1812 and All That (30 cents)

I must admit I have never really know that much about the War of 1812. I knew that Washington was burned, that the Star Spangled Banner was written, and that Andrew Jackson took New Orleans after the war was over. But I had no real context and, for this reason, I decided to read Walter Borneman’s book, “1812″.

It turns out that things were pretty complicated. Yes, there was a United States, but it still was pretty much an agglomeration of sovereign states, with the national identity still in formation. And the boundaries were shifting – Louisiana had just been purchased, but not fully controlled, and the borders with Canada weren’t that firm, either. What’s more, it wasn’t even clear who was a citizen of what country. If you were a British colonial living in, say, Massachusetts at the time of independence, did you automatically lose your British citizenship?

In the meantime, the young nation was trying to get its economic house somewhat in order, but found its trade abroad limited by continual attacks of various types (to collect “taxes”, to impress sailors into the British navy, to steal cargo) on the high seas. Most of the ships were English.

So, the nation needed to establish its equality on the seas (you can imagine the differing opinions here, from those whose livelihood depended on ocean trade and those who did not, for example). And to set its northern borders; and for some, that meant incorporating Canada, or parts of Canada into the United States (why would the French want to stay under Britain?). Etc. etc.

So, the military got into action – fighting the British in the north, and fighting British on the oceans. And, there were other actions against Indian tribes and confederations, which were themselves involved in Anglo-American politics, and the influence of the French and Spanish had to be removed from the Louisiana Territory, and why shouldn’t Florida be American after all?

So Detroit was American, and then Canadian, and again American. Mackinac Island stayed British a long time. Aaron Burr was involved with grandiose expansion schemes and, if those weren’t going to work, maybe dissolution schemes, because who says that the Northwest Territories and the Louisiana Territory have to remain part of America, and the residents of New England might have been, on the whole, just as happy to wind up with England or with Canada than to stay with the new United States, and the British did attack Washington and burn the government buildings to the ground (and were they surprised at the lack of resistance) but were stymied when they tried the same trick on Baltimore (the star spangled banner kept flying). And, after five years or so, the war was ended by treaty in Europe, but the news of the treaty took a long time to travel back to the New World, so how was Andy Jackson to know when he was determined to keep the British from conquering New Orleans (and likewise how would the British commander know, or would he care because, after all, it’s only a treaty)?

Very interesting. All of it.

Capital Fringe Festival: Super Claudio Bros.

This one was is very cute. A musical spoof on the video game Super Mario Bros. Good music, good visuals, very clever script.

But, to fully appreciate the show, you must of course be familiar with Super Mario Bros. Which I was not. But I had with me two of my best friends: my Blackberry, and (on my Blackberry) Wikipedia. So, with five minutes to spare, I was able to learn all about Super Mario Bros, and able to fully appreciate the show. Well, at least that’s what I think. If you really know the game, I am sure your appreciation is even greater.

So it’s not the mushroom kingdom, it’s the eggplant kingdom, and it’s not Mario, it’s Claudio, not Luigi but Luis, the Princess Peach, but the Princess Tangerine. But they jump and they run and they kick. And die, and come back to life, and they fight not Browser, but Bruiser.

Who was the audience? There were a lot of kids, and that was fine, but I think the target is not the kids, but the twenty and thirty somethings with Super Mario in their background. Some of the humor was a little adult for the kids, although I am sure that it soared over their heads.

Kudos to the entire cast, but especially to Matt Anderson as Bruiser.

And one small point – it would have been nice if the two women had been miked; their voices weren’t quite strong enough to carry.

Did Anyone Else See Karl Rove on Fox News?? (14 cents)

The Shirley Sherrod story is a fascinating one (even if you happen to be Shirley Sherrod). In a speech to an NAACP group, in telling the story of how she overcame feelings of racial prejudice, she tells the story of a white farm family, in danger of losing their farm over twenty years ago, whom she helped, but only to a limit. There was a mild tittering in the audience.

