So… this is what I think.

 

“They Say” that the French are small minded xenophobes who hate those who don’t speak French, that they are stingy and ungrateful and altogether despicable.

Scene I.  It is 1977 and my wife and I are in Paris on a vacation. We are in a Metro station trying to figure out the ticket vending machine and we are failing badly. Next to us is an elderly Frenchwoman, a grandmotherly type in a shapeless dress, who has no such problems. Hesitantly, I approach her, a French banknote in hand and, in my broken French, explain my problem. She responds in rapid fire French which of course I don’t understand. Shaking her head, she reaches into her copious handbag, pulls out some coins and feeds them into the vending machine. It spits out two tickets which she hands over to me. I am grateful and extend the banknote to her in payment. At least I try to. She waves me away, as if offended, and scurries away. I follow her trying to get her take the money but she is adamant. Mind you this is not a rich woman. From her appearance, she appears to be an old age pensioner. Yet, she helps out a stranger with her hard earned money. Forty years later, I am still humbled by her gesture.

“They say” that New Yorkers are the worst. That they are rude, obnoxious and heartless with no time for anyone but themselves.

Scene 2. A packed E train during the morning rush hour. People are packed in like sardines. Suddenly, a childish voice pipes up. “Mommy, I HAVE to go.” It is a five year old boy, his face scrunched up in discomfort. His mother shushes him, saying “One moment.” She pulls out a half full bottle of water, quickly gulps it down. She unzips his pants and holds the bottle while he does his business shielding him from the public gaze. Not that she needs to. The people next to them look away and give them privacy. The child finishes his business, the mother zips him up and caps the bottle. Another passenger hands her a tissue to wipe her hands and yet another gives her a plastic bag to put the bottle in. All this without a word being exchanged except for murmured “Thank you’s” and “You’re Welcome.”

What did I tell you about New Yorkers…

“They say” that the poor are lazy bums who prefer to walk the streets rather than do an honest day’s work. That most of them are alcoholics or drug addicts in search of their next fix, their next drink.

Scene 3. (The Final Scene). Circa 1982. Late evening. A woman in a NYC apartment receives a phone call. A male voice she does not recognize asks, “Is this JoAnne?” Hesitantly, she replies,“ Yes. Who is this?” The man continues, “Listen. You simply have to make up with Bill.  If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. He truly loves you.” Mystified, and a little angry, she demands” Who IS this? Are you one of Bill’s friends? Did he put you up to this because he didn’t have the guts to call himself?” The man doesn’t answer the question but continues to plead Bill’s case saying she will never find anyone else so well suited to her, who loves her so much. By now, Joanne has had it. She snaps, “If you don’t tell me who you are … right now… I am going to hang up.” At this, the man comes clean. He is a homeless man who had been rooting through a dumpster looking for food when  he came across a bundle of love letters that Bill had written to Joanne and which she had thrown away when they broke up. What is remarkable is what this man says next. He says “ I would have called sooner but I didn’t have the money for the phone call.” Imagine that. This homeless man who didn’t know where his next meal was coming from was willing to spend his last dime to help a stranger.

So this is what I think …

Generalizations are wrong. People are individuals first and last. Fifteen year old Anne Frank wrote in her diary,” I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.”

Can we believe any different?

( The first story happened to my wife and me as described. The second is a recent one from the N.Y. Times; so is the third, dimly remembered from almost forty years ago.)

 

 

 

 

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Women, Men, and Cooking in Retirement

When it comes to the division of labor between married couples, the task of cooking almost always falls to the lot of the wife. With rare exceptions, it is she who is the better cook and, besides, ” it’s in her job description”. Men, when they do cook, only do so occasionally to provide much needed relief from the daily grind of planning and preparing meals. It is only summer barbecues that are their domain.

Retirement brings big changes. After 40 or more years of cooking daily meals, women are understandably tired, and bored.  Cooking for just two seems an unnecessary burden. So much easier to eat out. Many of the couples in our Active Adult community do just that, eating out almost every day. Not my wife and me. While we do eat out more often than we used to, we still eat at home (or at friend’s homes) 90% of the time. Eating out is great, but not on a regular basis. Nothing to beat home-cooked food.

