The MTA has been failing its costumers on an epic scale lately. Yesterday's commuting nightmare also had Con Edison pitching in: NY Times "Why a Midtown Power Failure Snarled Your Morning Commute." Snarled is a pretty cozy word for soul-sapping mess.
There really are too many examples to list, except perhaps for the one I've pasted below. From August 1980!
Kudos to The New York Times archives. I started commuting from Long Island into Manhattan in high school during the summer of my junior year when I got an internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was soul-sapping (I know I've said that before.) I was young and wanted to shout and scream about how awful this daily experience was, and of course was really thrilled when the NY Times ran it.
Even more satisfying: my brother, who also commuted, was on a Penn Station platform, trying to get to the stairs to get to the street, hemmed in by too many people who can but shuffle inch by inch to keep going, when he heard a guy say to his friend, "This is just what she was talking about." He had read the article!
Thirty years on, and commuters are still cattle. Maybe that is simply the fate of city dwellers.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. . . . His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. James Joyce, The Dead
James Joyce captioning a photo of Bing Crosby in Road to Zanzibar may seem an odd juxtaposition, but old echoes have been swirling about me these past two weeks, as 2016 gave way to 2017. Neither quite Marley's 3 Ghosts nor Carmel's mimosa scent, but equally haunting and demanding attention be paid. Herein I try to do that.
It started with attending the experience of James Joyce's The Dead, 1904, the Irish Rep's spirited idea to bring the short story to life in the appropriately Beaux Arts building of the Irish Historical Society. From Lily greeting the guests in the foyer, to the Irish whiskey and wines that flowed, it was an imaginative way into the world of Joyce. (My one criticism was the lighting: much too bright, much too modern.)
The Dead has deeply touched the heart of generations of readers, as it did mine. So much so that writing about it was one of the very first pieces I wrote for my little space on the blogosphere. And it is the post that Tom Watson found that brought me into the company of so many writers I have enjoyed for these past 10 years, so I have layers of deep attachment to it. Rich Conaty
Three days later came the shocking news that Rich Conaty had died, on December 30. Rich was a singular soul. He fell in love with the music of the 1920s and 1930s, and made a career out of that love, primarily with a show called The Big Broadcast on WFUV.
I met Rich because of Bing Crosby, the life-long idol of my father. I was weaned on Bing Crosby because of it, watching every film and listening to as much of the enormous repertoire as was possible throughout my young years.
That lead me to be a fan of WNEW AM, and In 1983 Rich had a weekend show, Crooners Corner. That's where I first heard him. He played almost all Crosby, I couldn't believe it. A few years later, 1987, my father had died, and I wrote an essay called "October Song" about the 10th anniversary of Crosby's death (October 14, 1977) and my dad's death (sadly from colon cancer). I sent the essay to Rich. We met, and he read my essay on the air. I used to have a cassette tape of that show, but it got lost along the way. If anyone happens to have heard it, or knows which show it was, I would so appreciate getting a copy.
Shortly after that I starting working at the then Museum of Television & Radio as the senior editor of the publications department. The radio curator shortly after left, and I called Rich and encouraged him to apply. He did and that's how he became the radio curator there. We worked closely with the television curator Ron Simon to produce a book celebrating Jack Benny. It was enormous fun. Rich of course did an amazing job bringing the radio shows to life. The book is still available on Amazon. And there are many wonderful tributes to Rich from his fans on the WFUV site.
In thinking about Rich I tried to find a copy of my essay "October Song" that he read on air, since I no longer have the recording, but could not. It was from the Dark Ages, pre-digital; if you don't have a hard copy, you don't have it.
The Road to Zanzibar
But I stumbled upon another essay I wrote 30 years ago that I had entirely forgotten about: "Going His Way." And it's not about that Academy Award-winning film, but Road to Zanzibar.
Allow me to be Robert Benchley, breaking into the narrative a bit to help move the story along:
Back in the day my father was diagnosed in January, he died in April. By March he was very ill, but he was home, and we were all living as normally as possible. I saw that Road to Zanzibar was on Channel 13 at 10:30pm that night, and announced it at the dinner table.
Essay--
"Ordinarily it would have been a given that we would watch it together, but Dad was suffering and went to sleep early. Tacitly, we all knew that for him to miss this movie would be a strong, frightening sign that he would soon be leaving us.
"But then he didn't go up to bed. Instead, somehow, his love for us and his desire not to worry us gave him the strength to stay up, and he settled into his usual recliner chair."
"Benchley": I had never seen this Road picture at that time, and was not familiar with the music. And for some crazy reason I thought my Dad also did not know this flick or the music either. Back to the story:
"Every Road picture has a ballad. For Zanzibar, it's the Van Heusen and Burke, "It's Aways You" with Bing in a canoe with Dorothy Lamour, crooning in that lovely baritone range of his voice. This was new music for me. And to my left, my father leaned back a bit in his recliner, gently resting his head as he clearly sang
Whenever it's early twilight I watch 'til a star breaks through Funny, it's not a star I see It's always you
He didn't falter for a word or a note
Whenever I roam through roses And lately I often do Funny, it's not a rose I touch It's always you
"The years and the pain fell away, even if it was just for the beats of the ballad. And beyond all the resonance of the dying man connecting with his childhood idol was the fact that 5 years earlier my father planted a significant rose garden and become a serious rose gardener. It seemed out of the blue. Well, maybe not . . ."
