Princes of Maine, Kings of New England

One of my favorite books of all time is The Cider House Rules.  Often when I see a movie after I read the book, I am disappointed. I cannot remember exactly what my reaction was when I first saw the movie version of The Cider House Rules, but I recall, vaguely, that I thought it was the exception to the rule.  I was flipping the channels tonight and saw the movie again from nearly the beginning.

It is such a good story.  We are not beholden to someone else's rules. It is our job to find out what our business is, and to be active in whatever it may be.  Someone posts rules in a cider house who does not live in the cider house? Why should we adhere to them.  Why should we assume they are the right rules, particularly when they do not seem to make sense.

If you have never read the book and you are a reader, go get it from the library. If it wasn't for the fact that the story centers in large part about an orphanage that, on the down low, is also an abortion clinic--I believe the novel would be required reading throughout the land--at least in blue states.  If you are not a reader, take out the movie.  Tobey Maguire is great as Homer.  Michael Caine is at his best as Dr. Larch.  Charlize Theron is terrific.  Likewise Delroy Lindo.

I just finished a fast read--nothing of the calibre of The Cider House Rules, but better than decent. I picked it up because I'd read another novel by the author which I was not crazy about--but was a fast read, and I did not feel like working hard.  The book, Range of Motion, is about a woman whose husband is felled by a shard of ice that falls on his head. He is in a coma and the story, written mostly from the perspective of the wife, is about how she deals with her children and her new life without her love. There is an interesting side story with her neighbor who suspects her own husband of infidelity. This is the third novel that Elizabeth Berg wrote and one of the ones that brought her the acclaim she now enjoys.  If you feel like you want a book to jump start your reading, you can knock this off easy in a couple of days and figure, subsequently, that reading the book was worth your while.

Madness

I will write more later, but after seeing the end of the Michigan//Oklahoma State I want to explain why erstwhile hirsute Michigan bettors may be bald now.

The spread was Michigan -2 1/2.  Michigan is up by 2 and is fouled. Guy hits both foul shots. Michigan up by 4 with three point something seconds left.

Oklahoma State races up the court and throws up a desperation three at the buzzer.  Swish. Michigan wins. Michigan bettors lose and that wail is the noise you heard if you live near the state of  Nevada.

Something Must Be Done

I have, on more than one occasion, been a late adopter.  I got a credit card years after they were commonplace and only succumbed when I tried to rent a car and the agent said I needed a credit card to do so.  Nearly everyone I knew had a cell phone before I purchased one.  Other things too.

So maybe it makes sense or follows that it was after African American History month that I happened to pick up two books about the struggles black Americans have faced.

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is part history and part memoir.  It is about the resistance southern states put up in the face of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Ed Supreme Court decision.  That ruling made it unconstitutional for school districts to have separate but equal schools.  Separate but equal was deemed inherently unequal.

For those under 50 it may seem bizarre that there was reluctance to desegregate.  But if you are eligible to collect social security, the saga of Little Rock in 1957 is likely vivid. Stories about that battle--and listening to radio broadcasts reporting the incident--are among my earliest recollections. I have a vague memory of my parents nervously awaiting the 1956 presidential election, but the 57 Little Rock incident is more clear.

Growing up in Brooklyn, the concept of fighting over segregated schools was tough to get.  I lived in an integrated apartment complex and went to integrated schools.  I could not get the fuss.  But a fuss there was as Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County describes.  It is not about Little Rock in 1957, but a small town called Farmville, Virginia in the late 50s and early 60s.  Farmville had segregated schools and did not care that they were supposed to desegregate. What they did is incomprehensible fifty plus years later.  The County literally closed the public schools rather than comply.  Then they opened a private school which admitted only white students.  So, black kids in Farmville had no place to go to school.  It was the only county in the country that had no public schools.  Robert Kennedy then the attorney general took on Farmville and eventually--four years later--the county established public schools.

