documented life : an intertext
talmud



David
Liss
A Spectacle of Corruption
Enjoyable novel about 1720s Whigs, Tories and Jews.
April 28, 2010
David
Barnouw and Gerrold Van Der Stroom, Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday and Susan Masotty
The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, Prepared by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation
1956 - 2003
Don't use this edition to read the diary itself, but the historical background material here is excellent.
April 28, 2010
Harriet
Reisen
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
I've never read Little Women, although I may have seen bits of it in various filmic versions to which I paid little atention. I have however read the 19th century and as a result found this thorougly enjoyable from so many perspectives - the history of the Transcendentalists, Civil War era social history in Boston and surrounds, the story of how a woman of Alcott's era struggled for her most basic rights, the flukey, even miraculous, way in which a writer actually achieves a wealthy and in some ways happy end. Everything about this biography fascinates.
April 19 2010
Anne
Frank
Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, includes previously unpublished material
1991
This is not the Anne Frank you may have read in school. With all the good parts returned, we get a fascinating portrait of Anne's developing sense of herself as a young woman and her first feelings of love for a boy. I was reminded just how close they came to surviving, successfully hiding until August 4, 1944, shipped on the last train to Auschwitz. Yes, this is a story of tedium and people driven slightly batty, including Anne, by having to live in such close proximity for years, but Anne Frank somehow transcends all of the pettiness. Who might she have become? She was a beautiful person.
April 10, 2010
Sarah
Vowell
The Wordy Shipmates
Consumed as a book on tape during my commute to Salem, so I'm not sure this counts as reading, but I enjoyed it thorougly. Vowell's unique vocal style really adds to the pleasure. You might say it's not serious history, but it's plenty serious as comedy, and that's just fine by me. I certainly learned a lot about The Pilgrims.
March 2010
Andrea
Warren
Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie
1998
My daughter read this young readers story about Grace McCance Snyder, an early Nebraska settler, as she begins to explore nonfiction for the first time. Leora found it for her, because of her interest in fictional diaries from various periods in American history, and her love of the PBS show Frontier House. Suddenly I realized that this story and her interests, were running directly parallel to my study of my the Dakotas. This book certainly interesting to me in and of itself.
February 18 2010
Philip L.
Gerber
Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919
1990
Bess Corey settled in South Dakota in 1909, a good three decades after the years that I'm studying, and in a very different part of the state from great grandfather J.K. Smith (she in the Pierre area, he in Mitchell) On the other hand, like him, she was straight off the Iowa Farm, and looking to make something of herself. In generational terms her consciousness would have been closer to my grandfather's, G.Day Smith's, but again, although of his generation, she was a farmer's daughter. She did share with Day her teaching profession. All in all, this is a completely different settlement process from the one I'm studying, but Bess's story makes for interesting reading and it is interesting to dip into her letters as well.
February 14, 2010
John
Milton
South Dakota: A Bicentennial History
1977
Read for my work on my great grandfather J.K. Smith's life. Mitchell is not specifically mentioned, but general themes and atmospherics for the 1876 time period are helpful.
February 12, 2010
James
Donovan
A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn - The Last Great Battle of the American West
2008
