Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Watching Arthur and Amy run the Miami Marathon
CONDO IN THE KEYS by Wally Dobelis
If you want your inner child- cheerleader category – come out, go to a Marathon, and cheer the participants. The Miami Marathon is a terrific opportunity, because you can see your darlings at more than one station. We came to South Beach, because the whole Marathon group, starting at the American Airlines Stadium at 6Am, has a 5th mile passing point near our hotel, Betsy Ross , at 14th street, and we saw our darlings there, near 6;30, lit by a street light, about 10 minutes apart. Now you must understand that both the Rickenbacker Causeway, by which the marathon runner enter South Beach, and the Venetian, on which they exit, are closed for traffic, so we had no exit, to get to another observation point at the Miami Natural History Museum on Biscayne Blvd, which we had spied as a joint spot where you can see runners at 15th and 25th mile points. It took ingenuity to discover this place, and planning and luck to get there. At 14th Street the runners went west two blocks, to continue on Washington Ave and circle Miami Beach, leaving the center, Collins Avenue open, with traffic stranded, including some taxis. I went shouting down Collins, to attract a stranded empty taxi ready to turn around and get back to action in downtown Miami, stopped it and had him take is to the only open causeway, Alice Tuttle at 41st Street, to the 15/25 mile spot, a $45 ride. Once there we saw no spectators except for three red-shirted volunteer women from Chicago and Cleveland, with cups f drinks, pretzels an clickers, and long inflated rattle balloons, that could be slapped together. The first winner types, gaunt skinny men and women with foreign faces and insignia, were already there, unbelievable phenomena, totally framed in their task and non-responsive to our shouts of encouragement passing through while we were unpacking the cheer boards with the names of our darlings lettered on, and the happy face balloon bought last night at the local Walgreen’s and filled with helium at no extra charge. Name boards set on the ground, with the balloon overhead, we three parents spread out along a median, with our rattle balloons and digital cameras in hand, to greet the marathoners. Cheerleading does not come naturally, and it took us a while to get into the language of the red-shirted ladies, who danced, clapped and shouted encouragement: you’re looking good, keep it up, you going to make it! We stared experimenting wit Like your stride (good), no pain no strain (discarded), you are all winners (produced smiles and grimaces), ignore the red light1 ( some guffaws). The latter was interesting because we were at the intersection of two parallel roads reserved for runners and a major two way crossroad, which was accumulating angry drivers, blowing horns. Walking into their midst with a Marathon sign quieted them down and made most of them turn around, and eventually, toward the end of the two and a half hours we were theirs, the straggler marathoner traffic thinned and the local cops were able to send little spurts of one to three cars through. Once our two runners were through, half an hour apart, we paced and crossed the road to the 25th mile point, where single speedsters were racing through, seeming no more distressed than when we first saw them at the 15th.. I tried to concentrate on the stragglers coming through the e 15th, with a different cheer: It’s your day, don’t rush, baby, enjoy your day in the sun, which seemed to produce smiles through the palpable pains. At this point the participants, who paid $75 for the pleasure of getting a number and running or walking through the 26.2 mile full course (the 13.1 mile half-marathon racers were already finished), were elderly couples or stout or unpracticed non-runner community AIDS or training organization members doing their own fundraisers, who felt the pain, as much as the 25-milers. Many of the latter had drawn faces, and would stop, rub their legs, or resort to a walk. They need more of such words as You are almost there, you are really amazing, you’re going to make, it’s just a round the corner ( a lie we regretted when we had to walk in the last 2.2 miles to meet with our runners,). The least perturbed where the amputees who raced on wheels, amazingly agile, and the blind, accompanied by bicycle riding volunteer guides. There one or two visibly distressed runners, one who carried on bent sideways, and another who staggered. I tried to send the bicycled observers after them, to unknown results. We found our runners after we quit cheerleading four and a half hours into the day, after the last of our kids had passed through. We then walked the last torturous 2.2 miles, alongside the late runners . When found, our team had had heir free massages or rubdowns, solid portions of chicken or beans, oranges or cold drinks, and were reclining under the tent of the massage area, our agreed meeting point, ready to tell us tales of their pains and glories.The elders, happy with the safe outcome, were willing to listen, forever. Walking in, we also passed a Cuban band (there were some 15 music and dance groups playing along the course) and squads of schoolchildren volunteers with tables and tables of liquids (there were 20such) who offered the runners cups of soft drinks and water, and poured, when asked, some of the cool stuff over the runners’ heads. We too could have used some, believe me.
If you want your inner child- cheerleader category – come out, go to a Marathon, and cheer the participants. The Miami Marathon is a terrific opportunity, because you can see your darlings at more than one station. We came to South Beach, because the whole Marathon group, starting at the American Airlines Stadium at 6Am, has a 5th mile passing point near our hotel, Betsy Ross , at 14th street, and we saw our darlings there, near 6;30, lit by a street light, about 10 minutes apart. Now you must understand that both the Rickenbacker Causeway, by which the marathon runner enter South Beach, and the Venetian, on which they exit, are closed for traffic, so we had no exit, to get to another observation point at the Miami Natural History Museum on Biscayne Blvd, which we had spied as a joint spot where you can see runners at 15th and 25th mile points. It took ingenuity to discover this place, and planning and luck to get there. At 14th Street the runners went west two blocks, to continue on Washington Ave and circle Miami Beach, leaving the center, Collins Avenue open, with traffic stranded, including some taxis. I went shouting down Collins, to attract a stranded empty taxi ready to turn around and get back to action in downtown Miami, stopped it and had him take is to the only open causeway, Alice Tuttle at 41st Street, to the 15/25 mile spot, a $45 ride. Once there we saw no spectators except for three red-shirted volunteer women from Chicago and Cleveland, with cups f drinks, pretzels an clickers, and long inflated rattle balloons, that could be slapped together. The first winner types, gaunt skinny men and women with foreign faces and insignia, were already there, unbelievable phenomena, totally framed in their task and non-responsive to our shouts of encouragement passing through while we were unpacking the cheer boards with the names of our darlings lettered on, and the happy face balloon bought last night at the local Walgreen’s and filled with helium at no extra charge. Name boards set on the ground, with the balloon overhead, we three parents spread out along a median, with our rattle balloons and digital cameras in hand, to greet the marathoners. Cheerleading does not come naturally, and it took us a while to get into the language of the red-shirted ladies, who danced, clapped and shouted encouragement: you’re looking good, keep it up, you going to make it! We stared experimenting wit Like your stride (good), no pain no strain (discarded), you are all winners (produced smiles and grimaces), ignore the red light1 ( some guffaws). The latter was interesting because we were at the intersection of two parallel roads reserved for runners and a major two way crossroad, which was accumulating angry drivers, blowing horns. Walking into their midst with a Marathon sign quieted them down and made most of them turn around, and eventually, toward the end of the two and a half hours we were theirs, the straggler marathoner traffic thinned and the local cops were able to send little spurts of one to three cars through. Once our two runners were through, half an hour apart, we paced and crossed the road to the 25th mile point, where single speedsters were racing through, seeming no more distressed than when we first saw them at the 15th.. I tried to concentrate on the stragglers coming through the e 15th, with a different cheer: It’s your day, don’t rush, baby, enjoy your day in the sun, which seemed to produce smiles through the palpable pains. At this point the participants, who paid $75 for the pleasure of getting a number and running or walking through the 26.2 mile full course (the 13.1 mile half-marathon racers were already finished), were elderly couples or stout or unpracticed non-runner community AIDS or training organization members doing their own fundraisers, who felt the pain, as much as the 25-milers. Many of the latter had drawn faces, and would stop, rub their legs, or resort to a walk. They need more of such words as You are almost there, you are really amazing, you’re going to make, it’s just a round the corner ( a lie we regretted when we had to walk in the last 2.2 miles to meet with our runners,). The least perturbed where the amputees who raced on wheels, amazingly agile, and the blind, accompanied by bicycle riding volunteer guides. There one or two visibly distressed runners, one who carried on bent sideways, and another who staggered. I tried to send the bicycled observers after them, to unknown results. We found our runners after we quit cheerleading four and a half hours into the day, after the last of our kids had passed through. We then walked the last torturous 2.2 miles, alongside the late runners . When found, our team had had heir free massages or rubdowns, solid portions of chicken or beans, oranges or cold drinks, and were reclining under the tent of the massage area, our agreed meeting point, ready to tell us tales of their pains and glories.The elders, happy with the safe outcome, were willing to listen, forever. Walking in, we also passed a Cuban band (there were some 15 music and dance groups playing along the course) and squads of schoolchildren volunteers with tables and tables of liquids (there were 20such) who offered the runners cups of soft drinks and water, and poured, when asked, some of the cool stuff over the runners’ heads. We too could have used some, believe me.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Step outside and into adventure: Walk to work
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Since the transit workers have rejected the proposed MTA contract, it may be time to revisit this transportation alternative. I first tested it on December 20, Tuesday morning, and will try to include it in my routine, once in a while, for health and exercise reasons.
