May 31, 2006--Moon's of Great Neck

One of the concerns expressed not so below-the-surface in the current hot debate about illegal immigrants involves the fear that “real” Americans will be culturally subsumed as these aliens insist on speaking their own language (Spanish), waiving their own flag (Mexican), even wanting their own version of the National Anthem. Thus the push to put up a 2,400 mile fence, fine employers who hire illegals, and deport the 10-12 million who are here illegally.

Maybe there is another way—something we can learn from the United Arab Emirates of all places. It seems that they too have an immigrant problem—less than ten percent of the Emirates population are native citizens and these natives are concerned that their culture and way of life will be obliterated unless they take drastic measures to assure cultural preservation (see NY Times article linked below).

Foremost among these is to encourage Emiratians to marry other Emiratians. But there is a problem: it costs a fortune to marry in a traditional way—between $20,000 and $50,000 not counting the dowry and the required furnished house. Though the Emirates is a thriving economy, which explains why so many have moved there, average wages are only about $2,000 a month and thus such lavish weddings are beyond the means of most.

But since the government sees natives marrying natives and their subsequent procreating to be the only way to assure the continuation of traditional ways, they have established a Marriage Fund which helps subsidize these weddings. And as a way to cut costs they have instituted the practice of mass ceremonies, Reverend Sun Yung Moon style, during which up to 300 grooms get things started by having a ceremony of their own followed a few days later by a brides-only ceremony.

Ever realistic, the Fund pays its share in two installments—half before the wedding followed by the rest after several months to be sure the couples are still married since divorce rates in the Emirates hover near 50 percent.

I haven’t looked closely enough at the immigration bill that was passed recently by the Senate to see all of its provisions (forgot the House’s version—it’s all about fences, fines, jail, and deportation); but it seems to me that what the Emirates have come up with could be a model for us. I hope, therefore, that there will be an amendment when the bill goes to the Senate-House conference that establishes a Marriage Fund for us. We could sure use one. When was the last time you priced the cost of a wedding at Leonard’s of Great Neck?

May 30, 2006--Edgar Beckham: A Good Man

Edgar Beckham died last week at age 72. He had been a colleague of mine at the Ford Foundation. When I saw his obituary in the NY Times (linked below), though I was not surprised to learn of his death since he had been quite ill, I was amazed to learn for the first time how old he was. Not that 72 is old anymore, it is decidedly much too young to die, but during the ten years we worked together I always thought he was much, much younger than I because of his physical and intellectual vitality.

There was that vast mind of his—considerably larger than his huge body. The obit doesn’t reflect this, noting blandly that he was the first African-American dean of Wesleyan College, a program officer at the Ford Foundation, former chair of the Connecticut State Board of Education, that sort of good thing.

His death notice reported that he “directed” the Ford Foundation’s Campus Diversity Initiative. To say he directed it doesn’t begin to capture the fact that he conceptualized it, fought for it, and drew into its orbit dozens of colleges and universities of all stripes—from elite liberal arts colleges to open enrollment community colleges. That in itself was not remarkable; after all, dangle money in the form of grants before institutions and you can get them to dance to almost any tune. What is significant was the tune Edgar played that got them dancing.

This was back in the early 1990s when campus or curricular diversity to most meant acting affirmatively when admitting students in order to assure representation within the student body of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Edgar called this the “social justice” reason to diversify enrollments and course offerings—for the sake of equity. To many this sounded a lot like quotas, and as a result those on the political right used the fear of quotas as a very successful wedge issue.

Edgar argued that, yes, equity is important but it is even more important to make the case that diversity is an asset. In our pluralistic society wouldn’t all students benefit by studying at a college that reflects that pluralism? Not just by who sits next to you in a classroom but through the study of diverse cultures? And make that argument Edgar did. So effectively that by the time he left Ford in 1998, the debate was effectively ended. Even the opponents of curricular diversity conceded that the so-called Culture War was over and that campuses had been irremediably reshaped. Much of this thanks to Edgar Beckham’s efforts.

He used his physical vitality to become an advocate for campus change, tirelessly crisscrossing the country, and later the world, to promulgate this agenda. And he also used that physical vitality to just plain have fun! Although he was quite overweight that did not stop him from dancing all night at our program’s retreat just a scant four weeks after having had a kidney removed. I had crawled off to bed by 10:00 and needed to be told by much younger staff that he danced until they began serving breakfast the next morning!

May 29, 2006--"I Wish You Had A Good Job"

Now that it's finally Memorial Day, it's time to get serious about finding a weekend place in the country.

If you live in New York City and want a retreat within, say, a two-hour drive you turn first to the NY Times Sunday Real Estate Section. Not just for the ads but for the articles which, community-by-community, give you the lowdown on the pros and the cons, especially “who’s there” and by exclusion, who’s not. So if you need to see Steven Spielberg on Main Street you had better be thinking East Hampton and not Litchfield Connecticut. Martha on the other hand, can be seen both places.

And if you really want the drive to be two hours, in spite of what’s advertised, you had better find a spot that’s 90 minutes away since it will take you at least two hours to make that 90 minute drive because one truism about weekend properties is that everyone—not just brokers—lies about how long it really takes to get back and forth.

So when I turned to the Times recently, before flipping to the classified, which by the way could be included in the Book Review section under, “Fiction,” I paused to read the intriguing article, “My Broker, My Therapist” (linked below) since I could always use some more therapy. And also to see if there was some guidance there about how to behave when house hunting—in a hot market behaving just the right way could easily prove to be the difference between being shown that special place and only ones north of the Highway.

Here is a smattering of the insights that can be gleaned from this piece from the Times—

Older men who have embarked on a second marriage are inclined to “make grander real estate gestures” since “they have less time to be happy” (or perhaps the usually younger second wife has more time to be happy and is thus thinking about her own future).

Couples who have a great sex life want to be sure that their bedroom is situated in a way so that their bed “is away from their children’s rooms” (or maybe it’s the children who have the great sex lives and don’t want to be near their parents).

Men who think their marriages are on shaky ground prefer to buy condos and want them in only their names (or the wives want it that way because they sense the real estate market is flat and are happy to have the place in his name just so long as the Euro account is just in hers).

And then there is the broker/therapist’s problem with all the frequent public fighting that goes on when he wants this and she wants that.
Particularly when talking square footage and location, location, location—the twin pillars of real estate.

A Corcoran agent who works on the East End of Long Island tells a story about an unhappy wife who had her eyes on a $3.0 million house south of the Highway which her hubby said they couldn’t afford. In front of the agent, she shouted, “I wish you had a good job so we didn’t have to live this way!”

If there is a god . . . .

May 27, 2006--Saturday Story: Part II "The Music Library"

The Music Library--Part II

It may come as a surprise to have found him spread out with the full score to Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in the Barnard College Music Library, considering that at his elementary school graduation, because he was tone deaf and thus would throw his classmates off key, Mrs. Peterson, during rehearsal and in front of the entire graduating class, in a voice that had the capacity to shatter egos as well as glass, admonished him to lip-synch the words to the National Anthem and The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

You might therefore be further surprised to find him poring over that hundred page score since when his brother was attempting to learn to play the violin, he insisted that he practice his scales in their shared clothes closet with the door shut tight, so, he said, as not to hear “the scratching.” Although, in truth, if Jasha Heifitz were practicing in that bedroom, to our musically-impaired hero, it too undoubtedly would have sounded like scraping.

So what was he doing there with those rock-hard Bakelite headphones crushing his protruding ears, looking for all the world like a code breaker, while in fact he was attempting to decipher the orchestrations as if he were Bruno Walters’ apprentice with the Chicago Symphony, whose version of the Brahms he was attempting to absorb and understand? He had already mastered the pronunciation of the maestro’s name. “Valter,” “Valter,” he had been muttering to himself. Certainly not Walter. Obviously not.

Now he was attempting to hear, not just listen to this great and tragic work in E Minor. He felt prepared to take on this challenge as he was sufficiently tutored by then to know that the Fourth Symphony stands or falls upon the flute solo in the last movement, allegro energico e passionato, where, in the words of one of his professors at Columbia College across the street, “It stands for all the pleading, hopeful, gentleness and innocence in the world.”

Though he had as yet no idea whatsoever what was meant by “E Minor” or allegro, for other reasons soon to be revealed, including why he was at the Barnard rather than the Columbia library, he was making some progress on the passionate part.

This time he was alone at the library, not as he usually was with his roommate, Jerry Taybor, from the musical family of the same name. His father, the scion, presided over Friday evening cultural sessions in the Taybor den, which our Brahms enthusiast occasionally joined, along with the three Taybor boys, all in a clutch at the banker pere’s feet close by the tomb-sized mahogany Capehart phonograph as Koussevitzky conducted Mozart’s 29th or Toscanini his version of The Pastoral. This was in truth an accomplished family--one brother played the piccolo and went on to assume the second piccolo chair in the Saint Louis Symphony under the esteemed Walter Susskind; the other the tuba, who was at that time had what he called a “night job” playing in the house orchestra of the Mark Hellinger Theater, under the direction of someone whose name he had difficulty remembering, where My Fair Lady was near the end of its run. This job, which though it had the advantage of keeping his days free to pick up occasional gigs recoding advertising jingles, had the concomitant potential disadvantage of relegating him to the status of official family disgrace, that is if Jerry hadn’t, in a remarkably restrained form of sibling rivalry, preempted that role by having chosen to become a pre-med, even though he was reputed to have the best of the Taybor ears.

One would think in such a family, it needs to be said, a Jewish family, a father would have been equally proud of a piccilost and a budding cardiologist much less an oldest son who schlepped around a tuba to make a living, but with the Taybors (ne Trayberg) that was not the case. And thus when they were clustered at the phonograph to listen to music, it was blood sport.

