Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Israel (28 cents)

Coming back from Israel, I am continually asked what the political mood was, particularly with respect to Iraq. (The fact that the questions focus on Iraq show how little the questioners understand the issues facing Israel. Iran, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon all pose greater risks to the country than Iraq)

Nevertheless, the tenor of the question is clear.

The answer is somewhat more difficult, and of course we spoke to a very small percentage of Israelis, and those with whom we spoke tended to be unrepresentative of the population in general.

Putting this aside, what struck me in Israel was that, on the one hand, if you ask people what they thought about the future of the country, they all express pessimism (i.e., the problem will continue to be unsolvable and then Iran will get the bomb).

But, if you ask them about their lives generally, or if you just look about you, you will see people who are planning for the future as if there is not a cloud in sight. They are building buildings, starting careers, getting married, having children, and so forth.

How is this dual existence possible? I guess you have to be Israeli to answer that.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Back in the U. S. of A. ($1.36)

The jet lag is not too bad. In the first day or so, here is what has happened.....

1. The Book. On the trip, I had a great time reading "The Way of All Flesh" by Samuel Butler. Written in the late 19th century, this extended coming of age story is a delight to read, and full of clever social commentary that is as appropriate now as it was then. Semi-autobiographical, they say, it tells the story of the early years of Ernest Pontifex, who started out as the moderately abused son of a conventional clergyman (being a clergyman and a good father is not possible, according to Butler), is sent to a very unpleasant English boarding school, becomes of interest to his unmarried and fairly wealthy aunt in London, who somehow winds up in Cambridge and himself becomes ordained as a clergyman, who goes on cycles of losing and gaining his faith in various ways, who enters into an unfortunate liaison with an alcoholic and already married (to Ernest's later surprise) young woman of considerable beauty but no social standing, and who becomes (of course) a writer, one whose books are always reviewed poorly in comparison with his previous book (whichever one it is at the time), which is then described as an overlooked classic. You may not like his treatment of women in the book (when he treats them at all), but you have to admire Butler's writing style, incitefullness and humor.

2. The restaurant. Yesterday, we had lunch at Thai Kitchen on M Street. We didn't think so at the time, but it was probably a mistake. We ordered Tomkha, kanom Jeeb, PadPoyZian, and Rama Jay. OK? (Actually we ordered too much, so it became lunch and dinner, but a very unsatisfactory dinner).

3. The concert. Also, a mistake. It was part of our scheduled Smithsonian Jazz concert, this one concentrating on the music (compositions and big band arrangements) of Benny Carter, who died at 96 in 2003. The first half of the concert left us both cold, so we left, thinking that the problem was probably not Benny Carter's. I found some of Benny Carter's original recordings on www.tuxjunction.net, and we confirmed our belief. Carter had an extraordinarly smooth and sweet tenor sax style; he clearly differentiated between the role of the sololist and the band. The Smithsonian band was filled with technically proficient musicians whose style did not resemble Carter's in the least, and there was little differentiation between soloist and backup; it was simply loud, with little variation in tone. At one point, the conductor (who had done some of the transcriptions) said that Carter's style was unique, but his music could, when played by others, could be equally appreciated. I agree with half of this, and I think that the fact that it was mentioned at all meant that we were not the only ones who were dissatisfied. I do not think, however, that many in the audience left when we did.

Monday, February 19, 2007

The Reduced Israel Company

Benni Fish, Roaming through Jerusalem, Israel Museum,Fish and Olives, Caesaria, Tel Aviv, Mullet at Michael's, Tiberias, Rabbi Meir, Many, many salads, Pekein-Druze Village, Shimon's cave, Cafe Masada, Michal in Modiim, Zicharon Yaakov and hike through park, Nomi's cousin's restaurant, Eretz Yisrael Museum, Museum of the Diaspora, Noa Restaurant, lunch with Miriam, window shopping on Dizengoff and Ben Yehuda.......

The Reduced Israel Company

Benni Fish, Roaming through Jerusalem, Israel Museum,Fish and Olives, Caesaria, Tel Aviv, Mullet at Michael's, Tiberias, Rabbi Meir, Many, many salads, Pekein-Druze Village, Shimon's cave, Cafe Masada, Michal in Modiim, Zicharon Yaakov and hike through park, Nomi's cousin's restaurant, Eretz Yisrael Museum, Museum of the Diaspora, Noa Restaurant, lunch with Miriam, window shopping on Dizengoff and Ben Yehuda.......