It was the first day of the Subway Strike, and I was going to walk to work, from 17th Street to the Battery. Out on the street after 10 am, the sun was shining, but the subzero frost bite was palpable, and I decided to stay on sunny 3rd Avenue/Bowery. With the sun in the East and the river on my left, there was no way to get lost, and, hoofing along briskly, I should be there in an hour, gathering information along the way.
A full schedule of soccer matches displayed at Nevada Smith’s (13th Street) caught my eye first. The previous Sunday, passing at 11:30 AM, we had wondered about the shouting emanating through the opened door, until at another sports bar I had caught notice that Arsenal was playing Chelsea, two top contenders. At the 12 Street megaplex movies, a few girls were shouting at the box office window, demanding tickets. The street was otherwise silent, few NYU students, and no crowds at the Astor Place subway entrance. The city seemed nearly dead, Cooper Union was quiescent, no flophouse derelicts lounged near the White House Hotel (“ATM on premises,” this is a new era) and Bowery Tattoo, no traffic at the Bowery Poetry Center and Café, nary a loiterer at the Slanta Bar (neons in window advertising McSorley’s Ale), until the restaurant supplies district came in sight, well south of Cooper Square. With the interspersed two blocks of lighting supply houses, it dominates the wide avenue clear down to Canal Street.
There, men were moving shiny refrigerated delicatessen glass cases out on the sidewalk, next to industrial size Hobart mixers and tall tray racks. At Prince Street, Bari Pizza equipment house is flanked by a cigar store Indian type display, of white- toqued storefront figures portraying chubby chefs, some seven varieties, of a clearly Mediterranean cast, painted to your specifications (further down the avenue, at Canal, another chefs’ display shows them with Oriental accoutrements).
The Bowery is sort of dilapidated, low buildings abound, punctuated by once magnificent columnated mansions and banks; one magnificent structure at 130 seems boarded up, except for an obscure Jay Maisel (photographer) sign. The banks fare better; unknown finance companies with makeshift signs and the omnipresent HSCB have taken over.
At Canal, the jewelry district seems to have shrunk, but shows no signs of fading into Oriental goods stores and Chinese restaurants. Crossing the Manhattan Bridge access road, past Confucius Plaza and bearing left on St James Place (a right there would have taken me to the courthouses, Park Row and City Hall), one passes Chatham Green, the spread-out apartment complex, and encounters a fleet of NYPD busses servicing headquarters traffic from nearby Police Plaza, Now the view opens to the Brooklyn Bridge overpass, with streams of walkers, both in and out-bound, moving briskly. Crossing the Avenue of Heroes reminds one that Ground Zero is not far away.
Here the road turns into Water Street, approaching South Street Seaport, my home stretch, ten minutes to Hanover Square. The walk was an hour, not bad, at a nearly three-mile per hour pace.
Going home, 6-ish and after dark, was a different experience. Water Street had lines of black-dressed men and women, block long, patiently waiting for corporate-hired Academy shuttle buses, looking like something out of 1920s German movies. Further toward the bridges, the avenue was jammed with cars, barely moving northward, fighting the Long Island-bound cross-traffic. The street was full of pedestrians. Two days later, on the last day of the strike, I waited until nearly 8 PM, until the street was clear, and my taxi (yes, I succumbed to the $15, two-zone lure) could move briskly.
The mid-towner’s alternative to walking downtown is the PATH route. We are interested in two of the four PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) lines, the 33 St/Journal Square line. which tunnels to New Jersey, and at Pavonia/Newport crosses with the Hoboken/World Trade Center line. We can enter it also at 23rd, 14th, 9th and Christopher Streets, cross the river, change trains (same side) and continue to WTC, a 20-minute ride. The walk to 14th and 6th Avenue was long, and finding the entrance was tricky. You buy two PATH tickets at a time, an easy machine transaction, compared to clicking through the MTA menus.
The trip takes you into the belly of the Ground Zero cavity, about five intimidating stories deep. On the trip back from the WTC, a direct (no transfer) line was available, on Track 1, with mobs of passengers packing in, like sardines. This was a longer, 26-minute ride. Counting the walk to 6th Avenue and the one at WTC, to my Hanover Square place of work, the travel was longer although less exhausting. You choose.
Since the transit workers have rejected the proposed MTA contract, it may be time to revisit this transportation alternative. I first tested it on December 20, Tuesday morning, and will try to include it in my routine, once in a while, for health and exercise reasons.
It was the first day of the Subway Strike, and I was going to walk to work, from 17th Street to the Battery. Out on the street after 10 am, the sun was shining, but the subzero frost bite was palpable, and I decided to stay on sunny 3rd Avenue/Bowery. With the sun in the East and the river on my left, there was no way to get lost, and, hoofing along briskly, I should be there in an hour, gathering information along the way.
A full schedule of soccer matches displayed at Nevada Smith’s (13th Street) caught my eye first. The previous Sunday, passing at 11:30 AM, we had wondered about the shouting emanating through the opened door, until at another sports bar I had caught notice that Arsenal was playing Chelsea, two top contenders. At the 12 Street megaplex movies, a few girls were shouting at the box office window, demanding tickets. The street was otherwise silent, few NYU students, and no crowds at the Astor Place subway entrance. The city seemed nearly dead, Cooper Union was quiescent, no flophouse derelicts lounged near the White House Hotel (“ATM on premises,” this is a new era) and Bowery Tattoo, no traffic at the Bowery Poetry Center and Café, nary a loiterer at the Slanta Bar (neons in window advertising McSorley’s Ale), until the restaurant supplies district came in sight, well south of Cooper Square. With the interspersed two blocks of lighting supply houses, it dominates the wide avenue clear down to Canal Street.
There, men were moving shiny refrigerated delicatessen glass cases out on the sidewalk, next to industrial size Hobart mixers and tall tray racks. At Prince Street, Bari Pizza equipment house is flanked by a cigar store Indian type display, of white- toqued storefront figures portraying chubby chefs, some seven varieties, of a clearly Mediterranean cast, painted to your specifications (further down the avenue, at Canal, another chefs’ display shows them with Oriental accoutrements).
The Bowery is sort of dilapidated, low buildings abound, punctuated by once magnificent columnated mansions and banks; one magnificent structure at 130 seems boarded up, except for an obscure Jay Maisel (photographer) sign. The banks fare better; unknown finance companies with makeshift signs and the omnipresent HSCB have taken over.
