Southern Bookman

Headed back to New York City

Gearing up for a weekend trip to New York City, my longtime love.

The city has changed dramatically through the years, while its energy and frantic chaos remain the same.

As The New York Times documented in a special section recently, the Manhattan skyline looks far different now then it did even five years ago.

Resembling War of the Worlds aliens, monstrous skyscrapers have risen, blighting street life below. The soaring towers' owners, Mideastern and Eastern Europe billionaires, buy the high-rise apartments as money-laundering vehicles. The ghostly units above the clouds mostly stay vacant. Below the buildings' shadows, small retailers flee, leaving empty storefronts even on Fifth Avenue.

New York's soul shines at the New York Public Library,the Frick, Broadway and off Broadway theaters, the Morgan, the Museum of Modern Art and other places. They too are beset by plans and new directions, while their essence survives.

With rising seas, dominance of the ultra-rich and destruction of the middle class, the city's future looks troubled. At certain moments, when the light softens at Central Park or the curtain rises on a new show, New York's magic feels eternal.

 

Goodbye to New York, once again

New York City in early April. Each day is its own season.

The snow is a different snow from winter's. The rain doesn't feel like spring. A few blossoms shiver on trees growing from the small squares of earth cut into the sidewalk.

Cold, but not that cold. Except in the shadows of the buildings. Or when the wind blows from the Hudson River. Women in short skirts and black stockings. Stocking caps. The British girls with their English voices. 

Young teens in the hotel lobby. Girls from Utah in blue evening gowns. Yes, one says on the elevator, they performed at Carnegie Hall. Proving the old joke correct. 

Tourists with foreign accents crowd the streets, walking by abandoned storefronts. Fish and giant pretzels at sidewalk stands. Hot nuts. Lunch at the Algonquin. 25 W. 45th St. Joseph Mitchell. The Gotham Book Mart. 

Peter Hujar's photos at the Morgan. Peggy Lee. Susan Sontag. Young gay men, killed by Aids. Candy Darling on her deathbed.  Tennessee Williams manuscripts. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Elizabeth Ashley.

Dutch master drawings. The crystal elevator. Cafe tables. The ladies who lunch. 

New York public library. Rose reading room open again. Readers at tables, lit by lamps with silver shades. Down the hall, Shelley and his circle. Portraits from the days of Edith Wharton. 

Revolution exhibit. Situationists. Bob Dylan. Herbert Marcuse. 

Central Park. That day I saw Jackie Kennedy...The Strand's sidewalk kiosks. 

The homeless in their blankets. Crayon messages scribbled on cardboard. Can you spare some change? 

Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Village Vanguard. Feinstein's 54 Below. Carnegie Hall. Yankee Stadium.

Bebe Neuwirth. Renee Rosness. Steve Nelson. Andras Schiff. Aaron Judge. 

The Yankees outfield, standing at attention in their pinstripes behind the pitchers mound during the national anthem. NY caps held to their hearts. 

Young black woman, yelling in her New Yawk accent, "Hot chocolate, hot chocolate." Peanut bag tossed like a double-play ball. 

Yankees fans, who know the game. Commentaries in Jimmy Breslin voices.

The New Haven train from Grand Central. Fog and rain. Connecticut towns, where once the great cartoonists lived. Ghostly trees. Cemeteries. South Norwalk station. Long Island Sound. 

First Avenue from a certain apartment window. We spoke in the same way then, but who remembers where or when? Country music on the stereo. 

The Chrysler Building from a Fifth Avenue office tower. New York Life. "That used to be the Pan Am building."

Back to Atlanta on a Delta plane. Azaleas and dogwoods in full bloom. The green lawns of home.

 

Atlanta might lose again to Boston

Will Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology edge out Emory and the Georgia Institute of Technology?

The home of the Kennedy Library beat the home of the Carter Library?

Boston has emerged as the favorite to land Amazon's second headquarters, according to Bloomberg News. Atlanta and every other U.S. city with any trace of a digital economy are competing to win the site.

The Seattle-based Amazon said the $5 billion investment would bring 50,000 jobs to the winning city. That would be a lot of beans for Beantown.

A Boston victory in the Amazon sweepstakes would be bitter for Atlanta after its football team lost to Boston's in the Super Bowl, blowing a huge lead.

