Beetles-drummers and Beetle the Candidate.

British quartet The Beatles which can be approximately translated as the beetles-drummers, was returning to New York from a tour in Washington. A Pullman car carrying the artists was also filled with music critics, photographers and TV correspondents. During the train trip the artists were expected to discuss their views on music, culture and the meaning of life in general.

The train started moving and the journalists got their notepads ready. Suddenly one of the artists, Ringo Starr yelled like a Tarzan and started jumping on the couches like an ape. John Lennon and George Harrison traded pants in public, the ones they were wearing at the time. Then Ringo made the buzzing noises sounding like a film camera, and George climbed on the luggage rack.

But those present in the car weren’t amused for long. The thing is that the “beetles” behave on the stage just like they were acting on the train. “We are worthless musicians” admits George Harrison, the one lying in the luggage rack, “we can’t sing or do anything else with any skill.”

Nevertheless, in only four weeks two and a half million records by the “beetles” were sold in the USA. In Glasgow, England the performance by the quartet was banned after three and a half thousand crazed youths started crashing chairs and walls following the example of the artists. The noise during the concerts is so loud that the artists can’t hear their own singing. This actually makes them happy. Just the opposite, when they can hear each other’s screams they feel that the concert was a failure.

How can one explain the popularity of the quartet “The Beatles”? Even the magazine Newsweek mentions the ad campaign preceding their visit to the US: five million banners with the words “The Beatles are coming” were hanged on the telephone poles; the same number of posters was decorating public restrooms. Their screams named “I want hold your hand” and “Love me do” were played on the radio day and night.

There is no doubt that if Christ himself visited the United States, he wouldn’t get even a tenth of the advertisement.

Most importantly, “beetles” are masters at stirring up the darkest and the most primitive emotions in their audiences. And since most of their fans are between 12 and 16 years old, it’s easy to imagine the “educational” influences of the “beetles”. It only makes sense that fights and fainting are just as an inseparable part of the quartet’s concerts as the reinforced police presence.

Scandalous fame of the hairy “beetles” gave an idea to an American cartoonist Herblock. Since the popularity of one of the leading candidates for the President of the USA from the Republican Party Barry Goldwater is steadily declining, the artist suggested he should a get a “beetle”-like haircut and pick up a guitar.

Although this idea is not that outrageous; beetles – musicians and beetle-candidate have a lot in common. They both appeal to the lowest in human nature, they only know how to scream and mainly rely on the advertisement.

Specialists predict that “beetles” won’t be able to hold on to their success, they are just not in the league. And the same can be said about the senator from Arizona: his speeches are too delusional even for the right-wing of the American “crazies”…
*translated by me
**the article uses the wordplay Beatles-beetles mostly referring to The Beatles pejoratively as bugs.

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Recently I had a chance to attend the Coterie Theatre’s “Science Fiction Triple Feature” with my only celebrity friend and a real theater critic Grace. Sitting in the same room with multiple theater critics I thought that I should try my hand in their craft. My review follows:

Her voice pierced the darkness- horrified, pained, disturbed. She rushed to the stage wearing something that was thought of as futuristic fifty years ago. Is that how they imagined us then? (I need to update my wardrobe). I couldn’t look away from the stage while She was there. I felt what She felt – the horror, pure animalistic horror of facing a bloody death in your own house. I saw the threat through Her eyes, I heard it in Her voice, I followed Her every move. Were there other people on the stage? Perhaps… She gripped my attention, all of it. Lights went out with Her final scream.

The stage became a medical office, this time She was a teacher struggling with the moral implications of Her decision. She did something out of compassion and now was facing the unintended consequences. I could see Her hurt, tears in Her eyes, Her voice was breaking up. Sometimes She had to turn away from the audience; Her shoulders slumped under the weight of Her conscience. I knew Her pain will stay with Her long after the main character drifts back to his child-like state.

She appeared on the stage once more, wearing some post-apocalyptic garb fashioned out of a burlap sack. She danced in the uneven light of the fake fire. I felt She wasn’t sure about the future. It was exciting but terrifying. Her world was only as big as the circle around the fire. The darkness covered what was left of the civilization – ruins, rusted metal, shorted out power lines. I knew she would make it; she had the passion and determination – something the new generation of humans would need to persevere.

