Everyone has forgotten Semiramis

Last night to a splendid performance of Rossini's rackety grand opera Semiramide in the Venetian Theater at Caramoor: four hours of warble. Very satisfying. But everyone had to study the program because no one seems to remember who Semiramis is - or, to be sure, was - sometime between the 22nd and eighth centuries b.c.e.

Semiramis used to be as famous as, well, Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba and Herodias and Empress Wu, and the myths have much in common. (Also Zenobia, who is also nearly forgotten.) (On the other hand, Ishtar and Hatshepsut have entered the popular consciousness.)

The Semiramis legend, alas, has faded from the popular consciousness, perhaps because Gina Lollabrigida (who had the ideal maternal quality) never made a major Technicolor picture of it. Last March, in Rome’s Capitoline Museum, generally ignored in a long gallery of late Renaissance bric-a-brac, I saw seven huge tapestries depicting the queen’s life and career. We see her (as far as I recall), a foundling of unknown (perhaps divine) birth, nursed by doves; noticed (while leading an attack on Bactra) by King Ninus, eponym of Nineveh, who falls in love at first sight; sacrificing to Baal upon her husband’s sudden death and her succession to his contested throne; building the Walls of Babylon; leading her armies to conquer Egypt and India; hunting tigers in the Pamirs (or wherever); and at last, her power broken by the appearance of her long-lost son, Ninias, the true heir, taking flight with the doves and vanishing among the clouds. It’s a glorious load of gilt-edged bushwah (the real Shamu-ramat was simply queen regent of hyper-masculine Assyria for three years), and it’s a pity her story is forgotten, when once she held her own with such semi-mythical exotics as the Queen of Sheba, Cleopatra, King Arthur, Alexander, Agamemnon and Roland.

On the web, where one encounters the usual nonsense, a Biblical mystic identifies Semiramis as the wife of Nimrud (builder of the Tower of Babel) and the “inventor of polytheism” – that needed to be invented? Dante and Herodotus are cited among sources on Wikipedia. Her era is variously identified as 22nd and 8th centuries B.C.E. (Top that!)

She is also said to have:
1) been born to a goddess and a mortal – the goddess, ashamed, slew the mortal and abandoned the baby, hence raised by doves and shepherds – typical heroic birth trope, cf. Hercules, Jesus
2) she was a major tomboy, winning men’s hearts by her skill at hunt and war as well as beauty,
cf. Hippolyta, Brunhilda, Zenobia, the Ranee of Jhansi
3) first husband, a satrap of Nineveh, allowed her to lead a campaign against Bactra, which won King Ninus’ notice; the husband committed suicide – cf. The King’s Henchman, David and Bathsheba
4) Ninus was so impressed by her counsel (she founded Babylon in this version, as well as building the walls and the hanging gardens – both among the Seven Wonders) that he made her Queen Regent for a day; she promptly had him executed and took power, deceiving the troops by appearing in man’s attire as her son – cf. Hatshepsut, Catherine the Great, Irene of Byzantium, Empress Wu of China – all real rulers by the way
5) She then conquered Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia, but not India
6) She is said to have had a different lover every night – fearing they would take her power, she had them murdered in the morning. Ergo Dante put her in the lechers’ circle. This trope appears in tales (and operas) about Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, Queen Marguerite of France, several Roman empresses, Queen Tamar of Georgia, Herodias, etc. etc. I think it is all about men’s terrof of insatiable female lust which they may not be man enough to satisfy. The woman wiser or braver than a man is always either asexually prudish or lustful beyond all reason (the myth of Catherine the Great and the horse, e.g.) – she can’t be normal, because men can’t stand the idea of brave, brainy women being normal.
7) The incest motif comes from all sorts of places, notably the subconscious – but cf. Jocasta, Lucrezia Borgia, Cybele and Atys, Ishtar and Tammuz.
8) At last, after three years (historical), or 15 (operatic) or 42, her son showed up and had her put to death. (Cf. Athaliah) Or she was rescued at the last moment, cornered on top of the Tower of Babel, by a flock of doves, her old friends, who carried her off. Imagine trying to stage that with a Sutherland or Caballé – or Meade. Well – I once saw Sutherland fly off in a winged chariot in Esclarmonde, come to think of it.

