My Year At The Sorbonne

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

May 2011

Actually, my year at the Sorbonne was a year in Paris without the Sorbonne. You see, although I was registered for a Doctorat d'Universite I never attended any classes for the simple reason

they were all in French!

The year was 1951. In order to qualify for my G.I. Bill monthly check of one hundred and five dollars as a married man, I had to establish a subject for my thesis. I met with my advisor, who fortunately agreed to conduct the interview in English.

"Blake," I said.

"You Americans," he said. "All you know is Blake. Why don't you do Washington Irving in Spain. He's American, a wonderful writer. You could go to Spain and do your research there."

Although I had been an English major in New York, and had a Master's degree, I was woefully ignorant of Irving's experience in Spain. I vaguely knew he was the author of Tales of the Alhambra and later learned he was the American Minister to Spain. At another time, when I eventually got to the Alhambra, I was sorry I had not done any work on that thesis idea.

Never mind all that. I liked all his other work, which included The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, A History of New York, Rip Van Winkle and a host of other writings collected in The Sketch Book.

My wife Roz and I were overjoyed to devote the year to experiencing the food, wine and culture of Paris. Hotel living was far from pleasant, however. But fortunately the student services of the Sorbonne got us a small apartment in the fourteenth arondissement near Montparnesse where we thrived as happy residents despite the lack of hot water. The public baths and heating up enough water on our two burner stove for a bath kept us fit.

We did not have a refrigerator, but I loved shopping every day in the neighborhood food and wine stores and learned enough French to get by. One day in a butcher shop it occurred to me to ask the patron, "How long would it take to eat a cow?" I don't know what came over me to ask such a question.

"What did he say?" asked one of the local customers who was there that day. When he relayed my question to them an intense discussion on the fringe of an argument ensued until one asked, "How many in the family?" I don't recall the final result, but most of the group was satisfied with the response.

The cafe night life with the gang that we got to know was ideal, just hanging out, having drinks and engaging in hours of discussion on just about every thing. We were living the free life of expatriates soaking up all that Paris had to offer us in our twenties. The parks, the neighborhoods, the sites. You cannot describe how beautiful it all was. Late nights and sleeping in the next morning was a fragrant routine, listening to the French radio with some tantalizing comprehension. Reading so many books. Trying to write.

How we managed to find a beat up VW Beetle we could afford in a newspaper ad was a miracle of sorts, which gave us runs through France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Holland, often breaking down but finding people who could keep it going for very little. Each trip a story, documented in four notebooks we kept religiously. So many memories. Always wishing, wishing the dream would never end until we ran out of money enough to supplement our G.I. checks and had to return home to the U.S. to find work and our changed lives.

To this day, so many years later, we have applied the rich lessons we learned during those glorious days in the City of Light. Paris, we will never forget you.

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Exercise

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

April 2011

I have several ways to exercise.

It's a serious endeavor, because everything I read about exercise says it is good for you. I do not like to exercise, no matter how healthy it's supposed to be.

I may be an exception in that there are a lot of people on the streets running, whether it is hot, cold, raining, or probably somewhere snowing.

There are also stores that have exercise machines in the window with people, mostly young sweating, who are the farthest thing you can imagine from needing to exercise.

Be it as it may, I try.

The first thing I do in the morning is go to the bathroom. Not to exercise, but to urinate or whatever. Then I have my orange juice, after brushing my teeth. There is some exercise there but not very much.

Before breakfast, because I don't want to upset my stomach, I stretch my legs then my shoulders. I have seen Asian people in the park throwing their arms around, so I try that a couple of times. That hurts my shoulders and my elbows, so I stop that pretty quickly.

Getting out of a chair is kind of tough these days, so I do that two or three times. It seems rather silly, but getting out of a chair can be important.

Don't misunderstand me, I know this is vital. I have a couch, and getting out of it is not that easy, but I don't want to become a potato.

Walking is the key to health, so I don't take the car to go a few blocks. We have a lot of hills in San Francisco, so walking isn't a piece of cake. I do not eat cake.

Diet is not exercise.

You think I'm kidding, but I know this is serious.

I used to play tennis. I enjoyed this even when I lost, which was more often than most. I switched to golf, which is as you may know, a game where one good shot brings you back for another try.

