Picasso sells out at the Frist

The Frist Art Museum, Nashville/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Inside the galleries at the Frist/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Barefoot Girl,  1895. La Coruna. Loaned by Musée national Picasso-Paris. 

Picasso was only 13 when he painted this amazing working-class girl which shows his empathy for the subject, according to the label.  It's among the first of many seated women he painted such as the one below he made 37 years later.  Someone said they were birds in a cage.  (Picasso's cage.) 

Reading Woman, 1932. Boisgeloup. Musée national Picasso-Paris. 

This is of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's lover at the time and featured below in The Sculptor.  Marie was only 17 and almost 30 years younger than Picasso who was married when they met.  A standard line:  "You have an interesting face.  I would love to do a portrait of you," (according to Frist lecturers, Terri Cohen and Peg Werts, who gave one of many fine online sessions the Frist offered at no charge.  Dr. Werts paraphrased Picasso:  "I paint people as I think them, not as I see them.")

Picasso featured Marie-Thérèse Walter in many works, and in 1935, their daughter, Maya, was born.  Four years after Picasso died, Marie committed suicide.

Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937. Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Picasso took up with Dora Maar in 1936 at the time of the outbreak of Spanish Civil War when he was still involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter and married to Olga Khokhlova. Ms. Maar, a photographer, was instrumental in Picasso's development of Guernica.* She challenged him intellectually, according to the Frist online talk given by Ms. Cohen and Ms. Werts.  

Picasso often pictured Ms. Maar crying, easy enough to understand after he shoved aside women when another, more desirable woman crossed his way, such as Francoise Gilot, a Picasso relationship which led to Ms. Maar's breakdown and reclusiveness.

She split with him in 1943, regained strength and began to paint. Right on, sister!

This work was featured on the cover of the booklet at the Frist show. 

At the exhibition, my son, William, asked me how Picasso was able to attract so many women:  "It was not looks!" I exclaimed. Women are attracted to fame, power, and money, all Picasso possessions, I told him, which explains why ugly men have beautiful wives. For a while, anyway.

Man with a Guitar, 1911-1913. Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris

Can you find the man's moustache, the wall molding, and the rosette on the mandolin?  Good!  You may become an art historian!  The label said this "is characteristic of analytical cubism, which aimed to restore the three-dimensionality of a subject on a single surface by translating it into geometric facets." (?)  Translate that and you may become an author, too!

Both online sessions at the Frist which I attended featured this work.  Despite its connection to surrealism, the painter denied he was a surrealist.

Mother and Child, 1907, Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris

The label said this rendering reflects the artist's fascination with Iberian, African, and Oceanian sculpture and was probably inspired by a Romanesque Virgin and Child Picasso would have seen in Gosol where he stayed in 1906.

Inside the galleries at the Frist, visitors watch a film of Picasso in motion/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Woman with a Ruffle, 1926. Juan-les-Pins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The Sculptor, 1931. Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The label noted the artist's early 1930s were marked by sculpture. Here a bearded man meditates at a statue of Picasso's lover at the time, Marie- Thérèse Walter. Mingling figures characterized much of  Picasso's 1920s output, which carried over into the next decade.

The Bathers, 1918. Biarritz. Musée national Picasso-Paris

Picasso painted this while honeymooning with the Russian ballerina, Olga Khokhlova, whom he had met the previous year and to whom he was married, despite many affairs, until she died in 1955, according to the online presentation at the Frist by Teri Cohen and Peg Werts.  (In an earlier online Frist talk, Amy Von Lintel and Leonard Folgarait also featured this work.)

The Bathers is modeled after Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres' Turkish Bath.  Dr. Folgarait noted that although the figures are touching themselves, they look away from the viewer.

Head of a Bearded Man, 1938. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Man with a Straw Hat and Ice Cream Cone, 1938. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Child with Doves, 1943.  Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Although labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis, Picasso remained in Paris during the war years of Nazi occupation, 1940 to 1944 when he painted this large, malformed child holding a rattle, with two doves nearby, all enclosed in a somber setting, perhaps underground, perhaps inside a tomb.

