Aglow in Sadness From Notre-Dame's Flames

A little more than a week ago I watched, for the umpteenth time, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the classic 1939 film adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel starring Charles Laughton. It is a great movie.

The first time I saw the film I must have been no more than 10 years old. I watched it with my mother, probably as one of the Million Dollar Movies that played each night for a full week on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York during the 1950s. From that time, indelibly imprinted in my mind was the scene wherein the hunchback bellringer Quasimodo pours molten lead through gargoyles on the roof of the cathedral onto Parisian beggars and riffraff attacking Notre-Dame. 

For years I thought the mob was trying to free the Gypsy maiden Esmeralda from his grasp. He had saved her from the gallows, invoking “sanctuary” inside the church.  

The mob actually was trying to shield Esmeralda from a threatened royal revocation of sanctuary safety. Deaf, Quasimodo had no way of knowing the mob was not attacking him. 

To my young eyes and ears, the spectacle was all that mattered. The hunchback saved the girl. 

Hugo’s book is far different from its various movie iterations. Look it up on Wikipedia if you’re interested in knowing the differences. One thing is a constant—Notre-Dame commands the screen. 

I climbed to the top of the cathedral during my first trip to Paris in August 1966. I arrived at the base of Notre-Dame just before closing time. New visitors were not allowed entry through the main entrance that day anymore. Being a bold teenager of 17, I decided that up the down staircase was good enough for me. I raced up one of the towers, the right one if memory serves me correctly. The climb is 387 stairs. It took about 10 minutes. 

A few steps short of the top a young man descending said something to me I could not understand. Having just spent six weeks in Israel, I reflexively responded, “Mah?,” Hebrew for “what?”. He laughed and answered me in Hebrew that the viewing area was closing and being cleared of tourists. I rushed ahead and managed a short but thrilling view of Paris from above.

I’ve returned with Gilda to Paris several times. Notre-Dame has been one of our memorable stops.

Paris without Notre-Dame in its glory would be like visiting London without seeing Big Ben or Westminster Abbey, Rome without St. Peter’s Basilica or the Coliseum, Jerusalem without the Western Wall or the Dome of the Rock. 

Begun in 1163, the Gothic cathedral was completed in 1345 at a cost impossible to fathom.

Will Notre-Dame be restored? Would the French government sustain such an expense for an expected lengthy restoration? 

If there is a model of hope for a resurrection of the edifice it can be found at Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Built by Tsar Peter the Great on the shore of the Baltic Sea in the early part of the 18th century, Peterhof’s elaborate gardens, fountains and buildings were largely ravaged by the invading German army in 1941. Restoration began at the end of World War II and lasted through decades. Gilda and I can attest to its beauty. 

In Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia (“holy family”) Church is slated for completion in 2026. Construction began in 1882, but did not take on its current design until Antoni Gaudi took over as architectural director in 1884. Gaudi died in 1926 with only 20% of the project complete. Gilda liked it when we saw it about 15 yers ago. I didn't warm to it.

These days the French are not a particularly religious people. But the importance of Notre-Dame transcends beliefs. When the shock of the blaze is reduced to embers, a burning desire to rekindle national pride will fuel a revival of the grande dame of Paris.

Going beyond The Times for Daily News

The New York Times is considered by many as the newspaper of record. Naturally, I try to read it as much as I can. But one of my more quirky, informative reads is the US Daily Mail, from which I offer several examples from Monday’s news feed (there will be lots of links to click on, but well worth your time). 

Paris Public “Pissoirs:” Ever have the urge to go, just a tinkle, mind you, while out in public? In Paris, it seems, men have no compunction about urinating in the street. So the city fathers are assessing a radical idea: Public street-facing urinals disguised as flower-boxes, reports The Daily Mail. For more on this fluid story, click here: https://dailym.ai/2vG2GcH

Weaponizing Planes? Is a plane the new weapon of choice for suicide and/or murder? We all have heard about the worker who stole a plane from Sea-Tac Airport and ultimately crashed to his death. But how many are familiar with the story of a disgruntled husband who tried to kill his estranged wife and her son by crashing a plane into their home? They survived. He didn’t: https://dailym.ai/2B4B4Dg

Black Like Me? Not: Here are several examples of what it is like being black. 

I wonder how many pregnant white women have had the same experience as this black lady: https://dailym.ai/2P47XmB. 

Or how many white campers encountered this reaction during a field trip to an aquarium: https://dailym.ai/2MJAXOO

Ageless in Vermont: Vermont has given us Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian who wants to be president. Now the Green Mountain state has a 14-year-old legitimately running for governor. Check him out: https://dailym.ai/2P2mor8.

Chain Migration: First Lady Melania Trump’s parents just became U.S. citizens thanks to chain migration, an immigration rule Donald Trump and his creepy acolyte Stephen Miller want to do away with, now that their families have benefitted from it. 

If you haven’t seen it, Miller’s uncle on his mother’s side wrote an impassioned piece in Politico addressing his nephew’s cold rejection of the lifesaving rule that saved their family from extermination by Nazi Germany. Here are two links, a news story from The Daily Mail (https://dailym.ai/2B9Wijk) and the full essay from Politico (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351).

