Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
In the week just ended, some old adages came home to roost – to mixed memories.
-Some seniors among us will recall the wartime admonition, “Loose lips sink ships!”
-And the other widely quoted admonition “Don’t shoot the messenger” who brings bad news.
Both were revisited last week against a visual backdrop of hundreds of thousands of handwritten placards held aloft by hands across the globe.
The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of what is called the “doomsday clock,” advanced the Armageddon trigger to its most ominous level since the 1950s and the nadir of the Cold War. The good news is that it has, within the ensuing decades, been both advanced and retreated. It is, apparently, responsive to changing emphases and insights.
The symbolic instrument was introduced on the Bulletin’s cover in 1947. The scientists who are its custodians note that it is not a scientific instrument, nor even a physical one. Their announcements are based on its import for encouraging dialogue and awareness and, in layman’s terms, to face the fact that words matter. Especially when invoking nuclear warfare initiatives or a cavalier disregard for the negative potential of climate changes.
It seems encouraging that the group openly acknowledges past errors of judgment, as when the clock was not advanced at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s. That sort of realism and humility comes down on the side of hope, signaling that truth- seeking holds as much weight with the scientists as punditry or pronouncements.
The message is clear: while words matter, the willingness to use them for fact-seeking is the group’s goal. The “clock” ticks on relentlessly only so long as words are not respected for the vast power they have. But when that power is acknowledged and respected, there is the hope that they will awaken the respectful awe they deserve. I think of it in relation to the timeless observation that truth is accessible and that, when known, it can set both speakers and hearers free.
The second adage and its implications may not be so fluid. Willingness to identify message and messenger is, after all an arbitrary decision. So, once the judgment is made that the messenger is not open to broadening of horizons, or better, to using the current impasse to discover how things can be made better and more inclusive, the prospects for dialogue are limited.
In the case of last week’s events, it does not appear that there is room for the growing awareness that bubbles that happen can also be burst. They can fade in the honest effort to move beyond the borders of “beats” that allow truth seekers to listen and to sympathize. At their best, the members of the press whose freedom is enshrined in our glorious Constitution, go in search of the face to face encounters that are recognized as an expense worth undertaking. The purse keepers need to be partners in the search to know the truth of real people’s lives.
It remains an invariably bad idea to identify and so vilify the messenger based on the message he/she delivers and to rule out the possibility that he/she wants and needs that truth. It would appear that when a consensus of response bubbles up from a broad constituency, it takes on an import that transcends propaganda or partisanism.
So, it appears that tightening the loosened lips can have a salutary effect. Realism demands that we: both speakers and listeners, take note of the fact that the volume of a message increases in proportion to the size of the megaphone. That in turn, indicates that the holder of the megaphone can influence the impact that message can have for the better, by recognizing that the megaphone comes with increased responsibility. That happens if and when the speaker, seeing the potentially negative impact of words, comes down on the side of “walking back” the original message to reflect what is reasonable versus rabble-rousing.
This is no time for pessimism. If a system seems broken, we cannot afford to assume that it cannot be mended. Grown-ups can’t afford to imitate the children who greet a snow storm as an opportunity to build separate forts from which to shape snowballs to fling at one another across a field of mutual silence. We had chances last week to observe that words matter, and so to be inspired to use them wisely.
Who was it that said, “a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on?” I think it might have been attributed to Samuel Goldwyn. But in any case, whoever said it uttered a classic oxymoron. The late President Gerald Ford rivalled him in the observation that If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.
The formal definition is a conjunction of apparently contradictory words joined to achieve an effect. The Greek roots of the word combine two words that mean sharp and dull or keen and stupid. Those roots provide fertile soil for the satirist. Some of the most notable ones of those is the first person to nominate these two: Civil Servant and Great Britain.
Should you suspect that that individual was a native of the Emerald Isle you may be forgiven. Starting with an 18th Century Parliamentarian named Sir Boyle Roche who rose to address an issue of spending money for a project that would only begin delivering benefits to a future generation is reported to have said, “Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?”
