Coincidence? I think not.

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Sam Rosenthal

I want to tell you a couple stories.

They begin and end with a man named Morris Lewis Walker. Private First Class Morris Lewis Walker. “Mo.”

Mo was one of the best friends I ever had. I use the word “was” because Mo died, in 2009, fighting in Afghanistan. An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detonated underneath his unit’s vehicle, killing Mo and one of his fellow soldiers.

It is nearly impossible for me to put into words the effect Mo’s passing had on my friends and myself. I’ll spare you the platitudes that people usually heap on the dead, especially the young dead. We loved Mo because he was real — as real as they come. He saw right through you and on special occasions allowed you to see right through him, and this duality was magnetic. People like that leave, as Longfellow once wrote, “footprints on the sands of time.” Their actions and influence can be felt long after their passing.

Mo and I in New Jersey, summer 2008.

I don’t think that Mo’s gone. Not entirely, at any rate.

To preface this: I consider myself a highly rational person. When it comes to religious beliefs and all things supernatural, I trend toward the highly skeptical. I usually follow the Descartesian/agnostic approach of: If it can’t be proven by reason, you can’t trust it.

But.

Certain things have happened during my life that have made me question exactly how much of the Universe we humans can actually understand with our oh-so-incredible reason. They don’t all have to do with Mo, but in the interests of preserving this post’s thematic unity, I’ll relate the ones that do.

After college, I had planned on waiting tables, saving some money and traveling instead of immediately entering the professional world. A major reason I chose this was to give myself a solid chance of completing the novel that I had conceived during school. When Mo died, he changed not only the narrative of my novel, but that of my life as well.

To save for my travels, I had moved home from North Carolina after graduation. Mo’s funeral brought me back for a weekend. While I was there, I visited my friend Chetan at his house. He had some people over, one of whom was our mutual friend Heather. I told her my travel ideas — which were just that: ideas — and she said, “You should do my program in Spain!” She told me that if I spoke some Spanish, had a college degree, and was a native English speaker, I could get a student visa to teach English in Spain.

And, as all … three? … of my regular readers are aware, that’s exactly what I did. As my friend Katie likes to say, “It’s all Mo’s fault.”

Fast forward to Spain. St. Patrick’s Day. Madrid might as well have been Dublin. We couldn’t squeeze into any of the Irish pubs, so we strayed from our normal watering holes. After much prodding, a promoter convinced us to visit this bar called Star Studio. She showed us both floors of the packed bar/club, and we settled by the bar upstairs. Eventually, I got bored and split off with this guy named Magic (not making this up) to head back downstairs. Then I lost Magic, and, being my always-reserved self, started dancing in the middle of a group of Americans.

When I started to head back upstairs, I accidentally bumped a Spanish guy — bumped him good. He wheeled around with a sort of, “Dude? Really?” expression on his face. I could have ignored him. Could have told him to get over it. Could have told him worse. Could have said, “Sorry,” and moved on. But for some reason, I didn’t. For some reason, I threw my arm around him, apologized, and we started talking.

Then he told me his friend was from the States. “Ed,” he said, “come here!”

“Where you from, man?” Ed asked me.

“Philly. How bout you?”

“North Carolina.”

“No way, Bro! I went to Chapel Hill!”

“Sweet, man,” he said. Or something like that.

“What part of Carolina are you from?” I asked him.

“Fayetteville.”

I started to get a little curious. Nothing crazy, though. This guy looked younger than me. I doubted he would’ve known him. “I know Fayette-nam quite well,” I told him. “One of my best friends was from there.”

“Oh yeah man? Who?”

“Mo Walker.”

Ed’s face went white. It was as if, at the mention of Mo’s name, the whole bar had faded into some parallel, background universe. “Dude,” he said, “I went to high school with Mo Walker.”

He was one year younger than Mo. And here we were, in Madrid, talking about him. I tried to wrap my head around the odds of it: Mo’s high school had something like 30 people per class. That meant that only about 200 people could say they went to high school with him. And somehow, in a city an ocean away, I had bumped into not only one of those 200 people, but one who knew my friend well. And we only met because St. Patrick’s Day had forced us to go to a different bar, and because I had stopped to talk to a guy I bumped. If any of those circumstances hadn’t transpired, it wouldn’t have happened.

But it did. And it made me think.

Leaving Spain after two years was unbelievably difficult. I was happy there, and I could’ve stayed longer. For the first time in a long while, I was faced with a decision that didn’t feel right, no matter which way I went. I didn’t think it was wise to stay because I didn’t see myself progressing professionally in Spain, but by no means was I sure I was ready to come home.

I got home in October. I did some freelance writing and video work, and I applied to a bunch of different jobs, but nothing stuck. My bank account dwindled to amounts that would make the U.S. Treasury seem rich, and I spent my time between my mother’s place in New Jersey and my father’s in Philadelphia. I was eating a lot, sleeping a lot, and not feeling great about myself a lot. People didn’t make things any better when they asked me, “Why’d you come back from Spain?” I told them that my big, old, rational brain had thought it was a good idea at the time.

I knew that I needed a change. In one of those “Now I think of this?” moments, I remembered that my aunt had a place in New York City at which she only stayed a couple nights a week. I called her and asked if I could stay there sometimes while looking for work. She agreed, and I decided to seek employment as a server/bartender until I could find something that would make my degree useful as something more than a wall decoration.

Never mind the fact that my mom thought it was a terrible idea, and that I felt extremely uncertain; I was rather used to feeling uncertain by that point. I had to do something. So I came up last Friday with five days’ worth of clothes and 25 resumes. I started from my aunt’s place at 85th Street and walked down Amsterdam Avenue, then doubled back. Resume No. 24 was the lucky one — literally a block from my aunt’s, a new place called Hey Mambo offered me a gig.

And do you remember my friend Katie? The one who liked to say, “It’s all Mo’s fault?” Well, she happens to live in New York now. Is a bar manager at this place called Pranna. Has become one of my good friends. And told me to stop by her bar with Resume No. 25. Her boss liked me enough to train me as a bartender, even though I lacked the experience that Pranna would usually require. Seeing as Katie and I wouldn’t even know each other were it not for Mo, you could definitely say it was all his fault.

All this brings me to the really weird part. You see, yesterday was my first bartender training shift. I started off shaky, but after a few hours, I began to feel more comfortable. I was even allowed to start serving some guests. One guy gave me his card, and I noticed that he had a very Spanish first and last name, and that he was interested in the UEFA Champions League soccer matches.

“Do you have a favorite club?” I asked him.

“Real Madrid,” he said.

Just when I started to tell him that I had lived the past two years in Madrid, a woman cut us off. She was there to meet him, and she greeted him in distinct Madrileño Spanish. After she sat down and I poured her a glass of cabernet, the three of us began talking about Spain. I told them about my teaching program, and how difficult it had been to come home.

Then I heard the girl talking about UNC. “You know UNC?” I asked her.

“I went to UNC!” she said.

“Really? Me too.”

She squinted at me. “I know you!”

I did not think she knew me. “How?”

“Do you know Heather? And Chetan?”