Wouldn't that story have made a great trash flick for Gina Lollobrigida? Or Angela Lansbury in her blonde bombshell bitch days? I see George Sanders as Assur, Tyrone Power as Ninus, Sal Mineo as Arsaces/Ninias. Can we get Cukor to direct?

P.S. After a visit to Boston for the Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese show at the MFA, I wandered the regular galleries of that place (it's been thirty years since I was there last - I think), and found a Guercino of Semiramis Cutting Her Hair while Receiving the News of the Revolt of Babylon. According to the wall caption (bless Boston for its wall captions!), she put down her scissors and refused to complete her toilette until she had ridden her army to the offending city and suppressed the revolt.

That was a new tale to me (and, I presume, you).

Reminds me of the tale of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia (elder daughter of Philip II of Spain and Elisabeth de Valois, Verdi lovers take note), who reigned in Brussels for 35 years and once swore not to change her underlinen until the Protestant northern Netherlands were reconquered by the Catholic south (her bailiwick). Of course they never were conquered. One wonders what Isabella, and her maids, had to endure in consequence. Across the gallery from the Guercino were several works created for Isabella by Rubens, her court painter, including one of a series of warlike women on whom she might model herself, in this case, notably, Queen Tamyris vengefully tossing the head of King Cyrus into a basin of blood.

Another story I know nothing at all about.

Where were YOU the day Stravinsky died?

During my junior year in college – the one I did not spend merely torn between lusting not too successfully after women and wondering why I felt odd, unconscionable, never to be discussed or admitted things about men – make up your mind, Yohalem! – oh, my mind was made up; my mind was certain; I knew what I wanted - to want; it was just that my genitals did not always agree – I spent a lot of time smoking dope.

One of my dorm buds was Ken, loud, anarchic, thoughtful, ruminating behind a zany basso laugh copped from Howlin’ Wolf and honed with cheap cigarettes, also fond (so were we all) of concealing unsatisfied lust behind druggy philosophizing. He picked datura blossoms in New Jersey and we attempted that one day: unsatisfying. (Lakmé killed herself in Act III with this? I don’t think so.) Marijuana was better.

We were sitting one night in his room with some very effective weed, and he opened the little upper closet over his main closet (so were all rooms in Furnald Hall equipped), swung the door out, suspended a clear plastic cable from the catch, a heavy fishing weight from the cable. I stared and it spun and spun, a weight on a line. Sort of like the pendulum at the U.N. that, if you stare at it long enough, they say (whoever bothered to do this?), will change the direction of its arc in accordance with the spin of the planet – or the influence of the moon – or of the sun – or the Will of God – or some such principle. (A little green spaceman on Uranus eying us by scope, firing a gravity gun here and there, giggling insanely as we jump like electroshocked ants, drooling masticated matter from the corners of his mouth.)

And this fishing weight, this pendulum, Ken took between his fingers, making sure with his eyes that mine were fastened, fascinated, upon it (was it magic? Would it turn into a feathered bird? And sing and fly away?), and he let it go – and, you will hardly believe me – it swung! To and fro, side to side, on and on … slowly less and less (ah, friction! Trapped in eternal conflict with supernal Inertia! I feel a metaphorical Renaissance statue coming on – or a story by Italo Calvino, one of my great heroes at the time – Cosmicomics – they have just been reissued, by the way).

So back and forth and back and forth the dead weight ran on its all-but-invisible (occasionally sparkling in the shadows of an ill-lit snot-green Columbia dorm room) cable, coming ever so slowly to supreme, divine, rest. The earth, with barely an effort, held it fast then, a line from the center of the world to the lock on the little closet door above my head. The miracle of it all. Hit the bong again, bro. Saw a T-shirt the other day: “Bro-hemian Rhapsody.” That’s where we are.

His eyes on my eyes (spinning, whirling, whorling away I have no doubt), Ken lifted the cable again, drew it back, and let it go, grace of the arc, swoop and then up, symmetry and ration, all right with the world, music of the spheres (okay, arcs) (okay, maybe we do need some tunes, bro, actually…), and then, sublimely, all at rest, like Sophocles, the perfection of the knots unraveled and woven anew. The world without might go hang. Inside we had satori – and Jethro Tull – and another bowl.

