Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

"Edward Hopper & Cape Ann:" The exhibit didn't spark joy

Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape (until Oct 16)
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA

I am sorry to say that the Hopper exhibition did not spark joy. I found myself interested, but never felt the thrill so many other artists provide. For example, I was dazzled by Gio Swaby at the Peabody Essex and awed to view Hakim Raquib’s photos at the AAMARP (African American Master Artists in Residency Program). But this Hopper collection of both watercolors and oils, focusing on buildings and scenes in Gloucester, was dulled for me by the parallel mentions and pieces of Josephine N. Hopper (nee Nivison).

She was a rising watercolor star and after she hooked up with Hopper, she convinced curators to include him in shows, leading to his first sale in a decade. Once married, she abandoned her own name – a move that is incomprehensible to me for a professional woman – and began to concentrate on motivating Hopper, promoting his work, and becoming wifey. Her own output slowed to a crawl as he became increasingly prominent. He treated her with disrespect, but she took care of him and his legacy until and after his death in 1967.

The paintings and drawings at this exhibit lack the inclusion of many human figures – lack the loneliness and stillness we see in his later, more famous work. There are single houses, boats, and streets. The early work is a bit bland, but we can see him grow as time goes on.

Finally, hats off to the small Cape Ann Museum which has been overwhelmed by the massive demand to see this show. Our many small Massachusetts museums are treasures which we should support. Yesterday, though, was uncomfortably crowded, despite timed entry tickets, and the explanatory plaques were done in a small grey-ish font under lighting that was too dim. As a result, no matter what angle I could squeeze myself into among the others, it was very hard to read them.

"I Am Not Sidney Poitier" – book review in 150 words

"I Am Not Sidney Poitier" is written by Percival Everett, author of the novel "Erasure" on which the film "American Fiction" is based. Like “American Fiction,” this novel is less the intersection and more the crash site of Everett’s themes of race, confusion, double-takes, and the impossibility of communication. The protagonist is named Not-Sidney Poitier, despite looking convincingly like the actor. He inherits a ton of money which has no meaning for him, is overseen by Ted Turner after being orphaned, and studies under a professor who rightly teaches Nonsense. A bit of the supernatural and unwanted blow jobs are tossed in to further cloud personal (dis)connections. A trip to the South where Poitier is arrested twice, for being Black and clueless, ensures further discombobulation – in a tornado. The narrative is simultaneously dire and witty. Everett keeps a cool distance from the shenanigans of his protagonists, but we sure don’t.

My Tiny Reviews of ½ Dozen of the Oscar-nominated Best Films

American Fiction: It’s smart. It’s funny. It’s about a writer and the contortions writers suffer in order to get attention in this broken publishing world. Jeffrey Wright does a great, almost understated job as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, who whips up a “blaxsploitation” novel in place of his usual literary fiction. Instead of making a point as he intended, he makes a gazillion dollars when the “fake” book strikes gold. I relished this film on multiple levels.

Anatomy of a Fall: As my viewing partner said, “French films haven’t changed much over the decades, have they?” I fell asleep after an hour.

Barbie: See it on the big screen, although it’s probably too late to see it with a theatre full of ecstatic tweens, as I did. I had a great time watching it. Director Greta Gerwig has been robbed of nominations as Best Director by most of the awards shows (I watch them all), considering the amazing and complex job she did.

The Holdovers: Curmudgeonly towards people but sentimental about the elite prep school where he attended and has taught most of his life, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) gets stuck “babysitting” the one student who has nowhere to go over Christmas. The third person staying there, the cook Mary Lamb, is played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who has rightfully been scarfing up the award wins for a fantastic performance which is full of attitude and emotion. The movie is not unpleasant, but quite predictable as it proceeds to humanize the friendless teacher.

Maestro: Although I’m generally not a fan, I thought Bradley Cooper gave a powerful performance which kept me engaged from start to finish. I join those who felt it was a shame that the gay side of his life was underplayed in the film. Yes, he had the kind of purely sexual experiences included as rather grubby betrayals, but we are given insufficient mention of his long-time lover, who was a key part of his life. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this one.

Oppenheimer: I do apologize but I could only do one hour of this loooong film, even though I paid $5.99 to stream it. There is only so much I can take of self-important white men going all profound on me. If it starts to stream for free before the Oscars night, I’ll try again – but only out of a sense of duty since it has been winning winning winning.

Rustin: Although it was not nominated for Best Picture, I am including “Rustin” for it was my favorite film this year. I could not believe it was dissed. However, Colman Domingo has rightfully been nominated for Best Actor as he gave us a mesmeric performance of Bayard Rustin, the legendary organizer of MLK’s March on Washington and a galvanizer in the Civil Rights Movement. Colman is apparently only the second gay man playing a gay man to receive a nomination. Rustin was mistreated and excluded by the more conservative leaders of the movement, but eventually gained his rightful place next to MLK, and pulled off the amazing gathering we celebrate annually.

