Targeting Ithaca

Barbara Regenspan

I am not a cynical person and I fight cyni­ cism whenever it creeps into my life. So the act of researching this article about the City of Ithaca’s communication with the public regarding its southwest development plan, and especially its relationship to the Widewaters Corporation, including the actions of Widewaters around its efforts to build a Target store on the very site the city rejected for Wal-Mart five years ago, was a disheartening experience. Hannah Arendt’s conception “the banality of evil” has repeatedly come to mind during my efforts to capture the complex of moral lapses and poor judgment that has character­ ized the city’s process, as well as that of its clear ally, Marco Marzocchi. General Counsel of the Widewaters Corporation. After a num­ ber of interviews and much research of docu­ ments, I can see that what has happened gen­ erally is a defensive closing of ranks around the principle players who insist that they truly believe that southwest development is a cure for virtually all of Ithaca's economic woes; this closing of ranks has excluded the possi­ bility of any real dialogue relative to our city’s pursuit of economic development and has pro­ duced an end-justifies-the-means approach. While that might not be evil, it’s bad. It’s especially bad because this is a city with a disproportionate number of residents who are aware of the contradictions in the current global economic system that shape the choices available to us in our pursuit of local economic viability. For instance, at present, many developers are interested only in creat­ ing so-called "big-box” stores with their high sales volumes or are only willing to invest in malls anchored by big-box stores located away from, and often in direct competition with traditional downtowns. V Many of us are actively troubled that big- Si, l*'\ box stores and the other national chain stores Planning ’ tend to drive out locally-based businesses and Board mem­ are dependent on undervalued resources as ber Ken Vineberg, raw material for cheap goods made and sold thinks that the Target bv underpaid people. store proposed for Ithaca Some would say that these issues of global will still be in existence twen­ economic inequity and how they express ty-five years from now, when the six or eight themselves at home trouble only those of us cottonwood trees he offers as a solution to the characterizes as “careless” rela­ who can afford to be troubled. Still, in the viewshed problem might be tall enough to actu­ tive to its pursuit of southwest develop­ local debates, the only folks I've heard clam­ ally block the building from anybody’s view. ment is regrettable, though understandable, able southwest develop­ oring for the minimum-wage jobs these stores Yet Vineberg believes that until the number because of the equally careless behavior of its ment, which I clearly do not. A ,create are folks who wouldn’t take them. of folks opposing such development outnumber opposition, which has slowed down the city’s major problem in effectively responding to Another piece of likewise compelling data to the ones calling for better shopping opportuni­ process and frustrated both the city and the the pattern of self-justification that continues me: In both the public hearings and the written ties and more revenues generated by sales tax in first southwest developer, namely to issue from city government is having comments on the Draft Generic Environmental Ithaca, the elected government should be Widewaters, through the incursion of extra enough background information to under­ Impact Statement (GEIS) for the city’s pro­ allowed to do “what it was elected to costs and time-consuming challenges. stand the context in which decisions are made posed southwest plan, people from a wide array do”—which he interprets as the building of a But after researching this article, I would and actions taken. Hopefully this article can of social classes made the argument that unde­ shopping center that he has the expertise to argue that the city’s own efforts to circumvent sort through some of those details. veloped land, even undeveloped land zoned make beautiful—within the Buttermilk Falls opposition, which sometimes come perilously Even city employees have been pressured commercial, and especially land visible from viewshed. This is especially the case as, accord­ close to skirting state regulations, have set us to act on incomplete background information. glorious local treasures like Buttermilk Falls, is ing to him, suggestions for smaller-scale devel­ on a course that may have dire political and Phyllis Radke, the acting building commis­ a more valuable resource for the city and its res­ opment, such as the so-called “middle-ground” economic consequences. sioner, who last October 18 (1999) issued the idents than anything we could build on such alternative plan from the Citizens' Planning The purpose of this article is to speak to the fill permit that allowed Widewaters to dump land, especially understanding that the opti­ Alliance, "are a waste of time and energy need for honesty and openness in the Ithaca 80,000 cubic yards of gravel— not only on the mistic outcomes predicted from such building because no developer would look at them." city government, and to make that appeal continued on page 11 are likely to be short lived. Nobody, including For Vineberg, the city’s behavior, which he effective even to those who believe in size­ page 2 The fiOOKPRESS November 2000 Letters Kara Hagedorn is a naturalist with a zoology Buttermilk, below a campground, and in the been under a sheet of ice, a mile thick. I talk viewing, the Watchable Wildlife Program degree from Colorado State University. Site view of the gorge. All summer I have been lis­ of the Cayuga Indians, the colonists who had serves as a nationwide cooperative effort that moved to Ithaca in 1986 and has worked as an tening to people’s concerns and there is no a grist mill at the base of the falls and of combines wildlife conservation with environmental educator at Buttermilk Falls State ignoring that this is a beloved park to thou­ Robert and Laura Treman’s generous contri­ America’s deepening interest in wildlife- Park. Because of her concern over plans for a sands of people and a development of the size bution and desire to protect this scenic gorge related outdoor recreation. A binocular logo Target store in the immediate vicinity of proposed will have permanent and irre­ for future generations. As we go up the steps on state park highway signs will soon identi­ Buttermilk Falls State Park she wrote the follow­ versible damage on the quality of this scenic alongside the main waterfall I talk of the fy Buttermilk Falls as a wildlife viewing site. ing letter addressed to city officials. Having park. Already impacts have been made that Civilian Conservation Corps’ contribution of The cornerstone of the Watchable Wildlife received no response she requested that The you are probably not even aware of. For the beautiful masonry found throughout the Program is a series of state-by-state wildlife Bookpress publish her letter. We also include a example, on gorge hikes when we stop to look park. Then we continue on the trail to the viewing guides. Available at The Bookery, in previous piece she wrote for the Town of Ithaca out over the valley and talk about glaciation overlook for a long stop looking down on the downtown Ithaca, The New York Wildlife newsletter. and watershed, the group would often be valley. It is the only appropriate place to talk Viewing Guide is beautifully presented with delighted to see a great blue heron, hawk, or about glaciation, where people can visualize numerous color photographs of animals and August 23, 2000 pileated woodpecker fly and land in the the carving of the Cayuga Valley. Will a landscapes, directions to 76 sites, viewing hedgerow that was in the view below, across shopping center down below be your contri­ hints, and other relevant information. A nice To Mayor Cohen, Common Council the floodplain. bution? There are other places in the City of introduction on New York State’s biodiversi­ Members, and the Planning Board, Now that hedgerow is gone since it was cut Ithaca to put a development of this size. ty illustrates the connection between diverse down by Widewaters. You may not be aware School groups, the Boy Scouts, the habitats and wildlife diversity. I am writing to you as a private citizen of that Buttermilk Falls State Park is listed as a Paleontological Research Institute, day On a local level. Buttermilk Falls State Ithaca who has worked for eleven years as a Watchable Wildlife Park in a national and camps, all use this trail for geological educa­ Park is a perfect example of how habitat naturalist and educator at Buttermilk Falls state system of tourism guides. One wildlife tion. Again I ask, will this be your legacy, diversity supports wildlife. Within 751 acres, State Park (BMP). More than anyone else in viewing opportunity at BMF has already been urbanizing a scenic park that people come to the park contains several gorges, a small lake, the State Park system, I interface with the lost due to the southwest plan. Now, when we from all over the world? a cat-tail marsh, Buttermilk creek, streamside public at BMF in a very personal way. It is my stop at the overlook someone always asks, This decision should weigh heavily on your habitat, mature forest, flood-plain forest, red- job to walk around the campground several “Why have they cleared that area down conscience. For generations to come, what pine plantation, and a shrub swamp at Larch times a week inviting patrons to come on the there?” And when I say there is a proposal for will people think when they look down at a Meadow. Each one of these habitats provides numerous programs that our recreation staff a store or perhaps, shopping center, they make store (or perhaps a shopping center), a park­ food and shelter for a rich abundance of offer. Year after year 1 watch many of the comments like: “There?” and “Are they crazy, ing lot, moving cars, sunlight reflecting off of wildlife. same families return to BMF from Syracuse, don’t they know that campers come here to glass? Please consider the long-term conse­ During the past ten years as a naturalist and Long Island, Ontario, Iowa, Pennsylvania, get away from that?” And when I mention quences of what you are about to do. And if environmental educator at Buttermilk Falls etc. I have watched many of the kids grow up, economic growth they use terms like: “pea you haven’t been on one of my gorge hikes, State Park, I’ve experienced many memo­ and every week someone approaches me with brain planning” and “short sighted.” An you should come this Saturday Aug 26, at rable wildlife interactions: One day 1 watched a wonderful memory of one of my programs: equally disturbing view of the Widewaters 10:30 am to see the view in the context of a a pair of pileated woodpeckers chip out a finding a painted turtle on the gorge trail, or site is when you are coming down through the wonderful story, and see what will be lost. nesting hole in a dead beech tree on the Bear seeing a great homed owl at Larch Meadows, lush gorge and it opens up into the wider glen. I’ve just come in from an evening program Trail. While walking with a group on a dusk or seeing Sirius, the rainbow star, for the first Your first view of the valley below is now a and wanted to put something in writing to hike we spotted a wild turkey hen high on a time through a telescope that Cornell brown pile of dirt. I heard this outrage from you, but as a person who has dedicated eleven branch, its wings outstretched with six chicks Astronomy Club brought up to the camp­ people before, when Wal-Mart was proposing years of my life to educating people about the tucked into bed within her warm feathers. ground. Still, after eleven years, I am sur­ to build there and campers and hikers left wonders of Buttermilk Falls, you will never I’ve seen the perfect silhouette of a great- prised at how many visitors come to BMF strong comments at the park office, back at a know the depth of my sorrow on this issue. I homed owl shaped in the shadow of a setting from all over the world. time when we had comment cards. After Wal- will print out a copy of this letter for you and sun and triplet spotted fawns splashing and Although I understand the need for eco­ Mart was denied I suggested a zoning change drop it off at City Hall with an example of our playing in a pool in Buttermilk Creek. There’s nomic development in Ithaca I urge you to not to protect the viewshed for camper’s and weekly schedule so that you can get an idea of the ethereal, down-spiraling call of the veery allow a large development across from future generations, but 1 was ignored. Last the programs we offer at Buttermilk and why and loud splash of a warning beaver’s tail. year when I was on the Environmental tourists and locals never tire of hiking around Buttermilk Falls State Park has served as an Management Council and JoAnn Cornish pre­ this incredibly special place. There is no important site for public wildlife programs: sented plans for the southwest development, I escaping the fact that a development across The Beauty of Bats, Woodpeckers to Watch reminded her of all the concerns of patrons the street, below the campground and in view For, Mudflat Tracking, Thrushes of the and I was told that the city understood those of the gorge, will change it, forever. Forest, Leave it to Beaver, Fire-Fly Fireworks concerns, and it was clear that it was in the Sincerely, and Owl Prowls. Now, the New York State viewshed, and if something was built there it Kara Hagedorn Wildlife Viewing Guide recognizes this park's would probably be small and up toward the viewing opportunities: “Muskrat, beaver, and road. (This should be in the EMC minutes). mink are among the water mammals that uti­ Then I left town for 7 months and returned to September 15, 1999 lize this waterway. Campers might expect to the Buttermilk Trail to see a huge footprint of To: Sue Ritter see skunk, raccoon, opossum and red fox. TEN THOUSAND fill and plans for a 200,000 square foot devel­ From: Kara Hagedorn Watch at dusk for little brown bats and big opment. Re: Watchable Wildlife article for the Town brown bats and flying squirrels. Coyotes can VILLAGES® Maybe it is only because I see the gorge of Ithaca Newsletter be heard some nights. Songbirds abound dur­ and the view through the eyes of visitors ing the migratory peak in mid-May. Watch every Saturday that I find the idea of looking Among hundreds of natural areas in New overhead for sharp-shinned, red-tailed and EACH PURCHASE YOU down on a shopping center so incredibly dis­ York State, Buttermilk Falls State Park, in the broad-winged hawks...” MAKE BENEFITS A THIRD turbing. At the beginning of the hike I pull out Town O f Ithaca, has been chosen by the So grab your binoculars, walk quietly and WORLD ARTISAN a fossil and tell the story of the Devonian sea. National Watchable Wildlife Program as one enjoy a stroll on one of the park trails. Then I pass around a glacial striation explain­ of the top spots statewide to enjoy wildlife. Effortlessly, you’ll merge with the lives of the Now through Dec. ing how a million years ago we would have With the increasing popularity of wildlife animals that share this land. 156 THE COMMONS Ithaca NY 256-0616

