Two Senator McCarthys and an Age of Anxiety

Lately I've been getting the feeling that I'm being lulled into a sense of insecurity. It's the worst form of apathy: indifference in the face of danger. I miss those terror alerts we used to hear so much about. Level Orange and all that. Four years or so after 9/11, food service of sorts, has returned to the airlines. Now, you can take certain sharp objects onboard. I don't know what's more dangerous, the sharp objects or the airline food. Air marshals are now a regular feature on all all flights. I don't mind that, of course, but do they always have to take up the window seats? The authorities apparently think that a nail file or a knitting needle isn't such a formidable weapon against gun-toting, sharpshooting federal agents. That's reasonable. But have you ever seen an air marshal actually eat the airline food? Not likely. I hope the terrorists don't start noticing things like that. The government seems to think it's greatest weapon is to confuse the enemy. It's certainly working -- on the rest of us.

There are so many things to worry about these days, this "Age of Anxiety," as Haynes Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, calls his new book, it almost numbs the mind. But the most mind-numbing thing of all is the lack of leadership. This is all painfully recalled with the death last month of Senator Eugene McCarthy at the age of 89. McCarthy -- for those who don't recall -- was one of the first to oppose the Viet Nam War, another war justified by "faulty intelligence." McCarthy was different. He brought poetry into the polemics of politics. A man of many dimensions, McCarthy had guts -- he went up against the leader of his own party, the bellicose Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson. And McCarthy had wit and a facile command of the English language, which was one of the first casualties of the George W. Bush presidency. The other day, Bush denounced the critics of his war in Iraq, calling them "pestimists" -- which is funnier than he had intended. McCarthy described himself as "mired in complexity." That's one quagmire the incumbent needn't worry about. And McCarthy, the former high school teacher, the poet who once considered the Roman Catholic priesthood, was horrified by the religious doctrines that have become part of presidential politics.

"I've grown a little disturbed," he said portentously in 1968, "that almost everything the Church tried to give up at the Vatican Council has been picked up by the Defense Department - the idea of grace in office, a little hint of infallibility, a kind of revival of the ideas of heresy and of holy wars, the Inquisition, a kind of index on publications."

McCarthy managed to capture the imagination of young people. Some of my high school friends actually joined the "Clean for Gene" movement, eschewing the use of narcotics, psychedelics and booze to enhance the image of the so-called hippie peaceniks who opposed the Viet Nam War.
These were sober, abstemious dissenters. I was not part of that group. I wasn't committed politically. And I was a reluctant joiner of anything. I liked the idea of McCarthy being a poet, but his writing was a little staid for me. I liked the Beats and the Surrealists. I would likely support "Goyim for Ginsberg." Or "Rabble for Rabelais." Or "Whacked on Kerouac." But McCarthy's qualities of courage and calm deportment in a time of chaos were impressive and attractive.

For a politician, he seemed pretty authentic. He was of the very few who denounced the vicious Red Scary attacks by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. Even Eisenhower, the hero of the invasion of Normandy, would not stand up to Joe McCarthy. "As a young reporter," Haynes Johnson said at The Commonwealth Club," I thought Ike was a boob. He looks terrific to me now." Eisenhower despised Joe McCarthy. But when Ike's brother, Milton urged to take Joe McCarthy on, Ike declined, saying, "I won't get down in the gutter with him." Johnson says if Eisenhower made a speech to the country like Edward R, Murrow did (depicted in the George Clooney movie, "Good Night & Good Luck"), Ike could have ended Joe McCarthy then and here. But he didn't.

Johnson says the McCarthy Era never really ended. It's alive and well. "Kerry did not fight back when his record in Viet Nam was attacked, did not fight back when the press demonized him." He let Karl Rove, the new Joe McCarthy, defeat him.

Johnson says as long as there is no one with the courage to stand up and denounce abuses of power, a news media to hold leaders accountable, the Joe McCarthys will prevail. People who don't agree with the deamgogues are still being called traitors. As for Iraq, Haynes Johnson says, "I had a feeling that at the beginning of this war, it would be calamatous for this nation. We're not more secure -- we're less secure."

If there is anyone with the courage to speak out, it's Congressman Jack Murtha, a war hero that no one wants to impugn. Except for an empty-headed freshman congresswoman from Ohio, literally wrapped up in a flag on the floor of Congress.

But what we really need today is a touch of the poet.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He's still awaiting the day a political figure might re-emerge for whom it would be worth staying clean and sober. Bellingham's e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com.

The Christmas Curmudgeon

"Let's make this one program on which nobody sings 'Silent Night," the great curmudgeon, eorge S. Kaufman, sniffed on his radio show on a Christmas Eve back in the 1940s. For that intemperate remark, he was fired. Pulled off the air. His night became more silent than he had bargained for. You see, one could not denigrate the notion of Christmas -- not on Christmas Eve. No siree. For one thing, it was bad for business. Sponsors don't like satirists. They make people think. It's too distracting. That time should be devoted to the mindless frenzy to buy so we can be happy for the moment.

I suspect another sentiment that was muttered in the oak-paneled offices at the vast radio network: "Who does that Jew think he is, making fun of Christmas?" I have no doubt that was an issue at the time - as it is an issue today. Kaufman's ennui-drenched comment was beautiful for its brazen, uncooperative, ill-timed panache. And suicidal. He probably didn't really want to denounce Christmas. He was denouncing the creepiness that had already been attached to it. It howled in the hallways of department stores, in the unavoidable advertisements, in the hawkish commercial hysteria. The hopes and fears through all the years had been marked down to $49.95.

Kaufman, of course, was gleefully playing Scrooge. And George S, Kaufman, who co-wrote a few Marx Brothers movies (and "You Can't Take It With You" and "The Man Who Came To Dinner" and "Dinner at Eight")-and that makes him the provider of more laughs than just about anyone on the planet-was, indeed, one the first Christmas Curmudgeons. For this alone, he has earned my respect.

The Christmas Curmudgeon is not a cynic. On the contrary. Because it is the holiday season, I will treat myself to yet another Oscar Wilde quote: "The definition of a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

The Christmas Curmudgeon is cranky because he sees the potential for beauty tossed into the garbage with the discarded wrapping paper and the unwanted boxes. Boxes that are too often used by people to sleep in. The Christmas Curmudgeon has a tough time enjoying himself because he sees others suffering. He still has enough humanity left in him to be outraged. He prefers the quiet forms of charity -- the sort that go on without announcement and without media coverage. He still has traces of love under his crusty exterior. It causes irritation when it rubs up against the world, creating a rash. It's only exacerbated all the more by the stifling heat of cocktail parties.

Don't get him wrong. The Christmas Curmudgeon loves to laugh. But the chuckle is often accompanied by the shaking of the head. His humor is often taken as sardonic. But you might notice the victims of his piercing satire are the self-important, the pompous and the narcissistic. Hence, he has plenty of targets. The Christmas Curmudgeon loves to listen. He eavesdrops with the best of intentions and a secretly hopeful heart. He wanders through the park in the San Francisco darkness. As the California Street cable car rattles by, a couple, clinging to each other in the chill, stands before the Huntington Park fountain -- the one with the rococo turtles and the loco dolphins -- and gaze at the flag flapping atop the Mark Hopkins. Above the hotel, the half-moon shows itself through the clouds, hovering in the black sky. Our observer overhears her whisper to him tentatively, "This is going to be a wonderful year Christmas this year, isn't it?" The man leans toward her, clutches her a little harder, and murmurs, "The best."

The Christmas Curmudgeon smiles to himself and moves along.

Any curmudgeon worth his salt also has plenty of detractors. He may or may not have a religious conviction. But he always has a spiritual side. He privately believes in humanity and, above all, he has a belief in redemption. All good stories are about how someone gets himself or herself into trouble and then figures out a way to find a redemptive solution. Or, at least, make the effort.

The Christmas Curmudgeon is not bitter. He is simply disappointed. The theme to his life is innocence and how to protect it as long as possible. "It is the World with a capital "W," my friend, Father William Myers, is fond of saying. In this World, innocence is mislaid. But it is in this world we make our struggle.

The Christmas Curmudgeon has not yet given up. You can feel his pulse in his ironic phrases, his condemning speech, and in his private tenderness to others. He deplores the vulgar and longs for the authentic. Colleen Williams says the term "authentic" has become dangerously outmoded these days. Yet Our Yearning Yuletide Yob believes that real love will likely save him from mediocrity and the attendant terror it brings. He will keep on with the keep on, whether exalting love comes for him or whether is passes him by. If he lunges at windmills or at Christmas trees, he still remains in the fray.

Or if he goes on the radio to tell a national audience, "Let's make this one program on which nobody sings 'Silent Night,'" we'll know that the Christmas Curmudgeon is still alive and on the air. God bless him -- oh, and Tiny Tim, too. I've been meaning to send them both a card.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He refuses to reveal the identity of The Christmas Curmudgeon and will stubbornly maintain that position even if Bellingham is sentenced to a whole week of holiday parties that drip with relentless cheer. His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com

60's Icon Donovan Dazzles with His Metaphysical Music

A great cheer rose from the sold-out house at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts on Nov. 23 when Donovan, the Scottish-born troubadour who was once called "the British Bob Dylan," started to play Buffy Saint-Marie's anti-war tune, "The Universal Soldier." Donovan plaintively explained, "It's an old song but it looks like we're still in the same story." For a moment, the protest movement that raged against the Viet Nam War seemed to have been awakened from its deep sleep.

