Category: Manny Kagan

After my encounter with England, I ended up in Spain, in about the same period of time. Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 and died the same year as Shakespeare, in 1616. He finished writing Don Quixote de la Mancha in 1606. I am still listening to the audio book, which describes events and adventures of Hidalgo, a country gentleman, who after reading too many chivalrous romances, loses his mind and imagines himself as a knight-errant. A knight-errant’s job is to fight for justice in the name of the lady of his heart and whom he names “Dulcinea of El Toboso”. I wrote about this book in a previous newsletter. If you missed the synopsis, you can find it here.

My third encounter was to Italy. My wife, Elfa, subscribes to seasonal tickets to the Great Performance series at Davies Symphony Hall. It is a delightful experience every time we go to the concerts. Often it is a surprise, since we are introduced to musicians and performers whom we have not heard before. Our most recent performance was Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo: The Birth of Opera”, performed by English baroque soloists with the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 (three years after Shakespeare) and died in 1643.

The story begins with a description of the gentleman named Don Quixote, who spends a fortune to buy and read books about chivalry. After reading losing his mind, he decides to become a Knight-Errant, the occupation that was practical about 400 years later.

There is a word in Russian, “cavalier”, and though I am not a linguist, I thought that the word “chivalry” may have had some connection with the word “Caveleri”, which in Russian was used to indicate a person of certain standing in a phrase “Dami ee Caveleri”—similar to ‘Ladies and Gentleman’ (also used as an admirer or a dance partner). But it also connected with the word cavalry (soldiers who fought on horseback), which brings us back to our story where Don Quixote wanted to know how to be and behave like a knight.

According to the dictionary, a “cavalier”, or “chevalier”, means a gallant or courtly gentleman; a well-mannered man. It seemed that regarding how the word was used in the past, all definitions essentially lead to what today we call a gentleman. I proceeded to think about, what is a gentleman in today’s standards?  We’ve likely all heard the phrase, “he is a real gentleman”. Online, I found that one of the definitions of a gentleman is that it is “a man who combines gentle birth or rank with chivalrous qualities”. And what if I did not have a privilege of the gentle birth? Can I, like Don Quixote, learn how to be a gentleman without losing a sense of reality the way he did?

WikiHow tells us that there are at least 22 ways of how to be chivalrous. Apparently chivalry is not only about respecting women. It separates the “men from the boys”. I also found an article online by James Michael Sama, “The Art of Being a Gentleman” and of course there are more ways to learn. But first, start by practicing on yourself—before you can be gentle with others, be gentle with yourself. The word “Gentleman” can be used in different connotations, as well as in this story about a man who traveled to the countryside.

This little encounter reminded me about some thoughts I had while driving from Santa Fe to Phoenix via Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon National Park a few weeks ago. I remembered the quote, “The road is always better than the inn”, coined by Miguel de Cervantes in about 1605 in his novel “Don Quixote de la Mancha”.

The book describes the stories of a retired gentleman Alonso Quixano, who changed his name into Don Quixote, and together with his friend Sancho Panza, traveled in Spain and got himself into trouble. I read the book many years ago and the only things I remembered were Don Quixote fighting with the windmills, but the image stuck in my mind.

Like the previous Easter Sunday, I was expecting to find a lot of people at the top. After all, it was an orthodox church Easter and the Armenian community, which belongs to this religious group, actually owns the land surrounding the cross. When the public land (Mount Davidson) was sold to a private organization, the cross was saved. However, apparently the celebration of Easter at sunrise happens only once a year.

The plaque at the bottom of the cross commemorates the site of the Armenian Genocide or Holocaust perpetuated by the Ottoman Turks, which started on April 24^th, 1915, with an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed. Pope Francis described the mass killings of Armenians by Turkey as “the first Genocide of the 20^th century”

It was not the first mass killing in history, and not the last one. An estimated 6 million Jews were killed by Germans, Latvians, and Polish during World War II. It was commemorated yesterday, April 16^th, as Yom Hashoah—Remembrance Day. Recently, there were genocides in Rwanda, Tanzania, and the former Yugoslavia. Photo images of the survivors were recorded by the great photographer Sebastião Salgado. There is a must-see documentary showing his life and work called “The Salt of the Earth”. His other monumental project, called “Genesis: Photographs by Sebastião Salgado”, is his collection of photographs of nature. This project restored his belief that despite human atrocities, life goes on.

The surprises kept on coming. There were cars and a TV KRON 4 News station van at the top of the hill. How did they get there? There was a table with some food, water, and of course—Starbucks coffee.

It turned out that it has been a long standing tradition to greet Easter by the tallest Cross (103 ft) in California, at the site which belongs to the Armenian Church. People gather there to express their adherence to a tradition, followed by their faith that Jesus Christ came resurrected on the third day after his crucifixion, almost 2000 years ago. What has changed from that time long ago, on Sunday, the crowd used their cell phones to photograph the Cross, or to take selfies with the incredible city view behind them. Additionally, the correspondent from the TV station used his cell phone to read his script.