Tony Curtis

Firstly I saw him in The Defiant Ones, where he was playing together with Sidney Poitier. Then I saw him in Some Like it Hot, together with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon. Great movies.

Tony Curtis. He had a mix of impossible beauty along with some virile, cowboy-like note. Tony Curtis just passed away. He was 85.

(Filmofilia)

Plácido Domingo To Leave the Washington National Opera

Plácido Domingo will not renew his contract as general director at the Washington National Opera (a position he held since 2003). As I come to the end of my tenure at Washington National Opera, I think it is time for the company to go in new directions, including studying the possibility of a merger with the Kennedy Center, wrote he in a letter sent to the members of the board.

Read more in today's W Post...

(Washington, District of Columbia)

1960: Kennedy - Nixon First Presidential Debate

(video by John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library)

Years have passed since that memorable debate. It was the first time in history that two presidential candidates were meeting face to face on TV. The elections that year marked the arrival at power of a new generation, with a new mentality. Was 1960 to be a point of change in American history? We know what happened after that: the assassination of the youngest American president, the success of the Civil Rights movement, the horrible costs of the Vietnam quagmire.

The candidate who was defeated in 1960 came back and won in 1968. He traveled to China and opened this way a new era. And then came Watergate.

(Zoon Politikon)

Dancing at Lughnasa

Dancing at Lughnasa, movie made in 1998: a sad story about five unmarried sisters getting old together, some place in rural Ireland in the 1930's. Their brother, Father Jack had spent many years in Africa, as a missionary. He came back old and senile. I'm just thinking: maybe his senility was a mark of holiness, enriched as it was by his long African experience. Was he a rigid monotheist anymore, stupidly believing only in the Abrahamic universe? He had at a certain point a great phrase, people in Africa see in their dreams the ancient gods.

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 1/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 2/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 3/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 4/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 5/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 6/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 7/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 8/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 9/10
(video by xsara35x)

Dancing at Lughnasa : Part 10/10
(video by xsara35x)

(Filmofilia)

Masdar, the Zero-Carbon City of Thousand and One Nights

Evolution is no myth, but we may be evolving backward (Maureen Dowd in NY Times). While American society argues on Evolution theory and stem cell research China is doing moonshots (Tom Friedman in NY Times): building a network of ultramodern airports, building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities, launching its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry, starting an electric car industry in 20 pilot cities. Maybe the same Tom Friedman is right: we need to be in a race with China, not just Al Qaeda.

I would add to this, Islam and Arabs narrative is not only Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. 20 miles from Abu Dhabi, a new city has emerged: Masdar, the Thousand and One Nights miracle of nowadays.

Terra-cotta-like Exterior of a Residential Building (photo Duncan Chard / NYT)

This was conceived from start as a zero-carbon city. Electricity is supplied by solar panels, and normal cars are not allowed: there is an underground network of driverless electric cars instead. You enter the car and touch on a monitor the destination and that's it!

The city was designed by Foster & Partners. The architects have blended high-tech design and ancient construction practices to get the perfect model of a sustainable community where local traditions and the drive toward modernization are no longer in conflict (Nicolai Ouroussoff).

Read here a presentation of Masdar (the column of Nicolai Ourousoff in NY Times)...

Raising the Entire City off the Desert Floor takes Advantage of the Cooling Capacity of Stronger Winds (photo Duncan Chard / NYT)

Narrow Streets (photo Duncan Chard / NYT)

Solar Panels on Rooftops (photo Duncan Chard / NYT)

Dome of the Library Building (photo Duncan Chard / NYT)

the Personal Rapid Transit Station with a fleet of driverless electric cars

(Contemporary Art)

This is What Obama Said at the UN Yesterday

The courage of a man like President Abbas, who stands up for his people in front of the world under very difficult circumstances, is far greater than those who fire rockets at innocent women and children.

The conflict between Israelis and Arabs is as old as this institution. And we can come back here next year, as we have for the last 60 years, and make long speeches about it. We can read familiar lists of grievances. We can table the same resolutions. We can further empower the forces of rejectionism and hate. And we can waste more time by carrying forward an argument that will not help a single Israeli or Palestinian child achieve a better life. We can do that.