San Francisco is the first city on Donovan's national tour that marks the 40th anniversary since the release of his song, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man." Yes, that right, forty years. Donovan, backed by a crackerjack San Francisco band and three string players, performed for about two hours with one 20-minute intermission. He did the big hits, "Sunshine Superman," "Wear Your Love Like Heaven," "Colours," "First There Is A Mountain," "Atlantis," Epistle To Dippy," and the song that made him a folk singing star when he was 18, "Catch the Wind." He also played lesser-known but skillfully-delivered numbers, such as, "World, Slow Down," "The Divine Daze of Deathless Delight," and "Cosmic Wheels." Donovan introduced a new song, "Local Boy Does Good," dedicated to the late Brian Jones, the self-destructive but brilliant little boy lost of The Rolling Stones, who died in a swimming pool accident in 1969. "He was a rebel romantic," Donovan sang. "With a death-wish dream." Donovan is clearly delighted to be strutting his songs before an audience, striking the pose of a larkish thespian on a West End stage-almost a bit over the top-a blend of Baba Ram Dass and a breathy, nasal James Mason with an exaggerated Scottish brogue.

By the end of the show, a dozen or so people in the audience had to get up and dance and the sixties were alive again. Donovan closed with one of the coolest, paranoiac rock anthems of all time, "Season of The Witch," and led a spirited sing-along with the infectiously frivolous
"Mellow Yellow." Myles O'Reilly, the owner of O'Reilly's Irish Pub & Restaurant in North
Beach and The Holy Grail in Polk Gulch, provided an off-beat introduction that included bringing a stack of 45 rpm records from his formative years in Ireland onto the stage and reading the titles aloud to the crowd, which showed its bemused approval.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com

Help Me, Dr. Phil: I'm No Longer Fond of Frisco

Once again I returned from a trip to New York, dripping with that familiar malaise, that is, the muttering and the grousing: "I love New York. What am I doing in San Francisco? New York is alive. New Yorkers are friendly. San Franciscans are snooty and vapid. What happened to my
adopted hometown by the Bay? Where did the soul of San Francisco go? Do I really belong here?"

I am determined, though, not to go through this mind-gnawing, purposeless self-torture again. I am learning how to seek help when I'm drowning in a roiling sea of self-pity. This time, I'm going to confront my growing feelings of dissatisfaction with San Francisco. I'm going to take action.
So, I have decided to take my troubles to the great American arbiter of psychic distress, Dr. Phil.

By the way, "Dr. Phil" is locally broadcast on KRON Channel 4 twice a day, at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. I only mention this because I have an intense need to be loved by Channel 4. Even if I don't break through the seemingly impenetrable guest barrier to Dr. Phil, I can imagine pretty much how it would go if I appeared on his show. Something like this:

Dr. Phil: "Today we have a man who -- believe it or not -- no longer loves that beautiful City by the Bay, San Francisco. He feels lost and he's at loose ends. Maybe he's a little ungrateful and has no idea how lucky he is. His name is Bruce. I thought you might like to see what a
truly clueless person looks like."

Bruce: "Thanks, Dr. Phil. A pleasure to be here. After all, this is L.A. and I'm away from San Francisco and that's all right with me.

Dr. Phil: "What is with you? Are you suffering from beauty fatigue or
something? You have all that pretty landscape and water around you up
there, and all those great restaurants. What's up with that?"

Bruce: "Well, Dr. Phil, maybe there's more to life than pretty
landscapes, cable cars, and great restaurants. Is it so awful to ask for more?

Dr. Phil: "More? Like what? You sound like a man who's tired of being married to his wife? Even tired of his life. Maybe that's the deal."

Bruce: "Let's face it. It's not the same city since Herb Caen died and Ambrose Bierce disappeared somewhere in Mexico."

Dr. Phil: "I hate to tell you this, Bruce, but we all lose friends. That's life."

Bruce: "After 35 years, maybe I am tired of my wife, if you can call The City my wife. Frankly, living in San Francisco is like being stuck in a bad marriage without the sex. She's indifferent, disloyal and she's gotten pretty damned expensive. And I detest the 1-California bus."

Dr. Phil: "You're quick to blame everything on your wife here. When we come back, we'll ask Bruce the inevitable question, 'Can This Marriage Be Saved?' We'll be right back." During the commercial break I began to think how my brief trips to New York really constitute a Big Apple honeymoon that I may have every year or so. No wonder people get married and divorced so much. They want to recapture the mood of the honeymoon. Like a junkie constantly seeks to
recapture his first high. He never does. You have to get clean or die. If I really come clean, I must say that I haven't really been seeking out the things that San Francisco has to offer. New York is so electrifying, everything snaps and crackles and beckons to me. After years of commitment, it takes a little, no, a lot, of work to keep the spark alive. It all comes from keeping a sense of curiosity.

Last month, I saw some wonderful things here in San Francisco. David Amram's 75th birthday party at the Purple Onion, for example. "Evening's like this can only happen in New York or San Francisco," the irrepressible composer observed. Backed by Omar Clay on drums and Michael Zisman on bass, Amram dashed breathlessly from the piano to tearing off jazz riffs on his French horn to the penny whistle -- no, two penny whistles at the same time -- to the shehnai, an Indian oboe, to the Persian Boumbek, a goblet-shaped drum. All the while, Amram told
zany stories about his best friend, Jack Kerouac and how Amram wrote scores for Arthur Miller, and "Splendor In the Grass" and "The Manchurian Candidate." Dennis Banks and Floyd Red Crow Westerman sang Native-American songs and read from Kerouac's legendary "On The Road."

The four-hour show was a trip down the road of history but had no trace of that treacly trap known as nostalgia. At the end of the night, I loved San Francisco again. Now, let's get back to "Dr. Phil." Dr. Phil: "We're talking to Bruce, who says his love affair with San Francisco is long over and he'd like to find a more exciting place to live. Bruce, have you ever heard of the adage that wherever you go, you take yourself with you?"

Bruce: "Yes, I think that's the difference between baggage and luggage."

Dr. Phil: "Sure, you're glib but perhaps you're hiding behind your wit
a bit. How about this one? 'The fault lies not in the stars but within
ourselves.'"

Bruce: "Say, that's quite good. But, Dr. Phil, I have to tell you, I've changed my mind. You see, Suzanne Ramsey -- that's Kitten on the Keys -- recently put on a wonderful burlesque show at the Balboa Theater, a movie house that still plays real movies; a group of high school students put on a George S. Kaufman play for A.C.T. at the Zeum; Myles O'Reilly opened The Holy Grail, a dinner house that might help Polk Gulch become a civilized neighborhood again. That's a big risk but Myles is willing to take it. If he's betting on San Francisco, then why can't I?"

Dr. Phil: "Gee, Bruce, you're throwing my show off track. I'm the one who's supposed to lead the guest on to good mental health. You're not supposed to cure yourself, dammit. You're not even giving me a chance to introduce the outside counselors. They came all this way to help.
Maybe there's a free 28-day program in it for you."

Bruce: "Gee, I'm sorry, Dr. Phil. Maybe the counselors can help the people who run Muni. I'm not being ungrateful. You are absolutely right. The fault lies in myself. There's a wonderful world inside San Francisco. I just haven't been working hard enough to discover it lately. Because, after 35 years, San Francisco has become too much like me and I have become too much like her. Jaded and aloof. It's not all my fault, though, Dr. Phil. It wasn't my idea to make San Francisco a crass, predatory real estate market, a Disneyland for millionaires that's choked with automobiles. I still walk and live without a car. Let's bring back the fleet of ferries. Perhaps now it's time to start all over again. Maybe this small town should be smaller. And Lawrence
Ferlinghetti is right. Coit Tower should be made to lean a little, like Pisa. I'll try to bend a bit, too."

Dr. Phil: "Well, that's our show for today. Tomorrow we hope to introduce you to someone with real problems. At least I hope so."

_________________________________________________-

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He says he's working out his bi-coastal schizophrenia by pitching a job as a flight attendant on JetBlue. His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com

The President's Analyst

Those who recall the Loma Prieta earthquake, which happened sixteen years ago this October, might also remember how FEMA became a four-letter word in San Francisco's Marina District back in 1989. No one was happy with the slow response from the feds then -- and it seems to be true today in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

These catastrophes certainly can overwhelm government agencies. The hurricane certainly engulfed former FEMA director Michael Brown, whom President Bush endearingly named "Brownie." That was just before Brownie was washed out of his job with the storm surge. The phrase, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," will stick to Bush as will "Mission accomplished!" when he emphatically declared victory in the war in Iraq a couple of years ago.

Leadership during a crisis is often more style than substance. Mr. Bush has neither. In the hours following the 9/11 attack, Rudy Guiliani was asked how many lives might be lost in the collapse of the Twin Towers. What could he possibly say?

"It is more than we can bear," he stated simply, grimly.

With those words, the hearts of the world went out to him, the city of New York and the entire country.

Guiliani didn't have time to wait for a speechwriter. At the same time, when informed of the 9/11 attack, the president seemed stunned, He was speechless for a few minutes before being spirited away by the Secret Service. It looked like he was grasping for something to say. What was going through his head? "Well, what do you know?" Or "How about that?"

Bush does well in controlled, well-managed, staged presentations. Such as appearing before friendly folks in a flight suit, aboard an aircraft carrier, declaring victory, flags flapping in the breeze, a marching band behind him. Under the circumstances, it was a perverse show of
pageantry. It would have been a nice touch if Bush blew the smoke away from the barrels of a couple of six-shooters before holstering them.

I'm sure the moment made his mom proud. It sure showed his father who's the boss. After all, George H. W. didn't send Saddam hightailing it out of Dodge, formerly known as Baghdad. The kid had to finish the job. But now we're beginning to see why Bush Sr. chose not to invade the Iraqi capital. Welcome to the bottomless pit that other empires have stumbled into over the centuries. Here comes that word again: quagmire.

When John Kennedy went to Walter Reade to visit a dying Douglas MacArthur, the old general warned him, "Don't get involved in a Southeast Asian war." And here comes that word that tragedians and historians also like: hubris.

If Jack Kennedy was the restless, reckless Pyrrhus of ancient Greece, then George Bush the Younger is Oedipus.

