After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

As part of my marathon reading, I read a short novel by French author Jean Rhys, "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie". An English woman, Julia Martin, with a troubled domestic past, winds up in Paris, dumped by her "lover", Mr. Mackenzie. Mackenzie promises to keep her solvent and for a while does so, until his lawyer stops the payments. What happens to Julia as she sinks into depression and returns to London only to find her mother dying, and her relatives wanting nothing to do with her, is quite moving. Like "To Have and Have Not", there is a lot of alcohol in this book, but because of Julia's situation, her pernods seem more excusable than the booze they drank in Havana and Key West.

But who am I to judge?

Harry Morgan

"To Have and Have Not" contains three stories, all centered on one individual, Harry Morgan. Morgan, who dies in the third and longest story, is one of a number of individuals whose misspent lives revolve around boats, fishing, alcohol, more alcohol, Key West and Havana. The prose is sparse, and coarse, and to the point, like all of Hemingway. It was written in 1937. I still don't understand how he won a Nobel Prize.

Yea, for WETA

WGMS, Wasington's long time classical music station and, at last rating, one of the most listened to stations in DC, is no more. Having been shunted first from its original AM slot, and the from its original FM slot, and placed into a new FM-only location with less power than it needed, it has now been mercifully been euthanized.

To make up the loss, PBS station WETA is now an all-classical station. No silly ads. And much greater power.

Of course, a second classical station would be welcome. Perhaps it will show up one day.

The Sad Story of 4221-A Connecticut Avenue

This is a tough block only in the sense that it is on a busy street with virtually no parking, and with no anchor establishment to attract crowds. But the small Chinese restaurant seems to do all right, as does the combination KFC/Taco Bell. But the space next door is an address of problems.

For several years, there was an Indian restaurant there (I have already forgotten the name, but I think it was the Bombay something), which was managed by the former owner of the Peacock and Katmandu restaurants. It was a typical Indian restaurant, with typical Indian food, and typical Indian restaurant decor, and very few customers. We went there a few times, but as the years went on, we went less and less and then not at all. Perhaps, we were not alone in dining elsewhere.

After it closed and stayed vacant a while, a restaurant called Redel's opened. It seemed to be a barbecue restaurant, but you really could not tell what it served, or who it wanted to attract. It was, you would say, non-descript. We never went there; I am not sure if I know anyone who did.

Then one day in the Northwest Current, I saw an article saying that Mr. Redel was really pleased how well his restaurant was doing, but that the was completely revamping its menu, and it would now attract everyone from the neighborhood, because of its new broad choice of selections. Two weeks later, it closed.

And it stood vacant again. Then, a sign went up saying that The Coat of Arms was opening. Again, there was no clue as to what kind of food The Coat of Arms would serve, but the restaurant appeared to undergo some renovation, and in the plate glass window in front, there was a knight in shining armour. Or at leat the shining armour part. It didn't look like it came from a museum, but rather from a costume shop. But nevertheless it was a knight, and it certainly fit in with the name of the place.

I don't think that the Coat of Arms ever opened. If it did, it must have closed within a week, but it stayed there looking like it would open for some time.

Then, there was a big paper sign on the plate glass window (the knight having been removed), which said something like Indian Ocean, Indian cuisine, opening soon. Full circle, I thought. This would be another typical Indian restaurant in a building without parking. I must remember not to invest.

But then, having been out of the city for five days, I drive by and Indian restaurant sign is gone, the knight it still away, but the sign says: Opening Soon, The Coat of Arms, under new management.

Stay tuned.

The Collector (1 cent)

The third short book I read on our short Florida trip was John Fowles' 1963 book, "The Collector", the story of a young asocial butterfly collector, who stalks and kidnaps an attractive young girl, secreting her in the basement of a country house, where he fantasizes about her falling in love with him. The book starts as a first person account of the events leading to, and following the kidnapping; I thought this (and at this time the book) rather worthless. Then it switches to the victim's diary, where you see the same events from her point of view, along with aspects of her young (but intellectually precocious) life. This was the best part of the book, and makes reading it worthwhile. In this age of focus on kidnapping and prisoners, I thought that Fowles captured the emotions of a kidnapping victim very well. Of course I also thought that the victim was a much more interesting character than the perpetrator.

