Radical About Face: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the General

I want to see a general in the White House. For a woman born and bred in Berkeley, a leading community in any anti-war movement, this urge should generate an identity crisis. But it doesn’t. That disorientation has already occurred. In seeking the presidency, former Supreme Allied Commander Wesley K. Clark fused my conflicted self and brought me back to Democratic ground.

The general and I have a lot in common. Now living in Istanbul, the Turkish site of four recent terrorist bombings, and a former ground zero resident with a view of New York’s smoking pile, my world is a war zone. Instead of activist or escapist pursuits, I choose geopolitical chess.

After September 11 I worried I was turning into a Republican, practically an out-of-body experience. Longtime leftist friends marched in the streets while I was glued to the couch, waiting for the latest Osama tape on Fox.

I was already apolitical, having come unmoored from the leftwing in my twenties, when superficies concerned me most. Ineffectual packaging and delivery of a message, a typical province of radicals, seemed the ultimate self-indulgence and more about making statements than differences.

But then I saw myself acting like someone else. I was displaying the flag in my New York apartment window, on my lapel, and in the car, without a hint of irony and much emotion. Brandishing the flag was a homecoming after a lifetime of being an outsider. There was a time when I felt I couldn’t even buy one.

At a 1975 church rummage sale, my sister and I coveted a star-spangled banner as a bedspread, but the elderly seller chastised our disrespect. I was better educated about icons of Communist China than emblems of the nation, my progressive school abandoning the pledge of allegiance that year for an alternative morning ritual: calisthenics to a scratchy Chairman Mao record.

Most people can’t go home again, but I can’t even visit. My bohemian parents no longer recognize my political identity as an offshoot of their own. One Berkeley notion I’ve sloughed, illustrated by NATO generals at my wedding (groom’s side) is that the military is solely negative.

My Northern Californian childhood was steeped in a fundamental enmity for the armed forces, sinister wing of an objectionable government. Instead of tying yellow ribbons around gnarled oaks, neighbors papered telephone poles to get the U.S. out of Latin America. When my rebellious younger sister requested an Air Force brochure, the corruptive material was confiscated directly from the postman.

However alien in our mailbox and out on the scruffy streets, the service was familiar to me. Counter to Berkeley counterculture, and owing to my father’s drafted acquaintance with Army discipline, I was raised in a spit and shine household. Excellence was the only option, elbow grease the lone method, hierarchy unimpeachable, and punishment swift. Ever grunts, my sisters and I scrubbed bathroom grout with toothbrushes and grew steely with push-ups when afoul of regulations, while good report cards and judo promotions netted weekend passes for R’n’R sleepovers at friends’ houses. I trained seventeen years in boot camp, I discovered in college.  A first year West Point cadet described the climate he was expected to endure at the elite academy. “They take away basic rights and give them back as privileges,” he whined, trying to impress me.

That particular West Pointer failed to stir me, but crisp four star General Clark has. On television after 9/11, Clark anchored my attention with his magnetic and commanding presence, and drew me to his reasoned and reasonable commentary about Iraq, the war on terror, and the importance of the U.N. and NATO.  Later, the grassroots draft of the worldly and diplomatic warrior stoked hopes for a better world.  Eighty year old Midwestern veterans called the general back to duty, West Coast thirtysomethings pledged unemployment checks, and Europeans ineligible to vote declared “the world needs you”.  In announcing his Democratic candidacy, the brilliant strategist and Rhodes Scholar restored my place in that party. I recognize my complicated self in the Democrat he defines, a patriot forged from diverse life experiences and high-stakes demands of our time. Clark’s erudite defense of our Constitution reverberates in my idealistic Berkeley heart.

With the general in the White House, America is my home.

In a brainy, principled, comprehensive Clark world I’m not a traitor because I performed calisthenics to Chairman Mao, and intense athletic and academic achievements made me the stalwart character I am today. Clark’s well-delivered presentation of important issues is standard.

A liberal in conservative uniform, a peace-lover who knows how and when to prosecute a successful war, a thinking man of action whose own self-respect is a pleasure to esteem, Clark is where I’ve been headed my whole life.

Taming Health With A Holistic Healer

Until recently, health has seemed a lot like a roller coaster. When I feel well, it is easy to make supportive choices. I can treat myself gently, taking life’s turns without losing balance, fielding the track ahead with broccoli and brown rice, yoga and warm baths. But times of extreme stress or sudden ill-health become a scary carnival ride. I lose my composure, and my wholesome route swiftly plunges into chocolate and white flour, inactivity and anger. Tense and fueled with irritants, the turns come too fast to prepare. I am reactive. From such discombobulated depths, the future and everything it holds seems to be an uphill challenge.

Until recently. As a resident of New York City’s Ground Zero, in the weeks and months after the 2001 attacks, I swooped to new lows. A vivacious summer newlywed of 36, by winter I was fifteen pounds heavier; plagued by back pain; my vision clouded with conjunctivitis; and clinically depressed. To get back on the path to health, I needed professional nurturing. Determined to address why my actions become a health liability in bad times, I contacted holistic nutritionist Janet Walker, a member of the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.

Enrolling in Janet’s six month personalized healing program I embarked on a subtle and cumulative journey toward balance. Switching from the freewheeling carnival ride I was on to a more thoughtful approach, the six months were punctuated by struggles with my weight and food choices, lessons in primary and secondary nutrition, and revelations about my chances for sustaining health.

A graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City which integrates Eastern and Western health systems, Janet’s program adhered to the school’s tenets of no rules and no dogma. We set out to find what worked for me. Although we aimed to strike a balance between carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, protein and fats, and focused on adding beneficial foods while minimizing less desirable ones, we acknowledged that food was just a small part of how I nourish myself.

Food, the nutritionist told me, is secondary.

Primary nutrition is that which feeds the soul. We determined that my lust for life required a diet of focusing on the writing career I care about; prioritizing the people and things I love; and cherishing the time and effort it takes to relax and recharge my fiery disposition.

Meeting twice a month for an hour-long evaluation, we inventoried my nutritional choices, mood and energy levels, weight and digestive function. I repeatedly complained about my sugar addiction, so we analyzed what sugar has meant to me since childhood to identify the chain reaction its use and abuse causes. Janet promoted a compassionate approach to the ingrained behavior, explaining that my body physically needed it, and it was okay to select it. By brutalizing myself with guilt at eating sugar, I was making the ingestion of it poisonous.

But my healer also provided food suggestions to squelch sugar cravings, like root vegetables and whole grains, and maple syrup in a pinch. To detoxify and tone the liver after a meat-laden diet, she prescribed astringent greens like dandelion and warm lemon water every morning. When my digestion was upset by the changing diet, she offered white rice to settle my stomach and biotic supplements like acidophilus. Her gift of The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner augmented my understanding of relationships between food, mood and cravings.

We explored manifestations of my health in my work and my relationships and my presentation, with interconnections becoming apparent. I began to lighten my intensity by stripping the black dye out of my hair, which resulted in a more natural look according with my desire to be naturally healthy. I recognized a link between a congested relationship with my mother and certain writing pieces too leaden to take flight. We pinpointed troubles with time and people management and brainstormed healthful ways to calm me (yogic breathing), perk me up (green tea in the afternoons), and help me focus (eliminating external distractions like TV and telephones).

After meeting Janet, I indulged my renewed enthusiasm for health by visiting a natural food store and stocking up on whole grains like quinoa and millet and buckwheat, which I slowly inserted into a diet completely lacking them during months on the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet. I roasted and cooked the grains in quantities large enough to serve several times in the coming days.

The lessons of the holistic program slowly seeped into my life and the one I share with my Turkish husband. One day he announced that he might eat brown rice if I could find brown basmati, a surprise after his earlier resistance to the hardy grain. We’ve been preparing less red meat and more fish by making special arrangements to get to local seafood markets. I walk as much as possible and have started practicing yoga again, although I still need more exercise. I’ve also instituted a new habit of meeting a friend at a greenmarket every week rather than socializing at a restaurant where I don’t want to eat in order to see her. This friend, an expectant mother, told me she feels very well cared for by me. The compliment resonated. I desire to be happily of comfort to friends and relatives in need. To succeed illustrates that I feel whole enough to share.

These days I’m not a runaway amusement park train headed toward the candy aisle at the grocery store as if I have no choice in the matter. Physical ailments and weight have improved, and optimum fitness no longer seems a steep uphill climb. Mood swings and energy levels have been regulated. When life throws me an unexpected curve, I know what my options are, and in lovingly choosing, I know I can take care of myself.

In the final analysis, my major struggle during the program was also the biggest lesson and the ultimate revelation. I want to be healthy but intentions must be complemented by mindfulness. The more choices I make to treat myself with care and respect, the better chance I have of staying on my chosen track. Living life from a place of less confusion, now I start the day by making one good decision and following it with another.

Turner, Kristina. The Self-Healing Cookbook: A Macrobiotic Primer for Healing Body, Mind and Moods with Whole, Natural Foods. Earthtones Press. 2002. Northrup, Christiane. Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing. Bantam Books. 1998. Payne, Niravi and Richardson, Brenda Lane. The Whole Person Fertility Program: A Revolutionary Mind-Body Process to Help You Conceive. Three Rivers Press. 1997. Workman, Jennifer. Stop Your Cravings: A Balanced Approach to Burning Fat, Increasing Energy, and Reducing Stress. Free Press. 2001. Lad, Vasant. Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing. Lotus Press. 1984.

