A good amount of advance publicity was given to the lunar eclipse that occurred last night in the wee hours of the morning. I stayed up for it, watching the curved shadow of the earth take a “bite” out of the moon a little after 1:30AM. The bite got bigger and bigger, until “totality” about an hour later. Instead of completely disappearing in the shadow, the moon was somewhat visible, displaying a weird coppery color.
It was a crisp and cold night here in the Poconos, no humidity or city glare to dim the view. It was the early morning of December 21, the winter solstice, the official beginning of winter.
News programs announced it was the first combination of a lunar eclipse and winter solstice since 1638, at which time “Galileo was under house arrest for suggesting that the earth moved around the sun.”
OK it was a radical-sounding idea at the time. We see the sun “rise in the East and set in the West” all the time…sure looks like the sun is doing all the moving, and I certainly wouldn't have thought otherwise back in 1638.
More importantly, the Catholic Church firmly believed that the Earth was Stationary -- that it was -- that it HAD to be -- the Center of the Universe. It said so in the Bible -- (Psalms 93 and 96) “The World is Firmly Established. It Can’t Be Moved.”
So one could run afoul of both his fellow man AND God by embracing this newfangled Heliocentric (“sun-centered”) Theory.
In the middle of a full career teaching mathematics at universities, Galileo, in his mid-forties, shook the world in 1609 by inventing a telescope that could magnify by a factor of 30x. Prior to that the best available was only 3x. Not only had he created a new source of income, selling the telescope to mariners and sky gazers, perhaps a few Peeping Toms…
.
….but now he could explore the heavens so much more, and perhaps find something that would help prove that the Earth was not the Center of the Universe. The Heliocentric - Geocentric debate had been simmering for almost 70 years, courtesy of a man named Copernicus, who first proposed Heliocentrism. But Copernicus was aware that the world - particularly the Religious world - was not ready for his radical ideas, and he waited until the last year of his life (1543) to publicize his theories. The resulting controversy was somewhat reserved, with no strong champion for "Copernicanism".
Until Galileo, that is. With his new and vastly improved telescope, Galileo found four small celestial bodies orbiting the planet Jupiter. He plotted their movements, predicted their future movements, and destroyed the idea that ONLY the earth could have anything orbiting it.
With this and other discoveries, the Heliocentric - Geocentric debate heated up and became more public. The Church, still confident that its less-than-scientific viewpoint could be verified, didn’t flinch with the upcoming publication of Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”.
But Galileo’s masterwork was devastating and well-written, completely debunking the Geocentric theory and putting the Church in an uncomfortable position.
Galileo was ordered to stand trial for Suspicion of Heresy in 1633. With the threat of torture and death hanging over him, he officially recanted Heliocentrism. His books on the subject, as well as all of his other scientific publications, were banned.
At first he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but then the sentence was reduced to “house arrest”. He was guarded and monitored for the rest of his life, which was another ten years.
Copernicus had waited until the very end of his life to start ruffling the Church’s feathers. Galileo did almost the same thing, and didn’t stand trial until he was 68, having been free to do great things for most of his life.
He probably knew he would eventually be vindicated, maybe posthumously, that superstition and fanciful doctrines would eventually fall in the face of hard scientific evidence. Secretly the scientific community was embracing his ideas more and more, and it was reasonable to assume that better telescopes would eventually come along, for ever-improving views of a vast and complex cosmos.
Today the Hubble Telescope orbits the earth, taking photos of things so distant that Galileo would have been flabbergasted. Those four moons orbiting Jupiter are merely the four largest, out of a total of 23, and their surfaces have been photographed extensively. They are Callisto, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, known collectively as the Galilean moons of Jupiter.
It took some 350 years, but in the early 1990s the Church vindicated Galileo, apologizing for his heresy trial and the subsequent mistreatment. His legacy lives on, one of the greatest minds of human history, who absolutely loved lunar eclipses.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Throwing the Triple
well we
FLOAT thru the air, wit the
GREATEST of ease, we’re the
FLYING PAGES, we
ALWAYS please…..
HIGH in the sky, up a-
BOVE the ground, we’re
HOTTEST -- FLYIN’ --
ACT a - ROUND
The above lyrics are all I can remember from my first and only attempt at writing a Rap Song, and a goofy reminder of the nine months I spent with the Gatti Circus in 1988.
It was a medium-sized circus, certainly no Ringling Brothers. But it provided solid, predictable employment as a keyboardist at a time when I really needed it. It also provided a ton of interesting travel and interesting people, for instance the Flying Pages -- the sons of poor Cuban circus performers who immigrated here in the 50s.
Jorge Pages (“Pages” apparently both a singular and plural word) was the oldest of three brothers comprising this trapeze act. He was the “catcher” -- it seems that baseball and trapeze acts are the only institutions in which someone has the title of “catcher”. Jorge, thickly built, with large arms, hung from one trapeze and caught whatever human being was flying toward him, and then tossed the person back to the trapeze on the other side.
Felix was the middle brother, a bit of a renegade with a "street tough" image, and clearly the most athletic. In order to sell itself to a circus, a trapeze act had to have a least one person who could perform the triple somersault. Felix was able to do this about 95% of the time, plus quite a few other marvelous trapeze tricks.
Youngest brother Willy, only 18 years old, was thicker in build and less wiry and agile than Felix. “Throwing the Triple” did not come so easy to him, yet he spent much of the 1988 circus season trying to do it, often in front of thousands of people.
I remember it well. The ringmaster would announce “William will now attempt the famous Triple Somersault.” Then the drum roll, and the hushed crowd. Then up goes Willy, then down goes Willy into the net.
In 30 or so attempts, Willy managed the Triple Somersault just once, with a heroic assist from catcher Jorge, who seemed to be holding Willy by his fingernails. There was much congratulations and brotherly hugging all around, but over time it became clear that Willy would never be able to throw the triple with any consistency. By contrast, brother Felix would soon be working on “throwing quad“, the latest new achievement in trapeze, something once thought of as impossible.
