Thanksgiving

It was a wonderful edition of the great American holiday. And we have all been gathering for this for what has now been several years, first at Betsy's cabin in the Poconos and now Ann's Apricot in Farmington, Connecticut. Not to forget how far back some of us recall: memories conjured up by Vikki's bringing the little baskets of nuts we enjoyed at the Red Barn in Westport.

The Break of Noon

Here's an instance where I feel the critics had it all wrong. I've found Neil LaBute to be one of the most provoking contemporary playwrights--yes, I know, that may constitute faint praise. His new play, The Break of Noon, opened earlier this week and we saw it last night Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel (nee the Theatre de Lys) on Christopher St., West Village. The Times lead critic liked the beginning and most of the cast but found the whole enterprise disappointing. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal more or less trashed the whole thing.



The well-known David Duchovny is the lead, a man who somehow has survived the worst office massacre (37 dead) and now has intimations of being a spiritual guru to the world. Supported by the marvelous Amanda Peet, as well as Tracy Chimo and John Earl Jelks, Duchovny is on stage throughout the play--a series of blackout scenes--and manages, in my view, to stay atop the flow of great LaBute dialogue.



Last year we saw LaBute's excellent reasons to be pretty on Broadway at the Lyceum. That was also excellent and had its run shortened -- in my view -- only because it was nominated but captured no Tony awards and had no known names in its four roles. It recently was produced by one of the Washington theatre companies, Signature, I think.

LaBute has been accused of misogynist attitudes--I haven't yet seen his best-known work, the movie In the Company of Men--but I find he's far better generally at portraying women than a more successful playwright to whom he is often compared and whom I usually find compelling: David Mamet. His dialogue is crisp and often funny, helping him to push past the exteriors into these characters.

The Greatest Rivalry

It's nice that the first football game in the new Yankee Stadium will be a revival of Army v. Notre Dame. This was once the greatest rivalry in college football--any football. And the fact that it was mostly played at the Stadium was one factor in making it such a great contest. Actually, ND won most of the games. But the competition started off with a bang in 1913 on the Plains at West Point where the most celebrated early forward pass was thrown and caught by ND--caught by Knute Rockne, later ND's coach and probably the most famous coach in football history.

The game moved to Ebbets Field and then the Polo Grounds and then in 1925 to the Stadium where it remained for almost every year in the next two decades. It's hard to believe that after World War II, when the 1945 and 1946 games decided the national championship, the two schools discontinued the series because it had become too big. Can you imagine any so-called academic institution doing that today?

There were a few renewals but Army more or less has fallen down to where it even schedules Ivy League teams. Navy maintained the rivalry with ND over more than 30 years when the Middies failed to win, but now they have a two-year streak going. That's because the Irish aren't what they were either. The Subway Alumni--a term coined for the mobs supporting ND who stormed the Stadium for the Army game every year--will still turn out but the only hands-up scoring signals have often come only from Touchdown Jesus out there in South Bend.

Everything you ever heard of in college football happened in this series and usually at the Stadium. Davis and Blanchard--Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside--versus Johnny Lujack in '46. The Four Horsemen in '24. Rockne's speech--whether pre-game or, as tradition holds, at half-time, in '28 where he exhorted his eleven to win one for the Gipper. And it all began with that forward pass--long heralded as the first but now just the most famous early one--from Gus Dorais to Knute Rockne in '13 as they led an unknown ND club to their unexpected triumph at West Point.

It won't be for anything resembling a national championship and it won't even be close to that level of play at the Stadium Saturday but perhaps there will be a future for these two ancient rivals to renew the competition more regularly. People will still come out because of their names. And the game that was eliminated because of becoming too big a deal may eventually come to stand for the maintenance of a tradition, whatever the significance of the game. Get out your raccoon coat and flask.

Bought and Owned

"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity," proclaimed William Butler Yeats in another time, but doesn't his line perfectly reflect our current situation? I suppose that even the politicians I respect seem so supine is that almost all of them are bought and paid for by their contributors in one form or another. And the big contributors are the corporate ones, especially now that they need not identify themselves. You might thus wonder why you heard very little criticism of Wall Street from the supposedly progressive Democrats.

If it's true that FDR saved capitalism from its own excesses, then this time unregulated capitalism has managed to win without even having a fight. How quickly the disasters brought on by deregulation are forgotten--Katrina, the West Virginia mine disaster. Obama and Bush II both worked on TARP to save Wall Street from itself and both took nothing but abuse for it. And at least for a while, Obama saved GM and you'd think he might merit some praise for it.

But America is also the land of P.T. Barnum. If you don't sell yourself and have others sell for you, you will wither on the vine. The Democrats failed to take on the right-wing media to run on their record. Obama tried to compromise when no one on the other side was interested in making a deal. It seems that you have to be in California or New York for people to realize what is at stake.

The deficit commission is a perfect example. Sure in the long run, Mr Micawber was right about balancing your accounts. But in the midst of an economic downturn? Even Bush II said the other day that he'd choose to be Roosevelt rather than Hoover. Hoover balanced the budget; where did it get anyone? Trim Social Security and the few remaining benefits when the wealthy get huge tax breaks that have made this country the most unequal it has ever been?

The most outspoken voice for reason is a Nobel Prize-winner, professor, and columnist, Paul Krugman. The media are really at fault, of course, but I blame the Democrats for being the party of fear. Conservatism has already served the majority of our population poorly. Are you in favor of foreclosures en masse because greedy banks gave credit to unworthy buyers? The guy who pushed that garbage was a trader on the Chicago exchange--just another Wall Street type.

Klimt and Jack Levine

It was sad to see that Jack Levine, possibly the last of the great social realism painters of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, died, but also satisfying to note that he had managed to live to be 95. The obit writers stressed that he was against abstract art but I think they all seem to miss the way some of those arbitrary distinctions have been fading over time. Levine's works were wonderful in the way they expressed the sometimes savage critique of American society he offered but in no way did his depictions fall into the kind of realism practiced by such as Andrew Wyeth (whose work I have always enjoyed for entirely different reasons but who shared the spark of personality that Levine possessed, despite their distance from one another on the political spectrum).

Levine exaggerated features in the same way as did the most cynical of the great caricaturists--George Grosz and Otto Dix of the Berlin in the 1920s, with a similar world outlook. None of his pictures was realistic in the sense of just sticking to the exact representation--I recall a wonderful rendition he did of the original Budapest String Quartet that would turn up on concert programs and album covers for ages. I framed a copy of it--actually, a program cover--because it seemed to capture the exhilarating style of that stellar group of musicians. It may have been the closest he ever came to being non-political.

The obits recalled the controversy about his paintings being exhibited by U.S. authorities on traveling shows, in one instance in Moscow, I believe. They probably figured he'd be too popular in the old USSR. It was interesting that Eisenhower expressed the view that he didn't especially like Levine's stuff, but he did not in any way signal to anyone to remove them from the show. Today, our media-frightened regime might yank something like a Levine painting before anyone could raise their voice in protest.

The social conscience of the Vienna Secessionists was less obviously portrayed. The show of their work, which spotlighted the greatest of the group, Gustav Klimt, was a high point of my recent long weekend in Budapest courtesy of Eileen, who was conducting a training program in Hungary. Klimt could also be critical of things as they were but in a far more subtle manner. He also prefigured the Wiener Werkstatte, in that he clearly found use of design concepts helpful in his art.

It makes me wonder why we still seem fascinated by Klimt. He did things differently, for one thing. The use of the gold-leaf and the very graphic nudes, to be sure, aroused interest and attention but there's a marvelous artistic sense beneath all that display. His women are no languishing romantic types, even when portrayed in the nude, but are always formidable individuals. His scenes extend the natural beauty of scenes such as gardens and poplar forests. It must be that sometimes undefinable extra element that makes him still so compelling to us a century later.

Election Day Blues

I know, we haven't even lost yet and I'm already in a bad mood. The polls and the media's insistence on making them sound definitive--the Dems should give up already is the clear message. The worst part of this is that too many have already given up. Why can't our beloved President talk plainly to people about the economy? Is it too much for him to agree with Clinton, Carville and Begala about the supreme importance of the economy--that which affects everyone?

Also: I concede that Harry Reid is both occupied out in Nevada and not exactly God's gift to public speaking but where is Nancy Pelosi? Why isn't she travelling about instead of seemingly accepting the negative image the GOP has worked very hard to pin on her? And all the other Dems--especially those who are lucky enough not to be running this year. What a sorry bunch.

Bill Clinton, God save him, is the only stalwart out there day after day doing his damnedest to save the Democratic Party. We need some people who are proud to be Democrats, proud to be looking out for working people, happy to take on Wall St., the corporations, Roberts, Scalia and Alito. We don't need Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and their ilk who helped get us into this mess.

People have a right to be angry when the Dems act just like Republicans--even worse, when they take the lead in bailing out Wall St. I remember one disgusting New York lawyer with whom I had to sit at dinner who was proclaiming in '04 how much experience in foreign policy the GOP had in comparison. So where did all that experience get us?

We have had a succession of disasters that have befallen would-be real leaders of the Dems. Clinton was all right because he knew how to win and survive. But at heart he is at best a centrist or center-rightist. He would not take on Wall St. as it helped push us into the morass. When Robert Kennedy perhaps jumped aboard the antiwar wagon late, he gave us the glimpse of what could have been. John Edwards had a bit of that--too bad he was worse than Clinton in not being able to keep his zipper zipped.