Picasso, his art and his public, 1968. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Woman Reading, 1935, Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The Kiss, 1931. Musee national Picasso-Paris. Made in Paris, loaned by Paris, It must be a French kiss...oooohhhhh. The better to bite you, Madam.  This man resembles a cow and the mark of Zorro connects the two in the sheets. Note how the man's eyes are open; the woman's, closed.  Remember what I said about ugly men?  Who would want to see this monstrosity anyway and she is kissing him! Yeech!

In the Picasso galleries at the Frist/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Woman with a Baby Carriage, 1950, bronze. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Picasso began recycling objects he found on the street long before collecting discarded objects for art became popular. 

Using abandoned objects he found in Vallauris, France where he was living, the sculptor combined them with a baby carriage, a frying pan, and plaster molds he made into the woman's arms and head/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Sunday, 1971. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Musician, 1972. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The Family, 1970, Mougins.  Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The label copy noted this was characteristic of the artist's "final period" with its "deceptively naive handling of the figures," suggesting the influences of the 17th century (?).

At the back of the Frist Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
If you missed Picasso Figures at the Frist Art Museum, here are many of the most intriguing works I found at the only venue for this exhibition in the U.S.

Several of these were featured by guest lecturers speaking at free online sessions hosted by the Frist whom I heard before I saw the show.

The 75 or so pieces on display included paintings, sculptures, works on paper, including a film of him at work, loaned to the Frist by the Musée national Picasso-Paris,  the beneficiary of donations by his family who battled each other for years over his estate.  He left no will but just about 45,000 works, not only his own, but paintings by other notable artists.

The Picasso-Paris claims to hold the largest collection of Picassos in the world.

The value of his estate today is estimated between $530 million and $1.3 billion.

Before Picasso Figures moved on to Quebec, the Frist extended it for a week, until Mother's Day. The timed-entry tickets quickly sold out.

It was a large presentation, spread over several galleries, almost encompassing the Frist's entire first floor of exhibition space. Although the number of viewers attending was enormous, there was plenty of elbow room in the large rooms, and overcrowding was never a problem.

(When I spy an empty space in front of any work at a popular show, I rush up to it, to have it all to myself, at least for a few seconds, until someone else joins me and enters my space. At least, I've "had it" all by myself for a few moments and eventually, I get to the most popular works where solitary looking is seldom experienced.)


I was lucky to be able to attend two of the museum's online sessions about the show, excellent in every respect. (Contract stipulations prohibited recordings of these events.) 

I wondered if Picasso's misogyny would be mentioned, and Terri Cohen and Peg Werts did not disappoint, especially in this time of "Me Too," Ms. Cohen said.  

"He was cruel and abusive to women throughout his life.  His behavior cannot be excused." She said some Frist members were unhappy the museum presented the show, and I wonder if his maltreatment of women played a role in other museums in the U.S. shunning the show, if they did. Was the fact that the show was only presented at one museum in the U.S. venue related to covid-19 or funding? 

What was the reason?

Can it be that after a while, the renderings became rather boring and repetitive? The crazy, disjointed, ugly figures? Maybe with the attention to women's rights and the increasing acceptance of us as equals, Picasso will fall from favor or perhaps the descent has already begun. One can hope!

When in Nashville, visit the Frist, housed on Broadway in the former home of Nashville's main U.S. Post Office building, an art deco gorgeous structure, with or without art on display.

*Guernica was not part of this show, Ms. Cohen and Ms. Werts said. Beginning in 1937,  it was kept on and off at the Museum of Modern Art for safekeeping, to tour the world before MOMA returned it reluctantly to Spain in 1981. 

It is one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. 

patricialesli@gmail.com
















Roboto

'Wrath of Man' explodes on the screen

Dear Carla,

A movie for Thor! But, maybe not for you.

Sigh: It's hard to please everyone all of the time.

Because the Wrath of Man had a Rotten Tomatoes audience rating of 91% and a critics' rating of 67%, I knew it was likely to be good since the critics get them wrong about 98% of the time.

It was either this or Billy Crystal's new film, Here Today (audience rating, 93%; critics, 46%) which looked so predictable (old man meets younger woman, you know the score, ho hum, yawn) so I opted for Wrath and I am glad I did!

Jason Statham (left) and Josh Hartnett in Guy Ritchie's Wrath of Man

Yowsers, Christine!  (You won't like it; stay home)

When I entered the theatre, I wondered if I would have to leave midway through the show since the future is not known, I'm not a big fan of violence, but I do like the motion more than what you get from rocking chairs, especially after wasting time and money on the dull and lifeless (no puns intended) No Man's Land and Holy Moly.

 
I was the only woman in the moviehouse.  Which turned out to be OK. 

Ladies, this is not for the squeamish. This is a guy flick; not chick lit.

From the get-go, it was heave ho! And away we go. No time to catch a breath or doze a spell (see above). It was great to see a 21st century flick, guns ablazing, without... (hold your breath), female nudity. 

Thank you, producers and director!

And no sex (to speak of). Not, the porno kind.  Which just goes to show you, gratuitous sex is unnecessary for a really good show!

Plenty of bad words though, not sprinkled in the show, but flooding throughout, natch, which I was able to quickly ignore once I set my gears on "speed."

A "taut thriller" whose rage is transferred to the moviegoer.  You can almost feel the walls vibrate with his anger.  Something's up. 

It takes eight minutes for the SWAT team to arrive?

The time sequences go back and forth a bit too much, out of order, but that doesn't slow things down. Who needs time when your heart is beating nonstop?

The music by Christopher Benstead was initially terrific before it quickly became monotonous, the same repetitive sequences with the boom! boom! boom of the bass and drums. (No need to take your hearing aids. Matter of fact, you may need some after the show.)

The Washington Post reviewer suggested Ritchie and the star, Jason Statham (shades of Bruce Willis) were a mite too old, almost "has-beens," to be bringing all this mad action to the screen, to which I retort: Bring it on, fellows! I'll have some more of that (this).

Although the acting by most of the cast was not as sharp as I think it could have been, who cares when the story line was far better than most of the ones I've seen this year?


You don't need a description, do you? Let's just say, I'll never glance at money trucks the same way again.

This was my first Ritchie/Statham  film, and should I be embarrassed that I liked it? Violence and all? Moviegoers, it is solid entertainment! That's all we want at the movie house, right?

Now, who is the bad guy(s)? Give 'em H!

Some of the guys in Guy Ritchie's Wrath of Man

patricialesli@gmail.com

'Emily Dickinson' stars in Alexandria

Karen Jadloss Shotts is Emily Dickinson in Little Theatre of Alexandria's The Belle of Amherst/Photo by Matthew Liptak

It's a delight to sing the tune without the words and celebrate National Poetry Month with Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), her life and poems which the Little Theatre of Alexandria does in its new production, The Belle of Amherst.

Karen Jadlos Shotts is an energetic Emily in this one-actor, two-act autobiographical sketch by William Luce, directed by Frank D. Shutts, II. who is the LTA president and director of more than 70 shows, 27 at LTA.

Before I even got to the theatre, I liked what I expected to hear and see, Emily Dickinson's poetry in person, on a stage by a character in dress!

I was not disappointed.

Ms. Shotts is much more animated than I would have imagined the reclusive Ms. Dickinson to be. She enlivens the poet's life realistically with imaginary conversations with the scholar, "Mr. Higginson," with family members and with others.

Karen Jadloss Shotts is Emily Dickinson in Little Theatre of Alexandria's The Belle of Amherst/Photo by Matthew Liptak

She glides across the stage almost non-stop from one side to the other, flowing like her words, and stopping sometimes to extend her hands and stretch her arms high overhead like a cat yawning. She removes her long white apron and then puts it on again, all the while delivering Emily Dickinson's best-known works and describing her life.

I tie my Hat—

I crease my Shawl— 

Life's little duties do—

precisely— 

As the very least Were infinite—to me—

A silver tea set becomes useful when Emily has a cup or two with her imaginary guests in the family's Victorian house in Amherst, Massachusetts where Emily spent the majority of her adult life.

She speaks negatively of her nosy neighbors 

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog! 

and speaks glowingly of her father, and only after his death does her ill mother make an "appearance."

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes – 
I wonder if It weighs like Mine – 
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long – 
Or did it just begin – 
I could not tell the Date of Mine – 
It feels so old a pain – 

I wonder if it hurts to live – 
And if They have to try – 
And whether – could They choose between – 
It would not be – to die – 

The play follows Emily's life until death, always accompanied by her poetry and much-welcome splices of humor.  Was she humorous?

