Occasional Holy Man and Luthier Who Offers Stray, Provocative, and Insouciant Thoughts About Religion, Archaeology, Human Foible, Surfing, and Interesting People. Thalassophile. Nemesis of all Celebrities [except for Chuck Norris].
He Lives Vicariously Through Himself. He has a Piece of Paper That Proves He's Laird of Glencoe.
I watch the Democratic debates with the sound off and make up my own dialogue. It's especially fun with that Soviet guy from Vermont, whom I once watched yell at a waitress in a Bennington diner because his eggs were runny or something. A real friend of the working class, that guy.
The only time I turn the sound on is when Marianne Williamson is speaking, because I can't make that up. Also, her comment about Flint and Grosse Point was incisive.
When I was a child and living in Cleveland, currently the fourth poorest city in the United States and one that rivals Baltimore in poverty, crime, and abhorrent living conditions, especially among persons of color, I recall the fellows at the barbershop having a good laugh about urban renewal grants.
"I see Louis [our congressman at the time] is going to be putting in a new swimming pool"
"Yep", replied another patron, "Right in his own backyard".
The room surrendered to guffaws.
Also, this:
On the debate stage last night they debated a war Obama said he ended, a trade policy he said he made better and a healthcare system we were all told he fixed. Also kids in cages. But remember era of no scandals.
“A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” — The Associated Press, June 29, 1989
"Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" — The Independent, March 20, 2000
"President Obama ‘has four years to save Earth" — The Guardian, January 17, 2009
"18 Months to Save the Planet" - BBC, July 25, 2019
I confess to having eclectic taste in music. A quick look at my downloaded collection will reveal that I have recently played an opera by Wagner, selections from jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, something from Brooks and Dunn's greatest hits, Beethoven's 2nd, guitarist Link Wray, Miles Davis, Iggy Pop [particularly good for the gym], and the collected cadences of the United States Marine Corps [ditto on that gym thing].
Once upon a time I could think of no better way of spending an evening than sitting in a dark and [in those days] smoky club and listening to some group that I had never heard of and would never hear of again playing music that was independent of the brutal realities of the music industry. In the late 1970's and early 80's, that music was usually loud and raucous; by the 21st century, I would much more likely find solace in places like the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel or even The Embers Lounge at the Cleveland Airport Holiday Inn, listening to someone's interpretation of American classics. Still dark, just no longer smoky.
Among my favorites are "Pick Yourself Up", "Exactly Like You", "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "I'm In The Mood For Love", "On The Sunny Side Of The Street", and, of course, "The Way You Look Tonight". Since their original composition, these songs are still performed multiple times a day around the world by a rich variety of artists, if not in shopping malls and elevators. The other thing they have in common is that they, and many others, had their lyrics penned by Dorothy Fields, one of the most successful and least known lyricists of the golden age of American music.
Although born in New Jersey in 1905, Fields grew up in New York City where her father mostly worked as a comedian on the vaudeville circuit. When that medium began to subside, he shifted to musical productions, meaning that his daughter was exposed from an early age to theatrical life behind the curtain. This became her world and would remain so until her death in 1974.
While originally a performer, with her greatest success realized in the 1920's as part of a comedy duo on the London stage, Fields started noodling around with lyrics during her idle hours backstage until she came to the attention of the composer Jimmy McHugh, with whom she collaborated on producing the music for an otherwise forgotten production known as The Blackbirds of 1928, a popular pairing of musicians and singers both black and white. As was common with musicals in those days, it began its trial period as a nightclub revue and floor show, in this case at Les Ambassaduers Club on New York's 57th Street. When it moved to Broadway, it was one of the most successful shows of that decade and Fields found herself much in demand from that point forward.
Many of her lyrics would be heard for the remainder of that decade at The Cotton Club, as Duke Ellington, then its music director, became a fan of the McHugh-Fields collaborations. The fact that they didn't mind composing for black performers expanded their potential fan base so that their songs found a broader audience than most, especially when radio transmitted their oeuvre far and wide.
As was the case with novelists like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, songwriters, too, were lured to Hollywood in the 1930's with the advent of "talkies". Being no different, Fields went west and found herself teamed with Jerome Kern to provide the soundtrack for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film, Swing Time. From that film, "The Way You Look Tonight" won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1936.
Not to be limited solely to providing lyrics for stage and film scores, relying on her familiarity the theater world she teamed with her brother as a librettist, that is, the person who writes the play, or "book", around which the musical numbers are organized. Fields warmed up for this by writing three musicals for Cole Porter and then, at the high point of American stage music, worked with Irving Berlin when he provided the music and lyrics for her script for Annie, Get Your Gun. It would become the most popular musical of the late 1940's.
She would continue to write, sometimes as a lyricist, as in Sweet Charity in the 1960's, sometimes as both the lyricist and librettist, as in 1959's Redhead, a popular vehicle for Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse that won five Tony Awards, including that of Best Musical, and earned an historical footnote for being the first musical murder mystery.
