THE SEASONED TRAVELER

Puerto Madrynn, Argentina, is probably the northernmost outpost of Patagonia on the Atlantic side of South America, and justifiably popular, therefore, with tourists, which is what we were three years ago. Memorable are the fauna, particularly the sea lions and penguins. Unmemorable is the food. I reproduce below -- word for word -- the menu of one of the most popular eateries in town, which I just came across leafing through old travel brochures. We stuck to steak; can't go wrong with that in Argentina.

Shell fishes to the Milanese with three sauce

Variety of shellfishes to the pickle

Muffled up in flour meat in lemon and olive oil with capers and parmesan cheese

Cold meat brawn with Russian salad

Unrine ham with palmettos

Unrine ham with melon

Bird mayonnaise

LIBERAL FEELGOOD MOVIE OF THE YEAR

Nancy and I went with friends to see Clint Eastwood's Invictus the other night. It wasn't my first choice; no political movie ever is. But two of my favorite actors were in it -- Matt Damon and the inestimable Morgan Freeman, than whom no one on stage or screen has more effortless gravitas.

In case you've missed the hype and glowing reviews, Invictus concerns the successful efforts of Nelson Mandela to win black South Africans' hearts and minds away from soccer to the national rugby team, the Springboks, which had always symbolized for them the white Afikaaner nation that had oppressed them for so long. Mandela had two tasks to accomplish: first, to make a losing, dysfunctional team competitive on the world stage, and second, to convince black citizens that it was their team as well as their white counterparts.

I didn't hate the film. I was simply bored out of my skull. The film takes its title from an 1875 poem by the justifiably obscure Ernest William Henley, which is to poetry what Invictus is to film -- a collection of noble sentiments. "I am the captain of my fate, / I am the master of my soul," it proclaims, and the film's writers take their cue from that approach to discourse. Throughout, Mandela speaks only in political phrases, laying out his case not only through public addresses but to his staff and friends as well. To his aides, he says things like, " This is the time to build our nation" and "How do we inspire ourselves to greatness, when nothing less will do?" Damon is the Springboks' inspirational leader, Mandela's counterpart in the locker room, whose version of polspeak is the relentless pep talks he gives over and over: "We need to become more than just a rugby team," he tells us. He has a girlfriend with whom he won't have sex because he wants to save his anger for the field, and that's the only potentially personal relationship in the movie, Winnie Mandela (Mandela's estranged wife) having been conveniently dropped down the memory hole.

The actors sleepwalk through these roles; neither is given any recognizable human emotion to portray. What's left is a series of recurrent motifs: Mandela greeting by name and shaking the hands of overawed white rugby players; the stilted, suspicious gibes of his mixed-race security detail slowly turning into comradely banter; and scenes from the rugby matches -- largely incomprehensible to American audiences who don't quite know what happens when thirty large men in shorts huddle in a snorting, straining "scrum" and the ball mysteriously pops free and is picked up by a member of one team or the other. Just how the Springboks went from last to first in the standings would have made a good story (though it would have turned Invictus into just another sports movie, along the lines of Any Given Sunday, which takes its football seriously). Eastwood seems to think it believable that it happened just because Mandela convinced Damon who convinced the team that it would be a good thing to win every game they played. Not only do we have to watch all the huffing and puffing, we have to listen to the entire South African national anthem, which is as tedious as listening to anthems always is.



As the credits rolled at the end, half the people in the theater rose and applauded. What they were applauding was not the filmmaking, I think, so much as the PC sentiments portrayed. In the movie's limited context, South Africa's race problem had been solved, decades of hatred and resentment wiped away by men of good will who had been brought together by the towering figure of compassion and good sense that Mandela represented. (Tomorrow, December 17th, happens to be The Day of the Vow, still joyously celebrated by white Afrikaaners as the anniversary of the slaughter of 3,000 Zulus back in 1838.) In reality, I think, Mandela is indeed a larger-than-life figure, one of history's most admirable and effective political leaders -- like Gandhi. And in fact, this film reminded me a lot of Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, another interminable, dry, lifeless hommage to a fascinating man reduced to a figurehead and a symbol.

