Clearing the slate

”It’s been real and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.”
—Bob Delle, old friend and former USMC lieutenant

It’s the day of the Big Party, but yesterday it seemed like every other hour police cars, fire trucks or ambulances were blaring somewhere. I guess holiday stress, combined with some quirky weather, can contrib- ute to more than a few emergencies. Godspeed NYPD, FDNY and other local response organizations.

Today it’s considerably calmer, at least for the moment. I hear the clip-clop-clip-clop of a horse-drawn carriage gliding past my building on its way to the stable off of Eleventh Avenue. It’s a comforting sound, one as old as the city itself.

My dog Ilsa and I just got back from our morning stroll in Central Park. The warm temperatures have softened the fields, and I had to remove my hikers and clean the mud off of my blissful mutt before we reentered the apartment. Preparations for the New Year’s ball-drop in Times Square are well under way. Helicopters have been airborne since before dawn. Tourists are arriving at hotels by the busload.

I won’t be anywhere near that festive mob scene this year. My friend Fausto and his band The Fabulous Faustones are performing tonight at Walker’s, a nice little bar/restaurant in downtown TriBeCa. So I’ll be ringing in the New Year with some fellow musicians. They’ll be playing jazz, swing, blues, roots rock and Cajun music. It should be fun. Real fun; kick the holiday doldrums in the ass kind of fun. If you’re in town and have no place to go, come join us. The band begins at ten and plays until two. I can’t think of a better way to clear the slate.

To all my readers, a Happy and Healthy New Year. I’ll resume posting short essays at the Hell’s Kitchen Dispatch on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Stay tuned, tell your friends and please chime in with your comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Tsunami relief

It’s beyond the abilities of this writer to even begin to comprehend the suffering of the multitudes affected by the earthquake and tsunami that have devastated so many Asian islands and coastal areas. The death toll, as just reported by CNN, stands at 80,000 and continues to climb.

Just as in the days and weeks after 9/11, it’s time again for our country to unite and show the world that we, living in the wealthiest nation, are a caring and compassionate people. I’ve posted links below to some organizations that are involved in relief efforts. In a word, give. Whatever you can afford. It will be the most important gift you give this holiday season.

AmeriCares

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Care

Catholic Relief Services

Direct Relief International

Doctors Without Borders

Muslim Hands United for the Needy

Save the Children

United Methodist Committee On Relief

A purple Christmas

I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean
Through restful waters and deep commotion
Often frightened, unenlightened
Sail on, sail on sailor
–“Sail On Sailor,” Wilson/Almer/Rieley/Kennedy

Well, 2004 was a rollercoaster, so why should I have expected my Christmas to be any different? The past few days have been difficult. It was my first Christmas sans mate in almost a decade, and a freak show of emotions came calling. I had forgot how troublesome Christmas can be. My poor dog Ilsa didn’t quite know what to make of it. I will have to make it up to her later this week, when the weather warms, with a few long treks through Central Park.

How to measure the loneliness? Think of a small box of Russell Stover chocolates, given to me on Christmas Eve by a friendly Arab teen who works long hours in the corner deli. I go there every morning to buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper. “Merry Christmas, boss,” he said as he handed me the wrapped package. This hard city does have its moments of tender mercy.

I’m not writing to hail on the holidays. We all go through these times, and most of us endure and survive them. As Woody Allen once said, “The heart is a resilient muscle.”

In that spirit, I’ll reproduce here a note I received in the mail today from my friend Tom, who I wrote about in the piece entitled “True west.” Apparently, life on the left coast suits him just fine. Sail on, buddy.

