Category: Nonfiction

Walking on Walnuts

The Book of the Week is “Walking on Walnuts” by Nancy Ring, published in 1997.  This book is the career memoir of a pastry chef in New York City.  Ms. Ring discusses the uncertainty surrounding the fiercely competitive restaurant business in New York, and thus the attendant job insecurity of a pastry chef.  She discusses the details of the job– long hours, difficult bosses, hard work, and a hilarious episode in which The Fig Tree restaurant personnel were tipped off that a very influential restaurant reviewer, one Bette Brown, was to visit one night.

A woman fitting the reviewer’s description entered the eatery with her entourage.  She proceeded to complain about a draft at her table, then when moved, about being too close to the waiter’s station.  The bread basket caught fire from a candle on the table…  You can see where this is going– a long series of further mishaps, complaint-fodder for the fussy diner, “… who sarcastically asked Liz [the waitress] if she had graduated from high school.” Ms. Ring, who was also a waitress there at the time, witnessed Liz’s feisty temper flare as she finally told off the customer.

The supposed Ms. Brown confronted Carl, the restaurant owner, who, at the bar, was “… busy crying into his fourth double bourbon.” With the ‘don’t-you-know-who-I-am’ speech, she told off Carl, telling him her name.  It was not Bette Brown.  Carl was extremely relieved.  A good dining experience was had by the actual Bette Brown, who had been there earlier that evening.

This book contains not only entertaining anecdotes, but recipes, too.

Bang the Keys

The Book of the Week is “Bang the Keys” by Jill Dearman, published in 2009.  This book tells writers how to identify the kind of writer they are, set goals and deadlines, find a writing partner, use writing journals, meditate, identify the type of story right for them and improve their writing through advice, exercises and sources of additional readings.

This book’s author is a writing instructor and a published writer herself. It has been her practice to pair up writers in her classes so that one serves as morale booster and advisor to the other.

Computers have changed the way writers write.  She cites Lee Siegel’s book, “Against the Machine:  Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” commenting that “Essentially, we are fast becoming a mean-spirited race of superficial idiots who are disconnected from each other and from ourselves, and can no long distinguish between gossip and news!”

Needless to say, finishing a piece of writing requires discipline.  Many modern writers become easily distracted by texting, emailing and surfing.  The author gives tips on marking goals on the calendar, setting aside writing time and imagining the kind of counsel one’s own favorite author would give about how to proceed and commit to a project.

The author provides a mnemonic device (P.L.O.T.W.I.C.H) to remind writers how to develop a strong plot:  Premise, Links, Obstacles, Transformation, Wants, Impediments, Conflict and Heat.  Overall, she discusses a general plan for writers denoted by the acronym B.A.N.G.:  Begin, Arrange, Nurture and Go. This is why she says, “Bang the Keys.”

Guilty Pleasures

The Book of the Week is “Guilty Pleasures” by Donald Barthelme, published in 1974; publisher – Farrar Straus and Giroux.  This is a collection of humorous essays.

In one essay, the author presents a whimsical scenario in which Amanda encounters her friend Hector playing all manner of board games simultaneously. He says, “…On the floor.  It was my move.  When I play alone, it is always my move.  That is reasonable.”  He tells Amanda that everyone is playing these games, including businessmen, military men and scientists. Amanda says she is tired of playing games.

Hector renews her enthusiasm by musing on various hypothetical games such as Contretemps, the Game of Social Embarrassment, and Hubris. He engages her in the verbal Game of Deathbed Utterances. She thinks the games are “marvelous… because they are so meaningless and boring, and trivial. These qualities, once regarded as less than desirable, are now everywhere enthroned as the key elements in our psychological lives, as reflected in the art of the period… ”

Then comes the title of this essay, “Games Are the Enemies of Beauty, Truth, and Sleep, Amanda Said.” Hector describes one last game, that of Ennui.  It requires “… No rules, no boards, no equipment… the absence of games… the modern world at its most vulnerable.”

Saving Schools

The Book of the Week is “Saving Schools” by Paul E. Peterson, published in 2010.  This book tells the history of education in the United States.  It presents some inconvenient facts many politicians and even education “professionals” do not want to acknowledge.

Sociologist James Coleman did extensive longitudinal studies on thousands of students in the early 1960’s.  He found that “within regions and types of communities (urban, suburban and rural), expenditures per pupil were about the same in black and white schools… students did not learn more just because more money was spent on their education.” Students’ reading ability was not affected by the following factors:  class sizes, teachers’ credentials, textbook newness, number of books in the school library, or any other “material resource of a school.” It was affected by the students’ home lives. Another interesting finding was that low-income African-Americans read better when placed in classes with higher-income Caucasians, but the latter did not do worse when placed in classes with the former.

During the era of desegregation of the schools, Caucasian families moved from cities to suburbs at a higher rate than did African-American families.  Suburban schools therefore became more segregated, and thus there occurred less integration than otherwise in all kinds of communities overall.

One of LBJ’s anti-poverty programs gave billions of federal dollars to schools to provide intensive tutoring to disadvantaged African American students.  Unfortunately, this singled the students out, and made them targets for bullying.  Besides, the tutors “often had less training” than regular classroom teachers.  Research has yet to prove that the tutoring was significantly helpful.

Some education reformers have called for hiring of teachers who lack a master’s degree, as extra schooling is no guarantee of better teaching. Teachers earned master’s degrees in droves in the 20th century only because they were paid more for earning one. Teacher-training schools and unions have vehemently opposed removing this teaching credential.

“…relative to other employees who hold college degrees, teachers today are not as well paid as they were in 1960.”

In 2008, federal education officials and a team at UCLA proposed national education standards.  However, the portrayal of the United States in historical accounts, and the selectivity of curricular contents turned out to be too controversial.

The book also exposes the flaws of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law.  It covers the pros and cons of school vouchers, and the system that has been widely implemented as an alternative to vouchers – charter schools.

The author obviously favors the use of technology with regard to education.  For, the table of contents bears the headings for parts 1, 2 and 3:  “The Rise,” “The Decline” and “Signs of Resurrection.”  The third part contains a chapter on technology.

The author speculates that the future of education will involve online learning for all students, even declaring: “Each student, each household, each family will pick and choose among the endless variety of options entrepreneurs can produce.”  The use of the word “entrepreneurs” is disturbing when used in the context of education.  The author makes other assertions with which I do not agree, but he does provide extensive documentation on matters of “fact.”

Four Books on History, Mostly NYC

(1) “McNamara’s Old Bronx” by John McNamara, published in 1989; (2) “Fifty Years on Fifth 1907-1957” by The Fifth Avenue Association, published in 1957; (3) “From Alley Pond to Rockefeller Center” by Henry Collins Brown, published in 1936, and (4) “Centenarians” by Bernard Edelman, published in 1999.

(1) This is a book of essays on Bronx history, dating from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. I relate the following trivia:

BATHHOUSES

At the bottom of 138th Street in Mott Haven, there were floating bathhouses. It was Ladies’ Night on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

One of the most majestic Public Baths opened in 1909 at Elton Avenue and E. 156th St. It boasted Roman architecture, with carved ornamentation and a copper roof. However, bathtubs in residences became widespread, and the baths have gone the way of many other businesses.

TRAGEDIES

There occurred many tragedies that are now just a blip in the annals of Bronx history.

In the mid-1850’s, it was trendy for rival steamboat lines to “drag race”. On July 28, 1852, two ships, the “Armenia” and the “Henry Clay” were having a drag race. The boilers of the Henry Clay exploded, causing a big fire, and passengers to be thrown off the boat. Many were trapped in the stern by smoke, so they jumped off the side and drowned. To add insult to injury, looters boated out to the scene and took whatever they could get from the flotsam, jetsam, victims, and finally the steamship itself. The criminal case involving the ship’s owners and officers was tried in Riverdale, then a part of the Bronx. They were acquitted. A few months later, the passing of the Steamboat Inspection Act outlawed racing.

In January 1882, the Tarrytown Express and the Atlantic Express trains crashed during a snowstorm. The reason is that someone pulled the emergency brake on the Atlantic, and it had to stop. There was no problem found. However, since it was exactly 13 minutes ahead of the Tarrytown, and going in the same direction, a brakeman was supposed to go out with signal lanterns to warn the Tarrytown. He was too late. Between 8 and 13 people died. People like to tell the story using 13, as other “13’s” pop up in the story, including the aforementioned 13 minutes, the fact that there were 13 cars on the Atlantic, and it was Friday the 13th. The brakeman and the conductor were indicted for, then vindicated of manslaughter.

On June 15, 1904, there was the General Slocum disaster, in which an excursion boat caught fire while in Bronx waters, and hundreds of women and children on a church outing drowned.  In 1914, just two years after the Titanic sank, Murray Haas made a movie in Hunts Point simulating the calamity. The film’s replica of the iceberg was made of wood and canvas. Night shooting was done with flares and arc-lights.

ENTERTAINMENT

In the late 1800’s, German bands used to play music on the streets of the Bronx. It was a way for Germans to remember their culture. Listeners would put a coin in the musicians’ basket. When the bands were in front of pork stores and bakeries, they created a bit of nostalgia for German housewives. The bands played German drinking songs to remind them of their school days when in front of athletic facilities. In those days, one could get free lunch with the purchase of a beer, but bands that played at saloons at lunchtime got free beer anyway.

BUSINESS

In the 1890’s single Chinese men started restaurants and laundromats in the Bronx. Some were from Cuba. The laundrymen sometimes gave sugar cane to delivery boys to suck on. Girls did not work for them, because they had heard (false) horror stories of white slavery. The Chinese actually had a very low crime rate.

In 1787, the Lorillard Brothers, who owned a snuff mill on the Bronx River, created the first ad campaign for their chewing tobacco, snuff and “segars”. They mailed cards of an Indian smoking a long clay pipe of “Best Virginia” to every postmaster in America, since at that time, post offices served as general stores and centers of social activity.

MISCELLANEOUS

In 1907, Van Cortlandt Park was used as a holding pen for buffalo for a number of months, before the buffalo were sent to the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma. Buffalo were an endangered species at the time, and Congress was trying to beef up their numbers.

NAMING OF THE BRONX

There are a few theories as to how the Bronx was named. An unlikely story is that visitors to Jonas Bronck’s farm said they were “going to the Broncks”.

Another is that the first English settlers assumed the phrase “Bronck’s Land” to mean land of a certain nature, such as marsh or hills, and called it The Bronx, such as the way “Flatlands” or “New Lots” are sections of Brooklyn.

Still another is that people referred to specific regions, such as The Bronx River, or The Bronx Kills, by the short name “The Bronx” in the late 1700’s; this, according to Bronx Historian Dr. T. Kazimiroff.

*  *  *

(2) This book tells the history of the buildings and culture of Fifth Avenue, through the eyes of an association that has tried to maintain its high-class reputation through the years.

FIRES

In the 1800’s, construction materials were very flammable, electrical wiring was faulty, firefighting technology and infrastructure were poor, and hundreds of buildings were burned to the ground in hours:

In 1835, seven hundred buildings, including the Merchants Exchange were destroyed; 1858, it was the Crystal Palace; 1872, the Fifth Avenue Hotel; 1905, St. Thomas Church.

CENTRAL PARK

The area above 59th street was seedy until it was cleared for the creation of Central Park; in fact, it was named “Squatter’s Sovereignty”. The place was a shantytown of the homeless, an overgrown swamp.  Tracts of land sold to build the Park commanded tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 1850’s. The Park was finally finished in 1876.

In 1907, New York copied Paris, and introduced taxis. The taxis at that time were all different colors.

PAY TELEPHONES

There were telephone attendants in public phone booths from 1876 through the mid 1890’s. Coin-operated phones were introduced in 1896. They accepted all coins, from nickels to silver dollars. In 1910, nickels, dimes and quarters became the standard, but the caller still had to ring the operator to make a call. The rotary dial appeared on all phones in 1925. An organ maker and his lawyer started the Telephone Company of New York. Bell Telephone Company took it over in 1878.

* * *

(3) This book is an overview of the culture and landscape of various regions, including Queens (especially Flushing), Brooklyn, Bronx, Richmond (Staten Island) and a few bordering areas.

QUEENS

In 1683, Queens, named after Queen Catherine, was formed. The author complains that many of the borough’s old-world villages lost their rural quaintness and became citified. Such is the price of progress.

In the late 1800’s, there were a handful of police officers covering Flushing, New York.

TRANSPORTATION

The ways to get around used to include the straw-filled, horse-drawn car, then the cable and the trolley. The elevated trains replaced those. Surface cars, omnibuses and the subway have endured to this day.

BUSINESS

Industries such as steel, oil, tobacco, five-and-tens and railroads made many men rich from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Oil is still lucrative, but the other sectors have not fared as well, relatively speaking.

FORMATION OF “NEW YORK CITY”

At midnight on December 31, 1897, the five boroughs became united. Brooklyn was no longer a city. People used to play cricket in Staten Island. Cornelius Vanderbilt the First lived and died there. So did many sailors, who retired to the now landmark and arts center, Sailor’s Snug Harbor. Three famous architects, James W. Renwick, Frederick Law Olmstead and Arthur Gilman, lived there, too.