As the season progressed and people got to know each other, I had the audacity to try and write the “Flying Pages Rap”. The Pages traveled with cousins and in-laws who eked out a living selling cotton candy and circus souvenirs, and the circus “neighborhood” always had a Pages group of mobile homes and trailers, from which emanated all manner of rap music any time of day.
I knew little about rap in general, and even less about Cuban culture, but I went right ahead putting words in the mouths of these 3 brothers, with a little 4-track recorder that I was carrying during the entire 9-month contract.
One day in Oregon, as I sat in my pop-up tent-trailer with a rough draft of the rap on tape, I noticed Willy nearby and called him in to check it out. He smiled as he stood there with the headphones on, and it appeared that I had hit a home run.
A little later Jorge appeared, at Willy’s recommendation. Quite a different reaction. A small frown appeared on his face after a brief listen. In addition to the general “chorus” rap mentioned above, I’d written 3 individual solo raps, one for each brother. Jorge didn’t seem to appreciate the “Jorge” rap.
He said “you’re spreading it on really thick, Steve” and that’s about all he said. I didn’t offer to play it for Felix, and he never asked to hear it. I suspected that he’d heard an unfavorable review from Jorge.
The rap was forgotten, and the circus season ended, as did my career as a circus keyboardist. One year of circus was plenty for this lifetime.
The Pages went back to Sarasota, Florida for their 3-month off-season. I heard they did at least one more season for Gatti, during which Willy met a lovely young aerial athlete and quickly married her.
Only recently, spacing out as I so frequently do during my rides to Long Island and back, did the historical curiosity called the “Flying Pages Rap” pop back into my head. Maybe the individual solo raps left something to be desired, but that chorus still seemed catchy to me.
So I hit the Internet to find out what became of the Flying Pages. I found an extensive article on the subject, written in 2007, 19 years after I worked with them.
Jorge, the older brother who failed to recognize my genius as a rap writer, had retired from trapeze performance in 1992. By then he’d learned enough about the Big Top to run his own little indoor circus, called Circus Pages.
The article does not say what became of Felix Pages, the brash and highly talented middle brother. Considering his marvelous abilities, it seemed odd that the article had nothing to say about him, except that he also retired in 1992.
Willy re-invented himself as a catcher, with older brother Jorge as the perfect tutor. Instead of retiring in 1992, he had many years to go as the leader and mentor of…..
…..The Flying Pages. His son Anthony, with the perfect pedigree, was part of the act by the time he was 6 years old. At the age of 13 he threw his first Triple, and has been doing it with “the greatest of ease” ever since. He is clearly the centerpiece of the Pages present-day lineup.
Over the years, Willy and his wife have seen to it that the name Flying Pages is synonymous with quality trapeze artistry. Now both around 40 years old, they’ll now phase themselves out of the actual flying, as they recruit younger talent to support a “name” that is gathering increasing fame and industry respect with each generation.
Truly a family success story, truly a circus success story, and of course truly an American success story. A story of hard work and strong family ties. I’m glad to have met them at that particular juncture of their lives. Perhaps now I’ll re-record the rap, tweak it here and there, write a new verse for Anthony, and….nah, just kidding.
FLOAT thru the air, wit the
GREATEST of ease, we’re the
FLYING PAGES, we
ALWAYS please…..
HIGH in the sky, up a-
BOVE the ground, we’re
HOTTEST -- FLYIN’ --
ACT a - ROUND
The above lyrics are all I can remember from my first and only attempt at writing a Rap Song, and a goofy reminder of the nine months I spent with the Gatti Circus in 1988.
It was a medium-sized circus, certainly no Ringling Brothers. But it provided solid, predictable employment as a keyboardist at a time when I really needed it. It also provided a ton of interesting travel and interesting people, for instance the Flying Pages -- the sons of poor Cuban circus performers who immigrated here in the 50s.
Jorge Pages (“Pages” apparently both a singular and plural word) was the oldest of three brothers comprising this trapeze act. He was the “catcher” -- it seems that baseball and trapeze acts are the only institutions in which someone has the title of “catcher”. Jorge, thickly built, with large arms, hung from one trapeze and caught whatever human being was flying toward him, and then tossed the person back to the trapeze on the other side.
Felix was the middle brother, a bit of a renegade with a "street tough" image, and clearly the most athletic. In order to sell itself to a circus, a trapeze act had to have a least one person who could perform the triple somersault. Felix was able to do this about 95% of the time, plus quite a few other marvelous trapeze tricks.
Youngest brother Willy, only 18 years old, was thicker in build and less wiry and agile than Felix. “Throwing the Triple” did not come so easy to him, yet he spent much of the 1988 circus season trying to do it, often in front of thousands of people.
I remember it well. The ringmaster would announce “William will now attempt the famous Triple Somersault.” Then the drum roll, and the hushed crowd. Then up goes Willy, then down goes Willy into the net.
In 30 or so attempts, Willy managed the Triple Somersault just once, with a heroic assist from catcher Jorge, who seemed to be holding Willy by his fingernails. There was much congratulations and brotherly hugging all around, but over time it became clear that Willy would never be able to throw the triple with any consistency. By contrast, brother Felix would soon be working on “throwing quad“, the latest new achievement in trapeze, something once thought of as impossible.
As the season progressed and people got to know each other, I had the audacity to try and write the “Flying Pages Rap”. The Pages traveled with cousins and in-laws who eked out a living selling cotton candy and circus souvenirs, and the circus “neighborhood” always had a Pages group of mobile homes and trailers, from which emanated all manner of rap music any time of day.
I knew little about rap in general, and even less about Cuban culture, but I went right ahead putting words in the mouths of these 3 brothers, with a little 4-track recorder that I was carrying during the entire 9-month contract.
One day in Oregon, as I sat in my pop-up tent-trailer with a rough draft of the rap on tape, I noticed Willy nearby and called him in to check it out. He smiled as he stood there with the headphones on, and it appeared that I had hit a home run.
A little later Jorge appeared, at Willy’s recommendation. Quite a different reaction. A small frown appeared on his face after a brief listen. In addition to the general “chorus” rap mentioned above, I’d written 3 individual solo raps, one for each brother. Jorge didn’t seem to appreciate the “Jorge” rap.