Obama had promise but it appears both he and his advisers lack real belief in our cause. Having been skeptical of Hillary Clinton for years--since I saw her in action at an American Bar Association convention years ago--I realized during her ill-fated campaign that she really had the guts to fight hard and stick it out. She too made cause with the warmakers in Iraq but I think she might have turned out to be an RFK in recognizing how we need to cut our losses in Afghanistan, where we cannot produce anything approximating victory.

The Torch Has Been Passed

Last month I was invited to join a good friend at a panel presentation put on by the Smithsonian that featured the speechwriters for half a dozen Presidents. The most renowned of all of them was Ted Sorensen, who died yesterday. He didn't seem in great shape and had to be helped onto the stage but his mind was clear and he told some wonderful stories. It helped that he was joined by a great group of former Presidential speechwriters, beginning with Chris Matthews, who wrote for Jimmy Carter before he became an MSNBC regular. The others were Michael Waldman, Clinton; Michael Gerson, Bush II; and Landon Parvin, Reagan, who amazingly is a regular for GOP Presidents and others when it comes to injecting some humor. He came up with that Second-hand Rose takeoff for Nancy Reagan.



In good Washington style, the first angry questioner asked why there were no women on the panel. The unanimous response was that Peggy Noonan had been invited but was unable to attend and that she was the best Presidential speechwriter except for Sorensen (who stayed out of this one). Sorensen recalled some of his experiences with JFK, including a speech the latter delivered at Rice in Houston. Kennedy was justifying the space program (at a place fairly receptive to it) and observed that we needed to keep trying even if the odds were against any partiuclar project succeeding--he added in the margin to Sorensen's draft: "Why does Rice keep playing Texas?"



Some of the speechwriters had had experiences similar to Sorensen's but few had worked with their principal for as long as Sorensen had. Parvin told some funny stories about getting to know Bush 2d in Texas and then related his own excruciating experience visiting George and Laura while they were in one of the Lafayette Square guest houses that former and future Presidents enjoy using (Bush Senior and Barbara were using the first floor). Parvin goes upstairs to try to teach his candidate how to project while delivering a speech and to get some distance from him, is urged by Bush to go into the bedroom. First he pauses when he sees that Laura Bush is still in bed and then when Bush is shouting at him to sit down next to the bed, he sees that she's left a pair of black panties on the chair. Somehow she realizes the situation and deftly snatches the panties away as he moves to sit in the chair. Sorensen deftly suggested that he would resist continuing the panel discussion at this level. But the humor element was welcome.



Matthews described how difficult Carter was to work with, especially on speeches. He had been used to writing his own, but as Matthews emphasized, Carter was no Lincoln in this respect. The chief writer was Rick Hertzberg, who now pens the opening comment editorial for The New Yorker, maintaining with some success the tradition established by E.B. White. One might think that writers as politically attuned as Hertzberg and Matthews might be able to satisfy most clients but Carter remained immune to their talents. He apparently liked writing his own stuff...and it showed. Matthews grinned as he noted that there was one reference to the duo in Carter's recently-published diary. Carter said that they had sent him a draft of the state of the union address and he didn't like it.

In the Supreme Court

Yesterday I sat in on a Supreme Court argument for the first time in several years. It's always a bracing experience although I left with the feeling that this court has less understanding of and appreciation of the real world than ever, and that cuts right across the ideological spectrum--limited as it now is on the court: from center-right to extreme right.

Zillions of people seem to want to catch a glimpse of the court in action but relatively few are there to listen and follow the arguments themselves. The first case--at which I arrived halfway through, concerned when a criminal defendant needed to request the results of DNA testing. The argument became caught up, as they usually do, in the intricacies of state procedure. I had come to hear the next case--a Fair Labor Standards Act case. A lawyer I know works for the defendant company so this made me interested enough to attend the oral argument.

The case went off on whether an employee needs to put an intent to complain under the FLSA in writing or whether mentioning the intent orally to a superviser constitutes adequate notice to the company. There was a lot of interplay about what the word "filed" means but not until the end of the arguments did a real issue emerge. Justice Ginsburg spoke about intent of the 1938 statute--as it happens, Justice Scalia, the apostle of originalism, cracked that the FLSA was an "old fogey" statute, apparently because it was passed in 1938--namely, that the law intended to enable illiterate workers to register complaints without having to put them in writing. The court almost drew a deep breath because it had not been something that anyone else had even thought of, apparently. Justice Breyer seemed surprised in a sympathetic way and Chief Justice Roberts in a negative tone.

Not that I expect that this kind of basic issue will necessarily make it into the opinions. The last time I attended an rgument it was also about a notice issue--how long should prisoners be allowed to bring an internal grievance to prison authorities. Justice Stevens had posed the question of what was a reasonable time to the Solicitor General's rep who was appearing in support of the state prison authorities. The issue remained unresolved and was totally ignored in Justice Alito's opinion although mentioned in Stevens's unanswered dissent.

Justice Kagan did not sit on the labor case because it involved the SG's office, which appeared in support of the employee. I did see her in the criminal case and it was interesting to see her and Justice Sotomayor questioning heartily from opposite ends of the bench. All of them have their special ways of questioning--these two fired lots of theoretical questions. Breyer still puts forth complex hypotheticals. Kennedy asks tight questions aiming to provide some kind of basis for a ruling. Scalia and Roberts push their right-wing views. Not only does Thomas never ask a question but he often looks like he's sleeping.

The young lawyer from the Solicitor General's office brought some concreteness back to the employee's case by referring to the comparable language to what was at issue in this case to many other similarly-drafted statutes. The employer was well represented by one of the regular members of the Supreme Court bar; he again proved to me the value of retaining one of these frequent advocates. The lawyer for the employee showed some enterprise in rebuttal by picking up on Justice Ginsburg's point and emphasizing what the purpose of the statute was. But since his time ran out when he was not answering any justice's question, Roberts cut him off in mid-sentence.

La Stupenda

It's not often that you can observe with absolute confidence that someone was or is the best. But that is the accurate, if concise, description of Joan Sutherland, the coloratura soprano who died yesterday at 83. I was lucky enough to see and hear her sing several times and I have never heard another soprano who could perform some of the hardest roles in opera with such ease and confidence. There was never any struggling with Sutherland--whether it was a trill, a run, or just a series of incredible high notes that others might not dare to try, not only did she manage all of it successfully butshe made it look easy.

Although the obits focused on Lucia, in which she made her debuts at both the Met and La Scala, to me her finest moments came in Bellini's Norma. Callas had revived this pillar of the bel canto repertory but it had languished in the years since her passing from the scene. We also should recall that despite Callas's fantastic dramatic presence--on and off the stage--she was not always anywhere close to perfection in her singing. Sutherland famously played a bit part to Callas's Norma at Covent Garden--it is instructive that Maria told her that she had a great future.

Norma is a brute of an opera. First of all, it is long and the demands on the title role never diminish. Luckily for Sutherland, she was matched in the Met's great production with Marilyn (Jackie) Horne, a mezzo whose range in her realm was comparable to Sutherland's mastery of the top of the scale. Their duets as Norma and Adalgisa became the classic renditions of those beautiful operatic moments.

My first chance to see this spectacle was at a ridiculous venue, the Hynes Auditorium in Boston where the Met then appeared on the first stop of its annual national tour, now sadly discontinued. The Met reputedly had never before sold standing-room tickets at Hynes but this time, the clamor was so overwhelming that they made an exception and I was among the standees, off on yet another diversion from studying for my first-year law school exams. Like everyone else, I was amazed at how easy Sutherland made this challenging role--one that even Callas had had her problems handling--and what a beautiful sound she produced.

Living in New York, I managed to see the next great Sutherland occasion--the revival of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Regiment--the Italian composers often had French libretti for the Paris Opera). This was where she took the stage with someone she had a major part in discovering, the young Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who joined her in hitting the parade of high Cs,Ds, and Es with which Donizetti, last of the bel canto maestri, laced his score. Not only was this a singing triumph for both of them, but I felt this was the one time when the costume designers served Sutherland, a large woman, well, as she appeared throughout the first act in a snappy, attractive military uniform.

While I never did see her in Lucia--although I heard her on broadcasts several times--I feel I was greatly privileged to have witnessed Sutherland at her best, and she never did give a bad performance. It was just something she didn't do. Had she lived in an earlier age, she might have given us as a present what Nellie Melba, the only other Australian soprano to whom she could conceivably be compared, sometimes performed as an encore: the Mad Scene from Lucia. She of course is preserved on records and tapes--we have next to nothing good of Melba, alas--and perhaps my favorite moment to listen to comes from her recording of Verdi's Rigoletto, made with Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, when she sings the great duet--usually called a cabaletta--at the end of Act II (or III, in the original and old Met version) with Milnes in the title role and they each reach for a high note in succession just as the curtain is about to fall.

Hearing the massive applause that invariably followed that rendition--alas, not present on the recording--is perhaps the best testimony to the excitement that Sutherland engendered in the opera house. There was no one in her class in my time.

Opera at the Movies

The Met has been broadcasting live performances into movie houses for a couple of years now but I only got around to giving it a try this past Saturday, when they did Das Rheingold, the first installment in the Ring cycle with which they opened the season a week or two ago. This opera has lots of plot and is short--for Wagner, that is--at 2 1/2 hours or so. They make up for the brevity by having no intermission so it's still a long haul in that respect.

I loved the whole thing. The sound brought Wagner's fantastic music to the theater at a very high quality level. The picture was HD and with the closeups, you got a far better view of everything than would be possible even in a great seat at the Met. The massive 45-ton set came across wonderfully on screen and unlike opening night, it worked each time the slabs were moved.

