Depression and Holiday Cheer

1.  Depression.  The Republican debate on CNN last night.  Gail Collins had it right in her op-ed piece in the New York Times this morning:  “It’s no wonder that Republican voters are veering back and forth, rejecting one candidate after another.”

2.  Holiday Cheer.  A Christmas tree, without any religious decoration was placed somewhere on a state university in Missouri.  A Jewish faculty member complained to the campus diversity ombudsman, and the tree was taken down.  I have gone through my period of strongly disagreeing with any religious decoration at the time of the winter solstice (although I never objected to wreaths or holly or candy canes), and I have heard all the Christian voices talk about how a Christmas tree is a secular and not a religious symbol (and courts have even agreed with this).  I don’t know what kind of symbol it is.  But I conclude:  if the Christian world says it is not a religious symbol, we who are not of the Christian world should accept that.  Christmas trees are cheery, they are attractive and they are green (yes, you cut them down, but they are part of regenerative tree farm operations for the most part).  I say:  OK, I accept and like Christmas trees as a secular symbol of season and good cheer.  That does not mean that I expect to see them in my synagogue or in my living room.  But anywhere else, I think it is OK.  And what about religious symbolism on the tree?  Honestly?  Big deal.  That’s OK, too, and if the tree decorators want to put a dreidel on the tree or a Teddy bear named Mohammed, more power to them.

Tick Tick Boom

Or, rather “Tick, Tick…Boom”, the more accurate name of this three person musical by Jonathan Larson, or again more accurately by Jonathan Larson and David Auburn.  The show we saw on Sunday at Metro Stage in Alexandria.

We went because our friend Steven Walker, son of our friend Ellen Walker, and professional guitarist, was the professional guitarist in the small on-stage combo that accompanied the three performers.  He, as well as the three actors, did an excellent job in a show that might be considered both the prequel and the sequel to Larseo’s better known “Rent”.

As most probably know, Larson died unexpectedly from something known as Marfan’s Syndrome (a disease he did not know he had) shortly before the opening of “Rent”, his hit rock musical version of “La Boheme”.  He had written “Tick” as a one person musical review prior to penning “Rent”, and performed it in New York.  After his death, David Auburn redid “Tick”, making it a three person musical review.  The program states:  “book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson; script consultant – David Auburn”, but Auburn clearly did more than act as a consultant.

A young would be musician and composer in NY, trying to make a go of it.  His girl friend, who has her own career to worry about.  His oldest and best friend, selling out to the advertising world, and dying of AIDS.  What more could you want for this type of a review?

Kudos to all, and especially to Metro Stage, a new venue for Edie and me.

A dinner before at the next door French bistro “Bastille”.  Comfortable, pleasant, tasty.  And, because it is north of Old Town in a less dense primarily residential area, parking galore.

I Was Not Clueless (1 cent)

You may think I was, but I wasn’t.  For example,

when Edie said she was going to yoga class, rather than celebrate my 65th birthday……

when it was clear that Hannah and Michelle wanted to go to Shanghai Garden…….

when Hannah and Michelle were going to get to my house at EXACTLY 6:30…….

when 6:30 came and Michelle wasn’t there yet, which meant that she was late for the first time in her entire life…..

when Michelle finally arrived, she stalled before we left, she went back in the house because she might have forgotten something, and then took her entire purse apart ‘looking for’ her cell phone…..

when Hannah came in a dress and said that she was dressed up because she was at a first rehearsal for a play……

when Ben (our basement dweller) did not return home after work……

when I asked Michelle if I was going to have a surprise party, and she said ‘yes’.

Surprise!

Or should I say “Coincidence”?

It turned out that about 60 of my friends all decided to have dinner last night at Shanghai Garden Restaurant.  Friends from my office, my old office, my study group, my college, my law school…..all sorts of friends.

And then it turned out that Hannah and Michelle decided to take me to dinner there for my birthday on that very night.  And at the very time everyone else was there.

What a coincidence.  And, because it was such a coincidence, I think we all registered a great big surprise!

Well, think about it.  Could such a coincidence have been accidental?  Could you imagine it possible without not only a divine Creator, but one Who remains actively involved with the world?  Of course not.

I think I will send a note to Christopher Hitchens.