I read this mostly because I'm researching the South Dakota of my great-grandparents Jacob K. Smith and Emma Kate (Day) Smith, who immigrated to Mitchell, in the Dakota Territories, in about 1880, just four years after Custer's last stand at the Little Bighorn, 472 miles to the west of Mitchell. I'm not very interested in battle history, but I found the details of clothing, relationships, army culture and the incidental representations of 19th century life to be interesting windows on the world of my great-grandparents. They were married October 9, 1876 in Eldora Iowa, just three and a half months after Custer's force was destroyed on June 25, 1876. By 1880 the Dakotas were open to settlement and they were among the first settlers in Mitchell. The book itself tells the battle story in a matter-of-fact and interesting way, but it is easy to forget as one reads it and finds oneself sympathizing with how Custer may have been betrayed by his fellow soldiers that the whole lot of them were on a vicious genocidal mission to destroy and imprison an entire nation. If these genocidal American "Nazis" had succeeded on that June day in 1876 women and children would have had their heads bashed open on the rocks. Instead, just this once, the "Jews" (l'havdil) beat them back. The genocide was postponed, although not for long. The picture is further confused by the fact that there were so many native "scouts" helping to track down other Native Americans and enabling the army to kill them. While their presence highlights the "multi-cultural" nature of the frontier and the army and the social complexity of the frontier space, in the end these army Indians were cooperating in the genocide against other tribes of their broader "people." Then, upon all of that, I must consider the fact that my own ancestors, Jacob and Emma, and their parents and grandparents had each moved into the lands opened by genocide and built their lives there. These genocides were committed for people just like them, and they took full advantage, and yet were able to do so with relatively little personal involvement (although one ancestor, third great-grandfather Joshua Bland did, possibly, participate in the Blackhawk war in 1830.) For three generations Joshua Bland and his spouse, their daughter Mary Ann Bland Smith and her husband Samuel Smith, and their son Jacob K. Smith and his spouse Emma Kate (Day) Smith, advanced into Illinois (1833), into Iowa (1841) and into Dakota (1880) in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing operations. They were not the soldiers(except perhaps Joshua Bland, although in his late 40s he is unlikely to have been a frontline soldier), but the families for whom the soldiers drove the Indians out, and onto the reservations. Some of their memoirs even speak of childhood memories of "wigwams in the trees." The Native Americans were still around in their world but depleted and defeated, ghost people who were no longer much of a threat. Custer's story at Little Bighorn is the story of one bad day in the life of a not terribly competent but competent enough military machine that carved out the liebensroom that made my ancestor's lives possible. Sitting Bull's story at Little Bighorn is the story of one good day in a long and painful defeat. All of that, in turn is the karma that comes down to me through my mother and more broadly to the United States as a whole. It is interesting to think whether such karma is localized in place and localized in persons, or whether somehow all parts of the United States and all people in it now share it equally.
February 2, 2010
Steven
Johnson
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
2006
Any student of public health knows the story of John Snow, and how his removal of the Broad Street pump handle ended the London cholera epidemic, but this book tells the most interesting version of the story that I've read. Johnson writes a great detective story and historical essay on the birth of the modern city, the scientific approach to reality, the importance of sewers and microbes, and the future of humanity. This is a "Multnomah County Everybody Reads" book.
January 16 2010
Nancy Marie
Brown
The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman
2007
Brown seeks to connect Viking sagas with the archeological evidence in Vineland (L'Anse aux Meadows), Greenland, Iceland and Norway. She explores the reasons she is drawn to do so, and the difficulties in making any definitive conclusions about how this literature touches the outlines of sod houses and scattered artifacts we see now. Norse and Viking history from about 900 to 1300 are explicated, including the coming of Christianity. Brown also calls into question, through the experts she cites, Jared Diamond's interesting thesis about the reasons for the demise of the Greenland settlements, questioning whether the Vikings and their descendants were really so unwilling to consume fish as Diamond claims. Gudrid and her fellow Viking women emerge in the telling in all their glorious and ribald strength.
January 9 2009
Evan
Wright
Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut's War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America
2009
Prostitutes, thugs, white supremacists, pornographers, anarchists - what a wonderful world! Hey, life is dark, so would you have your journalism any other way?
January 4 2010

Books Read in 2009
2009 Summary -- I count about 55 books read and reviewed in 2009.
Brian K.
Vaughan and Adrian Alphona
Runaways: Pride and Joy
My son, age 12, was very happy when I picked up this hard cover comic book at the dinner table and begin to read it aloud and then silently. I was a little taken aback by some of the content, mild teen sexuality, references to prostitutes and impalements and the like. But I suppose it is all within reason for a 7th grader, and he hears much more at school. Then also, the theme of the series, the evil parents whose children must reject them to find their own path, certainly subverts some agendas of mine. While I subscribe to the importance of the psychodrama of adolescent self-definition and differentiation and welcome literature that enables my son to work it all out, it also makes me feel a sense of loss for what I have failed to teach, by example or didactically about traditional Jewish studies. How can his bar mitzvah studies or Jewish life make any sense to a child living in the world described by this book? I feel alienated from my child, and sad about his Jewish education. My son already lives in this world, and I have lost him. I hope it works out well for him. The story itself is good clean fun, in the modern sense, and well illustrated, and just great as long as you don't long for something much deeper. And if you were raised on this, how would you imagine something deeper? Where could a love for Torah come from? Oh well. If I'd been serious about that I would have had to make different choices for many years before now. I certainly made my son happy by reading this, and by promising to read more in the series.
December 30, 2009
Rebecca
Johnson
And Sometimes Why: A Novel
2008
I picked this off the library shelf simply because I thought the title was brilliant. I found it very rewarding. At first I was put off by the setting - the world of Los Angeles television and movie people - my least favorite people and my least favorite city. But the looping arc of the story, with its opportunities to meditate on causation, karma, death, coincidence, adolescent rebellion and sexual discovery, and how middle aged love ebbs and flows, all proved rewarding. I particularly admire the way Johnson seems to get inside the thoughts of such a diverse group of people, across ages, professions, backgrounds, summing up each of their perspectives in few words, bringing them briefly into contact with each other and then, in many cases, discarding them, yet using each vignette to knit the whole of the story. This is a beautiful and sad book, but one that makes me happy. And what a title!
December 24 2009
Jack
London
The Call of the Wild
1903
The Daniel Dyer illustrated reader's companion edition (1995) in which I read this book for the first time in perhaps 35 years is more interesting than London's original story. In it, and with its photographs, we learn a great deal about the actual world of Jack London and how it may have formed the backdrop for his short novel. The story itself, while lyrical, is thoroughly annoying. Though it is my own weakness to be sure, I find the ascription of human emotions and thoughts to dogs to be unhappily absurd. But, even read as a weird amalgam of fact and metaphor, freely accepting the conceit of a conscious dog named Buck, the symbolic level is deeply misguided. London's worshipful attitude toward tooth and claw can only be described as proto-fascist. His misunderstandings of the implications of biology for human society are typical of early eugenicists, and it is not hard to trace a line from ideas such as these forward to some of the great human disasters of the 20th century. Even if intended for 14 year old boys, we can easily recognize The Call of the Wild as an early expression of the political spirit of later 20th century fascism. So, acknowledged lyricism aside, this is bad medicine, and probably worth a read because of it.
December 21 2009
Jane
Yolen and David Shannon
The Ballad of the Pirate Queens
1995
Dramatic reading by my daughter, as my son, his friend and I ate our macaroni and cheese lunch.
December 20 2009
B'reshit / Genesis
Read the opening creation story to my daughter by way of explaining how the day begins in the evening. We also davened shachrit together, after a fashion, while my son went to schule with Leora, Shabbat Hanukah.
December 19 2009
Gordon S.
Wood
The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
2004
Wood's subject is the image of Franklin in his own time and in subsequent generations. The biographical narrative itself is familiar, if less detailed than others I've read, but it really ties together the different pieces and stages of Franklin's life in a useful way. Wood's contribution lies in his analysis of the changing ways in which Franklin was perceived, by others and even by himself - how did Franklin come to "represent" America? Wood's discussion of class and colonial society is also very helpful. He places Franklin in the context of his effort to rise from poverty to middling status to Gentleman of Philadelphia to Gentleman of the Empire and makes clearer to me the extent to which Franklin became truly a Crown loyalist and admirer of the British empire, an unlikely revolutionary, until just moments before 1776. He never was fully trusted by the Americans, although he retained a measure of personal popularity. The rejection of Franklin by English aristocratic political culture seems inextricably tied to the drift toward war - the personal was a mirror of the political for Franklin and England.
December 18 2009
Brian
O'Dea
HIgh: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler
2006
