Culture – Page 2 – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #4: Patti Smith, CBGB and an Observant Life

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from October 16, 2006

I’ve never been to CBGB OMFUG. Why do I care about a punk music club whose entrance was always spattered with graffiti and most of whose musical appearances were by people I knew almost nothing about — except Bruce Springsteen [he wrote this with Patti Smith] , Patti Smith [two favorites: People Have the Power, Peaceable Kingdom], Joan Jett [I Love Rock and Roll] and a few others? (I don’t t know the lore all that well – but it always seemed to me that women really got a crack at center stage at CBGB.) I think it was just nice to see it there – waving its fist in the air. It has closed – maybe to reopen, maybe not – and I’m just kind of sad to see it losing its lease to what some have called “the suburbification of Manhattan.”

Patti Smith, whom I had the honor to meet at last year’s Media Reform conference in St. Louis, was a real CBGB heroine and I felt, meeting her, a deep connection. We’re the same age. She’s a heartbreakingly honest person who lost her husband way too soon (and wrote People Have the Power partly at his instigation) — a mom and a singular human soul. The music she made was remarkably articulate (she is a poet after all) and inspiring. I’ve linked above to two of my favorites — one of which, People Have the Power, was an anthem of the Vote for Change election tour in 2004.

So what do the final days of a gritty music club where I never went have to do with my life as an observant Jew? Believe it or not – plenty. Both of them were fascinating universes I always observed from the outside and wondered about. Both stood for making one’s own way to truth. That search has taken me, for some reason I’m still grappling with, to the Orthodox Jewish community where I’ve found a home and spirit that brings a new kind of meaning to my life.

At my last big birthday I complained to a friend about my age and her response was “but you’re completely reborn in this new life – you’re not old AT ALL!” In some ways she’s right. I certainly feel that there’s a universe I’m traveling through that’s new, moving, inspiring and mysterious. Sometimes though it’s also a pain. For the past several weeks, from Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) to the end of Simchas Torah (Ending the annual, week-by-week reading of the Torah: the five books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and beginning again) the holidays consumed days of time: in synagogue, inviting guests to meals and going to meals at friends, building and dismantling a sukkah and observing the prohibition on driving and work. Since this year many of these days fell on weekends it meant NO catching up on work on Sundays and no farmer’s market. (two weird examples, I admit.) Since it’s the end of tomato season that last was sad though not critical to the future of the human race or my household.

Even so, all these small requirements, which I try to follow since I’ve made this commitment, can consume time and tax serenity and spirituality. I’ve come to love the prohibition on the Sabbath and enjoy the quiet days reading, taking walks, visiting, napping and sharing ideas. But the surrender to and acceptance of all these rules is a peculiar experience and I grapple with it daily. Even so, the quest, like that of the young rebels who put CBGB on the map, is a great adventure – and the learning is exhilarating.

Go listen to People Have the Power whether this post makes sense or not. It will make you happy on a Monday – although that’s easier here today since it’s the third amazingly gorgeous fall day in a row – with leaves turning and leaf smells beginning to fill the air. Which, I just realized, takes us right back to faith and gratitude for the world’s beauty when it shows up.

Big Birthday Memory #3: TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from August 24, 2006

OK – so I should be used to it by now. I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember. But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS* – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years, I read “adults 55+ adapting online.” Of course they are — sooner or later whatever I’m doing becomes part of a generational wave.

Don’t worry – there IS a connection.

I saw THE FANTASTICKS with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year. That was 1964 – four years after it opened. At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me – probably 25 or so – handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner. I kept it on the wall of my room for years.

El Gallo — the irresistible seducer and originator of the “hurt’ without which “the heart is hollow” — was first played by Jerry Orbach. [hear him sing Try to Remember here.] I met him when I was close to 50 – and told him I’d seen the show when I was 18. His face just changed – not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure. We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie. He replied “You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN! That wasn’t an interruption that was a pleasure.” So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me. “Please God please,” the young girl (“the girl”) cries out – “don’t let me be NORMAL!” That was me alright. Please let me be singular – not like the others!