Interestingly, in conversations with people who've claimed to have enjoyed Invictus, I've been able to change their minds about it by asking whether they really enjoyed the performances, individual scenes, cinematic moments and the like. "Well, actually," more than a couple of them have said, "I can't think of anything. I guess it was a little long." Yes, but it was saying all the right things. Duty required us to appreciate Eastwood's high-mindedness, and to reciprocate by approving his PC sentiments. But I hope he'll go back to making films like Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino. Both of them, like Invictus, were about heroes. But they were also about people.

TIGER, TIGER, BURNING NOT SO BRIGHTLY

Everyone expects me to blog about Tiger, just because I used to write about golf. But this isn't golf, it's adultery -- and it takes a strange form.

When the story first broke, I thought it was just another case of a star athlete giving in to one of the main perks of the job, the hordes of groupies who wait for them outside the arena, stadium or course to make sure their nights aren't lonely. Wilt Chamberlain bragged in his autobiography that he'd slept with 20,000 women during his career -- kind of gives new meaning to the term "dunking," doesn't it? I used to know a flight attendant who worked Yankee charters and who told me that one of the ballplayers (a name you'd recognize) was hitting on her during a flight and she asked him whether he was married. "Well, yeah," he is supposed to have replied, "but I'm not a fanatic about it."

But this is different. The whole story hasn't surfaced yet, but it's clear that Tiger wasn't engaging in serial one-night stands. He was actually having affairs with two other women -- leaving cell-phone records of multiple calls stretching back over a two-year period. Was his marriage to Elin (pictured above) rocky from the start? Why did he get married, anyway? To have kids whom he'd see very little of until he retired, by which time they'd be out of college?

"I'm human," he finally told the press, after the monumental PR screwup of the initial revelation. But that's just it. Before this, he didn't seem exactly human. No one on the PGA tour came off as more driven, more disciplined. He's remade his golf swing twice in eight years; it wasn't broke, but he fixed it anyway. And people want to see (or hear) what's behind the facade; there are half a dozen YouTubes of him farting during last year's Buck Open.

But lust seems a different matter. Except it doesn't seem to be lust, or only lust. He must need something from Ms. Grubb and Ms. Uchitel that Elin isn't giving him, whether it be companionship, understanding, or what the French call nostalgie de la boue -- an urge to wallow in dark places. In a piece dated today, December 6th, Carly Crawford in the Sunday Herald Sun said that at least in the case of Rachel Uchitel, "She was the only one he loved - he told her he loved her. He tells them it's their secret. He makes them feel special. You don't talk (publicly) after that." So maybe it is just that familiar athlete's habit of ringing up scores, after all.

It will be interesting, at all events, to see how this plays out. More interesting than Tiger's doings have been so far.

THE TRAVEL GODS COME THROUGH FOR US

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and Nancy and I are starting to think about our annual pilgrimage to Utila, a tiny island off the coast of Honduras, where Danielle, Ben and Maxim live.

Utila has both its charms (it is a Caribbean resort, after all, with world-class diving) and its drawbacks (aside from the diving, there are no recreational facilities, and the beaches and restaurants are nothing to twitter home about). All that is pretty much beside the point – seeing our kids is Prioritas Uno. But getting there is something of a hassle.

Though it’s only (!) about 2000 miles away as the crow flies, we haven’t yet found a crow willing to take us there. So the usual routine is to fly to Miami, then to San Pedro Sula (Honduras’ second-largest city), then to La Ceiba (a smaller city on the coast), and then negotiate the last 20 miles to the island itself either by charter or ferry. If everything is on schedule, this takes about sixteen hours; if not, maybe 24. The trip is like recapitulating the history of air travel in reverse: you start out on a 767 and end up on a single-engine four-seat Cessna 172, manufactured sometime during the Ford administration.

