Talk about repurposing....

A new luxury apartment building has opened in the Charlottenburg area of Berlin. Thanks to the superb location and beautiful rooms, apartments in the Atrion are being snapped up. But since the monthly rents start at $6,000, I don't think I'll try to take up residence.




The marketers for the building are fond of using the word 'Tradition.' The Atrion even has a brief note on the history of this very elegant area of Berlin. However nowhere on the website (at least that I can find) is there any mention of the history of the building itself. Which is a pity, as it is a respectable 100 years old. But then again if they discuss the building's history they might have to mention that during the late thirties and early forties the building was known as the Reichskriegsgericht. It was a Nazi military court where over 1400 dissidents were sentenced to death.















This situation cries out for some blisteringly bitter jokes, but I'm just not up to the job right now.
Anyone?

When Late Really Isn't Better Than Never

The Federal Prosecutor of the Republic of Germany has thrown out the 1933 arson conviction of Marinus van der Lubbe. He was accused of setting fire to the Reichstag (the German parliament building).

Van der Lubbe was executed in January 1934.

No Disrespect Intended....

...but I can't think of Martin Luther King without remembering one of the darkest periods of my life--just after college when I was teaching English comp. for $600 a month.

The composition curriculum was fairly rigid. The initial weeks of each class were devoted to analyses and discussion of nonfiction texts, taking them apart and showing the students the nuts and bolts of, say, Joan Didion's "I Can't Get That Monster Out of My Mind" or May Sarton's "On Solitude." At a certain point in the class we discussed traditional tools of classical rhetoric, such as anadiplosis (repetition of a word or phrase in successive clauses) and climax (arranging words or phrases in order of increasing importance). Then came their first paper: they were to choose a famous piece of writing and discuss the author's technique.

I was sitting my office grading these papers when I came to one on MLK's "I Have a Dream" written by my student Darren.* Darren was conscientious, sweet, and not very bright. He was going through the speech in a fairly competent manner, pointing out Biblical allusions and parallelism in all the right places and then:

"At this point, Martin Luther King had a climax."

When I finished banging my head on my desk I decided to take a break. I was walking through the corridors of the English department when I saw a professor whom I knew fairly well. I said to him blithely, "Did you know Martin Luther King had a climax during the 'I Have a Dream Speech'?"

A flicker of astonishment in his eyes was followed by a dirty little gleam. Then he grinned.

"Did he really?"



*All names have been changed to protect the clueless.

No famous speeches or filthy-minded professors were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

Oh. Canada.

FP Passport recently featured a post about the candidates' foreign policy gaffes--leading with Mike Huckabee's admission that he had never heard of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

Far funnier but equally terrifying in its own way: last year Canadian television personality Rick Mercer convinced* Huckabee that the Canadian Parliament meets in a giant igloo.**



*'Convinced' is perhaps too strong a word, suggesting some persuasion was necessary. Apparently it wasn't.

**To be fair, at least Huckabee knows Canada is an independent nation (at least I think he does). As late as World War II, most Americans assumed Canada was governed from London. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Cordell Hull (Roosevelt's secretary of state) is said to have called the Canadian Embassy to find out if London's declaration of war meant that Canada was at war as well. Or do you people declare war on your own now, eh?

Best of 2007 (in a sense)

As 2007 lurches towards its end, I've decided to post a list of some of the books and DVDs that sustained me in the penultimate year of the Bush-Cheney terror. But first the obligatory consumer advisory: if you are expecting something along the lines of a 'greatest hits of the year' list you will be disappointed. Some of these titles were published in 2007, others not. The list below is subjective, eclectic and compiled with a complete indifference to bestseller's lists, current releases and the whole damn zeitgeist.

Nonfiction:

Bookless in Baghdad by Shashi Tharoor.

This slim collection of essays by the senior UN official and author of Nehru: The Invention of India includes discussions of John le Carré and Pablo Neruda, musings on why Americans can't make a proper cup of tea and an exploration of the eternal question, Why are Indians such P. G. Wodehouse fanatics?

The Boys from Dolores by Patrick Symmes.

An un-putdownable account of the lives of a class of students at a prestigious Latin American prep school and how their whole world was up-ended by their most famous classmate: Fidel Castro.

The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin.

One of the most searing critics of twentieth-century America goes to the movies. His take on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is delightfully scathing.

Easter Everywhere by Darcy Steinke.

A painfully beautiful memoir of growing up and a raw, honest account of struggles with religious belief.

