by Peter H Frank | Feb 15, 2020 | Politics |
Nearly 30 years ago, I was sitting in an office at Bloomberg News when Mike Bloomberg stopped by.
The room, I think, had windows to the outside, but no one looked. Instead, what kept everyone’s attention was the activity beyond the full glass wall that faced the bustling center of the headquarter’s atrium, where large shelves offered free food to employees.
When Bloomberg unexpectedly came in, he introduced himself with a handshake and a smile. Friendly, quick-witted, and irreverent, he fidgeted in a chair near the door facing me. With an engaging, large ego on display, he was clearly master of this world.
So, as he talked to me, holding court, and glancing distractedly and repeatedly through the glass wall, it came as small surprise when he suddenly perked up and, guiding all our attention to a pretty young woman wearing a fashionable, short skirt, said, “Somebody make sure she gets hired.” The three of us men chuckled.
At the moment it happened, I knew Bloomberg’s comment was inappropriate. He should not have said it. Looking back, I should not have laughed. But the unexpected tastelessness, and my desire to be considered one of the boys, prodded me on. And that, I am certain, is precisely why he said it.
Such are the stories that most men, and more importantly, most women of a certain age know all too well. How times have changed – a little anyway – and thank God for that.
Of course, this still happens. The #MeToo movement is needed. But if the movement is succeeding at all, it has to do with awareness and change. Because society cannot change if people don’t change.
And that, in a nutshell, is what’s so illuminating about a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in late January. It found a full 53 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds supported Sanders for president, compared with just 7 percent of the Woodstock generation.
Yes, at first glance, it appears we’re a bunch of establishment fuddy-duddies who’ve lost our ideals as our hair turned grey. Although I’m not quite in that generation, I think I can speak for the former Summer of Lovers when I say we know well the appeal of certain platitudes, especially when you’ve not heard them before.
But we are not not progressive. We are not not idealistic. Some of us in our teens even absorbed the writings of Eugene Debs and admired Tom Hayden, if not Abbie Hoffman.
No, we’re not young, but that means we’re also not as susceptible to simplistic idealism, the type fueled more by passion than real-world solutions. And no matter how authentic the pitch, the more superpumpedness set before us – whether in Silicon Valley or Washington – the more skeptical we are of what’s underneath.
I know very well the culture in which Bloomberg flourished. And I know that behavior does not stop overnight when it is reinforced and encouraged by all those around you. Like me, sitting there, rewarding him with laughter.
As D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser remarked recently, she’s “pretty sure that all of us can imagine Wall Street 30 years ago, male-dominated. And I think we would all be very naive if we thought a lot of crude remarks didn’t happen.” And we know she is right.
From George McGovern and Millicent Fenwick to John McCain and Barack Obama, I’ve spent my life – like many others in my generation – hoping for leaders who will bring change. Most of us remember the assassinations and George Wallace, the Vietnam War and the first Earth Day, two-hour gas lines and 18-percent mortgages.
I’ve been lucky enough to live through the decades it has taken for much of society to finally recognize, address, oppose, and fix at least some of the rampant sexism, racism, antisemitism, and homophobia that was around me in childhood.
From middle school when our baseball coach publicly referred to my black teammates with unprintable epithets that did not include the N-word but were equally abhorrent. To the angry shout of “Jew” I would hear on the playground. To the parents’ obvious whispers as a young neighbor walked by after her abortion. To my friends sent to juvenile correction for smoking Mary Jane. To the fear of my friends when they had to “come out.” And to the world of chauvinism and racism I saw in the 70s growing up near New York.
These things are not gone, but our country is better (despite recent setbacks). Yes, there’s a long way to go. But society has changed because people have changed.
“I shall perhaps change soon, not accidentally but intentionally…,” Montaigne observed, “either because I myself have become different or because I grasp hold of different attributes or aspects of my subjects.”
So, as I watch the debates, I can’t help wondering why the moderators insist on questioning why, over so many years, some on that stage have changed their positions. And I wonder, very simply, how could they not?
Wouldn’t a more illuminating question be how any of them cling to positions that have barely budged for more than three decades? Haven’t things changed? I’d like them to ask, in the words of Montaigne, do you grasp nothing new?
