Paul Schiffman

In my e-mail inbox this morning was the following message: "Paul Schiffman died last night in his apartment." I got to know Paul in the 1970s when he was a bartender at the Lion's Head and I was a young lawyer living in Greenwich Village. At the time, I was taking the waters at the Head, which was a few blocks from my apartment. I'd heard that Paul had been a captain in the Merchant Marine, so one night, after he'd gone off duty (Paul worked the early shift, from noon to eight in the evening) and taken a seat next to me at the bar, I told him of my four sea crossings of the Atlantic during my childhood and my continuing fascination with ships and the sea. After a while, he growled something about having made his living on the sea and not needing to hear about it from "landlubbers and bollard squatters." A few months later, I was once again sitting next to him and, undeterred by our previous encounter, I said I had read that the Liberté, on which I had crossed the Atlantic twice, had gone to the breakers. "When I read that I damn near cried," I said. "I loved that ship." He put an arm across my shoulders and said, "Claude, that's something you and I understand that landlubbers and bollard squatters never will."

Paul was emphatic in his likes and dislikes. Any drink with more than two ingredients was anathema. I was at the bar when four young men in suits came in. As one approached the bar, Paul said, "What can I get you, mate?" "Four tequila sunrises" was the answer. As Paul slammed four glasses down and was filling them with ice, the customer tried to make conversation, asking Paul what he thought about a scandal involving Bess Meyerson, a former Miss America who'd gotten involved in city politics. "None of my affair," Paul said, gruffly. "But did you see..." the man continued. "Look," Paul said, "I don't give a damn if they hang her or shoot her!" After the Head's owner installed TVs at each end of the bar, I was in one evening and got enthusiastic about a college basketball game. I noticed Paul glaring at me, and when our eyes met, he said, "We used to have a portable TV that we kept in the cabinet under the dry bar, and we brought it out once every year--for the Kentucky Derby!"

Over the years, Paul and I had many conversations. We never became close friends, but I came to cherish his company and his opinions. He was unsparing of any tendentiousness or bullshit. I last saw Paul about a year ago, at a reunion of Lion's Head alumni at the Kettle of Fish, the bar that now occupies the space formerly taken by the Head. As I was parting, I shook Paul's hand, and, sensing that it might be the last time, said something a bit awkward (I don't recall just what), and he gave me a sharp look. Just a few days ago, I was recalling this and wondering if I'd get the chance to see Paul again.

Update: there was a memorial gathering for Paul at the Kettle of Fish on Sunday, February 27. Read Dermot McEvoy's account of it here.

News of the very old and the old: dinosaurs and wine

PBS Newshour

This has been a productive time for paleontologists. From Argentina, a dinosaur hot spot in recent years, comes news of what may be one of the most primitive of theropods, Eodromaeus ("dawn runner") murphi (see illustration at left). This scrawny four-foot-long critter lived in the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago, when dinosaurs were just beginning to emerge, and before they attained the dominance they would enjoy in the succeeding Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Eodromaeus is early in a family tree that would later branch to include such diverse progeny as T. Rex and Tweety Bird. Read more about it in this PBS Newshour story.

Utah, long a preeminent source of dinosaur fossils, produced eight new species (see this Deseret News article) in 2010. One of these, Seitaad ruessi, named for a Navajo legendary sand demon because its fossils were found in petrified sand, is a small, early member of the sauropod group, the familiar long-necked herbivores that evolved into giants like Apatosaurus. Another, Abydosaurus mcintoshi, is a later, larger sauropod. Two are iguanadonts, bipedal herbivores that are relatives of Iguanadon, the second dinosaur ever to be described and named. One, Hippodraco ("horse dragon") scutodens, is relatively small for this group, while the other. Iguanacolossus fortis, as its name proclaims, is massive (See their comparative sizes, and read more about them, in this Open Source Paleontologist article). Three, Diabloceratops eatoni, Utahceratops gettyi, and Kosmoceratops richardsoni, are ceratopsians; horned dinosaurs similar to Triceratops. Only one is a carnivorous theropod: Geminiraptor suarezarum. This dinosaur got its name, which means "twin predatory thief of the Suarezes", in honor of the twin sisters Marina and Selina Suarez, both graduate students at Temple University, who studied the geology of the area where the fossils were found (see this Environment News Service article). Geminiraptor is an early troodontid, a group of small, agile predators related to Velociraptor.

Now, from paleontology to archaeology and anthropology, and to one of my favorite topics: wine. I've posted before about the role of alcoholic beverages in the development of civilizations. This Washington Post article reports the discovery of the remains of "a surprisingly advanced winemaking operation" that dates to about 6,000 years ago, located in a cave near an Armenian village. As Slate notes: "It gives 'mis en bouteille dans nos caves' a literal flavor".

Martin Luther King, Jr. on hatred and love.

Wikimedia Commons

From a sermon delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1957:

There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.
…
So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, "I love you. I would rather die than hate you." And I’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.

