Movie review: 'Lost Leonardo,' highly recommended

Is it or is it not The Lost Leonardo?/Sony Pictures Classics

That The Lost Leonardo received a 100% audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes (and 95% by the critics) on the day I looked at RT tells you it's got to be good, right? * 

It is. Good.

From The Lost Leonardo/Sony Pictures Classics

It's a documentary, sure; my favorite kind, laid out in chronological style beginning with the discovery in a New Orleans art house of the so-called Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci and following its trail to the present owner who is...?

And where is it now?

On a boat, you say?

Before the Lost (the Last?) sold at a public auction at Christie's in 2017 for the most ever paid for a painting ($450.3 million), it was part of a Leonardo exhibition in 2011-12 at London's National Gallery, yet was pulled at the last moment from a Louvre showing in 2019 when, according to rumors, the present owner demanded it be placed adjacent to the Mona Lisa. Also, a Louvre publication about Salvator was removed from its shops and publication, denied.

Huh? What's up?

Find out at the show!

Andreas Koefoed, the director, performs a marvelous feat, bringing it all home in this balanced portrayal. How he and the producers coaxed the consultants, the "experts," the critics, the sleuths, the government officials and more to settle for his camera is a story in itself, but he did, and they are all happy to share their opinions.

Their names and identifications (titles) are listed in the bottom left corner of the screen, an indispensable aid for those of us who do not circulate in their worlds and must profess ignorance of most of them.

Who had an ax to grind?

Is it an original da Vinci?

I must admit I was skeptical going in...and coming away, I was skeptical. But, how about you?

For art lovers, the curious, curators, critics, collectors, dealers, lenders, tycoons, art historians, artists, "sleeper hunters" (?), this is a fast film you cannot miss!

That a world-known criminal is involved is revolting and maybe, that's what his subjects will do...one of these day.

Mr. Koefoed co-wrote the story with Duska Zagorac, Andreas Dalsgaard, Mark Monroe, and Christian Kirk Muff. Hats off to you!  Music by Sveinung Nygaard is excellent.

For more reading, Wikipedia has a lengthy accounting of the painting's provenance.

*Now, the audience gives it 93% and the critics, 95%.


patricialesli@gmail.com

Come with me to the fair...

The Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Well, maybe next year since the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair has already up and left the premises, but fun it was, and deee-lish!  There's always "next year"!  

A very tall fairy princess in the parade greeted guests at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Gaithersburg High School Trojan Marching Band paraded by in the Montgomery County Fair Parade/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Gaithersburg High School Band parading at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Can you imagine riding a float and hugging a live goat at the same time?  In a parade?  It happened at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

These little fellows were "meat goats" which means that, maybe, ....yep.  They marched in the Montgomery County Fair Parade. Maybe, their last walk on the plank before, you know, ..../Photo by Patricia Leslie

This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed home, this little piggie ate roast beef, the little piggie had none, and this little piggie rode a truck at the Montgomery County Fair, however, live animals did not accompany humans on this float in the parade/Photo by Patricia Leslie

How would you like to be born under the eyes of total strangers?  It happens often at the Montgomery County Fair when "Lit'l Shiester" was only three hours old when she was pictured here.  What a generous little calf and mom to be so tolerant of the curious!/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Mama and three-hour-old baby got no privacy at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

"Lit'l Shiester" with her mom at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

These little piggies seem to be luxuriating in each other at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

And for these  B I G  piggies, it was time for some shut-eye at the Montgomery County Fair/Photo by Patricia Leslie

It was the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair with lots of fun, lots to see, and whole lotta to eat!   

There were piglets and pigs and cows and calves and maybe, 6,000 kinds of rabbits.  (You could buy one rabbit for about $80 and some rabbits had pedigrees!  Rabbits?  Pedigrees? You've seen one rabbit, you've seen them all!)

Time to moo (can't resist) on to the cows and cows and  more cows which were about as numerous as the rabbits, but not so much.  (Sorry, rabbits and rabbit lovers.) 

How would you like a group of strangers watching your birth?  