A couple of years ago, we tried a different tactic. There’s a somewhat larger island only a few miles away from Utila called Roatan, on which there’s an international airport. It’s possible to fly Continental from NY to Houston to Roatan fairly quickly and easily. The catch is that there’s only one flight a week, going and coming, and you still have to get from Roatan to Utila, which ain’t easy: there are no boats (abortive attempts to run a ferry have all failed, despite the fact that there are always prospective passengers), so you’re back to flying. Anyway, we thought we’d give it a shot: we chartered a Cessna (the air taxi of choice down there) to meet our plane from the States and everything worked perfectly: we were on time into Roatan on a beautiful sunny day, the charter was waiting for us, and a smooth half an hour later we were hugging our family as we stood on the short, pitted tarmac that passes for Utila’s landing strip.

The problem was the return ten days later. Though the rainy season had ended, no one had told the clouds that were massing over the island. Rain started falling early in the morning, and by the time we reached the Utila “airport,” the half-mile-long runway was soggy, its potholes full of water. To make matters worse, there was another couple ahead of us; the Cessna would have to pick them up, turn around in Roatan and come back. When we saw it land, bouncing and splashing, we knew that would never happen. Though the pilot said he’d try his best to return, they barely got airborne, and we mentally kissed them goodbye. We had two hours to make our flight from Roatan to Houston; the next one was the following week.

Baffled, we shrugged at each other as the rain got stronger. We were joined by a girl in her 20’s carrying a large backpack; we asked her what her travel plans were, but she was vague. As we stood there, debating what to do, we heard the sound of engines. Plural. Not the lawn-mower putt-putt of the Cessna, but something more powerful. Out of the clouds appeared a small twin-engine airliner. It landed with no difficulty and taxied over the shed in which we were standing,. On its tail was emblazoned “CENTRAL AMERICAN AIRLINES.” Ben, who’s lived there for fifteen years, shrugged in bewilderment. Central American flies only between Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and San Pedro Sula, its other big city. “That’s my ride,” announced the girl with the backpack, and strode toward the plane, whose passenger door had been opened by a man in a the sort of purser’s uniform that reminded me of Pan-Am clipper days.

I followed her, splashing through the puddles, and as she boarded the plane, I asked the purser, heart in mouth, where he was going. “Roatan,” he replied. “Will you take us?” I demanded. He looked me up and down, chewed his lip, and finally answered, “Only if you pay in cash.” “How much?” “Fifty dollars each,” he said decisively, as if to forestall any bargaining on my part.

I would have paid five hundred. I stuffed bills into his hand, Nancy and I kissed the kids goodbye and hurriedly boarded. There were about 12 rows of seats, and only three passengers -– Nancy, myself, and the backpacker. As we taxied to the end of the runway, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. Now it gets weird. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in barely accented English. “Welcome to Central American Airways Flight Six, from Utila to Roatan. Today we will be flying at an altitude of nine hundred feet, and our estimated flight time is fourteen minutes. Sit back, relax, and have a pleasant journey.” The sense of disconnect was surreal – we were essentially being rescued, but here were all the amenities of “real” air travel,

Fourteen minutes later we landed in Roatan, an hour early for our flight to Houston.
I was profoundly grateful for the travel assist, and entertained by the theatrical veneer of professionalism, which you never get when you fly on Sosa or Copa, the legitimate airlines in that part of the world. Danielle says I should take a lesson from what happened: that some solution to a travel problem always comes along, so I shouldn’t sweat these things as I do. But I think this year, we’ll go back to the longer but somewhat more predictable four-leg version of the journey.

LIFE WITH DAUGHTER

I'm in a nostalgic mood. Rooting around the computer, I came across these vignettes.

1987:

"Give it back," I said to my eleven-year-old daughter.

"You got a problem?" she said, widening her eyes. "Is there a problem, Mister?"

I laughed. I loved it when she did shtick for me. She was only eleven years old, but she had a nicely developed sense of irony. She had been watching Wheel of Fortune in our bedroom when I came home, emptying my pockets onto the top of the old mahogany dresser; Danielle had hopped off the bed, lifted my wallet, and disappeared down the hall into her room with it. Taking things that belonged to adults was one of her favorite numbers; a couple of weeks earlier, she had filched a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her friend Camilla's father's sport jacket while he was driving them back from a weekend in the country. "He shouldn't smoke," she explained to us.