Dorothy Fields is remarkable to me for two reasons. The first, which harks to a pet peeve of mine about musicals in general, is that her songs never seem to be forced into the structure of the libretto, but are a natural part of the plot structure. The second, and greater, is that while her lyrics ranged over the course of forty years, from Jazz Age jive to the hipster slang of the mid-1960's, they never strike an odd or discordant note. For her words to suit both the differing times and the style of singers as disparate as Adelaide Hall and Ethel Merman, and dancer/choreographers like Astaire and Fosse, is remarkable. That's what translates her lyrics from talented composition into art.
As is noted in Michael Feinstein's appreciation of Fields' contributions to theater and performance music:
My niece, while watching a documentary that included Patti Smith performing:
"What is she on?"
My response: "The 1970's".
I wish that I had been there on that last night. Heck, I wish that I had been there on the last night at Folk City, where I once sat right in front of Allan Ginsburg and Peter Orlovsky when they recited and sang their poetry and songs. I wish that I had been there the last night at Kenny's Castaway, where I once heard the funkiest jazz in the midst of tiki kitsch, or The Bottom Line, or Max's Kansas City, or the Mudd Club, or the Village Gate, or.... I'll stop now, as I'm indulging in the sins of an older man. Nostalgia becomes sentiment; sentiment becomes a longing despair; despair is not a healthy state of mind.
But I do wish that I had been in CBGB on that last night, when Patti Smith, who had been one of the first performers to stand on that rickety stage, became the last performer to do so. She sang, recited, laughed [yeah, Patti Smith laughed], and waxed nostalgic until midnight when another piece of NYC's artistic life evaporated due to the usual combination of over-regulation, ridiculous rent prices, and the mad greed of landlords.
CBGB, the full, legal name of which was Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers, was opened in 1973 just as rock music was being destroyed by focus group-driven commercialization and, God help us, hair bands and disco. While in its original business plan, it was to rely on the types of music that were still authentic [in other words, not as popular], the venue found it's legs right around the time that a musical counter-revolution was to begin with punk and new wave music, as first heard and presented in that Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan.
CBGB's founder, Hilly Kristal, was a typical product of America Go Crazy, the New York-born son of Russian immigrants, he studied music in legitimate institutions of classical learning, but soon veered into the less-classical, eventually becoming the manager of the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, a venue that is still, fortunately, open for business. From there he gained the experience and confidence to open his own club over in the East Village on The Bowery, in the space of a former biker bar, and began to weave a portion of musical history.
The original bands were eventually replaced by those of whom no one had heard. Bands such as The Patti Smith Group, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, the B-52's, Blondie, and Joan Jett and the Blackhawks would play their first performances in that dank and funky bar. The only rules for playing at CBGB is that the bands had to move their own equipment and had to play original songs. At a time when new bands got their start by suppressing their own music in order to play tedious and familiar pop, this was an invitation that would have encouraged any band to play there for free.
Actually, many of them did. Kristal could be a little tight with the money.
I was in CBGB many times in the early 1980's, including on that stage and in the green room. It is memorable in that it was one of the messiest, most toxic environments that I have ever seen. The men's room was something that should have been featured in a "slice of life" exhibit in the study of urban decay; the graffiti there and on the walls of the green room should have been preserved for future archaeologists, although it may not have revealed our culture at its best and brightest.
However, the music scene was sublime, as no one else was, in that liminal time of cultural shift, brave enough to present the chaos, noise, and shock of this new style of expression. For that alone, CBGB should have been granted landmark status. Alas....
The club closed in October of 2006, with Kristal vowing to open either across the river in New Jersey or in Las Vegas. Neither happened, as he died of lung cancer the next year. Someone, however, was prescient enough to steal the toilets from the men's room. They'll turn up one day, I'm sure. The location is now a John Varvatos fashion store and the alley behind the club where unspeakable things would happen is now a "pedestrian promenade" filled with shops that sell things no one needs at prices no one can afford. [You will never know how hard it was to type that.]
Somewhere, at the bottom of a drawer, I have a black CBGB t-shirt that I probably bought for $7.99. It now sits with artifacts that I collected at dig sites in central America, at a tor in England, or along a riverbank in tribal Ohio. More than just a fading bit of cloth, it hearkens to a time of energy and originality, the fading of which I fear may be the harbinger of the end of our particular chapter in world history. We are no longer as energetically original and our young fear the violence of change. We are no longer the people of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers! O, Pioneers!".
The awning from CBGB now has a home at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland [yay, home town], and there is a "CBGB Lounge and Bar" at Newark Airport. An interesting film about Kristal and his club was released independently in 2013, entitled "CBGB", and was absolutely destroyed by the critics, so it's hard to find.
It really doesn't matter, though. If you want the experience, play the music at home. Heck, turn it up so it's loud enough to bother the neighbors and perhaps even alert the police and, when challenged, respond with vulgarities. That way, you will have captured a part of what saved American popular music, a combination of attitude, originality, and the complete absence of surrender to the superficial.
