Current Affairs – Page 6 – Don't Gel Too Soon

Battles and Bougainvillea in the South of France

maquis — Maquis of the French Resistance

There’s lots of history around here – spread out among the beauty that distracts from most of it. For the second time, today in the village of Borme Les Mimosas, the flowers overwhelm. Borme wins the best in show award for the region regularly and it’s not hard to see why. But before I share the loveliness, here’s a cool fact: the WWII resistance fighters known as Maquis got their nickname from the dark green plants and shrubs that covered huge swaths of ground and offered perfect hiding places – so perfect that the brave men and women they sheltered came to share the name.

War history haunts the fields and French villages crammed with memorials and statues, villages also overflowing with flowers, climbing the walls, overtaking public walkways and making very turn in the tiny streets a wonderful new surprise.

So for the second and probably the last time, here are the award-winning blooms. This time: the flowers of Borme des Mimosas.

Multicolored Bloomd og Borme — Multicolored Blooms of Borme

Bourn flower petals — Flower petals fill a tiny square

Bourn Bougenvillia path — Borme’s purple pathway

Bourn covered passage — Flower-decked covered passageway

How’s that for a treat and a break from all the awfulness that seems to haunt us lately. Whoever urged us to stop and smell the roses – well. . .

Barcelona and The Spanish Civil War Revealed

This poster recruiting women to join and support the anti-fascist militias was just one of the remarkable graphics and photographs shared during this tour of civil war history in Barcelona.

The tour’s guide, Nick Lloyd offered a passionate, rich, information-crammed account of the war and the complicated situation that preceded and followed it. The topic is thrilling, but it’s the teacher – the guide – who makes it real – and he does just that.

B Nick 2 — Spanish Civil War guru Nick Lloyd delivers his lessons and brings clients to the edge of their “seats” — actually, feet….

The stories are stunning. The first: the International Brigades from all over the world who came to help, including the Abraham Lincoln Battalion – the first integrated US military force, the second, the alliance among the police, the workers and the community – anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals – all trying to stop the viciousness that was the emerging Fascist machine. The next, individual courage demonstrated among so many under cruel, sadistic conditions.

The women, of course, did find a place in the movement. This first poster is the emblem of the Anarchist women in Spain. The second, was for the “people’s Olympics” conducted in protest of the “real” 1936 games in Nazi Germany. Young people came from everywhere for the event and many remained to support the struggle to sustain democracy and keep the Fascists at bay. And the third – a shattering portrait of American “Negro” contributions to Spain’s struggle.

Very few stories combine romance, politics, evil, idealism, danger and courage as well as those surrounding the Spanish Civil War. Some of the stories were so moving they were hard to bear. To the people of Barcelona, they are still real, and tangible and tough to hear and recall. For the rest of us, they bring pain and inspiration and sadness at how often similar tragedies have entered our history. And never seem to have taught anything to those who came after.

Grazie Roma

Two very full days in Rome, jet lagged but determined. The Coliseum and the Forum captured our imagination in new ways as we learned more about the lives of early Romans, their gladiators and their rulers. Jewish slaves helped to build the deadly theater. The famous Arco di Tito – Arch of Titus – bears images of a menorah because along with those Jewish slaves, captured at the fall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the conquering Romans brought treasure, including Jewish artifacts, and chose to represent them on Titus’ arch.

We did so much more but our first night on the Sojourn is almost upon us and we need to be up early to see Napoleon’s summer home. Here are a few more pix of Rome.

OH and Grazie Roma? It’s the best sports anthem ever, and the TODAY SHOW’s 1985 Rome week closed with Antonelo Venditti singing it, along with huge crowd of happy Rome residents, as we all celebrated on the Spanish Steps.

Robert Altman’s 40-Year-Old “Nashville,” Keith Carradine, Lily Tomlin and a Song

Robert Altman‘s Nashville is a perfect movie. This very sexy song from the film, written and performed by Keith Carradine (currently playing Madame Secretary‘s (CBS) boss, the President of the United States) won the best original song Oscar in 1976.*

He is singing to Lily Tomlin, who plays a white gospel singer with two deaf children; despite her marriage, she is as isolated as the metaphor suggests. Their attraction is clear and heady: as he addresses his performance to her it’s clear they will find a time – just once – to be together. It’s a lovely moment in a harsh story.

The film is political, angry and brilliant. It would be remarkably relevant today; you could say the demagoguery and tea-party-like characters were “ripped from the headlines” if the film weren’t 40 years old. See for yourself; in addition to a wonderful film, you’ll get to see Carradine and Tomlin knock your socks off.

