Tales of the Tarantula

by Frank Terranella

  Creativity and youth: An inconvenient truth?

  July 2014

  Have you ever noticed that creative people create their best works while they are young? Whether it’s musicians, authors or artists, it’s an inconvenient truth for those of us over 50 that creativity declines with age. I know I will get arguments on this point. People will inevitably point out the exceptions to the rule as disproving it. But if you look at the great creative works in history, you will find that the overwhelming majority of them were created by people under the age of 50.

  Some of that is due to the fact that many great artists die young – Mozart was 35; Van Gogh was 37; Fitzgerald was 45. But among those who do not, most find their later years much less fruitful from a creative standpoint. There are lots of examples, but I will pick just three from the 20th century.

  Example one is Orson Welles. Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26. He never attained that level of creativity again and made his last film when he was 50.

  Example two is Truman Capote. Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s when he was 34. He wrote his last great work, In Cold Blood, when he was 42. After that it was all downhill.

  Example three is Albert Einstein. Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity when he was 26. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics when he was 42. Although he lived to be 76, his later life produced no other creative breakthroughs on a par with his earlier work.

  So why is it that most creativity comes in the earlier years of life? Frankly, I don’t know. Is there something in the brains of younger people that dissipates over time and blocks creativity?

  Anyone who has ever had a stroke of creativity will tell you that when they were creating, it was like someone else was inhabiting their body directing the genius. Composers talk about sitting down at the piano and composing a hit song in as long as it takes to play it. Creativity, when it comes, always flows out so fast, it’s an effort to write it all down quickly enough. The very word “inspiration” comes from the Latin “in spirit” meaning literally “possessed by a spirit.” This is exactly the way artists talk about the process of creating their most brilliant works.

  Perhaps the human mind as it ages becomes less welcoming to this process of being possessed by creativity. Perhaps there is an unwillingness to just follow the dictates of the spirit as we grow older. Isn’t this the idea of “old people” that we had when we were young? Yet there were always exceptions to the rule. Most of us have memories of an older relative who didn’t act his or her age, and we loved them for that.

  So certainly we can be inspired and possessed by creativity in old age. It’s just less common. Famously, Grandma Moses did not begin painting until she was in her 70s. Fortunately, she lived to be 101. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote great works like the Mass in B minor into his 60s. Woody Allen’s output has not lessened with age. He was 76 when he wrote and directed Midnight in Paris, which won him an Academy Award. Clearly, inspiration can still occur in later life.

  I think the trick is not to settle for a comfortable existence where life has an unchanging routine. If the spirit moves you to pull an all-nighter to create, you should just open your mind and let it flow. Creativity may prefer youth, but we over-50s can still claim our share. Go Woody!

  The five stages of

  liberal grief

  July 2014

  There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. As a lifelong liberal, I have been going through them since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

  Stage 1: Denial – When Reagan was elected, it seemed to me that this was just a “throw the bums out” reaction to the incredible inflation and gasoline shortages we were experiencing at the time. It didn’t help that Jimmy Carter was perceived as weak on Iran and that Nightline reminded us every night for 444 days that 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage. It turned out that Reagan and the Republicans were like the house guest who never leaves. They occupied the house on Pennsylvania Avenue for 12 years. And then with only a break for a conservative Democrat who gave us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Defense of Marriage Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, we had another eight years of so-called “compassionate conservativism.”

  Stage 2: Anger – By the time George Bush was “elected” in 2000, my denial was over. Now I was angry. I was angry first that an election had been stolen and then that the thief was hell-bent on starting a war in Iraq. For the first time since the 1960s, I marched in the streets and took part in vigils against the war. The anti-war efforts were completely ignored by the Bush administration. The anger dissipated after a few years.

  Stage 3: Bargaining – By 2004, a helplessness feeling had set in. What could we have done better to elect John Kerry? Clearly our message had not gotten out. Were we doomed to have a President who was a joke to the rest of the world? Perhaps we could compromise some principles in order to elect someone who was not a liberal but was at least a moderate. The bargain we struck got us Barack Obama who immediately took compromise to a new level by adopting the Republican healthcare plan.

  Stage 4: Depression – As I watched a Democrat expand the use of drones, wiretaps and deportations to unprecedented levels, depression sank in. This was “our guy” doing this. What is it going to be like when the next inevitable Republican takes over?

  Stage 5: Acceptance – Just this year, as I turned 61, I came to the realization that I am never going see the kind of nation I thought I’d see when I first became socially conscious 45 years ago when my age digits were reversed. I also will never get to travel to the Moon or own a flying car. In the decade or so that I have left before senility sets in, I will have to accept that I live in an imperfect world. Good ideas don’t always beat bad ideas. Altruism doesn’t always trump greed. I have officially entered the cynical sixties.

