Okay, back in Florida. Joined a gym. I don't know why--the building I live in has its own gym, and of course we have the pool, and the ocean as well, and that's swell.

But maybe I want to get away, meet some people, and the whirlpool at this gym is very hot--hotter than I am used to, and finally I feel satisfied by the heat in the whirlpool and the suana. No steamroom here though. My fellow gymnaughts seem very blue collar which is to be expected here, as the price is very very low. But the gym is spotless, the pool is big enough and there are more machines here than in the Ford Motor plant in Dearbourne.

Maria and I have to go through all the mail that was kept by the post office here. This is the kind of project that proves my need to procrastinate, so I guess it will be a few days (weeks?) before I complete the project.

Le Divorce : American girl lives in Paris with French artist husband who walks out her. Sister comes to help her through her misery, but instead becomes the mistress of an important French businessman-politician. B-

Soulmate Aug 2003


On a walk through Central Park, on a rainy afternoon, I had asked my closest friend whether he felt that the woman that he had been married to for the past twenty years was his soul mate.

At six-thirty the next morning I received a phone call. I picked up the receiver and listened to the plaintive voice of his wife. She was sixty and had gone off the hormones that had kept her flush free for the past seven years. …


……………..

I looked at her, soundly sleeping, hair plastered against her sweated forehead; even in sleep drops of perspiration could be seen on her cheek. She was sixty and had gone off the hormones that had kept her flush free for the past seven years.



He was his own weather system, now in storm cycle, and no, it wasn’t that romantic distant thunder that brings lovers together, but rather it was the startling, fearsome crack right overhead, the flash of it simultaneous with its sound, evidence of its dangerous closeness, and blinding, a cleansing smell of ozone wafting through the brilliantly lit trees, eidetic, drenched and gleaming, then disappearing back to black in the threatening darkness.



He beat her mercilessly, with the alcohol fueled fury of a man too short and too fat, and too slow for his lean and hungry ambition. She loved him anyway, craved him for it, as most women love the men who beat them.


“Uncertainty,” Robert Musil said, “is sometimes nothing more than mistrust of the usual certainties.”

Here's what I want to say about him:

He beat her mercilessly, with the alcohol fueled fury of a man too short for his ambition. She loved him anyway, craved him for it, as most women love the men who beat them.

From Hal:

Spencer Tracy said it best; when asked what advice he could give to aspiring movie actors to make them good actors, he answered " show up on time....hit your mark...look into the lens....and tell the truth ! " I think something like this, could restore our ability to communicate......Hal


From Basil:

I am going to be sixty five in January. I've reached the stage in life
where I know it is all downhill from here. I look in the mirror and
don't like what I see. I try to do my exercising and I don't like how I
feel. I used to run four miles just to warm up. I now can barely jog
four miles. My doctor says I am in great shape for my age but that does
not help how I feel. I am getting old and I don't want to. I don't want
to deteriorate to the point where I can't stand looking at myself. I
think it is mostly a question of vanity but the thought of my muscles
becoming any more flaccid and my skin becoming more wrinkled is not
something I am looking forward to no matter how healthy I am. If I don't
die it will happen. I don't want to die but I think I would prefer dying
to growing much older. I am afraid of dying but I would be even more
afraid of living forever. Intellectually I know once I'm dead it's all
over so death is definitely more preferable.

On the other hand I don't worry about dioxins or watch what I eat and I
do not exercise obsessively. I smoke my cigars and eat fats and
sweets.......... What a relief Basil

From Gross:

I just finished Barzun's History of the West. He wrote this sweeping vision of civilization when he was 91; and he had stopped jogging years before. When we are no longer sufficiently fueled by our muscles, we need to look for a new energy source. gross

Basil's moaning results from the assumption that life is limited by physical capacity. The defect in that presumption is apparent from it's making. There is much evidence that our consciousness is capable of expanding indefinitely. Thinking carries us beyond our biology. Witness Stephen Hawking. The mind's eye clears with age. Look beyond the length of a jog, (which is also dependent upon time). Exercise ideas. Pessimism is poison. gross

Every man has seen women's bared breasts. Most have seen them hundreds, if not thousands of times under varied circumstances.

Why then, do we still hope for a glimpse of still another bare breast or nipple? Tonight Cameron Diaz was a guest on Jay Leno's night show. She wore a particularly revealing dress, one that looked as though her breast might fall out, or perhaps a nipple might appear. What kept me waiting, watching, hoping for a look?