This is the second prison narrative I've read recently (see Santos below.) Both were written by drug smugglers. Drug smuggling inherently requires a range of social, business and organizational skills, and perhaps naturally leads to memoir writing if those skills prove less than adequate to the task of evading arrest. Of the two books High is the more interesting, in part because it appears that O'Dea was somewhat more successful than Santos. But it may also be more interesting because he was luckier - he had a much longer career before his arrest, received only 10 years, and then transferred to Canada, his native country, and served substantially less than 10 years, enabling him to write freely outside of prison. Santos, arrested in his 20s and serving 25 years minimum, remains in prison until 2014 and may be constrained in what he can write about his past without potentially prolonging his time. O'Dea seems genuinely repentant, at least for his drug addiction and the harms he caused those near to him. However I caught not a whiff of moral reflection about his role in spreading cocaine about the world. While one is reading the book the story of drug running is described as the great adventure it undoubtedly was at the time, flying a DC 6 into a dirt strip in Columbia, commanding a fleet of boats and fishing trawlers, sending secret radio messages, operating a trucking company, staring down money men - a boffo adventure, albeit one that occasionally involves someone pulling a gun or getting beat up. The book interleaves memories of drug running with descriptions of life in prison after his arrest, and that is also a nice counter-point. The author's spiritual struggle to do time and transform himself in prison seems authentic. And so, in the end the author presents himself as a changed person, an addict who understands his addictive tendencies, a man starting a new family with a new wife. But it is the question of his own judgment of himself that catches me. He's proud of the business he built. I think he would say "it was only pot" (but of course before it was pot, there seemed to be a lot of coke involved too.) I don't know what to do with that. He talks of taking responsibility for his choices, but he doesn't say that these are confessions of a "former" pot smuggler. On some level, even if he is no longer in the business I get the feeling that his identity and ego have not let go of the successful enterprise that he built. The fact that pot should not be illegal, the fact that so many good people he meets in prison should not be spending 25 and 50 years in jail for nonviolent drug crimes, doesn't change the fact that he is proud of his accomplishments... as a criminal. I enjoyed the ride.
December 16 2009
Randall
Stross
The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
2007
Thomas Alva Edison was an antisemitic prick who palled around with Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. He also, apparently, invented the phonograph, the light bulb and half of the moving picture idea. The tangled process of invention is fairly well documented by Stross. We have to give Edison this: he enjoyed inventing and was endlessly enthusiastic about the process. He liked to play. Beyond his admirable enthusiasm and megalomaniacle self-regard, Edison's life provides a window on the 19th and early 20th century, paralleling the much more interesting and pleasurable story of Mark Twain's life that I recently completed. Like Twain, Edison was an early inhabitant of the land of superstardom, carefully cultivating and trading on his image as the Great Inventor throughout his life. Unfortunately, that image was based on his early accomplishments in the 1870s and 1880s, while his life went on to include another 50 years of failures of empathy, imagination and business, characterized consistently only by preening pig-headedness and cruelty. Edison was bailed out along the way by his best friend, the execrable Henry Ford. I didn't think much about Thomas Alva Edison before I read this book except that he had "invented the light bulb." Thanks to this book I now know a good deal more and think a good deal less of him. Good job on the light bulb Thomas, but, by the time you finally died in 1929, good riddance.
December 12 2009
Ron
Powers
Mark Twain: A Life
2005
This was an incredible and witty biography, illuminating the man and through him the entire 19th century. I found wonderment and amusement and new understanding. Ron Powers is a wit who, in writing about the 19th century's great wit, does him justice. I enjoyed this book deeply. We see in it the panorama of a life richly lived. It's an unusual life, a Zelig-like tale, that continually finds Mark Twain at the center of his age. We learn that Clemmons was the original rock star, a performer. We experience his business failures and his general incompetence as a business man. Along the way, we explore writing as art and writing as commerce. We come to understand that he was not a nice man, but an angry cuss, and somehow beautiful for it. We learn that for all his opposition to religion and Christianity, it is not entirely clear that he ceased to believe in the possibility of communicating with the dead or the spirit world. (No wonder that the sister of my great grandfather Adolphus Schmidt thought she could write a Mark Twain novel, the unreadable Jap Heron, on the Ouija board - this kind of thing was just up Twain's alley.) We learn of his loves (first Laura, and then Libby, his spouse), his daughters and his friendships and are impressed somehow by his capacity to love. He seems to embody the character of the Victorian age - when we successfully imagine what made people laugh, we understand an era, and an entire lost world. I loved this book.
December 8 2009
Anna
Myers
Graveyard Girl
1995
While washing dishes last night my daughter (age 9) read me the first chapter of this book set in the time of fever and death in 1878 Memphis. I was impressed by the emotional weight of what she was reading. I knew in a general way that she could "read anything", but I was made newly aware of just what that meant. I finished it quickly after she went to sleep. This is good child fiction.
December 2 2009




See the full book list, 1959 to the present, here.


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    Zombieland
    Fantastic romp through America. Total fun. We watched after finding the Bastard Fairies video called Dirty Sexy Kill Kill, which also totally rocks. May 12 2010
    Babies
    The first year of four babies in four cultures. They promised I would want to ovulate by the time it was done. The four of us rode the Max downtown. Amitai squirmed and kicked his mother's seat inadvertently for 90 minutes, but our daughter loved it. I found the Namibian and Mongolian stories interesting, although not so much for the babies themselves, cute as they were, as for everything else that appeared in the frame around them. The Mongolian landscape in particular was wonderful. The Japanese and American segments weren't very interesting, just cute. I also wonder about the way in which the "exotic" Namibian family was framed. The audience had visceral reactions to people who do things differently, but I wonder whether the film maker shouldn't have tried to help the Japanese and American urban families seem stranger to us... or the Mongolian and Namibian families seem more familiar. Instead we were all but invited to gasp and feel the strangeness of two cultures and the familiarity of two other cultures. Well there is plenty of strangeness in American family culture and American birthing and baby raising culture, and I'll bet the same for the Japanese. There was something odd about that presentation, and the lack of explanation. If you let pictures and sound tell the story, the story you get only captures the kinds of things that pictures and sound can portray. For example, the Namibians were exposed, bare breasted, while the others were much less so. On one hand, that's a reflection of how people really live, but on the other hand, it is unbalancing. Is it seeing people as they really are to see them naked, or does our inevitable awareness of "nakedness", in our understanding of the word, mean that we precisely do not see them as they are? The Japanese and American families have naked moments too, but some how these are respected and hidden. Well, does that create a balanced portrait or a distorted one? An anthropologist understands that there are no "primitive" cultures, but a film like this invites a less informed mass audience to see some people as exotic, strange and "primitive." Anyway, this was our Mother's Day present to Leora, at her specific request. I enjoyed it, and the whole family outing experience, hopping on the train, talking with my son about cell phone plans, eating a snack in the park afterwards, the works. May 9 2010
    Oregon Public Broadcasting
    After several years of careful documentation of every single DVD or movie viewed, the whole documentation project has gone to hell. We bought a television with a tuner, and I flop down on the couch and watch OPB now, randomly, in the evening. I can't document it. I don't even like it often. But it's happening all the time. May 2010
    Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh (2008)
    April 18 2010
    "39 Steps" at Portland Center Stage
    A play based on Hitchcock's movie based on a novel. Leora won free tickets. It was fun. March 20 2010
    Television
    We broke down and got a digital antennae and my son has been sick, so I've found myself watching sports, and OPB and stuff like that recently. March 2010
    Blade Runner
    I'm not sure that the Director's Cut is an improvement. I must admit I wasn't really thrilled by this. As an historical artifact from about 1982, it is impressive - the first really dirty future. But for whatever reason, it didn't' thrill me. March 19 2010
    Unknown (about "Crazy Eddy")
    Watched a show at my parent's house in Cambria about Crazy Eddy and how they brought him down. March 12 2010
    Ask This Old House
    Broke down, got an antennae, watched OPB. TV is dangerous. I could watch too much of it. I need to be extra diligent about documenting my viewing and remember that every time I watch I am obligated to document my viewing. I view this is a strategy to limit time wastage. March 2010.
    Madagascar 2
    Bits and pieces with the kids, early March 2010
    Oregon Ballet Theater
    Leora took me and the children to a performance by the Oregon Ballet Theater of Midsummer Night's Dream by Felix Mendelssohn and a modernist piece from the 1940s (The Four Temperaments: Theme with Four Variations for String Orchestra and Piano (1940) by Paul Hindemith, Choreography, George Balanchin.) I enjoyed the Midsummer's Night Dream more, with its live orchestra. The Balanchin piece was done to a recording, and rather too austere for my taste. My son really likes dance, which I find in itself to be fascinating and puzzling, because I relate to it with such difficulty. At one point he leaned over to me and said "impressive!" Several times, he said, "see, you should go to the ballet more Abba." He really wanted me to like this. He's his own guy, with tastes I can't always comprehend. He chatted happily with the woman to his right, a complete stranger, at several points during the performance. She didn't seem to mind. Toward the end he was getting pretty sleepy. We had cheap seats down in front and to the left, which was pretty good, except for a guy with a big giant head right in front of me. This may have been the second live ballet performance of my life, and the first one I have attended since about 1972 when I performed on stage (as a page and extra) with Rudolph Nureyev and the Royal Canadian National Ballet at the Shrine Auditorium. March 4, 2010