There
is that one day, usually in the second half of August, when you know
that fall is coming. The overnight temperature begins to drop below
sixty, in the evenings it is no longer uncomfortable to wear long pants
or even a sweatshirt, you begin to wear a wetsuit in the morning surf
again, and the shape of the waves begins to change. This latter event is
open to considerable speculation; it is considered a myth by those of a
scientific mind and even by some surfers. But watermen know that
something different begins to occur with the delivery of energy through
water, and they adjust their sails, the trim tabs on their hulls, the
nuance and knots of their surfcasting tackle, and their technique
accordingly.
Metaphorically,
this is especially noted by the early morning surfers, all of whom are
over the age 45. The younger set doesn’t go to bed until 3 or 4 in the
morning; they don’t wake until noon or so. Those of us who are parents
and grandparents are up and in the water in time to see the sun rise
from a gray/mauve/red horizon [well, at least on the eastern seaboard]
and all of us know the familiar challenges of being middle-aged and
older.
After
a week of so or mornings such as this, I’m feeling a little weakness in
my right knee. My shoulder has been making a popping sound whenever I
reach behind me, and I have to warm up a little before I can turn my
head all the way to the left. Although we don’t catalog our signs of
maturity with one another, the “dawn patrol” knows from its mild
grimaces of discomfort or slight limps that we are feeling the effects
of having graced creation for a half century or more. Sometimes the
simple chore of putting on a wetsuit seems a reenactment of Leighton’s
“Hercules Wrestling with Death”.
On
this particular morning, the waves, even with their altered shape, are
not quite ready for us. They are low, slow, and weak. When younger, we
would sit on the beach and wait it out or, more likely, enter the water
and wait and wait. We had all day, after all. However the cold water and
the colder air are a little uncomfortable in our maturity, so we do the
better thing and walk about the beach collecting the detritus left from
the day before. To paraphrase William Carlos Williams, we pick up the pure products of America Go Sloppy.
“My
grandkids learn about the environment in school,” says an older
waterman with whom I am picking up an assortment of soda cups, cheese
steak wrappers, and, interestingly, a stained “Obama ‘08” t-shirt.
“When
they visit me, they turn off my lights, unplug my coffee maker and
toaster, and generally hector me about being a better re-cycler. Then
they come to the beach and forget all that. It was never this messy back
in the day.”
“You
know what I find weird?", he continued. "Back then there were hardly
any trash cans on the beach, yet people took their refuse with them at
the end of the day. Now we’ve got cans for trash, cans for bottles, cans
for newspapers or [stuff], cans for I don’t know what. They’re all over
the beach; like every 25 feet or so. Yet, look at all the [stuff]
people leave.”
“They
don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t care, I guess. As long as they
use the right words their actions don’t have to match. They must of have
learned that from celebrities. Maybe politicians.”
By the way, why is it that the generations subsequent to mine, who have been lectured by their educational system for decades concerning the environment and one's personal responsibility towards it, are such remarkable slobs when unleashed into nature?
Also, why are local governments, who proffer moral lectures about why plastic straws are bad, so inept at simply keeping the waters clean?
Hmm, it must be climate change. Or Trump. Or something.
I have known a few clergy who have fancied themselves as socialist, and it was noticeable how often they came from the privileged class.
[Long-time readers of The Coracle know that I have an animus towards socialists as they are the only ideologues who have actively tried to kill me. Not with words or ideas, but with guns and a machete. Machete Guy was particularly tenacious, I recall. I'm trying prayerfully to reconcile it, but I confess it is challenging.]
For those for whom this is new information, one of the quiet mysteries of the past is how the Romans were able to make concrete that is more durable and solid than that available at Home Depot or Lowe's. It may be a mystery that has been solved.
"It isn't? I thought surf music was just The Beach Boys."
I have had this conversation and variations of it whenever some well-meaning individual tries to understand my eccentric hobby. It's natural since most normal people understand surfing through either the music of The Beach Boys [only one of whom, the drummer, actually surfed] and the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello movies of the mid-1960's. [Frankie and Annette didn't surf, either.]
Also, the "surf lifestyle" has been mainstreamed in fashion and graphic arts to the point of parody. Even those of us who engage in the sport/hobby, and thus are more familiar with its reality, can fall victim to it. We sometimes bleach our hair, we use obscure slang when describing waves and technical maneuvers, we see the invisible line that exists between those who surf and those who don't, and we have a hierarchy of achievement, the highest level being that of "Waterman".
Just for fun, if one enters the term "surf lifestyle" with a popular Internet search engine, one will receive almost 37 million references [what the puzzlewitted call "hits"] in less than one second. In fact, so pervasive has the "lifestyle" become that I've dropped my long-standing subscriptions to both Surfer and Surfing magazines, as both now seem nothing other than bound, glossy, and colorful adverts with little reference to the hard science of hydrodynamics and its adherents.
I have noted elements of surf culture before, especially with the art and car customization of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and their influence on mainstream culture, but I wonder how many realize that a sound that we commonly associate with the electric guitar as used in rock and other forms of pop music actually is from the true and original surf music. Its originator is Richard Anthony Monsour, known by the stage name of Dick Dale, who, despite rapidly approaching his 78th birthday and having twice survived cancer, is still displaying in live performances the technique that made the surf sound popular and evocative.
