December in New York   Santa Claus is alive and well. I know, because I saw him in mid-December at the Rector Street Station on the R line. He was sliding his Metrocard through the card reader to check his cash balance. He was in full regalia, but must have shaved his beard and taken off some weight. Perhaps he was hoping he had enough of a cash balance on his card to take the subway back to the North Pole.

I spotted him again the following week on the #1 line, but I think he might have been trying to go incognito. From the waist down he was Santa, in red and white with black boots. But above the waist he was wearing an old gray jacket and black knit cap, and looked more like a construction worker. Perhaps he was just trying to blend in a little bit more with everyday people.

Could Santa make such appearances in other cities? Of course, but with a difference: elsewhere he would be noticed and pointed at. In New York no one bats an eye, since New York is the kingdom of the blasé glance and prompt acceptance. Just don’t bother me. I’ve got to catch my train.

À propos the guy in the red suit, for the second year now, my sister Chris on Long Island has volunteered to dress up on two Saturdays in December to play Santa Claus, but with a twist. At the location where she volunteers her services, you don’t take your child to see her and have a picture taken on her lap. You take your dog. Offbeat? Perhaps, but why not?

During the year, when I’m not out of town, my calendar is quite open. If you want to get together I can likely be available, but December is different. Like most people I have a busy holiday calendar in December involving family, friends, and what I like to refer to as my museum parties that crowd the middle of the month.

I was glad to be able to work out the return from Japan and Taiwan to arrive back in New York just four days before Thanksgiving, which, along with Christmas, was spent with family at my niece Chrissy’s. One Sunday my sister Pat had her customary holiday brunch. New Year’s Eve will be quiet, and my sisters and I will take my mother Sophie out to celebrate what would have been her 72nd wedding anniversary.

Friend Paul and his wife, ex-Manhattanites now living in New Hampshire, rented a pied-à-terre in the landmarked Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens last summer, and I was invited to visit them this month. They are seasoned travelers (we met a year and a half ago in Hamburg as we were all boarding the QM2 [2008/16, end]) and they are very knowledgeable about Australia, which we discussed quite thoroughly as to their travels there and my upcoming plans.

Friend, former German student of mine, and guest essayist (2008/5) Carter Brey invited me to a gathering of about 25 people on Christmas Eve at his home on the Upper West Side, a half-block from the American Museum of Natural History (which I’d been to the previous week—see below). The conversation around the room was exquisitely international, and one way or the other, multiple locations on six continents were discussed, including references to some half-dozen languages. When I mentioned interest in Dubai, Carter took out his laptop and showed a couple of us pictures from his trip to adjoining Abu Dhabi. One older Chinese lady, now living in Pennsylvania, was enchanting. She spoke perfect English, and when I mentioned German, she switched to fluent German for part of our conversation. She had attended the Deutsche Schule in Shanghai and I believe, also in Rome, and continues to go to reunions in Germany of the school. She also knew Berlin, since her father had also been Chinese ambassador to Germany. When I mentioned Taiwan and the soup dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), she complimented me on my pronunciation, which was polite nonsense, since I know I didn’t even start to use any of the necessary tones, but I suppose she was pleased anyone would even try to say it. She also told me that the words mean Great Dragon Dumpling. What a charming lady, with cultural ties to China but also time ties to the prewar period.

I hadn’t been active in Mensa since the late ‘80’s when we lived in Westchester, although I’ve always maintained my membership. This year I got an email that Greater New York Mensa was having a holiday party one Sunday at a venue on Lexington Avenue, and I went to a Mensa function for the first time in years. Somehow I’ve always found good topics of conversation scarce at Mensa gatherings, but I did make occasional conversation. The most interesting was with a young guy who said he maintained an online blog, giving his insights and opinions on subjects of interest, and we compared notes.

And then there were the museum parties. One I did NOT go to this year was to Historic Hudson Valley’s gathering in Westchester County at the 1693 Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow (2005/18 “December Time Travel”). It’s certainly the most authentic historic holiday gathering in the area, but I’ve gone many times, it conflicted with something else, and not having a car I’d need to rent a Zipcar, which was more than I needed to do. Still, for the sake of completeness of my December-in-New-York possibilities, here’s a daylight, summertime picture of the Philipsburg Manor grist mill with water wheel, the weir holding back the mill pond on the Pocantico River, the historic Manor house in white and barn in black. Now picture instead a cold December night, you’re wearing a heavy coat, gloves, and knit cap against the cold, you’ve just walked down a bit from the visitor’s center where you’ve listened to the live musicians playing holiday music, visited the snack table (cheese, fruit, cookies), had hot cider and/or hot chocolate to warm you up. Cutting the darkness on both rails of the weir are numerous lanterns with candles, continuing along the sides of the path to the Manor House. All windows show flickering candlelight because the volunteer portraying the miller is demonstrating how the millstones grind, and in the house, volunteer guides in each room are describing the house and its Christmas decorations. In the barn, a professional storyteller in costume (Jonathan Kruk, another former student of mine—again, see 2005/18) is telling Hudson River Valley stories, and next to the barn is a bonfire with a 17C-18C fiddler playing historic tunes of those periods. Maybe I should go again next year. After all, it’s free for museum members, and this venue sets a historic holiday mood better than any other.