See the complete sermon at Martin Luther King Online. Thanks to the Rev. Steven Paulikas, Assistant to the Rector, Grace Church, Brooklyn, for citing this in his sermon this morning.

Nostalgic about the '70s? This National Airlines ad may cure it...

...or, it may not. You'd have to be well over thirty to remember National Airlines (not to be confused with a cargo and charter carrier based in Ypsilanti, Michigan), which was founded in 1934 and merged into Pan American World Airways in 1980. Pan Am went into bankruptcy and ceased operating in 1991. In its heyday, National was strong on two routes: the East Coast route from the Northeast to Florida, and the Southern Tier transcontinental route connecting Florida, Texas, and California.

AirNikon

The ad shown in the clip at the top, which aired on TV in the early 1970s, continued a tradition of sexual innuendo that began in the '60s and culminated in the 1970s with the "fly me" (perhaps riffing on the old "Coffee, tea, or me?" gag) campaign, during which National painted women's names on its planes (see "Elaine" in photo above), and also aired ads like this:


As this Time article reported, some flight attendants (then commonly called "stewardesses"--male attendants were rare in those days) objected to this campaign; in particular, to the company's requirement that they wear "fly me" buttons on their uniforms. The article quotes National's PR director: "We had no preconceived idea of injecting a suggestive leer into the campaign." Um-hmmm.

According to one of the comments on the "I'm Maggie, Fly Me" video, the campaign was the brainchild of Dick Wolf, who went on to create the TV series Law and Order.

Margaret Whiting: 1924-2011

Margaret Whiting, who died Monday at the age of 86, was one of the great song stylists of her generation. The clip above is of her rendition, in a duet with Johnny Mercer, of the now timely classic "Baby it's Cold Outside" (thanks to moonbeam0013).

Chilly scenes of winter in Brooklyn.

Statue of Civil War General Gouverneur Kemble Warren, Grand Army Plaza.

A white pigeon finds itself almost perfectly camouflaged on a Park Slope sidewalk.

The view from my window this morning, after fresh snowfall overnight.

Chilly Scenes of Winter is the title of a 1970s Ann Beattie novel later adapted for the screen by Joan Micklin Silver as Head Over Heels, then remade by eliminating an unconvincing "happy ending" and re-released under the novel's title.

Brooklyn's Winter Ale

Yesterday evening, I tasted this offering from Brooklyn Brewery. My notes:

Color: deep reddish amber.

Head: full and creamy, but collapsed quickly (perhaps because of low ambient humidity).

Aroma: fruity, with chocolate overtones.

Flavor: full, rich, mildly sweet and caramel-y, with slight hop bitterness at finish.

All in all, a most satisfying brew for a winter's night. I had a different reaction when I tasted this in May: see my tasting notes here. In particular, this time I didn't notice the "slippery, glycerin-y" quality that I did in the earlier tasting. I wonder if the formula has been changed for this winter's offering, if my palate has changed, or if it just makes a difference whether you taste this on a warm night in May or a cold one in January.

The Jets do not let me down.

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Jets 17, Colts 16! Gang Green pulled it off on a final seconds field goal following a perfectly executed sideline pass. Sometimes the upsets I want do happen. Next week, I can test that theory when the Jets face the Pats, who they defeated early in the season, and were trounced by toward the end.

If Namath is "Broadway Joe", should we now start calling Sanchez  "Park Avenue Mark"?

Phil Ochs, "There but for Fortune".

Back in 1978, when I was (as I often did in those times) spending an evening at the Bells of Hell, I slipped a quarter into the jukebox and played Dylan's "Positively Fourth Street". The music had barely started when Lee, the pretty Gypsy waitress, confronted me with blazing eyes. "I thought you were a nice guy."

"I try," I said, with a shrug.

"How could you play that song?"

"I know it's a bitter song, but I guess I'm in a bitter mood now."

"That's not the point. Don't you know? That song drove Phil Ochs to suicide."

I expressed my regret, and promised never to play the offending song again, a promise I kept so long as Lee was around. She stayed until a shrewish little woman who drank there for a time ratted her out for getting state benefits that partly covered the cost of her treatments for breast cancer while she worked off the books for a paltry wage plus tips.

I told some friends who had been involved in the Village folkie scene in the 1960s and early '70s about my confrontation with Lee, and they assured me she was mistaken. Dylan and Ochs had been friends to the end; the song was about someone else. I was relieved to be able, when the mood struck me, to wallow in self-pity with "Positively" and not feel guilty.

Phil Ochs was never my favorite folk singer. I liked "There but for Fortune" but I thought his voice was too pretty and precious. I didn't like "Here's to the State of Mississippi," which I thought unfairly ignored the presence of a large number of good people, white as well as black, in that much-maligned state, and perversely supported Ross Barnett and his ilk by making it seem that the whole state was under attack by "outside agitators."

Since I wasn't much of a fan, I didn't closely follow Ochs's career or music in the years leading up to his death. Today I received an e-mail from my friend Michael Simmons in L.A., with a link to his article about Ochs, written in conjunction with the release of Kenneth Bowser's documentary, Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune.


