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April 2011
From my apartment's four windows, I have watched 1 World Trade Center (1 WTC) grow a floor every several days.  Colloquially it is called the Freedom Tower and will be 1,776 feet tall when finished in 2013 or so.




Watching skyscrapers get built is a hobby, and in May 2006 I saw 7 World Trace Center (in the direct center of the picture) as it was completed (741 feet).



 



Some live English entertainers after eating spotted dick, scones, and bangers and mash.

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Nancy Russell-Tutty was given a special party on April 30th by two of her well-known
New Canaan High School Class of 1975 actors,
Karen Murphy (who was Angela Lansburgy's understudy in A Little Night Music)
and Kathy Russell (star of the longest-running off-Broadway Perfect Crime).


I gave each a copy of my In the Heart of Showbiz. 
Of the 30 or so at the party, Ron Russell-Tutty was showing his copy to everyone.
Marvin Weitz was Karen's handsome escort and made a special toast to Nancy. 
Ligardy Termonfils and I regaled Ron with tales from my autobiography.



.A first review by one of my students:


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Photo by Peter Ross   Kramer and David Webster, by MSN





I told Scott (NCHS '59) how my friend Tom Longden, a retired Des Moines Register journalist, had written me that when his and Mary's mother died, he included in the obituary that she appeared in two films by Iowa authors, Cheese for Miss Bishop, based on a book by Bess Streeter Aldrich and One Foot in Heaven by Hartzell Spence.  "Miss Scott was believable as an Iowan!" he added.

If Martha Scott was Yoshebel, the mother of Moses, wouldn't that mean that Mary and Scott were siblings of Moses?

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Now I remembered:  Andy Warhol . . . Ultra Violet . . . Superstar . . . Famous for 15 Minutes.


        http://www.thevillager.com/villager_415/warholslegacy.html

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Photo by Kirsten Sanchez/New Canaan Advertiser

New Canaan’s Outback Teen Center has a $10,000 recording studio that is opening this month:

           http://www.acorn-online.com/joomla15/ncadvertiser/news/localnews/90489-recording-studio-opens-at-teen-center.html

A YouTube video shows students performing – in the 1960s, my Variety Recording Studio was not set up as well despite having much more expensive equipment.

           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwfSpmfyPxA


            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmVzykr6AK0&feature=email


YouTube:

             http://bit.ly/gOoXf9

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          http://chelcbooks.com/

The first comments I have received are from

    •  A high school classmate in pre-1940s Iowa

          - I am shocked that a person I went to high school with would describe having sex in a corncob room, a church, and a car on Lovers' Lane!
   
    •  Employees

             - I’d forgotten about Warren’s grabbing the nun’s ass and she turned, kissed him, and squeezed his teat.

             - This work with so many pictures puts Variety Recording Studio into the history books. The 1960s came alive!

            - As you've heard before from others, you and Fernando were our favorite bosses of all time.
 
    •  Student

            - I’ve still no idea how you got all our written work back by the next class period. Did teachers know you were so involved in so many things?

    •  Neighbor


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          http://doublewidethemovie.com/riverboat-bertrand-russell-free-lecture/

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March 2011


When my inspiring 18-year-old Ligardy said to me yesterday, “Let’s have a heart-to-heart talk,” I knew something very, very important was up.

“A friend and I went to Beth Israel Hospital,” he said, “and we took the AIDS test.”

I hesitated, waiting for him to continue, admittedly anxious about what, when, why, who, and where. 

“We’re encouraging our friends to do the same. . . . We both knew the results would be negatives.”

Ergo, what parents, schools, the government, and the churches haven’t succeeded in doing, the kids themselves are doing. Or at least my son is doing.

I shall take him to the Empire State Building, as I once did his father, and yell out the news to the world.

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On March 25th at last (!), I received my autobiography’s first volume, and before 10 pm at the main postoffice on 33rd Street I had sent copies to three Iowa college libraries and to the Iowa Historical Society, emphasizing its interest to sociologists.


Surely enough, Google already has Lulu’s ad for it @$40:

          http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/in-the-heart-of-showbiz---vol-1/15163787


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The $52 book (not in print by Betascript Publishing) is described as “High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Warren Allen Smith (born 27 October 1921) is an American gay rights activist, writer and humanities humanist. In 1961, Smith started the Variety Recording Studio, a major independent company off Broadway, New York City, with his business partner and longtime companion Fernando Rodolfo de Jesus Vargas Zamora. Smith ran the company for almost thirty years (1961-90). In 1969, Smith participated in the Stonewall riots.”

I expect no royalties in their currency, rupees.
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Artist John Willenbecher, when shown the photo of Ligardy's finding where Marcel Duchamp had his studio, asked the noted New York Times writer of architectural history  Christopher Gray about the building at 210 West 14th. Their correspondence:

        JW:  A friend recently sent me the photo below showing the doorway at 210 West 14th Street.  It is evidently the entrance to the building in which Marcel Duchamp had his last studio -- the one in which over many years he created his final work, the Etant Donées (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art).  I was intrigued, however, by the relief over the door, now so horribly covered with yellow paint.  It seems to show an artist at work.  I am sure it had nothing to do with Duchamp and is only a happy coincidence -- but what could its story be?  John



 
        CG:  Yes, John, I love this thing, discovered on a walk about two years ago.  I cannot give you chapter and version, but it was a "dwelling" in 1908, but then a "studio building" as of 1928.  As of 1930 it was occupied by Pompeo Coppini, a sculptor;  by 1940 occupied by Eleanor Platt, sculptor; Duchamp here.  In 1956 purchased by Joseph Torch, who sold art supplies (ever heard of him?)
 
            I would style-guess it at 1910s, but 1920s is credible, too.   So - wild guess - it's either by Pompeo, or the owner of the building at the time.   But more definite information eludes me until I can give it several hours. 
 
            Next time, also ponder 204 West 14th, it presents as a boring white brick midblock apartment - but examine the unusual touches, like the decoration in the pavement, and other things which escape me.  It's a 1963 alt for owner Peter Choros or similar name.  Shows that there were brains working in what is otherwise conceived to be a desert. . . .
 
            Christopher
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On March 5th, I was invited by my 1965 student Dr. Nancy Offenhauser to hear her speak in New York City about having cured herself of cancer. I got to meet her lifetime partner – Patricia Horan – who drove to Manhattan with her from Kent, Connecticut. What fun we had reminiscing about New Canaan High School, her having been a Broadway electrician and stagehand and now chiropractor, and talking about our good health. What a shock to read in New Canaan's Advertiser that my 62-year-old student had died of cardiac arrest two days later!

Photo by Warren Allen Smith


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My autobiography, In the Heart of Showbiz, Volume 1, is scheduled to be available from chelCbooks on Friday, March 25th.  It will be available for $40 plus taxes and delivery from Amazon.com and other sellers in a few weeks.

However, it is available now for $25 tax and shipping included (if the cognoscenti send a personal check and code of NCHS before the end of April to chelCbooks, 31 Jane Street [Suite 10-D], New York, NY 10014):

          http://chelcbooks.com/

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Upon her death March 23rd from congestive heart-failure, everyone has an Elizabeth Taylor story. 

When her husband Richard Burton was starring as Hamlet (he got a 1964 Tony Award) at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre adjacent to my recording studio on 46th Street), the play's cast dressed casually as if it were a rehearsal instead of wearing historical costumes depicting the time in Denmark. Almost every night, Taylor would arrive in a black Cadillac a few minutes after the final curtain, and dozens of onlookers would wait to see her dash into the theatre, then bring Burton out with her.

