Tag Archives: Frank Terranella

‘Relationship’ with Computer Fraught with the Artificial

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Concepts, Entertainment, Men, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Me and my gal.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

The upside of Netflix being shut out by movie studios from streaming new Hollywood movies is that they have had to look high and low for content. The low has been some putrid indie films. The high has been some great British television. An example of the best is a British television series called “Black Mirror.” There are only six episodes available, but they are well worth your time.

Black Mirror has been described as an anthology series like The Twilight Zone, and it does have some similarities in that each episode is thought-provoking and often deals in moral or ethical issues. It’s set in the near future and technology plays an important role in each episode. For example, there is an episode called “The Entire History of You” that envisions a time where we all have video recorders attached to our eyes and implanted in our heads. This allows us to play back everything we experience at will on nearby television screens. While this instantly settles disputes about what people said, it also causes lots of problems. For example, the question “where were you last night?” is not simply answered by words any longer. Now we go to the videotape to actually see what you saw last night. It’s an intriguing concept and one bound to improve honesty. But a young couple with trust issues finds the pitfalls of having all this “evidence” to dwell on.

Another episode that really struck me was one called “Be Right Back” in which a man tells his wife he’s just going out and will be right back, but then gets killed in an auto accident. At the funeral, a friend tells the widow that there is a service available that takes all of a person’s online activity (pictures, emails, tweets, etc.) and creates a humanoid in that person’s form that has that person’s personality including memories, vocabulary and sense of humor. She urges the widow to simply re-create her husband from his online persona. After some initial misgivings, she agrees. The humanoid arrives and is indistinguishable from her husband and has all his online memories. But there are problems in any human-humanoid relationship and the episode shows them and how they are resolved. The episode seeks to explore the question whether a person is really just the sum of his online communications. By the way, the widow is played by Hayley Atwell, whom you may know as Agent Carter in the recent ABC television series.

The “Be Right Back” episode reminds me of another film that explored the romantic relationship between man and machine. It is the 2013 Spike Jonze film “Her” starring Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson. There, Phoenix plays a man who literally falls in love with the Siri-like voice of his computer. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. As computer assistants become more and more sophisticated, we are encouraged to think of them as persons. That’s why they have names. But any relationship between artificial intelligence and real intelligence is bound to be fraught with problems and that is what “Her” shows. Can a person be in love with a dis-embodied voice or is a body necessary? If you think about it, this is not a new question. In the past, there have been dis-embodied, long-distance relationships by mail or later telephone. Most of these did not work out once the parties met face to face, because real life is different from the intellectual life.

About six months ago I wrote about the peril of mistaking a life online with a real life. I urged readers to “Friend someone who lives in your neighborhood, rather than on Facebook. Deliver a Tweet in person. Interact with flesh and blood people and not just their avatars.” Television programs such as  “Black Mirror” and films such as “Her” show why artificial friends are as unhealthy as imaginary ones. It’s easy to be seduced by technology. That voice on your phone sounds so real. It’s always polite and helpful. Real people can be bothersome, rude and even hostile. But ultimately an online relationship is a fantasy. And living in a fantasy world, you always run the risk of a rude awakening.

A New Year. A New (Slimmer) Me

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

My Weight-Loss Chart

My Weight-Loss Chart

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

And so another new year is upon us. To those of us in the 50+ club, all years that start with a 2 are inherently foreign. When I hear that we are now beginning 2015, it sounds to me like someone saying it’s the 45th of September. It just sounds wrong.

My 91-year-old stepfather has a similar reaction. When I tell him we’re starting 2015 he jokingly puts his hand up and says, “Check, please.”

I’m not quite ready to check out yet, but 15 years into the 21st century, I do sometimes feel like it’s getting close to closing time. Longtime readers of this blog may remember that in July 2013 I wrote that I was resigned to the Hitchcock look of a massive gut for the rest of my life. So when my cardiologist told me to lose weight or have bariatric surgery like Chris Christie, I was initially skeptical that any sustained weight loss was possible for me.

