In which I am thankful for LaGuardia Airport

LaGuardia airport is just gross. Everything about it is gross. And worse than gross, LaGuardia is undependable. I once sat on the tarmac on a flight to Maine in the middle of July for three hours because there was a warning of rain. On another occasion, I almost missed a flight because the security line was so long that it stretched out of the building and onto the curb. So in preparation for a flight to Palm Beach this Thanksgiving, I gave myself ample time to account for any undependability and ended up sitting in the gross terminal bar for five hours before my delayed flight boarded.

As I made John Wayne faces while swilling martinis with too much vermouth, I was planted in front of a wall of television screens of varying sizes. Even though there were about 20 monitors behind the bar, they were each tuned to one of three channels: CNN, Headline News, or ESPN. It just so happened that terrorists had wrought havoc on Mumbai earlier that afternoon, so about 16 of these monitors were showing the burning Taj hotel while the others featured an obscure soccer match.

There is very little to do in an airport but drink, especially in LaGuardia, where everything one sees has that dingy, unsanitary look of something that could make you one of the first casualties in an international flu pandemic. For some reason, that day I had decided to wear a bowtie (I think I was excited for Palm Beach), making me unusually aware of my appearance. So I tried to read the latest issue of the New Yorker, in which the luminary historian Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates had written an article about his family’s history, living as light-skinned blacks in Maryland.

But my reading was continuously interrupted by breaks in the story out of Mumbai, where a hundred people were thought dead, and by travelers occupying and vacating the bar stools next to me. I was annoyed and jealous that these people were whispering to their companions and laughing and smiling, and galloping off to their on-time flights, hand-in-hand. I couldn’t help but wonder if their private, cooing conversations, included giggles about that nerd at the bar by himself with a bowtie.

Paris Hilton’s Stars are Blind came over the radio while I was ordering my third martini, an action that elicited a couple of raised eyebrows from the bartender. I shrugged it off with an ego-stroking thought about how she works in an airport bar, and then felt guilty for my elitism and decided I would order the turkey club, which I had heard was the second best thing on the menu, after a foul-looking quesadilla that had been delivered to some now-departed barstool neighbors an hour earlier.

The turkey club was prepared atrociously, but in a fashion not uncommon to airport eateries: they had reheated a pre-made sandwich with the lettuce and tomato intact. Warm lettuce is grosser than LaGuardia. But I took a bite anyway, and found it to be as expected: gross. My second bite reminded me of a Thanksgiving eve three years prior.

My family’s tradition has been to spend Thanksgiving with my paternal grandmother in Phoenix. Three years ago, I was the first to arrive in Phoenix, having taken a morning flight from New York and arriving at Grandma’s at about noon. I was famished and wanted nothing in the world more than a good Southwestern burrito. Grandma said she knew just the place, and she drove me in her huge Cadillac past what seemed like a thousand corner burrito shops to a place called the Five-and-Diner, which was across the street from a perfectly yummy-looking Del Taco.

The Five-and Diner did not offer burritos on their menu, and when asked if they could make one especially for me, they said that they did not even have wraps. Devastated with disappointment and seething with incredulity, I ordered a turkey club, to which my grandmother remarked that I was foolish to order a turkey sandwich the day before Thanksgiving. She went further to admonish me for not getting enough fiber in my diet, citing the digestive tract’s need for the “weight” of fiber. My diet being sufficiently ridiculed, she turned to my spending habits and wondered why I was not responsible enough to live in New York City solely off of my $28,000 salary from the Whitney Museum. Finally, when I had eaten a quarter of my sandwich, she asked for a to-go box and had half of it wrapped “for later,” saying that I didn’t need to eat the whole thing just then. When my parents arrived later that afternoon, I told them that I never, ever wanted to be left alone with her again.

This Thanksgiving, the family congregated in Palm Beach, as two of my cousins had babies in the last eight months and were not traveling with their infants to Phoenix. Grandma didn’t make the trip, for among the many things that just aren’t done in her opinion, 88 is far too old for a lady to travel by air. I held her great-grandson, Lawson, and marveled at the next generation, while her great-granddaughter, Taylor, giggled in my sister’s arms nearby. While that night’s meal did not contain a lot of fiber, it did feature a 1999 Dom Perignon and a 2001 Saint-Emilion. My cousins and aunt had been in the kitchen for hours, making every Martha Stewart recipe they could get their hands on, and the meal they presented was out of this world. Deep fried turkey is as moist as they say. I finished the evening with a single-malt scotch and watched my cousins fight their progeny to bed.

And wow am I fortunate! It is so easy to feel self-conscious and put-out (especially in LaGuardia), but looking at the reactionary smiles of my new cousins, one can’t help but consider the world they inherit and the place we have in it. Taking my airport delay as a microcosm, I have the following for which to be thankful:

• That those closest to me are safe and not abroad and under attack by terrorists;


• That my small cousins will grow up in a time when they will not see the discrimination that Skip Gates’s family did;


• That, like the couples who came and went during my sojourn at the terminal bar, I have people whom I love and who love me in return;


• That I have the luxury of knowing that warm lettuce is gross, as is LaGuardia;


• That my education and other opportunities I have been afforded allow me to work in places unlike airport bars;
  
• That the clothes I wear to mortification are made of cashmere and silk;


• That my grandmother, for all the battiness and preaching that she has assumed with age, is in good health and still playing golf; and


• Burritos.

Peyton Place

Even though it has been in its fancy new building for nearly a year, I recently went to the New Museum of Contemporary Art for the first time since it re-opened. The building has some high points and some “meh” points. Most strikingly, the elevators are very high-tech and painted in a vibrant green, which is very cool, even though it makes everyone look a little sickly. The galleries themselves are nothing to write home about (but in that they spent nearly $100 million on the building of a New York museum, the fact that the galleries are sub-par actually is worth mentioning). I can’t tell if the design includes adjustable fluorescent lighting, but the hum of the overheads distracted me while I was looking at the art. The gallery rooms are pretty small in general. I suppose that could have been used to the rooms’ advantage, creating intimacy, but the soaring ceilings negated any headway to be made on that front.

Whatever the building left to be desired, the art satisfied. The premiere show at the moment is a two-floor, mid-career retrospective of one of my favorite contemporary artists, Elizabeth Peyton. Peyton is the heir apparent of the great Los Angeles portraitist, David Hockney. Like Hockney, Peyton’s works are vibrant, sumptuous, and deliver an ethos of the subjects that is at times light-hearted and at times darkly brooding. Although she is a young artist, her work is endlessly engaging, and her talent is so immense, her background so well informed, and her skill so cultivated that one can't consider her beautiful oils without recalling masters from Raphael to Renoir. I don't mean to overstate things, but let's just say that I am fan.

I could write a tome on Peyton’s paintings, but for just a little catharsis, I only want to talk about the intimacy of her paintings. In dimension, they rarely exceed about 18 inches, making them a thoroughly engaging scale for the viewer, and most of the scenes she depicts are from a viewpoint of about one to four feet…very intimate portraiture. Her style is at once painterly in broad strokes of rich color, and delicately linear in representing the refined features of her young, often androgynous, models. Her subjects frequently are in vulnerable, quotidian situations, sometimes asleep, sometimes eating out of a take-out tin, sometimes sightseeing abroad. Still others are taken from tabloids and historic or archival photographs, especially of royalty, rock stars, and early feminists. No matter the individual, whether one of her lovers or Elizabeth Arden, the paintings have a spontaneous quality that can be breathtaking and elicit a range of emotions. If you have the chance to see this show, I highly recommend it.

On a personal note, the title painting of this show, Live Forever, was the anchor image for the advertising campaign during the 2004 Whitney Biennial, for which I had a marketing role beyond my years. I worked with Ms. Peyton for a short time in ironing out the details for the Museum’s use of the image, and our interactions were extremely enjoyable. I cannot be happier for her in seeing the first American presentation of a survey of her work. The show is lovely, as is she.

In God We Trust

Religion has played an important role in my life, but not for the usual reasons. Instead of providing me with the consoling or motivating faith of a divine presence, it has helped me to understand society, to build my cultural values, and to engage history from a third-party perspective. I guess I should explain.

The community in which I grew up was not terribly diverse, and in my High School class of 200 or so, I was one of two Jews (mind you, my mother is Jewish, my father a non-practicing Methodist). It didn’t really bother me, as I had no formal Jewish upbringing, attending bar mitzvahs only two or three times by age 18 and only sporadically attending casual Seders with family friends in the area. The first time I remember religion having a great impact on my life was when I was about 16 years old, and one of my classmates—a daughter of an evangelical missionary—found out that I was Jewish, pulled me aside between classes, and earnestly told me that she was afraid for me because I was going to hell.

Well, since then, I have made peace with my damnation, and I know it might be cliché to say it, but there is no way we all are getting into Heaven, and if there is only room for Christian radicals or exploding Islamic extremists, I feel more comfortable taking my chances with eternal fire. I am a Jew and a homo, after all, and the people “down south” likely will be more interesting anyway.

In all seriousness, the gospel in my household was Science. My mother holds degrees in Chemistry, Biology, and Geology, and my father is a practicing soils scientist. Chat around my house centered on watersheds and sandy loams. My parents left for weeks at a time, not to convert the heathens in Africa, but to map the soils of the Grand Canyon. Family vacations were spent looking at alluvial fans from the Pleistocene and trying to find glacial polish on granite throughout the American West. Sundays were anticipated, not for weekly sermons, but for the escapades of wildebeests and lions on PBS’s series, Nature.

With this background, I took a more cool and calculating approach to religion than most people might, and I really began philosophizing my beliefs while in college, when my exposure to diversity and drive to contemplate were at the highest levels to date. I came up with a system of beliefs that is not spiritual, basing my understanding of religions on my scientific upbringing, believing that all things ultimately are explainable. Sociology is the underpinning for my religion, which boils down religion to the most basic parts that have guided society for many millennia. So it is little wonder that the oldest of Western religions is the one with which I identify most readily. I consider myself a Jew, but my faith is not so much in a higher power as it is in humanity.

I believe that some Biblical accounts are historical and that some are fable. I believe that the Ten Commandments are the underpinning of Western society, not because God gave them to Moses with a mandate, but because they are the tenets that allow people to function as a group: don’t kill one another; don’t take things that aren’t yours; respect others; don’t lie; remember you need your rest. Really, I believe that the last seven commandments are the ones that have helped Western society to function for the last 3,000 years and that the first three are the imposition of beliefs on non-believers (There is only one God, I am it, and I will get angry if you worship anything else).

What is really interesting to me is that in the text, both in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, the Bible uses the notion of freedom from slavery as the reason for which this single deity should be worshipped:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…; (Exodus 20:2)

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm…. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

I do not pretend to be a scholar in backing up these beliefs. I am no holy man, I do not have an advanced degree requiring years of study, and I have not read the Bible cover to cover (though I think I might try). So you can imagine my fascination last night in watching PBS, which presented three programs on Western faith. The first, on Nova, blew my mind. It took a critical look at the first five books of the Bible—the Old Testament or Torah for my tribesmen—and sought to discover what could be factually substantiated through archaeology in order to devise an hypothesis about the beginnings of Western religion. It was captivating, and for people who are not entirely blinded by their inherited faiths, extremely plausible.

Without going into it in detail at all, the theory presented is that:

1. the book of Exodus is the oldest book of the Bible;
2. most Israelites were actually Canaanite slave classes, who rose up and conquered the elite classes, then spreading throughout the hills of modern Israel (or per Exodus, wandered the desert for 40 years); and
3. the idea of a single God and freedom from Egypt came from a small band of slaves who actually did escape from Egypt, eventually joined the Israelites, had a religious experience along the way, and shared their experience with the newly free Israelites, who were thirsty to establish a new society.

This theory is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this new society, which spawned Western religion, was based on a tale of freedom.

Is it unthinkable, therefore, that in our current age when political systems hold at their center the idea of freedom, Democracy might be replacing religion as the tie that binds people together? After all, according to Exodus and Deuteronomy, freedom is the reason for which we should believe in God in the first place. Could it be that participating in Democracy is really being in the presence of God? Is this Heaven? If we could ask a Canaanite slave what his heaven would have been, could it have been Democracy?

And in the discussion regarding civil liberties—especially right now surrounding Proposition 8, in which hell-bound Americans are up against the Catholic and Mormon churches—what should we be valuing above all else, freedom or God? And what if those are the same thing?

Sheep (Black and Otherwise)

So here we are, on the eve of what has been called perhaps the most important election of several generations. The process to get here has been so long and ugly that I am at once relieved to know that after two years of listening to people blame their colleagues for the messes in which our country finds itself, tomorrow the national tone will change from accusatory to a general hopefulness. And I believe that this shift will take place no matter who wins.

Of particular interest to me (and the one which gives me the greatest hope) is the chance to see the nation’s reaction to its first African-American President. In terms of a presidential candidate, Barack Obama is a no-brainer for me: inspirational, energetic, controlled, intelligent, wholesome, tolerant, and willing to admit his mistakes. Obama has assembled a platform and ticket that, on the whole, amount to smart politicking, as well as compelling reasoning for America’s current needs.

N.B. I am not going to address the McCain-Palin ticket or platform more substantively than to say that at every juncture one of the following words would be used: misleading, inappropriate, insulting, absurd, illogical.

I think that if Obama were a white man, this election would turn out to be even more of a landslide than what I currently think will happen. It would be folly to attempt a blog treatise on racism in America, but I think that I have a unique perspective in many respects to share with an anonymous public.

I live in Harlem, New York City, perhaps the most historic African-American neighborhood in the country, and I work at one of its most storied institutions. Harlem is a great place to work and, for me, has been an incredible place to live, not only for its nuanced sense of community, but also for its stark contrast to my upbringing.

While my loving, and open-minded parents laid the foundations for a similar son, I can’t look back at many of my most formative experiences and point to any that helped to prepare me to confront the history or implications of race-related issues in this country the way that I recently have: I grew up in a town that had put fewer than five black people through my high school. I spent summers at often ritzy science and fine-arts camps, travelling with my family, and working on our vineyard in Northern California. I went to an elite college in New England, and for all the administration touted diversity, they needed a special scholarship and training program to attract students from diverse urban areas.

Shortly before I moved to Harlem 2.5 years ago, an African-American friend of mine said to me as we strolled to the infamously preppy Upper East Side burger joint, J.G. Melon, “Nathan, you have absolutely no idea what it is like to walk through a neighborhood and have people look at you the way they look at me here.” Mind you, she said this from behind her Gucci sunglasses, while slinging her Chloé handbag and floating down East 74th Street on Jimmy Choo heels. She was dressed as impeccably as any Park Avenue matron we came across, and she also was right. That is, she was right until I moved to Harlem.

The issues surrounding race in America do not constitute a quiet undertone that might be silenced by the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. While I have been accepted by those who see me on a daily basis as a good neighbor and new Harlemite, I have been spat upon, called epithets, blamed for gross stereotypes of white people, mocked, and even avoided due to my skin color. Don’t get me wrong; these occurrences are very few and far between, and I still enjoy my adopted ‘hood. However, to think that by electing Senator Obama to the presidency, we finally will put to rest much of the “race issues” in America, we are only kidding ourselves.

While a President Obama certainly would symbolize how far our discourse on civil rights has come in a relatively short amount of time, my walk to work every morning shows me how much farther we have yet to go. I see a number of consistent symptoms of disenfranchisement around me every day: the number of canes, wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches on Frederick Douglass Boulevard at any hour of the day or night is astounding. The number of mothers who scream at their sobbing infants and even become physical with them in public is disturbing. The language used by the young people on the streets is appalling. The number of drug-addicted beggars is heart-breaking. These are the manifestations of feelings of powerlessness, low self-worth, disenchantment with the system, inaccessibility, and an unrecognized appreciation and specialness of their culture in the mainstream.

Yes, President Obama would be a great, gleaming symbol of progress for the role of minorities in this country, but I also hope that his election would signal the next needed step in racial equality, that of empowering marginalized populations to strive as individuals and communities and to respect the role they play in this country by understanding that it, in turn, is valued—ultimately, to enfranchise them as never before.

That will be the importance of an Obama presidency for Harlem: on the direct and practical side, greater accessibility to healthcare, more emphasis on bolstering underperforming schools, creating more employment opportunities, and more favorable tax policies for people in the lowest brackets; and indirectly, creating a new era of respect and leadership among people who identify with many shades of skin tone, outspoken women, middle names like Hussein, and who come from places where the “traditional home” never has been the norm.

Harlem has a lot riding on these returns. I feel so lucky to be here for this.

Dearly Beloved

For all that the press sensationalizes politics, from disproportionate coverage of candidate gaffs to sweeping characterizations of "the average American," I do agree with the sentiment that November 4 will be a landmark day. As is any person engaged in his society, I am on edge to see what choices my countrymen will make and to measure up the extent to which my beliefs and "self-definitions" are reflected and respected as we all cast our ballots.

Putting aside the presidential contest for a more focused, future post, the vote that has captivated my attention, incited my ire, and made me into a political fundraiser is Proposition 8 in California. Unfortunately, it is not incredible that a measure that "eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry" has the support of a dangerously potent half of the Californian electorate. However, two facets of this measure have me livid: 1) that it would mark the first time in American history that a constitutional amendment were adopted to remove rights from a targeted group of people; and 2) that people are using the measure as a chance to write their religious views into law.

