At my age, I find myself often having to pay final tributes to old friends, or to people I've admired from afar. My last post here was an obituary of a cat. Now I mourn a friend of very long standing. I met Allan Tremmel in 1958 when we were students at James Monroe Junior High School in Tampa, a city to which we were both recent arrivals. I found his accent intriguing. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, a place I would then have been very surprised to know would be my home for over half of my life.
As schoolmates, Allan and I quickly found we had common interests. One was in astronomy and space travel. My parents gave me a small refractor telescope, and we spent many clear evenings looking at the planets, the M31 galaxy in Andromeda, and other celestial sights. Another was trains, particularly model trains. We each had small train sets, and would visit each other to play with them. My parents were always happy to see Allan, whose unfailing politeness and unassuming disposition appealed to them.
As we went together through high school, Robinson in Tampa, and college, the University of South Florida, our common interests expanded to include art, history, literature, and music. During junior high and high school we had both listened to pop music - Chuck Berry through the Beatles - but in college our now late friend Mike Starling and I introduced Allan to the baroque music of Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and others, which Allan came to enjoy. I remember that he loved, as did I, Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, a required reading in our first year "The American Idea" course at USF.
After USF Allan and I separated geographically. I went north to law school, while he stayed in Tampa, got a job with Verizon, and married Marcia. I saw both of them during summer breaks, and later, when I settled in New York and into my career as a lawyer, when I visited my parents in Florida. We also kept in touch by email. He was delighted when I told him I'd moved from Manhattan to his native borough. When I told him that a well known theater couple had paid a hefty sum for an apartment on Sterling Place, his childhood home, he replied that he regretted having left Brooklyn.
The last time I saw Allan face to face was in March of 2013, at the ceremony for the commital of my mother's ashes to lie with my father's, who had died in 2008. Marcia, who is an ordained Episcopal priest, read the appropriate liturgy. I introduced Allan to Julene Gordon, who had been my parents' across-the-street neighbor, and whose late husband Robert had, like Allan, worked for Verizon. Allan said he had known Robert well and had enjoyed working with him.
Since then we were in frequent touch on Facebook. Allan was always keen to send me news of planetary conjunctions, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, videos of steam locomotives, and the like. I did my best to respond in kind, and to give him occasional news about Brooklyn that he might find interesting. I continued to hear from him into June, then got word from Marcia that he had been hospitalized with cancer. Several days later I got the news of his passing, which took place two days before his eightieth birthday. I've lost a friendship that I valued long and deeply. Marcia told me that his last days were painful for him. I'm grateful that he was released from that pain, and is at rest with God.
Neil Sedaka, who died today at 86, was a prominent contributor to the soundtrack of my adolescence. From 1959 through 1960 he had a series of catchy pop hits that were staples on the radio and at James Monroe Junior High School dances. One of these, "Oh! Carol" (1959, clip above) was inspired by his own adolescent trauma. He dated a classmate at Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn, named Carol Klein. It seems the relationship ended unhappily. She, later known to the world as Carole King, along with her husband Gerry Goffin, wrote a joking reply song, "Oh, Neil".
Today, Carole King posted a tribute to Neil Sedaka, noting that he had inspired her to become a songwriter.
I'm fond of syncretism, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice" (Merriam-Webster). Christmas, of which we are now on the eighth of the twelve days, is a syncretic holiday, combining Christian celebration of Jesus' birth with Roman and other pagan rites appropriate to the winter solstice. Where I especially enjoy syncretism is in cuisine, where I encounter it regularly when I enjoy a bánh mì for lunch, combining Vietnamese fillings with a French baguette, and in music. As I noted in a previous post, most of what we consider American popular and church music has African influence.
Andy Statmanis a musical syncretist. He first became known as a bluegrass performer on mandolin, but became interested in combining bluegrass sounds with jazz, and with the klezmer music he knew from his Jewish childhood. In the video above he plays mandolin, while Michael Daves plays guitar, on "Surfin' Slivovitz," which Andy wrote and which combines elements of bluegrass, klezmer, jazz, and '60s California surf guitar music. Their performance took place at the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, which annually presents the Brooklyn Folk Festival.
Slivovitz is a potent plum brandy made in Eastern Europe that has a special place in Jewish tradition.
The photo above is of our friend and neighbor Andrea Biggs with three of her recent paintings. Top to bottom they are: "Burst of Energy"; "3 Emerging Roses"; and "The Inception." They are part of the Brooklyn Artists Waterfront Coalition's 2024 Salon des Refusés exhibition, which opened yesterday. Many of Andrea's paintings, like these, are based on floral imagery, but depart from pure representation to express vibrancy and dynamism. She also does landscape paintings that show the influence of the nineteenth century Hudson River School artists. One of these, I'm glad to say, hangs on the wall of our living room, along with one of her floral paintings.
The Salon des Refusés exhibition includes works of painting, sculpture, photography, and multimedia by many artists. It is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM through October 13, at the BWAC Gallery, 481 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York.