He said “you’re spreading it on really thick, Steve” and that’s about all he said. I didn’t offer to play it for Felix, and he never asked to hear it. I suspected that he’d heard an unfavorable review from Jorge.
The rap was forgotten, and the circus season ended, as did my career as a circus keyboardist. One year of circus was plenty for this lifetime.
The Pages went back to Sarasota, Florida for their 3-month off-season. I heard they did at least one more season for Gatti, during which Willy met a lovely young aerial athlete and quickly married her.
Only recently, spacing out as I so frequently do during my rides to Long Island and back, did the historical curiosity called the “Flying Pages Rap” pop back into my head. Maybe the individual solo raps left something to be desired, but that chorus still seemed catchy to me.
So I hit the Internet to find out what became of the Flying Pages. I found an extensive article on the subject, written in 2007, 19 years after I worked with them.
Jorge, the older brother who failed to recognize my genius as a rap writer, had retired from trapeze performance in 1992. By then he’d learned enough about the Big Top to run his own little indoor circus, called Circus Pages.
The article does not say what became of Felix Pages, the brash and highly talented middle brother. Considering his marvelous abilities, it seemed odd that the article had nothing to say about him, except that he also retired in 1992.
Willy re-invented himself as a catcher, with older brother Jorge as the perfect tutor. Instead of retiring in 1992, he had many years to go as the leader and mentor of…..
…..The Flying Pages. His son Anthony, with the perfect pedigree, was part of the act by the time he was 6 years old. At the age of 13 he threw his first Triple, and has been doing it with “the greatest of ease” ever since. He is clearly the centerpiece of the Pages present-day lineup.
Over the years, Willy and his wife have seen to it that the name Flying Pages is synonymous with quality trapeze artistry. Now both around 40 years old, they’ll now phase themselves out of the actual flying, as they recruit younger talent to support a “name” that is gathering increasing fame and industry respect with each generation.
Truly a family success story, truly a circus success story, and of course truly an American success story. A story of hard work and strong family ties. I’m glad to have met them at that particular juncture of their lives. Perhaps now I’ll re-record the rap, tweak it here and there, write a new verse for Anthony, and….nah, just kidding.
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Golden Spike Disco
"Been there, done that, got the T-shirt." I've been a typical tourist over the years, buying T-shirts at so-called famous places. But they quickly become plain old T-shirts, and one winds up throwing on a shirt without noting what's written on it.
So I sat down at the breakfast table this morning wearing a T-shirt that said "Golden Spike" in large block letters. Under that was the image of two locomotives facing each other. Also an image of a railroad spike, used to hold the steel rails to the wooden cross-ties. The shirt attracted some curiosity, and I thought back to the weird place where I got the shirt.
The locomotives on the shirt represent the historic meeting of two track-laying companies back in 1869. In an ambitious project to connect the USA by rail from coast to coast, one company worked its way westward from St. Louis, and the other worked its way through the immense Sierra Nevada mountain chain starting from California. According to my 6th grade history book, the two tracks met at what is now Ogden, Utah.
When the very last connecting tie was nailed in, a Golden Spike was used, with much ceremony. There is a famous old photo of the occasion, in typical Civil-War era black-and-white, of workers grouped around the two locomotives, and some official-looking folks posing with The Spike in the Center.
The story was told very colorfully in that history book, and quite a few others, and gave me a hankering to see the historic spot. Well I guess it was only a small hankering, because I waited 45 years to go there, and only then because something else was going on.
It was summertime 2005, and the International Barbershop Harmony Association was having their annual worldwide competition in Salt Lake City. They leased out the Conference Center for the occasion. This huge 21,000-seat auditorium was the home base for the legendary Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so it was an inspiring setting for the best barbershop choruses in the world.
I got on a plane with an equally-interested friend, and we stayed for 4 days in a downtown motel, enjoyed the utter cleanliness and order of Salt Lake City, and the utter beauty of the musical performances at the Conference Center.
But somewhere, approximately 50 miles north of Salt Lake City was a place called Ogden, Utah -- which, according to my 6th grade history book was where I would find the old railroad track, the Golden Spike, and whatever tourist-y things might accompany it. I envisioned round-the-clock security guards at the location of the Golden Spike. I envisioned a Golden Spike Hotel, a Golden Spike Park, a Golden Spike Pancake House, a Golden Spike Disco.....
Heading north one afternoon in our rent-a-car, a local Utah road map gave me my first hint that there might not be a Golden Spike Disco. The closer details revealed that Ogden, Utah was a good ten miles to the EAST of the famous meeting spot. After making the appropriate left turn off the main highway, we found ourselves heading west on a much smaller road In the Middle of Nowhere as they say, with Ogden Utah getting further and further behind us.
I thought to myself, Surely we would reach the crest of some high hill, and suddenly GoldenSpikeLand would open up before us. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon, and surely the summertime dinner crowd was loading up all those restaurants.
At 4:45 we descended through a scorched-brown vista, miles and miles of sagebrush and weeds, and saw a solitary small building down in the distant desert valley. According to a dusty little road sign, we had reached our destination.
This little hut was the entirety of the Golden Spike Tourist Trap. It had one employee, selling T-shirts and books, and she was preparing to close the shop at 5:00. We were her last sales of the day, and we asked, with bated breath,
"Where's the Golden Spike?"
I almost asked where were the Security Guards for the Golden Spike, but by now I sensed something amiss, as if the Security Guard question would sound ridiculous.
She said that the famous railroad meeting point was "right out there", and she point toward a hardly-visible railroad track about 100 feet past the back door. And she went on to say that this stretch of track had been unused for over 70 years. When first built, it taken a roundabout route, circumventing a large body of water somewhere in Utah. Eventually the technology improved, and they built a bridge and track over the lake, a more direct route.
"But what about the Golden Spike?"
"Aw, they removed that spike a few days after they nailed it in. It's in some museum someplace", been there for 130 years now." She answered the question sympathetically, and I felt that she'd given this disappointing news to others before me.
We chatted a little more with the shop lady, watched her close up for the day, and were free to go back and check out the railroad track for as long as we wanted. Which was about ten minutes. I pictured the two locomotives, all those people in the photogragh long gone, looked around at the exact same desert hills that they looked on back in 1869...
