Portrait of a Lady 2

I was driving from Moira to Bombay, way way upstate. The sun shone, one of the first warm days of the spring. I passed a herd of bison munching on a dirty bale of hay that had been left for them in a sloping field.

Around the bend, and there over to the left stood a man at a horse-drawn plow. Two boys, his young sons, presumably, scrabbled away at the clods of muck obstructing the forward movement of the plow. The muddy hay of winter lay strewn across their expanse of land, which was unplowed and unplanted. They worked hard in the sunshine. The man wore a straw hat, an immaculate white shirt obscured by a black vest and jacket, and suspenders that held up his stovepipe black trousers. On his feet, leather boots. His boys wore exactly the same thing.

At last a T-junction and I turned west, on the road to the bridge to Canada. This was the Akewsasne Reservation, the heart of Mohawk country. Their Iroquois meeting house, always reliable for militancy, stood by the roadside festooned with a large billboard that read: “Yes, terrorists pass through Akwesasne! They’re called NY State Police, the FBI, US Border Control, ATF agents.”

I drove past a large casino, an IGA complex, a warehouse under construction. On the shoulder of the road in front of the last sat a buggy, with a trestle table set out. The frail black buggy looked like a toy that had somehow been multiplied in size by some 3-d printer. Between it and the table, petticoats flapped in the breeze on a clothesline. A sign read: “Baked Goods For Sale.” A horse was hitched to a post nearby. No more than twenty feet away, at the half-completed warehouse, a couple of young Mohawk men squatted on their haunches, cigarette smoke curling around the yellow hard hats. They appeared to be watching the horse, the buggy, the clothesline and the sale table.

Fifty feet further on, I turned into the parking lot of the Bear’s Den Trading Post, my last stop in the USA, where I habitually get a tankful of cheap gas and a big bag of discount Swedish fish. The post was its usual human kaleidoscope: impossibly huge upstate New Yorkers eating piles of fried things in the diner, ZZ-Top truck drivers with hair stringy and wet from using the showers in the back, French-Canadian families gripping their cartons of tax-free cigarettes while exclaiming loudly about jewelry in the Iroquois fashion store, and the usual bustle of bathroom-bound children.

Before the cooler, there she was. A tall, graceful young woman. On her head was a stiff brown bonnet hiding all of her hair and sloping bell-like down to her chin, where it was fastened by a shiny brown strip of fabric. Wrapped around her shoulders was a black woollen cape that fell down to just above her ankles. Beneath that a full-length navy-blue dress devoid of any grace notes, buttoned firmly up across her bosom and up to her neck, but still cinched at the waist, nonetheless. On her feet, handmade leather shoes, with rough coils of black-dyed cord running through a dozen or so eyelets.

Her arms hung down at her sides. At their end, holding her hands on either side, were two little girls dressed exactly the same way, down to the smallest detail. They must have been three years old, at the most.

The remarkable threesome looked at the sodas, designer water bottles and vitamin drinks, clearly nonplussed. The little girls had obviously never seen the likes of it before. Neither, perhaps, had the mother. The girls’ free hands timidly pointed out things, questioningly. The young woman spoke to them quietly, without reproach, in medieval German.

They moved on to the candy bar, tortilla chip and breath mint display. They stood before it, indecisive. The subdued German continued. From their vantage point in the Iroquois fashion store, the French-Canadian families could now see the woman and her daughters. The twang of their conversation dulled, quieted, fell to a whisper.

At last a decision was made. I got behind the Amish trio in the line to the cash register, my Swedish fish in hand. When it was their turn, the young woman pulled out from the fastnesses of her cape an enormous wad of dollar bills. She stripped a couple of singles off and wordlessly placed them on the counter. A gum-snapping Mohawk girl took them up and gave her back the change.

After paying, I went out to the parking lot. I could see the three walking back along the shoulder of the roadway. The girls still held their mother’s hands, but in their free hands were clutched yellow plastic wrappers, long and lurid. They both held a beef-jerky.

They reached the buggy. The two braves stood up and went back inside the warehouse to work.

Dilemma

I was thinking of taking a road trip across the U.S. this summer, but I’m afraid of melted cheese.

Will I starve?

