I really want to like this program, though I thought the opening episode of the 13-part series was too conceptual. Perhaps the producers believed that a generation of kids raised on Star Wars and CGI special effects wouldn’t warm to it otherwise, and perhaps that was just the result of getting some basics out of the way, but I’ll be looking for future episodes to have less sweep and more deep. Reviewers liked it.
In a tribute to counter-programming acumen, the Sunday night Fox broadcast is smack up against Masterpiece Theatre, probably cutting the audience for both. Thankfully, Cosmos reruns on Mondays on the National Geographic channel. Anything that would help Americans take science more seriously has to be appreciated. Said Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson in a Wired interview, “The idea that science is just some luxury that you’ll get around to if you can afford it is regressive to any future a country might dream for itself.” Dream on, my fellow Americans.
Watching the meticulous recreation of Vermeer’s painting, “The Music Lesson,” by inventor Tim Jenison practically gave me hand-cramps. And the result? I urge you to watch this documentary (trailer) produced by Penn Gillette, Tim’s friend, and see for yourself. The saga started when Tim read how optics technology—lenses and the camera obscura—may have been used in producing some of the great works of 17th century art.
As an inventor, not an artist, Tim attempts to replicate such a method and comes up with, or rediscovers, inventions of his own. In the film, he interviews British artist David Hockney and architect Philip Steadman who believe optics help explain Vermeer’s genius, but warn Jenison the art historians and critics don’t want to hear it. Tim even persuades Buckingham Palace officials to let him see the original painting.
Fascinating character, process, and insights. You’ll go away appreciating the “fathomable genius” of Vermeer more than ever, guaranteed. Great links here.
I first learned about the Sandy Hook school shootings on Twitter, moments after they occurred. Celebrity obits quickly appear on Facebook. Social media make it easy to share news and information, and lots of us do it. Exactly how many? And what do we share?
InkHouse Media + Marketing conducted a survey of 1000 U.S. adults’ sharing habits and found out the top reason people say they share is to “inform.” 54% of us do that, and half that number share to “entertain.” Equal percentages (12%) claim they share “thoughtful articles with tips from experts” and “cute animal photos.” Email remains a more popular sharing vehicle than social media.
But for getting our news, 73% of us still rely on tv, 52% on news websites, 36% on print magazines and newspapers, 25% on radio (that would be me!), and only 23% on social media.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures stolen by Germans and hidden in German salt mine in Germany. April 12, 1945. (photo: U.S. Army)
OK, reviews of The Monuments Men (trailer) have been tepid, George Clooney did give himself all the high-minded speeches, and it was hard to suspend disbelief with the star-power cast (who did a great job but are monuments themselves). Still, despite all those quibbles—and the spate of belated “the real story” websites and compelling personal stories emerging—this was an entertaining and satisfying movie, based on the book by Robert Edsel. For an exciting fictional treatment of this episode, see my review of Sara Houghteling’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
The characterizations of the architects, archivists, and artists that formed the film’s Monuments Men team are strong, and a surprising amount of humor is inherent in their personalities and the interactions between them, despite their desperate mission. Its purpose, as George keeps telling us, was not just to preserve “stuff,” but our way of life, our history, patrimony. The movie spares us conflicted opinions about its characters. They’re pure black or white, good or bad, people who want to save art or those who want to burn it. This oversimplification is a source of some of the criticism.
That is to say, there’s something comfortably old-fashioned about this film. If you’ve seen enough WWII films, you can guess the directions the plot will take, but really, the stakes are so high, does it matter?
Clooney’s character is right. This was a vitally important mission. It was hard. It was dangerous. And these heroes—seven actors representing around 350 real-life “monuments men” from many countries—accomplished it. Together they recovered more than five million paintings, sculptures, church bells, tapestries, and other works looted by the Nazis.
Edsel knew his material and made it real. Previously, he co-produced a documentary of historian Lynn Nicholas’s award-winning book, The Rape of Europa.
“Jewess with Oranges” by Aleksander Gierymski, looted, and found at an art auction near Hamburg in 2010
The Monuments Men is especially fun viewing for those of us here in Princeton, because more than a dozen of the real Monuments Men had ties to Princeton, two of whom directed the Princeton University Art Museum from 1947 to 1972.
One of the directors, Dr. Patrick Kelleher, wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1947 about St. Stephen’s crown, a Hungarian national treasure he helped recover from the Nazis . I saw it in Budapest, after it was restored to the Hungarians by former President Jimmy Carter.
