Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in lidarose9's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
12:10 am	Stormchasers .. One of my favorite reality shows is "Stormchasers," which shows on the Discovery Channel. It follows a collection of tornado chasers tearing all over the Midwest every summer, trying to get scientific data and images while trying not to get killed. It's one of the few shows you'll ever see on TV where the geeks with the thick glasses are the heroes. You wouldn't think it would make for good drama, but it does. These guys are trying to be in the right place at the right time, and thanks to the miracles of modern technology, they can do it, as long as they're willing to drive 12 hours a day, day after day. They zoom around in mini-research labs on wheels designed to ride out 140 mph winds. The mammoth vehicles look like tanks and are plated with protective armor and bullet-proof glass with giant claws that extend and retract to cling to the ground. Inside, the geeks alternately stare at laptops and scan the skies nervously. Radar and doppler data can only tell you so much. Tornados are unpredictable. They can turn on a dime. They can move quickly or stall over one spot or suddenly peter out. They almost never do what you expect. The guys get the data they need from their gadgets, but they must know how to read the sky. I don't know half the jargon they use, but they describe the sky with such enthusiasm and genuine awe, I wish I did. I love the way they know the clouds. When they think they're in a good spot, they all pile out on the side of the road and watch the sky. Most of the time they're half a mile away, far enough to be safe but close enough to be scared. They have to anticipate where the tornado will drop down, which direction it'll move, and then find a road it'll cross and then be there when it happens. They come pretty darn close a lot of the time. When it all happens right, they're like rodeo clowns dancing around a huge bucking bull, a furiously angry, incredibly powerful monster that could break your back with a flick of its head. They drop their probes or launch their balloons and stand filming til the last possible moment, then scurry back to their vehicles, throw it in gear and drive like hell, eyes wide with fear. Often at this point, the one not driving yells hysterically, "Gun it! Gun it!" or "Back up! Back up! Back up! Back up!" as the one driving yells, "I am! I am!" Through crazy camera angles, you see through the windshield the menacing dark swirling thing bearing down on them. What drama! At a climactic moment near the end of the season finale, they broke for a commercial and I was surprised to discover that my arms were crossed protectively in front of me, my legs were tucked up under me, effecting a type of fetal position, my hands were at my mouth, my mouth was open, and my heart was thumping wildly. Why? Stormchaser Reed Timmer and his team had succeeded in putting themselves in the path of a huge powerful tornado. They'd resolved to ride it out and had battened down the hatches and sent down the claws. They kept their windows open filming the debris flying wildly outside until the last possible moment, then frantically rolled up the windows and braced for it. The entire vehicle was shaking violently and then suddenly the driver's side window exploded in. Glass sprayed like bullets. The guys ducked down and waited for the worst to pass. When they finally uncurled, both front-seat guys had bloody cuts on their faces from the glass, but everybody was OK. The streaks of blood on their faces were horizontal. I think they were all in shock for a few moments. Obviously, so was I. ## Maybe everybody who grows up in tornado country feels like that -- or maybe it was just me, I dunno. But I was deathly afraid of tornados from a very young age. Partly I blame the Wizard of Oz. That tornado was the scariest thing imaginable to me, far scarier even than the Wicked Witch. I had nightmares about tornados from early childhood, and always did the whole time I lived in Iowa. Those dreams stopped when I moved out here. Back there, every small town has a tornado siren. Hearing that meant go to your basements, there's a tornado on the way. Our siren was designed to be heard several miles around the town, and its whine was terrifying. I never saw a tornado in real life. Until the advent of cheap video cameras, people didn't get to see tornados very often. The lucky shot by some TV crew once in a while, still photos from textbooks. They were mysterious as well as terrifying. In my family, we were all always fascinated by the wonderful, riotous thunderstorms that march across the plains states. We used to climb up on the roof and watch the storm clouds build up, or drive out to the edge of town and sit on the hood of the car to watch a lightning show. Small wonder my brother became a meteorologist. ## On one recent episode, Reed Timmer rolled down his window to talk to another researcher moments after passing close to a wild tornado. The wind had driven pieces of straw into the tiny gap where the car window rolls up into the door frame. After he rolled down the window, that straw was still sticking out of the window frame like a scarecrow's neck. Imagine the force necessary to push a thin, weak shaft of straw into a space like that. The dangers of stormchasing are not limited to the tornados. Downed power lines are probably a much greater threat. Flying debris is deadly. The downside of those armored vehicles is they break down a lot. And you sure don't want to get stuck in the mud on some dirt road with an F3 tornado bearing down on you and power lines flapping wildly. I am hoping that by next season, they've figured out they should wear protective goggles and helmets for those intercepts. And duck. xx (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
12:14 pm	LA Opera's "Siegfried" .. The stage is a black, blank space, steeply raked. It is divided into lanes like a race track, and each lane has a starting block staggered across the stage. Each lane belongs to a character and they stay in their own lane most of the time. I think. When they're not doing anything, they go stand on their starting block. Moving very slowly along the tracks, left to right, are random black-clad figures. They easily fade into the background, and if you don't look right at them, you might not even notice them. And you have to really watch closely to see them move. They slide quietly along the track, sometimes simply moving, sometimes carrying objects, sometimes performing the characters' actions for them. The items they carry are symbols of people or things described in the music at that moment. So when Mime remembers Siegfried's birth, a shadow person slinks along carrying a doll that looks like baby Siegfried. (The production is not without its laughs. Some of these items are comical, like the big pair of juicy lips that symbolize Siegfried’s mother, Sieglinde, and the toy castle that represents Valhalla. When Mime wagers with Wotan and offers to let Wotan behead him if he loses, he actually picks his own head up off his shoulders and hoists it around.) The characters move around in this empty space, singing and interacting with each other, but the shadow figures seem to be invisible to them. However, as random as the shadow figures appear to be, they carry along exactly the right item for exactly the right moment in the storyline. When Siegfried breaks Wotan’s spear, for example, the shadow figure carrying his sword is in perfect position to carry out the deed. Curtaining the front of the whole stage is a transparent scrim that provides a surface upon which to project light effects. Those effects give us more information about the moment, for example, when Wotan’s anger is signaled by a bright spiderweb effect flashed like lightning on the scrim. At the end of “Die Walkure,” Wotan realizes what a disastrous mess he’s made and claims to have learned his lesson. He says he’s done trying to manipulate events, that he’ll stay out of it all from now on, and what will be will be. But in spite of being a god, he’s only human – he can’t resist the urge to watch events unfold and to step in when he thinks he can get away with it. He lurks around behind the scenes even when he’s not onstage, and his presence is everywhere in this production. A large eyeball suspended at the top of the stage moves slow from left to right, symbolizing Wotan’s ever watchful eye. (He lost one of his eyes winning his wife Fricka, long ago.) His twin ravens, Thought and Memory, stand sentinel at the front of the stage, seeing all and reporting to him. In this production, even the Forest Bird and Brunnhilde’s magic rock are directly presented as Wotan’s devices. He’s not fooling anybody. Way off behind the “stream of action” is a space where mirror images sometimes appear, replaying the action being described by the singer, like a flashback. Other characters mentioned in the music may appear there as well. But past and present blur -- sometimes the mirror characters enter the stream of action and stare at their doppelganger stupidly, then wander offstage. In fact, most of the time, the characters talk about their actions but don't perform them. Siegfried doesn’t actually forge his sword Notung – he sings about it as shadow figures holding the pieces come together to form shapes which finally resolve into the long shaft of the sword. Neon tubes line the stage and delineate spaces, and also serve as swords and spears. They look like light sabers. The Ring of Power isn’t a ring at all, but a neon white bright orb. Our perspective shifts from one act to another, and at times the middle part of the stage rises up to form a giant wheel, like a turntable. When The Wanderer and Mime question one another with their riddles, each stands at opposite sides of this wheel, and their edge rises and drops as each question is asked and answered. Later, when Siegfried battles the dragon Fafner, the wheel rises up and folds in half, to suggest giant jaws closing on his tiny figure. As he is dying, Fafner reappears as a giant, on his knees, wearing dragon scales down his back. He staggers forward and falls, loosing a bright red ribbon of fabric which rolls down the stage toward us. Siegfried straddles this red shaft as he tastes the dragon’s blood. The characters have a Jungian nightmare appearance and seem to represent concepts, not humans. Siegfried has crazy yellow Bart Simpson hair and wears a vivid blue body suit with greatly exaggerated muscles and bearskin pants. He’s part cartoon hero, part comic figure, part child of nature. Brunnhilde, when he awakens her, is a Bride of Frankenstein cum Venus of Willendorf. Her billowing white dress is painted to accentuate her female features to the point of grotesqueness. Siegfried’s shadow figure uses Notung to free her from a dark shapeless shell. She’s been imprisoned inside a giant puppet figure that represented her father, Wotan, disguised as The Wanderer. Even awake, she seems transfixed, as if paralyzed by living. As she and Siegfried sing to one another, the passing shadow figures rip off bits of her white dress, revealing a blood red dress underneath, emphasizing that Brunnhilde is no longer a god. She is human. Siegfried, too, is transformed by love. His blue muscle shirt also turns blood red. Puppets figures show up quite a lot: When disguised as The Wanderer, Wotan is hefting around a life-sized puppet figure strung up on his spear. When the Forest Bird appears, the poor singer is crammed into a bird puppet perched on Wotan’s spear. There is no question who is directing her. Figures are distorted and twisted. Fricka makes a cameo appearance with long grasping arms, frozen in a perpetual reach, never satisfied, and a huge red mouth, always accusing. Erda emerges from the earth as a multi-colored ball of shifting light, a swirl of