Clifford Browder's Blog, page 31

273. Winter Holidays in the Big Apple

         Holidays in the Big Apple: people flock here, knowing it will be crowded and noisy, but they hope it will be joyous as well.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas some five million visitors come, giving a year-end boost to the city’s businesses but clogging sidewalks, streets, and subways, where they rub well-bundled elbows with disgruntled locals.  The Fifth Avenue store windows are ablaze with magnificent displays, but getting through the crowds to see them isn’t easy; you’re lucky, with patience, to get the barest glimpse.  As for getting your four-year-old anywhere near Santa Claus at Macy’s requires angelic patience or devilish corruption.  Up on the eighth floor parents with kids make their way through a labyrinth of Christmas trees, stuffed reindeer, and caroling snowmen in quest of Santa, and some have been known to offer bribes of $20 to $50 to attendant elves in hopes of skipping ahead of the long lines.  The elves themselves are in evidence here and there throughout the city and in great demand; visitors want to be photographed with them in “elfies.”  They’ve even been dispatched along with traffic managers to help calm frustrated drivers in heavily congested intersections.
Santa and his elves arriving at the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.
tweber 1
         One great attraction is the annual Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, which draws an audience of up to a million, though not all, thank heavens, on the same day.  I saw it once, long ago.  Of course they feel they have to celebrate the birth of the Savior, so a lackluster procession of shepherds, kings, and common folk are seen trudging across the stage, with even a camel or two, though I don’t recall any elephants.  Then, once this tribute to the occasion was been dutifully performed, they go secular in a flash of joy, with Christmas trees and brightly wrapped presents and of course, sooner or later (usually sooner), the celebrated Rockettes, kicking their long, shapely legs in marvelous precision.   To my knowledge, the Rockettes don’t show up in Bethlehem.
ralph and jenny
         Rockefeller Center, with its giant Christmas tree and sunken skating rink, is another great attraction and just as hard to access.  One woman trying to view it got trapped in a crowd on Fifth Avenue and had to give it up.  A young man from Nashville said he loves the hustle and bustle; that’s what the city is all about.  He confessed to spending more than $1500 on clothes and shoes at a number of stores, and said more money had poured out of his pocket in the past three days than in the past two months.  Now that’s the kind of visitor that New Yorkers – some New Yorkers – love.
Michael Vadon
         Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, has a Winter Village nestled among the midtown skyscrapers, with brightly lit shops offering jewelry, clothing, specialty foods, and other items suitable for gifts.  Knowing it only from mild summer days as a pleasant place with a broad green lawn and tables and chairs, I am amazed by its winter transformation.   Its free skating rink draws thousands of skaters, but in previous years they had to wait in long lines for two or three hours for their turn on the ice.  This year, thanks to a streamlined check-in process, the wait is shorter, and text messages inform them when they can skate.
Rhododendrites
         I experienced the crowds last Wednesday, trying to get back across 14th Street to the West Village – usually a routine trip, whether by bus or subway.  I waited with many others for the 14th Street bus, but when it came it was packed, and others got on first; I then got on, too – barely -- only to be told by the driver to get off and take the next bus.  More wimp than New Yorker on this occasion, I got off, but when the next bus came, it was just as jammed, so I turned to the subway.  When I finally got down to the platform and a train arrived, it too was so jammed I couldn’t get on.  After a long wait, I saw a second train approaching, but it was also jammed; there was no way to get on.  Then a third train came, not jammed, but it sailed right on past without making a stop.  Finally a fourth train came, and I was able to get on.  This was late afternoon, and 14thStreet is very commercial, so I assume that the crowds were heightened by kids getting out of school and New Yorkers throwing themselves into seasonal shopping.  The Internet is said to be stealing customers from real brick-and-mortar stores, to the point where malls all over the country are going bust and closing, but this doesn’t seem to be the case on 14th Street in Manhattan. 
          Should we New Yorkers complain about the holiday crowds in the city? Absolutely not.  We want their business and their presence.  And they themselves don't complain; they come here for the bustle and excitement.

          Source note:  For some of the information in this post I am indebted to an article by Winnie Hu in the New York Times of December 23, 2016.

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          My poems:  For my short poem “I Crackle” and a stunning photo of me, go here. For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.   
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


     

         Coming soon:  Once again, no idea.
         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

272. Bob Dylan's Village

         First, a bit of shameless self-promotion.  My short poem “I Crackle” has been published in the fall/winter 2016 issue of the online mag South 85 Journal.  It’s a nice little poem, but the real treat is the photo of me – the best I’ve seen in years.  For this marvelous experience, go here.

         Also, for last-minute holiday shoppers, consider my two books mentioned at the end of this post.  The novel is for readers who like historical fiction with an LGBTQ twist, and the selection of posts from this blog is for people who love (or hate) New York.

         And now, to business.  (As if the above wasn't just that.)

         The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), an often embattled preservationist society of which I am a member, recently sent me a map entitled “Bob Dylan’s Village.”  This was prompted by Dylan’s receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he graciously declined to accept in person.  Early in his career Dylan was indeed a resident of the Village, especially my turf, the West Village, performing here and making various locations his crash pad.  This was during the 1960s, but I was here too, first as a visitor from uptown in the 1950s and then, from 1961 on, as a resident, so many of the names on the map spark reminiscences.  Here are some of them.
         The White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street and West 11th, but a block from where I live today, was frequented by writers, intellectuals, and wannabes.  It was also a haunt of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), a lyrical genius and accomplished alcoholic who, like so many talented but impecunious Europeans, came to this country several times to rake in the bucks from appreciative Americans.  I had heard him read and spout scandalous remarks my senior year in college, and had learned to love his richly imaged but needlessly obscure poetry, but in 1953, when time and alcohol caught up with him, I was too immersed in graduate studies in French uptown at Columbia University to be aware of his bibulous presence in the city.  Above all, I regret not having heard him and others read his radio drama Under Milk Wood, which was completed here and performed in the months prior to his death. 
         It was at the White Horse that Thomas imbibed a disastrous amount of liquor one evening and staggered back to the legendary Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street in a state of near-collapse.  Rushed by ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital, he arrived there in a coma.  Summoned from Wales, his loving spouse Caitlin, who matched him in outrageousness and alcoholism, arrived and asked, “Is the bloody man dead yet?”  He soon was, dying on November 9, 1953.   She then became so unruly that she had to be strait-jacketed and shipped off to a psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island, following which she was sent back to Wales and long outlived him.  But Thomas had left his mark, for a young musician named Robert Zimmerman, newly arrived in the city, was so inspired by him that he changed his last name to Dylan.
         The Gaslight Café on MacDougal Street near Bleecker was a rather shabby basement joint where the lesser Beatniks of the day performed.  To be closer to their antics I migrated from the Columbia campus down to the West Village, holing up in a drab little apartment on West 14thStreet.  From there I commuted to a job at the French Cultural Services on the Upper East Side, and in my apartment on weekends gobbled bitter peyote buttons sweetened with raisins that transformed the world outside my head, and in it, into Technicolor visions of entrancing beauty.  When not so transported, I went often to the Gaslight and heard the Beatniks – not Ginsberg, Corso, & Co., who had by now departed – but the lesser lights of the day, a grubby but amusing bunch who read their less-than-brilliant poetry with great zest to indulgent audiences.  Sometime after this, in the latter days of Beatdom, my partner Bob, coming from Jersey City, heard Diane di Prima read her poetry there, probably far surpassing the stuff I was treated to.  Did Dylan perform there to?  Not when I was around, but probably.  (For a fuller account of my peyote adventures, see chapter 14, “Babylon,” in No Place for Normal: New York, cited at the end of this post.)
         The Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street near Hudson, not far from my 11th Street abode, was where Dylan was profoundly influenced by a performance of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, which opened there in 1954 with a memorable cast that included Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife, as the prostitute Jenny.  Forced to close because of prebooking by another show, it reopened at the de Lys on September 20, 1955, with largely the same cast.  Just a day or two before that, returning from my first and only vacation at gay-ridden Provincetown with a tall, urbane Canadian from Toronto, I went to the theater with him and his knowledgeable artist brother, a New York resident who suggested that we go get tickets.  We arrived there to find it was the night of the dress rehearsal, and the doors swung wide open to admit some invited guests.  Seeing our opportunity, we followed them in and saw the entire rehearsal, which was almost a finished performance.  Worn out by the long trip back from P town, I was drooping and nodding off, telling myself, “This is wonderful; for God’s sake don’t fall asleep.”  I didn’t quite, but being groggy throughout, I vowed to get tickets and come back wide awake.  I did, and experienced one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.  Was Dylan in the audience?  Who knows?
         My memories of the Theatre de Lys, alas, provoke a wee gripe.  In 1955 the financier Louis Schweitzer bought the theater as an anniversary present for his wife, actress and producer Lucile Lortel, who from then on was in charge of it and sometimes staged showcase productions of new plays for an invited audience.  One of her readers urged her to do a one-act play of mine, but she chose not to.  Later another reader urged to do the same play, but she still refused.  The play was never staged professionally in the city, and this and similar frustrations finally led me to give up playwriting, a decision I have never regretted, even though by then I had had a staged reading and a full production of full-length plays elsewhere in the country.  My revenge came when I was invited to a staging of an avant-garde play by a new writer at the de Lys.  Though I like to encourage fellow writers, this play was so lamentably over the top -- I remember the protagonist’s father dying, then getting up and dying again, and then again -- that I and several others had to fight hard to choke back our laughter, containing it until we were out of the theater and could guffaw immeasurably.  To my knowledge, the play was not done elsewhere, certainly not in New York.  In 1981, the year of Lucie Lortel’s 81st birthday, the theater was renamed in her honor, thus reminding me, every time I pass it, of my play’s double rejection.  To be fair, the theater has also presented any number of deserving productions, and my memory of Threepenny, seen a second time, is overwhelming.
         Washington Square Park, with its magnificent arch at the foot of Fifth Avenue, was a mecca for students and performers in Dylan’s early days in the city and still is today.  In 1961 the Washington Square Association, made up of home owners around the park, appealed to the Department of Parks and Recreation to curb the hundreds of “roving troubadours and their followers” playing music around the park’s fountain on Sunday afternoons.  The Department then began issuing permits to limit the number of musicians and banning the use of drums.  When complaints continued, the Parks Commissioner stopped issuing permits altogether.  The musicians and their fans then protested in turn, provoking an assault by the police, who shoved and mauled the peaceful protesters and hauled a few of them off in paddy wagons.  The public then protested the police’s quelling of the protest, and the city resumed issuing permits, a practice that continues to this day.
         Bob Dylan, who had arrived in the city the previous January, was apparently not at these protests, nor was I.  But at various times back in those days I saw the heavy hand of the minions of order in the park.  An Italian-American man with a mandolin often turned up in the park on mild Saturday nights and played and sang for passersby, who gathered quietly around him – the most orderly and innocent gathering in the Village.  But  sometimes the cops turned up, stopped his playing, and dispersed the crowd, which they evidently deemed dangerous.  On another occasion I saw a squad car drive through the park on a pedestrian path, forcing people onto the lawn.  Then New York’s Finest stopped the car, got out, and yelled at the people to get off the lawn.  Not the finest moments of the Finest, those Saturday nights in the park.

