De Young Christmas Letter 2024.

 Volume LI                                                                                                                       December 25, 2024                                                                

 Christmas Tidings

I’m sure some of you are getting tired of these letters. I mean fifty in a row. Give me a break! Or are you willing to take a chance on fifty-one, which starts with a declaration that I once believed in Santa Claus, then I didn’t believe in Santa Claus, then I could play Santa Claus, and now I look like Santa Claus.   

    We are now in our fourth year at Grand Living and more than ever convinced that we made the right choice. We still read stories to our daughter’s 1^st grade class every week and we share the keeping up of the Grand Living Library. I guess that goes to prove that when the chips are down books still power our lives.

 Have you noticed that the easiest way to find something lost is to buy a replacement?

OK, vote now. Is that better than Santa Claus? Worse!  Or keep trying!  

 I also keep busy as Secretary for the Grand Living Resident Council and trying to finish writing our family history. Our son David is helping with the formatting. On the medical side, I had a nosebleed go out of control in October and spent a night in the hospital. I’m now off blood thinners for the time being. Otherwise, I’m holding my own. Jan is still the champion reader and crossword puzzle solver. She schedules our community book club and helps with the creative writing group. She beats me regularly at Wordle and Mini Crossword. For Christmas, she has been knitting caps and mittens for a local mission. On the health front, she has had good luck with cortisone shots for arthritis in her hip and hand and continues to resist surgery.

Our daughter lives about ten minutes away and still teaches first grade in the Cedar Rapids Public Schools. She won a teaching award earlier in the year and recorded a demonstration lesson just last week that will be shown to teachers across the district. On the minus side, she took a spill in her classroom a while back and has had to wear a boot while it heals. Speaking of healing, husband Todd has had a new electronic implant device put into his back. It is supposed to give him more control over pain and it seems to work most of the time. When it stops, it means another trip to have it re-adjusted. Luckily, it hasn’t interfered with his slam-bang cooking. Thanksgiving dinner was a gorgeous feast. 

OK stop and take a breath and turn your mind to more important things. I opened my closet this morning and a lion was staring out at me. I said to him, "What are you doing in my closet?" He said "It's Narnia of your business."  How's that one?

All right, on to more important things. Grandson Mikel graduated from Upper Iowa University last May. He has started work on a Master’s degree there while working 30 hours a week on an Iowa DNR and University project to use goats rather than pesticides to control invasive plant species. Grandson TJ has had to restart his life after a short marriage and divorce.  He now has a new house and continues to work in Texas as a firefighter and paramedic. He fills his spare time with hunting and jobbing out work on home repairs. 

And finally, there is travel and one more joke. “If I ordered an axe from Finland and had it mailed to me in Cedar Rapids, would I now have a foreign axe sent? To check that out we traveled In June, to Finland to visit our son, his wife, and their family, who live in a suburb of Helsinki. Our daughter was our companion and caregiver. we could not have made the trip without her help. Here we all are after a great meal down by the harbor. Lotta took the photo so she and David get a close-up. David continues to work in IT for the Kone Elevator Company and Lotta has recently taken a new job in counseling.  Frida is already a young woman as you can see from the group photo. Selma is an all-around spitfire from an inventive artist to a goalie on her soccer team. And two-year-old Bruno is the happiest clam around with a smile that will melt even the coldest Finnish winter.  

So ends number fifty-one. We’d be liars if we didn’t mention our disappointment with the election results. We have great fears about what the country will look like in the future now that every fact is negotiable, every truth is relative, and his truth is the only one that matters. All is not lost, however. Many gifts have been bestowed on us; we will feel no guilt about that. While waiting for better times, we will continue to spread as much love, generosity, and humor into the world as possible. May you also bring some light to those you touch this holiday season. It is the least we can do.

 Yours, 

Jim and Jan De Young http://dramajim@gmail.com        janetwdeyoung@gmail.com

                       

THE GREY WOLF by Louise Penny

 

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

Penny’s 19^th Gamache novel starts slowly with strange phone calls and proceeds into a complex dissection of fateful moral choices. Do you save your family and run or make an effort to save the planet?  What we are saving the planet from is a large-scale terrorist conspiracy that reaches into the heart of a corrupt government. More specifically the issue in The Grey Wolf involves a plot to insert a deadly poison into the water supply which will kill thousands and create a panic in the population. The panic will drive citizens to support a new strong leader who will then use his power to subjugate the populace and enrich himself and his cronies. Does this sound just a bit familiar to you?

The book starts in Three Pines and does journey back on occasion, but by and large, we see little of the fascinating group of residents that add just the right warmth and humor to Penny’s writing. The wolves  dominate here. Several of Gamache’s old cases keep popping back up and I can see her point to deepen the psyche of her main character, but it may disconcert new readers. The re-appearance of the grisly slaughter and the nasty frozen monastery on the lake may not be as significant for them as for me. Forgive me if I find that Penny seems to be targeting re-current readers at the expense of new ones. Perhaps she feels that, given the size of her following, there is no need to curry favor with newcomers to her work.

Through it all Armand Gamache does survive, though once again battered and torn. For the moment the Grey and Black wolves are kept at bay. Some friends turn out to be enemies and some foes to be friends.  The foes want to stop Gamache because he cannot be corrupted. His friends know that he will choose the survival of the society at large even though his own family may be sacrificed. John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of Utilitarianism comes to mind. The moral direction should be to maximize utility and produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of citizens with the least pain.

