A Twenty Six day Trip with Four Legs

 

 

This lengthy entry necessarily starts with a picture of the boat we lived on each summer for nearly 20 years after I retired.  It is the thread that loops us through the eye of the needle of the past.

It used to be so much easier when we lived on it in Connecticut for the summer months: oaf up the car and off we went to our second “home.”  Driving up to CT each year was eagerly anticipated, and once unpacked and provisioned, voyaging on the Long Island Sound, to our mooring off the Norwalk Islands, and stays at Block Island, and day trips to NYC for theater on the New Haven Railroad, were planned, and seeing our family and friends.   Aging and then with Covid, we turned over the ‘Swept Away’ to someone more fit (and eager) to take on the responsibilities of upkeep and the joys of ownership:  our son, Jonathan.

Now that the boat is no longer ours and Covid seemingly, although not entirely, a nightmare of the past, last October we considered our options for this summer.  The same forces draw us back to the past. It might sound premature, but logistics dictate some sort of plan and commitment, even booking flights back then (no more driving up to NY or CT). 

Call me crazy.  But I came up with a Frankenstein trip, trying to combine four trips in one, for almost exactly a month squeezing into two medium size suitcases, even calculating our movements so we are at a public laundry about half way through. Thinking we still had limitless energy, plans were flying into White Plains, renting a car, and visiting our younger son and daughter in law at our former boat in CT for a few days, then off to a B&B in the Berkshires for a week of theatre, museums and local restaurants, then to Boston to spend time with our older son and significant other and then finally an eleven day cruise through the Canadian Maritime, the furthest point being Quebec for an overnight, returning to Boston for a flight home.  Whew. 

We were lucky to have caught some of the Democratic National Convention and the US Tennis Open while away.  Kamala gave us some hope, the DNC being alive with positive vibes, one that made us think, for those few days at least that we can erase the unmentionable one from our consciousness.  Otherwise, I’m moving to Halifax, the third time we’ve visited there with this trip.  I only need to grow younger like Benjamin Button to make that a reality (if the Canadians would have us). 

So as providence intervenes:  six days before taking our ambitious trip, I had a dental emergency. A permanent tooth had to be removed (a first for me other than wisdom teeth). Eventually, it will require a bone graft, post and crown.  Old age is not for sissies.

But what a way to start such a trip and I was on Amoxicillin for ten days.  Oh, swell, all the restaurants we were going to try and I just wanted a nice cold mug of Ensure as initially I couldn’t chew on my left side.  

We flew to White Plains (HPN) airport to pick up our car rental.  We had three wonderful days in Norwalk, going out on the boat with Jonathan and Tracie, and then Chris and Megan joining us for part of the weekend.  We got out to the Norwalk Islands where we’ve spent so much of our boating lives.  We change; it doesn’t.  There is something both reassuring and ominous about that.

Although not very descriptive, here we are approaching the islands we boated to for decades, Chimon on the left, Copps on the right and that little sand bar between, Crow.  But this is from the west side.  All those years we had a mooring on the east side, very protected from most winds, but, of course, the east.  Not wanting to be maudlin, but I expect my ashes to be deposited near Crow.

 

On the way out the harbor we visited our old, good friends, Ray and Sue, living on their boat only for the summers now since Ray has had health challenges.  But he hasn’t lost his sense of humor and they still act like the childhood sweethearts they were from grade school.  Ray was my boating mentor as described on the piece I wrote about our Block Island Days.

Except for the tooth extraction, the first leg was what we expected, and so nice to be with the family and friends we don’t get to see often enough. Our stay culminated with a festive dinner at The Cottage in Westport, the town where I had my publishing office for some thirty years.

 

 

Then we drove up to the Berkshires to stay at the Wainwright Inn Bed and Breakfast in Great Barrington for an entire week.   We had also booked this in October as it was the only B&B we could find that was more than a room, more like an AirBnB, yet still an Inn, including breakfast.  Our stay was in the entire upper floor of the separate, later built annex:

 

The main Inn was built in 1766, a charming old house with spacious yet cozy rooms on three floors.  Innkeepers Chris and Barb made it a pleasure.  I don’t do reviews on any social sites, just what I write here, but it was a wonderful stay, very convenient, and we made every minute count.

I can’t write in great detail, but the high points besides walking towns such as Great Barrington and Stockbridge, was visiting some of their restaurants, their public libraries, and of course museums and theatre. To me, architecture and people are the most important aspects of any such visit.  I want to imagine living in the places we visit (and I’d live in New England in a heartbeat, but Ann likes it here and so happy wife, happy life as they say).