I also thought the singing was good. The Washington Post's wonderful music critic, Anne Midgette (she used to be at The Times) was apparently at the Met Saturday and said the performance was not half so impressive in the opera house. She reported that several singers were hard to hear and apparently didn't have voices capable of filling the 3,000+ seat house or just couldn't meet the challenge. To me Bryn Terfel was a wonderful Wotan and Eric Owens an unusually strong and compelling Alberich. The rest were not as overwhelming--and I apologize for having qualms about a great singer, Stephanie Blythe, who was Fricka, but who is a huge woman and seems to stand for everything that dramatic opera is moving beyond. Especially on screen, she just is difficult to accept, although the matronly goddess Fricka (Wotan's wife) is probably an acceptable role for someone her size.

As always, it is the music--not even the singing or in this production, the amazing technology--that always is in charge with Wagner. It is absolutely glorious and James Levine, despite his many ailments, got another marvelous performance out of the Met orchestra. They did have a precurtain feature showing how they had the Rhinemaidens "flying" up the slab set to imitate their being in the river, but I thought the orchestral component was the key factor here. Ms. Midgette didn't like the costuming or the acting--both quite traditional and would not have been out of place in the now-retired very literal Otto Schenk production--but I find them at worst unobjectionable if not compelling.

I always learn something from a performance--especially here because the subtitles on the movie screen are exceptionably accessible. Wagner made Loge, the tricker and con artist who is the god of fire, only a demigod so he could set himself apart from the others. His role is key and was well sung. The Freia was appropriately fetching. Although I have no problems whatsoever with Wagner on a philsophical ground, it was at the least distracting that the god Froh looked like the Aryan model for Hitler Youth.

Deborah Voigt, who unlike Miss Blythe, has shed major amounts of avoirdupois, was the precurtain interviewer and I do indeed look forward to seeing her make her debut next spring onscreen as Brunnhilde in Die Walkure. That, of course, is to me and many others the truly greatest segment of the Ring cycle and it is nice even now to be able to look forward to it.

Back to '08--and How We Got There

I noticed a fairly inane comment--where else but on Facebook?--saying we needed to have someone who would get us back to where we were in 2008, meaning of course that Obama should go. Tempted to respond--always a reaction that should be repressed re Facebook--I might have noted: sure, tax breaks for the rich and the corporations, who either spend or invest their cash abroad, moving jobs there simultaneously. And oh yes, the market tanked--and it was Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, who led the bailout, yes supported by the Dems in Congress, but it truly was a rare bipartisan effort. We are left as it happened with banks still too big to fail, which means they can continue to invest anywhere but here and then be rescued by Uncle. And there were no jobs created in those years. That was the GOP legacy.

The continuing story, however, is far more insidious. We have been told we can't afford to spend on what we need to spend on, for among other things to get the country out of the recession, which for all too many people off Wall Street, has not ended yet. Our governments are starved because the hidden persuaders--not the ad men but the rich men--convince people that too much is spent and get them to vote for dumbass stuff lile Proposition 13 and when revenue drops, they then claim there's no money for anything--except to give them more tax breaks. The media do their bidding--wittingly and unwittingly--by giving all this attention to the carefully-created phony movement called the Tea Party. They try to make their prediction of a Republican landslide come true.

It does look like the Dems are finally waking up. Maybe it won't be too late--like 1968, when we got Nixon for our sins. Nixon, though, really was an outsider. He had a few rich backers but he really did annoy the Establishment. And we thought it couldn't get worse than him. Reagan served the purpose of the hidden persuaders by convincing every yokel that government was the problem. The Bushes just did the bidding of the rich. And then they finally got the Supreme Court majority--far more dangerous now than when FDR tried to take on the Four Horsemen of Reaction--to allow the hidden persuaders to stay hidden, so no one knows who's sponsoring the total b.s. you see all over the airwaves and the phony news stories, etc etc.

I suppose I find it amazing--even after all this--that people don't respond with outrage to the GOP defense of tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. Even Bill Gates's father campaigns to restore the estate tax as a fair measure of what those folks owe the rest of us. I guess that old lottery trick--refined on a million midways of carnival America--that you will be the big winner so don't vote to take anything away from the big boys--still works. The marks are still there to be taken--on a national scale now.

Hew to the line...

The Democrats need a good dose of John Belushi, the John Belushi who was Bluto in Animal House who excoriated his suddenly morose fraternity brothers because they were all being kicked out of school. All the polls and pundits act like the midterm election's over and nobody, including the President, has been willing to get out there and tell the people what's really at stake. Boy, do we need a Harry Truman to cut through the Fox fraudsters and all the other mouthpieces for the wealthiest 2% who are fighting to the death to make sure their taxes stay rock-bottom.

Yes, it's piling on, but I do fault Obama for praising Ronald Reagan: the advocate of trickle-down economics that doesn't do squat for anyone but the rich--where all the trickling stops. Reagan was the smooth-talking con man who convinced many of the gullible public that government was the enemy. I haven't seen the private sector doing anything for the mass of unemployed and hard up folks lately.

Instead, just like FDR, Obama helped save capitalism from itself. He went ahead and for better or worse, saved the auto companies. Wall Street must believe that it deserves always to be bailed out, like the banks, because now it acts like Obama, the guy who bailed them out (and Bush II did start TARP with Democratic cooperation) is the devil incarnate. I guess it's ok to bail out Wall Street but not ordinary people.

FDR couldn't solve the Depression all by himself but his administration did do something for people--first, it started putting them to work and then it tried to protect them from the ravages that capitalism had wrought: there was a moratorium on farm foreclosures, for example. Too radical today where balanced budgets are recommended only for the middle and working classes. Securities regulation was limited to disclosure--another great policy mistake that we have paid for over and over with every Wall Street crook.

H. L. Mencken was often offputting in his show of contempt for so much of America, but he may have been right with regard to how easily ordinary people can be conned by bigots and religioso fakers. And even as Obama has been studiously bipartisan (to a fault) and very middle of the road, all these tea party phoneys are at times letting their lightly-hidden racism emerge: who ever thought that a huge part of the public really would accept a black President?

We all have to open our mouths and shout out the crying need to vote for and elect any Democrat who's on our ballot. I just wonder about all those people out there who seem to be struck dumb by all that has befallen them--their jobs outsourced, their security net wiped out. It's the fault of we Democrats for not standing up for what we believe in and making everyone else aware of who got us into this mess.

Un Ballo at the Ballpark

The local opera company, which is experiencing hard times despite the continuing marketing of its general director, Placido Domingo, once again presented a delightful occasion at Nationals Park Sunday afternoon: a simulcast on the ballpark jumbotron of the season's opening performance, Verdi's Un Ballo en Maschera ("A Masked Ball" in English). And to those who may think that a ballpark is an inappropriate venue for opera, consider the precedent of the scene in the movie, A Night at the Opera, where Groucho and Chico have inserted the music for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in the musician's scores of the opera being performed (which I think was Verdi's Il Trovatore). When they get to the place where that music is played, the boys pull out gloves and start having a catch in the front of the pit orchestra.

The opera is delightful mostly because it is classic middle-period Verdi--this means lots of melody. As with a favorite of mine, La Forza del Destino, there also is a continuing theme which we hear at the start of the overture and which repeats itself over and over throughout the opera. The overture, by the way, is fairly brief and not often performed on its own as the wonderful La Forza overture is. Although it is not sung, the theme is persistent and in addition to resembling the destiny motif in La Forza, it also makes me think of Hoffman's repeated singing about his disastrous loves in Les Contes d'Hoffman. This use of motifs is another interesting Verdian practice that leads us straight to the Wagner leitmotifs, most notably, of course, in The Ring.

The plot and libretto of Un Ballo is even wilder and crazier than most opera libretti, which is saying a lot. But there is a reason for the madness. Verdi decided to write an opera about a real historical event that had occurred half a century earlier--the murder of the King of Sweden at a masked ball. The censors in still-Austrian-controlled Italy did not like theatrical presentations about murders of kings. So Verdi and his librettist, Somma, had to shift the story to Puritan Boston--hardly a likely spot for masked balls and other such entertainments. Gustavus the king became Mayor Riccardo of Warwick--the names in Boston were also left in Italian, although I don't think Verdi was familiar with the North End, Boston's still-vibrant Italian section. So the baritone Count Ankarstrom is Renato and Mam'zelle Arvidson, listed on the cast list here as a fortune-teller, became Ulrica the witch in the Boston setting. The conspirators, Count Horn and Count van Wartung, became Samuele and Tommaso, two rather low-grade Sicilian characters (reminiscent of Sparafucile in Rigoletto's introducing himself as "an assassin").

This all confused things quite a lot, although the music and what there is of the triangle plot remain fine. There's a wonderful article called "Death of a Libretto" by Henry W. Simon that explains the whole sorry history. This Washington National Opera production, shared with three other houses, like most today, restores the Swedish court setting. However, the characters still refer to each other as Renato and Ulrica (for some reason, Riccardo is referred to as Gustavo, maybe because he's the king) and the soprano Amelia remains just that, Amelia. The music is lovely--I always enjoy the conspirators' "laughing"chorus, filled by "ha-ha-ha"s much as the courtiers' similarly evil-minded song in Rigoletto is--no wonder Rigoletto then sings the aria "O Vile Race of Courtiers".

The concession stands were open--for once, the Italian sausage seemed an appropriate item to snack on, although vendors did not circulate through the stands, fortunately. But the picture was good, as was the sound, and it was nice to see families picnicking in the outfield--the whole day is called "Opera in the Outfield." The ending, tragic of course, especially since the murderer immediately regrets what he has done, is also silly in the way the Rigoletto ending is: the murdered king manages to sing for quite a while after presumably having been terminated with extreme prejudice.

