Mail Call

I read that there are some legislators who want to enact a “Do Not Mail” list, similar to the successful “Do Not Call” list.   Right on.

Let’s look at what we got today……

1.  A Comcast bill (can’t avoid that one, I guess)

2.  An offer to go to the Galapagos Islands with Harvard’s Museum of Natural History (eleven months from now).  Highlights include:  “See blue footed boobies”; after a morning of kayaking, I can “experience the escape of massage”; cabins with “two lower single beds which can convert to a queen bed and a window”.

3.  A letter from Children’s National Medical Center which starts with “Happy Spring!”

4.  An invitation to attend a Montgomery College Nursing School Alumni Reception

5.  An invitation from Catholic Charities to attend the 2008 Cardinal’s Charity Ball, April 19, $50

6.  The Library of Congress April Calendar of Events (most interesting look to be the music programs, and a lunchtime lecture on Tuesday the 8th on “The Rescue of Jewish Physicians by the Croatian Government, 1941-1945, one more tale in the story of human progress)

7.  An Invitation to the Harvard Crimson annual Boston lunch (April 26, $50 plus carfare)

8.  Invitation to cousin Maggie’s wedding in May in Kansas City (What a surprise; real mail!!  Wouldn’t want to exclude this one!)

9.  Summer/Fall class schedule at the University of the District of Columbia. (Most important statement:  tuition and fees will be waived for qualifying senior citizens, 65 years of age or older.  Do I qualify?  If so, it’s my chance to take beginning Arabic on Tuesday and Thursday nights in the fall.

10.  The Washington Post “At Home Living in Style” Magazine.  (Actually has an interesting-looking article on the restoration of Dumbarton Oaks, which had been closed for two years or so.)

11. The Comcast Channel Guide for April  (always pitch it; too much paper in the house already)

12.  Allergy & Asthma Today, Volume 6, Issue 1.

13.  A package of postcards that advertise various local businesses

14.  A pitch from Amnesty International

15.  A pitch from the American Jewish Committee (in advance of its 102nd annual meeting, April 29-May 3)

16. A pitch from Planned Parenthood Federation of America

17. A statement that a CD at Wachovia Bank is about to mature.  (My guess:  we move it somewhere else, because the interest rate will be so low, but we won’t know the rate for about three weeks)

18. An ad from Loehmann’s.  Explain this incentive to me.  “Bring this and save…take $25 off your purchase of $50 or more”, followed by “For a $50 transaction you will receive a discount of $25 prorated over the amount of the transaction.

19. Another package of ads from Direct Rewards.  Mostly home improvements.  (We can always use home improvements, as you know)

20. Second notice from the DC Nurses Association

21.  A pitch for the AARP Financial Life Insurance Program.

22.  Renewal notice for “The Forward” (we seem to get this weekly)

23.  An ad for Miracle Ear’s 60th birthday sale (theirs, not ours)

24. Our semi-annual 54 cent dividend check from PEPCO

25. A pitch from Camp Ramah of New England

26.  Hillary Clinton for President “We’re going all the way”

27.  Ad for a new credit card

28. A pitch from CARE (enclosing emergency meal tickets.  Huh?)

29. A note from Kaiser Permanente for Michelle, who has managed to go for (how many years, Michelle, 6? 7?) a long, long time, without telling them she has moved.

30.  The 2008 donor drive solicitation from the Arthritis Foundation

31.  A copy of The Forward

32.   Smithsonian Associate, giving the schedule of upcoming programs.

33.  The National Gallery of Art’s Spring 2008 weekend film calander

34.  A catalog from West Elm

35.  The monthly Adas Israel newsletter.

Well, I have to say, today is not as bad as usual.  By my count, of the 35 items, almost 1/3 are things we want or, even if we don’t want them, need.

But assuming about 300 mail delivery days a year and that this is average, it seems that we get over 10,000 pieces of mail a year.

Almond Croissants

Truth be known, there is nothing as good as a good almond croissant.

But I digress.

I have been staring at a novel called “Ninochka”, by Harvard Professor Svetlana Boym, for several months now. I am not exactly sure why, but you know how it is. You see a book, you judge it by its cover, and you know that you want to read it, although you don’t know the first thing about it.

The book previously belonged to Don. I don’t know who Don is, of course, or why the book wound up at Second Story books, but Boym had inscribed the book to him on March 18, 2003. Although the condition of the book seemed perfect, I think that Don did read it, or at least he read part of it. And he had a pencil with him, with which he only noted one thing. And it was on page 9, so perhaps he went no farther.

Nina Bel’skaya, prior to her being murdered, ate an almond croissant. It was 1939. Don circled the word “almond” and wrote in the margin: “anachronism”.

I have spent a little time (emphasis on the word ‘little’) trying to decide who is the better judge of the history of croissants, Don or Svetlana. While I may be wrong, I vote with Svetlana. Let’s look at what we know. Croissants have been around since at least the 17th century. Almonds longer than that. I rest my case.

I enjoyed the book, although I wanted to tell Svetlana to relax a bit as she went along. Everything seemed a bit tight to me.