The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections, Germany 1938-2001. by Getta Sereny.

A must-read for anyone who grew up in the twentieth century. This collection by the Austrian-born journalist represents a life-long effort to understand how Nazism could have happened and provides an account of its repercussions up to the present. The Healing Wound includes recollections of the author's work shortly after the war tracking down Aryan-looking children who had been taken from their Jewish or Slavic parents and placed with Nazi families, a look into the mind of former SS guard Fritz Stangl, an account of the 'Hitler Diaries' affair, and portraits of the children of ex-Nazis trying to come to terms with their parents' crimes.

The Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.

The New Yorker's Beijing correspondent, Hessler has written both a fascinating account of an American's struggles to live in China and a compelling portrait of a vast, varied, endlessly surprising country and some of the people who live there.

Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra.

I am still amazed at the author's achievement. He chose for his subject a region of the world bigger than Canada and with more people than both North and South America and leaves you feeling as if he didn't leave out anything. Bollywood, the Indian Army, the Dalai Lama, the Nepalese civil war, political corruption, unfathomable poverty--any topic you can think of, Mishra covers it.

Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Ross Acocella.

A collection of profiles that originally appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. My favorites are the essays on M.F.K. Fisher, Penelope Fitzgerald and H. L. Mencken.

Writing Home by Alan Bennett.

This collection of Bennett's diary entries, speeches, articles, and play prefaces is one of the best bedtimes books ever. His precise writing, unassuming sensibility and keen intelligence are an unfailing joy. If you were to read only one piece in this collection, choose "The Woman in the Van."

Fiction:

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.

If you've only seen the movie you've been had. I read the novella one night in November. The next night I read it again.

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland.

My review of this novel for the Globe says it better than anything I could write here.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.

I re-read it again last spring. Hornby's technical accomplishment of successfully creating and sustaining four different narrative voices (a working-class female Londoner, a twenty-something American rock musician, a washed-up talk-show host, and a teenage girl f**ked up in too many ways to count) is nothing less than stunning, but A Long Way Down is far more than the sum of its wonderful parts: this novel about deciding not to kill yourself is a clear-eyed, unsentimental look at how to go on living.

Sick Puppy by Carl Hiassen.

How do I start to describe this book? Should I tell you about the main character (an eco-terrorist with a trust fund)? The hooker who accepts only Republicans as customers? The geriatric rhinoceros? Or the real estate developer who sums up his career path this way: "What Robert Clapley missed most about being a drug dealer was the respect."


DVDs:

Seasons 2 and 3 of House.

Wonderful writing and use of music. And I don't want to press this comparison too far, but in some ways House reminds me of my father.

Seasons 1-3 of Slings and Arrows.

Dark Canadian comedy about a dysfunctional Shakespearean theatrical troop. As Celia says in As You Like It: "O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful."

The Man Who Copied.

Excellent Brazilian thriller about a bright young man (and sometime stalker) who works for a photocopying service. (seriously).

Untergang (Downfall).

A film about the last week of Hitler's life based on his secretary's memoirs. Not exactly the feel-good movie of the year, but if you hate what Bush has done to this country as much as I do, it's nice to have a reminder that things can be worse.


Other diversions:

Cooking out of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and The Best Recipes in the World (as you may infer from those titles, self-doubt about his culinary prowess is not one of Bittman's issues).

The bits of Fry and Laurie that have been put on YouTube.

Reading the Bible as it would be if it had been written by cats with a tenuous grasp of English grammar.


Fun facts I learned in 2007:

If I had lived at my current address in 1898, my next-door neighbors would have been a "metaphysician" and a "tree protector."

In Spanish, Much Ado About Nothing is Mucho ruido y pocas nueces ('much noise and few walnuts').

In France, Scrooge McDuck is called Dagobert.

It turns out my ancestors weren't just wasting their time writing poetry about stealing livestock and arranging rocks in circles for no apparent reason. They were also brewing beer.

When your can of surströmming is bulging at the sides, it's ready to eat.

Words Fail Me

From an article in the current Scientific American on the next generation of U.S. nuclear warheads:

The RRW1 (Reliable Replacement Warhead) would elminate the need for some of the toxic substances often used in weapons, such as beryllium..."Because of the release of the weight requirement, we are able to use substances that are heavier but more environmentally benign," [Livermore Laboratories scientist Bruce] Goodwin says. "We will be able to eliminate an entire [manufacturing] process that produces 96 percent radiological toxic waste that has to be buried and replace it with nontoxic waste that is 100 percent recyclable."