I caught a glimpse of her in the hallway; a beautiful young woman happily smiling, all the pain and drama left resting on the stage until the next show. I smiled as well, for I have just seen the Actress.

Free pizza and ice cream were in my future.

I’d like to thank the Coterie for the great evening.

For a real professional review please check out Grace’s article.

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I don’t make New Year Resolutions, but I start every year hoping to interview an Old Jewish Person®. Then I realize that I have no interviewing skills, or patience or determination to actually do it, and soon another year rolls around. So this is probably as close as it gets to having a narrative on this blog. This text is translated from an older gentleman’s blog I’ve been following for many years. He lives in Israel and seems to be retired after a long career as a physician. His stories are always fascinating, honest, and told from an old Jewish doctor point of view I find so relatable. If you read Russian you will find his blog to be a unique personal account of the long-gone era, mixed with tragic and funny stories he encountered in his latter years while working in Israel with ex-Soviet immigrants. And if you are Russian-impaired, you have to rely on my crude translating and editing skills. Translating takes a long time and there only so much of it I can do at work so this is only the first part. I also edited out an episode that cannot be possibly explained to a non-Russian reader without writing a small book. Part 2 that covers WWII and the years after is coming up sometime in the future.

In the early sixties, after three years of working in a rural area, my family came back to Minsk. I got a job in a TB clinic; my wife was hired as an ambulance doctor.

Soon I’ve met an interesting man in the clinic.

It was our consulting thoracic surgeon Grigory Semenovich. He was a distinguished man, a veteran of WWII, a PhD. Actually, when he was born in the beginning of the 20th century he was named Hirsch, his father was Simha, so his full name was listed in the passport as Hirsch Simkhovich. Not willing to pronounce such a tongue twister, people at his Worker and then Medical school called him Grisha, and later Grigory Semenovich. His last name was Obershmukler, which is translated from Yiddish means “chief smuggler”. It’s hard to say how his ancestors got that name, but in the early 19th century by the order of Tsar Alexander I all the Jews in the Empire were required to produce last names. And then it all depended on the imagination of barely literate clerks and happy owners of new names.

When I met him, he was an old man of sixty, small in stature around 160 cm (5’2’’), with a large bald spot surrounded by a narrow rim of gray hair. Thick black mustache streaked with gray, barely concealed a rough scar on his upper lip – a reminder of a childhood surgery. He had nasal and slightly hoarse voice. During surgeries he had to stand on a step-stool.
All this combined – a tiny height, baldness, big mustache and a voice – made for somewhat of a strange impression , although he was a good surgeon , very well-read and educated .

Grigory Semenovich had his habits.

During surgeries, when complications and difficulties arose, he did not yell at nurses or scolded assistants; did not throw tools like many venerable surgeons I’ve observed in my many years of study and work. He calmly and quietly muttered some unintelligible words in his nasal voice, and if all went well, even tried to sing something totally unfamiliar. When asked what it meant, he replied –
– Do not worry, I am commenting on the progress of the surgery to myself in Latin…
Once at the front, after a complicated and successful surgery, a higher-ranking doctor who was there with an inspection, said in Yiddish after a modest dinner and a “front-line hundred grams” (*of vodka):

– Hirsch, you need to be more cautious with your cursing , special agents (*of NKVD) may know what  “mome loshn” means but may not understand who it’s directed to …
Colonel inspector also grew up in a shtetl , went to a heder and was able to understand  all the terrible curses on the heads of Germans , crappy instruments, war, dumb commanders , bleeding and this lousy life …

Once when I was present with my electrocardiograph during a heavy thoracoplasty surgery performed by Gregory Semenovich, I was also able to make out the words of an indecent song that I heard as a child from my father .

