An Olympic Struggle: July 2012

I have always been a fan of the Olympics. In 1960, when I was in the ninth grade, I wrote a report on the Rome summer games which my nasty English teacher, Mr. Spector, called "not bad." High praise from a haughty,  pedantic, little "professor". I still vividly remember Ethiopian Abebe Bikila running the marathon barefoot through the ancient streets of Rome. From these and other Olympics I remember Wilma Rudolph, Ralph Boston, John Thomas, Bob Richards, Harold Connolly, Mary Lou Retton and Mary Decker. I can still see sprinter Michael Johnson taking the turn at unbelievable speed in the 200 meters. I remember the Russian weightlifter, Alexeyev, and the disdainful way he would throw down the bar after a successful lift. It was fashionable to hate the Russians back then. Valerei Brumel was a particular villain in my eyes. I remember the great Rafer Johnson vs. C.K. Yang.

Back then I was a big fan of the Olympic ideal, the notion of the amateur athlete, training on his own after he gets off work at the factory, and then competing against the "professionals" from the Eastern Block. What can I say? I was just a kid.

Every four years for about two weeks I find myself caring about archery or race walking or water polo. I re-learn the difference between a foil, an epee, and a sabre.  I delight in the distinction between Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. I think in one of those you can't stand on the ropes or bash your opponent's head into the turnbuckle.  I marvel at the new technology apparent in the bizarre looking equipment used in the air rifle competition.

With this in mind, I thought I'd let you in on a little secret: There are several Olympic events in which I could never win a medal, any medal. Here are the top ones:

1. Any event with a distance in it. Whether it's 50 meters or 26 miles, I could never win a medal in any distance-oriented event. This includes land or water, on horseback or bicycle. I tend to fade after a meter so there you have it. If there were a one meter dash, I think I could place. I used to be pretty good at "One-Two-Three Red Light." I happen to have good reflexes. Just not so much stamina. Plus I'm not a fan of horsies.

2. Skeet shooting. I just watched some American kill 46 out of 46 skeets. Even the poor slob in third place managed to kill about 42 of the little clay darlings. That's just amazing to me. I remember as a kid hiking over to Boston's Franklin Park where there was a grand old building called The Commissary. Inside were several ancient arcade machines, circa 1940 or so. One of the machines was a target shooting gizmo in which a bear with a glass belly would walk back and forth while I would try to "shoot" it with some sort of electronic rifle. If I hit the bear on his glass stomach, he would roar in disapproval and change direction. If I could hit him several times in a row, he would do several about faces and replicate the Curly shuffle from The Three Stooges. I probably spent well over $8.00 trying to make that bear my b-tch. Alas, I was always the one who faced the long walk home with the bear laughing at me all the way.

3. Badminton. There are two problems here. First, I'm, well, afraid of the shuttlecock. You know how some people are afraid of clowns? I love clowns. I'm terrified of shuttlecocks. It's irrational, I know, but what can I do about it? Another problem is the incredible speed at which the game is played. During my Temple University undergraduate days, I had to take several semesters of Phys Ed courses. I signed up for badminton thinking there would be lots of pleasant afternoon barbeques and cute co-eds. What a mistake that was! It turns out that serious badminton is vicious and many an unsuspecting player can find himself with feathers imbedded in places where feathers were never meant to go. No badminton medals for yours truly I'm afraid.

4. Kayaking. Earlier in these blogs I mentioned my recent aversion to kayaks, especially kayaks with no back support. Having just watched a number of kayakers take on a raging set of rapids as they maneuvered their non-back-supported crafts backwards and forwards through designated gates while trying desperately not to drown, I am forced to admit that a kayak medal is just not in the cards. Possibly if all the gates were lined up one after the other and all you had to do was ride that ol' current straight on through them, kind of like the tunnel of love, maybe my weight would prove to be an advantage in stabilizing the ship. Otherwise, it's "Iceberg, dead ahead!"

So there you have it. Very few Olympic dreams left for me.

But for my older son, Josh, a true Olympic struggle lies ahead. As most of you know, cancer has decided to torment this family again and Josh, with the help of his wonderful wife Cindy, and his awesome twins, Sam and Sara, will be doing battle with this formidable opponent head on. Believe me, there is no man better suited for this task.

How can I be so sure?

Hey, I knew his mother, remember?

Ain't life grand?
J

Scenes That Always Make Me Weep: July 2012

There are certain film scenes and moments that always make me weep. It doesn't matter how many times I've seen the films in question or how familiar I am with the particular scene. My response is automatic, completely out of my "control". I imagine we all have such scenes. Perhaps some of yours overlap with mine.

