Home » personal (Page 42)

Category Archives: personal

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Dartmouth College

Posted on by
Dartmouth Hall

Dartmouth Hall

It was a beautiful place to spend four years, even if I had never really been more than a few miles away from home by myself before then. I went from being a valedictorian who had won all the non-sports-related honors at Chanel High School to one of hundreds of similar people from all around the country, including those famous prep schools that have sprouted up over all of New England.

At that time, Dartmouth College was isolated by the fact that the Interstate Highway system had not yet made its way into New Hampshire and Vermont. Today, Hanover, New Hampshire, is less than two hours from Boston via I-89. During the months of January and February, we were at times cut off from all supplies until the snow plows could cut a channel for cars and trucks. All four years, I stayed in Middle Wigwam Hall, which was later renamed to McLane Hall. My dorm stood a mile from the center of campus. To get to class, I had to trudge past the eerie old Hanover cemetery, with its tombs dating back to the Eighteenth Century, often on a sidewalk that had obligingly turned into a sheet of ice.

During those years, I suffered frequently from severe frontal headaches, which were the result of a pituitary tumor (chromophobe adenoma) pressing on my optic nerve. The attacks occurred on 50% of all days, with the “penumbra” of the headache beginning around 11 am and reaching a crescendo around midnight. That’s why I did most of my homework before midnight and 3 am. It was not until after I graduated that I was properly diagnosed: Until then, doctors did not know what to think—especially since MRIs and CT Scans had not yet been invented.

Pain and all, I loved Dartmouth. The quality of the instructors was, for the most part, incredibly high. Particularly in the English department, I had a succession of professors I will never forget: men like Chauncey Loomis, Peter Bien, and Thomas Vance.

At first, I hoped to become an English professor, until the movies turned by head. The Dartmouth Film Society screened great films, including a huge year-round Alfred Hitchcock festival. Plus I made the acquaintance of Arthur L. Mayer, the former “Merchant of Menace” from New York’s Rialto Theater and the author of Merely Colossal (1953). It was while at Dartmouth that I decided to go to graduate school in film history and criticism at UCLA—and that’s how I wound up in La La Land.

Dartmouth College had been founded as a missionary school for Indians in 1769 under the patronage of the Earl of Dartmouth. In 1819, the school made legal history when Daniel Webster argued before the Supreme Court in Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, better known as the Dartmouth College Case. President Franklin “Handsome Frank” Pierce graduated from there and went on to become one of the most mediocre presidents in U.S. history.

I will leave you with the official seal of Dartmouth:

“A Voice Crying in the Desert”

“A Voice Crying in the Desert”

The motto was most appropriate considering the school’s winter isolation.

 

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Cleveland

Posted on by | 2 Comments
My Home Town

My Home Town

Cleveland has not aged well. When I was a grade school student, it was one of the ten largest cities in the United States, famed for its steel, machine-tool building, and automotive support industries. Now it is a fraction of the size, with a large bombed-out crater of a central business district and suburbs stretching across several counties in Northeast Ohio. When I graduated from high school, there was a regular diaspora to … anywhere but Cleveland.

The “Mistake on the Lake.” The “Worst Location in the Nation.” Perhaps the ultimate insult was when Amtrak pondered whether it was worth even stopping at the large underground station in the Terminal Tower, illustrated above. There was a time when the Terminal Tower was the largest building in the country outside of New York City.

Just being from Cleveland makes one feel humble. Wasn’t the movie that Maynard G. Krebs of The Affairs of Dobie Gillis always going to see The Monster That Devoured Cleveland? Well, Cleveland got devoured all right: The monster that devoured it was rampant unemployment.

I can only talk about the Cleveland that was because, after 1962, I spent most of my time elsewhere, either in Hanover, New Hampshire, attending Dartmouth College, or here in Los Angeles, where I seem to have set down roots.

The last time I saw my native city was 1998, when I attended my mother’s funeral. She had died in Kings Beach, California, on the shores of Lake Tahoe; but at her request, my brother and I had the body flown to Cleveland, where it was buried next to my father. After the funeral, my brother and I spent some time driving around our old haunts.