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Day One - Yesterday

We had the hotel wake us at 7, which was a good thing, and we hurred through the David Citadel breakfast buffet, so that we could meet our friends at 8:45 at Yad Vashem. We made it by cab with a few minutes to spare.

We had been at Yad Vashem in 1999, although we had not toured the museum itself. We had been in the children's building and seen the eternal flame, and then went to the library to register Edie's family members who were lost during the Holocaust.

A new museum opened last year, and we were told by all who had seen it that it should not be missed. And they were right.

Yad Vashem is by and large a very solemn place. The pathways through the garden of the righteous where placques commemorate gentiles who saved Jews during the war period, the children's memorial, where five candles reflected through an infinite number of mirrors in an otherwise dark building, looking like so many stars on a clear night, and the remembrance building where the eternal flame flickers over a listing of death camps.

We can't speak to the old museum. The new museum is, in fact, extraordinary. It is underground, and is centered on a single corridor, which serves as a spine for the exhibit halls and extends, I would say, from 600 - 800 feet. You cannot walk the whole corridor, however, as it is broken up by a number of low exhibits (so that your view is not obstructed), which force you to go through the exhibit rooms on both sides of the corridor in order to proceed. The walls of the corridor are triangular, so that the top of the corridor is a line of glass windows coming to a point; there is no roof. The corridor narrows as you go along it. So, to commmorate the Shoach, you are forced underground, with no light except for the band of hope/light at the top, walking along an ever narrowing corridor.

The exhibits are extraordinary as well. Not so much for the story line (it is what you would expect), but for the amount of incredible material on display (from pre-Hitler Europe through post-Reich immigration to Israel. Nothing is left out (i.e., no subjects appear taboo).

And it is not only the objects that they have, but the amount of objective documentation of every sort. Including unlimited numbers of photographs, and a tremendous amount of movies, both original footage and survivors' testimonies.

How long would it take to absorb everything in this museum? I would guess 2 or 3 days. Would you get bored? Not for a minute.

Our guide was Nurit. It was her first Yad Vashem tour. She was terrific.

We had a quick and not very satisfactory lunch in the cafe, and then went on to the Old City. Again for Nurit's tour. The only problem was the weather, which turned very chilly, very windy and very wet. But that did not stop Nurit.

We visited the Arab market, the Cardo, the Burt House Museum, the Temple Institute and the Archeological Park.

More later.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Israel: The Trip

At the airport, the passengers waiting for Delta Flight 152 from Atlanta to Tel Aviv had a rather motley appearance. Christian tour groups, Spanish speaking teenagers, military personnel (American), religious Israelis, secular Israelis, people of all ages, and all races. Most looked like they were expecting to have a good time.

We were very lucky because, although the plane was pretty well filled, the third member of our three seat group never showed, so the two of us had room to spread out, and Edie could even lie down to sleep.

Having flown to Atlanta from Washington, we were surprised when we looked at our route to Tel Aviv to see that the plane was going to return to Washington and leave the continental U.S. in mid-Delaware. This means that, in addition to the almost two our wait in Atlanta, we would have flown a total of three hours just to get where we started. In fact, the plane went a little south of DC and crossed into the Atlantic at about Newport News, but still......

I wondered what, if any, additional security we would have in Atlanta. And, in fact,w e had to go through the metal detector twice. When we flew from DC to Atlanta, our boarding passes stayed in tact. In Atlanta, they kept half and gave us half. By mistake, I gave the gate officer (at the second security entrance) the boarding pass to get us to Atlanta, not the one to Tel Aviv. What did he do? Point out my error? Arrest me? No. All he did was say 'thank you' and let me pass. Gives you confidence, doesn't it?

What characterizes a plane to Israel? My experience says, generally, chaos, with people sitting, standing, moving around, and especially playing with their hand held baggage. Put it under the chair. Good. No, take it out and put it above the seat. Fine. No, not there, move it further back; there may be more room. OK. No, that's too far back, bring it back here. If you want. Wait a minute, I need something from the bag; bring it down. No, never mind, I don't need it. And on and on.

