Fanfare for the Common Grampa

 
Today, my Grampa would be 100 years old.

He was my Mom's father; a tall, spindly man with lanky arms and legs, and practically no body fat.  A manual laborer all his life, he rarely kept more than an ounce of fat on his skin and bones.

That is one trait I definitely did not inherit from him!

He died in 1980, in Maine, the same state in which he was born, and where he lived most of his life, with the exception of stints in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  When I was growing up in Upstate New York, he and my grandmother would drive west from Maine to visit us, and I believe that was about the furthest he wanted to get from the Pine Tree State.

Like many native Mainers, he was born into poverty, worked most of his life just to keep his family fed, and never acquired much in the way of material possessions.  He and my grandmother, whom we called "Grammie," didn't get a television until long after we'd gotten ours - and we got ours after I came home from Kindergarten asking my parents who Mr. Rogers was!  My Grammie never learned how to drive - a lot of married women didn't back then in rural Maine - so it was just Grampa who drove their one car.  And those cars were always used; as in, several previous owners.  The first car of theirs that I remember was an old beige-colored Ford Falcon two-door, and then a newer taupe-colored Falcon, and then a four-door Dodge.  The Dodge was fairly big, bright blue with a black hardtop, and it was almost too fancy for Grammie, even though it didn't have power anything.

That's how many native Maine folks used to be.  Simple.  Reserved.  Quiet.  Hard-working.  Nothing flashy.  All the expensive cars on the roadways of Maine, especially along the coast, where my grandparents lived, belonged to vacationing summer people "from away."

The closest Mom's parents got to fancy was on Sundays.  He may have been a manual laborer, but Grampa would dress up for church every week.  He had an elegant gray suit, and socks with little diamond patterns on them.  He'd polish up his black Sunday-best shoes - long, narrow, heavy things those were.  Tie up his tie, slip on his tie clip, stick a crisply-folded white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit, and I'd never have pegged him as a guy who dug ditches or drove snowplows.

Almost all of my memories of him have him wearing a broad smile.  His cheeks would be a ruddy red, along with the tip of his nose, because most of my memories of him were made when we visited them in frozen Maine on Thanksgivings.  Even when Grampa and Grammie would come to Upstate New York, however, he'd work outside with Dad around our century-old farmhouse, fixing things or cutting firewood.  He always smelled of sawdust, or soot, or sand, or whatever that stuff was that he put on his hair to try and keep it neat.  Usually, however, his hair was the neatest at the breakfast table, right after he'd combed it.  After that, there was work to be done, and depending on the job at hand, the appropriate hat to be worn.

A few years before his death, somebody had sold him on the cheap an old, rusted-out International Harvester pickup truck with only wood boards where the pickup bed used to be.  It was a faded green color, with worn-out seats and battered chrome, but it was a work truck, so Grampa didn't care what it looked like.  Oddly enough, though, he never parked it in the driveway near the house, next to his blue Dodge sedan with the black vinyl hardtop.  Their property extended to a gravel drive on the other side of a brook that ran past their house, and he'd always park that truck over there, up under some overhanging limbs.  "To keep it out of the way," I think is how he explained to me.

All of his hard work eventually combined with some health problems that stemmed from his poor diet while he was growing up, um, poor.  His heart began to fail him, and he had bypass surgery that prolonged his life for only a few years, but back in the late 1970's, that was considered progress.  In his last winter alive, he was so weak, he couldn't chop wood for their stove, so the community up there in rural coastal Maine got together and cut several cords of wood to keep their stove going throughout the frigid season.  They cut so much wood, in fact, it made headlines in the local newspaper.  Over the years, my Grampa had done so much for so many other people on their sparsely-populated peninsula, cutting some wood for him was the least they could do in return.

A lot of people may take an hour out of their day to attend a funeral.  But how many will spend all Saturday chopping wood for you?

He died the next summer, on a splendid June day; the type of day I've come to say is one of those perfect summer days in Maine.  And a perfect summer day in Maine is truly a perfect day.  Not too hot, but with sunshine so buttery and abundant, it seems to be oozing out of the sun itself.  Clear air, more sparkling than glass.  Just the hint of a breeze, and the wind in the breeze is just the right temperature.  The grass on the lawns and the leaves in the trees become almost a translucent green, and the blue sky appears to go on forever through space.  My grandparents had a lovely patch of lawn to the eastern side of their little house, opposite the kitchen, and the view from that yard went across the road, under some magnificent tall trees, down a steep meadow, to a body of salt water called a "reach," which is a stretch of the ocean between the mainland and an island.

Unless you die in your sleep, a person can't ask for a better setting to be ushered from Earth into Eternity.  And my tired, thin, aging grandfather was lovingly blessed by our Heavenly Father with just such a transition.  It was after lunch, and Grampa was settling down in one of the two hand-made, wood Adirondack chairs that he'd painted a baby blue, perched over on the grassy lawn beyond the kitchen window.  Grammie was inside at the kitchen sink, washing up the lunch dishes, getting ready to join her husband and relax in the calm afternoon.  Briefly, she looked away while handling some plates.  When her gaze returned to the window, and to my Grampa, she saw that his head had slumped down.  His eyes closed.  Sitting in one of the baby blue Adirondack chairs, facing the water.  Under the deep sky, beyond which, angels were welcoming him into Glory.

Grammie didn't rush out to Grampa in a panic.  She knew instantly what had happened.

She dried her hands, went out to the Adirondack chairs, and softly bid him goodbye.

Does anybody have a pet name for you?  We don't know where he got it, but Grampa would call my brother and me "Sproggin."  As in, "how are my Sproggins today?"  Have you ever heard of that word?