65

Today is my 65th birthday.  This is a serious event, it seems to me.  I can no longer kid myself, and while I may have 30 years left, I may have only 30 days.  It is beyond sobering.

I remember when my old (not quite as old as me) friend Bob’s father turned 65.  Very inappropriately, I asked him how it felt.  He told me it felt great and that the reason it felt great was that he no longer would worry about dying young.  I thought I might feel the same way, but I don’t.  I just feel like I have been kidding myself.  I have been so lucky not to have had any medical issues that it seemed to me that time was (in spite of the calendar) really on hold.  Now, I know I was wrong.

My horoscope in the Post this morning does provide a ray of hope:

“You hit your stride this year, zooming past obstacles that used to detour you.  New relationships become quickly close, or old relationships are transformed with new energy.  There’s a financial bonus at the end of December and again in February.  You’ll be well recommended for an important job in May.  Virgo and Taurus adore you.”

My wife is a Virgo.

I slept poorly last night.  It is not an auspicious start.  But it will get better.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read (one cent)

The headline in the New York Times reads:

Farmyard Stills

Quench a Thirst

for Local Spirits

I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and said to myself:  “Interesting.  Backyard stills in France”.  I didn’t read the article.

Later, I looked at it again and realized that my eyes put the “f” (and maybe the “r”) from “Farmyard” with the “ench” in “Quench”, and came p with “French”.  The article had to do with Kansas.

What do I think of that?  I think that there must be backyard stills in France.

I also read, in Max Dimont’s The Jews in America that Gustav Poznanski (it doesn’t matter who he was) lived from 1805 until 1879, and came to America in 1832 at the age of 23.  A neat trick if you can do it.  My cousin Carol, an editor, told me that this is because publishers no longer want to pay editors.  Well, this publisher was Simon and Schuster, and the book was published 30 years ago.

At any rate, you just can’t believe everything you read.  Which leads me to Wikipedia.  I now know how easy it is to change an article, since I did so the other day.  However if truth be told, I have decided, since we all need something that we can count on and rely on, that I am going to believe whatever I read on Wikipedia.  Truth or falsity make no difference; I am a believer.

Four Sundays (2 cents)

It’s hard for me to write a post over Thanksgiving weekend, because I lose all sense of timing. Wednesday afternoon, things really begin to slow down, and Thursday seems like Sunday, which means that Friday seems like Sunday again, and I am afraid that Saturday and Sunday will all feel like Sunday.

On Wednesday/Sunday, I went to the hockey game with friends from out of town.  They are not Caps fans, and asked me what I thought the score would be.  I told them that Atlanta would win 5-1.  Final score:  Atlanta 5, Washington 1.  Expected, but still demoralizing, and the biggest cry from the crowd was the third period chant:  Fire Hanlon (the coach).  After the game, Hanlon was fired.

Before the game, I had a possibly interesting experience.  Possibly?  Well, I walked to the Verizon Center from my office, and stopped to have a quick (but good) supper.  I walked by a first class seafood restaurant, Oceanaire, and sat down at the comfortable bar, asking the very personable waiter for a Grey Goose and an order of crab cakes.  Next to me sat a gentleman who I would guess was about 70; next to him was a much younger woman, with whom he was having a conversation.  They did not look like a couple, and I wondered how they got together.  On my right, the chair was empty.  But shortly before I finished, one of the waiters came up to me and asked me if the chair was taken.  No, I said.  And he responded with, OK, I have company for you, and he led another young woman, well dressed, to the chair.  I smiled; she smiled.  I got up and left.  But it led me to believe that perhaps I looked like a businessman from out of town (I was well dressed; I was alone; I was reading the Wall Street Journal) who looked like I could use some company.

On Thursday/Sunday, we had our out of town friends the Aronins for dinner, and the meal was superb. And extensive. There was corn soup, and salad, and turkey, and stuffing and two kinds of cranberry sauce, and a lentil-sweet potato stew, and a cold melange of roasted vegetables, and a vegetarian stuffed pumpkin. Perhaps there was more that I have already forgotten. At the end of the meal, there was pumpkin pie, apple pie and chocolate-pecan pie. And coffee. And there was, during the meal, a good Alsatian wine and sparkling cider.

