Thursday, December 27, 2001
Opera - Puccini and the Bingle
These thoughts were prompted while watching Going My Way, the 1944 Christmas favorite that earned seven Oscars including those for Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. It has a scene where the Metropolitan Opera star Rise Stevens sings Carmen, and I was struck by the stiffness and woodenness of the sequence. No wonder the stalwarts are dying out. Younger people still think of the art form as stiff, formal and filled with false emotions, stout renors expressing undying love to even stouter sopranos
Opera certainly has come a long way since I spent hours in the standee line at Rudolf Bing’s old Met on Broadway and 38th Street in the 1950s. Think of Denyce Graves free-wheeling through the emotions of the gypsy girl, a dancer and nearly an acrobat, with an expressive face, body and voice. The experience can be more alive and charged up than any rock concert - except that the audience of elders does not jump up and shout quite that readily. But opera is getting that kind of charge-up, much to the dismay of traditionalists. Let’s face it, the art form is not sacred and must sell itself to today’s audience, used to movies and TV, not to speak of live stage, where the players have figures, faces and emotions appropriate to the scene, and mismatches do not succeed. And the scenery - lush and lively Franco Zefirelli designs bring ohs and ahs from the newcomers who want their $90 worth of presentation, while sparse modern designs do not attract. I am sorry, Robert Wilson’s Lohengrin of 1999 is inappropriate, although his designs might do for Philip Glass opera.
A recent issue of Opera News discussed the quest of opera impressarios for handsome and lithe singers. Purists cannot sneer at it if they want their beloved art form to survive, it will die if it has no under retirement age audience. And the singers recognize it, the last few years of Met finalists’ contests brought on younger and lithe figures on the stage, with movements.
This just by way of introduction for another subject, content. Up until recently opera fans, multi-lingual or not, had to rely on brief program notes for the content of the scene. Without details, the descriptions make the content insipid and banal. With the arrival of subtitles and supertitles, we have been given insights into the subtleties of the libretists’ and also comporers’ artfulness. Although sometimes distracting, the titles do enhance one’s appreciation. This is a pleasure, heretofore reserved for offline readers of librettos.
Take Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Puccini had a lively interest in America (Girl of the Golden West,xxx) and an understanding of the 1900 xxxWhen Lt Pinkerton rents the lovely house for a hundred years and marries the lovely geisha girl, both he and the cynical marriage broker understand that he has the right to break the contracts. He explains it to Sharples, the compassionate American consul, as the right of an enterprising and conquering eterpreneur, and that when the time comes, he will marry a pure US girl. In a sense that’s understandable, temporary arrangements apparently have been and continue to be the tradition in the East, not only for Americans but also for other emissaries of European and now Japanese capital markets. The girl was a geisha, presumed to have flexible standards. Unfortunately XX-San 16 years ol, saw the contract as one forever. When Pinkerton came back with a new wife, found that he had a son and was mostly interested in taking him away from San, the faithful xx killed herself. Pinkerton’s regrets did come across as perfunctory, and his wifes main interest, in the face of San’s deep anguish, was portrayed as selfish. For me, these were new insights in the characterization of the personages, pointing out the realism of their portrayal.
On the other hand, the villain in Verdis Traviata, Giorgio Germont, becomes more human as the dialogue progresses. Father of the courtesan’s lover Alfredo, he barges into their country hideaway, accusing the demi-mondaine of ruining his family, although he is instantly inpressed by the Violetta’s dignity, more so when he finds that she is selling her treasures to pay for their retreat. Nevertheless, he takes off his coat, practically rolls up his sleeves, and relentlessly barrages the woman with his demands to cease the relationship so that his daughter can get married.. The noble Violetta not only acquiesces but plays along, letting Alfredo believe that she has another lover. Mean Giorgio not only accepts her sacrifice but conceals the true reason of her departure. But his better feelings are coming forward, little by little, and when Alfredo demeans Violetta in public, he rebukes his son, still not revealing the reason for Violetta’s behavior. Obviously, a reconciliation still is to be avoided at all costs. By Act Three, though, he has revealed all to his son, by mail, and his emotions come true as he
Opera certainly has come a long way since I spent hours in the standee line at Rudolf Bing’s old Met on Broadway and 38th Street in the 1950s. Think of Denyce Graves free-wheeling through the emotions of the gypsy girl, a dancer and nearly an acrobat, with an expressive face, body and voice. The experience can be more alive and charged up than any rock concert - except that the audience of elders does not jump up and shout quite that readily. But opera is getting that kind of charge-up, much to the dismay of traditionalists. Let’s face it, the art form is not sacred and must sell itself to today’s audience, used to movies and TV, not to speak of live stage, where the players have figures, faces and emotions appropriate to the scene, and mismatches do not succeed. And the scenery - lush and lively Franco Zefirelli designs bring ohs and ahs from the newcomers who want their $90 worth of presentation, while sparse modern designs do not attract. I am sorry, Robert Wilson’s Lohengrin of 1999 is inappropriate, although his designs might do for Philip Glass opera.