Could the world be more perfect? I gazed, mesmerized. Rude Ken, for the moment gentle, looked kindly down upon me. He took the weighted cable in his wizardly hand, stared, all a-grin, into my eyes, and drew it this time, for a variation, back – towards himself – to let it fall east-west instead of north-south. A variation! An old thing made new! A wonder of the aeon! I smiled too, and waited for this marvel.

He let the cable go.

The dangling weight paused in the middle of the air.

Across the way, I awaited its coming (like a new Messiah, or at the least a new, improved, upgraded brand of Messiah).

It did not move.

It hung, frozen, in the air.

Gravity, rationality, inertia, the fourth force I forget what you call it – charisma? Animal magnetism? Zapitude? – stood still.

The pendulum was going nowhere, and would continue to go nowhere, while I, crosslegged on the carpet, struggled to keep my balance on the celestial dancefloor. The laws of the universe suspended! How could this be?

And then – and only then – sobering slightly, desperately, because elsewise I was going to choke and go under – my eyes sought the cable and followed it upwards to the fulcrum lock. When Ken pulled the taut cord to him, the open door above had moved too. It would have swung north to south, but it would not go east to west. When he let it go, apparently on the arc, in fact it was plumb, straight down from the handle. I was properly – utterly – magically – manically – gulled.

My shock – my wonder – my mortification – my ecstasy – were almost whelmed in his gusty, hideous, gorgeous, wolflike laugh. I did not know whether to be tickled or annoyed, cold sober or more stoned. It was a wonder and a revelation: the laws of the universe may not accord with your perceptions. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

All this came back to me this morning – God knows why – as something of a metaphor. The story, as one tells it. As Ken told it. While the teller speaks (or writes), while we allow ourselves to fall under the spell, we are not in our world (much less the real world, allowing for the sake of argument that there might be one beyond our individual perceptions); we are in the storyteller’s world, and for the sake of learning his or her secret, succumb without objection to this or that jiggle with our own notion of the real, allow the house of cards to be constructed before our dazzled eye and dwell in furnished splendor therein until the teller or some other external force huffs it down.

Thus if the teller says: You are in a shop, buying an egg, and the woman at the counter is a sheep – you will believe it. And if you walk towards the egg on the shelf where the sheep has set it, and the walk goes on for quite some yards, even over a stream, you will believe that. And if the egg when you reach it is as tall as you are, wears a waistcoat, and debates you on the meaning of words, you will believe that. Because you are in the story, and it’s a good story, and Lewis Carroll has told it awfully well. But mostly because you know – your mind (even unstoned) is trained to believe – that the effect, which is delicious, derives from this total surrender.

And the teller surrenders to – you hold the power to respond or not – to make him a conjuror or a fraud, based on his success, which you supply. One can tell tales in solitude, but it’s not the same. Yet every writer, to some extent, must work in solitude – and try the magic later.

So when the teller tells his tales, true or untrue, his magic quotient rises (and his self-satisfaction) the more as we believe, and our doubts are concealed so that he might remain a shaman. For he himself comes (I think) to believe the tales invented, or borrowed from other sources, embellished, ornamented, recast (as reality is always recast) as tales for telling, sagas, ballads, chronicles (not mere annals) before the listener who maintained (as perhaps he did not realize) the shaman's magic by pretending to enchantment – a mutual thrill.

Did he believe his own stories? I forgot to ask. It was enough for me that the pendulum continued to swing in the proper direction, or that if it stood still, he had a credible (if unscientific) explanation.

Oh yes, and Ken?

Ken dropped out. “My condolences,” I said, not knowing what to say. “I’m not sure those are in order,” he replied. Nor, in retrospect, am I.

But he still hung around Furnald Hall, and over Easter Vacation took off for Mexico with a freshman named John, in search of sights and booze and women (probably no dice) and weed – the Kerouac road trip we were all (thirty years too late) aspiring to. Their money was stolen in a bad weed deal, and they had to phone John’s wealthy parents for more to get home. They resolved to drive all night, top speed, and the highways of Mexico are not well lit. They hurtled around a mountain where some idiot had parked an unmarked, unlit van, engine trouble or out of gas or hiding from the federales, who knows now? a comedy of errors, except they both died instantly.