Drinking is not exercise, but it is far more enjoyable and not too bad for you if you don't do it to excess. Exercise in excess can be dangerous for your body. Joggers can overdo it to the point of losing their breath. That doesn't seem too bright. Swimming requires showering and risking athlete's foot in the locker room.

There surely is a point to exercise, and far be it for me to deny it, but how do you measure moderation? There must be a way to exercise without dread.

I am looking for that way.

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What Are People Actually Thinking?

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

March 2011

I've always wondered what people are actually thinking. It boggles the mind when you see what they do, what they say. Are they thinking? I took a course in psychology, way back when, to try to understand it. What I learned was when the environment of lab rats was put into turmoil, the rats went crazy. Is that our world today? Are people simply reacting to our nutty environment, the terror, the aggressiveness, the pace, the economy? Which came first, behavior or thinking?

You know what you are thinking. In the interest of trying to figure out what you or others are thinking, I thought I'd tell you what I am thinking.

I don't think you can surmise what goes on in a person's mind, one can't read their actual thoughts by simply noting their behavior. You can't overhear what they are thinking, as though they are doing a Shakespearean soliloquy.

I have to admit that in recent years I have started to think aloud, talk to myself. I am often alone for great periods, and suddenly realize that I haven't said anything for hours. My cell phone is just sitting there. Though I am married and have friends and family, I don't think aloud where others can hear me. So up to now no one knows what I am thinking, unless I tell them. When I write they may have some idea but writing is different.

A great many of my thoughts, I am sure, are not unique. I am a member of society and the human race, which is comforting, though I like to think I am me and no one else is me. My thoughts, as yours are too, were different when we were young, growing up, getting an education and at different stages of life.

So what are some of the things I have been thinking lately?

I have done a lot of reading in my time of philosophy and psychology and the classics. They are a part of me, but I don't think of them actively that much now, with some exceptions.

When I look in the mirror in the morning I sometimes talk to my image. Who are you I wonder? What do people think about you? They see my profile and the back of my head, which has to give them a different view of me physically, in addition to the frontal view that is familiar to me.

When someone calls out my name I am somewhat surprised, though of course I shouldn't be. I use their names, why shouldn't they use mine? My parents named me and for the rest of my life I have come to realize that is me. If I had changed my name, which I had thought of doing, would that also be who I am?

And what does it mean to be a senior, to have lived a portion of what others call history? I was "it" a while ago in a game of "Trivial Pursuits." I had to select a category. I was not up on sports or contemporary music, or so many other things. I knew something about history, so I chose it. Every question was about something that had happened in my lifetime. History!

To have lived through the Great Depression, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, all those presidents. Other people's history.

Have you ever thought about all the numbers in your life? Social Security, your land telephone number, cell phone number, your address, the phone numbers and addresses of the people you know, if you work, all those numbers, how much money you have, how much you have lost, your library card, your credit cards, pin numbers, checking account, passwords, license plate, driving permit, passport number, date of birth, wife's or partner's numbers, your combination lock, your safe deposit box, the temperature, the distance of the moon and the planets, how many days in November, your weight. You get the picture. Be grateful you are not on Roman numerals. How do you remember all those numbers?

I think a lot about my wife, of course, and my friends and family, and I'm sure they think about me, though one can't know exactly what they are thinking. Fiction describes people, some times going into their heads, added to the observations of behavior. Can that be utilized to understanding the way people actually think?

Psychologists, philosophers, do they know? The closest I can come to guessing what you are thinking has to do with the news, politics, family life, relationships, sports, the movies, television, the economy, healthcare, things to buy. We think about what we see and hear on the media, to paraphrase Will Rogers, who ironically said he only knows what he reads in the newspapers.

Kids, teenagers, adults, tomorrow's seniors, heads full of thoughts, some wise, some banal. Sex, children, survival, jobs, money, pleasure, health, joy, fear -- all those thoughts, the good and the bad. We may not know them, but as the Bard reminds us, "Thinking makes it so."

One of the little things I think about is what I should have for a drink before dinner. Or whether I should have a drink. I have heard that having a drink, as long as it is not in excess, say two or three, isn't harmful. In fact, a glass or two of wine with dinner is actually beneficial. And enjoyable. Eating, in excess, isn't good for you. Nor is sex these days.