A movie with Terrance Stamp was released in 1965; it won a number of awards, and I would like to see it.

And, I would like to know if the heroine of the book (Miranda) is a somewhat older Lolita, and if the butterfly collector is a somewhat younger Nabokov. There are significant differences of course, but enough common grounds to make you wonder what was really on Fowles' mind.

Boris Pasternak

I never could get through Dr. Zhivago. This time I tried The Last Summer, a short novel by Pasternak which takes place in pre-revolutionary Russia, and tells the story of a young Russian man, who has been disconcerted by his mother's death, and comes to spend some time with his sister in a factory town, but he falls asleep and dreams of his earlier years as a family tutor, when he fell in love with the Danish housekeeper but spent his time with prostitutes.

I couldn't understand it at all. Was it Pasternak or the translator? I will never know.

Of Moon and Sixpence

"Of Moon and Sixpence", loosely modeled after the life of Paul Gaugin, is Somerset Maugham's novelette about an English stockbroker who abruptly leaves his wife and two children to move to Paris. Thinking that her very conventional husband has fallen for a young shopgirl and is living the life of luxury, she sends a friend to retrieve him. The friend finds there is no shopgirl, and no luxury, and that the stockbroker has been driven by an uncontrollable urge to become a painter. Unsucessful in Paris (and blessed with a horrible personality and value system), the painter winds up on Tahiti where he paints until he dies of leprosy. After his death, he is recognized as a genius and major artist of the century.

The book is well written; it moved me right along. I read it on the airplane between Washington and Ft. Myers.

Is it realistic? Not really. Is each scene credible? Not at all. But does it hold together? Yes, in large part because of Maugham's artful use of language.

Sunny (not) Florida (7 cents)

I am in Florida for the second time this week, this time in Naples, where we will be for the next four days.

But let me tell you about my one day trip on Monday to Ft. Lauderdale. The plan was to take a 7:30 a.m. flight from DC, arriving about 10, and leaving on a 6:45 flight to get home about 9:15.

Everything went like clockwork at the beginning. Getting up at 5, I scraped the ice off the car, and was at the airport by 6:45 and on the plane by 7. We got our instructions and were promised a wonderful flight. Although all this was hard to hear because there did not appear to be a microphone on our Spirit Air flight.

We were then told that there would be a brief delay because they needed to load the passangers manually. (Yes, you read that correctly; that is what they said, and all they said).

Then we were told that the gates were closed and we would push off in two to three minutes.

Then 20 minutes passed.

Then we were told that there were two passengers who had not yet been boarded because of a computer malfunction and that we were waiting for them to get cleared.

Ten more minutes passed.

Then two men got on the plane, presumably the passangers, but at least one must have been special because he went right into the cockpit. Five minutes later, he came out and took a first row seat.

Then we were told that there was one maintenance issue that had to be checked, but it should not be a real problem. More time passed.

Then a new maintenance guy comes on the plane and goes into the cockpit.

Then we are told that everything is OK, but that there is a required computer diagnostic check on the plane because it is Monday morning, and in order to run the check, the plane's electronic system will be shut down. We should not be alarmed. It will start up in two minutes. It is like rebooting a home computer. ("We have all had that happen, heh,heh", said the pilot). It would check out fine immediately and we will be off.

The electric system was never shut down. We do not know if a diagnostic check was made, or if it needed to be.

Then we were told that people connecting to San Juan were going to miss their connection; they should get off and their luggage was being unloaded. About 5 or 6 passangers left.

Then we were told we needed to take on "several thousand pounds" of additional fuel, if we were going to get to Ft. Lauderdale, and that people on the right would see the fuel truck loading the fuel. I was on the left; the people across the aisle reported no fuel truck.

Then the Punta Gorda passengers had to deplane.

Then we taxied out. Then we stopped. Then for about 20 minutes we were de-iced.