I learned about all this when I came upon a little group of John’s friends, sitting in the third floor hall, ominously quiet, loudly silent, oppressively mourning. Nobody spoke. My first thought (happily not aloud) was: They’re as devastated as I am by the news! I’d just read in the Times that Igor Stravinsky was dead.

What if Mary Tudor lived 20 more years?

Mary Tudor does NOT die of anguish at the loss of Calais (or whatever killed her) but drags on a weary existence till, say, 1578, when she dies, aged 65, childless, succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, aged 45, a bitter, frustrated spinster who has had to lie and live alone in country houses all her life.

England becomes thoroughly Roman Catholic (again), as the small Protestant group is increasingly marginalized. Elizabeth has been obliged to become Catholic, but makes a deal that her claim to the throne is not affected by this, her father's will still being the law of the land. She has also declined the hand of the Duke of Savoy, who marries Margaret of Valois instead (as he did in actuality). In fact she continues to hold aloof from the marital sweepstakes, which suits Mary just fine. Mary even beheads the Duke of Norfolk for secretly trying to get Elizabeth to elope with him.

Philip II, however, is without a legitimate heir after the death of Don Carlos in 1568 -- he is unable to marry a subsequent fertile wife until Mary Tudor's death -- by which time he is a gout-ridden 51. Don Carlos, however, has been married to Elisabeth of Valois, and before his complete descent to insanity, has succeeded in fathering a child -- let's say a daughter, Isabel, destined in time to succeed her grandfather as Isabel II of Spain. (She will marry her cousin, Albert of Austria.)

Unsupported by surreptitious Protestant aid from England, the Protestant insurgencies in both Scotland and the Netherlands wither and die. Parma, undistracted by the Armada, takes Den Haag and Amsterdam. John Knox is burned at the stake by order of Mary, Queen of Scots, who marries her first cousin, the widowed Duc de Guise. Mary Tudor, alarmed by all these French forces in Scotland, disinherits Mary and proclaims Lord Darnley the heir to England after Elizabeth, encouraging him to marry Catherine Grey. (They have one son, the future Matthew I.) Willem the Silent is executed in the square of Antwerp. Henri de Bourbon is slain fighting a civil war with the Guises over the throne of Henri III of France. The Duc de Lorraine (husband of Henri II's second daughter) becomes King Charles X. The Armada is sent against Turkey and captures Thessalonika and Rhodes, though not Constantinople (because they can't get past the Dardanelles).

The restoration of a unified Catholicism throughout the West prevents all doctrines of individual human liberty and scientific data from getting very far. North America north and west of Florida is ceded to France. New Paris, at the mouth of the Verrazano River, becomes its metropolis. All the Jews in Europe flee to Turkey. So do the few surviving Protestants.

Discuss.

A Letter on Ethnogenesis to Patrick W. Geary

Dear Professor Geary,

I am an amateur historian whose interests include the myths peoples invent in order to justify various courses of action, and I have just read your splendid book, The Myth of Nations, which addressed (and often exploded) several questions and answers I had had about the era around the so-called Fall of Western Rome - such as why the Arian heresy lingered so long, and only among certain ("Germanic") populations, and then vanished so entirely, and how the Germanic tribes maintained a separate existence among the groups they ruled when they cannot have been very numerous. Your suggestion that this was done on purpose to keep an elite under the king's particular command from being subsumed in the great mass makes new sense of the confusion, as does your theory of the actual origin of the manpower involved.

(Aside: I noticed recently some spokesman for the Italian government comparing foreign immigrants to the invasions of the Goths, the Huns and the Normans - specifically NOT mentioning the Lombards among the foreign invaders of the peninsula. On the other hand, in a recent article in the NYTimes on the Elgin Marbles controversy, a Greek minister cheerfully admitted, "We were all speaking Albanian and calling ourselves Romans until Winckelmann and Goethe and Ingres and Byron told us we were the heirs of Socrates and Plato and ought to be Greeks." Let's hope he keeps his job - indeed, his life.)

