A man, a van, a rolling drama unplanned

I’m not sure what lesson to draw from a near-nightmare travel experience not long ago on the way into Washington D.C. But you know when someone says, in a tender act of inspiration, that it’s not the journey but the destination, don’t always believe them. This one was all about a most harrowing journey.

I flew into the Baltimore airport and, having sifted the options for getting into Washington, I booked a shuttle van that, with the likelihood of multiple stops, would eventually take me directly to my hotel.

The first hiccup was a mere Hadley Hemingway moment. When my van number was called, I was all the way to the door before I realized I’d left my backpack behind -- the backpack with my laptop, my life’s work, inside. Not unlike the tragic day in 1922 when Ernest Hemingway’s wife lost a valise with all his early manuscripts in a Paris train station. That legendary crisis, of course, was going through my head as I ran back to the bench where I’d been waiting. OK, the pack was still there. Onward.

The van had three other passengers and two stops. The driver turned out to be somewhat tentative, though often insistent when adjacent to more aggressive types. I ended up navigating when he missed one exit and nearly missed two others. And by my count, in something more than an hour’s journey, our van encountered four near sideswipes and maneuvered into two near T-bones.

But the real drama came from the seat behind me. An older man was expressing some discomfort and by the time the van made its first stop, somewhere in exurban Maryland, it seemed he was undergoing something like a medical emergency or psychotic episode. He let out a scream, he said he was going to kill himself, he tried to escape out the back door of the van as the first passenger was getting out the side door. The driver pushed him back inside. I asked the man’s wife whether her husband should go to a hospital or whether we should call an ambulance. She said he’d be OK once he got to their daughter’s place in Virginia. I asked whether the daughter could meet the van somewhere, but, no, she was working.

 I tried two or three times to determine from the driver how long it would take to get to their stop. He was a little rattled but finally consulted the GPS and came up with 20 minutes. I relayed the news to the ailing man. His wife had given him a nitroglycerine pill, and he began to calm down. Not for long. We were in the midst of bumper-to-bumper highway traffic when he stirred again, making a gesture toward the side door handle, which was locked and unable to be opened from the inside. I wondered how an ambulance or a police car could ever find us in the stream of slow-moving traffic. I told the man gently to chill out and assured him we’d be getting to their destination soon. He sat back.

At one point the man muttered something to his wife about killing two guys and how it wasn’t worth it because he didn’t know them. I was pretty sure he was talking about the driver and me. I tried to remember the name of that hi-jacked bus movie with what’s-her-name. And I felt at times as if we’d been deposited in a cosmic episode of Law & Order. If only Mariska Hargitay or Ice-T were on hand to save the day.

After recovering from one of those missed exits, the van finally arrived at the narrow, tree-lined street in Arlington, where the couple’s daughter lived. As they departed the woman turned to me and mouthed a thank you. After the man alighted, with help from the driver, he turned, looked at me and stuck out his arm for a firm handshake. “Take care” was all I could muster.

As the driver sat back down I gave him a tap on the shoulder. “We made it,” I said. He thanked me, said we couldn’t have survived without my help. “It’s tough getting old,” the driver said. I couldn’t agree more, though I realized the man might not have been much older than me. There but for fortune. Next stop: my destination, a D.C. hotel.

Remembering Fico: The Hemingway Trail in Cuba Loses Another Direct Connection

While we were in Cuba last month, we learned of the recent death of Alberto "Fico" Ramos. Fico is well-known in Hemingway circles, because he was one of the original members of the baseball team that the writer created for his son Gregory after taking up residence outside Havana in the early 1940s. The team was called the Gigi Stars, Gigi being the 10-year-old (or so) Gregory’s nickname. Fico later became chef at the Hemingway house, known as the Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm. The house stands high on a hilltop above San Francisco de Paula, a village about a dozen miles southeast of Havana. The Cuban government has owned the house since the Hemingways left in 1960 and now operates it as the Museo Ernest Hemingway.