At the request of Bruce Estes, managing 1. The publisher of The Bookpress were dishonest in how they reported the editor, and Gary Stewart, senior editor, of failed to check the accusations made in the results of the survey that showed 54 percent The the Ithaca Journal, we are printing their article that clearly affect the reputations of of Ithaca residents approved of the city’s gOOKPRESS response to Barbara Regenspan’s article others. Regenspan’s assertion that editors Southwest development plans. She declined “For Whom The Poll Sells,” which at the Journal are “apparently refusing to all these offers and asked that all future appeared in the September 2000 issue of print” her article distorts the facts. Had The efforts to reach her be done via email, rather P ublisher & Editor Jack Goldman The Bookpress. The Bookpress extends its Bookpress asked us, we would have been than in person or on the phone. Manacinc Editors apologies to the Journal for failing to able to give our side of the story. By publishing that Scheuffele and the Tracey Calhoun & Barbara Woltag request permission to reprint its banner. In fact, we made several efforts to work Journal acted dishonestly. The Bookpress Fiction Editors with her so her article could be published. damaged the good reputations of both the Janies McConkey & Edward Hower To the editor: We spoke to her to ask if we could meet Cornell University professor and the news­ Poetry Editor Gail Holst-Warhaft with her at her downtown Ithaca office to paper. By failing to seek a response from Contributors There are several troubling areas in the discuss some revisions. She declined. either Scheuffele or the Journal, the dam­ Kenneth Kvett, Harvey Fireside, Kara article by Barbara Regenspan that appeared Then, we asked if she could meet at our age was done in reckless manner. Hagedorn, Gail Holst-Warhaft, rim Joseph, Alice Koller, Adam lVrl, Barbara Regenspan, in the September issue of The Bookpress. offices. She declined. 2. The publisher of The Bookpress Robert Sward, Thom Ward, David Weiss This article was critical of the Journal's We also tried to arrange a meeting reprinted the Ithaca Journal front page report on an opinion survey conducted by a between Regenspan and Dietram A. containing the report on the survey along The entire contents of Tw Boookss me copyright ©2000 try Cornell University class on the attitudes of Scheuffele so that he might discuss with with Regenspan’s article. It is customary The Book runs. Inc All rights reserved. The Bompiess will not be liable for typographical error or errors in publication. Ithaca residents on the city’s plans for devel­ Regenspan how the survey was taken and when reprinting copyrighted material for Subscription rate Is *IZ 90 per year. The Boouhess Is published eight times annually. March through May and September through oping Southwest Park. That scientific sur­ analyzed. Scheuffele is the Cornell profes­ publishers to seek permission from the December. Submissions of manuscripts, art. and letters to the editor vey found 55 percent of city residents and sor whose class did the Southwest Park poll copyright holder prior to going to press. should be sent. SASE. fo: Tw Boouwss 59 percent of Tompkins County residents for the Journal. Regenspan claimed in her The Bookpress never sought permission to DeWItt Building 215 N. Cayuga Street. Ithaca. NY 14850 favored the development plan. article that both {he Journal and-Scheuffele appropriate-the Journals property. (607) 277 2254: fax (607) 275 9221 1 November 2000 The fiOOKPRESS page 3 The Making of Books

eight years. Since annual sales of books in the Alice Koller U.S. now stand at $23 billion for the 70,000 titles (2.5 billion books) published each year, The Business of Books none of the five conglomerates that control by Andre Schiffrin eighty percent of those sales would consider Verso Press. 2000 The New Press as competition of any sort 181 pages. $23.00 whatever. One of those five is Bertelsmann, which bought Random House in 1998. If books that are well-designed objects in Authors, too many of whom remain almost themselves draw your eye and hand, you'll wilfully ignorant about the business around reach for this slim volume the moment you which their lives and careers revolve, can buy see it. The colors of its dust jacket, its black The Business o f Books without being appre­ endpapers, the cream white and the discreet hensive that it intends to instruct them in bor­ texture of its paper, the proportion of print to ing matters. Schiffrin’s book is not about the margin on the page, the typeface chosen, even business of publishing but about the state of the unusual contraposed pair of ornaments publishing today (they are not the same) and that divides sections within its chapters, about his lengthy involvement in it. The state might at first lead you to believe you’re hold­ of publishing today is deplorable. You may ing a collection of poems or essays. already know that. But as seen from a very Verso Press, the book's London publisher, distinguished insider’s viewpoint, the story is won the Carey Thomas Award in 1990 for worth knowing. creative publishing, which Publishers Weekly Many Bookpress readers who are or long to does not confer solely for the look of a become authors do not believe that the busi­ house’s books. Verso’s logo is a specially ness of books is beneath them. They are designed sans serif “V" (imagine away the instead avid to learn as much as possible serifs of my letter). The choice seems pedes­ about the making of books in all its aspects. trian until you notice that it’s the silhouette of They know that publishing is an enterprise a partly open book resting on its spine, and that is nothing if it is not a business (the other then additionally notice that more pages are things it is might not exist unless it were a open on the left. In an open book, the recto business), and that not even good publishers page is the right-hand page, the left-hand page are in business for noble purposes only. They is the verso— that being the joke of it all, also know that more bad than good books because Verso is an imprint of New Left have always been published, that the state of Books. During Andre Schiffrin’s graduate publishing has been deplored from shortly years at Oxford, a new left was being bom in after the invention of movable metal type Britain. As Granla's first American editor, he within adjustable shapes. The difference knew most of the writers for the new journals, between the current and all past deplorings is including New Left Review, the original incar­ that the quality of what is being published nation of New Left Books. In light of the today is being deliberately curtailed as never story Schiffrin tells in The Business o f Books, before. Verso was the most obvious publisher for his The threat to good books is less from com­ first book as an author. puters than from the concentration of power Andre Schiffrin is a publisher much admired and many of its authors walked out of Bantam Doubleday Dell, owned by the in the hands of people who believe that books for the books he published during nearly three Random House in 1990 when Schiffrin left. German publisher, Bertlesmann. Vitale, a are merely objects on which to earn profits. decades as managing director of Pantheon His leaving was also much admired for the former banker, seemed never to have read The American reading public, a far smaller Books. Andre’s father Jacques Schiffrin had courage it displayed: no job awaited him, nor, any of the books his houses published. He proportion of the general public than is true of founded Editions de la Pleiade in Paris, later in the circumstances of the time, could he promptly put into effect a new policy for any Western nation, should be frightened by (and still) a successful imprint of Gallimard, but accept or be offered another job in publishing. Pantheon and all the other Random houses: the fact that five conglomerates now own all he was compelled to flee France in 1939. Once Here is why he left. show a profit on each of Pantheon’s books but a few independent trade publishing hous­ in New York, it was natural for him to make his For more than two centuries preceding the (rather than allowing some to pay for the oth­ es. Norton is one such, but its independence way to Pantheon, founded there in 1942 by the conglomerates’ acquisitions of publishing ers), publish fewer and more commercial rests on the fact that it is owned by its refugee German publishers, Kurt and Helen houses in the early 1960s and late 1970s, pub­ books, and contribute not only to Random employees (for now, anyway) who hold the Wolff. Andre was then nine years old. lishers believed that books are a special trust, House’s profits but also to its overhead. old-fashioned view about books. The New Pantheon was soon recognized as one of the the surest means of articulating, preserving, Pantheon had to pay “a sum of which we Press is another, but it survives only on foun­ most distinguished publishers in the United and disseminating the best and most signifi­ were never informed and did not negotiate.” dation money. These same conglomerates States, gathering the best of European authors cant ideas of a nation’s culture. In the service Thereafter, Schiffrin fought having to publish own multiple influential newspapers, televi­ to its list: Lampedusa, who brought The of that view, publishers recognized that it was books whose value he was to measure only sion and radio stations, and magazines as Leopard, and the then unknown Pasternak were necessary to publish commercially successful by their prospect of great commercial suc­ well. That means that they also control which among them. Until age fifteen, when his father books that not only paid for themselves cess. Then he left. The events surrounding his books are reviewed. Books that happen to get died, Andre grew up among books and authors. (quickly) but also provided the excess profit leaving were national news. themselves published elsewise, in spite of a He first set his own foot into publishing only that allowed the house to publish books that Since 1992, Schiffrin has been admired conglomerate’s disapproval of their ideas, can after he was in college, with a summer job at feed the intellect and the spirit. Being such a for having founded The New Press, one of simply be made to vanish: Thomas Maier’s New American Library, then an important pub­ book doesn’t bar it from selling well, but not the exceedingly rare new ideas in publishing 1994 biography of Newhouse (St. Martin’s lisher but now lost in the conglomerate dark­ many do (or did, since far fewer of them are during the last century. The New Press is a Press) went out-of-print the following year ness. E.L. Doctorow, not yet published, was published today), nor do most sell enough not-for-profit publishing house that receives when no New York publication would review one of its editors. copies even to pay the costs of publishing its support from foundations. Thirteen, it or accept an ad for it. It is now available In 1961, Random House bought Pantheon them. (Some analysts of the publishing busi­ including Macarthur and the Rockefeller only from a small Colorado publisher. Even and approached Andre to be its full-time edi­ ness assert that even books with small sales Brothers Fund, provided funding at its start; authors who disdain the business of books tor. One production and one sales manager, earn back their costs, despite what publishers by now, nearly forty assist it. This is the know that, without reviews, nobody knows two pleasant but uninspired men, were its say. There is not space here to detail the com­ basis for its claim that it “operatfes] in the they’ve written a book. only managers. When they departed a few plex reasons for their belief.) public interest rather than for private gain.” Readers and authors should also be fright­ months later, Schiffrin proposed to Bennett But when the conglomerates entered pub­ Many of The New Press’s famous, often ened by the fact that the two national chains Cerf and Donald Klopfer, owners of Random lishing, they dealt with books in the only best-selling, authors voluntarily return part of booksellers—Barnes & Noble, and House, that he and a small staff be allowed to terms they understood: books are items of of their royalties to their publisher. The New Borders—can buy books from publishers in run Pantheon. Having also newly bought commerce that differ in no significant way Press’s avowed purpose of providing broad­ such quantities that they can dictate what Knopf, Random wanted to assure Alfred from boxes of nails. Sales of a given size or er audiences for serious intellectual work is kinds of books they want to sell (and there­ Knopf that the literary distinction of his house weight of nail either contribute to the compa­ exemplified in its publication of John fore what books publishers will publish), that would continue under its auspices. Cerf was ny’s profit or that kind of nail is no longer Dower’s Embracing Defeat, which won the publishers give them such huge discounts that willing to try out Schiffrin's plan. Within his manufactured. This policy simplifies deci­ 1999 National Book Award for nonfiction. authors’ royalties are cut to the bone, that first year as managing director, Schiffrin sions about which books are to be published. Scott Armstrong, a New Press author whose those same chains nevertheless frequently found and published The Tin Drum. Between In 1980, S.l. Newhouse, Jr„ British (now nonprofit library disseminates declassified return (for full refund) forty percent of the 1962 and 1990, Pantheon published I.F. American) billionaire publisher of newspa­ internal federal documents concerning mat­ copies they order (which publishers there­ Stone, Margaret Drabble, the English histori­ pers, became Random’s newest owner. In the ters such as the Bay of Pigs and Iran/Contra, upon remainder at very low prices, paying an E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawn, F.R. early years of that ownership, Schiffrin was awarded the American Library authors no royalties from the sales), and that Leavis, R.H. Tawney, Foucault, Marguerite writes, he let himself believe that Newhouse Association's James Madison Award in 1992 they regard invoices as payable whenever Duras, Studs Terkel, and Noam Chomsky, a would not be like the other owners of power­ for “promoting and protecting access to gov­ they wish, while publishers demand that inde­ list that is the barest sampling of Pantheon’s ful conglomerates, that he would not inter­ ernment information and the public’s right to pendent bookstores pay their current bills eminent authors. fere with Pantheon editorially. But in 1989, know.” before they may order new books (publishers The Pantheon Books that remains today as Newhouse fired Robert Bernstein, Random’s The New Press boasts $3 million in annual are afraid to do that to the Big Two). an imprint of Random House is not longtime and highly regarded CEO, replac­ sales of the more than 200 titles (half a mil­ Schiffrin's Pantheon: that group of editors ing him with Alberto Vitale, then head of lion books) it has published during its short continued on page 9 JillH < •" ( < » 5 ■m j i ; ' page 4 The BOOKPRFSS November 2000 Two Poets Into The Woods Crossword by Adam Perl Kenneth Evett symbiotic relationship with Bishop’s book. It was much too big and heavy to read while “// suino chi legge." Years ago this message lying down (my customary position for that was spelled out on the dusty windshield of activity), so I had to read it while sitting in a our Hillman station wagon by a frustrated chair with the book on my lap. Occasionally I Italian thief who had broken into the car would lift my eyes from reading to gaze at the while it was parked outside the walls of paintings on my studio walls. The contrast Lucca and had discovered that it contained between the grey regularity of the printed only a handful of paperback books. Since page and my radiant watercolor images of then, as the designated swine, I have contin­ weight and space induced a momentary state ued to read books, mostly fiction, but recent­ of euphoria in which I saw myself as a realist ly I have found myself engrossed in the writ­ painter, with a subtle talent for abstract ing of two poets: One Art, a massive volume design. This perception seemed like an unin­ of Elizabeth Bishop’s letters and a little book tentional gift from Bishop, in addition to the of Shakespeare’s sonnets. gift of her own independent insights. Both poets were observant, sentient and Bishop’s letters provide a nostalgic acutely aware of being alive. Both were capa­ reminder of American cultural life in the last ble of unorthodox attachments. Bishop loved half of the 20th century, but what I value most the female architect, Lota Macedo Soares, about One Art is that the author is steadfastly and lived with her in Brazil for thirteen years. faithful to an obligation to express her Shakespeare was obsessed with a beautiful thoughts clearly. Once she has begun a sub­ young man of uncertain identity. Both poets ject she follows through with it to an articu­ proved that what an artist does with his brain late and lucid conclusion. This integrity has is more important than what he does with his endeared her to me and I think of her as an nether anatomy. I imagine that these poets exemplary model of that rare human speci­ were spirited, challenging, candid, aware of men, a fine writer. their own follies, and were probably good Recently the widow of a friend of mine company. I have come to feel that I know gave me an elegant little book of them well enough to claim them from afar as Shakespeare’s sonnets that her husband had my friends. used when a student at Oxford. Although I 69 I once met Bishop. She was an acquain­ had once memorized the sonnet that begins tance of my younger brother, Bob, who was “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s Solution on page 8 then literary editor of the New Republic and eyes . . .” to alleviate my teenage angst, the working in New York in the vacant apartment rest of the sonnets were unfamiliar. So it came ACROSS 45. Remembers 12. Dole of Robert Brustein, drama critic for the mag­ as a revelation to discover that with patient 1. Title for a rabbit 49. Act human? 14. 55, often azine. I went to visit him and he suggested attention I could understand the poet’s lan­ 5. Change in 50. Spoils 18. Lubricating that we go downtown and meet Elizabeth guage. While the conventional pattern of son­ Russia 51. Cafeteria supply 23. Dangerous Bishop. 1 have a dim recollection of the event, net construction means very little to me, I do 10. Source of 53. "Inside the ___" 24. Some but I do know that the poet and I shared a recognize the dramatic potential of working twenties? 55. Sgt., e.g. environmentalists mutual lack of interest in one another and I within limits, and Shakespeare’s genius for 13. Supporter of the 57. Place for a bug? 26. A great deal could not have anticipated that one day I accepting formal constraints, yet somehow arts? 58. Collection org. 27. Detox would learn to admire her profoundly. managing to say exactly what he meant with 15. Bell town, in a 59. Start of an old 29. Bridge's Charles Bishop and I were close enough in age to vivid and explicit words, seems to me mirac­ novel folk song 30. Huge, in olden have a similar generational awareness of our ulous. 16. Born 64. Buff days time, though her experience was more wide- He knew about our earthly ground, the pas­ 17. Robb White 65. Nurse Betty's 31. Martini's partner ranging than mine. She was personally and sage of time, the changing seasons,and the novel portrayer 32. They need professionally involved with well-known transience of all things; he even knew about 19. Cole of songdom 66. California's washers writers such as Marianne Moore and Robert the power of the word sweet. Above all, he 20. Give off Buena 33. G uide Lowell, while I only knew about them. She had the god-like talent to reveal what he knew 21. Behave 67. Aurora 38. Lawnboy was a close friend of painter Loren Mclver, about the physical realm and the mysterious 22. Harry's 68. Type of flu competitor was smartly hep about modem art, and even human beings who inhabit it. successor 69. Waterfowl 40. Nissan product painted naive watercolors on her own, while I While words may be used to insult a foe or 23. Up to 46. Region of led the life of a privileged art professor in an to stir up political passions or to arouse lust­ 25. Tinware DOWN Mexico Ivy League school, with plenty of time to ful thoughts, reading remains as one of the 27. Genetic material 1. "Want t o ___?" 47. Longings paint pictures and write essays on art and least harmful of human activities. It can pro­ 28. H ighly 2. Cheer 48. Muffin man's architecture for the New Republic, after my vide a sudden flash of understanding or yield successful clubs? 3. Language suffix Lane brother left The Atlantic Monthly. the aesthetic satisfaction of felicitous lan­ 34. Part of ETA 4. Rent over 52. Ornamental pin Bishop and I had both spent periods of res­ guage. It is the great unifying realm of human 35. Taboo 5. 18th century 53. Drum's partner idence at Yaddo, though at different times. thought and feeling, so I don’t mind being 36. Pastry philosopher 54. Verve There, as elite artists, we were treated seri­ called “the swine who reads." 37. Type of cuisine 6. Takes too much 56. Former sports ously and I, at least, was encouraged to regard 39. Like some PG13 7. Hemingway arena my profession as a worthy one, despite the Kenneth Evett is a professor emeritus o f m ovies 8. Puts into law 57. Mideast gulf professorial condescension of my academic art at Cornell University and a member o f the 41. Actress lone 9. Grovel 60. Verily . colleagues at Cornell. I developed a special American Academy o f Design. 42. 60's "do" 10. Noted sharp­ 61. Rage 43. Gaelic shooter 62. Magic org. 44. Grant contender 11. Marine w ood 63. Part of MPG November 2000 The BOOKPRESS page 5 Invitation to a Waltz