Having read Michael's piece, and seen the trailer for Bowser's movie (which I will certainly see), I now realize Ochs was a much more complex (dare I say "nuanced"?) and interesting character than I'd thought, and I regret (even more than the incident with Lee) not having paid more attention to him. For those in the New York area, the movie premieres tomorrow at the IFC Center, 323 Sixth Avenue at West Third Street. Call (212) 924-7771 for times.

Da Bearss let me down.

wikimedia commons

Unfortunately, after taking the field at Lambeau yesterday, the Chicago Bears behaved more like pussycats than the beasts wearing the helmets in the photo above. By losing to the Packers, they kept the Giants out of the playoffs, thereby extinguishing the faint hope that there might be an all-Jersey Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, the Jets, their playoff spot already secured, tore up the Bills, who, because of an injury in last week's Pats game, were missing the sure field generalship of Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Chuck Berry at Newport, 1958

Chuck Berry doing "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. Unlike the hit record version, this features a clarinet break. Thanks to miglesias64 for the clip, which comes from Bert Stern's documentary film Jazz on a Summer's Day.

I was tempted to write that the enthusiastic reception given Berry at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 contrasts with that given Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he did a set with electric guitar, organ and bass, as well as drums and piano. Some cursory research, however, convinced me that it is not clear that Dylan was booed for using non-traditional instruments instead of for poor sound quality or the shortness of his set.

Brian Williams tells all you need know about Brooklyn.

I'm arranging to have alerts of flash artisinal markets sent to my mobile phone. Thanks to Brooklyn Heights Blog reader "Monty" for the tip.

Scenes from a New Year's Day walk.

Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Bridge.

Squirrel, City Hall Park, Manhattan.

New One World Trade Center, under construction.

St. Paul's Chapel churchyard. The box in the foreground encloses a camera that began taking photographs of the World Trade Center site shortly after September 11, 2001, and is compiling a time lapse record of the reconstruction.

Another view of St. Paul's Chapel, Manhattan's only surviving pre-revolutionary building. St. Paul's served as a rally and resting place for rescue workers on and after September 11, 2001.

Bulls fend off Tigers, Holtz has successful first season.

The South Florida Bulls took an early lead, then withstood a fourth quarter rally by the favored Clemson Tigers to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, 31-26. New coach Skip Holtz (photo from gousfbulls.com) claims an 8-5 record for his first season in Tampa. Nice work, Coach.

This was USF's first bowl win over a team from a BCS conference (they lost to Pac-10 team Oregon in the 2005 Sun Bowl, 51-26). They have now made six consecutive bowl appearances, with a record of 4-2. This was the fifth consecutive season in which they won at least eight games.

Three variations on "Hesitation Blues": Janis Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and the Holy Modal Rounders

Here's Janis Joplin's take on a hoary pop standard, accompanied by Jorma Kaukonen on guitar (he also did a version of the song as part of Hot Tuna) and someone on a mechanical typewriter. The audio recording is accompanied by photos of Janis.


One of the comments on the Janis Joplin clip notes that "Hesitation" is a Jelly Roll Morton song, but in the clip above he denies having written it. Wikipedia attributes it to the songwriting team of Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham who are said to have made it up during a trip from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 1914. They used a "traditional tune" (a spiritual, according to W.C. Handy) and made up lyrics as the trip progressed. Since nearly every version of the song ever recorded has different lyrics, except for the chorus, it can be argued that the song has as many "authors" as it has performers. (Thanks to cox1356 for the Jelly Roll Morton video.)

This was the first version of the song I knew, apart from that done by Murray Kinnell, as the Fagin-like Putty Nose, just before he's gunned down by James Cagney, as a youthful Tom Powers, in The Public Enemy (1931). The Holy Modal Rounders were once described as "the originators, and sole exponents, of the genre known as acid-folk." I love the Rounders' lyrics ("'D' for Dreadnought..."). (Thanks to alexeiboronine for the video.)

There are many other excellent renditions of this song, including a western swing version (see a video here) by Willie Nelson with Asleep at the Wheel.

Arcade Fire: "Born on a Train"

My daughter turned me on to this group, and this song, which was easy, considering my love of trains. Since Arcade Fire are Canadian, I thought of this shot I got of the nose of a Canadian Pacific loco as we passed a freight train while riding south on Amtrak's Adirondack a couple of years ago:


Now, note the General Electric logo on the lower part of the loco's nose. Somehow, The GE (as my wife, a Lynn, Massachusetts native, calls it) got my e-mail address (probably by searching for train buffs) and sent me a link to a nice corporate propaganda piece on how their products are helping to make railroads more efficient. To which I put on my shill hat and say, "Hooray! More trains, less fewer trucks", thereby offending both the Teamsters and residents of Chicago suburbs.

Enrico Caruso, "Cantique de Noel" ("O Holy Night")

The legendary tenor sings my second most loved carol (for my favorite, see here). The quality of this 1916 recording amazes me.