    The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    Good stuff, and interesting musical response (in the extra material) to those who challenge his mechanized approach to organic CSA agriculture. On our new screen. March 3, 2010
    Winn-Dixie
    Flick about a dog and a girl, with the kids. March 1, 2010
    Captain Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
    Brain freeze... started to watch with the kids... oops. Sorry kids, didn't mean to share that with you just yet. March 1, 2010
    30 Rock
    We've been watching the first season of 30 Rock in rapid sequence and loving it. I think it's about 4 years old, but all new to me. February 2010
    Dead Man
    I purchased my own copy of this, my favorite movie, and am watching it again this evening. February 2, 2010
    Life Unexpected
    Watched pilot because it is set in Portland. Commercials are simply intolerable. January 20 2010
    Get Smart
    Various episodes with my children from season 4. Late January 2010
    Bedazzled (1967)
    January 15 2010
    On the Beach (1959)
    From the year I was born. I find the calmness with which the impending end of humanity is greeted to be absurd. But I like any effort to imagine apocalypse. January 2010
    The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)
    I liked the idea of a film about books and this was enjoyable enough for Leora and me. January 9 2010
    The Bob Newhart Show (1972)
    Leora and our daughter watched two episodes, while our son was away at his cousin's house. Leora won the bet when she guessed 1972 correctly while I guessed 1973. Our daughter liked it well enough, and why not? What's for a nine year old not to like? As for me, this is really quite dreary stuff. I knew that it would be safe and secure for a child, just as it was back in the day when I watched it as a 13 year old in Los Angeles. Bob Newhart was always gentle. But 37 years later only the material culture is even slightly interesting - clothing styles, haircuts, furniture and the like. As for the rest, well, The Bob Newhart Show was never really about the laughs so much as it was about likable Bob and his likable wife and the goofy characters around them who provided yuck lines. It's not watchable anymore, but it was nice enough in its day. Motzei Shabbat, January 9 2010
    Being John Malkovich
    I'd forgotten much of this. Great film. January 6 2010
    The Bourne Ultimatum
    I don't think that's the way it really works, but we had fun. January 5 2010
    Frisco Kid
    What was I thinking. I should not have watched this with my daughter. January 5 2010
    Flubber (Robin Williams)
    A bouncy begining to the new year on a Shabbat afternoon with my daughter. Barely interesting as a movie, but nice to be cuddled up together. My son, age 12, refused to watch. "Not funny" he said by which he means not enough physical humor, by which he means every minute of the film is not filled with someone falling or getting bonked on the head, whch, considering how much falling and bonking this movie has, tells you how high his standards are. He also is seldom interested in new material, prefering to rewatch familiar movies and shows. Of course afterwards he wanted to be filled in on the entire plot. January 2 2010
    2009
    A Wrinkle in Time (2003)
    What constitutes a good movie gets very confusing when a 9, 12, 46 and 50 year old are trying to view one together. However, I thought this was marvelous as entertainment, considering the audience. It is a pretty darn faithful rendition of a favorite children's classic. It was just a bit too intense for our 9 year old, but a little judicious eye covering got her through the worst of it. New Year's Eve, December 31 2009
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
    I had never seen this film, although I always heard good things about the cinematography. On first viewing this evening I loved it for its setting and historical renditions. As usual it's the material culture that interests me the most. The script is excellent and the Leonard Cohen songs, although odd in a Western town, are somehow fitting. They remind us, perhaps, that this is an allegory, just a film made in the 1970s about another time and place (1870s? 1890s? I do wonder what year is intended....) and not the thing itself. The major flaw is Warren Beatty's failure to inhabit the character of McCabe. The actor just doesn't quite make his character work. Why does he flip from being a self-assured gambling entrepreneur to a money losing drunken fool when Mrs. Miller comes to town? That she unmans him is clear, but why or how she does so is not well fleshed out, and I attribute that more to Beatty's acting than to the script or direction. The other actors however were surprisingly persuasive to me as renditions of people of their time and place. OK, the hair styles were a bit 1970s, but as Leora pointed out, the 19th century west may have tended toward long hair too. The steam tractor, which I had previously seen in pictures and dismissed as an anachronism, may in fact be historically accurate to the time and region, but I've read that it is a 1912 model, and I think that the sense of this movie's setting is surely several decades earlier than that. In any case, I love that tractor. I'm sorry it's taken me 40 years to find this gem of a film, a great Western, right up there with Dead Man, but I'm glad to have finally seen it. December 29 2009




