Check us out at www.mattmendelsohn.com!

See you there.

Matt

There are some clients you just love. Rashida Johnson is one of them.

When she and her sister first came into my studio, the excitement level was off the chart. And as I've said so may times over the years, what artist (of any kind) wouldn't want a client like that? In her first email to me, back on July 17, 2011, she wrote simply, "I LOVE your photography!" A week later, after we had met for the first time, she wrote back: "Your photography is AMAZING!" And two weeks after that, when she had signed a contract, she emailed yet again: "WE'RE SO EXCITED!!"

Now, part of me wants to buy Rashida a thank you gift and fix that caps lock problem she seems to be having, but maybe I'll get her something else. :)

Seriously, I have to say I was just as excited as Rashida, her groom, Steven, their two daughters, Sydney and Skylar, and their dog, Paris. The whole family is a delight.

The best part is that Rashida came to me by way of another of my all time favorite people (and families), Jessica Stafford Davis, who hired me a few years back to photograph The People's Inaugural Project. That project, where hundreds of rooms on inauguration day 2008 at the Marriott at Freedom Plaza were donated to homeless people, disenfranchised people, the elderly and the sick, was one of the most rewarding events I've ever photographed in my life. And I'm not blowing smoke. I'll never forget it.

It's clear that the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Old Town, just a stone's throw from my studio, produces some amazingly great folks. And I feel enriched to have met so many now!

Thanks, guys!

TO SEE A MINI GALLERY OF IMAGES FROM STEVEN AND RASHIDA'S WEDDING, CLICK HERE!

Matt

Remarks I made at Gutterman's Funeral Home, Woodbury, NY, April 9, 2012:

It was not even three years ago that I stood at this very podium at Gutterman’s. I had come home to deliver the eulogy for my best friend from childhood, David Fischer, who died after a short bout with leukemia. David was a bit of a nerd, in the best sort of way, an aspiring jazz trombonist and a lover of science fiction. My father, as many of us know, always liked people who were smart, and that included my thirteen-year-old friends. He in the front driving and David in the back with me, barely able to see over the seat, would, on the way home from this bar mitzvah or that winter band concert, discuss topics as far ranging as Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd or the latest Ursula Le Guin story.

As I drove up from Washington to Long Island to speak at David’s funeral, those memories came floating back. With cars whizzing by on the New Jersey Turnpike, I tried to gather my thoughts and formulate the core of what I would say. I wasn’t very successful and later that evening I sat in the dining room of my parents’ house in Old Bethpage staring at a blank laptop screen.

Suddenly my father popped his head in.

“You know, your father has written some good eulogies in his day. If you want me to take a look, just ask.” He had a devious, self-congratulatory look on his face.

“What”? I replied. “I’m good, dad. I know how to write, too.”

“I’m just saying, your old pops here is a prett-tttty good eulogy writer. I’ve written some good ones! Crowd pleasers! I could take a look. I’m just sayin’!”

Thinking I had been somehow transported into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I said, “Um, dad, you’re not challenging me to a eulogy writing contest, are you?”

“No, I’m just saying that if you get stuck, just remember Daniel isn’t the only good writer in the family. I’m a prettttt-ty good at eulogies.”

Jay Mendelsohn, ladies and gentleman: perhaps not the warmest and fuzziest guy in a time of grief but never one to shy away from an intellectual challenge. And a man whose sage advice—people drive like maniacs in parking lots—will live on long after him.

There’s a lot to be said of my father and I know my siblings and his dear friends will touch on a bit of everything today. He was brilliant scientist—I once asked him, proud and wide-eyed, like any kid, what he did for a living and he responded, “You wouldn’t understand.” He was right. I didn’t understand and I still don’t understand. Every year on family day at Grumman Aerospace, when the public could get a glimpse inside, I remember seeing a dry-erase board in his office filled end to end with mathematical hieroglyphics. Was my dad building a hydrogen bomb or were those just plans for a backyard swimming pool? I still don’t have a clue.

He was funny and he loved comedy. He loved his Modern Jazz Quartet and Beethoven sonatas. And he tried his whole adult life to pick up hobbies and talents that his childhood never afforded him. To no one’s delight, he took up violin at the age of fifty, fancying himself a modern-day Thomas Jefferson. He learned the keyboard even later than that, just as he spent hours at the driving range teaching himself to hit a golf ball, the only kind of ball not found in the Bronx circa 1940.

