Current Affairs – Page 13 – Don't Gel Too Soon

For Ellie Greenwich, Who Really WAS Leader of the Pack, With Thanks

When our kids were little, we used to sing. All the time. And early on, many of the songs they loved were written by this woman: Ellie Greenwich. She was a tough cookie I think. She was also one of the great song writers of her generation. Ever heard Be My Baby? (“Bee my, bee my bay bee, my one and only baybee…”) Chapel of Love? (“Goin’ to the Cha pull and we’re gonna’ get ma a a reed”) River Deep, Mountain High ?(“Do I love you my oh my, river deep, mountain high” that was Tina Turner.) Ever hear of girl groups? Then you’ve heard of Ellie Greenwich. There’s a reason she’s in the Song Writers Hall of Fame. She died August 26, the same day as Senator Kennedy, so I’m a little late, but I have a lot to thank her for.

Freshman year we lived in a dorm with a big porch facing Seelye Hall, the main classroom building. We’d put our stereo speakers in the windows over the porch and blasted whatever we liked at the time, especially in the spring, as the snow melted and spirits rose. One of our classics was “Leader of the Pack.” All of us, the Gang of Four as we were then, could re relied upon, for no reason, to belt out “Hey there, where’d you meet him?” to which another would reply (in song, of course, and I know you know this) “I met him at the candy stoh – ore.” It sounds so silly, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t.

The tribal music Greenwich gave us was alive with the spirit that was all of us, before the War tore everything apart, when we just had fun and our minds were full of ideas and ambitions, and songs, and romantic daydreams, and songs, and learning how to be grown ups (slowly) and songs. And her songs were so universal, so full of a love of living and living for love – way before we even heard of our sister alums Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Somehow, as things became more serious, Doo Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo didn’t flow off the tongue so easily. That’s why I was so glad when a Broadway musical, Leader of the Pack, opened in the 80’s and gave us another chance – and a great cast album, full of many of her greatest songs.

My own favorite is all tangled up in a memory. It was a sunny fall day and my six-year-old and I were walking down a street someplace in the Village. And we were arm-in-arm. And our walk had a rhythm – right feet at the same time, left feet at the same time, just the two of us. And the rhythm? It came because, together, crossing the nearly 30 years between us, together, we were singing –Da Doo Ron Ron.”

Not quite this great, but not bad, either. So thanks Ellie. And the rest of you – see for yourselves.

The Amazing Don Hewitt: CBS News, Conventions, 60 Minutes and Me

You probably saw the 60 Minutes tribute to Don Hewitt last night; I had meant to write about him when he died, got distracted and then, last night, realized I couldn’t not (if you forgive the double negative) recall him a bit. The photo you see here was during the production, I think, of an interview with President Kennedy. It shows him in action, rather than in a cute photo so it’s the one I wanted to use.

I was a kid when I first met Hewitt – 21 and new to the CBS Washington Bureau. It was late 1968 and he’d come down from New York to get everyone excited about his new show, 60 Minutes. That’s right – it’s almost 41 years old. He was introduced to me as “the only producer who could make you proud that you were the only one who’d gotten the recipe for Tricia Nixon’s White House wedding cake.” It was that infectious sense of competition — the joy of it, not the rest of it — that inspired the rest of us. Oh – and it was only later that I learned he had also been the producer of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates, the first ever to appear on TV.

Of course he could also drive you crazy – pushing, making last-minute changes, taking forever to finally appoint women as producers (his long-time secretary became one of the best) and, like all people of great energy, sometimes yelling. Really yelling.

I had the most to do with him at the presidential nominating conventions, which used to run “gavel to gavel” – from the moment the convention began until the moment it ended, live on TV. Four “floor correspondents” wandered the convention hall searching for stories. Each, and later each two, had a producer. And these correspondents were the top talent, showcased in the pressure cooker of 8 – 12 hours of live television. Over the years I worked with Roger Mudd, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Leslie Stahl and Dan Rather, among others. No shrinking violets here. And, presiding over them all, in his control room above the floor, was Don. When you had a story to offer you would go to a “floor phone” and call the booth. Someone would take your offer and relay it to Don (sometimes you’d tell him yourself) who would accept or reject it. Remember at the same time he was dealing with Walter Cronkite in the anchor booth and all the live guests who showed up there, remotes” out in the convention city and hometowns of about-to-be nominees and more. For all those hours, he’d make decisions. Sometimes you could argue, but usually you lost. With all the incoming data, he kept things flowing for four days (and evenings.) And he did it all with the same sense of “story telling” that he described as the secret behind the success of 60 Minutes. And it was a blast.

