The Green Mountain Boys

Vermont, despite its place on the map, was not one of the original thirteen colonies. It was a sliver of territory lying west of New Hampshire (from which it was separated by the Connecticut River), north of Massachusetts, and east of Lake Champlain, to the west of which lay northern New York. It had been claimed by France, though never extensively settled apart from a few forts, and was surrendered to the British, along with Quebec, in the Treaty of Paris (1763) which concluded the Seven Years' War (better known here as the French and Indian War).

Shortly after the cession of Vermont by the French, Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire began giving land grants there to settlers. King George III had a different plan. He decided to place the boundary between New Hampshire and New York at the Connecticut River, thereby giving Vermont (or, as the beneficiaries of Wentworth's munificence called it, the "New Hampshire Grants") to New York. Some of the Wentworth grantees, led by the brothers Ethan, Ira and Levi Allen, along with Seth Warner and Remember Baker, formed a militia called the Green Mountain Boys that prevented New York grantees from settling in the territory.

When hostilities between the colonists and Great Britain began in 1775, the Green Mountain Boys joined the rebel side and, along with Colonel Benedict Arnold from Connecticut, captured the British forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point on the New York side of Lake Champlain. Later, there was a schism between Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, which led to Warner's heading the Vermont Militia and Allen leading a rump group of Green Mountain Boys in an unsuccessful attempt to take Montreal.* Allen and his contingent were captured and held prisoner by the British.**

In January of 1777, Vermont declared itself an independent republic, though allied with the colonies in the fight against the Crown. In August of that year, Warner's militia played an important role in the Battle of Bennington, in which the British General Burgoyne's forces, marching south from Quebec in an effort to split the northern from the southern colonies, suffered heavy losses that contributed to their later defeat at Saratoga, considered to be the turning point of the war. Vermont gave up its independence and became the fourteenth state in 1791.

While the song in the video above is billed as a "Revolutionary War song", in my opinion it is of much more recent provenance. Still, I like it.

__________

*This was the first attempt by forces from what is now the U.S. (actually, the Green Mountain Boys had earlier briefly held St. John, Quebec, but quickly retreated when British troops approached) to invade what is now Canada; another happened during the War of 1812. Both times, we got whupped. I was amused to read, some years ago, that in the 1920s a group of Canadian military officers took what was billed as a good will tour of U.S. military installations, during which they drew up secret plans for an invasion. The initial thrust was to capture and hold what they called the "Albany salient." Little did they realize that any army compelled to occupy and defend Albany is an army liable to mutiny en masse.

**One of those who accompanied Allen, but who either evaded capture, escaped, or was released, was one of the more colorful minor characters in early U.S. history, Matthew Lyon. A native of County Wicklow, Ireland, he was an early settler in the New Hampshire Grants, and formed a unit of what became the Green Mountain Boys. During the course of the war, he was court martialed by General Horatio Gates for cowardice and, as punishment, made to carry a wooden sword. Despite this, he later had the distinction of serving in Congress from two states, Vermont (1797-1801) and Kentucky (1803-1811), and after that unsuccessfully tried to become a delegate from the Arkansas Territory. In 1798 he became the first person to be convicted under the alien and sedition laws, for publishing letters opposing President Adams' policies with respect to France, and was re-elected to Congress while in jail. He was also the first member of Congress to be charged with an ethics violation, accused of "indecency" for expectorating in the face of a fellow Congressman (this earned him the nickname "The Spitting Lyon"), but was exonerated. Lyon's one great contribution to history was casting the deciding vote for Jefferson when the presidential election of 1800 went to the House.

iPod Log 8: a long morning walk.

Kayaks in the East River off Brooklyn Bridge Park.

My work schedule and other duties have kept me from doing the long version of my morning walk for some time. I was able to do it again a couple of weeks ago; below is the list of songs I heard (with links to videos, where available), and some photos I took along the way.

Neil Young, "Like a Hurricane". One of my favorite rock songs of all time. Hear it here.

Scott Joplin, "The Cascades", (New England  Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, Gunther Schuller, cond.) Video, by the h2 Quartet, here

Flowerpots, Columbia Heights, Brooklyn.

Lightnin' Hopkins, "I'm Wit' It". Hear it here.

James Brown, "Chonnie-On-Chon". From Roots of a Revolution, Polydor's great collection of his early stuff recorded at King Studios in Cincinnati. Listen here.

Crossing Brooklyn Bridge.

Ruth Brown, "5-10-15 Hours". Hear it here.

Tee shirts for sale, Brooklyn Bridge.

Sibelius, Karelia Suite, Op. 11, 3rd movement, alla marcia (Helsinki Radio Orchestra, Okku Kamu cond.) Listen to the same piece by the London Philharmonic, Sir Charles Mackerras conducting, here.

Civic Fame, the Adolph A. Weinman statue atop McKim Mead & White's 1914 Municipal Building. Her backside faces the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon". In 1978 I adopted a young street cat and named her for this song. Original recording, with still photo montage, here.

I was distressed to find the Brooklyn Bridge cactus bisected. Still, the surviving parts seem healthy. This is one tough succulent.

Marshall Tucker Band, "Heard it in a Love Song". Hear it here.

The Drifters, "This Magic Moment". One of my favorite R&B songs of all time. Listen here.

Entering City Hall Park.

Rod Stewart, "Reason to Believe". From Every Picture Tells a Story, in my opinion one of the top five or so greatest rock albums ever. Video of live performance here.

Dave & Ansel Collins, "Double Barrel". Sizzling reggae from the expanded version of the great The Harder They Come CD. Live performance video here.

The Cary Building, one of my favorites of the surviving old commercial buildings of lower Manhattan.

Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line". Live performance video, with history lesson, here.

Stevie Wonder, "Living for the City". Live performance video here.

The new One World Trade Center (David Childs, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) rises in the background.

The Byrds, "Bugler".  One of my favorite rock groups ever, here with a mellow country sound. Hear it here.

Teardrop Park, in Battery Park City, designed by Michael Van Valkenberg, who also designed Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Tom Russell Band, "Gallo del Cielo". Thrilling, and like many Mexican and Mexican-inspired songs, tragic. Video with photo montage and live performance audio here.

