Nice work if you can get it: the college tour

     Eight colleges: Princeton, Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Columbia. Visited, one after another, boom-boom-boom, during a two-week, 2800-mile trek to the East Coast. Probably not the typical American summer vacation. Not exactly Disney World. But we are odd ducks, we Steinbergs. We liked it.

      We went to kick the tires of prospective schools for the oldest boy, the 17-year-old incoming senior — a “rising senior” I’ve learned to say, just one of many details of the academic world gleaned on the trip, from the proper pronunciation of Amherst — “Amerst,” no “h,” who knew? — to the fact that Middlebury has its own private ski slope, to the full name of Columbia University, “Columbia University in the City of New York,” which made me reflect on the economic, almost beautiful concision of “University of Chicago.” 

Nassau Hall -- Princeton

      The older lad picked the colleges. His brother, 16, gamely tagged along. My wife plotted the itinerary and found good hotels. My input, other than genes in the mid-1990s and resisting the urge to constantly quote Robert Browning’s line “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” was to insist there be some pure vacation stuff tucked in as well, between the tours, lest we go mad. Thus three days in a mountain cabin in Vermont, plus a couple days at the seashore in Massachusetts. I also drove most of the way.

     Prospective student tours are a big deal to colleges. Tens of thousands of potential customers beating a path to your place of business, begging to be impressed, fighting for the chance to give you money. It's an opportunity to be seized upon, even though only a fraction of the visitors — a handful in a hundred — will end up attending.

    As a guy in the communications biz, I was interested in how the schools met this challenge, how they presented themselves. Some were first rate. Some did a surprisingly cack-handed job of it. We attended an information session and a tour at each of the eight — tag team affairs where an official from the admissions office would talk up the school, or try to, then a student would lead a tour, though sometimes students were warm-up acts for the official, or even joined in the discussion.

      Princeton has the loveliest campus — sedate, beautiful, historic. Just strolling around lures you into the dream of luxury, of perfection. “I wish there were some animals, such as peacocks,” my older son actually said, as if he were landscaping Heaven. The town of Princeton adjacent to campus has the feel of an old money resort. The jeweler where I went at lunchtime to get a battery for my watch waved away my offer of payment, perhaps out of kindness, perhaps out of the charmed notion that I might return and buy a Patek Philippe or — my suspicion — perhaps because they do not traffic in trifles.

Yale 

      The Princeton info session took place in a vast science lecture hall, with a vaulted ceiling and old wooden desks, a complex, two story blackboard with giant, mysterious antique gauges above it, as if Michael Faraday had just stepped away for a beaker of benzene. The session, run by an assistant dean of admissions, was brisk, polished and without a false note.

     Afterward, our guide, Christine, a confident Californian sophomore, reminded me how out-of-touch with youth culture I have become. None of the bands or celebrities she mentioned attempting to impress us sparked even the faintest flicker of recognition with me — they could have been made up. It all sounded like, We had concerts by Woodburning Set, Dingus and the Feathered Friends last year. Plus Peter Piper filmed his last movie, "Delirium Tremens" here. That happened at nearly every tour. 

     The Princeton campus is wired for wi-fi, of course, and one has to wonder how much the traditional academic trimmings are mere backdrop. In praising the library, our guide said, “I like to touch 19^th century books because they’re cool.” And here she paused, musing. “I don’t do anything, I just touch them and move on with my life.” No one hissed.

Sterling Library -- Yale 

    If Princeton felt somehow delicate and colonial, Yale had a more solid, medieval cathedral feel, even though those Gothic edifices usually turned out to be dorm bell towers and dining halls. The younger boy and I ducked out of the info session to explore New Haven’s city cemetery, where we found the graves of Glen Miller and Charles Goodyear. We returned for the tour. Our spunky North Carolina guide kept being interrupted by gas mowers and heavy machinery — lots of summer landscaping and construction at these cash-washed universities.

    Then we went to Brown. “Is this the college? No!” my older son said, aghast, after we parked at the periphery of campus, something of a hodgepodge after Princeton and Yale. Sitting, waiting for the information session to begin, I pointed to a brochure calling Brown “a microcosm of architectural styles.” The bright spin. “PR 101,” I told my wife. “Try to turn your flaw into an attribute.”

      The Brown admissions official — I should shield her name, lest I inadvertently add to the ranks of the unemployed — began her talk by introducing herself with these words: “I love cloudy weather, rainy days and my favorite animal is the baby penguin.” I wish I could say she was being ironic, but she wasn’t. After Princeton and Yale’s sharp presentations, it was like stepping from a fancy restaurant to a child’s lemonade stand. Helping her not at all was a student who spoke so fast he could hardly articulate words. “Like an auctioneer,” I jotted in my notebook and showed my wife, who nodded grimly. “Eighty percent of Brown students go to graduate school,” the official said. “The other 20 percent become admissions officers.” That wasn’t quite: “Don’t get a degree from Brown because it’s practically worthless.” But it sure came close. (Note to proud Brown alumni: don't blame me for telling you. I'm not saying the school isn't a fine one — it may very well be. Just that the presenters didn't manage to convey it, at least not to us). 

    In fact, the duo did such a thorough job of undermining any interest in Brown we might have had that, when their effort came to an end, we all stood up, looked at each other and mutually agreed to skip the tour and just hurry to Amherst. At the last moment, my oldest son said, “Well, we’re here already,” and we reversed course and joined a tour. We were glad we did, because the guide, an enthusiastic young man from Mexico City (“Daniel, like the girl’s name,” he said, pronouncing it “Danielle”) did much to repair the battered reputation of the school, earnestly explaining how he had found his home at Brown. He radiated energy, though didn’t keep Brown from sinking to the bottom of the list and staying there.