Knowing this, and to lower the expectations and pressure he placed on himself, transgressive Jerry Taybor, with his unique sense of humor, renamed himself and encouraged his classmates to call him Jerry “Tuba.” But for anyone else at Mr. Taybor’s feet those evenings, the pressure and expectations were intense as he fired off to the minion questions about Opus this and Opus that. This pressure was felt especially by Jerry’s tin-eared roommate because his musical education to that point was from the little he had acquired while listening to the Make Believe Ballroom on the radio, where each afternoon Martin Block played the latest songs to join the Hit Parade. Mona Lisa, right then, being at the top of the charts.

Jerry’s roommate, fellow freshman and pre-med was eager to join the Taybor brothers in the den’s carefully maintained gloom, huddled on the Persian rug, by the fretted fireplace as if gathered by an ancient hearth, surrounded by deeply carved hardwoods and tapestries, because he was in the process of imaging a future for himself similar to that of the Taybor’s, where he too would have a fieldstone house on an acre of land on Long island, on the North Shore of course, replete with an identical faux-Norman mead-hall den, and knew he needed also to acquire their manners and style and take on their culture, none of which were a part of the curriculum at Columbia.

Thus, he called upon Jerry to teach him the rules of that game and to learn what, after all, was an Opus. He knew that meant, among many other things, that it was time for him to move on from Eddie Fisher to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. One of Mr. Taybor’s favorites.

And so, after returning from his third Friday evening with Jerry Tuba’s family, from his birthday savings, he bought for his dorm room a portable mahogany-stained RCA HiFi and three long-playing albums—Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Opus 43, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto In D, Opus 35 and Schubert’s Symphony Number 8, The Unfinished Symphony (no Opus but, mysteriously labeled D.759), the words to which he had memorized in order to fix it in his mind for the Music Appreciation test everyone needed to pass in order to graduate from P.S. 244:

This is the symphony,
the symphony
that Schubert wrote
but never finished . . .

* * *

Lessons with Jerry got off to a miserable start, with Jerry telling him that his choice of albums revealed just how massive the reclamation project was. There was very little to be learned, he was unceremoniously informed, from all of that “sentimental glop.” Those were the exact words.

When he managed to squeak back a modest protest, telling Jerry that the Schubert was Mrs. Peterson’s favorite at P.S 244, though they had never gotten to listen to anything but the first five minutes of the first movement, Jerry snarled at him, “We need Bach, we need Mahler we need some quartets. Beethoven for certain. “Something late. You need to get to know the 16th, the F major, especially the Lento—‘Es muss sein!, It must be!’” This was beginning to feel like something soaring beyond his expectations. He was alarmed that he would also have to learn Italian and even German? Lento, Es muss sein? He had Inorganic Chemistry and Introduction to Physics to worry about, not to mention his struggles with the Humanities and Contemporary Civilizations courses.

“Actually Jerry, I was thinking if I could learn just a little. You know, I have all my labs to do. And crew practice. What I really want is to be able to get the right answer when you father asks me a question about an Opus or something.”

With a shrug of feigned despair, Jerry sighed, “All right, we can do that.” But then showing an unexpected hint of understanding and compromise he added, “And if you insist on something Romantic, all right, we can at least have Brahms.” But still unable to restrain himself, “Something other than the schmaltz you bought.” Sounding very much like Mr. Taybor, Jerry Tuba continued, “If I’m going to turn you into someone I can walk around campus with, we need to get to Sam Goody’s immediately and buy you something substantial, something we can sink our teeth into, something profound.”

Though he had not been seeking profundity, just to be able to appreciate a few pieces in their entirety without having to make up words to sing to remember them, and to get through an evening in that den without humiliating himself, reaching for his coat, he asked Jerry, “Will you come to Goody’s with me? I want to get those records.”

With a wink, Jerry said, “As long as I don’t have to be seen walking with you.”

So in a few minutes, they could be seen, arm-in-arm, bent into the wind rising from the Hudson, striding across campus between the university’s twin libraries toward Broadway and then down into the subway, heading south to the heart of the City.

Thus he set off in pursuit of his true higher education.

* * *

The next afternoon, after chem lab, with a fierce rain slamming a staccato on the copper roof of their dorm room aerie under the eaves of Hartley Hall, Jerry and his musical ward sat leaning into the HiFi speakers as the second movement of the Schubert wove it schmaltzy spell. In spite of his rant of the day before, Jerry’s overnight thought was that it was best to start with theme-and-variation and that a good pedagogical strategy was to begin with something familiar, something anchored in childhood memory—something even from Mrs. Peterson’s Music Appreciation class. And so Schubert it was. Words and all, especially since they represented the principal theme of that movement that then goes on to be varied, seemingly, to Jerry, unenduringly, endlessly.

“This,” he lectured from his chair, “is the basic building block of much classical music—theme-and-variation. And after you have mastered that we can move on to subtler things, turning eventually to the inner structures of symphonic and chamber music—how composers score or orchestrate their work. For this we will, of course, need to have their actual scores before us. It will not be enough to just listen—we will also have to see and read their actual musical notations”

“But Jerry, I told you how I can’t carry a tune much less a theme and how I was told not to sing at my graduation. I’m getting hives at the thought of looking at sheets of music. Actually, the start of a migraine.”

“Not to worry, you will see that though I do not play an instrument I can follow a score; and you will be able to as well.”

“But your father says you have the best ear in the Tuba family. My ear isn’t even a tin one, though maybe tin foil.”

Jerry didn’t even smile at this little joke he was so intent on his lesson, “Just sit still and listen, they are about to recapitulate the theme. If you must, sing the words. You know them. But please,” he added, after all he was a Taybor, “sing them to yourself.”

* * *

Thus they proceeded. And after a scant two weeks, theme-and-variation had been mastered to the extent, remarkably, that he who had needed to learn the art of lip-synching five years ago could now find both the themes and their myriad twisted and involuted variations in even the Es muss sein F Major Quartet in F Major, Number 16, Opus 135.

It was therefore time, Jerry felt, to go to the scores—to seek the inner structures. This though meant they would have to disinter themselves from Hartley Hall where they had holed up to where the scores were kept—the Columbia College Music Library.

“It’s time,” Jerry said, “You are ready.” He could sense his pupil’s building anxiety. So in his most sensitive mode he added, “You will be fine. I will guide you.” This proved to be assurance enough.

“But do you still have that pipe?”

“Yes. It’s on my desk.”

“Get it,” he commanded. “Take it along. And the beret?”

“It’s in the closet.”

“Put it on. You’ll need it.”

“Need it? In the library? For looking at the scores?”

“Because there may be Barnard girls there. Comparative literature or philosophy and perhaps even music majors. No offense, but I want you to look as if you belong.”

It was clear to him that Jerry too was feeling some trepidation. About being there with him. So he took the beret off its hook, plopped it on his head, and turned, forcing a grin, to show Jerry. “No not that way! Let me show you.” Stifling any appearance of exasperation, the maestro pulled on it so hard, when adjusting it, that it felt as if he might yank out hanks of hair. “Like this. Not in the center of your head with your hair sticking out, but forward and tipped to the side. Let me do it.” He tugged at it again, “Didn’t you ever see Breathless?” His pupil remained silent and Jerry knew his tolerance was being tested, “Of course not.” He could not resist adding, “I can’t believe how deprived you are.”

When everything was in preferred alignment and Jerry was thus satisfied that they were ready be seen together, with pipe clenched tightly between his teeth and beret pitched at an angle that would have made Jean-Paul Belmondo proud, unlike the last time they skulked across campus together, Jerry was now pleased to be out with his prodigy, in full sunlight. And even if he still couldn’t carry a tune, he had become a theme-and-variation demon! That was something. And he looked the part, attractive at six-feet-four alongside Jerry’s plump five-seven. A virtual arm piece!

* * *

The Music Listening Room was housed in Butler Library, a marble monolith named for former Columbia President Nicholas Murray (“Miraculous”) Butler--advisor to seven American presidents; Nobel Peace Prize recipient; and famous on campus for many glorious things, including the widely emulated undergraduate Great Books curriculum and the establishment, in the 1920s, of a strict quota limiting the number of Jewish students who would be admitted and thus allowed to rummage around in Aeschylus much less Spinoza. He did not want his University overrun by that tribe! How delicious then, how ironic for these two now to be descending into the bowels of this eponymous library in search of the inner Brahms.

And how reciprocally ironic then, as if they were still not welcome in Butler’s book mausoleum, that the score of the Brahms’ Fourth had been sent on interlibrary loan across Broadway to the Barnard Music Library.

Jerry, never one to be perturbed by irony or disappointment, said to his sulking charge, “Not a problem,” adding, while pointing at the beret, “In fact, over there you will be able to put that disguise to better use.”

So they came back up into the open air and side-by-side headed west toward the River. For them to get a head start on what they would be doing once they checked out the score, eager to emulate Socrates, whose peripatetic style they were just then learning about while reading The Symposium with the great Moses Hadas, Jerry spoke, while they were on the move, about the Brahms:

“In its instrumentation, which we will work together to understand when we have the notations at last before us, while of course at the same time listening to the record, we will find that in its basic outline of four movements--the first fast, the second slow, the third a scherzo, and the finale--it has the appearance, just the appearance of the more conventional classic and romantic symphonies we have already been studying—the Mozart, the Beethoven.”

Jerry stopped them for a moment to turn so they faced each other, to emphasize the magic they would soon experience. He grabbed hold of both of his shoulders to rivet him in place and thereby secure his gaze and attention, “But within that structure which is now so familiar to you, you will discover, with my help of course, a profoundly original dialectic at the center of Brahms’ musical language.”

Though he knew it would not be until next year, when they got to Kant and then Marx that he would know what a dialectic was, he nonetheless understood that Jerry was initiating him into something profound, something, if he had understood last semester, that one of his professors had referred to as hermeneutic. With the Brahms as text!