a pebble on the gravestone. A naked slab testi­ Harvey Fireside fies to the shameful neglect of relatives. I found a small stone in the mud to bear witness to our Though l am a native Viennese. I was forced visit and to appease the spirits of my ancestors, to flee, in April 1940, age 10. with my father not that most Jews really believe in an afterlife. and stepmother. We boarded the Roma in In their wanderings through the desert they Trieste and took three weeks to reach New York. simplified burial rites. Corpses were washed, My father s photography shop and all our other wrapped in a linen shroud and buried within possessions, except for one small suitcase filled twentyfour hours in a plain pine box. There with clothes, were confiscated. Unlike were no family reunions in heaven supervised Germany. Austria has never offered compensa­ by Jesus, no Hindu-style reincarnations, or tion for this stolen property, let alone for our seats for the righteous alongside Muhammad. suffering during two years o f Nazi persecution. You returned to the dust from which you came. Since 1980, however, the Austrian govern­ The fortunate were survived by a good reputa­ ment began inviting refugees like me to come tion and a family that remembered them, per­ back for a week, as a sort o f reconciliation. It haps naming the next baby for them. was responding to a proposal o f Leon Zelman. After we had spent a few minutes with the a Polish survivor o f several concentration departed Feuerzeugs, we trudged over to the camps, who took the revival o f Vienna s Jewish wall at the back of the Jewish section. A large community as his life mission. By the time news Mogen David had been painted on the flag­ Harvey Fireside o f this program reached me in Ithaca, hundreds stones. A sign read (in German), “Here rest the Memorial at the hack of the Jewish section at the Zentralfriedhof Cemetery in Vienna were ahead o f me on a waiting list. The oldest countless martyrs who were brutally murdered that reads “Here rest the countless martyrs who were brutally murdered in the various had priority. My vintage was considered old but in the various prison camps by the fascist prison camps by the fascist regime. The Jewish Community of Vienna. ” not yet ancient enough to let me have my turn. I regime.” It was signed, “The Jewish waited patiently while the years passed. end of Vienna. Vans would bring us to the the signs for tombstones and floral tributes at Community of Vienna.” It was the first memo­ This past August, 1 read in the Sueddeutsche fourth, or Jewish, gate. We were told to wear old cut-rate prices. “The funeral business must be rial we had seen attesting to the 80,000 or so Zeitung that Austria's right-wing regime had shoes and coats that we wouldn’t mind getting dying off,” joked Rose, a widow from Brooklyn victims among the 200,000 Jews that had once dropped the visitation program from its budget. muddy. who was always ready to offer some comic made this city of two million a center of schol­ Its cost for some seventy visitors annually was During breakfast, Gaston Mariotti, our travel relief. Edith, an Israeli accompanied by her son arship, theater, music, and science. only about a hundred thousand dollars, or the guide, approached me at the buffet table. I was Ben-Zwi, lifted her eyebrows in disapproval. We spotted Rose looking disconsolate along cost of plane fare and hotel room for those hesitating over the bewildering variety of meats, Bert, a dapper gentleman from a London sub­ a byway of the central area. She was searching invited. Their companions had to pay their own cheeses, salads, bread and rolls, as well as the urb, seemed too wrapped up in his private world for the grave of her brother, but it wasn’t at the way. Just as it seemed 1 would never revisit my Viennese (improved) version of Danish pastries. to take notice. We reached the first gate. A row site to which the office had directed her. I birthplace, a phone message said 1 was being How could one make choices to fit on just one of stately chestnut trees lined the entrance road. offered to help, using the counting forward and invitedfor the week o f September 17 if I replied plate? Selections that would leave my arteries Several of us seeking information trudged after backward method that had worked for me. to the questionnaire being faxed immediately. still functioning after this week’s round of our guide to a little makeshift hut behind the Alas, I had to admit to her that she was right: My wife, Bryna, and I packed our bags. schnitzel and schlag (whipped cream)? And do gate. there was only an empty space where her broth­ With mixed feelings, we landed in Vienna. so without unduly disrupting the esthetically Mr. Mariotti gestured toward the elderly man er’s memorial was supposed to be. She said, “I Warm greetings by the staff o f the Jewish pleasing display? bent over his computer. “See,” he said to me, double-checked. The official said that some of Welcome Service reassured us. We were Mr. Mariotti interrupted my quandary to “your names aren’t on the printout.” I looked the missing gravestones must have been launched on seven days o f official receptions, inform me that none of the final resting places over the clerk’s shoulder. He was stabbing at bombed by the Allies in the war. An unlikely festive hello and goodbye dinners, a city tour, of the Feuerzeug family could be located. There the keyboard between puffs at his cigarette. story.” and a Sabbath service at the synagogue. Among was also no trace of the grave of my mother, “Perhaps he misspelled it,” I said. Indeed, he I agreed that it was indeed incredible that the our treasured memories are intimate talks with who had died when I was four, under either her had evidently scrambled two letters in his latest thirty American bombers that finally made it to others in our group, as we exchanged incredible maiden or married name. He conceded that my attempt. I diplomatically asked him to kindly Vienna in 1944 could have been responsible for escape stories. It was also time to pay long- wife and I could come along, but it looked as if retype it one more time, spelling it out slow- damaging just this cemetery. More likely, the overdue respects at the Jewish cemetery. it would be pointless. Bryna agreed with me ly.At once, miraculously, four Feuerzeug neglected section, with its gaps, weeds and that, even if the specific plots could not be names appeared on the screen: Lotti, an aunt I dilapidated markers, was simply a stepchild of It had been cloudy all week. This Wednesday found, we wanted to accompany the thirty oth­ had never known, who had died in the 1918 the authorities. On our walk to the van waiting morning in mid-September a steady light rain ers in this pilgrimage and at least join them in influenza epidemic when she was 30; Adolf, for us at the gate we noticed several sumptuous brought out the raincoats and umbrellas. We saying Kaddish at the Friday night service in the my grandfather, fortunate to have died in bed at memorials with Cyrillic inscriptions. These had were supposed to meet in front of the Hotel Seitenstetten Temple, the city’s only surviving 72, six months before Hitler’s troops marched evidently been erected by well-to-do Russian Stephanie on Taborstrasse (in the second dis­ synagogue. triumphantly into Vienna on March 13, 1938; families who had flocked to Austria to join the trict) for the trip to the Zentralfriedhof in We boarded the van. After a half hour’s ride Uncle Walter, who was arrested during the Nazi few thousand nostalgic folks that had trekked Simmering, the giant city graveyard at the other we knew we were approaching the cemetery by “Kristallnacht” pogrom on November 11, back to retrieve the dreams of their youth. 1938, and died at Buchenwald concentration On the ride back to our hotel, we didn't talk camp, age 29, on February 14, 1939; Nathan, much. Rose said, “They call this ‘perpetual another uncle, the victim of a botched operation care’? It’s more like deliberate neglect!” for stomach ulcers on May 7, 1939, when he “Well, what can you expect from people who was 44, leaving my Aunt Irma and teenage claim that Beethoven was an Austrian but Hitler cousin Kurt to vanish into the death camps a German?” I responded. along with a dozen other relatives. I gave up The frustrations of this visit still rankled: a trying to find the grave that held my mother and morning of stumbling through an unkempt jum­ grandmother. There was a line of petitioners ble of decaying gravestones. Couldn’t the behind me. Viennese, with all their compulsive neatness, The family plot was listed as Gate 4, group tidy up the place? From my conversations and 22, row 42 B, number 11. The van took us to the scanning of the local press, I knew that they Jewish gate. We could see others in the group ignored the Jewish presence and, for that matter, walking by gravestones, many of which were their own Nazi past. They preferred the role of lying on the ground or tilted at odd angles. High victims who claimed to have been badly treated weeds made it difficult to decipher the markers. by the Russians after the war and, most recent­ It was a disheartening sight. ly, by the condemnation of the European Union Our search took about twenty minutes. At the for including Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party in far comer of the oldest section, we stumbled the governing coalition last year. The token E.U. upon row 42. Presumably, 42B was just behind sanctions, such as excluding Austrian officials it. We tried counting off eleven plots, but saw from special events, had been roundly criticized only unfamiliar inscriptions. Finally, we began in the Austrian press as an infringement of sov­ at the far side of the row and counted back­ ereignty. Mild as it was, the official European wards. I spotted the marble slab: “Our dear, disapproval apparently hurt, because my former unforgettable Husband, Father and Grandfather, countrymen place great weight on respect and Adolf Feuerzeug, bom 29 June 1865, died 10 honor. Even though the sanctions had just been September 1937.” Uncle Nathan’s birth and lifted, newspaper pundits were still indignant death dates had been added below. There was about the affront. no sign of Lotti’s name, in an adjacent plot, nor The van disgorged us at the hotel. Soon we of Walter, whose um had been shipped C.O.D. would have to join the group for a three-hour from Buchenwald. He had been punished for tour of Vienna, ending up in Grinzing for a tast­ Rassenschande (“defiling the race”) by having a ing of the Heurigen (new wine). First, it would non-Jewish girlfriend. Could we believe the take me nearly an hour to clean the mud off my official cause of death, pneumonia? It seemed as shoes. I’m not sure all of it is gone. unlikely as that the shovelful of ashes in the par­ cel were really the cremated remains of Walter. Harvey Fireside /.v a visiting fellow in-the The main gate of the Zentralfriedhof Cemetery in Vienna. Harvey Fireside According to'Jewish custom, a visitor leaves Peace Studies Program at Cornell University. ’ page 6 The BOOKPRESS November 2000 Theodorakis and the

