Category: Culture

Munich — The Edge of War ★ ★ ★ ★

Was there ever a bad movie about the political turbulence that preceded World War II? I can’t think of one. Munich — The Edge of War is partly a political drama and partly a spy drama. In this version, Neville Chamberlain is still Prime Minister, and the story is divided between London, Berlin, and Munich.

The political intrigue alone, historically accurate, would carry this movie: What was Hitler’s intent with Sudetenland? What motivated Chamberlain’s efforts to avoid war at almost any cost? It’s the fictional espionage plot, though, that makes this such a brilliant story. Two young men who were Oxford classmates, one German, the other British, are in way over their heads in a German plot to arrest and remove Hitler. The British character is Chamberlain’s private secretary. The German character works as a translator in the foreign office in Berlin. Neither of them ever gets a moment of relief. The fear and menace grows and never lets up. Hitler is a relatively minor character, but Ulrich Matthes plays him like a character in a horror film.

This film reminds us just how important it is, after 75 years, to continue to grapple with the history of World War II. Today Russia may be on the edge of invading Ukraine. Only a year has passed since the United States removed a madman from the White House, who, had he remained in office, would have continued to work with Russia to destabilize Europe.

Just as a period piece, the film is elegant — old cars, old London, old Berlin, trains, typewriters, radios, cabarets.

Munich — The Edge of War can be streamed on Netflix.

Support the Scottish economy!


I got that little glass while touring the Oban distillery in 2018.

Tonight is Burns Night in Scotland. For those of you not familiar with Burns Night, I’ll leave you to Google for Scottish sources that can describe it much better than I can. But you’d be safe to assume that Burns Night involves food, drink, and the poet Robert Burns.

Having run low on Scotch, I went to the ABC store in Walnut Cove this morning and was surprised to find that they now carry Oban Scotch. In a way, this is unfortunate, because Oban Scotch costs three times as much as what I usually pay for quite good single-malt Scotch. But it’s Burns Night, and I bought it.

I would not have guessed that food and drink are only the second most important Scottish export to the United States. The first is listed by the Scottish government as engineering and advanced manufacturing. I have no idea what the specifics are for the engineering and manufacturing, but I’m sure it would be interesting.

Last year I came across the web site for Highland Titles. They have an interesting fund-raising scheme. For a certain donation, you get 10 square feet of land in Scotland. It’s a gimmick, of course, but it’s also a smart way of raising money for the conservation and rehabilitation of Scottish land. Lots of people who buy the 10 square feet of land visit the reserves while in Scotland to have a look at their little spot of land, so that brings in more money.

Haggis is traditional on Burns Night, but no haggis is likely be eaten in this house. (In Scotland you can get vegetarian approximations of haggis.) Instead I’m making a chicken pot pie with fake chicken, with winter vegetables on the side. There will be ale to start and Scotch to finish.


Oban, from the ferry. Ken and I toured the Oban distillery there in 2018, but we must have been so mesmerized by the distillery that we forgot to take pictures inside the distillery.


You can get one of these certificates by making a donation to Highland Titles, a conservation and restoration project.


Source: Scottish government web site

Pub food


Scallop pot pie

In this publess part of the world, if you want pub food, you have to make it yourself. One of the few compensations of January is the pleasure of running the oven. There’s snow outside. That was my excuse for making comfort food.

This is a sea scallop pot pie with potatoes, cauliflower, onion, celery, and peas. There are only seven scallops in the pie, plenty enough to flavor it. The winter vegetables and the crust are the main event. I may make this again for Burns Night, which is January 25.

Ale goes with everything.

Falling apart at the seams??

David Brooks has an important — but very misleading — column this morning at the New York Times, “America is falling apart at the seams.” The column tries to pull off the same old deception that so-called centrists always try to pull off. That’s the idea that bad things are always symmetrical, that “both sides” are always equally to blame.

It’s not that America is falling apart at the seams. It’s that Republican, Trumpist America is falling apart at the seams. Republicans are well along in becoming what Republican propaganda and Trumpist trash-talk have taught them to become — insufferable.

Show me someone assaulting airline crew and I will show you a white Republican. Show me someone being rude and demeaning to a waitress and I will show you a white Republican.

Brooks tries to blame the usual conservative boogey men. He mentions that a majority of Americans are no longer members of a church. Small wonder, given that the white churches have driven away decent people, having aligned their religion with Trump and Republican politics. The decline in church membership actually is a sign of moral improvement in American society, given what the churches have become.

Every liberal I know is working extra hard to preserve civility, even though we are often the targets of “fuck your feelings” incivility. A few months ago, a drunk Republican who lives about half a mile away from me threatened to kill me after he saw that the mighty right-wing talking points that he was shouting at me weren’t having the effect he wanted. He had a 9mm pistol in his back pocket. He shouted the N-word several times just to show that he wasn’t “woke.” His intent was intimidation. Trumpist America wants the rest of America to be afraid of them. I told him, and not in a snowflake voice, to stop trying to intimidate me.

