Holiday Events   In New York, the old year ended for me as usual: in addition to family gatherings and the annual holiday party in the lobby of my building, The Regatta, I had my customary series of museum receptions, not only at the Merchants House Museum and South Street Seaport locally in Manhattan, but I once again drove north along the Hudson for an hour to the reception given by Historic Hudson Valley at Phillipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow. As always, a members’ holiday reception increases the charm of the historic buildings. At the Merchants House, a town house from 1832 still retaining most of its historic furnishings, one of the party highlights was the traditional serving of the hot Christmas punch known as a “bowl of Bishop”, a favorite of Charles Dickens, such as when the reformed Scrooge says to Bob Cratchit: “I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking Bishop....” South Street Seaport, which also retains its 19C character, had a singing Christmas tree, a caroling choir standing in tree-shaped bleachers in the middle of the pedestrian zone on Fulton Street. And as always, it was fun to drive up to the 18C atmosphere of Phillipsburg Manor and, illuminated by lanterns, walk the paths to visit the animals and storyteller in the barn, the functioning water mill grinding grain, and the recently restored manor house. But the most atmosphere to me is obtained by standing ‘round the bonfire in the cold evening air listening to the fiddler in costume play 17-18C tunes.

Every year, the holiday reception given by the New York Alumni of Middlebury grows larger, and more spectacular. I remember a few years ago that the group fit quite well in a large room at the University Club on Fifth Avenue. The next year it filled the two levels of the entrance hall of MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art. Last year it expanded to fill the restaurant at the Boathouse in Central Park. This year, the organizers outdid themselves, but given the growth of attendees, they had to. To the south of 77th Street on Central Park West is the New-York Historical Society (where I also had a reception), and north of the intersection is the American Museum of Natural History, which serves as the national memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, whose statue on horseback is in the middle of the spectacular front staircase. Climbing those front stairs (on this evening, right after museum hours) one enters the Great Rotunda of the museum, perhaps three stories tall, with spectacular skeletons of three dinosaurs in the center. THIS is where Middlebury had its reception this year, filling the Rotunda all around the dinosaurs. In addition, although the two side exits from the Rotunda leading further into the museum were closed off, the exit at the back was open, and that area was also used for the reception. That back area is among the more famous at the museum. It’s the area with a large series of lifelike dioramas in large glass cases around the long room, with stuffed animals in natural settings; a bear here, zebras there, a pride of lions across the way. The center was filled with a herd of freestanding elephants. Walking from the Rotunda to the diorama area with a glass of champagne in hand, it occurred to me that this June I’ll be seeing similar live animals on two safaris in Africa.

Back in the Rotunda it was a pleasure to talk with people, and there was a marked increase in recent graduates attending the reception. I spoke to the people at the front desk about attendance. What had been 400, 600, 800 people in recent years had increased to 900 who RSVP’d, plus maybe another 100 that showed up anyway (some people have NO class). The organizers were joking that, if this keeps up, maybe they should hold the reception in Shea Stadium next year.

On New Year’s Day, I ended the holiday season as usual by listening to the broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic on PBS (I had TiVO’d it earlier to watch in the evening). It is always a pleasure to listen to the Wiener Philharmoniker play (mostly) Strauss at the Musikverein. The most fun is hearing the two final, ritualized encores every year. The first is An der schönen, blauen Donau/On the Beautiful, Blue Danube, usually rendered in English as the Blue Danube Waltz. It is one of two extremely recognizable melodies, recognized even by people who haven’t the slightest interest in classical music:

(The other highly recognizable one, probably even MORE recognizable than this one, I’ll discuss when I’m in Switzerland in July. Mentioning the land of Wilhelm Tell might serve as a hint.)

The last piece always played by the Wiener Philharmoniker at the Neujahrskonzert is the Radetzkymarsch/Radetzky March, written by Johann Strauss Sr in 1848 to honor Field Marshall Radetzky. From the first time it was ever played publicly, which was in a military setting, the officers started to clap and stamp to the chorus, and this is done to this day at the Neujahrskonzert. I understand the music is actually SCORED for orchestra AND audience. The Radetzky starts out with a rousing:

At this point, the audience is already aware it’s time to join in, and the conductor turns around and conducts the clapping audience:

The Radetzky is audience participation par excellence, and is well placed, every year, as the finale encore. Here is the 2008 presentation, conducted by Georges Prêtre, the only French conductor to ever direct the Neujahrskonzert: Wiener Philharmoniker: Radetzkymarsch

Speaking of Vienna, I recall something I recently read about the Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer recently acquired by the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue (2006/10). She has been described as “New York’s Mona Lisa”. That’s probably a bit over the top, but it’s a pleasant thought.