Family Values: Someone needs to get it through to the Trump Administration that family values really do matter, that separating children from parents is not what America stands for. Here’s the latest outrage, as The Daily Mail headlined: “Married US gov workers told adopted Peruvian daughter will be DEPORTED: https://dailym.ai/2vFvPEP.

Bear Facts: Finally, some uplifting news—several Ussuri brown bears have been released from tiny cages in Japan after 17 years or more of captivity. They were brought to Britain to an animal sanctuary. That’s the good news, though you may wonder why they were so maltreated in the first place: https://dailym.ai/2MDvnxD. 

Sometimes, you have to look elsewhere for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Putin's in the News and so Is Goebbels

Vladimir Putin is in the news for what he might have done and said. The stupid and embarrassing Democratic National Committee email scandal on the eve of the party’s nominating convention may have Russian fingerprints on it. Some are suggesting Putin had his tech spies hack DNC computers earlier this year so they could be released to WikiLeaks in time to discredit Hillary Clinton’s primary and caucus campaign. The FBI said it would look into the matter. 

Can you imagine Republican reaction if the FBI comes to Clinton’s and the Democrats’ defense after deciding there wasn’t sufficient grounds to indict the former secretary of state for her personal email server mistake? I can just hear Donald Trump screaming the FBI is rigged against Republicans as he besmirches another of our national institutions.

Putins also is in the “news,” so to speak, for a speech he allegedly gave to the Russian parliament about the need for Muslims to adapt to Russian laws and conform to Russian customs if they want to live in Russia. Copies of his “speech” have been circulating through the Internet.

However, according to Snopes.com, Putin never gave such a speech. It is another example of people using the Internet to create their own version of history in the hope of influencing a wider audience.

Secretary to the Great Influencer: A new documentary of a 105-year-old German woman, “A German Life,” is making its way around. She is not just any centenarian. Brunhilde Pomsel served as one of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ secretaries during the last years of the Third Reich.

“The people who today say they would have done more for those poor, persecuted Jews,” she says, “I really believe that they sincerely mean it. But they wouldn’t have done it, either. By then the whole country was under some kind of a dome. We ourselves were all inside a huge concentration camp.”

Take a moment to read the linked article from Monday’s New York Times http://nyti.ms/29gL4aH.

Now, understand why some think a Trump victory in November could easily be the first step on a downward path. If a domestic terrorist attack similar in impact to Paris or Nice occurs after he takes office Trump could declare martial law.

It is scary to think of the implications. “The dangers are still alive. It could happen again,” (one) of the directors, Olaf Müller, said. “One of the main aims of the film is to have the audience question: How would I have reacted? What would I have done in her situation for a new step in my career?”

Holocaust Stories: Angels at Two Fences

The Internet is recognized as a great information tool but, alas, also as a font of misinformation (hopefully not from this blog, though my wife and sister would say I get a lot of family history wrong. I respond that it’s my blog, history is what the blogger in the family says it is, and if they have another version they can write their own blog or send in a comment).

If you spend any time on the Internet receiving emails or logging onto Facebook or other social media sites, you undoubtedly will come across some unbelievable stories. My modus operandi when one of these tall tales pops onto my screen is to fact check them.

So it was that the other day I challenged an email carrying the Holocaust survival and love story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat. While hiding out on a farm outside Berlin, Roma was said to have thrown food every day for seven months to Herman inside the Buchenwald concentration camp. Herman ended the war in Theresienstadt and didn’t see Roma again until, amazingly, they went on a blind date in 1957 in New York City. They married shortly thereafter. Herman wrote a book about Roma, Angel at the Fence, appeared twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show and had his book optioned to become a film.

Alas, Herman admitted the story of the girl at the fence was all a hoax. The book was never published. The film was scrapped. Herman died earlier this year after more than 50 years of marriage to Roma. He was 85.

It was a story perhaps too good to be true. And yet, in my family, a similar story transpired. Distant cousins in France fled into Switzerland. The family of four was separated into three displaced person camps, the father in one, the mother and a newborn girl in another, and seven-year-old Miriam in a third.  

Miriam was able to see her mother from time to time during their three years of internment. An enduring memory for her was receiving food thrown by Swiss children over the camp fence. One of those children grew up to become her husband. 

When I first met Miriam in the summer of 1966, she and her husband, a struggling artist, lived in a garrote of an apartment in Paris. He didn’t speak any English. My French, based on two years of study in high school, was mostly limited to Ou est la bibliotheque? (where is the library?), merci (thank you), and s’il vous plaît (if you please). Our speech limitations notwithstanding, he and I ventured off to the Louvre. 

Sadly I couldn’t take advantage of his expert commentary. But as I wandered around the Louvre, mostly oblivious to the treasures before me, he did manage to point out the Venus de Milo standing amidst other statues, and, after I had walked past it, he brought me back to view the Mona Lisa (back then the da Vinci portrait was treated like any other painting, hanging nondescriptly on a wall with other works of art). 

