Harking back to my previous update, the day after I carted five large boxes of mostly military books, newly retired from my library, over to Ottawa’s Perley-Rideau Veterans Health Centre (PRVHC), I received an e-mailed message from them. After a cheery introduction (“Your boxes of books were passed on to me this morning. I peeked in the boxes and they are beautiful books to be sure!”), they got down to business:
“Could you please tell me to whom you spoke regarding this donation as we do not usually accept hardcover books for our library, and I would like to know if there were special circumstances associated with this donation. In our residents’ library, we have very little room left for new books; and also, the residents and their spouses usually find these books too heavy to pick up, hold and read.”
Well poop. I had a couple thoughts after I read this, first of which was the question: How could I have gotten such an enthusiastic response to my initial telephone overtures on the one hand when this message, on the other hand, makes it pretty clear that not only do they not have room for more books, they don’t want any hardcovers at all?
That last was especially disappointing to hear. Several of the books I had passed along were of the “coffee table” variety – big hardbound albums with lots of colour and black-and-white photos, battlefield maps and the like. Included were several collections of things like the best of the wartime picture magazines, Signal and Adler, produced and distributed respectively by the German army and the German air force for the same ends as the US wartime military published and distributed the more widely known Stars and Stripes, and Yank – propaganda for “our side”, whether your comrades wore khaki or field grey, flew a P-51 Mustang or a Ju-87 Stuka, or favoured Betty Grable’s legs or Leni Riefenstahl’s curls* as their choice of pin-up.
* Speaking of whom, read on after this item.
There were also massive biographies of several of the War’s great Allied leaders and generals: Churchill, Montgomery, Patton, Bradley. No lightweight volumes, to be sure, but as weighty with detail as they were with the actual amount of paper required to tell their stories.
And (and I know this admittedly is a bit of a stretch) in the back of my mind was the thought that some of the dwindling numbers of WWII vets in particular might find some information specific to their own service in the war, and share it with their families and visitors.
(“Look Pollyanna – when sunlight shines on these crystal-shaped pieces of plain glass, it makes rainbows on the wall!”)
But the final gentle kick was in the letter’s concluding paragraph:
“If you leave them with us, please know that we cannot guarantee they will be placed in the Library. We sometimes donate books to other organizations, we sometimes have an internal book sale to raise funds for resident activities and services.”
Have you seen the movie, Lilies of the Field? There’s a scene where Homer (Sidney Poitier) Smith and his Mexican helper, who are well along in building their adobe church, watch as a huge flatbed truck rolls onto their little job site with a load of high-quality bricks that a local contractor has decided to donate to them. Homer and his helper scratch their heads and conclude, “Well, I guess we could crush them to make mortar”, which reduces the donor – who drove the truck onto the site – to a spluttered, “Crush them… but this is brick!”
In seeking out the Perley-Rideau, I had hoped to give the books to people who would appreciate them for much more than a minuscule portion of their monetary value at a book sale, or by fobbing them off in bulk to someone who makes a business of selling used books. To read the suggestion that they might ultimately wind up going for that purpose was more than a little disappointing. After all, I could have done that myself.
But the PRVHC message did end on a slightly more – for me – optimistic note that at least some of the hundreds of books might wind up in places closer to what I had been hoping:
“Sometimes staff, volunteers, residents, family members take books that are out on display back to their homes for their own use and enjoyment.”
My reply was to express, gently, my disappointment, but to repeat a note I had put in an accompanying cover letter – the donation came with no strings attached.
End of story. (It’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.)
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(Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Nazi Party, original or neo.)
Now here’s a movie credit you don’t see every day. It shows up on Amazon.com as the list of people who brought to the screen a movie I just ordered, now that it’s finally come out in a Special Edition DVD:
“by Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler, Sepp Dietrich, and Josef Goebbels (DVD - 2006)”
The movie is, of course, the propaganda masterpiece, Triumph of the Will. I have no idea why Hitler, Dietrich and Goebbels’ names are even on it, because it is Riefenstahl’s film. But I suspect they’re there for the same reason that Brian Mulroney’s insufferable Minister of Communications weasel Marcel Massé went to Hollywood for the 1989 Oscars when the National Film Board was presented an Honorary Oscar on its 50th anniversary, and proceeded to monopolize the traditional “I’d like to thank…” microphone time normally accorded the people who actually put the product together. Hitler and Goebbels, just like all the people with pockets who bankroll artists, obviously feel they’re every bit as eligible for recognition as the genius who realizes the work.
