Watched the most recent Ken Burns’ documentary over the past couple of weekends on DVD (three discs, six hours). Searing, unsettling and – as usual – chock full of amazing photographs and movies, with a surprising number in color (still and video).

One of Burns’ finest efforts.

One thing that I had not noticed about Burns’ work before is the US-centric nature of his documentaries. I just hadn’t really realized this before. Sure, much of his work is on American-centric issues: Baseball, Prohibition, The Civil War. But look at the title of this documentary: not The Holocaust, but The U.S. and the Holocaust.

The same is true for his other not specifically US documentaries: The War (WWII) and The Vietnam War. Each film includes background and the actions of other countries, but the emphasis is on what these events meant to Americans.

Interesting.

This film – about the US and the Holocaust – gave mich of the backstory about Hitler’s rise to power and the imposition of the “Final Solution” (genocide; by raw numbers, higher for Jews), but a great deal of the emphasis was on the US’ actions and the stories of Jews who ended up in the US. And those who were turned away.

What struck me was how US politicians and military personnel, up to and including President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt, decried the persecution of non-Aryans in German-controlled Europe, but they always shied away from taking direct action to help throw a wrench in the genocidal apparatus, for fear of something going wrong and then US personal could potentially be killed just trying to “help the Jews” when there were other targets to hit. That was considered – over and over – and was deemed as just not acceptable.

Isn’t this, to some degree, anti-Semetic?

A couple of issues the documentary didn’t address, but that’s understandable given the breath of the issue:

• No mention of the brain drain, especially among Jewish scientists, the Holocaust created in Germany (think Einstein, rwin Schrodinger, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller). Many were current or future Nobel laureates, and many aided the Manhattan Project, which was a key to ending the war.
• Never really addressed if the Final Solution was a Hitler/Germany project or extended to other Axis countries (I think it was a German thing).
• No mention of how Stalin – an ally of sorts to Germany at the beginning of the war – had his own, much higher body count genocide later in the 20th Century. While the Nazi genocide seems more targetted at people deemed inferior to Aryans, and Stalin’s purges/gulags seemed more politically motivated, one still wonders if there was any connective tissue between the two – any :”lessons learned.” I just don’t know, and it wasn’t mentioned.

Unlike Baseball, which had interviews with everyone and their uncle, this film had only a half-dozen or so interviews interspersed within the footage (many small snippets throughout the six hours, but a finite number of interviewees, overall). Made for a tighter film, to me. On the other hand, not everyone in America has a connection to the Holocaust, but everyone loves baseball, so it worked there.

Not a film I will return to in the near future – it’s a bruising story to follow – but it’s well done and, given the rise in anti-semitism/white supremecy in the US as of late, it’s unfortunately very timely.

From CDC.gov

We’ll see how it affects me — the first shot gave me flu-like symptoms, the second and booster made me a little wiped out.

Let’s see what the fourth does!

Easy to get done – checked online, saw an opening. Booked online for later in the afternoon.

Got to the Cook County, IL facility (one of many), checked in, got shot, walked out.

I was halfway home by the time my “appointment” was scheduled.

Update 10/13/2022 – Same as he last two times: Dragging, elevated temperature. Spend the next day doing little and then the next day ~90 percent back to normal. Lesson: Take a vacation day for the day after shot.

This was a really disappointing series finale season – had its moments, but overall “meh.”

Some good closer action – the Pontiac Bandit (Craig Robinson is the best here) – but the rest was lame.

I get that they tried – over the first few episodes – to get past the (at the time) George Floyd, other police injustices. Too preachy, to me.

And not funny.

I get it – police were the bad guys then, but … this is a comedy.

Failed for that beginning of the season reason (police are bad) and how it wrapped up with all the characters really didn’t work for me.

Surprisingly good series (at the beginning) – I did not take Andy Samburg seriously – that had a good run and then kinda went “whatevva.”

Short story shorter: Last week I purchased four spanking-new tires for my 10-year-old car.