         Such are my memories of Bob Dylan’s Village, as prompted by GVSHP’s suggestive map.  In 1961 Dylan was a 19-year-old Jewish kid from Minnesota whose Midwestern chutzpah prompted him to tell a tale of running away from home to join a traveling band – a story that of course turned out to be false.  But that same chutzpah got him his first gig at the Café Wha on MacDougal Street the very day of his arrival, and he was soon deeply involved in the flourishing Village folk music scene of the time.  All of which goes to show that New York doesn’t have a corner on chutzpah.



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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




     Coming soon:  Maybe a post on the changing New York skyline, or the saga of the captive deer of Harlem, or both.

     ©   2016   Clifford Browder

     

271. Wild New York

         They are typical New Yorkers, smart, sociable, feisty, and loud-mouthed, shunning bright, cheery colors while showing a distinct preference for black.  But they aren’t groundlings, their realm is the sky overhead, where you may recently have heard their raucous croak – cr-r-uck or prruk – or what has been described as a metallic tok.  Crows?  No, these guys are bigger and more solitary.  This croaker is the common raven (Corvus corax), whom most of us know only from a line in Poe's poem "The Raven: "Quoth the Raven 'Never more.' "  The real, unliterary raven typically frequents the forests, coastal cliffs, and tundra of Canada.  Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds, 4th edition, 1980, reports it as expanding its range in the Appalachians, but only a casual visitor on the East Coast south of Maine.  When I used to vacation on Mohegan Island, off midcoast Maine, I would often see them soaring overhead, but never saw them in the vicinity of New York.  Even just a decade ago they were unknown down here, but recently their croak has been heard in various locations, one has been spotted on the roof of the Flatiron Building, and they are reported nesting in a water tower near Forest Park in Queens, at Co-op City in the Bronx, on the Brooklyn waterfront and in that borough’s Prospect Park.  Once a rural resident, the raven has followed a worldwide human trend in migrating to the cities – at least, to this one – where they now nest on such manmade structures as bridges and cell towers. 

                                                                                                                             Ken Billington
         But you may also have heard the more familiar caw of the crow (Corvus brachyrhyncos), once common throughout this country but decimated in the early 2000s by the West Nile virus.  Fortunately, this noisy cousin of the raven is making a comeback, appearing in numbers close to what it was before the West Nile outbreak.  Watch for crows in parks, since they like trees for nesting and open spaces for foraging.  And what, by the way, does brachyrhyncos mean?  It’s a kind of bastardized Latin, derived from ancient Greek: brachus + rhyncos = short + beak.  Short?  It looks pretty long to me, but who am I to argue with ornithologists?  If they say it’s short, it must be, but short compared to who or what?
         And now for another bit of urban wildlife.  STRAPHANGERS  GO  BERSERK  AFTER  WOMAN  TOSSES  BUGS  IN  SUBWAY  CAR screamed the headline of the New York Post.  It seems that a videotape showed a woman on the D train trying to sell worms and crickets out of a bucket.  When some teenagers bumped into her, she got angry and dumped the crickets and worms into the train.  Someone pulled the emergency brake, causing the train ,unhelpfully to stop on the Manhattan Bridge.  Skeptics later tracked down the woman who posted the video and got her to confess that she had posed as the cricket lady, doing “performance art” on the subject of homelessness; a confederate had knocked the bucket out of her hands.  So it was all fake, and the woman has been arrested on a charge of reckless endangerment.  The chirp  of the cricket is not likely to be heard on subway trains.
         This incident was faked but, in addition to singers and acrobats, the subway has witnessed chickens, frogs, goldfish, cats and dogs, buckets of dead crabs, a monkey, a used condom tied to a pole on the F train, and a man with a duffel bag full of snakes that he silently took out and draped on fellow passengers, except for one middle-aged woman who shrieked and screamed in protest.  And none of these were faked.  And so, dear tourists and visitors, ride our subways and have an adventure!
         Not that crickets are alien to the city.  The fall field cricket (Gryllus pennsylvanicus) can be found throughout the city in grassy fields, woods, garden beds, abandoned lots, playgrounds, schoolyards, and even tree pits (small plots of soil near a curb where a tree is planted).  And as autumn brings cooler temperatures they sneak inside buildings, crawling through cracks in foundations and gaps in window frames.  We hear them at night, when the males rub their wings together, the best of them dazzling females with their perfect pitch and regular song pattern.  But we don’t hear their chirp for long, since by Christmas they succumb to old age or starvation.  If only cockroaches would do the same!
         And in the sky above, you can see more than an occasional raven, or a bunch of crows, their floppy black wings beating the void.  Anywhere near water, as on Staten Island or in Jamaica Bay, you can see the outspread black-and-white-patterned wings of the osprey soaring overhead or diving to snatch a fish out of the water.  Almost eliminated by DDT in the 1980s, this magnificent avian has made a dramatic comeback.  In 2015, 21 osprey nests in and around Jamaica Bay produced 45 young – far more than before the onset of DDT.  I have seen those nests: big twiggy affairs   with mamma and the little ones peeking out, and dad nearby, bringing home the bacon, or rather, the fish.  New York is, in fact, a very “birdy” city, being situated at the junction of the Atlantic and Hudson Valley flyways, with wooded sanctuaries like Central Park (especially the North End and the Ramble) squeezed in among the asphalt and concrete of the urban wasteland. 

An osprey, preparing to dive.
         Not so lucky is the monarch butterfly, easily identified by its orange wings with black tracery, which I have often seen, two or three at a time, fluttering around the well-named butterfly tree in a little park near the Hudson River here in the West Village.  Their numbers have declined because the milkweed, a common summer wildflower, is declining in the Midwest, though I have found it at various locations, always dry and sunny, in and near the city.  Female monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, and the larvae feed on milkweed sap, which is toxic to other creatures, including humans; less milkweed means fewer monarchs.  The greatest danger to the monarchs used to be the loss of their forest habitat, the goal of their annual autumn migration in the Mexican state of Michoacán, which was devastated by illegal logging until Mexican authorities stopped the logging by offering different job opportunities to the locals. 



         But now a new threat to the monarch looms: a boom in avocado farming, inspired by a growing demand for avocados in the U.S.  Farmers in Michoacán are cutting down the oak and pine trees of the monarchs’ winter sanctuary to create avocado orchards.  It is said that the authorities are turning a blind eye to this development, either because of bribes or because they are fearful of organized crime and its links to the avocado industry.  To offset deforestation, trees are being planted in large numbers, but the monarch’s fate is, as of now, uncertain.  The next time I see avocados in a supermarket, I will think of these endangered creatures, so beautiful to behold, especially when they migrate in the autumn.  I’ve never seen the migration at its height, when waves of monarchs flutter through the fields, but I’ve seen any number of them feeding on asters on Monhegan in the early autumn – a sight that I hope will continue for years to come.  But will it?
         Bees too are in danger, though they can now be kept legally in the city, and a stand at the Union Square greenmarket on Wednesdays sells locally harvested honey from rooftop colonies throughout the boroughs.  U.S. beekeepers now lose some 30 percent of their colonies each winter, because of global warming, habitat loss, parasites, and insecticides far more deadly than DDT.  Why should this matter to people living cozily in cities, if they don’t yearn for honey?  Because bees pollinate 71 of the 100 crops providing 90 percent of the world’s food.  In short: no bees, no food.  At least, no plant-based food.  Big Agriculture is fighting hard to prevent bans on the insecticides here in the U.S., but the European Union has banned several of them, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is phasing them out on the public lands they manage.  
        A personal note: When I was about to graduate from college long ago, the dean called me in to discuss my future plans, which were vague at best.  Learning that I was an aspiring writer, he told me of a woman writer who kept bees.  "In the summer I keep bees," she said, "and in the winter they keep me."  She earned enough from selling honey to keep her home heated and meet other expenses, so that she could pursue her writing without a regular job.  Did I miss my calling?  Perhaps, but I've been fond of bees ever since.
         Obviously, some forms of wildlife are declining, while others thrive.  Among the latter are those black-masked sneaky creatures with striped tails that now abound in Central Park, coming out from the bushes at night in startling numbers, as many as 22 in one sighting at the edge of the Pond in the park’s southeastern corner.  Raccoons, of course.  These nocturnal prowlers have now become a tourist attraction, rivaling MOMA and the Met; people flock there nightly to feed the animals soft pretzels, organic gummy bears, potato chips, bits of hotdog, stale bagels from a bakery, and other goodies, and try to pose with them for selfies.  And the raccoons don’t mind; in fact, they flock there too in anticipation of goodies.  Though it’s not illegal, feeding them is not approved of by city authorities, since raccoons can carry rabies.  Nor do raccoons need these freebies, since they do quite well on their own, devouring plants, smaller animals, and insects.  But there they are, receiving free eats nightly from the unwary fingers of tourists, while in the nearby distance the buildings of Midtown Manhattan soar mightily, their many windows ablaze with light.  Once again, where but in New York?
D. Gordon E. Robertson


         A note on the Donald:  It’s not easy, getting him out of your mind.  And who is this arch foe of the establishment appointing as cabinet members and staff?  Among others, a hedge fund manager and a graduate of Goldman Sachs.  No comment.  But for Goldman Sachs, one of the two top companies I love to hate, see my post #158 of December 21, 2014:  “Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid or Martyred Innocent?”  (And the other object of my hate?  Monsanto, of course.)