Following dinner (which ended about 5), we just sort of hung around.  In the early evening, we decided to watch a television movie (there did not seem to be anything that we wanted to see at the local theaters), and chose the 1939 Ingrid Bergman/Leslie Howard movie ‘Intermezzo’.  It was Bergman’s first English language picture (she was 24) and a remake of a Swedish movie she had just completed.  It is the story of a young musician who falls for an older, married musician (in real life, as opposed to reel life, Howard was 22 years older than Bergman), has an affair (an ‘intermezzo’) before he goes back to his wife, and she back to school.  Pretty shallow, it was, but apparently a big hit.

On Friday/Sunday, because we thought everyone else was shopping, we decided to go to the Corcoran to see the Annie Liebowitz exhibit and the Ansel Adams exhibit. In fact, we learned that no one must be shopping because everyone seemed to be at the gallery. We saw the Adams exhibit (125 black and white photographs; nature and people; extraordinary technique), but the line for Liebowitz was too long. We did see the large exhibit on European landscape painting, however. These oils all come from the Corcoran’s collection. It is interesting to see how much the museum owns, but clearly the show would be different if a curator had the world to choose from, and not just those that happened to be in the basement storeroom. I don’t think that most of the paintings were of the highest rank, although many well known artists (Corot, Manet, Pissaro, Gainsborough, Constable and many Dutch masters) were represented.

We had lunch at the cafe at the Corcoran.  I know you can’t judge a restaurant by Thanksgiving weekend, but in truth it was not very good.

When we got home, we turned the TV on to see the first Caps game (or the last half of it) under new interim coach Bruce Boudreau.  They beat the Flyers in overtime, 4-3, and that was very good, but they gave up a 3-0 lead to get there.  We shall see.

A Friday night dinner with the Aronins, and conversation while we sat around with one of Comcast’s music channels (the one featuring vocal standards) on, sometimes in the background and sometimes the foreground.

Short (very) Takes

1.  I read Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun.  I am told it is perhaps his weakest book.  I have never read Faulkner, because I found it too foreign, but I decided to continue Requiem, once I started it.  It is a very strange book, half narrative and half play, the narrative giving the history of Jefferson, Mississippi, and the play showing the drama of a failed clemency attempt by the defendant’s trial lawyer and the mother of the baby the defendant murdered.  I actually thought it was quite good.  It is apparently a sequel to Sanctuary, which is a well reviewed book.  I am going to read it.  I bet I don’t like it as well.

2.  I saw Joseph Ellis at Politics and Prose talk about his new book on the founding fathers.  It is his 6th or 7th or 8th on the same people.  He is an engaging speaker; I don’t remember at all what he said.  Is that possible?

3.  I went to a staged reading of “What to Listen For” at Theater J.  The book tells the tale of an estranged mother and daughter, and Freud, Mahler, Glenn Gould and others.  Fiction.  In and out of reality.  Classical background music.  I didn’t like it at all.  It will probably be a big hit.

4.  At the St. Louis Art Museum, in addition to walking through the very colorful contemporary art collection, we went to see the George Caleb Bingham exhibit.  Focusing on three of his better known paintings, it included his charcoal and water color sketches of the characters, x-ray pictures showing how he repainted over his line drawings, and fascinating etchings of his work, with successive strikes as the etcher reached greater and greater complexity.  Fascinating, I thought.

Requium for a nun

Joseph Ellis

What to Listen For

St. Louis (20 cents/Hong Kong)

We went to St. Louis last weekend for the funeral of my 95 year old Uncle Sam, who died the day after being admitted to the hospital with pneumonia.  His death seemed peaceful.  His life had a minimum of physical suffering.  He lived by himself until he was 94, five years after the death of my Aunt Loraine.

There were about 60 at the funeral.  Except for Uncle Sam’s three children, their spouses and his grandchildren, I saw no relatives.  In fact, the only other relatives on my mother’s side that I know are still in St. Louis are her first cousin Myra (now 93 and not mobile) and her son Tom.  That is it.  On my father’s side, only Wendy, the granddaughter of my father’s oldest sister, and her husband.

When I was growing up, my father had five siblings living in St. Louis.  All were married, and all but one had children.  Where is this extended family now?  Chicago, Kansas City, Oregon, Wisconsin, Oklahoma,  and elsewhere.