*This iconic 1979 winner from Norma Rae , “It Goes Like It Goes”, never really got the attention it deserved either – and in some ways they’re so similar.

When You Ask Me About Smart Social Media – This Is IT!!!

The great Daniel Silva using the news of the day to subtly remind us, through this Facebook post, that his new book is coming (sort of) soon. Nice job Daniel!

Hedgie Steve Cohen an unwitting player in art sale controversy

Billionaire art collector Steve Cohen, one of the most successful hedge fund managers ever, has become the unwitting catalyst in an alleged international art fraud stretching from New York to Monaco and Singapore.

The alleged fraud was uncovered during a New Year’s Eve dinner between Cohen’s New York art consultant, Sandy Heller, and Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev — when Heller told his pal that Cohen had just sold a Modigliani painting, “Nude on a Blue Cushion,” for $93.5 million. NYPOST.COM

Daniel Silva

3 hrs ·

For fans of Gabriel Allon and The Messenger, life imitating art…

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Remember When Claire Underwood Was a Princess?

OK I know this is facile and a little silly maybe, but House of Cards starts Friday and when The Princess Bride theme slid onto my Spotify feed last week, I remembered that Robin Wright, (Princess Buttercup!) is now the notorious Claire Underwood: monstrous friend, cold manipulator and, of course, ruthless First Lady.

Art imitates life, right? This is a great reflection – hugely distorted and grotesque though it is, of what has happened to so many of us — women and men –particularly but not only in public life.

We walk such thin lines most of the time. We flee innocence and dependence in pursuit of ourselves. We watch what appears to be the slow crumbling of every trusted institution. We struggle to learn how to be — and remain, moral, whole adults, able to stand alone, able to love and share, able to support, able to seek and accept help when we need it. And still, we feel – women and men and our country itself – that we’re losing what’s best in us.

Claire has jettisoned most of these qualities, if she ever had them. The conspiracy she shares with her husband has tethered her to his malignant pursuit of power at any cost. Their “arrangement” is beyond toxic; even a desired pregnancy must be sacrificed. What would Princess Buttercup – or even the Dread Pirate Roberts – think of these two?

The Princess Bride was released nearly thirty years ago, in September of 1987. It’s possible that was a nicer time. The 5 top grossing films that year were 1) 3 Men and a Baby (corny/cute), 2) Fatal Attraction (boiled bunnies – not so cute), 3) Beverly Hills Cop 2 (bloodshed and mayhem amid the jokes – also not so cute), 4) Good Morning Vietnam (Robin Williams, war, music, grief and rebelliousness celebrated in the film but not so popular today), and 5) Moonstruck (love, family, fairytale new beginnings.) Also among the top ten were the venal comedy The Secret of My Success (7), Lethal Weapon (see Beverly Hills Cop above) (9) and, perhaps a distant cousin to The Princess Bride, Dirty Dancing (class, romance, first love, politics, music) (10.) Cumulatively not as dark a worldview as in House of Cards, but not all sweet little stories, either. Even so, add Dirty Dancing to The Princess Bride and Moonstruck and 1987 offered us at least three fairy tales. No fairy tales dare show their faces at the Underwood caucus, do they?

Even more interesting are the films IMDB denizens took the time to vote for that year. 1) Full Metal Jacket (more war), 2) Predator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and, 3)The Princess Bride herself! Behind her, The Untouchables (Costner as Ness), Lethal Weapon (see high grossing: cop comedies), RoboCop (robot – um – cop), and – again – Dirty Dancing. Wrapping up the top ten, Spaceballs (funny space stuff), Wall Street (“Greed — is good.”) and The Running Man. (more Arnold.) Probably Oliver Stone’s Wall Street comes closest to our current Netflix White House.

Last year, when the Underwoods took over the presidency, the highest grossing films, not a fairy tale among them, included six sci-fi/fantasy films including three from Marvel, a witch, a Hobbit and some Transformers. The list concludes with two animations, an American sniper and one Dystopian teen rebellion.

Those garnering the most IMDB votes included eight sci-fi/fantasy films including five from Marvel, an end-of-the-world time/space and time travel adventure and two outer space monster invasions. That list concludes with a fancy old hotel, icky, nasty Gone Girl and … a different Dystopian teen rebellion.

Not altogether sure what all this means except that we’ve lost much of our 1987 capacity to cherish whimsy and gentle humor, Grand Budapest Hotel or not. OH and that we need all that escape these days — really badly. If I were to guess, I’d say what we’re escaping from is a world where, although certainly not in the White House, the Underwoods have taken over, for real.

The War on Science? Anti-Vaxxers Trump the Right

We’ve all been ranting about “The Republican War on Science: anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-God-knows-what-else: all those conservatives refusing to see what’s in front of them.

