The Good Old Days

I have just read two books about the good old days, “The Politics of Rage” by Dan T. Carter (a biography of George Wallace) and “The Unmaking of a President” by Herbert Y. Schandler (the story of the Vietnam War and the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson). The good old days.

Dan T. Carter was a history professor at Emery University, and later went to the University of South Carolina, from which he retired in 2007. His book on George Wallace, published in 1995, is highly regarded, and rightly so. Not only is it a fascinating biography of former Alabama governor and two-time presidential candidate Wallace, but provides a broader history of the 20th century civil rights movement in the United States, and serves as a reminder of all the people and all of the events which so many of us lived through. Wallace as a poor, small town southern boy, as a boxer, a soldier and finally a politician, and how his politics turned more and more segregationist as time went to, becoming so influential that the Republican party, during the second Nixon campaign, began to emulate him, thus birthing the Southern Strategy. Only after Wallace was shot at a political rally in 1972 did he begin to slow down and realize his limits and, eventually, perhaps even to realize the wrongness of his earlier ways, as he toned down his rhetoric and sought forgiveness from many of his former targets. But it is the picture of America that is really important to remember, much more so than the personality of Wallace. For it is America that allowed Wallace to become a fairly series candidate, and certainly an influential politician. Thinking of himself first, perhaps, as a southern states-rights advocate for whom segregation was one important facet of a states rights campaign, he changed his mind when he began to campaign in the North – in Wisconsin and and Indiana, and when he gave the speech at Harvard that I remember so well boycotting. Then, it was that he discovered, to his great surprise, that all of American was the South. And to a significant extent, he was correct.

Schandler’s book is less well know, written in 1977 as an expanded Ph.D. thesis at Harvard and published by the Princeton University Press. It is an account of the politics of the Vietnam War during the Johnson years. Not an account of the war itself (although certain important trends and events are discussed), but an account of the discussions that went on between the White House, Defense Department, Military and State Department about how the war should be carried out – do you expand the bombing or curtail it and for what reason, with what expectations; how do domestic concerns affect the way you fight the war; how does the ability of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to fend for itself influence your actions; can you continue to avoid a call up of the Reserves, and should you; how thinly stretched in the American army; what are the ultimate goals, possibilities and expectations. Much sounds like what must be happening now, as the government ponders Afghanistan and Iraq. But there are differences – clearly the media (with all its focus on body kill counts, etc.) was not privy to the discussions in the way they seem to be today, and the highly partisan nature of today’s debate was notably absence in the 1960s. Again, it was reliving the past, reading about (in new ways) those familiar names: Johnson, Humphrey, Clifford, Vance, McNamara, Rusk, Westmoreland and all the others.

Why did Johnson decide not to seek reelection in 1968? For one thing, his polling numbers had dropped dramatically; it would not be easy. For another, he probably did believe that the need to campaign and to posture for votes would affect both the decisions about the war, and about various competing domestic issues. For a third, he was simply worn out (and in fact, he lived only about four more years, dying at the relatively young age of 64).

This was a very well researched book, and probably is not easy to find today. But it is working looking for, and reading.

I was Lost in Yonkers last night.

At Theater J, and recommend that others leave the GPS at home and follow suit.

As a literary work, I am not sure that Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” deserved the Pulitzer Prize that it received, but it is clearly a play that is an audience pleaser if well performed and well directed, and the Theater J production is all of that.

The story line: It is 1942, in Yonkers. Embittered German refugee, now living in Yonkers, saw two of her six children die, and the four others each in their own way develop abnormally, presumably in part based on her overly strict, hands-off, dour parenting (her husband died young). Her living children include Eddie, a weak, inoffensive man, somewhat afraid of his shadow, whose own wife has recently died (and who was estranged from his mother while he was married) and who must go on the road selling scrap iron to make enough money to pay off some major debts; Louie, estranged from his mother from time to time, who appears to be a (minor?) thug and bagman, and whose personality is as strong as his brother’s is weak; Gert, who is so nervous that she can’t even speak a full sentence without having to breathe in the last phrase; and Bella, who is an adult, but still a child, with an addled brain, but an extraordinary amount of warmth and humanity, and who lives and works (in the candy store) with her mother. When Eddie announces he is going on the road for ten months, he leaves his 13 and 15 year old sons to live with their grandmother, and it is the goings on, most of which are unpleasant and show tremendous familial dysfunction, that the audience follows until a kind of denouement is reached upon Eddie’s return.

