Catching Up Before I Fall Behind Even More (15 cents)

1. The low point of the weekend? Waking up with a sore throat on Sunday morning and feeling sick all day long.

2. But what about Saturday night? What about Saturday night? It was fairly typical. We went with out of town friends to see Little Red and the Renegades play at the annual Ambassador's Ball sponsored by the Maritime Republic of Eastport at the Eastport Democratic Club in Annapolis. Got home at about 1 a.m. Heard a lot of zydeco accordian sounds, along with drums, steel drum, keyboard, baritone sax, trumpet, trombone, bass and assorted vocals. Drinks might have been $6.50, but a Diet Coke was only a dollar.

3. The restaurant of the weekend? Montmarte next to Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. Lunch was cauliflour and mussels soup, and chicken and spinch quiche. Everyone was pleased. And I did not have to pay, because our out of town guest turned out to be a very tricky person. "Excuse me while I go to the bathroom" was the line that let her accost the waitress and pay the bill. (I wish more people were like her.)

4. The song? Not what Little Red played, but rather the Teapackets' "He's Gonna Push the Button", Israel's entry this year into the Eurovision song contest. Look up the title in Google, and you will get both Myspace and Youtube URLs.

5. The book? Another popular title, "My Yesteryears" by Lee Meriwether, St. Louis attorney and sometime diplomat, published in 1942 by the International Mark Twain Society in Webster Groves. Have you read it? Interesting in many ways.

Meriwether was a distant relative of Meriwether Lewis, the explorer, who is widely believed to have committed suicide. Meriwether doubts this, suggesting that he was murdered and that the murderers conjured up the suicide story to cover up their unwitnessed crime. This theory is apparently still alive. But who ever heard of this possibility?

Meriwether was born in Mississippi after her mother was unceremoniously booted out of Memphis, when occupying General Sherman decided that the arbitrary exile of southern women from the city would convince the Confederacy to stop some of its military actions. The tale of his birth is pretty shocking. Who ever heard of this?

It is true that in many ways, Meriwether remained a southerner at heart, even after moving to St. Louis (as if that would make a difference) and his view of the south during reconstruction could be used as corroboration for W.D. Griffith's portrayals in "Birth of a Nation". Carpetbaggers, scalawags, and former slaves run wild. What is interesting about this is the casual way that he presents it, as if it were a known fact that no one could (or would ever think to) deny or argue against. And, similarly, the Ku Klux Klan is described as a most beneficial organization. "From this frightful fate the South was saved by a plan as fantastic as it was illegal. The Ku Klux Klan was organized by the best men of the South".

He worked first for his brother, a journalist who put out a periodical dedicated to free trade policies. Until his brother tied, and Meriwether, still a teenager, decided to see the world, and ran off to Italy. But Italy was quite primitive in those days and he returned, following up a meeting with someone abroad by applying for and getting a job with the state Labor Commission.

Suddenly, he was a labor expert and the state commissioner, and before long became a public figure with his critique of the mining companies and their treatment of their employees. He was a marked man, who escaped being targeted for murder, and was considered an appropriate candidate (twice) for mayor of St. Louis. As an anti-establishment and reform candidate, according to his memoirs (and from what I can see, accurately so), he won twice, but lost both times because of vote rigging.

So, like all others with nothing to do, he became a lawyer, and then became a diplomat, being assigned the the American Embassy in Paris during the First World War, when he proved himself unable to stick to the party line and became a rescuer through the issuance of unauthorized paper of Americans caught behind the lines, and an acquirer of furniture which had not been approved. The latter was enough to get him dismissed (although he noted that, years later, he visited the embassy and the furniture was still there and in use).

His position was somewhat ambiguous during the war with regard to the satanization of Germany (he thought we were being very one-sided), but it changed abruptly when Hitler became chancellor in 1933, and Meriwether became outspoken as to the evils of Naziism.

He then seemed to have segued out of the law business, and spent much of his later years (he was 80 when the book was written) traveling with his wife. But it was not winters in Miami. They went to the Soviet Union in the 1930s at the height of Stalinism; they toured southeast Asia. And he writes interestingly of what he saw, and of the people he met.

Meriwether's life was clearly eventful, and in an odd way, as he just sort of went about his business, and Forrest Gump-like (or Zelig), there he was.

I know you have not read the book. I know you won't. But you would find it very worthwhile.

Oh, and by the way, it is readable, and filled with humor and irony.

6. And the magazine? I would suggest the February issue of the Jerusalem Report. Boy, do they collect interesting articles. For example, what do you know about black Muslim refugees from Darfur who have found their way to Israel and asked for asylum? Or, continuing with Africa, about the current status of the Jewish community in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe? What do you know about the conditions faced by female Zionist pioneers in the early 20th century? Or, for that matter, about the life (and death) of Houdini? Do you know that Ehud Barak wants to come back as prime minister (as does Benjamin Netanyahu), and that in spite of the failure of his early term, he might have a chance to take over leadership of the Labor Party (and do you know how he might accomplish this, and with whose help)?
What about conflicts between Arab and Jewish cattle ranches in the Galilee over grazing land? What about Tali Fahima, a young Israeli woman of conservative (Likud) background, who wound up as a defender of a young Islamic leader from Jenin (West Bank) and served almost three years in prison because of it; her story is absolutely fascinating). And do you know that there are big battles (with significance) going on amongst students at the universities in Lebanon? And, truth be told, that is only part of what is in this 48 page magazine.

7. What about the exhibit? The Portrait Gallery and Museum of American Art's first floor is a bit chopped up, because they are preparing for a Saul Steinberg exhibit opening early in April, and have a couple of other rooms in transition as well. But I did look at the one room exhibit on Walt Whitman (1819-1892), which provided a pleasant 30 minutes or so. There is only one large oil painting, by John White Anderson, but a large number of photographs of Whitman, from when he was a young beardless man (1848), when he first came to Washington, during the Civil War Years and towards the end of his life in the 1880s. There are also some of his possessions on display, including a walking stick, a pocket watch (the name of the maker is so small, that even with my glasses I could not figure it out), and a pen of his. There are photos of three individuals whom the exhibit's director believes to have been most clearly influenced by Whitman: Alan Ginsburg, Charlie Parker and Jackson Pollack. There is a first edition of "Leaves of Grass" as well as originals of some of the illustrations in the book. There are photos of places in DC connected to Whitman, including the Pension Building where he worked (before he was fired when it was discovered that he was the author of the immoral "Leaves of Grass") and Harewood Hospital, where he worked with the wounded of the Civil War. And a photo of his house in Camden NJ.

8. Tomorrow's highlight? Jury Duty