Warmest wishes of the season to all. Thanks to tomfroekjaer for the clip.

While we're on the subject of the moon: here's Billie Holiday

The future Lady in Satin at age twenty, as recorded in 1935, backed by Benny Goodman on clarinet, Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Ben Webster on tenor sax, John Truehart on guitar, John Kirby on bass and Cozy Cole (whose 1958 top 40 hit "Topsy Part II" I remember well) on drums. Thanks to erwigaudio for the Billie clip, and Arthur Boehm for the tip.

Lunar eclipse

A photo of last night's lunar eclipse by my Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague Marc Hermann.

Thine alabaster cities gleam...

Seen from Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Empire State Building and others in midtown Manhattan are illuminated by brilliant sunlight. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Brilliance of the Seas: another cruise ship calamity.

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I've never sailed on a large cruise ship, and never will. I did cross the Atlantic four times by ship in my childhood, three times in pleasant summer weather, but the first, when I was but five, in a terrible winter storm that sank the freighter Flying Enterprise. I was violently ill and couldn't hold down food for several days as huge waves tossed the S.S. Washington around like a rubber duck in a bathtub with an energetic child. Despite this, I debarked at Southampton, England with a love for ships and the sea that I've never lost.

Today's cruise ships, though, are to me an abomination. I'll make some exceptions: older ships like Saga Ruby that are survivors of the days of liner service, and Queen Mary 2 because of her shipshape lines, including a rounded stern. Most, though, like Brilliance of the Sea, don't look like ships at all, but like landbound hotels set afloat. Computer controlled stabilizers enable naval architects to design ships with much higher centers of gravity than they once could. These stabilizers make passengers comfortable during most conditions, but they are no match for what the sea can do at its worst, as the passengers aboard Brilliance learned the hard way.

The sea's anger isn't the only source of cruise ship disaster, as the recent travails of Carnival Splendor show. Mechanical problems can wreak havoc. These huge ships, carrying thousands of passengers and crew in a confined space, are also giant petri dishes, where pathogens can run amok, as witness the norovirus outbreaks that have hit Queen Victoria and other cruise ships.

I do hope to go to sea again some day. I would do it on a passenger carrying freighter, or perhaps one of the smaller cruisers that go to interesting places like the Galapagos or around the edge of Antartctica. But I would never go to sea expecting it to be an unrelieved pleasure jaunt. To me, it brings to mind this Neko Case song:



Thanks to Vancouver's Qtv.

Goldilocks, red dwarfs, and arsenic: are we any closer to finding extraterrestrial life?

http://www.freshwallpapers.info

Three recent news stories have increased the buzz about the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial life. None of them concern actual evidence of such life, but all point to an increased probability that it exists. The first is the discovery of the "Goldilocks" (as in "not too hot, not too cold") planet Gliese 581g, described in this earlier post. As I argued there, the existence of a planet that could support life and that is located just twenty light years from us suggests that such planets could be fairly densely distributed throughout our galaxy. From that one may further infer that the probability of there being life on other planets in our galaxy is reasonably high.

David A. Aguilar (CfA)

The second is the evidence that elliptical galaxies (see artist's conception at left) contain many more stars, mostly of the red dwarf variety like Gliese 581, around which the Goldilocks planet orbits, than previously believed. Ellipticals are the largest galaxies, containing many more stars than spiral galaxies like our own. If estimates of the number of such additional stars are reasonably correct, there may be three times as many stars in the universe, most of them of a kind capable of having solar systems that include earth-like planets, than previously believed. This also raises the likelihood of there being life somewhere out there, but considering that the nearest elliptical galaxy is about 2.65 million light years away, the chances of our detecting life in any such galaxy are nil.

In considering the likelihood of there being intelligent and technically proficient extraterrestrial life that we might be able to detect using the technical means available to us, it is important to understand the Drake Equation, discussed by Carl Sagan in the video clip below:

The fact that there are billions, perhaps trillions, more stars in elliptical galaxies that might have solar systems including earth-like planets, while it does greatly increase the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial life, even extraterrestrial intelligent life, doesn't affect our chances of discovering such life. However, the discovery of Gliese 581g nearby in our galaxy does point toward a higher probability of our discovering extraterrestrial life.

The third story does affect the Drake Equation. This is the discovery, by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her astrobiology team, of bacteria living in California's Mono Lake (photo at top of post) that have substituted arsenic for phosphorus in their chemical makeup. Until now all known living things have included compounds of the following elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Other elements, such as calcium and iron, are essential to some life forms, such as ourselves, but the preceding six have been common to all.

What this tells us is that "life" is a bit more flexible than we previously believed, and may arise or survive in environments we thought couldn't support it. Whether substitutions other than arsenic for phosphorus--for example, the often speculated-about silicon for carbon--are possible isn't known, but the fact that one works at least suggests that others might. This means we can assign a higher value to the "N" sub "e" (number of planets with environments suitable for life) term in the Drake Equation, and perhaps as well to the "f" sub "l" (fraction of such planets on which life evolves) term.