My jaw hit the bar. Heather was the person who told me about the Spain program. Chetan was my friend at whose house Heather told me about the Spain program, and he was the friend who I convinced to join me in Spain after my first year there. “Chetan’s in Madrid right now!” I told her. “And Heather is the reason I went there in the first place!”

“I know,” she said, “I was at Chetan’s house that night. I remembered you before, but I wasn’t sure. Then when you said UNC, I knew it was you. You were at Chetan’s house because one of your buddies passed away.”

This time, my face turned white, and the whole bar faded into some parallel, background universe.

Again — what were the odds of this? In a city as big as New York, during my first shift bartending, I met the guy who was meeting the girl who was there the night I decided to move to Spain. In North Carolina, where I was because of Mo’s funeral. What were the odds that they sat at the bar at that precise hour? That she recognized me and remembered how we met?

The famous psychologist Carl Jung described these sorts of coincidences, referring to them as “synchronicities.” He thought that they might indicate an order of universal organization known as “unus mundus” — “one world” — based on the idea of a collective or universal consciousness that causes certain things to happen in certain ways. A wise friend of mine believes that synchronicities are the Universe’s way of telling us something. And I’m beginning to agree with him.

I believe that Mo had something to do with me meeting those people at the bar last night. I believe he had something to do with me going to Spain. I believe that he has guided me, through synchronous events, since his death. And I am not usually one to believe such things.

But I do. When I left the bar last night, it marked the first time since my departure from Spain that I felt as if I was on the right track again. It felt as if Mo — or perhaps the Universe — was telling me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Because that’s what synchronicities make you feel — a palpable sense of being exactly where you’re meant to be, in precisely that moment. For the first time, I didn’t feel like leaving Spain or moving to New York were mistakes. I didn’t feel like the “unus mundus” and I were at odds anymore.

And it was all Mo’s fault.

The Cretan Restaurant

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Sam Rosenthal

The young American writer sat in the restaurant, sipping his ouzo mixed with water. That’s how the Greeks served it. That’s how they drank it. You wouldn’t drink it straight; even with the water, it had a sweet bite. He sipped it every few minutes, looking up from his manuscript and swirling the translucent liquid around the glass.

The restaurant sat about 40 but was only a third full, and of that number, half were employees or friends of employees. The other half were vacationers, almost all of them couples. The locals presided over the place from a long table toward the back, next to the man at the keyboard. Men and women, children and their parents and grandparents. Some he’d seen singing and dancing the night before, and he had a suspicion that the longer the music played and the more drinks they had, the same would recur.

He sat on the other side of the music man, who wore a black beret over his blacker hair, which fell to the back of his neck. He had a red polo shirt and navy pants, and he sat in a high chair behind his instrument, weaving through songs in English, Italian and Spanish with ease, changing the percussion and tones of the keys as if he’d been doing it since he was a young man, and perhaps he had.

Most of the songs were in Greek, though. The night before, they had all been in Greek, the music man and the locals in duets and trios. Finishing one such song, the music man addressed the crowd for the first time:

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is Greece. And especially Crete.”

The young writer watched him as he played the first few notes of the next tune. Haunting notes, the kind that reverberate within. They made the young writer halt his pen and watch the flicker of the light from the candles in the paper bags on the tables. The tender looks exchanged by the tourist couples. The cars and motorbikes passing outside. The waiters serving plates before sitting back down with their friends as if the customers were interfering with their social lives. The steam from the grill as the balding cook turned the souvlaki.

“On a dark desert highway,” the music man sang, “cool wind in my hair. Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air.”

The young writer sipped his ouzo and smiled. This was Greece. This was Crete.

Always Amigos

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Sam Rosenthal

(versión española aquí)

We stop at a metal gate that fences off acres of Spanish pastureland. Across the dirt road, the giant Telefonica satellite dishes serve as the only reminders of civilization.

“Esto es,” Alberto says. “This is the place.”

Marta and María’s country house is something from another time. Imagine a mid-1800s Spanish ranch like you see in the movies. I don’t have to imagine; I’m on set. Vine trellises and 15 flower pots adorn the porch. The house has muted maroon walls with sky blue paint outlining the windows and the main doorway, which features an Andalucian-style painting of the Virgin of the Macarena. They have a Virgin and a Saint for just about everything here — even “The Macarena.” Álvaro, Marta’s boyfriend and one of my best friends, tells me that the family’s land extends for a 30-minute-walk’s radius from the house. María and her boyfriend, Ismael, are out riding horses. The cows will return from grazing in an hour or so. Our friend David’s dog, Conan, greets us on the porch.

Walking inside, a blast of heat hits me. Forget your modern American grilling apparatus: They’re burning freshly-hewn wooden logs in an antique oven. Heaps of different kinds of meat cover the kitchen counters. Eugenio, the ranch steward who looks like someone out of a Depression-era photograph, is helping David with the fire. The actual cooking won’t commence until the logs have been reduced to embers.

In the meantime, I break out my baseball gloves and teach the Spaniards a bit of my national pastime. It’s almost the Fourth of July, after all. We cover basic throwing and catching techniques, which Álvaro picks up quickly. Our buddy Choches … not so much. You can’t shot-put a baseball. Neither can you swallow one, although Conan the Canine Barbarian is trying his hardest. We literally need a crowbar to pry the ball from his jaws. Of all the days to leave my crowbar at home.

After baseball, Álvaro pours me my first cup of sangría. Homemade. In a punch bowl. With loads of real fruit.

“He añadido ron,” he says, which roughly means: “I spiked the punch.”

Over the course of the evening, we will drain the sangría bowl three times. And then they’ll break out the hard stuff.

Back from horseback riding, María gives me a tour of the house. It’s actually modern, but her mother shrouded it in antiquity. María shows me the 1800s clothes irons, cow bells, bed heaters and water jugs her mother collected over decades to create the effect. She also shows me her mother’s paintings, most of which feature the family’s bulls. María informs me that, much more than serving as the mere antagonists of bullfights, bulls on a ranch like this serve a vital purpose: reproduction. This, of course, prompts me to ask her if they play Barry White or Marvin Gaye to get the bulls in the mood.

Evening falls, and Marta and María’s cousin and friends arrive. David declares the fire ready, and the barbecue commences. He and Álvaro kick everyone out of the kitchen, and we move to the picturesque back porch that looks out on the pasture. The roof beams, according to María, come from an old palace in Toledo. I tell her that my house’s roof beams probably come from Ikea. We draw the huge cloth curtains to block the wind, and everyone grabs a drink and a seat. Conversation, laughter and smiles.

Soon, the first plate of food comes out. Chorizo sausage and pancetta, which is a fattier version of bacon, if you can imagine such a thing. Not exactly a kosher first dish … but wow, what flavor! Next come bun-less hamburgers, sausages, another cut of pig I’ve never tasted before, chicken wings, Spanish omelette with chorizo, and a Spanish lasagna. Sides of artisan bread and the best olives you can find. Everyone ignores the salad.

More conversation, laughter and smiles. I swear, the Spanish have created an art form out of genuine smalltalk. Not a cellphone in sight. Who needs Facebook when you’ve got sangría? We talk about everything and nothing, which are really one and the same, when you think about it. I’m the only non-Spaniard here, but they treat me like family, teasing me mercilessly for my language gaffes.

Oh, how I am going to miss these people.

