Four Guys from La Gonave

Posted on 05/05/2012 by paulefallon

There’s a group of laborers that have taken to having English / Creole conversations with me.  We talk at lunch, but sometimes also at the end of the work day.  We use my Phrasebook as a starting point; pick a page, and start reading.  They read the English words, I help their pronunciation, and then we flip roles and I attempt Creole.  Some pages are worthless; being able to ask if your flight is delayed is meaningless to someone who has never been on a plane. The most relevant pages stick to the basics of time, weather, work, and family.  I learn that Emmanuel has a wife and four children, two boys and two girls; Drivle is single, not even a girlfriend; we all laugh that he is ‘lib’ though I applaud his honesty since every other Haitian man I know boasts of his girlfriend, even as I suspect many are fabricated.  Webert is single as well, but offers the conventional description of a girlfriend ‘at home’. Quiet Fanil allows that he has seven children, by several women, none of whom is his wife.  I search for the Creole word for ‘stud’ but cannot find it. It figures that a dictionary that defines single as ‘silibate’ would omit sexually charged slang.

 

When I ask where they live, all four say La Gonave, the island visible in the bay. I ask how they get there, and they tell me there is a ‘taptap bato-a’, a water taxi.  I picture the hydroplane that ferries commuters from Hingham into Boston, though the reality is sure to be more rudimentary.  I ask how long it takes to get home, and after some discussion they settle on forty-five minutes, which proves to be an awkward period of time to translate.  I ask them if they go home every night; in the States a forty five minute water commute would be considered light.  They laugh and say no, only weekends.

 

I ask where they live, and again they reply La Gonave.  Finally, I realize I have to ask where they sleep, and they point to one of the lean-tos at MoHI, where, apparently, they bunk every night, four of them, maybe more, in a space no more than ten feet square.  Suddenly the parameters of our work days shift for me.  I understand how the workers get here so early and never mind working so late.  They never leave.  Work is surely the most stimulating part of their day; once everyone leaves the émigrés from La Gonave have only themselves for amusement until the sun rises again.

 

On Saturday I ask if they are going to La Gonave.  They look at me odd and say no.  Then when are you going, I inquire.  In July, they reply, which is two months hence.  The more I know about them, the less I understand.

 

Among the four I know Emmanuel the best.  He has worn the same grey tee shirt and loose checkered pants since I first met him in December.  I am sure they were pajamas in a past life.  He has a light heart and a ready smile. The thought crosses my mind that he may have no other possessions.  He lives in a place that he visits only a few times a year, he sends money home to a wife and children when he has some in his pocket and can find someone to ferry it to the island.  When the weather is fine and the resources flow, he is a day laborer at BLB or MoHI.  If neither site wants him, he is on his own, in which case I can find him chatting along the path as I navigate between the two constructions.  He is as buoyant off site as when he is working.  Emmanuel can read; his English is quite good.  He is an adult, a married man in his thirties with a wife and children to support.  He is carries buckets of concrete for a living, when he can. That meager opportunity takes him far from his family, for a forty-five minute ferry ride is dear to a man of such limited income.  Yet he seems completely at ease with his lot in life.

 

I reflect on my own habits.  I never go anywhere without carrying a book, a magazine, or my computer.  I always have something ‘on hand’; to occupy my time if I hit a lull in my day.  The only time I am without accoutrement is when I do yoga, which is highly regulated in its own way.  I do not waste time.  I don’t consider myself particularly anxious, but as a motivated American, the thought of roaming the town all day in my only pair of clothes without so much as a pencil if no one wants me to carry their concrete is terrifying.

 

These guys are not dullards. They are literate and funny; their minds are quick.  Yet they spend large periods of time in a sort of physical and mental limbo.   Is that integral to the Haitian psyche, or is it an acquired skill?  Are they frustrated?  Do they rage against the dichotomy between their ability and their station?  By all appearances they have a calm acceptance of life; they appreciate what comes their way and are untrammeled by grievances and disappointments.  One could make the argument that such placidity sets Haiti back in her struggle to compete in the wider world.  On the other hand, I could benefit from some of that serenity myself.  I wonder if they translate it for me.

 

 

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Photo! Photo!