Essay end.
I had not thought about that moment for decades. And I only revisited because of Rich Conaty. And in my search for my mementos of Rich, I found my father's Decca 75 of "It's Always You." I didn't even know I had it. It's been sitting in a small part of my bookcase among other 75's that I took from the house after my mom moved, but honest to God I never looked through them.
And on this first snowy, snowy day, where the snow truly is falling beautifully on the living and the dead, I learn from a tweet from James Wolcott that Road to Zanzibar is on TCM tonight. I have not seen it in 30 years.
In honor of today's blizzard, here is a New Yorker’s first-hand account I found of driving in a blizzard from Teterboro, New Jersey to Massapequa Park, Long Island. I like it for its detail of the great roads of the Metropolitan area and the sheer driving description. Though a city girl with no car, I love the roadways of Gotham and the car culture of the people who know them intimately.
Plus, there is an O. Henry-like twist at the end.
“I left Teterboro (NJ) at 3 pm and the ground was already covered. The snow fell heavily (but fine)—about 2 to 3 inches per hour.
"I made good time to the GW Bridge, but then the back-ups began. We moved ever so slowly along the entire length of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (Ha!). After finally navigating a rise at the juncture of the CBX and The New England Thruway the way was pretty open to the Throgs Neck Bridge. It was difficult, though, because the road had not been plowed, and the snow was blowing and blinding and my windshield wipers were not working very well. "The rise in the road I mentioned was part of the problem with the CBX and set the stage for the rest of the trip—many cars (the drivers really) could not climb even the slightest incline without skidding and getting stuck. Quite a few of them ended up perpendicular to the traffic flow. "I took the Throgs Neck without a problem and the Clearview Expressway to Northern Blvd., where I got gas (Thank God!) This phase of the trip was relatively uneventful.
"Back on the Cross-Island things crept along. (I had thought about staying on Northern Blvd. but I knew the further East I went the hillier it would become so I decided against it.) No one could get on or off the L.I.E. because the entrance ramp/incline was blocked by snow. "We inched along, sliding and avoiding the abandoned cars. It was incredibly slow going.
"Finally, after getting up an incline near New Hyde Park road I saw another world---there was no backed-up traffic! Eureka! There were a few cars moving in front of me in a single file and I joined the procession. There was only one lane open (still no plowing, but some plows passed us on the other side, going into Queens), and with my windshield wipers not working at all by this time, I found it difficult to keep in line, but somehow I managed. "This strange caravan wound its way to the junction of Northern State and Meadowbrook Pkwy and since the cars in front of me went on Northern State, I did too. Soon the three cars in front of me pulled to the side to either rest or clean their windshields or whatever. That left me in the lead! "I was virtually driving blind. I sat forward as far as I could with my forehead practically pressed against the windshield with my chin on the steering wheel. Besides struggling to stay in the lane that had been traveled before (and de facto plowed) I had to be careful not to hit the abandoned cars. Grueling doesn’t begin to describe it. And it just didn’t end.
"The whiteout effect was so strong that I missed the turnoff for Wantagh Pkwy, which I had intended to take. I finally managed to cross-country (practically) at Hicksville Rd and make my exit. I was making progress when I ran into a snow bank on my left and the snow blew up and completely blocked my windshield so I had to stop and clean it off.
I must say it was quite an ordeal. I was really afraid I would not make it home. I finally did, NINE HOURS later. I had a triple martini.”
(As a point of reference, Teterboro to Massapequa Park is a 2-hour trip.)
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Here’s the thing about this description: it’s from a letter my father wrote in me on Ash Wednesday, 1983, when I was away in England as a senior in college!
He wrote me letters once or twice a week, this being the world before email. My father was an expert driver-—I love the swipe he takes at the drivers who can’t keep from skidding (it’s not the cars, it’s them).
Holding the letter in my hand brought me back to my flat at Southampton University, sitting on my bed reading it for the first time. He had a distinct, beautiful hand writing that some people found hard to read.
He could not have imagined me rereading it in the 21st century. Nor did he know he would die two years after writing it. We know not the hour nor the day.
"Welcome to a tradition started by the late Jon Swift/Al Weisel, who left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. As Lance Mannion put it in 2010: One of his projects was a year-end Blogger Round Up. Al/Jon asked
bloggers far and wide, famous and in- and not at all, to submit a link
to their favorite post of the past twelve months and then he sorted,
compiled, blurbed, hyperlinked and posted them on his popular blog. "
Satirist blogger Jon Swift/Al Weisel sadly died in 2009 of an aneurysm. Batocchio, who writes the Vagabond Scholar blog, picked-up the round-up mantle in honor of Jon Swift.
I was on the edges of Jon Swift's blog circle, via Tom Watson, and so I ended up in his round-up. It continues to be a wonderful collection of big/famous blogs and smaller/not famous blogs, all nestled together by Batocchio. I submitted my post about stumbling upon the BBC Desert Island Disc website & Yoko Ono's song selections. One of which her mother sang to her, and my mother sang to me: The Songs Our Mothers Sang to Us.
What is most wonderful about the round-up is the clear evidence that "blogs are dead"—which has been hailed since shortly after they began and heightend as Twitter and Instagram entered the scene—simply isn't true.
