I have no idea what the association was that lead to this memory. I was sitting at the computer on Facebook listening to some incredible diatonic accordion playing by a Quebecois musician.
The memory was of being in an apartment we lived in briefly on Broadway. I believe Broadway was the border between Newark and Belleville. Hospital aside, I was born in Belleville and lived with my mother and grandfather over my grandfather's grocery store until my father came back from Europe in 1946. Part of that time my aunt Marion was also there with my older cousin Steve.
I'm also thinking that we probably had to move because my grandfather's little grocery store went out of business due to pressure from the new phenomenon of supermarkets. We lived in an upstairs apartment on Broadway. Out the side window we could see that the apartment house was perched over a stream or small river. So the memory is just a fragment.....,my grandfather pointing me out the river and telling me that rats lived down there. I doubt I knew much about rats, but I could sense the gravity in the statement, and it wasn't pleasant. In fact it was kind of dark and scary as memories go. Why did this little fragment stay so long so close to consciousness, so easily recalled? Other moments are lodged in there among the neurons and synapses. But the rat fragment remains prominent. Hmmmmm.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Political Prospects
The Economist points out that Republicans may have scored an "own goal" in their opposition to Health Care Reform. They gambled on defeating it. They didn't. Who is now going to want to repeal prohibiting insurance companies from rescinding policies on existing conditions, filling the prescription doughnut, etc?
On the other hand they correctly predict that as Obama recognized following the Masschusetts Senatorial defeat, the dems will suffer mightily if unemployment is still high come the November elections.
On the other hand they correctly predict that as Obama recognized following the Masschusetts Senatorial defeat, the dems will suffer mightily if unemployment is still high come the November elections.
Passover at Aunt Sarah's
Growing up, first Passover was at Aunt Sarah's in Brooklyn. Second was just the three Becker's at home. Aunt Sarah was actually my great aunt...sister of my grandfather Savel from Slobodka, Lithuania. She was married to Harry Abbott. Her apartment was above her dry goods store. It sold mysterious things for women like girdles.
The Becker crowd was pretty large. There were probably 10-12 Becker cousins of my father's generation with their families. The feeling was heavily European. Accents were thick. Clothes were dark. I remember my father's cousin by marriage Ruby. I was fascinated by his gold teeth.
I remember the year I became old enough to read the four questions. I think it was solo that year. I practiced and practiced (the modern melody.) I sure was nervous. The crowd of relatives was pretty loud. I was very aware of how small my voice was. Of course I was greeted after the ordeal with a great outpouring of love and praise.
The way this seder went was that everybody started at the same time, and occasionally came back together for important moments in the Haggadah like cups of wine, breaking matzoh, etc. In between, it was each person chanting loudly in their own key, at their own pace. It was polophony. It was bedlam. It worked. I remember sometimes retreating from the verbal storm with some of my cousins to hide under the table.
Of course we plotted and ultimately stole, hid, and ransomed the afikomen. Uncle Harry gave each of us a silver dollar. This became a family tradition carried on by my father and I. While my father died in 1992, I'm still handing out silver dollars he had hoarded at the house in Springfield.
When the kids got bored, we went downstairs to the store. Best to break the boredom was the button maker machine. You put a blank button in this big press type thing, layered cloth over the top of it, and pressed the foot pedal. Magic, you had a cloth covered button. I remember thinking my older cousins were so sophisticated. It was as if one or two years in age had brought them all kinds of secret knowledge.
The menu never varied. Aunt Sarah's matzoh ball soup was classic. Big yellow fatty globs floating on the top. Huge matzoh balls that could easily have been used for cannon balls. I was always full after the soup.
The second night seder was at my parents with me, mom, dad, and grandfather Manny. It was pretty American. Can you believe the food I remember here was green peas. I did always marvel that my father, who seemed so assimilated (though of course totally Brooklyn) was so effortless with his Hebrew. And also that the melodies my grandfather used were different and seemed very old time eastern Europe. He really had down that yiddish singing quaver that I can't describe in words. The krecht in Klezmer derives therefrom.
Have you heard me describe Jews leaving Egypt? the meaning of the four sons? Nope. I guess you judge what stuck from those Seders.
The Becker crowd was pretty large. There were probably 10-12 Becker cousins of my father's generation with their families. The feeling was heavily European. Accents were thick. Clothes were dark. I remember my father's cousin by marriage Ruby. I was fascinated by his gold teeth.
I remember the year I became old enough to read the four questions. I think it was solo that year. I practiced and practiced (the modern melody.) I sure was nervous. The crowd of relatives was pretty loud. I was very aware of how small my voice was. Of course I was greeted after the ordeal with a great outpouring of love and praise.
The way this seder went was that everybody started at the same time, and occasionally came back together for important moments in the Haggadah like cups of wine, breaking matzoh, etc. In between, it was each person chanting loudly in their own key, at their own pace. It was polophony. It was bedlam. It worked. I remember sometimes retreating from the verbal storm with some of my cousins to hide under the table.
