Next the Movie

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” won the Golden Globe Award for best foreign language film of 2007.  It received universally strong reviews.  It is one of the more unusual pictures I have seen.  I recommend it.  But you need to be prepared.

It is a true story (although some of the people involved have claimed that the film is not accurate), the story of the editor of Elle magazine Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, at age 42, suffered a sudden and massive stroke, leaving him completed paralyzed.  Well almost completely – he was able to blink an eye.  He was also able to think and remember – his mental facilities were not affected.  He could hear, and understand.  He could see. He had what was called “locked in syndrome”, which you can look up on Wikipedia.

He was told to say “yes” by blinking once, and “no” by blinking twice.  He had a physical therapist who was extraordinarily devoted and (most of the time) patient, who would recite the letters of the alphabet, one at a time, until he blinked, and she would write it down.  In this way, he communicated, and in fact wrote a book, a memoir,  that was published in France.  The book is called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

This strange, and horrific, story is made stranger by the movie, because it is narrated by Bauby, as if he is talking to you, while unable to communicate to the world.  You are hearing his thoughts.  And they may be life-inspiring, but they are never pleasant thoughts.  His predicament is so incredible.

The movie was nominated for four academy awards, and director Julian Schnabel won Cannes’ best director award.

Many years ago, on the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV show, I remember an episode starring Joseph Cotton as a man injured (I think) in an accident, who found himself in the same situation.  Everyone thought he was dead.  He couldn’t even blink his eyelid.  He was in the mortuary, about to be embalmed, when a single tear rolled down from his eye……That’s when the story ended.  That would have been in the 1950s.  I was quite young.  I had a very strong reaction (as you can see, since I remember the show today).  I wonder if Bauby saw the show and said, like I did, “that can’t happen….can it?”

Let’s Start With Food (12 cents)

This is a catch-up posting reviewing recent restaurant visits:

1.  Zaytinya (Olive in Turkish) is a mezzo (i.e., tapas) restaurant at 9th and G, NW.  We went for a father’s day brunch, and it was excellent.  I had two things – “Patata Harra”, cubed potatoes, a homemade sausage, a moderately spicy cilantro sauce, and a absolutely delicious poached or lightly fried egg on the top, and an order of kasar cheese, a Turkish lamb’s cheese.  We also had three dips – hummos, htipiti (red pepper and feta cheese), and taramosalata (made from carp roe) on the restaurant’s light, puffy not-quite-pita.  Zaytinya is owned by the same folks who own the Jaleo restaurants, Spanish tapas restaurants, where we are to eat with friends on Thursday. “A”

2.  Busboys and Poets, at 14th and T, NW, where I went twice, for brunch on a Sunday and supper before a book signing program.  The brunch was simply scrambled eggs and toast – perfectly done.  The supper was a simple mahi mahi sandwich – perfectly done.  This a very casual, very friendly place, with performance/lecture space and a “progressive” bookstore attached.  (There are now three Busboys in DC.) “A”

3.  Shangri La, at 7345A Wisconsin in Bethesda.  A new Indian/Nepalese restaurant serving, in elegant fashion, organic food.  We had supper, a appetizer that was similar to, but not quite, pakoras, a simple vegetable biryani (that was filled with fresh vegetables and not overloaded with potatoes), and an okra stew.   As local Indian restaurants go, I think this is one of the best.  “A”

4.  Thai Tanic, 1326 14th St NW, Washington, is an ordinary Thai restaurant (which means that it is pretty good, but not exceptional), in a crowded space, which can get a little noisy.  But it’s a good before-the-show place, even if the best thing about it may be its name.  I don’t remember what I ate, but on each of my visits (like 3), the food has been quite good.  “B”

5.  Logan Tavern, P Street between 14th and 15th NW.  We’ve been here many, many, many times, and I am tired of it.  The food always used to be very good, then good, and now fair.  I don’t like the bread that they serve particularly, but they stick with it and have served it from the day the restaurant opened.  I talked to the waiter about this; he seemed to think it was OK, but in fact, this is what I think is wrong with the place.  The last time there, I had their big chopped salad with chicken.  It was OK, but when you look at the menu, which you have seen so many times, and decide on the big chopped salad, you know something must be wrong.  “C”

6.  Baldwin Station, Sykesville MD.  There are only two or three restaurants in Sykesville, and this one occupies the former B & O Railway Station.  It is a restaurant/bar with at least three separate dining areas.  We were there for lunch.  I ordered fish and chips, and then warned myself against fried foods.  The potatoes were not greasy, and I thought above average (I only ate about half of them), and suprisingly the fish pieces were large enough that I could cut away the fried exterior, and have some excellent fresh tasting cod.  “B”