It must be a medical school training lab!  Nope, it was at the fair where poor "Lit'l Shiester" and her mom had to endure a crowd watching her enter the world.  Take a gander of that!  And humans think they've got it rough when they deliver a ten-pounder.    R i g h t t t t t t .... Lit'l Shiester weighed a whole lot more than ten pounds!

With animals galore, there was alcohol, too (in tents), and whatever you do, never forget the funnel cakes and fried oreos which were plum delish (6 for $8)!  I don't even like oreos but these I had to try and they were wonderful, to melt in my mouth, all that gooey chocolate surrounded by empty air puffs of sugary dough.  I am still flying high from eating them many days ago.

Tickets to the rides were $1.50 multiplied by about 4 ($6) which is about the average cost except for the really big ones which go for more.  The swings were, actually, kind of boring but the pirate's boat was scarier than it looked, so much so that Marie cried to get off, but there was no stopping us when we got up real high, and she just had to cry and bear it. 

Admission - It varied. Next year the price will be different. 

Parking was free at Lakeforest Mall and free school bus shuttles at the mall had wheels to the fairgrounds. No waiting! Plenty of buses; plenty of room. Highly organized.

Restrooms - with attendants and fairly clean (for a fair!).

Come one!  Come all (next year)!  To the greatest DMV fair before fall!  (I had to make it rhyme.)

patricialesli@gmail.com
 

Book review: 'The Assassination of Trotsky'

A Diego Rivera mural depicts Trotsky with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "true champions of the workers' struggle." Part of the Rivera mural El hombre en cruce de caminos, 1934, in the Bellas Artes building, Mexico City/Joe Photo, Boston, Wikimedia

Without emotion or attitude, Nicholas Mosley gives a "blow-by-blow" account of the murder of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), between the time of the first assassination attempt on his life on May 24, 1940, and the last, successful one when he died the day after being stabbed by an ice pick*, August 20, 1940.

Regrettably, Mr. Mosley's documentation is omitted, save for the short bibliography at the end with six titles listed. The best insight into the person is  Trotsky's autobiography and his writings, Mr. Mosley says.

Leon Trotsky House where he was stabbed and where he lived from April, 1939 - August, 1940 Mexico City/Photo by Rod Waddington, Kergunyah, Australia, Wikimedia Commons

Mr. Trotsky left "works of some genius"; he was "a man with a marvelous literary eye and style," Mr. Mosley writes. 

I ran across the book title in the Wall Street Journal's column by Peter Stothard of the "Five Best [Books] on Political Vengeance," and per usual, the best library, the Fairfax County Library, got it for me on interlibrary loan.

The book is short (184 pages) and a fast read, written in 1972 in the "encyclopedic" style when Trotsky's grandson, Seva, was still living in the house. 

The first attempt on Trotsky's life saw about 20 assassins invade his home and shoot up the house (bullet holes, extant). Trotsky, his wife, Natalie Sedova, and Seva, miraculously survived without severe injury (Seva was shot in the foot while hiding under his bed) causing the chief of Mexico's secret police to question whether the attempt was fake and even happened.

Later that summer, bodyguards surrounding the house were lulled by the familiarity of a Trotsky acquaintance, a secret Stalinist, who arrived at the house on August 20 to discuss "a document" with "the old man" but stabbed him instead.

The murderer had several names and backgrounds: Jacques Mornard, Frank Jacson, Ramon Mercader. At the time, Mexico had no death penalty, and he was sentenced to 19.5 years for premeditated murder and six months for illegal possession of arms. 

Later, his parole request was rejected because the killer was considered "socially dangerous," and the courts decided it was hard to grant parole to a person "if no one knew officially who he was." 

Trotsky lived until the next day when he died at a hospital. When it lay in state, an estimated 300,000 filed past his body. 

Lenin had ostensibly "appointed" Trotsky his successor of the Soviet Union. Stalin was "rude" and unpolished, rough like the countryside, his origin.

Chasing Trotsky, his greatest rival, throughout Europe, Stalin delayed Trotsky's execution for years to avoid public fallout. After all, it was good public relations to keep him alive and have a scapegoat; Stalin could blame him for everything: the wheat crop failure, the pig swine fever, railway problems, factory destructions, even "nails in butter"!  

Trotsky knew he was a targeted man.

Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, arrive in Mexico, January, 1937, with Frida Kahlo behind them/Photo by unknown author, Wikimedia Commons

Eventually, after their itinerant European residencies, Trotsky and his wife found their way to Mexico in 1937 and the home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the latter who claimed credit for getting them admitted to the country. (After Trotsky's death, Rivera, man of honor that he was, said he was working for Stalin to lure Trotsky to his death site.) 

The Trotskys lived with the artists for about two years until, several stories go, Rivera flirted with Trotsky's wife (and vice-versa) which, combined with political disagreements, ended the happy arrangement.

American supporters helped raise money for Trotsky's last residence which became the scene of the murder.

Leon Trotsky's grave in Coyoacan, Mexico City/Photo, Wikimedia

His ashes and those of his wife, who died in 1962, are entombed at the Coyoacán house, open now as a museum.

The Trotsky home is definitely on my "must see" places whenever I get to Mexico City. 

*It is on view at Washington's International Spy Museum.  The weapon was missing for several decades until it was found under a bed and went on the market.  

Patricialesli@gmail.com

'Rumors' run wild in Alexandria

Starring in Little Theatre of Alexandria's Rumors are, from bottom left up the stairs: Kirk Lambert as Glenn Cooper, Roxanne Waite as Cassie Cooper, Peter Halverson as Ernie Cusack, Janice Rivera as Cookie Cusack. On the top landing from left: Stephanie Chu Rudden as Chris Gorman, Mike Rudden as Ken Gorman, Jayne L. Victor as Claire Ganz and Mike Donahue as Lenny Ganz/photo by Matthew Randall

With Neil Simon (1927-2018) driving the content and four dressed-up New York couples ready to party-hearty, what do you expect? 

It's an evening of hilarious Shakespearean farce at the Little Theatre of Alexandria, enough to make you forget about the day's troubles for a while and don't we all need that?

The laughs begin almost immediately in Rumors when real-life husband and wife Mike Rudden and Stephanie Chu Rudden as the Gormans start the action. 

Ken Gorman has discovered a problem. 

Help!  There's a crime underway!  

It takes only moments for three more couples to arrive at Charlie and Myra's to celebrate the couple's 10th wedding anniversary, but where are Charlie and Myra? 

And (more importantly), where is the food?  Thank goodness, the liquor is available.

Rumors run rampant. 

It's a laugh, a conflict, and expletive-a-minute.

Almost stealing the show is Mike Donahue as Lenny Ganz who delivers a strong commanding performance, but please, the "adult" words! Skimming the script, I don't find them. Are they supposed to make the production more timely?  Ouch!  My ears are aching.  I cannot imagine any party where this offensive language is heard so often.

But, officer!  My brand-new BMW with only 12 miles has been wrecked!

As supporting spouse, Mr. Donahue's real-life and stage wife, Jayne L. Victor, nicely augments her husband's role. 

Peter Halverson is Ernie Cusack, the realistic and dazed husband of "Cookie" (Janice Rivera), a charming, spacy actor who is laugh-a-minute every time she utters a line, reminiscent of SNL's "girl at a party."   

Hairdresser Rebecca Harris has designed a pyramid wig for the head of "Cassie" (Roxanne Waite) who enters the party performing a balancing act worthy of an Olympic contest. 

A metamorphosis in the bathroom crystalizes her personality as a slithering woman who needs the comfort of anyone but her husband (Kirk Lambert). 

Whatever shall we do?  

No food, no celebrants, but a crime is underway and here come the cops, with Joe Dzikiewics as Officer Welch leading an investigation, usurped by the wild exaggerations and animated gestures of his silent partner, Eileen Copas as Officer Pudney.

Seated are Peter Halverson as Ernie Cusack and Janice Rivera as Cookie Cusack; standing from left are Joe Dzikiewicz as Officer Welch, Mike Rudden as Ken Gorman, and Eileen Copas as Officer Pudney in Little Theatre of Alexandria's Rumors/photo by Matthew Randall

Everyone is formally attired (applause to designer Judy Whelihan), able to overlook red spots on white shirts. (I don't know why I find theater more enjoyable when characters are dressed for the ball, and ball they have in Rumors.)