Some of the highlights.  Our all day tour of the grounds, the museum, and a guided tour of Norman Rockwell’s studio were moving.  He and Edward Hopper are my favorite artists, the former capturing our aspirations and the latter our isolation.

Here is Rockwell’s famous painting, The Golden Rule, on display in his studio.  If you look carefully at the lower left is a photo he used for one of the subjects, most of these people from his home town.

 

Perhaps my favorite reason for connecting with his work is that I lived in those times.  One of them, ‘Soda Jerk’, features his own son, but a copy was displayed at the outside restaurant so we could walk into that time zone.

 

Most moving, and most evident of Rockwell’s transition from depicting Lily-white Americana to becoming an active civil rights advocate in the 1960s is his fabulous portrait of Lincoln for the Defense.  It depicts a famous murder trial, capturing his client, Duff Armstrong, shackled in the background.  It is spectacular, in its perspective, showing the towering strength of the future President.

 

No visit to Stockbridge would be complete without a meal at The Red Lion Inn, originally established as a small tavern on the main corner in 1773.  Norman Rockwell’s original studio was just across the street.

 

But much of our week was spent near our home base of Great Barrington, taking advantage of the town’s varied restaurants, and fun walking trips. Love visiting libraries wherever we go.  Found one of our best selling books in the Great Barrington Public Library and it was somewhat dog-eared meaning it’s been used frequently.  No better compliment to author and publisher!

 

Also notable there was a production in town of ‘A Jewish Journey through Broadway 1920-1980.’  As the majority of that journey was by Jewish lyricists and composers, it covered so much of the beloved music of our times, and it was an evocative reminder of the power of music.  Although performed at the St. James Place church, and by only three singers and three musicians, it nonetheless rang out a full Broadway sound, arranged by the gifted pianist and mega talented singer, Brett Boles (who I was amused to learn from the program notes is the vocal arranger for Randy Rainbow).  But make no mistake about it; his is a giant talent, along with the other two singers, Jennifer Mintzer, and Michael Pizzi, all Broadway pros with lavish singing voices.  How nice to emerge into a cool evening and be “home” in five minutes.

Another production we took in was in nearby Lenox.  Our timing was so lucky.  I thought we had seen virtually every Rodgers and Hammerstein show, even multiple times, until we learned that the Berkshire Theatre Group was putting on a full blown production which (embarrassingly to me as a pianist and to us a theater buffs) I had never heard of,’ Pipe Dream.’  Now I could spend the next few pages describing why this show “failed” but I’ll let the Berkshire Edge tell about this particular production.

 

I might add the following:  it was clearly R&H, much of the music beautiful.  R&H have always rooted for the underdog, and here we have a prostitute and, amusingly, an ocean scientist in love (not until the end though!).  The influence of Steinbeck whose stories the musical’s book is based on can be clearly seen.  Ironically, it reminded me of seeing the London production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘In the Heights,’ also about people living on the fringe, and yet an energetic and tight knit community

Another day side trip was to a tour of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox.  I can never do justice to the visit fully describing this phase in her life and post all the photos I took, so just linking their web site for further information, especially the introductory videos, shows why a trip to the Berkshires would be incomplete without visiting her home.

Here, though, is Ann in Edith’s bedroom where, remarkably, although Wharton had a beautiful library and a writing- greeting room, she wrote most of the novels while she lived there, dropping long-handed complete pages from her bed to the floor for her amanuensis to pick up, collate, and then type.  Stunning one can write a novel without a word processor!

 

Finally after one full week in this paradise, we drove off to Boston, first visiting Chris and Megan in Upton, MA.  Megan had prepared a lunch and we spent a lovely afternoon with them and our grand-dog Lily.  Maybe I was also “out to lunch mentally” – I was back on an antibiotic for a severe cough (Covid test negative!) and I thoughtlessly didn’t take pictures of that visit.  A shame.  They’ve fixed up their home as a dream cottage.

And so we went on to Boston to check into our hotel and drop off the car. Originally we had planned to hop the ferry to Provincetown for one of our days there, but I needed rest.  However, Monday we caught up with my old college buddy, Bruce and his wife Bonnie who came into town from their home in Sudbury.  We met at the Boston Waterfront where we were staying, and they took us to a lovely lunch at Legal Seafood.  Again, in my antibiotic haze, I neglected photos, but there are plenty of Bruce in my blog, including a piece I wrote more than 15 years ago.

