Officer Sanchez Gives Me A Ticket (45 cents)

Officer Sanchez of the MPD gave me a $50 ticket for failure to stop at a stop sign. It was my first moving violation in 39 years.

Here’s the story:

I am driving west on Fessenden Street, which intersects with 39th Street. 39th Street goes north only; it is a “T” intersection. Traffic in both directions on Fessenden and heading south on 39th at Fessenden have standard stop signs. The intersection, about 1/2 mile from my house is one I pass several times a week.

I come to the intersection. I stop. I hear a police siren to my right, and the police car turns from 39th onto Fessenden and pulls me over. I tell Officer Sanchez that I was certain that I stopped. She obviously disagrees, writes me a ticket, tells me I have 30 days to appeal, and goes on her way.

I circle around and see what she is doing. She is spending her morning watching cars at this intersection, and if she believes that anyone is not coming to a FULL stop, she is ticketing them.

In order to do this, as this is a very visible intersection, she hides. She parks on 39th facing south (that is, facing Fessenden), but on the wrong side of the street. She is on the left side, in the lane where cars travel north. Anyone else stopping or parking like she is would receive a ticket.

As you drive west on Fessenden, you cannot see her police car; it is shielded by a bush. But you can clearly see if there is a car coming south towards Fessenden. This is an eminently safe intersection and if someone driving on Fessenden does not come to a full stop, but rather a 90% stop, there is clearly no harm-no foul.

I saw Officer Sanchez stop a car in what I would suspect was a repeat of my situation. The car was driving west on Fessenden at a very reasonable speed, it braked at the stop sign, slowed to perhaps 2 mph, and went on. She let out her siren and pulled it over. It would be like a policeman ticketing someone for driving 25.5 mph in a 25 mph zone.

I didn’t see her when she pulled over the next vehicle. I only saw it as she was writing a ticket. This was a large dump truck heading east on Fessenden. Whether the driver ran the stop sign, I don’t know. But by stopping this wide truck on this heavily traveled, but two lane street, at the top of a hill (the intersection is at the top of the hill), Officer Sanchez created a dangerous and chaotic situation which lasted 15 – 20 minutes. Cars coming east, once they stopped at the stop sign, could not proceed ahead except by passing the police car and dump truck in the lane moving west, and they didn’t know when they could do this because the topography did not permit them to see clearly the cars coming west, and the cars driving west could not tell, until quite late, that there were cars coming east that had to use their lane. Very dangerous, Officer Sanchez.

The final car I saw her ticket was a taxi that was traveling west. I must admit that the cab driver barely slowed down at the top sign (not that he was going too fast, and not that he was doing anything dangerous, considering his ability to see cars coming south on 39th), and perhaps deserved at least a warning.

I assume there were many more, before and after I observed her. Whether she was assigned this task that day, or took it on her own I don’t know. Whether there was a “quota” involved, I don’t know. I don’t know what her motivation was, except that I don’t think it was to punish evil doers, or to assure traffic safety.

So, I will appeal the ticket. What good that will do me, I am not sure. (By the way, I did have a passenger/witness, but I don’t know if that will help or not.). But as a matter of principle, I must at least start the process.

My Joe Wilson Moment (one cent)

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, perhaps the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. We took a break from the synagogue in the early afternoon, driving back at about 3:30. I surprisingly found a good parking place on Quebec Street, across from the main door. But Quebec is a narrow street, and you cannot parallel park while cars are coming from the opposite direction, so I waited patiently for the opportunity to back into the space. The first car to come by me going in the opposite direction was a tan Mercedes, driven by an older woman, who was alone. Then there was another car, then a pick up truck, then an SUV. All moving slowly because of the congestion and pedestrian traffic.

Finally, I had the opportunity to move into my space. I started to back up, and what do I see, but that original tan Mercedes (who had made a U-turn in a driveway) beginning to pull into the space frontward.

I had my Joe Wilson moment. I gave my horn a loud and long honk (teruah!) and yelled (YELLED!) out “STOP!!”. She actually pulled out of the space (she could never have parked the way she was heading into the space in any event), and I was able to pull in.

Now, in retrospect, she was an old lady all alone (even though it is hard to feel sorry for a Mercedes driver), and I should have, especially in the spirit of forgiveness, atonement and all of that, ceded the space and continued my searching. The weather was nice, I was not in a hurry, and I never mind walking. But I didn’t. Instead, I turned into Joe Wilson. OK, reprimand me in well of the synagogue. I apologize.

Much Ado About Nothing

Last night, I saw much ado about nothing at the Studio Theatre.

