One Day Diary – February 27, 2009

I get asked all the time:  “So what does a partly retired lawyer do on the days when he doesn’t come into the office?”  In response, I decided to chronicle one day when I had nothing particularly scheduled.  The day turned out to be yesterday,  Friday, February 27, 2009.  I can’t say that it is either typical or atypical, but this is what happened:

7:45  I got up slowly, checked the news on TV and the weather (seeing it was already 50 degrees out), put on very casual clothes (old Eddie Bauer faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt with an understated logo of a trade association on whose board I serve), went downstairs, took in the two newspapers that are delivered to the house (“Washington Post” and “New York Times”), checked my email accounts and Facebook, and decided that not much seemed to have happened in my world while I slept.

8:30  As I often do when the weather is warm, I left the house to take a fairly brisk walk about a mile up Connecticut Avenue, stopping at Pumpernickel’s Bagelry, where I purchased a week or two’s worth of bagels for the house, eating one (poppyseed)  and drinking a cup of coffee at one of the tables outside on the street.  Even though the weather was warm, my only companions where a bunch of starlings which hoped that I would excrete some bagel crums on the sidewalk (which I probably did inadvertently).  While eating, I read through this week’s edition of “Washington City Paper”, which in fact had very little of interest (I pick it up to look at its fairly complete weekly event calendar), except for an article on drummers and a disease, or condition, called rhabdomyolysis, which often affects them (and in fact can become a matter of pride or passage) after a particularly hard workout, and which is evidenced by muscle breakdown, which can in part be observed by dark colored urine, and can become quite dangerous if it happens repeatedly and is not treated.  One more time, something that I have never heard about or imagined.  But I assume the article was accurate.

9:30.  I started the walk back home, looking for something of interest on the way.  Very few people on the street, a few people walking, pushing groceries, jogging, but no one I knew.  A police car was giving a ticket to a small truck belonging to a chimney cleaning company; the two men inside it clearly did not appear to be having a good day.  On the west side of Connecticut Avenue, just south of Ingemar Street, I saw two beautiful clumps of bright purple crocuses, with yellow highlights, proudly showing off like they were the first of the season in town, which they might have been since it is still February.  I have been seeing some green shoots around here and there, but this is the first color of the spring that I have observed.  Before I turned on to my street, I did stop at the bank, for my usual withdrawal of $200 with the hope that it will last me longer than I knew it would.  I also stopped at the mailbox to get Thursday’s mail, which did not seem to eventful, and which I brought up and put on the kitchen table.

10:00.  I did look at our synagogue’s monthly newsletter, which seemed much more packed with interesting items than normal.  I took out my calendar and noted the dates for the Garden of the Righteous Ceremony, honoring non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and for the next scholar in residence, Professor Max Ticktin of George Washington University.  I also saw that the synagogue is starting a new group for members 65 and older.  They can’t mean me, can they?

10:20.  OK, I am not working today.  I am home and not at the office, but sometimes attention must be paid.  I have a client who manages an apartment complex in Baltimore where there was a fire last week (tenant smoking in bed, apparently), which has displaced 17 families.  The property is subsidized by HUD, and we have been working (successfully) to get HUD to move its subsidy to other units (which my client must locate) so that these families have a place to live while the building is being repaired.  I spent an hour or so working with the client, and having email correspondence with HUD, to help facilitate all of this.  Hopefully, at least 12 of the families will be able to move (they are now in hotels) this weekend.

11:30.  I left the house, this time by car.  I stopped at Sheffield Liquor store, and bought two bottles of Spanish wine, and (for the freezer) a bottle of Gray Goose.  I saw that Politics & Prose, our first class neighborhood book store, had two boxes of “free books” in front of the store so I went to look.  Most were softcover “Advanced Readers Copies” of new books, but there were a few hard backs as well.  One was a novel by Whitney Otto called A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity.  It was in perfect condition, a first edition, signed by Otto. I figured that, for free, the price was right.  Not sure how it got into the giveaway boxes.

