We'll Always Have Paris

Sometimes I’ve sent out some letters when I’ve travelled to off-the-beaten-path places. But it’s hard to write something like that when you go to the place that should remain the first-choice destination on anyone’s list: Paris. Forget anyplace else, none of them is in the same league. Yes, it’s expensive and it always has been, even when the now-gone franc was soft against the dollar.

The other complaint was that the French, and especially Parisians, were rude and wouldn’t speak English if it killed them. The first charge was never really true, since practicing la politesse, such as saying “Bonjour” upon entering a shop, did and does inspire a friendly response. I first noticed during a very brief stop a few years ago that an amazingly greater number of locals now would speak English, and without sneering. My French remains good only at the reading level; no one bothers to correct my pronunciation any more: sometimes they play a new game by responding in English to my sorry spoken français.

The French way of life begins, for me, with the edibles. Start out in a boulangerie and enjoy the freshly-baked croissants, or brioche loaves, or plain, unvarnished baguettes. I just had a croissant here—a pretty good one—and it wasn’t even close. Either in the same place or in the patisserie down the street, move on to something major, like an apricot tart or millefeuille, a.k.a. Napoleon.

Some might suggest that the French can’t grill the way we can; you’ll find out that that’s erroneous when you sample a perfectly-cooked entrecote (usually ribsteak) or côte de boeuf (better roast beef that you’ll get in England, land of the rosbifs), as tender as a Peter Luger steak. I dined in a very famous bistro and enjoyed the classics there: soupe a l’oignon, complete with the melted cheese and bread; perfectly-cooked cocottes, or nuggets, of lotte (monkfish); and, to conclude, the obligatory profiteroles, the puffs of puff pastry filled with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. As one friend with me put it, chocolate sauce makes anything superb.

Less fancy spots also excelled. A fine bar (fish similar to sole) gave way to my knife slicing into it as one would with Dover sole. A Rue Mouffetard joint produced a more apple-oriented tarte tatin. And then I passed a fruit and vegetable emporium which featured in front as its lead items, girolles—the orange trumpet-shaped wild mushrooms, and figs. I didn’t manage to order one of those three-story towers of shellfish but some oysters at an unpretentious café on the Place de la Bastille were fresh and delightful.

There were all kinds of other favorites I never had time to order. No rillettes—the fattiest, roughtest and most wonderful form of paté; some nice cold cuts and cheese on a plank but few of the other delights of the charcuterie. Brought back the obligatory jars of Hediard mustard and jams but an Albert Menes clementine corse en tranches (marmalade of clementines cut in slices) I found at the Monoprix brightened every breakfast.

No Michelin stars graced the portal of any place I visited: no matter. So if I had sampled the simple life, la vie des français, that was just fine. Returned to the Louvre after a quarter-century mainly because most other museums are closed Monday. Saw the fabled trinity of Winged Victory, Mona Lisa, and Venus de Milo (latter only by accident on the way to the café) but then wandered through room after room of Rembrandts and Rubenses and two lovely Vermeers. Plus the attendant who directed me to Gericault’s Raft of Medusa and several of his equestrian paintings—there are even fewer of his works extant than of Vermeer.

Disappointments—of course. We had tickets to an opening night of a new ballet at the Palais Garnier—the fabled Paris Ópera—and it was cancelled by a strike of technicians. Mark it as put paid for my labor sympathies. Yet the opera house invited all of us (I had to go there to get my refund—in cash, no less.) in—those who showed up in black tie expecting a performance and those of us who knew none would occur—inside for champagne and canapes anyway. And the Musee Carnavelet—the museum of the history of Paris—is renovating the wing which has Marcel Proust’s cork-lined bedroom. Never had to wait more than a few minutes at most for any of the many Métro trains I boarded.

There’s so much more, of course. I steam when I hear someone in the U.S. joke about “freedom fries” and obnoxiously remind them that yes, the French were right about the Iraq war while our government lied to us. David McCullough’s new book chronicles how Americans travelled to Paris de rigeur in the 19th century. A final tip of the chapeau to our oldest ally, who could teach all of us quite a bit on the subject of how to live if only we let them.