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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




         Coming soon:  Bob Dylan's Village.  Reminiscences of the 1950s and 1960s.
         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

270. Meet the Trumpies, Our New First Family

         First to enter the restaurant, passing under the balcony famously lined with 21 cast-iron lawn jockeys, were Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, a young real estate operator whose father, also big in real estate, had been a regular.  Then a motorcade zoomed up, disgorging the Donald  with wife Melania, accompanied by Tiffany Trump, Donald Jr.  and Vanessa Trump, and Eric and Lara Trump, plus the inevitable Secret Service contingent.  They had surprised everyone, and especially the press and their staff, by leaving the security of Trump Tower on Tuesday evening, November 15, to dine at the famous 21 Club, a time-honored Manhattan institution on West 52nd Street but a few blocks from the tower, a former speakeasy now known for its superb cocktails and mediocre food. 
         The block was promptly shut down by the police, and when the press, alerted by a report from a diner inside, came flocking, only a few reporters were allowed to stand outside while the royal banquet proceeded within.  A standing ovation greeted the president elect as he arrived and again, albeit modestly, as he left; in between, fellow diners were snapping photos of him.  Since his usual table, no. 11, was too small for the group, the Donald and his family were seated at no. 14.  And what did our teetotaling future lord indulge in?  According to an observant fellow diner, a burger with fries and a virgin (meaning nonalcoholic) Bloody Mary.  A modest repast, but a burger there costs $36.
         Ivanka, Melania, Tiffany, Donald Jr., Vanessa, Eric, Lara – what a lot of Trumpies!  With Bill and Hillary it was just three, then four once Chelsea got married – so easy to keep track of.  But the Trump clan is huge by comparison.  So let’s sort them out while they’re still all here in New York.  And since Melania is the third of the Donald’s beauteous marital adornments, we’ll include the two exes as well.
         His first wife was Ivana, but that’s about as much as is certain about her earlier life.  She was born in either postwar Communist Czechoslovakia, or maybe Austria.  When they were married in 1977 by the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale in his Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, she gave her last name as Winklmayr, having married an Austrian by that name so she could get a passport.  But at times she used her maiden name,  Zelnickova, and while residing in Catholic Montreal she claimed to be married to a live-in Czech boyfriend named Syrovatka, a skier who had defected to Canada.
         Clearly, a woman of mystery, and that’s just the beginning.  She may have been on the Czech skiing team at the Winter Olympics of 1972, or she may simply have been a good non-Olympic skier.  In any event she made her way to Montreal, where she became a much sought-after fashion model, or just one of many such.  Certainly she was attractive; photos show a young beauty with abundant blond hair.  It was probably at a fashion show in New York that Trump met her in 1976, and he was instantly smitten.  He followed her to Montreal, introduced her to his parents in New York, and whisked her off to Aspen for Christmas, where he skied clumsily while she whipped past him on the slopes.  Yes, she was an expert skier, and he didn’t like being outskied, least of all by a woman, however beautiful.  But his bruised ego recovered, and he proposed on New Year’s Eve and then, after she broke off with Syrovatka, they were married in April 1977.
         But first there was the little matter of a prenuptial agreement that he asked her to sign, stipulating that, in the event of divorce, she must return any gifts he had given her – an agreement suggested by his attorney, the notorious Roy Cohn (see post #237, June 22, 2016).  Ivanka was no fool; a lawyer represented her in the ensuing negotiations with Trump and Cohn, and she demanded $150,000 to be deposited in an account under her name.  Both finally yielded a little, an agreement was signed, and they were married in Peale’s lily-adorned church before 200 guests, including Mayor Abe Beame.
         The married couple were apparently at first quite happy, and three beautiful children resulted: Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.  It was Ivana who gave her husband the name “the Donald,” and it was stuck to him ever since.
         Alas, happiness is a perishable item, especially among the rich and famous.  Trouble came in the form of another dazzling blonde, this one from Georgia, U.S.A.: Marla Maples, a frequent beauty pageant contestant who had almost won the title of Miss Hawaiian Tropic International in 1985.  In that same year she moved to New York, hoping for a career in theater, and met Trump at the gala reopening of the famous Rainbow Room.  When he invited her to lunch, she hesitated, then accepted.  The lunch was a five-hour affair at the St. Regis Hotel, in the course of which he confessed that his marriage was all but over.  Marla was 24, 14 years younger than Ivana, and her relationship with Trump developed slowly and, at first, out of the public eye.  Becoming aware of the affair, Ivana confronted Marla in Aspen and allegedly said, “You bitch, leave my husband alone!”  Rumors circulated, and it was soon known that the Trump marriage was unraveling.  When the New York Post blazoned on its front page “Marla Boast to Pals About Donald: ‘Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,’” Marla denounced the anonymous story as false, but the scandal shredded her budding career in theater.  Ivana was distraught, her children troubled; finally she filed for divorce, and after prolonged negotiations got a check for $10 million plus $650,000 a year to support herself and their three children.  But Marla didn’t marry him at once, even when pregnant with their daughter Tiffany; meanwhile, ever resourceful, she introduced and promoted a new line of fashionable maternity clothes.  Finally , on December 20, 1993, they were married before 900 guests at the Marble Collegiate Church, but only after she had been pressured to sign – you guessed it! – a prenuptial agreement.     
         The new marriage did not go well.  Marla discovered that her husband was so obsessed with business that he was emotionally detached from loved ones, including his four children.  For Trump, life was all about getting and   less about keeping, and it showed in his failed marriages.  In his third book, Trump: The Art of the Comeback, he would depict women as sexually voracious “killers” who used their beauty to dominate men, then observed that “I seem to bring out either the best or the worst in women.”   By 1997 they were ready to divorce, but months of quiet negotiations followed before she accepted the prenuptial agreement’s provision of $2 million and ongoing support.  The divorce was finalized in 1999, but they still met from time to time, having a shared interest in their daughter Tiffany.  Their marriage had lasted a mere six years.
         In 1998, a year before the divorce, another woman entered his life: Melania Knauss, an immigrant from Slovenia, an attractive model whose affair with him went for many years before they married on January 22, 2005.  This time the wedding took place at a church in Palm Beach, with 350 guests at the reception, including Oprah Winfrey, Rudy Giuliani, and then-Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband.
         To have your name linked to the Donald is to expose you to scandal-hungry tabloids and gossip magazines (those mags that assault your eyes at checkout counters of supermarkets); privacy is hard to come by.  Those two divorces involved real heartbreak for the rejected wives, and confusion and insecurity for the children.  The kids are all now involved with their sire, but what deep feelings they harbor is not known to the public.  More temptations and dangers await them as the Donald ascends the throne of this nation.  So let’s sum them up:
By the first wife, Ivana:
·      Donald Jr., 39, a real estate developer and Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions of the Trump Organization; married to Vanessa, a former model and actress; 5 children.·      Ivanka, 35, a former fashion model, Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions of the Trump Organization (which makes two of that breed), founder of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, its flagship store in the Trump Tower; married to Jared Kushner, described by Wikipedia as “an American businessman, investor and political operative,” owner of a real estate holding company and publisher of the weekly New York Observer; 3 children.·      Eric, 32, Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions of the Trump Organization (which makes three), founder of the Eric Trump Foundation, owner of Trump Winery, and overseer of his father’s 18 golf clubs (courses, not implements), married to Lara, who is described as “an avid equestrian” and animal lover; no children to date.
By the second wife, Marla:
·      Tiffany  (named for the famous jewelry store, whose air rights her father bought so as to build the Trump Tower), 23, an Internet personality, singer, and model; unmarried.
By the third wife, Melania:
·      Barron, 10, who lives with his parents in the Trump Tower. 
         And what do the kids say of their father?  Here’s a sampling, culled by his biographer Michael D’Antonio in interviews:
·      “There’s no more all-American guy than him.” – Eric·      “He’s going to say exactly what he is thinking.  He doesn’t need to hear what the question is or the story is in advance so he can craft an answer.” – Ivanka·      “He’s a polarizing guy.  That person who hates Trump the most still wants to get their picture taken with him when he walks by.” – Donald Jr.