Jerry again took up the pace as they approached Broadway. “But, ah, the last movement. Where everything comes together and Brahms’ achievement is secured--that finale, it is in the ancient form of a passacaglia--a series of I believe thirty, truly thirty variations on a single, merely one sparse theme. That should be red meat for you so to speak,” he said with a chuckle while slapping him affectionately on the back, almost hugging him, “You know almost as much as I about how this works!” For the first time they did feel like equals—so much was the power of theme-and-variation.

“And if you listen for it very carefully, though in your case, considering your limitations,” so much for equality, “you may not hear it--though I will be certain to show it to you in the score itself--the theme from the first movement wondrously reappears. Can you imagine that?”

In truth he could not—he had developed only the capacity to hear one theme at a time, which he immediately forgot when moving on to the next. He would for sure need the score and Jerry by his side.

Undeterred, Jerry was so transported by the anticipation of this inter-movement wonder, that he hummed the theme to him as they crossed Broadway, forgetting for the moment that it was unlikely to be heard by that afflicted ear. To anyone noticing Jerry’s barely moving lips so close by that ear, it would have looked as if it was a lover’s furtive kiss.

Thus so blindly enraptured were they that they did not notice the careening taxi which nearly sideswiped them. The driver, leaning from his window, leering at them, and screamed, “You assholes!” They could hear him roaring with ribald laughter as he screeched north toward Harlem.

* * *
The score was there, having arrived from Butler. It was waiting to be picked up by the Barnard student who reserved it, and so the librarian allowed them to check it out with the understanding that they would relinquish it at once (that was underlined) when she arrived and that they would sit opposite her desk at the long open table in the central atrium of the Music Library. Though it was unspoken, it was understood that this latter requirement was so she could keep an eye on them, suspecting that they might run off with it. It was the era, after all, of Panty Raids and the end of quotas. Sunlight, if not trust, poured in on them.

Again side-by-side, now sprawled out with the huge score book between them and with their earphones jacked in the sockets built into the side of the table, Jerry directed him to cover just one ear with them so he could be heard in the other as he walked him through the text, pointing out how each of the instruments had its own line of music. If one wanted to see where the oboes entered, all that was needed was to track along with the musical notations assigned to them. And above and below that oboe line could be found others for the violins, the celli (he noted, as with everything else, how careful Jerry was to emphasize the Italian plural), and even the tiny piccolo (would they be piccoli?). It wasn’t as difficult as he had imagined to see the mix of instruments printed in the score, even though the first movement was marked Allegro, fast, cheerful. And he began to think that he was also hearing that blend in his left ear, the inner structure.

But before they could turn the page to the second movement, the “moderate” Andante, he sensed a commotion at the librarian’s desk. Jerry had as well and was clearly more interested in what was transpiring there than either the score or the recording.

“I told you, Miss. Von Heuner,” the room filled with an imperious voice, “we have the score. Actually, they have it,” the music librarian was pointing toward them without deigning to look their way, “I let them look at it with the proviso that they would give it back immediately when you called for it, and so there is no need for you to be in such a huff.” And still not turning toward them, she snapped her fingers in their direction and uttered just one word, “Score!”

Ordinarily, in this kind of hierarchical circumstance, Jerry would have blanched and reacted more as a Taybor than a Tuba and his reaction would have trumped Miss. Van whatever-her-name’s. Actually, reverberations from the Taybor huff would easily have been felt up in Rockland County where Columbia’s Lamont Lab kept track of the seismic aftershocks of the world’s earthquakes. It would have registered on the Richter Scale of privilege.

But gathering the score, seemingly almost meekly, Jerry arose from his chair, true still somewhat regally, under total, surprising control. He could be seen uncorking himself to his full inconsiderable height; and as he approached the desk, and Miss. Von Heuner, it would have been difficult not to notice, though she hadn’t turned, that she towered over him by at least a head.

And it would not have been difficult to notice that that was quite some head—massively, radiantly blonde (revealed in the Barnard sunlight to be naturally blonde), with a jaw line and a nose so etched that they both looked as if they could be use for that purpose—etching.

There was to be no more Brahms, in fact no more Jerry. Because he disappeared, trailing behind his Rhine Maiden, his Valkyrie and did not surface, because that is literally what he did three weeks later—surface--until just before finals, all of which he promptly failed.

To be concluded next Saturday . . . .

May 26, 2006--Friday Fanaticism XXXVI--Father Fay

The parishioners should have known something was wrong when their parish priest, Father Michael Jude Fay, seemed to be more interested in decorating the rectory than in the Sacraments.

Then there were the wild parties Father Fay ran in that rectory, “risqué parties” in the words of his assistant pastor, Michael Madden. Father Madden was so upset by these that he would sit in his car for hours, waiting for the revelers “to pass out from drinking” so he could return to the rectory without being hassled.

Father Fay was also seen to play frequent overnight host, again in the rectory, to a man with whom he owned property in New York and Florida—the implication being that they were doing more than discussing real estate taxes.

According to the NY Times (story linked below), Father Madden felt he needed to do something but did not trust the bishop to investigate the situation. On his own, therefore, he hired a private investigator who found $200,000 in “questionable expenses” after reviewing just 25 months of records—for cruises, limousines, dinners, and homes on the Upper East Side of New York City and in Florida. He also discovered that Father Fay had absconded with $10,000 that a group of teenagers had raised for charity. At least, as far as we know, he managed to keep his hands to himself.

One would assume that when this came to light the bishop would discipline Father Fay and reward, or minimally acknowledge Father Madden’s good work. Not quite—no one knows where Fay is, but we do know that the priestly whistle-blower is the one being disciplined—for hiring the private eye.

Bishop Lori relieved him of his assignment, having determined that he required “a period of rest and reflection,” while Lori searched for a new priest for the Darien, Connecticut congregation. Parishioners, though, were so enraged about the situation that the good bishop relented and assigned Father Madden to run the parish on “an interim basis” while seeking a permanent pastor and before sending Father Madden off to his rest.

Darien is one of the wealthiest communities in America. Their priest was paid $28,000 a year plus room and board. OK, so much for the vow of poverty.

But then why would parishioners, as reported in the Times, not think twice before plopping $10,000 into the weekly collection plate? What did they think was happening to all that cash? Maybe it was just a case of the folks from Darien getting what they paid for.

May 25, 2006--"Don't Know Much About A Science Book"

Today there is yet another report in the NY Times about falling scores on math and science tests in the nation’s high schools (linked below). They report some improvement at the elementary school level and even some closing in the gap between white and minority students. But why the persistent problem at high schools?

Department of Education officials see it to be because of an insufficient supply of “fully” qualified teachers--too few with sufficient “content knowledge in math and science.”

I wonder. And further, I wonder why we even require everyone to take math in high school. (More about that in a moment.) I also wonder why we continue to teach math as if from a cook book. If it is true as many claim that most math teachers did not major in a mathematics while in college and thus have to teach from cook-book-like texts, then we should try to attract more math majors to teaching—though this will not be easy since they will have to start out earning about $30,000 a year, much less than they could make elsewhere.

But before we decide this is the way to proceed, let me indicate what one must do to become fully qualified to get licensed to teach math in New York State. It means that as an undergraduate you must take Calculus I, II, and III, plus Differential Equations, Advanced Statistics, etc. Then you need to complete at least 30 credits of teacher education courses and do student teaching. You as well need to earn a masters degree. Then you can get certified to teach in the South Bronx and earn your $32K (New York City’s minimum for a beginning teachers).

A simple question—what does having taken Calc III and Differential Equations have to do with being prepared to teach Algebra and Geometry at the high school level? All right, or Trigonometry? I suspect not that much.

Now, why do we require all students to take these math courses? I do not have a good answer. Since only a tiny percentage of the population ever uses much more than arithmetic in their everyday personal and work lives, what’s really the point? (When was the last time yoiu took the Square Root of anything?) Some educators say that there are intrinsic benefits—mathematical thinking transfers to many aspects of life. By studying math one acquires various analytical skills that have wide application.

No one would argue that acquiring these skills isn’t essential to a successful life; but then why not teach them directly, rather than indirectly via math? In place of the math sequence, couldn’t we require courses in Critical and Analytical Thinking, as well as others in the history of mathematical and scientific thinking?

Some, though, would argue that if we disestablished math requirements many from low-income backgrounds would be tracked away from elective math courses (which high schools should of course offer) and thus be shunted from the possibility of math- and science-related careers. But since interest and aptitude in math and science shows up early in children it could be fairly easy for educators to take note of that and make sure those children get into high-quality math and science classes. Those must be taught by fully qualified teachers who should be paid a competitive salary.

At the moment, because of the torturous ways in which these subjects are offered to all, more youngsters who, as a result do poorly in these courses, get turned off to academics in general and drift toward indifference, getting lost in the process.

But we will likely not have this discussion because there are math- and science-education industries that are more about serving and preserving the interests of their profession than that of their students.

May 24, 2006--"The Look On Her Face"

I remember the time during the Cold War when being a Liberal was considered by some to be very much like being a Communist. One of the worst things that could be said about such a person was that he (it was pretty much always a “he”) was “a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” The “card-carrying” was also supposed to evoke the thought that the person might be carrying a Communist Party card. Get it?

And so to some of us being a dues-paying member of the ACLU was not only a good thing in and of itself, since the organization was doing all sorts of courageous things to protect our freedoms, but it also had a little cache of its own since there was something excitingly transgressive about being a member.

Well, from the reports about the recent struggles within the leadership of the ACLU, maybe, if one still has such a card, it might be time to do something else to evoke those days—consider burning it.

Here’s a little background to the NY Times story (linked below) about the internecine warfare within the ACLU. About a year ago there was a huge uproar when it was disclosed that the ACLU’s Executive Director, in order to receive its annual Ford Foundation grant, had signed a statement that the organization did not support terrorism or anti-Semitism. This was because the Foundation had gotten burned for funding various groups worldwide that espoused the elimination of the State of Israel and were in other ways overtly anti-Jewish. Thus all grantees were required to renounce this to get their cash, including the ACLU.