Andrew Breitbart, who is an embarrassment to the internet media, distributes a clip of Ms. Sherrod’s speech, which is read by the media, and especially but not exclusively by Fox News, as indicative of (you decide) either racism in the Obama administration (Sherrod works for the Agriculture Department) or racism inherent in the thinking of black America. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, either on his own or at the urging or agreement of the White House, immediately fires her.

Of course, it turns out that Ms. Sherrod was not giving an overtly racist speech, but rather a healing and motivational speech (one which she delivered from time to time) about how her reaction 20 years ago was wrong, how she realized that her focus should not be on race, but that her job was to fight poverty and help anyone who suffers from that particular social condition, and how it was this instance that helped her learn that important lesson that she is now passing along.

You could not ask for a better speech.

But further, it seems that the white farm couple involved, remember nothing of a racial attitude on the part of Sherrod, but instead credit her with working very hard on their behalf, putting them in touch with a helpful bankruptcy attorney, and saving their farm. They considered her as having gone well beyond her duty.

Now what really happened, we don’t know. Perhaps 24 years ago, Shirley Sharrod did harbor strong anti-white feelings, and masked them when communicating directly with the white couple. Or perhaps, they simply did not pick up on feelings, which she was not really trying to hide. Or perhaps in telling her story, she exaggerates what happened twenty plus years ago; after all, stories used to make a point are always the better when exaggerated to make the biggest impact.

And once the real story came out, as well all know, everyone properly rushed to apologize. Even some of the Fox News reporters like Bill O’Reilly admitted they were wrong. So did Vilsack. And President Obama called her up. And she has been offered her job back (perhaps with a promotion that she doesn’t even want). Of course, Breitbart didn’t really apologize. He said he never meant to harm her (ha, ha), that he was after the NAACP, and it was others who decided to focus on Sharrod.

But what about Karl Rove? He takes the cake. Rove, who has some position as a commentator on Fox, was interviewed about the incident a day or two ago. He too admitted in the interview that Sharrod did not appear to be a racist. But did he leave it at that?

No. Karl Rove went on to say that, while she may not be a racist, she is doing something at least as bad, or maybe worse. By saying her job (Georgia State Department of Agriculture Rural Development Director) was to help poor people, SHE WAS INCITING CLASS WARFARE!!!!!!

Am I the only one who heard that?

A Chance Read

i picked up a softcover book, printed in England about 30 years ago, written by someone named Bryan Guinness, titled “Hellenic Flirtation”. It’s a short book, I only had a little time, and I decided to read through it.

The book itself is diverting in a silly way – a happily married man (probably in his 40s) is attracted to a young woman he can see from his London office window, meets her by chance and learns that she is the fiance of his godson. By virtue of circumstances, the girl (she is 24), the married man, and the godson’s father wind up on a lecture-cruise through the Greek isles. The father is a lecturer, the married man (whose wife decided not to come because her cow was calving) came to hear his friend lecture and see the sights, and they decided to give the other ticket to the young woman (her fiance was studying for exams), so they can get to know her better and decide if she is really right for their young man.

They travel to various tourist sites, including Delphi and Mt. Athos and Ithaka, and ancient history is comfortably thrown in with the story line, which involves Greek-Turkish intrigue, escaping prisoners, the married man and the girl being left on a rugged island as the boat sails off, the girl disguising herself as a man so she can visit the Mt. Athos monastery, sprained ankles, unrequited love (or is it requited?), and the young woman’s surprising (to our two gentlemen) decision to break off with her fiance, and marry instead another young Englishman who was also a cruise ship passenger and who was described as being rather bland. The ship docks, and our narrator, only a little worse for wear, leaves the site of the home of Odysseus’ Penelope, and returns to his farm in England and his own wife, Penelope, perhaps to live happily ever after.