     We made it to Amherst late, though in time for most of their last session of the day, guided —practically passed hand-over-hand — to the proper place by helpful students. Arriving at an intense disquisition in a spare, white meeting room, flanked by balconies, I felt like we had barged in a 1650 Pilgrim chapel. I kept wishing this serious conversation could be projected on a split screen to the assembled Brown community, alongside their own clownish performance, as penance.  “We have the resources to support your creative and intellectual endeavors,” the Amherst official said.
     Amherst is nestled in mountains. Our Amherst guide took great pride in walking backwards, and swung mightily for the home team. "Liberal arts does not mean unemployed," she said. She was also the only guide to stress a school's anti-substance abuse policy, including substance-free dorms (all dorms are theoretically drug free, but the designated substance-free dorms really mean it, apparently). 
     Alas, like many guides, she didn't have the whole talking-to-people thing down, and used the word "actually" in every other sentence, as an intensifier. "There's a reason why we love our alumni," she said. "Roughly 50 percent of all our alumni are actually active. Regardless of whether or not you are formally on financial aid, your education is actually subsidized by $20,000. That's because of our large endowment here. We are actually going to see their presence through our alumni database. When it comes to our alumni, we actually have their information on a data base...."
    The word became like a ball peen hammer tapping on the base of my skull, but my family afterward said they didn’t notice it, so maybe it was just me.

     Williams offered perhaps the most impressive spiel, the admissions officer — a canny vet, a few weeks from retirement — who asked students to identify themselves and talk about the reasons they are interested in Williams, then seamlessly wove their expectations into a presentation that covered all aspects of the school. At Williams, you could clearly see the tension between the parents’ interest — that their kids' expensive education would lead to a career of sorts, eventually — and the undergraduate imperative for fun. Williams has a system where you can hop off the study treadmill to pursue personal passions, and the examples given were: stone masonry, cheese-making, exploring surfer culture and a jaunt to Burgundy to learn winemaking, which I’m sure was loads of fun. Why you need a pricey college to master cheese making is another question.

    Of the eight schools, Dartmouth was the only one I had visited previously — Rolling Stone sent me there 20 years ago to do a story about a new way students communicated with one another, using a computerized message system called email, which became so popular some students weren’t even having phones installed in their dorms. I had expected the students to delight in the big shot magazine’s attention, but found them surly, unhappy that Rolling Stone had recently done a profile on the Dartmouth frat that inspired the film “Animal House” and was, apparently, inspiring it still.

Dartmouth

    None of this I mentioned, not wanting to affect my son’s search process with decades-old biases. And indeed, the associate director of administrations, Katie Madden, was as far from Dean Wormer as imaginable: easily the best of the eight, smartly explaining Dartmouth as part of a sharp, well-ordered career strategy that —and I’m exaggerating here only slightly — starts with excelling in high school and ends with winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine. She could easily be cast in the next big budget action thriller as the Secretary of Defense, briefing the president about the unfolding crisis with coolness and precision. Rather than any rambling, I-like-clouds digression, she gave an organized talk, explaining the three aspects to Dartmouth she was going to emphasize — “access, flexibility and engagement” Madden was also the only one of the eight to use real student examples, Dartmouth students she named who were patenting medical devices and forming their own companies and teaching African villages to use foot pump nebulizers.

     “The world is their classroom,” she said. “There are no boundaries to the experience you can have.” Those people at Brown, I kept saying to myself, ought to be ashamed.    

    After that, I was ready for my boy to go all out for Dartmouth. Then came the tour. Our guide had lived in London and Tokyo and Singapore and did, generally, an excellent job of pointing out the locations on campus. He also delved into the realm I had been reluctant to mention. “Everybody drinks under age,” he said, explaining that this is a major reason for fraternities, which — and he didn’t use these exact words, but this was the essence of his meaning — beside their continual charitable work, are basically temperance organizations designed to minimize the harm that comes from campus drinking by providing controlled settings for it to occur under the close supervision of responsible individuals. “Our parties serve really diluted beer,” he said, noting that 70 percent of the student body at Dartmouth join a frat or sorority, prompting my boy, who had researched all these schools down to the last detail, to ask his first question of the trip: “Would you comment on Dartmouth’s unofficial mascot being Keggy the Keg?” To which our guide replied, in essence, “umm.” 

     The last school was Columbia, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  As my boy bounded up to the desk to give his name to admissions clerk, I couldn’t help but think of his great-grandfather, Sam Steinberg, painting billboards in the Bronx in the 1920s, in his coveralls and painter’s cap, lugging around his buckets of whitewash. What would he think about his great-grandson even having a shot to go to Columbia? Proud, I hope. I sure was. In fact, I was what my people call verklempt.

     That quickly passed. Before the administrator showed up, Matt, a perky Columbia student — trim, mod eyeglasses, maroon v-neck, perfect pompadour — gave a presentation that was almost a performance piece, like one of the monologues from “A Chorus Line.”  Much of the appeal of Columbia, apparently, involves Hollywood stars joining your 
a capella group and seeing Daniel Radcliffe — whose name I at least recognized — shoot a movie scene on campus.

Columbia

     Still, he was sprightly and sincere — so sincere I wished his remarks, too, could be recorded and saved. Not to shame Brown, but so Matt, who no doubt will make a fine professional someday, could be shown it in 20 years time, to his certain horror.  Asked his favorite class, he replied “salsa and reggae dancing” and praised a student club called “Feel Good.”

     “They make grilled cheese and then just bring it to you,” he said. And to think Columbia only charges $60,000 a year to attend.