The following night we met up with Chris at his office.  You can see Ann pointing to his office window in the Old City Hall building, which conveniently has a Ruth’s Chris Steak House in the back of the bottom floor. 

 

So for the second time in two days, we were treated, not only to a lovely dinner, but again getting together with Chris and Megan.  So wonderful that they found each other during Covid, on line, and have a meaningful, relationship.  Love and commitment later in life has its virtues.

After a lovely three day stay at The Seaport Hotel, the area filled with activity, from the fishing wharfs, to new architecture, plenty to explore, it was time to pack up for an eleven day cruise on The Celebrity Eclipse, not a mega ship but one of the largest ships we’ve ever been on, some 3,000 passengers.  It needs refurbishing.  But we selected this cruise back in October for its timing and itinerary, departing from Boston, visiting mostly the Canadian Maritime, some of which we’ve been to on previous cruises.  This itinerary included an overnight in Quebec, which we were anxious to visit.

The cab ride to the Boston Cruise terminal was short, easy, so you can imagine our surprise when we arrived on time and we could already sense chaos, long lines of people, many more elderly than us and we’re no spring chickens, with their walkers and wheel chairs, trying to get into the cruise terminal which looked like a dilapidated old warehouse.  So we inched along in the hot sun for nearly an hour.

Luckily, the first day was at sea, and beautiful.  Some time to recover.  The US Tennis Open was on and I could leisurely read my book, Baumgartner, by Paul Auster, on the balcony (which I finished and was going to review here, but this entry is way too long as it is – another entry later). 

Throughout the cruise, when not touring ports, we were more likely to be in our comfortable room as the further we got away from all the artificial entertainment the better.  We settled on a regular dinner reservation in the main dining room, just the two of us, although the Captain was constantly encouraging us to make “lasting friendships” while on board.  We did not need such patronizing.  I relate more to the help, the waiters, the assistant waiters, the receptionist, the room attendant.  The service people were genuinely very friendly and hard working, all from distant parts of the world.  Bless those people.

The first port was Halifax where we’ve been to several times and still one of my favorites. 

 

On previous cruises we thoroughly explored the city, including this moving Titanic Exhibit, but this time I just wanted to test my lungs with a long walk to the Halifax Citadel.  Ann walked part of the way along the waterfront and then I booked it for a 4 mile walk, half uphill the equivalent of twenty stories.  I probably had no business doing that in my medicated condition, but like Mt. Everest, I had to because it was there?

With every 20-25 degree uphill block I stopped for a few minutes, and then continued on.

The prize: you can see the waterfront from the Halifax Citadel.

 

One of the nice things about traveling is I met a young couple touring Canada from Ghana of all places, while climbing the hill to the Citadel.  They were very impressed to meet someone from nearby famous Palm Beach FL.  They were sure excited to allow me to be photographed with them so they could show their friends back home, a Floridian!  So we exchanged reciprocal selfies with our respective phones.

 

Next stop was the one we most anxiously anticipated: Quebec.  This was an overnight and we hired a private guide to take us on a walking tour of the old and new city and boy, did we walk. 

But first, as we approached Quebec, one of the famous sites could be seen from the ship, one to which we were not taking a tour.  It was impressive though to see the Montmorency Falls from the ship:

 

As we entered the Quebec harbor I thought I recognized the magnificent edifice up on the hill where my parents had their honeymoon, Le Château Frontenac.  I vaguely remember seeing it in one of my father's home movies of that trip.  Here’s the irony. They were married on Sept 2, 1939, so the day we visited would have been the “happy couple’s” 85th wedding anniversary. 

 

Then we disembarked and met our guide, visiting first the Lower Town along the St. Lawrence River while Upper Town is circled by the fortifications, with an elevation of about 165 feet. I have dozens of photographs of architecture and people, always the main attraction to me, but I’ll make this brief.  Here is a Quebecer with her bunny:

 

 

Place Royale is a historic square in the center of Quebec City.  Film buffs will recognize this spot where Frank is apprehended (supposedly in France) in ‘Catch Me If You Can’.  The bust is of Louis XIV and the church is the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church, built in the 1700s.  No need to go to France with Quebec so close by!