But in order to comply with my doctor’s orders, I started with Weight Watchers in late June 2014. At my first weigh-in I tipped the scales at a hefty 224 pounds. Just about every week thereafter I have lost some weight. Sometimes it was just two-tenths of a pound. But by the end of December I was down to 184, a loss of 40 pounds. I have lost four inches around my waist. But I’m still about 10 pounds from what I initially set as my goal weight, and 25 pounds from the weight that the experts say is appropriate for my height and age. So it’s a process. I saw my cardiologist in December and he was extremely pleased at my reduced size and healthy blood pressure. I have had similar compliments from friends and family.

Weight loss is not a mystery. It involves simply eating less and exercising more. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. I have lost weight by cutting down on sweets and hitting the treadmill on a daily basis. Notice that I didn’t say that I have eliminated sweets. Weight Watchers is not into complete deprivation of anything. In fact, we are encouraged to have weekly treats. The trick is to be conscious of everything we’re putting into our mouth. More candy and cake means more treadmill and weightlifting. So far it’s been reasonably easy to live with.

The new year is the time for resolutions and I am sure that we will be seeing new people at the Weight Watchers meetings in January. Weight loss is a noble goal because you do it not only for yourself, but for your loved ones. But like all things that are worthwhile, it takes some effort. Sustaining that effort over time is the challenge of weight loss. I fully expect that I will gain some weight back some day. But I also know that I can lose it again. I know that because I’ve done it.

My doctor has been preaching weight loss to me for over a decade and until six months ago I was not sufficiently motivated to do anything about it. What changed in 2014? The truth is that it wasn’t just the doctor and his threat of bariatric surgery. In 2014 I became a grandfather, and I realized that if I didn’t start listening to medical advice I was not going to live long enough to see Bryce grow up. And I needed to be in shape to keep up with him. Funny how a baby can change your life in completely unexpected ways.

So I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions other than to try to finally reach my goal weight and stay there (or at least in the neighborhood). Next year at this time I’ll report back. Until then, have a healthy and happy 2015!

My One and Only Favorite Song

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

my one an donly loveBy FRANK TERRANELLA

When people ask me what my favorite standard song is, I often reply that I have at least a dozen favorites. For example, I love Make Someone Happy (music by Jule Styne,  lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green), Someone to Watch Over Me (music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin) and What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life (music by Michel LeGrand, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman).  I used the last of these to propose to my wife.

But if someone really presses me and won’t take more than one song as an answer, I confess that my all-time favorite is My One and Only Love by English song writers Guy Wood and Robert Mellin.  I think it’s a masterpiece, and judging by the number of recordings of it, many people agree with me.  It has a fascinating tune as it climbs the scale with its first six notes.  But it is the lyric that clinches the deal for me. It starts:

The very thought of you makes my heart sing

Like an April breeze on the wings of spring

And you appear in all your splendor

My one and only love

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The shadows fall and spread their mystic charms

In the hush of night, while you’re in my arms

I feel your lips so warm and tender

My one and only love

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The poetry is just breathtaking to me. And the words fit the music perfectly. Interestingly enough, these were not the original words to the song.  When Guy Wood wrote the music back in 1947, the lyrics were by Jack Lawrence and the song was called “Music from Beyond the Moon.” It was recorded by Vic Damone in 1948, but was a flop.  The lyrics then went like this:

The night was velvet and the stars were gold

And my heart was young, but the moon was old

I was listening for the music

Music from beyond the moon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You came along and filled my empty arms

And my eager lips thrilled to all your charms

When we touched I heard the music

Music from beyond the moon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is there any doubt why this original version didn’t make it?  Not only is the lyric nonsensical (beyond the moon, really??), it doesn’t  scan correctly.  Guy Wood wrote six notes as the end of each verse (mirroring the six notes of the beginning of each verse).  The words “Music from Beyond the Moon” require seven notes.

