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On Being a Guest, and Dumpling Evenings

On Being a Guest, and Dumpling Evenings

by Leo Racicot

I was in her company only once, twice if you count the time she came over to Ed’s. That visit was brief; we talked about The Makioka Sisters, the occasional merits of Bizet over Mozart, the high price of flowers at the corner market. There was not time to like her or not like her: she was “sweet”.

Ed is Edmund White, literary lion and gay cultural and social icon. He and Marilyn have lived in each others’ pockets for sixty-one years. Their affection for each other was as sturdy and tantalizing as a slice of good pie.

One October evening, Ed brought me over to Marilyn’s home on the Upper West Side. I was his “date” and this was to be my introduction to Marilyn’s “dumpling evenings”, calm, unpretentious gatherings of the great, the near-great, the soon-to-be great, the never-will-be-great. Quiet, intimate dinner parties, a tradition begun back when both were kids.

I have never forgotten that evening, and I know I never shall, held at Elizabeth Bishop’s “sun and crumb” time, that hour between day and night that summons us to table and to each other.

Rounding off our tiny foursome was Francis Polizio, a gentleman and a gentle man, a retired French teacher and dealer in antiques. Our gathering — Marilyn, Ed, Fran and me — certainly was companionable. I still enjoy divine friendships with Ed and Fran. But it is Marilyn I can’t forget.

I didn’t know her but I knew her — her face had a wise,  porcelain finish, almost Eurasian though, in truth, it was Germanic. Her skin, birthday pink and flower petal-gentle and her demeanor, equally soft, belied a searing intellect; her mind was a wide avenue of tolerance, of carnal acceptance, of ideas, an unapologetic Socialist back when it was traitorous, anathema to be so.

She was wearing just the right clothes — her skirt made a reassuring, rustling sound when she moved. She had a Sunday look. Marilyn had, yes, the look of a nun minus totally, of course, the antiseptic patina that ends any  further interest you might have meeting most religious — a sensuous nun, that’s it!

Her hostess radar honed in on my nervousness and she sat down so close beside me, I could taste her perfume. She was your silent confidante, an instant chum; an expansive nature lent her an instant familiarity. She and her home and her place in the world made everyone, everything near her cozy. Ed said “Marilyn radiated warmth”. Slender as a thread of saffron, she covered you in quilt-y comfort; you didn’t want to budge from it. Not ever. It was that palpable.

Her home radiated the same — there was about Marilyn and her apartment a fragrance of gentility, that essence almost impossible to find now. Have you ever seen the Panorama Easter Eggs so popular in the ’60s? Delicately ornate, flowered, candied ceramic eggs. When your eyes peered into the little window, they were treated to the most shimmering scenes: miniature seed gardens, poppy-colored ducklings, thatched cottages, opalescent fields where horses trotted and rabbits ran. Marilyn’s place made me remember those bagatelles of my boyhood — to enter was to be greeted by an absolute wonderland of objects and odors and sounds — the loveliest, most meaningful of all being Marilyn herself.

Over yonder, the stove popped and percolated with food – rich promises of tastes soon to be spooned out and enjoyed, the Christmas Eve excitement that seizes you wondering what the morning will bring. You could hardly stand the waiting so intoxicating was it — and when our meal finally was revealed — a great table of scallops with the roe still attached, the sweetest roasted yams, the best asparagus, the endless supply of wine.  Marilyn served it up Nana-style and we — the self-dubbed Four Francophiles — feasted and were at peace…

______________________

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about guests,  and about being a guest, a guest in someone else’s house or — their guest at a restaurant but that’s not quite the same, is it?  I mean, dining at the house of someone I haven’t met before, the feelings that develop when strangers get together to share food and drink and conversation. If you stop to think about it, it is such a common occurrence but is, in fact, really odd. Do you agree with me? The ways in which communal eating and drinking become instruments that draw people who don’t know each other together in harmony. Think of this as miracle — think of this and be amazed — that in a world of nine billion people — billion!  — we are given the blessing of eating with another person, or a small party of others, for an hour, an evening, a weekend, an afternoon. For a brief period of time, we are company for each other, share a special moment and then perhaps never see each other again. We mean to. We say we will, we must. We offer the unspoken, intimate whisper that next time, “It will be ‘just us’. Then someone moves away, or finishes college, or marries, enters the seminary, stops speaking to us without warning or explanation. Life and Death intervene.