As a seventh grade teacher, I probably taught Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird over a hundred times. Every time one of my classes finished the book and completed whatever wrap up assignment I had devised for them, we would celebrate by watching the movie in class. And every time Scout turns to the wall in Jem's room and says so matter-of-factly, "Hey Boo," I weep. I guess it's the depiction of that beautiful innocence, exemplified by both Scout and Boo, to which I and my tear ducts react. To this day I never tire of that film and especially that scene.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, one of my favorite movies is Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso. There are many scenes in that brilliant film that "grab" me, but most of them cause delight and laughter. When young Toto is told by his mentor, Alfredo the projectionist, to project the film onto the ancient walls of the city so that those without tickets will be able to watch, I can often feel the tears rising. But the scene that knocks me out each and every time is at the end of the film when the adult Toto, now a successful director himself, watches the bits and pieces of old, spliced film that his wonderful friend bequeathed to him. The images projected are all the love scenes that the Church had prohibited the old rogue from displaying. Toto weeps as he remembers his old friend, Alfredo, and so do I. Every time.

Although I have only seen The Artist once, and that very recently, I know that there is one scene in particular that will cause the waterworks to flow freely every time I watch this brilliantly conceived masterpiece. It occurs near the end of the film. I don't want to spoil it for those of you who have not as yet had the pleasure of watching this fine movie. I have a feeling that those who have seen it know the segment I'm referring to. John Goodman himself thought the scene was "perfect"!

 Elia Kazan's beautiful film On the Waterfront has several scenes that are tearworthy. The classic backseat conversation between Terry Malloy (Brando) and his brother Charlie the Gent (Rod Steiger) comes very close. The resignation in Brando's voice when he says (about his being a bum) "Let's face it," is heartbreaking for sure. But I bawl at another scene. When Malloy walks down to  Johnny Friendly's waterfront hangout and challenges him, all of the self respect and dignity that had eluded him in his life returns with a few quick body punches. Despite being pummeled by Lee J. Cobb and his henchmen, Malloy can finally stand on his own two feet, a natural, free man. Combine that visual with Leonard Bernstein's brilliant score and I am a piece of very wet toast.

Here are a few other quick looks at scenes that get me every time:

     when Oskar Schindler bemoans the fact that he could have done much more...

     when Randall P. McMurphy announces the World Series sight unseen...

     when the old Pvt. Ryan returns to the Normandy cemetery...

     when Forrest Gump asks Jenny if their son is smart...

     when Toy Story 3 starts, ends, and everything in between...

Finally, let me end this piece with my all-time champ. Saying I weep every time I see this scene is not quite accurate. I cry. I choke. I bawl. My nose runs. My breath spasms. My hands shake. The lump in my throat practically explodes.

  At the end of Field of Dreams, one of the sweetest movies of all time, Ray Kinsella, played wonderfully by Kevin Costner, chokes back tears as he asks his returned-from-the-dead father, "Hey, Dad, want to have a catch?" I'm actually crying as I TYPE this!

The reasons for my strong reaction to this scene range from the brilliant way the story has lead to this point, the yearning in Costner's voice, and the music that accompanies it; however, sitting above all that is my own story, in particular my own complicated relationship with my father. All that personal history conspires to make that scene remarkably powerful to me. It's a great, great cry.

Some people who are very dear to me are experiencing tears of a different sort these days, tears that are every parent's worst nightmare. Here's hoping that those tears flow beautifully and freely for as long as necessary.

Ain't life grand?
J

The Stuff I Don't Know: July 2012

The stuff I don't know could fill the province of Manitoba, and I happen to know that Manitoba is one big-ass province.

Here is a partial list:

I don't know how to fix anything. Oh, I can tell when a lightbulb has burned out (suddenly it's dark), or a battery needs replacing (the clicker stops working and I'm stuck watching Rachel Ray for the next hour), but if it's anything more complicated than that, I'm toast. I'm not proud of my ignorance in the area of manual repairs; it's just not in me. I believe those kinds of skills are usually passed down from father to son/daughter and ol' Sam was not, shall we say, particularly dextrous. Once during a New Hampshire Thanksgiving, our electric stove stopped working. Through trial and error, (I kept touching various heating elements until I found the one that didn't burn me) I was able to locate the part that needed replacing. I was then able to remove that part and replace it when the new part, ordered online, was shipped. I mention this because to this day that oven is the one and only household item that I have ever repaired. By the way, if you're wondering, that year's Thanksgiving dinner was cooked in our neighbor's vacant condo unbeknownst to them. I'm a bad fixer. I'm an excellent borrower.

