Something Our Courts Don't Need

A conservative friend sent me a story about a Pennsylvania state judge who apparently threw out an assault case where a Muslim beat up the plaintiff for wearing a costume purportedly of Mohammed.  The judge, it turns out, served in Iraq and at some point, became a Muslim.  There's been a lot of controversy, much more in Britain than here, about allowing religious communities to enforce their own laws. This case shows the danger in allowing this breach of separation of church and state.

We have seen instances of other religious groups seeking to use the local, state, and federal courts to enforce their particular codes. In New York, for example, some Orthodox Jews have tried to get secular courts to recognize decrees of rabbinical courts.  When this involves matrimonial cases, it is particularly inappropriate for the courts to give the religious courts any deference whatsoever, especially in view of the one-sided structure of Jewish divorce law.  It is equally improper to adopt any other religion's rules or accept their proceedings as having any legal standing.  Combining the state and ecclesiastical courts gave us the Inquisition.

It is very appealing to some to affect an attitude of supposed open-mindedness about allowing people to rely on their religions in a legal context.  But long historical experience confirms the danger of proceeding down this road.  We fought revolutions in both the United Kingdom and the United States to abolish the "divine right of kings"--an invention, regrettably, from the same King James I who commissioned the classic King James Version of the Bible. In recent years, popes have been offering apologies a few centuries late for the way their predecessors dealt with defendants such as Galileo. There's a play on at Theatre J in Washington about how the elders of the Jewish community in the Netherlands sought to excommunicate Baruch Spinoza, probably the most brilliant philosopher the Jews, or maybe anyone, has ever produced.

The bottom line on this subject is that people should be aware of how much trouble arises when the courts are pressed to recognize religious dictates or concerns of any kind. Every major religion, and the minor ones too, has features that are highly objectionable to others and often even to the religion's own adherents. In the worst case, the secular court gives a protective cover to the biases and beliefs of the religion. This is what happened when the ecclesiastical court in France convicted Joan of Arc and then tried to absolve itself of responsibility for her fate by turning her over to the "secular power" -- in this case, the English, who were only too happy to burn her for "religious offenses" as opposed to her waging war against them for her country.

Getting Darker of the Gods

Which, of course, is the literal translation of Goetterdaemerrung, fourth and final opera in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing it Saturday in the movie house, with terrific HD sound, closeups, and fine singing and the fantastic music. I last saw this opera in concert version at Washington National Opera a couple of years ago, after that company found itself overwhelmed and unable to finance a full production that was originally planned. 

It's a shame that Goetterdaemerrung is so long and comes last, because I've always thought that it contains the most fantastic music of all the four Ring operas, including Die Walkure.  Some years ago, Georg Solti led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of Act III at Carnegie Hall which emphasized the greatness of this opera, and Act III, which begins with that wonderful sound of the horns, in particular.

Orchestras often perform the segment of that act that is Siegfried's Rhine Journey separately. I'm not sure ir is really as mind-blowing as the final Immolation Scene, however. The cast was up to all challenges: Jay Hunter Morris is more than an acceptable Siegfried, Deborah Voigt has come into her own as Brunnhilde, and Hans-Peter Konig turns in a fine performance as the uber-evil Hagen.  The clueless pair--Gunther and Gutrune--were well-acted and sung by Iain Paterson and Wendy Bryn Harmer, who is certainly an attractive enough Gutrune to make Siegfried forget everything without the potion. 

I do not mean to forget perhaps the finest performance of all--the fabulous eight minutes at the start of the second act when the ghost of Alberich returns to reinforce his son Hagen's villainous purpose in the person of Eric Owens, who to me will now be the all-time Alberich, both in his acting and especially in his fantastic bass-baritone voice. Speaking of great voices, despite the weakness that is the major trait Gunther displays in the opera, one of the glories of the Solti Ring recording was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the greatest of all lieder singers, performing the role.