"I kind of think that's his call, don't you?" I had said to her.

"I probably saved his life," she had answered. "Anyway, Camilla told me to do it."

**********************************************************************

1990:

Danielle is in a playful mood. She flops down next to me on Nancy's and my bed in East Hampton, where I’m watching the news, and snatches the remote control out of my hand. She tunes the television to MTV and slips the remote control under her butt. Then she expels air noisily through loose lips, the way a tired horse does. “How would you spell that?” she asks me. “Me and Lee and Kiki were trying to figure it out.”

“How about ‘P-T-P-T-P-T-P-T’?”

“We came up with ‘P-F-F-F-F-F,’ I don’t know why,” she says. She wheels around, facing away from the television. She puts her feet on the wall and grabs the phone, dragging it off the bedside table. It lands on the floor with a crash.

“PLEASE don’t stretch the cord out, like you did with your own phone,” I tell her.

She gives me “P-F-F-F-F-F” again, spraying my face with saliva. “Do you want me to tell you about me and Kiki’s most disgusting saliva fight?” she asks, her face lighting up at the memory. Without pausing for an answer, she launches into it. “We’re hanging out at her apartment, her mom’s around somewhere but we’re really all alone, and there’s this bowl of M & Ms, so I put a bunch of them in my mouth, and suddenly there’s Kiki giving me this Zerber on my bare arm.”
“What’s a Zerber?” I ask.

She makes a wry face at my ignorance. “A putzel,” she says, borrowing a Yiddish term from her grandparents. “So I turn around and I spit this huge soggy mass of chewed-up M & M’s right in her hair. So we both put more M & Ms in our mouths, and we’re chewing them frantically, and she’s got all these chocolate and peanuts dripping off her head. But then her mom came in. Too bad!”

Nancy comes out of the bathroom in her robe, turns off the television set and announces that she wants to go to bed. Danielle’s expression changes to wild alarm. “Nooo!” she says. She flips onto her stomach and spreadeagles herself, grabbing each corner of the mattress with a hand and digging her feet under the bottom of the mattress. She is wearing a pair of my cast-off boxer shorts and a huge ripped tee shirt that says FRANKIE SAY . . . Arm the Unemployed on it. Her long hair is wild, hanging over her face. How big she’s gotten this year! Smooth and muscular, her skin glossy; at fourteen, she is all girl, a little too much so for comfort sometimes, given her penchant for loose, skimpy clothing and sudden, animated motion.

“Let’s go, Danielle. Uppy-uppy,” says Nancy.

“I want to sleep in here with you,” says Danielle over her shoulder, mischief turning the corners of her mouth up. “It’s cold in my room.” She’s right about that; we’ve just arrived an hour before from the city to a house whose thermostat has been set at 45 degrees, and the heat hasn’t really come up yet. The only warm place is her mother’s side of the bed, with its electric mattress pad.

“Then put some clothes on,” says Nancy. “I’m cold too, and I want to get under the covers. Let’s stop before someone ends up in tears.”

But Danielle can’t stop. She lets go of the bed, grabs the top blanket and wraps herself up in it like a mummy, then starts rocking back and forth, making crooning noises. She is lying across the bed, so Nancy can’t get in. There is a riding crop lying on the dresser and I grab it and start making light, exploratory probes with it. Knowing that she’s protected by the folds of the blanket, I locate what is probably her behind and flick the end of the crop across it. “Ow!” comes her muffled voice from the depths of the blanket -- not a real exclamation, just a flat statement. Her helplessness challenges me, so I flick the whip against her again, a little harder this time. “OW!” she screams, and suddenly she is writhing free of the blanket, tears flying from her eyes as she flicks her hair away from her face. She gives me a scalding look and stomps out of her room and across the hall. She slams the door of her room behind her. I look at Nancy helplessly.