Many board members were outraged that the ED, Anthony Romero (a former Ford staffer) would do this in such a craven and back-channel way, so at odds with the organization’s values—not because they were anti-Semitic, perhaps quite the contrary, but that by signing such a letter they were tacitly agreeing to what they saw to be Ford’s attempt to restrict free speech.

As a result of this stir, the ACLU board set up a committee to devise rule to govern board members’ behavior. Including, the Times reports, if the new guidelines are approved, restricting the rights of individual board members to publicly criticize the organization, its board, and executive staff.

You can only imagine how this is being received—the ACLU, the nation’s, perhaps the world’s preeminent guardian of free speech is considering muzzling itself!

Things have gotten so heated that the Executive Director has allegedly attempted to purge members of the board who have criticized him or other members, including, it is claimed, taking one member out into the hall during a meeting to tell her that he didn’t like “the look on her face.” And implying that she should be careful because they had “a thick file on her.” (The ED denies that they have such files.)

But there is clearly considerable verifiable evidence that the Executive Director and many of his board supporters see imposing these kinds of restrictions on their colleagues to be in the best interest of the organization. For example, one member, Susan Herman, a Brooklyn Law School faculty member, said that of course board members have a right to disagree, but when doing so they should take into account, “their fiduciary duty to the ACLU.” Translation—such public airings of internal differences will have an effect on the ACLU’s ability to raise money.

It will. Because as soon as I post this I’ll be burning my membership card.

May 23, 2006--"Our Authentic Being"

After the 2000 election, which required the Supreme Court to elect George Bush, Republican strategists concluded that the reason Al Gore won the popular vote was because not enough Evangelical Christians turned out at the polls. In order to get them there in 2004 they made sure to enflame their base by pandering to their homophobic fears—they arranged for anti-gay marriage initiatives to be on the ballot in key states. It worked—Bush won both the popular and electoral votes.

Democrats came to a similar conclusion—they were defeated because they did not do a good enough job promulgating a “values” agenda, including they did not go to church enough and have their pictures taken as they emerged from Sunday services. They also noted that though the Constitution calls for the separation of church and state, conservative Christian leaders, including the clergy, were not at all shy about preaching politics from the pulpit, even handing out voter palm cards and directing their followers to vote.

So now, not only do we find Democrat presidential aspirants praying in public but also moving to the right on so-called values issues (for example, Hillary did a version of a right turn on abortion), but we also find the Religious Left groping toward an electoral strategy—thinking about what they might say to their parishioners to get them politically mobilized.

The NY Times reported recently on a gathering of an assortment of Unitarians, Congregationalists, progressive rabbis, and even a few Benedictine nuns under the banner of the new Network for Spiritual Progressives as they sought to find unifying messages that might counter those of the Christian Right. (See full story linked below.)

In the spirit of learning from the success of the Jerry Falwells, much discussion focused on whether or not the Network should get behind specific policies. This was countered by those who felt that to be an inappropriate goal for religious leaders—instead, they should assert that they are “a religious voice” and thereby take religion back from conservatives who do endorse specific pieces of social legislation.

The idea of endorsing legislation proved to be difficult for Progressives since they see their principle strength to be supporting pluralism, giving voice to diverse views and priorities. How then to speak with one voice as they perceive conservatives doing? Assuming this to be the case (which it isn’t since conservatives are not as monolithic in thought or behavior as caricatured), how then can you get progressives politically activated by appealing to the faith and religiosity?

The Reverend Ama Zenya of the First Congregational Church in Oakland had the best idea—she told the assemblage that they should exhort their brethren to talk to one another about their spiritual values and “practice fully our authentic being.”

I can hear Karl Rove chuckling to himself as he waits for his next appearance before the Grand Jury.

May 22, 2006--Alexander Capalluto

“Alexander was our daughter’s first playdate and will always be ‘Zander to our Gingery.’”

Though you may not have known Alexander Capelluto, and I knew him primarily as the son of friends, his death is both unfathomable and tragic. Snatched from life at just twenty, he was what every parent would wish for in a child and someone the world desperately needed to see grow to full maturity.

Let me quote from an obituary written by the Headmaster of the Horace Mann School, where Alexander was a student a scant few years ago—

Graduating as Valedictorian of his class, he was recognized in many ways for his distinguished work and valuable contributions to the daily life of the school—elected to the Cum Laude Society, he graduated with honors in Mathematics, History, English, and Science. He was the recipient of the Joseph Chase Award in Mathematics and was a National Merit Scholarship awardee. He received Jazz Band and Chamber Wind Band awards, and was awarded the Scholarship for Academic Excellence by the State of New York. He was a remarkable individual whose imprint was everywhere . . . class president, a Governing Council representative, Model UN member, president of the Jazz Ensemble, ad hoc reporter for The Record, a cross-country runner and an avid basketball player. He was elected by his classmates to deliver their valedictory in June 2004. His death is a tragic loss.

He was killed while on his bike, during a final tune-up before departing with Yale classmates on a four-thousand mile trek across the country to raise money for Habitat For Humanity.

As Rona and I are about to leave for his funeral service, I am reminded of something written nearly 200 years ago about another untimely death—

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil

Zander may be gone but his life and example will not be forgotten. In fact, it is and will remain an inspiration.

May 20, 2006--Saturday Story: "The Music Library"

The Music Library

It may come as a surprise to have found him spread out with the full score to Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in the Barnard College Music Library, considering that at his elementary school graduation, because he was tone deaf and thus would throw his classmates off key, Mrs. Peterson, during rehearsal and in front of the entire graduating class, in a voice that had the capacity to shatter egos as well as glass, admonished him to lip-synch the words to the Star-Spangled Banner and The Battle Hymn of the Republic. You might therefore be further surprised to find him poring over that hundred page score since when his brother was attempting to learn to play the violin, he insisted that he practice his scales in their shared clothes closet with the door shut tight, so, he said, as not to hear “the scratching.” Although, in truth, if Jasha Heifitz were practicing in that bedroom, to our musically-impaired hero, it too undoubtedly would have sounded like scraping.

So what was he doing there with those rock-hard Bakelite headphones crushing his protruding ears, looking for all the world like a code breaker, while in fact he was attempting to decipher the orchestrations as if he were Bruno Walters’ apprentice with the Chicago Symphony, whose version of the Brahms he was attempting to absorb and understand? He had already mastered the pronunciation of the maestro’s name. “Valter,” “Valter,” he had been muttering to himself. Certainly not Walter. Obviously not.

Now he was attempting to hear, not just listen to this great and tragic work in E Minor. He felt prepared to take on this challenge as he was sufficiently tutored by then to know that the Fourth Symphony stands or falls upon the flute solo in the last movement, allegro energico e passionato, where, in the words of one of his professors at Columbia College across the street, “It stands for all the pleading, hopeful, gentleness and innocence in the world.”

Though he had as yet no idea whatsoever what was meant by “E Minor” or allegro, for other reasons soon to be revealed, including why he was at the Barnard rather than the Columbia library, he was making some progress on the passionate part.

This time he was alone at the library, not as he usually was with his roommate, Jerry Taybor, from the musical family of the same name. His father, the scion, presided over Friday evening cultural sessions in the Taybor den, which our Brahms enthusiast occasionally joined, along with the three Taybor boys, all in a clutch at the banker pere’s feet close by the tomb-sized mahogany Capehart HiFi as Koussevitzky conducted Mozart’s 29th or Toscanini his version of The Pastoral. This was in truth an accomplished family--one brother played the piccolo and went on to assume the second piccolo chair in the Saint Louis Symphony under the esteemed Walter Susskind; the other the tuba, who was at that time had what he called a “night job” playing in the house orchestra of the Mark Hellinger Theater, under the direction of someone whose name he could not remember, where My Fair Lady was near the end of its run. This job, which though it had the advantage of keeping his days free to pick up occasional gigs recoding advertising jingles, had the concomitant potential disadvantage of relegating him to the status of official family disgrace, that is if Jerry hadn’t, in a remarkably restrained form of sibling rivalry, preempted that role by having chosen to become a pre-med, even though he was reputed to have the best of the Taybor ears.

One would think in such a family, it needs to be said, a Jewish family, a father would have been equally proud of a piccilost and a budding cardiologist much less an oldest son who schlepped around a tuba to make a living, but with the Taybors (ne Traybergs) that was not the case. And thus when they were gathered at the HiFi to listen to music, it was blood sport.

Knowing this, and to lower the expectations and pressure he placed on himself, transgressive Jerry Taybor, with his unique sense of humor, renamed himself and encouraged his classmates to call him Jerry “Tuba.” But for anyone else at Mr. Taybor’s feet those evenings, the pressure and expectations were intense as he fired off to the minion questions about Opus this and Opus that. This pressure was felt especially by Jerry’s tin-eared roommate because his musical education to that point was from the little he had acquired while listening to the Make Believe Ballroom on the radio, where each afternoon Martin Block played the latest songs to join the Hit Parade. Mona Lisa, right then, being at the top of the charts.

Jerry’s roommate, fellow freshman, and fellow pre-med was eager to join the Taybor brothers in the den’s intentional gloom, huddled on the Persian rug, surrounded by deeply carved hardwoods and tapestries because he was in the process of imaging a future life for himself similar to that of the Taybor’s, where he too would have a fieldstone house on an acre of land on Long island, on the North Shore of course, replete with an identical faux-Norman mead-hall den, and knew he needed also to acquire their manners and style and intimate culture, none of which were a part of the curriculum at Columbia.

Thus, he called upon Jerry to teach him the rules of that game and what, after all, was an Opus. He knew that meant, among many other things, that it was time to move on from Eddie Fisher to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. One of Mr. Taybor’s favorites.

To be continued . . .