OK, diversion it is, and satisfactory diversion, if not necessary diversion. But the back story is that Bryan Guinness is, indeed, a descendant of brewer Arthur Guinness, who if not Thinking Arthur, could be known, I guess, as Drinking Arthur. And he is also nobility (he was the second Lord Moyne), and he was married to one of England’s well known Mitford sisters, the beautiful Diana, who left him and ran off with and eventually married Oswald Mosley, the head of the British Fascist Party, and friend of Goering and Hitler.

No fascist himself, Lord Moyne’s father (Walter, Guinness, the first Lord Moyne) was Churchill’s resident commissioner in the Middle East (headquartered in Cairo), and one of the architects of the British policy to restrain Jewish emigration to Palestine beginning in the 1930s for fear of further alienating the Arabs, and who was in charge of the British political battle against Hitler in that part of the world. He was assassinated in 1944 by Jewish extremists (of the Stern Gang), as a prominent representative of a anti-Jewish British policy.

But Lord Moyne was probably not the problem; in fact, he was clearly anti-fascist during the war, a confidant of Churchill’s, and supported a two state solution (partition) in Palestine well before it was supported by the British government, although he was very suspicious of the Arab/Jewish cultural mix, and of the capacity of the land to provide for a large population. He was also (who knows for what mix of reasons) supportive of the incarceration of his former daughter in law Diana during the war for her pro-German activities.

Bryan inherited his father’s title, but appears not to have been politically active, but spent his time on the Guinness Board and the board of various cultural organizations and foundations, and as an author of about 20 fictional books, including some written for children, and his memoirs.

Diana Mitford Oswald lived to be 93, dying at her home in Paris.

Capital Fringe Festival – Third Day (23 cents)

We saw two shows yesterday.

“The Hunchback Variations” is a series of reprises of a panel discussion, where two totally deaf participants, one of whom is Ludwig van Beethoven and the other Quasimodo (who is of course fictional), who come together to discuss their failed project of trying to create the sound called for by Anton Chekhov, who has not yet been born, in his final stage direction in “The Cherry Orchard”. “How ridiculous”, you say, and……right you are. But the 45 minute show is in fact quite clever, and the two performers performed it in excellent fashion.

Then we went to another show, a one woman show, that was so bad that I don’t even feel comfortable giving out its name. It was just awful. (If you are curious, or want to make sure you don’t see it by accident, it was at the Goethe Institute Theater last night at 8:30, and its single word name rhymes with “Scat”) I can’t even begin to describe what it was about – the presenter is a motivational speaker who seems to feel that everything would be OK if you just forgave yourself for whatever you might feel bad or guilty about in your past, and her she is dead, and stuck on a cloud that is not the best cloud, but is given the opportunity to have another life (a life of her choice, and she chooses the same one she just had) and she winds up on the best possible cloud, singing “A – You’re Adorable”. Unbelievable, and I just kept looking for the gong (which by the way appeared in “Hunchback”, but then was apparently swept offstage.

Odessa, the Jews, and the Ladies at the Bar

One evening last week, before a session as a volunteer for the Capital Fringe Festival, I stepped into an Asian restaurant, sat at the bar, and ordered a drink and some food. I had brought a book with me, a soft cover publication of the Stanford University Press, “The Jews of Odessa: a Cultural History, 1794-1881″ by Steven Zipperstein. I was sure no one would bother me.

I was wrong.

There was a lady sitting two seats to my left, a middle aged woman who looked sort of Hispanic and was on her second drink, it appeared, who said to me (a good question), “How can you read here?” It was dark and noisy and I had yet to figure that out myself. She asked to see the book and when she saw the title, she said: “I would love to read that book. That is a topic I am very interested it. It is very close to my heart. You see, my mother is from Spain. And I think I am Jewish.” Then she added, “By the way, where is Odessa?”

