A Flu Epidemic In 1820

On October 24, in the year 1820, according to the U.S. Capitol Historical Society's 2020 calendar entry for that day, "J[ohn] Q[uincy] Adams notes that his father [John Adams, the 2nd U.S. president, 1797-1801] is victim of flu epidemic raging in northern cities."

In light of today's COVID-19 pandemic, I would like to get an answer to the following questions: how did they handle the flu? Who was most at risk back then? How severe was it?

We might be able to draw a lesson or two from this history.

An Emerging Writer Isn't Always Someone Young

 In the November/December 2020 issue of Poets & Writers, you will find the 5th Annual 5 Over 50 profiles of writers age 50 plus who have published a debut book.

I just started my subscription so I was unaware of this annual acknowledgment until now even though I've read Poets & Writers for several years off and on. Somehow I missed those previous 5 Over 50 profiles.

Nevertheless, I was happy to see them. Usually it's a celebration of writers under 30 or under 40 who get most of the ink.

Finally, the 50 plus demographic, of which I'm a member--AARP's constituency--are getting some respect from the literary community, who have been too youth-obsessed when it comes to first-time authors.

As the editors at Poets & Writers have rightly pointed out, " 'new' and 'emerging' are not synonymous with 'young.' "

Can I get an "Amen" to that?

Should Compton Become The New Brooklyn?

 I don't know if Aja Brown, a young African-American urban planner, is still the mayor of Compton, California. Assuming that she is, I will point to an article that appeared on Los Angeles magazine's website dated October 2, 2013. (I accessed the article on February 5, 2019 while looking for anything about the city I once called home in the 1960s.)

What caught my attention, you ask? It was Ms. Brown's prediction, her desire, her belief that Compton will be the new Brooklyn. Disheartened, she said, by "the impact rap has had over Compton for decades," she wants to "rebrand our community."

As any mayor worth his or her salt would do, Ms. Brown touted Compton's many assets: "We're 15 minutes from downtown [it's not clear if she's talking about Los Angeles or Long Beach or both], the port and LAX. We're surrounded by freeways and have light and heavy rail and great institutions....We're ready to have a renaissance."

Let's hope that that renaissance she favors doesn't displace the city's  current residents. I don't know if Ms. Brown has ever been to Brooklyn. But before Compton is turned into a hipster's destination, she should bear in mind the many longtime Brooklynites, like the African-Americans living in the Crown Heights section, who had to leave because the area became too gentrified, too hip, too expensive.

There's an old saying, be careful what you wish for, you may get it. 

We Shouldn't Cherry-Pick History

 The News Briefs column in the January 17-23, 2003 issue of the Gay City News had an item headlined "We Don't Want Him." The him being referred to is none other than Adolf Hitler. The news brief, written by Andy Humm, announced that HBO was "developing a documentary called The Pink Fuhrer" that explored "whether or not Adolf Hitler was homosexual." 

Seventeen years later, the film, which I have not seen, should by now be available on DVD. I would like to see it to judge for myself if what is discussed is credible.

The thing that interests me more is the headline--"We Don't Want Him" instead of "Was Hitler Gay?" I can understand the urge to reject Hitler because of his genocidal, anti-Semitic pronouncements and behavior. But if he was a closeted homosexual, then he becomes part of gay history, like it or not.

Gay history has the tendency to celebrate only those deemed the good guys while ignoring those identified as villains like J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderers Leopold and Loeb.

If we're going to study gay history, it should be studied like all other histories, warts and all; the good, the bad, and the ugly; the sacred and the profane. By sanitizing and cherry-picking history, it becomes distorted and valueless. Looking at history in its fullness makes it possible for us to more accurately analyze and evaluate people, attitudes, actions, and events.

We can't do that if we hide the historical record. The history exists and we have to deal with it.

A Briticism Used In An American Op-Ed Article

 "Argle-bargle" is a term I've never encountered until I read Jennifer Senior's op-ed piece in The New York Times (September 23, 2020), called "The Ginsburg-Scalia Act Was Not a Farce." The article is about the friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, who were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Ms. Senior described Justice Scalia as a "hero of the Federalist Society, defender of originalism, dreaded foe of progressive argle-bargle." [Italics mine.]

I looked up "argle-bargle" in my copy of  the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition (2004), suspecting the term might be a British import. The closest term in the dictionary is "argy-bargy," identified as of British origin and meaning "a dispute or wrangle."

Consulting one of my two battered copies of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I found the word "argufy," of no particular origin. It is defined as "to argue or wrangle, esp. over something insignificant." That's about as close to "argle-bargle" as I could get in an American dictionary.

"Argle-bargle" is one of those British expressions that have entered American speech, much like "gobsmacked," "shambolic," and "the full monty."