He had some quirks, but he was also one of the millions of ordinary people who never were elected to public office, never held a high-paying job, never commanded troops in battle, never moved mountains... and never was upset that he hadn't.  Although, eventually, he did became a trustee in his village's historic little church.  I still have his well-worn Bible in a box in my closet; too fragile and delicate practically to look at, let alone use.  Sunday mornings, he'd be dressed in that gray suit, sitting at his little wood desk, reading that Bible to himself before the rest of us were done with breakfast.  I remember how he'd carefully turn its thin pages, his long, skinny fingers smoothing back the paper in a subconscious caress, up and down the crease in the binding, and clearing his throat repeatedly when he'd read aloud from it in that hardy Maine accent of his.

Grampa and Grammie are both buried in a humble little cemetery nestled up against a forest of pine trees, set apart from the road by blueberry fields and a white picket fence.  The church they used to attend is now closed, never used, like untold numbers of other formerly robust churches across New England.  The house where they last lived is currently owned by people from New York State and has been modernized beyond what my grandparents would probably neither recognize nor consider prudent.  Meanwhile, the two baby blue Adirondack chairs are here in Texas, in the garage, wrapped in plastic, on a shelf over my car.  A gold Honda Accord.

Too flashy, you think?

I'm not sure what Grampa would say about me owning a gold-colored Japanese car.  Or about his Adirondack chairs sitting on a shelf in a garage in Texas.  We don't know which is the one he died in, but it doesn't really matter.  Both of those chairs are a link to Grampa, just like his old Bible is.  A link not only to him, but to those perfect summer days in Maine.  And the even greater Perfection to which Grampa was called on one of those perfect days.

Some people get a lot of money from their grandparents when they die.  And that's all well and good.  Some grandparents leave both an abundance of money and wonderful memories, which probably is better still.  But some memories you just can't buy.  And you shouldn't want to.

Happy 100th birthday, Grampa - from one of your Sproggins.

King's Character Content Quotient

 
Putting words in his mouth.

Today is the day we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Some people will mark the occasion by attending a civic parade, marching down a road that used to be called something else, but is now called "Martin Luther King Boulevard," because it runs through a predominantly black neighborhood.  Others will perhaps participate in some act of charity or public-spirited endeavor, like painting the outside of a house in a run-down part of town, that just happens to be owned by a widowed elderly black lady.

Some corporations will give their employees time to participate in these conventional racially-themed activities as a good-will gesture.  They'll make sure local television news cameras are on-hand to capture the scene as blacks and whites, who ordinarily labor harmoniously alongside each other in their rewarding white-collar jobs, are hard at work happily making life just a little bit better for somebody whom corporate America would otherwise ignore.

Like a lot of American holidays, Martin Luther King Day is a day for pretension, and lately, in addition to the parades and Habitat for Humanity PR stunts, people try to vocalize what Dr. King would say if he were alive today.  They imagine how he would view the civil rights struggle, fifty years after his assassination.  He would be 84 by now; about to turn 85 in April.  Granted, black men of his generation did not have a very robust life expectancy, even if they weren't the target of an assassin's bullet.

Whomever the assassin(s) was(were).

James Earl Ray was the man officials accused of pulling the trigger, and initially, Ray confessed.  But he quickly recanted, and spend the rest of his life claiming King's death was the result of a conspiracy.  In 1999, the King family officially lent credence to Ray's claims, although all the facts may never be known.

And speaking of life expectancy, the doctor who performed King's autopsy said the civil rights leader may have been 39 calendar years old when he died, but the ravages of his struggle had worn his heart down to a 60-year-old's.

Here in Dallas last week, one of the TV stations broadcast some video from an elementary school's assembly in honor of King, and one little girl trying to complete the sentence, "what would Dr. King say today?"  She perhaps gave the best answer that could be given when she stated simply, "I don't know."  No platitudes, no poetry; but she did add something else, to the effect that "whatever he'd say, he probably wouldn't be satisfied with where we are."

And that's true enough, don't you think?  Both the probability of his not being satisfied, but also our genuine lack of knowledge of how he himself might have been transformed personally, not just politically or socially.  If he'd never been killed, had never died from a prematurely-aged heart, and were alive today, perhaps he'd have run for office at some time during these intervening 50 years.  Or maybe one of his children would have run.  But it's hard to tell how much he could have accomplished as a legislator from Georgia, especially considering the Deep South's protracted acquiescence to civil rights - even in the wake of King's assassination.

Then too, it's hard to tell what life would have been like if society hadn't reacted so decisively to the death of such an iconic figure as King.  When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, some scholars have said that the shock of such an audacious attack on the leader of the free world - whether Democrat or Republican - actually galvanized both legislators and voters.  Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, was a bulldog of a politician, yet he may have had an even easier time hammering through the assassinated president's legacy legislation based as much on sympathy and political correctness in the face of patriotic fervor, as much as anything else.  Might King's legacy similarly be greater today because he was assassinated, instead of being left to live out his life?  After all, an early death has a way of granting history the chance to enshrine the memory of a life so publicly cut short.  Given the chance to live out that life naturally, there's always the chance a person could blow it.  For King, he had those widely rumored affairs with women not his wife, and the FBI was apparently convinced that he was a closet Communist.  With all due respect to King's memory, personal indiscretion and government-instigated slander have brought down mightier public personages.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what King would say today.  The fact is that while he was alive, King put his voice to a good many ideologies that, frankly, our Founding Fathers should have incorporated into our country's incorporation papers.  Don't forget that after the American Revolution, not only were slaves - and howevermany free blacks there were - not eligible to vote, women and men who didn't own land weren't, either.  Weird, huh?  If somebody today were to read some of King's greatest speeches without knowing who he was, much of what he encourages American society to be is, technically, little more than what we've idealized our Founding Fathers to have intended for our country.  For King to be calling for that idealized America still, over 175 years after the birth of our country, casts him in as positive a light as it casts the people who were supposed to be forming this "more perfect union" in a negative one.

