The power and the glory

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. compose my own Tale of Two Cities. Though not in the Dickensian sense of angst, brooding, and ennui.
For the former and the current capitals of the United States are a twin, happy celebration of the best, nay, of the very essence, of America: freedom, democracy, prosperity.
In Philadelphia were conceived three of the most important, most valuable documents ever crafted by the human mind: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution birthing a country out of a gaggle that were the thirteen colonies.
In the epoch of socio-political history, the three crown jewels of the American Republic do stand side-by-side with Plato’s Republic, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Social Contract, Das Kapital, and the Communist Manifesto. For their sheer depth and breadth of influence, and the intensity of their impact to humankind.
Indeed, America’s remaining the sole world power today is an unimpeachable testament to this.
Philadelphia makes the animus of the American Republic. Even a non-American visitor – like me – easily perceives, no, strongly senses this. A tour of the sites around the Independence Mall is akin to a religious pilgrimage. In this wise, and for the traveling pilgrim, local or foreign, a renewal of faith in America and in everything that it has always stood for.
Cracked as it had always been, the Liberty Bell is no mute witness but still tolls in the mind the true, the good and the free, the very core values of the Founding Fathers.
At Independence Hall one is touched by the spirits, if not moved by the greatness of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and America’s greatest genius, Franklin.
Washington, in the highest moral ground, given that the general steadfastly refused the kingship proffered to him by an adoring American people after the triumph of the revolution against Mother England. Ah, were the other George W. as morally grounded in the elections of 2000 and in the Middle East question.
Washington, D.C. makes the corpus of America, governance – therefore, power – in residence there: at the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court. The Washington Post too, earning its right to power in the Watergate case that drove Nixon to oblivion.
In Washington, even the monuments are shibboleths of power and all that it entails. The memorials to the won wars: World War II, with its arches and pillars reminiscent of the very symbols of the defeated causes of Fascism and Nazism; the Korean War and its intrepid company of battle-tested, noble warriors. Even the Vietnam Memorial with its casualty-etched black granite bespeak of the indomitable American spirit, especially with the monument to three GIs in resolute pursuit of the American cause.
And what better representation of power than the Washington Monument: an obelisk that stabs the very sky, a phallic symbol in full erection. Pun unintended here, dummy.
Philadelphia and Washington D.C.: the grandeur of the past, the glory of the present. There lies the greatness of this country. Now, if only Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the Hezbollah subscribed to Pax Americana….

Garden of art

HAMILTON, New Jersey – Art appreciation in a most natural setting. That is the Grounds for Sculpture here, in the very heart of America’s Garden State.
From stone and wood to metal and resin, from the monumental to the theatrical, the objects of art range from the abstract to the impressionist to post-modern and, yes, even mobile.
Be they by the man-made lake, hidden in a bamboo grove, upon a slope, framed by tall cypresses, or atop a stone pedestal, the sculptures blend with their setting. Art becomes nature thus. And nature becomes art.
Truly, now fully do I appreciate my Humanities class in the university. It gave me some sense of the culturati. Hence, a deeper appreciation of the arts. Hence, a more meaningful and pleasurable experience derived.
Imagine my sheer joy in finding Degas’ blue ballet dancer series transformed into metal sculptures – complete with the ballerinas’ tutus.
A most pleasant shock was the sight of a woman in all her naked glory seated on the grass with two fully-dressed gentlemen about ready to take their lunch, a picnic basket of bread, fruit, cheese and wine nearby. Yes, it was a rendition in 3-D of Edouard Manet’s Picnic on the grass. Of course I joined the scene, captured in a photo for a lasting memento.
The wife I asked to pose – with me again – in another Manet masterpiece, the Argentuil, a sailor and his wife on the pier by their boat sculpted in resin.
I acted the lover of the Lady in a bathtub – an aptly-named metal sculpture, and made like a Peeping Tom to By Nature -- a lady taking her bath by a creek amid lush foliage.
Claude Monet’s green arch bridge in his series on the Giverny Gardens (hope I am not mistaken here) was copied most precisely there too, complete with the lily pond, the koi fish and the drooping weeping willows. It made a most romantic setting for me and the wife, sister Celia and her husband Edgar.
The piece d’ resistance to me though was Renoir’s Luncheon for the Boating Party – straight out of the canvas perfected in life-like proportion down to the last details – the whiskers of the boatman, the fruits, the wine, even the very folds of the women’s skirts.
Could not help gushing at the sight.
Beyond the masterpieces of the Impressionists, there were the Grecian classics too but given a new interpretation, like the Nine Muses, an abstract in granite.
This paper’s editor would have fallen in love with the Erotica Tropicana, a tableau of a naked woman in the jungle, set inside a thicket of Chinese bamboo. Sheer sensuality, Mister Ashley.
As this is America, there need be a touch of Americana. Coming straight out of the Depression is the Unemployment Line – a queue of forlorn men seeking work, any kind of work. Rural America is represented by gargantuan bulls at rest on a meadow, and two gossiping, really huge women.
There are more, much more than I could possibly write about here. But there is not one that did not touch me. It was one really beautiful, enriching experience.
So who now says that masterpieces of art – paintings and sculptures by the masters most notably – are a museum’s monopoly? And best appreciated there?
I have gone to the Louvre in Paris, the Moma and Guggenheim in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and seen the works of the masters. The excitement, the joy, nay, the bliss that came to me in beholding the masterpieces there is as great as that I felt at the Grounds for Sculpture.
My thanks to Debbie Seva, a close friend of the wife’s family, for the cultural enrichment. (For my past columns, access acaesar.blogspot.com)

