Category Archives: real life

***** An Officer and a Spy

Posted on by

Emile Zola, DreyfusBy Robert Harris (read by David Rintoul) –This novelization of the infamous Dreyfus affair in turn-of-the-20th Century Paris starts slowly, then builds powerfully. French Army Officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was sentenced to life imprisonment on aptly named Devil’s Island on flimsy and trumped-up evidence that he was a spy. As the book’s narrator, Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, gradually discovers, a spy remains in the French military command and, if so, he begins to suspect and then believe that Dreyfus is innocent.

As in the present day, it isn’t so much the original crime—in this case, convicting an innocent man—that creates all the problems, it’s the cover-up. The book is full of real-life characters of the time with whom I was passingly familiar—Georges Clemenceau, Émile Zola (J’Accuse!), Picquart, who rose to be Minister of War after Dreyfus’s release, and of course, Dreyfus. Learning how they out-maneuvered the army’s top generals is riveting, even though you know they ultimately succeed. Alphonse Bertillon, the originator of concepts of scientific policing reappears, with some dubious handwriting analyses; his contributions were explored more fully in The Crimes of Paris, which I read last year.

Louis Begley’s New York Times review would have had the book provide more context about French society at the time, though some of his examples are to me pretty clear: the high position of the army in society and “the extraordinary wave of virulent anti-Semitism that had washed over France since the 1880s.”

The Dreyfus case still resonates today, not least because of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe from both the left and right wings and the growing Muslim communities. Coincidentally last weekend, I attended a reading and discussion of a new play by McCarter Theatre’s Emily Mann, Hoodwinked, about the shootings at Ft. Hood and the friction between tolerance and intolerance within radical Islam and outside it. Looking back on Dreyfus, it’s easy to see where the players went wrong out of prejudice, self-interest, and absolutism. We see events in our own time through these same distorting lenses and, therefore, unclearly.

***** The Civil War of 1812

Posted on by
War of 1812

Naval Engagement off Kingston: H.M.S. “Royal George” pursued by Commodore Chauncey in U.S.S. “Oneida,” November 9, 1812.

It’s probably hard for any reasonably well-informed American to know less about the War of 1812 than I did when starting an audio-read of Alan Taylor’s 2010 The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies.(Taylor just won his second Pulitzer Prize for history for a new book.) The extent of my knowledge was irritation that the British burned the National Archives, making my genealogical researches more speculative and numerous trips to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where I’d visited Fort George (British) and Fort Niagara (American), on the shore of Lake Ontario, and barely separated by the Niagara River. There, I’d heard a bit about Canadian heroes Sir Isaac Brock and Laura Secord. Despite growing up near Detroit, I escaped unscathed by information about the role of that city and the Michigan territory in the war or the legendary naval battles on the Great Lakes.

This book was remarkable in making this conflict so interesting and relevant. Taylor describes it as a “civil war” for several reasons. For one, Irish immigrants fought on both sides and the British claimed these former nationals as their own; for another, the uncertain allegiances of the northern New Englanders and Canadians alike, with allegiances to the new nation not as firmly fixed as we might think and much trade and movement across the weak border. Within the United States, Federalists (leaning toward Britain) and Republicans (anti-British) were at odds throughout, maneuvering against each other, thwarting efforts to recruit and equip an adequate army. Militarily, both sides made disastrous tactical mistakes and miscalculations. For example, the Americans thought the Canadians would welcome being “freed” from the oppressor Britain, but for the ordinary citizen of Upper Canada, the side to choose was the one most likely to end the war soonest.

Especially intriguing was Britain’s calculated use of Indians to terrify ill-trained American soldiers, who had such fear of the natives they would flee an impending battle rather than engage. And, while the conflict is often described as “a draw,” in Taylor’s analysis, the losers were the Indians, because the peace did not secure their lands, and the British no longer supported them against American expansion and territorial expropriation. A fascinating read.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Blackfish

Posted on by
killer whale, Blackfish

Being in the pool with killer whales during performances, as in this photograph, is now banned (photo: farm1.staticflickr.com)

The Northwest Natives call them Blackfish. Tilikum is a Chinook word meaning “friends, tribe, nation”—exactly what Tilikum, the killer whale, has been denied. Finally, last night I watched the Magnolia Pictures documentary Blackfish, aired by CNN last October and November, which tells the story of Tilikum and the three humans he has killed.

Blackfish has sparked renewed questions about the capture, confinement, and training of cetaceans—especially killer whales—for human entertainment. From 1976 to 1997, 77 whales were taken from the wild in Iceland, Japan, and Argentina for aquariums and aquatic theme parks. Some additional number died during attempts at capture. Now about 50 of these animals are on display throughout the world, and a large number of them were born in captivity.

Not surprisingly, SeaWorld Orlando, where Tilikum lives, has many objections to the documentary (and provides only half-answers to the questions it raises), but their ultimate concern boils down to money. This was apparent in comments at an April 8 hearing on California Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s proposal to make it illegal to hold killer whales in captivity and to use them for performance or entertainment. According to NPR coverage, the President of SeaWorld San Diego “reminded committee members that the park is an important part of the regional economy,” with 4.6 million visitors last year and making $14 million in lease payments to the city.

SeaWorld’s lobbyist was even more blunt, saying that “if the bill passes, SeaWorld would just move the 10 killer whales it has in San Diego to other parks.” Such a restriction would cost the park hundreds of millions of collars, and SeaWorld “would expect the state to make restitution.” In short, he said, “if you ban them, you buy them.” The Assembly committee called for further study.

SeaWorld officials label Blackfish as propaganda and unbalanced. If by that, they mean the film is powerfully made, emotionally gripping, and makes a strong point, they certainly are correct. Filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite, however, says she is not an animal rights activist and developed an interest in the story of Dawn Brancheau’s 2010 death by wondering, “How could our entire collective childhood memories of this delightful water park be so morbidly wrong?” Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%.

Cowperthwaite provides background about killer whales in the wild that enables viewers to appreciate why the idea of penning them in pools is inherently flawed. Subspecies of orcas establish matrilineal, multigenerational family groups that are the most stable of any animal species. Throughout their lifetimes, individuals are never away from their family group for more than a few hours. Several related family groups form pods of perhaps 20 animals. They range great distances and are found in every ocean. Each group’s preferred foods, vocalizations (dialect), hunting methods, and behavior is specific to that group and is passed from generation to generation. In other words, the groups have an identifiable culture.

Adults are big (up to 26 feet long and weighing six tons or more), mobile (often traveling 100 miles a day), and fast (swimming nearly 35 miles per hour at top speed). They have big brains, especially well developed and for analyzing their complex environment and identifying prey. In the wild, females can live to age 90, and males to age 60, but their average lifespan is 50 for females and 29 for males. In captivity, they generally live into their 20s, despite the supposed advantages in feeding and veterinary care the parks provide.

Contrast this picture with their life in captivity. Generations are separated. Whales from different groups (culture and language again) are penned together. The environment is not particularly stimulating. And, if they don’t do what their human trainers expect, food is withheld. Killer whales, an apex predator, may find this baffling and unacceptable.

Intelligent, curious, playful, problem-solving–all these positive traits have helped create the friendly, seemingly affectionate Shamu image. In truth, although there are few documented attacks on humans–and no fatalities–by the tens of thousands of killer whales in the wild, the small number of captive killer whales reportedly has made nearly two dozen attacks on humans since the 1970s, four of which have been fatal, and three of which fatalities have involve Tilikum.

Born in 1981, Tilikum is the largest orca in captivity, 22.5 feet long and weighing 12,000 pounds. He was responsible for the drowning and battery deaths of a trainer in British Columbia in 1991, a SeaWorld Orlando intruder in 1999, and SeaWorld Orlando trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010, when he grabbed her arm and pulled her under the water. The latter death led to new safety procedures at SeaWorld, although the parks have unsuccessfully appealed OSHA safety penalties and are looking to install new technologies that would let trainers return to the orca pools.

Ironically, the sea parks that have fostered public affection for these giant creatures and cultivated interest in their welfare may also have created the environment in which concern over their captivity has again erupted, 20 years after Free Willy.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

A Failed Censorship Attempt

Posted on by
Afghanistan war, military, Mike Martin, Intimate War

(photo: Hurst Publishers)

The UK Ministry of Defence has been trying to stop publication of a book it requested on the British Army’s 13-year campaign in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The MoD commissioned captain Mike Martin of the Territorial Army to write the book, entitled An Intimate War – An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict 1978-2012, but does not like its conclusions. It therefore held up publication for almost a year, under a policy governing books and articles by serving military personnel.

The ongoing dispute  prompted captain Martin to resign from the Army, and the book will be published soon. In the U.S., it’s available from Amazon for pre-order, coming Friday, April 18.

According to an account in The Guardian, “the book presents a bleak picture of British and American involvement, claiming that troops failed to grasp that it was primarily a tribal civil war.” As a result, Martin says, the troops “often made the conflict worse, rather than better. This was usually as a result of the Helmandis manipulating our ignorance.” Involvement in Afghanistan has cost the Britain 448 deaths, many of which occurred in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and one of the country’s major poppy-growing regions.

Martin’s book argues that the Taliban were not the “main drivers of violence,” but rather that the conflict was driven by the personal motivations of Helmandi individuals, including local politicians  and tribal chiefs. This made the conflict akin to a civil war  between clans, “rather than a clash between the ‘good’ government of Afghanistan and the ‘bad’ Taliban,” says The Daily Mail.

Martin wrote the book as part of his PhD work for Oxford University and was one of a very few British soldiers who speaks Pashtu fluently. The book was the result of six years of research, involving 150 interviews conducted in Pashtu, and it begins with the problems the Soviets faced in Afghanistan in the 1970’s.

The Daily Mail story says “his criticism of intelligence blunders and the failure of commanders to understand the conflict is said to have embarrassed officials.” Although the Ministry opposes the book, Major General Andrew Kennett, who commanded Martin’s unit, said: “I think he has done the Army a great service by writing this,” and General Sir David Richards, the recently retired head of the Armed Forces, who commanded international forces in Afghanistan between 2006-07, said, “I sincerely wish it had been available to me when I was ISAF Commander in Afghanistan.”

Martin plans to donate proceeds from the book to military charities.

Three years ago, the Ministry of Defence bought up and destroyed all copies of a book by Sunday Times journalist Toby Harnden: Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan. Harnden’s award-winning book also was about the British deployment to Helmand, and after deletion of 50 words, it was reprinted.

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Hollywood Directors’ WWII Mission

Posted on by
Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi Party

1934 Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg (photo: wikimedia.org)

The wartime experiences of five major film directors are recounted in the Mark Harris book, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, which has garnered impressive reviews. The book describes the military contributions of five directors near the top of their careers: Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Huston. David Denby gives a nice summary of Harris’s book in the March 17 New Yorker.

(The pre-war activities of Tinseltown’s studios were pretty bad, according to two widely discussed books last year. The studios held back on films attacking fascism or condemning persecution of the Jews, in order to continue doing business in Germany, according to Ben Urwand in The Collaboration. As a result, “Nazis were all but invisible in American movies at the time when depicting their savagery might have done the most good,” said Dave Kehr in a NYT review of  Thomas Doherty’s Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.)

Capra was put in charge of Why We Fight, a series of training films for U.S. recruits, at the request of Gen. George C. Marshall. Capra saw this assignment as a democratic response to Leni Riefenstahl’s inspiring propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, depicting the 1934 Nazi party congress and the aims and ideals of the Third Reich.

The five directors approached their assignments differently, but in every case with impressive results. George Stevens’s documentary approach to recording the post-war liberation of Dachau became two films used at the first Nuremberg Trial.

What the directors produced upon their return home was irrevocably colored and deepened by these experiences, including Ford’s They Were Expendable, as Denby says, “a film suffused with an elegiac melancholy that is unique in American movies”; William Wyler’s The Best Years of our Lives; and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, in its way, the answer to Marshall’s challenge: a vision of a way of life “for which Americans would have gone to war,” says Denby.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Finding Vivian Maier

Posted on by
Vivian Maier, street photography, Rolleiflex, camera

(photo: wikimedia.org)

Another Netflix possibility, if it’s not playing in your local theater, Finding Vivian Maier, (trailer) is the story of the prolific photo-documentarian whose work came within a hair’s breadth of being lost forever.

According to a Wired story by Doug Bierend, the dedication of the filmmaker, John Maloof, in bringing her story to the public is a tale of equal parts dogged detection and appreciation of the joys of street photography.

A five-star rating from Rotten Tomatoes: 97% of critics liked it! If it’s as good as the documentary of legendary street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, it will be a gem!

Many of Maier’s works can be seen on the Artsy website’s Vivian Maier page.

UPDATE 10-22-14: Good rundown of the increasingly complex copyright claims and counterclaims swirling around Maier’s work in this Jillian Steinhauer article. I wonder how many of the men now vying for rights to her work would have given a nanny with the photography bug the time of day when she was alive?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

There Are No Children Here

Posted on by

By Alex Kotlowitz – This is an award-winning, almost 25-year-old book that I’ve wanted to read for a long time (thank you West Windsor Library book sale!), documenting living conditions in the Henry Horner Homes a now-demolished housing project of the notorious Chicago Housing Authority. It is credited with making a substantial contribution to reforms in public housing that have attempted to reduce the isolation of the poor, combat violence and drug abuse, and improve building maintenance and living conditions for those who remain in public housing. Chicago-based media impresario Oprah Winfrey produced a made-for-tv movie version in 1993.

The book focuses on one large family, particularly two young brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, ages 10 and seven at the outset, and follows their lives for three years. While Kotlowitz says he didn’t start out with the goal of public housing reform, no one who read the book—then or now—can fail to be affected by how public systems have failed so many American children. A 2011 interview with Kotlowitz revisted his experience writing this book and the subsequent fates of Pharoah and Lafeyette.

This year’s Peabody Awards recognized coverage of the continued neglect of low-income teens in WBEZ (This American Life) radio documentaries about Chicago’s Harper High School (Part 1 and Part 2) and the PBS documentary about a Washington, D.C., high school, 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School. But, as Chicago Public Radio’s Linda Lutton said, “I would trade every prize in the world for them to live in a different reality.”

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Guilty Until Proven Otherwise

Posted on by
house fire

(photo: Wikimedia.org)

4-28-14 update – New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that the number of innocent people on death row is about twice that of previous estimates–or about 120 of the approximately 3,000 people on death row in the United States, as reported by TIME. “Each quest for mathematical clarity only serves to underline the troubling paradox at the heart of the modern death penalty,” says reporter David Von Drehle. “We want the option of execution (every poll confirms this, even as the percentages in favor of capital punishment appear to be trending downward). But we also want certainty.”

The Michigan Innocence Clinic, a project of the U-M Law School, takes on cases of individuals wrongfully convicted in the state’s courts. The Clinic is modeled on Innocence Projects in many other states, with one difference. (Check what’s going on in your state.) It’s the only project in the country that focuses on cases that cannot be solved with DNA evidence.

In most felony convictions, DNA or other biological evidence is simply not available, so investigators must dig for other causes of how a prosecution went awry. Typical flaws in cases are eyewitness misidentification—with the shortcomings of eyewitness testimony repeatedly demonstrated—improper forensic science, false confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, unreliable or coerced police informants, and bad lawyering.

Take as an example the prosecution that sent David Gavitt to prison for 27 years. In 1985, his wife and two young daughters died in an overnight fire at their home, and David was hospitalized with burns and cuts. Police and prosecutors spent their energies attempting to prove a case of arson. Arson science has come a long way in recent decades, and many of the old theories about the burn patterns of fires as they spread have been soundly disproved. The Innocence Clinic brought modern experts into the analysis of Gavitt’s case, which convinced the current county prosecutor to drop the charges and release him from prison. Despite his quarter-century-plus in prison, he was luckier than Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted of arson in Corsicana, Texas, for a fire that took the lives of  his three tiny daughters. The faulty evidence that convicted Willingham also was refuted by subsequent, more scientific investigators, but the State of Texas refused to reexamine the case and executed him.

The Michigan Innocence Clinic has received some 4,000 applications (each 20 pages long) from inmates, and has a more than a dozen active cases. It has succeeded in exonerating eight prisoners so far. For a case that has previously been unsuccessfully appealed to be re-examined, not only must evidence must be strong, it must fit certain legal requirements. A video shows the kinds of holes in the prosecution that the Clinic uncovers.

According to an article by Alice Rhein in the Spring 2014 Michigan Alumnus magazine, a Clinic staff member is creating a documentary about one of its successful cases. He is attempting to crowdfund it, and so far has raised about a third of the projected $25,000 budget.

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Girls Books, Boys Books?

Posted on by
girls books, boys boooks, Let Books Be Books, gender stereotyping
(photo: farm5.staticflickr.com)

Is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” a girls’ book or a boys’ book? Is “Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom”? These are books for any child. But as children grow past the board-book stage, it doesn’t take long for gender stereotyping to creep in, with princesses and cupcakes for girls and superheroes (OK, a few not-so-interesting super-heroines, too) and robots for boys. Last I knew, boys liked cupcakes, too. Too bad the ones in books are always pink.

The UK grassroots (moms and dads) gender-neutral toy campaign, Let Toys Be Toys, has launched a “Let Books Be Books” effort to encourage publishers, booksellers, (and bookbuyers) to be reexamine their marketing practices and better reflect the diversity of kids interests, rather than channeling them into girl-boy stereotypes. It’s gaining support. I loved Nancy Drew until I read my first Hardy Boys adventure, and I never looked back. The “boys books” were just more fun!

The covers of the books on the Let Books Be Books web page tell the story. The boys’ covers feature adventure! Skills! (Submarines, kites, soccer, vikings, rocket ships); the girls’ books? Cupcakes, butterflies, flowers, balloons, jewelry. You’re nothing if not slathered in cutesy stuff. The message is clear: Boys DO. Girls look pretty. In 2014? (You can sign a petition here, if you care to).

“Artificial boundaries turn children away from their true preferences,” the LBBB website says. They narrow kids’ perspective on the world. A recent birthday party for a four-year-old girl provided cloying evidence that “Princesses Rule” in the constricted world of gifts for diminutive females. This tiny effort may be a dragonfly wing in the hurricane of gender-based marketing, but still worth taking a stand.

Watch Your Words

Posted on by

crossword puzzle, wordsFor the fifth year in a row, Dan Feyer got the last word, winning the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a bruising competition for speed and accuracy. Feyer was originally inspired to develop his lethal skills at the board by the documentary Wordplay (trailer), which turned solving “into a spectator sport”! Rotten Tomatoes rating: 95.

Director of the tourney is the NPR and New York Times puzzlemaster,Will Shortz. If you’re a crossword enthusiast, you’ll enjoy this list of online crossword sources, including American-style and cryptic crosswords, reference books, and so on.

A real detriment to enjoyment of my subscription to New York Magazine came about when it abandoned the London Sunday Times cryptic crossword for The Guardian’s, then for a more conventional type. Typical LST clues: “School run—true/false.” Ans: Nurture. Or “Superman retains interest in painter.” Ans: Titian. “Ancient fruit.” Ans: Elderberry. That kind of thing.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta