To know is no less to feel

“To know is no less to feel” The life and times of Judge Learned Hand who never made it to the high court ....but like other good men or women who were passed ov er for considerations other than merit, his stream of consciousness made us better human beings..

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His clear thinking and ratiocination was one thing but his intellectual craft and honesty was another.We remember his compassion and tolerance for galaxy thinking unlike his own The arduous journey by the common man to discover a breathe of poetry in the lay of the land.

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What’s it take to reverse the Felix Frankfurter Harvard Law School thinking? Didn’t Justice Brandeis culttivate his open mindedness in Oregon v. Muller (child labor laws).

But once the alter ego got the Justice’s seat on the high court, his role was no longer his Harvard Law School professorial. Sworn in for life can you blame his brain waves unfurling like Coney Island’s ebbs and tides

Constitutional interpretation. Reconciliation of contradictions. Stare decisis.

1066 the Magna Carta in reverse.

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Can any of us on this minor planet point to Justice Frankfurter’s change of mind. What was once revocable became irrevocable.

So it is ( Ucla’s“Mozart and Mushroom Barley”) the truth of man lies not in his uniform but in his soul.

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Judge Learned Hand became the chief judge of the second circuit. His legacy of open mindedness fair play and tolerance was no obiter dictum. He was a complete man.

No poker games that we know of .No hard nosed rationalizations searching for precedent(s) or minor league umpiring ... challenges to the laws of the land....

Gaining an advantage thru a well connected connection and once in the chair does a Felix Frankfurter.

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“The continuation of tolerance and imagination... that to me is the epitome of all good
government”

To know is no less to feel.

Senate Judiciary Hearings on a U.S. Supreme Court seat..., June 28,2010

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations

I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. Louisa May Alcott


Meanwhile the Los Angeles Laker victory parade ran its flow along Hollywood Boulevard past Vine Street..... the Adams hats Howie Goldman’s (of Midwood&Hollywood High) pops in his role as manager....the franchise’s origin in Minnesota’s1000 lakes, George Mikan’s floor leadership an artifact .... time arrested n the Laker archives.

The Great Books of Mortimeer Adler and University of Chicago’s Robert Hutchens at the Ivar Street library.... the Knickerbocker Hotel a shooting star away..

Victor McClagen, his bag of oranges Harry Revel his 88 heys “Surrogate Court Blues” and tabs of butter at breakfast, under the Knickerbocker canopy.,

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Back on the karma star billed sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard -the last installed six minutes and 26 ticks away from the Celtics retaking the crown from the Lakers.

A Dennis Hopper “Easy Ruder” enshrinement- the parade streaming toward Highland....the reality scene for the Oscars and Sid Grauman’s Chinese... the cemented hands and feet of tinsel town’s charismatic actors in the outside lobby.

Jack Nicholson, a basketball maven from the word “go” Maw West Marilyn Monroe “Tootsie’s Laker celebrity Dustin Hoffman Cary Grant’s Dyan Cannon Stephen Spielberg David Arquette

Van Johnson June Allyson.... Bobby Bteen Dick Powell Dennis Day Ruby Keeler Barbara Stanwyck.Judy Garland Don Castle Dean Jagger Gig Young Akim Tamiroff casting director Solly Biano, his son in law Vinnie Fotre Alan Ladd Veronica Lake Victor Jory “the Shadow knows” Alan Young, of “Mr Ed” fame.

Andy Garcia Spike Lee “Rocky” Stallone “(the Lords of Flatbush) shining credibility on the seventh game scene.....in thiis city of illusions

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Riding in the first convertible.... the owner of the franchise Jerry Buss, former Chemistry prof at the Trojan campus before he morphed his real chemistry with the insurmountable insurance tycoon Jack Kent Cooke who bought and brought the Lakers to their Inglewood hnb... the Forum.

The teams of the Laker Celtic coast to coast rivalry ....Jerry West Elgin Baylor Wilt Chamberlain Gail Goodrich Happy Hairston coach Pat Riley...later Magic.. Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) James Worthy Bryan Scott....

