Just finished reading two books that I thought I’d review for the greater world out there hanging on my every word: Daemon, by Daniel Suarez, and the sequel, Freedom. These are some really amazing books, and I think anyone who is interested in the intersection of gaming and our future society, democracy in its fully realized form, and the future of sustainable living in today’s increasingly interconnected world will love these books.
I don’t want to really add too much detail because it will spoil the plot, but if you have ever thought about what happens when augmented reality and MMORPGs collide, these books will be a great read. With everything from the Heroe’s journey to the archetype Paladin, aligned both good and evil, you rush from chapter to chapter watching the cards unfold. With enough tech to satisfy the hardest core geek, but light enough on detail to avoid a “geeks only” label, this is an awesome book. Personally, I rank this up there with De Toqueville’s Democracy in America, Huxley’s Future Shock, or Ellison’s “The Glass Teat”, I think it’s really that good.

Or maybe it’s the painkillers here at the Soggy Dollar Bar. Let’s put it this way, I like the book enough to bring it back home!

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Thanks to technological improvements when the weather man predicts a snow storm we all take it seriously.  I recall as a child a forecast of snow would justify sneaking to the tv (we only had one!) and turning it on with the volume very low and staying up all night watching any old movies I could find.  I was certain (or at least I hoped) there would be no school.  That is how I came to watch Love Story at 7 years old and decide right then that college in New England was my destiny - I mean there were Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neil making angels in the snow!  What more could one possibly want from a college experience?  Years later at a fundraiser at the Four Seasons for People Animals Love honoring the rescue dogs from 9-11 and their handlers I told Ali McGraw this story assuming others had followed her to college for such a reason and she said no.  No one had ever shared such a story with her.  I thought there might have been other little girls in feetsy pjs watching the snow fall outside who thought four years of snow would be fun!

Now years later snow is a different matter.  For all its lingering romance I prepared with working flash lights, a short wave crank battery operated radio, icy melt, led auto lights (which were disappointing as they don’t illuminate that much), a camping lantern, extra shovels, easy food, a cooler usually used in summer at Wolf Trap which would now serve to keep foods cold outside and knowing how to shut off the water main.

DC has never looked prettier.  The sculpture gardens at the Hirshhorn and the National Galley of Art blanketed in snow and the magnificent silence of a quiet city were my most favorite images.  As the snow fell the white made the monuments totally invisible.  The next day in the sun and snow they reappeared as inspiring as ever.

A four wheel drive enabled us to help friends and family.  Getting stuck on a snow drift the wench let us pull ourselves out from the snow bank we landed in trying to avoid a stuck limo bus driver.  The Georgetown students flooded the streets after the Hoya victory with no sense of the danger of vehicles unable to stop.  The GWU students took over 23rd St. for a snow ball fight.  For yesterdays Caps game (their 14th win!) against the Penguins there was a convoy of suburban SUVs (lacking snow on roofs or dirty cars - these had come out of the warm garages to venture downtown for the hockey match up!) with people inside all in red.

Businesses were closed.  Drivers stayed off the roads.  Forty  eight hours later we are evaluating the damage - trees down, trees missing limbs, roads impassable, but all in all feeling like a kid again.  I remember when DC got snow storms.  Dad would take us sledding in Rock Creek Park or at Battery Kimble before it became a huge pet dumping station.  There was a toboggan run on Democracy Boulevard which was just the best pre lawyers damages and insurance claims!  Then there were the day trips to Blue Knob and Liberty.

My dad would have friends show up and plow out the driveway.  I don’t know if he exchanged Redskins tix for the favor.  I would put on ski clothes and walk taking photos in the snows with the Nikon which I got as a 16th birthday present.  I have always loved snow.  Paul Caponigro and Ansel Adams achieved the look I hoped to achieve as if it was just about having the right conditions!

Years later when living in Georgetown with my fab roomie Lenka my friends and I weathered a great storm at Clyde’s and Martin’s Tavern walking thru the streets.  Lenka and her friends cross country and down hill skiied from bar to bar.

This snow fall fell on a Superbowl weekend which made it impossible to get to some of the parties but none the less it was a great game!  Laissez les bons temps roulez!  Now to prepare for Tuesdays snow!  BE SAFE! and Warm!

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On January 9th I was on the Next Generation Committee fundraiser at the USHMM with Ralph Fiennes and Bob Woodward.   We were thrilled that the event was a sell out just a few weeks after the holiday season and our snow storms.  The USHMM does such important work not only on the Holocaust but also on educational efforts for young and old on the roots of this evil - ignorance, racism, propaganda, and collecting data and information that I wish I could do more to help them.