Sound engineer Alan Wray has his hands full, ringing the too-loud doorbell. And the phone. (That phone conflicts with the timing of the show if expletives were added to make it more "contemporary.")  

Charles Dragonette has created an exquisite set for the prancing and dancing of the couples in this circus. Scene changes, not necessary. 

It's an enjoyable time with these quartets, enough to make you laugh out loud which is not only good for the soul but good for the heart, too.  

Fun at the theatre returns! And to accommodate the new mood, the Little Theatre is selling extra seating. 

Other crew members are Matthew Randall, director; Nick Friedlander and Jennifer Lyman, producers; Sarah Holt, assistant producer; Lauren Markovich and Meggie Webster, stage managers; Julie Fischer and Dan Remmers, set construction; Kirstin Apker, props; Ken and Patti Crowley, lighting; Sam Jensen, master electrician;  Larissa Norris, makeup; Margaret Snow, wardrobes; Mona Wargo, set painting; and Russell M. Wyland, rigging.

What:  Rumors by Neil Simon

When: Now through August 14, 2021, Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Some shows, nearing sellouts.

Where: Little Theatre of Alexandria, 600 Wolfe Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

Tickets: $21, weekdays; $24, weekends.

Duration: About 2 hours with one intermission. 

Adult language:  Yes and plenty of it. Totally gratuitous.

Masks: Required.  No exceptions.

Public transportation: Check the Metro and Dash bus websites.

Parking: On the streets and in many garages nearby with free parking during performances at Capital One Bank at Wilkes and Washington streets.

For more information: Box Office: 703-683-0496; Business: 703-683-5778.

boxoffice@thelittletheatre.com or Asklta@thelittletheatre.com 

patricialesli@gmail.com

'Bad Girls' in Baltimore, worth a trip

Jan van de Velde II (Dutch, c. 1593-1641), The Sorceress, 1626, engraving, Garrett Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art

Classic treatments of men treating women badly in art and perpetuating stereotypes are presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art in a new exhibition, Women Behaving Badly:  400 Years of Power & Protest.

Witches, and vampires and sorceresses, oh, my!  They are all here: the women who frighten men by their independence and aggressiveness, the art and names which have endured for centuries and have shaped attitudes about women.

Talk about the power of art!

In the engraving above, Golden Age artist Jan van de Velde II depicts a young sorceress brewing her evil, surrounded by a myriad of conniving creatures, certain to help her put an end to all that's good. 

It's one of my favorites in the show which illustrates the extremes that artists will reach to meet popular culture. One website says the Latin inscribed at the base of the work likely alludes to temptation. Van de Velde made this during a dark period in Europe's history, amidst  the Thirty Years' War, the Little Ice Age, and 1,000 witch trials which ended the lives of mostly women by death and torture.

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879), The mother is in the heat of composing, while the baby is in the water of the bathtub! 1844, crayon lithograph, Blanche Adler Memorial Fund, Baltimore Museum of Art

Do you love this as much as I? 

There she is, matey, the mother and wifey, whiling away at her "hobby" while her child drowns in the tub!  Now, what have you?  Send them back to the kitchen where they belong! Whoever heard of a woman writing?  I say, they don't know what a good world they've got. Look it how her house is all disheveled 'cuz she's paying no attention to what she should be doing! Bluestockings will be the last of these, I say they will! I'll see to it!

Thomas Nast (American, 1840-1902), Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!, ca. 1872, wood engraving, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

I don't know why this saddens me so much, to realize the artist, whom I have admired for many years, falls prey to the anti-feminist movement of the period which, I suppose, was harder to ignore than embrace, as many social movements are. 

While the woman in the center climbs a mountain with a drunk husband and children on her back, she says to Mrs. Satan, "I'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps." 

Mrs. Satan is Victoria Hull, a woman suffragist leader, who carries a sign: "Be saved by free love." 

Ms. Hull's cape has piping of a vulture's talons, no less. She was a woman of many achievements, drawing the scorn of the opposite sex as she introduced American audiences to the works of Karl Marx, was the first woman to operate a Wall Street brokerage firm, and was the first woman to run for president (1872). Read more about her here.

Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), Four Naked Women (Four Witches), 1497, engraving, Garrett Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art

You have to attend the exhibition to see the devil lurking behind the doorway on the left as he (he is a "he") colludes with these evil representations of humans whom Durer shows as sinister and tempting to all who glance upon them. In the center is a hanging globe with the year 1497 and the initials O.G.H. meaning "Oh God, save us" (from these monsters)!

Eugène Samuel Grasset (French, 1841-1917), Jeanne d'Arc /Sarah Bernhardt, 1890, color lithograph, gift of Henry E. Treide, Baltimore Museum of Art

According to museum label copy, Ms. Bernhardt, the world-renowned singer/actress, liked to think of herself as more than just a stage performer, and indeed she was! She directed, taught, wrote plays and textbooks, painted landscapes and sculpted. 

Above, she is pictured as none other than a 19th century Joan of Arc.

On Ms. Bernhardt's tour of North and Latin America in 1905, Wikipedia says she attracted controversy (her m.o., some might say) in Montreal where the Roman Catholic bishop encouraged his followers to throw eggs at her because she portrayed prostitutes as sympathetic characters.

Ms. Bernhardt had many lovers, the last of whom, an actor, was 37 years her junior.  Indeed!  The more I read about Ms. Bernhardt, the more I want to read. You see what art can do!  (Good art!)

Sarah Bernhardt (French, 1844 - 1923), Inkwell: Self-portrait as a Sphinx, 1880, bronze, Princeton University Library

Who knew that the divine Ms. B. was also a sculptress? Here she has cast herself in bronze, a  work she sometimes carried to concerts and put on display. While "tragedy" and "comedy" top her shoulders, she portrays herself as part bat, griffon, and fish which demonstrate her many interests.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901), Madame Réjane

1898, printed 1951, crayon lithograph with scraping, gift of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Baltimore Museum of Art

Gabrielle Réjane was a leading French actress of the early 20th century who also played on Broadway and in silent films. When she died, says Wikipedia, Paris "lost its soul" for she "was widely regarded as the embodiment of the Parisienne." Toulouse-Lautrec captured the liveliness and world of Paris on stage with his many drawings of the stars and dancers of the day.

James Van Der Zee (American, 1886-1983), Hazel Scott, 1936,

gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Hazel Scott was a jazz pianist and singer, born in Trinidad who moved with her mother to the U.S. A musical prodigy, she was only eight years old when she was offered scholarships to the Julliard School. She was the first black American to host her own television show, but after she testified before Joseph McCarthy's House on Un-American Activities Committee, her career floundered and she moved to Paris. From 1945 to 1960 she was married to U.S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and their son is Adam Clayton Powell III.

Listen to some of her music and see her perform here.

Martin Lewis (American, born Australia, 1881-1962), Shadow Dance

1930, drypoint and sandpaper ground, gift of Blanche Adler, Baltimore Museum of Art

Is this a photograph?  A print? A lithograph? The shadows and shapes captured my attention at the BMA show and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington which has the same work on view in the East Building. It reminds me of the famous photograph of Princess Diana holding two young children before she married Prince Charles.

Carl Van Vechten (American, 1880 - 1964), Bessie Smith, 1936

gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The "Empress of the Blues" grew up in Chattanooga where she sang on street corners with her brother playing the guitar, after their parents died and left the siblings in the care of an older sister.  By her early 20s, Bessie's popularity in the South and the East led to a career cumulating in 160 recordings for Columbia Records. The Great Depression almost ruined her career which a deadly car wreck in Mississippi in 1937  did end when Ms. Smith was 43.  Listen to her sing I Ain't Got Nobody on YouTube.

Belva Lockwood, left, with Dr. Mary Walker, c. 1912, photograph, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Ms. Lockwood was one of the first female lawyers in the U.S. and the first to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was a presidential candidate in 1882 and 1884 and the first woman whose name appeared on ballots. Sometimes Victoria Woodhull (see above) is listed as the first woman who ran for the presidency, but she was not old enough. (A candidate must be 35.)  

When Ms. Lockwood finished her coursework in Washington, D.C. at the National University School of Law (the predecessor of the George Washington University Law School), the school refused to grant her a diploma because she was a woman, and it was only after her plea to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who was the ex officio president of the school, that she was awarded a diploma and could finally practice law.

