Carol Bergman

We could have been in Rome or Paris or Berlin, walking in the gardens, gardens with statues and fountains. It might have been spring, the air moist with blossom and seed. Perhaps a light rain had been falling all morning and I was sauntering under my cheerful turquoise umbrella. But we weren’t in Rome or Paris or Berlin, we were on the line at Fairway, in the organic section upstairs. He was behind me, humming. I turned around and said, “You are singing.” And he said, “One must not stop singing.”

I was carrying a few groceries but he had a cart filled to overflowing. The top layer was chard escaping from a plastic bag, the large leaves with their red veins drooping over and nearly falling out of the cart. I began to laugh and said, “I see you have bought some vegetables.” And he said, “One must not stop eating vegetables.”

And as he talked, it was as though he was singing. I asked if he was a singer. “A baritone,” he said.

He was tall and slim, wearing a black wool jacket. And though his hair was dyed black with gray showing at the roots, he was ageless, like other angels I have met in the city. He was a troubadour who enjoyed singing and telling stories, descendant of the medieval troubadours from France and Spain.

It was a long line, everyone home from work on line at Fairway, it seemed. We had time to talk. I told him about two other troubadours I had met recently: Gary who played his guitar on a milk crate in the Overlook Passage in my Washington Heights neighborhood and sang “Let it Be” and nothing else. (I wrote about him here on November 1, 2014.) He had disappeared. “If only he were traveling,” I said. “But I fear he has sickened and died during our harsh winter.” And Scott, who played the flute in the same passage, taking turns with Gary who only played in the mornings. Scott was still there; he didn’t know what had happened to Gary. Both Scott and Gary were gifted in their own way, both of them homeless. Gary had never admitted he was homeless, but Scott had confirmed that he was.

“I have been fortunate. I had a privileged childhood and now I work at the Metropolitan Opera,” my new friend said. I never learned his name. There wasn’t enough time for that.  Read More 

“Egon Schiele, My Father and Me” was published in New York on February 11th and will appear in London this week, or next, in a full page spread with a photo and illustration. I could not be more pleased. This is a story “with legs,” as we say, of interest to many and an important contribution to the historical record. It is my hope that it will continue to travel far and wide. I have retained all rights.

It’s always gratifying to have an article, essay or book accepted for publication especially if one is paid well and/or the subject is deserving of attention. Gathering material for a story, writing it, working it, submitting, and then collaborating with a good editor—the arduous process is rewarded with a sale. But it’s not the only reward. People respond to the work with commentary online or letters to the editor, or they contact the writer with a personal anecdote, a question, a criticism, or a correction. My preference is to answer everything I receive in a timely manner with courtesy and attention—even the critical comments. After all, I have sent my writing out into the public sphere and this implies an obligation to those who read it.

In the case of the Egon Schiele piece, which explores the oddity of my father’s art collection among other things, the response has been both heartwarming and critical. I have been invited for drinks, invited to peruse documents that might change my mind, and I have discovered cousins I never knew existed. Quite a ride.

Once in London, after writing a controversial article for The Times Educational Supplement about racism in the British school system, I was asked to testify in the House of Lords. I had been invited by a Lord who liked the article and wanted to use it in defense of new proposed legislation. In the midst of a hot debate during which I remained silent, another Lord got up and suggested I return to the United States where I belonged. Of course, he was extremely polite and called me Mrs. Bergman. I was very young and inexperienced . The flattery of the invitation had trumped my journalistic scepticism and I felt stung. It took me a while to understand that I’d done nothing wrong. The article had legs.

http://forward.com/articles/214605/egon-schiele-my-father-and-me/?p=all


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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny.

--President Barack Obama in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015.

We didn't know what to expect when we arrived at the Court House in Kingston, NY last Friday morning. As we were leaving, my British-born son-in-law, Ryan, quipped wryly that he might be alone in the court room. His citizenship test and interview had taken place in Lower Manhattan which was teeming with people, but this was Kingston, a small, historic town in Ulster County. The town dates back to the 17th century Dutch period and there are many stone houses in the “stockade,” as it is called, in the old part of town. It was the perfect location to become a hyphenated Anglo-American or an American of British ancestry; the choice is always ours.

The ceremony took place in the Supreme Court of the State of NY, Hon. Mary M. Work presiding. And there were many surprises. First, the judge was a woman, an older woman—brava to that—and the Clerk of the Court, Nina Postupack, redundant to say, was also a woman, a younger woman. Brava to that, too.