Today King Charles III was crowned. This led me to think of the last British monarch to bear his name, Charles II (portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons). He was more fortunate than his father, Charles I, whose reign ended with his beheading. The young Charles was sent into exile in France. He returned to England and was crowned in 1660; his reign lasted until his death in 1685
While he has been called the "Merry Monarch" his reign was far from untroubled. In 1665 a terrible plague struck England, and the following year saw the Great Fire of London. What caused tension throughout his reign was his sympathy for Catholicism, inherited from his father and undoubtedly strengthened during his French exile.
In 1670 Charles entered into the Secret Treaty of Dover, in which he pledged to support France in its war against the Dutch Republic and to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified time (he did so, on his deathbed). This led to the Third Anglo-Dutch War, concluded in 1674 by the Treaty of Westminster, under which, among other things, the Dutch returned their colony of New Netherland to the English, who renamed it New York.
New York City's Borough of Brooklyn, where I have lived for the past forty years, is co-extensive with the County of Kings, so named in honor of Charles II. Our neighboring County, and Borough, of Queens is named for his consort, Catherine of Braganza (portrait by Peter Lely, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons). She was a Portuguese infanta, or princess, whose marriage to Charles at the age of 21 was, like almost all European royal marriages, diplomatically arranged. Her dowry included Bombay, now Mumbai, thereby helping to establish the British foothold in India. The marriage didn't get off to a good start. She developed a nosebleed and fainted when told that Charles had made his favorite mistress, Barbara Palmer, her Lady of the Bedchamber, or personal attendant.
Despite this and many other discourtesies, Catherine remained faithful to Charles until his death. To his credit, Charles resisted entreaties to divorce her when she suffered three miscarriages and failed to produce a legitimate heir to the throne. After Charles died she remained in England through the short, unhappy reign of her brother in law, James II, and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which sent James into French exile and gave the crown to his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, whose marriage had been arranged by Charles to placate Protestants and secure realtions with the Dutch. Under William and Mary, Protestant power was solidified by Parliament, which passed an "Exclusionary Act" barring Catholics from the throne. Catherine returned to Portugal in 1692, where she spent her later years active in affairs of state, serving on two occasions as regent for her brother, Peter II, and helping to secure a treaty between Portugal and England. She died in 1705 and is buried at the monastery of São Vicente de Fora.
As a Brooklynite I hate to say this, but, Queens, you got the better of the two royals.
Harry Belafonte died last Tuesday at the age of 96. According to his New York Times obituary his singing career began while he was a teenager, and he began to be recorded in the early 1950s. His "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)", made it to the pop charts in 1957, but didn't do quite as well as an almost contemporaneously recorded version by the Tarriers, a folk group consisting of Alan Arkin (later better known as an actor), Bob Carey (who was Black, thereby making this the first well known racially integrated American folk group), and Erik Darling my pleasant encounter with whom you can read about here. The Tarriers' version is an amalgam of two Jamaican folk songs put together by the American folk singer and songwriter Bob Gibson, who had visited Jamaica. The songs were "Day-O" and one called "Hill and Gully Rider". I'm pretty sure the first version I heard had the "hill and gully rider" chorus, so likely was the Tarriers' version.
"Day-O" was included on Belafonte's album, Calypso, which was the first long playing album to sell a million copies. The video above is of Belafonte singing "Jamaica Farewell", which was also on Calypso and charted in 1957 after "Day-O". It was written and composed by Irving Burgie, a Brooklyn native whose mother was from Barbados, and who wrote the lyrics for the Barbadian national anthem, "In Plenty and in Time of Need". He was a prolific songwriter, who wrote many more songs for Belafonte, some of which, like "Island in the Sun", became hits. He also performed as a singer, using the name "Lord Burgess".
There is some controversy over whether "Day-O", an adaptation, on which Burgie collaborated with Belafonte, of a Jamaican folk song, or "Jamaica Farewell", written by Burgie but considered part of a Jamaican folk tradition called mento, should be considered "calypso", a musical style that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. According to MasterClass, calypso "spread throughout the West Indies." MasterClass includes Belafonte in its list of "5 Notable Calypso Musicians" and calls "Day-O" calypso, no doubt because it shares calypso's call-and-response format and rhythmic structure. "Jamaica Farewell" lacks the call-and-response, but MasterClass calls mento a "subgenre" of calypso. "Origins of Mento", on jamaicanmusic.com, disputes this, arguing that while the two styles "share many similarities, they are separate and distinct musical forms."
One thing that cannot be disputed is that Harry Belafonte had a profound and lasting effect on American popular music, as well as that of other nations. His talent was not limited to singing. He also saw success as an actor, having met his close friend Sidney Poitier while they were both in an acting class, and as a television host. He is the only person to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Academy Award. The last was in a noncompetitive category; he was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his work to advance civil rights in the U.S. -- he became a close friend of and co-worker with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. -- and in South Africa, and for his efforts to provide relief for victims of famine and other disasters worldwide.
