480. Trees

                               TREES

I grew up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, and we had trees galore.  Though a nerdy little bookworm from an early age, I still climbed trees.  Climbing them was a challenge, a proof of manhood, fun, and an adventure.

                                                                                Stanley Howe

The low willow trees along a nearby canal were easy climbing.  A great oak nearby was more challenging; I and my friends climbed it, but not all the way to the top.  Also good for climbing were the apple trees in the back yards our neighbors, but they were fenced off, so we could only breathe the sweet smell of their flowers in the spring, and in autumn the cidery aroma of the apples that fell and lay mashed on the ground, soon abuzz with feeding wasps.

Towering above our house was a giant cottonwood, and every June it set adrift on any breeze its tufts of cottony seeds, to which I was fiercely allergic.  Out of presumed loyalty to his little brother, but really because his brain reeked mischief, my older brother would set fire to the thin blanket of cottony white seeds covering the ground and watch the flames with delight.  Luckily, he didn't set fire to the neighborhood.

On drowsy summer afternoons I would go out on a level bit of rooftop adjoining our sleeping porch and sunbathe.  High above me loomed the cottonwood, its green leaves flashing silver when rippled by a breeze.  The rustling sound of the rippled leaves, and the sight of the dancing dots of silver, entranced me.

At times it occurred to me that if the giant cottonwood ever fell in our direction, it would crash down on the sleeping porch where my brother and I slept on summer nights.  That my beloved tree might take me with it in its dying was exciting.  But of course it never happened.

Years later I learned more about trees: above all, how they communicate with one another, help one another, and don't steal

one another's light.  We need trees.  They 

• anchor the soil
• give shade
• host birds
• block wind
• filter pollutants from the air

When a freak storm devastated one corner of Central Park a few years ago and felled many trees, I mourned.  And right now, in California, Oregon, and Washington, trees as well as homes are being destroyed by raging fires.  

Given these losses, we need to plant trees.  Living in an apartment, I can't plant trees myself, so I donate to the Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation, so they can plant trees for me.  They do it in the U.S. and all over the world.  Which is life-supporting and essential.  The more trees we have, the better off we will be.  More power to the Arbor Day Foundation and anyone who plants a tree.

Coming soon: Autumn.

©   2020   Clifford Browder

478. Let's Have a Laugh: American Humor

BROWDERBOOKS

Four down and four to go.  That's the score for publishing my books, fiction and nonfiction.  Or maybe 3 1/2 to go, since Forbidden Brownstones has a publisher, is in progress, and will certainly be published. 

 

Which leaves three, all of them completed and in need of a publisher.

• Lady of the Chameleons, about a fictional French actress (modeled in part on Sarah Bernhardt) who comes to these shores for a nationwide tour (she would like to meet General Custer, or failing that, Mr. Sitting Bull).
• Dinner of Dreams, about a glib-tongued operator who offers nineteenth-century Americans whatever they want, or think they want: salvation, gold mining stocks, town lots in Western towns that don't quite exist, stock in a railroad that has yet to lay track, health and well-being.
• Metropolis, a huge, sprawling novel ranging in time from 1830 to 1880.  Kaleidoscopic, it follows a large cast of characters -- the Wall Street speculator Daniel Drew and the abortionist Madame Restell prominent among them -- through four sections, each a book in itself: Go Ahead, War, Flash, and Bust.

I'll be lucky if even one of these gets published in my lifetime.  The last one, being four books in one, is especially problematic, unless I self-publish it.  But it provides the epic setting for all the other novels, and in some cases the origins or final outcome of a number of recurring characters.  Only when set against it do the other novels acquire their full significance. 

So much for me and my books.  It's time for some humor.

       LET'S  HAVE  A  LAUGH:  AMERICAN  HUMOR

What's supposed be funny often isn't.  Back in my childhood, how often I and my family listened to comedians on the radio.  At appropriate intervals, blasts of recorded laughter ("audience enhancement") would assail our ears, while we sat there deadpan, unamused.  Did we lack a sense of humor?  Not at all.  A lot of the funny stuff on radio just wasn't funny.  Then, occasionally, it was, and we laughed.

Humor is perishable.  What one generation finds funny, another generation may not.  And it can be regional, inciting laughter in one region and falling flat in another.  Please keep this in mind, as I offer examples of American humor from the past.

When I used to vacation with relatives in rural Brown County, Indiana,  I heard that Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's wife, had once visited  the area and was shocked to see what passed for an outhouse in rural areas without running water: a board with a hole cut in it.  She started a movement to have such crude contrivances replaced by real toilets, even though there would be no running water.  The local name for this improvement: the Eleanor.  Local humor or a gesture of gratitude?  You decide.

Here now are some examples of American humor from an even earlier time.

