A New Look at Charlie Parker’s Son, A Decade After His Death

26 Apr

By Lanny Morgnanesi

A writer may write, and may be appreciated, but for him or her there is nothing like, say, applause. So writers take satisfaction in notes sent by readers. I received such a note this week, a reaction to a simple piece I wrote 10 years ago, one that may not have been entirely accurate.

It was a sad piece, about the death of a man named Baird Parker, who at the time of his death worked quietly in a Lansdale, Pennsylvania, grocery store. In his life, Baird Parker had known fame, but it was not his fame. It was his father’s, a man named Charlie Parker, a saxophonist and one of the greatest jazz innovators of all time. The headline on my story was: “Is the son of a god a god? The problem with famous sons.”

What I wrote was based primarily on Baird’s obit and included a statement from Baird’s mother that his life, for the most part, was destroyed by the fame of his father.

That was 2014. Ten years later, on the anniversary of Baird’s death, I received an online message from his old roommate, a drummer. For a time, the two lived together with their girlfriends on Clinton Avenue in Doylestown, about five minutes from my home. The roommate told me that Baird’s life was not one of sadness, that there was success, joy, happiness; that it was a good life, one to be celebrated. It was a simple message but moved me greatly. Most important – and this was not in any obit – Baird was a musician and a composer. On the 10th anniversary of Baird’s death, I now share with you drummer Paul Bozzi’s touching account of his old friend.

Paul Bozzi

Lanny, I read your post about Charles Baird Parker. I was disappointed and I thought I would take this opportunity to fill in a few details on the 10th anniversary of his passing. His life was not a failure by any means. Here is what I know.

Charlie “Bird” Parker died in 1955 when Baird was only 3 years old. Shortly after that, Bird’s widow, Chan moved the family to Paris. Chan remarried another great saxophonist, Phil Woods. Baird studied guitar and created a unique style, slightly dark and moody with a relaxed groove. His guitar influences ranged from Jimi Hendrix to Django Reinhardt.  

In the early 70s, Baird moved back to Pennsylvania. I met Baird in 1973. My girlfriend had known Baird as a child when they both attended Ramblerny, a summer camp for the performing arts in New Hope, Pa., that has become a thing of legend. Other “campers” included the Brecker Brothers, Holly Cole and the recently passed Richie Cole, who after Phil Woods died had become the one remaining bearer of the bepop saxophone. Sadly, with his passing, there seems to be no successor to truly carry on that torch.

Phil Woods

We were living in Connecticut at the time and the best friend of my girlfriend was in a relationship with Baird, so we came down to visit for a weekend. The drummer in the band Baird was working with fell ill on Saturday and they asked me to sub for him. A few days later I returned to CT and picked up what I needed and moved to Doylestown, Pa. to join the band.

We moved in with Baird and his girlfriend in a two-floor apartment on North Clinton St. in Doylestown, where we stayed for a few years. During that time, we worked with a few bands, most notably, Ronnie Rinard and The Shadows.  Ronnie was a well-known Elvis impersonator, and I think he really did channel Elvis. Ronnie had a great voice and amazing stage presence, and in true form he was absolutely eccentric. From 1972 through 1977 we played some crazy joints as well as big clubs around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Neither Baird nor I were big fans of Elvis, but we were young and happy, the money was good and the gigs were plentiful. Several nights a week, we would hop into his bright red Oldsmobile 442 convertible, he would quip “we’re off like a herd of turtles” and we would be on our merry way to another gig. Never a dull moment! If we ended up in a country joint where the clientele was rough and maybe a little racist about having a black man on stage, Baird would speak French into the mic, until his warm sense of humor would defuse the situation. He was so funny, and often had the band in stitches with jokes and witticisms about music and life in general. Often, at 3 am we would end up at Doylestown’s now-defunct Ed’s Diner (known by the regulars as “Dead’s Diner”) where we would enjoy the company of other late-night denizens and slam down a breakfast (or two sometimes)  before slipping around the corner to North Clinton St.

During that time, we also formed a group to play and record Baird’s original compositions. Unfortunately, all those recordings have disappeared. A great personal loss to me as the music was unique and now lost to the universe forever. In 1978, I took a gig touring with a band after which I returned to CT to start a family and lost touch with Baird.  Then around 2010 I went to Bucks County to ride the Delaware Canal bike trail. While there I looked him up and found him in Lansdale, Pa. where he had opened a music store, I believe it was called Birdland Music. He was doing quite well, owned a home and was living happily with a beautiful young woman and enjoying his life. Also playing with local musicians, many of whom had no idea of his lineage. I visited every summer for the next couple of years. Eventually, he closed the store and wanted to try something different. So he took a job as a baker at a grocery store. He enjoyed cooking and he wanted to learn about baking. We visited a few times after that until that day in 2014 when I received the devastating call from his girlfriend with the news of his passing. I was crushed. We had plans of the two of them coming to CT for an extended visit in the summer that year.

Charlie Parker

Baird was a joyful, humble, hardworking, extremely intelligent, talented and kind man. He was the son of a great innovator, and he had the same creative pulse running in his blood. He had been born into jazz royalty, and he accepted that and was proud of it. We talked about it a few times and you could hear the pride he had about his dad and his stepfather Phil Woods as well. Many famous jazz players knew him from his childhood, and he kept up with some of them. We once attended a Chick Corea concert where we were invited backstage and he was greeted warmly by Chick. He often spoke of his childhood relationship with Dave Lambert of the jazz vocal trio, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Dave was killed in an automobile accident in 1966.  Jon Hendricks’ telling of the story says that Lambert was a compulsive do-gooder and that he had stopped to assist another motorist in changing a flat tire. I can imagine Baird doing the same thing, he was just that kind of man.

Play on Baird, miss you brother!!