Update: read about an event in Belafonte's life, that helped to sharpen his commitment to civil rights, here.
According to Magee Hickey on WPIX 11 Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, three important holidays of the three Abrahamic faiths, overlap only once every thirty years or so. This is one of those years. She quotes Rabbi Aaron Raskin of Bnai Avraham synagogue here in Brooklyn Heights:
"When all these holidays come together it's a time of unity ... [t]o see how we complement one another to see how we can work together to make the world a better place."
Holiday blessings to my Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends; to all others, enjoy a glorious spring.
On June 2, 1953, Coronation Day, I was with my parents and Rex, the bull terrier mix puppy I had been given as a seventh birthday present, at Stile End, a cottage built, if you believed what was on the doorpost, in 1597. We occupied half of the cottage, located at the edge of the village of Rushden in Hertfordshire. The other half belonged to its owners, a farm family named Warner. They were lovely people, and their daughter, Peggy, single and in her thirties, was my caretaker whenever my parents were out for a play in London or an event at the Officers' Club at Chicksands, the small outpost in Bedfordshire where my father, a U.S. Air Force captain, was stationed.
In 1953 BBC television's signal didn't extend beyond metropolitan London, so we listened to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on our radio. She had been Queen since February 6, 1952, the day her father, King George VI, died. Her ascension to the monarchy took place while she and Prince Phillip were on tour in Kenya. In the almost year and a half from then until the coronation I saw many newspaper and magazine articles with photos of the, I thought, beautiful young Queen. She was also a prominent subject of conversation at the Sandon County Council School, where I was the only American but, in the course of two and a half years, became thoroughly anglicized in habits and speech.
I would no doubt have been surprised to know, at age seven, that her reign would last until I was almost seventy seven. Indeed, I would have been surprised to know I would live that long. I was a military brat, and thought that my destiny was to die gloriously in battle, after uttering some phrase that would later resound in history. The Queen was not known for stirring quotes, but this one seems very characteristic: "It’s worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change."
As I've noted before, with my advancing age, every year brings a larger number of contemporaries and admired or influential elders who have died. This year I won't try to make a comprehensive list; I'll stick to those who were most important to me, either because I knew them personally or found them especially impressive or influential. Besides the Queen, among those who were influential worldwide that we lost were Mikhail Gorbachev and Madeleine Albright. Although I'm not a soccer fan, I can't not mention Pelé.
F. Donald Logan was Martha's professor, mentor, and history major adviser at Emmanuel College. I got to know him when Martha and I visited Boston on several occasions, and enjoyed his hospitality, cooking, and love for Bailey's Irish Cream. He was a superb raconteur with a great depth of knowledge about medieval Europe, Church politics, and contemporary controversies. I enjoyed reading his The Vikings in History. Once, when I was attending a convention in Boston and Martha was unable to join me, Don let me stay in his Brookline apartment alone while he was on one of his annual trips to London, thereby saving my clients a hotel bill.
Clark Green schooled me in the fine art of church ushering during his term as Head Usher at Grace Church. Another Grace parishioner I will miss is the always delightful Shirley Baldwin. A neighbor missed by Martha, me, and many is Lesley Carter, a charming Scottish woman whom I would often encounter during my daily walks as she walked Bear, her massive and placid brown Labrador. Whenever we stopped to chat, Bear would attract kids who would shower him with attention, which he received gladly. I lost a Facebook friend whom I never met in the flesh, Walter William Milner, whose intelligence and wry English wit I'll never forget.
Among the ever dwindling roster of Lion's Head alumni, ones I will keenly miss are former co-owner Al Koblin (the Kettle of Fish, which Al mentions in the linked interview, later moved into the spot at 59 Christopher Street previously occupied by the Head), Cheryl Floyd, Jules Kohn, Marie Murphy, and Virginia Lucy Zox, known to all as "Sha", who served on the waitstaff and was a constant source of joy. She became a character in Head alum Robert Ward's novel The Stone Carrier. Thanks to friend Dermot McEvoy for keeping me, and many others, abreast of news concerning former Head regulars.
One writer lost last year with whom I was unfamiliar is Peter Straub, whose works are described in his linked New York Times obituary as "novels of terror, mystery and the supernatural" but who "insisted that his work transcended categorization". As he observed, "Adult human beings live with the certainty of grief, which deepens us and opens us to other people, who have been there, too." He was the father of Emma Straub, also a novelist, and the co-owner of Books Are Magic, which now has a location two blocks from where I live.
Now I'll turn to appreciations. As always, I must start with my wife, Martha Foley. For those who don't know, I fractured my left ankle on November 24, 2021. Since then I have had two surgeries and periods of rehabilitation, and now face a third surgery this coming Thursday, January 12. This has been a most trying period for Martha, who has had to do household chores and shopping that I would otherwise do, tend to my medical needs, and work for her clients as well as volunteering at the Brooklyn Women's Exchange. I'm hoping this coming surgery will resolve all remaining problems. My thanks to the physicians at NYU Langone Health, including Doctors Kenneth Egol, Pierre Saadeh, Mikel Sadek, and Mona Bashar, and the physicians' assistants, nurses, and technicians, who have provided me with the finest of care.