This struck me as the likely high point of the season, which is filled with rather unusual items such as Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride, not performed all that often, and Richard Strauss's Salome, which is, and Donizetti's Don Pasquale, a comedy that has tended to elude me, although Donizetti's music is almost always worth hearing. This is a big year in opera for Wagner's Ring. The Met opens next Monday with Das Rheingold, first shot in a new Ring production that promises to be more fun and less literal than the Otto Schenck one that has lasted 25 years there. The Met will also have Die Walkure at the end of the season and San Francisco will have a whole Ring at the end of its season, both next spring.

We were supposed to have a Ring here in Washington too, but the economic stringency has postponed that indefinitely. More's the pity. Last year's concert presentation by WNO 0f Wagner's Goetterdaemerung, done twice, was absolutely magnificent, and the critics agreed, including the estimable and demanding Anne Midgette, whom the Washington Post picked up a while back from the New York Times. This Ballo got mediocre reviews, with the writer asking whether WNO will continue to be a first-rank company. I don't think it ever has been, even though Domingo has until now been able to sign up anyone he wanted and has brought good talent in. Now I think even he can't get great singers to show up for the meagre amounts offered.

Salvatore Licitra, the tenor who filled in for Pavarotti's final two Toscas at the Met after Luciano was forced to cancel, was the king and he is a fine tenor who sang beautifully. I liked the baritone and the soprano and everyone else for that matter, although Ulrica the mezzo (really alto) was a bit off-key. Oscar the page--a famous show-off trouser role for a light soprano, that is, a woman playing a man's part because of how the music is set--was fine although some thought his facial contortions made him seem crazed.

A good time was had by all--and in view of their latest losing streak, nobody seemed to miss the Nats.

Parents and Teachers

We just had an election--well, a primary--here in D.C. that had education as one major issue, aside from the usual issue which was whether the incumbent mayor was perceived as black enough for the majority black city. Mayor Fenty was serious about reforming the wildly unperforming and expensive city school system; he named a young woman in her late 30s, Michelle Rhee, as chancellor. Her only real experience was in an administrative post at Teach for America.

She's not been perfect. But she has done a lot and stepped on a lot of toes. Some of them were those of the teachers union here. Nevertheless, she also managed to reach a contract with the union this year. Randi Weingarten, the national AFT president, got involved and probably made Ms. Rhee realize what she still needed to learn about negotiating as Ms. Weingarten is a real pro. She is not a union hack. She is for improved schools and protecting good teachers. As for the local leaders, they seem all right but a few years ago the union leadership went to jail for stealing hundreds of thousands in member funds.

Michelle Rhee definitely did not bother to touch base with some of the local power brokers. She built up good credibility with foundations, secured much grant funding for the DC schools, and has been showing progress in school performance. The Washington Post supports her but did her no favors in reporting on this year's scores. The paper emphasized the increased variance between scores of black and white students. The paper did not bother to note that this occurred as all scores went up, black and white. Yes, white students' scores went up more, but everyone's rose.

Now Fenty has lost the primary and Rhee has become involved more than she should have in politics. It remains to be seen whether the presumptive mayor-elect, Vincent Gray, will follow through on his promises to keep school reform going. He says Fenty and Rhee failed to involve parents and the community.

In my view, parents have the job of providing a good home atmosphere, inculcating a receptivity if not a love of learning, and making sure that students get to school on time every day. Professional educators have not distinguished themselves in running school systems, but what makes anyone think that parents should have a major say? Most parents do not know much about what works in education. But involving parents in major school decisions--more by way of show than for real--has become a totem of our modern school systems, and it is stupid.

The community knows even less. I always liked the iron control the New York Board of Regents had on curricula in the state's schools because you knew that every school system was not going to force its own weird ideas of what was important on students. True, in some states in the South you get creationists and other yo-yos determining curricula, but in New York, the state kept many districts on the mark.

Good school systems make sure that both those who need extra help and those who are gifted and need extra challenges are well served. Rhee made some mistakes. She once goofed bigtime by accusing some of the teachers she was firing of being sex abusers. It turned out she had no basis for this irresponsible and hurtful comment. She is not yet 40. She made mistakes. But on the whole she tried to do what was right and what was needed. In one sense she resembles Rudy Giuliani, who in general is an unpleasant type who deserves little credit just for acting sensibly most of the time after the Sept. 11, 2001 attack. But Giuliani was needed in New York City to clean up the mess that other politicians had been afraid or reluctant to touch. No one needs him now but he was needed when he arrived as mayor.

In the end, D.C. will get the schools it deserves. I do hope Gray isn't just blowing smoke by claiming he's for reform. I saw legions of hacks come and go from the school headquarters over the years. My daughter was in the system for a few years and her school had good teachers and a good principal. They only succeeded by fending off the central headquarters. It would be good if whoever follows Rhee is willing to continue the hard work she began here.

Elephants at Aida

I saw a very enjoyable performance of Aida here in San Francisco earlier this evening. It of course is the opera most performed by the Met and the "A" opera of the Aida-Boheme-Carmen A-B-Cs, but to me, every production of Verdi's Egyptian fantasy is an experience. First, it's the only real grand opera in the standard repertory--the others that fit that label are relatively rarely performed, such as Meyerbeer's L'Africaine or Les Huguenots. Second, most of the opera moves smoothly from melody to melody, in the finest Verdi tradition. Third, singers can sound good without making you think they are the best you ever heard in the role. As it happens I heard and saw Leontyne Price in the title role, and Corelli and I think Domingo as Radames.

The baritone, Marco Vratogna, was a good Amonasro, but I'm a sucker for good Verdi baritones, even though I did see Leonard Warren onstage in his prime, and not the night he died (for real) on the Met stage. This Italian baritone has sung at a lot of major places, like La Fenice, Scala, and Vienna, and yes, for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, but not yet at the Met or Washington. I'm not sure what they're waiting for--he has a beautiful tone.

I've not yet mentioned the highlight of the evening, however, which was Zandra Rhodes's costumes and sets. They were almost extreme--or as my friend Noah put it, "very San Francisco." Lots of turquoise and interesting non-geometric shapes and a wonderful "repesentation" of an elephant during the triumphal march. Did you know that in the 30s, the Met used to bring in elephants from the zoo for the march. My mother said she was in the audience once when they did that.

The production was directed by a British director, Jo Davies, who also had a few tricks up her sleeve. She ran the march in fits and starts--a switch from the steady progression in most productions where sometimes the small complement of extras moves so fast that you see them coming around a second or third time. And at one point, she has the King and Amneris facing the back of the stage from the front so everyone else approaches their review facing front. I said that the Aida, Micaela Carosi, and the Radames, Marcello Giordani, were excellent, but although her voice was all right, I couldn't get over regarding Dolores Zajick, the well-traveled Amneris, as a top-like looking figure in her massive headgear and short stature. She was hard to take seriously and that apparently mattered a lot to Verdi, who was once quoted as saying that the Amneris role is key to the whole opera. The priests all wore conical skirts or cassocks or whatever but she was the one you felt like spinning.

Not that I'm taking on the Maestro of Maestros, but I beg to differ. She moves around the stage a lot but has no great singing to do. Even the King--a classic comprimaro role--has more, I think. Some friends of my family used to know a Met comprimaro named Edmund Karlsrud whose biggest role there was the King in Aida, and he made a big deal about being a Met regular. A Chinese bass sang the role of Ramfis, the High Priest, and he was quite good, nice strong sound.

Carosi and Vratogna--Aida and her father, Amonasro--were convincing in those always difficult Verdian father-daughter duos--such as Rigoletto and Gilda. Their Nile Scene duet wasn't as stirring as the one that ends Act 3 (or more often, it's done as Act 2 these days) of Rigoletto, which may be my favorite duet in opera (the classic recording has Sutherland and Sherrill Milnes). I wasn't surprised to learn that with Davies and Rhodes putting it together, the production debuted at the English National Opera in London and then was at Houston, where the San Fran general director, David Gockley, previously ran things.

This was opening night and since your reporter nabbed what seemed (online) to be the last seat in the lovely War Memorial Opera House, I didn't bring my black tie, of which there were plenty in attendance, even a few white ties. San Francisco is that kind of place. I never went to the Met on Monday nights, which was once society night. In Washington, Monday is the opposite, with an early curtain for those who needed to get home sooner to care for their families. There were also a lot of private parties and the inevitable white stretch limos waiting outside on Van Ness Avenue across from City Hall. And the nice lady sitting next to me way upstairs struck up a conversation by saying how much she liked the figurative elephant. I couldn't have agreed more, and said so.

Almost at Labor Day

Where did the summer go? Here I am in the upper Hudson Valley, having enjoyed driving through Cold Spring and Fishkill and Rhinebeck and Red Hook yesterday and perhaps venturing over to the Columbia County Fair today (Dutchess County Fair ended Sunday). Not quite the desire to press upstate to the great NY State Fair at Syracuse or even the last day or two of flat racing at the Spa. Somehow managed to get on the beach this week at Quogue, which was terrific despite the powerful undertow generated by one incipient hurricane or another.

Friends have been nice enough to host us on these stops and we observe Poor Richard's limit of three days. There have also been a succession of weddings, family and friends both, and a quick trip or two for each of us--even a three-dayer last week to Huntsville, Alabama, which was a court assessment.