It helps that we both like to cook. My wife is an excellent cook in many different cuisines and I am not bad though my repertoire is more limited and I have to have a recipe to refer to. Since I don’t cook as much, I’ve never developed the familiarity with dishes that women cooks or housewives do. I mostly cook Chinese, Thai and other Asian dishes and always like to try out different things. In the kitchen nowadays , my wife and I have become an effective team. I do the  prepping -washing, paring, cutting and chopping; she does all the cooking. In other words, I am the garde manger, she is the chef. It works out well though there are still some problems.

The biggest is cooking for just two people. We get around that by cooking for four and freezing the leftovers for another meal. However, when it comes to cooking Chinese or Thai food, that is not an option because the food has to be eaten piping hot and immediately; it just does not taste the same when reheated. Also, when one cooks in small quantities, the specialty ingredients are used up at a very slow rate  and remain in the pantry for ever. Sauces and bottled ingredients have to be refrigerated and that too is a problem now that we have only one refrigerator. There is just not enough space to save condiments and sauces that are used only rarely. Right now,I have a bottle of fish sauce and another of shrimp paste that I will have to junk because they are well past their use-by date.

Having friends over for dinner has its own set of problems. People have all sorts of restrictions on what they can eat and the list seems to grow longer and longer. It used to be that people were either vegetarians or non -vegetarians. Now there are sub-divisions in both categories.  I have non-vegetarian friends who will eat only chicken, others who eat only shrimp and fish. Furthermore, as people age, they develop allergies to certain foods and they also give up other foods voluntarily. Some vegetarian friends are allergic to green peppers and cabbage, others do not like yoghurt and still others have to stay away from cloves. It’s difficult to keep all this in mind when putting together a guest list. Consequently, we usually have potluck dinners to cope with this problem.

Because of all these obstacles I have not been cooking much myself.  In the last three months, I think I have cooked Chinese food perhaps four times. Not nearly enough. I find myself chafing at the bit to start up again. Once in a while, I want to be the chef, not the prep cook.  I think I’ve hit upon a plan to resolve the problem of cooking cuisines with specialty ingredients. One part of the plan is to cook those cuisines which do require few such ingredients. Greek and Turkish food comes readily to mind and, with spring around the corner, they are ideal for the season. The second part of my plan is to concentrate on one cuisine at a time so that I can use up the ingredients required for it in several dishes spread over a month. Less demand on storage space and no wastage.

This has an additional benefit.Recently, our go -to Japanese restaurant closed down without warning when the owners decided to return to Japan. The other neighborhood Japanese restaurant that we like is too expensive. How great would it be to cook Japanese at home ! Not sushi or sashimi, of course but dishes like oyako- donburi, pork tonkatsu, miso chicken thighs with a side of tiger salad ( scallions& cilantro salad with  ponzu dressing) or shoyu-ramen. I can hardly wait !

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Two Newspapers in One

Last November, we were in Henderson, Nevada for a wedding. We stayed with a close family friend and one of the pleasures each morning was reading the newspaper, an actual printed newspaper. I get the digital version of the New York Times at home and it is great but, as I realized in Henderson, there is something to be said for the “real” thing, something you can hold in your hands and turn the pages. I love the digitized version of the Times but it has its drawbacks. One of them: you very soon fall into the habit of skimming , reading only the highlights or the headlines. Very rarely do I bother to turn to the sections and read the lesser stories.

When I started reading the Las Vegas Review Journal, I found myself reverting to my earlier habits. I skimmed it from the first page to the last and found myself reading not just the news but the columns and the restaurant reviews and doing the crossword puzzle. Almost immediately, however, I found myself puzzled. The Review Journal is a conservative paper with a conservative platform but I found the inner pages to be decidedly liberal, often taking positions contradicting those on the front pages. Then, I noticed that the inside of the newspaper was titled The Las Vegas Sun. I checked with my host and found that what I was reading was actually two newspapers in one. Back in 2005, the Review Journal and the Sun signed a joint operating agreement and the Sun became a section of ( and an insert in) the Review Journal. The two continued to have independent staffs and operated their own websites.  In doing so, they both saved a bundle in operating and distribution costs and have managed to stay afloat even in these days of declining newspaper readership.

What I find amazing is that the two newspapers have managed to preserve their independence despite being joined at the hip. They had been battering each other for over 50 years and have continued to do so, often attacking each others positions on the issues of the day. Even after the Review Journal was bought by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the Sun has been able to maintain its independence thanks to the joint operating agreement. (It must be an ironclad one!) The Review Journal meanwhile has seen increasing interference from Adelson with several news-stories pertaining to the casino industry having been killed or changed on an almost daily basis.