     He was relieved at last by a grown-up, James Minter, the director of international admissions, a robust, mustachioed man in a blue polo who had a calm, steady demeanor that I liked very much. He was like someone from the Army Corps of Engineers sent to explain how Columbia University would build a bridge to your future life. “Argument is what we do here,” he said, detailing the core curriculum of classics, and I looked over at my boy, to whom argument comes as naturally as breath. Minter spoke about himself, but in a sophisticated fashion. He was born in Georgia, he said, and was asked: did not moving to New York City seem a cultural shock?

     “For me, the culture shock was birth,” he said. “Coming to New York was correcting the mistake.” By the time he was done, the audience was leaning forward, breathless, its collective heart pinned on Columbia. Or, again, maybe it was just me.

      Regarding my older boy's impressions, he's a very close-to-the-vest lad. Let's just say, not Brown. Applying to high end colleges is the rare situation in American life where it's unarguably far better to be a rural black child or a Navajo. Bright middle class suburban Jewish kids are a dime a dozen, and need to bring clean drinking water to an African village or figure out something clever in their essays or snag a bit of luck to get themselves snatched from the slurry. We had managed to boost our prominent noses over the cliff's lip and were staring at the Promised Land of upper crust academic success. But whether my hard-working kid could claw his way that last mile, to an actual spot under one of those majestic oaks, is another matter. We didn't dwell on it.

Morgan Library -- New York

     The younger boy is into celebrity food television, so as a reward for his preternatural patience, we let him pick the restaurant in New York to go to after it was all over, and he chose Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster, at 125^th and Lenox, where we had a glorious Southern feast, outdoors on a beautiful summer day, watching the lively Harlem streetscape stroll by. Which made me think that Tolstoy was wrong when he said that all happy families are alike. Each happy family is happy in its own idiosyncratic way. At least ours is, happy just to seek, to explore, to learn, to try. A bit of success would be nice, too, but we aren't expecting promises.
     After lunch, while the older boy headed uptown with his mother to huddle with a Columbia neurological researcher and tour her lab, my younger son and I slipped downtown to have some fun, and visit the Morgan Library. That would not be considered fun for every 16-year-old, nor for every dad, but it was thrilling for the both of us, and we spent a long time studying the treasures that old Pierpont Morgan had hoovered up from Europe.  Next year, we will visit the colleges my younger son is interested in, and while he has only mentioned one so far—the University of Glasgow, because it was founded in 1451—I told him that people have gone to colleges for worse reasons, and that we stand poised to hie ourselves to Scotland and check it out, should he so desire.

   So where did he end up going? To find out, click here.

Columbia University 

Summer fiction week — "Planning My Breakdown"

     Well, if you can't find literary success, at least you can imagine what it would be like. Summer Fiction Week concludes with this youthful speculation of what might be in store.  It didn't work out that way and, frankly, I'm glad. Thanks for reading these —  we'll have seven new stories next August. Until then, back to the narrow realm of fact come Monday morning. 

     For many years already I had been sitting on the wide, breeze-blown porch of the Quogue Island house, watching the sea beyond my beach gently undulate with a steady, dull roar.

     Occasionally, I would break away from reverie long enough to lazily tap out a few keystrokes on my shiny black Remington Upright. Thwap, thwap each type bar would go, hitting against the heavy bonded paper. Thwap, thwap, thwap.

     After reading over the latest word or two, I would smile with casual recognition of genius, and return to contemplation of nature’s grandeur. The ocean, so very ... blue. Every morning exactly at 10 a.m., my new companion, Cassandra, dressed in simple white muslin, would open the screen door and bring out a cup of mint herb tea and a trio of fresh-baked cinnamon shortbread cookies. The screen door always slammed behind her with a loud wooden bang.

     It was that wooden bang, I believe, or perhaps the fact that the cookies were cinnamon shortbread, and there were three of them, which made me suspect my success, so carefully delineated and enjoyed for so many years, was now becoming a bit stale and threadbare. The pied a terre on 12^th Street, just steps away from the Strand, the house on the seashore, the Big Sky ranch, had all served me over and over. My wife Millie had conveniently run off to a celibate ashram in Oregon to “find herself” just as the future as I had always imagined it finally unfolded in its fullest, delightful, award-draped complexity.

     Shortly after I found Millie’s heartfelt note, speckled with charming misspellings, Cassandra—who had waited patiently for an hour in the line at Barnes & Noble—thrust into my hands, not my latest masterwork, open to the title page, but a beautifully embroidered sampler pillow, the chief design element of which was her phone number.

      She was tremendously svelte, for a woman who liked, as much as I, to drink beer and gobble little hot dogs wrapped in dough.  Millie hates them, but Cassandra couldn’t get enough. We ate them morning, noon and night. Nor was she reluctant to make wild, boisterous love minutes before departing for the swank Upper East Side parties which began to dominate our lives more and more, the flush of our exertions on our cheeks as we made our entrance, heads swiveling in our direction, voices hushed, reverently.

     Everyone assumed that a young woman of such attractiveness could only be drawn to a man like me by my fame, not to mention my continually burgeoning wealth. But I knew better, even though the money did at times stun me. How often I simply stared at those publisher’s checks, cut for immense sums, with their official bluish green, lightly patterned backgrounds. I read once where the late Doug Kenney was always absentmindedly sticking huge checks into books as markers, and I did that too, if only for a moment, to gaze happily at the effect, feeling a tingle of vertigo before snatching them out and hurrying off to carefully deposit them safely in the bank.

     In the end, my success became stifling. Cassandra was replaced by others, singularly and in combination. The huge publisher’s checks were supplemented by movie wire transfers and envelopes stuffed with cash, sent my grateful readers. “Please take this,” they wrote, “as words of gratitude fall short...” How many times could the boys from the Lampoon greet me at Logan Airport with a horseless coach, taking up the traces themselves to pull me through the streets of Cambridge? How many rounds of “Hip, hip, hooray!” — an exultation lost to most collegians — could ring in my ears? How many times could I ascend the cab, clutch my lapel with my right hand, and make that speech of gratitude and celebration, the speech which schoolchildren, 50 years in the future, would still be reciting, tears in their eyes?