We all know what happens when a person can’t change. We are watching a president incapable of learning, which means nothing less than he is incapable of change. Being unable or unwilling are effectively the same.
Whether Mike Bloomberg has changed, I do not know. Whether his charitable giving has been contrived for votes or is in genuine recognition of his current beliefs or his many past failings, again I don’t know. Will I vote for him? I’m decidedly undecided.
It’s not a matter of forgiveness. It’s a basic understanding – the type that comes as you climb up the levels of those survey demographics.
Because I, for one, know I’m not the same person I was when sitting in that chair in the early 1990s. My life has changed. My humor has changed. My understanding has changed. And I’m confident that my reaction today to Bloomberg’s comment back then most certainly has changed.
(Cover photo updated Feb. 20, 2020)
by Peter H Frank | Nov 30, 2015 | Culture, Life in Romania |
You can learn a lot about a society by the way people drive. The problem is I’m just not sure what that is.
I always found driving in New York City relatively easy. You raced up or down the avenues timing your ride to the timing of green lights. You did everything you could to avoid going crosstown. You cut in front of anyone. You swerved around potholes in the middle of heavy traffic after a pretend glance in the mirror. You battled other cars, avoided fighting taxis, and you knew pedestrians would run. And
as your car sped forward and you flew down the streets, you knew all was ok because everyone was doing it, like the instinctive fluid motion of a school of big fish.
Yield straight and left.
Driving in Mexico City was not quite the same. There, mostly you crept onto the city’s main streets and basically parked, sliding forward at about the same pace as the sun overhead. And while you kept an eye out for thieves, vendors in the road would walk past your car selling ice cream and water and garment bags and pencils. If you ever got as far as an intersection,
you knew whichever car’s bumper was the first one to arrive had just won the right to move the next inch. There was competition to be sure, but never did I find it aggressive or mean.
In Dallas and New Jersey and Baltimore, driving was simple. Most of the roads were straight. There were always some madmen around but everyone was so afraid of dying that people generally took care. In Los Angeles, it was like driving in a video game only a lot less believable. And in Washington, D.C., with all the avenues on diagonals, traffic circles and one-way streets, half
the drivers were lost, so you were always in good shape if you had any idea where to go.
In England, simply put, driving was boring. Except for the fact that everything was on the wrong side of everything, traffic moved politely as if everyone was waiting in a 60-mile-per-hour queue.
Yield everywhere.
Even driving a taxi 12 hours a night in Philadelphia was ok. It wasn’t the traffic and other drivers you worried about anyway. It was the ranting, gun-wielding passengers – who were almost as scary as the Yellow Cab’s Teamster bosses.
No, it wasn’t until I got to Bucharest that I truly learned to fear driving. It’s not the roads or the traffic that make traversing the city so scary. It’s the other drivers and pedestrians and the fact that all the lights are put in the wrong place. (In case you’ve not been here, the signals are sadistically located
Yield some more.
before you go through the intersection so when you find yourself halfway across an expanse of pavement about the size of Bermuda and you begin to see other cars moving at you, you have no way of knowing if you should stop where you are or play bumper cars up ahead. Even when you do stop in time, if you have the unfortunate luck to be the first at the light, they are now so far to the side or somewhere above you, you need to wait for the very helpful and friendly honking of the 20 cars behind you gently intimating in unison that the light has turned green.)
But then slowly you learn that to survive driving here, you must master only two things. Yes, only two things. Firstly, you have to assume that everyone is driving rationally and carefully just like you and then you must dismiss that thought entirely and instead anticipate them doing precisely the opposite of whatever you would expect.
With no right on red allowed here, you apparently have to wait to yield until you have the green light.
After you do that, then you’ll discover that whatever you’re now thinking is also not at all what they’ll do and instead you should anticipate that what’s most likely to happen is whatever is inconceivable for you to imagine them doing. And finally, you learn that’s not what they’ll do either. Once you know this, you’ll begin to be fine.
