Palermo Streets

The first photo shows the statues at the Teatro Massimo, just across the square from our hotel in Palermo. The rest of the photos show various street scenes within around a half-hour walk from the hotel.

Palermo Sunday Flea Market

As we walked around Palermo last Sunday we came to a tree-filled square enclosed in a fence, with flea market stalls set up all the way round the fence. One thing we realized: this is the place to see the old cart panels from the classic Sicilian farm carts which once were a predominant tourist attraction. Of course the motor scooter, truck, and automobile have now replaced all horse-drawn transports.

Sicilian History and Beaches

We just spent a week in Sicily -- without much internet access. We visited several historic monuments in Palermo, and then spent a few days at a beach resort, where Lenny attended a conference. Our arrival was hectic: after an hour of waiting at the carousels, we spent another hour in a long line to report two missing bags. They finally caught up with us at the second hotel. Fortunately our Palermo hotel was in a shopping district -- so we each have a few new clothes. And luckily, a bookstore in the area had a pile of the new Harry Potter, which was released on the second day of our trip. We've now both finished reading it.

During the trip, I also read two relevant books: Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West by Hubert Houben and The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. Roger II, king of Sicily in the 12th century, and his immediate successors built some of the beautiful churches we visited, so it was interesting to learn about that era. The first photo at left shows a mosaic of the coronation of Roger, which we saw in La Martorana church. The book explains the iconic significance of this image, which may not be a portrait in the modern sense, but symbolizes Roger's kingship in several ways. For example, his clothing is the regal garb of a Byzantine emperor. Roger's high official, George of Antioch, a Syrian Christian, built La Martorana.

La Martorana stands beside San Cataldo church, which has Arab-style domes. The second photo shows the exteriors of the two churches. As illustrated by just these two buildings, Sicily was at the intersection of three cultures: Western European Catholic (Roger held his kingship as a vassal of the Pope), Byzantine, and Arab.

The Leopard was especially enjoyable to read in context. In the first scene, the main character (a Sicilian prince living just before the reunification and democratization of Italy) goes from his palace on a hill down into the center of Palermo: just where we had been walking. Throughout the book, I was delighted with descriptions of the environment where I was reading: the rugged landscape, the dry heat, and the blazing sun.

I'll be posting more of my photos of the landscape, the food, the streets of Palermo, and my favorites of ancient Greek artifacts from the archaeology museum.

Art Fair, Ann Arbor, 2007

"Celebrating the Spirit of Innovation in America"

We took a three and a half mile walk along the Huron River and around Argo Pond today. As we walked beside the railroad tracks, approaching the dam, these are some of the images we saw. Most of the route goes through quite pretty woods along the river banks, in contrast to this area, where the junkyard cleanup has not quite worked out yet.

Quote from "Mountains Beyond Mountains"

"Paul has created technical solutions to help the rest of us get to decency, a road map to decency that we can all follow without trying to imitate him.... Paul is a model of what should be done. He is not a model for how it should be done. Let's celebrate him. Let's make sure people are inspired by him. But we can't say anybody should or could be just like him." (Mountains Beyond Mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world by Tracy Kidder, p. 244)

This quote is from Paul Farmer's associate Jim Kim, explaining that the poor people in Haiti and elsewhere can't wait until exceptional people like Paul Farmer come along to get good health care. I think this attempt to de-emphasize personal qualities is a key idea in reading the book. The idealism, effectiveness, super intelligence, self-sacrifice, diplomatic skills, persuasiveness, and determination of Paul Farmer can too easily become the focus of the reader, and can prevent focus on Farmer and his associates' actual goals.

When I initially heard of this book, I was reluctant to read it because I expected a sort of myth-making hero worship. It's much broader than I expected, with many well-presented themes. It particularly discusses the rise of drug-resistant TB and struggles against it, the plight of the poor in Haiti and tendency of many people to turn their backs on them, similar reactions to extreme problems in other areas of the world, and bureaucratic tendencies to make big mistakes because they rigidly avoid correcting small mistakes. I think the challenge of the book is to see all the themes, not just the one illuminating figure of Paul Farmer, remarkable though he is.

