Finding Grandma Opposite Lincoln Center

Visits home to New York are always bittersweet because the family members once part of my life had are no longer there. But the bronze portrait bust of operatic tenor Richard Tucker in a small triangular patch of green opposite Lincoln Center evokes comforting visions of my paternal grandmother -- and the story about her hiring him to sing the cantorial chants at Dad’s Bar Mitzvah in 1937. She paid him $300, not a small sum during the Great Depression.

Anna Wolinsky was the consummate doctor’s wife -- a woman with a sense of empowerment and also entitlement -- running every aspect of Grandpa’s medical practice on the Lower East and also his life. She operated in a world where appearances signified one’s station in life, and she would not have wanted anybody to think she had skimped on the Bar Mitzvah of her only child.

Loving but socially awkward, Grandpa counted on her to be the relationship-builder and master diplomat in all matters business and family related. Eminently pragmatic, she understood the lessons of quid pro quo, and had no qualms approaching one of Grandpa's patients for help -- the mother of another operatic tenor, Jan Peerce.

By 1937, Peerce was already a radio star -- five years into a soloist engagement with the Radio City Hall Music Company --but still four years away from his own debut at the Met singing Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata. I can only imagine Grandma pulling out all the stops, making it difficult for Peerce’s mother to say “no” to her proposal that he play the Bar Mitzvah gig.

No doubt they conducted their negotiations in Yiddish, the lingua franca of the neighborhood. Ultimately Grandma agreed to accept Jan Peerce’s brother-in-law, Richard Tucker. This was eight years before Tucker made his debut with the Met in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, and I have to believe Grandma managed to claim victory, despite any feelings of defeat.

Grandma’s birthday is July 4 and this summer marks the 20th anniversary of her death. Each time I return to the city, I’m painfully aware that she and Grandpa are buried at a Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn whose name I wish I remembered.

If Grandma had any Richard Tucker recordings on vinyl, and I'm sure she did, they no longer exist. For reasons that relate more to the heart than the head, I was really happy to find a C.D. of Richard Tucker’s “Welcoming the Sabbath” in Border’s. This was a day or so after 9/11, and right before the start of the Jewish high holy days. Listening to him sing brings me closer to Grandma, and her indomitable spirit.

Miss Subway and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

The New York subway system is an acquired taste. For me it’s always held the lure of adventure – with danger lurking in the shadows. So it seemed fitting that during my trip to New York last week, I make a point of seeing The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. My daughter, Daphne, seemed less excited about the prospect of seeing a film we both knew would be replete with violence and loss of life.

Denzel Washington plays Walter Gerber, the hero of the film and a character epitomizing decency and street smarts. Risking his life to save other lives and perhaps restore his own reputation, Gerber comes into his own with the shooting of the train’s motorman -- sending the message that the hostage takers want to deal with Gerber, who’s been demoted as punishment for alleged corruption as a manager -- and not the supervisor who treats Gerber poorly.

Perhaps the film’s most touching moment comes with Gerber’s wife asking him to bring home a gallon of milk. It’s her way of assuring herself that he will come home alive at the end of the day.

Feeling that I was watching Tony Soprano in his more endearing moments telling Carmela how the world works, I loved watching James Gandolfini play the Mayor. The prototypical, eminently practical New Yorker, he’s riding on an elevated train in Brooklyn when he gets word of the hostage taking.

When his aide suggests having a car and driver meet him at the next stop, he insists the subway would be faster. After the aide elicits passenger protests by insisting that the train go express to end of the line, the Mayor overrules him.

I rode the New York subway system as recently as last week, when I asked Daphne, and her husband, Etan, to meet me in Jackson Heights for a tour of the old neighborhood. Following my daughter’s instructions, I took the train to Roosevelt Avenue and 74th Street, and was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I got from my hotel in Manhattan to Queens.

The station had been renovated and expanded since my early childhood, but I still enjoyed the gritty feel of walking under the El. It occurred to me that areas in the immediate vicinity of elevated trains -- regardless of locale -- are populated by the newest immigrants, along with ethnic restaurants, check-cashing stores, and travel agencies specializing in flights back to the homeland.