But the 1832 Merchant’s House Museum comes close. As a member, I go every year to the holiday party, since it’s so close to home, on East 4th Street in Noho, not far from Greenwich Village and a half-block from the revitalized Bowery. It’s the only 19C home in New York City preserved intact as it was, both inside and outside. Picture the building on a December night, with the main floor windows glowing with gaslight and the basement windows revealing the party in the kitchen area, including the punch known as a Bowl of Bishop referred to in Dickens (2008/1).

South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan is a historic neighborhood that preserves the old port area. The SSS Museum is located in the historic Schermerhorn Row on Fulton Street at the East River, an 1812 counting house typical of commercial architecture of the era. At the holiday party members could also visit the current museum exhibit on New Amsterdam, which included copies of the Castello Plan (2009/24) of Nieuw Amsterdam. At the party I met Dave, whose interests extend to both ships and trains (rail ‘n’ sail), as mine do. He should be interested in trains, since he’s a department manager for Amtrak. We discussed in particular the (non-)rail situation in Cape Cod. We both decided to go, with his wife, to a lecture and special reception in early January at SSS about the 1935 luxury liner Normandie, once the largest and fastest passenger ship in the world, an Art Deco masterpiece, that burned and capsized at her Pier 88 dock in midtown New York in 1942.

Finally, there were two museum visits on a grander scale still, although neither visit was directly museum-related. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street (but physically jutting into Central Park), allows its members on certain occasions to dine in the Trustees’ Dining Room, and once before I took my whole family there for dinner. This December I decided to take my nephew Greg and his wife Rosemary. Greg first treated us to drinks and hors d’oeuvres at the Balcony Bar above the Great Hall at the entrance. Rather than an actual bar, it’s a table-service venue centering around a string quartet, all located in front of the museum showcases (Asian art, as it happens to be) on the balcony above the entrance, where some people are standing in this picture. Beverly and I used to joke that venues such as sidewalk cafés and the Balcony Bar are “very civilized”, a phrase I enjoyed repeating that evening.

And there was a language connection that particularly pleased me. When I first arrived at the museum, I noticed as always the multilingual sign that said Entrance, Entrée, Eingang, Entrada, Entrata, but that was all old hat. This time though, I did pay attention to one more notation for Japanese and Chinese visitors, 入口, which brought me full circle back to the trip that had ended just three weeks earlier.

After visiting the huge museum Christmas tree, annually decorated with numerous Neapolitan Baroque angels with a matching crèche below, we went to the top floor to the Trustees’ Dining Room for an enjoyable dinner. Although it was dark, you could look out into Central Park to the 21 m (68 ft) Cleopatra’s Needle right outside. It’s one of three ancient Egyptian obelisks in New York, London, and Paris, which actually have nothing to do with Cleopatra. And across the park you could see the skyline across the Park on Central Park West, where the New-York Historical Society was separated by 77th Street (of Thanksgiving balloon fame [2004/13]) from the American Museum of Natural History—where I’d been the previous week.

The New York Alumni of Middlebury College has had some great holiday parties at spectacular venues. I’ve documented those at the Museum of Modern Art, the University Club on Fifth Avenue, the Boathouse in Central Park. Two years ago it was held at the American Museum of Natural History (which is New York State’s Theodore Roosevelt memorial), mostly in the Main Lobby, which is in the form of a Roman basilica and has casts of skeletons of several dinosaurs in the center, as well as in the adjacent Hall of African Mammals, with its famous dioramas. But last year the recession struck, and there was no party at all, also not in Boston, the other annual venue. It was made clear that the College had to preserve its funding for student scholarships, given the financial situations of students’ families.

But this year the party was on again, and I continue to marvel at the modern world we live in. I was at the hotel in Taipei when I got an email giving the date, and explaining that, for the first time it would not be gratis, but would be covered by a $20 fee (which I’m sure still doesn’t cover it—President Liebowitz told me the College still had to give a subsidy). But yet from Taiwan I was able to email in my response, and then charge the fee, and the matter was then off my mind. We accept doing that sort of thing today as so common, yet forget that the ability to do that is so new.

It was again to be at the American Museum of Natural History, but this time at an even more spectacular location, underneath the full-sized suspended model of the blue whale in the Hall of Ocean Life. A huge square bar with dozens of bartenders and more glasses than I ever thought could possibly be used up (they were, almost) was set up in the center. It was particularly impressive to stand up at the room’s entrance on the balcony and observe below the 800 guests that eventually filled the room.

