I read In Cold Blood back in the late Sixties, not long after it was published. I read it and never forgot it.
Psychobabblings of a Middle Child
Saturday, April 8, 2023
1001 Books
I read In Cold Blood back in the late Sixties, not long after it was published. I read it and never forgot it.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
The Movie Tar
In the first scene, which runs for almost
twenty minutes, Lydia Tar, played by Cate Blanchette, is being interviewed by
the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. Throughout the interview, we see Tar, the
conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, as accomplished, brilliant and, for
want of a better word, haughty. In the second scene, with a fellow orchestra
conductor (a male this time), she moves beyond haughty to condescending. And in
the third scene Tar is teaching a seminar at Julliard where she berates a young
student after he tells her he’s “just not that into Bach.” This time she comes
off as bitchy.
It
is at this point that the movie begins to feel like a puzzle. There are too
many questions. For instance: a woman named Christa is mentioned. But who is she
and why is she at risk? And why, as I
watch Tar progress through the movie, do I feel as though I am watching a skein of yarn unravel?
The
answers come slowly. At first, as guesses. And then with an undeniable
certainty as the story reaches its incredibly dramatic climax.
And
I am left gaping.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Till, the Movie
“Hate is a virus in the blood…”
Roy Wilkins
I
heard the words quoted above while watching the movie Till, a story
about a Black boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and lynched while visiting
his cousins in Mississippi in 1955 because he whistled at a white woman
This powerful movie begins by showing us the excitement and vulnerability of a 14-year-old boy as he gets ready for his trip. Three days later, Emmett was dead.
After his
body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River, authorities in that area tried
to have him buried anonymously. It was Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted
her son’s mangled body be returned to Chicago and the casket remain open during
the public viewing.
During
the movie, Medgar Evers, who accompanied Emmett’s mother to the trial that
followed one month later, said the federal government was trying to pass a law
that would make lynching a federal hate crime.
“It
wasn’t passed until this year,” I whispered to my daughter, who was sitting
beside me in the theater.
Why had it taken so long? I wondered. As I sat
there watching the movie, I thought about the noose I’d seen on the Capitol
steps during last year’s January 6 riots and wondered if lawmakers had to
experience hate for themselves before they acted.
“Hate
is a virus in the blood.” Wilkins words reverberated in my head throughout the
rest of the movie.
“Does
this story need to be told again?” someone has asked. The answer is “yes.”
Emmett
Till was only 35 days older than I was in 1955, and I have known about his
murder almost since the day it happened. His brutal death is a story
that must be told again and again and passed down until racial violence and injustice in this country are finally eradicated.
Thursday, August 4, 2022
Termoli, San Giacomo, Venice and Padua!
From Rome to Termoli with its view of the Adriatic,
we drove “just over the hill” to San Giacomo degli Schiavoni, the town with the long name and only three streets. The town with a population (today) of less than 1500, where my father lived between the ages of three and eighteen. We went to find the house he built in the Sixties.
Afterward, we drove to Venice.
I didn't like Venice. I didn't like the canal. It was just a body of water, and I'd seen better bodies of water in Paris six years earlier, and in Switzerland as we drove passed the mountain lakes near Luzerne.
But then we went to the old part of the city, to that part of the city that had no water and no tourists either. To that part of Venice (called Mestre) where I ate smoked salmon and (would you believe) Philadelphia cream cheese on a croissant, and where I bought a blue dress I fell (quite literally, but didn't get hurt!) in love with.
Then we went to Padua because I wanted to pray in the church dedicated to my patron, Saint Anthony.
And finally, we started the long drive back to Darmstadt!
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Arrivederci Roma!
We have spent our five days in Rome and have just arrived at a seaside city close to the town my father grew up in. It is heavenly here, much nicer than it was in Rome.
Oh, Rome has all the sights, all of what Irving Stone once called “the agony and the ecstasy.” It has the Vatican:
The Trevi Fountain:
a view from the top of the Spanish Steps:
And, of course, the Colosseum:
But Rome was hot, hot, hot - which is why all my photos were taken at night- and this little city, called Termoli, has little more than a beautiful view of the Adriatic, and a delicious sea breeze!
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Florence!
Thursday, July 14, 2022
On the Beach
I’m on a beach. In Delaware. A mini-vacation before the longer one I’ll begin next week. I’m sitting under an umbrella, most of the time with my eyes closed, listening to the voices of strangers while a breeze skips across my skin, moving from one shoulder to the other.
There are people all around me - an older woman with short gray hair sitting alone with a book; an Asian family of three - mother, father and a teenage son who never leaves their side; a young black man with long thin locks that frame his face majestically; and a man behind me talking incessantly on a cell phone, his voice rising and falling with the cadence of the waves, a voice I’m surprised I miss after he packs up and leaves.
Children screaming. Women laughing. All of it muffled by the mantra of the waves that lull me into bliss, until finally, I pick myself up to head home, to finish packing for a trip across this ocean to Germany and beyond.