A recent issue of Opera News discussed the quest of opera impressarios for handsome and lithe singers. Purists cannot sneer at it if they want their beloved art form to survive, it will die if it has no under retirement age audience. And the singers recognize it, the last few years of Met finalists’ contests brought on younger and lithe figures on the stage, with movements.
This just by way of introduction for another subject, content. Up until recently opera fans, multi-lingual or not, had to rely on brief program notes for the content of the scene. Without details, the descriptions make the content insipid and banal. With the arrival of subtitles and supertitles, we have been given insights into the subtleties of the libretists’ and also comporers’ artfulness. Although sometimes distracting, the titles do enhance one’s appreciation. This is a pleasure, heretofore reserved for offline readers of librettos.
Take Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Puccini had a lively interest in America (Girl of the Golden West,xxx) and an understanding of the 1900 xxxWhen Lt Pinkerton rents the lovely house for a hundred years and marries the lovely geisha girl, both he and the cynical marriage broker understand that he has the right to break the contracts. He explains it to Sharples, the compassionate American consul, as the right of an enterprising and conquering eterpreneur, and that when the time comes, he will marry a pure US girl. In a sense that’s understandable, temporary arrangements apparently have been and continue to be the tradition in the East, not only for Americans but also for other emissaries of European and now Japanese capital markets. The girl was a geisha, presumed to have flexible standards. Unfortunately XX-San 16 years ol, saw the contract as one forever. When Pinkerton came back with a new wife, found that he had a son and was mostly interested in taking him away from San, the faithful xx killed herself. Pinkerton’s regrets did come across as perfunctory, and his wifes main interest, in the face of San’s deep anguish, was portrayed as selfish. For me, these were new insights in the characterization of the personages, pointing out the realism of their portrayal.
On the other hand, the villain in Verdis Traviata, Giorgio Germont, becomes more human as the dialogue progresses. Father of the courtesan’s lover Alfredo, he barges into their country hideaway, accusing the demi-mondaine of ruining his family, although he is instantly inpressed by the Violetta’s dignity, more so when he finds that she is selling her treasures to pay for their retreat. Nevertheless, he takes off his coat, practically rolls up his sleeves, and relentlessly barrages the woman with his demands to cease the relationship so that his daughter can get married.. The noble Violetta not only acquiesces but plays along, letting Alfredo believe that she has another lover. Mean Giorgio not only accepts her sacrifice but conceals the true reason of her departure. But his better feelings are coming forward, little by little, and when Alfredo demeans Violetta in public, he rebukes his son, still not revealing the reason for Violetta’s behavior. Obviously, a reconciliation still is to be avoided at all costs. By Act Three, though, he has revealed all to his son, by mail, and his emotions come true as he
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Holiday shopping in Melbourne, Australia
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
At the beginning of our trip Down Under I was advised that it would be much fun - Australians are very friendly, New Zealanders are even friendlier, and Fijians will be the friendliest. Our expreience has been about equal with the three, except that the Fikians do greet everyone encountered with their universal multipurpose greeting, "Bula," like a "Shalom."
Australians are the most informal in personal relations, although the saw that "Australians get dressed three times, to get married, to get buried and to go to the races" is not entirely true. Business people in the large cities are well-dressed and even their business informals are well-pressed and clean. But it is really true about the races. We happened to be in Melbourne on the day of the horse race called " Melbourne Cup," first Tuesday in November, when the state of Victoria shuts down completely and the rest of Aaustralia partially, to ocelebrate the event.