In my translation of an arbitrary and totally outrageous pronunciation (after all , the last time I heard this song seventy years ago !) One verse of this specimen of folk art translates roughly as follows:

Jew has sex with a Jew , goy has a goy ,
Rabbi has a rebbetzin and all enjoy …

It is known that in the USSR from NKVD to kindergartens people disgruntled with someone or something wrote anonymous complaints on a variety of subject to different organizations. Grigory Semenovich didn’t escape his. Clinic received a directive from the regional party committee with the request to verify the facts, investigate the matter and report back to the regional committee. The attached anonymous letter stated that the operating surgeon Obershmukler writes off a lot of valuable medicinal alcohol, but in reality he drinks the alcohol with no zakuski, while getting drunk with other physicians and operating nurses but the junior staff is never invited, as if they are not human… and these drunken parties cause harm to the Soviet state in general and all of medicine in particular.
Everyone knew that Gregory Semenovich cannot drink more than one shot during the evening. When they showed him the letter, he grinned into his mustache and said –
– Tomorrow is my surgery, send the commission, they will see for themselves …
The next day, Gregory Semenovich came to work with a large portfolio. Commission gathered soon – assistant director of the hospital Anna Artemovna, secretary of the local Communist Party organization, the chairman of the local union and chief nurse. Surgeon Obershmukler dumped a few thick monographs with bookmarks and a pile of printed instructions on the table.
– Please verify that I am following the guidance. This is a monograph with existing hand sanitizing methods, and these – he pointed to the printed sheets – are the latest instructions of our ministry. Now I’m going to wash my hands, and you will observe … Nurse, are you ready? Begin!
They began the long process of hand sanitizing while Gregory Semenovich explained.
– We are using the Fyurbringer’s* method with modification by Alfeld*. Sometimes we use Spasokukotsky* – Kochergin* method (*all these names could be medical-sounding gibberish). In all three methods the last stage is rinsing of the hands with a 70 % alcohol solution for 2 to 5 minutes; we will use 2 minutes. Nurse, give me a sterile napkin, start the stopwatch and slowly pour the alcohol on my hands!
Alcohol started trickling down on his palms, and then to the sink …
What are you doing! – screamed the Chairman of the Union, retired paramedic and a no stranger to drinking.
Last drops emerged from half-liter bottle.
– Now have to leave, patient is waiting, – Gregory Semenovich raised his clean hands and looking like a surrendering prisoner, shuffled over to the operating room …

Few more episodes.

In those years, our clinic expanded, changed staffing and simultaneously recruited several young graduates of medical school. One of them, Valya, came the first time to work in a mini-skirt. Minis were just beginning to come into vogue and assistant director Anna Artemovna stated that the Soviet young people and members of Komsomol cannot appear at work dressed like this. Reprimands did not help, and Anna Artemovna used every possible way to find fault with a young girl.

Anna Artemovna was a partisan nurse and after the war she married a former guerrilla commander, barely finished college and once admitted that after the college has not read a single book.
Once she burst into the staffroom, where doctors spent their free time and in a raised voice began berating Valechka for her transgressions. Valya didn’t have to look for words and said loudly –
Why are you attacking me like a Fury?
Assistant director froze for a few seconds.
– Girl! What did you say to me? I am an honest woman! I have a husband! It’s you who is shaking her tail, flashing your panties and bare hips to everyone, be ashamed! I would never put on skirt like this!
-Of course, at your age you have nothing to flash and have nothing to show, and no one wants to see it anyway!
From the far corner came a hoarse voice nasal voice of Gregory Semenovich –
-Anna Artemovna why are you boiling so much? Fury is not a prostitute, as you though. In Greek it means an evil vindictive woman and it may not be too far from the truth.
– You are and old man and on her side…
Anna Artemovna left the room and slammed the door.

Grigory Semenovich didn’t have a lot of work in our hospital. He dealt mainly with adhesions after the placement of artificial pneumothorax, occasionally performed therapeutic thoracoplasty and some others. For several days after a surgery, even on weekends, he visited his patients, punctured the pleural cavity, changed wound dressings and made new prescriptions.

During those years he lived with his wife in a small two- story Khrushchev-style apartment building, she was often sick, and he felt lonely. I often picked up duty hours in the therapeutic ward to make extra money. Grigory S. came to me in the duty room and we had long conversations …

Grigory S. was born in the early 20th century in a small shtetl near Minsk , and as all the local kids went to heder – elementary school at the synagogue. Since the childhood he started helping his father who was a cobbler, but always wanted to study and become a doctor.