So, are we any closer to finding extraterrestrial life? No, but it seems our chances are better than we thought before.

Can Terry Collins turn the Mets around?

It's a tough call. He did manage a turn-around for the Angels in the late 1990s, taking them from a losing team to one that finished second in the Designated Hitter League in his first two years there. His third year was blighted by bad luck: injuries, and a player revolt that led to his resignation after the 1999 season. Nevertheless, what he did while their skipper had something to do with the Angels' having won the 2002 World Series. His only other major league manager's job was with the Astros, before his time with the Angels. Since 1999, his only managerial experience has been in Japan (see photo), where he evidently had the courage to take on Godzilla-sized umpires, and with the Chinese national team in the World Baseball Classic in 2009. He spent the past season as the Mets' minor league field coordinator, so he has some familiarity with the organization.

The adjective most used about him is "intense". Do the Mets need "intense" now? I think they do, though whether Collins' brand of intensity is what's needed is in dispute. Ron Hart thinks not. He gives a variety of reasons. One is the usual New York as media-driven pressure cooker, which, along with the problem of being in the same town as the Yankees, he thinks will wear poorly on Collins. Nevertheless, Collins' experience in Anaheim was in a high pressure media market, and the Dodgers had the same relationship to L.A. that the Yanks do to New York. Hart characterizes Collins as a failed manager, but he had winning records in both Houston and Anaheim, though a conflict with players clouded his last season with the Angels (according to Hart, conflict with players also cut short his managerial career in Japan). Perhaps Hart's most forceful argument against Collins is that he hasn't managed in the majors for over a decade, and "[t]he ballparks have changed, the umpires have changed and the nature of the sport itself has evolved in many ways" during those years.

I suspect that Sandy Alderson, the Mets' new General Manager, may see Collins as, at the least, a short-term solution to the Mets' problems: one who can quickly impose order and change the team's course, as he did with the Angels. At 62, Collins may see the Mets job as one last shot at glory before retirement. I hope he succeeds. If he doesn't incite a player revolt, takes the Mets to a World Series championship, and manages them into his seventies (the last like the Mets' first manager, the Old Perfessor), I'll be surprised and delighted.

Thinking about Casey Stengel got me to wondering about the history of Mets managers. A quick web search got me to this handy chart. In their 49 seasons to date, the Mets have had fifteen managers, not counting Collins or four interims. Of these, only five have had overall winning records for their terms as Mets managers: Gil Hodges (1968-1971, 339-309--a 52% winning percentage), Davey Johnson (1984-1990, 595-417--59%), Bud Harrelson (1990-1991, 145-129--53%), Bobby Valentine (1996-2002, 536-467--53%), and Willie Randolph (2005-2008, 302-253--54%). It's interesting how these managers' winning percentages cluster around 53%, except for Johnson, the one outlier at 59%.

Bulls crush 'Canes in OT; Boise State unhorsed.

My alma mater has a way of pleasantly surprising me on the gridiron, as the South Florida Bulls did Saturday with their 23-20 overtime victory, at Miami, (the AP story includes the interesting factoid that the Bulls have never lost in overtime) over a demoralized Hurricane team whose coach was fired shortly after the game. Miami was 7-4 going into the game, and regarded well enough to have been ranked in the AP top 25 two times this season. Next Saturday, the Bulls have a home game against the Connecticut Huskies who, at 7-4, aren't ranked, but could still get a BCS bid by beating USF. The Bulls, also at 7-4, could likewise get a major bowl bid if they win.

In the other major intra-Florida game, Florida State beat Florida for the first time in seven tries. I had expected the Gators, who are having a miserable season, especially by their recent standards, to play spoiler, but they didn't.

I have friends on both sides of the Iron Bowl, so I had no favorite, but it proved to be a great game to watch.

I was pleased to see Boise State booted from the ranks of the unbeaten, if only because I can't forgive Idaho for giving us Sarah Palin. It was nice to see the job done by Nevada, a state that had the good sense not to send Sharron Angle to the Senate.

Texas Christian is joining the Big East, a move that's about as geographically logical as, say, Nebraska joining the SEC or Minnesota the Pac 10. Nowadays, though, it's all about getting that automatic BCS bid. I look forward to the first Bulls versus Horned Frogs game.

Thanksgiving is a contested holiday. Enjoy it anyway.