For readers though, this unique two in one newspaper is a boon. The Sun would definitely not been able to survive on its own and even the Review Journal would have been under financial pressure. The other advantage is that readers get to know both sides of the issue, an important benefit for all but those at the far ends of the political spectrum. Readers like myself who are closer to the middle can pick and choose what they want to read and thus obtain a more balanced viewpoint on the issues. I just wish that it were possible for those who rely on TV for news. Fox News is so far apart from almost everyone else that viewers who watch it  are in a world of their own.

To get back to the Las Vegas newspapers: In addition to the contrasting viewpoints, it was great to see a daily bridge column, an advice column by Ann Landers and two different crossword puzzles. The one in the Review Journal was more difficult than the Sun but both were doable for one with my limited skills. Too bad I can’t have those with the Times but I do have two New York Times books of Sunday puzzles which will keep me occupied until the end of the year.

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Long Island Pains

Recently, on Netflix streaming, I watched three episodes of Royal Pains  which ran for 8 seasons on the USA Network. It’s the story of Frank Lawson M.D, a talented and well-respected physician whose career is cut short because of a moral decision… he leaves the bedside of a rich donor to operate on and save the life of another patient. The rich patient dies because of an unusual set of circumstances and Lawson is let go. In the Hamptons to recover from his setback, Lawson saves the life of a partygoer at one of the island’s McMansions and, before he knows it, becomes an on-call physician _a so-called concierge doctor _ to Long Island’s rich and famous. In some ways, the series seemed like Bay Watch: lots of nubile young girls in swim wear, parties , booze and attractive locales, many of them beaches.

I’ve lived in the New Jersey- New York area for almost fifty years but , in all that time, visited Long Island just half a dozen times. I went to Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s summer home, to Nets and Islanders games, to Jones Beach and for a wedding. Jones Beach was nice, but nothing in Long Island was so distinctive as to make the long trip worthwhile. So, I was largely ignorant about Long Island. Seen from New Jersey suburbia, it did not seem attractive. When I was working in NYC, I constantly heard  my Long Island colleagues complain about the difficulties of their commute. They were always complaining about the vagaries of the Long Island Rail road and the bottlenecks on the Long Island Expressway. If it wasn’t the traffic or the railroads, it was the weather they were moaning about. Storms seemed to linger over Long Island; if NYC got three inches of snow, Long Island got twice as much. Likewise, hurricanes saved their worst for Long Island. When I considered that in order to drive anywhere in the tristate area, Long Islanders had to first go through NYC, I wondered why they had chosen to live in L.I. Granted that summertime in  the Hamptons was wonderful, I still didn’t think it made up for all the long winters, the  long commutes and the high taxes.

I knew about the Hamptons, the favored playground of newly rich dot-com millionaires, but I had no idea about the lavishness of their palatial estates until I saw Royal Pains. The size and opulence of the houses shown in the TV series took my breath away. Some of the mansions rivalled those on Newport, R.I, only these were modern. In addition to umpteen bedrooms and bathrooms, they had Great Rooms with huge dance floors, tennis courts, helipads and extensive  gardens. And the lifestyle depicted consisted of nonstop partying with lots of drugs and booze and casual sex.

At one time, the optics of such a series might have made it worth watching. Thirty-five years ago, Baywatch was a hit. Now, however, the aimlessness of the lives that are depicted is a turnoff. Back in the eighties, this was still a middle-class society. Nowadays,  many are living from paycheck to paycheck and several are drifting into poverty and homelessness. In such times, the antics of the rich difficult to watch without a sense of outrage.

Royal pains has its moments and Mark Fuerstein is appealing in the role of Frank Lawson but I won’t be watching it any more.

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The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Sometimes, I read a news article that makes me wonder if we are all living in a madhouse and the inmates are running the show.