The story is simple and complex at the same time. Tanya Stern, Leningrad born New York historian, young unmarried woman, is researching the mysterious death of Nina Bel’skaya fifty years earlier. Nina was a Russian emigrant, living in Paris, trying to make sense of the world of exile, and her role in it. She was poor. She was an intellectual. She was appealing to some, while she turned others away because of her independence of mind. She met a young American. They went to see Greta Garbo in Lubitsch’s “Ninochka”, and she was murdered in her apartment the next day.

The story of the book is the story of Nina, the story of Tanya, the story of Tanya’s grandmother Ninel (that’s Lenin backwards, a name she took to prove her solidarity to the cause), and yes the story of Lubitsch and Ninochka. Narrative, letters, interviews, emails. All with the underpinning of the twentieth century experience of Russian emigrants, including Communists, Pan-Slavists and Jews.  And agents, and double agents, of course.

All of these chains come together as the story proceeds, perhaps a bit too coincidentally. But at least, when the mysterious has been solved (or apparently so), and you end the book, you don’t walk around wondering about the plot. Just about the croissants.

Breakfast time.

Dramaturgy Class

Yesterday, we had the experience of being students in a dramaturgy class, and from it I believe I gained some additional insight on what Hannah will be participating in over the next few years.  We attended a program on Italian opera, taught by musicologist Denise Gallo, at the Smithsonian. Italian opera, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth.

Gallo is a very engaging instructor.  She places operatic endeavors of various periods in their historical context, how they were written to respond to the pressing issues, and social and philosophical trends of the time.  She talked about the continuing tension between the music and the text, and which took the primary and which the secondary roles over time.  She talked about staging.  About influence of technological changes, about the evolution of orchestral instruments.  She talked about cross-cultural influences, how German, Italian and French operas influenced, and stayed separate from, each other.  She used notes, narrative, CDs, DVDs, and a fair number of anecdotes (personal and otherwise) to get her points across.

Isn’t this what dramaturgy is all about?

To Correct Myself:

I reported that my mother had been visiting the New York World’s Fair in 1939, and was in the Czech pavilion when the Germans took the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Then, I looked at the history and saw that the Sudetenland was transferred without military action to Germany in October, 1938, after the infamous Munich conference.

I began to doubt my mother’s story (I was sure I had reported it accurately)

So, I looked further and saw that, in 1939, the Germans invaded what remained of Czechslovakia, taking control of the country and dividing it into two separate provinces, one called Bohemia and Moravia and the other called Slovakia.  This obviously occurred on the day my mother was at the Czech pavilion.  She never forgot the reactions of the Czech nationals who worked there.

A Day Off (5 cents)

I realized that, if I didn’t go to the office today, no one would be surprised, offended, or adversely affected. So I stayed home.

After a sluggish hour at the gym, I read the Washington Post and the Examiner (I didn’t have the energy to turn the seven pages needed before you hit news in the new NYT). I did not learn much from the paper, only that a man on trial for soliciting sex from young boys said that his troubles started when he was a teenager and was raped by Big Foot. I also learned that a quote attributed to former Senator Bill Bradley should have been attributed to another Bill Bradley, the one who works for Pajamas Media. [taking a break from this posting to see what Pajamas Media is. OK, now I know]

Then, I walked to the Metro and went to the National Gallery, which has a wonderful exhibit of mid-19th century English photographs. They include not only landscapes of English country side, but portraits, still lives, industrial scenes, urban scenes, ruined abbeys, and so forth. They all include photos taken other places in Europe (perhaps those of Italy are the most interesting) and an entire room of photos from India. The photos are primarily from the 1850s. They are what was known as calotypes, and were some of the first photographs ever taken. The negatives were the size of the prints, so the cameras tended to be big and boxy. Several are on display.

Correspondence from the Second World War

My uncle died this year at age 95.  He had been in the Army during World War II, serving part of the time in Europe.  He told a lot of war stories, especially as he aged, sometimes repeating the same story over and over.  And sometimes, coming up with something new.  Or mentioning someone who was killed in the war on a particular day in a particular event.  Once, I distrusted the accuracy of what he said, but looking up the battle he mentioned, at what I thought was an improbable location, and which he said took place on a holiday, I discovered he was correct.

His daughter, my cousin, has been slowly going through his house.  He was clearly a pack rat of sorts (although a neat one), and she does not want something of value (personal, not financial) to be accidentally tossed.  On one occasion, when I was in St. Louis, I helped her, and I discovered a box filled with letters, many, many, letters, which he had written to his wife (then his fiance) from abroad, mainly on official V-mail stationery.  It seemed to be a treasure trove, and although I did not read very many of them, I thought the story they painted might be interesting to a broader audience.

This morning, my cousin called to tell me that she found a second box, this time filled with letters my uncle wrote to his mother, and that they seemed to be daily letters and (within the bounds of military censorship) very, very detailed, sights, people, impressions.

I wonder how many more such boxes exist in homes across the country, and how many people have the patience (or is it just the obsessive nature) of my cousin in ferreting them out.

Negative?

A friend from New York (you know who you are) told Edie that she was worried about me, because my blog has turned so negative.