     It had to end. The expensive champagnes, mixed with ginger ale and sherbet and run through a blender the morning after parties. The women, wrapped in one of my Thai silk robes, quaffing big plastic cups of the frosty mixture, their eyes sparkling. The constant demands from the publisher. I once read how Hunter S. Thompson was locked in hotel rooms and forced to write. And I was too, the motorcycle couriers, in their black riding boots, fidgeting, clasping their gloved hands together and gunning their engines, staring up at a single lighted window, high in the hotel, where I would feverishly type away, machine-gun fast, each page reverently plucked from the thick carpeting as it falls out of the typewriter platen and immediately hurried to the printing plant.

     Finally, with a single slap of the screen door—the wood weathered, the screen slightly bowed out—I knew it was time to move on. Breakdown was near. Not a Frances Farmer, hair in my face, crescent-of-eye-white-under-fluttering-lids sort of breakdown, of course, with burly attendants lifting me off the floor and slamming me into a straightjacket. Not that. Something more refined. After several nights and days of my leading conga lines into swimming pools, upsetting tables of carefully-arranged hors d’oeuvres, and gunning the blue Mercedes across manicured lawns, my army of loved ones would conspire to send me away for a “rest.” Exhausted, I protest only feebly. A slight flourish of the hand as I’m packed, swooning, into the back of the sleek black limousine, which zips silently through the dark, empty Manhattan streets and into the progressively sunnier, ever-more-lovely countryside. When I awake, it is a new and unfamiliar, though not unpleasant, world.

    The lap rug is ... plaid, my hands pale and rather thin against it. Deidre, my nurse, hears me stir and looks up from her embroidery, smiling, her dear face framed by the crisply starched ends of her white nurse’s cap. “You’ve been asleep a long time,” she says, in her honeyed voice, like a wind chime on a summer’s night. She pours the tea. From far across the wide, wide green lawn of the sanitarium, the sea can be heard, a faint roar.

                                                                       #

Summer Fiction Week — "Mom Crimes"

     Maybe the strangest entry for Summer Fiction Week. This was written years ago, when I was a contributor to the old National Lampoon humor magazine.  I seem to recall a blasphemy issue being involved in its creation, and my shooting for something edgy, though not edgy enough, apparently, because they didn't take it.  Don't ask me what it means or why it's supposed to be funny: I'm not sure myself.

                                       Mom crimes

1. Your mom betrays vital American interests:

     After carefully selecting a few postcards of Paris to send back to you kids at a newsstand, your mom hurries across the street, just in time to meet a man she knows only as Haji at a small cafe off the Jardin des Tuilleries. After carefully showing Haji the postcards, pairing each one off with photos of its eventual recipient in a small album produced from her big, cluttered purse, she  tells him that he is looking thin and should order a brioche and a cup of boiled milk. As he does that, your mom digs further into the recesses of the purse and, eventually, pulls out a thick sheaf of papers wrapped in a rubber band.
    "Floor plans of the American embassy in Damascus," she announces in a loud voice, proudly, sliding the papers toward the man, who glances uncomfortably around. "Plus day codes, and a list of undercover operatives."
    "Magnificent," grins Haji, quickly grabbing the papers and sliding them out of sight. "Saddam Hussein thanks you, and will generously reward you for your..."
    Your mom cuts him off with a wave of her finger, grasping his forearm in an affectionate manner. "No," your mom says, smiling sweetly, "you thank him, from me, for carrying on his important work..."

2. Your mom has sex with strangers in a drunken debauch:

     It is the type of bar you would never go into: a gray tarpaper shack distinguished as a saloon merely by the "BUD" sign glowing in the filthy window, like a leer. Behind the building, in the gravel parking lot, are a dozen chopper motorcycles and two huge semi tracker-trailer cabs.
     Yet inside, piercing above the Metallica song screeching from the jukebox, is the distinctive laugh of your mom, only a little wilder, almost crazed than heard at any standard poker night. She is frolicking in a booth in the back, with three huge, bearded men wearing leather vests. The red frazzle of the neon casts a demonic glow to your mother's heavily-powdered face as she hefts a pitcher of beer to her lips, drinking form the side, laughing at the same time, spilling beer down the front of her pale blue house dress.
     One of the bearded guys fakes an effort to brush the beer from your mom's front, and ends up massaging a breast. Your mom pauses to pop a tiny square of Chiclet gum into her mouth as the entire group slides under the table in a howling, grasping, moaning mass of animalistic lust.

3. Your mom helps Josef Mengele escape from Israeli agents:

     Her Dr. Scholl's sandals clatter on the cobblestones as your mom hurries into the courtyard of the villa, scattering llamas and chickens as she rushes inside the yellow stuccoed companesto. Dropping a sack of plantains, she practically pulls a tall, grey-haired gentleman out of an easy chair.
     "Israeli agents!" your mom hisses. "Manuel passed word to me in the marketplace. They should be here any moment. Mach schnell, my love."
     Without a word, the man grabs a small satchel from the mantel, pulls aside a hand-woven woolen carpet, opens a trap door and —pausing to kiss your mom deeply on the mouth—disappears.
     Just as your mom has finished smoothing down the rug with her toe, the door bursts open and several tanned young men with curly black hair rush in, waving Uzis.
     "Guten Tag," your mom says, patting down her hair in that nervous way of hers.

