Spring break and a hidden past

With the last class over for the week, my spring break has begun. Some students stock up on sun screen, others on printer paper (conversation from yesterday: “Yes, your outlines are due in March, of course they are, what did you think? If you can’t do an outline by the end of March, can you do the full research paper by the end of April? No, don’t answer that, let me live with my illusions that you’ve been making consistent progress throughout the semester.”), I stock up on lists of things to read, write, tidy, pay, mail, post (new one this year!), watch, eat.

A reader suggested that, since I have a lot of New York coming up in my next year, I should pick up a copy of “Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts” by Leduff. Wanting to learn more about the book, I googled.

The book comes highly recommended. It’s about the forgotten men and women of New York. Writes one reviewer: “It is about laborers, dreamers, hustlers and immigrants from the city’s uncelebrated ranks of working stiffs. There’s the man who replaces light bulbs at the top of the Empire State Building, the last licensed trapper within city limits, the harbor policemen charged with the grisly task of removing dead bodies from the river, the black Santa Claus at Rockefeller Center, and the last civilian lighthouse keeper on Coney Island.”

So far so good, but what about the author? He’s a correspondent for the NYT, okay, cool, and what else?

I come across an article about Leduff in the San Francisco Magazine Online (here). Well now, Leduff appears to have a history of allegations of plagiarism. That’s not good. Are the accusations substantiated? Some are, others are borderline plagiarism (more like “idea theft” rather than text theft). Leduff appears to have a reputation for arrogance and a personality that is “bigger than life.” Suddenly I am wary.

On the one hand, this racy portrayal of the author should make him controversial enough to be, ipso facto, interesting. But suspicion, now running rampant, causes me to wonder about the veracity of some of his stories. So do I read the book, or reject the author and therefore his work? Seems like a harsh result based on a reading of an online magazine. Still, maybe I’ll begin my New York immersion with the other recommended book for now – “Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan” by Lopate. And I wont google the author until after I've read the book.

Get well notes

Thanks to all readers who wrote with deep concern and regret over what happened to the car (post March 7, below). [sample email: “eek!” “I feel terrible about your car’s mugging.” “Madison police are to be feared!”—okay, is there a story behind those words? “next year, park it in my block; nothing ever happens in my block” etc] I am sure if my torso got bashed in and my extremities were ripped out you’d all be equally horrified (wouldn’t you?). It is indeed reassuring that you exercise such deep feelings of empathy for the fate of an older Corolla. You’re not the type to do in an ailing grandmother or a sick dog --I admire you for your compassion.

Health update: unfortunately, the Corolla’s recovery is stalled. She’s turned temperamental ever since her brush with violence. The other day, for instance, she wouldn’t let me open her trunk and I had to undo the backseat and crawl in through there just to retrieve some groceries. I’m thinking it’s post traumatic stress, which should abate with the passage of time.

European identity

As May 1st draws near –the day 10 more countries, including Poland, officially become part of the EU- the number of articles in the press mentioning countries of Eastern Europe grows. Today, the NYT revisits the theme of apprehension about the great merger, evident both among the 15 current EU nations and the 10 still waiting on the side (here).

It’s a “refresher” article, in that it says nothing new, repeating ideas that have been much analyzed in recent months, especially in the European press (with all due respect to its author, because John Darnton is probably the most experienced western correspondent out there writing about Poland). But I liked reading it anyway. And, what’s old hat to me may need restatement for those less focused on that part of the globe.

One little paragraph in the piece hits the “belonging” (v. displacement) issue that I’ve blogged about previously. In describing the importance of a European identity, Darnton writes:

For others it becomes an effort to define what it means to be a European. Quickly, such conversations turn to intangibles, to talk of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and definitions offered centuries earlier by Dante and Voltaire. Some talk of a feeling of belonging that overcomes them in a Central European coffeehouse or of alienation when they visit the United States.

Yes, it is paradoxical that oftentimes you feel most “European” when you visit (live in) the United States. I feel somewhat vindicated, in the way that you feel vindicated when the NYT parrots something you have said again and again. I’ve often been asked what I miss most about Europe. For lack of anything specific to say I’ve answered that it is something about feeing the shadow of history at every corner, and living in a coffee-house culture. Darnton has spies in this house.