May 19, 2006--Fanaticism XXXV--A Potpourri

Sometimes on Fridays it's so hard to choose what to blog about--should I write something about Catholics coming back to the fold after all the pedophilia? The "tolerant" Dutch getting all tangled up about their Islamic "citizens’” rights? Killings in Turkey over head scarves? Hassidic heirs fighting over their father's patrimony? Or maybe the latest fad in names for Evangelical babies?

But then on just one day, yesterday, the NY Times had a story about each of the above (all linked below):

I'm pleased to be able to report that the "take" is rising again at Catholic churches throughout the US. What with all the troubles, one easily could have imagined that the flock would drift away and even more important there would be nothing deposited in the collection baskets. However, a new study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reveals that Catholics are not leaving the Church, have not stopped attending mass, and cash contributions remain at the same level as they were in 2002. One lay Catholic commenting on the study said that “Catholics have compartmentalized their faith.” They continue to believe in their local pastors while having doubts about the bishops.

The last time I recall anyone talking about compartmentalizing was when Bill Clinton used this technique to keep the presidency in one compartment and Monica in another.

And the Dutch are torturing themselves about what to do about the citizenship of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Muslim who is a Member of Parliament. She is best known as the writer of a TV documentary on violence by Muslims against Islamic women—a film made by Theo van Gogh who was murdered by an Islamic extremist. They have Ms. Ali on a technicality—she misrepresented a few aspects of her life on her citizenship application and thus there is a movement to withdraw it and expel her from the Netherlands. One would think the Dutch would want to allow her to amend her application and honor and protect her, but it seems some who live in her neighborhood are worried about their safety and want her gone.

She is by the way planning to come to the US to join the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Let’s hope she filled out her Green Card application correctly.

Then in "secular" Turkey, our version of the model for the rest of the Islamic world, five judges were shot because of their ruling against the wearing of head scarves in schools and other public buildings. A gunman burst into a courtroom and, while screaming that he was “a soldier of God,” wounded four and killed the fifth. The court had recently ruled that a nursery school teacher would not be allowed to wear a head scarf, even when away from school premises. This apparently was on the mind, such as it is, of the shooter.

I'll spare you an update about what is going on between the sons of Moshe Teitelbaum, the recently-deceased chief rabbi of the Hassidic Satmars--their bloody battle to replace him--so that I can end on a much happier note: the latest most-popular name for Evangelical babies.

This story could have been titled, “Lleh Htah On Yruf.” While you’re struggling with that, let me offer some hints that will allow you to figure it out. In 1999 in all of the US only six babies were given the name of Nevaeh (pronounced nah-VAY-uh). A year later there were 86, two years after that, in 2002, there were 1,692 Nevaehs, and just last year 4,457. This represents the fastest climb in name popularity in over a century. In case you are not a Biblical scholar, you need to know that it is not a name found there. But if you were suspecting that you were getting warm--Nevaeh is Heaven spelled backwards! The beginning of the Nevaeh craze is traceable to the appearance six years ago on MTV by the Christian rock star Sonny Sandoval and his daughter . . . Nevaeh. And they have been saying that MTV is the work of the Devil.

One more piece of good news—the Da Vinci Code opened today at a theater near you to uniformly poor reviews. The NY Times critic said it seems to take more time to watch the film than read the book. This means you won’t have to protest its showing by starving yourself to death. At least there’s that.

May 18, 2006--Clarabell The Clown Is Dead?

Anyone younger than 45 can stop right here and click on Gawker or Daily Kos or Huffington.

Let the rest of us, though, gather round this virtual hearth and shed a tear for Lew Anderson who died a few days ago at age 84. Not necessarily a tear for Lew himself, but for him in his incarnation as Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show.

The Show ran for 2,243 episodes from 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, until September 24, 1960, just a few weeks before John F. Kennedy was elected president. It was an age of very-much-needed Innocence before the cultural revolution that was inadvertently spawned by JFK.

And that innocence was no place better represented, literally embodied, by Clarabell. (See an obit linked; but more important see the second link that shows Clarabell in full flagrant makeup and costume that included an erect rope of hair emerging from his otherwise bald pate. I can only imagine what the Cultural Studies and Queer Studies folks have to say about all of this. Oh well.)

Every afternoon, those fortunate enough to have an early version of a TV, with a five-inch screen more “snow” than image, would pull up chairs to within a foot of the set to peer through the electronic crackle at Buffalo Bob; Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring; of course the garish wooden puppet Howdy himself; and, the wonder of all, Clarabell. They did their shtick in a very mundane studio surrounded by kids in makeshift seats, the Peanut Gallery in fact, where we would project ourselves while we lived out our very basic lives in East Flatbush or wherever, not at the time even capable of imagining five much less fifteen minutes of fame.

Like Harpo, I suppose Lew’s alter-ego (though perhaps alter-id would capture this more accurately), Clarabell did not speak but had two horns, one for yes and one for no—he as you might imagine wore out the no horn!

Clarabell did not speak until the very last episode when he peered into the camera and with tears visible—we could see them since the reception had improved by then—he uttered words for the one and only time, “Goodbye, kids.” Goodbye indeed! Kids indeed!

Rest in peace Lew, Clarabell, and everyone else from the Peanut Gallery who is there with you today because for many of us it will always be Howdy Doody Time!

May 17, 2006--It Isn't Over Til It's Over

Of the many Yogi-isms, the one I find most meaningful is “It isn’t over ‘til it’s over,” and though it is about baseball, the only team sport not ruled by time, it is thus also about life itself.

I was reminded about this just last night when I channel-surfed over to the Yankee-Texas Ranger game. It was top of the third inning and the Yanks were already trailing 10-1. Not very promising even for a game not controlled by the clock. So I switched over to MSNBC to catch the end of Countdown. But got so depressed listening to the ranting about immigration, the president’s poll numbers, and Brittany Spears again driving around with her baby not properly secured in his car seat that I turned the set off, read a little, rolled over, and went to sleep.

At about 2:00 I awoke from a disturbing dream and switched the TV back on to see if we had invaded any other countries while I was tossing and turning. Since we hadn’t and I was wide awake, I surfed back to the YES Network since I knew they present an “encore” version of the game, thinking masochistically, I would find out that things had gotten even worse for the Yanks and maybe, perversely, that would by comparison make the world situation look a little better.

Amazingly, I picked up the replay of the game in the bottom of the third inning when the Yanks managed to score two runs so they were behind by “just” seven runs, 10-3. Thus, I stayed tuned, in the spirit of Yogi.

You can get all the details from the linked NY Times article. But in summary, the Yankees proceeded to score two more runs in the bottom of the fifth inning and another six an inning later. So they took the lead 11-10. But as fate would have it, the very next inning, the top of the seventh, the Rangers scored twice more and recaptured the lead, 12-11. The Yanks, though, not to be deterred, when they came to bat in the seventh, bounced back and tied the score, 12-12. Neither team scored in the eighth; but during the top of the ninth, the Rangers, showing true grit, took the lead again. It was now 13-12. Time for the Yankees’ last licks with no clock ticking.

With two outs, just one more needed for the Rangers to lock up the victory, the Yanks managed to get a man on second base, the potential tying run. Their catcher, the dependable and stolid Jorge Posada, came to the plate as the possible winning run. But with two strikes on him and with the Rangers’ ace closer on the mound, it was not looking good up in the Bronx. Posada, though, took a mighty swing and sent the ball soaring into the bleachers for a two-run, walk-off home run, and the Yankees won, 14-13.

I turned off the TV, rolled over again, and like a baby sleep peacefully though the night. As I had hundreds of times many years ago during the era before TV when, in my darkened bedroom, I would listen to the game on the radio. Often very late at night, when the Yanks were on the road two time zones away.

Reminded then as now of the lessons I learned from those games-- about the power of time and effort and persistence.

That is, until it’s over.

May 16, 2006--The Wrath of Viguerie

It’s one thing for a politician to find his base eroding; it’s quite another for constituents from that core to turn their criticism into a feeding-frenzy.

But this is precisely what is happening to President Bush. When even Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail king who perhaps more than anyone else can take credit for building a commanding Republican majority that has effectively taken control of all three branches of our government, when someone such as Viguerie says, as he did yesterday in an article in the NY Times (linked below), that “There is growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose [my italics] the Congressional elections this fall,” when something like this happens you don’t even need your wife (or mother) to tell you how much trouble you’re in.

Viguerie is a bit of a voice from the past so if he were the only conservative leader with his pants in a bunch, Bush and Republicans up for election in November could get a good night’s sleep.

But then there is James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family whose daily radio talk show attracts many millions of devoted listeners. He is saying more and more openly that the Republicans who he and his followers turned out to support two years ago have betrayed them because they have not been pushing hard enough for the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. About the president, he says, “A lot of people are disappointed that he hasn’t put as much effort into the marriage amendment as he did for the prescription drug benefit or Social Security reform.” (This gives you a clear sense of his and fellow conservative Christians’ priorities.)

Aware of the fact that the outcome of midterm elections are disproportionately influenced by whichever party does a better job of motivating its core voters to get to the polls, folks such as Dobson are implying they will hold Republicans hostage by not mobilizing their followers unless they see action on those social issues that to them are defining. Thus, two years ago, as a strategy to get anti-gay voters to vote, there were statewide referenda on the ballots of key swing states. Look for more of the same this year as well as others staking out tough positions on immigration, the current hot wedge issue.

But then I have been wondering what might really be going on here—do conservatives really want to see Republicans lose control of Congress? And, do Democrats really want to take control of the House and Senate? Maybe the conservations, ever sly, in fact do want to lose in November so they can run two years later as the opposition party, blaming spending, deficits, and even the war in Iraq on the Democrats.

If true, I guess this means I should be hoping the Democrats lose so the focus of blame and accountability can remain where it is and should be—on the Bush administration and their Congressional partners in crime.

I suppose, then, that this also means I should be hoping that The Brain, Karl Rove, doesn’t get indicted so he can be around long enough to help mastermind a final Republican victory.