Website Contacts   It struck me only recently that there was a coinciding of events in the same two years, 2000 and 2001, that I’d never thought about being so similar to each other before. At the present, two activities fill my time. One activity is actively working with several friends on the Board of the offshore corporation I was instrumental in founding, Eden Bay Ventures Ltd, which is involved with Eden Bay Condominium & Resort in the Dominican Republic. The other activity is the extensive travel plus ongoing language study, of which this website is the fruit. Each assumed its modern form at the start of the new decade, the Aughties, and indeed at the start of the new millennium, and then each was significantly modified the next year.

Although many of us had owned property at Eden Bay for much of the 1990’s, it was in 2000 that a group of us became actively involved in turning Eden Bay around, and then it was in 2001 that several of us formed Eden Bay Ventures Limited, where I chair a Board of five Directors.

As to travel, Beverly and I had done extensive travel in the three decades ending in 1990, when we spent the summer studying in Spain. During the Nineties, though, retirement, opening up a second household in Florida as well as New York, and the onset of Beverly’s illness kept our travels limited the US, but then, in 2000, we sailed the Atlantic once again. By that year, travel had changed in that one could take a laptop along, which I did, expecting to write to family and friends frequently. That didn’t happen at all that year, since the trip was hectic, especially getting used to getting about internationally with a wheelchair. So it was actually during the 2001 trip that I started writing e-mail letters, which, after a few years of people asking to see old ones, became codified into the core of this website.

I mention the website specifically as a development because it has become an interesting means of communication. Someone in Tampa who had read comments on restaurants wrote me last fall about restaurants in general, for instance, and we had a pleasant correspondence about that and other topics of interest.

A couple of years ago (2005/18), while mentioning one former student of mine I had just met who is now a storyteller, I also mentioned another, Carter Brey, who is now principal cellist with the New York Philharmonic, and with whom I have had some contact over the years, but not for a while. In early December, right after I published the previous Series to this one, the one in which I discussed both Dutch and Les feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves, I got an e-mail from Carter. Of all things, he had been researching something about Dutch pronunciation, and voilà, there appeared to his surprise a reference to this website. We had a nice e-mail chat in which, among other things, he agreed with my interpretation of the variation in the Mercer translation of the Prévert original. Carter’s wife is originally from Italy, and he has become quite the speaker of Italian. He said that, with her assistance, he succeeded in reading quite a bit of Dante: actually, the entire Inferno in the original. Well—talk about coincidence--at very least I had just by pure chance presented the Worthy Reader with arguably the most famous line from l’Inferno: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.

The other surprise contact through the website was from Rand Packer. A year ago (2007/4 under “Roy’s”), where I was discussing restaurants in general, I mentioned that he had been a Chef-Partner at Roy’s but was leaving to open his own restaurant further north in the Tampa area, very close to where I live. He said he was pleased to find his name mentioned, and suggested I visit his Mariposa Mexican Grille. I had suggested in the restaurant discussion that restaurants be classified as either standard or gourmet, with the standard being subdivided to modest, midlevel, or superior. I visited the Mariposa for a meal, and Rand sat with me for an hour as we discussed restaurants, running them, furnishing them, expanding into a chain (he’s already working on a second one nearby). It was very enlightening. I would classify Rand’s restaurant as midlevel. I enjoyed an interesting appetizer referred to as “eggrolls”, which was rice and beans served in a wrap which ended up looking rather like, well, eggrolls, with an attractive presentation surrounded by sauces. At the end of January, the Saint Petersburg Times mentioned the Mariposa in its “May we suggest...” food listing in the category “Most entrees under $10”: “Rand Packer, the celebrated former chef at Roy’s in Tampa, chucked the fancy world of Hawaiian-style cuisine for something new and different. It’s a funky and affordable outpost of regional Mexican cuisine, cooking from Oaxaca ...”. I mentioned to Rand that in September I’d been to the Roy’s in downtown Los Angeles, and the manager was quite familiar with Roy’s Tampa. I also said that, when I go back to Hawaii this fall, I’m planning on going to several Roy’s restaurants, including the flagship in Hawaii Kai near Waikiki, at which point Rand told me he used to work there, and would contact them at the time to give me an introduction. In the long run in life it all fits together, doesn’t it?