At Canal, the jewelry district seems to have shrunk, but shows no signs of fading into Oriental goods stores and Chinese restaurants. Crossing the Manhattan Bridge access road, past Confucius Plaza and bearing left on St James Place (a right there would have taken me to the courthouses, Park Row and City Hall), one passes Chatham Green, the spread-out apartment complex, and encounters a fleet of NYPD busses servicing headquarters traffic from nearby Police Plaza, Now the view opens to the Brooklyn Bridge overpass, with streams of walkers, both in and out-bound, moving briskly. Crossing the Avenue of Heroes reminds one that Ground Zero is not far away.
Here the road turns into Water Street, approaching South Street Seaport, my home stretch, ten minutes to Hanover Square. The walk was an hour, not bad, at a nearly three-mile per hour pace.
Going home, 6-ish and after dark, was a different experience. Water Street had lines of black-dressed men and women, block long, patiently waiting for corporate-hired Academy shuttle buses, looking like something out of 1920s German movies. Further toward the bridges, the avenue was jammed with cars, barely moving northward, fighting the Long Island-bound cross-traffic. The street was full of pedestrians. Two days later, on the last day of the strike, I waited until nearly 8 PM, until the street was clear, and my taxi (yes, I succumbed to the $15, two-zone lure) could move briskly.
The mid-towner’s alternative to walking downtown is the PATH route. We are interested in two of the four PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) lines, the 33 St/Journal Square line. which tunnels to New Jersey, and at Pavonia/Newport crosses with the Hoboken/World Trade Center line. We can enter it also at 23rd, 14th, 9th and Christopher Streets, cross the river, change trains (same side) and continue to WTC, a 20-minute ride. The walk to 14th and 6th Avenue was long, and finding the entrance was tricky. You buy two PATH tickets at a time, an easy machine transaction, compared to clicking through the MTA menus.
The trip takes you into the belly of the Ground Zero cavity, about five intimidating stories deep. On the trip back from the WTC, a direct (no transfer) line was available, on Track 1, with mobs of passengers packing in, like sardines. This was a longer, 26-minute ride. Counting the walk to 6th Avenue and the one at WTC, to my Hanover Square place of work, the travel was longer although less exhausting. You choose.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Rocky Ferris (a/k/a Walter Rockford Ferris II), Tropical Surrealist painter of the Florida Keys
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
South Forida’s Keys , the nerset thing to the tropics we have, attract dreamers, lovers, sailors, divers, fishermen and artists. The latter succumb to the romance of it, and painters portray soft beach houses, ibises and herons, and terns gliding on the wet sand. It is that kind of poetry that you encounter in the many art show, at least eight of them per season, that the Keys communities sponsor, Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Key Weat, dreamworlds on their own.
There is no question, the environment is seductive to the sentimental and the enthusiastic amateur. Nevertheless, there are also serious artists’ communes that work on extensions of the local themes. We met a member of one, Rocky Ferris, a native who grew up at Indian Rocks beach between Clearwater and St Petesburgh, and caught the bug early, both sailing and painting. He was in the naval intelligence, where his talents were recognized, and went to a commercial art school to hone up on commercial techniques. But his main interest is photorealism as a fine arts technique, watercolor and oil. He paints realistic objects of the tropics in surreal juxtapositions, bright fish and pineapples and mangoes cascading through vaulted doorways in walls, bamboos growing through tiles, beach houses with verandas surrounded by modern intrusions. You think of Dali and Max Ernst, realistic portrayers of comfortable objects of the past distorted by disturbing events.
Rocky Ferris – his full name is Walter Rockford Ferris II – has named his panting style Tropical Surrealism, and has web sites under both titles. His art form, slow and carefully structured large watercolors that are not forgiving of mistakes, get turned over to a giclee master who prints them in this expensive reproduction technique in limited editions, numbered and signed by the artist. It is so expensive that Rocky Ferris has turned to painting and selling smaller originals, non-reproduced, as more economical for an artist of immediate needs.
Ferris’s own life is a combination of the comfortable old and the modern. Mostly interested in sailing, he has been a water person since early youth, having built his first boat at eight – without a center board, hence sailable only downwind. His most recently homebuilt boat overcomes that obstacle.
The talent of Ferris, who himself could easily pose for an Indian chief, has been recognized in a number of shows, having won Best of Show and First prizes at the Atlanta, Miami Beach, South Miami, Coconut Grove Arts Festivals, also at Pigeon Key and Gasparilla events. He was selected to show at the Southeastern Watercolor Exhibition, Deland Museum, and commissioned by the Academy Arts and Arthur A. Kaplin to paint watercolors and illustrations. His art hangs in a number of public collections, lobbies of banks, public buildings and business firms, not to forget restaurants and bars, and he is affiliated with The Florida Watercolor Society as well as the Keys Watercolor and Art Guild. The Bougainvillea House Gallery in Marathon represents him, although the artist himself follows the time honored path of appearing at the Keys and South Florida outdoor weekend art fairs that add to the charm of the islands and the welcome of the Paradise of American South.
South Forida’s Keys , the nerset thing to the tropics we have, attract dreamers, lovers, sailors, divers, fishermen and artists. The latter succumb to the romance of it, and painters portray soft beach houses, ibises and herons, and terns gliding on the wet sand. It is that kind of poetry that you encounter in the many art show, at least eight of them per season, that the Keys communities sponsor, Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Key Weat, dreamworlds on their own.
There is no question, the environment is seductive to the sentimental and the enthusiastic amateur. Nevertheless, there are also serious artists’ communes that work on extensions of the local themes. We met a member of one, Rocky Ferris, a native who grew up at Indian Rocks beach between Clearwater and St Petesburgh, and caught the bug early, both sailing and painting. He was in the naval intelligence, where his talents were recognized, and went to a commercial art school to hone up on commercial techniques. But his main interest is photorealism as a fine arts technique, watercolor and oil. He paints realistic objects of the tropics in surreal juxtapositions, bright fish and pineapples and mangoes cascading through vaulted doorways in walls, bamboos growing through tiles, beach houses with verandas surrounded by modern intrusions. You think of Dali and Max Ernst, realistic portrayers of comfortable objects of the past distorted by disturbing events.
Rocky Ferris – his full name is Walter Rockford Ferris II – has named his panting style Tropical Surrealism, and has web sites under both titles. His art form, slow and carefully structured large watercolors that are not forgiving of mistakes, get turned over to a giclee master who prints them in this expensive reproduction technique in limited editions, numbered and signed by the artist. It is so expensive that Rocky Ferris has turned to painting and selling smaller originals, non-reproduced, as more economical for an artist of immediate needs.
Ferris’s own life is a combination of the comfortable old and the modern. Mostly interested in sailing, he has been a water person since early youth, having built his first boat at eight – without a center board, hence sailable only downwind. His most recently homebuilt boat overcomes that obstacle.
The talent of Ferris, who himself could easily pose for an Indian chief, has been recognized in a number of shows, having won Best of Show and First prizes at the Atlanta, Miami Beach, South Miami, Coconut Grove Arts Festivals, also at Pigeon Key and Gasparilla events. He was selected to show at the Southeastern Watercolor Exhibition, Deland Museum, and commissioned by the Academy Arts and Arthur A. Kaplin to paint watercolors and illustrations. His art hangs in a number of public collections, lobbies of banks, public buildings and business firms, not to forget restaurants and bars, and he is affiliated with The Florida Watercolor Society as well as the Keys Watercolor and Art Guild. The Bougainvillea House Gallery in Marathon represents him, although the artist himself follows the time honored path of appearing at the Keys and South Florida outdoor weekend art fairs that add to the charm of the islands and the welcome of the Paradise of American South.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Beth Israel has closed its diabetes center, for lack of funds
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
For years this column has brought to your attention the epidemic of fat Americans, the French-fry eating and soft-drink sipping heartbreaking people who inhabit fast-food places between hospital visits, talking about their diabetes and high blood pressure. There are kids who never see a home meal, and adults who are incapable of making one. Help is needed, and the government, NY State, the hospitals and the insurers are failing us.
