Benjamin Wheeler, September 12, 2006-December 14, 2012–RIP

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My sadness and anger over the shootings at the elementary school in Connecticut grew this afternoon when I learned that the 6-year old son of a former colleague was among the children killed in the incident. From 2000 through 2006 I worked at Carroll & Graf Publishers, part of the Avalon Publishing Group, and during that time David Cole Wheeler worked in Avalon’s art department as a designer of covers and book interiors. For much of that time, his work station was directly across from my office, and Cole–as he was then known–and I spoke often, about books, design, politics, and New York City. He was a close work friend. Occasionally, I remember seeing his wife Francine come by the office.

On September 11, 2001, Avalon’s office was in lower Manhattan only a couple blocks from the World Trade Center. Many Avalon colleagues experienced that day together–I ran from the building with a co-worker–and months of upset and distress followed, as we continued working in that stricken neighborhood. In 2002, the company moved uptown to Chelsea but all of us having been through so much together, Avalon remained a pretty tight workplace, with a lot of close work friendships. We went our separate ways when Avalon was sold to Perseus Books in 2007, but folks have tended to keep in touch. Earlier this year, several of us came together on Facebook after learning of the sudden death of our office manager, David Ortiz, who was killed in an accident in San Diego where he had moved with his wife. I really liked David, and sadly, had written a recommendation for him on LinkedIn shortly before his death. How unsettling it is to know that that is still there on line.

I’d heard that after Avalon broke up, Cole–who’d begun using his proper first name, David–and Francine had moved out of the city and moved to Connecticut. Tonight, I got a message from longtime friend and Avalon colleague, Keith Wallman. The Wheelers’ six-year old son Benjamin was among those murdered in Newtown. This sketch of Benjamin is in the Washington Post tonight:

Benjamin Wheeler
Benjamin Wheeler, 6, was “a very spirited boy,” said Rabbi Shaul Praver of Adath Israel in Newtown.  He and his parents, David and Francine Wheeler, were not members of the synagogue, but they attended its Hanukkah  celebration.
“There’s always some brave individual who goes up to the dance floor to get everybody involved. That was Ben Wheeler,” he said. “Just delightful people.”
The Wheelers did not want to talk to the media Saturday, said a man who answered the phone at their home. The Episcopal bishops of Connecticut said the family were members of Trinity Episcopal Church of Newton. A volunteer there said the church lost several congregants in the shooting and the rector, the Rev. Kathie Adams-Shepherd, was ministering to them Saturday.

My deepest sympathy and condolences to David and Francine, and their older son, Nate. I’ve been thinking of them all night. They will remain in my heart.

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Donald Trump is “the Clown of New York” to a Defiant Scotsman

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Update: After publishing the blog post below, I dug a bit deeper and discovered a quite nuanced view of the controversy that was published just as it began to heat up in 2007. It’s an excellent piece by UK journalist Ed Caesar that originally ran in the Times of London, now found at Mr. Caesar’s own website. At that juncture five years ago, Trump was awaiting several of the local approvals required to build the gargantuan complex that would hold not just a golf course, but 900 vacation cottages and a ten-story hotel with 450 guest rooms. Michael Forbes was then a pesky annoyance to Trump, while many Scottish politicians favored the development. Some of it has since been built, but Forbes is still standing strong, and just won Scotsman of the Year, as noted below. While it seems that the village of Balmedie was then leaning toward support of Trump’s project, it appears that trend has since flipped in favor of the antis, of whom Forbes is the most visible symbol. The familiar dynamic has kicked in where Trump’s obnoxious personalty and bloated rhetoric has become the dominant element in the story. If you have some time, I recommend you read Caesar’s piece, as well.
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The website Common Dreams reports that Donald Trump has angered lots of people in Scotland with his determination to build profit-making golf courses on pristine land that many locals do not want developed in this way. A farmer in Aberdeenshire, Michael Forbes (pictured above), has defied Trump’s demands to sell him acreage from his land, prompting the rude American to denounce Forbes as “a village idiot” who “lives like a pig.” Now, Forbes has won a national contest as Scotsman of the Year, being named over such luminaries as Wimbledon champion Andy Murray. Forbes is quoted by Common Dreams:

“I went right off him the first time I met him. He was being all nicey, nicey and talking about how successful he was and how much money he had. That was it for me. I took an instant dislike to him. He called me a village idiot …but I think everyone knows by now that he’s the clown of New York.”