Two weeks ago, there was one such article about a group of graffiti artists being awarded $6.7 million when the building on which they had created their works was demolished by its owner. Let me back up a little…

In the mid-nineties, building owner Gerard Wolkoff allowed a non-profit group called Phun Phactory to paint over the outside walls of his Long Island City warehouse. The move appears to have been purely altruistic, its purpose being to keep graffiti artists out of trouble for defacing private property. For a while, Wolkoff even allowed these artists to live and work cheaply in the building. In the following decades, as graffiti artists used the walls for their work, the building became a mecca for tourists and others who wanted to view the graffiti. About 10 years ago, Wolkoff decided to tear down the building to make way for high rise luxury towers and the case wound up in court; the artists did not want their works destroyed with the demolition of the building. They claimed that the works were protected under the VisualArtists Rights Act. In 2013, while the case was still in court, Wolkoff had the walls whitewashed overnight; the buildings were demolished 10 months later and construction of the high rise towers begun.

In November 2017, a jury found in favor of the artists and two weeks ago, the judge awarded them the maximum damages possible: $ 6.7 million. I won’t go into the details of his argument in doing so but I’m appalled by the decision. I don’t care for property developers , in general, but I feel Wolkoff was hard done by. For twenty years he allowed these ” artists” the use of his buildings as a canvas ; yet, they then turned around and sued him when he wanted to demolish them. The buildings were his property and he had a perfect right to do so. That fact should have taken precedence over everything else including the artistic value of the graffiti ” art”.

How could anyone put a value on this graffiti? How was the figure of $6.7 million  arrived at in assessing damages? The artists whose work it was would never have realized a red cent for their works since they could never sell them. Why then should they have been awarded so much? If , indeed, the judge was bound by the letter of the law that declared the graffiti was a protected work of art, he could have found for the plaintiffs and awarded them the token sum of $1.

In my opinion, graffiti is a visual crime. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of 5Pointz and, when considered in its totality, those walls were an eyesore. Graffiti , by its very nature, is temporary , always under threat of being painted over either by the building owner or by other graffiti artists. What happened to 5Pointz was bound to happen one day, and did.

One other consequence of this trial and decision: In the future, no other building owner will allow the walls of his property to be sprayed over in the name of art. Good.

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Sleep Patterns

I was reading an interesting excerpt from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker PhD about how our sleep patterns are the key to a much longer life. According to him, we are not sleeping the way our distant ancestors  did, the way Nature intended us to.

Walker states that in olden times, in hunter-gatherer societies, people enjoyed a biphasic sleep pattern, seven or eight hours in bed at night resulting in about seven hours of sleep , along with a 30-60 minute nap in the afternoon. Furthermore, the nightly slumbers usually began 2-3 hours after dusk, around 9pm and lasted until dawn. No doubt, this was because those early cultures did not have the benefit of electric light and even firelight represented a drain on scarce resources.

Nowadays, in the post industrial age, we have been forced into a mono-phasic sleep pattern in which we sleep  for less than seven hours a night. Typically, this begins late at night though we still wake up quite early. And ,of course, modern office hours don’t permit the taking of an afternoon nap.

In support of his argument, that this enforced monophasic pattern is harmful to health, Walker points to a study of people who had to switch from a biphasic to a monophasic sleep pattern. Previously, they had office hours that incorporated an afternoon siesta but  were then forced to fall in line with the rest of the world and work regular 9 to 5 shifts. This study showed that over 6 years, these people suffered a 37% increased risk of death due to heart disease. Another statistic: People on the Greek island of Ikaria were four times as likely  to reach the age of ninety as Americans did.

When I began to read this excerpt, I did so with an open mind, but the more I read the more my doubts began to mount. Firstly, even if a biphasic sleep pattern is ” natural”, most of us never enjoyed it once we started our working lives. So how could we feel deprived of something we never had? Just as some factory workers, medical staff and others  get used to working the night shift, is it not likely that a monophasic pattern is becomes the new standard for us? In any case, what choice do we have? There is no way we will be able to shift back to a biphasic pattern. Even nations that enjoyed a siesta are switching to a 9 to 5 schedule.

As for those people in Ikaria who have a four times greater chance of living to the age of ninety, can this be attributed solely to their biphasic sleep pattern? These people are mostly farmers or shepherds; they work hard, live in an unpolluted environment,  eat a healthy Mediterranean diet and have a less stressful lifestyle. Is it not likely that these factors all contribute to their longevity?

I think so.

I also think that , as long as one gets a minimum of seven hours of sleep daily, it doesn’t matter if it occurs all at once or in two or more installments. When the mind and body need rest, the person craves sleep. As long as that need is satisfied, you are fine. I find that, with  most of my friends who are retired, an afternoon nap is an imperative, partly because they tire more easily and partly because they no longer get seven hours uninterrupted sleep at night. One of my friends who is in his eighties wrote me to say that the day’s activities are now accomplished ” between naps”.