My life is my work

There are people who do not think about retirement. They never want to not go to work. As long as the feet move and the mind stays on track 82% of the time – the world of work continues (I’ve noticed that academia, the judiciary and the papacy attract this level of commitment). Sometimes this is a good thing. So many accomplished scientists, writers, academics never lessened their level of commitment to their field until they were well past 90. But this is not the majority. Most people, even the “love my work!” diehards want to give it up at some stage of their lives in favor of fly fishing or bird watching (no insult intended: I would right now love to watch birds; I don’t know the first thing about birds, but it seems like a fine activity, as long as it does not include watching crows, see post March 9).

My father was forced to retire early, prior to when he would have considered himself ready (age: not even 60); my mother began a “career” of sorts when she decided to learn word processing – this was when she was approximately 70. She quit when she felt she couldn’t take one more winter in Wisconsin, forcing a move to warmer places at the age of 78.

Today, the WashPost (here) reported the following: “Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who will turn 80 this year, acknowledges that he is thinking about retirement. But he will not say when that might come.” That’s a hint that it might come soon, isn’t it? The article states further that Justice Rehnquisit is not the oldest member of the Court. Justice Stevens will turn 84 this year.

I am impressed. But also, I am a little nervous about it all. There are the mental alacrity issues to worry about, sure, but there are also the human dimensions. Who should make decisions of this magnitude, the justices (professors, popes) who have passed the point where the issue would have any impact on their lives? Surely at some point the act of stepping down is more admirable than staying put.

Thanks, Madison Police

I take back my friendly notes on your warm and fuzzy approach to helping those in trouble (see post below, March 7). You are MEAN! I have a crippled car. Shattered glass is lodged in the pavement around it’s wounded body. The sole comfort it receives is from the heartening rays of the WARM SPRING SUN. Emphasis should be on SPRING SUN, because there is not a trace of snow on the ground and I want to believe we are seasonally there. Call me an optimist, but the weather is on my side and the daffodil tips are clearly visible underneath the birch tree.

But in the eyes of the Madison police, we are in a chilly frosty cold spell of a “hit you in the gut” way of life, and a calendar that says “nope, no spring yet.”

Okay, have it your way. I will pay the $10 ticket you stuck in the broken-down-in-spirit-and-in-form little Corolla. We didn’t move her to the other side of the street last night. She needed a rest. We thought you’d understand. Obviously not, mean-spirited cops that you are.

Snail news

My Polish friend and reader asks if I knew of the fact that the Slow Food organization now has a Polish chapter. I did not. But my respect for the work of this group is monstrously huge, and I was thrilled that Poles were grouping together to revive an interest in growing, producing and eating foods with attention and respect for tradition, taste and natural ingredients. My friend described some of the intriguing ways of crafting (Polish) quality foods (for example: making sour pickles in barrels dunked in a river). It would be great fun to see this. Next time.

In the meantime, moving back to this side of the ocean, let me quote from a favorite website, SlowFood.com, where I found this note on the Coppola wines:

Sofia Coppola toasted her Best Screenplay Oscar for Lost in Translation with the trendy new wine in Hollywood, Sofia Blanc de Blancs. This sparkling wine had its official debut on February 29 at the Oscar parties. It is composed of 70% pinot blanc, 20% sauvignon blanc and 10% muscat canelli and is made by Frances Ford Coppola’s winery, Niebaum-Coppola Winery in Napa Valley. A bottle costs $19, but the wine also comes packaged in single serving magenta pink cans with a straw attached, called the Sofia Mini, sold for $20 per box of four.

The Sofia Mini sounds too odd. And it hardly is fitting for a Slow Food temperament: sparkling wine out of a can, with a straw? Thumbs down!

Ter ror ism and birthdays

As you can see from the title, I have reached new levels of google paranoia.

Yesterday I attended a fascinating lecture on Europe’s reaction to nine slash eleven. The speaker contrasted the UK and Germany and attempted to find explanations for the differences in the national alert strategies adopted in these two countries. The UK has implemented a vast array of anti-ter ror measures that extend well beyond what was in place in Northern Ireland at the heyday of its period of violence (I always think that the current political climate in Ireland is a forgotten Clinton legacy). Germany, for perhaps obvious reasons, is treading with greater care, putting civil liberties on the table each time a new measure is proposed.