Atlanta has stiff competition for the Amazon deal. Fellow Sunbelt wonder Denver recently was named the leading contender by The New York Times, ignoring that Denver's in the West and Amazon wants to come East.

Rocky Mountain High? Atlanta has the world's busiest airport. And folks don't wear cowboy boots to business meetings. Coors? Might as well drink water. 

Boston had the tea party. The Georgia Bulldogs play each year in the World's Biggest Cocktail Party.

Atlanta snared the Braves, who once played in Boston. Boston has the Green Monster. Atlanta has.....the Chop House?

Oh well, even if Atlanta loses out on Amazon, it still has Coca-Cola and Delta. And 23 streets named Peachtree.

 

 

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill give inclusive message as Soul 2 Soul Tour comes home to Nashville

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's Soul 2 Soul tour swung home last weekend to Nashville.

The Music City power couple filled downtown's Bridgestone Arena, where the Predators only a month or so before had electrified the old river town with a run at the Stanley Cup, losing in the finals to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The hockey afterglow remained bright, with a beaming Hill shouting "Hello Smashville" to the adoring crowd.

McGraw and Hill's blend of pop, rock and country, Vegas glitz and Nashville friendliness, packed the big bowl for two shows. Strained vocal chords had led Hill to cancel a preceding show in Little Rock, but she was in full voice in Nashville, dancing around the stage, hitting all the notes in performing her pop confections, and dazzling the crowd  with  her costumes: a gauzy white number, a silver cocktail dress, and, in a sultry encore with McGraw, a hot pink robe.

Displaying his laid-back big hat macho, McGraw made do all evening with a tight T-shirt and thigh-straining blue pants over his cowboy boots. His good-natured humorous dialogues with Faith about their married life  came off well.

Among those singing along, dancing and cheering was the governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, a business-oriented Republican whose efforts to extend Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was blocked by the hard-right state legislature.

Haslam's presence was notable because McGraw and Hill are known as active Democrats who supported Barack Obama. McGraw is mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate, although he seems fine for now earning millions touring, singing duets with his gorgeous wife and living on their suburban farm with their three daughters.

McGraw excited the crowd with his anthem "Live Like You Were Dying," and also issued what could be read as an anti-Trump message with his beautiful new song, "Humble and Kind." As he sang, giving voice to what used to be considered All-American virtues of humility, honesty, hard work and tolerance, the huge video board flashed with portraits of people of all ages, races and religions. 

 

The video's diversity contrasted with the virtually all-white crowd, which surely included a number of Trump supporters, although Nashville is considered a liberal island in conservative Tennessee. 

Before their steamy encore, McGraw and Hill circulated through the crowd, slapping hands and hugging fans. They're country royalty who keep the common touch.

 

Daniel Mendelsohn remembers how Homer's 'The Odyssey' brought him closer to his father

Daniel Mendelsohn's essay in the April 27 New Yorker about reaching a deeper relationship with his elderly father through their shared interest in "The Odyssey" gave poignant testimony to how classic literature can change our lives.

Jay Mendelsohn, a retired computer scientist, was 83 when he asked Daniel, a professor at Bard College, if he could monitor the freshman class Daniel teaches on Homer's epic poem about the Greek  hero Odysseus' 10 -year journey home from the Greeks' war against Troy. The elder Mendelsohn drove to Manhattan from his home in Long Island each week to attend the class.

The classroom study of "The Odyssey" led to the father and son taking a cruise that traced the sites of the Greek hero's voyage. The cruise leads to a stronger understanding between father and son.

Mendelsohn reaches higher acceptance of his father's rational mind, and the father better understands his son's artistic viewpoint. Jay Mendelsohn emerges as a wonderful literary character, witty, compassionate and insightful, qualities that Dan says he didn't often reveal to his family. The piece briefly touches upon his father's last painful days and death after suffering a massive stroke. 

I discovered from Mendelsohn's web site that the New Yorker essay is an excerpt from a memoir, "An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic," which will be published in September. National Public Radio recently did an interview with Mendelsohn, and put the photo above on its web site.

Mendelsohn's long been one of my favorite writers. I experience a jolt of anticipation whenever I see his name listed in the Table of Contents of the New Yorker or New York Review of Books. He's one of the few writers whose essays I'll reread in his books after enjoying them in a journal.