Three Queens   Cunard knows how to put on a show. On 25 April 2004, shortly after the Queen Mary 2 had been launched, a meeting of the Two Queens was staged in New York harbor. The schedules of the Queen Elizabeth 2 and the QM2 were coordinated so they would be in New York at the same time, where they paraded on the Hudson, ending in a fireworks display that evening. I had my family at my windows to watch the fun.

As mentioned recently, this past December Cunard launched the new Queen Victoria. The QV’s passenger capacity (2014) is less than that of the QM2 (2600), but more than that of the QE2 (1778). At any rate, for over a year it’s been announced that on Sunday, 13 January 2008, a particularly unique event would take place. Again it was in New York harbor, which Cunard seems to consider an ideal venue for this sort of spectacle. Not only for the first time in Cunard’s history dating back to the 1840’s were there three Cunard ships with “Queen” in their name, but their schedules had been coordinated so that the Three Queens would appear together at the same time. Again, I had family with me at my windows.

Looking sharp left from my tiny balcony and from my windows, the view is to the south past Brooklyn and to the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge, under which one sails from the harbor out to sea. It was evening when the brightly-light Mary could be seen to the left, pulling out of the Brooklyn Passenger Terminal into the harbor. Its size seemed to fill the distant view. The Victoria and the Elizabeth had been docked in Midtown, at what is now known as the Manhattan Passenger Terminal, and would be coming down the Hudson from the right, toward the rendezvous point in Upper New York Bay and the Statue of Liberty. It seemed, though, that they were delayed, so the Mary started moving a bit upstream to position itself more advantageously to rendezvous. Instead of coming up the middle of the river, where I’m used to seeing ships pass, in order to turn, it came close to the Manhattan shore—and my building. It came close enough to us that you could easily see the people on all the decks, which were not all that far away. Remember that these newer ships have balconies for most staterooms, so it looked like a brightly-lit apartment building was approaching the 9-story Regatta (I’m on the 6th and 7th floors)—but the approaching “building” was just a few stories higher. Someone made a joke that Cunard was sending the Mary to my building in recognition of all the business I give them. A fun thought—I only wish it were true.

We then got to witness, at a distance reminiscent of watching your hand in front of your face, an amazing feat of navigation, but one that is commonplace for the Mary. Traditionally, ships have fixed propellers that push them directly forward. Apparently, however, it’s not easy to do fine maneuvers, which is why most ships require tugboats to help them navigate the tight spaces in harbors. But the Mary was built with four “pods”, each one containing its own propeller. This alone gives it the equivalent of four-wheel drive. But beyond that, each pod can be turned in any direction. Theoretically, you can turn them all to one side and the ship can go upstream—sideways. This incredible maneuverability allowed the Mary to do a pirouette in front of our eyes. It came up to the Regatta, then this huge ship turned itself in a tiny turning radius, right before my windows.

After a while, we spotted what had to be the Victoria coming from the right. I say “had to be”, since it, too, looked like a brightly-lit apartment building, given all the balconies. It didn’t have any tugs, so it presumably has similar technology to the Mary. I will be sailing on the Victoria New York-Panama Canal-Los Angeles next January, and will report my experiences.

We then looked for the Elizabeth to come downstream, but didn’t see anything. We then realized that the moving dark spot blotting out the buildings on the New Jersey side must have been the QE2, which does not have the luminescence of her sisters. It also doesn’t have the silhouette with balconies, but shows more of a traditional style, so it appears more and more like an antique. Of course, it was less maneuverable, so it had to be surrounded by tugboats.

When the three Queens met, they proceeded toward the Statue of Liberty, where a bright fireworks display greeted them, and us.

Afterwards, when they left the harbor, the QM2 went on a trip to the Caribbean. The QV went to the Panama Canal, then Los Angeles (what I’ll be doing next year), and then would continue on her maiden world cruise. The QE2, though, was proceeding on her 26th and final world cruise, since she will retire in November to become a floating hotel in Dubai.

Gasparilla   Over the years, aside from flying, we’ve driven between New York and Tampa (what a drag), and we’ve taken the Auto-Train. Both require one overnight. The disadvantage of flying is that I have to rent a car in Florida, so that sort of visit I limit to four weeks. This year I had an urge to spend more time (ten weeks minus the New Orleans trip), so I once again took the Auto-Train. I delayed departure from New York until after the Three Queens, so I will spend the last half of January and all of February and March in Florida, minus ten days for a side trip to Louisiana.

