Random Thoughts, Rainy Day

I call them random thoughts as they are unconnected, except by a rainy day.  While the pitter patter of the rain can be soothing when living on our boat in the summer, torrential downpours, thunder and lightning are not.  Our dock is halfway into the Norwalk River, a long walk in wind driven rain, so while there are things to be done outside on the boat, and shopping to be addressed, today we are trapped inside a space which is a quarter of the size of my smallest NYC studio apartment.  Reading and writing are the best choices for today leaving the necessary errands and work for fairer weather.

Even writing has its challenges.  No Wi-Fi here so cellular is our only means of communication.  I’m accustomed to writing with things running in the background, particularly to look up facts, but on the boat I’m floating in space untethered.  

In a way I’m glad to have this opportunity as the next week will be almost entirely devoted to preparations for, and then the wedding of our son, Jonathan, to our soon-to-be daughter in law, Tracie.  Respecting their privacy I’m not going to say much about this eagerly anticipated affair, them, or their plans, but suffice it to say Ann and I are delighted, not only about the event, but they seem like perfect soul mates.

Last Friday we went into the city to meet them for a little “pre-wedding celebration” by having dinner at Hakkasan, a Cantonese restaurant with the most interesting food and ambiance, and it happens to be almost next door to the Tony Kiser Theatre where we had tickets to see Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts.  We had eagerly, and with some difficulty, obtained tickets after Terry Teachout’s laudatory review in the Wall Street Journal came out.  The play was highly praised as well by The New York Times.

There is much to be said in favor of this play in which six actors play non-chronological scenes in the life of this one ordinary woman and when you add them all up, they comprise what you would describe of each one of us, a unique life, and thus extraordinary in the same sense are those of the townspeople of Grover's Corners from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.  I liked the concept and the postcard kaleidoscopic non-temporal nature of the play but somehow I was little moved. 

I’m not sure whether this is the fault of the play or Second Stage.  We had seats more than half way up stage right and whenever a character addressed stage left we could hardly make out the dialogue.  Apparently performers were not wearing microphones.  Letts tries to make a broad statement about the “ordinary everywoman” but I felt he was dissecting a gender like a helpless frog in a Biology 101 laboratory class.  Maybe the play reads better as admittedly I did miss quite a bit of dialogue.  Hard to see how one reviewer felt it will become one of the outstanding plays of the early 21st century, but what do I know.  Guess he had a better seat than I did.

Actually (and as I said, these are random thoughts), one could make the argument that in light of the #Metoo movement, this play, written by a man, putting a woman in this context, could be considered a watershed theatrical moment.  After all, look at what is playing now on Broadway and generating a lot of criticism because of their portrayal of women, revivals of Carousel (see previous entry), and My Fair Lady (will be seeing it soon), not to mention the adaptation of the film Pretty Woman into a musical (reviews pending), which put women in the historical context of the times in which the works were set.

Does this mean that political correctness should ban such plays?  Of course I find it despicable that Julie was beaten by Billy in Carousel but one must take the times into account.  Ban all non PC plays and they’ll be little left to see.  I think there may be a case of cultural lag, but the arts do begin to reflect the changing times and perhaps Letts’ play is admirable on that basis alone.  Sorry, in spite of some of the objectionable themes, I still revel in the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe!

Tomorrow night we see The Understudy at the Westport Country Playhouse by Theresa Rebeck.  Perhaps she will cast more light on the “roles” of men and women, although it has more to do with the place of the “celebrity” on stage. Something on that play another time, which may be a while given our next few weeks.

On to a completely unrelated subject.  Random thoughts indeed.  Nothing like falling asleep on a boat with a good book in one’s hands. I’m generally into fiction but I like well written history as well, so for the past several weeks my night time reading has been Jon Meacham’s Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship.

This is one of the books which has been on my “to be read shelf” at home and I had just added Anne Tyler’s new novel, Clock Dance to that shelf.  Being an ardent Tyler devotee, I had intended to bring that book, but it is the hardcover 1^st edition, with a beautiful jacket, and I didn’t want to ruin it in any way and decided it could wait until I get home.  I also have scores of books and plays to read on my iPad’s Kindle application, but bedtime reading requires a physical book for me, and thus, Meacham to the rescue.

Meacham is not only a great historian, but a skilled writer at the same time.  I’ve written about WW II in this blog, mostly from my father’s perspective, and of course I’ve read a number of histories, especially from the FDR viewpoint.  Meacham carefully, painstakingly brings out the great statesmanship of these two men, their developing friendship, FDR’s crafting the Lend Lease program to deal with Britain’s needs and yet at the same time balancing Congress’ anti-intervention inclination before Pearl Harbor, even having to deal with some pro fascist feelings stoked by the likes of Lindbergh.