Having this talk fresh in my mind, I was interested to read a comment in the International Herald Tribune today about some of our own (US), less talked of anti-ter rorist measures. Let me reprint the humorous-in-a-dark-sort-of-way article here (copyright caveat: you can pick up the text on the Net here), because I know that most readers don’t bother following links (I speak from my own experience)—it is written by a retired correspondent living in England:

LONDON: My mother had a birthday coming up, and she loves English cookies. So we boxed up a selection, all under the irreproachable Duchy Originals hallmark of Prince Charles's Prince's Trust, and set out to mail them to Massachusetts.
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The woman at the Post Office wanted to know if they were home-made cookies. If they were home-made, we could have just sent them. But since they were bought, we would have to go through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's part of the war on ter rorism, you see. She referred us to a Web site: www.access.fda.gov.
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"FDA industry systems," the site proclaims. Created "in response to the Bioter rorism Act of 2002."
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Can this daunting rubric accommodate Cookies for Mom? I have my doubts. But I'm relieved to find a four-page section, "Sending Food Gifts Through International Mail."
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It quotes the rulebook: You can send foreign food gifts if you warn the Food and Drug Administration in advance and get a Prior Notice Number to put on the package.
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"Who is authorized to submit prior notice?" it asks, rhetorically. "A prior notice for an article of food may be submitted by any person with knowledge of the required information. This person is the submitter."
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Resigned to going through the same rigmarole as someone shipping a freighterload of Duchy Originals, I pull up the five-page "Prior Notice of Imported Foods."
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I get my account number and password, and start applying online for a Prior Notice Number. As I turn in my submitter information, I'm stopped. The system doesn't like something.
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Rejected, I send an e-mail to Help, and two days later a woman apologizes for the problem and asks for my account ID and password so it can be researched. I send those, and I hear back that it's going to their "test environment." Please allow two to three business days.
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Meanwhile I decide to try again on the submitter information. Now I can't even get to where I was before! Can the Food and Drug Administration have learned what I'm thinking of it?
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The Help woman says: "No one else has reported this problem. Try restarting your computer."
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I do that, and again I'm turned away.
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Has anyone got a recipe for home-made shortbread?

Lawyers who write on the side

I met a lawyer today who is a mystery writer on the side. That seems almost mundane and therefore uninteresting, but just to get your attention, I was told that he is the winner of the Poe prize for the best new mystery short story of the year. This not insignificant accomplishment clearly impressed ME and so he gave me his card. I was going to look him up once I got home, but then I noticed that the card was (mistakenly?) actually that of an insurance agent in California. So what now? Track him down to let him know that I have the number of the person he needs to call for his insurance question? I looked up the award winners on google for the past several years and none of them sound like they might have been him.

The thing is, I had a very interesting conversation on the art of short story writing. If I find out that this is not based in reality, because the guy is really a fake, then are some of my thoughts on writing, formed during this talk, suddenly less valid?

Audacious emails, pt. 1

This new feature will give you an idea of the type of people who write to me. I’m not talking about blog reader email and I’m not talking about spam – i.e. email generated by the truckload to anonymous addresses—I’m talking about email sent to ME PERSONALLY. Of course, I will protect the confidentiality of senders. As I said, I do not make things up on the weblog [yes, the “triplets of Bellville” post (March 8) is true—subsequently I decided that this person simply must like the feel of all those “ll” sounds rolling off the tongue]. In posting a message, I wont tamper with grammar or style. I will, however, change names and facts slightly because 1. I’m a nice person and 2. I don’t want to get sued.

Email message (A):

My ex wife kidnapped my son 4 yrs ago. She fled to Austria with him. My son is now 10yrs old. Last year was the first time she allowed me visitation with him (in Austria). She has sole custody of him in Austria. I have custody of him in the U.S. She said if I change the court papers here stating she has custody of him in the US she would allow him to come for a visit here in a few months. Is there an easy and inexpensive way I can change the court documents so they would be vague but state that she has custody and I have visitation rights? When my son arrives here I would of course want to wipe it out so it’s back to my having sole custody. Please if you could help me I would deeply appreciate it. Or if you know of one of your students that could help me out with the paper work....or what ever you could do. I am very desperate and don't have much time to take care of this.