Sailboats on the Hudson, seen from Battery Park City. Jersey City is in the background.

Grateful Dead, "Ripple". This song perhaps best exemplifies what one critic called the Dead's "patchouli oil philosophy", but I still like it. Live performance video here.

Washingtonia palm trees inside the Winter Garden, World Financial Center.

Sue Foley, "Bad Luck Woman". A Canadian blues singer. Yes. Unfortunately, there's no video of this song, but here she is doing "Truckin' Little Woman".

Coming down off the bridge over West Street, approaching the World Trade Center site.

Rusty & Doug, "Louisiana Man". Sounds just like crawfish étouffée tastes. Hear it here.

As I head back to Brooklyn, a tug approaches the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Band, "Long Black Veil". Live performance video here.

Bruce Springsteen, "Open All Night". Live performance audio with photo montage here.

A Honeymooners line welcomes me back to the Borough of Cherce.

Fleetwood Mac, "Station Man". From Kiln House, a post Peter Green and pre Buckingham-Nicks album that critics drubbed but I love. Hear it here.

Fleetwood Mac, "Buddy's Song". From the same album; the best Buddy Holly song he didn't write (and never heard). You can hear it here.

The Manhattan Bridge, seen from Washington Street in DUMBO, a Brooklyn neighborhood the name of which is an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass."

Carole King, "Smackwater Jack" (live version). a bonus track from the Tapestry CD. Video of a different live performance (BBC) here.

A phone call to my wife resulted in a stop at Almondine for croissants.

The Byrds, "Renaissance Fair". Audio of live performance at 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with still photo here.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Jacksonville Kid" (aka "Honky Tonk Night Time Man"). A live bonus track from the Street Survivors CD. Audio of studio version here.

On the home stretch: the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, "Everybody's Boppin'". Annie Ross was a regular at the Lion's Head. Audio of the original recording, with a still of the album cover here. A fitting finish.

A small victory in the apostrophe wars.

Here's the original version, along with my rant (which made me, in Stephen Fry's eyes, a loser).

Yes, I think the old sign was prettier than the new one, except for that egregious grammatical error.

I missed Bloomsday, but it's never too late for Finnegan's Wake.

So, the sixteenth of June passed, and unlike last year I did not go to the Ulysses' Folk House and do a reading; I didn't even have a glass of Burgundy and a gorgonzola cheese sandwich.

By way of penance I'm here paying tribute to James Joyce's other massive novel, Finnegan's Wake, which I will let the Clancy Brothers explain in their delightful way in the video above, for which I thank Vlikavec, who has a superb collection of Clancys videos on his channel.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: why I'm mourning the death of a law firm, part 2.

This is a continuation of the story that begins here.

When I returned to LeBoeuf in 1973 from my Army stint, the firm had grown modestly, to about 45 lawyers. While I had spent most of my first year working on public utility matters, I now found myself called on to work in different areas of practice. The firm was not departmentalized, so an associate like me could be assigned tasks in various fields. One of these, to my delight as a ship buff, was maritime law. I had to learn the intricacies of charter parties, which is what contracts to charter ships are called, including such concepts as demurrage and laytime, and, when the client decided to build its own fleet of tankers, I worked on drafting and negotiating the shipyard construction contract and the operating contract with an experienced ship owner that would supply officers and crews.

I also began to get assignments in what had become the firm's second major practice area: insurance. Our clients were London based insurers whose operations in the U.S. were mostly in what's called the excess or surplus lines market, in which unlicensed insurers could write business--typically large or unusual risks--that couldn't be placed with licensed carriers, and in reinsurance. My mentor in this area was Donald J. Greene, then a rising younger partner but later to become the firm's chairman and a "name" partner. Early on, I got an assignment from Don and wrote a memo, which I gave to his secretary. The next day she called: "Mr. Greene wants to see you in his office." "Close the door," he said as I entered. My memo was prominently centered on his desktop, which typically looked like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier after all the planes had gone on a mission. The memo had prominent red marks. "Sit down." He then told me how, in the course of his Jesuit education, he had asked whether a Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or such who lived an exemplary life was still condemned to hell for not being Christian. The answer he was given was "No," provided that person was completely unaware of Christian teaching. This, he said, was called the Doctrine of Invincible Ignorance, and my memo demonstrated it.

Despite this, Don evidently saw some redeeming virtue in my work, as I became a recipient of his "fun, travel, and adventure" talk.

Claude, I'd like for you to do more work for our [insurance clients]. This work will be challenging, and will involve a great deal of travel, some of it on short notice. You're a bachelor, right?...Good. Please make sure your passport is up-to-date and keep it handy.

Over the next several years I did a fair amount of traveling, none of which required a passport. I was assigned to keep track of legislative and regulatory developments in the Southwest Zone of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which involved trips to Austin, Cheyenne, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, and Omaha.  On one occasion, the associate assigned to the Northeast Zone had a schedule conflict and I was sent to an NAIC meeting in Baltimore. After one day, the junior partner who accompanied me said, "I can't take this any longer; give me a report when you come back Wednesday." That evening, sitting at the Hilton's bar, I got into conversation with Fred, the CEO of a Miami based insurance company. A man about my age came up to him and said, "Fred, the desk won't let the girls in without escorts." Fred looked at me and, in his best CEO voice, said "Come!" I went. Outside the door were three women with teased hair, wearing scanty tops, tight fitting pants, and stiletto heels, shivering slightly in the evening chill. We each took one by the arm, and walked them through the lobby, past the glowering desk clerk and concierge, to the elevators. We rode up to the top floor, where Fred had a deluxe suite. Inside were two state insurance commissioners, one accompanied by his wife, several other state insurance department officials, and some of Fred's junior execs. One of the commissioners asked me who I was. "I'm Claude Smith; I'm with Allstate," I answered. He said, "I have a real problem with that." Fred paid one of the women fifty dollars to remove her top and bra. He later paid another one hundred to undress completely; this prompted the commissioner with wife to bid goodnight. The naked woman then went around the room, perching on each man's lap in turn. Afterward, she gave her opinion of each of us. My diagnosis: "This one's scared of pussy." I finished my drink, thanked Fred for his hospitality, and went to my room, alone.