That still doesn’t explain Dietrich’s presence on the list. For anyone not up on the movers and shakers of the Third Reich, he was best known as a field commander for the Waffen SS, a highly mobile elite division in the German Army that was often the spearpoint of the Nazis’ feared blitzkrieg attacks. He is also generally held up as the man behind the “Malmedy Massacre” of over 80 US soldiers taken prisoner during the early hours of the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge. But in 1936? He was head of a unit called the Liebstandardte. A good friend of both Hitler and Goebbels, to be sure, but I’m still puzzled about why he appears in the credits of Triumph of the Will.
I might as well confess here and now that I am an unabashed Leni Riefenstahl groupie (a virtual fan, I guess that would have to be, now that she’s passed on – after reaching the venerable age of 101). My small Riefenstahl print collection is presently home to her rather hefty memoirs and an excellent biography of her by Audrey Salkeld. And my Riefenstahl film collection has exactly three titles in it: the aforementioned Triumph of the Will; Olympia, her stunning documentary on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin (where a black US sprinter named Jesse Owens stamped “Paid in Full” to Hitler’s claims for the mastery of the Aryan race by waxing the teutons with an astonishing performance that saw three world records fall and a fourth tied as he – Owens – captured one team and three personal gold medals in a span of 45 minutes! And in the eventual spirit of forgive and forget, in 1984 a street in Berlin just south of the Olympic stadium was named Jesse Owens Alle; and the Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule is a local high school.); and a documentary film about her by Ray Muller, with the fascinating title, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.
The documentary covers her pre-war celebrity as a dancer and actress and, indeed, as the main rival to Marlene Dietrich for the title of Germany’s most popular entertainer, her wartime service to the Nazis as a film-maker, and her late-in-life fascination with scuba diving and Africa’s Nuba people. Of her films for the Nazis, and her post-war castigation for same, Riefenstahl steadfastly maintained she was neither an ardent Party member, nor was she even aware of their malevolent side until almost the end of the War. She argued that she simply made – apolitically – her films the best way she could. The “horrible” part of the documentary’s title, of course, arose post-war when she was widely condemned as a strongly pro-Nazi artist, especially for Triumph of the Will, which portrayed Hitler and company in a profoundly sympathetic, indeed almost worshipful, light.
The dissipating haze of six-plus decades since the War’s end has pretty well seen Riefenstahl restored to her position as the architect of one of the finest pieces of propaganda ever committed to celluloid. That it happened to be about one of mankind’s greatest evils was just her rotten luck.
But whether you’re a film student, or merely someone with an interest in a unique story about a unique film-maker, the Ray Muller documentary is certainly worth a watch. And if the idea of viewing film purely as stunning art appeals to you, you will be hard-pressed to find anything that comes even close to her two masterworks. Triumph of the Will and Olympia, to take just one example, will immediately silence anyone who argues in favour of colourizing black-and-white film.
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Ottawa Public Library – Dart and Laurel (with apologies to the Columbia Journalism Review)
Recently, I travelled virtually to the Ottawa Public Library’s web site to reserve a book. This online service is outstanding. You first search the book under one of several – even half-remembered – options, for example, title, author, keywords, etc. You click on your nearest branch and when the book arrives there, you receive a phone call at home giving you a week to come and pick it up. The system even tells you how many people are ahead of you in the “I would like to reserve this book” queue.
In my case, however, I wasn’t even allowed through the cyber front door because it was time, I was told, for my library card to be renewed. (The logic of having to appear in person to renew a tool you use most often via the internet escapes me, but the onscreen message at least came with a “Contact us” link that included a phone number.)
Within seconds, I was speaking to a person who turned out to be most helpful. She explained the personal renewal was required in the event you had any outstanding overdue book fines, or your personal information had changed in the year since your last renewal.
(For several other reasons, I still don’t entirely agree that this policy requires a personal appearance, but at least they have a policy, and someone with the patience to explain it to me, politely, over the phone.)
She then asked me what book I was trying to reserve. When I told her, there was a pause of about six seconds, after which she asked, “Branch?” “Alta Vista,” I replied. Another pause – four seconds or thereabouts. “OK,” she said, “I’ve reserved it for you. You’re first on the list and they have it at the Alta Vista Branch so it shouldn’t take more than a day or two. When you go pick it up, you can renew your card at the same time.”