...and that was it. The Golden Spike is actually located in the Stamford Museum in California, and I'll surely never go there. It turned out that the site itself was the most important thing, and in hindsight I am quite glad to have gone there. The Spike would have been a nice touch, but obviously I misunderstood the whole situation.
My T-shirt, which I'm wearing right now as I type this, has an actual image of the Golden Spike, to remind me of what I didn't see. So the shirt is a bit misleading -- perhaps I'm doing a service here, providing a word of warning, for those millions of history buffs considering a visit to "Ogden, Utah", that they'd better plan a few extra things to do.
So I sat down at the breakfast table this morning wearing a T-shirt that said "Golden Spike" in large block letters. Under that was the image of two locomotives facing each other. Also an image of a railroad spike, used to hold the steel rails to the wooden cross-ties. The shirt attracted some curiosity, and I thought back to the weird place where I got the shirt.
The locomotives on the shirt represent the historic meeting of two track-laying companies back in 1869. In an ambitious project to connect the USA by rail from coast to coast, one company worked its way westward from St. Louis, and the other worked its way through the immense Sierra Nevada mountain chain starting from California. According to my 6th grade history book, the two tracks met at what is now Ogden, Utah.
When the very last connecting tie was nailed in, a Golden Spike was used, with much ceremony. There is a famous old photo of the occasion, in typical Civil-War era black-and-white, of workers grouped around the two locomotives, and some official-looking folks posing with The Spike in the Center.
The story was told very colorfully in that history book, and quite a few others, and gave me a hankering to see the historic spot. Well I guess it was only a small hankering, because I waited 45 years to go there, and only then because something else was going on.
It was summertime 2005, and the International Barbershop Harmony Association was having their annual worldwide competition in Salt Lake City. They leased out the Conference Center for the occasion. This huge 21,000-seat auditorium was the home base for the legendary Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so it was an inspiring setting for the best barbershop choruses in the world.
I got on a plane with an equally-interested friend, and we stayed for 4 days in a downtown motel, enjoyed the utter cleanliness and order of Salt Lake City, and the utter beauty of the musical performances at the Conference Center.
But somewhere, approximately 50 miles north of Salt Lake City was a place called Ogden, Utah -- which, according to my 6th grade history book was where I would find the old railroad track, the Golden Spike, and whatever tourist-y things might accompany it. I envisioned round-the-clock security guards at the location of the Golden Spike. I envisioned a Golden Spike Hotel, a Golden Spike Park, a Golden Spike Pancake House, a Golden Spike Disco.....
Heading north one afternoon in our rent-a-car, a local Utah road map gave me my first hint that there might not be a Golden Spike Disco. The closer details revealed that Ogden, Utah was a good ten miles to the EAST of the famous meeting spot. After making the appropriate left turn off the main highway, we found ourselves heading west on a much smaller road In the Middle of Nowhere as they say, with Ogden Utah getting further and further behind us.
I thought to myself, Surely we would reach the crest of some high hill, and suddenly GoldenSpikeLand would open up before us. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon, and surely the summertime dinner crowd was loading up all those restaurants.
At 4:45 we descended through a scorched-brown vista, miles and miles of sagebrush and weeds, and saw a solitary small building down in the distant desert valley. According to a dusty little road sign, we had reached our destination.
This little hut was the entirety of the Golden Spike Tourist Trap. It had one employee, selling T-shirts and books, and she was preparing to close the shop at 5:00. We were her last sales of the day, and we asked, with bated breath,
"Where's the Golden Spike?"
I almost asked where were the Security Guards for the Golden Spike, but by now I sensed something amiss, as if the Security Guard question would sound ridiculous.
She said that the famous railroad meeting point was "right out there", and she point toward a hardly-visible railroad track about 100 feet past the back door. And she went on to say that this stretch of track had been unused for over 70 years. When first built, it taken a roundabout route, circumventing a large body of water somewhere in Utah. Eventually the technology improved, and they built a bridge and track over the lake, a more direct route.
"But what about the Golden Spike?"
"Aw, they removed that spike a few days after they nailed it in. It's in some museum someplace", been there for 130 years now." She answered the question sympathetically, and I felt that she'd given this disappointing news to others before me.
We chatted a little more with the shop lady, watched her close up for the day, and were free to go back and check out the railroad track for as long as we wanted. Which was about ten minutes. I pictured the two locomotives, all those people in the photogragh long gone, looked around at the exact same desert hills that they looked on back in 1869...
...and that was it. The Golden Spike is actually located in the Stamford Museum in California, and I'll surely never go there. It turned out that the site itself was the most important thing, and in hindsight I am quite glad to have gone there. The Spike would have been a nice touch, but obviously I misunderstood the whole situation.
My T-shirt, which I'm wearing right now as I type this, has an actual image of the Golden Spike, to remind me of what I didn't see. So the shirt is a bit misleading -- perhaps I'm doing a service here, providing a word of warning, for those millions of history buffs considering a visit to "Ogden, Utah", that they'd better plan a few extra things to do.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Family
Thanksgiving can happen anywhere between November 22 and 28, so all my life I’ve had a birthday pretty close to Turkey Day, if not right on it. This was great because I was always guaranteed a birthday cake and song in the middle of a larger-than-normal family gathering.
Out came mom & dad’s Good Silverware reserved for special occasions, and out came the Special China, and a lot of extra food - much more than for a normal night in the kitchen. This was a Dining Room Occasion, with special guests, which only happened a handful of times a year.
This pleasant memory from my childhood was re-enacted in most spectacular fashion last weekend, as my entire family got together for two days here in the Poconos. They traveled from New Mexico, Vermont, Connecticut and Long Island, which in addition to Pennsylvania have become the new family centers.
My 60th birthday provided some impetus for this huge undertaking. More importantly, it tied in to Thanksgiving, and the fact that all of us had not been in the same place since January 2004.
As delighted as I was to see all these people, it was clear that they were delighted to see each other. Some of the youngest were meeting family members for the very first time. Old ties were re-established, with stories and laughs galore. It was a unique and wonderful time for all.