"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, 'Wait.'  But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.  There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair."  - from "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

And then there is King's dream that makes one wonder what what the Founding Fathers would have said, had they been alive to hear King proclaim it from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - from "I Have a Dream" speech

Of course, being judged by the content of one's character is a two-way street, isn't it?  The very people whose personal characteristics include bigotry are the ones who could be judged as not being worthy of emulation or honor.  But they were the ones to whom King was appealing, and even today, to whom his legacy continues to call.  People not only with white skin, you understand, but blacks, Hispanics, Middle-Easterners, Jews, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, Asians, Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers...

If King were alive today, what might he say about the status of race relations in the United States?

How about something like this:  "well, unfortunately, Americans have progressed on race about as far as they've progressed on judging anybody else by the content of their character."

Smoofee Doofee Office Talk

 
"The men I date don't need Viagra."

And indeed, a merrier widow I've never met.  But she's not saying what you're thinking.  And that was part of her charm.

She worked as a part-time receptionist at an office where I was formerly employed, and whenever it was her day to work, the rest of us knew we were in for a treat.  She was probably older than she looked, and certainly older than she acted.  She was one of those people who never seemed to have a really bad day, even when she was being treated for cancer.  Life was always an adventure for her, and, by extension, for us.  We simply had to come to work to go along with her.

Her husband, a Baptist minister, had died suddenly in his late 40's from cancer.  He had also sold life insurance on the side, and before becoming ill, had purchased a policy on himself that, upon his passing, left his widow financially comfortable.  She often claimed she'd gladly give all that money back if God would give her back her husband, but it also meant that she didn't need to work as much for the money, as it was to get out of her house.

She had two grown and married children living here in the area, and a son a few hours north in Oklahoma, plus grandkids and other relatives to keep her busy.  Plus her church.  Plus her volunteer work with a couple of local faith-based charities.  Although she was quite attractive, dressed stylishly, and would have made an all-around good catch for some fortunate fella, she really didn't date much, because she simply had no extra time for romance!

And, well, because she found out most unmarried men her age wanted her to take care of either themselves or their elderly parents.

Besides, she simply had too much spunk.  Then there was her being the widow of a Southern Baptist preacher, and a lifelong Baptist herself, which meant she expected the utmost in chivalry and morality from her menfolk.  That's why, when she was joking around with us about her slow dating life, she laughed that the men she'd gone out with don't need Viagra, because she didn't allow any hanky-panky.

Oh - did I mention that she had a creative way with words?  Even if what she meant wasn't always understood by those to whom she was talking.

We never really knew what she was going to say - or how she was going to say it.  For example, one of her favorite verbs was "bee-pee-doopin'," as in, "he went bee-pee-doopin' down the street."  Her exclamations and original colloquialisms became legendary.  In fact, I started writing them down, they were so extraordinary.  Here are just a few:

• Hoot de loodulee!
• Kiss my bunkers
• Bootlee skwoot
• Hoodlee doodlee's
• Fiddle-dee-di-do
• Tough luck stuff
• Holy coot
• You lazy gut
• Yay-by-hoo
• Bull-shooie  (probably to keep herself from uttering a more popular curse)

Her nouns and adjectives also defied description:

• Fleefee floppy
• Thingey-loobie
• Thingey-boopie
• Smoofee doofee
• Pur-dee ol'
• Woolly buggers
• Incentatism (for "incentive," I think)
• Flat as a flitter
• Hotter than a fruitcake
• Colder than a bat's butt flying backwards through a hail storm

One time, she was describing someplace, and she compared it by referencing a region of East Texas, known for its forests of pine trees.  So yes, I wrote it down, since the phrase she used was so peculiar, but I still don't know what it means:

"Like the Piney Woods without the trees."

Huh?  Can there be woods without trees?

I'd hear these things as she talked to various co-workers, managers, and even clients in the office, and I'd call out, "well, that one has to go on the list!"  But she was so good-natured, she didn't mind.  About the only protest she'd make is that this couldn't have possibly been the first time we'd heard that particular phrase.  Apparently, she grew up hearing these things from her family members in 1950's Fort Worth.

"No," we'd assure her, "you're entirely unique, and we like you that way!"

Here are some more examples of her unique eloquence:

• Regularly figure-out-able
• I'm fixin' ta thought of sumpthin'
• Scares the lily outta me
• It's a dog eat world out there
• Eating off the goopies
• I don't stick my tongue out for anybody
• Does your camera take pictures?
• Wore plumb slap-dab out

Once, when she was playfully reprimanding me, probably for forgetting something, she said "I told you three times" while she held up four fingers.

I mentioned earlier that she always dressed for the office to make a good impression, and once, when looking at models all dolled up in a fashion magazine, she wondered out loud, "don't they get tired of always having to look like that?  I know I do."  Yet she said it without an ounce of vanity, because she wasn't vain at all.  That's what made all of these sayings even more hilarious - at least to us.  She wasn't trying to be funny, or smart, or cute.  Her brain was shooting thoughts into her mouth, and her mouth just couldn't always keep up, and words would just tumble out.

I'm telling you all this not to make fun of my former co-worker, because oftentimes, when she'd stop and listen to what she'd just said, she'd laugh as loud as any of us.  Maybe she was even more tickled that we were paying attention to her every word, instead of treating her like many office workers treat part-time receptionists.  But we weren't the only ones paying attention.  When a daughter-in-law of hers came by the office one day, and I told her I was keeping a running list of her mother-in-law's sayings, she burst out in a good-natured laugh, saying mine was such a good idea, she should do the same at her home!  Obviously, our co-worker talked like this with everybody she knew.

