Of Maus and Men...

Not my men or anything, that’s for sure. Just some personages I’ve either admired for different reasons, or I attended their readings or performances — or just saw in movies. Some local to Pittsburgh.

Gerald Stern. Poet in Pittsburgh. Old as dirt now. Last heard him read many years ago and got to talk with. Fun guy, and polite. Warm person and so Jewish. He asked my name and then sang it in a song.

Joe Browne. Journalist, had a local column in the paper in which he was the total average joe treating the city like his neighborhood, giving shout-outs to people and businesses he liked. He noticed every young woman who smiled and made a point of talking with every one of them. He attended poetry readings devotedly. He’s gone now, but everybody liked him. Impossible not to — he was like a Will Rogers or something. He was really tall.

William S. Merwin. Pulitzer winning poet. Really attractive in photos when he was young and even when he definitely wasn’t. Utterly talented. But possibly a horndog, I think: I bought a ticket to one of his readings in the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh, which is a big place but felt like home because for years I took art classes there and also attended the free symphony concerts for little kids. He arrived early and looked at the audience that was slowly coming in. This was ages ago. I took a seat off to one side by myself. I can attest that he was a starer. He actually put his glasses on to get a better look. If my boyfriend hadn’t joined me a little later, and if I were braver, maybe I’d have more to tell.

Gary Allan. Country musician. Speaking of horndogs! Only saw one concert of his, because he usually commands larger venues and I don’t like big auditoriums; he played at a nightclub here that’s since closed. Sometime early in the show, he asked for the lights to be turned on so he could get a look at the audience — and he went on about how beautiful the women were, and even suggested they stop by afterwards to say hi. He was married too, but a little later there was a tragedy there. He did a really good show, if you like that kind of music.

Joseph Fitzpatrick. A Pittsburgh art institution all by himself, this man taught art classes both in the schools, and for free as part of a program in which art teachers in grade schools all over the greater Pgh area chose 2 students each year to get instruction from this man. Huge classes were held in different areas of the Carnegie Institute — the museum, the music hall, the lecture hall — every Saturday.

I was selected much later than my talented older sister, who’d been going continuously for most of her childhood. So I received less art instruction but I remember his speeches on life. He’d comment on the beautiful names some people had, when calling roll; he’d talk about grace and manners a lot. He detested chewing gum and wouldn’t allow it. He’d say: You can take a beautiful woman, dress her in the costliest of furs and jewels, make up her face in the most artistic way, dress her in the highest of elegant fashion — then give her one penny’s worth of chewing gum to make her look like a streetwalker. Probably every student of his heard that one.

William Steinberg. Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony for quite a few years when I was a kid. I was lucky that they had this program for grade school kids, giving free attendance — during the school day — of occasional concerts downtown. They were wonderful. All the kids were seated in our own section, I think. I remember we called him Old Redface, because he turned bright red from the neck up when he was conducting vigorously. Otherwise, he seemed kind of remote and cold, and dramatic.

Ernest Borgnine. I don’t know how but he seems to have a minor connection with Pittsburgh. I think it may be a bunch of military guys who knew him here. Anyway, after seeing the old movie Marty I was stunned and have had to watch it repeatedly. I can see how this ugly man could actually draw women. He was astonishing. But no other role I know of allowed him to do the same sort of acting. I think they put him in horrible TV comedies like McHale’s Navy because the public couldn’t bear to see him in mean or unfriendly roles for a while. He was kind of an unattractive, more complex Jimmy Stewart — in that one film that is. I loved him.

Fred Rogers. I guess some here consider him the patron saint of Pittsburgh. He was friendlier than Will Rogers, more earnest than Jimmy Stewart, mellower than the Dalai Lama, slower-talkin’ than Loretta Lynn’s much-vaunted country boy. And brave. If you ever get put in a gorilla’s cage, the gorilla roughly yanks off your socks and shoes, and you don’t flinch in the slightest but keep talking to it in a nice calm voice (because you’re being filmed for a children’s show and don’t want kids to be alarmed) — then you are brave too.

An English professor of mine talked about him, when he’d just started watching TV after avoiding it for many years. He found the eye contact Mr. Rogers kept with his audience kind of scary. I guess it was a different kind of television. What I remember most about Mister Rogers are the videos you can find of him pleading with Congress for public TV funding (at which he was very successful). He is one of the phenomena of the 1970s, when emotion entered public discourse as a Thing. Feelings! They became something they weren’t before, somehow.

I didn’t know he was a vegetarian, but apparently so. He was also a careful recycler; on a vacation to Florida, he and his wife couldn’t find recycling bins to put their trash plastic and cans, so he packed the garbage and drove it all the way back home to Pittsburgh to recycle it.
Many of the post offices here display signed photos of Mr. McFeeley, the mailman from the show.
A good youtube about him: https://youtu.be/4Xck2ByutMg

Pavarotti. I adore his voice; I’ll have to give him some thought.

Mario Lanza. Thicker voice than Pavarotti but also great to hear, and I like watching old movies he starred in. It’s funny how some Italian singers have a slightly hammy aspect to their sound, and Mario Lanza did too, a bit. (Pavarotti had no hamminess whatsoever.) It may be just the emotional sound to their rolling voices, which I can find a little too rich because I’m so American.

Juan Diego Florez. Amazing tenor. I especially love the video of him singing “Granada,” for which he should be the prototype or model for this song, to any later singer. To listen to it, and then click on Frank Sinatra singing the same song — in flat-sounding English — is a horrid experience. Sinatra’s voice went rotten early. I don’t know if it was his fault or not.

The admittedly cutesy singing trio of Il Volo. They sing a pleasant “Granada” actually. But they are just a boy band, it must be said.

Eung Kwang Lee. A baritone, and Oh, my favorite. I can imagine him in some black-and-white movie by Kurosawa, dressed like Genghis Khan or a ninja or Emperor Ming, singing in his oh-so-deep voice. I think he sings in Switzerland now. I wish there were more of him on Youtube. If I were a video game creator I’d make him a character. His super-power would be to sing people to death; after hearing him it seems like there is nothing more to do.