In the words of my big sis Jackie --
“What can we say? It was wonderful. Magical actually. When everyone was gone, I must say I was down. Maybe that's what it feels like preparing for a wedding, the big feast, and then poof. it's over. But because you all came, you made memories we will never forget. Seeing all the kids together for the first time, wow.....Just being in the same room together, a lot of love is what I'll remember, thank you so much, and thank you Lord for the gift of family“.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Same Birthday
Just type the phrase “famous birthdays” in the box, and Google will provide a list of famous folks who be blowing out candles the same day as you. Here are some of my kindred birthday people --
Nov 24, 1632 --- Baruch Spinoza
Pretty good start. Google says “ of all the philosophers of the 17th century, perhaps none have been more relevant than Spinoza….His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being, and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions, leading to virtue and happiness”
Spinoza quote: “True virtue is life under the direction of reason.” Tell that to a college kid on spring break.
Nov 24, 1784 -- Zachary Taylor
Also pretty good. The odds of my birthday being the same as that of an American President are only 8:1. Not that he was a great president. He was a war hero, the General who won the Mexican war, and back in those days people liked to vote war heroes into the Presidency.
He died suspiciously after only 2 years in office. So suspiciously that his bones were unearthed a few years ago and analyzed for traces of poison. As it turned out, there was no foul play, he simply had a nasty gastrointestinal reaction to a bowlful of ice cream and cherries. So I’ll be careful of that.
Nov 24, 1868 -- Scott Joplin
I would have been disappointed if there was no famous piano man born on Nov 24. It seems that everybody on the planet recognizes “The Entertainer” when it’s played, very much due to its use in the “Sting“ movie. I play it on my gig all the time, in addition to Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”. Supposedly this ragtime style was the ancestor of jazz.
Nov 24, 1888 -- Dale Carnegie
“How to Win Friends and Influence People” was required reading for me in 9th grade. Carnegie was a salesman, and simply a nice guy. Sold a lot of copies of that book too.
The thing I remember from his book is “Three Ways to Make Somebody Like You” -- focus on a) what he’s proud of b) what he’s interested in c) what he wants.
Nov 24, 1897 -- Lucky Luciano
Well what was this Mafia guy proud of? Not getting whacked. What was he interested in? Not getting whacked. What did he want? Not to get whacked.
He did survive a couple of close calls -- thus the nickname. But he died of natural causes at age 65 after a lifetime of wielding power in the treacherous New York mob world.
Nov 24, 1925 -- William F Buckley
Well I guess the question “What’s Your Sign?“ is an invitation to meaningless chitchat. Thus far, Nov 24 has produced a philosopher, a gangster, a piano player, a salesman, a military man, and now…..
…..a political columnist, famous for staunch Conservatism and an extraordinary vocabulary. He made one quick foray into politics, running for Mayor of New York City in 1965 as a somewhat facetious third-party candidate. Toward election day he said “If I win, I’ll demand a recount”.
Nov 24, 1940 -- Pete Best
From the very lucky Mr. Luciano we now go to the very Unlucky Mr. Best. Getting fired from a band is, in itself, not the worst thing in the world, in fact it’s often a blessing in disguise, the next step in one’s evolution as a musician and person.
But when you’re fired from the Beatles, replaced by a short, ugly guy named Ringo Starr, and within a year they’re The Most Successful Band in World History, well…don’t give me that evolution crap.
Nov 24, 1946 -- Ted Bundy
Well the key word here is “famous”, and unfortunately he is quite famous for his misdeeds. No book on serial killers is complete without a whole chapter on this guy.
Nov 24, 1950 --Stanley Livingston
The TV sitcom “My Three Sons” ran from 1960 to 1972, with Livingston playing the role of Chip, the middle son. Major dollars at an early age. Perhaps this is not too significant, but his birthday is exactly the same as mine, both day and year. Which is significant to me, and some day I’ll send him a Birthday card.
He stayed in show biz, producing, directing, acting, screenwriting, in movies, TV, and stage, seemingly doing what he felt like doing, seemingly completely out of the limelight. He has a website, with a pretty interesting resume, he looks robust, and I suspect he’s had a very nice life.
Nov 24, 1978 -- Katherine Heigl
The youngest, and the only female on my list. So what is “Grey’s Anatomy”? I wondered. Google says it’s a highly successful TV series in a hospital setting, with Ms. Heigl in a starring role. I haven‘t seen this show yet, but I suspect its really sexy.
Well that’s my Top Ten for Nov 24 --
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU FOLKS
WHEREVER YOU ARE
Pretty good start. Google says “ of all the philosophers of the 17th century, perhaps none have been more relevant than Spinoza….His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being, and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions, leading to virtue and happiness”
Spinoza quote: “True virtue is life under the direction of reason.” Tell that to a college kid on spring break.
Also pretty good. The odds of my birthday being the same as that of an American President are only 8:1. Not that he was a great president. He was a war hero, the General who won the Mexican war, and back in those days people liked to vote war heroes into the Presidency.
He died suspiciously after only 2 years in office. So suspiciously that his bones were unearthed a few years ago and analyzed for traces of poison. As it turned out, there was no foul play, he simply had a nasty gastrointestinal reaction to a bowlful of ice cream and cherries. So I’ll be careful of that.
I would have been disappointed if there was no famous piano man born on Nov 24. It seems that everybody on the planet recognizes “The Entertainer” when it’s played, very much due to its use in the “Sting“ movie. I play it on my gig all the time, in addition to Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”. Supposedly this ragtime style was the ancestor of jazz.
Nov 24, 1888 -- Dale Carnegie
“How to Win Friends and Influence People” was required reading for me in 9th grade. Carnegie was a salesman, and simply a nice guy. Sold a lot of copies of that book too.
The thing I remember from his book is “Three Ways to Make Somebody Like You” -- focus on a) what he’s proud of b) what he’s interested in c) what he wants.
Well what was this Mafia guy proud of? Not getting whacked. What was he interested in? Not getting whacked. What did he want? Not to get whacked.