So, with Bella we have a little of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”, and with Eddie and his two sons a little of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”. But Simon adds his own touches of course, as he puts these and other story lines together, and turns it into a comedy of great poignancy.

Some of the lines are extremely clever, and each of the characters fascinating (although I wonder if the play would have been a bit stronger if Eddie had only existed off-stage, rather than bookending the script with his going and coming).

“Lost in Yonkers” is often referred to as a coming of age play, about the two boys, Jay and Arty, but in fact the central characters are the mother and Bella. And especially Bella, played at Theater J by Holly Twyford in extraordinary fashion, drawing you in to sympathize with her limitations, and to marvel at her buoyancy, her sense of tragedy and her continual recovery and optimism.

There was a cast talk-back last night after the show. It seemed that the majority of the large audience remained, and the conversation was as interesting as the show itself. Surprising to me was the fact that at least three audience members had German grandmothers/mothers (I forget which), who were precisely the woman played so well by Tana Hicken. Tough, bitter, strict and – at least from the outside – unloving. And that Kevin Bergen, who played Uncle Louie, really had an Uncle Louie (not his name), who, like the character in the play, would show up unannounced and say that he had to stay a few days, or a few weeks, who carried the same black satchel that Louie carried, who had to duck as he walked by the front windows. And then there was the audience member who said that she was a step mother of two children with disabilities and saw characteristics of her children in the precise way that Twyford played Bella. And a discussion about whether this family, clearly Jewish in that the mother escaped anti-Semitic Germany, but not Jewish at all in any of the other elements of the script.

So the play appears to be universal in its appeal and in the ability of the audience to relate to it. And perhaps that it is this universality that led to a two year run on Broadway and a Pulitzer Prize.

Strange Evening with Howard Sachar (13 cents)

Howard Sachar, Professor emeritus of Modern European History, spoke Wednesday night at the Jewish Community Center, the last night of the Center’s Literary Festival. Having read over the years several of Sachar’s many books on Jewish and Middle Eastern history, I was looking forward to hearing him speak on the current state of Israel.

Sachar, in his early 80s, is tall and dapper and gentlemanly. His speech pattern is precise, his delivery very friendly, and he gives the impression of great oral elegance. This made him a joy to sit and listen to, with only one problem. The problem was the content of his speech.

Israel and the Palestinians, he said, will never agree to terms with each other. And an international mediator won’t help. What is required, Sachar maintains, is that the world powers (this seems to mean the US, Britain and certain unnamed countries, perhaps operating through the United Nations) must impose a settlement on the two middle eastern neighbors. Not with a “what do you think?”, but with a “here’s what you are going to do”.

This is the only way disputes have ever been settled, he said, hearkening back as far as the 17th century Treaty of Westphalia, and moving on through the decisions made after the Napoleonic Wars, and World Wars I and II. The creation of states, the dismantling of states, all without a vote of the states being affected. It is time, he says, for the today’s powers to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.

What? How does he think this would work? Who are these powerful nations, and why does he think that they could come to an agreement, even if they exist? Are the powerful nations all Christian, telling Jews and Moslems what to do? Does he expect that any Moslem nations will be involved and that we can sit down with, say, Saudi Arabia and come up with a proposal equally acceptable to all? Isn’t he concerned that Saudi Arabia itself is a bit vulnerable to anti-monarchic fundamentalists, for example?

And did the world powers that set European boundaries after the world war have to impose their decisions on a country with atomic weaponry? Or a country run by terrorists? And, what is even more, all the examples he gave were examples of countries who had participating in and who won a war dictating to the losers as a part of the treaty terms, and where they (so they thought) had a mechanism to monitor implementation of, and enforce against violations of, their decisions.