David Brooks’ self-deceived, centrist, both-sides hand-wringing will do no good, not until the Republican Party rethinks its politics and the white churches rethink their religion. They hate being a minority, and they are terrified by the fact that it is becoming harder and harder for them to dominate.

Don’t Look Up

Don’t Look Up can be streamed on Netflix.

First, a hat tip to Ken, who alerted me that this movie is a must-watch. Ken also wrote about it on his blog.

I’m not as critical as Ken on the quality of Don’t Look Up. If there are flaws, I didn’t mind, other than that the movie is about 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. It’s surgically accurate. And I rejoice because at last we’re heaping ridicule on Trump, Trumpism, and the millions of gullible and deplorable people who can’t see through Trump and who were willing to kill for Trump in the trenches of Trumpism. (Images from the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are my evidence that I’m not exaggerating.)

A major — and overlooked — marker in deplorable people’s eagerness to deify Trump was when John Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015. Trevor Noah said that Stewart told him this about why he left The Daily Show:

“He said ‘I’m leaving because I’m tired.’ And he said, ‘I’m tired of being angry.’ And he said, ‘I’m angry all the time. I don’t find any of this funny. I do not know how to make it funny right now, and I don’t think the host of the show, I don’t think the show deserves a host who does not feel that it is funny.'”

It was in 2015 that we lost public ridicule as a defense against the rise of Trumpism. Finally, at the end of 2021, ridicule returns in Don’t Look Up. Stewart is right. There was nothing funny about Trump’s occupation of the White House. We were all angry, too angry to employ ridicule. Hand-wringers on the left told us that we should “reach out” to Trumpists and “try to understand them.” Wrong. We should have relentlessly ridiculed them.

I was curious about how the right-wing propagandists who feed Trumpism to the Trumpists would respond to Don’t Look Up. I think I found the answer in a review in The Washington Examiner, which boils down to, “Nothing to see here. Move along. Everyone knows it’s really the libs who are ridiculous.”

It is definitely not from the Democratic Party that the ridicule must come. President Biden and the Democrats in Congress understand that. The Democratic Party must stay focused on governing and working for the good of the American people. The ridicule is more a cultural than a political responsibility. Thank you, Hollywood. Television, where are you? More, please.

Two very good essays in the New York Times this morning are reminders that, though Trumpists eagerly embrace their own deception, the rest of us understand quite well what’s going on. The first is by Rebecca Solnit, “Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies.” Solnit focuses on gullibility. The second is by Francis Fukuyama, who focuses on the world’s horror at what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

But understanding what happened is not enough to pull the American Democracy back from the brink. Those who broke the law to follow Trump must be brought to justice. And those who followed Trump but didn’t break the law must face public ridicule and public contempt so severe that they would be embarrassed to show their faces among decent people again for the rest of their lives.

Khatia Buniatishvili

Not until last year did I discover the pianist Khatia Buniatishvili. There are many recordings of her concerts on YouTube, and I have listened to almost all of them. Living here in the sticks as I do now, it would be a great overreach for me to claim that she is our greatest living pianist. But I will say (with gratitude for the many concert videos to be found on YouTube) that she is the greatest living pianist that I have heard.

Buniatishvili, according to the Wikipedia article, was born in Georgia in 1987. She started piano lessons, with her mother, at the age of 3. I believe she now lives in Paris. She clearly is in great demand in Europe’s concert halls, and she is a regular at the annual Verbier Festival in Switzerland. Her repertoire is decidedly and unapologetically romantic. Her style is a touch theatrical, in a good way.

My own musical talent is limited, but I was born with a good ear for both language and music. With the exception of my years in San Francisco, where the urban noise was terrible, I have taken good care of my hearing over the years and have no hearing loss. Except when the cat has something to say to me, these days I live mostly in silence. I never listen to music as a “background.” Listening to music requires our full attention and concentration. Audio-only recordings, as good as they can be, can never capture a full musical experience. For that, one must be in the same room as the musicians. When that’s not possible, well-recorded concert videos can come close. Of the various forms of social media, I like YouTube best. There’s plenty of garbage on YouTube, certainly. But the garbage is easy to ignore. YouTube’s search function is pretty good, with just enough imprecision to find things that you didn’t exactly search for but that are good finds nevertheless.

I have enough experience with Europe and Europeans to lament the quality of education that most Americans receive. Music has almost vanished from our public schools. Few Americans ever really master a foreign language. Today, a billion people speak English as a second language, but there are only 400 million people for whom English is the first language. Presumably, Buniatishvilli’s first language is Georgian. She speaks English very well, and her French is even better. She also speaks German. Only a tiny percentage of Americans have access to the kind of privilege and educations they would need to attain so much by the age of 34.