He did survive a couple of close calls -- thus the nickname. But he died of natural causes at age 65 after a lifetime of wielding power in the treacherous New York mob world.
Well I guess the question “What’s Your Sign?“ is an invitation to meaningless chitchat. Thus far, Nov 24 has produced a philosopher, a gangster, a piano player, a salesman, a military man, and now…..
…..a political columnist, famous for staunch Conservatism and an extraordinary vocabulary. He made one quick foray into politics, running for Mayor of New York City in 1965 as a somewhat facetious third-party candidate. Toward election day he said “If I win, I’ll demand a recount”.
Nov 24, 1940 -- Pete Best
From the very lucky Mr. Luciano we now go to the very Unlucky Mr. Best. Getting fired from a band is, in itself, not the worst thing in the world, in fact it’s often a blessing in disguise, the next step in one’s evolution as a musician and person.
But when you’re fired from the Beatles, replaced by a short, ugly guy named Ringo Starr, and within a year they’re The Most Successful Band in World History, well…don’t give me that evolution crap.
Well the key word here is “famous”, and unfortunately he is quite famous for his misdeeds. No book on serial killers is complete without a whole chapter on this guy.
Nov 24, 1950 --Stanley Livingston
The TV sitcom “My Three Sons” ran from 1960 to 1972, with Livingston playing the role of Chip, the middle son. Major dollars at an early age. Perhaps this is not too significant, but his birthday is exactly the same as mine, both day and year. Which is significant to me, and some day I’ll send him a Birthday card.
He stayed in show biz, producing, directing, acting, screenwriting, in movies, TV, and stage, seemingly doing what he felt like doing, seemingly completely out of the limelight. He has a website, with a pretty interesting resume, he looks robust, and I suspect he’s had a very nice life.
The youngest, and the only female on my list. So what is “Grey’s Anatomy”? I wondered. Google says it’s a highly successful TV series in a hospital setting, with Ms. Heigl in a starring role. I haven‘t seen this show yet, but I suspect its really sexy.
Well that’s my Top Ten for Nov 24 --
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU FOLKS
WHEREVER YOU ARE
Monday, November 15, 2010
Simple Old David
“The Alamo” was on TV again this past weekend. Not a week passes by where an Alamo movie doesn’t turn up somewhere on the many cable TV channels.
For the uninitiated -- The Battle of the Alamo occurred in March of 1836, when 181 Texan frontiersmen in a shabby old fort fought a Mexican army of 5000. It took 13 days for the whole drama to play out, and supposedly those 13 days were crucial to the organizing of a much larger Texan fighting unit further north. This larger group, shouting “Remember the Alamo”, eventually defeated the aforementioned Mexican army, and the nation of Texas was officially born.
It’s a compelling story which spawned no less than nine Hollywood movies. The story is further enhanced by the fact that a major celebrity of the time - Davy Crockett - was one of the Alamo defenders.
He was literally a legend in his own time, an 1830s Hulk Hogan, with both the macho aura and the fraud. His exploits -- bear wrestling, Injun fighting, and other wilderness prowess, were exaggerated to absurd proportions in the books of his time, for the provincial and the gullible. He “could ride a streak of lightning” and “leap the Mississippi”. A theater production, called “Lion of the West” was a fanciful presentation of his life -- Crockett actually attended this show, saw himself impersonated by an actor, and accepted a standing ovation at the end.
He parlayed his fame into politics, serving 2 terms in the US House of Representatives for his home state of Tennessee. But he finally overplayed his political hand, and was defeated in his attempt for a third term, a stunning rebuff for such a famous native son of Tennessee. In his concession speech he said “You all can go to hell -- I’m going to Texas”.
Now 49 years old, he headed west with a group of Tennessean cronies, hoping to parley his fame, experience, and stature into high position and a large spread of land, in what he understood to be the newly-forming Texan Republic, free from Mexican rule.
Fess Parker, John Wayne, Brian Keith, and Billy Bob Thornton are the most recent movie “Davy Crocketts”, playing the cherished role in 1955, 1960, 1987, and 2004 respectively. The first three took a fairly standard approach, playing a one-dimensional hero with a coonskin hat who fought and died for Liberty and Texas Independence.
The Thornton version probed deeper, and suggested a man who had misjudged the situation in Texas, and now faced an identity crisis that would seal his fate.
In all honesty Crockett certainly hadn’t expected anything life-threatening in Texas, the 2004 movie suggests. In fact he “thought all the fighting was over”, that the Mexican army had been chased away, that Texas had an organized and sizable army, that his Texas Relocation would be easy.
Then one morning he woke up to find the Alamo surrounded by 2000 enemy soldiers, with many thousands more to come. He saw the situation grow hopeless -- and as the days built up to the final battle, he considered escaping. There were several opportunities to gallop out in the dead of night, making a furious run for life, past the dozing Mexicans. But he stayed.
Davy Crockett (center) flanked by Colonel Travis (left) and Jim
Bowie in the 2004 version of "The Alamo"
What would the world think of The Great Davy Crockett if he’d “chickened out” and run from the heroic last stand? It would ruin The Legend which he’d cultivated over the years. On the night before the final, full Mexican assault, knowing what was to come, he confided to a friend,
and take my chances. But that Davy Crockett feller --
they’re all watching him..."
Of course, this statement comes strictly from the imagination of a scriptwriter. However to me it seems quite plausible that he said something like this, to himself at least, on the last night of his life, as he pondered the difference between his real and public selves.
Just as surely, all of us are torn between what we want to be, and what people expect us to be. Even without the added complication of public fame, we all deal with people’s expectations, many of which we ourselves help to create.
Happily, I’ll never have to launch a solo frontal assault against a dozen bloodthirsty Mexican soldiers, with just a single-shot rifle in my hands. It wouldn’t work out for me any better than it did for the “King of the Wild Frontier”. But for him, as a consolation, it led to everlasting fame, through history books and the modern miracles of film and cable TV. So if it’s really important to be remembered and celebrated by millions of total strangers, hundreds of years after you’re gone, then simple old David did the right thing.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Manhole
So what do you call it? A manhole, or a manhole cover? On the street I grew up on, I never saw a manhole cover removed, therefore I never saw the “hole” underneath. But it was too tedious to call it a “manhole cover”.