The octogenarian Papandreou, his white Gail Holst-Warhaft hair streaming in the wind, rode to victory in 1964 in the wake of the scandals, and set “Do you realize,” says the inimitable voice about cleaning up the corruption he saw on the phone, “that it will be exactly thirty everywhere around him. One of his first acts years?” was to dismantle the extreme right-wing “Impossible!” I say. But after I hang up I bands that had terrorized suspected leftists for know that he is right. His memory, despite his decades. He also began a desperately overdue seventy-five years, is better than mine. reform of the education system, and allowed On the way to Kennedy Airport 1 struggle the stifled Greek trade union movement to to remember how I arrived at Sydney airport reorganize. Papandreou was still enough of a that day in 1970. I have no memory of the conservative to stop short of interfering with trip, only that I was hardly able to breathe either the army or the royal family. King Paul with excitement, that I was pushed to the front had died in March. 1964, and been succeeded of an excited crowd of Greeks all waiting to by the playboy prince Constantine. Royal catch a glimpse of “The Tall Man.” And how power, however, as everyone knew, lay with suddenly there he was in a navy blue parka, his mother, Queen Frederika, who was said to his hair springing out like a ragged halo, sur­ be squirreling away in Swiss bank accounts rounded by security men and waving to the the millions of drachmas Greeks paid in hundreds of Greeks squeezed into the airport import duties. In this unstable atmosphere, lounge and chanting his name: “Mikis! George’s son Andreas, an economist fresh Mikis!” How he was led to a chair in the con­ from completing his studies at the University ference room but no-one stepped forward to of California, Berkeley, arrived and began interpret for the Australian reporters, and how agitating for even more liberal reforms. a prominent politician who had come to meet It may be hard for Americans to understand him pushed me into a seat next to him and that the Greek left, despite the undoubted said, “Why don’t you interpret! The photog­ meet him for dinner, he reminds me again of spread from house to house through the city, abuses of the mountain guerrillas described in raphers would rather have a nice-looking girl our first meeting. “You remember Sydney, in he had hidden in one house after another. He Nicholas’s Gage’s Eleni and Louis de in the picture than a Greek man!” 1970? Remember Didilis? He kept asking you would send a message to his mother to meet Bernieres’ Corelli's Mandolin, represented It was the beginning of my life in Greek to play him some Bach on the harpsichord? him at the cinema. She would arrive with a the most liberal and progressive elements in music. Perhaps I could say that it was the first And then he kept me awake all night saying bag of clean clothes which she would careful­ Greek society. The left had, after all, organ­ day of the rest of my life. It was not an expe­ ‘she played Bach for us with those little ly substitute for his dirty laundry. They would ized the only effective resistance to the rience I would care to repeat. Not only did I hands!...”’ sit, without speaking, watching whatever film German occupation of Greece during the sec­ feel my Greek inadequate to the task of inter­ The first time he set eyes on me was at was showing, then leave the theater at differ­ ond World War. Most of them chose to fight preting, but I was in such awe of the man who Sydney airport, but I had seen him once ent times and go their separate ways. with the communist-led resistance, not sat next to me that I could hardly articulate a before. It was in the winter of 1966-7 and 1 Theodorakis was one of the few wanted because the) believed in communism, but word in either language. And then there was was sitting in a restaurant with some friends, people to slip through the net that night. because they saw it as a way to rid Greece of his voice. It is a curious voice for a musician, all of us under the spell of a Greece that Everyone in Greece knew something might a detested regime. The emergence of a strong especially one who often sings on his own seemed too perfect to be true. We understood happen, but not then, not on a fine spring center under Papandreou gave some of these records. It is as if there is a surfeit of air in his very little of the political ferment around us, evening, a whole month before the elections Greeks an alternative to the communists, but mouth, providing a reedy organ accompani­ but it was in the air, mixing with the smell of in which George Papandreou was expected to thousands of Greeks who had been tortured ment to each syllable. True fans love it when diesel fumes and jasmin, fried fish and retsi- win a resounding victory again. and imprisoned by the right-wing government he sings; others wish he wouldn’t. In either na. Music was in the air too, the music of the Approximately two thousand arrests were of the 1950’s did not trust the center to protect case it is unusually difficult to follow him rebelika—Greece’s equivalent of urban made in the small hours of April 21st. Many them, and knew that Papandreou had not even when he talks, which he does in a voluminous blues—and songs written by the composer of the people arrested had already spent years begun to address the question of who held the flow. who was sitting at the nearby table—settings in jail for being on the wrong side in the real power in Greece. By the time he did, the Somehow we got through that press confer­ of Greek poetry, songs most Greeks knew by Greek Civil War. Politics in Greece, during royal family, the CIA and the right wing of the ence and into a waiting car. And thirty years heart. A Greek friend pointed him out to the I950’s had been of the simplified, Cold Greek army were well prepared to maneuver later I am again on my way to the airport to us—the tall man with his wife and two chil­ War variety, with the right mostly in power him out of political life. Once he was gone, a meet “The Tall Man,” except that this time I dren. “That’s Theodorakis, the composer,” he and heavily supported by American money, coup of some sort was inevitable. am in a cab with the musical assistant of the said in a hushed voice, and we looked at the expertise and weapons, and the left in prison, On the morning after the coup, a poet I conductor who will be directing his opera in figure we knew to be not only Greece’s best- on infamous prison islands like Makronissos knew went to a record shop and bought me a Carnegie Hall, and there is no real need for known composer, but a hero of left-wing where they were “re-educated” until they record of Theodorakis’s setting of a cycle of security. For a few panic-stricken moments Greek politics. publicly recanted their beliefs, or in exile. poems by Yannis Ritsos called Epitafios. we can’t find him; then we are led to a room All over the city that winter the letter “Z” Only for a brief season, from 1958-1967, did “You won’t be able to find this by tomorrow, where he stands alone with his wife. He is still was painted on walls, and sometimes under it, the left, or what remained of it, have a real “ he said, “so I got it for you before it disap­ a tall and striking figure, but he looks tired were the words: “He lives.” The graffiti opportunity to take part in the electoral peared.” As everyone suspected, the military and his hair, I notice, is greyer than last year. referred to the murder of the Greek deputy process, and even then, despite a large victo­ junta that took power on April 21st soon It springs, I am happy to see, long and unruly Grigoris Lambrakis, a man who had not only ry in the 1958 elections, suspected commu­ placed a ban on all of Theodorakis’s music. above him. It is strange that no one recognizes been active in Greek politics but was a pro­ nists were still in danger from what was Under proclamation number 13 of the Joint him as we make our way to the white stretch- fessor of medicine at Salonika University and referred to as the "parallel state”: a corrupt Chiefs of Staff, it was forbidden “to broadcast limousine that waits for him. Not only in an Olympic athlete. The story of his murder and violent police force, and a government or in any manner perform the musical compo­ Greece, but in most countries in Europe his would become the material of a novel and that worked hand-in glove with it. sitions of the Communist Mikis face would be enough to elicit cries, or whis­ later a film by Costa-Gavras. Theodorakis It was Andreas Papandreou’s father, Theodorakis.” Even to play the most innocent pers of “Mikis!” was the leader of a group formed in his mem­ George, who precipitated the April coup. As of his love-songs on a record-player in a pri­ It is hard for him to edge his way into the ory, the Lambrakis Youth Movement, which leader of an increasingly successful center vate house was enough to incur a six-month seat of the limo. He and Myrto, his wife, can­ he had founded after watching Lambrakis die opposition party, he began what he called a jail sentence. not believe how awkward such a car can be. in a Salonika hospital. Despite the apparent “relentless struggle” against the conservative I played my one record day after day, trying We talk about the rehearsals and the perform­ freedom of the streets, we knew enough to party under Constantine Karamanlis for its to follow the words of songs and realizing ance to come, how the orchestra will manage understand that Theodorakis was not just a abuses of power, corruption and electoral that both the poems and the songs were much on so few rehearsals, whether the hall will be controversial figure and the best-known song­ fraud. From being a rabid anti-communist and more complex than they appeared at first full. The car slides into Fifth Avenue and writer in the country, but a man in danger of arch political opportunist, Papandreou had hearing. Written in the style of the popular Myrto admires the sights of the city. All the his life. turned into something of a popular hero in his songs of the day—the bouzouki-backed tall man says is “You may like it. I’m afraid.” The coup d’etat of April 21st, 1967 took old age. His fiery speeches as leader of the rebetika—and sung by a popular singer, they "What are you afraid of?” 1 ask in some Greece by surprise. The night before, Center Union Party inspired a series of had blared from juke-boxes and radios before surprise. Theodorakis had presented some of his new demonstrations in 1963 against the govern­ the coup, but the more I listened to them the “I’m always afraid to be a long way from songs with a young singer named Maria ment. Then, in May, Grigoris Lambrakis was more I was astonished by the sophistication of Greece, ” he says, and I realize he is thinking Farandouri in a small nightclub in Kolonaki. murdered in Salonika by right-wing thugs the poetry and the melodic beauty of the about death again, and about his collapse at a The performance ended in the small hours of who were revealed to have been in collabora­ songs. concert in Germany last year. Death has been the morning. When he and his singers came tion with the police. And not just any police. Sometimes my neighbors would come by on his mind tor the last few years, ever since out into the streets they saw tanks heading The Greek public was galvanized by the to listen. They were mostly women whose his younger brother died of lung cancer. He is towards the Greek parliament. As the singers investigation, which made it clear that the husbands worked in the merchant navy. No- only seventy-five, but the years of imprison­ stood and wondered what was happening, Commander in Chief of the Northern Greek one ever suggested I turn off the music. They ment, torture, fighting, and house-arrest have Theodorakis hailed a taxi and disappeared. Police Force knew all about the plot to mur­ just said “Beautiful, beautiful!” Later, I heard left him in dubious health. He has a heart con­ I le realized he had only one chance: to hide in der Lambrakis. The finger was then pointed at that students had begun boarding buses in dition and suffers unexplained attacks of a friend’s house and wait. It was not the first the Prime Minister himself who was already Athens in twos and threes quietly singing a breathlessness. The idea of dying anywhere time he had hidden in Athens. During the involved in a serious dispute with the royal Theodorakis song. Usually the passengers but Greece terrifies him. street-fighting of December 1944 and the family. The result was that he resigned and would join in, and if the driver was sympa­ As I settle him in his room and arrange to early days of the Civil War, when the fighting moved to Paris. thetic. he would close the doors of the bus and November 2000 The BOOKPRESS page 7 Clothing of Greek Poetry