There is one school of literary criticism that conjectures that Sir Boyle was an inspiration for the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop in his play The Rivals. But that may underestimate him. Consider how deftly he used the construction when he was quoted as saying that anyone opposing freedom of speech should be silenced. (Shades of some recent news reports.) And thus was born the sometimes innocent, often sly verbal construction known as The Irish Bull. And I’m here to testify that the pattern of speech is alive and well. (And I’m not referring to any recent, contentious confrontations of press and politician.) I favor a definition that classifies the Irish Bull as an apparent contradiction used for emphasis.
As the “token American” recruited to the New York staff of the Irish Government’s Export Board (as marketing communication’s liaison), I knew I’d better get myself up to speed when I heard the following exchange between a phone caller and the Director’s highly professional assistant. “This is the phone number you can use to contact Mr. Mulcahy, but he is rarely there.” And I don’t think she was trying to be ironic. My great source of enlightenment was a delightful paperback title called The Irish Book of Bull: Better than all the Udders. (And No, it doesn’t suggest what you may assume it does.) I acquired the slim volume and can testify that I have done so over and over (even now when it is technically out of print) since it remains to this day the most “purloined” volume in my library. But be assured it is worth the search.
Sir Boyle Roche’s worthy contemporary descendants include the mourner said to have gazed into the coffin of the deceased and lamented, “Ah, he’s not the man he used to be, and never was.” And the comedian who got great laughs with the observation, “So I went out to get on my motorcycle, and there it was, gone.” Or the apparently innocent inquirer who asked, “Are you reading that newspaper you’re sitting on?”
If you are drawn to such word play you may also mount a search for Willard R. Espy’s An Almanac of Words at Play. This is a feast for the fun-seeker, copyrighted in 1975 and introduced by the late, great Alistair Cooke who said it was to language what a football was to Joe Namath, a golf ball to Arnold Palmer or a male of the species to Zsa Zsa Gabor. To tempt the palate of those who savor words as fun, here are some appetizers from a section focusing on headlines that linger and which uses the headline “Nudists Take Off.” It includes “Papa Passes”, the headline of an Ernest Hemingway obituary, and the obituary of Abdul Ahzis as “Abdul Ahzis as Was.” Espy opined that he doubted the New York Times was trying to be funny when it described an imminent widening of a strike by hotel workers in these words, “Maids all to go out with Hotel Waiters.” By 1981, Espy had added the title Have a Word on Me: a Celebration of Language.
In an era when words too often seem used as weapons, the likes of McHale and Espy are worth the search. What price insight that leads to laughter? And while you’re at it you may want to search for a copy of James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks. It’s a collection of examples of venery, the use of a collective noun to describe a group. A gaggle of geese, for example; or a pride of lions. I can predict that people who sample this book together will be moved to turn the practice into a game or contest. One such event I enjoyed with good friends competing for a good laugh came up with such classifications as “an inventory of archivists”; and “a scuffle of little boys,” “a ledger of CPAs.”
With all due respect for the power of 140 characters, it may be more important than ever to let the words, and the laughter flow. And that’s no Bull, Irish or otherwise.
It all started near Grand Central when I dodged a bullet because of a turf war between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs designed by an Archangel. That left me stranded 750-plus miles from our 10065 urban village, with only a geriatric piece of equipment as my electronic lifeline. I knew I was in trouble. But along came Good St. Nicholas and a rescue that left me celebrating the fact that 24-carat Customer Service is alive and well in an area code far, far away.
Now, before even the kindliest followers of Woman Around Town and Street Seens begin to wonder if the aforementioned challenges have left me quite unhinged, let me invoke the old truism, “You can’t make this stuff up.” I didn’t. There’s an explanation for these unlikely scenarios. And if you come along I’d love to tell you about each and all. And I promise that in the course of the stories you’ll meet some great people and have renewed hope in America’s service industries and retailers. No kidding!
Let’s start with dodging the bullet and Grand Central. The first was a metaphor; the second an iconic New York site. On my return to the terminal after Metro North returned me there from a long day on the banks of the Hudson, I fell victim to the frequent fallacy that I had time to tick off one more task on my “Urgent To Do” list. So, I went to the Verizon Wireless store en route to the Third Avenue Uptown bus stop to choose the replacement for the Android phone dating back some three and one half years.