You might wonder why I didn’t put the title of the play in quotes, or boldface, or italics. The reason is simple: it’s not the title of the play. It is descriptive of the experience.

The play was Harold Pinter’s “Moonlight”, the story of a dying man, and his not quite love/not quite hate relationship with his wife who tends to him, and his complaints about his two totally estranged sons (who are as strange, as they are estranged), and the ghost or spirit of his younger daughter, who most likely, but not most assuredly, is dead.

Ted van Griethuysen as the dying Andy rails and thrashes around in bed, his wife Bel, played by Sybil Lines, quietly does her needlepoint, Bridget (Libby Woodbridge) occasionally ruminates and most often just stares on a ledge above her parents’ bedroom, and her brothers Jake (Anatol Yusef) and Fred (Tom Story), verbally flail at each other, word sparring like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, taunting each other like the characters in Albee’s “Virginia Wolf”, at first unwilling and then emotionally unable to have even a modicum of current contact with their parents. Maria (Catherine Flye), perhaps a former lover to both Andy and Bel, perhaps to neither, and her husband Ralph, a failed soccer referee and possibly ex-lover of Bel, waft through now and then.

It is a short play, 70 minutes. In spite of some terrific dialogue between Fred and Jake, and in fact terrific acting from the entire cast, without exception, the play left me totally cold. No emotions were pulled up. The lack of connection between the groups of characters carried over to a lack of connection with the audience. It was much ado about nothing.

I have read four reviews of this production from local newspapers, and have looked at some reviews from other productions. With one exception, the reviews were not good. But all the reviewers liked the cast and all reviewers liked the play. So clearly something is wrong.

My answer is that it is the play that does not work. The lines may be clever, the end of life frustration may be realistic, but the play does not work, no matter how good the cast, staging or direction. You can like a car that can’t be driven, but you can’t expect it to take you anywhere. This, I believe, is the case with “Moonlight”.

Pasodoble, Joropo, Bambuco, Pasillo, Fandango, Porro Pelayero and More (5 cents)

You can learn something every day, I guess, but today, I failed to learn how to distinguish between the various forms of Spanish/Latin music mentioned above. I went to a very nice concert by the Brass Quintet of Medellin, comprised of five teenagers, who play trumpet (2), trombone, horn and tuba, and play classical, jazz and Latin music, all very well. The concert was sponsored by the Interamerican Development Bank, honoring the city of Medellin, Columbia, which has come so far in overcoming what had appeared like a permanently entrenched drug lord tyranny, in part by establishing programs of cultural development for the city’s young people.

The quintent was very good and, by the way, I seem to be a big fan of fandangos, and porro pelayeros.

Following the concert, we went to the IDB Gallery, which currently has an exhibit of works by 7 Latin American/Caribbean artists who now live in Canada. Although the quality of the work varied in my mind, I particularly liked the paintings of Colombian born Oscar Danilo Vargas (large canvasses with impressionistic apocalypsic scenes, with one small helpless man floating somewhere on the canvass) and Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, originally from El Salvador, whose almost cartoon-like, allegorical scenes of horror which remind you that troubles occur in all sorts of places.

Larry King Live (11 cents)

Larry King Live airs at 9 p.m.
At 8 p.m., I was watching the Campbell Brown Show.
Brown aired a short excerpt of Bill Clinton’s appearance on King’s show tonight, even though King’s show did not start until her show ended.
How can Larry King Live be Larry King LIVE?

Vanity Fair without Dominick Dunne

Not to worry.

I spent last night reading through the most recent edition. What could be better than a few hours reading about the following:

1. What Henry Paulson thought about his tour of duty as Treasury Secretary and how he thought he did in trying to stave off total financial ruin.

2. What 18 year old Levi Johnston really thinks about his almost mother-in-law Sarah Palin and her dysfunctional household.

3. How they caught the Boston University medical student who killed the “masseuse” he engaged on Craigslist.

4. What happened when Jackie and Bobby Kennedy hired William Manchester to write the official history of President Kennedy’s assassination.

5. How Walter Annenberg’s daughter Wallis is running the Annenberg Foundation and what it means, especially for Los Angeles

And my favorite, the story of the death of Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, and what has happened to all those billions (dollars and rubles). It’s a story that is too extraordinary even to be fiction.

Now, there were a couple of articles about the economy that I thought a bit boring. And I really don’t care about LeBron James, so I didn’t read his memoir. And I hardly ever read the sound-bite columns (I don’t know what you call them), which give you a sentence or a short paragraph about people who may be well know to most Americans, but are absolutely foreign to me.

But, for a magazine to have so much, every month, I think is pretty extraordinary.

So, once again, three cheers for Vanity Fair.

