A Bridge, Not Far

One of the unsung innovations of World War II, alongside the Jeep, the PT Boat, C-Rations and the Ballpoint Pen, is the Bailey Bridge, the backbone of military engineering from Tunisia to the Far East. Perfected in 1942 by British engineer Donald Bailey, it utilizes rectangular 10-foot steel trusses (you undoubtedly have seen the shape: a rectangle with two diamonds of bracing within) which can be readily assembled together to create the sides of the bridge, connected on the bottom with transoms, upon which wood beams are laid down for the roadway, and hey presto, the road is now open for traffic. The bridge can be assembled on rollers on one side of the desired gap (say, a river) and then pushed towards the other side, where it can sit on the opposite riverbank. One of the amazing advantages of the Bailey Bridge is that it could be assembled entirely by hand, and usually was, as the heaviest component would weigh about 500 Lbs., which six people could easily carry and install.

Bailey Bridges were constructed all over the world, and not necessarily as temporary solutions: Growing-up in Israel I encountered numerous Baileys all over, in places as diverse as over the Jordan river, connecting Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, or over the Yarkon river in central Tel-Aviv. The largest one ever was built in Australia after the 1975 Tasman Bridge Disaster in Hobart, Tasmania, where a 2,500 foot 2-lane monster was put in service for two years, keeping the city connected. The most famous one is possibly the fictional Bailey constructed in the epic film A Bridge Too Far, which tells the story of one of WW2’s greatest failures, operation Market-Garden. One Bailey is still in continuous service on the Thames (since 1946!) and another, more recent one, in India, is the highest bridge in the World, over 18,000 feet above sea-level.

In the 1982 Lebanon War I served as a Combat Engineer in the Israel Defense Force’s Maritime Engineering unit. The Israeli Air Force had “taken out” the existing bridge on Lebanon’s coastal highway (really the Mideast’s ancient Roman via maris) over the Litani river. It fell to our unit to replace it. Twenty-four hours later a beautiful, twenty-six-meter-long double-stack, triple-high Bailey was open for business. It was the sole constructive activity I participated in during the war, with the rest of my time devoted to blowing things up…

NC Highway 147 connects Interstates 40 and 85, is about sixteen miles long, and goes through the heart of Research Triangle Park past downtown Durham. We use it often, although it seems to be under perpetual construction. Imagine my excitement when, a few months ago, traffic was shifted to a new, temporary lane, traversing an exit ramp on, you guessed it, our own beautiful Tar Heel State Bailey Bridge!

We Get No Respect (take 1)

Last week the Eighties rock band Guns N’ Roses visited Israel. Currently on a reunion tour, they were scheduled to perform on Saturday night, taking the stage at nine in the evening. The venue of choice for this event was Hayarkon Park, a very large recreation complex in the heart of Tel Aviv. As it is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, there are very strict noise limit rules enforced, and typically all performances must end by 11 PM. Well, apparently this incarnation of Guns N’ Roses is not “Axl Rose & Joe Schmo”, but key members of the original lineup, who prepared a three-hour set. Facing a long show, the promoters moved the start time to 8 PM. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Close to a third of Israeli Jews observe the Sabbath, which includes refraining from using transportation. Guns ‘n Roses sold over 60,000 tickets to the show, which meant that to get to the venue (and presumably a decent spot in the general-admission lawn seating) one had to leave home long before nightfall, when the Sabbath is over. Hundreds of Orthodox ticket-holders were unable to make it to the concert, but for those willing to camp the entire weekend at the park. All of the complaints were to no avail; the noise-abatement ordinances in Tel-Aviv are immutable.

Requiem for a Club

What can you say about an eighteen-year-old club that died?

I’m appropriating the tear-jerking opening line from the 1970 film “Love Story”, as I sit to write an unlikely obituary, that of our local soccer club.

Triangle Futbol Club (TFC) was founded in 1999 by a group of coaches who created a unique soccer experience for youth players, a club in which “everybody plays” (regardless of financial abilities), and players’ personal development was the core of its mission, a rare proposition in the team-centric, pay-to-play environment of the time.

Our family discovered this exceptional institution in 2006. All our children played there, with two moving on to collegiate play. Words can’t convey the extent to which TFC was central to our family’s life: for close to a decade no more than a few days went by without a practice, game, tournament, meeting, or fundraiser. The ethos of the club permeated its operations: Coaches were accessible and supportive, parental participation was encouraged (except for “sideline coaching” during games), and everyone had an opportunity to participate and grow, at their appropriate level, to the utmost of their potential. And did they ever! TFC alumni made it everywhere: US national teams, Pro teams, colleges galore, even foreign national teams benefitted from the club, with countries as diverse as Croatia, Scotland, and Columbia calling-up current or former players. For thousands of Triangle families it was a home, a school, and a community, and their lives were better for it.

