This week

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1. The Book. Some years ago I bought a book called "Whoredom in Kimmage" by a woman named Rosemary Mahoney. It was signed by Mahoney and I purchased it at the going out of business sale of the used book store on Wisconsin Avenue, near the Japanese restaurant. I don't think I ever opened the book and, to be frank, do not know what it is about.

Last week, I saw another book by Mahoney, signed by Mahoney, on the outside table at Second Story Books. It was called "A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellman", and was the retelling of the summer when high school student Rosemary Mahoney got a job as a housemaid for Lillian Hellman on Martha's Vinyard.

After finishing the book, I am not sure what would be worse. Spending the summer with Lillian Hellman, or having the 17 year old Mahoney living in my house.

It is probably a tie.

I know it is too late to spend time with Hellman, but if Mahoney ever suggests it, just so you know, I will run the other way. Far and fast.

Has my old friend Larry Gillis said in college as a group of us were telling a story going from person to person: "The mayonnaise factory blew up" "How was it?" "It was Hell, man".

So was the book.

2. The Baseball Games. You have to give to the Nats. After starting the year with expectations of 100+ losses, and losing 16 of their first 25 games, the Nats have, since then, played at a 50-50 level, and now have a record better than eight of the other teams in the 30 team major leagues.

Their schedule requires them to devote the last two weeks of the season to the two teams leading their division, the Mets and the Phillies. So far, they have beat the Mets 5 out of 6 games, and lost 3 out of four to the Phillies. They play the Phillies 3 times and the season is over. We shall see what happens. After sweeping the Mets, the Phillies are only one game out of first place in the division. So these games, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, will be very important.

Their relief pitching has been a strong point, but they need to rely on a closer with more consistency than Chad Cordero has had this year. I know he is only 24 or something like that, but how will he be when he is 29, and is he worth keeping around?

Next year, the hope is that Nick Johnson, Christian Guzman, Dmitri Young and Sean Hill will have their injuries behind them. Even with no changes in personnel, the team should be competitive.

3.
The concert. It had been a long time since I have gone to a Tuesday concert at Epiphany Church. I am not sure why. But I did go on Tuesday to see an interesting group called Ensemble Gaudior. Three members played at the church, baroque music on vintage instruments. Alexandra MacCracken's violin was made in 1665, and Lori Barnet's cello in 1755 (both have been restored), and Joseph Gascho's harpsichord was made in 1965 but based on a 1694 design. That is in and of itself quite interesting.

I never know quite how to rate a performance on vintage instruments, since the sound is invariably different. I enjoyed the concert, and had very different reactions to the four pieces played. MacCracken played a selection from a Bach partita, which she chose, I assume, because she liked it and could play it in a very spirited fashion. The other pieces were by composers who were apparently quite prominent in their time, but with whom I have no familiarity: Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Johann Jakob Froberger, and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. I thought that the Schmelzer sonata prima was dull and flat and not particularly well played. I thought that the Froberger toccata and capriccio was snoozable. But I loved the Biber! It was his sonata terza from sonatae violino solo, but was an ensemble piece. It had extraordinarily modern harmonies and tonalities for a piece written in 1681. He lived in Salzburg and published a fair amount of music. I'd like to hear more.

MacCracken introduced the piece, and said there would be a suprise ending. There was. In the middle of a phrase on a hanging up-note, it just ended. I wonder. It was also 1:00 on the dot. Perhaps you can end the Biber anywhere you choose.

4. The Entertainer. I went to see Alan Alda, author of a new series of essays,"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" speak on Tuesday night at the 6th and I Street Synagogue. It was part of the Politics and Prose author series. It seemed like the building was over 90% full.

It is clear that everyone there loves Alan Alda. And admittedly, he is a very charming and engaging fellow. Most people know him from "Mash". In fact, when the moderator asked the audience, "How many people here have never watched an episode of Mash on television?", only one hand went up -- mine. I cannot quite understand how war and medicine together make for entertainment (especially for humorous entertainment), but I am really in the minority on this one.

Alda's speech was a rambling one, although it did not seem so because his delivery is so good. I have no idea what the books is about; it did not really come up. He basically told anecdotes about himself.

He talked about celebrity, the number of times people who when the meet him lose their motor skills, or become verbally dyslexic and say to him "You are my biggest fan". And he says this happens to all celebrities. And then he tells how tongue tied he got when he, years ago, met Liv Ullman for the first time.

He talks about people ask him to give speeches at odd places. Like the time he was asked to give the commencement address at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He assumed that they had trained their students how to practice medicine, but needed him to show them how to act like a doctor. Or the time he was asked to speak about Thomas Jefferson at Monticello to a group of Jefferson scholars.

He talked about how people do him favors. Like when he visited the leaning tower in Pisa and was taken up some steps beyond a sign that said "absolutely no one allowed". He asked about the sign, and was told it was very dangerous there, and if there was any additional movement, anyone in there would be trapped. No one could enter, but for him, they said, "we will make an exception".

He seems like a genuine fellow, very talented, and dedicated to being meaningful. But would I go see him again if he were speaking in the office down the hall?

Nah.

5. The big speech. President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University. I heard part of the speech and some of the questions asked by the students and the answers to those questions. It does not appear that the event added to, or further endangered, world peace.

My own impression was somewhat unexpected. I thought that, if I lived in the closed society which has been Iran for almost 30 years, and my news was controlled and managed, and I was not a particularly sophisticated or worldly person, I might have eaten up almost everything A. said. It was internally consistent, it bespoke of confidence and lack of ambiguity or equivocation.

It is only when you look at it through the perspective of a broader view of today's world that you realize it was almost all utter nonsense.

So, I can see the secret of his success.

Two ancillary questions:

first, was Columbia president Lee Bollinger's insultingly descriptive introduction (accurate or not) appropriate. I say 'no'. It reminded me of a DC Bar Association meeting thirty years ago when the invited guest was then Secretary of Defense Henry Kissinger and the U.S. had just sent troops into Cambodia chasing the Viet Cong. The then president of the DC bar in introducing Cambodia made it clear that neither he, nor the Bar Association, was endorsing such criminal action, then saying, "and I give you Mr. Kissinger...." Not appropriate.

second, what about Ahmadinejad's crazy remark about their being no homosexuals in Iran. Even for the isolated Iranian, this would have raised a question. As an old law school professor of mine once said: you can listen to a beautiful clock strike the hour, but if you count the strikes and they add up to thirteen, you doubt not only the last strike, but all that came before it. Maybe that was the reaction I would have had, were I in Iran listening to my president.

6. Another book. I am not sure how I pick them, but I read a book called "Bartholdi and the Statue of Liberty", written I think for teenagers by Willadene Price and published in 1959. I really enjoyed its simplistic writing style, recognizing that there were probably more generalities in the book than a full fledged biography would have contained.

But here was Frederic Bartholdi, of a wealthy Alsatian family, indifferent student, artist. Became a sculptor, and became enamored of the United States and of the French assistance to the American Revolution. And he decided that there should be a statue dedicated to Liberty. The biggest statue in the world.

The book tells of his political, social and artistic vision, his relationship with major French artistic and cultural figures, his mother and his wife (the model for the statue). But most interestingly, it tells how the statue was made, how it was financed, how it was displayed and how it was transported.

There is a lot of information, all of it (and I mean all of it) interesting in this little book.

7.The movie. "Into the Wild", directed by Sean Penn, starring Emile Hirsch, from the book by John Krakauer, based on a true story. A young college graduate from an abusive family (that, to the outside world looks perfect) decides to forsake society, and go out on his own. Changing his name to Alexander Supertramp, he is remarkably successful in his initial ventures in the west, ranging from the Dakotas to Baja California, meeting and charming some interesting people on the way, giving away his money, taking odd jobs now and then. But his real goal is to go to Alaska, to go out into the wild, and to live all by himself.

He finds an abandoned bus, which serves as his home and shelter (and where his body will eventually be found). He eats wild berries and shoots small game, and again does quite well. Until he decides it is time to leave, and discovers that he is trapped. The river he waded across months earlier is now a torrential stream, uncrossable. He was, I assume, by then out of ammunition, and he can no longer gather meat. He is left to foraging vegetation with the help of his book. He guesses wrong on one plant, and becomes violently ill. He then starves to death.

The movie is over 2 1/2 hours long. It is well acted, and photographed. But it is not uplifting, it did not touch me emotionally, and I would have been just as happy if I had never gone to see it.

8.
The exhibit. There is a Morris Louis retrospective at the Hirschhorn. Large, large abstractions. The Washington Color School. Twenty eight paintings on display. A personal connection, because Edie knows his widow (he died 45 years ago).

I found the work quite absorbing. Paintings you could look at for a long time. That surprised me.

The technique is also interesting. Although the work is done on canvas, these are not oil paintings, but more like batiks, where the thin paint is absorbed into and becomes part of the campus. It is an affecting technique, but it makes conservation that much more difficult, and there is one room devoted to conservation problems, also quite interesting.

My impression of Louis is that he was really a sorrowful character. He seems to have been singularly morose and uncommunicative. He was obsessive about his work, using his bedroom or dining room (depending on the house) as his studio. He rarely emerged. He died of lung cancer at the age of 49.

9. Next to the exhibit. The Hirschhorn, on the same floor, has a number of large installations from its own collection based on light. There is a very dark room, with a pale reddish orange light cast on a full wall. There is a clear acrylic bagel shaped prism (with a much larger hole)which spins on a string slowly (and randomly?) while a bright light shines through it, bringing shadows and forms and rainbow colors to the white wall beyond. There is an installation called 'Invisible', which looks just that unless you stand about three feet the from the beam of light cast from it, in which case the word 'visible' shows clearly on your body.

I thought these light based exhibits were worth the price of admission on their own.

10. The cafe. Yesterday, we stopped at a small cafe on maybe 9th and R (maybe), called Asia. Very modest, quite pleasant, quite busy, small menu. Not too far north of the convention center, but for the neighborhood. Shows what is happening in Shaw.