4. Your mom sells heroin to children in a suburban schoolyard:

     The autumn colors are just starting to emerge on the oaks and sycamores on Shady Lane the day some 6th graders notice your mom lingering on the playground, pretending to examine the flower beds the PTA has dug by the chain link fence. A few of your friends go up and tell her that you're not there — you went with the Explorers Club to the Natural History Museum on a field trip. She says she knows that, startling them slightly, then suddenly thrusts her hand into her blouse and draws out a fistful of small glassine packets of white powder from her bra.
     "China White!" she hisses, urgently. "The beset you can buy. You won't get hooked." She dangles the packets back and forth in front of the faces of your friends, who, grumbling, dig into their pockets for spare change.

5. Your mom secretly worships Satan with other community stalwarts:

     No sooner has your mom dropped your sister off at her piano lesson than she wheels the big, fake-wood-paneled station wagon toward the white spire of your church.
      She is met at the door by the janitor. "They're all down there," he says, quickly bolting the door after your mom slips inside.
     Eleven figures, in black robes, their faces hooded, look up as your mom and the janitor descend the stairs. Little Wendy Peters—she's in your sister's 4th grade class—squirms in terror, struggling against the ropes binding her hands and feet to the rough stone altar.
    "Hi Wendy!" your mom says, happily, as the little girl's eyes goggle in horror. "Don't be frightened. Soon you'll be skipping jump rope with Satan. Won't that be nice?"
     The others have formed a ring, kneeling, and begin an ancient chant as your mom dons her own black hood—similar to the others, but with a pentagram on the forehead and antlers on either side.
     She removes a long kris from under the altar and  holds it in both hands, the serpentine blade hovering over Wendy's naked stomach.
     "Here me O forces of darkness!" you mom booms, in that deep "dinnertime" shout you've heard so often. "Malik nocturno achtan nocturno mento mori haec et olum!

                                                       #  #  #

Summer Fiction Week — "Author's Query"

     This story is a relic from the pre-Internet age, when the New York Times Sunday Book Review would run tiny classified advertisements by authors seeking information from the public to help with their book research. As anyone who deals with the public is acutely aware, you never know what weirdness you dredge up when you cast your hook into that pond. This actual query caught my eye, and I wondered what kind of response the poor woman received.  

                                      Author's Query

                         For a book on button folklore, I would appreciate

                            hearing from anyone with any button-related

                            anecdotes or tidbits from the past or present.

                                                                  -- ELLARAINE LOCKIE

                                                                     627 Templeton Court

                                                                     Sunnyvale, Calif. 94087

Dear Ms. Elaine Lockie:

     Just yesterday I'm at the office a few minutes before an important pitch meeting, checking myself in the men's room mirror, when I see that one of the little white buttons from my button-down collar is missing. Puzzling, because it had been there in the morning; I was sure of it.

     Anyway, at first I think I can just unbutton the other button, so they'll match, and I'll get by okay. But I look like a bum, with my collar ends all sticking up. So I race around, hoping a secretary has a needle and thread. Luckily, Margaret does— a little sewing kit from a hotel — and I race back to the bathroom. I fish out the tail of my shirt and tear off the little extra collar button. It would be easier to take the shirt off, but I don't have time, so I just sew it on, my face an inch from the mirror. Guys walking into the restroom stare at me, but I don't care. I've never been so focused on a little button before. I get it on, tight, just in time, and bolt to the meeting.

     We didn't get the account, but at least I knew it wasn't because of a button.

     I hope this story is useful to you.

     Sincerely,

     Tom Coreno

     Columbus, Ohio

Dear Ellaraine:

     What a bee-yoo-ti-ful name: "Elleraine." Like music. The moment I read such a pretty name, I knew that here, finally, was one special lady. And when I saw that you were interested in buttons too, whoa, it seemed like fate. I, too, have been fascinated by our round and colorful helpmates ever since I was a young boy, and have many thrilling button stories that I could relate to you. 

     But first, tell me more about your project. I imagine you've already sold it to a big publisher, and gotten a big advance. That's swell. Nothing like a load of money to make a woman happy—or a woman and a man happy, if you catch my drift.

     But maybe we can help each other. Write me a letter, telling me all about your book. Don't forget to include a picture of yourself and return postage. I promise I'll write you back immediately.

     Dylan McManus

     P.O. Box 23043

     Joliet, Illinois

Dear Friend Lockly:

    Greetings! Please direct your attention to my article (enclosed) revealing NEW IMPORTANT TRUTHS of great interest to all readers of any button book!!! you MUST ask yourself why this knowledge has not been disseminated to the public? What WEB OF LIES is keeping it hidden from those WHO MUST KNOW?!?!?

     It should be a simple thing for you to pass my essay along to your contacts at the New York Times  and see that it is published. The WORLD HANGS IN THE BALANCE!!!!

     Cordially,
     Arthur M. Gaynes

     Dearborn, Michigan

Dear Ellen Lockie:

     You want stories about buttons? Okay. Here's a story. Look at the enclosed photograph. That's my son, my beautiful son, Randall, who was 18 months old when he got hold of a stray button. He must have found it on the floor. Randy put the button in his mouth and choked to death on it, right in front of my eyes.

     There! There's a button "anecdote" for your book. How do you like that "tidbit"? Does that make you happy? I cried for three hours when I read your stupid little ad. I hope you die. I hope you choke on your little button book, you bitch. If you print this story, I'll come after you with all the legal might at my disposal.  Remember -- I know where you live.

      Mrs. Alan Lenckos

      Salt Lake City, Utah

   

Dear Ms. Luckie:

     I'm not sure how much of your book is going to concentrate on Civil War buttons. But to the extent that it does, would you please manage to get something right? The crossed saber pattern that you see with alarming frequency on the uniforms of so many enlisted men in Union battle re-enactments should in fact be worn only by officers. You can't imagine how many times I've had to upbraid people over this. It's really very simple.