Or, we can say that this time will be different -- that this time we will not let terror, or turbulence, or posturing, or petty politics stand in the way. This time, we will think not of ourselves, but of the young girl in Gaza who wants to have no ceiling on her dreams, or the young boy in Sderot who wants to sleep without the nightmare of rocket fire.


(Zoon Politikon)

To Dance with the White Dog

When, after a long, beautiful life with his wife, he remained alone, a white dog appeared, to be his companion and make him keep his grace and balance. Nobody but him could see the dog, and they believed the old man was having the fantasies of senility. But, little by little those who were gracious to the old man started to see the white dog by themselves.

And sometimes the white dog was taking the shape of his beloved, in very special moments.

Before dying he told his son and his grandson to come early in the morning to the cemetery: they would see there the dog. And so they did after he passed away, and what they saw were the footprints of the dog near the tomb.

To Dance with the White Dog, a book, and a TV movie about love, and about grace, and about balance in life, in your last years.



(Filmofilia)

The New Book by Bob Woodward

Obama does not think the Afghan war in the classic terms of the US winning or losing, but more as Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?

A new book by Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars, will be released on Monday and details the internal battles between the President (along with his political aides) and the military for defining the exit strategy in Afghanistan.

Read more in today's W. Post...

David Axelrod

Gen. David Petraeus

(Zoon Politikon)

David Ignatius: Between Red Alert and Perilously Uninformed

French Soldiers Patrol Under the Eiffel Tower on Monday
(photo: Francois Mori / AP)

The public needs to understand that terrorism nowadays is a fact of life and not an existential disaster, considers David Ignatius. The public must be informed: there is a fine line between leveling about threats and scaring.

Here's David Ignatius' opinion in today's Washington Post...

(Please send your comments at davidignatius@washpost.com)

(Zoon Politikon)

Downtown Silver Spring: Lebanese Taverna

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: Wayne Avenue Garage

close up

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: Red Lobster

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: Eggspectation

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: Macaroni

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: Hello Stranger

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring: View at Night

(SilverSpring)

Downtown Silver Spring

(SilverSpring)

It Was Summer In Silver Spring

(SilverSpring)

Silver Spring: For Sale on Wayne Avenue

(SilverSpring)

The Trains from Silver Spring

Silver Spring metro and railroad stations are elevated. Colesville Road passes under them.

I thought at the station from Kamakura, in Ozu's movies. Was it once Silver Spring as quiet as Kamakura, as I know it from Late Spring?

I tried a video, it was hard to choose a correct angle. Here's what I got:

(SilverSpring)

Call Your Mom But Don't Ask For Money

Message on a Bathroom Wall
(photo: liquidsunshine49)

They say it's in Silver Spring's Quarry House tavern: beer, burgers and basement. And music. It's for dating as well as for any casual business. Only be brave enough to come down the thirteen steps.


(SilverSpring)

Silver Spring - Mi Rancho

I took once my lunch at Mi Rancho: a great steak and some red wine. I promised myself to come again, I never found time any more. Maybe when I come again to DC. It is a fine place, very friendly.

(SilverSpring)

Silver Spring - Silver Market, in 1938 and Today

(SilverSpring)

Silver Spring in the Night

(SilverSpring)

Silver Spring

Silver Spring, Maryland, a city I love so much. I used to come there by metro, then I was taking the East-West Highway and the trail towards Bethesda. Some other times I was coming from Bethesda, on the trail (and East-West Highway, crossing the Rock Creek Trail by Meadowbrook Stables), and I was taking the metro in the end to go home.

First time I came there it was from Bethesda. I took the trail, it was about three miles or so, but I got confused once in Silver Spring, I didn't know the directions to the metro station. It was getting dark and it was kind of cold.

Then I started to come very often and I discovered bit by bit the city's beauties. There is a spirit of the place, anywhere, and it's hidden. You need to be patient and open, you'll discover it, this spiritus loci.

• Silver Spring in the Night
• Silver Market, in 1938 and Today
• Mi Rancho
• Call Your Mom But Don't Ask For Money
• The Trains from Silver Spring
• For Sale on Wayne Avenue
• It Was Summer In Silver Spring
• Downtown Silver Spring
• Downtown Silver Spring: View at Night
• Downtown Silver Spring: Hello Stranger
• Downtown Silver Spring: Macaroni
• Downtown Silver Spring: Eggspectation
• Downtown Silver Spring: Red Lobster
• Downtown Silver Spring: Wayne Avenue Garage
• Downtown Silver Spring: Lebanese Taverna
  

(Washington, District of Columbia)

Nicholas D. Kristof - Message to Muslims: I'm Sorry

Many people consider that moderate Muslims should stand up to their extremists and apologize for their fanaticism. That is true also for us: as moderates we should stand up against our extremists and apologize for the wave of bigotry and nuttiness directed against Muslims, for all that racist innuendo that equates Islam with terrorism and sees in any Muslim the enemy.

Many of us honestly believe that Islam generates violence, but world is far more interesting and nuanced than a black and white picture of them against us.

Nicholas D. Kristof in today's NY Times...


(Zoon Politikon)

Be a Pirate

Somewhere near Andros Island, Bahamas
(c Sea Dragon Pirate Cruise)

Footprints on the Sand
(c Radius/SuperStock)

The Pirates Alley
(c Angelo Cavalli/SuperStock)

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers
(c Blaine Harrington III/Corbis)

(Blogosphere)

Adrian Fenty Lost the Primaries

(http://dcist.com/2008/06/13/mayor_fenty_got_a_smart_car.php)

Mayor Adrian Fenty lost the Democratic primaries. Vincent C. Gray got the nomination and has all chances now to gain in the elections. I wish him success, but I would have cast my vote for the incumbent, because I think he needed one more mandate to finish what he had in mind.

Read here more in W Post...




(Washington, District of Columbia)

Yale Strom

I met Yale Strom in 2000, in Bucharest. He was doing a documentation for a future book he had in mind: it was about the Yiddish theatrical activity in Romania. I waited for him at the main railroad station: he had traveled all night in a sleeping car, and he intended to stay in Bucharest for half a day and visit the Jewish Theater. He had the return to New York the same day.

Yale was not alone. Together with him was Garry, a recent acquaintance of me: I had met him in New York a couple of months before, at the 2000 Docfest.

We entered firstly a restaurant and took a copious breakfast followed by strong coffee.

And Yale started to talk. I think it is hard to meet such an open guy, and so passionate. Well, he is a man of many passions, and of many talents. I'd say there is a common denominator: the Yiddish culture. Yale is firstly a musician, and his primary passion is Klezmer. But he is also an artistic animator, leading a Klezmer band, the Hot Pstromi. And Yale is also an ethnographer, looking for Klezmer artifacts wherever he can find them: of course in the South Eastern Europe, as well as in the East, to Poland to Ukraine to Russia.

Klezmer performed by Yiddish artists, but nowadays more by Gypsies. And so through the years he's been getting more and more interested in all aspects of Gypsy Weltanschaung, befriending and visiting them often, playing together Klezmer music. Gradually he became passionate for all aspects of South Eastern European popular culture: from music to poetry, to all expression of performing arts, to myths, to cuisine! Was it only about Yiddish? Oh, no! It was now the Balkan world, and also the Russian world. Yale told me about his movie on Birobidjan, and the Jewish Autonomous Region some place in Far Eastern Siberia.

What he is looking for is actually Yiddish artifacts and people playing Klezmer music. And this means for him to understand these people, to understand their music, their traditions, their life, their cuisine, everything, to become one of them, to play Klezmer with them, then to make documentary movies about them, then to write books, to tell us his findings.

We left the restaurant and it seemed for me that I knew Yale for ages. And I didn't know by that time anything about his CDs, movies and books!

We talked to a cab driver who agreed to take us and go wherever need was, up to the Jewish Theater and then to the airport. The driver was an enthusiastic young man who took us also to some places of tourist interest (before going to the theater): firstly the huge Palace of the Parliament, then some old churches. He was a student actually, at the Bucharest University, where he was doing a major in Geology, and he needed to support himself, hence the cab job.

