Letter to a friend,
I watched “In the Electric Mist” tonight with Sue. I should have known better but I didn’t realize how brutal the violence in it was. I had not read the novel by James Lee Burke, as it is an earlier novel I haven’t yet caught up to. I had no idea that they would turn Dave Robicheaux into another ‘Dirty Harry.’ I have read a dozen of Burke’s novels and I don’t think of him as such a ruthless PI, someone who will ignore the law in so many instances. Not surprisingly, Sue ragged on me for all the “gratuitous violence.” I didn’t see the same way: most men would have reacted as Dave did if their daughter had been kidnapped by a scumbag killer. One would do what had to be done to get her back safely. It has to be kept in mind also that Dave was responding to two vicious murders of young girls who did not deserve what they got. He can be rough with suspects, but he has a tender-hearted side too, which comes from his home life. But there is no doubt that the director made the murders justification for Dave’s violent reactions. I think Burke developed another strategy in the later novels; he invented Clete Purcell, who takes on the role of a loose cannon and psychologically challenged individual. In short, he divides Robicheaux into two, and I think that tactic worked well. One of Dave’s jobs is to rein in his pal Clete, so he can be of service to his investigations.
Tommy Lee Jones made a more satisfying Dave Robicheaux than Alex Baldwin in the 1986 film “Heaven’s Prisoners.” Jones’ face, with its hangdog look and multiple creases and wrinkles, expresses Dave’s boozing and the emotional load he carries from what he does as a detective. He looks capable physically as well—strong, resilient, and durable. John Goodman, who hails from Louisiana, was a good choice for Balboni, who’s a typical lowlife villain for Burke, sleazy, loudmouthed, and who has others do his dirty work. And like Al Capone, he’s done in, not by the local police, but by the IRS.
Sue and I also watched “Elegy,” with Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz and Dennis Hopper. It was based on the Phillip Roth novel, THE DYING ANIMAL, which I haven’t read. I burned out on Roth 10 years ago. He was getting too sexually obsessed, murky, and solipsistic for my tastes. The movie is drenched in atmosphere, has good music (Eric Satie, Madeleine Peyrdux) and a kind of elegant cinematography. But the script is dreadful. Kingsley and Hopper are predatory professors who repeatedly have affairs with students in order to deny the fact they are growing old. They spout what is supposed to pass for learned wisdom, but it no more than the chatter of frustration and a poverty of emotional satisfaction—rather pathetic. They express arrested development more than any real insight. When Kingsley falls for Consuelo (Penelope Cruz), a voluptuous dark haired beauty from Cuba, he reacts like a gloomy teenager, quite smitten and jealous as a first-time lover. I lost patience halfway through the film. We finished watching it but it had lost all credibility. Have you seen “The Visitor” yet? Make sure you do. It has become my yardstick to measure bullshit films against something genuine. It was the most honest film I have seen in quite a while, and it deals with real issues. The lead character was another professor, but he was miles apart from the two in “Elegy.”
Another film we saw this week and that I’d recommend to you was “Far North,” with Michelle Yeoh and Sean Bean in the leads. Yeoh is the Chinese actress from ‘‘Crouching Tiger” fame and many other worthy films. The film is based on a 4 page short story called True North by a Canadian author, Sara Maitland. It is a English production with a Pakistani director, who also wrote the screenplay. Yeoh is Saiva an Eskimo woman whose mother was told by a shaman that it would have been better for her not to have been born, for if she did live a heavy curse would be upon her. Saiva and a younger woman, Anja, presumably her daughter, roam the Arctic landscape, always on the move, with getting enough food always a challenge to survival. They inevitably have encounters with others, some good, some bad, and in one instance they take in a hurt stranger (Sean Bean) and tensions build as sexual temperatures rise. The fact Saiva believes what the shaman said about her leads to her undoing. The film has a fantastic ending that strains credulity, but it is a powerful ending nonetheless. There is no way to anticipate what it will be.
Jerry P
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
A Visit to Avebury
A Visit to Avebury
The following is an excerpt from a 45 page report I wrote after a three week trip to the British Isles in 1998. It concerns a visit to Avebury and the Great Circle of Stones and Ceremonial Grounds of ancient Britons who lived in the region now called Marlborough Downs where the Neolithic natives pitched their culture and religion.