continue to drive around the streets until the that combined Che Guevara and John the night they first broke Victor Jara’s guitar, hilarious game. I wondered, later, if the audi­ students got off. Lennon, with a little of Verdi thrown in. No then his hands. ence had ever been aware of what was hap­ Even for foreigners, Greece began to seem wonder I was intimidated. • • • pening. For some reason the insects were con­ less perfect under the regime of a group of • • • In the Riverside Chapel the Manhattan fined to the area where we sat. fanatical, unimaginative, colonels. A journal­ “Remember Didilis?” Of course I remem­ Philharmonic are rehearsing with the soloists. No sooner did the insects move on than it ist friend was arrested for making a statement ber Didilis. Didilis was the piano-player who It is the first time they’ve seen the score of began to rain. Again we looked to against the regime and shipped out of the taught the rest of the band what to play. No Theodorakis’s opera, Electro, and the com­ Theodorakis to see what he would do. As the country . I wondered what sort of courage it one used music in the popular band. Didilis poser cannot believe how well they are read­ rain got heavier, 1 shut the lid of the spinet, would take for me to do something against the would listen to a piece, play it on the piano ing his difficult piece. We are sitting behind but Theodorakis suddenly grabbed the micro­ regime. Reports had begun to come out about and explain what Theodorakis wanted. He the conductor and occasionally Theodorakis phone himself and sang a stirring song, a set­ the torture of women as well as men by the grew up in Northern Greece, where his fami­ asks me to tell the conductor something about ting of a poem Ritsos sent him during the dic­ police and army. I knew I hadn’t the courage ly played chamber music together. 1 remem­ the tempo or the rhythm. Finally he stands up tatorship: for that. But did I have the courage even to ber him looking with curiosity at the harpsi­ and hums the final bar as he wants it. This Don't weep for the Greek spirit, there where leave the country I had decided to live in chord in my house and asking me to play him time 1 am not nervous about my Greek, but it's about to stoop rather than remain in it under a dictatorship? a little Bach. Again I was overcome with about the performance. It is something I am Don’t weep for the Greek spirit, with the Could I face writing about it and knowing that nerves and stumbled my way through the partly responsible.for, having finally found a knife at the bone, the leash at the neck, I could not return? Something about the ban­ slow movement of the Italian concerto, but conductor willing to take on one of Don't weep for the Greek spirit— see it fly ­ ning of a man’s music and his imprisonment Didilis was enraptured. The more he drank, Theodorakis’s major classical works. In the ing— made me angry enough to do something. I the more enthusiastic he became, until he tore breaks, the musicians walk over to congratu­ See it flying again, becoming manly and went first to London, where exiled Greek stu­ off his shirt and dragging Theodorakis to his late him on his music. Most of them had never wild! dents and intellectuals met regularly and sat feet, began dancing with him. It was a night heard of him and not a single musician in the It strikes the beast with the harpoon of the in smoke-filled rooms singing the songs of Theodorakis has never forgotten. Greece was orchestra has any idea what place he occupies sun. Theodorakis. Then there was a concert of his still under a dictatorship but he was free and in his own country. Only the soloists know his The crowd, who were beginning to move music in the Round House. Two impossibly out of the stadium, stood still and, as he began romantic figures stood on the stage, a hand­ to conduct them, they sang the last two lines some goat-like man called Andonis with him again and again, while we in the Kaloyiannis, and the 18-year-old Maria orchestra became redundant. Farandouri whose voice was powerful enough • • • to raise the roof beams. For two hours they “An Evening with Mikis Theodorakis” sang his songs to an audience of weeping, takes place in the Donell Library in New cheering Greeks who ended up singing along York. The idea was that Theodorakis would with them. If I had been an admirer of his talk about his music, especially the opera, music and his courage before, I was now as Electro, and I would interpret. Instead, he fanatical as any Greek in the audience, but I tells me that 1 will talk about his music, and had no idea what to do with my new-found he will answer questions. His English is very ardor. limited, and he is a big talker. He may be right Some of the London Greeks were involved in suspecting that the American audience will in producing a newsletter, but mostly they tire of hearing him speak Greek, and the seemed to be resigned to the dictatorship last­ Greeks wili tire of hearing me interpret. He ing for a long time, and they were divided into doesn’t tell me what he wants me to say, but mutual distrustful factions. Eventually, I dis­ he has read enough of my writing about his covered two Englishwomen who seemed to music by now to know that I will not misrep­ be doing a useful job of trying to support the resent him. families of the many political prisoners. One We arrive on time (Theodorakis is one of of the women was Marion Sarafis, widow of the most punctual people I know), but there is the legendary leader of the Greek partisan another event going on and we cannot enter army. The other was a woman called Diana the auditorium. The only place to wait seems Pym, who had spent time in Greece during the Margaret Sadoway to be in the library itself, where Theodorakis civil war. Between them, they had compiled a Mikis Theodorakis with singer Maria Farandouri and musicians at Volos Stadium in is mobbed by Greeks who want his auto­ complete list of prisoners and established a May 1975. graph. It is a difficult situation, especially network of financial support for their fami­ when he is buttonholed by a man who wants lies. Diana Pym was an unlikely-looking at the height of his fame. Didilis had not yet life’s work, but it is their parents, not they to tell him his life story, but there is no way to political activist; she reminded me of some of begun to drink himself to death, but was his who revered him as an idol. The singer who rescue him and I can see that there is a good the teachers I had had in high school, and she most valuable musician. Farandouri, sings the role of Clytemnestra says, “If only chance he will decide to leave. By the time we treated me as the naive do-gooder 1 was. In stretched out on my bed and smiling from ear he were conducting! I grew up singing get to the platform he is in a fighting mood, her little office in Soho she told me I would be to ear, was a voice made for his music. Petros Theodorakis in chorales. When he conducts ready to amuse himself by teasing me through a liability if I went back. They would give me Pandis, his new male singer, was as handsome you can feel the music flowing straight into the question-and-answer period. I have thirty a single message, perhaps, but that after that as a lion. That night was the first and last time you.” minutes to talk about Theodorakis. I presume I would be much too visible to be of use. If I any of them had seen Theodorakis dance. At “Yes,” I say, “1 remember.” Despite the there are people in the audience to whom he really wanted to help the Greek cause, she the end of the evening he turned and said to fact that I felt even more inadequate as a is only a name, perhaps the composer of said, I should go back to my own country and me. “When the dictatorship falls, you will musician than an interpreter, I remember. It Zorbas Dance, perhaps a revolutionary fig­ do what I could to inform people about what play in my band.” was not so much that he conducted, but he ure from the days of the Junta, or perhaps they was going on in Greece. • • • lifted up his hands, closed his eyes waved just wandered in off the street. What can I say My meeting with Theodorakis in Sydney The next time we met was in Paris. It was them above his head and pulled the music out that will give people any idea of the life and had something to do with the sensible Mrs. in May, 1973. The fall of Salazar’s Portugal of his singers and musicians like an endless works of the 75-year-old man sitting beside Pym. I did, in fact, go back to Australia, had encouraged Greeks to think the end of the series of colored silk handkerchiefs. He me, a man who is now, amongst other things, where I worked as a journalist, musician, and dictatorship was at hand. Theodorakis was appeared to be lost in his own world, but he a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize? teacher. I also became involved with the busy composing a major new work, a setting knew exactly who had played a wrong note, He is here for his music, and I am here as a Greek community, who were much more of Pablo Neruda’s Canto General. As we who had made a late entry. person who has played and written about his active than their counterparts in America or walked down the Boulevard St. Germain, he In Larissa, one night, a swarm of insects music. There is enough to say about that. The Europe in opposing the dictatorship. As the began singing and conducting it at the same descended on us. Like most of the concerts on fact that he set out, at nearly 70 years of age single Australian involved in the anti-dictator­ time, while people turned to stare at the tall, that first tour of the countryside after the dic­ to write his first opera and is now working on ship movement in Sydney, it was natural for wild-haired man waving his hands above his tatorship fell, it took place in the local football his fourth, is impressive in itself. But I realize me to go with the Greeks to the airport to head. “You know it’s the same melodic mate­ stadium. The spinet I was playing in the band that even in his music, Theodorakis means meet Theodorakis. After thousands of protests rial I used for the soundtrack of State o f Siege, was giving trouble. The whole bottom octave many different things to different people. from artists and intellectuals all over the he told me. “You must have heard it,” I told had jammed because in the rainstorm the Most of his fellow Greeks know him as a world, he had been released and had begun him I hadn’t and he began searching for a night before the technicians had put it upright composer of hundreds of songs, songs that touring the world giving concerts of his record store. When he asked the girl behind in the van. By the time I managed to free the brought the best of modem Greek poetry and music. By the time Theodorakis arrived in the counter for the soundtrack, she looked at keys I was already panic-stricken. Half-way music together. A recently-published antholo­ Sydney, those of us who were involved in the him curiously for a moment and then said, through the concert, huge insects began to gy of the poems he set to music in his songs movement had listened to a tape-recorded “But aren’t you Monsieur Theodorakis?” drop onto us; they seemed to be blind and stretches to 430 pages. It is as good an intro­ message he had smuggled out of the mountain Delighted, he paid her for the tape and pre­ dumb, flying right into us, landing on our duction to the poetry of modem Greece as any village where he remained for a year under sented it to me. “Listen, you’ll like it. But hands, our faces, our instruments. Everyone I know, and it includes many of Europe’s house-arrest, a whispered message of defi­ now it has become a great big oratorio and began to swipe at them as they played, and I leading poets as well. But to call these songs ance and fury at the treatment of his wife and President Allende has invited me to perform it saw that there was about to be a mass exit “popular music" is misleading. children. He was, for very many Greeks, a in the stadium in Santiago. Pablo Neruda will from the platform. Theodorakis observed it There are many cultures in which popular legendary figure. If I had to make a compari­ come and read his poetry.” too. He began to swipe at the insects in time music, often the music of a despised or reject- son of what he represented during those The concert was set for the night when the with the music, so that, without missing a years, it would have to be some hybrid figure stadium was tilled with political prisoners. beat, he transformed our rising panic into a continued on page 9 page 8 The BOOKPRESS November 2000 Post-Modern-A (Mostly Found) Poem where we stand: CLASS MATTERS and full of self-esteem and bounce, Robert Sward teacher's fluorescent bride. bell hooks

"loan of Arc zvas married to the Biblical Noah." "Now or never," Honey said, her eyes twinkling. Why is it that the face of "The inhabitants of Egypt zoere called mummies, poverty in America is a black and built pyramids in the shape of triangular cubes." Post-civilization, post-modern, post-Cracker-Jack, early unforeseeable, post paradigm. face, even though most of "The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France the thirty-six million poor in and Switzerland." "Now you see it, now you don't." America are white? How do fantasies of wealth’s power He graded his papers "They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot." and went home to Honey. help keep the poor poor? "In the dessert, the climate is such "Areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation." the inhabitants have to live elsewhere." where we stand: Honey and the teacher were newlyweds. "Come and get it," Honey called. CLASS MATTERS Filing her nails, she watched some Joan Crawford movie. "Come and get it." Handed him a joint. "In Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time." bell hooks

"Get your papers graded?" Applying nail polish, *Based on certifiably genuine student bloopers. Honey reached for Cosmopolitan, turned back to the TV Guide. Robert Sward is a Guggenheim award-winner and teaches at the University o f California, Santa Cruz extension. He is the author o f 16 books All pink and red she was including a new book “Portrait o f an L.A. Daughter & Other Poems. ” Harvest Festival, Tahaughnik, New York

Thom Ward hoping our entrances won't lack the spunk of each departure, something like the robust, Stopping the stroller he looks at his watch tumbling sparrows, or the thought Drawing on both her roots in and says, l believe it's now officially before such thoughts which assume Kentucky and her adventures with beer-thirty. And though nostalgia the flavor of happiness. Accordingly, is often dubious, you'll have those suds we're clothed for the go-anywhere-ramble, Manhattan coop boards, Where We with your just-arrived-from-Ohio brother, husbands, wives and children, our favorite Stand is a successful black woman’s perhaps on a picnic bench under maples, sneaks or shoes finding new ways to disperse reflection—personal, straightforward, while the wind's ball of twine little eskers of leaves, the sharp, tenacious rasp and rigorously honest—on how our unravels in your pocket, whips about of mid-October that makes you realize dilemmas of class and race are a village with so much to follow - what is truly vital are the spontaneous intertwined, and how we can find fast kids and white hots, streets opportunities for purposeless fun, lioiv the heart ways to think beyond them. will let itself convert to that cup of beer full of amateur musicians and clowns, Routledge ♦ 164 pages ♦ $16.95 paper the smell of crushed apples among you hand to a stranger, video camera and a map the knickknack booths, the bloated of festival exhibits, who’s also stopped pumpkins beside the tractors, to catch his breath and gape at the rumpled earth "This book is a must." pinwheels and ice cream, the vegetable buttressing the valley and the brook, lean against — Frigga Haug, author of wagons parked on the lawn near the statue the generous frame of a combine harvester, as if Female Sexualization and of the intrepid war hero. Anyone he'd spent all day gathering wheat, threshing chaff, Beyond Female Masochism can feel local, pluck a grape from the crust as if it were the only place called home. of a homemade pie, twirl what's left of a purple-belled gentian. Scholars agree Thom Ward is editor of BOA Editions. He is the author of the poetry the Iroquois spoke a word which translated collection, Small Boat with Oars of Different Size; A chapbook of his PROFIT AND means intricate balance. We know that. poems, TumbleKid, was recently published by The University of South Most of us taciturn, then suddenly convivial, Carolina-Aiken Press. He lives in Palmyra, New York. PLEASURE Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism T h e B o o k p r e s s WINSALSA/WINCOLEGA! fr c / f /ttr, Spanish and Portuguese learner-centered Comments, Submissions, software for students and teachers a jk/ Version 5 for Windows 95/98/NT/2000