“Sometimes she just has to have a fight,” she says.

“Yeah, but I did hit her,” I answered. “It really was my fault.”

“Oh, it was your fault, all right,” says Nancy.

OCCASIONAL VERSE

Like a lot of other people, over the years I've written poems for special occasions -- chiefly birthdays, weddings, anniversaries. Lest they be lost to posterity, I thought I'd better get them out there. (The dates have been omitted to protect those who are now aged and infirm.)

To Nancy, on her birthday

A lady turning thirty-seven
Deserves a little piece of heaven --
A gift, perhaps, that costs as much as
If she were a queen or duchess,
Or, at the least, a birthday luncheon
That’s fit for goddesses to munch on.
But best-laid plans of men or mice
Sometimes with fate will cut no ice;
Because my knee my weight won’t lift,
I couldn’t shop for any gift,
And cause Danielle last night went whoopsie
No birthday outing for my Poopsie.
Still, I can pen these lines to say
To wife and mom, Happy Birthday!


To Harry Wise, on his birthday

Ode: To the Late Harry Wise

It might be on the squash court
Or at a restaurant;
It might be at the tennis club
Or any local haunt.
If you’re a friend of Heshy’s,
Just try this on for size
You’ll spend some time there waiting for
The Late Harry Wise.

He’s booked a court for seven;
My watch says twenty past.
I’ve stretched and warmed up three times, now;
My temper’s slipping fast.
It’s 7:27;
Blood pressure on the rise --
Another piece of gamesmanship
By the Late Harry Wise.

I’ve hit upon a scheme I think
Might really be a winner:
Reserve a table -- nine o’clock --
When we go out to dinner.
Then tell him it’s for half-past eight.
“Eight-thirty sharp,” he sighs.
Who shows up at 9:45?
The Late Harry Wise.

A vision of the future dim
This morning came to me:
A doleful group of mourners
Standing funerarily.
The grieving widow, all the kids,
Each dabbing at their eyes.
Who’s late for his own funeral?
The Late Harry Wise.

But now, before that fateful day --
O many years before --
Your friends are gathered round to say
We wish you many more.
I hope you’re at the table for
This poetic surprise,
But I’ll start without you if you’re late:
Happy Birthday, Harry Wise.




For Mary Freeman, on her Fiftieth

Mary at 50

Write a birthday poem that's funny
Says the note from Rappaport.
"Relevant" -- right on the money
(Just be sure to keep it short)
In a vein that's light and airy,
Something altogether nifty
To cheer up our good friend Mary
Who is closing in on fifty.

Fifty, you say Mary's turning?
Cannot be! No way, Jose´!
Though it seems we've known her always,
We just met her yesterday.
She's that young Cornell alumna
Lives off Lex on Ninety-fourth,
In a nice old roomy brownstone
Just a little too far north.

Taking courses toward her Masters',
Has a house at Lido Beach,
Has a husband who's a lawyer,
Has a daughter who's a peach.
Now a second peachy daughter,
Now a son, and now another --
Her career's on the back burner,
Mary's now a full-time mother!

Years are passing, bringing with 'em
Lots of joys and lots of debt;
They could use a private income
(Harvey now is with Korvette).
All that private school tuition,
Orthodonture, doctors' bills,
Even from the pediatrician --
Korvette's future's looking ill.

All at once we're in the eighties,
Harvey's building a hotel.
Mary's now in private practice,
Prospects rosy, life is swell.
But her kids are leaving home now,
And her friends are turning gray.
Time is passing much too quickly!
It's September -- where is May?

Yet it's not a time for panic.
Mary Freeman's here to show
How to pay with grace and beauty
Debts we all to Time do owe.
As our poem at last closes,
This is what it wants to say:
You're not getting older, Mary,
Simply better, every day!



For David and Jan Gordon, on their wedding day

David and Jan

Some loves last for now and ever,
Liz and Darcy, always true.
Some are sort of now or never --
Capulet and Montague.
But for you, all sunny weather,
Not a quarrel, not a rift.
May your happy days together
Last as long as does this gift.



