9/11: 25 Years On, We Seem to Have Decided to Surrender, Never Mind Forgetting

Today, the day after the 25th year commemoration of the act of war that was 9/11, it is the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary, a feast that was added to the Catholic Calendar by Pope Innocent the XI to give thanks for the victory over the Ottoman Empire in the year 1683. The army of Jan Sobieski has asked for intervention through Our Lady of Czestochowa, and it was victorious. 

I only know this from the Magnificat Magazine, because when I initially tried to look it up online, interestingly the identity of the opponent, The Ottoman Empire, was muted. I found the following on Catholic Answers, offered as context. 

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/under-marys-holy-name-victory-in-vienna-september-12-1683

On this tragic anniversary, a tragedy perpetruated by human evil, not by some random chance, the repetition of the phrase, "Never Forget!" or "We Will Never Forget!" began to upset me because the phrase was in a long line of moments of cognitive dissonance I have had, and many others have had since that despicable day. In 2019, one of our young new generation Muslim representatives said this in part:

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties. So you can’t just say that today someone is looking at me strange, that I am going to try to make myself look pleasant. You have to say this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it. I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is a right you have.”

I read a comment like this, and so many online, on the public airwaves and in the remaining newspapers, print and online, and at least I think I might be losing my mind. I will tell you why. I love immigrants from other places, legal immigrants, as were my recent forbearers, who want to be part of the American Experiment, not ones who tell us constantly how evil we are.  Imperfect, yes. That's the result of the sin of Adam and Eve, but not evil. In fact, the history that you are busy revising, and we stupid native born, naturalized and those who chose to be citizens because they actually LIKE it here, are allowing, out of what Gad Saad has called "Suicidal Empathy", demonstrates that, at least for a while, the nation founded under God and natural law, was indeed a beacon. Although the Founding Father's and their progeny knew about Islam (Barbary Coast). The poor things likely had no idea that it would be paired with Communism, under the theory the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (That partnership is doomed to fail once they conquer the rest of us). Any questioning of the motives of an Ilhan Omar, is not prejudice, which has no basis in evidence or fact, it is based on a stated purpose and goal of a faith, and includes comments like that above. You are not comfortable that people wonder about your view of your faith and the United States, when you tell us what you think? The genius of Communism and of your approach as well is that you use our own principles, bastardize them, and then tell us we are not abiding by them. Some people did something. What people? Who? Why? Have we not been told that America is the Great Satan over and over? Yeah, you have a right to ask what the concerns of other Americans are. We have a right to ask without being accused of a prejudice that is not prejudice, but experiences, like 9/11 that pretty much confirm the statements, the history of a group that seeks and has always sought to conquer. 

The last days of memorializing 9/11 has brought stories that I never have heard in 25 years, some of them even more horrifically highlighting the barbaric cruelty of that day than when I first observed the terror on my television set. I think they were withheld so we would forget. And so the next generation would be made oblivious to it, as they are, the same generation who just cannot understand why they must work for money. 

Forgot? This is more than forgetting. I hope that these new revelations and reminders of the fact that people were tortured (things like jet fuel falling on them when the planes hit; having to choose to jump rather than be burned to a crisp) and murdered will reinstate some national memory. We have become hard of heart when it comes to truth. I never understood that phrase when I read it in the Bible. But when people act so consistently against not only the interests of others, but their own interests, hardness of heart is not only a moral failure, but a form of insanity. Stockholm Syndrome? We have been so brainwashed in the last more than 25 years about everything, that we actually walk into the trap with smiles. Even the Church forgets its own history with aggressors. 

We need to say it. We do not want Communism. We do not want Islam. We want the Judeo-Christian nation that was painstakingly crafted so that people did not have to worry about somebody doing something bad to us. But we have to wake up and reverse a trend that has been building even more horribly since what, the 1930s? And before. 

Are we giving up the Republic, or not?

This does not mean that we hate anyone. I hate no one. But when you say you want to hurt us, and you act on it, then we have a right to say, "You are not allowed to do this." We do hate principles and actions which demean, abuse, murder and enslave.We can forgive your transgression. But we do not have to allow you to commit others. You need to stop and if you decline, we have a right to self-protection. And that includes prudent suspicion. Small example. I went to my Church today to pray. It is one of the few places that keeps its doors open during the day. When I got there I heard a loud noise, and then realized there was a homeless man on the choir loft steps who did not look approachable. He had left his food and water on one of the tables. We live, alas, in a world where homeless, mentally ill people stab others from behind. Is that a prejudice, or a reality? I would never tell the man he had to leave, because he has a right to be there and he wasn't doing anything destructive. And I am still glad the doors are open. But I am not going to stay there with my back to him. Where is the unfairness, the cruelty here in this small example? 

I am already old and while I am seeing the destruction of our civilization far faster than I expected (which my late father warned me was coming in my time almost 20 years ago). Can you imagine Moses coming down from the mountain today? Commandments, what commandments? Too many are still dancing around the Golden Calf and sacrificing other humans to guttural impulses. Too many are standing by and saying to themselves, "It has nothing to do with me." Those people who died in three airplanes, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and from cancers of the pile of rubble that was once businesses and human beings, deserve better indeed. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/09/the-victims-of-9-11-deserved-better/

Remembrance: Aunt Terri, 1927-2026

I am usually able to write about people, places and things without much difficulty. But on this occasion, I am having difficulty indeed in composing this blog memorial to the last member of our immediate family's World War II generation. "Our" refers to my cousin Carol and I. Though we had a large extended Irish-American family (and I have a large extended Greek-American family as well), there was little interaction while we were growing up with those cousins, second, third and probably fourth. Aunt Terri kept up with them, but we had rare sightings. Whose explicit or implicit decision that was I cannot say. So, my cousin Carol and her nephew, also my cousin, Chris, in Seattle, (by her late sister, Barbara), are the lone remainders of a time and place, that to me, feels a galaxy away. 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the immediate Higgins/Moffatt core group lived in the same five story, walk up, tri-part building, on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx, near Mt. Eden Avenue and the still somewhat Grand Concourse. There was 1594, where my grandmother lived, and my oldest Aunt, Kathleen (although later we would be told she never lived there, a tale unto itself we never quite got to the bottom of), the Moffatt side, including my Uncle Frank's sister and her kids, Eileen, and later Patricia. Then 1596, which had only three apartments on each floor, where my parents and I lived on the fourth floor, next door to Uncle Frank and Aunt Terri. We shared a fire escape between our apartment bedrooms. And finally 1598, which was where (I might be off on who lived where I realize in the haze of time), my Aunt Rita and Uncle Ben lived with their two daughters. My grandfather, Andrew, who died only eight months after I was born, in December 1955, had been the building superintendant for some years, and the four girls, Kathleen, Rita, Rosetta and Teresa, had lived with him and his wife in the basement to which there was attached an apartment. We kids, me, Barbara, Carol, Eileen, (Patricia was too young), played in the courtyard regularly, and attended family parties at one or another of the apartments in each part of the building, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, birthdays, that to my mind, the eldest of the cousins, were too well fueled by alcohol and deep secret hurts, more than the presents and social joys of the various occasions. The age difference between me and my cousins was significant, even at 2 years and nine months older than my closest in age cousin, Barbara. By 1970, I was in high school. We had moved from the one bedroom in the devolving neighborhood to a two bedroom in a still pleasant area of the Bronx, near the Jerome Reservoir, not entirely up to my mother's standards and desire--a place with a doorman. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank moved to a luxurious high rise rental building on Broadway and 64th Street, right across from Lincoln Center in 1974, the same year my mother died at 48. Aunt Terri got the doorman my mother craved without being satisfied. People, over the years thought thereby that they had a lot of money. The family was scandalized that they were willing (or able) to spend the great sum of $450.00 a month to move there. The 37th Floor with a million dollar view. Or the higher up, the higher the million. But Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank had no kids, and they did have two incomes at a time when that was unusual, he being a bus driver and she being an executive secretary at places like Imperial Reading. And the place was rent stabilized. (Upon her death, the rent was $2050). By this time, the rest of her immediate family, my mother, Rosetta and father Constantine, her sister Rita (Carol and Barbara's mother) and Uncle Ben, and Uncle Frank's sister and family (Ronnie, Tommy and their two kids Eileen and Patricia) had already moved. By 1975, my mother, my Grandmother Higgins, and Carol's father had all died. This, of itself, shifted relationships. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank spent most of their social time with his sister Ronnie, and his other sister, Helen, and Ronnie and Tommy's kids in New Jersey. That part of the family remained intact at least for a time, while my side had already been pared down by death and separation. 