Ralph Fiennes was compelling as interviewed by Bob Woodward.  Woodward’s questions were mostly very interesting(more later).  Fiennes who played Amon Goeth the Plaszow concentration/labor camp commandant  in Schindler’s List and then a number of characters from the Sonnenshein family in Sunshine is an amazing actor.  His recent movies are also remarkable.  Last year the Museum showed the documentary of Helen Hirsch who was a slave as a young girl in the psychotic Commandant’s home.  She lived through the war and came to the museum to discuss the terror and experience of returning to Plaszow with Goeth’s now grown daughter.  The young woman had no idea of what her father was doing at the labor camps and now she speaks in Germany to college students about the Holocaust and the horrors perpetrated at the time.

What is remarkable about film is it’s ability to tell a story - horrific, painful and real.  The clips that were shown from Schindler’s List and Sunshine reminded me how great actors in the hands of brilliant directors can bring forward evil in a performance that is true and as brutal as it is to watch we don’t avert our eyes as we know it is only a performance.  Helen Hirsch and the others experienced this terror first hand and some have lived to tell us about it.

Both Ralph Fiennes and Bob Woodward were gracious to everyone at the end of the evening.  Answering questions, taking photos.  I don’t know how an actor can play the roles that Mr. Fiennes does with such success.  He is not just a great actor but also a humanitarian.  Bravo Mr. Fiennes in your greatest role - illuminating the horror’s of these times and places with performances which tell the story of a history we pray will never be repeated.

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Last night’s opening of The Four of Us by Itamar Moses at Theater J at the DC-JCC provided me once again with an evening where I walk away appreciative of my good luck to live in a city such as Washington DC.   The local theatre scene has grown so much, the audience, the talent that the city attracts that I can only hope the bad economy doesn’t bring it to a halt.   Thank you to the donors and patrons who still make this all possible.

I knew nothing of the play or the playwright until last night although within the theatre world he is well known and acknowledged.  Recent plays I have seen Phaedre and two Tom Stoppard plays were of a different era so to meet a young new talent is really exciting.  The playwright like me is a fan of Stoppard’s work so he and I discussed Arcadia and Rock n Roll after the performance.  The vocabulary of Moses’ play is of our times and the experience of the characters is of this age.  Moses is talented and I am excited to see his work evolve as I have with Tom Stoppard.  (My first Stoppard play was in London in the early 80s- The Right Thing starring Diana Riggs.)  The themes - friendship, competition between friends, love, romance, relationships, sex, rejection, are classic however, only the test of time will prove the ability of this work’s content to be sustained in the future.

Directed by Daniel De Raey the actors and staging all work to great effect.  A one act play approximately an hour and a half long with only two actors it was fabulous.  Benjamin played by Dan Crane and David played by Karl Miller are both so talented that watching them is a true delight.  The self-possessed Benjamin and by contrast the more bohemian David are a perfect point counter point to one another.   The music, staging, and lighting were all beautifully integrated into the play as an element to smooth the transitions of time, space, and memory.

Simply, it is a story of two young men - one a playwright (David), the other an author(Benjamin).  One meets with “success”  the other wrestles with his sense of inadequacy in the face of his friends personal and professional accomplishments.  No one is spared - as these two characters confront the challenges of their decade and their professions (on a micro level this is not about sweeping political ideas but much more about intimate personal conflicts)  creating an oeuvre, getting an education, navigating the world of sex and intimacy, within the context of being friends and all that friends share.  Honestly, I didn’t know men were this open in their relationships with one another.  Perhaps writers and playwrights would be more verbal than the average MBA or PhD candidate?  I loved the last scene of the play which would not have been possible without the material which preceded it.  I would love to see this play again!  Now I have to go see The Real Thing which happens to be running this week at Georgetown University which is an odd coincidence.  And my own childhood friend who I have known since I was three and I are getting together tomorrow which all  gives me quite a great deal to reflect upon.

The creative process whether collaborative in theatre or the more solitary world of writing are both splayed open for us to observe like a documentary on the Discovery Channel.

The play is wordy and fun.  I believe the play will last longer than the friendship of the two characters portrayed but I suppose this young playwright may surprise us in future works where he might explore once again our world and what gives it meaning.