     Sincerely,

     Abner Silverstein

     New York State Button Society

 Dear Miss Lokie:

     The Zipper Museum and Library is among the most popular tourist attractions in the state of Indiana, and contains over 15,00 historic and interesting zippers in a 5,000 square foot display tracing the history of the zipper from its roots in 16th century France to the present day. Surely no story of buttons would be complete without inclusion of the "metallic centipede of buttons" (Hardwood, 1909). I will look forward to hearing from you. 
     Cynthia Mead, curator
     The Zipper Museum and Library
     Porter, Indiana

Dear Ellaraine:

     I was sad not to hear from you, but I also understand. Maybe I was a little forward. Still, I'm hoping you'll write, because I know a wonderful story regarding buttons. Really, it is. Just wonderful.
     But first—how much are you paying for these stories? This tale that I have is great—there's a lion, and a castle, and of course lots and lots of buttons in all colors and shapes. So what are we talking here? Tell you what—a thousand bucks, and the story is yours, by return post. Just send the money order to the address below. I am looking forward to contributing my fine story to what I am sure will be an excellent book.
     Dylan McManus

     P.O. Box 23043

     Joliet, Illinois

     Note: The real Ellaraine Lockie must have done better than I imagined she would, because her book, "All Because of a Button: Folklore, Fact and Fiction" was published, in 2000.

                       

Summer Fiction Week — "Bad Report Card"

                                     Bad Report Card


     I pick up coffee and an uncut bagel from the cheerful Korean woman at the grocery near my  building. On impulse, I add the Post. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't. Ten minutes later, upstairs at the office, I sip the coffee, bite the bagel, and look at the newspaper. "JERRY ROBERTS' GRADES PLUNGE" the front page screams.
     Jerry Roberts is my 9-year-old son. I set down the bagel, pick up the phone, hit "1" on the autodial. Two rings and it's Claire, my wife. "Honey..." I begin. "Yes, the Post," she says, without my asking. "They called yesterday. I forgot to tell you."
     The pictures looks as if shot through a telephoto lens from 100 yards away. Grainy, his hair uncombed. He looks like a maniac. As usual, the headline overstates the gist of the article. From a B to a C in math. From an A to a B minus in English. Everything else pretty much the same. Some plunge.
     Still, repercussions come quick. Long Island Newsday calls before I finish the coffee. "He's growing," I say, around the last mouthful of bagel. "This is nothing that hasn't happened before." My boss sticks his head into my cubicle, pretending to ask about some small business matter. But he soon cuts to the chase. "So how's everything at home?" he says, awkwardly faking conversation, the way a bum asks you for the time. "How's your boy?"
     "Well Stan, you know how kids are," I say, exuding false bonhomie like a gas, squeaking back in my chair, spreading my hands goofily and grinning. "Yadda yadda yadda." He seems mollified.
     Nothing is getting done, work-wise, so at lunch I head over to Jerry's school. Two television trucks parked outside—big, white, boxy with telescoping masts swaying high above.  One WNYC, the other, French television. I enter the school—that school smell, what is it? Boiled hot dogs? Wet scarves?
     Empty classrooms—everybody is at recess, on the patch of crumbling asphalt penned by chain link fence they call a playground. Out back I find Jerry's teacher, Mrs. Something-or-other standing near the Four Square courts, her little powder blue cardigan draped over her shoulders and held in place by a chain and clips. She calmly watches two boys pound the tar out of each other. "I'm Mr. Roberts," I say. She jerks her thumb over her left shoulder, wordlessly.
     Jerry's sitting by himself, on a milk carton, his hands placed limply on his knees, staring at a spot on the ground. I squat down on my haunches, reach out and squeeze his shoulder. "Hey sport," I say, in my best, reassuring manner. He doesn't look at me. I resist the urge to lift my hand off his shoulder and slap him upside the head. Instead, another gentle squeeze and a full 60 seconds of silence. 
     "The Post was mean to me," he finally sniffs, pitifully, starting to cry. He looks at me for the first time. Ball in my court. "Now there hey," I say. "Don't Jerry. Don't." I stand up, and look around for help. Some two dozen kids holding sticks with red streamers fluttering at the ends, one in each hand, are going through an elaborate running dance, arms straight out like airplanes taking off. It looks like something out of a Red Chinese opera. "Come on," I say.
     I lift him up and sling him over my shoulder. He doesn't struggle or protest. Walking quickly I pass the teacher, who starts to say something, but I cut her off. "How did the Post find out about his grades, anyway?" I ask. Her eyes narrow. "Quisling! Traitor! Judas!" I shout at her, over my shoulder, gesturing with my free arm.
     On the street the television people, pressed against the window of Jerry's empty classroom, notice us and hurry in our direction, each woman reporter in full high-heeled tottering trot, their cameramen and sound men chugging after them. New York is faster than France.
     "Mr. Roberts!" she yells, as I reach the corner. "Mr. Roberts!" I shift into overdrive and nearly sprint in front of a garbage truck. The pause gives the French reporter just enough time to get into earshot. "A qui me louer?" I hear her screaming as I hustle out of sight. "Quelle bete faut-il adorer? Quels couers briserai-je? Quel mensonge dois-je tenir? Dans quel sang marcher?"
       Three blocks away, my heart is going like an air hammer as I set Jerry down. He is beaming happily—he enjoys the escape; it is something from a TV show, something he can understand. We stand there smiling at each other, catching our breaths. I look down at him and he looks up at me with a "Now what?" look. "You want a beer?" I say. This doesn't register. "Let's go home to your mother." We do.
     After dinner we sit on the sofa and laugh as WNYC runs a four-second clip of me huffing by, Jerry over my shoulder like a blue duffle bag with legs, change jingling in my pockets, my hair sticking up in random directions, a look of sweaty lunacy slapped all over my mug. God knows what they'll think in France.
     The next morning, I go for the pecan roll with the coffee. The papers ring me like a bell—"Bethpage Dad Sloughs Off Grade Shocker," Newsday bleats. The Post puffs me into a trend: "U.S. School Score Lag—Are Lax Dads to Blame?" At work, Stan mutters, "You could have mentioned the new thermocouple unit," as we pass in the hall. I look bad, but at least the focus has shifted away from Jerry. And we got knocked off the front page by a 12-year-old girl in Elizabeth, New Jersey who still wets  the bed.
     That night, Jerry and I make her a big Valentine—a red construction paper heart festooned with glitter and stickers and gold braid from gift boxes. In the middle, Jerry writes "HANG IN THERE HONEY!" and we all sign it.