They Didn't Believe Me

Tonight was when another of a wonderful series of musically-illustrated talks about Broadway composers at the Smithsonian featured Jerome Kern. Yes, there were plenty of other fantastic songwriters in the first half of the 20th century--many Jewish, like Kern and Irving Berlin, and some not--like Cole Porter, but to me, Kern stands out because his songs are just "so wonderful" like Bill in the song of that name. Reciting a list of them just confirms my feeling: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Ol' Man River, Make Believe, Bill, A Fine Romance, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Who, I've Told Ev'ry Little Star, Look for the Silver Lining, How'd You Like to Spoon With Me, All the Things You Are, Long Ago and Far Away, Yesterdays, I'm Old-Fashioned, I Won't Dance, She Didn't Say Yes and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man.

There were more--about 700 published and maybe a total of 1300 or more. If you're at all like me, you probably never thought that all the ones named were Kern's. They are part of our culture, to the extent that we continue to have one. With Kern, it was almost always the songs. Most of the shows they came from are forgotten--deservedly so, for most of them.

For Kern, the composing apparently came easily. Once he convinced his father that he was not cut out for business--sent to purchase 2 pianos, he bought 200, he studied music and gradually broke into show business at a funny time--the 1910's, when vaudeville was in its glory and minstrel shows still toured the land. Operetta ruled Broadway until World War I squelched it and Kern joined up with two talented Brits, Guy Bolton and the renowned P. G. Wodehouse, who provided book and lyrics to the series of Princess Theater musicals he composed in the teens.

These were a shift from the over-produced opulence of Ziegfeld and the operetta-like corniness of much of Victor Herbert. Kern always kept spinning out the songs and he kept doing it for both Broadway and after sound arrived, Hollywood. He did die rather dramatically at 60, had lived a pleasant and highly successful life, married once and stayed married to the end, and was a noted book collector, who rather presciently disposed of a fantastic collection in January 1929 for more than $1 million, quite a sum then.

But there was one more thing. He wrote his finest score for the musical that changed the whole Broadway world. This was Showboat in 1927. I saw it last year, in a local company's production, and all the defects came out. It was always too long. Many of the characters are caricatures. Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics were a cut above an oeuvre I've never been all that sold on but there's some corniness left. The show was based on Edna Ferber's novel, the lady who gave us Giant and Cimarron and Ice Palace. The topics that amazed the public then--miscegenation, racism, adultery, abandonment--leave us somewhat nonplussed today and the piece can come off as heavy and tedious, if not embarrassing: take the part of Queenie, originally played on stage by an actress who used the name Aunt Jemima, and yes, that's who she resembled. Really.

Until you get to the music, that is. And it's the music that makes us realize that none of the rest really matters at all. Robert Wyatt, the musicologist who puts on these programs, had some fantastic sound and video clips. The ones with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and Billie Holliday singing Yesterdays are fabulous, but then there are the ones from the original Showboat. First comes Aunt Jemima doing Queenie's Ballyhoo, which sets the stage for Helen Morgan with Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and finally, majestically, Paul Robeson, who actually joined the cast later, in 1928, singing Ol' Man River. All of my reservations were swept away by the glorious rhythm and swell of Kern's music--once again, it's the songs, stupid--in all of those and if Robeson's bass baritone doesn't bring tears to your eyes, stay home.

Solving the Structural Problem

The President did come up with some good moves in the big bag of tricks he unloaded at the joint session last night. As one of the comments in today's Washington Post put it, it was a real stemwinder. It was what he needed to do and he did it. Yes, he presented a package that in itself and especially with his presentation would be nigh unto impossible for anyone rational not to accept, and yet...

No, I'm not disappointed that he didn't come out with all barrels blasting, which is what I had been hoping he would do. But he was a step ahead of me. He saw that he had to do things differently from the past--not turn it over, as he did with health care, to Pelosi and Reid. This is the kind of package he should have been putting together from the start, instead of letting himself get rolled by both parties and giving in all over the place.

Sure, it may notwork, but he's got them on the defensive. Maybe the Democrats will start giving him a little support for a change. I put a clip on Facebook of FDR speaking in 1936 about how the Republicans promised they would do everything better--the man's absolute glee in painting a glorious satirical picture was sheer joy. Obama had it all perfect for a change--now he just has to maintain the front without caving.