The facts came most poignantly to this column’s attention while reviewing local takeout facilities in 2004, and walking into restaurants and looking at the clientele. The series of articles did not cover fast-food services, from McDonalds through Starbucks and Au Bon Pain, but seeing was enough. More disturbing were lunchtime sightings in beautiful Columbia County, a hundred miles north, an agricultural area of largely defunct family farms that has lost its place in this mass-production world and survives as a weekenders’ paradise. There the Burger Kings and Wendies have lots of clients who live on 99 cent meals, Cokes and French-fries, and Bob’s $1 weekday breakfasts, with disturbingly many of them in the 300 to 400 lb. weight class, slowly ambling around, a few of them youngish people, leaning on sticks or crutches. The Ponderosa steak house’s eat-all-you-can salad bar drove the restaurant out of business; there were too many big eaters.
Interestingly, the Homeless Shelter Program at Brotherhood Synagogue brings a revelation. Twenty four years ago, when it started, you had to ask the guests at the sandwich and soup dinner how many sugars they would like in their coffee, because often the normally sugared drinks were returned as insufficiently sweet. Three or four spoonfuls were the norm. Now, in recent years, through some good tutoring at the intake center or elsewhere, the sugar use has fallen to nearly normal. Wish that the rural poor would learn this lesson.
Schools seem not to have learned, offering sweet automat food and sugared Snapple drinks for lunch breaks. Kids are naturally drawn to sweets, and bringing them to classes is a popularity enhancer.
Now the NYTimes has undertaken to expose the diabetes/overweight scourge, in four articles, starting 1/9/06. The incidence of this sneakup killer has nearly doubled since 1980, and the cost of treatment, maybe up to $1,600 a year if caught early and treated through medication, diet, exercise and constant watchfulness and preventative means, can shoot up into a $30K stroke, $30K leg amputation or heart attack, $37K final stage kidney disease or $50K stitching up of the stomach. Nearly 21M Americans are diabetic and 41M are pre-diabetic, with blood sugar around the 136 borderline mark, and the US and our own NY state pay little attention. Tuberculosis, with 1000 NY incidences a year, got $27M and a staff of 400, diabetes in NY has three people and $950K in funds. The 2002 nationwide cost of diabetes was $132B, while all cancers together cost $171B.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that poor Americans, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with a high genetic pre-disposition to diabetes are the main victims. Maybe it is due to the slow non-dramatic movement of the disease, and the cultural difficulties (fat is beautiful in some Asian and Latin contexts, and eating a lot is health-inducing for people who come here from starvation). It definitely has to do with a growing level of inactivity, starting in the 1940’s, when TV kept kids in the living room rather than outside, playing ball, then spread more when the Internet took over, with its quasi-intellectual cachet. The sad fact is that computer use can be associated with building up the intellect, and it mostly does, but often it is frittered in endless computer mail and games masquerading as homework.
One would expect that diabetes prevention and early control programs would flourish. Not so. Doctors in four NYC hospitals, including the Fierman Center of Beth Israel hospital, on 17th Street, set up clinics for education, dieting, exercise and medication of diabetes. Three of them have since closed, including the BI one. They did not fail the patients, they failed to recoup costs, bleeding money, losing $1.1M in ten months.
You might think that in the days of certain specialist doctors earning over $1 M annually, this loss could be carried. Not so. Insurance companies that pay huge sums for operations, nickel-and-dime the preventive programs to death, even though they were run by nutritionists rather than endocrinologists (the US is not training too many in that specialty either, the payback is low and the work hard). The key is the focusing in US medical industry on acute illnesses while neglecting slow-moving chronic ones.
So, what is the solution? The mind boggles, there are so many players; public awareness, education, cooperation and money are the main ingredients. We are bound to see progress in this generation, the exposure is too striking, but not without heavy lifting.
Many thanks to NYTimes. See the blog behind www.dobelis.net for more
For years this column has brought to your attention the epidemic of fat Americans, the French-fry eating and soft-drink sipping heartbreaking people who inhabit fast-food places between hospital visits, talking about their diabetes and high blood pressure. There are kids who never see a home meal, and adults who are incapable of making one. Help is needed, and the government, NY State, the hospitals and the insurers are failing us.
The facts came most poignantly to this column’s attention while reviewing local takeout facilities in 2004, and walking into restaurants and looking at the clientele. The series of articles did not cover fast-food services, from McDonalds through Starbucks and Au Bon Pain, but seeing was enough. More disturbing were lunchtime sightings in beautiful Columbia County, a hundred miles north, an agricultural area of largely defunct family farms that has lost its place in this mass-production world and survives as a weekenders’ paradise. There the Burger Kings and Wendies have lots of clients who live on 99 cent meals, Cokes and French-fries, and Bob’s $1 weekday breakfasts, with disturbingly many of them in the 300 to 400 lb. weight class, slowly ambling around, a few of them youngish people, leaning on sticks or crutches. The Ponderosa steak house’s eat-all-you-can salad bar drove the restaurant out of business; there were too many big eaters.
Interestingly, the Homeless Shelter Program at Brotherhood Synagogue brings a revelation. Twenty four years ago, when it started, you had to ask the guests at the sandwich and soup dinner how many sugars they would like in their coffee, because often the normally sugared drinks were returned as insufficiently sweet. Three or four spoonfuls were the norm. Now, in recent years, through some good tutoring at the intake center or elsewhere, the sugar use has fallen to nearly normal. Wish that the rural poor would learn this lesson.
Schools seem not to have learned, offering sweet automat food and sugared Snapple drinks for lunch breaks. Kids are naturally drawn to sweets, and bringing them to classes is a popularity enhancer.
Now the NYTimes has undertaken to expose the diabetes/overweight scourge, in four articles, starting 1/9/06. The incidence of this sneakup killer has nearly doubled since 1980, and the cost of treatment, maybe up to $1,600 a year if caught early and treated through medication, diet, exercise and constant watchfulness and preventative means, can shoot up into a $30K stroke, $30K leg amputation or heart attack, $37K final stage kidney disease or $50K stitching up of the stomach. Nearly 21M Americans are diabetic and 41M are pre-diabetic, with blood sugar around the 136 borderline mark, and the US and our own NY state pay little attention. Tuberculosis, with 1000 NY incidences a year, got $27M and a staff of 400, diabetes in NY has three people and $950K in funds. The 2002 nationwide cost of diabetes was $132B, while all cancers together cost $171B.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that poor Americans, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with a high genetic pre-disposition to diabetes are the main victims. Maybe it is due to the slow non-dramatic movement of the disease, and the cultural difficulties (fat is beautiful in some Asian and Latin contexts, and eating a lot is health-inducing for people who come here from starvation). It definitely has to do with a growing level of inactivity, starting in the 1940’s, when TV kept kids in the living room rather than outside, playing ball, then spread more when the Internet took over, with its quasi-intellectual cachet. The sad fact is that computer use can be associated with building up the intellect, and it mostly does, but often it is frittered in endless computer mail and games masquerading as homework.
One would expect that diabetes prevention and early control programs would flourish. Not so. Doctors in four NYC hospitals, including the Fierman Center of Beth Israel hospital, on 17th Street, set up clinics for education, dieting, exercise and medication of diabetes. Three of them have since closed, including the BI one. They did not fail the patients, they failed to recoup costs, bleeding money, losing $1.1M in ten months.
