The Civil War at Ford's Theater

We are going to plays at every theater in D.C. this year. Saturday was Ford's Theater. This is the same theater in which Lincoln was shot as the Civil War ended.  They have refurbished it and it is quite lovely. Our choice of plays was one with Lincoln or Civil War, the Musical. Who could resist such an amusing name? We have been looking at other shows, like (and I kid you not) Call of the Wild, the Musical.  No, we're not seeing that.  The great north country doesn't speak to me as the Civil War has lately.

 
Look how intimate this theater is. We were in the second row of the balcony. And this was our view. The stage is behind the band. The stairs lead down to a lower stage with a portion of the stage that rotates around the band stand. So there could be a bit of action amongst all the songs. This was more opera than musical. Lincoln's words were often shown on the scrim on the upper stage. There were also pictures of slaves at work and soldiers, alive and dead.

We all had our favorite characters. Eric liked the woman we called Sally the Slut. I'm sure the front of her blouse would have closed if she tried. Instead, we got to watch her bra and a mass of skin whenever she came on the stage. I liked watching the cute little Union soldier above. He is singing about a letter to his father just before he went off to die. I'm wondering if I would have liked it better if they had compiled songs from the era. Instead, this is all new songs in that vein. The singers were all very good, even Ms. Sally. Huge focus on slavery as opposed to state's rights. But, I guess, state's rights was always code for slavery anyway.

This is us by Lincoln's box. I am on the stair above. Anything to be taller than Cindy. As I said, this is a small theater. You can see how Booth jumped to the stage after the deed was done. 

Across the street is the house where Lincoln died. They moved him from Ford Theater, but I suppose that is obvious. These are beautiful old houses. Next door is a cute little Bistro. We have three other events on the calendar for April and May. And we will be going out to see the Cherry Blossoms any day, probably tomorrow. They should be at their peak then.  

So much to do, so much time. I am off this week and then will begin three weeks work for a variety of Garys - Mather and Cubbage. That will all end in a nick of time as Adrian arrives the next day. What a delight. All that and Spring is busting out all over.

Do you know it was two years ago almost exactly that I arrived in India. Two years. Time flies. I'd say that in Latin if I was sure I could spell it correctly. I still remember fondly that time and all the people I met. Namaste to you all.

Recent Books

I have been reading too many brutal mysteries lately. I don't know if this was affecting my better nature, but it couldn't be good. So I am in the middle of cleansing my soul with Victorian melodramas. Two were written at that time. I'm in the middle of both of them, so I can't tell you how they end. Sure. What is Wikipedia for if not to find out the end of books? They are a lot of fun, even if you know the ending. The Small House at Allington was written by Anthony Trollope in 1864. Yes, that 1864. The Civil War was just drawing to a close. It is so interesting to read what was going on in the more settled England at the same time. What was going on was that people were deciding who to marry based on what money the other had. Lily is loved by two men, one without potential (who eventually made lots of money. I'm reading on to find out how.) and one with a little more potential and a smarmy charm. This is one of the Barchester Chronicle books, so if I really find that I care about these people, there are more folks to get wrapped up in. I might just put them on my "palate cleansing" list. Imagine cleaning up with shallow people after reading too much about brutal people.

Portrait of a Lady was written in 1880. The Los Angeles Times was first published the next year in that rough and tumble town on the West Coast. Things were now much more civilized on the East Coast, but we still had many dirt roads and orange groves. This book is about an American, but takes place primarily in England and the continent. Foolish woman with money marrying the wrong man and facing sorrow and despair. Lovely. I'm in the middle of this one, too. I think it will have to wait for me to finish The Small House, because I'm starting to get these silly ladies mixed up. Oh, there are silly men, too; but, who cares?

Rounding out the trio of Victorian books is one written by Ken Follet, A Dangerous Fortune. This is one of the books I got for Eric and me to listen to on our trip to Philadelphia. Follet wrote The Eye of the Needle, at one time one of my favorite books. That one is full of spies and intrigue and the source for two good movies. This one is more like the two books mentioned above! Oh crikey, I just realized that he also wrote the insipid Words Without End and Pillars of Dearth. Or something like that. Actually, this wasn't bad, especially if you are already reading two books with almost exactly the same theme. This is more from the man's point of view; lots more fumbling for women's breasts. Can't imagine Trollope or James mentioning that. It is an interesting addition to this trilogy of marriage in the time when money and class was everything. It was written in 1993 and includes a bank failure and a good banker who tries to pay off all his creditors. Must be fiction.