I had very little to do with Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank, and from my perspective, really, they had little to do with me after my mother died. I will speak for myself when I say that, though Aunt Terri was my Godmother, we were never particularly close during my childhood. If truth be told, I thought that since I never enjoyed the active social life that they generated with my parents in all the restaurants and Bars of New York, (my cousins and I went to such places at the Top of the Sixes, the Rainbow Room, El Morocco, Chateau Henri IV, the Cattlemen; I guess there were no babysitters) and at the family parties, which always led to extra strain in my parents' carefully constructed relationship, Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank found me a bit of a pill, a kill joy. Uncle Frank's nieces seemed more suited to going out than I did.  I was closer (if I were ever capable of it) to my Aunt Rita, who seemed to have a bead on what it was to be a child, in a way that neither my mother, nor Aunt Terri did. And, my Aunt Terri, seeing that my mother was perhaps too strict with me emotionally, and acknowledging it later in our lives, did nothing to intervene at key times in which she could have reminded my mother that I was a child, not a cat to be trained. (My mother was a cat whisperer). Those were the times. You minded your own business. I can hear my cousin Carol shouting as I write this, "No, No! that isn't right!!!"  But to be fair, most of the time, my life was calm enough, and it definitely was well provided in every way that even as I write this I feel guilty to suggest any lack. To the extent of the good and/or successful that I am, my mother and father were extraordinary. 

By 1981, after I got my law license in New York, I moved to Los Angeles, an intense dream I had had since my first visit in 1977. Aunt Terri came to visit once, maybe twice, while I lived here. We kept in touch by telephone and Aunt Terri regaled me with the happenings with her New Jersey nieces and in-laws. She remained close to my cousin Barbara until Barbara's untimely death in 1992.  But it was a sporadic and superficial relationship between us at best.  Carol was estranged from her and my other Aunt, Kathleen, for reasons I completely understood for many years. Ultimately, there was a rapprochement and after Uncle Frank died 26 years ago, and Terri remained in her Lincoln Plaza apartment alone, Carol began to visit and help as needed. For a short while, her grandnephew from New Jersey lived with her, but that did not ultimately work out. I never remembered Aunt Terri, or any of my Irish relatives, as particularly religious, and definitely not a regular church goer. After Uncle Frank died, Aunt Terri began to attend and assist at her local parish, where she made new friends. She was always very attentive to her old and new friends. I was amazed by the amount of correspondence she had maintained.                  

Her New Jersey nieces wanted her to move to them. She nearly found herself in the Garden State after a fall in the 2000s, but ultimately she was an inveterate New Yorker. She wasn't going to die anywhere other than in New York, and if she could manage it, in the same apartment. In the last decade or more, I found myself closer to my Aunt Terri, and she to me in large part because of Carol. The nearly eight years between Carol and I had compressed, and while we had had vastly separate lives when we were young, we became closer. I visited New York multiple times, stayed with Aunt Terri a few, and as I had seen my mother became ill, a coldness they shared, seemed to thaw. She would tell me how much, when I was born, that she had wanted me to be her child (she could not have children and Uncle Frank was resistant to adoption, according to Aunt Terri.) She would often tell me in her later years "Know that I love you. . . ." words that I never recalled from days long gone by. Aunt Terri was the remaining connection, the sole remaining connection, to my long dead mother. The affection she clearly had for my mother was enormous. Right across from her favorite chair was a large photograph of my mother to which she spoke regularly, telling my mother of whatever activities were going on here in California with me. To be fair, she spoke to all the other relatives and friends pictured in her apartment and to items she imbued with their essence. But I do think my mother got special priority. When a high end coffee and dessert place opened up on her block, called "Rosetta" she was delighted. It did feel slightly cosmic. 

When she could no longer get to Church, Aunt Terri had a regular, and wonderful, Eucharistic Minister, John, who sometimes brought his dog, Abby. She prayed the way I always have hoped to pray, in continuous conversation, ordinary conversation, with Our Lord. She was grateful for every day she woke up, even when activity became extremely limited. She loved her Yankees, and the original Perry Mason. There was even a picture of her and Raymond Burr by the television from one of her visits to Los Angeles, at the Sheraton Universal, where she stayed. And then there were the favorite old movies on TCM.

My cousin and I tried to get what we are sure are family secrets out of her. She circumvented, and sometimes I think, reinvented. Whatever the family secrets, they died with her. I don't know if that is for the best or not. 

I am glad to say that I decided to visit New York in April 2026, to celebrate her 99th Birthday, and share with her my birthday a few days later. She had the determination to live to 100, but every visit had demonstrated a lessening of energy and an increasing frailty. She was wearing out. We ate yet another meal from the wonderful Fiorello's downstairs, though it was take out because she really could not get around anymore, and refused a wheel chair (she only conceded to a walker in the last year). My cousin did it up, with sashes and musical cards and candles and chocolate cake. It was a perfect wrap up for all of us. 

I am always amazed at my cousin's manifest love toward her, truly wishing the best for the other. 

Aunt Terri fell, or passed out, or whatever it was around August 12, and was hospitalized at Mt. Sinai. She had resisted the idea of assisted living or more right up to that moment, but she knew, without being told (though she was) that she needed far more than my cousin could do. The way I see it, the way my cousin sees it, she decided it was time to let the Lord take her. She died on August 18, quietly. The way, I think, she wanted to, although she would have preferred it be in her apartment.

Her funeral was beautiful, where she wanted it to be, at her old parish, concelebrated by three priests, with a cantor with the voice of an angel, and joined by quite a few (considering that at her age so many people are gone, and that she had not been around the parish for some several years) of those who knew her. I stayed in her apartment a few days before it would be cleaned out, the apartment she had lived in 52 years. I memorized the view, the stuff, and took lots of photographs, recalled the moments and was grateful for the reconnection we had had. 

On August 26, I left 37A, leaving the keys on the kitchen counter, closing a big chapter of her life, and my own. I wish I could really pinpoint exactly what I feel. This is the best I seem able to do.

                                        

John Williams: The 94 Year Old Maestro Back on His Stage at the Hollywood Bowl

September 4, 2026. Every year, as part of a summer Hollywood Bowl package, there is a weekend for the music of John Williams. Until July 8, 2023, it was titled the Maestro at the Movies, and Mr. Williams conducted selections from his own works. You would have to have lived under a rock and never seen a movie or watched television not to have heard his compositions. When I was a kid, his early music welcomed and closed the Huntley-Brinkley Report. His was the theme for the Olympics for many a year, and remains so. He scored Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, ET, and Harry Potter, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler's List. He scored much people do not recall, but to which they might hum mindlessly with a soft pleasure. 

My friends, Len and Andrew, and a guest local or east coast visitor have been at these concerts multiple times. The highlight always was the innocence of the bulk of 17,000 people waving their toy light sabers of many colors in the open air venue as the Maestro conducted his famous Star Wars marches. In July 2023, he was joined by two other well known conductors, Gustavo Dudamel and David Newman, a scion of the famous Newman family of composers of movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s. If I recall Mr. Williams held a saber himself one of the nights. Every year we worried that maybe this would be his last hurrah, as the reality of age catches up even to the renowned among us. 

And then it happened. We heard that there were health problems, not particularly identified, but inevitable for any nonogenerian. He had to cancel this and that. To the extent he was seen, including at the dedication of the Hollywood Bowl Stage to him, he was wheelchair bound and frail. 

We still attended the summer event as part of our package, and we enjoyed it, but it lacked the verve that can only be present when the composer is, one who knew how to charmingly milk the audience with whether there would be an encore. He would drift off the stage, baton in hand, stopping for the cheers, and moving toward the wing of the stage, only to stop and do a little motion we called "sleepy time", his hands at his head to indicate he was done. But then he would come back and there would be another familiar piece. That looked to be no more after 2023.

Last night, Len, Andrew, and our visitor from the East (who had to be cajoled to make his usual trip to Southern California from New York, Matt, the son of our long time college friends) ate our sandwiches and mused about the good old days of this concert, now called "A Tribute to John Williams". We still enjoyed them, but I said, "They are really not the same." And based on press and photos, Andrew pronounced and we agreed with equal authority that John Williams would never appear again. 

Bryce Dallas Howard, the actress daughter of Ron Howard, did the commentary in between the various selections, slightly varied from the previous years. It included more of what I admit to enjoying a great deal, watching the film cuts to the accompaniment of the orchestra, just like sitting in a scoring session at a studio, except with thousands of people and under the stars. Some of these clips I hadn't seen in years and they were as affecting as ever. I was as happy last night as I was in the 1970s that ET got to go home, and that those kids flew on bicycles to meet his spaceship in a field. Dallas Howard noted that none of these magical things would be believable, could even happen, without the music of John Williams. They wouldn't have, for me. This I know. 

As always happens at the near end of a concert, lots of people were already filing out, so they could try to beat the rush of crowd and cars and escape to their homes. Sure, there would be an encore, but the evening was winding down. 

