It’s become the norm in South Florida: May arrives, with its heat and humidity, and one’s thoughts turn to playoff hockey.
Tuesday night I went with my friend Joe, a high school English teacher, to watch the Panthers at The Federal, the restaurant inside the team’s practice facility in Holiday Park. One rink was hosting public skating – the game showing on two big screens – while the other hosted a men’s league game.
The restaurant – here in Florida’s hockey heartland – was full. We sat outside, at a table overlooking the pickleball courts, with a choice of numerous screens.
The sound was turned up, and punctuated from time to time by the loud roar of cat that was provided by the restaurant.
“I could use that in class,” Joe said, impressed. “Whenever a student falls asleep.”
Sunday’s Times also carried a long article about the new pope, which included a few paragraphs about his years at Villanova. “He majored in math and attended Masses that were sometimes interrupted by shouts of ‘Hoagie Man!’ when a guy selling subs passed by.”
The Hoagie Man was an institution at Villanova, at least in the ’70s. You’d be studying in your dorm room, dinner a distant and unpleasant memory, and suddenly you’d hear the welcome cry of “Hoagie Man!” followed by the Pavlovian sound of a box full of hoagies – Italian, roast beef, ham & cheese – being dragged down the terrazzo floor in the hall. The day Pope Leo was elected I texted a former classmate, wondering if the papal apartment would now be getting nightly visits from the Hoagie Man. But I never thought of the Hoagie Man as a disrupter of Masses. He announced his presence upon entering a dorm, late in the evening, far from church.
David Brooks had an essay in yesterday’s New York Times titled “We Are the Most Rejected Generation.” (The headline was a quote from a college student he spoke with.) I read the piece with interest, though my professional experience with rejection, while long – stretching half a century now – is entirely self-imposed, and I can remove it from my life whenever I like: All I have to do is stop writing and submitting what I write to editors. For the current generation, at least the ones who want to get into good colleges, rejection is an inevitable part of life. Brooks wrote that many students apply to 20 or so schools, hoping that at least a couple will accept them. A friend in St. Petersburg wrote an article recently about the difficulty of getting into college in Florida; he began it with the story of a girl from his hometown who had the grades, SAT scores, and extracurricular activities that in the old days would have gotten her into an Ivy League school; she got rejected by the University of Florida. Brooks asked young people if “living in this exclusionary regime affected their personalities,” and the answer was a resounding yes. Though it’s good preparation if they want to become writers.
A Polish friend messaged me this morning with the news that she’s presenting a paper at an academic conference and one of her co-panelists will be discussing my book. Looking at the program listing that she attached, I saw that a professor at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin will be talking about Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, as well as another book about Poland by another American. I googled this author and learned, with dismay, that she is an esteemed anthropologist, the recipient of numerous academic awards. Surely, she wrote a deep, well-researched, important study of Poland. My book, by contrast, is a mix of descriptions and anecdotes from the two and a half years I lived in Warsaw. I hope the professor is not too hard on me.
I was on a plane Monday after attending the memorial service for my friend Sam Graff, who died a few months ago at the age of 86. The mass at Sacred Heart Church was followed by a reception at the Trenton Country Club, not far from where Sam and Sally (my first newspaper editor) lived in a house designed by Sam’s grandfather in 1907. Sam had left the Trenton Times by the time I arrived, working as a photo editor at the New York Daily News. “Photo,” he used to answer the phone, “Graff.”
On the flight back home from Philadelphia on Monday the man sitting across the aisle from me sported a message tattooed across his thigh that was partially covered by his shorts. At one point the shorts inched up, revealing the words: JESUS WEPT.