About the Photo of the Dead Boy on the Beach

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The photograph shows the body of a little boy, about three years old, cradled in the arms of a Turkish officer after his body was found face down in the sand near Bodrum, Turkey, one of 12 migrants who drowned while trying to flee from their town  of Kotani in northern Syria.

This photo is all over the internet, at the top of the trending list.  It’s also in yesterday’s New York Times, although in small size in black and white on an inside page—page  A11 in my edition-- with the caption “A Turkish gendarme on Wednesday carried the body of a child who drowned en route to the Greek Island of Kos.”

 First this photo became viral on the internet, shared everywhere, eliciting worldwide demands for aid to these families who are risking death and all their life’s savings to get out of Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, to reach Europe and safety. Seventy immigrants were found stuffed into a truck in Austria, suffocated by ruthless smugglers who abandoned the decomposing bodies and fled.  Days ago we read about that and were appalled, but it had only a fraction of the impact of the photo of one little boy found dead on a beach in Turkey.

The second wave of attention to the photo was an internet flood of protest—“Leave the dead their dignity!”  people wrote,  “Show some respect! Don’t show me this photo again!”

I found this outburst of protest to be heartless and stupid.  This is what photographs are for, people!  To put a face to suffering and injustice and to motivate us, the viewers, to do something about it.  Photographs, in their immediacy, have the ability to hit us in the gut far more than any collection of words, no matter how eloquent. That’s why, since the beginning of photography in 1839, photographs have been used to  touch people’s emotions and sway their opinions.  Even before the Civil War, Abolitionists were using photographs like “The Scourged Back” to raise anti-slavery emotion.  And the pro-slavery factions did the same; witness the notorious daguerreotypes of stripped and humiliated slaves ordered by the country’s leading scientist, Louis Agassiz, to promote his theory that blacks were a separate and inferior  species..

Think about the famous photograph by Nick Ut of the little girl running from the napalm during the massacre at My Lai.  The New York Times debated putting this photo on the front page—after all, the little girl was naked and screaming and on fire.  But the editors had the grit to put it prominently on page one.  I remember, in 1972 picking up the paper from the mat and saying to my husband, “This photograph is going to win the Pulitzer prize.”  And it did.

Sadly, The Times did not show the same courage with yesterday’s photo of the boy on the beach in Turkey.  After much debate, they decided to run it inside and to choose a less distressing photo with the child’s face obscured.  Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post put the more moving close-up of him face down on the sand on their front pages. (Today, Friday, The New York Times had a much larger photo in color of the boy lying in the sand, while a Turkish gendarme prepares to pick him up. Still on an inside page.)

When President Nixon saw the photo of the “Napalm girl” of My Lai, he wondered aloud if it had been faked.  But it was very real.  The little girl in the photo, Kim Phuc, lived to grow up, defected to become a Canadian citizen, and founded the Kim Phuc Foundation,  which offers medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war, including Ali Abbas, a boy who lost both arms in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The photo of the “Napalm girl” that The New York Times dared to put on its front page electrified the world to the reality of what happened at My Lai and ultimately did some good for humanity, leading to her humanitarian foundation.

There won’t be any happy ending for the little boy on the beach in Turkey.  His name was Aylan Kurdi.  He was three years old.  At least 12 people drowned when his boat capsized in the night while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos.  The bodies of his brother Galip, five, and his mother Rihan, 35,  were found farther up the beach.

The original photo I saw of the boy’s body being carried by the Turkish police officer did not show his face, but just now, on line, I saw a photo of the little body sprawled in the sand, in his red shirt and blue shorts and smart new shoes, as if dressed for the first day of pre-school. I could see his face.  That’s when I couldn’t hold back the tears.

“Leave the dead their dignity. Show some respect!” cry those who don’t want to see such images, but photos like these give the dead and the  abused back their dignity, especially if the reaction to such disturbing images can alleviate the conditions that caused these deaths.