"You replace beryllium with something that quite honestly you could eat and be healthy," he adds...

Oh no! Gay Penguins!

Banned Books Week has come to a close, and I've spent the past few days reading about books that have been challenged (i.e., it's been demanded they be removed from libraries or bookstores) during the previous year.

As as all twelve of my readers are probably are, the most challenged book of 2007 was And Tango Makes Three, a book about two male penguins that adopt a chick. The book is based on the true story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo that tried to fertilize a rock and get it to hatch (penguins aren't too bright, apparently).


Zookeepers took pity on the dim-witted pair and gave them a real egg, which they were able to get to hatch, and thus young Tango was born.

Tango--written for the 4 to 8-year-old-crowd, has troubled quite a few parents. In Shiloh, Illinois, some parents requested that the book be put in a "restricted" section of the school library (it's news to me that elementary school libraries have restricted sections). Mother of two Christine Farmer expressed the feelings of many parents when she said "Kids have to be kids at this age...I don't know why sexuality of any type is appropriate for kids that age." Sexuality? Now I'm not sure what she's getting at, but if she knew anything about what birds do to procreate...well let's just say that to mammals it's barely recognizable as sex.

But I digress. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the book's existence alarmed Republican County Commissioner Bill James, who has been quoted as saying, "I am opposed to any book that promotes a homosexual lifestyle to elementary school students as normal." (Tango was removed from Charlotte-Mecklenburg school libraries).

Perhaps, I'm naive, but I seriously doubt that a five-year-old is going to look at a few pages of drawings of penguins and ask mommy, "When's the next Pride march?" She'll probably just be thinking about...penguins. Or maybe drawing. Or--and I'm going out on a limb here, I realize--drawing penguins.

Maybe parents are afraid the book carries some kind of subliminal message. Twelve years from now young Chad or Tripp might be watching Animal Planet, hear the word "PENGUINS" and immediately dump Courtney so he can slake his newfound lust for the high school quarterback.

This is the possibly the most ridiculous uproar the family values crowd has raised since 1994, when a North Carolina preacher named Joseph Chambers tried to use the state's anti-sodomy laws to ban Ernie and Bert.

The American Library Association has provided a list of other books frequently challenged in 2006 here. Sexual content of any sort is invariably the leading reason for objections to a book. Any sympathetic treatment of homosexuality is a close second. And objections to sexual content--especially gay sexual content, invariably come from conservative Christians.

It's unsurprising that conservative Christians would object to books that conflict with their moral teachings. But please, people, show some consistency. If you want to object to books that contradict Biblical teachings, you're only scratching the surface.

While the Bible is a long, rambling hodge podge of a book--a welter of creation stories, national myths, royal chronicles and often contradictory religious teachings--it's remarkably consistent on certain topics, like how one should treat the poor.

Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Prov. 31:8ff. [Commandment to kings.] Open your mouth for the dumb, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.

Luke 3:11. And [John the Baptist] would answer and say to them, "Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise."

Mt. 5:42. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

Now contrast this with a remark by a certain bestselling author. On June 11, 2004 Bill O'Reilly treated his listeners to his opinion of the poor:

...you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy... Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen.

So where are the mobs of Christians demanding that The No Spin Zone be pulled from library shelves? Let's face it, Bill O'Reilly is basically urging people to reject Biblical teaching. Where are the concerned parents worried their child might read O'Reilly's books and end up in Hell like the rich man in the parable of the beggar Lazarus?

But no, it's the books about sex that get all the attentiion.

And while we're on the subject of conservative darlings, let's discuss one who's made a career out of violating the Book of Common Prayer's injunction to live in love and charity with one's neighbor: Ann Coulter. She's spent much of this year on the war path against John Edwards, most notoriously accusing him of exploiting his son's death. In its nastiness, it's vintage Coulter.

But I'm most intrigued by Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot." Of all the things she could have called John Edwards--"vain," "inexperienced," "Doogie Howser, Presidential Candidate"--she chooses an insult preferred by fifteen-year-old boys, one that she had to have known would draw a firestorm of criticism. Maybe she couldn't help herself.

It's obvious social conservatives are obsessed with sex. Especially gay sex. Please, people: get help. See a therapist. Spend time in airport bathrooms and see if you can work this out of your systems. Do something. Because this fixation of yours on gay sex--it's just not healthy.