Happy Reading, you readers' readers, get thee to the Vagabond Scholar.
Today, 12/21/14, the exceptional actress Billie Whitelaw died at 82. I did not see her as Winnie in Happy Days (pictured above), but did see Fiona Shaw at BAM in 2008, and wrote this post that the woman buried in the sand, with just ritual and verbal/intellectual exercise to pass the time, defines a blogger. Yikes. Beckett, as genius: check.
Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So let's sing a song of cheer again, Happy days are here again.
I was never a student of Samuel Beckett, Ireland’s great, bleak ultramodernist, master of black humor. When I was at college at Southampton University (England, not Long Island), one of the dons performed Krapp’s Last Tape. It was compelling, and the intimate nature of the performance was memorable, but it did not send me running to a Beckett tutorial.
The chance to see Fiona Shaw, however, sent me running to BAM for her limited engagement in Happy Days in 2008. I went with few preconceived notions. I had seen photos of Irene Worth somewhere along the way. Her aging music hall woman, with flapper headband, stuck in the sand never looked very appealing. I did not know of Billie Whitelaw's embodiment, which is immediately more appealing.
But from the moment I walked into the Brooklyn theater, I was carried away. Tom Pye’s “mound” is a visually stunning mixture of English seaside gone nightmare and post apocalyptic landscape. The lighting is piercingly LCD bright, unnatural, startling.
An elegant white parachute material curtain rises to the ceiling, and when it gently falls, Winnie is there, buried to her waist in the sand, gently folded over herself, with her head and arms resting on the ground.
A loud, jarring, ugly alarm sounds—jolting everyone--and Winnie wakes up. Her day is book ended by the buzzer that tells her to sleep.
She begins her morning rituals by brushing her teeth, and reading the toothpaste tube.
The absurdity of the situation is heightened by the familiarity of it—-both in the normalcy of brushing your teeth in the morning, and in the fears being embodied before your very eyes: the fear of being stuck, or buried alive, or isolated from all humanity.
It turns out Winnie is not completely isolated. There is Willie, her husband, who lives in a hole to the side of her mound. He grunts monosyllabic answers to her questions and reads headlines from his paper. Winnie speaks of how wonderful it will be if/when he moves to the front of her mound and she’ll be able to see him without straining her neck.
The rest of Winnie’s world is a parasol and a black bag that contains her mirror, a revolver, and a hat. The sun is merciless, and she is baking. The hat offers a little protection, as does the parasol, until it mysteriously blows up.
Winne As Blogger.
Winnie’s life is ritual punctuated by verbal utterances. Her conversation is peppered with quotes from Shakespeare, Milton, Browning, Keats, Byron, authors who make her feel less alone. (Here is a guide to them--scroll down to the Literary Allusions). Even her oft repeated “sorrow keeps breaking in” is apparently from Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
The fear that she articulates is that there will be no one to listen to her. "Just to know that in theory you hear me even though in fact you don't is all I need." Just how much of blogging did Beckett foreshadow?
All of our voices are “out there” in the barren landscape of the blogosphere in the hope that someone is listening. In the hope that we don’t come across as the droning, tedious wife. We bring as much of life as we can into the void, soldiering on through anxiety and angst. From the other perspective, Winnie herself is the consummate blogger, with her daily entries of conversation.
Back in her theatrical world, what comes across most in Act I is the life force at its purest. Fiona Shaw is luminous. Her “chatter,” as it has been called, is not grating in the least, but engaging, measured, rhythmically inflected, with extraordinary facial gestures and arm movements.
There is a lot going on here. The piece could be a metaphor for what happens to married couples when they settle into the coexisting grunting state. Willie as the henpecked husband, who has shut himself off from his wife’s eternal yammering. Winnie can’t stop yammering because she literally can do nothing else. Willie could leave the mound, could leave Winnie, and we have no idea why he doesn’t.
The gun is an ominous presence. Winnie kisses it, and could use it to end her situation, at least in Act 1.
In Act II, with no relative time to Act I, Winnie wakes up and is buried up to her neck; she can no longer do her morning rituals, or reach the gun. Winnie doesn’t comment directly on her worsening condition. She continues to try to organize her time as best she can, knowing that the song must be sung before the bell to sleep. That she shows no outward sign of complete despair is deeply unnerving.
At the end of the play, Willie moves to the front of the mound, ‘dressed to kill” as it says in the play in formal mourning trousers and top hat, and Winnie is excited that he is reaching out to her. She sings “The Merry Widow Waltz” (I love you so) since she can no longer open the music box. The last moment is Willie reaching up toward her, and the two looking at each other.
But is he reaching for the gun? Is it to use on himself, or her? It is a haunting ambiguity.
I grew attached to Winnie in the course of the play, drawn in by her spirit and determinism. “This will have been another happy day.” I could say the same from my mound here in blogspot.com. Lucky for me Steed always responds in full sentences and doesn’t like guns at all. In fact we BBBBBUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZ.
Several years ago Dan Eisenberg of put out a call for a one-day Blog-a-thon, when those things were happening, on It’s a Wonderful Life. He wanted people to either explain what all the fuss is about, or agree that it could be added to Mary and Yale’s Academy of the Overrated, (joining Gustav Mahler, Isak Dinesen, Karl Jung, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, Vincent Van Gogh, Ingmar Bergman).