Not only does Mendelsohn excel at explaining classical literature and themes, he's also brings a different perspective in writing about pop culture. I especially remember his New York Review piece that dismantled the "Mad Men" hoopla.

He's also a translator from the Greek language, although I was disappointed with his rendering of Cavafy's "Collected Poems." His Cavafy poems lacked the sharpness and emotional weight of other translations.

Nevertheless, I'll look forward to reading more about his and his father's odyssey to greater love and understanding. The book will also teach valuable lessons about how classics like Homer's work can enrich modern life.

Joe Biden comes through: LaGuardia Airport to join 21st century, 21 years later

Like many travelers to and from New York City, I've spent hours in LaGuardia Airport, at all hours of the day and night.

The only notable incident for all of that dead time was seeing New Orleans music legend Dr. John in the men's room.

While crowded old LaGuardia is often decried, I don't find it that horrible, although its ambience is closer to a 1956 bus station in Birmingham, Ala., than to a 21st century airport.

Was Paul Ryan sleeping when they found $4 billion?

On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the ground-breaking ceremony for a $4 billion rebuilding of LaGuardia. The airport will keep operating during the project, scheduled for completion in 2021.

The renovation will give LaGuardia its first rail connection, although the plan already is drawing criticism for benefiting white collar tourists rather than airport workers. Sounds like the rail could be the worst option to get to the airport.

After years of alarming rides with spaced out cabbies and  Brooklyn limo drivers who looked like Tony Soprano's cousin, I might give rail a try, if I'm still able.

And, cynics are saying that by the time the work is done, the airport already will be obsolete, and that New York's construction unions will delay the project for years longer. 

The workers will do fine. However, the renovated airport is likely to sink into Flushing Bay before too many years when melting ice caps raise sea levels.

Hey Joe, America is now the Third World

Biden a few years ago said LaGuardia is like the Third World.

Joe doesn't fly much to commercial airports. The entire U.S. flight system is like the third world, if not worse. 

Atlanta, with its long security and delayed exits from airplanes, is horrible. LAX is like a laxative without a nearby bathroom. San Francisco has rail, but you need to be a Silicon Valley algorithm geek to figure out how to catch the right train. Seattle makes you wish 'Amazon would take over. 

Despite the naysayers, good for New York. 

When will New York match Kolkata?

Now maybe something will be done for an even worse New York travel terminial, Penn Station. Projects have been proposed for years, while the train terminal deteriorates.

If LaGuardia's the Third World, what is Penn Station?

It's worse than Kolkata, where one of its rail stations opened in 2006, five years after the city's name was changed from Calcutta.

Don't worry New York. There are still 85 years left in the 21s century to modernize Penn Station. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Long-Delayed Trip to New York's Frick Collection Yields Wonderful Discovery

New York City, no matter how gloomy the weather, wears a special holiday season glow. During Thanksgiving week, warm temperatures switched to snow, rain and cold, although not too bad. 

With airline points, we stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria, still a luxurious place although living on past glory. The bars were fine, and the young hostess at the Peacock Alley made an extraordinary effort to seat our family party on Thanksgiving Eve, although we hadn't made a reservation.

We saw the sights: Union Square, where the Ferguson protesters swirled even before the grand jury decision's announcement; the Fifth Avenue Library; the Plaza; the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; and shoppers packing Fifth Avenue.

A highlight for me was visiting the Frick. For years, I've wanted to go to the art museum housed in Henry Clay Frick's old mansion on East 70th Street across from Central Park. The old industrialist's collection celebrates traditional pictorial art before the cubists changed artistic perceptions. Not even any impressionists are included, quite a relief. I've seen enough Monets, Cezannes and Van Goghs.

A special exhibition from the Scottish Museum showed John Singer Sargent's wonderful Portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, and Botticelli's Virgin Adoring Her Child. I lost myself in Sargent's swirl of colors that somehow coalesce into independent images. The beautiful young woman emerges from the elegant chair upon which she sits. The delicate fabric of her dress sleeve reveals her arm - hypnotic in its sensuality. Her sash, hair, flawless skin - yes, falling in love again.

Botticelli's rich, vivid colors and flat perspective offered an earlier, more primary aesthetic experience. It's a wonderful work, but I didn't find it as mesmerizing as the Sargent.

I also loved Hoblein's portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, of "Wolf Hall" renown. The details of their clothing, their haughty, cunning faces, told more than words about Henry VIII's era.