Not everything the Nazis looted was saved; and not everything has been found—“The Amber Room” is a premier example. Many stolen works may today be stored in basements and attics or even hanging on the walls of the children and grandchildren of ordinary soldiers who carried them home. And they still make news, as recently as last week. (And again, on April 8 and on April 12) As author Robert Edsel says, “They can be found,” as “Jewess with Oranges” was in 2010. His Monuments Men Foundation is intended to accomplish exactly that.
At the opening of the movie in Princeton, current and retired Princeton University Art Museum leaders spoke with the audience and related this anecdote: On Christmas Eve, 1945, some Monuments Men were celebrating in a room full of unopened cartons. Someone said, “Hey, it’s Christmas, shouldn’t we open a package?” He found a crowbar and pried open a wooden crate, reached in, and pulled out the bust of Nefertiti. Was it worth it. Oh, yes.
Alas, the lessons of this extraordinary collaboration between the military and the world of art and archaeology were neglected in the 2003 assault on Baghdad, when U.S. troops failed to secure the high-priority National Museum of Iraq (below; photo: wikimedia.org) Although museum officials already had quietly hidden most of the collection, some 15,000 items looted items have still not been recovered.
Impossible to view and practically ignored a few years ago, the Oscar-nominated short films have become one of the hottest tickets around. Last night I saw the documentary shorts and later today will see the live action shorts. These viewings are courtesy of the Trenton Film Society, which shows the films at the intimate Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton. (The festival also offers the nominees in the animation category.)
In recent years the short films have become available through Netflix and other resources, but I like the Big Screen—well, the Bigger Screen—at the Playhouse.
Only one overworked word describes the five documentary shorts: Awesome.
A gay man, nearly beaten to death as a teenager, becomes acquainted with the former skinhead who was one of his attackers (Facing Fear)
The Yemeni protests that turned violent and led to the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seen through the eyes of youthful cameramen (Karama Has No Walls)
Unlikely artist, Ra Paulette, working alone and by hand carves magical caves out of soft New Mexico sandstone (Cave Digger)
“The soul of a city can be found by talking a walk”—the premise and inspiration for generations of street photographers. In the February 2014 Metropolis, Jeff Speck, city planner, architect, and sustainable growth advocate writes about his book, Walkable City, claiming such visually rich environments are “better for your soul.”
Every Picture Tells a Story
Walking is certainly a better way to get a closeup look at the life going on around you. He illustrates that point with scenes of timeless urbanism captured by some of the giants of the street photography genre—Gary Winograd, Lee Friedlander, Vivian Maier, and others. The daily activities that animate city streets produce layered insights about both places and people. In a vital urban scene, “the presence of difference”—in ethnicity, race, class, income level, occupation—suggest endless story possibilities.
These images may require a second, even a third look, but it is clear why such photographs are often used as writing prompts. What’s going on between those two? What are they looking at? What are they thinking? Why did he wear that?
Walkable ≠ Happy
Canadian journalist Charles Montgomery’s book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Though Urban Design, agrees that walkability may be a component of a healthy city, but alone it cannot make a city a happy one. A more complex set of elements contributes to people’s assessment of their own well-being. Photographers have captured these factors, too:
elbow room (“People like their space”)—think about how kids tag every graffiti-friendly surface, it’s a way of claiming something distinctly, if momentarily, theirs; or consider the “reserved” parking place
green space—and not just the occasional pocket park, but big swaths of it worthy of Frederick Law Olmsted, connected in continuous corridors, perhaps helping to explain the runaway popularity of the High Line, and
economic justice. In other words, a city cannot be happy when a large segment of its population is much poorer than the rest.
Quality of life may be high in great, high-status cities, but that “does not translate into feelings of well-being . . . where social stratification creates a culture of status anxiety.” Those tensions, too, are evident in photographs of many urban streetscapes.
What’s the “Walk Score” for your address (U.S., Canada, and Australia)? Moving? Find walkable places to live. My neighborhood’s Walk Score is 35, compared to New York City’s 88.
Many of Vivian Maier’s works can be seen on the Artsy website’s Vivian Maier page.
Detroit, my long-ago home town, “is one of those taxing places that require you to have an opinion about them,” says Paul Clemins in the New York Times.
Numerous recent books, films, and photo essays have tried to shape and inform those opinions, and I’ve covered a number of them on this website, from the ruin porn phenomenon, to the Heidelberg Project, to the threat to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The plot-thread of of this once-great city was allowed to unravel until the American automotive dream drove right out of town. City lots filled with abandoned homes, the wrecked shells of once-beautiful buildings, suitable for nothing more than desolate parking lots.
A story by Monica Davey in the Times this week describes yet another effort to get a handle on the devastation. A central office is collecting information and photos of every abandoned and dilapidated building in the city, recorded by teams outfitted with computer tablets. The comprehensive database they are compiling will be ready this spring and is expected to help city leaders decide what to try to save and what to demolish.
Former Mayor Dave Bing suggested shrinking the city to a core that could be maintained, instead of continuing to provide city services to blocks with only one or two standing, habitable houses. But even people residing on empty streets that look like farmland—and in some areas actually are being farmed—don’t want to give up their homes. Some officials say demolishing the worst buildings might cost $1 billion, while a public-private effort called the Detroit Blight Authority has begun an aggressive demolition campaign, clearing lots that will become . . . . ? Enough human drama here for scores more books and films.
On the list of LA Times finalists for 2013’s best current issues books is Detroit native and journalist Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy. It tells the history of a city, but more important, the stories of the people struggling in it. In his review, Clemins says, “Many city supporters [and a nascent creative class is among them] will object to the ‘autopsy’ in the subtitle, though it’s not the suggestion of civic death that rankles. Rather, it’s the suggestion of the surgically precise.” As the teams of surveyors roaming the streets who are in a sense conducting that autopsy can attest, decay is a messy business.
“Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled . . .” – Dylan Thomas
The Central and Northeast U.S. isn’t the only country hit by snowstorm after snowstorm this winter. Take a look at how Tokyo residents responded after a 10-inch blizzard—its biggest blizzard in decades. Snow sculptures from the land of “Hello Kitty.”
Photo gallery from the 24th Annual International Snow Sculpture Championships – Breckenridge, Colorado. Tokyo amateurs, be in awe!
Have a cup of hot chocolate and let Frank sing to you. Let it Snow!
Hot chocolate not warming enough? Here’s a hot toddy recipe that calls for brandy, whiskey, or rum (whatever you have, basically) and tea. The recipe says you can skip the tea. Just so it’s hot!
Your Cryosphere Glossary from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Perfect for teachers, dads, and moms who get asked those tricky snow questions. Find out where it’s snowing right now with the NSIDC “near-real-time” data map.
Simon Beck’s Snow Art—made by stomping around in the snow, very precisely. Not just your everyday snow angel.
A collection of Snow Poems. I like this one by Frederick Seidel. Good to remember when you’re stuck in the snow. Six-sided, too.
Snow is what it does.
It falls and it stays and it goes.
It melts and it is here somewhere.
We all will get there.
A recent op-ed about the incomparable snow leopard, and how the big cats are saving people. She has her eye on YOU.
“Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners” – by Alexandre Cabanel
“The Poisoner’s Handbook”—a perfect TV show for mystery writers–initially seemed an odd choice for one of PBS’s fine American Experience documentaries a few weeks back. It was based on the book by Deborah Blum, who appears among the show’s interviewees. About the book, Kirkus said, “Caviar for true crime fans and science buffs alike.” And so was the documentary, which you can watch here and which begins:
In 1922, 101 New Yorkers hanged themselves, 444 died in car accidents, 20 were crushed in elevators. There were 237 fatal shootings, and 34 stabbings. And that year, 997 New Yorkers died of poisoning.
Not all those deaths were intentional, it turns out. Ninety years ago, life was full of poisoning hazards at work and at home. You may remember the below-stairs tour of cleaning products, rat poisons, polishes, and “remedies” in the great home in the movie Gosford Park, all of which looked mighty suspicious when the master was murdered.
A major cause of death was carbon monoxide, an odorless, tasteless gas that got into the air thanks to leaky stoves and the piping for gaslights. Even today, when houses are shut up tight for winter, we still hear about deaths from malfunctioning space heaters or, difficult to believe though it is, charcoal grills people roll in to heat up the house. (In 2011, five members of a Long Island family were hospitalized when the 43-year-old mom actually did this.)
Poisonings are so much rarer today, the PBS program explained, because in 1917 New York City hired Dr. Charles Norris to be the city’s (and the nation’s) first chief medical examiner. Norris, born into a wealthy family, was one of those larger-than-life characters who create their own weather. Norris, in turn, hired Alexander Gettler to head the City’s first toxicology laboratory. Gettler and his staff built the field of toxicology from scratch, and he and Norris created modern forensic science. CSI fans are grateful.
Gettler soon realized that he and his staff had to conduct definitive studies of the way different poisons killed, their symptoms in various concentrations, and how they could be detected. Murder by poison, which had been difficult to diagnose in many cases, especially if it wasn’t suspected, became less and less feasible.
In 2011, I read The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor, a finalist for the nonfiction National Book Award in 2009. During his lifetime (120-63 BCE), Mithradates Eupator fought some of the most famous Roman generals, mostly successfully. At the height of his career, he governed 22 nations around the Black Sea and could speak all of their languages. He was an infamous poisoner. He believed his mother murdered his father by poison, and, to protect himself, he learned as much as he could about them.
One protection he engaged in was to take small doses of certain poisons every day to build up his tolerance. (Anyone familiar with Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mystery Strong Poison is familiar with this strategy.) As a result, when Mithradates’ enemies at one point gave him a lethal dose of something, it had no effect, which didn’t hurt his reputation for invincibility. In the region where Mithradates ruled, there was a body of water made poisonous by a deadly plant. Many ducks lived there and fed on the plant, unharmed. Mithradates prepared a great banquet for his enemies, featuring—you guessed it—those self-same ducks, and, by morning, his guests were all dead. He also developed a “universal antidote” to poison, still of scholarly interest. When the Romans finally captured Mithradates, he tried to commit suicide by poison, but his protection worked too well, and he was ultimately stabbed to death.
Gardeners may have noticed the King’s name is familiar: Eupatorium is a genus of flowering plant with several hundred species, including (and in my garden) Joe-Pye Weed. One of its species is, of course, poisonous to humans.
Circling back to American Experience, the underlying message might be that, much as Americans complain about “government regulations,” in the 1920’s before the Food and Drug Administration took dangerous patent medicines off the drug store shelves, before there was a Consumer Product Safety Commission, and before the workplace safety rules that protect people like the poor young women who worked as radium dial-painters and died horribly of jaw and bone cancer, everyday life was full of deadly hazards, and mystery writers had one more handy tool in their store of potential mayhem-makers.
Ringing in my ears? I’ve heard that sound before . . .
It’s the sound of studio musicians and, for so many of them, all we ever do is hear them. We don’t see (much of) them or know much about them, because they labor in near-anonymity. Still, one hopes the days are gone when Phil Spector would release a song recorded by one of his most talented backup singers and slap the name of a better-known group on the label.
Jo Lawry, Judith Hill, and Lisa Fischer
Yes, I finally saw 20 Feet from Stardom yesterday, and it was pure pleasure (trailer). Full house at the theater, too—rare for a documentary. Mick Jagger looking every day of his 70 years. Springsteen. Sting. White guys talking about how important these uncelebrated black women were to their music and their success. Hmm. And now I know why “Gimme Shelter” was such an unforgettable moment during the Rolling Stones concert in Central Park. Lisa Fischer. Hit that link to the tune and fall in love.
Oh, and does Darlene Love bear Spector any malice for subverting and derailing her singing career for decades? “Where he is, right now? I’ve got closure,” she said in the July 1 New Yorker. Where he is right now, of course, is prison. And her career is back in gear, touring this summer, though in general, backup singers have had a rocky road traveling solo. Their sublime sound together almost makes you wish they wouldn’t try.
Music industry rapaciousness and the exploitation of artists who just want to sing (or play) their music may be an old story, but it makes for good movies. Another is Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) about the almost-invisible Funk Brothers, Berry Gordy’s house band of super-musicians. The Rotten Tomatoes summary calls them, “unsung heroes”—tongue-in-cheek, presumably, since that’s exactly what they were not. Singing to their music created the Motown canon.
Then there’s The Wrecking Crew, one of the most prolific studio bands of all time. The list of the songs they played is amazing—everything from the Mission Impossible theme to Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” to The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” to the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.” Wow. They created a lot of the riffs that immediately identify classics by the Beach Boys, Tijuana Brass, Sam Cooke . . .
Distribution of a 2008 documentary about their work (trailer) has been held up for years because the music industry (big surprise!) wanted millions in fees (later reduced, but still hefty) for the snippets of songs used in the film. The controversy has received solid coverage, and the producers have tried to raise the money to pay off the companies, but the DVD is still not out. (You can Donate Here.) Beware of Amazon’s “The Wrecking Crew DVD” link. It will show you the book the docu is based on and some other stuff, but the item with the black cover you think might be the DVD is not, say two angry reviewers!
