Martine and I are very different persons, yet we seem to get along well in our relationship. For instance, after I broke my collarbone in the beginning of June, she took good care of me, helping me to dress and clean myself and driving me around even though she hates driving in L.A. traffic. One doesn’t forget things like that.
Although I read incessantly, around 150-175 books a year, Martine only reads one book: The Bible. And within the Bible, she reads (and re-reads) mainly one book, the Psalms.
For years, Martine preferred the Good News Bible, a clear and simple translation first published by the American Bible Society in 1976. After a few years, she literally read my hardbound copy to pieces. When I suggested she read the King James Version, she demurred. There was something about all those “thees” and “thous” that she couldn’t tolerate.
Recently she tried the Revised Standard Version, but it still had too many “thees” and “thous.” Recently, during one of her walks, she found a paperback New International Version that she liked and is now reading.
I’ve never read the Psalms. One psalm I read in public was Psalm 23, at my mother’s funeral. Her cousin Baksa Sandor, the Hungarian Reformed bishop of London, Ontario, was to give the graveside service, but he was a no-show. So, with tears in my eyes, I read Psalm 23 from my mother’s bible to the people attending the funeral.
One of these days, I will read the Book of Psalms in their entirety. It seems to help Martine quite a bit; maybe it will help me, too.
Today, for the first time in six weeks, I took the MetroRail E Train downtown to attend the Mindful Meditation session at the Central Library. The reason for my absence? In early June, I broke my collarbone; and it is only now that I feel well enough to attend.
And the weather for my first day back was a lulu. It was 90º Fahrenheit (32º Celsius), with the humidity making it feel even more sweltering. As I have no pituitary gland to control my adrenaline, I took extra hydrocortisone at breakfast and lunch and drank plenty of liquids, including a bill bowl of Vietnamese phó with filet mignon and noodles for lunch.
Usually, I check out three or four books from the library. Today, I didn’t check any books out, not wanting to carry a book bag with my recuperating right arm Instead, I looked at several travel guides to Cambodia and Laos before the guided meditation session began. (I’ve been reading a lot about neighboring Thailand lately.)
After I ate at the 505 Spring Street food court (in air-conditioned comfort), I trudged the three blocks south to the 7th Street Metro Center station at 7th and Flower Streets. As the elevator was out of service (again), I laboriously took the stairs down to the tracks and waited two minutes for the train to Santa Monica.
All in all, it was a positive experience. This first time back, I wanted to err on the side of caution; and I’m glad I did.
In my senior year in college, the frontal headaches from my pituitary tumor (which I didn’t know I had) typically lasted twelve hours, usually noon to midnight. It was at midnight that I would begin to do my homework assignments. Naturally, as an upperclassman I stayed away from classes that began before noon.
The headaches didn’t come every day, usually every other day on the average.So, half the time, I took my classes with the tumor pressing on my optic nerve. I had complained about it at the student infirmary several times, but my real pain was pooh-poohed by the doctors and nurses—which left me thinking I was a terrible wuss.
Around that time, I hung around at Fairbanks Hall, headquarters of Dartmouth Films, which acted as an audio-visual service for the college, and which ran the Dartmouth Film Society, of which I was second in command. In the evenings, I would check out what 16mm film prints had been ordered for various classes and, if the titles interested me, I would screen them for myself.
This is how I watched the “Why We Fight” series of U.S. World War 2 propaganda films, which were produced under the supervision of the man who directed It’s a Wonderful Life, namely Frank Capra, who served as a Major in the Army Signal Corps. Capra served directly under General George C. Marshall in directing or supervising these films. They consisted of:
“Prelude to War” (1942)
“The Nazis Strike” (1943)
“Divide and Conquer” (1943)
“The Battle of Britain” (1943)
“The Battle of Russia” (1943)
“The Battle of China” (1944)
“War Comes to America” (1944)
Not part of the series, but viewed by me around the same time, was “Know Your Enemy: Japan” (1945), which was embarrassingly racist.
Other films I remember from this period are two French musicals directed by René Clair (Sous les toits de Paris and Le million, made in 1930 and 1931 respectively). Then there was a French documentary directed by Nelly Kaplan entitled Abel Gance, hier et demain (1963). Once I got to Los Angeles, I made every effort to see as many of Gance’s films as I could. His silent biopic Napoléon (1927) is one of the greatest films ever made.
When I wasn’t screening films for myself, I would chat with my friend Peter Jensen, who was using Dartmouth Films’ Movieola to edit a film he had made based on a Chekhov short story.
Since I am still slowly recuperating from a broken collarbone, I have taken advantage of the 2026 World Cup to watch a lot of soccer football or futbol. Generally, I am not a big fan of spectator sports, but futbol is in my veins, so to speak. My father played the game in Czechoslovakia and Cleveland, where there were nationality club leagues active in the 1930s.
When I was a lad, my father took me to Moreland Park in Cleveland, at a time when there were still a lot of nationality clubs active. I was impressed that a lot of the older spectators knew the terrible Paris twins, Elek and Emil. Among the scuttlebutt was a story that my father kicked so hard that he broke the other players’ legs more than once.