But for all intents and purposes, the beauty of the Jay Mendelsohn A to Z is that you really never have to get past the B’s. A, of course, is for atheism, though if any of us harbor hopes of being home by the All Star break I’ll mercifully spare you the details of my mathematician father’s legendary disdain for all things religious.

His religion can be found in the B’s anyhow: The Bronx, Baseball and Bagels, the beauty being that the first two were generally discussed while eating the third. For as long as I can remember, the book Gödel, Escher, Bach sat on the downstairs shelf in our house. This is the Jay Mendelsohn version: The Bronx, Baseball, Bagels.

He and his buddies would gather each morning—and I mean every morning—at Town Bagel, Plainview’s own Algonquin Round Table. Ralph, Milt, Herb, Lenny and the gang. They were such a fixture that a a little plaque above the first booth notes it as the headquarters of the “Town Bagel Irregulars.” The Irregulars would talk about everything—think Regis and Kelly but with a bunch of old Jewish guys—a stack of papers on the table providing the discussion fodder. But mostly the talk was about baseball, even in the depths of January.

My father’s love of baseball is well known and I won’t dwell. Suffice to say his entire life seemed to revolve around the New York Mets and a recliner. From Art Shamsky and Cleon Jones to Rusty Staub and Jon Matlack. From Mookie Wilson to, well, Mookie Wilson. Boy did my father love Mookie Wilson. It’s no surprise that he chose to leave us last week just hours after Opening Day, when the Mets were firmly ensconced in first place with a 1-0 record. 

His love began like it does in most, with memories of childhood. In 1969, the Anno Domini of any Met fan’s life, he submitted an entry to a poetry contest that Newsday was running. And wouldn’t you know they published his poem:

They came home after school

and gave their all;

With just a broomstick and a rubber ball.

No record book records

their feats;

Of greatness achieved

on city streets.

But my Hall of Fame

of derring-doers

Includes the guys who

hit three sewers.

Though I’d seen that poem hanging next to the bar downstairs for most of my life, it never really clicked until recently. There’s a myth in my family, one that is often repeated, that my father wanted his children to be just like him. And that he got his wish with Andrew, the physicist and first-born, but then saw his dream evaporate as his next four children pursued careers in decidedly more liberal arts-y pursuits. But that’s not the case. The truth is that I think my mathematician father secretly wanted to be more like his liberal artsy children, including Andrew, an accomplished pianist, and that he always harbored artistic desires that couldn’t be found in Plant 35 of the Grumman Aerospace Corporation.

Several years ago, at the memorial service of my father’s brother, Bob, with whom he had difficult relationship, just as he did with his other brother Howard, my dad sat in the pew of a funeral home in Staten Island listening as a rabbi who, through no fault of his own, gave a generic, fill-in-the-blankish kind of comfort speech, one which described Bob’s life as being a blessing to those around him, blah blah blah. From a few rows back I could see steam coming out of my father’s ears, and it had nothing to do with his disdain for clergy. It was because this well-intentioned rabbi didn’t know a single thing about the man he was speaking of.

My father rose to the podium and those of us in attendance that day will never forget the moment. The man with no literary aspirations, the man who spent a lifetime in algorithms, began to describe the hellish life Bob went through as a boy, crippled yet undaunted by polio, his two brothers struggling to help him up the endless stairs at Yankee Stadium, metal leg braces clanging all the way.

It was a Rosetta Stone moment for me, the first time I had seen my father speak so eloquently about anything and perhaps the first time I understood the sadness of his formative years. 

Thomas Wolfe once wrote “Only the Dead know Brooklyn" but had he met my father he might have set his story a few miles north. For people of my father’s generation, the place seems to only exist now as a ghost story, populated with spirits of a long-gone place. It’s a bit weird. The Bronx—Montgomery Ave., Popham Ave. in particular—played such a pivotal role in shaping my father’s life and yet I’ve never been there. Not once, either by myself or with my father. He never took me. All I know of it is from the stories. How he helped to teach English to Bill Graham—then Wolfgang Grajonca—a Polish refugee who lived downstairs and would go onto become one of the most important non-musicians in the history of rock and roll. Of the buddies, Walter, Eugene, of the Grand Concourse, and of run-ins with gangs with names like the Fordham Baldies.