Oh, yes, unlike those mentioned above, he actually is a surfer.
[Update: Since this bio's original posting, Dale earned his eternal reward in March of this year at the age of 82.]
Dale was born in Boston to a working class family that, in the great Western migration of the post-WWII period, moved to southern California when he was a teenager. Personally, I can't imagine how great it would be to transfer from the snow, ice, and grime of Massachusetts to the sunny climes of L.A. County in one's formative years, but it clearly made a difference to Dale. Already a self-taught musician, proficient in ukulele, tarabaki, oud, and drums [Dale was of Lebanese descent, which explains both some of the instruments in his repertoire and also the Arabic rhythms in his own compositions], once in California he became both a surfer and, naturally, a guitarist.
I could describe his technique, but it's much easier to display it:
Sharp-eyed viewers will note the the strings on Dale's guitar are, in effect, upside down with the higher strings on top. This was because Dale was left-handed and, as guitars favoring lefties were rare in the 1950's, he simply flipped a right-handed guitar to favor his style. Even after left-handed guitars became more available, he was set in his technique.
The rapid pick work and lighting fast scales that were his hallmark were in evidence from the very beginning. However, in addition to what was required in the actual playing of the instrument, another, previously passive, element was necessary for the sound. While electrically amplified guitars had been in use for over a decade, the guitar was making its pilgrimage from an ensemble to a lead instrument and the amplification equipment was becoming more and more important. Dale realized that it was not just his fingers that could shape the sound, but changes in the flow of electricity from instrument to amplifier, especially when using absurdly thick guitar strings.
When played in ensemble with an orchestra or combo, the guitar amplifier is generally set to #3 or #4 on the volume dial. Dale would turn his amp all the way to the right to the #10. While this produced the volume and some of the sound quality for which he was looking, it also ensured that the amplifier, or at least its speaker cone, would not survive too long without becoming a casualty to culture. In short, they blew up.
This was such a predicament, especially as Dale had gone from performing in small venues to being the weekly headliner at the 3000 seat Rendezvous Ballroom in Newport Beach, that it was Leo Fender himself who came to the rescue by developing what is now known as the Single Showman Amp. Thanks to this deus ex machina provided by the inventor of the guitar pickup [that's the device that translates sound into electric impulse], no one had ever played louder than Dale, to the delight of the teenagers who gathered at the Rendezvous and the horror of their parents and audiologists. Between the two of them, Dale and Fender created the "heavy metal" sound.
Thus it was here that the first, true "surf" song was heard, complete with all of the elements of style that have since become the convention of the genre.
By 1963, Dick Dale could safely label his second album The King of the Surf Guitar. That same year, the first in the series of "beach movies" made by American International Film studios, and starring the previously-mentioned Avalon and Funicello [and Donna Michelle...sorry, I got lost in thought for a moment], would be made and naturally featured some brief performances by Dale, hinting at the energy that he brought to his live shows.
Unfortunately, that same year The Beatles would arrive in the United States and behind them a vast collection of other English bands in what is known to musicologists as The British Invasion. Suddenly, instrumental based music was no longer popular and, save for The Beach Boys and their harmony-driven songs [and massive Capitol Records publicity machine], surf music was relegated to a niche within the very broad world of pop.
It refused to go away, however, much like Dick Dale himself. Surviving both cancer and an infection caused by polluted waters off of the southern California beaches, Dale would become an environmental activist and would return to the stage in the late 1970's to perform for environmental and cancer charities, revivals, and fans of his particular sound; the one created all those years ago in a grubby and under-used facility on Balboa Harbor.
Nowadays, one may hear evocations of the Dale sound offered by contemporary groups too numerous to mention, although a complete, and rather massive, list may be found at the Surf Rock Music website. [I'm partial to Los Straitjackets, myself.] Dick Dale has been and is regarded as a legend by some of the most impressive guitarists in history, including the late Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn. [Dale may be found playing with the latter in the video below. While I can't explain his hair, other than to note it was the 1980's, one can see how much of pop culture found its soundtrack through his musical style].
Oh, and just to reiterate an earlier point, Dale is also a surfer. In 2011, he was given his own position on the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, California.
His guitar is famous, too. It's named "The Beast" and it was one of the first Stratocasters, given to him by Leo Fender himself.
It has been many years, decades, since I was last in Oxford. I've actually been to Oxford, Mississippi more often in recent times than I have the center of British higher education. Of course, the U.S. Oxford boasts William Faulkner's home and the small post office that he grossly mismanaged, and that has been of greater interest to me lately.
However, Oxford, England has its tweedy charm and is certainly a place steeped in the history of the English-speaking world. It boasts the Ashmolean Museum, a place we should really speak of on a future Thursday, the Bodleian Library, a rather nice botanical garden, a stellar natural history museum, the assorted colleges of the University, and, of course, the one place most visually representative of Oxford: The Radcliffe Camera.
For those who enjoy television detectives, a full series of mysteries have been filmed there for the last thirty or so years, thus making Oxford, on TV at least, the city with the highest murder rate in the developed world.