The US is not in a war with Israel or Palestine. And the only settlements reached by powerful nations affecting smaller nations outside a war situation are those settling colonial boundaries in the 19th century, or the Munich agreement between Britain and Nazi Germany which resulted in the transfer of the Sudentenland to Germany. And we know how successful that was.

Sachar impressed everyone with his intellect and his ability to deliver a very good speech. But I think his conclusions had everyone shaking their heads in bewilderment.

Movie, Lectures, Food

The Movie: One more East German film at the Goethe Institute, ‘The Tango Player’ (or ‘Der Tangospieler’), a 1989 film released after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before the reunification of the two Germanys. I thought that it was an extremely boring film but, at the same time, an excellent portrayal of the central character and his dilemma in re-entering East German life in 1968 after a 21 month prison term for a ‘political crime’. So, I have to blame it on the director, I guess.

Professor Darrow is, by all accounts, a successful history professor at a university in Leipzig, who also happens to be a good pianist. He is asked to help out at a student cabaret when the regular pianist becomes ill, and is unfortunate to be arrested as two Stasi members in the audience believe that at least one of the pieces is subversive. No one seems to believe that he knew nothing about the text of the songs, that he was only der Tangospieler.

He comes out of prison, loses his girlfriend, his father’s respect, his job, etc. He decides he will no longer play the piano or teach history – he tries to get a job as a truck driver, but no one will hire a former professor/political prisoner as a truck driver. So he is jobless in a Communist society which worships employment. His potential new girl friend tells him to disappear, to straighten out his life, get rid of his bitterness, and then come back if he wants to.

But he is so bitter. And, to make it worse, during the time he was in prison, 1966-1967, society opened up somewhat and everyone agrees that he never would be sentenced for the same ‘crime’ (even if you discount his lack of knowledge) in 1968, when protesters are enjoying Prague Spring, and everyone is so optimistic about the future. So he feels doubly set upon.

Leipzig was clearly a provincial city during this period. Darrow runs into his lawyer and into the judge who sentenced him several times after his release. Initially, trying to hold down his feelings of revenge, he eventually succumbs and attacks the judge in a park, increasing his problems with the system and deepening his increasing psychiatric problems. He is threatened with prosecution unless he returns to society, so he takes a job as a waiter on a North Sea resort, and soon realizes that this is not the life for him, so he is going to have to compromise with society.

A good psychological study of a true victim, whose position as a victim makes him sensitive, perhaps overly so, to the faults of the society in which he has spent his entire adult life.

The Lectures. First, Orly Rahminian gave a fascinating power point lecture at the Library of Congress of the “Image of the Jew in Iranian Society”. Rahminian is a graduate student at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Middle Eastern Studies. The lecture topic is her thesis topic, and she has been spending time as a fellow of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her research demonstrates that anti-Semitism is a long time feature of Iranian (and of Moslem and especially Shiite Moslem) society, where Jews were considered, as a religious matter, unclean, and contact with them was very limited. It was only during the years of the Shah, the Pahlavi regime, that anti-Semitism seemed to have receded into the past, only to re-emerge with the 1979 revolution. What was interesting to me was how similar the images of the Jew in Persian society are to images in European history. Was it because they were looking at similar Jewish populations (which would raise some uncomfortable questions), was it because there was contact between Moslems and Christians so that they were feeding on each other (which raises other questions), or was it because both religions were breakaways from Judaism giving adherents of both the necessity to demonize Judaism in order to legitimize themselves.

The second lecture, also at the LOC, was by Daniel Pinto, a Brazilian diplomat and student of the Jewish presence in Brazil. Talking about the early movement of Portuguese Jews to new world Portuguese colony Brazil (where there was no Inquisition), the entry of the Inquisition and the resulting hiding of Jewish practices, the immigration of Jews over the centuries from the middle east and Europe and their important role, continuing until today, in Brazilian society, a society that has lacked any strong history of anti-semitic activity.