You might think that in the days of certain specialist doctors earning over $1 M annually, this loss could be carried. Not so. Insurance companies that pay huge sums for operations, nickel-and-dime the preventive programs to death, even though they were run by nutritionists rather than endocrinologists (the US is not training too many in that specialty either, the payback is low and the work hard). The key is the focusing in US medical industry on acute illnesses while neglecting slow-moving chronic ones.
So, what is the solution? The mind boggles, there are so many players; public awareness, education, cooperation and money are the main ingredients. We are bound to see progress in this generation, the exposure is too striking, but not without heavy lifting.
Many thanks to NYTimes. See the blog behind www.dobelis.net for more
Beth Israel has closed its Diabetes Center, for lack of funds
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
For years this column has brought to your attention the epidemic of fat Americans, the French-fry eating and soft-drink sipping heartbreaking people who inhabit fast-food places between hospital visits, talking about their diabetes and high blood pressure. There are kids who never see a home meal, and adults who are incapable of making one. Help is needed, and the government, NY State, the hospitals and the insurers are failing us.
The facts came most poignantly to this column’s attention while reviewing local takeout facilities in 2004, and walking into restaurants and looking at the clientele. The series of articles did not cover fast-food services, from McDonalds through Starbucks and Au Bon Pain, but seeing was enough. More disturbing were lunchtime sightings in beautiful Columbia County, a hundred miles north, an agricultural area of largely defunct family farms that has lost its place in this mass-production world and survives as a weekenders’ paradise. There the Burger Kings and Wendies have many clients who live on 99 cent meals, Cokes and French-fries, and Bob’s $1 weekday breakfasts, with disturbingly many clients in the 300 to 400 lb. weight class, slowly ambling around, a few of them youngish people leaning on sticks or crutches. The Ponderosa steak house’s eat-all-you-can salad bar drove the restaurant out of business; there were too many big eaters.
Interestingly, the Homeless Shelter Program at Brotherhood Synagogue brings a revelation. Twenty four years ago, when it started, you had to ask the guests at the sandwich and soup dinner how many sugars they would like in their coffee, because often the normally sugared drinks were returned as insufficiently sweet. Three or four spoonfuls were the norm. Now, in recent years, through some good tutoring at the intake center or elsewhere, the sugar use has fallen to nearly normal. Wish that the rural poor would learn this lesson.
Schools seem not to have learned, offering sweet automat food and sugared Snapple drinks for lunch breaks. Kids are naturally drawn to sweets, and bringing them to classes is a popularity enhancer.
Now the NYTimes has undertaken to expose the diabetes/overweight scourge, in four articles, starting 1/9/06. The incidence of this sneakup killer has nearly doubled since 1980, and the cost of treatment, maybe up to $1,600 a year if caught early and treated through medication, diet, exercise and constant watchfulness and preventative means, can shoot up into a $30K stroke, $30K leg amputation or heart attack, $37K final stage kidney disease or $50K stitching up of the stomach. Nearly 21M Americans are diabetic and 41M are pre-diabetic, with blood sugar around the 136 borderline mark, and the US and our own NY state pay little attention. Tuberculosis, with 1000 NY incidences a year, got $27M and a staff of 400, diabetes in NY has three people and $950K in funds. The 2002 nationwide cost of diabetes was $132B, while all cancers together cost $171B.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that poor Americans, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with a high genetic pre-disposition to diabetes are the main victims. Maybe it is due to the slow non-dramatic movement of the disease, and the cultural difficulties (fat is beautiful in some Asian and Latin contexts, and eating a lot is health-inducing for people who come here from starvation.). It definitely has to do with growing inactivity, starting in the 1940’s, when TV kept kids in the living room rather than outside, playing ball, then spread more when the Internet took over, with its quasi-intellectual cachet. The sad fact is that computer use can be associated with building up the intellect, and it mostly does, but often it is frittered in endless computer mail and games masquerading as homework. Adults do eBay and their games, and, yes, porn.
One would expect that diabetes prevention and early control programs would flourish. Not so. Doctors in four NYC hospitals, including the Fierman Center of Beth Israel hospital, on 17th Street, set up clinics for education, dieting, exercise and medication of diabetes. Three of them have since closed, including the BI one. They did not fail the patients, they failed to recoup costs, bleeding money, losing $1.1M in ten months.
You might think that in the days of certain specialist doctors earning over $1 M annually, this loss could be carried. Not so. Insurance companies that pay huge sums for operations, nickel and dime the preventive programs to death, even though they were run by nutritionists rather than endocrinologists (the US is not training too many in that specialty either, the payback is low and the work hard). The key is the focusing in US medical industry on acute illnesses while neglecting slow-moving chronic ones.
There are two predominant types of diabetes, - In Type one the immune system destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin, the hormone that helps glucose, the main source of body fuel created when food is broken down, enter the blood cells. In diabetes, blood sugar builds up while cells starve. This form is prevalent in youth, and is being researched thoroughly, to the point of the American Diabetes Association having changed its name to by adding Juvenile to it. Meanwhile. There’s Type 2, 90-95% of the cases, in which the body reacts to its inability to receive insulin. It is treatable, by lifestyle changes, but not reversible. Monitoring is needed, and long-term follow-up. This is where the insurance industry can get testy. For instance, it balks at paying $150 for a podiatrist examination and toenail-clipping visit, an hourly rate well above the endocrinologist’s charge.
So, what is the solution? The mind boggles, there are so many players; public awareness, education, cooperation and money are the main ingredients. We are bound to see progress in this generation, the exposure is too striking, but not without heavy lifting.
Many thanks to NYTimes & Dr. Miro Petani.
For years this column has brought to your attention the epidemic of fat Americans, the French-fry eating and soft-drink sipping heartbreaking people who inhabit fast-food places between hospital visits, talking about their diabetes and high blood pressure. There are kids who never see a home meal, and adults who are incapable of making one. Help is needed, and the government, NY State, the hospitals and the insurers are failing us.
The facts came most poignantly to this column’s attention while reviewing local takeout facilities in 2004, and walking into restaurants and looking at the clientele. The series of articles did not cover fast-food services, from McDonalds through Starbucks and Au Bon Pain, but seeing was enough. More disturbing were lunchtime sightings in beautiful Columbia County, a hundred miles north, an agricultural area of largely defunct family farms that has lost its place in this mass-production world and survives as a weekenders’ paradise. There the Burger Kings and Wendies have many clients who live on 99 cent meals, Cokes and French-fries, and Bob’s $1 weekday breakfasts, with disturbingly many clients in the 300 to 400 lb. weight class, slowly ambling around, a few of them youngish people leaning on sticks or crutches. The Ponderosa steak house’s eat-all-you-can salad bar drove the restaurant out of business; there were too many big eaters.
Interestingly, the Homeless Shelter Program at Brotherhood Synagogue brings a revelation. Twenty four years ago, when it started, you had to ask the guests at the sandwich and soup dinner how many sugars they would like in their coffee, because often the normally sugared drinks were returned as insufficiently sweet. Three or four spoonfuls were the norm. Now, in recent years, through some good tutoring at the intake center or elsewhere, the sugar use has fallen to nearly normal. Wish that the rural poor would learn this lesson.
Schools seem not to have learned, offering sweet automat food and sugared Snapple drinks for lunch breaks. Kids are naturally drawn to sweets, and bringing them to classes is a popularity enhancer.