I should have replied thus: So let me get this straight: you’re asking a law prof and students, future illustrious members of the legal profession, to help you figure out a way to “adjust” court records so that their “message” would be fake but look real? And you want me to do this quickly and with little expectation of getting anything for my illegal and immoral acts, with the exception of possibly a criminal charge that’ll land me in jail along with homicidal drunk-drivers and convicted drug felons? If your ex siphoned money from a bank, would you write a prof in the business school asking for help so that you could do the same? I’m not denying that child kidnapping is a tremendous problem among divorced parents. But your devious plot, leading to the “recapture” of your son (possibly a lynching party, to go after your ex later on?) sounds like a BAD IDEA that should be PUT TO REST.
Copied to: Board of Professional Responsibility with a Post-it saying: “please put this in my file as evidence of the fact that I am a morally and legally upright attorney, that I do not take bribes and I turn away potential clients who ask me to do illegal acts. Thanks, NC”

Why do some people do great things?

We ask this about people such as Schindler – who risked his life to save Jews from extermination during World War II. Schindler’s List comes out today on DVD, hence there is a renewed sense of curiosity about the man himself (Schindler died 30 years ago). Why did he do it?

Do we ask this because so many Germans did the opposite? So that his act of goodness stands out like a single flower would in the rubble of war? Maybe we expect too little of ourselves… We marvel at greatness, as if it truly is the unanticipated surprise gift.

The year Schindler’s List won the Academy Awards (seven, including Best Picture and Best Director) was a good year for movies. Could I even find a dissenter who’d argue that the movie was not the most significant film experience of the year? I’m thinking no, and that’s a good thing.

From Blackmun to Black Birds and Blackboards

I’ve come to appreciate that in the suburbs, waking up to the gentle twitter of birds really should be translated as waking up to the screaming noise of black birds (not of the Agelaius phoeniceus sort, but CROWS).

Crows can make life on our block an offensively dirty and miserably loud experience. The birds build their nests in the tall trees that line the street (minus one tree – chopped down, my fault, see post below) and leave their droppings on chosen driveways. They love ours. No good reason, they just do.

They ravage the garbage pails each week. Thanks to them, I know that our left-side neighbors always order meat toppings on their pizza, and everyone up and down the block knows that we went through a summer fad of eating fruit juice pops. There’s actually more that they know, but what the block knows, the blog need not reveal.

This morning, the birds were at it from dawn and it isn’t even garbage day. I heard that one environmentally correct way of dealing with them (apart from brutal murder and I am not there yet) is to fly a plane overhead and make exploding noises. These days that’s just about the worst idea that you could have. So, I am working on developing coping strategies instead.

But mainly I am hurrying to review my lecture for this morning. It is an introduction to the issues surrounding child support. This is the one topic that I cannot do without using numbers and a calculator (an anathema to law students), because you cannot demonstrate the legal fictions and absurdities created by otherwise rational (one supposes) legislators without entering into the math of it. This in turn means that since I am technologically of the “behind” sort, I have to expose my other behindedness – meaning I have to turn my “back” to the class and write things on the blackboard.

I hate doing that—perhaps my loathing of it signifies my not wanting to lose control of the classroom. And in addition, when I turn my back to students, I am imagining that I have gotten myself into some absurdly compromising state, much to everyone’s amusement. This isn’t sheer paranoia. Four years ago, I was walking to my office in the morning and a random student on the sidewalk came up to me and said: “uh, I think you’d want to know, your skirt zipper is undone.” I was so GRATEFUL to her, but ever since then, I feel compelled to check every time I am turning my back to the class. The act of checking itself is probably completely indiscreet and produces gales of guffaws. What can you do.

To days gone by

Remembering today the Les Mis lyrics:

“Drink with me to days gone by,
Can it be you fear to die?
Will the world remember you
When you fall?
Could it be your death
Means nothing at all?”

So much has been said about the newly released papers belonging to Justice Blackmun that I needn’t add yet another blog entry on the topic. But there is one small file of material that, to me, is particularly intriguing. It has to do with the friendship between Blackmun and Burger.

Can you sustain a friendship in light of significant political and professional differences? In an interview some years back, Blackmun admitted that his mother was right to warn him that his lifelong friendship with Burger might be challenged once they were both appointed to the Supreme Court. Blackmun hadn’t believed her initially, but after a few years on the job, he changed his mind.

How can years of shared experiences be undone in this way? Is it because each Justice was convinced that the work product would survive into posterity, lasting far longer than any personal connection ever could? One can only speculate. Still, it is saddening to read about the details of the breakdown. Friendship is circumscribed, defined by each of the participants. Why would it dissipate so late in life? Reading the materials now, one can see the decline in spirit and commitment. For me, it is one of the sadder stories that emerges from the Balckmun papers.