Poor Vic Damone must have felt like the unluckiest guy around when Frank Sinatra recorded the revised version with the Robert Mellin lyric in 1953 and had an immediate hit. Of course, the definitive version of My One and Only Love is the one by Johnny Hartman that he recorded with John Coltrane in 1963.

The bridge of the song is nothing special musically, but again Robert Mellin’s lyrics shine:

The touch of your hand is like heaven

A heaven that I’ve never known

The blush on your cheek whenever I speak

Tells me that you are my own

And finally, the last verse of the Mellin lyric draws inspiration from the second verse of the original Lawrence lyric, but Lawrence had a base hit. Mellin hits it out of the park:

You fill my eager heart with such desire

Every kiss you give sets my soul on fire

I give myself in sweet surrender

My one and only love

Now that’s a song!  It moves me whenever I hear it. It’s not the music of my generation, but then neither is Bach or Beethoven. It’s classic Tin Pan Alley — one page in the rich American Songbook that Jonathan Schwartz has spent a lifetime promoting.  And you don’t have to be over 50 to love it.

Starting the Travel Bug Early

13 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Bryce loves Barcelona!

Bryce loves Barcelona!

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

When I think of all the places I would like to see before I can no longer travel (or remember traveling), high on the list is Spain. You see, as the song says, I’ve never been to Spain, but I’ve been to Oklahoma. Yet I’ve always wanted to go to Spain. I studied Spanish history in college and have always been fascinated by the Arab influence there. The architecture and the art, not to mention the food and the climate, all beckon to me.

In fact, the only reason I didn’t get there when I did my college summer trek through Europe is that Spain was not covered by the StudentRail pass that allowed me to get on any train in any other European country. Maybe it was because dictator Francisco Franco was still ruling Spain at the time. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, the StudentRail pass didn’t work there, and so I didn’t get to Spain in 1972. And in the years since, I have not had an opportunity (either business or pleasure) to travel to Spain, even though my job causes me to communicate with people in Spain every day.

This is why it is particularly hard for me to take that my 9-month-old grandson Bryce has now been to Spain. His parents got a passport for him and took him along on their recent vacation to Barcelona. My wife and I had volunteered to babysit while my son and his wife traveled, but they decided that they wanted to experience travel with a baby. By all reports, the travel went well. My grandson did not terrorize other passengers on the overnight trip over by screaming or otherwise behaving like the baby he is. Instead, he seemed to take the airplane ride in stride.

Of course, unlike adults, babies take most things in stride. That shouldn’t surprise us because if you think about it, babies experience new things every day — new sights, new smells, new tastes, new sounds. So something new like an airliner is all in a baby’s normal day. At least he didn’t have to wear a costume like he had to do for his first Halloween a week earlier. And a new country where people speak a language other than English is no sweat to someone who doesn’t speak any language yet.

Actually, my wife and I also took a baby on vacation in 1986. The 11-month-old was Bryce’s father and the trip was to Orlando and Disney World. David did just fine back then and so it did not really surprise us that Bryce also did well. But like his father, Bryce will have no memory of his first plane ride. He will have no memory of Spain. And that’s OK. He has a lifetime to go back.

Since like many young parents we took our children on lots of trips when they were very young, we know that Bryce will get tired of being told that he’s been to Spain. He will complain, as our children did, that it doesn’t count if you don’t remember it. And I guess that’s true. And that may be my opportunity. I can volunteer to take a 12-year-old Bryce back to Spain so that I finally get there. I just hope that I’m not too old to remember it.

Remember PEZ? A Museum Does

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Concepts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Pez main

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Among the fondest memories of we over-50s is penny candy. It amazes my children when I tell them that when I was a kid, you could actually buy something with a penny. In fact, you could often get two of something for a penny — like Bazooka Bubble Gum. In this age of packaged candy that costs a dollar or more, it is truly remarkable that there was a time when we could cash in an empty bottle, and use the two-cent deposit to buy candy!