For De Witt Snodgrass, who has just sent me his book of poems titled "Mexican Dance Suite" (mine is in the same meter)

To De Snodgrass

I’m in love with your Mexican Dance Suite --
It’s a metrical, technical neat feat!
Let me add, though I’ve no urge to repeat,
It was fun from beginning to end.

And of course it was beautifully printed;
On typography, you’ve never stinted.
It’s a rare mix of arts, newly minted --
I’m honored to call you my friend.

Oh, but what will you do for an encore?
Say which popular forms will you next score?
Rap, rock, folk, heavy metal, or all four?
A poetic, synthetical blend!

I can’t wait to find out what you’ll do next.
Please, De, send me posthaste any new text.
I assure you, if not I’ll be sore vexed --
Now I’ll just say so long until then.



Dialogue with Danielle (literally; she wrote the first one, I the second, when she was in high school)

SHE:
You [my Socrates
Reflecting mirrored . . . moon]
Look here from afar;
I [the apprentice
Changing form of playdough]
Ride the falling star.

I:
I [your old man
inordinately fond of Q & A]
smile toward the mountains as
You [once apprentice, now disciple]
ride the flubber like an astronaut into the thinning air.
Falling stars burn out young, but rising ones
are hard to catch. Better just to listen as
they sing into space.




A Sonnet to Josh Gladstone and Kate Mueth, on the occasion of their marriage

To Josh and Kate, not one impediment
Would we admit. Their love’s too true for that.
Their wedding cup contains no sediment,
No sweat-mark stains the band of their love’s hat.
Despite the nepotistic state of mind
Involved in casting the director’s squeeze
As female lead in Summer ‘99
They handled all the challenges with ease.
So yet another HSF romance
Has blossomed here along with Heather/Dave,
Dave/Amy, and the others in love’s trance --
Gladstone and Mueth are fast each other’s slave.
They’ll bear it out e’en to the edge of doom,
But I, I find, have now run out of room.

SIGNAGE REVISITED

Suppose you were following my directions to our house in East Hampton, and I had told you to stay on Stephen Hands Path until it dead-ended. You're on that road and you come to a fork at which sits this sign. Which way do you steer?

Wrong.

Despite the clear indication that you should bear left, Stephen Hands Path is to the right.

I realize that I've been preoccupied by signs lately; this is my third blog on them. The first dealt with the inexplicable grammar of a New York City parking sign, and the second with a threatening billboard posted by the Southampton Police Department showing a cop aiming a radar gun as if it were a Glock.

Of course, all English teachers are interested in signs; we're trained as semioticians (semiotics is the study of signs; same root as in "semaphore"). But road signs are more than just a subset for me; they constitute an index to how much a local government prizes its citizens.

New York State spent a lot of money over the past few years on large, elaborate message boards displayed on its parkways and highways, designed to inform motorists on traffic conditions ahead. Virtually all of them have stopped working. The one on the southbound Cross Island Parkway, which lets you know whether the Long Island Expressway or the Northern State Parkway is moving better, has never worked. Now there are signs only a year old on the parkways that are supposed to give you the time in minutes to a particular destination depending on which of several routes you take, and only one in ten seems to be in operation.

In East Hampton, main thoroughfares are labeled at every intersection, I guess to reassure you that you're still on the same road you've been on (which comes in handy if you take the left fork on Stephen Hands). But only about half the cross streets are identified. What's that about? Is the reasoning that anyone who would want to go to McGurk Street already knows where it is? On Memorial Day weekend, the roads are like a demolition derby, as renters try to figure out where they are and how to get where they're going -- making U-turns, swerving toward and then away from intersections, screeching to sudden stops. The locals have no patience at all for these tenderfeet (who, of course, support the local economy single-handed); they tailgate them, leaning on their horns, laughing all the way.

I guess it's a lost cause in this economy; no one is going to undertake an ambitious program of studying and replacing all the signs on all the roads in the state. So my tip of the month is, buy stock in GPS; it's becoming indispensable.