What can be made of this?

[statement of intent: I am going to continue with my determination (see Saturday post) to favor text over visuals in the blog, but this post just would not work without the graphic. A new resolution is thus made: I will stick with text only, unless an OVERWHELMING URGE, or necessity lead me to incorporate visual imagery]

A friend has taken to inserting an odd phrase into the conversation. We will be talking about not anything in particular, and he will say “the Triplets of Belleville.”

[It’ll be like this, for example: “So far, March hasn’t been a very tempestuous month; in fact it has virtually manifested halcyon elements a summer season [nc: ignore the choice of words – this stuff is normal for him] perhaps obfuscated a tad ‘the Triplets of Belleville’ by the intemperate cloud-cover, wouldn’t you say?”]

I really don’t know what to make of this. I’m not even sure he saw this film. Perhaps the figures have made an impression – of the sort that only ten years of psychoanalysis would begin to unravel, in which case I don’t want to question him about it, in the same way that one doesn’t ask someone with 11 fingers why they have been blessed with an extra.

Sometimes I think that winter puts us over the top. We say and do bizarre things, which can only be attributable to our almost uncontrollable desire to pilfer, ravage and destroy anything in sight, just because we have such anger within, all the result of severe light deprivation.


I’m going to give him some time. By next month, either his head will have cleared and we will again converse quite normally, or I’ll rebut with an equally obscure and irrelevant phrase (like ‘ooee, oo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang’ --from Alvin and the Chipmunks maybe? Not terribly sophisticated, but undeniably noticeable) and see if he responds. This may open the door for a reasonable discussion of the problem.

One line

Meet Krtek, hero of Saturday's post (see below), the mild-mannered bandit that stole my calm over the week-end.

Why did I fail to post images? Tonya (of blog fame) stopped by my office and we went over the steps I followed, versus the path she had taken. The difference? One line. I was missing one stinky little line. That's it. Computers are insane in their fastidiousness!

Late night run-in with the Madison police

It’s not what you think. No one called the police on me. I called the police on THEM.

Late the previous night someone took a club to the car that we park on the street, shattering and ripping out side mirrors, antennas, and generally leaving their vampire-tooth gashes up and down the body of the vehicle.

Being reticent to go out on days when March gusts of wind make the outdoors inhospitable, none of us noticed this car-nage until late in the evening, when our visitor decided that she had to get out and see the world [our visitors often feel somewhat isolated in the suburbs, what with the nearest hub of commercial activity consisting of a strip mall with not much in it beyond a Bob’s Copy Shop (an essential to suburban living) and a Hooters Bar (no comment)].

The car is a nifty little Corolla that once belonged to my mother. It got left behind when my mother decided to move to California to become one of those weather-obsessed (“is it as miserable as I remember it in Wisconsin right now?”), radically-leaning (words such as imperialism and socialism can be heard among the clatter of soup spoons in her cafeteria), gray panther types (power to the aging!) of Berkeley. In the typical way of an older driver, my mother had never put many miles on the car. Thus, even though the vehicle is old (not quite as old as she is, but gettin’ there), the odometer would have you think it’s virtually off the showroom floor.

Feeling frugal with this inherited machine that is now mainly driven by visitors, we have never bothered to insure it much – though of course, we insure against the damage to the planet that may be caused by its gentle movement around town.

As soon as we noticed the shattered glass and the twisted metal last night, I called the non-emergency police number and had the following conversation with the officer-on-call:

nc: “I’m calling to report that someone bashed in our car.”
Police: “A real shame. Do you know who did it?”

nc: “I have my suspicions..”
police: “Good. Would you like to give us some names?”

nc: “My suspicions are only suspicions. I know better than to accuse people without evidence of their guilt. However---- now that you ask, I do know that the car has an enemy. Last year a driver ran into its parked little sweet body and we made her pay substantial sums to get it fixed. She may well hold a grudge.”
Police: “What’s her name?”

nc: “No no, you’re not going to make me say it.”
Police: “Well, would you say that there’s more than a $1000 worth of damage now? Because if it’s less, why then we can just mail you some forms and you can self-report!”

nc: “What, no house-calls anymore?? In any case, it’s more than $1000. It costs $5000 these days to repaint a scratch on a fender. Of course it’s more than a $1000! The car has been walloped by a maniac with a clear homicidal impulse.”