Soccer has always been “big” in the Triangle, with many clubs, school teams, and fans. As the wags used to say: “It is the sport of the future, and has been for the past thirty years”. The cornerstone of this is the strength and prestige of our local collegiate teams, not the least of being UNC-Chapel Hill’s Woman’s Soccer Team, with its twenty-two national titles under coaching legend Anson Dorrance. Apparently, this does not suffice for some. The typical American spectator’s disdain for amateur sports, even at their highest level, and our obsession with professional teams, has created a powerful push in the Triangle for a Major League Soccer franchise in our midst. Obviously, from an economic development perspective, this effort is to be commended and supported. There even would be value for youth player development, for the handful whose skill and potential are advanced enough for a professional academy. But what about the rest of us?

Recently, in a move designed to primarily support NC Football Club’s (formerly the Railhawks) plans for an MLS franchise, the two largest clubs in the Triangle, CASL and TFC, with much fanfare, agreed to merge and operate as one mega-club, NCFC Youth Soccer, which is expected to field 14,000 players in the Fall, making it the largest of its kind in the country. This statistic is being bandied-around as a sort of achievement or business success, with little regard to the substantial cultural differences between the clubs, the elimination of a local rivalry that was incredibly important to the game (imagine The Yankees and the Red Sox merging), and the existential question which no one seems able to answer: Why should two self-sustaining nonprofits, with distinct missions, merge in support of a for-profit venture? This move will ultimately sacrifice quality for size, competition for conformity, and cynically attempts to “convert” youth-sports supporting parents into professional soccer spectators. This merger does the game and our community a disservice, and benefits those who have little to do with Youth Sports in the Triangle.

I came to praise the club, not bury it: Our Under-17 Girls, the “Last Team Standing”, won the Regional championship last month in Greensboro, playing our club’s last game ever in North Carolina. In true TFC style they held the Floridian team scoreless for over an hour and then, in a timespan of about ninety seconds, scored two exciting goals, earning their spot at the National Championship in Texas. Thus TFC will get to play a few more games in July, under the blazing Texan sun. Who knows? They may win the National title, and will certainly represent our club, state, and region well. But then, once the final whistle blows, it will be over, and the once-proud name of Triangle Futbol Club will no longer adorn a game roster, and our happy little club shall be no more. To paraphrase the Immortal Bard: “take it for all in all, we shall not look upon its like again”.

Welcome, Big Soccer.

Top of the Pops

Guys like making lists; this one’s no different. I hereby present, in ascending order, my nominees for the five best songs of all time:

5 – “Your Forehead is Adorned with Black Gold” – Arik Einstein

Israeli culture includes a unique art form, not seen much elsewhere: setting poetry to music. An untold number of Israeli pop or folk hits started out as written poems, at times with complex meter and rhyme. There is a particular interest in poems by the originators of modern Hebrew poetry, primarily the works of Nathan Alterman, Lea Goldberg, and Abraham Halfi, who revolutionized the poetic scene between 1935 – 1960. Many poems are set to a variety of tunes by competing composers. This song, by poet/actor Abraham Halfi, in which he sings of the beauty of his love as he approaches her at night, is considered by many to being the best specimen of the genre, and is often rated as “the Best Israeli Song” in a variety of such listings. Composer Yoni Rechter worked on the composition for six months, and Arik Einstein, often called “Israel’s Frank Sinatra”, accompanied by strings and a mournful oboe, sings beautifully the sublime lyrics:

“You love being sad and silent, listening to a story about near and far,

And I, who often watch you quietly without words or deeds,

Forget all about others”.

4 – “”Ne me quitte pas” – Jacques Brel

There is nothing quite frightening and tragic as a man who feels that his love is about to leave him. Brel, the great French chanson singer-songwriter (OK, he was Belgian, but his songs were French) totally delivers the goods here: from a piano intro that clutches at your heart, to soaring lyrics that speak of rain pearls and ancient volcanos, and constantly resolving to the title, ne me quitte pas, don’t leave me. This song has been translated into dozens of languages and enjoys hundreds of covers, none of which hold a candle to Brel’s raw 1959 recording of his insistent pleading:

“I will create a kingdom for you

Where love will be the king

Where love will be the law

Where you will be the queen

Don’t leave me

Don’t leave me

Don’t leave me

Don’t leave me”

3 – “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” – Bob Dylan

Recently covered by rock luminary and survivor Patti Smith at the Nobel Award Ceremony is Stockholm (where she was so overcome by the emotion of the moment she forgot some of the lyrics and had to start over) “Hard Rain” is a great post-apocalyptic prophesy set to music. Borrowing (as he oft does) the question-and-answer format from the old English ballad “Lord Randall”, Dylan shares with us a harrowing vision of the future, broadcast from the cataclysmic Sixties, with images of dead oceans, pellets of poison, children warriors, bloody tree branches and talkers with broken tongues. It is everything we could ever fear for the future of Earth, Humankind, and America. Premiered at a folk “Hootenanny” in 1962 at Carnegie Hall, the organizer, godfather of Folk Pete Seeger, told a wonderful story of how he warned performers that time was short, so they were limited to three songs each, for a total of ten minutes. According to Seeger “Bob raised his hand and said, ‘What am I supposed to do? One of my songs is ten minutes long.” I doubt that a single person dared breath that day as Dylan intoned from the stage:

“And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”

2 – Strange Fruit – Billie Holiday

If Slavery was the Original Sin in which our country was born (it was), and Racism the single most pernicious and malevolent aspect of our society (it is), then there cannot be a more important song in the American annals than “Strange Fruit”. English teacher Abel Meeropol published it as a poem in 1936, and later set it to music himself. The great Billie Holiday started performing it in 1939, when she would close her shows with it, on a darkened stage with a single spotlight on her, and take no encores afterwards. Rarely in the history of popular music has a song been so identified with its performer. It was her biggest-selling recording, and has been covered countless times by others.

“Strange Fruit” puts to word and music the most shameful, horrific, and unspeakable American event, lynchings. The lyrics require no analysis or explanation, and the three short verses should be absorbed in their entirety:

“Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop”

1 – A Felicidade – João Gilberto

The opening song of the classic 1958 film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). The two principal creators of the then-new Brazilian art form, Bossa Nova, collaborated to create what I consider to be the greatest song of all time. Intoxicating music from Antonio Carlos Jobim married with an emotional narrative from his lyricist Vinicius de Moraes (a few years later they would create “the Girl from Ipanema”) telling the story of the poor of Brazil toiling all year for the one day of grandeur manifested in Carnival. The chorus is “Sadness has no end, Happiness does” reminding us of how fleeting joy can be. I first encountered this song in an Israeli radio show of translated Brazilian songs, and was smitten by the intoxicating music and the tragic lyrics, such as:

“Happiness is like a feather

That the wind lifts into the air

Flying so light

But life is short

It needs to have the wind without stopping”

So there you have it: The Feinstein Five. Different cultures, different musical styles, and only one of them danceable (A Felicidade). yet all speak, both lyrically and musically, of eternal themes of the Human Condition:  Poverty, Conflict, Rejection, Hatred, and Love.

We Get No Respect (take 2)

North Carolina Pride, which is “North Carolina’s Annual Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Festival” has been held on the last Saturday in September for the past seventeen years. One would think that with that sort of history the ability to look at the calendar years in advance would be a given. Sadly not, as this year’s North Carolina Pride is scheduled for Saturday, September 30, which falls smack-dab on Jews’ holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Jewish Federations and Congregations are veritable hotbeds of community activism and involvement, and nothing brings out the faithful like a good parade. Except on that one day which, unsurprisingly, appears on virtually all available calendars. Accordingly, people of the Jewish faith will not be able to participate.

I have encountered this tone-deafness to Yom Kippur many times in the past, particularly with trade conferences and professional events in the South, and when I asked about the date conflict, responses ranged from “We can’t take everybody’s holidays under consideration” to “We noticed that but this was the only available date”. My favorite was, many years ago, being invited to a conference on Yom Kippur at the swank “Breakers” hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. When calling to ask about the date, before I could get a word in, the organizer (whom I knew) breathlessly stated “Can you believe that they had availability for our four hundred rooms on that day? And at such a low rate?” Sadly, I assured her that yes, I could.

Non-Jewish Americans often try to create “connections” to Jewish holidays. Rosh Hashanah is, of course, New Year’s Day (it actually isn’t). Hanukkah is equated to Christmas (nothing of the kind; it’s actually a minor holiday, not even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible), Purim is Halloween (well, there’s costumes in both, but that’s about it), and Passover is compared to Easter which, but for the fact that The Last Supper was a Passover seder, the two holidays are at complete polar opposites of the theological spectrum. Yom Kippur is different: a somber, introspective day in which we fast and atone for our transgressions and ask for forgiveness from our family, friends, and creator, in that order. I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that neither Christianity nor America have co-opted this holy day which, more than anything, acts as a human “reset” button for our lives. I suspect that the lack of any Christian corollary to it is the root cause for non-Jews cavalier attitude towards it.

As to the Jew-free North Carolina Pride, the Durham Federation has announced that they will host their own Pride event, in October. Let us hope that it will not interfere with that most ecumenical Fall activity, Trick-or-Treating.

Up in the Air

Something is happening to Our National Pastime. There has been a significant, measurable increase in the number of Home Runs hit, with June of this year announced as having the largest number of them in Baseball history. Conversely, there has been a corresponding reduction in ground balls and associated put-outs. Pitchers are elevating pitches to prevent hitters from getting “under the ball” and jacking them into the stands, and many players are on record with statements about “juiced baseballs”, which no-one really knows what that means, but for the fact that players moving up from the Minors swear that the MLB ball “feels different”. I personally find no fault with any of this, which will make for a very exciting summer. Go Rays!