So there you are. Another “legend” gone – and he was a legend who transformed the news business for the better and kept it that way for a long time before commerce made it much harder to sustain the kind of quality he demanded. Except on 60 Minutes, of course.

Back to the Future: Futurism at the Tate and 1968

In the early 20th Century there was a band of wild men who created an entire new way of thinking about “Art.” They were called Futurists and for those of you who took Art 11 and already know about them, I understand that I didn’t discover them – this being particularly true since they are currently appearing in a retrospective at the Tate Modern here in London. AND for my penultimate (I think) post here I want to tell you about them because they were a real kick.

This painting, by Luigi Russolo, is called “The Revolt.” On the right you can see “the people” pushing up against the hard line of the establishment. It’s the same thing the Futurists themselves were doing. Here’s their major “Manifesto.”

These are our final conclusions:

With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:

Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.
Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin…
Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!

As I wandered through, alone and more available for being by myself, (this one is Carra’s The Funeral of an Anarchist) I felt that I knew these guys. Yes they denigrated women (more on that in a second) but their rebellion, their anger, their passion, their desire to change everything – that was familiar. Of course I never wanted to destroy; none of us did. But the feelings of anger, of disappointment in the ways of the world, the desire to find new ways to say things, those were familiar — and swept me back to the determined, impassioned girl I was then. I can only describe my reaction as delight.

You’re going to tell me that this is the kind of blind passion is just what was wrong with the 60’s. And for those who transformed these feelings not into art but into primitive acts of violence – they were wrong then and they’re wrong now. That’s what is so amazing about art. You can act, and express, through representation instead of concrete acts of violence and hatred. That’s what these enraged men did. Meanwhile, the women artists were pretty angry, as you can imagine. One of them, Valentine de Saint-Point, although she agreed with their ideas, had some of her own to go along with them. Like this:

“Women
are Furies, Amazons, Semiramis, Joans of Arc, Jeanne Hachettes, Judith
and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras, and Messalinas: combative women who
fight more ferociously than males, lovers who arouse, destroyers who break down
the weakest and help select through pride or despair, “despair through
which the heart yields its fullest return.”

I wish I knew more because there’s so much more to this; the impact of Cubism on all
of it, the way it affected artists in nation after nation, and, most of all, the sheer energy of
art that, instead of freezing a moment, seems to set it free and follow it.

Colbert, The Word and Woodstock

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Tasers

I know, I"m in London and I should stop putting up videos of TV shows. But I love this one. And, it's what we call "timely" since the 15th is the 40th anniversary of .. well watch this and see for yourself.

A New Gig and New Ways to Make Change – Care2.com

This is pretty exciting. I’m now Managing Editor for all the Causes channels at Care2. It’s a unique organization that provides essential information on critical problems and the people who want to change them. Unlike many such groups, Care2 combines information and action – offering members both the information they need on the issues they care about and the tools to take action on those issues.
I hope you’ll come by and take a look; the issues range from Environment,and Animal Rights to Women’s Rights, Human Rights, Civil Rights and Politics to Health Policy to Global Warming .

I’d be particularly grateful for your observations about the organization and its 11 million members! Comment here or write to me at cindys@earth.care2.com.

You Mean There Are Jewish Neighborhoods in PARIS????

I’ve been to Paris probably close to 15 times in the past 30 years; never has it disappointed me. But until I began living a more Jewishly observant life, I’d missed a huge part of it. Like virtually every other city in Europe, Paris has a “Jewish neighborhood.” Like virtually every other city in the world – (if they hadn’t been thrown out altogether) the Jews moved out of their old neighborhoods, as they did on the Lower East Side, leaving their stores and delis behind.
This neighborhood in Paris, in the Marais, is somewhere in the middle. Plenty of Jews are still there; plenty more have moved on. But the services, and especially the restaurants, groceries and bookstores — and several synagogues large and small — they’re still there. This is the bookstore where you can buy prayer books and Jewish history and Shoah books as well as candle sticks and other Jewish necessities. It’s not far from a primary school whose front entrance includes a tribute to the more than 100 Jewish children seized there during the German occupation of Paris, never to be seen again. Stand outside that door and you can’t help but imagine how it must have looked and sounded and felt that day.

On a lighter note though, since we’re Jews, there’s food. This is one of two competing falafel stands on Rue de Rosiers and the lines were enormous on this hot, sunny Sunday. In addition to residents and Jewish tourists wandering by, whole tour groups arrived to try the native fare. It was quite festive, actually.

