The Commodore Hotel

My idea for a play ...

Characters:

Marco Antonius (aka Marc Anthony) - Italian impresario

Morty Blumenstein, aka Ferdinand de Bullock, diplomat

Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, matron

Constance Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, her daughter

Svetlana Plekova, wife of Andrei Abromovitsky, Russian oligarch

The location: The Commodore Hotel, in the English seaside village of BlanketBarn

Story: 

Marco Antonius, the famous Italian impresario, has arrived in the small English seaside village of BlanketBarn to find the cast for his upcoming show “Girls, Girls, Girls, a comedy in three acts!”

He will stay at the Commodore Hotel, the most ritzy of the local pensions, with its tea served precisely at 4pm and its tiny little restaurant with its understaffed kitchen off the back.

Marc Antony, as he is commonly called in England, produces extravangzas of the first order and it’s the dream of many an aspiring young actress to get into one of his shows. Hence, the dancing girls (well, really young women) who have packed onto trains to get to BlanketBarn early are now lined up outside the hotel to see if they might find a room there. Or do they need to traipse  around town looking for other lodging?

In the lobby, they fail to see a short fat man in a seersucker jacket, sweating profusely while trying to stuff the last bites of a sandwich into his mouth as he leans uncomfortably against the concierge’s oak desk. He is Morty Blumenstein, of New Jersey in the United States, trying to check into the hotel under the name of Ferdinand de Bullock, Spanish diplomat. Morty is here because Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort is here, with her 16-year old daughter Constance.

Why are Grace and Constance here, you ask? The annual meeting of the British Temperance Union, Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort president.  

Every year, the Union (as it’s known) hosts a gala ball with Grace presiding. It is Morty’s firm belief that she will be wearing the famous Madagascar diamond. “Worth a trip from Jersey to try to get my hands on that rock,” is what he said to his mother as he departed for the docks in lower Manhattan to get on the boat that would take him here. 

Grace’s daughter Constance is here because as a 16-year old, she had no choice. Grace’s husband, William Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, retired ambassador to Kumpour, cares not a wit for the Temperance Union, indeed enjoys his tipple a little, and wouldn’t be caught dead in the Commodore Hotel this weekend. He’d rather take care of his tomatoes, sunflowers and zucchini than be dragged down to BlanketBarn for that dreadful affair.

So, Grace decided it would be best to bring Constance along. Little does she know that Constance … virginal, pure, unblemished Constance … wants nothing more than to be in one of Marc Antony’s shows. This she has kept from her dear mother because of the shock it would cause. This precious, some would say mischievous, innocent angel would never want to be in a show like that!

Meanwhile, Svetlana Plekova is also standing in the lobby. Dark black hair tied back in a bun, she is trying to check into

Dog walking on the Harvard campus the morning after Election Day

 

"More than a few people have a stunned, glazed look on their faces as they wander silently and slightly aimlessly towards their morning destinations."

A letter to a colleague after yesterday's election

This is a brief note I wrote this morning to a colleague --

Thank you for going out to OH and PA to do the hard work of campaigning for the issues and the people we all care about. I didn’t do more than contribute some money.

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would invite that guy back in, given all that we already know about him. It’s scary not to recognize one’s own country. I can’t decide if this feels closer to Germany of the 1930s or the final days of the Roman Republic. Both historical examples come to mind. 

I only hope that the upcoming damage to our institutions, our reputation and our personal liberties will not be irreversible.

For the time being, we are relegated to working in our regional enclaves to defend and promote the principles and truths we hold to be self-evident, those that make America a truly great nation. We also must work on reducing the divisions in our land. As the saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall.

Bullsh*t

 

Our mother

Our mother was many things over the course of her lifetime. Not all of them were pretty. 

But as a young thing, she certainly could cut a figure. Smart, elegant, arrogant, a ‘cliffee, she had a lot going for her, and that photo effectively conveys it. 

It was also the era of another Harvardian, John F. Kennedy, so the aroma was in the air. My parents thought they were pretty hot stuff, and maybe they were. “It was a heady time,” was a favorite phrase of my mother’s. I’m certain it was.

Phyllis Munro Ferguson Seidel (1938-2024), circa 1963

The subway is a sewer

 The sewer scene in Les Miserables and the movie The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 really are the same story -- life underground when there is a great city above. For Victor Hugo, it's Paris of 1832. For director Joseph Sargent, it's New York of 1974. The main question is, will any of their characters ever see the light of day again.

