Circling The News

(Editor’s note: This story is reprinted with permission. It initially ran on Facebook as a remembrance of Roger and Michelle Potash about Sidney Poitier. Potash is a veteran attorney and he and his wife are Palisades residents.)

Roger Potash posted: THIS MORNING, WE LOST A GREAT ONE!

I pay tribute to the greatest Actor and Human Being…..SIDNEY POITIER…..

In the mid-nineties, Michelle and I were in the bar at Spago, Beverly Hills, waiting to be seated at our table, when out comes Sidney.

Michelle spots him and jumps off of her bar stool, throws her arms around him, plants a kiss on his cheek, and declares “I love you.”

Sidney kisses her back and declares “I love you too.”

A few weeks later, I am in the reception area of Oppenheimer and Co. in Westwood, preparing to have lunch with my Porfolio Manager, when Sidney and his manager join us.

On the elevator, I remind Sidney of that kiss and he asks me for a business card; he takes out a pen and writes on the back….’Michelle, I’ve not forgotten that kiss at Spago…lovingly, Sidney Poitier.”

It is one of Michelle’s most cherished possessions. RIP SIDNEY

OBITUARY—SIDNEY POITIER

Legendary actor Sidney Poitier, 94, died on January 6, in Los Angeles. He was born prematurely, weighing just three pounds. He grew up on Cat Island in the Bahamas, population 1,500, in a home that had no electricity. He quit school when he was 12 to help support his family.

Three years later his father sent him to live with a brother in Miami. Having $3, he traveled steerage on a mail-cargo ship.

He moved to Harlem and took jobs washing dishes, working as a ditch digger, waterfront laborer and delivery man in the garment district.

Before he turned 17, he lied about his age, saying he was 18, so he could join the Army. He was assigned to a mental hospital on Long Island and was so appalled by the treatment of patients, feigned insanity to obtain his release in 1945.

He went to the American Negro Theater to audition, although he had never seen a play and could barely read. With his thick Caribbean accent, the director took him to the door and told him all he could see for him was working as a dishwasher.

“As I walked to the bus, what humiliated me was the suggestion that all he could see in me was a dishwasher. If I submitted to him, I would be aiding him in making that perception a prophetic one,” Poitier later told the AP.

“I got so pissed, I said, ‘I’m going to become an actor — whatever that is. I don’t want to be an actor, but I’ve got to become one to go back there and show him that I could be more than a dishwasher.’ That became my goal.”

Poitier bought a radio and practiced speaking English. He returned to theater and was again rejected but made a deal that he would be the janitor in return for acting lessons.

Poitier got his big break when Harry Belafonte did not show up for a rehearsal attended by a Broadway producer. Poitier, his understudy, took the stage and won a part in the 1946 all-Black production of “Lysistrata.”

“No Way Out” (1950) was his first substantial film role and he played a doctor persecuted by a racist patient. In “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1952), based on the Alan Paton novel about racism in South Africa, he appeared as a young priest.

Next was “Blackboard Jungle” (1955) where he played a troubled student at a tough New York City public school, who eventually sides with Glenn Ford, the teacher who tries to reach him.

“The Defiant Ones” (1958) earned Poitier an Academy Award nomination for best actor, where he played a prisoner on the run, handcuffed to a fellow convict, a racist, played by Tony Curtis.

Poitier won an Academy Award for the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field.”

In 1967 Poitier appeared in three of Hollywood’s top-grossing films: “In the Heat of Night” opposite Rod Steiger, as an indolent, bigoted sheriff, with whom Virgil Tibbs, the Philadelphia detective played by Poitier, must work on a murder investigation in Mississippi.

In “To Sir, With Love” he was a concerned teacher in a tough London high school, and in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a taboo-breaking film about an interracial couple, he played a doctor whose race tests the liberal principles of his prospective in-laws, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

In 1951 Poitier married Juanita Marie Hardy, a dancer and model, whom he divorced in 1965. They had four daughters, Beverly, Pamela, Sherri and Gina. In 1976 he married Joanna Shimkus, his co-star in “The Lost Man” (1969), a film about a gang of Black militants plotting to rob a factory. They had two daughters, Anika and Sydney.

By BOB VICKREY

The author and satirist Fran Lebowitz once said “I would eat at home more often but there’s no food there.”

In recent years, I’ve adopted Fran’s motto. I’ve been single perhaps way too long, and usually start preparation for the next meal only when my stomach begins to growl. In other words, I hardly ever plan ahead for more than one meal at a time.

I bring this up because when I opened my refrigerator yesterday at mealtime to see what I might find, I discovered only the remnants of a large pepperoni-mushroom pizza that seemed rather embedded in the cardboard box it arrived in. I couldn’t remember whether this one was the leftover from Thanksgiving weekend or from the Labor Day party.

The whole pizza seemed to have turned a darker color than I had remembered upon delivery. Nevertheless, I placed it back on the shelf.

I know single guys have a reputation for exhibiting this particular style of sloppy eating habits. We probably deserve the label. During one summer barbecue in my backyard, I asked one of my guests to grab the ketchup from the fridge, but when he returned, he announced (to my chagrin) that the expiration date was January 2001.

After the guests left, I took a quick inventory of the contents of my refrigerator and found an otherwise good quart of congealed milk, and either soy sauce or A-1 Steak sauce, although it was hard to tell because the label had faded and had begun to peel. The mustard dated to the George W. Bush administration.

This wasn’t always the way it was. I remember growing up in a home where there was always food on the table at mealtime. We’d all be outside playing in the yard and our mother would call us in, and we’d find a veritable banquet awaiting us when we took our places around the dining table.

Those never-ending bowls of food just simply appeared out of nowhere and we never had to worry about where it all came from or how it got there. I had not even remotely considered the fact that this gravy train might end one day when reaching adulthood.

But I found out soon enough. I was married during the 1970s, and my wife and I had full-time jobs, so it didn’t take long for me to realize that the “gravy train” I had remembered from boyhood had long since pulled into the station and had been permanently decommissioned.

After arriving home from work, we began our nightly dinner-time ritual to see who would make the first move toward the kitchen. After several moments of palpable tension, one of us would often end the standoff by grabbing the car keys and flipping a coin to decide which restaurant staff would be cooking for us that evening.

Our evening scenario soon became an overnight national phenomenon and signaled the time when American workers simultaneously hung up their aprons and stopped cooking dinner forever. We went out to eat. We bought TV trays, and we ordered take-out. And suddenly our kitchens turned into nothing more than a space that you walked through to get to another room.

I’m glad to report there is a new food market in my neighborhood called Erewhon that has a hot food bar that serves delicious (and healthy) dishes. It has become my last-minute go-to option in recent months. The only problem is that the store caters to a younger crowd and the lighting inside is extremely dim, as management seems to be trying to create a nightclub atmosphere. (And judging by my hefty checkout tabs, there must be a cover charge added—though fortunately, no two-drink minimum.)

In fact, I expect Erewhon to soon install a rotating disco light on the ceiling with accompanying ABBA music piped in. I’m always anticipating that my young server will jump out from behind his food station, rip off his apron, and slide across the black tile floor while busting his best John Travolta “Saturday Night Fever” moves.

But about tonight’s dinner: I’m confident that I could still cook some simple meals, save money, and also feel more self-sufficient in the process. I know how to prepare a few easy pasta recipes a friend taught me years ago, and I’m betting I could get some of the rhythm back in the kitchen again if I put my mind to it.

And just thinking about all this makes me realize that I’m starving, and my stomach is beginning to make that rumbling noise again. I spot my penne arrabbiata recipe on the fridge, but suddenly think better of the idea.

As the rumble gets louder, I grab the local pizza emporium phone number from the kitchen counter. “Hi there, this is Bob. No, I’m not calling in an order tonight. I was just wondering if you could tell me what color an edible pepperoni-mushroom pizza should be?”

Bob Vickrey is a longtime Palisadian whose columns appear in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald. His long-running “Lunch Club” series was published by the Palisades News. You can find more columns on his website:  bobvickrey.net

By PEPPER EDMISTON,

Circling the News Contributor

DECEMBER 30, 2021: Covid has been especially tough for us Baby Boomers. What with hair dye, face fillers, plastic surgery, fat extraction, breast-raising and other modern magic, we look nothing like our grandparents did when they slipped into their seventies. We don’t look like them and we don’t think like them.