color topped by a face wearing a gigantic fright wig. As the opera progresses, the shadow figures move along the tracks perceptibly faster, but time moves always in one direction. It speeds up as if to indicate momentum, as destiny inexorably compels these creatures to play out the roles they were created for. The actions of the past are always replaying somewhere and cannot be changed. And the future? Who knows? ## And so, after all that, how did I like it? Well, I tried to keep an open mind. Parts of it I liked a lot, but I had some reservations too. As time goes on, the more I “digest” it, the more I like it. It’s a very brave production. I’ve been in the audience watching plays, musicals, stage productions, and opera all my adult life, and there’s no question that great drama and music will always trump all the stage design, flashy lighting and set clutter in the world. Because we humans are so good at filling in blanks, a really good opera or play will work on a blank stage. Sometimes less is more. At the same time, stagecraft is a huge part of the appeal of seeing dramatic works onstage. Much as I love the music, singing, and storytelling, I also really love the purely theatrical aspects of live performance art onstage. Trapdoors, false floors, flying flats, revolving stages, simulated fire, real fire, trompe l’oeil, puppets, lights, costumes, makeup – to me, it’s all magic. I love it. Every performance of every production of every play, musical or opera has the opportunity to tell that story with its own unique voice. I will often get something new out of seeing different productions of plays or operas I’ve seen several times before. So even if something doesn’t particularly work for me, I will still appreciate having had the chance to see it. All this is by way of explaining – I’m going with a thumb’s up on this one, in spite of one, huge stumbling block: Brunnhilde’s awakening. When she wakes up, she is human for the first time. She has been asleep a long time. She feels the sunlight on her skin and cries out, “Hail to thee, sun! Hail to thee, light!” For a long moment before she’s aware of Siegfried’s presence, she experiences the feeling of being in a human body, waking to warmth and light. I have a mental image of this scene to which I am strongly attached, and this production’s depiction was its antithesis. Brunnhilde never really wakes up the whole time she’s barrelling out her passionate pledge of love and devotion to Siegfried. She stands there like a statue, declaiming. I don’t get it, really. But I can set that aside. ## Oh. You’ll notice I have not said one word about the singers. How often does that happen? This production is so visually compelling, it completely overshadows the singers, and I don’t think most singers would like that. But the good news is -- I could forget about the singers singing because they were just right. That’s a good thing. Nobody struggled, everybody held up their end. This keeps your focus on the action. The standouts for me were Vitalij Kowaljow as Wotan and Graham Clark as Mime. This Siegfried was a guy named John Treleaven, and he did pretty darn good. It’s a terribly taxing and exhausting role: he’s onstage throughout the whole thing (nearly). It’s very physical, he’s running all over tarnation, forging the sword, slaying dragons, climbing mountains -- then to top it all off, he has to sing an absolutely gorgeous but very long, drawn out love duet with Brunnhilde for like an HOUR after four long hours of exhausting build-up. There aren’t a lot of tenors who can handle that, and the ones who can are often middle-aged singers with years of experience in pacing themselves. This further contributes to Siegfried’s dorkiness. He’s usually a rather portly older fellow acting like a 12-year-old mental defective. How romantic or heroic is that? Treleaven’s voice was very good, very strong but supple. His Siegfried did seem a tad tired toward the end, but honestly I feel his performance was sound. He held up well. And I must say, Siegfried’s youthful exuberance was somehow easier to take from a comic-book character. Olwen and I have discussed a lot this problem of Siegfried being such a dork. I keep casting about in my mind for the right model, and so far haven’t found the right one. But the closest, I think, might be Arthur, if he had been killed a couple months after he’d pulled the sword from the stone, and never had the chance to be the great king he was destined to be. Siegfried is meant to be a hero, he is born for it. Yet the first chance he gets, he goes off and does utterly stupid, human things that result in betrayal, heartbreak, and death. We’ve decided Siegfried is about wasted potential. He had the makings of a superhero, but he sabotaged himself with fatal egotism. When we are asked to mourn for him, we aren’t mourning his death so much as the death of Wotan’s dream of redemption, of a way to make right all the world’s wrongs. Siegfried was the only the vehicle for that dream, Wotan’s last chance. I can’t help wondering how this production will wrap up the story with “Gotterdammerung.” Will they be able to wring pathos from Siegfried’s death after having played him like a cartoon all along? “Siegfried” is the most cheerful of the four operas, and all these wildly, um, creative interpretations may have worked better as a result. But what about the dark, angsty soap opera in the home of the Gibichungs? I’ll be curious. ## The orchestra was fine. xx (Comment on this)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
10:57 pm	October is opera month .. Events have conspired to put lots of great opera within arm's reach, and it's just too good to pass up. So we’re gorging. Three down, two to go. I think. LA Opera is doing a Ring cycle, and a couple weekends ago, Olwen and I flew down to Los Angeles to see their "Siegfried." People like to experiment with the Ring, so it’s always fun to see how it’s staged. The story is pure archetype, so you can set it anywhere or anyhow you want. In Seattle's first Ring, for example, the action took place backstage at a Victorian theater with Wotan as stage manager. Our current Ring emphasizes man’s relationship with nature, so it’s full of really gorgeous natural settings. The LA Opera Ring appears to take place outside normal time and space, in a kind of dream landscape. No effort is made to represent reality. It’s all symbols suspended in black space, figures moving in zones of being. Sounds crazy? It was. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It was worth the trouble and expense to fly down there. Next up was Seattle Opera’s current production of “La Traviata,” a well-worn favorite. You can’t not enjoy it. It’s some of the most beautiful music anybody could conjure up. But both Olwen and I felt the orchestra was in a tug of war with the voices at times. I was daydreaming thinking of how one could set Traviata in a small American town, where the local minister’s son falls for a bad-ass biker chick. Then yesterday, I rolled out of bed early enough to make an 11am showing in a tiny art theater in Bellingham. They were showing the HD simulcast recording of the Valencia Ring cycle’s “Die Walkure.” You may remember that we saw their Rheingold a few months ago here in town, and I absolutely loved it. So we were very eager to see this. While not quite as visually stunning as the Rheingold, it was really really really good and well worth the 90-mile drive. Next up Wednesday night, I believe, we’re scheduled to see the encore simulcast showing of the Met’s new “Tosca,” which was booed on its opening night. “Tosca” is the opera I probably know best, and so I have lots of opinions about it. I expect to hate it. Which is great fun! And finally, if I am remembering right, we will finish up next weekend with another trip to Bellingham to see another encore showing of the Salzburg Festival’s “Don Giovanni.” Olwen saw this when it showed here; I skipped out. She absolutely loved it, and so of course I regretted skipping it. Here’s a second chance. It is set in the present and all the characters are seedy drug addicts who lurk around a remote bus stop. Now I am not a huge fan of Mozart’s operas – I very much like his other work, but my mind tends to wander during his operas. But this sounds like it will keep me awake. xx (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
11:33 pm	send him the bill .. You know I like to browse around the trash on TV, yes, I'm not proud of it, but there you are. So in fact, I have seen the Balloon Family on that now-infamous episode of "Wife Swap." (That show is another blog post of its own.) You know how they say you need a license to drive a car but anybody can have kids? This family is a perfect example. Even allowing for a general exaggeration of weirdness (like they say the camera adds 10 lbs., it also adds 20% to your weirdness), Mr. Balloon has the emotional maturity of a four-year-old. If I ruled the world, he would not be allowed to procreate, buy liquor, or operate motor vehicles. The man-child sets the bar as low as possible, and the kids follow suit. Mom cheers them on. Mom is a 24/7 slave, doing everything remotely responsible, so Dad can be free to be a four-year-old. I don't know where they get their money. Maybe they charge admission. They pretended to be a family of storm-chasers the first time they were on, but it was just an excuse to be camera-worthy. (Has anyone coined this term yet? It seems so apt to me, the way Lindsey Lohan puking is camera-worthy, but Lindsey Lohan shopping is not.) They were billed as a family of thrill-seekers, not bound by conventional fears about safety. Of course, they were paired with a family of ultra-conscientious safety fanatics. Mr. Balloon gave a number of dazzlingly infantile performances. I have no doubt the whole stunt was a hoax meant to score him a reality show. I mean, if Ozzie Ozborne can have his own show, why not Balloon Man? Why not indeed. This is what comes of rewarding bad behavior. ## I don't watch the news anywhere, but once in a while I catch their little lead-in things. They're so unintentionally funny! I don't worry much about the young ones cuz they don't know any better -- they were born after the whole OJ thing. But the older ones, I feel kind of sorry for them. It must be hard to live with the changes they've seen. The whole journalistic ethics thing, I mean. I imagine some of the national people still think they have some credibility, but the smaller market and local people are just such a joke. Well, the national ones are too. I don't even want to try to imagine the thought process they must have to use to justify it to themselves. xx (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