Our hotel breakfast room the day before had been filled with what I thought of as rugby players, men of all ages, strong guys wearing shorts despite the rainy weather, shouting imprecations at each other. Next morning, entering the lobby, I was surprised to see it chuck-a-block with the same men, now in their best suits with classic neckties, their ladies wearing broad-brimmed hats and matching pastel dresses, crowded around tables filled with huge trays of delicacies. There were oysters on the half-shell from Tasmania, huge prawns, herring from the Indian Ocean, and pastries beyond belief.
Around the life size staue of a previous winner, three husky men in nearly white wigs and khaki uniforms of a crocodile farm were bantering with all passing women, young and old, while nearby a tall blond-bewigged dandy in a beautifully cut pink suit, showing a heavy five-o’clock shadow, entertained a bevy of gorgeous models. Crossdressing, to give the needle to the Royal Ascott-loving Pommies (Brits) with their proper ways, is part of the Cup spirit. . I never made it to the breakfast, a dozen oysters topped off with a few fruit tarts, all laced with endless beakers of decent chardonnay and champagne will hold the appetite of the biggest trencherman.
While the afficionadoes in their scant finery were getting chilled at the race track, our tour hit the road, to visit a seaside colony of "fairy penguins,". on Phillips Island, 80 miles away. We had formed a pool, and my draw was the favorite, which started last and came in last. Nevertheless, my dearest had the place horse, and we celebrated the winnings toasting Melbourne with glasses of superb shiraz, the best tipple "roo country" has to offer.
Fairy or "little penguins" are smaller than seagulls, and the males cavort all day in the surf, catching fish. They come out of the ocean at nightfall, in tidy groups by the dozen or the hundred, climbing up the dunes and looking forlorn in the grass until they figure out how to reach their hollow (the mates help, by calling). There they regurgitate their catch, feeding the family. The hillside resounds with happy clucking and cooing. Tourists watch this from arena seats and boardwalks. No cameras are permitted, to prevent disorienting the small creatures even further.
Unlike Sydney, Melbourne was founder by immigrants rather than convicts, and the architecture shows it. Delicate lacy balconeed two-story houses still exist in profusion in the outer areas of this city of 1.5 m inhabitants- while the city, in a rush of modernization started in the 1950s and intensified by the rush for the 1966 Summer Olympics, has become a skyscraper metropolis. American accounting firms - Deloitte, Ernst, KPMG, PWC- and insurers -French AXA- sport their acronyms on tall buildings in Melbourne, alongside native banking giants (they also abound in Sydney and Auckland). The result is an incongruous mixture, and melbournians are heard regeretting their error of not protecting the old treasures. Now preservationists have succeeded, and many a fine colonial structure and courthouse can be viewed in or near the 64-block central square, navigable by trolley cars that take you around it free of charge. There you can buy gifts for both this and the succeeding Christmasses at the immense Victoria Market, with its hundreds of wagon traders offreing a profusion of both souvenirs ans necessities at negotiable proices. It staggers the imagination ( make sure you come on Sunday, on other days it offers mainly food).
Melbourne is also a city of parks - one-fifth of the space was reserved for them, and the major thoroughfares have two tree-filled medians, since they were constructed to the width of 99 feet, enough for an ox-cart to make a u-turn.
The suburbs on the ocean, with beaches, were undesirable just decades ago - St. Kilda’s was full of bawdy houses and bars, until the dinks (double income, no kids) discovered it. Another suburb, Williamsport, has grown in value . A high school classmate of mine, penniless post-WWII immigrant, built a house on a then worthless property that has now grown to 30 times its cost.. Although patriotic, he is crook on Australians (a crook car, for instance, is not broken but is does not run well), and considers them shiftless, without ambition ("get a job, make a little money, and then, happy days!"). The anti-immigrant policy adopted by the conservative Coalition Prime Minister John Howard, as exhibited in his refusal to accept the boatload of stranded Mideastern refugees has my friend incensed - the emigrees have built Australia to what it is today, he feels. Our stay n Australia overlapped the general election period, when the events of 9/11 legitimized this refusal to accept immigrants before their papers are validated, and gained it more popular acceptance, to the point that the opposition Labor candidate Jay Beasley adopted a similar stance. Howard won.
