One of the most satisfying scenes in David Henry Hwang’s new Yellow Face, a play full of satisfying scenes, is the face-off between a playwright named David Henry Hwang and an unnamed New York Times reporter. The playwright has taken the unusual step of making himself the protagonist in this cracked-lens look at identity, cultural loyalties, and the relative reliability of commercial theater vs. commercial journalism.
The meeting between the writers ends after each gets his story: an exposé of Hwang’s father for the two-faced journalist, and a final chapter for Hwang in the saga that will become Yellow Face (continuing its world premiere through July 1 at the Mark Taper Forum, in a co-production by L.A.’s Center Theatre Group and New York’s Public Theater in association with L.A.’s East West Players).
To both ape and undercut the media’s claim of objectivity, Yellow Face employs the scattershot quoting of headlines, bylines, and datelines to identify its events and characters. Rather than reflecting on history – as set designer David Korin’s wood deck and massive gold-framed mirror suggest – Hwang at first seems to be transcribing it. The more these citations punctuate the script, however, the more holes they produce in it. Soon, we are in a limbo where fact and fantasy, whether on stage or front page, are indistinguishable.
As Hwang told Sylvie Drake in LA Stage, “Some of the stuff in the play is true and some of it isn’t and I hope it’s hard to tell the difference.”
The seesawing between drama and documentary serves Hwang’s larger goal of revealing the cost of prejudice in real terms while showing its utter absurdity through farce. He does this through his own powerful writing and the strong yet playful direction of Leigh Silverman. Silverman holds the tonal teeter-totter for her Asian and Caucasian cast, who balance their alternately scary or silly performances upon it. Future productions of this play, however, will only be this good if they can rest on the kind of sharp-yet-solid fulcrum provided by Hoon Lee's performance as Hwang. In one of the region's best stage performances so far this year, Lee makes simultaneously getting the laughs and landing the punches look easy.
Ironically, Hwang credits stories in The New York Times with inspiring his M. Butterfly, the take on the Puccini opera that became a landmark Broadway hit in 1988 and made the 31-year-old the first Asian American playwright to win a Tony for Best Play. Whatever political capital came with his success was immediately tested when mega-producer Cameron Macintosh announced that Miss Saigon, which had opened its record-breaking London premiere in 1989, was heading to Broadway.
Lead Broadway roles for Asian Americans was a dream come true for the underappreciated theater community that Hwang found himself providing a public face. When Macintosh announced that he would bring his London stars, including Caucasian Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian “Engineer,” to America, there were protests. The producer justified it by saying he could not find an Asian American good enough for the role. That just compounded the indignity, much like Attorney General Gonzalez did this year in attempting to soothe the feelings of fired U.S. attorneys by attributing his actions to their poor performance.
It was just the latest in a long list of show-business slights for Asian Americans. And in his newfound prominence, Hwang was faced with a lose-lose decision. He could be loyal to the commercial theater that had helped make him a star, or be an advocate for the community that had helped make him a man.
What transpired is both reported and satirized in Yellow Face, which incorporates Face Value, Hwang's failed mid-'90s spoof of these issues. As Spike Lee did with the hypocrisy of blackface in Bamboozled, Face Value did with yellowface, a performance style in which Caucasian actors tinted their skin and pulled their eyelids to evoke an Asian look. As bizarre as it sounds now, stars as big as Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn, and Mickey Rooney joined the ruse.
Like Bamboozled, Face Value could not work its brilliant satire into sustainable drama, and famously closed its Broadway run after previews. But, thanks to Yellow Face, it is now part of this hysterical history lesson.
(Hwang, who would also protest the depiction of the woman in Miss Saigon, gave a lecture in 1994, which provides additional context.)
Among the stand-outs in the cast are Tzi Ma in numerous roles including Hwang’s father, and Peter Scanavino, as the white man who becomes a leading Asian personality based on some resumé tinkering. (By putting him in The King and I, Hwang reminds us of Lou Diamond Phillips, who starred in a recent tour of that warhorse after gaining fame in La Bamba, directed by the same Luis Valdez who had his own casting nightmare with a Frida Kahlo biopic.)
Others who give multiple dimensions to multiple personalities are Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Lucas Caleb Rooney, Tony Torn, and Kathryn A. Layng, the real-life wife of the playwright who, despite Yellow Face's careful blurring, knows exactly where the newspaper ends and the fish-wrapper begins.
This world premiere is a co-production between Center Theatre Group in L.A. and The Public Theater in Manhattan. At press time, the Public’s press office confirmed that the play would be produced in its 2007-08 Season, but the exact slot was yet to be announced. The production is also made in association with East West Players, which America’s paper of record called “the nation’s pre-eminent Asian American theater troupe.” There will not be a separate run at East West – whose main stage is named for this playwright, and whose health is in part owed to his father. So that 10% of the ticket price will benefit East West, order tickets online and use code 8873.
CREDITS by David Henry Hwang,
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY
By SALLY BROMPTON
January 14, 2008 -- You will be fun-loving and fancy-free over the coming 12 months. No matter what serious issues you are expected to deal with you will always find a reason to be cheerful and your positive attitude will rub off on those around you. Who says Capricorn is all work and no play?
By SALLY BROMPTON
January 14, 2008 -- You will be fun-loving and fancy-free over the coming 12 months. No matter what serious issues you are expected to deal with you will always find a reason to be cheerful and your positive attitude will rub off on those around you. Who says Capricorn is all work and no play?
f Today is Your Birthday: January 14
The Year Ahead
Forecast for January 2008 to January 2009
With Venus in a tense aspect to Uranus in your Solar Return, some disruptions in your friendships and attachments are possible this year. Unusual attractions (to people and things) can have you acting on a whim. You may deal with freedom versus closeness issues in your relationships. It may be that you experience sudden changes or breakups with a friend or lover. However, the chance of a sudden new friendship is just as likely. At the root of this is a stronger taste for the unusual. What is familiar is less exciting to you than what is new and different. If a relationship seems to threaten your sense of freedom, you may have an easy time separating from it. Some fireworks in both your social and financial lives are to be expected, keeping things fresh and exciting. The best way to handle this energy is to open yourself up to the need for change in your love life or with regards to how you spend and make money--or both. Get in touch with this need for new experiences and/or attitudes so that changes are not forced upon you.
Venus also forms a harmonious aspect to Neptune, however, and you are more imaginative and attuned to the world of beauty and romance this year. Gentleness with others is the best way to harness this energy and to attract what you want into your life. There could be truly "magical" times on a romantic and social level. You might even find and fall in love with the person of your dreams. Benefits come through paying attention to your dreams and intuitions.
Mercury in a hard aspect to Mars suggests some problems with hasty decision-making and a sharp tongue.
Mars opposes Pluto at the time of your birthday, adding quite a bit of intense energy to your year. You have powerful, transformative energy at your disposal this year, and much will depend on how you handle it. Channeled positively, you could move mountains when it comes to pushing your projects ahead. If mishandled, however, you could be argumentative, stressed, and hell-bent on having your way! Avoid taking extreme measures to make things happen your way, and avoid people who might be doing same. Deliberately trying to maneuver things in order to get the upper hand will be a lesson in frustration.
With Mars trine the Moon's North Node, you may be actively involved with teamwork and collaboration with others this year. This can also indicate an increased need for sexual union, as it stirs the passions and generally indicates ease in satisfying one's desires through positive connections with others. This aspect is one indication of getting engaged, married, the beginning of a significant new relationship, or the intensification of an existing romance.
Jupiter harmonizes with Saturn at the time of your birthday this year, suggesting a period of constructive accomplishment. In general, you are practical, realistic, and your judgment is especially sound--and you derive much satisfaction from practical accomplishment. The key to harnessing this wonderful energy is to identify and find pleasure in the simple things that make you happy. A nice balance between optimism and practicality is with you this year.
More involvement with groups enhances your life, and the ability to find a balance between optimism and practicality helps you to achieve your goals. Some intensity and a tendency to overdo is likely, however. Avoiding power struggles with others, and jumping into decisions before giving issues careful thought, will be necessary. While romantic ups and downs are likely, there could be some truly magical moments in your love life this year.
2008 is a Number Seven year for you. Ruled by Neptune. This is a year of preparation, chance, and refinement. It is not a time of dramatic changes. Instead, it's a year when reflection on the past is helpful, and when refinements to your life path should be made. It's a good year to study and analyze. Unexpected twists to your life story and "chance" meetings are probable. Advice - take stock of your life in order to prepare for more exciting years to come, examine the past and plan for the future, get in touch with your deepest needs and uncover your personal power, don't strain yourself or actively try to expand.
2009 will be a Number Eight year for you. Ruled by Saturn. This is a year of power and accomplishment. Actively seeking to expand, taking educated risks, and moving forward are highlighted. This is a year of opportunity, particularly in the material and business world, and opportunities need to be seized. It's generally not a year to find a new love partner, simply because the focus is on the material world and your place in the world. This is a problem-solving year in which you can expect real, tangible results. Advice - take action, plan ahead, seize opportunities.
The Year Ahead
Forecast for January 2008 to January 2009
With Venus in a tense aspect to Uranus in your Solar Return, some disruptions in your friendships and attachments are possible this year. Unusual attractions (to people and things) can have you acting on a whim. You may deal with freedom versus closeness issues in your relationships. It may be that you experience sudden changes or breakups with a friend or lover. However, the chance of a sudden new friendship is just as likely. At the root of this is a stronger taste for the unusual. What is familiar is less exciting to you than what is new and different. If a relationship seems to threaten your sense of freedom, you may have an easy time separating from it. Some fireworks in both your social and financial lives are to be expected, keeping things fresh and exciting. The best way to handle this energy is to open yourself up to the need for change in your love life or with regards to how you spend and make money--or both. Get in touch with this need for new experiences and/or attitudes so that changes are not forced upon you.
Venus also forms a harmonious aspect to Neptune, however, and you are more imaginative and attuned to the world of beauty and romance this year. Gentleness with others is the best way to harness this energy and to attract what you want into your life. There could be truly "magical" times on a romantic and social level. You might even find and fall in love with the person of your dreams. Benefits come through paying attention to your dreams and intuitions.
Mercury in a hard aspect to Mars suggests some problems with hasty decision-making and a sharp tongue.