Memories of the New York subway system, both recent and distant, came to mind:

1) Dad’s frequent warnings not to walk between the subway cars, lest I literally fall through the cracks. Any time such a death was reported in the news, he made a point of calling it to my attention, especially when it involved someone whose educational credentials suggested he should have known better.

2) A news account of a student from New York’s High School of Music and Art being pushed in front of a rushing train --thanks to a deranged man not taking his medication, a young violinist lost her arm.

3) Fears about Daphne being on the subway headed to Queens on the morning of 9/11. A student at Columbia Journalism School, she had been assigned to cover the primaries. My fantasies about terrorist incidents on trains were unfortunately reinforced by news accounts of riders in Japan being gassed.

4) Boarding the train at Roosevelt Avenue with Mom and my brother so we could meet Dad in Manhattan and go ice-skating at the Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park.

5) Images of the Miss Subway of the month interspersed with the advertisements for vocational schools plastered inside the cars. More often than not, this model passenger was a Caucasian with her hair done up in a beehive requiring lots of hairspray, lived in one of the outer boroughs, and worked as a secretary in Manhattan.

What are your own memories of the New York subway system?

Does NYT Still Count? Yes, When It's Your Wedding

Daphne Sashin and Etan Horowitz
Photo Credit: Roberto Gonzalez

As of today, Glinder & Glinder Will Fight for Your Wedding Announcement -- an amusing video about a fake law firm soliciting business from couples whose wedding announcements have been rejected by The New York Times Style Section -- has captured 3,000 views on YouTube. Created by the Kasper Hauser Comedy Troupe to promote sales of their book, Weddings of the Times -- itself a fake collection of New York Times wedding announcements -- the video also parodies the personal injury lawyer advertising on TV, always with a backdrop of law books.

In the interest of disclosure I’ll admit that the wedding announcements are usually the first thing I read when I pick up the Times on Sunday – unless there’s a really compelling front page story about people whose weddings will never make the Style Section because they are dealing with the consequences of credit scams, foreclosure, serious illness or a host of other maladies providing us with real perspective on what's important in life.

Is it any surprise that when David Brooks wrote Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, he began by talking about the Times wedding announcements? He observed that having gone to the right schools and having parents who were well educated were hallmarks of those whose announcements made it in.

I should also disclose that when Dennis and I got married in 2000, I didn’t feel I could truly enjoy our reception until I got a call from Vox Reprints. Ours was a Saturday night wedding, and when the man at the other end of the line asked if I wanted to purchase reprints of our wedding announcement, this was confirmation that our wedding would be reported in the Times the next morning.

As a communications professional, I know there’s no guarantee even the best of pitches will translate into a published story. But researching the rules and following them helps. As noted on the Times’ website, “couples posing for pictures should arrange themselves with their eyebrows on exactly the same level and with heads fairly close together.”

We met with a professional photographer several months before the wedding. Though he had his own ideas of how to pose Dennis and me, I politely but firmly explained that the sole purpose of the photo was for submission to the Times. Having the photo comply with their requirements would not guarantee publication. But non-compliance would virtually guarantee rejection.

The Times likes to know how the couple met. I thought the story of a well-educated widow and widower being introduced face-to-face in the gym – particularly at a time when online dating was coming into its own – might grab the attention of gatekeepers on the lookout for countertrends. In a gesture that seems quaint in retrospect, I sent the photo and information packet via Fedex.

The fact that our announcement and photo made it into print on a day when hundreds of others were rejected may have been more of a numbers game than anything else. Our wedding was late March, and I postulated a few things:
- Pre-Passover and Pre-Easter advertising might yield a thicker Style Section with more space for wedding announcements;
- Fewer people get married in March than June or October and that might mean fewer couples competing for space;
- Flooded with submissions from young couples marrying for the first time, the need for variety might open up space for the middle-aged couple remarrying.

We live in a time when it often seems like Facebook is the venue of choice for announcing one’s wedding and displaying entire wedding albums. The Facebook profile pic of any woman married within the past 12 months is likely to show her in a veil. A few weeks ago, I also saw the details of a wedding unfold over Twitter – with rapid-fire Twitpics of the happy couple and their bridal party.

