Appreciating Jerry Liebling's Vision

R.I.P. Jerome Liebling, 1924 - 2011

In Focus: Jerome Liebling: (photo of, not by ...)

Jerome Liebling was a visionary photographer and documentarian of the American experience, who taught and inspired so very many, and whose pictures illustrate unique, personal and transcendent stories. It is said that "Jerome Liebling and his camera saw into the souls of America" - have a look here and see what you think.  He passed away on Wednesday.

In 1969, moving from Minnesota with his family, Jerry rented our home in Amherst for a year (my father had an exchange to teach American Literature at Keele University in the British Midlands). Upon arrival, Liebling started the interdisciplinary film and photography program at brand-new Hampshire College.   I challenge you to think of a better artist at combining film and photography than Ken Burns, who has many times expressed his deepest debt to Professor Liebling under whom he studied at Hampshire.

* * * Today begins the Emily Dickinson International Society's annual meeting, in Amherst. Come one, come all!  The EDIS was founded in 1980, my father keynoting and organizing the events.  At around this time, Jerry began capturing images for his spectacular book, The Dickinsons of Amherst.

Dickinson Fence  - Amherst, MA (1980)  Jerome Liebling

"Like Emily Dickinson, he is constantly wondering what happens to us after we die. Liebling: "In the body that remains, is there some residue of the spirit, of the soul?"  Dickinson: "Do people moulder equally. / They bury, in the Grave?"  Liebling's photographs are always asking where the line is between life and death.  What of our feelings lingers around the objects we loved?  Why is grief, even when 'tongueless,' so palpable?"

Christopher  Benfey

The Dickinsons of Amherst

While his imprint is admired the world over, and his work appears in the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Museum of Modern Art,

Emily, by Jerry

 Jerry and his family made a huge mark on the Amherst academic, social, and political community for over forty years.  I feel fortunate to have known him.

God Rest His Soul.

J. C. Duffy: Fusco Father

Porter Brothers Meet the Fusco Brothers

J.C. Duffy, the hilarious cartoonist whose work appears frequently in the New Yorker and elsewhere, is a friend of my brother's whom I met at the bachelor party that I'd organized before Dave's wedding in 1997.  The two were classmates at U. Penn in the glory days.

We chatted again at a 40th birthday cookout in Trenton, N.J.

A lot of Duffy's tableaux take place in bars - and I support that!  For instance this one and that one. And here is something to enjoy in the sunny summer season:

Happy Summer Reading, friends...

Yes . . . a laughing, funny, burly guy is J.C. Duffy!

Once Around the Track with Andrew Cuomo - Champion of Same-Sex New Yorkers

Beginning this Sunday, New York citizens may legally enter into same-sex marriages under the law signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo one month ago.

At a high school track meet this spring, I snapped a shot of my parents, who had come along to see their granddaughter run the individual 400m and the 4x400 relay.  Seconds later my mother turned around, spotted the gent nearby and exclaimed "That's my paesano, the Governor of New York!"

Indeed, it was he.  Forza Italia !!

Governor Cuomo lurks behind my opposite-sex parents

Strauss-Kahn Scrum with Maid, the NY County D.A., and Me

One day sometime in autumn,1981, down on the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial and where the Viet Nam Memorial would shortly be unveiled, I joined a college classmate and his rowdy soccer club for a game of - not soccer, but rugby.  Among the players: Cy Vance, Jr.

Cy Vance, Jr. May Throw Out Case Against Strauss-Kahn

Then a law student at Georgetown U., Jr. was noted more for his father's recent stint as Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter (a performance that received mixed reviews), than in his own right.  But it turns out that he is now the Manhattan DA.


And just look at Jr. now!


Although some are heckling him...

Watergate Doug Feaver - You Heard It Here First

Got The Feaver

<< ------ Who's the beatnik?  He's the night city-desk editor who answered the call in the wee hours of Saturday morning June 18th, 1972 about a bungled break-in by some ersatz plumbers at the Watergate apartment & office complex.  39 years... and it seems like only yesterday!

Doug Feaver was my cubicle neighbor in the Post newsroom for 6 months in 1999 while I worked on a "top secret!" editorial technology project for washingtonpost.com. A painstaking, personable, and funny guy, Doug had seen it all - and 'though he was by then only 5 years or so from retirement, he kept up exceedingly well with the rowdy young journo's.