Their remarks convey admiration and wonder, not resentment.
         The whole slew of Trumpies are a beautiful bunch, with a tendency toward long-haired blondes among the women.  The Donald won the election by appealing to white blue-collar workers in the Midwest, but he and his family are elite in the extreme, steeped in glamour and glitz: real estate men and fashion models, investors and entrepreneurs, most of them executives of one sort or another and linked to the Trump Organization, connections with which may prove problematic, now that the president elect plans to turn his businesses over to them so as to avoid conflicts of interest. 
         Daughter Ivanka’s presence at her father’s meeting with the prime minister of Japan has already stirred controversy.  And her New York residence at the Puck Building (owned by her husband and his father), at the corner of Houston and Lafayette in downtown Manhattan, inspired a peaceful demonstration there on November 28 by more than 150 artists, curators, and gallery owners protesting her father’s policies and pronouncements, while a new Instagram account is posting similar messages to her, since she is thought to be more attuned to culture and art than her father is.
         And the two ex-wives?  Ivana has since married and divorced, then married again, the wedding for 400 guests hosted by none other then the Donald at Mar-a-Lago, his palm-tree-adorned estate in Palm Beach, with daughter Ivanka as maid of honor.  Ivana has since separated from hubby #3, with whom she has an “on-again/off-again relationship.”  She has also developed lines of clothing, fashion jewelry, and beauty products sold through TV shopping channels; has investments in Croatia; and has written several books.  Hardly a has-been.
         And Marla?  She has appeared in films and on radio and television; supports charities and non-profits; has declared herself “mostly vegan”; and has released an album, one song from which won a Hollywood musical award.  Yes, there is life after Trump; these girls don’t fade away.
         As for Melania, future challenges await her as First Lady.  She has already been described as unsmiling and ice-cold, a sharp contrast with Michelle Obama.  In September she filed defamation lawsuits against a British tabloid and a Maryland political blogger, because of their allegations that she had worked as an escort for a gentlemen’s club in Italy in the 1990s; the tabloid and the blogger both published retractions and apologies.  As First Lady she hopes to help women and children, and especially wants to combat cyberbullying among children, having herself quit social media because of the “negativity.”  Good luck on that, Melania.  She will not immediately move with her husband into the White House, since she wants her son Barron to finish his school year here in New York.  (From Barron I anticipate a future blockbuster memoir: “I Grew Up in the White House.”)  So the Donald will probably be hopping back and forth between Washington and New York.  Trump Tower, after all, has things the White House can’t offer: spaciousness, glitz, and Melania.
         Source note:  For much of the information in this post, especially as regards the two previous wives, I am indebted to Michael D’Antonio’s biography, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success (St. Martin’s Press, 2015).  For a reliable survey of the Donald’s career to date, one can’t do better.
         The Naked Cowboy (and others) at the Tower:  The Trump Tower, the subject of the previous post, is hosting more than Trumpies and potential cabinet members and staff.  The Tower is still open to the public, albeit with heightened security, for the Donald has followed the example of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who decreed that the palace and spacious grounds of Versailles should be open to the public, so as to dazzle them with the wonders therein.  So it is that the Tower’s lobby has recently witnessed performances by none other than the Naked Cowboy, wearing his spangled undershorts and a slung guitar and not much else, with TRUMP blazoned across his vibrant behind.           A fixture in Times Square for decades, the Cowboy has migrated there to pose with potential cabinet members, boost the numbers of his social media following, promote his Naked Cowboy Oysters, and voice his admiration of the president elect, whose victory has given him faith in American and human potential; the Cowboy wants to be a New York icon, too, and live in a top-floor apartment like the Donald.  In a corner of that same lobby a man reads aloud from Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States by way of protesting Trump’s election, while on the sidewalk outside another malcontent sells pins bearing the message DUMP TRUMP.  So  it goes now on traffic-jammed, security-ridden, prestigious  Fifth Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan.
         Coming soon:  No idea, but it won’t involve the Donald.


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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.





         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

269. Childe Donald to the Dark Tower Came: Trump and His Tower

In the penthouse of his 58-story tower (he claims 68), far above the urban hurly-burly and up near soaring falcons and God, the future lord of these United States has hunkered down with family, friends, and advisers, reading the Times and the Post each morning, tweeting, and deciding staff and cabinet appointments that will shake the nation and the world.  (Please note: he never watches television.)  Down below in the realm of ordinary mortals, the Fifth Avenue entrance, topped by the letters TRUMP TOWER in gold, is defended by legions of Secret Service agents, teamed up with New York’s Finest and their bomb-sniffing dogs, against hordes of gawking tourists, casual passersby, visiting high school students who spit at the edifice and with their fingers flash obscene gestures at it, sullen Democrats, dismayed feminists, and other presumed terrorists.  Buses creep by in a jam of traffic, and shoppers eager to access the Gucci and Nike flagship stores in the innards of the tower complain of being scrutinized unduly by the vigilant minions of order.  So it goes now on Fifth Avenue between East 56th and 57th Streets in the heart of Midtown (and very Democratic) Manhattan.
         I confess that I have never seen, much less set foot in, Trump Tower, know it only from photographs.  Viewed from the west from across Fifth Avenue, its mass of black glass, steel, and concrete soars majestically above the main entrance, but if viewed from the southwest, one might think a great chunk of it had been ripped off, leaving a jagged surface (sometimes termed “sawtooth faceting”), a design permitting more corner windows and therefore, I assume, higher rents.  At least it’s not just another big glass-and-steel box, like so many other Manhattan high-rises.  Inside there are public spaces in pink marble, gold-painted elevators, a slew of shops and cafés, and a five-level atrium topped by a massive slanting skylight, with a plummeting 60-foot waterfall and a footbridge spanning the waterfall’s pool.  For me, it all registers as supermodern and glitzy to excess – dazzling to the point of satiety. 
         The tower’s upper floors house 256 residential condominia owned by moneyed foreigners, corporations, pop stars, and Hollywood celebrities, as well as Trump’s office on the 26th floor and, crowning it all, the president elect’s three-floor penthouse.  And how much do the condo apartments cost?  Anything from $625,000 for a studio (there are only a few) to more than $28 million.  And what amenities do they offer?  Marble bathrooms, Jacuzzi bathtubs, state-of-the-art appliances, walk-in closets, and panoramic views of the city, as well as a full-time doorman, concierge, and valet, a “fitness room,” maid service, and a common storage room.  (As if anything in  Trump Tower could be “common”!)
         Photographs of the penthouse’s interior show a living room in ornate French rococo with an abundance of gold, a huge chandelier flanked by murals overhead, sofas big enough to seat a large family, Louis XV chairs with elegant curved legs, and a large window giving a spectacular view out over the city.  Impressive, but hardly cozy.  The chairs and sofas are spread out at too great a distance for easy conversation; to be heard at the other end of the room, one would have to shout.  Fine for entertaining hordes of guests, or perhaps the Japanese prime minister (with daughter Ivanka controversially present), but not so good for quiet daily living.  There are photographs online showing the apartment and, posing in it, the Donald, his wife #3, Melania, and their ten-year-old son Barron.  Melania is gorgeous, but she looks more glamour puss than mother.  Here are some of the comments, dated 2012 to 2015, that the photographs have elicited online:
·      Melania is beautiful and elegant.  Reply: Or dumb as the floor she walks on.·      Oh god this is ugly.·      I just can’t see a toddler playing there.·      All that money … and still no taste.·      No $$$ in the world can buy her a smile.  [As seen here, Melania looks businesslike, though often displaying her shapely legs, and offers a paucity of smiles.]·      [One commentator castigating another.]  You are JEALOUS.  Leave the cat lady alone.  Let her live in her glass castle.
Obviously, comments on the décor slide quickly into comments on Melania.  And all this before she became the presumptive First Lady.
         To judge by these pre-election photographs, the penthouse looks quiet and spacious, its privacy sealed off from the world outside.  Today, with the Donald and his staff deciding the weighty matter of appointments, it may be a bit hectic as they confer, tensions arise, and the president elect makes phone calls to prospective appointees and summons them into his royal presence.  (Unless, of course, all this is done in his 26th-floor office.)  And the skies above the tower have now been declared a “national defense    2016   Clifforairspace,” permitting the government to use deadly force against any aircraft thought to pose an imminent threat – a designation to be lifted on January 21, 2017, the day after Childe Donald moves from 725 Fifth Avenue to  somewhat more humble quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
         Meanwhile, the brouhaha continues far below.  The intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56thStreet is now restricted by portable roadblocks, concrete barriers, metal barricades, and even some booted and helmeted police officers carrying heavy weaponry who looked like an occupying army, if not invaders from Mars.  On the east side of Fifth Avenue the sidewalk between 56th and 57th Streets is closed, forcing Tiffany customers to enter that stellar emporium by its 57th Street entrance.  The west side of the avenue is still open to pedestrians, but passage there is hampered by an impromptu press pen, construction litter, and selfie-snapping tourists.  And the whole block of East 56thStreet between Fifth and Madison Avenues, with the residential entrance used by the president elect and other occupants, is now closed to pedestrians and vehicles. 
         “There will be some disruption,” Mayor de Blasio admits, “but look at the bright side: the holidays are coming.  Midtown is going to be all messed up anyway.”  He urges New Yorkers who don’t need to be there to stay away from the block with the Trump Tower, yet at the same time endorses the New York tradition that lets protesters do their thing close to what they are protesting, which in this case means the Donald and his tower.  Should protesters again arrive en masse, as they have been doing at intervals ever since the election, it will be a test of nerves for all concerned.
         Disruption there is, and at that very time of year when, with the holidays approaching, retailers register their best sales of the year.  And this on Fifth Avenue, crammed with pricey retailers who, while being coy about it, are so scant of sales that they’re sending scarfed employees out into the street to lure shoppers past the barricades and into the bowels of elegance.  A woman from New Jersey who wanted to buy the Sylvie, the latest pocketbook from Gucci with a glittering gold chain down the front, had to talk her way past three different police officers who searched her shopping bag before she could enter those sacred precincts, and a young man also from New Jersey likewise had to run the security gamut before forking over $500 for a pair of Gucci sneakers.  Selfie-snapping visitors from England and Italy and Mexico, as well as Harlem, the Bronx, and the Upper East Side, rub elbows outside with a male honeymooning couple from Birmingham, England, who have come to get a glimpse of “the Devil himself,” while  young protesters flaunt  NOT  MY  PRESIDENT  signs and posters.  “We haven’t seen chaos quite like this back home,” observed a hospital worker from a small town in Minnesota who was in the city for a business conference, as she gazed up at the tower in bewilderment.
         OPEN  TO  THE  PUBLIC  is emblazoned in gold on the lobby entrance of the tower, and so it is, with only a newly installed magnetometer to scan bags.  For those who survive the affronts of security, the famous Atrium still gives access to the Trump Bar, the Trump Grill, the Trump Café, Trump’s Ice Cream Parlor, Trump Events (whatever they are), and the Trump Store, this last offering Trump colognes with names like “Success” and “Empire” on sale, next to “Make America Great Again” hats.  On the ground floor is the Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry Boutique, Ivanka being not one of Trump’s trio of wives, beauteous adornments who sport the melodious names of Ivana (#1), Marla (#2), and Melania (#3), but an  attractive golden-tressed daughter of the Donald and his no. 1, Ivana.  In the café Secret Service agents now lunch on such delicacies as “Trump’s Mother’s Meatloaf,” served by an immigrant from Mexico who insists that he’s a taxpayer and no criminal and therefore under no threat of deportation.
         Just as we must all get straight our future Chief Exec’s several wives and their offspring, so we must sort out the numerous Trump Towers.  How many are there in the world?  Seven and counting, since more are evidently under construction.  (Towers, not wives.)  Not just America, but the whole world is being Trumped.
         Source note:  For much of the information in this post I am indebted to two recent articles in the New York Times: “Trump Tower, Once a Tourist Attraction, Is Now Restricted From Ground to Sky,” by David W. Dunlap and J. David Goodman, November 11, 2016; and “Hunkering Down at His Tower, Grinding Fifth Avenue to a Halt,” by Sarah Maslin Nir, November 17, 2016. 

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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




         Coming soon:  Meet the Trumpies, Our New First Family. 

         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

268. Confessions of a Comma King: My Career in Freelance Editing

         The diversity of New York City – a common theme in this blog – is seen in the diversity of the occupations of its residents.  This post will glance at one of them, freelance editor, since that was my profession for many years and was – and probably still is – peculiar to New York.
         In the New Yorker in 2015, veteran editor Mary Norris told how she had, almost by chance, become a “comma queen” at the prestigious magazine, thus introducing the term and notion of a “comma queen” to the general public.  That being the case, as a longtime freelance editor, now retired, I can present myself as a onetime “comma king,” though not one so prestigious as a New Yorker practitioner of the trade.
         To start with, why do manuscripts need editors?  Because authors screw up.  If you ever read a book that was lightly edited, or even not edited at all, you’ll find yourself entangled in confusing sentences, needless repetitions, misspellings, puzzling omissions, and other annoyances that keep you from focusing on the book’s content.  So editors exist for a reason.
         And what is a freelance editor?  A freelance editor is an editor who operates independently – probably because he or she wants more free time and a more flexible schedule than a regular job would allow.  The profession is a refuge for would-be novelists and playwrights and other literary ne-er do wells at the outset of their hopefully brilliant careers, when they must focus on the manuscripts of others, and not on their own presumed masterpieces.  And it is peculiar to New York, since that is where publishers cluster, though today there are probably freelance editors elsewhere in the country, thanks to the Internet.     
         As a profession, editing requires good knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and spelling – stuff that pupils were forced to study in school long ago, but in today’s schools generally neglected -- and a fiendish attention to detail.  One is constantly having to decide whether or not to put a comma here, a semicolon there, and one must have mastered the subtleties of the colon and the apostrophe, and the differences between American and British spelling and punctuation.  Details, details, details.
          And how do freelance editors get manuscripts to work on?  By networking, by telling friends in publishing what they’re up to, by advertising or sending out letters to publishers (rarely successful, in my case), by getting to know editors who will then recommend them to other editors.  Once you get your foot in the door, résumés and interviews are rarely necessary; personal recommendations are all that matters.  And why do publishers hire freelancers?  To save money.  They hire them when they need them, and not when they don’t.  And they don’t have to give them pensions or other benefits; freelancers are on their own.
         What is a freelancer’s equipment, aside from sharpened pencils and an eye for detail?  When I was a freelancer back before the Internet, three books:
1.    Merriam-Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, 2ndedition, 1934.  A huge hunk of a dictionary that sits on my desk today, but is rarely used, since now it’s easier to consult the Internet.  This was the Bible of freelancers, much preferred to the 3rd edition of 1961, since it indicated preferred usage; it was the schoolmarm of dictionaries.
2.    The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th Edition, Revised and Expanded, The University of Chicago Press, 1969.  A second Bible, “for authors, editors, and copywriters.”  No graduate student writing a dissertation could be without it.
3.    The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr., with additions by E.B. White, 2ndedition, Macmillan, 1972.  Affectionately referred to as “Strunk” and known to the knowing few.
         From Strunk one learned to use serial commas and commas with nonrestrictive relative clauses; to delete “the fact that” as superfluous; to express co-ordinate ideas in similar form; not to put slang in quote marks; to differentiate between “among” and “between,” and between “farther” and “further”; not to confuse “anybody” with “any body”; and to distinguish between “comprise” and “constitute.”  (“A zoo comprises many species of animals,” but “Many species of animals constitute a zoo.”)  If the very thought of all this baffles or exasperates you, you’ll understand why editors exist.
         But there are different kinds of editing, requiring different skills.  I mostly worked on textbooks from several major publishers – Holt, HarperCollins, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich -- with a scattering of novels and nonfiction titles from Viking, and scholarly works from Oxford University Press’s New York branch.  Proofreading involved reading the galleys of a manuscript and making corrections in the margin, using proofreading  symbols.  Copyediting involved reading the manuscript at an earlier stage and, depending on the needs of the publisher, doing light or heavy editing.  Light editing meant the manuscript was already in good condition or, more likely, the author was resentful of changes.  “She doesn’t like her words being monkeyed with,” one inhouse editor warned me, “and some of her words are just begging to be monkeyed with.” 
         Finally, there is manuscript editing, where the manuscript may be in need of changes, in which case the editor, often working with the author, is expected to intervene.  This was common with textbooks, rare otherwise.  On one occasion I was invited, even urged, to make suggestions about additional material, and this with the full consent of the exhausted author; I in fact became a collaborator, and was generously acknowledged as such by the author when the book came out.  This was a foreign language textbook, and such textbooks usually required heavy editing and a working knowledge of the foreign language.  “The most difficult books we do,” the production people often complained, because they rarely knew the language in question.  I edited occasionally in Spanish, often in French and German, and once or twice even with a book requiring some knowledge of Latin.  (Ah, how I loved to strut my high-school Latin among the hoi polloi!  Oops – that’s Greek.)
         When editing textbooks, I often got to know the authors, either by phone or in person, and a rum bunch they were.  Some of them, at least.  My least favorite one was the coauthor of a very successful English college reader.  A former salesman, he knew the market and knew how to present his book to the professors who might adopt it.  Which evidently entitled him to be nasty.  Me he spared, but everyone else involved in the project he dismissed with scorn.  The top editor of the department hiring me was lazy, he insisted, and had to be prodded to give his manuscript the attention it required (not true; he was diligent but in charge of some fifteen or twenty manuscripts), and the inhouse production editor was “just your or anyone’s Polish grandmother” (she was likable and quite competent).  I was glad to be done with him and came away unscarred.
         The French author of a second-year reader was described to me as “quite dashing and continental; when he’s due to drop in, all the girls are aflutter with anticipation.”  When I met him, I found him to be continental indeed and very sophisticated, but a rather homely forty-year-old.  His French sophistication had dazzled them all, more than making up for his lackluster looks.
         A German textbook author based in Salt Lake City had amusing stories to tell about the Mormons.  But the best story of all, relayed to me by an editor who had visited him there, concerned the noted Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, whose unique and challenging stories I have read in translation.  Borges had visited the author, who asked the blind writer what he would like to do.  “Take me to the mountains,” said Borges, and to the mountains they went.  It was spring and the birds were singing, and Borges listened intently with great pleasure – a revelation for his host, fascinated to see how a blind man could richly appreciate the unseen spectacle of spring.
         Especially challenging was one of the last manuscripts I worked on before retirement: The HarperCollins World Reader, an ambitious anthology of world literature in translation, with an American editor whose enthusiasm recruited contributors, and an English editor who was hired to do the nuts-and-bolts work of editing; I worked with them both.  My job was not to edit the manuscript, but to be in touch with the twenty or more contributors, each a specialist in his or her field, and to encourage them to get their contributions in on time.  The schedule was tight, so the pressure mounted.
         Some of the contributors were a delight to work with, others were cranky and opinionated – supreme examples of the academic mind at its worst.  “You keep changing your mind!” complained the Korean contributor, when I told him HarperCollins had decided to present the book in two volumes, so he would have to do two introductions, instead of one.  I explained tactfully that for the publisher this was an undertaking without precedent, a truly ambitious project, and we were of necessity feeling our way.  “All right,” he said, “but you do the second introduction!”  So I did it, focusing on the postwar division of Korea and the onset of the Korean War – subjects not requiring a profound knowledge, or any knowledge, of Korean literature.  By way of contrast, when I informed another specialist of the need for two introductions – a woman who was busy moving from one university to another, having just been made department head at the second school -- she answered “Got it!” and soon delivered what we needed.
         An unforeseen dilemma arose when one of the contributors, a respected specialist in African literature, suddenly died; fortunately, a substitute – another distinguished scholar – was found to replace him.  But we weren’t always so lucky.  The Australian who was supposed to work with another specialist to present the literature of Polynesia and other regions of the Pacific kept putting me off: “Yes, yes, I’ll get to it soon.”  Then he announced that he would be disappearing into Tahiti for the summer and would be incommunicado, but of course he would be sending the needed material.  By now my suspicions were aroused.  And sure enough, HarperCollins got a brief note soon thereafter, announcing that he was resigning from the project, no reason given.  It was too late to find a replacement, so the Pacific region had only half the material intended.  What the fellow’s problem was we never knew, but he shortchanged the publisher and the book’s future readers.
         Always hanging over us was the schedule, forcing us to constantly hurry the contributors along.  When the inhouse editor informed me that, because of budget considerations, they would have to terminate me, I was relieved.  I wished them and the project well, but I was free at last from the constant pressure.  The anthology appeared in 1994 in two volumes with the thinnest of pages -- 2,796 in all.  Given a copy, I skimmed those pages often, lingering over the Chinese poetry, and tasted an excerpt of Lady Murasaki’s 11th-centuryTale of Genji, considered by many to be the world’s first novel,  a Japanese epic relating the amorous adventures of Prince Genji, an emperor’s son by a concubine.  Intrigued by the excerpt, I obtained a copy of the novel in modern translation and read it through, amazed that the chain of seductions didn’t become repetitious, but held me to the end.
         In the same year that saw the publication of the anthology, I retired from freelance editing, though since then I have helped several friends write their memoir: a gay prison inmate who recounts his arrest and imprisonment; a lady from Calcutta whose memoir/cookbook combines accounts of an idyllic childhood with Indian recipes related to each of her reminiscences; and a Sister of Mercy who tells of her bout with life-threatening illness and the recovered memory of being molested in her childhood.  The latter two have now been published, and I’m hoping that the inmate’s memoir will likewise soon appear.
          Another New York moment:  On the 14thStreet bus the other day a black man in his forties got on, wearing a knit cap of many colors, a sort of skull cap run riot.  Immediately he began talking loudly left and right, which is not the New York way; one doesn’t address strangers unless you have a particular reason to do so.  He sat down near me and continued his boisterous monologue, mostly incoherent, while flashing a broad toothy grin.  Of what he said I could only make out snatches, as for instance, “No!  I won’t dance!” followed by a chuckle, and then something about how Jesus Christ turned water into wine, which he evidently approved of.  He wasn’t crazy, just ebullient and talkative.  And lyrical, since at intervals he burst into song and, when done, applauded himself.  And how did his neighbors on the bus react?  By remaining expressionless and turning their face away from him, so as to avoid eye contact.  Since he was right in front of me, I could hardly avoid his gaze, so I smiled faintly, then looked casually out the bus window as if there was something there of interest.  At one point, while still blabbing, he took out a small bottle and put a dash of perfume behind each ear.  When he got off at Union Square, still blabbing, the bus was immersed in quiet relief.  I wish the fellow well, but from a distance. The lesson to draw: when you get on a bus in New York, you never know what to expect.

          An election note:  A friend of mine in Florida tells me that when he went to vote, he saw pickup trucks lined up on the grass behind the parking lot, all with shotguns and rifles visible in the rear windows.  Also, there was a tent-kiosk selling Trump T-shirts.  He voted straight Democratic, but wasn't surprised when the state went Republican.

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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.





         Coming soon:  Childe Donald to the dark tower came: our president elect in his tower.                  ©   2016   Clifford Browder

         

267. Wonders of Staten Island: the North Shore, plus a post-election chirp

         Staten Island has a bad press.  It’s the forgotten borough; the only borough in Democratic New York that consistently votes Republican (including in the recent election); that oddball distant bit of real estate squeezed up against New Jersey, which other New Yorkers think it should maybe be a part of; that unknown little island at the end of a half-hour ferry ride that tourists take so as to see the harbor and marvel at downtown Manhattan, following which they promptly board another ferry to return.  And in spite of its attempt to be “cool,” as seen in its much vaunted development plans for its North Shore -- the shore facing the harbor and Manhattan -- it still reaps derision, as seen in these comments online:
·      How can it be cool when it is isolated from the rest of the world?·      The land that time forgot.·      I’ve lived in SI myself and it was only for specific reasons, none of which involved much of a choice, and got out as soon as I could.·      Staten Island’s biggest problem is its provinciality.  Residents still refer to Manhattan as “the city.”  It’s something foreign and other for most SI’ers.  The place has a morassy vibe it can’t shake.
         But this Manhattanite has hiked the Staten Island Greenbelt – how many Manhattanites have even heard of it? – as well as other parks on the island, and likes the quiet of some – not all – parts of the island.  And he has a guide, Victoria, an Ohio-born transplant who has lived most of her life on the island, and who has introduced me to the hidden wonders of the borough.  Last October, on an unseasonably mild and sunny autumn day, she offered to take me to Fort Wadsworth, which I had never heard of.  The trip took us by car along a certain segment of the North Shore and gave me a series of revelations.
         But first you have to access Edgewater Street, which runs along the shore, and from the ferry terminal that ain’t easy, but my guide knew the way and immediately we found ourselves near the water and the first revelation, the National Lighthouse Museum, which I had never heard of.  The day being mild and sunny, we decided not to visit the museum and instead walked along a broad esplanade beside the water, where three big modern apartment buildings loomed up that offered residents fine views of the harbor.
         Going on from there along Edgewater Street, we came to the second revelation: Miller’s Launch – again, a facility I had never heard of.  We drove onto the premises and found a narrow waterfront crowded with parked cars and, anchored beside several piers, the strangest assortment of boats I have ever seen: boats that looked like tugboats and yachts, and others like motor-driven barges, some of these with flat, empty decks, others with all kinds of gear on board, including towering cranes, winches and windlasses, huge drums, and stuff I couldn’t describe.
         Miller’s Launch, my guide explained, was a family-run enterprise providing all kinds of marine services in the area: transportation of workmen and supplies, rescue operations, oil-spill clean-ups, dredging, towing, undersea cable laying – you name it.  Their website lists boats equipped with vehicle ramps, rescue ladders, radar, depth finders, booms to contain oil spills and vacuums to suck them up.  If you have a maritime problem of any kind, Miller’s can handle it.  They have even rescued a Coast Guard vessel in distress, provided equipment to engineering experts and award-winning film crews, and assisted the police by dredging the harbor to recover bodies.
         Miller’s is open every day, 24 hours a day.  A friend of my guide, a woman who in her off hours writes haikus, handles a night shift at Miller’s and says it’s a welcome night when all she does is watch television.  In her office there is an array of screens showing the current operations of every one of Miller’s boats, and it’s her job to keep track of them all.  Emergencies are all too frequent, and that’s what Miller’s can handle.
         Just beyond Miller’s on the North Shore, heading east, loom a batch of hulking, abandoned buildings and a pier that constitute another revelation: Homeport, a U.S. naval station created in the Stapleton neighborhood by the Reagan administration in the 1980s as part of its Cold War campaign against the Soviet Union.  But soon it was deemed to be too small, too expensive and, because of budget cuts, unnecessary; it was closed in 1994 and the premises turned over to the city of New York.  So what can you do with a 35-acre decommissioned naval base and pier on Staten Island?  For years, nothing.  But Staten Island is trying to be “cool,” to lure developers and utilize its North Shore.  So in 2011 the city reached an agreement with a developer to create a new, mixed-use waterfront community.  Stores and housing, including affordable housing, are anticipated, as well as a waterfront esplanade.  It’s hard to imagine such a project in Manhattan, where developers and real estate interests, politicians and preservationists would soon be at one another’s throat, with resulting interminable delays.  New apartment complexes are now advertising studio apartments for $867 a month for tenants with a total annual income ranging from $31,097 to $38,100.  Are you listening, you rent-oppressed, snooty Manhattanites?  And for commuting, the Staten Island ferry is free – that’s what I said, free. 
Homeport in 2010, before development.  It's going to house more than a court.
         Just a short ways beyond this marvel is another: Urby Staten Island, a residential waterfront development meant especially to entice millennials new to the city who feel a bit lost in its vastness and intensity, and are put off by its astronomical rents.   Here they can live communally with affordable rents, enjoying a shared kitchen, a gym, landscaped courtyards, a 300-car garage, a bike room accommodating up to 500 bikes, a bodega, an apiary (yes – bees!), an outdoor swimming pool, and even an urban farm with a farmer in residence, providing some of the food for the meals.  Not to mention views of the harbor, Brooklyn, and lower Manhattan.  Current monthly rents range from $1795 for a studio to $3550 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.  No, I’m not kidding, and no, I’m not being paid by the developer.
                   After these marvels, one risks a comedown.  Edgewater Street ends at the Alice Austen House, the former residence of the pioneering woman photographer Alice Austen, now converted into a museum dedicated to her life and work.  Having already visited it, Victoria and I continued on our tour of the North Shore, now following Bay Street to Arthur von Briesen Park, a landscaped public park that was once the estate of the German immigrant Arthur von Briesen (1843-1920), who practiced law here and founded the German Legal Aid Society to provide legal services to impoverished German immigrants. When his heirs deeded the estate to the city, the original mansion had to be torn down, but the park offers a gently rolling wooded landscape, and a view of the harbor and the Verrazano Bridge.  While enjoying the view, my guide and I saw a container ship with HANJIN on its side, Hanjin Shipping Company being a South Korean enterprise that, alas, has just gone bankrupt, creating turmoil for its oceangoing fleet.  Fortunately, we were able to ignore the problems of Hanjin and enjoy the wooded scenery around us, its foliage gently tinted with the shades of autumn.
         Finally, the last and climactic revelation of our tour: Fort Wadsworth, a nineteenth-century fort guarding the Narrows, the narrow channel between the Outer Bay and New York harbor.  We couldn’t go inside, but we strolled about the part of the fort on a bluff overlooking the harbor, which gives a spectacular view of the nearby Verrazano Bridge linking Staten Island to the People’s Republic of Brooklyn.  And on the shore far below, we could see Battery Weed, with three tiers of slots for cannon (but no cannon) in its harbor-facing walls.  Being more into wildflowers than historic forts and cannon, I noticed, growing near us on the bluff, the blue-violet petals of New York aster and spikes of a late-blooming goldenrod.  We then walked under the approach to the bridge for a view of the bridge from the other side – also spectacular.  There were plaques giving a brief history of the fort, which, when closed in 1994, was the longest continually manned military installation in the country.  It was comforting to know that it and other forts around the harbor had been there for over two hundred years, valiantly guarding the harbor and city of New York.  And when did those doughty cannon discharge their murderous fire?  Except in practice or to fire a salute, never, for no hostile warships have dared to invade these privileged waters since 1783, when the British evacuated New York.  Still, New Yorkers must have slept more soundly, knowing that the British fleet in 1814, or a Confederate raider in the 1860s, would meet a fierce welcome if they presumed to threaten Gotham.  And the old fort, now a part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area, does provide great views of the bridge and harbor.  And this is where the annual New York City Marathon begins.  But no crowds were there to jostle us; Victoria and I had the place almost to ourselves.
The Verrazano Bridge, with the lower section of Fort Wadsworth.
         So ended our tour of this stretch of the North Shore of Staten Island.  Let the inhabitants of Manhattan take note: Staten Island, that fiercely neglected borough, offers splendid views, comprehensive marine services, and the fine affordable housing that Manhattan desperately needs and woefully lacks, and its cannon have long protected the city from nefarious invaders.  So don’t sneer, you spoiled sophisticates; that little island has every right to aspire to “cool.”  May it build and flourish.

          A post-election chirp:  Protesters continue to march in the streets of New York and other large cities, following Donald Trump's triumph, which shows how passion-fraught this last election was.  Three further thoughts occur to me:   

The Donald promised to drain the Washington swamp (I'm all for it), but apparently is including Washington lobbyists in his transition team.  ???Among his followers being considered for high-level positions are Rudy Giuliani, our ex-mayor, and Newt Gingrich, who tried to impeach Bill Clinton for his sexual escapades.  The three of them have had nine wives among them.  How do the evangelical Christians, who backed Trump, feel about this?  ???Mike Pence, governor of Indiana and Trump's vice, has been described to me by relatives in Indiana as quiet and diligent -- a notable contrast with Trump's impulsiveness and flamboyance; they like their governor, but don't seem excited by him.  (He has had only one wife, by the way.)  Can he and other sober Republicans restrain their impulsive and often vindictive leader?  ???

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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




         Coming soon:  Confessions of a Comma King: My Life as a Freelance Editor.

         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

266. New York City is not Trump country.

     Yes, the unthinkable happened: Trump won!  Last night hundreds of protesters marched from Union Square to the Trump Tower on Park Avenue, shouting "We reject / The president elect" and similar slogans; some violence resulted and there were 65 arrests.  Similar protests were staged in numerous other big cities throughout the country.  But let's face it: protests or not, he's the president elect.  And big cities aren't what he and his followers are all about; they're about small towns and rural areas, and stricken regions of the Rust Belt that feel neglected and abandoned by urban elites and the establishment.

     For a blue collar worker in the Rust Belt -- say, in Akron, Ohio -- big cities are alien entities, even the enemy.  Everything about New York, the city I live in and celebrate, says special, glitzy, unique. The things most associated with it -- media, publishing, fashion, theater, museums, and so on -- suggest a world that Rust Belt workers are shut out of: a world of glittering night clubs and fancy restaurants frequented by hedge fund managers and celebrities; surging, impersonal crowds; luxury housing; Broadway shows at phenomenal prices; a hodgepodge of flourishing immigrant communities that speak strange languages; and towering high-rises whose glass pinnacles vanish into light.  This is the City That Never Sleeps, a mecca of hustlers (unless, like the Donald, they're born here), a citadel of money, power, diversity, and success.

     Never mind that I and many New Yorkers get (and need) plenty of sleep, don't hobnob with celebrities, live in rent-stabilized apartments, and live on a budget.  The fact remains, New York comes across as BIG, BIG, BIG, a nest of glamour and success.  How could people in the Rust Belt and elsewhere, just managing to get by financially and remembering the better days of long ago, not resent New York and all it stands for, and rally to that oddball New Yorker, Donald Trump, who speaks to their need?  With hindsight, it seems almost inevitable, but the polls and the pundits missed it.  No one I know in New York -- mostly middle-class professionals -- voted for Trump, but ours is a world of security and achievement, far removed from the stricken districts that voted for Trump.

     What now?  For the moment we have to show the world how a real democracy works.  The loser in an election congratulates the winner (Hillary did, and graciously), and the retiring president works with his successor to arrange a smooth transition (Obama is doing just that, while observing that Bush had done the same for him eight years ago).  Demonstrations in the streets, no doubt, but no riots, no assassination attempts, no military takeovers; that's not our way.  I heard Obama's brief post-election message to the nation; it was moderate and reasonable.  And I heard Hillary's speech to her followers here in Manhattan; it was heartfelt -- a quality that I didn't get enough of in her speeches during the campaign.

     Hillary is one tough cookie, but the country wanted someone anti-establishment, and she is establishment to the core.  So it goes in politics.  The ones I most sympathize with are the women who supported her, often with tears of joy in their eyes, many of whom now wept through the night of the election, as the results came in; this was not their year, and they aren't just appalled by her defeat, but also by the fact that she lost to a man who has boasted of groping women.  (Hillary's husband had done the same -- more of the baggage she carried -- but he was never caught boasting of it on tape.)

     A surprise?  Yes, the outcome was a surprise, though not the biggest one ever.  The biggest in my memory was in 1948, when Harry Truman, the Democratic president, fooled everyone by defeating Thomas Dewey, the Republican.  While this 2016 race was known to be a close one, no one back then thought Truman could win, but he campaigned doggedly, barnstorming around the country by train, speaking to crowds even in whistle stops.  So sure were the media of a Republican victory that they didn't bother to do polls during the last month of campaigning.  Only a few vigilant observers noticed that the crowds that Truman drew were getting bigger and bigger.  The rabidly pro-Dewey Chicago Tribune even ran a premature headline, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.  When Truman won, he posed with the headline, flashing a broad grin.  As vice-president Harry had also posed while playing an upright piano at the Washington Press Club Canteen for servicemen in 1945, with newly minted Hollywood star Lauren Bacall reclining on top of the piano -- another memorable Truman photo.

     One last note:  When Truman won, people groaned.  Many voters thought he wasn't up to the job, but he turned out to be a vigorous and successful president whom even Republicans today admire.  On the wall in his office was a famous sign: THE BUCK STOPS HERE.  An omen for the future?  Who knows?




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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




     Coming soon:  As announced, the wonders of Staten Island's north shore, which snooty Manhattanites had better not sneer at.

     ©   2016   Clifford Browder

265. New York Moments: Revelations and Sudden Deaths

         What is a New York moment?  A moment that brings a revelation, a surprise, or even a sudden death or injury that is unique to New York, a moment that couldn’t happen just anywhere, a moment that is quintessential New York.
         My latest New York moment: recently on Hudson Street I saw a man of about forty walk by with his hair in a bun on top of his head, and, sticking up out of the bun, what looked like a sprig of a plant.  As he walked off I then saw, on his legs below his shorts, one short black sock, and one long yellow stocking reaching up to his knee.  This sight garnered from me and other bystanders, not shock or stupefaction, but just a casual smile.  We’re New Yorkers, inured to oddball sights.  In New York, it’s Halloween all year.
         Not long ago, coming back from the Union Square greenmarket, I entered the Union Square subway station, a maze of passageways where a tangle of subway lines meet.  Several trains had just unloaded passengers, and streams of striding New Yorkers were flowing in from all directions.  Amazingly, they didn’t collide; each flow managed to avoid the others and surge briskly on.  This sight, which I have seen many times, struck me at once as typical New York: brisk, energetic, intense.  Some Con Ed workers had ribboned off one corner of the station and were doing maintenance work there, and off in another direction, just to one side of the flow, there was a pudgy man with only stubs of arms, seated, pounding an array of drums, hoping for money and seeming to give the striding streams of people a tempo.  A first-time visitor would have been terrified by this spectacle of purposeful New Yorkers striding briskly toward some destination; the very intensity of it – quintessential New York – would have put them off.
         My day begins and ends with a New York moment when, looking out my bedroom window, I see what I call the Tower of Light: a soaring tower, windows lit up, topped by a red dot of light.  This of course is One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, the main building of the rebuilt complex on the site of the destroyed Twin Towers, a 104-story structure topped by a spire: the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the sixth tallest in the world.  The spire will be outfitted with antennas to service broadcasters lured away from the Empire State Building.
         Asking some acquaintances for their New York moments, I recently heard two stories.  One told of coming away from a flamboyant drag show in midtown Manhattan and meeting on the street, coming from the opposite direction (and therefore not from the show) a costumed individual so ostentatiously and exuberantly wild as to defy description, except to say that he (assuming it was a he) was wearing what looked like a space helmet.  All of which reminded me of the one time I marched in the Gay Pride Parade back in 1994, when, just behind my group, came a contingent from San Francisco, the first row of which consisted of drag costumes so outrageously weird that they looked like creatures from outer space.  But that was the Gay Pride Parade, the once-a-year gay Halloween, and this experience was on a very ordinary evening in midtown, if ever there is such a thing as an ordinary evening in New York.
         The other New York moment they told me of was, in some ways, even weirder.  Walking in midtown past the legendary Seagram Building on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rdStreet – once hailed as a miracle of minimalist architecture, but to my eye just a big glass and metal box – my acquaintance saw a bunch of people on the sidewalk looking at a pool in the building’s plaza.  So he too stopped and looked, and there in the pool, with its soaring spume of water in the center, a penguin was splashing happily about.  A real live penguin, with no indication of how it got there.  A New York moment, not likely to be repeated in Peoria or Dubuque or Kokomo (with all due respect to those estimable communities).  And when I googled “Seagram Building, penguin,” all I got was Wikipedia on the building, and a Penguin anthology of poetry.  So the mystery remains.
         Yes, if one keeps one’s eyes open and alert, there is lots to see in New York, much of it surprising.  If one looks up, you may see a red-tailed hawk or a peregrine falcon soaring, and if you’re near water, an osprey.  And in winter, high above the rooftops, hundreds of starlings circling round and round with a precision matching the Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall.  Being on the Atlantic flyway and near the coast, New York is a “birdy” city.  And the New York Times, that inexhaustible font of information, recently informed me that crows and ravens are returning to the city.  So residents can expect to hear the crow’s familiar caw and the raven’s less familiar cr-r-ruck adding their music to the symphony of urban dissonance.
         So much for looking up.  And if one looks down?  Graffiti, and pavements torn up for construction -- nothing special there.  But if you were  an archeological consultant during the recent reconstruction of Washington Square Park, you would have discovered brick burial vaults containing centuries-old coffins, and the tombstone of an early immigrant.  The park, now frequented by New York University students and citizens like myself, and adorned with Stanford White’s magnificent Washington Arch, was once a cemetery.
         I’ve also promised moments of sudden death, and they do happen.   All too familiar are the deaths of the elderly who live in an apartment alone and are found by neighbors.  Such was my friend John who died last spring, and another friend whom I hadn’t seen for years, who was likewise found in his apartment, with a glass of wine on a nearby table – not the worst way to go, in my opinion.  But here I’m chronicling unusual deaths, as for instance: on February 25, 2010, a 46-year-old man from Brooklyn was crossing Central Park near 69th Street when the snow-laden branch of a massive elm fell on him, striking his head and instantly killing him.  He was found with a pool of blood beside him in the snow.  The branch was thought to have weighed 100 pounds.  So next winter watch where you walk.
         But that could have happened anywhere there is snow; it’s not unique to New York.  Agreed, so how about this: on January 16, 2004, a 30-year-old woman who was walking her dogs on East 11th Street stepped on an electrified metal plate and was electrocuted.  The metal plate, installed on the street by Con Edison to cover wiring, had become electrified by a wire not properly insulated.  In November 2004 Con Edison agreed to pay her family $7.2 million.
         Still, that might have happened somewhere else.  So here’s a story of an injury that could have happened only in New York.  In 1997 a 33-year-old woman, an investment analyst, was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with her husband and child at 72nd Street and Central Park West, when a mammoth balloon, buffeted by high winds, got loose and knocked part of a lamppost onto her head; for nearly a month she lay in a coma, then finally recovered.  And that could have happened only in New York, the site of the one-and-only Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  And to top it off, on October 11, 2006, a plane crashed into her high-rise bedroom at East 72nd Street, setting it on fire and killing the pilot and his flight instructor, minutes before she arrived home.  Having survived a Thanksgiving Day disaster,  how would you like to come home and find your bedroom in flames, with an aircraft’s engine lying beside your bed?  Only in New York.  Alas.
         One final only-in-New-York incident: on Saturday, October 29, during the second intermission at the Metropolitan Opera’s matinée performance of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, a man approached the orchestra pit and sprinkled some white powder around the tympani and the conductor’s podium, then left.  The musicians reported it, and the Met, fearing some dangerous substance like anthrax, canceled the rest of the performance so the police could investigate.  Several thousand operagoers, some of whom had traveled a great distance to attend the performance, were obliged to leave the building, and as the investigation continued, the evening performance of another opera was also canceled. 
         Another act of terrorism in the Big Apple?  No, for the white powder proved to be, not anthrax, but the ashes of human remains.  But why would anyone do such a thing?  The answer soon came when the police, following a lead from an audience member, located one Roger Kaiser, a jewelry maker from Dallas, at a bed-and-breakfast in Manhattan.  Kaiser admitted having sprinkled the ashes, explaining that he had promised a friend, now deceased, who was a great opera fan, that he would scatter his ashes in opera houses around the country; he had meant to do so discreetly, without any desire to disrupt the performance.  “Not a bad guy,” a police official concluded, and no charges resulted.  An Instagram selfie of Kaiser shows a bald man, wide eyed with a somewhat silly grin, with an apple on top of his noggin – a tribute to William Tell, the Swiss hero who shot an apple off his son’s head.  The Met manager  announced that the Met of course welcomed opera lovers, but not the ashes of their friends.  Again, where but in New York?