Still, when my daughter, Daphne, and her husband, Etan, got married in November, I made sure to share the link to their announcement in The New York Times via Twitter, and also post the link on my Facebook page – but only after I was sure the happy news and the photo made it into the Sunday paper. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for hard copy, and I think that’s what the video tells us.

Readers: Do you have any tips on getting a wedding into The New York Times? Experience dealing with Times fact-checkers? Please use the Comment section to share.

Links:
Glinder & Glinder Will Fight for Your Wedding
How to Submit a Wedding Announcement to The New York Times

10 Takeaways from Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference

I opened my first Twitter account in March 2008 after a poolside chat with my son-in-law, Etan Horowitz, a technology columnist and blogger for The Orlando Sentinel. At the time I wasn’t sure how I might share my thoughts in 140 characters or less – at least in a way that would provide value to anybody else. I knew Twitter was searchable on the Internet and didn’t want to do anything that would leave an embarrassing digital trail for posterity.

The turning point came when I got my iPhone in early October or November. Though certainly not essential for Twittering, having the iPhone made it easy to Twitter when I was waiting in lines or sitting in the car on long trips while Dennis drove.

I solved the issue of deciding whom to Follow on Twitter by seeing whom Etan, otherwise known as @etanowitz, was Following. Each time he was a panelist at an event likely to feature other power Tweeters – such as the Consumer Electronics Show or the South by Southwest Interactive Festival – I checked to see who he had added and whether I might learn anything by Following the person myself.

For me the best thing about Twitter was that I could get links to lots of different blogs, news stories, and videos. I also learned that I could pass along the offerings of the people I Followed by Re-Tweeting. A communications professional by vocation, I love being able to promote people, issues, and stories I think are important.

Earlier this week, I had the good fortune to accompany Etan and my daughter, Daphne, whose Twitter name is @Dsashin, to the 140 Characters Conference in New York. Organized by Jeff Keni Pulver, a self-described technology anthropologist and the guy who founded the venture that gave rise to Vonnage, this two day event brought together everybody who’s anybody in the world of Twitter and social media.

New York has a lot of distractions, and while I planned on listening to a presentation featuring Etan and other panelists, I wasn’t sure I would stay the entire day. The events unfolding in Iran and the fact that Twitter was giving voice to people with no other means of expressing their political views provided added context to a conference planned many months ago.

Nobody envisions and plans a conference like Jeff Keni Pulver, and I don’t think I’ve ever attended any event more valuable. Anybody who plays the theme song from Exodus when a panelist or speaker goes beyond his allotted time deserves nothing but praise and admiration.

Always on the lookout for celebrity sightings, I can’t resist noting that I saw @anncurry of NBC’s The Today Show, @johnabyrne of Business Week, @shelly_palmer of MediaBytes, and @lizstrauss of Successful Blog.

Twitter friends not able to be at #140conf have asked me to tell them what I learned during day one, and 10 takeaways come to mind. The ideas are not mine, but those of speakers and panelists I heard, and I invite my readers to fill in who provided what.

1. “Twitter provides postcards to the future. Imagine how nice it would be if you could see the Twitter stream of people in your life who are no longer with you.”

2. “Links are the currency of the internet.”

3. “Twitter is not instead of traditional media. It’s just a new channel.”

4. “There’s a big difference between presentation and conversation, and Twitter is about conversation.”

5. “Find interesting people [to Follow] and amplify their voices.”

6. “If you want me to Re-Tweet your Tweet, make me feel proud to pass it on.”

7. “120-125 is your character limit if you want to be Re-Tweeted.”

8. “Re-Tweeting is like offering an assist to the best people on your team.”

9. “When people ask ‘what’s the return on investment?’, ask ‘what’s the return on ignoring Twitter’.”

10. "Governments can use Twitter to bypass the media and reach segments they usually couldn't reach."

Who Can Begrudge Judge Sotomayor Her Simple Pleasures?

When Dad announced that he had purchased a speedboat, I was thrilled. Just eleven at the time, I knew my brother and I would no longer be the only kids spending summers at Lake Mahopac just sitting on the beach. Now we could water ski any time we wanted, no longer at the mercy of invitations from other kids.