Riverdale, The Bronx, was a bird sanctuary for decades before it received other inhabitants.

*  *  *

(4)  This book presents an oral history of dozens of people, mostly white (and a few blacks), who, at its writing, claimed they were more than 100 years old. All were born in the mid to late 1890’s.

WAR/IMMIGRANTS

During WWII, Nazi minister Goebbels put out the propaganda that Germany had “successfully” invaded the Soviet Union. One West German man says he viewed that as good news, because he knew the Russians would fight back. Polish prisoners agreed. He came to America in 1942, where he discovered he could actually find a job. And talk to women unintroduced, without getting in trouble. There was even free night school.

One way a man was tested to determine his fitness for the air force during WWII, was to spin him around in a dentist’s chair. If he qualified, he might be sent to MIT for six weeks’ training.

UTILITIES/ENERGY

When telephones were first installed in residences, seven or eight families shared one line. The ring tone was different for each household; for example, one long and three short rings.

Some people had a coin-operated gas meter. The gas was pumped into light fixtures, which one could turn on by striking a match. When the electric company was invented, it tried to convert people from gas to electricity by giving away appliances and light bulbs. Some people did not welcome electricity, because they were scared of getting shocked. The early electricity meters were also coin-operated. Before the electric iron, females’ work was even harder, because ironing of clothing was done with irons in a fire that had to be constantly stoked.

HOLIDAYS

In Maryland, Christmas, never July 4th, was celebrated by setting off firecrackers. There were gifts of pickles made to the “Negroes”. The sound of a Revolutionary War cannon firing might be heard to herald the start of Christmas Day.

EDUCATION

About one hundred years ago, schools might have all grades one through eight in the same classroom. The teachers might be eighth grade graduates. There might be reading, spelling, arithmetic, penmanship, grammar, geography, history and physiology. But no gym, no art, no music. If a kid misbehaved in school, the teacher would punish him, and then his parents would, too. Students started each day by hearing a Bible passage, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and singing a patriotic song. The kids were sick a lot with chicken pox, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, hepatitis and malaria, and they were infested with black lice. Fortunately there was poisonous mercurial salve to kill the lice, and quinine for the malaria. Fun.

TECHNOLOGY

Cobblestones were used on roads to prevent stick wagons from getting stuck in the mud. People had to shovel snow off the roads themselves. When cars were first introduced, drivers’ licenses were issued, but some people just taught themselves to drive, and never got caught for not having a license. People got flat tires all the time, but also had tire repair kits. Sometimes horses got scared by cars, because cars were very noisy, before getting mufflers. Gasoline was sold in grocery stores, if at all.

Procter & Gamble used to have a huge line of soap kettles, and it still took 7 days to make one bar of Ivory soap. A process was invented that cut the time to two hours. Pringles potato chips never spoil because they are packed on a bed of nitrogen in a cylinder. In the early 1960’s, P&G unwisely tested disposable diapers one hot summer in Dallas.

WAGES FOR WORKERS

sd’s – single digits

long – sunup to sundown, 6-7 days/week

Year Job Approx. Pay / Hours

1910’s cotton farmer 5 to ? cents a pound long

19 teens self-employed optometrist $500 a day

19 sd’s coyote killing $5 a head

19 teens drugstore clerk $1 a day long

1890’s laundress $1 a day long

1890’s outdoor manual laborer $1.50 a day long

1910’s lamplighter $24 a month short

1910’s railroad workshop 23 cents an hour long

1910’s motorcycle & bike repair 50 cent an hour

1910’s shoeshine stand $4-$80 a week

19 teens security guard $3 a week, free board

19 teens coat-button painter $8 a week

1920’s domestic servant for rich $15 a week, free board

1910’s restaurant cook $4 a week, free board long

19 sd’s factory nail-puller $6 a week

1910’s factory assembler $7 a week

19 teens ML baseball player $250-$450 a month long

1920 bicycle factory worker $25 a week

19 teens milkman $42.50 a week

1920’s banker $70 a month

19 teens pre-union coal miner 40 cents a ton long

pre-union coal miner $9 a week long

19 teens seamstress $7 a week

1918 certified teacher $90 a month 1918 teacher $64.35 a month

19 teens Navy yeomanette $2 a day, free board

1930’s coalmine paymaster $175 a month

19 teens train car factory worker $15 per unit

Forest Hills Diary

The Book of the Week is “Forest Hills Diary” by Mario Cuomo, published in 1974.  In 1972, New York City Mayor John Lindsay chose Mario Cuomo to embark on a fact-finding mission to collect public opinion data on a proposed low-income housing project on 108th Street in Forest Hills near Corona, Queens, to consist of African American tenants, three towers of 24 stories each.

