<\/p>\n
If you’re on the<\/strong><\/span> Cleveland Workmen’s Circle concert committee, there’s a 25 percent chance you’ll be dead in 10 years. (I counted the dead from a 10-year-old committee roster.)<\/p>\n An elderly woman suggested we include a tribute to a recently deceased committee member in our concert brochure. But the brochure’s cover already read “in memory of Eugenia and Henry Green,” the concert’s principal funders.<\/p>\n I said, “People are dying on this committee every other year. We can’t be putting in written testimonials.”<\/p>\n “Like who?\u00a0 Who’s dying?” the woman asked.<\/p>\n I didn’t name names.\u00a0 Why sidetrack the meeting?<\/p>\n The committee met in<\/strong><\/span> a room under a portrait of Eugene V. Debs. \u00a0A photo of Norman Thomas was in the hallway.<\/p>\n This committee in its prime — about 20 years ago — was like hanging around the cafeteria at CCNY or Western Reserve University in the day. \u00a0There had been Max Wohl, Socialist (capital S<\/em>) and major ACLU donor; David Guralnik, editor of the New World Dictionary; Herman Hellerstein, the cardiologist who first recommended, in the 1960s, exercise after heart attacks; and Harold Ticktin, Mississippi civil rights lawyer (summer 1965), authority on the Jewish Bund, and former “Kinsman cowboy” (Kinsman Road loiterer).\u00a0 Ticktin said the Jewish Kinsman cowboys in the 1930s called the Italian Kinsman cowboys “noodles” and shkutzim<\/em> (gentile boys).<\/p>\n Committee members occasionally called each other “friend,” a quasi-socialist salutation.<\/p>\n Several “friends” decided to honor Yiddishe Cup with a Workmen’s Circle dinner.\u00a0 What Yiddishe Cup didn’t know: the honoree paid to be honored.<\/p>\n Ben Shouse, friend<\/strong><\/span> in charge of fundraising, had a booming voice and a shock of gray hair like H.L. Mencken.\u00a0 And he wore suits like Mencken, and he smoked a cigar like Mencken.\u00a0 Politically, Shouse was un-Menckenable.\u00a0\u00a0 Shouse was a retired labor union boss, autodidact (he liked inculcate<\/em>), and an advocate for the arts, especially “Shakespeare for the workers”-type events.<\/p>\n Shouse phoned me, suggesting Yiddishe Cup musicians pony up for the banquet.\u00a0 He said, “Stratton, you know how these things work. Cooperate!”<\/p>\n I didn’t know how these things worked.\u00a0 Not in 1994, I didn’t. \u00a0I thought Yiddishe Cup was being honored because we were good — some sort of arts prize.\u00a0 I had played tribute dinners before, but had never understood the dynamics. \u00a0Shouse said he had raised thousands at a previous dinner in honor of his elderly girlfriend.<\/p>\n Two Yiddishe Cup musicians told me they couldn’t afford the price of the dinner, let alone bring friends, or crazier yet, “buy a table.”<\/p>\n I corralled three people,<\/strong><\/span> including my wife, to attend.\u00a0 I hesitated to hock <\/em>friends, particularly for a chicken dinner at a windowless Alpha Drive party center.\u00a0 And my friends would have to listen to speeches about a fraternal organization, Workmen’s Circle, most had never heard of.<\/p>\n Shouse phoned Yiddishe Cup’s singer and said to him: “Stratton gave fifty-five dollars.\u00a0 Greenman gave twenty-five dollars.\u00a0 How about you?\u00a0 And who are you bringing?”<\/p>\n Shouse nearly traumatized my singer, a sensitive artist.<\/p>\n One Yiddishe Cup musician didn’t bother to show up for the tribute.\u00a0\u00a0 Another musician rewound his Shouse phone message for me: “This dinner is in your fucking honor! \u00a0You’re sophisticated. You know the rules.\u00a0 Do your part!”<\/p>\n Shouse died in 2003. He raised a lot of money for the arts in Cleveland.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Coda: If you’re on the Cleveland Workmen’s Circle concert committee, there’s a 25 percent chance you’ll be dead in 10 years. (I counted the dead from a 10-year-old committee roster.) An elderly woman suggested we include a tribute to a recently deceased committee member in our concert brochure. But the brochure’s cover already read “in memory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8836,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/8836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThis year the concert committee added several younger members. Odds are now probably less than 25 percent of a random-selected committee member dying in the next 10 years.\u00a0 Also, the \u00a0Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas pictures are down. Rebbe Menachem Schneerson is up.\u00a0 A Chabad-affiliate organization bought the Workmen’s Circle building and shares it with the Workmen’s Circle. Now playing in Cleveland:\u00a0Enemies: A Love Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"