What surprised me more than anything else were the trees! When I lived on East 176th Street in the 1950s, the neighborhood was still relatively new and bare; and the trees were all tiny. By 1998, they were gigantic and imposing. It was actually rather nice. I should probably go back there again, perhaps stopping in on a visit to New York or Boston. Most of the people I grew up with are either elsewhere or under the ground, especially the older generation. So it goes.

Desert Interlude

Posted on by | 1 Comment
Sunset in the Anza-Borrego Desert

Sunset in the Anza-Borrego Desert

Before tax season gets too intense, Martine and I will spend a four-day weekend in Southern California’s Anza-Borrego Desert. Occupying the eastern third of San Diego County and stretching roughly from just south of Mount San Jacinto to the Mexican Border, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is the largest state park in the United States, and also one of the least known. And, for all its desolation, it is a place of surpassing beauty. Here one can actually sees stars at night—by the million.

If one goes at the right time of year, the desert can be a healing place. What is the right time of year? I would say from late October to late May. During the summer, temperatures can rise to 130 degrees Fahrenheit (or 54.5 degrees Celsius). Only emergency workers and German tourists try to brave the blast furnace heat of a desert summer.

As I do not have a notebook computer (nor do I want access to one at this time), I will not be blogging again until Sunday or Monday.

 

Zsofi Sebek Returns to Cleveland

Posted on by | 1 Comment
My Mother Before She Married

My Mother Before She Married

My mother was actually born in Cleveland, Ohio, but was raised by her grandparents, Daniel and Lidia Toth. Her own mother and father were too feckless to be trusted with the care of a child, and the mother eventually became an alcoholic and ended up at the State Mental Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan. Daniel and Lidia decided that it would be best to bring up their little Zsofi in the Old Country, so they went back to their little farmstead in Felcsut, just southwest of Budapest.

It was not until 1937, when Zsofi was nineteen, that the three returned to Cleveland. Hitler was threatening, and Austria had already fallen. So the Toths and Zsofi sailed on the Queen Mary from Cherbourg to Southampton, England, and from thence to New York. Below is the cover of the passenger list for that sailing:

The Title Page of the Passenger List

The Title Page of the Passenger List

And here, below, is my mother’s name on the passenger list:

Not Quite Spelled Right

Not Quite Spelled Right

The Cunard Lines people who signed her in misspelled her name, as if she were German. In Hungarian, the letter “s” by itself is pronounced as if it were “sh” or “sch” if you’re of the German persuasion.

One would think that my Mom was able to hit the ground running, inasmuch as she was born here. Not quite. She didn’t speak a word of English, and neither did my great grandparents Daniel and Lidia. She had to work as a maid and take night school classes in English before she was able to get hired for a better job. Years later, Mom got a professional certification by a humorous white lie on her application. When asked about her college education, she penciled in, “University of Hakapeszik.” That’s Magyar for “School of Hard Knocks.” P.S.: She got the job.

Osagyefo

Posted on by
O Brave New World!

O Brave New World!!

Like many American boys at the time, I was a “serious” stamp collector. The quotes are because I was enthusiastic, but I probably had nothing in my collection worth more than eighty cents. I remember going to a stamp show at one of the downtown Cleveland hotels where the big event was the release of stamps from a newly independent African country. The former Gold Coast was now Ghana.

There were already several independent nations which had shed their colonial mantles by that time, including Egypt and Sudan. But that was “before my time.” I was frantic to find everything I could about the new nation, with its heroic leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who called himself the “Osagyefo” (see below).. In English, that meant “The Redeemer.”

Kwame Knrumah, the Osagyefo

Kwame Knrumah, the Osagyefo

I had been someone weary of all the British colonial stamps with their profile of Queen Elizabeth II, who at that time was certainly the cutest monarch with which I was acquainted, but I was ready for some novelty.