A few months ago, my father sent his children a story he’d written. It seemed to come out of nowhere. Perhaps, like a D-Day veteran who said nothing to his family until his last years, my father felt a need to finally get it out. Then again, maybe he was just continuing the eulogy contest we started three years ago. There’s a presumption that the eulogist knows something about the person he’s eulogizing. I certainly know my dad but I’m not sure there’s anything I can offer you better than this. So here, for the very first time, A Short Visit, by Jay Mendelsohn:

At my age—eighty-two in September—it’s probably not a great idea to embark upon a detailed re-reading of The Odyssey, a book I first encountered in Doc Solomon’s Latin class at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx some seventy years ago, with a recent screening of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Between Cole Porter coming back to life and Odysseus’ visit to the House of the Dead, many shades, to use Homer’s term, have been dancing through my head of late.

In my working life, I was an applied mathematician in the research department of an aerospace company for thirty-six years. After that I was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at a local university. During the time of my retirement I have taught myself to play a halting—not haunting—version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” on keyboard. And just last year I co-authored a paper published in the Journal of American Baseball Research.

Despite all of this, my five kids keep making suggestions about projects that will help me “avoid Alzheimers.” One such suggestion, from my son Daniel, a classics professor, was that I sit in on his course on the epic poem, The Odyssey. I thought this might be a good thing: going back to college, not as professor but as a student.

But on a recent evening stroll, I went further back than college. I turned a corner and suddenly I found myself standing at the intersection of 175th street and University Avenue, where my friends would meet after dinner to decide the night’s plan. As was usual for U. Avenue, the streets were crowded with people out strolling. But like Homer and Woody, the people I saw were just shades. I knew many of them. 

There was Florence Spierer. She was one of my mother’s best friends. She ran a beauty salon in her apartment on the ground floor of 1635 Montgomery, where we first lived when we moved to the neighborhood. Her husband Walter was a swindler who went to jail for scamming $5,000 from the superintendent of the building. Startled, I quickly realized where I was. I looked for some familiar faces, like Walter Robbins or Freddie Berger, who died at twenty-two in an automobile accident. Freddie had so much talent but he lived and drove too fast.

I stood there on the corner for a few minutes. No one could see me. I started walking up the hill on 175th St. and I had the sense I was being programmed, like having a GPS inside my head. I understood where I was going. I walked up to the fifth floor of a building diagonally across from 1635, walked down the hall and stopped in front of an apartment door. I could hear high-pitched voices of ladies talking and occasionally the sound of jingling coins. I knew I had entered the apartment of Maimie P., a close friend of my mother Katie, and the woman who ran the daily poker game for the neighborhood ladies.

In those days gambling was illegal but everyone knew that the game existed. Katie, my mother, was a regular. Mamie brought up her three sons using income from the game. Her youngest, Larry, was one of my closest friends over the years we lived in the neighborhood, and our friendship continued after we married and moved to Long Island. Never a word passed between us about the relationship of our mothers. In those days of hard times, kids knew when not to talk.

Anyway, there I was in the apartment and there were the ladies around a table covered with a white table cloth. I recognized it. I recognized Aunt Sarah. Of the four Stanger sisters, Sarah was closest to my mother. My mother got up from the table and announced, "He's here." She started to explain which of her sons I was: "He's the smart one. He put the man on the moon". (When my mother found out the company I worked for built the lunar module, she was totally convinced I was solely responsible for doing it. After many years of trying to disavow her of that, I gave up. In this place, I thought, what difference does it make?)

My mother walked towards me, her arms stretched in front of her and I reached out to meet her. But Odysseus could not embrace his mother and neither could I. Never mind—Katie and me were never big huggers. 

"So how do you like it here mom?” I said. "It’s very nice,” she replied. Mom could always make do whatever her circumstance. Then, turning her head away and lowering her voice, she said, "But I wish these ladies were better players. I win lots of money every day but money is not much use in this place. I'd rather be playing in a harder game."

"How’s dad?" I asked.

"Oh, he's fine. You'll see soon enough.”