I did chat with a few people, but attendance skews very young at these college parties, with many recent graduates, all of whom seemed to know each other, and probably did. I found two people I knew, but had my most interesting conversations with President Ron Liebowitz of Middlebury, who later introduced me to Mike Geissler, Vice President for Language Schools, Schools Abroad, and Graduate Programs. Since I’ve been involved with all three areas of Mike’s responsibility, we had some interesting talks, but primarily about Mainz, my time there, and his time there at the Middlebury Office. I also was pleased to find the German program at Middlebury is once again thriving.

But I’d first had an informative talk with President Liebowitz. Ron was originally from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and we discussed city life, also Middlebury’s expansion across the country. When I first went to Middlebury, there were five summer language schools, German (the first one founded, in 1915), French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. By the time I went back for doctoral study, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic had been added. But I now asked Ron about the two newest summer schools, of Portuguese and of Hebrew, and both are doing well. I wondered what languages might be next, and he thinks perhaps Korean and Farsi (the language of Iran). [If you look carefully, but with some flexibility, you’ll realize that FARSI is a variation of PERSI(an).]

Ron had a fun story, which then also became a game of words. When the Hebrew summer school was founded, a kosher kitchen was established with it for students and faculty (some faculty members were borrowed from Brandeis University). All went well, until one day, a chef who wasn’t thinking right decided to serve catfish, which is a big no-no, since it, like lobster, is not kosher. What Ron calls the “catfish caper” took quite a while to straighten out, since it involved getting the kitchen rabbinically recertified.

But the wordplay was this. In telling the story, Ron said that catfish was verboten, using the German word, but I then pointed out that I knew there was a Yiddish word that covers the situation more accurately, but I couldn’t come up with it. Neither could he, but he turned to his wife, who he said had lived on a kibbutz, and she came up with treyf, which is the opposite of kosher. Language problem solved.

Invictus (Film)   During December I decided to go see the film Invictus. It’s a good film, with worthy historical subject matter, but by itself, not enough for a writeup. However, the story behind its title, based on a poem, is to me of compelling interest, and, given the dual subjects, I will discuss them both.

It takes place, and was filmed, in South Africa, and has been described as one of the biggest films ever made there in terms of stature and stars. It’s the story of the first years of Nelson Mandela’s presidency up through the playing of the Rugby World Cup in South Africa in 1995. Clint Eastwood’s direction clearly shows the racial divisions in the society and Mandela’s attempts to begin to assuage them. Morgan Freeman plays Mandela with his salt-and-pepper hair and forward stoop. I heard Freeman say in a TV interview that Mandela himself asked Freeman to play him. Freeman embodies Mandela so well that, when a distance shot of Mandela is shown after the credits at the end, you feel something is wrong—Mandela should look like Freeman, right?

The story involves Mandela’s attempt to help unify South Africa through the national passion for rugby. The national team, the Springboks, which had earlier been excluded from international play because of South Africa’s apartheid policy, had in recent years performed in less than a stellar fashion, so Mandela contacts the team captain, urging him to do his best to improve the team for the sake of unifying the country. The captain, François Pienaar, is played by Matt Damon, who acquired for the role a very credible South African accent and had extensive coaching on playing rugby. (Not only does Pienaar’s first name show French Huguenot background, his last name is an Afrikaans/Dutch respelling of what had been “Pinard”, to maintain the French pronunciation.) In the film, Pienaar and the team take the ferry to Robben Island in Cape Town and actually visit Mandela’s cell (2008/10). All in all, the final event of the film has been described as “the game that made a nation”.

It is a historical fact that Mandela, after earlier meeting with Pienaar, later wrote down an inspirational message that was delivered to Pienaar, which is the basis of the film’s name. However, what the message actually was historically was different from what it was changed to in the film for dramatic purposes , so this is where the behind-the-scenes plot begins to thicken.

In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt (see above) gave a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris entitled “The Man in the Arena”, which is notable for this extended paragraph:

It was this that Mandela sent to Pienaar in a note before the match. It was a logical decision, given that the team’s past record was not outstanding, but that the team needed to persevere at that point, and of course the metaphor of a man in an arena was spot-on for a rugby captain in a stadium. It’s the “doer of deeds” that counts, who may either “know victory [n]or defeat”, but must at least “strive”. Such a doer is today sometimes referred to by the term “the man in the arena”.

While this is historically accurate, it was changed in the film, so that Mandela’s note quoted the poem Invictus, which also gave the film its name.

Invictus (Poem)   I’m sure we all have holes in our education. When I find some voids of mine, I try to fill them, so, just this year alone, I’ve researched, learned, and shared, among many other things, how atolls are formed (2009/15), that Chinese characters are slightly less daunting than they seem at first glance (2009/31), and that half Marco Polo’s iconic trip was by water (2009/33).