So… never mind about terms like monophasic or biphasic.  Just listen to your body and all will be well.

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No Vegetables For You ?

I was in the checkout lane at the local supermarket and the cashier was ringing up my purchases when she hit a snag. One item had her stymied . She held it up and asked the girl at the next lane,” Do you know what this is?” The other girl knew the answer.

“THIS” was a cauliflower.

This was many years ago. It would not happen today, mostly because every item has a bar code that can be scanned. Cashiers don’t need to know what the items they are checking out are. Otherwise … who knows?

At the time this incident happened, I remember being astounded. How could she not know what a cauliflower was? Then I realized it was not surprising when you consider how few vegetables most Americans eat. Even today, the American diet is heavily meat-centric. When I’ve been invited to dinner at the homes of my friends, the meal has consisted of a salad followed by roast chicken or steak accompanied by potatoes( boiled, mashed or French Fries) and a vegetable.  “Vegetable” usually means carrots, green beans or green peas. This I believe is the standard fare in most American homes. BTW, this comment does not apply to families living in the big metropolitan centers and to first generation immigrants ( particularly Asians) who still eat the cuisine of their native countries. I know this is true when I look at the laden shopping carts of fellow shoppers in the supermarket: Meat, frozen entrees and pizzas, pasta, tomato products, very few vegetables, bags of chopped salad, cereals, eggs, desserts and soda. Though, nowadays the soda has been replaced by bottled water. When I took my friend to an Indian supermarket he was amazed at the number of vegetables on offer, many of which he had never seen and did not know the names of.

Why is this so? Why is the American diet so meat oriented? I don’t know the answer but I have observed this fascination with meat in other countries too. When we were in the Dominican Republic, some years ago, I went to a local restaurant to see what the local food was like. There on a steam table were mostly meat dishes, the only difference with high end hotels being that they were stews and casseroles made with inferior cuts of meat, what we would call ” organ meats” or ” offal”. Vegetables( except for potatoes, onions, tomatoes and carrots) were conspicuously absent and I later found out that vegetables were in short supply and relatively expensive.

Even among the poor, there is a hankering to eat more meat. I remember reading about a riot in Egypt where the rioters marched on the luxury hotels in Cairo shouting slogans, among them ” We eat bread while they eat meat!”

Many of us seem to make a connection between meat eating and upward mobility. In Shanghai, we were dining in a half empty restaurant on some the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten. Next door was a jam packed McDonalds with a line of customers snaking out the door. Our guide remarked sadly that Chinese never had a problem with obesity until the American fast food chains came to China.” Now”, she said ” kids want to eat hamburgers and fried chicken all the time. They don’t want to eat Chinese food anymore”. The results were not difficult to see. Shortly thereafter, I was looking at the Guinness Book of World Records and noticed that the world record for heaviest child was held by a Chinese boy of 14 who weighed in excess of 350 pounds( I can’t remember the exact figure). I also saw the record for the maximum weight loss was also held by another Chinese boy.

And yet, all this meat eating is not good for the body. My wife had been to a talk by a nutritionist at the public library. After talking about the desirability of a balanced diet with plenty of fiber and lots of grains and vegetables, he mentioned how they aid digestion and bowel movements. Going to the toilet at least once a day was a must, he declare; otherwise retaining this waste in the body for longer periods could lead to illnesses such as colon cancer, besides being highly uncomfortable. One lady in the audience was amazed. ” But I go only once a week !” she said. I don’t know what else was said in response but I can’t help thinking she must have been perennially constipated. What a horrible condition to be in. If I miss going even for a day, I feel terrible and I know I’m difficult to live with. To be in such a condition for a week, week in and week out, boggles the mind. No wonder I see so many TV ads for extra strong laxatives and stool softeners.

I want to make it clear that I am not a vegetarian. I do eat meat, all kinds of meat ( beef, pork, chicken, fish), though in much smaller quantities. I do not eat it at every meal though I have some protein every day. When I eat meat, it is the supporting, rather than the main, component of the meal. While I occasionally will have a steak or roast chicken, most of the time I eat meat in the form of curries, casseroles, stews or chili. And , of course, plenty of vegetables, sprouted grains and legumes. To my mind, the Japanese and the Chinese have the ideal diets; small quantities of meat or fish in almost every dish and plenty of vegetables, often raw or par-cooked. Perhaps a strict vegetarian diet is best, as some diet gurus aver, but it is not for me. I like the taste of meat and to satisfy my  body’s protein needs entirely from vegetarian sources would be difficult and too much of an effort.