7.  Moby Dick, Bethesda (also on N Street of Connecticut in DC).  This is one of those places where you order at the counter and then bring your meal to your table.  Quite informal.  I had a swordfish shish-kebob, which was very, very tasty.  You can get it with salad or rice, or by itself.  Unfortunately, although it needs something to make it into a meal, the rice was ordinary, and the salad equally so.  “B”

8.  Cosi.  For a salad at lunch, I find Cosi always hits the spot.  I normally either get the vegetarian Signature Salad or the Shanghai Chicken Salad.  The bread (choice of white or whole-grain freshbaked flatbread) is as good as the meal.

9.  Au Bon Pain.  This is my other normal lunch choice.  I had an Arizona chicken sandwhich (I think that is what it’s called) – nice piece of grilled chicken, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, romaine and mustard on sun dried tomato bread.  Very nice.  And here, I hardly ever order the same thing twice.  “B”

10.  Austin Grill.  I remember the days when the Austin Grill in Glover Park was a favorite for a casual meal.  No more.  In fact, it’s not there any more.  It is still in other places, including 8th and E, NW, Washington.  I went in for lunch today, ordered a chopped salad with chicken.  It was filled with beans and corn and slivered tacos, and all sorts of other things, and it was spicy, spicy, spicy.  This just is not a good place any more.  “C”

The Tsars and the East ($2.05)

“The Tsars and the East” is the name of a major exhibit at the Sackler Museum of the Smithsonian Institute.  It will be on display through September 13.

The exhibit features 65 items from the Moscow Kremlin that were gifts to the tsar by statesmen, royalty, nobility and merchants from the Ottoman Empire and Persia, primarily in the 15th through the 17th centuries.  Many of these items have never been out of Moscow before.

During this period of time, there was extensive trade between these various empires, and shifting, but continuing, political alliances.  Gift giving was a matter of protocol when diplomatic or commercial enterprises entered the Russian empire.  Except for certain gifts that may go directly to the tsar or his close family, all gifts were taken to the Kremlin, where they were catalogued and recorded, and detailed records kept of their provenance.

The items on display at the Sackler were “masculine” in nature.  Swords and scabbards, daggers, shields, helmets, maces.  Saddles, stirrups, saddle blankets (caparisons), bridles and other equine related items.  Clerical robes.  The fabrics came from the southern empires, the work was sometimes done in Turkey or Iran, and other times in Russia, in the Kremlin workshops.  Gold and inlaid gems predominate.  Tulip designs and Arabic inscriptions.

All in all, a very nice, and informative, exhibit.

Wine and its Aftermath (3 cents)

Remind me never to drink white wine again.

It seems that, whenever I drink white wine, I have a restless night and a heavy head.  It happened last night (I had two glasses of an Italian pinot grigiot).  This does not happen when I drink red wine.  But 20 years ago or so, the situation was reversed.  White was my wine color of choice and I shied away from red, for the same reason I want to shy away today from white.

So I am trying to figure out what has changed.  The possibilities are:

1.  Nothing has changed.  I just don’t remember 20+ years ago clearly.

2.  The wines have changed.

3.  My physiology has changed.

4.  It is a matter of what you typically drink (i.e., if I started drinking white wine regularly and not red, I would find myself having trouble with red wines, but not white).

5.  It is all psychological; nothing has changed at all.

6.  Some, all, or none of the above.

And the answer is?

Can You Believe Everything You Read?

From this morning’s Examiner:

An article about the University of Maryland:  “The university, based in Adelphi, is one of 11 degree granting institutions that comprise the University System of Maryland.  About 85 per cent of its credit hours come from on-line courses taken throughout the world.”

An article about Algeria:  “…. today only 16 percent of Algerians favor the equality of sexes, compared with 27 percent in 2000.  And 70 percent of Algerians would like every Algerian woman and girl alike to wear the hijab.”

Mini-thoughts on Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Pollard was an American defense analyst with top secret clearance who spied for Israel over a short period during the 1980s.  He was arrested, pled guilty, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.  He has been in prison for over 22 years.

There have been several books written about the Pollard case.  I just read Wolf Blitzer’s 1989 book, Territory of Lies, which I am sure is neither the best nor the most comprehensive.  Nevertheless, it tells the story.  And it is not a pretty one.

