The following is a guest post from Beth Kaplan, author of Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: the Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin, who will be speaking at the Y on April 8.

New York City, for me as for many, is filled with family and friends. But it is also a city of ghosts.  My father, Jacob Gordin Kaplan, was a left-wing New Yorker who had to move to Canada in 1950, thanks to Joseph McCarthy. Every year, we flew or sailed back from Nova Scotia to visit Dad’s birthplace, making the rounds of countless relatives - many of my grandmother’s ten brothers and sisters, and my grandfather’s six. All of that generation, now, are gone. 

Luckily, though, some were still furiously alive when I began work, in 1982, on my book about my great-grandfather Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: the Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin. In 1983, how amazed I was to discover that Jacob Gordin’s youngest child, my father’s Aunt Helen, was still living in Queens.  We had never visited and I knew nothing about her because she and my grandmother often argued, as did so many of the Gordins. I went immediately to Queens, to hear a woman of 87 tell stories of growing up in the household of the greatest Yiddish playwright in the world.

All my life, going to New York has been a thrill, but this time – coming to speak at the 92nd Street Y about my great-grandfather’s titanic, tragic life and about my search for him – is especially momentous. This is a New York story, the tale of an immigrant, forced into exile, who arrives penniless on the Lower East Side, and transforms not only his own life but the lives of his fellow Jews around the world, with his dramatic words. 

I have dreamed of honoring my Great-aunt Helen, and all the others who gave me their memories, by bringing their stories back to New York where they belong. On April 8th, thanks to the 92nd Street Y, I will be flying in to do so.

Rob O’Neill, researcher/professor of animation at Pratt Institute and former character technical director at DreamWorks where he worked on Shrek 2 and Madagascar, leads a discussion next week at the Y on the State of the Art of Animation. The following is a guest post written by him for the 92Y Blog.

Something that I likely won’t get time to cover in Tuesday’s presentation is how modern animation techniques are being used outside of the traditional (filmmaking) means. One way is in the biological sciences. Animation techniques have been used in the past as a means of visualizing phenomenon over time. That continues and is constantly developing but these days researchers are also making use of access to animation systems as an apparatus for analysis. Two examples come to mind. The first is that of Stephan Gatesy of Brown University and the “Scientific Rotoscoping” technique. Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which the motion of the animated character is created by the tracing of live-action reference footage. This is a common technique in both traditional 2D animation and modern digital 2D/3D animation. Walt Disney even used rotoscoping on such classic films as Snow White (1937), for which he filmed an actress acting out the role and then provided the film to his animators as a 2D baseline of realistic motion from which they could begin work.

The motion derived from this method has a very realistic and controlled look when compared with that done without this frame-by-frame reference. Gatesy and his team are creating accurate 3D animations of the locomotion of animals (often birds) by filming them on treadmills and wind-tunnels with an X-ray camera. These X-ray movies are then imported into 3D animation programs in which hierarchical models of the bones, which have been meticulously sculpted (or scanned), are match-moved on a frame-by-frame basis to re-create the motions and thus create accurate animated 3D models of the motion. Scientists are now using what Disney and many others have relied on for years to recreate and study motion. 

While scientific rotoscoping takes a cue from animation techniques, a collaborative project between paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and computer scientists at the University of California at Davis takes its lead from classic computer graphics techniques, in particular morphing. Morphing is the transformation of one shape into another. The work being carried out, labeled “Evolutionary Morphing,” is actually the interpolation of shape transitions between extinct and living primate species in an attempt to mathematically fill in the gaps in the fossil record. With the advent of 3D laser-scanning technologies, the ability to capture, at high resolution, the shape and detail of anatomical specimens is changing the way in which data are collected and analyzed. Databases of specimens can be stored and compared using methods that rely not on the resolution of the scan but on the shape of the specimen. The power and, I would say, artistry, of this technique allow researchers to investigate the hypothetical shapes (and thus hypothetical species) interpolated in between them.

More examples of such work and how scientists informed the work of animators in the past and present is discussed in my article, “Emerging Congruence between Animation and Anatomy” in the April 2007 issue of “Leonardo" (Volume 40:2).