Hard as it is to believe, in view of the ridiculous plot and all our negative associations with the philosophy Wagner espoused, the opera does capture your concern. I don't know that I will ever be convinced of the "holy fool" characters' worth--Siegfried and Parsifal (Gunther is just a run-of-the-mill idiot). In the end, it was fun for once to see that what was always regarded as Wagner's most unperformable stage direction--the Rhine overflowing its banks--was well within the capability of the Met's production to accomplish, but the fall of Valhalla that is supposed to accompany it--often not clearly distinguished from the collapse of the Hall of the Gibichungs--seemed a bit less than world-destroying.

One for the Money

A secret vice of mine is partially reading Janet Evanovich novels about her Trenton, N.J. bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.  I enjoy the setting--Trenton has an ethnic, all kinds of ethnic, neighborhood called the Burg--and the character but eventually the feeble plotting and somewhat ludicrous behavior of many of the characters (other than Stephanie) gets to me and I put the paperback down, rarely to return to it.  There are now 18 of this series--17 in paperback.  

Tonight Eileen and I went to see One for the Money, the first movie made from one of these mysteries--as I said, the plotting is so thin that you can barely call them mysteries; Graham Greene's term, entertainments, is the most appropriate descriptive. The movie stars Katherine Heigl, who admittedly is not very believable as the half-Hungarian, half-Italian Stephanie, and various lesser-known players, with Debbie Reynolds stealing many scenes as her grandmother, making this character more credible than in the novels.

The critics universally panned the picture and the small theater in the multiplex where we saw it was not well filled.  Everyone's review dumped on Heigl and the writing and the directing and just about everything and everyone else. I'm not the easiest person to win over for a movie but I think they all are wrong. This movie is just plain fun.  There's none of what I usually despise like stupid slapstick or childish fun and games.  

The dialogue is pretty decent and the good lines came from the better parts of Evanovich's first novel of the series. Those of us who read most of them appreciated the playing of her two male friends, Morelli and Ranger.  Both were nicely played. So what if the Italian Morelli was played by Jason O'Mara?

I used to think movie critics are the worst species of critic--they run in packs and have no feel for what the reasonably intelligent viewer is seeking.  This confirmed all my old prejudices against most of the movie critics I have read. They were so busy crowing about a boring outing like Hugo that they couldn't appreciate some simple enjoyment that this one provides. The one critic I usually find worth reading (because of course I tend to agree with him) is Roger Ebert; as far as I can tell, he hasn't reviewed it as of today.

He Used to Be a Republican

Yesterday, a new time of life began for me.  The first of my contemporaries, and a very treasured friend and roommate, Howard Reiter, died after being treated for cancer over the past few years.  Howard was a distinguished political scientist, longtime chair of the political science department at the University of Connecticut, and a veteran analyst and commentator on American electoral politics.  Howard was wry, knowledgeable, eminently fair, and believed in the efficacy of some institutions the rest of us regard with skepticism, such as political parties.

Howard’s early years in the political sphere were spent in Republican territory.  When I first met him at Cornell, he was what was then described as a conservative.  He was a product of the then-famed Cornell government department with a renowned faculty that included Andrew Hacker, Allan Bloom, Walter Berns, Allan Sindler, and Clinton Rossiter.  When he did his graduate work at Harvard, his advisor was Seymour Martin Lipset, the doyen of electoral politics as a field of study.  Most of those named were somewhat conservative—Berns and Bloom left Cornell after the 1969 tumult.

Gradually, Howard moved toward a place that no longer exists: the left wing of the Republican Party.  He was highly involved in the Ripon Society, which prodded the GOP toward recalling its Lincolnian roots when it came to subjects such as race.  Eventually, he was so far removed from today’s Republicans that someone who knew him at Cornell heard him speak and asked, “Didn’t you used to be a Republican?”

