Fucked - 2011

My cousin and I had a long telephone call last evening. I was south of Charleroi. It was the ugliest town in europe. Oil Can was north of Boston. We were an ocean apart. I asked about his father, the judge. The ex-marine has been repatriated from the hospital. My uncle was back at home.

"That's good news." Jack was my godfather. The Korea War veteran liked to say that no baby cried more a Christening. The wailing was a premonition of my apostasy. "Send him my love."

We discussed our immediate families. His son was applying for high school and mine were safe from the floods. "On a more serious note, how's business."

"Business sucks." His investment firm specialized in financing start-up companies. "Everyone is searching for the next big thing and it isn't going to be 3-D TV.

"The world economy is only going to improve if the banks, governments, and people abandon the ways of the past. Trade in their cars for trolleys and trains. Stop eating shitty food and begin to pay cash for everything rather than live in a perpetual debt." I had been chanting this mantra for years without denting the status quo. "The old industries are dead and no country can exist without a manufacturing base. America and the West have to re-industrialize their economies."

China controlled the world with its providing internet one-stop shopping for everything.

"I make a half-million a year and I'm broke." My cousin liked the fine things in life. He should be able to afford them.

"And if you're broke, what do you think the rest of the world is like."

"Fucked."

"There's no other word for it." The head of the IMF announced that the world economy was in danger of entering another lost decade unless bold steps were taken to bolster the faltering economies of Greece, Italy, and Spain. They were no alone either.

"And I don't see the calvary coming to the rescue."

"Grim."

"Very grim." I was in agreement, but then said, "At least I'm drinking good Belgian beer. And it's cheap."

3 Euros for a 33CL glass of Rochefort.

"A bright light on the horizon."

"We have to take them as they come."

"Better some than none. Drink a beer for me."

"You got it." Oil Can was my favorite cousin.

I hung up and went down to the local bar in Montigny outside of Charleroi. I ordered a beer. I drank it in less than two minutes. The second one went a little slower and the third lasted almost thirty minutes.

After the fifth I was fucked, but fucked in a good way and i walked back to Vonelli's house with a slur in my steps. The moon was clearing through the clouds.

Fucked or not tomorrow was going to be another day.

Gesamtkunstwerk Macht Frei - 2011

The German word Gesamtkunstwerk is defined as the ideal work of art. 

Last night I arrived on train from Charleroi and immediately changed into a suit to attend a Chamber Music concert at the Luxembourg Theater with the Honorable UK ambassador. Luxembourg might be the most boring city in Europe, but culturally there was always something bring light to a gray northern European fortress town. Annie Sofie von Otter was singing a series of song written by the inmates of Theresienstadt. The Nazis under SS Doktor Seidl transformed the old fortress into a model concentration camp to house the Jews of Czechoslovakia. Designed for 7000 soldiers Terezin was occupied by ten times that number 70,000. The camp was filled with the great minds and the Nazis guided the Red Cross on tours through this Potemkin clone to show that their munificent treatment of the Jews.

The horrible conditions did not prevent the inmates from pursuing their crafts and last night the soprano along with her violinist, pianist, and bassist  resurrected their souls with music from Ilse Weber, Erwin Schulhoff, Karel Berman, and others. The musicians painted a tone poem of the doomed efforts to remain human during the Nazis’ pretending to be humane. Only one of the night’s composers survived Terezin.

The singer’s father had tried to inform the world about the death camps. He had received the information from a SS officer, Kurt Gerstein and died a suicide in French custody. His father was a die-hard Prussian, who wrote his son, "You are a soldier and an official and you must obey the orders of your superiors. The person who bears the responsibility is the man who gives the orders, not the one who carries them out."

This philosophy was repeated by countless Nazis after the surrender.

“We were only following orders.”

Kurt Gerstein obeyed his soul. He died a suicide in French custody.

There were good Nazis. But they weren’t in Terezin. The music of the dead haunts the future with the past.

The last song WIR WERDEN BESTIMMT WIEDERSEHEN brought tears to my eyes and the Ambassador as well. Alice had a tender soul.

‘We will see each other again.’

His 'we' walked as ghosts last night in Luxembourg.

I hope they were happy.  

Belgium Beer Research

My first beer was a Miller in March 1965. I was almost thirteen. The end of winter. My three friends and I bought the beers from Red Tate. The town drunk. I can't recall now ever seeing him drunk. We drank the beer behind Our Aunt of Jesus Catholic Church. Two bottles each. I got sick and spewed out the beer like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean. I caem home and went to bed. My mother asked what was wrong. She had her suspicions. I said nothing.

On the following Sunday the old Irish pastor dedicated his sermon to the evils of teenage drinking. His God saw all and knew all just like the nuns. His warning came too late for me. I had already vowed to never again drink beer.

That pledge was later adjusted to never drinking Miller beer. My teenage friends were Bud fans. For me something was off about a beer hauled by the Clydesdales and I only drink it when there is nothing else available like at MLB baseball games and barbecues in Iowa. I preferred Nargangansett, locally brewed in Cranston, RI, which slids down my throat as smoothly as the Saco River over the rocks of Crawford Notch.

