Yesterday was a Busy Day

I started with two mile walk up the street and back, with a break in the middle for a high quality poppyseed bagel and large cup of French roast coffee - my favorite way to start almost any day. While I was drinking my coffee, I read part of A Drive to Israel, a book by Cairo author and satirist Ali Salem, describing his automobile trip through Israel following the signing of the Oslo accords.

Salem has just left Washington after a week here working with Ari Roth of Theater J, who is adapting this book for the stage. I had the opportunity to see Salem speak twice (once to a large group and once to a small group, sit in on a working session with Roth and a group of actors discussing the adaption-in-process, and be present at a small dinner party at which Salem was a guest. Perhaps, I will talk more about all of this on a subsequent blog. (I say "perhaps", because whenever I say "I will", I wind up never getting around to it.)

At any event, after my morning solo venture, Edie and I decided to play tourist, and went down to the various war memorials near the Reflecting Pool. We found a good parking space on 17th Street, and walked to the Vietnam War memorial, the Lincoln Monument, the Korean War memorial, the World War I memorial and the new World War II memorial. (See yesterday's posting for my two primary observations.) The weather was beautiful, and I guess we may have been the only Washingtonians around. This is not the way it should be.

We walked back to the car, purchasing en route a World War II refrigerator magnet and attached ribbon, to give to my uncle, who will be shortly celebrating his 93rd birthday. He spent a good part of World War II in Italy, and tells his army stories, again, and again, and again.

We then drove to the National Gallery of Art, finding the second closest parking space to the door to the East Building, from which I car was departing as we arrived.

We had several goals to accomplish at the museum. The first was lunch, and we each had a buy-by-the-ounce plate from the salad bar. The quality was B/B-, and the price almost exactly twice what you pay at Soho for a larger selection of better food.

We then went to the exhibit of Irving Penn's platinum prints, which will be there all summer, and which everyone should try to see. Penn, who I think is still living at about the age of 90 was primarily, I believe, a fashion photographer for Vogue and other magazines, but he also photographed numerous celebrities mainly in this country and France, and took busman holidays in such places as New Guinea and the Peruvian Andes.

The photographs in the show (some of which I recognized) were primarily made in the 1940s and 1950s, using standard silver solutions in the development process. In the 1970s, he became interested in the use of platinum instead of silver (apparently platinum had been used a lot prior to World War I) and spent a lot of time re-inventing a platinum technique, and reprinting his old negatives.

The results, with deeper and softer tones (all the pictures are black and white), are worth a visit to the museum (or to the Yale University museum after the show closes here). His portraits of mid-century artistic and literary figures (Picasso, Beaton, Chagall, and all the rest), his fashion photographs (some of which feature his wife), his paintings of family groupings from Cuzco, and 'warriors' from New Guinea, are shown off to their best.

From the Penn exhibit in the East Building, we crossed to the West Building to see the Gilbert Stuart exhibit, which closes the end of July (I had already seen it in February in New York). Stuart, who painting hundreds of George Washingtons, also painted Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe multiple times, as well as other historical figures, and prominent members of the wealthy class in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, London and Dublin. Detailed features on all of subjects, and an excellent use of color make this a worthwhile exhibit. Among the well known paintings, are his full length "The Skater", a painting of a New York businessman, a number of Washingtons, and the painting he did of a 90 year old John Adams just before Adams' death.

We then went to the regular, free National Gallery Saturday afternoon movie. In the summer, they show old movies which have been restored at the Library of Congress, as part of the library's extensive restoration program. Yesterday, it was 'Baby Face', starring Barbara Stanwyck. This is a really silly movie, about a young girl, whose abusive father in Erie PA dies when his illegal still catches on fire, and who is advised by an elderly family friend, a shoemaker with an accent who reads and quotes Nietszche, to leave Erie, move to a big city, and use her feminine power to get anything she wants.

She goes to New York (accompanied by her 'colored' friend and sort-of servant/maid, who is with her throughout - an interesting touch) and decides to get a job at a large bank, Gotham Trust, a company with no available openings. But she seduces (it appears) the personnel man, and then sleeps her way from department to department, until she has affairs with the president of the bank, Mr. Carter, as well as with the fiancee of Mr. Carter's daughter, Mr. Stevens. This helps her in the short run, but winds up with a murder suicide in her apartment.

The bank then turns to the playboy grandson of the founder of the bank, who exiles Ms. Stanwyck to the bank's Paris branch, where she shines, and commences an affair with the bank's new president on his first trip to France. They marry, the bank fails, he is indicted, and needs $500,000 bail (his money is gone; the only assets are those he had given her). He asks for the money, she says 'no' and she and her 'colored' friend (Chico is her hard to believe name) start back from France with their assets in a suitcase. But before the ship sails, Stanwyck has second thoughts and runs back to her husband's office, to find him seriously injured of yet another self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The movie, released in 1933, was banned in NYC (and therefore did not open) because of its questionable moral stance. It was redone, with the elderly Mr. Krok telling Barbara that, when she uses her feminine ways to get ahead, that there is a right way and a wrong way, and that she should use the right way. Also, with a new ending, where the $500,000 is turned over to the bank as a voluntary contribution to put it back on its feet (I assume the revised version drops the concept of the indictment and bail) , and Mr. and Mrs. Threlkeld (just remembered the name) move to Pittsburgh where "they have no money at all" and Mr. Threlkeld takes a laborer's job at a steel mill.

Then, we came home to relax a while, although I went to Gold's Gym to finish A Drive to Israel, while on the cross trainer. Then, as reported yesterday, dinner at Blacksalt. I neglected to say that we went there without reservations and were told that it would be an hour wait. Two chairs at the bar opened, and we were able to be seated there for supper within about twenty minutes. Had we waited the hour, I think we would soon be waiting, because at 8:30, there must still have been a half dozen groups awaiting their tables, and I know we would have been at the back of that line.