Howard and I met in a slightly advanced Freshman English class at Cornell.  We apparently qualified for it based on our AP scores and were given an assistant professor as our teacher rather than the usual grad student instructor.  We hit it off based on mutual interests in all sorts of arcane politicians such as Thurlow Weed and John Bailey, Marx Brothers pictures—yes, we thought of starting a student appreciation society called the Young Marxists, which was scrapped for obvious reasons, and other byways of popular culture.  Howard kept his activity at a moderate level at The Cornell Daily Sun, where he wrote a regular column, while I spent half my life there. 

Probably our familiarity with and skepticism of political hacks led us to hold student government types who fit the description in total disdain and prompted our one joint column when the student body seemed set on turning the rascals out, “The Ax for the Hacks.”  We had gotten friendly enough to agree to room together when starting grad school and law school, respectively, at Harvard.  Surprisingly, the experience solidified our friendship—one of our only disputes was over whether to put up political posters featuring then-Senator Ken Keating (R-NY, and Howard’s choice) and a Judge Xavier Riccobono, from somewhere in New York City, whose poster I obtained and brought back mostly for laughs.

Howard went on to a wonderful career in academic political science, culminating in being president of the New England Political Science Association. He published many articles and a number of books, including Selecting the President, a far-sighted study benefitting from his immensely practicable yet still idealistic outlook.  This befitted someone who had first been exposed to politics as practiced in the old-time hardball manner by the Nassau County Republican Organization, which went through its A. Holly Patterson, Joe Carlino, and Joe Margiotta eras, ultimately giving New York State Alphonse D’Amato. 

Howard also was a visiting Fulbright professor at Uppsala University in Sweden and spent time as a visiting teacher in Estonia as well.  The U.S. Information Agency and other sponsors sent him as a lecturer on American politics to many countries, all of whom gained from his immensely knowledgeable comments and analysis.

We remained friends over the years and did not get together anywhere near often enough.  His visits to Washington for the American Political Science Association meetings prompted reunions and we always picked up right where we had left off.  He had known my wife Eileen from Cornell and in fact, was the luckless date and victim of one of her first cooking efforts: an attempt to grill kebabs using stew meat, when they both were interning in Washington for the summer.  Howard also was married at about the time we were exiting Cambridge, and always supported his wife Laura’s own career as a therapist at Trinity College, Hartford, and in her own private practice.

There was a quiet enthusiasm to Howard, despite a put-on attitude of world weariness.  When we roomed together, that interest manifested itself many times, once, I recall, when we decided to take in two of the Best Picture Oscar films of the early 50s that were being shown at a Boston theater at the unlikely hour of 3 A.M.: Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve. 

Academic resumes tend to be lengthy—filled with every scrap of paper written and every lunchtable discussion treated as a full-fledged panel. Howard’s is concise and has a short mention of articles of general interest in various publications, including the Times, the Nation, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the like. Looking through a number of them brought up online, I began to realize how active his mind was and how readily he produced tight, effective and wise commentary.

Despite rooming with me, he never had the slightest interest in sports. Only Howard, during his time at Notre Dame, his first teaching job, would have sauntered over past Touchdown Jesus to the stadium the day before a game, and tried to buy a ticket—“as an experiment,” he later told me, and learned that the game had been sold out months earlier.

Jersey Eats

As is well known, the State of New Jersey gets little respect.  Over the years, it hasn't mattered whether the state is represented by the likes of Princeton basketball hero and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley or the current governor, a bully named Chris Christie, people tend to view the state as run by mobsters such as the one made famous in a TV series, Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini. The state has had more than its share of crooked politicians, going all the way back to the notorious mayor of Jersey City in the 30s and 40s, Frank Hague, who was merely telling the truth when he said bluntly, "I am the Law." (In case you might have questioned that declarative, go to the law books and look up a case from those days where the opposing party in some litigation to Hague was none other than the N.J.State Legislature. Not surprisingly, Hague won when the case reached the state's highest court.