First Christ,mas in the Golden State

Well, the people here are as beautiful as the weather, so I don’t stand out as much as I do on the East Coast but I seem to be fitting in among them—I have registered for my first Botox injection to try to cure the Irish curse and have put a ten-dollar down payment on a Porsche Carrera—they read the paper while they drive here so it can be very distracting, especially when they read about the record snowfall in the East…they dream big, of course, since they’re so close to that nightmare called Hollywood…they will put me in the movies and all I have to do is “act naturally”…the mountains almost reach to the sea, so nature has seduced them all into some false sense of well-being. Oprah is a neighbor, so we feel optimistic in the face of all that wealth and know she is doing as well as she can to treat the servants as well as she does her producers…I am in love with a woman who rides horses and cooks stew and she is like light folding into the ocean. I imagine I will be all right even though as a New Yorker, I hate to be polite to anybody—it’s so demeaning to everyone concerned. I have come here to outwit the West and hopefully take some of their easily earned money—anyway, the only ones you can trust on this spread, as is true anywhere, is the hired help. So now the Christ,mas lights are blinkin’, the tide leaves a little snowy white foam in its wake, Santa is preparing his red t-shirt and trunks (a bathing suit to those of you who didn’t have an old man from Brooklyn) and waiting to sleigh ride in on the next warm Pacific blue wave. The second true thing I have to write is that I hope we can find it in our jingle bell hearts to have a little more faith and love for all those soldiers far away and near.

Merry Christ,mas,
Thom

Mom's annual Christmas poem

I just received my mother's Christmas card, a poem she writes every year, in the mail today. The format is always the same: a white card with a small red ribbon. I'll share this one with my readers, a Christmas greeting from a member of the World War II generation:

Christmas Luster

"It ain't easy!" It's been so often said,
And as I grow older, these words, echo in my head.
I decide to write, all the pens are dry;
I want to laugh, all I do is cry!
Remembering is a blessing
But sometimes it's a curse-
It pulls at one's heartstrings,
Until they're ready to burst!

You want to tell the world-
"Look before you leap!"
But when it's time to say so,
You are fast asleep!
Each day you grow older-This you try to forget-
But the mirror on the wall reminds you
And then you start to fret!
Christmas is coming-how can I make it great?

But wait-

How can I make it great?
What a totally stupid thing to state!

It is He who makes it great!

He stands beside me now and I'm totally aware
The Luster of Christmas starts in one's heart
And reaches out from there

May Christ fill your heart with luster at Christmas
Coupled with good cheer
And may His love embrace you
All through the coming year!

Red rambling

I've just finished work, and tomorrow begins an 11-day vacation, extending through Christmas and into the New Year. To celebrate, I've poured myself a glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, 2001. Not a terribly good year, all told, but this red hits the spot; it better, at forty-nine bucks a bottle.

So I'm being a little self-indulgent. It's a nice way to decompress. Outside it's unseasonably mild again, forty-six degrees, and this comes on the heels of a deep freeze that felt like the worst of February. Tomorrow it's rain and fifty-five. Freaky weather.

The kind that makes you sick. More than a few friends and colleagues have been zapped by colds. This nasty little bugger hangs around for the better part of a week. To ward it off I've been eating echinacea pills like Pez; if a backache could turn me into Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what the cold from hell on Christmas Day could do. Two words, Alec Baldwin. And I ain't goin' there.

There's not much to report from the kitchen today. We all know what's been happening in Iraq. Right after Najaf and Karbala, a missile, rocket, suicide bomber, whatever, explodes a mess tent in a US military camp outside Mosul, killing over 20, including up to 19 Americans. Apparently it's taken military officials by such surprise that, a day later, the facts remain unclear. That's quite a feat in today's news-as-it-happens world.

The families of GIs in Iraq are in for a rough Christmas. If you know one, lend a hand. Or at least offer to. Many will prefer their solitude, but it's always good to know people around you care.

Better that, than listening to "The Bumper of My SUV," the country tune by Chely Wright making its way up the charts. Forget the fact that the singer demanded the resignation of her fan club president, a longtime associate, for allegedly asking fans to falsely identify them- selves as members of the military, or sibs thereof, in calls to radio stations requesting the song.