One night between 9 April 1964 and 8 August 1964 when the play closed (with Hume Cronyn as Polonius, Alfred Drake as King Claudius, and Eileen Herlie as Queen Gertrude), we had just finished re-recording Norman Chase (of the banking family) in one of his several sessions. The engineer's task was to correct Chase's mistakes such as an off-key high note at the very conclusion of a song. Chase would do many takes, the engineer would have him choose which was the best, and with a razor blade the original tape's section would be cut and the correct note spliced in. In the business, we were well aware that many singers could not sing live as well as we could make them sound by splicing sounds made in the studio. 

On that night, I exited with Chase to his black Cadillac that was waiting outside on 46th Street, whereupon a rush of theatergoers descended upon us, thinking Elizabeth Taylor must be inside the limo and Chase must be Richard Burton. 

"Your fans await!" I joked as he sped away.
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In 2005, I helped Beth Lamont (Mrs. Corliss Lamont) and other New York humanists plant a tree at the Tom Paine Park in Foley Square, across the street from the Thurgood Marshall U. S. Court House, 40 Centre Street.

On March 21st, returning to the Court House to legalize chelCpress – which I couldn't because there's a Chelsea Press on 15th Street, so I founded chelCbooks –  I crossed the street to see how "my" tree is doing.  On a rainy day and with my iPhone, I got a photo of the tree that is recovering from the winter.

I have several memorable memories of the Court House:
           (a) in 1948, I sat near Eleanor Roosevelt (who supported Hiss) during the Alger Hiss trial – he had been accused of being a Soviet spy and with the help of Whittaker Chambers (a confessed Communist spy who alleged he had had sex with Hiss) Hiss was conficted of perjury and imprisoned; and
           (b) I accompanied Simon Blanc in 2005 as he renounced his citizenship in Dominica and became a U. S. citizen in an unforgettably emotional ceremony with 200 others.

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Timothy Madigan, my professor friend who teaches ethics at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, tried to determine if it was really, really true that I guard the gates of Hell to keep the hordes of believers out. So he went to New Zealand and found a note right there on the gates, "Sorry, I'm on spring break! Come back in a week!"




Dr. Madigan asked me to discuss the following in 30,000 pages or more: 

    "The sinking of the Titanic has been much discussed ever since it occurred in April of 1912. Dozens of books and many film adaptations (including the Academy Award winning movie directed by James Cameron in 1997) have addressed the significance of the event. One area which has not been properly explored, however, is the ethical realm, and the many moral dilemmas raised by this great tragedy.

Why were there not enough lifeboats for everyone? Was the owner of the ship culpable for its sinking? Should the captain and crew have gone down with the ship? What was the reason behind the order “women and children first?” Were first-class passengers given preferential treatment over the others? Should this sad tragedy be the basis of fictionalized films and Broadway musicals or is this disrespectful to the memories of those who perished? And are there any lessons to be learned from the sinking?"

Help!  I need help!

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You know you're getting up in age when people you used to know (and were my recording studio clients) are on postage stamps, which were issued on March 16th.

Tito Puente hung out and recorded several times at my studio, both on 46th and 42nd streets.  Watching him play his timbales during a session beat watching him at any concert. If something wasn't perfect, Tito could swear a blue streak as well in English as in Spanish.

He brought Celia Cruz, whose English was mediocre but her movements were consummate and understood in any language.  The two deservedly are among the better known Latino musicians. I did not know Selena or Argentine tangoist Carlos Gardel.



José Gallegos was my studio's manager who brought Puente and Cruz – his Colombian father had been the pianist who accompanied Carmen Miranda everywhere.  "And why was your mother Carmen's wardrobe manager?" I asked.  "To make sure her husband behaved," was his response. Imagine being the son whose mother's job was being wardrobe mistress for the lady with all the funny hats!


Variety Recording Studio's Warren Allen Smith
and its manager, José Gallegos
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Royston Ellis was successfully hung!  My former editor when I wrote columns in Caribbean newspapers, the chap who turned John Lennon onto drugs and has written novels that sold over a million copies, sent me proof:

                http://wireimage.com/ItemListings.aspx?igi=488138&nbc1=1
      

Taslima Nasrin, after getting the second honorary doctorate, went from Belgium back to India and then to Switzerland, where she got standing ovations for her talks about women's rights. On the 11th, her niece, Asha with her mother and dad, visited and I learned that Taslima's nephew (Suhrid, who changed his name to mine, Allen) is in Bangladesh. The big news is that Taslima has received an immigrant's visa and is on her way to becoming an American citizen.  That's Southeast Asia's as well as Europe's loss, another example of America's gain.





In The Heart of Showbiz, Volume 1, is going through the final draft and might be available for $40 or $50 yet this month.  The 500+ paperback will describe co-founding Variety Recording Studio in 1961 with Fernando Rodolfo de Jesus Vargas Zamora; the independent recording studio scene in the 1960s-1990s; my as well as Vargas's autobiography (in Costa Rica and Iowa); colleges (U of Northern Iowa; U of Chicago; Columbia); important dates and subjects; what it was like to teach in New York City and New Canaan, Connecticut, naming students and faculty who inspired or who did not; and over 300 b&w photos (eBooks will be in color).

By my 90th birthday in October, I hope to have finished Volume 2 (connections: actor Gilbert Price; Prime Minister Edward O. LeBlanc of Dominica; sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke; historian Priscilla Robertson; author Taslima Nasrin; and Haiti – Ligardy Termonfils' father and mother; Haiti's first psychiatrist Dr. Louis Mars) and some secrets heretofore undisclosed.  Volume 3 will include a listing of the 200+ plays seen on Broadway; the experience of founding Philosopedia, that got over nine million hits; the festschrift by students, faculty, and friends; my blogs going back to 2004; my exes; and an obituary.  When the autobiography is finished, I'll only have the British column to keep me in mischief. At some point, I may retire.

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Doug Fishbone, who lives across the hall from me when he's not in London, has a movie, Elmina, that has been nominated for a Nigerian Movie Academy Award.  Anita Fishbone, his mother, and I are elated. Doug's the only Caucasian in the movie, which has recently been featured at the Tate in London. Doug is known for piling hundreds of bananas in different cities, sculpting them, then inviting viewers to eat his work. See a trailer:


  




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My friend Royston Ellis is being hanged in London! Hurrah! Hung or not hung, if y'gotta get hanged, get hung in the National Portrait Gallery, I always say.

On March 8th, Royston (who was my editor when I wrote my column in his Dominica newspaper) flies to London from Colombo "to gaze at my 19-year-old self in a photograph by Ida Kar, being hung at a special exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). I am also to be filmed reading a few poems and, on Thursday afternoon, to sign copies of the new edition of my 1961 book The Big Beat Scene." Royston was England's Allen Ginsberg, the one who is said to have turned John Lennon onto a drug. I'd never before seen the following photo, which now will hang near Kar's pictures of Henry Moore, Cecil Beaton, Georges Braque, Jean Arp, Keith Vaughan, Olivia Mary Manning, and André Breton.


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My former student, Nancy Offenhauser, NCHS '61, became a chiropractor who in 2002 was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Instead of going to physicians, she has successfully treated the condition herself without surgery, chemo, or radiation. She now speaks widely and describes how instead of trying to "cure" cancer she was able to manage her vascular and lymphatic circulation in order to keep nutrients flowing into cells and waste products flowing out.  She lists fourteen key points to follow in her book, Healing Cancer Peacefully (Kent, CT, Round House Press, PO Box 744, Kent, CT 06757).  In Manhattan, I heard her speak and was tremendously impressed with her approach. "If you have a pain right now," she instructed us in the audience, "point to it, place your finger firmly if you can feel your heart beat, and count to 20." Did your body react by increasing the circulation in that area?" she asked, for everyone was concentrating. Her book also advises what to do if you have had conventional treatment and might think that you are "cancer free" – she advises that your job is "to rebuild your body and immune system so that you won't need to create a cancer again."  Eureka, I reasoned – we create cancer, not get it like flu from germs spread by others.