12:36 pm	King Leopold's Ghost .. So in 1898, a guy named Edmund Morel was working for the Liverpool company responsible for all the shipping back and forth between Belgium and the Congo. The Congo was exporting bazillion tons of rubber at the time, making Belgium's King Leopold a fortune many times over. Morel frequently visited the docks in Belgium where the ships were loaded and unloaded. He noticed that while tons of rubber came in, the only thing going out was guns and ammunition. Not trade goods. It didn't take a PhD to figure out something was fishy. The only possible explanation was slave labor. He wasn't a journalist or a do-gooder, just a low-level accountant type at a big company. He never even went to the Congo. But he had to do something, and he did. What he did was largely forgotten until Adam Hochschild wrote about it in his book “King Leopold’s Ghost” a few years ago. The book describes how Belgium’s King Leopold II manipulated, cheated and lied his way into “owning” a giant chunk of central Africa as his own personal property. Most of the world’s powerful countries were carving up what was left unclaimed around the globe at that time, and Leopold wanted to make sure he wasn’t left out in the cold. Beginning in 1885, he turned this area along the Congo River into his own personal Cash Cow, robbing it first of its ivory, then of its rubber. It’s impossible to know how many died, but estimates range from 4-10 million Africans. They were worked to death, beaten to death, killed in local wars, starved, or were simply killed. The luckier ones had their hands chopped off. Once Morel realized what was going on, he quit his job and devoted his life to unmasking Leopold’s ugly secret. He transformed himself into an investigative journalist and spearheaded an international movement aimed at shaming Leopold into reform. Because of Morel’s efforts, “ownership” of the Congo passed to the country of Belgium in 1909. By that time, much of Central Africa had been emptied of its population. ## This monster Leopold can stand shoulder to shoulder with the bloodiest of our “modern” villains, the large-scale scoundrels who cheat, lie, swindle and steal on a global level, as well as the mass murderers. He portrayed himself as a do-gooder, pretending that his interest was primarily to provide schools, help out the missionaries, and build some roads. He pretended to be motivated by a desire to protect these people from the Arab slave traders. He bribed and sucked up to the right people. He created a private holding company called the International African Society and passed it off as a philanthropic organization meant to support missionary and anti-slavery efforts. His master stroke was manipulating President Chester Arthur into recognizing his claim on the territory. Once the US recognized it, all the other powerful Western nations followed suit, and Jack’s your uncle. ## Thanks to Hochschild’s book, we know about E.D. Morel today, but before that, his heroic work had been largely forgotten. Bloody Leopold, too, for all his wealth, has been largely forgotten. But we do remember Josef Conrad and is 1902 book, “Heart of Darkness.” Conrad traveled up the Congo River in 1892 and saw for himself the casual, widespread brutality. He was deeply traumatized by what he saw there. With the alchemy of a great artist, he transformed the haunting experience into one of the most chilling, vivid and memorable portrayals of a symbolic journey into the darkest recesses of human nature. And thanks to Francis Ford Coppola, Conrad’s novel has a second life now as the inspiration for the film “Apocolypse Now.” Many people may not know about Leopold or Morel, but they know about Col. Kurtz and what he stands for. It’s another great example to the enduring value of art. ## A while ago I watched a reality show on the History channel called “Expedition Africa” in which four people retraced the steps of Henry Morton Stanley in his 1871 search for Dr. David Livingstone. Livingstone was a famous explorer who was searching for the source of the River Nile, and hadn’t been seen in a few years. Stanley was a journalist and got some newspaper to sponsor his efforts to find Livingstone, and the rest is history. The team retracing Stanley’s steps consisted of an expedition leader slash explorer, a survivalist slash explorer, a wildlife expert slash anthropologist, and a journalist slash war correspondent. They had all read Stanley’s account of his famous journey. Throughout their own trek, each of them repeatedly referred to Stanley’s description of this or that location, or Stanley’s experience here, and talked generally what a neat and cool guy Stanley was. Stanley may have been a neat and cool guy, but Hochschild’s book reveals he was also a shameless self-promoter, a liar and a murderer. Nearly everything he told everyone about where he came from was a lie, and he passed himself off all his life as something he was not. He was Welsh, though pretended to be American most of the time. He was the unwanted bastard of a prostitute, and grew up in a workhouse in England. He served in and deserted both sides during the American Civil War. After his triumphant return from finding Livingstone, he was hired by Leopold to follow the course of the Congo to its source and “negotiate” Leopold’s claims with tribes along the way. He did so, and in the course of which he was responsible for causing the death of uncounted Africans (and many of the Europeans who accompanied him). Later he made another, mostly needless journey across Africa to “rescue” another guy (who incidentally didn’t want to be rescued). Most of what he wrote about his famous explorations was vividly embroidered, wildly exaggerated or a bald-faced lie – all designed to make himself look more heroic. He spent most of his life finding ways to make money this way, speaking to groups about his travels. He too was a very modern scoundrel. ## Interestingly, if you look at the reviews of Hochschild’s book on amazon, you’ll find a handful of “Leopold deniers,” people who claim Leopold has been the victim of a smear campaign or that Hochschild’s scholarship is faulty or shoddy. I saw no such evidence of this in reading his book. It occurs to me that for any topic, there is a fringe element that will deny anything. If you wrote a book about how the sky is blue, there is a jackass out there who would claim that you’re making it up. And Fox would give him a TV show and pretend it’s news. xx (Comment on this)
Friday, September 25th, 2009
9:53 pm	the death of our newspapers .. There’s so much going on that’s scary or sad or infuriating these days, it’s mind-numbing. But one thing lately that worries me a lot is the death of the print journalism. Daily newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur, and I wonder what we'll do for reliable, objective, intelligent information without those institutions. Sure, they're far from perfect, but there’s a long tradition of integrity underlying them that keeps us all on the right course, more or less, most of the time. Yes, we're pestered to death by plenty of what passes as journalism on TV and radio, and this new hybrid we access online. But most of that is lazy, manipulative trash, sensationalism, half-truths and slander. Most other countries fight for the right to objective, independent news coverage, but we take it for granted, so much so that the reliability and balance of a Walter Cronkite is a thing of the past. Why? So some people could make more money, I guess. But it’s so important. Often our knowledge of a tragedy can be traced back to one individual who noticed something fishy, decided to find out what was going on, and then made sure to spread the word. Those people must have somewhere to go, somewhere they can turn to bring the world’s attention to a problem. Cuz I believe most intelligent people do care when innocent people are being victimized. Most people do want to see evildoers held accountable for their actions, and most evil-doers prefer to keep their actions quiet. They do care what the rest of the world thinks of them. The world’s attention can often be the most powerful weapon with which to combat injustices. We’ve seen it over and over. The bad guys wait for the cameras to leave before they do their evil deeds. The presence of observers can stop people. The certain knowledge that this is going on the front page of the world’s newspapers makes a difference to people. It may not stop them, but it can slow them down, and sometimes that’s enough to make a difference. A few years ago I saw a movie at SIFF called "The Devil Came On Horseback" about the genocide in Darfur. Present at the showing was Brian Steidle, the subject of the film. In 2004, he was a young Marine captain serving as a UN observer of the newly brokered peace in Sudan. He saw something fishy and looked a little closer. What he saw changed his life. He brought back the photographs that "broke the story" to us in the West. (It remains to be seen whether it's done any good, the fact of our knowing -- but that's a posting for another day.) The point is, Steidle had somewhere to go. There was a mechanism in place to bring them to the world’s attention. That mechanism is now going away, and that worries me. xx (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
9:24 pm	slavery .. I've been trading off lately reading books about slavery, Oliver Sacks' books, and science fiction by Sheri Tepper. I can only read so much about slavery at one time before it starts to overwhelm me, so usually it's a relief to move to another planet or to immerse myself in the mysteries of the human brain. And yet, it all goes together -- those other planets often play back the same themes from our own planet's life, and often the imagined is more unsettling than the real. And the tragedy of one human brain gone wrong can embody all the pathos of the universe in a single story. So I have to watch myself and make sure I don't get too depressed. Then I need to go watch South Park or the Mariners to even things out. So why slavery? Well, let's see. It ties in with my on-going interest in genocide, of course. Also, over the summer, two of my tutoring students were taking an American history class. The texts focused on the stories not usually taught to children, the stuff we prefer to skim over, like slavery. Back in the 1970s, our high school textbooks didn't dwell on the role of slavery in US history, so I really don't know much about it. I was learning right along with them, and it made me want to know more. Also, without a doubt, Battlestar Galactica made a deep impression on me. In fact, it may only be in science fiction where we can fully explore the human impulse to dehumanize another creature, to make them into a thing which we can then exploit, abuse, and destroy with impunity. It's no coincidence that our deepest, darkest fears explored in sci-fi often involve humans serving as slaves, lab rats, or even food for an alien conqueror. How would it feel to be the victim of what we do to our fellow creatures? Then there was that Valencia Rheingold and the visual image of those dancers suspended from the conveyor belt like sides of beef. Also, my so-called study of nondualism over the last couple of years brings this concept to my attention. Our discussion comes back again and again to the idea of freedom -- not the freedom to choose among an array of useless products, but the freedom to see clearly, to reject conditioning, to live in harmony with our human nature. The ultimate loss of freedom, of course, is slavery. xx (Comment on this)
Monday, September 21st, 2009
3:11 pm	Beowulf .. Normally I'd be complaining about how the script took liberties (and how) with the story, but you know, I don't care. Beowulf was written a long time ago and the author isn't around to be insulted. Besides, it was faithful to the spirit of the story. Normally I'd also be harping about anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, but this movie did pretty good on that score. Probably that's why I can so easily forgive the story fiddling. Some of the armor and weapons were more medieval looking, but I spotted little that was jarring or silly. Apart of course from the supernatural/mythic elements of the story. This movie was my first time to see the process called performance capture or motion capture. They put sensors on the actors and basically make them into cartoons. I've spent enough time playing Playstation games that the effect is familiar. I can't say that I feel it enhanced or detracted from the storytelling. But with all the CGA effects available to us today, I'm not sure what this adds to a filmmaker's toolchest. xx (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