Less believable was the story that Elek thumped a referee in the back as he was inhaling before whistling a foul, causing the ref to swallow his whistle, which had to be pulled out by the lanyard.
Mind you, I don’t know that much about futbol and am confused by concepts such as off sides and the rules regarding corner kicks and free kicks and such like. What I enjoy is the fact that the game is action-packed, with a minimum of time-outs and no lengthy breaks for advertising, other than halftime.
The sport today is more forgiving than in the thirties, where there weren’t so many substitutions, and injuries meant your side had to play with less than a full complement of players. And there definitely weren’t any hydration breaks.
Who am I rooting for? Of course, it would be nice to see the U.S. team do well. Unlike my father, however, I am for any team that plays with its heart in the game. And I secretly have a preference for Argentina, Brazil, and the other teams from the Americas. Whom would I like to see lose? Probably Germany. I still haven’t altogether forgiven them for two world wars.
It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday, June 3, when I got up from my seat right next to one of the rebar planters in the garden of the Getty Center. Sliding on the gravel, I slid into one of the planters, striking it with my head, collarbone, and the back of my right hand. Three bystanders came and helped me up.
The pain wasn’t yet at its peak: That came three hours later. Somehow, I managed to make my way to the MTA bus stop on Sepulveda Blvd. and take the 761 bus to the end of the line by the Metro Rail Sepulveda station. From there, I had to walk four blocks to where my car was parked near the intersection of Exposition and Pico. Driving several miles with an ever more painful right shoulder was not easy. Somehow I managed the feat by planning a route with all right turns (using my left arm to turn right).
I could barely make it up the stairs to my apartment. When I walked in, I notified Martine that I had rebroken my right shoulder. (I was wrong as it turned out.)
Plunking down on the couch, I found the pain increasing exponentially, to the extent that I couldn°t get up. After dealing with my stubborn refusals for six hours, Martine dialed 911. Within minutes, my apartment was filled with burly first responders, who lifted me up and waltzed me down the stairs top a waiting ambulance. Fortunately, UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital had space for me in their emergency ward.
I will give you more info tomorrow. I will jump the gun, however, by informing you that the diagnosis of my condition was “closed nondisplaced fracture of acromial end of right clavicle.”
I’m trying to recover some memories of the 12-year-old Jim Paris when he was in the 7th and 8th grade at Saint Henry School around 1957-58.
I was living at 3989 East 176th Street in the Lee-Harvard area of Cleveland, just west of Warrensville. Over the previous five years or so, I managed to pick up the English language and get over the whole class clown stage of my life when I was poised halfway between Hungarian and English. Television definitely helped, even though the language spoken at home was still Magyar.
Beginning in the 5th grade, I was one of the smartest kids in class—although Marianne Boguski always had the top grades. One day, I sneaked a peak at the teacher’s desk and found that my IQ was the highest in the class: 132. By the way, Marianne went to the University of Dayton where she majored in chemistry. Here she is, sitting in the first row left of the university’s chemistry club:
Marianne Boguski in 1966 at the University of Dayton
In this picture, she is not nearly as geeky as she looked when we were both at St. Henry. In fact, she looks a whole lot more presentable than I did at that age.
The word was out that there was a new Catholic high school in nearby Bedford. When I was in 8th grade, Chanel High School only had a class of freshman 9th graders. The only other Catholic high schools in the area were St. Stanislas, St. Edward, and St. Ignatius—all of which were geographically undesirable to a resident of Lee.Harvard.
Fortunately my grades and test scores were good enough to get me a full year scholarship, so my parents did not have to pay tuition.
In 7th grade, my teacher at St. Henry was Sister Beatrice OP, who was in her eighties but will still sharp as a tack. The next year, I had Sister Rose Thomas OP. The OP indicates that the sisters were members of the Dominican order. The OP stood for Order of Preachers.
Many of my friends who has Catholic educations had issues being taught by clergy or sisters. I did not. My teachers at both St. Henry and Chanel were dedicated, smart, and tough. No regrets there.
It’s an odd-looking stone whistle. I have no memory of where I got it. Did I buy it? Did I find it? Did Martine find it and leave it on the desk in my library? (I never asked her.)
The oddest thing about it: The only way it sounds is if you inhale (not exhale) through what looks like the lips of the whistle creature—at the front of the above photo. The air comes from two locations, the largish hole at the rear and the smaller countersunk hole on top. The two little holes that look like eyes don’t go to deep enough to affect the sound.
I have adopted the stone whistle as a sort of good-luck charm, keeping it at my side when I’m reading. Several times a day, especially when I’m about to get up from my chair, I pick up the stone whistle and inhale. What goes through Martine’s head when I do this is anybody’s guess.
It’s just one of those meaningless little rituals that are part of my life, and of everyone’s life.
Wilford Brimley (1934-2020) or Jim Paris (b. 1945)
No, that is not a picture of me—but it might as well be. Apparently, I am a dead ringer for a deceased character actor named Wilford Brimley, who appeared in such films as True Grit (1969), The China Syndrome (1979), Cocoon (1985), The Firm (1993), and Timber the Treasure Dog (2016). So if you should meet someone who looks like the above photo, please don’t come up to me and ask if I’m Wilford Brimley. I am James Alex Paris, an entirely different person, one with no acting experience whatsoever, even though strangers seem to think I am an actor.
I did act in one short student film about half a century ago, but that was my filmography in toto.
The one thing which throws people off is that I have the same facial expression as Brimley had. He didn’t smile much, and neither do I. (Among other things, my teeth are decidedly not photogenic.) As is well known among my friends, I eschew all contact with strangers. When a stranger addresses me in public, my standard response is in Hungarian until they go away with a confused look on their face.
Among other things, Wilford Brimley was decidedly NOT Hungarian. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and was born of a bona fide Western American than I am, having been born in Cleveland, Ohio.
Brimley was a pretty good actor, but I do not take credit for any of his roles. Just as I hope his estate doesn’t take credit for any of my blog posts.
This is a re-post from Multiply.Com from January 18, 2011. I thought I would post it again because, if my father Elek would still be alive on April 17, he would be 115 years old. Alas, he died in 1985.
It’s been a while since I revisited my past. This time, I’m going back into the period before my birth. The above picture was taken at some point in the 1930s and shows the Paris twins, Elek (Alex) and Emil, and their sister Margit.
Can I tell which one of the men is my father? Probably, it is the one on the right, because my father Elek was always better tanned and more athletic but not so well dressed as Emil. Even later in life, I sometimes had to wait for them to start talking before I recognized them, because they had very distinctive voices.
Elek and Emil could never live far apart from each other. When Emil bought a condominium in Hollywood, Florida, my Dad followed—in the same Carriage Hills condo complex. My father died in October 1985; and Emil died a few months later, of pretty much the same combination of diabetes and heart failure. At my Dad’s funeral, Emil was visibly shaken, as if his world had been taken away from him.
All their lives, the two twins competed through their children. Dad had the two sons, my brother Dan and myself; Uncle Emil had a son and daughter, Emil Jr. and Peggy. At times, the competition got bitter, especially when my cousins faltered in school and in their personal lives. Dan and I, however, always liked our cousins and regretted any bad blood between the brothers. They were just that way.
Margit was a different case: She never married. I don’t even know whether she dated very much or even wanted to marry eventually. Some years after this photo was taken, she opened May’s Bridal Shop in Garfield Heights, Ohio, and lived on the premises spending her time sewing bridal gowns. My job when visiting there was to pick up fallen pins with a magnet. I would also look with admiration at all her old calendars with Currier & Ives illustrations.
I don’t remember when Margit (whom we called Nana) closed the shop and retired to Florence, South Carolina, but I think it was in the early 1970s. She didn’t last very long because, shortly after I returned from Hungary in 1977, I got a call that Margit had died suddenly. The timing was unfortunate, as my parents were still in Hungary visiting. So I notified my brother and the two of us attended the funeral—after sending a telegram to Dad in Hungary. He was very broken-up that he couldn’t make the funeral in time, but was grateful that Dan and I went.
Whatever the competitiveness between the frequently warring twins, I always felt that my Uncle, my cousins, and my Aunt loved us for what we were. Although Margit was closer to her brother Emil than to her brother Elek, that never impacted on the next generation. I did feel, however, that my Dad had said certain unkind things about my cousins that I wish he hadn’t. Cousin Emil Jr was always good-hearted and frequently protected me from neighborhood bullies when I was a little shrimp of a kid; and Cousin Peggy was, I always thought, incredibly cute.
A life is always strange when one looks at it all of a piece. I cannot help but feel that I have grossly oversimplified the complex web of interrelationships that existed among us. The important thing is that I accepted the few bad things because they were more than made up for with kindness and love. Elek, Emil, and Margit now exist inside of me; and all the conflicts have been resolved.
In the Age of Trump This Is Becoming a Real Problem
With most of my friends, I tend to avoid any discussion about the current political situation. That becomes a sticky issue when so many people are glued to news programs. In fact, the only person with whom I am comfortable discussing the news is my brother Dan. And that is because we generally agree on most of the issues.
I am a strange kind of hybrid who is at one and the same time a liberal and a fiscal (but not a cultural) conservative. I do not belong to any political party and have even gone so far as to vote for some Republicans for local (but not national) office. As a result, any political discussion with a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat or Republican is likely to end in discord. For example, my dislike of the tent-dwelling homeless in Los Angeles has made me notorious among the woke Liberals of my acquaintance.
When I was a child in Cleveland, I was raised in a family where there were broad political disagreements. My father was a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s campaigns for the presidency. In 1980, my mother voted for John B. Anderson for the top office. Only my brother and I tended to agree. (In 1968, however, I was so disgruntled about choosing between Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey that I did a write-in for Otto Schlumpf for president.)
So do I watch the news at all? Not really, unless we are talking about the weather. There are so many television channels with news all or most of the time that they really don’t have much to say, so they tend to repeat their “breaking” news ad infinitum ad nauseam. Martine watches the news a lot, but I think her problems with insomnia are attributable to her news habit.
Tarnmoor 
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