I left the building and continued up the hill, heading west toward Popham Avenue, crossing Montgomery. I glanced across the street and a bunch of kids were playing a game of “Captain” up against the street level wall in front of 1635 Montgomery. Captain is a Bronx variation of box ball. The sidewalks in our Bronx neighborhood were divided into rectangles. In Captain, each player occupied a rectangle one length away from the building wall. 

The game I was watching was being played against the wall, under the ground floor apartment of Dr. I. Starin (Starinsky once, I’m guessing.). Dr. Starin was the guy who falsely diagnosed me as having rheumatic fever in 1940, when I was just eleven years old. Because of that mis-diagnosis I lost a semester in school and all the friends I had since the fourth grade. I had to stay in bed for about three weeks and I was sent to a poor kids’ convalescence home for two weeks after that. All I could do was sit and watch the other kids play. Now here I stood, watching the game for a while, hoping one of the players would hit the ball too high and break the window of Dr. Starin. But time was running out and there was not enough for me to satisfy an old grudge. I had another visit to make. 

I continued west to Popham Avenue, the highest street in the Bronx. From there everything was downhill to the Metro North train—across the Harlem River and over to Washington Heights in Manhattan. I entered 1647 Popham.

The elevator appeared to be waiting for me and it immediately started up when I stepped in. Without pushing the button, I was on the sixth floor. Apartment 6A was next to the elevator on the right. We were a sixth-floor family for all but two of the twenty years we lived in the Bronx. I rang the door bell, but the bell made no sound. Thinking it was broken, I knocked on the door, but there was no sound no matter how hard I knocked.

So I just stood in front of the door listening, and here's what I heard: Jack Benny. I knew it was the radio because Benny introduced the singer, Kenny Baker, who was long gone by the time of TV. The happiest times of my dad's life were listening to his favorite radio programs, all of them comedies; Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber Magee and Molly, Amos and Andy and others. Jack Benny was his favorite. Over the years I had come to know most of the Benny routines, and as I listened through the door, one of them was beginning. A holdup man says to Benny, "Your money or your life.” There’s a long silence. Benny finally replies Well, I'm thinking! and the audience roars in laughter.

I hear my father’s laughter also. My father was good man, without any enemies and only a few friends. Even as a little boy I knew he was a sad man, hard to get close to. His happiest times were doing what he was doing right now. I listened more outside the apartment door. When he was fourteen-years-old his mother died. His first wife died before she was thirty, his sister died at sixteen, and his brother at twenty-one. He suffered much but never complained. I felt this sadness as I was growing up but I didn't understand it until much later. But I knew one thing for sure: on Sunday night, I would always hear him laughing and that always made me feel good. Standing outside the door of the apartment, in this underworld, I was feeling good, too.

I sensed it was time for my visit to come to an end. I stepped into the elevator, rode down to the first floor and stepped out of 1647 Popham Ave. and right into the driveway of 10 Neil Dr. in Old Bethpage.

I was home.

Okay, so I lied. I promised that by this time we'd have a new website/blog in operation but you what what happens to best laid plans. Hopefully by this time next month we'll be a little closer to that goal. And so we beat on, as F. Scott, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Our past today involves the Iverson family. Seven or so years ago, on a brutally hot day if I recall correctly, I photographed Becca Iverson's wedding at the National Cathedral. It was a beautiful affair, with a reception at the Museum of Women in the Arts.

This past January I had the pleasure of shooting another Iverson wedding, this time the marriage of Becca's sister Margot to Joshua White. Winter had replaced the summer heat, but the cast of characters all remained familiar. (Except that Becca now has a beautiful baby girl.)

Josh and Margot were married in the Bethlehem Chapel at the Cathedral. Before heading down though, I searched quickly for a spot that had the two ingredients for a great cathedral photograph: a) light and b) no tourists. It's harder than you might imagine. But judging from the picture that sits atop this page, I'm rather pleased with the result. :)

After the cathedral, it was off to one of my favorite historic homes in Washington, Meridian House. Blame it on those magical Linden trees but there's always something incredibly romantic about this place. I've shot so many weddings here over the years and I never get tired of walking in again.

Margot and Josh are about to return from a delayed honeymoon to New Zealand. So rather than yack, how about some pictures instead?

To view a mini-gallery of images from Josh and Margot's wedding, CLICK HERE.

Have a great day. It's a gorgeous pre-Spring day here in the nation's capital. Look at these pictures and then go ride your bike!

Matt