Their “voice”..... not Sam Balter the Ucla Bruin “voice”s but Chick Hearn..... going west on Sunset Boulevard past the San Diego Sepulveda Freeway.... toward the Pacific Ocean.

The strip of Dino Everet Crosby The Bowery Boys Busby Berkeley’s pink stuccoed two tier restaurant... past the Beverly Hills Hotel... the Mary Pickford (Gladys Smith) William Randolph Hearst (San Simeon).... muses of a bygone era of swash buckling heroics way before sound cameras and computer generated technology broke the Bel Air Country Club caste system ...

“Fore....... Douglas Fairbanks? Junior?” .

Six minutes 26 ticks on the game clock..

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In the second limo a banner wrapped around its chrome “Kobe passed the ball to me.....Kobe passed the ba ll to me” was Ron Artiste, a product of the Queensboro projects.. his smoking gun from down town ... defending Paul Pierce in the war to the death playing out on the hardwood..

“I love my wife and psychiatrist.....”relaxed in his nantra,, off the trappings of his Straples Centered tea leaves.

The Saint Johns Red Storm letterman was in his ego trip,..his ascent from those grim public housing environs, the playground and hoops... his passion, a liberating exodus from food stamps and welfare...the Rucker hardtops..

Not unlike Dennis Rodman dying his hair, way out afros... being disrespected by the fans.,leaping into the stands (the fan throwing suds)

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Finding the open man....El Capitan Paul Pierce and Ray Allen moving without the ball...... Kevin Garnet in the paint..a high school grad (a la Koby) on his quest for another ring

The Lakers had their misgivings...six minutes and twenty siix tucks on the game clock the tandem got cold, the Lakers inching back in the fourth quarter of the 28 quarters played between Boston and the City of Angels....

Grasping the magnitude of their coast to coast slugfest gave shivers to“Gunga Din” Captain Blood”“ ”The lives of the Bengal Lancers”

Sending a text message back to Bean Town’s garu Red Auerbach : those parquet floors

Where are Bill Russell Bob Cousy Bill Sharman Tommy Hensohn Sam Jones John Havlicek Danny Ainge Jo jo White Tiny Archibald Larry Bird the Chief McHale Dave Cowens KC Jones Cedric Maxwell Spec Sanders Don Nelson ML Carr Bill Walton Don Barksdale Howie Schultz Dennis Johnson when we need them.

The Lakers have USC’s Tex Winter triangle..... their 11th bearing ring coach Phil Jackson wore,,,the winningest NBA garu ,,the zen master told his troops

“We have them in our spell....... They’re playing tentative not to lose... on their heels the losingest team in the fourth quarter.....of all time”

“Keep the spacing, passing to their weak side no dribbling rotation setting picks and screens....into the paint and our seven footer (Barcelona needs a shave and a cut, doesn’t he?) ..be unselfishly aggressive... crash the glass for rebounds and second opportunities. . you’re still being tested.”

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The limos rolled past the Los Palmas 99 seat equity theater....Clifford Odets “Awake and sing”. Julie Garfinkel J Edward Bromberg Morris Carnofsky Stella Adler Art Smith Larry Parks Betty Garret Sidney Skolsky...

Tony Quinn and “Garfield” in the star’s dressing room.

Echoes of Carol Channing’s “Lend an ear” the limos snaking their way to Highland Avenue, the reality scene for the Oscars..the Hotel Roosevelt and tweets of George Liberace Xavier Cugat and his partner in crime Abbe Lane.

Passing Musso&Frank’s water hole, Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”) doing commercials...the out of town newspaper rack...the Pickwick book store..Tear Doll Sheet’s burger pizza sushi .

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The limos crept toward La Brea tar pits, the worshipers waving at Koby.... “Who’s the honky with him?”

“Lamar Oden? Farmar? Sasha? Brown? Walton? coming off the bench?”“

“Don’t you recognize Mike Procopio ,the former Celtic scout and PaulPierce’s trainer, Koby got wind of his video analysis ... Ray Allen going cold after his eight threes in game 2.

Surreal!

It blew Doc Rivers mind. The Celtics never finding their rhythm again. Rondo’s swashbuckling denied.”

“What’s his weakness, Mike?”asked Koby of his Oklahoma City defensive match up.

