IN LIEU OF FLOWERS | In Nov. 23 NY Times, p. B12

Death Notice, November 23, 2019.

Saturday, November 23, 2019 – This morning I circled this obit for Perry Janoff, who died earlier in the week at the age of 100. (The NY Times calls this an  "Announcement of Death.")   

Alice sent it around to a few friends. 

One recipient has already requested that his death notice include the same message, if still relevant.

THE END OF TIME | 2018

The new owners couldn't wait to take down
the Time Inc. sign. January 31, 2018. 
(Detail of photo with NY Times story.)

The Beginning of Time Two Yalies, Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, were cub reporters at The Baltimore News in 1922.

They pitched a crazy idea for a “news magazine.” It flew. They raised $86,000. They quit their jobs.

On March 3, 1923, they published the first issue of Time: The Weekly News-Magazine.

The End of Time Betsy Gleick, senior writer, Time: “[T]he Time Inc. sign [came] down [on January 31, 2018] and the Meredith sign [went] up basically the minute the deal closed. From the outside, the haste struck me as so depressing. Why the race to obliterate a great legacy?”

Summary of long history of Time in the New York Times, May 21, 2018.

TIME LINE | The Nazis in 1922, 1933

First mention of the Nazis.
 Link tweeted by Jon Ostrower.

Time Line

Nov. 22, 1922 | The New York Times writes that Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda is just a temporary gimmick to get attention.

Mar. 4, 1933 | FDR is inaugurated for the first time in USA.

Mar. 5, 1933 | Adolf Hitler votes in his last contested election.

IMMIGRANTS | We All Were Once

Lady Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...

(Emma Lazarus)

We are about to head into a holiday season in the United States that is full of reasons for compassion to displaced Syrians.

It is already difficult for a Syrian refugee to get asylum in the United States. So far 2,300 have been admitted. Egypt has admitted 135,000, says Nicholas Kristof.

The New York Times today posted a list of all the steps that the U.S. Government takes to prevent the admission of an enemy of our country.

Thanksgiving. It is worth remembering that the Mayflower Pilgrims were refugees from persecution in England. Dissenters like them could be charged with treason and executed.

St. Nicholas Day. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children and travelers, as well as of New York City. He has, in the person of Santa Claus, been personified through the poetry of Clement Clarke Moore of Chelsea, New York City as the embodiment of empathy and generosity.

Christmas.  When pregnant Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem, they were in a strange city. The only available place for them to sleep was a stable. That was bad enough. But Matthew 2:1-18 says Joseph was warned to emigrate with the rest of his family to Egypt to escape King Herod. They may have stayed in Egypt as refugees for as long (one commentator says) as eight years.

MOVIES | Locations in Greater NYC, Silent-Film Classics

Sampling of silent-film locations. NYC has

hundreds of them–NYT, please find.

Two years ago I posted on this site a hunt in Paris for the location of key scenes in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. So imagine my pleasure at finding in the New York Times today a story by Eve M. Kahn about location-hunting in Greater New York  for scenes in classic silent films.

As film buffs will know, Thomas Edison started the silent film era in New York City, substituting films for vaudeville acts The silent films had a piano player on hand to accompany the moving pictures. Edison moved his film operations to New Jersey, but that move–as happened later with the garment industry–turned out to be only a temporary way-station on the way to a more distant location.

Just as later the garment companies moved on to North Carolina, then Mexico, then China and now Bangladesh and Vietnam, the movie industry took off from New York and New Jersey to Hollywood in the first and second decades of the 20th century.

But meanwhile many films were made in New York City, nearby Fort Lee, N.J., and upstate New York. Now, in the words of the New York Times,

modern technology is turning some of the strip malls and storage sheds of New Jersey and New York into silent-movie shrines. With help from the Web, fans of those films can hike along parking lots, weedy streambeds and gritty alleys where early screen actors posed as American Indians, Confederate soldiers, Soviet spies, Dickens characters and escaped convicts.