Trying To Put the Fun Back in Boyhood

        Allen Johnson with his dog Co-Co in the early 1940's

         Allen Johnson Jr., 79, has lived a life filled with adventure, travel and success, but he insists, “My life peaked at nine.” He has written a memoir and books of poems and essays, often reflecting on the unfettered joy of growing up under the “benign neglect” of his parents and the loving guidance of black employees in his parents’ large Alabama home surrounded by forest in Mountain Brook, an affluent suburb of Birmingham.

         Johnson attended three universities, and sailed to Europe in the mid Fifties on the Ile de France when he met Ernest Hemingway on board. He has lived in a variety of places including Switzerland, Cuba, Florida and Vermont, where in 1971 he founded the Vermont State Craft Center.  He plays jazz guitar. He met and wrote about Albert Einstein and Nat King Cole and he served in the army in ’59 and ’60.  But he insists the best time of his life was his boyhood in the South.

         His memoir  “Fun! A Boyhood”, was written and published over twenty years ago, primarily “so that my descendants would be able to know what I was like as a boy. I also wanted to memorialize what was an extraordinarily joyful time in my life along with some of the people—and dogs—who gave me so much love and fun.”       

        In “Fun” Allen remembers the particular pleasures of a boyhood in the 30’s and 40’s--handmade slingshots, comic books, pocket knives , war-time Spam and margarine instead of butter, his Dick Tracy cap gun and the little comic strips that were wrapped around Double Bubble gum, radio shows like “Terry and the Pirates”, hoecake dripping with melted butter, BB guns and firecrackers, water pistols, yoyos, chemistry sets—most of which would never be permitted by careful parents today.  “Having a dollar in your pocket was money. Having six cardboard tubes of copper-coated BBs in your pocket dragging down your pants was wealth,” he wrote.

         Re-reading his memoir 20-some years later, Johnson reflected, “I found the seventy-three year-old me in complete accord with the fifty-two year-old me on the subject of the negativism in the modern world.  I continue to want to do my small part to turn this trend around.  It is essential that we start to pay more attention to the source of the joyful, fun things in life.”

         So he drew on his childhood memories for three books, known collectively as the Blackwater novels, and turned to his long-time friend George Schnitzer of Premium Press America, an independent publisher, to publish them.  The books, which are reminiscent of Mark Twains’ works about boyhood a century earlier, are targeted at forth and fifth graders but appeal just as much to adults and especially grandparents who want to share their childhood adventures with their grandchildren.  (Many of Johnson’s own adventures, bad and good, including blowing up the toilet with a cherry bomb, appear in the books.) They have won a number of awards including the INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award, and the IPPY 2015 Bronze Medal for Best Juvenile Fiction.

         In the first novel,  “My Brother’s Story”, identical twins Johnny and Will are orphaned and adopted by two families, Johnny by an abusive aunt in Tennessee and Will by a loving couple who live in the country near Birmingham. Johnny runs away and is sheltered deep in the Blackwater Swamp by Linc, a reclusive black man who is persecuted by Bobby Scagg, the son of the man who lynched Linc’s father.  In turn, Johnny is able to care for Linc when he becomes ill with malaria. “My Brother’s Story” is a record of the twins’ adventures as they search to find each other and then to win the right to live together.

         The second novel, “The Dead House,” continues the tale of the twins, and draws on author Johnson’s love of tree houses, riding on Pullman trains, dogs, and mysterious mansions. The third, “A Nest of Snakes” begins when the twins, up in their tree house, overhear a plot.  With their friend Rad Fox they decide to help Linc, who is in danger from the Ku Klux Klan.  One reviewer, Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center said, “Their story has an important childhood lesson at its heart: How good men and women, black and white, would stand up to violent, scheming racists in the era of Jim Crow.”

         Race relations and the inequities of the past play a part in each of the Blackwater novels.  As Johnson told me, “The point I try to make in these books is that a lot of love existed between the races, and in my entire boyhood I never saw one interaction that wasn’t based on love and respect.   When I was growing up, a lot of us were exposed to a black person who worked for the family.  I learned about honesty from our cook, Nettie.  They became part of the family and helped to raise us.”