“Make him go to his left,. He’s got the stroke when he goes to his right. He’s in his mind’s eye.” said the former Celtic scout... a spy who came off those parquet floors.

The limo passing the tennis courts where Bill Tilden held his razzle dazzle giving tennis lessons.......twenty five buckeroos an hour post WW2

“Whatever is negotiable...can ya afford a bargain , kiddo?.”

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The fourth limo had the “Fish”...Derek Fisher, Koby’s long time alter ego.... the two pros bonding from the moment the “Fish” could take over a game.. his left hand swish from downtown, demoralizing the Celtics, the shot clock waning down..

His character on ice when his daughter’s eye cancer needed the Big Apple’s medicos, jetting from Utah... returning for the playoffs in Salt Lake City.....

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The Celtics in exasperation, never getting their open court game in transition... their energy out of synch..... Hall of Famers Hubie Brown and Dr Jack Ramsey in a meeting of the minds.

Six minutes 26 seconds .......

All those repetitive drills practices games breaking ground with the likes of Ucla’s John Wooden’s All American character playing out..... the Forum and Staples Center.

Basketball had come of age west of the Mississippi..

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What could Doc Rivers do? Call a time out to regroup his troops who had lost their way?

“Not to panic Maintain yer coo l Be patient”

But where’s the energy?

Any gas left in their tanks? Whupping Miami and Dwayne Wade. Cleveland Cavs and James. Orlando’s Van Gundy and Dwight Howard......

No “bigs”. The tendons in Perkins right knee. Sitting in civies. Nobody to put a body on their Pai Gasol&Andrew Bynum( seven footers) Bynum with his own knee but able to stand his ground..... 13 minutes a half.

Put a body on them. Get second opportunities ...put backs

Six minutes 26 seconds,

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As coach Phil Jackson of South Dakota reveled in anticipation of becoming the winningest coach in NBA history....eleven rings......a sixth man off the Knick pines 40 tears ago ...

Sitting alongside Red Holtzman Of the Pitkin Sutter Avenue East New York Hebrew Educational Society..... franks a nickel knishes a dime, the immigrant masses crashing their gated fate at Ellis Island......

Jerry Buss’s chutzpah... asking the zen master to take a pay cut on his 12 million $ a year

7foot six Ugandan( ten years NBA) 47 year old Manut Bol ... time ran uut on his failing kidneys and skin complications

The Big Apple.... the first day of Summer... June 21 2010

The genius of Alvin Malinow’s inevitability

My Aunt Rose slipped away at 94 plus this past summer. I was with her in my beginnings,

and she was with me in her endings, the tenacious grip on her ego finally finding its release.

Remembering her town house long before town houses had become a symbol of fashion in our once affluent society. Long before coops condos tax shelters and gentrification had become the sine qua non of our world’s stage.

She had an elevator like in those Fifth Avenue mansions Serge Rubinstein used to ride up and down in thinking out his smart money moves the night before the street opened in the morning..

Long before insider trading became the vogue in the latter part of our twentieth century eighties.

Where the Kaminsky sisters of Berditchev Buffalo the Bronx and Bensonhurst held court at her gardened estate on Avenue T near Ocean Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. She never
stopped bragging about her three sons prowess.

Diminutive a la Leslie Caron’s “Gigi” with the looney tunes of Montparnasse and the Left Bank. Or Irving Berlin’s “Tin Pan Alley” and Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”. Or those gas lighted music halls where David Copperfield and Oliver Twist used to cavort.

She may have thought of herself as an egotist and an authority figure in search of herself.. But her strong will, and steel colored hair combed straight back were somewhat of a tradeoff. She having lost her left breast or was it her right.? a mastectomy twenty years into her yesterdays.

Wasn’t she the first sister who could afford the luxury, as they say of a live in maid, whose name was Clara. And when Clara passed away, she invented Melissa.

She had her children, didn’t she? Three boys from her marriage with a widower, and a girl and  boys from his..

Her scenario included a chessboard and pieces alongside the telephone and a summer home in Lake Ronkonkama. What she didn’t have was anyone to boss or lord it over in her aging. Thus she visited her late sister in Southern California..