The boy was born with a small genetic defect – a slight cleft lip and had surgery in his childhood to repair it. For the rest of his life he remembered the majestic figure of the surgeon in a long white coat and mask with clean hands raised up in the air…

After the revolution, Grisha went to Minsk and began working as a mechanic at the depot at the railroad station, while attending a night school. After 2 years local Communist cell, the trade union committee and the director gave him a referral to the technical school. Grisha successfully graduated and enrolled in medical school.

Student years were difficult – Grisha worked nights as a nurse in a hospital, then as a surgeons’ assistant and studied hard.  He often participated in simple surgeries …
Then graduation. He, a Jewish guy, son of a shoemaker – a medical doctor! Joy knew no bounds!
But he was yet to become a surgeon …

Initially he worked in Polesia, in a remote village in a forsaken district hospital with 10 beds. He worked alone, treating all diseases, delivering babies. Queues at the reception were huge, and after a day at work – night house calls …
The following year they hired a midwife, and then came a paramedic – life became a little easier. Grisha set up an operating room, started performing minor surgeries. The village had no electricity so he arranged for a power generator near the hospital. When the old steam generator started huffing and puffing at night – the whole village knew that there was a patient or a birth.
After three and a half years he was sent to a surgical residency.
Gregory never came back to the village, he was sent to the district center to work as a general surgeon. At the age of almost 30 his lifelong dream came true!

At the new job young surgeon met a charming female colleague, an obstetrician -gynecologist, who started working there a couple of years prior.
Her name was Rachel. She was a tall, stout, pretty blonde. Her face had a disproportionately large nose that made her embarrassed …
Her path to medicine she was easier than Grisha’s – her parents were able to get medical education during the Tsarist years and escape from the Pale of Settlement – her dad was a pharmacist and her mother a midwife , and they were allowed to live in big cities .
Rachel was three years younger Grisha, 16 centimeters taller without heels and 15 kilos heavier …
Grisha always liked big women. He realized that it was his destiny and started a proper siege.
Fortress did not especially resist, Rachel liked miniature men and, in particular, Grisha. After a few months a simple wedding took place in the yard of a small house, where young people found an apartment – just a friendly dinner. Toward the end of the event happy and tired groom took a nap in the corner. Rachel took him in her arms like a baby, and carried him into the bedroom next to her powerful chest   to the applause of the remaining guests.

Gregory S. and Rachel worked at the district hospital for a few more years, when they encountered the first trouble – they did not conceive. Pregnancies ended in miscarriages, doctors’ advice did not help, and to get the advice they had to go to the regional center or to Minsk. And the young family decided to move to Minsk, the capital.

In the early 1930’s, doctors were needed in all hospitals. Without much difficulty and patronage Rachel and Grisha got jobs in their respective specialties, and moved into an apartment with Rachel’s aunt.
Finally, nature took its course, Rachel became pregnant and in 1936 and delivered a healthy girl.
In the fashion of those years she was named Svetlana.

Time passed quickly, maternity leave has ended. Not so young mother-doctor knew that to send the infant to the nursery meant to put the long-awaited child in danger. A thought to leave work did not cross her mind. They had to find a nanny. One of the former patients suggested his distant relative – Alesya – a 16-year-old girl, an orphan from a distant village, almost illiterate , but familiar with young children , decent and clean .

They took the girl took into the family and she raised Svetlana from the age of 8 months! They even looked similar, both were round-faced blondes, only  Svetlana had green eyes and Alesya’s were blue …
When friends asked the Alesya where she works, she nonchalantly replied “I do not know, some surgeon” …

Few more years passed. Svetochka started in kindergarten. Alesya helped around the house and attended night school. Grisha and Rachel worked hard and taught Alesya all they knew themselves – from cooking to nursing care. They took care of her future – Alain finished seven grades, passed the entrance exams and in the autumn of 1941 was supposed to go to nursing school.

Grigory Semenovich didn’t have a lot of work in our hospital. He dealt mainly with adhesions after the imposition of artificial pneumothorax, occasionally performed therapeutic thoracoplasty and some others. For several days after a surgery, even on weekends, he visited his patients, punctured the pleural cavity, changed wound dressings and made new prescriptions.