It's still a fine hook and I will be on the list to get the next adventure that her ending of this one is pointing to. Gosh, shouldn't be ending a sentence with a preposition!

REVIEW OF THE GREAT HIPPOPOTAMUS HOTEL by Andrew McCall Smith

 

Andrew McCall Smith is up to his old tricks again in this the umpteenth entry in the long-running No. 1 Ladies‘ Detective Agency series. We are treated to two story threads in the current book.  Mma Rmotswe takes charge of a Speedy Motors customer who is undergoing a mid-life crisis by purchasing a bright colored sportscar from Mr. JLB Matekoni without telling his wife. After the car is totaled in its first test drive, Mma comes to the rescue with her usual wily compromise.

The second story puts Mma Makutsi in the investigative lead and features the tracking down of the perpetrator or perpetrators of a series of actions designed to destroy the reputation of the Great Hippopotamus Hotel. We get several twists and turns in this thread as there are multiple suspects. With the help of her shoes, Mma Makutsi does a fine job locating the villain.  

I don’t rate this as the best of the series, but it is the kind of uplifting Christmas read we all need this time of year. All of the familiar characters are there, the gentle humor rings true, and the life-supporting philosophy of forgiveness brings everything to a satisfactory close. McCall Smith's prose just seems to float like a summer cloud above the violence, cruelty and tension of the present day.  Almost like clockwork, every twenty-five pages or so you can underline a droll piece of comedy, a heartwarming observation, or a philosophical gem.   

To wit: "Men drink beer and eat sausages—they are all a bit like that –after a while their stomachs say ‘no more room for all this beer and sausages—and then they spread in the only direction possible—which is to the front.’”

or 

“It is helpful if a people’s leaders build things, rather than knock them down.”

or 

“If only we could go back and cancel the misunderstandings and acts of selfishness that are like millstones in our lives, but we cannot, and so perhaps it is best for us to forget those things we cannot change.”

I love his books. I give this one a 4.8 out of 5. 

Robert Harris PRECIPICE

 

Robert Harris Precipice

Having just finished Robert Harris’s CONCLAVE and liking it, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a copy of his September release of PRECIPICE at the Marion Library. It is set in London and the English countryside, which enchants an Anglophile like me. The time was the beginning of WWI, which is always a fruitful period for generating juicy plots. In this semi-fictional novel the British Prime Minister Asquith is battling his own cabinet and the European powers as the war breaks out.  There is the scheming Lloyd George and the raging bluster of a young Churchill to contend with and then there is Asquith himself, who is having an affair with a young moneyed British woman named Venetia Stanley. He is sending her lovey-dovey letters topped off with classified information and actual state documents that he and his lover have been tossing out of moving car windows. His love letters to Venetia have actually survived, but Venetia’s responses have not. Harris solves the problem by re-creating them. This ends up making an interesting spy procedural that shows the British government at the beginning of WWI engaging in attempts to ferret out German intelligence agents long embedded in the country.  Harris also creates a young Scotland Yard detective as a lower-class representative, who is assigned to go undercover to smoke out where the leaks are in both the civilian and political population. Needless to say, when the evidence begins to point to the Prime Minister himself, the situation heats up.  

It's not a great book, but a pleasant throwaway read all the same.  I give it 3.5 out of 5.

Review CONCLAVE by Robert Harris

 

Harris, Robert Conclave

Robert Harris writes potboilers. In 2016 he wrote CONCLAVE-- a book about the inner workings of the Catholic church when in the throes of election of a new Pope. The current hot movie of the same name starring Ralph Fiennes is adapted from the book.

There are plotters a plenty amongst the Cardinals who are vying for the throne of St. Peter and some of the activity seems a bit far-fetched. For instance, Harris manages to get the Cardinals all housed in a sort of Motel Six with paper-thin walls, but has it also contain the living quarters of the former Pope. It’s justified by the old guy's preference for poverty, but it just makes it convenient for one of the Cardinals to burgle the apartment in order to find the secret materials that have caused the current Conclave to be so compelling.

Otherwise, it is smoothly organized around the sequence of ballots that show who’s up and who’s down and the intrigue that goes on between all of the nominees. It’s a good ride in print and I am looking forward to seeing the film. 

I give it a 4  out of 5.

Review Kathy Reichs FIRE AND BONES

 

Kathy Reichs, Fire and Bones

Ms. Reichs has written twenty-three crime procedure novels featuring a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan. The jacket sidebars are quite giddy in their claims of excellence.  She is top-notch, amazing, and an incredible plotter. Her science is on-target, her characters are fascinating, and every paragraph carries menace. I wish I could join in affirming this praise, but frankly I found Fire and Bones  rather disjointed and tedious. We do get plenty of gory details of what it is like to autopsy people killed by fire, but the villains don’t seem to draw out compelling interest while the victims get little emotional attention aside from their existence as statistics.

The story is fairly simple. Temperance Brennan puts off a great weekend with her current squeeze to help investigate two nasty fires that came complete with four fatalities so badly burned that they are hard to identify. One of the burned-out structures also contained a much older unidentified corpse that is discovered in a burlap sack in a sub-basement. The first four deaths turn out to be connected to old criminal gangs and bootlegging and the other goes back even further in time. As we cycle between the two different cases, the last one seems to get lost until the author decided she must tie that one up with a final twist. It came off as a forced afterthought.  