The landscape approaching Avebury was truly spectacular, great vistas of green rolling hills and vast lowlands with small clusters of trees scattered throughout the Downs. “Downs” is an English expression to describe an expanse of open, high, grassy land, usually with rolling hills, which for the most part are used as pasture for sheep. The first ritual image of the Neolithic culture that we saw from the car was the “Westbury White Horse” on the side of a distant hill. Seeing it from far away it was hard to judge its true dimensions, but it was obviously huge. This particular earthwork, to use a contemporary term for such art work, was created in 1788, replacing a much older and smaller figure on the same spot. The horse gleamed in the rich green landscape, its whiteness the product of the local bedrock, chalk, a geological formation that covers a vast area of southern Britain. The topsoil was scraped away revealing the white chalk below. It played a role in the Great Stone Circle too. Avebury was an awesome experience for my wife and I, as we have been haunted by the place ever since. The site was the hub of a pre-historic complex of ceremonial spaces, ancient stone avenues, and burial chambers. Stonehenge, which is twenty miles south of Avebury, was smaller in scale and was constructed 100 years after Avebury. The older site was finalized in 2600 B.C., with parts of it being even older. Perhaps Stonehenge was a variation on a theme of an earth/sky animistic religion, as it seemed to be built specifically for astronomical purposes, hence why it was smaller and less grand in concept. In contrast, Avebury was more like a Grand Cosmic Design, if you will, a Mandala dedicated to the Great Goddess and her fertility rites; also a place for ceremonial rites, the main theater for their animistic religion, where the bones of the ancient dead had a place in the ongoing culture. It continued in use for 700 years, double the time of American history. It was contemporary with the stepped pyramid of Zoser in Saqqara, Egypt. One major scholar of Avebury called it “the colossus of pre-history,” as it is a huge complex of several hundred acres, spreading laterally to the west and ends there in Silbury Hill, a cone-shaped, man-made mountain at the termination of one of the long avenues. So far no one has divined to purpose of the hill; it is not where the dead are buried; perhaps it was simply a marker of some kind. It is 130 feet high, the largest megalithic structure in Europe, about the same size as the small pyramids of Egypt.
That same scholar wondered why Stonehenge has received greater attention and renown than Avebury. The identical thought crossed my mind as I experienced the power of the place. The concept of the place was thrilling to a symbologist like me; it resonated just like, for example, The Tibetan Wheel of Life. It was the pivotal site, the original ‘sacred ground’ of the local peoples.
The massive circular embankment and deep ditch that surrounds the Great Stone Circle was dug with what passed for a shovel in those days, the shoulder bone of animals. The dirt was piled up to make a bank around the ditch, which was more of the gleaming white chalk. The sides were twenty feet deep and it was approximately 1400 feet across. The whiteness of the ditch made a vivid contrast with the grey and green on the environment. The outer circle contained 98 standing stones that were 10 to 20 feet in length and weighted on average 20 ton. The largest stone in the bunch, which is still intact, was 65 ton. Unlike the stones at Stonehenge, which were worked and shaped, those at Avebury were raised as is. Inside the Great Stone Circle were two smaller circles, side by side, one to the north composed of 27 stones, the other to the south made of 29 stones. The two long avenues that that fed into the ritual area were probably lined with 400 stones. Of the approximately 600 stones used at the site only 76 are still standing. The site remained intact throughout the Roman occupation, when the place was a popular tourist attraction for Romans. A Saxon village sprang up inside the Great Circle, but it wasn’t until Medieval times when the damage to the stones began to occur, as the Christians weren’t to tolerate or sympathetic with the expression of their pagan brothers. They had a fear of pagan worship and gave the huge stones names like “The Devil’s Brandirons,” “The Devil’s Chair” and “the Devil’s Quoits.” For me, some who once taught Art History, it was sad to realize what had happened and that it showed such little respect for the evidence of what came before; but the Christian zealots could not abide the evidence of a previous religion so future generations could see what a fully articulated Neolithic temple was like.