Now, if I was a car guy, this might be somewhat exciting, especially if the tires had some awesome name: Tiger Claw, PavementGrippers, KingsOfTheRoad.

But I’m not a car guy. And the tires I put on replaced the boring old tires that came with my oh-so-sexy Ford Focus. Continental tires, I think.

For me, tires have no bang for the buck.: $140 per tire, installation fee, recycle fee, state tax, local tax, HBO Max 6 months, Spotify, two box minimum of Girl Scout cookies…

And what do I have to show for it? Tires that no one looks at anyway.

Get a new, big-ass TV? Fire it up and it sure looks pretty.

New stereo or speakers? Crank it up! (Does anyone buy new stereo equipment anymore?)

Oh well – it was necessary and it’s done. Shouldn’t ever have to worry about tires on this car again.

Keri Blakinger’s meticulous and thought-provoking memoir starts off with the story of an unexpected and sensational crime: An Ivy League student (also a heroin addict) is caught with $50k of heroin (oh – she’s also a drug dealer).

The Ivy institution is Cornell University and the student is Blakinger.

The first 250 pages of the book are, for the most part, a record of her incarceration: Jail, transfers to other jails closer to courthouses, and – finally – a series of prisons where she serves her time, No exhaustive examination of lawyers, judges, trials or the then-current outside world. Just prisons and prisoners.

There are some flashbacks – the figure skating is a surprise – and vague stabs at how she got to this point, but the first 250 pages really concentrate on her time in jail (before conviction) and then prison (post conviction – again, no mention of her lawyer, did she plea out?), a period of about three years. She illustrates in painful detail the prisons themselves and – especially – the prisoners she is locked up wth. How they are treated; how they are mistreated. How prisons do not promote personal betterment; it is just dehumanizing. And that’s the point.

We have a busted incarceration system.

The overwhelming minutiae, as well as the bleak day-to-day details (think One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but a longer time with shallower details), started to weigh down on me, and I put the book aside for a week or so.

But I left off just before the tone shifted.,The last fifty or so pages were lighter, covering the period just before her release up through the present day, a span of five or so years. For an overwhelmingly bleak book, it ends, overall, on mostly upbeat notes.

An English major (slash heroin addict) while she was in college, Blakinger relies on words to slowly get into journalism and ends up championing prisoners’ rights: She’s now with The Marshall Project (“Nonprofit journalism about criminal justice”), going into prisons as fellow felon to find out what can be done to make the time more bearable, She’s had some successes book drives, dentures, a rare success in a sexual assult case. The prisoners – current and former – talk to her because she’s one of them – always a powerful tool.

And – obviously – she’s published a book! Good for her.

I first read about this book by women writers on Twitter (it came out in June 2022), and after the first dozen or so references, I looked it up and bought it.

I was expecting something more along the lines of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted (committed to an asylum at 18) or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which is a novel but based on Plath’s very real life events. Both dark and filled with demons, but very wise and grounded.

Blakinger does talk about the stuff in her head – pre- and post-arrest. And it ain’t pretty, especially her experience with solitary confinement. But she’s more interested in the structure and execution of the criminal “justice” system than herself.

And she’s particularly interested in – and empathetic with – those who did time with her. I bet the pre-edit version of this memoir was 500+ pages, and most of the cuts were her stories about/discourses with her fellow inmates. I could be wrong, but I’m probably not far off.

Blakinger is white and her folks have money (she was at Cornell U.), but she never really addresses her privilege until the section after she was released, but she is relentless about herself on this. She realizes she got breaks – big and small – because of her station in the world. She mentions her car getting pulled over (while muling drugs) and got off with a warning – the cop saw a Cornell course guide in the car. What mischief could a white coed be up to?

And the privilege is just as important out of prison, especially when on parole. One tiny slip – maybe not your fault (a friend’s friend joins you for dinner. Your friend’s friend is, unknown to you, a felon) – and you could easily be back in prison. The dinner was at some nice French restaurant? Ah, how could you have known? Same situation but you’re black/brown and eating in a McDonald’s parking lot? You just violated your parole.