So what murderous tripe was it that I was trying to escape? Well, Reacher, of course. The Hard Way wasn't as misogynist as some of this others of his that I've read recently. The bad guys are just psychopaths. Nice. Eric and I started this on our trip. I had to finish it so I could tell him all about it. Maybe I didn't have to finish it, but I did need to know how it ended and what lead up to that end.

The other silly mystery was A Letter of Mary. This is a series about a young woman who married a much older Sherlock Holmes and solves mysteries with him. Oh dear, I know; such a silly premise. And such a silly book and story. Please smack my hand if I think I might read another of these books, ok?

Art

Eric and I drove to Philly for the last three days of the week. We went to see the "Cezanne and Beyond" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We stayed at a really crappy hotel. Its sole claim to fame is that it is within walking distance of the museum. We found another good thing when we walked across the street to the Rodin Museum. It is modeled after the Musee Rodin in Paris.  Eric had told me about that museum before I visited there the first time in 1989.  Both museums are worth visiting. The two things I remember most about the Paris museum was the wonderful grounds with rows of plane trees and families wandering the grounds. The second thing was that I didn't have the French hand numbering system down. How do you say that? In America we hold up the pointy finger to mean one, as in "I would like one ticket."  Un is still hard for me to say right.  Of course, those of you who have been to France know that the thumb indicates one.  The pointy finger is two. I gave my extra ticket to the woman in line behind me. Un, Duex por moi. See, I still don't speak French. By the way, Mahler's bust is at the top of the page and Zola is to the left. Don't know if he was pleased with this.

The Cezanne exhibit was great. We spent some time in the Expressionist part of the museum before we got in line. Man, the line was long but fast moving. The people inside moved more rarely. The idea is to have a Cezanne picture surrounded by picture that it inspired. You see the bathers on the right. There was an installation of several pieces that reminded you of the bathers that was inspired by the painting. And there was a red painting with darker red lines running through it. That was the outlines of the figures in Cezanne's painting. Picasso, Matisse, Jasper Johns and many others were included. I thought it was fascinating.

When we got home, I worked a bit more on the side yard. It is almost clean. Today I got my hair done. Cindy worked in the yard as I slaved in the chair with the slowest hair dresser in nine counties. Still, Cindy is the fastest, hardest worker around. She had bags filled with leaves and debris from the vegetable garden and this little planting area between our driveway and our neighbor's drive. When I was raking yesterday, a woman stopped and told me that she loves to see what my garden will do next, it is always so beautiful. I told her that I just rake here. My sister-in-law is the woman with the vision. And the muscles.
We started Doctored Evidence on our drive north to Philadelphia. I soon realized that this wasn't something that would catch Eric's imagination. We moved on to a Reacher book. Doctored Evidence is a mystery that takes place in Venice. It moves slowly and ends quietly. I enjoyed it. The detective is happily married to a woman who loves to cook huge meals for lunch and, sometimes, dinner. He describes them in mouth-watering detail. She also loves to read and makes connections between her books and life. Love this woman. So does he. How rare to have a happily married police officer. 

Somewhere along the line I also read Cracking the Code. The code being cracked is the code spoken by Republicans that have Americans in such a trance. The author is an Air America talk show host. So he leans to the left and is observing the right. But in a nice way. This is all old information about how people receive data in different ways (different senses - feeling, hearing, seeing, etc.) and how you need to address these different senses to get people to receive what you are saying. He talks about framing the message and future talking. Future talking is about putting people into the future and then bringing them to it through your message. I was wanting to think this was going to be all bullshit when I started reading, but I've heard these thoughts enough in my career to give it all some validity. In those cases we were talking about getting your point across in business. Same thing. I hope Dems read this and understand how to manipulate as well as the princes of manipulation.  
Finally, I am preparing for Adrian's visit at the end of April. Don't you love this picture of him? It was taken at my birthday celebration 1.5 years ago. Anyway, Cindy mentioned going to a National's game sometime this year. I thought that this was a great opportunity to go, so I got tickets to see them play the Cardinals. And then I had been thinking about visiting the other close ballparks, so I got tickets to see the Angels at Baltimore and the Nationals at Philly.  It was supposed to be the Mets at Philly, but those games were sold out. This should be fun. It was always going to be good to see Adrian, but he doesn't care to travel around that much. Baseball gives a reason. Dean and Fred would say that it is the best reason.