Before we drove over to Silbury Hill and then on to Salisbury Cathedral, we had lunch at a new restaurant on the grounds of the Village. Guess what the name of the place was? “The Stones”-what else could it be? To the surprise and delight of my family, they severed the most delicious hot vegetarian food and delectable sweets. Nasima was ecstatic over the quality of the food.
The following is an excerpt from a 45 page report I wrote after a three week trip to the British Isles in 1998. It concerns a visit to Avebury and the Great Circle of Stones and Ceremonial Grounds of ancient Britons who lived in the region now called Marlborough Downs where the Neolithic natives pitched their culture and religion.
The landscape approaching Avebury was truly spectacular, great vistas of green rolling hills and vast lowlands with small clusters of trees scattered throughout the Downs. “Downs” is an English expression to describe an expanse of open, high, grassy land, usually with rolling hills, which for the most part are used as pasture for sheep. The first ritual image of the Neolithic culture that we saw from the car was the “Westbury White Horse” on the side of a distant hill. Seeing it from far away it was hard to judge its true dimensions, but it was obviously huge. This particular earthwork, to use a contemporary term for such art work, was created in 1788, replacing a much older and smaller figure on the same spot. The horse gleamed in the rich green landscape, its whiteness the product of the local bedrock, chalk, a geological formation that covers a vast area of southern Britain. The topsoil was scraped away revealing the white chalk below. It played a role in the Great Stone Circle too. Avebury was an awesome experience for my wife and I, as we have been haunted by the place ever since. The site was the hub of a pre-historic complex of ceremonial spaces, ancient stone avenues, and burial chambers. Stonehenge, which is twenty miles south of Avebury, was smaller in scale and was constructed 100 years after Avebury. The older site was finalized in 2600 B.C., with parts of it being even older. Perhaps Stonehenge was a variation on a theme of an earth/sky animistic religion, as it seemed to be built specifically for astronomical purposes, hence why it was smaller and less grand in concept. In contrast, Avebury was more like a Grand Cosmic Design, if you will, a Mandala dedicated to the Great Goddess and her fertility rites; also a place for ceremonial rites, the main theater for their animistic religion, where the bones of the ancient dead had a place in the ongoing culture. It continued in use for 700 years, double the time of American history. It was contemporary with the stepped pyramid of Zoser in Saqqara, Egypt. One major scholar of Avebury called it “the colossus of pre-history,” as it is a huge complex of several hundred acres, spreading laterally to the west and ends there in Silbury Hill, a cone-shaped, man-made mountain at the termination of one of the long avenues. So far no one has divined to purpose of the hill; it is not where the dead are buried; perhaps it was simply a marker of some kind. It is 130 feet high, the largest megalithic structure in Europe, about the same size as the small pyramids of Egypt.
That same scholar wondered why Stonehenge has received greater attention and renown than Avebury. The identical thought crossed my mind as I experienced the power of the place. The concept of the place was thrilling to a symbologist like me; it resonated just like, for example, The Tibetan Wheel of Life. It was the pivotal site, the original ‘sacred ground’ of the local peoples.
The massive circular embankment and deep ditch that surrounds the Great Stone Circle was dug with what passed for a shovel in those days, the shoulder bone of animals. The dirt was piled up to make a bank around the ditch, which was more of the gleaming white chalk. The sides were twenty feet deep and it was approximately 1400 feet across. The whiteness of the ditch made a vivid contrast with the grey and green on the environment. The outer circle contained 98 standing stones that were 10 to 20 feet in length and weighted on average 20 ton. The largest stone in the bunch, which is still intact, was 65 ton. Unlike the stones at Stonehenge, which were worked and shaped, those at Avebury were raised as is. Inside the Great Stone Circle were two smaller circles, side by side, one to the north composed of 27 stones, the other to the south made of 29 stones. The two long avenues that that fed into the ritual area were probably lined with 400 stones. Of the approximately 600 stones used at the site only 76 are still standing. The site remained intact throughout the Roman occupation, when the place was a popular tourist attraction for Romans. A Saxon village sprang up inside the Great Circle, but it wasn’t until Medieval times when the damage to the stones began to occur, as the Christians weren’t to tolerate or sympathetic with the expression of their pagan brothers. They had a fear of pagan worship and gave the huge stones names like “The Devil’s Brandirons,” “The Devil’s Chair” and “the Devil’s Quoits.” For me, some who once taught Art History, it was sad to realize what had happened and that it showed such little respect for the evidence of what came before; but the Christian zealots could not abide the evidence of a previous religion so future generations could see what a fully articulated Neolithic temple was like.