                                                           # # #


      The questions the French TV reporter shouts out, by the way, are lifted verbatim from Arthur Rimbaud's poem "A Season in Hell." Translated: "For whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image attack? What hearts shall I break? What lies should I uphold? In what blood tread?" I've always considered that passage to be the credo of professional journalism.



  

Summer Fiction Week — "Further Crimes of the Jews"

  

 
     This was written after reading one too many of the anti-Semitic form letters that used to flood the newspaper.  It struck me that, crazy as the various fantasies were, they also betray a dull sameness; always the same handful of old plots and cliche conspiracies—running the banks, puppeteering the government, taking over the world. Exactly what they've been serving up for 50, 100, 500 years. It's just boring. I wondered why haters, when concocting their slanders, couldn't ever stretch their tiny little minds and accuse Jews of something fresh and interesting? As a change of pace. Such people also can exhibit a jarring folksiness at complete odds with their poisonous messages. 

            Further Crimes of the Jews

Dear White Racial Friend:

     Thank you for your continued support of Thundering Liberty magazine. The fall issue was our biggest yet: While I'm sure everyone is busy preparing for the Conference of White Aryan Nations in Demopolis, Alabama (Nov. 6-8. See you there!) it is my solemn duty to present to you this timely new series of compelling pamphlets about important and overlooked subjects. 

     Many friends have asked me: Why a new series now? Well, it has come to my attention that while TruthKrieg Press and other brave publishers have been vigilant in exposing the hidden crime of insidious Jewish control over the U.S. government, the media, banking, all retail trades, telecommunications, the United Nations and such, casting the harsh light of truth on the international plutocrats who dictate the minutest details of our daily lives, the enormity of that conspiracy has only served to mask other equally serious and vital truths and allowed them to escape detection.

     Until now!!!

     This new series, Further Crimes of the Jews, explores the horrifying range and chilling depth of the entrenched lies, exposing bold new truths which every thinking white person will want to know about. It represents the culmination of years of research by myself and my family (Claire and the kids say hello, by the by. Rudy starts the 9th grade this year, and Mike is just finishing forestry school. Where does the time go?) We've been working round the clock to get these pamphlets ready in addition to our many other duties, and of course the web site, but felt the absolute urgency of the material demanded no less of us.

     Hot off the presses are:

     No. 1: The Pity Mongers—How Jews Created Anti-Semitism. Startling facts, disinterred from sealed Soviet archives, illustrate systematic way 19th century Russian Jews invented anti-Semitism to make neighbors "feel bad," then forced it upon a protesting, kind-hearted world. Story of Malyensk, the village that pogrommed itself. With testimony from handwriting experts. 42 pages. $1.75.

     No 2: Strike Three—The Jewish War Against Baseball. Documentary proof that Jewish owners/vendors have systematically tried to destroy national pastime as another way of softening up country for eventual takeover. Details of how the athletic performance of childhood heroes is sapped by diabolical rays disguised as "lights." 70 pages. With diagrams and maps. $1.50.

     No. 3: Louis Farrakhan—Jewish Stooge. Undeniable evidence that Farrakhan, apparent foe of the Jews, is actually in employ of international cosmopoles, who use him as a smokescreen to cover up vast Jew/Black Conspiracy of Blood Unity, where Jewish money funds black efforts to unweave social fabric through drugs/rap music/Oprah. 45 pages. Color cover. $2.50.

     No. 4: Banz-Oy! The Jews and Pearl Harbor. Suppressed historical records show that "Lost Tribe" of Israel settled Japanese islands in year 941 A.D. with express purpose of attacking United States by surprise exactly 1,000 years later. Responsibility for WWII, decline of the American automobile industry, karaoke, Hello Kitty, firmly established. 24 pages. $1.

   

     No. 5: Initials of Death. Scientific data shows that many foodstuffs sold in supermarket chains are contaminated with undetectable traces of poison as set out in Talmud (secret Jewish plan for world control). Jews know to avoid fatal foods marked by "U" or "K" masonic symbols hidden discreetly on labels. 39 pages. With photos. $2.25.

     No. 6: The Other Lies. Convincing sources reveal that much of "history" is fabrication of Jewish textbook cartel, designed to instill guilt, diminish patriotism   and twist national consciousness into Jewish view. Slavery, rumors of poor treatment of American Indians, Vietnam War outcome, Sept. 11 "attacks" exposed as pernicious myths. Depositions of expert witnesses included in appendix. Plus time line. 118 pages. $3.

     I think you will agree that this important information must be understood by all aware Americans. Please help spread the truth. order all six pamphlets today for just $10 (a $12 value!) Organizations ordering in bulk receive a 15 percent volume discount. (Please send request on letterhead). 