What else do I think?

There is, of course, the world, our country, the suffering and joys, what it all means, if that were possible.

Sometimes I am not thinking at all, just reacting, living the day. But when I am not day dreaming, there are more things I think about.

Bob Herbert, The New York Times columnist, makes me think about the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class losing that position in society that they have had since World War II. Are we losing our democracy, while Egypt and perhaps parts of the Middle East, may be gaining theirs?

Why do some people order Coke when they go out to dinner? Why do they order a hamburger at a good restaurant? Why do they dress down instead of up? Why do they shout and laugh so much in restaurants? Why is the music, if that's what it's called, so loud in restaurants? The French don't allow it. So much better for your enjoyment of a good meal.

Why do some people drive so fast, even in the rain? And so aggressively, without common courtesy?

Am I being too critical? I wonder about that sometimes. But not enough.

What do I like about some people? That they're nice, funny, interesting, look good whether they are good looking or not. Why don't I like Best Sellers, popular movies? Am I an elitist? What's so bad about being an elitist? Wasn't that once upon a time a distinction like a good education?

I think about my skin a lot. It's so vulnerable. Is that the word for sensitive? It cracks and sheds, gets so dry. It has lost its integrity, some one once told me.

I used to think about what people thought of me. No longer, though I want to think I still care, in a way. What are some of the other things I think about?

Security, relationships, what I should have said that time, the moon, the stars, the universe, evolution, faith, books I'm reading and have read, my education, money, death, my travels, my health, my garden, my 71 Olds Cutlass Supreme convertible, what's going on, where it's going, so many questions.

Enough about me. What are you thinking, right now?

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You're Only Dead Once

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright Elliott Joseph

February 2011

To life!

Hey, wait a minute. This blog is supposed to be entertaining. What am I doing writing about death? Well maybe what has an absolute end can help provide meaning to what comes before.

Ernst Becker opens his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "The Denial of Death," with a quote from Samuel Johnson, "The prospect of death wonderfully concentrates the mind." As the realization came to me of its eventuality, whenever that may occur, I began to prepare information for those who will have the responsibility of taking care of matters after I am gone.

What started this for me? Besides my own natural thoughts, I was faced with all those tragedies and disasters in the news, floods, tornados, storms, shootings, war, disease, the ever presence of obituaries.

But what sealed it for me was deleting the names in my address book of those friends and family members who have passed away. What a terribly sad and painful thing to do! Everyone dies, but how to accept it? If I could retain the names of the dead, perhaps their ghosts would comfort me.

There is so much being written about death these days. The media, the literature, the films, the theater. It's hard to escape it.

Live forever? Jonathan Swift cautions us about that, as you may recall from that part of Gulliver's Travels about the Struldbrugs.

"Happy notion where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal...their minds free and disengaged from the continual apprehension of death." What advantages I would acquire if I lived forever, I thought.

"The question," Swift writes, "was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would have a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it.

"Loss of teeth and hair, no distinctions of taste, eating and drinking without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue. In talking they forget the common appalation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations."

And so Emerson writes, "As the bird trims how to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, obey the voice of eve obeyed at prime; 'Lowly faithful, banishing fear, right onward drive unharmed; port, well worth the cruise, is near, and every wave is charmed.'"

And John Donne. "Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so."

For some, I guess, like Donne, "One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, death, thou shall die."

Every creature, from the beasts of the jungle to the tiniest insect, does everything it can to avoid death, and yet there are men and women and boys and girls who come to welcome it, though in truth, others embrace it tranquilly, if not eagerly.

Death?

To life!

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You're Only Dead Once

Ten Thousand Words?

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

January 2011

On Christmas Day The New York Times published The Year in Pictures 2010. To say they were remarkable, eloquent and breathtaking would not be an exaggeration. On the same day the San Francisco Chronicle published an article reporting that Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the last lab in the world processing Kodachrome color film, will discontinue its service at the end of the year.

Also reported was "The Last Kodachrome Photograph Show." The photographer Pat Willard, who will have four Kodachrome photographs in the show, refuses to use Ektachrome film and will revert to black and white.

My wife Roz Joseph, also a professional photographer, has refused to go digital and has given up taking pictures, leaving some thousands of color slides and prints in her collection.