 

Before “climbing” to the upper city we were on a street towered above by Le Château Frontenac:

 

 The Quebec funicular quickly whisked us to the upper part of the city, over the old fortifications, to spectacular views: 

 

 

And of course the requisite photograph of us in front of the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac:

 

 

 

And to complete the picture of this hotel, the lobby communicates the stateliness of the building:

 

 

But before leaving our guide, Yves Trudeau, from the HQ Services Touristiques agency (highly recommended) we stopped at a little sidewalk bistro (just like Paris!) where we treated him and us on a blustery day to cappuccinos! He was like a walking encyclopedia always imparting some important historical tidbit, explaining that after Quebec was twice captured by the British, it finally reverted to French again, thereby preserving their beautiful language.  

Needless to say we were beat walking hours on mostly uneven cobblestone streets.  We have no regrets though about not going out to experience the night life as the US Open Tennis matches were underway so we had a lovely dinner on board the ship and watched the games that night.

From there we went on to the Port of Sydney Nova Scotia.  We’ve been there before and it is a pretty town to walk but stayed on board  Before arriving in the harbor, we passed Anticosti Island on the starboard side and counted at least 60 giant wind turbines on the island and wondering, where are ours? 

Its harbor is tricky to get into and I was impressed with how the ship was handled, all it’s automatic controls and positioning being checked out by old fashioned dead reckoning, reminding me of what I had to do (without joy stick controls and GPS) to manage our boats over the decades. 

I had a clear view of the starboard control (there are three centers on the bridge) watching an officer with his binoculars checking out the position it showed on their electronic charts.  Redundancy equals safety. The harbor had been dredged about fifteen years ago and I could see the bow thrusters churning up the bottom:

 

 

Late that day we departed for Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Charlottetown, its capital, has rows and rows of Victorian homes.  It had a feeling a little like Block Island where we spent parts of our summers on our boat.  It is certainly known for its seafood and we were determined to have some of their famous oysters and especially mussels. 

 

 

They are justifiably proud of their heritage and they have an occasional actor walking the street, who stays in character (you can’t drag the 21^st century out of them).  Here you see a young housewife and mother being interrogated by Ann about the town in the age she is portraying, her name, her children, and, in general, her love of Charlottetown in the nineteenth century.

 

 

Finally, we returned to the U.S. with a stop in Portland, ME, where once we had a festive dinner with family and friends to celebrate Jonathan’s graduation from Bates College so many years ago.  I didn’t see the city then, but was determined to use the day to walk from the waterfront, to the arts district, the old port and see the sights.  It reminded me a little of Asheville, NC, sort of hippy in its own way, and with a dedication to more liberal values.

 

Clearly, the First Unitarian Church of Portland stands firmly on those liberal grounds and as the last religion I briefly held was Unitarian, I made it a point to see that social activism is still a foundation of this humanist religion:

 

 

A bit of serendipity brought me to the childhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which he occupied in Portland.  I stopped by the Historical Society to ask for directions to the library and a lovely woman said right next door is a research library which I toured.  It was adjacent to Longfellow’s home which he occupied in his youth and early adult years before he became closely associated with the nascent Bowdoin College and went on to become one of the most recognizable scholars and poets of his time (although now considered a minor poet).  Fascinating to read about his life.  And most of us can still recite part of his famous ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.’

Just to stand there and walk through the gardens which his family created was inspiring.  It is the oldest standing brick structure on the Portland peninsula, and was meticulously restored by Maine Historical Society to its mid-nineteenth century character.

 

As in Halifax, I covered about four miles on foot, with the inclines not as steep.  But was happy to return to the ship dreading the next day of disembarkation in Boston, getting to the airport, where we would have to wait about four or five hours for our flight. 

Getting off the ship was not quite the nightmare of getting on, and Boston Airport was quite comfortable.  A little restaurant at the end of A Terminal, Harpoon’s, served delicious Lobster rolls, ironically the only time we ate lobster on the trip (skipping the traditional fanfare lobster night on the ship for a more quiet meal in one of the ship’s specialty restaurants, unfortunately, mediocre at best).

Total time between leaving the ship and getting home was about 11 hours.  The plane, a Delta Boeing 737 was like a meat locker and we had to keep hoods over our heads to stay warm, but we were prepared.  Actually, it was a very nice flight, in spite of leaving on time, getting in a little late as the pilot was rerouted over the west coast of Florida to miss some big thunderstorms.  I watched him thread the plane between them using my Flight Aware app on my phone as we were tied into the plane’s Wi-Fi. 

We had covered 2,750 nautical miles on the entire cruise, and add in the nearly 500 miles in our rental car.  So, after 26 days on the road and at sea, it’s wash, wash, wash, and write, write, write.