There's a wonderful feeling of late August, just before the start of what the late Alistair Cooke called the real American New Year. Wildflowers are still in full bloom but there's a tree or two already turning on the Taconic. I've managed to not lose control totally, thanks in part to all the seafood that still dominates menus in coastal places this time of year. And last week we made it down to Cantler's near Annapolis for crabs for the first time this season.

My rhapsody gets going in foolish directions, such as my continuing enchantment with driving two-lane New York country roads, marked or unmarked. Little things bring me out of the reverie -- like seeing the profile picture of FDR as you enter Hyde Park and notice that the outline shot includes the cigarette holder censored at the FDR Memorial in DC.

As always, it somehow remains an effort for the two of us to break away for a few days. There's always something hanging over our heads to be finished. Yet if I didn't get back to some of these favorite places--the ocean, the crab joints on the rivers or creeks or inlets near Annapolis, the New York countryside--I'd feel that I'd missed the whole summer.

Notes on recent occurrences

Last week I once again attended an informal breakfast where Elizabeth Warren spoke. In case you've been away from the papers, she's the Harvard law professor who has directed the oversight panel reviewing the TARP expenditures. She's probably the leading expert in the U.S. on bankruptcy and consumer credit. She struck me as exceedingly able and aware on all aspects of the subject and especially oriented toward the interests of consumers and middle-class people. At the same time she understands what credit is all about and how the financial system works--she just doesn't think that the only interest worth recognizing is the bankers' lobby. I do hope the President names her to head the new consumer protection agency. It's the rare occasion when there's a perfect candidate. He'll take some flak from the interests but that goes with the job.

What to make of all the recent deaths in the Yankee world? Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard and Major Ralph Houk. I suppose I'll miss Sheppard the most because he was such a class act as the public address announcer for the last million years. I enjoy Keith Olberman's program but his move to get Steinbrenner immediately into the Hall of Fame is a misjudgment; I'm sure he'll get there eventually but the stories about those left out who are more deserving these past few days include Curt Flood and Marvin Miller and even Col. Jacob Ruppert. I'd vote for all of them before him, but George had enough impact to merit selection, especially when you have someone like Charley Comiskey in there. Buck Weaver should replace him.

Deborah Voigt will do Annie Get Your Gun next summer at Glimmerglass Opera. Sounds fine to me, because even opera singers have trouble matching up with Merman. At least they won't use amplification. I found myself warming to the bill announced for next year at George Mason down here by Virginia Opera: Rigoletto, Cosi, Die Walkure, and Butterfly. Hard to beat that for pure enjoyment. I missed the event of the summer: the Will Crutchfield Norma at Caramoor with the new sensation, Angela Meade.

I've been working on proposals for projects all across the Balkans and the Caucasus, two of my old stamping grounds. Too much has not changed in too many of these places. I read the specs of the RFPs and realize that so many of the Rule of Law projects fail to achieve their entirely unrealistic objectives. Not that we have anything much to boast about here of late: the Supreme Court refused to review a Texas case where the judge and the prosecutor were having it off. No problem there, I suppose.

Back on the Adirondack

En route on Amtrak No. 68, The Adirondack—Right now, we’re passing Lake George, just went by Crown Point, which fell during the Revolutionary War shortly after Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys surprised the British by taking Fort Ticonderoga, a few minutes ahead, “in the name of the great god Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” It’s just past three in the afternoon and we left Montreal at 9:30 this morning, which tells you that this train doesn’t exactly highball its way to New York.

As with the train we took to Montreal, this one is filled with Montreal Jazz Festival attendees, which may be why U.S. customs took almost 1½ hours to clear us at the border. We’re also running late because the northbound train was late in reaching the siding at Westport, on Lake Champlain, where each train must wait for the other because there are no other places for them to pass. I’m not sure why they were late, given that there’s a long stop at Albany, which I hope our train will shorten in order to make up some time.

All of which sounds pretty ridiculous when discussing an 11-hour train trip that covers 381 miles. I figured the major stretch on the old Delaware & Hudson route, which begins north of Schenectady, would be the slow part and I was right. Part of the cause must be the condition of the roadbed, and also that the route is curvy. Having said that, I’m entranced by the beauty of Lake George, with its islands and the Adirondack backdrop out the other side of the train. Lake Champlain is more formidable—at times, you think it might be another of the Great Lakes where you can barely see Vermont on the far side—but this stretch from Ticonderoga to Whitehall is spectacular.

I do wonder if this train is normally this crowded—a sell-out both ways. By Amtrak’s standards, especially if you buy a ticket well ahead of travel, this trip is a bargain. There’s a café car that’s not much different from the ones on the Northeast run between Washington and Boston. No old New York Central or D&H dining cars on this day train—as in all-day. And no observation car as may be found on some of the Western routes and the famed VIA Canada Toronto-Vancouver Canadian route. Nothing fancy, not even Amtrak’s pale imitation of the old Pullman car: business class.

We’ve had fantastic weather on this trip—sunny and clear every day, which I suppose gives a somewhat misleading impression of both Montreal and this North Country of New York State. On the right I keep seeing still water and verdant meadows with mountains in the background, right out of one of those Frederic Remington paintings of the Adirondack scene. All you need is someone out there in a canoe.

You do get to see Albany, with all those wonderful old buildings such as the old D&H Gothic marvel, modeled after the Weavers Hall in Ypres, Belgium, or even the old, massive and overdone State Capitol. Rocky’s Stalinesque Mall looms in the background and then it’s over the bridge to Rensselaer, where the station serving Albany is actually located.

All That Jazz

Montreal--We're here for a long holiday weekend, occasioned by the scheduling tomorrow (Sunday) of a wedding of one of Eileen's friends. I'd never spent much time here--in fact, I'd been here only once before, on a quick run up from Vermont way back when I was doing some court studies there. A friend insisted on taking us then to the famed Schwartz's deli to have smoked meat, the Montreal answer to pastrami or corned beef. Since everything here has to be labelled in French, Schwartz's has become Chez Charcuterie Hebraique Schwartz officially and I haven't been there this time because I didn't especially go for the smoked meat then either (it doesn't taste good, like pastrami and corned beef)--or, for that matter, their version of bagels, which are sweeter and smaller than the home variety.

But enough about Mordecai Richler's Montreal, which is as far gone today as he is. Montreal, in every other respect, is one great place. The weather has been fantastic, cool and sunny. The city is amazingly attractive--old and new buildings, lots of nice parks, a wonderful botanical garden, and as fine a range of restaurants as you will find anywhere. The standard there is very high. We've gone in three days to Greek, local French, and Portuguese restaurants--all three were superb, each in its own special way. The Greek place had a delightful Greek salad, lots of cucumbers and truly ripe tomatoes, and good octopus and fish generally; at the Frenchd one, Eileen had a top-notch steak frites and I had marvelous field greens salad with chives and venison done in osso buco style--oh yes, there was this chocolate mousse concoction too; and lastly, the Portuguese, Ferreira--one of the finest places in town, we were told--where we had a cataplan, which is a bouillabaise Portuguese style cooked in a pan with a cover called a cataplan, and black cod with porcini and a port-based sauce, preceded by grilled calamari and a tomato, melon, and arugula salad. A number of places we passed on Boulevard St. Laurent and environs were having a Lobster Festival, which I haven't managed to try out yet.

We're here in the middle of the Montreal Jazz Festival and last night went etto a large theater in the Place des Arts to see and hear Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed (her husband as well as the originator of The Velvet Underground and Walk on the Wild Side), and saxophonist John Zorn in concert doing improv. She played violin and a keyboard, Zorn only his sax, and Reed all kinds of guitars and banjos, but wildly amped with a keyboard and synthesizer and who knows what other electronic gear. I wanted to give it a chance and Eileen really wanted to bug out about three minutes into the barely more than a hour-long program but we stuck it out...and it didn't get any better. It was incredibly loud, but I sort of expected that--I didn't figure, however, how it fits into anyone's definition of jazz or even music. Most of the audience applauded and seemed to like it all right, but one dissatisfied customer shouted out that they should play music, to which Zorn responded--in the group's only spoken words onstage--that if he didn't think it it was music, he should "get the fuck out of here." Today's Montreal Gazette review said that everyone was a loser: those who didn't like it and even those who did, because of the short set.

The Atwater Market has wonderful comestibles of all kinds and the Jardin Botanique (botanical garden) is huge and very engaging. It contains Chinese, Japanese, and First Nations (Canadian tribes) gardens, amid all kinds of other gardens--aquatic, plants grown for food and fiber, roses, lilies--that are in bloom now that it is really summer here. The French language law seems to be honored in that every sign and label is in French but everyone speaks French and English, except, it seems, the Metro, on which everything is in French. It figures, since the whole operation could readily be switched to the Paris original without anyone noticing the difference. I think the French signage, despite views to the contrary, is good for visitors in that it emphasizes the difference that underlies the whole society in Quebec--this isn't like visiting any other place nearby in the U.S. or even Toronto or Ottawa.

I didn't mention yet that we travelled here (and will return) on the Adirondack, Amtrak's 11+ hour special from New York's Penn Station to Montreal' s Gare Centrale. I'm not sure the train is always packed as it was the other day with Jazz Festival-bound riders from New York, but the trip is spectacular, as you first travel all the way up the Hudson east bank to Albany, on the old New York Central main line as far as Schenectady, then it's the old Delaware & Hudson route up past Lake George and Lake Champlain. It's a day train--which means all day. The cafe car is standard Amtrak. The trip takes as long as it does because the track alongside the lakes and the Champlain Canal is both curvy and probably not the most up-to-date so speeds get slow. We also killed almost 1 1/2 hours at the border with Canadian customs, who probably take as long as they do because I assume their U.S. brethren do the same. By comparison, it only took an hour each way at the border between Greece and Macedonia, where we all had to get off the train and give them our passports, and those countries aren't on good terms; it took even less when we crossed the old Iron Curtain by train west of Pilsen in Czecho back into then-West Germany.