The structural problems would challenge an FDR or a TR. Place the blame where it belongs: Reagan, who suckered the middle and working classes into voting against their interests, and led them down the damn-the-government blind alley, and Clinton, who fell right in with his Wall Street pals and the Business Roundtable in pushing globalization without any real guidelines.

So now we see every major former U.S.-based manufacturer sitting across the border in Mexico or in Shenzen, a stone's throw from Hong Kong. That's where all the manufacturing jobs are. If all of these traitors got taxed as they deserve, and found out that it wasn't automatic that you could sell in the U.S. market, we could easily balance the budget etc. etc.

Those jobs aren't coming back because both parties are bought and paid for. Any stimulus will help--again, especially if it isn't just a pure giveaway to special interests, which happened the last time he turned it over to his Congressional partners. Yes, the stimulus worked and would have worked better if it had been allocated more rationally and to projects that could get moving. Because of that built-in drag, and the corruption, Krugman was right in saying it needed to have been bigger.

But as long as the corporates are insulated from the effects of their greed, don't expect much change real soon in the economy. Despite that grim picture, for once Obama did the right thing, though, and did it well. It may presage a better time for everyone in 1992. After all, we had Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith and Huey Long in the 30s, too, just like the crazies today--who control the GOP--who want to go back to 1900 or earlier, much less trash Social Security. Huey's problem, it should be noted, was his dictator-like approach that made Louisiana then almost a totalitarian state, not necessarily what he was trying to do. That's the side of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men that sometimes gets lost: that Willie Stark started out really trying to help people.

A Few Days in Mizzou

This week I was out in southwestern Missouri, getting into some hilly country that's part of the Ozarks. Most of my time was spent visiting people in courthouses but I had time to sample three major features of the region. One was the reasonably well-known "strip" in Branson, reputedly where middle America goes to be entertained.

If they do, many are likely to be disappointed. In the early days there, names like Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson did perform but now the whole place is bogus, filled with impersonators and reconstituted singing groups from long ago, such as the Platters, who may have one of their original members still on hand. There are souvenir joints and fast-food places and other turisto specials galore.

I'm someone who has frequented almost every kind of show you can imagine--from summer stock to circuses to rodeos to amateurs doing Shakespeare and yes, the Rolling Stones--and I'm leaving out the worlds of opera, jazz, chamber music, musical comedy, and film. A few weeks ago I happened to drive down the Las Vegas Strip, also a place with tack aplenty but also some genuine headliners and real names on the marquees.

But the other two local specialties were more fun. In Springfield is the still-being-constructed Bass Pro Shop World, which must be the biggest hunting and fishing emporium anywhere. On my way to meet some people at a restaurant contained within the walls--and named Hemingway's, naturally--I must have passed displays of every kind of gear and outdoor clothing imaginable, and and then a few more. Finally, I heard some shots and yes, there was an actual shooting gallery right there in the midst of the sales floor.

Finally, my local colleagues, well, they were down from the state capital but they know the area, had little trouble convincing me to dine early that evening (5:30 so we wouldn't have to wait too long) at the original Lambert's "the ThrownRolls place" which is located, appropriately, in Ozark, Mo., with two other outlets in Arkansas and Alabama. Lambert's holds 700 diners at a time, gives you a choice of barbecue offerings, such as ribs or pulled pork or catfish, or country ham or meatloaf, or in my case, pot roast (o.k., they call it roast beef). Servers turn up with "passarounds" beginning with their famous fried okra and then black-eyed peas and other sides, some coming with the meal, such as fried apples and cucumbers'n'onions and every kind of potato.

The piece de resistance, however, are the hot rolls. Apparently, someone once shouted to a waiter to throw him one, so now, young men move down the center aisles with barrows and toss rolls out to those who can field them, much as those cheerleaders flip t-shirts out nowadays at major league baseball games. Yes, the food is of the volume-over-refinement sort but it's mostly good old basic American favorites. I'd go back in a heartbeat--if I still have one after this outing.

The Star of Page One

If you've seen the film about the N. Y. Times called Page One, you've been introduced--almost personally--to a well-travelled veteran who now is a media reporter for them named David Carr. Much of his appeal arises from his checkered career--on papers from one in Minneapolis to the Washington City Paper (for which he appears in a ski hat adorned with its logo) and off the job from his past attraction to crack and his years as a single parent.