Pollard, who is quite bright and blessed with a powerful memory, was always something of a social misfit.  He was clearly, but not necessarily improperly, pro-Israel.  He seemed to have a problem telling the truth all of the time.  He apparently had a history of taking drugs, at least to some extent.  He is not the person you would want to hire for confidential duties.

He decided that the United States was not sharing enough with Israel and that the provision of additional intelligence information to Israel would not only help that country, but help the United States as well, so he acted, coming in contact with representatives of one of Israel’s foreign intelligence agencies, and offering as a walk-in to provide documents.  The Israelis, after debating whether to trust him, worked out an agreement, insisting that Pollard be paid for his services, because the payments would compromise him and make it more likely that he would not change his mind.

Pollard was not trained as a spy, and it showed, as he made many mistakes, including telling his wife everything, not being careful with all of the documents he procured, expecting that Israeli would lie for him, protect him and get him out of the country if he were discovered.  None of this happened.

He and his wife, Anne, were tried together, although they had pled to different crimes.  The government did not request life imprisonment under its plea agreement, but the Secretary of Defense, Cap Weinberger, submitted a lengthy affidavit,  much of which was confidential, that may have requested the lengthy sentence. Sentencing was up to the judge, who was persuaded perhaps by the Weinberger memo and by the inappropriate and unfortunate interview that Pollard gave on the eve of the trail to 60 Minutes.  The sentence was life imprisonment for Pollard, and five years imprisonment for Anne Pollard.  She served somewhat over two years before being transferred to a halfway house, and the Pollards divorced after her release.

The effect of the spying?  Israel got intelligence that it otherwise would not have had, including information that permitted it bomb PLO headquarters in Tunis.  Did this help Israel, or the U.S.?  Is that even a relevant question?  I think not.

The sentence?  Too harsh?  Should I care?

Wadad Makdisi Cortas and the Ahliah School in Beirut

An odd topic, you say.  Not really.  Ms. Cortas’ daughter, the widow of Columbia Professor of Comparative Literature, Edward Said, has recently edited and published her mother’s memoirs.

Ms. Cortas was a very accomplished Arab woman, educated both in Lebanon and the United States, where she earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.  Born in 1909, she became in 1935 the Head of School at the Ahliah School, a private girls school in central Beirut, a position she held for over 25 years.  This school educated a significant number of Lebanon’s female intellectual and social elite, and was highly respected.

Her memoir, partially read last night at Busboys and Poets by Mrs. Said, and her daughter, talks about her childhood in Lebanon, her time in Ann Arbor, her work experiences, the effect of the 1948 end of the British Mandate over Palestine, the wars 1948, and the Lebanese civil war of the late 1970s.  Completed shortly before her death in 1979, the book appears to re-create a lost world, with accuracy and sympathy.

Not knowing much about Lebanese educational policy during this time period, I asked whether the school had Moslems or Christians, and whether it was a religiously related school.  I was told that the school (located in a former Presbyterian Missionary building in the center of Beirut’s Jewish area) had a very diverse student body, Moslems, Christians and Jews.  Knowing what I know now about the Arab middle east, and what I think I know about Lebanon, that suprised me.

But I was more surprised at what a woman sitting a few tables in front of me said.  A graduate of the school (as were several women in attendance), she said, simply, “and we didn’t know what anyone’s religion was.”

Suave, sophisticated, cosmopolitan Beirut.  Where are you now?

Recent Food (one cent)

People are interested in what I say about where I eat.  I am not sure why.

Father’s Day brunch at Zaytinya was a treat.  I had a dish with spicy lamb sausage, diced potatoes and a wonderful poached egg, along with some Turkish kasar cheese, and three dips:  hummus, taramasalata, and a red pepper dip.

Saturday night, a casual meal at Moby Dick in Bethesda.  Swordfish shish-kebab.  Quite good.  (And I learned that the Moby Dick chain’s name comes from Moby Dick restaurant in Tehran; at least that’s what one review that I read says).

Tonight, a mahi mahi sandwich and sweet potato fries at Busboys and Poets.  As always, good.

And surprisingly good fried cod (that means tasty, juicy, thick and not too greasy) and chips at Baldwin Station in Sykesville MD.

And I didn’t even mention the nice dinner at friends on Friday.

