Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedon by David Blight

Frederick Douglass was a remarkable man who lived an equally remarkable life.  As a child he had a few pieces of luck, which did no spare him from knowing first hand the life of a field slave in the Deep South, but did allow him to be able to live to tell the tale and write about it.
Douglass spent most of his adolescence in a house in Baltimore, where the mistress allowed him to play with her son and who taught him to read and write.  Those were huge advantages that he could have easily missed out on.  Then there was the fact that he worked in a shipyard, so he knew the city, the ways of free men, and he had a skill.  So when he escaped as a young man and started his life as an abolitionist and an orator , he was equipped to do so.
The book covers Douglass' entire life, which was long and occasionally controversial, but the long standing take away message is that by his first hand accounting of slavery and the legacy of men owning men, is the uncovering of deeply sadistic traits in this way of thinking that survives in the modern American experience.  It is not just the need to feel superior, but also the need to inflict pain and then to derive pleasure from it that makes white supremacists so loathsome.  Douglass witnessed the continuation of that far beyond the Civil War, and Blight writes about it with balance.

Earth Emergency

Mornning in the Burnt House by Margaret Atwood, 1939

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread. 

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent. 

On The Basis of Sex (2018)

There is nothing about the story of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's trajectory to the Supreme Court that I do not like, and the documentary about her last year told a lot of it very well.  This movie focuses on her time at law school up to her arguing a case before the Supreme Court as a young lawyer with her incredibly supportive husband.
The movie opens with her being significantly out numbered by her male peers in law school, the discrimination that occurred for women, from in the classroom up to the public humiliation the dean subjected them to, and her amazing resilience in the face of all that.  She then went a step further--when her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer and given a very grim prognosis, she set about making him successful, but going to his classes and teaching him the material covered.  The woman does not sleep.
Upon graduation she cannot get a job with a law firm, so she teaches at Rutgers and yet yearns to make a difference.  Her husband, the tax attorney, helps her to find a case where she can.  The tax law would not allow a deduction for the expenses of an unmarried male caregiver, only a female. She sees that the best way to overturn laws that disadvantage women is to take on one that disadvantages men. It was probably just an oversight; the writers of the tax code failed to consider that an unmarried male might have the care of an elderly parent. But Charles Moritz did. And the government, under the direction of Dean Griswold, now at the Justice Department, make a very big mistake. Instead of amending the rule, they decided to fight. They underestimated Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  And she went on to systematically dismantle legislation that discriminated on the basis of gender.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

 One review I read of this book was entitled "Melancholy Dane", which made me smile, because while the dog in the book does have the countenance of a grieving Hamlet, he lacks other important features of the tragic hero.
On the surface, this is a book about a writer whose best friend has committed suicide, who takes the friend’s now ownerless and abandoned Great Dane into her teeny tiny New York City apartment.  There is also some aspect of owners who do not take responsibility for their pets, as the now deceased writer, who died by their own hand, left the dog to the narrator without once asking her about it, and in fact it is somewhat of a burden.  Not only does she not have a lot of dog ownership in her past, she lives in a building where pets are forbidden and she is on the brink of losing her apartment, which she can ill afford to do, when she happens upon a solution that works.
It is underneath all that a book about grief.  The struggle to come to terms with loss, which the narrator and the dog share in equal parts, and then to move on--which the dog does not but the narrator manages to live with the new normal, is the take home message for me.  The Great Dane is a difficult to overlook manifestation of the catastrophe, which the narrators friends fail to see the significance of but the reader cannot overlook it.

The Four Questions

The repetition in the Passover story, the leaving behind a life of slavery, and heading out into the desert, not to a life of luxury, but rather one that has new struggles, is something we do year after year.  The fact that it is inextricably linked with the Easter story does distract from its significance, and it is true that this might be somewhat limited to Jews and those that love them.
Obama saw the link between this story and that of African-Americans who survived slavery.  Here is an excerpt form his 2015 announcement of the White House celebration of Passover:
We are "retelling one of humanity’s great stories of liberation.  The Exodus was neither easy nor quick.  The Israelites’ journey to freedom required them to choose faith over fear and courage over complacency.  Above all, it required the works of an awesome God, who led them out of bondage with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
The story of the Exodus – the signs and wonders that appeared when hope seemed lost, the Jewish people’s abiding belief that they would one day reach the Promised Land –  has inspired countless generations over the years.  It inspired Jewish families to hold fast to their faith, even during times of terrible persecution.  It inspired young Civil Rights leaders as they marched across an Alabama bridge in search of their own Promised Land, half a century ago.
And it continues to inspire us today.  Tonight, my family will read the passage of the Haggadah that declares we must see ourselves as though we personally were liberated from Egypt.  The Exodus reminds us that progress has always come slow and the future has always been uncertain, but it also reminds there is always reason for hope.
Like the Israelites who Moses led out of slavery long ago, it is up to us to never lose faith in the better day that lies ahead.  In our own country, we can continue our march toward a more perfect union.  Around the world, we can seek to extend the miracles of freedom and peace, prosperity and security, to more of God’s creation.  And together, we can continue the hard but awesome work of tikkun olam, and do our part to repair the world."