It's been years since I saw this former co-worker, and I'm not even sure the company for which we both worked is still in business.  But I found that list the other day while sorting through some other paperwork, and oh, the memories it brought back!

They say that languages are always evolving, and within our little brick and glass office building, that was certainly the case.  I suppose we were our own Galapagos Island, what with all the fleefee-floppy, smoofee doofee woolly buggers scaring the lily out of us as we ate off the goopies.

Linguistic evolution?  Hey:  It's like the Piney Woods without the trees.

Tourist New York Experience

A small group of us Texans got together for dinner recently with a mutual friend who now lives in New York City, and was back in Dallas for the Christmas holidays.

Whenever my friend and I get together, we always compare notes about our Big Apple experiences, with hers being so much fresher than mine, yet remarkably, not as different as one might imagine.  As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and New York City is one of those places where that saying never fails to prove true.

It was expensive when I lived there, and it's even more expensive now.  The diverse personalities it attracted then are still attracted there today.  People in old apartments still have to run their window-unit air conditioners in the winter to combat the sweltering steam heat being pumped through radiators from basement boilers that only know two settings:  on and off.  If you open your windows - even a crack - too much soot from the city's dirty air comes inside your apartment.

There are always interesting stories from the subway to tell.  Always new adventures to relate.  And always, the same old complaints, about the price of movies and shampoo and tolls, slothful unionized workers, and tourists.

You know you've become a legitimate New Yorker when you start complaining about the tourists!

These Little Town Blues

Ahh, yes, those wonderful sidewalk-clogging, subway-bumbling, map-toting, photo-taking, suburbanites and internationals who figure the $300 they spend per night in the city's overpriced hotels entitles them to treat Gotham's residents like bit players in a real-world urban theme park.

Nearly 53 million tourists visited New York City in 2012, spending nearly $37 billion during their stay, which funded over 300,000 jobs for New Yorkers.  The City of New York estimates that tourism spared each of the municipality's households $1,575 in taxes.  Among international travelers, New York is the fifth-most-popular urban destination.  By comparison, sun-soaked Los Angeles is merely 20th.

With all that's at stake from its tourism industry, business-savvy New Yorkers know they can't begrudge their guests the opportunity to see what makes their home such a desirable place to visit - even if living there is somewhat less desirable, partly because of all those tourists!  But then again, the incessant irony that can be found in almost every nook and cranny of Gotham is part of its charm.  New Yorkers would love to live without tourists, but as frightfully expensive as the place is already, living without tourists would make it even more expensive.

Crime and Punishment

When I lived there, back in the early 1990's, crime was at all-time highs, and tourism, while a large component of the city's economy, wasn't nearly as prominent as it is today.  Yet even then, city residents grumbled about all of the sightseers.

After a family from the deep South had shopped in Trump Tower, they were jumped by muggers right outside the glitzy shopping center's doors on Fifth Avenue, and the father was stabbed to death when he didn't produce his wallet fast enough.  Apparently, the family, flush with both cash and excitement over their visit to the big city, had gone through the shops in Trump Tower, flashing their money and blathering in their Southern accents, which caught the attention of some crooks looking for easy prey.

When news broke throughout the city of the murder, in broad daylight, on one of Manhattan's most famous and congested thoroughfares, I was appalled.  But native New Yorkers scoffed.

"Serves them right, showing cash in public."

"That's what country hicks get when they don't know how to behave in New Yawk."

"What idiot shops in a place like Trump Tower and acts like it's their first time to spend money?"

I quickly learned that tourists won't get any sympathy from New Yorkers if they don't follow some basic survival tips.

Today, the city enjoys a far lower crime rate than when I lived there, and of course, that's a good thing.  However, just because the place is a lot safer now, should that translate into apathy when it comes to protecting yourself from even petty crime?  No, you probably won't get murdered, or even shot, during your stay, but just because its crime rate is low doesn't mean there is no crime.  After all, no matter where you live, crime rates are all relative, until you become a victim.  And there are still plenty of crime victims in New York City.

For example, in 2013, the city experienced over 20,000 felony assaults.  There were nearly 45,000 cases of grand larceny, which in New York State, means theft of property valued at $1,000 or more.  Petty larceny?  Try 85,000 cases of it.  So... how much is the watch you're wearing?  That leather overcoat you're planning on taking with you?  Out of 53 million tourists plus 8 million residents, these crime numbers may not sound like much, but hey - if you can follow some easy suggestions to avoid becoming a statistic, why not?

Therefore:  Men, simply keep your wallet in a front pocket at all times.  Ladies, wear an over-the-shoulder purse across your chest.  See?  It's not that hard.

Wherefore:  New Yorkers who display their personal electronics in public do so either with the benefit of sufficient wealth (to replace them after they're stolen), or with an insufficient amount of wisdom.  Or both.  And the same follows for tourists.  If you're going to be stubborn and brandish a smartphone in public, make sure you have an exceptionally firm grip on it.  Forty percent of all robberies in New York City involve smartphones.

Be wise about your surroundings at all times.  However, you'll drive yourself silly if you racially-profile, since native New Yorkers of all colors and cultures will likely walk, dress, talk, and otherwise express themselves in manners that you're not used to.  Remember, New York doesn't exist for you, and neither do New Yorkers.  They're not going to change their attitudes to accommodate you.  The reason you're being tolerated is because of the money you contribute to the city's coffers.  Just make sure the money you're contributing is through your hotel tax (by the way, it's best not to look at your bill when you check out) and not a tourist-target mugging.