Here comes the fun part -- the cheap, sophomoric psychology in which I like to dabble. Remember. I don't report rumors in this column. I just make them up. With all reasonable-sounding dissertations, I call on a source. He's Dr. Cosmo Sostenuto, who has been studying the case of George W. Bush. I understood that Dr. Sostenuto has been associated with the
Langley-Porter psychiatric institute. Later I learned Cosmo was really the night porter at the Hotel Langley in the Tenderloin. A small misunderstanding on my part, but, all the same, it means Dr. Sostenuto has had lots of time to read.

"The invasion of Iraq was clearly an Oedipal gesture that was meant to emasculate the father," Sostenuto asserts. "George W. has never called on his old man for advice on global strategies. He would rather just arm wrestle him."

And what about Bush the Older's role, along with Bill Clinton, in the post-Katrina debacle?
George W. apparently wanted his father and Clinton to appear on television appealing for disaster relief donations while holding mops and buckets in order to humiliate them. George's mom, Barbara, nixed the idea, saying it was a little too much.

"I'll do the humiliating around here," the matriarch announced.

When refugees from New Orleans crowded into the Astrodome, Barbara Bush observed, "This must be a step up for them." George W. clearly has inherited his mother's sensitivity.

Bush family friends who attend the more intimate dinners at the White House on holidays say the experience is unnerving. "The president likes to flick his mashed potatoes off his fork at his father while at the table," says Dr. Sostenuto. "Like every good dysfunctional family, no
one appears to notice, even if the older Bush is splattered with spuds."

On one occasion, the president assailed the First Lady with, "How come you can't cook like my mother?"

"Now George," Laura said solicitously, "you know that I'd have the chef prepare anything you'd like."

"That's what I mean," the president snarled. "I'll bet you can't even make apple pan dowdy."

"George," Laura replied, patting his hand, "you don't even know what apple pan dowdy is."

Well, I'll bet my mother does!"

Barbara smiled sweetly.

Laura surely knows what apple pan dowdy is. After all, she was a librarian. But she decided to let the issue go.

"Get Brownie on the phone!" President Bush the Younger shouted to no one in particular. "Tell him to get everybody in the Astrodome some apple pan dowdy."

But Brownie was not available. He'd already left Washington to see if he could get his old job back at the International Arabian Horse Association. To him, wild horses suddenly looked a whole lot tamer.

Bruce Bellingham, author of "Bellingham by the Bay," is currently working on a coloring book about intelligent design. His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com.

The Tell-tale Heart Tells All

"Spring is here. Why doesn't my heart go dancing?" asked Lorenz Hart, the poet of Broadway. It seems that my heart is dancing all too erratically these days -- in the style of Buddy Rich, Joe Morello and Olatunji. Drummers of passion and their wild, unconventional meter. No more I will ever underestimate that solid 4/4 beat, a la Ringo Starr -- it is so reassuring. Little did I know I would spend much of the winter racing in my own medical Iditarod. Traipsing through the snow behind a team of huskies was one of the faraway thoughts I entertained while recently sequestered in St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco for seven days.

"We wondered why you kept shouting, 'Mush! Mush!' in your sleep," the overnight nurse chuckled.

I could have been ordering breakfast. With non-fat milk, of course. Mush suggests pablum -- more like a literary criticism -- or gruel, the ne'er-do-well cousin to oatmeal that Charles Dickens forged as a symbol of poverty, abuse and misery.

Seven days in the hospital! Gee whiz, I went in for a simple chest X-ray. They wouldn't let me leave. If I weren't for Cow Hollow's Dr. Harvey Caplan, I would not have been convinced to get that chest X-ray. Little did I know I was tickling the dragon's tail.

Little did I know that getting sick can be a full-time job.

"This is a big deal," announced the ER doc as they stripped me of my civilian clothes. They call the condition atrial fibrillation -- a dangerous, irregular heartbeat that for months I unwisely and erroneously attributed to flu, bronchitis etc. It caused some blood clots in the heart, fluid on the lung and serious difficulty in breathing. They considered stopping my heart electrically, then resetting it, but the blood clots will have to clear up first. Meanwhile I have to hope they'll stay where they are. "You are at an elevated risk for a stroke," a grave-looking doctor averred. Later for the jumper cables.

"I got arrythmia, I got music. I got my gal. Who could ask for anything more?"

The hospital gave me a private room. And cable TV, which is a novelty for me. I watched it for hours and hours. And for hours and hours, it's "Law & Order" and "Law & Order" and more "Law & Order." After a week of relentless "Law & Order," I feel fairly confident that I'm ready to take a shot at the New York bar exam.

But, listen, I'm better now. I'm breathing, but not up to max. I am making headway on the hills again, slowly. I'm carrying the Mac around again. Even turning on the power occasionally and writing on it. I also take nine or ten pills a day and will likely do so for a long time to come. The beta-blockers tend to run me in slow motion. Plus a low-down-no-salt-no-fat-no-meat-no-cheese-no-alcohol-no-trans-fats-no-innards-no-outtards-no-marbelized-marvels-of-the-sirloin-set-no-hooves-no-snouts-no-foreskins-no-leafy-greens-no-nothing-no-nonsense diet. Some people actually choose this regimen on their own, if you can believe that. Spinach and all leafy green veggies are prohibited. No bok choy in Mudville. I even like Brussel sprouts, if you can believe that. But now I know they will kill me. I can hear my mother's voice: "Eat your Brussel sprouts. They won't kill you." They will thicken my blood, if you can believe that. That could kill me. I must avoid the nefarious, blood-curdling Vitamin K. No more early morning grazing in Alta Plaza Park for me.

"Everything that your parents said was good for you," observed Woody Allen, "turns out to be bad for you. Milk, red meat, college." Wait a minute. Did the doctor say, "No alcohol"? You sure?
My friend, Dr. Dean Ornish, recommends fish oil. Lots of it. Roll out the barrels. Even OPEC is impressed. Fish oil is more expensive than that light, sweet crude we hear so much about these days. I wonder. If you poured fish oil into your car's engine, would it automatically head to the beach? Come to think of it, some of my favorite people are sweet and crude. Tenderness means a lot to me these days. For years, Dr. Dean has asked me, "Bruce, how's your heart?" I don't think he was restricting the topic to atria and ventricles. The heart can be a palpitating yet persistent hunter.

"If I were a pessimist," intones one doctor, "I'd say you'll be on blood thinners and beta-blockers in perpetuity. If I were an optimist, I'd say indefinitely." He must be a comedy writer for Savonarola. Dr. Albert Lee, the heart specialist at St. Francis, brought his own brand of crepe to hang: "If you don't do what we say, it's a heart transplant or death for you." Cheery fellow. But Dr. Lee, like all the folks I met at St. Francis, is a compassionate, dedicated healer. He even came in on the weekends to check on me. He has to use tough language to get through this "patient from hell" -- as I was once described. I seem to wear denial and dismissiveness on the sleeve of my hospital gown.

Here I am, banging on the computer in the cafeteria of San Francisco General Hospital where the reviews of the kitchen are mixed but the clientele's performance remains engaging. There is a bedraggled woman going from table to table, hustling spare change. This, I imagine, has replaced what's left of MediCal. Some disaffected denizens here mutter angrily to themselves then explode into a volcanic stream of racist invective until security finally shows up and puts the kabosh on the melee of the minute. Then the participants are simply forgotten to death. John Prine comes to mind: "A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down --- and won."

Later, there's one noisy donnybrook by the first-floor elevators. I half expected a couple of game wardens to fire their tranquilizers darts at the two overheated perpetrators. All symptomatic, as the great Paddy Chayevsky wrote in The Hospital, of "the whole wounded madhouse of our times."

Back to the wizard of blood thinners to get the results of the day's copious hemo drain. Ran into a pretty young doctor at the cash register who told me that for the patient, the Coumadin Clinic (purveyors and protectors of anti-coagulants) is "lots of work and requires plenty of vigilance." Some avocation for this meandering boulevardier who tends to measure life through the length of city blocks -- not milligrams.

I have been assigned an internist at yet another clinic in the Castro. It's all part of my new epidemiological travelogue throughout San Francisco. And the ennui that goes with the excursion. To die in Provence sounds far more appealing. The doctor at the SFGH clinic maintained a less-than-sanguine tone the other day. Almost elegaic. Mournful. I managed to get there at 6:30 a.m. and oiled out in a breezy five-and-a-half hours. Yes, being sick has become a full-time job. And the hours are lousy. But the stakes are high. The night before, The Black Dog (Churchill's nickname for his life-long bouts of depression) deliriously kept up his restless and relentless pacing with his claws clattering across the hardwood floors.

Another day -- and they have become a bit blurry. I have been with yet another medical person. Mimi, the nurse practitioner (and heroine of "La Boheme"), was very nice to me. She gave me drugs. I am so easily pleased. She slid the prescription slowly and deliberately across the table to my fingertips. She wet her lips. Well, maybe she wet her lips. All right. All right. She most certainly did not wet her lips. You can see I am making such an effort to make the clinical appear lascivious. And Act One is dying.

Mimi is also trying to lower the beta-blocker intake -- gradually. I screwed up the courage to ask her about the wisdom in mixing Coumadin with Viagra. She looked it up on her Palm Pilot. The only thing I'd worry about is your low blood pressure, says she. Would Rudolfo discuss such things with Mimi? Not in Act One. No, siree. Yesterday, the SFGH doctor increased the thinners. This is the Dance of the Dosage. I do appreciate how powerful these drugs are. I'm a little afraid of them. Funny. I was never daunted by a tumbler of tequila in front of me.

I am still amazed by how good the music is here at Starbucks in the Theater District. Remarkably good taste and non-fat milk, too. (But dairy had to go, too. I've adopted the vegan life. Which inspires the rhetorical question, "Would you rather have a Bulgarian feta or a fetid Bulgarian.?" A choice that hardly leaves one inspired.)

I confess. I have had impure thoughts. No, not about Bulgarians.