The partner in charge of the insurance practice was Keith Brown, a portly man with carefully coiffed silver hair, who cultivated something of an air of mystery. He occasionally drove his secretary, Mildred, to tears. When this happened, he would excuse himself, then return a few minutes later with a small bottle of perfume which he would put on her desk with a curt "Here!" One day in the spring of 1975, I was walking past Keith's office and heard "Claude, please come in." As I entered, "Close the door." ("Oh, shit," I thought.) "What are you doing tomorrow?" "Nothing, " I said. I had work to do, but no meetings or deadlines. "Good," he said.  He told me to take the noon shuttle to Washington, get a cab to the river entrance to the Pentagon, go to the reception desk, identify myself and who I represented, and say I had an appointment with a certain lawyer in the Department of the Air Force. A guard would be assigned to escort me to this lawyer's office. Once there, I was to ask the lawyer to tell me everything he could about the contingency plans for the evacuation of Saigon and, in particular, whether the Civil Reserve Air Fleet would be mobilized, which meant that many civilian airliners would be commandeered by the military and taken into a war zone. This was of great concern to some of our insurance clients, who had written war risk coverage on these airliners. I figured I had just been sent on the biggest wild goose chase in the history of the firm. (Pentagon photo: en.wikipedia.org)

The following day everything went as planned until I got to the Pentagon reception desk. After I had identified myself, my firm, and our clients, no guard was summoned. I was told, "Go down the corridor with the entrance to your right until you get to the third ring, then turn left, and it's the fourth door on your right." Once I got there, I was greeted cordially by the Air Force lawyer. "Any plans to use the CRAF?"  I asked. "No, it's going to be all military." I thanked him, flew back to New York, and drafted a Telex (how we sent instantaneous written communications in those days, though fax was beginning to catch on) to London. The Telex, no doubt, was intercepted and read by both the CIA and the KGB.

Around that time the firm moved from One Chase across Nassau Street to 140 Broadway (photo LoopNet), now the Brown Brothers Harriman Building. (Shortly after we moved, a senior executive of our biggest client asked a receptionist for directions to the men's room. Her answer: "I don't know; I never use it." Her redemption was marriage to an associate who later became a partner.)  My office mate in our new quarters was Charlie McCrann. Charlie and I had been friends for two years. We were bachelor neighbors in Greenwich Village and often met in the evening for beers at neighborhood bars. We had different backgrounds. I had been a military brat who moved around a lot during my childhood, and went to a public high school and a state university before Harvard Law. Charlie grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of a stockbroker, prepped at Lawrenceville, then went to Princeton and Yale Law. He looked like Warren Beatty. I didn't. I yearned for WASP princesses. Charlie could have, and had had, his fill of such, so he longed for secretaries with outer borough accents. (He would later marry a beautiful Haitian woman.)

One particular in which we were very different was this: Charlie was determined to keep his work life and his social life separate. I was, along with a few other associates, a rare exception he allowed to this rule. Several times when Charlie and I were out drinking together, I spotted someone else from the firm entering the bar. His reaction was always, "We've got to get out of here, now!"  I was the opposite. I loved to mix people from different parts of my life together. I threw parties in my Village apartment to which I'd invite friends from the firm, law school classmates, and various characters I'd met at the Bells of Hell or the Lion's Head. At one of these, I looked across the room and saw a LeBoeuf partner sharing a joint with the members of a punk rock band.

Charlie was a movie buff. He had been president of the Yale Law School Film Society. While we worked at LeBoeuf, he took evening film classes at New York University (I was sworn to secrecy about this). We both left the firm at about the same time (late 1977), I to a utility company client in the suburbs (I reverse commuted from the Village) and Charlie to be legislative counsel to the chairman of the New York State Assembly's Insurance Committee. His job allowed him about six months off each year when the legislature wasn't in session, during which time in 1978 he took a feature length horror film script he had written as an NYU class project, in which almost all of the characters have the names of LeBoeuf lawyers, and turned it into a real movie. The plot was based on the paraquat scare of a few years previous. A group of hippies growing marijuana in a remote clearing in a national forest kill two federal agents who try to bust them. The feds then hire a cropduster to dump an as yet untested, highly toxic herbicide, Dromax, on their crop. The plane arrives just as the hippies are frantically harvesting, they get covered with Dromax, and are transformed into blood craving zombies who go on a murderous rampage.

Most of the cast and crew were recruited through ads in the Village Voice, though a few parts were given to Bells of Hell denizens, including me. Charlie pulled off a coup in getting John Amplas, who had played the title role in Pittsburgh goremeister George Romero's 1978 hemophagic thriller Martin, to play a federal agent (not one of those who get offed at the beginning). Aided by a New York State arts grant (the application described the project as a film about the dangers of herbicides), Charlie was able to hire top notch camera, sound, and special effects people, and to commission appropriately eerie music by Ted Shapiro. Most of the film was shot at locations close to the country house of a couple who were Bells regulars. It was in the wilds of north central Pennsylvania; to get there, you passed a sign that read "Welcome to Potter County, God's Country".

Charlie's working title was Forest of Fear. The distributor he convinced to handle the movie in the domestic market thought that sounded too much like an arty Japanese film, and changed it to Bloodeaters--Butchers of the Damned. Under that title, it played drive-ins and movie houses across the nation. Another distributor later acquired the rights to make it into a VHS tape (and later DVD) with the title Toxic Zombies; in the 1980s it played under that title on the USA Cable network. Charlie and I, and several other cast members (Charlie played the lead role, a forest ranger, as well as producing and directing) went to the East Coast premiere of Bloodeaters at the Twin Pine Drive-In on the outskirts of Waterbury, Connecticut. After the movie we went to the concession stand and were mobbed by local teens asking for our autographs (I can say this has happened once in my life). We were then feted at a party at what may have been Waterbury's classiest discotheque.