After my few days in Paris I never saw him again for he and Miriam could not sustain their fairy tale love story. They divorced well before I returned to Paris decades later. 

A Tribute to Jean-Claude Baker of Chez Josephine

I religiously read obituaries in The New York Times, not, as the saying goes, to find out if I’m still alive. Friday night I was startled to read about the passing of Jean-Claude Baker, apparently by his own hand. He was found Thursday in his car at his East Hampton, NY, home.

I doubt most of you knew Jean-Claude. I can’t say I had more than a passing awareness of him, either, until about a year ago. I didn’t know him as a friend. Rather, he was the co-owner and maitre d of Chez Josephine, a French bistro on West 42nd Street off 9th Avenue in Manhattan, a few doors down from Playwrights Horizon, a theatre group Gilda and I and our friends Jane and Ken have been members of for more than 10 years, enjoying four to six plays a year, several of which have gone on to win Pulitzer prizes.  

We used to attend weekend matinees then visit a museum before dining at restaurants all over the city. A few years ago we switched to evening productions with dinner at nearby restaurants, including Chez Josephine. In truth we dined there at first because of its proximity to the theatre. We kept going back because the food, the service, the piano-bar ambiance, the decor and the convenience made each meal memorable and delectable. If you’re anything like me, you grew up hating liver. But the pan-seared calf’s liver at Chez Josephine is to die for. And its shrimp cocktail is among the plumpest I’ve enjoyed.

Jean-Claude often would be standing directly inside the front door, cheerfully dressed in a high collared tunic. About a year ago when Ken and Jane had to miss our night at the theatre, Linda and Jacob took their places. Intrigued by all the pictures of Josephine Baker, the American chanteuse Parisians adored, decorating the walls, Linda asked Jean-Claude about them.

He enthusiastically joined our table recounting a quick summary of his life while bringing over a copy of a book he had written about Josephine, the woman who had taken him in as a struggling teenager in Paris and for all intents and purposes adopted him, one of about a dozen waifs she mothered in the City of Lights.

The last time we ate in Chez Josephine was in early December. Jean-Claude was not in his usual spot greeting patrons. I asked if he was in but was told he was taking some time off at his East Hampton home. Reports of his death said he had been depressed for several years. How sad that a man who had given so much joy to friends and strangers would succumb to demons inside his mind (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/nyregion/jean-claude-baker-a-restaurateur-dies-at-71.html?ref=obituaries). 

The Fear Factor in Journalism

Have you ever done, or not done, something out of fear? Have you ever crossed to the other side of the street to avoid a group of teenagers, white or black? Have you ever decided not to travel to a distant land because you feared violence?

I can honestly and unashamedly say I am guilty of letting fear control some of my actions. Though I have traveled to Israel numerous times, even during an Intifada, I have avoided vacationing in South America, part of an irrational fear and prejudice stimulated by too many clichés about banana republics and banditto violence.

I don’t know about you but I am in awe of foreign correspondent who thrust themselves into tense surroundings in countries where they mostly do not speak the native tongue. While hordes of civilians and even military personnel flee scenes of combat, war correspondents charge toward the front. Don’t they have family to go home to? Don’t they fear for their lives, particularly in the Middle East where journalists are now prized for their hostage qualifications as stars of potential videotaped beheadings?

For journalists, the front lines no longer are confined to zones of deadly combat exchanges. The brutal massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, an act of butchery regrettably easily duplicated anywhere in the world by terrorists acting individually or in groups or even by state supported thugs, makes that plain.

We can track down perpetrators (as they did Friday in France), even stop them before they implement their evil, but we will never be able to eradicate the threat to society, not as long as crazed fanatics can distort a religion or creed and manipulate an individual to abandon all decency and kill at will.

During my working career as a journalist I didn’t have to fear my decisions would affect anyone’s life or death. That’s not to say fear did not enter some of my editorial and publishing choices. It was a fear based on economic consequences. Would we lose advertising if we criticized a supplier? Would we lose circulation if we questioned the strategy of a retail company? Would we lose an exhibitor if we didn’t shave booth costs or provide a better location on the trade show floor?

I’d like to say I resisted all those temptations to journalistic integrity and independence, that they all stemmed from my bosses’ blind pursuit of the almighty dollar while I remained true to the journalist’s separation of church and state—editorial and sales. There were times, I acknowledge, when I gave in. I rationalized that even The New York Times, no matter what its editor might say, made decisions based on current or prospective advertisers or which politicians the paper favored or rejected.

I compromised my values. Nobody died or was injured because I succumbed to my fears. Nor did any heinous philosophy spread. Simple commerce was transacted.

Fear has killed far more stories than the abhorrent attack on the staff of Charlie Hebdo. Even as the world, particularly the journalistic community, extols “Je Suis Charlie,” few if any publications or Web sites have reprinted the images of Mohammed that provoked the assault. 

Should they? Sit quietly in a room surrounded by pictures of your family and decide for yourself. What would you do?