It was the period of presidential elections in Romania and all people were very excited about. No candidate had got enough votes in the first round, and a runoff was to be in a week or so. People in Bucharest were very polarized (and the driver was no exception). It seemed that the only guys not taking care about the runoff were Yale and Garry. Happy fellows! Anyway, the conversation with Yale was now intertwined with the political remarks of the driver, the whole becoming a funny mix of English stories about Klezmer and Romanian political statements.

By all accounts it was a great day, and I kept contact with Yale along the years through eMail. His messages have always a sentence or two in Yiddish, greetings for good health and good fortune. These Yiddish greetings have always been kind of a puzzle for me, solved through some basic German and a lot of effort; but it paid!

I had meanwhile moved to DC area and I wanted to go visit him: he lived in New York. As it always happens, what seemed very feasible proved impossible for lack of time. And when I found a window of two days to come to New York, I found out that Yale had just relocated to LA. I found in bookstores lots of his CDs and I bought them, also a great book on Yale's South Eastern European wanderings, maybe I find time some day to write about it here.

Well, I am now again in Bucharest, and Yale intends to come next year for a series of concerts. That would be great to meet him again, and to greet him like Vos machtsu, Yale?

• The Hasidim from Brooklyn (a Photo Essay)
• Visiting Old Friends in Iasi
• Just Klezmer
• Rroma Dance from the Balkans
• A World To Rediscover
• Dave Tarras, the King of Klezmer
• A Paschal Greeting from Yale Strom
• Warsaw:Museum of History of Polish Jews
• For Yale Strom: Soviet Footage about Birobidzhan from 1936
• For Yale Strom: Mark Bernes
• For Yale Strom: Yiddish New York
• The San Diego Troubadour
• For Yale Strom: How Do You Say E-Mail in Yidish?
• André Heller, Tsen brider
• Di rumenishe kretshme

(Filmofilia)

(A Life in Books)

Mayoral Race in DC

Recursivity
(photo: Bill O'Leary / W.Post)

Well, it's not exactly recursivity: it would be were the camera showing Mr. Fenty handling the same gizmo.

Will Adrian Fenty keep his job? Difficult to answer, as his contender Vincent C. Gray (also from the Democratic Party) seems to be placed quite comfortanly in the mayoral race. Let's see what happens tomorrow, at the Democratic primaries.

Yesterday Adrian Fenty did his best: 1.500-meters swim, 40-kilometer bike ride, 10-kilometer run in the Nation's Triathlon, followed by a visit in Adams Morgan and then at Carmine's restaurant (while Mr. Gray toured some African-American churches). A sportsman and a man of faith, no more no less.

Read more in Washington Post...

(photo: Jahi Chikwendiu / W.Post)

(photo: Bill O'Leary / W.Post)

(Washington, District of Columbia)

Ready to Fight Back?

(http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/09/12/opinion/12richimg.html)

(Zoon Politikon)

In the Aftermath of 9/11 the Country Stood United

As smoke rises from the ruins of the World Trade Center, a Palestinian-American woman participates in a candlelight vigil for peace on Sept. 16, 2001 (Mark Lennihan/AP/Newsweek)

Bloodbanks across America were overwhelmed with ordinary citizens who wanted to help--though the supply was much greater than the demand (Tim Boyle/Getty Images/Newsweek)

Many people left memorabilia and flowers near Ground Zero. Out of respect for those gestures of support, Heather Holland Wheaton turned those objects into art (Jim Cooper/AP/Newsweek)

In Pakistan on Sept. 27, 2001, members of an ethnic regional political party pay homage to the victims of Sept. 11 attacks during a candlelight vigil (Zafar Ahmed/AP/Newsweek)

French citizens pause for three minutes of silence during a memorial outside the U.S. embassay in Paris in 2001 (Michel Lipchitz/AP/Newsweek)

Nelson Mandela signs a Wall of Nations, representing all the nations who lost individuals in Sept. 11 attacks (Ezio Petersen/AP/Newsweek)

In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule - Pres. Bush quoting from the Quran (Doug Mills/AP/Newsweek)


(Zoon Politikon)