Memories of Botticelli

Animal, vegetable or mineral?

The game of 20 Questions brings back childhood memories. But it can also be a complex game, as I am learning right now.

My friend Walter surprised me by starting a game of 20 Questions via email last week. Email makes the game slower but easier in at least one respect: you don't have to remember the answers because you have an email trail.

The category for the game with Walter was mineral. The answer was "a speed bump." I ran out of questions before I could get it right.

He started another round a few days ago. Again, the category is mineral. I've asked nine questions so far, and I'm stumped. If I am interpreting his answers correctly, the thing is bigger than a breadbox, can be found in homes, is used by men and women and is man made. But here's my quandary: the thing is neither useful nor decorative.

What could it be? I have 11 questions left to find out.

In my college days and for a few years afterwards, we played a more layered version of 20 Questions called Botticelli. It was named for the early Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. He's the artist in the self-portrait above. (His best-known work is The Birth of Venus, which I finally saw in the Uffizi museum in Florence five years ago.)

Botticelli, the game, begins when one player -- let's call him "the chooser" -- announces that he is a person whose last name (or only name) begins with a certain initial. If the person were Sandro Botticelli, for example, the initial would be B. The hard and fast rule is that the person whose identity the players seek must be at least as well-known as Sandro Botticelli. The person can be either fictional or real.

Botticelli includes "access questions" and "yes/no questions." Players must ask access questions about people with the announced initial until they stump the chooser. Using my B initial, I might ask the chooser "Did you commission the original plan for Richmond?" If the chooser cannot think of an answer (in this example, William Byrd II), I have stumped him. Thus I win the right to ask yes/no questions until I get a no. I might ask if the chooser's character is fictional, or if he is male, or whether he is an American.

Once I get a no answer, it's the next person's turn.

It's not necessary to stick with the facts known so far when asking an access question. In our B example, a player might ask "Are you the cartoon spokesperson for a fruit?" If the chooser says "Chiquita Banana" -- or even any other character who fits the question -- the next player gets to try an access question.

And so it goes until the yes/no questions add up to an identity, at which point the guesser whose turn it is would ask, "Are you Sandro Botticelli?" and the game is over.

Games of Botticelli can last a long time, an hour or more.

I have such pleasant memories of playing Botticelli while driving with friends to Charlottesville or D.C. or while gathered around a table at a bar or while killing time between college classes.

I haven't played in at least 30 years.

I wonder why. I should do something about that.

Perhaps I'll host a Botticelli party.

Or play a game via email with Walter.

(If you want to know more about how to play the game of Botticelli, click here.)

Mining memories

Here goes part two of my series on memories.

A few days ago I wrote about joy and of my belief that it's more prevalent in memories than in real life -- simply because joy is so rare in real life.

Memories of another kind assaulted me during this past week. This time, the memories I'm talking about are things of great ... moment, like the Watergate scandal, Nixon's impeachment and resignation, Civil Rights, Women's rights, and Southern prejudice.

One of my colleagues from WTVR TV News from the 1970s emailed me the other day. She's working on a book, and she wanted to tap my memories.

I was a new news director in the early 1970s and was building a staff. The station's and my goals converged when it was time to hire a new reporter. We had no on-air black news people. We were also woefully short on women.

I decided to hire a black woman. Months later, I picked her to be the co-anchor, with a white man, of the 30-minute noon newscast, which drew something like 70 percent of the people watching TV. It was a ratings powerhouse, sandwiched between, if memory serves me, a top-rated game show and the mother of all soap operas.

I was proud of hiring her. She was direct, honest, objective, appealing on camera, intelligent, a quick thinker and a good writer. She also was not above calling me out when leftover traces of Southern prejudice or disrespect showed through in any aspect of the news operation.

She also carried a heavy burden. She was a pioneer, a trailblazer, in Richmond television.

When she told me recently of some of the overt prejudice she recalls, it shocked me. Did I never know? Or was I just not invested enough to remember? In a recent email, she quoted bits of advice I had given her at the time. Forty years later, I read what she says I said, and I suppose I advised her well enough. But I don't remember saying those things.