I thanked her very much, but she hung up before I could ask her if she might consider serving as the inaugural Dean of a new Faculty of Client Services that I would be prepared to propose to every Library School in Canada.
Swift, courteous, efficient. Problem identified; problem solved. What in heaven’s name is this woman doing in Ottawa in the year 2006?
Alas, my follow-up experience was not pleasant.
Within 24 hours, my phone’s voicemail was in possession of the automated message telling me my book was waiting for me. So off I went to pick it up.
When I got to the checkout counter, the person behind the counter (let’s call him the weaselly little turd, just to ensure there is no confusing him with the person with whom I had dealt the day before), looked at the title and cover illustration, and offered this unsolicited commentary: “I hate reading alternate history novels by people like this guy and Harry Turtledove and such. They’re always so ‘America rah rah’ and blah blah blah… waste of reading time.”
Now what I should have said was, “Well thank you Sammy Sunshine. But you know what I hate? I hate people who feel they have the right to pass judgement on my choice of recreational reading material… and most especially when they work in a library.” Then what I should have done was reach across the counter and pull his face forward towards the book until Conquistador, by S.M. Stirling utterly filled his field of view. Then I should have added, “You might want to look at ‘The Peshawar Lancers’, by the same author. It’s a lavishly descriptive novel of alternative history set during the Raj – the period of British Colonialism in India. There might be Americans in it, but they’re peripheral players, at best. Now if you’ll just give me my book and take yourself away from the counter here where you actually deal with people and maybe consider instead re-directing your library career into the lively and challenging sub-major of dusting the stacks, I’m sure absolutely everybody will be just delighted.”
That’s what I should have said. Instead, I managed a wan smile, took my book and left. (I’m already a couple chapters into it. It’s going to be a great summer read!)
Damn my Canadianness, anyway.
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“Beginning tomorrow, I’ll be working on making my political career toast.” :
"’Beginning tomorrow, I'll be working for Pointe-aux-Trembles, beginning tomorrow I'll be working for Quebec and beginning tomorrow I will be working for the country of Quebec,’ Boisclair told jubilant supporters.”
(Newly-elected Québec MLA for Pointe-aux-Trembles and leader of the [provincial] separatist Parti Québécois, André Boisclair, celebrating the August 14 by-election win that finally got him a seat in Québec’s provincial “National Assembly”. Reported at CTV.ca, August 15)
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Um…
(News sentence from the mouth of Nancy Wilson, CBC-TV Newsworld, August 14: “Our top story: A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be holding although there have been several reported skirmishes”.)
Let’s put it together, shall we? “Ceasefire” is an English-language compound word that means, literally, “stop shooting”. The quantity of fire is irrelevant. If it is “any”, then there is no “ceasefire”. Got it?
Really glad I could help. Call me anytime.
You flaming idiots.
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Pet peeve time!
I’ve been buying a wave of DVDs and CDs recently, and I have a whine about the way they are packaged. Given that they’re all shrink-wrapped anyway, is it really necessary to stick a strip of unbelievably adhesive “security seal” tape on three edges of the product’s case before the shrink wrap goes on?
(The correct answer is “no”.)
Because when you peel off the security seal tape, you inevitably leave behind the band of adhesive that fails to come off with it. And that little strip is so powerfully glue-like, I swear you could stick a DVD or CD case up merely by pressing it against the wall. Which also means, of course, that it will fuse itself to any piece of paper or wayward cat fur clumps that, tumbleweed-like, happen to be in the vicinity of your recently unwrapped latest bit of home entertainment.
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And on a musical note, here are a couple recommendations, depending on your mood:
The soundtrack for Grosse Point Blank. When I really enjoy a movie, I almost always find that its soundtrack brings it all back simply by sliding the disc into the CD player. This movie is a quirky black comedy about a contract killer (John Cusack) who returns home to attend his high school graduating class’s tenth reunion. Minnie Driver plays a woman he intended to take to their prom night, but never picked up. The movie is their first meeting in a decade. It won’t be entirely a happy reunion and the dialogue for these scenes just crackles with wit. Dan Aykroyd plays a rival contract killer who is trying to persuade Cusack to abandon his lone-wolf approach to his profession and join a syndicated group of guns for hire that he, Aykroyd, is trying to put together. And Alan Arkin has a hilarious turn as Cusack’s therapist, who knows what his client does for a living and yet who tries to bring normal therapy regimens to bear in order to help him deal with his issues. (This may be where the idea for the Billy Crystal / Robert de Niro twin pics, Analyze This and Analyze That found its roots.)