Posted on 05/03/2012 by paulefallon

As soon as I start down the hill after work a woman approaches in a bold black and white full length skirt, a patterned green blouse and a small tree with the root ball firm on her head.  She gives me a grand smile.  I itch to whip out my camera and take her photo; she is worthy of a National Geographic cover.  I ask the obvious question, ‘what kind of tree is on your head’, to which she replies ‘mango’.  Her lips are already moist in anticipation of her future fruit.  She has another sapling in her hand and a small boy in tow.  I am tempted to ask if I may take her picture, but I refrain.  I will be content with the memory.

I keep my camera clipped to my belt, ever ready, but I only take three kinds of pictures in Haiti. Anything goes at the construction sites, where the workers are photographed and videotaped constantly for all manner of publicity.  I take still life’s and landscapes.  And I take pictures of people who ask me, mostly children.  There is a gaggle of them who live along the hill to BLB, and every time I hike by they run out screaming, ‘photo, photo’.  I stop and take their picture; they never cease to marvel at the tiny image of themselves I displayed in the view frame.

I do not take photographs of people without their permission and I do not ask for permission. I feel it is an invasion. I am living in the Haitians’ world.  That I would like to preserve an image of a woman carrying a tree, or a bucket, or a bushel of bananas on her head makes her an object of curiosity, when she is simply doing her daily business.  Strangers don’t take photos of me at my computer, and it would be odd if they did.  I would love to document fisherman spooling their nets and women bleaching laundry on rocks and street vendors sitting in front of their paltry wares. But there is a fine line between generous wonder and prurient fascination, as the most compelling images are often the most desperate.

As I continue home I see all kinds of people carrying plants.  It turns out that May Day is a holiday in Haiti, celebrated with a tradition of planting trees.  Since Haiti can use all the trees it can get, I am a big fan of the idea.  You will just have to take my word for it.

The children on the hill in their daily photo.

 

 

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Holding Hands

Posted on 05/01/2012 by paulefallon

As a politically correct American, the only place I ever touch someone in public is their right hand to my right hand.  There are rare exceptions. I might give my friends or my children a hug if we meet at a restaurant, and I have been known to press the shoulder of long time clients when our professional relationship has become personal as well.  But I would never put my hand on a colleague’s shoulder or give him a pat on the back. The United States is a spacious, litigious society.  We claim a broad personal space and we guard it well.

The line in Haiti is more closely drawn, if it exists at all. Haitians jostle one another in the marketplace as a matter of course.  They live in small spaces, often many people in one room; sometimes multiple people in one bed.  Holding hands is common across genders and activities; every day I see construction workers stroll the site with their hands clasped to one another.

When I first came here I would wave to people as I greeted them. Then I started shaking hands.  Now I make a point to greet the workers personally each morning.  I shake their hand and place my left over it; I give them a good morning look in the eye.  This contact dances on the edge of my comfort zone, but I can tell they appreciate it.  A few of the guys, as I take their hand, throw their left arm around my shoulder, which I accept as a gesture of camaraderie.

Walking home after work, I run into a laborer along the main road.  Gascon bounces up to me, grabs my hand and embraces my shoulder.  We chat and I move on..  A few steps later I run into Clebert, a mason’s assistant. Clebert is a small, spry guy with a gregarious nature and a constant smile.  Mister Paul, he calls out, thrilled to discover me off the construction site.  We greet and I continue on, out of town and over the river; along the highway to the turnoff where my path dips into the jungle.  As I descend into the cool evening I hear footsteps behind me.  At a clearing I slow and step aside, to let the person coming upon me pass.  It is Clebert, at a good clip.  Ah, Mister Paul, he exclaims as if it were years, rather than minutes, since we last saw each other.  He reaches out and takes my right forearm in his left, lets his hand slide down into mine and grasps my fingers.

I am surprised, but I do not pull away. I suck in a breath and force myself to acknowledge that it is rather nice to have a warm, friendly hand in mine.  We walk and in hand.  I ask the small retinue of questions I have at my disposal when one on one with a person who speaks no English.  Clebert was born in Grand Goave, has lived here his whole like, and has a wife and four children; a resume virtually identical to all the other workers.  After a decent interval I point out a flowering tree, which allows me to free my hand.  I do not return it to the same place.  I have had plenty of hand holding with a near stranger on my first foray into such close personal space.  We continue along with a more comfortable distance between us, at least for me, until he gives me a hearty m’ale and turns off towards his house.