I'm looking forward to discussing the book at the next meeting of my book club.

Fourth of July Parade

No one can remember when the first Fourth of July Burns Park Neighborhood parade took place. The flyers were stapled to telephone poles throughout the neighborhood this year, again by a few informal volunteers, who also drove the one and only car leading the parade. We walked up the parade route, a few blocks from home, and met it coming down Olivia Street.

"Don't let it touch the ground!" said the mother (above) to the baby trying to wave a flag.




The most recent parade I attended before today was around 28 years ago. Evelyn and her friend Becky had a float on a red wagon. Our dog Dolly won a prize that year for wearing a patriotic bandana. The dog in the photo above looks a little like Dolly. Nobody was awarding prizes this year, but watermelon was served to all at Burns Park, the end of the parade route.




Houses along the route -- and all over the neighborhood -- were ready for the Fourth.

Kyoto Temples, 1994

Katsura Detached Villa: Kyoto, Japan, 1994

Reading about sushi inspired me to review some old photos we took on our two trips to Japan. The Emperor's villa is open only to invited visitors, and there's a long waiting list, but Mariko and her parents made sure we were on the list. Every detail of Japanese tradition, including a moon-viewing platform, tea houses, stone pathways, water gardens, and self-consciously rustic buildings are all included and utterly beautiful.

The World's Navel

......all that fighting over this place. Every real day, thousands of years into the past, and underlying so much of the background of Chabon's alternate history.

Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Jewish history is complicated and full of opportunists, sell-outs, optimists, altruists, realists, and dreamers. Depressing reversals of fortune and betrayals are fundamental to any part of it. It's hard to grasp any big picture of Jewish history or identity. So much is distorted, intentionally or through accidents to the people who might have told their story.

In the modern Jerusalem I've experienced, the views of history vary enormously. Black-hats (a.k.a. Hassids or Haredi) live, work, study, and possess their own view of history. Every person sightseeing or weeping at the Western Wall of the ancient Temple has his own view, I'd say. The Arabs selling tea and Oriental sweets and Falafal and Arab-logo Coke, the Christian tourists -- everybody has a point of view. Any Jew in Jerusalem surely senses the fragile nature of the Israeli success. Seeing Jewish history alive like this is scary.



In The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon has made up a bizarrrely alternate Jewish history. He embeds a huge palate of characters and events in a consistent invented world where Jewish life continues despite its terrible recent past. Using just a few allusions and references, he creates an alternate end to World War II and to the foundation of the State of Israel. The Zionist dream in Chabon's alternate world means something entirely different than it meant before the war, or what it may mean now, retrospectively. The book is so self-contained that I think the reader has no time to ask if the alternate history is at all plausible. That's just not an issue, I'd say.

Comparison with Philip Roth's The Plot against America, another alternate Jewish history, seems inevitable. But Chabon's whole approach differs utterly. Roth gave us ordinary characters faced with an extreme challenge, and his point is to highlight their survival. Chabon gives us extraordinary characters, primarily policemen, murder victims, and criminals. He creates a Chassidic sect that controls organized crime in the temporary Jewish settlement in the wilds of Alaska (Did I mention that the alternate Jewish reality is in Sitka? Well, it is.) He creates a whole society of transplanted Jews who have named their streets and buildings after 19th century Yiddish heros and authors, and have adapted to life in the modern world -- especially guns and cell phones -- without really abolishing the Shtetl.

Above all, unlike Roth, Chabon never really tells us if his imagined Jewish community survives the ordeal he puts them through. Looking forward, his main character at the end of the book considers: "Any kind of wonder seems likely. That the Jews will pick up and set sail for the promised land to feast on giant grapes and toss their beards in the desert wind. That the temple will be rebuilt, speedily and in our day. War will cease, ease and plenty and righteousness will be universal, and humankind will be treated to the regular specacle of lions and lambs cohabiting. Every man will be a rabbi, every woman a holy book, and every suit will come with two pairs of pants." (p. 407) This is hope? Nah.

Characters in The Yiddish Policemen's Union speak Yiddish and curse in American, though there's rarely a word of actual Yiddish in the text. A few remember a version of Hebrew that was emerging in 1948 when disaster befell the nascent state of Israel. Their speech contains all the good humor and pithy idioms of 1920s American Yiddish, remembered with nostalgia, and written with unbeliveable skill. It's worth reading just for the dialog.

This oddball Jewish settlement has made it past the year 2000, and their lease on Alsaka is about to expire. They face an existential challenge: where will they go and what will they do, as their land reverts to the native Americans.

The plot is a police procedural: someone unknown is getting away with murder, and a cover-up is impairing the honest, committed and personally conflicted police officers (two men, one woman, lots of baggage). Love, loyalty, alcoholism, a chess master's puzzle, parents, unborn infants, a possible messiah with a gift for blessing and a curse on his own existence, international political plots, and a miasma of complicated personal stories mingle. Perhaps the most impressive and unlikely portrait is of the wife of the Chassidic rabbi and her role at the rabbi's court, which is located on an Alaskan island. Or perhaps the most impressive character is the half-Indian half-Jewish policeman named Berko. Perhaps it's the failed messiah.

Can we really picture this all happening against a background of midnight sun (like in this photo I stole from some chamber of commerce website, unlike my own original photos of Jerusalem!) Can we see these yids, as they consistently call themselves, in an imaginary Alaska November with snow, sleet, rain and cold? Well, we have to.

Did I mention that I loved every word of this book, and that I'm lost in admiration for its combination of totally improbable choices of topic, style, language, and subject matter? The way it toys with the big issues of Jewish history but doesn't make them burdensome. Or almost doesn't?

My friend Olga brought me the book, and was pleased that she had chosen so perfectly. I'm grateful to her for this choice.

Greenfield Village

"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

So begins "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." For him, all engines went ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa especially when he heard his own old car making the noise, a background to whatever adventure he was having.

As we drove along in an ancient and venerable Ford today, Olga suddenly understood what sound Walter Mitty was hearing: poketa poketa... went our vehicle's distributor, sparking its sparkplugs and just its general reluctance to go slow enough for the safetey concerns of the village, using its two forward gears. Does it use unleaded gas? Well, yes, it was built before gas was leaded (and later unleaded).

After our ride in the old ford, we enjoyed a number of different sights in the village.

Shakespeare in the Arb

The isle was full of noises. A flute, drums, and thunder-making devices supplemented the sounds in the Arboretum on a beautiful evening, mild and not particularly humid. The rumbling of the train and once its whistle, the songs of birds, a woodpecker drumming, a very loud creaking of a branch in the wind, a helicopter heading for one of the nearby hospitals, and the puffing of an occasional runner rounded out the noises.

"The Tempest" in the Arboretum used the entire Arb as Prospero's island. Before the performance, we ate a snack beside the Huron River, where the remains of the shipwreck that begins the play were visible on the other side of the river. (Admittedly, although we suspected they were the shipwreck we thought they also might be a homeless person's belongings.)

The play began in a rather open space beside the woods. As Prospero explained Miranda's mysterious past, an airy spirit was standing in the limbs of a pine tree. Several sprites shared Ariel's lines, as well as haunting the woods as the 150 members of the audience moved to the part of the island where the action took place, under the direction of the artistic director. Ushers in identifiable "Tempest" t-shirts guided the lines of "groundlings" who like us had brought a blanket to sit on, and the others, who had chairs or chose to stand up. Two golf carts transported those who couldn't walk.

The constant changes of scene, the movement of the sprites in the trees, and the changing light as the sun set on the longest day of the year made an extraordinary setting for an excellently acted production, which used no artificial lighting or amplified sound. As in Shakespeare's time, it began early in the evening and ended at sunset.

Prospero was excellent as particularly were the two drunken courtiers, Stephano and Trinculo. Caliban was fantastic. He walked on his hands and feet, and snarled most effectively as Stephano drank from his bark bottle:Here is how the audience filed through the woods. In the foreground is my friend Olga, who's visiting us this week:
The players bowed as the audience applauded and the sun was setting behind the trees. The only odd sensory experience was a miasma of insect repellent that people sprayed on themselves throughout the play.

Anthony and Cleopatra

I'm dizzy from reading this play where each scene moves to a different location all around the Mediterranean, and where the personal and the political swirl together more confusingly than the current political scene in France. (Parallel in the news: the loser of the recent election, Segolene Royal, has dismissed her lover and rival for political leadership of the French socialists. Bedfellows make strange politics there. They will soon be forgotten in France, and have hardly been noticed at all over here.)

In movies, there are often examples of swirls like this. By chance, in the midst of my reading the play, we watched the film Babel, which jumps between Africa, Japan, San Diego, and Mexico with alarming jumpiness, and a lot less skill than Shakespeare. (I didn't like the film much and wouldn't even mention it except for the coincident jumping.)

Shakespeare usually has a more coherent focus. At least I usually find it a lot easier to follow the action and thematic development of a play. Here, he includes many descriptions of the exotic locales. Maybe he would have been pleased to have the filmmaker's choice of showing the many settings visually, but the richness of the descriptions suggest that he loved doing it the way he did.

As I say, I feel somewhat lost in the plotting. Anthony has much to lose, and he loses it: his political power, his family connections, his military might and reputation, and his relationship with Cleopatra. She of course is suggested to be older than most women in their prime, but to have an inexhaustible prime to call on.

I could start pulling up all the utterly famous quotes that set the exotic scenes, create the amazing character of Cleopatra, and cause one to share the depths to which Anthony falls. But I don't feel the need to do what's been done so often.
Bevington's Wide and Universal Theater demonstrates that every age had a new way to visualize and present Shakespeare, and that the 19th century was especially prone to make every word into a concrete onstage image, while 20th century performances sometimes are more abstract than the original productions at Shakespeare's Globe. Here's an image I found that really goes over the top, painted by Alma-Tadena in 1883.

Marianne Wiggins: "The Shadow Catcher"

The Shadow Catcher is a highly enjoyable novel. The frame story uses a device that seems to be coming up in a lot of very recent books: the main character, who tells the story, has the same name as the author, and seems to have many similar characteristics. "Marianne Wiggins" -- the character who might be the author -- begins with some observations about artwork: "Let me tell you about the sketch by Leonardo I saw one afernoon in the Queen's Gallery in London a decade ago, and why I think it haunts me." (p. 1)

The first two chapters could possibly be autobiograpical: the narrator is a writer, trying to sell a script to an unnamed Hollywood personality. She lives in LA and obsesses about traffic and alterate ways to avoid the worst congestion. She knows about celebrities. She has a home and a car. Her book is about Edward Curtis, photographer, who created the common understanding of what it looked like to be an Indian. All the details of her life could be either truth or fiction: it's not a critical matter.

On page 43, the novel turns to "her" book. It starts with the early life of Edward Curtis's wife Clara, daughter of a painter whose works are no longer desired because photography has replaced his skills. We see how she and her younger brother happened to travel out to the territory of Washington to live with his family. As Clara meets Edward Curtis, we meet him. As he develops into a skilled and artful photographer, we see him through her eyes, and we find out how she teaches him what she's learned about painting: the link to the first thoughts of "Marianne Wiggins" and her passion for Renaissance Italian art.

A marvelous aspect of The Shadow Catcher is the constant reference to the works of Curtis, which are reproduced so much that every reader can probably visualize them. In case you don't have the photos in your mind's eye, very small reproductions of the works and of other relevant material appear in the text: I think the use of illustrations in a novel is another 21st century trick that's coming into its own. You can also find very good reproductions online -- as I showed.

Eventually a completely unexpected turn of events in the Frame Story causes an unexpected nexus between "Marianne Wiggins" the narrator, the legacy of Edward Curtis, and even the title of the book. The author leaves behind the early themes of creating visual art and of comparing photography to painting. There's nothing wrong with the way the book treats these themes, but the unexpected plot element is what makes a seemingly predictable work into an exciting read. I don't want this to be a spoiler, so I'll stop now.