Ethnogenesis is not a word I had been aware of, but it is such an obvious and intriguing concept, the invention of a nationality and the myths to support it, the common ancestry and the divinely favored dynasty, etc. One can see it at work from the very beginnings of Rome, in the legend of a city formed by free men, refugees, bandits seeking out an altar that liberated them and allowed them to join the new state, and on a recent visit to Turkey, I began to study Ataturk's far-ranging experiment to "invent" a Turkish citizenry - was he a Clovis or a Theodoric? It seems the former.

The one footstep in your overall analysis that puzzled me was in understanding how the proto-Slavic nations could have become so very widespread (Novgorod to Macedon) while still speaking so comparatively similar a range of tongues (compared to, say, the dispersal of Germanic or Romance languages, which are far more distinct from each other) without some coherent invasion from a coherent entity. The separation of the Slavs by the Avar entity is perfectly clear, but this part puzzles me. That is one question I wished to ask you.

Another question, which you may not have given much thought to (it being a mere thousand years out of your period, and a thousand miles from Europe), but which intrigues me (as a Jew), is how the process of ethnogenesis that you outline might account for the "state history" and racial legends recorded in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Samuel and Kings - a tale that, in its first chapters, has no contemporary written and very little archaeological backing, and in its later (post-Davidic) chronicle shows clear signs of creative tampering and ethnic myth-making of just the sort you record for the Franks, the Goths, and so on.

A minor but semi-professional point, if the book is reprinted (I hope it will become very well known, and taught, and taken into consideration by students of the period), is that whoever copy edited/proofread the hardcover edition I have read (2002, Princeton) was careless to the point of annoyance about the spelling of unfamiliar names, Slovene becoming Slovine, for example, and Breton indistinguishable from Briton. I'd be delighted to send you my list of errata!

With great admiration and pleasure,

John Yohalem

Stonewall and the Revolts of 1968

What no one ever comments upon, in re: Stonewall (and there is endless commentary upon Stonewall, as in the Times editorial page this weekend, and Rich Wandel's splendid talk at the Chelsea Center last Thursday about what he did in the burgeoning Gay Rights movement after Stonewall) is the timing, vis-a-vis 1968.

1968, you may remember (it hardly got mentioned last year), was the year of rebellion everywhere. The big ones were the revolt against LBJ's handling of Vietnam culminating in the Chicago riots during the Democratic National Convention in August; Prague Spring, culminating in the Warsaw Pact Invasion, also in August; the Paris explosion against DeGaulle; and the Mexico City university riots - the bloodiest, most violent, least remembered of the lot (the Mexican government still denies the whole thing). There were little pops everywhere else, but those were the big ones, the ones that rattled the world. By December, there were notable demonstrations in the least likely bastion of the culture: audiences at the Metropolitan Opera booed Franco Corelli and Gianna d'Angelo off the stage (she never returned to it, at the Met or anywhere), and Rudolf Bing had to put an insert in the program requesting that audience response not be so extreme.

The question is: what did these upheavals have in common? Prague was an uprising against Brezhnev's communism; Chicago against the Democratic machine; Mexico against the quasi-left-wing PRI; Paris against the quasi-right-wing Gaullist Party. What programme did the young (mostly) rioters share?

The answer appears to be an irritation by the powerless against the men in suits (or uniforms) who ran the world and ignored their desires, needs, wishes - the power structure put in place at the end of World War II who refused to change their ways of doing business while the whole world changed around them, who continued to congratulate themselves with remaining impervious to any concerns they had not already resolved upon. The refusal of the power structures to listen. The old refusing to depart. (In an era in which Franco, Salazar, Tito, Chiang, Mao and Stroessner continued to rule, this was quite a notion.)

Briefly the power structure won, nailed the coffin down upon the monster it had begot, but the world cannot be frozen, change cannot be halted for long. And the young were soon entering the power structure and reforming it from within - even in Prague and Mexico. Revolutions are too uncertain, and most people prefer a quiet life - however exhilarating riots are for the young, those whose property might be damaged always side with the forces of reaction. The revolts appeared to fail in almost every case. The violence of Altamont seemed to put paid to the peace and love of Woodstock.

Almost.