Letters to the Editor Foreiqn language editor ♦ On-line dictionary ♦ Grammar notes ♦ Customizable Download a 30-day FREE TRIAL from our website at: www.lnttrltxKhaca.com or from download.cntt.com ' t,// //., r J/-//JK’ rtf i% >IN TERIEX THE |NTERLEXLABFOR l a n g u a g e s w uu.lhclx xikciA.com/ * 0 7 I ASSOCIATES LlN C (607)257-8663 lx xikpress /r/ ■i/< A r,/. l)ookpress(n chit itvconnctt.com F r i e n d s o f t h e B o o k p r e s s r /• <■<( / / n., a / : M. H. Abrams Joyce F.lbrecht Carol & Margaret Nasli ((>07) 2 77-225 I Diane Ackerman Kenneth Evett Michael Kanunen Benjamin Nichols Frank Annunziata Lydia Fakundiny Steve Komor Sonya Pancaldo Kaushik Basu LeMoyne Farrell Isaac Kramnick Steve Sc Answers to “Into The Woods” Helen T. M. Bayer Bryna Fireside Martha Johnnie Parrish I1HHNI ISI siom Martin Sc H aney Fireside & Arthur Kuckes Andrew Sc Leslie Bernal Sheldon Flory Eva Kiifner-Augsberger Nancy Ramage "Rosemary Hennessy offers HEUEieiU ESUEI Jonathan Bishop Mrs. William D. Fowler Mildred G. Kuner Mary Ann Rishel M JUiiEiaBiHiimmi »eju Miriam Brody George Gibian Sandra & Walter Edgar Rosenberg the first book-length M i i i i c i k j m m m m E. Wayles Browne Jodv Gladding Lafeber Nick Salvatore statement on the political Patti Sc Henry Goode R. Carolyn Lange Jane Parry Sleeper Jules Burgevin Jerry Gross Deborah Iznnon Gushing Strout economy of homosexuality.... Edward 1. Chase Marj Haydon Alison Lurie Ann Sullivan [A] necessary tool in R. F. Cisne Neil Sc Louise Hertz David Macklin Deborah Till Maria Sc Gerald Coles Eva Hoffmann Myra Malkin Ree Thayer rethinking the intimacies William Cross Roald Hoffmann Dan McCall Alison Van Dyke between capitalism and sex." u t’jL'jLJH uejpjuti u n m Jonathan ( Hiller Phyllis Janowit/ Janies McConkey Gail Warhaft 3 1 0 1 Ruth Darling George & Maureen McCov Paul West — Robyn Wiegman, I1EIU UHH U U UIEH Robert ). Dohertv Audrey Kahili Terry McKiernan Wimhrop Wetherbei University of California, Irvine UHIZI UHEIHKKSlUfcmiUEi Dora Donovan Allied Kahn Scott McMillin Marian White Ann Druyan Peter Kat/enstein Louise Mink (•'arol Ann Wilburn ROSEMARY HENNESSY EIHIH jJEJMUJEJ Edvvaixl Murray l l l t a u a 13 18] Routledge ♦ 265 pages ♦ $22.95 paper 'r I C November 2000 The gOOKPRESS page 9 The Making of Books

continued from page 3 will sell off these intractable holdings in Business o f Books is of little help. prepared from page proofs for a French edi­ • • • affordable chunks to people who understand Schiffrin seems not to know that other per­ tion published “last year.” To reach the page How to live a life in books in the face of the kind of handling books require. sons have written about the business of to which an index entry directs you, you have this implacably increasing concentration of Or perhaps only authors can hold back the books. His preface mentions that he had little to add (sometimes subtract) two (sometimes power? onslaught, and that for a curious reason. research to rely on, that memoirs of British three or four) page numbers. The error isn’t Schiffrin points out small shafts of light in Everyone in publishing earns a living from it and American publishers make up most of the even consistent. addition to his own that have begun to except authors (fewer than five percent of available fare. But at least two books could Books and articles mentioned in the text appear. One that emerges from his pages authors can fully support themselves on book have served him well: Leonard Shatzkin’s In that you’d like to examine yourself are often without, 1 think, his seeing its implications, is income), even though there would be no jobs in Cold Type (Houghton Mifflin); and Lewis undocumented in the two and a half pages of that the huge conglomerates are losing publishing unless authors wrote books. Since Coser, Charles Kadushin, and Walter Powell, Notes. For Le Monde s “fascinating [l 996] money by the very policies by which they’re employees have very practical reasons for not Books: The Culture and Commerce of survey of European publishing”(p. 118), there eliminating the publication of quality books. challenging their employers, the task rests with Publishing (Basic Books). Both were pub­ is no note. “In...article for the New York For years, Random House had been paying those who make what publishers sell. lished in 1982 and are still outstanding. There Review o f Books, Professor Robert Damton out unheard-of advances for books that were Authors can begin by flinging aside their are many others. I had expected Schiffrin’s argued...” (p. 138). No date, no note. Same either not written at all or failed when they distaste for understanding how books earn book to bring me up to date about these mak­ page: “A recent internal study of forty-nine were published. In 1997, Random wrote off money. Since authors are accustomed to ings, and to be equally careful. But if a book university presses showed...” No note. In $80 million of unearnable advances. teaching themselves what they need to know does the job its author intended, it shouldn’t “...an article in the Times Literary Supplement Schiffrin writes: while they’re working on a book, teaching be faulted for not being what its title seems to last year that provoked widespread discussion Apart from the write-offs, the house themselves about the making of books would­ promise. The events of the intervening eight­ in England...,” does ‘last year’ refer to 1999? itself had declared a profit of only 0.1%, a n’t be an unfamiliar use of their skills. I use een years that Schiffrin relates will disturb And if so, what issue? figure so low that many initially thought “making” in the broadest sense of the you even though they may remain mysterious I’m among those who admire Andre the New York Times [no date cited] had term—the physical form of books, their print­ without the broader context. On the other Schiffrin for the books he has published, for made a typographical error reporting it. ing, their distribution, their selling, the mar­ hand, this may be the only kind of book about leaving a job that threatened his integrity and Such profits were far lower than anything kets for books, the history of libraries (indeed, publishing that anyone can write and get pub­ that of the profession he loves, and for having RH had ever recorded in the years before the history of all these matters), and the ways lished today. conceived the brilliant idea that is The New Newhouse took over. books are used in the societies they serve. I’d have preferred that a certain careless­ Press, for having brought it into existence, and Perhaps the conglomerates will get tired of These studies are fully as absorbing as literary ness did not mar this book about serious mat­ for keeping it exuberantly alive. He will, I hope, pouring money into a business that gets thin­ history and criticism. They can certainly have ters by an author who is also a publisher of write the story of that undertaking one day, ner with each intensified effort to feed it. far-reaching implications for the remaining serious books, but that may be accounted for when it has survived and thrived a bit longer. Even Newhouse with his billions decided that books an author will write, more so than the by Schiffrin’s having “transformed into chap­ Random wasn’t fun any more. Books them­ isolated research that goes into one book at a ters” (his phrase) some of the articles on pub­ Alice Koller is a philosopher, the author o f selves may have already begun defeating the time. I’m suggesting that the very life of lishing he wrote for the Chronicle o f Higher An Unknown Woman and The Stations of moneybags who would turn them into mere books may depend upon whether authors Education. Solitude, and a Visiting Scholar in English at items to be sold. Perhaps the conglomerates understand these things. In this endeavor. The For example, the index must have been Cornell University. Theodorakis and the Clothing of Greek Poetry continued from page 7 to them, consciously related to the popular which is brilliantly translated by the musical popular songs,,to compose melodies that ed subgroup (the gypsies of Andalusia, the working-class music of the day, but the setting: would express the essence of the poems that slum-dwelling tough guys of Buenos Aires, words would be drawn from the leading poets In the basement tavern have inspired him. The melodies and the rebetes of Piraeus) has been appreciated of modem Greece. amid smoke and curses rhythms are the bare bones of his music, and and adopted by a middle-class audience and For more than two decades, Greek popu­ (with the barrel-organ screeching above) he gives them out freely (some critics would eventually transformed into commercial pop­ lar music was a unique blend of the popu­ our whole gang was drinking last night, argue too freely) to anyone who wants to ular music. What began in Greece in the late lar and the elite, of high and low culture. last night like all the others, perform or arrange them. For him, they have 1950s and continued into the 1970s was And it inspired a generation of to wash the poison down. been a sort of public lending library, from something quite different. It was a conscious Greeks—even a few non-Greeks—to think The song is a hasapiko, in other words it is which others are free to borrow and the com­ attempt by Theodorakis and his fellow com­ that music and poetry, stirred in the right composed in the rhythm of a slow urban poser himself can take what he needs for his poser Manos Hadzidakis to provide the pot, could transform the world. The pot dance that yokes two or three men together in own classical compositions. Greek people, exhausted and demoralized by itself had to be a traditional one and certain a coordinated pattern of steps requiring prac­ years of suffering, with a new sort of music. ingredients had to be in it already. First, tice. It opens with an introduction that clev­ • • • The elements of the music would be familiar you had to have a traditional body of erly mimics the sound of the barrel organ, an I have talked on, moving from music, a shared musical heritage to build urban sound that is mechanized but imper­ Theodorakis’s “popular” songs to his “clas­ on. Moreover, you had to have a culture in fectly so, depending, as it does, on the steadi­ sical” compositions, especially the opera we PIANOS which music and poetry were already ness of the organ grinder’s arm and invari­ will hear in Carnegie Hall in a few days’ linked. And in spite of the gulf that divided ably emerging as a jerky series of staccato time. The questions begin, and Theodorakis 1 Rebuilt uneducated Greeks from the bourgeoisie, a notes. What Greeks who knew the Athens of replies in a lava flow that ceases only every Reconstructed deep respect for folk song was common to the 1950jor 60s could fail to hear the echo of four minutes. He is enjoying himself as I get Bought both. The music and poetry of the the laterna as they listened, not follow the more and more exhausted trying to keep up. Sold Orthodox Church was another common parea (group of friends) down those narrow “I didn’t say fock, I said folk,” he says, pro­ Moved element that united Greeks of all classes, stairs, pausing with the melody as it sinks on nouncing the “I” carefully. “You don’t pro­ 1 Tuned whether they were believers or not and each stair like a tired foot, rises in a nostalgic nounce the “1” in English,” I reply. After 1 Rented reinforced the inter-connectedness of poet­ sigh and sinks again into lassitude? which he repeats “fock, fock, fock” like a ry and music. Theodorakis’s technique in such songs is naughty schoolboy until the audience Listening to the dozens of songs he wrote not IVortmalerei (word-painting) in the ren­ laughs. in the decade that followed, I am continually aissance or baroque sense. Rather, like The final question brings his best answer, struck by the subtlety of Theodorakis’s musi­ Schubert, the composer echoes the mood and and reminds me why he changed my life. cal responses to poems. Take his 1964 set­ sentiments of the poem through a combina­ “Where do you get the inspiration for your tings of the poet Kostas Varnalis, for exam­ tion of musical effects that include rhythm work?” someone asks. He answers without ple, that formed part of the cycle Politeia B\ and the melodic line itself. Almost any of hesitation. "1 never thought of my music “The Doomed” is a poem set in a basement Theodorakis's early settings of poetry turns except as a way of clothing poetry.” Ithaca Piano Rebuilders taverna, where a group of disillusioned and out, on careful examination, to be acutely (607) 272-6547 self-pitying old friends gather each evening sensitive to the poetic line. He has been crit­ Gail Holst-Warhaft is an independent 310 4th St., Ithapa (Off Hancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) to drown their sorrows in drink. The poem icized for the simple arrangements of his writer and translator o f Greek poetry. She is Complete rebuilding services. the author o f Cue for Passion: Grief and its No job too big or too small. Call us. has a nostalgic melancholy about it, a long­ songs, but this has never been the point for ing for lost beliefs and half-forgotten beauty him. Theodorakis’s concern has been, in the Political Uses (Harvard, 2000).