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Sam McKay and I managed to close the Quill Bar at the Jefferson Hotel thanks to the pianist Peter Robinson, Luca the Manager, and the inspiring other guests who joined us in caroling, singing and dancing.  Tunes ranged from “I’m Leaving On a Jet Plane” to “Blue Christmas” to a swaggering rendition of New York New York with an impromptu line of Chorus girls made up of the various tables of guests.  Friends at the bar happened to be there including Don Brown from Intelstat.  Sam an exceptional talent from the Congressional Chorus hit the high notes on songs like Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Summertime by Gershwin.  The hot cocoa and schnapps annual outing this year led us to the Jefferson for a change of scenery from the Four Seasons now that the Garden Terrace is no more.  Peter and I have a long history of piano singing from the days at the Jockey Club/Fairfax Lounge so finding him last night literally made my heart sing.  No joke men and women all waltzed to I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady.  For a moment DC was the way it used to be - quaint, intimate, charming, and friendly.  For toppers we drove past the White House Christmas Tree which was gorgeous in the snow and dark night.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

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Tonight was the lighting of the Christmas Tree on the elipse of the South Lawn of the White House.  Folks were lined up by 2pm for the event.  Fortunately it was a lovely day.  The crowd afterwards seemed to head to the Old Ebbitt Grill, the Willard, the Occidental.  The children were dressed in their holiday finest and looked so beautiful.  I would have taken photos but the folks would have been concerned.  Honestly, if I was a fashion photographer or style writer there would be the story, “The Return of Classic Attire for Kids at the White House and Beyond.”

We went to Cafe du Parc at the Willard Hotel.  The food was fantastic as was the ambience.  Senator Corzine quietly enjoyed his escargot.  After dinner we went to the W Hotel roof top.  Native Washingtonians recall the hotel from the days when it was a family owned hotel with reasonable rates for families visiting the city.  Now it is a W so the green and white canvas and chintz floral sofas on the roof have been replaced by cozy clubby sexy furniture.  Some of the gorgeous wrought iron and brass details survived the renovation but are hardly noticeable with the garrish red and black furniture.  Drinks are far more pricey now.  Drinks start around $10.  Best part about tonight were the young people we met from the DNC, the White House who made me optimistic about tomorrow since they were so bright, motivated, and fun.  We also met a lovely family from Iraq and we told them we wished the best for their country.  DC attracts so many people from around the world and the country.  This is the best vista to see it from.  It used to be a quiet discrete patio.  Those days are gone.

The enthusiasm of the young people for their mission for the DNC is not what concerns me what I find troubling is the DNC Organizing for America is calling the Hill and the White House to garner support for the President’s agenda.  The concept is that elected representatives “represent” their constituents not robo callers or paid callers whatever side of the aisle.  Actual tax paying Americans can not voice their opinions since they can not get thru.  Our system is broken and this is a misrepresentation of the concept of America.  On the one hand I am glad these kids have jobs on the other is why can we not address the reality that these organizations that do this (corporate, politically driven) are destroying the country.  The people have lost their power to speak.

Happy Holidays!

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Tomorrow starts Congressman Thompson’s hearing for the Homeland Security Committee on The Salahai White House State Dinner crashing.  Congressman Thompson says that the White House Social Secretary does not have to testify as it is a “security issue.”   The Secret Service did their job.  They made sure that no one entered with weapons.  They supervised the entrance of guests thru the mags.  The fact that the White House Social Secretary was not present nor was her staff to identify guests should be the responsibility of that office.  Indeed once guests were inside someone should have known who people were and if they belonged.  Three hundred and twenty guests showed photo id and were checked off of two lists for a formal state dinner except for the Salahai who were admitted.  More details should be provided on exactly what occurred.  Secret Service should not take the fall for White House staff error.  President Obama and the White House guests would only have been in a world of hurt had Mr. Salahi been on a polo horse with a mallet.  The behind the scenes email exchange of the Pentagon’s White House Liaison Ms. Jones and the Salahi’s efforts of trying to wrangle an invitation illuminate the realities of DC power networking and jockeying.  The worst part about this distraction which should have been handled differently is that it eclipsed India and any news about that country.

Social climbing is a part of any city.  DC is no exception.  Make it a crime and DC will become an even duller place.  I feel sorry for these people as their legal fees mount, the public exposure is humiliating, and they are now labeled criminals?  Mrs. Salahi will look great in black and white horizontal stripes!  Like the great Courts people flock to citites with wealth and opportunity to be in the presence of those who can bestow favors and deals to them.  This is nothing new.  The self promoter is not American it is universal.  Funny thing when I checked online on Sunday night the YouTube Speech of the President and Prime Minister of India had 80 hits, the Salahai wedding 76 thousand plus.  Thank goodness for transgressions of the more prurient type of our sports heros to knock this story down a bit.