While my mother only had one sister (Loraine), both of her parents had large numbers of children.  If I remember correctly, she had more than 40 first cousins in the city.  And where are they?  Texas, Tennessee, Florida, California, Kentucky, Ohio, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

How weird this is.  It is only at United Hebrew Cemetery that the familiar names appear.

We stayed with my old friend, Michael, who is preparing for a Thanksgiving with his stepson who lives in Vietnam, his stepdaughter and her family, who live in Miami, and his nephew who lives in New York.  Michael too has virtually no relatives in St. Louis.

I spoke to my other friend Michael.  His sister now lives in Ohio, and his two children in Hawaii and Massachusetts.  I spoke to my friend Jeff, whose two children are both in Illinois.  My friend Pat, whose two children and their families are all in Seattle.

So, it’s just not me, who is losing the connection.  Think ahead to the St. Louis of, say, 2020.  A small city in the midwest, with extensive suburbs, a good museum, a better university, a battery of sports teams, but inhabited by a race of strangers.

In 1973 (one cent)

In 1973, I moved to within one block of Connecticut Avenue.  From that date forward, although I have had three different addresses, each has been one block from Connecticut Avenue.

Something else happened in 1973 on Connecticut Avenue.  That was the year that Shanghai Garden Restaurant opened.

I had dinner there tonight, and had a very interesting conversation with Rae, one of the three siblings who operate the establishment.  The subject was Rae’s father, now in his 80s, retired, but whose presence is still felt at the restaurant and, now and again, seen.

Here is the story.  Rae’s father was born to a farming family, not very far from Shanghai.  He was the oldest son, but being a very determined fellow, he convinced his mother (who controlled family decisions) to let his younger brother take over the farm, and let him go to the city and look for employment.  Very unusual in early 20th century China.

He came to Shanghai, and got a job in a hotel restaurant where he was the lowest of the low, basically the equivalent of a potato peeler; in this manner, he spent the years of World War II.  But he learned a little about cooking.  He married, he had his first child, and then the Chinese Civil War began and he was “drafted” by the nationalist army, the forces of President Chang Kaishek.  With Chang, he evacuated to Taiwan, where he served in the military and then was employed by the United States Army.  Apparently, there was some sort of American army facility on Taiwan, where officers would come for rest and recreation.  Rae’s father got a job in the kitchen and before long, because of his work ethic, he learning of basic English, and his natural political instincts, he ran the kitchen.

The army paid him a good salary, which was embellished by favors from local farmers and suppliers, from whom he bought enormous amounts of food for his mess hall.  He saved money, and through contacts, was able to sneak his wife and daughter out of mainland China with false identification papers.  He had four more children on Taiwan, and through the same contacts was able to bring other family members from the mainland to join him.

He left his employment by the Americans and opened a noodle restaurant, where he competitor was his neighbor.  Two noodle restaurants on the same block, both doing well.  But when larger space opened up across the street, Rae’s father invested his savings in opening a much larger, more modern restaurant.  Hoping it would secure his financial future, in fact it failed.  His competitor’s more traditional shop across the street was the winner.

He left his family in Taiwan and went to work in the kitchen of a ship.  The ship traveled across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal.  When it landed in New York, Rae’s father jumped ship, and became an illegal refugee in America.  Through Chinese immigrants in New York that he knew, he got a job as a private chef for a wealthy woman.  She lived in a penthouse apartment; he had his own room, a large amount of freedom, and met a number of prominent, wealthy Americans.

But he grew bored and restless, and another friend suggested he come to Washington, where he got a job at Trader Vic’s Restaurant.  Trader Vic had a kitchen divided in two, one prepared the western food, and one the Oriental food.  Rae’s father worked in the Oriental side of the restaurant, eventually become first its head chef, and then head chef of the entire restaurant.  He was able to bring his family from Taiwan.  Rae was ten at the time.  At Trader Vic’s, he learned western cooking, as well as Chinese.  A number of his employees were illegal aliens; Rae’s father had met an immigration attorney, and referred his employees to him to help them get his green cards.  One day the lawyer asked him why he hadn’t applied himself; he answered that he just had not done it yet.  He had a large family to support and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily.  The lawyer, who became his lifelong friend, said that he would not charge him, since he was such a good referrer of business.  Working with the attorney, with the support of Trader Vic’s, he received a green card.

In 1973, he decided he wanted to work for himself.  This is when Shanghai Gardens was born.