Mars opposes Pluto at the time of your birthday, adding quite a bit of intense energy to your year. You have powerful, transformative energy at your disposal this year, and much will depend on how you handle it. Channeled positively, you could move mountains when it comes to pushing your projects ahead. If mishandled, however, you could be argumentative, stressed, and hell-bent on having your way! Avoid taking extreme measures to make things happen your way, and avoid people who might be doing same. Deliberately trying to maneuver things in order to get the upper hand will be a lesson in frustration.
With Mars trine the Moon's North Node, you may be actively involved with teamwork and collaboration with others this year. This can also indicate an increased need for sexual union, as it stirs the passions and generally indicates ease in satisfying one's desires through positive connections with others. This aspect is one indication of getting engaged, married, the beginning of a significant new relationship, or the intensification of an existing romance.
Jupiter harmonizes with Saturn at the time of your birthday this year, suggesting a period of constructive accomplishment. In general, you are practical, realistic, and your judgment is especially sound--and you derive much satisfaction from practical accomplishment. The key to harnessing this wonderful energy is to identify and find pleasure in the simple things that make you happy. A nice balance between optimism and practicality is with you this year.
More involvement with groups enhances your life, and the ability to find a balance between optimism and practicality helps you to achieve your goals. Some intensity and a tendency to overdo is likely, however. Avoiding power struggles with others, and jumping into decisions before giving issues careful thought, will be necessary. While romantic ups and downs are likely, there could be some truly magical moments in your love life this year.
2008 is a Number Seven year for you. Ruled by Neptune. This is a year of preparation, chance, and refinement. It is not a time of dramatic changes. Instead, it's a year when reflection on the past is helpful, and when refinements to your life path should be made. It's a good year to study and analyze. Unexpected twists to your life story and "chance" meetings are probable. Advice - take stock of your life in order to prepare for more exciting years to come, examine the past and plan for the future, get in touch with your deepest needs and uncover your personal power, don't strain yourself or actively try to expand.
2009 will be a Number Eight year for you. Ruled by Saturn. This is a year of power and accomplishment. Actively seeking to expand, taking educated risks, and moving forward are highlighted. This is a year of opportunity, particularly in the material and business world, and opportunities need to be seized. It's generally not a year to find a new love partner, simply because the focus is on the material world and your place in the world. This is a problem-solving year in which you can expect real, tangible results. Advice - take action, plan ahead, seize opportunities.
YOUR BIRTHDAY: 14 January (CAPRICORN)
our personal ruling planets are Saturn and Mercury.
The energies of these two powerful planets result in a most revolutionary and incredibly changeable destiny. You are cautioned to act with great care, lest your own power devour you. It is best for you not to act impulsively, nor to speculate, but to harness the gift of this great electrical and magnetic energy that you have been endowed with.
You are at a crossroad in your life in this incarnation, and will be confronted with choices as to whether to "buck the system" and authority or to use those forces to help you achieve your own ends. You may have had issues early in life that relate to your father and so must resolve those facets of your inner life to bring out the best in your love, marriage and relationships generally.
The only way you can achieve grand success in this life is through keeping your motives channelled along higher lines of action.
Your lucky colour is green.
Your lucky gems are Emerald, Aquamarine or Jade.
Your lucky days of the week are Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Your lucky numbers and years of important change are 5, 14, 23, 32, 41, 50, 59, 68, 77.
Famous people born on your birthday include Albert Schweitzer, John Dos Passos, Julian Bond, Faye Dunaway and Emily Watson.
our personal ruling planets are Saturn and Mercury.
The energies of these two powerful planets result in a most revolutionary and incredibly changeable destiny. You are cautioned to act with great care, lest your own power devour you. It is best for you not to act impulsively, nor to speculate, but to harness the gift of this great electrical and magnetic energy that you have been endowed with.
You are at a crossroad in your life in this incarnation, and will be confronted with choices as to whether to "buck the system" and authority or to use those forces to help you achieve your own ends. You may have had issues early in life that relate to your father and so must resolve those facets of your inner life to bring out the best in your love, marriage and relationships generally.
The only way you can achieve grand success in this life is through keeping your motives channelled along higher lines of action.
Your lucky colour is green.
Your lucky gems are Emerald, Aquamarine or Jade.
Your lucky days of the week are Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Your lucky numbers and years of important change are 5, 14, 23, 32, 41, 50, 59, 68, 77.
Famous people born on your birthday include Albert Schweitzer, John Dos Passos, Julian Bond, Faye Dunaway and Emily Watson.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
3 mo tenors
Off-Broadway's Little Shubert Welcomes Three Mo' Tenors Sept. 12
By Andrew Gans
12 Sep 2007
Phumzile Sojola in Three Mo' Tenors.
photo by Zaven Khashikian
Three Mo' Tenors, which has played numerous dates in regional theatres around the country, arrives at Off-Broadway's Little Shubert Theatre Sept. 12.
The production — conceived, directed and choreographed by Marion J. Caffey — will officially open Sept. 27. Willette Murphy Klausner produces.
Described as "part opera, part jazz, part Broadway, all music and all passion," the production features two separate casts who take the stage, three at a time, at alternate performances. The singers who comprise Three Mo' Tenors include Kenneth Alston, James N. Berger Jr., Ramone Diggs, Duane A. Moody, Victor Roberson and Phumzile Sojola.
Theatregoers can expect to hear opera, jazz, gospel, soul, spirituals, new school, Broadway and the blues. Creator Caffey said in a previous statement, "Three Mo' Tenors is the zenith of versatility. Where else can you hear Usher, Pavarotti, Sondheim, and Marvin Gaye come out of the same two vocal chords?"
Show times are Tuesdays-Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 and 8 PM and Sundays at 2 and 6:30 PM.
Tickets, priced $75, are available by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com. The Little Shubert Theatre is located in Manhattan at 422 W. 42nd Street.
New Jerusalem
Spinoza Clashes With Community in Premiere of Ives' New Jerusalem, Opening Jan. 13
By Kenneth Jones
13 Jan 2008
David Ives, currently on a roll with his acclaimed adaptation of Mark Twain's Is He Dead? on Broadway, is represented Off-Broadway witn New Jerusalem, opening Jan. 13 after previews from Dec. 28.
Tony Award winner Richard Easton, plus Fyvush Finkel, David Garrison, Jenn Harris, Michael Izquierdo, Natalia Payne and Jeremy Strong star in the world-premiere drama, produced by Classic Stage Company in Manhattan.
Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie (Chicago, White Christmas, High Fidelity) directs the play, about the 1656 interrogation of the philosopher Baruch De Spinoza. The production continues to Feb. 3, at CSC's home at 136 East 13th Street.
In New Jerusalem, which is presented by special arrangement with commercial producer Robert Boyett, the Jewish community of Amsterdam interrogates Spinoza for his controversial ideas. The play "examines the clash between religion and modernity that Jews, Christians and Muslims are still, some 350 years later, struggling to reconcile," according to CSC.
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Ives worked with CSC last season as the translator for Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play, which starred Zoe Caldwell and Denis O'Hare. His translation of Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear won a 2006 Jefferson Award in Chicago. His original plays include the popular collections of one-act comedies All in the Timing and Time Flies; Polish Joke; Canvas; and Saint Freud. He has adapted more than 30 classic musicals for the acclaimed City Center Encores! series.
New Jerusalem features set design by Tony Award winner John Lee Beatty, lighting by Tony Award winner Ken Billington, costumes by Anita Yavich, and sound design by Nevin Steinberg/Acme Sound Partners.
According to CSC notes, Baruch de Spinoza, born November 24, 1632, was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous "Ethics," Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists, and has been called "the absolute philosopher." In his early 20s, he became known in the Jewish community in Amsterdam for positions contrary to Jewish belief. On July 27, 1656, a convocation of his temple board was called, and a writ of kherem (excommunication) was issued against Spinoza. Although there is no record of what was said in the temple on that day, the precise terms of Spinoza's kherem have come down to us. The writ was severe, and never revoked. Following his excommunication, he adopted the name Benedictus, the Latin equivalent of Baruch; they both mean "blessed." Banished from Amsterdam, he earned his living as a lens grinder, and died at 44 on Feb. 21, 1677.
Richard Easton (Mortiera) appeared last season in the highly acclaimed, Tony Award-winning production of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center Theater. In 2002 he received the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Stoppard's The Invention of Love.
Jeremy Strong (Spinoza) most recently appeared at Playwrights Horizons in Richard Nelson's Frank's Home and John Patrick Shanley's Defiance at Manhattan Theater Club.
David Garrison (Van Valkenburgh) has appeared on Broadway in Wicked, Titanic, Torch Song Trilogy, Bells Are Ringing and A Day In Hollywood/A Night In Ukraine, for which he received a Tony nomination. On television he starred in "Married…With Children."
Fyvush Finkel (Ben Israel) is a major figure of the New York Yiddish theatre. In 1970 he assumed the role of Tevye in the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1992 David Kelly cast him as attorney Douglas Wambaugh on the acclaimed CBS series "Picket Fences," for which he received an Emmy Award in 1994. He was most recently been seen in "Boston Public."
Director Walter Bobbie received the Tony Award as Best Director of a Musical for the current revival of Chicago, now in its 11th year on Broadway. His other Broadway directing credits include the recent revivals of Sweet Charity and Twentieth Century, and the original musicals High Fidelity and Footloose. He is the former artistic director of the NY City Center Encores! series. He is also director of the popular commercial production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas, seen in major markets around North America.
New Jerusalem will be performed Tuesday-Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 PM and 8 PM and Sundays at 3 PM. For tickets and information visit www.classicstage.org or call (866) 811-4111, or (212) 352-3101, or visit the CSC box-office, 136 E. 13th Street, Monday through Friday noon-6 PM.
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CSC is under the leadership of artistic director Brian Kulick and executive director Jessica R. Jenen.
So, Young Mr. Spinoza, Just What Is Your Thinking About God?
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By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: January 14, 2008
In recent years the playwright David Ives has become better known as a theatrical plastic surgeon. He’s the man primarily responsible for nipping and tucking the wayward books of the wheezier Broadway musicals for the City Center Encores! series. And this season he did his level best to spray away the smell of mothballs from a previously unproduced play by Mark Twain, “Is He Dead?”
Mr. Ives’s latest act of literary ventriloquism is possibly his most challenging yet. In his new play “New Jerusalem,” which opened Sunday at the Classic Stage Company, Mr. Ives is channeling no less a thinker than Spinoza, the influential Jewish philosopher of the 17th century and a man not exactly known for his snappy humor.