Finally, the title: Corrections in Ink. This phrase is used at least three times in the book, basically saying at the time she only has a pen so any corrections she makes to a journal, crossword puzzle or reporting notes are done “in ink.”

I think it has a deeper meaning: Blakinger is not going to memory-hole her crimes or her time. She’s going to own it: she’s a now-sober felon.

And her time served – her Corrections – is being put out there for all to see, printed – in Ink – in this book.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Economy” – August 1854

Now some guys they just give up living,
And start dying little by little piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racing in the streets

– Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run “Racing in the Streets” – August 1975

The last three years of college – when I had an apartment, I was quite the magazine whore.

I would read everything: Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, Science, The New York Review of Books (not the The New York Time Book Review – different animal), Newseekl and so on.

One particular favorite was The Atlantic. – always well written, always with a roster of stories that didn’t fall in any one bucket. Mainly non-fiction, but excellent fiction, as well.

Last week, I purchased a digital subscription to theatlantic.com.

Why?

Two main reasons:

• Excellent writing and writers – Anne Applebaum, Molly Jong-Fast, David Graham, Tom Nichols (just off the top of my head), as well as occasional pieces by non-staff, such as Tim Alberta.
• Giving back. Sure, I can get a couple of free articles a month or go into incognito mode and get a couple at any time. But both Romy and I read The Atlantic pretty regularly, do why not give something back?

I’ve no regrets.

When I was in college, I read a very strange and impressive short story^* in the New Yorker. A half page long – the bottom half of the page was a very New Yorker-esqe cartoon.

A half page long, all one sentence with some magical writing: “The Letter From Home, ” by Jamaica Kincaid, of whom I had never heard. Puzzling but lyrical. What to make of it?

I clipped the page (later had to copy the tattered page) and stuck it in this or that folder packed with, to me, interesting writing.

In 1985, Kincaid came out with the novel Annie John and whenever it was that I ran across it (before 1990, I’m sure), I picked it up. I recalled the magazine article, and the author’s name was easy to remember.

It remained, on my bookshelf, unread. Until yesterday.

Clocking in at 148 pages with generous margins, it’s closer to a novella than a novel, but no matter. The book traces – first person – the thoughts, joys, illnesses and mental gyrations of a young girl growing up, from 10 years old to 18, with her mother and father in Antigua.

Like the New Yorker story, it’s beautifully written, hard to put down (I read it in three hours, almost uninterrupted), and difficult to decipher.

At heart, it’s about growing up, learning to love, and learning to leave love – and other parts of your life – behind.

I remain puzzled by the ending, to come to grips with some of the decisions she makes, most only to herself (Annie John) without input nor sharing with others.

Incandescent.

^*April 20, 1981 issue, pg. 33

A National Book Award finalist in 2020, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, by Claudio Saunt, is a deeply researched look into the priorities and policies that led to the state-sponsored expulsion of U.S. Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River to the west of the same.

In his forward, the author lays out three key points he will attempt to qualify:

First [the book] argues that the state administered mass expulsion of indigenous people was unprecedented. [snip] The U.S.-sponsored expulsion of the 1830s became something of a model for colonial empires around the world.

The second and related point made by this book is that the state-sponsored expulsion of the 1830s was a turning point for indigenous people and for the United States.

The expulsion of the indigenous people was far from inevitable [snip] It is not difficult to imagine alternative history. Congressmen who were opposed to federal spending, against the expansion of slavery, dedicated to Christianizing native peoples, hostile to Andrew Jackson, or simply reluctant to overturn current policy might have found common ground to join together temporarily to block the expulsion of Native Americans.