Institute for Integrative Nutrition, www.integrativenutrition.com, 212-730-5433 Janet Walker, Certified Holistic Health Counselor, www.innergrain.com, 718-768-1721 American Association of Drugless Practitioners, www.aadp.net, 903-843-6401.

This appeared in a variety of publications.

Rhapsody In Red: New York's Meatpacking District

Morning comes fast and filthy in the meatpacking district.

“No one beats our meat,” leers the cheeky hand-lettered tagline on a local butchery truck.

It's parked on the reeking edge of 1980s New York civilization, waiting for the goods under cover of predawn murk.

A lightening sky reveals new atrocities, like the cobble stoned gutters of Gansevoort Street where chicken feathers float gracefully on chartreuse anti-freeze.

At the corner of Little West Twelfth, a chunky, sueded ham-bone is jostled from an overloaded Dumpster!

Whispers and grunts.

Local loft residents commuting to art school, publishing work, the fashion biz avert eyes as transvestite prostitutes and teenage runaways service seedy clientele between refrigerated 6-wheelers.

From vans emblazoned with waving Porky Pig counterfeits, gutted hogs bled grey swing in suspended unison on rails toward the cinderblock Pork-and-Pack plant. That’s all for these folks.

Late morning, leather-clad bikers stumble out of Jay’s BDSM bar at Hudson and 14th, blinded, sated, heading home.

Noon.

The end of workday whistle blows and meat packers emerge, steel-stomached servants of a carnivorous society, from chilled caverns through dense polyvinyl climate-control curtains.

Brutal job well-done, in blood-stained lab coats and heavy rubber boots they stroll down the sunny avenue, pockets full of fifths.

+++ This appeared in Versal, an international literary magazine published in Amsterdam

The Boys Next Door

As beleaguered Iraq continues to list, lawless and malfunctioning under ineffective American leadership, I am reminded of a prophetic evening before the war, a dinner of fortune telling and historic premonition, when the guests could not yet envision a positive post-Saddam Iraq, and an Ottoman imperial setting supported the chaos theory. It was a warm autumn night in Istanbul 2002 and I was dining with my Turkish in-laws and some friends, members of Turkey’s military elite.  We sat at water’s edge in the shadow of Feriye, a nineteenth century Ottoman palace now transformed into an elegant restaurant. Over platters of grilled grouper and plates of garlicky eggplant, familiar jocularity soon devolved into graver matters, the geopolitical concerns of soldiers: succession in bordering Iraq.

“There is no clear replacement for Saddam,” declared General Çevik Bir, large palm striking linen. Vigorous and handsome, the sixty-three year old retiree paused dramatically. Candles flickered in the breeze, the black Bosporus lapped at ancient stone embankments. And we, family and friends, waited, forks poised.

The general knows the pandemonium of a power vacuum. Rising to world prominence in 1993, he commanded the United Nations peacekeeping force in Somalia during the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident. He is also one of Turkey’s most engaging dignitaries.

“No one can go in there before the leadership problem is solved.”

Up went a chorus of supportive murmurs. “So right, paşa,” chimed well-wishers who’d gathered behind our chairs, waiters and chefs and other diners charmed by the celebrity of prominent soldiers. Since its founding in 1923, in the democratic, Western-oriented but Muslim republic, the military is especially revered as guardian of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular philosophy.

Bir lifted to his lips a tall glass of milky rakı, the national anise liquor, signaling he relinquished the floor. The crowd, including Istanbul’s chief of police Hassan Özdemir who had drifted over from the next table, returned to their respective dinner parties and kitchen duties.

A wiry guest with dark eyebrows seized his opportunity.  Leaning forward in a roomy navy suit, General Neçdet Timur, former chief of staff of the Turkish army, countered that stabilizing Iraq demands more than locating an appropriate leader, it requires a government palatable to the region. “Arab nations won’t support a new war,” predicted the soft-spoken Timur, in Turkish. Another guest, an elegant woman wrapped in a beige shawl, translated for me.

“Even if the U.N. institutes a democracy, he says, it will be poorly received by those who lack that kind of culture,” she whispered to me as the small man concluded, folding his hands in his lap as pristine waiters swept the table of fish-bones and lemon wedges.

Intrepid civilian from the U.S., drunk on the geopolitical experience at the table, I tried my hand in the debate before considering its strength. “What about that fellow from the Iraqi National Congress – you know, the one exiled in America?” As I interjected, I realized my failure to even remember Ahmed Chalabi’s name signaled that my words did not demand serious attention from the military men. The clueless question hung in the air while the generals turned in their chairs and scanned the terrace for servers with trays of plump figs and oozing, flaky baklava. They had grown bored with the circuitous and intractable issue, one they had undoubtedly pondered many times before.

Sometimes generals just want to have dessert.

These particular retirees have other more satisfying outlets for discussion than dinner with uninformed civilians like me. Alongside fellow generals, admirals, ambassadors and university intellectuals, both men contribute geopolitical and military analysis to National Strategy, the Turkish defense magazine where Bir is managing director.

As a sliver of moon rose above the colonnaded palace the woman in the beige shawl once again came to my rescue, introducing a different subject: the history of the palace.  In the very rooms our dinner was prepared, she explained, in 1876 a disastrous sultan committed suicide after being deposed by reformers known the Young Turks.  I had actually heard of the Young Turks, and was quick to tell her so. Encouraged, my feminine companion glanced around the table for other contributions but no one was listening. The generals had reverted to trading jokes with a new visitor, the stylish Vedat Başaran, Feriye’s chef and general manager, a man dedicated to reviving the glories of Ottoman cuisine.

“With no fitting successor, the empire suffered what we call the year of the three sultans,” my impromptu historian explained, describing a spiraling year of unsuitable and decadent leaders, all quickly replaced.  Her tale trailed off as Turkish kahve was served in tiny cups painted gold with tulips. Thick black coffee was too strong for me to drink at that late hour, but there was no refusing tradition.

When I urged her to finish her story, she pressed on, irony beginning to dawn. She had not succeeded in changing the subject.

“Finally, a liberal sultan was enthroned, and he swore to make a constitution,” she wrapped up tidily, drained her coffee and flipped the cup onto its saucer. Not yet tired of prophecy, one of the generals had offered to interpret our fortunes from muddy grounds.

Later that night, amped on caffeine as expected, I couldn’t sleep.  A quick peek at the Ottoman history books revealed that progressive Sultan Abdul Hamit II -- the broadminded ruler who swore to improve the welfare of the people -- soon reneged on his promise, over-burdened by the task. There was simply too much work to do.

These days it often seems that there is too much work to do in Iraq, from restoring basic utilities to protecting the populace and the economy. But if the generals’ theory and history’s warning that night in Istanbul offer any insight, Iraq is suffering the initial power vacuum of a poorly-planned reformation attempt. Call it “Iraq’s year of the three sultans”.  A time of confusion, danger and spiraling ineptitude, the substitutions certainly are underway in Baghdad as U.S.-appointed interim administrator L. Paul Bremer III swiftly replaced General Jay Garner and local councils emerge, corrupt and disband. Perhaps by this spring a promising new Iraqi leader will be installed, one who will swear to make the necessary changes.  For the sake of his fortune, he better be a student of history.

++ This appeared in The Drexel Online Journal, September 22, 2003.

Master Of The Road Takes A New (GPS) Mistress

Most of the time my husband and I work as a complementary team. He trusts my research skills and intuition to invest money and choose gifts for his mother; I defer to his computational and engineering strengths with taxes and misbehaving electronics.

At home in New York City, we face each other at the dining table on twin computers, and in the kitchen, one cooks while the other tackles cleanup.

But when my husband commands the steering wheel of an automobile, suddenly he thinks he can do without me.

"Turn right, honey," I plead, as we pass a landmark in rural New York State for the third time.

"I think that's the way to the bridge," I say, wistfully pointing out the window as our car rumbles straight through the intersection.

The crinkled map in my lap may offer no clue which gray squiggle represents this wooded country road, but I still think we should have turned right. Call it feminine instinct.

The man of my life is not listening. Nor is he watching the road. Instead, he's enamored with a new woman in the car. One hand on the wheel, the other is fondling a small Global Positioning System (GPS) unit mounted to the dashboard, the NeverLost Magellan.

Soon a breathy, female voice intones, "Calculating route. Make a legal U-turn."

My computer-scientist husband swiftly complies, checking his mirrors as if the mechanized woman in the dash can appreciate his rigorous driving etiquette. Chafed, I realize he prefers feminine instinct packaged in a high-tech gadget worthy of James Bond.

"Approaching left turn in one mile," the disembodied lady voice continues.

It's the turn I suggested, but now my husband is convinced. Our car has located the GPS satellites, computed our location, and placed us on the grid. It's all very scientific. My man is bewitched by the small guidance screen highlighting our route in pink. When the car reaches the turn the machine makes the cloying sound of a 1950s doorbell.

Noticing my sour expression, he attempts to lighten my opinion of the device, enthusing over the instrument's slew of advantages: we can clock our time to destination, check our maneuver list, magnify the map. We can locate Chinese restaurants in the region and view the next five exits. And then to add insult to injury, he points out that we can receive all this instruction in seven languages, including French, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese.