We also managed to be the last on your block to see Billy Elliot on Broadway as we passed through New York. The show is a bit slow-paced, probably runs too long as well, and has just average music by Elton John and unmemorable book and lyrics, but--the cast, especially its dancers, make it work and leave the audience on its feet. We were right up there applauding with them. It was great theater.

My Funny Valentine

Last night featured a 2 1/2+ hour immersion into the wonderful world of Rodgers & Hart. This was another retrospective at the Smithsonian put together by Robert Wyatt, whose programs are enjoyable although he loses track of time, so had to end with Babes in Arms and never got to The Boys From Syracuse and Pal Joey. Eileen adds that he commits every fault every presenter fears--knocks out the video, puts on the wrong CD number, and ignores the clock.

Nevertheless, his audio and video clips, plus his gloss on the careers of Dick Rodgers and Larry Hart, make the evenings memorable. He started with two blockbusters--Lena Horne doing "My Funny Valentine" -- probably the saddest and most delightful lyrics Hart ever wrote and then his last song, "To Keep My Love Alive," which features the most sublimely wicked lyrics probably ever sung on Broadway--in this case, by Hart's great friend, Vivienne Segal. He didn't get to it but she was the original singer of "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" in Pal Joey. I also would have loved to have heard some stories of the interplay between Rodgers & Hart and John O'Hara, from whose stories, of course, Pal Joey derived.

I knew Hart was a strange case but did not realize that from 1935 on until he died in 1943 (at 48), he sank farther and farther into alcoholism. Wyatt did not mention that both Rodgers and Hart were bi (as was Cole Porter), but in Hart's case, he was so short with such a large head that he never did find the love he sought and that search is at the heart of his lyrics. It also seems clear that he was a true genius, in view of the speed with which he wrote. Rodgers was, too, and also not the nicest guy on the block, despite the ease with which he turned out melody after melody, first with Hart, then on a heavier basis with Oscar Hammerstein II, and lastly on his own, as he composed from age 14 until his 70s.

But the songs...There's a Small Hotel and I Don't Remember When and Blue Moon and Mountain Greenery (which he didn't get to, either. The picture you get, too, of Broadway in the 20s and even later in the 30s, even after talking pictures began to diminish the huge number of productions (264 in one year in the 20s!) on the New York stage. There's so many songs that when you hear them, you remark that you never knew that was by Rodgers & Hart. Remember Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan dancing up the proscenium as FDR in I'd Rather Be Right? Yes, they wrote it.

They did shows with Balanchine as choreographer and were a bit in awe of his reputation until he told them he'd design the dance in any way they wrote the music and lyrics. As with the other composers and lyricists, they had an early 30s period in Hollywood, when the stage was in the doldrums. There too, they succeeded. Of course, for their first five years, they had only flops until The Garrick Gaieties sprung them in 1925 with We'll Take Manhattan, written originally for some summer camp musical or Columbia varsity show.

They even were the first with an integrated show--integrating the songs and the plot, that is. It was a flop, alas, called Chee-Chee, so we had to wait for the Rodgers & Hammerstein kick-off, Oklahoma, for the first successful one. Hart, incidentally, who was dead before Oklahoma opened, turned down the chance to do it, based on Green Grow the Lilacs. I like to think he thought he was too corny, not that some of his own shows weren't. They did Billy Rose's Jumbo at the old Hippodrome. Wyatt doesn't know New York that well, so we shouted out that it was located at 44th St. and Sixth Ave. I didn't have the heart to add that for about a half-century it's been a parking garage.

Larry Hart's nephew was in the audience. There was also mention of Larry's brother, the comedian Teddy Hart, one of the many memorable stage folks I once was introduced to at The Lambs with my dad. He had been an original star in The Boys From Syracuse, and outlived his brother by about 35 years.

Always That Profession

It was a rare wonderful evening in the theater, the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C., that is, doing Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, the other night. First, the play is one of his good ones. He wrote it in 1893, but the censors kept it off the London stage until the 1920s and even New York City took a decade to get it on the boards in 1905.

The leading ladies were Elizabeth Ashley as the title character and Amanda Quaid as her daughter, a "new woman" graduated but lately from Cambridge and upset that her mother is still engaged in her profession of running houses in various European cities. Two great company regulars--Ted van Griethuysen and David Sabin--played two principal male roles superbly.

It was great entertainment, including some music hall turns by a young woman named Caitlin Diana Doyle as the young Mrs. Warren. I recall Ashley in her youthful days playing Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; while she no longer can play those kinds of roles, she still has a strong capacity to hold your attention on stage.

Shaw's arguments are hardly as controversial today but the fulcrum now falls on whether Mrs. W. should have stayed in her business, even if you give her a thumbs-up on how she got into it and used it to make her way in the world. Both women relate well to our contemporary issue of workaholism--neither has any interest other than a narrow focus on her career, as both the architect hoping for some show of interest in the finer things such as art learns, as does a baronet who has always known how to enjoy his money.

It's nice to see that The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest is now atop the best-seller list in the U.S. (or in The Times anyway). I for one have thoroughly enjoyed Larsson's Millenium series and managed to get hold of this third volume during one of my overseas jaunts before it was published here in May. Both his leading characters are highly attracting but the really great one is Lisbeth Salander, the 25-year-old bi Goth girl who is a genius computer hacker.

Another event of note was attending the Nationals opener versus the White Sox here Friday night to see seven innings pitched by Stephen Strasburg, the phenom. He was quite impressive but the Nats are so hitless that the one run he allowed stood unanswered for six more innings (the equalizer left him without decision rather than the loser) and then Chicago managed to score on a Nationals error in the 11th. The Nats are in a bigtime slump--another witness from upstairs in box 208 was Pale Hose fan Barack Obama and his girls, unnanounced in the stadium but noticed by some fans sitting behind me near the dugout.

Obama's Success Story

You might think from much of the media lately that President Obama hasn't been accomplishing much. Yes, health care took a long time but no one until now got very far and whatever its shortcomings, he got it done. It looks likely that financial reform will get through, too, thanks much to Goldman Sachs and their unabashed defense of giving advice out of two sides of their mouths. Two good Supreme Court justices--I assume Kagan will make it past the gauntlet of nonsense issues--will be on the bench this fall, making it looking good for when he gets to replace one of the stinkers. And in a hundred agencies that never get reported on, people are trying to undo the corporate welfare showered on the supposedly regulated industries by Bush's corporate agents.

But when you listen to tv or read the papers, even the Times and the Post, you'd think the man is mired in endless problems. Well, yes, there are incredible challenges. How would you like to balance retaining an important ally such as Turkey when Israel needlessly riles the whole world and we have some closed-minded types (I'm holding back, believe me) here siding with Netanyahu over the U.S. And then there's the Gulf, Mexico this time, not Persian. So-called pundits want us to keep relying on lying BP--despite total lack of evidence to support any basis for trusting corporations more than our government. Alas, the not-yet-reformed regulatory agency was still in the hands of corpsymps--and technically, tell me what else the government could have done when corporations enter an untreaded area without adequate backup plans.

So I for one am tired of hearing about economic royalists (remember FDR's great phrase), Tea Party yoyos, phoney populists, and all kinds of reactionaries being treated respectfully by the media that gives the President all this heat. This is the result of media concentration--the reactionaries yell about media being liberal but Rupert Murdoch owns a whole lot of it and he just peddles this nonsense.

We had eight years of non-regulation, corporate giveaways, trickle-down economics, and the world turned against us--ending in the biggest crash since the 1930s. One might think that people would think about where their best interests lie--not with the corporations who would happily ship your job away. I've enjoyed seeing the responses to this put out by the Coffee Party. Check it out on your nearest social media outlet.

What's Wrong With Haiti?

Although the story was the front-page right lead in Sunday's New York Times, it's likely that many people missed it, because it was about Haiti. People become accustomed to bad news out of Haiti so they skip each new chapter chronicling the continuing degradation of the already wiped-out country. The story was an investigation into what happened when Haitian police invaded a prison after an abortive effort at a prison break. It's likely that they killed more than 25 prisoners, many of whom they had long wanted to murder, and then buried them in a common pit.

My long-time colleague, Maury Geiger, was in town yesterday and told me more about the story. He is quoted in it--he has personally been trying to improve conditions, especially with respect to justice in Haiti, for many years. It turns out that he was at least part of the inspiration for the coverage by bringing the situation to the attention of the Times reporters.

Last autumn, I spent some time working with him in Port-au-Prince, where I witnessed the conditions at the National Penitentiary, which were sordid. It was some kind of blessing when after the earthquake wrecked the place, everybody took off. Haiti still has a system where people are arrested and there's no bail or pretrial release system so they stay in jail until trial which may follow years later.

The reason this situation persists is that (1) people with connections "arrange" to have relatives who are arrested released at the police station and (2) the people with influence in the society--judges, ministers, successful lawyers, academics--care less about the situation of those less well off, who constitute most of the population, than is true anywhere else I've ever been.

In working on court system improvement, you learn that complex procedures mean that everything takes longer and there is greater opportunity for corruption. We used to have a complicated pleading system in U.S. courts, but simplified it many years ago--by the mid-20th century. Things can still get hung up procedurally here but it's better than it had been.