12:00  I drove to Bethesda, to the Bradley Barbershop, which has become my regular place, for no particular reason, except that it is low-key (not a salon), $14 a haircut, and they have (I think) 9 barbers, which means that there is usually not a wait, except on weekends when parents bring their kids.  I had a new barber this time (I don’t care who cuts my hair; it isn’t much of a challenge), a fairly young man, who looked like he had not had a hair cut in 5 years.  He turned out to be very talkative.  He was born in Vietnam (so are the people that own Sheffield Liquor), but that no one ever guessed.  “Can you believe it,” he said, “most people think I am from the Philippines.”  I really didn’t think one way or another.  He has been in the Washington area since he was 3 years old, and has beet cutting hair (men and women’s in various places) for 12 years.  He has traveled back to Vietnam several times, but thinks that the country is just too money conscious (I guess that’s Communism for you) to live there.  “But if I were rich…….”  He asked me my name (no one at Bradley Barbershop ever did that before) and told me (I think) that his name was Handsome.  Or maybe it was Han Sum.  Or maybe I heard it wrong.  At any rate, he did a good job.  I did ask him who cut his hair – he told me that he cuts his own hair, and that he was a big believer that everyone should decide for himself how he wanted his own hair to look.  I couldn’t argue with him there.

12:45.  I wasn’t sure what there was at home to eat, so I went into the Thai Corner restaurant on Bethesda Avenue.  I had seen it before, but never gone in.  It is in a newish office building, several steps below ground level, is relatively small and informal (a place you don’t feel uncomfortable if you are by yourself), and I decided it would give me a chance to see what the Whitney Otto book was like.  I read the first 40 pages or so, while having tofu and vegetables in a mild peanut sauce, which was quite good, for $7.50.  I didn’t want anything too fancy.

1:30.  I arrived back at home, made a cup of coffee and sat down with the two newspapers.  There is always interesting things in the newspaper (I don’t understand why more people don’t read them), but I concentrated most on trying to understand what the Obama budget will entail, thinking as always about how the world will get out of the mess it is in, and marveling (and fuming) at the audacity of the Senate in suggesting that DC can get a vote in the House of Representatives only if we repeal our ban on semi-automatic weapons.  I’d rather skip the vote, thank you.

2:30  A few minor (and I mean minor) household chores, like taking out the trash, straightening a few things and so forth.

3:00  I went to the gym, with my Whitney Otto book in tow, reading it on my 40 minutes on the cross trainer, then fiddling with a few of the resistance machines before coming home.  Kept my eye on CNN while I was there, as well, watching the Dow lose another 100 points or so.

4:00  On the way back from the gym, I stopped at Zips, my laundry/cleaners, to drop off 9 shirts,  a pair of slacks and a sweater.  They will be ready tonight at 5.  I will forget to go get them for several days, until I wonder why I don’t have any shirts in the closet.

4:15.  Back home.  Took a shower.  Watched a little of CNN’s news. Found that they had nothing new to say, and turned off the TV.

4:45.  Went back down to the computer, and put my week of expenses in Quicken, filing my receipts in my 2009 shoe box.

5:00.  Looked through two weekly newspapers that arrived today, “The Northwest Current” and “Washington Jewish Week”.

5:30.  Finally, I sat down with the book I started to read last week, Victor Klemperer’s 1933-1945 diaries, published under the title I Will Bear Witness.  A (more or less) Jewish professor of philology in Dresden who, somehow, with his non-Jewish wife, managed to live both through the Holocaust and the Dresden firebombing attacks.  Very, very interesting journal he wrote.  (I will write more about that later, I am sure)

7:00  Set the table, and opened the wine (one of the bottles I bought earlier today) for our Friday night dinner (just the two of us).