And then, whatever the Star Wars March to come, so that everyone could make a final wave of sabers, there he was, John Williams, the Maestro himself, being wheeled out toward the podium and the conductor, David Newman, and Bryce Dallas Howard, and facing us surprised as can be. We had just said with deep affirmation that we would never see him on stage again. And there he was, to the astonished cheers of everyone, cameras suddenly out.  We can speculate about what the health issue is, besides old age, and it appears he cannot speak. He certainly did not speak this night, but he conducted, as of old. No words, but an absolute sense of joy emanated from him as he conducted, and after he conducted. I found myself shrieking in appreciation. This was a rare cultural historical moment. I was, we were, overjoyed to be there to share it. But what I found is how much I loved watching him soak up the love of the crowd, and how he had this amazing personal moment and gave this amazing personal moment to us. 

And maybe to let us know he is all there, inside a well worn body of talent, he even did, "Sleepy Time". 

Will he be back tonight, and tomorrow, for the same show. Len, Andrew, Matt and I agreed, "if he feels up to it." So glad he felt up to it for sure on September 4, 2026. 

Others got better videos than I did, I was so discombobulated by his appearance. 

https://www.facebook.com/100078399062087/videos/2128077847808284/

I am having trouble downloading, so all I can say, since the mainstream has not really reported on it, go to FB or Instagram. Lots of videos.

Artemis Unveiled/In Another Age and Time by Constantine Gochis

This is another one of those stories that I know has some partial truth. The main character "Jim" was in fact a fellow veteran of my father's and he was indeed a police officer in New York. As for the rest, because at the beginning, my father gives a nod to Edith Hamilton with a quote, from her book "Mythology", I assume the rest is entirely fiction. Either way, I hope you agree it is interesting.

                                                             ARTEMIS UNVEILED

"Actateon, a great hunter was out hunting and, hot and thirsty entered a grotto where a stream widened into a pool.  But all unknowing he had chanced upon the favorite bathing place of Artemis, and at the very moment when the goddess had let fall her garments and stood in her naked beauty on the water's edge. The offended divinity gave not a thought to whether the youth had purposely insulted her or had come there in all innocence.  She flung into his face drops from her wet hand and he was changed into a stag. His heart became a deer's heart and he who had never known fear before was afraid and fled. His dogs saw him fleeing. They fell upon him, his own faithful hounds, and killed him." Edith Hamilton, 'Mythology'. 

IN ANOTHER AGE AND TIME

Big Jim called as usual just before Christmas.  He has phoned me at this time of year for more than twenty-five years.  We were buddies overseas in World War II and served together after the war in an army reserve unit. Jim's civilian capacity was, before and after the War, as a police officer in New York City.  He lives quietly now that he is reclusive and at an age when we are fated to a redundancy of memory and a repetition of oft told tales. I assume I will now be regaled with another oldie.  I am wrong. He mentions a name that has never occurred before in his garrulous dissertations--his partner, Barney, a detective with whom he spent years in the Vice Squad in those regions of the Bronx which, if one is wont to draw comparisons of degradation, was and still is comparable to a nether region of the ancient Greek underworld, Tartarus, or Hell.

"I know," he begins, "I never talked about Barney, and for good reason.  I didn't believe his story at first. One thing for certain, he had guts.  It was worth your life to venture into the areas of some of our assignments; you know, numbers, vice, prostitution, and murder were a daily occurrence. Nothing deterred him.  Barney was a hunter. He was fearless and he was feared. He was hated particularly by a new enclave of sectarian criminals from revolutionary torn Haiti. They were dreaded for a hitherto unknown type of criminal retribution--the profligate use of the machete. 

It was rumored they were headed by a woman, one never seen but prominent in legend. 

Then, one day Barney lost it. I can almost name the day it happened. It was the day we were on a drug and murder outbreak in the Haitian enclave of the South Bronx. We had a warrant to search a particular building. When we came out there was fear in his eyes. He acted as if there were someone or something behind him, and his hand was locked tightly on the butt of his pistol.

One day, when he had it particularly bad, he told me his reason for his sudden change from hunter to prey. It came afer we consumed a half bottle of Bourbon at a local gin mill.  

'Remember Jim,' he said, 'when we tossed that building on Cortlandt Street. I open the door on one of the most elaborate bath rooms I ever see, white marble, an immense tub, more like a pool--blinding golden fixtures. When I walk in she rises from the suds filled bath, brazenly nude, soap foam dotting the perfection of her golden brown body, a beauty such as I have never seen. I am startled, and paralyzed. She stares at me coldly and flicks a handful of suds in my face.'

I laughed when he told me all this. 'Forget it Barney," I said, 'that's pure supersition. There's no such thing as voodoo.'

I stopped laughing when his body was found, torn, as if by wild dogs."

All the News That's Fit to . . .Repeat. . .and Repeat (And No One Does Nothin' to Fix The Problem)

As I write there is once again, today, the not soothing sound of a helicopter hovering to "cover" a story.  I am out most days, but today I decided to do a few things at home and have had the opportunity to watch the news gatherers, the ones in helicopters, do their work.

Endlessly.

Last week, you may know, as it made national news, a water main, age 106 (when people actually built things that lasted), finally gave in and burst, flooding a major artery of Sunset Boulevard and a series of local buildings on Holloway and Palm Drives. Updating these pipes has been on the City of Los Angeles agenda (the damage was to West Hollywood, but the pipes are LADWP) for some time and getting it done was scheduled for some time in the indeterminate future. When the workers were able to shut off the water, and it could not be done suddenly, so the water continued to flow, some 200 cars were damaged or submerged in their car parks, and many who live on the ground floors of otherwise pretty lovely condominiums, had significant damage.  A popular eatery was damaged significantly. The apartment dwellers are now likely finding out that unless they had flood coverage (and why would they in this area of West Hollywood?) it is unlikely their home insurance or renter's insurance will cover. As to the cars, hopefully people have comprehensive coverage that includes flooding. 

The location of this particular event was about a mile from me, literally a block from the parish I have attended for 43 years, that was happily spared. There was hope that after pumping the water and repairing the pipe and testing the output and strength of the repair, concrete could fill the sink hole and the area reopened by this weekend. However, as of today, in an area where concrete was already poured there seems to be. . .a leak. For the first several days, if I were on my terrace I could see helicopters arriving and hovering through the day. I was not too distressed by the noise, which was somewhat distant, and I was fascinated watching how long one of these vehicles can hover before it has to make a circle, or, running out of gas, which I assume they do, they leave and are either replaced or get a refuel. The last couple of days the amount of time spent watching the progress of the fixing and filling of the sinkhole has been enormous. And much like the skit by Monty Python and the dead parrot, there really isn't a lot to report. Every day, effectively, the word is "They are trying to fix it." or "They are fixing it". Or, "they hope to open the street soon." West Hollywood's version of Nancy Guthrie is still missing. It is truly amazing how the news can say so much about the same thing and tell you that it is is, well, "news".

So, today. I hear endless helicopter sounds upon waking up. It is closer than usual. I mean, nearly over my own apartment, but Google offers nothing. I ask whether there might be a new water main problem, because of the new one that was also found on Sunset. I go to You Tube and put in the following:  "helicopter over Hayworth right now". And up comes the story.  A new water main break on the block next to mine, and flowing to Santa Monica Boulevard (which also got hit a bit, further west, with the first one). Air 7 (I am sure among others) tells us that it was over the scene and there was "a significant amount of water percolating out from the ground and onto the sidewalk and street."  A contractor they interviewed and filmed it said he was worried that these pipe problem "might become more common." Hmmm. A crumbling infrastructure, a feckless leadership that will be voted in in the next election, and earthquake country, I cannot imagine why anyone would be worried.

All day, a copter, the same one or different ones, I don't know, have been making regular trips to hover over the same spot to see what has changed. It stays for about ten to fifteen minutes each time (or it feels that long) and then leaves for a while.  Sometimes I can see it from my terrace; sometimes not. Here's a pic where I could see it. 

But even when I couldn't see a copter, it has been loud. And distracting. And, I know, one person's opinion, it's all brutally unnecesary in its repetitiveness.  It's two thirty. They have been gone a while. Maybe they have enough shots to repeat and repeat and repeat with "new" commentary that repeats and repeats. 

The exploding culture of obsessive observation for the news and for social media, and the noise,  exacerbate the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness at the deterioration of all of California and the fact that endless money for endless needs, education, homelessness, repair of roads, of aged pipes, seem to go missing without anyone ever being held accountable. And those who perhaps should be held accountable (and I leave you to decide who those people are) get re-elected and tell you how wonderful everything is.  The cognitive dissonance is nearly unbearable. My tack of late is to get just enough information to have a vague idea just in what details our world is crumbling but mostly close it out for day to day sanity. And prepare as best as I can for the Eschaton. Hopefully by tomorrow there will be a little less noise. But I am not counting on it. 