Knowing I’d be experiencing Mardi Gras for the first time, I felt it worth while to once again go to Tampa’s Gasparilla Pirate Festival. We had gone to the Gasparilla Parade once some years ago, so I’d had some experience with it.

Although in practice Gasparilla is the same as any carnival festival, its concept is different. All carnival festivals, be it Mardi Gras, the carnivals in Rio de Janeiro or Venice, or Karnival/Fasching/Fastnacht in the German countries, are at least theoretically based on the fact that lent will start on Ash Wednesday, so that Tuesday is a last chance to celebrate. Gasparilla, however, has no such basis. Its concept is that “pirates” are invading Tampa, and that’s an excuse to surrender the keys to the city to them for a day. There is an apocryphal legend of one José Gaspar, a pirate, on which the whole fantasy is based. The Gasparilla Invasion has been taking place since 1904 (so its centennial was four years ago), when the Invasion took place on horseback. Today it takes place on a 165-foot/50-meter ship, the José Gasparilla, which docks downtown, after which a parade goes up Bayshore Boulevard into the downtown area. Rather than being based on the date of Ash Wednesday, Gasparilla today takes place regularly during the last Saturday in January. All the floats are pirate-themed, as are the participants’ costumes. Although different items are tossed to the public, the most common, as at Mardi Gras, are strings of beads, although, as I found out, only rarely do you get at Mardi Gras strings of beads the size of the ones in Tampa. Most beads at Mardi Gras are outsized, with long strands. In Tampa I caught close to two dozen. Often, some of the marchers come up to the sidelines to actually hand beads to onlookers. On three different occasions, I was personally handed a string of beads by one of the marching ladies. It must be the pony tail.

Rather than parking downtown, I took the new streetcar. Tampa had had streetcars from 1892 until the last one ran in 1946. I had been a member of the Streetcar Society, which promoted reintroduction of this new line. It now runs from the neighborhood of Ybor City, adjacent to downtown, right to where the parade was taking place, so it worked out well for me to ride the new streetcar for the first time.

Ybor City, once independent, is now a notable Tampa neighborhood, and serves as its Latin Quarter. It’s named after Vicente Martínez-Ybor, one of a group of Cuban cigar manufacturers who established Ybor City in 1885 (it was promptly annexed by Tampa in 1887). Although in Spanish it’s pronounced ee.BOR, in English the pronunciation EE.bor has taken hold. It was Tampa’s immigrant neighborhood, populated by Cubans, Spanish, Italians, and Germans. The cigar industry was the mainstay in Ybor City and Tampa during the early 20C, but went into decline after the depression, and the original immigrant population slowly moved away. The neighborhood was largely razed during the urban renewal period of the 1950’s but has been reborn as an entertainment district. Much of Ybor City has been declared a National Historic Landmark District, and some buildings, often the homes of ethnic social clubs or else associated with the cigar industry, are on the National Register of Historic Places. Almost since moving to Tampa, I’ve been a member of the Ybor City State Museum, which reflects the history of the area. I’ve always found particularly interesting the museum display that shows that it was the German community which was largely involved in doing the engraving of the florid labels for cigar boxes.

Miami’s (South) Eighth Street has become known in recent decades as Calle Ocho since the arrival of the Cuban community, but for a century, the main street of Ybor City, Seventh Avenue, has been known as La Setima, and is labeled as such today (“seventh” is always pronounced setima, although even so it is sometimes written more traditionally as “septima”). Since 1905, the Grande Dame of Ybor City has been the Columbia restaurant on La Setima. It’s grown so that its dining rooms have taken over its entire block. After the Gasparilla I once again went back to the Columbia for dinner, and got my favorite location, around the bubbling fountain in the center of the patio. Among other things, I always order the Columbia’s landmark 1905 Salad, which is prepared tableside.

There was an interesting crossing of the two meanings of “culture” in the cigar factories, high, literate culture, and everyday, ethnic culture. For the hundreds of people sitting at tables laboriously rolling cigars, the work would have become very boring except for the notable institution of the lector (lec.TOR). Seated on a platform among the workers, the lector, which simply means “reader”, would read anything and everything. Always in Spanish, even if it meant translating on the fly from material in English or Italian, which some of them could actually do, he would read newspapers and books, including great literature. Perhaps it would be El Quijote, chapter by chapter, perhaps Anna Karenina the next week.

Ybor City also retains a notable location where Cuban history was made. Where Fourteenth Street crosses Seventh Avenue (La Setima), on the steps leading into a cigar factory, none other than Cuban national hero Jose Martí in 1893 declared to the tobacco workers Cuba’s independence from Spain. A monument commemorates this event, as does the fact that Fourteenth Street is now officially named Avenida República de Cuba.