I browsed the various options and concluded that one was “just right.” It had the stylus I had come to like; not so many features as to make me feel like a deer in headlights. In all externals, it seemed the winning choice. That’s when the reality of the clock and of the brewing turf war brought me back to reality. Over years in which he and his team have guided me (sometimes kicking and screaming) from PCs to the recent and current MAC, a brilliant network engineer has earned my designation as Michael the Archangel, a patron known as warrior and message deliverer supreme. Somehow he and his staff have created a system that allowed me and my colleagues to have the best of both worlds, perhaps even three. Contacts were kept, files were portable, for better or worse we didn’t need to miss a phone call or a text.
But don’t ask me how that was able to happen so seamlessly. And don’t take it that the Messrs. Jobs and Gates always approved. Remembering that, I had to say to the helpful Grand Central Verizon Wireless associate, “I’m so sorry but I will have to put off closing our deal until Michael the Archangel engineers the transition.” AND THAT IS HOW I MISSED PURCHASING THE SAMSUNG NOTE 7! (How do you spell Whew?) just before it began exploding (literally!) in the media and aboard trains, planes and clothing pockets. While I was breathing a sigh of relief, the original connector cord wore through and I acquired an emergency stand-in from my local CVS.
Fast forward to a 5-day trip to Illinois that has so far lasted for some 35. Very near Christmas Eve, the cell phone and connector of this story decided to divorce for irreconcilable differences. Enter Good Saint Nick. As manager of the Verizon Wireless Store across from the Macy’s at the Louis Joliet Mall, he stepped in to be my Knight in Wireless Armor. Sight unseen, he took my phone call and came to the rescue. Only after the fact did I learn that he was “the boss.” He personally conducted the search for a hard-to-find double connector; called a nearby sister store that had the replacement and told them to save the unit for me to pick up that very day.
Forgive me for being astonished! When I asked his name and found it was Nick, I thought immediately of the Good Saint Nicholas of Dutch legend who personifies the giver of gifts at the Christmas season. Truth to tell, Nick Vlachos was not the first and is not the only amazing Verizon Wireless miracle worker I have encountered. There was the young woman who insisted on staying with me on a landline until she “found” the missing and muted phone I had packed into an under-bed box of stored winter clothing. And the Long Island executive who said, “take my cell phone number in case you have a problem.”
I opted out of the FIOS option because of the yards of plaster that would have had to be drilled through. But let’s raise a toast to the likes of Good St. Nick of Joliet, Illinois who restores our faith as he preserves the life of antiquated cell phones. And of course inspires us to eradicate all memories of the phrase “Beware of Greeks who come bearing gifts.” Perhaps he should sign on to find the safe solution for Samsung’s burning issue of the Note 7.
Like most New Yorkers, I live in a village. No matter that the village is called an apartment building. The numbers are similar, and sometimes when one has lived in the village for a number of years, or in times when crises hit one of its residents, the sense of community flourishes.
This Christmas will be more real to me because of what happened on my street (no matter that it is called a floor) in one such village…..
“Once upon a time”……In the simplest possible terms: a child was born. But it didn’t happen in the simplest possible terms. Instead it happened in the context of a brilliant, complex bachelor.
Because he is a very private person and because he tends to wrap his kindnesses in understatement, if not complete anonymity, I’ll call him Joseph, after another good man who also, at great cost to himself, became the parent of an often-misunderstood little boy.
The Joseph of my story had for years found time in his life as the senior editor at a prestigious publishing house to give the most valuable donation of all to a well-known program to help the city’s helpless. He gave his time, generously and personally, to encourage and to counsel young people at odds with the law and with themselves.
It was through one of these contacts that he first came to know the little boy. A mutual friend tells of how a special bond was recognizable from the moment Joseph first saw the child. While the boy’s mother fought an often-losing battle with drugs and the sometime companion of the two drifted away, Joseph kept watch and never gave up on either of them. He was quietly determined that the little boy would not be pulled into a cycle of hopelessness without knowing that there can be choices in life.
So, the little boy first began to visit the village on weekends. It was a chance for his mother to get a brief respite from the demands of two tiny children growing up, first in a shelter and then in a cramped apartment. And mostly it was a chance for the little boy to do what is largely missing from the lives of the city’s poorest children: to play.