Overhearing this fairly one-sided conversation, the bartender, a young woman whose ethnicity was not apparent from the nature of her tattoos, entered our conversation and said: “I want to read that, too. My good girl friend just converted to Judaism. She had an orthodox conversion; it took her two years. So, you see, during that time I learned a lot about Judaism.”

So, Steven Zipperstein, you don’t know how close you are to having a best seller on your hands.

Now, what did I know about Odessa, I wondered. I knew that it was on the Black Sea, now in the Ukraine, formerly the Soviet Union. I knew a lot of Jews came from there and have friends who will tell me that their grandparents came from Odessa. I saw the Eisenstein movie, “Potemkin”, and remember that wonderful scene on the steps leading to the water. I knew that a lot of musicians came from Odessa, especially violinists, especially Jewish violinists. That was really about it.

I now know a little more, thanks to this quite interesting book. For instance, I know that Odessa did not exist as a city until the very end of the 18th century. This makes it the same age as, say, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, I would think. Younger than Boston or New York. I know that Odessa was always an unusual city for Russia/USSR – it did not develop from the typical Russian nobility/peasant culture, but was formed to provide a port for the Russians on the Black Sea, and so was, from the beginning, a commercial city, populated by whomever the Russians could get to move in this relatively uninhabited area – Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews. It didn’t matter.

I learned that the Jewish population, therefore, was not built on the pious Jews moving from the established shtetls of the north, bringing their religiously directed habits with them, but that the Jewish population consisted primarily of people who wanted to put those shtetl environments behind them, and to strike out to a new frontier, so to speak, creating a new identity.

I learned that there were in fact a variety of Jews, some who had become atheist, some who did try to replicate the yeshivas and synagogues of the northern Pale, some who thought that acculturation or assimilation into a Russian society was the goal (keeping Judaism primarily as a faith), and some who were looking to westernize both Russia and Russian Jewry.

I learned that the civic actions of the Jews of Odessa exceeded those of any other part of Russia – yes, there were artisans, but there were retail establishments, traders, and manufacturers. That a greater percentage of Odessa Jews went to Russian schools than in any other Russian city. That there were traditional and “German-style” synagogues, often at odds with each other, often supporting each other. That, yes, Jews did become the patrons of, and later the participants in, Odessa orchestra and operatic performances, perhaps as one way to bridge into a larger Russian society. I learned that there were many civic leaders and politicians who were Jewish and that, unlike in most of Russia, Jewish charitable institutions served non-Jews as well as Jews. I learned that there were many Odessan newspapers for the Jewish community, including one of the only Russian language Jewish newspaper (something the country discouraged, for fear that non-Jews would read it).

And, most of all I learned that there was a sense of optimism, of progress, and of the inevitable westernization of Russia and consequent demise of anti-Semitism, which fueled all of these changes in the Jewish population.

And then I learned about the pogrom of 1871, which shattered all of these illusions and ended this era of good feelings. It looked like the pogrom did not have a religious rationale, but rather a commercial one, and that not only the ethnic Russians but the ethnic Greeks were involved, their feeling being that the Jews were monopolizing commerce, that they were conspiring to take advantage of everyone else, and that they were all in this together.

The government did little or nothing to stop several days of looting (this had a lot to do with the personal feelings of the officer in charge of the city), and the reaction in the Jewish community was one of shock and bewilderment. How could this have happened?

Apparently, things were somewhat repaired, but the myth of a progressive Russia had been broken, never to come back.

In 1881, as a new repressive tsar took power, and large scale emigration began, the book ends. How Odessa prospered through the remaining 35 years of capitalist Russia, I am not certain.

Bad Advice, Very Good Lunch, Not a Very Good Book (2 cents)

Let’s talk about my experience at Jim Coleman Toyota. Three years ago, we signed a 36 month lease for a 2007 Prius. When the lease expired, we decided to buy the car. The transaction was fairly painless. After giving my check, the dealer told me that Jim Coleman would get my new license plate, registration and window sticker, that they would put temporary 60 day plates on the car, and that I should take my old plates and drop them off at the DC DMV (which is standard practice here).