We simply called it a manhole. Drab, inconspicuous, simply functional. A thick, heavy, iron disk, more than 2 feet in diameter, with the letters “BSBQ” imbedded in the iron. (“Bureau of Sewers, Borough of Queens” -- I found out much later on). And though they’re probably all the same to manhole workers, there is a very special one on 46th Road, between 202nd and 204th Streets in Bayside, NY.
It so happened that this street was chosen by some Founding Baby Boomer kids to be a favored street for stickball. Not the kind of stickball you see in schoolyards, with some guy pitching at a rectangle “strike zone” painted onto a brick wall. (Not that there was anything wrong with that!).
By the time I was old enough to play with my earliest pals, bases were painted in strategic places on the street, and the game imitated real baseball, at least in the sense that baserunning and fielding were key elements. Pitching was eliminated -- the batters held the ball (Pensy Pinky or a “Spaldeen”) and bounced it whatever way they pleased before swinging the stick.
However, the “field” was ridiculously elongated. The street was only 28 feet wide, so first and third base were painted at the left and right curbs, 28 feet across from each other. To allow for a 60-foot run from these bases out to second base, or in the other direction toward home plate, the standard 90-degree angles of a baseball infield were dramatically stretched, and became more like two 30-degree angles at home and second, and two 150-degree angles at first and third. Runners “rounding second” had to do something resembling a U-turn, and many a kid fell on his butt out there for lack of traction.
One particular manhole -- The Manhole, to be reverent about it, served as home plate. No need to paint a 5-sided “home plate” figure. The Manhole was perfectly located, about 80 feet in from the 202nd street corner, surrounded by houses full of kids. The asphalt “field” ran some 250 feet down the street, toward the less-developed far end of the block.
The Manhole was the Center, where sides were chosen, where you ran to score a run, where you threw the ball to prevent a run, and most of all, where you stood alone for a few seconds, keenly observed by all present, with stick and ball.
In the beginning, it was where I watched “the big kids” play. They were fearsome and macho, and some of them could hit the ball over Mr. McHugh’s house into the trees of the woodsy vacant lot at the far end of the block on the left side. This was an automatic home run.
Mr. McHugh’s property made for some rather curious Ground Rules. McHugh, shrewd dude that he was, owned 2 adjacent properties, far down the left side of the street. The first property, occupied by nothing but weeds and flowers, was unfortunately completely enclosed by tall hedges, not quickly accessible. Any ball hit there was an automatic Out.
The second property -- adjacent and further out, contained the McHugh house, and was equally inaccessible. The only people who deliberately hit the ball toward McHugh’s house were those who hoped to clear it. It was either Home Run or Out, and batters who adopted this strategy were especially subject to scrutiny.
The crazy layout of the bases dictated that you hit the ball straight ahead. There was hardly any Right Field or Left Field. This was good, because there was really no practical way to play the game if the ball was hit too far off center.
Nonetheless, there were some properties just past first and third base, on the right and left sides, that were considered “Fair Territory”, and kids could be seen scampering into driveways, through lawns and bushes, on walkways and porches, chasing that elusive pink rubber ball.
If the neighbors were annoyed, they never seemed to show it. Kids and adults alike might drop what they’re doing at any given time to observe some stickball. As in pro baseball, where the focus is usually on the batter -- on 46th Road the focus was on whoever was standing at The Manhole. It felt like a stage.
One of the more heartwarming sights was that of a kid named Gerald, a 15-year old Polio victim who could barely stand. Yet the big kids let him play. He would stand for a minute at the Manhole, actually get the stick around and hit the ball -- a soft ground ball usually, and another kid would run the bases for him.
A more amusing sight would be some young teenybop girl in short shorts, hanging out with the big kids, trying her luck at batting both the ball and her eyelashes.
Less amusing were the frustrated attempts of the youngest kids trying to get the hang of it. Bounce the ball once? Bounce it twice? Hit it high or low? Short fat broomstick or long skinny one? Two strikes, yer out, on this street. I was pretty lousy at first, actually got “chucked” (fired from a choosed-up team) a few times.
Then, at some point, I got the knack. My 46th Road stickball got supplemented by some real baseball with bats and gloves at a real field elsewhere, with a different group of kids. There I learned to whack a baseball, flipping it in the air and not attempting to bounce it first. This transferred over to the broomstick and rubber ball pretty easily. Eventually I had enough strength and skill to knock a few over McHugh’s house, quite a sweet experience.
I never did become part of a “big kids” crowd that played stickball and flirted with the girls. The aforementioned “big kids” social crowd disappeared, and was not replaced by a new group of big kids, it seemed. Perhaps I was at the tail end of a Golden Age of Stickball on 46th Road.
I passed by the old neighborhood recently. There was absolutely no one to talk to, half of the houses had been razed and replaced by larger, gaudier structures. Mr. McHugh was long gone, and his two properties were completely unrecognizable from long ago, now occupied by large showy buildings. My dad’s old house, right across the street from the former McHugh properties, was also barely recognizable.
I had a few minutes to kill, so I got out of the car, talked with the Asian man who now owned my dad’s former house. Strolling down the street, I was awash in all the memories and images of kids and adults on a young and happy new suburban Baby Boomer street some 50 years ago.
Presently the asphalt looks pretty new, perhaps recently re-done. Certainly no sign of painted bases, nothing to indicate that anybody had ever played stickball there. Which is all perfectly fine. Everything evolves, as it should, on 46th Road and elsewhere.
Then I came to The Manhole, located exactly where it always was, looking like it always did, the “BSBQ” still quite clear to read, stepping out of the past without a trace of age.
I stood there staring out at the ghost of an asphalt stickball field, seeing one kid after another, facing me 60 feet away in between third and first base, playing the closest “infield” position. I saw Gerald, the teenybop girls, big kids, little kids, and the curious onlookers. I summoned my imagination and pictured the top of McHugh’s house, as it was back in the day, 250 away and inviting us all to reach it. And if it was possible at the moment, I would have emptied my wallet for a broomstick and a Spalding rubber ball and one more time at bat at The Manhole.