Pray with Our Lady of Fatima (June 6 to June 13, 2026, St. Victor Church, West Hollywood, California)

When has it not been turbulent in our world? And why do we insist that we can create a Utopia on our own strength, when clearly the evidence of previous efforts is that we fail explosively? That failure usually means the deaths of millions of innocent souls, and yet, the insistence on being our own gods persists. It began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve, who had everything, gave it all away with the "No" of disobedience to the Creator. Yes, it was a test of free will. Just one thing God asked you not to do. Eve did it first, Adam did not stop her, and worse, he followed her to pain and suffering. "I don't believe in a Creator!" you might retort. That's ok, He doesn't need my or your belief. He asks for it for our good and happiness, not His. He wants for us to share in His freely given gift, to share in His Divinity, not for us to seize it from Him and push Him out. Then why do we all suffer? Love cannot be given, nor reciprocated, in the absence of free will. Free will means that we can fail to give and reject love as well.  The hard answer is that human disobedience unleashed it all, and its randomness, from natural disasters to the death of children. What did the Apostles and others say to Jesus? "Lord, your sayings are hard." Then why doesn't God intervene?  He did. The fallen angels did not get that second chance because they had perfect knowledge of the truth. But as to us, He uttered His Son, Jesus Christ, who in two natures, Divine and human, atoned for our sins by allowing His creatures to crucify Him, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent His Holy Spirit, thereby extending a Divine Second Chance, expressed in the Catholic Church from and after 33 A.D. The first bad choice of Adam and Eve had consequences and those consequences cannot be reversed, BUT, each one of us can exercise our free will to say the "Yes" that the New Eve, Mary, the Mother of God said, follow Him through the door of death and be with God eternally. He reminds us of that offer all the time. He provided us the Sacraments, the visible signs of His continued Presence in the World, Sacramentals to dispose our hearts and minds to Him, Miracles, Saints, to help us accept the offer, because He knows how weakened we were as a result of the Original Sin, the disobedience of the creature to the Perfect Will of God.

May to October, 1917 was an extended occasion of one of those reminders. The Mother of God appeared to three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, in Fatima, Portugal. These innocents, simple shepherd children, were chosen to send her messsage, on her Son's behalf, and as the mother He had given to us on the day of His crucifixion. The message was of the urgency of  repentance and conversion to a world embroiled in World War I, a warning against an even worse conflagration (World War II) a rabid atheism and anti-Catholicism and Revolution in Russia that presaged Communism in many countries and has assiduously and violently sought to spread its errors everywhere. The weapons she offered were prayer, especially the Rosary, for peace and to convert hard hearts and wake up humanity to its acts of self-destruction, but mostly the ultimate horror, the eternal separation from God, from Love itself. 

Mary encouraged devotions especially of First Saturdays:

“All those who during five months, on the first Saturday, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say a rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary for the intention of making reparation to me, I promise to assist them at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 279-280).

Hard to believe? Yes. But did it happen? It is disputed mostly by modern atheists, while others, even Catholics, fail to commit to the idea that the God they say they believe in, existing outside of time snd space can orchestrate a mysterious, loving warning to His creatures to use their free will wisely in this second and final chance. The atheists of the day in Fatima certainly disputed that it could happen. They derided the stupid peasants, as now those who believe 109 years later it happened are derided as stupid. The mayor, a Freemason, did. A journalist of the paper O Seculo, Avelina de Almeida, a committed atheist did. But on the day of the last appearance of Mary, October 13, in which she urged again the recitation of the Rosary, something happened that is not merely a matter of belief, but documented in photographs and in the surprised and surprising reportage of the unbeliever himself. De Alameida brought a photographer who was no friend of the faith. What they captured was a massive reaction to an otherwise inexplicable action of nature, of the Sun itself, literally spinning in the sky, drying a rain drenched, mud stuck crowd all at once and the ground on which they stood amazingly not blinded by staring into the sun. 

https://www.bluearmy.com/astounding-things-how-the-midday-sun-danced-at-fatima/

https://theotokos.org.uk/article-fatima-october-1917-1/

Was the atheist a victim of the mass hysteria claimed to be the reality of the matter? Were the people miles away affected by the alleged mass hysteria? As in all things related to God and the Catholic Church or miracles, we have a choice to believe or not to believe, and to pray for ourselves and the world which always seems to be spinning out of control because, if we really are honest, of our own persistent sins. 

I am a little surprised at how ecstatic I am at being able to participate in a week of listening to Our Lady of Fatima's message and to thank her for being a model of the "Yes" to the Plan of God the Father to get us back to where He intended us to be, in a divine union with Him, that which is Heaven.

A little band of parishioner believers and their pastor at St. Victor will be hosting the Los Angeles Archdiocese Division's Blue Army replica of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, in whose crown the bullet (related by many to the Third Secret of Fatima) once lodged in St. John Paul II, now reposes in Portugal. The replica is one of several special such statues which make pilgrimages to various locations to spread the message of Fatima to all. It was carved by an apprentice of the sculptor of the original statue (that was in 1947) and blessed by Archbishop Jose Gomez on the 100th anniversary of the appearance of Mary at Fatima. 

From the afternoon of June 6 (3 p.m.) to the morning of June 13 (the 109th year after the second apparation of Mary), there will be prayer, Procession and Adoration of the Eucharist, Confession and devotion inspired by this visit, especially the recitation of the Rosary. There will be an opportunity for the attendees to join the Blue Army

The tentative schedule:

Saturday, June 6, 3-5 p.m., The Divine Mercy Chaplet, Message of Fatima delivered by a member of the Blue Army, Los Angeles Division, Questions and Answers.  Hear the story. Hear the urgency. Hear about conversion, reversion and reparation for our sins and those of the whole world!

Saturday, June 6, 4:30 p.m., The Rosary

Saturday, June 6, 5 p.m. Vigil Mass

Sunday, June 7, after the 10:30 Mass: Procession of the Eucharist around the block of St. Victor Church 

Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12:

Daily Rosary at 8:00 a.m. 

Confessions daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:25 a.m.

Daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.

Eucharistic Addoration Daily from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. with confession from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00  p.m.

Saturday, June 13 at 8:00 a.m. Rosary

Saturday, June 13, at 8:30 a.m. Farewell Mass

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us, for the conversion of souls and the reparation for sin. 

Ever so slowly, so slowly are the words I was taught as a child finally coalescing in my heart and mind. Some absorb it without resistance, in trust, as did the three children at Fatima. I am late to a slow burning realization that comes from too much thought and not enough faith. 

Today was Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the fearful and made them all brave and holy. 

Now I look forward to a week of hearing the critical message of making the right choice in order to save souls, including my own. 

Love Stories by Constantine Gochis

So many of my father's stories were generated in the context of his travels in his neighborhood, my neighborhood at that stage, for we lived blocks away from one another in those days, the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. I think both of us favored the area because it was reminiscent of the New York neighborhoods we had left to come to Los Angeles. I came here, willingly and excitedly, with the hope of being a television writer or perhaps voice specialist in some aspect of the entertainment industry. Dad came because his only child was here. I am sure I have mentioned before that my father was not crazy about Los Angeles, paradisal weather notwithstanding. This story is one among them although Fairfax Avenue is not directly mentioned in it. He made the best of having sacrificed himself for me. 

_______________________________________________

The lines to the cashier were interminable.  Christmas Eve is no time to shop. There were now only three customers before me, though customer number one had filled the moving counter to capacity, and worse, she was preparting to write a check for the purchase. There would now be the inevitable search through her cavernous purse for identification, the clerical notations for security, and then the "double coupons".

The elderly woman in front of me reached up and smoothed an errant hair just over the right ear of her companion, an older gentleman who had so far remained immobile during this process we shared. He had his own checkbook precariously held in his palm. She examined him carefully for further imperfection and ran her hand along the side of his mouth, though I could not see any disorder there. She whisked whatever it was away, with a gentle flick of her fingers.

"You like him?" I importuned. 

"Very much," she answered, her face brightening from what had seemed of questionable humor when she noticed my probing attention.

"Have you always liked him?" I insisted.

"For forty-five years," came the unexpected response from the seemingly inattentive gentleman.

"Yes," I offered, '"but does he like you?"

"I think so," came the reflective reply, and then she recovered, "I'm sure, I'm very sure."  It seemed a kind of penitential response, but then she smiled. A few of the other customers were now listening avidly to the conversation. A smiling African American lady offered her experience to date, "I've been married for eleven years," she said proudly.

"No cigar," I said.  "You have thirty years more to match these folks."  The loving couple beamed, and we all moved up a notch. The lady ahead of us had completed the "double coupon" phase of her interminable transaction.

"How about you?" I asked the girl just behind me, young, maybe approaching thirty. She had been expressionless through our improvisation. Her hair was combed back severely and there was an air of privacy about her. But I took the chance.

"Don't tell me," I began, "you are recently married, perhaps three years?"

"Two," she answered.  

There were two twelve packs of beer in her cart.  "Your husband is a football fan?" I inquired. "A couch potato?" I added.

"No chance," she retorted. There was determination in her answer. "Not if I can help it," she posited, to me, rather glumly.

