Tales of the Tarantula

by Frank Terranella

  When you are lost in the passion of a kiss

  For your lips are much too close to mine

  Beware my foolish heart

  But should our eager lips combine

  Then let the fire start

  For this time it isn’t fascination

  Or a dream that will fade and fall apart

  It’s love this time, it’s love, my foolish heart

  The sentiment of the lyrics is reminiscent of “Fools Rush In,” which was written a decade earlier. And while the lyrics are fine, it is the melody that has so intrigued jazz musicians for the last 65 years. It’s a haunting tune that really sticks in your head. I find that all I have to do is hear it in the background and I start humming along, and the tune continues to play in my brain for hours or days to come (a classic ear worm).

  Like the “William Tell Overture,” which has long outlived the opera for which it was written, “My Foolish Heart” continues to enchant us decades after the film in which it was unveiled has faded into film obscurity. Lucky for us, great songs are a joy forever.

  The kindness of strangers

  April 2016

  When you talk to people over the age of 80 and ask them what’s the hardest thing about getting old, many of them say it’s watching their friends and family die off, one by one. Many people in their 90s find that they have outlived all their peers and report feeling they have stayed at the party too long. The truth is, it’s hard to replace a good friend. And the older you get, the harder it becomes to make new friends. The world seems full of strangers.

  Last weekend I saw two marvelous films that have little in common except that they both involve people making friends with strangers. The first is Enchanted April, based on a 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. The book was originally filmed in 1935, but I saw the 1991 remake starring Miranda Richardson, Josie Lawrence, Polly Walker and Joan Plowright.

  Enchanted April is the story of four English women who rent an Italian castle together for the month of April. The women are strangers whose ages run the gamut from youth to old age. The story shows how they overcome their natural inhibitions, open up to each other and become real friends.

  Joan Plowright plays the old woman who initially just wants to be left alone to ponder her life and read letters from her dead friends. After a little time in the Italian castle with her new acquaintances she reports, “All my dead friends don’t seem worth reading tonight. They always say the same things. Good things, but always the same.”

  Polly Walker plays a beautiful young socialite who has come to Italy “to just sit and not talk and not have to be the center of attention all the time.” She explains, “I’ve wasted so much time being beautiful.”

  All of the women are transformed by their breathtaking surroundings on the coast of northern Italy near Genoa (the film was made in Portofino). And it is just because they are with strangers that they feel they can let down their hair, be themselves and enjoy an Enchanted April. It’s a wonderful story about taking a break from your life to take stock of where you are and, more importantly, who you are.

  The other film I enjoyed last weekend was a 2014 romance called Before We Go. Like Enchanted April, it involves two complete strangers who are brought together by fate and help each other find out who they really are. The film stars Chris Evans, who also directed, and Alice Eve, who play two young adults who meet in Grand Central Terminal in New York. Alice plays a woman named Brooke who drops her phone in front of Chris, as she runs to catch a train at 1:30 a.m. Chris plays a wannabe musician named Nick who runs after Brooke to give her her phone. He sees the train pull away without Brooke and hears her sad story of having been mugged and having nothing but a train ticket left.

  There are no more trains to be had that night, so the two set off together to try to find her wallet with the idea that the mugger might have just taken the cash and thrown the wallet away. What transpires as they spend the night walking around Manhattan is the heart of the film.

  At one point, after spending only a few hours together, Nick is faced with having to meet up with his ex-girlfriend who broke his heart and decide whether to pursue his dream of being a musician or not. He says: “Why is it that any one decision always seems too small to be the biggest decision of your life.” Brooke replies: “I don’t know but sometimes you have to just make the choice and jump.”

  Brooke is also facing a crisis, which is why she was racing for the train. She needs to get home before her husband returns from a business trip where she suspects he was cheating on her. Brooke is not sure whether she wants to remain married.

  Nick tries to help Brooke come to a decision about her husband’s infidelity; Brooke tries to help Nick get over the feeling he has lost the love of his life and will never love again.

  The film uses a nice gimmick of pretending that the characters can use archaic Manhattan pay phones to call into the past. Near the end of the film, Nick calls his past self with Brooke listening and gives a rambling report of their night together. He then says: “And at the end of the night, you’re gonna want to say some things, but don’t. Don’t ruin it. It’s nothing she doesn’t already know. Just give her a kiss. Wish her good luck. And, uh… thank her. Thank her for showing you that you can love more than one person in this life.”

  Sometimes, it takes a stranger to help you see your life clearly.