Then, at about 10:15, we took off, so my arrival for my 12:00 presentation before a client board of directors was delayed from 10:30 to 1:15. I had to speak quickly.

Coming back everything was on time. But not pleasant as the gods bounced us around the entire way. A lot.

So, what was the story of the Spirit a.m. flight? We'll never know.

(Last night, to Ft. Meyer, USAir worked perfectly.

Highlights of the Weekend

1. Not the 4-1 loss the Caps suffered to the Panthers on Saturday. It was an awful game.

2. Not "Ultima Thule", a Swiss movie about a man in a coma who dreams of Alaska, while the hospital tries to keep him alive. They should have dropped the plot and made it an IMEX movie. It would have been a hit.

3. Perhaps, the C-Span caller, who confidently said that sometimes the voters get ahead of the people.

4. Perhaps, the delicious (but highly priced) red snapper at Luigino's.

5. Not the fact that my barber shop raised the price of haircuts by $1.

6. Perhaps the snow, although we had to cancel our dinner with friends (who got stuck in Fairfax).

7. Maybe, but not quite, "The Two of Us", 1968 movie about 8 year old Jewish boy in France farmed out to Christians in a village for the duration of the war.

Quick Takes (2 cents)

1. Theater. "Sleeping Arrangements" at Theater J. A feel good fantasy memoir of growing up in the Bronx in a very odd family. Your father was killed in the war (OK, so there was no war going on, but you're just a kid), your mother dies when you are seven, you best friends get you into trouble, your summer camp experience is a disaster, you move in with your two odd (and too odd) uncles, and your wacky grandmother, Etka from Minsk, joins the household. It is not profound, but it is simple and it is cute and defintely worth seeing.

2. Movies. "Live and Become", about a non-Jewish Ethiopian boy who, at age 11, in pushed onto an Operation Moses plane by his mother to help him escape a refugee camp, and live and become. And never to tell anyone that he isn't Jewish. For the first half of the movie, the boy, adopted by a white French Jewish family, is extraordinary; in the second half, as he becomes a doctor, and joins Medicines sans Frontieres and returns to the camp in Sudan to work, it begins to unravel a bit only because it tries to do too much. Absolutely worth seeing; also provides very good visuals both of dusty African refugee camps and of parts of Israel not normally seen on the screen. Also saw two movies on television, "A Song for Bobby Long" with a graying John Travolta (he is in his mid-50s? I thought he was still 35) and Scarlet Johanson, and "Creche" a new French film. "Bobby Long" did not get terrific press, and it is clearly not a masterpiece, but it catches the rhythm of the city that was New Orleans as Johanson, returning to her estranged mother's house after her death, finds it inhabited by Bobby Long and a friend, and has to make do and accommodate. "Creche", having to do with strange messages and drawings being delivered to the home of a TV journalist, perhaps traced to a man from Algeria who the journalist's parents almost adopted as a young boy. We kept watching hoping something would happen that was both interesting and would pull the movie together. No such luck.

3. Book. Finished "A Matter of Opinion", the memoirs (part personal, part history) of Victor Navasky, long time editor and sometime publisher of 'The Nation' magazine. It bogs down in places, but it is by and large a fascinating story of American opinion magazines, and all of the extraordinary and well known people who wrote for them, and tried to keep them functioning. For anyone interested in the topic, the book is highly recommended.

4. Restaurants. "Frascati", an Italian restaurant in Bethesda which has been around a long time, was surprisingly good. We had a whole tilapia and osso bucco. I am not sure I would do the osso bucco again, but not because of the way it was prepared. Just not my favorite. Another good meal at Logan Tavern.

Book Two: The Greek Treasure

I had never read an Irving Stone book. He was of course the examplar of the historic biography, with books like "Lust for Life", the story of Van Gogh.

One of his later books was "The Greek Treasure", the story of Henry and Sophia Schliemann and the search for Troy and Mycenae. Henry, German by birth, American by citizenship, marries a Greek teenager and (sometimes with her, sometimes on his own) uses the fortune he made in Russia and California to fund his dream: the discovery of Troy. He succeeds, navigating a course between being a loyal family man and a self-centered fanatic, between Turkish (Ottoman) and Greek officials, between his pledge to display the treasures in Greece and competing pulls from Constantinople, Paris, London and Berlin.