During those years he lived with his wife in a small two- story Khrushchev-style apartment building, she was often sick, and he felt lonely. I often picked up duty hours in the therapeutic ward to make extra money. Grigory S. came to me in the duty room and we had long conversations …

Grigory S. was born in the early 20th century in a small shtetl near Minsk , and as all the local kids went to heder – elementary school at the synagogue. Since the childhood he started helping his father who was a cobbler, but he always wanted to study and become a doctor.

The boy was born with a small genetic defect – a slight cleft lip and had surgery in his childhood to repair it. For the rest of his life he remembered the majestic figure of the surgeon in a long white coat and mask with clean hands raised up in the air…

After the revolution, Grisha went to Minsk and began working as a mechanic at the depot at the railroad station, while attending a night school. After 2 years local Communist cell, the trade union committee and the director gave him a referral to the technical school. Grisha successfully graduated and enrolled in medical school.

Student years were difficult – Grisha worked nights as a nurse in a hospital, then as a surgeons’ assistant and studied hard.  He often participated in simple surgeries …
Then graduation. He, a Jewish guy, son of a shoemaker – a medical doctor! Joy knew no bounds!
But he was yet to become a surgeon …

Initially he worked in Polesia, in a remote village in a forsaken district hospital with 10 beds. He worked alone, treating all diseases, delivering babies. Queues at the reception were huge, and after a day at work – night house calls …
The following year they hired a midwife, and then came a paramedic – life became a little easier. Grisha set up an operating room, started performing minor surgeries. The village had no electricity so he arranged for a power generator near the hospital. When the old steam generator started huffing and puffing at night – the whole village knew that there was a patient or a birth.
After three and a half years he was sent to a surgical residency.
Gregory never came back to the village, he was sent to the district center to work as a general surgeon. At the age of almost 30 his lifelong dream came true!

At the new job young surgeon met a charming female colleague, an obstetrician-gynecologist, who started working there a couple of years prior.
Her name was Rachel. She was a tall, stout, pretty blonde. Her face had a disproportionately large nose that made her embarrassed …
Her path to medicine she was easier than Grisha’s – her parents were able to get medical education during the Tsarist years and escape from the Pale of Settlement – her dad was a pharmacist and her mother a midwife , and they were allowed to live in big cities .
Rachel was three years younger Grisha, 16 centimeters taller without heels and 15 kilos heavier …
Grisha always liked big women. He realized that it was his destiny and started a proper siege.
Fortress did not especially resist, Rachel liked miniature men and, in particular, Grisha. After a few months a simple wedding took place in the yard of a small house, where young people found an apartment – just a friendly dinner. Toward the end of the event happy and tired groom took a nap in the corner. Rachel took him in her arms like a baby, and carried him into the bedroom next to her powerful chest   to the applause of the remaining guests.

Gregory S. and Rachel worked at the district hospital for a few more years, when they encountered the first trouble – they did not conceive. Pregnancies ended in miscarriages, doctors’ advice did not help, and to get the advice they had to go to the regional center or to Minsk. And the young family decided to move to Minsk, the capital.

In the early 1930’s, doctors were needed in all hospitals. Without much difficulty and patronage Rachel and Grisha got jobs in their respective specialties, and moved into an apartment with Rachel’s aunt.
Finally, nature took its course, Rachel became pregnant and in 1936 and delivered a healthy girl.
In the fashion of those years she was named Svetlana.

Time passed quickly, maternity leave has ended. Not so young mother-doctor knew that to send the infant to the nursery meant to put the long-awaited child in danger. A thought to leave work did not cross her mind. They had to find a nanny. One of the former patients suggested his distant relative – Alesya – a 16-year-old girl, an orphan from a distant village, almost illiterate , but familiar with young children , decent and clean .

They took the girl took into the family and she raised Svetlana from the age of 8 months! They even looked similar, both were round-faced blondes, only  Svetlana had green eyes and Alesya’s were blue …
When friends asked the Alesya where she works, she nonchalantly replied “I do not know, some surgeon” …

Few more years passed. Svetochka started in kindergarten. Alesya helped around the house and attended night school. Grisha and Rachel worked hard and taught Alesya all they knew themselves – from cooking to nursing care. They took care of her future – Alesya finished seven grades, passed the entrance exams and in the autumn of 1941 was supposed to go to nursing school.

