Tiger Woods, Mrs. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Elizabeth Weil (an unlikely trio, if there ever was one) (38 cents)

I have been so busy reading about Tiger Woods. The question is: how many women are there? The count apparently now stands at 9, although I think it’s even money that at least one of them is playing make believe. For a while I have been afraid that we will never know the answer to the question, but now realize that I was wrong. Luckily, it turns out that the Tareq and Michaele Salahi were present at each of Woods’ assignations, so that when the book is written, we will learn the truth.

The person most in the dark is of course, Mrs. Tiger Woods. Apparently, this is always the way it is. I have just read a book called “Adam’s Belle”, the memoirs of Isabel Washington Powell (she was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s first wife of three or four; he was her second husband of two), an interesting (but perhaps hard to find) memoir co-authored by Joyce Burnett and published by DBM Press in Springfield VA last year. Powell was Isabel’s perfect husband, her Prince Charming, until one day after his election to Congress he told her that she would not be coming to Washington with him because, although he would always love her, he had outgrown her and had to move on (and then became very nasty with lawyers and things, trying to kick her out of her house as quickly as possible). But of course it turns out that he had been having an affair with musician (and wife #2) Hazel Scott for over a year, and even Isabel’s best friend knew but couldn’t bear telling her. So, once again, the spouse finds out last.

But of course, you never know what goes on within a marriage, do you? This is a truism, I know, but the exception that proves the rule is the marriage between Elizabeth Weil and her husband, Dan (Weil?), which was the subject of a long article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine titled “I Have a Pretty Good Marriage”. Well, let me be the first two tell you that Elizabeth Weil is delusional – either she has made up a lot of stuff to make the reader squirm in embarrassment (delusional possibility #1) or she has convinced herself that her seemingly downright awful marriage is “pretty good”. Hard to imagine why anyone would write and publish such an article (and can’t wait to see the reaction of her two daughters when they are old enough to read it), and to think she is working on a “memoir about marriage improvement” just makes my eyes roll. The premise of the article is that her nine year old marriage is pretty good, although the not-so-good aspects she describes seem to me to be so all encompassing that a better description of the relationship would be “quite bad”, but that she decided to make it better by going through every marriage improvement program available, each of which seemed to make things much worse (which was not surprising since the various therapies each seem to focus on one more awful aspect of their partnership). Ignoring the effect of these problems on their overall relationship, she simply concludes that marriage is difficult because the closer you try to become, the more you rebel and want to be your own person.

Going back for a minute to Isabel Powell, her marriage as she describes it was quite good – born to a middle class light-skinned black family in Savannah Georgia, she and her sister Ferdi Washington, became dancers/actors in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, a career she gave up to marry the man destined to take over the large Abyssinian Baptist Church on Riverside Drive. She had been married before, had a son, and surprisingly one night got into an argument with her husband who struck her. She was out of there immediately; he tried to make amends (it was an isolated incident apparently). She would have no part of it. He responded by committing suicide.

After Powell was elected to Congress and left her alone, she pretty much stayed alone. Alone but active, teaching and mentoring children and keeping up with some of her old acquaintances (many of whom were quite well known literary and entertainment figures), until she died last year, somewhere in her nineties. On the level of moral standing, she, as opposed to Congressman Powell, seems to rate quite high.

As to Elin Nordegren, Mrs. Tiger Woods, we will see what happens to her, and whether she will take after Isabel Washington Powell or not.

Did you know that Oscar Wilde was married and had two sons? (10 cents)

Perhaps you did. I, for one, had never paid any attention to Wilde’s family, but he was living with his wife and two sons, when his troubles broke out, and his homosexual or bisexual ways led to his arrest, trials, and eventual incarcerations.

When that occurred, and the Wilde sons were only 8 and 11, they were certainly not told the origin or substance of their father’s troubles, only that he was going through a bad time, that their home was to be taken from them, that they had to leave Britain, separate from their parents, and change their names from Wilde to Holland.

Then came a series of generally unpleasant schools, in France, Switzerland, Italy and Monaco, and the death of their by then estranged parents, followed by a series of not quite successful guardians, and the separation of the two boys to different schools.

The older brother Cecil was killed during World War I; the younger, Vyvyan, lived to be 80, seemed to have got over the embarrassment of his father’s notoriety, and became something of an author himself, writing a memoir, “Son of Oscar Wilde” that talks about how he and his brother coped with all of the changes foisted upon them after the arrest of their father. An interesting book on a number of levels – how schools worked at the turn of the century, and how the Wilde family coped in general with Oscar’s problems.