Temporary plates are good for 60 days, which meant in our case until next Monday, July 19.

Time passed, and I heard nothing. I was ready to call Jim Coleman and ask about the status, when I received last week in the mail a new registration card and window sticker, but nothing was said about the license plates. I called Jim Coleman and was told by the receptionist that I should keep using my old plates (the ones I had been told to turn in). I talked to the man who handled our transaction and was told that the receptionist was wrong (“how could she tell you something like that”?, were his words), and that he would check and call me back.

This was Monday. He did call me back, and left me a voice mail message: he told me that the plates would be at Coleman in a day or two, and I should call back and ask for “Pam”.

I spoke with Pam today. She told me that the receptionist had been right, that the District now did not change plates or registration information when a car went from lease to purchase. “I’ve told the people that here. I can’t count the number of times.”, she said.

Well, OK. Luckily, I am lazy enough not to have taken the old plates to the DMV, and tomorrow I will put them on the car. And the new registration and window sticker I received last week? They are identical to, clones of, the ones I already have.

Then why did I need the temporary plates and need to get new stickers? Not clear to me, but to Pam, it is clear as clear can be: when you bought the car, it was no longer ours and the DMV had not yet received notice of or recognized your ownership. So, you had to take off the old plates, put on the temporary plates, and then restore the old plates when you got word from the District.

So, that’s what I am doing. Hope this is really what I am supposed to do, and I won’t have a problem next year when it is time to extend the registration.

Speaking of lunch, I ate at Divan, a Turkish restaurant in Glover Park, on Wisconsin Avenue. I had driven past it many times, but knew nothing about it, not even that it was Turkish. I had a ground lamb kofte on rice, served with green beans and carrots, and a small salad. It was absolutely first class. Unless you want fish (they had only swordfish), this is the place to go.

The book? “Harp” by John Gregory Dunne, a sort of jumpy memoir about his Irish parents and grandparents, how he goes about writing, his own health issues, his Army service in Germany, and a couple of other things. The biggest advantage is that I could read it very quickly, but I don’t think it to be a very good book.

It certainly didn’t make me like him, or particularly respect him. (He’s not living any longer, but probably wouldn’t care.) After he died, in 2003, his widow, Joan Didion wrote a book about the first year without him, “The Year of Magical Thinking”. It was a best seller and award winner. I read it at the time, and didn’t like it either, and didn’t get a good feeling for her. At least my reactions to the two books were consistent.

Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (15 cents)

“What a great title”, you say. And, you are right, although as a description of Edward Kritzler’s book of that name, it is a little misleading. Clearly chosen as a way to sell books, not to explain that book’s content.

Kritzler’s subject matter is fascinating, as I will try to explain. Unfortunately, his writing style is not up to the task. He jumps across oceans and back again, and back and forward in time, on a steady basis, making you too dizzy to figure out what is really going on. He needed a better editor than Doubleday chose to give him.

Too be fair, his subject matter is confusing and not easy to organize. But let me see if I can set the stage for you –

In 1492, when Columbus set sail from Spain to find a western passage to India, the Catholic reconquest of the Iberian peninsula was completed with the conquering of Granada, and the Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism were expelled. That, we know.

Most unconverted Jews headed eastward on the Mediterranean, ending up in North Africa, Turkey or Italy. Others went to Portugal, where they were welcomed, but only for a short while before they were “forced” to convert. Converted Jews, termed “New Christians” were permitted to remain in Spain, but they couldn’t be Jewish, or retain any Jewish traditions, or the Catholic Inquisition would arrest and condemn them to death.

Controversy remains as to whether or not Columbus himself was Jewish, or a New Christian, or a Judaizer. But we know that many members of those groups traveled with him on his various voyages to the New World, and that the initial Spanish settlements contained numerous New Christians.