Food. Another dinner at new Acacia Bistro on Connecticut Avenue, where the food is good but the menu, a combination of small plates and entree dishes, meat tapas and cheese tapas, is so confusing. A lunch at the Iron Gate in where I normally have the excellent tuna or salmon, but decided instead to get a salad with chicken, and quickly realized I made a mistake. And last night, at the Asia Spice in Chinatown, where I had a Japanese meal – sashimi donburi, which had 8 large pieces of raw fish (tuna, salmon, yellowjack, and something I couldn’t identify) over a bowl of warm rice with a nice sweet sauce and not too much of it, a delicious deep green seaweed, and grated dalkon radish. And it was excellent.

The Alchemist (36 cents)

1. The Play. I don’t think we would have gone to see the Shakespeare Theater’s production of Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist”, if we hadn’t won tickets in a raffle this summer. But we did go, without great expectation, Thursday night. We had heard that the 16th century language was hard to follow, and that it was a silly play.

Well, it is silly, but there was no challenge with the language (which in fact seems much easier to follow than almost-contemporary Shakespeare), and the slapstick antics make the play appear to be almost contemporary. It is a satirical play in its substance and a farce in its style. I confess ignorance to its original setting and context, so I don’t know if there were other farces in Elizabethan England. We think of French theater when we think of farces, but there was nothing French about this one.

The wealthy owner of the house leaves London to escape the plague, his trusted butler remaining behind. Taking advantage of his freedom, the butler and two friends, one male and one female, take over the house and use it as their base for a series of con schemes, to defraud the general populace of their hard earned jewels and money, as they cater to their greed. The lead con is an “alchemist”, who has discovered the philosopher’s stone that can turn everyone’s wishes into gold, as well as the ability to bring good luck in gambling ventures, and attract beautiful women galore.

In order to do this, the three schemers take on various personna, in order to meet the needs and expectation of their various clients. This adds a great twist to the normal farce, where people are shuffled in and out of many stage doors as others arrive of whom they must be kept in ignorance. Here, in addition, each time, someone new arrives, our alchemist himself must step into a closet and change his clothes and identity, which each outfit more elaborate than the last.

The production is highly professional, the cast strong, the set works like a charm, and the costumes are flawless.

So who is satired? Alchemists and their foolishness, con artists, gamblers, lawyers, churchmen, money grubbers, drug dealers – an entire raft of fascinating types who seem as relevant to the 21st century as they must have been to the 16th.

“The Architects” and a few others (3 cents)

1. “Die Arkitekten” (“The Architects”) was the second of the Wende series being shown at the Goethe Institute in Washington. I was enthralled by the film, and thought that the full house (only about 100) was, as well, until I heard some tittering at some of the egregiously bureaucratic responses of some of the East German Communist officials. I could not be sure if the titterers were tittering because they thought the entire movie was a bit too schmaltzy.

And it is, somewhat. But I had no problem overlooking that as I watched the film’s central character, a 38 year old architect in East Berlin in the 1980s, who had been a star student and went to work for a public design agency, where he languished, having designed nothing but a few bus stops and trash pickup centers. Yet he is ahead of the rest of his class, most of whom have left the profession entirely.

To make a long plot short, he is tapped by the agency head to lead a major project, a town center to include housing, retail, office space, entertainment venues (theaters and sports facilities), public art and gardens, and just about everything else. He takes on the major responsibility on one condition: that he can choose his own team, and he does (those classmates no longer in the field), and they work like hell, win a competition and then have to face the reality of the GDR budget cutters, manufacturing sector planners, and party ideologists. Their plans are cut, and changed, and then the project is canceled.

In the meantime, our hero is having another sort of problem. Living in a suburban high rise development with his physical therapist wife and his daughter (maybe 11 or so), he has to face the fact that his wife is bored with her life, jealous of his “second family” at work, and ready to flee, which she decides to do (with her daughter) into the arms of an old friend from Switzerland.

So, the architect is losing everything, all at once. How does it all end? Not great. Wife and daughter leave the GDR, our lonely hero is comforted by a woman on his “team” who is a single mother with a young son (a substitute, yes, but clearly not what he was looking for out of life), and the project is reinstated, albeit with some new (yet undefined) conditions. It is too much for our friend, however; he declines any further participation, is going to (after the film is over) resign his job and go to work with an old architect/friend who has been designing the restoration of historic churches and monuments.