James Bradley’s “The Imperial Cruise” and “Flags of our Fathers” (16 cents)

There is no question but that James Bradley’s new book “The Imperial Cruise” provides fascinating, thought provoking and disturbing reading. The title of the book refers to the mission sent by President Theodore Roosevelt, under the leadership of Secretary of War and future president William Howard Taft, to major Pacific Ocean ports in 1905. It’s often been said that it was this voyage which first identified the United States as a major Pacific power, and that its goals were both that of a good will tour and that of an announcement that “we are here!”.

Bradley sees much more. The author of the well reputed “Flags of Our Fathers”, whose own father was one of the six American servicemen pictured raising the flag on Iwo Jima, sees the first Roosevelt presidency (as epitomized in the 1905 tour) as having planted the seeds that led to the eventual conflict with Japan that culminated in Pearl Harbor and everything that followed. Thus, one Roosevelt created the problems with which another Roosevelt had to solve.

And it’s not a good story that he tells. It is one of hubris and theories of racial superiority. And it may or may not be correct.

Let me try to explain in a simple manner. According to Bradley: the United States has always been a very violent country, as evidenced by the ruthless way it spread westward at the expense of native Americans, who were treated with the utmost of violence (violence not surpassed by the most horrific stories of today which emanate from so many corners of the globe). The violence, Bradley believes, can be explained as a consequence of a theory of racial superiority – that the Aryan race is the cream of all races, and the Anglo-Saxon component of the Aryans constitutes the creme de la creme. This is what was being taught at all the major universities, including Roosevelt’s Harvard, and this is what was written and spoken about by scholars and politicians alike. The white man conquered the North American continent, and it was time to continue the movement west across the Pacific, to “follow the sun”.

It was this theory of the manifest destiny of the white Anglo-Saxon United States that led to the unnecessary and contrived war with Spain that gave us possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And which convinced us that we had a right to take possession of Hawaii by staging the establishment of, in effect, a second government in the islands, and then a revolt against the queen and the independence of the country. And all this was done under the belief that these various peoples did not have the ability to govern themselves (although, as Bradley points out, Hawaii itself was quite competently governed).

One of the facets of Anglo-Saxon society that showed a strength, rather than a weakness, in early 20th century thinking, was our willingness to express ourselves and to go to war not only in defense of our independence, but as a way of increasing our influence and control. We may have entered the colonial game late, but enter it we should, and we must. Unfortunately, Congress (with its war and treaty making powers) didn’t see it this way; we were in fact quite isolationist on the legislative side. So Roosevelt had to skirt around constitutional restrictions and, through a variety of secret moves, and without any Congressional funding, increase America’s presence in the region. Thus, he denied that we had a part in the revolution against in Hawaii, and in fact denounced it as a rogue operation, but didn’t do anything to restore the royal family. He told the Philippine natives that the U.S. came into rid them from Spanish control and grant them their freedom – although their freedom was withheld until after World War II, and hundreds of thousands of Philippine natives (yes, hundreds of thousands) were killed in the interim in order to secure American control.

In the late 19th century, after coming out of extremely isolation, Japan undertook a domestic program different from any other in Asia. They decided to westernize, to militarize, to send their young men to the U.S. and Europe for education, to concentrate on economic prosperity. This was in contrast to the other Asian peoples (many of whom of course were under French or British colonial domination), such as the Koreans and the Chinese, who were more intent on holding on to their traditional ways of life and dress. In the eyes of Roosevelt, the Korean and Chinese societies were dying; the Japanese society was in the ascendancy. And, since Congress would not fund American incursions in Asia directly, Roosevelt decided that the Japanese could do our work for us, and that as Japan’s ally, we would benefit (and presumably later be in a situation where we could move in more directly). So Roosevelt encouraged Japan to invade and take control of Korea (while telling Korea he would never let this happen), encouraged Japan to adopt the equivalent of an Asian Monroe Doctrine, and secretly took the Japanese side during the Russo-Japanese war, when the Russians were attempting to increase their own influence on the Pacific by controlling ice free ports then part of China.

All this was well and good, perhaps, until he learned that the Japanese did not view themselves as America’s advance men, and that Japanese ambition was as strong as, or stronger than, his own. And he never would have guessed that Japan and Russia would become allies, allies in keeping America out of Asia, so that their own plans would not be thwarted. And that Japan would be so concerned about the American naval fleet in Honolulu that, on December 7, 1941, it blew it to bits.

