Nancy Rommelmann

Reason Number 4062 We Love These Kids

My daughter Tafv is living in New York.

We bought her an iPhone, with which she takes many photos, many of which she sends to me.

Most of them are of food. I told her, she should publish a book called, "Brunch."

Yesterday, she told me she and her friend were off for a picnic in Central Park.

She sent me a photo of herself, ready to roll.

 

Then she sent the one below, with the subject line, "We brought the wrong sheet." I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

 

Calling All Writers and Readers: Help, Please

As many of you know, I have been researching a book about Amanda Stott-Smith. I've published a few essays, and written several hundred pages more. But a bunch of writing does not a book make. For me, the crucial part, of any piece of writing, is the construction. I spend an inordinate amount of time constructing  longer pieces (this one comes to mind, sheesh -- months!), comparing this time to what my husband used to say when he worked as a painting contractor, that 90 per cent of the work is in the prep.

I've had a year of prep. As of yesterday, a table downstairs (as opposed to my desk upstairs, where I am now) is serving as the construction zone. It's actually a lot of fun, if a little daunting, and as for the writing that will come once I build my structure, I don't worry about that. (Ha - yet.)

Here's where I would love some help, from you who have been so helpful and illuminating in your comments regarding the work thus far: what narrative nonfiction books do you adore? Which ones just blew you away? I have my star chamber of authors writing in this realm, Didion and Langewiesche and Krakauer, and I plan to reread two works ("Sahara Unveiled," "After Henry"), if not so much as roadmaps for me, simply as good roadmaps. As in these works, mine will contain some first person, if more as filtration system than player.

Some books I have recently read, quasi in the genre of what I am writing, and whether or not they worked for me:  Julie Salamon's "Facing the Wind" (yea); Sebastian Junger's "A Death in Belmont" (nay); Deanne Stillman's "Twenty-Nine Palms" (yea) and Kathryn Harrison's "While They Slept" (nay); Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven" (yea, the gold standard), David Dow's "Autobiography of an Execution" (yea, with the slightest reservationof as to son's/wife's munificence), Terri Jentz's "Strange Piece of Paradise" (fascinating, a little long; more memoir), and Dave Cullen's "Columbine" (yea, big yea).

Most of these books use murder as a launching point. Your recommendations need not. I have faith that whatever you offer will be useful, as it has been so far xx

They're Kidding, Right?

Roger Ebert nails it

Frivolity: What's in Your Fridge?

I admit it: I like when I am reading an interview and this question is asked. So, what's always in yours? I don't mean just the condiments and milk, but the things you love and always need to have.

Here are mine:

Fridge: Natural peanut butter, habanero sauce, soda water, and (increasingly) Greek yogurt.

Pantry: Pretzels. I am hard pretzel freak, and if you know of a brand I need to try, tell me. Current favorite when I can find them: Utz.

Liquor cabinet: Gin, preferably Plymouth and Ransom, red wine.

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

You could use a laugh, right? Click here for the whole strip

Choking and Funk

When my daughter was little, I had a paralyzing fear of her choking, particularly on hot dogs. I was so worried that, when she was two and spent a month with my mother in New York, I would daily call my mom, "No hot dogs, or if you do, slice them lengthwise." This, because I knew of two toddlers that had choked to death eating hot dogs cut into little barrels. My mother thought I was overprotective, she took to answering the phone, "Oscar Meyer."

Today's New York Times has a story about the very worst choking hazard foods for very young children. Here's the story, and here's the list:

Hot dogs, peanuts, carrots, boned chicken, candy, meat, popcorn, fish with bones, sunflower seeds and apples.

Dr. Gary Smith warns the following foods should not be given to children under 4 or 5: raw carrots, marshmallows, peanuts, popcorn, hard candies and gumballs. Which makes perfect sense: while babies and toddlers can bite food, they cannot chew it. Further, their throats "narrow to the size of a drinking straw." I have to tell you, I feel a flutter of terror just writing this.

Okay, enough. Watch your children, and then this video, especially Flea, who is - tah dah! -- one of the professors at Bootsy Collins's new Funk University - F.U. f0r short -- where, per his mission statement, Professor Bootsy explains "how you gotta 'bring some funk...to get some funk.'"

NB: I AM throwing a goddamn dance party this summer, and yes, I will be wearing my platform shoes, and yes, this song will be playing, and I hereby invite you to tell me what ELSE I must have in rotation, and of course you're invited

Well, Would You Look At That [Verizon/Ristretto Ad]

Don't blink! (And yes, they asked permission.)

Draw Mohammed Day, Part 2

I did not get a chance to draw yesterday, due to 14 hours of plane travel (don't ask) and then, within 30 minutes of landing, having to be in court (on a story).

It's just as well, as words are my medium. And we are going to continue this conversation.

Just reread Reason's post about DMD -- which includes (as I could not see yesterday on my iPhone) the shocking images drawn by the imams, shocking not for aesthetic reasons but because it was the imams who created them in order to throw gas on a smoldering fire. As Nick Gillespie writes,  "It is as if the pope created 'Piss Christ' and then passed it off as the work of critics of Catholicism."