What they don’t know, of course, is that the Berlin wall will be torn down within the year and the two Germanys united within another five. Success may find him, after all.

I thought the film showed real emotions by and large connected with personal relationships of various kinds, all of which were believable. If indeed the public officials were a bit stereotypical, my guess is that that is just the way that they were. An added plus for the movie: it is a film about architecture, and you see East Berlin in a way that I have never seen it. You are on foot, looking out of windows, driving the streets and freeways. I have been in East Berlin twice: in 1962, one year after the wall went up, when it was very stark and very depressing, and again in 2006, after it had seamlessly been integrated with West Berlin into one great city. What I saw in this film was quite different from either.

2. On DVD, I watched “Cleo from Five to Seven”, a 1962 French film about a young Parisian singer (the actress was 25) who has a suspicious medical finding that requires a biopsy. She is to speak with the physician in two hours to get the results. The film covers those two hours, when she is filled with dread. Her maid, her taxi driver, her older male patron/lover, her new acquaintance in the park, the coffee shop, the hat shop, her flat.

This is not a great movie, and parts of it dragged for me, but I loved seeing Paris in 1962 because, as I was in Berlin that year, so was I in Paris and, in fact, I was there is June, the month of the movie. I had hoped that I would see myself as an extra, but I guess they cut those scenes out.

Oh, and how does it end? Sort of indeterminately. Cleo has a quick conversation with her doctor. She is told “not to worry too much”, that she should be fine after about two months of treatment. Who knows what that means……

3. The third film was “The Four Feathers”, a 1939 film about Kitchener in Khartoum, recommended by friends and not the kind of movie I usually watch at all. The British are about to send a battalion to the Sudan to avenge the loss of Khartoum by General Gordon. Faversham, the third generation of officers in his family, refuses to go and resigns his commission, losing his fiance (the daughter of a general) in the process. He finds he cannot live with his decision, goes to the Sudan as a civilian, disguised as an Arab whose tongue has been cut out and who has been branded on his forehead, to see if he can help, and in fact he saves the British Empire (not to mention, his rival for his fiance’s affections, who has been blinded due to sunstroke) and returns home a hero and once again in everyone’s good graces.

A remake of the film was released within the passed 5 years or so, but its quality is apparently not up to 1939 standards. Well, 1939 was a big year: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind and all. But even without these, I am not sure if The Four Feathers would be widely remembered.

4. Hilary and Jackie, made about ten years ago, about the tragic life of cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, and her relationships with her sister, her parents, her brother in law, her husband Daniel Barenboim, her cello, and her fatal illness. Based on a memoir written by her sister Hilary, a flautist turned country housewife/mother, who relationship with her younger sister was complex to say the least, there are many things in it that are quite controversial within family circles.

Is the memoir honest or not, or was it just one more part of the long (and sometimes unconscious) rivalry between the two sisters? It is hard to say.

The movie is also very painful, dealing with Du Pre’s illness. I didn’t really need to see that – at least with Cleo, we have hope that she is going to be cured without significant trauma. And Barenboim dose not come across too well, either. As he apparently said about the movie: Couldn’t they have waited until I was dead?

The Art of Anne Truitt, The Jews (?) of Southern Italy, and pq-qp=h/2′pi’i

1. Anne Truitt. Some time ago, I picked up a copy of one of Anne Truitt’s journals and tried to read it. For some reason, I couldn’t get through it. Yesterday, I went to see the retrospective exhibit of her work at the Hirshhorn. I didn’t expect that I would be too impressed, but I was wrong.

Truitt, a Washington sculptor who died in 2004, did not like being called a minimalist, and did not like being called heavily influenced by the Washington Color School, but I think that is exactly what she was. She apparently started off which figurative sculptures, but destroyed most of them, when she went for black and/or white understated geometrics on paper and canvas, and wooden walls and tall rectangular pillars, which she smoothed and sanded and painted and repainted and repainted until she had the colors exactly right. Now, if you saw just one of those colored pillars, you might say “so what’s the big deal?” But seeing them lined up, room after room, they were beautiful, each complimenting the other.

Last night, I went back to her volume called “Prospect”. I have no idea why I had a hard time reading it before. It is elegaic writing – a woman in her seventies thinking back on her career and her life, and thinking forward to…..not very much.

2. The Jews (?). I think that everyone at Temple Shalom last night was surprised at the crowd that showed up to hear Rabbi Barbara Aiello speak on “The Turbulent History of Jewish Life in Italy”. It looked to me that more than 300 were in the audience.

They heard a very weird, animated, prop-laden talk by an American rabbi of Italian/Jewish descent who has started a synagogue in the village of Serrastretta, in the Calabrian boot heel of Italy. She talked a bit about recent archeological findings in Italy, and Jews who came to Italy for various reasons during the time of the Maccabees and the Roman Empire, and Jews who were driven from France during the middle ages and from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century, and who went to Sicily and, when that became uncomfortable as a result of the Inquisition, who crossed the Strait of Messina and wound up in Calabria. She did not talk (except in response to questions) about the Orthodox Jewish establishment in Italy today, about the Nazi period, about Ostia, or about anything north of Naples.

She did speak, however, about Jews in Southern Italy who don’t know they are Jewish, who may have some family customs that show carryover from centuries before (funeral customs, Friday night customs), and crypto-Jews, who know they are Jewish and keep in hidden. Listening to her, lower Italy is like the lower east side in New York, ethnically speaking. And if you only would give them the opportunity and the welcome, Jews would surface out of nowhere. It was, I believe, a bit fanciful.

Only during the Q and A, did she talk about how the Jewish establishment ostracizes her, how the Moslems in Southern Italy refuse to have anything to do with her, and how skinheads, bolstered by international contact through the internet, demonstrate a rise of anti-Semitic activity.

It was a bizarre presentation, filled with show and tell (family pictures, cloth maps of the south of Italy, candlesticks that belonged to her aunt, books written in Italian which she would hold up as she mentioned them). But it was interesting.

3. The formula. Pq-qp=h/2′pi’i is, if you aren’t familiar with it, the “fundamental commutation law of quantum mechanics”, written on Max Born’s gravestone. I enjoyed reading Barbara Greenspan’s biography of Born, “The End of the Certain World”, although have to admit that often I felt like I was reading a book written in two languages, one of which (English) I understood, and the other of which (Physics) was Greek to me. Putting aside the unintelligible, this story of a young man born and married into financial privilege, brilliant and educated and setting out on an important academic track, who found himself caught in the Nazi web, having to leave Germany (although he had converted to Lutheranism, at least in form, to satisfy his wife) after the Nazi government expelled him from his professorship in Gottingen (where he had worked with Heisenberg and others, and mentored Oppenheimer and Teller), and who found himself living during and after the war as a professor in Edinburgh (only to return to live his last years in Germany because of the generosity of the German pension system). A physicist friendly with Planck and Einstein, instrumental in the development of quantum physics, a student of the electron, of relativity and the lattice of crystals, Born was often overlooked for major recognition until 1954, when he was (at long last) awarded a Nobel Prize.

An interesting and long life, filled with brilliant discovery and rewarding teaching, but also the agony of physical illness, emotional turmoil, political insanity and a strong and stated desire not to have science used to further war and destruction. A very readable biography (that is, the English part) of a man, his wife of many, many years, and his three children, the oldest of whom, Irene, married a Newton-John, and had a daughter named Olivia.

Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (11 cents)

I was a little concerned at the noon time concert at Epiphany Church today. There was a audience of between 75 and 100 on a beautiful day. There was only one piece on the program, to be played by Russian born Irina Kats, who teaches at the Levine School and performs widely.

I was first concerned because Ms. Kats gave an introduction to the piece that lasted almost 20 minutes. Not that it wasn’t interesting and didn’t put things into context, because it did, but many of the concert goers are on strict lunch schedules, and I was afraid that the piece would extend beyond the 1 p.m. end time (which it did). But more than that, I was concerned because three different people sitting close to me stood up in the middle of the concert and walked out.

I figured that Moussorgsky, or at least Pictures, must not be for everyone. They weren’t walking out because of the time (it was still early), and they certainly weren’t walking out because of the performer who was spectacular.