OK, keep that in mind. Now, remember that the Pope divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese colonies, in present day Brazil, also included numerous New Christians. And for a while, the Spanish Inquisition had not established itself in Portugal.

Also, keep in mind that Holland, recently separated from Spain, welcomed the Jews (think of Spinoza and my posting about Theater J’s “New Jerusalem” last week) and allowed them to live openly as Jews.

Now get set for the competition – Latin America and the Caribbean had three European contenders for settlement – for gold and silver mines, for sugar plantations: Spain, Portugal and Holland. Who were the common denominators? The Spanish/Portuguese/Dutch Jews, who had interlocking families in the three countries, spoke all of the languages, and were able to operate as “New Christians”, but often wanted to be able to live openly as Jews.

You get the picture. To escape persecution at home, the Jews/New Christians settled the New World, only to find the problems of home creeping up on them, as the Inquisition spread to the New World, as Spain and Portugal combined in 1580 bringing the Spanish Inquisition to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil, as the Netherlands captured the north of Brazil from the Portuguese (permitting Jews to live as Jews), only to lose it again, forcing the now-open Jews to leave, either going to Amsterdam, Curacao, or on that famous ship that left Recife and wound up on Manhattan Island.

So, the Jews (who were, everywhere, known as the Portugals, even in Europe) were fighting for the social freedom, their political freedom and their economic freedom. And economically, not surprisingly, they were very successful in trade, and sugar, and mining. And to protect their enterprises, and prejudice their competition, they, like everyone else, got into privateering, or privacy. Which is where the Jewish pirates come up.

So, Spain, Portugal, Holland. And then there was England, no longer Catholic, with its settlements in North America. How can it get in on the sugar trade, on shipping silver, and so forth. It needed a base in the Caribbean and Jamaica, an island formerly the property of the heirs of Christopher Columbus, with a significant “Jewish” population, seemed ideal. So, it was the Portugals that helped the English take Jamaica, and the English let the Jews settle in New Amsterdam (now New York) and even in England itself.

So, there you have it. With apologies to Edward Kritzler, I must say I probably did a worse job than he did in telling this story – a Jewish presence in the New World from 1492 on. And not only a Jewish presence, but an important one – economically, politically, socially and militarily.

One final point. Think about Somalia today and those terrible pirates, attacking ships in the Gulf, and leaving like kings on shore. Unbelievable that such a thing could happen. But in the 16th century in the Americas, the identical thing happened – privateers capturing and sinking treasure ships of all kinds, their captains living like kings. But there was a difference – in the 16th century, the great powers (Spain, England, etc.) encouraged this activity, sponsored it, and took a cut of the proceeds. Does that happen today, as well?

There’s nothing new under the sun.

Capital Fringe Festival – Second Visit

This will be quick. We chose two performances for Sunday night. I had high hopes…….

The first was a one-woman review called Dorothy Parker’s Last Call, based on the life, and the words, of poet/humorist/Round Table member, Dorothy Parker. Lesley Abrams performed well enough, I thought, but there just wasn’t enough in the piece itself to justify putting it on. If the writing in this brief show is all Dorothy Parker had to show for her life, it seems it was a very shallow life indeed. But that, I know, it wasn’t.

From there, we went to see a cabaret performance called Love Noir, feature the songs of Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen (quite a trio). And indeed the best thing about the show was the selection of music – it was just terrific. The two performers, one male, one female, had their moments, and were almost up to the task, but the high notes caught one, and the inability to make his emotions seem quite real enough tricked the other. The keyboard accompanist was technically very proficient, if a little personally stiff. I don’t want to sound too harsh – I did enjoy the show quite a bit but, as I say, Lenny, Kurt and Harold were the true stars.

In between, a light supper at Busboys and Poets (5th Street version). You gotta love Busboys and Poets. It’s quite an institution now.