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Bang It Out!

Posted on 04/30/2012 by paulefallon

The Haitian approach to work follows the dictum, “Work requires banging.” Most Haitians are remarkably strong, and much of the work site camaraderie is based on shared displays of physical prowess.  There is nothing praiseworthy in the carpenter who cuts concrete formwork with such precision that it slides into place.  Ah, but if the plywood is a too long and the carpenter can poise a mallet over his head, swing a giant arc and force it into submission, that is work.  Better yet, the wood does not comply at once, so the worker has the opportunity to pound repeatedly, creating reverberation over the entire site.  Of course if the plywood is cut too short, the carpenter has a similar opportunity, force fitting shims to fill the gap.

A concrete building is essentially built twice. First we build it in wood, creating formwork that takes the inverse shape of our design, molds of columns, beams and floors.  Concrete is terrific at withstanding forces that push on it (compression), but lousy when pulled apart (tension), so we hang steel inside the concrete, which we call reinforcing, or rebar.  The steel, encased in the concrete, takes care of the tension very well, but it must be fully covered by the concrete, for exposed steel will rust and deteriorate.  When building up from the ground, columns and walls, we install the reinforcing first, and the formwork is built around it.  For elements in the air, beams and floor slabs, we install the formwork first, and then fill it with reinforcing.  Either approach offers multiple opportunities for banging.

Reinforcing must be installed straight and plumb, the steel cut, bent and tied off with thin wire called fille alegature, which might be the longest word in Creole.  Banging 5/8” diameter steel rod can’t do much of anything to it, so gratuitous banging goes on all day to no real effect.  Installing the formwork around it is the real fun.  There are a few important rules to follow. The walls need to be straight, and they need to have clearance around the steel; if the steel touches the formwork, it will be exposed to air in the finished product, which will cause the steel to rust when wet.  Rusty steel is weak steel.  We require at least 1-1/2” of cover, 2” is preferable.  We never get it.  The walls are supposed to be 12” wide.  If they are 13 or 14 inches wide, no matter, so long as they are consistent.  But there is no fun in erecting a piece of formwork and just letting it stand there.  The carpenters routinely install the formwork about 10 or 11 inches wide. The result, of course, is that the reinforcing is too close to the walls, which then affords the wonderful opportunity to insert cleats and stone shims and hammer the forms wider apart.  This also affords the opportunity to stop work and negotiate, a pastime that they love and I loathe. I identify location after location with insufficient clearance and the carpenters argue.  They are in a no lose situation; if I prevail they get to bang some more, if I capitulate, they have triumphed over the blan.

We have yet to complete one concrete pour with a full 1-1/2” cover everywhere.  The engineers back in the States would be disgusted with my track record, but then again, they are back in the States while I am here surrounded by fifty really strong guys who love to swing their big mallets. I console myself that Haiti is not New England.  We have no freeze / thaw cycles that will spall the concrete and expose reinforcing, and in Haiti the finished concrete is covered with a thick parge that will offer another level of protection.

Above ground walls are built of concrete masonry units (CMU), modular block that are 16” long by 8” high by 8” wide.  Standard Haitian block has three voids in them.  The problem with three hole block is that when you stagger the block vertically, the holes do not align.  Many people died in the earthquake when unreinforced CMU walls fell on them, so we add reinforcing to every row of block and vertical rebar throughout our walls.  We custom fabricate two hole block (US standard) so that if the crews offset the blocks on each course by 8”, the holes line up, as do the vertical reinforcing bars in each hole.  It sounds so simple, yet we never quite get it right.

We carefully set vertical reinforcing in the concrete foundation at 16” on center (oc), hoist the blocks up and slide them into place.  The mason’s like to work as pairs, and prefer to start both ends of a wall and work towards the middle.  The result, of course, is that the middle block is either too short of too long.  An opportunity for banging!  Over a few courses the vertical joints shift so much the vertical rebar no longer align with the holes.  The masons bang a crimp in a vertical rebar to shift it to a new void; often as not we wind up with reinforcing 8” oc in some locations and 24” in others.  The virtues of beginning the wall in the middle and working towards each end (where we frame into a column to be poured later and therefore have some slack), seem clear to me, but no matter how I try, and have the bosses explain in Creole, the workers give me their weary nod and then start a new row from opposing sides.

Haiti is a tradition bound country, and their concrete construction methods have evolved over hundreds of years.  The earthquake proved their techniques inadequate, if you think like an engineer.  But Haitians put more faith in tradition than calculations, and are just as apt to credit the mystical for the trauma of their earthquake as they are to credit physics; so trying to explain why a particular piece of steel is necessary to protect them in the future is a daunting challenge. I comfort myself that we have come so far; that the walls are being reinforced, if not perfectly, and they are tied to the columns, fairly well, and the concrete covers the reinforcing, good enough.   The quality of the work is increasing, ever so slowly.  We make progress every day, we tear out and rebuild less and less all the time.  And when we hit an impasse, the workers find a way to bang it out, which always makes everyone feel better.

 

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Twin Construction of Different Fathers

Posted on 04/28/2012 by paulefallon

I am spending more time at the Mission of Hope School site this trip to Haiti. The Be Like Brit orphanage is moving along very well; there is so much repetition now the crews need less supervision while some work has slowed down as the rains prevent material deliveries up the hill. The school, however, which has moved in fits and starts, is now surging forward.  There are so many similarities between the two projects; same design team, same construction crews, shared tools and materials, one would think the experience on one site would be like the other. Yet the culture of each construction site is remarkably different; as different as their owners, Len Gengal and Lex Edme.

BLB would be considered an efficient job site by American standards, in Haiti it is a phenomenon.  We have a construction shanty with a plan table and work space for four people.  It is headquarters for Len, Gama and me, Tito, the accountant, and Frankie, the gofer. It is air conditioned, though when Len is gone I discourage using it because the breeze is pleasant all day long.  Fanes, the job superintendent, is the only person who enters the shanty without knocking, yet even he never uses it as a place of work.  He only enters for morning meet & greet and scheduled meetings.  If crew members have a question, they knock on the door and wait for us to come outside.  They cross the threshold only once a week; to receive their Saturday pay.

The trades at BLB are well organized.  Every crew has a boss, and there is a clear hierarchy of communication, from Len to me or Gama to Fanes to the boss to the crew.  If I am spray paint marking locations of electrical or plumbing fixtures on the floor and pick up a broom to clean an area, a crew hand will always come over, take the broom, and sweep for me. No one allows me any manual labor.  At BLB, pay is tied to performance.  Masons are expected to lay ninety blocks per day, and since the flow of blocks, mortar, and reinforcing are continuous, it is an achievable target.  If they don’t achieve their quota, they receive short pay.

Three women have set up makeshift breakfast and lunch establishments on site, the Haitian equivalent of the lunch truck.  They serve competing versions of dire et pwa (rice and beans), embellished with chicken or goat or fish to suit any wallet and any palate, and I can attest that their food is very good.  Workers have their preferred options; during lunch they cluster by trade at their kitchen of choice.

MoHI is less hierarchical, both by circumstance and by design.  There is no construction shanty.  I set up my drawing and computer on a picnic table under a lean-to, surrounded by school children and an arm’s length away from the concrete mixer. When Lex is present he wanders the site, his primary tools being his voice and his cell phone.  Since the site is so compact and the children are everywhere, the crews cannot segregate as much; everyone works everywhere.

Crew designations are less clear at MoHI.  If I am marking something up, no one volunteers to assist me; yet if I need someone to hold the end of the tape while I measure something, I just grab the nearest guy and he is happy to help.  People are paid by the day.  If the daily productivity is low, Lex gives a pep talk the next morning to inspire the men, but output expectations are less stringent than at BLB.  MoHI is a more complicated building with more challenging conditions; if masons lay fifty blocks a day, they are doing well.  No one grouses when asked to do something outside their usual task.  The laborers work hard, but the output is not as remarkable.

MoHI provides lunch for the workers at mid-day or, if we are pouring concrete, whenever the pour is finished. Sometimes they even provide soda.  The food is standard Haitian fare, cooked in giant pots and served out of five gallon paint buckets.  Today is was diri et sauce pwa, a variation on rice and beans where the beans are pureed into a thin gruel and ladled over white rice.  Delicious, but simple.  The delicacies available up the hill are not on the menu here.  Lex and Boss Pepe serve the food; everyone jams under the lean-to escape the sun. We talk and joke.  The cliché of the happy native is so politically incorrect I shudder to use it, yet these guys have so much fun with a half an hour and a plate of rice that my spirits rise even though I understand only a quarter of what they say.

Before my work day ends, I ask Renee if they pay workers less since MoHI feeds them. No, she replies, MoHI pays the standard wages, but feels that feeding the workers has the benefit of making sure they eat and making them more receptive to working late when needed.

As I walk home I consider these two variations on a theme – the proto-capitalist BLB site versus the Social Democratic MoHI site.  As management, whose salary (?) is independent of either system, I should be able to make an objective assessment.  But I cannot.  On each site I have enjoyable, productive days. At BLB I feel very productive; at MoHI I feel very good; which pretty much sums up Lex’s and Len’s primary drive.

Boss Pepe ladles out lunch at MoHI

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Rainy Season

Posted on 04/25/2012 by paulefallon

One aspect of spending time in Haiti every month for a year that particularly appealed to me was the opportunity to witness the country’s full cycle. The seasonal adjustments of a Caribbean nation are minor compared to those of New England, but I looked forward to experiencing the subtle shifts between warm days morphing into cool nights (January) and hot days that stick to you 24 hours straight (August).  Be careful what you wish for, however, for either of those options seem preferable this time of year – we are thick in the rainy season.

Haiti has been cloudy since I arrived. It rains every night, hard, and often during the day.  Haitians are notoriously, almost hilariously afraid of rain.  At the sign of a few drops the entire crew at BLB scurry down the ladder and huddle under the second floor slab until it clears.  Today they just quit at noon.

The rains lay a lugubrious blanket of humidity over everything.  In a country where mechanical objects are precarious to begin with, the moisture seems to make everything break down.  The water pump at MoHI is on the fritz, the main generator is kaput, so we haul portable generators back and forth between home and work.  None of it much bothers me because if there are no lights it just gives me more time to sleep and if everyone is taking bucket showers, then we are all equally slimy.

The impact on the natural world of so much rain is anything but subtle.  The corn, so scrawny just three weeks ago, is reaching Kansas proportions. A bird got disoriented, flew into the chain link fence at BLB and broke its wing.  Gama brought it into the shanty where it scurries from corner to corner to avoid Christlove’s attentions.  If its wings heal, we will release it to the sky, though Gama threatens to mark it with a BLB.

The most bizarre natural phenomenon is the rain bugs.  They emerge every night around 7:30 pm, when night falls, and swarm any place with light.  They are a monstrous version of the ‘noseeum’s that swarm Massachusett’s ponds on wet summer evenings.  These are long, up to an inch, with wide wings. They are so easy to kill there is no sport in it at all.  With one thumb you can smudge out half a dozen.  Of course, that is also a testament to their density.  Well over a hundred are circling my light bulb as I type this.  I only bother to kill them if they land on me, but since I don’t glow I am not an object of their attention.  Besides, only the most literal animal rights activists could protest rubbing these guys out; they are all dead by morning anyway.

Like all minor annoyances, the rainy season offers its particular pleasures.  Last night Lex and Renee took me up to Saint Etienne in the mountains to give them some advice on a project they are building up there.  It was twilight when we arrived, the clouds drifting over the mountains created a mist shrouding the terraced hillsides.  It was green as any corner of Ireland I’ve ever seen yet more dramatic.  The hills of Haiti are so steep they defy physics; which makes them seem unreal.  In the silvery mist, Haiti looked like nothing other than Tolkien’s Middle Earth.   It is a small trial to persevere a few rainy days to experience such magic.

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Descent into Eerie Chaos

Posted on 04/24/2012 by paulefallon

The pilot of American Airlines Flight 1291 into Port au Prince made the craziest descent today.  He remained high in the air until the city came into view, then made two complete arcs, 720 degrees of centrifugal pull, to reach the ground.  Outside my window the view rotated from sky to water to coast to city to coast and then the sequence repeated over again.  The pollution was worse than usual.  As we spiraled down the sooty sky grew green, and by the time the pilot leveled over the runway, the sky and the water were the same shade of a lima bean.