But Churchill won over FDR and a bond of friendship developed, although both men had their own egos and insecurities to be served.  Thus, like all human beings, they were flawed but their trust in one another and their leadership truly saved democracy.  When Stalin became more of a factor, they grew somewhat apart, but Churchill warned FDR about Stalin’s own agenda, and was proven right, bringing them back together again.

Meacham makes copious use of original correspondence to underscore what these two men accomplished.  The book was written some fifteen years ago.  When read today one cannot help but think of those men and what, now, passes for “leadership” in our government.  To every inspirational letter written or eloquent quote of these two titanic leaders, juxtapose one of the endless uninformed, despoiled tweets of our current leadership.  Where would we be if our “transactional” President had faced the likes of Hitler and the needs of the British people in 1940?  The book really needs to be read in that light now.  I could quote galore to make this point, having turned down the corners of more than 50 pages for that very purpose, but now, with little time, on my old laptop, in the pouring rain, to what end?  Simply read Meacham’s brilliant work, and consider that question.  Roosevelt and Churchill made history. History did not make them.  They were the right leaders for terrible times. 

Do we have the right leaders for our times?  If you read Franklin and Winston, you may be asking (and answering) that question with every page.

Photographs

Think of this as a “Facebook page.”  I don’t “do” Facebook, so this is an alternative to publish photographs on the Web, an attempt to archive them.

Photography used to be my avocation.  My father was a professional.

I no longer pursue it as a hobby in this digital age, preferring, now, writing and piano, but when we travel, I usually take a couple of cameras (as well as my iPhone).  Still, some of the more gratifying shots are right here in our own backyard which happens to be between the North Palm Beach Waterway and the North Palm Beach golf course.  The latter is where I like to walk first thing in the morning, around sunrise.

It was designed by the famous golfer, Jack Nicklaus, who is a local resident.  He created many undulations so it contrasts to the normal flatness Floridian topography and makes for a great walk before the sun is too high and golfers take over the course.

This shot is from one of the higher points on the golf course.  I like to joke with visitors that it is the highest point in the area.  It very well might be:

I take a lot of pictures of sunrises here, one of the more recent ones a glorious sunrise on Easter Sunday:

Occasionally I’ll see a fox on the course, or a snake, but no gators.  Birds of all varieties make the course their home.

The mother of all spider webs also caught my attention.

From our home on the waterway we see some spectacular sunsets, but then there are also moonsets if I get up early enough.

Then, also on our waterway there is an occasional bizarre sight, such as this 100 foot plus yacht being towed fore and aft.

Boating related as well, a drone shot (not mine) of a raft up in which we participated on nearby Munyon Island, our boat ‘Reprise’ in the lower right.

Finally), a photograph of the two of us attending opening night of Edgar & Emily, the Grim Reaper hovering behind.  

Rabbit at Rest -- Art as Life Itself

For years I’ve had a copy of Updike’s Rabbit at Rest sitting on the small bookshelf of our boat, where we have spent a part of the summer for each of the last eighteen years.  Each stay grows a little shorter as we age.  Perhaps that is because the boat seems to get smaller but the truth is it’s just more difficult. Boating demands strength and agility and a touch of fearlessness, all of which we had in abundance when we first started to boat on the Long Island Sound almost forty years ago, visiting most ports from Norwalk, CT to Nantucket, with yearly stopovers at Block Island.  Our stays now are mostly at the home port dock, but fortunately we are far out into the Norwalk River so it’s almost like being at a quiet mooring, with just more creature comforts when needed, like air conditioning. But occasionally we go out to the Norwalk Islands where we still have a mooring, especially on a fine day like this, leaving our home port…

I’m not sure why I kept this duplicate copy of what I consider to be Updike’s finest novel, Rabbit at Rest, on the boat, but now I know, having picked it up again.  I’m steeped in nostalgia. When I first read it I felt I was looking into my future.  Now I'm looking into my past. No one is a better social historian than Updike, the novelist. I miss him so much.

