Author: Gil

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RIP

My parents were worried when Dr. and Mrs. Capers moved in next door; the house they built was shaped like an ark. “Do they know something we don’t?” Mom wondered.

The Capers helped me grow up (sorta like in loco grandparentis) and they showed an awful lot of kindness to my mom after Dad left. Dr. Augustus T. Capers died on Thursday, at the age of 87, after a full life.

Update:

I went to the funeral today in Paterson. The program included the following:

Reflections of Life

Augustus Theodore Capers was born on September 30, 1918 in Charleston, SC, the son of Wade and Anna Morris Simmons. When he was a young child, his mother died and he was raised by his great aunt, Florence Capers, and her husband. They moved to Paterson, NJ with Augustus at the age of 5 years. On Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 6:45 a.m., he entered into eternal rest while watching the sun rise.

In 1943, he graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Science in Biology. He received his Doctor of Dentistry from the Dental College of Howard University in 1947 and achieved further distinction with the highest score on the NJ Dental Examination in 1948. This began his dental career in Paterson, which extended over 50 years. During the Korean War he served as a captain in the U.S. Army Dental Corps and was honorably discharged.

Dr. Capers and his wife Gertrude were champions of civil rights. They founded the first black democratic club in the city of Paterson. Both served the community by advancing equality in housing and employment opportunities within the City Administration, the Board of Education and the Police Department of Paterson. Dr. Capers was appointed as the first black dentist to serve on the dental staff of the Paterson school system by the mayor. In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey sent congratulatory greetings as Dr. Capers was the first black State Assemblymen elected by the citizens of Passaic County, District 14-B, who elected him to a second term. During this same year, he was elected to serve as a member of the Board of Directors for the Paterson Boy’s Club. Dr. Capers was honored by the Bergen-Passaic Howard University Alumni Club and his fellow Paterson Kiwanis Club members for his commitment to community service, consumer advocacy, justice and equality.

His ties to the Paterson community remained strong in his twilight years when Dr. Capers and Gertrude retired to Ringwood, NJ. Both he and his wife, a published author, were honored by the Paterson Public Library. Her poignant memoir, “A Scent from the Blue Ridge,” (under the pen name Trudi Capers) serves as a tribute to her husband’s accomplishments and a reflection of the history and the genesis of the civil rights movement in the City of Paterson, while tracing her family’s roots from slave and American Indian ancestry. In September 2002, Dr. Capers and Gertrude celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with family and friends.

He leaves to cherish his memory: his beloved wife, Gertrude Stanton Capers; three children, artist Selena James, Superior Court Judge Michelle Hollar-Gregory, and financial consultant Augustus T. Capers, Jr.; as well as three grandchildren, Dr. Robert A. James, Jr., and Ryan and Kyle Hollar-Gregory; sons-in-law Robert A. James, Sr. and Milton R. Hollar-Gregory, esq.; nieces Betty and Virginia; nephews Vreeland and Melville; and many cousins, other family members and friends.

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C’est Levee, or Once More Unto the Breach

It’s the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s whomping of the Gulf Coast. I’ve been down to New Orleans four times since then. I’ve tried to chronicle a little bit of the reconstruction, or at least my viewpoint on the progress.

My perspective is limited, of course. Amy’s family lives about 25 miles from the city, so the people I see the most down there talk more about the after-effects, not their own property loss. We’ve made trips into the city each visit, but mainly in the central business district and the French Quarter. I haven’t gone through the lower Ninth Ward in any of my visits, but I also don’t visit the South Bronx when I go to New York.

Or does the WTC site serve as a better analogy? Ray Nagin seemed to think so, when he contrasted NOLA’s rebuilding pace with the five-year span since the Twin Towers were knocked down: “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”

It was a cheap shot, but Nagin’s a mentally unstable grandstander, so that needs to be factored in.

How does the city get rebuilt? Darned if I know. I wouldn’t exactly trust a “master plan” developed by the crooked politicos of Louisiana in concert with the ass-clowns in Washington, and the Army Corps of Engineers is already covering its ass about the possibility of the current levees being unable to handle another major storm. I’m having enough trouble just trying to settle on a color for my home office, since the official VM wife objects pretty violently to the deep green currently in place.