Stockbridge Red Lion Inn Figures by Norman Rockwell

 

 

Summer Reading: A Refulgent Novel and an Erudite Sports/Social History

 

First, the novel: Paul Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies is another under-the-radar American classic, joining others I’ve read and written about in this space, Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, John Williams’ Stoner, and A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley

 

The likeable narrator and protagonist, Nathan Glass, is a lung cancer survivor, now retired from a life insurance company.  He is divorced and seeks anonymity by relocating to his old Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.  He envisions it as the place for his life’s ending.  Instead, it would be a new beginning.

 

Park Slope is the perfect setting for the metafictional parts of the novel as Auster himself lived there.  He passed away earlier this year; it was his obituary that reminded me to read him.  I was interested in this particular novel as I too had lived in Park Slope as a young adult during my first marriage. 

 

Nathan has no relationship with his ex wife other than being disdained by her.  He is estranged from his only daughter, Rachel, and Auster engineers their reconciliation as the consequence of a subplot.

 

So much of modern literature is about families coming apart.  Instead, Auster sees Nathan as a change agent, endowing him with a charisma that is instrumental in bringing families and people together, including a niece Aurora (“Rory”) and nephew, Tom.  In this regard, this is an unusually joyous post modern piece of fiction of redemption and second chances, so deeply satisfying.

 

Tom was a brilliant graduate student when Nathan last saw him years before.  Chance encounters plays a significant role in the novel such as when Nathan finds a dispirited Tom working in Brightman’s Attic, a local bookstore.  That encounter sets everything in motion.  He takes his nephew to lunch at Cosmic Diner where Nathan flirts more than usual with his favorite waitress, Marina, not only to impress Tom but because he was in “such buoyant spirits. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed [Tom}, and now it turned out that we were neighbors – living, by pure happenstance, just two blocks from each other in the ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, NY.”

 

From there, a cast of unrelated characters are brought together in some way:

  Tom, his nephew and Rory, his niece (who was held captive by her second husband, a religious cult member).

  Rachel, Nathan’s daughter.

  Lucy, Rory’s nine year old daughter (who Rory sends alone to Tom in a daring attempt to free her daughter from the cult).

  Harry Dunkel (aka Brightman), ex convict, gay, a lover of books but engaged in art and manuscript forgery.

  Nancy Mazzuchelli (aka the “B.P.M. – Beautiful Perfect Mother”), who Tom has an unrealistic crush on, Uncle Nathan straightening that out, and who figures prominently at the novel’s denouement.

  Stanley Chowder, proprietor of the Chowder Inn in Vermont, which Tom and Nathan think of buying with Brightman, their idea of “Hotel Existence.”

  Honey Chowder, Stanley’s daughter, a 4^th grade unmarried teacher who invades Tom's life.

  Joyce, Nancy’s mother, a widow, who unexpectedly becomes Nathan’s lover.

 

There are more characters in the air, but these are the ones who Nathan, survivor of chemotherapy, keeper of “The Book of Human Folly,” his notebook of "every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I have committed during my long and checkered career as a man,” comes to touch or rescue in some way.  He literally rescues his niece, Rory:  “Aurora chose to talk to me because I was the one who had gone down to North Carolina and saved her, and even if we had been out of contact for many years prior to that afternoon, I was nevertheless her uncle, her mother’s only brother, and she knew that she could trust me.  So we got together for lunch several times a week and talked, just the two of us, sitting at a back table in the New Purity Diner on Seventh Avenue, and little by little we became friends, in the same way her brother and I had become friends, and now that both of June’s children were back in my life, it was as if my baby sister had come alive in me again, and because she was the ghost who continued to haunt me, her children had now become my children.” 

 

234 Lincoln Place

I had such a personal investment in reading this book as I lived at 234 Lincoln Place for a couple of years.  I remember running from that brownstone apartment, frantically trying to get a cab on Flatbush Avenue at 2:00AM one night in late February, 1965 to get my ex wife who was in labor to the Brooklyn Hospital.  Auster mentions The Berkeley Carroll School at 181 Lincoln Place which would have been a half block from where we lived.  Such a school could not have existed then, before gentrification.  In fact, that is what stands out so strikingly reading the novel: the degree to which the neighborhood has changed just during my lifetime.  It’s become Brooklyn’s version of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, another one of my old abodes.  Many of the places he mentions, the diners, the bookstores, the schools, didn’t exist then.  But streets, such as Carroll Street, where our friends at the time, Morris Eaves and his wife lived, and 7^th avenue where we did our shopping, and of course Prospect Park, resonate.  The mention of Carroll Street reminded me of Morris, so I Googled my long forgotten acquaintance and school-mate who became a Professor and a well known William Blake scholar.  I thought I’d write him, sadly only to find his recent obituary. 