Simply put, Updike peers into the abyss of death in this novel.  It hangs heavily in some way on every page and having gone through some of the same experiences with angioplasties and more, I closely identify.  He’s now a snowbird in this novel, 6 months in Florida and 6 months in his familiar Pennsylvania environs. Rabbit (Harry Angstrom) has let himself go, however.  His little exercise is golfing but even that goes by the wayside.  On the other hand he is addicted to fast food, salt, you name the poison.   “Harry remorsefully feels the bulk, 230 pounds the kindest scales say, that has enwrapped him at the age of 55 like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one. His doctor down here keeps telling him to cut out the beer and munchies and each night…he vows to but in the sunshine of the next day he’s hungry again, for anything salty and easy to chew.  What did his old basketball couch…tell him toward the end of his life, about how when you get old you eat and eat and it’s never the right food?  Sometimes Rabbit’s spirit feels as if it might faint from lugging all this body around.”

This last sentence really gets to the heart of the novel.  It makes me wonder whether Updike was unconsciously elaborating on the great Delmore Schwartz poem, The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me, especially the lines:

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,  

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,  

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,  

A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,  

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope  

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.  

—The strutting show-off is terrified,  

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,  

Trembles to think that his quivering meat  

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

With that as the essential theme, nothing escapes the granular examination of Updike the social historian, the sterility of Florida life, the inherent difficulty of the father – son relationship (poor Nelson becomes hooked on drugs, always having to live in the larger than life shadow of his father, and leads the family into financial crisis), the political back drop of the time – Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the cupidity of corporate America, driving real industry overseas and becoming a nation of financial engineering.  In fact, so much of the novel stands up to today’s world and one can see the foreshadowing of the Age of Trump.  There is even a swipe at Trump on the front page of Rabbit’s local Florida paper of the late 80s, a picture of Trump with the headline (Male call: the year’s hottest). One would have to wonder what Updiike would have written with the last few years as political fodder.

Rabbit maintains a little garden at his house in Pennsylvania, but he’s also planted the seeds of what his family has become, his wife Janice yearning for a life of her own as a real estate broker, his son Nelson running their car dealership into the ground with debts to finance his cocaine habit, his daughter in law, Pru, hanging onto a loveless marriage, his two grandchildren looking to their grandpa for love and guidance, and Rabbit like a deer caught in the headlights.  “Family life with children, is something out of his past, that he has not been sorry to leave behind; it was for him like a bush in some neglected corner of the back yard that gets overgrown, a lilac bush or privet some bindweed has invade from underneath with leaves so similar and tendrils so tightly entwining it gives the gardener a headache in the sun to try to separate bad growth from good.  Anyway he basically had but the one child, Nelson, one lousy child.”

But that is not the only thing that is entwined, being strangled; it’s his heart and the American soul. “As the candy settles in his stomach a sense of doom regrows its claws around his heart”  “With [his golf partners], he’s a big Swede, they call him Angstrom, a comical pet gentile, a big pale uncircumcised hunk of the American dream.”   And when he finally has a heart attack on a Gulf of Mexico beach, “he lay helpless and jellyfishlike under a sky of red, of being in the hands of others, of being the blind, pained, focal point of a world of concern and expertise, at some depth was a coming back home, after a life of ill-advised journeying.  Sinking, he perceived the world around him as gaseous and rising, the grave and affectionate faces of paramedics and doctors and nurses released by his emergency like a cloud of holiday balloons.”

He has an angioplasty when he should have had a bypass, but he doesn’t want anything done in Florida instead returning to his home soil of Pennsylvania.  “Harry always forgets, what is so hard to picture in flat Florida, the speckled busyness, the antic jammed architecture, the distant blue hilliness forcing in the foreground the gabled houses to climb and cling on the high sides of streets, the spiky retaining walls and sharp slopes….”  But home there are problems, family problems, money problems, leading to marital discord, and Rabbit on the run again, but to where, to Florida, bringing his compromised heart, and his focus more and more on death. “It has always…interested him, that sinister mulch of facts our little lives grow out of before joining the mulch themselves…”

And yet, on the lonely drive down I95, one that I’ve done scores of times myself, Updike’s penchant for social commentary and his ear for dialogue dominates.  Nearing the Florida border Rabbit turns to a man one empty stool away from the counter of a rest stop restaurant, asking:

“’About how many more hours is it to the Florida line?’  He lets his Pennsylvania accent drag a little extra, hoping to pass.

‘Four’ the man answers with a smile. ‘I just came from there. Where you headin’ for in Florida?’

‘Way the other end.  Deleon.  My wife and I have a condo there, I’m driving down alone, she’ll be following later.’

The man keeps smiling, smiling and chewing. ‘I know Deleon.  Nice old town.’

Rabbit has never noticed much that is old about it.  ‘From our balcony we used to have a look at the sea but they built it up.’