Yesterday, the day of the big blackout, I went to the Whitney with MG, hoping to visit Tim Baum at the same time as his gallery is only a block way. Well, we never heard from Tim, so Mike and I did the Whitney, after passing through a blockade of very aggressive fund raisers. I t was lucky that Mike and I had the benfit of fighting for Coach Quinn on our old HS football team, Mike as a first string tackle and me as a benchwarming guard. Anyway, we cross blocked the little old lady and soon found our selves on the admission line.

Following our Whitney experience we went for a walk through Central Park, stopping for sandwiches at the Boathouse. We talked about soulmates and decided, basically, that they were very hard to come by. Comprimise seems to be the order of the day, especially at this age.

I was to have dinner in Great Neck with a neighbor from the old days on Willow Lane, and so I left Michael and took the "C" train from 79th and CPW to Penn Station where I made the last train that made it all the way home before the blackout. I arrived at Great Neck at 3:59 PM and went to 5 Continents to pick up some cheese for cocktails with Vesta and Maria. At 4:10 PM as the cheeseman began to weigh the cheese on an electronic scale he lights went out. The Cheeseman paniced and ran out of his store, leaving me alone with the cheese. Resisting the natural impluse to steal all the cheese in sight I waited for him to come back in. But now the electronic scale couldn't weigh anything--not even Mr. Cheeseman's thumb. He was reluctant to sell me anything, even though he had already cut my cheese. So I convinced him to estimate the weight--and finaly just stuffed some cash in his hand and took the cheese.

Last night we saw the Smuin Ballet dance Dancin' with Gershwin.at the Joyce. The Joyce is a small theater which was re-built especially for dancing and I dare say that there isn't a single bad seat in the house. But the Dancin': like eating at a restuarant named Moms or playing cards with a guy named Doc, one should not attend events when the producer thinks it's a good idea to drop the "g" at the end of a word ending in "ing." You can write that down. And shoould one be a dancer one should know that it is not a good idea to try to tap dance in a tuxedo to a recording of Fred Astaire singing Fascinating Rhythm. Mark this: when the audience hears Astaire's voice it cannot help seeing Him dance. I felt sorry for Shannon Hurlburt and Roberto Cisneros as they tried to climb the Astaire Mountain. Can't be done. It's like trying to outplay Art Tatum at the piano. Astaire and Tatum are in a class by themselves. You can be great but you can't be Astaire.


However, the rest of the night was light and fun. the light funtastic comes to mind.

Too often social reform is conflated with socialism. Liberalism is not socialism. Progress is not revolution.

I checked your link, and spent some time looking at the pictures that the Italian futurists made--the graphics, lettering, etc. I have a friend, a schoolmate, named Tim Baum, who is an expert on Man Ray, and a major dealer of his work. He befriended Man Ray during the last ten years of Man Ray's life.

Tim has a gallery in an apartment on Madison Avenue, and I will be calling him tomorrow because I discovered a coincidence. Inspired by looking at the Futurists I went to the library today and took out several Man Ray books--photos, biographies, etc.

It seems that Emmanuel Radnitsky and his family lived on the block where my grandfather had a drug store. I imagine that they were his customers and probably often used the telephone in his store or were called to it when people would call the Radnitsky family.

Seabiscuit: Come prepared. Bring a handkerchief.

My studies of Leopold II temporarily put aside, I am now reading Ben Hecht's autobiography which brings back many of the names of my youth, unknown by anyone of your generation except, of course, you, names like Sherwood Anderson, Charles MacAurthur, Fanny Brice, Gene Fowler, Billy Rose, Mike Ben Ami (Israeli gun runner,) William Frawley, David Bellasco (now you know who the theater is named for--he was a producer) Red Grange, Hugo Haase*--I didn't know the name either--anyway a hoard of names was buried deep in my mind, and mining them has been fun, not the back breaking work that usually accompanies my literary "studies" when I must struggle to learn new names. Recovering the old ones is easier, and the slagheap shrinks.

Of course, there are many others mentioned in Hecht’s book who are still known names, but what interests me is the number of names who were important in Hecht's day who have been forgotten by Everyone, and who were not even known in the fifties. At least not known by me in the fifties. Fame is, indeed, fleeting.

Maria knew one of the names: Bill Frawley.

Well, here's a factoid for you: Sherwood Anderson died on shipboard after swallowing a toothpick in an hors d'oeuvre sausage. So much for toothpicks & sausage, eh?

Much of my reading this spring and summer has emphasized the inhumanity of man, and we are reminded that it is nothing new. You can read about it in the Bible, some of the inhumanity ordered by God Himself. Gross told me a little about the un-Godlike punishments delineated in the Bible but I didn’t pay attention until I began to read about the other genocides we’ve lived through.