Without even an effort at restraint, I leered unapologetically at the sign at the cafe on Taylor Street moments ago: "Steak & Eggs $6.95." The image brings visceral, carnal notions. But, as an entree, it's an offering as remote to me as my long-awaited invitation to a luau on Krakatoa from the Polynesian Grass Skirt Society, written in the warm, personal hand of Uma Thurman.

Ah, but let's face it: There is always Dusty Springfield singing on the house system about the son of a preacher man. There's a passion in her piety as she tumbles through the hay. I am so easily pleased. I would like to hear a radio station where the announcer reads only from the Book of Revelation. With a laugh track.

Get this: I had a dream last night (or this a.m) where I was leading a mandolin orchestra and we were hashing out one of my songs, "Basura" (which means "grabage"), but someone kept insisting on Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight." Oddly, at an art gallery next door to this Starbucks, I just noticed the current show features photos by Pattie Boyd, the Carnaby Street gal who captivated any number of Brit rock stars and inspired (according to the sign in the window) George Harrison's "Something" and Eric's "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight." Just another coincidence, I suppose.

I notice more coincidences lately --- or maybe I'm just paying attention a little more often.
Believe it or not, I am anticipating a phone call from an elderly man who wants to guide me into the rolling hills of the California countryside for a day or two to get me out of the city, er, The City. (It's Harold, the father of my priest friend, Father William. Yes, he's the father of the Father.) This anticipated journey evokes that image of the medieval knight of the Crusades dutifully following the hooded, black-shrouded figure of Death up the coastal hills in the Ingmar Bergman film, "The Seventh Seal."

I might be back by the weekend. Maybe. I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Bergman.

Here's my crucial, breathless line, "Hey, wait for me, Harold!"

No matter. This only shows I don't have to go through this all alone. I'm in good hands. It's just a new adventure. Besides, all those great drummers who have been duty-bound to the off-beats and syncopation amid the rhythm of life remind me there is a lot of listening and playing left to do.

Meanwhile I have decided to name my first-born daughter Lorazepam.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He is currently writing a musical comedy based on the Physician's Desk Reference. He may be reached at bruce@brucebellingham.com.

The City of Yes, The City of No

I can remember when the favorite word in San Francisco seemed to be "yes." That is, the locals here were likely to respond with a "Sure, why not?" whenever a new idea might be suggested. We were a game town before the real games -- the ones with high stakes -- began. Real restate is the new mantra.

Truth is, most of us are barely hanging on by our manicured fingernails. I remember John Lennon, yes, that ancient troublemaker, described his first meeting with Yoko Ono in London in 1968. She had a show at a SoHo gallery. John sauntered in by himself one evening. One Ono piece required participation. John had to get on a step ladder and open a little door that was attached to the ceiling. When he revealed the message underneath, he saw the word "yes."
"That was exactly the right word," John later recalled. "If it were "No" or "Buzz Off" or "F--- You," I would've just walked out. But I stayed and fell in love."

I remember falling in love with San Francisco. And that was a long time ago, too. That's when "yes" seemed to be the order of the day. That's when we S.F. denizens -- and very happy to be so -- liked to try new things. Of course, I wasn't always aware of the risks involved. Just as
well.

"Hey, Bellingham," an old timer growled at me in Perry's. "You shoulda been here in the old days, in the 60s. The Pill had just been invented and the real bad diseases hadn't shown up yet."
I was hoping to keep this discourse a bit loftier. And free from the paralyzing influences of that common disease of advancing age: nostalgia.

There is an expression often used in Alcoholics Anonymous that was coined by Herbert Spencer, "Contempt prior to investigation," Spencer said it keeps a man "in everlasting ignorance." What I loved about San Francisco was the apparent acceptance of the opposite, if there's such
a thing. In others words, "Yes" was the response, before any investigation was considered at all. Yes, it was a joyful sort of recklessness.

But the City that Knew How is Now The City of No. It's a cautious, timid community, afraid to make a move, as is the behavior of any oppressed peoples. Creepy, self-serving interests have taken over -- whether they be born of the perverse notion of political correctness or
the venal obsession with what might affect property values. From Goethe to Ginsberg, boldness, with its "Power, Magic and Genius in it" was the order of the day. Casting our fate to the strong winds coming off the Pacific Ocean.

Worst of all, The City of San Francisco just isn't any fun anymore. Why not have a ski jump at the top of Fillmore Street? The only thing I'd say to the charmingly garrulous Johnny Moseley is that the ski jump should be permanent. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow all year 'round in Pacific Heights. With Muni fares going up again this month, it might be a cheaper alternative to taking the bus, a good way to get down to Cow Hollow from Pacific Heights -- very quickly. It's all going downhill anyway, folks. Have some fun. Save on gas. There's a war on, you know. Really, there is.

One young woman who had planned her wedding at the Flood Mansion thought the ski jump might mar the view for her guests. How's that? She could have combined the ceremony and the honeymoon at Aspen without even leaving Broadway. I fear she suffers from "contempt prior to
investigation." Besides, that would make for some really interesting wedding photos.

The Board of Supervisors said "no" to the permanent home porting of the battleship U.S.S. Iowa on the San Francisco waterfront. The consensus at City Hall is the old battle wagon is a symbol of war. How goofy is this? San Francisco was the center of naval operations for the Pacific
Theater in the Second World War. So the ship now goes to -- Stockton?

Twenty years ago, another set of supes made the same mistake with the U.S.S. Missouri. I took my late mother aboard when the Missouri stopped for a visit. We walked across the teak planks to the "Surrender Deck". This is where the "instruments of surrender," were signed by MacArthur and the Japanese, where World War II officially ended. If you don't get a lump in your throat while standing there, well, something's missing.

These ships are no longer symbols of war, they are reminders of our history. Recalling history probably does more to oppose war than any other sort of lesson. To preempt history with a mindless sense of political correctness is a pretty good way to guarantee "everlasting
ignorance." That's one of the few things that does last forever.

And now we are in another war, though you wouldn't know it by looking around. No one seems to be saving on gas -- which is what the war is all about. During World War II an expression appeared ion highways all over America, "Is This Trip Necessary?" an appeal to save fuel. Let's
bring those signs back.

I might support offering old battleships a home here -- it creates jobs and encourages tourism -- but I do not, like most San Franciscans, support this ill-conceived war. The U.S. claims it's fighting terrorism but has created a Woodstock for murderous fanatics.

I like the way Mayor Newsom lighted into PG&E the other day after that transformer explosion in the Financial District. I have a more personal complaint with the arrogant utility. I called PG&E the other day and asked if there could be a discount on the bill for people who are chronically ill.

The young-sounding fellow checked my statement and exclaimed, "But you don't seem to use much energy at all!"

"Well," I explained, "I try not to -- there is a war on, right?"

"Yeah," he sniffed, "but you use practically nothing! Whatta ya live in a cave or something?"

So much for PG&E's campaign to save on energy. We still are in the Enron era with the specter of everlasting ignorance. With the way things are going, caves might get pretty popular in that real estate guide.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." His energy use is mostly restricted to burning the candle at both ends. His e-mail is bellsf@mac.com

Mars Over Maui

I wrote this piece in August 2003. I can't get back to Hawaii right now, so I thought I'd revisit the Islands by sashaying through these recollections for a bit. The column appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

MAUI, Hawaii, Aug. 25 -- The intense, flickering brilliance of Mars, the Red Planet, that careens so closely by the Earth this week makes Maui, the Hawaiian Island of Valleys, even more mystical than it usually is. "Maui is amazingly spiritual," says Rod McKuen, the poet/troubadour of the San Francisco '60s. Rod is here to perform in a musical called "Soulmates," written by the popular local composer and performer, Patricia Watson. I came to here to see the show, which
played this weekend at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. ... "I went up the the mountains here for a few days to do a little writing on my book," Rod explains. "The words were just pouring out of me. There is something about this place that reaches directly to the soul." He reminds me of the Irish singer who would gather his poetic notions by walking barefoot on the ancient ground of the Old Sod. He'd feel the Muse come up through his toes. ...

It's clear to understand why Maui evokes transcendental dreams. With the magnificent clouds wrapped low around the mountains, the heavens seem to come down to visit the mortals. ... There are churches everywhere in Maui. This has everything to do with Hawaii's missionary
past. "I even saw a large group of Mennonites at McDonald's," McKuen, remarks, clearly amused. Ah, yes. So many Mennonites, so little time.

And time moves slowly on an island so far from any main land mass. History holds fast. "Maui has a whole lot of gods that were here long before the Christians," says 16 year old Lisa Garcia, born in Texas and raised on Maui. Lisa likes to talk about the sites where Island warriors battled and died. "All these places are sacred -- and they are haunted." Jasmine Lowcher, a striking, raven-haired 18-year-old actress who appeared in "Soulmates," also knows the ghosts of Maui. "I have heard the Night Marchers," she says, with a little pride. "Their footsteps thunder down the trail at certain nights. They are the warriors who were slaughtered in the battle in Iao (rhymes with "meow") Valley a long, long time ago." ... Black Beach is where a princess, who betrayed her king for the love of another warrior, was put to death for her faithlessness. "You can sometimes see her blood on the wall of the cave where she died," says Lisa. "We swim there to honor her." Even Maui has its own Tristan and Isolde legend. ...

Lisa and her mom, Mona Garcia, attended the performance of "Soulmates." They applauded its zeal for the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, McKuen appeared on stage briefly, as a priest, "I'm not quite sure why I am playing a priest in Germany, of all places -- but I guess that's show
business." He sang one song, a "homily," Rod says. Yes, he wrote it last week in the mountains. It stopped the show. It's called "September Comes Around (All Too Soon)." It's an instant McKuen classic. The show is performed entirely in song -- with few spoken words -- in a bouncy pop style. Sort of "Godspell" meets "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." Broadway star Mary Jo Catlett was a big hit. It was directed by David Galligan, known to S.F. audiences for his work on the Richmond Ermet AIDS Foundation benefit galas. "Soulmates" was a big event on Maui. McKuen chuckled about how his name appeared on the marquee on the highway above Steely Dan, who are appearing at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Oct. 10. ...

