Remembering George Kimball, Part 2, and re-encountering Niall Toibin

I've confessed in an earlier post that I wish I had gotten to know George Kimball better. Wednesday evening, I felt like I had, by dint of attending a memorial gathering for George in the ballroom of the old Edison Hotel near Times Square (the Edison was chosen, I'm told, because George was frequently there when it served as headquarters for the New York State Boxing Commission). During the course of an hour and a half, I heard recollections of George's life and wit, and selections from his writing, from family members, including his ninety year old mother, Dr. Sue Kimball, whose mellifluous Southern voice (I hadn't known of George's Dixie heritage on the distaff side) was sure and full as she recounted a childhood and youth marked by precocity and portents, as well as from fellow writers and other friends. Among the journalists who shared memories of their beloved colleague was Pete Hamill, who said he and George had met while fellow students at "the University of the Lion's Head."

One person I was surprised and delighted to find paying spoken tribute to George was the great Irish actor Niall Toibin, whom I had the pleasure, through the good offices of our mutual friend Jack Deacy, to meet while I was on vacation in Dublin in 1989. At the time, Niall was playing the part of the older, narrator Brendan Behan in Borstal Boy, Frank McMahon's dramatic adaptation of Behan's autobiographical novel, at the Gaiety Theater in Dublin. (He is doing a reprise of that part in the video clip above.) After I bought a ticket, a phone call to Niall's home and the invocation of Jack's name got me an invitation to join him backstage after the play for a drink, in the course of which we talked about Behan, the Irish theater, and friends and places we shared in New York. After the ceremonies for George, I approached Niall and renewed our acquaintance, and also met his daughter.

Along with the spoken reminiscences there was a slide show spanning George's life, and a video of a speech he gave while running for sheriff (unsuccessfully: the Lion's Head knew its share of quixotic political aspirants, including George, Norman Mailer, and Kinky Friedman) in Lawrence, Kansas. There was also music. First came a recording of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels, good friend of my late friend Cicely Nichols, doing a song that included the repeated line, "Love is like a lizard/ Nibbling at your gizzard." Next Tom Paxton took the stage and sang "Comedians and Angels", his reminiscence of old Lion's Head friends, which he followed with the Irish lament, "The Parting Glass".

Then another Head veteran, composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, and raconteur, as well as recently minted octogenarian (an event he celebrated at the Bowery Poetry Club with George and his wife in attendance; see the clip above) David Amram, on piano, played a duet arrangement of Gershwin's "Summertime" with the superb young trumpeter Nabaté Isles (who doubles as a sportswriter). For the final number, David was joined by Tom Paxton, and they did an eye-misting guitar and flute rendition of "Wild Mountain Thyme" ("Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?").

Many thanks to George's family and friends for a heart-warming evening.

The New York Times' Homeric nod.

This just in from the Gray Lady:

President Obama and his Russian counterpart, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, have broken through a logjam in their arms control negotiations and expect to sign a new treaty slashing American and Russian nuclear arsenals in Prague next month, officials from both nations said Wednesday.

Russia and the U.S. both maintain nuclear arsenals in Prague? Does Vaclav Klaus know about this?

Is AOL News the on-line National Enquirer?

Consider some of today's top stories:

Ex-astronaut claims government cover-up of truth about UFOs.

Florida woman attacked by wild hog.

Stripper assaulted with stiletto heel.

Bare-chested Barack.

Kaddish for the New York Sun.

As someone born on the leading edge of the baby boom, I've found myself having to say farewell to many of the people I admired in my childhood, youth, and even younger adulthood, of late. This year, to give several examples, I've mourned the passing of Bo Diddley, Erik Darling, John Stewart, Paul Newman, and my friend Cicely Nichols. Today, though, I'm grieving for a newspaper. The New York Sun existed for just over six years, and I've been a subscriber only for the last year and a half. The Sun was intended to fill a niche in New York journalism that has remained empty since the demise of the World Journal Tribune, that of an upscale, broadsheet "conservative" paper. I put "conservative" in quotation marks because, as I've written here before, in the footnote (below the addenda) to this post, it is a term that no longer has a clear meaning (as is also true of "liberal"). Indeed, the conservatism of the Sun was of a different cloth than that of the old WJT. Moreover, unlike the WJT and the Times, it made no pretense that its news articles were "objective", as opposed to its editorial and opinion columns. "Fair and balanced" it was not, nor did it aspire to be.

I disagreed, sometimes vehemently, with much of what I read in the Sun. Nevertheless, I was always happy to see it at my doorstep. (Was it just my imagination that the delivery person usually put it down to the right of my copy of the Times?) I liked to read it because it challenged my thinking on some issues, and inspired me to hone my arguments. I'll always be grateful to Amity Shlaes for adding Pigovian tax to my vocabulary, and in John McWhorter I found someone I could agree with more often than not, and who brought to issues like the "war on drugs" perspectives that were new to me. I'll also miss the trenchant baseball analysis of Tim Marchman, and coverage of the arts that was, in my view, second to none. Among the last, I was especially fond of the essays on art and architectural history by fellow Brooklynite Francis Morrone. I hope all of these writers quickly find other venues for their work, and thank Seth Lipsky and his team for a fine run.