I could not conceive that LTA's Emily would stay cooped up in a house for years as Emily Dickinson chose to live. But, the director begs the actor's animation and energy to keep the production moving, necessary to sustain attention in today's world, much better than watching the poet sit at a desk and mouth the words.

This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me —

The simple News that Nature told

With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed

To Hands I cannot see —

For love of Her — Sweet — countrymen

Judge tenderly — of Me 

Myke Taister has created a nicely filled, almost overcrowded set of Emily's bedroom and. a few steps below, the family parlor with lots to see and distract from poetry: framed photographs, paintings, lamps, windows on either side of the stage and curtains rustling with the wind.

Sound by Janice Rivera and Donna Hauprich is excellent, just the right amount and volume, as horses and carriages come and go outside Emily's windows, and music and church bells can be heard at other times.

In her room 

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

And she

I never saw a Moor —
I never saw the Sea —
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given —

Jean Schlichting and Kit Sibley have fashioned under Emily's apron a dull candlelight long dress which fits Ms. Shotts like a large potato sack from neck to floor. Arms covered, of course, and all in a shade of white which is what Emily Dickinson always wore:  An angel of poetry?

In program notes Director Shutts hopes that LTA's illumination of Ms. Dickinson will provide guests with "a greater appreciation" of the poet and "how her phosphorescence now shines brighter than her contemporaries!"

It does!

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – 
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity – 

Emily Dickinson fans will want to rush and get tickets to see and hear the poet speak her songs.
Several of the shows are sold out.

LTA is seating about 25 percent of its capacity, strictly following covid-guidelines for masks and social distancing,



Other Belle of Amherst production members include Russell M. Wyland, producer; Melanie "Mim" Blower and Marg Soroos, stage managers; Jeff Auerbach and Kimberly Crago, lighting; Helen Bard-Sobola and Bobbie Herbst, properties; Chanel Lancaster, make-up; Robin Maline, hair.What: The Belle of Amherst by William Luce


When: Now through May 15, 2021, Wednesday through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m.


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


Tickets: Start at $24. Several shows are sold out.

Duration: About 90 minutes with one 10-minute pause.

Public transportation: Check the Metro and Dash bus websites.

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

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

Asklta@thelittletheatre.com


patricialesli@gmail.com

'Mole Agent' is dull...dull...s n o r e ....

Moviegoers, Mole Agent ranks near the bottom of my "Worst Movies I Have Ever Seen" list along with the dreadful Nomadland and the famed cat movie. 

I should have known from the title.

Save your time!  And your money!  

The only action here are the fluttering clothes on the line and the flowers waving in the breeze.

An old man becomes a resident at a nursing home, ostensibly as an undercover agent to find out whether the nursing home is as bad as some suspect.

Compared to the nursing homes I have visited, this place is the Taj Mahal (and not as lively as the marble and stones you find there). 

This is the inside of a grave.  

Let's go!

This is billed as a "drama/documentary," but I call it a drama for those who need a doc. 

Yes, yes, yes!  Actual residents are many of the "actors."  Does that make it any better?

Nyet!

Why did I go see it?  Good question.

#1. I was starved for a movie, any movie (and any movie is what I got).

#2. The audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes was an 84 (compared to the critics' 95) which was a big hint about the "action" to come because if you think about it (after I had seen it) the only members of the audience who'd pay to see this thing and rate it are those not interested in action!  

Get it?  Now, I do!  

And the critics!  The critics!  Why they'd give Nomadland a 94!  

I tell you:  A sleeping mole in a hole has more action than this. 

Ho hum, I suppose this has a market in the 15,600 nursing homes found in the U.S., and, as for the rest of the world, don't they care for their elderly besides stashing them in these horrible places?  

Whatever. 