The life is one of luxury and hardship, but on the whole, Schliemann succeeded in meeting his goals, and his young wife (30 years his junior) became quite an active partner and archeological exploer in her own right. It is quite a story.

The book? It reads quickly. It takes the basic history and fills it in with a lot of domestic dialogue. While the domestic subplots might not be necessary, they don't interfere with the story.

There are really three story lines, I guess. The personal story of the Schliemann's, the history of the discoveries, and significant amounts of retelling of the stories of the ancient Greeks that fueled the need to make these exciting, but exhausting, discoveries.

I cannot speak for the accuracy of the history, but assume it. As to the fictionalized story, it is credible. As to the descriptions of ancient history, I found it a little dry, particularly when compared to that other popular reteller of these tales, Richard Halliburton, who also popularizes ancient history, but in a much more unique and entertaining fashion.

The treasures of Troy wound up in Berlin, apparently to be lost during World War II.

The Right Word

The topic on this morning's talk show was the "surge", and the question was: is this the right word?

Quoted was Mark Twain, who apparently said something like: "The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between 'lightning' and 'lightning bug'.

Book One: Betraying Spinoza (5 Cents)

Our study group this evening is meeting to discuss Spinoza. The basic text is chapter 40 of James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword", but we have also read Rebecca Goldstein's "Betraying Spinoza", which has the benefit of being readable, short, informative and interesting.

Spinoza comes across as a very modern guy, living at just the wrong time. He was excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community (the precise reasons are not quite clear, but he was obviously a pain in their side) when he was still a teenager, but he never converted to Christianity, so he had to live outside all of the religious communities of his time, when the ONLY communities were religious communities. So when someone says: "I wonder why Spinoza never married", it seems clear to me that (putting aside whether he could find a ready spouse in his situation), but how could he find anyone to conduct a marriage ceremony if the idea of civil marriage did not exist? You can see his problem.

At any rate, here was a modern philosopher who said that the entire universe if a manifestation of God: God is everywhere. Not in heaven sending down his son to die, nor in heaven promising a return to a promised land. Not a God of historical progression, but a God who permeates everything. Not a God who requires specific ritual or observance. There was simply no religion to encompass what today does not sound weird at all. And maybe it did not sound weird then, either. It was just highly, entirely politically incorrect, threatening every political and social structure that existed in this very precarious liberal country in a very precarious world.

Baruch Spinoza: the right man and just the wrong time?

As Easy as One, Two, Three....

The final touches are being put on the renovation of the Connecticut Avenue tunnel under DuPont Circle.

Admiring the speed and quality of the work, as I drove through this morning, I was impressed at the concrete blocks that have been put in place to separate the northbound and southbound lanes of travel.

I noted that the architect/engineers had carefully marked each piece, so that the workmen would have no problem in determing what goes where.

And there they are, with their identification numbers not yet cleaned off.

From South to North, you will find 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 8, 9, 11, 12

A real contest (10 cents)

Where is this? If you are clever (some of you), you will be able to let me know.

Andy Rooney at Politics and Prose

Andy Rooney has put out a new book, titled "Out of My Mind". He appeared at Politics and Prose last night with his publisher, Peter Osnos, in dialogue.

He is 87. I don't think he wants to be making appearances like this. He did not make a presentation, but answered questions, first those posed by Osnos and then by the audience. His answers were not expansive, only a few were clever, he told very few tales of his past.

It was not a painful evening, and we did learn a little about his early days as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes during World War II, and his take on journalism and the media today, but you just got the feeling he'd would rather have been somewhere else.

His journalism start came after he was drafted out of Colgate when he was 19, and wound up in England, first in artillery and then in journalism (he'd edited the Colgate paper), where he covered the war for the "Stars and Stripes". Then, he said, reporters had their own jeeps, could buddy up (he often traveled with Ernie Pyle, whom he liked a lot), and go wherever they wanted. You did not have to check in first and say where you were going. Today, he says, the military first needs to know where you are, then prepares people to talk to you, and the news is hardly news. He also says that, in Baghdad, for instance, the journalists are in worst shape because they either stay in the Green Zone, or they go out and get killed.