Now the NYTimes has undertaken to expose the diabetes/overweight scourge, in four articles, starting 1/9/06. The incidence of this sneakup killer has nearly doubled since 1980, and the cost of treatment, maybe up to $1,600 a year if caught early and treated through medication, diet, exercise and constant watchfulness and preventative means, can shoot up into a $30K stroke, $30K leg amputation or heart attack, $37K final stage kidney disease or $50K stitching up of the stomach. Nearly 21M Americans are diabetic and 41M are pre-diabetic, with blood sugar around the 136 borderline mark, and the US and our own NY state pay little attention. Tuberculosis, with 1000 NY incidences a year, got $27M and a staff of 400, diabetes in NY has three people and $950K in funds. The 2002 nationwide cost of diabetes was $132B, while all cancers together cost $171B.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that poor Americans, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with a high genetic pre-disposition to diabetes are the main victims. Maybe it is due to the slow non-dramatic movement of the disease, and the cultural difficulties (fat is beautiful in some Asian and Latin contexts, and eating a lot is health-inducing for people who come here from starvation.). It definitely has to do with growing inactivity, starting in the 1940’s, when TV kept kids in the living room rather than outside, playing ball, then spread more when the Internet took over, with its quasi-intellectual cachet. The sad fact is that computer use can be associated with building up the intellect, and it mostly does, but often it is frittered in endless computer mail and games masquerading as homework. Adults do eBay and their games, and, yes, porn.
One would expect that diabetes prevention and early control programs would flourish. Not so. Doctors in four NYC hospitals, including the Fierman Center of Beth Israel hospital, on 17th Street, set up clinics for education, dieting, exercise and medication of diabetes. Three of them have since closed, including the BI one. They did not fail the patients, they failed to recoup costs, bleeding money, losing $1.1M in ten months.
You might think that in the days of certain specialist doctors earning over $1 M annually, this loss could be carried. Not so. Insurance companies that pay huge sums for operations, nickel and dime the preventive programs to death, even though they were run by nutritionists rather than endocrinologists (the US is not training too many in that specialty either, the payback is low and the work hard). The key is the focusing in US medical industry on acute illnesses while neglecting slow-moving chronic ones.
There are two predominant types of diabetes, - In Type one the immune system destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin, the hormone that helps glucose, the main source of body fuel created when food is broken down, enter the blood cells. In diabetes, blood sugar builds up while cells starve. This form is prevalent in youth, and is being researched thoroughly, to the point of the American Diabetes Association having changed its name to by adding Juvenile to it. Meanwhile. There’s Type 2, 90-95% of the cases, in which the body reacts to its inability to receive insulin. It is treatable, by lifestyle changes, but not reversible. Monitoring is needed, and long-term follow-up. This is where the insurance industry can get testy. For instance, it balks at paying $150 for a podiatrist examination and toenail-clipping visit, an hourly rate well above the endocrinologist’s charge.
So, what is the solution? The mind boggles, there are so many players; public awareness, education, cooperation and money are the main ingredients. We are bound to see progress in this generation, the exposure is too striking, but not without heavy lifting.
Many thanks to NYTimes & Dr. Miro Petani.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Sal Anthony’s, Second Ave Deli are closing - who’s next?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The news in the January 5, NYTimes about the closing of the Second Avenue Deli was depressing, to say the least. Next day’s update, about Jack Lebewohl looking for a resolution in "x days" before vacating was bracing. But the doors remain closed, and the daily kosher food seekers are deprived of their fare. There are alternatives – I hasten to note the two kosher delis on First Ave north of 14th Street, not that far from the 156 Second Avenue and 10th Street haven – but who can match the pickles, and the sauerkraut appetizers that miraculously appear even before your order is taken, and the intimidatingly large sandwiches of corned beef and pastrami piled high on rye? You can make two lunches of the leftovers alone.
This closing is not a unique event – Sal Anthony’s at 55 Irving Place (between 17th &18th Streets) is also closing in January, victim of a tripling of the rent. Tony Macagnone opened it 40 years ago, and it has served the neighborhood faithfully with good food at reasonable prices, giving the neighbors a street party at the last brownout, and providing trays and trays of dinners in the fateful days of 9/11/2001, when volunteers spent their days clearing the Ground Zero site, and coming back to the 13th Precinct for meals organized by Arlene Harrison ( many other restaurants of the T&V Country also contributed). Tony will not leave the neighborhood, he has the SPQR Restaurant in Little Italy and the Gyrotonic and Pilates Movement Salon in the landmarked historic former Fat Tuesday’s and Joe King’s Rathskeller, aka Scheffel Hall building at 190 Third Avenue, but we the clients will be the losers.
This is not the beginning and not the end. Adiana, the good Italian restaurant on Third Ave at 19th Street, closed in 2004, and remains shuttered. CGBG, an immensely popular entertainment place on Third Avenue, closed last year, when the landlord, a charity, of all things, claiming the needs of its homeless clients, forced it to shut down – or was it to make real estate profits? Even the Mayor, forever looking for restaurants to fill the leaks in his budget, has raised the sidewalk café taxes, and the inspectors have tightened their requirements and fines. A 17th Street restaurant, currently worrying about a tripled rent two years from now, had to accommodate a t ax increase f from $3,000 to $11,000 plus for its ten outside tables.
The landlords who overpaid for real estate and are now trying to cash in by tripling the rents must realize that the ordinary New Yorker’s food budget is not a forever-stretchable affair. At some point people give up on restaurant food, and go to the premade dinners now so readily available – not only TV dinners but also readymade frozen vegetables and pre-roasted chicken in the supermarket, or Whole Foods huge selection of hot buffet and cold takeout varieties. Only the celebrity restaurants on Park Avenue and Union Square, specializing in boy-meet-girl, business lunches and birthday celebrations can stretch their prices to accommodate huge rent increases, and the owners (the names of Mario Batali, Danny Meyer, Steve Hansen, Todd English and Eric Pettersen come to mind) leverage their businesses by having a bunch of venues, not just one or two.
Ordinary businesses that will take the space once occupied by a restaurant just cannot afford the humongous rents that the realtors now want. The real estate boom is shutting down. The places that two-income families frequented do not reopen once closed. There is a blog that runs a regular Plywood Report, listing all the food and drink facilities that have been shuttered. The implications are not pleasant to consider.
Going back to Second Avenue Deli, the rent increase is not that frightening in percentage terms –$24,000 a month up to $31,000 in five years, for 2,800 square feet. The actual increase number, $9,000 a month, represents major boost per unit of food sold, particularly when Jack Lebewohl forecasts a need to spend several hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the storage, refrigeration and general restaurant facilities, satisfactory last year but now requiring work to pass the upcoming tighter Board of Health inspection requirements. He cannot take the risk of the investment without a long-term lease at reasonable terms, and is closing now. The new landlord, Martin Newman of Jonis Realty of Great Neck who bought the property from Sterling Equities, shrugs his shoulders, calls it fair and points at the $17.50 tongue-on-rye sandwich, presumably as representing a considerable profit margin.
Let us hope that the Second Avenue Deli dispute gets settled, in the interests of the people who depend on its kosher facilities, the charities that receive its free food, the employees who make a living there, and us, the neighbors and once in a while visitors who enjoy the food and atmosphere, and like to check out the stars in the sidewalk representing the greats of the Yiddish Theatre, and visit the little triangle park across from St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie, named for his late brother Abe, whose murder nearly ten years ago remains a mystery.
The news in the January 5, NYTimes about the closing of the Second Avenue Deli was depressing, to say the least. Next day’s update, about Jack Lebewohl looking for a resolution in "x days" before vacating was bracing. But the doors remain closed, and the daily kosher food seekers are deprived of their fare. There are alternatives – I hasten to note the two kosher delis on First Ave north of 14th Street, not that far from the 156 Second Avenue and 10th Street haven – but who can match the pickles, and the sauerkraut appetizers that miraculously appear even before your order is taken, and the intimidatingly large sandwiches of corned beef and pastrami piled high on rye? You can make two lunches of the leftovers alone.