It's just not a very good ballad. You can read the lyrics here. Wright says she wrote it based on a real incident in her life. But I don't know anyone in this country right now, liberal, conservative or otherwise, who would be so crass as to flip the bird at someone just for driving a vehicle adorned with a US Marines bumper sticker. Wright's attrib- uting such behavior to someone on their way to a church meeting, or to a private school to pick up their kids, strikes me as a little disin- genuous, a tin-eared attempt to sound cool on the alternative charts: Let's see, how can I sell my support for the troops without alienating the Moveon.org demographic? The song, issued without a label, has landed her a record deal. Go figure.

No one needs "The Bumper of My SUV" to be reminded of the selfless sacrifices made daily by the members of our armed forces. Every day I think of them, and of their fallen comrades, without the assistance of stars indulging personal ambitions. God rest ye, brave men and women of the US military.

When my feeble life is o'er,
Time for me will be no more
Guide me gently, safely o'er
To Thy kingdom shore, to Thy shore
"Just a Closer Walk With Thee," traditional country hymn

Nuts and fruitcake

So here it is, less than a week before Christmas, and bad news rides a blast of Arctic air here in Manhattan, chilling to the marrow. In Iraq, Muslim extremists have turned up the dial on the havoc meter, and today President Bush says Iraqi security forces are decidedly unpre- pared to defend their country as it strives to bring about democratic reform.

Yesterday explosions in Najaf and Karbala snuffed at least 67 lives in the bloodiest insurgent mischief since July, according to Terence Hunt of the Associated Press. In his article on the president’s press con- ference today, Hunt leads with Bush’s “sobering assessment” of the Iraq war: “No question about it, the bombers are having an effect.”

Meanwhile, Tim Reid, of the British TimesOnline, quotes the president’s “sobering prognosis for Iraq’s near-term future”: “I certainly don’t expect the process to be trouble-free.”

If I could I’d buy these guys a drink. Not because I think there’s anything particularly revelatory in their coverage of the president’s remarks. Bush has been saying all along that we should expect more trouble from insurgents as Iraq inches closer to free elections on January 30. And it wasn’t a secret that the performance of the Iraqi military and security forces during the assault against insurgents in Fallujah last month amounted to a mixed bag of desertions and sporadic acts of heroism.

If anything, the president’s frank observations should serve as a wake-up call to Iraqis. The United States is there to help them establish a country that is free of the iron-fisted madness that comes with religious extremism. But the Iraqis—all 16 million of them who are registered to vote next month—have got to want it. They have got to be willing to take up arms themselves to defend their fledgling democracy, and stop laying blame for their problems at the feet of the West.

The Iraqis would do well to take their cue from Anthony McAuliffe. Sixty years ago this December 22, McAuliffe was acting commander of the US 101st Airborne as it came under repeated attacks from the German army during the Battle of the Bulge, the last great counteroffensive launched by the Third Reich during World War II. On that day the Germans issued the US paratroopers holed up in Bastogne, Belgium, an ultimatum: surrender or face certain annihilation. Two hours later they received McAuliffe’s one-word reply: “Nuts.”

The return of Christmas cheer

Heaven, I'm in heaven
And the cares that hung around me through the week
Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek
—Irving Berlin, “Cheek to Cheek”

Work, work and more work, right through the weekend again. But this time should be cake. My year-end vacation is in sight. After next Wednesday I’m off till the 3rd of ’05. Aw, yeah.

And I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here, in the best city on earth at Christmas. The weather’s colder, more December-like now, and the city’s dancing with its denizens like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers. Just like it must have felt during the Depression, to see Fred and Ginger on the big screen, dancing to a Gershwin or Berlin standard as though the times were but a bad dream, that’s how it feels today walking the streets of Manhattan. I’m not being senti- mental; it’s just the way it is in the big town during the holidays.