While it is generally known that the University owns the libraries, museums, and gardens, it is perhaps less known that the various colleges either own or have owned their own public houses. Given the role of the pub in English history and village life, this is perhaps unsurprising.
One such pub, currently owned by St. John's College of Oxford University and formerly owned by University College, is The Eagle and Child, know colloquially as "The Bird and Baby" or "The Fowl and the Fetus". It dates from the middle of the 17th century although, as with most old institutions, its early history is a bit fuzzy. It may have served, during the English Civil War, as the unofficial headquarters of the Royalist Army; it may have been named for its patron's family crest; it may have been named for the Aquila and Antinous constellation. Again, no one really knows and, even in a place of intellectual inquiry, not too many really care.
However, there is one portion of the pub's history that is beyond question, and that is in its service as a meeting place for a collection of some of the most interesting minds of the mid-20th century. Beginning in the 1930's, a collection of Oxford faculty, that is, "dons", began to gather for lunch in the "Rabbit Room", a private back room at The Eagle and Child and, in the midst of the usual gossip and silliness, would exchange ideas for stories, characters, and other metaphoric expressions of their academic pursuits rendered through fiction. As they met, and shared these notes, the group enabled the foundation for literature that is surprisingly lively and, especially in the 21st century, still very popular.
The group of dons, named "The Inklings", would include in their core group C.S. Lewis, a professor of English and perhaps the most well-known Anglican theologian of his century, and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many other works oft-quoted by the earnest know-it-alls at Yale Divinity School. J.R.R. Tolkien was a member, also a professor of English and the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Charles Williams, lesser known outside of the study of Christian mysticism, poetry, and early science fiction, but still of great influence, would be the third significant participant.
Other dons, writers, and editors would come and go over the three decades of The Inklings' weekly luncheons, including the philosopher and poet Owen Barfield, and the critic Hugo Dyson. [An aside: Dyson couldn't' stand The Lord of the Rings and forced Tolkien to stop reading from his manuscript while they were eating.]
In their exchanges, from the reading of works-in-progress to their less formal conversations about literature, God, life, and the virtues and vicissitudes of Oxford, The Inkings found a safe, quiet place at The Eagle and Child from 1933 until 1963, when the death of Lewis altered the group's dynamic so significantly that, in his honor, they ended their weekly gatherings.
[Another aside: The Eagle and Child decided to renovate in 1962 and eliminated the wall that enabled the Rabbit Room's privacy. The Inklings thus moved to the pub across the street. Let that be a warning to publicans who decide to alter familiar gathering places. I'm especially thinking of you, Princeton Club of New York. That was a great, dark, slouchy, main floor bar that you once had. It was ruined, of course, and now mostly serves as a well-lit, uncomfortable gathering place for mildly-alcoholic women.]
The Eagle and Child did not let the burgeoning interest in Lewis and Tolkien go to waste, however, as the pub has been promoted as a "must-see" location in Oxford in travel guides both published and online. No doubt, this would have amused Lewis and perturbed Tolkien.
Of the public house itself, there are some things here and there online that one may read; of The Inklings, there are two books worth recommending. One bears a ridiculously long title: The Inklings: A Group of Writers Whose Literary Fantasies Still Fire the Imagination of All Those Who Seek a Truth Beyond Reality [Good Lord!]; and the second and newer, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams.
I'm not sure what it is about Oxford that makes writers so windy, but that will likely not be the case with The Eagle and Child's current menu, which features fare such as hunter's chicken, steak [without kidney] pudding, and toad in a hole. You really have to just order it, eat it, and, if unsure, fortify with a few round of Charles Williams' cult theology and some Johnnie Walker. I'm not sure which is more intoxicating.
It is a commonplace in many of the most influential public policy
precincts in the nation’s capitol these days — including among
congressional aides working for senators, representatives and committees
— that Christianity is in steep decline in America, that the country is
fast becoming more secularized with every passing day.
That certainly appears to be the case, judging by many aspects of the
elite culture and the intellectual, social media and political rhetoric
it sanctions, but a totally opposite picture is easily seen once you
get outside of Amtrak’s Acela Corridor and the LA-San Francisco-Seattle
axis to examine the data that reveals the real America.
There we find a nation whose people are becoming more, not less,
involved in their churches, small groups, Bible studies and caring
ministries reaching out in their communities. Perhaps even more
surprising is the fact that the same thing is true in their own ways of
most of the rest of the people with whom we share this Earth.
It occurred to me in one of those moments of realization and clarity that in comic books is usually signaled with the sound effect "Cazart!", that those who have been telling me the most about the decline of Christianity and the incipient doom and gloom have been the bishops under whom I serve. It may be that they are anxious for retirement and/or are feeling the, mostly self-imposed, stresses of their jobs, but in ordinary circumstances I would expect the opposite from them.
But, their job is mostly these days to represent the weight of cultural guilt, so who knows? The thing is, as a small-parish nobody, I see a reality that is better reflected in the current, secular literature and studies than in the puzzle-witted pronouncements of my betters.
I noticed recently that a lot of British men whom I see on the TV news tend to wear rings on their pinkies. Growing up, the only men whom I recall participating in that fashion were mid-level Mafiosi. However, it appears to be a thing among the upper class.