Melbourne has gorgeous Royal Botanical Gardens with a lake full of lovable ducks and swans eager for the visitor’s bread, popular on Sundays. Downtown, across the muddy Yarra River from the monumental Flinders Street railroad station, is the Southgate, a center of cafes, art galleries and places to sit and enjoy. the view and people. Flinders Street crosses the big shopping street, Swanston, and, going east, becomes Wellington Parade, with the Treasury and huge Fitzroy Gardens on one side and the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and the Tennis Stadium on the other. The city owes its initial prosperity to the iBllarat gold strikes of 1851, oand the stadiums to the 1956 Summer Olympics.
Melbourne is the birthplace of the Aussie rules football, with 12 of the league’s teams residing in the vicinity. This is a sport of 18 players to the side, on a field much larger that the US football, and it combines kicking, carrying and throwing of the ball with tackling of players (no protection) Injuries are frequent. Aussies are sports oriented to an extreme, and, besides soccer, basketball and cricket (the Test Matches were about to begin), go wild over rugby, both union and league style (don’t ask me what is the differrence, I just might tell you).
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish all our readers a Happy Holiday Season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Joyous Qanzaa
.
At the beginning of our trip Down Under I was advised that it would be much fun - Australians are very friendly, New Zealanders are even friendlier, and Fijians will be the friendliest. Our expreience has been about equal with the three, except that the Fikians do greet everyone encountered with their universal multipurpose greeting, "Bula," like a "Shalom."
Australians are the most informal in personal relations, although the saw that "Australians get dressed three times, to get married, to get buried and to go to the races" is not entirely true. Business people in the large cities are well-dressed and even their business informals are well-pressed and clean. But it is really true about the races. We happened to be in Melbourne on the day of the horse race called " Melbourne Cup," first Tuesday in November, when the state of Victoria shuts down completely and the rest of Aaustralia partially, to ocelebrate the event.
Our hotel breakfast room the day before had been filled with what I thought of as rugby players, men of all ages, strong guys wearing shorts despite the rainy weather, shouting imprecations at each other. Next morning, entering the lobby, I was surprised to see it chuck-a-block with the same men, now in their best suits with classic neckties, their ladies wearing broad-brimmed hats and matching pastel dresses, crowded around tables filled with huge trays of delicacies. There were oysters on the half-shell from Tasmania, huge prawns, herring from the Indian Ocean, and pastries beyond belief.
Around the life size staue of a previous winner, three husky men in nearly white wigs and khaki uniforms of a crocodile farm were bantering with all passing women, young and old, while nearby a tall blond-bewigged dandy in a beautifully cut pink suit, showing a heavy five-o’clock shadow, entertained a bevy of gorgeous models. Crossdressing, to give the needle to the Royal Ascott-loving Pommies (Brits) with their proper ways, is part of the Cup spirit. . I never made it to the breakfast, a dozen oysters topped off with a few fruit tarts, all laced with endless beakers of decent chardonnay and champagne will hold the appetite of the biggest trencherman.
While the afficionadoes in their scant finery were getting chilled at the race track, our tour hit the road, to visit a seaside colony of "fairy penguins,". on Phillips Island, 80 miles away. We had formed a pool, and my draw was the favorite, which started last and came in last. Nevertheless, my dearest had the place horse, and we celebrated the winnings toasting Melbourne with glasses of superb shiraz, the best tipple "roo country" has to offer.
Fairy or "little penguins" are smaller than seagulls, and the males cavort all day in the surf, catching fish. They come out of the ocean at nightfall, in tidy groups by the dozen or the hundred, climbing up the dunes and looking forlorn in the grass until they figure out how to reach their hollow (the mates help, by calling). There they regurgitate their catch, feeding the family. The hillside resounds with happy clucking and cooing. Tourists watch this from arena seats and boardwalks. No cameras are permitted, to prevent disorienting the small creatures even further.
Unlike Sydney, Melbourne was founder by immigrants rather than convicts, and the architecture shows it. Delicate lacy balconeed two-story houses still exist in profusion in the outer areas of this city of 1.5 m inhabitants- while the city, in a rush of modernization started in the 1950s and intensified by the rush for the 1966 Summer Olympics, has become a skyscraper metropolis. American accounting firms - Deloitte, Ernst, KPMG, PWC- and insurers -French AXA- sport their acronyms on tall buildings in Melbourne, alongside native banking giants (they also abound in Sydney and Auckland). The result is an incongruous mixture, and melbournians are heard regeretting their error of not protecting the old treasures. Now preservationists have succeeded, and many a fine colonial structure and courthouse can be viewed in or near the 64-block central square, navigable by trolley cars that take you around it free of charge. There you can buy gifts for both this and the succeeding Christmasses at the immense Victoria Market, with its hundreds of wagon traders offreing a profusion of both souvenirs ans necessities at negotiable proices. It staggers the imagination ( make sure you come on Sunday, on other days it offers mainly food).