Here is the trailer for Bloodeaters:



Here's a favorable (!) review of the movie. Charlie's photo is next to the first paragraph; the photo on the wall is of Beverly Shapiro, who played his wife, Polly. During the scene from which this still was taken, Charlie opens a pressboard binder enclosing a thick sheaf of paper, supposedly weather statistics. It's actually the LeBoeuf fifty state excess and surplus lines law survey. The photo next to the third paragraph shows an especially clever bit of special effects gore involving a barbecue glove, a pig's foot, a wristwatch, a turkey baster, and stage blood (clear Karo syrup with red food coloring).

There will be a part three to the LeBoeuf saga. Can you stand it?

Update: It's here.

Second update: A few years ago Toxic Zombies was revived in Italy as Il ritorno degli zombi. You can see it here. I sound good dubbed in Italian.

Count Basie and Jackie Wilson cover Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love".

A little over a year ago, I posted a clip of Count Basie and Jackie Wilson, great jazz and R&B artists, respectively, doing the Stevie Wonder Motown classic "Uptight". Unfortunately, that video clip is no longer available, but I was glad to find the clip above, evidently from the same recording series, of Jackie and the Count covering what, in my opinion, is one of the best R&B ballads ever, "For Your Precious Love".
  Here's the original, by Jerry "The Ice Man" Butler. Much as I'm a fan of both Basie and Wilson, I still prefer Butler's understated yet emotionally intense delivery of this song, with its subtle accompaniment:  guitar, bass, very quiet snare, and soft harmony vocals. Still it's good to have both. What do you think?

About the annoying pop-up ads on this blog; or, how to get rid of Text-Enhance/DealPly

You may have noticed, as I just did, that certain words in my posts are being highlighted--not the ones I've highlighted as links--and that, when you mouse over these words, ads pop up. I didn't, at least not knowingly, authorize this, and I'm trying to find out how to get rid of it. Sorry for the distraction.

Update: It seems the problem was an extension, which I never knowingly added, to my Chrome browser, called Text-Enhance. Unless you had this on your browser, you wouldn't have seen the highlighted and underlined words (links that I put in are highlighted but not underlined) in my blog posts, and wouldn't get the pop-up ads. If you are seeing these things on my blog or on any website you visit, follow these directions to get rid of the malware that has attached itself to your browser. When you see the list of extensions on your browser, it may not include Text-Enhance, but it may show as DealPly. I hasten to add: there is no malware in this blog, and visiting it is perfectly safe.

Santana sits 'em down for the Mets.

It only took them fifty seasons, but the Mets finally got a no-hitter. They got it off the arm of their ace, Johan Santana, who has had a rocky start this season coming off shoulder surgery. The eight runs scored by Santana's teammates called into question the notion that he doesn't get run support. That he and the team got it against the Cardinals, a strong contender in the NL Central, makes it doubly impressive.

Typically for the Mets, it wasn't without drama. Santana came within inches of losing it in the sixth, when a long drive down the left field line was, in what I'm sure in the eyes of most Cards fans was an example of "home cooking", called foul. That the drive came off the bat of Carlos Beltran, who subsequently grounded out, casts doubt on the "curse of the ex-Met" theory. Photo: Wikipedia.

Goodbye, Doc Watson

I had the pleasure of taking in a performance by Doc Watson some years ago in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. Doc died today at 89, not long after another titan of the traditional country scene, Earl Scruggs, with whom Doc sometimes performed. In the clip above, thanks to Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, he does "Tennessee Stud", a song I first heard him perform on Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: the inevitable happens.

As anyone following the story knows by now, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP filed for bankruptcy early today. The New York Times story notes that the merger of the former Dewey Ballantine with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP happened just before the financial collapse of 2008. Before the merger, LeBoeuf, under Steve Davis's leadership, had been aggressive in recruiting partners laterally from other firms, and Dewey had taken on debt. According to the Times:

Even as [post-merger] Dewey’s performance flagged, the firm doled out lavish multiyear, multimillion-dollar guarantees to its top partners and star recruits. The guarantees — there were about 100, with several over $5 million a year — created compensation obligations that the firm could not meet.

That what should have been evidently risky behavior continued after financial market turmoil, along with other, more gradual changes in the market for legal services, such as the tendency of corporations to take more legal work in-house to save costs, reduced the firm's revenue, points to a parallel between Dewey and J.P Morgan Chase. In both instances, there seems to have been a tendency to "double down" rather than to accept what may have been a manageable loss. I'll be writing more about the J.P. Morgan debacle soon.

This is not the promised second installment of my reminiscences about the LeBoeuf that was. That we be along soon; I hope by this coming weekend. Please stay tuned.

Prison blues: Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons

On my way home this evening, my iPod, on random shuffle, played "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, then followed it with...


...a heart-tugging cover of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home" by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Donna Summer, 1948-2012

I hated disco when it dominated the party scene and the airwaves in the mid to late 1970s. Now that it's wrapped in the warm blanket of nostalgia, my feelings have mellowed. And I always made an exception for this lady with the powerful voice. Thanks to Rael1964 for this live performance clip.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: why I'm mourning the death of a law firm, part 1.

"You're part of the legend." That's what another lawyer I had just met, who had formerly been a partner in the firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP, arriving there long after I'd left, said. I didn't ask what the legend was. From the perspective of a 21st century megafirm, the firm with which I started my career in 1970, then called LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, must have seemed a legend, though perhaps more like Fiddler's Green than Camelot.

My first contact with LeBoeuf was an interview in Cambridge during the fall of 1969. After I introduced myself to the partner and associate conducting the interview, the partner's first question was if I knew a woman in my class who had done a summer clerkship at the firm that year.

"Know her? I've only been hopelessly infatuated with her for the past two years. Why else would I have signed up to interview with a little known firm in a city I haven't seriously considered as a destination?", I thought.

"Yes," I said. As I gave my flat affirmation, my eyes and the partner's made meaningful contact. Knowing we shared an affection, we became simpatico. The rest of the interview was pro forma. By such ephemera are the course of a life shaped. A few days later, I got a letter inviting me to further interviews in New York.

(The woman in question later spurned LeBoeuf's offer of a permanent position, choosing instead the charms of San Francisco.)