Oh, the fuss is well deserved.
MARY'S VOICE I love him, dear Lord. Watch over him tonight. JANIE'S VOICE Please, God. Something's the matter with Daddy. ZUZU'S VOICE Please bring Daddy back.
It’s a Wonderful Life tells a story that would exist whether Philip Van Doren Stern had ever written his 1943 short story it's based on, “The Greatest Gift,” or not. It’s part of being a sentient person to wonder what would things be like if you weren’t here, either from your death now, or backdating the idea to never being on the planet.
But what raises it up to a great film is its earthiness and common-sense sensibility. It draws situations with just a few strokes that have deep resonance for the experience of the solid middle class after World War II and following generations, like the family dinner scene before the high school graduation dance, the father’s fatigue at working at a job he doesn’t like, and George’s ideas of getting out: “I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world.”
But most importantly, it captures the anger that lies just beneath the surface of so much of “nice” domestic life, a byproduct of all the primal life forces held in a precarious balance for family life to be possible at all.
Jimmy Stewart’s performance is strong throughout, and his anger is particularly convincing in various scenes.
In the phone call scene with Mary he portrays “panic of commitment” without cliché.
Script direction: George can stand it no longer. He drops the phone with a crash grabs Mary by the shoulders and shakes her. Mary begins to cry. “Now you listen to me. I don't want any plastics and I don't want any ground floors. And I don't want to get married *ever* to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do.”
He’s angry and his sexual energy is dangerous as he’s drawn to Mary, his lust overwhelming his wanderlust. This is not a sentimental vignette. It is a clear-eyed look at one of the age-old realities of civilization: men don’t particularly want to participate.
George’s anger at Uncle Billy when he discovers the money has been lost is sharp: “Where's that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where's that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That's what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it's not gonna be me.”
When George gets home he isn’t able to tell Mary what’s happened, he can only RAGE against the pedestrian details of his life: the broken banister, the kid banging on the piano, how cold the house is, the teacher who sent ZuZu home sick.
He is a hulking presence, terrorizing the family with his anger:
Mary (in an outburst) “George, why must you torture the children?”
That’s when George runs out of the house and to his appointed destiny with Clarence.
PETE Is Daddy in trouble? JANIE Shall I pray for him? MARY Yes, Janie, pray very hard. TOMMY Me, too? MARY You too, Tommy. (on phone) Hello, Uncle Billy?
George’s sojourn in the universe where he never existed is carefully plotted, and the details are deep. The town is ugly and the people mean and crass. He finds his mother is a harsh, suspicious landlady and Mary a withered, mousy woman. Mr. Gower is a rummy child murderer, his brother is in the cemetery and by extension, all the men in the transport because his brother wasn’t there to save them. The dots are strongly connected, and his actual impact on these lives is clear. Again, I see no mawkish sentiment here.
George’s nightmare is short-lived, as he returns to the bridge and prays to live again: "I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again."
The snow returns and he is back to his life. My favorite part is him running through the town; it is the perfect visualization of a feeling of unbridled hope and joy. For the moment, anger—-which is fueled by the maddening details of life and experience-- is banished by the desire for life itself.
I think it is an excellent film. I think if Clarence’s line “Ridiculous of you to think of killing yourself for money,” helps one person gain perspective and stop from hurting themselves when things are grim, then it’s more than an excellent film. And I like its realistic depiction of prayer. It reminds us that we don’t know how grace works, but people have experienced its power, and so it should show up occasionally in our cinema lives in a real way.
Here’s a great gift from Imdb: the whole script is online.
I was saddened with much of the world at the death of Lou Reed last Sunday. A daughter of Long Island (Massapequa Park) by way of Brooklyn mourning one of its sons (Freeport) via ditto.
I was not an intimate fan of the rocker outside of his classics that are ingrained in the soundtrack to life of my age eschalon.
But two things brought me a little closer to this distinct voice, this rocker talking to my generation.
One is that he came to the Museum of Television & Radio in January 1994 when we had the US premiere of the TV documentary, Curious: The Velvet Underground Live in Europe.
I didn't get to talk to the man, but I had some conversation with his entourage, including Peter Gabriel. He had the bluest eyes this side of Paul Newman, and we talked about the English choir tradition, he being of the Ralph Vaughan Williams school, where I prefer the slightly lesser loved Herbert Howells.
I went out to dinner with the entourage, I think Penn Jillette was at my table, because as it was breaking up, Laurie Anderson and Lou came over to our table, and he was zipping up her parka. It was a very cold evening and they were bundling against it. They looked like little kids getting ready to go out and play in the snow. A friend commented that there was an inner youth about them, that they would never seem old. I don't know why that struck him then, but it did and he was right.
With Rufus Wainwright at Carnegie Hall
Several years later, December 13, 2006, to be exact, I went to The Wainwright Family & Friends Christmas Show at Carnegie Hall. It was a magical evening that I wrote about in the early days of this blog:
The Christmas Show is unique because it included Rufus Wainwright's sisters Martha and Lily and Aunt Sloan, and guests Jimmy Fallon, Teddy Thompson, Laurie Anderson, and Lou Reed.
How can you describe the Rufus voice? It is wildly distinct. It’s a clear, pointed sound, with a nasal but not unappealing undertone. He swells note to note in well controlled verbal scoops. His sound has a sexiness that pretty much defies gender categories.