But, relieved of my navigating duties and with nothing else to do, I fume. Arms crossed, staring straight ahead, I think, "How galling to be sexy and precise in seven languages!"

For all I care, she and my husband can both get lost. I am jealous of a travel gadget.

"Enjoy the sunset," he finally suggests, sighing, as we approach New York City, master of the road saddled with a crotchety old mistress in the shotgun position.

Then tragedy strikes the happy couple. Hoping to avoid thousands of vehicles entering Manhattan, my husband discovers he cannot suitably query the on-board guidance computer.

The James Bond woman is lacking in dimension and limits him to simple options.

"Shortest Time," "Most Use of Freeways," and "Least Use of Freeways." The expensive little machine fails to factor the rush-hour time of night and the circuitous route we normally prefer to avoid the bottleneck.

Following the robotic navigator's strategy, soon we are mired in traffic near a bridge we wanted to bypass, and then end up in a tangle of New Jersey roadways before office buildings disrupt our signal and erase the on-screen map.

My husband begins to lose his composure.

He's fidgeting with the machine even though the device clearly states when rebooting that "Driver should not program while driving."

This must be the first time he has defied the dame in the dash.

Me, I'm enjoying the dusk as instructed.

We merge into an eight-lane highway heading west to California. An obvious mistake. Springing back to life, the computer offers a solution that seems easy but is impossible to execute among the dense traffic and poorly lit roads. Overloaded tractor trailers blast their horns as our car swerves uncertainly.

"What should I do?" my husband finally wonders aloud.

"Go south, we'll figure it out, sweetie."

The metropolis of Manhattan looms; I am positive we can't miss it.

But the inflexible device contradicts me, insisting in its firm and vaguely accented way, "Proceed to highlighted route!"

My husband, looking more like the man I married, reaches over and shuts off the misleading NeverLost. Seductive voice silenced, the screen goes dark. But as the city lights rise before us, I can still see the ghostly trace of her suggested itinerary.

++++

This appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, August 21, 2003 and in The Thong Also Rises anthology

You Are What You Wear

Warmer weather is a welcome flowery relief in most places.  Except in my office -- since sunny days invite sproutings of a particularly chauvinistic variety from a male coworker, making me yearn for the winds of fall.  Scattering opinions on female attire like grass cuttings as he mows his way through the office, this season my colleague has grown buggy about skorts, the hybrid skirt-shorts with a sarong-like flap glimpsed everywhere from suburban tennis courts to big city streets. "They're false advertising, an affront to men," I hear him exclaiming indignantly to staffers he’s ambushed in the lunch room, down by the water cooler, in the next cubicle. "First I'm impressed by a woman in a sexy skirt,” he backtracks to the source of his apparel allergy, sounding rational if not exactly evolved.  “But when she turns around, she's wearing a pair of utilitarian shorts. She could be on her way to do the laundry."  Then, to his retreating audience he thunders his dark conclusion that skort wearers mix signals. “Skorts could lead to miscommunication between the sexes!”

The sentiment hangs in the air like a storm cloud and when he finally drifts off to compile some new sales figures it descends upon me in a rain of mirthful day dreams. I begin to envision this highly-strung he-man spotting a leggy woman in short skirt.  Buzzing after her he suddenly realizes her outfit is a duplicitous skort.  Costume disillusioned, he cries, "No wait, there's a seam!"

Don’t get me wrong, I am not completely unmoved by his pathetic plight. I can appreciate what a disappointment this hybrid garment must be to a certain segment of the population whose pulse quickens at the front view, men who assume a skirt does the full 360.  I am especially sympathetic to the dreadful flip-flops of emotion skirt chasers approaching from the rear must endure when they get a load of the front.  But I also wonder if, in the larger scheme of inter-gender relations, a skort is so cataclysmic.  Does it disorient as much as the tornado of a highly padded and gravity-defying Wonderbra whirling through the air on its way to lodging in the chandelier?   The tidal wave of a masterful makeup job liquefied and pooling on an early morning pillow?  No, the woman who wears a skort is still the very same, even if a man on the street can't determine whether she's heading to Laundromat or luncheon.

Who cares about the rear view of a skirt, anyway? It’s overrated, considering the multitude of flat-as-a-frying-pan bottoms out there and the way seat material tends to stretch and wrinkle.  At least a skort delineates a woman's derriere and keeps crisp where a skirt glosses over.   It must not be the rear view of a skirt that attracts my steamed associate but rather the idea that if he shares the company of a female in a short skirt he may be the recipient of a surprise gander.

In this regard, the skort pest is his very own pesticide. If men like my colleague weren't so absorbed with a hint of flesh or gleam of panty and then overspill their banks at the notion of a woman in a short skirt, maybe skorts wouldn't be so popular.  Women find skorts liberating precisely because of such puerile behavior. The garment’s extra coverage relieves the self-conscious vigilance of a woman in a miniskirt as she maneuvers to daintily walk, sit, bend and climb without unveiling her privates for every opportunist within eyeshot.

My corn-for-brains coworker wonders if women intend to be glamorous and sexy or functional and sporty when we don a skort.  But he is lost in the woods long before the issue of sexy or sporty mushrooms. A woman’s words and actions rarely take their meaning from a piece of fabric.

He took the wrong path when he chose to bemoan communication between the sexes.  With the amount of inauthentic paraphernalia in the feminine arsenal, skorts are hardly a prime assault on reality or communication.  The feminine propensity toward artifice doesn't nettle my critical colleague when a woman fakes nature’s bounty in a bosom, or streaks of the sun in her hair or its rays on her bronze cheeks.   Eager to accept superficies that make a woman appealing to him, he has no interest in how she manages it, nor does he while afternoons on the porch wondering what she means by it. The sticky skort, however, masks exactly what this fellow finds intriguing about a woman while revealing something much more mysterious: the beehive of complexity that exists in us all. We women expect and demand many things from a single moment of our lives while my black and white coworker prefers we keep our message to him simple. Sexy = available.  Functional = unavailable.

It seems to me that spectrum-challenged men like the skort hater have a lot more to worry about when it comes to the opposite sex than an extra seam.  Perhaps a skort’s extra seam separates the men from the boys – since it takes a seasoned man to fully appreciate a woman who employs artifice not only to be gorgeous, but comfortable too.

+++

This appeared in the Malaysian men's magazine Men's Review.

Launching Writer's Desk: A Web Tool To Organize The Writing Life

My software developer husband and I designed and built a new web-based writing tool. It was inspired by my experience as a freelance nonfiction writer. This online service provides a basic foundation for writers to get organized by recording revisions, tracking submissions, compiling market information and registering rights and income. For the past six months my husband and I have been designing and building a new web-based writer's tool. In this season of resolutions, we're happy to announce the launch of Writer's Desk, an online workspace to improve the way writers spend their time. We'd be honored if you pass the opportunity to colleagues and friends -- writers of all kinds -- who may have resolved to get organized this year.

SITUATION

Being a writer often sneaks up on a person.  Not many train for the vocation nor start with all the equipment, contacts, long view.  It's no wonder that eventually the snowball of success or dogged enthusiasm becomes an avalanche of produce - or expectation. Then buried writers inch along using outdated, poorly conceived systems to track work; repeatedly resolve to better keep writing in circulation; dream of one day expanding to new markets. SOLUTION

My computer scientist husband watched me -- a New York-based freelance writer -- function in this typical writerly way.  But unlike sympathetic others in the writing trade, he found observing me in action unbearable. So we pooled my professional nightmare with his software developing expertise to construct a website that has revolutionized the way I work and is too useful not to share with the wider writing community.

If you can operate a web browser anywhere in the world you can use this online service to simplify the logistics of being an active writer. Subscription is less than USD20 per year and while the site is optimized for the U.S. market, feedback from international users will help make it a global service.

FREE SUBSCRIPTION

Register for a thirty day free trial at www.writers-desk.com to judge if Writer's Desk improves your current method to:

• Track writing objectives and submissions
• Compile editorial guidelines and publishing contacts
• Register rights granted, income earned
• Trace the development and history of work - and more!

+++

We just opened it to the public as a subscription service.  You can find the creative and business workspace at  www.writers-desk.com

Writers use tools to *write* and tools to *sell the work*.  Writer's Desk is a bit of a cross between the two since it helps a writer envision her portfolio, both published and unpublished; encourages hierarchical thinking about projects and other writing ideas in order to more deeply develop material; offers a place to consolidate market contact information and notes; and helps track submissions, rights and income.

I can upload documents to the web service for retrieval on the fly -- and open and update my account from any computer with Internet access. So for me, logging on to Writer's Desk every day affords a quick overview of what I've done, what I must do today, what I plan to do and what I hope to do.

+++

A superb and versatile tool to manage song submissions and grant applications.

-- songwriter, Seattle, WA

Smart use of web technology. Finally I'm not tethered to my laptop.

-- journalist, New York, NY

Perfect for disorganized writers. Especially helps follow up with editors and agents!

-- novelist, Lawrence, KS

Portfolio overview is priceless. Great to develop new ideas, exploit material.

-- essayist, Des Moines, IA

Suits my purposes: developing scripts, tracking festival submissions.