The New York interview went well, by my estimation, until lunch. The two partners who accompanied me to the Broad Street Club were: Peter, tall, of patrician manner, and bearing the name of one of New York's grand old Dutch families; and Joe, short, balding, bespectacled, and Jewish. For most of the lunch I felt like a spectator at an intellectual ping pong match, as Joe and Peter engaged in what to them seemed most enjoyable repartee. Then I made what I later learned was a classic mistake: "If they take you to lunch, don't order dessert." I ordered a creme de menthe parfait. When it arrived, Joe said, "That's instant alcohol!", and Peter said, "Oh, no. We'll have to carry him back." On our return to One Chase Manhattan Plaza (see photo, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org) where the firm had its offices, I managed to get into the same revolving door compartment as Joe, and trod on his heels. When we arrived at the firm's reception area and I thanked them for the lunch, I got Joe's surname wrong. "Oh, well," I thought, "so much for that."

When I got the letter offering me a job as an associate, at the then stratospheric starting salary of $15,000, I celebrated by buying Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers, a bottle of vodka, and a bottle of Kahlua, then went home, fixed a Black Russian, turned up the volume, and grooved to Grace Slick singing

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America,
In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide, and deal,
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, VIOLENT,
And young.... 

When I started work at LeBoeuf in June of 1970, I was given a desk in an office next door to Joe's that I shared with two other associates, Judy (the firm was ahead of its time in having two women lawyers; the other, Sheila, had started as a secretary, went to law school at night, was made an associate, then became the firm's first female partner after twelve years, as contrasted with the usual six or seven) and another Pete. Working on my first assignment, I came to a citation I didn't understand. I asked Judy if she could explain it, and she said, "Why don't you ask Joe?"  With trepidation, I knocked on his office door.  He looked up, blinked, and said, "Oh, so we did make an offer." 

I later discovered, because of my occasional urge to push the sartorial envelope, that Joe was a self-appointed dress code enforcer (he personified the saying, "Think Yiddish, dress British"). One day I showed up in a perfectly acceptable Brooks Brothers tan poplin summer suit, but under it wore a fire engine red dress shirt and a dark blue tie with a diagonal chain link figure that matched the red of the shirt. As I passed Joe's office, I heard, "Hey, Claude, ya gonna shoot 'em up?" I looked at him quizzically, and he said, "You look like you're dressed for the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre."

The desk I was given in the three-associate office had belonged to a lawyer who left the firm shortly before I arrived. In what has now proved to be a bit of historical irony, that lawyer was John Martin Dewey, the younger of Thomas E. Dewey's two sons. Dewey père was the former Governor of New York and Republican candidate for President in 1948, famously and erroneously declared the victor over Harry Truman by the Chicago Tribune. After that he became the lead partner in a large, prestigious firm then called Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood.

Past Joe's office was Jim's, and a few doors down from Jim was Jack. Both were listed on the letterhead as partners. Jim had closely cropped white hair, a round, florid face, and glinty Irish eyes. Jack had sharp features, slightly protuberant eyes, and slate grey hair brushed back and pomaded into place. Both would arrive every morning ten-ish, and close their office doors.  Both took long lunches from which they would return with more color in their faces than before. They would close their office doors again, and soon the odor of cigar smoke would waft from under them.  No associates were ever called to their offices for assignments. From bits and pieces of lore I could glean from older associates, Jack and Jim had been very productive partners for many years. They had done financing work for public utilities, the traditional centerpiece of the firm's practice. Someone told me that Jack billed forty hours a week to a large upstate electric and gas utility, which was glad to pay the bill, knowing he would occasionally look over a bond indenture with his keen eye and institutional memory.

One of my first big assignments was to assist Taylor, a senior litigation partner, with a matter for a client in Jamestown, a small city located near the far western end of New York State. Our first trip out to visit the client was in October, and it was a clear, crisp fall day as we boarded an Allegheny Airlines (a predecessor of USAir, often called "Agony Air") twin turboprop Convair at Newark Airport. Our flight was a puddle jumper that went from Newark to Bradford, Pennsylvania, then to Jamestown, then on to its final destination, Pittsburgh. As we flew westward, we were soon over a thick cloud bank. On our descent into Bradford, I casually mentioned to Taylor that this was where Allegheny had put two planes into the trees the previous winter. We made it into and out of Bradford without incident. Descending into Jamestown, which was still under heavy clouds, we had just broken through so that I could see brilliant autumn foliage below when the pilot gunned the engines and we began climbing. He got on the intercom and said we'd missed our approach, that he would circle and try again, but that if we missed a second time we would have to skip Jamestown and go on to Pittsburgh. We made it on the second try. (Photo:AirlinersGallery.com)


I can't resist mentioning here that Jamestown later became the birthplace of one of my favorite rock groups, 10,000 Maniacs, which, in turn, became famous for launching the solo career of Natalie Merchant. The clip above is of their song "Maddox Table", named for one of Jamestown's biggest employers (the city was a furniture manufacturing center) and a customer of our client. The music is accompanied by video scenes of Jamestown life in 1948; "Maddox Table" is a paean to the band's parents' generation.

After a day conferring with the client's managers, we were taken to dinner at Jamestown's club for local V.I.P.s. Taylor and I had tickets to return to Newark on an Allegheny flight that took the same route as the one we took out in reverse, leaving at 7:30. As it got to be 6:30 and we were finishing dessert, I glanced nervously at my watch. Taylor asked if Cognac was available. It was. Cigars? To be sure. Our cab got us to the airport just as the plane was taking off. "Darn!", Taylor said. "We'll just have to rent a car, drive to Buffalo, and see if we can get a flight from there. If there's nothing tonight, my sainted parents will put us up." At the Buffalo airport, we were able to get on an American Airlines 707 nonstop to Newark--no flirting with the treetops in Bradford.