  1776 – My Independence Day tradition

  July 2016

  I was a history major in college and I still read more books in the history genre than any other genre. I think that knowledge of history provides the same sort of long-view perspective that age does. I also have been a life-long lover of theater. And so it is not surprising that one of my favorite musicals, 1776, combines my love of history and theater. The musical concentrates on the days prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

  Peter Stone did a masterful job of crafting an enjoyable show without sacrificing historical accuracy. Oh sure he combined some characters and took some liberties with the timing of events, but he managed to preserve the essence of the story and got all the major details right. Sherman Edwards wrote the great score.

  The show was on Broadway in 1969-1972, anticipating the coming bicentennial. William Daniels played John Adams, Ken Howard was Thomas Jefferson and Howard DaSilva was Ben Franklin. The trio reprised their roles in the 1972 movie.

  I wish I could say that I saw it on Broadway, but I didn’t. My first contact with the show was a production at my college. I was briefly the theater critic on my college paper and 1776 was one of the shows I reviewed. Needless to say I gave it a rave review and then enjoyed the film version as well.

  I bring all this up because there is July 4 tradition at my house. Every year since the DVD of 1776 was released more than a decade ago, I play the movie every year on the morning of July 4. It serves to remind me and my family why we have the day off. It also serves to remind me what is good about this country. It is so easy to lose sight of the founders’ dream in a world where Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on anything. It shows that people from disparate backgrounds can, when they try hard, reach a compromise that furthers the public good.

  In the case of 1776, the compromise was over whether slavery would continue in the new nation being formed. Despite the wishes of Adams, Franklin and Jefferson that slavery be phased out, Southern insistence on preserving their “peculiar institution” threatened to sink the new ship of state before it could be launched. The three founders saw that they could not stand on the principle that “all men are created equal” but instead had to essentially “kick the can down the road” by maintaining the slavery status quo in the interest of giving birth to a new nation. It was left to men of Abraham Lincoln’s generation to deal with the issue four score and seven years later.

  Watching 1776 each year provides some perspective on the turbulent political time we have been experiencing since 2001. It provides a reminder that statesmen (and women) wh
o put the good of the country over partisan principle are the people who will be revered by later generations. Give it a watch this year. It’s usually on television around the 4th. Your Independence Day experience will be richer for it.

  Here’s to engaging again with other viewpoints

  August 2016

  By any measure, these are dark days in the history of the United States. The darkness to which I refer does not arise from the factors that were front and center in the speeches at the Republican Convention. The darkness arises from the fact that the nation is split into two camps and neither trusts the other. As a result we have a dysfunctional Congress that can’t even get non-controversial things like disease control and bridge repair done.

  The problem is that it takes trust to have a debate over issues. Where there is no trust, neither side is interested in hearing the other’s viewpoint because the assumption is that it is based on biased facts. There can be no reasonable discussions between the two sides as long as each is in their own bubble.

  So before we can come together and have a meaningful discussion, liberals have to stop portraying conservatives as ignorant rednecks, hicks and racists. They have to learn why conservatives honestly fear the government may someday be coming for their guns. Conservatives have to stop thinking that liberals are lazy losers who want nothing but government hand-outs. They have to stop thinking that gun violence is strictly an inner-city problem. In a nutshell, we have got to reduce the “us” and “them” rhetoric and turn up the “we.”

  Granted, our media promotes an “us” and “them” culture. Cable news and the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine have made it possible for people never to hear opposing viewpoints. The Internet has further enabled the division and exacerbated the situation. The loss of faith in “objective” media has removed the former arbiters of facts.

  The only way forward is to engage. We need to get past the suspicion and talk. Liberals and conservatives can start by noting what they have in common. They are all Americans; they are all parents and children; they all want safe places to live. Let’s talk about how to solve problems.

  Anyone who has paid close attention to the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump has heard some overlap in what the problems are. That’s a good first step toward solving them. The next step is compromise. It’s been a part of American politics since the Continental Congress. It’s the only way a democracy works. In the words of a song heard at the Republican Convention, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try, sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”

  Some may say that a presidential election year is the wrong time to expect the two sides to engage in any positive way. But I think that a time when issues are being debated by the candidates is exactly the right time to engage each other on possible ways to make America greater. Whether you think America is already great or we need to Make America Great Again, we can all agree that it can be greater. But we need to actually talk to and get to know the people we reflexively demonize and see that we have more in common than we think.

  Have a civil and respectful conversation outside your political bubble. Don’t just talk; listen. America will be greater for it.

  Protests:

  No pain, no gain

  September 2016

  I don’t condone lawlessness in the same sense that I don’t condone illness. But like illness, lawlessness happens. It’s part of life. When society is sick, the symptoms are usually violent protest. Having lived through the 1960s, I can tell you that although it’s never pretty when we go through bouts of violent protest, it’s often necessary. Because when it comes to major social change, the rule unfortunately is “no pain, no gain.”

  While I hope that the need for violent protests about police killing unarmed African Americans will be mercifully short, I think that this is the harsh medicine that Americans need in order to rouse us from the stupor in which we live most of the time. It’s similar to the metaphoric two-by-four that you hit the donkey with to get its attention. Violent protests burst through the bubble that protects us from unpleasant reality.

  You may wonder why the protests have to be violent. Can’t we accomplish the same thing by peaceful protest? The simple answer is that like negative campaigning, violent protest works better.

  A case in point is the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 2003 to peacefully protest against our entry into Iraq. There was no violence. And there was no effectiveness. By contrast, many protests against the Vietnam War were violent with groups like the Weathermen actually deploying bombs. It was deplorable, but it was effective. Nixon ended the war.

  So although I hope that no additional lives are lost in Charlotte and elsewhere that protests may erupt against perceived police wrongdoing, I accept this as part of what the founders had in mind when they incorporated the right to protest in the First Amendment. While the law protects only “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” I think that the founders knew that just as protests against English tyranny had sometimes turned violent, protests against perceived American tyranny would as well. And just as we had survived the violent protests that had often led to things like the Boston Massacre, the country would survive a measure of violent protest in the future.

  If we recognize protest as a symptom of societal illness and attempt to treat the cause rather than the symptom, we will all arrive at a better society. For like all adversity, protest that does not kill us, makes us stronger.

  … And life goes on

  September 2016

  There was a columnist years ago who ended his columns with the phrase “and life goes on.” To a young person at the time, the phrase had little meaning. But as I approach Medicare eligibility age, I have come to see the wisdom in these words.

  In my adulthood, I have seen triumphs like the fall of the Berlin Wall and terrors like the fall of the Twin Towers. But through it all, and after it all, life goes on. If you are young you may think – “duh, of course life goes on.” But if you think that, you haven’t stepped back to look at the tapestry that is life.

  The World Trade Center Memorial … and the new One World Trade Center building

  When I was 14, my father died. It changed my life forever. And if someone then had said to me then “life goes on,” I would have been offended. That would have trivialized my loss. But today as I look back, with nearly 50 years of life having intervened, I see that there is a real comfort in reflecting that no matter how catastrophic a loss, life goes on.

  So when I made my first visit to the World Trade Center Memorial last weekend, as moved as I was by the black holes where the towers had been, I looked at the new tower and thought “and life goes on.”

  No one who was in Manhattan on that fateful day will ever forget the panic and the open grief that followed for weeks – the poignant pleas on walls everywhere for any information about missing loved ones, the open displays of flags on shirts. We felt a fellowship in our grief that allowed strangers to talk to each other on the subway. But after the smoke cleared from Ground Zero, and the tiny biographical portraits of the dead ended in The New York Times, life went on.

  And so, as I mark the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death this weekend, I again am comforted by the fact that life goes on for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom was born just 50 days after she died. No matter how bad the news, time heals all wounds.

  That’s why I have to laugh when I hear people say they are moving to Canada if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected president. Surely, no matter who is elected, the nation will survive. The day after the new president and new Congress takes office in January, power will shift. But life will go on.

  “Interesting” times require a large dose of hope – and faith in the next generations

  November 2016

  The old curse says “May you live in int
eresting times.” And we are certainly living through the most “interesting” election year most of us can remember. Both sides see the election as Armageddon, with only destruction and dystopia remaining in its wake if the other side wins. But the republic has weathered contentious elections before (1860 comes to mind), and there is every likelihood that this time will be no different.

  I think that no matter what the outcome, we will all be happier once the election is over and the tension is broken. I will be especially happy because on the day after Election Day my granddaughter Caroline celebrates her first birthday. Grandchildren are such a blessing because they are visible signs of our hope for the future. We all hope that they will someday see, or better yet, help create a better world.

  Back in 1977, a film biography of Muhammad Ali called The Greatest came out with a theme song composed by Michael Masser with splendid lyrics by Linda Creed, who also wrote great songs for The Stylistics and the Spinners. George Benson had a moderate hit with the theme song in 1977. But it was not until Whitney Houston applied her considerable talents to it in 1985 that the song, “The Greatest Love of All,” became an anthem.

  Linda Creed’s words are among the most poetic ever set to music and they provide comfort and wisdom in this, and all turbulent times. The song begins:

  I believe the children are our future

  Teach them well and let them lead the way

  Show them all the beauty they possess inside

  Give them a sense of pride to make it easier

  Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be

  If you internalize the belief that children are our future, it is clear how important it is to “teach them well” and “show them all the beauty they possess inside.” And once you’ve taught them well, including giving them a sense of pride, you can just “let them lead the way.”