This is a very ugly story. Not the kind of story that makes you proud to be an American. (I had only read one other book that gave me this same reaction, T.D. Allman’s “Unmanifest Destiny”, a 25 year old book which also talks about American intervention into foreign lands, and how we continue to delude ourselves in thinking that we are being helpful and should be making friends; this book is another that is worth reading, if you can find it.

I need to see more of what the critics will say about “The Imperial Cruise”. Did Bradley discover the hidden undercurrent of American policy in the Pacific, or did he cherry pick his facts and quotes to string together a theory that won’t stand upright on its own? One of the Amazon reader-critics points out at least three instances where Bradley is wrong on his facts, concluding that the entire premise of the book must be brought into question. (Bradley says that 90,000,000 came to the St. Louis World’s Fair, but the number is normally given at 20,000,000; Bradley talks about when Captain Cook sailed from Hawaii, but in fact he only sailed far enough to be blown back to shore where was attacked by natives and killed; Bradley talks about Oscar Wilde, but has his homosexuality become a focus of journalistic discussion a decade too early.) These misstated facts are serious, but are they serious enough to bring the entire premise to its knees?

I suggest you read the book, and then read what is going to be said about the book over the next year or so, for I assume that controversy will follow.

And you may want to read “Flags of Our Fathers” as well – if only to give you a shocking description of what the fighting was like on Iwo Jima, important for its airfields to control, where thousands of Japanese fighters had constructed and were living in underground bomb-proof bunkers which led to hand to hand combat from one end of the island to another. And to see what happened to those who fought there, or at least to the six in the photos. Three killed later on the island. Two leading lives of desperation, and only one, Bradley’s father, leading a “normal” life. But he never (yes, never) spoke about Iwo Jima, his role in it, the photograph, his medals, or the death he witnessed. Instead he went home and bought a funeral home, which he operated for almost fifty successful years, working to make the surroundings of the deaths of others much humane, for the benefit of their survivors.

Margit Morawetz Meissner’s Story

I have just finished reading “Margit’s Story”, the autobiography of Margit Meissner, a remarkable woman and friend of ours. Published in 2003, and for sale among other places at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Margit acts as a docent, the book tells in remarkably clear, readable style and with apparent objectivity, her fascinating, and often harrowing life story.

Born Margit Morawetz in 1922 in Innsbruck, Austria and raised largely in Prague, her mother came from a very wealthy family and her father was a very successful banker, allowing the Morawetz family to live in style and luxury, to travel widely and to meet some of Europe’s most cultured artists, musicians and families.

All this came to a change first slowly and then abruptly as Hitler first invaded Austria ending the family’s summer use of its home in Alt Aussee, and then as the Germans entered Prague. In Paris at the time, Margit and her mother escaped through France, across the Pyrenees, through Spain, into Portugal and eventually to America. In these two sentences, I have unmercifully shortened the courage, the adventures and the luck that they found along the way, even as others of their family were escaping to Australia, to Canada, to England, and not at all.

Arriving in America, first finding work in New York and then in California, Margit married for the first time (unsuccessfully and against the advice of her friends and family) and found herself back in Europe after the war, working with children in Germany and elsewhere, and eventually spending time in Alexandria (Egypt) and Israel, before returning to California. She was only about 30.

She remarried Frank Meissner, who became a business man, and Margit had two children, continued work she had done as a dressmaker and dress designer in a number of settings, and began working with children with disabilities as the result of some physical problems and learning disabilities of her own children. They lived in Buenas Aires for a time, and she eventually moved to Washington DC, where they lived for many years in Bethesda, and Margit became very active in matters at her local schools and throughout Montgomery County, while her husband worked at the InterAmerican Development Bank.

Throughout all of this, Margit, with a great linguistic facility that can only put most of us to shame, learned German, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, French, Spanish, English and Portuguese, speaking most of them fluently and without a noticeable accent. She proved to be extraordinarily handy with needle and thread and related equipment, as a seamstress, designer, business owner and manager, and instructor. She proved herself able to organize not for profit organizations concerned with education and special needs students. She kept up innumerable friendships; she traveled everywhere (her siblings lived in Canada, Ibiza and Australia, with second homes scattered throughout Europe), and the last time I saw her, a couple of months ago, she was, now a widow from her third husband, at age 86, about to go on a trip to Bhutan.

We trust she got back safely and enjoyed the trip. I must call her up and make sure.