Fine, that is, until you run into the second small problem: pedestrians. (And please know, of course, that when I say “run into” pedestrians, I mean that literally). You see, because the streets are too long and there are not enough lights, the city is strewn with a few million random crosswalks painted anywhere someone wants one, across little streets, across big thoroughfares, a few that cross highways and one or two on airport tarmacs. It really doesn’t matter. What’s vital to know is that it’s your job as a driver to stop (now that sounds Communist to me, no?) and the way you know to do that is you must watch for one of the few million small signs, made of a blue invisible substance, that are somewhere not near the road. So as you’re driving and praying that the car to your left doesn’t suddenly swing right for absolutely no reason just as the guy backing out of his driveway into the road without looking will stop in time for the car driving along the sidewalk to pull into your lane you also are expected to be searching for some sign that you can’t see to warn
you that in seconds an old lady is about to step in front of your car.
Got it? Ok. Now that you understand this, let me tell you the really strange thing about driving here. There are no Stop signs.
That’s right. And when I say there are none, of course, I mean I’ve seen three. In the entire city of 2 million people, each of whom appear to drive eight or nine cars. Yes, three – and two of them were in the same place.
Don’t ask me why. For some unknown reason having to do with the homogenous Dacian-Latin-Saxon-Slavian-Magyan culture or perhaps an endemic genetic Bucharestian fear of octagons, the idea of Stop signs apparently never arrived here. Personally, my theory is that everyone expected the Americans to bring them when they got here at the end of World War II – and we know how that worked out.
I have no idea what these yellow boxes mean, but if I were you, I would yield here, too.
Now, for those of you who have never driven between here and the US, let me tell you that in America there are Stop signs everywhere. Even in parking lots and alleys and at the end of one-way streets. If there’s room, there’s a Stop sign. It’s part of our national philosophy: “If in doubt, make them stop.” (And if you’ve seen recent stories about our police, you know what I mean.) And if we don’t make you Stop, then we tell you to Go. No weak, in-between indecision for us. No sir. Because as Americans, you should know, it’s always more important to make a definite decision than to worry about being right.
And the fact is, in most of this country, there are plenty of Stop signs. Yet here? Instead, in Bucharest, everywhere, you are ordered to Yield. Not Stop. Not Go. Just Yield. In other words, don’t stop unless you have to – and if you do have to, then go ahead and pull out into the intersection and make the other guy yield to you.
One of the three Stop signs in Bucharest.
In a way, it makes sense. Of course, when coming to an intersection where there are busses and bicycles and cars and motorcycles and trucks and scooters and baby carriages and skateboards and shopping bag-laden old women chasing trams that are speeding left and right with another couple roads that all come together, you’re likely to consider the idea of stopping just a little if for no other reason than to miss out on a sudden and painful fire-consuming death. I also suppose Yield signs everywhere help avoid the complication that other cities suffer when they must explain that, though it says Stop, the sign also tacitly contains the concept “and then Go. ”
In some ways, of course, “Yield” is less harsh of a concept than the order to “Stop.” But given the decades of Communism when “Yield” was how you lived unless you wanted to go to jail, wouldn’t you rather read a sign that is more democratic and generally more honest? Yes, a sign that more accurately reflects the values of society. A sign that honestly conveys how people think and drive. I wonder what shape we should use for a sign that announces: “Warning: If you don’t hurry up, the other guy wins.”
by Peter H Frank | Aug 24, 2015 | Culture, Life in Romania |
Several months ago, I came across something in Bucharest that was so unexpected and so
much fun that I was thinking to write a blog post about it. Until, that is, after a bit of effort, I was able to convince myself no one would find it interesting. So I eagerly and happily relieved myself of the chore.
Then several weeks later came an article in The Guardian titled “The secret history of 19th century cyclists” and, well, I decided maybe I was wrong. (Never had I realized the bicycle was such an important feminist tool.)
Still, I let it go. No one would know. Then The New York Times crept up with a story last month about the history of bicycling and the fact that some of its history was being enshrined in an ex
hibit at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It seems the great American suffragette Susan B. Anthony (of the disastrous one-dollar-coin fame) once said cycling did more than anything else to emancipate women. (Apparently it was related to giving women the freedom to shop more quickly, or something like that.)
