A New York Evening: Part I   Last night I had decided I'd been working enough lately and made a reservation to go hear some fado singing. I had a little time to kill until it was time to leave, and I was sitting at the demilune desk near the window. The sun had just set and the remaining glow silhouetted the row of Jersey City skyscrapers on the opposite side of the Hudson, with their office windows lit up as usual. It was a little hard to see, since my indoor lights were reflecting on the windows, but then I was just able to make it out as the lower half of all the Jersey City skyscrapers started moving in unison, right to left, downstream into New York Bay and out to sea. I did figure out what was happening, and at least this time I wasn't discovering it by spotting it in the backsplash mirror of the kitchen sink, when I used to do my work at the kitchen counter. I turned out the inside lights and didn't really need to see the large illuminated sign on top of this squat strip of moving windows, the one that said Queen Mary 2 above all the rows of cabin lights. It's the only ship that has that clear and obvious an illuminated sign, yet is ironically the ship that needs it least, due to its distinctive size. Spotting the Mary unexpectedly like that marked the beginning of a pleasant New York evening.

A New York Evening: Part II   To explain my location better, it would be helpful if you could imagine where I am in Lower Manhattan, as well as the references I make occasionally to Wall Street, Lower Broadway, and Trinity Church. To do this, make the "V for victory" sign with two fingers. The space between your fingers is the southernmost fifth of Manhattan island, obviously much narrower than most of the island, since here it comes to a point at historic Battery Park, where the Staten Island Ferry and the ferries to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty leave from. An up-and-down line between your fingers is Lower Broadway, where the tickertape parades are held. Now, imagine a horizontal line connecting your knuckles, crossing Broadway in the middle. This line is what I call the Wall Street-Rector Street line going from river to river. It's a brisk 30-minute walk. Picture starting at the right knuckle on the East River and walking the 6-7 very short blocks up Wall Street, with the famous view of Trinity Church at the upper end of the street at Broadway. It's a T-intersection. To continue westward you do a zig in front of the church and a zag around its left side. This second T-intersection with Broadway is Rector Street, named after the church rector. It then goes downhill another four blocks to the Hudson (your left knuckle). The landfill known as Battery Park City has been added here, so you have another zig-zag to reach where I live.

My point is that, no, I don't live at the end of Wall Street, but for all practical purposes, Rector is the de facto continuation of Wall, forming a route crossing the island. There are no fewer than five subway lines crossing the Wall/Rector route perpendicularly. The points I am making here are that everything is compact, everything is walkable, five subway lines give maximum transportation flexibility (and I haven't even mentioned all the bus routes, but I"m a rail kind o' guy), Wall and Rector are de facto a single street, or at least a single route, and any subway stop with either name will get you to me.

It's an eight-minute walk from the Regatta on South End Avenue to the closest Rector Street station, on the # 1 line. In general, I get far more exercise in New York walking to do errands or to go to the subway than I do in Florida. Anyway, I got down into the station last night, where I promptly met someone interesting. This gentleman with flowing white hair (not quite Leopold Stokowski) looked a bit confused. It turns out he had been driven down from Worcester, Massachusetts to do repair work on the organ "at the cathedral". Not knowing of any nearby cathedral, I asked if he meant Trinity Church, just two blocks up the hill on Broadway. Yes, that was it. In retrospect, he did look like a musician, yet with technical overtones: an organ repair expert. He was headed for Pennsylvania Station and had an Amtrak ticket back to Massachusetts. He was a little nervous taking the subway for the first time. Hadn't he even ever been on the "T" in Boston? He'd never been on a subway, anywhere. Aha, fresh meat, ready for indoctrination.

Out of Rector Street, I told him we were passing under Ground Zero, with its closed station. The next stop was Chambers Street, where he should really take the express train. Oh, no, better leave well enough alone. But of course he didn't want to miss his Amtrak connection. Look, they're holding this local train here at Chambers for the express to come in. Look at the map. The local will reach 34 Street/Penn Station in nine stops. The express will do it in two, skipping all the others. In came the express, across the platform he darted, and he waved back as the express pulled out even before the local. Another subway success story. [Nota bene: to my knowledge, which is extensive on subways, New York is the only system in the world with express trains, operating as described above.]

A New York Evening: Part III   III I was going by subway up to the Alfama Portuguese restaurant in Greenwich Village, on Hudson at Perry. At one time or another, I've gotten plenty of friends and family there. I've discussed the Alfama before, especially the other time Bev and I went to hear fado singing a couple of years ago, that time when I came back to the table and an older gentleman fado singer had just come over to wordlessly kiss her hand and give her a copy of his fado CD, out of respect.

Alfama has been around for five years now. Two of my "commercial friends" are Miguel and Tarcísio, the owner-partners. They have a fado evening every Wednesday. As the dinner entrée I ordered the Mariscada, which is a seafood stew served in a cataplana. This is a large copper pan shaped like, and that opens like, a walnut, and you eat right out of it. It was excellent. I had the barman choose a nice white wine for me; he chose one from the Alentejo, southeast of Lisbon. In place of dessert, I wanted a port. I've learned at Alfama that most ports are blends; if you want more quality, you order a vintage port (all from one year) called a colheita (col-YAY-ta). He chose a nice one from 1977 for me.