Italy has changed (2 cents)

If you don’t believe me, read “Christ Stopped at Eboli” by Carlo Levi (1945) or “Fontamara” by Ignazio Silone (1933). Even if you believe me, you should probably look at these 20th century classics to remind yourself of the changes in Europe wrought not only by wars but by the coming of roads, tourism, prosperity and technology.

“Show Boat” Lite: a slow boat to nowhere at the Signature (5 cents)

I had read a few highly mediocre review of “Show Boat” at the Signature Theatre, but tried to ignore them when I went to see the show last night for at least three reasons: you can’t rely on reviews in general, “Show Boat” is one of my favorite musicals, and the Signature generally puts on first class productions. Unfortunately, this time the critics are right and this particular Show Boat will simply laze along the river until it closes in mid-January.

The production has so many problems. First, although there are some strong performances (Joe, Queenie, Gaylord Ravenel, Frank and Ellie), two of the most important roles (Nola and Julie) were poorly cast and are poorly performed, with each of the two actors showing lack of (or wrong) emotions, struggling to stay on pitch, with too much vibrato in their voices. Second, the orchestration, so important for this show, is somehow off – a little too tinny perhaps, not rich enough, and not sufficiently integrated into the show. Third, the staging, for “Show Boat” is minimalist – for example, there is no boat, putting this production about half way between a full production and a concertized version of the show. Fourthly, a couple of good songs were cut, and some of the dialogue was rewritten (without success). Fifth, the production is totally devoid of all drama – a show that normally absorbs the attention of so many different emotions (issues of segregation in the south, and in Chicago; difficulties of making a living in early 20th century America; addictions of drink and gambling; laws against mixed racial marriages and relationships; “passing” for white and being outed; parents and children; spousal relationships; life upon the wicked stage) is devoid of any emotion, cold, bland, disjointed.

“Show Boat” is a wonderful show, combining great musical tunes with a high sense of drama, showing post-civil war America trying to grapple with racial and socio-economic issues. If the music is sub-par, and the drama utterly lacking, what do you have left? Memories of better performances, a few tunes that keep running through your head, and hopes for more successful “Show Boat”s in the future. The cast of this show seemed so stale, as if they know they have a loser on their hands; how will they keep going for six more weeks?

Much Ado About Nothing (a Double Entendre) at the Folger (35 cents)

Let’s start with a confession. I think that “Much Ado About Nothing” is just what the name says. I don’t like the play. I don’t like the plot. I don’t like any of the characters. I understand that this play has been performed steadily over the past 400 years and that it is one of Shakespeare’s more accessible comedies, but I just don’t like it.

Having said that, I have seen it performed a few times, I saw it last night at the Folger in Washington, and I am sure I will see it again. But while I can appreciate a good performance, I am sure that my overall impression is colored by what I think of the script itself.

There is some good acting in the Folger production (see below), but the negatives far (far!) outweigh the positives, in my opinion. Here are my problems:

First, the director decided to set the play in Washington DC and display the “diversity” of Washington and especially its Caribbean-born community. Well, OK, why not? Shakespeare has been updated before. BUT…..they didn’t change the text to say that this was Washington DC. They kept talking about being in Messina. In fact there was nothing unique about the set making it Washington DC. It was really set in “anyplace” urban world, from all I could see.

Second, the play starts with the return of the military – in the play, I think it was the Sicilians against the Florentines. But in this production, what war were they coming back from? It made no sense.

Third, the diversity was weird plus. The two central women, cousins, were both played by African American actors, with a West Indian accent, as was the role of Leonato, their father/uncle. In fact, each of the female roles appeared to be played by African Americans with Caribbean accents, but the other men were not African American, and did not have Caribbean accents – I thought that the contrast and imbalance was embarrassing.

Fourth, the role of Borachio (an evil perpetrator, turned informer) is a male role, here played by a woman. But they kept the clearly male name, and called her both “fellow” and “her”, as I understood it, confusing her sexual identity for no good reason. And, because she was played by an African American woman, they had her speak with a Caribbean accent, even though she was the only of the “non-neighborhood” types to do so.

Fifth, the prince Don Pedro was played by an Asian American, who has an Asian intonation in his voice, and his brother Don John was an angry young white man (he would have been better cast as Rif in West Side Story). Etc., etc. I just thought the casting was awful.

Now, some of the performances were excellent – particularly Rachel Leslie’s Beatrice (although she was better as the first act shrew than as the out-of-the-closet lover), Roxi Victorian’s Hero (whose performance improved as time went on and her condition worsened) and Doug Brown’s Leonato. Howard Overshown’s Benedick was acceptable, although he and Beatrice seemed to have no chemistry, and his performance does not stand on its own the way Leslie’s does. The actors playing Claudio, Don Pedro and Don John, though, were totally sub-par for what you would expect at the Folger, and although Alex Perez’ Dogberry grew on me, I thought with a little more directing assistance, he could have done much more with the role. And what a waste to have talented actor Craig Wallace acting as a DJ, spinning West Indian music.

This is the third performance we have seen at the Folger since we became subscribers. And the first to disappoint. Hopefully, the remaining two this year (“Orestes” and “Hamlet”) will remind us why we bought the subscription.

Music, Music, Music

Yesterday’s concert at the Church of the Epiphany was a piano soloist devoting the noon hour to Haydn, whose 200th jahrzeit is being noted this year. She started with a Haydn concerto, followed by a series of Mozart variations. I was disappointed with both, not necessarily because of the technique of the soloist (although I asked myself the question), but because I thought that the Steinway concert grand and the church’s acoustics did not permit the music to be as light as it needed to be. It sounded too ponderous. Then came a tribute to Haydn written 100 years ago by Debussy, a short piece which I enjoyed immensely.

The last piece on the hour long program was Beethoven’s First Piano Sonata, which he had dedicated to Haydn. During the first movement, something happened that I had never experienced before. After playing for 3 or 4 minutes, the pianist stopped, stood up, smiled to the audience and said something like “I have to get something”, leaving the stage. In less than a minute, she returned with the sheet music, which she opened up on the piano, and she started the piece anew. How often she looked at the music, I am not sure. In fact, I thought the Beethoven was the highlight of her concert. It was just a bit weird.

And it got me thinking about my piano lessons, so long ago, at the St. Louis Institute of Music, in Clayton. I think I started when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.

SLIM occupied a very large, old brick building that sat upon a lot that encompassed an entire square block. I think there were three floors plus a basement. Whether it was originally built as a school, or an insane asylum, I never knew; it could have easily been either. The basement was used to print music; it was the home of the Art Publication Society of St. Louis, which was somehow affiliated with SLIM. I do not believe that either is in business anymore; the building has long been torn down.

BUT, there is a website!! www.slimites.org, according to my Google friends, and if you go there, you get a “coming soon” page. Whether it has been “coming soon” for a week, or for a decade, I don’t know. But at least there is proof (sort of) of its existence, that SLIM was not a product of my imagination.

Let me proceed…..My first piano teacher was named Arthurleigh Bartzen. That was something, because I was of course an Arthur, but he was an Arthurleigh! I had never heard of anyone with that name (and haven’t since). I remember he came from San Angelo, TX, which also surprised me, because he certainly did not look like he ever could have been a cowboy.

Now comes the weirder part: When you go on the slimites web site, there is a directory of people who have been connected with SLIM, with their addresses and phone numbers. I think you can get on simply by emailing at a yahoo.com site. AND Arthurleigh Bartzen (and his wife Shirley, who I am sure did not exist back then – we are talking 55 years or so ago) are listed, with an address and a phone number!!! How weird is that?

When you took piano lessons at SLIM, you also had to take a separate music theory class. Which I hated. So you went twice a week. I had a number of different theory teachers over the years I was there. I don’t remember most of their names, although I can picture one (tall, red haired, who when she played the piano swayed like a palm tree in a hurricane, and told us that playing the piano was a great way to loose weight) whose name I would like to recall. The one theory teacher that I do remember had a double last name, the first I had ever seen: Kara Georgieff.

Now when I google Kara Georgieff, I come up with a doctor Michael Kara Georgieff in St. Paul, MN. But when you look at his bio, you see that he went to Washington U. Medical School in St. Louis. So, was his mother my theory teacher? Perhaps.

And, if you go to the website of the Music Teachers National Association, you see that there is a member named Katja Georgieff, and that she lives in St. Louis. Is she related to Michael? Is her real name Katja Kara Georgieff?

One more point: the old Serbian royal family was the House of Karageorgevic. I learned that a long time ago, and always assumed that my theory teacher (long dark hair, mysterious accent) should have been the Queen of Yugoslavia.

So, as you see, my questions go on………….

Revenge, followed by Revenge (38 cents)

Sunday morning’s program at Adas Israel was beyond fascinating. Journalist Tom Friedman interviewed journalist Laura Blumenfeld about her book “Revenge”, this year’s “Adas Reads” selection.