In defense of loneliness

 The Streets of London is a folky tune by Ralph McTell with delicate guitar and smoky vocals evocative of Donovan or Bob Dylan. First recorded in 1969, it reeks of that decade's lingering sadnesses and melancholic pursuits of social justice. If you're old enough, you'll remember this song even if you're only hearing it now for the first time.

Its basic lyrical premise is to dissuade an unnamed listener from feeling lonely by pointing out at all the people who are truly lonely, out on the streets of London.

It led me to this thought: I wonder if our device-driven world has deprived us too completely of loneliness. Force feeding us togetherness. Unrelentingly pushing information. Virtually drowning us. 

Perhaps we'd be better off if we could once again sit in a crowded cafe too late into an evening, alone and alone in our thoughts, listening to that bloke on stage gently walking his guitar, telling us not to cry by telling us how better off we've got it than those people. It's a strange longing, but not without some merit.

It's here if you want to listen to a version of it.

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

What days are these that political violence reemerges in our midst. Heinous, the violence. January 6th condemnable, July 13th condemnable. This violence must be condemned. By all parties. And the gun. Always the gun. Americans and their guns. 

How did we get here? For whatever reason, I think of 1968, when the veritable world must have seemed to be collapsing. The Vietnam War churning through ever more American lives, Hue and Tet in January. King then Kennedy killed within two short months of each other by June, and cities aflame in rage and fear. 

There is fear now too ... Trump as a kind of Caesar, set out to destroy the Republic and all its restraints on the accumulation of power once power is bestowed on him. But that is a future state of affairs. And as we know, the future is unknown. The current state of affairs is now. 

America, never so healthy, wealthy or powerful, tearing itself apart. How so ever did we get here?

Please note.

 A note recently written to a women’s college alumnae class secretary about getting older:

Your job must be tough too. For some reason, I have a baseball analogy in my head: an outfielder standing alone in the outfield of an empty stadium, catching fly balls during practice. Very methodical and routine and (perhaps) lonely, with one sharp twist every time -- each ball always has the same message scrawled on it ... "So and so has died. Please note." 

The Stranger

 "Mother died today. Or was it yesterday. I don't remember." These words start The Stranger by Albert Camus. So I recollect. As it turns out, the internet tells me I'm essentially right. It was most likely was the Penguin translation of the 1980s that I'm recalling. 

I have thought about these words for many a decade whence I first read them. And on June 3rd of this year, if I had posted this then, they would have been accurate to me. 

This whole little tale, those few sentences you have just read, is an odd compilation of the impression that literature left on the mind of a young man, the passage of time from that impression to the moment described therein, and a retrospective telescope back through time from that moment to that long ago initial impression. 

Or in my case, Mother died today. Or was it yesterday. I don't remember.

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Holocaust Commemoration, 2024

Earlier in May, the city of Cambridge held its annual Holocaust Commemoration hosted by Brian Corr and the Cambridge Peace Commission.

This year was a particularly harrowing one given the explosive mix of the world's events: the war in Gaza and the rise of right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in this country and around the globe. Brian made it clear that this ceremony was to remember events of 1930s and '40s Europe and was not an opportunity to editorialize on our current topics du jour, no matter how pressing or upsetting they may be. The speaker was the 100-year-old Esther Adler, who grew up in Breslau but fled the Nazis in 1938 to Palestine. Her amazing story and her redolent humor filled the room. It's not often that you hear a gathering of Jewish people laugh at the mention of Kristallnacht, but that is what happened. It's also worth noting that this is an interfaith event, with rabbis, pastors and imams all present. 

I was asked to introduce the poem Bashert which is read aloud every year. Here are the brief comments I made before we began. It is a truncated version of my comments from the 2019 event, which I also posted in this blog.

As part of tonight's commemoration, we read Bashert. "Bashert" is written by Irene Klepfisz and it means something like "destiny" in Yiddish.

Klepfisz tells us the fate of many people, propelled by random chance or simply a desire to survive.

These were people she presumably knew, and they come alive for us because we know them too, in our memories, in our lives and in ourselves.

We say about the Holocaust that we should "Never Forget." Tonight, we remember many things:

• We remember all communities that have faced or face repression or persecution or genocide, wherever and whoever they may be.
• We remember our own commitment to confronting intolerance and our recommitment to one common humanity.
• And we remember our admiration for the human spirit ... its profound ability to resist and be resilient ... but also its deep ability for caring and kindness.

This is a responsive reading ...

My movie list

I am a fan of film noir, and have been for a long time. Perhaps it's the atmospherics or the long shadows - or maybe the tough guys and dames on the streets of some long beleaguered city. Whatever the reason, I've been knocking away at a strong number of them over the past few years, and so I tallied a list.