He sang What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve, channeling Rosemary Clooney. If he had been in a black strapless dress, it would have seemed perfectly natural. His Cantique de Noel, with a beautiful piano accompaniment, was elegant and very moving.
There were other great numbers: Martha and Jimmy Fallon singing Baby It’s Cold Outside; Laurie Anderson droning a hurdy-gurdy to all verses of O Come All Ye Faithful, which she graced with the O Superman inflection; and Sloan singing a knockout, uplifting, joyous rendition of Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.
And then there was Lou.
He comes out wearing a bright yellow, wild jacket—must be his idea of festive—and sings White Christmas with Rufus. It's campy and sweet at the same time, with Lou giving his version of a crooning bass. He was born in 1942, the year that Holiday Inn, which gave us Irving Berlin's White Christmas, came out. So there's a wonderful connection there.
And then he sang a solo Silent Night that was poignantly hallowed, in its way. He gave it his driving rock beat under a jagged—jarring semi shout of SILENT NIGHT. And yet there was a sense of respect for the words, and . . . all 3 verses. Not even Bing Crosby did that. The third verse usually makes me cry, and this was no different:
“Son of God, Love’s pure light. Radiant beams from they holy face; with the dawn of redeeming Grace. Jesus Lord at thy birth. Jesus Lord at they birth.”
All with.----The Reed rhyyyyth-mnic----phrasing.That----we know---and love.
He is our aural e. e. cummings. This rocker, this drug addict, this malcontent, offering the classic hymn, during Advent, in Carnegie Hall. Nunc dimittis.
Someone at that December 13 concert filmed the White Christmas duet. The video is very blurry, but the audio is good enough to capture the moment. No one has posted the Silent Night.
Reed would later go on to sing at the Jubilee concert in Rome for JP11, and the Vatican's pop cultural guru in the curia, Gianfranco Ravasi, tweeted words to Perfect Day when Reed died. Clearly because he speaks to the true humanity in us.
Good night sweet prince (as Laurie has called you). And flights of rockin' angels sing you to your rest. The life of a rocker, it's a bitch on the body. May your soul rest in peace.
(Top photo: From the Kate and Anna McGarrigle: A Not So Silent Night DVD, backstage at the Knitting Factory, 2009, similar to the Carnegie Hall concert.)
It's like a zoom-in detail to Christian Marclay's The Clock, which only spent a few seconds on 4:00 am. Now there are people giving the 'dark night of the soul' hour it's due.
Many people aren't in the mood for a "rah-rah" American post this morning, following the Zimmerman verdict. I like what Ta-Nehisi Coates has to say a lot. Though our legal system is flawed, it is still one of the great ones in the world.
I know today is what the English speaking countries call Bastille Day, commemorating the famous storming thereof in 1789. Wiki says the French don't refer to the fortress at all. For them it is La Fete Nationale, or Le quatorze juillet, and they are celebrating the whole idea of the birth of the Republic.
But I missed Canada Day, July 1, celebrating the anniversary of 1867 when the British American colonies Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada became the country Canada within the British Empire. And Canada Day would have been the perfect time for this post, except I didn't yet have the knowledge I needed yet. Hence segueing from the French.
As an aside, I'd like to say "hi" and "thank you" to the many Canadian readers of this blog. I'm looking at you, Moncton, NB; Vancouver, BC; Montreal, Saint-Eustache, Chateauguay, Quebec; and Ottawa & Toronto, Ontario.
Memories of a National Embarrassment and a Song The Guardian started publishing its series of revelations about the NSA spying in June 6, and the scandal unfolded throughout the month, with Edward Snowden being charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with espionage and theft of government property on June 14.
The revelation of this spying is another in a long line of disappointments in our government. My mind harkened back to Watergate, which I experienced as a child. I was not a budding news junkie, but I knew something bad for the country had happened.
And that memory was tied to a dim but nagging memory of a novelty patriotic song. Not really a song, more like speaking a song with some music. I thought it had something to do with the energy crisis, and my impression was it was a counterbalance to the badness of Watergate.
One line that stuck with me was something like, "do we hide our scandals? No, we put them on the front page for all to see." And I vaguely remembered "America the Beautiful" playing at the end.
So I started asking friends and family of a certain age with, prompting them with my little shards of factoids, and
NOBODY KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT.
It was the strangest thing that nobody, even people with big knowledge of popular music, had even the vaguest notion of this song.
Could I have made it up? It seemed so real.
Mystery Solved: "The Americans"
So I started googling: 1970s, patriotic song, watergate, and all permutations.
Got lots of hits, but none of them were it: "Proud to be an American." Dickie Goodman parody songs. John Wayne speaking different songs.
Then I asked my brother, and he found it.
It was a record of an actual Canadian broadcast by a commentator named Gordon Sinclair. (Born in Toronto in 1900, there is lots of information at the site for the Gordon Sinclair Foundation, which gives yearly journalism awards.)
On June 5, 1973, on his usual CFRB radio show, he lambasted "the world" for not appreciating "The Americans," which is what the commentary came to be known as, and for not offering help whenever they were in crisis.
For him, it was just one show of thousands, but it took on a life of its own. It was as though one of Any Roony's 60 Minutes segments went seriously viral.