[Animation: State of the Art with Rob O’Neill: 6/5/07]

Wren Abbott, an editorial intern at New York magazine and freelance writer, reviews the Gene Wilder talk for the 92Y Blog.

On Sunday night in the Kaufmann Concert Hall Ms. magazine founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin interviewed comic legend Gene Wilder, whose debut novel My French Whore came out earlier this month. Wilder has appeared in over 30 movies – he made his film debut in 1967 as an undertaker kidnapped by Bonnie and Clyde, played the eponymous chocolatier in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, fell in love with a sheep in Woody Allen’s Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), and in the role he says he’s most proud of, co-wrote and starred in Young Frankenstein.

Wilder’s new book, following the memoir he brought out last year, is a slight, curious tale about an American soldier in World War I who, captured by the Germans, survives by impersonating a famous American spy. It’s based on a screenplay that Wilder wrote 38 years ago when he was in Paris filming Start the Revolution Without Me. Although Wilder did serve in the military for a year (in the medical corps in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania), and his protagonist Paul Peachy is an amateur actor who, like Wilder, is from Milwaukee, My French Whore otherwise seems to have little basis in the author’s own experiences. As a result, the story has a fantastical quality, with Peachy spending most of the book luxuriating at the “magnificent castle” where the German army is accommodating him and falling in love with his French whore over roast duck and farmer’s cheese, occasionally taking time out to attend to matters of military intelligence.

In fact, what is most striking about Wilder when he’s not acting – in both his books and in his public persona – is his earnestness. He doesn’t use humor, as you might expect, to deflect sensitive subjects, but in his memoir and in his talk on Sunday, spoke frankly of the emotional landmarks in his life – his mother’s death from heart disease, his estrangement from adopted daughter Katie (Katharine Anastasia Wilder), losing his third wife Gilda Radner to cancer. According to Wilder, he isn’t a natural comic – “in life” he says “I was never funny” – but he has a gift for embodying an absurd character believably, to comic effect. What Wilder, a dutiful student of “method” pioneer Lee Strasberg, brought to comic roles was seriousness – thoughtful application of his actor’s training and instincts. What he strived for above all, he writes in his memoir, is believability.

When Wilder worked with Arthur Penn in Bonnie and Clyde, his big scene took place in the back seat of the outlaws’ car, where Gene Hackman, as Clyde’s brother Buck, tells a dumb joke that he finds uproariously funny, about a farmer spiking cow’s milk with brandy to administer it to his mother. Wilder’s idea was to not know the punchline until they were playing the scene for the first time, and when Hackman blurted out “Whatever you do – don’t sell that cow,” Wilder laughed until there were tears in his eyes. Penn was surprised and impressed – he’d never envisioned that scene as funny.

Wilder also had an important insight about the character Willy Wonka, and agreed to play the part only on the condition that he get to introduce the character in a certain way: appearing before the townspeople for the first time, Wonka hobbles out with a cane, pretends to stumble, and goes into an acrobatic forward somersault. On Sunday Wilder explained that the change was critical in setting up the character, because “from that point on, you don’t know whether I’m lying or telling the truth.”

Wilder made his name playing characters that hold something in reserve, like the mysterious Wonka, whose intentions are unclear up to the end of the movie, when he chooses Charlie as his successor at the factory. His memoir and his too-precious new novel suggest that Wilder’s imagination works best when hemmed in by a well-defined character. His acting is dependent on good writing – and in fact, that’s why he hasn’t acted in awhile – (he hasn’t appeared in a theatrical release since Another You in 1991). He said on Sunday that when he reads a good script “a bell goes off, and I know I have to do this.” The bell hasn’t gone off in awhile, but Wilder says he doesn’t miss acting. Once he started writing, he said, “it got into my vein, into an artery I think.”