The Palestinian Garden in 100 words

This piece is exactly 100 words and within that restriction I tried to express what I am feeling, as an American Jew who lived in Israel for 14 years, about the Israeli destruction of Gaza and the mass murder of Palestinians and the American support of this crime.

The Palestinian Garden in 100 words

By Sue Katz

Nabila wanted children, although her husband was reluctant, living as they did with all the deprivations that accompanied life in Gaza. Medical care was limited to emergencies in the best of times, so pregnancy complications were feared. “I want to give life,” Nabila cried many times, “I want to water the Palestinian garden.” In the midst of a dreadful bombing, she began to have cramps she could not handle. As they approached the hospital in their old car, the front of the building exploded. A stone flew through the windshield into her temple and the garden shriveled into barren desert.

The 10th Anniversary of Boston's LGBTQ Elders of Color

 

My piece in the revived Z Magazine that I wrote for many times in the past. Now revisioned as ZNetwork and online.

 

Read it HERE.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor

I’ve just come back from a trip to Ireland, and perhaps the biggest thrill along the way was my purchase, in a second-hand bookstore in the seaside town of Kinsale, of a collection of short stories Cheating at Canasta (2008) by William Trevor, who is considered one of the all-time greatest Irish short story writers.

William Trevor (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016) spent much of his adult life in England, but identified as "Irish in every vein." He wrote novels as well and won the full array of literary prizes.

The first story in this collection, “The Dressmaker’s Child,” haunts me still. It combines elements that run through many of his stories, but does it with a deep grey brilliance. There are troubled characters who become entangled inadvertently. There is trauma that lingers unspoken. There is human connection that is as painful as it is sustaining. There is a cloudy environment expressed with mastery prose.

Many of these pieces, not the least the title story “Cheating at Canasta,” plumb alienation and a sense of difference that perhaps only an emigrant or a person in mourning can convey. There is love, but too often it is lost, even squandered. Writing in the third person, Trevor creates a novel’s-worth of a world in each of these short stories, and, as a voracious reader of short fiction, I leapt hungrily into them.

REVIEW: “Seven Guitars” by August Wilson in Boston

Boston area people: If you want a superb theatre experience, see if you can score tickets to “Seven Guitars” by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project, appearing at Roxbury’s Hibernian Hall.

All the best elements are here: spot-on direction by Maurice Emmanuel Parent, seven remarkable actors, perhaps the finest 20th Century playwright August Wilson, and an intimate community theatre in which every seat is a good seat.

One of Wilson’s ten “Century Cycle” plays set in subsequent decades, “Seven Guitars” starts with the funeral of Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton and then looks back at what led to this budding musician’s death. All the action takes place in the backyard of a house in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where both August Wilson and I (two years later) were born.

This production perfectly catches every nuance and complication in Wilson’s incomparable writing. Hurry to experience this reasonably affordable, accessible night out (there’s an elevator and plenty of free nearby parking); this show ends March 5th.

Book Review: “American Sirens” by Kevin Hazzard

American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics (2022) by Kevin Hazzard is the inspirational story of the invention of street medicine, of medically-equipped ambulances, and of the profession of EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians). What made this history especially resonant for me is that this medicine-changing first initiative took place in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home of playwright August Wilson, the jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, the Negro League’s Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team, and me in my early years.

The idea of creating an ambulance service in an area of town where the police and fire departments’ makeshift “ambulances” wouldn’t go to because of racism, was the brain-child of an acclaimed white Austrian immigrant, a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Peter Safar, an anesthesiologist. He was opposed by the other first responders, who had at most six hours of first-aid training and basically just gave a rough ride but no life-saving care to those in need, and by the local Pittsburgh government, particularly the white mayor Peter Flaherty, a nasty, racist piece of work.

Dr. Safar connected with the local activist non-profit Freedom House and they scraped together a way forward, recruited often uneducated, unemployed, sometimes unmotivated, but ultimately brilliant Black men from the community, and put them through the most rigorous medical and social training imaginable. Twenty-four men graduated. From their first calls during the uprising after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom House service was a huge success from every point of view – except financially.

Their initial funding came from President Johnson’s job creation funds, but once Nixon came into office, that all dried up. A young white doctor, Nancy Caroline, took over the training of the medics and the running of the service with a fierce determination that kept them afloat until their betrayal by Pittsburgh’s politicians and police. She ended up writing the EMT textbook that would be used for many generations of students.

The author, a former paramedic himself, has researched this slice of progress and its roadblocks with remarkable detail, following certain of the players from start to end. It reads more like an action script, with valiant medics performing beyond their own expectations and the imaginations of all who were offended that Black people were spearheading an amazing new service.