I'd watched my dad build an entire back patio of bricks and railroad ties by hand during the summer of 1973, his energy fueled by the live radio coverage of the U.S. Senate Watergate hearings, chaired by Sam Ervin and starring a cast of astonishing characters ("Abplanalp," anyone?), and a featuring the almost-daily detonation of a new bombshell in the fascinating disintegration of the second Nixon administration.  Years later to be inside the Post newsroom was pretty cool, but to meet Doug was to shake hands with history.  A true newsman's newsman.

Where it all began . . .

"On the average there are roughly fifty burglaries daily in the District of Columbia. Some are reported at length in our newspaper. Most are reported in smallish type in a crime column.

Obviously, this burglary was different."

—Washington Post managing editor Howard Simons in 1973

Mary Amons: My Real DC Housewife

When I met her in 1981, Mary Schmidt (now Amons) - star of Bravo hit/cancelled series "Real Housewives of DC," was the schoolgirl daughter of CTM Chairman Robert L. Schmidt - he who introduced me to the sports, politics and TV worlds and several of the notorious who are named in or cued up for this blog.

Mary Schmidt & hubby-to-be Rich Amons, pre-glamour

The Schmidts lived next door to candy mogul Forrest Mars, Jr. and family in McLean VA, and Bob's nice wife Patty was daughter of Ukelele Hall of Fame 2001 inductee Arthur Godfrey.

I learned a lot by working for Bob Schmidt who is one of the greats: a hardworking, inspiring and personally decent executive; Kennedy administration veteran, college football star, and tireless organizer and promoter of charities like the Georgetown U. Lombardi Cancer Center and So Others Might Eat.

In the early 80's, cable TV folks thought that PBS had the golden goose, and they set out to clone it.  Bravo (Cablevision/Rainbow, pre-NBC) was [then] a high-end, daypart-only entry that competed with similarly high-end Arts & Entertainment (ABC/NBC/Hearst) and pay entry CBS Cable for the cultural high ground.  How quaint now to think of these lofty aspirations... and Lo (Low!), How The Mighty Have Fallen!  Bob had been president of the National Cable TV Association during the launch of HBO, TBS and ESPN and other pillars, and was by the early eighties in the thick of all the ambitious new programming development, particularly the emergence of regional pay sports nets.

Hail, Mary

But if I somehow then could have painted for Bob a vision of the cable TV landscape of 2011, with all those high-brow plans in tatters across a field of pandering, reality-TV detritus, he would not have recognized what Bravo (and the rest) might one day become.  And for suggesting that mischievous daughter Mary might one day star in as curiously exhibitionistic a show as the Real Housewives franchise, I think he might have given me the heave-ho.

* * * * *

post script: My Coto friends Dave and Betsy live down the block from original "Real Housewives of Orange County" stars Jeanna (Nov. '80) and Matt (Oakland A's) Keough, (and a quick and lively hop-step 'round the corner from Jenna Jameson, at whose doorstep reportedly forms a line two blocks long of costumed fathers on Hallowe'en...).  But Mary Schmidt Amons is my Real Housewife.

Thanks Debbie G. for the tip on what's become of our little Mary!

Lucy Wilson Benson - Absolute Class

I can't tell you enough about how much I admire this lady!  My friend Lucy Wilson Benson serves as Chairman of the Board for the Amherst Cinema Arts Center, operator of the Amherst Cinema and the Pleasant Street Theater.  It has been my privilege to meet and get to know her whilst serving on the Board myself for the past four years.

In Virtue, One Gains Knowledge...

"You Never Can Tell!"  A devoted Smith College alumna, (Class of '49), Lucy married an Amherst man - Physics professor Bruce Benson - and has scaled the heights.  The phrase "distinguished career" is so often overused, but it fits Lucy like a smart Peck and Peck suit.  She became local, then state, then (1968-1974) national head of the League of Women Voters. Jimmy Carter named her Undersecretary of State, at the time the highest ranking woman ever at the State Department. 

''Don't ask me what it feels like to be a woman Under Secretary of State, because I don't know. I do know what it is like to be an Under Secretary of State, however.''

Lucy later served our state exceptionally as MA Secretary of Human Services under Governor Mike Dukakis.  A woman with clear head, a quick tongue - always constructive and right to the point.  A lover of life and funny as hell.

Two Beauties of the Silver Screen

Here is a nice profile written a few years back, in the Amherst College campus paper, about LWB.

I am proud to know Lucy - she went out to change the world after college, did so, and has remained our "United Nations of Amherst" treasure.

And her hair is spectacular!

Happy Mother's Day, from Ben Stiller and Kate Hudson

Ben, Kate, have you called your mothers yet today?

Happy Mother's Day,
Anne Meara, the cheek-pinching mom,
and same to you Goldie Hawn, the mom I'd like to pinch!

With love,

TOM