It didn’t take long for me to be disabused of the Osagyefo. Right around then, Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser tried to rally the leaders of independent (and, presumably, soon to be independent) states to join his movement of non-aligned countries. As Nasser himself was leaning more and more toward the Communists (Oh Horrors!), it wasn’t long before I began to see him as a fellow traveler. Sure enough, after roiling the waters of West Africa for a few years with his increasingly authoritarian rule, he ended up in Romania, where he died in 1972.

Ghana was just the beginning of a rush to independence of former British colonies. After disillusionment with Nkrumah I became a bit more leery about wishing them well. But then I was only a twelve-year-old stamp collector. What did I know?

 

A Thai Christmas

Posted on by | 2 Comments
Martine at the Sala Thai in Chinatown

Martine at the Sala Thai in Chinatown

I had forgotten all about this photo. Although I cook four or five days a week, we didn’t have anything in the refrigerator on Christmas Day, so we had to go out to eat. Now on that Holiest of Holidays, most restaurants of the Euro-American variety are shut tight; so I suggested that we go to Chinatown, where we were sure to find some good restaurants that were open. (It kind of reminds me of that last scene in The Christmas Story, when the whole family goes out to have Peking Duck after the Bumpus’s dogs had demolished their dinner.) Martine and I have always been partial to a little Thai restaurant called the Sala Thai at the corner of Alpine and New High Streets. It is one of the rare Chinatown restaurants that sports an “A” health department inspection rating (see above). Once you step inside, though, it feels as if you were on a side street in Bangkok.

Fortunately, it was open. So while Martine has a chicken pad see ew with broccoli, I had some spicy fish filet with veggies. It was not quite what one thinks about for a holiday dinner, but it was good. Afterwards, we strolled through several souvenir shops and Chinese bakeries in the Chungking Plaza area.

That evening, we also had an interesting dinner experience. The only place we could find open was a Denny’s in Santa Monica. There was a long line—about three quarters of an hour—before we were seated. Apparently, both the waitstaff and the kitchen were short-handed, not having anticipated a high demand for their food on Christmas Day.

I was ready for New Year’s Day. I had cooked a big pot of a vegetarian curry for the week. It was Monica Dutt’s recipe for Gobi Alu aur Matar ki Tarkari, or, as it is also known, Curried Cauliflower, Potatoes, and Green Peas. I had bought some delicious (and spicy) tomato chutney and garlic pickle at India Sweets and Spices in Culver City the Saturday before, and added it to make a delicious entrée. The recipe can be found on page 126 of The Art of Indian Cooking (if you can find a copy of this now rare item).

 

Auld Lang Whatever

Posted on by
Time to Change Your Calendar

Time to Change Your Calendar

In the accounting profession, we are apt to view New Years Day with a jaundiced eye. It is the beginning of the 100-day Bataan death march that is tax season. For a while, we will have weekends. Then, at some point in February, we begin to work Saturdays. In March, Sundays are also added. That is in a high-rise building with no weekend air-conditioning, unless we pay for it. To add insult to injury, the two national holidays during this period—Martin Luther King Day and Presidents’ Day—are just two more workdays. (The company makes up the time lost later.)

Every year, our clients tend to be later and later in supplying us the information we need to file the returns, and gradually increasing pressure is applied between February 1 and April 15, until the last week is a nightmare of running around, making last-minute changes, and printing numerous copies of multiple hundred page returns.

Not a pleasant prospect.

So, auld lang whatever. Put up a new calendar, start paring away at your social life (such as it is), be sure to get some exercise, and read some good books.

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Automobile

Posted on by
Me and My Nissan

Me and My Nissan

 

I was very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.

This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the next few months, you will see a number of postings under the rubric “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. This is a reprint from a Blog.Com posting from 2009, but I had to give it up at that time. This time, I will try to complete my alphabet.