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Alvin Malinow had buried that sister, Esther, next to her husband, Curtis, in a simple unpretentious grave site scene at Eden Cemetery. No Rudolf Valentino or Al Jolson Presley affectation. Alvin had seen to that.

What did he care about Aunt Rose’s need for domination over her sister?

Wasn’t it enough for her older brother Uncle Max, to be committed for over fifty years in the asylum at East Islip, Long Island, for doing nothing more than scribbling a “Dear Bill” letter to President William McKinley, who was playing out his life as President of the USA.

“Nothing wrong with your Uncle Max,”said the psychiatrist. “All he needed was emotional support..” thumbing thru the bulky dossier, long before the busy work or the hi tech revolution and the computer printout.... off a 20mg hard drive for memory and storage.

Alvin remembered meeting the sisters at a celebrated birthday luncheon for the aging on Victory Boulevard in Reseda........He was sitting on the dais, introducing an Afro American academia from U.S.C who tried raising consciousness in her prognosis of geriatrics among all of us.

That was Alvin’s mitzvah. And Harry Isenberg, sitting at the sister’s catered table knew time was running out on Aunt Rose’s younger sister.. The energy just wasn’t there as Harry helped her from her chair..

The inevitable arteriosclerosis was weighing her down. Three generations of Malinows would have one more work order.. Two of the mortuary’s dark suited young attendants drove to Shangri-la, Esther’s last domicile before her entombment at Eden...

Harry walked a ways with the sisters, nudging Esther’s elbow as they maneuvered thru the chairs and the tables into the cloak room.

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He remembered publishing Esther’s younger son letter from Justice Hugo Black whose words and thoughts were his last gesture, before his soul slipped away into immortality at age 85.

He was thinking about the response he published in the “Guardians”

“Perhaps Hugo Black’s life is what it’s all about.. Living on this minor planet, wasn’t fulfillment the modus operandi....thinking... playing tennis.... writing opinions....

The Constitution and its Bill of Rights, curled up in his jacket pocket for constant reviewing..To make it a part of himself...

Alvin was putting on his coat, his pinned I.D. covered by the dangling sleeve. The day was balmy user friendly.. But the society was still self serving and hedonistic . And the middle Kaminsky sister knew her time beyond Santa Monica’s “Shangri-la” was limited..

Noshing in Zucky’s deli.. Walking the mall., Watching the bathers and the sailboats from the Palisades..

The marshmallowy clouds hanging softly under the blue skies of her ceiling........

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Alvin Malinow knew the score of our hard nosed times. “Rent your house. Go to the Big Apple.. Get a part time job. Find a wife....”

His humanity unknowest to him had transversed the Continent.. and the family’s Venice Boulevard mortuary. .He had expanded West, breaking new ground on Sepulveda.

And it was on that same Sepulveda, the site of Leo Baeck’s Temple, where Esther’s younger son, found his wife, Estelle.

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Who’s to say the Guardian’s own Humanity had not transcended the planet’s own built in limitations, playing out the “Genius of Alvin Malinow’s inevitability”

The Big Apple, 8/15/08...revisited the second day of Passover, April 9, 2009.

Rambling scrambling on the passing of coach John Wooden in his 99th year

Rambling scrambling on the passing of coach John Wooden in his 99th year...

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One of his very first ball handlers, an 89ish said he had lost his father at age eleven, and coach Wooden was there for him.

Central High School, South Bend Indiana,1931-2

”The drills were 6-9 every morning, But alas alack Indiana State offered coach Wooden an opportunity...a fast break whatever. It was a swish and he couldn’t refuse..could he. He and his Nell packed it int and returned to his alma mater.

“Fm the cradle to the grave, I had my ups and downs like ev erybody.....I fought it out as a “lost” soul and I was lucky thru the difficulties and what seemed insurmountable adversaries .

The temptations ploys and ingenuous stratagem and tactics thru 8 decades without a father figure. But like I say I was lucky.

Those daily 6-9 morning drills at Central High, I bawled the tears when he and Nell packed up ...and I’m bawling again. A grown man in his 9th decade. Please forgive me folks. We may never see another coach Wooden..a surrogate father in the trappings of a fast break off the weave crashing the boards...”