My guess is that his war time recollections (I think the book is called "My War") make for good reading. Apparently, you can see some of his original dispatches on the Stars and Stripes website.

Does anyone buy his books? I guess so. Does anyone read them? Probably fewer.

I was thinking about all the books that are published as I stood watching him last night and looking around the store. The many chairs were filled when we got there about 15 minutes early.

Who reads all of these books? Who buys them?

I was standing on the cookbook wall, where they have hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks, of every flavor imagineable. Why just where I was standing, right next to my left knee, they had four copies of a very attractive looking book called "The Man and His Meatballs".

No bestseller, this.

"I Drive the Speed Limit" (3 cents)

This was the bumper sticker on the car driving in front of me this morning down Brandywine Street.

Of all the irritating bumper stickers I have seen, for some reason this one irritated me the most.

"How sanctimonious", I thought. "Holier than thou."

I followed this car as it crept down Brandywine at about 20 miles and hour, my irritation growing, until it turned left, without signalling and after running a stop sign.

Violet Bonham Carter

Violet Bonham Carter was the grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, the daughter of British prime minister Herbert Asquith, and close friend of Winston Churchill. In 1965, when she was almost 80 years old, she published her memoirs of Churchill, entitled "Winston Churchill, an Intimate Portrait". They are fascinating to read, if a bit dense at times.

Churchill was about 15 years her senior and they met when she was a teenager. She was taken by his charismatic personality from the beginning, as were most people. She tells of his early life, and the adventures he found as a soldier in India and a reporter in Africa, including his escape from a Boer prison. And his start in politics as a Conservative, before his defection to her father's Liberal party. Irish home rule, and World War I are important parts of this story, including Churchill's failure at leadership in connection with the fall of Antwerp, and the loss at Gallipoli where 40,000 British soldiers died.

Churchill was always sure of himself; he was also often inconsistent. Although he became a great war leader (as a soldier, as head of the Admiralty and eventually as prime minister), he early on said of war: "when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individually severallyl embittered and inflamed--when resources of science and civilization sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of Kings".

Violet Bonham Carter was a very bright woman. In another era, she would have been a politician in her own right. In early 20th century England, she was an intimate advisor to her father, and an intimate (not physical, but in every other way) friend of Churchill's. Her story is an insider's story, and you can see how close many of the issues and emotions facing politicians and their relationships with each other are to those facing politicians today. But, England being England, their dialogue was sharper, "rapier-like" you would say.

Her writing is incredibly well crafted; this seems to have been an early English trait. On the death of Lord Kitchener: "To the nation, to whom Kitchener was a legend, it was as thought Nelson's Column had suddenly fallen at their feet." On C

Her quotations from Churchill (on painting "just to paint is great fun. The colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out"), from her father's diaries and speeches, from her father's rival within the party Lloyd George's speeches, and from Conservative Arthur Balfour's speeches are equally elegant. What has happened to this type of rhetoric and oratory?

The book ended abruptly, and I assume that she was anticipating additional volumes. It is 1917, and the Americans have not yet entered World War I. Bonham Carter says:

"In the years that followed, thought we never lost our way into each other's minds, and though at moments nothing counted but the unbroken bond between us, there were times when our passionate disagreement was vehemently expressed; others when our differences seemed too deep to be bridged by words and silence fell between us--times of incomprehension and bewilderment. Until at last a day came when the paths that for so long had parted us suddenly met. And as they brought us face to face we knew that we were once more side by side."

Jo Davidson

Jo Davidson is a sculptor. I always thought he was a she, but it turns out that she is a he. His long career was primarily as a portrait sculptor, and next to the Josephine Baker exhibit, you will find about 15 of his busts, including one of himself, as well as Gertrude Stein, FDR, Andrew Mellon, Clare Booth Luce, Sinclair Lewis and others. Very nice.

