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An Old Queens Friend Honors An Ancient Wonder
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| Queens College friends Trib publisher Mike Schenkler & artist, filmmaker Mark Podwal. photo: Lillian Schenkler
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By MICHAEL SCHENKLER
Growing up in Queens has led me to many wonderful friends and experiences. This past extended weekend was one of them which was an outgrowth of a friendship that has lasted more than four decades.
Mark Podwal grew up in Queens – in Electchester. We were fraternity brothers in college – Queens College – where we wrote skits together with some very other talented Queens guys for an annual competition which we always won. (If any of them are reading, please email me at the address below). On two years, we included a brief cartoon – one of them in 3D – which Mark drew, as part of our presentation.
We worked on New York Moratorium – the anti war movement together. Mark drew, I wrote.
Mark became a doctor – a dermatologist – I began teaching and as a sideline a partner in an art gallery. We began to sell Mark’s work then publish his serigraphs and lithographs. Mark grew.
Over the years Mark has published more than a dozen creative art books, has drawn op-ed cartoons for the NY Times and through his artwork, always has a story to tell.
If you had to identify his niche, Jewish legend, history and tradition is where he has achieved the greatest success. In addition to his own books, he has illustrated dozens of others including including five by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. He became an established artist with shows in New York, Jerusalem, Prague and elsewhere – I’ve attended several of the local ones.
His works are represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), The Library of Congress (Washington, DC), the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Museum of the City of New York, The National Gallery in Prague, and Princeton University.
Mark designed the tapestry which adorns the arc at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has reproduced his works on three ceramic plates. He was the illustrator and creative consultant for the PBS television video A Passover Seder Presented by Elie Wiesel and created the cover painting for Itzhak Perlman’s cd recording, Live in the Fiddler’s House
Mark has always drawn with a message. Whether his first book “Decline and Fall of the American Empire” a collection of peace (anti-war) drawings, his medical and scientific knowledge portrayed in his early “Freud’s DaVinci” or any of the the Jewish books he’s had published, the meaning is much deeper than the art itself.
Mark is one of those rare people whose talent never seeks to amaze. His brilliance and gifts have been responsible for an endless string of creative work over the four decades we’ve been friends.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when he called me several weeks ago and said, “the American premiere of my movie is at the Hamptons Film Festival; come see it.”
“House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague” is a documentary written by Mark which he co-produced with the film’s director, Academy Award winner Alan Miller.
The solemn yet joyous documentary tells the story of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, the site of layer upon layer of buried members of the once-vibrant Jewish community of the Ghetto. “House of Life” chronicles its history, rich in lore, mysticism, tradition and philosophy that attracts two thirds of a million visitors annually. Tales of great rabbis and philanthropists and the story of the giant golem created from clay to protect the Jewish people – the subject of one of Mark’s books — are narrated by Claire Bloom.
The 12,000 stones on the surface of The Old Jewish Cemetery may be covering as many as 100,000 members of Prague’s historic Jewish community. Under the German occupation in World War II, the cemetery was the only place where Jewish children were allowed to play. Later, under the communists, lovers met there for trysts.
The cemetery, as does the film, serves as a reminder of the indomitable spirit of a people compelled to honor their past and preserve the lessons of history.
After the premiere, as with most the films at the Hamptons Film Festival, the filmmakers took questions and discussed their work. Then with a dozen old friends and family we broke bread and toasted Mark Podwal, a Queens story with deep meaning and a message.
L’chaim!
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State Sliding Deficit Financing Slippery Slope
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HENRY STERN
Gov. Eliot Spitzer was the principal speaker recently at a Citizens Budget Commission forum dealing with the state budget and health care costs. He spoke well and forcefully about problems that will require joint efforts to resolve.
CBC showed charts indicating that although this year’s budget was balanced, they foresaw increasing gaps in the out years. There are three classic ways to close budget gaps: 1) increasing receipts, usually by tax hikes or great prosperity 2) reducing expenditures, which means cutting the budget, and 3) borrowing money, which inceases state debt and the debt service which the state must pay each year for interest.
One can also do what Enron did, borrow money outside the budget by using state authorities in order to submit a cleaner, balanced budget, without regard to how much debt the state and its related agencies will have to service and eventually redeem or perpetuate.
Last year the remarkable boom in both Wall Street and real estate balanced both the city and state budgets, bringing results evocative of the 2000 dot.com bubble. Recent events, including subprime lending defaults, consequent writedowns and Wall Street layoffs, indicate that the bonanza enjoyed in 2006-07 is unlikely to be repeated in 2007-08. This means there will be less money in the state coffers to offset expenditures, which the state budget adopted March 31 cheerfully increased by 7 percent, more than twice the rate of inflation.
Unfortunately, the pressure of politics causes both legislators and executives to spend more than they receive in taxes. They do this to placate the interest groups that endorse candidates and contribute to campaigns. Divided state political leadership enables the unions and sometimes the corporations to play one house against another.
It is widely believed that the new governor’s belligerent style and occasional overstatements are responsible for the current deadlock, but even assuming the governor had been as sweet as honey pie, it would be difficult to know how much more legislative business would have been accomplished, and what the price would be in pounds of pork. We learned that in politics, not only does not everything you hear turn out to be true, but a great deal of untruth, if not theft, privilege, self-indulgence and abuse of power, is part of the process.
The continued practice of spending more money each year than the state takes in has increased our public debt to over $50 billion. In addition, there is over $45 billion in debt, maybe more, incurred by the 700 public authorities that make up the fourth, most secretive, branch of state government. If the economic picture worsens, the budgets of state agencies will be impacted seriously, which translates into reduction of services.
The largest single item in the state budget is Medicaid, whose cost, coming from all three levels of government, exceeds $44 billion in New York. Medicaid is a federal program, enacted in 1965 as part of LBJ’s Great Society, which provides health services, home care and nursing care to people who are supposed to be poor. The states contribute a large share of the cost, under an old formula in which New York State pays 50 percent, while some Southern states pay as little as 22 percent. According to this year’s state budget, New York’s share amounts to just over half the total cost, about $24.6 billion.
New York is unique in charging a large fraction of its share to the cities and counties of the state, which for many localities is an enormous financial burden.
Governor Spitzer is determined to reduce these costs, and basically to see to it that money goes to poor people rather than to large hospitals, particularly teaching hospitals. His program is staunchly opposed by an alliance of hospitals and their unions, which launched an advertising campaign last year at budget time accusing him of denying care to poor children. Eventually, the matter was compromised by the legislature when the FY 2008 budget was adopted. Look for the struggle to be renewed this spring.
What impact the current impaired relationship between the governor and the legislature will have on the budget process remains to be seen. Hopefully, things will be better by spring, when the major budget decisions will be made. Unfortunately, any weakness or division on the part of public officials weakens their influence, and emboldens those who, for reasons of their own, some possibly legitimate, have designs on the strained state treasury.
The steamroller will have to smooth a rough road. It will require considerable skill as well as brute force. Well, he ran for the job.
StarQuest@NYCivic.org |
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Not4Publication.com by Dom Nunziato |
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