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My initial impression of the renovated Park Hyatt was several months back when I met friends for tea.   My lovely White Tea cost $11 which I found not to be too soothing as I had an entire box of White Tea from Safeway in my kitchen cabinet which I had purchased for $3.00 and no amount of adding water to the complicated tea service would lessen my anxiety about the price.  So,  I enjoyed my tea and tried to assuage my guilt complex thinking of the Sherpa who schleeped the tea from the high mountains in Asia which I was now enjoying as I listened to my friends stories about Argentina.  So reluctantly I went to dinner the other evening when invited.

I am so glad that I made this particular dinner party.  First and foremost, Blue Duck Tavern is a restaurant which can best be described as “comfort food for the comfortable.”  We sat at a wooden round table with no linen table cloth.  The beautiful decor and ambience of the restaurant is Vermont/Marthas Vineyard casual.  Americana chic.  The kitchen opens up into the restaurant so you feel like you are at the kitchen table rather than in the dining room.

I can not thank my host enough for one of my most fun and memorable evenings in quite some time.  I told my brother the next day I felt like I had been at the Knights of the Round Table with the literal bounty of food.  All that we missed was some portly jolly fellow in a Renn Faire Costume knawing on a drumstick while enjoying ale from a large tankard and William Hogarth in the corner capturing the grotesque excess of the moment on his easel.

The repast included - oysters, duck, pheasant, steak, polentta with wild mushrooms, crab cakes, stuffing, branizino, chard tart, brussel sprout salad, greens, and copious wines!  The family style passing and tasting made for great fun as everyone loved everything.  No vegetarians were invited.  Absent was pasta, bread, and tomatoes.  This was hearty fare.  Nothing was either vertical nor drizzled.

Having spent Saturday at the Reedville Oyster Festival fund raiser for the Reedville Fisherman’s Museum in a slightly more authentic environment of food preparation - Boy Scouts shoveling oysters onto the fires, volunteers depositing them on large tables with guests donning their own oyster knives and gloves to shuck their own oysters this seemed pratically French by comparison.

Each food item came in its own dish/pan.  Slightly nicer than pyrex the variety of bowls, platters and serving utensils created its own dance of kitchen ware.  I half expected the plates to gracefully do a show stopper off the table like in Beauty In the Beast singing “Be Our Guest!”  The candle light bouncing off the simple crystal glasses and the contrast of the silver, glass, copper, wood made me think Thanksgiving had come early and I was enjoying a repast in a friends home in Vermont where the labradors would soon be getting tasty morsels on the braided rug beneath our slippered feet.  Actually the poor labs would not get a thing in this instance.  There was no fat on the duck, steak, or pheasant.  Actually, there were no left overs what so ever.

In true Elizabethan fashion I would have expected performers to come entertain us as we awaited dessert.  But no we would have to settle with the “passion” play at the table.  Given DC it was the usual restrained ineundo and drama ranging from politics, love affairs, conspiracy theories, and the economy.  Arguments and pithy remarks ran the gamut from unemployment numbers being deflated from their reality, DC real estate still lagging behind NYC (thankfully for now), to more outlandish suggestions such as the conspiracy theory that Obama’s protocol gaffe of bowing to the Emperor and to the King is an intentional sabotage effort of Secretary Clinton’s protocol chief to cost Obama reelection as it offends all Americans, and lastly, that Fred Malik must be sleeping with Sarah Palin as his defense of her book on the news was so totally inexplicable to his friend at our table!  We just had to laugh at these suggestions - I mean have you seen Todd Palin? And, perhaps no previous President that we could recall bowed since they were not that flexible?

Back to the meal - now it was time for dessert - again I found myself momentarily in New England enjoying pumpkin pie, apple pie, fig ice cream and vanilla ice cream.  Big wooden spoons which you had rinsed off after stirring the gravy earlier were now plopping ice cream on my plate.  It was a total fantasy.

Someone at the table said that President Obama loves this restaurant.  I can totally appreciate why after all the meals with proper service thanks to the elegant White House and Blair House staff, proper silver ware, crystal, linens, White House china and small intricately designed beautifully presented morsels this is a meal for a King!

(Photo to be posted later.)