You've Come a Long Way From St. Louis (3 cents)

I am speaking of Josephine Baker, who ran away from St. Louis to sing and dance when she was only 13, and who was "discovered" at 16 and cast in some of the country's top African-American variety shows. Then came Paris, and (often dressed not at all), she became the biggest celebrity in France and the center of a large black American expatriate artistic/entertainment community.

And she lasted a long time, going from stripper, to chanteuse, to movie star, to woman of the world. Quite an impressive history. A long way from St. Louis.

The Portrait Gallery has a Josephine Baker exhibit, which contains by my count 101 different pieces: photos, paintings, posters, movies, programs, books, advertisements and endorsements, masks and sculptures. A very nice exhibit, not only because Baker was so ingratiating, but because of the quality of some of the pieces themselves, especially the art nouveau posters of Michael Gyarmarity, and the lithographs of Paul Colin, both of whom were very close personally to Baker.

Yes, a long way from St. Louis. But, in 1952, she came back for a homecoming performance at the old Kiel Auditorium. The program is in the exhibit (and is probably the least artistic of any piece).

The Weekend

1. The Museum. The Hirshhorn, where we saw two closing exhibits, one called John Baldessari Explores the Collection, where the museum is giving various artists and critics the opportunity to choose works belonging to the museum which are held in storage to be put on display. Our reaction was that most of them should remain in storage, particularly Man Ray's Blue Bread (a sculpture which looks like a blue baguette), which should probably be sent down the garbage disposer. There were works of art by many well known artists (including Karl Appel, Claes Oldenburg, Joan Miro, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassett, Jean Dubuffet, Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Rene Magritte and Milton Avery), but no well known works, and no works which would have given the artists any degree of fame (well, maybe one or two exceptions). The second exhibit was an exhibit by a number of modern sculptors (may their names soon be forgotten), who not only had their own works displayed but were able to select works by other artists who influenced them. This exhibit made the Baldessari look good.

2. The Restaurant. This time it was Zaytina, and everything was excellent, the salmon, the bronzini, the ground beef and lamb, the imam balydi, the fritters, etc. Everything but the Turkish coffee.

3. The Game. Caps 3 - Thrashers 2 in overtime. Semin scored with 17 seconds left. Went with friends Steven and Rene. Terrific game.

4. The Sale. The $1 per book moving sale at Wonder Books in Hagerstown. I saw very few books which approached $1 in value.

5. The Book. Nina Burleigh's A Very Private Woman, the story of Mary Meyer, wealthy young woman, wife of diplomat/CIA official Cord Meyer, mistress to John F. Kennedy, friend of Jackie, artist member of Washington Color School, friend of Timothy Leary (and advocate of LSD), and victim of murder on the C and O Canal Towpath. More insight into the Kennedy years. Nicely written book. Makes you shake your head and wonder.

I had read Burleigh's other books about Smithsonian founder James Smithson. Enjoyed that one, as well.

New Restaurant (2 cents)

We tried a new(ish) Thai restaurant last night, with excellent results. It's called Kanlaya (I think that is a Thai name), and is located in Chinatown, on 6th Street, under the venerable Burma Restaurant. Burma? Thailand? And it's Chinatown?

Pleasant atmosphere, good prices, nice service, and good food. I had a duck curry, Edie had a vegetable tofu dish, and our friends had a vegetarian pad thai, and a tofu and snowpea combination. Appetizers included a vegetarian soup, house salads with peanut dressing and fresh papaya salad.

With something to drink, it came to about $20 per person.

Top to it off, we went to the Caps/Canadiens game. Caps won 5-1. For a change.

The Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea (1 cent)

I went to three first floor, west building exhibits at the National Gallery of Art today. An exhibit of British romantic art primarily from the late 19th century, an exhibit of Rembrandt drawings, and an exhibit of photographs of New York from the 1930s and 1940s. You would think that at least one of these would have captured my interest, but none did.

I have seen a lot of black and white photos of New York. These just were not that illuminating. After all, how many subway passengers do you want to look at? As to Rembrandt, he was quite prolific, as every city seems to have 400th birthday Rembrandt exhibits, but how many small drawings or etchings can you appreciate at one time? As to the British art, none of it was bad, but was any of it that good?