10:33 pm	The X-Files: I Want To Believe .. I'm really behind in writing about movies. I'm really behind in writing here at all. Summer, you got yardwork, you got baseball -- there's just more competition for my time. But baseball season is winding down, the days are shorter, and time marches on, so I'll start with this one. I should point out I didn't rush right out to see this in the theater when it was out. That tells you something. I was a huge X-Files fan for the first 4 years or so back when it was on TV. But alas, as is the case with so many things, once the show became popular, it went downhill. Fast. I remember, I think, that Chris Carter (the creator) originally had a five-year story arc already figured out before they even started the show (like Babylon 5), but when it became so successful around the third season, they contorted up the story to prolong the show. It was just going to be more of the same never-ending going in circles, two steps forward, three steps back, cryptic clues about Mulder's missing sister, hints about Scully's missing ovaries, Cancer Man being threatening, the Lone Gunman being weird, blah blah blah. Totally ruined it. It's such a shame. I didn't even watch the last couple seasons. I'd just lost interest. When the first big screen movie came out, I was hoping it would finally give us the closure we'd all been waiting for. I wanted to like it, I really did. It had some answers. It had some spectacular special effects. It was kind of a yawn. Honestly I just didn't care anymore. Whatever it was that made me care about Scully and Mulder back in the day, it was gone. So, no, I didn't rush out to see the new one, the "I Want to Believe" movie. I noticed it on cable, I tivo'd it. So, the verdict? Bearing in mind there seems to be a smaller amount of long-term storage space in my memory, this movie has nothing that I'll remember in 3 years. -- Oh. No! There IS one scene I'll remember. Scully and Mulder are in bed. Spooning. Having post-coital pillow talk. From their relaxed easiness, we can conclude they've been "intimate" for some time. My jaw dropped, I was stunned. Then I was glad. That's the one true thing Chris Carter has done for those characters for a long, long time. They deserve it. They were great characters, once upon a time. xx (Comment on this)
Monday, September 7th, 2009
10:32 pm	there's a stupid way to solve problems, and there's a smart way... .. So why do we keep choosing the stupid way? Let me give an example. Not long ago, large oil tankers would have dramatic accidents and spill oil all over, wrecking beaches, killing animals, and wasting lots of perfectly good oil. There was a simple solution: double-hulled tanker ships. Everybody bit the bullet, new ships got manufactured, old ones got refitted, and voila. We don't have oil spills anymore. You've heard the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Nobody can contest the fact that our addiction to oil has bad consequences. We're wrecking the planet and we're hostage to the people who control the oil. We're PERFECTLY positioned NOW to fix this problem. In a SMART way. The domestic auto industry is ruined. We've got creative, inspired people with workable, practical ideas for decent alternatives. We have the infrastructure, the know-how and unemployed workers we need to retool our auto industry to something non-gasoline-based. Consumers are more than willing to try something new, as the very successful hybrids have shown. No, I don't mean improved gas mileage. Fuck that. I mean cars that don't need gas. Vehicles requiring gas should be an exception. The vast majority of us can and would happily drive non-gas-powered cars. I mean, we have cars now that can tell when you're falling asleep at the wheel and wake you up. We have cars that show movies to our kids. We have cars that tell us where to drive and cars that make phone calls for us. They can do everything except run on something other than gas. It's like putting whipped cream and a cherry on top of a pile of dog doo. It's still dog doo. Why isn't this happening? Can someone explain this to me? Are we insane? xx (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
12:26 pm	Emily Hawley Gillespie .. We tend to romanticize the past and imagine that complicated emotional conflicts within families are a result of recent phenomena. “Things were so much simpler in the old days.” But I think humans living in communities (whether physical or emotional) always have complicated, complex relationships. Recently I bumped into a book in Half Price Books. It's the diary of a woman named Emily Gillespie, who lived in east-central Iowa, from 1858 to 1888. It starts out like a typical Little House On the Prairie-type story: a young woman's hopes, a young couple, farming struggles, blizzards and hailstorms, happy barefoot children. But not for long. Small resentments barely mentioned in the diary combine, grow and, in time, fester. Family relationships degenerate into bitterness and anger, doing far more damage than any prairie wildfire. Before you know it, you feel like you’re reading a murder mystery and can’t put the book down. Her maiden name was Emily Hawley. Her parents’ families had come to south-central Michigan from New York a couple generations earlier. She comes from a respectable family, but her father has had little success as a farmer. He has too many daughters and only one son who is kind of a flop. As Emily begins her diary, she is looking ahead to her own future. She loves her family but knows she “cannot live forever in her father's house.” She wants to go back east to art school, but of course there’s no money. She is of marriageable age and has one suitor after another, but none make any kind of impression on her. You can tell she feels a little like a prize cow up for auction at times. Her mother reminds her it's just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one. It must have been a big decision to leave home all alone and go off to the wilds of eastern Iowa, But the ten easternmost counties of Iowa had long been settled, being busy with Mississippi River traffic. And the railroad had begun to reach deeper west into the state. Her uncle has a small inn in Manchester, Iowa. He and his daughter are doing OK there. So Emily takes the train (she calls it "the cars"), spends a night in the huge metropolis of Chicago, and arrives finally in Manchester. Though she is happy enough living and working in the inn, she is terribly homesick and thinks continually about going back to Michigan. Again she has one suitor after another, none of whom interest her. Around the time the Civil War breaks out, she meets a young man named James Gillespie. She genuinely likes him, and they get serious almost immediately. She doesn't explain in her diary, but we eventually figure out that he comes from a halfway successful family. (The diary rarely provides context or explanations, but in time much becomes evident.) His folks lived in town but have a farm where she and James will live. Their first years are hard but happy. They have two kids, a boy and a girl. The farm work is a struggle, the house is small and primitive, and they both work long, exhausting days. Emily's days were a blur of endless gardening, food preparation, cooking, child care, cleaning, churning, sweeping, mopping, washing, sewing, weaving, knitting, making candles, cleaning lanterns, chopping wood. They are able to raise enough money to buy James’ way out of serving in the Army. After the war ends, westward migration becomes a deluge, and when travelers passed the farm, she proudly records the $.25 she is paid for giving them breakfast. At harvest time, for example, between the extra help farm workers and passers-by, she prepares meals for groups as large as 25 people. She can often trade or get paid for her sewing. Or they sell the butter she churns. On top of all that tiring work, she begins keeping poultry, at first just a few chickens, then later adding turkeys. She finds she can make a nice bit of money with this. In time, they are able to pay off their debts, “get ahead,” and even build a new, bigger house. But all is not rosy. James' parents change their tune, and start badgering the young couple wanting to be paid for the land. They don’t come to visit, and don’t even come to see their grandchildren. Emily is hurt and mystified. Her sister Harriet moves out to join her, and Harriet's husband isn't much of a farmer. In the years that follow, Harriet is pregnant with one baby after another, and James and Emily are called upon to help out a lot. Making matters worse, James' sister and her husband are struggling too, and often James spends more time helping out his sister's family than working on his own land. Emily grumbles in her diary about it. She feels like any success she and James have is being sucked out of them. It wasn’t all their fault -- the 1870s were bad years in the Midwest, and like everyone else, the Gillespies had to struggle to stay afloat. But little by little they acquire more farm equipment and household goods. Her turkeys are doing well. The little ones go to school. It becomes very important to her that they get a good education. Up until this point, their story is pretty typical. The young couple have problems, yet in general “all is well,” as Emily puts it. But, she reports later on, it was around this time that James begins to get “nervous” and have what she calls “fits.” He is worried to the point of distraction about debt. He has a great horror of the public shame of bankruptcy or losing the farm. In time, this anxiety becomes obsessive and irrational. He even talks about suicide. Hoping to evade creditors, James decides to sign over the deed to the farm to her and asks her to keep it safe. He explains he wants to make sure she and the children are provided for “if anything should happen” to him. She is touched. This event is a turning point in their lives. In time, their debts are paid off and their financial situation improves. But the better off they get, the more unhappy James becomes. He wants the kids to do farm work, but Emily refuses -- she wants "better things" for them. James becomes more and more irked about her turkeys and refuses to lift a finger to help her. He “gives” a horse or a calf to her, then sells it without telling her, just to make the point that he can. He takes his black moods out on the animals. If she tries to intervene, he goes berserk and beats them even more. As the children grow older, the in-laws die, the rift with her sister Harriet grows, and James becomes more and more ugly. When she wanted to build a bigger house, he makes her pay for all the lumber from her turkey money. His “fits” became more extreme. Sometimes he appears with a rope and tells her he’s on his way to the barn to hang himself. She starts to wonder if he is crazy. He wants her to sign over the deed to the farm . He says she’s plotting to either kill him or to drive him off his own land, and he will not rest until he has that deed back again. Emily refuses. She believes he will throw her and the children off the farm if she does. They live like this for a long time, in an uncomfortable stand-off. Their son Henry goes off as a travelling carpenter to earn money to help out, and their daughter Sarah teaches school. In time, Emily begins having health problems and finds it necessary to bring in a “hired girl.” Around this time, Emily’s father comes to live with them. Emily’s useless brother lost the family farm in Michigan, and her father has nowhere else to go. Emily always had a good, loving relationship with her father, but as soon as he moves in, problems started. Things quickly get so bad, he moves out and goes to live with Harriet. Though he’s only lived in Manchester a year or so, he makes a claim against the county, that they should have to support him since his daughter won’t. (Counties had a “poor farm” set aside for residents who’d gone bankrupt – it was an early form of welfare.) The county says if Emily has the deed to the farm, she’ll have to support her father. So in this way, the county, Emily’s father and her husband conspire (whether intentionally or not) to force her to sign the farm back over to her husband. Everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Harriet