First off, let's talk turkey. Actually, let's discuss whether we should be eating turkey at all. Back in the early 1980s, Calvin Trillin wrote a piece titled "Spaghetti Carbonara Day", later anthologized in Third Helpings (1983) and in The Tummy Trilogy (1994). The gist of his argument is as follows:

In England, along time ago, there were people called Pilgrims who were very strict about making everyone observe the Sabbath and cooked food without any flavor and that sort of thing, and they decided to go to America, where they could enjoy Freedom to Nag. The other people in England said, "Glad to see the back of them." In America, the Pilgrims tried farming, but they couldn't get much done because they were always putting their best farmers in the stocks for crimes like Suspicion of Cheerfulness. The Indians took pity on the Pilgrims and helped them with their farming, even though the Indians thought that the Pilgrims were about as much fun as teenage circumcision. The Pilgrims were so grateful that at the end of their first year in America they invited the Indians over for a Thanksgiving meal. The Indians, having had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine during the year, took the precaution of taking along one dish of their own. They brought a dish that their ancestors had learned from none other than Christopher Columbus, who was known to the Indians as "the big Italian fellow." The dish was spaghetti carbonara--made with pancetta bacon and fontina and the best imported prosciutto. The Pilgrims hated it. They said it was "heretically tasty" and "the work of the devil" and "the sort of thing foreigners eat." The Indians were so disgusted that on the way back to their village after dinner one of them made a remark about the Pilgrims that was repeated down through the years and unfortunately caused confusion among historians about the first Thanksgiving meal. He said, "What a bunch of turkeys!"

But, were the Pilgrims (who weren't actually called that until some years after 1620) really such an unpleasant lot? David D. Hall, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, in his op-ed piece "Peace, Love and Puritanism" in yesterday's New York Times, blames their bad rep in part on a novel written many years after they arrived:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who came along a couple of centuries later, bears some of the blame for the most repeated of the answers: that Puritans were self-righteous and authoritarian, bent on making everyone conform to a rigid set of rules and ostracizing everyone who disagreed with them. The colonists Hawthorne depicted in “The Scarlet Letter” lacked the human sympathies or “heart” he valued so highly. Over the years, Americans have added to Hawthorne’s unfriendly portrait with references to witch-hunting and harsh treatment of Native Americans.

Hall then argues:

Contrary to Hawthorne’s assertions of self-righteousness, the colonists hungered to recreate the ethics of love and mutual obligation spelled out in the New Testament. Church members pledged to respect the common good and to care for one another. Celebrating the liberty they had gained by coming to the New World, they echoed St. Paul’s assertion that true liberty was inseparable from the obligation to serve others.

Ah, but here's another point of controversy: did this notion of an "obligation to serve others" manifest itself in a kind of pre-Marxian "socialism" that, as argued by some "conservative"* writers in recent years, led to indolence and crop failure which was alleviated by a decision to allow individuals or families to own and farm private property, thereby giving them the incentive to produce more and leading to the bumper crop that was the basis for the first Thanksgiving feast? The British historian Godfrey Hodgson observes of this argument, in his article "Thanksgiving and the Tea Party" in openDemocracy, that "there is a certain historical basis for it."

When the settlers had first arrived at Plymouth, all their slender property was held in common, and food distributed to each according to his need. In spring 1623, they decided to allow each family to grow its own food on its own plot. [Edward] Winslow [one of the settlers who arrived on the Mayflower] describes the motive thus: “considering that self-love, wherewith every man, in a measure more or less, loveth and preferreth his own good before his neighbour’s, and also the base disposition of some drones”.

Hodgson notes, contrary to Hall's suggestion of a religious motive for the holding of property in common, that

...[A]ll of them, godly or profane, were engaged in a capitalist enterprise. They had borrowed money for the expedition from financiers who would have to be repaid. Their agreement over sharing land and property was the internal arrangement of a company of adventurers, of whom there were many such in 16th and 17th century England; this one just happened to include men and women with religious convictions.

Kate Zernike in her November 20 Sunday Times article, "The Pilgrims Were...Socialists?", quotes New York University historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman concerning a similar common holding agreement among the settlers of Jamestown, Virginia: “It was a contracted company, and everybody worked for the company. I mean, is Halliburton a socialist scheme?”

There is also dispute over the timing and nature of the first Thanksgiving feast. Hodgson notes that there are two extant accounts of the earliest years of the Plymouth settlement written by original settlers. One of these, Good Newes from New England, by Winslow, was published in 1624, just four years after the Mayflower arrived; the other, Of Plimothe Plantation, by William Bradford, governor of the colony, was written and published a quarter of a century later. Both Winslow and Bradford, the latter perhaps relying on Winslow's earlier account, describe an event in the summer of 1623, which Hodgson summarizes thus:

A drought causes the crop planted by the settlers - corn and beans - to fail. They respond by humbling themselves before the Lord in prayer and fasting. “Oh, the mercy of our God”, Winslow writes, “the clouds gathered together on all sides, and the next morning distilled such soft, sweet and moderate showers of rain” that the corn and the beans revived. The settlers thank their God for His mercy.

This comports with the notion of the motive for the first Thanksgiving: gratitude to God for a good harvest. It also fits with the "Tea Party" account chronologically, since the "common course" of property holding was abolished by Bradford in the spring of 1623. Nevertheless, it doesn't support the notion that a newfound industriousness on the part of the settlers caused a bumper crop; instead, it was a change in the weather that the settlers ascribed to their pious supplications to God.