The book is as much about the author's experience living in Farmville as the incident itself.  As the author explains, her grandfather was among the townspeople who implemented the plan to close the public schools.  Her parents, of my vintage, attended the private school and, significantly, the author--thirty years my junior attended the private school even though by that time there were public schools.
The author claims that she had no awareness that there was a problem, and now feels guilty about her ignorance and her family's complicity.  The guilt is magnified because she married a mixed race man who would have been deprived of schooling had he lived in Farmville.  Also, her black maid growing up had a daughter who was a contemporary and she had to leave her mother's home to live with a relative in order to get an education.  So the maid--someone the author loved and admired--was separated from her daughter and the perpetrators of the injustice were her employers.

I am glad I read the book but I cannot recommend it. The commingling of the family saga with the events of the day is not blended well.  There is a good deal of repetition.  I think the details of the incident might have been presented with a preface or epilogue describing her family's involvement.

The Underground Railroad is a novel that takes place before the emancipation of the slaves. It is centrally about a slave who escapes.  The book begins with Cora, the slave, enduring the horrors of slavery.  Bleak and ugly are words insufficient to describe her experience.  She decides to flee and does so with another slave.  Cora travels on an actual underground railroad.  We know that the underground railroad is used to describe how slaves escaped with "railroad" used as a metaphor for the series of "stops" where slaves could hide as they escaped.  Cora goes on an actual railroad. I am not sure this aspect of the book is necessary. What is significant is who she meets and what she has to deal with in order to escape.

Usually when I read a book I race through the second half. I thought the writing in the first half of this book was great, and much better than the second half.  Colson Whitehead, the author, depicts portions of Cora's journey very well.  Other characters--the slave catcher, other slaves, the people who help her escape--are also well drawn.  I recommend this book, but for me at least it was not all that easy sledding toward the end.

Some buddies were in town this past weekend. The three of us--white folks in our mid to late 60s--recalled an incident that we witnessed in the dormitories.  Black students had petitioned successfully for there to be separate corridors within the dorms.  The people who lived on these corridors were not all activists, some just wanted the comfort not to feel discriminated against. There were some vocal political figures in the group.  One week, a group of other students--a group comprised of both blacks and whites--had petitioned the dorm directors for a forum to make a presentation against the dedication of corridors for black students. This group claimed that segregated wings of a dormitory undermined attempts for racial harmony.

So, there was a meeting. And it was no fun.

This was the 70s with significant political tension.  The black and white students from the integration group were surrounded by the black students from the segregated corridor.  The forum had no chance to be peaceful. Forty minutes into the tensest of tense conversations a fight broke out and the head of the residence halls got whacked in the face as did a member of the integration group.

The next day black and white parents came up from New York to protest the way their kids had been manhandled.  It was a mess.

But if you read Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County and The Underground Railroad, you could understand how the residual effect of slavery and segregation could lead to the tensions that existed that day in the dormitories and really continue to surface into the 21st century.

cult

Yesterday, Tuesday, I had a strange experience with technology.  On Monday I was in Florida at the condo my brother and I inherited three years ago today.  I was there because the air conditioning unit needed what is called a "tune up."  If I did not have this done in early March I would have lost the opportunity to have it so tuned up for reasons that are related to a contract we have with a vendor.

So, I was given an 8-12 time slot for Monday.  I was parked in the house with my phone in my hand starting at 745 a.m.  When, at noon, nobody appeared, I called the business.  I was told that he would be there any time now.  When, at one, nobody appeared, I called the business.  The technician was "just finishing up a job" and would be there shortly.  At 130 the technician called to say he was on his way.

At 2 pm in came a technician who looked like he had heard that I was sore.  I explained that I had no beef with this poor shnook who probably just goes where the business tells him to go.  And probably hears an earful from frustrated customers at every stop.  Twenty minutes and some friendly conversation later, the air conditioner was tuned up. I signed a document and all was well in the world.  Sure I had only a few hours of Florida sunlight left, but hey, there are worse problems.

It was cool on Monday night for Florida. I took a walk and needed a long sleeve shirt and even with that it was a bit brisk.

I woke up on Tuesday and noticed that the air conditioner was not working. Just great.  Less than 24 hours after it was tuned, the thing that had been working before it was tuned, now--tuned--was not functioning. I figured it had to be something minor that the technician had done inadvertently.  So, I go to call the business using my cell as we have no landline at the condo.