-- screenwriter and director, San Francisco, CA

An Egg Salad Sandwich On The Red Line

A high school friend from California came to visit me the summer I graduated from college, back in 1986. We had been close out West, but suddenly it seemed my young friend was undirected in life, lost. I realized I didn't know what to do with her. She had put on some weight since I'd last seen her, and now she looked Hawaiian with her tanned skin and her flowered shirts. Shacked up in my six-floor walkup on Houston Street, she would lie in bed all day when I was at work, resting up for our nights out on the town, answering the telephone and taking incomplete messages. She had mentioned that it would be great if I could get her a job.

Trying to show her the ropes, but none too thrilled at the prospect of being saddled with her indefinitely, one day we headed uptown to a party. I didn't know how I would dissuade her from moving to New York on a depressed whim. Then the city provided the impetus.

It was hot on the train, one of those older red ones with the patchy linoleum flooring that slightly caved in when you stepped on a worn area. The car was half full, people sitting in their bubbled spaces, not looking at each other. But it was hard not to look at the one person standing by the middle door, holding onto the pole with one hand, and an egg salad sandwich with the other. He must have been 400 pounds. Shaped like Humpty Dumpty, his bulk was topped with a blue baseball cap, his pale face darkened with new beard growth. His brown eyes rolled upward as he took a bite.

Then without warning, he vomited. An arc of egg salad projected from him at least three feet into the center of the car. The amount he vomited must have totaled ten egg salad sandwiches, slop spreading in a diameter of three feet. It was a once in a lifetime event. My California friend blinked at him, her mouth opening in shock. The hardened New Yorkers on the train silently and swiftly got up from their seats and exited at the ends of the cars. No one looked back.

Then the man then took another bite of his sandwich and a gurgling noise escaped from my friend. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into another car.

The next day she apparently made arrangements to fly home, while I was at work, and when she left she didn't look back.

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This appeared in Jacquelin Cangro's The Subway Chronicles website and The Subway Chronicles anthology published in 2006 by Penguin

Figurehead Travel Model For The Sharing Economy

Acknowledging a tendency for certain students to be natural leaders in their social circles, Kerim Baran, principal of a figurehead travel service based in San Francisco, invites magnetic personalities to serve as unencumbered trip leaders while their classmates cement social and professional bonds in style.

“Imagine jetting off to an exotic locale with your favorite college crowd,” says Baran. “Without the buzz-killing responsibility of being in charge.”

Inspired by his own social travel peaks while in the academy, this Harvard MBA offers a short-cut to quality group travel in Turkey and beyond, absorbing intensive logistics and tailoring trips to culturally curious, active collegiates.

In its maiden season this past summer, Baran chartered Istanbul nightclub hopping and Aegean yachting tours for several assemblies of Harvard students.

Staging my destination wedding in Turkey last year was a first-hand lesson in the immense energy investment -- and memorable profit -- of group travel. Through social connections I have become acquainted with Mr. Baran and his travel philosophy.

I see it as a way to maximize college holidays: students with less cash to drop than shoulders to rub can benefit from the economy of scale offered by this new form of group trip. The figurehead model.

Invite To Beta Test A New Writer's Tool

As a writing friend or associate of mine, I’d like to cordially invite you to beta-test WRITER’S DESK.  This new web-based writer's tool was designed by my computer scientist husband after unbearably observing me in action. Too useful not to share, we soon plan to launch it as an online subscription service.  If you can operate a web browser, you can use this database software intended to simplify the logistics of being an active writer. An online centralized place to store and manage information to maximize your writing potential, WRITER’S DESK can help you:

TRACK SUBMISSIONS AND MONITOR PROGRESS

• Identify publications and presses where your work is currently under consideration
• Display a history of your submissions to a specific outlet
• Distinguish agents and editors you’ve followed up with and their reactions
• Map the exposure of different incarnations of your work
• Register the rights granted and income earned on each project

DEVELOP YOUR WRITING GOALS

• Brainstorm overarching project ideas
• Pinpoint specific directions to go with your material
• Note thematic patterns in your publication history to strengthen your portfolio or phase-out beats of little interest
• Log unpublished or unused material and make plans to capitalize on it
• Chart a publication path to your dream gigs

ORGANIZE YOUR RESOURCES

• Plan well-received approaches based on editorial and submission guidelines of your target presses, publications, and editors
• Compile, annotate and manage a database of publishing world contacts
• Upload document files for access on the fly
• Search your projects and files by keyword or word count

HOW TO BE A BETA TESTER

The beta test starts in October. During the test period, use the tool to its fullest extent to evaluate how it works for you. While using and in an exit questionnaire, share your impressions about any and all aspects of the tool.  (If you lack sufficient time or motivation right now, but want to be kept abreast of WRITER’S DESK developments, let me know by email before October 1.  I will be happy to notify you when we launch so you can enjoy the software at your own pace.)

In exchange for your active participation as a beta tester, I am pleased to offer the online service free for a year, with significantly discounted membership thereafter. A considerable additional benefit of being a beta tester is that later versions -- customized with your valuable feedback – may align not only with the way you truly work, but how you have always dreamed of working.

Interested beta testers, please email me by Tuesday, October 1 and let me know what computer system and version of IE or Netscape you plan to use.  Soon you will receive a detailed email with a link to the tool and the start date of the test.

Thank you for taking a moment to consider assessing WRITER’S DESK beta version, I appreciate it!

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Welcome to the WRITER’S DESK beta test.  Thank you for trying this new web service, your enthusiasm and sense of adventure are appreciated!  Here are further details of the test -- which begins today -- and a link to the tool.

CONTROLLED BETA

The test you are about to participate in is a controlled beta test, which means that it is not open to users beyond those who are initially invited. Any new accounts registered after the beta group has enrolled will be blocked.  Others will be able to try the system for free when we launch.

However, feel free to refer associates who might be interested in trying WRITER’S DESK in an expanded test.

SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS

Since this is a beta, we will regularly update the site, incorporating fixes and changes based on the results of testing and your feedback. An update takes about five minutes, but for now we ask you not use the site between 11:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. nightly.  If or when the schedule changes, you will be notified by email.  We will also alert you to longer updates.

SAFEGUARD DATA

Like all beta versions, the WRITER’S DESK software you are about to use is potentially unstable. While no data has been lost during development and alpha, we recommend you safeguard the information you enter in the tool by printing it out.  Also make sure you keep a copy of any documents you upload from your personal computer. The database will be backed up daily and transferred to a remote machine, but not the documents you have uploaded.

CONFIDENTIALITY

By participating in this beta you agree that you will refrain from sharing details -- large and small -- about WRITER’S DESK with anyone from the start of the beta period until we publicly announce launch of the service. We apologize if this goes against your communal grain. When we launch we would be more than happy if you mention the web tool to others!

BEING A TESTER

During the beta period, use the tool as often as you can and to its fullest extent to best evaluate how it functions for you. But also test its limits: don’t fill in every field or only partially fill a field.  Enter what you think might be bad data and see how the system reacts. DO ODD THINGS! If all goes as planned, you will know when the system fails when you end up on an error page, on which the path of the page that generated the error will be displayed.  But any other odd behavior should be reported. Let us know what happens to you, and while you work, share what you’re thinking by jotting observations and questions in the feedback form.  Which sections seem gratuitous, which are vital, what is missing?

EXIT QUESTIONNAIRE

When the beta ends, in an exit survey we will solicit your opinion on possible new features, based on our own plans for developing the service, and your feedback while testing it.

GET STARTED

Proceed to http://www.writers-desk.com. Register. Preview the Getting Started page, and you’re on your way!

We look forward to hearing what you think of WRITER’S DESK and thank you for your time.

Down Past Chinatown

"goeasylady" advises an obstacle gawker elbows outas resident struggles past bag-laden from far-off shops on my door knob hangs menu of local vendor "here to assist you" chirps ad listing scenes it cleans: crime trauma accident death looking forward to winter months in my cocoon now not so sure but rent reduced may help me save deep sleep will draw me inward and black velvet drapes with matching mossgreen tassels -- plus earplugs - make luxe this bright ground zero bedroom dusted windows a relief

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This extended haiku (called a tanka) about living in Ground Zero after 9/11 appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, September 2002.

Swing's The Thing

Calling all hepcats and righteous chicks! It’s time to jump, jive an’ wail: swing is in the air. That’s new millennial swing, a bracing rediscovery of America’s original art form – jazz music and dance. This retro movement is currently red-hot in frolic pads coast to coast to coast: from New York’s historic Webster Hall to the stylish Derby in Los Angeles, to the ultimate international swing mecca of Herrang, Sweden. Equal parts spirited partner-dancing, infectious live music, and suave vintage threads, the upbeat scene is fast becoming a turn-of-the-millennium pastime of choice.

The swing revival seems a lot like a time warp: on stage a zoot-suited bandleader reminiscent of flamboyant Cab Calloway prances in front of his honkin’ horn section waving a conductor’s baton, his watch chain drooping stylishly to the floor. On the dance floor exhilarated couples leap and shimmy, combining moves their grandparents once loved with the death-defying aerobatics of '90s extreme sports – maneuvers picturesquely dubbed Suicide Dip, Helicopter and Mop the Floor. Meanwhile over at the bar sweaty hoofers take refreshment, the women in upswept hairdos and billowy skirts, the men in fedoras, two-toned "Spectator" shoes and baggy pants held aloft with suspenders. Rounding out the fantasy cast of characters are ‘40s enlisted men in uniform joined by pin-up girls in seamed stockings; and ‘30s gangsters in double-breasted suits, their pin-curled, smoky-eyed molls in speakeasy finery. But this is no time warp: on closer inspection, the crowd sports pierced noses and tattoos, rainbow-dyed hair, mobile phones and digital watches. The music isn't strictly swing either, with rockabilly guitar licks and a drummer doing more than keeping tempo. When the band strikes up a particularly hoppin' jive, rested rugcutters scope for honey partners and quickly disappear into the roiling mass of limbs and hair and skirts and smiles.