          But as an adult, Johnson realized the poisonous injustices rampant in the South.  “As a child I didn’t understand.  But my college years at the University of Alabama also gave me first-hand experience of the good people coming together with love to help each other and to confront racial hatred.   I was in the audience when Nat King Cole was attacked.”  (In 1956 the entertainer was assaulted on stage during a concert in Birmingham, Alabama.)

          Beyond describing interactions between the races in the  1930’s and 40’s, the novels are a celebration of the joys of an unfettered, unscheduled boyhood.  “My hope is that grandparents will read the novels to their grandkids for fun and to help them understand how life was back in their day.”

        He laments that such an unregulated and independent childhood is not necessarily possible today. “The country is much more urban than when I was a child.  Roaming free in the woods is not possible for many kids.  Rough and ready fun, contact with nature, has been lost.  Also, the media have got parents so scared that they won’t let kids go off on their own.  Modern kids are over-structured and hooked on technology and there may not be much we can do about it.”

    But Johnson, who has three adult children but no grandchildren (yet), is hoping that he can help today’s kids rediscover the possibilities of childhood.  “I consider these books to be parables on how to live. They come from an earlier time when young people played outside as I did as a boy in Alabama.  Fun was my goal and the possibility of getting into trouble added spice.  When I went out the door in the morning, I knew I was going to have fun.  The only question was how much fun.”

                                                                                                                 

  

Amalia's Birthday Countdown

On Thursday night, Amalia and her family, including new little brother Nicolas, arrived at Yiayia and Papou's house in Grafton, MA to celebrate Amalia's 4th birthday (which is actually on August 26th.)  Amalia made sure to pack her special dress with a birthday cake on it.  She had asked for a birthday tiara with sparkling lights and a magic wand, which Yiayia managed to find.  Everything had to be in pink, Amalia's favorite color.  Here's Amalia re-discovering the toys she left in Grafton.

 

On Friday the decorations went up, the pool animals were inflated and Amalia decided to try out the pool along with her Mommy and little brother. 

 

Amalia showed everyone what she had learned during swimming lessons in Nicaragua in July.

 

We all got lunch from Bradish's down the road--including their famous fried onion rings and, because it was Friday, they had clam rolls as well.

That night we all ate ate Amalia's Uncle Fred's restaurant, The Westboro House.  Tia Marina, also a birthday girl, had flown in from San Francisco and she patiently cleaned all the tomato sauce off the ravioli so that Amalia would eat it.

Next day Amalia got dressed for the party with all her required accessories: party dress, "I am 4" badge, pink magic wand... crazy straw?

 

When everybody started coming, Tia Marina, wearing her own birthday tiara, convinced Amalia to put on her bathing suit and jump in the pool.

When it was piñata time Amalia got to take the first whack at the Doc McStuffins piñata because she was the youngest.  But a boy who was older finally broke it open.

Then it was time for the cake--carrot cake from Yummy Mummy in Westboro, with a mermaid on it.

Papi and Papou lit the candles.

And Mommy lifted Amalia so she could blow them out.

Then everybody sat around the pool, eating, and Yiayia held Nicolas.

The older Greek folks stayed inside the rec. room where it was cooler.  Then they all had Greek coffee and Nick's sister Kanta read fortunes in the coffee grounds.

They all loved holding Nicolas, because he smiles at everybody. 

Here he is with his Mommy's godmother, Kiki Economou.

"The goodie bags come at the end," Amalia informed her grandmother.  Here she is checking out the loot in her goodie bag with her Papi.

"It was even better than last year's party!" Amalia told her Grandma.  "Because it was so beautiful."

Then  she went back to Manhattan with her family to get ready for her SECOND 4-years-old birthday party to be held on Sunday in Central Park!

Are Emoticons and Emojis Destroying Our Language?

     If you are on the far side of seventy, as I am, you may not even know what emoticons and Emojis are, but trust me, your grandchildren do.  Emoticons--those little smiley face icons used to show various emotions, and their descendants, Emojis-- icons illustrating almost anything, from Santa Claus to a screaming cat to a pile of excrement-- have become so popular with young people who communicate by texting and e-mailing, that  some Emoji experts converse only through pictographs.  You don’t need to know the other person’s foreign language—or even how to read!  