What I remember most is her perspective on a city that I thought I knew inside and out. She taught me about culture, attitudes, politics. I remember conversations about authors, politicians, music and heroes. She broadened my world. She moved on to anchoring in several major national markets before leaving the business a couple of decades later.

She was on the air on Channel 6 for stories that only she and I remember and for stories the whole nation remembers. She could do a good feature story that made your heart melt. And she could keep the noon newscast on the air with few resources other than her own wits while awaiting network coverage of Richard Nixon's farewell address to his White House staff. (He was late.) With a little help from me running copy up and down the stairs, she kept the newscast moving professionally. I'll take her word for it: I have no memory of her marathon ad-lib or of my running up and down the stairs.

I don't doubt that any of it happened. I just don't remember those incidents.

This business, yet to come, of getting together and exploring our no-doubt distinctly different memories of a brief, key period in our lives as journalists will prove to be interesting and probably challenging. Two people. Two perspectives. Two selective memories of events from nearly 40 years ago.

We'll be meeting up next month. I'm looking forward to it.

Joy happens more often in memory than in life

The Charles Bridge in Prague was built between 1357 and the early 1400s. Its original statues of noblemen and saints on the balustrade have now been replaced by replicas. (Photo by Walter Foery, 2002)

Memory is selective -- and I am constantly amazed nowadays at what I do remember about my life. And what I don't.

Several threads came together during the past week to emphasize the point.

It began when I watched a travel show on Prague, a city I visited in 2002, about a decade after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. It's a beautiful, stimulating and energetic city, striving in those days to hurl itself headlong into freedom and capitalism.

I remember many details of the city -- the Art Nouveau architecture of the Old City (against a backdrop of square, spare, concrete Soviet workers' housing high on the hills). A funicular ride to a luxuriant park with a panoramic view of the city. Shopping in the city's biggest department store with only pointing and hand-gestures as a way of communicating. And staying in a B&B away from the city center: It was a bus ride and a climb up a steep four-block hill to Ron's Rainbow Guest House.

Staying there was my friend Walter's idea, and I agreed. A rainbow flag flew above the door. There was even a rainbow on the toilet lid. The décor was clean and spare with an abundant use of rainbow colors. But I was exhausted every time I walked up that steep hill to Ron's Rainbow Guest House and then had to climb two more flights of stairs to my room.

Yes, I remember that vividly.

And I distinctly remember two meals in Prague. One was outdoors at a restaurant overlooking the city. What I really recall is the view. It was a warm, sunny, relaxed afternoon in an almost idyllic spot. (Walter took the picture above while sitting at our table.)

The other was at an outdoor café at the end of the Charles Bridge (the far end in the image above). It was an intimate setting in an old and crowded part of the city. I have no memory of what we did before or after, or even of what I ate, but I recall sitting there with a good Pilsner while I people-watched. The sunlight was golden yellow. The casually well-dressed Czechs and tourists around me were just going about their lives, enjoying a brief break. I was content to sit, sip my beer and watch --marveling all the while that I was in ancient Prague, so far from home.

A third Prague meal was memorable, but for a far different reason. It was a drizzly night, and Walter and I set out for dinner with no destination in mind. We wandered the Old City. We read menus posted outside several places, and skipped them for various reasons -- too touristy, too elegant, too boisterous.

We stumbled upon a basement restaurant that seemed to appeal. The walls appeared to have been hand-carved out of the rock beneath the city, candles and fresh flowers sat on white tablecloths, the waiters wore ersatz tuxedoes, and -- best of all in those early days of freedom for the Czechs -- the menu was in both Czech and in fractured English.

But it wasn't the meal, which was perfectly fine as I recall, that was memorable. It was the finale. We wanted after-dinner drinks. I looked carefully at the English side of the menu and saw Drambuie listed. I ordered by pointing to it.

Perhaps I pointed to the wrong thing. Perhaps the waiter misunderstood, Perhaps the order got mixed up in the kitchen.

What I got was a chocolate sundae in a parfait glass.

There was no trace of Drambuie in it. But it was a fine chocolate sundae, elegantly served.

Walter, by the way, got the glass of port he had ordered.