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More surprising, perhaps, is patience’s tion between time and desire. It is too needy. It to.under-develop their ideas: look to see what David Weiss calm self-assurance, as if it, too, knows in cannot nurse or cultivate its desire; desire is you’ve breezed over; the impatient often lose advance how things will turn out: that the bus something it doesn’t enjoy. It wants the pay­ their concentration: take a break, come back 1 have always lacked patience. Less the is only late, that what came off will go back off. The impatient often take irritable charge, when you’re fresher; the impatient tend to ful­ how-long-is-this-going-to-take variety than on with a little work, that one day you will be but in fact they prefer others to do the work. fill the prophecy of failure: remind yourself the I-can’t-get-this-to-fit! kind. From the start good at the guitar, that eventually she will Impatience is an unskilled boss. It likes to give you may be no damn good at carpentry but 1 can remember others saying, “Careful, don’t love you back, that all things come to those orders. It wears the mask of patience only so stand a chance configuring words. In my case, force it. You just need to have patience,” as if who wait. Patience has faith: in the person long as things go well and actuality is identi­ I won’t know what I’ve imagined until it’s patience were a thing, like some baseball card who has it and in the grander scheme of cal with wish fulfillment. Nevertheless, it may done. My imagination is myopic, not far­ you didn’t have and hoped to get. No one ever things. Hamlet, that great exemplar of tor­ get its real wish, which is to be thwarted. sighted; it materializes through the words. I advised me to get hold of impatience. mented impatience, disgusted with his own Time, for impatience, is a pure impediment. can’t even imagine how I’ll finish this brief Impatient was something you were. The restless inaction in a time that’s “out of joint,” Patience, on the other hand, has tuned the piece. But having gotten here so patiently, or admonition, “Don’t be so impatient!” was comes round to acknowledging that "there’s a pace of accomplishment to its expectation. at least with the help of patience’s stand-ons, doomed from the start. How could you not be special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; Or, rather, it’s the other way around; expecta­ in spite of the world being so out of joint I what you were? There was no real getting His “the readiness is all,” is as good a phrase tion makes all the adjustments, attunes itself could spit, 1 may as well just quit while I’m away from it. If, at times, I managed to be as any for the essential equanimity of to circumstance. Zorba, holding a chrysalis in ahead. patient, somehow I was never “patient patience. his hand and marveling at its unfolding, enough,” letting go of the glued pieces of the Impatience, like a tea kettle’s whistle, has blows on the butterfly to speed its metamor­ David Weiss teaches writing at Hobart and fuselage before they’d sufficiently set. The just one timbre, but there are many types of phosis and kills it in the process. Nature, inner William Smith Colleges. sands of patience poured through the hour­ patience. There is Penelope’s shrewd sort, and outer, has a tempo, its own rhythm of glass, always just a little too quickly. I pre­ which is not the same as the patient-as-a-spi- fruition. ferred to paint by numbers, to throw a ball off der kind; nor is it the patience of Job which is Composing this, the ideas and words are SALVADOR DALI the stoop over and over, cocooned in the more ambiguous than the cliche: is it that Job just coming to me (although not in the order serenity of the foolproof, of repetitive motion. puts up with his calamities and suffering, or is they are now appearing—what you are hear­ THE DIVINE COMEDY Perhaps I only remember it this way. his stubbornness a refusal to be mollified by ing is the result of patient effort by an impa­ 100 Woodblock Illustrations Impatience is memorable, after all, it comes any voice but God’s? In each type, unlike tient person); they are coming to me as a suc­ squalling in, a spasm that is theatrical in with impatience and its frothing ejaculations, cession of thoughts, each like a silver pinball October 29-December 31 nature— I can’t do this! I don 't understand! It patience waits and works quietly; it believes emerging into the grooved wooden ramp SOLA ART GALLERY plays out quickly but leaves a trail of conse­ in justice, that it will be done, that patience when the previous ball has, slipped past the quences behind, consequences which the fit is itself will be rewarded. flippers. So long as it goes well, and balls They are a rebellion against. Impatience is willing to Although it may not trust in itself or in the keep appearing as though I were hearing that beautiful, ruin what it can’t manage to do. It makes a future, impatience’s real trouble is that it can­ wonderful thwock! of a free ball, it won’t be a dynamic, point of it. How many times have 1 mishit a not imagine its satisfaction; it must experi­ matter of patience, though I am aware, as I lyrical, and nail, bending it or marring the 2 X 4 and then ence it. Impatience is an unfortunate literalist. write, of reminding myself not to worry, the grotesque. smacked it repeatedly till the bent nail was Its near relation, revenge, though likewise next idea will come. Yet experience has A rare deeply embedded in the wood? Patience outraged, is a cold cousin, it can bide its time. shown me, when ideas don’t come, what to opportunity. would have carefully pried the nail out and It imagines a future it will attempt to bring do, how to overcome a stuck moment and its Don V miss it. started a straight one in its place. Impatience about, and, like patience, takes pleasure, frustrations. prefers to mete out punishment. It wants to albeit obsessively, from what its mind’s eye For someone who has a hard time concep­ publicize your failure. Smash with the ham­ sees. If memory is our imagination of the tualizing the future (it often feels like a dis­ mer all you like, impatience knows who’s to past, patience is our imagination of the future. ability), familiarity and technique, instead, DeWitt Mall, Ithaca, NY blame. And worse, it seems to know it ahead Impatience is explosive, momentary; can foster patience. They can stand in for Tel.(607) 272-6552 Fax.(607) 387-9688 of time before the verdict is in, like a butcher revenge, plot-driven, besotted. With impa­ imagination. I’ve been here before and know Mon-Sat 10:30-5:30 Sun 12-3 who puts his thumb on the scale. tience, something has gone wrong in the rela­ what to try. The impatient, for example, tend

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continued from page / attorney from Widewaters—they discussed October 11, 2000 Widewaters parcel, but also on city park­ law and caselaw in this area—the Widewaters land—has become a target for the increasing attorney presented a number of legal argu­ Planning & Development Board concern of ordinary citizens as well as envi­ ments that convinced the city attorney that it City of Ithaca ronmental and “clean government” activists. was legal to issue the fill permit.” City Hall—3rd Floor Yet Radke stated in a very pleasant inter­ Yet in making her determination in favor of 108 East Green Street view with me for this article that she did not segmentation, and in subsequent public state­ Ithaca, NY 14850 know—until local citizen Vicki Romanoff ments defending her ruling, Geldenhuys informed her this past spring—that the Target never mentioned meeting with the Dear Planning Board Member, building was planned for the same site visible Widewaters attorney, let alone his significant from Buttermilk Falls gorge trails that the city role in—to use the mayor’s words—“con­ I’m writing to share with you the experience of the County Board in dealing with the denied Wal-Mart five years ago. vincing” her that the fill permit was legal. Widewaters development group, as this information might be useful to you in your own dis­ Radke candidly told me that she was “glad It has taken more than a year for the pattern cussions and deliberations. [you people] are trying to get to the bottom of of secrecy and misrepresentation regarding So that you will be fully informed of any biases or ulterior motives 1 may have in sending this thing. But I’m afraid you can’t get the the Widewaters project to emerge into public this letter, let me briefly state my opinion of the Target development: information you need from me. I don’t know view. The city did not reveal specifics about I believe a Target store would be a valuable addition to Ithaca and I welcome one in the if you’ll ever be able to get it. I wish 1 had the project until three days after the mayoral city. We have lost too many major retailers in the county in recent years and need to replace never been involved, although with the ‘per­ election. Yet a recent story in the Ithaca them. missible segmentation’ ruling, I don’t know Journal has revealed that complete plans for I have some concerns about the planned location and think that the main Southwest devel­ even today I would do anything differently.” a Target store were submitted to the city for opment area is preferable. Many of my concerns about the location could be addressed and Here Radke is referring to her decision, on review on October 4, 1999; further, they were mitigated through appropriate site planning. November 12, 1999, to issue a fill permit to kept in City Hall for two weeks and discussed I believe that the development of a Target store should be done in compliance with state Widewaters even though doing so would at a city staff meeting before being returned environmental law and local land use regulations. result in “segmentation” of the city’s environ­ on October 18th, the same day Widewaters’ In late 1996 the county was approached by Charles Havlik about the purchase of the piece mental review of the project. second fill permit application was received. of county-owned land shown on the attached map. As you probably recall, this piece of land, “Segmentation” is a term used in state and We now know that Mayor Cohen knew of together with those parcels labeled on the map Havlik (sic) and Weiner, made up the pro­ city environmental law. Because environmen­ those plans by October 7, 1999, but never men­ posed Wall-Mart project, which had been recently withdrawn. Mr. Havlik and his represen­ tal review is required to be comprehensive tioned them until March 2000, when he was tatives told us that he was working with a development company (since revealed to be and to occur at the earliest possible time, seg­ confronted with evidence of their existence. At Widewaters) to do a smaller project on his own property alone. He said that his property mentation of the components of a project that time, he insisted in a public forum that the alone was sufficient for the development but had very little frontage on Elmira Rd. He said (i.e., reviewing one stage at a time, rather plans were returned “within 24 hours of being he was interested in acquiring our property in order to increase road frontage, but that our than all at once) is highly disfavored. It is received,” at the developer’s request. parcel was not necessary to the development and that it would go ahead, on his property allowed only in certain, specified instances, The plans for a Target store (and associated alone, regardless of our decision. such as when the later stage of a proposed shopping center) submitted last month by You can see from the attached map that this was a plausible claim, but some Board mem­ action is unknown. Widewaters are exactly the same ones submit­ bers believed that our land had a much greater value as the key to joining the Havlik and In July 1999, shortly before he was sus­ ted (and quietly returned) in October 1999. Weiner properties than it did as a simple addition to either. Those members asked that the pended (and later fired) as building commis­ The developer did not even bother to print a contract include a clause stating that the county would receive an additional $50,000 if our sioner by Mayor Cohen, Rick Eckstrom had new title page, to hide the 10/4/99 date stamp. parcel was used to join together and develop the other two. Havlik’s response was, sure, we determined that the city could not grant an Yet when Widewaters counsel, Marzocchi, don’t care. We have no intention of doing that anyway. Havlik then signed a contract that earlier, identical fill permit request from attended the meeting of the city’s stated that he had represented to the county that our property was not necessary to the Widewaters. (The fact that Eckstrom rejected Conservation Advisory Council on November planned development, but only desirable. Widewaters’ original request did not become 8, 1999, and in all subsequent public state­ Obviously the property is essential for the proposed project and the representations made public knowledge until December 1999.) ments, he insisted, emphatically, that there to us were false. It’s not clear whether it was Havlik and Widewaters together lying to us or Eckstrom rejected Widewaters’ application were no plans for the site and that segmented whether Widewaters lied to both Havlik and us. It is clear that it was decided that paying the on the grounds that the city’s review of review was therefore proper. No one from $50,000 later was preferable to being honest about their intentions. I urge you to be very cau­ Widewaters’ proposed project could not be City Hall questioned these assertions. To this tious and distrustful in dealing with this developer as they have clearly demonstrated their separated from the then-ongoing environmen­ day, no one at City Hall has acknowledged lack of integrity. tal review of the entire southwest development that anything inappropriate has occurred. I am outraged and offended by the lies, manipulations, and flat out illegalities that have plan, specifically that any review of a proposal Cornish says the timing of the return of the surrounded this project. These include: to place fill for the project could not be seg­ Target store plans was “coincidence.” 1) The developers lying to the county about their intentions. mented from review of the ultimate commer­ "Widewaters was completely surprised by the 2) The developers lying to the city when they applied for a fill permit and denied having cial plans for the site. In other words, before it appearance of the plans, just as we were. It specific plans for the site. could apply for and receive permission to fill was a complete miscommunication. The 3) The city lying to the public about knowing that the developers did, in fact, have spe­ the property, Widewaters must present its full developer contacted Target, and Target cific plans for the site. plan for development of the site. requested that the plans be returned, and we 4) The issuance of an illegal fill permit based on these lies. Radke is clear that she and the Planning returned them.” 5) The placement of fill by the developer on land they do not own. Department were in agreement with Cornish went on to say that, “Even today 6) Attempts by the mayor to intimidate the Board of Zoning Appeals by threatening to Eckstrom at the time. “It [Widewaters’ there is no clear tenant although we continue refuse legal representation if the developer sued them for carrying out their official function. request] was segmentation, and none of us to negotiate on the assumption that it is Target. I hope that the Planning Board will bring to this process a level of integrity that has so far wanted anything to do with it.” As far as I know nothing has been signed been sadly lacking. As one public official who has previously dealt with these developers, Yet, a few months later (and less than a between the developer [Widewaters] and speaking to others who must now do so, let me offer a few words of advice. Do not rely upon week after the mayoral election), then-City Target. In fact, the developer keeps telling us any representations made by these developers about their intentions. If those representations Attorney Mariette Geldenhuys countermand­ that Target is pulling out or has pulled out.” are in the form of promises to do something, be sure that you have an effective means of ed Eckstrom’s “segmentation” assessment. It remains troubling that no transactions enforcement available. If those representations are in the form of threats about what they will She told Radke, on November 8, 1999, that with regard to the above-cited erroneously do if you take or fail to take some action, ignore them. You cannot guess what they will actu­ segmentation was permissible in this case, mailed Target plans were documented in the ally do based on what they claim. because “there are no site-specific plans at public record, in this case. Building I do not intend this letter as a form of political pressure, indeed I sincerely hope that you this time.” Radke issued the permit on Department files, other than the note from a will stand firm against all such pressure and simply judge the proposals presented to you on November 12th. secretary requesting the cost of postage for their merits and in accordance with the law. Nevertheless, 1 do believe that the public has a JoAnn Cornish is the city planner who the returned plans. Even if the transactions right to know about the deception practiced by the developer in dealing with the county. works on environmental reviews. She con­ were handled by phone, no one involved Therefore, after allowing a reasonable time for this letter to reach you and be read by you, firmed that the Planning Department also bothered to provide a cover letter or notes that I will also release it publicly. agreed with Eckstrom's original position might help us to understand how the multina­ against segmentation. I asked Cornish what tional Target Corporation made such a “mis­ Sincerely, had changed at City Hall that explained the take.” Ordinarily, it is standard procedure to Tim Joseph turn-around on segmentation. She said there maintain a public record of official actions Representative, Tompkins County Board of Representatives Dist. 12 was “pressure” from the administration to regarding property transactions, especially “get moving" on development that was rec­ ones of this magnitude. Falls Road. Nevertheless, he says that a law­ case in reporter David Hill’s recent (Monday, ognized as being in the city's best interests. Radke admits to deeply mixed feelings suit against the city that directly challenged October 9) lead article in the Ithaca Journal. Radke was more vague but not at all about being too busy and too stressed to know the segmentation of environmental review Headlined, “City’s Handling of Widewaters offended by my attitude of wonder at the the details of what was going on at the time. would have been justified. (Of course, the 30- Permit Questioned," the article was prompted city's behavior. She did say that “the man “Sometimes you really don’t want to know. day deadline for such a lawsuit had elapsed by Tompkins County Board member Tim from Widewaters [referring to Marco We [who work for the city] see ourselves as before citizens discovered that plans for a Joseph’s accusation that Mayor Alan Cohen Marzocchi] was around a lot." working for the mayor. You know Ben Target store had been secretly submitted and did know, "despite later denials, tha Mayor Cohen goes further on this point in Nichols was in favor of Wal-Mart. But mayors returned.) And why should the public need to Widewaters had specific intentions for land in response to. my e-mail to him in preparation get elected and then they go. We’re still here.” sue the city in order to ensure reasonable the city's southwestern corner when the for this article. I asked him why people in Vineberg characterizes as wasteful and ethics in local government? Building Department gave the company a City Hall who were initially opposed to the frivolous the appeal of the fill permit decision , , Sometimes people, even when they really permit 11 months ago to fill in part of the segmentation idea had changed their minds. to the Boat'd -of Zoning Appeals, by several do want to know, simply don’t have enddgh low-lying, site.”, , Cohen responded: "There- was an ongoing members of- the Conservation Advisory background information-to understand wiien discussion between the city attorney and the Council and three residents of Buttermilk they are being misinformed. Such was the continued on pane 12 page 12 The BOOKPRESS November 2000 Targeting Ithaca