In Joseph’s company, he visited the local firehouse and the firefighters let him sit on the big, red truck. He ran and tumbled and tired himself and Joseph in Central Park. Neighbors saw him go from grasping to giving as the reassurance of Joseph’s presence taught him that a boy needn’t grab for things in the constant fear that they will be taken away.
Then one day the boy’s mother left him with Joseph and didn’t return. But instead of becoming swallowed up in the system, ricocheting from foster home to foster home, the boy came to live in the village full time. Joseph battled the dragon of bureaucracy for him and made it possible for the boy to have the one bit of continuity and stability his young life has had.
Joseph never tells the boy placating lies when the child asks why his mother went away, or if she will come back. But neither does he tell him truths which are designed to frighten. Mostly, I suspect, he simply stands by this little boy.
Joseph tells of how he arranges for the little boy to spend Sundays at the home of one of his teachers so the boy can have positive experiences of a mother and a loving family. He does not seem to take it for granted that the little boy can stay with him in the long term.
Joseph’s dream would be for the boy to become a part of a family that is full of warmth and support and nurturing. As he describes the scenario, he adds that he would hope that the family might allow him to continue to have “some role” in the boy’s life.
And so it began, “Once upon a time……”
Perhaps you who read these words today have been, or have known “Joseph” or “the Boy.” And even if you have not, may you hear in this story new reasons for hope. Happy Christmas.
Which one, you might ask? There are so many of them rattling around in our memories. London, where the soap box orators vent? Upstate New York where memories of FDR are enshrined? The South Side of Chicago where a great university shares a neighborhood with a President’s pre-White House home; gracious 19th Century houses and churches speak of times when space was spent lavishly to accommodate families and worshippers?
I spent the past week in the last of those three Hyde Parks watching my sister benefit from the genius of great doctors at The University of Chicago Medical Center and discovering a hotel with a big brand name and a massively creative take on that name, which manages to achieve both predictable quality and absolutely unpredictable personal touches. For a few days, I had the feeling I had visited Downton Abbey or the Bellamy residence and that the staff had been directed to foresee and respond to everything needed to make a challenging time into a touchingly positive one. The Hyatt Place Chicago-South/University Medical Center Team are to hoteliers what Merlin was to magicians. Or perhaps I should compare them to Mary Poppins’ Uncle Albert who was said to be able to “fix everything but broken hearts.”
Need to get from the hotel to the hospital or vice-versa? From 7AM to 7 PM just ask and in 10 minutes Larry or Dwight will whisk you there in a Mercedes bus they operate as if it were a streamlined sedan. Unfortunately, nothing is needed to shuttle you to the iconic ice cream parlor where tastes are offered any of the scores of original flavors. Local eateries include the cash only cafeteria President Obama is said to visit whenever in his hometown. A cornucopia of options surrounds the hotel and they make it easy to allow guests to order in to their in-house central delivery facility. A lavish breakfast is served daily.
Outside the doors is a world of options for all the necessities and niceties to establish a home away from home, from first run cinema to homewares and shopping options.
The “urban village” of Hyde Park is much like that of my Manhattan 10065. A quick review of the December issue of It’s Happening in Hyde Park showed me a stunning catalogue of cultural and historic icons that dot this Southside neighborhood (above). They range from the singular Museum of Science and Industry to the Du Sable Museum of African American History; the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House and magnificent Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and U of C’s Court Theater. A full page shows parks to be visited and others amaze with lists of houses of worship, restaurants and ongoing events. Everywhere there is the mosaic of people that power the strength and diversity of this enclave.
“Town and Gown” is a phrase that has its own varied meanings wherever institutions of learning live and further inspire their surrounding neighborhoods. Having seen the Hyde Park neighborhood from a home away from home in its center, I leave with a treasure of hope for what our great nation of villages can achieve.
There is a moment in the flight between JFK and Cuba when the passenger looks out and sees the Island country and the State of Florida simultaneously. When that happened to me early in the first year of the new Millennium, I thought of the advice the boy Arthur was given by Merlin in Camelot. “If you soar high enough, borders disappear.” A little more than a week later, I had seen the truth of that advice from on board the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital, which took off from New York looking mostly like an iconic DC-10, but was soon transformed into a world class teaching hospital of ophthalmology.