Taylor later became the messenger delivering some very welcome news. I was cavalier in my preparation for the New York bar exam; as a consequence, I failed on my first attempt. The day after the results came out, three partners (not including Taylor) came to my desk at different times, each to confide that they, too, had flunked the exam on the first go-round, and not to worry. After that, I had to leave the firm temporarily to fulfill my Army Reserve active duty commitment, and found that Fort Polk, Louisiana was an ideal study environment. I took leave to go back and take the exam, and a month or so later got a phone call from my parents, who had received a telegram: "You passed bar exam. Congratulations, Taylor."

To be continued.

Update: Part 2 is here, and part 3 is here.

Moon Hooch: two saxes, a drummer, hot music and great views of New York City.

Thanks to my daughter for showing me this great clip by eDsanca.

Break up the Mets, Part II

Ike Davis, who's had his (as sportswriters love to put it) struggles at the plate, hit a three run homer at Citizens Bank Park tonight to help the Mets complete a three game sweep of their division rivals and often nemeses the Phillies on their home ground. Having taken two of three from the Phils at Citi Field in April, the season record is now 5-1 Mets. The Amazins are now in third place in the Real Baseball League East, but a mere half game behind the division leading Nats and Braves. Third is as well as I'd hoped they would finish the season, even in my wildest dreams, but they're flirting with better.

I can't help but wonder if I'm sharing the fate of Tantalus.

An almost-super moon over Brooklyn Heights

Tonight's supermoon, or, as we here in Brooklyn Heights call it, Cosmo's moon, was obscured by clouds. Last night, walking home from Jack the Horse Tavern, I did get this fuzzy photo (using my BlackBerry) of a 99% supermoon looming over Hicks Street.

The San Patricios

On this Cinco de Mayo, the day that Mexico celebrates its independence, I'm thinking about an incident in the long and fraught relationship between that country and ours, back when that relationship was at its most fraught, 1846-48, when we were at war with each other. It also involves Ireland, a country for which, through some ancestry, many friendships and now through marriage, I hold great affection.

The San Patricios, or St. Patrick's Batallion, were mostly Irish immigrants who defected from the U.S. Army either, like their leader Jon Riley, shortly before war was declared, or during the course of the war, to join and fight with the Mexican army. Along with Irish, the battalion also included immigrants from other European countries, almost all of them Catholics, a few native Mexicans who had enlisted in the U.S. Army, and some escaped African slaves. Few were U.S. citizens.

The song in the clip above, by David Rovics, of necessity gives a simplified account of the San Patricio story. The original 200 or so who defected with Riley are said to have been motivated by the discrimination they felt from officers and fellow soldiers because of their being Irish and Catholic (Irish immigrants were objects of considerable prejudice at the time) and by being denied the ability to practice their religion (no Catholic chaplains or masses) which the Mexicans, as co-religionists, could offer them. However, the Mexicans also offered higher pay to soldiers who would defect and serve in their army, and made promises of land to those who fought and survived. Immigrants to the U.S. may also have been offered land upon completion of army service.

They are said to have fought bravely and effectively. Many were killed in action. Those who were forced to surrender near the conclusion of the war were dealt with harshly. The ones who defected before hostilities were declared, including Riley, were given fifty lashes and had their faces branded with the letter "D" for deserter. Those who deserted after the war started were executed; a few by firing squad but most by hanging.

The Chieftains, in collaboration with Ry Cooder and many Mexican musicians, recorded an album, San Patricio, based on the battalion's history.

A train of thought leads me to a Jimmy Buffet song, and to waterbeds.

I was thinking about now obscure early 1970s bands with silly names, and that led to thinking about songs with funny titles, and that led me to the Jimmy Buffet song shown in a live performance in Honolulu (thanks to elenapopper for the clip) above.

Listening to Jimmy's song made me think about waterbeds. I've never owned one, and never hope to. I'm sure that, in my cooperative apartment proprietary lease, somewhere in the fine print I read years ago and mostly forgot, there's a clause prohibiting them. The weight can put strain on structural elements, and a leak on a higher floor could send water cascading down. Maybe this is why I haven't heard of waterbeds in years: I live in a city of apartment dwellers. Perhaps I have suburban acquaintances who are frolicking on waterbeds but somehow failing to mention this to me. Out of curiosity, I did a web search for "waterbeds New York" and found one dealer in suburban Farmingdale.

Do any of you have a waterbed?

Goodbye, Levon Helm

An Arkansas boy, Levon Helm joined up with fellow Razorback Ronnie Hawkins and followed him to Canada where, with the addition of some Canadian musicians, they became Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, and spread the gospel of rock 'n' roll in the Great Frozen North. Later, sans Hawkins, they became Dylan's backup band. Then they became The Band, makers of so much sublime music. The clip above, thanks to PBS, shows Levon drumming and singing with a group called the Midnight Ramblers on the classic Band song "The Weight" sometime not too long ago. Levon died today at 71, from "complications of cancer."

Break up the Mets!

This sort of thing isn't supposed to be happening. I was delighted by their season opening sweep of the Braves, but I recalled a similar occurrence some seasons ago, after which the Mets quickly demonstrated what statisticians call regression toward the mean. I thought that was happening when the Mets lost their second two to the Nats, including the vaunted Santana-Strasburg match-up. I couldn't watch the game, as I was working. After seeing the 4-0 score, I asked Kristin, charming Chip Shop bartender and fellow Mets fan, if Santana had re-injured his shoulder. "No," she said, "he's all right. They just never hit for him."

I'll confess to being puzzled by this "run support" thing. The implication is that the batters dislike a pitcher, so, in games when he's pitching, they (subconsciously, we hope) don't see the ball as well, or take a little off their swings. But if it's the ace pitcher who typically doesn't get support (as with Santana), then a more straightforward explanation is that schedules often produce ace-to-ace match-ups, so the batters will facing the opposing team's best pitcher, as the Mets may have been with Strasburg.

In another few weeks, I may look back on this post with embarrassment. For now, I'm enjoying the ride.

Brooklyn Brewery's "Sorachi Ace" beer.