I found the supporting characters to be either unbelievable, like Ivy Doyle, the way too rich sidekick telejournalist. She just doesn’t make a very satisfying Dr. Watson and the various arson detectives come off as pretty traditional types rather than people.

In sum, I found this a pretty modest offering. I won’t be heading back to the library to search out any of the earlier books.  I give it a two out of five.  

Review Dona Leon The Jewels of Paradise

 

The Jewels of Paradise

 The authorial reputation of Donna Leon rests comfortably on her twenty-plus novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, who investigates crime in the atmospheric confines of one of the most enchanting cities in the world—Venice. 

This is a leisurely, contemplative stand-alone novel that will be too slow paced and too much dependent on an interest in 17th-century opera and court intrigue to attract a lot of readers.  The main character, Catarina Pellegrini, a Venetian musicologist, is working as a researcher in England when she gets a strange invitation to apply for a job that will require her to return to her hometown of Venice and research the contents of two ancient chests that may contain valuable items. Two venal relatives of the original owner of the chests are now vying for the riches that may or may not be inside. 

The ensuing search for the rightful heirs allows Leon to do what she does best and that is to immerse the reader once again in all of the pleasures, the food, the history, and the corruption of Venice as it is and was.  What is discovered at the end is an enduring truism that is operable in any century and any country. “If enough people choose to believe something is what other people say it is, then it becomes that to them.” The just completed election seems to prove that. 

I give it 3 out of 5 

Jim De Young, 10/25/24

  

Review: Jen Psaki SAY MORE

 

 Psaki’s 2024 book is subtitled “Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World.”  There is no ghost  writer listed and it reads as a group of suggestions about the nature of communication in general and political communication in particular. There is no muss, no fuss, no interminable length. Her focus is positive and reflects a quote from the early pages.  “People who are drawn to public service want to be part of a greater good—it isn’t about them as individuals, but how they can contribute.”      

 

Her practical advice is on the money.  I liked “Do the task you are dreading most first. Then everything that follows will feel easy.”  Another favorite was to admit to yourself that you can’t be good at everything. Locating your weaknesses can go a long way to make successful corrections as you move through life.

 

Often her suggestions focus on the particular problem of being a political spokesperson. She says it is difficult to reflect your bosses’ views accurately without letting your personal views creep in. She rues the ease with which disinformation and violence can be spread in today’s social media.  If an attack is personal to you as a spokesperson, then use it to remind yourself that if you got so much under the skin of your adversary they felt the need to attack you with lies, you may be on the right track. Also defending yourself strongly from these kinds of attacks can be counterproductive. I note here that Kamala Harris has been able to use a laugh and humor to sidetrack personal slanders thrown at her. 

 

Good communication doesn’t have to be loud or long. One descriptive and emotional human interest story is often worth more than a string of statistics. For all communicators, but especially spokespeople, you must know your audience. You can’t craft a good  message or response if you don’t know who you are speaking to. Do your prep. Anticipate objections and have answers ready. Own up quickly to mistakes. It helps to be a better listener because then you can read the content and body language as it comes at you.

 

She claims the successful political communicator has to build bridges where none exist. I grant you there are adversaries who want no bridges and are concentrating on filling the river with crocodiles, but one way to build a bridge is to speak humbly about hardships you might have had that they also may have faced.  Just present yourself as human and flawed just as they are.

 

Her best advice was “Don’t take the bait!” When you get questions like “Many are saying”, “Some say”, or “Critics are saying”, your best option is to respond with a question rather than launching into a refutation. i.e.  “Can you tell me more about who they are?  Can you attach a number to apply to your question? In other words “How many is some?” or “Who are they?” There is a difference between your golf foursome and a clutch of twenty foreign heads of state.  

 

She closes by emphasizing that good communicators are optimists at heart and they keep on thinking that connection is possible and something positive is attainable. She also successfully steers clear of the contemporary political scene. That means you can pick up some good ideas regardless of your party. The book is a long way from being a candidate for a Pulitzer Prize, but does give you a bit of a look at the development of a political junkie. It is not exciting, but the advice is pretty solid.

 

I give it a 3.5 out of 5

Review: Daniel Silva A DEATH IN CORNWALL

 

Daniel Silva’s latest spy thriller, A Death in Cornwall, is every bit as good as his last ones. In this outing, Gabriel Allon, Israel’s semi-retired spy chief and part-time art restorer, is asked to help solve the murder of a well-known art authenticator. The trail leads out of the art world and into the world of billionaire oligarchs who hide their wealth in layer after layer of foreign shell companies and often use the acquisition and trading of valuable paintings as a part of their tax evasion schemes.

 

I am still in awe of how expertly Silva knits his plots and brilliant humor together as Allon and Ingrid, his kleptomaniacal computer guru associate, weave their way through all of Europe including London, Cornwall, Paris, Marseille, Corsica, and Venice at breakneck speed. Silva seems to know in acute detail every local wine and food preference as well as every road turn and railway and flight schedule to get you to the next destination. I give you one example. As the violent climax nears, one of the attacking duo asks the other what is in the rucksack he is carrying. The answer is “night-vision field glasses, two Glock pistols, ammunition, a couple of secure phones, and a box of McVities.” The sidekick asks, “Dark chocolate?” And the answer is “Of course!”  To which the reply is “I’d kill for one.” Only immaculate research, an eye for word play, and vast experience can come up with that exchange.