Why do I volunteer? It’s fulfilling. But not exactly in the way I’d hoped…

I coordinate Makor’s monthly commitment to help with food prep at God’s Love We Deliver, which serves nutritious and surprisingly delicious meals to people with AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses. They’re people who might otherwise die of malnutrition or starvation, if not for the two meals a day God’s Love brings them.

Whenever I volunteer, I’m always struck by the diversity of the people who show up to peel potatoes or chop carrots with me. Old and young. Gay and straight. Married, single, divorced and widowed. Professional, retired and unemployed. There’s a matter-of-factness with which they approach their commitment to helping people they will likely never know, and to providing a service that, God willing, neither they nor anyone they love will ever need. It seems so selfless for them—us—to give their time so freely to ensure someone somewhere will eat.

But what drove me to volunteer wasn’t so noble. It was the social (read: dating) possibilities! About three years ago when I moved to the City, a friend told me that when she lived in Manhattan, she’d met and dated a guy at a soup kitchen. So, I signed up! Of course, God’s Love We Deliver isn’t really a soup kitchen, per se. But hey, the very first time I volunteered there, some TV show was on-site doing a story about looking for love in philanthropic places. Has it worked out? Well, no—not that way, anyway. I’m still single. But I’ve met some great people and had a surprisingly good time cutting up (pun intended) in the kitchen.

And I have to say, what keeps me volunteering isn’t the hope that Prince Charming will turn up at the cutting board next to mine. It’s the great feeling I have when my volunteer shift is up and I’m tired from three hours of focused effort—but in a good way. I’m full of pride in humanity, having worked side by side with other regular folks who turned up, rain or shine, to help. And, no matter what happens the rest of the day, there’s a tremendous, continuous joy in knowing I did some good that day. It’s fulfilling, plain and simple.
-Donnell Brown

The next Makor date for God’s Love We Deliver is Sunday, March 25. Interested in volunteering? Here’s more information on all of the programs offered by Makor Community Service.

Robert Marshall, author of A Separate Reality—described as “...a portrait of an artist as a young man in the seventies. It’s a novel about Jews in the sun-belt diaspora, sprinklers on dead grass, and the smell of creosote in the desert at night. It’s a story of rattle snakes and the death rattle of the sixties. It’s about Watergate and the history of the left from the Rosenbergs to McGovern."—conjures up a 100-word description of a dream for the 92Y Blog. (“100 Words” background here.)

Dream I’m at a museum with my father. They’ve bought some new paintings, very tiny Rembrandts. Because they’re so small perhaps he can see them. So I wheel him out into the museum (also a parking lot), but we can’t find the Rembrandts, or the little Van Goghs which may also be there. We give up, head in, but must be careful—we don’t want to get in the lane where the planes are taking off. We do, accidentally, for a moment, but then manage to reenter the building (airport?). Later my brother is also going blind. Spina Bofida, he says.

He joins Jami Attenberg and Galt Niederhoffer for the New Jewish Fiction talk at Makor on March 7.

We’re adapting an idea conceived by former New York Press editor-in-chief Jeff Koyen that involves getting writers to submit “100 Words” on any topic or thought of their choice. Read more about his project at 100Words.com where people are tasked to write 100 words a day, every day, for a month. It’s a worthy challenge, even for the most seasoned writer/blogger. Since there is no shortage of great writers coming through the doors of the 92nd Street Y (see: Unterberg Poetry Center) and Makor on a regular basis, some early in their career and others of considerable achievement, we thought it would be a good idea to ask those who are interested to submit their own “100 Words On...” contribution to the 92Y Blog. (Once is enough for our purposes.) First up is Jami Attenberg, author of Instant Love who is taking part in the New Jewish Fiction talk at Makor on March 7.

On book tour, there were eccentric old men at every reading. It had something to do with the word “love” being in the title of my book. They all wanted to know what I knew about love. (The answer, of course, is: not much.) You might think they were dirty old men, but I liked to think of them as “dirty-curious.” And I became curious about them. Except for the man in Portland, who sat in the front row wearing short-shorts with his legs spread wide open. His was a kind of love I wanted to know nothing about.