I am not sure exactly what a bravura performance is, but whatever the definition would be, Ms. Kats’ Pictures at an Exhibition qualified. I was lucky enough, even though sitting in (as I counted them) the 13th row, to have a direct view of the keyboard, so that I could see the strength, the speed and the agility with which she attacked (an appropriate word for much of the piece) the piano. I didn’t have to worry that the vast majority of audience members who stayed were just being polite, either. The standing ovation was immediate, showing that I was not the only one who appreciated the performance.

Her introduction started off well. A little about Moussorgsky’s background, his place as one of the “Five”, the group of Russian composers of the 19th century who included Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, his personal problems, his avoidance of formal training, his alcoholism and the alcoholism of his best friend, who died at age 39, throwing Moussorgsky into a depression relieved (perhaps, relieved) only when he saw a special art exhibit arranged in his friend’s memory, and decided to compose a piece based upon the pictures in the exhibition. But then she began to describe each of the ten pictures, and how the music (which had not yet been heard) corresponded to them – and that was a bit too much.

All forgiven, however, when she sat down at the piano.

Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2 cents)

I just saw Michael Moore’s latest film and, although I found it well worth watching, I did not appreciate it as much as I did “Fahrenheit 911″ or “Sicko”. It may because the very broad topic of capitalism doesn’t lend itself as well to a two hour expose, or perhaps because the issue is too me less black and white than gun control and universal health care. But I think not. I think that the movie tried to cover too much, and flipped between journalistic coverage and comedy too sharply.

The premise is straightforward. Michael Moore and the Catholic Church (three priests are interviewed) believe that capitalism is both un-American and un-Christian. The olden days were better than today, at least with regard to economic equality (nothing said about the perpetual premise of pervasive poverty), and there have been many instances of injustice, particularly when it comes to kicking people out of their homes, or firing them, or when financial company executives take staggeringly large bonuses (paid too often from taxpayer funds). I can’t disagree with any of this and agree that there is a lot lacking in the economic policies of the country. I agree that capitalism has succeeded in part because of the success of its own propaganda, and that the Reagan years were devastating to the long term health of the country.

But it isn’t a black and white issue, and the answer is not, as Moore suggests, concentrating on democracy rather than economics. As one interviewee said about democracy: two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. That kind of democracy we obviously do not need.

The movie is very much pro-union, as you would expect, and strong arguments are made for the collective strength of union movements. The movie is very much against a Congress and administration(s) with financial ties to regulated industries, such as the banks and the mortgage industries; it is hard to argue with this, on the one hand, but on the other, who can understand financial markets other than those who have participated in the system?

You watch the movie and you are reminded of all of the injustices that you know about and ignore every day. And you do want to do something about them. But you know that it is virtually impossible to solve the problems, and that even Michael Moore, with all of his money and connections, can hardly make a dent in them.

The Movie: Once again, I went to see a new central European movie, this one “White Palms”, a Hungarian movie (filmed partially in Canada), based on a true story about a Hungarian gymnast, the brother of the director, who starred in the film. Once again, it was heavy, heavy, heavy. Imagine: a young boy in Debrecen, Hungary, is a talent gymnast-in-training, being coached by a sadistic disciplinarian who looked like he belonged guarding a concentration camp. His pushy parents, proud of his accomplishments, are oblivious to the scars and welts on his body. Finally, at 15, he runs away to (of course) join the circus, which in fact is run by a Russian as sadistic as the coach. He is seriously injured doing a “death twist” on the trapeze without a safety net, apparently retires from gymnastics and, some time later, takes a coaching job in, of all places, Calgary (the movie does not say what happens after he falls from the trapeze or how he winds up in Calgary where he apparently knows the owner of the local gym). His coaching career is cut short because he belts a kid in his class, something that Canadian parents won’t put up with, and is instead assigned (in lieu of being shipped back to Europe) to try to coach a talented teenager, who has become very surly and introspective. He succeeds in establishing a rapport, and trains him well enough that he enters into the world gymnastic contest being held in, of all places, Debrecen. His coach, our hero, also enters into the competition. The Canadian comes in first; the older Hungarian third. This is all very exciting, and the coach disappears after the contest to (once again) join the circus. He now lives in Las Vegas as a member of Cirque du Soleil. Truth is stranger than fiction.