and her father will never speak to Emily again, and they turn her other sister Edna against her too. James demands that she and the children pay him rent to live on the farm. He becomes outwardly abusive and violent. He deliberately puts salt in the turkey feed to kill them. She fears for her life. James begins to disappear for days at a time. Eventually he moves out and only drops by occasionally, sometimes bringing food that Emily is afraid to eat. She puts a chair at the top of the stairs to warn her if James comes upstairs in the night. Then, very quickly and quietly, she and the children move into a rented room in town, where Emily lives for a year or so as an invalid. She dies at age 49 of what they called paralysis. She probably had a series of strokes. ## Emily’s diary records people cracking up and being carted off to the “Insane Asylum.” She reports her horror upon finding out that her cousin murdered her four kids and then committed suicide. Her niece Susan gets pregnant and has to marry the baby’s father. Later on when he proves to be a crappy husband and father, Susan leaves him and returns to live with her own father. Somewhere amongst her numerous pregnancies, Harriet has an abortion. Emily joins a parents group protesting the beatings their children get at school. She rails against her husband’s stupid abuse of his farm animals. She subscribes to a women’s suffrage periodical and records her bitter disappointment at being unable to attend a public meeting where Susan B. Anthony spoke. She visits some of the “revival” meetings of the popular fundamentalist church groups and finds them distasteful and manipulative. Once while we were paddling around in her pool, my mom told me about some relatives of her mother’s. Someone died in a house fire, but they later discovered the person had been murdered and the fire set to cover it up. I remember being shocked. My grandmother and her siblings all seemed so prim and proper, respectable and reasonable. Yet this had been a crime of passion. It’s comforting to imagine that in the past, people stayed true to their loved ones and stood firm in their commitments, but I think that’s a fairy tale. We’re all human. Peoples’ emotional lives were just as fraught as ours with resentments, anger, shame, envy, jealousy, guilt, dishonesty, selfishness, pridefulness, and mistrust. Emily Gillespie uses the language of the 19th century and peppers her entries with lines from popular, sentimental poems and songs, but the problems she faced were, in many ways, not much different from the problems we all struggle with today. ## (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
11:59 pm	Forgiving Dr. Mengele .. Somehow I bumped into this documentary on Netflix and watched it a few weeks ago. The title certainly grabs your attention, and it says it all. If we all made a list of people it would be hard to forgive, he'd be in the top 10, maybe even top 5. This little old lady, Eva Kor, and her twin sister Miriam were victims of Mengele's medical experiments in Auschwitz. Miraculously, both girls survived the war. They went to Israel, both married and had kids, and later went to the US. Then in middle age, the effects of Mengele's experiments began to take its toll as Miriam developed serious health problems. When her kidneys failed, Eva donated one of her own, and her sister's life was extended several years. Remember that TV miniseries called "The Holocaust" back in 1978? After it was shown, people started asking Eva about her experience in Auschwitz, which made her realize she'd forgotten a lot. Hoping for clues about Miriam's illness, Eva decided to search for information about the experiments. But all the records had been destroyed. So she began to seek out the surviving so-called Mengele twins and formed a support group. For most of these people, the group was the first time they'd spoken about the experience in all those years. This reconnection with the past stirred Eva into action. She created a Holocaust museum in her hometown in Indiana and for years now she has tirelessly educated people about the Holocaust. Busloads of tour groups visit her museum. She regularly goes around to high schools and community groups to speak about her experiences. When her museum was burned down by white supremacists, she stubbornly rebuilt it. In her search for information, she learned that one of the Auschwitz doctors was still living, a man named Hans Munch. After the war ended, many people came forward to speak in his defense, saying he'd done everything possible to help the prisoners to survive. In 1993, the year that Miriam finally died, Kor went to visit Munch to ask about the medical records. She discovered that he was deeply haunted by what he'd seen and done in Auschwitz. Her heart was filled with compassion for this man, and she decided to forgive him. But it wasn't enough to just forgive. She decided to formalize this forgiveness in a ceremony. And then she realized *that* wasn't enough. She decided to forgive all of the Germans, including Mengele. Despite the protests and condemnation from many of the other Mengele twins, Eva persisted with her plan. In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, she stood at the gas chambers in Auschwitz with Munch, her children, and his children and grandchildren, and read out her declaration of forgiveness. ## This remarkable woman's commitment to forgiveness was further challenged when she agreed to meet with representatives from Palestinian groups behind the lines in Israel. She was driven through one armed checkpoint to another. It was very hot. The further they went, the more nervous she became. When they finally arrived at the bunker-like meeting place, she sat uncomfortably clutching her purse while a small group of scholars and activists told her of their experiences. She could not make eye contact with them. She squirmed like a 5-year-old and barely suppressed the impulse to roll her eyes. She cut them off rudely and admitted she wished she was back at her hotel room. One of the participants confronted her with the fact that some of those people had travelled a great distance and gone to a great deal of trouble and danger to come to this meeting. She waved it off and shook her head. She had nothing to say to them, and they had nothing to say that interested her. ## I watch with interest the efforts we make to mend and heal after catastrophic inhumanity like war or genocide. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee of South Africa, the community-based reconciliation groups in Rwanda -- these all have so much to teach us about how to go forward after the worst has happened. Forgiveness is a fundamental concept of most of our world religions, but something we experience as individuals. Yet it's essential to our survival as a species. Somehow this powerless, orphaned and tortured child was able to grow into a woman who could understand the message of forgiveness: that the one who hates is a slave to that hate all their lives, that forgiveness is indeed the ultimate reclamation of personal power. She embraced it publicly in her efforts to spread that message. In this way she triumphed over her own tragedy. Eva Kor was not content to spend the rest of her life defined by the cruelty she suffered as a child. And she didn't push it away and try to forget it. She transformed that awful experience into a very personal gift to the world: a way to help others. But there are limits to her compassion, it seems, and so she also fails, in an all too human way. So maybe the title should be "Forgiving Dr. Mengele But Not The Palestinians." ## URL for her Holocause museum: http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/index.php?sid=1 A page about her at a very interesting website called The Forgiveness Project: http://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories/evakor xx (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, August 7th, 2009
10:16 pm	my own health care crisis .. I had the opportunity last night to observe myself becoming unreasonable angry over nothing. I was hanging with the nonduality guys, telling about finding out that my insurance company will not pay for my migraine pills for the rest of the year. Philip remarked that the latest research shows that exercise will soon take the place of all those drugs we take for things like depression and such. I told him I wanted to slap the shit out of him. He said something else, but of course I wasn't listening -- I was mad. I said you just don't say things like that to someone with chronic migraines. I didn't raise my voice or hit him or call him names or anything, but I felt bad that I snapped at him. Well, he can take it. Luckily I can afford to pay for the pills, but what if I couldn't? It brings all this debate about a national health care plan into sharp relief. What I really would like to do is slap the shit out of the politicians making hay of this with their endless childish whining and irrational catastrophizing for the sake of drawing airtime on Fox News. I'd really like to slap the shit out of the corporate toadies at the insurance company and the evil greedy bastards at the pharmaceutical companies. And the next time someone tells me I should exercise to get rid of my migraines, I'm going to smack them up side the head good and hard, and say, "Hey, that hurts, doesn't it? I bet some exercise will help." ## Sometimes we get our own little windows into a larger problem. Lots of people have lots of stories about how broken the so-called system is. This is mine. For an awful lot of people, Imitrex (sumatriptan) is a wonder drug. Without it, many of us would be unable to live a normal life. I've read enough online to know my own problems are small potatoes compared to many others, but my potatoes are bad enough. The creator of Imitrex, an evil drug company called Glaxo, has had an exclusive patent on it since 1991. As I understand it, this is how the system works. The original company gets to produce a drug exclusively and charge whatever they want for the first 17 years. The idea is they get to recoup their R&D costs. Then, once the patent protection expires, other companies can start to produce it as a generic, which provides that good old American competition to drive prices down. Making the most of its legally sanctioned monopoly, Glaxo has been charging INSANELY high prices for Imitrex all these years, making the drug unavailable to most people without insurance. Even people with insurance have trouble: I was paying about $260/month and I have insurance. Because it's so insanely expensive, the insurance company gouges you for it any way they can. My insurance company, for example, will only pay for 12 pills every 32 days, so I have to carefully ration the pills. That means I sometimes don't take a pill when I would like to. That means unnecessary pain. ## Seventeen years is a long time, but ever vigilant for new ways to exploit its legally sanctioned monopoly, Glaxo repeatedly got extensions on their patent. Finally last fall, the long-awaited generic sumatriptan became available. Migraine sufferers everywhere rejoiced. But alas, it is not the end of being screwed. It's just getting screwed a different way. Here's how. 1. Turns out one company gets 7 months free and clear as the exclusive generic producer (another monopoly!), and again, they can charge whatever they want. And sure enough, when the single new generic became available, we discovered it is *very nearly* as expensive as Imitrex. The cost savings are laughable. Woohoo! I save a big $24! 