• A sign at the Laughing Gas filling station in the 1920s in Salome, Arizona (pop. 100): SMILE  --  YOU DON'T HAVE TO STAY HERE, BUT WE DO.
• An improvised charcoal sign in Congress Hollow, Ohio, where, sometime before 1842, Henry Clay and a group of Congressmen were spilled from their stage:  HERE  CONGRESS  FELL  ON ITS  ASS.

Nineteenth-century tavern guest registers -- huge calfbound books with spaces for each traveler's name, residence, destination, and remarks -- attracted colorful comments in the "remarks" column.  A prime example is from an Indianapolis inn on the National Road, a major gateway to the West before the coming of railroads.  Many visitors just identified themselves as "Stranger," and a fancy Easterner put" "C.H., from any place but this."  Another patron identified himself as "a genuine dealer in counterfeit money," and another remarked, "Still causing women to weep."  And when one traveler put "Stranger and wife," another added, "or some other old whore."

Place names in the West were often a mix of grim humor and grim reality.  California boasted such locales as

• Hell's Delight
• Jackass Gulch
• Last Chance
• Puke Ravine
• Skunk Gulch
• Loafer's Retreat
• Quack Hill
• Chicken-Thief Flat
• Murderer's Bar
• Skinflint
• Chucklehead Diggings
• Poverty Hill
• Lousy Ravine

Rest assured, there was a story behind each name.

Calvin Coolidge was our president from 1923 to 1929.  As Harding's Vice President he served out Harding's term when Harding died, then was elected for a full four-year term himself.  Quiet and somber, he was the proverbial reticent New Englander.  A woman once came up to him and said, "Oh Mr. Coolidge, you're such a reticent man.  I just bet a friend five dollars I can make you say more than two words."  Coolidge's reply: "You lose."

And of course there was Mae West, as American as they come.  

A friend: "Goodness, Mae, where did you get all those diamonds?"                  Mae: "Goodness had nothin' to do with it."  

But without hearing her intonation, you get only half the humor.

And Eartha Kitt singing, 

    "I'm just an old-fashioned girl,

    I want an old-fashioned house

    With an old-fashioned sink

    And an old-fashioned millionaire."

And in film, the Marx Brothers.  "Who are you going to believe?" asks Chico.  "Me or your own eyes?"

And there is ethnic humor:  "Help!  Help!" cries the Jewish lady in Miami Beach.  "My son the doctor is drowning!"

Which is just a sample of modern American humor, more sophisticated than the humor of nineteenth-century rural America.  

So there it is: American humor at a glance.  Only a glance.  I haven't even mentioned Mark Twain.

Coming soon: A Queens neighborhood where 167 languages are spoken.  Can you guess its name?

©  2020.  Clifford Browder

479. 167 Languages, "Hot Beds," a Gay Pride Parade, and a Sundae for Eight.

          167 Languages, "Hot Beds,"  

             a Gay Parade Parade, 

            and a Sundae for Eight

A neighborhood barely half the size of Central Park, with 180,000 residents speaking 167 languages.

Signs in Spanish, Bengali, Urdu, and Hindi, the most interesting ones from tiny shops on the second floor, facing the elevated subway tracks.

A building with a Turkish owner, a Greek super, and Indian, Pakistani, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Muslim, and Uzbek tenants, plus some former Soviet Jews.

Romanticos, taxi dance halls where lonely Latino males go to dance with Latinas in short skirts.  They chat, they show each other photos of their families back in the Dominican Republic or Mexico, they coo over each other's kids, and they dance.  For a few dollars exchanged, they all feel less lonely.

Undocumented immigrants who are allowed to rent an apartment or get a job without a Social Security card, which lets them pay the rent and send money back home to their families.

Gentrification: Big garden apartments that once cost $300,000 now go for close to $1 million, forcing more and more immigrants into basement apartments, some of them fire traps, and some with cubicles  called "hot beds," shared by people in shifts.

Right smack in a neighborhood with very conservative religious communities -- Bangladeshi Muslims and Latino Catholics -- a thriving Latino LGBTQ bar scene, and once a year, the second biggest Gay Pride parade in the city.

A Methodist church where Scrabble was invented, and where services are now offered in Urdu, Bahasa, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish.

A neighborhood where you can come from anywhere without papers, start at the bottom, and work your way up.

The promise of America: a legendary ice-cream store offering a punch-bowl size Kitchen Sink Sundae for eight.

Such is this New York neighborhood.  Can you guess what it is and where?

Source note:  To come.

Coming soon:  Trees.