So, it seems, the world wouldn’t leave my laziness alone.
Maria Mihăescu, nicknamed Miţa Biciclista, pictured here in an undated photo from the late 1890s or early 20th century.
But that’s not why I’m finishing this post. No. Not really. I’m finishing it because I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere else in the world that would have placed a plaque on an old house in the middle of a city for a woman who accomplished what this one did. And I thought you should know.
The woman I refer to is Maria Mihăescu, otherwise known as Miţa Biciclista. Now, for you Romanians out there, I know I run the risk of prompting a laugh, announcing I’ve just discovered something like coal in Newcastle. But to you non-Romanians (and you know who you are), you too might find this as interesting as I. (And as a bonus for persevering, I’ll teach you a sweet little nursery rhyme at the end that you can sing to your kids.)
Now, I don’t want to boast, but I’ve lived in Bucharest for six years and I’ve visited maybe three museums already. Well, two, if you don’t count the Museum of Peasants where I only go to the gift shop. (I’m told the rest of the place is very nice.) I walk a couple miles most days and more than twice I have stopped to know where I am. The fact is I still marvel at everything, even though I stop to read nothing. To be very honest, I’ve probably read just a handful of plaques the entire time I’ve lived here. You know the ones I mean – those square engraved stones on the front of houses that announce for history that “the guy who lived here for three weeks in 1862 was rich and a dentist.” (See one 
pictured nearby. He was apparently a “prominent personality” when he didn’t have a flashlight up your nose.)
The fountain, outside her front door.
But back to my story. So there I was, ridiculously early for a meeting on a hot afternoon in a neighborhood in Bucharest that I thought I knew well. To kill some time, I needed to wander. A lot. Slowly. (Did you know there’s a water fountain stuck right in the sidewalk at the corner of Strada Biserica Amzei and Strada General Christian Tell? Neither did I.) And, lo and behold, I found myself a plaque.
“Miţa,” it said, “the Cy
clist House.”
At first, I thought this was only slightly interesting. They made bicycles here, or maybe Miţa, (pronounced: meetza) whoever that was, had been in the circus. But then I reached the end of the sentence: “…the first woman to ride a bicycle in Bucharest.”
The plaque.
Well, well. How about that? People back then sure had a lot of time on their hands, I figured. They must have been sitting outside their homes every evening waiting for someone to go by, just like now when you get eyeballed by those lines of friendly stone-faced citizens in all of those villages that you find yourself crawling through so you don’t get a ticket as everyone who lives there is sitting on wooden benches out by the road so they can stare at the strangers and feed the mosquitoes.
Yes, that must be what happened: In the sleepy streets of Bucharest one evening before 1900, all of a sudden, one old guy says to another: “Was that a woman who just rode by on a bicycle? By golly, I reckon that was the first woman in this great metropolis who ever sat on one of those contraptions.”
So, there you go. Within days, it was confirmed, and hurrays and huzzas were shouted all around. And this little woman from Dițești was honored and feted for finally having the gumption to give the two-wheeler a death-defying go.
And if you, too, just now, thought anything similar, then you, too, would be so far from right, you wouldn’t even know it was out there.
The house.
Because this sweet Miţa Biciclista was not that kind of sweet little woman. How to put this genteelly? Our heroine, Miţa, it seems, was a very good rider. Yes. Oh, yes. Very good, indeed.
King Ferdinand (who, by the way, husband of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter).
In fact, she was so good at riding, she was invited to ride the king’s bike. And, it seems, she probably rode it several times. That’s apparently why King Ferdinand gave her this classic Baroque mansion in a great part of town.
(The house, by the way, which sits on a corner, is right across one street from the French Embassy, which seems appropriate somehow, and right across the other from a big church, which actually in some ways also seems appropriate.)
And Miţa didn’t stop there. She also is said to have ridden the bikes of many prominent men, including some very famous artist, a Nazi-sympathizing Prime Minister, and the Portuguese King Manuel, who asked her to marry. She was also said to be the first lover of King Leopold of Belgium. It seems these men all liked her bike riding very much.