Along with the writer Eamon Lynch, on assignment from The New York Daily News, and photographer Lyn Hughes, who after decades of shooting what she describes as everyone and everything “from Top Chefs to Top Dogs,” we set off on a glorious adventure she called “transformative.” I was reminded of it last week by the news of Fidel Castro’s death. But the memories, like the experience have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with healing. That is the universal currency of ORBIS the humanitarian champion in the fight against preventable blindness.
Having recruited many journalists to travel with Orbis, to observe its unique missions to countries where preventable blindness is endemic, I had never personally observed one. And so, in the era of the Elian Gonzalez drama and when only a humanitarian objective would allow our government to grant visas in cooperation with a mutually respected neutral consulate, I knew when presented the opportunity that my initial reaction of “I can’t go the very week we are moving to a new asc international office,” was overruled by the profound conviction “I can’t NOT go.”
And so, Eamon, Lyn and I joined the Orbis staff and volunteer doctors and nurses in Cuba’s Matanzas Province for a glorious and appropriately high-soaring adventure.
The many journalists the asc team had encouraged to travel with Orbis to observe its unique missions to countries where preventable blindness is endemic, were unanimous in the sense of wonder at what they saw and filmed and photographed in those missions. But I, personally, had never seen how eminent ophthalmologists volunteer their time and skill to partner with the Orbis staff and local medical communities to create a unique learning and healing experience. I had never seen how a DC-10 touches down and is seamlessly turned into a world class teaching hospital; how from hundreds of candidates for treatment, a number are chosen on the basis of the ability to provide healing to the patient and invaluable learning for their new colleagues.
The challenge to the journalist is to discern the subjects who will emerge as the story: six-year old, whose alternating esotropia would have to be addressed and reversed before the window of opportunity closes. So it was with the feisty Katherine/Katerina that Eamon’s story followed (photo above). She was chosen because her condition was generally not treated in Cuba at that time, and so it presented the ideal teaching opportunity in which the Orbis volunteer physicians could share insight with their Cuban counterparts.
As the ORBIS nurse assured her that the pre-op IV was simply a way of feeding her, Katerina responded by directing the translator to report that she was not hungry. Puzzled by Eamon’s Irish name, she brightened when told that it was the Irish equivalent of Eduardo. When the two met again at the end of her successful procedure, they met eyes and she said through the translator, “I will call you Eduardo.” To which he spoke from deep joy, “And I will call you Kate.” You see, when you soar high enough borders do disappear.
Surrounded by miracles, Lyn was observing and chronicling how the first-class section of the reconfigured DC-10 became the operating theater. There, each procedure from laser to full scale retinal surgery, was observed by members of the Cuban medical community gathered there and also transmitted to an adjunct hanger space to accommodate the large numbers of medical personnel eager to grow, to dialogue, and to learn.
What we saw along the way has burned itself into the newly awakened eyes of my heart and mind. There was the arrival night reception when our Cuban hosts offered performances of dancers mirroring the amazing variety of latter day Cubans. In a judgment colored by something akin to fatigue from jet lag, travel, arrival, change from traveling clothes to jeans, and reconfiguring the plane to hospital, I concluded that, in Matanzas, the length of a set of dancing is measured as the span of “a life well lived.” Among protests of “but please, we have more Rum to offer you,” the well-traveled worker bees crept off to their beds to prepare for the healing heart of the visit.
When a “free Sunday” arrived, it brought a Jeep-borne one day field trip to Havana. A roadside stretch of beach illustrated the astounding gifts of automobile preservation and restoration that seem to reveal that the Leonardos of those arts live in Cuba. We crowded in quick visits to some of Hemingway’s favorite haunts, a bookstore to search for a biography of Jose Marti and finally a too-late return trip on a road that boasted no road lights but scores of families on bicycles bearing platforms that seemed to support all their earthly possessions.
Home restaurants, marking the early entry into individual enterprise, offered a way to learn the many definitions of Cuban tastes. The hotel where we were assigned, was host to many Canadian and Italian tourists who followed the paths to what Cubans of the past likely considered a sort of Hamptons get-away.