Of course we plotted and ultimately stole, hid, and ransomed the afikomen. Uncle Harry gave each of us a silver dollar. This became a family tradition carried on by my father and I. While my father died in 1992, I'm still handing out silver dollars he had hoarded at the house in Springfield.
When the kids got bored, we went downstairs to the store. Best to break the boredom was the button maker machine. You put a blank button in this big press type thing, layered cloth over the top of it, and pressed the foot pedal. Magic, you had a cloth covered button. I remember thinking my older cousins were so sophisticated. It was as if one or two years in age had brought them all kinds of secret knowledge.
The menu never varied. Aunt Sarah's matzoh ball soup was classic. Big yellow fatty globs floating on the top. Huge matzoh balls that could easily have been used for cannon balls. I was always full after the soup.
The second night seder was at my parents with me, mom, dad, and grandfather Manny. It was pretty American. Can you believe the food I remember here was green peas. I did always marvel that my father, who seemed so assimilated (though of course totally Brooklyn) was so effortless with his Hebrew. And also that the melodies my grandfather used were different and seemed very old time eastern Europe. He really had down that yiddish singing quaver that I can't describe in words. The krecht in Klezmer derives therefrom.
Have you heard me describe Jews leaving Egypt? the meaning of the four sons? Nope. I guess you judge what stuck from those Seders.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Ornette
In 1969, I was working and living with the WIMP collective. Briefly put, WIMP was a printing collective that "inherited" the SDS printing shop/office in the basement of a building onSpring Street in SOHO district of Manhattan. Tangential to the main story, it happened that Ornette Coleman (avant garde saxophone player) lived in one of the upstairs lofts. It was pretty wild....we'd be printing day and night to the mad clatter of the printing presses, and could here him working out on his horn upstairs. This was during a period when he was not playing out, and just working on his music. We got to know him and I visited several times in his loft and played pool with him. The story kind of goes down hill. At one point he was behind on his rent and we as members of the coop ownership supported keeping him on till he could pay. At a later date there were a few bomb threats against us in the building because of our activities. We didn't think they were very serious. He voted to throw us out. We did stay till we decided to close down on our own a year or so later.
Urban Underground vrs. Big Developers
First job out of social work school (after being 1-Y for the draft) was as community liaison from NYC Dept of City Planning to the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan (along the west side.) That job was going pretty ok, and I had hooked up with a group of radical urban planners called the Urban Underground. These were part of a larger group of graduated lefties who were trying to take the SDS (students for democratic society) model off campus, organized around professions/careeers. So there were city planner, welfare worker, teachers, etc group in this umbrella organization, Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS.)
John Lindsay was the liberal (Republican) mayor of NYC and Manhattan was under economic and political pressure to "upzone" its zoning regulations. Up zoning meant allowing taller buildings on site. That in turn made it economically viable and desirable to tear down existing structures to build new bigger ones. Essentially low income housing would be torn down and replaced with luxury housing, forcing middle class and poor people out of Manhattan.
Initially Lindsay and his City Planning Commission opposed the push by developers to upzone (from Residential 8, to Residential 10.) They needed some data. So somehow, though I was hired for my community organizing and not my technical planning skills, I was assigned to do a "windshield survey" to see if this change was needed. The Administration and City Planning were arguing to the developers that there still remained many R-8 sites that were developable and so the R-10 was not needed. I conducted this survey and found, in fact, that there were many good developable R-8 sites in Manhattan.
Ultimately, pressure from developers caused the City Planning Commission to reverse course and publish its intention to upzone. They claimed that they had conducted studies that there was little R-8 developable land left in Manhattan and that the upzoning was needed. The Urban Underground mobilized. We authored a nifty brochure based on the RCA Victor ad with the dog listening to "his master's voice" on an old victrola, replacing the masters with developers, and the obedient dog with the City Planning Commission. I recall our words in the brochure were pretty close to, "City Planning provides fig leaf for big developers." That's a nice turn of phrase I've used many times since...including describing the role of worker training in job safety.
We also made successful contacts with local community housing advocacy groups throughout the city. So on the day of the hearing, I and four other members of the Urban Underground testified at the radio broadcasted public hearings. I took a day off work, as did several of the others who were City Planning Employees. Some of the five worked for planning consultants. Jacque Leavitt who teaches planning at UCLA was our leader and most grounded technical expert. I (the newcomer in the group) had by chance been thrust in the role of the whistleblower. I testified, that I was the one who had conducted the research, and that, in fact, my agency was lying about the results. There was plenty of R-8 land left that cold be developed for housing. WOW!. Big brouhaha.
I and Urban Underground were on the front page the the NYTimes for our points and whistleblowing. The City Planning Commission (lead by its one very liberal member) deep sixed the proposal to upzone.