The long history of attempts to assist Haiti through foreign aid also includes many episodes of corruption. Maury Geiger went on 60 Minutes some years ago with Mike Wallace to spotlight how crooked American contractors were stealing funds intended to improve the Haitian judicial system. But now we are face to face with the real problem: yes, France is always a villain because they managed to make Haiti--poorest country in the hemisphere--pay the French reparations for freedom since 1804. And the U.S. has tried hard but not had much success in improving anything there.

No, the real problem is the Haitian government and underlying it--forget all the dictators and their stooges--is the upper crust of Haitian society, the people who live at the top of the hill above Port-au-Prince. These are the lawyers and judges and ministers whom I heard discuss the problems and explain why nothing can be changed. We have had ugly corporate types in the U.S. both in the 19th century and right now who exploited everyone, especially workers, but would plead ignorance or whatever when confronted. But in Haiti, these makers and movers of the justice system just don't care. And for so long as they are in control, nothing will change.

Post From Portsmouth

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is one of those nicely-surviving old towns that you always mean to visit and spend a few days touring but usually don't. Lots of the old town stands as original buildings befitting one of our northern-most seaports. Some years ago when I was doing some work in New Hampshire, Eileen and I visited a large restored area called Strawbery Banke, accent on the peculiarities of spelling, a la shoppe. It was fun and perhaps even better than going to its more famous relative, Williamsburg, where we will be next weekend (and are unlikely to spend any time touring the tourist area).

I did drive through downtown today and enjoyed an early season farmers' market even if they ran out of lobster rolls by the time I arrived, so I had to have one at Bob's, the stand amidst the outlets across the bridge in Kittery, Maine. My raison de visite was the annual convention of the Horatio Alger Society, of which I have in my declining years become a more regular attendee. As with other such groups, the average age of members is rising and the number in attendance falling in direct proportion.

I've belonged to the society longer than almost all active members but have been an irregular attendee at the conventions owing to my travel schedule and conflicts. I enjoy knowing a number of the members all of whom I never would have known through any other likely way of meeting. Ive not hosted the convention--usually when I actually volunteer to do that it means I will somehow leave the group and be unable to deliver, sometimes causing hard feelings: I couldn't host the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks because I changed jobs and some people took umbrage. I will try to do it one of these years, though, or risk being the oldest member who hasn't done it.

If you like book collecting, the convention is fun. I like late 19th century juvenile literature because of the Americana it conjures up for me. In an era without tv or movies or radio or Ipods, children read Alger and Oliver Optic and Henty and J. T. Trowbridge and Edward S. Ellis (the last two were American frontier adventure writers). We know that Lincoln enjoyed the rough humor of Artemus Ward. I find it enjoyable to be with people who know an immense amount about things like the third states of first editions, or the broken type on page 46 of another.

Alger wrote mostly in New York City and conveys a very definite picture of the metropolis in the 1870s and 1880s. He had limited ability at setting a plot--basically, he had one which he repeated about 100 times. But his descriptions of New York settings are worth knowing and his values are fine, as appropriate for us as for the Gilded Age inhabitants for whom he wrote.

It seems he gave most of his earnings to good causes such as the Newsboys Lodging House, and it may have been in the form of penance for this quietly defrocked Unitarian minister, who was thrown out of his pulpiy on Cape Cod for undisclosed reasons that are familiar to us as regards clergymen today. He also contributed to the American popular literature in yet another way: his assistant Edward Stratemyer finished six of his novels and them proceeded to invent, write, and eventually oversee a factory-like operation -- the Stratemyer Syndicate -- that produced Tom Swift, the BobbseyTwins, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and several other series for children.

The Society established an official repository for a fine collection of Alger at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, which isnt too far from O'Hare Airport. The retired librarian at NIU now lives in Durham, New Hampshire, and hosted this convention. The high point for me was returning to Newick's restaurant on Dover Point, where you can get the finest fried clams in the world, or at least the only ones I will deign to enjoy, on a level with Faidley's crabcakes in Lexington Market, Baltimore.

The Other Mr. Goldstone

Richard Goldstone is one of the world's most distinguished jurists. He was outspoken in his opposition to apartheid in the bad old days in South Africa and he has been outstanding in his defense of liberty and liberties on South Africa's Constitutional Court. Despite the amazing success of South Africa in avoiding bloodshed--entirely, I suggest, because of the inspired leadership of Nelson Mandela, the conversion of this country from a bigoted authoritarian state to a true democratic republic has not been easy. Mandela will not be around forever, either. People like Goldstone have proven their mettle in a hard testing ground.

Benjamin Netanyahu, in contrast, has a reputation as someone who speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He owes his position as prime minister of Israel to the lawless settlers who doctor records and use force to steal land from Palestinians and block any peaceful resolution of the long-term issues. So clearly is he "owned" by the extreme right in Israel that he cannot deal reasonably with President Obama, so the latter quite reasonably pays him scant attention any more.

Netanyahu and his ilk have tried to stir up the worldwide Jewish community against Justice Goldstone because he led a UN-sponsored inquiry that said that both Israel and Hamas committed atrocities during the last war. They even tried to threaten Goldstone with bodily harm if he attended his nephew's bar mitzvah. This all reminds me of the nonsensical position espoused with some success in America some years ago by the late Norman Podhoretz that anyone who questioned any policy of the Israeli government was anti-Semitic.

Most people that Netanyahu now attacks want a fair settlement far more than he does. I think of Jimmy Carter and George Mitchell. Netanyahu's minions would have you believe that they too are anti-Semitic. Our president has tried mightily to have everyone in the Middle East see the U.S. as a fair dealer only focused on bringing peace to this beknighted region. Now that he is showing some success on the domestic front, his international standing and effectiveness may rise in tandem.

Note: In case you were wondering, the first Mr. Goldstone was the character in the movie musical version of Gypsy played by the late Benny Lessy, to whom Mama Rose--Rosalind Russell, but originally, of course, Ethel Merman--sings "Have an egg roll, Mr. Goldstone" when he decides to take a chance as a vaudeville operator on their act. Lessy was memorable in performing the part--he's just in one great long scene--without ever saying a word.

Reunions--Not in Vienna

Yes, that was the title of a rather talky Robert E. Sherwood play of the 30s that featured the Lunts and sometimes Noel Coward, I believe, which meant that even if it wasn't the greatest vehicle, they all must have delighted audiences. But I just returned from a 40th reunion--law school, no less. They did have some other reuning classes there and it was encouraging to see the far more populous 50th reunion class--complete with Mike Dukakis, tank-less this time--yes, they did look old.

This time, a nice number of friends showed up, so that made the reunion. Over the years, the law school has turned over all planning to the development people, and if they feel what they've done for a reunion weekend makes sense, their instinct is to do exactly the same thing again. I skipped most of the programs since the weather in Cambridge and Boston was spring-like and pleasant.

But I did make a class forum on retirement--led by a woman who was contemplating forced retirement from partnership at an old-line Boston firm where she was a partner in trusts and estates, naturally. She couldn't face life without that. My old friend and best man, Guy Blynn, remarked helpfully to me that 40 years ago, that firm wouldn't give him the time of day as the old ethnic walls were just beginning to break down. But we kept listening to these people whining about how their firms were effectively forcing them out by pushing them to delegate work to cheaper-billing associates. Again, Guy noted that since they were the partners, they had helped create this engine that dispatched its drivers before they were quite ready to be bounced.

He's fully retired and I'm semi-retired. I didn't think there was anything I would say about what I did that would interest most of the attendees, since I went in a rather different direction from all of them way back when. There were some very constructive ideas if anyone bothered to listen: a friend and classmate both at college and law school described how he had organized an entire program in his large law firm to represent people litigating their immigration status. Someone said to another old friend whose law firm had imploded and whose days as counsel at another had ended that he must have retired, only to elicit the far more straightforward response: "Hell no, I was fired!"

We did indulge in some nostalgia-tripping: when Noah Griffin arrived, he outlined a path that included walking through Longfellow's garden (the house isn't yet open for the summer), the monument opposite the State House on Beacon Hill to the Glorious 54th Regiment of Glory fame, where we met an excited re-enactor, and then the current Brattle Book Shop near the Common, always a wonderful place to spend some time searching for something you never knew you needed. Seamus at the Parker House ran through some of the amazing history of that famed hostelry. We even caught the tail end of the Princeton-Harvard lacrosse game, with the Crimson upsetting the favored Tigers.

Boston and Cambridge have changed a lot, especially on the dining front, but you wouldn't have known it from our choices. Lunch at probably the only true "joint" left in Harvard Square, Charlie's Kitchen, which now has a beer garden; late night snacking at the still-laden-with-MSG Hong Kong, and late dinner at the now ultra-unfashionable Anthony's Pier 4. Hey, they still make a nice broiled schrod. Sure, Legal is better but why go there when they're in your neighborhood.

My conclusion was that change is coming, albeit late, to my law school class. I remember my 25th, when there were four of us not in suits and the other three were from California. Now I bet half the attendees were both jacket-less and tie-less. You may think that's sexist but hey, there were 20 women in our entering class of 540. Now women make up 53% of a law school class.

The new dean spoke, describing all kinds of new initiatives and new courses, all of which made my head spin because, finally, in my old age, the place is getting much more open and broad-minded. It has adapted to changed times when not everyone will be heading for a large firm. I did smile when I heard that one "new" idea was to have required courses on Legislation and Negotiation in the first year. My wife learned Legislation from the late great Father Drinan at Georgetown back in the 80s and she's been teaching Negotiation 9and ADR) at GW for the past fifteen.