I see that the call is going out, but I hear no ringing at the other end.  I try again. No ringing.  I call another number, the call apparently is going out, but no ringing.  I go to the cafe in the complex and ask someone to call me.  She tries. Her call goes directly to voice mail.

Just great. The air conditioner does not work.  I am leaving for the airport in a few hours, and I can't contact the business.  My laptop is functioning so I have to write to my brother in New Jersey and ask him to call the company and set up an appointment.  I tell him I have to be out of the condo by two.

In my car I go and drive to an A T and T place. They reset the phone (not before trying to sell me a new phone) and the phone works.  I call my brother. He tells me that he has made an appointment for 1 oclock (they promised) for a technician to see what the trouble is.  I drive back to the condo.

Yesterday, go figure, it had gotten warmer in Florida so I am warmer myself in the not air conditioned unit.  Also, go figure, the technician is not there at 1.  I go to call the business as I have to leave at 2 for my flight.  The phone does not work.  I shut it off. I turn it on and it works. I call the company and they tell me that the guy is just finishing up a job and will be there in ten minutes.  I have heard this refrain several times in the last day and a half and now know that the person who is giving me the likely time of arrival is full of fecal matter.   When the repairman does not appear at 130 I go to call the business. The phone does not work.  I'm having just a wonderful day.  I shut the phone off, and turn it on.  The phone works. I call the business and the spewer of false information tells me that the repairman is on his way.  Sure.

At 2 he shows up. Another poor shnook who is just going where they tell him to go.  In thirty seconds he sees that his colleague who was there yesterday had turned a dial one way while tuning the air conditioner  and had forgotten to turn it back.  Zip zip the air conditoner is fixed. I get in the car to drive to the airport. I go to call my brother to tell him all is well and the condo will not melt.  The phone does not work.

So, today during lunch hour I go to the apple store which is an enormous three story building in prime real estate on Boylston street in Boston. If you ever want to know why your ipad costs what it does, go check out this building.  Must cost a sweet bundle to rent the spot.

When I walk into the building I see, all over the first floor (and then later I see them all over all floors) an army of smiling 20 somethings with ipads. They are all there to deal with guys like me who either want to buy a product or more likely need service.  The fellow I deal with is wearing a sock hat inside and duds that are a college student's attire except for an apple tee shirt.  He is all positive when I tell him what I need. He tells me that a technician will be with me in 45 minutes. The guy pokes at his ipad and I get a text telling me that I will get another text when they are ready for me. I ask if there is a Starbucks nearby. He says there is. I say I will go there. He says "Awesome."

I take a walk to the Starbucks a half block down.  A 20 something woman with green hair says "awesome" when I ask for an egg sandwich and coffee. When I ask her if I should swipe my card or use the chip, she tells me to swipe.  When I do so, she says "Awesome." I sit down, sip my coffee, pick up my sandwich when my awesome sandwich is ready.  I take a number of bites in my sandwich when I am buzzed to be informed that the technician is ready for me.

Back I go to the Apple Store with smiling apple shirted believers swarming around.  One such smiling kid says I should go to the third floor. I walk up the stairs, see more smiling children on the second floor. I walk to the third floor. There are dozens of swarming smiling Apple people there. Every one is saying terrific or fantastic to whomever they are chatting with. I go to a counter. I tell the smiling kid there that I was buzzed. She asks my name. I tell her. She pokes her ipad and says, ALAN! like I am someone she has been looking forward to seeing and is now delighted that I have arrived.

I say, yes, I am Alan.  She says, "Awesome."  Then tells me to sit down on a bench and a techie will come out to check out my phone.

I sit down and feel like a very old guy.  I have to be forty years older than every smiling apple-person. These people look like they have found religion and have taken some drugs along the way. They are all so smiley and happy looking like they have found the right route to spiritual salvation.

My mental meanderings and thoughts that I am ancient are interrupted by a young smiling woman in an apple shirt with a ring in her nose who says she is "looking for Alan!"  I tell her she found me, but feel like asking if she is old enough to drink.

