Regrets 3

Ernest Borgnine, the actor, made a very positive impression on me during my youth appearing in many films: From Here to Eternity as Sergeant Judson, Vera Cruz as Donnegan, Bad Day at Black Rock as Coley Trimble and especially Marty as Marty Piletti.  

In the first three of the above films, Borgnine portrayed a villainous character.  However, he was the lovable protagonist in Marty.

Between 1951 and 1967, Borgnine appeared in some 37 films.  He was enjoying a very successful career.

After I graduated college in May 1967, I moved to the Detroit Michigan area as my brother Ted lived there.  I met and started dating Bonnie (Bonita) Sobol, whom I married the following year.

One day later in 1967, I found myself with Bonnie and some of her friends in the VIP lounge at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.  Two of our group were heading out on their honeymoon.

As I didn't know well anyone in the group except for Bonnie, my eyes wandered around the VIP lounge, my first and only time in such an environment.  And there right in front of me, sitting alone on a sofa intently watching TV, was Ernest Borgnine.

Instead of walking over to engage him in conversation, I was frightened at the prospect that he would bite my head off for bothering him.  

In 2012, shortly before his death at 95, I saw his last  interview.  He was asked what he had learning over his long life.  He responded with, "Be nice to people."  That quote was reinforced by what I read in his autobiography and what I saw in numerous videos about his traveling around the USA.  

I regret that I did not have the courage to talk to Ernest Borgnine when I had the chance.  I am convinced that he would not have bitten my head off.  Quite the opposite I am sure.  

Take advantage of all opportunities.

Fiddler on the Roof

 Fiddler on the Roof  is a 1971 American period musical film produced and directed by Norman Jewison based on the 1964 stage musical of the same name. Set in early 20th-century Imperial Russia, the film centers on Tevye, played by Topol, a poor Jewish milkman who is faced with the challenge of marrying off his five daughters amidst the growing Antisemitism in his small village of Anatevka.

As I previously mentioned, I don't know much about the early life of my maternal grandparents who emigrated from Imperial Russia to the USA in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.  However, Fiddler on the Roof gives me some ideas about such early life.

The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, winning 3: Best Cinematography, Best Music: Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score and Best Sound.  Among its nominations were Best Picture (won by The French Connection), Best Director (won by William Friedkin for The French Connection) and Best Actor (won by Gene Hackman for The French Connection).

Fiddler on the Roof is a metaphor for survival in a life of uncertainty, precariousness while "trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck."

Through Yente the matchmaker, Tevye arranges for his eldest daughter, Tzeitel, to marry Lazar Wolf, an affluent butcher.  Arranged marriage was a common practice in many cultures, including Jewish culture, and still exists in today's world.  Romantic marriage is a more modern concept. 

However, Tzeitel is in love with her childhood sweetheart, Motel the tailor, and begs her father not to force her to marry the much older widower, whom she does not love.  Tevye reluctantly agrees and, despite Lazar Wolf's humiliation, Tzeitel and Motel are married. 

Tevye persuades his wife Golde to accept the marriage of Tzeitel and Motel by claiming that a prophetic dream told him that Lazar Wolf's dead wife will haunt Tzeitel if she marries her husband.  Furthermore from the dream, Tzeitel is fated to marry Motel.

The necessity of creating the dream to convince his wife demonstrates the matriarchal structure of the Jewish culture...outside of the religious life.

At the end of the film, Tevya and his family are forced to leave Anatevka and, like my grandparents, emigrate to America. 

  

Yearbook, Chapter 6

On Friday night, Bennie's mom and dad left home and drove a few hours to the 1000 Island Harbor Hotel in Clayton, New York, along the banks of the St. Lawrence River.  This was their annual weekend vacation trip to the same resort.

On Saturday afternoon, Bubbles borrowed her father's car and drove to Bennie's house for the first time.  She looked great.

Bennie spent all that morning tidying up his bedroom, his bathroom, the kitchen and the dining room.  He wanted to make a good impression on Bubbles.  

When she arrived, he gave her flowers.  Then she gave him a big kiss on his lips.

He gave her a quick tour of the house.  She was especially interested in his bedroom.

They adjourned to the kitchen where he prepared a lunch for the two of them of steak and boiled potatoes.  There was a lettuce and tomato salad and chocolate pudding in the refrigerator.  She thought everything was delicious.

After lunch, Bennie and Bubbles walked slowly, holding hands, to his bedroom.  First, they sat on his bed and started kissing.  Then, they removed each other's clothing and started exploring each other's body.  Eventually, after exhilaration, they fell asleep lying in each other's arms. 

    .

Nathan Hale

Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut in 1755.  He graduated with first-class honors in 1773 from Yale College at age 18 and became a teacher.

After the Revolutionary War began in 1775, Hale joined a Connecticut militia unit which supported independence from England.  He was elected first lieutenant within five months.

In the spring of 1776, the Continental Army moved to Manhattan to defend New York City against the anticipated British attack. In August, the British soundly defeated the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island via a flanking move from Staten Island across Brooklyn.

General George Washington was desperate to determine the location of the imminent British invasion of Manhattan.  To that end, Washington called for a spy behind enemy lines.

Hale volunteered on September 8, 1776 to go behind enemy lines and report on British troop movements, which he knew was an act of spying, punishable by death. Hale planned to disguise himself as a Dutch schoolteacher looking for work, though he did not travel under an assumed name and reportedly carried with him his Yale diploma bearing his real name.

While Hale was undercover, New York City (then the area at the southern tip of Manhattan, mostly south of what is now Chambers Street) fell to British forces on September 15, and Washington was forced to retreat to the island's north in Harlem Heights (what is now Morningside Heights).

Major Robert Rogers of the Queen's Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him. After luring Hale into betraying his allegiance by pretending to be a Patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehended Hale near Flushing Bay in Queens, New York.

On the morning of September 22, 1776 (248 years ago), Hale was marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which was next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern-day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged.  He was 21 years old.  It has traditionally been reported that his last words, either entirely or in part, were: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." 

Regrets 2

In 1904, my maternal grandmother, Naomi (Elkin) Karchevsky, a woman in her early twenties, carrying her infant daughter (my aunt Francis), travelled from a small town in the Russian Empire all the way to Ellis Island in the New York City harbor to begin a new life.

Eventually, she and my grandfather, Julius, who arrived in the USA a year earlier, settled in Oswego, New York when my mother Margaret was born in 1907.  My parents met eighteen years later in 1925.  I was born twenty years after that in 1945.

My grandmother lived a long life passing away in December 1976 at more than 90 years of age.  At the time, she was living in a nursing home in upstate New York.  She was in reasonably good health, physically and mentally, when she suffered a stroke and died one day later.

I was (for the first time) a pall bearer at her funeral in Rochester, NY.  Afterwards I had my first experience sitting shiva.  "Eat...eat," I was told, so I ate.  The food was very good and plentiful.

My grandmother died just after my daughter Rachel celebrated her first birthday on December 7, 1976.  All that year 1976, I thought about taking her to the nursing home to introduce my grandmother to another of her many great-grandchildren.  I kept putting it off thinking I could do it another time...but it didn't happen.  It is another of my life's regrets.

As we lived not far from each other, I frequently saw my grandmother, especially when she lived in Rochester.  I had many happy memories of her.  

But, since my grandmother passed away, I have developed a curiosity about what her early life was like and what happened on that fateful journey from Russia to America.  That story is gone, but I imagine a little bit from the film Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Kurds

Kurds are an ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria.  The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million.  Kurds speak the Kurdish languages.

Kurds do not comprise a majority in any country, making them a stateless people.  After World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. 

However, that promise was broken three years later, when the Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey and made no such provision, leaving Kurds with minority status in all of the new countries of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.  

Recent history of the Kurds includes numerous genocides and rebellions, along with ongoing armed conflicts in Turkish, Iranian, Syrian, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds in Iraq and Syria have autonomous regions, while Kurdish movements continue to pursue greater cultural rights, autonomy, and independence throughout the Kurdistan region.

Sufficient evidence exists, however, that, despite the fact that history is full of examples of Kurdish uprisings against the empires under whose rule they resided, the desire for an independent or autonomous Kurdish state among Kurds, in the modern sense, emerged only after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a new autonomous region in the northern part of the country was created and a new Kurdish government, under the name Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), came into existence. On 30 January 2005, the KRG organized a referendum on the question of an independent Kurdistan. The unofficial results recorded that 98.88% of Iraqi Kurds supported independence.

The referendum of 25 September 2017, like previous attempts at independence, was a step taken to press the Baghdad government for political and economic gains. Similar to the 2005 referendum, the latest one sparked controversy as it included the disputed territories of northern Iraq—including the Kirkuk oilfields—as part of the Kurdistan Region. 

This referendum carried only symbolic meaning for the Kurds, rather than any real potential for the declaration of an independent Kurdish state. The ballot asked a single question: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region’s administration to become an independent state?” 

The results recorded that 93% of participants voted in favor of independence. The referendum went ahead despite the fact that almost all international actors—with the exception of Israel—were against it?

That begs the question as to what do the Kurds and the Israelis have in common?  Answer:  a desire to have their own independent state in the Middle East.  The problem:  The powers that be in the Middle East don't want them to succeed.  Why?

Israel and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq maintain a close informal relationship, but do not have formal diplomatic missions in each other's territory. Their ties are rooted in Israel's historically strong support for the Kurdish people and their long-running desire for self-determination and national independence in Kurdistan.  

The Iraqi government and the Kurdish government have differing policies with regard to the entry of Israeli citizens into their territory: Kurdish authorities accept Israeli passports at Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, and Israelis are entitled to regular freedom of movement throughout the Kurdistan Region.

Iraq, which has been a party to the Arab–Israeli conflict since Israel's founding in 1948, does not recognize Israeli sovereignty.

In light of Israel's conflict with the Arab countries, the Kurdistan Region has declared that there is no cause for animosity between Kurds and Israelis.  In 2017, the Israeli government openly voiced support for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.  Relations between the two sides have been met with antisemitism and anti-Kurdish sentiment from the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey.

One-Eyed Jacks

Marlon Brando and Karl Malden are two of the most acclaimed Hollywood movie stars of all time.  They appeared together in three films: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961).

The phrase one-eyed jacks refers to two of the jacks in a standard deck of playing cards: the Jack of hearts and the Jack of spades. One eyed jacks is a phrase most often used to describe cards that are being declared wild.

The film One-Eyed Jacks, a western, is the only one directed by Marlon Brando.  It is known that he wanted his friend Karl Malden to portray his partner/antagonist in the film.

The film starts with Rio (Brando) and Dad (Malden) robbing a bank in Mexico.  They escape but are chased by Mexican police.  

While up on top of a hill trying to fend off the police, the two decide that one of them should go off and get fresh horses.  Trusting him, Rio lets Dad have such an opportunity.

However, with one fresh horse, Dad abandons his friend and rides off to safety.  Rio is then captured and spends 5 years in prison before escaping.  He is consumed with revenge against Dad.

After leaving Mexico, Rio joins a gang of bank robbers heading to Monterrey, California where Dad is now surprisingly the local sheriff.  At their first meeting, both Dad and Rio lie about what happened 5 years before and since.  

Dad said that there were no fresh horses available.  It is not only not true, but Rio knows it is a lie because the Mexican police took him to the farm where Dad got his one fresh horse.  Others were available.

Rio says he evaded capture by the Mexican police.  Dad does not know the veracity of this story.  After the lies, they shake hands based of their old 'friendship.'

Rio even said to Dad that 5 years is a long time to hold a grudge.  But, it is never too long according to his true feelings.

Eventually there will be a shoot-out confrontation.  After all, this is a Western.  For example, see Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, High Noon (1952) with Gary Cooper and Shane (1953) with Alan Ladd.