Kate Klimo and Buffy Shutt, the authors of Coming of Age… All Over Again, are hosting a brunch tomorrow at the Steinhardt Building for a casual discussion of their midlife guide for baby boomers. The following is a guest post written by them for the 92Y Blog.

# # #

When good friends look back over the years, they see a scrapbook-like procession of hairstyles or hair tints, skirt lengths or waist lines, babies in Snuglis or kids in mortar boards. When we look back at our friendship, which began the very first day of freshman year at college, we have all of that, for sure. But we also have something else. We have talk. We have this long, rich, sometimes frayed but never entirely abandoned, tapestry of talk that stretches out between us from coast to coast, since for twenty years we have lived on opposite sides of the country. There is talk over restaurant tables, talk at kitchen tables, talk on beaches and lawn chairs, talk in letters and on telephones and cell phones and, lately, on the Blackberry, our thumbs busily twiddling, day after day after day, back and forth. Talking.

What is the talk about? It started out, when we were in college, talk about term papers and boy friends and, when we stayed up all night speeding on black coffee and smoking Tarryton’s, pondering the Meaning of Life. After we graduated, it was talk about husbands and childbirth, careers and promotions, getting the babies to sleep through the night, getting the kids into nursery school and, finally, through the SATs and into college.

It was a few years ago, when we hit our fifties, that the talk took a turn for the scary. There was parents falling ill, kids careening back toward the nest, loss of a job at 50, bank accounts groaning beneath the strain of supporting nearly grown children and a parent whose Social Security and pension checks couldn’t quite stretch to the end of each month. It was the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night; that gives you the whimwhams and the sweats, and we’re not talking hot flashes here (although we certainly could, if you’re interested.) It was out of this talk—the insights we developed, the research we did, the resources we put together, the exercises we came up with, the stories about ourselves we told each other--that COMING OF AGE…ALL OVER AGAIN was born. And because our talks covered the complete length and breadth and depth of our very busy lives our book became a many layered thing, about many things rather than about just one thing. Fond as we are of metaphors, we found ourselves adapting the cake as a metaphor for our lives. Why cake?

Because even when you follow the recipe, it’s not always easy to make it pretty, although God knows we try. Because our lives are complex and complicated. We like to embrace the many parts of us. Because a layer cake is beautiful and delicious and forever and always a symbol of or a cause for celebration.

One of the most important layers of this cake is friendship. You might say that we are evangelical on the subject of friendship and its importance in our lives as we hit 50 and discover that we are coming of age all over again. Studies show that having friends make you healthier and happy as you get older. Do you remember how important friends were at the start of our lives, in grade school and high school and college? Friends were everything in those days. How did it happen that, sometime in the last thirty or forty years, friendship became less important in our lives? We think it’s true that, for most of us, what with jobs and careers and kids and husbands and significant others of all stripes, friendship has lost importance. How do we bring friendship back into the center of our lives? How do we restore our friends to their rightful and infinitely useful place?

We think that a Tea Party is a good start.

Are we talking about little white gloves and clotted cream and gilt-edged calling cards? Nope. We’re talking about figuring out who your real friends are—the friends you want to call when something great happens and the friends you want to call when life’s coming apart at the seams. We’re talking about picking up the phone and calling the friend you’ve been meaning to call for the past ten years and are past embarrassed about contacting, but so what? We’re talking about getting together, one on one and in comfortable and safe groups, and talking about the serious and often scary stuff that is facing all of us boomers as we pass the halfway point of our lives. We’re talking about living our lives with an open heart and an open mind and an absolute willingness to try out new ideas, share stories, make a few mistakes and still feel, on occasion, like the geekiest kid in the class. Our lives are many-layered, take the time with your friends at the tea party to talk about each layer.

So it seems, after all these years, though we’ve long ago sworn off the Tarrytons and our black coffee is now milky tea, we are still sitting around talking, pondering the Meaning of Life. Won’t you join us?

White gloves not necessary.