There was much emotionally charged public debate due to the very nature of the undertaking (housing projects in general, have a bad reputation– for crime, for bringing down property values, etc.).  Cuomo could have proposed reducing the planned apartment sizes to that of studios or 1 bedrooms– a compromise in order to push the project through. Regardless, he could not please anyone because Forest Hills residents were against the project altogether, while African Americans wanted apartments of at least 2 bedrooms.

Another option was to make one of the three towers a “Mitchell-Lama” which would allow tax breaks, but reduce the number of low-income units, and reserve 40% of the units for the elderly. The reason for favoring the elderly was to minimize the public sentiment that the apartments would be crime-ridden. Cuomo visited projects in the Bronx and had seen this phenomenon himself.

The Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights had gone downhill due to low-income housing. The African Americans with whom Cuomo spoke were against the project.  One black leader admitted to him in confidence that a way to spur upward mobility among African Americans was to have a mix of middle-income and low-income tenants.

The “scatter-site” legislation was passed allowing the project proposed originally, to be built.  However, raucous public hearings prompted the developers to compromise by building three towers of 12 stories each (instead of 24), 40% of which were to house seniors. All sides of the controversy roundly criticized a report released by Cuomo, although few people had actually read the whole thing.  This book provided an engaging analysis of political and urban issues with respect to race, housing and human nature.

Whatever It Takes

The Book of the Week is “Whatever It Takes” by Paul Tough, published in 2008.  This book is about Geoffrey Canada’s efforts to improve his community in Harlem in New York City, through both educating kids and providing social services to parents to improve the kids’ environments.  City agencies funded his programs.

Mr. Canada felt bad that he could not save all the underprivileged children in Harlem.  He did not operate his school the same way the KIPP chain of charter schools did– hand-picking a group of underprivileged kids it would make into high-achievers, whose accomplishments would exceed those of their peers.  He idealistically thought all children could become college material, if his Promise Academy charter school (initially a middle school, and later, also an elementary school) did its job right.

However, many studies have shown that success in life becomes much more likely for an individual when that individual is taught specific skills starting in infancy, such as “patience, persistence, self-confidence, the ability to follow instructions, and the ability to delay gratification for a future reward.”  Middle school is too late.

But Mr. Canada still felt it was worth trying to turn their lives around, although he had far less success with them than with kids who participated in his programs from infancy and were lucky enough to be chosen in the lotteries that determined who was accepted.  Also, he had the most success when kids stayed in the programs from infancy through at least middle school, but this was extremely expensive.

The jury is still out on whether society as a whole is greatly improved by providing a small percentage of underprivileged people with resources superior to those of their peers, so they may succeed in life.  I doubt Mr. Canada, and even all of the other people and entities helping too, will ever be able to bring success to all of Harlem’s children. Some people do not want to be helped.  Others unluckily are not chosen in the lotteries. I don’t know the solution.

Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference

The Book of the Week is “Teacher:  The One Who Made the Difference” by Mark Edmundson, published in 2002.  The author wrote this book as a tribute to his high school philosophy teacher.  One of many memorable questions the teacher asked during the school year was, “Why do we need leaders?”  Answer:  We need someone to think for us.  Many of us human beings are lazy and we do not want to think for ourselves.  The author described how even the class clown was made to think, and learned something in this teacher’s class.

To Know A Fly

The Book of the Week is “To Know A Fly” by Vincent G. Dethier, published in 1962.  This thin, little paperback book discusses how scientists attempt to understand the behavior of a fly.  Those who pull off the legs or wings of flies either come to a bad end or become biologists.

“The [required] college education not infrequently is as useful for acquiring proficiency in the game of Grantsmanship as it is for understanding biology.  No self-respecting modern biologist can go to work without money for a secretary, a research associate, two laboratory assistants, permanent equipment…” a car, books, animals and their accompanying accessories, etc., and a vast quantity of money (called overhead) “to the university to pay for all the transcribers hired to handle all the papers and money transactions that so big a grant requires.”

There is much to be said for the fly as an experimental animal.  The author describes in detail some clever experiments involving the fly’s eating habits and capacity to learn.  “To know the fly is to share a bit in the sublimity of Knowledge.”