 

We moved from Park Slope as my ex wife wanted to go to graduate school after our son was born, so we moved back to downtown Brooklyn to be near LIU. 

 

I envy that Auster had developed deep roots there and his love of everything Park Slope glitters in this novel. 

 

Our protagonist/narrator, Nathan, after performing such healing reconciliations and introductions, has a medical emergency which again parallels one that deeply resonates.  He had all the symptoms and the pain of a heart attack.  And suddenly he’s in a hospital.  He was convinced his life was over. “I was in there with myself, rooting around with a kind of scrambled desperation, but I was also far away, floating above the bed, above the ceiling, above the roof of the hospital.  I know it doesn’t make any sense, but lying in that boxed-in enclosure with the beeping machines and the wires clamped to my skin was the closest I have come to being nowhere, to being inside myself and outside myself at the same time.  That’s what happens to you when you land in a hospital.  They take off your clothes, put you in one of those humiliating gowns, and suddenly you stop being yourself.”

 

In the ER and in his room, while tests are being made, other patients come and go; they face a common foe.  I’ve been there myself on a number of occasions, and I know the feeling which Auster painfully resurrects.  While lying there his mind works overtime, trying to make sense of all of it and he has an epiphany for a business: “to form a company that would publish books about the forgotten ones, to rescue the stories and facts and documents before they disappeared – and shape them into a continuous narrative, the narrative of a life” (Actually, a damn good idea as he envisions the financing to be a surcharge on a life insurance policy – something he knows something about.  In effect, it’s a vanity book, but fully paid for via the insurance policy.  Why not?)

 

“[O]nce the pages had been printed and the story had been bound between covers, they would have something to hold on to for the rest of their lives.  Not only that, but something that would outlive them, that would outlive us all.”…“One should never underestimate the power of books.”  I emphasize the last sentence as it aptly describes The Brooklyn Follies and I can imagine the author talking to me, as a motivational statement to finish my own memoir which I now have in draft form, dragging my heels to complete merely because of ‘who cares?’ outside family and friends.  I think Auster would say “who cares who cares?”

 

Spoiler alert here about the ending (although I knew it in advance – there is even some foreshadowing --and the knowledge only intensified the impact for me).  Luckily for Nathan, the presumed heart attack turned out to be merely an inflamed esophagus and he is discharged from the hospital and is on his way home early in the morning on Sept. 11, 2001, in a joyous mood about the future. “Overhead, the sky was the bluest of pure deep blues.” The conclusion of this early post 9/11 novel comes down like a sledgehammer.

 

There is a segue from the Auster book to the second, a work of non-fiction:  Auster was a baseball fan and in fact it was said he became a writer because as a kid he had an opportunity to get Willie Mays’ autograph but he didn’t have a pencil.  From there on in, he carried one, and a pad, and that began his writing career.  (No doubt the beginnings of “The Book of Human Folly”.) So as I was reading the Auster novel I was finishing what would most aptly be called an encyclopedic narrative, The New York Game, Baseball and the Rise of the New City, by Kevin Baker.  It really deserves its own full blown entry, but how does one review an encyclopedia?  It has New York City in common with Brooklyn Follies, and like the novel it makes a special personal connection.

 

The story of the unique, almost symbiotic development of the city and baseball is laid out by Baker as a Dickinsonian novel with a huge cast of characters.   “Whitman called it ‘America’s game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our laws; it is just as important in the total of our historic life’” “To Mark Twain it was ‘the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming, 19th century’“.

 

Mirroring American life, the game’s owners were “in the game for the most American reasons: organize commercialize monopolize“

 

Before 1890 its development was a somewhat random event.  By then it began to resemble the game which we follow today and became our only major professional sport at the time.

 

In NY it was a multi ethnic affair, mirroring the city itself, German, Irish, even eleven known Jewish players, but like other sins of society, Afro Americans were not accepted, even in NY.  They began to develop their own leagues; many of those teams and players of major league caliber. 