This is probably the best compensated, cushiest position in all of American Protestantism. Not only is the salary very high [$250,000 annually in this case], but the benefits are generous, as well. Plus, as one presides over secular Christianity's "Palace of Woke", there are compensated speaking engagements, retreat opportunities, and book contracts in the offing.
If you can claim some moral loftiness, in this case in the pastor's vocal support of the #MeToo movement, that makes it all the better.
The one thing you probably shouldn't do, especially when negotiating a new contract that asks for an additional $100,000 a year, is act piggy. Why did she think that she could do something that male clergy would be punished/fired/defrocked for doing? Yeah, I think I know the answer.
It takes a powerful sense of entitlement, or just plain puzzlewitted-ness, to wreck this gig and to treat one's staff in such a manner.
I have noticed that, at times in the church, the loudest, most "moral" voices were often used to mask the speaker's reality.
I also notice that we've come a long way from what Jesus and the disciples lived.
I’ve done a few ‘nametag and hairnet’ jobs in my time, so I felt sorry for the staff, who have never been anything less than thoroughly professional and courteous. Here they were, without the wages or training to do so, having to act as counselors to people with drug and mental health issues, all so some millionaire CEO somewhere could feel #woke. They thought they were going to be working at a trendy coffee shop, they ended up in the Double Deuce from the movie Road House instead.
"Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks." - Sylvia Earle
I was once jammed onto an airplane in the midst of a gaggle of well-fed corporate men and women who were highly charged after attending a week long "team-work and incentive" workshop in Las Vegas. After the third pass of the liquor cart, my well-lubed cabin mates were dancing in the aisle to the dulcet tones of Shakira and Justin Timberlake, poorly navigating the various armrests and safety features of the Boeing 767, and chanting slogans inherited from their conference. Chief among them was "WE SWIM WITH SHARKS. WAHOO!!!"
Yes, it was a long flight. One of the few things that lightened the ordeal was that I was traveling with my surf buddy, BoonieJackson, and we had just spent the week driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway surfing every beach that looked worthy of the stoke. After the fourth or fifth "WAHOO!!!", we traded a bemused look.
See, we had spent seven days literally swimming with sharks, and not as a corporate metaphor, and knew that it was hardly the pinnacle of physical or moral courage. All it meant was that we had been in the water.
Now it's true that there have been injuries and fatalities associated with shark attacks on surfers, especially with that of friend-of-The Coracle, Bethany Hamilton. However, more surfers have drowned or suffered significant head trauma on submerged coral than have ever encountered a shark. This writer has surfed for forty-six years in various world waters and, while he has seen his share of the genus Carcharodon, he has never been menaced by them. This is also true of the sharks encountered while bonefishing in the flats of the Florida Keys, sailing off of Cape Cod, and scuba diving the Palancar Reef. They are always there, but they tend to keep their own counsel.
However, it goes without saying that sharks have a reputation. There was a time when it was common for ocean-going pleasure craft to carry "shark guns" on board. These were usually salt-water resistant shotguns or rifles used for deer hunting. Ernest Hemingway famously employed a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun on board his fishing boat, Pilar, and once, while attempting to kill a shark that had been hauled aboard while sail-fishing, shot himself in both legs with a .45 Colt.
There are also shark fishing competitions, specially designed shark spear guns and pneumatic knives, and multiple recipes for shark parts, popular in the Pacific Rim countries, that require an alarming level of slaughter. There have been many, many movies and even a few novels that present sharks as a rapacious predator that will automatically attack any human in the water.
A few years back, a couple of Hawaiian surfers, tired of the waves being crowded by amateurs, took some old, broken surfboards, cut what looked like shark bites out of them, and liberally distributed them about the beaches of the North Shore. Suddenly, the surf wasn't as crowded any more. Hence, as with my plane cabin mates, the employment of the shark as a metaphor for danger even among those who work in some of the safest jobs ever known in human history.
It would take quite a novel thinker to work against that current of common thinking about sharks to truly study them and present their much more complicated role in the aquatic eco-system. A pioneer, of sorts. Fortunately, a couple of New York City parents created such a pioneer when they decided in the early part of the 20th century to do something that nowadays would get them arrested and publicly shamed on a variety of news shows and on social media. They would, on a near-daily basis, drop off their nine-year-old daughter at the New York Aquarium for her to spend the day, alone and un-escorted; a true "free-range" kid.
Instead of giving her a life's worth of trauma, as would be the case with some of the often soft, coddled children of the current age, it created in Eugenie Clark a robust curiosity about ocean life and eco-systems. She would, because of her parents so "endangering" her, become the pre-eminent expert on sharks and a pioneer for women in the field of marine biology.
Born in 1922, Clark's father died when she was still a toddler and her Japanese-American mother married the famous restaurateur, Nobu, which granted Clark the wherewithal necessary to pursue the considerable academic degrees necessary for her field. These included degrees in zoology from Hunter College and New York University and considerable research work done with Scripps Institutions of Oceanography in California, its eastern counterpart, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute of Massachusetts, and the American Museum of Natural History. Some of her most significant work was done with the U.S. Office of Naval Research, which had both an astronomical budget and the absolute best in post-WWII technology for the study of the ocean.