I thought of the gesture of the elderly lady brushing an imaginary spot from the mouth of her husband.  There was love in the gesture. I looked for softness in the young girl's face. It might be there, but there seemed to be a difficulty in its manifesting itself. Her face was pale, and there appeared bluish rings under her eyes and to the extent she smiled, it seemed to be with reluctance. I felt a touch of sadness on this eve of the day of the Nativity. a day of new birth and hope and promise.

Deep in her eyes there was this tangible sadness, and unfulfilled aspiration. And she had so many years to travel still. 

Seven Deadly Sins

In the 1990s an 2000s, until he died in 2008, my father was a member of a couple of writing classes at the West Hollywood Community Center, which I think generated his prodigious output that I often think will take me more years than I have left to cull. But it is a task that I have been and remain glad to undertake, albeit with the speed of a garden slug. Often, the teachers Bea, or Rick, would propose a topic for the senior students most above age 60, and several way into their 80s. My father was somewhere near the age I am now when he wrote many of these tales, reminiscences and opinions. 

As I read through these writings over time, I see many things about my father, some of which I am still trying to clarify, but much of which I knew, like his perpetual guilt and a deep anger, and his ever present doubt about the Spiritual, which fascinated him, but which at the same time, he pushed away, with a sarcasm that when directed to me or friends and family, could be a difficult to forget cut, and sometimes undeserved by its recipient. Or so the recipient would think.

These stories reveal a man in constant internal struggle. Maybe that's all of us. But I tend to think that it is some more than others, and right up to the end Dad was working on something that was generated by something he could not reveal even to himself.

__________________________________________________________

"OK," I say to my reflection in the mirror, what can you say about Rick's selection of theme for this week's writing class? Well, at least I can name them all?"

"Don't be flippant," says my image, "this is a serious matter."

"What the hell," I conclude to my substantial self, "Perhaps it's not Dinner With Andrew, but it's as good a device as any. Off the record, come to think of it, I have probably violated all of the Seven Deadly Sins. You want the truth? More than once. Maybe as recently as last week."

"Be serious," says my image counterpart, "these sins are not only Deadly, they are Cardinal. Now there's a little distinction, to diverge for a moment. Any prelate of stature would tell you that the Maxims reflect moral failings that 'seriously interfere with living a spiritual life'. Nevertheless what did you do last week to help forge that inevitable heavy chain you will carry eternally in that great beyond?"

"I'll tell you.  But first, that business of Spirituality: Medieval Catholic patter. Who says I want to be spiritual? Anyway, last week, I go to a Rite-Aid to buy some pipe cleaners so I can blow some cleansed secondary smoke into the Los Angeles smog. When I reach the cashier's line, I find myself standing behind one of thos magnificats of creation, a beautiful, bare-backed young woman, with little in front to mitigate total nudity. From a logical and critical point of view, it is still too cold for such gratuitous revelation. Nevertheless, the unblemished perfection and intoxicating texture of youth is a sight that creates great peril for my immortal soul:  I Lust.

"Dirty old man," chides the mirror image.

"Yea, verily," I say, and in that same week I go to Cingular, to renew my cell phone contract.  The eyes that look up at me reflect the eternities of outer space: beauty beyond the secular. She waves her enameled fingers to dispel an offending loose hair and I note the golden band of fealty, no doubt to some undeserving male. I Covet.

"For shame," says my visible conscience. "What was the Saint who said these failings can lead to more serious transgressions? Was it Aquinas or Augustine?"

"Funny you should mention the latter?" I note back. "He lived a merry life before he went into hiding behind the cloth. As we know, there are many things lurking beneath celestial costumes. Good subject say, for the Cardinal of Boston. An item for another day. To return to matters relating to Amartia, the Greek for 'missing the mark': In my youth I was guilty of Sloth, or, if you apply a less onerous description, Laziness. I can still hear the sonorous voice of my sainted father summoning me from a deep slumber, 'Son, are you getting up or what?' 'Or what' was a perpetual plea by dad for me to greet the daylight and look for a job. In those salad days of hanging out at the Candy Store without the wherewithal for a three cents plain or a two cent chocolate covered jelly bar, I may have committed my first two violations of the deadly seven."

"Yes," I remember, "you were particularly exercised when the Cohen brothers stomped in or their daily libation at the fountain."

"Now, there was Gluttony.  Murray Cohen was big and fat.  Bernie was bigger and fatter.  Each time they came to the counter they would order a malted milkshake and while waiting, stuff their mouths with jelly bars and other goodies.  They always had the cash.  I felt Anger at their profligacy in the face of my penury, and Envy at their good fortune."

"Oh, yes, nodded my mirror companion, "that leaves the pitfall that may bar our way to Paradise.  You know what Thomas Aquinas says is the most serious of all the seven deadly sins? Remember when you were waiting tables at the Catskills resort and got into that game of craps with the real estate mogul?"

I remembered.  It was a Friday night and the mogul always came up on weekends to minister to his Honey--that was her name. Indeed, she was.

I Coveted, I Lusted and I Envied. The mogul clearly felt his own anger when I dropped my forty bucks in the crap game. But I bridled when he handed me back the money I had lost. I would have succumbed to the offer except for the patronizing remark, "Here, kid" that came with the temptation to take it back. Pride.

The Family Tree by Constantine Gochis

This short reminiscence of Dad's reallly connects with another I just entered onto the blog the other day, "The Melting Pot".  To me, both stories, and likely others I will post here, are evidence of the extremes and ambiguities of human nature. Back when my father's family first came to the United States, from Greece, and Italy, and my mother's family from Ireland, the new immigrants, many of them, so wanted to be part of the American Dream, that they virtually excised their original cultures in key ways. My Greek Grandfather actually changed his last name to something he viewed as more "American", such that my father had issue when he became a soldier in WWII, he had to take legal steps to change it back to Gochis.  How many first generation children never learned to speak Greek, or Italian, or Gaelic, because they wanted to be fully American? Some kept their cultures rather resticted to their homes. Outside they felt the need to be prove their American adaptation. This was an uneasy attitude, and so many of the same immigrants' behaviors told the children at the same time they ought not be too American. The same grandfather who took what he perceived to be an AMERICAN name, also despised it when his children dated outside of the Greek nationality, and again, in full contradiction, married an Italian American. There was a love, and a resentment, for the country to which they had, in many cases escaped. The love overtook the resentment, at least in the public square, then. They bought into the requirements of citizenship. They ascribed, perhaps with some of that resentment intact, but truly to the ideas of the American Experiment. That was then. Now, the resentment has superseded the desire to be an American.  The invitation to illegal immigration which has overrun our shores, people who, in many cases, might be perfectly wonderful, but who have no interest in becoming American, or, because of policies dooming the nation, is toppling American history. This new immigrant, has no idea of the unique nature of the American principles of the rights of man and from Whom they derive, because our own leaders are rewriting history to depict America, which no one ever said was perfect, but strove to perfection, as the most evil of any society that came before, or exist now. It's disheartening. My father died 18 years ago so the extreme of hatred for the country, though he predicted it to me, and friends, he did not live to see. He saw it coming all the way back in the 1960s. 

No nation in the world succeeded as long as America did bringing in peoples from contrasting places of different values and made them "one out of many".  The many had to maintain a central philosophy. But therein is the rub. We haven't. "It's a Republic, if you can keep it," said a Founding Father, who likely is now called an abundance of vile names. One can only pray that the fall of America will somehow be intercepted by the intercession of a Higher Power. 

_____________________________________________

My source from New York told me I was to be visited by three "Graces". This oracular fount is a senior family member who has been present since early in the last century, when three brothers, one of them my father, left their ancestral digs in the Kalamata region of Greece and ventured into the promise of golden American streets, thence, to prosper and multiply.

They multiplied. Some flourished. Some did not.

Helen called. She is a first cousin, the daugter of Uncle Steve, my father's brother. There was to be a family wedding, she announced, and she and her sisters, Irene and Demetra, would be in Los Angeles for the occasion. Would I be at home?

I have not seen this cousin for perhaps forty-odd years, though I do recall that then she was indeed worthy of her name-sake, the one who centuries ago sparked the Trojan War, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and imperious. I mention this, specifically, because the girls of our geneology border in morphology on either side of comely.

I had no visual memory of the sisters, Irene and Demetra, and certainly not the bride to be, Melissa, the inspiration of their hegira. Demetra, as you may know, is the mythical goddess whoses daughter Persephone was kidnapped by the God of the underworld, Hades. 

I make no invidious comparisons, but this I can say, Melissa upon my meeting her, was indeed comely and charming.

Helen is still tall, now generously ample, assertive and perhaps still imperious. Her golden, youthful luminosity has naturally faded as it does, but still lives in the many pictures the girls brought from their halcyon days. Indeed, I tell Helen. She was beautiful. Helen preens.

We reminisce over white wine.  We exchange stories of our heritage's mythologies. We disagree on some key facts regarding family heroics. Irene, of placid disposition, and thus aptly named, recounts with a misture of pride and amusement, "Papa used to love to tell how he returned to Greece, with his rifle, to assure the marriage of his sister, another Demetra.  It seems that the promised suitor was somewhat reluctant to honor his promise of marriage."