7:30.  Had a very nice dinner, appetizer (chopped black olives and fennell seeds on tangerine slices), soup (turnip with greens), roast chicken, bulgar pilaf, green beans and sweet potato pie.  We are part of an organic farmer’s co-op, and this year there has been an absolute surplus of both sweet potatoes and turnips.  Blame it on global warming, perhaps.  The dinner was excellent, but my part of it (the wine) was a bust.  I would suggest that you avoid a tempranillo-cabernet combination bottled in 2006 under the name: The Spanish Quarter.

8:30.  I washed (most) of the dishes.

9:00  Back to Professor Klemperer’s book.

11:00  Upstairs, to prepare myself for the next day (which is, of course, the current one).

So, curiosity seekers, that is it.  Not very exciting, I understand, but actually a very pleasant time.

I forgot to complete and post this on Tuesday

Mardi Gras Lunchtime Concert:  I was looking forward to hearing some good Dixieland music at the Church of the Epiphany today, but no such luck.  The band had piano, drums, bass and clarinet.  Where were the coronets and the trombones?  And how can Hoagy Carmichael be considered Dixieland, no matter how it is played?

Sarajevo:  I read through Edward Serotta’s Survival in Sarajevo, which has some spectacular photographs and talks about the role of the Jewish community during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.  The book also gives a nice history of the Jews of the former Yugoslavia, from the 16th century to and through World War II.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do (28 cents)

One of the advantages to Henry James’ Daisy Miller is that it is less than 100 pages long.  Another is that it is a delight throughout.

Daisy Miller, young American ingenue, traveling with her mother through Switzerland and Italy.  From a wealthy industrial Schenectady family, they are more nouveau riche than high society.

Daisy is typically American, naive, open, and oblivious to formal social norms.  And young American expat Winterbourne is smitten.  But he knows the ways of society, so cannot be too forward and comes across as stiff.  Ms. Miller takes up with a handsome Italian, to the shock of all the Americans, and even her own mother is afraid that she has already become engaged.

The ending is tragic.  The prose is terrific.  The descriptions of the European locales are very evocative, showing how much things have changed in the last 100+ years.

Burma, the Ledo Road, World War II, African Americans and the Like

I just finished reading a new book, Now The Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight From the Greatest Manhunt of World War II, by Brendon I. Koerner, and found it fascinating on several levels.

An African American is drafted into the Army in World War I, sent to help build the Ledo Road, connecting northeast India, through Burma, to China under appalling circumstances.  He kills a white officer and escapes into the jungle, living in a remote Naga tribal village (and marrying the 14 year old daughter of a tribal leader), but is later caught and eventually hanged.  A true story.

The story of Herman Perry is itself of interest, but this book is interesting on several levels.  First, it is quite an indictment of the treatment of black soldiers in the segregated army of the 1940s.  I had read before about the difficulty that black soldiers often had off the base (especially in the south), and of course of the heroic efforts of groups such as the Tuskegee Airmen.  But I had never read about the harsh treatment within the military, the contempt with which African Americans were held and the perceived limits of their intellecutual, emotional and physical capacity, and the fact that they were detailed to the lowest and meanest of support jobs, including the building of the Ledo Road (a task which itself should probably never have been started) in the jungles of Asia.

It is also the story of American support of Chiang Kai-Shek, and Chiang’s many shortcomings, and the rivalry between General “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell, and Chaing’s advisor, Claire Chennault, as to how American support should be directed.  It is the story of the defeat of the Japanese in the jungle.  It is a story of military justice during World War II, through the court martial and review process.  And it is the story of the Naga tribesmen and their active head hunting ways.

It is a book well worth reading.

Classic Weekend (Albee and Beckett)

We saw both “A Delicate Balance”, Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, and Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”, this weekend.

“A Delicate Balance” is (as is often the case for Albee) an attack on the wealthy WASP couple, this time by means of an alcoholic sister, a daughter separated from her fourth husband, and another couple, their best friends, another WASP couple, who came in the middle of the night because they were “afraid” to stay at home. Wonderful writing, more questions asked than answered, good performances, but for some reason not quite satisfactory.