Dear Carla, this is not a movie for Thor. 

patricialesli@gmail.com

Salem's witches, worth a trip

 

The Salem Witch Trials 1692  was on exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts which featured era pieces, belongings of the participants, and paintings, several shown below. Another witch exhibition is set at the Peabody this fall, Sept. 18, 2021 through March 20, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie 

The entrance to the Peabody Essex Museum where popular witch exhibitions enlighten museum goers/Photo by Patricia Leslie

What has captured the attention of these children at the Peabody Essex Museum?/Photo by Patricia Leslie

It was the Examination of a Witch, 1853 by Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1813-1883), Peabody Essex Museum/Photo by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey R. Dykes

Detail of Examination of a Witch, 1853 by Tompkins Harrison Matteson, Peabody Essex Museum, which the artist depicted 160 years after the event. Note the animal-like claws of the hands of the woman in red kneeling on the right as she examines a victim whose skin eruptions gave the witch police proof the undressed woman was evil. The woman in center with the red kerchief has the look of a witch herself as she points to imperfect skin on the back of the young woman. Behind her, a helmeted soldier holds a spear used to hold back curious crowds. At the Peabody exhibition, a similar spear hung on the wall and may be seen above in the photo of the children on the floor. Mr. Matteson based his painting on an event in Boston which occurred in a public tavern, a common location for these testimonies.

William Drage (c. 1637-1669), Daimonomageia: A Small Treatise of Sicknesses and Diseases from Witchcraft, and Supernatural Causes, 1665, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum. Mr. Drage was an English physician and apothecary whose thinking about witches came to America with settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Cures for witchcraft included hanging rosemary, ivy, and mistletoe inside the house. You can forget about kissing under the mistletoe, unless ..../Photo by Patricia Leslie

This book, Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 1677, was written by John Webster (1611-1682), a witchcraft skeptic who nevertheless believed some could practice the craft naturally using the sciences of astronomy, botany or alchemy. (The spotlight in the left corner is from overhead lights.) From the Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie

These are the walking sticks belonging to George Jacobs Sr., an elderly man put to death by testimony from his granddaughter, Margaret, who recanted...too late.  They were a gift in 1918 to the Peabody Essex Museum from Allen Jacobs, presumably related to Mr. Jacobs. In the background is a rendition of Mr. Jacobs's trial by Tompkins Harrison Matteson.  (Please see below.)/ Photo by Patricia Leslie

The granddaughter of George Jacobs, Sr. sentences her grandfather to death in Tompkins Harrison Matteson's Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, 1855, which the artist painted 163 years after Mr. Jacobs's trial and execution.  Although Margaret recanted her testimony, she was too late, and her grandfather, shown in the lower right with his hands extended, begging for mercy, was led to the gallows. The woman with her outstretched arms to the right of Margaret may be her mother, Rebecca, also accused of witchcraft. Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of R. W. Ropes, 1859/Photo by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey R. Dykes

Detail from Tompkins Harrison Matteson, Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, 1855, Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of R. W. Ropes, 1859.

On the wall at the Peabody is a quote from Thomas Maule's 1695 Truth Held Forth And Maintained/Photo by Patricia Leslie

It was not until 2016 that Proctor's Ledge was confirmed by researchers from the University of Virginia to be the site of the hangings of 19 "witches.' Scientists were led to the place by the findings of Salem resident Sidney Perley who, in 1921, questioned the long-identified summit of Gallows Hill on the outskirts of Salem as the hanging place. Mr. Perley said his research pointed to what is called, for unknown reasons, Proctor's Ledge which is at the base of the hill. He was proven right.

A dedication of the memorial was held July 19, 2017, the 325th anniversary of the hangings of Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Wildes.  Millions of Americans are related to the "witches" hung at Salem, including my own children, related by their father to Rebecca Nurse.

The 19 victims' names are carved in stone in a semi-circle around a "single oak tree, as a symbol of endurance and dignity," according to the city's website. The crooked sign in the upper left is a reminder to wear masks during covid times/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Proctor's Ledge, the memorial to the witch victims in Salem, MA/Photo by Patricia Leslie

 

Proctor's Ledge, the memorial to the witch victims in Salem, MA, where from the left, victims' names are Bridget Bishop, hung on June 10, 1692, and Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, and Rebecca Nurse, the latter four hung on July 19, 1692. Outside the picture is the name of Sarah Wildes, also hung on July 19, 1692/Photo by Patricia Leslie

l

Proctor's Ledge stones are dedicated, from the left, to the memories of George Jacobs, Sr., whose granddaughter, Margaret betrayed him, John Proctor, Sr., and John Willard, all of whom were hung on August 19, 1692/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Proctor's Ledge, the memorial to the witch victims in Salem, MA/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Proctor's Ledge, the memorial to the witch victims in Salem, MA/Photo by Patricia Leslie

A day ends in Salem, Massachusetts which my sister says is a haunted and crowded place at Halloween/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Just when you think you've heard it all,
a Michigan politician calls female competitors in his state, "witches" to be burned at the stake.  

