Sunday, May 23, 2004

LEARNED HAND AND GUIDO CALABRESI’S WIFE ARE NOTED AT YALE GRADUATION WHILE THE BUSH FAMILY LAYS LOW

Today marks the first day of the graduation ceremonies on the Yale campus. I understand that every effort was made to keep politics away from the podium. President Bush, though in New Haven, is not going to make an appearance at any of the ceremonial events. His graduating daughter, too, skipped the speeches today.

…And so she failed to hear filmmaker Ken Burns say the following (this from the AP):

Without mentioning Bush by name, Burns drew parallels between today's political leaders and the Iraq war, versus Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, which he chronicled in an award-winning film series.

Both wars threatened to tear the country apart, Burns said.

"Steel yourselves. Your generation must repair this damage, and it will not be easy," Burns told the seniors.

Burns quoted famed jurist Learned Hand as saying, "Liberty is never being too sure you're right."

"Somehow recently, though, we have replaced our usual and healthy doubt with an arrogance and belligerence that resembles more the ancient and now fallen empires of our history books than a modern compassionate democracy," Burns said, to applause from the 1,300 graduates and their families and friends.

…But I wonder if she noted the protesters outside the home of the University president (where the Bushes were staying for a while this week-end)? And who exactly was protesting? From the AP release:

The crowd was a mix of students and older Yale graduates.

Anne Tyler Calabresi, 69, of Woodbridge, said she was protesting on behalf of herself and her husband, Federal Appeals Judge Guido Calabresi, a Yale graduate and former dean of the Yale School of Law.

"I'm profoundly worried about the way this country is going," she said. "And I'm furious about the lies George Bush has told to us again and again. He has led us into a war that is destroying our reputation around the world and creating implacable enemies around the world that we didn't have one year ago."

TORNADO WARNING AND OTHER WEATHER-RELATED DIRECTIVES

A message from the local weather radio station (currently appearing on my computer):
While driving tonight... do not enter flooded roads... underpasses and intersections. Stay away from flooded rivers... creeks and culverts. Remember... turn around... don’t drown.

I appreciate the good intention behind this advice. Moreover, I should not be the one to comment, since I am sitting safely home rather than being on a road where creeks and culverts are flooding. Here, the only danger of flooding is in the solarium… Of course, I am at the moment in the solarium… Does the warning thus apply to me as well? Should I turn around and type backwards, with an eye toward avoiding a rush of water from underneath? If they're telling me not to drown, I most certainly want to be a good citizen and do my part to keep my head above any rushing waters.

HOW CAN SO MANY PEOPLE CONFIDENTLY MAKE UP LISTS?

Everyone does lists: favorite books, movies, names, favorite everything! Even the new blogger format asks this of you: name this, describe yourself thus. To me, this is an impossibility. My favorites, my personals, they’re always in a state of flux.

Take movies: when I was 15, I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet 45 times (I counted), paying each time the requisite Polish zloty (I lived in Warsaw then) over and over to sit through it. The colors, that youthful, zesty Juliet, Mercutio’s stunning movements, I could not get enough of it all. [Oh! I see that John McEnery, who played Mercutio, is currently appearing in a very minor role in “Girl with a Pear Earring!” I should see if he still evokes the same rapture, in his, ahem, slightly older countenance.]

But not for long. “R&J” got dumped once I discovered Lelouche’s ‘A Man and a Woman.’ [God, remember when he sings in the background ‘A l’ombre de nous’ – in the shadow of us; or when they come together but neither is ready, each lost in the death of their former love; oh, such a film! It was, btw, the Grand Prize winner at Cannes, in the 1960s… I can see it now, the cinematography is so slow, their love develops through the minutia of small, improvised gestures, glances; nuanced, gentle, hesitant, with exceptional acting; such a brilliantly artful film.]

That lasted until I went through my movies-in-the-shadow-of-WW II phase – especially ‘The Garden of Finzi-Continis,’ a 1971 film that blew me away. I dream about scenes from that movie still. [It was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Even Pauline Kael liked it! Again, a contemplative, initially subtle movie, that takes you through the lush Italian gardens slowly, and then plunges you into the horror of Fascist persecution of Italian Jews.]

And so on. A favorite? No favorite. It doesn’t work that way. A favorite may be defined by the context, or by the state of readiness to be mesmerized, to fall in love, to be driven insane. Often it has more to do with me, than with the movie itself.

I KNOW THAT SOME OF MY GOOD FRIENDS AND CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS ARE VEGETARIAN BUT…



This guy is dinner!-->

The brazenness, the audacity, I mean, come on! That patch of ground is decimated as a result of his shenanigans.






<--I found this rabbit dish on the Net: "Brochettes de lapin au fenouil et aux herbes de Provence." A few cubes of red pepper, cucumber, a dash of olive oil and we're set.


One more leap into the dianthus patch and I am sharpening the knives.

TO DUST

A week ago I was sitting at terminal 2E at the Paris airport thinking how nice it is that all Air France flights to and from the States arrive and depart from this brand new structure. (To and from Tokyo as well.) It is (was) amazing: all glass and air and space, curved into a hall that muffles sound and creates (created) a feeling of a contained universe: expansive, but not overwhelming.

I have another series of flights coming up this summer and I was looking forward to again being routed through there: 2E, the terminal of choice. But it is no more (see story here).

IT’S RAINING, SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

The tile floor of the un-solarium has suspiciously dark-looking grout. Normally it is not dark. It is dark on the rare, rare occasions when the ground underneath is so saturated that the water has nowhere to go but up, right through the cement, into the grout, eventually flooding the room. It has happened twice before in the 17 years I have lived here. I am near that stage again. Dark grout = wet grout. I WANT THE RAIN TO STOP! Enough already.