The press in Britain have lionized Mr. Forbes a 21st century ‘local hero,’ reminiscent of the Scottish character in the 1983 Bill Forsyth film with Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert “Local Hero,” who convinces his town to resist the siren song of an oil company’s money. Sticking to the film analogy, a documentary has been released on the golf course controversy, “You’ve Been Trumped.” Here’s a trailer for it:

An advocacy group has also been formed to push back against the development, Tripping Up Trump. I’ve been to Scotland several times over the years and admire people I’ve met there and remain entranced by the countryside, even seeing it only in photos. Kudos to those saying, “No” to Donald Trump! H/t Don Van Natta, Jr. (@DVNjr) who shared the Common Dreams piece on Twitter.

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Teasing “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”

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Update: One day after I published the post below about “The Hobbit,” the NY Times published this interesting piece today about the Tolkien archive, which is housed in the US, at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Also, please note an earlier blog post of mine, J.R.R. Tolkien Renounced Racial Politics in 1938 Letter to a German Publisher.
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Some readers of this blog may recall that I happen to share a birthday with J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbit protagonists Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, having written about that literary link in a piece on this site labeled Personal History. Since my teens I’ve been a fan of Tolkien’s work and then enjoyed Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy. My wife and son and I already have tickets to see “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” when it opens late next week. I’ve seen a trailer or two for the film but have steered clear of reading much about it, not wanting to have the element of surprise hijacked by reading details I don’t need to know yet.  Still, I crossed paths today with a very encouraging Hobbit teaser on Nerdist.com, the website of Chris Hardwick, ebullient host of “The Talking Dead” fan show that is boradcast on AMC TV after the zombie-apocalypse program “The Walking Dead.”

What’s good for the book is also good for the film–a sense of humor. Though some of LOTR‘s self-importance is being retroactively returned to the tale, Bilbo is simply a much more fun reluctant-hero than Frodo, whose dewy-eyed earnestness was way too goody-goody at times. Martin Freeman [cast as Bilbo] also played Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and that character–quite correctly–shares spiritual DNA with this Hobbit, who wants to live out the simplest pleasures of the countryside, but gets whisked into something bigger, and complains all the time. It also feels like the themes here are more tangible for kids to relate to than abstract ultimate-good versus ultimate-evil, such as the benefits of going outside and making friends instead of sitting around the house (granted, LOTR had a team of friends too, but it broke up rather quickly. This group stays together).

I greatly enjoyed the 2005 film version of Douglas Adams’ modern SF classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, directed by Garth Jennings, which featured not only the aforementioned Martin Freeman, but also Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, and the voice of Alan Rickman. So, if Peter Jackson’s new Hobbit film can conjure up some of that cinematic pleasure, then we’re in for a treat.

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Carrying On the Tradition of a Brave Human Rights Rabbi

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Dec. 6 Update: As of noon today, the NY Times article about the expression of support for the UN’s endorsement of Palestinian statehood by the rabbis and board at B’Nai Jeshurun was the most emailed story on the Times website. Also, for any readers of this blog who would like to discover more about Marshall Meyer, my friend and longtime BJ member Jane Isay reminds me of Marshall’s posthumous book You Shall Be My Witness, which she edited with Marshall’s widow, Naomi.
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Though I have not officially been a congregant for the past several years, I was for more than a decade (1985-97) an active member of Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, a Manhattan synagogue. Its lead rabbi during the years I was active, until his untimely death in 1993, was Marshall T. Meyer. I met Marshall in 1985, shortly after he returned to the United States from Argentina following a lengthy sojourn as a rabbi there, during which time he became an outspoken critic of the military junta that imprisoned, tortured, and ‘disappeared’ thousands of people they deemed opponents in the country’s “dirty war.” The dedication of the searing 1981 book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, by Argentine activist and former prisoner Jacobo Timerman, reads,

To Marshall Meyer

A rabbi who brought comfort

to Jewish, Christian, and atheist prisoners in

Argentine jails.