    See the full movie list here.



    geniza of practical ephemera


    “The nice thing about being a kid”

    As I was putting my son to bed and massaging his back this evening he said to me:

    “You know the nice thing about being a kid is that you can just let parents take care of things, like if you’re in a car at night and you’re worried about where you are you can just let your parents figure it all out and you don’t have to worry about it.”

    I agreed that that was a nice thing about being a kid, and I said, it’s also a nice thing about being a parent – you get to worry about things for someone else.

    Funny thing is I honestly can’t really remember being in that situation late at night with my children… but it feels like a memory I have from my own childhood.

    May 4th, 2010

    Posted in Ephemera | No Comments »


    Arieh and Ruti

    Here’s a very rough translation of a little song by Amir Lev. I know that I haven’t got the second line right in particular, and I’ve probably made other mistakes. I just do this sort of thing as a mind puzzle. No great message here. It’s a nice sad little song, that’s all.

    Update: I think I figured out the second line, and have re-translated it. But the last stanza still can’t be right as I have it.

    Arieh and Ruti (Very rough translation, needs work)

    Arieh makes Ruti laugh, sitting in a restaurant
    He raises one eyebrow like an actor
    And Ruti leans and holds his hand
    Beneath the table legs entwine

    And Arieh in bed waits for her to come
    Hears the door as she enters the house
    Instead of coming to him she takes her time
    Always she bathes for hours

    Avalanche in the mountains,
    Always thought it would happen some sad day,
    A shining palace, in seconds a rubble pit.

    One night, Ruti does not return
    In the morning, he awakens to the sound of water
    Her clothes are thrown across the floor
    Again she bathes for hours.

    He doesn’t ask her where she was
    Sitting on the sofa, hands raised in surrender
    Ruti with a cigarette, nods off to sleep
    Instead of one pill he takes two.

    Avalanche in the mountains,
    Always thought it would happen some sad day,
    A shining palace, in seconds a rubble pit.

    By the gate a convoy gathers
    And Arieh is the first to lie on the trailer
    The loudspeaker says to begin the walk
    And I looked for Ruti and she was nowhere

    Avalanche in the mountains,
    Always thought it would happen some sad day,
    A shining palace, in seconds a rubble pit.

    אריה ורותי / בס

    עמיר לב
    לחן: עמיר לב
    מילים: עמיר לב

    ………C
    E C D G
    אריה מצחיק את רותי הם יושבים במסעדה
    E C D F#_G
    הוא מזיז גבה אחת כמו שחקן
    E C D G
    ורותי רוכנת מחזיקה לו את היד
    E C D F#_G
    מתחת לשולחן מצמידים רגליים

    מעבר…..E C D G

    E C D G
    ואריה במיטה מחכה לה שתבוא
    E C D F#_G
    שומע את הדלת היא נכנסת לבית
    E C D G
    במקום לבוא אליו היא מושכת את הזמן
    ….. C D F#_G
    תמיד היא מתרחצת שעתיים

    C E D G
    מפולות בהרים
    E C D G
    חשבו זה יקרה באיזה יום עצוב
    F_G# C E D
    ארמונות נוצצים
    E C D G
    הפכו בשניות לאיזה חור עלוב

    E C D G
    לילה אחד רותי לא חזרה
    E C D F#_G
    בבוקר מתעורר ושומע מים
    E C D G
    ואיך שהיא זורקת את הבגדים על הרצפה
    E C D F#_G
    ושוב היא מתרחצת שעתיים

    E C D G
    הוא לא שאל אותה איפה היא הייתה
    E C D F#_G
    יושבים על הספה ונותנים ידיים
    E C D G
    ורותי עם סיגריה מתרחקת לשינה
    ………… C D F#_G
    במקום לקחת כדור אחד הוא לוקח שניים

    C E D G
    מפולות בהרים
    E C D G
    חשבו זה יקרה באיזה יום עצוב
    F_G# C E D
    ארמונות נוצצים
    E C D G
    הפכו בשניות לאיזה חור עלוב

    E C D F#_G
    ליד השער מתקבצת שיירה
    E C D F#_G
    ואריה ראשון שוכב בעגלה
    E C D G
    ברמקול הודיעו להתחיל בצעידה
    ……….C D F#_G
    ואני חיפשתי את רותי והיא לא הייתה

    C E D G
    מפולות בהרים
    E C D G
    חשבו זה יקרה באיזה יום עצוב
    F_G# C E D
    ארמונות נוצצים
    E C D G
    הפכו בשניות לאיזה חור עלוב

    קטע סיום…..
    E C D G
    ……….C D F#_G

    הוצאת אקורדים ע”י אריק מלאכי.