Rod McKuen's name will inextricably linked to San Francisco, though he's lived in Beverly Hills since 1969. "I saw Rod read his poems in Sausalito," says Kris Hinsvark, who stood at the stage door after "Soulmates," with her husband, Richard. "That was in 1965 and I still recall it well." Diane Kopperman traveled from Las Vegas to see Rod McKuen. She attends McKuen events all over the country. "I tell people I am a stalker," Diane deadpans. "Then they just get quiet." She
is part of the McKuen diaspora. His worldwide fans embrace a religious fervor of their own. ... Dave Donnelly, longtime columnist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and frequent raconteur in S.F. saloons, winged in from Oahu for the show. ... Joseph W. Bean, who wrote for the long-disappeared S.F. Progress (precursor to the S.F. Independent), is now with the Maui Weekly: "I kept coming back to Maui. I finally decided it was cheaper to move over here." ...

Several people murmured to me, "You'll be back here, too." No one here seems to talk about where where you're going. They only ask when you are coming back. Maybe that's why "Aloha" means neither "Hello" nor "Goodbye." Coming back? To this beautifully dissolute island bordello
in the middle of the Pacific? I wonder. I was skeptical about Maui's magnetism. But, after a day or two, I feel a little sweet forgetfulness about the madding world seeping in slightly. That's easy to do while typing on a Mac in the Tradewinds Poolside Cafe at the Maui Coast Hotel, the languid music drifting over me in the perfumed breezy afternoon. "We'll be together again," the pedal steel guitar seductively promises, "here in this paradise." But I need a purpose, even in this paradise. So it's time to collect Rod McKuen and our young handler, the bright and capable Ben McMillan. We're off to Kahalui to look at ukes. ... And there are other pressing matters on this
breakneck itinerary. I have to squeeze in another marveling look at Mars and the constellations that hold court across the Maui sky. "Too many stars to squander," Rod gently warns in his new song, which was penned on spindrift pages in the still night on Maui soil. And then there is the topic of when I might be coming back -- back to Maui, that is. ... Aloha. ... Hello & Goodbye. ...

The Accidental Purist

Every time I get into trouble, I go for a walk by the water. From time
to time I'll saunter along the Marina Green. That salty, ancient smell
of San Francisco Bay; the steady, gentle lapping of the waves foaming
against the black rocks -- it all gives me reassurance. There's a
language in the water. If I listen close enough, I can hear a sweet,
lyrical poem told by long dead poets in untranslatable verse. All I
have to do is ignore all the shouting that goes on in my head and tune
into its frequency. I fall into its rhythm and I feel a great sense of
calm relief. The primordial, swirling water is forever. My problems
have a short life.
And so do I.
There's not a hell of a lot I can do about any of it.
Speaking of long dead poets, I'm sure you recall Emily Dickinson's
famous line, "Because I would not stop for death, he kindly stopped for
me."
Emily was "the Belle of Amherst" but the not the belle of the ball. She
was not invited to a lot of cocktail parties. You might see why. It's
unusual to break the ice at a social gathering by talking about death.
By the way, I've noticed that medical examiners are some of the
funniest people in the world. But they usually have to keep their jokes
to themselves at their own exclusive cocktail parties.
I know a man who, while very young, used to be hired to cause
disruptions just to get the party going. Yes, there is really such a
job. In Yiddish, he's called a "tumler," and his job was to create a
little mayhem at parties at Jewish resorts such as those found in the
Catskill Mountains of New York State. This would break the tension
between strangers meeting for the first time. What a wonderful culture
that is -- to actually have such an occupation. Too bad the United
Nations doesn't have a few of these. The Security Council could use
them.
I'm sure Emily Dickinson was very funny. Or she could be funny. Who's
to say? Most of the time Ms. Emily was shuttered in her room, writing.
Or walking about, listening to the language of the trees.
"Death kindly stopped for me." Beautiful but not too funny. Lately I've
stopped to think about things, more than I used to. It's part of that
trouble I mentioned earlier. You see, I have developed a serious heart
ailment. I've mentioned it before. It's an unwelcome adventure. But I
have no intention of letting death stop for me just yet. Death has
plenty of other stops to make. All the same, it sure slows me down a
bit. Maybe that's why I like to hear the relentless, rock steady rhythm
of the tide. That solid, reliable meter is missing in me. Right now my
heart is off the beat. It flutters uncertainly. It gives my whole being
a sense of wobbling off its axis, a touch of vertigo.
So I have slowed down a little (the medications, that is, the
beta-blockers and the ACE inhibitors put everything in slow motion
anyway). Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Dickinson's
contemporaries and fellow New Englanders, were always talking about
slowing down. And that was in the early 19th century. Off to Walden
Woods Henry went. There he "wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow
out of life." That's in the language of his world, the world in the
woods. Can you imagine hearing that today? Someone on a cell phone, on
the packed 1-California bus? "What am I doing this weekend?" the person
shouts into the phone. "I'm going to live deep and suck all the marrow
out of life!" When there's poetry on the buses, the world will have
changed.
Marrow is now off my diet. So is all meat, fish, and dairy products.
Yes, I have taken to digging for roots and collecting berries in the
Presidio. Well, not quite but my cardiac crisis led me to be very
careful about what I'm eating. The doctors put me on a low-fat, no-salt
regimen. I didn't think it was tough enough and decided one day, not so
long ago, that chickens never have a good day. So I have become a
reluctant but now a zealous full-fledged vegan. I adhere to the Dr.
Dean Ornish "Reversing Heart Disease Diet." It's severe. It means no
oils or fats of any kind. Except fish oil. "Take three or four grams of
fish oil a day, Bruce," Dr. Dean told me. "It might help your heart get
back to a normal rhythm." He insists on a certain brand, Complete
Omega, by Nordic Naturals. Pricier stuff but the company filters out
all the metallic poisons. The other day a chap in the Marina told me
his wife, who consumed only fish for her health, contracted mercury
poisoning. Yes, we have gone that far in contaminating our oceans and
rivers. We have stopped listening to the language of water. It's very
scary. Who needs "War of the Worlds"? We've been waging war on our own
planet for a long time.
There is even a slow food movement, founded in Paris in 1989. I heard
about it through my friend, Lisa Carlson. I know what slow service is
but I'm not sure what slow food is. It seems to have much to do with
selecting foods from the region and caring for the environment that
produces it. It's a reaction to the mass-produced, hormone-injected,
chemical-drenched foods we see everywhere.
I like the notion of slow food. I'll pick a farmer's market around
town, fill the bags with veggies and all sorts of beans and make a
legume ragout in a good-sized pot. It might last a week. Or longer.
Like cassoulet, the French, exalted form of pork and beans, I'll keep
adding to the mixture from time to time. I get a serene sort of feeling
by soaking the beans in a large bowl overnight or for a few days, then
stirring them lovingly over a low flame as they simmer for hours. I'm
convinced this unhurried, simple form of cooking is clinically good for
me. At the very least, it gives me pleasure.
I don't feel any holier or more sanctified by becoming a vegetarian. I
just feel better. Oh, don't think I don't miss scarfing down a pastrami
sandwich. Or sucking the marrow out of the osso bucco bone. The workers
at Tommy's Joynt still have to chase me out of the hofbrau because I
tend to steam up the glass while hovering over the steam table, leering
at the brisket. If I did not have a near-death experience and this
terrifying ailment, I would not have selected this way to go. This is
not such a noble calling. As for nutrition, I am the accidental purist.
"You may have a serious form of chronic heart disease," my
wise-cracking internist, Dr. Debbie Brown, says. "But you look really
good." Isn't that all that matters in our culture? Let's face it: it
helps.
Here, walking along the Bay, confronting the waves, I may fend off the
inner terrors fighting to take over. "Listen to me," a soft but
distinct voice says, "I am the language of water. And this is all you
need to hear right now."

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay" (Council Oak
Books). When not meandering near the wind-swept coastline, he may be
reached at bellsf@mac.com

Tormented By Civilized Cartesian Phantoms

The British stage actor, Sir Antony Sher, came on Charlie Rose program to discuss his one-man show about Primo Levi, the Italian chemist who turned to writing after his survival at Auschwitz. Even the brief clips of Sher's performance are very intense.

What intrigued me was Sher's experience with stage fright late in his career. "It's quite common with serious actors who have been at their craft for a long time. Olivier had it so badly that the rest of the company (at The National) was instructed not to make eye contact with him. It would terrify him. He felt the actors were judging him"

Sher described his own terror: "I could hear my own voice delivering the lines to the audience but another voice in my ear would say, "You're going to screw this up. You're going to make a botch of it. You're going to blow it. Then a third voice would start shouting, contradicting the second voice. There was all this racket going on in my head. What causes it? It's an Inner Demon."

"And how did you make it stop?" Charlie asked.

"By doing a one-man show."

I wasn't familiar with Levi's writing. Now, I think I'll pursue his books. He committed suicide, by the way, pitching himself down a stairwell in Turin 40 years after his Auschwitz liberation.

"It wasn't the camp that caused his death," said Sher. "It was his lifetime bout with clinical depression -- something he had before he was caught by the Nazis." Curiously, his depression vanished while he was in the concentration camp. Survival became everything. But it returned after the war.

Despite the so-called racial laws, Primo Levi managed to complete his degree in chemistry at the University of Turin in 1941. But he had difficulty finding work. And two years later, when the Germans invaded northern Italy, Levi fled to the mountains with a pearl-handled pistol, joining
an ineffectual band of partisans.

"I was twenty-four," he would recall, "with little wisdom, no experience, and a decided tendency -- encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me for the previous four years by the racial
laws -- to live in an unrealistic world of my own, a world inhabited by civilized Cartesian phantoms ..."