The best discovery was Claude Lorrain's astonishing "The Sermon on the Mount." I'd never heard of the artist, or the work. The conception of Jesus on a rocky plateau, talking to his audience spread out on lawns below, is astounding. The faces of the listeners show complex psychological depths. It's truly one of the great paintings.

 

LSU Goes to San Francisco

I loved that my alma mater LSU's basketball team drew the University of San Francisco in the first round of the NIT tournament. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities, and as a sports history buff, I've long appreciated the University of San Francisco's athletics heritage. On one visit to San Francisco, we were driven on a moonlit night around the university's beautiful mission-stye campus, and I had chills remembering the school's sports legends.

Not only do the Dons have one of the great all-time basketball histories, with famous coach Pete Newell and national champsionship teams led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. San Francisco, before dropping the sport because of finances, was one of the West Coast's football powers. The 1949 team is considered among the all-time best, with Gino Marchetti and Ollie Matson and other future NFL stars. The undefeated team refused to travel to  a deep-South bowl game because the black Matson wouldn't be able to play because of segregation.

The NIT game promised to be one of  LSU's memorable sports chapters. I'd hoped that the players would get the chance to experience some of San Francisco's culture, but appaently they stayed by the airport far out of town and saw the city just when they were driven to the game. But even traveling through the beautiful city by the bay is a wonderful educational adventure.

When the game began, I was excited that former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton was doing the commentary. But while he was at times entertaining, Walton often sounded like a half-crazed hippie who'd done too much LSD. He also got a few facts wrong. However, he endeared himself to me with his fond and generous remarks about LSU and Louisiana culture. Walton mentioned visiting Baton Rouge and working with then LSU center and future NBA standout Shaquille O'Neal during Dale Brown's great LSU basketball era,  a time  I remembered. Although Walton's wordy attempts to draw grand historical theories crashed, he did show an appreciation of  literature and cultural rarely if ever displayed during sports events.

I particularly enjoyed one of his unexpected references, to the eminent LSU history professor and author T. Harry Williams' classic biography of Huey Long, the Louisiana governor and U.S. senator who emerged as a national populist figure during the 1930s. The Kingfish's assassination at the soaring Louisana state Capitol he erected remains a subject of fascination and controversy.

Williams, who also wrote classic Civil War books such as "Lincoln and His Generals, " was one of the stalwarts of a time when LSU was known as much for academic excellence as sports success, a legacy established by Long, as Williams memorably recounts. Alas, those days are gone. From the great ambitions of Huey Long, the state has sunk into the small-minded regime of the beady-eyed Bobby Jindal, himself a national figure, mystifyingly. Jindal is one of the stars of the lunatic GOP, while Long's progressive ideas energized the great Democratic Party of FDR.

While many view Long as a venal dictator who did more harm then good,  he undoubtedly brought Louisiana into the modern world. Williams in his book shows the broader cultural and social atmosphere of Long's epoch.  Revisionists say Williams took too benign a view of Long. But no recent works have matched Williams'  book  in its breadth of scope.

So, I'll give Walton a pass for some of his nutty flights. LSU won the game, San Francicso's great history was honored, and T. Harry Williams and Huey Long were mentioned on ESPN U, its U for once almost justified. All in all, a memorable night.

 

Robert Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" and St. Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw

I've discovered an interesting divergence between two works of art: Augustus St. Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw, located on the border of the Boston Common directly across Beacon Street from the Massashusetts State House, and Robert Lowell's poem inspired by the sculpture, "For the Union Dead."

On a recent visit to Boston, I heard a U.S. Park Ranger give a lecture about St. Gaudens' sculpture, which honors Shaw and his black 54th Massaschusetts Regiment. Shaw and many of the black soliders were killed in an attack on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The park ranger cited the motto on the top right corner of the monument as saying, if I heard him correctly, "they give up everything to serve the republic."  I've recently learned through a commentary on Lowell's poem in the Norton Anthology of Poetry that the motto on the sculpture is actually "He gives up everything to serve the republic," (Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam, the Latin motto of the Society of Cincinnati). Shaw's father chose the motto for the piece, dedicated in 1897.