Well it hasn’t turned out that way. Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so. It made me a great talk show producer – never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next. I guess that’s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge — rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.

I know about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study. Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more “civilian” boomers are finally hitting the web. I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected. The web was a perfect home for us. Just like THE FANTASTICKS.

*OK Feminist friends, there’s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they’ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it. It just can’t trump the wonder and poetry.

Posters From the Revolution, Rescued and Amazing

Photo from Trip Advisor comments of SakijR from Finland

This poster, portraying China’s children energetically joining the assault against the U.S., is one of the remarkable Mao-era treasures hiding in this obscure Shanghai apartment complex, home to the Shanghai Poster Art Centre.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the years before and after produced an enormous range of political art, clearly targeted with great care to varied segments of the population. As the Cultural Revolution’s image (and to some degree Mao’s) tarnished though, the new government ordered the posters – and their energetic messages – to be destroyed.

Yang Pei Ming edited — Museum founder Yang Pei Ming. Photo by Mao Dou

Thanks to this man, it didn’t all make it to the garbage bin. As the website says: A labor of love, the museum was founded by Yang Pei Ming, who grew concerned about both the poster art and the unusual history <and> started to collect posters ever since 1995 when all the government organizations deleted the propaganda materials due to the political reasons.

It was a thrilling, surprisingly moving visit; passing through so many years of cynically generated passion and ideas in just a couple of rooms added impact to every poster and its story. Here are a few; there’s not much more to say. Let the pictures tell the rest.

Pandas, Pandas, Pandas! Even Cooler than You Think!

You’re looking at — forgive me — the dream of a lifetime: a personal, face-to-face meeting between my husband Rick and Ching Ching, a 1-year-old giant panda. He’d wanted it forever. After all, he spent a pretty large percentage of this trip’s temple visits taking photos of resident dogs and neighborhood monkeys while everyone else went after the remarkable beauty of the temples themselves. We set a pretty large detour on our China visit so this could happen and I don’t think he’s come down from his happy place even three days later.

This is the Dujiangua Base of the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda, in Shiqiao (‘Stone Bridge’) Village,in Dujiangyan Prefecture, 40 miles from the city of Chengdu. Our brilliant guide Selina, suggested that, since Rick wanted to “hold” a panda, which the better-known larger facility no longer permitted, we visit this brand new almost-open facility on a cool, grey morning.

Unlike the closer, more frequently visited Chengdu base, Dujiangua sits in a lush, quiet forest, panda enclosures set into the woods, a path allowing visitors to be just yards – and a low wall – from them. It’s so quiet you can hear them chew their bamboo or draw a deep breath. No noisy crowds to mar the sense of peace provided by researchers and volunteers, just a sense of closeness, and wonder.

When someone we love is able to do something this personally meaningful, it brings at least as much joy to the rest of us. The additional gift: meeting these amazing animals and being so grateful to be along for the ride.

Xian: The Breathtaking Terracotta Warriors

Tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 BC - 210 BC) — Tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang

They stand in silence, sentinels for China’s Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 BC – 210 BCE) , the visionary ruler who demanded this ghost army of 10,000 to guard his tomb (and also demanded the expansion and unification of the fragmented Great Wall – making it what it continues to be today.)

It is a special army indeed. Singular figures each, their faces unique.

After 2,200 years, in 1974, farmers digging a well stumbled upon them — just a few shards suggesting more. The village elder understood what might be, gathered the random pieces in his home, and called the experts. They found ten thousand soldiers, discovered through a leader’s instincts and a small farming village’s need for more water.

It’s not possible to describe passing through a wide passageway and coming upon these:

A kneeling archer; his hands are placed to hold a crossbow

A high-ranking general whose single raised finger suggests that he may be second only to the Emperor

little boy - general — Look at the bottom right: even little ones are not immune

This entire trip is exploding my brain in the best possible way.