The other account, as found in Bradford's narrative, agrees more closely in its details to what has become the traditional Thanksgiving story, in that it takes place late in 1621 and involves Native American guests. Hodgson describes it as follows:

Bradford’s account [is] of a feast in 1621 - a sort of frontier diplomatic dinner - between the people Bradford later called “Pilgrims” and the local “Indian” tribe and their “king”, Massasoit. Bradford describes how the colonists sent four men out to hunt, who returned with a large quantity of “fowl” (not necessarily turkeys); and how the Indians contributed the carcasses of five deer. That event is widely remembered as the First Thanksgiving (see [Hodgson's] A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving [PublicAffairs, 2007]).

Randy Patrick, in "The Myth of the First Thanksgiving," relying on Hodgson's A Great and Godly Adventure, notes that the Native Americans were party crashers, not invited guests.

When about 100 Wampanoag warriors showed up uninvited at the Pilgrims’ festival with freshly killed deer as a gesture of goodwill, they were angling for a treaty with the Anglo-Saxon tribe.

Patrick also notes Hodgson's "convincing" argument that the 1621 feast was not one of "thanksgiving" to God, but rather (quoting from A Great and Godly Adventure):

...“a harvest-home celebration, of the kind familiar from centuries of observance in rural England, interrupted by a force of Indians …”

In the first place, Hodgson says, the Separatists (they weren’t called Pilgrims) showed their gratitude to God not by feasting, but by fasting.

Being radical Protestants, they didn’t celebrate holy days (i.e. holidays) such as Christmas and Easter, because they considered them superstitious relics of Catholicism.

Being English, however, they did celebrate the secular Medieval harvest festival, which involved eating, drinking beer and wine, and playing games.

However, Patrick disputes Hodgson's contention that turkey was not likely to have been on the menu because they were scarce in the vicinity of Plymouth. He cites Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower (2006), which quotes Bradford to the effect that wild turkeys were abundant in the area, and that the settlers hunted them in winter when they could track them in the snow.

One thing’s for sure: If the Pilgrims did encounter a turkey, they would know what it was because the Spanish had introduced the American species to Europe by way of the Ottoman Empire (thus the name “Turkey”) in the time of the conquistadors. By the 1620s, it was a familiar dish on the English table.

As for the pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce, Hodgson says, the English colonists didn’t have sugar until decades later.

So, what can we conclude from all this? Attempts to use history to prove gastronomic, political, or religious contentions must always be examined carefully. Meanwhile, enjoy your turkey with all the trimmings.

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* I've put "conservative" in quotes for the reasons given in the first footnote to this post. In particular, I think that advocates of largely unregulated "free markets" are anti-conservative, if "conservative" is understood to mean protective of a stable social order, as untrammeled markets are erosive of such stability.

College football update: Harvard wins The Game, but not the Ivy; Sunshine State stays in top 25.

Once again, I missed The Game. Only effete Eastern liberal elitists like me call it The Game. (Wait a minute: I've usually thought of Florida/FSU as The Game.* Oh, well; please don't tell any of my friends in The New England Society in the City of Brooklyn.) I was tempted by an e-mailed invitation to watch it at the Harvard Club of New York City, and thought of going there, drinking beer, and live blogging it on my BlackBerry just as I did the Florida/Georgia game from the Tapper Pub in South-by-God Tampa last year. But this pleasant prospect was chilled by the vision of some broomstick-up-the-arse type coming to me and saying, "Excuse me, sir, but the use of personal communication devices on Club premises is prohibited."

Anyway, this year's version of The Game wasn't quite the cliffhanger last year's was. The first half was all Yale, but after the bands did their thing, ol' Mo (as the pundits love to say), perhaps having liked Harvard's halftime show better, went over to the Crimson side and stayed there until the final score was Harvard 28, Yale 21.

While this will leave Cantab fans happy with the season as a whole, Harvard failed to win the Ivy crown many pundits had predicted it would. Thomas Kaplan of the Times proved prescient in picking Penn.

Meanwhile, in the world of what most of you call real college football, Miami got thrashed by Virginia Tech, and was thereby banished from the AP top 25 for the second time this year. But Florida State's drubbing of Maryland put them back in the rankings at 22nd, thereby confirming my theory that it's become a fundamental law of nature, on par with f=ma, or Bristol Palin is a lousy dancer who nevertheless gets lots of votes, that at least one team from the State of Florida must be in the top 25 at all times.

My USF Bulls had their usual troubles with Pitt, and next week face the humiliated Hurricanes. I fear it won't be pretty; nevertheless, USF is assured of a winning season under new coach Skip Holtz.

Can anyone beat Boise State? I'm rooting for Nevada.
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*By Florida standards, this marks me as hopelessly nouveau. If I were really old school, Florida/Georgia would be The Game.