American beer has rightfully acquired a bad reputation thanks to Budweiser and Oscar Wilde according to a Tottenham Spurs fan once said, “I find American beer a bit like having sex in a canoe. It's fucking close to water.”

Over my youth I drunk Olympia, Coors, Busch, Iron City, Narragansett, Carling, Labatt, Molson, Pabst, and hundreds of other brews, until American beer was wiped off the menu by Heineken.

Soon I extended my exploration to foreign shores to taste the beer in their native surroundings. I drank Corona in the Yucatan, slugged down Karlsberg in Denmark, swilled 1664 in France, quaffed Tiger in Malaysia, soothed my thirst with Bintang in Indonesia, and savored Leo in Thailand along with beers from every country on my circumnavigations of the globe.  

I even created a special holiday for beer.

Beermas sounded good to my ears.

I celebrated it almost daily with pleasure.

I returned from overseas three years ago. My favorite bar was five blocks from my apartment. The lovely Chinese bartender served cold Stella-Artois in a glass. The clientele became my friends. I had downed several thousands of the beer at Frank’s Lounge on Fulton Street from August 2009 to September 2011, when I left the USA for Luxembourg to became the writer in residence at the British Embassey and told my fellow drinkers at Frank’s that I would return a better man, because my next destination bordered Belgium and nothing goes down better than the Trappist beers of that country.

Leffe, Duvel and Stella Artois are good supping beers, but they pale in comparison to the Achel, Dubbel, Chimay, Orval, and dark Rochefort. None of those brews are under 7% alcohol.

That autumn I trained west to Belgium, Charleroi to be exact. A crapped out coal town. My good friend from Florida Vonelli lived on the outskirts in a grand manse on the verge of collapse within earshot of the R3 autoroute, whose  eternal traffic hushed through the trees like a rush of a river. We enjoyed each other's coumpany and had since I first arrived in Paris in 1982. One sunny morning and there aren't many of those in Belgium that time of year, Vonelli announced it was time to visit the Aulne Monastery on the nearby Sambre River."  

"It's a walking distance away."    

It was not yet noon, but beer drinking was a sacrment in Belgium and we tramped out of Montigny-le-Tilleul on a wooded path to the river locks and drank a beer at La Guinguette. Just one. An Abbe d'Aulne blonde. Luscious.

The ruins of Aulne abbey overlooked the river. French revolutionay troops had sacked the Cistacian monastery in 1794. Not a single monk inhabited the property. As an atheist I was proud of their work, but not that they had destroyed the 50,000 books in the library.   

After wandering through the tumbled stones we retreated back to La Guinguette. We were the only diners, although two old women were supping on a dark beer. at least 7%. We ate a fine meal of , mussels, sole, and a crepe for dessert. Three courses cost $30. We drank three beers through the courses. I had never tasted better and we ordered a fourth to chase down the crepe.

"What I like about Belgium is seeing little old ladies drinking beer in the cafes at noon. It make me feel good." Vonelli has been living in Belgium for a number of good reasons. Beer was one of them.

"That's the only reason you live here?" The first sip of the fourth glass was as good as the fourth sip from the first beer.

"That and the beer."   

There were other attractions to Belgium and one of them was Charleroi, the ugliest city in all of Europe. It also had good beer. Beer defines Belgium as much as frites with mayonnaise. In fact beer was so popular in Belgium that a low-alcohol version was served in schools up to the 1970s.

When I returned to Luxembourg I ordered a Duvel for lunch with Cod fried in olive oil.

It's 8.5 % alcohol.

I think I'll have another.

I have no heavy machinery to operate in the afternoon or tomorrow either.

Another Happy Beermas.

From me and my son Fenway.  

George Washington # 1

Three years ago George Washington was voted Britain's greatest enemy commander by a poll over nearly 8000 people held by the War Museum in London, beating out IRA leader Michael Collins, Napoleon Bonaparte, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. His statue resides before the National Museum in Trafalger Square. The soil beneath the statue's plinth came fromhis native Virgina, as the general had vowed imported Virginia soil to never to set foot on British soil again

Washington's posthumous victory in the poll was explained by a prominent historian, “His army was always under strength, hungry, badly supplied. He shared the dangers of his men. Anyone other than Washington would have given up the fight. He came to personify the cause, and the scale of his victory was immense.”

George Washington was unable to attend the award ceremony, but his words on peace live forever.

"There is nothing so likely to promote peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy."

In Defense of Spike Lee

Back in 2014 a Abraham Lincoln lookalike visited Fort Greene on President's Day to promote Quicken Loans. They promo team offered $25 to put a photo of the ersatz Abe and #quickenloans on your Facebook page. I tried on my cellphone without success. The young girl gave me a card for trying and I purchased two bottles of wine for $18 at the liquor store on Fulton.

Some things never change.

Spike Lee doesn't feel the same way about Fort Greene with good reason.

At a speech at Pratt Institute the film director had attacked gentrification as an invasion of uncool white motherfuckers who call the police to quiet his jazz playing father and white couples bogarting Fort Greene like it was their birth right.