_________

Marilyn got very sick very fast. Our time together was brief, an evening really. There followed cards at birthdays and holidays, “hellos” conveyed through Ed. But illness became her constant companion and she grew self-conscious of her deterioration. She closed her door to even lifelong friends. She made a valiant attempt to get to Ed’s to see us at his annual Christmas feast but phoned to say she was too weak to even make it to the corner to hail a cab. In May, I was listening to Joni Mitchell singing, “Nothing lasts for long…” when Ed’s email came saying “Marilyn died”.

I fell in love with Marilyn Schaefer in one breath. There was something indelible about her, about “there”, there being where she was and lived. I still see her. I feel her. I keep thinking about being a guest, about what that means. About why some people will take a stranger into their home and nourish them and love them, without question. I keep remembering that evening in that Upper West Side apartment. Outside — the mad, Manhattan circus. Inside — Marilyn and cozy repose.

_________

You are equally loved, if not more loved, eating with one friend, or a couple of friends, as you would have been feasting among the multitudes in Great, Old Babylon or being one of The Twelve seated at Our Lord’s Last Meal.

 _______

The Four Francophiles

Marilyn with one of her paintings

One of the early dumpling evenings

Seen & Heard: Vol. 13

Obituary: Shigeaki Mori – “Shigeaki Mori, Survivor Of Hiroshima Who Led A Search, Is Dead at 88,” New York Times, March 23, 2026. On the morning of August 6, 1945, Shigeaki Mori was an 8-year-old student on his way to school when the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. He survived but 140,000 residents of the city did not. As he and his family tried to rebuild, he heard rumors that a dozen American POWs were also killed in the blast. Although both governments denied this, Mori pursued the rumors and, after more information was declassified in the 1970s, had proof of that fact. He made it his life’s work to find the families of the POWs. He eventually succeeded. One of those killed was Normand Brissette of Lowell. He was a crewmember on a Navy aircraft shot down during an earlier raid on the city and was held in the city’s jail, awaiting transport to a POW camp. He was among 12 Americans, ten of whom died in the blast while Brissette and another held on for a few days before succumbing to their injuries. Mr. Mori gained international fame in 2016 when Barack Obama became the first President to visit Hiroshima where he laid a wreath on a memorial. Sitting on stage, Mr. Mori’s embrace of the President yielded an iconic photograph of the event. In 2018, Mr. Mori traveled to Lowell for the dedication of a memorial to Normand Brissette which was unveiled that day, May 28, 2018, at the Centralville Veteran’s Park. Here’s a link to my blog post about that event. 

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown – This 2024 film is about the early years of Bob Dylan’s musical career and stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan. I like Dylan’s music, but I’ve never followed music as closely as I do other parts of popular culture, so I wanted to see this movie for educational purposes with the caveat that every movie parts with reality in some ways. The movie begins with 19-year-old Dylan arriving in New York City with a guitar and a small backpack, then follows his entrance into the music business and concludes with his historic performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. That was historic since it was the first time he used an electric guitar in concert. This created an uproar among folk music aficionados who saw it as a sellout to rock music and commercialism. Real life musicians who feature prominently as characters in this movie include Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, and Woody Guthrie. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Civil Rights movement provide dramatic background for the movie which focuses on Dylan’s prolific songwriting during this time in which he churned out classic hit after classic hit.