Spring Approaches

I have been working sporadically in the garden, mostly raking the leaves that are still left from the Fall. Spring is just a few days away and I am trying to get rid of the old before the new arrives. On the left you can see the new that is starting to pop up. Cindy planted hundreds or thousands of red tulips in this part of the walkway. Okay, not a thousand, but lots. They are just starting to poke their noses through the soil. The ratty looking plants around the edges will have white flowers. It will be beautiful. When they are here in full, it will really be Spring. For now, we have the pretty purple crocus growing up in the lawn. What a pleasant surprise. It is their pretty faces that prompted me to go out to clean the garden. Little bulbs are starting to poke up everywhere. I have to be careful as I rake not to step on something trying very hard to make its presence known.
This is not a dry season. I decided to read Love in a Dry Season because I liked the way Shelby Foote wrote about the Civil War. He's a champion story teller, his characters are well formed. This is true in this book as well as in the other books. Actually, this reminded me a lot of Elmer Gantry. fI just checked, it isn't read by the same person, so it must be the writing. And the main male characters are equally into themselves. Once again, Foote has written about interesting characters and places. My goodness, I think I really like novels. I had no idea.
My blast from the past is of Cynthia and Teena. I love going through my pictures to see the people who have made me smile. I've been promised pictures of Teena's little boy and have never seen one. Oh well. I tried to call Cynthia a few days ago and got voice mail. I'll try again and will actually leave a message.

Door Holders

The people at Booz Allen are champion door holders. You go through a lot of doors to get to your desk. This is in part due to the fickle weather outside and no revolving doors in the lobby. And you need to use your pass to get into most hallway doors. These folks here are very good at remembering to hold the door open for those behind them. Just good manners and they have very good manners here.

That's why I wasn't totally surprised when a gentleman held the Men's Restroom door open for me the other day. That door is right next to the backdoor I go through to get to my desk. We both looked a little surprised when he realized what he had done.

What can I say? A true gentleman. Him, not me.

Guernsey, Literature, and The War

The snow has finally melted. It was wonderful to be in the middle of it. The snow was light and fluffy. Or it looked like mounds of whipped cream. Or it was black and grainy and shoved over to the side of the road. It took 4 days for my car to completely melt; or the snow on it took that long. Luckily, my car is still intact.  

My job is such a bust. I still don't have company email.  On Thursday I left at 12:30. Yesterday I left at 9:30. Now my password isn't working. Me neither. Tres desolate.

Life is still not as bad as it was on Guernsey during WWII. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an enjoyable book none-the-less. It is written as a series of letters. Thankfully, this was a letter writing time in the world. It takes place in England just after the war and many of the letters are about what life was like on Guernsey during the occupation. Although the characters are colorful, the book doesn't totally sugar-coat the occupation. It seems to be fairly even handed. It ends a bit rom-com. But the rest of the book is so good, you might be able to overlook that.

One of my favorite things about the Guernsey book is the writer's love of books. It doesn't just show through the literary societies stories, but also through the heroines stories about books. I especially liked the story of her failed engagement.

Ever Gullible

Bernie Madoff made me do it. The man ran a Ponzi Scheme; he took money from those who wanted a good return on their investment and paid off with money from new "clients." He promised a 12% per annum return. That's actually about what I was making in my 401K before the bottom dropped out of the market. Of course, the guys who were managing my 401K accounts were actually investing the money. That wasn't true of Bernie. He ran a true Ponzi Scheme.

Of course, I had to learn more about this. What better choice than to read Ponzi's Scheme by Mitchell Zuckoff. Ponzi was an Italian immigrant at the turn of the last century with a checkered past who settled in Boston and found a clever way to build the fortune he so deeply desired. He promised a 50% increase in the value of investments in 45 days. He said that he was buying and selling postal certificates. I still don't quite understand what those are, but I don't think it matters. He wasn't buying and selling them anyway. He relied on the long line of gullible people streaming from his office doors. His company's name was The Security Exchange Company. The reader of this book goofed once and called it The Security Exchange Commission. I was waiting for that.

Ponzi would bring in over a million a day at the best of times. That's why he had money to pay off the people who didn't roll over their profits. A million dollars! The newspaper cost two cents at that time. People had to scrimp and save for a long time to get $50. And yet, they gave that money to Ponzi.

The book is also about how a newspaper, The Boston Post, nailed him. Police and other legal types failed. In fact, a lot of them were investors. The owner of the Post didn't believe this scheme was real and worried about the pressmen who were investing. We may not have newspapers around soon, but we will always have charlatans.

It's Snnnnoooowing

Snow was forecast for Sunday and Monday. This was the front walk on Sunday afternoon. More snow should come overnight, but it will clear up by the Monday commute.