      But a number of us older folks, including academics, are more than a little  worried about what the popularity of communicating with pictographs is doing  to our language and literature.

     The first emoticon was created in 1982  by Scott E. Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. Pretty much no one had a personal computer or access to the internet except for geeky scientists and scholarly computer experts who communicated with each other on the earliest on-line bulletin boards.  They wanted a way to mark posts that were not meant to be taken seriously, to avoid frequent fire storms from people who didn’t get the joke. At 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, Fahlman hit three keys on his keyboard: a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis—and the emoticon was born –a sideways happy face. He wrote: “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers  : - ) 

         Fahlman never thought to trademark the Smiley emoticon, and never made a cent from it.  He maintains a sense of humor about his fame as the Father of the Emoticon: “It’s weird, though,” he says, “to think what the first line of my obituary will be.”

     Clearly there was a need for a way of adding emotional resonance to the dry words sent by e-mail, text, i-chat, etc.  Computer programs competed to provide the most, best Smiley emoticons. Plain text emotions turned into animated colored images. 

     While the Smiley emoticon is beloved by texting teenagers, there are many adults out there who become enraged at the sight of that smiling yellow face. “I am deeply offended by them.” Maria McErlane, a British journalist, actress and radio personality told The New York Times in 2011. “If anybody on Facebook sends me a message with a little smiley-frowny face…I will de-friend them...I find it lazy.  Are your words not enough?”

     Despite the dislike of many intellectuals, it seems that nearly everyone who texts uses the Smiley emoticon.  In 2007, Yahoo! surveyed 40,000 Yahoo Messenger users and found that 82% of them used emoticons in their IM conversations; 83 per cent said that “happiness” and “flirting” are the two emotions they express most with emoticons. Fifty-seven per cent said that they would rather tell a “crush” their true feelings with emoticons than words. 

     Emojis are the next generation of emoticons—images that represent emotions and just about everything else, while emoticons are always about emotions and express them with a face.  Emojis are not just Smiley faces but also flags of various countries, musical notes, people, an engagement ring, the Statue of Liberty, a camel, a baby bottle, a green dragon, a butcher knife, a cat making the “Scream” face, even a stack of dollar bills with wings and a pyramid of excrement with eyes and a grin.

     Named for a Japanese word that means  “picture” plus “letter” (moji.)  Emojis began in Japan and the pictographs often are very specific to that country, such as men bowing in apology or a white flower meaning “brilliant homework”.  According to Business Wire, more than seventy per cent of young women in Japan use “Emoji-enabled services” and the Emoji market there exceeds $300 million.

     What do you DO with Emojis? You use them (especially if you’re female and young) to jazz up your e-mail or text messages. Twenty-something Hannah Goldfield wrote in October 12, 2012, in a New Yorker essay called “I Heart Emoji”:

      “As with so many technological tools, texting has far surpassed its original, utilitarian purpose to become, for many, not only the primary form of pragmatic communication…but also an art form...Last month, with the introduction of the iPhone 5 and iOS6, texters got… a set of brand new Emojis.  As one aficionado recently put It, ’It’s like you’re a speaker of some primitive Japanese picture language with only three hundred some odd words and your vocabulary just DOUBLED.”

     Another, presumably young female, (she calls herself “Hot Piece” and writes for a blog called “Total Sorority Move”) reacted to the same news: 

     “WAIT A SECOND!  There are NEW EMOJIS for iOS6 and I can’t even begin to explain my excitement …There’s a family and a bride, which I’ll never use except wishfully, and gay and lesbian couples…And there is a tongue.  Emoji sexting is going to be a thing.” 

     Emojis are so trendy that they were discussed in the January 13, 2013 episode of HBO’s Girls, when no one could understand Shoshanna’s Emoji of a panda next to a gun next to a wrapped gift.

     The best known Emoji artist in the U.S. is data engineer and NYU teacher Fred Benenson who, in 2009, when he was 29, raised over $3,500 on Kickstarter to fund his translation of Moby Dick into Emojis—titled “Emoji Dick”, of course.  He hired helpers through Amazon Mechanical Turks and translated the 200,000-word epic completely into pictures.  In February of 2013, the Library of Congress welcomed it as the first ever Emoji book in its collection.

     Here’s the first sentence, “Call me Ishmael”

     Emoticons and Emojis are a language of pictures that is universally understood, so it surmounts language barriers, sort of like communicating with aliens in a science fiction film by mental telepathy.  If the popularity of emoticons and Emojis continues to grow, and if more classic books like Moby Dick are translated into pictographs, what does that bode for the future of language and the subtleties, skills and eloquence of writers, poets and journalists? 

     I’d have to agree with the opinion of one Ben Smithurst, who writes for Harsh Critic and reacted to an article written by Emoji Dick translator Benenson in Jan. 2013’s Esquire Magazine called “How to Use Emoji for Men.”  Smithurst’s rejoinder was called “Emoji:  Has Esquire Lost its Mind?” He summed up the subject with an illustration of an Egyptian goddess sitting in front of hieroglyphics and the sentence: “Basically, after 5000 years of technological progress, we’ve returned to eking approximate meaning from pictograms.”

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This post is excerpted from my forthcoming book “The Saga of Smiley, How a Cheerful Icon Changed the World”.

Older Women and the Rules of Society

 

On the occasion of her 80th birthday, Maria Agustina Castillo returned to Sacred Heart in New Orleans, where she attended high school under the strict supervision of the nuns in the early 1950s.

“I feel like, as women, we’re always trying to figure out the rules of the world around us.  We’re raised to listen to the rules of society, as opposed to men, and I sort of realized by the time you figure out the rules, they’ve all changed.  Older women carry so many worlds inside them—both the societies that don’t exist anymore and themselves at a younger age.  I like how they (older women) are kind of uncensored.  People of that age stop worrying about what others think.”

When I read those words last Sunday in an interview in the Worcester Sunday Telegram, they struck me as deeply wise, because they encapsulated many things that I’ve learned in my 75 years.   And I was doubly impressed because that statement came from my 40-year-old daughter, Eleni Gage, who was being interviewed about her newest novel “The Ladies of Managua” by reporterAnn Connery Frantz.

Eleni’s book is about three generations of women in Nicaragua and the secrets and tensions between them.  Her favorite character is the grandmother, Isabella, who was sent as a teenager from her home in Nicaragua to finishing school in New Orleans where she learned things like how to get into a cab properly, how to set a nice table, and how to make fudge.  This character is based on Eleni’s Nicaraguan husband’s grandmother, who is still alive today to dispense advice on proper behavior.  Isabella, in the book, is the mother to Ninexin, a heroine of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. She lost her husband to a bullet, is devoting herself to building a new Nicaragua, and is frequently reminded by her daughter Maria and others, “You couldn’t have been a good revolutionary and a good mother.”  As Eleni commented to the Telegram, “Guilt is hard to escape, especially for women.  You’re expected to do certain things, raise your kids in a certain way.”

Years before Eleni was born, I discovered the difficulties of learning the rules of the game when I married a man from a close-knit Greek family.  I was a very naïve Presbyterian from Minnesota.  Nick and his sisters had suffered starvation and worse during the Greek civil war and eventually escaped in 1949, coming to Worcester, MA to join their father, a cook, whom nine-year-old Nick had never met.  As retribution for engineering the escape of her children from their Communist-held Greek village, Nick’s mother was imprisoned, tortured and executed. (He told her story in the book “Eleni” which was later made into a 1985 film.)

Once I married Nick in September of 1970, I realized I was involved in a game to which I did not know the rules, especially after our son Christos was born ten months later.  We lived in an apartment in Manhattan but would drive nearly every weekend to Worcester, MA, to visit Nick’s elderly father and his four older sisters.  I was always breaking rules without realizing it.  At our son’s baptism, which culminated in Greek line dancing while Nick’s father Christos balanced a glass of Coca Cola on his head, I was wearing a long dress. In church, while my baby was being dunked and tonsured, and holy oil was put on his hair, I would nervously, in the front row, cross my legs.  Every time, my father-in-law would stand up, walk across the church and tell me in a stage whisper that I was not supposed to cross my legs in church. (It was a long dress, people!)  Also, when I took the baby home, while the party was still rollicking, I washed the holy oil out of his hair.  Big mistake!

Nick once told me, in the early years of our marriage, that a Greek wife must always be ready to feed unexpected guests at a moment’s notice.  And I have never been a good cook. But luckily he is.

Over the next 45 years I learned—to cook moussaka, to do Greek dances, to speak Greek.  And I had two daughters, including Eleni—although having a son first, Christos, gave me a major boost in the eyes of the Greeks. (The three requirements Nick spelled out when we decided to get married, were 1. Quit smoking, 2. Name the first two children after his parents and 3. Marry in his Greek Orthodox Church.)

Well I did all that—It helped that The New York Times sent our family to live in Greece for five years while Nick was their correspondent in the Middle East.   Along with our children, I learned the language and the rules of the game.  Years later, back in the U.S., when strange odors emanated from my teenaged son’s closet, I wasn’t surprised to find in the pocket of his church-going suit a bulb of garlic that one aunt had hidden against the evil eye.  It’s now an ordinary occurrence to have my future read in my coffee grounds by one of Nick’s sisters and, when things seem to all be going wrong at once, the kids and I regularly ask another aunt to do an exorcism against the evil eye.

Eleni said in last week’s article that, as she was growing up, I would point out rituals and celebrations to her—the rules of our game. She became so interested in them that she majored in folklore and mythology at Harvard, learning things she has put to good use as an author of three books. (Her second, “Other Waters” was about an Indian psychiatrist in New York who thinks her family has been cursed.) 

It was very gratifying to learn that my early efforts to discover the rules of the game sparked a lifetime’s education and writing career in my daughter. (Well, the Telegram’s reporter referred to me as “Jane” instead of “Joan” but whatever.) The part of Eleni’s statement about older women that gave me the greatest encouragement was: “I like how they (older women) are kind of uncensored. [That’s me, for sure.] “People of that age stop worrying about what others think.” [I hope that will be me, as well!]

Photographing New York Shadows

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In a recent post called “Reflections on the Windows of Greece” I mentioned that, when I’m traveling, for some reason I’m drawn to photographing windows in Greece, doors in Paris and chairs in Nicaragua. (Don’t know why—it’s not a conscious decision.  I think the doors and windows attract me because I’m always wondering what lies behind them.)

(What I love to photograph best in every country is people, especially children, but that can often get you in trouble.) 

Lately, while walking around Manhattan with a camera in my hand, I’ve become fascinated with the shadows cast by the fire escapes.  (I’ve mentioned before that my good friend Mari Seder, who is an award-winning professional photographer, once told me that sometimes the shadow is the most important part of the photograph.) 

Whenever I drive into Manhattan, when I turn off the FDR Drive onto 96^th Street, I notice the building above, uninhabited except for the bodega on the ground floor. If the sun’s out and the shadows are there, I take a picture through the windshield (while I’m stopped, waiting for the light to change of course!)  I love the crazy zigzag patterns of the shadows.

The other day, while walking on Third Avenue in the Seventies, I came upon a block that was a virtual symphony of fire-escape shadows.  Do you like the panoramic photo above or the closer photo below best?

I also tend to photograph architectural details.  In Manhattan, it’s important to look up (except when crossing a street, of course!  Those taxis can be lethal!)  You’ll find all sorts of unexpected treasures, like these.

 Once I started looking for shadows that make pleasing patterns, I found them everywhere.  Here’s  a photo I took while waiting for a check-up in my doctor’s examining room!

And here’s a table and chairs outside near the pool.