Before we drove over to Silbury Hill and then on to Salisbury Cathedral, we had lunch at a new restaurant on the grounds of the Village. Guess what the name of the place was? “The Stones”-what else could it be? To the surprise and delight of my family, they severed the most delicious hot vegetarian food and delectable sweets. Nasima was ecstatic over the quality of the food.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Was Bush after Bonds?
Rachel Maddow had an unusual guest on her program late last week, Dave Zirin, the Sports editor for The Nation magazine. Sports rarely show up as a political issue on a show devoted to politics; but in this case the story involves the Justice Department’s obsessive pursuit of Barry Bonds, which has political ramifications. In fact, the case is an aberration created by the Bush Administration, or at least that is the story laid out by Zirin on Rachel’s show, and his version of events is persuasive.
Barry Bonds has long been painted as the “bad boy” of Major League baseball. Zirin compares him to Sean Penn, the “bad boy,“ of Hollywood. Both men can be surly, combative, straight-forward and truthful. They are both exceptional talents, witness the fistful of records that Bonds has racked up, and the Oscar that Penn recently won for his performance in “Milk,” not to mention the many other fine films he has made over the years. Each commands considerable respect for his skills. Zirin then ran out a scenario about the Bonds case, which was music to my ears because I have defended him a number of times on the Forum.
First of all, The presiding judge in the Bonds case, Judge Susan Illston threw out the Fed’s case last week and then it was announced that the case was suspended indefinitely, as the prosecutors, now without their evidence, ponder what to do next. The case was thrown out because the Federal agents had run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, in particular the 4th Amendment, acting as if the Constitution doesn’t exist. ESPN’s legal expert, Lester Munson, called the loss of evidence “devastating, “ a tremendous setback for the prosecutors.
According to Zirin, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department “always seemed irrationally determined to prosecute Bonds. It was as obsessive as the fisherman Santiago attempting to bring home the great marlin in Hemmingway’s THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.” Also called obsessive was the IRA agent Jeff Novitsky, who was the agent who broke open the BALCO case; he became the steroid-busting hero to many members of the Media and newspapers, the man behind the scenes who cleaned up baseball and nailed Barry Bonds who deserves to go to jail. Zirin told Rachel that agents went into Comprehensive Drug Testing, a leading firm in testing, with a warrant to seize ten tests but instead took 4,000 medical records—that’s every player in the Major Leagues—records that were supposed to be sealed. Zirin said Novitsky was given the green light by President Bush and John Ashcroft and told them “to go for the jugular.” Three judges told the agent to return the records but he kept them as evidence. The next thing he did was to try to intimidate Greg Anderson, Bonds personal trainer and witness for the prosecution who has already spent a year in jail for refusing to testify in court. He still refuses to testify. So Novitsky tried to strong-arm his mother in law, threaten her with tax evasion and jail time. That didn’t work either. Zirin caustically observed, “They’re acting like the Gestapo.” But since the case was illegally assembled the evidence is crap and Judge Illston threw it out as a consequence.
So, in conclusion, it is quite clear that Bonds has been scapegoated for his prickly personality and because he broke Henry Aaron’s home run record, which is regarded as sacrosanct by purists, G.W. Bush, who was a part owner of the Texas Rangers for a number of years. Bonds upset the baseball gods and had to be crucified for his transgression. Then there is Management’s complicity in the steroid era. Zirin said he knows for a fact that some trainers told owners that players were experimenting with some questionable substances. They chose to look the other way because home runs made them more money. As Greg Maddox said in that famous TV commercial,” Chicks like the long ball.” So did the owners. So instead of sharing the blame for what happened and admitting their complicity, they chose to dump it all on the players, with the press and electronic media jumping in with moral judgments and endless verbal spankings of the naughty players. Barry Bonds became the poster boy of the offenders, the black sheep of the Major Leagues. His obsessive adversaries in positions of power did all they could to put him in prison. It was all so much money and time wasted by a politician now retired and nullified.
Thank you, Dave Zirin, for your diligent reporting.
Barry Bonds has long been painted as the “bad boy” of Major League baseball. Zirin compares him to Sean Penn, the “bad boy,“ of Hollywood. Both men can be surly, combative, straight-forward and truthful. They are both exceptional talents, witness the fistful of records that Bonds has racked up, and the Oscar that Penn recently won for his performance in “Milk,” not to mention the many other fine films he has made over the years. Each commands considerable respect for his skills. Zirin then ran out a scenario about the Bonds case, which was music to my ears because I have defended him a number of times on the Forum.
First of all, The presiding judge in the Bonds case, Judge Susan Illston threw out the Fed’s case last week and then it was announced that the case was suspended indefinitely, as the prosecutors, now without their evidence, ponder what to do next. The case was thrown out because the Federal agents had run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, in particular the 4th Amendment, acting as if the Constitution doesn’t exist. ESPN’s legal expert, Lester Munson, called the loss of evidence “devastating, “ a tremendous setback for the prosecutors.
According to Zirin, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department “always seemed irrationally determined to prosecute Bonds. It was as obsessive as the fisherman Santiago attempting to bring home the great marlin in Hemmingway’s THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.” Also called obsessive was the IRA agent Jeff Novitsky, who was the agent who broke open the BALCO case; he became the steroid-busting hero to many members of the Media and newspapers, the man behind the scenes who cleaned up baseball and nailed Barry Bonds who deserves to go to jail. Zirin told Rachel that agents went into Comprehensive Drug Testing, a leading firm in testing, with a warrant to seize ten tests but instead took 4,000 medical records—that’s every player in the Major Leagues—records that were supposed to be sealed. Zirin said Novitsky was given the green light by President Bush and John Ashcroft and told them “to go for the jugular.” Three judges told the agent to return the records but he kept them as evidence. The next thing he did was to try to intimidate Greg Anderson, Bonds personal trainer and witness for the prosecution who has already spent a year in jail for refusing to testify in court. He still refuses to testify. So Novitsky tried to strong-arm his mother in law, threaten her with tax evasion and jail time. That didn’t work either. Zirin caustically observed, “They’re acting like the Gestapo.” But since the case was illegally assembled the evidence is crap and Judge Illston threw it out as a consequence.
So, in conclusion, it is quite clear that Bonds has been scapegoated for his prickly personality and because he broke Henry Aaron’s home run record, which is regarded as sacrosanct by purists, G.W. Bush, who was a part owner of the Texas Rangers for a number of years. Bonds upset the baseball gods and had to be crucified for his transgression. Then there is Management’s complicity in the steroid era. Zirin said he knows for a fact that some trainers told owners that players were experimenting with some questionable substances. They chose to look the other way because home runs made them more money. As Greg Maddox said in that famous TV commercial,” Chicks like the long ball.” So did the owners. So instead of sharing the blame for what happened and admitting their complicity, they chose to dump it all on the players, with the press and electronic media jumping in with moral judgments and endless verbal spankings of the naughty players. Barry Bonds became the poster boy of the offenders, the black sheep of the Major Leagues. His obsessive adversaries in positions of power did all they could to put him in prison. It was all so much money and time wasted by a politician now retired and nullified.
Thank you, Dave Zirin, for your diligent reporting.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Tag the Donkey with the S-Word
President Obama was at the Chicago Bulls game on Friday night in the Windy City and the crowd erupted when he entered the auditorium. The crowd was noisy with cheers and enthusiasm and he waved at the crowd before he sat down to enjoy the game. It’s great to see him out and about on the weekends rather than isolated at Camp David, and dressed casually too.
Okay, it is becoming obvious that our new President is organizing a pretty progressive overhaul of our government and society. My attitude about it is: Go for it! The Republicans on the other hand are saying this Obamaian project threatens the American Dream and they are shouting,” It is socialism on the march.” They have dragged out the old negative tag of Socialism and are trying to attach it to the tail of the donkey. Rush Limbaugh also brought out the charge of “class envy,” trying to stigmatize the Democrats with that tag too. Well, for all practical purposes, class warfare has begun. Happily I can report that the President enjoys the good will and confidence on the majority of the American people. These black tags are a bit out of date and won’t stick to the degree the Republicans are hoping for.
Last week Rachel Maddow had Tim LaHayne and James Jenkins on MSNBC. They are the co-authors of the LEFT BEHIND series of 16 novels about The rapture and the Anti-Christ, books that have sold to the tune of 65 million copies—a truly amazing number. LaHayne brought up how he views Obama. He too thinks he is bringing a form of socialism to the country, although he would not call it that. But LaHayne does see him as giving sovereign power to the government over most aspects of American life; he wants to take from the haves and give it to the have-nots; and in general transform what conservatives have built over the past 30 years, starting with Ronald Reagan. On the other hand, since Obama says he is a Christian, he too will be swept up in The Rapture, which confuses matters.
The so-called advance of Socialism and conservative bitching about it, and “the Bush-Obama spending spree,” were hot topics at the CPAC gathering in the Nation’s capital this past week. Newt Gingrich is still the leading intellectual of the group and he said Obama wants to establish an “American version of European Socialism.” Other voices wailed about the state of affairs. Speakers like Boehner, Huckabee, and McConnell all issued dire warnings about our slide toward perdition. For some reason McConnell felt compelled to say he’d rather spend time with Rush Limbaugh than the likes of Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. To each his own. Rachel Maddow was willing to give these people some respect, but she said she had to draw the line at Allen Keyes remarks about Obama a couple of days ago. He called the President a “radical communist” which is ridiculous. He is one conservative who is around the bend and can’t be taken seriously.
The conservative movement has shrunk to between 20 to 25% of the electorate and they are still stunned that they lost the election and thus lost their edge with the Democrats. As power slips away and their values lose credibility with the American people and as they witness the tsunami of the Democrats Center-Left coalition starting to roll, they don’t know where to turn. There is no Ronald Reagan on the horizon, just a host of middling talents.
Okay, it is becoming obvious that our new President is organizing a pretty progressive overhaul of our government and society. My attitude about it is: Go for it! The Republicans on the other hand are saying this Obamaian project threatens the American Dream and they are shouting,” It is socialism on the march.” They have dragged out the old negative tag of Socialism and are trying to attach it to the tail of the donkey. Rush Limbaugh also brought out the charge of “class envy,” trying to stigmatize the Democrats with that tag too. Well, for all practical purposes, class warfare has begun. Happily I can report that the President enjoys the good will and confidence on the majority of the American people. These black tags are a bit out of date and won’t stick to the degree the Republicans are hoping for.
Last week Rachel Maddow had Tim LaHayne and James Jenkins on MSNBC. They are the co-authors of the LEFT BEHIND series of 16 novels about The rapture and the Anti-Christ, books that have sold to the tune of 65 million copies—a truly amazing number. LaHayne brought up how he views Obama. He too thinks he is bringing a form of socialism to the country, although he would not call it that. But LaHayne does see him as giving sovereign power to the government over most aspects of American life; he wants to take from the haves and give it to the have-nots; and in general transform what conservatives have built over the past 30 years, starting with Ronald Reagan. On the other hand, since Obama says he is a Christian, he too will be swept up in The Rapture, which confuses matters.
The so-called advance of Socialism and conservative bitching about it, and “the Bush-Obama spending spree,” were hot topics at the CPAC gathering in the Nation’s capital this past week. Newt Gingrich is still the leading intellectual of the group and he said Obama wants to establish an “American version of European Socialism.” Other voices wailed about the state of affairs. Speakers like Boehner, Huckabee, and McConnell all issued dire warnings about our slide toward perdition. For some reason McConnell felt compelled to say he’d rather spend time with Rush Limbaugh than the likes of Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. To each his own. Rachel Maddow was willing to give these people some respect, but she said she had to draw the line at Allen Keyes remarks about Obama a couple of days ago. He called the President a “radical communist” which is ridiculous. He is one conservative who is around the bend and can’t be taken seriously.
The conservative movement has shrunk to between 20 to 25% of the electorate and they are still stunned that they lost the election and thus lost their edge with the Democrats. As power slips away and their values lose credibility with the American people and as they witness the tsunami of the Democrats Center-Left coalition starting to roll, they don’t know where to turn. There is no Ronald Reagan on the horizon, just a host of middling talents.
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