After the murderous generals fell from power, Marshall served on the national commission that investigated and chronicled the full range of crimes and abuses they had committed, the only non-Argentine to do so. He told me in sadness that after his service on that body he found he could no longer be an honest pastoral counselor to victims’ families, having learned disturbing details of the torture prisoners endured; he felt torn between sharing what he knew when grieving survivors asked him about their relatives’ last days. Wanting to spare them more agony, they sensed he knew more than he could say. Marshall–who as a rabbinical student worked with spiritual giant Abraham Joshua Heschel, typing several of his book manuscripts prior to publication–had a big personality and was unflinchingly vulnerable. He gave and received a lot of hugs. When he returned to the States from Argentina, he soon became rabbi of B’Nai Jeshurun, then a moribund Manhattan congregation, and within a short time had made it one of the most vital synagogues in New York City. It even gained a nickname, ‘BJ.’ During his tenure, Marshall recruited two younger rabbis to serve alongside him there, Roly Matalon and Marcelo Bronstein–from Argentina and Chile, respectively–who fully took the helm after his wrenching death, at only age 63. Though I’m not much involved with the congregation these days, I still consider myself a sort of lay disciple of Marshall’s, and a friend to Roly and Marcelo and to the congregation.

As a reading of Marshall’s NY Times obituary will attest, provided here in a link and below as a scan of my original clipping, Roly and Marcelo carry on Marshall’s committed rabbinate. The NY Times reports tonight that the two rabbis, along with BJ’s longtime musical director, Cantor Ari Priven, and rabbinical colleague Felicia Sol, and the institution’s board, have made public an open letter they wrote, seconding the UN’s vote last week that endorsed Palestinian statehood. The Times article reprints the entire letter, as I will do too.
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Dear Friends,

Yesterday’s vote at the UN on Palestinian membership was a day which will go down in history, although what history will write about it only time will tell.

In this week’s Parashat Vayishlach, Jacob battles with the angel and earns the name Israel. It is the first time we are recognized as the people of Israel. Our own struggles were rewarded exactly 65 years ago on 29 November 1947 with the UN partition plan that acknowledged the right of the Jewish people to an independent state.

The Parasha also tells us how Jacob prepares to meet his brother Esau again, 20 years after fleeing from him. The risks are real — Esau has threatened to kill him. This meeting is the biblical prototype of confrontation between Israel and the nations. Before the meeting with Esau, Jacob prepares in three ways: he divides his camp in two, he prays to God, and he sends Esau gifts and conciliatory messages. These three tactics mirror the basic strategies that Israel has at its disposal: preparation for battle, prayer, and diplomacy.

We as a nation have had to rely on all three at different times. Today we feel it is critical that we remember the crucial role that diplomacy played in achieving independence for the State of Israel.

The vote at the UN yesterday is a great moment for us as citizens of the world. This is an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come forward and ask for recognition. Having gained independence ourselves in this way, we are especially conscious of this. Every people has the right of recognition, every person has the right of recognition.

As Jews deeply committed to the security and democracy of Israel, and in light of the violence this past month in Gaza and Israel, we hope that November 29, 2012 will mark the moment that brought about a needed sense of dignity and purpose to the Palestinian people, led to a cessation of violence and hastened the two state solution.

We continue to pray for a lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors.
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As soon as I read about what they’d done at BJ, I tweeted this out with the link to the Times piece:

Philip Turner ‏@philipsturner
Proud of NYC’s Cong B’Nai Jeshurun, its rabbis&board for boldly voicing support of UN vote for Palestinian statehood. http://nyti.ms/UEwkGK
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Now I’m happy to share the news even more widely, here on this blog. For the record, I will state that I believe in co-existence and a two-state solution as the best hope for resolving the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. I’m grateful to have known and shared a deep friendship with Marshall, and appreciative of the legacy that his successors faithfully carry on at BJ.

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“Yr Obt Servant A Lincoln”–a Gift from an Old Friend

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An Alexander Gardner photo of Lincoln, given to me by my late best friend, Robert Henry Adams, of Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago. Rob often gave me pieces he couldn’t re-sell, because of a defect, in this case the crease bisecting the center line. He said it came up at auction and he was the only who bid on it. Still, it is period and bears a Lincoln autograph, either machine-reproduced from his hand, or even possibly, from his hand in ink. Caption reads “Yr Obt Servant A Lincoln.” Rob’s portrayed in pictures and words elsewhere on this blog, here and here, the latter under the heading ‘Franconia College.’

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From Pea-Shooters to Sonorous Voices: Time-Keeping, Then & Now

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Early this morning I saw that Shaun Usher, whose blog Letters of Note is one of my favorite websites, had tweeted this historic photo and humorous message:

“Before alarm clocks there were knocker-upper’s. Mary Smith earned sixpence a week shooting dried peas at sleeping workers windows. Limehouse Fields. London. Undated. Photograph from Philip Davies’ Lost London: 1870 – 1945.”