The music matches the film’s wild roller coaster of emotional bounces back and forth between the mundanity of a high school reunion and the vicious brutality of Cusack’s chosen profession. It flows from the lilt of Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now to quasi-punk new-wave pieces from bands like The Clash and The Violent Femmes. Those in the latter genre set a tempo reminiscent of those road movie scenes where all you see are the white lines on the pavement relentlessly clicking by to mark either the good guy’s drawing closer to what awaits him, or the sinister tension as the bad guy gains on him.
It’s a great sound track and, if you can imagine such a blend, a darkly hilarious film.
Light years away is the soundtrack for the movie Good Night and Good Luck, a relatively brief (it only runs 90 minutes) dramatization of a very public disagreement between CBS News’ Edward R Murrow and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s Joe McCarthy. Directed by George Clooney (who also has a minor role), the movie has a painfully obvious parallel agenda evident in dialogue lines like McCarthy’s mantra, “Well if you don’t agree with me, you must be a communist” **, and discussion about locking people up without following due process.
** From the Washington Post, Monday, August 14, 2006:
“By insinuating that the sizeable majority of American voters who oppose the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy, Vice President Cheney on Wednesday may have crossed the line that separates legitimate political discourse from hysteria.”
In one sequence that captures all too well Cheney’s – sorry, McCarthy’s – excesses, during one hearing he browbeats a luckless middle-aged black woman who had worked as a stenographer in a highly secure department and who had several “Secret” and “Top Secret” documents flow across her desk. The woman is plainly trying not only to understand the intensity of McCarthy’s grilling, she’s also plainly trying to get across to the Senator that she barely understood the text of the material she worked with, much less had any idea that it might be valuable to a foreign power. There are some very well rendered on-air editorials from Murrow where the label, “the Junior Senator from Wisconsin” is used like a club. McCarthy, in fact, only ever appears in actual documentary footage, which makes him all the scarier by eliminating any possibility that critics could accuse Clooney of over-dramatizing the Senator’s paranoia.
The soundtrack is billed as “music from and inspired by” the movie. In the film, there are a few scenes where the CBS staff around Murrow retire to a favourite, smoky watering hole to deal with the growing rift between Murrow and McCarthy, and the growing concerns of CBS chairman Bill Paley (played in a tour de force by Frank Langella). There are also transition shots where cast members either sit in the control room for, or simply pass by, a studio where a blues / jazz program is in progress. And it is this music, which comes in bare snips during the movie, that makes up the album. I call this my late-night-on-the-back-porch-third-glass-of-red-wine genre of music. Lots of stand-up bass… and you can almost hear thick, lazily drifting cigarette smoke in every song… People who are fans of singers like Julie London or Blossom Dearie will absolutely love this album. It’s riddled with standards like Straighten Up and Fly Right, How High the Moon and One for My Baby – not the originals, but covered gorgeously and lushly by a woman named Dianne Reeves.
Amazon.com’s summary of the album includes one editorial review that describes Reeves and her musicians as a “cool contralto, fronted by a quicksilver combo”. Mood and genre in exactly seven words. I’ll shut up about it now.
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And finally, recalling a couple entries ago when I mentioned discovering how easy it is to upload photos, here’s a pair that relate to my typical work day. I’ve whined on several occasions about the concrete-and-stone “Garden of the Provinces and Territories” alleged-to-be-a-park that I pass through twice each day, whose entrances are now blocked by steel posts in preparation for the coming winter when they will be further barricaded by a heavy chain. Well, here it is in its early morning glory:
And here is the reason why, for all the griping I do about the execrable examples of government communication that cross my desk, I never complain about my physical space:
This is the view from my cubicle, in the afternoon when the sun has moved around behind the building in which I work. This is looking… oh, pretty well southeast (Montreal would be about a two-hour drive away along this line). The building in left centre with the new copper (not green) roof is the Supreme Court of Canada. To its right – with the green copper roof – is the Bank of Canada and to its right, the building with the three-storey lid whose tiny windows look like little black spots is the National Library. Not to be confused with the building farther left that also sports a “hat” – that’d be the Radisson Hotel with its revolving restaurant.
Until next time.
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