So what happened to us rebels. Those who worked for the agency received a written notice summoning us to a meeting with management. We were advised we could bring legal counsel if we wished. We figured we were going to be fired so were ready with a plan for the next escalation. Recall that student sit ins against the War in Vietnam were taking place throughout the nation. We worked out in advance that if fired we would sit in at the City Planning Offices, joined by some community groups. We even bought chain to lock up and close the building (or chain ourselves together?) At any rate they ended up whining how they agreed with us all along, appreciated our sincerity, but had to make this concession for the greater good of getting Lindsay reelected.
I went back to work. But I had no assignment, no work to do. I was also prohibited from using the telephone at work and from going into and City Planning files. I hung out for about 4 months till it got too boring. Then I quit and went to work full time for MDS supporting their city wide structure and opening a leftie political coffee house on the upper west side. More of that later.
John Lindsay was the liberal (Republican) mayor of NYC and Manhattan was under economic and political pressure to "upzone" its zoning regulations. Up zoning meant allowing taller buildings on site. That in turn made it economically viable and desirable to tear down existing structures to build new bigger ones. Essentially low income housing would be torn down and replaced with luxury housing, forcing middle class and poor people out of Manhattan.
Initially Lindsay and his City Planning Commission opposed the push by developers to upzone (from Residential 8, to Residential 10.) They needed some data. So somehow, though I was hired for my community organizing and not my technical planning skills, I was assigned to do a "windshield survey" to see if this change was needed. The Administration and City Planning were arguing to the developers that there still remained many R-8 sites that were developable and so the R-10 was not needed. I conducted this survey and found, in fact, that there were many good developable R-8 sites in Manhattan.
Ultimately, pressure from developers caused the City Planning Commission to reverse course and publish its intention to upzone. They claimed that they had conducted studies that there was little R-8 developable land left in Manhattan and that the upzoning was needed. The Urban Underground mobilized. We authored a nifty brochure based on the RCA Victor ad with the dog listening to "his master's voice" on an old victrola, replacing the masters with developers, and the obedient dog with the City Planning Commission. I recall our words in the brochure were pretty close to, "City Planning provides fig leaf for big developers." That's a nice turn of phrase I've used many times since...including describing the role of worker training in job safety.
We also made successful contacts with local community housing advocacy groups throughout the city. So on the day of the hearing, I and four other members of the Urban Underground testified at the radio broadcasted public hearings. I took a day off work, as did several of the others who were City Planning Employees. Some of the five worked for planning consultants. Jacque Leavitt who teaches planning at UCLA was our leader and most grounded technical expert. I (the newcomer in the group) had by chance been thrust in the role of the whistleblower. I testified, that I was the one who had conducted the research, and that, in fact, my agency was lying about the results. There was plenty of R-8 land left that cold be developed for housing. WOW!. Big brouhaha.
I and Urban Underground were on the front page the the NYTimes for our points and whistleblowing. The City Planning Commission (lead by its one very liberal member) deep sixed the proposal to upzone.
So what happened to us rebels. Those who worked for the agency received a written notice summoning us to a meeting with management. We were advised we could bring legal counsel if we wished. We figured we were going to be fired so were ready with a plan for the next escalation. Recall that student sit ins against the War in Vietnam were taking place throughout the nation. We worked out in advance that if fired we would sit in at the City Planning Offices, joined by some community groups. We even bought chain to lock up and close the building (or chain ourselves together?) At any rate they ended up whining how they agreed with us all along, appreciated our sincerity, but had to make this concession for the greater good of getting Lindsay reelected.
I went back to work. But I had no assignment, no work to do. I was also prohibited from using the telephone at work and from going into and City Planning files. I hung out for about 4 months till it got too boring. Then I quit and went to work full time for MDS supporting their city wide structure and opening a leftie political coffee house on the upper west side. More of that later.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Showcase Prep Going OK
My musical showcase at the MAC is on in 8 days. I've been practicing about 2 months. Thought I'm playing 3 classical compositions, some blues piano and klezmer accordion, I've spent three quarters of that time working on 2 difficult movements of Bach. About a week and a half ago, I was feeling really stuck, and not sure I would get where I wanted to be by April 4. This week things started moving. I'm going to make mistakes and some things are not as even as I'd like, but I'm at a point that if I played tomorrow, I think I'd be satisfied with the ability to make and communicate music.
WHEW! That feels good and is a relief.
WHEW! That feels good and is a relief.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
Obama - just when you want to love him, you're disappointed. Just when you want to give up, he's great!
This week's news if full of good political news. How often does that happen!
1. Health Care passes.
2. US looks like it might get tough on Israel building in Arab areas.
3. Google faces down China;
4. US and Russia moving towards nuclear arms reduction.
Whew! That's big!
This week's news if full of good political news. How often does that happen!
1. Health Care passes.
2. US looks like it might get tough on Israel building in Arab areas.
3. Google faces down China;
4. US and Russia moving towards nuclear arms reduction.
Whew! That's big!
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