A little before 7 AM on the first Friday of September, the year 1952, Mrs. Barone enters the Larson's home. She has been their housekeeper/cook/nanny (when Burt needed one) since Molly Larson died tragically many years ago.
Mrs. Barone, a widow for almost 20 years, is in her early 70s with grey hair tied in a bun. She could definitely afford to lose some weight.
Mrs. Barone has deep affection for Burt and visa versa. Regarding Harvey, they have a professional relationship. They only talk when necessary.
Since Burt can fix his own breakfast of Corn Flakes and fresh strawberries with milk (from his father's dairy), Mrs. Barone is busy preparing Harvey's breakfast: an egg omelet, two strips of bacon, buttered (also from his dairy) toast and coffee with cream (again from his dairy) and sugar.
Before Burt comes downstairs, he enters his father's bedroom full of curiosity about his father's Thursday. Harvey offers few details. But, Burt enjoys watching him shave, especially when he's applying the shaving cream with a brush. How long will it be before Burt can do the same?
There are two topics Harvey and Burt share in common, baseball and boxing. Harvey loves the Yankees. They are easy to love having won three straight World Series and look like a good bet to do it again in October as the American League pennant winner.
"Did the Yanks win last night, Dad?"
"Sure did."
Instead of mimicking his father's passion for the Yankees, Burt feels a desire to compete with him. Maybe Harvey doesn't give his son enough quality time. He is always so busy at work. Maybe deep down, Burt is angry about that. So, this gives rise to Burt's hatred of the Yankees.
"What about the Dodgers?"
"I don't know. You can read about them in the afternoon paper."
What a disappointment. Harvey knew of Burt's interest (as a Dodger fan) in this score, but failed to take note.
"Will you be home tonight to watch the Fights on TV? Two welterweights, Gil Turner and Bobby Dykes."
"You know I always come home as soon as I can. It should be a good one."
After breakfast and a chat with Mrs. Barone, Burt heads off to school. However, his next stop will be at the house of his cousin, and best friend in the world, Libby Collins.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Worse Than Death
I used to think nothing was worse than death. As I don't believe in an afterlife (nor a before life), death means the end, the absolute end of an individual's consciousness. The world will go on, but without you. The individual no longer exists...except for what they leave behind. That is a difficult concept to accept. However, it is not a punishment. As Paul Newman said in the 1967 Western movie Hombre, "We all die. Just a question of when."
However, I have come to believe there are things worse than death. Pain, terrible pain, without end, is worse. Dying, in order to end the pain, would be preferable.
Before my father died in 1981, I used to have occasional headaches. There was always Tylenol in the house to end the pain. When I traveled I always took some with me, except the trip to bury my father. But what if there were nothing to treat the pain, only suffering, endless worsening pain?
About 16 years ago, I began to feel pain in my perineum. Tylenol didn't help. My gastroenterologist never saw such a thing before. A second one recommended as a solution an excruciating procedure (with no guarantee) that I anticipated would be worse than what I was experiencing. I declined. Thankfully, after a few months the pain disappeared and has never returned. I now understand why some people commit suicide because of persistent, endless pain.
In season 5 of the Showtime series Ray Donovan, his wife Abby (Irish actress Paula Malcomson), after suffering cancer and its treatments for many months, chooses to end her life on her own terms rather than continue the fight. "I don't want another day."
Then there is mental pain. I heard once of a husband who accidentally injured his wife so badly she was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. How could a man live with himself after committing such a grievous blunder? How could he look at her day after day for the rest of his life knowing what he had done to her?
Recently, I watched an episode of the Netflix series Anne With an E (season 2) about a teenage girl named Anne raised on a farm in Canada at the end of the 19th Century. Her mother, Marilla (British actress Geraldine James), who is suffering from an unidentified illness, exclaimed, "I won't be a burden to Anne."
Marilla did not want Anne changing her life in order to care for her sickly mother. If there were no other alternative, Marilla would prefer death than alter the course she was setting for Anne's bright future.
Unlike the USA where there is a whole industry that cares for the elderly, Brazilian culture dictates that families care for their aged parents. My wife Cristina has already spent 25 years (and counting) enduring the burden of first caring of her father and now her mother.
As I just celebrated my 73rd birthday, I realize I am closer to the end of my life than the beginning. Of course, this could be true any time, but for sure at mine. I don't know what will be my end, something quick or long lasting? However, I know one thing: "I won't be a burden to anyone." It is not my wish to return to those halcyon days of my infancy when I could not care for myself (eating, bathing, eliminating).