May 15, 2006--Kentucky Pork

I think it is at the end of the McLaughlin Group where panelists are asked to list their version of the “Outrage of the Week.” Usually such things as so-and-so leaking something inappropriate to the press or a congressional golf junket to Scotland. The kind of things to which we by now have grown numb.

There is, though, one outrage reported in yesterday’s NY Times (linked below) that snapped me out of my coma and is my candidate for the “Outrage of the Year.” It’s about a little-known Republican Congressman from the 5th district in southeastern Kentucky--Harold “Hal” Rogers.

When I saw the Times headline, “In Kentucky Hills, a Homeland Security Bonanza,” I assumed the story was another one about how congressional districts not on al Queda’s radar screen manage to get Homeland Security money in the spirit of the way Congress works—if there is money to go around, all 435 congressional districts get in line at the trough whether they need it or not.

But in Hal Rogers’ case considerable more is at stake. In his position as chair of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget he directs money to projects that are supposed to protect us from terrorists.
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After 9/11 Congress passed legislation to fund the production of a tamperproof universal Transportation Worker Identification Card that would assure that everyone who works at an airport, rail or boat terminal could not easily slip through security. Good idea.

But four years after the legislation was approved and tens of millions of dollars was appropriated, we still do not have the system in place. That is because the work was directed, via no-bid contracts, to companies in, you guessed it, Congressman Rogers’ district. Including to a company that employs his son.

To quote a senior security analyst at MJSK Equity Research which tracks the ID card industry, “Something stinks in Corbin, Kentucky.” Actually, it’s worse than that—something stinks in Washington.

You can get all the outrageous details in the full Times article, including the list of junkets he and his wife have been on, paid for by the very companies that have thus far failed to produce the ID cards the taxpayers have already paid for, including numerous trips to Hawaii, I assume during the winter, where he and the Mrs. presumably checked out the security system at Honolulu Airport.

I, though, have a practical question—don’t places such as the Los Alamos and the Sandia Labs already have tamperproof ID systems that could easily be adapted for transportation workers? I even think Congress has such a system for its own staff. By using one of these I suspect we could have saved the tens of millions already spent in Kentucky and, more important, the workers would have had the IDs years ago, and we would be securer in our homeland.

May 13, 2006--Saturday Story Concluded: "The Pickle Boat"

The Pickle Boat

I was the Number Seven oar in the freshman Pickle Boat. Though none of the eight of us had ever rowed before, except perhaps in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake, Coach Al Lawrence, a frog-voiced decorated ex-Marine, declared, “Four years from now, men, we’re going to the Olympics in Rome. I can see you in your Shell on the Tiber River. That’s in Italy. So practice your rowing technique, work hard, eat the right food, and above all, men, no smoking. And then we’ll be off to sunny Italy.”

He always ended this speech with a flourish, “Arrivadecci Roma!”

His Italian was as flawed as his coaching, and thus arrivadecci, “goodbye,” it turned out to be for us since his dream and ours sank one day on the Harlem River, 7,000 miles from the Tiber.

My father, however, refused to concede defeat, still nurturing his fantasies for me and the seven other members of the crew.

You may require some background since Crew as a sport hasn’t as yet attracted that many fans. Just fanatics, of which I at the time was certainly one. You also probably need some background about how a Jewish Pre-Med English major with a tweed jacket, pipe, and beret wound up each afternoon at practice dressed in Columbia blue shorts, sweatshirt, and rubber rowing booties, rather than brooding over a beer at the West End Bar, the Beat poets’ favorite hangout on Broadway.

Crew is the quintessential prep-school sport since, among other things, to participate one needs—a very expensive boat or shell that seats eight plus a coxman, equally costly ten-foot-long oars (eight of those), a fieldstone boathouse in which to store the shell, and above all access to a river or lake that isn’t polluted.

Before I go any further, think about how a high school in, say, Brooklyn would attempt to participate in crew. Even assuming, which is a lot, that a public school could get its hands on a shell, oars, and a place to keep them, where would the rowing take place? The lakes in Prospect Park are no more than a hundred yards in length at their broadest and crews need at least two thousand meters (not the way things are measured in non-metric Brooklyn). If a crew somehow managed to drag itself and its gear from Tilden High School to the Gowanus Canal or the East River by the Navy Yard, the toxic chemicals found there, in less than half an hour, would eat their way through the quarter-inch thickness of laminated wood of which shells are constructed and then immediately move in to attack and dissolve the oarsmen.

Then you have to have someone to compete against. It is totally unimaginable that a Tilden would find competition in a league consisting of Madison, Lincoln, Erasmus, and Aviation Trades High Schools. Thus one find crews at Exeter, Andover, and the Lawrenceville prep schools. What we also find there are six-foot four-inch gentiles—as essential to a winning crew as the shell itself.

Columbia, without a quota, at thus at the time the “safe” Ivy League college for over-achieving Jewish Brooklyn public school graduates, had a crew, which was an Ivy requirement. But without any prep school freshmen, no one who tried out for the Columbia crew knew their starboard from their port much less that as a crew member you had responsibility for just one oar, on the left (port) or right (starboard) side (forget any rowboat experience), or that you were probably guaranteed to finish last, considering the prep-school-prepared nature of the competition.

So it is a good and legitimate question why anyone at Columbia would try to join the crew. What could possibly be behind this case of mass masochism?

In my case, which I subsequently learned was representative, I was told to do so by my father. When he dropped me off for Freshman Orientation on a hot day right after Labor Day, when I asked him for any last minute advice he might offer as I was about to embark (word here chosen intentionally), we had not spoken one word to each other except about the Dodgers on the long drive from East Flatbush to Morningside Heights, an intercontinental trip in cultural terms, he said, “Make sure to go out for the crew.”

Though I had almost no sense of what that meant much less what a crew did, after I learned about the inner world of crew, I was reminded again that my father was a master of the hidden and occult pathways to assimilation. If I was to make it in the second half of the 20th century, he knew, I had better learn their ways and if necessary how to “pass.”

So not only did I find my lonely way to the Baker Field boathouse at the very northernmost tip of Manhattan Island, I also took the precaution to cover other bets by outfitting myself in proper collegiate attire, which featured a tweed jacket, pipe, and beret because, if all else failed, I could become a poet.

* * *

All twenty-four of us who tried out made the crew. We were equally inexperienced and without anything resembling muscle tone. There was room for all of us since there were three separate and very distinct freshmen crews, each group of eight assigned to its own boat—the Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Third or Pickle Boat. Though I was seated in that latter boat it wasn’t until many years later that I realized that by naming it after a pickle, Coach Lawrence might have been expressing his latent feelings about us. He didn’t call it the Gherkin Boat, which might have been appropriate if we had been the worst of the pre school boys.

How, you might be wondering, did he make his distinctions since we were in crew-terms indistinguishable to the untutored eye? Though it would have been quite easy to divide us between pre laws, pre meds, and math geniuses. Retrospectively, I have to assume it was by the subtle differences he was able to discern in subtle aspects of our bodies.

Crew is about technique, coordination, power, and endurance. The power derives from legs and backs. But all of our legs were bandied and grossly underdeveloped and our backs displayed the poor posture that was characteristic of young scholars from the ghettos of Brooklyn. Therefore, neither our legs nor our backs were of any use in either the shell or as a help to Coach Lawrence who needed to find a metric that he could employ to place us in one boat or another. Endurance, on the other hand, could be measured in a clearly physiognomic way—by a comparison of our chests which by their sizes and configurations would reveal our lung capacities and thus our ability to endure. Coach Lawrence, who was also an expert eugenicist, by just a glance at our shirtless shivering bodies, was able to assign us to our proper shell and separate us into port and starboard oarsmen.

Our chests revealed all he needed to know—those not distorted by allergies were candidates for the Varsity boat; those who caught frequent Croups or had post-nasal drips found themselves in the Junior Varsity boat; while the Pickle Boat was reserved for those of us who suffered from chronic Strep Throat and or Bronchitis.

Try as he did, poor Dr. Holsager, the extended family’s devoted pediatrician, who was still my doctor even though I was a college freshman, could not seem to protect me from a continuous onslaught of diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, or lungs. At least once a month since I was three I would be plagued with fits of wheezing, blowing, dripping, coughing, chocking, and spitting. All of which, by the time I was seventeen, assured that I would have what my father called a “sunken chest,” just the sort of upper body that would relegate me to the Pickle Boats of the world. Or make certain that I would lead a sedentary life. Thus the beret that I purchased at the Stag Shop on the first day of Orientation.

True, I had played basketball because I was prematurely tall, and this gave my father hope that I also had the potential to become what he thought of as a man. But my greatest basketball skill was standing flatfooted, towering over everyone else on the court, waiting for rebounds to come my way. The coach, Mr. Ludwig, taught me just where to stand and to be sure to always keep my arms extended above my head, easily well above everyone else’s. This was hardly preparation for the very different, much more athletic requirements of crew. Nonetheless, I was determined to persevere since I knew what was at stake—

Everything.

* * *

The coach arranged for his own version of orientation—just for the men of the Pickle Boat. He told us to meet at 10:00 pm the night before the first practice in the Lion’s Den, the college’s version of a rathskeller, set in the dingy basement of John Jay Hall. There, with all light supplied by candle stubs, with the walls sheathed with smoke-stained Teutonic stucco, the eight of us seated at a heavily carved beer hall table with Coach Lawrence at the head, we received his charge:

“Men, and I call you that in spite of the way you may have been thinking about yourselves up until this time.” He then muttered, chuckling to himself, “After all, look at you.” And none of us, sneaking looks to our left and right, could not have disagreed with him, “But you are the right sort of recruits I will mold into men. You know about the Marines, don’t you? Well, I was a Marine after leaving college. I didn’t graduate, though I was on the varsity crew. I wasn’t ready for college. I was still a boy. No need here to go into why I left with a year to go. Let’s just say it was because thanks to crew I was turned into a man and it was as a man that I was asked to leave college.” More chuckling for reasons it was also easy for us to imagine.