We met Fico on our first trip to Cuba, in 2003, and I sat in on an interview session on the grounds of the Finca, sitting by the drained pool, where I took this photo. I remember Fico as extremely personable and eager to share stories of life around the Hemingways. Our friend Raul Villareal, with whom we spent a week in Havana in December, confirmed Fico’s death the first week of December. “He was able to see his daughter who came in from Miami and I was told that he left us peacefully in her company,” Raul told us in an email. Fico in fact worked with Raul’s father, René Villareal, who ran the Hemingway household in the 1950s and oversaw its preservation after Hemingway’s suicide in 1961. “I was very sad to hear the news,” Raul added. “(W)e lost one of the few remaining Cubans who knew and worked for Hemingway.”

To bring the story full baseball circle: On our return visit to the Finca Vigia in December, we happened to meet Jorge Juan Rey Artze, who for 10 years has coached a youth baseball team in the surrounding village of San Francisco de Paula. Carol Zastoupil thus was able to continue her mission to deliver baseballs to young Cubans. We’ve often seen kids swinging crude bats against rocks in the street, so she has taken the lead in loading her bag with baseballs. (I pack a few sets of guitar strings to hand out.) A couple of years ago, we stopped to watch a youth team practice in Guantanamo City and shared a bunch of balls with them, leading to a team picture and much good cheer.

A sad postscript: Our friend Raul Villareal died unexpectedly of a heart attack not long after I wrote this item about Ficto and just a few months after our trip to Cuba in December 2018. You’ll find a tribute to Raul elsewhere on this blog.

Secrets and Surprises at the Library for the Performing Arts

Those inclined – impelled? -- to a life of research tend to geek out in libraries. Gems of forgotten history bubble up from back rooms. Intellectual encounters with voices of the past arise from quaint, hand-written letters. And photographs open a deep connection with the humanity of a subject or the revealing details of a place. So it was on a recent behind-the-scenes tour of the Library for the Performing Arts, the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library. The library contains vast quantities of archives, and the back rooms seem like one of those English garden mazes, lined by file cabinets, shelved boxes, and old-school card catalogues.

I was among a small group of writers who was led around the place by three of the departmental curators, archivists responsible for music, theater and dance. Imagine getting a glimpse and a curatorial opinion of the ballet shoes worn by Anna Pavlova more than a century ago (photo). Or seeing what the curator described as the oldest known document of choreography in the West, a dance notebook from the court of the Medicis, circa 1453 (photo). The library includes the principal archives of Jerome Robbins, and we caught a glimpse of a rather rare slice of his memorabilia  – one of 24 accordion-fold diaries that Robbins crafted out of text and cultural imagery (no photos allowed of that). The library is planning on putting the diaries on display in an exhibit beginning in September 2018.

We saw Salvador Dali’s unrealized stage design for a production of “Romeo and Juliet” (photo). And another dance revelation occurred as we passed the model of a stage set for a George Balanchine production of “The Nutcracker” from 1964 (photo). The proscenium arch décor included floral bouquets that the designer, Rouben Ter-Arutunian, reportedly snipped out of Mother’s Day cards from Hallmark. When the stage set was finally realized, the painters meticulously reproduced those flowered images, and, it was suggested, Hallmark probably never received a dime of royalties.

The foundation of the library’s musical collection is classical – I mean, where else can you fawn over a lock of Beethoven’s hair (photo)? But its jazz collection is constantly growing, too. One quirky document: A feature interview of the jazz aficionado George Avakian from the Horace Mann School newspaper under the byline of ... Jack Kerouac (photo). After leaving Lowell, Mass., in 1939, Kerouac spent a year at the New York school before beginning his college education at Columbia. Kerouac was not exactly at his peak. Here’s a little exchange with Avakian, who apparently also once attended Horace Mann and wrote for the newspaper:

“Knowing that you were once editor-in-chief of the Horace Mann RECORD,” we told him, “we were wondering whether or not you would supply us with some jazz information.” This, with a sense of uneasiness.

 “Are you from the Record?” he asked, with a broad and disarming smile.

“Yes,” we replied, very much relieved.

“Well that’s fine,” he ejaculated with a smile. “Sit down.”

Offered here, with a smile.

Find the whole Kerouac article at the library’s online archive: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5ddc5f60-bbbf-0133-e670-00505686d14e

10 Thoughts About Boston for a Friend Who's Moving There

A friend is moving to Boston so I gave her some thoughts about my hometown. I haven’t lived there for many years, but I get back every so often and love to experience new places and old. Some people will find this list clichéd or surely incomplete (no mention of public transit? I love the T). So be it for now.

(I’ve gotta say, the other day I got a lump in my throat when the Patriots came back to win that AFC championship game. The Pats are not exactly my first team, but I was a little surprised to sense the hometown pride. Turns out I’ll be in New York on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s not quite halfway between Foxborough and Philly, though close enough, and I suspect there won’t be many Patriots fans in the sports bars. We’ll see.)

So here goes. Not in any particular order.

Fall in love with the ocean. Sandy beaches on Cape Cod to rocky coast of Maine. Find the places that move and mesmerize you.

Neptune Oyster Bar, North End. Yes it's tiny and sometimes takes hours to get in, but I like the place, especially sitting at the bar. Some of the freshest oysters, etc., in town. Lobster rolls two ways. Good beer and wine.

Harvard Square. Overly gentrified and sorta too trendy, but it's the heart of intellectual and multi-cultural Cambridge. Bookstores, shops, restos, coffee or tea and the leafy pleasure of walking around Harvard Yard. I bought my first jazz albums at the Coop just about 50 years ago (Coltrane, Monk, Cannonball Adderley) and my first copy of Howl at the newsstand outside. The vibe remains if you know where to look. Try the Red House (was closed for renovation last time I was there) or new place, Waypoint. Always new restaurants opening.

Speaking of which: Craigie on Main. Between Central and Kendall squares in Cambridge. One of my go-to restaurants. Again, I like the bar: creative cocktails, good wines, French-style cooking. Pricey, but you can get a burger too. One of my Boston faves.

The Granary Burial Ground. When you walk the historic streets of downtown Boston take a stroll through this quaint old cemetery. It'll put you in touch with the spirit (and spirits), you know, names like Adams, Franklin, et al. (Photo)

Boston Common. One of the nation's truly great public spaces. Parkland, pond, etc. On northeast corner, on Beacon Hill across from Statehouse, don't miss the bronze sculpture (by Saint Gaudens) commemorating the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the black soldiers fighting for the Union in Civil War (photo). And a few steps away from there is another great (and expensive) Boston restaurant: No 9 Park, one of restaurateur Barbara Lynch's signature places. Thoughtful, creative, potentially romantic.

The art museums: Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner (photo) are mere blocks apart, so plan a twofer. (At the MFA, don't miss the sublime installation, "pivot blue green," by former Kansas Citian Anne Lindberg, in the contemporary wing; look up. Photo) Harvard's museums also worth checking out. And the ICA, near the Seaport (take the Silver Line!), is cutting edge in a cool building (photo).

Bukowski. OK, not every joint has to be expensive. This great dive bar and griil will appeal to your inner beer nerd. It's up a side street from Prudential Center (where you can indulge in the new Eataly). Good burgers and sandwiches; sassy servers. Pretty sure Bukowski, named for the grimy LA poet, is cash only.

JFK Library and Museum. To be a real Bostonian you must make a pilgrimage (via Red Line and a shuttle bus) to this important place of local and national history. The library also houses one of the most significant collections of Hemingway material, in the non-public research rooms upstairs. Let me know if you go and I will try to drop a word and get you a peek into the Hemingway Room. Also new out there is a Ted Kennedy center, but I haven't been there.

Fenway. Quirky and iconic. Surely you'll go there to see the Royals. Fun option: try the Bleacher Bar. Some seats have a window view overlooking center field, or there's TV above the bar. It’s open year round if you’re in the neighborhood. Also in the neighborhood: Eventide Oyster, a Boston branch of the well-regarded Portland (Maine, of course) restaurant, opened to wild expectations in 2017.