If my brain deteriorates to the point where I no longer know my loved ones, I would prefer death. After all, as Mr. Carson said in the PBS series Downton Abbey (season 4), "The business of life is the acquisition of memories."
However, I have come to believe there are things worse than death. Pain, terrible pain, without end, is worse. Dying, in order to end the pain, would be preferable.
Before my father died in 1981, I used to have occasional headaches. There was always Tylenol in the house to end the pain. When I traveled I always took some with me, except the trip to bury my father. But what if there were nothing to treat the pain, only suffering, endless worsening pain?
About 16 years ago, I began to feel pain in my perineum. Tylenol didn't help. My gastroenterologist never saw such a thing before. A second one recommended as a solution an excruciating procedure (with no guarantee) that I anticipated would be worse than what I was experiencing. I declined. Thankfully, after a few months the pain disappeared and has never returned. I now understand why some people commit suicide because of persistent, endless pain.
In season 5 of the Showtime series Ray Donovan, his wife Abby (Irish actress Paula Malcomson), after suffering cancer and its treatments for many months, chooses to end her life on her own terms rather than continue the fight. "I don't want another day."
Then there is mental pain. I heard once of a husband who accidentally injured his wife so badly she was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. How could a man live with himself after committing such a grievous blunder? How could he look at her day after day for the rest of his life knowing what he had done to her?
Recently, I watched an episode of the Netflix series Anne With an E (season 2) about a teenage girl named Anne raised on a farm in Canada at the end of the 19th Century. Her mother, Marilla (British actress Geraldine James), who is suffering from an unidentified illness, exclaimed, "I won't be a burden to Anne."
Marilla did not want Anne changing her life in order to care for her sickly mother. If there were no other alternative, Marilla would prefer death than alter the course she was setting for Anne's bright future.
Unlike the USA where there is a whole industry that cares for the elderly, Brazilian culture dictates that families care for their aged parents. My wife Cristina has already spent 25 years (and counting) enduring the burden of first caring of her father and now her mother.
As I just celebrated my 73rd birthday, I realize I am closer to the end of my life than the beginning. Of course, this could be true any time, but for sure at mine. I don't know what will be my end, something quick or long lasting? However, I know one thing: "I won't be a burden to anyone." It is not my wish to return to those halcyon days of my infancy when I could not care for myself (eating, bathing, eliminating).
If my brain deteriorates to the point where I no longer know my loved ones, I would prefer death. After all, as Mr. Carson said in the PBS series Downton Abbey (season 4), "The business of life is the acquisition of memories."
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Antietam
Antietam is a creek in north-central Maryland near the Town of Sharpsburg. In the 1860s the town had a population of around 1,000.
In the summer of 1862, General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River in an attempt to move the Civil War to the North. He hoped to win an important victory which might bring European recognition of the Confederate States of America.
On September 17, 1862 (156 years ago tomorrow), Lee's army met General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Antietam (creek). "It turned out to be the bloodiest day in United States history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded or missing." That is four times the total of American casualties on D Day, June 6, 1944.
Union forces claimed victory at Antietam as Lee was the first to withdraw from the field of battle all the way back across the Potomac into Virginia. The super cautious McClellan failed to pursue him. This and other failures eventually led President Abraham Lincoln to dismiss McClellan later that year. In 1864, McClellan unsuccessfully challenged Lincoln in the presidential election.
According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential biographer, "The victory (at Antietam) was the long-awaited event that provided Lincoln the occasion to announce his plans to issue an Emancipation Proclamation the following January (1, 1863)." Six days after the battle, September 23, 1862, a preliminary proclamation was published.
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued under Lincoln's Constitutional war powers as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces suppressing the ongoing rebellion. It states that "all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are and henceforward shall be free." Such slaves had been used for military purposes by the Confederate armed forces. Freeing them would hinder those forces.
Previously, the goal of the Civil War from the northern point of view was to preserve the Union. Now, a second goal was added: to end slavery. Thankfully, both goals were achieved. "God bless the United States of America."
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Sixteen Again RevisiTed
On January 11, 2015, I posted a story in my blog entitled "Sixteen Again" about a significant experience of mine back in 1961. Faced with an opportunity that didn't happen very often, I used all the courage I could muster to ask a pretty blonde girl from Minetto for a date. She accepted. All went very well on the date until the very last moment.
For an unexplained (by her) reason, when we returned (after dancing and dining) to her house, she got out of the car, ran to the door, opened and closed (herself behind) it before I got there to say good night. She refused to speak to me ever again. What had I done to deserve that?