Out of the tourist trap

RUSCOMBMANOR, Pennsylvania. Nature-tripping that started on the way to and from the Niagara Falls continues here.
No freeways, no heavy volume of vehicles – so, no smog. Just the smooth two-lane country road winding through green-and-gold cornfields, emerald forests of oaks, maples and pines, and – again, quaint little villages with their ubiquitous ever-red barns. With the eponymous Blue Mountains forming a backdrop against the light, light azure skies speckled with white cotton-candy wisps of clouds.
Ah, couldn’t help but feel romantic here. Driving all alone with the wife, in the embrace of soothing jazz in my sis-in-law Agnes’ Subaru Impreza. A sentimental journey, indeed, to young, young love: of first kiss bliss, of floating on cloud nine while HHWWPSSP – that’s holding hands while walking pa-sway-sway pa, for you cold-hearted cad.
So a pot of gold is promised at the end of a rainbow, so a slice of Eden is delivered at our journey’s end – a log cabin atop a slope of green, green grass by a forest of ash, birch, pine, and locust trees whence emerge foxes, rabbits and squirrels scurrying for food and play in the early morning.
In the evening, comes a sweet, sweet symphony of the whistling wind, rustling leaves, the hum of cicadas and the buzz of crickets.
God’s own little acre is home to Steve and Yolanda Spohn, nee Sanchez, the wife’s cousin. Tibo is a retired US Navyman and is now a computer systems analyst while Yolly used to play lead guitar in an all-female band that once gigged in Angeles City under the moniker Sweet Earth. City baby boomers will remember them as the top draw at the then Hawaii Five-O Club in Balibago. She now plays only occasionally – as in the Mass at the reunion of the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus alumnae in New York City – as she has a full-time bank job in Boyertown, one more small pleasantville in good old USA 30 minutes from here.
In the country, in a log cabin – something melds the rustic with the romantic effecting – yeah, here I go again – a thoroughly uplifting and at once profound spiritual sense: Of Creator and creation as kindred essences. God is good. Allahu akbar!
I don’t wonder now why all the best, and more charismatic, preachers in America were born and bred in the country; the firebrands, mostly in the inner cities. Think here of Martin Luther King vis-à-vis Malcolm X.
So do presidents. The guy from Plains, Georgia – Jimmy Carter – while graded by the American electorate as a “fair” president is hailed the world over as an exceptional ex-president, impacting his character in the field of human rights and in the propagation of the democratic system of governance – heading election monitors in trouble spots in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and in his advocacy for human dignity so manifest in the Habitat for Humanity.
The log cabin stands too on revered ground in the annals of American political history. A number of American presidents, notably the great Andrew Jackson and the greatest, Abraham Lincoln, as well as a greater number of pretenders to the presidency used the born-in-a-log-cabin campaign spins. Of course, the election results were not always to their favor.
God, nature, democracy – essential America – in my contemplation of a log cabin by the woods. Truly, the best of this land of the free and home of the brave is not in your usual tourist brochures. No matter their glossiness.
I got out of the cities, got to the country, and found myself in the very heart and soul of America.

American Quilt

BUFFALO, New York – It’s the America I’ve long wanted to see. Far from the asphalt jungles and forests of concrete, steel, and glass skyscrapers of the mega cities.
One enters another – and more pleasant – world in the great American universe, as it were, in small-town USA. That is the countryside, the pocket of communities by the network of well-paved highways paralleled north to south and crisscrossing east to west, farther, way farther than the bespectacled eye can see.
A 398.7 mile-ride from Philadelphia to Niagara – taking all of nine hours, including periodic “relief stops” – makes more a deeply absorbing than a simply observing experience. One not only sees, but also feels America. One gets enwrapped and enraptured in the colorful American quilt, to idiomize it.
Green America – its towering pines, shady maples, mighty oaks and assortment of other hardwoods line up the rising, sloping, meandering interstate highway through the Poconos and the Appalachian mountain ranges; a kaleidoscope of wild blooms carpeting the road shoulders and the dividing lanes.
Here and there, white-washed picket-fenced houses and spired little churches make picture postcard perfection in summer green. “Even better in burnt-orange fall, and best in winter white,” my sister-in-law Agnes Fuentes was quick to add.
So do the ubiquitous red barns and white or gray grain silos amid rows upon rows of green and gold cornfields, some so terraced they reminded one of our own wonders of Banawe.
Silver, shimmering silver flashes where the Keuka, Canandaigua and Conesus Lakes manage to peek from their emerald blinds. Can’t help but think fish, especially when the township Trout Run comes in sight. And there’s Canton too, to top off this culinary mindset.
Speaking of food, one never goes hungry on the interstate highways. Rest stops are a combo of restaurants – MacDonald’s, Denny’s, Dunkin’ Do-nuts, KFCs, Starbucks, etc. – gas stations, and even hotels. And the rest rooms there are divine, from a Third World perspective. Mostly no-touch sensors do the work of flushing, washing, and even dispensing paper hand towels.
A journey this delightful is a joy by itself. Hence, the bored and agitated “Ain’t we there yet?” did not even come to mind in our group of eight in a Dodge Grand Caravan – the wife and her sisters Agnes and Celia with husband Edgar, cousins Bing and Boy with wife Jessie.
Joy turns to awe upon reaching the journey’s end – mighty, spectacular, Niagara Falls.
The feeling is wanting for words to describe. It is akin to a religious, nay, spiritual awakening. An epiphany, even. I saw Niagara and the first thing that came to mind was to praise God for this wonderful creation. Sprayed all over by its mist, I felt a new baptism, a renewal, a new closeness to Him. God bless America. This America.

Biting the Apple

NEW YORK CITY. The blare of sirens off screeching white-and-blue patrol cars and platoons of on-high-alert city cops – scenes straight out of NYPD Blue – welcomed my arrival in the Big Apple.
Big time! So I imagined, seeing all the ruckus as I came out the subway’s Lexington station and walked to Grand Central Terminal. Only to be yanked back to reality: “It’s all standard security now here,” said Mary Jo ‘Angging’ Palencia, the wife’s best friend in the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus way back in Iloilo City, way farther back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
“There are even dogs stationed upstairs,” continued Angging who works for The Versailles Foundation/Claude Monet-Giverny officed in Grand Central.
A sense of siege permeates New York. The terror of 911 still grips the city. Compounded by the current crisis in the Middle East where America is again trying to do a fireman’s job. An arsonist’s job, one Arab guy sneered.
Nowhere is this – the siege, not the fireman’s role – more apparent than at St. Patrick’s Cathedral down Fifth Avenue. Posted on every door of the seat of the New York archdiocese are New York’s finest. Their ubiquitous patrol cars parked at strategic spots.
Enter the cathedral and your bag goes through thorough inspection check while you have to empty your pockets and go buzzed with hand-held detectors by burly, but courteous private security personnel. Their kind too stand as sentinels by each heavy wooden door, and at the cathedral’s very nave.
Comes to mind a suicide bomber blowing up himself and everybody else after taking holy communion. Morbid. Or one in priestly habit opening his arms in fraternal greeting, “Peace be with you,” as he drops unpinned fragmentation grenades. More morbid.
Across St. Patrick’s, at the mecca of art deco that is the Rockefeller Plaza, police herded to the makeshift stage of NBC’s Today Show a placard-toting audience from across America. Police presence was even more pronounced at the other side of West 49th Street with the septuagenarian group Chicago performing for another NBC show.
Up East 51st corner Park Avenue, a portion of the street has been appropriated for NYPD Precinct 17, complete with a communications command container van and concrete barriers.
At Battery Park, gateway to Liberty and Ellis Islands, tourists and visitors have to go through full-body detectors and their bags through x-ray machines similar to those used in major airports. And yes, cameras and cellphones are required to be turned off as one goes through the security tent to the ferry boats.
Patrol boats of the NYPD and the FDNY – the heroic Fire Department of New York of 911 fame – ride the waves between Liberty and Ellis.
At Central Park, mounted cops have always been a fixture. Now they are augmented with more foot patrols.
The first time I was here in September 2000, it was a breeze through the 86th Floor observatory of the Empire State Building. Now, the security checks are as detailed as a needle-in-a-haystack search.
Broadway and Times Square have too their full complement of cops-on-foot and cops-on-cars.
The rubble has been totally swept from Ground Zero. Construction of the new World Trade Center has started. Still, all points to the now hallowed site are guarded by policemen.
Never again a 911, indeed. That is the mindset here and, I presume, in all America.
All these security measures notwithstanding, New York is far from a garrison state. No M-16-toting Army men anywhere, neither any Abrams tanks nor V-150 armored personnel carriers moving about.
New York is still enjoyed for all its delights – its sights, sounds, and tastes.
A childhood friend who really made it big in the World Capital, Tom Batac, hosted me and the wife to a French feast one night, then to an Italian treat the next. The latter complete with a connoisseur and gourmand in Nino Noto. Ah, the signore’s choice of wine and Tuscan cuisine could have come straight out of Paradiso.
I love New York. Ever.