 

As the sport grew, “the vertical city was born, “skyscrapers, bridges, churches, museums but perhaps the greatest creations during the beginning of the century were the city’s train stations.  “Built less than 10 years and a few blocks apart, “the new Beau Arts Grand Central terminal, lavish with statues and it’s soaring, 125 – foot ceiling adored with a gorgeous blue map of the zodiac. And across town, Charles McKim’s Pennsylvania station, a symphony and steel and honey marble, large enough, in the novelist, Thomas Wolf’s phrase ‘to hold the sound of time’ yet still a structure of measureless beauty.“

 

It’s all here in this definitive work, with all the heroes and miscreants that made up our national pastime and the building of the world’s greatest city.  The writing is spellbinding such as these two pages describing the glories of the city in the 1920’s.  The reader feels a part of a previous era:

 

Baseball, NY, and the 1950’s was my childhood.  On our way to school we’d argue about who is the best centerfielder in NY.  I said Mantle, a Dodger fan said Snyder, and the lone Giant friend said Mays.  He was right of course. 

 

Mays and Ruth are a category onto themselves.  The book ends before the Mays era though.  In fact I was finishing this book when the Say Hey Kid’s death was reported.  He began his career in the Negro leagues, playing briefly for the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons joining Ruth as the greatest baseball player ever.  Ruth‘s heroic feats and gargantuan appetite for everything life had to offer though are covered in detail in Baker’s book.

 

Negro Leagues Kansas City Monarchs 1920-1965

So many of the minor players can be found in its pages; such as Phil Rizzuto who went to my high school and was rejected by the Dodgers and Giants, but the New York Yankees recognized his fielding, bunting, and love of the game and the rest is history.  When Ann and I were having dinner at the Stadium Club sometime in the 1980s, and he was broadcasting with Bill White, they came in to have dinner before the game.  He called out to everyone that he had a headache and was wondering whether anyone had an aspirin.  My wife’s handy pill box came out while she exclaimed, “I have some, Phil.”  He came over to the table and I told him that my father went to Richmond Hill High School with him to which he exclaimed his patented “Holy Cow.”

 

I can’t remember another social / sports history that can compare to The New York Game, Baseball and the Rise of the New City, by Kevin Baker.  Holy Cow!

 

A High-Stakes Dilemma; the 2024 Election

 

It’s come to this: choose between an “only I can save you” candidate and an “only I can beat him” incumbent president.  It is a choice between two self-serving candidates, one who Christian evangelicals think was sent by God and one who says “only the Lord Almighty himself” can stop him from running.  Score: God 2, America 0.

 

Don’t we, the electorate, deserve better than this?

 

On the one hand we have the twice impeached Trump (both times acquitted by his Senate acolytes).  He is also subject to a ruling that he committed fraud (by NY State, Trump appealing the case), a hush money felony conviction (by the Manhattan D.A., sentencing delayed courtesy of SCOTUS) and a conviction as a defamer and a sexual abuser of E. Jean Carroll (cases now out on appeal).  Then there is the Department of Justice’s charge that he committed felonies removing White House documents to Mar-a-Lago (the Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon is indefinitely postponing the trial).  Add to this the indictment by Fulton County, GA of his participation in a conspiracy to commit Election Subversion (naturally, the case is not expected to begin before the November election).  And, finally, perhaps the most serious of all, the Department of Justice’s grand jury indictment of Trump for Election Subversion, his actions culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot (?), insurrection (?) peaceful tourist exploration of the U.S. Capitol building (?) (please fill in one of the choices depending on your political persuasion).  This case is now knee-capped by the recent conservative leaning Supreme Court, three of whom were Trump appointed.  Those are the challenger’s credentials.

 

On the other hand, we have President Biden, whose old man shuffle looks very bad but, worse, shows signs of cognitive decline during his presidency culminating in his own suggestion of an early debate (“make my day, man”).  Sad. The President essentially is a good man, having moral values that we, who have lived long enough, have seen erode over our lifetimes.  Although politics has always been a rough and tumble arena, the old guardrails of acceptable social mores and civility are failing in an iPhone-social-media-consumed world where 240 characters and the Internet equivalent of chain letters pass as thinking.

 

He has, as his family and handlers insist, done many good things.  Bringing us back into the world of nations with some shred of respect might be among the most significant.  But Dr. Jill, his wife, is both right and wrong that a poor 90 minute performance should not erase the accomplishments of 3-1/2 years.  The legitimate concern is the next 4-1/2 years.  And beating the cult of Trump is not an easy task even for a younger, more vigorous candidate as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, decides such elections.  The next five months must be filled with intensive campaigning in those swing states.  This is going to be an election season which will be ground out, yard by yard. And as the Presidency goes, the makeup of the House and Senate could follow: high stakes, indeed.