Amending California's constitution as Prop 8 suggests is dangerous on many levels, perhaps the most serious of which is setting a precedent for legal discrimination. Proponents justify their stance on numerous bases, the most rational (and I use “rational” loosely here) of which are that they wish to protect the institution of marriage and do not want their children to learn about same-sex couples in school. Both of these positions are based in a fear of the unknown: Will we have to pay more taxes if same-sex couples are allowed to marry? Will my children be gay if they know about same-sex marriage? Is my marriage impacted because the State defines it differently than my church? Why do they want to be "married" anyway; they can't have kids, right? I hate gays.

The truth is that none of the above fears matter when it comes to the laws of the land. The idea is equal protection under the law for those to whom it is entitled. Same-sex couples pay taxes, shop, vote, work, shop, create art, love, are committed to each other, shop, form families, pay mortgages, raise children, and shop. They are as much part of American society as any other paired-up folks and, therefore, entitled to the benefits that other people have. To deny them those benefits—let alone to strip them thereof—is to disenfranchise and to discriminate.

In this discussion, it is nearly impossible not to address the dichotomy of the word “marriage.” It is at once religious and it is associated with legal rights that extend far beyond California. There is an institutionalized gray area surrounding marriage between hard definitions in both spheres. For some reason, we still value oaths taken in the presence of something ordained as holy over vows simply stated in earnest. For instance, this summer I had the privilege of officiating the wedding of two dear friends. From my computer in New York, I became an ordained minister of a non-denominational establishment in Washington State and read my friends their vows in Texas three weeks later. Had I not been ordained, no matter how casually I came by my credentials, their marriage would not be legal. This is but one example of the ways in which theism still plays a part in our legislation (another glaring one is sworn testimony in the legal system). The social movements that are taking place right now and the dialogue surrounding religion are calling into question the place for religious beliefs in our legal system at all, but that, too, is far too dense a topic to address appropriately here.

I am a supporter and practitioner of religious freedom, and to remove that right is unacceptable. So too, by extension, is the imposition of religious views on American laws, which are designed to structure society in its multiplicity. That is why I am disgusted by the fact that an enormous amount of the funding to support Proposition 8 has been donated by and thanks to a mandate given by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By some accounts, Mormons have given more than three-quarters of the funds raised in the measure’s support. I will stop short of wishing the entire tribe back to Utah and simply state that until I am allowed to add my own chapter to the Book of Mormon, I will thank them for not trying to write their theology into the constitution of my home state.

One of the key questions that Prop 8 proponents ask in justifying their positions goes something like this: If we allow gays to marry, what’s next? Mormons (ironically) taking multiple wives? People marrying animals or machines? Turning a cheek to the outrageous comparison of homosexuals to animals and machines, my response is that our system of government has lasted so long thanks to its ability to be amended to evolve with our society. In terms of civil rights, Prop 8 is the equivalent of three steps backward.

If we want to eliminate the argument over the word "marriage," we could just remove "marriage" from all laws and future law-making. That would make it the intensely personal and spiritual institution everyone wants it to be and keep it from being dragged through the mud at all. In the meantime, it is unacceptable to deny a group legal rights, whether or not people are able to distinguish between that which is faith and that which should be law.

New Beginnings

I am surprised to make this attempt at proving to be an active participant in the blogosphere, never having committed to any sort of journal before, but at the urging of a dear friend, I am pleased to introduce myself to all those wonderful people out there in the dark, who might pick up what limited pearls I have to cast.

This blog likely will be an outlet and reflecting pond. The witty double-entendre that I selected for its title (thanks to said friend) plays on the facts that I quit smoking two days ago and overall tend to allocate too few substantive moments to consider my life, digest what goes on during the day, and relax. I have loads to say about the world in general, which continuously provides me with inspiration and challenges even those ideas that are the most steadfast for me.

While blogs are intrinsically self-centered, I do promise that among the introspection, musings on culture and politics, temperamental outbursts regarding a renovation project and long-distance relationship, and chronicles of ridiculous escapades with a bevy of larger-than-life girlfriends, you will find more than a passing moment of entertainment.

Subsequent posts will serve as an informal introduction to my personal history, but whatever readership these lines end up garnering, I hope that those who stumble across my collective thoughts consider them an interesting perspective from a thoroughly unique point of view.