The flight was fine, for an eleven and one half (but who's counting?) hour flight. They fed us three times. A meal, a breakfasty snack, and a lunchy snack. At 5 a.m. EST, the religious men on the plane (surprisingly few, maybe a dozen) did Schachreit in the vestibule where the breakfasty snacks were prepared, so they got first choice. (The yogurt went fast)

Towards the end of the flight, when it was clear that I had done all the dozing I was going to do, I watched a movie, "Volver" by the Spanish director who very long name begins with an A, and is written something like Almovodar. A young girl murders her pediophilic (I thought he was my) father, and her mother hides the body in the freezer of a friend's restaurant. Meanwhile, her aunt dies, who is totally mentally and physically incompotent, but who lives by herself in a big house, where she is apparently taken care of by her (she's supposed to be) dead mother. And then it turns out that her mother isn't dead (or Russian), but that she killed in an arson set fire her husband and his mistress, who was the mother of a close friend and neighbor, who everyone thought simply disappeared. And everyone (who is alive at the end of the movie) lives happily ever after.

So, we got to Tel Aviv early. Michael met us at the airport and announced he was sick. Yorem met us at the airport to pick up the camera equipment we brought for him, and by default got to drive us into Jerusalem, which is a long ride, to our hotel (which he seemed to have some trouble finding). That was very nice.

We went out for dinner. Turing left from the David Citidel Hotel past the Skirball Museum, the King David Hotel and the YMCA and stopping at a fish/dairy restaurant called Rosemary. The Greek salad that we split would have fed the Greek Army. The Bulgarian feta on the salad was Israeli. The trout was really what I call salmon trout and was quite good, but was served with another salad, 3 to 5 baked potatoes, a cooked tomato, a cooked yellow bell pepper, and a half of a roasted onion. Enough for the Turkish army too.

That was day number one.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

A Temporary Change of Direction (3 cents)

We are flying to Israel this evening (and tonight and tomorrow morning) for a 12 day visit. I will not have my computer with me, but we will be staying at hotels with business centers. I will try to keep everyone posted, although each time we have taken a trip and I have promised this, I have failed. Because I will be recapping our trip, there will be more pointed references to individuals living and dead than usual.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

"The Blue Mountain"

Each of the four readers of Meir Shalev's "The Blue Mountain" who reviewed it on www.amazon.com gave it four (the maximum) stars. It is the story of a settlement in Israel's Jezreel valley, clearly not a kibbutz, perhaps a moshav, perhaps something unique in its organization. Started by four friends, three male members of the second aliyah and one woman, who marries one of the three (she marries the winner of the lottery they held for her). Others of their generations come and leave, more marriages occur, children and even grandchildren are born and die. The characters are both humorous and sad, one of a kind and universal. There is a little more fantasy in their makeup than reality.

I thought the book started very well and for the first hundred pages, I was certain that the remaining two hundred fifty would be very enjoyable. But it was (for me) to be. (For me) the book went nowhere. And, by the way it was organized (or perhaps better because it seemed to lack any form of organization--it certainly had only a semblance of chronology), it was impossible for it to go anywhere.

So, at page 150, I gave up. But not before I read the last chapter to see what happened. It was as I feared. If anything more happened, I did not care. The last chapter chapter 51, I read after chapter 27. I did not miss a beat. And at the end of the book, chronologically speaking, we were back in an earlier chapter, as if it was the present not the past, and as if the future (which I had read about as if it were the past) had not yet occurred.

Perhaps this is a four star book. But to my surprise, I didn't think so.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Cybertime (2 cents)

I am driving to work, and the car in front of me looks new, and has one of those 60 day temporary tags that says that it expires on February 29, 2007.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

This is How It Goes (46 cents)

Neil Labute seems to take promising situations and turn them into a disaster. The first of his plays that I saw was "The Shape of Things", where a promising young romance turned into a menage a trois ala "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" Then, I saw "Fat Pig", about a young man who falls in love with an obese young woman, only to dump her when his friends disapprove. And dump very unceremoniously.

So, when I went to see "This is How It Goes", billed as a play based on relationships and racism, I feared the worst. I thought it a profound play, much to my surprise.

Three characters, twelve years after their high school graduation. Two (black man, white woman) are married; the third (white man), recently divorced, returns to his home town and becomes the tenant of his married friends, living in an apartment above their garage.

It gets very complicated very fast. The black male is an alpha-male, handsome, wealthy, charming, driven, goes to sleep at 2 a.m. and runs ten miles in the morning before work. The woman wants to be noticed. She is attractive, nice, but maybe not much else. The white male, who is also the narrator, speaking to the audience and setting the scenes that he is usually in, is even harder to read. He is charming, seems to have had some troubled years behind him, but makes a lot of mischief. He has always been in love with his former classmate, present landlady. And he has always resented her husband, who was a bit too-alpha for him, and who bullied him around when he, the white man, was a pudgy high schooler.

You can see the tension building. I am not going to tell you how it goes. And even, when you see the play, you may not know. The while male tells the audience at the beginning that he may not be a credible narrator. He says that truth is illusive, as it in fact always is.

Yes, racism is there, both as an assumption and an undercurrent, until it erupts, and then again recedes.

There is a lot of truth in "This is How It Goes", illusive as it may be.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Lisa Nowak

A friend of astronaut Lisa Nowak was on CNN this morning. He was a clean and articulate white guy, so he convinced me that Ms. Nowak, when she put on a diaper, a wig and a trenchcoat, and drove 900 miles from Houston to the Orlando airport with a BB-gun, folding knife and chemical spray, to accost another woman who was involved with another astronaut with whom Nowak had "more than a working, but less than a romantic" relationship, was acting out of character.

What a weird (and tragic) story. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out, and what motivated Nowak (some physical malady, some psychological problem?) to take this bizarre path.

And, contrary to the O.J. Simpson saga, at least everyone is still alive.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

A good meal

I hadn't been in the restaurant at One Washington Circle (anyone guess the address?) for years, maybe decade. But I had lunch there today, meeting a friend whose office is equidistant from the hotel in a different direction.

I had salmon, served with "shaved" onions and Jerusalem artichokes. The salmon was about as good as it can be. Moist, tasty and just the right size. The onions were sweet (sweetened?). The Jerusalem artichokes were a problem, though, only because I forgot what they were. They looked like potatoes, but they didn't taste like them, so I thought maybe they were bad potatoes (bad in a unique way), and I ate about three of them, but left on the plate about 20. Had I remembered they what they were, I probably would have liked them, and eaten them.

I also had dessert (how often do I do that at lunch?). I had a lemon-orange tart of some sort. It was only so-so, and I scooped out the insides and left (after just one taste) the crust.

The espresso was perfect, but there sure wasn't much of it.

It was too expensive for lunch (I normally pay about 1/3 the price), but would I go back? For the salmon, to be sure.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The Jewish Hospital of Berlin

Several years ago, I read a book titled "Stella", written by journalist Peter Wyden, father of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Wyden had grown up Jewish in Berlin, moving to this country with the advent of the Nazis. One of his school mates was a very attractive, blond, Jewish girl named Stella Kubler. He had lost track of her after his move to the United States.

At some point many years after the war, he discovered that Stella was still alive in East Berlin, and that she had survived the war in Berlin acting as a 'Spitzel', a name for a Jew who was given survival preference by cooperating with the Nazis to seek out and finger other Jews in hiding in the city. Not, as you can imagine, a very well respected occupation.

The story he wrote of Stella was an important one, because it took and black-white situation and painted it gray. After all, Stella acted in part to save her parents as well as herself. It was clear that the motivation was mixed. It was also clear that Stella did not survive the war whole, that she had been internally compromised, and that in her older years, she did not present a sympathetic face to the world, and especially not to the Jewish world.

One of the interesting facets of "Stella" was the reference to Berlin's Jewish Hospital, which Wyden reported as having continued to function with Jewish staff throughout the war (and with, for a while, sheltering Stella).

The fact that the hospital continued to function in this manner (and still does today, by the way) was beyond fascinating, so when I saw a fairly recent book, "Refuge in Hell" by former CIA and NSA general counsel Daniel B. Silver, I was intrigued.

The story is indeed fascinating, and its survival (and the survival of about 800 employees and patients and prisonsers upon liberation) cannot be fully explained. But it did function, as the sole hospital for sick or injured Jews, as a prison for Jewish prisoners (some of whom needed medical care and some of whom did not) and as a collection point, like so many others. Under Gestapo control and the leadership of Dr. Dr. Walter Lustig (he had an MD and a PhD), the hospital provided medical care until liberation and, as well, became the home of the Jewish Gemeinde, the recognized Jewish community. Staffed largely but not exclusively of Jews married to Aryans, or children of mixed parentage, it and its staff had its share of troubles (including arbitrary punishments, some fatal, and forced 'selections'), but formed an unknown repository of Jewish continuity in the Prussian capital.

A very interesting book.

Dreamgirls (1 cent)

After watching Dreamgirls last night, I decided to look on the indb site and see what others thought of the movie. Obviously, it has won many awards and been nominated for others, but the reviews that I have seen (not studied, just seen) have not been all that great. So what does the reviewing public think?

Well, it is extraordinary, because the reporting viewers are completely split between those that thought it was just one of the best movies they have seen in a while, and those who thought it was an absolute waste.

It would be interesting to have some sort of a study done of these viewers, to see if those who liked shared any characteristics others with similar feelings about the movie, or whether it was all random.

I fall on the "I really like it" side. I am not sure why, but I did enjoy the music, and thought everyone did a great job. Jennifer Hudson's voice is obviously extraordinary, but there was not one miscasting or subpar performance in the entire cast. Even those who didn't like the movie thought that Eddie Murphy was great, which he was, and no one (for reasons unknown to me) complimented or even mentioned Danny Glover, who I thought was terrific.

It makes you realize how things have changed from the days when it was hard to find experienced African American actors. This is one extraordinary talented and, as Senator Biden would have it, articulate cast.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Is "Nine to Five" the worst movie ever?

Having just seen it, I believe the answer is definitely 'yes'.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Lena Pillars



Along the Lena River, south of Yakutsk.

Huh??

Oops

Several months ago, I attended a fascinating lecture/book signing by Timothy Naftali, the new director of the Nixon Presidential Library. Held at the Spy Museum, he spoke about his new book, Khrushchev's Cold War, which he co-authored with Russian historian Aleksandr Fursenko. Based on newly released Kremlin archives, it told the story of the Kennedy-Khrushchev years from the Russian point of view, purporting to unravel what was really in the minds of the Soviet leaders, how they were misunderstanding us and how we were misunderstanding them. It was fascinating.

Today, I decided to go back to the Spy Museum for another booksigning lecture, this time about preparation for the invasion of North Africa by the Allies in 1942.

Much to my surprise, then, when I opened the Washington Post this morning, and found a review of the Khrushchev book. And much to my surprise, the review, by Michael Dobbs of the U.S. Institute of Peace who is writing a book about the same time period, was scathing.

Basically, although the Naftali book contained much new information (some from sources since re-closed), Dobbs claims that the book is short on accuracy. Very short on accuracy. He points out serious factual discrepencies between this book and a previous book by Naftali (for example, one individual was a Captain in one book and a Colonel in another, when he was in fact a Major; then there was an incident which one books tells of involving four submarines and the other book two submarines, but none of the ships are the same in both books). He also points out serious problems in the Russian material (Fursenko's responsibility) based on published versions and translations of some of the source material.

The problems were so widespread that the Post authorized Dobbs to contact the authors, something rarely done by reviewers. And, in fact, Naftali both admitted some mistakes and implied that he was unable to check the facts given him by Fursenko. Fursenko was less forthcoming.

This shows what happens when you collaborate with someone without sufficient safeguards, I guess. It may be a particular problem in dealing with Russian historians who were formerly part of the old Soviet intelligentsia.

Let's hope that "12 Apostles" does not suffer from the same deficiencies. Paris based American journalist Hal Vaughan narrated an interesting story, basically as follows:

FDR decided as early as 1940 that the U.S. would have to enter the war in Europe, and that this would be done first by wresting north Africa out of Axis hands, and then moving onto the European continent. In order to prepare the way, and to keep his preparation secret both from Congress and the American public, he recruited twelve individuals, working under the supervision of diplomat Robert Murphy, who under the guise of being involved in govenment regulation of American shipping, were able to map the country (we are talking about Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and set up clandestine partisan groups ready to spring into action, their goal being freeing France (all three countries were under French domination) from Vichy control.

The plans were successful, paving the way for the landing of British troops in Algeria and Americans in Morocco under Eisenhower, but everything did not go by clockwork. At times, it appeared that everything would backfire. People were approached who should not have been. Communications broke down. The landing forces were delayed. Problem upon problem, but all worked out for the best (assuming an invasion that cost life upon life could be looked upon as having worked out for the best)

The crowd was not very large (the topic? the weather?), and I am not sure how many books were sold. Vaughan told the story so well, that I decided whateverelse was in the book would not remain in my memory in any event.

It was certain a worthwhile hour. One more story about which I knew absolutely nothing.