Those are some of my Prague memories: Memories enable us to capture what brought us the most joy in our travels -- over and over again. The moments of delight come with traveling, experiencing the new, being surprised by choices, and realizing that customs, like adventures, are not good or bad, just different and sometimes exciting.

Perhaps I would do well to always keep in mind that simple joys can be memorable. That in itself is worth remembering.

More on memory next time.

A day to celebrate

Forty-five years ago, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. It was probably one of the most dynamic periods of my life. I matured over the next four years. I became more self-confident. I learned to manage my life better. I grew up.

But I had to lie in order to put on a blue uniform and follow in the footsteps of my father and my brothers. My desire to make myself proud, to make my parents proud, and to do right as I saw right, meant that I had to deceive.

Today, I received a note from a straight friend, an airman who served with me in Germany. We chat often via e-mail these days.

"Don't Ask -- Don't Tell expired at midnight, and the world kept turning. Isn't it refreshing that there is one less obstacle to serving one's nation? ... God bless you, Don -- and thank you for your service to the nation.

"Will you blog about this event?"

I told him I probably wouldn't. But his touching e-mail -- which is emblematic of this gentle soul I met nearly a half-century ago -- has been on my mind all evening.

I answered him by saying that my orientation made little, if any, discernable difference for me when I was an airman. It just wasn't an issue. There were many of us who were gay at Bitburg and Spangdahlem air bases -- enlisted men and officers who wound up getting to know each other primarily at a small but quirky and amiable bar called Zum Bitchen in Trier, about 30 kilometers away.

(I never knew how the bar got its name, but it has something to do with the German word for "small," and it certainly was.)

In Germany, I was first a surgery medic, then a broadcaster on American Forces Television. There wasn't much prejudice in either specialty. The USAF wasn't conducting any witch hunts that I was aware of. The Vietnam War was at its peak, and I assume that warm bodies in uniform were more important to the establishment than what those warm bodies did in their private lives.

But this is not to say that others didn't have a tough time, a really tough time, because of who they were. It's taken a long time for prejudice to fade just a little, and it's not gone yet.

But we're getting there.

And for that, I am thankful.

How long? (part 2)

How long does it take the city to clean up after a hurricane?

Eighteen days.

To be more precise, it took the city until today to pick up the vast piles of trees, limbs and brush that accumulated by the curb as my neighbors and I cleaned up our yards.

Using the city's web site, I reported the need for a bulk trash pickup on Aug. 30.

On Aug. 31, the I got an e-mail from the city saying my request had been taken care of.

"We are happy to report that your Trash/Bulk Pick-up request has been completed by the assigned agency. We at the City of Richmond truly appreciate your proactive approach to resolve this issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us in the future."

Yeah. Right.

I understand that the city has been busy in Irene's aftermath. But why lead me on?

The city administration's -- and the mayor's -- reputation has been tarnished by the slow response all over Richmond. For his part, the mayor has put one big plodding foot after another in his mouth as he attempted to handle the cleanup and his resulting public-relations problem. In recent days he's seemed to be running out of feet, so great has been the criticism. His only response has been to avoid giving a direct answer to any and all questions.

Dwight Jones has been mayor of Richmond since 2009. Before that, he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates for 14 years. He's certainly learned that the best way to dodge hard questions is by not answering them.

All politics is local.

And you can't get much more local than piles of debris in front of your house.

All things considered, it's good to have my personal heap of trash gone. I'm sure my neighbors feel the same way. I'm glad to have the extra parking space, and I'm happy not to have to maneuver around hurricane debris as I drive.

But there's one thing the mayor should keep in mind: Voters have long memories.

How long is long enough?

Hurricane Irene charged through Richmond exactly two weeks ago today.

Yet the pile of tree debris in front of my house has gone untouched by city clean-up crews for 12 days. I notified the city that it was good to go two days after the hurricane.

The same seems to be true in every neighborhood I've driven through -- from Northside to the Museum District to the near West End. It's worse in some areas. On the way home from the grocery store this afternoon I saw a giant city-owned tree that crashed down on a corner lot, crushing a board fence and an outbuilding. It had not been touched since it fell. Nearby was a pile of debris from a city-owned tree that had blocked a road during the storm. It had been cut into chunks and piled at the curb in front of a home.