First, Friedman was the perfect interviewer. He asked just the right questions, smiled and laughed at the right time, and went out of his way not to one-up his interviewee by inserting any of his own thoughts.

Not that Laura Blumenfeld would be easy to one-up.

Her story is as follows:

In the early 1980s, her father, an American rabbi, was shot in the old city of Jerusalem by an Arab, as one of a series of attacks. He was injured, but recovered. His daughter was in college at the time.

She decided to get revenge, and years later, as a Washington Post journalist and new bride, she and her husband spent a year in Jerusalem. Her stated purpose was to study revenge, and this she did, not only amongst the Palestinian community, but world wide, visiting societies were revenge was encouraged by and often programmed into the social fabric. She went to Sicily, to Albania and even to Iran. All by herself, never apparently identifying herself as Jewish and certainly not as the daughter of Rabbi Rosenfeld.

But what is most amazing, after she learned the identity of the shooter (who had been sentenced to 25 years in prison), she located and befriended his extended family, who lived somewhere between Jerusalem and Ramallah, visiting them (as an American journalist writing about revenge) over a period of months and months. And, through the family intermediaries, she corresponded extensively with the shooter, Omar, while he was in prison.

In most society, revenge is a vicious affair – eye for eye, tooth for tooth and all that. But Blumenfeld’s father talked to her about “constructive revenge”, where the goal was to build yourself up so that you did not feel inferior to, but rather became superior to, the object of your revenge. And she had a goal for Omar, as well: transformation.

In her initial contacts with Omar, he came across as ideological and strident. She wanted to break him down by showing him herself as a person, just as he was doing to his large family. And it seemed to have worked over time, as he told her (while in jail) that if he ever got out, he would not attack anyone again.

I don’t want to give away the climax, although Blumenfeld did on Sunday, because I think you should read the book. But even if you knew what happened, there are so many important issues raised by her half-crazed scheme to find and make contact with the man who shot her father, that the book would still be a worthwhile read.

At least that’s what I think. I haven’t read the book, either. But I will.

And revenge seemed to be the theme of the day, as we spent the evening at the Rockville Music Theatre’s wonderful production of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story”, where Jets and Sharks plot out and carry out revenge against each other throughout the show.

The cast was superb, including of course Michelle’s Rosalita (she who wants to go back to San Juan, to the dismay of all of her friends), but also Tony and Maria and Riff and Anita and all the others. Without great publicity, the show virtually sold out all performances. Everyone involved should feel very proud.

Sierra Leone, St. Louis Park MN, and Cafe Deluxe

1. Sierra Leone. The civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s was clearly awful. Just how awful it was can be glimpsed in the memoirs of Ishmael Beah, “A Long Way Gone”, published in 2007. Beah, now living in Brooklyn, having moved to the United States in 1998 at the age of 18, and graduated from Oberlin College in 2004, was trapped by the war in his native country and impressed into the Sierra Leone army at age 13. His native village was attacked by rebels the year before, he was separated from his family (other than his older brother) and with several other boys escaped into the forest, where they lived by hook or crook for the next year or so, before he wound up a soldier witnessing and being involved as an active participant in atrocity after atrocity. The story is, to a middle aged American, mind boggling.

What is equally mind boggling, however, is the sophistication of this changeable group of 6 or 7 boys, and their resourcefulness. Beyond that, Beah obviously shines above the others – educated in English, he was a fan of Shakespeare, able to recite from memory some of the memorable speeches of the Bard and able to discuss Shakespeare with one of the rebel officers. He and others were also fascinated by rap music, and he was part of a young performing group, just beginning to participate in local talent shows before the war erupted, and they took their cassettes with them as they wound through the countryside.

Luck and talent brought Beah to the United States, where he now heads an NGO focusing on the reorientation to society of former child soldiers.

His book is not without controversy, and has been attacked as being an exaggerated account and mentioning events and dates that cannot be corroborated and at times might even have been inaccurately described. Beah has responded forcefully to his critics. And of course it is impossible for a reader to know.

2. St. Louis Park, MN. St. Louis Park is the site of the new Coen Brothers movie, “A Serious Man”, which we saw tonight. Let me simply say that I thought the movie was awful. I am going to leave it at that.

3. Cafe Deluxe. Dinner at Cafe DeLuxe in Bethesda was, as always, very good, although I stuck with a salmon salad nicoise and a glass of Merlot. But all was good – the greens, the light dressing, the warmed salmon. I joined their frequent eater club – I don’t think I will ever get a free meal, but maybe a birthday present?