The Real Headlines

American Government Kills Guest of Pakistani Government

Obama Doctrine Hailed as “The New Frontier Justice”

Man Shot by LAPD for Using Wife as Human Shield; Woman Claims They Were Dancing

White House Hails "Valuable Intelligence" Found in Bin Laden’s Home; Orders Navy SEALS to Raid Graceland in Search of Lady Gaga’s Next Song

Mission Accomplished: National Security Spokesman Lies When Everyone is Paying Attention Then Takes It Back When We Aren’t; 76% of Americans Believe Bin Laden Shot While Throwing a Thermonuclear Hand Grenade

NRA Leader to Visit Abbottabad

Congress Honors Testosterone as "National Hormone"

Metropolitan Diary: Pam Geller Spotted in Tribeca Not Saying Anything; Supporters Fear “Sharia Gag Order”

Report: Pakistani Police Never Answer Someone-is-Blowing-Up-a-Helicopter-in-my-Neighborhood Calls

Report: Pakistani President Pleads With Electorate to Stop Laughing in Disbelief; Press Labels Bin Laden Compound “Costellobad.”

CIA Headquarters to Annex the Rest of Virginia

Mossad to Sue U.S. Navy for Copyright Infringement

OMB Forecasts Euphemism Shortage in American Foreign Policy

Bush Administration Takes Credit for Winning Second World War

UK Tabloids Decry Pakistan Operation as Plot to Diminish Royal Wedding

CNN: LeBron James Said to be Relieved Osama bin Laden Dead

Germomino Watch: Hillary Clinton Rebuked By American Medical Asssociation For Covering Her “Allergic Cough” With Hand Instead of Arm

GOP Mulls Tax Credit for Corporate Helicopters

Sarah Palin Tweets She Can See “Packistand” From Her House

Dick Cheney Claims Saddam Hussein Behind Obama’s Poll Numbers

FOX News: Democrats Plan to Fund 2012 Campaign Through Sale of Bin Laden Death Photos on Muslim e-Bay

John Yoo Criticizes Bin Laden Execution as “Too Painless”

Aftermath: TSA Launches Involuntary Vivisection Program at Nation’s Airports

Al Qaida Denounces Murder of Its Leader, Vows "War on Terror"

NY Times Reporter John Burns Promises to Get a Haircut and Shut Up Already

Guantánamo Renamed Nuremberg

Portrait of a Lady 1

Yesterday I was waiting for an elevator in the lobby of a retirement home. Beside me, leaning on a walker, stood a little old lady of my acquaintance.

Bonjour, Hélène.

She looked over at me. The penny dropped.

Ah bonjour, monsieur!

We waited together, patiently. I looked at her walker. The last time I saw her she got around with a cane.

Pourquoi?

I motioned to the walker.

She sighed and answered in a French-Canadian accent as thick as goalie’s pad.

Je suis fatiguée. Ben ben fatiguée…

We looked up at the elevator display. It seemed to be stuck on the third floor.

I felt a nudge at my elbow. Hélène held out a newspaper clipping, protected in transparent plastic. She urged it on me.

Regarde-moi ça!

I took it from her. It was from Ottawa’s French-language daily. Yesterday’s edition.

A picture of Hélène, wearing a deranged, gleeful smile. On her head a conical, comical party hat.

The headline read: La Doyenne d’Ottawa!

The caption stated that Hélène Chatelain, the city’s oldest resident, is seen here celebrating her 108th birthday.

We got on the elevator. I placed the clipping face up on the tray of her walker. The door closed.

We looked at each other.

Cent huit?

Her smile was positively demonic.

Zahn witt!... Ben ouais…

I recognized the smile from the newpaper. I looked down at the clipping.

She misunderstood. She thought I was looking at the walker. Reproachfully.

The doors opened at her floor.

Vous savez, monsieur, she apologized. On a beaucoup beaucoup dansé.

The New Steal

Let me get this straight.

You extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. You deepen those cuts over time. You eliminate the capital gains tax. You eliminate the estate tax. 1% of the populace possessing 40% of the national wealth strikes you as fine. Though 50% or 60% would strike you as a more equitable share of the pie for yourselves.

You force the elderly into the private sector to look for health care, the operative words being “look for” not “get.”

You eliminate Medicare and Medicaid.