I'd had a taste of Brooklyn Brewery's Sorachi Ace beer at Borough President Marty Markowitz's presser for Dine in Brooklyn (indeed, several tastings, as the Brooklyn Brewery folks were kind about refilling my little cup as I went around tasting food), and I wanted to try it again. This afternoon I spotted it at Lassen & Hennigs, and decided it would be an interesting accompaniment to my temporary bachelor (my wife is at an archivists' meeting in Cape May, New Jersey) dinner of Trader Joe's barbecued pulled pork on a bun accompanied by a mixed green salad with tomatoes and mushrooms topped with T.J.'s sesame soy ginger vinaigrette dressing. Above is a photo of the impressive 25.4 fluid ounce bottle, with its Champagne-style cork.

Here is a closer photo of the label. "Sorachi Ace" is the kind of hops used in making the beer.

When I pulled the cork, there was a nice little "pop." I made the mistake of pouring a bit too fast, which resulted in a huge head. After allowing it to collapse enough to pour more beer, I settled down to drink and eat. Here are my tasting notes:

Color: deep amber.

Head: big, creamy, long-lasting.

Aroma: citrusy, hoppy, with floral overtones.

Taste: rich, not overly bitter, toasty, suggestion of apricots in the finish. After I wrote those tasting notes, I did a web search for "sorachi ace hops" and got this. While the article stresses a lemony quality of the hops, the comment by Ben (scroll down) refers to " a really creamy, cloying, buttery element" that seems to agree with my "rich" and "toasty."

Bottom line: an interesting, well made beer that stands up to flavorful food like BBQ pork. It would also be good to savor on its own.

Marshall Chapman's lament for her friend Tim Krekel

Almost three years ago I posted a video clip and some text about Marshall Chapman performing with her friend Tim Krekel and his band at an event called Bobbie Watson's Dance or Die, at the Vernon Club in Louisville. As I noted in an addendum to that post, not long after that event Tim died; I've since learned it was from a fast-acting cancer.

The clip above, thanks to Music Fog, is of Marshall singing a lament for Tim, in which she recalls singing with him that last time in Louisville.

Mets complete three game sweep of Braves.

If the AP wire says so it must be true. I never dreamed they would go undefeated this deep into the season. So far, everything seems to be clicking: Sanatana back in old form, Dickey, Niese and the bullpen pitching well, Francisco (is it now a rule that Mets closers must have "Francisco" as part of their name, and will we someday have one named Francisco Franco?) rings up three saves, Wright is hitting, Lucas Duda looks to be a force at the plate, and, dare I say, Ruben Tejada is filling in nicely for that guy who went to the Marlins (now if only he proves less fragile).

Easter Hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana.

The Easter Hymn from Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria Rusticana is here performed by the chorus of the Geneva (Switzerland) Amateur Operatic Society. A bit rough in spots, but what it lacks in precision it makes up for in brio. Thanks to briantho for the clip.

David Amram, Paquito D'Rivera, Dave Coles, and Lion's Head Alums on an April evening.

Composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, and raconteur par excellence David Amram put on a show at the Greenwich Village venue Cornelia Street Cafe (there was a round of applause when it was announced that the Cafe's lease, despite contemporary Village real estate madness, has been extended for five years; it has been in its location since 1977) on Monday evening, April 2. The event was arranged by Lion's Head veteran Jack Deacy, who spread the word with help from Dermot McEvoy, who maintains a e-mail list of over 100 alumni of "Lion's Head University." The Cafe's narrow performance space was packed, leaving quite a few, like your correspondent, who didn't know he needed no steenking reservation, seated on bar stools or standing in back.

By Jack's count, in addition to him, Dermot and me, these were the Lion's Head folks present: Sheila McKenna, Mary Elizabeth Pendl, Barry Murphy, Jeanine Johnson Flaherty, Tim Lee and Joann Horovitz, Mary Breasted and daughter, Peter Myers, Dave Coles, Neil Hickey, Billy Powers, Patsy Denk, Jill Freedman, and Myron Rushetzky. Also present were husband and wife actors Kier Dullea and Mia Dillon who treated us to readings from the works of Jack Kerouac, as did Canadian actor Michael Sean Collins. Frank Messina, poet laureate of the Mets (a title once earned, though never officially bestowed, on late Head regular Joel Oppenheimer), read two of his poems. Singer-songwriters Beatie Wolfe and Morley Kamen sang.

The video clip above shows David singing a segment from "Pull My Daisy", a song he composed, with lyrics from a Kerouac poem, for the film by the same title. He is joined by Cuban jazz great Paquito D'Rivera, who plays a solo on clarinet. David's excellent sidemen on this and other pieces are, from left to right: Cameron Brown on bass, Elliot Pepper on bongos, Kevin Twigg on drums (and, in a later piece, glockenspiel), and David's son Adam Amram on congas.

Here David plays a shennai, a reed instrument of Indian, or possibly Persian, origin. During the course of the evening, in addition to piano and shennai, he played French horn, a Chinese instrument the name of which I don't recall (though it may have been a huluhu), a drumlike instrument the name and origin of which I don't recall, and two tin whistles, one from each side of his mouth. He also demonstrated proper technique for playing the tambourine (it's not just shake and slap).

Those of us who were, for its too brief existence, also devotees of a bar called the Bells of Hell (it was always a moveable feast between the Bells and the Head) remember David Coles as Denver Dave, resplendent with almost shoulder length blond hair, tending bar there many nights. His western drawl and low key manner couldn't hide his keen intelligence and depth of knowledge which, as the saying goes, he wore lightly. Bells regular Zizi Roberts wrote and sang a lovely song about Dave and his "cowboy dream." After the Bells closed, Dave went to Washington, became part of the team at PBS's NewsHour, and lost his long blond mane. He's now writing a memoir, and, with piano accompaniment by David Amram, read a part of it about Amram's visits to the Bells, a portion of which is shown in the clip above. Dave's reference to "Irish acid rock" is to Turner and Kirwan of Wexford.

Closing time at the Head often called for a parting song, and "Wild Mountain Thyme" became the customary choice. I earler posted a clip of David and another former Head regular, folksinger Tom Paxton, singing "Wild Mountain Thyme" at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. On Monday night, David started it off slowly and mournfully, as it should be, on flute. After a few bars, the Head veterans started to sing, their voices swelling to the end.

Mets in three way tie for first in NL East.