 

Interspersed with the action is the main theme, which is as up-to-the present as today’s evening news. It is stated baldly by the cashiered former MI5 villain Robertson when he tells Allon, “Your implacable sense of right and wrong is admirable, but I’m afraid it’s rather out of fashion at the moment. The truth is there is no right and wrong any longer. There is only power and money.” 

 

I give it a full-throated 5 out of 5 for its genre.

 

 

Book Review: Smolder by Stuart Woods sort of.

 

Mr. Woods is another of those hyper-prolific authors that turn out books like a plastic extrusion machine.  They are quick reads and even more quickly forgotten. There are about thirty of them in the Stone Barrington series alone. 

In this one Barrington, an obscenely rich lawyer, spy, serial lover, and son of a famous artist finds that an old enemy wants to humiliate him by purchasing or stealing his mother’s valuable paintings and then burning them.  At the bottom of the rotten art world, the fancy cars, the right wines, the casual affair minded women, and the equally casual killing is just another tired formula thriller.  Oh, did I mention! Mr. Woods is dead and some other hack is carrying on the torch.  “Old writers never die: the heirs just want more money." 

.5 out of 5  

Stacy Abrams Rules of Engagement

 

Abrams has written other novels under the name Selina Montgomery. It would appear this re-publishing under her now more recognizable name as a Georgia prosecutor is intended to squeeze more money out of a losing proposition. This story of super spies tracking down a doomsday weapon goes nowhere fast.  Every other page is full of hyper-sexual panting with no return on your investment. I finally quit around p. 100 with the jousting still underway and no real interest developed in the characters or the apparent plot.

Into the trash pile and give it a rating of

 Zilch out of 5   

 

The Conditions of Unconditional Love by Andrew McCall Smith

 

Alexander McCall Smith writes books (a lot of books) and they are the kind that are needed when you are under duress and ready to shout “STOP” to the universe.  There is a soothing quality about his prose and the characters who utter it.  The villains are more pompous or unconscious rather than evil and the good folks always seem to be able to solve their problems by practicing some element of unconditional love. That keeps them and you going.  

This brings us to Isabel Dalhousie the main character in McCall Smith’s The Conditions of Unconditional Love. She is well-off, happily married with two children, and the editor of an academic philosophical journal. She says early on, “. . . we have to accept people for what they are and not spend our time looking for perfection in them.” Now, according to her husband Jamie, Isabel also has a penchant for taking on the troubles of the people around her.  He would like her not to do that, but she is persistent and he finally gives up and just watches. For the reader, it is exactly those gently quirky and often humorous problems that draw you in.  

Four troubles are featured in the book. Isabel’s scholarly nemesis has tried to set up a conference that will result in giving him a way too large a paycheck for organizing it. Second, her husband has suggested offering a spare room to a woman who has run into a bad patch. Third, Isabel is maneuvered into participating in a book group comprised of women who hate each other.  And finally, her niece, Cat, has had another troublesome love affair. These problems throw a monkey wrench into Isabel’s normally comfortable and ordered life. By the end, each has been put into the rearview mirror. Isabel feels better. Her husband Jamie is happier. The troubled person or persons feel better and McCall Smith has worked his erudite, poetic, and gently humorous magic once again. He is the ultimate feel-good author.

I give it four out of five.   

 

 

 

Book Review Anne Hillerman LOST BIRDS

I fell in love with Tony Hillerman’s books a long time ago. When his daughter Anne picked up the franchise after his death, I was not expecting a lot. Sequels written by children or ghostwriters often fall short. Lost Birds is now Ms. Hillerman’s ninth book featuring the familiar characters of Joe Leaphorn, Bernadette Manuelito, and Jim Chee whom her father created. I can say unequivocally I have transferred my membership in the Tony fan club to his daughter Anne. Most of her first eight books increased the stage time given to Bernadette Manuelito and her husband Jim Chee (Cheeseburger) with Joe Leaphorn retired but lurking in the background as a helper.  Lost Birds now brings him back into well-deserved prominence.

It opens with Leaphorn receiving a phone call from a Navaho, Cecil Bowlegs, who asks for help in locating his wife. She had been working at the Indian School where Bowlegs was a janitor and now has vanished. Before the call can be completed, a loud explosion cuts it off.  The explosion pretty much destroys a building at the school and inside it is a car that contains a body. Bowlegs fears the bomb was aimed at him because he was in arrears on some gambling debts and goes on a runner himself.  Meanwhile, Joe Leaphorn has another client who has been adopted out of the native community and is now trying to re-find her roots. She is one of the lost birds alluded to in the title. While Leaphorn looks for Bowlegs and tries to help the woman, Chee, and Manuelito become involved in the bombing investigation and apparent murder. In another subplot, Leaphorn’s significant other meets with her estranged son and finds that pulse-pounding danger can lurk even for elderly cops and their loved ones.

The tragic history of the "lost birds" is the glue that holds all this together. It added new information for me. I was aware of the problems with Reservation Schools of the past that tried to eliminate tribal history in favor of Western European culture, but I had little knowledge of the program that removed Native children from their natural tribal communities and offered them up for adoption by Non-Native couples.  

No Hillerman book, father or daughter, would be complete without a reverence for the Dine community and the land on which they live. If you have traveled to the Four Corners area or even if you have just seen pictures of it, you will find Anne Hillerman's geography faithful and her description of the land as captivating as her father's. I recommend you start her series now and bet you will be hooked and start looking for copies of the first eight as soon as you finish this one. 