Also included is a May, 2010 Guernica interview with Paul Berman (whose #1 fan I am apparently becoming) in which, astonishingly (or maybe not), he needs to explain to the interviewer that, no, Theo van Gogh is not responsible for his own murder; the murderer is. 

The Reason post also led me to this interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, controversial, yes, and parts of her book drove me batty, but look at this quote in relation to what we're discussing here, or better, read the whole thing:

I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims. Because my Catholic and Jewish colleagues are fine. The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you’re having constant quarrels with God. Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands, no quarreling allowed. Quarreling or even asking questions means you raise yourself to the same level as Him, and in Islam that’s the worst sin you can commit. Jews should be proselytizing about a God that you can quarrel with. Catholics should be proselytizing about a God who is love, who represents a hereafter where there’s no hell, who wants you to lead a life where you can confess your sins and feel much better afterwards. Those are lovely concepts of God. They can’t compare to the fire-breathing Allah who inspires jihadism and totalitarianism.

...

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?

Hirsi Ali: I think that’s where we’re heading. We’re heading there because the West has been in denial for a long time. It did not respond to the signals that were smaller and easier to take care of. Now we have some choices to make. This is a dilemma: Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you?

Reason: George Bush, not the most conciliatory person in the world, has said on plenty of occasions that we are not at war with Islam.

Hirsi Ali: If the most powerful man in the West talks like that, then, without intending to, he’s making radical Muslims think they’ve already won. There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.

...

The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.

Discuss.

Draw Mohammed Day

Getting on a plane so this will be briefer and shorter than I want it to be: today, Reason magazine is sponsoring Draw Mohammed Day, for all the right reasons. Reason's Nick Gillespie explains:

It's worth meditating on the whys and wherefores of the contest, which was inspired by a jihadist death threat against the creators of South Park and was originally suggested by Seattle artist Molly Norris.

...There comes a point in any society's existence where it must ultimately, to paraphrase Martin Luther (who himself was more than happy to see opponents put to death), dig in its heels and say here we stand, we will do no other. We don't need to be perfectly consistent philosophically or historically or theologically to assert what is special and unique not just about the United States, with its bizarre and wonderful articulation of the First Amendment, but the greater classical liberal project comprising not just the "West" (whatever that is) but human beings in whatever town, country, or planet they inhabit. And at the heart of the liberal project is ultimately a recognition that individuals, for no other reason than that they exist, have rights to continue to exist. Embedded in all that is the right to expression. No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats.

...Our Draw Mohammed contest is not a frivolous exercise of hip, ironic, hoolarious sacrilege toward a minority religion in the United States (though even that deserves all the protection that the most serioso political commentary commands). It's a defense of what is at the core of a society that is painfully incompetent at delivering on its promise of freedom, tolerance, and equal rights. It's a rebuttal to the notion that we should go limp in the clinches precisely because bullies and bastards can punch or blow us up.

Here's my pal Amy Alkon's contribution. Where's yours?

Market Day, by James Sturm [graphic novel]

Market Day, by James Sturm, is one beautiful, profound and disturbing graphic novel, with some unexpected oddness. Really liked. Did I mention disturbing?

Grand Central

Taken yesterday, by the inestimable Jackie Danicki, after we spent 45 minutes leaning against a marble wall in the terminal, drinking iced coffee and talking, mentioning,  more than once, how grateful we are for our work and our lives and the wonderful people we share them with. 

What Communism Wrought

Six or seven years ago, we were having, as we often did in our home in Los Angeles, a few interesting people over for drinks. We would drink in the basement, where there was a full bar, and I mean a real old-fashioned wood bar, with room for eight of ten people at the rail and brass nameplates where the regulars had sat. The house had, decades earlier, been a Shriners hall, and when they left, they left the bar. Anyway, on this evening, two of the remaining people at evening's end were the political cartoonist Roman Genn, and Stuart Swezey, who owned Amok Books. I wasn't there for the beginning of the conversation, but could not help but hear the midpoint, as Roman's voice was rising; this, because Stuart was apparently expressing his admiration for communism, as it existed in the former Soviet Union.

"You're fucking kidding me," said Roman, who grew up in Moscow, and as a political cartoonist, had numerous run-ins with the police state until immigrating, in 1991, at the age of 19, to the US. "Have you BEEN there?" he asked Stuart. "Have you LIVED under this regime?"

Stuart had not, but he would not be divested of his idea that communism was a beautiful dream, all that equality, and sure, it hadn't worked out, but the ideal...

"No! No fucking ideal!" Roman was saying. Roman is a very, very funny guy, and he tried, a little, to inject some levity into explaining to Stuart that he had no idea what he was talking about, a position I roundly seconded, believing then as I only more strongly believe now, that communism is the very worst of the worst*, that it will only and only can lead to oppression and mass murder. (For a quick tour 'round, try Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.)

I am recalling this today for two reasons: I am in New York, at my mother's apartment, at the breakfast table where I used to debate communism with my late stepfather,  David Levine, a lifelong communist and someone who felt as Swezey did. Always a great way to start the day. And also, because of today's NYT front page story, about journalists around Moscow being beaten, stabbed, having their brains kicked in and worse when they call out the authorities for any reason, at which point others in authority not only do not press charges against the assailants, but against the journalists. Want change? they seem to say. Fuck you. Here's a kick in the teeth instead.