Most of Clark's studies would take place among the atolls and islands of the South Pacific, including Micronesia, Melanesia, and the Marshall, Palau, and Marianas Islands. To further her research, it was necessary for her to be a proficient swimmer, certified scuba diver [I would remind the reader that this was before scuba diving was made popular by the TV show, "Sea Hunt"], cave diver, and technologically able. Again, she did this, too, at a time when it was so rare for a woman to be involved in these particular sciences that she gained the respectful sobriquet of "The Shark Lady".
While she studied a great many types of fish, it was her work with sharks that gained her most notoriety, as her research reversed many of the assumptions about sharks that were and are common. She wrote numerous articles, both scholarly and popular, on the subject of sharks and published several books, including Lady With A Spear and The Lady With The Sharks [I always thought both sounded as if they were fiction written by John D. MacDonald or some such mid-century pulp writer], and served as a mentor to numerous women in the biological sciences. She was also the founding director of what is now known as the Mote Marine Laboratory.
Not only did she, in the midst of researching the biology of a rather dull flatfish, indirectly discover the most effective shark repellent yet produced, made from the secretions of a Pardachirus marmoratus [or Moses sole, a Red Sea dweller], but she also highlighted what was realistic in the feeding habits of sharks.
As an editorial note, when I first compiled the list of the fifty people to be remembered on Fridays over the course of a year, Dr. Clark was included and, at the time, still alive. My concern was that her scientific and social contributions had been forgotten and her inclusion was to be an attempt to redress that possibility. However, three weeks ago at the age of 92, Dr. Clark died and has since been memorialized in all of the major media. There is much about her to be read on line, so the original reason for posting is no longer as necessary as I once thought.
[Although a non-smoker, she died of lung cancer. Many of those early scuba enthusiasts developed the disease and it is thought to be related to the gas mixtures and the equipment used in diving in those days.]
The handy thing about weblogs, though, is that they can be wonderfully personal. As such, it might be appropriate to note one of her contributions that was left unmentioned in the canned obituaries and vague remembrances in scientific journals. Namely, Clark taught watermen the real nature of sharks.
She was never attacked in any of her nearly 75 years literally swimming with sharks, and only once suffered a wound from one when a sample of a shark's jaws fell against her arm while she was driving in her car to a lecture.
Her learned perspective and positive attitude towards even the most feared of sharks is one that injects a necessary note of reality into any experience in the water. While care always needs to be taken in the open and untamed sea, it is a care born of common sense and a full understanding of one's surroundings.
On W. 44th, next door to the New York Yacht Club, the Harvard Club, and what was once my favorite Persian restaurant [It was named "Tehran", and it didn't survive the aftermath of the Iranian Hostage Crisis] is a slender hotel of some significant literary history. So much so that the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the hotel's most famous collection of characters is being celebrated this summer.
Opened in 1902, originally as a long-term residential hotel to be named "The Puritan" [that produces a chuckle, given the hotel's history], the owners realized, as their location was perfect for serving the theatrical and publishing communities, that the renamed Algonquin would serve as standard, rent-by-the-night hotel with the intention of providing a pleasant midday and, especially, end-of-work meeting place. Thus, they built up the restaurant and bars to a standard that attracted transient performers, playwrights, and authors; and familiar regulars.
However, it wasn't until the hotel's second decade, in the aftermath of World War I and the beginning of the Jazz Age, that The Algonquin came into its own. One day, in happenstance, a collection of writers associated with Vanity Fair magazine met for lunch in the hotel's Rose Room, a small pleasant restaurant located behind the original lobby, and had such a good time that they decided to meet every weekday. The original group expanded some, were given their own, round table at which to meet each day, were assigned their own waiter, and became a recognized, even legendary, source of wit and critical thinking during the expansion of American literary expression.
While the names of those who gathered in the Rose Room are no longer as familiar as they once were, their influence on our culture is undeniable. Of the original group, included were:
Robert Benchley - a syndicated humor columnist and star of short comedy features at the movies.
Heywood Broun - sportswriter and founder of the American Newspaper Guild
Franklin P. Adams - newspaper columnist and radio performer
Marc Connelly - Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and performer
Ruth Hale - reporter specializing in women's rights
George S. Kaufman - award-winning and prolific playwright
Harpo Marx - yes, he of the famous brothers; ironically silent on screen, a verbal wit in real life
Dorothy Parker - most prominent of the women magazine writers of her era; a screenwriter, too
Harold Ross - founder of The New Yorker magazine, the publication of which was first proposed at the hotel.
Robert E. Sherwood - another award-winning playwright and screenwriter [Waterloo Bridge, The Petrified Forest, etc.]
and
Alexander Woollcott - theater and social critic for The New Yorker, and of such influence that at least two play and film characters have been based on his memorable personality. [For those curious, the title character in The Man Who Came to Dinner and the villain in Laura.]