One clue to the origin of "argle-bargle" is Cockney rhyming slang. Lonely Planet's London guidebook (Lonely Planet Publications, 2012) says that Cockney rhyming slang "may have developed among London's costermongers (street traders) as a code to avoid police attention. This code replaced common nouns and verbs with rhyming phrases." For example, " 'going up the apples and pears' meant going up the stairs, the 'trouble and strife' was the wife, 'telling porky pies' was telling lies and 'would you Adam and Eve it?' was would you believe it?"

In the meantime, maybe I should send a copy of this blog post to Melissa Mohr, who writes the "In a Word" column for The Christian Science Monitor Weekly magazine. Ms. Mohr might be able to shed some light on "argle-bargle." 

Bridging Cultural Differences Via Books

 On my way home from shopping at the Target store in East Harlem, I saw a poster taped to a lamppost on 116th Street. At the bottom of the poster it announced the formation of the Brown Boys Book Club. The aim it said was "to make reading cool" and to promote the reading of "books by us for us." It wasn't clear who the "us" was it was referring to. African-Americans or Hispanics? Or was the reference to both groups?

Going by the name of the club, I think it's safe to assume that membership is exclusively for young males of color. It's a well-known fact that women and girls read more than men and boys. In fact, I've seen more women and girls than males reading on the bus, in the subway, and on park benches. So it's a good idea to encourage boys to be as quick to pick up a book as they are to pick up a basketball.

But I don't think these boys should be limited to reading "books by us for us," especially in a city as racially and ethnically diverse as New York.

I am a lifelong reader and my literary tastes, like my musical tastes, are very broad. As a kid, I read stories about Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes; stories by Edgar Allan Poe; the Hardy Boys mysteries; The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, etc.  My introduction to Truman Capote was in a Reader's Digest Condensed Books volume that contained his The Muses Are Heard, a nonfiction book about a troupe of African-American actors who travel by train across the Soviet Union to perform Porgy & Bess. Years later I began reading James Baldwin, Richard Wright, John A. Williams, Chester Himes, Ernest J. Gaines, Alice Walker, and other African American as well as African writers.

There's nothing wrong with reading about people who look like you and share your ethnic background. But there are other cultures out there to learn about and to learn from. To do otherwise would be to deprive oneself of many wonderfully told stories as well as seeing the world through the eyes and experiences of others. And through literature you can learn that despite our many cultural differences, there are certain characteristics and feelings we all share and can identity with.

Note: There is a Brilliant Brown Boys Book Club in Chicago that was formed earlier this year. It may be the model for the New York book club.

Revisiting TV's First Golden Age

 Ben Brantley, a New York Times drama critic, wrote an article that appeared in the Arts & Leisure section (August 30, 2020) with the headline, "Enjoying Live Theater, Decades Old."

Since Broadway shows are shutdown until January due to COVID-19, Brantley has had to content himself with watching plays that were originally broadcast live in the 1950s during what has been called the Golden Age of Television, via YouTube.

He recalled when he was five years old walking into his family's living room in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and seeing what he later learned was the tail end of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," starring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. He remembered their characters arguing which left him "both upset and enthralled by what I had witnessed."

No doubt this televised performance planted the seed of theatregoing in his mind that later blossomed into a (so far) 27-year career as a drama critic.

His depiction of the racial landscape on television in those long ago days caught my attention: "...the faces on the screen are still overwhelmingly white, a reminder that the United States was still very much a culturally segregated nation."

I think it was the black writer John Oliver Killens who wrote that blacks on TV were so rare that whenever a black performer came on the screen, black people all over America would race to their TV sets to see them.

Accompanying the article were three black-and-white photos (one of them of writer Rod Serling) from the 1950s. The photo I found the most arresting was the one of the actors seated around a table during a rehearsal of "Twelve Angry Men" in 1954. The photo caption says the rehearsal was for CBS's Playhouse 90. Actually, it was for Studio One. According to The Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine Books, 1979), "Reginald Rose contributed teleplays for Studio One and it was Rose's 'The Twelve Angry Men' in 1954 that won Emmys for writing (Rose), direction (Frank Shaffner), and performance by an actor in a drama (Bob Cummings)." 

Behind the actors are three cameras and crouching down behind one of the cameramen is a black man in short sleeves and wearing a headset. Although television back then was "overwhelmingly white," here was this black man (and possibly a second one in a far corner holding what looks like a still camera). But definitely the one behind the white cameraman is black.

Who was he? What was his job title? How did he get hired as a crew member on a major network show? What became of him? Did he encounter racial discrimination and racist comments while on the job? Does his name appear in the end credits? I have so many questions.

Just seeing him in the photo was a pleasant discovery. Who knew there was at least one black person among the crew members working on plays for the anthology series Studio One? He would have been, to reference a James Baldwin essay, a fly in buttermilk.