As for directors, there's lots of Henry Hathaway and Alfred Hitchcock with some Carol Reed, Jules Dassin and Fritz Lang thrown in for good measure.

On the actors side, James Mason has become a fan favorite, followed closely by Ray Milland and Robert Donat. 

And of course let's not forget the best Holmes-Watson pairing of them all, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. 

Anyway, it's all just fun stuff from long ago.

Title	Year	Actor(s)	Director
13 rue Madeleine	1947	James Cagney	Henry Hathaway
49th Parallel	1941	Leslie Howard
5 Fingers	1952	James Mason
Adventures of Tartu	1943	Robert Donat
Berlin Correspondent	1942
British Intelligence	1940	Boris Karloff
Captain Horatio Hornblower	1951	Gregory Peck
Cash on Demand	1961
Charade	1963	Cary Grant; Audrey Hepburn
Circle of Danger	1951	Ray Milland
Cottage to Let	1941	Alistair Sim
Counterspy meets Scotland Yard	1950
Cry of the City	1948	Victor Mature
Damn the Defiant!	1962	Alec Guinness
Deadline USA	1952	Humphrey Bogart
Dial M for Murder	1954	Ray Milland; Grace Kelley	Alfred Hitchcock
Dick Tracy	1945
Dick Tracy’s Dilemma	1947
Diplomatic Courier	1952	Tyrone Power	Henry Hathaway
Dracula: Dead and Loving It	1995	Harvey Korman; Mel Brooks
Enter Arsene Lupin	1944
Foreign Correspondent	1940	Joel McRae
Funeral in Berlin	1966	Michael Caine
House on 92nd Street	1945		Henry Hathaway
I’ll Get You	1952	George Raft
Johnny O’Clock	1947	Lee Cobb
Lady in the Fog	1952	Caesar Romero; Lois Maxwell
Man Hunt	1941	Walter Pidgeon; Joan Bennett	Fritz Lang
Man in Cairo	1953	George Raft
My Favorite Brunette	1947	Bob Hope; Dorothy Lamour
Mystery of Marie Roget	1942
Naked City	1948		Jules Dassin
Nazi Agent	1942		Jules Dassin
New York Confidential	1955
Night Train to Munich	1940	Rex Harrison	Carol Reed
No Highway in the Sky	1951	Jimmy Stewart
North Sea Hijack	1980	Roger Moore; James Mason
Pimpernel Smith	1941	Leslie Howard
Port of New York	1949	Yul Brenner
Rear Window	1954	Jimmy Stewart; Grace Kelly	Alfred Hitchcock
Sabotage	1936		Alfred Hitchcock
Scarlet Street	1945	Edward G. Robinson	Fritz Lang
Sherlock Holmes films	1939	—Hound of the Baskervilles
Sherlock Holmes films	1939	—The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes films	1942	—Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
Sherlock Holmes films	1943	—Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
Sherlock Holmes films	1943	—Sherlock Holmes in Washington
Sherlock Holmes films	1943	—Sherlock Holmes faces death
Sherlock Holmes films	1944	—The Spider Woman
Sherlock Holmes films	1944	—The Scarlet Claw
Sherlock Holmes films	1944	—The Pearl of Death
Sherlock Holmes films	1945	—The House of Fear
Sherlock Holmes films	1945	—The Woman in Green
Sherlock Holmes films	1945	—Pursuit to Algiers
Sherlock Holmes films	1946	—Terror by Night
Sherlock Holmes films	1946	—Dressed to Kill
Sink the Bismarck!	1960	Kenneth More
Spy Hunt	1950
Strangers on a Train	1951		Alfred Hitchcock
The 39 Steps	1935	Robert Donat	Alfred Hitchcock
The Dark Corner	1946	Lucille Ball	Henry Hathaway
The Deadly Affair	1967	James Mason	Sidney Lumet
The Fake	1953
The Heroes of Telemark	1965
The Iron Curtain	1948	Tyrone Power	Henry Hathaway
The Lady Vanishes	1938		Alfred Hitchcock
The Naked Street	1955
The Secret Ways	1961	Richard Widmark
The Stranger	1946	Orson Welles	Orson Welles
The Underground	1941
The Upturned Glass	1947	James Mason
Triple Cross	1966	Christopher Plummer; Romy Schneider	Terrence Young
Waterfront	1944	John Carradine
Where There’s Life	1947	Bob Hope
Whispering City	1947	Paul Lukas
Woman in the Window	1944	Edward G. Robinson