Angkor Wat, Mostly in Photos.

ANKHOR MOAT — The moat surrounding the temple complex

We are at the end of our stop in Hong Kong – such a special time with good friends. But after Angkor Wat I was so exhausted that I never wrote about it. Here is a bit – mostly in pictures.

As you can see above, the approach is stunning. The complex is surrounded by a moat, and because of the heat we arrived very early so it was especially lovely. It’s a mystical place, massive and beautiful. Below is a Buddha guarding a series of hallways. It’s one of the few who still has a head. As you can see in the next photo, many were detached and sold by smugglers. I was surprised to learn, when I asked, that for all the horror they created, the Khymer Rouge never touched one Buddha. I had assumed that they would be like the Taliban or ISIS in their rampant destruction of holy places but oddly, that was not the case.

Finally, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple,studded with Buddhas, and the Ta Phrom Temple, where parts of a Tomb Raider film were shot. That’s us, too!

Vietnam, Its Tragedies — and Ours March 2016

Ho Chi Minh - his image is omnipresent — Ho Chi Minh – his image is omnipresent

We’re leaving Vietnam and I’m still astonished that we were here! I keep remembering the history and the battles and pain and rage and guilt of those years. We had a long discussion with our guide on our Mekong River cruise. His father fought for the South Vietnamese, his uncle for the North. His dad spent 8 years in a prison camp after Saigon fell; to this day he doesn’t speak to his Viet Cong brother. So much pain. So much might have been. So powerful to pass signs that say Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, Tan Son Nhut Airport, Mekong River, China Beach.

People here are definitely not as poor as those in Cambodia – not nearly, although the South is definitely better off than the North, and there’s a sense of forward motion that isn’t as present in Cambodia.

In both countries, it’s been important to think beyond the history so traumatic to them – and to us – and see them for what they are moving toward today. Just look:

Japanese covered bridge — Japanese Covered Bridge Hoi An, Vietnam

IMG_5597 (1) — Cruising on the Mekong River

flower maket row — Mekong River Floating Market

Lots more to come; Internet troubles right now…

Cambodia, the Buddha and the Past

We weren’t supposed to bomb Cambodia, but we did. I remember the day that the revered Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield first learned of Nixon’s “secret” attack on what seemed to be a gentle, somewhat innocent country for which he held considerable affection. He was almost trembling with rage. I know now that his anger arose from what he knew would happen to Cambodia as a result of this assault on a nation so far not actively involved in the conflict.

Here are the tenets of Buddhism described by our guide YuKu; they inspired gentle Cambodia then and still do today: Neutralism, Tolerance, Compassion and Sympathy; Learn to know, Learn to do, Learn to be, Learn to live together. In many ways, our bombing wiped out the capacity to follow them.

In the years before Richard Nixon ordered the bombings in 1970 (there were, to be fair, Viet Cong racing over the Vietnamese border into Cambodia to avoid US and South Vietnamese troops) Buddhism offered a foundation, and the Cambodian economy was growing well. The bombs put an end to that growth and threw the country into the vicious chaos that brought on the killing fields. In thosse terrible years, the Khymer rouge herded most of the people into the countryside to farm. Those who were were well educated were often executed instead. More than 2 million met torture and death.

For me, the visit to the temple and the rest of our day were haunted by my growing awareness of just what our bombs had retarded or destroyed. Not just temples and Buddhas. Not even just the futures of the educated or political. No.

We destroyed lives.

Cambodia has had to build or rebuild much of its infrastructure from roads to hospitals to schools.

We visited a school. And we met Monica.

We all know poor countries have fewer resources to educate their children but the gap between our worst school and this one is pretty big. The kids go to school free but must buy their books, workbooks and supplies. And the teachers? Their documents and supplies are stored in a dusty filing cabinet in the one-room office. Not a computer in sight.