‘Lot of building on the Gulf side now, the Atlantic side pretty well full. Began my day in Sarasota.’

‘Really? That’s a long way to come.’

‘That’s why I’m makin’ such a pig of myself.  Hadn’t eaten more than a candy bar since five o’clock this morning.  After a while you got to stop, you begin to see things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘The stretch I just came over, lot of patchy ground fog, it gets to you.  Just coffee gets to your stomach.’  This man has a truly nice way of smiling and chewing and talking all at once.  His mouth is wide but lipless, like a Muppet’s  He has set his truck driver’s cap, with a bill and a mesh panel in the back, beside his plate; his good head of gray hair, slightly wavy like a rich man’s is permanently dented by the edge of the cap.

‘You driving one of those big trucks? I don’t know how you guys do it. How far you goin’?’

All the salad on the plate has vanished and the smile has broadened, ‘Boston.’

‘Boston! All the way?’ Rabbit has never been to Boston,  to him it is the end of the world, tucked up in under Maine.  People living that far north are as fantastic to him as Eskimos.’

 

There is more to the dialogue than that but it exhibits Updike’s keen ear for ordinary talk.  I could have had the same conversation as that (although Boston is not fantastic to me in the same way).

Arriving in Florida, without his wife, who is really not following him, he is alone, with his failing heart and his dimming dreams, the heavy bear that goes with him, dragging him down, down.  Rabbit at Rest.  Brilliant, one of the best novels of the late 20^th century along with Roth’s American Pastoral.

Not having Updike’s decade by decade commentary of the Rabbit series feels like the same galactic void from his sentence:  “The stark plummy stars press down and the depth of the galactic void for an instant makes you feel suspended upside down.” My world is upside down without him.

“We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving ties.” –

 

Baseball and Boating

As American as apple pie.  But for us the beginning of the summer concludes our Florida “season.”   We’ll get to a few more Class A+ minor league games but as part of the summer is scheduled for traveling, our boat is best stored on land during the hurricane season.  Thus, early yesterday morning I made my annual solitary trip leaving the North Palm Beach Waterway and the PGA bridge behind, 

and emerging into Lake Worth to run down to Riviera Beach where I was met at a boat ramp by Mariner Marine, the dealer for the Grady White.  After getting the boat up on the trailer and climbing down, it is but a short ride to the dealer and there I arranged for the annual servicing as well, saying farewell to our center console, ‘Reprise,’ but knowing when I pick her up in the fall, that it will have been serviced and detailed, looking beautiful for more time on the water.  And at my age I now must add, health willing of course.

The night before we saw another minor league game, this time the Bradenton Marauders (Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate) facing off against our Palm Beach Cardinals at Roger Dean Stadium.  We decided to sit behind home plate so I could get a better view of the pitching: two fine pitchers were at work.   

First there was a fellow lefty, Cam Vieaux, who was drafted in the 6^th round only last year and is carrying a 1.42 ERA since joining Bradenton.  Vieaux is clearly a control pitcher with a fast ball only in the low 90s which he mixes with a change-up and a curve to keep batters honest.  But if batters guess fast ball correctly, he is hittable, and as a result gave up 11 hits in 7 innings.  Andy Young found that key in the 6^th inning with a home run, tying the score 2-2.  Still, Vieaux gave up only 2 earned runs while recording only 2 strike outs.  He is a crafty lefty and as he perfects his style, he has future potential.

On the other hand, the Palm Beach Cardinals right hander. Ryan Helsley, is a classic power pitcher, his fast ball in the high 90s. The Cards lifted a large number of foul balls as batters got under the ball or not able to get around on those fast balls.  He was drafted in the 5^th round by the St. Louis Cardinals out of Northeastern State and has averaged more than one strikeout per inning in the minors with a career 2.20 ERA.  As with many young pitchers, location is the issue and he needs to get to the point of recording outs with his other pitches.  He went six innings with seven strikeouts, also giving up two earned runs.  He’ll learn and when he does, he’ll move up.

As it turned out, the game stayed at 2-2 and went until the early morning hours, the Palm Beach Cardinals finally scoring the winning run in the 14^th inning, a walk off infield single by Leobaldo Pina.  By that time, we were long-long gone, the pitching and seeing good ball playing more interesting to me than the outcome of the game.

I’ve said it many times before – Class A+ ball in the Florida State League is normally every bit as professional as a major league game, and several of the players we’ve seen over the years have graduated to the majors.

All in all it was a beautiful night for baseball at Roger Dean Stadium and an equally fine morning to run the boat one last time this season.