For many years, I've known more about New Jersey because it was a national leader in the field in which I've labored--court administration.  It has a very active, very competent state court administrative office and has set standards followed by much of the rest of the country. The state's Supreme Court has also exercised more authority over both the bench and the bar--lawyers who neglect cases or abscond with client funds get thrown out of the bar faster than in other states.  Judges are more respected because politicians actually take the process of appointment seriously--both legislators and governors, for the most part. The Chief Justice exercises supervisory authority over the system and can decide where to assign any judge. I once relished telling a New York lawyer for whom I was working  that when a lawyer in New Jersey tried to complete the [fraudulent] transaction my guy was contemplating, the New Jersey lawyer was disbarred. Oh, and the transaction we were looking at would occur there, too. But it never did.

A trip to the Garden State this past weekend renewed my fond respect for the gustatory side of New Jersey.  Northern New Jersey especially is known for local Italian restaurants with no pretensions and exceedingly high quality. These are the kinds of places where the sauce simmers all day and no one puts the pasta in to cook until a few minutes before a party is to be served.  I met some good friends at a gigantic version of a legendary Jersey diner, near Bordentown, that has one of the world's most extensive menus but produces wonderful plates and massive quantities at very reasonable prices, complete with cinnamon rolls on the bread plate. I've had dishes like clams on linguini with broccoli rabe and yet more served on the side. This time I had their version of veal marsala with lots of veal and mushrooms and a nice light sauce, with acorn squash garnished with apple slices and Italian-style eggplant as accompaniments.  Even I drew back at the very prospect of dessert.

Even more marvelous was a restaurant in Elizabeth, on a side street in a modest residential section, a stone's throw from Newark Airport, called Valença. This area, as well as the nearby Ironbound section of Newark, is known for its large number of Portuguese restaurants; the Newark section also has lots of Spanish restaurants. This restaurant had outstanding clams and at lunch I shared a cataplana, which refers to the copper pot in which all kinds of seafood are cooked, served in a light red sauce. There was also a wonderful grilled veal chop and steak cooked on a hot stone. Coconut crème brulée led off an enticing dessert list. As with the diner, the prices were highly reasonable: main courses ran between $20 and $25 at most. The cataplana for two was $27. The last previous place I had ordered cataplana was at one of the top places in Montreal, which happened to be Portuguese too.  Montreal, on the other hand, is definitely major league when it comes to restaurants. It cost more than twice as much and was no better than the fine version in Elizabeth.

The Lyric Shines

The U.S. has long had three major opera companies--the Met, Chicago Lyric, and San Francisco.  Add to that Santa Fe and Glimmerglass in the summer, St. Louis in late spring, and you've covered the best. Last night, during a brief trip to Chicago, I finally made it to the Lyric here.  The present company only dates to 1953 but there was a predecessor that went back to 1910 until it folded in 1946.

The occasion was a celebratory concert aimed at subscribers featuring Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, with the house orchestra led by music director Sir Andrew Davis. They are of course possibly the leading soprano and baritone now singing, which was the point, because the concert recognized the succession of a new general manager for Lyric who is replacing Bill Mason, who led the company for the past 15 years and broke in right at its start in 1953 as a boy soprano in Tosca.

His reflections at the intermission reminded me that Chicago still stands for the principle of starting right at the top.  The company's first manager, Carol Fox, took off for Italy and returned with casts that included Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano,Jussi Bjoerling, and Tito Gobbi (not sure whether she caught up with Bjoerling, the great Swedish tenor, in Italy or not). It's a quality you have to admire in the Windy City.  The original John D. Rockefeller did it the same way a bit more than a century ago by supporting the first president of the University of Chicago in hiring enough great faculty to place it immediately among the great universities of the world.

More  to the operatic point, the delightful singing last night made me realize that there are not innumerable great operatic settings for the soprano-baritone combination. The dynamic duo opened with Verdi--where Simon Boccanegra and Amelia realize they are father and daughter, and ended the act with Leonora pleading with the Count di Luna for Manrico's life in Il Trovatore.  In between, Hvorostovsky added yet more Verdi with Rigoletto's "O vile race of courtiers"--here was where I wish they had kept on with the Act II singing right to the great soprano-baritone finish of the act with the successive high notes.