On to pleasant matters. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, and her partner, Drew Rodkey, have presented us with a granddaughter, Ada Xiomara Rodkey. They live in Chester, Pennsylvania, just south of Philadelphia, and we have enjoyed two visits, the most recent over Christmas. We're also grateful to Drew for the work he did on our apartment and furniture during their visit. We look forward to seeing them again soon.
Finally, thanks to all my friends and readers for your support and encouragement. I wish you all the best of everything for 2023.
Martha and I have been fans of the Repast Baroque Ensemble; indeed, have been friends of the musicians, for almost a decade. This video shows them performing Fuggi dolente core ("Flee broken heart"), a sonata by the seventeenth century Italian composer, Biagio Marini. The musicians are, clockwise on the video: Amelia Roosevelt, violin (she plays two parts, recorded separately and synced for the video); Sarah Stone, viola da gamba; Gabe Shuford, harpsichord; and Stephanie Corwin, bassoon. Ms. Corwin's husband, Joseph Di Ponio, did the superb editing.
Repast has had a recent change in its core musician roster. In order to devote time to environmental and climate matters Ms. Roosevelt has yielded her position as first violinist to the equally capable Natalie Kress. Amie will remain very active with Repast as its executive director.
We are eagerly anticipating Repast's next concert, "Dutch Masters: Painting and Music in the Early Baroque", on Saturday, January 28 at the McKinney Chapel of the First Unitarian Congregational Society, in Brooklyn Heights. It will also be held on Sunday, January 29 at 3:00 p.m. at the Manhattan Country School. It plays to my fascination with connections between music and the visual arts -- see here and here. It will feature an expanded musical line up, with parts for recorder, theorbo, and a second viola da gamba.
I first met Pete Hamill in 1994, at a Barnes & Noble bookstore on Fifth Avenue in Midtown. He was there signing copies of his newly published autobiography, A Drinking Life. I handed him my copy and said I had started drinking at the Lion's Head, a Greenwich Village saloon Pete had loved, about a year after he had quit drinking, and had gotten to know his brothers Denis and John there. He signed my book, "For Claude, who keeps the flame alive." There was a line behind me, so our conversation was necessarily brief.
I next saw him several years later, when he was in a panel discussion at Brooklyn Borough Hall on a topic I can't recall. When the talk ended, I went up to him, sure I would have to re-introduce myself. Before I could, he extended a hand and said, "Hello Claude, how are you?" I've mentioned this to several people who knew Pete well; the response was always to the effect of, "Yep, that's Pete."
Two years after our encounter at Barnes & Noble, the Lion's Head closed. Pete noted the occasion with a column in the New York Times, "A Whisky-Golden Time."He declined the opportunity to go there for the Head's final night farewell party, "because I didn't want to spend a night carousing with ghosts."
They would all be there, moving among the living, as if it were just another packed, dense night in the late 1960's. They would reach past shoulders for fresh drinks or curse some politician or wander to the big table in the back room where Tommy Clancy of the Clancy Brothers was singing, ''Castles are sacked in war, chieftains are scattered far/truth is a fixed star, Eileen Aroon . . .''
Pete, his brother John, and the Clancys are all gone now. I'm blessed to have known Pete and John, and cherish the memory of having, at the bar of the Lion's Head, sung a duet with Paddy Clancy without knowing who he was until I was told later. So I pass on to you, my reader, beannachtaí na féile Pádraig, "blessings of St. Patrick."
A year ago I did a separate post to show 2020 the door. I'm sure we can all agree that 2021 has, on balance, been less than delightful. There were many good things that happened, including in our neighborhood. Still, the emergence of Omicron, some severe weather disasters, and inflation driven by, in my view, a combination of manufacturers' misestimation of demand, supply chain problems largely caused by COVID, and concentration of economic power in some important industries, have made it a trying year indeed.
There are plenty of remembrances. Those most personal to me include Ron Jones, who was a valued mentor during my early years of law practice and a friend for years after; Wally Brewer, friend and fellow Grace Church parishioner; friend Leonard Ryan; and Martha's cousin and our friend Alice McFarlane.
2021 saw the passing of many people prominent in matters of government and statecraft; local, national and international. I remembered Colin Powell and Desmond Tutu on this blog. They were joined by F.W. de Klerk, Bob Dole, Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, Vernon Jordan, Walter Mondale, Harry Reid, George Shultz, and John Warner. Special mention goes to Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who, at the age of 26, successfully argued for appellant "Jane Roe" before the U.S. Supreme Court, and who went on to serve as a Texas legislator and, later, advisor to President Jimmy Carter, in which roles she continued to be an effective advocate for women's rights. There are others I've failed to mention, for which I trust you'll forgive me.
The literary world had its share of losses. Those the impact of which I feel most are novelist, essayist, and social critic Joan Didion, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (whom I once saw, bent over his manual typewriter, during a visit to his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco), and Larry McMurtry, realistic chronicler of the old and contemporary West.
Space exploration lost Michael Collins. As pilot of the Apollo 11 command module, "Iron Mike" remained aboard while crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the Lunar Excursion Module to the moon's surface and back.
Among baseball's losses were Hank Aaron, who broke Babe Ruth's long standing career home run record in 1974 and held it for thirty years; Jim "Mudcat" Grant, the first Black twenty game winning pitcher who enjoyed a post-baseball career as an R&B singer; and Tommy Lasorda, who began as a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and went on to manage the L.A. Dodgers for twenty years, winning four league championships and two World Series.
True to form in recent years, the Mets started hot but soon cooled off, again largely thanks to their injury proneness. Owner Steve Cohen, looking for a quick turnaround next season, said "Fie to you, luxury tax; I'll pay" and opened his wallet to acquire ace pitcher Max Scherzer. The Mets also have a new manager, veteran Buck Showalter, three time American League Manager of the Year: once with the Yankees (1994); once with the Rangers (2004), and once with the Orioles (2014). The best I can say now is, I'm cautiously optimistic.
As always, I must begin my list of appreciations with my wife, Martha Foley, now not just for her encouragement of and suggestions for my blogging, but also for her self sacrificing help as I recover, slowly but surely, from my ankle injury. I also thank our daughter, Liz, and her boyfriend, Drew Rodke, for summoning help to deal with my injury, caring for me for two days - including a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner - and driving me home to Brooklyn. Thanks to the physicians and nurses at Riddle Hospital in Media, Pennsylvania for stabilizing my fractures, and to the physicians, nurses, and physical therapists at NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital for surgery, post operative care, and therapy. Finally, thanks to all my friends, too numerous to mention individually, who have provided support and encouragement, either in person, on the phone, or in writing.
Yesterday was the 83rd birthday of the small coastal oil tanker Mary A. Whalen (photo above). She is owned by PortSide New York, a not for profit organization that has as its purpose to demonstrate "new ways to bring urban waterways to life."
PortSide threw a birthday party for Mary, with educational events, art and activities for kids.
Emma Garrison (photo above, holding a horseshoe crab), a graduate student in the School of Environmental and Earth Sciences at Queens College of the City University of New York, gave a lecture on marine life in the estuary that includes Mary's dock. Standing to Ms. Garrison's right (left in the photo) in a red shirt is Carolina Salguera, PortSide's founder and executive director.
Before Ms. Garrison began her talk, a large container was lowered over the ship's side down to the water's bottom. It was hauled up after some time, covered in muck and strands of seaweed. Crew members sorted through the mess, and came up with some interesting creatures.
Among them were several tunicates (photo above), "colony animals" (each spot on the surface is a separate animal) that filter their food from the water. Also found were some other tunicates called sea squirts, which were shaped like little bottles with mouths and, when squeezed, would squirt water, to the delight of the children watching.
Another creature found was this little Asian shore crab. Ms. Garrison said these arrived here in the ballast water of ships that came from Asian ports. The haul also included some marine worms, mussels, and an oyster.
After Ms. Garrison's lecture and demonstration, a woman who introduced herself as Cat, a librarian, did some songs accompanying herself on ukulele, and getting the assembled kids to join in. She then read some children's books, again inviting audience participation.
There were several other vessels docked ahead of Mary's berth. One of them was Cornell, a tug formerly owned by the Lehigh Valley Railroad and now preserved and used for excursions and training.
Although ship's cat Chiclet was named the official host of the party, she wisely remained in the cool of the warehouse adjoining the dock on a very warm afternoon.
I gave 2020 the bum's rush in my last post, but promised to follow up with my annual post offering remembrances of those lost the previous year, along with appreciations of those who have helped or inspired me. Here it is.
The year 2020 saw a grievous loss to the Hamill family, to Brooklyn, to New York City, to literature and journalism, and to the alumni of the Lion's Head, including me, in the deaths, in unseemly quick succession, of the brothers Pete Hamill and the much younger John Hamill. Pete had been in poor health for some years, so his death was not unexpected, but still felt deeply. I first met Pete in 1995, when I went to a midtown Barnes & Noble to buy a copy of his autobiography A Drinking Life and have it signed. As I handed him the book, I told him I'd started drinking at the Lion's Head about a year after he'd quit drinking, and that I knew his brothers John and Denis Hamill. This got a necessarily short conversation going - there were others in line to get their books signed - and Pete wrote in mine, "For Claude, who keeps the flame alive." About nine years later, having had no further personal contact with Pete. I saw that he would be on a panel discussion at Brooklyn Borough Hall, and I went because whatever they were discussing interested me and because Pete would be there. When the discussion ended, I went up to Pete, sure that I would have to re-introduce myself. Before I could say anything Pete held out his hand and said, "Claude, how are you?" I saw him again twice before he died. The first was at a memorial gathering for the late Lion's Head bartender Paul Schiffman, during which we had a longer conversation than we'd had at Barnes & Noble; one that left me laughing appreciatively. The last was at a panel discussion at the Brooklyn Historical Society (now the Center for Brooklyn History) about the Brooklyn Dodgers, roughly ten years ago. After this, he had to be helped off stage and put into a wheelchair. This done, I went to him and mentioned my name. He seemed to remember, and we simply exchanged best wishes.
