“The Occident Remains Omnipresent”

Book-shopping during the Blitz.

No doubt these gentlemen were searching out Siegfried Kracauer titles.

On Boredom

People today who still have time for boredom and yet are not bored are certainly just as boring as those who never get around to being bored.

Siegfried Kracauer (1924)

And, No Doubt, The Crowds Roared . . .

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in the plaza outside Munich’s Central Train Station in September 1938.

All buildings in the photograph were destroyed during the war, and none rebuilt to pre-war designs.

Munich’s current Central Train Station is an unattractive, utilitarian building, of basic and cheap construction and materials. The building is not in keeping with the great beauty of central Munich, and needs to be replaced.

Columbus Day Weekend

Tomorrow, after my morning classes, Andrew and I will drive down to New York for a long Columbus Day Weekend.

If traffic is no worse than on a normal Friday afternoon, we should arrive in Manhattan around 4:00 p.m.

Assuming flights from Minneapolis are on schedule, Andrew’s parents should already be settled into our hotel when Andrew and I arrive. They are scheduled to arrive in Newark just past 1:45 p.m., and will take a cab from the airport into Manhattan.

We have Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon and evening already planned, but Saturday morning, Sunday morning and all day Monday remain open. We shall probably decide what to do during those periods while we settle in late Friday afternoon.

Tomorrow night: New York City Ballet and my second viewing of one of George Balanchine’s very greatest masterpieces, “Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet”.

I can’t wait.

Decision Made

Over the last 48 hours, Andrew’s parents and Andrew and I have decided what to do over Columbus Day Weekend: we shall go to New York.

After abandoning Houston, we examined Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh as possible destinations. We found little to do in each of those cities over the holiday weekend other than visit art museums (which would be perfectly fine, except museums in all three cities have very constricted open hours, even on Sundays).

We investigated New York’s listings, found enough events to our liking to warrant a visit, and scheduled a trip.

New York City Ballet may have been the determining factor in our decision. NYCB will be offering two programs of interest to us that weekend, one program to include “Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet” and the other to include “Chaconne”. I loved “Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet” when Andrew and I attended a performance of the work at NYCB in January of last year, and Andrew tells me that I will love “Chaconne”, too.

Andrew’s mother loves City Ballet, and Andrew’s father loves Balanchine (but only Balanchine), so a trip to New York will be welcome for everyone.

We were able to target three plays we want to see: a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”; a revival of Arthur Kopit’s “Wings”; and a revival of Michael Frayn’s early and seldom-performed “Alphabetical Order”.

All that, and a museum visit or two, should be enough to keep us occupied over the long weekend.

Matt Gatens As Chita Rivera!

Eliciting great excitement on both coasts, Variety and Broadway World reported this afternoon that University Of Iowa men’s basketball player Matt Gatens has had a one-woman show in development for the last two years. The show, “Chita”, will be a tribute to Chita Rivera, the 77-year-old singer and dancer—and former Latin bombshell—who first graced the Broadway stage in 1952’s “Call Me Madam”. Rivera is also warmly remembered for her Great White Way appearances in “Can-Can”, “Sweet Charity” and “Kiss Me, Kate”, among many other hits.

Director and choreographer Susan Stroman, who got her first big break in the 1987 revival of “Flora, The Red Menace” and who is best-known for her work directing and choreographing “The Producers”, has quietly been working behind the scenes with Gatens on the project for more than two years, devoting time to “Chita” whenever she has had a few moments to spare from other projects. Stroman cited her previous experience in staging successful one-woman shows—Stroman was the guiding force behind 1992’s “Liza Stepping Out At Radio City Music Hall”—as the reason why she in particular was the ideal figure to guide the “Chita” project to fruition.

Broadway insiders have known, for months, that the show was in development. Outsiders, too, have suspected that something was afoot, owing to Gatens’s frequent practice of incorporating Broadway choreography into his work on the basketball court.