When no one can eat any more, dinner ends. In the kitchen, I record a video of Álvaro and Choches dancing like idiots to James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” I then show said video to everyone on the porch. As if that wasn’t embarrassment enough, Álvaro and Choches don dresses and heels and wear them outside. Marta says those are actually shirts, not dresses. Álvaro looks like a Saint Bernard in a sweater designed for a poodle.

“What bet did they lose?” I ask.

Marta smiles at me. “Bet? There was no bet.”

The girls’ cousin and friends leave, and “the usual suspects” prepare for one of our customary poker games. Taking me aside, Álvaro puts his hand on my shoulder and asks me, “¿Estás agusto?”

He wants to know if I’m comfortable. If I’m having a good time. If I feel at home.

All I can do is hold my arms out and smile. “Dude,” I tell him (but, you know, in Spanish), “this right here — human beings getting together, having a good time, enjoying each other’s company — this, to me, is the peak of civilization. This is what life’s all about.”

He grins and gives me one of his huge bear hugs. He and I both know that these moments are growing scarce, for me at least. In less than a month, I leave Spain. Less than a month left with mi familia española. I’ve been with them for two years now — two incredible years — and this summer, it comes to an end.

I remember when, a couple weeks ago, I told Álvaro I was leaving, and a storm cloud passed over his always-sunny face. “Seeing you all the time,” he said to me then, “I forget that this isn’t your country, and you’re not here forever. I forget that this isn’t your home.”

Sometimes, I do, too. It’s something I’m trying not to think too much about — my departure will get here when it gets here, and in the meantime, there are wonderful moments to relish. As Robert J. Hastings once wrote: “Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.”

I walk out into the yard. Natural beauty as far as I can see, interrupted only by the tops of the Telefonica satellites in the distance. Out here, the stars hurt your eyes. The Big Dipper hangs lower and brighter in the sky than I’ve ever seen it. Taking a deep breath, I smell the fresh air and listen to the leaves rustling in the wind.

“Samu,” they call to me from inside, “poker!”

I head in, and they’re all seated at the table. Conversation, laughter and smiles.

“Os quiero,” I tell them.

“I love you guys.”

Amigos para siempre

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Sam Rosenthal

(English version here)

Paramos delante de una puerta metálica que guarda héctares de dehesa española. Al otro lado de la calle de arena, las parabólicas gigantes de Telefonica sirven como los únicos recuerdos de civilización.

<<Esto es,>> Alberto nos dice. <<This is the place.>>

La casa de campo de la familia de Marta y María es algo de otra epoca. Imáginate una finca española del siglo XIX como ves en las películas. Yo no tengo que imaginar — estoy allí. Espalderas de parra y 15 macetas con flores de todos tipos en el patio. La casa tiene paredes de rojo moreno, con pintura de azul del cielo rodeando las ventanas y la puerta principal, que tiene una obra en el estilo andaluz — la Virgen de la Macarena. Tienen una virgen y un santo por casi cualquier cosa en este país, incluso “La Macarena.” Álvaro, el novio de Marta y uno de mis mejores amigos, me dice que necesitaría andar por 30 minutos para cruzar toda la finca. María y su novio, Ismael, están montando caballos. Las vacas van a volver de la dehesa en más o menos una hora. El perro de nuestro amigo David, que se llama Conan, nos grita <<¡Bienvenidos!>> del patio.

Entrando en la casa, choco con una pared de calor. Olvídate de tu parrilla americana moderna: Están quemando leño recién cortado en un horno antiguo. Cantidades grandes de tipos variados de carne cubren las mesas de la cocina. Eugenio, el hombre que cuida y guarda la finca y que parece alguien de una foto de la Gran Depresión, está ayudando a David con el fuego. No van a empezar cocinar hasta que la madera se convierta en ceniza.

Mientras esperamos la cena, saco mis guantes de beisbol y enseño a los españoles un poco del pasatiempo nacional mío. Por cierto, casí es el 4 de julio, que es nuestro Día de la Independencia. Practicamos las técnicas para lanzar y coger la pelota, y Álvaro las aprende rápido. Nuestro amigo Choches … pues, no tanto. No puedes lanzar un beisbol como una bola de cañon. Tampoco puedes tragar una, aunque Conan el Barbaro Canino está intentando. Literalmente necesitamos un palanqueta para quitar la pelota de su boca. ¡Qué pena que olvidé mi palanqueta en casa hoy!

Después del beisbol, Álvaro me echa mi primera copa de sangría. Casera. Con muchos trozos de fruta verdadera.

<<He añadido ron,>> me dice, que más o menos significa en inglés: <<Be careful.>>

Durante la noche, vamos a vacillar el cuenco de sangría tres veces. Y sólo entonces sacaremos el licór para empezar a beber en serio.

Tras volver de montar caballos, María me enseña la casa. Realmente es muy moderna, pero su madre la ha disfrasado como antigua. María me enseña las planchas, las campanas para las vacas, las calientacamas y las jarras de porcelina del siglo XIX que su madre ha collecionado durante años para crear el efecto. Tambien me enseña las cuadras que pintó su madre, las cuales mostran los toros de la familia. María me dice que los toros hacen mucho más que ser los antagonistas de las corridas de toros — en una finca como ésta, sirven una funcción vital: reproducción. Esto me inspira a preguntar si tocan David Bisbal o Julio Iglesias para poner los toros cachondos.

El sol atardece, y la prima de Marta y María llega con sus amigos. David declara que el fuego está listo, y la barbacoa comienza. Él y Álvaro nos echa de la cocina, y vamos al patio atrás que tiene una vista perfecta de la dehesa. María me cuenta que la madera que utilizaron para construir el techo viene de un palacio de Toledo. Le digo que la madera que utilizaron para construir mi casa en Nueva Jersey probablemente viene de Ikea. Cerramos las cortinas para parar el viento, y todo el mundo coge bebidas y asientos. Conversación, risas y sonrizas.

Pronto, el primer plato sale. Chorizo y pancetta, que es como el beicon, pero con más grasa, si puedes imaginarlo. Desde luego que no es algo muy Kosher … pero ¡jo, qué sabor! Enseguida salen hamburguesas, salchichas y otro corte de cerdo que nunca he probado, alitas de pollo, tortilla con chorizo, y una lasagna española. Tambien pan artesano y las mejores aceitunas que puedes encontrar. Todo el mundo ignora la pobre ensalada.

Más conversación, risas y sonrizas. Los españoles han creado una arte de hablar con sinceridad y interés sobre cosas no importantes — lo juro. No es lo que les dicen que importa, sino lo que sienten. Nadie se atreve sacar su movíl. ¿Quién necesita Facebook cuando hay sangría? Hablamos sobre todo y nada, que en realidad son lo mismo, cuando lo piensas. Yo soy el único extranjero aquí, pero me tratan como familia, burlandome sin clemencia por mis errores de pronunciación.

Cuando nadie puede comer más, la cena termina. En la cocina, grabo un vídeo de Álvaro y Choches bailando como idiotas a <<I Feel Good>> por James Brown. Enseño dicho vídeo a todo el mundo en el patio. Parece que eso no ha sido verguenza bastante, porque Álvaro y Choches se visten en vestidos y tacónes y estrenan sus nuevos estilos afuera. Marta les informa que esas son camisas, no vestidos. Choches parece Luisma en Aida cuando se pone la ropa de Paz. Álvaro parece un perro San Bernardo en un jersey diseñado por un caniche.