There are various versions about just how it happened. One is that Sinclair had read in the paper that morning that the American Red Cross was bankrupt, and he was disgusted that no country was stepping in to help, and so his diatribe.
Anchor Bryon MacGregor then read a transcript of the show on CKLW in Ontario (also reaching Detroit), and U.S. News & World Reports published a full transcript.
Demand for a copy of the speech was so high a Canadian record label released it with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as soundtrack, and an American label with "America the Beautiful."
From Wiki: "The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)" went to #24 on the Billboard Hot 100, making the 73-year-old Sinclair the 2nd-oldest living person ever to have a Billboard U.S."
All the ones on YouTube are the Canadian version, so I still haven't actually heard the song as I did in the 1970s. It ran on AM radio in its heyday, which is why I heard it so many times.
The line about Watergate that I remembered is
You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at.
When the Americans get out of this bind ... They will come out of this thing with their flag high.
It was odd and eerie to hear that strong, distinctive voice again on the YouTube uploads. I have no emotional connection to the piece or to Sinclair, but I had such a clear idea of it in my head, with no resonance from any one I asked, and then it was found. I had not understood the song as a kid, and clearly didn't get that it was a Canadian talking about US. There's lots more complexity behind the politics of what he's talking about (what were we really doing in Nicaragua?), but you can appreciate some of the big picture he's talking about.
Sinclair later remarked he was tired of the phenomenon of this one piece, and regretted the errors that were in it, but said he stood behind the perspective. He died in 1984.
Here is a transcript and the Canadian version of the record.
"The Americans: A Canadian's Opinion"
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.
It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers), I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help?
The Americans did.
They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on... let's hear it!
Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again.
You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws..are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.
When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.
When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?
I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around.
They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.
And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke. This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.
* * *
Wiki said that it was brought back after 9/11, but I never heard it then, which is surprising, being one of the few people of my generation who had remembered it at all.
Courtesy of the New York Times and SMITH online magazine, the Six-Word Memoirs phenomenon meets Mother’s Day.
I first ran into the Six-Word Memoirs in Lizzie Widdicombe’s New Yorker write-up in 2008. SMITH had run a contest: Your life in six words. Why six words? Lizzie believes the precedent was Hemingway’s short story in under 10 words composed to win a bet: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
(This story is itself a piece of apocrypha attached to Papa by the playwright John deGroot in his 1996 play of the same name. Excellent explanation about it here.)
Regardless of the origin, the six-word autobiography is now well established because of the SMITH contest, which spawned a series of books: the original Not Quite What I Was Planning, (the winner of the contest from the 25-year-old hairdresser from Minnesota with the great name Summer Grimes); its sequel in a deluxe edition; then Six Word-Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak; Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous & Obscure, and more.
The ones in the New York Times submitted for Mother’s Day are witty, poignant, sad, funny, and spine tingling: a complete spectrum of experiences of the mother/child relationship. You can hear whole backstories in the six words.
Here are some where the relationship was sadly painful:
Her way was the only way.
Made me the scapegoat, thanks mom.
Never a kind word for me.
She did the best she could.
Single motherhood: think long and hard.
Never met mother; sent to another.
Then there were a bunch that I could have written for my Mom:
I'm really not following football this season. But having the Super Bowl in New Orleans is a good reason to shine the light on my extremely talented painter friend, David Barton. A specialty of his is architectural oil paintings. He captures building details as though he was taking a photograph, but the pieces have the dimension of emotion and story that is particular to the medium of oils. The combination is very satisfying art.
David starts by photo research, for places he doesn't visit in person, or taking his own pictures of building that he does go to see. He went down to New Orleans in what turned out to be the year before Katrina to take pictures.
He created a series of New Orleans buildings (above), including the great St. Louis Cathedral at Jackson Place (below).
Barton: "It wasn't 'til I cropped the image, radically formatting it to the horizontal, that this painting worked for me."
Me to, since I'm the proud owner.
Here is more of his work from his website. The jpegs really don't do justice the vibrancy of the art in person. Yay New Orleans! Yay David! And if I had to chose, I'd go with The Ravens because they named themselves after the Poe poem.
Back on December 13, someone I follow retweeted this from Anil Dash:
"I am very appreciative of the very kind responses to my piece about The Web We Lost. But if you liked it, BLOG ABOUT IT. Don't just tweet."
I was intrigued. Someone entreating blogging over tweeting.
I clicked back to find his article, on his blog, lamenting what we've lost in the blogosphere as the web has evolved.
Here's one of Anil's points, about linking:
"Ten years ago, you could allow people to post links on your site, or to show a list of links which were driving inbound traffic to your site. Because Google hadn't yet broadly introduced AdWords and AdSense, links weren't about generating revenue, they were just a tool for expression or editorializing. The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse, by corrupting links."
And who is Anil Dash? His site says "I'm an avid and unabashed student of pop culture, extremely versed in the minutia of funk music and hip hop history, and obsessive about the details of how the modern technology industry came to be." He's turned his passions into a tech/strategist career, and a blogger since 1999. More about him here.