Several hours later, a very young, very friendly officer came to our door. I had hoped he would come with great fanfare, lights shining, siren blasting, to scare the bejesus out of the people who did it, should they be watching from behind a shrub. But no, all was quiet, save for our barking Ollie who obviously has not yet learned to be intimidated by a blue uniform.

The officer wrote up the damage and gave me some good advice as to where I can get some salvaged replacement parts (for those who are curious: at the dump). I asked if he’d had any other calls of this nature lately, just to see if our peaceful existence is coming to an end (today: quiet suburb, tomorrow: drug-trafficing, gang-infested mean streets of the south side of Chicago type -- our last place of residence prior to moving to Madison). He answered “well, I typically work the downtown beat. It’s a little less calm down there, you know. Nice little block you got here.. noticed there’s a pretty little house for sale up the street?”

Maybe he’ll be a neighbor one day soon. Good. Our battered little car will feel safer. So far, being surrounded by houses where people’s jobs run from stamp-collecting (that is seriously the income-generating occupation of our immediate neighbor) to film-making (where the flamingos reside, see post in February) hasn’t kept vandalism at bay (mailbox bashing is a neighborhood past time for the young and restless).

Tomorrow, think red carnations

I would have thought that Hallmark would have picked it up in a big way: what other holiday is there that'll sell the cards, between February 14 and March 17? And, if you are not of the shamrock heritage, even March 17 doesn’t work. So why hasn’t March 8th been heralded as the holiday to end all holidays?

In my years in Poland it was perhaps the most important of the winter celebrations: a day for the proverbial red carnation-- International Women’s Day. I have never thought that the day received much attention in the States. Most years, I can hardly remember it’s here. Do I miss the red carnation I would have gotten in Poland from male colleagues, friends too? No. But I miss the significant attention brought on this day to women’s issues. It was an excuse to get the nation to focus, if only for a day, on persistent gender inequality and discrimination, particularly in the home and workplace.

No, I never did much care for the carnation: it was a mummified flower that seemed to withstand days on end without water. It would last the same amount of time whether you left it in plastic cellophane, neglected in the closet, or placed it in a milk bottle on the kitchen table. But March 8th was just a touch early for the tiny violets, the lilies-of-the-valley, or the forget-me-not bouquets that would be sold by old women from full buckets at every major intersection in the city just a month or two later. This was March, and so it had to be the carnation.

Waiting for a call

There is a reason why the phone is not a favorite of mine. I’m always wishing that it would ring, or, more often, wishing that it would not.

This time, while waiting for a friend and reader to call back, I was staring at the closed phone book, and I saw on the cover of the White and Yellow Pages a little pop-up ad announcing: Homeland Security Guide; see “H” for Homeland Security.

Thinking that perhaps there might be some things I could learn about – like what I could be doing even now to protect myself, for example, I flipped through the pages in search of this Guide. First I checked the red business pages: nothing. The listing went from “Homedco” to “Homemade.” Next, yellow pages: nope, straight from “Home Warranty Providers” to “Homeopaths.” Well, of course, I should have checked US Government: no, nothing again. It moves from “Highways” to “Horses” (horses?? Oh, it’s the phone number for “wild horse and burro adoption”).

I knew I had problems adapting to new technology, but this is a phone book, damn it. I should be able to manage a phone book. Good thing there isn’t a real crisis.

Up up and away

A story caption in the NYT caught my eye –“If You’re Thinking of Living in Exile...” it read. I had assumed it was targeting those who will be disenchanted with the results of the November elections (up to 50% of the population after all, or, in the style of 2000, perhaps even more). In fact, the story is about the lives of exiled dictators.

Could the world do no better than offer a home on the Riviera to the “Cannibal Emperor” Jean-Bedel Bokassa (from the Central African Republic), who, in his time, had the reputation of killing then eating his enemies? Or how about Idi Amin Dada, whose milder sin was to rename Lake Victoria the Idi Amin Dada Sea, and whose great atrocity was that he allowed a quarter million of his country men and women to be murdered? Why would the international community leave him to bask in his Saudi Arabian retreat?

The article in the Times reminds us that lest we rush to criticize the French or the Saudis for taking in Bokassa or Amin, we might recall that the US gave Marcos a posh villa to run to on the Hawaiian coastline not too long ago.