According to Wikipedia, a judge for the Maryland Bar Association lectured Ms. Lockwood "that God Himself had determined that women were not equal to men and never could be. When she tried to respond on her own behalf, he said she had no right to speak and had her removed from the courtroom."

She is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington.

Dr. Mary Walker is the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor and one of only eight civilians.  She was a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War and was arrested when she, the first U.S. female surgeon for the U.S. Army, crossed enemy lines to treat soldiers. 

An abolitionist, she was also an ardent suffragette who was frequently arrested for wearing men's clothing. Male attire was more comfortable, safer and more hygienic than long skirts which spread dirt and dust, she claimed. Despite years of criticism for dressing like a man, she stood her ground.

Dr. Walker died a year before the passage in 1919 of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote.

Currier & Ives (New York, 1857-1907), Woman’s Holy War. Grand Charge on the enemy’s works, c. 1874, lithograph, Library of Congress

Here we have a woman joining the 19th century temperance battle against the evils of alcohol.  Back then, maybe "she" wasn't so bad.

Sarah Choate Sears (American, 1858-1935), editor and publisher: Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946), Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 1907, gift of Cary Ross, Baltimore Museum of Art

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) wasn't such a "bad girl." 

Among many occupations, Ms. Howe was a poet who composed The Battle Hymn of the Republic sung thousands of times ever since it was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. She co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association and organized the Association for the Advancement of Women to help women improve their education and successfully enter the working world. 

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, "Nadar" (French, 1820-1910), George Sand, 1864, woodburytype (after Nadar negative), gift of Leland Rice, Baltimore Museum of Art

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876), was more popular than Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac during her heyday of the 1830s and 1840s in France. Some writers influenced by George Sand were Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,  Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf (below). 

Gisèle Freund (French, born Germany, 1908-2000), Virginia Woolf, 1939, color photograph, collection of Penelope S. Cordish

Ms. Woolf was an English writer (1882-1941) whose works "inspiring feminism" have been translated into more than 50 languages. Hear the only surviving recording of Ms. Woolf here.

The Baltimore Museum of Art/photo by Patricia Leslie

The entrance to the Baltimore Museum of Art, reminiscent of the new USPS stamp series featuring works by Cuban and New York artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999)/photo by Patricia Leslie

It's not all negative in the three small galleries featuring 75 European and American prints, photographs, books, and sculpture from Renaissance artists to the 20th century which show heroines, witches and femmes fatales, performers, new women, and authors.

Edvard Munch's famous Vampire of the woman with the long hair sucking blood from a man's neck plus all those evil, conniving Biblical women and Greek heroines women you've read about for years:  Eve, Delilah, and Salome, and Greek counterparts whose names have endured for their acts of maliciousness and murder:  Medusa and her snakes, Pandora, Judith, Phyllis are here.

After you've moved  through the first gallery of murder and mayhem, the second gallery brings a breath of airy escape to see the faces and works by independent women admired for the trails they have laid. 

It is likely that younger women may have no experiences with the inferior status older women have endured, or, at least, not in the same amounts. This exhibition is an introduction.

BMA's senior curator of prints, drawings and photographs, Andaleeb Badiee Banta, said she had been considering the idea for the exhibition for several years, beginning when she was at another institution, but it was not until she came to the BMA with its  exquisite collection of prints and drawings that she took the idea to museum management who said "yes" before she could finish her description of her proposal.

The show will be up for the anniversary of Women's Strike for Equality Day, first held on August 26, 1970 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which gave women the right to vote. 

This exhibition is supported by Nancy Hackerman, Clair Zamoiski Segal, Amy and Marc Meadows, Patricia Lasher and Richard Jacobs, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

What: Women Behaving Badly:  400 Years of Power & Protest

When: Wednesday - Sunday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. now through Dec. 19, 2021

Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

How much:  It's free! Reservations are required.

Getting there: From Washington, D.C. on the train, it's an easy, comfortable, and economical one-hour ride on the MARC train. Plenty of departures. Once at the Baltimore Penn Station, take the free Circulator shuttle north up Charles Street, get off at 31st and walk up the short hill. Directions and parking. 