His big story in the picture is uncovering the almost idiotic leadership that bought and bled the Chicago Tribune until it went into bankruptcy. With careful inquiry, he found that at best the managers only knew what they had picked up working in radio and at worst they carried on as if what was once (self-described as) the World's Greatest Newspaper was a fraternity party complete with sex and booze.

I should have expected that when I picked up the Times today, he would be breaking yet another great story that required a lot of work. Trying to find out if Rupert Murdoch's minions in the states had engaged in conduct just as atrocious as had their colleagues on his U.K. enterprises, Carr set his gaze on a company that dealt with one area of advertising. It had come to dominate its field, however, by pulling every conceivable violation of antitrust and through behavior that was strikingly anti-competitive.

The Justice Department regional antitrust office had recommended prosecution and denial of permission to acquire its major competitior. Strangely, and leaving no paper trail, the front office of the Antitrust Division in Washington had instead cleared the merger. It turns out that the then-head of the division was none other than my old law school classmate Joel Klein, until recently the generally-regarded as successful reform-minded Chancellor of New York City's public schools. Joel was hired upon leaving the NYC school system by none other than...Rupert Murdoch.

OK, and the Carr story tells all sides, Klein's division some time later denied some Murdoch outlet permission to acquire something else. But there's no good explanation for this decision, especially since no one will talk even now, and the federal prosecutors who decided not to pursue the case in New Jersey now work for Gov. Chris Christie, who was then the U.S. Attorney there.

As my old friend and fine journalist himself, Don Kaul, said (as the title of one of his books), "they're all in it together." Carr's story certainly leads one to that most reasonable conclusion. By the way, the movie, which generally was well done, was at its best when it showed Carr and a few other media reporters and editors at the Times encountering the classic kind of theory-mongers who turn up on panels in New York and D.C. It may be, as these types have it, that newspapers really are over the hill, but you have to hope there will always be intrepid reporters like Carr and some place for them to practice their skills.

The Tales That Keep On Telling

It's been a few years since I've attended a performance at the Wolf Trap Barns out in the other Vienna, the Virginia one just past the Capital Beltway. But Friday night was the premiere of the Wolf Trap Opera Company's production of The Tales of Hoffmann, with three performances to follow within the next week. Suffice it to say that for its amazingly lively and enduring music, plus the overall fun associated with Offenbach's grandest opera--mostly he wrote lighter fare for the 1870s Paris equivalent of the Broadway musical stage--Tales remains one of my true favorites, even if it's name weren't close to mine own.

This company features young, up-and-coming singers, all of whom were marvelous. Before the performance, the producer gave a pre-show talk, explaining about the fairly well-known history of how companies keep re-inventing this opera. Offenbach needed a few years to round up backers and finally got them--Opera-Comique in Paris and a major theatre in Vienna--but he died in 1880 before the opera opened.

Since he was operating in those times much as modern Broadway composers--taking numbers out of his trunk and inserting them, even if used in previous work, where deemed appropriate--there is no authoritative version sanctioned by the composer. Letters and other written items have appeared during the next century, so many that a major revision of the score has been almost completed. This advanced version is what Wolf Trap used and it shows major improvements from the tradition Choudens version.

Wisely, the new version keeps all the numbers that Offenbach picked up from his earlier work. These include the most famous tune in the opera, the Barcarolle, and the wonderful bass aria, Scintille Diamant, as well as the peculiar septet at the end of the Venice act--where the six characters are joined on stage by the chorus to make up the septet.

The character of the Muse, who here decides to disguise herself as Hoffmann's companion, Nicklausse, has also been enlarged and especially at the end, made far more meaningful. Hoffmann actually decides not to leave the beer hall with his anamorata, the opera diva Stella, because he realizes that his three fateful loves in the opera are combined in Stella, to his detriment. Instead, he accepts the Muse who has made clear to him that his destiny is as a poet to commit his experience to verse and history. It's hard not to feel this is a better end for the opera that the old one of seeing him pass out drunk just before Stella appears so that her departure with the villain is perfunctory.

All the singers were fine, and quite tall, including Hoffmann, whom I've been used to seeing as a more diminutive type. The soprano who played the largely trouser role of Nicklausse and the Muse, Catherine Martin, was lovely in both voice and appearance. The villains, played as is the tradition by the same bass-baritone, were well-performed, save for one missed note in Scintille.