Nancy had three siblings, none of the others in my classes.  I remember her father but had not known he was an engineer who worked with film and recording and who in 1948 had a scholarship to record the sound of a specific insect (a fruit fly) in Benin. How I wish he had visited my recording studio in 1961, for he likely would have had some good advice about our Shure microphones. In 1964 we lent our rare wireless mike to the producer of Golden Boy to be hidden in Sammy Davis Jr.'s fighter shorts for his role as a boxer. "You'd never guess where that microphone was yesterday," I told a client who was using it after it was returned.

Students often say they're uncomfortable calling me by my first name. I was uncomfortable calling my student Nancy, rather than Doctor.


Photo by Patricia Horan

February 2011
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Ken Smith, my cousin the famous landscape architect, has been in the news for a Planters Grove project he's doing for Mr. Peanut in New Orleans.  Also, he has projects in Des Moines and elsewhere plus went to Los Angeles to speak at a Global Green Pre-Oscar event in Hollywood. Ligardy and I are invited in mid-March to another party at his downtown apartment, this time for his wife Priscilla's birthday.

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"The DuCaines, my dad's band, recorded at Variety Recording in 1966 or 1967. If by chance you remember them, I'd love to hear any recollections you have of their time at the studio," wrote Jason Lent (of Essential Junk). The engineers during that period have all died, alas, but I contacted several others on my old staff and heard back from Bill Wittman:  "Although I was a client in 1967, it's before my time as an engineer there. . . . I'm getting ready to leave next week for a few months of routing with Cyndi and our current blues band. We play Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Japan, and Australia . . . until mid-April. I'm tired already!  Plus Cyndi's "Memphis Blues" is up for the blues category Grammy. Cheers, w2."

What a joy to hear from former employees (and students and clients), including from Vinny Leary, an original Fug and later one of our engineers who claims the most comfortable job he ever had was with Variety – he now teaches audio technology at New York's Institute of Audio Research.

Below is Cyndi Lauper at a console, and her right-hand bass guitarist Bill is appropriately at her right hand.



Wittman sent the following by iPad while traveling from New York City on his way to perform with Lauper in Australia. What an inspiration to be sincerely liked over the years by employees in the 1960s to 1990s!  Ligardy, learning about PhotoShop at Parsons, tells me that it's possible to modify the white in order to make the background natural, not orange.  I'm learning not only from former employees but also from my 18-year-old.







       http://www.ibdb.com/search.asp







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At the official opening of the D. C. Moore Gallery in its new building (535 West 22nd Street) on February 3rd, I joined several hundred who observed featured works by Robert Kushner and Romare Bearden.  The most expensive was one by Bearden (below) for $260,000.

Photos by Peter Ross

I met Robert Kushner (seated), whose dozens of works were displayed in the DCM gallery's large room.

The last show that I attended was also Paul Cadmus's last – he died a week after his 95th birthday was celebrated at the gallery:

 

The DCM represents such other artists as Jared French, Jacob Lawrence, George Platt Lynes, Jack Levine, John Marin,  Pavel Tchelitchev, and George Tooker.

What caught my eye were works by Whitfield Lovell (and the handsome professional photographer who has shot Barack Obama, Anderson Cooper, Ban Ki-moon, Gordon Parks, and on and on. . . .).

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January 2011

Al Knaus, a colleague who taught at Saxe Junior High and New Canaan High School for 28 years, is a much admired painter and an inspiring teacher.  Following is an oil painting of Karen Santry NCHS '66, my student and his former art teacher at Silvermine Guild. The work with brush in teeth has been exhibited at a New Canaan bank as well as the Waveny Care Center, the Lapham Community Center, and the New Canaan Inn. 



Next to her is a painting of New Canaan's Pedro Guerrero, whose children went to the high school and keep in touch. The painting was from a photo taken when Guerrero was Air Force captain stationed in Italy during World War II. He is known as Frank Lloyd Wright's photographer, is now 93, and lives in Arizona and New Mexico.  From a photo in 1991, he painted Fernando and me when we were in our 20s, recently remarking, "Two  good-looking guys, and one of my favorite portraits." I'm the one wearing Fernando's tie.



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Ligardy is now in his second semester at Parsons. Although 6' tall, he's not the tallest on The New School University's basketball team, but as a freshman he's the youngest. On January 29th, we celebrated when Parsons beat Pratt Institute, 51 to 47, during which he played during the second half.  He has recently taught me how to text (WTF!) and what the Carolina Zigzag is, but we're both sad that LeBron James wasn't watching and that we missed him when he recently was at a nightclub near where we live.




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          http://www.karensantry.com/

Remembering Jerry:  A touching memorial for Jerry Bock was arranged by his lyricist Sheldon Harnick (American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, 24 January 2011), and I was one of the hundreds who filled the theatre. Harold Prince flew in from Florida. Chita Rivera (played Rita Romano in the 1956 Mr. Wonderful) spoke;  Harvey Fierstein danced and sang two memorable Tevye songs (played Tevye in a 2005 revival of Fiddler on the Roof – he's now in La Cage aux Folles); Boyd Gaines spoke and sang (won the second of his four Tonys in the 1993 revival of She Loves Me). Leading ladies Barbara Cook and Kate Baldwin sang. And Hal Linden reunited with actors who played his sons in the 1970 Bock-Harnick musical The Rothschilds.  In the audience were Patti Faggen Bock (whom he married in 1950) and son George and daughter Portia.

Harnick arranged a boffo memorial!

Bock used Fernando (whom he called Mr. Wonderful) as his Audiosonic engineer to record demos for Harold Prince, including for Mr. Wonderful (starring Sammy Davis Jr., Sammy Davis Sr., and Chita Rivera); Fiorello! (starring Tom Bosley); and Tenderloin (starring Maurice Evans). When Audiosonic went bankrupt, Bock loyally followed Fernando when in 1961 he and I founded our Variety Recording Studio (and I am listing the following from memory only) to record demos for She Loves Me (1963, starring Jack Cassidy); Fiddler on the Roof (1964, starring Zero Mostel); Baker Street (1965, starring Inga Swenson); The Apple Tree (1966, starring Alan Alda as Adam and Barbara Harris as Eve); and The Rothchilds (1970, starring Hal Linden).

My techy Peter Ross had planned to work with me but, instead, accompanied me and took some photos.










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            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Edwards_(philosopher)



I took (despite his warnings to students never to photograph him) perhaps the only known photograph of Paul:

      




            http://bertrandrussellsociety.com/

            http://users.drew.edu/jlenz/brs-organization.html


            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mR_GD6BHCc

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•  Professor Karen Santry was our date at the Jane Street Tavern, surprisingly the first time she had been to Ligardy's and my brunch hangout although she has lived in the area with artists at Westbeth for years. An art professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (and a talented '66 honors English student in my New Canaan classes), she upon meeting him years ago at her apartment taught him in minutes how to "ghost" a sketch. She has never met his favorite high school art teacher, Jack DeMartino . . . . She laughed wildly when Ligardy recounted the difficulties of his Parsons freshman class group work – he and a talented classmate had no problem working smoothly in the first assignment, but in the next group of four (in which the three girls didn't listen for 5 of the 8 weeks to his recommendations as to how to do a more difficult assignment) they finally gave in and were amazed that in what he did quickly to meet the deadline resulted in their being adjuged excellent for carrying out something so important but hard to teach:  group work. . . . She was gleeful when he described how he was sure he was failing one teacher's seemingly picayune requirements, keeping him up until 03:00 many days, then finding she had graded him with a final A-, a grade difficult to receive at Parsons.  We both were interested and listened to a trick he learned about using a ball point pen to insure that art markers don't bleed. . . . We remarked that the 40-acre Silver Hill Clinic is seldom in the news, that I had taken Ligardy several times to Silvermine but not to Silver Hill, and that author Tom Wolfe (he of the white suits, unlike Warren of the yellow shirts) and author Truman Capote (whom in 1964 Warren saw as he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters) knew about New Canaan's hospital.