If you think you're lost, or need to catch your breath, one trick I learned when I lived there is to stand facing plate glass windows to evaluate the "lay of the land" in reflections on the windows.  By doing so, you'll look more like a shopper than a confused tourist, and you'll reduce your tourist-target quotient.

Don't Be a Typical Tourist

And speaking of confused tourists, if you try my little window trick, please do so while standing at the edge of the sidewalk, not in the middle of it, where New Yorkers are hurriedly walking in their attempt to get someplace fast.  One of the surest ways to become the object of scorn by New Yorkers is to become an impediment to traffic, whether pedestrian, or motorized vehicle, or even bicycle.  You'll see lots of green paint on the pavement now, but that green paint denotes a bike lane, not a stand-and-chat-while-checking-directions-on-my-smartphone zone.

If you want to take a photo, step to the side and away from both pedestrian and vehicular traffic.  Don't spend lots of time taking your photos; with digital cameras, you can take several snaps in a row and hopefully, later on, you can check to see that you got at least one good shot.

If you're part of a group of three or more people, don't walk more than two abreast.

Only the rudest New Yorkers stand right in front of subway car or elevator car doors, waiting for them to open.  When waiting for a subway, bus, or elevator, step to the side when doors open.  Let off-loading passengers disembark first, and then board quickly yourself.  If you're boarding a subway car, make sure you've already determined you've identified the right subway line/train beforehand; don't block doorways as you contemplate making a last-minute change.

My view from a Port Authority helicopter
flying over Park Avenue in the early 1990's.
A lot of those shorter buildings in the center of this photo
have been replaced by glassy high-rises.

Hey - there's a lot to explore and experience in the Big Apple, and the best way to enjoy your visit is to be safe and smart about it.

Remember, too, that even though you're probably mostly interested in Manhattan, that fabled island is only one of New York City's five incredible boroughs. So, if you're an adventurous sort, consider exploring hot spots outside of Manhattan Island's more famous tourist destinations, like the world-renowned Bronx Zoo, the pseudo-Tudor splendor of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, and surprisingly elegant Brownstone Brooklyn.

And speaking of what to see and do, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a brief listing of where to go - and where to avoid - during your stay in the world's greatest city.  Now, as a rule, I don't really recommend restaurants, since tastes - and budgets! - in dining vary so much, but I do bend that rule with a couple of key exceptions.

So, if you're ready to be an educated tourist, let's go!

Manhattan Attractions I Recommend to Tourist Friends:

Uptown (above 59th Street)

• Central Park, particularly the Central Park Zoo and Mall (no, it's not a shopping mall)
• Guggenheim Museum, on the Upper East Side, not so much for the art (see my opinion of MoMA below), but the building itself, where you take the elevator to the top and walk down the ramp; the Guggenheim represents the only work of Frank Lloyd Wright's ever constructed in New York City
• American Museum of Natural History, on the Upper West Side, even if it is full of evolutionary theory
• Sylvia's Soul Food Restaurant in Harlem, where the sweet potato pie will make your cardiologist wince

Midtown (between 34th Street and Central Park South, also known as 59th Street)

• Bergdorf-Goodman, the penultimate ultra-chic department store, whose high prices will make your head spin
• Macy's Herald Square, the first and the biggest, featuring original wooden escalators above the second floor
• St. Patrick's Cathedral, even if you're not Irish - or Catholic
• Chrysler Building, an Art-Deco masterpiece, and even though its lobby is the building's only public space, it's still worth a visit
• Citicorp Center, where you can actually stand underneath a skyscraper
• High Line, a new park built on abandoned elevated train tracks
• Grand Central Station, everything its name implies
• St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, Park Avenue's grand dame of Anglican theology, swaddled in ornate Byzantine splendor
• Junior's Delicatessen in Times Square, whose famous cheesecake preserves the quintessential Brooklyn recipe

Downtown (The Battery to Herald Square at 34th Street)

• Trinity Church, at the head of Wall Street; would that our nation's financiers acknowledge the symbolism; Alexander Hamilton is among the notables buried in its adjacent graveyard
• St. Paul's Chapel, opened in 1766, the oldest continuously-used public building in Manhattan (there are older buildings throughout the boroughs, however; for example, a Quaker meeting house in Flushing, Queens, was built in 1694)
• Battery Park City, with its refreshing esplanade along the Hudson River, although it's the most non-New York neighborhood on Manhattan Island
• Staten Island Ferry, still the best value in New York City with iconic views of the Statue of Liberty, Lower Manhattan, and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
• Brooklyn Bridge, which you can walk across for stunning skyline and water views
• Century 21 Department Store, among the last of New York's fabled Jewish-owned discount emporiums, where the low prices will make your head spin
• Gramercy Park, the city's best-kept secret, even if all we can do is look inside; nearby are the quaint Washington Irving house, the prestigious National Arts Club, and the artsy Players Club.
• Bowling Green, the first municipal park in the United States, home to the famous Wall Street charging bull, and across the street from the Rockefeller family's former Standard Oil headquarters, the former US headquarters for the venerable Cunard Line, and the historic US Custom House (now housing the National Museum of the American Indian), a Beaux-Arts jewel of a building

Tourist Traps in New York City:

• 30 Rockefeller Plaza, unless you like being completely surrounded by similarly-duped tourists
• Empire State Building, unless you like waiting hours in close quarters and still not get to the very top
• Trump Tower - actually, any Trump building - unless you think gaudy bling is wonderful
• SoHo, TriBeCa, and the Bowery, unless you like absurd prices and hollow trendiness
• Chinatown, unless you like filth, noise, and chaos
• Almost any "famous" restaurant, particularly in the Theater District, like the Carnegie Deli and Planet Hollywood