We simply called it a manhole. Drab, inconspicuous, simply functional. A thick, heavy, iron disk, more than 2 feet in diameter, with the letters “BSBQ” imbedded in the iron. (“Bureau of Sewers, Borough of Queens” -- I found out much later on). And though they’re probably all the same to manhole workers, there is a very special one on 46th Road, between 202nd and 204th Streets in Bayside, NY.
It so happened that this street was chosen by some Founding Baby Boomer kids to be a favored street for stickball. Not the kind of stickball you see in schoolyards, with some guy pitching at a rectangle “strike zone” painted onto a brick wall. (Not that there was anything wrong with that!).
By the time I was old enough to play with my earliest pals, bases were painted in strategic places on the street, and the game imitated real baseball, at least in the sense that baserunning and fielding were key elements. Pitching was eliminated -- the batters held the ball (Pensy Pinky or a “Spaldeen”) and bounced it whatever way they pleased before swinging the stick.
However, the “field” was ridiculously elongated. The street was only 28 feet wide, so first and third base were painted at the left and right curbs, 28 feet across from each other. To allow for a 60-foot run from these bases out to second base, or in the other direction toward home plate, the standard 90-degree angles of a baseball infield were dramatically stretched, and became more like two 30-degree angles at home and second, and two 150-degree angles at first and third. Runners “rounding second” had to do something resembling a U-turn, and many a kid fell on his butt out there for lack of traction.
One particular manhole -- The Manhole, to be reverent about it, served as home plate. No need to paint a 5-sided “home plate” figure. The Manhole was perfectly located, about 80 feet in from the 202nd street corner, surrounded by houses full of kids. The asphalt “field” ran some 250 feet down the street, toward the less-developed far end of the block.
The Manhole was the Center, where sides were chosen, where you ran to score a run, where you threw the ball to prevent a run, and most of all, where you stood alone for a few seconds, keenly observed by all present, with stick and ball.
In the beginning, it was where I watched “the big kids” play. They were fearsome and macho, and some of them could hit the ball over Mr. McHugh’s house into the trees of the woodsy vacant lot at the far end of the block on the left side. This was an automatic home run.
Mr. McHugh’s property made for some rather curious Ground Rules. McHugh, shrewd dude that he was, owned 2 adjacent properties, far down the left side of the street. The first property, occupied by nothing but weeds and flowers, was unfortunately completely enclosed by tall hedges, not quickly accessible. Any ball hit there was an automatic Out.
The second property -- adjacent and further out, contained the McHugh house, and was equally inaccessible. The only people who deliberately hit the ball toward McHugh’s house were those who hoped to clear it. It was either Home Run or Out, and batters who adopted this strategy were especially subject to scrutiny.
The crazy layout of the bases dictated that you hit the ball straight ahead. There was hardly any Right Field or Left Field. This was good, because there was really no practical way to play the game if the ball was hit too far off center.
Nonetheless, there were some properties just past first and third base, on the right and left sides, that were considered “Fair Territory”, and kids could be seen scampering into driveways, through lawns and bushes, on walkways and porches, chasing that elusive pink rubber ball.
If the neighbors were annoyed, they never seemed to show it. Kids and adults alike might drop what they’re doing at any given time to observe some stickball. As in pro baseball, where the focus is usually on the batter -- on 46th Road the focus was on whoever was standing at The Manhole. It felt like a stage.
One of the more heartwarming sights was that of a kid named Gerald, a 15-year old Polio victim who could barely stand. Yet the big kids let him play. He would stand for a minute at the Manhole, actually get the stick around and hit the ball -- a soft ground ball usually, and another kid would run the bases for him.
A more amusing sight would be some young teenybop girl in short shorts, hanging out with the big kids, trying her luck at batting both the ball and her eyelashes.
Less amusing were the frustrated attempts of the youngest kids trying to get the hang of it. Bounce the ball once? Bounce it twice? Hit it high or low? Short fat broomstick or long skinny one? Two strikes, yer out, on this street. I was pretty lousy at first, actually got “chucked” (fired from a choosed-up team) a few times.
Then, at some point, I got the knack. My 46th Road stickball got supplemented by some real baseball with bats and gloves at a real field elsewhere, with a different group of kids. There I learned to whack a baseball, flipping it in the air and not attempting to bounce it first. This transferred over to the broomstick and rubber ball pretty easily. Eventually I had enough strength and skill to knock a few over McHugh’s house, quite a sweet experience.
I never did become part of a “big kids” crowd that played stickball and flirted with the girls. The aforementioned “big kids” social crowd disappeared, and was not replaced by a new group of big kids, it seemed. Perhaps I was at the tail end of a Golden Age of Stickball on 46th Road.
I passed by the old neighborhood recently. There was absolutely no one to talk to, half of the houses had been razed and replaced by larger, gaudier structures. Mr. McHugh was long gone, and his two properties were completely unrecognizable from long ago, now occupied by large showy buildings. My dad’s old house, right across the street from the former McHugh properties, was also barely recognizable.
I had a few minutes to kill, so I got out of the car, talked with the Asian man who now owned my dad’s former house. Strolling down the street, I was awash in all the memories and images of kids and adults on a young and happy new suburban Baby Boomer street some 50 years ago.
Presently the asphalt looks pretty new, perhaps recently re-done. Certainly no sign of painted bases, nothing to indicate that anybody had ever played stickball there. Which is all perfectly fine. Everything evolves, as it should, on 46th Road and elsewhere.
Then I came to The Manhole, located exactly where it always was, looking like it always did, the “BSBQ” still quite clear to read, stepping out of the past without a trace of age.
I stood there staring out at the ghost of an asphalt stickball field, seeing one kid after another, facing me 60 feet away in between third and first base, playing the closest “infield” position. I saw Gerald, the teenybop girls, big kids, little kids, and the curious onlookers. I summoned my imagination and pictured the top of McHugh’s house, as it was back in the day, 250 away and inviting us all to reach it. And if it was possible at the moment, I would have emptied my wallet for a broomstick and a Spalding rubber ball and one more time at bat at The Manhole.
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