•  "Text me at least once a day," I requested, using a voice that didn't sound like a demand. 

"Let me get this straight, Warren," he said, incredulous. "You are asking me to text you?" 

Wait till his peers hear about this!

•  In the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, Republicans were unable to stop the legislation, bringing a cessation to the more than 13,000 discharges of homosexuals since 1994. Now, in the first week of January 2011, the U. S. Navy started an investigation as to why a film with raunchy and anti-gay content had been shown to the nearly 6,000 crewmembers on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The film had been made several years prior by Captain Owen Honors, then second-in-command of the ship, now the commander of the aircraft carrier. What a disgusting turn of event for gays who have served in the U. S. Armed Forces from Colonial times (1620 - 1774) through the War of Independence (1775-1783) and American Civil War (1861 - 1865) and the two World Wars (1917 - 1918; 1939 - 1945) and the various Cold Wars (1945 - 1991) and others up to 1994 (Persian Gulf, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Philippines, Iraq)!  I do remember two cowardly straights at Fort Knox in 1944 who were dishonorably discharged because they claimed to be gay in order to avoid being sent abroad. . . . What a pathetic joining of church (theology) and state (politics) occurred in 1994 during Bill Clinton's Presidency – after he won, Congress enacted the gay ban policy, outflanking Clinton's repeal effort. Who's to blame? General Colin Powell was instrumental in the 1993 implementation of the military's don't ask, don't tell policy. After Clinton won the presidency, Congress rushed to enact the existing gay ban policy into federal law, outflanking Clinton's planned repeal effort. Clinton called for legislation to overturn the ban, but it encountered intense scrutiny by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, and portions of the public. DADT emerged as a compromise policy. I was never able to pinpoint whom to snail-mail my two battle stars to show my being so upset. . . . Today, I still cannot donate blood, because of a 1985 FDA ruling that gays as well as bisexuals are not allowed to donate blood. While a teacher in the 1950s to 1980s, I tried to donate as much as Coach Joe Sikorski.

•  New Year's Eve I had Dubonnet and Champagne with librarian neighbors who live downstairs. An hour early, I arrived with my iPad and found four genius-type humanities experts, three who also have worked at the main 42nd Street Library and one a guard at the Metropolitan Museum. "Let me show you what'll put libraries out of business," I said with mock seriousness. And I showed the iPad's bookshelf with four of my own e-books. To my surprise, some had seen but never tried turning a page. And, using Whisper to dial the host (Don Fowle, a Yalie who was my guest one year at the annual ceremonial of the American Academy of Arts and Letters), I and the others saw him jump because he was sitting next to the telephone, then saw him leave to go to another phone in his bedroom. "Where are you, Don?" I asked from the living room, and we all heard him respond through the iPad that he was at home. "But where at home, Don?" It was a dramatic moment for us all, particularly as he walked back in.I explained that I didn't really think e-Books would put libraries out of business.

What fun talking to the guard about his not allowing tourists to take flash photos but seeing his expression when I told him that Ligardy and I have taken photos for some assigned school art projects; to the one librarian who had also acted professionally, who knew theatre inside out; to the Rutgers librarian who regaled us with stories about Nancy Mitford ("I list her in my Who's Who in Hell,I confirmed; and to the other librarian who (amazingly) had written Gilbert Price's obituary in January 1991 for a theatre publication – I told him details he had never before heard and which I'm describing in In The Heart of Showbiz, the autobiographical draft of which now exceeds 1,000 pages. It will include 180 pages of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's and my correspondence for two decades; my several-decade correspondence with Dominica's Premier Edward LeBlanc, and details as to how I am about to embarrass Dominica's government for not yet accepting the two commissioned oil paintings of LeBlanc (by FIT Professor Karen Santry) and not yet returning them (as well as complaining to our State Department and threatening to give the story to 60 Minutes); to exposing Paul Kurtz, a philosopher and ethicist for his unsigned and non-ethical panning of my book, using deliberate lies because I did not use his son's publisher to print my book; to telling how Irving Berlin appeared suddenly and sang "Oh, How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning" in Chicago at a USO program in 1944 for those of us on our way to Europe; how Mae West was the first actor I saw on Broadway (a free ticket in 1944 to Catherine Was Great; how I once accidentally opened a dressing room door and there was Boris Karloff in his underwear; and how the current Weight Watchers ads are now featuring Anthony Newley's 1965 "Feeling Good," the sheet music of which I was one of the first to play and which helped Gilbert Price get his role in Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd (for during the play's cattle call at the Variety Arts Building Newley gave him the music, he ran downstairs to my studio, and he was the only one able to rehearse the song) . . .and my documented tales go on and on.

•  Most recent dream: I appeared before my English class and spent the hour discussing how, in the 1960s and 1970s at my recording studio during the other 185 days of the school year, I was actively involved in scratching discs, salsa, funk,rock-and-roll, heavy metal and, starting in 1979, rap. The class in my dream thought it was a vocabulary lesson and had not heard of Joey Dee, Tiny Tim, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, James Brown, Alan Freed, Jimi Hendrix, Sun Ra . . . .

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Almost daily I add to my autobiography, and at the start of 2011 I included the following:

    • Lyle Stuart, who in 2000 accepted my 1,200-page Who's Who in Hell primarily because of its title, once won an $8,000 libel suit against Walter Winchell and over $160,000 in 10 consecutive visits to Las Vegas, where he was no longer allowed in casinos once they recognized him. He lost a $3,000,000 defamation suit filed by casino owner Steve Wynn. So when I went to his office to sign my contract, he asked if it would be OK if his wife signed for him inasmuch as Wynn had made him temporarily bankrupt.  I agreed, and his wife Carole Stuart is still paying me royalties.

    • Charles Francis Potter (Unitarian author of The Story of Religion around the time that Will Durant wrote The Story of Philosophy) in the 1950s invited me to his 72nd Street Ansonia Apartments (where Caruso once lived). He wanted to give me his latest books for review in The Humanist (of which I then was book review editor).  To my surprise, he asked what I thought about J. B. Rhine's experiments at Duke University concerning telepathy and clairvoyance, and I responded that from what I had read they were a waste of time and money. "Not so fast, young man, his wife Clara said as she entered with a deck of cards. I took one card and showed no one, she went into the kitchen, and Charley touched the card.  She guessed what it was, but she was wrong; I took another card, she guessed, and we kept a record of her rights and wrongs.  I expected anyone could guess half the time, but she guessed 12 out of 20. "Proves nothing," I said to their amusement, except inwardly Potter fell in my estimation until I read what he once observed, "The ideal humanist is a well-rounded person, intellectually informed, keenly intelligent, intuitively developed, and emotionally sensitive. He is well-balanced, appreciative of beauty in poetry, music, and art; that is, responsive to sound and harmony, form and color, and to the infinite inspirations of nature—sunsets and stars, mountain-tops and flowers—but, most of all, appreciative of the marvelous depths and heights and infinite possibilities of human personality." 

    In the past week, Darlyn J. Berm, in a controversial Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, claims that the existence of extrasensory perception is possible.  I'm not surprised that scientists have objected to the editor's choosing to run the article that was not peer-studied prior to publication.

    •  Karen Santry NCHS '66 has just asked Ligardy to choose several photos of me in order that she can make an oil painting from them that she will give to him.  (Her teacher, Saxe and NCHS faculty member Al Knaus once completed an oil painting of me and my companion Fernando who is pictured and described in my Celebrities in Hell.  Knaus's painting will also be given to son Ligardy - his paternal grandmother has just died, so now he has no grandparents, just Emmeline his mother, his Aunt Lise, and me.)

    • Karen Murphy NCHS '73 has just finished A Little Night Music and is looking for a new job.  Following is a draft of what I will include in my autobiography.


Murphy's drama teacher in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly Nancy Russell-Tutty, has followed her career more than I have. But I saw her in Titanic (1997); King David (1997); 42nd Street (2001); All Shook Up (2005; Ligardy Termonfils, the 18-year-old I am helping to raise, and I met her after the performance); 9 to 5 (We met her afterwards); and A Little Night Music (2010, in which she invited the two of us to Angela Lansbury's dressing room, for she performed as her understudy for two weeks – here, she introduced us to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who had kindly come by to congratulate her on their first two weeks as stars. On the vacant theater's stage, I photographed Ligardy and Karen, quite a thrill for Ligardy to actually be onstage looking out at hundreds of vacant seats where people had been just moments prior and with Karen pretending to pour her flute of Champagne on his head.)

In 2009, with Nancy and Ron Russell-Tutty, I saw Murphy in My Vaudeville Man, for which she received the 2009 Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Musical. She was Miss Strict in Zombie Pro, an off-Broadway musical played at the Variety Arts Theatre – playing a public school teacher, she seemed to be imitating the NCHS teacher the students called Miss Misguidance.  At her night club act on 42nd Street, she came to Ligardy's and my table. Once, we were invited to her home in Riverdale, at which we met her suburban neighbors. 

Except for 3-time Tony Award Nominee Gilbert Price, my companion in the 1960s until his death on 2 January 1991, I have followed no actor more thoroughly.


A Little Night Music

In 1973, I saw Harold Prince's and Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music for the first time. This was mainly because I liked the hilariously funny Hermione Gingold (whom I'd first seen in 1953 in a musical revue called John Murray Anderson's Almanac, in which she played Miss Reingold the Cellist; and saw her in Milk and Honey, even saying hello during her arrival and exit from several afternoon performances, for during the summers I then lived a block away from 45th Street's Martin Beck Theatre; and I watched her one day pinch the fifty-something Variety Arts telephone gal, who only pretended to be startled).

The play was written by Hugh Wheeler, about whom I've been unable to find much personal information. On the surface it’s about five Swedish singers who are uncomfortable in their marriages. Like a Greek chorus, they dance as they tell their stories, and an elderly woman in a wheel-chair (Madame Armfeldt) tells hers to her inquiring grand-daughter (Fredrika), adding that the youth should look for the three times that the summer night smiles: first on the young, second on fools, and third on the old.

Ligardy – animated – focused on Karen’s scenes, laughing at the young Lutheran theological student who is confused (as are 99% of teenagers) about how religion can accept sex as anything but sinful. The common sense philosophy ejaculated laconically by Madame Armfeldt, however, at first came across as utterings of an old lady, not anything particularly profound; afterwards, they were clearly messages that Wheeler did not want to get lost in all the humor. The summer night smiled the third time as Madame dies in her wheelchair.

For my third visit, I went alone. During its final week, the first week in 2011 at 6 pm, I impulsively took the (Duke Ellington “A”) subway to TKTS and got an $80 ticket for the 7 pm performance at the Walter Kerr (where Ligardy and I had once been in our neighbor Mary Louise Wilson’s Grey Gardens dressing room).

I arrived early and conversed for a long time with a nearby married couple from 78th Street and Riverside Drive who also had just bought their tickets. As the plot unfolded, I kept empathizing with this heterosexual 50-something couple, “Mr. Riverside” not telling his occupation and his wife saying that she was considering being an English as a Second Language teacher (probably for additional income, but she added that she would not be adequate to teach French to 18-year-old Ligardy, who knows more patois than French)

Some Ramblings

Could The Riversides, or other couples in the audience, have been analyzing their own relationships as the plot unfolded? Had either ever suspected the other of infidelity? If previously married, did either continue remembering a past spouse? When Madame Armfeldt said to her grand-daughter that in her marriages she had inherited what she had wanted (material things like yachts, villas, jewels, things she had forgotten), but it was the face of a Corsican brigand she could not forget – did the couple still have memories about past loves and were they really the happy twosome they seemed to be?

I told the Riversides I wished they were next-door neighbors, but they did not know that I would really like to get answers to my questions about their personal lives.  Now they seemed happy together, but how many times had they been so displeased with each other that in desperation they inwardly sang “Send In The Clowns.” How difficult would it have been at some time for a Donald to trump a Mrs. Riverside without yachts, villas, and jewels and tempt her to leave. On one level, the song that got a standing ovation all three times I heard it underlined how sometimes the futility of our human condition can make us so upset that what is left but to laugh with the clowns. I just never experienced that, having found three paramours, all comfortable not being married.

Who was Hugh Wheeler (1912 - 1987) except as a Tony Award winner for A Little Night Music (in 1973), Candide, and Sweeney Todd? Wikipedia is a poor source except to describe him as a mystery story writer under such noms de plume as Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge. I would bet a year’s salary (easy because I have no employer) that as the writer of three Tony Award plays he most assuredly was gay, but he is not so listed in any source that I have yet found.

During the intermission I asked one of the “Playbill Ladies” what play would move into the Walter Kerr Theatre, learning it would be The House of Blue Leaves probably with Edith Falco and Ben Stiller. “Oh, back in 1986 I helped make cues for that work by John Guare.”  Her response (for tonight’s play had a hidden orchestra and conductor):  “What are cues?”  She had been told, yes, that the ladies who gave out the playbills from the 1940s on were called “playbill ladies” because they lived in the area from 42nd to 50th streets and could walk to work during inclement weather; I must be in my 70s, she was thinking.

This night’s Playbill denotes that the play was suggested by a film by Ingmar Berman.  YouTube provides a sample:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwSjE34RNNU

I have already been asked which was the best of the three.  But that's like judging which part of a fruit salad is the tastiest, the clementines, the tangerines, or the oranges?  Zeta-Jones's and Bernadette Peters's voices in "Clowns" were so different, so unique. No one else could move her lips like Gingold, as I'm sure many London and New York ladies had physically witnessed. I'd naturally recuse myself if asked to judge between Murphy and Elaine Stritch, although I've already been asked. The sets, except for the 1973 play, were identical, as was the touching choreography. And what a difference it makes depending upon who is sitting next!

Following is what the final week's Playbill includes about Karen Murphy:

Karen Murphy (Swing, u/s Madame Armfeldt). B’way: 9 to 5 (Margaret the “Atta Girl” drunk), All Shook Up, 42nd Street, Titanic, A Christmas Carol, King David. Off-B’way: My Vaudeville Man (Drama Desk nom.), Showtune, Zombie Prom, Hysterical Blindness, Forbidden Broadway. Tour: White Christmas, Wizard of Oz, Les Misérables. Cabaret: Bistro Award, NYC debut. Recordings: Torchgoddess, Forbidden Broadway Volume 2.

December 2010

The major surprise of the year was finding I have a cousin Ken Smith – my grandfather and his great-grandfather, who were brothers born in Ontario and who volunteered to fight in our Union Army, are both buried in Waukee, Iowa. Ken (a landscape architect – projects for MoMA, Des Moines, Minneapolis, California – and admirer of Philip Johnson, as shown by his distinctive glasses) threw a non-Christmas secular feast for a few of his neighbors at his and his wife Priscilla's loft in SoHo. Priscilla (right top, right, with glasses) was born in Indianola, so the three of us were born less than 60 miles apart and just this month found each other. Ken invited the Haases (Linda, right top, center, arms crossed), her husband (left top, rear, on the right), his 85-year old mother (Mary Anne, who once headed a school in Greece or Rome, next to him in red and next to an 89-year-old senior), and their two daughters (one in college, one in high school). The Chinese-born financial program designer (top left, 2nd from right) and the Brooklyn lighting designer (top left, next to Ligardy at the extreme left) I could have learned from if only the party hadn't ended at 02:00 or 03:00.  The next day I learned that Ligardy (who was a hit, particularly with the girls' mother and grandmother) had been served champagne (which he said is OK once a year but isn't as good as orange juice). . . .

       

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For Winter Solstice, I treated myself to walking a few blocks to the Joyce, the city's #1 ballet theater. Robert Carter was the major star, and he is seen on YouTube:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23MdOu9nm4I&NR=1

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For 13 years, Sir Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka sent me his regular Egograms which contained his completed projects, contracted ones, movie/TV options, and those under consideration.

END OF YEAR WASMGRAM

High Points

Health remains at a 7, if 10 is the high - I walk more slowly but take no medication

    except eye drops.
Ligardy graduates from high school, the first in his family, with a 92 and honors.
Ligardy scores high in his first semester of art at Parsons The New School

    University.
Ligardy is one of 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students at New School

    University to make their basketball team, and he’s the youngest.
On a scale of a low 1 to a high 10, Ligardy and I rate each other a 10 and now
    inspiringly share the apartment weekdays.
All deadlines were met, including my January 2011 British column.
My four books are now available as paperbacks or eBooks, and I can read each
    on my iPad.
Of my Minburn (Iowa) 1939 graduating class, 6 of the 13 are alive and     keep in
    touch via a Pinhook newsletter that I edit.
Taslima Nasrin is safely out of Bangladesh and India and will become a U.S.
    rather than a European citizen; as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, she has been speaking

    about feminism at colleges all over the country.
Peter Ross, my computer techy, is as appreciative of my help as I am of his, for he has

    guided me during the last decade to feel at home in the 21st century with its scientific

    gadgets
What fun this year to have accumulated 900 pages of autobiographical notes for
    In the Heart of Showbiz, which will describe (a) my having run a major
    independent recording studio while teaching and being a journalist; (b)
    my two paramours and other loves of my life; (c) my friendship with two of the

    “Big Three” of science fiction; (d) my correspondence for almost a dozen years

    with the politician who secured his West Indian island’s independence from

    Queen Elizabeth II; and (e) going on record about events in my life that few knew

    then or probably will care to know now in what will be a non-commercial

    autobiography with what some will find to be sensational facts.

Not So High Points

    Ligardy did not receive the generous scholarship that we had expected – the
        student who did has already dropped out.
    Emeritus, a newsletter I edit that is for all New Canaan (Connecticut) public
        school retirees, has fewer than 100 of more than 1,000 eligibles who
        receive the irregular e-mailed material.
    Born when a conservative Republican president (Herbert Hoover) was replaced
        during the Depression by a progressive Democrat (Franklin Delano
        Roosevelt), I am now living when a conservative president has been
        replaced by a progressive Democrat (whose Congress unlike FDR’s) is
        blocking (with corporate lobbyists’ help) needed measures to tackle our
        $14T debt and $1.4T annual deficit. The gap between poor and rich has
        widened. We are no longer the superpower, having become only one of
        the superpowers.
    On one of the most shameful days in the modern history of the Senate, the
         Republican minority on Thursday prevented a vote to allow gay and
         lesbian soldiers to serve openly in the military of the United States.
         They chose to filibuster a vital defense bill because it also banned
        discrimination in the military ranks. And in an unrelated but no less
        callous move, they blocked consideration of help for tens of thousands
        of emergency workers and volunteers who became ill from the ground
        zero cleanup after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.  The New York Times,
        Editorial, 11 December 2010 -

        Despite my having earned two battle stars in 1944-1945, today I could not

        openly join the US Armed Forces, although I could in all countries of the European

        Union (except Greece), and in Taiwan, Russia, Australia, Israel, and Argentina.

        I cannot donate blood because I will be asked if I am gay. I wouldn’t dare walk

        hand-in-hand with any of my past companions in Arizona.
  

Born when the world was 3-tiered (Heaven above, Earth here, Hell below), but

        now living when Earth is but a speck in the Milky Way Galaxy and it’s
        likely that Life never “began” but always was (an idea I first heard
        from religious naturalist Julian Huxley, who coined ethnic group as opposed

        to race and transhumanism to describe the improvement of human beings), I live

        in a time when supernaturalism unfortunately appeals to the vast majority, who

        continue to support one religious cult over another and “believe” in the various

        theologies, not in the scientific method of reasoning and in the United Nations

        adopted and proclaimed Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

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I have scanned about 200 of our correspondence, and the following is an example.





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Following it is a sample summary for my autobiography of what scans also contain:

9 May 92
Paul Cadmus, 88 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, gave me a book for Clarke, who then was 84.
David Lasser was 90 on 20 March 1992 and Clarke credits him for turning him on to astronautics.
Jeromy Agel in 1970 edited The Making of Kubrick’s 2001.  Isaac is Isaac Asimov.
Robert Having His Nipple Pierced was a 1971 movie directed by Sandy Daley and starring David Croland,
        one that showed Robert Mapplethorpe having his nipple pierced while his lover looks on.
The “Black Book” was a Chelsea Hotel guide for describing individuals with a connection to the hotel.
A wasmgram was my imitation of Clarke’s egogram, in which I listed current projects planned, finished, or in the works.
ACC liked Norman Cousins’s “Anatomy of an Illness” program that I recommended he see.


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November 2010

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                                                                                    Peter blinked, and I reverted with the help of Ligardy the Magician

Dr. Peter Stone and I had some Cold Ass with our burgers. He was on his way from Stanford University's Political Science department (think: Condoleezza Rice) to Tulane University (where he is teaching in New Orleans, Louisiana) to Bethlehem (to be with his parents in their Pennsylvania manger) – "Our Cold Ass is from Pennsylvania," explained Heather the waitress.

In September, he'll be teaching at Trinity College in Dublin (Ireland).

I handed him Uranus. That's my iPad, and he phoned Ligardy (whom he had once tutored in 8th grade math during one of his many trips to see me).  With Uranus in hand (no wires, no phone, no cost), we woke Ligardy up in Brooklyn with a question:  "How much is 45 x 45?"  "Hey, I'm sleeping and you're asking me . . . uh, 2425?  No, 2025, right?"  Peter was impressed.

On a previous plane trip, Peter read Celebrities in Hell, finding a wrong picture for Larry Cohen and some wrong facts (the year Star Wars came out, the year Al Lewis ran for governor, Noam Chomsky never appears on a Cumbawamba album) - Peter's an intellectual wiz!  I've since corrected everything. 

Peter, who is Vice Chair of the Bertrand Russell Society Board, is one of my confidantes, and we traded stories about his recent and amicable divorce and my stories about how being a dad is a 24/7 joy, not job.


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On November 14th, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation arranged a tour of Westbeth, which we in the neighborhood know as the largest community of artists anywhere in the world – it was formerly Bell Labs, where the vacuum tube and condenser mircophone were invented and where in 1927 live television images of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in Washington were first sent over telephone lines to demonstrate long-distance television transmission.

Professor Karen Santry (who was one of my honor students at NCHS in 1966, was a student of art with Al Knaus, and now is at the Fashion Institute of Design) invited Ligardy and me to tour some of the studios. We had visited her studio on the 10th floor several times as well as one of her work spaces in the basement, but today we got to see several other artists' studios and met sculptors Ken Wade and Jan Harding and painter Nancy Goldring – I have promised to get her in touch with Royston Ellis in Sri Lanka, for her paintings include many scenes from Kandy and elsewhere in what then was Ceylon. . . . Several of the artists, hearing that Ligardy is a Parsons freshman, said they also had attended and even taught there.

Below in her basement working studio, Karen has just told Ligardy how she had painted one of the geisha girls, only after which she learned the model was a guy.

Below, the three of us are in a sculptor's apartment, her tools beside one of the works she is constructing.