2. Turns out this generic, called Dr. Reddy's, is produced by a company located in India and is manufactured in Singapore. Sorry, people, but these are not countries whose quality control I trust. Turns out lots and lots of people have been finding these generic pills ineffective and/or have been plagued with new, evil side-effects. Eureka! That might be why I've had to take more pills lately! Turns out the FDA allows as much as a 25% variance in the exact compounds used for a generic drug. Now I don't know about you, but I think a variance of 25% is significant. Think about a diabetic. Think about your blood pressure medication. And guess what? It's been over 7 months, and I don't see any additional generics flooding the market to drive down prices. ## I changed my insurance plan last fall to get better coverage on prescriptions, since I have this DEPENDENCE on Imitrex. The new plan paid for the whole thing after a $10 copay. I thought I had it made in the shade. But Saturday when I went to pick up my pills, the bill was $289. I fumed all weekend, waiting for Monday so I could call Regence. Turns out there's a $3000/yr maximum, and I've already exceeded it and it's August. How about that? How did it happen? The insanely expensive Imitrex. But wait! I've been getting the cheap generic since November! The generic costs almost as much but is less effective, so I have to take more, so I buy more, and so it maxed out my insurance. So here I am shopping for Mexican or Canadian Imitrex online. I've been reading a lot of online forums about migraines. It infuriates me. We are victims. We have no choice. We are slaves to the drug companies. I HATE this. ## I don't know what people did in the past before our wonder drugs. I probably would have killed myself. I've lived with migraines off and on for most of my life. I've tried everything you can possibly think of, and nothing has ever worked except Imitrex. I have a long list I keep on my computer so I can print it out when I have a new doctor or neurologist, so we can save time. I'm not dumb. I've had 30 years of this. Magnesium? done it. Vitamin B12? done it. Meditation? done it. Cranial sacral therapy? done it. Feverfew? Don't make me laugh. I've kept food diaries, I've removed all foods with tyramine and other headache triggers from my diet. Caffeine, yoga, acupuncture, inderal, neurontin, hormones. It's a long list. The last neurologist I saw wanted me to exercise. I told him it would not make any difference, that I've tried numerous times with no result. I explained that over the years, I've gone through long periods of various types of regular exercise: walking, swimming, aerobics, yoga -- and none of it has ever made ANY difference with my headaches. He said, "Humor me." So I decided to be a good egg. I did what he wanted, and I was right. It made no difference. I reported this back to him, and then I stopped seeing him. I'm done being a good egg. A few years ago, I was taking so many drugs for these headaches, I had trouble keeping it all straight. The thing that is so fucked up about that is, apart from my headaches, I am a healthy person with no health problems. Why was I taking six or eight different powerful drugs and still having headaches almost daily? In spite of all the effort they put into making it unpleasant for us, drug companies and health insurance cmpanies WANT you to take a lot of drugs. The more the merrier. That's how they make their millions. Eventually I got off all of those drugs except for the Imitrex. Yes, there's something wrong with this picture. There are so many things wrong, you don't know where to start. Well, naturally it leaves me feeling very frustrated and angry. When I make a wall chart of what's wrong with America, there will be two large triangles. The first will consist of the health care industry, the pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance companies. This is the First Triangle of Evil that needs to be busted. The second, I'll talk about some other time. xx (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
6:29 pm	the Valencia Rheingold .. I've been to 3 cycles of Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" here at Seattle Opera, and I'd like to see more, other live performances. With opera, seeing different productions can really make a huge difference in your appreciation. Something about that particular production reaches inside your gut and reveals it all to you in an utterly new way. You can see "Carmen" several times, for example, and think it's an OK opera with nice catchy tunes, then later see a different production, and all of a sudden you "get it." Suddenly you can see it is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. It's like a door opening, and now it moves you deeply. Sometimes it works like that. For years I've been going to all these Wagner operas, not because I "get" them but because I've been hoping to get them. Wagner's operas are pretty, um, er, dense, and I think they may take a long time to get, at least for me. Well, so, after a long time, I think I finally do "get" the first opera of the Ring, "Das Rheingold." This is important because everything that happens later on springs from that first opera. And it may be that a deeper understanding of the first one will help things fall into place with the others. ## It was an HD recording of a live performance in Valencia, Spain. It was staged by the Catalan theater group Fura del Baus, co-produced with the Maggio Fiorentino Festival in Florence, with Zubin Mehta conducting. This is one of those delightful live HD simulcasts, like the Met is doing -- so are major opera companies around the world. This was also, by far, the most abstract production we've seen, and I have to wonder if maybe that helped. ## "Das Rheingold" is a tricky opera to stage because it is all one act. There's no chance to close the curtain to move scenery, yet the stage must undergo several big transformations. We start out on the bottom of a river, watching water nymphs frolick. Next we move to a place where gods and giants live, one assumes the surface of the earth. From there we go down deep inside the earth, where nasty little dwarves mine the gold that everybody wants. We finish back on earth, though by this time it's a changed world, drained of life. There's a lot of tricky stagecraft involved too. You've got to portray believable giants and dwarves. You've got to turn a guy into a snake and a frog. And people have to become invisible. All this can all slip into silliness if you're not lucky. The biggest difficulty, I believe, is the fact that you have a whole lot of people acting like dumbasses. Sure, that's human nature, but one tends not to care what happens to dumbasses. It's one of the problems I have with the Ring -- throughout the whole cycle, you have to overlook a lot of inexplicable bad behavior, and it all starts here. ## So what made this one work for me? It comes down to two things: 1. a new light shining on Wotan, and 2. the remarkable set and staging, in particular with one crucial scene. 1. As I've said, Wotan has always seemed like such an incredible dumbass to me. He causes all the trouble that drives the Ring cycle with his own stupidity. So as an audience member, you're working at a disadvantage right off the bat cuz you can't muster any sympathy for the story's central character. But we saw this Valencia production last fall when the economy was in freefall. Every day we were all reading unbelievable stories about our country's political and business leaders' reckless irresponsibility and criminal greed. They'd fucked the country up so bad, we were all going to the poorhouse. Even the most cynical among us hadn't dreamed it was as bad as it was. There, in that pathetic parade of greedy, short-sighted, narcissistic bastards, Wotan was just one more. Powerful men do this all the time, don't they? Wotan made a deal promising to pay with something he didn't actually own, figuring he'd come up with something later on. Sound familiar? To me at that time, Wotan was still a dumbass, but he also seemed a little more human. 2. This production was visually memorable in so many ways, but I'll restrict myself here to describing the one scene that made the greatest impact on me. Wotan and his sidekick Loge have traveled down into the underground world where the evil dwarf Alberich mines for gold. Alberich is the embodiment of irrational greed, rather like Golem in the Tolkein stories. He is overlord of this dark realm called Nibelheim, pitiless and inhuman, enslaving his own people to dig ceaselessly for more gold. The dwarves are called Nibelungs. In most productions we see dark-costumed creatures scurrying around busy with some activity approximating mining. The gold itself is usually some kind of sparkly object like spray-painted foam rubber. The Nibelungs don't dance or sing, they just labor endlessly in Alberich's mines. This production took a different approach. The gold was portrayed by dancers wearing gold hooded body suits. Their faces and hands were also painted gold, so they were all identical. When I first saw this, I chuckled a little, but as I watched, I found myself buying into it. When unoccupied, the gold lay there inert, like rock. When the gold was commanded to do something, the dancers animated themselves and wiggled towards one another as if magnetically pulled. They press together and wiggle across the stage together, looking like shimmering drops of mercury. In the dimness, their shape as individuals melds into a visual blur. The blur takes on the appearance of a shadowy pile of golden stones. It is when we see Alberich's mine, a horror begins to seep into your awareness. Wotan, Loge and Alberich stand downstage. Wotan's trying to trick Alberich, to get the gold away from him. Behind them is the monstrous machine. It's a long conveyor belt stretching across the back of the stage. At one end, the long, lithe bodies of the dancers are strung up to the belt, to hang like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse. Their feet are hooked onto the conveyor belt. They are limp, like a dead thing. They swing along as the belt moves, and when they reach the other end, they're unhooked and fall into a heap. Behind and above all this is a huge movie screen where throughout the opera, visual images are projected to set the scene. Here now, we are shown a repeating image of giant golden eggs on a mechanical assembly line. They're shoved forward, dropped down, moved back, then slide away. On and on and on. All the time Wotan and Loge negotiate with Alberich, the machine works mercilessly behind them. It takes a few minutes for you to realize: the eggs are big enough to hold one of the dancers. The golden eggs are human ova, the golden dancers are human slaves. The gold is a slave to its master. The gold is the newborn slaves, who are set to work running the nursery, birthing, transporting, storing, perpetuating their own enslavement. A rush of references come: The Nazi death camps, of course. The generations of African-Americans born into slavery here, in the land of the free. Golem and his Precious. The Cylons of "Battlestar Galactica" deciding to suppress higher function development in their own servant-androids, the Centurions. The skinjob Roy, who impulsively saves Deckard's life even as he was dying himself, in "Blade Runner." We humans are pretty good at finding ways to justify dehumanizing those we consider "other," whether that's blacks or Jews or animals or artificial life. If it's not human, then it doesn't matter what we do to it. Right? Look what we do to our non-human brethren in our horrorshow laboratories, factory farms and slaughterhouses? If we ever discover real extra-terrestrials, we'll probably do our best to find a way to make slaves of them too. I won't see the Ring as being about a fight for the Rhinemaidens' gold anymore. I'm going to see it as a battle for the soul of humanity, with the price of slavery versus freedom weighing in the balance. Wotan's spear, his rule of law, I know now it's a covenant of trust between the gods and the other inhabitants of that world -- of what's right and what's not. Wotan should never have built Valhalla on credit. He should never have promised payment he didn't have. When he heard about the stolen gold, he should have seen it returned to the proper owners. But far worse than that, to me: When he saw what was going on in Nibelheim, he should have lowered the boom on Alberich one hundred and ten percent. He should have shut that operation down, broken the machines, caved in the mines. But he couldn't, because he needed that gold. As far as I'm concerned, his spear was broken that minute. ## Yes, it is a bit ironic to see the ultimate dehumanization of slavery as the root of the problem in Wagner's Ring cycle, since he was himself a massive bigot. But I do believe now that is the heart of it. The deepest depth of human nature, of man's inhumanity to man, is to take away someone's basic freedom, to make them into an object and then place value on that object and trade it, treat it like a commodity. Birth it, use it, kill it, throw it away. Of course, Wotan made himself into a slave when he promised something he could not deliver. It didn't really matter that his motives were good, sort of. His lying, cheating and scheming were not enough to save the world he wanted to protect. You can't save a good world by engaging in evil deeds. We're all supposed to be sad in the last minutes of the final opera when Valhalla falls into flames and destruction. But you know, now I think I'll feel OK about it. xx (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