Required:  Masks and free reservations.

For more information, call: (443) 573-1700
TDD: (410) 396-4930 and/or visit artbma.org.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Rating the Trump books

I haven't read the estimated 4,500 Trump books which is the amount the Guardian estimates has been published since he took office in 2017, but I have read a few which I rank for you below.

My choices are based on new information, style, interest, content, documentation, readability.

If you only have time to read one, the best, most interesting, the one which is most captivating, whose author still commands a daily audience (if you follow him on Twitter) is:

1.  Michael Cohen's Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. It's short and fast. In retrospect (I read it last year), I can't believe it's 432 pages for it seems like half that, which gives you an idea of the speed per page.

2.  John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened:  A White House Memoir, filled with lots of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes glimpses of what went on when Mr. Bolton spent 17 months in the Wild House. Lots of unexpected humor by means of the author's snarky comments. 592 pages.

3.  Mary Trump's Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.  She, of course, is his niece and a clinical psychologist.  Very quick. Short and not so sweet. 240 pages.

4.  Bob Woodward's Rage. A little dry in places, but, if you get this far, worth a read. 480 pages.

4.  (A Tie with Woodward's) Peter Strzok's Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.  I listened to this book by a former FBI assistant director.  Why the author doesn't sue Trump for defamation is beyond me. Perhaps Trump's office at the time protects him who can say whatever he wanted since that's what his content is. 387 pages.

I read about half of Brian Stelter's Hoax:  Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth until I finally realized (dumb me!  Read the sub-title!) it really was about Fox and who cares about Fox? Mr. Stelter is the host of CNN's Reliable Sources which airs every Sunday at 11 a.m. and which I try not to miss. 448 pages.

If you have recommendations and/or comments, please write up!  Thank you.

I be done with Trump and his books (I hope!).

patricialesli@gmail.com

John Bolton's hilarious 'Room' of their own

You just thought Trump's White House was chaotic. Readers, not only was it chaotic, but John Bolton is here to tell you it was lots more than that!

I may not agree with the author's politics, but I can sure laugh at his anecdotes from his short (17 months) tenure in the Wild House. It's nothing short of rockhouse madness.

Bolton must have carried a secret microphone/recorder inside his breast pocket for his recollections of so many fine details of the day-to-day chaos in Trumpland, described in The Room Where It Happened.

I detected no conceit, no self-applause, no boastings in his memoir. When Trump complimented Bolton's "'troika of tyranny'" speech, Bolton reminded him that one of the president's own speechwriters had written it (p. 249). 

Bolton's snide comments ricochet throughout the book; some of the highlights:

He writes more than once:  "You couldn't make this up" referring to the daily frenzy engulfing the administration (258). 

His background on Venezuela and the Middle East makes all those WAPO editorials easier to understand. 

"God only knew who he [Trump] was talking to or whether he had just gotten a case of the vapors* because things were still uncertain." 

After an attack in the Gulf of Oman, Trump believed "that if you pretended bad things hadn't happened, perhaps no one else would notice" (392).

("I found these weekly trade meetings so chaotic I largely left them for {Charles} Kupperman to attend, which punishment he didn't deserve, but life is hard" (460).)  Kupperman was the deputy national security advisor. 

At the G20 trade summit in Buenos Aires, no one knew "from one minute to the next" what Trump would say. He envied Xi Jinping's lifelong term as Chinese ruler and told Xi, "that people" in the U.S. were clamoring for an end to the president's two-term limit. 

Writes Bolton: "I was aware of no such chatter" (297).

Bolton didn't like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin too much. 

At the G20, Bolton writes Mnuchin spent the day "beavering" with China's #3 man, Liu He (296).  After all, Mnuchin was a "panda hugger"(290).

Munchin got all excited at China's agreement to purchase more soybeans "just as if we were a Third World commodity supplier to the Middle Kingdom" (297).

During the Venezuelan revolution, Mnuchin worried about the banking sector and the risk to credit card companies. Bolton reminded him that the thousands protesting in the streets, "the poorest people" did not have, nor were they "thinking about Visa and Mastercard!" (269). 

Bolton was only too happy to announce to principals that he thought "Treasury was not entitled to its own foreign policy" like Mnuchin desired (273). 

Mnuchin spent so much time in the White House, on presidential trips and in California ("who for some reason was in California again" (258)*) that they "'hardly recognize him in his building,' said [John] Kelly disdainfully" (241).

Mnuchnin, was "basically a Democrat" who maintained "his campaign for doing nothing" (252).

Bolton was not a big fan of Defense Secretary James Mattis either whom he continually portrays as a cry baby. 

If "his view didn't prevail, which was standard operating procedure for him: stress that timing was urgent, which is what Mattis said when it suited him, and predict doom and gloom if he didn't get his way" (176).  "Mattis obstructionism at work" (190) ....Trump never liked him either: "a Democrat." 

Preparing for the meeting with Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Bolton worried about the "daily explosions everyone became inured to in the Trump White House."

Bolton says another Trump-Kim Jong Um summit looked "depressingly inescapable" for Trump was hot-to-trot and get a deal done with Kim. It was not to be.

With his good buddy, Shinzo Abe of Japan, Trump lamented the fact that Abe's father was unsuccessful as a World War II kamikaze pilot, forgetting that, had his father achieved his goal, there would have been no good buddy Abe, born after the war. "Mere historical details." says Bolton (345).

Remember the columnist, Charles Krauthammer (1950 - 2018)? Not a Trump fan. He told Bolton he'd been wrong to characterize Trump as an 11-year-old: "'I was off by ten years'" (8).

While leaving the White House after his job interview, Bolton writes he felt like he was in a college dorm, with people going in and out doors. Wasn't there a crisis underway to try and repeal Obamacare? Bolton didn't recognize the place (18).

At the Trumps' first state ceremony with French President Emmanuel and Mrs. Macron: "Sadly for the press, nothing went wrong" (68). 

"Later, the black-tie state dinner was very nice, if you like eating until 10:30" p.m. With the John Kellys, the Boltons skipped the after-dinner entertainment and went home (70).

At Trump's Turnberry* Scottish golf resort, Greenpeace* breached security by flying an "ungainly contraption," akin to a "a bicycle with wings" hauling a flowing banner which said Trump was "below par." The Secret Service hustled Trump and later, Bolton and Kelly, inside before anyone could look at it too long, although Bolton wanted to prolong his viewing.

On a visit to London and Scotland, Trump called the US and UK relationship, "'the highest level of special,'" which Bolton called "a new category."

Trump repeatedly instructed his staff to avoid criticizing Russia too much publicly (179).

In a "discussion" with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told the Turkish leader that Christians were "going crazy" about Turkey's incarceration of American pastor, Andrew Brunson, and Erdogan responded that Moslems in Turkey were "going crazy" and Trump interrupted him to say "they were going crazy all over the world."  

Writes Bolton: "If possible, the conversation went downhill thereafter" (184-185).

Don't forget Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN. Not only were the Turks unable to understand what she was trying to negotiate, neither could the Trump team (186).

The "Haley Problem" included her belief that the US ambassador to the UN was the Secretary of State. 

From everything Bolton heard "including directly from Trump, she and Tillerson [Rex Tillerson, secretary of state] cordially detested one another (well, maybe not cordially)." She wanted to visit India and visit the Dalai Lama:  "The purpose of this trip was unclear, other than getting a photo op with the Dalai Lama, always good for an aspiring pol" (238).

When Bolton was at the Justice Department, "we called the Southern District [of New York] the 'Sovereign District of New York' because it so often resisted control by 'Main Justice,' let alone the White House" (185-186).   

Discussion about the Korean War and its aftermath involved a continual re-education of the president as Bolton tried to enlighten him about that history.  

Why "were we still there?" Trump complained. "Every few days, someone would inadvertently press a button somewhere, and Trump would be repeating his lines from the same movie soundtrack" (210).

It's easy to understand why Trump did everything he could to stop, to stall, to change the content of this book (491). Like so many tomes, it reveals him to be the Emperor of No Content. 

* Although there are several references to Mnuchin and his trips to California, California is omitted from the otherwise good index, as are other words (vapors, Greenpeace, etc.). 

Coming up: I rate the Trump books!

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