But apparently the short poem Invictus had eluded me. Its last two lines are immediately recognizable and often quoted, but, like many quotes, one doesn’t necessarily know where they came from. It reminds me of the apocryphal individual who wondered aloud what the big deal was about Shakespeare. After all, all he did was take a lot of famous quotes and string them together, right?

Because of the film, as I first recently read the sixteen lines of the poem, I found it powerful and meaningful. But after I found out the circumstances of the poem being written, and then reread it, the effect of the meaning multiplied. Since a subject should ideally be approached in the most meaningful manner (such as how I decided to physically approach the Peace Park in Hiroshima [2009/42]), I’ll first give the background, and only then quote the poem, with a comment or two.

It was written in 1875 by an English poet, journalist, and editor, William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). It is arguably the most famous thing he wrote. He’d had a teacher at school who was a poet, and he inspired Henley’s interest in poetry; Henley kept up with the teacher for the rest of his life.

There was however a defining crisis in Henley’s life. From the age of 12 on, he suffered from tuberculosis of the bone, and in his upper teenage years in the late 1860’s, his left leg had to be amputated below the knee. Illness also often kept him from school, as did his widowed father’s business misfortunes. He tried to establish himself as a journalist and editor, but still spent long periods in the hospital because his right foot also became diseased. Amputation was again proposed to save his life, but instead he was determined to find another solution. Three years of hospital treatments in his mid-twenties (1873-1875), although he was not cured, gave him some three more decades of a relatively active life. Still, he did die relatively young, at the age of 53.

[Another tragedy in his life was the death of his sickly daughter Margaret at age five. As it turns out, Henley was acquainted with J.M. Barrie, who immortalized Margaret as Wendy in Peter Pan.]

He wrote the poem from his hospital bed at age 26 in 1875. He first published it in his Book of Verses in 1888, but it was untitled. The title Invictus was added in 1900 by the editor of the Oxford Book of English Verse when he included the poem.

Now read the poem (or reread if you’re already familiar with it), but with the added knowledge of the circumstances of its being written. Keep in mind that he’d already lost his lower left leg as a teenager. He wrote this in his mid-twenties at the point of having to make a life decision about his other foot.

The whole poem, and certainly the famous and oft-quoted last two lines, take on additional significance knowing Henley’s background. It’s a passionate and defiant call for self-reliance and resilience in the face of adversity. It is said that Mandela did use it for self-motivation while in prison (Freeman reads the last four lines aloud in a voiceover in the film), but whether it or the Roosevelt speech was more appropriate for the rugby situation in the film remains to be seen. Given difficult circumstances, The Man in the Arena encourages one to do one’s best; one doesn’t know if one will succeed until one tries. Invictus, on the other hand, warns one not to be trampled by circumstance. The former is incitement to willingly go forth against life’s difficulties; the latter expresses determination to fight back from within against forces from without. The former says “attack”; the latter says “don’t let yourself BE attacked”. The messages are slightly different, but both are valid and well-taken.

The imagery is quite clear throughout, but some archaic (and poetic) words cause trouble. When I saw the word “strait”, my first impulse was that it was a misspelling of “straight”, but that meaning of “unbent” didn’t make sense. Further checking revealed an interesting variation of usage. The noun “strait” meaning a narrow place, such as at Gibraltar, can archaically also be used as an adjective, and still meaning “narrow”, so “how strait the gate” means no matter “how narrow the door/passageway”, it should not be an impediment.

I’ve only known “fell” to be used in the expression “in one fell swoop”, which I always thought described something happening “in one swift movement”. But “swift” didn’t make sense in the poem, so more delving was needed. It turns out that “fell” means “violent” (who knew???), so that “in one fell swoop” means “in one violent movement”, or perhaps, as a compromise, “in one violently swift movement”. So being “in the fell clutch of circumstance” is being “in the violent grip of circumstance”, which does reflect Henley’s experience.

Why did Henley use two archaic words? You could argue that archaic (“poetic”) words add flavor. Perhaps. But I’d argue simple mechanics. In each of the two lines, he only needed a one-syllable word, hence “strait” and “fell”, not several as in “narrow” and “violent”. As Freud is supposed to have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Finally, we get to the title that was added on to Henley’s poem, Invictus, which is hugely appropriate. It’s a Latin word that I would say best corresponds to “Unconquered” (although you could also use “Unvanquished”). But we can dig as well into the center of inVICTus and find –VICT-, which also appears in VICTorious, so the word warns against letting life’s travails be victorious over you. But even better, it also appears in VICTim. Although “Unconquered” is the best translation of the title, the warning is still: Be Not a Victim.

I would assume the fireworks around Taipei 101 in Taiwan saluting 2010 will again be spectacular tonight. Happy New Year.