If you have 35 minutes to spare, I highly recommend the performance below of the Beethoven piano concerto. Notice how carefully Buniatishvili listens to the orchestra. Notice how she flirts with the orchestra. Notice how much fun she is having. The conductor, too, is remarkable and is clearly having a grand time. Notice how the conductor, Marin Alsop, often turns back to the orchestra with a smile on her face when the music passes from the piano back to the orchestra. I get the impression that they all had so much fun in rehearsals that they will feel sad when the performance ends.

By the way, in our noisy world, I think that a good pair of noise-canceling headphones is a must, both for preserving some silence and for listening to music. Apple’s noise-canceling headphones are extremely expensive, but the Anker Soundcore Q20 headphones are a bargain at $54.

With the Orchestre de Paris:

An encore at the Verbier festival:

Speaking English:

Speaking French:

Speaking German:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noe0nFWmusw

Guernsey

One review described “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” as comfort food. I’d agree but go a step further: It’s a confection, very suitable for the holidays. If you have an annual tradition of watching “Love, Actually,” at Christmas, then you might consider taking a break from that this year and watching “Guernsey” instead.

It’s a period piece, set in 1946 just after the war (though there are flashbacks to the German occupation of Guernsey during the war). The film is worthwhile just for the Guernsey scenery. I had no idea that Guernsey is so rugged, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the island was, and remains, a kind of 25-square-mile garden, with the highest point at 364 feet (111 meters).

Like many good movies, the film is based on a book (published in 2008). The plot is well constructed, the dialogue is smart, and the cast is first rate.

“Guernsey” can be streamed on Netflix.

Why have cafeterias died off?


Under the turkey there is cornbread dressing.

I was at a K&W Cafeteria today for the first time since pre-pandemic days. I found myself wondering why cafeterias are so endangered, given that they are so practical. When I got home I did a little Googling. Wikipedia has a nice article on the history of cafeterias. The answer to my question should have been obvious. It was mainly fast food chains that killed off cafeterias.

K&W Cafeterias filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 22, 2020. The company’s financial situation was already stressed, but the pandemic tipped them over the edge. Some K&W cafeterias have closed, but some remain open under a reorganization plan while the company tries to pay its debts.

According to the Wikipedia article:

“At one time, upscale cafeteria-style restaurants dominated the culture of the Southern United States, and to a lesser extent the Midwest. There were numerous prominent chains of them: Bickford’s, Morrison’s Cafeteria, Piccadilly Cafeteria, S&W Cafeteria, Apple House, Luby’s, K&W, Britling, Wyatt’s Cafeteria and Blue Boar among them. Currently, two Midwestern chains still exist, Sloppy Jo’s Lunchroom and Manny’s, which are both located in Illinois. There were also a number of smaller chains, usually located in and around a single city. These institutions, with the exception of K&W, went into a decline in the 1960s with the rise of fast food and were largely finished off in the 1980s by the rise of ‘casual dining’.”

K&W held out much longer than most cafeterias. The decline of cafeterias is a huge cultural loss. K&W helped keep traditional Southern cooking alive into an era in which people cook less and less at home. I suspect that the displacement of cafeterias by fast food also had a considerable effect on public health and the rise in obesity.

I felt guilty for stopping at K&W. It’s very rare for me to eat out anymore. But now I don’t feel so guilty. The surviving cafeterias need every dollar they can get.

A Boy Called Christmas

There are many B-grade Christmas movies, of course (and lots of A-grade ones as well). But not all the B-grade ones have a cast that includes Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent. The B-grade budget is apparent in some of the sets. But some of the Old World scenery is gorgeous, filmed in Finland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

Nikolas, the boy, is played by Henry Lawfull, a newcomer with a strange face strangely suited to fairy tales and magic. Stephen Merchant is the voice of the mouse.

“A Boy Called Christmas” can be streamed on Netflix.

The Rose

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and so the Christmas season begins. As a heathen and pagan, I prefer the word Yule. If we set aside the centuries-long war on Yule by the church, then some pretty nice hard-to-kill things remain — yule fires, lights, greenery, feasting, gift-gifting, conviviality, and, most of all, music. The best Yule music, always, is choral music.

Usually this time of year I post something from the choir of King’s College Cambridge. This year, here is something a little different. It’s the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles with the country singer LeeAnn Rimes. She is a rare (these days) country singer who actually can sing, with no equipment other than a microphone.

When I post music videos, I always try to post only videos that are well recorded. So, as always, make sure that your computer is connected to good speakers, or use headphones or earpods.