<<¿Qué han apostado?>> pregunto.

Marta sonrie. <<¿Apuesta? ¿Qué apuesta?>>

¡Cómo voy a echar de menos esta gente!

La prima de Marta y María y sus amigos salen, y preparamos para uno de nuestros partidos costumarios de poker. Álvaro me saca a un lado y pone su mano en mi ombro. <<Samu,>> me dice, <<¿estás agusto?>>

Quiere saber si estoy cómodo. Si estoy pasandolo bien. Si me encuentro como en casa.

Solamente puedo levantar mis brazos, sonriendo. <<Tio,>> le digo, <<ésta es la vida. La gente reuniendo, pasando el tiempo juntos, disfrutando de la companía de otros ser humanos — esto, para mí, es lo mejor de la civilización.>>

Álvaro sonrie y me da uno de sus abrazos de oso. Ambos nosotros hemos dado cuenta que no nos quedan muchos de estos momentos. En menos que un mes, salgo de España. Menos que un mes con mi familia española. He estado con ellos durante dos años — dos años increíbles — y este verano, se acabará.

Me acuerdo de cuando, unas semanas pasadas, dije a Álvaro que me iba a ir, y una nube oscura pasó sobre su cara que normalmente refleja el sol. <<Porque estoy acostumbrado a verte tanto,>> me dijo, <<olvido que esto no es tu país, y no estás aquí para siempre. Olvido que esto no es tu casa.>>

A veces, olvido tambien. Es algo que estoy intentando evitar de mi mente para ahora; mi salida llegará en su propio momento, y entre medias, hay cosas maravillosas para disfrutar. Como escribió Robert J. Hastings: <<Tenemo que vivir la vida mientras hacemos nuestro camino. La estación vendrá bastante pronto.>>

Marta llama a Álvaro, y salgo fuera del patio. Veo la belleza natural en todas direcciónes, interrumpida solamente por los satelitos Telefonica en la distancia. Aquí, las estrellas brillan tanto que hacen daño a tus ojos. La Ursa Mayor parece lista para servir una ración grande de sopa casera. Respirando profunadamente, huelo el aire del campo y escucho al sonido del viento sobre las ojas.

<<Samu,>> me llaman, <<¡poker!>>

Entro en el patio, y todos están sentados en la mesa. Conversación, risas y sonrizas.

<<I love you guys,>> les digo.

<<Os quiero.>>

Friday in Retiro – a very short story

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Sam Rosenthal

They were sitting in Retiro Park. The stone wall they were on curved around a palatial courtyard full of pristine sand walkways, stone mounts for stone sculptures, person-height evergreen shrubs, the trees he said he loved with the long, low, pine branches that draped over you like thatched roofs, and the trees she said she loved because they looked like broccoli. He’d never heard of those trees before, but upon seeing them, he loved them as well. They really did look like broccoli.

Behind the courtyard and the pathways and the trees was the classic Madrid skyline, with those beautiful old charming buildings that matched the beautiful old charming Madrileño couples taking their Friday strolls. To the right of our two foreigners on the wall, a tan man kneeled behind a makeshift metal drum, playing it with the soft hammers of his palms. In front of him, a group of young men sat around a friend of theirs, who twirled a type of yo-yo device between two sticks. A master of his craft, just like the drummer man who she said she usually saw in other parts of the park, but was glad he was there today. They had sat near the music man, and the yo-yo boy, and he had looked at the courtyard and the fading light and listened to the music and the chatter of the birds.

“Tell me a story,” she said. “You’re a writer. You should be able to tell me a story.”

He held his hands out in front of him, over the edge of the wall, as if to hold up the whole courtyard for her.

“This is the story.”

Holocaust memorials and memoirs: A visit to Germany

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Sam Rosenthal

Our feet wore heavy, solemn treads into the snow that blanketed the Berlin ground. We walked among the silent stones, which the German winter had shrouded in an inch-thick frost.

Using the frost like condensation on a bus window, visitors inscribed messages on the stone slabs. My friend Travis and I saw two European girls with SLR cameras slung over their necks. One, a 20-something-year-old redhead, traced a word onto the rock with her gloved finger.

“What does that say?” I asked her, hoping she spoke English.

“Liebe,” she said. “Love.”

It was my first trip to Germany.

As I am a Jew, it was no simple vacation; it was a chance to encounter a place which had possibly affected the course of Jewish history as much as Jerusalem itself, a place which had spawned the greatest atrocity mankind has ever known. A place that had fostered Hitler and the Holocaust and now, 70 years later, still bears the scars of every number the Nazis etched into human flesh.

Though it’s true that Berlin and Munich offered us plenty to enjoy, this trip was about more than bratwursts and brauhauses.

The Brandenburg Gate loomed behind me. Thousands of people milled about the structure, which dates back to 1791. The Prussian monarchs gave birth to it, Napoleon once stole a part of it, the Nazis made it a party symbol, and it formed the Berlin Wall crossing where people could (or couldn’t) enter and exit East and West Berlin.

In that moment, the Gate symbolized the country whose leaders and population had once made it their business to exterminate anyone with my bloodline … not to mention gypsies, Communists, Poles, homosexuals, the mentally ill or physically disabled, and anyone else who opposed them or failed to meet the criteria for their ideal, “Aryan,” race. Standing there — a Jew, a free Jew — filled me with a sense of defiant power.

“I am alive,” I whispered. “I am still here.”

Every story has at least two sides, and this one features the Germans as much as the Jews. Because of my Jewish and journalistic roots, it intrigued me to know what Germany’s like now, if people there talk about the Holocaust, if they feel shame or anger or remorse — to know if they care.

During our first and only night in Berlin, nobody uttered so much as the “H” in “Holocaust.” Waking up late the next morning, we had less than two hours to sightsee before catching a train to Prague. And that’s when it happened.

We approached the hostel’s front desk girl, Berlin city maps in hand. “What can we see in an hour and a half?” I asked her. “We definitely would like to do the Brandenburg Gate, and the remaining parts of the Berlin Wall are important, too.”

“To be honest,” she said, “the wall is not so interesting.” With a pen, she circled the Brandenburg Gate on the map, and another spot nearby. “From the Gate, you should walk down and see the Holocaust memorial. These two things you can do in time, and they are important.”

Boom — the first hint of the scar. It spoke volumes to me that a German girl, about 27 years old, recommended a Holocaust memorial to two random tourists. She had no idea she was talking to a Jew, yet, of all the sites in Berlin, she directed us to the Brandenburg Gate and “The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.”

It mattered to her.

There we sat in a dimly-lit, Bavarian restaurant in Munich, speaking English and Spanish with the joint’s German owner, when a couple sat down to our left. Christian looked to be 60-65 years old, and Anne Marie a few years younger, both German and decent English-speakers. We conversed a few times during the meal, and toward the end they asked us what activities we had planned.

“Actually,” I said, “we’re going to Dachau tomorrow.”

“You’re going to Dachau?” Anne Marie asked me. “Are you Jewish?”