“It was hell there. We were up by the Yalu River one winter. It was so cold, the proverbial Witch’s Tit, that I lost three of my toes to frost bite. Couldn’t have rowed after that.” He grunted. “One guy in my company, he, well, I’ll tell you about him another time. Forget his name to tell you the truth.” We sat there careful to keep our eyes averted. “Where was I? Ah, yeah, right. About the Marines. Like I was saying, in the Marines I learned one thing—it’s not enough to be just a man. It’s what you do as a man. You will learn that from crew. You will not need to join the Marines for that.” Now his amusement was no longer suppressed—he burst into overt laughter, even pounding the table. It was obvious to all of us that the prospect of any of us even thinking about becoming Marines was to him an appropriately hilarious idea.

“I know you have to go to class and do your studying. After all, what would we do if you people, you men I mean, didn’t become our doctors and lawyers,” he winked at us. “I’m sure you get my meaning here.” Another wink. “But I bet you’re wondering why I arranged this meeting for just the members of the Pickle Boat.” Indeed, we had been wondering. “Well, let me relieve you of that one. I know where you come from and I know as a result that none of you are natural athletes.” And he added as another aside, “Not that the other two crews are much better.”

He had a huge stein of beer and, as if contemplating his sorry situation, assigned by fate to be the coach of such a hopeless bunch, he took a moment to empty it. “But I am just the man to turn you into a winning crew because I know who you really are and what you really think about yourselves and how desperate you are to leave your old ways behind and make something different of yourselves and therefore how hard you will work at this and do everything I tell you without asking questions. Because you know who I am and how you really want to be like me and not like the members of your families, who tomorrow morning will drag themselves back to their desks and spend the whole day squinting through their glasses at their ledger books.”

He looked around the table at each of us slumped and squirming in our tooled-leather chairs, pausing at each of us until we with trepidation looked up to return his gaze and nod in silent compact.

“And so men, tomorrow will be the beginning of this new life. Through the exercise routine I will teach you and our workouts on the river and the food I will tell you to eat (forget about the stuff your mothers made you eat at home). If you do all of that, within six months when you look in the mirror you will no longer recognize yourselves.”

If he had taken a vote, all of us would have agreed to give up even our grandmothers’ beloved noodle kuggel and brisket of beef if after six months, or for that matter six years, we would be unrecognizable to ourselves.

“And finally men, I forgot one thing—medications. We’ve got to get you breathing. So our trainer will get everyone all the antihistamines you need.” And with that, as a man, we leapt from our seats and spontaneously began to sing Roar, Lion, Roar.

* * *

Every afternoon at 3:30 a bus would pick us up outside our dorms, on Amsterdam Avenue, right by Saint Luke’s Hospital. That you will see was fortuitous—to be picked up and dropped off right there at the entrance to the Emergency Room, which over time was to become an important destination for me.

We would pile onto the Campus Coach, schlepping math and chemistry books along with us so we could cram in some homework on the long ride up the granite spine of Manhattan. Every one of us was leading at least a dual life.

At that legendary 1926 Boathouse, after changing, each crew would lift its shell from its rack in the shed and carry it, supported on our shoulders, down the steep and slippery hill to the launching dock where we would, in a single coordinated movement, drop it to our waists and then lean over to place it in the murky waters of the Spuyten Duyvil. The fact that it took us a full two months to master this technique while building the endurance so as to not pass out from the effort, and the fact that we also hadn’t mastered the coordination required to put the shell in the water in such a way as not to half fill it with river water, this should have alerted us to the fact that we weren’t to the crew born and we would never attain the even subtler forms of coordination required to become an effective crew.

And we should have looked up the meaning of the Dutch spuyten duyvil. That would have alerted to another fact--that the 17th century Dykman family who owned the land and named the waterway were prescient—for a spitting devil it indeed was to be!

Coach Lawrence rode in a power launch, positioning himself in the midst of his three crews, shouting instructions to us through a megaphone—

“Goldberg,” he roared, “You need to feather your oar. You’re dragging it in the water and slowing the boat.” (Goldberg was bent like a pretzel over his oar since his spine was rigid from some rare childhood disease of the spine.)

“Gottlieb,” the coach boomed so powerfully through the megaphone that he could be heard all the way to Riverdale, “How many times have I told you to keep your eyes straight ahead? By moving your head from side to side you’re rocking the boat.” (Gottlieb wore glasses so thick that their lens could be used to start fires and were thus so hot that on the water they were always completely misted up and he couldn’t see anything unless he turned his head to look out of the corner of his eye.)

“Goodman,” in a voice filled with so much frustration we thought he was addressing all of us, “Use your legs, that’s where you get your power.” (Goodman, even if he used his legs, which he didn’t since they were always a mass of cramps, would never be able to supply much power from his Number Five position, which was supposed to be the shell’s “engine room,” since his feet were so flat that he was required to wear stainless steel arches even in his rowing booties, and as a result his feet kept slipping out of the boot stretchers that were secured to the bottom of the shell in order to anchor our feet in place.)

“Goldfarb,” the coach barked, “How many times do I have to tell you to breathe in when reaching forward and out when you pull on your oar?” (Goldfarb, the coach should have known, was so afflicted by fall allergies that he was lucky to be able to breathe either in or out when either reaching or pulling even supplied with a double-dose of the trainer’s antihistamines. As Number Six he was situated right behind me and wheezed so loudly that at times he drowned out even the amplified instructions and commands coming from the launch.)

“And Gutterman,” Sergeant Lawrence bellowed, almost snapping us to attention though we were slouched over our oars, “If you keep catching crabs whenever you try to lift your oar from the water, there will be no Olympics, no Roma for any of us.” (The coach did not know that Gutterman was the only member of any of the three crews who ate strictly Kosher food; and so to keep picking on him for catching crabs, though it was an appropriate technical crew term, to Gutterman it was still treyf, forbidden, and only got him so agitated that it assured he would catch enough crabs during every practice to keep even the busiest restaurant in Chinatown fully supplied.)

I did not escape. As the coach seemed to do things alphabetically, after all the Gs, he finally got to the Z: “You, Number Seven,” he hurled at me in what sounded like mockery, “I was talking on the phone with your father last night and he told me that you skipped your workout last weekend. No wonder you’re rowing like a girl.” (My who? On the phone? Rowing like what? Though we were nearly done for the day, having already turned toward the boathouse, and everyone was so exhausted that our collective panting was more coordinated than our rowing, all those crunched behind me still managed to gather enough oxygen to be able to choke out sputtered bursts of laughter at either the fact that the coach was talking about me with my father or that he said I was rowing like a girl. Even I knew that both were equally humiliating and hilarious.)

* * *

Perhaps it was psychosomatic, the result of knowing how Coach Lawrence and my father were conspiring, but at the end of the next day’s practice I needed to be lifted from the shell by my crewmates and carried up to the trainer’s room in the boathouse because I found that I couldn’t get out of the shell on my own—my body seemed rigidly locked in rowing position.

The trainer, Ray Fullerton, who was a Columbia fixture (campus legend had it that he been with the college since it was named King’s College, after King George III), was waiting for me and was very reassuring, telling me that my condition was so common that he had seen dozens of crew members over the years bent just as I was, like a right angle bracket, and that he had a liniment that he himself concocted many years ago that would fix me right up, “You’ll see,” he said with a slap on my back that sent a flame of pain down my left leg, “You’ll be back in the boat tomorrow afternoon.” And I had been worrying that it would take until at least the end of the year before I would be able to lie flat.

He rolled me onto my side and managed to pull down my sweatpants and rowing shorts to get to my injured hip even though he was afflicted by shakes so severe that the liquid he had compounded was splashing out of the bottle and onto the training table. I realized how potent it was since the leather where it dripped was already becoming bleached.

And from that, I assumed it would burn right through me when he applied it to my left hip. I knew, however, that I could endure it if it would straighten me out and get me back into that boat. And so I was relieved that it felt cool rather than hot when he rubbed it in with those knurled hands of his that had kneaded the muscles and joints of so many illustrious alums--some who had been on the Columbia football team that achieved the greatest upset in sports history back in 1934 by beating Stanford 7-0 in the Rose Bowl; others who had gone on to pro careers with the New York Knicks; and maybe even he had ministered to Lou Gehrig who had played first base for Columbia in 1921 before becoming the Yankees’ Iron Horse. I was indeed in good hands—Lionel Trilling for Literature and Ray Fullerton for crippled backs. I was thereby reminded that this was after all the Ivy League!

He told me that he would be applying a stick-on patch to cover the affected area and that later that night I might feel some heat beneath it. I would know from that that it was working its magic. He cut a huge circle from what looked like a rubber sheet, about the size of a basketball, peeled off one layer to expose the gummed surface and then plastered it on to me.

I already was experiencing some relief and thus feeling optimistic as I was able to hobble to the bus on my own, still bent over to be sure but ambulatory. I did though need help getting into bed and once settled there immediately fell asleep on my side, still pretty much in the shape of an right triangle.

* * *

At 3:00 am, emerging from a dream inexplicably set in a restaurant, I thought I smelled steak sizzling on a grill. Just as I was marveling at the vividness of my dream, I realized in panic that the meat I smelled burning was me! The flesh below the patch was broiling. I was on fire!

I tore at the patch and ripped it off, horrified to see a circle of skin adhering to it. My skin. And saw as well that my hip was now a throbbing mass of raw flesh. My screams roused my room- and crewmate, Gottlieb, who after groping for his bottle-thick eyeglasses was able to see the carnage. He remained calm--he was after all a pre-med—and dragged me from my cot to the Emergency Room at St. Lukes where, because I was triaged to the front of the line ahead of someone from Harlem who had been shot on the leg, I realized that my condition was either serious or that Columbia students were given automatic priority over anyone who lived down the slope and east of Morningside Park.