  But just to be sure I don’t get too cynical, I have also this year been given a wonderful grandson in whom I can place all my youthful hopes and dreams for America. I may never get to see a kinder and gentler America where guns and wars are rare and where equality pervades every segment of society, but Bryce may see it. One can only hope.

  A trip to Ellis Island – Where America welcomed immigrants

  July 2014

  Like many New York-area residents, I have never been to many of the tourist meccas like Ellis Island. And since three of my four grandparents were immigrants, I decided on a beautiful Sunday morning recently to see the ground zero of 20th century immigration for myself.

  The great thing about a visit to Ellis Island is that the only way to get there is by boat. Of course, that’s the way it’s always been. Between 1892 and 1954 immigrants arrived at Ellis in boats from all over the world. The boats today run a route that includes Liberty Island along with Ellis Island on every trip. So even if you just want to see Ellis Island, you get a free trip to Liberty Island thrown in.

  Ellis Island was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and some exhibits are still not back. But what’s there is gold. There are artifacts galore and you can tour the great hall where immigrants waited to be called up to be interviewed. You can see where they ate and where they slept. You can see an above-average orientation film that tells the full story of American immigration. And they don’t try to cover up America’s checkered acceptance of immigration. There are whole exhibits to “nativist” hostilities to every immigration group. For some, like the Asians, the dislike was codified into laws that forbade immigration altogether for decades.

  But what surprised me most about visiting Ellis Island was the people who accompanied me on the boat. It seemed to me that the vast majority of my fellow visitors were immigrants themselves, or perhaps simply tourists from foreign countries. English speakers were definitely in the minority. And this dismayed me. It seems to me that it would do many native-born Americans good to see the lengths our ancestors went to try to deal fairly and humanely
with immigrants.

  From my reading of history, and from the exhibits at Ellis Island, I know that the people who created and worked at the facility were not all big fans of immigration. Yet they followed the law, and I suspect they even bent the law sometimes, to give many needy people a shot at the American dream. The key, of course, was that the laws during the time Ellis Island was operating either allowed unrestricted numbers of immigrants (as long as they were healthy and could prove they had a way to support themselves) or set the ceiling on the number of immigrants high enough that people did not have to wait years or even decades to come into the country legally.

  The tour guides at Ellis Island go to great pains to explain that not everyone who came to Ellis Island got to stay in the country. If you were found to have any disease or were otherwise “unqualified,” you would be sent back to your home country. In fact, a member of my family who was found to have tuberculosis was sent back home. He would return to the United States years later after being cured of the disease.

  I think that anyone who visits Ellis Island comes away with two thoughts: (1) it was a tough, nerve-wracking way to come into the country but, (2) the process was designed to be fair and efficient and it was that most of the time. One of the rooms you can visit is the make-shift courtroom where immigrants who were being denied admission could have their cases reviewed by administrative judges. The hearings went on all day, every day. Many were able to convince hearing examiners that they were being denied entry unjustly. Contrast this to the detention facilities we have today for unqualified immigrants that provide no right of appeal.

  Clearly the immigration situation today is much different than it was 100 years ago. But when you visit Ellis Island, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, you can’t help but be thankful that Americans then, while not being crazy about the hordes of immigrants filling up New York City, were compassionate enough and intelligent enough to let them in, in the hope they would contribute to the country.

  Essentially, in those days, America made a bargain with the world. You can come here if you promise to work hard and help make America a better place. Even the most ardent immigration opponent would have to agree that the immigrants who came through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954 kept their side of the bargain. Are we sure that the thousands of people we turn away today because of ridiculously low limits on the number of immigrants cannot similarly contribute?

  Getting in touch with my inner

  NASCAR redneck

  August 2014

  The tailgating scene at a NASCAR race

  I think that we over-50s stay young through new experiences. You say you’ve never been scuba diving? Jump in, the water’s fine. Never been to the opera? No time like the present. Recently, I crossed an item off my bucket list. I attended my first NASCAR race.

  Now some of you may be wondering why it took me 61 years to try the most popular spectator sport in America. My only defense is that I’m from New Jersey and there is no NASCAR in New Jersey, never has been. The closest racetrack for me is 90 minutes away in the Poconos. So unless you have family or friends who are fans, NASCAR is not on your radar in the state with the most roads per square mile in the nation.

  Only recently has a New Jersey NASCAR fan become a friend. My daughter’s boyfriend has been going to NASCAR races since he was a boy. So when he mentioned that he and his family were heading out to Pocono Raceway for the weekend, I expressed a desire to go along. So my daughter and I got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and headed to Pennsylvania to meet up with her boyfriend’s family who had rented an RV and were waiting on the Pocono Raceway infield for us.

  If you’ve ever been to a horse race, you know that there is a center portion of the track that is usually green but not inhabited by fans. Car racing is a bit different. First, the track is about twice the length of a horse track and the infield is accordingly much larger. In fact, it’s large enough to accommodate hundreds of RVs. This is like the biggest tailgate you could imagine. Everyone brings grills, lots of food and unimaginable quantities of beer. In fact, everything about car racing is supersized. The racing is like horse racing on steroids; the tailgating makes football fans look like rank amateurs. Even the crowds, in excess of 200,000, are far beyond any other spectator sport.