Captured at once by a troop of Fascist militia, Levi soon found himself crossing the Brenner Pass in a cattle car, en route to a location whose name had not yet acquired its terrible, latter-day
resonance: Auschwitz.

I once had a memorable breakfast with Joe Bologna in a greasy spoon in -- of all places -- Northridge, California. He talked about acting and the nature of fear. Growing up in Brooklyn, he considered becoming a priest. His father shined shoes in Wall Street and saved enough money
to send Joe to Brown to become an architect.

I wrote this in my Examiner column, January 2004: Joe Bologna & Renée Taylor performed "It Had to Be You" at the Cal State Northridge Theater yesterday here in chilly Southern California. The house was packed.

"These are wonderful audiences in the San Fernando Valley," said Renée. "People come from all over." The couple wrote the show over 20 years ago. But its tenderness and insight into human vulnerabilities transcend the vagaries of fashion. In a characteristic Taylor/Bologna theme, two strangers find redemption through chaos and rediscovery. It’s a very funny and very touching show.

But “It Had to Be You” had to be funny.

“You don’t cut funny,” said Bologna’s character in “My Favorite Year.” But there’s always the poignancy. “I used to have trouble with sexuality when I was young,” Joe said before the matinee. “I just didn’t like how it made me feel vulnerable. I considered becoming a priest, but then I had too many questions about God."

He would have been a very funny priest. …

Which reminds me of the old joke: "How do you make God laugh? Just tell Him your plans."

And now a final word on parrots (from "My Favorite Year"):

Rookie, your Meatloaf Mindanao was superb!

Rookie Carroca: Thanks. That takes two days to prepare, you know.

Really! Tell me, what was that rather pungent taste?

Rookie Carroca: Parrot!

-someone spits up and Aunt Sadie swoons-

Rookie Carroca: And they're not easy to work with. They put up some squawk.

Just Another Card-Carrying Party Goer

Because it always takes me so long to find my cummerbund, I am
grateful the Black & White Ball occurs every two years. By then, it's
typical that I still haven't learned to handle a bow tie properly. But
the occasion reminds me that a new pair of black & white Chuck Taylor
high-tops is in order. The sneakers go well with the tuxedo.
What I like about the Black & White Ball is how the hoi polloi may
mingle with the haughty. But everybody gets to dress up -- sometimes
with catastrophic result. But it's still the best opportunity for
people-watching in San Francisco. It's all cleavage and cuff links and
I confess, I like it. It's the great egalitarian costume ball.
It's all terribly democratic, if you have the money. You can't have a
democracy without an entire class of people believing they deserve
better and want more.
David McCullough, perhaps our greatest living historian, was in San
Francisco the other day, talking about his new book, "1776." The early
Americans wanted more out of the government that abused them. They were
willing to go to great lengths to ignite a series of events that turned
out to change the world.
"The more you learn about the Revolutionary War," McCullough told the
Commonwealth Club at the Hotel Nikko, "the more you know what a miracle
it was. I cannot believe we won it. The victory combined circumstance,
fate, character, ability but -- above all else -- the refusal to quit.
If it weren't for these people (who led the uprising against the
British), all of those high ideals in the Declaration of Independence
would be nothing but words on paper."
The rebellious colonists had to give up their Black & White Balls
(the standard of living was very high in the American colonies before
the Revolution) for the right of self-determination. They felt betrayed
by their King when he hired mercenaries to crush the colonists. "I hope
that those who come after us appreciate the hardships and sufferings
we've had to endure," wrote Abigail Adams. At the outset of the
fighting, her husband, John Adams, predicted correctly, "More people
will die from dirty pots and pans than from musket fire." About 1 per
cent of the population was killed or died from disease. That's the
equivalent of 3 million Americans today.
"Even without the war, life was a struggle every day in the 18th
century," observed McCullough. "Planning for the worst was how to get
through the day. That's why there were no plastic surgeons or
orthodondists."
Now, 229 years later, the plastic surgeons and orthodondists were
filling their plates and their glasses at the Black & White Ball
without a though for dirty pots and pans. Thank you, Abigail Adams and
all of your brave and brilliant contemporaries this July 4th.
McCullough pointed out the Revolution would not have been won without
the French: "The French Fleet arrived to save the day at Yorktown."
The Black & White also owes much in its traditional panache to the
French. Bastille Day also approaches again this month. It's
Independence Day for the French -- perhaps the most independent people
on earth.
You might recall that on July 14, 1789, an angry mob stormed the
Bastille prison in Paris, subdued and dispatched the guards, and freed
all of seven prisoners.
But the symbolism was enormous. The French are crazy about symbolism.
It sparked the French Revolution.
Louis XV was well-liked. But his son, Louis XVI, saw his ratings drop
precipitously. This sort of thing happens quite a lot among property
owners in the Marina. The recent generation doesn't seem to have the
savoir faire -- that generosity of spirit -- that their parents, who
actually worked to acquire the property, demonstrated. As for Louis
XVI, who got his house the old-fashioned way -- by the divine right of
kings -- also inherited a very unpopular mistress, Marie Antoinette.
She is now considered the patron saint of spin doctors, who are trained
these days to remove Maud Frizon shoes from one's mouth. But a
Versailles is still a Versailles.
The much-maligned Marie is still remembered for the infamously
condescending crack, "Let them eat cake." It went over well with the
baker's guild but it bombed with just about everyone else living under
the yoke of the House of Bourbon. They
might have preferred the bourbon to the cake. After a fashion, of
course -- or, as Groucho would say, after an old-fashioned.
The era of "noblesse oblige" came crashing down. The weather had
changed. A hard rain fell. A reign of terror followed.
Today, the guillotine is gone but the celebrations continue. You
can always find a guillotine being auctioned these days on eBay, I
suppose.
The French are an odd lot. They find the lining of a cow's stomach
palatable and Jerry Lewis funny.
They're a little on the xenophobic side. For example, there's Brigitte
Bardot. The former, sweet sex kitten keeps her claws out for foreigners
-- seeking their expulsion from France. La Bardot is still a stooge for
the ultra-right-wing La Penn Party. She's the perfect free-thinker:
loves animals, hates people.
Beauty and the Bigot.
Ah, but who doesn't love French food and French wine? Or Fernandel;
Charles Boyer; Piaf; Aznavour; Truffaut; Jean Lafitte; Jacques Pepin and
Claudine; Dumas, Kiki of Montparnasse; Voltaire, Juliette Binoche; the
brioche at the Chestnut Bakery; Cocteau; Madame Curie; Madame La Farge;
Madame Tussaud; Johnny Hallyday; Rimbaud; Cezanne; Flaubert, Capucine;
Jean Reno; Rousseau, Florence Aubenas; le Comte de Lautrémont; Renoir,
the painter; his grandson, Renoir, the filmmmaker; Manet; Monet; Louis
Malle; Montmartre; the Citroen Deux Chevaux -- or Jean Luc Godard? Oh,
that's right: he's Swiss. Never mind.
The French gave us wonderful expressions: "bon vivant" (drunk);
"beau monde" (a bunch of drunks); "bete noir" (a nasty drunk); "au
naturel"
(a drunk who takes his or her clothes off at the company Christmas
party);
"a votre sante" ("Oh, good, we have another case of beaujolais"); "carte
blanche" (drinks are on the house); "bon marche'" (a discount liquor
store); "bonhomie" (finding a former acquaintance who'll pay for the
next
round); "raconteur" (a verbose drunk); "coup de grace" ("Zoots alors:
We're out of wine!") and "bon voyage" ("You've had enough. Go home.")
The French gave us the Statue of Liberty. Rodin's "The Thinker"
ruminates at the windswept entrance of the Palace of the Legion of
Honor out by the ocean. There's a replica of the Arc de Triomphe in
Washington Square in New York's Greenwich Village. The French
titillated us with French Ticklers, lent us a French Quarter, provided
a French Connection, taught us the French Horn and invented the French
Kiss. They even managed a way to combine their use. And gave us a term
useful for both kissing and horn-blowing, "embouchure." Anything that
involves the tongue seems to be French, including cooking it. The
French snickered while sending the English a bundle of "French Letters"
-- postage due. "French Letters" is a quaint old Brit term for condoms.
Yes, it appears the French invented sex, if you believe the brochures
--
which is also a French term. And, if you're not in the mood for sex,
there's always French Toast. That's usually less complicated.
At any rate, Happy Bastille Day and July 4th, too. To France and to
the USA, two cultures and two nations that still have something in
common: a refusal to give up.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He's
observing his own holiday, that is, his 35th year in San Francisco. "My
timing was off," confesses Bellingham. "I missed the Summer of Love and
got here just in time for The Summer of I'm OK, You're OK. That's not
quite the same thing. The Sexual Revolution is over. It's still unclear
who won." ... Bellingham's e-mail is bellsf@mac.com ...

Kindness for the Queen

At first glance, I was a bit puzzled by the following note from Damian Bergen-Corby and his memories of the late "Queen Susan of Albania." A little research revealed that I did write a commentary about this shadowy woman who hailed from the verdant landscape of Australia, not the rugged terrain Albania.

This piece and the attendant obit appeared a year ago, in July 2004, on Rod McKuen's famous and venerable web site, "Flight
Plan." As homage to Queen Susan and to all obscure, displaced historical characters and, as Bob Dylan, wrote, "for every hung-up person in the whole, wide universe," I include it here. First, a little personal note from Damian Bergen-Corby.

"Back in the early 90's when I lived in Manhattan, I often dined at a restaurant called "Sam's Place", on E.33rd.St. Although it served Italian food, it was owned by a prominent Albanian family. The restaurant is quite popular with European royalty, and frequently Queen Susan dined there. Actually, she never really dined ... she more or less did work there. Pushing her salad aside, The Queen would fill out Visa applications, apartment applications, job applications -- you get the picture, for any number of rude, chain smoking Albanian exiles in NYC. Albanians are a fairly aggressive lot, but The Queen never seemed to
mind her work,even as her food got cold and wilted, and cigarette smoke engulfed her lovely, smiling face."