Examples:

• Irene Castle in the silent film Patria (1916), filmed in Ithaca, N.Y.
• Edwin Thanhouser, in a studio in New Rochelle, N.Y., about 1915. 
• Theda Bara beguiling suitors on rock outcroppings in Fort Lee, N.J.
• Lionel Barrymore’s being followed by star-struck extras on the Cornell campus in Ithaca.
• D. W. Griffith using hand-forged iron gadgets to produce fade-outs while filming along an eroded canal towpath in Cuddebackville, N.Y., in Orange County.

“It’s like hallowed ground,” said Ben Model, a silent-film historian and film piano accompanist.

Yes, indeed. For the whole story, go here.

INEZ | Leads DC Parade,1913

Inez waits to start the DC suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the eve of
Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. This photo was the basis of the iconic
painting of Inez Milholland that still hangs in the lobby of the Sewall-
Belmont House (renamed the Paul-Belmont National Monument). 

The NY Times, p. 1, Mar. 4, 1913, said: “Through all the confusion and turmoil the women paraders marched calmly, keeping a military formation as best they could.” http://bit.ly/YppmES

The 5,000 suffragist marchers–men and women–left the Capitol and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, with 500,000 onlookers.

“Two New York women shared in the honors of the day. One was Miss Inez Milholland and the other was Gen. Rosalie Jones, who with her hikers occupied a place near the end of the line.

“Miss Milholland was an imposing figure in a white broadcloth Cossack suit and long white-kid boots. From her shoulders hung a pale-blue cloak, adorned with a golden maltese  cross. She was mounted on Gray Dawn, a white horse belonging to A. D. Addison of this city. Miss Milholland was by far the most picturesque figure in the parade.”

“At one time at the height of the disorder Inez Milholland helped to restrain spectators by riding her horse into the crowd.”

CONCERTGEBOUW | Orchestra in NYC Feb. 13-14

The Concertgebouw in their home habitat in Amsterdam.

NYC, Feb. 10, 2013–We will be going to hear Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Feb. 13 at Carnegie Hall.

The Concertgebouw is performing Mahler's First and Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2.

The Concertgebouw was judged the world's best orchestra by a panel of judges put together by Gramophone magazine in 2008. The New York Times asks: "Greatest orchestra in the world, or greatest orchestra ever?" The New Yorker says:

This world-renowned orchestra has the same qualities as a Rembrandt painting: commanding virtuosity and an unforgettably warm, rich palette.

My mother's grandfather, Charles Boissevain, when he was editor of the Algemeen Handelsblad, the leading Dutch paper of its era, led the campaign to build the Concertgebouw when there was nothing on the spot but a field of grass.

The Concertgebouw Orchestra was created in 1888. Charles Boissevain and his eldest son Charles E. H. Boissevain helped recruit as conductor William Mengelberg, who in turn became a huge fan of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Charles E. H. was on the Board for many years, excluding the years when his brother-in-law Han de Booy was a staff officer. 

The long, glorious and then sad story about Mengelberg–who has been described to me as the greatest conductor of the early 20th century–is told here:  Mahler and Mengelberg - www.boissevain.us/charlesboissevain/mahlerandmengelberg.html.

Mahler died in Vienna nearly 102 years ago, spending the last three years of his life in New York City, conducting the Metropolitan Opera - with its first opening night under his leadership on January 1, 1908 with Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde", followed by Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Beethoven's "Fidelio". While Mahler had many fans in New York City, he also faced backbiting from the New York establishment. Arturo Toscanini was inappropriately matched with him at the Met for the 1908-09 season. Toscanini knew how to woo the critical establishment and went on to a half-century of success. Mahler meanwhile was delighted to get away from the Met and accepted an offer to conduct the New York Philharmonic.  Dogged by a heart infection, however, he left New York in April 1911 and died the next month in Vienna. Years later, Leonard Bernstein said "I am Mahler"–meaning that he felt a spiritual kinship–and he is buried with the score of Mahler's Fifth Symphony over his heart.