Book Review: “Book and Dagger” – The subheading of this 2024 nonfiction book is “How scholars and librarians became the unlikely spies of World War II.” Written by Elyse Graham, a history professor at Stony Book University, the book explains how the United States, in the years between the two World Wars, failed to establish and operate any kind of a national intelligence collection and analysis organization, so when the country entered World War II, it was woefully behind other combatants. Into that void stepped William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Usually when one thinks of the OSS (which was the forerunner to the CIA), it is about saboteurs dropping behind enemy lines and daring escapes from the Gestapo. But this book tells a different side of the OSS story. Donovan and his associates recruited hundreds of history professors, archivists and librarians to the OSS to engage in what is called “open-source collection.” Ubiquitous printed materials such as phone books and bureaucratic transportation studies proved to be intelligence gold mines in the right hands. This book is mostly about the process of finding and collecting that material which often brought seemingly mild-mannered academics into dangerous situations. The concluding chapter of the book makes some universal observations about the kaleidoscope of people necessary for a country to create, obtain and understand important information. It shows how before the 1930s, Germany was the leading country when it came to scientific research, but when the Nazis came to power and enforced their concepts of racial purity over ability and intelligence, Germany faded as a leader in science, surpassed by the United States which welcomed those who Germany rejected. Although the author makes no  further comment, I couldn’t help but think that many of the policies on immigration and academic freedom imposed on the United States by the current regime, place this country in the role of Germany in the 1930s. I just wonder which other nation will be the beneficiary of this short-sightedness. 

Book Review: A Short Stay in Hell – This 2009 fantasy novella by Steven Peck was enthusiastically recommended to me and since A Short Stay in Hell requires just a short time to read at just 98 pages, I zipped through it. The book explores the experience of hell, but a hell unlike anything we in the west have ever had described to us. Instead of a Dante-like inferno of constant physical pain, this hell was more psychological. The author, who happens to be a Mormon evolutionary biologists, critiques those who believe there’s is “the one true religion” since in this book, even devout, good  people end up in hell. That’s because the one true religion of this world is Zoroastrianism. Anyone not an adherent – and very few are – is condemned to hell. But here, hell is a customized experience. The main character liked to read so his hell was set in an enormous library filled with millions and millions of books, most of complete gibberish, others with a random word and a few with a snippet of text. To be released from this hell, one must fund the book that contains the story of their life, a search that can take millions of years. They are not alone in this library. There are thousands of other similarly situated people, both men and women. All appear in their late 20s and in good health and recall every detail about their lives. But they are all American, white, English-speaking, and lived between 1920 and 2070. They can be injured, grow ill, or die, but each morning they are revived in perfect condition. The punishment is the monotony and the sameness of this new existence which is a type of torture. This is not the kind of book I would normally read but I’m glad I did.

An Easter Editorial

An Easter Editorial – (PIP #102)

By Louise Peloquin

     L’Etoile published the editorial below one hundred years ago.

The 25th “peek into the past” presents another such piece and casts a light on the newspaper’s publication choices by pointing out the following.

“For the French-Canadian community, the church was not only a place of worship and religious ceremonies but it was also an institution of education for all ages, from the parish school to adult, life-coach-style counseling, mirroring its all-pervasive role in “the old country” – Québec. The church was also a venue for social gatherings from charitable organization meetings to musical and theatrical performances to kermesses and bingo tournaments.

Consequently, it was vital for L’Etoile to cover church events. In addition, as a service to the community, the newspaper gratuitously published many Franco-American parish bulletins. Naturally, this move met potential readers’ expectations, making the effort a win-win for both the paper and its public.” (1)

__________

L’Etoile – April 3, 1926

SURREXIT DOMINUS, VERE,

ALLELUIA (2)

     In order to understand the meaning and the scope of these words, following Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross and hearing him cry out “all is finished” would have been necessary.

     Yes, everything seemed to be finished for Jesus. All that was left was a horribly disfigured body.

     Of his lifework even less remained: a few poor women, a small number of ashamed disciples among whom only one had the courage to follow him up to calvary. Which one among his friends was thinking of conquering the world? Judas, one of the twelve, sold him to his enemies. Peter, the leader, denied him. The others, only thinking of returning to their fishing nets, were trembling at the tragic adventure they had witnessed.

     Yes, everything really seemed finished for Jesus. He, who had been like so many others, the Life and the Resurrection, was sleeping, with the debris of his work, in a tomb sealed by Roman authorities.