Definitely a 5 out of 5

 

 

Book Review of ORWELL'S GHOST by Laura Beers

 

Orwell’s Ghost-- Wisdom and Warnings for the 21^st Century by Laura Beers--

I happened upon this title in the Marion Library and it reminded me that I had not read 1984 in some fifty years. I also had been seeing his name and books bandied. All sorts of talking heads and essayists seemed to be shouting that this or that is “ Orwellian”.  I wondered what that label meant to modern readers.

First, it does carry enough meaning to still place 1984 on best-seller lists in multiple languages some seventy years after its publication.

Second, I re-learned that George Orwell was a pen name and not his real name. That was Arthur Blair. His father was an imperial administrator in India and Arthur had a pretty typical upper-middle-class childhood,  which included pricy prep schools and the very upper crust Eton. Critical to his later development, he did decide to eschew Oxford or Cambridge and went instead off to fight in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s.

Third I learned that Orwell was a major-league misogynist. He had little use for women even though he married two of them. He expected them for the most part to stay home, do housework, and take care of any children. He wrote reams about the plight of the working man, but had little to say about the working woman. In the same vein he was also adamantly against any and all forms of abortion. 

Even though he was not a very pleasant human being, his philosophy on government holds up well. He considered the “will to power” universal and believed it could exist on the left or the the right political spectrum. His indictment of totalitarianism in 1984 is alive and well in 2024 and the work remains readable today even though in his time his main attacks were aimed at colonial empires and Communism. Today we can easily see that cancel culture, disinformation, and fake news are just new names for Orwell’s Ministry of Truth?

Our present access to the internet may have increased our individual powers, but along with that has come increased surveillance capacity on us by the state and multinational corporations. In his day Orwell never reached the point where he claimed freedom could exist without some form of restraint. There must be some social responsibility to speak the truth.  As Ms. Beers said, “Freedom is the right to say 2+2=4, but not to claim that 2+2=5.”  A life can be censored and someone who continues to insist that 2+2=5 cannot be tolerated. “Double think,” Russia calling its invasion of Ukraine “a special operation” for instance must be corrected.  The scary thing about information today is that an idea deplatformed in one space can find plenty of alternative spaces on which to continue. .   

Give it a 3 of 5  Not for all souls.

Review of THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA by Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

The Light in the Piazza, Theatre Cedar Rapids Brucemore offering for 2024 takes a noble crack at a clearly Sondheim inspired musical. It doesn’t match Sondheim in music or plot, but falling a bit short of genius is still pretty damn good. Piazza debuted in 2003 and was based on an earlier book. It has gone through further tummy tucks for later successful New York and London runs. In London, the role of Margaret was played by semi-retired opera diva Rene Flemming.

This leads me to remind readers that you have to work a bit harder to appreciate many of today’s musicals. Hummable tunes and chorus casts large enough to fill a small hall have been left in the dust. In this rendering the four-member chorus is relegated to a few ballet moves and posing like statues in the stage set’s niches. Even with the splash limited to lush lighting and more limited tete a tetes, that isn’t the biggest problem with The Light in the Piazza. For me, it was that it is almost half-spoken or sung in Italian and there are no operatic sub-titles to help an audience over this linguistic hump. I admire the time that the acting company must have devoted to mastering both real Italian and the accents of non-native people attempting to speak English or Italian. Yet, I must admit to losing where the story was going on occasion.  It didn’t kill the piece for me, but I would have been helped by some better translation.

What I did get was that sometime in the 1950’s a well-off southern mother (Margaret), who has some long standing marital problems herself, brings her daughter (Clara) to Florence for a vacation. A wayward wind blows Clara’s hat right into the hands of a young Italian (Fabrizo) and bingo “attraction at first sight.” Clara is bowled over and mother Margaret goes into protective mode.  It is then revealed that Clara has been kicked by a horse at a young age and is now physically a woman but is lacking in normal mental and emotional development. Margaret is afraid if Clara is allowed to fall in love, she will be jilted as soon as the young man or his family discovers her disability. I think you can imagine the rest of the story without any help from me.      

Don’t get me wrong. This is still a production well worth seeing. The performance takes place outdoors in a natural amphitheater. The set, composed of beautiful Renaissance arches and stairs, takes on with lighting  gorgeous shades of golden Florentine sunshine as well as moody violet-tinted evening hours. A neat little working fountain held the left side of the stage and had a tiny copy of Michaelangelo’s David at its center. This supplies a somewhat ironic comment on the lover's developing relationship. In other words, the stage design was perfecto.  

Although the young lovers are important, the glue that holds the piece together is the mother (Margaret), played by Rebecca Fields Moffitt. She takes over the part with authority and along the way  is both physically and vocally more convincing than the young lovers. She manages to fold her own unhappy marriage into her desire to protect her daughter while recognizing and playing the comic moments nicely.

The bittersweet semi-operatic score is ideal for this dark romance, although it would help if Catharine Blades (Clara) could find a way to indicating her affliction in manner as well as in song. She has a lovely voice, but seems so perfectly normal that if we had not been told we might not think she has the problem her mother says she has. Fabrizio, played by Tegas Gururaja, also manages the difficult vocals well and does display the physical tentativeness of a young Italian who is not quite the typical smooth Italian Roue often depicted in films. Max Moreno, (Signor Naccarelli), Fabrizo’s very Italian haberdasher father, was solid right down the line.  Fabrizio’s older brother had some potential comic contrasts to his more sedate younger brother that were never quite realized. Perhaps, he was not given enough latitude by the director to exploit this contrast and thereby lightening the mood a bit more often. 