This is a tiny school that lets tours pass through once in a while. I know it’s a tourist resource but there is no way to fake 41 kids singing to you about hygiene and brushing their teeth. Or to imagine the poverty and determination that surrounds their classroom. They lost so many years — maybe chunks of a generation, in fact, and are still far from recovered from those years.

For the village farmers it is the same. The simplicity of their homes and paucity of resources is shattering.

Part of the reason it is so painful to remember those days, whether here in Cambodia or in the US, where US universities exploded and four students died at Kent State at the hands of the National Guard, is that it doesn’t take long to determine that there is a basic sweetness in the Cambodian people that ill-prepared them to face down what landed upon them once the bombs began to fall.

You can see it in the face of our guide here as he sang to us before we left the bus to fly to Vietnam. I know this post is all over the place but I kept rewriting it and there’s so much more to tell you about that I’m just going to leave it as a meditation on a terrible time. Being in Cambodia and even more in Vietnam (that’s next) has awakened all kinds of things in me. Which is what is travel is for. It doesn’t help Monica and her friends though.

Two Days in Thailand: Bangkok and the Beach (Mostly Pictures)

Temple of the Emerald Buddah

These are pictures from Bangkok’s Temple of the Emerald Buddha, where we spent much of Tuesday. So much beauty and mystery here. Above is part of the multiple-building temple. Below are a couple more scenes. It was really really hot and really really crowded as so many people, both the devout and the tourists, gathered to see the painstaking work that created this beautiful place.

A small closeup of the beautiful work that covers all these buildings — executed, I learned, by both men AND women.

One of a series of panels from the Ramayana that wanders through the Temple complex.

I couldn’t resist this adorable little guy, sitting on a small block outside the building where Thailand holds coronations.

Our next day was fun – lounging and picnicking on the beaches of Ko Kut.

I had to include this; you’ll never guess what it is. Part of our adventure was “Caviar in the Surf” which is just what it sounds like. It was really weird – not the event but what it looked like. Droves of our fellow passengers moving together from the beach out into the sea to the tables of caviar — kind of spooky looking from the shore but a great treat for all.

We leave in the morning for Angkor Wat. More from there.

Exotic Singapore — Caning and the Kindness Movement

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This is just a little bit of what we’ve seen wandering around this confusing city. Its level of exotic mystery is considerable; so too is the sense of an over-governed, highly disciplined universe. These photos are just a peek at the color, variety and mystery popping up all around us. A diverse community of Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, Malay, Indian and Anglo live together sharing four national languages (Malay, Mandarin,Tamil, and English.)

As we made our way in from the airport just past 1AM Thursday, we saw wide avenues and planned parks that seemed stifling within their neighborhoods, so we were delighted to learn how much more there is to this city than that first impression. However.

This is a tough, tough government. Even the tour guides note ruefully “Well yes, but I can’t talk about that.” In other words, if it’s about government rules, or the fines for littering or parking in the wrong place or or or — no comment. And caning transgressors – nope.

I thought it was just me who felt like I’d walked into a scene from Fahrenheit 541 or 1984 but no. Rick agreed that it’s kind of spooky here despite the ethnic variety and history and hodgepodge of design and architecture.

Whether at the gigantic conservatory “Gardens by the Bay” or the Chinatown Heritage Center or Orchard Road – an endless Rodeo Drive crammed with shoppers and women dressed like Donatella Versace – there’s a sense of programmed unreality.

Then there’s the government-sponsored Singapore Kindness Movement. designed to “improve the characters” of the people of Singapore. Kind of weird but OK… Still, on a tour bus the recorded guide’s rhetoric was infused with defense of the rules and policies that govern this place and its behavior. Government rules and monitoring affect attitudes, sense of humor and behavior. I was in Eastern Europe when it was behind the Iron Curtain and it was scary but people laughed about it and spoke with irony and a sense of the absurdity about much of what they faced.

In Singapore, the impact is worse, I think: scary, resigned acceptance and a spooky inhibition that slowly but surely lands upon a visitor.

It’s quite an experience to swing between the visual (and culinary) feast here and these authoritarian undertones.