Social, optimistic and tactile, swing is the new singles scene. The emphasis on manners, style and distinct gender roles make it the perfect antidote to decades of macho Rock, New Wave gender-bending and slovenly Grunge. However, pressure is high for would-be jitterbugs who need to collar those swift steppin’ moves -- or risk forever being a "Charlie", that is, a man who can’t dance. Lady newcomers on the other hand often find a willing tutor nearby or take advantage of each venue's complimentary professional lessons. Yet even the best instruction may not cure what ails swing’s dreaded "bunters": no sense of rhythm!

Swing is incredibly versatile, encompassing more than thirty cross-pollinated dance styles for every ability and musical taste. If the tricky rotating 8-count of the Lindy Hop and the fast 6-count of East Coast Swing prove too overwhelming, there’s always the bouncy, single step Jitterbug. Wallflowers do well with the Shim Sham Shimmy, a line dance performed in a group, or sultry West Coast Swing which meshes with slower country or blues music. Latin vibes best accompany Jive, while Shag steps are danced to beach music. Then there’s still the Susie-Q, Trucking, Boogie-Woogie and the Big Apple to master – and getting back to swing’s improvisational roots accomplished swingers often devise fancy footwork of their own.

The swing craze was originally sparked during the 1920s’ Golden Age of Jazz when Black Americans stomped the night away in New York City’s grand Harlem dancehalls like the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom. Jazz giants Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington entertained assemblies of thousands with the danceable, syncopated rhythms of "hot jazz”. Dexterous canaries like the legendary Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday supplied finger snappin', scattin' vocal accompaniment. All-night dance marathons where hoofers and horn-players inspired and challenged one another soon led to the creation of swing's fundamental dance, the Lindy Hop -- a flurry of complicated footwork, dizzying turns and aerial flips.

By the '30s and '40s the scene’s momentum propelled it into mainstream American culture where it was featured on radio, phonograph and film. Re-named “swing", its harmonic sophistication, jungle rhythms and outlandish horns dominated the social milieu: from the lowliest Southern juke joint to the swankiest Northeastern nightclub to the most quintessential Midwestern high school prom. Dictionaries were produced to keep the avid public “hep to the jive” emanating from the swing world, with volumes alone culled from inventive Cab Calloway -- the electric Harlem bandleader famous for trademark hits like “Hi De Ho” and “Minnie the Moocher”. Meanwhile, the downtown smart set enjoyed history-making swing culture on the Broadway stage, courtesy of Tin Pan Alley composers Cole “Guys and Dolls” Porter and the Gershwins. Enduring tunes like “Rhapsody in Blue”, and “Summertime” from America's first opera “Porgy and Bess” are national treasures in the swing tradition.

No matter how many classics swing spawned, the movement refused to be set in stone. During the Big Band era, clean-scrubbed bandleaders like Benny “the King of Swing” Goodman, Glenn Miller and the Dorsey brothers transformed the spicy nucleus of swing into a stately, dignified event with up to 60 musicians at a time. The dances became codified and easier for the masses to master, while wild jitterbugging, the great-granddaddy of modern slam-dancing, was decidedly frowned upon. Later when World War II economics shrank the bands in size the rowdy quotient was purposely heightened by bandleaders like Louis Jordan and Louis Prima, who pioneered boisterous jump-swing, jump-blues and jump-jive. Bim bam baby, overnight rambunctious new dances cropped up. This wartime sound, heard in the Andrews Sisters' driving “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B", laid the foundation for modern rhythm and blues, not to mention the musical epoch that ultimately eclipsed swing: rock ‘n’ roll.

Top musicianship and passionate innovation continue to characterize the latest crop of killer-diller swing bands, so it's no surprise they seamlessly incorporate a modern sensibility with a tradition dating back to the early part of the century. Fusing old jazz and contemporary rock, blues, punk, ska and rockabilly, groups with evocative names like Royal Crown Revue, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin' Daddies are adding an exciting new chapter to the saga of swing. Today's neo-swing is in the groove, complete with fiery hot attitude and slang of its own. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the band credited with catalyzing the current craze by performing in the cult film SWINGERS, describes its explosive style as "high-octane nitro jive".

Making a splash in American movies, on television and radio, and sweeping around the globe, fun and fanciful swing is on its way to becoming a popular culture of epidemic proportions. Again. Swing's the thing, Daddy-O!

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This appeared in the inflight magazine of Malaysia Airlines.

Reading Survival Of Hollywood's Fittest At Victoria Rowan's Stories On Stage

Glad to be reading my writing in this series by my writing mentor. VICTORIA C. ROWAN is proud to present:

BEYOND WORDS: STORIES ON STAGE

LIKE ART LIKE LIFE: OUR COMPLICATED POP-CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS ...

With this extraordinary talent: * Anastasia Ashman on the survival of the fittest in Hollywood

Darwin On The Red Carpet

Lights. Camera. Action! Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hollywood’s finest locale. I’m the naturalist Charles Darwin; filling in for Joan Rivers, a superlative member of the entertainment world subspecies pseudofaba emaciata, if I may classify her myself. That ultra critical chickadee really knows how to test a border: Due to a daring Botox escapade, Joan will be back on the job –- more pseudofaba than ever -- as soon as she can blink.

Until then, fellow movie star lovers and biology buffs, this is our night! We’re here on the roiling red carpet at Los Angeles’ Kodak Theatre, ready to exalt the parade of sanded, bleached and recast individuals produced in this archipelago of entertainment. I’m a devotee of Hollywood fauna.

When I set sail for these latitudes, I tell my wife I’m headed to a laboratory of evolution accelerated to the speed of a paparazzo flash!

That gets me off the hook.

Think about it folks, some of the stars we’ll see tonight are naturals, summoned from the general populace by the mighty Kliegs. Others submit to a surgeon’s knife to acquire popular characteristics.  With the original population supplanted by the natural, artificial and sexual selection of show business, we end up with the pert beaks and powerful tails of Josh Hartnett and Jennifer Lopez! Lesser forms driven to extinction, the Tinseltown population is highly plastic. Traits like plush fur, supple limbs, and perfect pitch may be profitable to any number of species, but in Hollywood, they are just the baseline.

So let the Oscar expedition begin! There, over by the potted palm. Amid a gaggle of studio executive trophy wives, all a pre-nuptial size two: Do I spot Melissa Gilbert, the little prairie marmot who frets on an infomercial couch? I beg your pardon, a walkie-talkie marks that particular crooked mouthed plain-Jane as a functionary. Possibly an usher. One-hit wonders, or what we Hollywood naturalists term stagnalis trivialis when we remember them, would be barred from such a competitive environment. But they still might try to pierce better borders.

For Hollywood creatures, it’s in the blood to quest.

I say to my wife: Emma, when entertainers struggle to become rich and famous, that’s simply their naturally amusing method of hunting for food and mates. Their exposed environment allows the rest of us to enjoy their conspicuous survival of the fittest, with the threat of extinction nipping at their heels.

Look there, by the curb! Limos are starting to disgorge tonight’s cravenly careerist Oscar contenders. Who’s that coming this way? Someone hand me an eyeglass. It’s easy to identify a translucens crema from this distance, even if I can’t name the exact individual. Leggy clones answering nature’s casting call for cream puff actresses, it could be Denise Richards, Jennifer Aniston. They have done well to mate within the translucens subspecies, since spouses Charlie Sheen and Brad Pitt increase their probability of having soap opera-ready offspring.

I cannot match Joan’s bantam-weight standard tonight. I have yet to trap one specimen while many good and distinct subspecies are slipping by in the throng! Look there, a pod of wannabe alphalisters bobs and crests, riding the pressure waves in front of a larger and more impressive creature. See how they communicate, spurred ever onward by the high-pitched whistles and whines of Sandra Bullock, Renee Zellweger and Salma Hayek!

Statuesque Nicole Kidman is parting the crowd. Tinged Moulin Rouge, she’s stepping out tonight with the Broadway colony of ziegfeld multiperformata populated by high-energy Goldie Hawn, Shirley MacLaine, Gina Gershon and Vanessa Williams.

“Equity, I got Equity,” they trill to anyone who will listen, projecting their voices effortlessly over the din.

But this Aussie interloper has also been observed making a nest, alongside her countrywoman Cate Blanchett, in the A-list aerie of megastella diadema. With her flexibility and sheen, assertive Nicole has the proper genetic predisposition of an Academy member, in this naturalist’s humble opinion. Her ability to survive on seaweed could even spell success in the steamy Galapagos, alongside the best of marine iguanas!

A ruckus is undulating through the red carpet assembly. Who on earth? Good lord, take cover! It’s the vacuum-packed optima gloria Madonna, the only one of her type. With her harsh habitat and cold-blooded pace of evolution, prospective mates are left gasping in the dust. Notice how I allow her wide berth; this reptile is known for a nasty bite.

Here comes the most versatile creature in Hollywood, Will Smith. Swinging easily from home-boy to A-list without ruffling feathers or raising hackles, rubbery Will defies classification.