Paul Bozzi

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The King of Ningxia — a novel

1 Apr

In the mid-80s, I lived and worked in China. When I returned home in 1985, I set out to write a book partially based on my experiences. Decades passed, and it remained unwritten. But finally, this year, I finished my novel. It is different from what I first intended. Entitled, The King of Ningxia, it shifts in time between then and now. Primarily, the story is about the transformation of two people. On a deeper level, it is about the transformation of two countries. If you are interested in international intrigue, a journey from near poverty to great wealth, or a warm romance that turns cold and controlled, you might find this book interesting. The King of Ningxia is free to Kindle subscribers, and available on Amazon.com in paperback and a digital version. Use this link or a sneak-preview of the first chapter. Thanks.

LANNY MORGNANESI

Speaking, and only a few understanding … well, a few meaning 26 million

28 Sep

By Lanny Morgnanesi

            On a rainy September afternoon at the Bluestone Country Club, in a ballroom surrounded by an empty golf course, the Shanghainese Association of Greater Philadelphia held its annual gala, and I was the only white person there.

            The agenda included music, singing, dancing, a fashion show, door prizes, and a buffet lunch. But overall, it was more like one big commercial. Since there was no English, my escort wife, born and raised in Shanghai, explained most of it to me, even though I figured out much of it myself.

            Once through the door, the first order of business was photography. Everyone, everywhere, was taking photos. On the path to the ballroom was a tripod mounted with a ringed light and a device that took and showed you five photos of yourself, then sent them to your phone. Long line for that.

            Next was a large, wall-mounted banner with the group’s name on it, in English and Chinese, and a hired photographer taking pictures for the group’s website. There was no formal line. Instead, you pushed your way forward in a competitive tussle.

            After that came the ballroom, with about 300 well-dressed people (told to wear black and white) mingling about and shooting with their phones.

            The proceeding began when a fit-looking man in a well-tailor suit addressed the crowd. Poised and confident, he had organized the event and helped secure a panoply of sponsors. At first, he welcomed the people. In short time, however, he pitched his real estate business and advised the group to connect with him on the Chinese app WeChat to learn about the newest real estate deals. He was an effective promoter of himself, and no doubt owned a significant piece of the area’s Chinese real estate market.

            He was followed by a musical performance, a woman in a traditional qi pao-style dress who sang and play an instrument called a pi pa, a sort of Chinese lute or guitar, pear-shaped with six strings. Aside from my wife, this was the only person at the party I knew, and I did not know her well. If fact, I hadn’t seen her for 20 years, and did not remember her name, if I ever knew it. My wife spoke to her first and addressed her as “lao ban,” a title of respect for a store owner. My wife was quickly advised by the lao ban that she no longer was a lao ban.

            There was a time, before streaming and serious Internet use, when my wife and I made regular visits to a bookstore and Chinese emporium owned by the former lao ban. It was on Race Street in Chinatown, a huge, two-story building filled with Chinese merchandise you could not get elsewhere. We went there often to rent Chinese language videos and buy a few books. Chinatown has developed a lot since then, with a more vibrant economy and new, more innovative entrepreneurs who displaced old-school, never-change Cantonese. Longtime establishments have been replaced with contemporary noodle houses, soup dumpling places, and dim sum joints. The lao ban, who had rented her huge building, probably was priced out of the market after Chinatown became hipper and the video and book market died. Where her business once stood, there is a two-tiered Asian food court.

            The lao ban, perhaps in her 60s, is now a musician and singer of Chinese opera. On this day the Bluestone Country Club had the perfect audience for her, but, unfortunately, an imperfect sound system. There was distressing feedback. The volume was too loud, and high notes came off like screeches. I felt bad for her as she played on. The feedback was fixed for the next act, but the system continued to deliver poor quality sound, which, I guess, the audience got used to. They cheered loudly for a young woman in a shiny, tight, blue-sequined jump suit who danced and sang a contemporary song called, “Give Me a Man at Midnight.” She was good, but I wanted to hold my ears. Others seemed more than content.

            Next, a contingent of trained amateurs took the floor and performed a waltz-like dance to the tune of Moon River. It was more like walking than dancing, but the women wore gorgeous gold dresses, and it was fun watching them. When it concluded, audience members were told where they, too, could get dance lessons.

            There was a fashion show, with women of various ages posing and strutting like runway models. This was followed by information on modeling classes. There was no entertainment related to banking, cosmetic surgery, or travel, but people pitched those services anyway.

            As the afternoon unfolded, I paid attention to language. I found it interesting that speakers addressing the crowd spoke Mandarin Chinese, the national language of China. But off stage, while chatting amongst themselves, they spoke Shanghai dialect. No one outside of Shanghai understands Shanghai dialect. It is spoken with pride by members of an exclusive group that considers its hometown the singular place in all of China for high style and hipness. To them, it is the epitome of elan, a better-than-New York equivalent of 26 million people. It has such appeal you must be born there to live there or get special permission to move there. The Shanghainese are a tribe, and they think highly of themselves. They have names for people who are not Shanghainese. And they have a name for their women, who are stereotyped as self-possessed, demanding, spoiled, and self-centered. It is both a polite and derisive term, a little like “Jewish American Princess.” The hard-to-handle women from China’s largest city are called “Shanghai little sisters.”

But back to the dialect, which I’m thinking helps to define Shanghai cool. While the dialect is substantially different from the national language, some alterations are slight. For example, the common Chinese greeting “ni hao” (literally: you good), was changed in Shanghai, for some reason, to “nong hao.” The common good-bye of “zai jian” (literally: see again) was changed to something that sounds like “zay way.” To decline an offer, the Chinese normally say “bu yao” (literally: don’t want). But the Shanghai residents slam those two syllables together, speed them up, and put a different sound at the front, saying “v-yow.”

Here is an example of how protective the Shanghai people are of their exclusive dialect. I was in the dessert line and the guy behind me struck up a conversation in English. He had come to the United States as a student in 1985 and trained as an engineer at Columbia.