 

 

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Changing perceptions

While watching the smash hit  Netflix series The Crown, I was struck by how the Duke of Windsor has gone from being a hero to a shallow,  selfish dilettante and quite likely a Nazi sympathizer. Initially, he was admired by many of my parents’ generation for giving up the throne of England to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. That view has long since been discarded. Historians now feel that it was lucky for his country that he abdicated, paving the way for his younger brother to become King George VI.  By all accounts, the latter was a man of sterling character who overcame his insecurities and worked well with the wartime prime minister Winston Churchill to guide Britain through her darkest days. The Duke meanwhile was an embarrassment who was appointed Commissioner to the Bahamas to keep him out of the way and spent his later years as little more than a pitiful shell of a man who spent his days travelling and attending endless parties.

An even more striking example of changing perceptions is Herbert Hoover, the most derided American president of his time. His image is forever tarnished by his ineffectiveness during the Great Depression  which began in October 1929, just eight months after his inauguration. Hoover’s insistence on balancing the budget even at the cost of raising taxes sent the economy into a tailspin from which it never recovered until FDR succeeded him. And yet, there was much about Hoover that was laudable. His early years read like a Horatio Alger story. Orphaned at age 9, he was sent to live with an uncle who disregarded the young boy’s brightness.   He was sent to work as an office boy even  before he completed high school. At age 17, he passed an entrance exam that enabled him to attend Stanford University, then a free school. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in geology, he was unable to find an engineering job. He took a job loading ore carts at a gold mine in Nevada City  CA, working 10 hours a day, seven days a week for the miserable pittance of ten cents an hour. After several years of this dead end job, he was chosen as trouble shooter for a British mining company where he rose to become chief engineer. When World War I broke out he helped evacuate Americans stranded in Europe by the war and displayed remarkable efficiency in bringing home 120,000 of them home. His finest moments were after the war when he was chosen to head The Committee for Relief in Belgium. At the time, Belgium was in sad shape , its  farms destroyed, its factories shut and its food stocks depleted. The Belgians were in grave danger of starving but Hoover managed to supply them with 20,000 tons of food, every week for a period of 2-1/2 years – a feat which made him an international hero and earned him the title of the Great Humanitarian. However, a  recent book by Bill Bryson is not so laudatory. Bryson’s book says that Hoover missed no opportunity to publicize his humanitarian work and that others, such as Myron Herrick, the U.S ambassador to France worked just as tirelessly but never sought the spotlight. So how should Hoover be remembered … for his humanitarian feats or for his ineffective Presidency? There is no easy answer.

In bygone days, celebrities were usually protected from the results of their peccadilloes and their character flaws hidden from the public. JFK , for instance, was  a serial womanizer whose affairs were kept under wraps until long after his assassination. Journalists felt an obligation to do so out of respect for the President, the position not the man. In those days, there was too little information about public figures. Nowadays, there is too much. Every action is dissected, audio and video equipment intrudes on every moment, public or private. News is mostly opinion and it is difficult to know what the truth really is.

The British cricket writer , Peter Roebuck, tells in his autobiography of a chance encounter with a soldier.  At the time, Roebuck had been dealt with rather shabbily by the powers that be. The soldier approached, shook his hand, wished him well and said” The closer you get to men of substance, the more they seem like shadows.”

How true.

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The Reason We Amass Things?

The director Judd Apatow once bought a home gym. After using it three or four times, he stopped lifting weights and the gym fell into disuse. He didn’t get rid of it, however. It still sits in a corner of his office where it functions as a storage room cum clothes hanger. Apatow tells himself that it could be used one day. As he puts it “ … anything’s possible. All hoarding is hope. You think ” I can’t die because I have to watch that stack of DVDs! Makes you feel immortal, having too much stuff.”

Really? For a moment I thought that Apatow might have hit upon something. But , upon further consideration, my reaction is ” Nah!”

