Lisbon 2010

To continue yesterday’s train of thought concerning internet fixation, “turn on, tune in, drop out”, the famous phrase coined by Tomothy Leary in the 1960’s might now be “link up, download, pop up”. People might start thinking about staying in touch instead of getting on line, but anyway who am I to question the benefits of the technology I’m using at this very moment?
I’m in Lisbon Portugal right now, a fantastic place especially at this time of year. I got here just in time for the festivities of the patron Santo Antonio, what a party!!
Here’s something typically Portuguese: I went into a café just now to have an after lunch Ginja (a liquor made with a cherry of some sort), and saw this sign: “We are obliged to enforce the smoking prohibition”. Isn’t that a nice way to say “NO SMOKING”? Roundabout yes, but very polite. “NICHT RAUCHEN”!!
Cruising the world on Google Earth the other day, I found the actual house where I was born. This is no ordinary house; we’re talking about a very large 3 story early 1900s neo-colonial farmhouse. It was our family house and sat on 40 acres of land just 35 miles Northwest of Manhattan, our closest neighbor an 18 hole golfcourse, now Fairway Park, the actual golfcourse having been relocated by a couple of miles and renamed “New York Country Club”. I used to get my mother to make lemonade so I could hawk it to the golfers at the 8th. hole which bordered our apple grove. I also used to try and steal golfballs if they were hit close enough. Our other neighbor was a missile site, muscles permanently flexed with cold war fixation, just waiting for those nasty commies to try something funny so we could let loose with the ballistic toys we’d been polishing and fondling for just such an occasion.
This is not to say we were millionaires at all, in fact when my father decided to emigrate and try his hand in Europe, the whole caboodle went for US$70.000, quite a bit in those days (1958), but still no fortune. I was 8 years old at the time and I remember the auctioneer who came to sell all the furniture and whatnot. Seeing as how I had so much prior experience, he hired me to sell lemonade but then slipped off without paying me. This was my first job and should have served as a warning to what the world held in store for those ho don’t watch their step, but I paid no heed and and entered the music business anyway...
So I decided it might be fun to try and find out some more about the house, like who lived in it now, maybe get some cool pictures, an update on the history in the past 50 years? By the looks of the Google earth aerial shot I would say it’s now some sort of a private clinic or a club house or something, definitely not a single family home, I imagine the heating bill alone would be enough to support a jazz musician for a whole year.
In spite of my offerings: original 1950’s aerial photographs I posess, and other little tidbits of information and snapshots, my pleas for information and 21st century photographs were completely ignored by the present neighbors. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that they must be afraid of terrorists. I could be a mad bomber or something angling for information which I could later use to blow myself up in the middle of their golfcourse or something. That would completely ruin an otherwise perfect afternoon for someone working on their handicap...
Used to be commies, now it’s muslims, Spring Valley lives in fear.... By a Spring Valley blog I recently saw, I understand that at one point there was some concern about the growing jewish population.
Must rush off, my last day in Lisbon, have to go see the sunset...