My recollection is that it was my own father who performed the act of family honor.

"It was in 1912 or 1913, " I say, "just before the war with Bulgaria, or Turkey, I can't be sure.  He cemented the marriage, but got drafted into the Greek military, a corollary benefit of the pilgrimage.

We talked of lifetimes. Forty years is a long, long time, of marriages and children, or the dissolutions of relationships and the finality of death.

All three sisters are widows. I have heard that Helen had four husbands. She recalls only three. In our initial phone conversation I remarked to her that I had met her first husband.

"Which one?" came the query.

"The arranged one," I reminded. "The one your Papa wanted."

"Oh, that one," she replied. "I forgot about him."

It is a curious fact. My fathers and his brothers were almost tyrannical in their chauvinism. They were xenophobic, distrustful of this complacent new world to which they had come, with its short skirts and bobbed hair. And yet, of the ten females and six males of their aggregate progeny, only two married Greeks.

I knew that Melissa, of this fully modern age, would not marry in the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Normandy Avenue. There would be no exchange of laurel wreaths and the ceremonial processions ad chants.

"When is the wedding, Melissa," I asked.

"Tomorrow," she replied.

Now, you may well ask, what is the significance of this family trivia?

The short answer is, the "melting pot", who dissolves therein and what is the alloy that is produced?

Once Upon a New Year's Eve by Constantine Gochis (and a Very Long Prologue by the Djinn)

This story causes me to tear up, frankly. Again, my father somewhat manipulates time in its telling and clearly the names have been changed, the name. My mother died in November 1974 at age 48. They had met when she was 18.  My father was about as uninterested in having another relationship, and definitely uninterested in the possibility of another marriage after she died. They had been married for 28 years, and as they say now, it was "complicated". There was a deep sadness and unsatisfied longing in my mother. She had, I think, expected my father, to give her a life that whisked her from the Bronx to a Manhattan apartment complete with doorman and concierge. Her younger sister, who has lived over double the time alloted to my mother, now age 99, managed the apartment with those amenities, then 450.00, an outrageous sum at the time. She and her husband, a bus driver, had two salaries, as my aunt was a working woman in a time when they were negligible. But my uncle also was, in my child's view, and in my view from my dotage, a bit of an operator. There are stories, albeit sketchy ones. My parents and I had moved earlier, to a nice two bedroom apartment in the Fort Independence area of the Bronx. But, it was still the Bronx, and there was neither doorman nor concierge. 

For the two years of my completion of college, and my first semester in law school beginning in February 1977, it was just my father and I. Dad was still working and in his spare time, he read, and played a mean game of paddle ball with the locals in the nearby park next to the Jerome Reservoir. He enjoyed being the cook and host at my parties at our apartment. And he flirted with my female friends, who enjoyed his charm that was reminiscent of a Ronald Colman or Adolph Menjou. Dad's flirting was artistic but it wasn't serious. It did, however, give me the agita of embarrassment. 

But somewhere in late 1976 or early 1977 (according to this story is was 1976), a work friend wanted my father to meet a woman, some 16 or more years younger than he, who was full blooded first generation Greek, but a woman in the work world, and at that time separated from her musician husband. There was a coincidence that they had both attended the same Greek School as children, albeit many years apart. My father resisted but ultimately surrendered to the blind date. And when they met, there was magic. There was dancing. I mean, really, there was dancing, lots of dancing, in the few remaining places, like Roseland, in Manhattan.

It was a little paradoxical that I, in the throes of law school study, and never marginally good at dating, was the one always waiting up for him. I guess he made the paternal decision not to stay in her Manhattan apartment, paternal not only for me (though I was not naive) but in consideration for her son, who was about 16, some years young than me at 23. Truth be told, once I met her, I was crazy about her, and if I could have arranged their marriage, I would have gladly been the wedding planner.  Many of my friends met her.  One time, they came back from some event, my father in a tux and she in a beautiful formal dress and they easily joined my college crowd. But there were obstacles. The difference in age bothered my father a lot. He had had one heart attack in 1971, a serious one at 53. And he had other health issues that sometimes required surgeries. He was adamant that this young woman should never be put in the position of having to be his caregiver. Or that he would die suddenly, and first, which he had expected to do vis a vis my mother. One day, about two years into their relationship, it ended. Dad made it sound as if it had been entirely his decision, which I would find out later, was not the case. It was, well, "complicated". She was a devout Greek Orthodox girl for whom divorce was problematic. And I have heard that many years later, though they were not together, she took care of the separated husband, in his last illness. Ironic. 

Dad never stopped talking about her. And I reconnected with her. I don't recall exactly when, at least after I moved to California in 1981.  I tried to get her to come to his 80th birthday, as a surprise. It was clear that whatever the outcome of the romance, the connection had been a bit magical for them--a dual Cinderella story without the happy ending for my father. I don't know what she felt. She is still alive, 18 years after Dad passed away, and we talk from time to time. She simply has said, "It wasn't meant to be". But there was a little residual magic. I asked her again to come for my father's 90th birthday, to Los Angeles, again to be a surprise. Dad was very sick by then, the early spring of 2008. She came for a weekend. Such a lovely action required a material and emotional thanks. I paid for the hotel (over her objection) and my friend Len gave her miles to travel from New York. It was a packed few days several of us shared with them. Completely platonic, but a bit romantic, from my point of view. I thought my father loved it. Dad died two weeks later. 

I don't know when he wrote this story, before or after that visit, nearly 30 years after they had last seen each other. I think it was before. But  finally reading this story,  makes me extra glad that that I arranged that weekend in March 2008. 

_________________________________________________________

Once Upon a New Year's Eve

Two groups of people lined the bus entrance.  Someone was descending, but it was taking more time than usual.  No one wanted to intercede. I decided to, myself.

A little bent old lady was making her exit. She was not fully ambulatory. Her three plastic bags were suspended on the bus coin box. There was, also, her walker, which she was manipulating precariously, and a cane. 

The driver lolled with indolent indifference to the unfolding scene, his paunch imbedded, nay, wedged, three inches into the steering wheel.

I reached into the bus and retrieved the plastic bags, the walker and the cane and helped the bent figure traverse the chasm between the vehicle and the curb.

Her eyelids seemed almost shut, but she looked up and thanked me. She held both of my hands and whispered a chant, sibilant and unintelligible.  Then she said, clearly: "I am poor and cannot reward you, but you will have a gift. Twelve dreams you will have, one a month. You may want to alter something in the dream, or add or even eliminate an action, but only the dream will change. You will remember it upon awakening, but nothing will be altered in reality. On December 31, you will have your first dream.

I tried not to laugh. The little crone was surely putting me on. The story of the goddess Athena who, disguised as a beggar woman, sought help and received it, came to mind.  The kindly were rewarded for their assistance with a pitcher of wiine that remained perpetually full.

It was already December 31. A bottle of something with the quality provided by Athena would certainly palliate the fact that my New Year's Eve would be spent alone. I laughed again. But I felt goose bumps on my skin.

I marveled as my augur arranged her three shopping bags on the cane and then affixed them in some miraculous manner to the walker.  She then crossed the street slowly, stopping only to hurl an invective at the bus driver, who had moved forward slightly into her path, as the traffic light turned a permissive green.

There was no magic bottle, but I did mix a pitcher of Martinis. After the third one, I dozed, but was rudely awakened by the phone. She was coming with me. My world had changed.

We were late. I pushed the accelerator to its limit. The Governor's Island Ferry was about to leave imminently, and the next one would not be available until after midnight. She clung to my arm. I had only one thought. I was going to ask her this time, come hell or high water, tonight, December 31, 1977.

I could see the attendant moving across the bow to attach the interdicting chain. I barely missed hitting him as I crossed onto the boat and stopped.  My companion was thrown into my arms and I held her hungrily. I could hear an insistent tapping on my window to which I did not wish to respond, so much was my joy. When I did, I was properly penitent.

"You could be barred from the Officer's Club, permanently," he said. "You deliberately ignored my stop signal." Still, he looked at us, and then smiled.

"Just this once, it's New Year's Eve", he said.

This was our second New Year's Eve together but I knew it would be different.  For the past several months I had thought of nothing else.  I would ask her, beg her to forgive me for last year's failure, when the words would not come.

I held her tightly. We had not moved from our positions in the care in which we had stopped and she was hurled into my arms. I felt impatient. I would not wait for us to debark. I was practically incoherent.

"Marry me, Lara, marry me, now, tonight, before the clock strikes twelve." 

She kissed me and I knew she would. We walked to the prow and watched the ferry pierce the waves as it approached the wooden barriers of the pier.  I thought the helmsman was moving too fast. The ship plowed with force into the landing and we were thrown apart. 

I awoke. I was alone by a phone that never rang. There were three olives in the ashtray.

I had had my first dream. 

Once Upon a Time by Constantine Gochis

The Djinn's preface:  My father had a complex relationship with his parents, oft expressed in the pronouncement, "My parents were peasants". This may seem harsh, but what little I can glean from the sparse stories of his childood as the second of 7 surviving children, his father was a bit of a brute. At age ninety something, he dead for many decades, my Aunt Georgia expressed a lingering fear as if somehow he could still reach her with his disapproval. He died before I was born. My mother and father married secretly in about 1946. My mother failed the test of ethnicity. She was not Greek. In fact, she was full blooded, first generation, Irish.  This was anathema to my grandfather, although his own wife was first generation Italian. While the marriage remained a secret, my grandfather had an entire dinner in which he sought to introduce a nice Greek girl to Dad who painstakingly served them. When the marriage became a matter of family publicity, and Dad introduced her to the paterfamlias, she was given a mitigation because she wore an outfit that covered her charms from head to toe. Thus, at least, she was a "good girl". But my father had even less affection for his mother, though he always behaved in an honorable fashion toward her. She died in old age. One of his stories related to her was how she chased his younger sibling, Tony, around with a kitchen knife, when he committed some child's mischief. She was pregnant at the time. 

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Mr. Randolph was one of my father's favorite customers.  It was not that he was a big spender. In fact, he was one of Papa's elite clientele whose nature was never to carry cash, or anything heavy. "Put it on my account and have the boy bring it up," was the usual interaction.  In my preteen years, I was the "boy".

Mr. Randolph was a person who exuded elegance, although somewhat worn.  He was carefully attired. He carried a can and wore a felt hat, tan in color. This was an accessory he wore constantly, regardless of the sartorial conflict.  To my younth eyes he himself seemed somewhat worn, and probably not one of the affluent denizens of the neighborhood.

He was friendly, and garrulous, and whether or not he bought something, he frequently became engaged in philosophical discuss wion my father.  Papa addressed him as Professor Randolph, although he was, in fact, of more pedestrian accomplishments. My father applied his own value to degrees of accomplishment. "Professor" was not a title of reverence to him.  It was a challenge, an invitation to a joust. He felt sure that only the vagaries of early deprivation separated him from the heights of learning.

I suspect that it was Mr. Randolph who introduced my father to an aphorism he often employed, one that varied slightly in syntax, "Stay on your feet and limitations" or "Lay on your feet and limitations." In either version, it became his paradigm of universal application. 

When he was confronted by the logic of an adversary, he resorted to a store of illustrative fables.  His most pointed rebuttal lay in the story of a man who was sitting on the breanch of a tree and sawing it from the inside. A "Professor" who was passing cautions him that if he continues in this fashion, he will surely fall. The man, who always responds with pique, responds, "Professor, if you are so smart, tell me when I am going to die." I do not mean to disparage my father, but I temporize.

It seems that in one of the many dissertations with Randolph, the subject of a magic substance, called "Ergosterol" was revealed to him. Ergosterol is an enzyme that humans possess beneath the skin that produces Vitamin D, but only when exposed to the sun. This particular revelation had evil consequences of some severity for me.

On the next day after the epiphany, he directed Mr. Hagiopolis, his employee, to take me to Long Beach for a sunbath.  I was, consquently, severely burned and blistered. My mother, not as yet instructed in the salutary benefits of Ergosterol, opined that the event was caused by the "matia", the evil eye cast upon me by her sisters in law.

The patriarch, my father, inspected the areas of the holocaust on my body and was pleased with the results. He was of the philosophy that medicine that tastes bad is good; the discomfort of minor burns had to be equally beneficial. 

He directed Mr. Hagiopolis to bring me back to Long Beach the next day.

The Melting Pot by Constantine Gochis

As I have noted before, I never entirely know how much of the "old" stories of Dad's family are fully true. I know they have some truth, for example, because I know that before the Depression, the family had a house in the Bronx. I have seen the picture of most, though not all, of the children in the backyard, which in the photo, at least, looks more lush than my father describes in this story when it was purchased. My uncle Steve is not in the picture because he was not yet born, and my Aunt Georgia, the eldest, is not in the picture because she hid from her husband that she was older than he, and the rest of her siblings. That she hid this is confirmed by the photos, including this one in the back yard, in which she is cut out, or rather, she cut herself out. Perhaps somewhere there is a negative, though I doubt it, this many years on. We are talking the 1920s. My father is about five in the picture, wearing a sailor suit. They were more prosperous then, though not rich. The Depression would take that away and I believe it was before 1931, the date in which my father says this father in law came to live with them. I do not think that Nikkos is a real character, if only because, my father's mother was not Greek. She was Italian, though first generation, born on Mulberry Street somewhere around 1890 ish. But I suspect there is some hard kernal of truth in this tale. I actually thought I had posted it long ago, but turns out I had not, or I never noted it in my list of now over 100 stories I have published on this blog written by my father. I regret that he never became a known writer. He had a great talent. He always wanted to do something creative as a vocation. It didn't work out that way. Still he was a man of deep thoughts and educated tastes as all these stories demonstrate. And of course, a master of cynicism.

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THE MELTING POT

The old man came to live with us in 1931, I am sure. It was the year Papa bought an eleven room house in the Bronx to shelter his growing family.  I was the eldest at six.  There were already four children.  Papa left no doubt about his itention to sire many more.  There was little more than a year between my brothers and sisters in age. 

Nikkos, the old man, did not get along with his son-in-law, who was married to my mother, his daughter. He regarded Papa as a turncoat Greek, who had sold is glorious Hellenic birthright for a mess of American pottage. Papa attended "corrupt Americani" night schools.  He became a citizen.  He allowed his wife to bob her hair.  He was not a true Greek.

Nor had he attended the wedding of his daughter, though it was celebrated in the great cathedral on Forty-Seven Stree, the "Holy Trinity" or "Hagia Triada".  

A mitigating circumstance was the ten dollars a week that he contributed to the hearth. The Great Depression was upon us.

He was, for the times, affluent.  His income came from the Government insurance policy which was compensating him for the loss of his son, Nikkos, Jr. who was killed in France on November 4, 1918, seven days before the armistice.

He was wont to curse, beneath his breath, at his son's picture, before which a candle burned perpetually, in a flickering red cup, on our piano.

Nikkos begged his son not to enlist to fight for this "barbarian" country.  Nikkos, Jr. embodied all his aspirations, his immortality, his fortress against assimilation into this mongrel society he had grown to hate. He had sold his flesh to Mammon.

He had three more children, all girls, before his peasant wife sickened, as silent and obliging as she lived, died quietly.

There ensued the inevitable.  He was a desultory parent. He never noticed his authority has weakened.  The eldest girl led the insurrection. She married an Italian contractor and fled to Chicago. My mother's selection did not please him even though my father was Greek.  There was, of course, the violence.  He beat his first daughter severely, but she had him arrested and roundly chastised into restraint by the robed men with pince-nez glasses and ascetic nostrils.  The hated Americani.

When the only other daughter married a diamond dealer from Salonika, of a prominent Jewish family, his soul hardened and with the death of his son in France, he lapsed into monastic resignation.

I knew nothing of this history until much later.  From the outset, there was friendship between us.  I was not yet seasoned to the antagonisms of adult behavior.  I liked the old man. On the Fourth of July, he would stuff a five-dollar bill into my pocket and say, "Go maka somma noise!" I supposed he made allowances for this American day of liberation since it was, conincidentally, his birthday.

One of my few childhood memories is the shock of separation somehow engendered by our sudden move into our new house.  I remember looking out of a window into strange, undeveloped, weed-encumbered lots. I turned to find Grandpa standing behind me, curious, peering to determine the source of my interest.

I did not tell him. I had no words for the feeling.  There was nothing out there, but loneliness.  Still, I felt a warmth in his unexpected presence, a feeling of comfort, companionship. He was offering friendship and I needed a friend.

We were neighbors. My room was separated from his by a flimsy wall that sllowed the sounds of his evening peregrinations to filter through.  I could hear the scraping sounds of an obstructed urination, followed by the anathemas he hurled the the Icons on his wall. He cursed each in turn, by name, excoriating them, blaming them for leading him to this desert of brick and stone, where his dreams took no seed.

Every once in a while, he would chant one of those Ottoman "Amanes" or plaints of his village, wailing songs of despair and rejection.

I believe I was his only companion.  My fatgher ignored him.  My siblings were in various states of maturation. There was a coldness between him and my mother, and silence from his other daughters from whom he never heard.

We had no age difference between us. We played together as equals. He was trim and agile, gray eyed, with carefully cropped hair.  He had an array of pipes which he alternated daily.  I bought his "Prince Albert" tobacco when he ran out. I was fascinated. I knew he liked me, and to a child this is the measure of all need.

I helped tend the gardens he created out of the barren half-acre of our property.  I learned to plow, sow the seed, water the fragile shoots, hammer support into the ground for the fast growing tomato plants.  He would watch, approvingly, stopping occasionally to throw a rock at an offending cat, adding a sharp curse to give impetus to the projectile.