I know her life and title "Queen of Albania", does seem odd, but she was, by all accounts, a kind, generous and good humored women. I guess considering what a miserable job she had to perform, one would have to possess such traits ... just to get thru the day. I just wanted to say something kind, on behalf of my Albanian friends who loved her deeply; about a woman who has had too few kind words spoken about her - even in death
Dear Damian, The stories of exiled royalty in Manhattan always intrigued me. One of Charlie Chaplin's last films (the last he appeared in) was called "The King In New York." Our hero in the movie is, of course, an impoverished monarch of some obscure European principality, who's toppled by the inevitable populist vagaries of 20th century history.

To this day Americans remain obsessed with royalty, for some perverse reason. I confess I am no better on this account: I still keep my diamonds secretly sewn into my bodice in the event there is another assault on the throneMany thanks for the colorful reminiscence.
Best, Bellingham

A Chakra To The System

I could barely conceal my excitement when I saw the news that the
legendary Ravi Shankar was performing in May at the San Francisco Opera
House. It's been 35 years this month since I arrived in San Francisco
and stayed. I still don't know why. Intransigence? Poor judgment? My
residence here has had all the turbulence of a long love affair.
Sometimes living in San Francisco is like being locked in a bad
marriage with no sex. Other times, the city sweeps me off my feet. The
idea of seeing Ravi Shankar again stirred feelings in me that I thought
this old jade had lost forever. The same feelings I had when I first
saw this jewel of a town in June, 1970.

George Harrison described Ravi as "the Godfather of World Music." On
stage with him was his gifted, cool, beautiful daughter, Anoushka, who
is a sitar genius in her own right. You might know Ravi has another
accomplished daughter -- Norah Jones. That would be a great jam
session. With progeny just around the corner, it's likely Ravi Shankar
will also be the "Grandfather of World Music."

Seeing Ravi takes me back to my adolescence. He's always been a hero to
me. As a teenager, I was mesmerized by the Indian music that the
Beatles brought to their audiences. In New Jersey, I begged my mother
for the $200 to buy a sitar at the 4th Street Music Store in Greenwich
Village. Even Dylan bought his guitar picks there. So it was tabernacle
of coolness. My mother gave in. My heart was racing as I produced the
money for an amused fellow behind the counter who saw the sparkle in my
eyes. Awkwardly schlepping the long, lithe, beige instrument with the
large tuning pegs on top and a million strings that were stretched over
a gourd, slipped gingerly into a saffron-colored woven cotton bag, I
made my way to the subway with this oddly-shaped cargo tenderly
clutched in my arms and then on to the bus at the George Washington
Bridge Terminal. Crossing the Hudson River, (it was the Ganges that
afternoon), I took my treasure home to New Jersey.
"You're lucky to have such a beautiful instrument," my mother said with
some kind reverence.
I played and played that thing until after an interminable two months,
I felt I was ready for public performance. Never mind that I used a
flat pick (that's hopelessly gauche) or that a guru in New York told me
it was required of a serious student to learn how to sing all of the
literature in Indian music in a sort of solfeggio. Forgive me, but I
can't quite recall how the "do-re-mi" goes in the Hindustani system. To
learn this, I was told, takes about seven years. Only then you may pick
up an instrument. Seven years? You gotta be kidding.
I was ready now. "Now" is one of the prime words in a teenager's
lexicon. It usually is preceded by the phrase, "Give it to me." I got
my hands on a Manhattan Yellow Pages and called every Indian and
Pakistani restaurant in the directory and asked if they needed a sitar
player. Believe it or not, after only about forty toll calls, a man on
the phone said in a wonderful thick East Indian accent that I should
come see him. He sounded like Leo McKern as the renegade Indian fakir
in the Beatles movie, "Help."

I actually got hired at the age of 16 to play the sitar on weekend
nights at the Kohinoor Pakistani Restaurant on 2nd Avenue on the Lower
East Side. Yes, with the flat pick and made-up melodies that sounded,
well, Indian. I would wear a Nehru shirt and black dress shoes. All
these years later, I still marvel at the nerve of that 16-year old.
Wistfully, I only wish I had just a wee bit of it today. I think I
lasted four or five weeks at the gig. Let's be grateful for small
miracles.
"My sister-in-law does not like you and does not think you are very
good," the Kohinoor owner explained apologetically. (Cherchez le
sister-in-law.) "Perhaps you could learn 'Never on Sunday.' It was
Number One on the Hit Parade in Karachi." I went home, learned "Never
on Sunday," played it in the restaurant the next week about twenty five
times a night and got fired.
It's one of my favorite memories.
I got to meet Ravi Shankar twice, in the Green Room at Lincoln Center.
On the second occasion, I stood in line behind The Young Rascals --
also Jersey boys -- who meekly requested sitar lessons from the master.
Shankar politely -- even gently -- turned them down.

These memories were keeping me company as I took my box seat at the
Opera House, expecting a lovely, meditative evening. No so fast. I
forgot that San Francisco in many ways has become the Honyak capital of
The Coast.
And what is a "Honyak"?
I'm not sure -- but I know what a lummox is. He was seated in front of
me -- wreaking of dope and patchouli -- tweaking and squirming in his
box seat all through the performance. He actually waved his glass of
cheap red wine in the direction of the musicians and played "air sitar"
along with the master. My friend, Paulette Millichap, the publisher of
Council Oak Books in Pacific Heights, would call this behavior
"devolved." No respect for the "Godfather of World Music." Wordsworth
came to mind, "The world is too much with us, late and soon." I was
distracted from the concert and my childhood remembrances, of course,
and kept fantasizing about how I could nail this inebriated jackass
into a box of his own. Even at this stage -- Ravi Shankar turned 85
last month -- do people not have a clue that the master, Ustad Ravi
Shankar and his colleagues, Anoushka, and the great Tanmoy Bose on
tabla, provide serious classical music? Does anyone play "air cello"
along with Yo-Yo Ma? These days, they probably do.
I mentioned this annoyance to an usher. She said, "These are not opera
people here tonight. Opera people do not wave their wine glasses
around."
Well, it might be tolerated, even encouraged, during the raucous
drinking song in "La Traviata." Or during an Ouzo-soaked party where
they play "Never on Sunday."
But when it comes to a private, hypnotic, meditative excursion into
kundalini, let's keep the party polite.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay" (Council Oak
Books, San Francisco). He's toying with the idea of retrieving his
sitar from the New York apartment of a friend and becoming a serious
pupil -- at his advanced age -- of Indian music. If Bellingham can sit
still long enough. Meanwhile, e-mail him at bellsf@mac.com.

Blogsite by kimberly kubalek, www.kubalek.com

Newsweek has a problem ...

... and the Pentagon seems to think the magazine's editors are trying
to four-flush their way out of a story that Newsweek now says was
partly inaccurate -- the one that alleged U.S interrogators flushed a
copy of the Quran down a toilet in order to rattle Muslim prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay.
Never mind linguists: the Army really need plumbers.
At least Newsweek explained that Koran is really spelled "Quran. I
guess that means the unhappy inmates at Gitmo are "Qurantined."
No one is happy with Newsweek's half-hearted back-pedaling. Many in the
Islamic world say it only comes from White House pressure to defuse the
tension. The Pentagon used strange language about the alleged
toilet-flushing episode. Spokesman Larry DiRita complained that
Newsweek did not actually issue a retraction. The magazine "tried
instead to water it down."
Isn't that how the trouble got started in the first place?

Let's Keep The Party Polite

I went to see the legendary Ravi Shankar last night at the San Francisco Opera House. George Harrison described Ravi as "the Godfather of World Music." On stage with him was his gifted, cool, beautiful daughter, Anoushka, who is a sitar genius in her own right.

Seeing Ravi takes me back to my adolescence. As a teenager, I was mesmerized by the Indian music that the Beatles brought to its audiences. In New Jersey, I begged my mother for the $200 to buy a sitar at the 4th Street Music Store in Greenwich Village. Even Dylan bought his guitar picks there. I played and played that thing until after an interminable two months, I felt I was ready for public performance. Never mind that I used a flat pick (that's very gauche) or
that a guru in New York told me it was required of a serious student to learn how to sing all of the literature in Indian music in a sort of solfeggio. That takes about seven years. Only then you may pick up an instrument. Seven years? You gotta be kidding.

I was ready now. I got my hands on a Manhattan Yellow Pages and called every Indian and Pakistani restaurant in the directory and asked if they needed a sitar player. Believe it or not, after only about forty toll calls, a man on the phone said in a thick East Indian accent that
I should come see him.

I actually got hired at the age of 16 to play the sitar on weekend nights at the Kohinoor Pakistani Restaurant on 2nd Avenue on the Lower East Side. Yes, with the flat pick and made-up melodies that sounded, well, Indian. I would wear a Nehru shirt and black dress shoes. All
these years later, I still marvel at the nerve of that 16-year old. I think I lasted four or five weeks.

"My sister-in-law does not like you and does not think you are very good," the Kohinoor owner explained apologetically. (Cherchez le sister-in-law.) "Perhaps you could learn 'Never on Sunday.' It was Number One on the Hit Parade in Karachi." I went home, learned "Never
on Sunday," played it in the restaurant the next week about twenty five times a night and got fired.

It's one of my favorite memories.

I got to meet Ravi Shankar twice, in the Greeen Room at Lincoln Center. On the second occasion, I stood in line behind The Young Rascals -- also Jersey boys -- who meekly requested sitar lessons from the master. Shankar politely -- even gently -- turned them down.