I got to know John when he became a bartender at the Lion's Head. Mixology was just one of John's many talents. As his obituary notes, he was a reporter for the New York Daily News, as was brother Pete, who later became its editor. Brother Denis is a Daily News columnist. Like Denis, John was also a screenwriter, co-authoring two Hollywood screenplays. Despite his having opposed the war in Vietnam, John served there as a combat medic, was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and is credited with having saved the lives of at least two fellow soldiers.
John and I quickly became friends when he started his Lion's Head gig. We shared two loves: the Mets and Irish music. We also had similar views on social, political, and economic issues. (At the time I was probably more "conservative," which is to say "liberal" in the classical sense, on the economic stuff.) We lost touch for a while after John moved to California, but re-connected through Facebook, where we became avid readers of, and commenters on, each other's posts. Our last Facebook exchange was a few days before his death from COVID-19, which must have come quite quickly. Before I started writing this, I looked at his Facebook page, which is still lively with reminiscences by family and friends. It was there that I found the image that I put at the head of this post, the Irish toast, "May we be alive at this time next year." It was posted there by his friend Chris Tracy.
Along with the one-two punch of the deaths of the Hamill brothers, there was another death that hit me hard, that of Judy Dyble. Like that of Pete Hamill, hers was not entirely unexpected. In my Remembrances and appreciations, 2018 and '19 I told of how I had fallen in love with her voice in 1970, when I acquired the first Fairport Convention album, how we had met, if only electronically, in 2008, and how this blossomed into a trans-Atlantic Facebook friendship that led to my learning of her lung cancer diagnosis in 2019. We stayed in touch through the first half of 2020, with her delighting me with news of the British music scene, photos of her rescued greyhound Jessie, and zany recipes that usually culminated in a kitchen-destroying explosion. There were few mentions of medical problems; nothing that seemed immediately dire. In early July she posted that Jessie had gone for a visit to her daughter's; this should have been a warning. After a few days silence came the announcement of her death.Above is a video of Judy, with Songs from the Blue House, doing Joni Mitchell's "I Don't Know Where I Stand." This is the song she sang on Fairport's first album that made me fall in love with her voice. Many years later, that voice was still lovely.
In earlier posts I've noted, ruefully, that with advancing age each year brings increasing numbers of losses of family and friends, as well as of people I've admired in various realms, such as art, literature, music, theater, politics, and sports. 2020 unsurprisingly proved no exception to this sad rule. Certainly the most consequential loss was that of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I consider the loss of singer and songwriter John Prine, for the beauty, incisiveness, and influence of his writing and singing, very significant. Others from the music world I mourn are Bob Shane, the last surviving founding member of the Kingston Trio; Bonnie Pointer of the Pointer Sisters; Rush drummer Neil Peart; Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green; and bluegrass guitar ace Tony Rice. From showbiz, Sir Sean Connery left us shaken, if not stirred; Alex Trebek, game to the end, gave his final answer; and Terry Jones has made his last foray into medieval history. Baseball lost three great pitchers: Whitey Ford, the Yankees' "Chairman of the Board"; Cardinals' fireballer Bob Gibson; and Tom Seaver, "Tom Terrific" or "The Franchise" to long time Mets fans. Oh, yes; the Mets had a lousy season, but more about them in the "appreciations" below. Ailurophiles and existentialists mourned to loss of Henri, le Chat Noir.
In addition to the loss of the two Hamill brothers, the ranks of former Lion's Head regulars continued to be thinned. Those we mourn include jazz critic and "combative cultural gadfly" Stanley Crouch; Pulitzer winning journalist Jim Dwyer, poet Derek Mahon, and raconteurs par excellence Arthur Friedlander and Jerry Schindlinger. I'm sure to have missed a few; my apologies. My thanks to Dermot McEvoy for keeping us informed.
It was a very trying year for friend and fellow Robinson High alum Cheryle Cerezo-Gardiner, who had to witness the ravages of cancer on her oldest son, Martin Jacinto Cerezo, who finally succumbed in January.
