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The Archbishop’s Garden

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The Archbishop’s Enclosed Garden in Mérida, Yucatán

Do you ever really use your front lawn? There you are, in full view of wandering passersby and the occasional hobo. You feel self-conscious and even slightly stupid—unless you are doing yard work.

Take a look at the above courtyard, which is surrounded on all sides by the Mérida, Yucatán archbishop’s palace. It was a hot, humid day; yet the garden was cool with comfortable benches in the shade. I took advantage of the benches before seeing the rest of the art museum that the archbishop’s palace has been turned into.

I love the Mexican houses that have no setback from the street, instead enclosing a private courtyard that is in actuality the heart of the house. Of course, there are laws that prevent such a thing in the United States. Hence all those front lawns that are thirsty for water and fertilizer and are never used for the pleasure of the family within.

Granted, the archbishop had the means to have something special built for him; but I have seen scores of small gardens in more modest Mexican houses, including many of the small hotels at which I have stayed. In many cases, they are used as bars or simple restaurants.

Sometimes I think that the water shortages in California and other desert states could be alleviated simply by getting rid of those front lawns that attempt to imitate an English country house. California is not England, nor is it the Eastern U.S.

Betty Boop Meets Cab Calloway

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Cab Calloway and Cartoon Representations

As I hinted in yesterday’s post, I am not done with posting about the cartoons of Max and Dave Fleischer. Among my favorites were the Betty Boop cartoons with music (and dancing) supplied by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. In 1832 and 1933, Calloway worked with the Fleischers and three or four Betty Boop cartoons.

These included:

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

Snow-White (1933)

The Old Man of the Mountains (1933)

The reason I say there were three or four cartoons partnering Cab Calloway with Betty Boop was that there is a separately titled segment of Snow-White entitled St James Infirmary Blues.

None of these films could be regarded as suitable for children. (That also goes for Poor Cinderella, about which I posted yesterday, and in which Betty is in the street wearing nothing but bra and panties). In both Snow-White and St James Infirmary Blues, we see Betty in a glass coffin whose pallbearers are the seven dwarves, followed by the evil queen and Ko-Ko and Bimbo.

Even worse is The Old Man of the Mountain, whose villain is a bearded dirty old ogre who chases Betty Boop down the mountain with lascivious intent, at one point ripping off her dress.

On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) website, there is an interesting article entitled “When Cab Calloway Was Betty Boop’s Co-Star.”

Poor Cinderella

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Today we can see all the Walt Disney cartoons (except maybe Song of the South) most any time we want. The same goes for the Warner Brothers classics with Bugs Bunny, Daffy, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, and Wile E, Coyote. Even Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker) and Hanna-Barbera are all around us.

But the cartoons I most love to see were produced by the Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave. They were best known for their Popeye cartoons , but their work included an animated Superman, Betty Boop, Ko-Ko the Clown, and a whole host of other creations. Unlike Disney cartoons, those by the Fleischers included mostly human characters.

One of my favorites is a Betty Boop cartoon called Poor Cinderella (1934)—her only appearance in color. The cartoon was based on a hypnotic song of the same name that recurs through the cartoon. At one point, an animated Rudy Vallee is shown singing it.

Here, for your enjoyment, is the cartoon itself:

In the coming weeks, I will provide links to other Fleischer Brothers products. I have always loved them and delight in sharing them with you.

The English Teacher

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Daily writing prompt
Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
View all responses

It was September 1958. I had just entered high school and been introduced to my English teacher, the Rev. Gerard R. Hageman, S.M.—a Catholic priest of the Marist order. He was incredibly strict. We had frequent quizzes in which one could only get two possible grades, 100 or 0 (Z-e-r-o). And the numerical grades were averaged out.

Father Hageman had created a one-page mimeographed summary on yellow paper of jis “Random Rules of Grammar and Style.” I will present you with two excerpts. The first are the rules which call for commas. This was abbreviated to D SAPS DT C CINQ MOC. The letters stood for: Direct address, salutation, appositives (I have since forgotten what those were), parentheticals, series, dates (city and state), titles after names, compound sentences, contrasting ideas, introductory adverbial clauses, non-restrictives, direct quotations, mild interjections, omitted words, and common sense.

Here are three random rules from the yellow sheet:

  • Pronouns are weak. If used, they must have clear and definite antecedents.
  • Introductory participles, infinitives, and gerund phrases must refer to the subject; and the subject must come immediately after.
  • Nouns and pronouns used as modifiers of gerunds are in the possessive case.

Imagine the impact on a thirteen-year-old boy and the threat of a zero score for any single violation of the rules.

Father Hageman was relentless. But, you know what? I still follow his rules religiously. The young student who wanted to be a nuclear physicist wound up preferring writing and, maybe, becoming an English teacher.