A Few Pre-Rosh Hashana Thoughts

1. I just read “The Tehran Operation: the Rescue of Jewish Children from the Nazis”, based on the diaries of David and Rachel Laor. More extraordinary life stories coming out of World War II in Europe. David and Rachel, teenagers who did not know each other, escaped the Nazis by moving east into Russian controlled territory with their families. The Russians were less than friendly to Polish refugees, Jewish or not, and many were arrested on various grounds and sent to work camps in the far north. Rachel’s family wound up in Siberia; David wound up in Karelia, the Russian area on the Finnish boarder. After several years in the camps living under terrible conditions, in 1941, the Russians freed all Polish prisoners, again Jewish or Christian. Many freed Polish citizens traveled south, in an attempt to get to Iran, which was neutral in the war, and agreed to accept Poles on a temporary basis. Of course, it was not easy to get to the southern parts of the Soviet Union, it was not easy to leave the country, and it was not easy to get to Iran.

Many of these refugees were Jewish, many were alone, having lost family members along the way, or even before their initial arrest. Many were children.

David and Rachel were quite resourceful and wound up helping Jewish children escape to a temporary transit center/camp in Iran. Their individual stories (how they got where they got) were remarkable. But this is true also of each of the children.

Eventually, they went by ship from Iran to Karachi, and from Karachi to Aden, and from Aden to the Suez and then overland to Palestine. David and Rachel married.

But the foci of the book: a nice if sometimes hard pre-war life in Poland, harrowing escapes following the German invasion in 1939, a new life under the Russians, arrests and transports to the north, and conditions in the northern work camps, liberation, confusion traveling south, trying to find lost relatives (sometimes successfully, sometimes miraculously), working with the children, making arrangements for the trip to Palestine, and the trip itself. A story of David and Rachel and their family members, to be sure, but also of the people they met in the work camps, on the road, in Uzbekistan waiting for an opportunity to leave, the children in Tehran. So many stories, each the same, each different.

Which leads to the old question: why virulent anti-Semitism? And that brings me to another book, this one by John Beaty, called “Iron Curtain Over America”, written in 1951, the story of how the Jews, and especially the Zionists, and their willing tools the Democrats, and the Bolsheviks, wreaked havoc on 20th century America, and how the Germans under Hitler, and those who should have been their natural allies, the Anglo-Saxons and Germans who constituted 80% or so of the American population, should have been able to stop them. Like many other similar books, this book purports to be an historical account, filled with quotes and references and allusions. Someone reading it cold would have to say: boy, this guy is smart, this is interesting history.

I am reading through parts of Beaty’s book. My question is how it is possible to write a book that appears to be so carefully researched, and which obviously took a great deal of effort, and reach such inane conclusions. In this case, that the Jews are really Asiatic Khazars who have always been semi-savages (like the Turks), with a totally different mind set than Americans or Western Europeans, and who have been out to destroy western civilization. Do the writers believe what they write? Do they all work backwards from their conclusions to fill in the historical blanks, knowing that they are creating distortions, and selectively leaving things out (such as German discrimination against the Jews or even the Holocaust)? They aren’t dumb; if they were, they couldn’t turn out books like this. But if they are smart, why aren’t they smart enough to know better?

Beaty would conclude that, i assume, that the Germans were right in invading Poland to stop the judaizing of Europe, that the Bolsheviks were wrong in arresting Poles, but not wrong in arresting Polish Jews, etc. etc. How can someone reach these conclusions?

Two books, two things to think about on Rosh Hashana. Why do these things happen, and why do some people obviously think that they should?

Last Saturday, at the Slichot services at my synagogue, Zemer Chai, Washington’s Jewish choir, sang. The music, in Hebrew, Engish and Yiddish, the tunes familiar and new religious and secular, prose and poetry, well selected and beautifully performed. For a while, you can forget some of the horrors, and luxuriate in the sounds.

The Assault on Senator Sumner (3 cents)

Last evening, I read through the official transcript of the House of Representatives Select Committee, appointed in 1856 to study and make recommendations following the physical attack on Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Congressman Preston Brooks of (you guessed it) South Carolina. It had been determined that, although the attack was against a Senator and took place in the Senate chamber, only the House had jurisdiction over its own members.

1856 was a time of great tension. A prime issue was the Kansas Territory, recently opened to settlement, and attracting northern abolitionists and Missouri pro-slavery settlers, leading to violence and the epithet “Bloody Kansas”. Senator Sumner, a strong abolitionist, gave a fiery (to say the least) speech criticizing in very harsh, and erudite, terms, the actions of the pro-slavery contingent in Congress and especially Senator Butler of South Carolina (who was not present in the chamber, and was apparently ill) and Senator Stephan A. Douglas of Illinois. He spoke very unkindly regarding South Carolina in general Brooks, a young Congressman, was outraged at the attack and determined to wreak vengeance on the Massachusetts senator.