The only plausible explanation is my decision to give a ride to my Minetto friend, Warren Bickers, who was hitchhiking at the corner of West First and Utica, created some kind of a horribly embarrassing situation for her, for which she blamed me to eternity.
Afterwards, I focused on her rejection of me at the end, instead of the other 99% of the date. Instead of realizing she had and thus other girls would also accept a date with me (one wrote in my yearbook "Don't keep your nose in a book; it's too cute to be in there."), I focused on her rejection at the end. Instead of realizing the ease with which I conducted myself with her during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end. Instead of realizing how much she was enjoying herself during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end.
There is an old expression, "If you fall off a horse, you get back up." I didn't take such sage advice. That date, in the first half of my junior year, would be my one and only during my high school days. I permitted the ghastly fear of rejection to control my behavior for the next two years until my Penn roommate Mike Parr arranged a date for me with Phyllis Green, a Temple coed.
If I had focused on the positive side of that date instead of the negative, how my life could have changed? I was on the cusp of developing social self-confidence, which I lacked before then. But my reaction to the end of that date crushed my fragile ego for years to come.
My two children never lacked for social self-confidence during their formative years. Why? I believe it was because their mother and I worked hard to instill it in them. On the other hand, I suffered because nobody did that for me during my youth.
When I graduated from college in 1967, I decided to move to Michigan where my brother Ted and his wife lived because, lacking social self-confidence, I knew my sister-in-law would arrange many opportunities for me to meet young women. That's how I met my first wife.
If back in 1961 I had used that date experience in a positive way, I could have developed into a socially self-confident young man who would not have needed any such assistance in Michigan. I would have preferred to remain in Philadelphia after graduation, a city I had grown to love during my four years at Penn. What a different direction my life would have gone? I'll never know.
For an unexplained (by her) reason, when we returned (after dancing and dining) to her house, she got out of the car, ran to the door, opened and closed (herself behind) it before I got there to say good night. She refused to speak to me ever again. What had I done to deserve that?
The only plausible explanation is my decision to give a ride to my Minetto friend, Warren Bickers, who was hitchhiking at the corner of West First and Utica, created some kind of a horribly embarrassing situation for her, for which she blamed me to eternity.
Afterwards, I focused on her rejection of me at the end, instead of the other 99% of the date. Instead of realizing she had and thus other girls would also accept a date with me (one wrote in my yearbook "Don't keep your nose in a book; it's too cute to be in there."), I focused on her rejection at the end. Instead of realizing the ease with which I conducted myself with her during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end. Instead of realizing how much she was enjoying herself during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end.
There is an old expression, "If you fall off a horse, you get back up." I didn't take such sage advice. That date, in the first half of my junior year, would be my one and only during my high school days. I permitted the ghastly fear of rejection to control my behavior for the next two years until my Penn roommate Mike Parr arranged a date for me with Phyllis Green, a Temple coed.
If I had focused on the positive side of that date instead of the negative, how my life could have changed? I was on the cusp of developing social self-confidence, which I lacked before then. But my reaction to the end of that date crushed my fragile ego for years to come.
My two children never lacked for social self-confidence during their formative years. Why? I believe it was because their mother and I worked hard to instill it in them. On the other hand, I suffered because nobody did that for me during my youth.
When I graduated from college in 1967, I decided to move to Michigan where my brother Ted and his wife lived because, lacking social self-confidence, I knew my sister-in-law would arrange many opportunities for me to meet young women. That's how I met my first wife.
If back in 1961 I had used that date experience in a positive way, I could have developed into a socially self-confident young man who would not have needed any such assistance in Michigan. I would have preferred to remain in Philadelphia after graduation, a city I had grown to love during my four years at Penn. What a different direction my life would have gone? I'll never know.
Sunday, September 2, 2018
The Naked City
The Naked City (New York) is a 1948 film noir directed by Jules Dassin, produced by Mark Hellinger and stared Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Don Taylor and Ted de Corsia. In addition to producing, Hellinger also did the narration for the movie. Sadly, he died of a heart attack at forty-four years of age shortly before the movie was released.
The Naked City won two Academy Awards: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (William Daniels) and Best Editing (Paul Weatherwax).
On one level, The Naked City is a police drama showing in almost documentary style the mundane minute by minute steps of a murder investigation. Jean Dexter, a former model, is found dead in her bathtub. Who done it? Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald) and Detective Jimmy Halloran (Taylor) are assigned to the case.