To my surprise, as we entered a painter's studio the lady on the left (below) asked if I recognized her, a teacher at New Canaan High.  We'd never before met, but Jeanne McDonagh and I had e-mailed and I donated to the Fritz Eager Collection – which she has organized – a letter Fritz had sent me before for his early death in 1970. As an honor student in my class, he excelled and was in the Class of 1959.

Ms. McDonagh studied at St. John Fisher in Rochester, where I have several friends in the philosophy department who allowed me several years ago to talk to their classes concerning my books. I was impressed today that residents knew each other but often had not been in their apartments or known what kind of art they produced.

Jeanne McDonagh of the NCHS Art Department, her daughter, and an unidentified guest. On the left are Ligardy and Karen.

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Using a free app, Toktumi, I made a telephone call on my new iPad, something really incredible!  I dialed Ligardy, his iPhone rang, we started talking. I then added Peter, and the three of us had a conference call.  The cost?  Zero for 30 days, then $10/month for calls anywhere.  Skype also is free, but you can see and be seen when phoning Monica Methol in Uruguay. I have since chosen mainly the Whistle company. Methinks the days of cell phones are threatened. I can't wait to go to the Jackson Park nearby that has WiFi, phoning someone, and watching passersby wonder how I could be telephoning with an 8" x  9.5" iPad.

Jerry Bock's death on November 3rd sent me to the draft of my autobiography, which includes the following:

    . . . .Jerry laid down all the musical tracks at my Variety Recording.  I particularly remember, after Jerry finished "Sunrise, Sunset" and "If I Were a Rich Man," he had a song for which he'd not chosen a title and it sounded like a Jewish dance of some kind, at the end of which glasses would be broken by smashing them to the floor .  "What'll I file it under?" I asked.  Jerry said the play's title had not yet been chosen.  "Well, file it under Tevye," he finally decided. I knew nothing about Shalom Aleichem or pogroms and little about what Harold Prince was bringing to the Imperial Theatre at 249 West 45th Street, near where my companion Fernando Vargas and I lived in Hell's Kitchen.  The studio had hundreds of tapes and I filed them by client, composer, date, and title.  "So how do you spell it?" I asked, not clear if the word started with a T.  (Later, it was called "The Wedding Dance.")  So Fernando, who engineered the several sessions, made Jerry a 33rpm demo acetate with 10 or 12 songs to take to Mr. Prince. Because of the rush, I delivered the disc of what would become Fiddler on the Roof, starring Zero Mostel, to Prince's home address.

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I have two favorite trees, the weeping willow near the 81st Street entrance,

and a huge, tall one in Dominica's National Park in Roseau, at whose bottom I am standing several decades ago.

Unable this year to make it to Connecticut to see the foliage changes, I made my annual trek to Central Park the first week in November.

At 4 pm, the sun hit the very top but not the lower part – a few years ago high winds destroyed many nearby trees.

This day I volunteered to photograph a newly arrived Danish couple with their daughter.

"Is Hamlet still a prince there?" I asked, to the father's amusement.

October 2010

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  Halloween:  Who dat knockin' on ma door?





                   
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Ligardy, having cleaned up his room and made it orderly, entered on October 27th with a birthday cake that was missing 11 candles.  "But I'm 100," I complained!

At the Jane Street Tavern, techy Peter Ross took me to dinner on my 89th.

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  Photo by Priscilla McGeehon





Cruising the Deuce, that I wrote under one of my pseudonyms in 2005, is now available for iPad as well as for paperback, as are Gossip from Across the Pond and Celebrities in Hell.  What fun to hold the cursor down on a word like dip and find the automatic dictionary correctly describes it as pickpocket. The painting by New Canaan's Al Knaus of Allen and Fernando could not reveal his last or my real name. Orgies is described by the dictionary as early "6th cent: originally plural, from French orgies, via Latin from Greek borgia 'secret rites or revels.' "

The first to buy Celebrities was Peter Forcan, who got three paperback copies for me to autograph, one for the Bertrand Russell Library in Serbia, another for his Florida family, another for him in New Jersey. I voluntarily send all my books to the oldest library,  the Royal Library of Alexandria in Egypt, the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. The first to buy eBooks of Celebrities was one of my first students (George Gould esq. of Bentley School) and former student David Elders of New Canaan/Darien.


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  Photo by Ligardy Termonfils 


(l to r)  The author; his iPad showing Celebrities in Hell (2nd edition); reading about Taslima Nasrin in the actual book; my online blog as shown on my iMac; and the 1st edition, now out-dated. 

For the record, the iPad's name is Uranus; the iMac is Ganymede, whose immediate predecessors were Gawd, Jésus, and Holy Spook.


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Count 'em:  Luis Fantuzzi (Puerto Rico), Gabriel DeSilva (Brazil), Guillermo Methol (Uruguay), Terry Staber (Dominica), Suhrid Kamal (Bangladesh), Ligardy Termonfils (Haiti) = 6 sons that I have

And Monica Methol (Uruguay), Bhalobasha Srotoshini (Bangladesh) = 2 daughters

On 10/10/10 sons #5 and #6 were with me. They laugh when they find that I taught many identical ideas to both.

  

Allen, 28 (who changed his name to be like mine and whose interest at Hunter College has been physics), is now talking business and economics with me. He has a financial interest in a minority- and woman-owned contracting company, helped develop their logo and web site, and we both use the Quick Books accounting program.




Ligardy, 18, who is a freshman majoring in art at Parsons (The New School University), completed  Alas, Poor Yorick!  in one class period. The assignment was to do a still life in a reductive charcoal drawing. When I told about Hamlet and the court jester whose skull reminded him of the transience of time, he agreed to the title. On our wall is Self Portrait, completed two years ago. His father once told me that he wished us two farm boys had grown up together as teenagers. Since his death seven years ago, I've been growing up with his teenager. Style conscious, he wears my actual 1944 dogtags.

September 2010

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Dr. Timothy J. Madigan, Professor of philosophy at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, includes the following in his Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies article, "Six Degrees of Bertrand Russell" (Summer 2010):

Just what exactly "separated by degree" means is a bone of contention among those playing the game. But it seems to me that if you have actually met a person X, then you have knowledge by acquaintance of X, whereas if you meet someone who met X you are separated from X by one degree. Thus, I never met the jazz great Sun Ra, but my friend Warren Allen Smith (former head of a recording studio) worked with him on several of his albums, so I am one degree of separation from Sun Ra.

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Although Earl Russell sent me two letters (February 24th, 1951, from 41, Queen's Road, Richmond, Surrey; and another on 9 May 1956), I don't think that qualifies me to claim there's one degree of separation for I never met him in person.  John Dewey, yes, and I can still remember the warmth of his hand upon our meeting at Columbia University.
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One of my album covers for Sonny:

The letterhead he and I used for me to collect money from those who owed him – he claimed he only completely trusted Fernando and me of all those around him. Upon his death, he owed us over $5K (but I have his master stampers). Yale Professor John F. Szwed's The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (Da Capo Press, 1998) describes all this in detail.

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Ever since answering my ad for a Mac computer technician 10 years ago, Peter Ross has been my right-hand man. Not only has he put Philosopedia onto a site that netted 9,000,000 hits last year (as well as was capable of arranging for its no longer being posted), and kept me informed about the latest developments in 21st century Apple's devices, but also he's one of the four to whom I dedicated the above book . . . and he's one of the few who knows my major and minor deficiencies and still puts up with me. An hour ago, I took him for his 45th birthday party, and I was capable of putting the following photo on the web within that short time. The waiter was well-tipped, for he thought I was in my 60s and Peter in his 30s.

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On his 18th birthday, Ligardy and some of his friends watched musicians perform in Union Square, celebrated at BBQ's <http://dallasbbq.com/>, and got photographed at the 47th Street TKTS booth with tourists (see the Mennonite from Virginia on his left) on the outside steps.