Audience reaction at the performance we saw was polite, but did not capture the spontaneous joy that occurred at the end of Sondheim’s A little Night Music last year. The Light in the Piazza was still pleasurable and definitely a fine entertainment for a summer evening. TCR is to be admired for choosing and presenting it.  

 

DEATH IN A GHOSTLY HUE by Susan Van Kirk

 

I’ll start with my bias warning. Susan Van Kirk was our next-door neighbor. My wife is one of her beta readers. While teaching English at our local high school, Sue taught both of our children and my wife taught her kids in elementary school. Sue was and remains one of my wife’s best friends. This also means there are identifiable local references throughout the book that can only be enjoyed by a real resident of the fictional town used as a setting. These are meaningless to a general reader, but they are sure delightful for us.  

“So, say it ain’t so Sue!”  Not the final Art Center Mystery! Just because Jill banished the ghost, there are plenty of other loose ends to tie up. The love affair with Sam is just getting going, the personality change in Ivan Truelove needs explaining, Louise’s dating habits could bring on catastrophe at any moment, and Jill’s family cannot stay out of trouble for more than twenty minutes. All those valuable paintings from the judge might be a target for thieves and surely the Babbling Brook Community Church must be ripe for another foray. I admit finding another body in the basement of the art center might be pushing it, but what might Jill do with a body found frozen inside the big freezer plant next to the slaughterhouse?  Just a thought.

Back to business. Death in a Ghostly Hue, is Sue’s third art center mystery and I really do hope not the last.  All of the first three are set in a small midwestern town and take place in and around its Art Center. Jill Madison, the main character, runs the enterprise and the ins and outs of mounting exhibitions and the problems of working with a board of directors are given full shrift. The center itself has been endowed by Jill’s mother, who was a talented and successful painter.

The beginning of the book seemed a bit too obvious as a conflict set-up for me. We learn of a man named Quinn Parsons, who killed Jill Madison’s parents eight years ago in a drunk driving incident and has now suddenly returned to town to make amends publicly. From there the plot moves on so quickly that before I could worry about my initial doubts, the killer is himself killed.

Madison’s brother becomes the prime suspect and the novel now really begins. Jill and her quirky friend Angie (all good detectives need a second fiddle) now concentrate on what might explain the behavior of Mr. Parsons and what might be the hidden motive of a new murderer. Undergirding this is an exploration of the nature of forgiveness in the form of the presence of a Civil War ghost meandering about in the art center rafters. Only Jill can see and hear him and he turns out to be the most interesting character in the book as he provides the key to understanding his own 19^th century demise, the killing of Jill’s parents, and the difficulty of forgiveness for an act that continues to haunt long after it has been committed.   

Van Kirk’s work is definitely becoming more sophisticated with each succeeding book she publishes. She shows better and more deft plotting, more interesting characters, and now a definite sense of playful humor. This is a fun read. It goes quickly and we get just enough serious thought about a significant moral issue to give the book more depth than the average cozy mystery.     

Within its genre this offering gets a solid 5 out of 5.     

Review of WAITRESS at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 Waitress by Lots o people

Marita May O’Connell has a wonderful voice and a lithe winsomeness in the title role of Jenna in Waitress at the Theatre Cedar Rapids (TCR), Still, she cannot carry a flawed book and a director who had a hard time controlling focus and keeping the supporting characters from going wild.

It is hard to know where to start here, but let’s note this adaptation from a long-shot winner at the Sundance Festival has been meddled with by a later film (which was pretty successful) and at least two Broadway re-incarnations. I haven’t seen any of them, but I find the coherence of the central image--a young woman from the south who has a lousy marriage and a penchant for making pies lacking. 

Think for a minute. Why pies? They are creamy sweet and happy. But a woman whose major goal in life is to bake them is consigned to the kitchen and apparently a group of men who want them to stay there and be pregnant. What would change in this piece if Jenna wanted to be a computer programmer? Earl remains a stupid redneck asshole with or without confining Jenna to the kitchen. Oogie would be an intolerable boor all the same. It is hard to believe that sensitive Jenna and shy little Dawn would find them attractive with or without a slice of pie, but if the women all had ambitions beyond waitress, those male creeps would be gone in a flash. And then there is our adultery-fueled sexual predator doctor. I am sure he would have jumped at the opportunity for some office nooky even if Jenna’s irrational smooch had not been offered? Pie does not deepen or help explain the plight of a pregnant woman in a bad relationship who tries to work through her issues by sleeping with her doctor? Is pie an aphrodisiac since her best friends are still copulating up a storm with nasty or looney men?  Let’s face it, this ship was leaking before it left the port. And that was before Jenna had apparently got drunk and been impregnated by her unprotected slob of a husband. 

I’ll mention two other areas briefly that contributed to my negative reaction. In the first act, the sound of the orchestra was so loud that it was hurting my wife’s ears. The amped-up mikes of the actors increased the din to the point that when I checked with several people in our group at the intermission, none of them could understand the lyrics or dialogue. Had we not been with the group, my wife and I would probably have left then and there. Thank goodness the sound engineer got that issue under better control in Act II and we could understand a bit more of what was going on and being sung about. 