The two gymnasts do play themselves, the gymnastic events are well filmed and exciting. The Canadian in fact went on to win a gold medal for Canada in the 2004 Olympics. The early sadism and cruelty, though, is very hard to sit through and, although the film has received some very strong reviews, I would not advice you to put yourself through it.

The Books: Just a quick report. As part of my “I think I’ll read a book that no one else has ever read” program, I read a volume called: “Assignment Algiers” by a retired U.S. intelligence agent named Erasmus Kloman and published by the Naval Institute Press. Kloman was part of the original OSS during World War II, assigned to Cairo (British Egypt) and Algiers (French Algeria) and then, after the invasion, Italy and France. Having recently read and enjoyed jounalist Frank Gervasi’s “A Violent Decade”, which covered much of the same territory, I had a better understanding of how the American and British armies succeeded in defeating the Germans in North Africa and how difficult the Italian campaign was, even after Mussolini was dismissed as the leader of Italy. But I hadn’t realized how active American intelligence agencies were in helping guide the armies (of course, sometimes their advice was ignored), nor how much intelligence was able to be gathered by a relatively small number of agents, carefully placed who, at the same time, were trying to figure out how to organize and operate an intelligence agency for the United States, something that had not been done before. Well worth reading.

I am continuing my program with reading a biography of physicist Max Born, written by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan. Well written, but meant for someone who has some idea as to what quantum physics is all about, I am glossing over the science and concentrating on comings and goings of Born in this very interesting inter-war period in Germany (I know he is going to leave Germany soon).

I also recently read Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” – a one act play about two men who meet in the park, one a family man, and one a penniless loner of dubious sanity, and what transpires as Jerry (the loner) tells Peter what happened between him and his landlady’s dog, and what happened at the zoo. Hint: there is no happy ending. A nice short play for a theater with a very limited budget.

The lecture: I went to hear Neil Sheehan speak about his latest book, “A Fiery Peace in a Cold War”. The book has received wonderful reviews, but I wonder how many people will really sit down and read it. It’s about the cold war, and the development of a missile defense (to replace, or supplement a bomber defense) as a way to bring about a delicate balance (reminds me of Albee) to keep the Soviet and the Americans from blowing each other up. He focuses on the role played by General Bernard Schiever, who was the most powerful voice in the military arguing for the development of a missile shield and the team that he assembled, and the willingness of Eisenhower to let them proceed in spite of some vociferous opposition from General Curtis LeMay and others.
The book took Sheehan 15 years to research and write; his last book, “A Bright Shining Lie” took him 16 years, so he is speeding up. The presentation was absolutely fascinating but, again, there was enough detail given in those 45 minutes or so, that I don’t think I’d want to dig through the entire book.

The Exhibit. I took a quick look at the Meyerhoff Collection exhibit at the National Gallery (I was on a very tight schedule) and will definitely go back. A large exhibit of twentieth century masterpieces given to the gallery by the Baltimore Meyerhoffs, it includes numerous works by John, Pollack, Kelly, de Kooning, and many many others. I heard a small part of a guided docent tour that focused on the concept of the canvas (flat and smooth, or something to have things sticking out of), rivalry between certain artists, references to fellow artists in various of the works, subtle touches of satire or irony that one would not easily notice, working with color and layout in very careful ways, and of course common themes and techniques. I would love to do the complete tour with this particular docent, but do not know if docent identity can be learned in advance.

The Restaurants. Less eating out than usual over the past week, in part because we had guests at our house and had meals at the houses of three groups of friends. We did have one very fine meal at Rasikas, a fairly new, and very contemporary Indian restaurant off Seventh Street downtown. We went there on our way to the home opener of the Caps at Verizon Center. That game was pretty good – it started off very strong, although the Caps had to hold off a strong rally by the Bruins in the last period. But since then, the Caps have lost 3 in a row. This is how you get to the Stanley Cup?