Ellis Island:My Tribe (1997)

Ellis Island (1997) Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

My daughter took this shot of me when I visited Ellis Island in 1997. I took her there so I could show her the place where my father and my grandparents came when they immigrated to the USA from Vitepsk Russia in the early part of the 20th century. 

My grandfather came over first. He smuggled himself out of Russia to avoid imprisonment and being drafted. He was a follower of Trotsky, a Jew and a wanted man for his political activities. Pogroms were on the rise, but he had to leave his pregnant wife behind. It was either that or imprisonment. He fled on his own to establish himself in NYC. 

At the Ellis Island site, I was able to find the record of his passage here: The ship he took from Germany was the Grosser Kurfurst. He arrived at Ellis Island on 6/27/1912. He was 22 years old. His occupation was listed as "sailor", his race was "Hebrew". He settled in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and eventually got a job in the garment industry. I never knew he was a sailor! Apparently, this is how he must have worked off his passage, by becoming part of the crew. 

He sent for his wife, Chane and son, Abram (my dad) a year later. They made the move with his sister Luba (22 years old), another sister Rose (24 years old), and my great-grandfather Isak who was 57 years old at the time and his wife Masha. They came across from Germany on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, arriving at Ellis Island on July 26, 1913. Dad was 10 months old and my grandmother was 22 years old. 

It is hard to imagine all that they must have gone through to make this journey, but I am very glad they did. This country has been built on the backs of immigrants and slaves and indentured servants. Whenever I get to feeling sorry for myself, I remember the sacrifices and struggles that they went through to keep things in perspective. I guess since my grandpa was a "socialist" that makes my dad an original "red-diaper" baby. Grandpa was also a kind man, not at all religious but he lived by many of the Jewish traditions he was raised in. I don't know about others, but I am proud of the many "tribes" that are part of my heritage. Isn't that what the strength of diversity is all about?

Life on the Faultline

Life on the Faultline Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

It is 19 years today since the Loma Prieta Earthquake in Santa Cruz. I remember standing in a parking lot, watching the earth roll like an ocean wave beneath my feet. 

We all walked around seasick for days afterwards. We live here clinging to the edge of a great continental plate and overlooking one of the deepest underwater canyons in the world in the Monterey Bay. The beauty that surrounds us comes at a great price. In the natural world, there are the annual fires, followed by the winter rains and floods and mudslides. Summer brings drought conditions tempered by the cooling fog off of the Bay. 

Our houses are built on rocky outcrops, up on stilts, sitting on top of shifting sands. We can't seem to get close enough to the ocean. We all want to live as close as possible to the tide pools and the wilderness that lie just beneath the water's edge. We do whatever it takes to make it work....

Truth, Lies and Betrayal (9/1939)

Truth, Lies and Betrayal (9/1939) a

This is a shot of my mother and Fred on one of their first dates in 1939. It was taken on the porch of my mom's home in Verdun, Montreal Canada.

Fred became mom's first husband, father to my oldest brother and a life-long friend to me. They were together from the time she was 17 in 1939, married in 1945, until she left him shortly after my oldest brother was born in 1950. 

I will let you hear in his own words how Fred described his first encounter with my mother, as he related it at her memorial service three years ago: "The first time I saw her was in 1939. For those of you who may remember-1939 was an interesting year: everybody had learned to jitterbug, yet one of the most popular pieces of music was a classical item turned into a pop song-a tango. And Canada declared war on Germany just as the fall semester began-Sept. 10. But back to that "first time": I was coaching a student team for a friendly basketball game against a group of part-time evening students whose days were occupied earning a living. The game was prelude to a Christmas party at Montreal's newest, and then smallest, college-Sir George Williams (now the incredibly large Concordia University). In the first half, we were trailing-and it was all due to a young, lively, tenacious, aggressive player who had the shooting eye of an as-yet-unborn Michael Jordan. At half-time, the instructions I gave my squad was to double-team the young lady in question-and, if possible, keep her from scoring again. At game's end, our irate opponent marched over and called me the most "unsportsman-like coach" she had ever encountered. I listened, apologized for trying to win the game, and asked if I might have the pleasure of a dance later. Another blast hit me decrying my sportsmanship-with the added, "I wouldn't dance with you if you were . . . ." 

"About an hour later, while I was jitterbugging with a team member, I spotted her standing at the edge of the dance floor watching me. So I deliberately danced the next number with the same partner, and the next!! I felt that pair of eyes constantly on me. I asked the band leader (a classmate-who, incidentally, still leads a dance band in Montreal) to play a tango. His eyes lit up and he said, Jalousie? The pop hit of the day-a classical score with lyrics added, and featured in a 1939 movie, Paris Honeymoon. I walked over and asked the young lady in question if I might have the honor of a dance. She agreed-and we danced the evening away as though we'd been dancing together all our young lives. (The lyric lives with me: "Your eyes give the answer I'm dreaming of, the soft word your lips will never say! I fear that your eyes just deceive, and it's only the tango you love.)...." ---Fred Kerner (2003) 

Throughout all her betrayals and lies, and the difficult years after she left Fred, married and divorced my father, Fred has always been a kind and constant friend and father-figure to me. Fred is the only one of that triangle (my father, Fred and my mother) who is still alive. Thank you Fred for being there when it counted and for telling me the truth.

On Top of the World (1955)

  On Top of the World (1955) Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

My father in his prime. He was a doctor, best-selling author and happy family man. A first-generation Russian-Jewish Immigrant, naturalized US citizen, and WWII veteran, life didn't get any better than this. 

Scratch the surface just a bit, and underneath the facade, he was married to a beautiful woman who didn't love him and passed off her son by another man as his. He was a gambler, who financed the start of his medical practice from his winnings on the troop ship back from his service in Okinawa. His best-selling book was ghost-written by his wife's ex-first husband, whom she still had a thing for. 

He was also an alcoholic and a womanizer. In addition to his legitimate medical and psychiatric practice, he made a great deal of his money under the table as an abortionist in a time when it was still illegal. My dad enlisted his sister, my aunt, in his schemes, and she kept two sets of books for him until she died. 

 

But the women who got their procedures with him were safe from dangerous back-alley abortions because he was a medical doctor.

 

Contrary to the popular view, life was complicated in the 1950's. One of the big differences between then and now is that people didn't talk so openly about it during those times. 

 

When I look at him in this shot, I can't help thinking about that final shot of a crazed Jimmy Cagney at the end of his 1949 classic movie, "White Heat", when he is shouting: "Top of the world , Ma!". At least in that famous shot at the end of  the film, Cagney knew he was on fire and that he was about to die.