Walking further and further out into the sea that lay beyond the white sand beaches made it somewhat easier to believe that a young mother might have believed she could simply continue walking and so take her son to the other beach that lay to the west. At the start, she too might have had the look of intense maternal joy Lyn remembers seeing as another mother walked from a miraculous airplane, holding a child in her arms whose sight had just been restored.
For both of their sakes we can hope that Merlin was right and we can continue searching, each in his or her own way for new ways to “soar high enough.”
Opening photos and map from Bigstock by Shutterstock. Newspaper images from The New York Daily News. Article by Eamon Lynch, photos within article by Lyn Hughes.
Author’s note:
Eamon Lynch is a contributing writer for Newsweek and previously editor of Golf Magazine.
Lyn Hughes, photographer to Top Chefs and Top Dogs (Animal Medical Center), is a NYC photographer for over 25 years. Lyn captures the essence of the moment from Ethiopia’s Awash River Valley to Red Carpet Night at the Tony’s. You can view her work at www.lynhughesphotography.com
I read one morning that learning one new word in a foreign language each day fosters brain health. How could anybody resist such an optimistic opportunity and challenge?
So, as you have read in the headline of this column, the first learning experience I was able to log in on in my trajectory to improved brain health was an expression of gratitude. For the two or three of you who share my woeful lack of proficiency with America’s second language, that phrase means “I am so grateful.”
Let me tell you about some of the other things I learned and which richly deserve to generate gratitude.
I learned that test trains are running up and down the tracks in the Second Avenue Subway. And so besides being grateful, I also apologize for my comment in the inaugural Street Seens column that the subway line apparently had eternity as its due date. Workers on the Second Avenue Subway fortunately either never knew or had forgotten that I “dissed” it and by association, them, in that first column and were all smiles as they assured me that test trains on the line have had successful round trips as they check for proper functioning and put up signs to mark the many stops between here and Coney Island.
I learned that our national anguish of an endless electoral campaign will presumably end in less than two weeks. And I am grateful to be able to call up and invoke once again Abraham Lincoln’s invitation to summon up “our better angels” as we face the task of making peace in a respectful atmosphere where there are inevitable winners and losers. I am truly grateful that his words stand as a beacon as we work as hard as it will take to feel compassion for one another and turn aftermath into prelude to better things via better angels.
I learned that when I walk the block between Second and Third Avenues (the uphill path) that I am not just imagining that it seems longer than that. It is presumably because this was the location of horse barns housing the actual horsepower that fueled the earlier NYC public transport that preceded the now defunct Third Avenue “El” required that amount of square footage. Homes for these equine powerhouses set the perimeters that now define Manhattan House. In one stroke, history has decreed that both are provided the luxury of ample space.
“Sister Peggy” Dr. Margaret Ann Landry, RSHM
Finally, and most marvelously, I learned that there is such a heroine as “The Purple Nun,” and that she is not the central character in a graphic novel. She was a Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary for more than five decades. In a community that takes as its mantra the scriptural promise to work to bring life and bring it more abundantly, it probably shouldn’t be surprising to review a chronology that includes service as a teacher, a college administrator, a faculty member of Marymount International School in what was then Umtali, Southern Rhodesia, and one who helped create there the mission school of St. Killian.
On return to the US she once more set out on an unexpected path for more than two decades as counselor and campus minister at Long Island’s Stony Brook University, where she could have been remembered as Dr. Margaret Ann Landry, RSHM; DHL upon receiving the University’s accolade of Doctor of Humane Letters. Instead though, to most of the scores of students, alumni, and colleagues who traveled to Tarrytown to honor her in a rainy night’s Vigil and the next Day’s jubilant Mass of Resurrection she was “Sister Peggy or The Purple Nun,” so called for her penchant for unifying her wardrobe around that single color.
Tens of thousands of shares on the linked social media pages of Stony Brook and the RSHM global network celebrated memories of the wise, practical and remarkably generous woman who always made time for the human concerns and aspirations that she respected as of first importance.
In a final commendation at her Funeral Mass at Marymount Convent in Tarrytown, the celebrant suggested that in this painfully fractured political season we might do well to consider that in her light we will come to see how red and blue reach new glory as purple. None better than she to discourage anyone who might consider that miracle impossible. French was the language she taught to students at Marymount School in Arlington, Virginia, but I think she will not object to being the heartfelt Amen! Alleluia! of a story about gratitude headlined “Soy tan Agradecida.”