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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




         Coming soon: The north shore of Staten Island, where the forgotten borough strives to be cool.  Watch out, snooty Manhattan – marvelous things are happening there, and maybe you can’t compete.
         ©   2016   Clifford Browder

264. Why New Yorkers Won't Put Up with Donald Trump

With the election close upon us, it seems fitting to republish here Vignette #14, dated July 1, 2012, explaining what New Yorkers will and won't put up with (chapter 17 in the book).  At the moment, they won't put up with Donald Trump.  He's a native son, and Hillary has problems, but he simply goes too far.  So here is that text from over four years ago, when another presidential election was in the offing.  You will see how it applies to the Donald.


14.  Dear readers,  Here, as promised, is Tolerance and diversity in the city: What New Yorkers will and won't put up with, and why.  7/1/12                                                                                  

We New Yorkers are pretty easygoing regarding the morals of our elected officials, which sometimes puzzles non-New Yorkers who read about those officials' misdeeds and peccadilloes. As an example I'll mention again Jimmy (Beau James) Walker, our dapper parade-loving mayor in the Roaring Twenties, a celebrity long before my time but even today a legend in the city. Natty, beguiling, and debonair, he charmed everyone who came near him, and seemed the very embodiment of his age, being fond of chorus girls and speakeasies and rarely showing up at City Hall before noon. Alas, the Great Crash of '29 and the Depression that followed brought a very different age when his charm and nonchalance didn't quite seem appropriate. When an investigation of his administration revealed rampant corruption, Mayor Jimmy resigned his office and, fearing indictment, left the country for an extended stay in Europe, where his show girl lady friend soon joined him. But the investigation never pinned any specific misdeed on him, and when he returned to the city a few years later, a dozen tugboats crammed with well-wishers saluted him in the harbor with horns and whistles, reporters flocked in droves, and 1400 letters and telegrams awaited him in his hotel room. If a rascal, at least he was a charming rascal; all was forgiven.

Fast-forward to today: Though it's common knowledge that Mayor Bloomberg has a girlfriend, this raises no eyebrows here. What does raise a few is the report of her having a six-figure salary as a member of the board of directors of Brookfield Properties, which owes the city a six-figure sum in back taxes. Also, Brookfield is the owner of Zuccotti Park, where the Wall Street occupiers moved in and founded a real community, until Hizzoner sent his minions to drive them out. This too raised a few eyebrows, but to date no torrent of moral indignation has engulfed his august presence; he hasn't crossed the line. (A possibly irrelevant aside: Michael Bloomberg, with a fortune of $22 billion, is the eleventh richest person in the U.S., but we New Yorkers, being, as I say, tolerant and easygoing, have managed to forgive him that.)

The one who truly tried our patience was Bill Clinton, at the time of Monicagate. When he repeatedly denied having an affair with the twenty-one-year-old White House intern and was then proved a liar, we didn't cry out "How wrong!" or "How immoral!" Rather, we said, "How stupid!" For it was stupid to give his enemies such ammunition. And as my dentist's assistant commented resignedly, "He just can't keep his hands off the girls!" But for most New Yorkers the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice that brought his impeachment in the House didn't constitute the high crimes and misdemeanors justifying an impeachment, and in Harlem the whole business was shrugged off as irrelevant. So when the Senate acquitted him, we concurred. And then, of course, Newt Gingrich, leader of the drive to impeach him, admitted to having an affair with a House intern, and several of his fellow solons owned up to the same. At which point, with some justification, we cried "Hypocrite!" Whatever his sins, for most of us Bill Clinton hadn't quite crossed the line.

Rudy Giuliani was a different story. We had reservations about him as a peacetime mayor (more on that another time), but had to admit that as a wartime mayor -- post 9/11, that is -- he came into his own. But when he humiliated his second wife by announcing his plans for divorce to the media, rather than first informing her in private, we found his action to be (to put it mildly) ungentlemanly, a reaction that intensified when he paraded his girlfriend about in public, and his lawyer described Mrs. Giuliani as "howling like a stuck pig." This indeed was hubris and not to be countenanced. Push New Yorkers far enough and they turn out to be conventionally moral with a vengeance. Fittingly, the aggrieved wife got a million in alimony, though the errant ex-mayor was married to the girlfriend in Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York mayors, by none other than our illustrious current mayor, Hizzoner Michael Bloomberg.

Another perhaps irrelevant aside: Rudy at least was deliciously unpredictable. When word got out that he had appeared at a private party in drag, we New Yorkers were thunderstruck. Mr. Macho Get-Tough-on-Crime Giuliani in drag? Preposterous! But photos in lavish color, showing him in a platinum blond wig and appropriately padded frilly pink gown, convinced us, and we chuckled. It didn't help any hopes he had for higher national office as a Republican, but proved he had a sense of humor; his poll numbers shot to an all-time high. "I already play a Republican playing a Democrat playing a Republican," he announced, being a onetime Democrat turned Republican. And, more to the point: "I enjoy having fun." This topped even Jimmy Walker's antics. Ah, Rudy, how we could have loved you, if you hadn't been so monstrous to your wife!

Another brief example: John Edwards of North Carolina, competing with Hillary and you-know-who to be the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, also denied rumors about a girlfriend and even a child by her, saddling an aide with the paternity, until forced to admit the truth. This we could have -- maybe -- overlooked. But the affair was unfolding while Edwards knew his wife had an incurable cancer, and this could not be condoned. I had in fact preferred him to the others but, once the whole story came out, I was totally disgusted and knew his political career was kaput. Sad. Like Giuliani, he had crossed the line.

And Eliot Spitzer (is there no end to these examples?), a dynamic New York State attorney general who was easily elected governor, but whom the media then exposed as having patronized an elite escort service, paying a "petite, very pretty brunette" $4300 in cash for a single encounter, and maybe as much as $80,000 to prostitutes in all. We have nothing against petite, pretty brunettes, and he did seem to have had good taste and certainly wasn't stingy, but this didn't sit well with the citizenry, since as attorney general he had broken up a call-girl ring and locked up eighteen people involved in it. Within a month he had to resign. We New Yorkers might (with reservations) have overlooked the call girls, but we despise hypocrisy. (Thanks to her media exposure, by the way, the petite brunette was allegedly offered $1 million to pose nude for Hustler magazine and finally ended up in Playboy.)

Why do New Yorkers tolerate as much as they do? There are probably many reasons, but surely one of them is diversity: in a city where there are so many different kinds of people, one learns not to judge too harshly or rush into severe moral strictures. (There are exceptions, I don't deny it.) Instances of diversity: my partner Bob's doctor is Norwegian, and our home-care aides are Jacques, a Haitian, and Irena, a Russian from Moscow. If I go out on errands, within two blocks I'll hear at least three languages, often from tourists with their noses in a guidebook, and I may see a turban or a sari. And recently, when I took a walk in the park by the river, I saw a woman veiled from head to foot in a burka. If I go out to lunch on Sunday with friends, our choice of nearby restaurants include the Dublin Pub, the Smorgas Chef (Swedish), or the Empire (Chinese, but serving Japanese dishes as well). And when I last lunched at the Empire, at a nearby table sat a bunch of young marrieds, some black and some Asian, with infants of mixed race, all having a delightful time. (Significantly, perhaps, their elders were not present.) And out the window I could see, across Seventh Avenue, a row of store signs: Fantasy World (offering sexy outfits no respectable citizen would want to be seen in, except in fantasy); Yavroom (jewelry); Psychic Reader; Spa Jolie -- Grand Opening; VILLAGE VANGUARD (a renowned jazz spot that's been there for years); Rivoli Pizza Restaurant; and above them on the second floor, Lose up to 8 Inches in 2 Weeks, and Laser Hair Removal. For all these varied enterprises there are obviously enough customers to justify the high rent paid. Again, diversity.


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          My poems:  For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down.  To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here.  For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
          My books:  No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.  For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here.  As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.




The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



     
Coming soon:  As announced, New York moments, sudden revelations, surprises, and even sudden deaths in the city.  A space mask, a penguin, crows and ravens, a branch weighing a hundred pounds, and electrocution by steel on the street.

©   2016   Clifford Browder