(Witold Rybczynski in Slate has a neat piece about how a new-urbanist project in Denver provides an example of how to start putting together neighborhoods, but it all presupposes that the neighborhoods aren’t built in a locale that’s existentially flood-prone.)

I’m having trouble coming up with anything to say that I haven’t gotten at already, so why don’t you, my dear readers, tell me what you make of New Orleans? A bunch of you came to visit in March for my wedding, but I want to hear from those of you who haven’t seen it, too. Tell me what you remember of the city, if you’ve been there before, what you thought if you’ve been there post-Katrina, and what you think of the ways and means of rebuilding a city that wasn’t in great shape before it’s cataclysm.

(Update: I know it’s hard to believe, but Ray Nagin has more to say!)

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Undermined by the Undermind

I have zombie dreams every few months and they’re no fun, let me tell you. I figure they derive from a persecution complex that probably sub-derives from my family’s history as Jews in eastern Europe.

The result is a pretty standard scenario in which I’m the target of a shambling mob (at least they’re not high-speed zombies like in 28 Days Later or that Dawn of the Dead remake). Typically, it takes either the extreme end-game peril or the exertion of going all Dusty on a zombie’s skull to wake me up.

It’s not easy getting back to sleep after that, so I try to get up quietly so as not to wake my wife, take my book from the nightstand, and head downstairs to read.

Despite my susceptibility to these dreams, I don’t go out of my way to avoid zombie flicks. I don’t usually seek them out either, unless one is from a director whose work I follow (like Danny Boyle, of whom I now realize I’ve seen every U.S.-released film), but if a zombie movie’s on TV, I’ll likely watch for a bit. And Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite movies of the past few years. (Also, I went to YouTube to search this gem out.)

Thursday night, I was working pretty hard to put together an article for my magazine (“write an article” would be putting it too charitably). It was an ugly process, made slightly easier once I made myself a Hendricks & tonic. It’s not an article that I’m happy with, but they can’t all be winners.

Amy turned in around 10, and I followed shortly after, a little buzzed and burned out. I barely had the motivation to go through my nightly ablutions.

That night, I had a zombie dream. I don’t recall a lot of the set-up, but I do remember my wife standing in our hallway looking around the corner down the stairs of our house, and running into my office to tell me that three zombies were coming up the stairs. For no apparent reason, there was a cricket bat by my door, so I grabbed that and ran over to the top of the stairs.

Shambling up at us was one of my oldest friends, who’s a bohemian in NYC nowadays. Two kinda generic art-guys were in tow (they were wearing black turtlenecks, which is all I can remember about them now). They weren’t dripping gore or anything, but they were clearly zombies.

Having the high ground as well as the advantage of a fully-functioning nervous system, I immediately went to work with the cricket bat, braining my old friend and her two undead accomplices. I remember that it took a few shots to put them down, but at least I didn’t have to resort to flinging old records and kitchen appliances at them, as Shaun & Ed did.

I woke up immediately after, heart racing from the oneiric adrenaline surge. Figuring there was no getting back to sleep, I got my book (Pride & Prejudice, if you’re wondering) from the nightstand and headed downstairs to read.

But the instant I reached the landing, I realized exactly where my dream had come from; I had left the front door of the house open. My aforementionedly witty and image-associative subconscious decided to quote Pete from Shaun of the Dead to let me know, “And the front door is open . . . AGAIN!!”

Fortunately, it also left me with that cricket bat, so I guess I can’t complain.

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Outta touch

Sorry it’s been a quiet week, dear readers. I’ve been busy at work, but I’ve also found myself falling into one of my wheels-within-wheels paranoiac phases. It’s centered on trying to get at an understanding of the power-relations at play in the current Gulf War.

Anyway, I gotta write an article on the benefits of RFID in the pharma supply chain, so I’m gonna get to that.

I leave you with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon / sushi axis.

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WWII Flashback Day!

At the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland has a column on Gunter Grass, while George Will writes about the Japanese shrine to war-dead, which drives China into a tizzy.

It’s interesting, how we can’t bear to forget and we can’t bear to remember.

Here’s Hitchens reviewing a book about the moral issues of firebombing Hamburg, Dresden, Wurzbeg and other German cities during the war.