For starters, here is Milosz’s take on a thing that has also assumed some importance in my life: the automobile:

Surely the automobile was invented in order to make a mockery of those pessimists who predicted that the number of horses would grow exponentially and that cities would choke to death from the stench of horse excrement. From Kiejdany county, in which there was a single automobile (Count Zabiello’s), I was catapulted into California [Milosz taught at Berkeley], where the automobile is just the same as electricity and bathrooms. I am not nostalgic for the good old days. I lived amidst filth and stench without being aware of it. And I belonged to the so-called upper social strata. The Wilno [today’s Vilnius] of my school years had cobblestone streets and only a couple of neighborhoods had sewers. One can imagine the mountains of garbage and excrement in Wilno during the Romantic era. It would be worthwhile to describe the female readers of La Nouvelle Héloïse [an influential work by Rousseau] not from above, but from below: f\rom the perspective of their chamber pots (where were they emptied?), their underpants (they didn’t wear any), and their gymnastic contortions while washing.

Now I rather doubt that most environmentalists would consider some of these factors when they rue the effect of the automobile on our civilization. No doubt, the internal combustion engine is both a boon and a bane to us, as the mercury in our thermometers creeps up from year to year. Here we are, thinking we have broken the Earth—at least until another Krakatoa-style volcanic explosion or major meteor or asteroid strike shows us the real face of catastrophe.

I, on the other hand, would like to talk about the automobile from another point of view. I came to it rather late in my life. As I have written earlier, I had a pituitary tumor in my youth that has had repercussions on my health extending to the present. Starting in the 1970s, I had to take a blood pressure medication called Catapres that resulted in a narcoleptic response every time I traveled in a car or bus. I had to postpone driving for many years, at least until a more efficacious medication was found.

Then, in 1985, at the age of forty, I finally got my drivers license and purchased a four-cylinder Mitsubishi Montero, which lasted for ten years. Then I bought the 1994 Nissan Pathfinder (see photo above) which I am still driving today. I am like Yeats’s Irish airman for whom “a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds.”

No one loves heavy traffic. Southern California is, unfortunately, a cacopolis with regards to driving. Ah, but then there is nothing like setting off at 4:00 am, before the first hint of sunrise, and dashing through the empty freeways of Los Angeles to the deserts of the Southwest or along the coast to the beauties of the Central Coast and points north. When I can choose my time, driving is sheer pleasure.

That’s why I think that the next step for mankind is not the bus and the bicycle, but another type of vehicle powered by a different source of energy. When it does not become a nightmarish experience, as it so often does, driving could be one of the great pleasures of life.

“Little Jimmy Drew This”

Posted on by | 4 Comments
I Was Always Into Drawing Castles in the Air

I Was Always Into Drawing Castles in the Air

When my mother died in August 1998, I spent a whole day going through old photographs and other memorabilia relating to Mom, Dad, my brother, and myself. In the end, I think I barely scratched the surface; but I was not able to spend more time at the task. One of the things I rescued from the trash was this drawing of a castle I made at the age of six.

In the upper left-hand corner, Mom wrote in Hungarian, “Little Jimmy drew this 1951 February 1.” At the time, she was pregnant with my brother Dan, who was born on April 5. We were living at 2814 East 120th Street in the Buckeye Road Hungarian neighborhood on Cleveland’s East Side. Already, I had gotten into trouble at school for not speaking English, so by this time my Dad was probably looking into getting a house in the suburbs so that I could become a regular Americano.

What does this drawing say about me? If I were a psychologist, no doubt it would speak volumes. I always had grandiose visions which were fueled by the stories my Mom told me, either of her own invention or from children’s books she took out of the library next to my school (Harvey Rice Elementary) on East 116th Street. According to one website about interpreting children’s drawings:

Children who draw fortresses or castles want to communicate their feelings of power and richness. But they may also be creative kids who love to create imaginary friends with whom they have long conversations or games. These children are full of fantasy and creativity but they generally have problems at school because they get easily immersed in their imaginary worlds.

That sounds about right to me, actually. Thanks to my Mom, mine was a richly imaginative world. Perhaps that’s why I write these blogs. I want to share my imagination with the world, or at least a small corner of it.

A Merry Christmas to All

Posted on by
Wreath at Grier Musser Museum

Wreath at Grier Musser Museum

A Merry Christmas to all who happen on this website today! Although Southern California is bright and sunny today, with the temperature expected to reach record highs, I know that much of the country is mired in stormy weather. Regardless of the weather, may today be an oasis of peace and happiness for you and everyone you know.