I am still also bothered by the problem of figuring out what year this all took place. Pretty much before cell phones, but then Earl pulls one out to take a photo. Wierd! Certainly the woman's movement did not seem to have reached this southern town. Not much clue in the costumes either as the hemlines were all over the place. Dawn goes lime green stripes and pulls focus wherever she moves in the second act. Then there is the wedding in the cafe rather than a church. Maybe love is a table, but Evangelical Christianity which is a strong feature of the South, only gets a cursory treatment and a teenage pastor. . 

That brings me to the chorus or ensemble that meanders in and out at various times. They seemed to be more of a distracting background of unmotivated movement than a critical part of the action. Their contributions were limited to providing a desultory dance or two and some occasional backup vocals. The director appeared to have little interest in spending time with them. Most were young and needed a stronger hand on how focus works on a stage. My sense they were often marking time while waiting for their next contribution.     

TCR has done much better work than this.  

 

 

 

Review of Sharpe's Command by Bernard Cornwell

Sharp’s Command by Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell has written over fifty assorted military history potboilers and this is one of them. Major Sharpe and his ragtag group of men face huge odds in a series of 18^th century battles in Spain. They win by the hair of their chinny chin chins each time. There is plenty of blood and gore and little time given to the suffering that underlies all wars. Cornwell’s knowledge of ancient weaponry, period military tactics, and history is impressive, but over-all this is a summer throw-a-way. Action without depth has been a good combination for this prolific author.

I give it 2.5 of 5. 

Book Review of The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs enjoys her new family as Vera Lynn croons “The White Cliffs of Dover.”  How fitting is that! What can one say when a treasured fictional friend you have followed from a servant’s abode through two world wars is retired.  Jacqueline Winspear’s 18^th Mazie Dobbs adventure, The Comfort of Ghosts is a satisfying close, but leaves just a smidgen of an opening for the author to change her mind if she wishes to continue the story beyond the end of WWII.

Rationing is still a heavy burden on life in England when the book opens. The troops are coming home, but many, including Billy’s son Will, have been psychologically damaged by their experiences.  Then comes the discovery of an undercover wartime plan to train groups of citizens, some as young as 12 or 13, to become a new “Resistance” in the country should the Nazis invade. Maisie finds four children who are a part of this plan “squatting” terror-filled in a London flat after witnessing a murder on a country estate where the owner has been hosting parties catering to German sympathizers.

To save the children, Masie promises to solve the murder. The unraveling is, as usual, full of twists and turns. Masie’s longtime friend Priscilla comes back into the picture as does the final section that circles all the way back to the tragic death of her husband James.    

Winspear’s simple straight-forward prose is masterfully combined with her skillful insertions of all the background material needed to make this story coherent for a first-time reader. However, the narrative is much richer and enjoyable if you have followed Maise right from the start and assimilated the details of her beginnings in the servant quarters, her series of happy as well as tragic love affairs, and her work as an investigator and psychological analyst. As one of that rank of readers, I will simply close with a line from the epilogue. It says it all about Masie’s hold on us and our attachment to Ms. Winspear’s plot-making, historical acumen, and emotional wisdom. 

             “Maisie reflected on the passage of time and how one path had led to the next,

often by chance and sometimes by intention, though invariably with a few sharp,

            uncomfortable turns.”    

Daniel Silva The Order

 

Mr. Silva is an accomplished author of over 20 espionage thrillers. This one seems long and dense--perhaps because I was reading it in a small print paperback edition. You may also not be ready for quite this much medieval church history and some of the political bias that appears. On the other hand, The Order continues to draw you in. The plot centers on the murder of a pope by an ultra-right-wing faction with a plan to take over the entire Catholic church. Silva claims the book is a fictional elegy on the age-old curse that the Jews killed Jesus and it draws heavily on Pius XII’s treatment of the Jews during World War II. The current anger and desperation over the still raging Gaza War also lurks as an undercurrent. 

The savior of the Catholic faith is, ironically, no other than a Jew. Gabriel Allon, master assassin, head of Israeli Intelligence, art restorer, and tender family man is this time summoned from a vacation holiday in Venice to investigate the possible murder of a pope. The mystery is bound up in a literary enigma. There are multiple ancient copies of biblical texts available and whether there is or was a gospel of Pilate, whether it exists but is a forgery, or whether its potential content might be terrible enough to elicit the murder a pope keeps the narrative boiling right down to the very last pages.

This is not an easy read and general critical opinion is mixed, but Silva is a master writer of location detail and Gabriel Allon is a fascinating and complicated character.   

I give it a 4 out of 5

 

Christoper Fowler –White Corridor

 

White Corridor is a 2007 entry in Fowler's long line of Bryant and May adventures and I had not read it before. Our heroes remain two older-than-dirt detectives who function out of the so-called “Peculiar Crimes” Unit of Scotland Yard.  Arthur Bryant is a curmudgeon who dabbles in the occult and strange ancient history while his partner John May is more normal and goes by the book occasionally. The two main characters and their contrasting ways of reaching the solutions are always ingenious, humorous and historically fascinating.