“I guessed you’re confused by all this Shanghai dialect,” he said in a joking way.

            “Of course,” I said, “but I know a few words.”

            He looked at me as if that could not be true.

            Then I said the few words of Shanghai dialect I knew. Oddly, he repeated those words back to me in Mandarin. No, I said, I know the Shanghainese. And I repeated the words again, with him once again saying them in Mandarin, as if I were not allowed to speak that way or couldn’t possibly know what I was saying. Finally, I convinced him that I had gently penetrated the veneer of his beloved dialect. He smiled uncomfortably and shook his head. We both got dessert and parted.

So at the party, as the spoken word shifted effortlessly between a defining dialect and the linguistic standard, I thought about American English and concluded that there is nothing comparable to this in the U.S., no comfortable, communicative patois used in a secret way outside the button-down structure of society.  

Or is there? A question for another day.

            After the entertainment came lunch. When going to an affair such as this, one expects Chinese food. There was none. No chopsticks, either. The buffet was bread, salad, green beans, potatoes, pasta, pot roast, and salmon. The partygoers filled their plates high, without reluctance or aversion. I guess the country club chef didn’t offer a Chinese option, and that clearly was not a problem for this crowd.

            After about four hours, the party winded down. It was time to leave, and the rain was still heavy. We did not, however, get wet. Everyone received a well-built umbrella, courtesy of the Paramount Mortgage company, whose name appeared on the umbrellas in both Chinese and English.

            On the way out, the partygoers continued to define themselves as unique. You could hear lots of “zay ways,” but not a single “zai jian.” A group of young Shanghai little sisters, outfitted in fine dresses, pushed past me, seemingly arguing among themselves, or perhaps debating a point or two about the party, or maybe discussing where to go next. I didn’t understand a word of it, and I’m sure they took great comfort in that.

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On the Resilience of Consciousness, or, An Ode to a Departed Friend

5 Aug

By Lanny Morgnanesi

            You are eating outside at a restaurant in a New Jersey tourist town. The people who walk by are varied, colorful, animated. Each one, everyone, has consciousness. They are creatures of thought and understanding, aware of their surroundings, aware of their fears and limitations, aware of their joys and sorrows. And they walk, and talk, and work, exhibiting complex patterns and wide ranges of motion and activity. Below the surface, within and around them, are intricate, beautiful, biological, chemical mechanisms that create their consciousness, permit their existence, dictate their actions, and allow them life. Some of these mechanisms we understand. Some we do not. Some we think we understand but aren’t sure. The mechanisms in certain individuals make them highly intelligent in mathematics, or music, or art, or philosophy, or war, or in figuring out how to configure the plumbing in a 50-story building. The mechanisms make people weak or strong, sometimes capable of near-superhuman feats. The mechanisms can create anxiety and depression and make people prisoners of their own minds. They create heroes and villains. Mostly, the mechanisms allow our species to conduct themselves normally and efficiently, below greatness and above infamy.

If you could look at the structures of these mechanisms, see into them, observe them on a microscopic or even smaller level, watch them work, watch them create and destroy, the chemicals, the neurons, the proteins, the DNA, the transmitters, the receptors, it would be like observing the face of God.

            Now, pull back. Way back. Into the vast heavens of galaxies and the infinite.

            You no longer see the creatures in the small tourist town. Although complex, from this perspective they are inconsequential and meaningless, as if they didn’t exist, yet they do, but for what purpose? Let’s forget them for now.  So unimportant. Look at the stars. So many stars. Two hundred billion trillion of them in 2 trillion galaxies. If you could see everything up there, you’d see less than 5 percent of our actual universe. The rest is hidden and undetectable. That’s just our universe. Some scientists, obviously the silly ones, believe the universe we know is just one of an infinite number of invisible universes. The scientists say in those infinite universes, everything has happened. You became rich in one. Married a movie star in another. Became a king in a third. Were a pauper, a beggar, a thief, a Mafia don, the first person on the moon. If this were true, the God who created the multiverse could not be comprehended by the shallow, limited human mind. All prophets, all scripture would be meaningless. That God’s purpose and nature would be far removed from the anything taught us by the wise and peaceful Nazarene who lived in a small town, on one planet, in a singular universe.

            If we discount the hidden, the pattern of things high in the sky are no less and no greater that the patterns inside our bodies. They are only larger. All of it made from the same building blocks. All of it in compliance with the same governing rules.

            Now zoom back in close to the people walking the streets of the tourist town. Look down at the weed growing through a crack in the concrete. Zoom in even closer and see the worlds within the world of the weed. Now closer, and closer, and closer. It will never stop. You can never get close enough. Level after level after level.

  Up and down. In the heavens or under foot. Infinite complexities on infinite levels. So which one is the distinguishing level? The rung of importance? The level that matters most? Is it our level? We tend to think so.

            Our prejudiced is triggered by our ability to think, to communicate, to build and destroy civilizations, to philosophize, to love and hate – and our inability to properly detect intelligence in other species and organic matter. Ants build civilizations and get work done. They receive little credit for it. We are awed when we see non-primates using tools, then go on our way and forget about it. Germaphobes and others acknowledge the vast preponderance of bacteria in the world but never dream we might exist solely for it. We know – at least some of us do – that plants talk to each other. A tomato plant being eaten by a bug will signal the danger to other tomato plants, who then go into defensive mode. Yet we don’t consider them conscious beings.

            Our consciousness, because it is ours, ranks supreme. We know that all life share much, DNA for example. Eternal consciousness? Sorry. That’s our monopoly.

If God has singularly granted homo sapiens heaven-bound consciousness, then God did so as an exception to the rules, laws, forces, element, and constants that every other aspect of the universe must conform to. And God did so to creatures that are a mere speck of almost nothing and hardly any use at all to the universe. Why? I haven’t heard any convincing answers.