Keeping with the time-keeping theme, later in the day I saw that Lucas Wittmann, Books Editor of the Daily Beast had tweeted about this obituary from The Economist, remembering the life of Brian Cobby, who for decades was the voice of what is known in Britain as “the talking clock.” From the magazine:

“For many people in Britain for much of the 20th century, indulging the national weakness for exact timekeeping, Time spoke from the other end of a telephone line. His number could be dialled; and from a room presumed full of chittering and whirring timepieces, Time would inform them that ‘At the third stroke, the time. . . will be ten twenty-seven and fifty seconds.’ His companion robot then chimed in: Pip—pip—pip.”

I’m grateful to Usher and Wittman, and the two publications, for publishing these rich evocations of time-keeping from the past two centuries. Here’s a full shot of the knocker-upper image:

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Would a Lawyer Today Dare Send Such a Funny & Profane Letter?

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If it’s Sunday, it must be football, right? In keeping with the day, Shaun Usher, the British proprietor of the always-splendid website Letters of Note has reposted on his site’s Facebook page a funny exchange of correspondence that I chuckled over when he first shared it last February. It gave me another good laugh today. Shaun’s placed the 1974 letters under the heading Regarding Your Stupid Complaint. They were between Dale O. Cox, Esquire, a persnickety Cleveland Browns season ticket holder, and the Browns’ team office.

As readers of this blog may recall, from pieces such as How to Enjoy Sports Even When Your Teams Have a History of Failure, and a Personal History essay, I grew up following the ups and (often the) downs of Cleveland sports teams. With my late father and brother, I had the great good fortune to attend the last professional sports championship of a Cleveland team–when in the 1964 NFL title game the Browns upset the Baltimore Colts, 27-0. As the scanned copy of a grade school composition of mine will attest, the season ticket holders we sat near in the upper deck in Section 42 were a colorful bunch, like “Bert, a lover of wine” who “often fixe[d] himself a Diet-Rite and wine cocktail,” and Eddie, who “As soon as the first half ends, breaks out [a] thermos of chili . . . he shares with John, while John splits one of his many bottles of wine with him.” (See bottom of post for the whole piece.)

In the summer of 1977, after I was graduated from Franconia College, I worked as a beer vendor at Cleveland Indians’ baseball games. I enjoyed walking the wide open grandstands of cavernous Municipal Stadium, calling out such pitches as “Beer Here!” and “Get Your Cold Ones!”. My happy run as a vendor ended though when I worked a Cleveland Browns pre-season game, and was appalled to discover that the placid beer-drinking Indians fans I’d come to enjoy serving had morphed into, as I wrote in that personal history essay, “an unruly, inebriated mass. . . I was lucky I didn’t have my rack of beers stolen along with all my earnings.”

With these recollection of public drinking and intoxication at Municipal Stadium, you can see why I derive such a good laugh from the correspondence between Mr. Cox and the Browns (headings and signatures abridged):

November 18, 1974

The Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Stadium
Cleveland, OH

Gentlemen:

I am one of your season ticket holders who attends or tries to attend every game. It appears that one of the pastimes of several fans has become the sailing of paper airplanes generally made out of the game program. As you know, there is the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury as a result of such airplanes. I am sure that this has been called to your attention and that several of your ushers and policemen witnessed the same.

Please be advised that since you are in a position to control or terminate such action on the part of fans, I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events. It is hoped that this disrespectful and possibly dangerous activity will be terminated.

Very truly yours,

Dale O. Cox

The Browns’ reply, from their General Counsel and cc:d to team owner Art Modell, was written only three days later:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. 

Very truly yours, 

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP. 

James N. Bailey,
General Counsel

cc: Arthur B. Modell

Cleveland Browns letters
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In the years following the exchange with Mr. Cox, Art Modell–who died this past September at age 87–would later be tagged with infamy among many Cleveland sports fans for relocating the Browns to Baltimore in 1996. Yet it’s plain to me that at least in 1974 he was still a stand-up guy, or he wouldn’t have condoned his team attorney sending such a funny, profane letter to a customer who was himself a lawyer, and one who included in his letter an implied threat of litigation–“I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events.” Would any caution-ridden lawyer today dare to send such a letter in response? If you have thoughts on this and would like to continue the conversation, please let me know what you think in the comments field below. A final point on Mr. Usher’s Letters of Note presentation for this exchange. He uses a photo in it of a Cleveland stadium, but it is the new Browns stadium, built and opened in 1999, on the site of the old Municipal Stadium, where I attended games as a boy and worked in 1977.