Unfortunately, Father Hageman returned to the Marist college in Atlanta, where he died suddenly on January 1, 1961. I wish I had a picture to show you, but that was years before the Internet.

In a 2018 interview with the then Catholic bishop of Atlanta, Joel M. Konzen, S.M., the interviewee noted:

All of us who went to Josephinum had a wonderful education there, but particularly wonderful in English. Writing and languages were highly emphasized at the Josephinum in that day. We had a wonderful teacher, Msgr. (Leonard J.) Fick. I think that anyone who went there would tell you the same thing. …

It was … kind of what they say about Father (Gerard) Hageman at Marist, that if you ever had either of those, you knew you were good to go in terms of writing and so I liked to write.

Perched on Nothing’s Branch

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Hungarian Poet Attila József (1905-1937)

The last few days I have been suffering from a summer cold. I know it’s not summer yet, but the temperature has been hot. During that time, I was reading a manically humorous detective novel written in the 1940s and finally quit as I was two-thirds of the way through. What I picked up next was a collection of 40 disturbing poems by a Hungarian poet who committed suicide by throwing himself under a train in 1937.

It’s not that I’m addicted to gloominess, but I am after all a Hungarian myself. So it must be something in the blood. Here is the title poem from the collection I read:

Perched on Nothing’s Branch

I finally arrive
at the sand’s wet edge,
look around, shrug

that I am where I am,
looking at the end. A
silver ax strokes
summer leaves. Playfully.

I am perched solidly
on nothing’s branch.
The small body shivers
to receive heaven.

Iron-colored.

Cool shiny dynamos revolve
in the quiet revolution of stars.
Words barely spark from clenched teeth.

The past tumbles
stonelike through space,
blue time floating off
without a sound. A blade
flashes, my hair—

My mustache is a full
caterpillar droopong
down my numb mouth,
my heart aches, words are cold.
There’s no one out here
to hear—

London

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A London Slum

I was rereading some of William Blake’s Songs of Experience this evening and shuddered at the poem entitled, simply, “London”:

London

I wander thro’ each charter’d street
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier°s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the newborn Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

How strong is that phrase “mind-forg’d manacles”! How descriptive of a particularly American form of suffering in the Age of Trump!

Better Read Than Dead

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I know it has been a week and a half since the tents for the 2025 Los Angeles Times Book Festival were folded up and stored until next year. But a few thoughts have been running through my mind that I wanted to air.

Admittedly, the Festival was a boon for people who love to read. I did not, however, feel that the tens of thousands of people who thronged the fair were necessarily book lovers. Probably there were more people there who wanted their offspring to become book lovers just so long as they themselves did not have to crack open a volume.

What made me feel this way? Perhaps I saw too many people thronging the booths that offered trashy genres such as romance, “cozy” mysteries, and dungeons & dragons type fantasy. The big local bookstores were well represented, but they were so crowded that I couldn’t get close to them. The only exception was Small World Books on the Venice Boardwalk: They were not super-crowded because they dealt mainly in poetry.

As in previous sears, I found the Small World Books Poetry Stage the most comfortable venue in the festival. There was a different poetry reading every twenty minutes, and many of them were top notch. Even some of the poets who weren’t that good were wonderful performers of their poems.

I attended both days of the festival. On the first day, I was appalled by the long lines and high prices at the high-toned food trucks scattered throughout the grounds, so I stepped outside the festival and patronized the Mexican and Central American food vendors by the campus gate. On the next day, I discovered the restaurants outside the grounds of the festival at the University Village, where Martine and I got a tasty lunch without having to wait an hour and were able to sit comfortably at one of the outside picnic tables.

Magyar for a Day

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Dancers from the Karpátok Hungarian Folk Ensemble

Around the beginning of May, I look forward to the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church’s Annual Hungarian Family Festival. It’s also one of Martine’s favorite events because of the food, the entertainment, and the friendliness of the people in attendance.

I don’t get too many opportunities to participate in any event as a Hungarian. I still remember much of the language, and the Hungarian parishioners seem to understand my somewhat ungrammatical Magyar. The pronunciation is okay, but my vocabulary has gaps you could drive a regiment of Hussars through.

Martine loves stuffed cabbage, and the church does a fair job cooking it up. But most noteworthy are the baked goods (Sütemények), particularly the Hungarian cheesecake (crémes) that tends to sell out in microseconds after being brought out out from the church kitchen.

Also wonderful is the folk dancing by the Karpátok Hungarian Folk Ensemble, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary in Los Angeles. When the Covid-19 lockdown hit, the last public event we attended was a Karpátok concert. We are happy that they are as active as ever and are considering a program of events featuring their music and dancing.