With page after page of color photographs in the paper, especially in the Sunday Magazine, it is shocking that the Times has announced it is dramatically reducing (believe it?) the publishing of photographs starting the first of 2011, in an effort to bring back some of the ten thousand words that even one picture represents.

Words will continue to appear in the paper for those intrepid readers who wish to go beyond the captivating images brought to bear by a host of talented shutterbugs.

So what's going on? It is the development of the digital camera that may be behind the return of the printed word. Rapid technological advance of the camera from the days of the old Graphlex encumbered by its outlandish flash, has transformed photography to today's convenient digital devices which not only do away with film, but which, with alarming alacrity, backed by the extraordinary manipulations afforded by Photo Shop, produce frightfully gorgeous results, such as raising a model's awkward eyebrow and putting a sports car on the top of Mount Everest.

I am a victim as well as a beneficiary of this ease of producing good color renditions heretofore requiring the most careful attention to format and subject, and without the need of utilizing painstaking studio work aided by brilliantly creative lighting.

In a recent three week trip to Portugal, one of the world's most photogenic countries, I shot, without any particularly professional ability, over 700 not bad photographs with a pocket sized digital camera I bought for less than two hundred and fifty dollars. Gone were the heavy, expensive Nikons and their array of lenses with there countless boxes of transparency film, to shoot dozens of guesswork slides that I could show to no one without a projector and a dinosaur of a screen, while they dozed off in boredom. Furthermore, each of those friends and relatives, with their digital cameras could now produce rather excellent pictures, making my own unnecessary.

I must say I have taken some pretty good pictures myself in the past, have gotten some awards, and have been the subject of photographs by some excellent pros, such as the one shown here by the renowned travel photographer Carl Purcell, who had led the safari trip to Kenya that my wife and I took twenty-five years ago. Because of his talented eye he was able to make a snapshot look thought out, and it proved good enough to be published in newspapers across the United States and abroad, demonstrating that you don't need a digital camera to do a great job.

In my early career in advertising I learned to respect the agency's art directors and photographers whose now ancient equipment could produce outstanding work. Who read my words of copy that I labored over?

So it's actually the quality of the photography these days that is behind The New York Times possible thoughts about questioning the proverbial statement that a picture is worth ten thousand words. And the word may be spreading. Amazon is back to selling books. With Kindle, your average consumer is reading more, and turning from the thrall of the image.

Sports, travel, advertising, arts and leisure, Sunday styles, even The Week in Review, have been dependent on the photograph to grab the attention that only a glaring headline used to produce.

If the Times ever does cut back its photography, will you miss the ease of all those amazing pictures to tell you their story? Will it try to make you want to know more with the word?

"Taking photographs," writes Susan Sontag in On Photography, "has set up a chronic voyeuristic reaction to the world which levels the meaning of all events."

Will I lose my former love of the photograph? Is it too seductive, too easy to relate to? Has it become too time consuming to think? Too difficult to ignore? Will I miss the words?

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Alameda Sand Sculpture

By Elliott Joseph

Photography By Roz Joseph

Copyright 2010 Elliott Joseph

December 2010

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read."

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that marked them and the heart that fed,

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who can explain the compelling anti-Ozymandias passion to create beautiful sculptures and castles of sand, only to see them washed away within hours by a relentlessly approaching tide? This curious and highly vulnerable art form can be seen on countless bathing beaches around the world each summer, yet nowhere is it more poignantly and expertly practiced than at the Robert Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda, California where each June several hundred serious men, women and children compete in the Annual Sand Sculpture and Castle Contest.

They come well prepared to this broad expanse, with its handsome view of the San Francisco skyline. They bring home-made tools, shovels, containers for carrying and spraying water, a sketch of their planned sculpture, warm clothes for protection against the wind, and enough food and drink to sustain them during the feverish work session to meet the deadline and beat the water before it erases their painstakingly constructed achievements from the memory of mankind.

The sculpture must be made of sand, with trimming of wood, rocks and shells found that day on the beach. That's the only rule before they go to work, singly or in groups, on the small plot of beach assigned to them at the low tide morning registration hour. By mid-day their sculpture will have to be completed so that the judging, and the all-important picture-taking, can take place before the inevitable.

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