Grandma was appalled at her son’s purchase and thought it was fiscally reckless. Privately she told me Dad had taken a loan to buy the boat. When she and Grandpa bought two different summer homes, first the one at Lake Hiawatha, and later the one at Lake Mahopac, they paid cash.

The brownstone on the Lower East Side housing Grandpa’s medical office, railroad flat, and two rental units, had been bought with cash in the early 1920’s. True, the reason they needed no mortgage is that Grandma’s parents helped with the purchase.

The summer homes she and Grandpa purchased were for the benefit of their grandchildren, as was the bulk of their spending. Each week I would see Grandma hand Dad cash that he would deposit in bank accounts for my brother, sister, and me. Those bank accounts paid for all college expenses, including the dorm and the books, plus medical school for my brother.

In ways that might elicit a smile or two, Dad was in a position similar to that of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee. He didn’t need to pay for anybody’s college, and neither does the judge, who has no children. He too worked in government, and though the pension was certainly not as generous as that of a federal judge, I think he figured he’d be o.k. He later had a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the government worker equivalent of a 401K plan.

As Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw notes in his blog, because federal law does not require that a TSP be reported, we don’t know if Judge Sotomayor has one. Still he notes that his grandmother would be very disapproving that a woman who earned $205,330 last year has a net worth of just $740,000.

I know Grandma would be equally disapproving, and not just because she lived in different times. Her relationship with money was different. She viewed one’s net worth as a source of power and independence in and of itself.

There’s a vestige of Grandma in me. Last month I took the advice of a personal finance column, suggesting that I divide my monthly mortgage payment by 12 and then add the result to each payment – with the goal of paying the mortgage off more quickly. If I told Grandma what’s happened to my 401(k), she might suggest that the balance would be even lower had I not started contributing the max after paying for Daphne’s college.

I’m not suggesting it’s inappropriate to require financial disclosure from a Supreme Court nominee. If some of the judge’s law school classmates making considerably more were asked to reveal their net worth -- say in a divorce filing -- the grandmothers would be even more disapproving of the spending habits of the well-compensated.

But there’s also a side of me that would ask both grandmothers to be less judgmental of other people’s spending. Unlike many of the Ivy Leaguers with whom she went to Princeton and Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor doesn’t come from money, so it’s harder for her to accumulate significant wealth.

According to The New York Times, Judge Sotomayor lives in a 980 square feet condo in Greenwich Village -- which while a lovely area, is hardly the lap of luxury. She also drives a White Saab convertible, and likes traveling and dining out. Is this really so out of the ordinary for a divorced woman working long hours and living alone?

The Times says she also contributes to the support of her mother and stepfather, is inclusive when she throws a party, and gives nice holiday gifts to her clerks and others who work for her. How can we begrudge her these simple pleasures?

Greg Mankiw’s Blog

gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/05/scotus-appointee-is-spender.html

A Memorial to Lives Lost on Air France Flight 447?

If I tell you I was an English major, and got a master’s degree in English -- purely for the fun of it -- you may not think that what I’m about to say is so odd. When I learned last Monday that 228 lives were lost when Air France Flight 447 plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, I thought back to “Lycidas,” a pastoral elegy by the 17th century poet, John Milton.

Milton wrote the poem as a memorial to Edward King, a friend who had drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Wales. King was heading home from Christ’s College, Cambridge to Ireland for a visit with family when the accident occurred. The line that has always stayed in my head -- but also my heart -- is “he must not flote upon his watrie beare unwept, and welter to the parching wind without the meed of some melodious teare.”

Because Edward King’s body was never recovered, it could not be placed in a coffin on a funeral bier to be wheeled up the aisle of a house of worship, and ultimately buried in a graveyard or cemetery. Sadly, the same is likely to be true of many of the 228 people who were headed earlier this week from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Understandably initial news coverage focused on whether terrorism might have been involved, and then questions about mechanical or human error. Still I found it frustrating that I had to wait until the next day’s New York Times to learn who had been on board Flight 447.

The Times headline writer, understanding what it is people really want to know, titled the story “Among the Victims on Air France Flight, Doctors, Dancers and Royalty.” But I’ve found the ordinary people more interesting. A photo provided by family members shows a good-looking, middle-aged geologist – working for an energy company – and his wife, equally attractive. They were bound for a Paris vacation before he was to begin a training seminar in Spain.