Our grandparents were thrilled to be alive at seventy-five, as the life expectancy for males born in 1880 was a swift forty-five years. Plus, our parents, born around 1920, were equally grateful. My dad lived to ninety and whenever he was asked how he felt, answered, “Just happy to be vertical.”

We expect to be vertical and cute. When we take our grandkids for a walk, we assume we’re mistaken for the mommy. When we go to the pharmacy with a prescription for a statin, we figure the pharmacist thinks it’s for our dad. And, when a salesperson says “Mam,” we know he’s speaking to the old lady behind us. But, he’s not. He’s talking to us, to me.

Covid has been confusing because we don’t know how we fit in. We’ve been horrified at the deaths of thousands of people in nursing homes. We know we’re not them, not the “truly old.” But, are we old at all? Very recently, we were middle-aged and could graciously accept that. But we aged out of that group because, OMG, our kids have become middle-aged! Are we elder middle-agers or young truly oldsters? Or are we just plain f…king old and had better learn to live with it?

Whoever we are, my dear husband Joe got Covid. He was the family’s first gift on Christmas morning. Surprise!! Other than Joe, we all tested negative. Everyone else headed for the hills, but where could I go? Every bedroom in our house is filled with family, whom we love and who will never, ever move out. (Another time, another story.)

We have what was formerly known as the “Master Suite,” and is now called “The Place with the Most Flushing.” You enter through a door into a small hall, maybe 5 feet long. On the right, a pair of sliding doors opens to the bedroom. On the left, a sliding door opens to my dressing room. Straight ahead another sliding door opens to my office. The hall area is neither pretty nor roomy, but there it is. Doors that were rarely used have become barricades against death.

Joe, who is disobedient in the best of times, got the bedroom, because his bathroom is adjacent. He only needs to remember two things: when you exit the bedroom, close the sliding doors shut, and always wear a mask. He has never, not once, closed the doors fully. He does mask up, but not neatly. I can feel the Covid molecules escaping the bedroom and see them sliding out of Joe’s mask. I try to keep away but sometimes we collide in the kitchen. I screech and back up, causing Joe to throw up his hands and retreat to his library. That has been our entire relationship since Christmas, other than a daily call.

I am sleeping on my office couch which I bought from an old friend. Before his divorce, he slept on it for months. When I’m dozing, I sometimes feel his pain and other times feel his relief. Amazon Prime delivered a foam mattress pad and a mattress cover. Both are too large and keep slipping off the sofa but are better than the floor. I’m roughing it, a little bit like camp, but instead of fun roommates, high anxiety is my constant companion.

At first, I wore a KN95 when venturing out of my office. But, as the opening in Joe’s double doors kept widening, my fear increased. I am now double-masked. When I leave, I quickly open and close the office sliding door. Then, I quickly open the dressing room sliding door but not fully. If it’s closed tight, it will never open again. The house is thirty years old – an ancient ruin in today’s world. So, the virus can creep into my little dressing room, which is why I keep a window open. Wind and rain sleet onto my face and I shiver violently, but at least there’s ventilation.

The dressing room has a regular door into my bathroom. But, in opening it, who knows what zooms in there? So, I only take my mask off to shower & brush my teeth. To exit: Mask up, hold breath. Quickly open and close bathroom door; open and close stuck sliding door; open and close other sliding door. Now, multiply that by fifteen which, as any Baby Boomer knows, is the number of times you need to interface with the privy in a given day. Breathe in, slide open, slide close, slide open, close not fully, open, close, pee, breathe out, breathe in, open, close, slide open, close not fully, slide open, slide close, breathe out. Repeat fifteen times.

So, that is my life. I’ve tested negative three times on the home kits, but I’ve heard those tests don’t read the Omicron virus very well, so I’m getting a formal PCR when it stops raining. If I’m positive, I’ll still maintain this schedule because more virus from Joe could make me sicker. Actually, I’m becoming accustomed to the old couch and sliding door routine. I’m considering maintaining this arrangement indefinitely as it will probably add years to our marriage, keeping us together until we are the truly old.

(P.S.–Joe is doing well. His breathing is strong and, bless his heart, he never complains!)