For those with a connection to Pittsburgh, most especially the Hill District, you may feel, as I did, a special thrill to read of the familiar streets and institutions, to learn of yet another amazing moment in Pittsburgh’s hidden – or repressed - history. This non-fiction book has it all: challenges overcome, fascinating characters, heroes and villains, and adrenaline-fueled action from start to finish.

Postscript: In researching photographs, I discovered this 2023 Pittsburgh PBS program on the Freedom House ambulance service.

Photographer Hakim Raquib: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW

If you are anywhere near Boston before January 30, bust your ass getting to the Midway Gallery (15 Channel Center Street, Boston MA 02210, everyday 8AM-8PM) to see the exhibition of Hakim Raquib. Titled YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW, it includes selected works of this sensational photographer, spanning 50 years. Luckily it’s run has been extended until January 30, so you have time to rush there. You can thank me later.

Hakim Raquib’s sublime Egyptian landscapes blew me away. I once spent two weeks on a camel tour of the Sinai desert and viewing his desert work was like returning there in emotional technicolor. His compelling manipulated images flashing back to the Civil Rights Freedom Riders, to the Black Panthers, to Spike Lee, moved me, reviving my own memories of that period. Click here to view his project on Winter.

As Michael Thierry, a senior art Director, said on Raquib’s Linked-In page, “Hakim is an amazing photographer of a scale beyond imagining. His work transcends and transforms the viewer.” I fully agree.

 

P.S. I took these photos myself, so they don't do the work justice!

BOOK REVIEW: Never Be Afraid: A Belgian Jew in the French Resistance

Never Be Afraid: A Belgian Jew in the French Resistance recounts Bernard Mednicki’s intricate memories of his courageous life history. Ken Wachsberger - author/editor/book coach extraordinaire - brings us this man’s unique narrative. “It’s his story, but I wrote it,” Wachsberger explains, clearly a feat of close listening and empathetic understanding.

From Mednicki's childhood, when his father moves the family to Belgium to escape the Russian pogroms through his marriage, his decision to pass as Christian after Hitler’s invasion of Belgium, his work with the French Resistance, and his arrival in 1947 to America (with its dramatic twist), Mednicki shares his emotion, describes the painful roadblocks, and discloses every clever survival scheme.

In Volvic, France, the description of the rats in the stable where Mednicki had to house his family caused me a sleepless night. The efforts he made to protect his sick son tore at my heart. But the tale of turning a porcupine into a rabbit and that into a rooster was a riot.

Fundamentally, this is a story of resistance which serves as a negation of the myth that Jews went to their death like lambs to the slaughter. Mednicki joined the French Resistance, spending his first night as a fighter with a group of men and women, hidden from the Nazis on top of a mountain. He managed to balance his two constant struggles: to keep his family and himself fed and to fight against the Nazis.

This is the Third Edition of this volume, a book that wants to continue to live, much like its hero Bernard Mednicki. Wachsberger is the respected writer/editor who brought it into life and who continues to nurture it, knowing that within these pages is an unusually textured picture of one Jew’s experience of facing down the fascism that defined the 20th Century. In a time when Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are sky-rocketing, this is a reminder of why we need to start now to fight the good fight.

The Kennedy Assassination Changed Us and Changed TV

I must have been 16 on Friday, November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated. At school we were brought into the auditorium for the announcement and students and teachers alike sobbed. I cannot imagine a political figure today who could engender such a national tender reaction to their violent death (except perhaps Obama?).

Parents left work; we were sent home from school; and everyone was glued to their tvs. The Kennedys were so young and exciting compared to their predecessors Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower. They brought color and hope and style into the White House for the first time in living memory. There are parallels with the Obamas. Barack brought Blackness to the Presidency; Jack brought Catholicism, which at the time was a major breakthrough. As I made my way home from school, I saw children and adults alike crying. It was intense.

At home my parents set up the card table in the living room where we had quick meals - like hot dogs - that didn't require much time away from the television. A dazed and blood-splattered Jackie stood beside Lyndon Johnson, at his insistence, when he was sworn in as President a few hours later aboard Air Force One.

On Sunday, as Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail, I saw Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald live on tv. For all those who watched January 6th unfold live, you probably have a sense of the shock it provoked. But Ruby’s attack may have been the first act of fatal violence ever broadcast on television. It changed the way news was delivered. As a Pew Research report noted:

The nation collectively tuned in to non-stop coverage that pioneered a new form of wall-to-wall television news delivery. Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer told Reuters, “The Kennedy assassination became the template for coverage,” while Newseum official Patty Rhule called it the moment when “America became a TV nation.”

It would be the start of a series of high-profile assassinations that would rock my world in the 1960s: Chaney, Goodman, & Schwerner (Freedom Summer) in 1964; Malcolm X in 1965; Che Guevara in 1967; Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy in 1968; Fred Hampton in 1969.

Here you can see what we saw when Ruby shot Oswald.