Manhattan Non-Essentials (places that are interesting but not a must-see):

• Times Square, where the neon is amazing but Disney has sanitized the New York flavor to nothing (but I know you'll ignore my opinion on this one, since everyone has heard so much about the place)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, which, with too much art on display, can be overwhelming; it's best appreciated in strategic doses over the course of repeated visits
• Museum of Modern Art, seemingly tormented by its drive to keep abstract nihilism relevant (and these days, according to its longtime members, overrun with tourists and noise)
• Statue of Liberty, which is best appreciated from the decks of the Staten Island Ferry
• Ellis Island, which although it has a plaque my family dedicated to my grandmother, erased too much gritty history in its desire to sanitize the legal immigration experience
• Park Avenue and the Upper East Side, since the really big money isn't visible from the street
• New York Public Library, whose real contribution to the city and academia extends beyond its walls
• The subway, where tourists mostly get in the way of New Yorkers rushing to get someplace
• New York Stock Exchange, which while offering a real-time, real-life economics lesson, can be utterly confusing
• Carnegie Hall, whose legendary charm and resonant acoustics are increasingly rented out to musical groups of dubious distinction
• Lincoln Center, one of urbanism's best lessons about bad 1960's design, proving that even the world's best orchestra and opera, plus continuous - and costly- architectural tweaking, can only salvage adequacy
• Cathedral of St. John the Divine (in the winter, or on a cloudy day), when its shadowy interior and bleak, incomplete exterior can recall the foreboding chill of religious cynics
• Harlem, where nouveau riche blacks have reclaimed beautiful neighborhoods but in the process, have made them as unlivable for middle-income minorities as their crime-ridden shells were a generation ago
• Fifth Avenue Shopping (from Rockefeller Center and Saks Fifth Avenue to 59th Street), whose brands have mostly become suburbanized and whose urbane patrons now gravitate towards Madison Avenue
• Strand Books, an amazing Greenwich Village bookstore awash with the pungent smell of really old paper, but so crowded with grunge hipsters it's not a conducive environment for browsing... it's also not a place most registered Republicans would feel welcome
• Bloomingdales, which although being a Manhattan retailing institution, seems to have lost some of its glamorous mojo
• Zabar's, probably the world's original gourmet foodie emporium, whose business model has now been replicated so much, you'll likely miss how legendary the store has been to at least two generations of Upper West Siders
• Washington Square Park, and its iconic archway, in the heart of Greenwich Village and the campus of New York University, boasting an exquisite old-time city neighborhood that's home to some of the City's most bacchanalian college students and artists

January Sixth, the Twelfth Night

 
Today is the sixth of January.

So what, you ask?  It's Monday, the beginning of the first full calendar workweek of 2014.  It's back to the grind after two weeks of holidays.  And even here in Texas, the temperatures are frigid.  Fifteen degrees - with a windchill of about two - when my clock radio turned on this morning.

Nevertheless, no matter the day of the week on which it may fall, January 6 on the Christian calendar denotes the Feast of Epiphany.  Ee-PIFF-ah-nee.  It's also called the "Twelfth Night," since January 6 is twelve days after December 25, the day we "officially" commemorate the birth of Christ.

Yes, centuries upon centuries of us humans re-telling the life of Christ - and striving, in some meager way, to ascribe a contrived extravagance to the mortality He suffered on our behalf - has inflicted some indignities with regards to accuracy.  We celebrate Christmas when we do, for example, because it was easier for early church leaders to link it with other secular holidays than to try and figure out a more precise timeline for the Nativity (which was probably in late March or early April).

Speaking of contrivances, it's worth noting that the Magi, whose visit with the Christ Child the feast of Epiphany commemorates, were never in the stable, as is popularly portrayed.  Nor do we know if there were only three of them.  We know there was more than one, that they traveled a great distance that couldn't possibly have been traversed the night Christ was born, and that when they finally did arrive, they brought three gifts for the Christ Child.*

Hey - not to rain on your "three kings at the stable" parade; even the whole "Twelfth Night" thing is man-made; the Magi did not arrive at Bethlehem twelve minutes after His birth, or twelve days, or twelve months - or twelve anything.  The number twelve is simply a theologically significant, frequently recurring number in the Bible.

Epiphany may look like it's a contrived tradition, which is the excuse many modern evangelicals give for ignoring it, but that's too bad, because Epiphany is, more importantly, chock-full of Gospel relevance.  Epiphany celebrates the physical revelation and purpose of our incarnate God in the form of Jesus, since it was through the gifts given by the Magi that tangible confirmation of this human baby's redemptive role in history was established.  Yes, the angels had proclaimed the birth of Christ, the shepherds had witnessed it, and Simeon and Anna had orally validated it, but the gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the Magi provided material proof for it in a world always searching for tactile affirmation.

Theologians postulate that the baby Jesus was probably two or three years old by the time the Magi arrived in Bethlehem, and that Joseph and Mary had established a residence for their little family in the same town over which the Christ Star had shone since the night of His birth.  It's even possible - although unlikely - that Joseph and Mary, by the time the Magi arrived, already had other children, since by then, they would have been officially married for a while.  But even if they didn't have at least one other child by natural means, how awkward must it have been to watch what was likely a caravan of royal astronomers and sages pull up at their front gate?

With, of all things, gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

These were exceptionally important gifts.  The gold they gave, for example, represents the royalty of Jesus as the King of Kings.

Frankincense was an expensive perfume used in the Jewish temple representing worship as a fragrant offering to God.  In the context of being a gift from the Magi, it signifies the consecration of Christ's pure life of service on Earth that would please His holy Father (some branches of Christianity tie frankincense to Christ's baptism by John the Baptist, and the dove appearing from Heaven as God decreed His pleasure in His Son).