Sometimes, in midsummer, when the sounds of crickets protested the hot weather and the fireflies lit the darkness under his grape arbor, he would try to convey his longing for his abandoned country. I saw what he was seeing. His sky, deep and blue, the vines heavy with grape clusters, the gnarled olive trees silhouetted against a reddening, darkening sky at sunset.  I travelled with him, in his dream to the "Kafeneon" of his forsaken village, the coffeehouse where his friends gathered to sip the thick sweet coffee in the little cups.  I could hear the songs of the heroes of 1821 who descended from Mount Ossa with their long sabres to slay the hated Ottoman.

Sometimes, he would break into a mournful dirge.  "Manna mou, manna mou, pou eeseh?" "Mother, mother, where are you?

Nikkos died when I was twelve.  It was as if he decided to leave. He gave me his watch with the gold case that opened to disclose a face of Roman numerals.  He did not protest when I fingered his collection of pipes. He pressed a five dollar bill into my palm and said, "No tella your mother."

I got his room with the Byzantine Ikons on the wall and his four poster bed, the one he died in. Usually fearful of the metaphysical, I was not afraid. If his spirit were given to wandering, it would not, I knew, harm me.  I was not so sure about his children and my father.

Papa said what he told me about the old country was "skata", a Greek word for "shit".  I don't know why he wanted to tell me his truths--perhaps some inner guilt of his own, some failure, some genetic adhesion to a sacred code of behavior that he might have violated. There was too much vehemence in what he said. 

"There was no lush garden," he said.  "The grapes were withered on the vine when he left. The olives had to be pressed, and pressed again, before his family could have any olive oil."

I don't know.  I did not care then and I don't care now. I hope he is sitting in a familiar "Kafeneon" sipping his little cup, under lush verdant vines, where resin win flows in gentle streams and the quarter tone Moorish songs of heroes echo deep within the soul. His battle was more fearful than the Ottoman hordes. A pitiless crucible, a melton pot that engulfs, sears and destroys the old so that the new may live.

"Xaire, Farewell, Rest."

They Are All Good and Honorable Men by Constantine Gochis

I haven't quickly posted this story, and I am not sure if it is a real reminiscence, of my father's. It does however reflect his deep cynicism about humanity, and is among the explanations for his resistance to faith---that God would bother to create such people, that this could not possibly be the action of a good God to allow the vagaries of human banality or worse, cruelty. It was pointless to attempt to remind him that the villain was not God, but the wilfulness of the creation. Order was thrown into disorder, not by God, but by a pride born of Pelagianism, the idea that man does not need God, that there can be no original sin and man can perfect himself. It happened in Eden; it continues now, the only difference is that after Redemption, the second chance at choice is a purely individual one. It will save or condemn each of us based on the choice, rather than lead to a collective salvation or condemnation as the choice of Adam and Eve very nearly caused. 

Man causes the mess. He blames God. He excises God. And remains clueless about the mess of his own making. 

Sin is a choice. The people in this story are fictional (or real) examples of it of varying degrees. Wasn't Harvey Weinstein considered a good and honorable man even though all his "friends" also good and honorable men (and women) knew otherwise? And whose fault is that?

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They Are All Good and Honorable Men

Prologue

There is a scene in the movie, Zorba the Greek, in which the Cretan, Mavrandoni, cuts the throat of the town's beautiful widow.  The townspeople, assembled for the execution, approve. It was an act of honor. Mavrandoni wipes his knife and stands before the populace, proud, unashamed. He is, after all, "Kalos kai agathos," good and noble. He has avenged a mortal assault on his honor.

What was the offense?  The widow rejected the attentions of his son, an infatuated juvenile. The boy commits suicide. And worse, she had given her favors elsewhere. 

There are cerebral processs that have mystified me throughout my life.  I began to notice certain startling aberrations of the cognitive mind early in my youth.

The movie I had just watched reminded me of some people I have known, all I am sure, thought to possess the qualities of the good and honorable which they brought with them from the "Patrida" the fatherland, the old country, in the early years of the 20th Century in a small piece of New York.

There was never a day when some one of my father's townsmen did not make an appearance at his store.  

They came out of loneliness for an occasional glass of ouzo, a favorite Greek potable, or a loan, to tide one over, or some feta with retsina wine and the discussion of the latest crisis in the homeland.  Several came for no visible reason at all.

Since, as a pre-teenager, I was required to do service in the store--one was never too young to learn about work--I got to know each of the visitors intimately.

There was Mr. Stelyn. Not only was he a visitor on a social basis, he was a supplier to my father's stores of glazed fruits, in those cellophane wrapped, beribboned packages of gift or steamer "Bon Voyage" baskets purchased by the elite for the elite.

Mr. Stelyn was a Church goer, an entrepreneur of status.  Papa considered him a person of the highest "Kalos kai agathos", good and noble, an opinion he had, in retrospect, about all his peripetatic friends.

One day when I was alone in the front of the store making childish drawings, Mr. Stelyn approached me.

He looked down at my artistic endeavor and smiled, disclosing two gold capped canines, and said, "Nice, nice picture," and drew close to my left side. He continued in his thick accent.

"Make, make nice picture."

I was not too young to recognize his member, erect within his trousers, impacting a point near my waist.

The contact was quickly and abruptly aborted when my father came into the store. There was the usual exchange of salutations. Mr. Stelyn returned his salutation with a wide smile enhancing the two golden crowns, framed in a very white face.

"Kala eemeh, kala eemeh, Yoryee."  "I am well, George," which was my father's name.

In retrospect, it is well I did not report the incident to my father. He was predictably capable of killing Mr. Stelyn or more likely, slapping me for uttering such an accusation against his countryman.

Mr. Peter Booloukos was one of three brothers, each notable for inclusion in my pantheon of worthy men.

He spoke little English.  In one of our rare dialogues--the elder tutoring the younger--he lectured me on the linguistic dependence of English on Greek. I remember only one word of his dissertation. "Aeer, aeer!" I took this to mean "Air". His profundity had discovered the similarity thus between the English and Greek languages.

I was in great need of that substance "air", to mitigate the strong oor of ouzo in our confined atmosphere.

I was afraid of this man. There was something sinister about his appearance. He wore black exclusively. An also black slouch hat topped the rest of his macabre ensemble. My fears were well founded. Pete never entered or exited from the front door of his apartment. I knew of the circuitous route he took beause I was in his home on an errand for my father.

Pete controlled the space allocated to the peddlers of frankfurters, chestnuts and other street business from Fifty-Ninth Stree and Broadway to One Hundreth and Tenth Street. If a recalcitrant peddlar refused him cash tribute, his wagon would be overturned or worse.

Pete had been married. When he susptected that his wife was unfaithful, he chained her to her bed. She broke loose and jumped from the third story window. She did not die. He had her repatriated. 

I do not remember the name of the middle Booloukos. My brother, Tony, who had a a distinct talent to characterize someone with a word, called him the "Hook". I suppose this was inspired by the fact that this Booloukos was a man of huge build, but with one withered arm and hand that was permanently affixed at his waist level.  

The third Booloukos was Aristotle.  He had a beautiful daughter in love with someone they called "O Americanos", the "American". 

The brothers discouraged this relationship. I overheard their rendition of their application of interdiction in the time worn tradition of their village of origin.

The other men nodded in approval of the Homeric account.

Two of the brothers held the young man while the "Hook" applied convincing physical chastisement. He disappeared.

The daughter, named Chrysoula," a name suggesting a quality of gold, disappeared in a way. She walked into space from the roof of her house.

There was one man I knew nothing of except what might be called externals.  He was a perpetual visitor to my father's store, coming in those brief hours of respite from his job as a dishwasher. He had taken the job on the day he left steerage of a magnificent ocean liner, one of the Cunard leviathans. He had never left that job. He was a youngish man, with a full head of black hair and a perpetual half-smile in the fashion of the comedian Stan Laurel.

His perpetual expression and unique taciturnity intrigued me.  He spoke to me only once in perhaps ten years of his comings and goings. His name was Christos, aptly named if one considers kindness and patience. Alas, he was also a man of limited cerebral capability. He was, one day, the only extraneous visitor of the motley crew that usually made its appearance. He had his usual half-smile but it had the quality of distress about it. I asked what ailed him in Greek, not sure that in pronouncing his name, I was correct in using the "dative" declension rather than the "vocative". I was learning Greei.

"Echo ponos," he said, pointing to his stomach. Pain.

I remembered a nostrum I had recently learned in the science portion of the "Book of Knowledge". It called for two glasses, one filled with lemon juice and the other a solution of bicarbonate of soda and water.  I prepared the potion, while Christos observed. Cynicism seemed to alter his expression, slightly. His eyes opened when I poured one glass into the other and produced a marvelous foam.

I gave it to him to drink, which he did, like an obedient child.

There was an enormous burp, and a look of surprised, unexpected pleasure.

"Make me 'nother one, boy," was the second complete sentence I heard from him, in the same day.