Free, "All Right Now"

Music that I hear while traveling often gets deeply engraved in my memory. In October of 1970, taking my first vacation from my first full-time job as an associate at a New York City law firm, I went to visit some law school friends in California. Heading west on a United Airlines DC-8 to Los Angeles, I listened to the "contemporary" track on the plane's sound system. I hadn't been listening to radio much over the preceding few months, so the songs I heard were mostly new to me. Among them were "I'll Be There" by the Jackson Five, "Lola" by the Kinks, "Green Eyed Lady" by Sugar Loaf, "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, and "All Right Now" by Free. The last, by a band I hadn't heard of before, impressed me with its pounding beat and compelling vocal. Free was a relatively short-lived but influential British band. Initially a blues group, their music evolved into the straight ahead hard rock style exemplified by "All Right Now", which became a big hit and made their album Fire and Water sell well. Despite their success, Free disbanded in 1971, largely because of the drug problems of lead guitarist Paul Kosoff, who would die on March 19, 1976 (my thirtieth birthday) while on a flight from L.A. to New York, the opposite direction from that in which I was going when I first heard "All Right Now". Free's lead singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke later became part of Bad Company.

The clip above is courtesy of frozenfish91, whose home page on YouTube features a clip of Paul Kosoff playing guitar on an instrumental piece called "Time Away", which he did with the group Back Street Crawler after leaving Free. It is accompanied by a series of still photos and short videos documenting Paul's life and career.

Harvard grad leads Bills to first victory, and other football musings.

On Sunday there was an epic battle of the beatens, with the Buffalo Bills, winless in eight starts going into the game, hosting the 2-6 Detroit Lions, who hadn't won a road game in 24 tries. Both teams were playing with backup quarterbacks, having lost their starters to early season injuries. The game was played on a chilly, rainy western New York day, and culminated in a 14-12 Bills win.

The Bills' QB for this, and for six previous games, was Harvard alum Ryan Fitzpatrick. Despite the six losses, Fitzpatrick played well enough that, going into the Detroit game, Forbes magazine rated him the NFL's best QB for the buck. Who said Harvard grads can't be cost-effective?

Fitzpatrick's success got me thinking: how many Ivy League players had made it into the NFL in recent years, defined for me as since I was in college, i.e. since the mid to late 1960s? As luck would have it, a quick Google search got me to the blog of someone who has listed all the Ivy players drafted by NFL teams from 1967 through this year. They number 81; more than I had expected. The majority of these players were seventh or later round picks, and most, I'm sure, never made the team rosters. Fitzpatrick was a seventh round pick by the Rams in 2005. He saw little action in two years in St. Louis, then went to Cincinnati, where he appeared in 13 games in the 2008-9 season, then to Buffalo, where he had ten appearances in 2009-10 and seven so far as a starter this season.

Over this period, only two Ivy players were first round picks. Calvin Hill, from Yale's great 1968 team, is the only Ivy grad to have achieved stardom of those drafted during these 43 years. He was the first Dallas Cowboy running back to gain over 1,000 yards in a season (1972), a feat he repeated in the following season. (One of Hill's predecessors as an Eli running back, Chuck "the Truck" Mercein, was drafted by the Giants in 1965 and had an undistinguished career except for his heroics as a Green Bay Packer in the 1967 "Ice Bowl" NFL championship game.) The other was Columbia QB Marty Domres, taken in the first round of the 1969 draft by the Chargers, but never a great success with them or, subsequently, with the Colts, 49ers or Jets.

One second round pick, Cornell RB Ed Marinaro, taken by the Vikings in the 1972 draft, achieved at least minor stardom in the world of film and TV after six lackluster seasons in the NFL. You can see him as Coach Marty Daniels on Blue Mountain State.

On other football matters, this must be the first time in I don't know how long that Florida has not been in the AP college football top 25. The Gators dropped off thanks to a loss to former coach Steve Spurrier's South Carolina Gamecocks. The Central Florida Knights were knocked out of their brief first appearance in the rankings by a loss to Southern Mississippi, which led me to think this would be the first time in God knows how long that no team from the State of Florida was in the top 25. However, the Miami Hurricanes snuck back in at 24th on the wings of a 35-10 thrashing of Georgia Tech. My South Florida Bulls, 6-3 under their new coach, Skip Holtz, get a shot at the 'Canes on the 27th, but first must face the always-tough Pitt Panthers.

Client 9, the downfall of Eliot Spitzer.

Eliot Spitzer's self-inflicted political undoing seemed puzzling to me, as to many. I've also commented about his neckwear. So, I'm looking forward to seeing Client 9, Alex Gibney's new documentary about his rise and fall (see Gibney interview above). Gibney has produced the documentaries Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Taxi to the Dark Side; Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson; Casino Jack and the United States of Money; and Freakonomics. Disclosure: my charming next-door neighbor is Gibney's mother-in-law.

For those of you in New York City, Client 9 is playing at Angelika Film Center New York, City Cinemas East 86th Street, and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

Update: Keifus sez: "You can also rent it at home if you subscribe to IFC's on demand thingie."

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, "Even Heroes Have to Die"

"Many are the beauties of the fall."