And just when my children are telling me that the only use for a penny today is to pay sales tax, I blow their minds when I tell them that back when I was a kid, there was no sales tax. People just paid the listed price. Those pennies were just for candy.

Pez

Well recently I was travelling on I-95 in Connecticut and I passed a sign that advertized a museum of PEZ. Now PEZ is one of those special baby-boomer-era treats like penny candy. For the uninitiated, PEZ is a small brick-shaped candy that comes in several flavors. It started out In Austria in 1927 as a mint for people who wanted to quit smoking. In fact, the word PEZ comes from the German word “pfefferminz” meaning “peppermint.” The famous PEZ dispenser was designed to look like a cigarette lighter.

However, PEZ did not come to America until the 1950s. So we were the first generation of children to experience it, and the novelty of the now-iconic plastic dispenser. I think that it was certainly the dispenser that made PEZ special. They made hundreds of different dispensers with many famous characters on them. Collecting PEZ dispensers is still widespread enough that collectors gather annually for conventions.

Pez dispensers
At the PEZ Museum in Orange, Connecticut they have displays of the many ingenious dispensers that the company has made over the years. My favorites are the dispensers with the heads of presidents of the United States. But there are few licensed characters in the world from Mickey Mouse to Elvis Presley who have not had their heads on a PEZ dispenser.

In addition to the traditional cigarette shaped dispenser, PEZ also marketed guns as dispensers. This allowed kids to shoot candy into the mouths of their friends.

The PEZ museum is actually located at the plant where PEZ candy is made (the dispensers come from China). So if you go on a weekday, you can watch them make thousands of little PEZ bricks in scores of flavors. And of course, you can buy PEZ. Here, the self-guided tour does not just exit through the gift shop, it is integrated into the gift shop. But where else can you find a Thomas the Tank Engine or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PEZ dispenser?

PEZ and penny candy are among the great treats of a baby boomer childhood. Sadly, only PEZ is still with us. The types of candy that a penny used to buy, if you can still find them, are now a specialty nostalgia item. But even at the current inflated price, a licorice pipe is a treat that I will want to share with my grandson. And I can amaze him with tales of the wondrous things a penny used to buy for a kid.

Hello 50. Goodbye Creativity?

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Men, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

franks 54BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Have you ever noticed that creative people create their best works while they are young? Whether it’s musicians, authors or artists, it’s an inconvenient truth for those of use on the right side of 50 that creativity declines with age.

I know I may get arguments on this point.

People will inevitably point out the exceptions to the rule as disproving it. But if you look at the great creative works in history, you will find that the overwhelming majority of them were created by people under the age of 50. Some of that is due to the fact that many great artists die young —  Mozart was 35; VanGogh was 37; Fitzgerald was 45. But among those who do not, most find their later years much less fruitful from a creative standpoint.

There are lots of examples, but I will pick just three from the 20th century. Example one is Orson Welles. Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26. He never attained that level of creativity again, and made his last film when he was 50. Example two is Truman Capote. Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s when he was 34. He wrote his last great work, In Cold Blood, when he was 42. After that it was all downhill. Example three is Albert Einstein. Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity when he was 26. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics when he was 42. Although he lived to be 76, his later life produced no other creative breakthroughs on a par with his earlier work.

So why is it that most creativity comes in the earlier years of life? Frankly, I don’t know. Is there something in the brains of younger people that dissipates over time and blocks creativity? Anyone who has ever had a stroke of creativity will tell you that when they were creating, it was like someone else was inhabiting their body directing the genius. Composers talk about sitting down at the piano and composing a hit song in as long as it takes to play it. Creativity, when it comes, always flows out so fast, it’s an effort to write it all down quickly enough. The very word “inspiration” comes from the Latin “in spirito” meaning literally “possessed by a spirit.” This is exactly the way artists talk about the process of creating their most brilliant works.