The first point, to me, is the most curious. As long as there have been invaders, these interlopers – to the US or elsewhere – have long pushed aside the native inhabitants – by deceit, force or by a show of (potential) cooperation. This happened with Indians in Maine, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

But in the south – where most of the mass expulsion took place – it took official government policy to remove the great number of Native Americans from that area. Not just some redneck with a musket. Official policy.

That was different. And not in a good way.

The book was not what I was expecting – I wanted to know more about why Indian reservations are sovereign nations and so on. Didn’t get much of this here.

And the book is so well researched that it was a difficult read. Most histories will say something about what the good or bad guys did, and then give an example.

Saunt will lay out a dozen examples. Great research and reference, but too dense for what I wanted, which is more of a 10,000 foot view.

Glad I read the book, but it was a tough read.

And I still need to read a “Native Americans for Dummies” book so I can get answers to questions I have, but that’s another day.

It seems like forever since we last heard from Mrs. Maisel and the gang. And, in streaming (Amazon Prime) times, it certainly has been forever.

All of Season 3 dropped 12/9/2019; the first two episodes of Season 4 finally landed 2/18/2022 (each following Friday unveiled two additional episodes, the last two of eight on 3/11/2022).

In between there was COVID – which was a challenge for all shows/movies. But remember the first episode of Season 3? The USO show in an airplane hanger with multiple performances and a thousand or so extras (the soldiers in the audience)?

Just can’t do that in the age of COVID.

So they retooled and welcome to Season 4!

In many ways, this is – to me – the weakest, most disjointed season yet. Still, the show is of such high quality – acting. writing, visuals (still in 1960) – that the stumbles are forgiven.

The last two episodes – especially the last – tie together so many of the earlier loose threads that it makes going back to re-watch the first six shows. And we end with a big dose of Lenny Bruce, which is always a good thing – his chemistry with Midge – going back to the pilot – has been amazing. Of course he wants to sleep with her, but he sees in her a kindred spirit: He respects what she’s trying to do and intimates that he truly believes she will succeed.

Some thoughts on Season 4 (spoilers abound!):

• When is Midge going to get over her privilege? She gets fired, has no prospects, and she lands to two foci: 1) Keeping her swanky apartment and upscale lifestyle, and 2) No more opening acts – she needs to be the headliner. Huh?
• Tony Shalhoub is not used well here. While Shalhoub excels in any scene he is in, he’s put into weird situations. Would the Abe Weissman of the early seasons enjoy wearing a cape or watching TV shows while eating dinner off TV trays?? No… And would the nebbish, mathematical genius of early seasons be a … theater critic? Again, no…..
• Susie with an office/home overlooking Times Square? Yeah, there’s a foreshadowing explanation, but still.
• The magician client Susie takes on early in this season…makes no sense. But Episode 7 is the very unexpected payoff. Great scene for Rose Weissman. So unexpected, so hilarious. And so revealing to Midge in many ways.
• Joel is still a dick, but he’s been supportive of Midge the whole time in a way that doesn’t jibe with the times – 1960-ish. Everything points to Joel and Midge reconciling, but what’s the deal with Joel & Mei? This season offered up a deep twist on the whole relationship (Joel/Mei) in several different ways (professional, relations with family and with Midge). Interesting how the showrunners extricated all the characters from this morass.
• While Jane Lynch is her usual brilliant in the season (Sophie Lennon). I was glad not to see her in the last two episodes. Let’s focus on Susie and Midge – that’s the heart of the show.
• Still unclear what Susie wants in life (beyond not being in debt), but she does demonstrate a flair for finding talent (like Midge). She catches a black stand-up that she signs – like an early Richard Pryor. Expect to see more from him in Season 5.
• We see the beginnings of Lenny Bruce using morphine (he died in 1966 of an accidental morphine overdose). Will Season 5 go out to 1966, or will he just kind of circle the drain and it’ll hit Midge what the inevitable end to this story will be?

Finally, the last episode gives all sorts of hints, plot lines for the next (final) season. Some dark, some potentially dangerous, but all point to Midge ending up Season Five playing Carnegie Hall.

You read it here first.