She sits down and tries to explain what might be wrong with the phone and what she is going to do to try and remedy it.  I swear I do not understand a single complete sentence she is uttering. I get a few words here and there, but if I have to take a listening comprehension test when this is over I will fail miserably.  I ask some questions which sound to me, let alone to her, as if I am saying something like,  "So you think that 2 and 2 is 4?"  And she is trying to be patient with me and smile.

She takes the phone to a backroom and I sit on a stool near a long bench on which sits maybe thirty IMACs for those who are waiting or are just meandering about.  Back comes the 20 year old and tells me what she did and how I can do it myself.  Yeah, right, I think.  She sees my doubt and shows me. "You just hit this, and then you hit that, and then you hit that, and you are all set."

By the time I get to the second floor I am sure the technology will have changed so the instructions she gave me will be worthless.  I pass, not kidding, at least twenty more apple clad smiling people and I feel like I have just spent time in a building that a cult has rented.

I ask someone on my way out, how she became so knowledgeable about this stuff.  "Just by playing around" she says.

When I got back to the office I spotted something on the net about the best places for people to retire.  I went through the list.

Private Lives

My friend Ken is an actor and Professor at the Boston Conservatory--a music and performance school very close to where I work at Northeastern.  Yesterday his senior students were performing Fear and Misery in the Third Reich at a 2pm matinee.  The play is not the Odd Couple. Had it not been that this was one of his productions I would have skipped a show about the Nazis and enjoyed what was a balmy 70 plus degree day at the end of February.

I've been to his plays before at the Conservatory but this one was in a different theatre.  What with some surprising traffic on a main road, and more difficulty than usual finding a parking spot, I just arrived at the building address at 2--on the button.  Once inside, I had to find and wind my way in a maze to locate the theatre itself.  Down a staircase, through a computer room, down an alley way, and I peak around a corner.  When I peaked around the corner, I saw that the show has started.  Fortunately, I found a spot right away--in the front row.  I snuck in, parked myself, and began watching a play about Nazis.

I knew nothing about the show before I sat down except that it was about the Third Reich.  This play--I discover at intermission--had previously been called "The Private Life of the Master Race."  I am familiar with that title--though had never seen the show. I am pretty sure that when I was an undergraduate, there had been a student production at Albany.   When the show concluded Ken told me why he could not use the original title.  I now cannot recall the reason completely.  The original title is more apt.  The show is made up of vignettes that depict what it was like to be a member of the so-called "Master Race" while Germany was succumbing to Nazi influence.

In more ways than one for me, this was an "in your face" production. I was right on top of the actors shouting Heil Hitler. They were bolting on and off the set inches in front of me. They carted in caskets, Nazi flags, members of Hitler youth.

Vignettes showed frightened scientists excited about Einstein's discoveries but afraid to acknowledge their excitement lest they be identified as Jew sympathizers; a judge debating whether to acquit guilty SS officers and find guilty an innocent Jewish merchant; a Jewess leaving her non Jewish husband so that he would not lose his position in a hospital.

Ken added some things to the show which were powerful.  Near the beginning he had actors hold up a bed sheet onto which he projected some clips from late 1930s Germany.  The excerpts were chilling. Hitler's proclamations regarding immigration and keeping the Aryan race pure. Goebbels attempts to intimidate the press.   Lobotomized followers goose stepping to the beat of a megalomaniacal leader.

At the end of the show, the actors reprised a scene from the end of the first act.  At its conclusion, right before the curtain call, the actors--all early twenty somethings--shouted out, Never Again.

Given the news on Friday that Trump had prohibited certain news outlets from briefings that they had previously been allowed to attend, the play was especially gripping.

I think there are a number of different types of persons who voted Republican in the last presidential election. (1) There are conservatives who believe that the tenets of being conservative are correct --less government intervention, low taxation, rugged individualism, and preservation of traditional notions of God and family.  (2) There are Republicans who have always voted Republican, are loyal the Republican party, who could not comfortably pull a lever for a Democrat, and who may feel that even a less than palatable candidate who is Republican will be able to increase Republican influence and consequently better government.  (3) There are people who just could not embrace Hillary Clinton. She did not do anything for these voters and they could not warm up to her candidacy. (4) There are people who liked and like Donald Trump's message.