At first, he apparently considered a duel, but changed his mind because he thought that would have been construed as his having determined that Sumner was his social equal. As an alternative, he decided to beat him up, and enlisted the help and guidance of two other Congressmen, another South Carolinian and a Virginian. After a Senate session had adjourned, Sumner was sitting at his desk working. The three Congressmen entered the chamber, two stepping aside, while Brooks walked up to Sumner and began attacking him with his cane (he had a cane as a result of being shot in the hip during a previous duel), knocking him unconscious. Sumner required a long recovery period, and was unable to resume full Senate duties for about three years.

There was no dispute as to the facts. Brooks did not apologize (even once). The Select committee recommended that Brooks be expelled, and that the other two be reprimanded. An expulsion vote was taken, and defeated. Brooks resigned anyway, but (good old South Carolina) was re-elected to the next Congress, the cane becoming his symbol and apparently, at least informally, “hit him again” a catch phrase.

Sumner’s speech is an extraordinary example of nasty, high-falutin’ political oratory at its best/worst, putting aside the simple fact that he was right on the issues. No one today would dare give such a powerful talk, directed against particular individuals and governmental actions, the way Sumner did. And presumably, no one would walk into either chamber and bludgeon a man almost to death because of a speech.

But then again, we may be getting close, don’t you think?

One Liners

Because of all of the political nonsense going on, I am limited to one liners.

1. I read Art Buchwald’s “I’ll Always Have Paris”, his memoir of his decade and a half in Paris, as a reporter on the International Herald Tribune. I have never been a Buchwald fan, not particularly liking his writing style, nor his overall persona. While there are some funny incidents in this book, I don’t think it paints a very good picture of Buchwald, and I am not pleased that I spent so much time reading it.

2. The Penn Quarter Arts Festival in downtown DC on Saturday was absolutely first class. The craftsmen (artists, photographers, jewelry makers, potters and so forth) were top rate. The inexpensive food provided by local restaurants was appreciated. The general friendliness of the crowd was apparent.

3. In contrast, the angry, nasty participants in the T Party on the Mall, going on at the same time, and their silly red, white and blue costumes, and their outrageous signs, were frightening and disgusting.

4. The Alain Renais movie, “Muriel, ou le temps d’un retour”, another film about memory and its effect on the present, was enjoyable to watch, but unbelievably confusing.

5. The AAUW book sale in McLean was excellent, as usual. My surprise find was an autographed copy of Albert Speer’s “Spandau Diaries”. The DC public library’s book sale, by contrast, was pretty bad – most of the books were library discards, or books whose condition would have made them rejects at most similar sales.

6. We finally tried our new neighborhood retaurant, Acacia Bistro. After some confusion with the server, we found the food quite good. A very nice cod, and some tasty broccoli rabe. The rosado Cava and the Flying Fish Merlot helped the tastes along.

7. The lecture by Israeli Minister of Minorities, Avishai Braverman, concerning the 20% of the Israeli population which is non-Jewish Arab, was a disappointment. Braverman’s heart is in the right place, but he has not figured out how to hone his message and get it across.

At a Loss for Words/Too Many Words (40 cents)

There is so much to say that I am at a loss for words. I am sitting here watching the disciplinary hearing on the Joe Wilson disapproval resolution in the House. If Wilson apologized to the House, all of this would be unnecessary. But what am I hearing? The Republicans are blaming the Democrats for wasting legislative time, acknowledging that Wilson was wrong, but not suggesting that if he simply said “I’m sorry”, that no more time would be wasted. It is extraordinary. To me, it is unbelievable.

And not only does Wilson not apologize to the House (or to the American people) for his outburst, he also does not acknowledge that he was WRONG when he stated that the President was lying. The President said that the House bill would not provide health care for illegal aliens. This is correct, as Mr. Wilson agrees, but he says that ‘You lie’ was appropriate because there was no enforcement provision to make sure that illegals weren’t served. Huh? And the Democrats are now putting in some sort of enforcement clause (OK), and this somehow proves that the president lied. Double huh?

Now, in this debate, the Republicans are saying that it was a good thing that Joe Wilson did what he did, because it has helped the health care debate move forward. Triple huh?

And all sorts of folks are saying that Wilson is an outstanding guy. The fact that he called a Democratic congressman from California a hater of America is what an outstanding guy would say, right? Trying to keep the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina House – an outstanding guy would do this, right? Etc. Etc.

At a loss for words.