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Catching such a fate playing out smacks of a miracle...an enchantment defying the odds don’t you think. The pilgrimage akin to crashing the glass...a ‘33 model A n its “Go west young man”

six cylinder state of mind.. ...in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of wrath”

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Arriving at Ucla’s Westwood Village campus post World War 2, the 17th century renaissance buildings overwhelmed our freckle faced public schooling 208 233 217 Midwood High... in Brooklyn.

Impressionistic beyond belief, the reality of the academic life...Plato’s admonishment at the entrance of Royce Hall and Faraday’s Nothing is too wonderful to be true above the entrance to the Chemistry building. Notwithstanding the Ncaa’s death sentence on USC’s athletic programs across town six decades later.

Harry Trotter’s track and field, Joe E Brown’s field Bill Spaulding’s speedball..., the tennis courts off Westwood Boulevard where graduate manager and tennis coach Bill Ackerman sweated his players, Jane Withers home above Sunset Boulevard at the Northern end overlooking the striving letterman varsity scene.....the scrimmaging where Bert LaBrucherie held Rose Bowl rehearsal.....(former LA High coach)..the trainer rooms Ducky Drake...the mess hall for the players..... and a scrub reporter for Harry Morris’s Daily Bruin..

Passing of the Wilbur Johns “coach” to Indiana State’s JohnWooden., and his Ucla immortality.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true

Big Apple of Brooklyn, June 11,2010

Whatever big words spill off the tongue like calibration

Whatever big words spill off the tongue like calibration or serendipity the “The field of dreams” and the players betting on themselves in a purgatory rivaling anything in Dante’s ”Inferno”. comes nowhere a blown call on a perfect game pitched 24 hours ago in Motown. June 3, 2010

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All aggression and name calling ceases on the demilitarizing zone separating the two Koreas...suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan (Pakistan vented their anger, cursing umpire Jim Joyce for being the culprit of an injustice... not seen since the serpent caught Adam and Eve off the beaten path to first base in the Garden of Eden.

The Security Council took our breath away from their deliberations on the Gaza blockade: a flotilla of activists trying to break the standoff. Even in America the partisans stepped away from their war of words to take a fresh look at the replay of a “safe” when the batter was patently out, the “habla el Espanol pitcher recognizing the mortal call on his immortal legacy..a perfect no hitter...27 up 27 down.

“I forgive the ump Jim Joyce. He’s only human. We’re a ll imperfect.....a grown up not crying nor aghast .... a billion humans throwing up their hands.

The astronauts walking in space had their walky talkies cell phones computer cuess glued into the nterpretations of why Jim Joyce brought this on himself and his legacy.

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What to do to rectify the injustice? Call in the Supreme court? The former Preside of Yale? A knothole kid in his soul?. Would the baseball leadership have the common man at heart and restore honor to the 188 year old “Field of Dreams”

Or would they cave in to stare decisis and notwithstanding the hllowed cry of “The revolution has come” when a blind call “safe” should have been “out”

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Little leaguers Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer of our civilized digital blogs web sites I pods Microsoft Apple confections in our cradle to the grave loop look the other way....avoid coming to grips with the theft and steal of a baseball pitcher’s soul in the fabric of America’s “Saveslls and outs”

“Griffy Junior” retiring the same day...a center fielder ranked with Willie Mays Joe DiMaggio Mickey Mantle day after day for some 24 years makes the call “a cloud on the game”

“Thirty lashes with a wet noodle”

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The problem of calling a monumental play at first in broad daylight if it is a heist,,,:we wuz robbed” it’s a natural...but if like Johnny Vandermeer pitching his second no hitter under the Ebbett Field kleigs, the blunder can be mitigated.

“Moider the bum”

Ancient Dodger umpires....,Bill Klem Majorkurth have an alibi.

They were a “no show” for their aging eyes at Doctor Kochman’s ophthalmology center in its morphing guise.....formerly the Midwood movie theater playing out Burt Lancaster’s “Field of Dreams” in the Avenue ‘J’ galaxy.