Before Mr. Ives established a reputation as the best cut-and-paste man in the business, he was known for short comic plays presented in omnibus collections like “All in the Timing.” So is he kidding with this Spinoza business? Will the great thinker find reason to sport a pair of plastic Groucho glasses at some point?
The play’s sobering subtitle — “The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” — provides the answer. Intellectual persecution is not a laughing matter after all. Mr. Ives has strayed a long way from 42nd Street, into territory more suited, it would seem, to the likes of Tom Stoppard. One fears footnotes.
But Mr. Ives’s humor has always mixed the cerebral with the silly, so his daring leap into metaphysics is not entirely anomalous. In “New Jerusalem” he occasionally indulges his relish of a good wisecrack — “There is no Jewish dogma,” Spinoza quips, “only bickering” — but for the most part he takes off the clown mask and serves up a straight drama full of heady talk about God and nature and the essence of things. The play is a lumpy but generally engrossing primer on Spinoza’s radical thinking, presented in the classic style of a courtroom drama and buoyed by a skilled cast.
As that daunting subtitle suggests and students of philosophy will know, the play is based on actual events. Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew living in Amsterdam, was a brilliant scholar whose inquiries led him into territory that made trouble for his fellow Jews, who were graciously tolerated if not wholly welcomed into Dutch society.
The play opens with the brief for the prosecution from Abraham van Valkenburgh (David Garrison), a civic leader who is alarmed at rumors that the well-liked young man is spreading poisonous thought through the city. “He is a threat to the piety and morals of this entire city, and he and his ideas must be stopped,” he importantly intones. “The city’s regents send you this message: Abide by our laws, adhere to the regulations governing your community or face the consequences.”
Mr. Ives lays out the mechanics and the consequences of Spinoza’s interrogation in a debate among van Valkenburgh; the city’s chief rabbi, Saul Levi Mortera (Richard Easton), Spinoza’s teacher and mentor; and Gaspar Rodrigues Ben Israel (Fyvush Finkel), a “parnas” of the temple congregation, or member of the committee that will pass judgment on the case. At stake is possible excommunication from the religious fold, and indeed all social contact with the city’s Jewish establishment.
What exactly is Spinoza accused of? Oh, just general atheism and heretical questioning of key tenets of Judaism and Christianity. But before presenting the interrogations as a battle of ideas between Spinoza and his accusers, Mr. Ives gives us a snapshot portrait of the philosopher as a young man.
Idling at a tavern with a friend, Simon de Vries (Michael Izquierdo), the young Spinoza, who is played as a gentle-hearted genius by the engaging Jeremy Strong, speaks of his interest in things eternal and things mathematical, and the connections between the two. Later, exchanging confidences with a music teacher, Clara Van den Enden (Natalia Payne), to whom he is romantically devoted, he dismisses as “entertaining stories” many of the biblical tales she holds dear. “Nature, which is to say God, cannot depart from its own laws,” he explains in a friendly tone, as if speaking of simple sums.
Mr. Ives has studied his Spinoza and infuses the dialogue here and in the interrogation scenes with chunks of his later writings trimmed down to their essentials. There is no historical record of the actual testimony at the synagogue, so Mr. Ives has a free hand to present the conflict as a sort of impromptu seminar in Spinoza’s theology and philosophy, interrupted with skeptical questions from the opposing team.
For the most part the debate makes for lively if dense listening. Mr. Garrison huffs and fumes with convincing earnestness as the grand inquisitor, while Mr. Finkel’s slyly sympathetic Ben Israel does his best to find the good Jew underneath the iconoclastic thinking, at least until Spinoza begins picking apart the Articles of Faith.
Mr. Easton conveys Mortera’s divided heart with moving simplicity. Deeply fond of Spinoza and often swayed by his dazzling thinking, he nevertheless knows the welfare of the city’s Jews relies on the forbearance and good will of the Dutch Christian leaders.
The play has its unwieldy passages. The intrusion into the proceedings of Spinoza’s half sister Rebekah, her peevishness honed to strident intensity by Jenn Harris, is jarring and unconvincing. Rebekah’s long monologue excoriating Spinoza for his heresies adds little to the conversation, and her sudden conversion to his defense in the play’s last moments is bewildering. And like many another courtroom drama, “New Jerusalem” is often static.
But as Mr. Strong’s Spinoza parries each attack with good-natured ease, the debate mostly holds your attention. His Spinoza is perky and adorable, a brash but modest young fellow whose head is amusingly stuffed not with baseball statistics but with incisive conclusions about God, nature and the universe. You may have no idea what he’s going on about — Spinoza’s work is famously dense — but you can’t help rooting for the guy.
into the wild
Following His Trail to Danger and Joy
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: September 21, 2007
There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine.
Some of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy.
In letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.”
Mr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it.
What he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery.
Mr. Salles’s film, in which Gael GarcÃa Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism.
An enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.”
One problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words.
Mr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks.
Well no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature.
Instead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography.
The source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.)
Fleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn.
Chris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene.
He is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire.
Which is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road.
“Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes.
INTO THE WILD
Friday, January 11, 2008
Brian
This is my new friend Brian. I met him on line waiting for Natalie Merchant. Brian and I talked the line away. He became my friend when in the bitter cold. He offered me his hat. We chatted the time away and he was joined by a friend. We continued to talk and we both realized we had tickets for Wednesday. During the show, we stood near but separated from each other and at the end of the show. We looked at each other and knew.. wednesday, whoever got there first. Would save space for each other.
Wednesday came and I was there first. We spent the waiting time together and then the show. At the end of the show, i told Brian I made a new friend.
Brian had many natalie stories to tell. He travelled to a number of shows during the Tigerlily tour and became friends with a NM bandmember so spent many nights back stage. He joined NM a few times on stage to sing. He told me a story of buying chocolates on Valentines day for his friend Jennifer and NM and here is the result..
Brian is a school teacher of 5th grade boys in a private school on the upper east and tutors. He is looking to relocate to Baltimore to be with his partner, Justin who is in medical school. They are the proud parents of two french bulldogs...
Heres Brian with more hair than he has now... he has a great new haircut....
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
teh Malbone Street Wreck
Last night, after meeting a student, I got on the train at Canal Street and so didnt a small trollish man with whiskers like a motorman from 1900s. He could have worked at one of those dress up like the ages, character places like Plymouth Plantation. As we started over the Brooklyn Bridge, be started to yell out the History of the Bridge. Random Trivia facts about the Manhattan Bridge and ofcourse "the most famous bridge of all" The Brooklyn Bridge. He was a transpotter who i then referred to as the Q train tour guide. He even stopped talking on the Manhattan BRidge for people to use their cellphone, like a tour guide would.
His mission to tell us about the worst train wreck in NYC history right there on the brighton line in 1918, where 97 people were killed, second only to a crash earlier that year in Nashville where 100 died. The worst mass transit wreck not train crash in US history second to Nashville....
was the Malbone street wreck. The tour guide was not quite accurrate about the blame and how it all happened but it was good yarn and i learned something new and it was entertaining.....
____________________-
THE NEW YORK TIMES · SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 1918
SCORES KILLED, MANY HURT ON B.R.T.
First Car Crashes Into Tunnel Pier
and Other Cars Grind It to Splinters
INJURED MAY REACH 100
Dispatcher, as Strike Motorman, Sends Crowded Train
to Doom at 70 Miles an Hour.
TO ARREST B.R.T. OFFICIALS
Rescue Hindered by Jam of Debris In Narrow Tunnel
-- Hardly a Soul Escapes from First Car.
A Brighton Beach Train of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, made up of five wooden cars of the oldest type in use, which was speeding with a rush hour crowd to make up lost time on its way from Park Row to Coney Island, jumped the track shortly before 7 o'clock last evening on a sharp curve approaching the tunnel at Malbone Street, in Brooklyn, and plunged into a concrete partition between the north and south bound tracks.
Nearly every man, women, and child in the first car was killed, and most of those in the second were killed or badly injured. Rescue work in the wreckage, jammed into the narrow tunnel, was extremely difficult, and the counting of the dead proceeded slowly. At 11 o'clock eighty-five bodies had been taken from the wreckage, and the police announced that no more bodies were in the tunnel. The names of many of the injured were not obtained, but the police estimate that at least 100 had been injured.
District Attorney Lewis announced at midnight that the train was being run by a train dispatcher. This man had been pressed into service in the rush hour because of the strike of motormen, which began in the early morning. At 2 o'clock this morning, as a result of the wreck, the motormen called off the strike, leaving the adjustment of their grievances to the Public Service Commission. The District Attorney ordered all the officials of the B.R.T who could have been responsible, and members of the train crew put under arrest. He said the B.R.T. officials had withheld the name of the man who was operating the train.
Mayor Hylan arrived at the Snyder Avenue Police Station shortly after midnight and consulted with District Attorney Lewis and Commissioner Enright as to what steps should be taken in ordering the arrest of the officials of the B.R.T.
Just before one o'clock this morning, the missing motorman, Anthony Lewis, who is 29 years old, was arrested at his home, 100 Thirty-third Street, Brooklyn, by Detectives McCord and Conroy, and brought to the Snyder Avenue station, where he was immediately taken into a room to be questioned by the District Attorney, Mayor Hylan, and the Police Commissioner.
After Motorman Lewis had been escorted to the Snyder Avenue Station and questioned, it was stated that his story indicated criminal negligence in hiring him to run the train. Mayor Hylan said:
"This man confessed that he had never run a train over that Brighton Beach line before. He also admitted that when running around that curve, he was making a speed of thirty miles an hour."
A post on the curve warns motormen not to go faster than six miles an hour in this part of the road. When he was asked at the examination why he had taken a job for which he was unfitted, Motorman Lewis replied: "A man has to earn a living." He said that the only experience he had had in running a motor was in switching about a year ago, but that he had been taking instruction for two days on the B.R.T. before running the train yesterday.
On the way to Flatbush the motorman said he had no intention of running away. He said he remembered nothing until he found himself at home, following the accident. He does not know how he managed to get out of the wreck, nor how he got home. He says he has an indistinct recollection of having boarded a trolley car but cannot remember what car it was. He was seated in a chair, pale as death, when the detectives reached his home. He was very nervous and seemed to be on the verge of a collapse.
After the conference with District Attorney Lewis at the Snyder Avenue Police Station, Mayor Hylan said:
"I have ordered Police Commissioner Enright to station policemen at every terminal and carbarn from which trains leave, with instructions not to permit any green motormen to take out a train. No man will be permitted to run a train, unless he has had at least three months experience."