    March 15th, 2010

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    Ideas of Rest

    These are the things they did to build the original temple. The Rabbis figured if you don’t do these 39 things, you are pretty much not working, ergo, refraining from these 39 activities constitutes the essence of Shabbat rest. All the rest is details, and there are quite a few of them.

    Defining negative spaces is a way of speaking volumes. Things and actions and thoughts that are not present give rise to other things and actions and thoughts that are then able to become present.

    Imagine giving each of these modern interpretations, in addition to or instead of their ancient ones. Can we identify the winnowing, the grinding, the spinning and the trapping that we do, and step back from it? Could we find a way to map all 39 paradigmatic work activities onto our own lives? It’s all about living the poetry.

    Source: http://www.torahtots.com/torah/39melachot.htm

    March 1st, 2010

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    Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples | Magazine

    Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples | Magazine.

    March 1st, 2010

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    A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn – The Last Great Battle of the American West

    James Donovan: A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn – The Last Great Battle of the American West – 2008

    I read this mostly because I’m researching the South Dakota of my great-grandparents Jacob K. Smith and Emma Kate (Day) Smith, who immigrated to Mitchell, in the Dakota Territories, in about 1880, just four years after Custer’s last stand at the Little Bighorn, 472 miles to the west of Mitchell. I’m not very interested in battle history, but I found the details of clothing, relationships, army culture and the incidental representations of 19th century life to be interesting windows on the world of my great-grandparents. They were married in 1876 in Eldora Iowa, the same year Custer’s force was destroyed. By 1880 the Dakotas were open to settlement and they were among the first settlers in Mitchell. The book itself tells the battle story in a matter-of-fact and interesting way, but it is easy to forget as one reads it and finds oneself sympathizing with how Custer may have been betrayed by his fellow soldiers that the whole lot of them were on a vicious genocidal mission to destroy and imprison an entire nation. If these genocidal American “Nazis” had succeeded on that June day in 1876 women and children would have had their heads bashed open on the rocks. Instead, just this once, the “Jews” (l’havdil) beat them back. The genocide was postponed, although not for long. The picture is further confused by the fact that there were so many native scouts helping to track down other Native Americans and enabling the army to kill them. While their presence highlights the “multi-cultural” nature of the frontier and the army and the social complexity of the frontier space, in the end these army Indians were cooperating in the genocide against other tribes of their broader “people.” Then, upon all of that, I must consider the fact that my own ancestors, Jacob and Emma, and their parents and grandparents had each moved into the lands opened by genocide and built their lives there. These genocides were committed for people just like them, and they took full advantage, and yet were able to do so with relatively little personal involvement (although one ancestor, my third great-grandfather Joshua Bland did, possibly, participate in the Blackhawk war in 1830.) For three generations Joshua Bland and his spouse, their daughter Mary Ann (Bland) Smith and her husband Samuel Smith, and their son Jacob K. Smith and his spouse Emma Kate (Day) Smith, advanced successively into Illinois (1833), into Iowa (1841) and into Dakota (1880) in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing operations. They were not the soldiers (except perhaps Joshua Bland, although in his late 40s he is unlikely to have been a front-line soldier), but the families for whom the soldiers drove the Indians out, and onto the reservations. Some of their memoirs even speak of childhood memories of “wigwams in the trees.” The Native Americans were still around in their world but depleted and defeated, ghost people who were no longer much of a threat. Custer’s story at Little Bighorn is the story of one bad day in the life of a not terribly competent but competent enough military machine that carved out the liebensroom that made my ancestor’s lives possible. Sitting Bull’s story at Little Bighorn is the story of one good day in a long and painful defeat. All of that, in turn is the karma that comes down to me through my mother and more broadly to the United States as a whole. It is interesting to think whether such karma is localized in place and localized in persons, or whether somehow all parts of the United States and all people in it now share it equally.

    February 2, 2010

    via BookLog – A lifelong blog of books read and remembered.

    February 3rd, 2010

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    Four men walk into a paradise…

    Four men entered paradise [pardes] — Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher [that is, Elisha], and Akiba.

    Ben Azzai looked and died;

    Ben Zoma looked and went mad;

    Acher destroyed the roots;

    Akiba entered in peace and departed in peace.

    —-

    See Abraham Joshua Heschel…

    February 3rd, 2010

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    William Blake – Excerpt

    The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
    The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
    For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
    This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
    But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
    If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
    For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narow chinks of his cavern.

    February 3rd, 2010

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