Others would come and go over the next decade, but the so-called "Vicious Circle" of the Rose Room would leave a lingering imprint on wit and writing for much longer.
However, there are other attributes to the hotel that are memorable and linger to this day. Not the least of which is the tradition of a hotel cat who will wander about the lobby, bar, and restaurant and behave indifferently to the comings and goings of the clientele. There have been a series of cats reaching back to the 1920's with the first, named "Hamlet" by and for the actor John Barrymore, stretching through three Matildas and six other Hamlets, including the current resident. Each year, in the cat's honor, there is a cat fashion show.
Newly published writers, when in the city on a publicity tour, used to be able to stay a night for free, as long as they donated a signed edition of their book to the hotel's library. They still get a substantial discount and the hotel's collection is representative of 20th century literature both great and, well, not so much. Still, it's the thought that counts.
Of course, there have been artistic works that have been written or composed in the hotel's rooms, bars and lobby, too. Not the least of which is "I Could Have Danced All Night", banged out on a piano by Lerner and Lowe for over 24 straight hours to the gross annoyance of the other guests. They probably weren't all that annoyed in retrospect after the musical "My Fair Lady" became the toast of Broadway and, eventually, Hollywood.
Speaking of annoying, the self-consciously reclusive J.D. Salinger, author of the tedious, and often high school-mandated, novel Catcher in the Rye [better known as We Have to Read This, Why?] would stay secretly at the Algonquin when in New York visiting his publishers. No one would care about him there or, outside of college campuses, anywhere else but, still, the hotel likes to note this.
When William Faulkner had to leave his bucolic Oxford, Mississippi to visit the folks at Random House Publishing, he would take a room three or four times a year. He would even compose his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in one of those rooms. Thankfully for the other guests, not on a piano.
Like the Rose Room restaurant, the Oak Room bar is now closed [it was where Harry Connick, Jr. and Michael Feinstein became famous] as is the small, rather pleasant commuter bar that had been just off the lobby. However, the Blue Bar remains open and they still make a proper Manhattan, in addition to a martini that boasts a chunk of diamond floating in the mixture. The latter costs $10,000, for those interested; the Manhattan was twelve bucks the last time I was there.
I first stayed at the Algonquin when on a buying junket for the retail corporation in 1981. We were supposed to stay at the shabby place next to the equally shabby Penn Station, but I was willing to pay extra just to be reminded that I was once an English major. It was a great stay with a great meal in the Rose Room. When I later moved to New York, I would take dates to the Rose Room, too, as a bit of elegance was always appreciated by the young women whom I courted.
For many years, I belonged to the Princeton Club, just a block away, but would still stop by the Algonquin for a coffee in the paneled lobby or a drink in the bar. Since the Princeton Club has been mismanaged to the point of indifference, replacing its dark, slouchy bar with some well-lit place with uncomfortable seating, and eliminating its proper library, not to mention offering guest rooms to members at the same price that the Algonquin offers to its clientele, it was easy to surrender membership and return to the hotel, especially as it has so many familiar personal memories attached to it.
It is not any more or less expensive than any other hotel in New York, but carries something that is perpetually under threat in our contemporary age: grace and calm charm. That alone is worth the price.
Since media income is driven by the number of "clicks" any given article receives, the contemporary practice is to write something stupid, like "air conditioning is sexist", to invite attention, commentary, and, naturally, criticism, and then mock the critics in as sophomoric a manner as possible, thus enabling even more "clicks".
To paraphrase a band from Akron, "Gosh, we're all devolving".
In 2018, the men’s World Cup generated $6 billion, from which their organizing body distributed 7 percent to the teams.
The 2019, the women’s World Cup generated $131 million, from which their organizing body gave 20 percent to the teams.
I'm really not interested in millionaires quibbling about the largess they receive when I'm trying to figure out how to make my $44,000 of annual net income work in Connecticut, but when they and their media/political buds decide it’s the moral issue of the day and expect me to take a side, I like to do a little ciphering.
I occasionally come across quotations that snag my attention like a needle-hook to yarn. I may or may not agree with the writer's perspective, I may find them derivative or vulgar, but they represent something that stirs my curiosity and perspective.
I really want to stay out of this nonsense, but historical ignorance injected into potentially volatile topics calls for some redress.
This week encourages too many people to display both their ignorance of American history and their naked narcissism. It's a remarkable pathology to observe.
A current leader in the narcissism sweepstakes, a former athlete who "lost everything" by having to accept $15 million to serve as a spokesman for some Chinese slave factory a sneaker company, decided to head towards the July 4th finish line with this snippet of a speech by a true hero of American history.
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”
- Frederick Douglass pic.twitter.com/IWLujGCJHn
Yeah, you maybe should have read the entire speech. Here's the part that the sneaker company employee left out:
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall
of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of
slavery is certain.
I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing
encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great
principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my
spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.
- Frederick Douglass, as delivered on July 5, 1852, in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society
I would note the date. The speech was made 11 years before emancipation. Everything Douglass said about the Declaration was accurate and worked to enable freedom.
Speaking of slavery, here's a factory where the workers make $9.30 a day and work up to 72 hours a week.