 

That 90 minute debate presented so many opportunities for a more-in-the-moment candidate to simply respond to Trump’s avalanche of invectives, lies, non sequiturs, and his vision of an apocalyptic America. Just a “will you listen to what this man just said?” would have been sufficient.  It is a well known rhetorical device to overwhelm the opponent with so much garbage in a short period of time that it is impossible to respond to all.  But Biden failed to capitalize on those opportunities and robotically went onto his own bullet points, poorly presented, trailing off into mumbling, painfully allowing Trump, an expert in reality TV to use his logorrhea and body language to eviscerate Biden.

 

The point is, we all saw the so called “debate” and once seen it can’t be unseen.  The same point should be made about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  We all saw Trump urging the crowd on, and, once seen, it can’t be explained away.

 

To make matters worse, on Friday July 5, Biden agreed to an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.  Presumably this was supposed to show us the new and improved Joe.  It only brought out more issues.  Early on he was asked the pointed question: “Did you watch the debate afterwards?”  First he had that deer in the headlights look, until finally responding “I don’t think I did, no.” Oh, Joe, is the answer really “no” or you already don’t remember?  Most chilling though was his insistence that only God could make him drop out of the race, and then to the question of how he would react to losing to Trump he said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest [sic] job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” In other words, if we give it the ‘ole college try, that’s good enough?  In an election which may decide if the American experiment is over?

 

He frequently turns to his wife for advice but publicly she is proving not to be objective.  Given the high, high stakes, perhaps we need a much more forceful intervention by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

 

To the repeated question of whether he would take a cognitive or neurological test, Biden implied every day was such a test (given his responsibilities), dodging the answer.  Both candidates should take two tests, a cognitive test and one to determine an Antisocial Personality Disorder.  Publish the results so, as Mitch McConnell infamously exclaimed blocking Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination, “the American people can decide.”

 

Peggy Noonan accurately framed the Democratic Party’s dilemma in the July, 6/7 Wall Street Journal: “It makes no sense to say, ‘Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.’ Unpredictable is better than doomed.”

 

Exactly 248 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence a new British Prime Minister was elected, Keir Starmer, who told Britons the following day “Country first, party second.”  Might it be time for both the Democratic and Republican parties to adopt the same priorities? 

 

Assault on Reason – Our Ongoing Gun Nightmare

 

News items this past week include the graduation of schoolmates of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting victims, from the area’s Newtown CT high school.  That massacre was 12 years ago.  What has our society done since then to address the ownership of military-style weapons?  Nothing.  It’s worse than nothing: the prior week’s Wall Street Journal had a related article:  “How School Shootings Are Changing the Design of American Classrooms; Architects are focusing on safety features to keep perpetrators out and create a sense of community for students.”  There is a direct correlation.  We are normalizing gun violence, accepting it as a part of everyday life.  What kind of a deranged society addresses such a problem that way?

 

And from the Associated Press: “Demolition of the Parkland classroom building where 17 died in 2018 shooting begins.”  Presumably the great State of Florida will be hiring those clever architects to rebuild the school.  From that same article: “Broward County is not alone in taking down a school building after a mass shooting. In Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the 2012 shooting and replaced. In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish it. Colorado’s Columbine High had its library demolished after the 1999 shooting.”

 

So apparently, that is that is the “solution.”  After the slaughtering of children in our schools, tear the buildings down and build ones hardened against such shootings (after the requisite “thoughts and prayers” and brief puffery by politicians saying they’re going to do something about it).  Logically speaking if we continue on the present path to perdition, over time we will eventually replace all schools rather than addressing gun control head on.

 

Hey, it’s an American right to shoot ‘em up!

 

It would be bad enough if that was the only recent gun news.  But, no, there is more! Those wonderful new conservative members of SCOTUS have reversed the ban on bump stocks.  Again, from AP June 14: “The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a ban on bump stocks, the gun accessory used in the deadliest shooting in modern American history — a Las Vegas massacre that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

 

The court’s conservative majority said Friday that then-President Donald Trump’s administration overstepped its authority with the 2019 ban on the firearm attachment, which allows semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns.”  (BTW, now Mr. Trump defends the SCOTUS decision.)

 

We’ve become a one step forward, two steps backward gun addicted society.  If only the NRA was solely to blame, but it is ingrained in our “culture.” How many more innocent people will have to die before we have ANY leadership to ban military style weapons and implementing a registration system for gun ownership?