“Yes,” I answered, knowing full well that there was a time when saying such a thing, in this very place, was a crime punishable by ignominious death.

“My daughter is Jewish,” she said. “She converted when she married my son-in-law, who is Jewish. We all have Chanukah together every year. Now, it is very multi-cultural here.”

Probably born at the end of World War II or soon after, Anne Marie told us her father had once concealed her Austrian heritage and told her she was Aryan — Hitler’s ideal race. When she visited Yad Vashem — the Holocaust memorial, museum and educational center in Jerusalem, Israel — she found out that her father had lied to her; she had Austrian, non-Aryan ancestors. She realized that “a person’s looks … blonde hair, blue eyes … these things cannot tell you who a person is.”

She had willingly visited Israel — Yad Vashem even! She had confronted her country’s past. “You can´t change the six million people,” she said.

But you can acknowledge their lives. And you can learn from them.

Dachau is a concentration camp. Was a concentration camp. The first concentration camp.

Our tour guide, Curt, reminded us that it stopped being a concentration camp on April 29, 1945, the day American forces liberated the victims. Predominantly male, political prisoners and later the whole host of Nazi enemies were sent there — more than 200,000 of them in 12 years. More than 43,000 died.

Now, a normal, suburban town exists next to Dachau’s borders. It was like that during the war, too, although the town’s borders were a tiny bit farther away then. According to Curt — an Irishman who’s lived in Germany for 10 years and has extensively studied World War II history — the townsfolk knew, or at least had some idea, what the Nazis were doing there. The town’s current residents naturally know what happened there as well, but they live seemingly oblivious to it; some of them walk their German shepherds outside Dachau’s walls. Curt made a sour face when he saw this. “Those are the dogs the Nazis used to murder people,” he said.

Before we entered Dachau, Curt addressed us: “This is not the kind of tour you enjoy,” he said, “but the other tour guides and I believe that it is by far the most important tour that we lead.”

Because it no longer functions as a concentration camp, Curt referred to Dachau as a “memorial.” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “memorial” as “something that keeps remembrance alive.” Dachau accomplishes this from the front gate — which bears the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Shall Set You Free”) — all the way to the secluded corner where the Nazis housed their machinery of death.

In between, you see the barracks, which were designed to house a couple hundred men … but often held a couple thousand. They slept on rows of wooden planks, head-to-foot, like sardines.

You see the main grounds where they held roll call, which involved everyone standing at attention, in all types of weather, for hours and hours. The guards humiliated people at roll call, beat people at roll call, and executed people at roll call. If any prisoners collapsed, and others tried to help them, the Nazis laid them all in the dirt.

You see “the bunker” — the torture chambers — where prisoners endured solitary confinement in utter darkness for days, weeks or even months at a time. The Nazis conducted “pole hangings” there: The process involved tying a man’s hands around a pole, behind his back, and dangling him above the ground until long after his shoulders broke into a position for which no human shoulder is made. Rumor has it that the camp archives contain a picture of two guards simultaneously jumping on a pole-hanging victim and disconnecting his upper body from his torso.

All this, you see. All this, you feel. All this, you try to understand. It is not easy.

It is not the kind of tour you enjoy.

We headed toward the crematoria.

We walked the same path that so many had walked before — to their deaths — and traversed a five-foot-wide bridge that spanned a small stream. The stream ran smooth and black and indifferent, a liquid shadow, cutting through the snowy banks and disappearing into a thicket farther along.

“Even here,” I said to Travis, “there is beauty.”

The crematoria are not beautiful. They are ovens made for human beings.

But seeing them is all-important; humans must know what they are capable of doing to one another.

First, Curt took us to the “old” crematorium, so-named because prisoners started perishing at such a prolific rate that the Nazis needed to build a second human bakery and a gas chamber. In the original crematorium alone, they turned 11,000 human bodies into ash.

Looking at those vestiges of mass murder takes you back in time, so much so that you can envision them when they were in use: The fires burned right in there. Someone carried a body here and stuffed it in there. Then they shut this door and took the ashes out of that one.

Standing outside the gas chamber: Guards led inmates — up to 150 at a time — over here, told them they’d be showering in there, and had them strip their clothes (which others would wear). Once the prisoners walked inside, someone locked those doors, and someone over here dumped canisters of Zyklon-B poison gas into that vent, there. The gas pills dropped in, and the guard closed the vent.

A few minutes later, men went in and removed the bodies. The victims, who were poisoned and suffocating, tried desperately to reach the unreachable ceiling vents before they died. This created a corpse pyramid. The gas also caused them, records state, to defecate and vomit all over the floor.

All bodies and their outputs were promptly removed and burned or washed away, readying the room for the next lucky group.

These things happened. Here.

I stepped inside the gas chamber.

It was an empty room. Brick walls, tile floor, drywall ceiling. Vents and drains here and there. It looked like an old high school gym’s group shower. It was supposed to look like a group shower.

To my right: the poison gas vent. I walked over to it, grasped the bars, and peered out where I had previously looked in.

Then — right there in the gas chamber — I sat down.

The floor was cold. A few people stood in the room, but I pictured those who’d been there before. Then those people left, and others walked in. Others left, and others came in.

And I felt … peace.

It was one of the strangest and more moving sensations of my life. In Berlin, and Munich, and certainly all that day in Dachau, my thoughts and emotions had dwelled on the past — on anger, on sorrow, on death, on man’s capacity for evil. On resistance, survival, pride and prevention.

But in the middle of that gas chamber: Peace.

The whole day had been filled with pain. In that gas chamber, though, the pain subsided. I was able to see it for what it had been — of course — but I could see it, also, for what it had become: an empty room. I saw people entering and exiting, from all parts of the world, assembled there to bear witness and to understand. It showed me how even the greatest evil can be transformed into a tremendous good.

The crematoria, the gas chamber, the bunker, the barracks, the roll call grounds … they have all lost their former power. Their power now is cautionary; they have been reduced to artifacts, reminders of the past that teach us in the present. That is all they are.

Eventually, our Brazilian friend, Natalia, walked into the room. She noticed me sitting down and walked over. She patted me on the shoulder and said, in her Portugese accent, “Everything is fine, Sam.”

I smiled and rose to my feet.

After we left the gas chamber, our tour group stood around the “Statue of the Unknown Prisoner,” which bears the inscription (in German): “To Honor the Dead, To Warn the Living.”

Curt gave me the opportunity to address our international group of more than 20 people. Other than myself, there were only two other Jews.

“I just want to thank all of you for coming,” I said. “Growing up Jewish, you learn a ton about Holocaust history, but you don’t really know how it’s taught all across America, let alone in the rest of the world. And you worry that people won’t learn about it. To see people here from so many different places, to know that people care about it and that it’s not just something that affects Jews, it really means a lot to me. So thank you.”

Later, I asked Curt how he’d describe the general German attitude, or feeling, toward the Holocaust.

“Shame,” he said. “Utter shame.”

According to him, Germans now regard anti-Semitism with the utmost seriousness. He related the tale of a neo-Nazi who posed for a picture, two thumbs up, in front of Dachau. Curt said the man “got in a whole mess of trouble.”

Finally, he told me that Germans no longer sing any kind of patriotic songs — and hardly any others, for that matter — in public. “Because under Hitler,” he said, “they used to sing songs all the time.”

At first, we weren’t sure it was the Holocaust memorial. I’ve been to Yad Vashem in Israel and the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and there in Berlin all we saw were large, stone blocks spread over a plot of white-powdered earth. Like giant tombstones — 2,711 of them.

“This has got to be it,” Travis said.

Our only indication — a plaque nearby — described the history of the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” The area was first utilized in 1688 and had had many different tenants, but this caught my attention: “It came to be used as the office-villa of the Reich Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels.” One of Hitler’s right-hand men. The plaque also said the site formed part of the Berlin Wall-era “death strip,” where guards shot people trying to cross the border.

Now, it serves as a memorial — to honor the dead, to warn the living.

“Liebe,” she said. “Love.”

“Why did you write this?” I asked her.

She twisted a lock of hair in her finger. “Because this is an important place,” she said. “We have to remember what happened here. And I think that love is a good message.”

For some reason, I blurted it out: “I’m Jewish.”

She gave me a look of sincere compassion. “This must have a lot of meaning for you.”

She’ll never know how much.

— Post-writing note:

My grandmother sat across from me at lunch, holding a printed copy of the story above. “You know the memorial in Berlin?” she asked me.

“Yeah …”

“Your cousin was the architect.”

“Come again?”

“Yeah – Peter Eisenman. He’s your cousin.”

I sat there, stunned. This site that had made such an impact on me had been designed by one of my relatives, and I’d had no idea until afterward.

Coincidence? Who knows.

Email Sam Rosenthal at samrose24@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @BackwardsWalker

Don’t be a stranger now, y’hear?

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Sam Rosenthal

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

Bet you’ve heard that one before. Who hasn’t?

From an early age, we’re instructed to avoid unfamiliar people. Don’t look at them, don’t get in a car with them, don’t walk down an alley with them — not even if they have candy. Especially if they have candy.

Well, forget that.

Talk to strangers. Seriously. Shake their hands, hear their stories, and enjoy the little quirks that make them “them.” It’s not such a strange thing to do.

This blogumn began as notebook scribble in Kansas City International Airport. As I sat in the fast-food court, watching planes go by on the Tarmac, I reflected on how I got there: More than 3,000 miles of Amtrak train travel … and a man named Jim Wells.

On Saturday, May 15, I embarked on a 12-day journey across the country and back. Starting at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, I stopped at Union Station in the nation’s capital before heading to another Union Station in Chicago.

Sometime before Pittsburgh, I entered the train’s dining car. “Reservation for one.” They sat me “community style” with — gasp! — strangers. My first encounter of the human kind involved Mike and Angie, a married couple from Great Britain. ‘Twas bloody lovely.

When we got to Chicago on the 16th, I met some people from South Jersey, my home turf. At a hat embroidery store I once visited while applying for colleges, the charming hat embroiderer, Tully, helped me design a “Keep It Movin” hat at Navy Pier. After sharing its meaning with her, I kept it movin’ myself.

At 3:15 that afternoon, I boarded the “Southwest Chief,” heading non-stop for Los Angeles. The longest leg of my journey, we’d cover 2,256 miles in 41 hours. And I would love every minute of it.

As we crossed the Mississippi River, I started talking to a guy from Missouri. We passed by a beaver dam, and I told him it reminded me of the time my cousin, Juli, was fly-fishing and got chased by beavers. He told me it reminded him of his uncles who used to harvest marijuana.

Huh?

Long-and-insane story short: He had two uncles who grew pot together in Missouri, and one day the feds tried busting them. The men fled. One escaped by land; the other, by sea. The latter dove into the black, muddy river and swam into a beaver dam, which sufficed as a hiding place … until the beaver came home.

“So he’s sittin’ there in the beaver dam, pokin’ the animal with a sharp stick to keep it away,” my midwestern muchacho told me. “But there was no way in hell he was leavin’ his hideaway. Eventually he swam to shore, and his kid picked him up.” To this day, he proudly stated, his uncles remain free men.

Leave it to beaver, damn.

During the ride, I spent a lot of time with Octavio, a Californian who originally hailed from Mexico, and his two-year-old son, also named Octavio (aka Octavio Dos or Octavio También).

Then I met E-Ro, the only person taking more pictures than my geeky self. I played a song by Silvertide, entitled “California Rain,” for her. “I brought my rain to California,” the lyrics go, “All the way from Philadelphia, PA.” When we arrived in The City of Angels, it rained.

“It’s because you played that song!” E-Ro said. I like to think so.

My last evening in Los Angeles, I met a guy named Arul in a bar. “You’re from New Jersey?” he asked me — a typical let’s-not-be-strangers-anymore question to ask. “Whereabouts?”

“Voorhees,” I replied. “It’s a little town near Cherry Hill … you’ve probably never heard o—”

“Dude!” he interrupted me. “I went to Eastern!”

Eastern — my high school. I traveled 3,000 miles from home to meet someone who owns the same yearbook. Later in the night, we ran into a guy who played ice hockey in our town, and we saw a California license plate that read, “NJFRESH.” Ain’t that strange.

Post-writing note: One day, I received an email from a guy named Wes, who wrote, “I am the guy with the NJFRESH license plate … Just googled (sic) it for the hell of it and your blog came up.”

On Saturday the 22nd, I re-boarded the Southwest Chief and headed for Lamy, New Mexico. I enjoyed a memorable lunch with Jon, a writer/actor/director from L.A. who wore a warm smile and a settling demeanor, and Jean, a petite, young-at-heart lady whose eyes sparkled and who had made about a dozen cross-country train trips in her life. My kind of girl.

At our station stop in Albuquerque, Amanda from Riverside, Calif., shared her French fries and her story with me. I digested both.

At Harry’s Roadhouse in Santa Fé, N.M., I met a retired physicist who studied wolves in the wild, said he had stood a few precarious feet away from them without worrying. “Wolves,” he said, “just don’t attack humans.” Safer than strangers with candy.

On the way to visit my friend Lauren in Lawrence, Kan., I tried focusing intensely on my work — not taking pictures, not daydreaming, not talking to anyone. And that’s how I met Ed Robinson.

I first noticed him preaching The Gospel of Ed to a couple sitting in front of me while I toiled on my manuscript. He initially struck me as a rambling hobo, as strangers often do.

After finishing his sermons on the dangers of fluoridated water, preposterous prescription pharmaceutical prices, and KFC’s supposedly steroid-enhanced chickens, he started walking back toward his sleeping berth. Then he caught sight of me, froze, and watched me typing until I acknowledged him.

“Hi,” I tepidly greeted him.

“What’re you writing?” He nodded at the computer screen.

“I’m actually working on a book,” I said.

“You don’t say. So am I.”

I considered the tall, black man in a University of Michigan hat and matching T-shirt. He could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. (He eventually revealed his age but told me, “That’s my secret,” and it’ll stay that way unless Ed feels like telling you, too.)

Ed Robinson is a walking fiction hero in a non-fiction world. He talks and talks, tells you story after story, and you listen and listen, captivated.

He told me about the time he tried photographing a wild rhinoceros in Africa, startled it, and ran away. He claimed his camera had run out of film, so he lacked photographic proof. He did, however, do a terrific rhino impression — grunts and snorts and sniffs and all.

Then he told me about his books-in-progress, his pursuit of a second collegiate degree at his mystery age, and his illustrious career in music. He told me to look up his CD: Ed Robinson, In a Romantic Mood.

Then he recounted his adventures in Europe — Finland, I think — where he said the women are male-hunting Amazons. “Tall!” he motioned with his hand above his head. He described a couple of his exploits with a gleam in his eye and a boyish grin on his face. In a romantic mood, indeed.

The whole time, I wondered: Is this guy for real? He told so many tall tales, I thought about calling him “Aesop.” But his stories contained so many vivid details, and they all fit together into the narrative of his life; I wasn’t sure what to think.

Upon my arrival at Lauren’s in Lawrence, I immediately Googled In a Romantic Mood. There was Ed, on the CD cover, sprawled across a grand piano and donning a yellow suit. He was smiling — at me, it seemed, for doubting him.

While crashing on Lauren in Lawrence’s couch — and fearing for my life because highly-venomous brown recluse spiders had invaded her apartment — I met Morris, Shelby, and a number of other town locals. As they say in Almost Famous, “We’re just real Topeka people, man.” Except they’re real Lawrence people, but you get the point.

I survived the evening without a spider bite and, the following morning, rode the Southwest Chief one last time to Union Station in Kansas City, Mo. Now that I’ve visited one in D.C., Chicago, L.A. and K.C., I’ve decided that Union Station must have the most original name since Bob Smith.

At “Generic Station,” a major problem confronted me: How would I get from there to Kansas City International Airport, more than a half-hour away?

The solution: Jim Wells.

Upon exiting the Southwest Chief at Union Station IV, I talked to the Amtrak information lady. “How do I get from here to the airport? Is there a shuttle?”

Her look said, “Oh boy, are you screwed.” Her mouth said, “No, there’s no shuttle. I suppose you could take a taxi, but that’s going to cost you. It’s like 25, 30 miles from here.”

Fudge. I walked toward the station exit, prepared for a billion-dollar cab ride. Then I heard a voice.

“I can take you to the airport, if you want.”

I wheeled around. A thin, older man stood before me. He had sparse, salt-and-pepper hair — more salt than pepper — with a matching mustache and silver eyeglasses. He wore a plain, gray T-shirt and light khaki shorts.

A complete and total stranger.

My previous life experiences and mental conditioning told me not to trust him, to be wary, to take the bank-busting taxi. But the man had kind eyes and ‘a real Topeka person’ tone.

“I saw you talking to the lady,” he said. “You’re trying to get to the airport?”

“Yeah …”

“I don’t mind taking you, as long as you don’t mind my dog coming along for the ride. I don’t have anything important to be doing the rest of the morning.”

Everything in me screamed, “Don’t do it, you moron. He’s a stranger — he can’t be trusted!” If I was a cat person, the dog would’ve been the deal-breaker.

Exercising caution, I told him I wanted to investigate my cab and shuttle options first. He said that was fine and even helped the process along.

The closest shuttle had just taken off from Kennedy Space Center. The taxi driver asked if I wanted to take out a loan.

Back to the stranger. “You’re sure you don’t mind taking me?” I asked him. “I feel bad putting you out like that.”

“No,” he shook his head, “I really don’t have anything important to do this morning.”

He had stuffed his hands in his short pockets, which I studied; if he was hiding a gun in them, it was the smallest gun ever made.

“Alright,” I said, “let’s go to the airport.”

And so we did. I walked with him to his car — pretty sure it was a stylish, new Volkswagen — where his peaceful puppy, Harley, panted in the back seat. We put my belongings in the trunk and started driving. My nerves remained on edge.

“I’m Sam.” I said, closing the door.

“I’m Jim Wells,” he said as we shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you, Sam.”

I texted my dad in case I was about to end up in a ditch somewhere, something along the lines of, “Hey I’m going to the airport from the train station in a car with a man named Jim Wells. If you don’t hear from me within an hour, call the cops.”

The farther we drove, though, the less I worried. Jim said he was 76 years old, a retired physician. He started telling me all kinds of information about Kansas City, a lovely place. Did you know that there’s a Kansas City in Missouri and Kansas? I didn’t, but I do now, thanks to Jim.

Once we started passing highway signs for KCI Airport, I said to myself, “Self: I don’t think this guy has any intentions of chopping you into little pieces or selling you into sex slavery.”

And of course, he didn’t. When we arrived at the airport, Jim refused to even take the money I offered him for gas. We exchanged contact information, and I headed off to my gate.

Ten minutes later, my phone started ringing. “Jim Wells,” the caller info screen read.

“Hey Jim, what’s up?”

“Hey Sam. I was just wondering — how much did they charge you to check your bag?”

I laughed. “I had to take a few things out to get it close to 50 pounds, so it was just $25. It would’ve been an extra $75 if it had been overweight.”

“Oh good,” he said, “I was worried about that. Well, have a safe trip and stay in touch!”

Smiling to myself because of the leap of faith we both had taken — for he risked as much by taking me as I did by riding with him, if not more — I resigned to keep talking to strangers. I met a number of people during the ride home, and the experience taught me that the more you break the ‘stranger‘ barrier, the friendlier a place the world becomes. Something about the effort you expend to meet and understand another person takes you out of your own, isolated microcosm and back into the crazy carnival of Life.

Are there ‘bad’ strangers? Of course. Just as there are bad friends, bad family members and bad spouses. People are people — some are good, some are bad, and all are different. But when you keep to yourself, every stranger seems bad, or at least suspicious. Open up, and you’ll often reveal the good in them. All the people I met on my trip — all the conversations, interactions and moments we shared — enriched my journey. If I had never allowed myself to get to know those individuals, if we had remained mutual outsiders, my trip would not have been close to what it was.

Jim Wells taught me that.

I still don’t know exactly what made him offer to drive an unkempt, bearded stranger to the airport, 30 miles out of his way. I don’t think Jim knew why he did it, either.

“I guess it’s because somebody once helped me out like this in Greece,” he said before we parted ways.

My guess is that he just felt like helping out a fellow human being, meeting someone new, and sharing perspectives on life. Maybe even making a friend.

And why not? Stranger things have happened.

Contact Sam Rosenthal at samrose24@gmail.com

UNC Soccer Superstar Casey Nogueira Discusses Going Pro (Video)

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Sam Rosenthal

First Place, 2009 Society of Professional Journalists’ Region 2 Mark of Excellence Awards for Television Sports Reporting.

Originally aired on Carolina Week, then ABCNews on Campus.

Nogueira Story

How about ‘The Life of Rosenthal?’

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Sam Rosenthal

Originally published in The Daily Tar Heel, April 25, 2007, under my then-column title, “Wednesday’s Special: Green Eggs and Sam.”

Sports. Illustrated.

Two words that changed my life.

Not because the magazine sparked my interest in sports, not because it made for excellent bathroom reading material, and not because the Swimsuit Issue mingled body paint with 3-D goggles.

No, Sports Illustrated changed my life because the back inside page ran a column by Rick Reilly.