On Monday I learned of a cause taken up by the remarkable New York City Girl Scouts. They described it quite eloquently on Channel 7 Eyewitness News. Happily, I also know that they have a formidable champion for their cause that they may not be aware of. But the fact is that she is an heroic figure mounted on a horse of equally formidable proportions and can be found only a short bus ride away from Central Park, which the Girls Scouts have identified as the battleground of their campaign.
The Scouts want a female statue to be added to the crown jewel of New York’s parks system whom they will be able to see as a more realistic role model than the fictional women/girls Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose and Juliet Capulet (embraced by the young Romeo Montague.)
Several years ago I was introduced to the monumental figure of Joan of Arc who rides into battle from Riverside Drive at 93rd Street. It took author/film maker Mary Pat Kelly to open my eyes to the woman who reigned there for more than a century, since her 1915 dedication, as the first and at first the only non-fictional female memorialized on a Manhattan public space. With her keen sense of the convergence of real individuals in the popular culture of other times and places, Mary Pat has encouraged her friends to explore the rich connections they can find in the urban villages that make up our city.
That instinct led to her pointing out that May is a rather perfect time to celebrate the mighty Joan, who was burned at the stake in May of 1430 and went on to become the patroness of France credited with leading the nation’s troops to victory in the siege of Orleans. My most recent visit to the Equestrian Saint happened last May 30 just a century and one year after she came to Riverside Drive on the day of her dedication. I was charmed to see that several bouquets of flowers had been left at her feet by earlier visitors.
I could not help but hope that they also honored the eminent artist and art patron Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) who sculpted the statue and thereby crushed the stereotypic view that such a monumental work could never be achieved by a woman.
The crowd that gathered to celebrate the unveiling of her statue in the throes of a World War included political dignitaries from at least two continents and even Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison as one of those who pulled the cord to unveil that stunning 20-foot sculpture. The informative account of the Joan of Arc Memorial on the NYC Parks website includes the detail that portions of stones from the Tower of Rouen where Joan was imprisoned are embedded in the base created for the statue by John Van Pelt.
It is rich in details of how Hyatt Huntington tapped into conventional and unconventional sources to achieve the awesome work: a horse at work for her local Massachusetts fire department, armors from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections and her own young female relative to serve as a model of the equally young soldier-saint.
After turning back the siege of Orleans the young Joan was ultimately captured and sold to the enemies of the King whose restoration she was inspired to seek; tried and condemned to be burned at the stake just a few months after her 20th birthday. Her story has been a favorite of playwrights, artists and authors.
But back to our Girl Scouts and their campaign to see a non-fictional female become the subject for an important statue in Central Park. Who better to adopt as their patroness in this enterprise than a young girl who lived on this earth for less than two decades and in that time dared to become a heroine, depicted in a work of art so rightly described as “larger than life size.” Or for that matter, who better as a joint inspiration than a sculptor who overcame skepticism that she was up to the task and was subsequently commissioned to fashion the statue of Cuban patriot Jose Marti, the whose statue stands near the southwestern entrance to Central Park.
And so, advice to all the dreamers: To Horse!
Opening photo: Bigstock by Shutterstock
All other photos courtesy of NYC Parks/Art & Antiquities; last photo by: Dorothy Cheng, NYC Parks
The Scouts want a female statue to be added to the crown jewel of New York’s parks system whom they will be able to see as a more realistic role model than the fictional women/girls Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose and Juliet Capulet (embraced by the young Romeo Montague.)
That instinct led to her pointing out that May is a rather perfect time to celebrate the mighty Joan, who was burned at the stake in May of 1430 and went on to become the patroness of France credited with leading the nation’s troops to victory in the siege of Orleans. My most recent visit to the Equestrian Saint happened last May 30 just a century and one year after she came to Riverside Drive on the day of her dedication. I was charmed to see that several bouquets of flowers had been left at her feet by earlier visitors.
After turning back the siege of Orleans the young Joan was ultimately captured and sold to the enemies of the King whose restoration she was inspired to seek; tried and condemned to be burned at the stake just a few months after her 20th birthday. Her story has been a favorite of playwrights, artists and authors.