The engraving above is by William Blake. There were a number of similar pieces, along with landscapes, and biblical scenes and everything you would expect. Mainly watercolors, the landscapes could be pleasant (but it was not like seeing the Constable exhibit, even though there was a drawing of a tree in winter by Constable). The "horror" engravings, like Blake, could be fascinating, but I couldn't put them in any sort of context.

It's always nice wandering through the National Gallery, but I don't think these three are worth the trip.

Jan Karski and the "Story of a Secret State"

Jan Karski taught international politics at Georgetown for about 40 years. But before that, his life was something else.

A well to do, and well educated Pole, he was called up for military service just before the Nazis attacked Poland in 1939. He never saw action, because the Nazi conquest was so fast (so unbelievingly fast to a country which believed it could withstand the attack; but again, so did France). But no sooner did the Germans attack Poland from the west, but their allies the USSR attacked from the east, and Karski found himself a Soviet prisoner of war.

He was freed in a prisoner exchange with the Germans, and escaped from the westward bound train. He saw how devestated Poland was, even Warsaw. He joined the underground, went on a mission to Lvov, became involved in being a courier and an underground journalist, and was chosen, in part for his language ability, for a mission to London to meet with General Sikorski. Of course, a trip to London was not a walk in the park, it was a train ride to Germany pretending to be German, and to occupied France, and travel to Vichy France, and then a hike over the Pyranees, entrance into Spain pretending to be Canadian, finding one's way to Algiciras and onto a fishing boat which took him to an English boat, which finally got him to England. He never lived in Euorpe again, and became an American citizen in 1954.

The book was published in 1944, and apparently sold about 400,000 copies in the United States. The book has 33 chapters. It can be divided into parts. Part 2 starts at chapter 29.

The first 28 chapters, after describing the events I set forth above, talks about the extensive organization of the Polish underground, the people in the underground, the risks taken, and the often tragic results for participants. The words "Jew" or "Jewish" are hardly mentioned, leading the reader to think that the fate of the Jews was simply not within the amit of Karski's concern.

But then come his meeting with two Warsaw Jewish leaders as part of his preparation for the Sikorski meeting. And his two trips to the Warsaw ghetto and his trip (disguised as an Estonian guard: "No one will question you being Estonian, as long as you stay away from the Estonians.") to a concentration camp, where Jews are being liquidated. He identifies it at Belzec, but its description does not fit and he later agreed that he must have been taken somewhere else.

He is appalled by what he sees, which are conditions so much worse than the terrible conditions the Poles are facing. Apparently, he really did not know this. But shortly after his visits, the Warsaw ghetto uprising occurs, it is cleared out and burned, and everyone then knew what was going on. Beginning with chapter 29, this is a different book.

He tells what he has seen to exiled Polish Jewish leader Szmuel Zygelbojm (who commits suicide days later), to Polish prime ministor in exile Sikorski (who soon dies in a plane crash in Gibraltar), to Prime Minister Anthony Eden and to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Karski started out as a fairly normal guy (Karski was actually a nom de guerre), thrown into extraordinary circumstances, seeing his normal world destroyed as quickly as if an atomic bomb had been dropped, and seeing the absolute lack of humanity in the German invaders. Something he never could have imagined before.

On his way out, he visits an old "liberal" friend in Berlin. He is again appalled. His liberal friend and his friend's liberal family talk about "Hitler knows best", and how it's too bad when the Jews have to suffer as they are killed, but they won't infect Germany any more, and so forth.

You learn a lot about Poland during the war, and about the risks taken by the underground, and of course (in the second part) about the fate of the Polish Jews. But a warning: if you are squeamish, I would stay away from chapters 29 and 30.

As we have for several years, the entire family went to the Caps New Year's Day afternoon game. We expected to win, but we lost. We have now lost five or six in a row. I thought that the only highland was Nicholat, the defenseman recently brought up from Hershey; it looks to me like he is here to stay. I am not sure when John Erskine will return, having a broken bone in his foot, but without him, the defense is pretty weak. Brian Muir is also out with a foot injury.

