Our voyage begins in Dublin, with an Aer Lingus flight full of hot Irish stewardesses, and a morning feast of blood sausage and runny eggs. Passing by a bar, where tourists and locals alike were drinking at 8 am local time, we flew to Rome. A short train ride to Firenze, and the adventure really began. Due to some logistical foul ups, we didn’t have lodging arranged. We wandered around the city until 2; taking in the Duomo without the hordes of tourists, and then hunkered down in the grass by the train station. It was sort of like camping, but without less wildlife and more drunks and homeless folks. I actually didn’t really sleep, preferring to stay awake and watch passersby. And they say chivalry is dead…
The next day we got a bus to Panzano, and met Janet and Lou to take us to the Villa Bracciano. It’s an incredible 500 year old castle, with a pool, stocked wine cellar and stunning hillside views. This is travel Sable-style, and we made to sure to enjoy it while it lasts. We toured charming hilltop towns, ate hearty meals and drank wine until we could drink no more. Then the next day, we did it all again. My favorite meal was at a restaurant in Panzano called The Butcher’s. He is a friend of Jamie Oliver, and it’s apparently frequented by Jack Nicholson. There is no menu, just wave after wave of meat dishes. I had more wine than normal, and ate myself silly on rare lamb balls. Our last night we dined on our patio under the moon, and finished the evening with drinking games and Hannah Montana style Uno (apparently she’s kind of a big deal). Ali dubbed the trip Sable Crunkfest 2008, and I have to agree. Next year in the Greek Isles!
With teary goodbyes, and firm warning to come home alive, we departed this morning and continued to Lucca and Rome.
The conquering heroes
Our sweet pool
A long night in Firenze
Wine tasting at Cennotoio
Lou can hold her own
Crunkfest 2008
Went to Dana and Eric’s fabulous wedding in the mountains of North Carolina. It was a gorgeous day, and both the bride and groom looked stunning, and their exit to the opening riffs of Kashmir was eminently appropriate. The party involved pulled pork, a meal expertly prepared by Ashton, moonshine drinking on a verandah, and interesting mix of Princeton graduates, Atlanta residents and a few yankees. It was a real cultural experience.
While the events were perfect, the transportation there and back was not. Our flight into Greensboro was on the heels of a category 2 tornado with winds of approximately 130 mph. Two FedEx planes were damaged, pushed into a fence and ditch. We landed safely, but saw some sweet lightning and experienced some pretty strong cross winds.
You’d think that this would be the extent of the travel related incidents, but our flight back was even more exciting. The flight on Sunday night was cancelled due to crew worktime issues, so we were rebooked to Monday morning. Janet scored us a free night at the airport Marriott thanks to her impeccable negotiating tactics. The morning flight to Laguardia was fine until the approach, just after we passed over Lady Liberty. At that point, the pilot came on the intercom and informed us we were having “mechanical trouble” and were diverting to Philadelphia. It turns out that the flaps were malfunctioning, so a higher landing speed would be necessary to avoid stall, requiring a longer runway than Laguardia has. A perfectly reasonable explanation, but not the one that was offered at the time, so there were some ripples of passenger nervousness. Lou popped a Xanax and Janet tightened her seatbelt.
Philly was also experiencing strong crosswinds, so our first approach got down to perhaps 50 feet before the pilot gunned the engine and went around for another try. Again, not out of the ordinary, but when mixed with the previous circumstances, people started to get freaked out. The second landing was trailed by emergency vehicles, and I managed a quick snap of one just off the wing.
emergency landing
tornado airplane
My great uncle, Samuel Levinger, fought and died in the Spanish Civil War with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He was a machine gunner in the Tom Mooney Battalion, and died at the battle of Belchité in late August 1937.
The son of a rabbi and an author, Sam was an adventuresome child. At the age of eight he ran away from his home in Delaware to re-enact the story of Huckleberry Finn, floating south on the Mississippi. He didn’t get very far. His family were active liberals and anti-fascists, not Communists. His parents supported both Franklin Delanor Roosevelt & Norman Thomas, a socialist candidate for president in 1936. They were proud defenders of striking workers. When Sam was fourteen, he ran away to join a coal workers strike in Kentucky. He was the sole person to be arrested for “talking back” to the sheriff.
At a May Day Parade in New York City in 1936, he carried on his shoulders a young child named Staughton Lynd, who grew up to be a prominent social and labor activist, and professor at Yale University. In a 1998 address to the Friends of Kent State University Libraries, Lynd said the following about his memory of Sam:
“When I was five or six years old, a young man named Sam Levinger carried me on his shoulders in a May Day parade in New York City. Later that year Sam Levinger went to Spain as a volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. As a child I was told that he was wounded in the groin by machine gun fire, and died because medical supplies were inadequate.
Recently I was asked to review a book on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and learned more facts about Sam Levinger. He came from Columbus, and attended Ohio State. His father was a rabbi. For the last sixty years I have assumed that Sam Levinger was a Communist, as were most of the volunteers for the Lincoln Brigade. Now I learn that he was a member of the Young Peoples Socialist League, as I might have been had I been fifteen years older. I learned the date and place that he was fatally wounded: in August 1937, at Belchite. These facts are all new to me, but the inward, essential meaning of Sam Levinger’s life and death became part of me as a child. I do not even actually remember being carried on his shoulders. Like so much of oral history, it was told to me, and I accepted it as true, and it was true. Levinger touched my life, teaching me without words that one should be prepared to give one’s all for an ideal.”
Sam wanted to use his experience in Spain to further his writing. He was collecting material for his future career as a professional writer; the talents for which he certainly had. Here is an article published in The Nation under the pseudonym “RP.” I have been told by my mother that it was actually written by Sam. Reproducing this article is probably in violation of copyright law, but given that the date of publication is 1937, I doubt anyone will care. Sam’s war journal was published posthumously in the now-defunct Columbia Dispatch. Rabbi Mark Samuel Hurvitz, whose middle name comes (partly) from my great-Uncle’s, tracked down a copy and transcribed and posted it.
Sitting down with Mother and searching through her collection of family papers, we found a half finished manuscript of a book my great-grandmother had started to write about her son. Elma Ehrlich Levinger was a well published author of children’s and Jewish stories, and she intended to memorialize Sam by telling his story. Her book was never published, but my mother or I may resume the task in the future.
I wrote a research paper on the Spanish Civil War when I was in high school, for which I received second place in the annual American History Essay Contest. (I was bested by the inimitable Jared Malsin, the kind of person who, had he been born 75 years ago, might also have joined the International Brigades to fight fascism.) Given that I wrote this as a sophomore in high school, it doesn’t comport to my current standards of research or writing, but it’s worth posting for the sake of completeness.
Here is a copy of his last letter home, informing his parents that he was going back to the front from a hospital in Madrid. It is a truly stoic piece of writing, almost to the point of being glib. Without ever having known Sam, I have no reference point to compare it with. But it does compare with the standard Levinger humor: always biting, revealing the truth of a situation, even in the worst of times.
Sam’s idealism and courage were far above that of the average 20 year old, and I am honored by the knowledge that some of the same blood flows in my veins. I am inspired by his sacrifice in the face of evil, and I dedicate myself to the pursuit of social justice in his memory. ¡No Pasaran!
Samuel Harold Levinger (1917-1937)