On the ground this bizarre disequilibrium continued.  This is how Lex Edme, the founder of Mission of Hope International, who picked me up at the airport, describes the situation as we drive through Port au Prince.

A Member of Haiti’s congress was stopped last week at a police checkpoint. The officer found a concealed weapon on the Congressman’s chauffer, arrested him and put him in jail.  The Congressman, irate, went to the jail and demanded his chauffer’s freedom.  Three hours later the arresting officer was shot and killed.  Lex is a little unclear whether the policeman was shot by the Congressman, the chauffer or a hired gunman, but in any event the Congressman has immunity from prosecution.  The police, in solidarity, called a strike for today.  As a result, there are no police in the capital city.

The dominoes of lawlessness fall fast.  Stores are closed, as shop owners feel unprotected from thieves.  Schools are closed, as parents fear for their children.  Gangs gather.  They throw rocks and build barricades and set bonfires at busy intersections.  The point of their protest and their allegiances are a murky as the thick smoke enveloping the city.  The streets are barren with few pedestrians, no street vendors and scant traffic.  The massive open air market is deserted.  Huge white UN tanks with uniformed Brazilian soldiers barrel down the thoroughfares, more menacing peace keepers than the police sedans ever were.  The city is a web of silent tension; the quiet is explosive.

The US State Department issued warnings advising Americans against traveling in Port au Prince.  It is interesting that Ameircan Airlines felt no compunction to announce anything about this to the hundreds of American’s they deposited into the melee.

As we drive, Lex maintains regular cell phone contact with a striking police officer who updates him to trouble spots, a personalized, riot-centric traffic report.  We take a circuitous route to avoid trouble spots.  Evidence of agitation surround us, the black soot of spent fires, boulders from barricades.  Yet we weasel through the gaps of Port au Prince’s terror.  Nothing slows us down.  With no traffic, we reach Grand Goave in less than two hours – a personal best.

Once outside the city Lex explains that he considered not risking the trip to Port au Prince today.  He tried to contact me but I was already in flight.  We have a contingency plan in case no one can meet me at the airport; I have met the head of airport security, Mr. Big (that’s right, Carrie Bradshaw, the man of your dreams wound up here), and I am comfortable putting my fate in his hands if need be.  But Lex’s commitment to his volunteers is supreme.  He monitored the situation, decided better to pick me up before things got worse, and took meticulous care to ferry me safely home.  It is hard to imagine my love and respect for this man could grow, but he impresses me more with every visit.  I am so fortunate to have Lex looking out for me.

 

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Almost Famous Grows Up and Now I’m Old

Posted on 04/21/2012 by paulefallon

I have lots of good reasons to feel old.  I just passed my 57th birthday, a number so uneventful it barely deserves notice.  I sleep more than I used to, and have less energy when I am awake.  I run so slow that technically I jog.  Gravity is cruel to my sagging eye lids and downright sadistic to my chest.  I’ve lost two inches in height and gained two shoe sizes.  My ankles are elephantine.  And if I stay home on a Saturday night, like tonight, I don’t even think of myself as a loser.  But even adding all these things up, I consider my slowing down a harbinger of prudent maturity more than a fact of being old.

Time marches in an exorable pace of continuous diminution, but we do not comprehend it that way.  We do not notice the microns of daily wrinkle growth.  We don’t see any wrinkles in the mirror. Until one day there they are, fully formed, long and deep. Maturity is a graceful gesture; getting old happens in crude, giant steps.

This week I got really old.  Thanks to Kate Hudson.  You know Kate, the bubbly star of dozens of romance films I have never seen, as well as the amazing star of Almost Famous, which I saw and loved.  Kate’s a kid, right?  Lovable and goofy.  And her mom, Goldie Hawn, is a kid too.  Goldie was goofy in my youth, popping in and out of the joke wall on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In when I was a teenager.  But even though Goldie is not on the joke wall anymore and she won an Oscar and had a daughter and her daughter is a movie star, that doesn’t make me old.

What makes me old is that Kate Hudson has moved from being almost famous to being almost matronly.  There she is on every bus stop poster in the city of Boston, all decked out in a saffron dress with tiny pleats forming a billowy, undefined bosom, her hair pulled taut behind her head, exposing sensible earrings peering into the camera for Ann Taylor. I suppose that the marketers angle was for Kate Hudson to make Ann Taylor speak to a more youthful clientele, but propping Kate into that slightly aggressive, ankles-crossed-and-tucked-behind-the-seat pose reminiscent of Wellesley College Donor Appreciation Luncheons will not make the Urban Outfitters crowd flock to Ann Taylor.