There was some more bravura numbers--the great soprano aria beloved by sopranos from Adriana Lecouvreur, probably because, like Tosca, it's an opera about a prima donna, and then Wolfram's wonderful aria from Tannhauser.  There were plenty of Russians in the audience--and not just in the seats up top where we were (we got two of the last few seats available a few weeks before the concert) and they and everyone else must have been delighted to hear the rendition of that wonderful scene near the end of Eugene Onegin where Tatiana puts it to Onegin, who after rejecting her when she was young, is madly in love with her when she has become rich and respected.

As the saying goes, you don't hear singing like this every day or any day. It was a wonderful evening and certainly made me want to return to the Lyric, which will present Aida, Showboat and Rinaldo later this season. Apparently, just as opera stars always will work in their schedules some time to enjoy San Francisco, the human quality of Chicago opera management has enticed them back over the years: Fleming is now the creative consultant and a vice president. Even the encore had some flair--a bauble from Lehar's The Merry Widow, perhaps the operetta which is closest to opera. It always holds up--and that includes when I happened to see it presented in Lithuanian some years ago in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Dr. Seuss

There's a good exhibit about Theodor Seuss Geisel, to give him his full name, although he's known better by his pen name of Dr. Seuss, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and I decided to see it today. In terms of impact, it's hard to beat him--estimates of his total output in terms of those who have read his books: 200 million. It's also hard to think of a writer, and in his case, that includes illustrator, of course, who said and did the right thing so often.

This exhibit has clearly been prepared to travel round the U.S. and it gives good coverage to all aspects of his lengthy career, including giving younger visitors--and those inclined to those things--to exercise their own imaginations.  After graduating from Dartmouth, where he edited the humor magazine, Jack O'Lantern, and some time at Oxford and in Europe, he started out in advertising, with the famous tag line attributed to him for an ad for insect repelllent--"Quick, Henry, the Flit!" 

The exhibit notes that he and his writer friends did not suffer much in the Depression thatcame upon them a few years after arrival on Madison Ave., but there's a note in Geisel's writing about his being fired from Standard Oil, the makers of the insecticide. By the time World War II was upon him, he had done pr work for the government and now was churning out editorial cartoons for PM, probably the most leftist large-circulation daily newspaper ever published in the U.S.  PM was a perfect stage for his anti-Nazi drawings and he likely increased its appeal beyond those who enjoyed the likes of I.F. Stone, James Wechsler, and Max Lerner, the last two later moving the then-liberal New York Post when PM folded in the late 40s. A few years ago we saw a great exhibit of this work at the library named for him on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.

Now, Geisel's genius really began to emerge.  He had always drawn fantastical creatures and had a lively pen and could turn out clever verse.  He wrote a children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry St., and followed it up with more. Some had some generous themes, like Horton Hears a Who, about the elephant who realizes "that a person's a person, no matter how small" and Yertle the Turtle, when a would-be dictator turtle is upset when a rebel upends the stack of turtles atop which the ruler sat. And he contributed much to the language, such as the title character of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

His defining books, though, to me, were The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs With Ham.  He restricted the number of words he used, composed the verse using anapest, and created memorable characters and ideas for kids of all ages. Both had the word limits, he having written the latter by way of response to a challenge from the publisher Bennett Cerf that it couldn't be done.   I still love the end of The Cat, when the children face the question we all confront so often:

Should we tell her
The things that went on
there that day?"

"Well...what would YOU do
If your mother asked you?"

 And, of course, he would occasionally slip some of his old political views, such as environmental awareness, into the children's books, such as this from The Lorax:
 
“UNLESS
someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.”

 I don't think I can recall anyone who has had the positive impact he had on so many children and adults while engaging in sheer entertainment that remains just as delightful and meaningful as when it was written.  Perhaps one of the favorite usages I've heard that was drawn from his work -- from The Cat, of course -- came at an otherwise dull meeting when someone described two henchmen as Thing 1 and Thing 2.