On, now, to the positive side of this long screed. In my remembrances and appreciations for 2019 and 2018 I paid my respects to two women whose courage I had found inspiring: Jennifer Garam and Lauren Jonik. Both are still well and flourishing. As a cancer survivor, Jennifer recently had a check-up to assure the cancer was not recurring. Everything proved OK. I'm sorry to know that, with the onset of the pandemic, she decided to leave Brooklyn. I regret no longer having her as a neighbor, though even before COVID our face-to-face, as opposed to on line, encounters were rare. Perennial optimist that I am, I don't share her outlook for the city's future, though I realize some things will never be the same. In any event, I respect her reasons for leaving.
About those Mets: When Steve Cohen was announced as the new principal owner, I had some trepidation. I worried that, as a successful finance guy, he would assume he knew all he needed to know to get top performance from a baseball team, and would staff the baseball operations with sycophants. I was encouraged when he said he would make my fellow Harvard Law alum Sandy Alderson (we didn't overlap; I was class of 1970, he was of '76, but I got to meet him at an alumni gathering when he was the Mets' General Manager) as the team's President. During his tenure as GM (2010-18), which was cut short by a bout with cancer, many players who are mainstays of the current roster were acquired, and the Mets went to their fourth World Series (2015). I know little about Alderson's choice for GM, Jared Porter, but his record seems encouraging. I can't quibble with retaining Luis Rojas as manager; the Mets recent woes seem not to stem from inept field generalship but rather from uninspired, and sometimes inept, play. The trade that brought Francisco Lindor to the Mets has scribes wondering if this could make them at least divisional title contenders next season. As a long suffering Mets fan who once remarked on the team's "ability to rouse hopes, then smash them like cheap china," I'm leery of being too optimistic. Still, it's new ownership and management, and reason for hope. Update: Hardly had I written this than the news came out that Porter has been fired as GM after confessing to sending an "explicit" photo to a woman reporter several years ago. Trust the Mets to come up with some last minute drama.
There are many others I could praise for the encouragement they have given me along the way, including, as always, my wife, Martha Foley and my daughter, Cordelia Scales. (For those familiar with her as Elizabeth or Liz, she has decided to be known by her middle name. I think it's a fine name - ask Shakespeare - and I approve.)
Simon Dinnerstein painted The Fulbright Triptych (above) over a period of several years during and after living in Kassel, Germany on a Fulbright fellowship, studying print making. It is leaving its permanent home at the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University on loan to the McMullen Art Museum at Boston College, where it will be from September 8 through December 8. The McMullen Museum website says the Triptych will be on view starting Monday, September 9, but Mr. Dinnerstein's email says it will be open on Sunday, September 8 from noon until 5:00, and that he will give a talk about the painting at 3:00.
As the Museum's press release, linked above, points out, the Triptych
was produced in an era of postwar art [the early 1970s] when minimalism, video art, and and installation dominated the New York scene. At the time, figuration, and even painting itself were out of fashion.
Mr. Dinnerstein's email gives a link to "Triptychs and Temporality." an article, from the Journal of the National Academy of Art and Design, by Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Silver discusses the references to historical artistic styles and artists that appear in the Triptych, with illustrations that focus on details of the painting.
I had the pleasure of meeting Simon Dinnerstein twice. The first time was after he gave a talk about the Triptych at the Brooklyn Historical Society. The second was when, at the suggestion of my friend Louise Crawford, I visited his home and studio in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and took the photo shown above. The story of that visit, along with those of mine with six other artists over a two day span, is here.
If you're wondering what became of the baby held in her mother's lap in the left side panel of the Triptych, watch the video above.
This concert was on October 18, but the demands of remunerative work and of keeping the Brooklyn Heights Blog going have delayed my review. Nevertheless, I think it's still a useful exercise, as I want to do what I can to raise awareness of the work of the Repast Baroque Ensemble.
The Ensemble are, from left to right in the photo, Katie Rietman on cello, Gabe Shuford on harpsichord, Amelia Roosevelt on violin, and Stephanie Corwin on bassoon. Bassoon? If you're thinking this is a departure from the usual baroque chamber music lineup, you're right. The lineup can change from concert to concert. In this concert, Ms. Rietman was allowed a break and her place taken temporarily by Sarah Stone, who played a viola da gamba, or viol, an instrument roughly the size of a cello that originated in the fifteenth century. Also, Ms. Roosevelt was joined on violin by Beth Wenstrom.
The theme of the concert was an examination of Baroque era French and German composers' reactions to music of other cultures. The first part featured works by French composers that reflect what Ms. Roosevelt called "the French fascination with the distant and exotic." The first piece was Jean-Baptiste Lully's "March for the Celebration of the Turks," from the comédie-ballet (a play with sung and danced interludes) Lully co-wrote with Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. The plot concerns a social climber who is convinced by a con artist that he can arrange a marriage of the victim's daughter to a Turkish prince. My notes on the piece, hastily scribbled on the concert program, are "Stately; European." The music didn't sound to me to be especially Turkish; still, the Turks were something of a European power, and aspired to be a greater one, at the time. You can hear it here, as part of a scene in the movie Tous les matins du monde, and decide for yourself. Repast's ensemble was much smaller than that seen in the movie clip, but played the piece with authority.