First Day at the Fringe, an Unusual Chinese Restaurant and how About that Norman Rockwell? (5 cents)

The Capital Fringe Festival opened its three week run on Thursday. We saw two shows last night, both adaptations and abridgments. First, Medea, performed by a company from Indianapolis. Second, Macbeth, performed by a new, local company. While neither performance was a block-buster, each was more than adequate and quite professional.

Medea is a tough, dark story. Having forsaken her own family to assist Jason, her true love, obtain and return to Corinth with the Golden Fleece, and having given birth to two children with Jason, Medea finds herself on the outside, after Jason returns to Corinth and decides to abandon Medea and marry the daughter of the king.

Revenge becomes the order of the day, and Medea determines to kill not only her husband’s new bride-to-be, but also her two children, both of whom she professes to love, in order to get back on Jason.

High drama here. And important issues. What rights do a scorned woman have? And where do those rights end? And does it make a difference that the scorned woman’s past is none too clean herself?

I sensed a strong feminist slant in this production. That is OK, to a point, and the concept of Medea being left high and dry, driven from the city, with no where to go gives rise to a lot of empathy. But did anyone deserve to die because Jason decided to abandon her? And particularly, did her children deserve what they got?

Silly question, you ask, but even today, 2500 years after Euripides wrote the play, child murder goes on. Young women are killed in India, it appears. There is selective abortion in certain parts of the world. And what about all of those Islamic mothers, proud to have their children martyred as suicide bombers? Is any of this that different from the sad case of Medea?

Macbeth is equally dark for other reasons. Macbeth and his lady are quite ambitious, hoping that the death of King Duncan of Scotland will lead to his accession to the throne of that country. So, he kills the visiting Duncan, but becomes unglued, captive to his guilt, to the continuing pressure from his less guilt-ridden wife, and to the prophesies of three strange witches, who say that Banquo will have children who will obtain the throne, but that Macbeth has little to worry about until Birnam Woods approach his castle.

Both Medea and Macbeth played their roles well. Medea, if anything, was overstated and a bit too frenetic at times, but Macbeth could have used a little more fire, but they did a good job. Kudos also to the chorus in Medea, cretins that they were, and to the fighting scenes in Macbeth, which on a small floor-level stage, endangered the individual sitting closest to the soldier’s entrance (that would be me).

In between the two shows, we went to the American Art Museum to see the exhibit of Norman Rockwell paintings from the collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. This is an exciting exhibition that will be at the museum for the remainder of 2010, and should be seen by all. The detail of Rockwell’s figures, his fine draftsmanship, the bright colors, the facial expressions, and the compositions themselves – remarkable.

In his absurd questioning of Elena Kagan, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, made it clear to her that any right thinking American would realize that we were a much better and freer country thirty years or so ago than we are today. (Others reminded him of, for example, the relative position of women, blacks, Hispanics and gays thirty years ago.) Perhaps, Coburn was thinking of Norman Rockwell when he made that statement, because clearly Rockwell’s America is a special and very positive place (even the pictures of sadness and melancholy portray stories that you somehow know will turn out well in the end).

Maybe we need a Rockwell today, to paint today as he did during the middle of the last century. Wide-eyed children, proud parents, beautiful but innocent women and their admirers, old folks enjoying their friendships during their sunset years. We still do have these folks around, and perhaps the art world needs to put them in the center of things now and then.

We had dinner at a fairly new Chinese dim sum restaurant called Ping Pong. OK, weird name. And weird restaurant. No chicken lo mein, or shrimp fried rice here – just Chinese tapas, three to an order. A wide assortment, yet somehow not enough. And if there are restaurants like this in China, they must be as new as this one. As in tapas or mezze restaurants generally, it is a little hard to know what to do the first time.

Now, without going into detail, I will say that I thought almost everything we ordered was excellent, and I would definitely return. My companion (who wishes to remain anonymous, but is also known as my wife) felt just the opposite. If I do go back again, it clearly won’t be with her.