Mayor Hylan said that he did not wish to discuss the legal and possible criminal phases of the accident until he had completed his investigation.
District Attorney Lewis, after his conference with Mayor Hylan said:
"I have ordered Colonel Timothy s. Williams, the president of the B.R.T. and Vice President John J. Dempsey to appear at my office today and give me an explanation of Lewis's running the train".
A few minutes before the accident the motorman missed a switch, according to passengers, went some distance on a wrong track and then backed up and switched again to the Brighton Beach line for Coney Island. After that the train moved at such high speed as to frighten many passengers. Some thought the motorman had lost control of the train, and others supposed he was going at unprecedented speed to make up for time he had lost. A naval officer who was a passenger said the train was making fully seventy miles an hour when it left the track.
Rams Concrete Partition.
The first car left the rails a few feet in front of the opening of the tunnel and rammed one end of a concrete partition separating the northbound from the southbound tracks. It was thrown at right angles across the roadbed in front of the entrance to the tunnel. The other cars cut right through it, the second car smashing it to bits and the whole train passing over the wreckage and coming to a stop 200 feet down the tracks inside the tunnel.
Packed together as in a box without structural strength to give them any protection, the passengers in the first car were crushed and cut to pieces. Not one is believed to have escaped. After breaking through the first car, the rest of the train dashed it against the partition wall and strewed wreckage and passengers along the tracks ahead, where the wheels of the cars following passed over them. Only splintered fragments of wood and broken and twisted bits of iron and steel remained of the first car.
The second and third cars, leaving the rails after their impact with the first, ran sidewise into a series of iron pillars supporting the roof of the tunnel at intervals beside the partition. The pillars cut great gashes in the sides of the cars, which were still traveling at high speed, and mowed down the passengers who were standing striking the heads of some from their bodies.
The left sides of the second and third cars were stripped away. Scores of men, women, and children were flung by the impact out of these cars against pillars and the concrete wall, where they were killed instantly or ground under the wheels after falling back upon the tracks. Some who were not flung from the car were killed inside when they fell upon the broken iron of seats, splintered timbers and iron beams which projected through the shattered bottoms of the car. Passengers on the platforms were nearly all killed instantly. One dead man was found impaled on a broken bar of iron, which had run underneath the car, but which broke and shot up into the air like a javelin in the crash.
Firemen who took part in the rescue work said the second and third cars had fallen over so that one side formed the floor, and the passengers were heaped upon one another, some dead some dying, some slightly injured and some unhurt, but all so tightly gripped in the wreckage and so menaced by steel and wooden splinters that movement was impossible. Bodies were found with only slight marks of injures, indicating death by suffocation. Small fires were reported to have started but these, it was said, lasted only long enough to cause terror to still conscious persons imprisoned in the wreckage.
Most of the passengers in the two rear cars escaped without serious injury, although nearly every one was cut by glass or bruised when thrown from his seat. They were packed so tightly in these two cars that the force of the shock was broken. Women became hysterical when they learned what had happened in the front cars.
The rear cars were without light, and when the passengers made their way into the tunnel, they found themselves in total darkness. Many who tried to reach the forward cars in answer to the cries of the injured found their way cut off by masses of broken wood and twisted steel which barred the entrance to the second and third cars. There was no access to eitehr of these cars and no means of escape for the survivors, who were pinned by broken seats or jutting timbers from the roof, sides, and floor of the car, so that they could not move. Some were pressed against dead bodies, and others jammed until they were smothered against wounded or fainting passengers
Delay in Rescue Work
Because of the position and the nature of the accident there was a delay in spreading the alarm and police and firemen were not notified for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before an organized attempt at rescue could be made.
The word that a terrible accident had occurred, with little detail as to the place, or time, spread quickly over the borough. As a large part of the people in Brooklyn have fathers, husbands, sons, and daughters traveling home in the rush hours thousands of persons were alarmed. When the place of the accident became generally known great crowds gathered there trying to learn the fate of friends or to satisfy curiosity, and the work of the police and fireman was for a time greatly embarrassed by those who crowded forward as bodies were being lifted up the side of the open cut which approached the tunnel.
Reserves from six precincts were sent to keep back the throngs which filled the streets near the wreck and ambulances arrived from every hospital in the borough. Scores of doctors and nurses were sent from the Department of Charities. Aid was given promptly by women and ambulances of the Women's Motor Corps of America. Women of the motor corps went into the tunnel to aid in carrying out the injured women and children. Some of the desperately injured breathed their last in the arms of these women.
District Attorney Harry E. Lewis of Kings County and Police Commissioner Enright, who started an inquiry into the causes of the wreck at the Snyder Avenue Police Station with Timothy S. Williams, president and other officials and Messrs. Whitney, Kracke and Hervey of the Public Service Commission present, expressed the positive opinion that the accident was caused by the negligence of the motorman of the wrecked train.
Due to Recklessness
"The accident was undoubtedly due to the negligence and to the recklessness of the motorman," said Mr. Lewis. "This man was drafted from another department to run this train, and we are searching for him. He disappeared immediately after the accident and apparently he was aided in making his escape. We are searching also for the other men who were in charge of the train. "From information in my possession he was traveling at a highly excessive rate of speed around this curve and disregarded the signals. When his car jumped the track the second, third, and forth cars were buckled and smashed. These three cars were old-fashioned wooden coaches, and at least twenty-five years old. The first and fifth cars of the five car train were motor cars, but they were of wood like the others.
"All five cars were loaded to the gates with people. Directly after the accident happened the motorman, Lewis, disappeared and I heard that he had been spirited away by one of the claims adjustors in the employ of the B.R.T. I have ordered his arrest, and sent a notification to the company to produce the man forthwith. I also went to the home of Turner, the conductor of the train who was in his bed under police surveillance suffering from an injury to his hip received in the accident. Turner said the train was going at a fast rate around the curve. Lewis was known as a train dispatcher at Brighton Beach and it was his first trip with a train".
Mayor Hylan visited the scene of the wreck last night, went down the ladder and into the tunnel, where he viewed the wreckage, from which bodies and parts of bodies were still being taken. His first remark was: "Wooden cars." Later he said: "I believe this this is the result of employing an inexperienced motorman and the use of all wooden cars. I shall make an investigation tomorrow and see if the B.R.T. cannot be compelled to stop using 'green' motormen."
He left the accident to go to the Flatbush Avenue Police Station to confer with District Attorney Lewis.
Commissioner Enright went to the wreck to direct the police, in their efforts to find the names of the men who were running the train. They found none of the officials of the transit company were able to give them the names because the regular men were not in their places on account of the strike. The police reported to the Commissioner that officials of the B.R.T and employees as well had showed disinclination to aid in discovering the names of the motorman and guards.
By direction of the Commissioner and District Attorney Lewis, Acting Captain Jon Coughlin, in command of the Sixth Branch Detective Bureau, confined the efforts of his men last night to search for the motorman and other employees.
Police and firemen, making their way by the light of lanterns into the tunnel. and moving cautiously among wreckage and dead bodies, chopped openings into the second and third cars and then began the painful task of lifting wounded men, women, and children from the tangle of steel, glass and sharp splinters which stuck out like bayonets in all directions, some of the having already pierced those in the cars.
Those able to walk or to be helped along were carried to a concrete buttress at the right ride of the cut which made a path about two feet wide and sloping inward. Those not badly injured were supported up a ladder running up the side of the open cut to the street. One woman, who had escaped uninjured from one of the cars which had suffered least, fell from the ladder, but was caught by a fireman just below her.
Cradles of burlap were made for the recovered bodies. These were made fast by ropes and hoisted by firemen and policemen to the street level, where they were laid out in rows and then carried to police stations.
While surgeons were hastily binding wounds by lantern light, inside the tunnel, priests were administering last rites to the dying and to bodies of those apparently killed instantly, but in whom it was thought possible that a spark of life might linger.
Thousands Seek Friend
Tens of thousands of men and women went to the police stations where the bodies were taken, The number of those fearing they had lost relatives made the identification of the dead a slow and difficult process in the midst of affecting scenes. The bodies were finally removed to the Kings County Morgue.
The telephone service in Brooklyn was overburdened until communication was almost impossible by thousands of families seeking news of members who came home by this line and had not arrived. The wreckage put an end to Brighton Beach traffic, holding up tens of thousands on trains which followed it. Many of those who were delayed had to take long walks to overcrowded street cars, that that practically all the ordinary travelers on this line, who did not get through the tunnel before the wreck, were an hour too two late in getting home. In the meantime their families had in many cases become alarmed and had gone to the place of the wreck in search of news, so that their reunion did not take place until late in the evening, after many hours of suspense and dread.
Those fearful that they had lost relatives in the wreck reported them as missing at the police stations nearest the accident, and the list soon grew to several hundred. Most of the detectives in Brooklyn were put to work by Police Commissioner Enright aiding in the identification of bodies. Many of the bodies were in such a state that identification may never be made. Women and girls, it is thought will be in the majority when the list of the dead is finally made up.
For a long time last night Charles Ebbets Jr., was very uncertain as to the fate of his father, the President of the Brooklyn Baseball Club. The young man was to have met his father at Ebbets Field about the time the collision occurred, and he feared that the elder Ebbets might have been on board the ill-fated train. The young man after working the telephone for an hour or so, was finally able to get tidings of his father, who was making a four-minute speech in the War Savings Stamp campaign. The young man threw open Ebbets Field for the treatment of the less seriously injured. About fifty of those not badly injured were attended there by physicians who had volunteered for this work.
A Survivor's Story
Walter H. Simonson, a civil engineer and President of the American Lead Burning Company at 30 Church Street, who was a passenger in the third car of the train, said the wreck was caused in his opinion by the speed maintained by the motorman on the curved tracks leading into the subway beneath Malbone Street, at the approach to the new station at Prospect Park. Mr Simonson, who lives at 935 East Thirteenth Street, Flatbush, gave this account of his experience in the wreck:
"I entered the car at the Flatbush station, At the Franklin Avenue Station, where the tracks curve away from the Fulton Street tracks, and which the train should have followed, the motorman, instead continued upon the Fulton line for a block or more. The the train was backed across a switch to the Park Row tracks, and thence onto another switch, and finally over to the Coney Island tracks. Instantly the speed of the train was increased, even at the curve at the Franklin Avenue Station, so much so that many of the passengers showed nervousness."