The plot setup puts our two elderly detectives headed for a weekend conference in a borrowed van. A nasty winter blizzard on the moors traps them with a large number of other vehicles. Rescue will be a long time coming and there seems to be a serial killer running amuck through the snow. Meanwhile, back in London, the unit's pathologist is murdered within the white sterile environment of his own laboratory. The story now cycles back and forth in both "white" environments with Bryant and May trying to solve their own problems while also trying by cell phone to help the junior members of their unit back in London solve their murder. Needless to say, it turns out that there are connections between the two cases. 

As a devoted Anglophile and card-carrying senior citizen, I am particularly fond of these crotchety old detectives with their unorthodox methods and sappy humor, but this is not one of their best cases. The  "trappped in a snowstorm with a murderer" gimmick has been used more than once before and the moves back and forth from London to the moors just seem to make the book disjointed.    

My own I interest in Fowler's books started because several of them had theatrical or performance oriented situations and used a lot of London history. They had titles like Oranges and Lemons, and London Bridge is Falling Down.  I think Fowler should keep his sleuths in London. 

3 out of 5

 

 

 

 

No Trump ever

Dear Joe, 

 I know what old feels like and a lot of it ain't pretty even if you are more than capable at your age. Is there a possibility you might end your run on a high note and turn things over to some younger folks in order to give them some time to make their own hay and mistakes?  I can never vote for Trump, but I would not like to have to hold my nose and vote for you again.  Would you at least give it a thought? 

Jim  (86 and still pretty sharp, but not what I used to be.)

What may have been a factor in Biden's poor debate performance.

 Bob Woodward said this evening on MSNBC that Biden's debate performance was so bad that there must have been some causal factor or factors operating.  As I was listening to him, I suddenly found myself connecting to the fact that my wife and I returned from a trip to Finland last Friday and it featured a 9 1/2 flight through several time zones.  One week after our return we are still having some residual fogginess, sleep and meal dysfunctions,  and occasional overall feeling of things not being quite right.  And we are in our 80's just like Joe Biden and jet lag according to the following article cited next .  Now remember that Biden had two hard working literally back to back trips to Europe in the two weeks before the debate. Jet lag also impacts older people more strongly and can present lack of focus and tiredness.  I know Air Force One is a flying hotel, but is it possible that this was a factor in his performance.  Just thinking. See: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/jet-lag/symptoms-causes/syc-20374027.  

Review Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

 

Hard to say much about the author who has published 37 previous novels. He will be read no matter what. And why not? He won the writing chops game long ago. His narratives are strong and full of surprises at just the right time. His characters live and breathe through simple familiarity. You are pre-primed to see how the Lincoln Lawyer will win another case and you want to know how his now investigator Harry Bosch’s cancer treatments are progressing and how he will contribute to the case.  The defendant is sympathetic to the core. And finally, the connection to the title is neatly positioned early on and solidly integrated at the end.

Of his books I have read this seems to be about half way--nowhere near the worst but not taking the gold. It is totally workmanlike and kept me turning the pages, which is what a legal or police procedural is supposed to do.

I give it a solid 4 out of 5

 

Good article in Washington Post today by Ruth Marcus on sentencing Trump. The guy said a few days ago "If they can do it to me, they can do it to anybody." Isn't that the point? We aren't; he isn't, Biden's son isn't, nobody is above the law in this country. If there are exceptions, the bedrock of the constitution is cracked wide open and special interest rules.

Review of Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

 

Review Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

What do you require to for a successful theatrical reminiscence? Do you look for inside show business stories, heartfelt emotion, laughter, literary comments, wise notes on the craft, etc.? Judi Dench’s latest book with Brendan O’Hea has all of that and more. Dench is in turn earthy, eloquent, wise, revealing, funny, and sentimental. She breathes an exuberance toward life into every chapter. I have seen a good deal of Shakespeare in England as well as in Canada and across the USA. I have directed six of his plays, acted in two, and worked on a few others. My only caveat here is that in order to truly enjoy the book, you had better bring some familiarity with the Bard’s works. It is organized around the Shakespearean parts Dench has played over her long career and each chapter takes up a role she has played. Her interviewer sets up the questions and then she goes off on the director’s concept, the staging, her own approach, speaking the verse, or her interactions with fellow actors. Even if you are not familiar with the script (say Measure for Measure or Cymbeline), there is still plenty of enjoyment in her often funny and endearing commentary.   

Did you know that Peter Hall, used to stand at a lectern beating out the rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse while she and her fellow actors spoke their lines. Or did you know she loves Stratford Upon Avon, not because she has played there so often, but because so many Shakespeare references can be seen in the countryside around the town. Or do you need some line reading tips like the significance of what she calls “a pick-up line.”  It is a complete iambic pentameter line which is shared between two actors, as when in Macbeth a servant speaks to Lady Macbeth.  

“Servant:  The King comes here tonight

Lady Macbeth:                                          Thou’rt  mad to say it.”

That, according to Judi, is “Shakespeare’s way of telling you to pick up your cue.”

 And finally, she hates The Merchant of Venice with scatological fervor, but the inscription on her beloved husband, Michael Williams, gravestone comes from a line in that play. She played Portia to “Mikey’s” Bassanio and it is spoken just after Portia’s famous quality of mercy speech when Bassanio says, “You have bereft me of all words.”   Has there ever been a more moving epitaph for an actor?

I could go on for a long time, but it is better for you to look for a copy of the book and see for yourself the pleasures it contains. If you have treasured the reruns of ‘As Time Goes’, know know a little bit about the Bard, or just plain love the theatre, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent is the book for you.   

I give it a five out of five.