“Krapp’s Last Tape”, on the other hand, is a short, one-act, one-actor play, a 69 year old man who makes a tape every year recounting his past year, both makes his current tape, plays a 30 year old tape, and starts the play with almost 30 minutes of very dull pantomiming.  And the entire play was only 65 minutes long.  I thought that this play should be performed at Abu Ghraib, but no……it would be considered torture.  OK, Becket is a minimalist, and it would be hard to get more minimalist than this.  As to the actor, I can’t comment – having seen him before in “Judas Iscariot” at Forum last year, I know he is a wonderful actor, and perhaps you just can’t do this any better than he did.

Before  the Albee, we had supper at La Bettola in Arlington, an Italian restaurant where no one is Italian.  And I had to send back the inedible salmon, and replaced with Chicken Francese, which was just fine.

Istanbul (1 cent)

We attended a lecture by Nigel McGilchrist last evening at the Ripley Center, sponsored by the Smithsonian. The topic was Istanbul, and this was the fourth Turkey related Smithsonian program that we have attended over the past year. We were in Turkey for two weeks in November.

The lecture was quite enjoyable; McGilchrist is a very affable and intelligent speaker. His slides last night were not the best, however, and he was obviously tired and hungry, having flown in just before the lecture from San Diego, without food.

Nevertheless, there was a lot to appreciate. Some of it was pure review, which is always nice (makes you think you are smart), some of it shows how much you miss when you visit a tourist location (he mentioned things, for example, about Topkapi that looked like they should have been obvious, but were news to me), and some of it was brand new, such as the 16th century to build a bridge across the Golden Horn, where one of the entries was by Leonardo da Vinci, and one of the requested entrants was Michelangelo).

An excuse to go back soon would be nice. It probably is not going to happen.

The Book, The Concert, the Lecture, the Book Reading, the Movie, the Hockey Game (25 cents)

1.  The Book.  One day, I will figure out why I read what I read, because there seems to be no pattern, rhyme or reason to my choices.  Over the first few days of this week, I read Ursula Hegi’s Floating in My Mother’s Palm, a series of vignettes about people and events that took place after World War II in a small German town on the Rhine.  The teller of the tales is a young girl growing up there, and she owes much of what she knows to the woman in charge of the pay-library.  The book is related to an earlier Hegi book, Stones From the River, which I would like to read.  The stories themselves may be by and large depressing (but is that life?), but they are told in a lyrical way that carries you right along.  Sort of a Winesburg, Ohio with an edge.

2.  The Concert.  I disciplined myself to go to a Tuesday noontime concert at the Church of the Epiphany, a habit that pretty much has fallen by the wayside, I am afraid.  I picked a good day to go, as a group calling themselves Ensemble Gaudior was performing two Haydn pieces (Piano Trio No. 18 in A major, and String Quartet in D minor), using period instruments (either original, like a 17th century violin, or replica).  The musicianship was apparent, the sound was richer than I had expected, and the introduction to pieces by Thomas and Alexandra MacCracken, and their description of the instruments, added to the hour.  As to the two pieces themselves, I found the quartet to be the more enjoyable, although I was interested to hear that the trio, which put a significant burden on the pianoforte, was unique for its time in this regard.

3.  The Lecture.  Surprisingly, 400+ people showed up at 6th and I Synagogue to hear a lecture entitled “Revisiting Memory:  Facts and Myths About the Jews in Poland and Russia” by Brandeis U. professor Antony Polonsky.  Polonsky is writing a 3 volume history to be published by the Oxford University Press, and seems totally on top of his subject matter.  He made the point that the history of the Jews of Poland, Russia, Galicia, Ukraine and Lithuania have some major differences, which appeared throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and that it cannot be assumed that they shared one history.  He spoke about the optimism that surrounded Polish Jewry in the first three decades of the 20th century, of how the western Polish Jews were more assimilated and acculturated to their German surroundings, how the progress of Judaism in Russia was arrested by the Bolshevik revolution, even as certain anti-Jewish measures were abolished.  He talked about the modernization of Hasidism and its institutions in Poland, about the ebb and flow of anti-semitism, and the when anti-semitic popular feelings were supported by governmental actions and when they were opposed by governmental actions.  All in all, a very interesting lecture, although the density of his thought process, his command of detail, his South African accent, and some problems with the microphone that made it sound like he had not completely swallowed his oatmeal made the evening difficult for some attendees.