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When the email arrived inviting me to view the Living Proof Project (www.livingproofproject.com) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation I responded yes. The event tonight in Washington DC was much more important than I could have anticipated. The Gates Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates in particular started the evening by thanking the American tax payer. The stories from around the globe from Nicaragua, to Ethiopia, to Tanzania, of the “living proof” of the difference these efforts make were highlighted. You see our - the American tax payer dollars contributed through US Aid programs globally does make a difference. The presentation tonight focused on the impact of those contributions to fighting disease, treating patients, providing education and resources to fight malaria, HIV/Aids, polio, infant mortality, death in child birth, and rotavirus (to name a few). Please share this site with others. If we all work together by 2025 we can help to save millions of children from these illnesses and increase the hope of these families for a brighter tomorrow.

In these tough and challenging times for America we must acknowledge that we can still play a role in helping others. We are facing our own pandemic with H1N1 and the reality of the fragility of our own existence and that of our neighbors should awaken a stronger awareness about the continued need for us to have a position of leadership in the fight to save all lives. The videos were real. The impact genuine. It reminded me of Dickens Christmas Carol and the ghost of what is to be. We have been provided a glimpse of the future. We should keep in mind what may be the future can be altered with our efforts.

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Marvin Hamlisch’s song from A Chorus Line came to mind as I read Sarah Kaufman’s very lengthy piece published in The Washington Post. I totally applaud the Post for devoting this much space to this article and to Sarah for writing it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/07/AR2009050704620.html?wprss=rss_print/style

Sarah and I studied ballet together at Metropolitan Ballet in Bethesda Maryland years ago. One of our classmates went on to become a prima ballerina with ABT. I turned down my ballet scholarship to L’Ecole de danse classique in Monaco at the same time Amanda McKerrow, who I was fortunate enough to score the same as in a Royal Ballet Exam went off to New York. Amanda had the perfect dancer body-petite, lithe, gorgeous turn out and feet, beautiful face, disposition, talent and height. She was 5′3″ and I already at 14 was 5′9.” Although only a teen I was realistic about my future in dance. This is not a surprise in an industry where ones career usually (without injuries) ends around 35 at the latest.

Here is a clip of Amanda performing from You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwvRp-PccE

No dieting and practice would alter the fact that on pointe I was too tall!
This was pre MTV so the thought of becoming a choreographer hadn’t crossed my mind and I wanted to go to college anyway.

Reading Sarah’s article about the specter of George Balanchine and his hold on American dance I wondered if Sarah might have read Gelsey Kirkland’s autobiography, Dancing on my Grave. At the time of its publication I did not read it. Gelsey Kirkland was a dancer with ABT when it was based at the Kennedy Center. It was truly a golden age of ballet - Russian defectors played into the politics of Washington, the Cold War resulted in ballet and political intrigue as well as spectacular dance.
There was a cult of celebrity to the Russian dancers - Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova (a haunting Odette/Odille), and then Mikhail Baryshnikov arrived in Washington DC and we were transfixed. The Bolshoi, The Kirov, ABT, The Joffrey, and New York City Ballet seemed to be competing for dollars and prominence on the world stage from the Opera House of the Kennedy Center.

Gelsey Kirkland, a young American dancer, partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Clara in his adaptation of The Nutcracker in 1977. I was there opening night and met them backstage after the performance. It was a thrilling evening. When her drugs and love affairs resulted in her leaving ABT I recall being very sad. I viewed it not as a fault of her character but of a system which used artists, making demands on them, and then tossing them aside. It seemed the physical toll on ones body coupled with the emotional challenges to ones ego would be hard for anyone but the most disciplined of personalities.
Her firing scared me enough that I had no desire to try drugs, alcohol or even cigarettes as a young dancer.

Ms. Kirkland’s book published in 1986 tells of her personal struggles with Balanchine when she was a young dancer. Her stories illuminate his arrogance and the spell under which many dancers including Baryshnikov were held and haunted by him. Kirkland’s brave rejection of him, her reasons, and her separation from NYCB to ABT is captivating reading.

In addition to the book being about her, the ballet, her romances, her personal challenges, it is very much a record of an exceptional moment in the ballet world and certainly in Washington DC.
I was at many of the performances which she refers to in the book. In 1986 her love affairs would have been “gross” to me since I had no reference for love and affairs of the heart, now almost 25 years later the book intrigued me and made me recall many names such as Peter Martins, Fernando Bujones, and Patrick Bissell, the dancer who introduced her to drugs, dancers I had not forgotten but whom I had only applauded from a distance.

I would welcome the opportunity to hear Ms. Kirkland speak. I hope that she reads Sarah’s article. I certainly hope anyone interested in that seminal moment in American ballet will read her book and watch the DVD of her performance with Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rQSuuHIm8I

The comments in response to the Post article are all worth reading.  Ballet critics don’t get as personal as political comments but the variety of these remarks are worth reading:

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