The story references the loss of eight children, including an 11 year old boy, Alexander Bjoroy, the son of an oil industry ex-patriot, returning to prep school in England after a visit with his family. By all accounts, the boy, who previously attended school wherever his father was working, including the British School in Bogotá, Columbia, was a gifted athlete much loved by other kids.

Tragedies of such proportions typically elicit stories of people blessed by the fate of missed connections. They also elicit plans to build memorials to those whose lives were lost. When Daphne wrote for Newsday on Long Island, I was especially proud of her story documenting the grief of the families of TWA Flight 800 victims and their efforts to build a magnificent granite memorial in a little park overlooking that portion of the Atlantic that claimed their lives. That flight, bound for Paris, crashed shortly after takeoff in July 1996.

Children were on that flight, too, including 16 members of the French club at Montoursville High School in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and their five chaperones, bound for a summer exchange program in France. They got their own memorial on the grounds of the school. It’s a statue of an angel in a grove of 21 trees, one for each of the victims.

Memorials are important, and I don’t know what if any memorials last Monday’s crash will produce, and if so, where they will be. The only guaranteed memorial is in the hearts of those who survive.

Cape May Here I Come

More than a year ago, my friend and fellow blogger, Dan Cirucci, published a highly derogatory column about Cape May. Complaining about traffic-clogged roads and hordes of people descending on this popular seaside community in New Jersey each summer, he waxed poetic about the palmettos of Hilton Head, his choice for beach vacations.

Dan will no doubt laugh when he hears that on a particularly frigid Boston day in February, I booked Dennis and me for an entire week at the Congress Hall Hotel this July. It’s a comfortable hotel abutting a beach with the pounding surf I find especially soothing – even if the sound has the potential to be drowned out by large numbers of anxious mothers yelling at even larger numbers of small children.

Cape May is known for birding, and I could lie and tell you I’m hoping to spend the week looking for a spotted something or other. With its abundance of beautiful Victorian homes, I could tell you I’m planning to go on lots of architectural tours. Dare I say that the bulk of our site seeing will be en route to some very nice eateries?

The truth is that I’m hoping for long, therapeutic days in a beach chair -- with no computer, and just a few trashy novels. I’ll even settle for a few fog-enshrouded days, praying for no downpours. No doubt Cape May is everything Dan has said it is. Though I don’t remember whether he resorted to the phrase honky-tonk, I’ll tell you that I can’t wait to go into all those shops selling fudge and chewy chocolate things with marshmallow and caramel.

Yes, like Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor, I too, loved reading Nancy Drew. But I loved the Bobbsey Twins even more, especially the volume where Bert and Nan, and Flossie and Freddie get to spend their summer at the seashore. Reading that book while knowing that my family was spending the summer at Grandma’s home in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey filled me with longing.

In those years the Jersey shore was for me associated with the Miss America pageant, pre-Anita Bryant, pre-gambling. After a day trip with my parents at the beach in Atlantic City, I begged them to take me back to the land of sun, sand, sea and saltwater taffy shops.

The next time I returned to the Jersey shore was as the mother of the bride last November. My son-in-law, Etan is from Philadelphia, and Daphne fell in love with Cape May when they went to visit his Aunt Vicky and Uncle Joel, who have a home there. Etan’s mother and Daphne’s aunt did separate inspection tours of the Hotel Alcott, and pronounced it a perfect venue for a fall wedding.

Though I toyed with the idea of stopping at Atlantic City en route, ultimately I decided that Dennis and I should drive directly from Boston to Cape May, spending a few days before the wedding at the Virginia Hotel. We didn’t see much sun, but I delighted in running along the beach, feeling the gale force winds in my hair, and the mist on my face.

My friend, Dan and his wife live in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, and I assume that many of their neighbors consider Cape May a default destination for beach vacations. Cape Cod and the Maine coast, both beautiful but also distressingly congested in summer, are the default for those of us living in Boston. Need I say more?

Fun Links

Down the Shore with Jen

Dan Cirucci's Blog