             Our concept of consciousness is that it is constructed and operated by the organic components of the body, and that when those components decay and die with the body, something remains to reassemble and transport consciousness to a spiritual world, preserving our thoughts, our memories, our relationships, our recognition of friends and relatives. We believe this without identifying the earthly components that perform the reassembling and the transporting. We explain it by saying the components are not earthly.

Nothing like this—spiritual intervention — has ever been found, for sure, in the universe. And for this reason, I cannot believe that the consciousness once existing inside a human is retained somewhere else after death. For me, the state of post-death resembles the state of pre-life, meaning consciousness, as we know it, cannot exist without the body. It dies with the body.

            Recently an old friend, my college roommate, succumbed to stage four cancer. The final days were difficult. All he wanted was to pass. When the end was within hours, I asked him to be honest. I ask if he expected to go somewhere. I was thinking that by approaching death he might be closer to truth, and that he would be willing to share that truth with me.

            There was nothing surprising about his answer, be it newly revealed truth or just long-held ideas. He said he is a Christian, that he believes in the afterlife, that he expects to go to the place most call heaven. I told him, for his sake and mine, I wished it true. He said, if possible, he’ll get back to me later with confirmation.

            Nothing yet.

            My friend said he was a Christian, and I guess that’s true. Maybe not entirely true, not exactly true. His Polish-born parents, who came to America during Hitler’s rise, raised the family as Orthodox Catholic. Several years ago, at his father’s funeral, an aunt told him he was Jewish. The Catholicism was a safe cover. I’m not sure why, and I didn’t tell him, but I was hoping he’d convert back. Instead, he continued to attend a place called Son Light Bible Church.

            The pastor at Son Light, for certain, would have discouraged a return to Judaism. At the funeral service for my friend, he said the only way to heaven was through Jesus Christ, which Christ himself says in the Bible. Without accepting Christ, the pastor said, not even good works can save you.

But I suspect even if my friend had converted and lost his right to heaven, the pastor would still acknowledge the release and reconfiguration of his consciousness. It just wouldn’t go to the good place.

  I wish I could believe in the resilience of consciousness and the eternity of memory. I wish I did not have to sit here in a tourist town in New Jersey, with a view of the sky, a view of the prancing anthropoids, and a view of the lowly weeds, thinking of what might or might not remain of my friend, realizing that everything just seems the same to me. Like one family. Like a complete set of Legos. If one thing goes to heaven, it should all go to heaven. But it all can’t go to heaven.

Can it?

“Would you like a refill on that coffee?” the waiter asked.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, curious if my decision will in any way affect the universe, wondering if anyone’s memory of this day will reach heaven, worried that, all scripture aside, I am doomed to never find out.

Discomfort in America and a Labor Movement Without Unions

16 Oct

By Lanny Morgnanesi

Something’s happening here. And to be frank, what it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man, and a woman, with an attitude over there, and a realization, and a new way of thinking, and opened eyes, and a tired will. He, and she, and an assortment of other strange, unfamiliar phenomena, have unknowingly cojoined to produce discomfort in America and the world. He, and she, and all the rest, have caused you to pay more for bacon and chicken wings and refrigerators and stoves. Because of her, and him, and all the rest, it is harder or impossible to get certain products, things you have always relied on, things that you always expected to be there. Because of her, and him, and all the rest, supply trucks to stores are late, half empty, or never arrive. Prepare to wait 26 weeks for kitchen cabinets.

         In the end, what he and she have done will result in something good for America.

         But what it is isn’t exactly clear. Not to me, anyway. Still, I’m trying to think it through, read about it, figure it out on my own. My conclusions may be accurate, semi-accurate or ridiculous. In these times, what does it matter?

         In these times, what broken and weakened unions failed to do – join workers in a wide confederation that confronts big management and rejects low wages, decimated benefits, poor working conditions and corrosive indignity – is being done quite effectively on an individual, uncoordinated, one-by-one basis. I’m speaking of  the men and women with attitudes, realizations, a new way of thinking, opened eyes, and tired wills.

         In short, disgusted people have decided not work. Without consulting each other, they have – separately but together – stopped making you breakfast at your local diner, they have stopped helping you find socket wrenches at Home Depot, and they no longer answer the phone at your doctor’s office. Without unions, without campaigns and encouragement, and without organization of any kind, much of America has gone on strike. The U.S. Labor Department reported in October that a record 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m guess this is unprecedented in the history of the American labor movement.

Ships backed up in port, unable to unload

                   It’s really about time. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says the typical American worker, after adjusting for inflation, hasn’t gotten a raise in 40 years.

          To illustrate the plight of the low-wage worker, a conceptual artist and self-taught engineer named Blake Fall-Conroy  built a machine as a way to duplicate the frustrations and hopelessness felt by workers. The machine is a box filled with pennies. It has a crank. When the user (worker) turns the crank, he receives payment in pennies for the time he or she has turned the crank. If payment is at the rate of $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage, the machine gives the worker one penny every 4.97 seconds. The payments stop when the cranking stops. Blake’s contraption begs the question: How long is the average person willing to turn that crank? Today’s labor shortage suggests the answer: Not long.

         In a New York Times story, we are told about Sandra Beadling, the manager of a Dollar General store in Maine. She’s claims to put in 70-hour workweeks (without overtime), doing the job of several employees, including stocking shelves. The story doesn’t mention her salary but does say she has a difficult time hiring people at the Dollar General rate of $12 an hour because Walmart is paying $16. In August, she got home from work one night at 11:30, left her house the next morning at 4 a.m. to do an inventory check, then quit. No more of this, she said.

         This is happening a lot.

         How can so many people just quit their jobs? How do they live?

With people quitting jobs, it’s harder to get a cup of coffee

         Well, let’s hope they have a working spouse and some savings. But the person who quit no longer needs a car, can probably save money on lunches, coffee and clothes, no longer has to pay for daycare or now can provide free daycare for grandchildren. They also can earn extra cash as a free agent in the gig economy, working when they want for companies like Uber and Door Dash or even Amazon delivery.