A grade school essay of mine on the fans I sat near at Cleveland Browns’ games.

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A Farewell to Wendy Weil, Book Agent & Friend to Many

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On Thursday afternoon I attended a lovely memorial, sweet and sad, for a longtime book biz friend, literary agent Wendy Weil. I’d learned of her passing on September 29 when, scanning the Saturday NY Times, my gaze had landed on her picture in a death notice. Struck with a sudden heart attack, she’d died one week earlier, on September 22, which happened to have been my birthday. I’d have been shocked and saddened regardless, but knowing she’d died on a day I was celebrating hit me especially. I was reminded me of the psalm-like phrase, “In the midst of life we are in death,” from The Book of Common Prayer. That day I blogged about Wendy at this post, “Wendy Weill, Book Agent Extraordiniare, RIP“, and made sure I cleared time to attend her memorial.

Attesting to personal qualities that engendered much affection and loyalty, and her sound professional judgment, nine author clients of Wendy’s eulogized her, and many more of her writers were in attendance. Authors speaking were Jim Magnuson; Beth Gutcheon; Phillip Lopate; Andrea Barrett; Nancy Salz; Alice Walker (by video); Anthony Doerr; and Karen Joy Fowler. Her playmate from toddlerhood, fellow book agent Lois Wallace, also spoke from her perspective of more than sixty years of shared friendship. A good short film was shown, made by Jessica Wallace, with Wendy speaking about women who keep, or don’t, their own family name upon marrying. Representing Wendy’s immediate family was her stepson, JT Ross, who allowed as he had probably been closer to Wendy than his own mother. At the very end, New Yorker editor Fran Kiernan read a eulogy from novelist Mark Helprin, who’d planned to be there but was prevented from getting to NYC by travel problems.

It was a personal disappointment to me that Helprin wasn’t there, as I had hoped to say hello to him and share memories of Wendy. In the early 1980s, my whole family and our Cleveland bookstore Undercover Books hosted Mark for very successful signings of two of his early books–A Dove of the East and Winter’s Tale. The second of those two events came in 1983, and was a proper launch party, with local book press and probably 150-200 customers. Critic Benjamin DeMott had only a few days earlier praised the novel expansively on the cover or the NY Times Book Review, and people came in droves. We kept pushing the book for weeks, and all Mark’s titles, especially Refiner’s Fire. Wendy heard of our store, and got a hold of me and asked to meet at an ABA, our annual book convention. I was delighted then when I met such a winsome, ebullient emissary from the New York publishing scene. When I left the bookstore in 1985 and moved to NYC to work in publishing, Wendy was excited for me. She was unfailingly helpful and full of encouragement and suggestions as I sought and then landed my first editorial jobs. Later, I always relished receiving submissions from her office–especially after she established her eponymous agency, in ’86–as I knew how carefully she chose her clients and the books they would embark upon writing.

The last time I saw Wendy she began our conversation by recalling our shared connection with Helprin. She excitedly told me she’d recently licensed a new novel of his, to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. After I learned of Wendy’s passing, I realized that that novel, In Sunlight and In Shadow, was on the verge of officially being published, but she wouldn’t be around for the happy milestone.

Inside the printed memorial program, the front of which is pictured at the top of this post, people who’d like to make contributions in Wendy’s memory were asked to donate to the Women’s Media Group Scholarship Fund and/or the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, a worthy group that Phillip Lopate spoke of in his eulogy. I also found a flyer in the church vestibule promoting an effort to name a memorial bench in Riverside Park in Wendy’s honor, where she was fond of walking her cairn terrier, Bridie (shown on the program cover in Wendy’s arms).

I’ll close with a mention of Andrea Barrett’s moving eulogy. Andrea, who often incorporates elements of natural history into her work, had brought with her a book that Wendy once bought her as a gift, a sort of field guide to mosses. Andrea held it aloft from her place at the lectern, extracting from it  samples of old mosses in tiny envelopes that previous owners of the book had pressed between its pages. Andrea read the tiny pencil-written notations that indicated where the specimens had been found and picked, and when. These were all from the 1930s, and lent a simple kind of homely poetry to the memorial. This example of Wendy’s thoughtfulness showed how much she cherished living things, from the plant or animal worlds, and from the realm of letters and the imagination. She was a dear friend, and will be missed so very much by so very many.

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