D-Day (65 years and 16 days ago)

On June 6, D-Day, we were at a used book sale at the Claude Moore Farm in McLean, Virginia.  My wife spotted and picked up a copy of Martin Gilbert’s 2004 book, D-Day, an apparent first edition, with a perfect dust jacket, in excellent condition, on sale for $2.  Thinking the coincidence too great to pass by, she picked it up, only to discover that the book had also been inscribed by Gilbert on a visit to Washington in April 2004.

In part because I enjoy reading Gilbert’s books, and in part because it is a short book (under 200 pages), I kept it on my desk waiting for an opportunity to read it.  The opportunity came yesterday, between various Fathers Day activities.

D-Day of course is the name given to the June 6, 1944 landing on the beaches of Normandy of Allied forces beginning the pushback against Nazi Germany.  The battle of Stalingrad had taken place, stopping the Nazi’s Drang nach Osten, the allies were moving northward through Italy and Rome had just been retaken.  Victory appeared both inevitable, and still a long way in the future.

Gilbert discusses both the planning for the invasion, and the invasion itself.  Much, to me, was familiar, but some things I either never knew nor had forgotten.  One new item was the discussion of the reluctance of Churchill to approve the invasion.  It was first discussed as early as 1942, but at that time the Allies were unprepared, and it was clear that a successful invasion depended on American and British industrial production (and especially American), on massive numbers of American troops, and on intelligence information that did not yet exist.  Churchill, so anxious for American involvement as necessary for victory, was very concerned about an unsuccessful invasion, and very concerned about the inevitable loss of life.

Gilbert discusses the well known diversionary tactics of the Allies, to lead the Germans off the track of where the actual invasion would take place.  He talks about the importance of the code-breaking activities at Bletchley, so that German plans could be read before they were put into effect, and so it was easy to determine what the Germans knew about the allied plans, and what they did not.

He talks about the massive resources that needed to be devoted to the Normandy undertaking, and how it would clearly divert attention from the Pacific, from North Africa and other theatres, and how Stalin was against anything that would weaken the opposition on the Nazi eastern front.

He talks about the invasion itself, at the various beaches were American, British and Commonwealth troops landed.  But also about the commando groups behind the lines, and about the importance of air support, about the large number of civilian deaths with each phase of the operation,  and of the dangerous clearance of land mines, and sea lanes, and the building of artificial harbors, and of sea and amphibious craft that could do any number of things under a variety of conditions.

He also makes you wonder a bit (at least I did) as to whether the invasion was necessary.  With the weakening of Nazi forces, could more have been made of air strikes (on factories, bridges, railway lines, etc.), with less loss of life?  I don’t know the answer to that one, and perhaps it is a question that cannot, and should not, be asked.

One day, I’ll get back to my old form, I am sure (2 cents)

And then, I will write about the things I have been doing.

For example, I went to a fourth OLLI lecture at American University, this time given by Ambassador Richard Schifter.  Again, it was a fascinating morning.  Three topics:  first, Schifter (who was then Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights) talked about the rise of Gorbachev and the break up of the Soviet Union, giving his very positive feelings about Gorbachev and about how the United States and the west failed the new Russia by failing to support its newly free economy allowing the country to fall into deep depression, leading eventually to the rise of Putin, whom Schifter equates to a Romanov czar; second, to the agreement in the 1970s between Khadaffi and Castro to develop an alliance of unalligned nations to control the votes in the UN General Assembly, and how Khadaffi insisted that an anti-Israeli policy become a linchpin of this bloc, leading not only to all of the anti-Israeli resolutions, but also to the creation of three separate pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli offices within the UN, the only example of special UN offices devoted to a particular issue or problem; and third, his proposal on how the UN should and could be revitalized, by strengthening the non-political agencies of the organization, such as the World Health Organization, or International Labor Organization, to deal with agriculture, poverty, economics, water rights and so forth.

I may also write about my three days in New York, and the evening presentation by Professor David Roskies of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who is about to lead the new Ben Gurion University Yiddish program; the evening was spent discussing the poetry of Abraham Sutzkever, whose life (from the Vilna ghetto to the Soviet Union to Poland to Tel Aviv) has been an unbelievable one.  Or my privilege to be at Theodore Bikel’s 85th birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall, for the benefit of the Juvenile Law Foundation, with such luminaries as Peter and Paul (Mary being ill), Tom Paxton, Arlo Guthrie, the Klezmatics, clarinetist David Krakauer, young violinist Sarah Horowitz, Alan Alda and others.  Or my day at the surprisingly beautiful and interesting New York Botanical Gardens, and its 250+ well manicured acres.  Or my short trip today to historic Sykesville, Maryland.

One day…..