No, it is only going to make Kate Hudson look old.  Wherever I pedal I cannot escape the knowing gaze of this woman who was never supposed to stop being a silly girl. The math is simple.  If Kate Hudson is a mature woman now, and I grew up with her mother, that makes me old.  Older than any sags or droops or shuffling jogs have ever made me feel.

I think it’s time for me to have a makeover; pop over the Newbury Comics and pick up a poster of the real Kate for my bedroom wall.  Back when she was almost famous and I was almost young.

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Cabaret Reconsidered

Posted on 04/15/2012 by paulefallon

Yesterday morning, as I cycled past the cherry trees budding along the river, I drifted into a Kander and Ebb state of mind.  I sang “How Lucky Can You Get’ and really meant it; I sang ‘Marry Me’ and really didn’t.  I do no justice to their canon, rasping their percussive melodies and grinding their piercing lyrics while enduring the startled glances of passing runners who realize, just a moment too late, “Hey, that guy is singing.”  By the time I reached the Fiedler Footbridge I was in a Kander and Ebb trance, channeling Cabaret.

My first Cabaret was 1968 summer stock at the Beach Haven Playhouse. I am sure that my mother had no idea what she exposed me to; no Daughter of the Holy Name Society takes her thirteen year old chubby sponge of a son to theatricals that celebrate decadence and fascism.  But she was starved for culture along the Jersey Shore and I was always her willing companion, especially if live actors, song or dance were involved. The emcee was a rail thin, incredibly tall man-child with eerie white makeup, hollowed cheeks and maraschino cherry lips that turned every smile into a leer. He wrapped his spindly legs around the Kit Kat girls with an angular suggestiveness that gave me night shivers for weeks.

The imprimatur in my teenage mind that Cabaret represented the epitome of debauchery was permanently established by Bob Fosse’s brilliant 1972 film that sharpened the outlines of the love story between Sally Bowles and Cliff Bradshaw.  When Liza Minelli’s solid thighs caressed that Thonet chair I understood that homely people can paint themselves up in the search for love, but that love might get a little twisted.  At the same time, beautiful, ambiguous people, like Michael York, can dip into the underworld for a stimulating diversion but can always retreat to the comforts of wealth and aquiline breeding. Being no Michael York, I embraced Cabaret as a thrilling but cautionary tale.  I developed a haunting rendition of the title song on my guitar; I sang it in a minor key.

For forty years Cabaret has titillated my heart strings. When people ask where I would most like to visit in the world, I always answer Berlin. Yet I have never gone.  The raw brutality of The Kit Kat Klub intrigues me, but I preserve my distance.

Then last night I went to the graduate cabaret at The Boston Conservatory.  April is high performance season at TBC; in the two weeks I am in town I have five different gigs on my calendar.  As a passionate supporter of TBC, it would be enough that the students are so talented and their productions so fresh.  But my love runs deeper, for I project a bit of myself on every student, that past of me that was too tentative and too conventional to nurture, that craved a life of theater yet bowed to the ruthless odds against success.  TBC is so vital because every student ignores society’s insistent rants about money and employment and material success.  They have a dream grand enough to stake their future on.

The MFA students develop 30 minute solo acts of song and story, just a stool, a mic, a piano, and themselves under the spotlight, facing an audience in a black room.  I imagined that compressing your cumulative talent into a single act would result in majestic, sweeping performances, yet the vignettes were quite the opposite.  Each student worked a story line close to their heart, and since they are young, the stories revolved around personal family experiences.  Mike Maloney’s trip to Disneyworld at age six inspired a wonderful journey across the Magic Kingdom, Marissa Roberts brought a perceptive edge the challenges of being a fashionista and Leora Bernstein convinced us that after school escapes into Jedis and wizards are not only the fantasies of little warrior boys, but also gawky girls with too big voices.