The second piece was Jean-Philippe Rameau's Timbourin en Rondeau, part of an Opera-Ballet, Les fêtes d'Hébé, that is based on Greek mythology. The Timbourin, nevertheless, seems influenced by Native American music. It provided an opportunity for Mr. Shuford to leave his keyboard and show his skill at playing a hand drum. This was followed by another Rameau composition, Air tendre, from his opera Dardanus, also on a Greek mythological theme. This was done as a duet between Ms. Corwin's bassoon and Ms. Roosevelt's violin; my note was, "Interesting counterpoint."
Two more French pieces finished the concert's first half. Jean-Pierre Guignon's Les Sauvages is a duet for two violins which Ms. Roosevelt and Ms. Wenstrom played with alacrity. My notes: "Swooping at first, then frenetic, wild, but with dreamy interludes." Then came another Rameau: Pièce de clavecin en concert No. 3, in A Major, for harpsichord, violin, and viola da gamba. This was in three movements. For the first, La Lapopliniere, my notes were "Bouncy; lilting." For the second, La Timide, they were "Anxious; then aspiring, optimistic." The third, Les Timbourins, was "Stirring."
The second part of the concert focused on the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann's fascination with Polish music. The concert's printed program included several quotations from Steven Zohn's Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann's Instrumental Works (Oxford University Press, 2015, Chapter 9). Visiting Poland, Telemann was impressed by music of "true barbaric beauty." In his autobiography, he wrote:
Suffice it to say that there is much in this music that is good, if it is handled properly. Since this time I have written various large concertos and trios in this style, clothing them in Italian dress with alternating Adagios and Allegros.
The first Telemann piece was his Duo for Two Flutes in E Minor, TWV40:142, performed with alacrity as a violin duet by Ms. Roosevelt and Ms. Wenstrom. My note for the first movement, Piacevole, is "Sorrowful"; for the second, Andante, it's "Graceful"; and for the third, Scherzando, it's "Danceable." Repast's concerts typically include a piece that allows Mr. Shuford to escape the relative anonymity of providing continuo and to showcase his keyboard virtuosity. The second Telemann piece, Ouverture Burlesque for solo harpsichord, TWV32:2, provided this opportunity, and Mr. Shuford responded masterfully. My note: "Also danceable but courtly, then livelier and playful."
The third piece, ConcertoPolonoise in B-flat Major, TWV43:B3, has four movements. The first, Polonoise, elicited another "Playful"; the second, Allegro, "Loping, swings"; the third, Largo, "Soulful"; and the final, another Allegro, "Peppy, rocks!"
The concert concluded with Telemann's Chaconne Comique in A Major, TWV21:8, from his comic opera Der neumodische Liebhaber Damon ("The Newfangled Lover Damon"). My note on this was, simply, "Delightful."
Repast's next concerts will be in March of 2019. The theme will be Wanderlust, "explor[ing] the German fascination with nature and escapism, with inspired repertoire from the early Baroque as well as the early romantic periods." On Thursday evening, March 14 at 8:00 they will be at McKinney Chapel, First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn; you may buy tickets here; on Friday evening, March 15 at 8:00 they will be at Advent Lutheran Church, 2504 Broadway, in Manhattan; you may buy tickets here.
Oil tankers don't, as a rule, survive for eighty years. The giants that haul crude from oil fields to refineries are reckoned to have a useful life of about twenty years, maybe thirty tops. This isn't about one of those.
The Mary A. Whalen was launched in 1938 at the Red Hook, Brooklyn shipyard of Ira S. Bushey & Sons, as the S.T. Kiddoo. (Mr. Kiddoo was a vice president of Fairbanks Morse; the ship has a Fairbanks Morse engine.) She is all of 172 feet long, and served to haul refined products on coastal routes between New York and New England, as well as carrying bunker fuel to ships in New York Harbor. In 1958, when she was converted from carrying gasoline to carrying fuel oil for home heating or for ship bunkering, her name was changed to Mary A. Whalen. An old maritime superstition has it that changing a ship's name brings bad luck. Mary had bad luck on Christmas day, 1968 when she went aground off the Rockaways. This led to a Supreme Court decision that had considerable effect on maritime law.
Mary was taken out of service in 1994. Instead of going for scrap, she was bought by a maritime services firm that used her as a dock and office. In 2006 she was acquired by PortSide New York a not-for-profit organization headed by my friend Carolina Salguera (photo above). PortSide fixed Mary up, secured a berth for her near her Red Hook birthplace, and in 2011 succeeded in having her listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
For Mary's eightieth birthday, PortSide invited artists aboard. I found Janice McDonnell (photo above) working on a painting of the giant gantry cranes that load and unload container ships at the Red Hook Container Port, a last vestige of ocean going cargo shipping in New York City, almost all of which has moved to New Jersey, and whose demise has ben predicted for some time but which, so far, has survived.
For an account of an earlier party on the Mary A. Whalen, featuring folk music, see here
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