Oct. 18 is one of the toughest days of the year. June 21st is the worst. That's the day my dad died, in 2002, of cancer. Oct. 18, or 10-18, is his birthday. I try to make it a day of celebration, but the joy is not without a profound sadness, both over his suffering and my loss, but now more so because my son, Michael Alexander, will never know his namesake grandfather, dedushka (DED-oosh-kah)or dziadzia (JAH jah). Michael William Gural was best known as Brother Mike. He wasn't a monk, though he spent much of his life living like one. Brother refers largely to his true humanist belief in democratic socialism. My dad was the consummate scholar-athlete-worker-artist-humanist-teacher-philosopher-storyteller. He would love his grandson unconditionally and make him his most important student, since his daughters.
(Look, Mike, paragraph breaks! Apologies. Inside joke.)
On this day, as I attempt to smile more than I cry, I offer a few quick quotes from the many tomes my father read and re-read until his dying day. Even as his once strong, athletic body crumbled and the cancer spread to his brain, my father was able to do what he loved best, "commune with the Great Minds through reading books." I am blessed with a wonderful, brilliant husband who will be as committed to his son and my father was to me, to ensure that Michael Alexander engages with the Great Minds through the great books. I often go to these Great Minds for inspiration, for solace, for support, for guidance.
Today, I'm turning to some of the simplest ideas my father shared with me when I was a young child. While my son is a genius, he's still just a 6-month-old genius.
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
Aristotle
Life must be lived as play.
Plato
I am not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
OK, That one's not so simple without explanation, but I'll save that for when I get a gig teaching Marxian Philosophy 101.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Ivan Turgenev
Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Kahlil Gibran
I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
Joseph Campbell
To be is to do.
Immanuel Kant
I could go on and on, but I'll stop at one more. This last one is not like the others. It's not likely to come up in any Intro to Great Minds class.
The steak at Barney's is rather nice.
Paul Edwards
Of course the Barney's quote is absurd out of context. Edwards is an Austrian-American moral philosopher, who lived from 1923 to 2004. It's quite likely that Brother Mike and Edwards met at some point in their academic careers. I don't ever recall my father mentioning Paul Edwards, but Brother Mike was such a prolific re-reader, a true scholar, he communed with many, many Great Minds. It seems that Edwards was a similar type of scholar. While writing his doctoral thesis he contacted Bertrand Russell to discuss scepticism about religious belief.
I digress. The Paul Edwards quote comes up today because it is from a hardcover textbook, "The Logic of Moral Discourse," published in 1955 with an introduction by Marxist philosopher Sidney Hook. That book comes from a very small section in our home library. My father left behind a scholarly library carefully compiled over seven decades and meticulously organized. My mother sold the entire collection when he died. I was angry for awhile, but I understand how keeping thousands of books was too much for my mother to bear, especially on an emotional level. She'd already taken care of him, like she did her own father and mother, who also were bedridden and very ill for many years. My father died at home, with his books. When I told Mike about the books, he immediately began investigating, contacting rare and used book dealers throughout Massachusetts where my mother lives. Mike found one dealer who had a couple dozen books he chose from the collection my mother gave away. Mike didn't tell me until the books arrived. It was early in our relationship, and I was living in the Village, on MacDougal between Bleecker and Houston, just blocks from Forbes magazine's offices, where Mike worked at the time. We used a handcart to haul the re-found treasures back to my modest walkup. That night, Mike and I communed with those books. My father and my husband never met. That is unfair. They share so much passion for the Great Minds and would have had epic debates and discussions. Back to the books. My father often made notes in perfect cursive using the very light touch of a No. 2 pencil. He'd never deface a book other than to imprint his name, MICHAEL W. GURAL, in block letters on the inside front cover. My father made very detailed notes in Chapter V, "The Steak at Barney's is Rather Nice," in which Edwards examines the philosophical meanings of the word nice.
The Barney's at 660 Madison serves a Certified Angus Sliced Steak at lunch for $34 (meh, at best), and a Dried Aged Grilled New York Strip Steak at dinner for $42 (I'd still prefer a steak at Strip House, or a natural beef or buffalo steak that Mike dry aged at home. Yeah, you can do that. Alton Brown taught us how.) Again, I digress. Eating at Barney's wasn't the same in my father's (and Paul Edwards') days in New York. And I doubt they would have have met at Barney's, if they met at all. In any case, I'm sure the steak at Barney's in the 1950s was "rather nice." But that whole business has changed a lot over the years. In 1977, Barney's in-store restaurant was renamed The Cafe and started selling salads, soup, and sandwiches to cater to tourists. I'm sure there are at least a few Park Avenue ladies-who-lunch who are even older than my dad, would be 84 today, with perfect coiffes and vintage furs, who could recite the menu from 55 years ago. For the record, my dad would have ordered the Fish of the Day, even though he'd prefer the Grilled Veal Chop.
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