         The quitter might actually come out even, especially is you add value to free time, family time and the absence of stress and aggravation.

         But as I said, it’s not exactly clear what’s going on. There is indeed a labor shortage related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with some people unwilling to work jobs that put them at risk. Also, some factories may have shut down due to COVID, making it difficult or impossible to get certain products. Then there are demand shifts that have caused havoc in the market and its supply chains. For example, in the beginning of the pandemic, there was this idea that automobile sales would suffer but people staying at home would buy more gaming systems, kitchen equipment, exercise equipment, hair clippers, and so on. So computer chip factories that were still operating shifted production away from chips used in cars and trucks and began focusing on chips for home electronics. When the auto market roared back, there weren’t enough chips for the new cars. Since then, the price of used cars has risen to unbelievable heights. And  because of all those orders for gaming systems, kitchen equipment, exercise equipment, hair clippers, and so on, container ships are clogging American ports and there are not enough dock workers to unload them. There is also a shortage of containers.

         Fueling some of our current woes is an energy crisis in China, Europe and elsewhere. We are ordering more from China, but China is running short of coal to fuel the factories that make the products we want. Major flooding has shut down major Chinese coal mines, and China somehow got into a spat with Australia, a main exporter of coal to China, and China no longer buys from them. So coal prices have soared and China is forced to conserve by shutting down factories. Naturally, it takes longer to get your Chinese-manufactured goods.

A coal shortage in China has caused factories to shut down

         Meanwhile, in Britain, non-British truck drivers (and there were a lot of them) were forced from their jobs when Britain exited the European Union. Fuel is going undelivered, as well as other goods. Food is rotting in fields.

         So the world’s in a mess.

         Again, while it is not quite clear what is happening, my main culprit in all this is mostly unseen, unless you look closely. It’s a demographic shift caused by income inequality. And I’ll explain this simply and quickly:

         All around the world, a higher percentage of wealth has accumulated in a smaller number of hands. The hands that go wanting see no reason to incur the added cost of children and family, and populations fall. Meanwhile, the large number of older people – part of a population boom after World War II – are retiring and leaving their jobs, or dying and leaving their jobs. With so few young people coming into the job market, and with the widespread anti-immigration movement keeping foreign workers out, there aren’t enough people around to fill the vacant jobs, especially low-paying jobs. Important things don’t get done anymore.

         The end.

         And so, wages must rise – significantly. Inequality must ebb. People must once again feel the degree of economic security that convinces them to bear children and work hard at their jobs, to strive for something better rather than withdraw from something worse. The process will be slow, but inexorable. When it happens, maybe everything will once again become clear. And balance, now out of whack, will be restored.

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Catholic School in the 60s: Much more than education

25 Aug
In the 50s and 60s, almost all Catholic school in and around east coast cities looked like this.

By Lanny Morgnanesi

NOTE: I wrote this piece in 2010 for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was probably the most controversial thing I ever wrote, eliciting an onslaught of reaction — both positive and negative — and causing the publisher of the Inquirer to condemn it in a letter-to-the-editor of his own paper. With nostalgia in my heart of late, repost it here.

I read recently that Saint John Bosco Elementary School is closing due to low enrollment. Although the school teaches grades kindergarten through 8th, it has only 152 students. This startled me because when I attended, 1957-1965, there often were 100 kids in a class – a single, zoo-like class.

Where did everyone go?

Bosco opened in 1953 in Hatboro near the height of the baby boom. It was housed in a non-descript, cheaply constructed building. I received a miserable education, although I came out with good penmanship and an ability to diagram sentences. There was much to hate at Bosco. My top source of unhappiness was eating from brown bags at our desks because we had no lunchroom.

Odd, since the more logical choice might be those face slaps, hair pulls and rulers across knuckles … all administered by nuns. But to the victims, this perpetual combat was perversely welcomed and actually made class interesting. My most compelling contribution occurred one day when the nun ran down the aisle and yanked me out of my seat by the shirt. It must have been a cheap shirt because it ripped. The nun’s hand flew off and hit me in the nose, which began to gush.

She backed off and I stood before her, a little guy with a mangled, blood-covered, regulation white dress shirt. There was a pause, a long one, and she said, “Get out and fix yourself.”

In the empty hallway I considered going home. Instead, I went into the bathroom and washed the shirt in the sink. The blood actually came out. I put the wet shirt back on and reentered the classroom. Not another word was said on the subject. For a limited time I felt a sense of immunity, which made me proud and happy.

I imagine I had a reputation as a trouble maker, although it seemed all the boys did. In my final day there I was blamed for something I did not do. The nun, knowing I was graduating, sent me off as if I were a criminal, saying, “One day I’m going to see your name in the newspaper. You just watch.”

After college I became a reporter and for years fulfilled her prophesy. Well into that career I learned the school’s namesake – which we always associated with a chocolate drink – was the patron saint of journalists. Of all we were told, we were never told this.

We were told, however, of the greatness of John F. Kennedy, a Catholic and therefore our earthly savior. During the presidential campaign of 1960, a boy much bolder than I came to class wearing a large Nixon button. The nun ordered him to remove it and he refused. She took it from him and with her black nun shoe stomped it once, twice … maybe five or six times … then threw it in the trash. The next day he wore 10 of the pins, and was beaten.

I remember thinking this act represented true heroism, the first I had ever seen from someone my age. It saddened me because I knew that in my life I would never, ever, have that much courage.

Three years later when Kennedy was shot, I was being punished. Temporarily banished from the classroom, I was sent outside to clap blackboard erasers … to remove the chalk by smacking them together. When I returned everyone was on their knees.

I was flabbergasted and looked at the nun for an answer.

There was no explanation. Forcefully, she ordered, “Get down and pray.”