My question is this: given what we know about history--Where are the people from the first three groups now that Trump has shown himself to (1) have no regard for the truth, (2) support a master race agenda, and (3) suppress the right of freedom of the press.

It is time to speak up. Now. The private life of the master race shows how corrosive not standing up to lies can be to all of us.

Very balmy yesterday in Boston. Saw the show, walked out, took a stroll on 2/25 which typically is an option only on 4/25.

Woke up this morning.  Feels like 25 degrees.  Time for all of us to confront reality.

Who are we anyway?

The Likeness is the second novel by Tana French that features detective Cassie Maddox.  In the first novel, In the Woods, Maddox works with Rob (nee Adam) Ryan to solve a murder case.  We learn in the first novel that Cassie had at one time worked undercover.  While Rob and Cassie identify the doer in the first novel, there is a problem which precludes really nailing the main culprit.  Partly as a result of the snafu, Rob and Cassie split, and Cassie finds herself working Domestic Violence cases-- not homicides.

When I finished The Likeness I read through some of the surprisingly glowing reviews.  My comments are not as glowing.  I did spot one reviewer comment that resonated. The critic wrote "The premise was intriguing, the promise was there; it just took too long to get there."

Amen.

This 466 page novel could have been a very good short story of fifty pages or so.  There is one preposterous postulate upon which the story is based, and that would be a problem even with a short story, but the message could have been one that lingered nevertheless.

Who are we, anyway?  Am I Alan Zaremba a former college professor turned administrator?  That is what my resume suggests, but could that just be who I am for this stretch.  Might I just as easily become someone else entirely with a different job, living in a different city, with a different spouse. And could there be a time when I could not be sure who the hell I was even though I had been, up to that point of self doubt, certain I was what my resume said I was.

I don't recommend this book. It is too long, just dawdles too much and, contrary to some of the comments in the reviews, I do not think it is particularly well written. That said, it is intriguing if you go beyond the plot line.

It's a mystery, a whodunit, so if you gobble mysteries voraciously, you may want to read it. And there sure are a lot of people who liked it judging by the Amazon reviews. If, however, you are a reader of my blogs and tend to agree with my take on novels, I think there are better ways to spend your reading time.

Here's the premise.  Cassie is surprised one day to receive a phone call asking her to come to a murder scene.  She is surprised because she no longer works in Murder but rather is involved with Domestic Violence.  She protests but is told that there is something about this case that is different.  So, she goes to the scene of the crime where she sees her boyfriend (not Rob) who is near the body but as white as a proverbial ghost.  Cassie goes to look at the body and is taken aback because the dead woman looks exactly like her.  Cassie has no twin, no sibling of any sort, but this murdered person looks just like her.  If that is not enough to stun her, she is aghast when she sees the identification card of the murder victim.  The dead person has been using the name that Cassie used when she worked undercover: Lexie Madison.  Somehow this dead person became the fictitious person, Lexie Madison, who Cassie had pretended to be.  She stares at the dead person, essentially looking at herself or her fake self.

This dead Lexie Madison lived with four others, three men and a woman in a sort of commune. The four housemates become prime suspects.  The plan to solve the murder is for the detectives to tell the housemates that Lexie miraculously survived a stabbing. Then Cassie--the look alike--was to come back to the house, pretend she was Lexie and sleuth out who had murdered Lexie.  But, of course, not only is Cassie not Lexie, but Lexie is not Lexie since Lexie was a made up person in the first place.

In the course of pretending to be Lexie, Cassie kind of sorta becomes Lexie, and a member of the commune.  Meanwhile the reader finds out how the dead person came to be Lexie, which she did by changing lives several times in various countries.

What is preposterous, of course, is that no matter how much of a look alike you are to someone else, someone who knows you well will pick up on mannerisms that are different.  So, the notion that Cassie could pass as Lexie without suspicion is suspicious.

But if you suspend that disbelief, (and knock out about 400 pages) this is an interesting tale.

Can we change on a whim and then become another. And if we can, well, who are we anyway? Who is anyone?

impeachable offense

Let's see. Bill Clinton got a blow job and was impeached.

Donald Trump is threatening the first amendment to the Constitution and the lobotomized in Florida are shouting hosannahs.