By June, 1969, there was quiet on all these fronts. That is when the embattled faggots stood up in Sheridan Square for what, I argue, was the last revolt of 1968 - and the most successful. A pervasive injustice, the attitude of the rulers of the world towards a generally repressed minority, was challenged successfully. Nothing ever went quite back to normal - first in New York, then in San Francisco, then in Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna. Today: Shanghai, Jerusalem, Riga, Moscow, Rome are the front lines. No one goes back into the closet. The politicians who denounce gay are either shown to be hypocrites (an easy call) or heartily despised by the youth who know far too much. You can't be gay anymore and think you're the only one. The magazines of the 1970s, the epidemic of the 1980s, the Internet now won't let that happen any more.

Stonewall, the last (and least bloody) was the most effective and successful of the revolts of youth of 1968, the fairy godparent after the fact of all the others.

Conspiracy Theories from A to Z!

A friend has suggested I create a list of Conspiracy Theories from A to Z. I am trying to keep to the Usual Suspects. Any suggestions to add to the cauldron to those below?

A is for Aliens (space, time, species); also Assassins; also AIDS, conspiracy to spread it among blacks and gays, and not find a cure

B is for Bush dynastic links with Saudi Arabia and Bin Laden

C is for CIA (or Communist subversion)

D is for Darwin (pro- (undermining respect for the Bible) or con- (undermining Science, Education, Separation of Church and State)); also Princess Diana, assassination of

E is for Extraterrestrials, Roswell, Flying Saucers

F is for Freemasons (or perhaps Fluoride in the water to undermine our sexual vigor)

G is for Gun control

H is for Homosexuals (seducing children because they can’t reproduce) (and undermining marriage)

I is for Illuminati

J is for Jews (or should this be under Z for Zionists?) (or I for Israel?) (or P for Protocols?)

K is for Kennedy Assassinations (includes destruction of JFK Jr’s plane, and murder of Marilyn Monroe, and Chappaquiddick; see also Mafia)

L is for Liberal Agenda

M is for Mafia (or perhaps Modern Art)

N is for International narcotics trade (or for 9/11) (or Nazis) (or the Great Negro Conspiracy to turn our youth into sexually-obsessed drooling idiots by means of various insidious musics, thereby mongrelizing the race) (or for Neo-Cons)

O is for Obama (the Arab, the Muslim, really white with a suntan, Socialist Agenda, can't have written those books because politicians don't write that well)

P is for Pagans (see also, Materialists, Nazis) (or the Pope, but see R) (or Political Correctness) (or Petro-dollars)

Q is for al-Qaeda

R is for Roman Catholics (secret banks, control of Italian government, suppression of Jesus's sex life and true gender, etc.) (or for Rock n Roll, according to Otto Habsburg a Communist propaganda initiative)

S is for Satanists (or Stock Market manipulations) (or Sports Events, secret Mafia control of) (but see N for Narcotics) (or Socialist Agenda)

T is for Terminators/Time Travelers sent by machines to subvert us. (Also Templars)

U is for USA – not-so-secret plot to undermine all distinctive high or national or ethnic culture in the name of capitalist conformity

V is for Vampires (or Voodoo)

W is for Woman’s Liberation, undermining Male Potency and Natural Domination (or Witches, if there is any difference)

X is for … well, I can’t really tell you that – some of you know, of course

Y is for the subversion of irresponsible Youth against reasonable Old Age

Z is for Zigeuner (the Gypsy conspiracy against Civilization) (or Zombies?)

Brooklyn and Queens on a hot weekend

I have seen BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music evolve over thirty years from salvageable hulk of ruin amid scenes of ruin (with unusual performances), to punk palace of the arts (with its own snazzy crowd of devotees and lots of Euro-art), to major grande dame of the city arts scene, jewel set in glittering renewed downtown Brooklyn. At the moment it is holding a Muslim Cultural Festival, with Asia House and other institutions around town – music, theater, dance, film, “storytelling” from a dozen countries – and I am getting to as much of it as I can.

There was a “souk” in BAM’s car park this past weekend, the usual arts and crafts (overpriced), the usual unhealthy junk food – and some exceptions. At the Turkish booth, a bunch of ladies in headscarves brought home-made stuffed vine leaves (best I’ve ever eaten) and home-made baklava (ditto, especially when it had been sitting in the hot sun a while), and some Lebanese guys had spinach pies shaped like hamantaschen. Someone was selling witty T-shirts for far too much money, such as, on a covered wagon, heading a whole train of such, “Why settle? … Israel!” which could be taken to support either (any) side of the question, eh?; “Surf Saudi Arabia! Sportsman’s Mecca,” “Petro sexual,” “Come out to … Iran!,” “Party Like Iraq Star,” “Gaza Strip Club XXX,” and “Afghanistan!” above images of a wind surfer on the ocean. There was very good Middle Eastern music but the CDs on offer were mostly recent, jazz-inspired, beatboxed shit - if it uses microphones or electric instruments, I'm not very interested.

Across the street, by the way, is Mark Morris’s building, an old hulk completely gutted and refitted and modernized for his dance troupe, with rehearsal halls to rent to others. Typical of the modesty of the man: The new cornerstone, prominently visible, was laid in 2000, so it reads: “A.D. MM.”

According to an article I happen to be proofreading, 46 percent of Queens is foreign-born (a record for U.S. counties), and the borough is huge, in addition, with well over a million people. All sorts of cool folk live there now.

All this as prelude to Sunday when, fed up with being cooped up by ill health in gorgeous weather, I took the bike (via E train) to Roosevelt Avenue for Queens Pride. I’d somehow never made it before, and by the time I arrived, the parade was over (if it had ever been) and a street fair on rainbow themes filled a dozen blocks where the Indian, Pakistani and Afghan colonies meet various Latino enclaves as the E train crosses the 7. (There are also a Thai temple and a Jain center not far down the street.)

Several stages had lip sync drag mamas or folk acts or rappers to which almost no one in the crowd paid attention, there was lots of unhealthy food, there was a guy giving out cards of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, lots of condom distribution, petitions to sign (I signed one to save the libraries of Queens from budget cuts), free hepatitis shots and STD screenings, someone selling straw cowboy hats (I bought one, and it saved me from sunstroke), a bin of used CDs (Ann Hampton Callaway scatting standards in tribute to Ella, a bargain for $2), and I got pair of binoculars for $10 which won’t hurt me when I lose them, as the $140 ones did, there were assorted well-built young men but it was very neighborhood, much of the crowd was straight and enjoying the festa part. I’ve always preferred that Gay Pride be a festa for all, not just Our Crowd.

After an hour or so, I’d had enough of it, so I began biking aimlessly southerly, pausing for beer at an Irish bar (barman from Galway, “city of the tribes” – “I have friends who spend the summer there,” I told him; “Have they got a summer there?” he was skeptical) with a waterfall and barbecue in back, drifting down Greenpoint Avenue through ethnic neighborhood upon ethnic neighborhood, all unknown to me, over the Newtown Creek into Brooklyn. The plaza around the east end of the Williamsburg Bridge, once full of elegant bank buildings, then a ruin for decades, is now reviving nicely – some of the banks are now churches; others are, once again, banks – and through the Valley of the Shadow of the Hasidim to Fort Greene and on and on, miles and miles, most of it amazingly less shabby than it was in the 80s. I attempted a bridge to Manhattan, but my thighs were having none of it.

At last I was at BAM again – easy to spot from a distance because it is beside the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, a Romanesque domed minaret spire, the oldest skyscraper in Brooklyn and one of my favorites in the city. (The ground floor, currently in restauro during condo conversion, has a sublime Cosmatic pavement which I trust will be preserved.) The Turks were out of vine leaves, so I got spinach pie instead to wash down more baklava. Then I took the bike by subway back to the Village. Another week of exercise and I’ll be able to handle a bridge or two.

Old movie houses (often full of fine deco detailing) and old banks (usually of turn-of-the-century grandeur: many domes, imitating either the Pantheon or the U.S. Capitol/St. Paul’s; many colonnades of one or another classical order) and old churches tend to switch functions: churches become theaters, banks and movie theaters become churches; banks become carpet warehouses. I favor retaining the old buildings just to vary the streetscape, prevent it becoming lethally dull, so I am delighted when they are preserved, whatever the organization.