9:58 pm	cultural whats-its .. The other night at our conversation class, we had a new student joining us named Zi from China. Turns out he is a cryptozoologist who has been studying the Chinese version of Sasquatch full-time for 9 years. He had a giant backpack from which he kept extracting pictures and articles and books. He started out showing me the scar on his ankle from being injured in an earthquake. Then he showed me the other ankle where he has 2 scars from a snake bite. It must have been one big snake cuz the teeth marks were an inch apart, I shit you not. Next to it was a scar as big as a silver dollar where he was gored by a wild pig. Sounds like this guy has had an interesting life! He has very little English, so one of the others served as interpreter for us. The Chinese call their Bigfoot the Wild Man. Zi has seen the Wild Man himself once, from a distance. He's got some of the Wild Man's hair with him; he's going to bring it for me to look at next week. If I was still friends with my ex-husband, he would be SOOOOOO excited. I tried to determine whether this man is here to look for our Sasquatch over on the peninsula, because Gray's Harbor County has the most Bigfoot sightings in the whole country by far. One of my favorite shows, "Monsterquest," has lots of episodes devoted to the various types of Bigfoot creatures around the world. Really, they're all over. The size varies, the color of its hair, but the general idea is the same. Personally I think it's another branch of the hominid tree, some last remnant of one of our biological cousins: maybe a Neaderthal or something we don't know about. It's hilarious how we always think we know everything. ## One of my favorite students is moving back to China. He and his wife and little daughter. He's been coming to those classes for as long as I've been there. He can make better money in China and his wife can work there. Here she can't. You can tell he's bummed out about going back, but I think most Chinese people don't expect to have a choice about things. I have always had such fun conversations with him. He's been in the US for over 3 years and so his English is pretty good. He's always asking questions about why English is so random. Like what's this about doubling the final consonant when you add an "ing" on the end of a word. Rafting. Camping. Parking. Barfing. But then why shipping, stabbing, transferring? One night he was cracking up about how we say a German word, "Gesundheit," when someone sneezes. Tuesday night he wanted to know why we use a Japanese word to describe a tidal wave. I just said well, we glom onto a lot of other peoples' words and they glom onto ours. That melting pot thing. Language is like that. Baowei comes from a very small village in a remote rural area where old traditions die hard. A lot of Chinese people who come over here are from cities, so Baowei's perspective reaches further even than theirs. Half the time he'd crack up at the stuff I asked him. "I come from a very small village, we don't have library." Like it was the funniest question on earth. Baowei's wife Dan came with him the first few months. She would always cover her mouth with her hand when she laughed, very self-consciously. I guess she'd been taught to do that. She outgrew it quickly. Baowei has been a post-doctorale research assistant at Children's Hospital here. He says graduate assistants are slaves. I believe it. He has no life cuz all he does is work. Dan went back to China for a year or two. He stayed here and worked and sent the money back to her. So they will move back to Shanghai, where Dan's family lives. They have asked me to come visit, but China scares the bejaysus out of me. I would be afraid to eat *anything*. And I'd be constantly afraid another Cultural Revolution would break out while I was there, and I would disappear into a Chinese work camp or something. I think that's probably like them being afraid of getting killed in the streets here by a demented gun-toting Vietnam vet or a drugged out crazy person or Hannibal Lecter. Too many movies. But still. xx (Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
11:42 pm	MJ, part deux -- the media feeding frenzy .. Sure, I too marvel at the media circus, the hooplah, saturation coverage. But what do you expect? That's what these people do: hype, overinflate, exaggerate, grind something into dust. It seems a bit late in the day to complain about lack of balance. Balance went out the window 10 years ago. Or fifteen. When I was growing up, I was taught how to deal with bratty kids throwing temper tantrums: Ignore them. Conventional wisdom was if they don't get any attention, they'll stop. That's the attitude I've taken toward the media this past decade or so. We can hardly blame them for doing what they do when we continue to watch, read, or otherwise patronize (read: reward) their behavior. I stopped taking the local paper around 2001. I haven't watched TV news, local or national, in a decade. I used to listen to NPR for the news, but I haven't even done that for a long time. Initially I did this out of self-protective motives, not from any high-minded objections about the quality of the news. At that time, I couldn't take all the bad news. I had to protect my fragile psyche. Thank God, I'm better now. But in the meantime, I learned something really interesting. You can live your whole life without knowing jack shit about what's going on in the news and it really doesn't make an impact on your day-to-day life. For the most part. There are some few exceptions, of course. Of course, the news media did suck in 2001, and it has gotten worse as time goes on -- both the coverage and the news itself. Lately, while working with students on the computers at school, I occasionally browse through the headlines on cnn.com. I always regret it. Almost all of it is horrible news, depressing, sometimes horrifying. I reserve the right to remain in ignorance about most of it. I could never have considered this earlier in my life. Back then I had a basic respect for most professional journalists. I used to work with them. I know they took their responsibilities very seriously. Also I felt obliged to stay up-to-date on current events and the news as a responsible citizen. I read the paper over my coffee every morning for all of my adult life. But then I stopped -- and nothing happened as a result. The world continues to spin on its axis. My brain did not atrophy and rot. Life goes on. Now I wonder why I have to do it at all. While we're plugged into the maitrix, we can't see that all of that information is a heavy burden. And we blindly load it up onto our shoulders just cuz they put it out there. Somebody somewhere makes a decision about what's important and we all fall in line and pay attention, dutifully read, dutifully watch, dutifully listen. If it's placed before us, we omnivorously, mindlessly consume it. That whole system is based on the assumption we can trust those people. In the past, I think we could, in general. For the most part. But things have changed, and the people controlling our national news media radar screen are a bunch of idiots, at best, or amoral, at worst. I want to select what I pay attention to. I'll choose who I listen to and about what. And 90% of what they throw out there is crap, utter shit you really don't need to know about, shit that depresses the fuck out of you, shit that you can't do anything about, shit that makes you feel powerless and miserable. They find the most sensational aspect to any story and trot it right out front, so that you don't have to be bothered with context or balance. You have to harden your heart and devise some way to numb yourself down so you don't walk away from the radio feeling depressed, angry, outraged, frustrated, fuming, overwhelmed, frightened or furious. Numb down or dumb down, those are your choices. The internet is by far the worst. It's a veritable mudslide of info-crap: junk news, blogs written by idiots, pseudo-news, meta-news, anti-news. I wish CNN would divide their home page in half, the left half could be called "The Serious News" and the right column would be all the stories about mothers who flush their newborn kids down toilets and pop stars who overdose on prescription drugs. I guess nothing about this is new, but the Michael Jackson "story" is just one more opportunity to notice how bad it really is. ## Do you suppose we could affect the quality of our country's new coverage by applying that lesson from childhood? Ignore them and they'll stop acting up? Are we capable of doing that? I kinda doubt it. As a country, we're addicted to junk news just like we're addicted to foreign oil and junk food. I'll continue to consume minute, selective portions of the news. I'll miss out on some important things here and there, but most of what I'll miss is crap. For the people bitching about the media overkill about MJ's death, as always, there is the easiest solution: turn the channel, turn to another station or turn the device off. ## I want to revisit this point: It's been a real eye-opener for me to learn how little we really need all this so-called information. Does it really make a difference in my own life? None whatever. Does my knowing about it change anything? No. Am I going to get involved to actually DO something about any of it? Hell no. The only thing I can do with any of this information is use it as grist for the conversational mill, something to bitch about with other people -- or argue about. If I want to know something about a specific issue, I seek out specific info, complex and detailed info, not junk info. I read books about it or watch documentaries, or investigate it on the internet or (gasp!) the library. Once every couple years, I get myself up to speed for the elections, like cramming for an exam. After that, I'm happy to go put my nose back in a book. xx (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