Meanwhile, I just finished re-reading Gravity’s Rainbow, which is (in part) about the German rocket bombardments of England. And behavioral science, organic chemistry, kaballah, Argentine politics, the afterlife, zoot suits, pinball, cinema, the tarot, Nixon, and the respective extinctions of the dodos and the Hereros. I’m still juggling and re-parsing What Went On.

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Lucky!

Thursday night, Amy & I watched Soapdish, which she hadn’t seen before. She enjoyed the heck out of it, but marveled over how much I liked the movie. I’d seen it a few years ago after a friend of mine told me, “It’s one of the only movies he’s in in which Robert Downey, Jr. doesn’t have the best performance.”

Watching me cracking up over the over-the-top bitchiness of the women’s performances, Amy asked me, “How did you ever end up marrying a woman?”

I replied that at least I wasn’t an opera fan, but that didn’t provide much of a defense.

Last night, we were clicking around when I noticed that Sky High was just starting.*

While I was making drinks in the kitchen, I heard Amy say, “Ooh! Lynda Carter!” and “Ooh! Bruce Campbell!” within two minutes.

I walked back into the living room and said to my wife, “And you’re amazed that I got married?”

Thank gosh we found each other.

* I recalled a short writeup in GQ that mentioned this flick as one of the least appreciated movies of 2005. Instead of tedious Disney kid-fare, it was actually supposed to be pretty witty (especially with two Kids in the Hall making appearances in it) and entertaining for semi-developed adults. Unfortunately, GQ has the least-helpful website in the world, so I can’t pull up that recommendation.

But it turned out to be right. The movie was a hoot, at least for geeks like us. And with the, um, mature sexiness of Ms. Carter and a straight-haired, brunette, glasses-wearing Kelly Preston, Sky High may have the highest MILF-factor of any movie in years.

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On the DL

Dennis Leary goofs on Mel Gibson while he sings the praises of Jewish ballplayers during a Red Sox broadcast.

(Some of you may wonder why, as a Yankees fan, I keep a link to a Red Sox blog in my blogroll. It’s because Mnookin’s an awfully good writer, isn’t prone to flying off the handle, and needs all the pity he can get, since he cheers for a team whose fans I witnessed perform The Wave five times during the June 19 game against the Nationals)

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Smoking Grass

I wanted to write a long piece exploring the tension of Gunter Grass’ novels with his recent admission that he served in the Waffen SS during World War II, but I was stymied by the fact that I’ve never read a word he wrote, probably due to my irrational bias that all Germans from that era were Nazis.

Anyway, Grass’ “frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history,” sez the website for the Nobel Prize, which Grass won in 1999. The site also tells us, “after military service and captivity by American forces 1944-46, he worked as a farm laborer and miner and studied art in Düsseldorf and Berlin.” Which is true-ish. As is Grass’ own comment in his Nobel lecture, “Humans have much of the rat in them and vice versa.” I probably oughtta read that whole lecture sometime.

Now, I’m actually going to cut some slack for the 17-year-old Grass. Given that my dad lied about his age to join the military when he was a 16-year-old in Israel, I can pretty easily imagine a young Grass who wanted to join up, get away from his family and “help the war effort” or something.

I can even imagine a situation where he didn’t really understand that this could lead him into the SS. I don’t know the facts of military allocation during the war, so I can’t say that he’s lying about how he was assigned to the Waffen SS. And it certainly sounds like that unit was more devoted to combat operations than to the running of concentration camps and mass executions that other parts of the SS were engaged in.

War sweeps a lot of people up into decisions that they couldn’t imagine making in other circumstances. For a 17-year-old in a duty-bound society like that . . . well, I’m just saying that I don’t hold that piece of his history against him.

However, I am stuck trying to figure out what’s more unconscionable: not revealing till he was 78 the fact that he was in the Waffen SS, or only revealing it so he could have a sales peg for his new book.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve tried marketing literary books before and “I served in the SS” isn’t much worse than some of the angles I’ve seen.

(Oh, and to that writer at Time who argues that Grass wouldn’t have been such a good/important writer had he not kept this deep, dark secret all along: you’re a moral imbecile.)