Yes, indeed. Miţa was some kind of woman. According to various things written about her, this daughter of a clothes washer, petite as she was with blonde hair and blue-green eyes, knew what she was about. She earned her nickname from a journalist who had fallen in love with her (if the dates are right, when she was 13 years old). She was also nicknamed Miţa Cotroceanca because of the gossip about her relationship with King Ferdinand, who lived at Cotroceni Palace here in town. Then in the 1940s, she married a general and eventually her finances began to suffer before she died in 1968 at the age of 85, presumably her bike-riding days well over.
The church, Biserica Amzei.
And while, I suppose, she’s no Susan B. Anthony, she did make a mark on the history of this country. Consider this from a somewhat overly serious article in the Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies last year. [Some proofreading changes have been made to the original.]
“…we can say that the functions and meanings of the bicycle get reconfigured through history, moving from means of transportation (18th century) to means of emancipation for women (20th century). As a consequence, in Romania we have Miţa Mihăescu, also known as Miţa Biciclista (Miţa the Cyclist). A controversial character of those times, Miţa the Cyclist becomes an exotic appearance in a society where the public/private – male/female dichotomy is strong, the public space being male dominated. Miţa the Cyclist is the first woman that pedaled wearing pants in Bucharest, breaking the social gender norms derived from riding a bicycle, and also through the outfit she chose to wear. I believe that Miţa’s deviations from the social norms were tolerated by the male dominant society thanks to the fact that she was a male chaperon, this label justifying her behavior to society. But still, in her case the bicycle was a symbol of emancipation, she was a woman that no longer depended on a man to travel in the public space, an independent woman that decided on her own the aspects of her life. A modern figure, Miţa was frequently mentioned in the Furnica magazine, thus certifying her modernity and the curiosity that she arose all around her, thus becoming the attraction of interbellum Bucharest.”
Yet another writer described her this way:
“The bicycle with a silver handle belonged to a thin and elegant daughter of Eve, with black curls, silk purple tight pants, with a pinkish blouse that freed fluffy sleeves, with tall boots and white silk headgear, wrapped around in white veil, from which two large needles Madame Butterfly style arose.”
So yes, here she is, Miţa Biciclista. Not a national heroine, perhaps, but a Romanian woman we won’t soon forget. (Thank goodness.)
Furnica magazine.
Indeed, I’m told by my wife that when she was a kid (not all that long ago), she often heard children shout out a rhyme (apparently, only when no parents were near). So now, all together, let’s sing it loud:
“Coana Mița biciclista
A căzut și și-a rupt pizda.”
Now, for any of you out there who have forgotten your Romanian, this translates literally to: “Madam Miţa the cyclist, fell down and broke her pussycat.” (Except her cat wasn’t there.)
Yes, indeed, perfect for kids. And anyway, in Romanian, it rhymes really well.
So now you know why I decided to write this. How could I not? What other woman do you know earns a nickname, a house, a plaque AND a dirty nursery rhyme just for riding a bike and leaving her cat at home? Ah, the good old days.
And where else but in Romania could you find such a plaque? In fact, how many other places would you find such a woman?
by Peter H Frank | Apr 23, 2015 | Culture |
Source: http://play.tojsiab.com/c3hlWHN6Rkw5OWsz
Being roughly twice the age of the internet, I believe I have the right to render some judgment on this latest flash in the pan. (I mean, what are today’s tablets if not essentially the equivalent of Kenner’s Close ‘n Play, maybe version 143.2?)
My conclusion: there are no more than five defensible reasons why the internet’s existence does anyone any good (well, actually only two if you remove the topics of sex, our desire to endlessly and pointlessly proclaim our over-self-esteemed opinions, and our irrational need to inform everyone of our infatuation for running, jumping, biting, hanging and sleeping warm sources of litter-box droppings and free-floating, nose-clogging hair).
No, in the 25 years that we’ve been surfing and stalking and spying and searching and engaging in other acts of self-hypnosis, there are only two reasons why the internet is of any productive use (well, ok, come to think of it, there’s actually only one if you exclude EVERYTHING related to sex).
And what is that one thing? To do meaningless spontaneous searches on topics that are suddenly of paramount importance in the middle of the night.