These memories were keeping me company as I took my box seat, expecting a lovely, meditative evening. No so fast. I forgot that San Francisco in many ways has become the Honyak capital of The Coast? And what is a "Honyak"? I'm not sure -- but I know what a lummox is. He was seated in front of me -- wreaking of dope and patchouli -- tweaking and squirming in his box seat all through the performance. He actually waved his glass of cheap red wine in the direction of the musicians and played "air sitar" along with the master. No respect for the "Godfather of World Music." Wordsworth came to mind, "The world is too much with us, late and soon." I was distracted from the concert and my childhood remembrances, of course, and kept fantasizing about how I could nail this inebriated jackass into a box of his own. Even at this stage -- Ravi Shankar turned 85 last month -- do people not have a clue that Ustad Ravi
Shankar and his colleagues, Anoushka, and the great Tanmoy Bose on tabla, provide serious classical music? Does anyone play "air cello" along with Yo-Yo Ma? These days, they probably do.

I mentioned this annoyance to an usher. She said, "These are not opera people here tonight. Opera people do not wave their wine glasses around."

Well, it could be tolerated during the drinking song in "La Traviata."

In a related item, I see that Judith Martin aka "Miss Manners" -- the official arbiter of good behavior -- is appearing before the Commonwealth Club but not in San Francisco. She come only as far as Mountain View, 35 miles south of San Francisco, at the Finn Center, on Tuesday, May 17. I wonder if anyone can do "air protocol."

Your Servant in San Francisco,

Bellingham

Cut To The Chaste

"Cut To The Chaste."

That's my suggestion to San Francisco Archbishop William Levada for the title of his memoirs as he is about to assume his new duties in Rome -- to head the powerful enforcement arm of The Church's theology, the Vatican Congregation to the Doctrine of Faith. His job will be to look of for cases of "heretical perversity." And to collect the payoffs from the local shopkeepers. "Heretical perversity."

The Church has such a terrific sense of the lingo. It metes out its reproach in a grand way -- the opprobrium that drips with contempt is almost a pleasure to endure because it is phrased so well. But historically, the consequences of "heretical perversity" went far beyond mere florid verbal admonishment. It was a whole different scene back in the 1500s when The Church let loose its doctrinal dogs.

"Is this the same outfit that used to burn the witches?" asked Levada excitedly at his Vatican interview with the mysterious Cardinal Anselm Penetratus.

"Well, they hanged more witches than actually burned," murmured the Cardinal.

"That's cool," Levada gushed. "Do you think we could bring back the wasps on the flesh thing, you know, in a quiet sort of way?"

"A Muttering Instinct,"I've used that phrase as a column headline before. I thought a good title for this alleged longer work I am allegedly working on. Now, I find myself in this fair Marina District, a most decorative cultural casket.

Minding matters grave, my friend, Ian Whitcomb, once a pop star in "the British Invasion," told me story about Boris Karloff, who, as a traveling thespian, missed the last train out of Carlisle or Manchester or some northern city like that.

Remember this story? He knocks on the door of a dreary-looking house that could be a bed & breakfast.

A dry voice, one that seems not to have spoken in a very long time, croaks, "Yes?"

"I find myself ensconced in your fair city this evening," Boris explains cheerfully. "Do you have rooms for the night?"

"Yes," growls the clipped, dry voice.

"Ah, and do you have special terms for actors?" asks Boris.

"Yes," snaps the dry voice behind the door. "And here's one: Fuck off!"

Rodney Sheratsky: More Than A Maker of Minds

As I watched scores of teachers gather outside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel atop Nob Hill in San Francisco in a protest against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the scandalously pathetic state of California schools, I could almost hear the voice of Dr. Rodney E. Sheratsky.

Inside, dinner guests were shelling out $100,000 per plate for the honor of having dinner in the same ballroom as the governor. Sheratsky might murmur, "Evelyn Waugh said it best, Bruce, 'This is all rather ill-making.'"

Rod Sheratsky was a treasure who lived atop the majestic outline of the sheer cliffs of the Palisades that hover over the Hudson River, framing the New York City skyline across the water. To me and to countless numbers of his students, he'll remain one of the monuments of the region.

My former English/Journalism/Film/Humanities high school teacher at Northern Valley Regional High in Demarest, New Jersey lived in nearby Fort Lee, just over the magnificent George Washington -- the bridge of my childhood. That's so he could always have quick access to his beloved New York. He'd regularly jump on the bus for Lincoln Center ... Carnegie Hall ... some off-Broadway play or a gallery in Soho, his wallet filled with membership cards to the MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Met and so on. His young students would marvel and sometimes snicker at this eccentric man who would take a Manhattan hotel room for two weeks out of the year so he could attend the New York Film Festival and see movies morning, day and night. Today that really sounds wonderful to me.

"I'm grateful now that I used to do that," Rod told me last year. "Today I couldn't do it physically."

Rod died in New Jersey on March 18, 2005. He was 71.

I never found out about that doctorate he had attained when he was so young. It must have had something to do with the arts or humanities -- but I figure it had more to do with humanity itself. He really was an expert at getting a kid to wonder about things -- to realize there is a
curious beauty behind the ordinary. And that there was irony and humor and intangibles that move us because they are spoken only in the heart.

We stayed in touch over the years. He was a one-of-a-kind peach who was always giving something to someone -- even when they didn't always know what was being passed along to them.

When Alan Dundes, the UC/Berkeley folklorist, died this year an obituary revealed that a former student was so grateful for all he learned from his teacher that he gave Dundes a million dollars. I wish I could have given Rod a million bucks. It would have been fun to see how he would've given it away. And he would have. I'm pretty sure he would've endowed at least a few libraries. When my book, "Bellingham by the Bay" was published, Rod scarfed up five copies and donated one to my high school library -- and one to the public library in my hometown, Closter, New Jersey. He also gave a copy to Uma Thurman, who was performing in an off-Broadway production just because he knew that would amuse me. I have no idea if it amused Ms. Thurman.

Sheratsky co-wrote a book about a British documentarian, "Humphrey Jennings: More Than A Maker of Films." Rod was certainly more than a teacher of students. One day, in the classroom (I was a freshman and this was the 1960s), I was in a snit about something. I think that's
when I got kicked out of Honors English for the usual dereliction of duty and, no doubt, dishonoring English in some way. Rod nonchalantly dropped a napkin on my desk. It was filled with sugar cubes that he had nicked from the cafeteria. You see, he'd read in the New York Times that the latest psychedelic rage with all the kids was to gobble up LSD-laced sugar cubes and embark on something called "an acid trip."

How could I stay mad after that? My teacher was a co-conspirator for my mischief. We chuckled privately for hours.

He tagged along with me when I, at the age of 14, had arranged for an interview with Allen Ginsberg at the poet's New York Lower East Side apartment. Knowing Ginsberg's notorious reputation for pot-smoking and pedophilia, Rod pretended he "just wanted to meet this man of letters."

We ran the interview as a full-page piece in the school newspaper, of which Rod was faculty advisor. Only later did I realize how much heat Rod had taken for such an outlandish expedition. This was 1966, the Viet Nam War was just getting really hot, the nation was beginning to
come apart, and we're running an interview with this Commie peacenik pothead fag? Rod was my protector and took the brunt of the criticism from the faculty. He also taught me to have the courage to stand by my work. When I told Rod that the football players had hanged me in
effigy, he was unrepentantly delighted. Years later, a famous actress, Mercedes McCambridge, imparted the same sentiment to me: "Only those who get themselves into trouble are worth the time of day."

Rod despised sentimentality and some of the drippy things that make up popular culture. He passed up the usual staid poetic works that clogged the curriculum in order to introduce his English classes to Walt Whitman's "To A Prostitute." On that occasion, he would tell a pupil,
"You'd better close the door before we get into this." He'd refer to the beloved Julie Andrews movie that gained an almost reverential status as "The Sound of Mucus." By the way, Rod adored Pauline Kael, who was fired from McCall's for writing a scathing piece, "The Sound of Music: The Sound of Money." For Rod and Ms. Kael, it was always open season for sacred cows that produced too much saccharine. "Those who get themselves into trouble ..."

I recall when Rod took our high school film class (hard to imagine we even had a film class back when the government really spent money on schools) on a field trip to see "2001: A Space Odyssey." But we HAD to see it in Cinerama, he said. That meant going all the way to Montclair, N.J. And sitting in the first few front rows in order to get lost in the movie. (That was to get a notion of Kubrick's own aesthetic cinema dimension, don't you know.)

Because of Rod, I saw my first opera, it was Puccini ... my first Picasso ... my first Ferlinghetti ... my first Bertolucci ... my first play by Strindberg ... my first Marx Brothers movie ... had my first ice cream soda on Washington Square. Last year, when I called him from Manhattan to announce I was taking the bus over the George Washington Bridge to Jersey to visit him, his
voice took on a disarming gravitas.

"You know that I am remanded to a wheelchair, Bruce," he intoned solemnly.

"Yes, Rod, I know about that."

"Well," he whispered with mock sincerity, "they used to call it syphilis but now they call it Parkinson's."

He never stopped being funny.

When he invited me to take whatever I wanted from his book collection, I knew it was a goodbye from him. It broke my heart. He could no longer hold a pen in his trembling hands so he had me inscribe the books to myself. That was so like him.

"One thing before you go," he said. "Can you show me how this thing works?"

Someone had given him a cell phone. I sorted through the package and found a number for it.

"Here, Rod," I instructed, "you hold this." Standing a few feet from him, I called his number from my cell phone.

It worked. Pretending to be startled by the call, he chirped into it, "Uh, hello? Who is this?"

"It is I, Rod," said I, standing next to him.

"Oh, all those years of teaching English grammar just paid off! You said, 'It is I.'"

Then he added, "I want you to know, Bruce, that I love you."

"I love you, too, Rod."

It was all very cinematic -- like a Godard movie -- actors closing a long distance in a small room. But after all this time, Rod was never really far from me. I can hear him right now, "Ah, but let's face it. We had some damned good fun."

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay" (Council Oak Books, San Francisco). He would like everyone to know that he has no plans to terrorize the local culture by taking up teaching.