     Of this Jesus, whose words had moved all of Judea to the point of making the crowds want to crown him king, undoubtedly all that was left within the hearts of the small groups of remaining faithful was just a memory made up of admiration, of sadness and of love. And in the spirit of future generations persisted the image of the most generous and most vain of undertakings ever conceived for humanity’s happiness and moral goodness.

     But, on the morning of the third day, three women bearing precious perfume go to the tomb to finish embalming the Master’s body. None of them imagined that the deceased, whom they had wrapped in a shroud, would no longer be where they had seen him placed. Only one question preoccupied them: who could have rolled the large stone sealing the entry of the sepulchre?

     But wonder of wonders, the stone no longer secured the entrance of the tomb. The seal of the authorities was broken. The guards stationed there had fled, terrified. An angel bathed in brilliant light reassured the three women, petrified at the sight of so many wonders.

     The women immediately left the tomb, trembling with fear and joy. They ran to bring the news to the disciples. But lo, Jesus came before them and said “I greet you.”  They drew near, kissed his feet and adored him. To reassure them, Jesus gently told them: “Do not be afraid. Tell my disciples to go to Galilee and there they will find me.”

     On this Easter morning, our Lord and Master comes to us in the glory of his resurrection. Like the women, let us kneel at the foot of the cross of the divine Resurrected and say: “my Lord and my God.” (3)

****

 1) PIP #25 posted on March 26, 2024:

https://richardhowe.com/2024/03/26/annual-demonstration-of-faith/

2) The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

3) Translation by Louise Peloquin.

No Kings Rallies: pictures worth a thousand words by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Newton Center Green in Massachusetts was packed on Saturday, despite temperature in the 30’s and a biting wind. A 10-piece local brass band energized the crowd with a rousing Saints Go Marching In. There were young and old, black and white, center and left, pets wearing “No Kings” doggie jackets, and speeches, lots of speeches. We didn’t stay for the entire event but were there long enough to be moved by the spirit and the message.

En route to our hometown No Kings Rally, my husband and I figured that, between the two of us, we represent 123 years of speaking out and going to protest rallies- first as activists, later as journalists. Civil rights, anti-Vietnam War protests, women’s rights, fair housing, and lots of others in between. Mostly moved by the spirit of having to do something. Has it mattered? Not our behavior alone. But with countless thousands of others, working together, over time and with countless setbacks, shared efforts of many contributed to moving the moral arc of history toward justice. Now we are in a perilous period of setbacks.

Will the 3300+ demonstrations across the country Saturday (more than 160 in Massachusetts), involving millions of people, protesting the many flaws and violations, wrong-doing and law-breaking actions, crass and crooked behaviors of the President, actually have an impact? Will yesterday’s spirited opposition translate into meaningful political action?

There has been some descriptive scholarship correlating large mass mobilization size with movement success. Consider the 3 1/2 % rule, which holds that when 3.5% of the population of a country actively protest nonviolently against an authoritarian government, they can shift loyalties among regime supporters and precipitate that government’s change of policies or even fall from power. That’s been the underlying rationale for Indivisible’s organizing the “No Kings” protests.

The estimated numbers have grown steadily from the first No Kings rally in June 2025 ( 5 million) to October 2025 (7 million) to this weekend’s. But the 8+ million people protesting in the United States Saturday still represent only 2.4 percent of the population. The “magic number” in the United States is 12 million. If that political science precept holds, at least four million more are needed.

This may have been the largest organized protest in our history. But to effect meaningful change, the engagement must be sustained and enhanced, with the next target being record-high turnout in the mid-term elections to block egregious policies in the short run and effect a change of government in 2028.

The challenge now is to avoid doom scrolling and resist the drive to check the dystopian news multiple times a day. We need to save our sanity but be strong enough to recognize authoritarianism and the symptoms of illiberal democracy when we see it. Find the candidates worth supporting – at all levels- wherever they are in our country– in races that matter. Support other activists who have the capacity to persevere. And, above all, let’s keep remembering this: