Tag Archives: real life

**** Fighter Pilot: The Memoir of Legendary Ace Robin Olds

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By Christina Olds, Ed Rasimus and Robin Olds. Narrated by Robertson Dean. A tale of modern derring-do, with Olds–a flying ace in both World War II and Vietnam, who led that war’s most renowned air battle–fighting both the enemy and the Pentagon. The authors credit him with impeccable judgment about strategy and tactics in both the immediate flying situation and long-term for the U.S. military. His heavy drinking, failed marriages, and lack of diplomacy are glossed over as “I am who I am.” He was a larger-than-life personality, and it’s a great story. His views about Vietnam don’t square with contemporary assessments, but reflect the frustrations of military men at the time that, if the country was going to commit young lives to the effort, they should plan to win, not pull their punches.

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Girls Books, Boys Books?

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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

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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.

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Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey

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cosmos, science
Star formation in the cosmos (photo: NASA)

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.

Tim’s Vermeer

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The Music Lesson, Johannes Vermeer, camera obscura, optics, Tim's Vermeer, Tim Jenison

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.

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Our News Now

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tv news truck, news, social media, where Americans get newsI 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.

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The Monuments Men

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Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton, looted Nazi art

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, looted art, Aleksander Gierymski

“Jewess with Oranges” by Aleksander Gierymski, looted, and found at an art auction near Hamburg in 2010

Hungary, Budapest, St. Stephen's CrownThe 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.

Queen Nefertiti, EgyptAt 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.

National Museum of Iraq, BaghdadRelated Articles:

 

Hot Ticket

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Ra Paulette, Academy Award, documentary, Cave DiggerImpossible 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 109-year-old Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer (obituary, 2/27/14), who played the piano in Theresienstadt and was still playing at the time of filming, who says, “I love people” (The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life).
  • 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 last days and death of convicted murderer Jack Hall in the loving care of inmate volunteers in an Iowa prison hospice (Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall)

Real people doing amazing things. Truly awesome.

A Painful Memorial

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Philip Seymour Hoffman, playwright, American Playwriting FoundationYesterday’s New York Times included a front page story and full-page announcement of the establishment of “The American Playwriting Foundation,” to make annual $45,000 grants for creators of new American plays, one of the largest awards available for this purpose today. The Foundation was established in honor of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, “who relentlessly sought out truth in his work and demanded the same from his collaborators.”

Initial funding for the Foundation came from the National Enquirer, which published an interview with someone falsely claiming to be Hoffman’s friend David Bar Katz. In its haste to print this information, the newspaper “made a good faith error” by inadequately checking its source. Katz’s subsequent lawsuit led to an apology, and “instead of seeking a purely personal reward for the harm done to him, Mr. Katz brought the lawsuit as a vehicle to . . .create something positive out of this unfortunate turn of events.”

Out of one man’s tragedy, another’s unselfishness, and the foolishness of an entity with more money than sense, miraculously, something good may rise.

My 7/28/14 review of Hoffman’s last major role, in what is both movie title and obituary, “A Most Wanted Man.”

 

Finding the Soul of the City

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“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:

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.

walkability, streetscapes, urban life, High LineMore:

  • Jeff Speck’s TED talk on the walkable city.
  • The 10 U.S. cities having the most people who walk to work.
  • How cities are trying to become more walkable.
  • 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.