It's nice to see Harvard evolve but they are hardly the first. A bit like the time in World War II in the Pacific when somehow the Seabees managed to get set up on an island before the Marines arrived; thus the welcoming banner, "The Seabees are always happy to welcome the Marines".

Kyrgyzstan and Coal

Since I was in Kyrgyzstan less than two years ago, I was most interested in the swift change of government that is occurring there. It appears to be something of a coup--starting with protests against price increases by an increasingly authoritarian government. Then this morning I heard a correspondent who had been there recently express the view that this shake-up had the Russians' hands all over it.

First I had been skeptical of the U.S., when our spokesman there merely expressed the view that people should restrain violence and proceed peacefully. Difficult to do when guns and major forces are being dispatched and used. I'm heading for a panel discussion this noon hour on the future of the Millenium Challenge Corporation. This is the government-funded entity that supported the project on which I was involved in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, back in late 2008.

The whole situation is starting to look like a late episode of Cold War strategizing: the radio correspondent took the position that the Cold War never has ended. The Russians would like the U.S. out of Central Asia; the U.S. needs the base in Kyrgyzstan for support of Afghanistan operations. Before we start criticizing the Russians, remember how we reacted when they sought to extend their influence to our backyards in Cuba and Central America.

Kyrgyzstan is a poor country, with some mineral resources (being mined mostly by a Canadian outfit), that has little going for it except Asian mountain tourism in the Hindu Kush and other high mountain places. It has not flourished since the breakup of the Soviet Union--unlike neighboring Kazakhstan, it has no oil. It is located quite far in the east of Central Asia and could well become closer to its eastern neighbor, China.

The government that appears to be on the way out has not been very good for the people but our role should be to encourage positive behavior on the part of the new regime. If it really will seek to improve conditions, the U.S. can be quite helpful if we think beyond Afghanistan. If this is a Russian ploy, we need to call it for what it is.

Speaking of good for the people, the coal disaster in West Virginia has the media being very careful in assessing blame, despite the hordes of violations of safety regulations. The last time I noticed this guy Blankenship was when he bought the West Virginia Supreme Court election and the 5-4 Supreme Court threw out his case where his bought judge provided the majority in his case. No one seems to have made a big deal out of the fact that one reason he has gotten away with poor compliance is the non-union status of his mines. Nobody wants a union until the proverbial stuff hits the fan and management is happy to meet all day and night to hold families' hands so they don't scream bloody murder to the media.

It's a shame that too many people today have never heard of the man who was once America's best-known labor leader, John Llewellyn Lewis, who led the coal miners. John L. would not have missed a beat in letting the world know whose fault this "tragedy" was: coal-owning corporate types like Blankenship who will sweat every dime out of the miners' hides.

Back in Moot Court

This week I've donned the judicial robe to sit six times on benches hearing arguments in the Jessup International Law Competition, which is held in Washington, D.C., this time each year. More than 100 teams from around the world compete--representing law schools and public policy programs--and the International Law Students Association manages to find some huge law firm to foot the bill. This year--White & Case; last year, Shearman & Sterling.

I got involved in this last year through the suggestion of my legal assistant on the Indonesia project I worked on in Jakarta about five years ago. She had represented the University of Indonesia law faculty in the Jessup Competition and then coached their term for several years. After winning a Fulbright to Boalt Hall at Berkeley, and passing the New York bar, she worked for an intellectual property firm in Austin and now is with a large Jakarta firm.

The competition requires all the teams to brief and argue a complex made-up case mythically set in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The names of the countries are also made up but the legal issues are real. You may chuckle but in international law, the fact that a ship captain "discovered" a group of uninhabited islands in 1777, leaving a flag and a carved stone marker to show he was there, might be enough without more to support a successful claim derived from his being the first. Usually something commercial comes into play, so they have recently discovered oil near these islands, and the nearby nation that claims them versus a former colonial empire became independent right around the time that most of the South American countries did, in the 1820s.

There is a whole world of international law, made up of United Nations resolutions, ICJ and predecessor Permanent Court of Justice decisions, international conventions agreed to in Warsaw and Geneva, for example, and even a Convention that tells you to interpret other conventions, that one having been held in Vienna. There are all sorts of treaties, bilateral agreements, learned treatises, and other efforts to combine theories and precepts from both the Anglo-American common law and the European civil law.

I am always amazed that the concerned nations actually were willing on so many occasions to put their destinies in front of third-party panels or arbitrators. My favorite unlikely neutral was the one chosen in 1890 or so to decide the "Pig War" for control of the San Juan islands between British Columbia and Washington State--a conflict that left the remains of the British and American Camps as historic sites on San Juan Island. The Brits and Americans chose, of all people, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Perhaps the Kaiser was looking ahead because he seemed to come down on the side of the Americans when it came time to draw the line down through or around the islands.

The competition is fascinating to see how different students approach the task of argument. As with admiralty law, there are unusual terms: counsel are referred to as "Agents" and briefs are termed "Memorials." The argument style is a bit more formal than is common in the U.S., even the Supreme Court. If you make any kind of broad or conclusory statement, which might well serve to present your theory or underlying theme of the case, you will be peppered from the bench with demands for references to supporting authorities.

I've now sat with judges who are lawyers in Ghana, the Dominican Republic, and Germany this year and had an engaging conversation with a lawyer from Azerbaijan in the judges' lounge. To make my week complete, I long ago agreed to judge moot court arguments tomorrow night by some George Washington University law students. Amid their consideration of search provisions of criminal law, I might just ask them if they had considered the impact, say, of the Barcelona Traction case.

Out of Court Sparring

It remains to be seen whether the latest little foray by Chief Justice John Roberts will stir up the peapatch or just die on the vine. I do admit that I've wondered what the Supreme Court is doing attending the State of the Union--my assumption is that it is a relatively recent "tradition" that brings the three branches together. I say recent because until FDR's time, presidents did not deliver their State of the Union reports before joint sessions of Congress at all, preferring to transmit them in writing.

Given that Roberts was an advocate and a fairly well-known one, prior to his being named to the bench, one might assume that he's used to a bit of give-and-take. I suppose that being in the House and having the President turn to you and your colleagues as he unloaded against one of your decisions was a surprise but Harry Truman's remark about heat and kitchens comes to mind. Roberts and his right-wing pals can push counsel around in their courtroom but apparently what he called "hollering" in the legislative arena was too much for his tender ears.

He should show up at the British House of Commons some day and hear them roaring as the debate heats up. Roberts seems pretty sure of himself for a man who has spent his life being insulated from the pressures most of us must endure. If it were up to me, the White House would up the ante in terms of castigating the campaign finance decision, one that went way beyond the bounds of what needed to be decided to impose the activism of the conservatives on us.

After all those years of whacking the hell out of the Warren Court, are conservatives now telling us that it's not right to blast the Supreme Court? Utter nonsense--there are too few ways of getting their attention since they can ignore anything they don't want to hear. Roberts kept his nose clean and the Democrats were afraid to vote him down as an inappropriate nominee because of his reactionary background, as they also were with Alito.

It's about time that Obama puts up some real liberals for judicial vacancies. The system won't work if only the conservatives nominate their true believers. If you wonder why no one on the Supreme Court merits a whole lot of respect, it's because we have sunk to nominating people without significant ideological records. All the so-called "liberals" on the bench are really what we used to call moderates: Stevens, a law firm partner from Chicago whom Gerry Ford put on the court; David Souter, known in New Hampshire as a conservative attorney-general; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, two mildly progressive academics. O'Connor quit so a fellow Republican president, even one she may not have liked a whole lot, could name her successor.

The whole business and all the fakery that goes on about the nominations makes me realize that the eminently pragmatic FDR had it right when he tried to pack the joint. He too had a Supreme Court majority that decided it would keep the government from dealing with the worst economic crisis in our history. This Supreme Court majority--Roberts and his pals--deserve to worry the way the Nine Old Men in the 30s did.

Under Wonderland?

Two Friday nights spent seeing films which opened that day: last week, The Ghost Writer and today, Alice in Wonderland. Both were definitely worth seeing. Early impressions: Pierce Brosnan is much more believable now that he's a bit over the hill rather than beautiful. And I've resisted the appeal of Johnny Depp for a long time but he's a delightful Mad Hatter. The Ghost Writer demonstrates that Roman Polanski has not lost his touch in the slightest. He was always great at creating a film with subtle menacing not horror or thriller.

Unlike a lot of people in this country today, I would cut him a break after all these years. Yes, he did the wrong thing by running--leaving aside whether he was guilty of the crime. But the system had set itself up to do a number on him and he saw no other way out. Remember it was his wife who was murdered. By the way, Polanski has some fun making Brosnan's character a bit of a dissolute Tony Blair. And then he shows how in the end the Establishment squeezes anything but its version of what happened out of the picture.

Back to the movies. Tim Burton has taken the impossible-to-dramatize work of Lewis Carroll and had some fun with it. Some of the wonderful characters are there--Alan Rickman voicing the Caterpillar, one of my absolute favorites, was superb. Stephen Fry, too, voicing the Cheshire Cat, was equally adept. It was all good fun with little traces here and there of the original. I do wish that in addition to "off with their heads," they had retained two of the Red Queen's other marvelous lines: "Sentence first, trial later" and "Don't you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place?"

We seem today only to want to emphasize feet of clay. Was Lewis Carroll a bit dodgy in his liking for little girls? I recall reading about the long life of Alice Liddell, supposedly the model for Alice in the books. She sounded in her recollections like he was hardly dangerous, just hard to understand. The books themselves are delightfully full of the illogical conundrums that only a brilliant mathematician like Charles Dodgson could conjure up.