Gatens’s recent appearance as a floozy chorine/cowgirl in “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas”, televised live nationwide from Indianapolis on March 11, more or less let the cat out of the bag that Gatens was moving into musical theater. However, it was not until this morning’s announcement from the stage of the Lyceum Theatre, where Stroman was adding finishing touches to Kander and Ebb’s “The Scottsboro Boys”, scheduled to open on October 31, that theatergoers officially learned that “Chita” was in current production.

Theater and dates have not been announced, but it is widely expected that “Chita” will move into the Belasco early next year once “Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown” concludes its current run.

Stroman disclosed that a two-year gestation period had been necessary in order to allow Gatens to master the show’s choreography.

“Close observers have noticed, for the last two years, that Matt has been incorporating more and more Chita Rivera moves and routines into his on-court play”, Stroman told Variety.


“Little by little, he is getting better—and I can now see genuine glimpses of the REAL Chita Rivera in Matt’s work”, Stroman revealed. “He’s a real joy to work with, eager to nail every facet of Chita Rivera’s huge talent and larger-than-life personality. Matt was born to play Chita.”


“Matt still has not mastered all the moves”, Stroman continued, “but he has made enough progress that soon we will be ready to go into full-time rehearsal.”

Jujamycn and The Nederlander Organization will jointly serve as producers for “Chita”. DARR Publicity—known for its work on an earlier one-woman show, “Behind The Façade Of Jackie O”—will handle public relations duties for the production. All jewels worn by Gatens in "Chita" will be courtesy of Harry Winston.

Gatens’s understudy has not been announced (although Josh Oglesby was rumored to be under consideration until the producers learned about his 2009 theft of alcohol from a Cedar Rapids Walgreen's outlet).

Ditherers All

Our prospective trip to Houston over Columbus Day Weekend is off.

While Andrew and I were in Minnesota over Labor Day Weekend, Andrew’s parents and Andrew and I had talked about traveling to Houston that particular weekend in order to see the two German Impressionism exhibitions at Houston’s Museum Of Fine Arts. We had planned to make a decision whether to travel to Houston in the two weeks following Labor Day.

We were delayed in making a decision—apparently, we are ditherers—and a decision was not reached until tonight.

Our decision is not to go to Houston.

Other than visiting the Houston Museum Of Fine Arts, we could find nothing in Houston that interested us that weekend—and we decided that it was not worth traveling to Houston from Boston and Minneapolis solely to visit an art museum, no matter how much we wanted to see the German Impressionism exhibitions.

From what we have been able to ascertain, the only review of the German Impressionism exhibitions in Houston has been the review that appeared in The Houston Chronicle. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have not covered the exhibitions, a startling oversight, and neither have any other American newspapers (even the newspapers in Austin and Dallas failed to send their art writers to Houston to write about this historic event).

When the German Impressionism exhibitions now on display in Houston were on view in Cologne earlier this year, virtually every newspaper in Europe covered the exhibitions in detail. The art press in the United States, however, is virtually ignoring the event—and Andrew insists that this is because American art writers are simply ignorant about German art.

It is possible that we may yet try to find a different weekend to make a quick trip down to Houston in order to attend the exhibitions, but that eventuality is, admittedly, very unlikely.

Unlike last year, there will be no classes on Columbus Day this year at law school, and Andrew and I would like to take advantage of the situation and go somewhere that weekend.

We are in the process—right this very minute—of looking at things to do and see that particular weekend in Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh. We chose those three cities because they are roughly midway between Boston and Minneapolis, and should have good flight connections for Andrew’s parents and for Andrew and me.

We no longer have the luxury of dithering, and must make a decision in the next 24 or 48 hours.

Andrew’s parents and Andrew and I are not the only ditherers on the planet.

There are some persons down in Oklahoma and Texas who need to decide—and decide without too much additional delay—whether this year’s Thanksgiving celebrations will be held in Oklahoma or Dallas.

Persons in Boston and Nashville need to book flights—and airlines, for some reason, are somewhat persnickety about allowing travelers to book flights when those very same travelers do not know their final destinations.

All Quiet On The Western Front

Stuttgart-born Hans Hildenbrand was one of 19 photographers sent by Kaiser Wilhelm to photograph The Western Front, but Hildenbrand was the only such photographer granted color film, exorbitantly expensive at the time.

This 1915 color photograph from German front lines shows the degree of destruction in The Vosge Mountains of Eastern France, where continuous shelling wiped out entire forests.

The Roaring Lion

"Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity, the photographer must act or lose his prize."

Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)

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Karsh’s famous portrait of Winston Churchill—said to be the most-reproduced photograph in history—was taken in 1941 on commission from LIFE magazine. It was soon to appear on the cover of LIFE, and instantly made the photographer’s name. The photograph was also to become Churchill’s personal favorite likeness of himself.

The photograph was taken on December 30, 1941, in The Speaker’s Chambers of The House Of Commons in Ottawa, where Churchill had just completed an address to The Canadian Parliament.

MacKenzie King, then Prime Minister of Canada, had arranged for the portrait session—without informing Churchill.

Upon being confronted with the photographer, Churchill growled, “Why was I not told of this?” and lighted a cigar.

King pleaded with Churchill to allow himself to be photographed by the young Canadian photographer, and Churchill relented, gruffly informing Karsh that he would grant him “two minutes”.

A grateful Karsh requested Churchill to remove the cigar, and Churchill refused—at which point Karsh approached Churchill, snatched the cigar from his lips, walked back to his camera and snapped the picture. The glowering image of Churchill was the result—and it soon came to represent the great wartime leader for the duration of the war, defiant and unconquerable. Karsh himself titled his photograph of the scowling, belligerent Churchill, “The Roaring Lion”.

Less well-known is the second photograph of Churchill that Karsh snapped that day. The second photograph, taken thirty seconds after the first, shows a smiling Churchill—and it was the second photograph, and not the first, that became Karsh’s personal favorite among the thousands of portraits he created during more than seven decades of work.

The Grave Of Winston Churchill At Bladon

The grave of Winston Churchill at Bladon, which we visited early on the morning of August 18, 2008, two years ago today.

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When we returned from our 2008 trip to Great Britain, I wrote about our journey.

I ended my post by describing how moved I was by Churchill's grave.

Andrew tells me it is the best thing I have ever written, and he suggested that I publish it again.

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Andrew’s father always has insightful and original observations to make, and it is always a pleasure to learn what he has to say about anything. About halfway through our trip, he pointed out that everything in Britain worth seeing, and everything that makes Britain unique, pre-dates World War I.

World War I was the great turning point in Britain’s fortunes. The country has never recovered from the disaster of The Great War, from which Britain emerged as a titular victor but from which Britain also emerged as a spent force. Nothing created in Britain after World War I—whether buildings or institutions—is of anything other than parochial quality or interest.

Other than summoning one last burst of energy to get through World War II, Britain is a nation that has been in long-term decline since The Great War. After 1918, the nation turned inward, and shifted its focus to bitter domestic infighting over apportioning pieces of a dwindling national wealth. That decline will soon be one century old, and there is no sign of abatement in its depressing progress. Its insignia are everywhere.

The most obvious evidence may be witnessed in its citizens. Britain’s people are provincial and narrow-minded, poor and poorly-educated, unable to accept and adapt to the fact that Britain is now a Third-World country, more or less irrelevant on the world stage.

The standard of living in Britain is remarkably low, and the gap in living standards between Britain and the most advanced societies such as the United States, Japan and Singapore is great and ever-widening. The quality of goods is poor, the quality of food is poor, the quality of health care is poor, and the quality of education is poor. This has very troubling implications for the future of the Atlantic Alliance, an alliance many Americans assume will die (and rightfully so) over the course of the next two, three or four decades.

Thirty years ago, Britain enjoyed a standard of living that was the envy of Spain. Today Spain enjoys a standard of living that is the envy of Britain. The standard of living is today higher in traditionally-impoverished Ireland than in Britain, a situation genuinely unthinkable as recently as one generation ago. Soon enough, Poland will enjoy a standard of living higher than Britain’s.

Personal productivity is today higher in France, of all places, than in Britain. Personal productivity is also higher in Brazil, still an under-developed country by any reasonable measure.

For the cause of its decline, Britain need only examine its tax policies, which inhibit the creation of capital.

None of this will change unless and until Britain abandons its present course, and this is very unlikely to happen. Only a shocking external event could reverse the course of decline Britain has embraced, and even a shocking external event may no longer do the trick.

Ironically, Britain’s decline was set in stone, not in the first half of the 1940’s, while war raged, but in the second half of that decade. Having secured a victory over Germany for the second time in as many generations, Britain voted Churchill out of office even before victory in the Pacific theater had been secured. The new government instituted policies that guaranteed that Germany, the loser of the war, would be the ultimate victor. To what ends had the great sacrifices of the war years been perverted?

Churchill did not return to power until 1951, at which point he was too old to take a firm hand in shaping his country’s future, lacking the strength and the willpower necessary to dismantle the social welfare programs and revoke the draconian tax laws enacted by Clement Atlee and Ernest Bevin. Churchill led what amounted to a caretaker government until 1955, at which point he was gently eased into retirement by the senior leadership of the Conservative Party and succeeded by Anthony Eden, who was to fall from power only one year later, a victim of the Suez misadventure.

At least Churchill, upon his death in 1965, ten years after retiring from office, was awarded the honor of a grand State Funeral. His was the last State Funeral to be accorded to one not a member of The Royal Family. (It was recently determined that Baroness Thatcher, upon her death, will also be honored with a State Funeral).

We visited Churchill’s grave at Bladon very early on Monday morning, our last full day in Britain. We were the only visitors present at such an early hour.

Churchill’s grave is a simple stone slab in a small rural churchyard, only a short distance from Blenheim Palace, where Churchill spent his unhappy childhood years. His grave is surrounded by trees as well as the graves of his loved ones: his British father and his American mother, his devoted Clementine, and three of their children, including Randolph, Churchill’s favorite. (The grave of another Churchill relative, Consuelo Vanderbilt, wife of the Ninth Duke Of Marlborough, is also nearby. The Churchill men clearly liked to marry American brides.)

Churchill’s gravestone is white. This shocked us greatly. Alex and Andrew had visited Churchill’s grave in 2004, and they had told us that the gravestone was dark gray in color, almost black.

As things turned out, we learned that Churchill’s gravestone had been cleaned in 2006 and restored to its original color. The current gravestone, however, is not the original. It is the second gravestone installed over Churchill’s grave. The first gravestone had been replaced in 1998, decayed by the tens of thousands of visitors who had worn away the gravestone by touching its surface in tribute to the great man. The current gravestone, too, shows great signs of wear, and will probably have to be replaced in another decade or so.

It is very telling that such a great man, who could have elected to be buried at Saint Paul’s Cathedral and who could have commanded a great monument to rival the magnificent stone edifices erected for Wellington and Nelson, chose for his final resting place a simple grave in an isolated country churchyard near his native soil.

We spent twenty minutes or so standing and quietly paying our respects. We all touched the gravestone, which was somehow important to us. Churchill, half-American, one of the greatest Anglo men who ever lived, was THE great figure of the Twentieth Century, just as Abraham Lincoln was THE great figure of the 19th Century and just as George Washington was THE great figure of the 18th Century. Churchill, however, somehow seems closer to us than Lincoln or Washington, perhaps because he was not such a distant figure. There are millions of people alive today who lived through the Churchill years, although their number grows smaller with each passing year.

Visiting Churchill’s grave was a deeply moving experience. It was also, oddly, a very sad experience. Our sadness was almost inexplicable in view of the fact that Churchill had enjoyed such a long and fulfilling life, a life of vast achievement and vast accomplishment in many fields, a life of long and deep friendships, a life that produced a devoted circle of family members and admirers. At age ninety-one, Churchill had earned well his final rest, and at his death no one lamented the fact that the old lion, who had performed his services to his nation so admirably, had been called home at last. (His beloved Clementine survived him by a dozen years, but Clementine retired permanently from public life at Winston’s death. She spent the final twelve years of her life in seclusion.)

It must have been the passing, not of the man himself, but of what Churchill represented, that filled us with a great sense of sadness.

His like will not come again.

I wonder what Winston Churchill would make of the Britain of today.