"At the Park Place station where the tracks begin on a down grade, the motorman seemed to continue the same speed, apparently to make up for the delay at the Franklin Avenue switch, and this speed continued at the curve to the entrance of the tunnel. As the wheels hit the tracks of this curve under Malbone Street I felt the car rise from the rails and turn partly over, striking against the concrete pier at the entrance to the tunnel with such force as to tear out the entire side of the car."
"The left side of the car crumpled against the concrete wall. The car seats were torn apart and the men and women jammed among them, and down on them came the roof of the car. We sideswiped the wall for a car length or more before the train was stopped. My head bumped against a wooden column in the side of the car that was not demolished with all the other woodwork, but this protected me from contact with the concrete wall."
"Every light in the car was extinguished. When I partly recovered my dazed senses I found myself pinned down at the neck with a beam from the roof. I got free and assisted two men to get out through a window on the opposite side. His the cars been of steel construction instead of wood such an accident could not have had such disastrous results."
Mr. Simonson said the car was crowded, many of the men and women standing.
Crash Heard a Mile Away
The series of crashes that demolished the train against the immovable sides of the narrow tube in which it was traveling was heard for blocks, and policemen on post near Flatbush Police Station in Snyder Avenue, almost a mile away from the enclosed tube, reported to the superiors in the station their belief that a great accident had occurred somewhere in Prospect Park.
Thousands of persons living in the vicinity heard the noise, and those within a few blocks of the tube heard the cries of the injured a few moments after the demolition had ceased. Immediately the station employees on the Brooklyn Rapid Transit and all the near-by stations, as well as policemen and civilians who had heard the noise sent telephone calls to the police and fire stations.
The policemen and firemen did not reach the open breach where the road enters the tunnel before hundreds of civilians, and the police had difficulty driving back the crowds. All this added to the general confusion, and before the police had been able to drive the crowds back other thousands, from trains that had been stopped at other stations along the line for passengers to alight, ran to the tunnels only to form an immense barricade against the efforts of the policemen, the firemen and others who were trying to beat their way into the tunnel to aid the injured.
Exerting great efforts under the direction of Inspector Murphy, in charge of the police for the borough, the police managed in time to drive back the crowds so that the rescuers worked without being hampered, but occasionally a person anxious about the safety of a relative would break through the lines and run to the tunnel.
The first man to emerge from the tunnel was almost divested of clothing. His coat and trousers had been ripped from him; he had only one shoe, and was without hat, collar, and tie. His face was bleeding from many gashes and is left arm was useless. The crowd divided for him to pass through and before the police could get his name he was taken into an ambulance bu a surgeon from the Kings County Hospital and hurried away.
Before many minutes had passed scores of persons, most of them men, struggled out of the tube with the assistance of policemen, and other who had made their way through to the high piled wreckage. Many others injured did not have enough strength to leave the tube and lay upon the concrete emergency walk at the sides of the tunnel, helpless.
Officials of the Edison Company heard of the difficulty of the work in the dark, and gangs of men were sent to set up a system of emergency lights. For more than a block around the entrances of each end of the tube was made as light as if searchlights were playing.
The first rescuers found that they would be unable to give much assistance to the injured or to bring out the bodies at once, because the wreckage was jammed so tightly into the tube that no crevice or opening was left. They had to tear away the debris piece by piece, to uncover the bodies and to release the injured. As they worked, carrying the wreckage out at the mouth of the tube they found parts of human bodies, with purses, books, newspapers, broken packages, shreds of apparel, and here and there some breakable article that remained unbroken and unscratched.
The wreck occurred the evening of November 1, 1918 at 6:22PM, during the last days of World War I. An elevated train, consisting of five cars constructed primarily of wood, entered the tunnel portal beneath Malbone Street, negotiating a curve designated to be taken at six miles per hour (9.6 km/h) at a speed estimated at between 30 and 40 mph (48-65 km/h). The trailing truck of the first car derailed, and the two following cars completely left the tracks, tearing off their left-hand sides and most of their roofs. The first and fourth cars sustained relatively minor damage, while the second and third cars were severely damaged, the third so badly that it was dismantled on the spot. The fifth suffered no damage at all. The motorman was not injured and left the scene of the accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbone_Street_Wreck
His mission to tell us about the worst train wreck in NYC history right there on the brighton line in 1918, where 97 people were killed, second only to a crash earlier that year in Nashville where 100 died. The worst mass transit wreck not train crash in US history second to Nashville....
was the Malbone street wreck. The tour guide was not quite accurrate about the blame and how it all happened but it was good yarn and i learned something new and it was entertaining.....
____________________-
THE NEW YORK TIMES · SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 1918
SCORES KILLED, MANY HURT ON B.R.T.
First Car Crashes Into Tunnel Pier
and Other Cars Grind It to Splinters
INJURED MAY REACH 100
Dispatcher, as Strike Motorman, Sends Crowded Train
to Doom at 70 Miles an Hour.
TO ARREST B.R.T. OFFICIALS
Rescue Hindered by Jam of Debris In Narrow Tunnel
-- Hardly a Soul Escapes from First Car.
A Brighton Beach Train of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, made up of five wooden cars of the oldest type in use, which was speeding with a rush hour crowd to make up lost time on its way from Park Row to Coney Island, jumped the track shortly before 7 o'clock last evening on a sharp curve approaching the tunnel at Malbone Street, in Brooklyn, and plunged into a concrete partition between the north and south bound tracks.
Nearly every man, women, and child in the first car was killed, and most of those in the second were killed or badly injured. Rescue work in the wreckage, jammed into the narrow tunnel, was extremely difficult, and the counting of the dead proceeded slowly. At 11 o'clock eighty-five bodies had been taken from the wreckage, and the police announced that no more bodies were in the tunnel. The names of many of the injured were not obtained, but the police estimate that at least 100 had been injured.
District Attorney Lewis announced at midnight that the train was being run by a train dispatcher. This man had been pressed into service in the rush hour because of the strike of motormen, which began in the early morning. At 2 o'clock this morning, as a result of the wreck, the motormen called off the strike, leaving the adjustment of their grievances to the Public Service Commission. The District Attorney ordered all the officials of the B.R.T who could have been responsible, and members of the train crew put under arrest. He said the B.R.T. officials had withheld the name of the man who was operating the train.
Mayor Hylan arrived at the Snyder Avenue Police Station shortly after midnight and consulted with District Attorney Lewis and Commissioner Enright as to what steps should be taken in ordering the arrest of the officials of the B.R.T.
Just before one o'clock this morning, the missing motorman, Anthony Lewis, who is 29 years old, was arrested at his home, 100 Thirty-third Street, Brooklyn, by Detectives McCord and Conroy, and brought to the Snyder Avenue station, where he was immediately taken into a room to be questioned by the District Attorney, Mayor Hylan, and the Police Commissioner.
After Motorman Lewis had been escorted to the Snyder Avenue Station and questioned, it was stated that his story indicated criminal negligence in hiring him to run the train. Mayor Hylan said:
"This man confessed that he had never run a train over that Brighton Beach line before. He also admitted that when running around that curve, he was making a speed of thirty miles an hour."
A post on the curve warns motormen not to go faster than six miles an hour in this part of the road. When he was asked at the examination why he had taken a job for which he was unfitted, Motorman Lewis replied: "A man has to earn a living." He said that the only experience he had had in running a motor was in switching about a year ago, but that he had been taking instruction for two days on the B.R.T. before running the train yesterday.
On the way to Flatbush the motorman said he had no intention of running away. He said he remembered nothing until he found himself at home, following the accident. He does not know how he managed to get out of the wreck, nor how he got home. He says he has an indistinct recollection of having boarded a trolley car but cannot remember what car it was. He was seated in a chair, pale as death, when the detectives reached his home. He was very nervous and seemed to be on the verge of a collapse.
After the conference with District Attorney Lewis at the Snyder Avenue Police Station, Mayor Hylan said:
"I have ordered Police Commissioner Enright to station policemen at every terminal and carbarn from which trains leave, with instructions not to permit any green motormen to take out a train. No man will be permitted to run a train, unless he has had at least three months experience."
Mayor Hylan said that he did not wish to discuss the legal and possible criminal phases of the accident until he had completed his investigation.
District Attorney Lewis, after his conference with Mayor Hylan said:
"I have ordered Colonel Timothy s. Williams, the president of the B.R.T. and Vice President John J. Dempsey to appear at my office today and give me an explanation of Lewis's running the train".
A few minutes before the accident the motorman missed a switch, according to passengers, went some distance on a wrong track and then backed up and switched again to the Brighton Beach line for Coney Island. After that the train moved at such high speed as to frighten many passengers. Some thought the motorman had lost control of the train, and others supposed he was going at unprecedented speed to make up for time he had lost. A naval officer who was a passenger said the train was making fully seventy miles an hour when it left the track.
Rams Concrete Partition.
The first car left the rails a few feet in front of the opening of the tunnel and rammed one end of a concrete partition separating the northbound from the southbound tracks. It was thrown at right angles across the roadbed in front of the entrance to the tunnel. The other cars cut right through it, the second car smashing it to bits and the whole train passing over the wreckage and coming to a stop 200 feet down the tracks inside the tunnel.
Packed together as in a box without structural strength to give them any protection, the passengers in the first car were crushed and cut to pieces. Not one is believed to have escaped. After breaking through the first car, the rest of the train dashed it against the partition wall and strewed wreckage and passengers along the tracks ahead, where the wheels of the cars following passed over them. Only splintered fragments of wood and broken and twisted bits of iron and steel remained of the first car.
The second and third cars, leaving the rails after their impact with the first, ran sidewise into a series of iron pillars supporting the roof of the tunnel at intervals beside the partition. The pillars cut great gashes in the sides of the cars, which were still traveling at high speed, and mowed down the passengers who were standing striking the heads of some from their bodies.
The left sides of the second and third cars were stripped away. Scores of men, women, and children were flung by the impact out of these cars against pillars and the concrete wall, where they were killed instantly or ground under the wheels after falling back upon the tracks. Some who were not flung from the car were killed inside when they fell upon the broken iron of seats, splintered timbers and iron beams which projected through the shattered bottoms of the car. Passengers on the platforms were nearly all killed instantly. One dead man was found impaled on a broken bar of iron, which had run underneath the car, but which broke and shot up into the air like a javelin in the crash.
Firemen who took part in the rescue work said the second and third cars had fallen over so that one side formed the floor, and the passengers were heaped upon one another, some dead some dying, some slightly injured and some unhurt, but all so tightly gripped in the wreckage and so menaced by steel and wooden splinters that movement was impossible. Bodies were found with only slight marks of injures, indicating death by suffocation. Small fires were reported to have started but these, it was said, lasted only long enough to cause terror to still conscious persons imprisoned in the wreckage.
Most of the passengers in the two rear cars escaped without serious injury, although nearly every one was cut by glass or bruised when thrown from his seat. They were packed so tightly in these two cars that the force of the shock was broken. Women became hysterical when they learned what had happened in the front cars.
The rear cars were without light, and when the passengers made their way into the tunnel, they found themselves in total darkness. Many who tried to reach the forward cars in answer to the cries of the injured found their way cut off by masses of broken wood and twisted steel which barred the entrance to the second and third cars. There was no access to eitehr of these cars and no means of escape for the survivors, who were pinned by broken seats or jutting timbers from the roof, sides, and floor of the car, so that they could not move. Some were pressed against dead bodies, and others jammed until they were smothered against wounded or fainting passengers
Delay in Rescue Work
Because of the position and the nature of the accident there was a delay in spreading the alarm and police and firemen were not notified for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before an organized attempt at rescue could be made.
The word that a terrible accident had occurred, with little detail as to the place, or time, spread quickly over the borough. As a large part of the people in Brooklyn have fathers, husbands, sons, and daughters traveling home in the rush hours thousands of persons were alarmed. When the place of the accident became generally known great crowds gathered there trying to learn the fate of friends or to satisfy curiosity, and the work of the police and fireman was for a time greatly embarrassed by those who crowded forward as bodies were being lifted up the side of the open cut which approached the tunnel.
Reserves from six precincts were sent to keep back the throngs which filled the streets near the wreck and ambulances arrived from every hospital in the borough. Scores of doctors and nurses were sent from the Department of Charities. Aid was given promptly by women and ambulances of the Women's Motor Corps of America. Women of the motor corps went into the tunnel to aid in carrying out the injured women and children. Some of the desperately injured breathed their last in the arms of these women.
District Attorney Harry E. Lewis of Kings County and Police Commissioner Enright, who started an inquiry into the causes of the wreck at the Snyder Avenue Police Station with Timothy S. Williams, president and other officials and Messrs. Whitney, Kracke and Hervey of the Public Service Commission present, expressed the positive opinion that the accident was caused by the negligence of the motorman of the wrecked train.
Due to Recklessness
"The accident was undoubtedly due to the negligence and to the recklessness of the motorman," said Mr. Lewis. "This man was drafted from another department to run this train, and we are searching for him. He disappeared immediately after the accident and apparently he was aided in making his escape. We are searching also for the other men who were in charge of the train. "From information in my possession he was traveling at a highly excessive rate of speed around this curve and disregarded the signals. When his car jumped the track the second, third, and forth cars were buckled and smashed. These three cars were old-fashioned wooden coaches, and at least twenty-five years old. The first and fifth cars of the five car train were motor cars, but they were of wood like the others.
"All five cars were loaded to the gates with people. Directly after the accident happened the motorman, Lewis, disappeared and I heard that he had been spirited away by one of the claims adjustors in the employ of the B.R.T. I have ordered his arrest, and sent a notification to the company to produce the man forthwith. I also went to the home of Turner, the conductor of the train who was in his bed under police surveillance suffering from an injury to his hip received in the accident. Turner said the train was going at a fast rate around the curve. Lewis was known as a train dispatcher at Brighton Beach and it was his first trip with a train".
Mayor Hylan visited the scene of the wreck last night, went down the ladder and into the tunnel, where he viewed the wreckage, from which bodies and parts of bodies were still being taken. His first remark was: "Wooden cars." Later he said: "I believe this this is the result of employing an inexperienced motorman and the use of all wooden cars. I shall make an investigation tomorrow and see if the B.R.T. cannot be compelled to stop using 'green' motormen."
He left the accident to go to the Flatbush Avenue Police Station to confer with District Attorney Lewis.
Commissioner Enright went to the wreck to direct the police, in their efforts to find the names of the men who were running the train. They found none of the officials of the transit company were able to give them the names because the regular men were not in their places on account of the strike. The police reported to the Commissioner that officials of the B.R.T and employees as well had showed disinclination to aid in discovering the names of the motorman and guards.
By direction of the Commissioner and District Attorney Lewis, Acting Captain Jon Coughlin, in command of the Sixth Branch Detective Bureau, confined the efforts of his men last night to search for the motorman and other employees.
Police and firemen, making their way by the light of lanterns into the tunnel. and moving cautiously among wreckage and dead bodies, chopped openings into the second and third cars and then began the painful task of lifting wounded men, women, and children from the tangle of steel, glass and sharp splinters which stuck out like bayonets in all directions, some of the having already pierced those in the cars.
Those able to walk or to be helped along were carried to a concrete buttress at the right ride of the cut which made a path about two feet wide and sloping inward. Those not badly injured were supported up a ladder running up the side of the open cut to the street. One woman, who had escaped uninjured from one of the cars which had suffered least, fell from the ladder, but was caught by a fireman just below her.
Cradles of burlap were made for the recovered bodies. These were made fast by ropes and hoisted by firemen and policemen to the street level, where they were laid out in rows and then carried to police stations.
While surgeons were hastily binding wounds by lantern light, inside the tunnel, priests were administering last rites to the dying and to bodies of those apparently killed instantly, but in whom it was thought possible that a spark of life might linger.
Thousands Seek Friend
Tens of thousands of men and women went to the police stations where the bodies were taken, The number of those fearing they had lost relatives made the identification of the dead a slow and difficult process in the midst of affecting scenes. The bodies were finally removed to the Kings County Morgue.
The telephone service in Brooklyn was overburdened until communication was almost impossible by thousands of families seeking news of members who came home by this line and had not arrived. The wreckage put an end to Brighton Beach traffic, holding up tens of thousands on trains which followed it. Many of those who were delayed had to take long walks to overcrowded street cars, that that practically all the ordinary travelers on this line, who did not get through the tunnel before the wreck, were an hour too two late in getting home. In the meantime their families had in many cases become alarmed and had gone to the place of the wreck in search of news, so that their reunion did not take place until late in the evening, after many hours of suspense and dread.
Those fearful that they had lost relatives in the wreck reported them as missing at the police stations nearest the accident, and the list soon grew to several hundred. Most of the detectives in Brooklyn were put to work by Police Commissioner Enright aiding in the identification of bodies. Many of the bodies were in such a state that identification may never be made. Women and girls, it is thought will be in the majority when the list of the dead is finally made up.
For a long time last night Charles Ebbets Jr., was very uncertain as to the fate of his father, the President of the Brooklyn Baseball Club. The young man was to have met his father at Ebbets Field about the time the collision occurred, and he feared that the elder Ebbets might have been on board the ill-fated train. The young man after working the telephone for an hour or so, was finally able to get tidings of his father, who was making a four-minute speech in the War Savings Stamp campaign. The young man threw open Ebbets Field for the treatment of the less seriously injured. About fifty of those not badly injured were attended there by physicians who had volunteered for this work.
A Survivor's Story
Walter H. Simonson, a civil engineer and President of the American Lead Burning Company at 30 Church Street, who was a passenger in the third car of the train, said the wreck was caused in his opinion by the speed maintained by the motorman on the curved tracks leading into the subway beneath Malbone Street, at the approach to the new station at Prospect Park. Mr Simonson, who lives at 935 East Thirteenth Street, Flatbush, gave this account of his experience in the wreck:
"I entered the car at the Flatbush station, At the Franklin Avenue Station, where the tracks curve away from the Fulton Street tracks, and which the train should have followed, the motorman, instead continued upon the Fulton line for a block or more. The the train was backed across a switch to the Park Row tracks, and thence onto another switch, and finally over to the Coney Island tracks. Instantly the speed of the train was increased, even at the curve at the Franklin Avenue Station, so much so that many of the passengers showed nervousness."
"At the Park Place station where the tracks begin on a down grade, the motorman seemed to continue the same speed, apparently to make up for the delay at the Franklin Avenue switch, and this speed continued at the curve to the entrance of the tunnel. As the wheels hit the tracks of this curve under Malbone Street I felt the car rise from the rails and turn partly over, striking against the concrete pier at the entrance to the tunnel with such force as to tear out the entire side of the car."
"The left side of the car crumpled against the concrete wall. The car seats were torn apart and the men and women jammed among them, and down on them came the roof of the car. We sideswiped the wall for a car length or more before the train was stopped. My head bumped against a wooden column in the side of the car that was not demolished with all the other woodwork, but this protected me from contact with the concrete wall."
"Every light in the car was extinguished. When I partly recovered my dazed senses I found myself pinned down at the neck with a beam from the roof. I got free and assisted two men to get out through a window on the opposite side. His the cars been of steel construction instead of wood such an accident could not have had such disastrous results."
Mr. Simonson said the car was crowded, many of the men and women standing.
Crash Heard a Mile Away
The series of crashes that demolished the train against the immovable sides of the narrow tube in which it was traveling was heard for blocks, and policemen on post near Flatbush Police Station in Snyder Avenue, almost a mile away from the enclosed tube, reported to the superiors in the station their belief that a great accident had occurred somewhere in Prospect Park.
Thousands of persons living in the vicinity heard the noise, and those within a few blocks of the tube heard the cries of the injured a few moments after the demolition had ceased. Immediately the station employees on the Brooklyn Rapid Transit and all the near-by stations, as well as policemen and civilians who had heard the noise sent telephone calls to the police and fire stations.
The policemen and firemen did not reach the open breach where the road enters the tunnel before hundreds of civilians, and the police had difficulty driving back the crowds. All this added to the general confusion, and before the police had been able to drive the crowds back other thousands, from trains that had been stopped at other stations along the line for passengers to alight, ran to the tunnels only to form an immense barricade against the efforts of the policemen, the firemen and others who were trying to beat their way into the tunnel to aid the injured.
Exerting great efforts under the direction of Inspector Murphy, in charge of the police for the borough, the police managed in time to drive back the crowds so that the rescuers worked without being hampered, but occasionally a person anxious about the safety of a relative would break through the lines and run to the tunnel.
The first man to emerge from the tunnel was almost divested of clothing. His coat and trousers had been ripped from him; he had only one shoe, and was without hat, collar, and tie. His face was bleeding from many gashes and is left arm was useless. The crowd divided for him to pass through and before the police could get his name he was taken into an ambulance bu a surgeon from the Kings County Hospital and hurried away.
Before many minutes had passed scores of persons, most of them men, struggled out of the tube with the assistance of policemen, and other who had made their way through to the high piled wreckage. Many others injured did not have enough strength to leave the tube and lay upon the concrete emergency walk at the sides of the tunnel, helpless.
Officials of the Edison Company heard of the difficulty of the work in the dark, and gangs of men were sent to set up a system of emergency lights. For more than a block around the entrances of each end of the tube was made as light as if searchlights were playing.
The first rescuers found that they would be unable to give much assistance to the injured or to bring out the bodies at once, because the wreckage was jammed so tightly into the tube that no crevice or opening was left. They had to tear away the debris piece by piece, to uncover the bodies and to release the injured. As they worked, carrying the wreckage out at the mouth of the tube they found parts of human bodies, with purses, books, newspapers, broken packages, shreds of apparel, and here and there some breakable article that remained unbroken and unscratched.
The wreck occurred the evening of November 1, 1918 at 6:22PM, during the last days of World War I. An elevated train, consisting of five cars constructed primarily of wood, entered the tunnel portal beneath Malbone Street, negotiating a curve designated to be taken at six miles per hour (9.6 km/h) at a speed estimated at between 30 and 40 mph (48-65 km/h). The trailing truck of the first car derailed, and the two following cars completely left the tracks, tearing off their left-hand sides and most of their roofs. The first and fourth cars sustained relatively minor damage, while the second and third cars were severely damaged, the third so badly that it was dismantled on the spot. The fifth suffered no damage at all. The motorman was not injured and left the scene of the accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbone_Street_Wreck
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Women Are Never Front-Runners
Women Are Never Front-Runners
By GLORIA STEINEM
Published: January 8, 2008
Correction appended.
Readers' Comments
"I'll bet that Barack Obama cries sometimes, as does Bush, as does McCain. The only person I suspect does not cry is Mitt Romney — though he probably has hired some very talented people to cry for him."
Matt Schultz, Cedarburg, Wisconsin
* Read Full Comment »
* Read All Comments »
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.
Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?
If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.
That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).
If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits.
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.
I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.
I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.
But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.
What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.
What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.
What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.
What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.
This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”
Correction: An earlier version of this Op-Ed stated that Senator Edward Kennedy had endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race.
Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.
Next Article in Opinion (8 of 19) »
By GLORIA STEINEM
Published: January 8, 2008
Correction appended.
Readers' Comments
"I'll bet that Barack Obama cries sometimes, as does Bush, as does McCain. The only person I suspect does not cry is Mitt Romney — though he probably has hired some very talented people to cry for him."
Matt Schultz, Cedarburg, Wisconsin
* Read Full Comment »
* Read All Comments »
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.
Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?
If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.
That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).
If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits.
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.
I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.
I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.
But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.
What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.
What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.
What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.
What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.
This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”
Correction: An earlier version of this Op-Ed stated that Senator Edward Kennedy had endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race.
Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.
Next Article in Opinion (8 of 19) »
Monday, January 07, 2008
dreams
The cat could not come to my parents house because there were holes in the walls and they were afraid that if she got in the wall, she would not be able to be removed. I remember thinking, I have taken chances and nothing has happened, so can I take a chance? I saw the walls with the holes.
In my dream, I was driving a car and pulled into a parking place. I changed my clothes into casual wear. In the dream, I saw my Carole and I was hanging around. Knowing I had to weigh in. The parking lot and place started to fill up and I offered to move my car to make room. I realized that I had to be across long island toward the Hamptons to collect an reeward. I changed back into dress clothes and went off to collect the reward but knew I was going to be late to retrieve it. I knew there was gonna be lot of obstacles and traffic. I also knew I changed clothes for a short while and changed back to my new clothes. This dream is symbolic but significant. For the last month, I have been recognizing some of the issues pertaining to my weigh to lack of weight loss. I had gained about 7 lbs and was getting too heavy again. I recognized that I had to change core identity issues and didn’t have to live with the Fat Girl identity. I had an encounter at work where no one knows me but at an average weight, then attending a meeting where the leader made me feel like that 5 year old again who was being yelled at for being fat and being able to recognize that eating thru that experience was not helpful and hurtful only to myself. I chose to attend a different meeting. The leader was passionate and well meaning but her manner was not beneficial. In 6 years, I never left a WW meeting angry at the leader only myself. I realized that I have changed and the old way of dealing with things doesn’t work and doesn’t have to. I am changed and even though my old ways ( eating behaviors of coping) were not working and really don’t work for me anymore.
This was a breakthrough dream for me
In my dream, I was driving a car and pulled into a parking place. I changed my clothes into casual wear. In the dream, I saw my Carole and I was hanging around. Knowing I had to weigh in. The parking lot and place started to fill up and I offered to move my car to make room. I realized that I had to be across long island toward the Hamptons to collect an reeward. I changed back into dress clothes and went off to collect the reward but knew I was going to be late to retrieve it. I knew there was gonna be lot of obstacles and traffic. I also knew I changed clothes for a short while and changed back to my new clothes. This dream is symbolic but significant. For the last month, I have been recognizing some of the issues pertaining to my weigh to lack of weight loss. I had gained about 7 lbs and was getting too heavy again. I recognized that I had to change core identity issues and didn’t have to live with the Fat Girl identity. I had an encounter at work where no one knows me but at an average weight, then attending a meeting where the leader made me feel like that 5 year old again who was being yelled at for being fat and being able to recognize that eating thru that experience was not helpful and hurtful only to myself. I chose to attend a different meeting. The leader was passionate and well meaning but her manner was not beneficial. In 6 years, I never left a WW meeting angry at the leader only myself. I realized that I have changed and the old way of dealing with things doesn’t work and doesn’t have to. I am changed and even though my old ways ( eating behaviors of coping) were not working and really don’t work for me anymore.
This was a breakthrough dream for me
What Sharon Means |
 You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do. You are truly an original person. You have amazing ideas, and the power to carry them out. Success comes rather easily for you... especially in business and academia. Some people find you to be selfish and a bit overbearing. You're a strong person. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You're always up to something. You have a ton of energy, and most people can't handle you. You're very intense. You definitely are a handful, and you're likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun. You are well rounded, with a complete perspective on life. You are solid and dependable. You are loyal, and people can count on you. At times, you can be a bit too serious. You tend to put too much pressure on yourself. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. |
Natalie Merchant Hiro Ballroom 1.4 2008 review
Music Review | Natalie Merchant
Songs From an Unrecorded Minstrel
By JON PARELES
Published: January 7, 2008
“This is a new song,” Natalie Merchant announced onstage at the Hiro Ballroom on Friday night, at her first full New York City concert in four years. “Try to absorb it here, now, ’cause I don’t know when I’ll make a record.”
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Stephanie Berger for The New York Times
Natalie Merchant at the Hiro Ballroom on Friday night. New songs filled her two-hour set, the first of her six sold-out shows.
Ms. Merchant, who sold millions of albums in the 1990s, has an adoring audience and no record label behind her. She’s not alone. As contracts end, more and more well-known musicians are trying to reinvent their careers for the era of mass downloading and plunging album sales. At the Hiro Ballroom, when a voice in the crowd asked when Ms. Merchant would release a new album, she said with a smile that she was awaiting “a new paradigm for the recording industry.” Another fan called out, “Myth America,” the independent label Ms. Merchant formed in 2003 to release “The House Carpenter’s Daughter,” an album of rearranged folk songs. Ms. Merchant replied, “Myth America is bankrupt.”
So for the moment, Ms. Merchant is back to the age-old economic model of the troubadour. People who want to hear her latest songs will have to see her perform them. New songs filled her two-hour set at Hiro Ballroom, the first of six sold-out shows through Jan. 10. Although she has played some guest appearances and benefit shows during her hiatus, Ms. Merchant was slightly taken aback by current concert behavior: cellphones raised overhead to shoot photos and video. But she sang with thoughtful passion, traversing American music from folky fingerpicking to soul grooves to pop hymns.
Ms. Merchant, who had a daughter in 2003, has written songs around poetry by and for children. She also had new songs with her own lyrics and a setting of Shakespeare’s 73rd sonnet, waltzing gently as she sang about “bare ruined choirs” and thoughts of lost love and mortality.
The new songs, like her catalog, offer sorrows, warnings and solace. A folky political parable described a “golden child” whose father did everything for him. A minor-key rocker held vows of “giving up everything” in a somber crescendo, with images of emptiness hinting at Buddhism. The children’s songs brought out Ms. Merchant’s playful side; she finds wonderful things in archives. She had a countryish setting for a Victorian poem about alternate plans “if no one ever marries me,” a vaudeville shuffle about falling in love with “the janitor’s boy” and a Gypsy-tinged waltz about riddles posed by “The Man in the Wilderness.”
As she unveiled her own new songs, Ms. Merchant let herself be as moved as her audience. In a gospel-soul song about trying to find the courage to push through troubles, which mentioned New Orleans, and in a waltz that contemplated war and human strife and wondered, “How can we have so far to go?,” she burst into tears. They were a troubadour’s live, spontaneous, here-and-now moments: nothing an album could contain.
Natalie Merchant will appear Tuesday through Thursday at the Hiro Ballroom, 371 West 16th Street, Chelsea, (212) 260-4700, bowerypresents.com; sold out.
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Sunday, January 06, 2008
John Prine 1/ 5/2008
John Prine took the stage at Carnegie Hall last night for an evening with John Prine.
NO large band, a bass player and Jason Wilber on guitar. I figured wed be out of there in 90 minutes. John started with Illegal Smile, Decal and after two hours brought IRIS DEMENT for a set and then went electric. I thought maybe he was playing everyone song he knew..
Souveniers
Crazy as a loon
the missing years jesus
Hello in there
angel from Montgomery
Same stone
dont bury me
the great compromise
sweet revenge
saddle in the rain
fishing and whistling
Living in the future
Unwed fathers
all the best
hurting nobody
lake marie
paradise
Jet SET
invite them over
inspite of ourselves
Glory of true love
Taking a walk
she is my everything
it seemed like Prine kept going. MOre and more... he was figdety and spoke little but was having fun. Angel from MOntgomery got a standing Ovation. Hello in there made me cry and it was night that belonged to JOHN, even when he brought out greg brown and Iris for happy birthday wishes and a birthday cake.... and paradise
the show really was paradise
thanks John Prine
Natalie Merchant Hiro Ballroom 1.4 2008
after 4 years of raising and child and being virtually unavailable except for charity events and special events, Natalie Merchant returned to the stage. Hiro is a tiny stage and NM was no more than 4 feet from me all night. There were people reaching out her and cat calling her and snapping pictures. She was the consummate professional and worked with the crowd. She was nervous and had moderate level of energy. By the end of the show, she was looser and having fun with the crowd.
I made three friends that night. Andrew from SCotland, who natalie recognized. she acknowledged lots of people that night. Brian a school teacher from NY and Stephanie Berger, the NYtimes reporter who needed to take photos. I could have made her job hard or easier. I chose easier.
Natalie was in great voice and explained her new songs. She was asked to set an Elizabethan sonnet to music and it was stunning. She then set children's poetry or poetry by children to music. Man from the Wilderness, a nursery rhyme with a scary tune: Janitor Boy
* Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
And the janitor's boy loves me;
He's going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.
o "The Janitor's Boy"
* He'll carry me off, I know that he will,
For his hair is exceedingly red;
And the only thing that occurs to me
Is to dutifully shiver in bed.
o "The Janitor's Boy"
* I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine.
But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.
To a swing tune. Natalia Crane wrote this at age 10. Natalie Merchant was taken by the poem and set it to music. it was a fun little ditty.
There were others and then she got on her more new music. Texas about a child who is privledged and destined to own the moon. His father sets him on a course. Moving On, Moses song, Getting on song that she talked about as a new years resolution.
Natalie sang many known songs from Tigerlily, Orphelia, an impromptu Owensboro, village green preservation society by Kinks, I need love by sam phillips.
I was taken by the show, the closeness, the music, hearing Natalie live again after all these years. She really is one of my favorite. I will be back again on Wednesday for another dose of NM.
Thank you NM for returning to the stage and singing for us and for you.
REVELATIONS
by Yoko Ono
Bless you for your anger.
For it is a sign of rising energy.
Direct not to your family, waste not on your enemy.
Transform the energy to versatility
And it will bring you prosperity.
Bless you for your sorrow
For it is a sign of vulnerability.
Share not with your family, direct not to yourself.
Transform the energy to sympathy
And it will bring you love.
Bless you for your greed
For it is a sign of great capacity.
Direct not to your family. Direct not to the world.
Transform the energy to giving.
Give as much as you wish to take,
And you will receive satisfaction.
Bless you for your jealousy
For it is a sign of empathy
Direct not to your family, direct not to your friends.
Transform the energy to admiration
And what you admire
Will become part of your life.
Bless you for your fear
For it is a sign of wisdom.
Do not hold yourself in fear.
Transform the energy to flexibility
And you will be free
From what you fear.
You are a sea of goodness,
You are a sea of love.
Bless you, bless you, bless you.
Bless you for what you are.
Bless you for your search of direction
For it is a sign of aspiration.
Transform the energy to receptivity
And the direction will come to you.
Bless you for the times you see evil.
Evil is energy mishandled and it feeds on your support.
Feed not and it will self-destruct.
Shed light and it will cease to be.
Bless you for the times you feel no love.
Open your heart to life anyway
And in time you will find
Love in you.
Count your blessings every day for they are your protection
Which stands between you and what you wish not.
Count your curses and they will be a wall
Which stands between you and what you wish.
The world has all that you need
And you have the power
To attract what you wish.
Wish for health, wish for joy.
Remember you are loved.
I love you!
y.o.
by Yoko Ono
Bless you for your anger.
For it is a sign of rising energy.
Direct not to your family, waste not on your enemy.
Transform the energy to versatility
And it will bring you prosperity.
Bless you for your sorrow
For it is a sign of vulnerability.
Share not with your family, direct not to yourself.
Transform the energy to sympathy
And it will bring you love.
Bless you for your greed
For it is a sign of great capacity.
Direct not to your family. Direct not to the world.
Transform the energy to giving.
Give as much as you wish to take,
And you will receive satisfaction.
Bless you for your jealousy
For it is a sign of empathy
Direct not to your family, direct not to your friends.
Transform the energy to admiration
And what you admire
Will become part of your life.
Bless you for your fear
For it is a sign of wisdom.
Do not hold yourself in fear.
Transform the energy to flexibility
And you will be free
From what you fear.
You are a sea of goodness,
You are a sea of love.
Bless you, bless you, bless you.
Bless you for what you are.
Bless you for your search of direction
For it is a sign of aspiration.
Transform the energy to receptivity
And the direction will come to you.
Bless you for the times you see evil.
Evil is energy mishandled and it feeds on your support.
Feed not and it will self-destruct.
Shed light and it will cease to be.
Bless you for the times you feel no love.
Open your heart to life anyway
And in time you will find
Love in you.
Count your blessings every day for they are your protection
Which stands between you and what you wish not.
Count your curses and they will be a wall
Which stands between you and what you wish.
The world has all that you need
And you have the power
To attract what you wish.
Wish for health, wish for joy.
Remember you are loved.
I love you!
y.o.
89% Barack Obama
86% John Edwards
86% Chris Dodd
85% Hillary Clinton
78% Joe Biden
77% Bill Richardson
72% Mike Gravel
70% Dennis Kucinich
39% Rudy Giuliani
38% Tom Tancredo
32% Mitt Romney
28% John McCain
23% Mike Huckabee
23% Fred Thompson
18% Ron Paul
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
86% John Edwards
86% Chris Dodd
85% Hillary Clinton
78% Joe Biden
77% Bill Richardson
72% Mike Gravel
70% Dennis Kucinich
39% Rudy Giuliani
38% Tom Tancredo
32% Mitt Romney
28% John McCain
23% Mike Huckabee
23% Fred Thompson
18% Ron Paul
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
My parents were working class immigrant factory workers, so we didn't have much money growing up, still there were some privileges we did have...
From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 - nope..dancing school and hebrew school. Neither were negotiable
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively - The only role models were Fiddler on the Roof and Molly Goldberg until Barbra Streisand did THE WAY We WERE...
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 - It was on my dad's account, but it was in my name for emergency only
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs - Nope! My father switched jobs right before college so i paid for it all myself thru loans and scholarships
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels - But they also involved going in groups via buses and having guides talk in Chinese.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them - 1966 Comet station wagon
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home- i grew up in a two family house that my father lived in since he was 3. it
25. You had your own room as a child. - 1 bedroom apartment until I was 12, then moved after that to share a bedroom with my 2 siblings.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18 - There were 3 phones in the home, but we only had one line for the entire apartment.
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School -
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. - my parents took us to the circus
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. -
Tags: meme
From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 - nope..dancing school and hebrew school. Neither were negotiable
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively - The only role models were Fiddler on the Roof and Molly Goldberg until Barbra Streisand did THE WAY We WERE...
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 - It was on my dad's account, but it was in my name for emergency only
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs - Nope! My father switched jobs right before college so i paid for it all myself thru loans and scholarships
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels - But they also involved going in groups via buses and having guides talk in Chinese.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them - 1966 Comet station wagon
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home- i grew up in a two family house that my father lived in since he was 3. it
25. You had your own room as a child. - 1 bedroom apartment until I was 12, then moved after that to share a bedroom with my 2 siblings.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18 - There were 3 phones in the home, but we only had one line for the entire apartment.
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School -
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. - my parents took us to the circus
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. -
Tags: meme
Capricorn Horoscope for week of January 3, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of January 3, 2008
Do you ever wonder if God loves Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton more than he loves you, as seemingly evidenced by those celebrities' charmed lives? Do you suspect that Tiger Woods' fame and Bill Gates' wealth mean that fate is friendlier to them that it is to you? If so, you're in for a major surprise, Capricorn. Events in 2008 will bring you big deliveries of the next best things to riches and fame. You'll get more proof than you've had in a long time that God and fate adore you.
Do you ever wonder if God loves Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton more than he loves you, as seemingly evidenced by those celebrities' charmed lives? Do you suspect that Tiger Woods' fame and Bill Gates' wealth mean that fate is friendlier to them that it is to you? If so, you're in for a major surprise, Capricorn. Events in 2008 will bring you big deliveries of the next best things to riches and fame. You'll get more proof than you've had in a long time that God and fate adore you.
Wu-Tang’s GZA Says ‘No’ to Pot
Wu-Tang’s GZA Says ‘No’ to Pot
Discovers he’s just lazy.
The Wu-Tang Clan revealed a darker, more mature sound on their new album, 8 Diagrams, and it’s not the only way the Staten Island rappers have grown up. GZA, the group’s oldest member at 41, has given up pot. “I’m done with that,” he says. It’s part of an effort to become more productive; GZA hasn’t produced a solid solo effort since 1995’s Liquid Swords. “I could have done so much more in the past,” he says. “I’d get up, roll a blunt at seven in the morning. If I played chess online, I wanted a blunt. If I read a book, I would smoke a blunt, and then I’m reading the same page like five times.” He stopped smoking two years ago, but then the Clan went on tour this summer, and he relapsed. “I don’t know one Clan member that doesn’t smoke weed,” he says. “In certain towns, people would just hand you weed.” He quit again when he realized his car smelled; now he makes guests smoke before they ride with him. As for increased productivity, he’s had another realization. “I’m just really, really laid-back-slash-lazy,” he says. “Last minute with everything. And now I can’t blame the weed.”
Discovers he’s just lazy.
The Wu-Tang Clan revealed a darker, more mature sound on their new album, 8 Diagrams, and it’s not the only way the Staten Island rappers have grown up. GZA, the group’s oldest member at 41, has given up pot. “I’m done with that,” he says. It’s part of an effort to become more productive; GZA hasn’t produced a solid solo effort since 1995’s Liquid Swords. “I could have done so much more in the past,” he says. “I’d get up, roll a blunt at seven in the morning. If I played chess online, I wanted a blunt. If I read a book, I would smoke a blunt, and then I’m reading the same page like five times.” He stopped smoking two years ago, but then the Clan went on tour this summer, and he relapsed. “I don’t know one Clan member that doesn’t smoke weed,” he says. “In certain towns, people would just hand you weed.” He quit again when he realized his car smelled; now he makes guests smoke before they ride with him. As for increased productivity, he’s had another realization. “I’m just really, really laid-back-slash-lazy,” he says. “Last minute with everything. And now I can’t blame the weed.”
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