Melbourne is also a city of parks - one-fifth of the space was reserved for them, and the major thoroughfares have two tree-filled medians, since they were constructed to the width of 99 feet, enough for an ox-cart to make a u-turn.
The suburbs on the ocean, with beaches, were undesirable just decades ago - St. Kilda’s was full of bawdy houses and bars, until the dinks (double income, no kids) discovered it. Another suburb, Williamsport, has grown in value . A high school classmate of mine, penniless post-WWII immigrant, built a house on a then worthless property that has now grown to 30 times its cost.. Although patriotic, he is crook on Australians (a crook car, for instance, is not broken but is does not run well), and considers them shiftless, without ambition ("get a job, make a little money, and then, happy days!"). The anti-immigrant policy adopted by the conservative Coalition Prime Minister John Howard, as exhibited in his refusal to accept the boatload of stranded Mideastern refugees has my friend incensed - the emigrees have built Australia to what it is today, he feels. Our stay n Australia overlapped the general election period, when the events of 9/11 legitimized this refusal to accept immigrants before their papers are validated, and gained it more popular acceptance, to the point that the opposition Labor candidate Jay Beasley adopted a similar stance. Howard won.
Melbourne has gorgeous Royal Botanical Gardens with a lake full of lovable ducks and swans eager for the visitor’s bread, popular on Sundays. Downtown, across the muddy Yarra River from the monumental Flinders Street railroad station, is the Southgate, a center of cafes, art galleries and places to sit and enjoy. the view and people. Flinders Street crosses the big shopping street, Swanston, and, going east, becomes Wellington Parade, with the Treasury and huge Fitzroy Gardens on one side and the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and the Tennis Stadium on the other. The city owes its initial prosperity to the iBllarat gold strikes of 1851, oand the stadiums to the 1956 Summer Olympics.
Melbourne is the birthplace of the Aussie rules football, with 12 of the league’s teams residing in the vicinity. This is a sport of 18 players to the side, on a field much larger that the US football, and it combines kicking, carrying and throwing of the ball with tackling of players (no protection) Injuries are frequent. Aussies are sports oriented to an extreme, and, besides soccer, basketball and cricket (the Test Matches were about to begin), go wild over rugby, both union and league style (don’t ask me what is the differrence, I just might tell you).
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish all our readers a Happy Holiday Season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Joyous Qanzaa
.
Tuesday, December 18, 2001
East End Temple preserves neglected historic building
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The interesting building at 17th Street west of 2nd Avenue (next to the Rutherford Place apartments, the former Lying-in Hospital, then Manhattan General, then Beth Israel drug trestment center), that has been a bit of an eyesore, is going to be restored to its former glory, as the new home of the East End Temple.
It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt (1828-95), the flamboyant architect of chateaux for the Vanderbilts (the 660 5th Avenue "Hunting Lodge," the Breakers and Marble House in Newport, the garden-rich Biltmore in Asheville), conservationist Gifford Pinchot and other American grandees. Having brought Beaux-Arts style to New York in 1855, Hunt was also commissioned to design public structures - the base of the Statue of Liberty, the facade of the Metropolitan Museum, the 1873 Tribune skyscraper, not to speak of the extention of the U.S. Capitol and the 1893 Columbian World Exhibition in Chicago. Hunt is celebrated in a memorial in Central Park at East 70th St.
The residence at 245 East 17th Street was built in 1883 for the Harvard-educated lawyer Sidney Webster (1828-1910), private secretary of President Franklin Pierce (Democrat, 1853-57, failed to reconcile the North and South over the admission of Kansas as a slavery state). Webster met Governor Hamilton Fish while the latter was a U.S. Senator (1851-57; NYS Governor 1849-50; Secretary of State under Grant, 1869-77), and married his daughter Sarah in 1860. She bought the property from her father. Webster practiced law in N. Y., was a director of the Illinois Central RR, and wrote Two Treaties of Paris and the Supreme Court (1901), useful as research material for Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. His other important local connection was the ownership of Pen-Craig, a Newport cottage purchased from the George Frederick Jones family, whose daughter Edith spent many months of her childhood and young adulthood, as Mrs Henry Wharton, on the premises.