©.  2020.  Clifford Browder

477. Wall Street Is Not Main Street

BROWDERBOOKS

I have often commented on the industry that thrives by selling products and services to aspiring writers.  Skeptical as I can be, I'm not immune to their appeal.  Recently I bought a roll of 100 gold seals proclaiming NOTABLE BOOK, BlueInk Review.  BlueInk assured me that I was one of the lucky few -- 5 percent of their authors -- who qualify for this offer.  It was their favorable review of New Yorkers that made it possible.  The cost of the seals?  $25.00, plus shipping $9.95 (those seals must weigh a lot), for a total of $34.95.  

So why have I shelled out this sum for a bunch of seals?  Because exhibiting at book fairs taught me that any little gimmick like this makes a book more attractive to attendees.  They may never have heard of BlueInk Review,  but that little gold seal is impressive.  Of course, with the pandemic eliminating book fairs for the moment, those seals will only adorn the books (currently 12) in my apartment.  But someday, hopefully, those books will appear at a book release party or a fair, or be displayed in my living room, if I have guests.  Someday...  But oh, how those little gold seals catch the eye!  

One final thought:  Where on the cover will I put the seal?  It won't be easy finding a spot that won't interfere with my name, the title, or the illustration.  I hadn't thought about this until now.  Hmm...

               Wall Street Is Not Main Street

"Wall Street is not Main Street."  So spoke Mr. Thomas DiNapoli in a recent radio interview.  And who is Mr. DiNapoli, that I should quote him here?  He is the New York State Comptroller, an elected office he has held since 2007.  I met him briefly once at the greenmarket, and delighted him by saying that, in the opinion of at least one voter -- me --  his elected office, upstaged by the governor and lieutenant governor in elections, is highly significant.  He is the state's chief fiscal officer, responsible for seeing that the state and local governments use taxpayers' money --  our "donations" -- effectively.  A watchdog, necessary because who really trusts the government -- especially our dear state government up in the cesspool that is Albany -- to do things right?  (If I deplore Congress as a swamp, I have always described our state government in Albany as a cesspool, and am still of this opinion.) So what prompted Mr. DiNapoli's comment on Wall Street?

The stock market hit a new all-time high in February and then, as COVID-19 assailed the economy, it plummeted to a low in March, and since then has recovered and is now again hitting all-time highs.  Certainly this was a bust followed by a boom, and it all happened in record time; instead of taking months or even years, the plunge and recovery were scrunched up into one single month.  Unprecedented.  

So if the market is sky high, isn't that good?  For investors, yes.  For stockholders of Apple (the stock I love to love), Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a few other tech biggies, the leaders in this rally, things are peachy keen.  But meanwhile vast numbers of people are out of work and desperate financially, small businesses are failing, and the general economy is devastated.  So as Mr. DiNapoli observed, Wall Street is not Main Street -- far from it.

Long ago in a pre-pandemic age I published post #410, "High Buildings, High Markets, High Debt.  How Soon the Bust?"  The date was May 26, 2019.  I commented on the megatowers surging skyward all over the city, and wondered if and when those skinny colossi -- or at least the ruthless optimism that inspired them -- might collapse, taking the stock market with it.  My premise: anything that goes up up up has to come down down down, the big question being when? And one might add, why and how?  And today the big question is: Has it happened already?  The answer: it would seem so, yes.

Even before the pandemic struck, developers in Long Island City and Greenpoint, two of the busiest real estate markets outside of Manhattan, were troubled by a softening market.  As of early July of this year, nearly 60 percent of the condos completed in Long Island City remained unsold.  

As for Manhattan, the pandemic brought a sharp drop in sales as well.  In June of this year a full-floor condominium on the 88th floor of One57, a 90-story tower at 157 West 57th Street on what has come to be called "billionaires' row," was sold to a Chinese conglomerate for $28 million, a 41 percent discount from the original purchase price.  Which is nice for Chinese conglomerates and foreign billionaires desiring a little pied-à-terre in Manhattan, but not too relevant for most of us.

More to the point: people are fleeing Manhattan, leaving a lot of apartments unoccupied, bringing rents down 10 or 12 percent, maybe more.  For renters, this is good news, if they want Manhattan.  But lots of New York fugitives are now paying extraordinary sums for houses in the suburbs, sometimes even buying them unseen.  So for now New York, one of the priciest real estate markets in the country, is beginning to look like a bargain -- a pricey bargain, but a bargain nonetheless; all is relative.  Whether this will continue is anyone's guess.  Ask the virus.

So the bust did indeed come, but in a way no one predicted.  Who could have anticipated a pandemic? And even if the stock market is surging to new all-time highs, Main Street -- meaning most people -- is suffering.  And that suffering may last a long, long time.

On this cheery note, I'll conclude.  What goes up up up does indeed come down down down, but in record time it can go back up up up again.  There's something about this that doesn't feel quite right, but that's how it is for now.  Tomorrow, who knows?  Meanwhile, just talking about it makes my head a bit dizzy.

Coming soon:  American humor.  Let's have a laugh.

©  2020  Clifford Browder