New Yorkers get a little slower and lighter in step this time of year; there’s so much to savor. Slick art deco lobbies ornamented with festoons of pine. A Salvation Army band, sounding like a New Orleans funeral, joyous and mindful. Balconies on high-rise buildings, draped with white and multicolored lights. An old homeless man pushing a shopping cart and wearing a Santa hat. The crowds, of shoppers, tourists, theatergoers and office-party revelers, their high-spiritedness a contagion to the most grizzled of us working stiffs. But lots of smiles, even from those under the 50-hour harness.

Not that I was feeling this festive all week. I threw my back out on Tuesday. Let it be said, men are crybabies when it comes to their ailments. On Wednesday, while stuffing envelopes with cash for the super, the parking attendants, the postman, the laundry workers and my barber, my nagging backache had me thinking more like old Ebenezer Scrooge, denigrating the season as a “poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!''

Then on Thursday I received a Christmas card from my ex-girlfriend. “It is in giving that we receive,” the cover quoted Francis of Assisi. Not exactly a visit by the Three Spirits of Christmas. But it did make me feel a little better.

Okay, I thought, looking over the stuffed envelopes. So here’s something for Marco the super, even though I had to wait 3 weeks for him to send someone to repair my leaky shower. Here’s something for the parking attendants, even though they had to send my car into the body shop to repair a dent they caused, and then had to recharge my battery after leaving the key in the ignition. Here’s something for the workers at the Laundromat Café, where a towel and several socks have gone missing. And here’s something for Steve my barber, for his talents in making the same haircut look a little different each time.

Like I said, I was feeling better, but not exactly beatific, like Francis, or blissful, like a redeemed Scrooge. That feeling only came Friday morning, after sleeping on a heating pad on loan from my ex-girlfriend. One night on that and suddenly my back wasn’t so disagreeable. Suddenly it was okay to recognize the people in my life who get it right most of the time. Give Scrooge his Three Spirits, give Francis his visions, lend me a heating pad, and all is well with the world.

Men are crybabies over their aches and pains, and I’m no exception, especially when they flare while the rest of the city is dancing.

Pieces of 2004

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too
—Bob Dylan, “Mississippi”

I’m taking stock a little earlier than usual this year. God knows, 2004 calls for it. What a rollercoaster ride in almost every way — personal- ly, professionally, politically, you name it. Get it done now, before Christmas.

I pick up the pieces one by one, the stuff of my life in 2004. I look over each, remembering, deciding whether to keep it or toss it into that big, still lake behind me:

A longtime relationship, ended in February, but friends for life; that’s a keeper. Keep up those scholarly conquests, Mo. You're where you were meant to be.

A new cubbyhole of an apartment, on a street opposite a car dealership where car horns on new SUVs go off at the slightest provocation; I try to skip that piece off the surface of the lake, but it sinks without a bounce. Not nearly flat enough. Looks like I’m moving again in February.

A ukulele, purchased on ebay in June; a tiny keeper, my musical worry stone.

Weirdness at the local pub, partially of my own unwitting doing, which made me see rock bottom before I hit it and turn myself around; I rear back and throw that baseball-sized nugget like a shot-putter, letting go an earthy grunt. It hits the water hard, displacing its point of entry as it sinks fast, sending ripples across the surface of the lake. I will try to be more aware, to communicate more directly and to know when to say when, but not before. Soon all is still again.

My Christian roots; I haven’t looked at this piece in years but I never got rid of it either. It was one of those things that would always turn up when you least expected it. I blow on it, rub it on my shirtsleeve and drop it into the pocket containing my wallet and keys. This piece needs a home; or maybe it already has one. Something to look at and think about again.

Re-bonding with my dog Ilsa, after I’d loaned her to my ex for security and comfort. Actually this isn’t a piece at all; it’s Ilsa’s Kong. This belongs on the shelf beside her treats until our next morning walk.