Secondly, the court room was crowded: 46 soon-to- be New Americans from 30 countries, friends and family, filled the hard wooden seats. A woman handed out brochures for ESL classes and a Daughter of the American Revolution distributed American flag lapel pins. Just think about that, I thought, how that venerable elitist organization has had to change.

But, most surprising, were the thoughtful narratives from elected officials and the Judge. The most touching: Legislator Craig V. Lopez told the story of his Puerto Rican family, a hardscrabble childhood, and what it means to him to be an American. Then a local high school choir sang the National Anthem and God Bless America and the New Americans took an oath of allegiance which sounded dated, but also profound.

The next day President Obama addressed a crowd in Selma, his eloquent and elegant speech the perfect addendum to the citizenship ceremony, a reminder of how this country was formed and how much work we still have to do. The President is a good storyteller and a good writer, as were our well-educated, well-read Founding Fathers.  Read More 

They have identified the monster who has been beheading men in the dessert. In these horrific videos, the men are wearing orange jump suits and the killer is dressed in black, sleek monster fashion to be admired/emulated by all his FB friends around the world.

Let us not give this criminal/terrorist a name or wonder with endless interviews what he was like as a boy, how he turned from the sweetest child into a monster. He and others like him must be stopped, as Hitler had to be stopped. Are these killings any less planned? Any less awful?

And I could go on, but have promised myself to take a break from the news—print and electronic—from the images of beheadings and all the geopolitics associated with them.

Is it possible for a writer to ignore what is going on in the world? Or for any artist? Can we create a work so insulated that it glows serenely in a utopian, cosmic firmament? How did Murdoch manage “By the Sea, By the Sea,” for example. Or Naipaul, how did he explain to himself “The Enigma of Arrival?” These are books of descriptive pastoral contentment and they are utterly relaxing. Perhaps these writers took a respite from beheadings, metaphorically speaking. We all need that. Is it any wonder that the renaissance in cable/tv programs keeps us glued week after binging week? What are your favorites, dear reader?

In a PBS documentary I watched last night, Philip Roth, a dark comic writer who claims he has permanently retired from writing said, “You don’t have to look for suffering when you’re a writer. It will find you soon enough.”

Indeed.

And so I am ignoring the pressing concerns of the world today, or just for today. I turned off my computer before noon, I went for a swim, I met a friend for lunch, I bought some bananas, I washed the dishes. And I will turn on the television after I sign-off here to watch a favorite program or two. House of Cards, Season 3, Episode 1. I'll start with that.  Read More 

I was walking in the light snow late this morning when I spotted a FDNY Communications truck. What kind of communications?, I wondered. I had never seen a truck like this before. I put down my groceries and waited. There was a story here, that was obvious, and I am forever in search of a good story.

A handsome young man with Fire Department logos on his shirt and hat emerged from the truck with a sack of tools which he placed at the base of what I now know is an Emergency Rescue Service box, or ERS Box for short. The cover on the base of this nearly one-hundred year old structure was open to fresh new wiring that needed some fixing. Rather than scuttle the solid housing, they have been refurbished and rewired. History preserved. All of them are now hooked up to a central computer, and when one falters, the repair trucks are sent out pronto. They are now an important tool in the city’s emergency preparedness; if cell phones and the internet go down, these boxes will still work. There are more than 5,000 in all five boroughs of the city. Breathe a sigh.

Of course, I was as interested to hear all this as Edward, the technician, was to tell me about it. He was an articulate and voluble story teller, as are most ordinary people. According to Stephen Pinker in his book, “The Language Instinct,” we are hard-wired to speak, and by extension, we are hard-wired to tell stories. Electronic media short-circuits this hard-wiring with sound byte communication which is not good for writers. But a return to long form oral storytelling is good for writers. And though Edward had his cell phone on one ear as we were talking—his supervisor I hoped, not his girlfriend—we were conversing in long, narrative sentences about the Mayor’s recent snow-storm shut-down of the city, the perfect opportunity to test all the emergency services, including the ERS boxes. “We need to do this,” Edward said. “New Yorkers are always complaining, but they shouldn’t complain. Just last week, a woman was attacked, she pressed the fire button—there is also a police button—and the fire truck arrived in minutes. The attacker fled. I’ve been thinking about her. She was almost raped. This work I do, it’s important.”

Edward, thank you. This blog post is dedicated to you and all the other emergency service workers and first responders everywhere.  Read More 

I was eager to meet my new students. I never know who will turn up, it is always an interesting surprise, but when I arrived at the building, I realized it was not the best building to be teaching my class; it was not accessible. And sure enough, Valerie Pepe, was waiting for me in the lobby and she was understandably incensed. She had been dropped off from work by Access-a-Ride which she has to book well in advance, they were scheduled to pick her up at 9 p.m., and until then, she wasn’t going anywhere. She had three choices: quit (never an option for Valerie), register for another section of the class in a different—accessible—building, or find some way to get upstairs, a lot of them. And, of course, this was not her responsibility, it was the university’s responsibility. They—the powers that be—are mandated by law to make such an egregious error right, immediately.

So there was I and there was Valerie, incensed but insistent on taking my class, and this wasn’t flattery, she had heard about me and wanted to experience my class, she said. So I began a discussion with the security guard and the other building staff on duty and we decided, all of us, that we’d get Valerie upstairs even if she had to be carried. More students arrived and every one, to a person, also offered to help.

I need to explain here that Valerie has a congenital orthopedic deformity called Athrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (AMC). She has had numerous surgeries and is on crutches. In addition to having a disability, she has a Masters Degree in Social Work, a full-time job with the city, more than one thousand FB friends, a polished fashion sense, an engaging sense of humor, boyfriends now that she is no longer married, a fund-raising organization for research into this deformity which also provides support to afflicted families (http://amcmusicfestival.com/valerie-pepe/), tireless energy, and great ambition to write a memoir about her life thus far. Does any one who knows her have any doubt that she will do this? No.

During the siege that we now call 9/11, Valerie’s co-workers trundled her down the stairs and up Sixth Avenue away from the falling debris and incinerated bodies. They made it as far as 18th Street where they stopped for respite at the Hollywood Diner which forever after has become one of Valerie’s writing rooms. They let her sit as long as she likes, she can order food or not, though she usually is starving after work. And I meet her there from time to time to discuss her pages. Our relationship as mentor and student is ongoing, for which I am most grateful.

The challenge of a disability, even a mental affliction, can be a powerful motivational force. I have seen it time and time again and it is always inspiring to me and to the other students in the class. Do most of us have such obstacles? We do not. If Valerie can make it to class and work on her writing day in and day out, why shouldn’t we?  Read More 

Sometimes a name fits a person and Bella is most definitely a Bella, inside and out. I first met her in the elevator of our building—we live on the same floor—as she was returning from a rendezvous with her Russian women friends in Bennett Park. She said she was feeling bored with these women friends, she liked men, and all the women talked about was their aches and pains and grandchildren. Bella has two sons, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, and she adores them all, but she is also an artist and she likes talking about art and how she makes art. Did I mention she is 91, has had six eye operations, injections in her hip, and so on, the usual old-age complaints. She doesn’t lament, she gets back to work. Four days a week, she has an attendant, and she is fortunate to have the money to hire someone to help her, but it is the three days a week she is on her own—widowed but not bereft—that she feels most happy and free. Why? She is still making art.

“Aren’t we lucky,” she said, when I began to talk about being a writer and writing every day no matter what else is going on in my life. Aren’t we lucky, indeed.

One day, I met Bella in front of the building. It was cold, but she was outside getting some fresh air. She was wearing a knitted Russian hat and sitting on her walker reading a book—a Russian detective mystery. “I usually read literature,” she said in her heavily accented English. “So when are you coming to see my gallery?” she asked.

I hadn’t yet been to her apartment. Now it was time. “Come over after dinner. I eat at 6.”

And so I went.

In her apartment, Bella uses two canes to get around, and she is in pain. But the enthusiasm of showing me her work, her husband’s work, the work of friends—cameos, oils, watercolors—trumped discomfort. Every canvas had a story—about the artist and the subject. And the apartment gallery was immaculate, every inch curated by Bella. But it was her work that was most impressive; she’s a miniaturist. Trained as a costume and fashion designer, she began painting miniatures around 1970 when she was still living in Russia. She sold many; others are in museums. Now she gives them away. And she has fun: a series of opera stars in costume, another of French and British royalty, movie stars, whatever occurs to her. Her collection of brushes is scattered in thick jars all over the apartment and she has two desks where she works with her still smooth-skinned only slightly arthritic hands.
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Most of us are familiar with Annie Leibovitz’s quirky and revealing celebrity photos in Vogue, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. “I couldn’t help but be pulled into other people’s lives,” she has said.

Widowed when her partner Susan Sontag died in 2004, and recovering from financial difficulties, she set out on a pilgrimage across the United States to take pictures of monuments and historical landscapes. But, of course, these images are much more; they are metaphors of loss.

The photographs are gorgeous and haunting. Gorgeous, because Leibovitz has attained a skill level that only comes with experience and self-confidence. Haunting, because there is a strange emptiness in the images. What is missing? What remains? How is this landscape held in our memory? How is our life renewed? What has been left unsaid?

The curator has left us to find our own way into this armature as we walk through the galleries. There are no diverting explanations as we come upon a framed cluster; we have to figure it out for ourselves. Yes, a guide is available, but the text is minimal and not that interesting. Just the facts, no interpretation.

Consider the photograph of Gettysburg, for example, where a Civil War battle raged. It’s stunning, quiet, inflamed with a turning autumn tree, the artist’s inner transformation of grief into art, negative space made palpable as we contemplate the iconic setting.

I have admired Leibovitz’s work for a long time and am pleased she is continuing to explore her medium with gusto and imagination.

The exhibit is on at the New York Historical Society until February 22nd.  Read More 

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
-- John Lennon

I talked to my friend Sonya in Paris after the shootings, the lockdown, and the police/military action. She had forced herself to get back onto the metro for a concert just a day after the killings and she was scared, as were all her friends. She was reading the accounts obsessively, watching the live action on TV, and mostly staying indoors. Her local Arab grocery store had been shuttered and feelings of hatred for immigrant guest worker neighbors surfaced too easily. I was shocked. Sonya is not indigène, she is not French; she is German. When she was fifteen she found her grandfather’s SS uniform in the attic of her childhood home. This required explanation which left her unsatisfied and ashamed. At sixteen she left for France where she became a fashion reporter, married and had a son. She is tri-lingual and trans-national, yet in the hours after the attack, she did not recognize herself.

She had known there would be trouble. The French have created high rise ghettos where the young men are restless, angry, uneducated and unemployed. They get into petty crime and worse. In prison they become radicalized, a familiar story. The same has happened in America where 2.1 million black men are in prison, 40% of the prison population, the highest incarceration rate in the world. So we must not be righteous, we must be sad. There are fault lines in our histories-- national, global and geopolitical.

Our conversation went on for two hours. I knew Sonya had to talk and talk and talk. My job was to listen. This was raw footage, unedited and still unformed as a story. But it needed to be processed, it needed to be told. “All sorrow can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them,” wrote Isak Dinesen.

I was reminded of life in New York after the 9/11 attacks. We had all been struck dumb and numb by terrorism, the terrorists’ intent. Pulling ourselves back into life, keeping the story straight, figuring out what is going on without malice or vengeful thoughts, was a challenge. It still is.  Read More 

Happy New Year, dear reader. I am writing this blog post on Monday, January 5, 2015. Tomorrow it will be colder, it will be snowing—hopefully only lightly. My literary/theatrical event, “Nomads,” is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village. Oh, the sound of that is truly exciting, I have to say.

It is my first collaboration with actors. We even had a rehearsal, a relief from the solitude of preparing a manuscript for publication. And I learned so much. Most importantly: what reads well may not work at all when it is spoken.

I have always wanted to write a play. How hard it is! I took a dramatic writing class at Gotham Writers Workshop a few terms ago and confess that all my efforts failed. Well, it was my first try and I was trying something new. I was a student again and that, in itself, was a pleasure.

I had written a couple of screen treatments with my screenwriter husband, not exactly the same. A treatment is written in the present tense and it is narrative prose; my husband did all the scene visualization. And so I went into the Gotham class as a complete beginner. I was enthusiastic, I was curious, I was daunted.

Oh, how I disappointed myself at first. I had forgotten what I always tell my students about imperfection, struggle, and acceptance of our flawed efforts. I turned to Virginia Woolf’s diaries, always a comfort. “It is bound to be very imperfect. But I think it possible that I have got my statues against the sky,” she wrote in her diary.

Soon after, I relaxed. The teacher was outstanding, the students inspiring, we read plays and discussed them. I came up with five possible scenarios and came away with an even deeper appreciation of dramatic writing.

And, obviously, something stuck. “Nomads” has a theatrical feel; twelve pieces will be “performed.”  Read More