  

This is us on Monday. It snowed overnight and kept snowing until

close to noon. On the left is Eric shoveling the walk so he could get the paper. Bailey loves to crunch ice cubes. Who know that she loved to catch the snow in her mouth as well. 

Cindy worked from home. She has the best view in 

the NorthEast. I did not go into work. My job involves a lot of staring at walls.  I thought I'd take this moment to stare at the snow.

Here we have Katie  shoveling out the driveway and sidewalks. The snow had pretty much stopped

 so people were moving around. The neighbor was walking her dog around the block. He was very happy to see her hard at work. Look at the pond on our side of the fence. There isn't much water in there or the frogs would be ice skating

 

The last picture is of my snowed in car. So much for not much more snow, as we imagined last night.  The snow falling was really beautiful. I'm glad I didn't have to drive in it.

I've Been Working

Let me just start with this Oldie But Goodie picture of Suresh and Fred. Even though the arrival of Suresh and Teena signaled the beginning of the end of our tightly knit group, they became very dear to us. It also signaled the beginning of a whole new life for me. A trip to India? Who would have thought of that a year before this picture was taken. Fred is still at The Times and I think that his life has not changed all that much. He is still programming quietly at his desk. I know the people who used to rely on his help have missed him. He was wonderfully soothing. Do those folks in Orlando do what Fred did? 

I am in the middle of a four week temp assignment. The woman I'm helping has been overwhelmed by work and I haven't helped her main problem. The first week she gave me a couple of mind-numbing jobs that took the week to complete.  One job was to enter all the contacts from her boss's old contact list into Outlook. Seems the boss just brought a hard copy with her, not a computer file. I listened to a book while I did this. I know, so unprofessional. But I was in an office with 95 pages of names. I found that I couldn't listen to anything that I really wanted to hear, or rather, remember what I was reading. So instead I listened to one of the Cat Who books, The Cat Who Wasn't There. I think this was the perfect book for entering contacts by. In other words, I just remember there was a cat in it and a man with a mustache. Perfect 

She went in to work on Saturday to get her act together and make a list of projects for me to complete. I am looking forward to going into work tomorrow. The second week was mind-numbing. I browsed the Internet a lot and wrote emails to friends. That is not as much fun as it might sound.


I have been reading other books in the past two weeks. Some I'd started long before and just decided that it was time to wrap it up. One of thease was Dead I Well May Be. I think this took a long time because it is very violent. It is about a young man from Ireland who enters the US illegally and leads a life of crime. Two things made this enjoyable. First, he is a very smart kid who reads a lot of interesting stuff. He is surrounded by people who are less clever than he and his interactions with them are enjoyable. Second, the reader has a wonderful Irish accent. I keep hearing "we'uns" in my head. I would listen to this book again, just for the joy of hearing the way Irish people talk. Fortunately, the author has written more books, so I will not have to relive this violence.

Another book I finished recently is Ghost. This was a pretty funny book, even though the author didn't suspect that it would be. The author used to work for the government in the Counter terrorism unit. He was not a spy. He was one of those guys who read the stacks of paper that comes into our government to be analyzed. He does get to leave the office now and again, but he is not a field agent by any stretch of the imagination. And his writing is very pedestrian. Someone told him he should use descriptive words, so he identifies every object he sees by brand name. If I cared, I would know the make of his watch, shoes, notebook, pen and cell phone. But I really didn't care. This one was not bad enough to throw across a room, it wasn't hateful. Just B O R I N G. 

 

Jack Reacher is never boring. This book, The Enemy, is a prequel. He is still in the military and from this we know why he hits the road to be the prototypical loner. Lee Child writes about a lot of events that don't move the plot, but help us to understand Reacher better. That could have been distracting, but as a fan I liked that. Funny, I hadn't thought about this being called The Enemy. I guess it refers to the old line "I've met the enemey and he is us." Reacher does have an issue in the book trying to figure out who the real bad guys are and why. I liked it.

And now the Civil War is truely over. Battle Cry of Freedom is an excellent book. That's not just my opinion. It did win the Pulitzer Prize, after all. McPherson starts with a long ramp up to the war, explaining all the factors that were involved with the disagreements between the North and the South. He covers much of the same information that I had read in The Waking Giant. Only this is better written. Points like the super-religiosity of the era are not belabored. But you can see how this whole fundamentalist streak has plagued us for more than a century. Battles are mentioned but not written about in the detail of the Foote books. That is actually a good thing. My suggestion is that you read this book if you want to know about that period.