In the progress of time the building changed, eventually turning into a Beth Israel clinic. The interior was divided into examination rooms and cubicles, preserving only the magnificent front room with its wooden fireplace and wooden ribs across the ceiling. Nevertheless, the Hunt house was one of the prides of the Stuyvesant Square Historic District, when it was established in 1975.
The East End Temple, occupant of a small building and other adjacent valuable underused land on 23rd and 2nd Ave, had a dream, since the 1980s. They hoped to trade their valuable corner real estate to an apartment building developer, reserving for themselves some much improved premises on three floors. When that did not materialize- the 1987 recession intervened, the relationships changed – in 1998 they sold the property to developer Don Zucker, expecting to use $2.9 million of the proceeds to buy a larger mid-block property Meanwhile, their long- time architectural consultant Harry Kendall fitted them up with a temporary temple in a former restaurant at 403 1st Ave.
A few months ago the dreams came to a fruition - the 17th Street property surfaced on the synagogue=s radar screen. The building was researched and found appropriate, it was bought, the plans were presented to Community Board #6 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, all with great urgency, and the synagogue part of the restoration is hoped to be completed by August 2002.
How is that all possible, in the days of environmental impact staements and multi-level reviews and approvals? Well, with good plans that respect original design and good intentions, everybody cooperates. The plan was driven by the the president of the synagogue, Helene Spring, the Board of Trustees and its Chairman, Richard Muskat, and the Rabbi, David S. Adelson.
What, then, is the plan? The building has five stories, of which the ground floor and the next level will be combined, to form a balconied sanctuary, with seating for the 200 families. A lower level, of equal size, will be the social room.The beautiful front parlor, the Library, will be preserved. Directly behind it the present staircase and the elevator will be removed, and a new elevator installed . The sanctuary will fit in the space behind, nearly to the end of the 90-plus foot depth of the building (an L- space in the back will be squared off). The two upstairs floors will serve as offices and Hebrew School.
The landmarked front elevation may be described as French Renaissance Revival, although Hunt was inventive in his use of designs. The building has interesting step-wise dormers. The architect, in researching the design, was able to locate original photographs showing small Ionic columns between the roof structures, lost in the past years as the building was maintained and adapted for use by various owners. They are expected to be restored.
The substoop basement entrance door looks original, with its projecting Abrownstone@ mouldings. Yet, the photographs show that Hunt=s designed door was stylistically matched to the adjacent windows. It is expected to be replaced with a a more delicate double-door, matching the present opening. The doors were never aligned, since Hunt=s design featured a lower than usual stoop, and a basement entrance did not fit under it.
The building=s base line has also suffered.. In the passage of time, the original textured rusticated stone pattern was smoothed out. It will come back, as will the outside fence, which originally was a low meandering shape.
Harry Kendall, the architect, is a preservation expert. Since graduation, in 1985, he has taught in the Department of Historic Preservation of Columbia=s School of Architecture. Among his recent accomplishments, he has combined two historic Tribeca warehouses into the Fisher Mills condo building, restoring the exteriors and adding three floors. The Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association and some neighbors (Jack Taylor, Meryl Stoller and Eric Petterson) have been at the meetings and have expressed their approval of the rehabilitation of the neighborhood’s treasure.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V offer their fondest Holiday Greetings to our neighbors. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and a Good Kwnzaa!
The interesting building at 17th Street west of 2nd Avenue (next to the Rutherford Place apartments, the former Lying-in Hospital, then Manhattan General, then Beth Israel drug trestment center), that has been a bit of an eyesore, is going to be restored to its former glory, as the new home of the East End Temple.
It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt (1828-95), the flamboyant architect of chateaux for the Vanderbilts (the 660 5th Avenue "Hunting Lodge," the Breakers and Marble House in Newport, the garden-rich Biltmore in Asheville), conservationist Gifford Pinchot and other American grandees. Having brought Beaux-Arts style to New York in 1855, Hunt was also commissioned to design public structures - the base of the Statue of Liberty, the facade of the Metropolitan Museum, the 1873 Tribune skyscraper, not to speak of the extention of the U.S. Capitol and the 1893 Columbian World Exhibition in Chicago. Hunt is celebrated in a memorial in Central Park at East 70th St.
The residence at 245 East 17th Street was built in 1883 for the Harvard-educated lawyer Sidney Webster (1828-1910), private secretary of President Franklin Pierce (Democrat, 1853-57, failed to reconcile the North and South over the admission of Kansas as a slavery state). Webster met Governor Hamilton Fish while the latter was a U.S. Senator (1851-57; NYS Governor 1849-50; Secretary of State under Grant, 1869-77), and married his daughter Sarah in 1860. She bought the property from her father. Webster practiced law in N. Y., was a director of the Illinois Central RR, and wrote Two Treaties of Paris and the Supreme Court (1901), useful as research material for Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. His other important local connection was the ownership of Pen-Craig, a Newport cottage purchased from the George Frederick Jones family, whose daughter Edith spent many months of her childhood and young adulthood, as Mrs Henry Wharton, on the premises.
In the progress of time the building changed, eventually turning into a Beth Israel clinic. The interior was divided into examination rooms and cubicles, preserving only the magnificent front room with its wooden fireplace and wooden ribs across the ceiling. Nevertheless, the Hunt house was one of the prides of the Stuyvesant Square Historic District, when it was established in 1975.
The East End Temple, occupant of a small building and other adjacent valuable underused land on 23rd and 2nd Ave, had a dream, since the 1980s. They hoped to trade their valuable corner real estate to an apartment building developer, reserving for themselves some much improved premises on three floors. When that did not materialize- the 1987 recession intervened, the relationships changed – in 1998 they sold the property to developer Don Zucker, expecting to use $2.9 million of the proceeds to buy a larger mid-block property Meanwhile, their long- time architectural consultant Harry Kendall fitted them up with a temporary temple in a former restaurant at 403 1st Ave.
A few months ago the dreams came to a fruition - the 17th Street property surfaced on the synagogue=s radar screen. The building was researched and found appropriate, it was bought, the plans were presented to Community Board #6 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, all with great urgency, and the synagogue part of the restoration is hoped to be completed by August 2002.
How is that all possible, in the days of environmental impact staements and multi-level reviews and approvals? Well, with good plans that respect original design and good intentions, everybody cooperates. The plan was driven by the the president of the synagogue, Helene Spring, the Board of Trustees and its Chairman, Richard Muskat, and the Rabbi, David S. Adelson.
What, then, is the plan? The building has five stories, of which the ground floor and the next level will be combined, to form a balconied sanctuary, with seating for the 200 families. A lower level, of equal size, will be the social room.The beautiful front parlor, the Library, will be preserved. Directly behind it the present staircase and the elevator will be removed, and a new elevator installed . The sanctuary will fit in the space behind, nearly to the end of the 90-plus foot depth of the building (an L- space in the back will be squared off). The two upstairs floors will serve as offices and Hebrew School.
The landmarked front elevation may be described as French Renaissance Revival, although Hunt was inventive in his use of designs. The building has interesting step-wise dormers. The architect, in researching the design, was able to locate original photographs showing small Ionic columns between the roof structures, lost in the past years as the building was maintained and adapted for use by various owners. They are expected to be restored.
The substoop basement entrance door looks original, with its projecting Abrownstone@ mouldings. Yet, the photographs show that Hunt=s designed door was stylistically matched to the adjacent windows. It is expected to be replaced with a a more delicate double-door, matching the present opening. The doors were never aligned, since Hunt=s design featured a lower than usual stoop, and a basement entrance did not fit under it.
The building=s base line has also suffered.. In the passage of time, the original textured rusticated stone pattern was smoothed out. It will come back, as will the outside fence, which originally was a low meandering shape.
Harry Kendall, the architect, is a preservation expert. Since graduation, in 1985, he has taught in the Department of Historic Preservation of Columbia=s School of Architecture. Among his recent accomplishments, he has combined two historic Tribeca warehouses into the Fisher Mills condo building, restoring the exteriors and adding three floors. The Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association and some neighbors (Jack Taylor, Meryl Stoller and Eric Petterson) have been at the meetings and have expressed their approval of the rehabilitation of the neighborhood’s treasure.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V offer their fondest Holiday Greetings to our neighbors. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and a Good Kwnzaa!
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Visiting Alice Springs, center of Australia
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
Visiting Alice Springs, center of Australia
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