  It took an hour, but my daughter and I finally reached her boyfriend’s RV parked on the track infield. The first item on the agenda was breakfast, and the bacon, eggs and sausage were among the tastiest I’ve ever had. We took a walk around and noticed RVs with satellite television and RVs with rooftop terraces. We also noticed a lot of Confederate flags.

  Now I would expect to see the stars and bars south of the Mason Dixon line, but we were in northern Pennsylvania, about 150 miles north of Gettysburg in fact. So the presence of large numbers of Confederate flags was puzzling. The license plates in the parking lot did not indicate that Southerners had driven north for the race.

  No, I found out that the stars and bars has become the flag of Redneck Nation. People who simply identify themselves as rednecks fly the flag, in some cases totally ignorant of its historical significance as a flag of slavery for African Americans. And as I looked around, the only people of color I saw were security personnel. There were also far fewer women than men. It seems that NASCAR is a predominantly white male pastime. Fortunately, I fall into that demographic, at least on paper.

  As race time came around, we all went to the fence separating the infield from the track and watched the cars whizz by. I have to say that I enjoyed the race itself and all the people we met were extremely friendly. I am glad that I went for the experience of it, just as I was glad that I visited the Guggenheim Museum the previous Sunday. I think that the overlap of customers at the two is probably quite small. But I’m glad that it includes me. In fact, I would not mind attending another NASCAR race in the future. But this weekend, I’m going to the National Gallery.

  Some things never change and that’s a good thing

  September 2014

  My father was born, lived and died in the same house. But that’s a rarity. The odds are that if you’re over 50, you have lived in several different places in your life. I’ve lived in nine.

  It’s always interesting to return to the place where you grew up. For some of us, it’s depressing. Inner city neighborhoods that once were great places to live, now are not so much. For others, it’s just a strange experience because so many years have gone by that most of the people we used to know are gone.

  I moved out of my hometown of Lodi, New Jersey in 1975, the year I got my first job. If that looks like I couldn’t wait to get out, you’re right. But just about every year since, I have returned to the town of my birth to partake in a cultural landmark – an annual Italian street fair called the Festa de San Giuseppe.

  Most people in the New York area who have been to an Italian feast have been to San Gennaro in Little Italy. That’s the king of Italian feasts. It has great food and even greater crowds. In fact, the crowds can be compared to a subway car at rush hour. It’s not a fun experience and no one would do it if the food wasn’t so great. By contrast, the smaller feasts like San Giuseppe in Lodi are comfortable and the food is every bit as good.

  For the uninitiated, these Italian feasts are basically church fundraisers. Non-Italian churches have carnivals and bazaars every summer; Italian parishes have feasts. In addition to the best pizza and sausage and peppers sandwiches around, Italian feasts always feature a statute of the church’s patron saint on which feast-goers tape paper money. It used to be just dollar bills, but these days you often see 20s and even 50s. Watch for the guy who attaches a $100 bill. He probably is either a fan of The Godfather or he is the real thing.

  Now it would be strange enough if the Feast just featured a currency-covered statue. But an important part of just about every Italian feast is the procession of the statue through the streets. That’s for the people who are too sick (or too lazy) to come to the Feast. On a
t least one day during the run, the Feast comes to them, accompanied by a band playing music from the old country. The marchers carry the statue right to the doors of willing donors.

  This procession of the statue through the streets of town is among my oldest memories. It’s quite amazing to a small child for a band to come to your house once a year carrying a statue like the ones you’ve only seen in church. It’s like God opened a traveling branch office – equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

  Anyway, the Festa de San Giuseppe was a part of my life for all the 22 years I lived in Lodi. And it has continued to be a part of my life for the almost 40 years since. As my hometown has changed to the point of being unrecognizable in many ways, one thing has remained constant – the Feast still happens every Labor Day weekend. And it still looks very similar to the way it looked 50 years ago.

  I have dragged my wife and children to the Feast for years. Why? Because it provides a sense of continuity to my heritage and to the place of my birth. And that’s important in our transient society. The unchanging ritual is comforting.

  Labor Day’s ritual used to be to watch Jerry Lewis on the MDA Telethon and go to the Feast. Jerry is gone now, but the Feast carries on. And I hope it does for the rest of my life. The zeppole are out of this world!

  Remembering in the age of smartphones

  October 2014

  Most of us have reached the point in life where names and titles sometimes elude us. I distinctly remember the same thing happening to my grandparents. As a child I would often prompt them with the names that were just out of mental reach. “What’s the name of that actress with the big nose?” my grandmother would say. “What’s that guy’s name who’s on that TV show I like?” my grandfather would ask. As a dutiful grandson I provided the answers.