This closing is not a unique event – Sal Anthony’s at 55 Irving Place (between 17th &18th Streets) is also closing in January, victim of a tripling of the rent. Tony Macagnone opened it 40 years ago, and it has served the neighborhood faithfully with good food at reasonable prices, giving the neighbors a street party at the last brownout, and providing trays and trays of dinners in the fateful days of 9/11/2001, when volunteers spent their days clearing the Ground Zero site, and coming back to the 13th Precinct for meals organized by Arlene Harrison ( many other restaurants of the T&V Country also contributed). Tony will not leave the neighborhood, he has the SPQR Restaurant in Little Italy and the Gyrotonic and Pilates Movement Salon in the landmarked historic former Fat Tuesday’s and Joe King’s Rathskeller, aka Scheffel Hall building at 190 Third Avenue, but we the clients will be the losers.
This is not the beginning and not the end. Adiana, the good Italian restaurant on Third Ave at 19th Street, closed in 2004, and remains shuttered. CGBG, an immensely popular entertainment place on Third Avenue, closed last year, when the landlord, a charity, of all things, claiming the needs of its homeless clients, forced it to shut down – or was it to make real estate profits? Even the Mayor, forever looking for restaurants to fill the leaks in his budget, has raised the sidewalk café taxes, and the inspectors have tightened their requirements and fines. A 17th Street restaurant, currently worrying about a tripled rent two years from now, had to accommodate a t ax increase f from $3,000 to $11,000 plus for its ten outside tables.
The landlords who overpaid for real estate and are now trying to cash in by tripling the rents must realize that the ordinary New Yorker’s food budget is not a forever-stretchable affair. At some point people give up on restaurant food, and go to the premade dinners now so readily available – not only TV dinners but also readymade frozen vegetables and pre-roasted chicken in the supermarket, or Whole Foods huge selection of hot buffet and cold takeout varieties. Only the celebrity restaurants on Park Avenue and Union Square, specializing in boy-meet-girl, business lunches and birthday celebrations can stretch their prices to accommodate huge rent increases, and the owners (the names of Mario Batali, Danny Meyer, Steve Hansen, Todd English and Eric Pettersen come to mind) leverage their businesses by having a bunch of venues, not just one or two.
Ordinary businesses that will take the space once occupied by a restaurant just cannot afford the humongous rents that the realtors now want. The real estate boom is shutting down. The places that two-income families frequented do not reopen once closed. There is a blog that runs a regular Plywood Report, listing all the food and drink facilities that have been shuttered. The implications are not pleasant to consider.
Going back to Second Avenue Deli, the rent increase is not that frightening in percentage terms –$24,000 a month up to $31,000 in five years, for 2,800 square feet. The actual increase number, $9,000 a month, represents major boost per unit of food sold, particularly when Jack Lebewohl forecasts a need to spend several hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the storage, refrigeration and general restaurant facilities, satisfactory last year but now requiring work to pass the upcoming tighter Board of Health inspection requirements. He cannot take the risk of the investment without a long-term lease at reasonable terms, and is closing now. The new landlord, Martin Newman of Jonis Realty of Great Neck who bought the property from Sterling Equities, shrugs his shoulders, calls it fair and points at the $17.50 tongue-on-rye sandwich, presumably as representing a considerable profit margin.
Let us hope that the Second Avenue Deli dispute gets settled, in the interests of the people who depend on its kosher facilities, the charities that receive its free food, the employees who make a living there, and us, the neighbors and once in a while visitors who enjoy the food and atmosphere, and like to check out the stars in the sidewalk representing the greats of the Yiddish Theatre, and visit the little triangle park across from St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie, named for his late brother Abe, whose murder nearly ten years ago remains a mystery.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Match Point, a Dreiserian movie with added twists by Woody Allen
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Seeing Match Point, Woody Allen’s DreamWorks/BBC production, fresh after the An American Tragedy operatic experience is quite an emotional charge.
Woody Allen, in his best serious nihilistic excercize in many yeards, goes through the Theodore Dreiser New York setting, transplanted to London. A young serious arriviste tennis pro with a love for opera (Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) training a wealthy playboy (Tom Hewett, played by Matthew Goode), is adopted into his wealthy London family (the scenics are outstanding) as the husband of his sister Chloe. He falls for Tom’s seductive fiancé, an aspiring actress from Colorado, Nola Rice (Scarlet Johanssen) , who becomes the problem, pure Dreiser, but with a final twist that is pure nihilistic Woody.
The whole movie with its predictable outcome is as thightly constructed as a Strindbergh play, no throwaway scenes. You know where it is going, not distracted by the Henry Jamesian social banter, the luscious scenics and Tate Modern art decor. The clues are in the recurring backgroung music, the melancholy catchy theme of Una Furtiva Lacrima from Garetano Donizetti’s (1797-1848) L’Elisir d’ Amour, as sung (allegedly) by Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) presumably electronically improved, with La Traviata and Rigoletto arias (for the high drama scenes) interspersed.
There might be a little jarring politics added to the literay content (“The innocent are slain to make way for grander schemes. You were collateral damage.”) that interfere with the high-minded theme of the factor of luck, announced in the innocent opening tennis sequence. Allen succeeds in keeping our attention, although in a depressingly pointed way. It is not surprising that viewers exit laughing ofter suffering gut-wrenching pain, inappropriate but indicative of post-operative relief.
Seeing Match Point, Woody Allen’s DreamWorks/BBC production, fresh after the An American Tragedy operatic experience is quite an emotional charge.
Woody Allen, in his best serious nihilistic excercize in many yeards, goes through the Theodore Dreiser New York setting, transplanted to London. A young serious arriviste tennis pro with a love for opera (Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) training a wealthy playboy (Tom Hewett, played by Matthew Goode), is adopted into his wealthy London family (the scenics are outstanding) as the husband of his sister Chloe. He falls for Tom’s seductive fiancé, an aspiring actress from Colorado, Nola Rice (Scarlet Johanssen) , who becomes the problem, pure Dreiser, but with a final twist that is pure nihilistic Woody.
The whole movie with its predictable outcome is as thightly constructed as a Strindbergh play, no throwaway scenes. You know where it is going, not distracted by the Henry Jamesian social banter, the luscious scenics and Tate Modern art decor. The clues are in the recurring backgroung music, the melancholy catchy theme of Una Furtiva Lacrima from Garetano Donizetti’s (1797-1848) L’Elisir d’ Amour, as sung (allegedly) by Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) presumably electronically improved, with La Traviata and Rigoletto arias (for the high drama scenes) interspersed.
There might be a little jarring politics added to the literay content (“The innocent are slain to make way for grander schemes. You were collateral damage.”) that interfere with the high-minded theme of the factor of luck, announced in the innocent opening tennis sequence. Allen succeeds in keeping our attention, although in a depressingly pointed way. It is not surprising that viewers exit laughing ofter suffering gut-wrenching pain, inappropriate but indicative of post-operative relief.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Step outside and into adventure: great horned owl in Central Park
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This was shaping to be another kind of article when good friends Mary and Harry called, suggesting that we drop our post New Year’s Eve plans and come with them to Central Park, where observers have sighted a great horned owl. This creature, with a wingspan of five feet, has been living in the Ramble for the past two weeks, sleeping in a treetop during the day and going hunting after dusk. Don’t dally, we were told, who knows how long she (it had to be a female, they are larger) will stay here, in January, before flying south.
This was an invitation not to be taken lightly. We have had an encounter with a giant owl before – some years ago I had practically a mano-a-mano with one, when a little bird was knocking against our picture window upstate, hiding in the big forsythia bush. When I looked up, there was a huge white owl with immense wingspread, trying to get to the little guy. I ran outside into the snow, and chased the intruder away.