Beautiful Boy (2018)

The movie is based on a pair of best-selling memoirs by the San Francisco journalist David Sheff and his oldest son, Nic, that chronicled Nic’s descent into crystal-meth addiction.   The film manages to blend the books together, which ends with the dramatizing the perils of addiction from the inside and the outside.  It tells a heartbreaking true story and one that surely will resonate with viewers who’ve experienced addiction themselves. David (Steve Carell) has been a reasonably good father.  He is divorced with two children with his new wife, but Nic (Timothee Chalomet) is included in his newly transformed life.
While Nic's experience is portrayed, it is largely the story of  his father's anguished but impotent crusade to rescue his son from a life-destroying drug dependence.  But the more the film goes on, the more he realizes he’s doomed to fail. Nic is still the son he adores, but the lust for drugs takes on a harrowing life of its own.  You can see that Nic loves his family, but not more than he loves the high, and what he does to them is painful to watch.  It is a very believable movie that has one of the  happy endings that can be possible, and jsut how hard it is to reach.

Assymetry by Lisa Halliday

This first effort was rewarded with a spot on the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2018 list. It is a debut novel by a woman who admits that she had a relationship with Phillip Roth as a young woman, and the male novelist in the first third of the book is pretty transparently modeled on him.
The second part of the novel is quite different and it isn't clear until the last section where it exactly fits into the story.  It is a monologue by Amar Jaafari, an Iraqi-American who is being detained by immigration officers at Heathrow Airport. The circular logic that keeps him there and prohibits his movement is so absurd, and also so unrelated to the tale of a young women who lets herself be subsumed by the author with a greater reputation than her own as to be unrecognizable as being part of the same story.  But in the end, if read very closely, we see where the story is going, and all in all, it is both a romantic comedy and a launching pad for something bigger in the future.

Charred Cabbage Salad

This is a great salad, also from the Double Awesome Chines Food cookbook.

1 lb. cabbage, sliced into wedges
1 medium apple, diced
1/2 c. crumbles blue cheese
1/4 c. Fermented Black Bean Dressing*
Chopped nuts

Heat skillet with oil to hot.  Cook cabbage wedges until slightly charred on all sides. Put on cutting board and slice. Toss in a bowl with apple, blue cheese, add dressing and salt to taste, garnish with nuts and serve.

Fermented Black Bean Dressing*
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/4 c. rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. fermented black beans
2 tsp. brown sugar
Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a blender, season to taste.

Private Life (2018)

Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is 41. She's not fertile, and there is un underlying anger about that in her.  She thought she could postpone childbearing until almost 40 and really, there is no data to support that assumption.  It is how she wanted it to be, but it really isn't founded in reality. Richard (Paul Giamatti) is 47. He has j one testicle which is blocked. This is a terrible state of affairs for any couple, but a somewhat morose comic gold mine for actors who express frustration as well as these do. Rachel and Richard's obsession with child bearing distracts them from dealing with longstanding issues in their marriage, and maybe their careers as well. A kind of This Is What I Gave Up Parenting For situation.  Richard was once an acclaimed actor and theater impresario. He now runs a pickle-making company. Rachel is a writer who's trying to finish a new novel. She's finding it hard to stay focused . They know having a child is a long shot. They've tried various procedures and treatments and flirted with adoption and surrogates. They refuse to give up. Should they?  The answer is definitely yes, but they would disagree.

Year of the Pig

This is my year!  It is the first time that I have been cognizant of the zodiac years as they specifically pertain to me.

I have been in China during the Festival of Lights or Spring Festival on two occasions, and I am very impressed by how ubiquitously celebrated this is.  The whole country is on the move for two to three weeks during this time period, visiting family and friends, celebrating the year that has finished and hope for a healthy and prosperous new year.  There are many food traditions that surround the celebration, but what is striking as a visitor is that literally everywhere you go there is evidence of the celebration.

We are now in the year of the pig.  There are a number of theories that surround the origin of the China zodiac.  Animals found in the zodiac have been found on pottery going back to 500 BCE.  There is likely a connection between the zodiac with the Silk Road, and the fable about the animals and the order of the years relates to a banquet that the emperor held, and when each of them arrived.