He's actually very funny about how realtors changed Bushwick to East Williamsburg, why there's more police protection and better schools.

This telling of the truth was met with anger by the newcomers and Uncle Tims like John McWhorter of Time Magazine without any mention of economic cleansing of Harlem, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Brooklyn.

Spike Lee was speaking against reverse migration and for affordable housing.

"Where are we going to go?"

"People can not afford to live here anymore."

I know the story.

I was moved out of my place on East 10th Street.

I had lived there almost thirty years.

They and we know who they are don't want us here.

In Russia they call it a pogram.

'They' want the poor, minorities, and the disenfranchised to leave without a forwarding address.

Well, we ain't going right yet and I applaud Spike Lee telling the truth.

It has to be said and said by 'us'.

Not them.

To see Spike Lee's speech at Pratt Institute please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI73SRbi8AQ

George, Washington 1972

Back in late August 1972 my college friend Ptrov Sinski and I hitchhiked west from Seattle. A rancher left us off at exit 149, serving George, Washington, a small farming community surrounded by endless fields of ripening wheat. The two of us ignored the sign forbidding hitchhiking, but within ten minutes a Highway Patrol car halted on the shoulder. The officer wasn't that much older than us, but he had an old head. A cracker's head.

"You boys can't read." The buzz-cut cop pointed to the sign at the bottom of the onramp after checking our IDs.

"We can read, officer." I played polite.

It was a waste of time. We hadn't bathed in days. To him we were dirty hippies. It wasn't easy to bathe on the the road. Not for hippies or any travelers.

"Then go back to read that sign again." This was an order and the trim trooper stared hard at Ptrov. His hair was longer than mine and his name was foreign. "If I find you anywhere near the highway, I'll give you a ticket. Do anything else and I'll arrest you."

"Yes, officer."

"You boys think I'm being a hardass, but a week ago an officer was struck dead by a passing vehicle and the order has come down to enforce the laws." Cops were very protective of their own, especially those fallen in duty.

The uniformed officer drove off in his high-powered Plymouth Grand Fury. We obeyed his edict and held up a sign saying EAST to the cars passing on I90.

For several hours local teenagers gave us the finger and shouted garbled insults. Their hatred of hippies was not a fad. We wanted to get out of there, but we were trapped off the Interstate.

A little before sunset a Chevy van stopped on the shoulder and we ran up the highway.

Before we reached our ride van, the trooper showed up with light flashing.

"What I tell you boys?"

"We weren't hitchhiking on the highway."

"But a car stopped for you on the highway. Same thing.

He asked for our IDs. We received $50 tickets for hitchhiking and the driver was fined $20 for illegally stopping for hitchhikers.

"But we weren't on the highway," Ptrov protested in earnest outrage.

"You saying I don't know my job?"

"No, officer, we're not saying that. We just want to get home."

"Then get in that van and don't come back through here again."

We entered the van and the driver pulled away from the exit at less than the legal speed limit.

"Cocksucker." He looked in the rearview mirror, then tore his ticket into pieces.

"What are you doing?" I had put mine in my wallet.

"I'm from Ohio. I ain't ever paying that ticket." The driver pulled out a joint and lit it with the lighter. He introducing himself as Jackson.

"You going to Ohio?" Ptrov asked with high expectations. His girlfriend lived in Milwaukee. It was on the way to Ohio.

"Just as far as the Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. I'm working on the highway building rest stops." Jackson passed the joint to my disappointed friend. "We can crash there. Don't look so sad. At least you're out of George, Washington."

He was right and the two of us tore up the tickets like anti-war protestors ripping up draft cards at the Pentagon. I threw the shreds out the window. It was good to be free again.

Battle Of Long Island 1776

After successfully ousting the British from Boston on March 17, 1776, General George Washington assembled the 10,000 strong Continental Army in New York to deny King George III's Royal Navy access to the harbor. Throughout the spring and summer Washington's commander's prepared defenses in Manhattan, however in July the British task force landed in Staten Island and General Howe gathered over 30,000 troops for his offensive.

After making landfall on August 22, the redcoats strengthened their numbers with Long island loyalists. Still believing the city to be the prime target, Washington sent over 1500 troops as reinforcement to General Isaac Putnam's command.

It was not a feint and on August 27 the first assaults on the forts of Long Island took the rebels by surprise with overpowering force of arms.

The battle was a disaster for the Americans.

The bravery of the Maryland 400 forestalled defeat, but at day's end Washington and his troops were trapped under Brooklyn Heights. One more push and the rebellion would be quashed with traitors hanging from every available tree in New York.

The the finishing coupe never came that night.

The British had been taught a deadly lesson at Bunker Hill.

They dug ditches ever closer to the American lines.

In the morning the redcoats discovered that Washington and his soldiers had been evacuated by John Glover's Marblehead regiment. Fishermen, whalers, and sailors.

9000 troops had escaped the trap and the war wasn't destined to end until General Conwallis' surrender at Yorktown six years later.

Not a victory.

Most certainly not a defeat.

More a draw with the British realizing that the world would turn upside down one day.

But not on August 27 for General George Washington.