But the point of the evening was the fado. Accompanying the singers as usual were the two guitarists. I learned more about that this time. One was playing the regular Spanish guitar, with the standard hourglass shape, but the other was playing the Portuguese guitar, with a rounded teardrop shape. I spoke to this guitarist afterwards, and he pointed out that this type of guitar has twelve strings and is not found commonly outside of Portugal.

Tarcísio introduced the program, explaining that fado, the Portuguese word for fate, had its origins in the coastal cities of Portugal dating from the years when sailors would go off with the explorers and fisherman would also sail away for long periods of time, leaving relationships to "fate". So, fado can be described as, most often, a melancholy lament type of song, although there are some livlier ones. It is the Portuguese "national singing style". As to pronunciation, take the English word "father" and change the "-er" to "-oo": fado is pronounced FA-thoo.

There were two begowned singers. I recognized Elizabeth from the last time we came for fado. She is Portuguese, but lives locally. She's a mature, good-sized woman. The special attraction for the month of March was a young woman visiting from Portugual, sylphlike, maybe in her twenties. She's appeared in a musical in Portugual about the life of a famous fado diva.

I asked Tarcísio about it and the answer was interesting. Alfama gets to announce it has a fado singer from Lisbon. But as it turns out, Alfama in New York has gained a name in Portugual. The Portuguese equivalent of the Today show has done a feature on Alfama. Therefore, when the woman goes back to Portugual, she can build up her career by adding to her résumé she has not only appeared in Nova York, she's appeared at Alfama. There are very few cities in the world like New York that not only have the variety of cultures, but also that international, career-making reputation.

Maybe it's my age showing, but I had a favorite of the two singers. The young woman was charming, had a beautiful voice, and was roundly applauded in each set. But when Elizabeth stepped up ...

Elizabeth, with all due respect, has leather lungs. She belts out a song so you really know you've heard a song sung. Who knows, maybe she went to the Ethel Merman School for Belters. She led off the first set with Lisboa Antiga, popular years ago under the English-Spanish name Lisbon Antigua.

It was a wonderful way to start off the evening, but quite frankly, coming from Elizabeth, it was more like

I didn't know or recognize most of the songs, but one song she sang kept on repeating "canto fado" at the end of each line, which means "I sing fado". Therefore, judging from the sprit of that type of singing, I would hazard an educated guess that the song was saying something like "When things go wrong, canto fado, when it's raining, canto fado..." If you can follow that line of thinking, then you understand fado.

At the end of the evening I did something I've never done before in my life. As a matter of fact, I did it twice. I went up to Elizabeth to thank her for a very enjoyable evening, took her hand, and then kissed it. I told her about Beverly and how she had also enjoyed her singing, and Elizabeth said some very nice things, so I kissed her hand again. I've never done that before with a stranger, but it particularly fit in to the Latin atmosphere, and to my recollection of that man kissing Bev's hand. Of course, a bottle of Alentejo wine and a nice glass of colheita did help to get me to do it, but I do not think that will be the last time it will happen.

Ethel Merman   Ah, but I shall digress. Having mentioned Ethel Merman (Lucille Ball, on her show, famously called her "The Merm") brings to mind the time Bev and I saw her in person, and, of course, therein lies a tale.

She was a secretary from Astoria, Queens. Her name--and I like this part--was Ethel Zimmerman, from which she dropped the first syllable to become Ethel Merman. She proudly spoke and sang in Noo Yawk dialect, had lungs of leather (or was it steel?) and belted out her songs. She said it herself: Omma belta.

I won't (and can't) mention everything she did (OK, a little: Panama Hattie, Call Me Madam, Gypsy), but this piece is about Annie Get Your Gun, most of whose songs became very popular, none more than "There's no Business like Show Business".

Annie Get Your Gun was revived in the last few years with Bernadette Peters. She is very, very good, but she's not Ethel Merman. How do I know?

Sometime in the 1970's I'll guess, there had been another, earlier revival of Annie Get Your Gun with none other than Ethel Merman. It was done in the cavernous New York City Center, which has a huge auditorium that had been originally built for the Shriners. It is vast. It is Ethel Merman size. Beverly and I went to see the show.

I'm not sure if the other performers were miked. They probably were. Merman didn't need it:

Merman had already been too old to play the teenage Annie Oakley the first time around, and by now, she was several times the right age. And that Noo Yawk dialect never had fit too well into the Wild West. To the bargain, she was now rather zoftig.

And if you think that anyone in that vast auditorium cared one whit about any of that nonsense, then you just don't get it.

But my favorite part is this. As you know, Irving Berlin lived to be a centenarian, and he was still going strong at the time of the Merman revival. He wrote a new song just for it, "Old Fashioned Wedding". It's now become part of the show, since it was included in the Bernadette Peters revival as well.

It's a song done in counterpoint. If you're not sure what that is, it's two different songs, one slower, one livlier, sung at once. Think of Moon River and the Theme from Picnic.

In "Old Fashioned Wedding", Frank Butler and Annie Oakley are describing the types of wedding they each want. He sings sweetly and slowly:

She sings the upbeat:

They argue, she throws a temper tantrum, pounding her fists in the air and doing a foot-stomping dance, but of course, by the end, they each change their minds. He says:

And the Merm picks up:

Priceless.