So, let me say, first to New York friend:  nothing is wrong, and I did not know I was being negative.

From here on out, only positive reporting.  (Boy, does that sound like a drag)

Morning Thoughts ($1.21)

Newspaper Thought 1. I knew the NY Times couldn’t hold onto their new format, putting page 2 news on page 7 (see earlier posting), although they stuck to it for two days. Today, I see that there is news creep at the Times, and they have a full page of news on page 6. Of course, they have moved their page 6 ad to page 7, so the third page of news remains on page 8.

Newspaper Thought 2. I see that Howard University has decided to make its campus daily web-only. As no one under the age of forty seems to read newspapers in print any more, perhaps this is a better idea than it seems to be. It is certainly cheaper. I wonder if other universities will (or do) do the same.

Automobile Thought 1. Michelle and Jonathan flew to Denver yesterday. Last night, I received a phone call. Their rental car turned out to be a Prius. So far, so good. They had just left the airport and were on the freeway. They got a little concerned. They had figured out how to turn the car on and how to steer it, but their question was: “How do we turn this car off?” Should I have let them figure it out themselves?

Automobile Thought 2. A relatively new blue Subaru parking on our block has had a chronic problem with its alarm system going off. When it happens, you hear 29 loud beeps, a short silence (I guess you don’t actually hear the silence), 29 more loud beeps, another short silence, and 29 final loud beeps. I assume we are talking about 3-4 minutes from start to end. Several nights ago, it happened early in the morning. Then twice during the day. And then the night before last, starting at about 3 a.m., it happened four times before 6 a.m.

Unclear what can be done. We have told the police. The car clearly has a right to be there. We live on a block that has apartments at one end, and houses at the other. I like it when the apartment dwellers park in front of the house. It’s like we are having company that we don’t have to entertain. But they really should mind their manners.

Last night, no sound. That was good, but I couldn’t sleep anyway. And then, at about 7 a.m., when I had a chance to sleep another hour or so, another horn blared out, as it has on Tuesday and Wednesday. We assume that our neighbors across the street (who are French) are in France for an Easter holiday. But no one told the school bus driver, who has come by each morning, sat with engine idling, and then given two very loud honks before moving on.

Music. While I thought I made an exceptionally good cup of coffee this morning, it was not quite enough to keep me going. It helped, though, when WETA played a recording of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with Wilhelm Kempff at the keyboard. Why don’t I try to make a note each time I hear a recording that I think exceptional? Maybe this is a start.

Food. I passed by the new Chop’t salad shop on Connecticut Avenue, as I do every morning. I once had a carryout salad, and it was pretty good. But I don’t like the place for at least two reasons. First, the name. Clearly, chop’t is not a word, and never will be. It doesn’t even look like a word in any language. And how should it be pronounced? I actually don’t know: to rhyme with klopt (also not a word), to sound like “chop it”, or to be “chop-T (like Ice-T)? Equally importantly, they have painted the walls (all visible from the street) the sickest shade of green that they could find. I want them to move on to a side street far removed from my daily path.

The Post and the Times (1 cent)

Today is an interesting day in the newspaper business.

The Washington Post said on its first page: “Yes, it does look different! Beginning today, we are changing the look and the read of our A-section, with additional graphics, better labeling, more diversity in content and a more organized report. Our new look begins on A2.”

The New York Times said on its first page: “To our readers: Look different? Changes to the first section of the newspaper today are explained on Page A2.”

Quite a coincidence, huh?

But that is where the similarities end. The Post it appears is putting more news in its front section, with bolder headlines, and a less regimented design. It does look more appealing. And it is replacing what has, for me, been a wasted page 2, which has basically contained summaries of other articles, and snippets of limited value, and making it a hard news page. Congratulations, Post.

But what in the world is the Times doing? The bottom of its cover page (about 3 inches worth) is now devoted to headlines from the inside. I think that is OK, maybe even a good idea, although some of the choices are questionable, such as a mini-review of a new novel by Colin Harrison, “deadly deals and cheap thrills”. But then…..there is no news on pages A2, A3, A4, A5 or A6!!!!! Page A2 and page A3 have only a summary index of what is elsewhere in the paper, small paragraphs, not to different from what is on the bottom of the first page, highlighting 35 different items. What do they think a reader will do with this? Read the summaries as if they are a web page and pick and choose which pages to go to elsewhere in the paper, rather than turning all the pages? Why on earth would they want that? Then, on page A4, there is only one sentence summaries of 17 items you can find on nytimes.com, although most of them appear to appear in the print version as well, and corrections of earlier errors. Pages A5 and A6 are only ads.

By the time you get to A7, you are tired of turning pages, sure you must have missed something, and ready to start your day.

Too bad. The Times, it is a-changin’.

Congratulations, United States, You Are Number 24

Jane’s Information Services ranks the United States as the 24th most stable and prosperous country in the world.  We are behind Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 20 European countries.

But you have to love it.  The most prosperous and stable country?  The Vatican!

Congratulations to George Bush and his administration, and to the overwhelming dedication of the American people towards equality and civil improvement at home.

The least stable is “Gaza and the West Bank”.  I think the Palestinians have Hamas to thank for this.