Sad to say, it turned out to be the latter because though my situation was nasty it was not as life-threatening by any means as a gunshot wound. They patched me up and sent me back to the dorm, wrapped in gauze, telling me I needed to get x-rayed the next day to see what was really wrong with my hip. It was suspected that what they would find would be beyond the experience of even a trainer who in the 1930s had treated the great quarterback Cliff (“Monty”) Montgomery. I needed a doctor, not a trainer, and a Jewish one at that.

* * *

It turned out that I needed more than a doctor—I needed a specialist, an orthopedist, the “biggest” in this case a Doctor Phillips, decidedly not Jewish, who after a raft of x-rays determined that my hip muscle, the body’s largest and most powerful he informed me, that the gluteus maximus, from the strain of rowing and, he hinted, because of my faulty technique—one of the diplomas on the wall of his office was from Andover Academy; another from Princeton—that most powerful of muscles, even powerful in me he said, was in the process of tearing apart two of the fused pelvic bones that were supposed to remain fused, if one was to avoid becoming a cripple.

He told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to refrain from crew practice for a few months and not do anything more strenuous than walk in a straight line. “But what if I have to turn the corner from 116th Street onto Broadway?” I asked. “I have my lab there.”

“You make a big circle,” he responded, sweeping his arms in a wide arc and then demonstrated by pacing off such a grand left turn in his huge waiting room that he had to ask someone to get up out of her chair and move it so he could complete the circle and his instructions. To drive them home, as he opened the door for me, indicating that that too might put too much strain on my pelvis, he said, “If you do what I say, when you come back to see me in a week maybe, just maybe you’ll still be able to walk. Otherwise, it will be a wheelchair you’ll be needing.”

I had not told my father about having to see a doctor much less a specialist. When I initially injured myself I did tell him about it and he dismissively said, matter-of-factly, “Rub some Bengay into it and you’ll be fine.” Since I had been careful not to tell him about what the trainer had done, I certainly wasn’t going to bring up x-rays much less orthopedists. So I did not mention my new technique for turning right and left or the specter of the wheelchair.

When I returned to Dr, Phillip’s office on Park Avenue, Columbia had an arrangement with him to treat their athletes as part of the student health plan, I waited for another patient to arrive who was better able than I to open his door; and once he had me called into his examining room I reported to him that during the previous week I had been so diligent in following his instructions that I made only six left and four right turns.

This did not seem to impress him nor did the fact that I arrived without the assistance of a wheelchair. He sat at his desk, half turned away from me, swinging in his chair, not looking up but with his eyes riveted to the x-rays in my file. After a few minutes of awkward silence, I managed to ask, “So, what’s next?” He didn’t look up, “I am feeling much better.”

Still without looking at me, and in a voice quite different than the commanding one of the first visit, he spoke now in a subdued monotone, “I talked with Coach Lawrence yesterday and told him you could go back to practice next week.” Stunned equally by his change in demeanor and the news I felt myself stiffening. “That is, as long as you go to St. Luke’s every afternoon before practice to get a Diathermy treatment. That’s a deep heat treatment.”

“But,” I interrupted, “I thought you told me last week that it would be at least a month before I could maybe resume practice. You said, that is, if I hadn’t turned into a cripple.” In confusion and desperation, I peered at him.

Then almost in a whisper, he said“I also spoke with your father . . . “

“Who?” I exploded, not able to contain myself.

“. . . who told me,” he continued, looking down, “How important it was for you to get back to practice. That the coach was getting the crew ready for the Olympics and it would soon be rowing season. That without you . . . . “

* * *

And so I found myself the following Monday in the Physical Therapy unit of St. Luke’s, where for a half hour I lay under the beam of the Diathermy machine, induced by it into a form of delirium that was perfect preparation for the trek to the boathouse and our practice, which I sensed the coach shortened that afternoon in deference to my condition.

This routine went on for two weeks. As if I had been transformed into an automaton, before getting on the bus, I would go up to the fourth floor of the hospital where I would lay on an electrical plate inserted beneath my hip, what the technician called an “indifferent electrode,” which would serve as the “receptor” for the electrical current they shot through my body to produce the desired inner heat. Though the contraption within which I was placed looked like a cross between Rube Goldberg and Dr. Frankenstein machines, it seemed to work because I in fact was feeling better and was able to participate in the workouts that were gathering in intensity as the coach sensed I was strengthening. And because the rowing season was just two months away and he needed to get us ready for the first race which was against Yale and Harvard.

* * *

It was freezing on the river that February, so much so that when the ice pack began to break up in the Hudson River, some of it flowed through the Spuyten Duyvil and down into the Harlem where we practiced. There was so much of it in the river that our coxman was hard pressed to avoid them.

Just as I was about to be fully restored, and began thinking that maybe I could taper off the treatments so I could get back to the chemistry lab I had been cutting, very late one Thursday afternoon at the end of the month, as we were sliding up to the dock, shivering against the stiffening last afternoon wind, Coach Lawrence pulled his launch right up alongside out shell.

Leaning toward us, without needing his megaphone he was so close, he spoke in weary voice, one we had never before heard, “Boys,” he said, “Remember that night in the Lion’s Den when I told you that I knew you better than you knew yourselves?” We nodded our heads in such unison that the shell did not rock, “And how I said to you that if you did everything I told you to do you could have a life about which you were only just imagining and were even afraid to acknowledge?” More nodding, still no rocking, but now with our eyes, as then, averted. “Well, I am worried about you now. I am concerned that that dream will elude you. As mine did. Remember I told you about that too?”

We sensed he was now talking even more to himself than to us. “You may think my life was very different than yours. Well, you’re wrong. You know nothing about me. My real name isn’t even ‘Lawrence.’ My father changed it when I was two years old. He wanted a different life for me that his own. And look what I did with it. I threw it away.” Though he then turned away from us, we still could hear him, “Here I am, what, coaching a Pickle Boat.”

He then wheeled back toward us, his face suddenly aflame with rage, “Goldberg,” he spat, pointing at him with such ferocity that to Goldberg and the rest of us it felt as if his finger was piercing our chests, “You of all people, I have learned that you were smoking. I told you that was absolutely forbidden. You’re pissing away all the hard work.” He had never used that kind of language before, “You, with that spine of yours. You don’t even belong in this pathetic boat.”

With a look of disgust, he turned to the rest of us, “And what’s the matter with you—Goldfarb, Goodman, Gutterman?” His string of G’s stung like bullets. “And you, you with your Diathermy treatments? You knew what he was up to and what did you do? Nothing. That’s what you did. Nothing. You and that father of yours.” He couldn’t even look at me.

He was using the megaphone again even though he was just a few feet from us. I felt as if my head would shatter.

“And for that, so all of you will follow my orders, today we’re doing extra practice. We’re going back down the river to Yankee Stadium. That will help you remember.” And with that he jolted his launch to starboard and roared off while we wearily turned in the Duyvil toward the rush of the Harlem.

But just as we managed to come about and get ourselves oriented to the south, as full darkness settled over us and the water, before we could even respond to the coxman’s, “Ready all, row,” we slammed into a huge chunk of ice that likely had formed a month earlier ninety miles north up the Hudson near Albany.

And with that the shell began to fill with icy river water since the razor sharp ice had cut through the fragile shell as if it were a huge scalpel. In what felt like seconds, the entire shell was full and it and we slowly sank into the river. To the depth of our equally fragile chests. Where we came to rest.

Somehow Coach Lawrence had sensed disaster and had looped back to us; and again through his megaphone, his voice now calm, instructed us to remain in the shell and to keep our oars extended. That if we did that we would not sink any further and he could then come alongside and transfer us one by one, alternating starboard and port, to keep us on even keel, until all of us were in the launch with him and he would get us back safely to the dock.

He promised that, and we believed him as we had, in truth, believed him about everything else.

* * *

The college paper, the Spectator, the next day had all the details—the smoking incident; the extra practice; the sinking; the rescue; the fact that all of us where kept overnight in St. Luke’s “for observation”; that we were OK by the next day; that since the freshmen crew now had only two shells the third boat would be disbanded (they happily did not refer to it as we knew it); and that the coach, Coach “Luckman” they misnamed him, had been “granted leave for the rest of the year.”

But as with so many newspapers, they got the facts right but missed the real story—that though it appeared that he was attempting to motivate us by continually talking about the Rome Olympics, he was up to something very different; they failed to report that he knew what we really wanted to attain was equally foreign yet sensed in us the capacity to get there if we made the right kind of effort; that he knew what that effort entailed and that it was about techniques and endurance and powers that were not learned nor played out on rivers or in shells; the Spectator as well did not write that he also knew that this could never be discussed, that it needed to be kept within our covert circle; and that “crew” was a metaphoric world in which the symbols of these aspirations could emerge; they did not report that Coach Lawrence understood that he had sought those very same things and, though he had failed, he had chosen to devote his life to boys such as us who he knew could learn more of what we really needed from his example than from anyone else on campus.

Also not reported was what we knew--about this, too, he was right.

* * *

Two years later, on an April Saturday, having borrowed my father’s battered car, I drove down to Princeton, to watch the races between the Yale, Harvard, and Princeton crews (being sure to park it out of sight), historic races that were held annually on Carnegie Lake, a man-made marvel devoted just to racing.

It was a day so glorious that it appeared it too had been created by God or man to accommodate these ancient rivalries.

Sitting on the grass embankment, which also had been shaped into a perfect perch from which to see the entire two thousand meters of the course, I was reminded of what my father was thinking when he dropped me off for my first day at college with the admonition to go out for the crew—his sense that crew served as a form of social alchemy, a hermetic process through which the base-metal boys of places such as Brooklyn were transmuted into gilded men such as those one finds in late April on Carnegie Lake.

But by then I knew that alchemy was a failed science of dreaming and that even the great man for whom this lake was named never even went to college