And that’s how we get from Hickory Dickory Dock to George Enescu.
Very recently, I was singing (some might call it destroying) the nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock to my young son, and when we reached “the clock struck one,” I unexpectedly thought of The Late Show, that 1 a.m. movie that would come on after The Tonight Show on CBS-TV (Channel 2) in New York while I was growing up.
Why? Well, read on.
For those of you not of a certain age or location, for at least two generations of New Yorkers (and as I now read, Angelenos also) beginning in 1950, The Late Show on those local CBS stations was a staple (actually THE staple in our household) of late night entertainment. Many nights, it was the only thing on TV past 1 or 2 a.m. And on Friday and Saturdays, it was succeeded by The Late Late Show, which made them very special nights for us insomniacs in that we had company to almost sunrise, or to the religiously related programming that would start at 5:30 or 6 a.m. on Sundays. (Anyone else remember the old Davey & Goliath stop motion cartoons?)
While the movies were generally old and (if memory is correct) generally good, the one thing that is unforgettable is the theme song to the show. Taken from the light concert piece, The Syncopated Clock (get it? Hickory Dickory Dock….the clock struck one?) the 10-20 seconds of repeated percussive melody are indelibly impressed on our memories and (as with anything indelibly impressed on our memories) tends to pop up unexpectedly, like when we sing nursery rhymes or sit for hours waiting to see the doctor.
So I went not just “googling” but also “youtubing” to hear it once more. And there it was. Did you know it was written in 1945 by Leroy Anderson while he was serving at the Pentagon as Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence? No, neither did I. And until the other night, I didn’t really care. [Listen to it, here.]
And hey! Look at that! Did you know he also wrote The Typewriter!? One of my other favorites. No, neither did I. [Listen to that, here.]
And holy cow!! Did you know that he ALSO wrote Sleigh Ride!!?? Now there’s a song you WILL actually know. [Listen and sing along, here.] (Lyrics were added later.) [And for those, click here.] See how this works?
So I wondered, who is this guy? [Find him on Wikipedia, here.] Or find his official website , here.] And yes, indeed, he’s pretty interesting. He wasn’t THE most interesting guy I’ve ever read about, but at least he seems to have had a very good life. That’s nice.
And he was smart as well as musically gifted. Fluent in nine languages, he attended Harvard University and studied with some of the most famous people around at that time. And you know who one of them was? That’s right. While earning his Master’s degree at Harvard in the 1920s, he studied composition with George Enescu. That’s right. THAT George Enescu. The Romanian. [For him, go here.] Unless you’re actually also Romanian. [In that case, go here.]
So there you go: a Romanian connection I already had in my childhood that never existed until Google was invented. My favorite excuse for watching the sun rise and sleeping through high school and your favorite excuse for a great music festival knew each other.
Now I think I’ll go look up the name of that Lithuanian guy I can never remember who used the recipe of a Romanian friend to introduce pastrami to New York in the 1880s.
(Oh, and just in case you don’t know the nursery rhyme, you can find that here. Or for those of you who weren’t paying attention in 1967, find Kenner’s Close ‘n Play here.)
by Peter H Frank | Apr 18, 2014 | Business, Culture, Politics |
In case you missed it last week, the European Commission announced it wants to make it easier for companies with single shareholders (meaning small and medium-sized firms) to operate throughout the EU. It would do this by standardizing lots of things so folks would not have to travel around or spend lots of money to expand their businesses to other EU countries. [Link here]
I say “hooray!” Great idea! There are lots of companies in Romania that would love to start doing business internationally. And now, thanks to the EC, they’ll soon have a little help.
But really, come to think of it, why stop there? The world is bigger than Europe. Just aligning a few things here is a good start, but why not do something that will have a REAL impact? Many of the companies I’ve met here dream of truly hitting it big. They are writing their websites in English, hungrily peering across the Atlantic, seeing their futures conquering the US.
So no, I say if these brains up in Brussels really want to be useful, they would concentrate on doing something even more important than merely unifying regulations and standardizing documents. They would give these small-business folks a list of vital dos and don’ts that goes beyond just the documents and helps standardize behavior. (more…)