Each set distilled a wide emotional range, included pathos and humor and a songbook that highlighted their particular talents.  What impressed more than the talent, which was evident, was how deeply these people understood themselves.  They were not twenty-four year olds gaping platitudes, but fully formed adults revealing the contours of their hearts, and through their specificity they tapped universal human experience.  By the time Mike tells us the inspiration he derives from his handicapped brother or Marissa agonizes that her thighs rub or Leora strides back into high school after a Facebook thrashing, they have drawn us into their world with such generosity that we care. And by revealing themselves so perceptively, their performances stir the particular joys and wounds of our own hearts.

I left the performance with a new appreciation for cabaret, an art form based on soul bearing which, when done right, nurtures our own souls.  Perhaps in 1930’s Germany life was so brutal that the only sane response was ‘admitting from cradle to tomb is not very long a stay’.  But cabaret can inspire higher aspirations as well.  After all, “Fate is kind.  It brings to those who love, the sweet fulfillment of their secret longings.”  Riding home I let Kander and Ebb slip from my mind; Jiminy Cricket guided me through the starry night.

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A Tale of Two Babies To-Be

Posted on 04/11/2012 by paulefallon

Tomo and Brad are having a baby.  That is the correct terminology among liberal, upper middle class couples in the United States, where having a baby is a scrupulously planned, much anticipated, and widely shared event.  Tomo and Brad are two of the three owners of Bikram Boston, a trio of yoga studies that offer upwards of twenty yoga classes a day at a cost of up to $22 per class. They teach yoga, they take yoga, they are healthy and vital, engaging new-age entrepreneurs. Tomo, a slight woman from Japan, and Brad, an alum of the University of Colorado with all the hip good naturedness that implies, have been married for several years.

Right now Tomo is at 25 weeks.  Brad teaches the Sunday morning class I attend and has a penchant for inserting personal revelation into his dialogue.  These days that means a baby update at some point in the class.  We all know it’s a boy, that Tomo craves seaweed, and that Brad likes to rest his ear against her tiny swell of a belly.  His excitement and pride is palpable.

Tomo teaches on Saturday mornings, and though she also infuses her class with personal vignettes, hers is a more acerbic humor.  She tells us things like, “Here is my status report.  I can no longer reach down and tie my shoes.”

We regulars enjoy hearing about the baby.  At check-in and check-out, when I see them one on one, I inquire how Tomo is feeling, whether her family from Japan will come when the baby is born, and their move to a larger condo in South Boston.  The entire Bikram Boston community has a vested interest in this baby.

When I am in Haiti, every day I walk from the orphanage to the MoHI School.  Near the base of the dirt road is a collection of a dozen or so houses, some concrete, others just sticks and tarps.  One woman sits in front of a woven platter of packaged snacks for sale, though I have never actually seen her sell one.  The rest of the women squat on their stoops and chat. There are many children; I do not know which belongs to whom.

Two of houses share a narrow exterior gallery, no more than three feet wide, with a covered roof.  One woman sits there, absorbing whatever draft filters through the space.  She is silent, never acknowledging my ‘Bon Soir’ as I pass.  Children clamor over her hugely pregnant belly as if she were a rock, some obstacle to their merriment.  Sometimes another woman occupies the passage with her, equally mute.

One day when I walked down the hill, the woman was not sitting in her space; she was standing along the side of the road with her hands clasped tight and high on the trunk of a flimsy tree, her hips shot out behind, her belly hanging free.  She swayed imperceptivity as the breeze, her eyes blank, teetering with fear.  I did not speak to her; her body language announced her private agony, as if trying to rid herself of the burden of her belly.

In a few months, if all goes well, Tomo and Brad will be parents.  A child will be welcome into this world, surrounded by love and a community of avid supporters.  We will follow the little tyke through his first steps and his first tooth and where he goes to kindergarten.  We will hear about his birthday parties and his first sleep over, the agony of middle school and every trophy he earns in high school.  He will be nurtured for twenty years or more, given every opportunity to become as fully formed as his potential allows.

In a few weeks, if all goes well, a baby will be born in Haiti to a silent mother with no evidence of a father.  The burden of her belly will be shifted to her breast. She will nurse it as long as she can, then find food for it as best she can, until it is big enough to let roam on its own, another face in the hordes of children of Haiti.

How we enter this world is the most arbitrary fact of life.

 

Posted in Haiti, United States, Yoga | Tagged , , | 2 Comments