Oh, and there’s a photo missing here. I was scared to take it. We were approaching the former home of Jo Goldenberg, the legendary Jewish restaurant in the neighborhood, internationally known even before it was bombed in the summer of 1982, killing six and injuring several others. It’s gone now, a victim of the times, but as we neared the empty building, police sirens in the ooh-aah sound European sirens make, blasted us, close by. They screeched to a halt outside and a policeman cautiously approached a bag siting on the stoop outside the former deli. Clearly frightened, he gingerly picked up the bag to put into the police van and move it from the area, now so full of tourists and shoppers. Unnerved, my husband and I sped away.

So you don’t get a photo. But I can tell you that the cop looked very scared. And just so you don’t think this is a lot of melodrama, I was in a synagogue in Vienna EXACTLY one week before it was bombed. I had my young son in his stroller. That next week, a mother died throwing herself on top of her child – in his stroller. So there’s more to hanging around a famous Jewish neighborhood that candlesticks and shwarma.

One more thing. It looks as if, again, like the Lower East Side, gentrification may complete the job that first persecution and then upward mobility began. Last year, a story appeared in AFP – the French wire service, with the headline: “Paris Jewish quarter fights tourism, commerce in battle for soul.” Fashion retailers and other high-end businesses want to be in what is now the “cool” neighborhood and let some of that cache rub off on them. The Jews? Well they’re fighting to keep their institutions and to remain a distinct community, but there’s no guarantee they’ll succeed. Until then, the Marais, in addition to great coats, shoes, bags and jewelry, remains the “Jewish neighborhood.” So get there while you can.

It’s Pretty Different for an American in Europe With President Obama in the White House

At the big Paris flea market, Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, which takes up several city blocks, this portrait was among the items for sale. I’ve seen people reading Dreams from My Fatheron the Metro (seriously, the guy next to me, honest) and everyone wants to talk about him. What a difference!

Kevin Spacey, David Letterman, Twitter and Moms Rising – All in One Post!!!

OK so I’m in London and a friend posts this on my Facebook page. And I should be telling you more about London and that we’re leaving for Paris this afternoon (on theEurostar!!) for the weekend but this is just fun.

ALSO on that same Facebook page though, from Moms Rising, is this:
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner “…we are now lagging behind the rest of the world in closing the gender gap. According to the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 31st of 128 countries overall, but 76th in educational attainment, 36th in health and survival, 69th in political empowerment, and 70th for wage equality for similar work. In the representation of women in our Congress, we rank 71st.”

Reps. Maloney, Biggert reintroduce Equal Rights Amendment

So when you’re finished laughing at Kevin and Dave, think what we can do about these devastating numbers! I’ve just gone to work at Causes Managing Editor at Care2 and we have an active women’s rights section there – and we all know plenty of other places to raise some hell. Somehow, seeing it all aggregated like this makes it worse, no?

Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London

You can see it there – the street name in English and, I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book. Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been. Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane. But the book was published six years ago. And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.

Gentrification has arrived – as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint. As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them. Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself. Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that — nothing remotely ethnic. There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus. And there are liquor stores.

I’m not sure precisely why I’m telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel. Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago. This immigrant literature, whether it’s Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced. So it’s nothing new; it’s just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.

Another Day in London Town and Some Questions About This Health System

You can get an MRI in 24 hours in London. Of course it will cost you L250 and is not covered by the National Health Service — but you can get one.

How do I know this? I walked into a spa-like place on Drury Lane to find a massage for my husband and there on the reception desk was a brochure announcing the opportunity. Why? NOT because National Health doesn't provide MRIs, but because you can wait as long as 6 months to get one. That's one of the legends of National Health that looks like it 's at least partly true. Then I had a tiny experience of my own.

A small disaster and quick work. I was up very late last night talking to a friend in DC -' til 2 AM. So when I got up this morning I was a little raggedy. And in the process of slicing bread the knife slipped and I stabbed myself in the left hand. Bled like anything. There I was, alone in the apartment, bleeding and imagining sliced tendons or non-stop bleeding or God knows what.

I was impressive though. Stopped the bleeding with pressure and ice, called our local Boots' pharmacist, who told me to call a walk-in clinic who told me they were NOT insured to apply a butterfly bandage and gave me the name of a doctor far far from here. Not too reassuring.

I struggled into some clothes and walked to Boots to beg for help, and even though they'd refused on the phone, help me they did. Looked at the "wound," told me I'd "done all the right things," sold me some special band-aids and anesthetic disinfectant and sent me on my way. But it' clear nothing is ideal. The pharmacist says that the services are often "abused" and that we in the US have "the right idea." I'm going to try to figure out more about National Health "on the ground" while we're here. It's always different when you're right on top of it. In the meantime, I seem to be fine; pain diminished, bleeding stopped at least for now. More later.