4.  The Book Reading.  On Monday, I heard Abraham Verghese read from his new novel, Cutting for Stone, the story of twin children of a nun at a convent in Ethiopia.  My guess is that the book is well worth reading, but the highlight for me of the lecture was hearing Verghese, a professor of internal medicine at Stanford, talk about medical education today, about the difference between curing and healing, and about the dangers of an overly scientific practice of medicine where the computer patient becomes more real than the one in the hospital bed.  He stressed the importance of bedside manner, which is clearly has in spades.

5.  The Movie.  Not at a theater this time, but on my TV screen.  I re-saw “The China Syndrome”, not a perfect picture but still compelling, particularly in light of the Three Mile Island catastrophe and the Karen Silkwood murder.  It’s the story of a nuclear power plant in southern California and a shift supervisor (Jack Lemmon) who believes, based on certain vibrations, that the plant is unsafe, and needs to be shut off the grid until it is inspected and repairs.  No one believes him, and he is reluctant to testify, although he agrees to provide indirect testimony through a local TV news reporter (Jane Fonda) and her camera man (Michael Douglas).  If you haven’t seen it, you won’t find out the rest of the plot here (I was accused of doing that, recently), so you have to get the DVD or see it On Demand.

6.  The Hockey Game.  Last night, it appears that the Caps were finally going to lose one at home; they just weren’t playing their best, although Alexander Ovechkin’s goal while he was sliding on his back was nothing short of extraordinary.  But a score by David Steckel to tie the game with only about 2 minutes left, a penalty-less scoreless overtime, and two straight shoot out goals by Alexander Semin and Nikolas Backstrum, ended the evening with a 4-3 Caps win.  The season has about 6 weeks to go, and the Caps will not be playing against any top ranked teams (they will play Philadelphia once and I think Pittsburgh twice), so it should be (I know, you can’t count chickens ahead of schedule) an easy road until the playoffs.

“The Reader”

“The Reader”, with Kate Winslett and Ralph Fiennes, is a wonderful, powerful movie, that poses some of the moral dilemmas faced by Germans in the years after World War II in ways not normally presented.  We have now seen all five of the Oscar best picture nominees.

I still go for Slumdog Millionaire, because of its extraordinary energy and cinematography.  But if it turns out to be The Reader, I wouldn’t be critical.  To me, the other three nominated films, Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, and Milk, are not in the same league.

A Show, A Meal, A Book

1. The show. “The Seafarer” by Conor McPherson at the Studio. It’s Ireland and Christmas. The house is disheveled. Two brothers (one, Richard, blind, one, Sharkey, just returned home from years away, first at sea and then as some sort of driver in Cork), two friends, and a newcomer, a mysterious, well dressed stranger. Talk about their (failed) lives, amidst an overwhelming amount of drink. Badgering each other (with affection?) constantly. And But who is this newcomer? He is the devil himself, come to claim the soul of Sharkey, who had made a deal with him some time ago after killing a man in a bar room brawl. A card game commences – who will win? The devil, who will then lead Sharkey through the hole in the wall, or not?

An interesting play, finely written, with some outstanding performances.

2. The meal. At Thai Tanic, one of Washington’s better named Thai restaurants. A nice papaya salad, and a duck curry that had a nice (if a bit too spicy) taste.

But let’s talk about the duck. Earlier this month, in London at Vivat Bacchus, I had duck, and it was delicious. The duck at Thai Tanic, while good and certainly recognizable as duck, was not nearly as good. So my question is: is the type of duck you are served in England the same type of duck that you get in Washington? Or is the English bird just that much better? (I don’t know the answer to this question, but have my hunches.)