[The Coming of Age… All Over Again Brunch: 1/23/07]

Food author Michael Ruhlman (The Soul of a Chef and The Making of a Chef) got his first taste of the blogging world with a guest stint on Megnut.com. He’s a natural so we asked if he would contribute something here in advance of the roundtable discussion he’s hosting next week at the 92nd Street Y. He gave us a full plate.

# # #

On Monday the 23rd, I’ll take the stage here with two of New York’s best chefs, and one of its most famous chef-writers, respectively: Gabrielle Hamilton, Eric Ripert and Tony Bourdain. A festive gathering, and, assuming Bourdain is coherent, one that promises to be illuminating, because it concerns a subject that is deceptively rich: How I Learned To Cook. Now the reason for this occasion is to promote the new book of that title, a substantial compendium of cooking epiphanies from chefs as diverse as Ferran Adria, Michelle Bernstein (funny story about a major blunder at the Beard House under Palladin), Michel Roux and Ming Tsai, among many many others. Hamilton’s story about opening Prune will continue to establish her as one of the best chef-writers still cooking.

How I Learned To Cook is an important question because it conveys why cooking is about more than food, which is why for me the subject is so endlessly interesting to write about. The best of the essays might better be called What I Learned by Learning to Cook. Some people find the sport of boxing fascinating because it represents man’s atavistic existential struggle in this world, one human being alone, slugging it out for his life. For me cooking at the professional level, cooking on the line, represents this same kind of struggle. Yes, there’s that thing called the dance and it is a team effort, each night’s service, but ultimately, for the cook, for you, if it’s you, it’s a matter of whether you measure up, are you good enough. Nothing worse in the world for a cook to be told he or she is not good enough.

I think it’s in Mamet’s American Buffalo: “It all comes down to whether or not you know what the fuck you’re talking about.” That’s what cooking’s like.

You can’t lie in the kitchen; it’s a brutal beautiful world. There are very few professions where it’s impossible to lie to yourself. But in a really good kitchen, it quickly becomes obvious if you are. And there are fewer humiliations as deep as not measuring up on the line, and few glories more satisfying than the private understanding of exactly how well you performed on this night.

I’ll be asking how three chefs not only learned to cook, but why? That’s more to point as far as I’m concerned. Why does one do this work that is both tedious and enormously stressful, this work that requires hellishly long hours, including weekends, mother’s days, Christmas Eves and Christmas Days, Passovers and Yom Kippurs and Thanksgivings, in physically uncomfortable circumstances, but, for poverty-level wages?

Really, it boggles the mind. People in Cleveland ask me if I ever thought of or think of opening a restaurant. When I say, as I invariably do, “Are you CRAZY?” they’re actually surprised.

Why did I learn to cook? It wasn’t because of some twinkle-toes love of the beurre blanc and foie gras, I can tell you that. It was anger. I learned to cook out of anger.

I was a journalist dressed as a student at the Culinary Institute of America, there to write a book about how this school trained others how to be a chef. But the chef instructor told me that we—meaning me versus him and the rest of the students—were cut from a different cloth. I wasn’t good enough to be a chef. I didn’t have it.

I seethed. I learned to cook out of anger.

I think people learn to cook for a variety of reasons, but why they stay in the kitchen, that’s a whole other question. I can’t wait to talk to these chefs, whose experiences and temperaments and styles are so widely varying. I’m especially curious to talk to Hamilton, a wickedly good writer, as I’ve said. She’s deeply skeptical of me, for good reason, no doubt. Then there’s Bourdain, who basically makes up stories about me and publishes them as the truth (a sympathetic neighbor here in Cleveland, walking her dog down our leafy street, paused to chat with my wife out of concern, whispering confidentially to her: “I didn’t know Michael had a drinking and gambling problem..."—swear to god, this actually happened, what I have to put up with for hanging out with Bourdain, a mixed blessing to be sure). And Eric, a friend, and incredibly talented chef and leader, he’ll be worried I’ll bring up his loafers again. It ought to be an interesting night.
—Michael Ruhlman

Related: Food events and classes at the Y and Makor
Earlier: Interview with Eater.com’s Ben Leventhal and Tony Bourdain