Travel Songs   For a change of pace, I’ll mention that for some time I’ve been wondering about appropriate songs to herald travel activities. I had a couple in mind, but also asked friends and family for their thoughts. The results ended in a curious selection, which I’d like to discuss.

The most surprising result was that, strictly speaking, there turns out to be far fewer travel songs than you think. For instance, in 1948, Frank Loesser wrote:

This has nothing to do with China, or Transpacific cruises. The singer has something quite different in mind. The problem isn’t as always as obvious as here, but is there nevertheless. Here are two songs dealing less with travel than with a specific place, but they do illustrate a point. In 1953, Cole Porter wrote:

So far we have a song exclusively about Paris. But then comes the kicker:

This is a charming sentiment, but it turns the song around entirely. The song suddenly has little to do with Paris. The singer would love Nowheresville just as much if his/her love were there.

And then, there’s the 1954 song that became Tony Bennet’s signature:

True, this one more strongly pertains directly to the city, yet if “my love” were across the bay in Oakland, rest assured, “my heart” would be high on a hill in Oakland instead.

This is the point where I have to quickly inject my concept of Dual Reality, which I’ll discuss more fully sometime. Essentially, it’s like the division of knowledge between arts and sciences, or between the humanities and science/math. Or, it’s the reality of the heart as opposed to the reality of the brain. We can and do accept both routes, and do so at the same time. So, we disregard the fact that “my love” is at the root of these songs, and we continue to accept them emotionally as songs in praise of places, Paris and San Francisco--but with a wink.

There are other reasons a song might not be just right. “The Happy Wanderer” was suggested. Here are the standard English words:

Here are the original German words of Der fröhliche Wanderer, with my translation (not adjusted to fit the meter). It’s not a German folk song, but was written for a German children’s choir, which sang it in 1953 at the Eisteddfod, the Welsh international singing contest. They won, and it then became an international hit:

To some extent it’s a translation problem. “Wandern” means to hike, and a Wanderer is a hiker. It was at the time just too much of a temptation to translate Wanderer as wanderer, since Der fröhliche Wanderer actually means The Happy Hiker. Hiking through the woods is a passion in Germany, and that’s even evident in the standard English version above. So this is not a travel, but a hiking song—in other words, a sports song.

Next year I expect to go to Australia, and I’ve always loved “Waltzing Matilda”, Australia’s most widely known folk song, which I hope to discuss much more fully at that time. It was written in 1895, has been a contender to become the Australian national anthem, and is occasionally actually used as such unofficially. That this song deals in any way with travel (more precisely, the freedom to travel) is not apparent to most non-Australians (and possibly nowadays, not to some Australians as well). Picture the classic image of an itinerant worker walking along the road with his possessions bundled in a bag behind him, most frequently hanging on a stick over his shoulder. That bag in older Australian slang is a matilda, and as long as the matilda is bouncing back and forth—that is, “waltzing”—it means the man is traveling along the open road, and has the freedom to do so. The imagery is colorful, but the meaning of the song is unfortunately too obscure for use here.

So we come back to the two songs I had originally been considering. By coincidence, they are both associated with unrelated people named Nelson: Willie Nelson and Rick Nelson.

Since he wrote it in 1980, “On the Road Again” has been strongly associated with Willie Nelson. Here he sings it on YouTube: Willie Nelson: On the Road Again

It seems ideal as a travel song, but the kind of travel it’s praising could be described as business travel. This is a show business song about life on tour—look at the third line very carefully. As you take a play “on the road”, so Nelson is here looking forward to taking his music on the road. This is primarily a song about the joys of entertaining the public, and having to travel in order to do so, but we will take it in for our purposes as a travel song [wink, wink]. The way to do this most easily is to just excise lines 5-8 for use. We also can figuratively consider “on the road” in the broadest sense, not only on a highway, but on a railroad, on the sea lanes, even in the air lanes.

Finally, Rick Nelson in 1961 popularized "Travelin' Man", and performs it here on YouTube: Rick Nelson: Travelin' Man

This one is particularly problematic. The song does describe a traveler, but one who goes on in following verses to describe how he keeps on bed-hopping on an international sex tour. The solution here to make this song more adequate for our needs is to make a cut after the third line.

So what do we now finally have as our two musical travel themes? Apparently that

and I’m also

I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me now. I’m off to see the Wizard--the wonderful Wizard of Oz.