As Kennedy lay dying somewhere in Dallas, I was asking God to save him and I didn’t even know it.

There was so much I didn’t know at Bosco. I can’t remember learning much of anything. Once, during Geography, a small and mysterious country near India was being ignored and I stood up (you had to) and asked, “What’s Neepal?”

There was that familiar deadly pause, then the response: “Sit down or I’ll give you a knee, pal.”

As a wise guy, I actually respected this.

Soon there will be nothing left to respect. They’ll probably knock the place down. It must seem so big with only 152 students. Each one must have been valuable, treated like an angel. What a contrast to the Malthusian mess of me and my 99 compatriots, all in a single room, boys in front, girls in back, holding ancient textbooks and hiding damaged self-esteem, with baloney sandwiches wilting in the cloakroom and a single, unsympathetic, septuagenarian sister using something called a catechism to teach us that – above all –heaven is within our grasp and God loves us.

How could the pope have allowed this?

Goodbye, Saint John Bosco. I’m sorry for telling tales out of school.

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That Break was to Write Fiction

11 Aug

By Lanny Morgnanesi

Of late, I’m not much of a blogger. Instead of writing non-fiction here, I’ve been writing fiction and trying – and failing – to sell it. Short stories are sent to small literary magazines with small readerships and small reputations. The magazines routinely reject them. I don’t know if it’s them or me. It’s probably both.

            As a life-long journalist, fiction is liberating because you make things up. Journalists interview people and hope they will say something interesting, funny or poignant. Often, they don’t. A reporter might have to work a source for quite some time to get a quote of even moderate worth. With fiction, if you want or need a specific thing, you decide what it is and write it. And you pray it is as clever as you intended it to be.

            What I like most about writing fiction is the departure from reality. You sit there without moving and travel somewhere. You become people unlike yourself, or maybe too much like yourself. You contrive plots and scenes. On good days a magical force takes over and writes the story for you. I once began a piece about a television set and ended up with a tale of a rich woman compromised by guilt and pursued by man who wants  her secrets. (Somehow the TV stayed in.) It’s almost like Mohamed getting the Koran from God, or when Bob Dylan is asked about his songs from the 60s and says, “I don’t know who wrote that.”

            When I finish, I like almost everything I’ve written. Naturally, I get this wild idea that others – editors of literary magazine – also will like it. Alas, they don’t. Or, if I’m being kind to myself, they like something else better. When an editor won’t accept you, you look for positive feedback from friends. Generally, these are people who are busy and don’t have the time or inclination to read your work and comment on it. When they do read it, you pray for a surprising and spontaneous, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” With me, that never comes. Most act overly cautious. Some will praise the work in even, sober tones, and that is satisfying, but it’s disappointing. After a few days, you get the idea they were just being kind. And through all this, you still like and treasure what you wrote. You persist in thinking its high merit is being overlooked.

            A slight irritation comes when a casual, good-natured reader misses something well-calculated and ultra-literary. In a story about two people who, over the course of years, spend only short but critical moments together, the woman has a job selling time shares. Get it? No, you don’t. Is that your fault or mine? In another story, a nun gets free heating oil for poor people. It’s subtle and not outwardly explained, but to do so she uses Mafia tactics picked up from her father. Too subtle? I wish I knew.

             Online writer communities exist, and writers will critique each other. Unfortunately, I feel a good number of these writer/critics are young and unexperienced and don’t dig in like I wish they would or could. Speaking of young, while my stories vary in content, I worry my mature age injects them with oldness and nostalgia. Young editors cannot make a connection or see value (although they don’t have a problem with Faulkner). In a story about a tragic character who mocks his own victimhood, I mentioned his wife forcing him to see Wayne Newton in Vegas instead of Sinatra. Not exactly up to date, eh?

            While I love making things up completely – one story is about a troubled America and its use of four-star concentration camps during the second coming of Christ – I tend to write about what I know, like how Atlantic City has changed since the opening of its first casino, as told through the eyes of a cocktail waitress who began work in 1978 and never left. I’ve also  written about China in 1985 (I lived there then), and a friendship between a landscaper and a bestselling author who lived in my town during the 50s and 60s. Pretty dog-eared. Still, there is a story about an intelligent robot struggling to understand irony, one on little leaguers writing a comedy sketch before practice, and a 16-year-old junkie who finds (steals) the money for his MBA. I haven’t completely abandoned freshness.

            Regardless, none of  it (with two small exceptions, including the robot) gets published.

            I’m at the point now where I may start putting some of the shorter pieces on this blog, to give them the light of day and to see what happens. Let me think about it.

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After the virus, there will be decorating

20 Apr

Milan_Cathedral        

By Lanny Morgnanesi

Easter came and there were no large family gatherings or in-church services. There was only Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, who sang for free while the world  listened.

Bocelli said his was not a performance. He called it a prayer and the event was advertised as Music for Hope.  It took place in the Duomo di Milano, one of Italy’s most breathtaking cathedral. Bocelli was accompanied by a musician playing the world’s largest pipe organ. Otherwise, save for the unseen camera crew, he was alone.

Inside the cathedral, the tenor sang a few piece of sacred music. People watching live on Youtube saw a pantheon of statues, stained glass, etchings, carvings, relief work, marble, enormous pillars, icons and more. As Bocelli sang, there were cutaways to the empty streets of great cities like Milan, Paris, New York and London. After 25 minutes or so, the blind singer stop singing and walked unaccompanied down a corridor, through an enormous door and onto the Duomo steps. There was no one outside in the locked-down city, the epicenter of the Coronavirus in Italy. The small country of 60 million has reported 159,000 cases and 20,400 deaths.

bocelli new

Andrea Bocelli

Bocelli stood on the steps and returned to his singing. In English, he sang the 18th century Christian hymn, Amazing Grace. There was no music at first. After a time, the production people layered in a full orchestra. When the song ended, there was silence, and the cameras shutdown. The prayer was over.