It was an interesting thought to see another owl in action, and we joined our friends in a cab ride to CP, a little early for the owl action, so we visited the Reservoir first, to see some reddish ducks. The Reservoir, seen from 85th street, was like a Corot painting, grey skies and water, with trees and the Castle near the tennis courts in foreground. But no red ducks, only a few mallard couples, and a clutch of seagulls in the center. Nothing daunted, we headed to 72nd Street, slightly cold in the as the day drew to a close.
At 72nd Street, on the edge of the model boat lake, where kids float their little yachts in summer, wind or motor-driven, a man has a photo exhibit of the hawks at 927 Fifth Avenue, the ones that caused the public furor when the coop apartment owners, tired of the smells, decided to destroy the nest. Pale Male and his new nest mate, portrayed in Marie Winn’s 1998 book Red Tails in Love and on several broadcasts, are still in the neighborhood, but Mary Tyler Moore and her husband, the lonely defenders of the hawks’ nest, have sold their 18-room nest and left. Rik Davis has pictures for sale, and graciously lets you peer through his telescope to see the hawks’ nest in action. He also has pictures of the Romeo and Juliet statue at the Delacorte, with a robin’s nest on Juliet’s breast, and of our objective, the owl, which he describes as located “up the path to the Ramble, past Central Park Cafe, and then some, and look for a crowd of fifty people.”
We could not quite pass the café without a cup of hot coffee, and ran into a clutch of bird people, our hosts’ acquaintances. But there was not much time for socializing, if we wanted to see the owl before she took off for her nocturnal hunt, so up and down the Ramble we went, a crooked path veering left to the side of The Lake (look it up on the map in your Yellow Book), at a spot called The Oven, a dip between two hillocks, and there, atop a tall tree, was a black oblong with ears, observed through high-power binoculars, with groups of people watching, some sitting on benches, waiting for the bird to move.
It was a big creature, probably from Wyoming, here by accident, and not expected to stay, we were told by a passing bearded birdman. The bush telegraph is apparently very strong (or is there a web site?), since scads of people were coming daily for the viewing. Our man assured us that this was the first memorable event since a couple of bald eagles floated down the Hudson on an ice floe, feeding on fish along the way (unverified) a couple of years ago when the river iced over (verified), then flew back home.
While waiting for the owl to move, our troop moved down to the lakeside, towards the graceful Bow Bridge, to see a gaggle of mallard ducks and Canadian geese begging for food, obvious victims of civilization and the welfare system. Our informant further told us of 19 screech owls released in the park, which had been hand-fed and perished in the hard get-your-own food environment (we subsequently found that a couple of nests had managed to survive and brought forth hardy offspring). Darwinism on the wing.
The owl finally stretched one wing and then the other, while fifty spectators held breathlessly still, and moments later opened the powerful great machine, to plane down, then flap up to a better height, finally settling on a tree over a ravine rich in mice (no bird hunter this, per our informant.) We eventually gave up waiting for the owl’s grand flight, thanking the volunteer guide, who refused to give his name, claiming to be an extraterrestrial alien.
On return to the heated café, we exchanged experiences with other seekers of warmth, among which a computer expert and bird and plant watcher, Ken Tauris, upon hearing of our adventure, also claimed the alien mantle, offering Alpha Centauris as his real name. Feeling gratified and honored to have met two aliens and a giant owl in one day, we returned to our modest aerie nest and cats and an environmentally justifiable cold supper of domestic fowl.
Feel free to follow our example; you too may meet the owl, and any number of facile bird story tellers of dubious veracity but considerable charm and entertainment value. An afternoon well spent.
Go to the blog behind www.dobelis.net for a longer version
This was shaping to be another kind of article when good friends Mary and Harry called, suggesting that we drop our post New Year’s Eve plans and come with them to Central Park, where observers have sighted a great horned owl. This creature, with a wingspan of five feet, has been living in the Ramble for the past two weeks, sleeping in a treetop during the day and going hunting after dusk. Don’t dally, we were told, who knows how long she (it had to be a female, they are larger) will stay here, in January, before flying south.
This was an invitation not to be taken lightly. We have had an encounter with a giant owl before – some years ago I had practically a mano-a-mano with one, when a little bird was knocking against our picture window upstate, hiding in the big forsythia bush. When I looked up, there was a huge white owl with immense wingspread, trying to get to the little guy. I ran outside into the snow, and chased the intruder away.
It was an interesting thought to see another owl in action, and we joined our friends in a cab ride to CP, a little early for the owl action, so we visited the Reservoir first, to see some reddish ducks. The Reservoir, seen from 85th street, was like a Corot painting, grey skies and water, with trees and the Castle near the tennis courts in foreground. But no red ducks, only a few mallard couples, and a clutch of seagulls in the center. Nothing daunted, we headed to 72nd Street, slightly cold in the as the day drew to a close.
At 72nd Street, on the edge of the model boat lake, where kids float their little yachts in summer, wind or motor-driven, a man has a photo exhibit of the hawks at 927 Fifth Avenue, the ones that caused the public furor when the coop apartment owners, tired of the smells, decided to destroy the nest. Pale Male and his new nest mate, portrayed in Marie Winn’s 1998 book Red Tails in Love and on several broadcasts, are still in the neighborhood, but Mary Tyler Moore and her husband, the lonely defenders of the hawks’ nest, have sold their 18-room nest and left. Rik Davis has pictures for sale, and graciously lets you peer through his telescope to see the hawks’ nest in action. He also has pictures of the Romeo and Juliet statue at the Delacorte, with a robin’s nest on Juliet’s breast, and of our objective, the owl, which he describes as located “up the path to the Ramble, past Central Park Cafe, and then some, and look for a crowd of fifty people.”
We could not quite pass the café without a cup of hot coffee, and ran into a clutch of bird people, our hosts’ acquaintances. But there was not much time for socializing, if we wanted to see the owl before she took off for her nocturnal hunt, so up and down the Ramble we went, a crooked path veering left to the side of The Lake (look it up on the map in your Yellow Book), at a spot called The Oven, a dip between two hillocks, and there, atop a tall tree, was a black oblong with ears, observed through high-power binoculars, with groups of people watching, some sitting on benches, waiting for the bird to move.
It was a big creature, probably from Wyoming, here by accident, and not expected to stay, we were told by a passing bearded birdman. The bush telegraph is apparently very strong (or is there a web site?), since scads of people were coming daily for the viewing. Our man assured us that this was the first memorable event since a couple of bald eagles floated down the Hudson on an ice floe, feeding on fish along the way (unverified) a couple of years ago when the river iced over (verified), then flew back home.
While waiting for the owl to move, our troop moved down to the lakeside, towards the graceful Bow Bridge, to see a gaggle of mallard ducks and Canadian geese begging for food, obvious victims of civilization and the welfare system. Our informant further told us of 19 screech owls released in the park, which had been hand-fed and perished in the hard get-your-own food environment (we subsequently found that a couple of nests had managed to survive and brought forth hardy offspring). Darwinism on the wing.
The owl finally stretched one wing and then the other, while fifty spectators held breathlessly still, and moments later opened the powerful great machine, to plane down, then flap up to a better height, finally settling on a tree over a ravine rich in mice (no bird hunter this, per our informant.) We eventually gave up waiting for the owl’s grand flight, thanking the volunteer guide, who refused to give his name, claiming to be an extraterrestrial alien.
On return to the heated café, we exchanged experiences with other seekers of warmth, among which a computer expert and bird and plant watcher, Ken Tauris, upon hearing of our adventure, also claimed the alien mantle, offering Alpha Centauris as his real name. Feeling gratified and honored to have met two aliens and a giant owl in one day, we returned to our modest aerie nest and cats and an environmentally justifiable cold supper of domestic fowl.
Feel free to follow our example; you too may meet the owl, and any number of facile bird story tellers of dubious veracity but considerable charm and entertainment value. An afternoon well spent.
Go to the blog behind www.dobelis.net for a longer version