These days he’s floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. He certainly has nature’s vote, and mine!

Camouflaged in what appears to be a white cobweb, I discern the outline of bodacious blonde Pamela Anderson, mincing this way on her tiny feet. Her mirror of a mate, the smirking fedora-ed Kid Rock, trails with a posse of bubble-headed rock stars, male models and pro athletes. Is it a band of inanis abdominalis, or just Pam’s preserve?  She’s coming right at us; we may be able to get a closer view. I--I think she’s going to peck me.

No, Miss Anderson, I did not steal this frock coat from Russell Crowe, thank you for inquiring! As if I would dare test that coiled lion of a man. Naughty bird!  Science has tried to elevate subdivisum fornicatum -- specimens like Anna Nicole Smith or Carmen Electra -- to a higher caste, but invariably the experiment fails. Most dancers of exotic plumage persist in behavior better suited to their original territory.

Refined refreshment advances in the always elegant Natalie Portman, radiant in royal blood-red, joined by others from the nobilis magnificus flock, actresses from the better families and with degrees from the finest institutions of higher learning.

Raven-haired Jennifer Connelly, the ink on her pedigree papers still wet, glides by with impeccably subdued princess sisters Reese Witherspoon and Sigourney Weaver, and Gywneth Paltrow. These genteel swans are the souls of Hollywood discretion, all long necks and fine features and good diction. I predict the Academy will rush to recognize Jennifer’s graceful emergence within the erudite borders of a well-esteemed but sparsely populated flock.

The presentation hour draws near and even the watering holes are abandoned. Wait, I recognize a bouncy blonde duo. The 15-year old twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are fresh from the teeming warren of juggernautis pubescens, youngsters with entertainment empires. I will carefully approach these veteran bunnies, so as not to scare them! “We have to be in bed early,” sniffs Ashley, or Mary-Kate. “Not because we’re underage, silly! A board meeting tomorrow.”

In the distance, I spy Gosford Park nominees Dame Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren flying down the promenade, leading a siege of britannicum ingenium toward the empty lobby. Thank heavens, my fellow Britons have alighted at last, they simply dominate the nominations! Dame Judi, Kate Winslet, Sirs Ben and Ian bring up the rear of this huge assemblage.

Notice how their complex visages seem to map lifetimes.

The Queen and the Academy have recognized the cogency of their expressions, but I dare say Hollywood will resist being over-run by imports in tonight’s survival of the fittest.  Even so, Sir Ian’s intimidating traits make him the strongest britannicum in contention. Towering head and shoulders above the competition, this wizened creature can conjure a terrible force of nature when denied.

It’s showtime, ladies and gentlemen. May the fur and feathers fly!

Security State of Bloomberg

Not too long ago, an invitation to lunch offered a view of New York City's future. It looks secure, and rather loose at the same time. Since a good spot to meet and eat in midtown refused to present itself during a brainstorm, a member of a news service directed a friend to pick her up at the office.

"Welcome to Bloomberg," yipped an eager young fellow in a headset, lunging at the unprepared visitor stepping over the threshold of the new mayor's eponymous media company.

The keyed up greeter was one of several customer service sentinels strategically posted along the elevator bank on the 15th floor, the main reception area of Bloomberg's Park Avenue headquarters.

These chipper sentries mark the second stage of the organization's security gauntlet, their purpose to intercept and orient non-staff arrivals. Already, in a separate lobby downstairs, a phone call had been placed to the hostess, an ID check executed, and a pre-produced pass adhered to a jacket identifying the visitor and her official Bloomberg sponsor. After passing through an electronic sensing apparatus that read the badge and displayed its contents to a security guard, it was on to the elevator, no doubt equipped with a closed-circuit camera.

At the time no notice was taken, all thoughts on lunch and upcoming chitchat.

But jolted by Harry Headset into the present, or make that the future, noshing reveries swiftly ceased.

Given the controlled Orwellian setting that stretched behind him, Harry could easily have announced, "You are now entering the State of Bloomberg."

For this Bloomberg central command is certainly a state, of mind and being, with its well-defined borders, and its distinct cult of personality.

It's a Disneyland of Mike, the internal TV station projected on monitors in the glass-walled halls with floors lit from below, and a colorful kaleidoscope illuminating an interior glass stairwell.

"Right this way, have a refreshment," the zealous one's script apparently read, with direction to propel new arrivals toward a kiosk of refrigerated drinks and bowls of fresh fruit just past the lobby's freestanding cylindrical aquarium. The short leash implication was that moving about in any other fashion is discouraged. The visitor planted herself on the couch and waited to be rescued by an in-house contact.

A young staffer flitted by in patent leather, high-heeled shoes. Not just open-toed or sling backed pumps, both marginal head office taboos, but barely-there, day-at-the-beach, boudoir thongs. Nothing professional or urban about them. Apparently the sexy thongs were appropriate footwear (along with the rumored dress code of short skirts for women) for an ironclad outfit like Bloomberg.

A visitor cannot sit on the couch too long, unclaimed and banana-in-hand. After about ten minutes the greeter reversed his warm welcome, demanding "Who are you here to see exactly?"

Pressing his headset closer to his ear, he listened to an information feed of unknown origin and import, frowning.

The employee lunch date appeared, apologizing for her lateness.

"I had to go back for my ID badge," she explained, "I can't leave the office without it."

She meant this literally, as glass doors that operate like firewalls refuse to open without sensing the thing.

This photo ID badge has an open sesame effect other places, too. Due to the big man's hefty contributions to the arts, it affords free access to museums and cultural events all over the city. But the mysterious lack of the Bloomberg LP attribution has caused problems with its use in the outside world.

"The last museum I went to, they just stared at me when I held it up as my ticket."

Conversation temporarily halted during a quick pre-lunch trip to the restroom. No visible surveillance in here. But the volume of piped-in music in bathroom was so high it precluded speaking in a natural voice to another person, which must automatically cut down on intimate discussions of the latest in brazen footwear.

Word Play: Avant-Garde Poet Brion Gysin Resurrected

"I talk a new language. You will understand," Brion Gysin said in a 1960 poem, originally spoken into a tape recorder and then replayed for a London audience at the Institute for Contemporary Arts. Meanwhile onstage, the Canadian multimedia poet silently plied a large canvas with paint. "I will make a bow to the picture between your ears," he continued in the poem, composed from a collage of texts. Credited with pioneering the "cut-up" technique, Gysin proposed to liberate words. Among those who accepted his challenge: William S. Burroughs and Laurie Anderson.

Yet after existing on the bleeding edge of innovation for 50 years—prodigiously producing visual, written, and spoken poetry alongside the best in the surrealist, bohemian, and Beat movements—Gysin's written lingo faced extinction. Now, 15 years after his death, the publication of an unprecedented anthology, Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader (Wesleyan University Press, $24.95, paper), revives his known body of literary work and showcases rare finds, like 1972's unproduced screenplay of Naked Lunch.

Arranged chronologically and annotated with a light scholarly touch by Brooklyn-based editorJason Weiss, the anthology amasses obscure pieces, historical scholarship, memoirs, songs set to music, and permutation poems, the widespread spoken recordings of which afforded Gysin a founder's rep in sound poetry. Precise mathematical rearrangement of text rather than haphazard collage, permutation poems were patterns of words liberated from their meaning, creating new meanings. Musical and relentless, the poems' influence can be heard in the repetitive compositions of Philip Glass.

To get Gysin's newly collected writing off the page and back into ebullient performance, the Poetry Project will present a late-night reading curated by 31-year-old multimedia poet Christopher Stackhouse. Artists lined up to spout Gysin's psychic adventures and aesthetic provocations include video maker Marshall Reese, printmaker Terry Winters, and poet Pierre Joris. Stackhouse's own foundation in spoken-word poetry has spurred visual work paralleling Gysin's later forays into "Calligraffiti" (language transformed into pure image, brush strokes approximating Arabic and Japanese calligraphy). If the mere look of Stackhouse's poetry introduces a new vocabulary, Gysin, wherever he is, surely would savor his sound.

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This appeared in The Village Voice, December 4, 2001

Digging Up Conflict: Archaeologist & Murder In The Holy Land

My review of SACRED GEOGRAPHY: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land by Edward Fox  In a land as old as murder itself, American archaeologist Dr. Albert Glock lay assassinated on the West Bank doorstep of his favorite Palestinian assistant.  Israeli authorities stationed nearby inexplicably took three hours to arrive at the scene, and now ten years later, have yet to solve the real-life crime.

Reopening the 1992 investigation, London-based journalist Edward Fox pries into a neglected but central theme in the Near East: the role of archaeology in the political, cultural and religious hotbed that is Palestine.  A kaleidoscope of bias awaits and offers us a stark looking-glass, the sum of its shattered parts.  The very phenomenon dogging the archaeology of Palestine and that set Dr. Glock in the crosshairs of an unknown assailant, Fox alleges in SACRED GEOGRAPHY: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land, is what catalyzes and paralyzes the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In this smart and gripping thriller, the author does an admirable job of digging up both the psycho-political terrain, as well as the dirt on the professor from the West Bank’s P.L.O.-funded Birzeit University.

Admittedly not a specialist in politics or archaeology but armed with a graduate degree in Arab language and culture and more than ten years’ interest in Palestine, Fox pored over Dr. Glock’s papers, interviewed his associates, and enrolled at the university where the slain man directed the Palestinian Institute of Archaeology.