Perhaps the human mind as it ages becomes less welcoming to this process of being possessed by creativity. Perhaps there is an unwillingness to just follow the dictates of the spirit as we grow older. Isn’t this the idea of “old people” that we had when we were young? Yet there were always exceptions to the rule. Most of us have memories of an older relative who didn’t act his or her age, and we loved them for that. So certainly we can be inspired and possessed by creativity in old age. It’s just less common.

Famously, Grandma Moses did not begin painting until she was in her 70s. Fortunately, she lived to be 101. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote great works like the Mass in B minor into his 60s. Woody Allen’s output has not lessened with age. He was 76 when he wrote and directed Midnight in Paris, which won him an Academy Award.

Clearly, inspiration can still occur in later life. I think the trick is not to settle for a comfortable existence where life has an unchanging routine. If the spirit moves you to pull an all-nighter to create, open your mind and let it flow. Creativity may prefer youth, but we over 50s can still claim our share. Go Woody!

I Want What She Has: Big Muscles

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

,

Originally published on December 11, 2012:

Muscle Chick by Julie Seyler

Muscle Chick, by Julie Seyler

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

When I was 12, I arm-wrestled a girl and lost. I had not entered puberty yet, and the girl had. As I remember, it wasn’t even close.  The girl, who was the same age as me, had initiated the match.  She asked me to show her my bicep muscle. Perhaps she was flirting, but I was oblivious. When I flexed my arm, practically nothing popped up. The girl smiled, suppressing a giggle. She also did not have a defined bicep, but she had a thick arm, and was simply much stronger than me at that age. From the moment she engaged her strength, and started to push against my hand, I simply could not stop her from pushing my pre-pubescent arm down to the desktop. She was proud of herself, and when we argued about anything thereafter, she would flex her arm and say, “Remember, I’m stronger than you.”

Soon after that, I entered puberty, and within 12 months, when I flexed my skinny arm, a hard, round muscle popped up. It was truly amazing to the girl. She knew that I had not started lifting weights, or even exercising.  Just on the basis of being a boy, I had developed a bulging bicep muscle bigger than hers.  And to add insult to injury, she found out when we had our re-match that I was now just a little bit stronger than her also.

I was never a gym rat in my teens and never had athlete-sized biceps. But like most men, I developed biceps in my teens that were bigger than those of the women I came across. While they were just average by male standards, I was confident that I was not going to lose a strength contest to any woman I might meet.

Then I hit 40. I noticed that my biceps did not have the peak they used to have when I flexed them. I noticed there was more fat on my arm covering the muscle.  By the time I hit 50, I noticed a decrease in arm strength.  Lifting heavy items to put them on a top shelf was not as easy as it used to be. I started to read articles in The New York Times and elsewhere that said I was losing one percent of my muscle mass each year. This was alarming.

And then I started noticing that many women were developing  biceps as large or larger than mine. I was walking in Midtown Manhattan one day, when I saw a young woman with biceps the size I had formerly only seen on men. These were not cute fitness biceps from aerobics; these were cannonball-sized guns on a beautiful woman.  And I loved them on her! And beyond that, I wanted them on me.

Continue reading →

Getting in Touch with My Inner Nascar Redneck

11 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Men, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

photo 2By FRANK TERRANELLA

I think that we over 50s stay young through new experiences. You say you’ve never been scuba diving? Jump in, the water’s fine. Never been to the opera? No time like the present. Recently, I crossed an item off my bucket list. I attended my first NASCAR race.

Now some of you may be wondering why it took me 61 years to try the most popular spectator sport in America. My only defense is that I’m from New Jersey and there is no NASCAR in New Jersey, never has been. The closest racetrack for me is 90 minutes away in the Poconos. So unless you have family or friends who are fans, NASCAR is not on your radar in the state with the most roads per square mile in the nation.

Only recently has a New Jersey NASCAR fan become a friend. My daughter’s boyfriend has been going to NASCAR races since he was a boy. So when he mentioned that he and his family were heading out to Pocono Raceway for the weekend, I expressed a desire to go along. So my daughter and I got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and headed to Pennsylvania to meet up with her boyfriend’s family who had rented an RV and were waiting on the Pocono Raceway infield for us.