Discovered in Dexter's address book, the police question Frank Niles (Duff), who claims only a legitimate business relationship with her. However, Muldoon and Halloran discover Niles has no legitimate business. In reality Dexter and Miles conspired to steal jewelry from wealthy New Yorkers.
Dexter enticed Doctor Stoneman to give her information as to when his friends would be at parties he hosted so actual burglars, Willie Garzah (de Corsia) and an associate, could rob jewelry from their unprotected homes. Niles would then sell the jewelry and divide the money among the conspirators.
However, Garzah gets greedy and kills Dexter. Later, he tries to kill Niles. By following Niles, the police discover he sold stolen jewelry. To help himself, Niles implicates Stoneman and the robber ("It was Garzah"). In an exciting conclusion, Garzah is discovered living on the lower East Side of Manhattan and is cornered by the police on the nearby Williamsburg Bridge.
In one poignant scene, Dexter's parents (from out of town) come to the New York City Mortuary to identify her body. The mother before the identification is very angry and says, "All these young girls, so crazy to be with the bright lights. No bright lights for her now, is there? What about us? Scandal! My husband's a gardener. He works for a banker, a highly respectable gentleman. He'll get fired now. I hate her. I hate her. She even had to change her name. I do hate her. I do. I warned her. A million times I warned her. I hate her for what she's done to us."
But when she sees her murdered daughter's body, her attitude suddenly changes. "My baby. Oh, my baby." And the tears of a distraught mother flow.
Secondarily, The Naked City is "a story of the city itself." It was filmed on location in New York, rare at the time. The actors "played out their roles on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York...A great many thousands of New Yorkers played out their roles also (unbeknownst to them). It was the city as it (was in the summer of 1947). Hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup."
At the end, the narrator sums up The Naked City. "It's one o'clock in the morning ... and this is the city and these are the lights that a child born to the name of Victoria (Jean Dexter) hungered for. Her passion has been played out now. Her name, her face, her history were worth five cents a day for six days (as written in the newspapers). Tomorrow, a new case will hit the headlines. Yet, some will remember Jean Dexter. She won't be entirely forgotten, not entirely, not altogether. There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."
The Naked City won two Academy Awards: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (William Daniels) and Best Editing (Paul Weatherwax).
On one level, The Naked City is a police drama showing in almost documentary style the mundane minute by minute steps of a murder investigation. Jean Dexter, a former model, is found dead in her bathtub. Who done it? Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald) and Detective Jimmy Halloran (Taylor) are assigned to the case.
Discovered in Dexter's address book, the police question Frank Niles (Duff), who claims only a legitimate business relationship with her. However, Muldoon and Halloran discover Niles has no legitimate business. In reality Dexter and Miles conspired to steal jewelry from wealthy New Yorkers.
Dexter enticed Doctor Stoneman to give her information as to when his friends would be at parties he hosted so actual burglars, Willie Garzah (de Corsia) and an associate, could rob jewelry from their unprotected homes. Niles would then sell the jewelry and divide the money among the conspirators.
However, Garzah gets greedy and kills Dexter. Later, he tries to kill Niles. By following Niles, the police discover he sold stolen jewelry. To help himself, Niles implicates Stoneman and the robber ("It was Garzah"). In an exciting conclusion, Garzah is discovered living on the lower East Side of Manhattan and is cornered by the police on the nearby Williamsburg Bridge.
In one poignant scene, Dexter's parents (from out of town) come to the New York City Mortuary to identify her body. The mother before the identification is very angry and says, "All these young girls, so crazy to be with the bright lights. No bright lights for her now, is there? What about us? Scandal! My husband's a gardener. He works for a banker, a highly respectable gentleman. He'll get fired now. I hate her. I hate her. She even had to change her name. I do hate her. I do. I warned her. A million times I warned her. I hate her for what she's done to us."
But when she sees her murdered daughter's body, her attitude suddenly changes. "My baby. Oh, my baby." And the tears of a distraught mother flow.
Secondarily, The Naked City is "a story of the city itself." It was filmed on location in New York, rare at the time. The actors "played out their roles on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York...A great many thousands of New Yorkers played out their roles also (unbeknownst to them). It was the city as it (was in the summer of 1947). Hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup."
At the end, the narrator sums up The Naked City. "It's one o'clock in the morning ... and this is the city and these are the lights that a child born to the name of Victoria (Jean Dexter) hungered for. Her passion has been played out now. Her name, her face, her history were worth five cents a day for six days (as written in the newspapers). Tomorrow, a new case will hit the headlines. Yet, some will remember Jean Dexter. She won't be entirely forgotten, not entirely, not altogether. There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."
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