8:07 pm	Michael Jackson, requiescat in pace .. No, I was not a fan, but he was in the public consciousness through most of my life, so he felt a little like a companion. He was there, like he said in the song. I have a friend who was a big fan, and he is truly broken up and is mystified about how much loss he feels for someone he never met. Undeniably, public figures can represent something meaningful to us as symbols of something personal. But music in particular can bypass all the defenses we use to separate ourselves from the world and reach directly into our hearts in such mysterious ways. It's absolutely real. His music meant little to me, but it meant a lot to other people, and for their sakes, I felt bad when he died. When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. There wasn't money for buying records. At some point I laid hands on an old rickety family cassette tape recorder and kept it by my bed next to the radio. I taped songs off the radio randomly and made my own mix tape. Most of the songs were pot luck; I just recorded whatever I could by reaching the right buttons in time. I listened to that tape over and over. I wonder where it is now. Here's what I remember: Don McLean's immortal "American Pie" as well as the haunting "Vincent," the theme from "Shaft" by Isaac Hayes (can ya dig it?), Barbara Streisand singing "Since I Fell For You," "Day After Day" by Badfinger, and the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There." Back then I was unconsciously looking for blueprints for romantic love, and that song got filed into that mental database. Look at it: You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back Where there is love, I'll be there I'll reach out my hand to you, I'll have faith in all you do Just call my name and I'll be there I'll be there to comfort you, Build my world of dreams around you, I'm so glad that I found you I'll be there with a love that's strong I'll be your strength, I'll keep holding on Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter Togetherness, well that's all I'm after Whenever you need me, I'll be there I'll be there to protect you, with an unselfish love that respects you Just call my name and I'll be there If you should ever find someone new, I know he'd better be good to you 'Cause if he doesn't, I'll be there Gosh, isn't that what we all want from love? In a nutshell? No, he didn't write it. Berry Gordy did. His father probably stood over him threateningly to make sure he sang it just so. Poor little Michael did what he was told back then. So while he doesn't deserve credit for the song's sentiments, it was his voice we heard, all of us who learned how to love by listening to the radio back then. xx (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
11:09 pm	the more things change, the more things change .. A new season of "The Real World" started tonight, and it reminded me that I wanted to write about the last season. So I'm going to do that now. This show started out years ago as really *the* prototype reality show. Back then, the kids actually had jobs and needed to pay for their own long distance phone bills. People were more "real" -- they actually had a fat chick once. But day-to-day struggles weren't sexy enough, so little by little the producers reshaped the show to insulate them (and us) from that REAL real world. The last five years or so, the "cast" lives in a bubble where everything is provided, nobody has to work, and everybody's beautiful. Thus they are able to devote their full attention to what the people really want: sex, booze, and interpersonal drama. It's one long drink-puke-hookup fest. Last year's show, however, went a different direction. It was the usual cast of disparate types, cynically selected for maximum drama potential. But instead of the usual predictable dramas, here's what happened: -- Nobody hooked up with anybody. This is unheard of. -- The division (every season has a division) was between the girls and the boys. Usually it's factions of girls vs. girls. There was an almost junior high vibe. Stinky girls! Stupid boys! -- Traditional sex roles were reversed. The girls would sit in the kitchen playing cards, which infuriated the boys. The boys were mad at the girls for being such slobs. The boys wanted to TALK about the problems. The girls didn't. The boys asked for heart-to-hearts. The girls shrugged them off. The boys got extremely upset about Not Being Heard. When pranks were played, but it was the boys who lost their sense of humor and got all upset. The girls rolled their eyes and went back to playing cards. The predictable dramas never developed. The ex-soldier was perfectly accepting of the gay Cuban guy. The Mormon virgin guy (who's gay but doesn't know it) got along fine with the smart black chick. The jock weight-lifter dude had no problem relating to the transgendered girl. The other girls took the tranny into their hearts and constantly assured her she was every bit as much a girl as they were. The boys all pretty much figured out right away she'd started life as a he, but didn't have an issue with it. Except that she was a narcissistic slob. Which as we all know is a genderless affliction. There were the usual spats and misunderstandings which ballooned into giant glassware-crashing fights, but when they weren't fighting, this cast ended up being refreshingly against type. There was drinking, of course, but their lives didn't revolve around the clubs and bars. Each of them actually seemed to have interests and talents. This time, for example, one girl wanted to pursue hip-hop dancing. We went with her to an audition -- it was murder. The weightlifter guy was serious about modeling. The ex-soldier was a superb singer-songwriter and comedian. The non-gay guy was all about becoming one of those useless Hollywood interviewers. It was so nice to see some young people with some ambition. MTV wanted them to help promote the new movie about former Real World cast member Pedro, who died of AIDS, and nobody threw a hissy fit about having to hang out with all those fags. Even when things degenerated into serious stupidity, they all quickly abandoned their positions when disaster struck. The group was locked in an epic battle about... oh, I forget what, when news came that the ex-soldier was being stop-lossed and sent back to Iraq. He was devastated, but he quietly pulled himself together and set his mind to it. All hatchets were immediately buried. The last few episodes of the show became about something entirely different. His name is Ryan Conklin. He's there now. xx (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
8:18 pm	SIFF: Forever Enthralled .. My last SIFF selection was an "I Walk The Line"-type biopic of Chinese opera's equivalent of Elvis, I think. I'd say Pavarotti, but I get the feeling this guy was more like The Beatles were to England in the 1960s. I asked a couple of our Chinese students about him last night; they all nodded knowledgeably. He is or was a cultural icon. Hard to imagine, cuz he's basically a drag queen. His whole career, he sang female roles. I mean they were roles written for men, of course, but the characters were female. Western opera has women singing men in "trouser roles" -- but I don't think anybody ever made themselves into a household name that way. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyhow, though it was a good movie, I doubt I'll remember much besides the fabulous costumes. xx (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
2:37 pm	SIFF: A Woman In Berlin .. It's funny. With that last movie, I wanted to read what other people had to say about it. With this movie, I don't care. Why? I guess for me it has to do with source material, for one thing, and also how much I know about the subject itself. I wanted to know whether "Downloading Nancy" had been adapted from a book. The film said it was based on "true events" so I searched for info about those events and found nothing. A woman pays a man she meets online to kill her -- shouldn't there be some news stories about this? And to me, if a movie is made from a book, I have to take that into consideration when forming an opinion about the film. "Downloading Nancy" left me with conflicting feelings. I like to look at others' points of view when sifting through my own reactions. With "A Woman In Berlin," however, I'm clear about how I feel. I know it came from a book, I've read the book, I've read a bit about the book, and I know a bit about the topic. So I'm not really all that interested in others' opinions. Anyhow, all that's neither here nor there. ## When I read this book a while ago, I wrote about it here: http://lidarose9.livejournal.com/143053.html And so, the verdict? Thumbs up. The movie did a good job of translating the story to the screen, for the most part. I was prepared to dislike it, cuz there's a lot they could have done wrong. The setting was right. The German soldiers holding Berlin at the beginning of the movie were old men, the only men left. Once they abandoned the city, only women, children and a few old men remained. Berlin was filled with bombed-out buildings. Rubble blocked the streets, and dead bodies lay everywhere. The air was choked with dust from collapsed buildings. The people cowering inside those buildings were terrified, numb with fear and hunger. Their world had come to an end. The Russian soldiers could easily have been turned into cartoon caricatures, brutish villians or twisted psychos. But the movie portrayed them the way the book describes them: ordinary men, farm boys, business men, teachers, all far from home, exhulant yet desperately tired. Very quickly we see they are not monolithic, one thing, Russian. They are Ukrainian and Mongolian and Georgian, all trying to be one unit, but still very different as individuals. The commanding officers are straining to maintain control at times. We see their sense of vindication, sometimes angry, sometimes grateful or tearful -- that the Germans who'd betrayed them, who despised them, who thought they could roll right over Russia the way they rolled right over so many other countries -- they showed them! The Germans who murdered women and children, who starved prisoners of war to death, who thought Russians were like dumb animals -- they'd had another thing coming! You can sympathize with them. They were our allies after all. But you also sympathize with the women hiding in those dark basements. The movie skates over some details I'd have liked to have seen, but those choices are forgivable. The movie also reworks some plot points, I suppose to create a more conventional story arc, but it remains true to the spirit of the book and those changes don't bother me. They are quite minor. The film's main character represents the book's author very well. She is not a superhero, but she speaks a little Russian, can keep a cool head, and has some courage. She has a sophisticated understanding of human nature and is determined to find a way to not starve, not get shot, and not get raped by every man who can run her down every night. So it becomes very simple, very soon. You're starving. You can't escape. The rape can include a brutal beating: being roughly shoved down onto hard cement, choked, kicked, punched, twisted, face ground into the gravel, bruised, scraped, and torn. Or you can take him to your bed, lay down and close your eyes for a few minutes, and then he is grateful and falls asleep, and next time he comes, he brings some food. You pick. So she forms an "alliance" with the Russian commander, which ensures that she and the people in her building are left alone and get some food. The people from her building are grateful, but also despise her. She knows. She can't afford to care. You know the rest of the story. Her lover is transferred, by which time some order has been restored in Berlin, so the worst of the danger has passed. Her husband comes home and when she gives him her diary to read, he despises her and leaves her. She held onto her diary for a few years and then decided to publish it anonymously. The book was condemned as degrading to German women. Only many years later, after she was dead, did we realize how brave this woman was for telling the truth about what happened. I remember when I read this book, it was one of those books where you say to yourself, "Why the HELL has nobody made this incredible story into a movie?" Well, someone did. If you get the chance to see it, go. xx (Comment on this)