The concert lasted 30 minutes and, so far, has been watched by at least 37 million people.

Andrea Bocelli’s music, as intended, gave us hope. Even more inspiring might have been the miracle and magnificence of the Duomo di Milano, the largest cathedral in Italy. Construction on it began in 1386, just a few decades after the Black Death killed 100 million people worldwide. Many believe the depths, damage and darkness of the plague is what spawned the creativity, commerce and optimism of the European Renaissance.

Duomo interior

Interior of the Duomo di Milano

The amazing thing about the Duomo is its utter completeness as a work of art. The virtuoso violinist Itzak Perlman has said that in the world of symphonic music there is no such thing as a casual note. With the Duomo, there is no such thing as a casual surface. Every piece of wood or stone has been slaved over and loved into a masterpiece. In Renaissance Italy, the greatest and most famed artists would fight for commissions to illustrate or decorate a surface. And great time would be spent on them. Lorenzo Ghiberti spent 27 years on the doors of the Baptistery in Florence. When Michelangelo saw those doors he called them “the Gates of Paradise.” The doors to Milan’s Duomo may not be as famous, but they are covered in jaw-dropping art work. Mark Twain, in Innocents Abroad, said this about the Duomo doors:

“The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures —  and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex, that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest …”

            You look at a place like the Duomo di Milano and quickly comprehend that no such monument would be built today or could be built today. It’s a representation of a now unachievable achievement. The Duomo was a continuous work in progress for nearly 600 years. That’s how long it took to complete. The expense was enormous and funds were not always available. In 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte, about to become King of Italy, ordered the facade to be finished and said he’d pay for it. He never did.

Duomo doors

Door engravings, the Duomo di Milano

The art and culture of the Renaissance arose as great fortunes in banking and commerce were being made. Wealthy, influential families like the Medici and the Borgia possessed incomparable riches and used their fortunes on the arts. It was expected and something of a requirement. What was created was to be shared with regular people and offered up to God in thanks. Great new wealth also has been amassed in our era through the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple, PayPal and others. But it is used differently. There is good being done, but it’s a different kind of good.

Screenshot_2020-04-19 From Warren Buffett to Bill Gates How auto dealerships are attracting a whole new class of investor

Buffett, Gates, Soros

True, the rich create foundations to better mankind (and get a nice tax deduction for it). George Soros, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among a handful of billionaires who have contributed much of their wealth toward improving the human condition. The other side of this benevolence, however, are efforts to change the world in more entrepreneurial ways. The excessive profits of enormously successful companies, for example, might be channeled into no-profit or low-profit ventures, like building space ships or driver-less cars. Intentions are good and hopes for mankind are high, but the goal is ultimately money. Rarely do we see artistic creations or architecture wonders (the Brooklyn Bridge is an older example of this) that people feel part of and gravitate toward.

Apple is said to have spent about $5 billion on its campus for 12,000 workers in Cupertino, California, yet by any stretch it is not considered a great wonder of the world. (For that money is should be.) Today’s really impressive modern architecture is found mostly in the Middle East and Asia. The world’s tallest building is in Dubai. Eye-poppers are all over Singapore, Malaysia and Shanghai. Still, all this is so very different from building a church that takes 600 years to finish and is so magnificent that, even when surrounded by the sad solitude of a catastrophic pandemic, looking upon it makes us feel good.

Hearing Bocelli and seeing the Duomo I think of the Renaissance and whether a new one might be on its way. When our pandemic turns to dust, will we find a vigorous need to look upon life as new and to create things never before created, perhaps experience joy in ways that have been forgotten? Will we insist on engraving the mundane with the spectacular and seek enjoyment from even the routine?

graffiti-1

Graffiti art

Trying to fathom a modern day equivalent to the high art of the Duomo surfaces, I stumbled on a harsh and incongruous comparison  — inner-city surfaces covered in graffiti. These markings, considered art by the best of their creators, deface yet celebrate. They spring from repression but in a perverse way speak to optimism. Can anything about tomorrow be learned from the spray paint on walls, bridges and subway cars?

After the population decline of the Black Plague, wages for laborers went up (high demand, low supply) and the price of land went down (low demand, high supply). Inequality eased off. Opportunity abounded. The Renaissance (literally The Rebirth), and later The Enlightenment, burst forth, light from dark. So what happens to us and our culture when the all-clear sounds?

Duomo arches

The Duomo

This could be our big chance for change, unity and joint hope. Let Bocelli keep singing. Let the light shine each evening on the Duomo Di Milano. And let everyone else search out and lay claim to a surface in preparation for its decoration. The unadorned will no longer be accepted.

 

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The origin of Johnny Four Fingers

6 Apr

Nicknames

By Lanny Morgnanesi

On Facebook, I saw posts listing 10 people “I’ve met,” with one being a lie. I decided to play and put up these 10.

  1. Johnny Four Fingers
  2. Frank “Two Meatballs” Ferretti
  3. Bing Bang Ciao
  4. Joey Lollipops
  5. Pauli “Rembrandt” Scungeel
  6. Spinach Face Tommy
  7. Tony Loud Cry
  8. Pasquale “Dog Shoes” Maroni
  9. Vincent Steam Breath Bug Eyes
  10. Nathan the Nickel

Then I realized the more curious readers might want to know how these men got their names. So here at NotebookM I’ve decided to provide that information.

Johnny Four Fingers – As a child, his big hands prevented him from reaching inside a soda machine to steal Cokes. So he used his father’s power saw to remedy that.

Frank “Two Meatballs” Ferretti – Always thin, his grandmother said she’d give him a quarter if he gained weight. To look heavier, he stuffed a meatball into each cheek.

Bing Bang Ciao – Upon leaving a drinking establishment, he would always bang his left fist on the bar, then bang his right, then say good night.

Joey Lollipops – He robbed a corner store but took only candy.