Strange, eh? Well, Leopold and his minions were no pikers when it came to elemental bestial horror, and with these biographies under my belt "Heart of Darkness” gets a new reading, the horror now being the Belgians and Europeans rather than the Africans. It’s not as though the Africans learned much from us, they had some of their own home-grown horrors, but it is true that bestial behavior on earth isn’t limited to the beasts, nor is it limited to Saddam, Stalin and Hitler.

Gross has moved from his study of religion to a new study of science based on his reading of science written for the “educated layman.” Well, we may not be properly educated, but we are laymen. He mentioned his astonishment at the miracle of our presence on earth, considering all the mischance that could have occurred going back millions of years even before there was a man who could be inhumane to his fellow creatures.

Eons of evolution brought us to the human state and at any minute during all those eons the path leading to humanity could have been obliterated; then more eons when anyone of our ancestors could have been killed or could have died of illness before having the offspring that would lead to us.

For this alone, we should give more honor to our grandparents and those before them. Look at me—in effect the penultimate of the Katz line—it doesn’t look as though Aaron will have any more children and most likely Max will remain childless. So, there’s no more Katz’.

But all the ones before us struggled, starved, froze, planted, hunted, star gazed, humbled themselves (or didn’t), just so that you and I could be here worrying about our weight or a tax increase. How many times did we hide in the woods, hearing our neighbors being raped and killed? Look, we’re just dots in the universe and lucky dots at that.

So why are we so bad to each other? Jerry, the fellow in whose apartment we are staying, had a daughter who died of cancer in her thirties. Right now he is having an air conditioning problem. I remarked that Maria and I felt bad for him, and he answered, with more than a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye, that after losing a daughter he was able to focus on the real, the good and the important. According to Jerry, air conditioning filters don’t fit into any of those categories.

Genocide: A case may be made that the first genocide was God's killing of the first born Egyptians. Since then genocide has been a popular method of taking control of land or getting rid of neighbors.

The twentieth century has seen plenty of genocidal terrors--starting early in the century with the Turkish eradication of the Armenians. Americans stood by and allowed it to happen, denying all the time that it was happening, in spite of Ambassador Morgenthau's warnings, protests, and pleadings with our Congress. We wanted to maintain a delicate relationship with the Otttoman Empire and so we said nothing. We've always found diplomatic or policy rationalizations for ignoring humanity in need. Need I remind you of Cambodia, Bosnia or Rwanda?

A Problem from Hell -- America and the Age of Genocide -- Samantha Power -- Race Murders in the twentieth century --Armenia Cambodia, Holocaust, Bosnia, the Kurds, Kosovo, Rwanda. But remember genocide goes back much further than the 20th century.

Leopold II of the Belgians, King of Colonialism -- Barbara Emerson.
Leopold owned the Congo personally and his evil is painted herein by a silken brush.

King Leopold's Ghost: Adam Hochschild. Genocide and plunder in the Congo. Money making for the very rich and unconcerned.


*Hugo Haase was a German hero-politician of the twenties and thirties who chose to stand up to the Weimar Government when it massacred two thousand Germans in Moabit prison and later chose to stand up to the Nazis and was assassinated for it on the steps of the German Parliament.


Well, its late. I’m going to call my granddaughter Remi, and give her a hug over the phone.

Buster Stronghart

John Watkins, M.D.
221A Baker Street


Sunday, August 3, 2003


Dear Steve:

I noted your loss of weight the other day at Chelsea Piers; but there was something else I noted with some interest. I believe that it is the second time that I saw you place the unwanted portion of your food with deliberate neatness onto a certain part of your plate.

At Chelsea Piers it was the roll part of your hamburger. You took both sections and placed the top half over the bottom half after carefully removing all the meat and cheese. You moved the roll to a place slightly off center on your plate.

You ate everything else, every morsel of “Atkins-allowed” food, I guess. When you were done your plate was clean, the roll perfectly reassembled (though somewhat flattened by the weight of its absorption of juices and fats) in that slightly off center place on the plate.

A month before, when we ate at March I noticed the same behavior. A careful separation of wanted and unwanted food. And then, you created artfully what was almost a “presentation” of the food to be returned to the kitchen by the busboy.

I am wondering whether this curious behavior is intentional, a method of, perhaps, rewarding yourself for your improved eating habits, or whether it is unconscious. Are you aware of it? Has anyone else commented upon it? Does your plate-designing behavior precede Dr. Atkins’ diet?



Your obedient servant,

John Watkins

Dr. John Watkins, Holmes’ loyal assistant.

King Leopold's Ghost: Adam Hochschild. Genocide and plunder in the Congo.

Leopold II of the Belgians, King of Colonialism: Barbara Emerson Leopold and HM Stanley explore and claim the Congo, destroying African life style and civilization along the way. .