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Since there is no large-scale event like an All Star Game planned in Kansas City in the year 2013, I propose to make the 30th anniversary of the movie The Day After the theme for the year. Granted, The Day After is a horrible, poorly acted, made for TV movie, with special effects that make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad look like the Star Wars, but it scared the crap out of millions of Americans and convinced President Reagan to sign a Nuclear Treaty few years later.

The movie demonstrated  that it only takes hours after the nuclear strike for the American Military to disband and start fending for themselves, few days for the food riots to start, and few weeks for most people to lose their humanity and forget the English language. It also showed that the government will be predictably unprepared, a nuclear shelter doesn’t protect against a big gun and that people will still ignore the warnings and go to a movie theater right before being blasted with inexplicably excessive number of nuclear devices.

The idea of using The Day After to promote tourism in Kansas City is not new and not even mine. In his article “Kansas City after “The Day After”” published in the Travel Holiday Magazine in June 1984, John Garrity quotes Richard Pfanenstiel, director of the Missouri Film Commission saying:

“The Day After was the best thing that ever happened to Kansas City, Kansas City looked good”.

then goes on to write:

“If you caught the final 20 minutes of the ABC’s The Day After, last November’s doomsday movie, you probably don’t agree with the above statement. You saw Kansas City as an ash-gray rock pile, a windy moonscape dotted with small fires around which a few radiation-ravaged survivors huddled for warmth. The Day After,  you guessed, would not o for Kansas City what Where the Boys Are did for Fort Lauderdale.

“As of Sunday night,” Kansas City Times columnist Arthur Brisbane wrote after watching the film, “we’re famous as the city ABC blew up.”

Or, as some other wag noted, “There goes the neighborhood.”

“If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” a television newsman deadpanned, “I’d just as soon have passed it up.” This last remark, of course, paraphrased Mark Twain, the most famous of all Missourians, who predicted that mankind’s folly would bring it to just such an inglorious end.

Others contend that ABC, by blowing Kansas City off the map, actually put Kansas City on the map. The film has now been shown to nearly 200 million viewers around the world. And if The Day After  depicted Kansas City as unlivable after a nuclear strike, its pre-attack footage captured this heartland city at its best: tree-lined boulevards, lush parks crowded with joggers and Frisbee throwers, monumental fountains, fashionable people shopping at fashionable store in the Country Club Plaza. The camera caught them all with an aching poignancy.

Whether Kansas City will be rewarded with a sudden influx of foreign tourists (along the lines of Hiroshima’s sober pilgrims), it’s too early to say. But even the casual visitor to Kansas City could do worse than use The Day After as an approach for a visit.

As you can see, I already completed all the necessary research, made a trip to the Kansas City Library and suffered through the entire 2 hours 6 minutes of the movie (which I have successfully avoided for my almost 20 years in this country), and now I am presenting this concept to the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association absolutely free of charge. We need to hurry up before Lawrence steals the idea. I propose the following mottoes to be used in the campaign (sample):

• Kansas City 2013: We Haven’t Been Blown Up For Real, You Know.
• Kansas City 2013: We Are Not Mutants.
• Kansas City 2013: Come Visit, The Radiation Is At Almost Gone.

Proposed activities (sample):

• Multiple walking, bus, Segway, Volvo station wagon and helicopter tours will carry the tourists to the sites shown in the movie such as the Liberty Memorial, Plaza, Nelson-Atkins Gallery, West Bottoms, Truman Sports Complex.
• Big screen TV’s placed at these and other locations will be playing the movie as well as the KMBC special “Sunday, Nuclear Sunday” which aired on November 20, 1983, complete with commercials where young Larry Moore, Brenda Williams and non-senile Walt Bodine will discuss now outdated nuclear research.
• Restaurants will offer themed menu items like “Missile Fries” and “Nacho Cheese Meltdown”.
• This horrible song may be used for additional advertising materials.

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