In a tale that crisscrosses itself in time, the journalist literally becomes an archaeologist sifting through the artifacts of the case, and putting them into context. Arrogant and undiplomatic 67-year old Glock, an ordained Lutheran minister on the payroll of a missionary group, had cultivated many enemies in his two decades in Palestine, where espoused a controversial form of archaeology emphasizing the tenacity of Arab villagers. Suspects start to pile up faster than Fox can catalog them, from rival archaeologists, Jewish settlers and Israeli hit squads, to neighborhood intifada vigilantes and the military arm of Hamas.

To build context for the case, Fox delves into the history of biblical archaeology, an opportunistic sub discipline founded on the idea that the Bible is a true chronicle of history, its finds shrouded in religious mysticism and light on science. A field replete with religious charlatans and swashbuckling adventurers, its power has been recognized and exploited by generals and statesmen who mined Palestine for biblical wonders to advance their own causes.

It started in 325 A.D. when the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine institutionalized the faith by creating a tradition of relics and pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  The resulting tourism industry in Palestine may now be one of the oldest in the world, but its sacred geography consists of layer upon layer of myth, tradition and pious fantasy, reports Fox. The facts have been obscured by centuries of rewriting history for the benefit of whomever was at the top of its heap.  A particularly dense chapter illustrates the dizzying spiral of zealotry affecting Jerusalem, where holy spots were enshrined, demolished, replaced, wrested from rulers with differing beliefs, and given new histories and new futures.

By the end of the 19^th century, most of the world’s powers were drawn to establish national archaeological societies to explore the Holy Land despite the fact that Palestine’s archaeological remains were among the most meager in the Near East.

“This was negative cosmopolitanism in action,” declares Fox, a phrase he coined to mean the identification of many people with one place.  Palestine was left edgy and exhausted by the cultural, theological and political plundering of Americans, French, British, Russians, Armenians, Ethiopians, Germans, Christians, Jews, and Muslims.  The modern state of Israel has been well-served by biblical archaeology’s predilection for making the landscape fit the map, Fox goes on, with archaeological finds legitimizing its right to the land, while the Islamic stake in the Holy Land “has been taken up and developed in recent years by the Palestinian Islamist movement.”

Yet it was Glock's keen interest in history and geography that led him to see that the land did not fit the map. His evolving skepticism in the Bible as history took him from biblical scholar to biblical archaeologist, to an archaeology of Palestine “of interest not to biblical scholars in the United States but to the Palestinian people themselves,” records Fox.  In particular, he was attracted to the long and hidden history of the Ottoman period, a relative golden age for the common man in terms of peace, prosperity and political autonomy.

Knowledge of such a past might invigorate the surly and downtrodden population, Glock mused. He had witnessed their disenfranchisement by the practice of Israel- and Bible-biased archaeology and the way it overlooked Arab and Islamic contributions to history and culture, and in some cases bulldozed it into oblivion.

But restoring a connection to the land would not be easy in an environment where archaeology and the military were inextricably entwined, and where pro-Palestinian archaeology had been literally outlawed.  Since the 1967 Israeli occupation, Fox relates,  Israeli censors stamped out anything that “contained a Palestinian version of the history of the country, and [ruled] that recording the Palestinian past was considered an act of sedition.”  Furthermore, Glock’s determination to dig was met with resistance and hostility from suspicious villagers, and his own students who wanted to provide a more glorious myth of Palestinian statehood.

In this cobwebby tale of bias, the journalist fails to escape its tacky tendency to skew results.  Fox’s prejudices, underscored by a middle-of-the-book admission that  “Like Albert Glock, I took to rooting for the Palestinian underdog,” sometimes make him blind to irony. Regarding the 1954 Hague Convention’s prohibition of excavation in occupied territories, the author gleefully reports the professor’s wily machinations to circumvent the agreement, yet reminds us “all respectable archaeologists” refrained from excavating in deference to the Convention,  “(except the Israelis).”

Even so, Fox the investigator is balanced enough to leave the case unsolved.

As in archaeology, the final answer is delayed by the prospect of a new find changing everything.

Emerging Artist Curates His Influences

"I just discovered this cat a month ago," admits Poetry Project curator Christopher Stackhouse. He's referring to Brion Gysin, the avant-garde artist whose newly anthologized 50-year career he will highlight December 7th.

The rangy, 31-year old African-American artist, polite in a blue oxford shirt and subversive in open-toed sandals this cold October day, shifts on his girlfriend's futon couch, enthusiasm undampened by the admission. A broad-headed white dog at his feet keeps sleeping.

A privately-taught multimedia poet from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Stackhouse is a quick study and has no doubt that a gem has dropped into his event-coordinating lap. As presenter of the Friday Night Series of the Poetry Project's 35th season in St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, he's charged with bringing established, multidisciplinary poetic talent to the public from October 2001 to May 2002.

His particular mission --closely instructive to his own passion as an emerging figure on the New York underground arts scene -- is to illuminate and explore the shared poetics of filmmaking, music, visual arts, and the written word.

So the discovery of Gysin is topical kismet for Stackhouse, since the cat at hand is not only the subject of a December publication ( Back In No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader, Wesleyan University Press), but was categorically made for an East Village reading. The Canadian poet-performer-painter's impeccable bleeding edge credentials include being a Beat collaborator of William S. Burroughs in Tangier, and the Bohemian associate of Picasso, Dali, Man Ray and Gertrude Stein in Paris. Deemed an innovator of sound poetry, Gysin was especially interested in getting it off the page and back into ebullient performance.

With talent bookings by anthology editor Jason Weiss, newly-in-the-know Stackhouse will host a late night reading by multimedia performers of all stripes. Videomaker Marshall Reese, printmaker Terry Winters and poet Pierre Joris will join others spouting an unprecedented collection of Gysin's psychic adventures and aesthetic provocations in a cozy ("we've only got 75 chairs") lecture hall annex of the landmark chapel.

While Stackhouse moderates the show and manages the physical operations, supported by three interns and a sound engineer, he'll most likely absorb, absorb, absorb. The Gysin event promises to be a valuable experience for the young poet, who candidly describes himself as "living by his wits," diverted by day with a succession of jobs like editor, film grunt, file clerk, web content producer and art handler in museums.

Even so, spoken word poetry has formed the foundation of his artistic career. Over the past five years, Stackhouse recorded several poetry collections set to syncopated music and sparse, harmonic, computer-generated voicings over polyrhythms, like the Black Market Records/MCA International release The Beauty Of Celeste. Stackhouse frames the recordings as "the aesthetic antithesis of late twentieth century rap, or hip-hop," however much rap provided the inspiration.

Those recordings are in large part what led him to be tapped as a symposiast in the Poetry Project's 1998 "Blues, Hip-Hop, and Identity" and the "Spoken Word, Poetry, Electronic Music" symposium at the Tribes Gallery in 1999. In addition, Ed Friedman, the artistic director the Poetry Project, claims the multimedia poet's conviction that "artmaking should be a multi-genre, multicultural, political, philosophical and historical undertaking," made him a natural choice to curate the late night series.

Despite his oral strengths, the multifaceted Stackhouse submits a good case for putting poetry back on the page, especially when he breaks out the pigments and brushes. Recent works have focused on transforming language into pure image, much the way Gysin did, when he produced paintings suspended between word and image, brush strokes approximating Arabic and Chinese calligraphy. Allowing the mere look of language to dictate its meaning, Stackhouse muses that his own work is "art as notion, as opposed to actual materials. Art for the mind."

His brushy text-based ink-on-papers shown by Gale-Martin Fine Art earlier this year led NY Arts Magazine reviewer Susan Kart to think of "the wall markings made on caves by early humans," while Kevin Platt, director of the gallery and Stackhouse's dealer of two years, cites a parallel to the output of Belgian-French artist and writer Henri Michaux, another influential figure Stackhouse recently recognized. Having sold 25 of Stackhouse's works Platt describes a fascination with the elements of calligraphy created by someone proficient in both written and visual media. "It's as if Christopher's introducing a new vocabulary," the South Chelsea dealer says.

In a sky lit Sixth Avenue living room, a matted and framed set of four pen and ink portraits hang over the Stackhouse girlfriend's futon couch.

The artist waits for an interpretive reaction.

The linear male heads drawn on a ringed pad of paper, top edge ripped, seem like coffeehouse sketches. Staring, cobwebbed eyes have a circular mole placed between them, just like the one Stackhouse has in real life. (A third eye, or just a mole? Stackhouse laughs, "Yes, a third eye.") Vertical lines intersect the serious faces, drawing down from the eye like a monocle chain.

"Tension," prompts the artist, the tension between opposites. Opposite views, opposing urges, perhaps? Two of the heads sport an X on their foreheads: representing the mark of man, explains Stackhouse, the mark of pre- or illiterate man.

"Like the signature of a slave," he adds. Or perhaps that's the former signature of a former slave?

Stackhouse seems distinctly inclined to explore the de-evolution of expression. As a literate artist, he often spurns his ability to write by making marks on paper that look like writing, but somehow aren't, and then he would mean something by them. Gysin would be proud, and given the social context, so too might James Baldwin. Baldwin is one cat Stackhouse has already discovered, at the age of nine when the family relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stackhouse's Virginian father "traveled with Jimmie's entourage as secretary and friend from 1979 to 1983," and Baldwin's political and social theories pervaded the household. For three years Stackhouse has honed his own expressions of being Black in America as a Fellow of Cave Canem, a 35-year old organization providing retreats and workshops for African-American poets.