But Lowell makes a significant change in the motto, using it as the epigraph for his poem. Matching what the Park Ranger said, Lowell renders the motto as "Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam," or "they give up everything to serve the republic," according to the anthology's editors. So, while the original motto limits the honorific to Shaw, Lowell extends it to all of the members of the regiment. Lowell's change to make the motto apply to all of the soldiers has apparently been adapted by the Park Service.

I don't know enough about Latin to explain the change in the syntax of the sentence. Perhaps it's necessary to give it the new meaning. It's also interesting that the pronoun change is apparently accomplished by changing the verb tense. Also significant is that in both cases, the verb is in the present tense, not gave, but he gives and they give. The message is that the sacrifice is eternal, and perpetually challenges the living toto try to follow the heroic example of Shaw and the 54th.

Following the great man school of history, the sculpture centrally honors Shaw's heroism, although the black soldiers are depicted on the statue. It's called the "Robert Gould Shaw Memorial," and he alone is shown mounted on a horse, dynamically at the center of the bronze relief, with his soldiers on either side, marching under his leadership. In what the park ranger interpreted as a sign of high honor for the soldiers, they are depicted realistically, with distinctive Negro features, not  abstractly stylized or stereotyped. Still, in what might be considered an example of 19th century paternalism, Shaw dominates and is essentially the one person honored.

In his poem contrasting Boston's historic era of heroism with the modern era of cars and parking garages, Lowell wonderfully describes the sculpture.  "Two months after marching through Boston,/half the regiment was dead;/at the dedication,/William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe."

Lowell also contrasts the age of personal military valor with the modern fear of nuclear annhiliation, the total warfare that would make such heroism as Shaw's impossble, except of course for the type of suicidal plane ride depicted in "Dr. Strangelove." Since all would be destroyed, no one would be there to dedicate memorials, or remember.

In the poem, Lowell cites the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and states "There are no statues for the last war here." Broadening the range of the motto also allows Lowell to celebrate the young heroes of the 1960s civil rights movement, which he says as a last vestige of the old heroism.

St. Gaudens's statue and Lowell's poem, a wonderful example of ekphrasis (poetry inspired by works of art), memorialize their historic eras, and transcend the past, allowing us to reflect upon our own time. The park service is to be commended by echoing Lowell and honoring the entire regiment, although the bronze memorial will always remain "He gives up everything to serve the republic."

A Visit to Beacon Hill

On a warm Saturday afternoon, remembering Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," I returned to St. Gaudens' memorial sculpture to the Mass. 54th Regiment. The memorial on the ridge overlooking the Boston Commons and across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts Statehouse is one of the great works of America's heroic age. Recalling Lowell's poem, I also saluted its bookend, Allen Tate's "For the Confederate Dead."

At the statue, I discovered a group of Civil War enactors dressed like the brave soldiers of the 54th. It turned out that the day, July 17, was the anniversary of the 54th's assault on Fort Wagner, S.C. Unfortunately, I'd missed a special ceremony in honor of the event. But I was moved at seeing the black men dressed in blue Union uniforms, and a lady dressed in 19th century gingham, and a man in a farmer's straw hat. 

Then a young park ranger appeared and announced a tour of Beacon HIll, which would delve into the abolitionist movement and the black civil rights movement in 19th century Boston. The young ranger gave an in-depth analysis of St. Gaudens' sculpture, pointing out the "angel of death" floating above Robert Gould Shaw on horseback. He also mentioned the realistic portrayal of the black men's faces, along with the pine cone in the corner, the symbol of Massachusetts. A pine cone also shines from atop the statehouse's gold dome.

The tour of Beacon Hill was informative and inspiring. How brave were the black men who sheltered fugitive slaves and fought off slave hunters from the old South. We saw several historic houses where these black heroes lived, and finished the tour at an architecturally interesting building, the old African-American meeting house. The ranger took us on a walk through alleys that the slaves used for escape; and I could feel the excitement and terror they must have felt.

After the tour, I limped back to the Boston Commons and sat on a shady bench. Some young students were there, pulling off a prank of some kind. A young man sat on the bench, reading a newspaper in which he had punched a hole, to eye young lovelies going past, I assume. A young woman wore a moustache. They passed out joke brochures. I wasn't sure of the purpose, but they seemed trying to make some kind of absurdist statement.

Recovered, I wandered away from the young woman with her long dress, tennis shoes and moustache. I thought again about the park ranger, translating the Latin inscription on the St. Gaudens statue, "they gave their all in the service of the republic."