*As David posits in the comments, Nazi fascism was worse, to which I will add, it was no picnic under Pol Pot. But aside from wackadoos and hate groups, you don't have people waxing poetic -- as they do about communism -- about how utopian it would have been if only those terror regimes had worked out.

Anyone Got $700?

Because I really want a copy of Ellen von Unwerth's Fraulein, the enormous Taschen book Tavie and I leafed through yesterday while walking around SoHo. I include one of the images, comparatively tame, below. I would actually love to give this book to my husband, and if he needed to disappear with it for three weeks, I would understand.

The Flight of the Intellectuals

Great Michael Totten interview with journalist and author Paul Berman, on the release of his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which I cannot wait to read. A clip:

MJT: You provided some examples in your book, and I've some experience with this myself. I was in Beirut when the Syrian military was finally thrown out by a million citizens taking to the streets, and the whole thing was dismissed by some people in the West as a right-wing Christian Gucci revolution.

Paul Berman: Yes.

MJT: It was absolutely appalling, and I will never forget it. To this day I get hate mail from these kinds of people when I write about Lebanon.

Paul Berman: It really is something remarkable. I can understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. It comes from some old and very unattractive currents in Western thought that we can see over the course of the 20th century.

Remember, a lot of people despised the Soviet dissidents, too.

MJT: Right. What do you think causes this? I think I have it mostly figured out, but I still feel like I'm missing something.

Paul Berman: Well, I don't have it entirely figured out either. [Laughs.] But I note it. In regard to the Soviet dissidents of the past, at least nowadays there is a consensus of opinion that, yes, the dissidents were correct and we should have listened to them. So why didn't we? When I say "we," I mean the intellectual community as a whole in the Western countries. And it's for a whole set of reasons.

An outright sympathy for communism and the Soviet Union itself was only one of those reasons. This only accounted for one set of people.

There were other people who dismissed the dissidents for what you might call conservative reasons. They wanted to assume the Slavic world was hopelessly steeped in traditions of autocracy and ignorance and habits of obedience and deference -- the traditions of tsarism. They could see very well that communism in the Soviet Union had replicated the whole tsarist system, in a new version. There was a leader at the top whose rule was uncontestable. There were the masses at the bottom who had to proclaim the wisdom of the leader at the top. And a lot of people looked at this and said, yes, this is what the Slavic world is supposed to be. This is the authentic thing. Slavs are inherently inferior to Westerners. They aren't capable of being free people. They aren't capable of thinking for themselves.

So when the dissidents rushed out and told us that the Soviet Union is crushing individual liberty or doing other oppressive things, our response to them was to pat them on the head and say, well, it's nice that you got out, and you are welcome to say, but you're not talking about the real world. The real world is one where Slavs are destined to remain forever victims of oppressive tyrants, and this is because Slavs enjoy being victims, so we're not going to take people like you, the dissidents, all that seriously.

The logic behind that kind of thinking is very appealing, to some people. It pictures a world that is dominated by cultures that we like to regard as authentic -- cultures with unchanging deep qualities that go back thousands of years, and may be rich with cultural jewels, but will never produce anything more progressive and will certainly never embrace the kinds of freedoms and advantages and dynamism that we celebrate in our own culture. So that's one idea.

Then there's another idea that appeals to many people, which is based not on our own feeling of superiority, but on our own inferiority. We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about. So when we look at the world, we should look at it in a spirit of humility and remorse, and we should recognize that other people have been unfairly treated.

We should recognize the superiority of those other people over ourselves. Money-wise, we may be richer. But, morally, the other people are richer. And so, we should despise ourselves, and we should love the other people -- the people who possess qualities so superior to our own as barely to be human. And then, filled with those very peculiar ideas, we set about looking for messianic figures who might express the superior culture of the other people, and might lead the human race to a higher stage of development. And if someone objects to this analysis, we say, oh, we inferior Westerners are incapable of understanding the mysterious thought-patterns of those other people, so who are you to judge?

MJT: I think you have it pretty well worked out.

Paul Berman: I assure you, I don't.

Read the whole thing.

Long Distance Mother's Day

The little one called early from NY.

"I tried to send you flowers yesterday from online," she said. "But they were all so ugly, with teddie bears and stuff."

I told her, I know. That a call is better.

 A little later, she added a, "Hi, mom!" from the back of a cab. Sweetness.

What Do I Do With It?

 
Or rather, in it. Found it yesterday while cleaning off a shelf. Husband bought it three years ago and it has yet to be inaugurated.

All recipes/tips appreciated.

Lynn Redgrave, RIP

What a wonderful actress

How You Know It Is Art, Or, Lady Gaga - Telephone, Redux

My daughter just sent me this link, of the troops in Afghanistan and their remake of Lady Gaga's Telephone, which I linked earlier. This production made me remember that art is something that inspires people, and made me smile so much my face hurts.

Telephone Remake @ Yahoo! Video