The comments on his "The Web We Lost" are equally interesting reading:
Ryan Sholin · Top Commenter Of all these things, I miss Technorati the most, but I also miss the culture of blogging that powered it. Now we (well, Anil and Jason and Gruber and obviously many prominent others excluded) barely use our blogs, content to share half-passively, doing things like posting a comment and leaving the box checked to post it to Facebook as a method of exposing our thoughts on a link to a wider audience. Is that enough? Have I sufficiently participated in the conversation? Should I tweet this, too? Maybe I will.
As a blogger since 2006 I am witness to what Anil is talking about. The blog culture in general has changed. It's not as vibrant as it was "in the beginning," with voices subsumed into the impersonal, megalopolis world of the HuffPos and the enticements everywhere to be pithy, and only pithy.
But not entirely.
Vagabond Scholar Continues Jon Swift Tradition
Back starting in 2005 there was a blog/blogger named Jon Swift: "I am a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues."
He had quite a following of people who "got" that he was a faux conservative and it was satire (Swift, hint, hint) or didn't and followed him straight.
Everything about "Jon Swift" is the antithesis of Anil's observation. Everything about Swift is highly unique, highly individual.
Swift was in reality the freelance writer Al Weisel, but he took the literary tradition of a nom de plume very seriously, going so far to fight Facebook for his right to have an account with that name.
He participated in a the collective of bloggers that Tom Watson brought together under the umbrella Newcritics.
Swift's blog had a large following and "famous" friends. He started an end-of-year roundup where he asked smaller bloggers of his acquaintance and circles to chose a post of theirs from the year and he would link to it in a roundup. Very nice thing for a blogger to do. Great way to learn about new ideas.
All of Swift's creative engery was stopped by an aortic aneurysm that erupted as he was driving down to his father's funeral in Virginia in 2010. A tragedy on every level for this 46 year old man. His death saddened a good chunk of the blogoshpere, because everything about his work was smart, funny, and perceptive, but above all, unique and individual, on its own platform.
To honor Jon Swift, blogger Vagabond Scholar picked up the tradition of the blog roundup, which I'm granfathered into. (My contribution is about Paul Fussell.) It's another year of great links, many of them from the political side of the blogosphere, which is interesting to me because that's not my usual beat to read.
And so, Anil Dash, here's a bit of the web we knew in 2006, alive and well.
I have been afflicted a bit lately from the nearly 6-year itch of the blogger, which hits different people at different times. Tim Footman recently chronicled his own near-anniversary with an homage to "old style blogging," when unrelated ideas flowed so easily, one to the other.
Besides the general wear and tear of weekly blogging, my funk had an odd trigger: the Emmy Award show at the end of September. Not who won/who didn't win, but the show itself.
Starting right as it began with the taped segment "Backstage," which was set in the bathroom with Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks, Zooey Deschanel, Connie Britton, Martha Plimpton, and Mindy Kaling. Bates hears someone crying and opens a stall to see Lena Dunham, naked, binge eating on the toilet. Then finds the source of the crying is Jimmy Kimmel, crazy eyebrowed with too much botox so he isn't going to go on.
The women say they can punch him into shape, and start punching him in the face one by one.
I don't think award shows of any kind should have a sense of self importance, but it's pretty low to locate your sensibility in the toilet, even with Jimmy Kimmel as host.
I have long been a cheerleader for the intelligent creativity of TV, celebrating its spectrum from Three's Company to Scenes from a Marriage, which Bergman made for Swedish television, fascinated by the power of the "miniseries" to bring people back in front of the screen several nights running. And here I was being assaulted by the industry's projection of itself in the lavatory, with an eating disorder and physical violence, which many people thought was funny. I hated all the Kimmel taped pieces, particularly the mock In Memoriam.
With all the talent who come together to create Homeland and Modern Family, this is how the industry presents itself on "their night." I found it so depressing and disappointing that it took my voice away for a while.
The next day I saw a picture of Jim Parsons and Zooey Deschanel presenting that I love for its composition and color, and for the easy elegance of the actors, even if they look like they escaped from a Pushing Daisies episode. But beneath this facade of beauty, New Girl and Big Bang Theory are on Neil Genzlinger's "Trends That Deserve the Unwelcome Mat," for their reveling in urine gags. Crap, we're back in the bathroom.
I agree with Genzlinger that this is an unwelcomed trend, which worries me a little. He's the guy who took on what is clearly Seinfeld territory, "Really," without referencing Seinfeld. As Jerry declared, "You crumbled a bit of civilization off there yourself."
Rick or AJ?
Well, the funk has lifted, fueled in part by the ridiculous Funny or Die, "Greatest Event in Television History," from Paul Scheer, Adam Scott, Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Jeff Probst and their love of Simon & Simon. It's completely over the top, but done by guys who love and know television from its smallest pixel to every inflection that we all picked up on since our impressionable childhood viewing.
Simon & Simon has that great, lame, 1980s magnetism about it. I was just in San Diego and took a city trolley tour. They did not mentioned Simon & Simon when going over the Coronado Bridge, but I will write to tell them they really should.
I had two interesting professional engagements last week, thanks to Floria Lasky and Sidney Hillman. Each had a substantial career that included service to the larger community, and each had been such a force in their own fields that after their deaths colleagues took the time and effort to create something in their names that bring people together. That's the exciting part.
I greatly admire people whose very lives bring people together. We all try to contribute to the conversation and make an impact where it will tangibly help someone, but that's a talent some people have more than others. And then there's Floria and Sidney, who can do it from the grave.