Less time spent with my mother and sibs; I'll be seeing them this Christmas, with the exception of the West Coast gang, at home and merry in Oregon. I look the piece over with mixed feelings. I remember how our father used to gather the family on the stairs leading to the living room on Christmas mornings when I was a kid. Then he'd light the tree and lead us in a rendition of "Happy Birthday" to Jesus before giving us the green light to rip into our presents. Today the old homestead is but a ghost of itself, draftier and in need of work. But it's where my mother has chosen to stay. I'll set this piece down as a reminder next to my calendar for 2005.

Iraq, terrorism, the war against Islamofascism and my decision to support the President in a Bush-hostile town; this piece will go into the glass-paneled bookcase, alongside my Red Cross photo ID for the first anniversary observance of 9/11 at Ground Zero.

I think about what I’ll say to guests as they study it. I’ll tell them something along the lines of, “My choice for president became a no-brainer shortly after the Democratic convention. It wasn’t easy being openly supportive of President Bush on the streets of New York. Wearing my ‘W 2004’ cap, I was bombarded with epithets that would have irritated the Dalai Lama. Street vendors sold all kinds of Bush-bashing buttons. I asked one if he had any ‘W’ buttons without the slash, or perhaps some blank buttons and a few colored pens so I could make some of my own. He just looked at me and threw up his arms; a man’s gotta make a living.

“I’m glad I stood by our president, and ecstatic the majority of my countrymen did as well. The war against Islamofascism, and the efforts to bring democracy to parts of the world that are starved for it, remain the most important issues of our time. Christopher Hitchens duly noted, 'If Bush is remembered for kicking out the keystone of Arab rejectionism, in his first term, and then helps Palestinian statehood in his second, he'll be remembered as a historic president.' That, and a president who did more to foster future global stability than any US president since Ronald Reagan.”

That’ll play in Poughkeepsie. A few pieces left to consider.

Stress-releasing workouts at the gym; a keeper, one that’s also helped me to cut down on smoking.

A bottle of wine with weekend dinners; a keeper to be shared.

Working weekends and deciding to form my own business; the motivating keeper for 2005. Get ready, kiddo.

It’s a good thing I’m wearing cargo pants; lots of deep pockets. So it looks like 2004 hasn’t been such a bad year after all. It's been a rollercoaster ride all right, but more like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island with an old friend: scary, thrilling, bone-rattling and over too quickly.

It was twenty-four years ago today...

I’m listening to “An die Musik,” a two-and-a-half-minute thing of beauty composed by Franz Schubert sometime around 1817. Verena Krause is the soprano, Jörg Demus the pianist. It was written as an ode to music, a meditation on a poem by Franz von Schober. But to me it always sounded like a first snowfall, if snow could sing. Fitting music for early December. You can hear an inspired version by Bryn Terfel and Malcolm Martineau here.

Not that it’s snowing in New York, mind you. In fact, it’s more like April here. And maybe just a wee bit cruel, too. I just got back from my final walk with Ilsa the now sleepy dog, and in the time it took us to go around the block we were set on edge not once, but twice, by two separate events. These things happen in New York. Let’s not forget that on this same date 24 years ago John Lennon was murdered outside the Upper West Side’s Dakota Building.

The events Ilsa and I encountered just now weren’t nearly as extreme. It really is much safer in the city today. They just weren’t on our radar.

The first incident occurred as we walked east towards Tenth Avenue. In front of the single mothers' home on my block, a young black couple were trying to quiet their crying son, who couldn’t have been more than five. The father didn’t look threatening by any stretch—he was short, thin and wore horn-rimmed glasses. It was what he was screaming that got to me: “Shut up, okay? Did you hear me? You better shut up..." Now I know this guy might have been stressed himself after a lousy day at work; it wasn't like he was hitting his child. But I’ve never known his approach to work when you’re dealing with a likely exhausted and confused little boy.

The second event unfolded as we turned onto West 48th Street. Two men who were drinking beer outside the corner deli decided to follow us. At one point we were all completely lost to anyone’s view behind the trailer of a parked eighteen-wheeler. It was then that these guys picked up their pace and closed in, and I thought a mugging was surely in the works. But then they stopped, looked us over and turned around. Whew. I guess all those workouts at the gym finally paid off. Or maybe they realized they'd left their beer unattended (a likelier scenario). That’s all right, guys. Have one on me.