Trump trumps Pepin

Did Donald Trump consult chef Jacques Pepin before snaffling the Apprentice title for his show? Pepin wrote the memoir in 2003, so it’s not as if it’s a text from a more distant past. Or, maybe Pepin and Trump are one and the same? I don’t really know the show – I tried watching once, but truly could not stay with it.

How about the publication? This is from the Apprentice, the book: “I was thirteen and a half years old when I quit school…My parents somewhat reluctantly—but wisely—went along with my decision. To be sure, I was an “old” thirteen, hardened by the war. At an age when most kids don’t know how to cook their breakfast, I had already worked in four busy restaurant kitchens.” And later: “I had loved to forage for food in the forests.” And: “my tastes have remained simple. I like straightforward food that is well seasoned and elegantly presented without fuss or deception.” Finally: “On television I wanted to teach viewers essential techniques of cooking… I became convinced that the only requirement for getting my own (TV) show was raising half a million dollars, an undertaking that I knew nothing about.” Okay, that seals it: different men, a world apart.

BTW, in trying to find out more about the Trump show, I came across the site where you can apply to be on the Apprentice in the second season (here; on that same site, you can also read about THE DONALD. The Nina did not do that). Only four days remain, thus you should act quickly. If a friend got on – I’d watch.

A long detour along roads poorly described

From my earliest posts here, I’ve admitted to being a fan of travel writing, consummately working through shelves of essay collections in bookstores, searching out pieces that may offer a touch of whimsy or a more serious reflection, sometimes pointedly witty, sometimes ponderous and brooding.

But over the last few years, reading travel narratives has been a bit of a disappointment. So many books, magazines and publications contain journalistic, snappy texts that are functional and impersonal, with a minimal amount of asides, so that the pieces no longer meander [oh, say, along a buckwheat strip of yellow blossoms in a Slovakian village, where the only wealth is in the mouths of residents whose rotting teeth have been replaced by gold crowns, and where the most coveted piece of clothing is likely to be a tight fitting Frank Zappa t-shirt, worn on Sundays only, of course], but GET YOU THERE RIGHT AWAY, with bold purposefulness.

And I’m not thinking of travel guides (these have improved considerably over the years). I’m thinking of the classic travel essays, on topics as different as Parisian booksellers and the disappearing hutong neighborhoods of Beijing. For me, travel writing should not be hurried or terse. But neither should it distract with an overabundance of history or geography. These forays into factual accounting have cropped up especially in works of traditionalists of the genre–for example, writers for the NYT Sunday Travel Section—who are more likely to immerse you in historic asides these days than to offer a personal statement or an insight on a destination.

So, every quarter, I look forward to the NYT Sophisticated Traveler, and each time I toss it aside with great resignation.

But not today. Messud’s piece on Washington – a city where she once lived and now remembers with the kind of nostalgia that is reserved for places one has left behind—is sentimental but not sweetly so: “Perhaps perversely, I miss Washington’s almost puritanical streak, that it is no place to window-shop, no place for luxuries: all the fancy stores have long been pressed out to the suburbs, leaving the city center for industrious pursuits like the making of laws and money—but leaving room, potentially, too, for thought, rather than stuff.”

Mewshaw’s essay on pre-Olympic Athens hoists you, along with the author, into the cab which he takes from the airport: “the cabdriver smoked, as does apparently every man, woman and child in the country, and he fretted with worry beads as he tuned in bouzouki music on the radio.” The cab hits a gridlock. Mewshaw observes “It’s estimated that Athens has more than 2 million automobiles and 500,000 motorcycles, and at any given moment all of them appear to be stalled in anaconda coils of exhaust. For more than 20 years, motorists have, in theory, driven only on alternate days, according to whether they have odd- or even-numbered license plates. But rather than halve the volume of traffic, this law has prompted many people to buy two cars.”

And finally, there is the Livsey piece on wombats and kangaroos. It begins thus: “As a girl, growing up in Scotland, I knew exactly how to reach Australia. All I had to do was dig deep enough, and eventually I would emerge on the other side of the world, where everyone walked upside down and strange animals would hop to greet me. I was a determined child, but after several attempts yielded holes only a few feet in depth, I admitted defeat.”

Perfect essays. Travels writing took a detour, but now seems to be finding its animus and wit. That’s great news for the addicted reader. The future looks good again.