In the role of an elderly knothole kid from Ebbets Field,,calling the outrage in America’s pastime..June 4,2010

Los Angeles Laker shooting guard Ron Artiste as he spun

The Divine Presence tapping Los Angeles Laker shooting guard Ron Artiste as he spun....crashing the boards....swishing a buzzer beater... the 5th game of the NBA Western playoffs


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The Saint Johns campus, the Jamaica Estates Hollis Forest Hills Queensboro Community College .. the denizens were all a buzz with his winning shot as the intrepid “Johnny” ...his upper body strength (one for eight on his “j”) his infamous will power and upper body strength inciting the hysteria ... his alter egos guarded at the perimeter... double teamed “down town”“ ..those strong hands putting back the Koby Bryant miss at the horn.

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Was this ex Red Stormer airing his life to the Phoenix Suns and their second team off the bench...sharpshooters from downtown led by Steve Nash’s higher soccer intelligence...against Phil Jackson’s triangle.

A bew coach named Alvin Gentry....big energy from Brazil’s “Leandrrinho” Barboso.......downtown three’s from Arizona’s Channing Frye.......his mates off the pines..

Say a prayer for coachGenrty and the Phoenix tempo as they run the open floor, the Suns” hoping to find their rhythm and themselves

Coney Island’s Luna Park reopening (1944)......May 29,2010

As Art Carney was puckering up, whistling his Elmer’s tune”

As Art Carney was puckering up, whistling his Elmer’s tune” to the 6A elevator Avenue H apartment some 7 decades earlier, little did he know Elmer Schnitzer ....Leonard, his younger brother, their energetic mother and father(a practice of dentistry) living on the 14th Street side, got the sidewalk drift.

The Carneys from across the street, living above the Bohack grocery store..the corner of Avenue H and Rugby Road (14th Street).... The stretch reaching back back back to the Greek island of Crete, an Aristotle Onassis Maria Callas Jackie Kennedy distance from Cyprus ..

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Theseus, son of Aegeus the King of Athens, is charged to kill the minotaur in his labyrinth.

“Did you ever think sir, that you were destined to destroy the monster. That it wasn’t a myth, after all?”

“Without Ariadne’s help, the minotaur’s torso wouldn’t be hanging in Bohacks window. My role was that of a Greek shepherd. A compassionate shepherd. Not a blustering CEO of a monster”

“But the monster saw himself as a horn empowered bull: crippling the vulnerable crushing the fragile oppressing the weak among us

“Dominating our consciousness in the snorting bloodthirstiness of his labryinth. the center of his King’s castle.”

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“This wasn’t any Vienna Boys Choir on tour” said Theseus, thinking ahead of himself....

Siegfried on his Rhine journey quest, arranging “Tristan and Isolde”... for his murderous struggle with the MINOTAUR and his demoniac cries, enscribed in the Epithalamium of Catillus.

“How does that grab you, folks. ”, Ariadne, the King’s daughter, distracts the monster’s take of himself.... akin to the Angels in Faust tempting Mephisto from cashing the bargain he made with Faust..

“Putting your soul out there,”cried the Devil in disguise ”Rush hour in Hong Kong,” the harmonic language dripping with lustful cadences, the passion going to the Trojan Horse...

Abraham Chasens , scribbling the notations, his wife Constance Keene, at the keyboard .Charlie Chaplin’s David Raksin scoring “Modern Times” for an aroused Dionysius.... emerging from the innards of the Trojan USC belly.

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The Cretan struggle exhausted Theseus... abandoning Ariadne’s amore to sleep, she surfacing on Naxos, awakening as Dionysius’s wife, Theseus launches for Athens, forgetting to loft the white sail. His father, the King, thinking his son gone, commits suicide.

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Richard Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel’s merry pranks composer, set the Theseus-Ariadne minotaur to Ariadne aux Naxos.......as thou his dissonance could ever survive that puckering up whistle of Art Carney ”Elmer’s tune”, the recipient being young Straus, occupying the 6 A elevator apartment, Avenue H side..

The treachery of Pearl Harbor hovering ......capturing Straus’s own awakenings..... not to be cast as cannon fodder across our Aegean sea of eternity.

The Big Apple, awaiting the first snow flakes, December 6, 2009