This lack of cleanup makes parking especially difficult.

What gives? When will the city get around to clearing debris from our neighborhoods?

Maybe Mayor Dwight Jones has other things on his mind. He was slammed last week in published reports that said he failed to list his new oceanfront condo on Singer Island in Florida, for which he paid a quarter of a million dollars, on his 2011 Statement of Economic Interests.

In addition, at least one member of City Council is asking whether the mayor was even in the city when the hurricane hit. Councilman Marty Jewell insisted, "If he was here, he would have shown his face. He lives for the camera." (The city's top administrative officer says the mayor was in Richmond.)

The mayor did manage to be seen on TV when he joined Virginia's governor for a photo-op tour of hurricane damage in the near West End.

And he was heard from a few days later when he dispatched GRTC buses to housing projects to take residents to grocery stores. (A few days later, a published report said that, between them, two of the buses had transported one person. I wonder what the unit cost for that project was.)

He also was before TV cameras at the airport yesterday to greet President Obama as he arrived in Richmond for a speech at the University of Richmond.

Clearly, the mayor loves being on TV.

But when is he going to clean up the tree debris that's been littering the city's curbs for two weeks?

Perhaps he's waiting until he can arrange for television coverage.

Being "special"

"I am unique. There is only one of me."

In this morning's paper, the slogan is seen in a picture of a classroom poster that accompanies a story about Richmond's public schools opening tomorrow.

It is, of course, true. But it's so trite as to be meaningless.

The quote is from Margaret Mead (1901-1978), the famed cultural anthropologist. But there's more to it.

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

The full Mead quote appeared in the same newspaper that published the back-to-school image this morning.

It appeared just three days ago.

Does self-esteem know no boundaries?

Safe havens and pulled people

I've heard some egregious errors made by local TV reporters during the last few days of hurricane coverage.

But the prize for Most Obscure Statement Made During Coverage of the Irene Aftermath goes to ... Rachel DePompa.

In a story on last night's 6 p.m. WWBT TV newscast, she stood in front of a fallen tree reporting from a neighborhood where people are saying they're fed up with the lack of electric power.

"The rolling hills and tall trees of Stratford made this area a haven for Irene's destruction," she declared.

Huh?

Let's leave aside the fact that the neighborhood is Stratford Hills, not Stratford.

More important, does Rachel know what a haven is?

My Random House Dictionary of the English Language, unabridged, says a haven is a safe place. You know, like a harbor where you'd moor a boat to keep it from harm during a storm.

So what exactly is a "haven for Irene's destruction?" Is it a safe place for a hurricane to do its damage? The good residents of Stratford Hills might disagree.

I don't have a clue about what Rachel was trying to tell us.

Or was she just stringing cool-sounding words together without fully grasping the meaning of what she was saying.

I suspect that was it.

Rachel is not alone. In many ways, her goof is emblematic of local TV news.

A few months back, her colleague Gene Petriello reported live from the scene of a fire: "Nine people, all from the same family, without a place to live, and they have their 78-year-old aunt to thank."

What on earth does that mean? Come to find out, the aunt hadn't set the fire and made her family homeless. No, she had awakened them and saved their lives.

Gene covers a lot of fires, staples of the contemporary local newscast. Who can forget the time he proclaimed, "We're told here a woman actually woke herself up to the fire."

And he reported on another blaze: "Six people were pulled and rescued after being trapped in an apartment fire." If it weren't so tasteless, I might make some comparison between pulled pork and pulled people. Sorry. I guess it's too late for me to be tasteful.

Words, words, words. Does it matter how you use them? I guess it doesn't -- not if you're on TV.

So, here's a tip from a veteran of the word wars for Rachel, Gene, and all the other local TV news newbies: Words are tricky. The biggest problem for many amateurs who try to use them is that they have meanings. And I'm going to be picky, picky, picky here -- good sentences have logical structures.

So, if you're not sure what words mean or what order they should go in, it's probably a good idea to stop and think.

If you're in the news business, words are ... well ... your stock in trade.