Well, my friend Erin Kotecki Vest, whose immune system is seriously compromised, posted on Facebook yesterday from a pharmacy where she’d gone to pick up a prescription. Next to her was a man who had brought with him his son, who has whooping cough! That’s kind of the equivalent of waving a gun at her.

Whooping cough (Pertussis) can usually be prevented through a DPT injection; although this kid’s vaccination status is unclear, the more people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, the less safe the rest of us are. This is not an observation, it’s an epidemiological fact.

Meanwhile, measles is haunting California, from Disneyland to affluent Marin County and other Northern California communities*. And the folks fighting the science? We have met the enemy and they are us: Whole Food progressives who refuse to accept hard evidence that the “vaccines cause autism” research was a fraud.

Imagine how scary this is for those of us in California (which always leads the way for the rest of the country by the way, so don’t write this off as California crazy.) I have three grandsons under four; two of them are under 6 months old. They can’t have MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunizations under 12 months. So here we are: Daycare at the gym? Children’s concerts? Family restaurant dinners? Story time at the library? Would you go?

What I want to know is, if it’s wrong to deny the theory of man-made climate change and wrong to deny the theory of evolution – both of which have been repeatedly found to be true by researchers, why is OK to risk the lives of entire communities of kids when the decades of research have proven these vaccines to be safe and reliable? What’s the difference? And which side’s “war on science” is doing the most damage to us and our families — and threatening our children and grandchildren — right now, today?

*The chart above is from the Council on Foreign Relations via the LATimes.

Paris to Strawberry Fields to City Hall: Needing Each Other

It was impossible to watch Sunday’s enormous march through traumatized Paris with any detachment; events that touch us all invariably drive us to gather, so we felt it too. Stating the obvious, certainly, but, as I grow older and my inventory of remembered public sadness grows — JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Oklahoma City, 9/11 — it remains remarkable.

I am somewhere in this crowd, gathered for a vigil and moment of silence six days after the assassination of John Lennon. Imagine all the people, living life in peace he wrote. Grief and anger at his loss drew us then, as, so many years later, grief and anger summoned the people of Paris.

I am somewhere in this crowd, too: another Sunday, in 2014, 34 years later. We’re in San Francisco, not Paris, but once more have come together, a continent and an ocean away from the millions in France. We too mourn, and rage, and join together for comfort — but look. Thirty four years later, John Lennon is still present, asking the same questions, demanding, even as we mourn, that we do better.

That’s How I Got to Memphis – Music and the News

Will, Charlie's grandson and Jim sing That's How I Got to Memphis — Will, Charlie’s grandson and Jim sing That’s How I Got to Memphis

Stuck in my head ever since the end of The Newsroom, this song really seems to want to spend today with me, which would be fine if it didn’t make me so sad.

It won’t matter much if you didn’t like the show, or if music doesn’t carry you forward and back or if you don’t mourn the decline of integrity as a core value of journalism, but the use of it at a funeral for Charlie Skinner, (Sam Waterston,) the keeper of the flame, the leader who defended the honor of every journalist and story, is a spectacular metaphor. YouTube won’t let me embed it, but here it is if you have the patience to link, it’s worth it.

Aaron Sorkin says Charlie represented the loss of decency offered by each of us to the rest of us, but for me, as Newsroom closed down, he stood for the rules that made journalism credible and critical to our country*; rules eroded in surrender to commerce and coarseness and fear. Even so, The Newsroom closed with the first moment of yet another day’s show. As Sorkin said, “They’re going to keep doing the news.” It will, though, be with the loss of just a little more of the combination of honor and power, the Charlie Skinner, that had protected them, and us, for so long.

*The Atlantic called it a funeral for “old media” but I’ve lived in “new media” for decades now and the show wasn’t about that change – at least not to me.

Did We Thank Title IX on Thanksgiving?

There’s a beautiful breakfast buffet at the hotel we stayed at for Thanksgiving weekend; Wednesday morning was a pretty thin crowd so there was a lot of easy chat from table to table and in the buffet line. Just in front of me at the omelet station was a very tall young woman — around 30 or 35.

“My husband and I together aren’t as tall as you are!” I teased. “Did you hate that in high school?”

“Oh, no” she replied, “I played basketball so I was fine about being tall.”

“WOW – Thank you Title IX” I laughed.

You can guess what came next: she’d never heard of 42-year-old Title IX and had no idea what it was or why it had been so necessary or what would have become of her basketball opportunities without it. Like my most-admired friend Veronica Arreola, we all need to help the girls coming up behind us understand how far we’ve come and how very far we still need to go.