I think this is what led to the three Coyote goals in the first period. If I were a better viewer, I could gauge whether the goals are caused by goalie or defense shortfalls (or both), but I can't.

The other problem was our weakness on the power play and that even Ovechkin, Semin, Clark and Zubrus seemed off their game.

Next one: Thursday against Montreal.

Other than that, things were pretty quiet. That's good. Having been disappointed at the articles in the Smithsonian Magazine's January issue, I was happy to see that I had overlooked December, which is filled with interesting stuff: 'The Treasures of Timbuktu' [thousands of handwritten Arabic books, ignored for centuries, being preserved where possible and restored], 'Antarctica Erupts' [Mt. Erebus, 1700 degrees Fahrenheit in the crater) and 'Rembrandt at 400' (powerful paintings, filled with emotion, unlike anything else being done at the time], amongst other things. There is a Rembrandt drawings exhibit at the National Gallery. And we just saw one in St. Louis at the St. Louis Art Museum. Prolific guy.

Just When You Think You Know Everything

An obituary in the Post announced the death of Alfred Burger, 90, a Vienna born nuclear engineer. Burger left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and wound up in England. To quote the article: "Caught up in a sweep of suspected Nazi spies in the early days of World War II, he was among more than 2000 Jewish regustees placed aboard the ship Dunera, destined for an internment camp in the Australian outback. He survived the harsh conditions of the voyage and two years in the camp before authorities, realizing that they had made a mistake, released the prisoners. A movie, "The Dunera Boys" (1985) chronicled the plight of the refugees."

Just when you think you know everything.....

The End of 2006

We spent a very nice New Year's eve with our friends Bob and Nona. Very casual, we went to supper at our neighborhood Chinese restaurant, Shanghai Garden. Normally closed on Sundays (family values), Rae and his sisters decided to open on New Year's eve. We expect, when we walked into the restaurant at 7 p.m., that we would be one of very few customers, since (a) customers would not expect SG to be open on a Sunday, and (b) who would go to a neighborhood Chinese restaurant on New Year's eve?

It turned out that the place was packed (I think to the surprise of the staff and perhaps the dismay of the kitchen). The food as usual was good. We had egg rolls and quick fried eggplant slices with scallions as appetizers, while for main dishes there were salmon with Hunan sauce, du bien tofu (I am not sure what makes it du bien; it sits above a flame on a chafing dish, and is an off-menu choice), chicken and sauteed spinach, and a seafood and vegetable soup that Nona had.

Afterwords, back at the house for dessert (Edie had made a chocolate something or other that everyone loved and I stayed away from) and champagne (again I just said no), and to look at our pictures from Hawaii (where I realized how quickly I had forgotten some of the names and references).

Our guests left about 11, and we wound up watching the William Hurt/Kathleen Turner movie "Body Heat", while I thumbed through this extraordinary photography book I picked up a couple of months ago by the photographer Donald Robinson. The book is called "In Harmony With Nature".

There was an additional highlight of our 12/31. We had gone down to the National Gallery to see the Constable exhibit on its last day. Constable painted in England during the first third of the 19th century, specially in very large (his six foot paintings) canvasses showing landscapes mostly near his area of birth, northeast of London. Virtually all of his large work is in England (the Tate, National Gallery and Royal Academy), with only once painting hanging normally in Washington, and one at the British Art Museum at Yale.

His procedure was unique as, in addition to making pencil sketches of his subject areas, he painted full size oil sketches. This exhibit was the first to bring together all of his six foot paintings along with all of the sketches. He had apparently kept the sketches, which look to have been painted much more quickly, although they themselves are worthy of attention. It was interesting to see the small changes he made from sketch to final product, not only in subject matter (moving a tree, adding a person, etc.), but in tone and coloration. His sense of composition was excellent.

His life sounded far from perfect. Born to a fairly well to do family, he seems to have gone through good and bad times economically, and his wife, with whom he was obviously very close, died young of tuberculosis, putting him into somewhat of a tailspin. He died, it said unexpectedly, at 60.