  Photo by Alexa Rodriguez

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My son Ligardy Termonfils is not living at home, nor at a Parsons dormitory.  He has a pied-à-terre, also known as 1/2 of our apartment at 31 Jane. He moved in and will stay 5 nights per week, spending the weekends with his mother in Brooklyn.  She is so proud of "our son!"

Ligardy (luhGARdee TAREmoanFEE) not only assembled the Staples chair but also the complicated IKEA sofa chair with a 78" mattress.  The Mondrian rug has been on the floor since 1990, The Sweet Blues (framed electric picture) and Hex #2 are by Anita Weshler.  The Eames chair was Fernando's and mine in Hell's Kitchen.

The next night, from one of our windows we watched Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system (11 times larger than Earth), which came as close as it has been in 50 years and won't look that bright until 2022. Living with a teacher does have some advantages.

I have challenged a YouTube Timbuktu 1978 video, in which Bruce Hubbard was credited as being the Mansa of Mali. No, it was Gilbert Price, I objected to Alan Eichler, not knowing he was the play's associate producer. My complaint is signed revdoodoo.

Program Note: Timbuktu – in the Ancient Empire of Mali, West Africa, in the year 1361 (of Islam 752) – was Moslem, black, opulent, and remote. Travelers died in attempts to cross the Sahara in search of this fabled city, and so its reputation grew even faster than its wealth. When one of the rulers, Mansa Musa, made a pilgrimage to Mecca in the year 1324, he brought with him a vast retinue of thousands and gave away so much gold that the price of gold fell ten to fifteen percent in the money markets of Cairo. Gilbert played the role of the Mansa of Mali in the Broadway play directed by Geoffrey Holder.

Bruce was Gil's understudy, but the timbre of their baritone voices was different (and the video is terrible). 

           

Eichler has now explained that the full-length video he shot was of the closing night in Los Angeles, not the Broadway play.

Eichler, who is a public relations person (whose accuracy in writing shows he's in need of a proofreader), and I have fast become e-mail friends. I asked if he knew about Buddy Westman, the music teacher at Bentley where I taught (for whom I had to notate music, because he couldn't).  Here is part of what Eichler wrote me, acknowledging that he had erred:

(11 Sep 2010) Sorry for the confusion.  I was associate producer of "Timbuktu" and shot the full-length video of the show on closing night in Los Angeles, which I thought this clip was from.  I didn't now any video of Gilbert existed.  If you have the photo of Gilbert and Eartha at the White House with Jimmy Carter, I'm the one in the blue shirt standing next to them...

Bud and I worked together for many years at Lee Solters office on 46 St. back in the 60's (I'm dating myself)...actually it was first job, so I was just starting out!  "Timbuktu" ended its run in Los Angeles, with Bruce and Vanessa Shaw replacing Gilbert and Melba Moore for the tour.  I don't know if Gilbert ever mentioned it, but during the Broadway run, there was a big diabetes dinner at the Waldorf and Eartha, Gilbert and I scooted over there during intermission, ran through the Waldorf lobby with both of them in their scanty costumes, and into the main ballroom so they could go stage and speak to the crowd.  Then we raced back to the theatre and they made the second act curtain!  I can send you a scan of the White House photo...

(12 Sep 2010) Here's the White House photo. It was taken between matinee and evening performances of "Timbuktu" during the pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Center and Eartha is still in her stage makeup.  One of my other clients, Geraldine Fitzgerald, was able to arrange for Eartha to be invited to the White House if possible, and it created great news for us since it was her first return since the Lady Bird incident.  The occasion was the re-opening of the restored Ford's Theatre and Eartha made front-page news all across the country! (I'm the one in the blue shirt looking on nervously.)  The girl next to Gilbert is Eartha's daughter Kitt.  One of my favorite things about this photo is that everyone is looking at someone else!  Gilbert was a sweetheart and I loved working with him.

To my surprise, I have been informed that Gilbert was not the consummate actor I had thought he was:

•  Gilbert's off-stage conduct and on-stage performance both became erratic and were a concern to both producer Luther Davis and writers Bob Wright and Chet Forest.  I was at the Mark Hellinger every night and  I know that Gilbert was late getting to the theater many times and I do think he may have actually missed some performances.  If he was not actually "fired," then I can honestly say the decision was made not to renew his contract or have him do the national tour.   I pleaded for Gilbert, but Luther Davis was very firm in this decision.  This is something Eartha agreed to when she was told, but she did not instigate it.  Bruce was considered much more reliable, though I think he lacked Gilbert's "magic" quality.         

When President Jimmy Carter had visited Gil backstage during 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he quipped that Gil (whose role was that of Lud, who was in charge of President John Adams's  housekeeping staff and continued through a string of other presidents) had spent more time in the White House than he had.  Gil once laughed that back at Erasmus Hall High in Brooklyn he had never dreamed of being honored by a President of the United States or that his classmate Barbra Streisand would ever become known as a singer. . . . How I prize this photo!

Gil was nominated for a 1978 Tony Award as best actor in a musical – his rendition of Alexander Borodin music was consummate.  Why Eartha Kitt was nominated also as best actress in a musical is beyond me. Melba Moore, a gospel singer, wasn't even in the running.

    http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=4043

    http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=56582

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From my apartment windows on September 7th, I took a photo of the searchlights at Ground Zero that will be shown 2.4 miles away on 9/11/2010.  A few days before the attack on the World Trade Towers is memorialized, engineers test the searchlights to make sure they work.

  
On the free ferry to IKEA in Brooklyn - Photo by Peter Ross

I must be one of the few dads whose son has suggested that he'd like to move in 5 days a week instead of just staying some weekends. Ligardy – upon finishing his first week of art classes at Parsons The New School For Design (a mile away at 66 Fifth Avenue) – suggested this, so I took the ferry to IKEA in Brooklyn and brought back furniture for his section of what truly is his pied-à-terre.  From Friday to Saturday, he'll be with his mother in their Bushwick, Brooklyn, home (10.5 miles away – by subway, he allows 55 minutes; by bicycle and over the Brooklyn Bridge, he allows less than 30 minutes).

After one of his classes, he asked what I thought about Gilgamesh, which a professor had taken up that day and is described in the $150 textbook that is required in his class.

Returning from the IKEA store by taxi, I told my Sudanese driver (from Darfur - his wife and a child fled first to Egypt) about teaching one of Haile Selassie's many sons (children of women in his harem).  Knowing the student would come to my classroom, I pretended to be reading the Qur'an when he arrived. Needless to say, the new student had never before had an American teacher with Allah's book on his desk.

The driver, a new American citizen and the type that makes our country so great, said he had a copy of the Qur'an in his car's glove compartment.  "Does it say that the Sun goes around the Earth, or that the Earth goes around the Sun?" I asked.  Without hesitating, he responded, "Oh, the Sun comes up in the morning in the east and goes around the Earth, setting in the west."  No, I advised, that would mean that Allah wasn't that good in science.  Realizing that he must be talking to someone who was saying something challenging, he kept talking so long I was afraid he was missing income. He learned my name and said, yes, he'd take me to Darfur to meet what members of his family are still alive. When I showed him Ligardy's picture, he said how lucky he was to have me.  "No," I insisted, "I'm the lucky one."  And now he really wanted to just stay talking. It's so easy to make interesting friends in Manhattan, especially when you challenge them.

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August 2010

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Advisor Theresa Vitale welcomed Ligardy to Parsons The New School for Design at 66 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which is only a few blocks from his pied-à-terre (my apartment). Despite their non-Apple designed web page, we finally were able to sign up for his freshman classes. Ironically, just a few days before his classses start, we have still not managed to arrange the necessary financial arrangements. He'll be working for his degree in graphic arts.

 

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