If you’ve ever been to a horse race, you know that there is a center portion of the track that is usually green but not inhabited by fans. Car racing is a bit different. First, the track is about twice the length of a horse track and the infield is accordingly much larger. In fact, it’s large enough to accommodate hundreds of RVs. This is like the biggest tailgate you could imagine. Everyone brings grills, lots of food and unimaginable quantities of beer. In fact, everything about car racing is supersized. The racing is like horse racing on steroids; the tailgating makes football fans look like rank amateurs. Even the crowds, in excess of 200,000, are far beyond any other spectator sport.

It took an hour, but my daughter and I finally reached her boyfriend’s RV parked on the track infield. The first item on the agenda was breakfast, and the bacon, eggs and sausage were among the tastiest I’ve ever had. We took a walk around and noticed RVs with satellite television and RV’s with rooftop terraces. We also noticed a lot of Confederate flags.

Now I would expect to see the stars and bars south of the Mason Dixon line, but we were in northern Pennsylvania, about 150 miles north of Gettysburg in fact. So the presence of large numbers of Confederate flags was puzzling. The cars in the parking lot did not indicate that Southerners had driven north for the race.

photo 4 (4)

No, I found out that the stars and bars has become the flag of Redneck Nation. People who simply identify themselves as rednecks fly the flag, in some cases totally ignorant of its historical significance as a flag of slavery for African Americans. And as I looked around, the only people of color I saw were security personnel. There were also far fewer women than men. It seems that NASCAR is a predominantly white male pastime. Fortunately, I fall into that demographic, at least on paper.

As race time came around, we all went to the fence separating the infield from the track and watched the cars whizz by. I have to say that I enjoyed the race itself and all the people we met were extremely friendly. I am glad that I went for the experience of it, just as I was glad that I visited the Guggenheim Museum the previous Sunday. I think that the overlap of customers at the two is probably quite small. But I’m glad that it includes me. In fact, I would not mind attending another NASCAR race in the future. But this weekend, I’m going to the National Gallery.

Five Stages of Liberal Grief

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Men, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

stage exportBY FRANK TERRANELLA

There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” As a lifelong liberal, I have been going through them since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

Stage 1: Denial — When Reagan was elected, it seemed to me that this was just a “throw the bums out” reaction to the incredible inflation and gasoline shortages we were experiencing at the time. It didn’t help that Jimmy Carter was perceived as weak on Iran and that Nightline reminded us every night for 444 days that 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage. It turned out that Reagan and the Republicans were like the house guest who never leaves. They occupied the house on Pennsylvania Avenue for 12 years. And then with only a break for a conservative Democrat who gave us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Defense of Marriage Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the repeal of Glass Steagel, we had another 8 years of so-called “compassionate conservativism.”

Stage 2: Anger — By the time George Bush was “elected” in 2000, my denial was over. Now I was angry. I was angry first that an election had been stolen and then that the thief was hell-bent on starting a war in Iraq. For the first time since the 1960s, I marched in the streets and took part in vigils against the war. The anti-war efforts were completely ignored by the Bush administration. The anger dissipated after a few years.

Stage 3: Bargaining — By 2004, a helplessness feeling had set in. What could we have done better to elect John Kerry? Clearly our message had not gotten out. Were we doomed to have a President who was a joke to the rest of the world? Perhaps we could compromise some principles in order to elect someone who was not a liberal but was at least a moderate. The bargain we struck got us Barack Obama who immediately took compromise to a new level by adopting the Republican healthcare plan.

Stage 4: Depression — As I watched a Democrat expand the use of drones, wiretaps and deportations to unprecedented levels, depression sank in. This was “our guy” doing this. What is it going to be like when the next inevitable Republican takes over?