You defund the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. You slash aid to students, the disabled, education, the poor, the states, international programs, global health initiatives.

You increase spending on the military.

You eviscerate any reform aimed at regulating Wall Street and preventing corporate tax avoidance, offshore banking by bail-out recipients and excessive CEO compensation. At the same time you take away the rights of collective bargaining from public sector unions.

If you don’t get all of this, you shut down the government.

And people vote for you.

Is that about right?

The Eyes Have It

Paris once had dozens of repertory cinemas. In those folksy medieval days long before netflix and bluray, the owners of those cinemas more or less dictated what people would be talking about in the cafés afterward. The movies could be good, bad, awful, dated, cheesy – but that didn’t matter because the whole point of the evening was to escape from your unheated, closet-sized chambre de bonne apartment for as long as possible.

So you’d have a month where Billy Wilder was the big thing, then Preston Sturges, then maybe Carol Reed or Kurosawa. Sometimes the programming centered on actors, many of them almost entirely forgotten. But you didn’t care… everybody went to old movies all the time.

During one drizzly February in the mid-eighties, my local was running a Robert Taylor festival. I plopped down my five francs and found a seat in the crowded hall. The feature was Ivanhoe, starring Taylor, Joan Fontaine and another Taylor – Elizabeth.

Refresher: Ivanhoe tells the story of a knight home from the Crusades who allies himself with Robin Hood to restore Richard the Lion-Hearted to the throne of England. Along the way, the dashing Ivanhoe has to contend with a Saxon lady, Rowena, played by Joan Fontaine, and with a Jewish girl, Rebecca, played by Elizabeth Taylor.

Okay, so jousts and tournaments and treacheries took up most of the running time, all shot in Technicolor camp and greeted by the audience with occasional snickers. Then came the climactic scene. Ivanhoe has to make his choice. Both women stand before him, Rowena and Rebecca. He chooses Rowena, the Saxon.

Close-up on Rebecca’s face.

The movie was made in 1952. Elizabeth Taylor was twenty years old.

You get the picture.

From the back of the room, a gruff voice, the voice of a homeless man, the words slurred, “Putain de merde!! Il est aveugle, cet enculé?!!”

Which may be delicately translated as: “Holy shit! The fucker’s blind!!”

The explosion of laughter turns to raucous catcalls and whistles as Ivanhoe and Rowena look at each other lovingly. The crowd loses it, joyfully, and the shouts and jeers make the concluding moments of the movie inaudible.

No one cared. Suspension of disbelief had just crashed and burned.

Utterly and completely.

Il est aveugle, cet enculé?!!

Won't you come home, George Bailey?

The world has changed.

Robbers used to take the money and run. Now they take the money and run the bank.

Churches used to be picturesque outposts of institutional anti-Semitism. Now they’re franchises of the Bangkok red light district.

Schools were joyful factories of drudgery, filled with obstreperous kids and staffed by tough-love teachers. Now they’re a drag on the economy, spreading nonsense about evolution and suckling away at the taxpayer teat.

The business section used to be the most boring part of a newspaper.

Corporations paid taxes.

Spam was something you ate.

White supremacists knew their place.

The United States got into a war only once every decade.

Ke$ha had not yet been born.

Double chocolate-chip mud-pie fudge-infused pancakes did not come with melted cheese and bacon.

Individual mortality inspired literature and philosophy, not lawsuits and twenty-mile jogs in a blizzard.

Self-storage facilities were used exclusively by eccentric collectors who had amassed too much stuff.

Automobiles were a means of transport, not a residence.

Tutankhamen and Omar Sharif represented Egypt.

The Gilded Age was found only in history textbooks.

A special interest meant a hobby, not a lobby.

Soldiers took pictures of themselves raising a flag, not some dead guy’s head.

All other news of the world and the country did not get blacked out when a sports star like LeBron James changed teams or a minor entertainer like Charlie Sheen shot his mouth off.

Israel was sort of cool.

The purpose of a man was to love a woman, not legislate about her womb.

Tyrants, despots and dictators were our bff.

Ignorance was an embarrassment, not a qualification for public office.

Airports were not managed by Benito Orwell.

Vampires were not considered suitable prom dates.

People prayed in private.

Privacy existed.