A knock at the apartment door reveals a workman in an indeterminate uniform, inquiring about the origin of a water leak discovered downstairs.

"There's no sign of it up here," assures Stackhouse. Yet the soft-spoken poet knows full well that discovery is part and parcel of creation, and it's just a matter of time before the source of a well-spring is identified.

+++

A version of this profile appeared in The Village Voice, December 2001.

NYC's Elevated Drama

It’s after five on Friday and I have pleasing, twenty-something plans for the evening.

Judging from the look of Larry, a diminutive agent at the literary agency where I am director of operations, he does too. A tanned, old-school publishing guy, he’s a middle-aged romantic, known to still hold his handsome wife’s hand in public.

We arrive at the elevator in superb spirits. After I press the call button, Larry and I glance at each other and smile. With my black downtown jumpsuit and his Upper East Side tweed, it’s apparent we’re heading for different worlds.

When the elevator arrives, I try to lock up, being last on the floor tonight. "Can you hold that a minute," I ask the lone man inside, as I insert my key in the security gate and flick off the hall light.

But the passenger in the lift, a tall curly-haired man in a black leather jacket, abruptly presses an internal button and snarls, "I can’t wait, I’m meeting someone."

The heavy doors begin to rumble closed.

Larry and I jump to call the elevator again, pulse quickening for a confrontation.

The doors shudder and reverse, the stranger’s pocked face reappears.

The agent firmly steps into the carriage and then holds the door for me while I hoist my bags.

"You only have one floor to go," the elevator man whines in exasperation, as if being one floor above street level makes the thing return any faster, going the right direction at rush hour.

We have no other option since the stairway is locked as usual.

Without a thought, I reply right into the man’s face. "So do you, bud." He has only one floor to go before he is free to pursue his precious appointment, it is true. But rather than instilling some kind of rationality, this ignites a rant about my snotty choice of words.

"Who do you think you are talking to me like that?" he demands, peppering the question with expletives. In the airless car his venom is inescapable. Larry and I press ourselves up against shiny steel walls, gaze averted.

Though it's only a few seconds, tonight the ride seems like an eternity. Then the man attacks what he must consider the jugular with a socioeconomic insult.

"Low rent," he declares, voice thick with condescension.

He is referring to our company’s status in the building hierarchy.

The upper floors in this Gramercy building are monopolized by fancy businesses in the music and fashion trades, with huge view windows and smart furniture.

Down here on two, the space has been compartmentalized and our small back office, crammed with bookcases that sag under the weight of unsolicited novels, looks onto a dingy light-well.

Unused to considering the relative prosperity of my employer, I am baffled to learn we are bottom-rung.

Larry takes offense, perhaps because he’s toiled for decades in world-class publishing organizations and has internalized the prestige of association regardless of traditionally shabby surroundings.

Or, because he’s read a lot of boilerplate romance novels and understands what is required by the chivalrous in these situations.

He invites further confrontation, demanding that the man repeat himself.

"Do I have to spell it for you," the curly headed man spits.

Not only do we work on an inferior floor, apparently we are too dense to comprehend why he despises sharing the elevator.

"LOW RENT!"

But Larry and I don’t need much spelled out, except why this guy wants to force the class issue. With his oily hair and pale, scarred skin he looks seedier than we do.

The lift comes to a stop and Larry passes me his folded newspaper.Snotty damsel who instigated this mess, I clutch it purposefully.

The doors slide open and five-foot-two-inch Larry, deliberately genteel, suggests to the stranger, "Let’s step outside."

I have to suppress a giggle. The timing is too perfect. But the incensed man isn’t interested in a gentlemanly duel and stalks ahead of us, bellowing obscenities in the dark and echoing marble lobby.

My dogged co-worker follows and yells from the lobby entrance, "Prick! That’s what you are, a prick."

I well up with pride that affable old Larry has mustered an appropriate term for the altercation. This must be how he talks in the locker room at his chi-chi athletic club.

The creep is crossing 25th Street and launches a final threat over his shoulder. "If you were twenty years younger."

He allows the sentiment to trail into ridiculous silence. Fury deflated, he doesn’t care about us anymore. His appointment must be looming, most likely with someone who has yet to cross him in pursuit of uninterrupted elevator passage.

But sparkplug Larry isn’t finished. He responds loudly, arms open.

"Here I am, come and get me!"

The elevator man skirts the Armory wall and disappears around the corner at Lexington on spindly legs, a hyena chased from an honorable fight.

The world comes back into focus. People in the street watch for a cue as to what’s next.

Nothing's next.

I return Larry’s neatly folded newspaper and we begin our routine stroll toward Park Avenue.

"I love New York, don’t you?" he says, looking invigorated and alive.

"It’s a beautiful evening," I reply, gazing up at the pink sky.

+++

This appeared in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, January 2, 2001

A Colonial Tale Of Vengeance & Deceit

(This appeared in the Asian Wall Street Journal, January 2000) Review of MURDER ON THE VERANDAH: Love and Betrayal in British Malaya by Eric Lawlor, 260pp, published in 1999 by Harper Collins Publishers, 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB.  L17.99

In Kuala Lumpur in 1911, an adulterous British woman shot and killed her cheating lover, scandalizing the town and sending reverberations throughout the Empire.

Now her shocking behavior -- famously fictionalized by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1926 short story "The Letter" and portrayed by Bette Davis in the 1940 Hollywood film -- is examined in an entirely new and perceptive light, at once sympathetic to the Eurasian murderess and damning to the rigid Eastern protectorate in which she found herself captive.

Although Eric Lawlor's Murder on the Verandah is ostensibly the true story behind the notorious Ethel Proudlock case, within a few chapters his account morphs into a withering social history of British Malaya. For prurient interest, especially to residents of modern Malaysia, it doesn't disappoint.

However, Proudlock herself remains a cipher in spite of Mr. Lawlor’s admirable (albeit hypothetical) efforts to flesh her out. Unable to procure even one likeness of the woman, the author instead is pressed to supply photos of clubs, activities and locations which have only peripheral bearing on her story.

It is understandable that Ethel Proudlock was actively erased from the lives and memories of those who knew of her.

In race- and class-conscious British Malaya at the turn of the twentieth century, Proudlock appears doomed from the beginning.  Mr. Lawlor surmises she was born illegitimately to a low-ranking Briton and a native woman, then treated coolly by her father's European family, and hastily married in 1907 to the undistinguished and naive young teacher, William Proudlock.  Ethel was most likely pregnant with her only child at the time, born on the honeymoon trip to England.   "So much in her life reeked of deceit," notes Mr. Lawlor.

Even though she was a minor figure about town and dogged by ill-health, Proudlock apparently dreamed of being noticed: she was both a clotheshorse and an aspiring actress.

These qualities cannot have been rewarded in a society which had recently traded in its freewheeling pioneer atmosphere for a distinctly suburban, timid conformity.

"Malaya no longer felt like Malaya," was the nostalgic lament.  "It had been domesticated, and where once tigers had roamed, now there were tennis courts and cricket creases."

Racial purity was also being increasingly emphasized, with nascent movements to exclude Asians from the civil service and to segregate train cars.

In this climate, Proudlock’s mixed bloodline would have resulted in further ostracization.

When Proudlock's audacious actions finally captured the ultimate limelight in her murder trial, "people who saw her on the witness stand remarked on how self-possessed she looked."

She enjoyed playing an upright woman who had killed defending her honor, as she claimed William Steward attempted to rape her.  Only when sentenced to hang for the murder of the tin mine manager did she lose her composure.

A debate raged in both England and Malaya over the virtues of the case and her supporters looked for a way to reverse the decision.  It was mostly a matter of appearance, however, as the British liked to believe they cut exemplary figures in Malaya.

Eventually she was pardoned by the Sultan of Selangor and exiled to England. If the shame weren't enough, her husband's public denunciations of the trial proceedings effectively ruined him too.  He was forced to resign as headmaster at the Victoria Institution and his inquiries were rebuffed ever after by the Colonial Office in London.

Murder on the Verandah succeeds as a masterful negative-space account of the woman and her vengeful crime, supplying us with context,  the pressures and the expectations under which Proudlock and her husband must have labored.

It also paints the portraits of a large cast of characters who lend their thoughts and life experiences to Mr. Lawlor's points: among them newspaper editors, estate managers, civil servants and their wives.

Mr. Lawlor's dark perspective specifically vindicates Maugham's acerbic view of Malayan planters and district officers, even though Maugham’s unwitting subjects uniformly insisted that they had been defamed.

The revealing retrospective continues through a host of ills suffered by the British in Malaya, as well as the hardships of Asians at the hands of their insensitive British masters.  Exploring the cruel indentured servitude of Tamils on rubber plantations and the perception of Chinese rickshaw pullers in town, Mr. Lawlor exposes just how alienated the British managed to make themselves.

So unnerved at surrendering control even for a short ride across town, they believed a rickshaw puller "used the opportunity not just to avenge every wrong he had suffered at their hands, but to avenge as well every wrong done to every member of his race."

Paranoia, perhaps.

Yet, as Ethel Proudlock knew to her core, revenge is the province of the dispossessed.