Is this a bad sign? My wife, a Red Sox fan, is convinced that a good start always betokens a later collapse. She should take heart: the Sox lost their opener to the Tigers. I'll savor the moment, be encouraged by seeing Santana and the bullpen hold old archrivals the Braves (though the title of Mets' nemesis seems, in recent seasons, to have shifted to the Phillies) scoreless, and Wright drive in the sole, and thus winning, run. There was an injury--hey, these are the Mets--to starting center fielder Torres, though not one that is likely to sideline him for long.

I have no illusions about a quick turn-around. Harvey Araton quotes Mookie Wilson:

The New York Times: Wilson...said he believed the Mets could regain their standing and someday even turn New York back into a National League city if they could develop and stick to an organizational blueprint.

When his Mets were on top, “the Yankees were trying to buy pennants and it didn’t work,” he said. “I think they learned their lessons over the years: you have to build a strong foundation of core players. And then you can figure out what you need most, that piece or two, in order to win the World Series.”

"Ride On, Ride On in Majesty", King's College Choir, Cambridge

I was thinking I should find an appropriate post for Palm Sunday; checking Facebook, I found it, courtesy of another Grace Church, this one in Massapequa, New York. Clip by drwestbury.

Austin-Healey Sprite

I took this photo of an Austin-Healey Sprite Mark II, III or IV--the three models' exteriors are, to me, visually indistinguishable-- in August of 2008, in the Glen Park section of San Francisco. A 1961 Mark II Sprite was my first car. It served me from my sophomore year of high school (I got a Florida driver's license at 16) into my first year of university. I loved it, but traded it for a somewhat larger Sunbeam Alpine because, after an accident caused by someone turning left out of the right-hand lane in front of me, my mother was convinced that the Sprite's smallness made it invisible to other drivers.

The iconic (I once swore off that over-used word, but it is appropriate here) Sprite was the Mark I (so designated only after the Mark II hit the market), sometimes called the "bugeye" or "frogeye":

The first Sprite I saw was on Virginia's Skyline Drive, as my parents and I were returning to Florida after a visit to my mother's relatives in Pennsylvania. We were traveling the constantly curving highway behind a bugeye Sprite with British right hand drive piloted by a man in a tweed Sherlock Holmes hat. The Drive has many parking spaces, or "scenic overlooks", where one may stop and look at vistas of the Shenandoah Valley and mountains beyond. The Sprite driver disdained these, but eventually pulled over to the shoulder of the road and got out, camera in hand. My mother asked why he hadn't stopped at one of the overlooks, and my father answered, "He couldn't waste his time on that, because it had already been seen."

The big and the small: Torm Thames and Patrick Sky

As I earlier noted here, Brooklyn Pier 7, which lies next to Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 6, sometimes serves as a temporary berth for ships between charters. For the past week or so, it has hosted a larger than usual vessel, Torm Thames, a Norwegian flagged chemical tanker with an overall length of 604 feet and a cargo capacity of 47,036 deadweight tons. I took the photo above from Pier 6 while on a morning walk the day after Torm Thames arrived.

Here is a better view of Torm Thames' superstructure, taken the following, foggy, morning from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

Continuing northward on my walk, as I passed the northern edge of Pier 6, I caught a glimpse (and was able to get a quick shot just as she began to disappear behind the pier) of the small harbor tanker Patrick Sky heading south into the Buttermilk Channel.


Here, thanks to FL92002, is a video of Patrick Sky heading south on the East River after passing under the Queensboro--excuse me, the Edward I. Koch--Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge). There's also a photo of Patrick Sky with a snow-covered main deck, taken after the storm of January, 2011, on Will Van Dorp's Tugster: a Waterblog.

Lady Day: Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation.

March 25 is the traditional day to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, though on this year's Episcopal Liturgical Calendar it has been "transferred" to Monday, March 26, because it would otherwise fall on a Sunday in Lent. The Feast commemorates the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, announcing that she will be the mother of Jesus (see Luke 1, 26-38). It is also called Lady Day (apologies to Billie Holiday fans, of which I'm one).

The painting above, The Annunciation (1898), is by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), the first internationally recognized African American painter. A native of Pittsburgh, Tanner studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where one of his instructors was Thomas Eakins. He later emigrated to Paris, and continued his studies there. In the 1890s his work became known to the French artistic establishment, and he had a painting accepted into the Salon in 1896.

The Annunciation (click on the image above to enlarge) is interesting for, among other things, its depictions of Gabriel and of Mary. Earlier paintings of the same subject were quite different. Consider this Annunciation (circa 1644) by Philippe de Champaigne:

In this painting, Gabriel is rendered, as angels were in medieval, renaissance, baroque, and neoclassical art, as an anthropomorphic figure with wings added. Mary is shown in full dress, arrayed as a well-to-do European woman of the Renaissance era might be, in a red gown and blue cape. She has been studying a book, an anachronism, but presumably what she is reading is Isaiah 7, 10-14, anticipating the birth of Immanuel. While her hands register surprise, her facial expression is one of quiet ecstasy: note the slight smile and the keen eyes (for an enlarged image, see here.) She also has a subtle halo.

In Tanner's painting, by contrast, Gabriel is shown as a shimmering (the on-line image doesn't do the painting full justice) shaft of light. This may reflect a modern theological understanding of angels as disembodied entities. (I recall the late Roman Catholic Bishop--later an archbishop; now a Servant of God--Fulton J. Sheen, on his television show in the early 1960s, saying that an angel's theme song might be "I Ain't Got No Body.") Tanner's interest in religious matters--many of his works were on Biblical themes--may result from his father's having been a clergyman who became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

More radical than his portrayal of Gabriel, in my view, is Tanner's depiction of Mary as a young woman huddlrd in her bedclothes, with a facial expression not of joy, or of fear, but of acceptance with a hint of wistfulness (for an enlarged image, see here). There is no halo. Tanner, trained by Eakins in the realist tradition, leaves little doubt that this is a real woman.

I'll close this with Sting's live rendition (also see here), of the traditional song "Gabriel's Message", a studio version of which is included in his album If on a Winter's Night....