Myrrh is a luxurious, aromatic resin that, in Biblical times, was used in the embalming process, as corpses were wrapped for burial.  Obviously, this could have been an exceedingly troubling gift for Mary and Joseph, charged with rearing the young Savior, since it foreshadowed the Passion of Christ and His arrest, torture, and crucifixion.

Sobering, indeed; and yet, for us, a reminder of the intrinsic, righteous, and holy purposes for Christ's mortality.  So that's why Epiphany is considered a feast day for believers in Christ, because without the attributes these gifts symbolize, we would have nothing at all to celebrate.

Think about it:  the gold can be seen in Christ's royal yet servile life that pleased God (frankincense) and demonstrated a sort of death (myrrh) to self.

Since no mention of these gifts is ever made again in the Gospels, some theologians have speculated as to whether or not Joseph sold them to fund the family's flight into Egypt to escape Herod.  Or maybe the family sold of some of it over time as daily bills continued to come due during Christ's growing-up years in Nazareth.  At least if the family had saved the myrrh, don't you think one of the apostles would have included a reference to it when Christ's body was taken from the cross and placed in the tomb?

Nevertheless, since the gifts from the Magi were rich in both their cost and symbolic affirmation, what happened to them matters far less than what they represent.  Maybe it's not a sin to casually shuffle the Magi conveniently about our Nativity scenes, but the Incarnation narrative as a whole is incomplete without understanding what they brought.  We Christ-followers may have meshed together some parts of His story over the millennia, but the basic components of that story remain as true as when they happened in real time, in real places, to real people, involving real gifts with real significance.

After two thousand years of telling and retelling this story, to have only the timeline get fudged is a pretty remarkable testament to its overall integrity.  Don't you think?

Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of evangelicals don't bother celebrating Epiphany, and the churches that do tend to lean on the liberal side of Christendom.  I attended a Twelfth Night service at a large Episcopal church in Dallas a couple of years ago, and the sermon was something about Christ coming to Earth to help us communicate better with each other.

Um, no; that wasn't the reason!

So, since the selection of theologically-sound Epiphany services near your home will likely be slim to none, I've taken my "virtual worship service" idea I had a few years ago for Christmas and tweaked it for a Twelfth Night observance.  It's shorter, since the repertoire for music about the Magi tends to be almost exclusively about three kings, which, as I also mentioned earlier, is more fiction than fact.  After all, it's not like we need any more folklore and legend in the account of God's Incarnation as The Christ.

Basically, just flow through the "order of worship" below, clicking on each link to open the videos from YouTube in a new window.  So, without any further ado, let us proceed with our virtual concert, complete with opening and closing prayers:


Bidding Prayer:  Oh great God, Whose divine providence has granted us salvation through Your holy Son, Whose birth we commemorate this season, we Your people bid Your help so as to worship You in spirit and truth, not just as we join in these praises to You, but as we celebrate Your many good gifts to us, not the least of which is our very reason to be joyful, our incarnate Savior, even Jesus, the Christ.


Opening Fanfare
J. S. Bach, "For the First Day of Christmas (Part 1)" from the Christmas Oratorio


The Narrative
"From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable" by Stuart Townend

(Despite its sub-par audio quality and quaint aesthetics, I chose this video because the girls who are singing come from an African orphanage, helping to represent the global breadth of God's salvific plans through the incarnation of His Son.)


The Invitation
"O Come, All Ye Faithful"


Awe
"O Magnum Mysterium" from the ancient Matins for Christmas; this version composed in 1994 by Morten Lauridsen of Los Angeles, California

Latin text:  O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio!  Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia.

English translation:  O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord, lying in a manger!  Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear Christ the Lord. Alleluia!


Exultation
J. S. Bach, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" and "Et in Terra Pax" from the Mass in B Minor

(Yes, we have South Koreans singing in Latin!  The Gospel isn't just for English speakers, is it?  I hope I don't need to translate, but just in case, "gloria in excelsis Deo" means "Glory to God in the highest," and "et in terra pax" means "and peace on earth.")


Benediction:  Eternal God, Who replaces our night of despair with the brightness of Thy one true Light, bring us who have known the revelation of that Light on Earth to see the radiance of Thy heavenly glory through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

Our Lord Christ, to Whom gifts from the magi heralded Thy royalty, divinity, and sacrifice, please fill us who are Thy servants with goodwill as partakers in Thy salvation, and with hope, and with exceeding gladness in sharing with others the gift of Yourself, the holy Babe of Bethlehem, Amen.

Gracious Holy Spirit, on behalf of those who mourn, who are destitute, or who otherwise need our ministry of compassion, we humbly beseech Thy bountiful mercy during this festival season, even as Thou dost direct us to be Thy hands and feet of goodwill to our neighbors.

And the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon Your people, both now, and forevermore.  Amen.
_____

* Perhaps I should also point out that some explanations for Epiphany involve the presumption that the Magi were the first Gentiles to meet the Christ Child, and thus, their visit was the "epiphany," or revelation, of Christ to the non-Jewish world.  I have three problems with this view:  First, the fact that it introduces religion (not faith) into the Gospel narrative; second, that it seems to either subordinate Judaism or unduly elevate "Christianity" when God's Incarnation was nonreligious; and third, because there are a lot of schools of thought on the role of Jewishness in Christ's earthly ministry, and it's hard to know which is the right one (although I personally tend to side with John Piper's view).  So, for the sake of God's glory over mankind's theologizing, I prefer to minimize this aspect of Epiphany.
 

Hear Amid the Winter's Snow

 
They're calling it "Winter Storm Hercules."

From Chicago to Boston and beyond, sub-zero temperatures and the season's first major blizzard have visited the nation's most densely-populated region, right at the end of the Christmas and New Years holiday.  For most schoolkids, who are already on a two-week Christmas break - if they're still allowed to use the word "Christmas" - there have been no classes to miss.  Yet, anyway.  However, for their parents, many of whom likely had to return to work yesterday, the commute is treacherous, and sidewalks and driveways suddenly much wider and longer than when temperatures are above freezing.

She had no intention of adding insult to injury, but on Facebook this morning, a longtime female acquaintance of mine posted a photo of herself all tanned and glamorous, having arrived in Palm Beach just a few days ago after spending Christmas with her family in Ohio, and before that, wrapping up a project in New York City.  In photos she'd posted from suburban Cleveland, her skin was lily white, like the color of the snow that's been falling up there these past couple of days.  But already, less than a week down in Florida, her skin is as bronzed as any native Floridian's.  I'm sure all of her friends in Ohio and New York - and Connecticut, where she has a summer home - are admiring that tan with more than a tinge of "wish-I-were-there."

Northern winters are indeed kinder to kids than adults, aren't they?  It's usually kids who get to stay home during snowy weather.  It's kids who are allowed to go play in snowdrifts while their parents shovel snow from driveways.  And it's kids who get to trudge back inside after getting snow all down in their socks and underwear and be greeted with a steaming bowl of homemade soup, or mug of hot chocolate and fresh-from-the-oven cookies.

Growing up in rural upstate New York, when we'd come back inside after romping around in the piles of snow blanketing our property, I don't clearly remember my Mom ever giving my brother and me fresh-from-the-oven cookies.  But I do recall her soups, and settling down to the dinner table after taking off our mittens, scarves, and woolen hats - clumped with little balls of icy snow - and hanging them over the big wood stove in a corner of the kitchen.  As those clumps of icy snow would melt, droplets of water would hit the iron cooking surface of that stove, and quietly spit and hiss. 

Back in the laundry room, where we'd have removed our one-piece snowsuits and clunky winter boots, little puddles would be forming as more snow - buried in the creases and folds of our garments - thawed.  The way my brother and I burrowed into snowbanks along our driveway, rolled in fluffy drifts around trees, and romped with our energetic collie in waist-high meadows of brilliant white snow, we could look like employees from a talcum powder factory when we came inside.

Dad had a snowblower, a clanky, noisy contraption that gobbled up fallen snow and blew it out of the way, and he'd clear our long driveway after a major snowstorm, leaving crisp white walls along edges that could get several feet high.  We lived in the "snow belt" of New York State's Tug Hill Plateau, where lake-effect snow blowing in from Lake Erie could dump several feet of the white stuff in one blizzard.  I remember one winter, when fallen snow got so high, it covered our kitchen window.

With all the practice he got, Dad was mighty proud of his snowplowing prowess, but since we hadn't expended the arduous effort like he had, my brother and I couldn't share his appreciation for a well-cleared driveway.  Instead, to us, a freshly-carved wall of snow along our driveway represented the next opportune site for creating a new tunnel, or pretending like we were skydiving, or simply throwing ourselves into something so soft and fluffy that we couldn't possibly hurt ourselves.

Even if we did leave a mess.

It wasn't the loss of such precise creases alongside the driveway that bothered Dad, however.  It was all of the snow my brother and I would, as we cavorted in these newly-carved snowbanks, cause to spill out and into the driveway.  Hey - we weren't old enough to drive, so we didn't let practicalities haunt us back then.  I don't think my brother or I ever learned our lesson:  inevitably, Dad would bark at us to go and get the shovels, and scrape up the snow that was now obstructing the path for our cars.

Actually, I don't remember that we had a lot of snow days, when school was closed because of the snow.  In fact, many times, blizzards would start while we were in school, and if we were fortunate, class might be dismissed early so all of the buses could get back to the depot at a reasonable hour.  When I'd arrive home, I'd climb into my snow gear, and trundle off into the freshly-fallen snow - and indeed, the freshly falling snow - to enjoy the irresponsibility of what adults would consider to be bad weather.

When it's snowing, everything seems hushed, doesn't it?  And muted.  You can shout, but your voice - especially the voice of your parent - doesn't seem to carry as far.  I suppose it's an acoustic fluffiness from all the soft flakes of frozen water.  If there's no wind, and snow is falling so steadily it seems you're wandering around in white sheets, you can enter your own private world of contemplation and awareness, with the light grayness of both sound and sight.

Stop, and try to hear the snow falling.  Flop on your back in snow so fresh, it hasn't begun to compact itself.  Swirls of snowflakes coil up from where they'd fallen and settle on your face and nose like transient visitors... because they melt away in the warmth of your skin.  We had huge, towering pine trees in front of our house, and I loved to crawl down into the snow cavities created by even the slightest breeze, and the broad, thick pine branches just a few feet above the ground, collecting most of the falling snow.  Laying up in underneath, just out of sight, but still able to command a view of one's increasingly white surroundings, the solitude was palpable.  And so freeing.  When you're a kid playing in the snow by yourself, there is no hate, no misunderstanding, no offense, no quarreling.  Just your imagination - an imagination too young to have been corrupted by what's wrong with our world.

Yes, they say youth is wasted on the young.  And whenever I see photos and videos of blizzards these days, as a fortysomething adult, while I have no regrets about not living up there and having to shovel and snowblow and try to drive in that stuff, I do regret that I can't go back and simply traipse out around the eastern side of our two-story farmhouse, down the broad side yard... around to the silent sentinel of pines, in the shadows... as they obediently held out their velvety branches in the falling snow.

And laying down and listening.

And

not

hearing

anything.