I have a friend who has 5,000 records and CDs. He is retired now and is busy cataloging his collection and , of course, listening to his favorite songs over and over again. Another friend is at once a bibliophile, a film buff  and a music lover. In his house he has a large loft, three walls of which have shelves containing his collection of books ( many of them autographed by the authors) and CDs and DVDs. He admitted to me that there is no way he could possibly read, listen or view his entire collection. Once in a while ,he may dip into this or that but his chief pleasure is in owning that collection and knowing that he can access it whenever he wants. I myself had a large collection of books ( particularly cookbooks) before I gave half of it away to an acquaintance. What remains is still sizeable and I have no illusions that I will read all those books again or cook one tenth, one-hundredth of those recipes. I like having those things around because of the pleasure of possession.

A good friend of mine put it perfectly. He said” I have boxes and boxes of stuff, most of which means something only to me. These things are not valuable but I will never get rid of them. One day, when I am gone, my son and daughter will go through the things in my garage , then call the junk man and have them hauled away. That’s OK but, as along as I’m around, I want them.”

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Passionate Sports Fans

Some years ago, when we were in Siena, Italy our guide told us about pro basketball as it is played in Italy. He described a match between Bologna and Siena played on the latter’s home court before 6,000 frenzied fans. Before spectators could enter the arena, they were searched for concealed weapons. Just before the game started, five busloads of Bolognese fans were escorted into the stadium by policemen in riot gear. They took their places in the visitors section – a virtual cage surrounded by metal bars. This was for their own protection as soon  became apparent. When the home team took the court, the visiting fans played drums and trumpets , then turned around as one, dropped their trousers and mooned the home fans. This resulted in an outpouring of rage as Sienese fans stormed the cage , throwing missiles, cursing and spitting through the bars of the cage. This set the tone for the rest of the proceedings which featured rude chants, constant drumming, taunting and frequent stoppages of play due to court invasions. When the visiting team won the game on a last second three pointer, there was a full scale riot during which the police were overwhelmed and dozens of fans wound up in hospital. I wish I could give you more details of the game but will not do so because I cannot do so without bursting into gales of laughter. It really was too funny though not to the participants. For them , these basketball games are deadly serious: a re-enactment of past struggles when city states were bitter enemies that fought constant wars over territory.

In comparison, American sports fans are well mannered and civilized. But, only in comparison. There are certain rivalries in American sports which generate the worst in people. One of them is that between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, two baseball teams many of whose fans hate each other with a passion. In the Bronx, there are certain bars which are for Yankee fans, others which cater to Red Sox fans. Woe betide the unwary fan who strays into the wrong bar. I remember reading about a fan wearing a Red Sox  journey who was walking home from a game at Yankee Stadium. As the fan passed a ” Yankee” bar, another fan came out and challenged the former to a fistfight. What blew my mind was that both fans- the Red Sox fan and the Yankee fan- were women ! Yes, women fans can be passionate too.

Too my mind, football and ice hockey attract the most aggressive fans because of the nature of the games and because more drinking goes on during these contests. My acquaintance Steve told me about a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Detroit Lions that he attended in Philadelphia. He was not a particular fan of either team but when a Lions receiver made a spectacular catch he applauded . At the time the Eagles were leading 38-9 and the game was not in doubt. However, an Eagles fan took umbrage and started directing obscene comments and threats at Steve. Steve took it quietly for some time but it finally got to be too much. He was there with his young son and did not want to give him the impression that he was a wimp. When the Eagles fan went too far, Steve got up and challenged him to a fight. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and the other guy backed down. This is not to criticize Eagles fans; Giants fans, Jets fans are just as bad.

There was a time when visiting fans clad in their team’s colors could sit anywhere in the stadium, in the midst of home fans. They would have no fears for their safety. Both sets of fans would watch the game without fear of violence. This is still mostly the case but increasingly I read of altercations between fans of opposing teams. This is a pity because I fear such people are missing out on the real beauty of the contest they are watching. They may call themselves sports fans but what they really are fans of a particular team, not of sport.

My friend Arnie used to support all the New York teams at a time when none of them was doing well. Towards the end of the basketball season, as soon as the Knicks were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, he would say ” OK. Game over. Time for hockey.” He would stop following basketball and switch to reading about hockey.A month later, the scenario would be repeated . ” Time for baseball”. And so on. It’s OK to root for a team but when you identify so closely with its successes and failures, you open yourself to disappointment.

 

 

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