     All of these new pamphlets, and of course the previous issues, plus thousands of thought-provoking books, magazines and audiotapes are all available at my Liberty Bell Bookstore in Dearborn, Michigan as well as at the Hammer of Truth Book Store and Coffee house in Cicero, Illinois and the Clarion Call of Liberty's True Duty Gallery in Parma, Ohio.

     On to other news.

    I also will be holding a seminar at November's conference, "Spreading the Truth." In it you will learn how to produce and distribute the truths gleans from your own research —handy tips such as eliminating margins to pack in more truth, creative use of punctuation and underlining and capitalization to convey excitement of dramatic truths, and prime locations such as bus station restrooms to place materials for maximum exposure, plus of course our special friend, the Internet. Cost is $45, and you should sign up now because space is limited.

     The new series, as well as much of the old material, will of course be on sale during the conference as well. Look for me at booth No. 237 on the upper deck of the North Concourse. See you there!

      Best wishes and Sieg Heil,

      Arthur M. Gaynes

Summer Fiction Week #2 — "Regarding My Mother's Photography"

       If you've ever seen a Sally Mann or Jock Sturges photograph, you've perhaps wondered how, in later years, the children depicted in those jarring images came to view their youthful brush with cutting edge art photography. I certainly did, leading to this story. 

      Recent articles in the popular press, written by people who should know better, have tried to create the impression that some sort of terrible rift exists between my mother —the photographer Harriet Jane Gordon—and her two adult sons: myself and my brother David. They interpret our absence from the opening of her retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art as somehow indicative of a hostility on our part—or otherwise, why would we have not shared in such a crowning event in our mother’s professional career?
     Let me begin by saying that such speculation, particularly Chas Mywald’s piece in ARTnews, is invasive and unwarranted and only serves to heighten the already superheated media frenzy over my mother’s photography. As it happens—not that it is anyone’s business—I sent a card of best wishes to my mother on the eve of the Whitney show, and understand, through channels, that she was pleased to receive it, despite statements to the contrary attributed to her in print and on certain hateful web sites.
     When it comes to David, I will not presume to speak for him, other than to say that he is a private individual, pursuing his particular field of interest, who does not care to enter into enervating public controversies. I am told he tried to visit the Whitney show, anonymously, but had to leave hurriedly when he was recognized. We have talked on the telephone, recently, and I can say with confidence that he was never spoken to Chas Mywald, or anyone else at ARTnews and does not bear our mother any ill will. Nor do I bear our mother any ill will.
     I am not suggesting that our childhood was utterly without difficulty. Growing up under the circumstances which we did was frequently difficult, at times extraordinarily so. Anyone who has seen works such as “Neil Astride Alaskan Moose” or “David Dressed as Harlequin” (and at this point, who hasn’t?) knows that these were not easy sessions to participate in, particularly considering our ages at the time. Many people do no realize that the football team posing with David in “Harlequin” is the very junior high school squad he would later attempt to join. The chasm yawning under me in “Neil in Peril” is not some clever photographic effect, as people often suppose, but the Atchafalaya Gorge in Smokey Mountain National Park. Ever the perfectionist, my mother took 45 exposures, and it was only when the sapling began to slowly pull out of the soft earth of the cliff edge that my entreaties were heeded and I was hastily hauled up. 
     Despite the occasional mishap, we generally enjoyed helping our mother with her work, carrying her large 8 x 10 view camera up mountainsides near our home in a heavily-wooded section of North Carolina, collecting specimens for those montages of animal excreta of which she was particularly fond, playing for hours in the crisp, cold Montavista River while mother tried to get exactly the right combination of dwindling daylight, splashing water and capering, unfettered boyhood.
     Particularly hurtful are the stories that we do not appreciate the artistic merit, or even the financial worth, of my mother’s photographs. I do not dispute that, after college, I permitted my former roommate, Edgar Witherspoon, to take possession of two dozen silver gelatin prints, including the series “Maturation 1-12,” but I did not, as N.K. Kleinfield has suggested in The New York Times, leave them out on the curb. Due to their extraordinary size it became necessary to store the photographs somewhere and whether or not my transfer of the photos to Edgar was a gift or a loan is a legal matter I am not permitted to discuss. The story about David going after our mother’s photographs with a linoleum knife at the Phyllis Kind Gallery is an utter fabrication. He was merely trying to block the door to the exhibit, and left quietly after police were called.  
     The problem, I believe, stems from the singular nature of the photographs, which excite people’s interest—interest that would normally be directly toward my mother, who is after all the creative force at work here. But which is blunted by her frequent, almost daily pronouncements and interviews in the artistic and mainstream press and of course on-line. Because of the paucity of unknown facts or unexpressed opinions related to our mother, curiosity is instead directed toward her subjects, particularly my brother and myself. Our success in avoiding the limelight and managing, despite great odds, to live quiet, private lives, only served to further stoke the fires of public interest, which is why I am writing this, as an attempt to satisfy the legitimate questions raised with growing frequency in the year leading up to the Whitney show.
   I have a job, working in the food preparation industry. I am married, and live in a middle-sized city in the South-Central portion of the United States. My wife has always known about my mother’s photography and been very supportive. I owe her a great deal.
    David, as I state previously, should be allowed to speak for himself, if and when he feels moved to do so. I am not a professional, and do not feel comfortably evaluating the emotional state of others, particularly close relatives.
     Speaking for myself—again, contrary to the lies and distortions already alluded to—I in fact do have several of my mother’s photographs, stored away. I keep them not simply due to financial considerations; I am proud of the artistic legacy these works represent and my central if at times unwilling role in their creation, and would even consider displaying some of the less jarring photographs in my home, were it not for the presence of my own young children, whose welfare must be considered.