Pauli “Rembrandt” Scungeel – The best forger in Brooklyn.

Spinach Face Tommy – Chronic acne.

Tony Loud Cry – A rival gang caught him and threatened to cut off his testicles and shove them up his rectum. His lament was heard three blocks away.

Pasquale “Dog Shoes” Moroni – The heat went out at a cheap motel where he was staying with a hooker. He took her fake fur and fashioned it into slippers.

Vincent Steam Breath Bug Eyes – He survived a garroting, but it was not pretty.

Nathan the Nickel – He lived on Fifth Street, as opposed to Nathan the Dime, who lived on 10th.

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On Writing and the Pandemic

30 Mar

NY-empty-streets

By Lanny Morgnanesi

I’m not sure I’m ready to write.

The Coronavirus pandemic has inspired innumerable blogs, podcasts, articles and commentaries. Photos and videos of ghostly, empty streets circulate widely and never end. Footage of people singing to each other as a salve to the quarantine are reaching large numbers in live, nightly broadcasts. And I’m empty of thought.

In such times, for writers, the bare minimum is a journal. You can start it with vigor, try to shed light on the mundane, neglect it a little then let it trail off, but – unless you are out there and in it, which means you’ve got something – you are writing whatever everyone else is writing. My journal began thusly on March 23:

It’s impossible to put today in perspective, since yesterday was bad and tomorrow most certainly will be worse. At this point, at this time, numbers cannot adequately describe what we ultimately will face and how we will get there. Instead, let a few statistics be a point of demarcation along a road of unknown length. Let them serve not as a measure but only as a backdrop for the very present.

At that time, COVID-19 had infected 292,142 people and killed 1,600. Today, a mere seven days later, there are 729,100 infected people and 34,689 deaths. Experts say as many as 200,000 could die in the U.S.

Aside from my venturing out once for groceries – noting the absence of flour and yeast and realizing that in a panic you can’t outthink people – there really was little to write about at a time when there is a great deal about which to write.

While not writing, I read a little about writing. It was a retro piece in the New York Review of Books from 2016. The author was Joan Didion, whose utter and complete immersion in the art of writing has always fascinated me, and the piece was simply called California Notes. She begins saying that in 1976 Rolling Stone magazine asked her to cover the San Francisco trial of Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped by political radicals who became one of them and took part (while armed) in a bank robbery. Didion is a Californian who relocated to New York, but the Patty Hearst assignment would bring her back to California. She would seek inspiration for the piece by reacquainting herself with the state and trying to revive her own emotions about it.

didioncouch

Writer Joan Didion

For me, as I sat not writing, the best part of California Notes was Joan’s confession that she attended the trial but never wrote the piece. There was no explanation, except: “I thought the trial had some meaning for me—because I was from California. This didn’t turn out to be true.”  Her California reflections, however, led her years later to write a compilation called Where I Was From and even later  California Notes.

There’s a famous Nora Ephron quote that reminds me of Joan and has been repeated in this time of crisis: “Everything is copy.” I always thought it peculiar that such a quote would become so famous, since few outside of writing know what “copy” is. The reason must be because writers are the ones always repeating the quote. Anyway, “copy” in this sense means “material” for writing, and now – with the world shut down by a virus — everything is indeed copy. You go outside for a walk and it’s copy. You venture out and drive through town and it’s copy. You cook a meal or seek activities for your kids and it’s copy.

Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Trancas, California, March 1972

Didion with husband, the late writer Gregory Dunne

Even without a pandemic, everything for Joan Didion seemed to be copy. (Her husband died and she got a book out of it). It might be that everything around Joan Didion, all the clouds she allowed to cover her success and notoriety, seemed like a personal pandemic, so she recorded it. In California Notes, she mentions an airline trip from New York to San Francisco in the 50s and reports that on the flight she had, “a Martini-on-the-Rocks and Stuffed Celery au Roquefort over the Rockies.” This means that while in her 20s she was taking notes on everything she did.

It’s true that in my youth I took notes. Joan got much more out of hers than I ever did. Like with her, the urge still remains with me. Recently, while in semi-retirement, I agreed to take a $25-an-hour job as a census taker, figuring I would get something out of it, a story about the real America, even though I’d only be visiting the homes of people in my mostly white, mostly affluent suburban county. As the virus spread, the government wisely decided not to send people house to house. I never went to even one.

In California Notes, there is mention by Joan of an early newspaper job at the Sacramento Union. Newspapers require reporters to learn local “style” – the proper way to refer to things in print. Joan touches on this and says,  “I learned that Eldorado County and Eldorado City are so spelled but that regular usage of El Dorado is two words; to UPPER CASE Camellia Week, the Central Valley, Sacramento Irrigation District, Liberator bombers and Superfortresses, the Follies Bergere [sic], the Central Valley Project, and such nicknames as Death Row, Krauts, or Jerries for Germans, Doughboys, Leathernecks, Devildogs.”

Patricia-Hearst-front-emblem-Symbionese-Liberation-Army

Heiress Patricia Hearst, after her kidnapping

Everything is copy. Sadly, I didn’t make any kind of record of the local style at my first newspaper, and can only remember this: “Do not use a period after the ‘S’ in ‘Harry S Truman High School.’ A period suggests an abbreviation and in this case ‘S’ is not an abbreviation because President Truman did not have an actual middle name.” In the same way I know I cannot compete with the person who thought to buy yeast before I did, I know I cannot compete with writers who know what food and drink they had on a plane in 1955, or can recite that actual constraints put on them decades ago by local “style.” Maybe Joan Didion came up dry at the utterly fantastic trial of Patty Hearst, but she found inspiration at every other turn in her life.

I’m sitting here now looking for inspiration. I suspect I’ll find it eventually. I’m fairly certain, however, I won’t be writing about my neighbors singing, if indeed they ever do. I prefer instead to write about things we fail to see. And right now, I can’t see anything.

 

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