One last thought about John Lennon. I know his image has taken a beating over the years. But we should remember John Lennon first and foremost as an entertainer and a songwriter. I've always admired how he and the rest of The Beatles approached their jobs as craftsmen. They were true believers in the work ethic, something I’m sure had to do with their working-class roots in Liverpool, England. They were perpetual optimists and lovers of life, too. There isn’t a song in their catalogue you couldn’t play for a child today.

That was the thought, here's a true story. In 1967 the BBC had just finished setting up satellite relays to connect television networks around the world. To commemorate the occasion, a special called “Our World” was planned. The program would, in the BBC’s words, “for the first time ever, link five continents and bring man face to face with mankind, in places as far apart as Canberra and Cape Kennedy, Moscow and Montreal, Samarkand and Söderfors, Takamatsu and Tunis.”

The Beatles were commissioned to pen a song for the occasion. This is what a 27-year-old John Lennon wrote and performed with his band before a worldwide audience estimated at half a billion:

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
All you need is love

As the radio waves that carried that message drift ever outward, bound only by the space we cannot calculate, I'd like to say, God bless you, John Lennon, wherever you are.

Raw talent and a phone call

People say I’m crazy
I’ve got diamonds on the soles of my shoes
Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of my shoes
—Paul Simon, “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”

A golden December morning in New York City, scattered clouds, no wind, a chilly bite to the air, the city always slow to rise on Sundays.

Ilsa the happy dog took the lead on our morning walk, her ears flopping in time to an even quickstep, her hard-rubber Kong clenched between her teeth. She was a dog on a mission, Central Park her nonnegotiable objective. Due to some rain and pressing commit- ments, we had been there but once all week, so I was as eager to arrive as she was.

Along the way we encountered Christmas tree vendors setting up on street corners. I savored the scent as we breezed by the bundled trees. This has routinely been my favorite time of year in the city. As a kid I took in several Radio City Music Hall Christmas shows here with my family. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s the price of admission bought you a “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ recital, a film and a live show. Today you get just the show, a joyous blend of the secular and sacred, but it’s still the best holiday ticket in the city. Just to walk around the renovated music hall with its art deco flourishes is a marvel. I saw Albert Finney play a memorable Scrooge in the musical film of the same name while one of my younger brothers sprawled in the aisle, fawning over a new pair of pajamas he had refused to leave home without. It’s amazing how memories like those can sustain you in later years, when some holiday seasons are bluer than others.

Christmastime can be a trying time for many. Two years ago, while walking east on 14th Street towards the outdoor flea market in Union Square, I happened upon a grisly scene: an elderly woman had just leapt to her death from the balcony of her apartment six stories above. I later read she had been despondent over the loss of her husband. Apparently she just couldn’t endure a Christmas without him. Where were her neighbors? Her relatives? Her friends? We should all remember those near to us who might be having a rough go of it during the holidays. Sometimes a simple phone call is all it takes to lift the spirit.

Central Park was everything we anticipated. The park is largely deserted in the early morning hours; a few dog walkers, a smattering of intrepid joggers and cyclists, and that’s about it. Most of the trees are now bare. Brown leaves crunched under our steps as we wandered off the trail and into a field to play fetch.

I tossed Ilsa’s Kong high into the air and watched her dart after it with manic glee as it bounced every which way off the semi-frozen earth. A dozen or so throws later I could feel my rotator cuff pleading for a rest; no steroids in that shoulder. I started thinking about Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. If the stories about their steroid use are true, it certainly doesn’t bode well for them, or for the sorry state of our national pastime. If there’s one positive to take away from that mess, it’s this: money and fame alone will never buy authenticity. That will always come down to the simpler things, like raw talent and a phone call around the holidays.