When I left Manhattan last Friday, I rode on a LimoLiner bus which traversed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in Harlem.   It was lined with antique buildings with fire escapes. We were moving too fast for good positioning, but I snapped this photo through the window before Manhattan faded into the distance.

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump

This post, published in April of 2011, became one of my most popular--undoubtedly because of the super-flattering portrait of The Donald (below). Now that Trump has declared his run for the presidency, this post is once again getting lots of hits.

Palm Beach, I’ve noticed, is like Disney World for grown-ups—everything is bigger, better, cleaner, fancier (and more expensive) than in the real world. The latest example came yesterday (Sunday) when we were invited to lunch at the Mar-a-Logo Club by a friend who is a member.  (The cost, I’m told, is $150,000 initiation fee and $75,000 each year after that.)

I didn’t even know that Donald Trump had turned his palatial (think Versailles) private home into a private club in April of 1995.  His presence is still everywhere—from the plaque at the door to the name and crest on the paper hand towels (I stole one) in the gold-encrusted bathrooms and on the welcome mat, to a portrait that is apparently meant to portray The Donald at a younger age in sports clothes.

Everywhere you turn there are golden cherubs, marble statues, parrot and monkey motifs and antique Spanish tiles.  Flowers? Chandeliers? Fountains? Swimming pools? Don’t ask.

 The Mar-a-Lago Estate was built to the specifications of Marjorie Merriweather Post (then Mrs. E. F. Hutton)and completed in 1927. (The name is Latin for “Sea-to-Lake”—it has water views both front and back.)  Three boatloads of Dorian stone were brought from Genoa, Italy. There were 114 rooms in the original villa.  According to a “short history” of the place, “It was Mrs. Post’s plan to bring together many Old -World Features of the Spanish, Venetian and Portuguese styles.”

In January of 1969 the estate was named a “National Historic Site”.  After Mrs. Post died in 1973, she left the place to the federal government for use as a diplomatic/presidential retreat.  It was pretty costly to maintain--so in 1985, it was sold to Donald Trump who used it as a private residence for ten years  (and married his third wife, Melania, there in 2005).  Even his first wife, Ivana, used it for her ill-starred wedding to an Italian 24 years her junior in 2008. 

In April of 1995, it became the Mar-a-Lago Club.

According to the “brief history” available at the desk, Trump has “since built a magnificent swimming pool, an award-winning beauty salon, a world-class spa, one grass and five red-clay championship tennis courts and a remarkable croquet court.…Completed in 2005 is the all-new Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom—the interior is in a Louis XIV  gold and crystal finish that is one of the finest spaces of its kind in the country.”

We joined our friends for lunch in the outdoor patio (where I ordered lobster quesadillas) and they told us that Jennifer Hudson was on the premises, resting after her recent performance on American Idol, and Joan Rivers had just checked out.

With the Trump name plastered everywhere, it sort of seemed natural that The Donald himself breezed in as we were eating. Wearing a baseball hat and casual clothes, he greeted the several tables of diners, making sure everyone was happy.  I asked about the décor, having been stymied by the mix of Spanish tiles and the Arabic-looking plasterwork.  Was it Moroccan? I asked and he agreed—Moroccan it was!  (At that point neither he nor I had read in the “brief history” that it’s actually “Spanish, Venetian, and Portuguese” all mixed together into a decadent , dazzling, over-the-top mish-mash that would send Mad King Ludwig into a jealous funk. There popped into my memory a French phrase which doesn’t really have an English equivalent.  It was all a bit “de trop.”)

Later in the afternoon we saw Trump depart, along with Melania and her parents, their young son and an older girl who was evidently Tiffany, the daughter he had with second wife Marla Maples.

Throughout the estate, which we explored post-lunch, poking into rooms and peeking behind doors, we kept encountering antique tiles with a Latin motto: “Plus Ultra”, which translates as “Beyond the Ultimate.” This is Mar-a-Lago’s slogan.  As we left, past the gilded cupids and the large brass lions at the gate , I was reminded of another ancient classical slogan carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:   “Midhen Agan”—“Nothing in excess”.