Stage 5: Acceptance — Just this year, as I turned 61, I came to the realization that I am never going see the kind of nation I thought I’d see when I first became socially conscious 45 years ago when my age digits were reversed. I also will never get to travel to the Moon or own a flying car. In the decade or so that I have left before senility sets in I will have to accept that I live in an imperfect world. Good ideas don’t always beat bad ideas. Altruism doesn’t always trump greed. I have officially entered the cynical sixties.

But just to be sure I don’t get too cynical, I have also this year been given a wonderful grandson in whom I can place all my youthful hopes and dreams for America. I may never get to see a kinder and gentler America where guns and wars are rare and where equality pervades every segment of society. But Bryce may see it. One can only hope.

Ellis Island: A Lens to Immigration History

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Opinion, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Ellis1

By FRANK TERRANELLA

Like many New York-area residents, I have never been to many of the tourist meccas like Ellis Island. And since three of my four grandparents were immigrants, I decided on a beautiful Sunday morning recently to see the ground zero of 20th century immigration for myself.

The great thing about a visit to Ellis Island is that the only way to get there is by boat. Of course, that’s the way it’s always been. Between 1892 and 1954 immigrants arrived at Ellis in boats from all over the world. The boats today run a route that includes Liberty Island along with Ellis Island on every trip. So even if you just want to see Ellis Island, you get a free trip to Liberty Island thrown in.

Ellis Island was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and some exhibits are still not back. But what’s there is gold.ellis2 There are artifacts galore and you can tour the great hall where immigrants waited to be called up to be interviewed. You can see where they ate and where they slept. You can see an above-average orientation film that tells the full story of American immigration. And they don’t try to cover up America’s checkered acceptance of immigration. There are whole exhibits to “nativist” hostilities to every immigration group. For some, like the Asians, the dislike was codified into laws that forbade immigration altogether for decades.
But what surprised me most about visiting Ellis Island was the people who accompanied me on the boat. It seemed to me that the vast majority of my fellow visitors were immigrants themselves, or perhaps simply tourists from foreign countries. English speakers were definitely in the minority. And this dismayed me. It seems to me that it would do many native-born Americans good to see the lengths our ancestors went to to try to deal fairly and humanely with immigrants.

From my reading of history, and from the exhibits at Ellis Island, I know that the people who created and worked at the facility were not all big fans of immigration. Yet they followed the law, and I suspect they even bent the law sometimes, to give many needy people a shot at the American dream. The key, of course, was that the laws during the time Ellis Island was operating either allowed unrestricted numbers of immigrants (as long as they were healthy and could prove they had a way to support themselves) or set the ceiling on the number of immigrants high enough that people did not have to wait years or even decades to come into the country legally.

The tour guides at Ellis Island go to great pains to explain that not everyone who came to Ellis Island got to stay in the country. If you were found to have any disease or were otherwise “unqualified,” you would be sent back to your home country. In fact, a member of my family who was found to have tuberculosis was sent back home. He would return to the United States years later after being cured of the disease.

I think that anyone who visits Ellis Island comes away with two thoughts: (1) it was a tough, nerve-wracking way to come into the country but, (2) the process was designed to be fair and efficient and it was that most of the time. One of the rooms you can visit is the make-shift courtroom where immigrants who were being denied admission could have their cases reviewed by administrative judges. The hearings went on all day, every day. Many were able to convince hearing examiners that they were being denied entry unjustly. Contrast this to the detention facilities we have today for unqualified immigrants that provide no right of appeal.

Clearly the immigration situation today is much different than it was 100 years ago. But when you visit Ellis Island, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, you can’t help but be thankful that Americans then, while not being crazy about the hordes of immigrants filling up New York City, were compassionate enough and intelligent enough to let them in, in the hope they would contribute to the country.

Essentially, in those days, America made a bargain with the world. You can come here if you promise to work hard and help make America a better place. Even the most ardent immigration opponent would have to agree that the immigrants who came through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954 kept their side of the bargain. Are we sure that the thousands of people we turn away today because of ridiculously low limits on the number of immigrants cannot similarly contribute?