3. The book. For some reason I chose to re-read Rom Landau’s “God is My Adventure”, written in the early 1930s, about the various spiritual movements afoot in Europe, Hermann Keyserling, Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Frank Buchman, Shri Meher Baba, Stefan George and Principal Jeffreys. Why, I am not sure, except that I continue to wonder why people believe as they do. I recently saw a poll that described the extraordinarily high (to me) percentages of Americans who not only believed in God, but who believed the literalness of scripture. I just don’t understand it, and thought I would look again at some of the faddish movements that capitalized on that type of thinking and attracted people who needed to believe but just couldn’t fit in with the established churches.

Another Holocaust Story: they are all alike; they are all different (1 cent)

I chanced upon Journey to the Golden Door: a Survivor’s Tale by Jay Sommer, and like all holocaust centered books, it contained both the all too familiar, and the amazing.

In 1981, Jay Somer, a high school foreign language instructor at New Rochelle High School, was named the National Teacher of the Year.  His path to that honor was extraordinary.

Somer was born in a very small Carpathian village (then in the new nation of Czechoslovakia; now apparently in Belorus), to a disfunctional family.  His father, who later abandoned the family, was a religious zealot who could not hold either a job or his liquor.  His mother was devoted and affectionate and hardworking, but died of tuberculosis when Somer was 12.

Because there was no Jewish education available in his home town of Kustanovice, Somer was sent to a neighboring town for his cheder training, living with strangers, having meals at different houses each day, at the age of 6.  Then, shortly before his father’s abandonment, the family moved to a bigger town, and Jay was sent to a Greek Orthodox school, being apparently the only Jewish student.  By age 10, he was working full time, eventually apprenticed to a bicycle mechanic. Then, following his mother’s death, as he was about to turn 16, he left his home and went by himself to Budapest in 1942, at the age of 13, where he found employment, but struggled to pay for food and lodging.

Who can imagine today that a child of this age would have to face these challenges, basically on his own.  As life was beginning to take shape for Somer, the world was falling apart.  World War II was raging and, in 1944, the Germans entered Budapest.  Jay, like most Jewish boys, was sent to a German work camp.  He was 15.

He was clearly a bright boy, particularly adept at languages, having by now mastered the dialect that was spoken in his original village, as well as Czech, Yiddish, Hungarian and probably German.

He survived the work camp, and was there when the Russians invaded.  Because of his linguistic ability, he became a translator for the Russians, who were trying to root out Nazis and Nazi collaborators.  His linquistic skills improved more (he added Russian to his languages), and he was convinced to join the Russian army, which he did.

He was given a short furlough to Budapest to look for surviving family members.  He found his older half-brother (his mother had been married previously and had been a widow), and with his brother and sister in law, and several others, escaped across the Austrian border (it was an organized escape by a Jewish group that gave out false papers and bribed guards) and, shortly thereafter, crossed by foot through the Brenner Pass into Italy, winding up at a DP camp in Cremona, where he was to spend another two years or so (adding Italian to his language bank).

He had a severe soccer injury (the DP team was playing a local team, and he was involved in a collision which left him with a perforated intestine; he lived only because recently discovered penicillin was available at an American army base, and his brother and friends had the gumption to press for it), he fell in love with an Italian girl, and then by complete fluke and happenstance, he wound up with a sponsor in New York (a relative of someone in the Cremona camp, who was willing to sponsor him), a visa, and steamship passage from Naples to New York.

He landed at Ellis Island in 1948.  He was 19 years old.

His early New York days were difficult, but he found employment, and went to school, earning a bachelors, masters, and Ph.D., and adding English and, believe it or not, Spanish to his languages.  He became a teacher, first in the Bronx and then in Westchester County.

Apparently, Somers is still living in New Rochelle, and still teaching (he is now in his 80s) Hebrew (oh, yes, I forgot that: he also learned Hebrew) at a synagogue there.

A typical and extraordinary story of a survivor.  Worth reading for sure.