Whenever SI popped up in my mailbox, I always flipped it over to that last page and read the “Life of Reilly,” spellbound, before ever looking at the cover. Outside of schoolwork, I read books as often as I wore women’s clothing (usually once a year during Spirit Week), but I devoured all of Reilly’s books. “Did you read what Rick Reilly wrote?” I always asked my dad.

About the same time, I read an SI article by some Tim Crothers guy about Matt Doherty’s first win against Duke as UNC’s head coach (keep that in mind).

Professional baseball scouts stopped calling after Tee-ball, so instead I dreamed of becoming the next Rick Reilly. From high school to now, I have been “Newspaper Boy,” distant relative of Quailman. I spent three years writing for the Eastern Voyager and joined The Daily Tar Heel sports desk my first semester at North Carolina.

This year, the DTH gave me a weekly sports column – just like Rick Reilly (except he has more money, and I more hair). It has been one helluva semester writing the Wednesday’s Special for you.

In addition to my column, I took a sportswriting class this spring. Early in the course, my professor handed one of his own stories to the class – a Sports Illustrated article about Matt Doherty’s Tar Heels driving back to Chapel Hill after beating Duke at Cameron. This time around, that Tim Crothers guy who wrote it sat before me in Carroll Hall, taking us behind the scenes.

“They call this school?” I thought. “I guess those out-of-state tuition hikes are worth it.”

The class brought out my personal best work; interviewing Dewey Burke one-on-one for my final was as pleasurable as a Bojangles’ chicken biscuit (though I’ll never eat the recording). And because my column ran on class days, I picked Crothers’ brain on every bite of Green Eggs and Sam.

Weekly advice from a Sports Illustrated veteran? I kept imagining it was all a dream, that I would wake up one day to find my hand in a bowl of warm water and my roommates taking Polaroids. If you told me five years ago that I would be here today, I would have given your foolish keister a wedgie.

But here I am, the semester in the books, my columns on the pages. I’ve never learned so much about myself or my writing before. One of my favorite books – W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” – raises the idea that we never know how truly happy we are during certain parts of our lives until we reminisce later on. That said, I know that I will look back on this year someday as one of the happiest of my lifetime.

For that, I offer my sincerest gratitude to my readers – many people who I know, many who I don’t, all who I appreciate. I find it easy to express my feelings in writing, but I never know the right words when I’m eating chicken tenders at Joe’s Joint and you tell me how you and a friend sit down every week to read my column.

Once, my friend Bonnie stopped me on the street while walking with her boyfriend and whispered in my ear, “He loves your columns. He always asks me, ‘Did you read what Sam Rosenthal wrote today?'”

I still call my dad almost weekly asking if he’s read Rick Reilly’s latest piece, so that made my day (slash lifetime). “I think I’m gonna blush,” was the best I could stammer.

This column is my “Thank you” note to anyone who has ever given me feedback, good or bad.

Whether or not I go on to become the next Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin or Tim Crothers, I will always cherish this year. I call it Wednesday’s Special because seeing my column in print every week made the day just that for me.

I’ve waited all year to write it:

I hope you liked Green Eggs and Sam.

Contact Sam Rosenthal at samrose24@gmail.com.

Athletes can be at home in class, too

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Sam Rosenthal

Originally published in The Daily Tar Heel, April 25, 2008.

Once upon a freshman or sophomore year, Kelly Davies approached me, her mind ill-at-ease.

Davies, a volleyball player, needed to vent about a former Sports Desker’s article, which struck her as, um, a teensy bit insensitive.

“There was some opinion piece about what student-athletes should be taking at Carolina,” Davies rehashed with me last week. “And it said that they should be taking a modified – what does modified mean? – exercise and sports science curriculum.

Continue reading →

Gone in (less than) 9.7 seconds

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Sam Rosenthal

Originally published in The Daily Tar Heel on August 27, 2008.

Mind-boggling.

What a terrific term. Makes you smile just to say it.

In the sports world, we seldom encounter true mind-bogglers – feats stupendous enough to flummox you worse than Paris Hilton holding a paper that reads “turn over” on both sides.

At the Beijing Olympics, we encountered one such diamond in the rough: the number 9.69.

As in 9.69 seconds, or the time it took Jamaica’s Usain Bolt to run the 100-meter dash.

Nine-point-six-nine. Turned that sucker over in my head a million times (felt just like Paris). Nine-point-six-effing-nine!

Do you realize how fast that is?

For perspective, 100 meters equates to 328 feet, 1 inch. So on average, Mr. “Lightning” Bolt covered 33 feet, 10 inches every second of the race.

Look at a spot about 30 feet away from you, and imagine being able to get there in a single second. That’s so fast it makes Barry Sanders look like Barry White.

Yet Bolt actually slowed down at the end of the race. Dragged his feet, threw out his arms in celebration and still became the first man to run the hundred in less than 9.7 seconds.

Consider my mind thoroughly boggled.

But 9.69 was merely the first world record Bolt set in Beijing (breaking his own mark, of 9.72 seconds). He followed up his 100-meter insanity with an equally ridiculous run in the 200 meters.

Bolt crossed the finish in 19.30 seconds, breaking Michael Johnson’s world record from the 1996 Atlanta Games by 0.02 seconds. You probably remember when Johnson set that record; people deemed it unbreakable.

Bolt broke it while running into the wind, this time without letting up at the end. Nobody else in the race fared the slightest chance of beating him; it was Bolt versus Johnson all the way. And as he surpassed the first man to win the 200m and 400m at the same Olympics, Bolt also became the first to sweep the 100m and 200m since Carl Lewis – and Bolt alone won both events in world record time.

Then, in the 4×100 meter relay, Bolt earned another gold medal. He ran the race’s third leg faster than an electrical current and, along with his fleet-footed Jamaican teammates, obliterated the field en route to another world record finish of 37.10 seconds (0.30 seconds faster than the U.S. team in 1993).

Oh, and Usain Bolt turned 22 in Beijing. Makes a certain 21-year-old feel like, well, an underachiever.

But IOC President Jacques Rogge lambasted Bolt for over-celebrating and not congratulating his competitors. Rogge said, “That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” in response to Bolt’s claiming “I am No. 1” and his catch-me-if-you-can attitude.

There’s something to be said for that. Upon reviewing Bolt’s races, the Jamaican jackrabbit certainly could have acted more sportsmanlike. After Johnson set his 200-meter world record, he hugged the other racers in appreciation.

But in this age of egocentric superstars, sportsmanship often goes by the wayside whether we like it or not.

And you know what? Bolt is No. 1. Catch him? They couldn’t. No matter how Rogge perceives a champion, he cannot deny that Bolt indeed is one.

So let’s put “Lightning” Bolt’s performance into context:

Sprinting must have been one of humanity’s earliest forms of competition. Some dude probably turned to another dude and said, “Hey, see that spot over there? Bet I can get there before you.” So easy a caveman could do it.

That said, we have no knowledge of anyone, ever, being better at getting to a spot 100 meters or 200 meters away than Usain Bolt.

You know the aphorism “There’s always a bigger fish?” Well, right now, in the ocean of sprinting – one of the oldest oceans in the world of athletic competition – Bolt is the Kraken, Moby Dick and Leviathan rolled into one. There has never been a bigger fish.