Floria Lasky
Because Floria met Jerome Robbins as a young women last century . . . there was a workshop of people who run the social media accounts for many of the city's nonprofit cultural institutions.
Here's How:
Floria Vivian Lasky was born in the Bronx on April 24, 1923, the daughter of Polish immigrants, who named her after Floria Tosca, the heroine of Puccini’s opera. She entered Hunter College at the age of 14. After graduating first in her class at New York University law school in 1945, she joined the law firm of Fitelson & Mayers, where she would stay for the next 62 years, eventually becoming a principal.
A master negotiator, she was a leader in the field of entertainment law, representing such clients as Jerome Robbins, Jule Styne, Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers.
Robbins was a particularly close client and friend. She knew him for more than fifty years, and continued to serve as executor of his estate as president of The Jerome Robbins Foundation and trustee of The Robbins Rights Trust until she died in 2007.
In her honor the Jerome Robbins Foundation created the Floria V. Lasky Award and Symposium. The award this year went to Paul H. Epstein, a partner at Proskauer Rose for nearly 30 years, he founded Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and was instrumental in establishing the George Balanchine Trust and the Leonard Bernstein Office as well as helping to bring Jerome Robbins' Broadway to the stage.
To have even more direct impact on the cultural life of the city, the foundation partnered with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to produce a workshop, Digital & Social Media Strategy: Strategy, Planning, & Implementation. It was a good Saturday afternoon at the Jerome L. Greene Space on Charleton & Varick, with presenters from leading digital agencies and the audience of people who run the social media accounts for cultural nonprofits across the city, which was excellent.
Sure I can always reach out to my social media counterparts--like Christopher Gruits at Carnegie Hall or Doug Reside at NY Public Library for the Performing arts—but in the hectic day to day of the Paley Center, I rarely do. So, thank you Floria, for helping me stay connected.
Because Sidney immigrated from Lithuania and became a garment labor leader . . . I met some excellent journalists whose work I might have missed, I learned something about Labor Union history, and I connected with fellow bloggers in person.
Here's How:
Sidney Hillman was the founding president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union of America, a predecessor union of Workers United, SEIU. An architect of the New Deal, he fought to build a vibrant union movement extending beyond the shop floor to all aspects of workers’ lives.
Hillman died in 1946. His passing was felt as a deep personal loss by men and women in every walk of life. Before long, the union, which he had led since its founding in 1914, was besieged with requests to create a living memorial to the man who had become the spokesman for progressive industrial democracy.
The Foundation is deeply concerned with the responsibilities of a free press, including radio and television. Since 1950, the Hillman Prize program has honored contributors to the daily, periodical, and labor press, as well as authors and broadcasters.
The very first daily press winner was the great liberal columnist Murray Kempton. In later years, photography and, most recently, blogging, were added as prize categories.
The Sidney Hillman Foundation has sought to illuminate the great issues of the day—from the search for a basis for lasting peace, to the need for better housing, medical care, and employment security for all people, the promotion of civil liberties and the battle against discrimination based on race, nationality, or religion.
And so I was invited to join the Bloggers Committee by old friend Tom Watson, joining Lindsay Beyerstein, Lance Mannion, Howard Greenstein, Marcia Stepanek, Jamil Smith, Jill Filipovic and others to bring some real-time attention to the winners, who included Frank Bardacke, Ta-nehisis Coates, Sarah Stillman, Katie Falkengberg, and Yoav Potash. Danny Glover and Sidney Poitier were inspiring presenters, and lovely to meet.
Things are a little intense for me right now, as they are for many people for many reasons, at this time of OWS and all the ongoing wars, struggles around the world.
To handle the pressures—big and small, life changing and life threatening---you’ve got to find small pleasures where you can find them. They are one of the things that help keep you balanced.
And on this Thanksgiving, two small things have given me that little blast of “things are okay”: A Buffy marathon, and a blog comment.
I’m cooking this year, so I was up early and stumbled upon the 6:00 am start of the Chiller Buffy Marathon. I am an original, serious fan. It’s hard to describe the import of that statement to the uninitiated. I haven’t seen an episode since the series ended 8 years ago, so what a great cheap thrill it is to hear that music again. And, the marathon is the last 10 episodes of the series, which (except for the last, which I DID NOT LIKE), I don’t remember that well, so it’s like seeing new episodes. (And, I want to go on record that, in the final analysis, I believe Angel (the series) was the superior creative achievement, an unpopular idea in my circle that I hope to defend someday in print.)
I could transcribe great Buffy dialogue all day: “First Date”: Buffy: He (the principal) may want to give me a promotion, or he may what to kill me; Willow: Well, you’ll have to dress for the ambiguity.
As anyone who has stopped by here before knows, I am also a serious fan of blogging, and tomorrow happens to be my 5 year blogoversary.
Last night someone in Abu Dhabi, clicked over from a 23 year old’s tumblr who had linked to my Orson Welles post. I love when the UAE visits. But my favorite part is the way the 23 year set up the link on his page:
"First-hand Accounts of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds
This has long been my favourite example of early, en masse trolling.
Orson Welles, my hat is off to you sir."
A 23 year old saying that any concept has “long been” in his vocabulary is enheartening.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy the day of rest and family (and for those who partake, Buffy).