I don't know how a car works. I know which buttons and pedals to push and I know what happens when you push them, but I have no idea why or how anything happens. Now, the question could be asked, "Does one need to know this information?" Obviously the answer is NO, since I've been able to get wherever I wanted to go in a car since 1964. That includes Eufala, Alabama. So why do I lament being saddled with this particular area of ignorance? There are several reasons. In any male conversation involving  horsepower, cylinders, brake pads, mufflers, universal joints, rotors, washer fluid, or octane, I must sit in a quiet corner and hope my name isn't called. When I bring my car in for repairs or maintenance, I must await the final tally and pay the bill with a smile. I can't ask "How come you did this?" because I don't know what "this" is. It's kind of like ordering dinner in Albania: Here's my credit card. Please do not ask me if I have any questions. One time Ada and I were traveling with our English friends, the Davidsons. Young Jamie, probably about 5 at the time, asked his dad to explain how an internal combustion engine worked. (By the way, young Jamie is bound for Cambridge University to, as they say, read chemical engineering. I guess the lesson took!) I was hanging on every word of Steve's patient and not at all condescending explanation. Unfortunately, he lost me at "turbine".

I don't know how to grow anything. If I tried to live on the stuff I've grown, I would have died of malnutrition sometime around 1972. I see other people, many of them barely literate, able to grow actual vegetables in their own back yards. As near as I can tell, there really isn't supposed to be that much to it. You need a seed, a shovel, dirt, and water. Frankly, I don't think I ever had the right kind of shovel. In our Hanover, MA house, I was forever trying to fill in the sketchy parts of our lawn. Each spring I would march down to the local Home Depot to purchase that year's can't miss lawn seed,  (for hard to grow areas) special fertilizer (for hard to grow areas), purified spring water, (for hard to grow areas) and sketchy-lawn-growing-shovel (for hard to grow areas). How proud I felt when the last bare spot had been dug up and gorged with wonderful new seed, dirt, and water. Every day I would come home from teaching and inspect these newly-fecund areas. When I spotted the first evidence of new growth, I would ask my family to raise a glass to honor and acknowledge my fertile, green thumbs. Alas those first spare thin strands would prove to be the only strands, a lawn rogaine experiment gone terribly wrong. All that was left for me to do was pray for winter to arrive early.

I don't know how to build anything. Let me amend that. I can build you a board. Just tell me how thick, how long, and how wide you want it and I'll take care of the rest; however, if that board needs to be attached to something larger, say a bookcase or desk or lunar transport, I'm afraid I'm going to have to farm the job out. I have good friends who have built their own homes. Let me clarify: they had a vacant piece of earth and a year later on that earth stood a complete house, with electricity, cable, and a porch. If I were given that same challenge, a year later that vacant piece of earth would be strewn with various sized boards. Nothing else, just boards. But in my defense, it wasn't always thus. Back in the fourth grade in Mr. Fairweather's wood shop class at the Sarah Greenwood School, I was considered something of a woodworking prodigy, a little pudgy Jewish Bob Vila if you will. My signature piece was a woodpecker-shaped doorknocker which I proudly presented to my Aunt Minnie and Uncle Albert at their home in Newton. That beautifully painted and varnished woodpecker adorned their back porch door for many years, forever ready to announce the arrival of unexpected guests. It wasn't Woody's fault that nobody, expected or unexpected, ever used that particular entrance when visiting Minnie and Albert's place. As a matter of fact, I believe that I am the only person to have used that knocker, which I did probably 3 or 4 hundred times every time we visited there. One sad day I went to see if Woody still had his spectacular knocking ability, and he was gone. Even the nail holes used to fasten him had been spackled over. When I asked what had happened to Woody I was given a doughnut and told to get lost. My ability to build things was gone. On the other hand, my ability to eat doughnuts blossomed from that moment onward.

In To Kill a Mockingbird Jem complains to a neighbor that lawyer Atticus can't actually DO anything. The neighbor gently scolds him and reminds him that there is plenty that Atticus can do, including making someone's will so airtight that....(I've forgotten the rest of the line, but you get the idea.)

I don't know how to read a legal or financial document. I've tried, I really have. I'd like to think that if I tried just a little harder, maybe I could get beyond the first paragraph. So far this inability has not caused me any great financial or legal hardship. Unless you count the fact that I can't enter Missouri or exit Arkansas.

So how can someone with such a dearth of common knowledge and skills survive in this crazy, wacky world?

I have a secret. It's spelled V-I-S-A!

Ain't life grand?
J