Other changes are less momentous. Schlemil loses his aria in this version as well as his shadow. And the modest production by the Wolf Trap company lacked some of the accoutrements of the major houses--no entrance or departure by Giuletta in a gondola, for example. Spalaanzani's workshop was not adorned from top to bottom with wheezing machines of all kinds.

But these singers, this version, and the pleasant house made for a charming evening with one of the most enjoyable operas in the repertoire. There are two more performances next Thursday and Saturday, and Friday night they will present an evening of E. T. A. Hoffmann's own music, as befits the man who was novelist, short story writer, poet, and composer in addition to being the hapless romantic chronicled by this irresistible opera.

The Straits of Georgia

The Straits of Georgia are really an inland sea, separating Vancouver Island, on which the British Columbia capital, Victoria, is located at the southern end, from the mainland, where the large city of Vancouver stands. We had occasion to see all these amazing places during one of our typical long-distance, short-stay trips last week and weekend. The objective was to attend a "handfasting" ceremony on Denman Island, which is a modest-sized island halfway up the east, inside coast of Vancouver Island.

The ceremony has some Celtic antecedents, I'm told, but is tantamount to an engagement with many attributes of the actual wedding. We were invited by a good friend whom Eileen met during her junior year at LSE and who showed us some less visible and highly interesting attractions in Ottawa, where he lives, last summer. One of his sisters has lived on Denman for more than 30 years so he and his bride, both embarking on matrimony for the second time round, chose to celebrate there. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all, with the bride attired in a Russian peasant dress true to her origins and our friend in full Scottish regalia, which was based on his mother's birthplace.

We broke up the trip with some time in Victoria, oft described as Canada's most British city, and ended up with a stay in Vancouver, which has some similarities to San Francisco in its hills and cosmopolitan character. Both cities have magnificent museums where we focused largely on the major anthropological collections of indigenous peoples of the Canadian Northwest. The Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria has the usual wide range of totem poles and implements, but especially noteworthy is the lodge of a Kwakiutl chief, famous as the site of the most expansive potlatches. In Vancouver the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia has an even more impressive collection of house and totem poles, kayaks and canoes and implements of all kinds, and the fantastic yellow-cedar woodcarvings of Bill Reid and other modern practitioners of the traditional arts.

Vancouver also boasts its own Shakespeare Festival, called "Bard on the Beach" since the plays are presented in large tents on one of the beaches along English Bay. Mostly because we had just seen a magnificent Merchant of Venice at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington--which even made the anti-Semitism of the play comprehensible--we opted for Henry VI: The Wars of the Roses, which is a combined version of the three Parts of Henry VI, not one of Shakespeare's most-performed works. The acting in the Douglas Campbell Theatre (named after one of the mainstays of the Stratford, Ont., Festival) was superb--the play is very rough even by Shakespeare's standards with all sorts of deaths, usually enacted onstage but the convoluted plot explains what the Wars of the Roses were all about and, perhaps most critically, is vital to a full comprehension of the next play (in historical if not written sequence), the great Richard III.

By the end of the play, Richard already dominates the proceedings. Henry VI also features one of Shakespeare's most-quoted lines, uttered by Dick the Butcher, supporter of Jack Cade's rebellion, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers!" It's probably impossible for Shakespeare's intent to catch up with the common use of the phrase--as in Coriolanus, Shakespeare did not usually have a high view of common people and here he was emphasizing the disorder and riot that accompanies popular rebellions.

We probably were on more ferries than I'll take for the rest of my life, but another one took us from Denman Island to Hornby Island, which has a music festival ranging from classical quartets to rap, and a wonderful pub with another fantastic sea view, called The Thatch, where we enjoyed a spectacular sunset. I remain enthralled by the Northwest generally, by the combination of huge Douglas firs and amazing waterscapes. Even during our brief stays in Seattle, where we began and ended our trip, there was no rain.

Lots of salmon at table, of course, and in Vancouver, deliciously creamy black cod. Our B&B on Denman offered the inevitable and highly apopreciated hot muffins. Probably our favorite meal was had at Camille's in Victoria, where they seemed to have the finest hand at cooking the salmon just right, and then ending the trip out in the sun on a deck overlooking Puget Sound at Ray's Boathouse, hosted by Ken Lambert, photographer extraordinaire for The Seattle Times.