continued from page II plan. This argument is used to justify the ment to the scale that currently exists on sur­ zens of Ithaca deserve to know. city’s uncompromising position on southwest rounding parcels.” The clear implication in In the meantime, further troubling informa­ Naturally, the reporter asked Cohen to development and the Widewaters’ project, but this letter is that the Parks Department favored tion has surfaced. While sifting through New respond to Joseph’s charges. Hill writes: it simply does not hold up to close analysis. a much smaller scale of development than that York State web sites, a member of the “Cohen said the issue has been raised and Few, if any elections are truly decided on proposed by Widewaters. Citizens' Planning Alliance stumbled across found by a court to be proper and in the city’s the basis of a single issue. Alan Cohen had But in a second letter to Lee from Kane, the State Board of Elections Electronic Filing interest.” been mayor for four years and his challenger, dated July 20, 2000, most of the previously Database, which is a searchable record of But in order to understand that Cohen’s Dan Hoffman, had been involved in city pol­ stated concerns have mysteriously evaporat­ campaign contributions to committees on response has nothing to do with Tim Joseph's itics for almost 20 years. Both had made plen­ ed. Kane states that “discussions” and “nego­ behalf of state-level candidates. charges, you have to be informed enough to ty of allies and enemies whose votes were tiations” with Widewaters (which must have The database records a contribution from know that the issue of illegal segmentation going to be based on those connections, not occurred privately) resulted in “significant Joseph Scuderi to Friends of Senator Seward raised by Joseph’s claim never came before a on any particular issue. concessions” concerning “noise and view- dated July 11, 2000, just four days after the court of law. (Remember that the city justified A main thrust of the harsh attacks on shed mitigation.” conference call cited above which “resolved” gthe "permissible segmentation” ruling that Hoffman by the so-called “Democrats for The first “concession” mentioned is that OPHRP concerns about the Widewaters legalized its issuance of the fill permit by way Cohen” was that, based on a carefully selected “Widewaters has agreed to conform to the development. The contribution came one day of its claim that the developer had no specific sample from his 12-year Common Council vot­ design guidelines” which the city recently before the letter from Marzocchi outlining intentions for development of the land it ing record, he was in fact a closet conservative, adopted for the southwest area. The guide­ Widewaters’ "concessions.” An analysis of all owned.) resistant to funding such liberal icons as Ben & lines suggest the use of “earth tones” for exte­ of the campaign contributions recorded in the Cohen is citing a court ruling around a case Jerry’s or Ithaca Neighborhood Housing rior building surfaces and “a percentage of New York State campaign finance database that was prompted by the city’s issuance of the Service. And Cohen chose to launch his cam­ green area of no less than 10 percent, plus 2 by either Joseph T. or Joseph R. Scuderi, the fill permit, but the determination he describes paign at the Northside home of two prominent percent of decorative/flower boxed side­ founder of Widewaters and his son, shows never happened. In a suit brought by members of the former “Stop Wal-Mart” group, walk.” Noise pollution concessions are limit­ that this contribution was the only one direct­ Widewaters, the State Supreme Court did over­ who, like others in their neighborhood, were ed to certain seasonal restrictions on truck ed to a candidate for a seat outside of the dis­ turn the revocation of the fill permit ordered by greatly disturbed that the law firm Hoffman deliveries “for the anchor tenant” and a more trict where they live or have their corporate the Board of Zoning Appeals. But what the worked for had opposed a city ordinance that northerly placement of the driveway. headquarters (except for their “soft money” judge ruled was that the BZA had been outside allowed eviction of tenants accused (though not The obvious question arises: Since when is contributions to the New York State of its jurisdiction in hearing an appeal on a fill necessarily convicted) of drug use. These issues following the city’s rules a “concession?” In Republican Campaign Committee and the permit and furthermore that the city’s rules for had nothing to do with southwest development, any event, the steps mentioned address but a State Conservative Campaign Committee, flood plain properties were too confused to but probably affected hundreds of voters in an fraction of the concerns about viewshed and and contributions to the Committee to Re- enforce. Contrary to Cohen’s claim, the issue election where the switch of just 200 votes sound pollution Kane had expressed in his Elect Senator Bruno, the powerful of segmentation of the environmental review would have changed the outcome. February letter. Despite this, in his second let­ Republican who is Senate Majority Leader). for the fill permit was never discussed or ruled In the course of my now eight months of ter Kane concludes that “we feel that ade­ Kane did not respond directly to my request on by the court (or the BZA). activist opposition to both the city’s intentions quate mitigation has been accomplished to for an interview related to the above informa­ David Hill honestly did not have the back­ and process with regard to its southwest devel­ alleviate our concerns.” tion and concerns, but Randall Sawyer, the ground to understand Cohen’s disingenuous opment plan, I’ve become fascinated by the A third letter, dated July 12, 2000, from Director of Communications for State Parks or (equally troubling) completely uninformed moral ramifications of the whole scenario. In Marco Marzocchi, General Counsel to the did. In a series of closely spaced phone calls assertion, so there was no effective follow-up my formal work in the world I am a social jus­ Widewaters Group, may help to explain Randall impressed upon me the serious nature questioning of Cohen in his article. Hill con­ tice-focussed teacher educator, and in helping Kane’s change of mind. This letter, addressed of the implications I was raising. We agreed tinues, “The volley continues a fight over my students who will be teachers understand to Kane, makes reference to a conference call that it was my interpretation that the mitiga­ how to promote new development in the why public schools sometimes function in dis­ on July 7 in which Kane and Marzocchi par­ tion offered by Marzocchi on behalf of City...” leaving the average reader to assume appointing ways, the post-modernist concep­ ticipated. Another participant listed is Tarky Widewaters was minimal relative to Kane's that what’s being featured is the kind of typi­ tion of “social construction of morality” has Lombardi, a former powerful Republican original statement of his concerns. cally partisan political struggle they are sick been very useful to me and to them. Perhaps state senator who now chairs the Government It was also made clear to me that State of hearing about. Cohen even appears to be that concept can shed some light on many of Relations and Legislative Services Group of Parks knew nothing about campaign contribu­ the good guy, shutting down the boring “vol­ the issues that have surfaced with regard to the his law firm, Devorsetz, Stinziano, Gilberti, tions and had no connection to that. I contin­ ley” of charges and counter-charges. city’s pursuit of development. Heintz & Smith. It would thus appear that ued to suggest that for his own information During the late January (2000) public hear­ A compelling example of the “social con­ Widewaters hired Lombardi to use his consid­ Sawyer ought to check out the New York ings about southwest development called by struction of morality” is articulated by Aaron erable influence with the state government. State Campaign Finance Database. I further Common Council in response to significant Feuerstein, the now-famous owner of the Another participant in the conference call asserted that I had no interest in embarrassing public pressure, those who testified in opposi­ environmentally conscious Polartec factories, was Duncan S. Davie, the Chief of Staff for State Parks by publishing these troubling tion (the overwhelming majority), even those Malden Mills, located on the border of James Seward, state senator for the 50th findings. Rather, my primary interest was in with specific expertise in environmental con­ Massachusetts and New Hampshire. When a District. Davie’s involvement raises questions alerting the public and city officials to the servation, biology, engineering, planning, and December 1996 fire destroyed these factories about private influence on government in secret questionable tactics of the developer. economics, without exception felt that they that employed 2,400 of the best-paid textile sessions dealing with the public’s business. In their desire to prevail over those who take were not being taken seriously by Council workers in the world and determined the eco­ There is no indication whether a represen­ exception to their strongly held belief that mas­ members who drifted in and out of the sessions. nomic stability of two small towns, tative from the city took part in the confer­ sive development in southwest park is the After the controversial ruling of “permissi­ Feuerstein guaranteed the future jobs of every ence call, it should be noted that for two answer to Ithaca's economic problems, city ble segmentation” by the city that allowed the worker and offered full pay during the time it weeks the city’s Planning Department stalled officials have arrived at a critical juncture. Widewaters Corporation to dump 80 thousand took to rebuild. a request from the Citizens’ Planning Alliance Either they can adopt an approach which .cubic yards of gravel fill on land visible from In response to public acclaim and the asser­ for a copy of Marzocchi’s letter to Kane. In includes openness, dialogue and real leadership at least two Buttermilk Falls gorge trails, and tion by the president of the textile union local the end, the letter was obtained from the in regional planning, or they will have to face the cover-up that ensued, the mayor and that Aaron Feuerstein was a saint, he insisted Department of Parks in Albany. the consequences of adhering to the attitude Common Council members at the hearings that what he had done was nothing special: “I If there is even the possibility that the that their chosen ends justify what increasingly positioned themselves defensively, barely con­ don't deserve credit. Corporate America has Widewaters Corporation or any Ithaca official appear to be ethically dubious means. cealing their disdain for dissenting viewpoints. made it so that when you behave the way I "twisted arms” in Albany to influence the Testimony given at the hearings was virtual­ did, it’s abnormal.” Department of Parks to drop its objections to Barbara Regenspan is an assistant profes­ ly ignored by Common Council in its final Corporate America has made decent behav­ development plans in the southwest, the citi­ sor o f education at Binghamton University. "findings” at the conclusion of the $500,000, ior abnormal. To me this is the most helpful taxpayer-funded GEIS process, even as some way to understand a series of three letters Council members continued to tout the city’s recently accessed by the Citizens' Planning The magnanimity in hosting the hearings in the first Alliance. The letters raise disturbing ques­ JOIN THE place. The weak findings statement by Council, tions about the New York State Office of rationalizing the most extreme development Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation FRIENDS OF ftOOKPRESS scenario (calling for one million square feet of and the Widewaters development plan for the new retail and office space in the southwest), southwest area site across Route 13 from failing to include the protective measures Buttermilk Falls State Park. required for Wal-Mart on the very same site in Two of the letters are from Daniel S. Kane, Enclosed is my contribution to 1995, and pledging the city to budget-busting Director of Resource Management for the □ Please send my F riends of T he Bookpress. infrastructure expenses, deprived the Planning Parks Department, addressed to Jeannie Lee, complimentary subscription Board of leverage in their coming negotiations in Ithaca’s Department of Planning and □ $25 □ $50 □ $100 other_$ _ to T h e Bo o k p r e ss as a gift to: with developers during the site plan review Development. In the first, dated February 14, Name: ______process. Ironically, as I only learned from Ken 2000, Kane raises several issues regarding Name: ______Address: Vineberg through researching this article, to possible development on the Widewaters site. Address: ______this date the city has seen little developer inter­ These include his reservations about the mag­ est for sites in southwest park, other than the nitude of the area of development and its Phone: ______Widewaters parcel, because of the distance of impact on the viewshed from Buttermilk Falls, most of the property from Route 13. as well as concerns regarding sound pollution —I Please keep my contribution anonymous The mayor and his supporters often invoke that would affect visitors to the park. Kane the claim that Cohen’s re-election last goes so far as to state that “the most appropri­ November was tantamount to a referendum in ate mitigation option to minimize the visual T he Bookl’kl.ss is a non-profit oignm/alion favor of the city’s southwest development impact on the park would be to limit develop­ I______I