Like me, he must have been the only person older than 50 years who lives east of the Mississippi River who has not visited Salem, Massachusetts, the location of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and 1693 where 25 persons were killed or died as the result of mass hysteria. 

Nineteen of the witch victims were hung; one man, Giles Corey, was literally "pressed" to death with heavy weights as punishment for his "craft"; five victims died in jail.

One was an infant, Mercy Good, who never knew life outside the prison where she was born and where she died before her mother, Sarah Good, was hanged.

Mercy had a sister, Dorothy, who was also confined to the jail with inadequate circulation, a dirt floor, and crude sanitary facilities. Dorothy was incarcerated for more than eight months, chained to prison walls and although she wasn't put to death like her mother, family members said she suffered from the effects of her imprisonment for the rest of her life. 

Dorothy was five years old when she was jailed.

The witchcraft scare in Salem began with the telling of tall tales by a slave, Tituba, to young girls, confined to their home prisons during the harsh winter and having nothing better to do than to listen and spin yarns of their own.

As a child of about nine years old, I recall stumbling across this sad chapter in American history in an encyclopedia which I never forgot. I can still recall the illustrations and as an adult, the absurdity of it all and man's inhumanity to man, much like Ron Weiser.

Thanks to an excellent display at the Peabody Essex Museum right in the heart of Salem, visitors can become better educated about the hysteria, rumors, and seizures which can overtake crowd behavior and expand. The Peabody is hosting two exhibitions about the witches this year, with remnants and artifacts from the trials and the people involved.  

I was at Salem about the time Ron Weiser was spewing his female hatred like a snake. For him, I highly recommend a visit to Salem and to the Peabody Essex Museum to see this fall's shows which may cause Mr. Weiser to shed his snake skin and rethink his poison and what it can become. 

May I be so bold to suggest "GoFund Me" for his visit with excess funds to be donated to female candidates? 

The Peabody Essex Museum was founded in 1799, only 37 years after the trials, and prides itself as the country’s oldest continuously operating museum.

On a different note, at Turner's Seafood Restaurant, my pal, Maureen, and I had an excellent dinner outdoors in 37 degrees, but the wind was calm, we were dressed warmly (made comfortable by the restaurant's nearby standing heaters), and the warm chocolate lava cake provided its own pleasures.  

Salem is about 30 minutes north of Boston's Logan Airport.

What: The Salem Witch Trials, Sept. 18, 2021 through March 20, 2022.

When:  Open Thursday-Sunday, 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.

Where:  Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, 161 Essex Street, Salem, MA 01970

Tickets:  

Adults, $20; seniors (65 and older), $18; students (with i.d.), $12, youth 16 and under, Salem residents, and members, no charge. 

For more information:  978-745-9500, 866-745-1876 and visit pem.org. 

patricialesli@gmail.com

 

Press \\ Press Releases

PEM announces fall exhibition schedule

 

'Courier' is worth admission price

 

Yay!  The movies are back!

It's not the greatest spy movie I've ever seen but it will do in these days of entertainment starvation.  Especially after wasting time and money on the austere, the horrible, the boring Nomadland.

At the same movie house on a Saturday night at the same show time, the audience had swelled to about 25 from the poor audience showing for Nomadland.  

Carla, I think Thor will like The Courier. It's based on a true-life tale of a British spy ring working to obtain Soviet Union  nuclear secrets which preceded the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Merab Ninidze, left, is Soviet spy, Oleg Penkovsky, who transmits secrets to The Courier, Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, right).

Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) are wooden and robotic government agents who recruit the where-am-I? salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) to transmit secrets from the Soviet Union. 

Starting the action is information supplied by Soviet double-agent, Oleg Penkovsky, portrayed by Merab Ninidze who steals the show. Besides Mr. Cumberbatch, he's the only one who legitimately conveys his character with aplomb, however, Vladimir Olegovich Chuprikov does a good job as Nikita Krushchev.  The rest of the cast is generally lifeless.

In another time and place, The Courier likely would not gain as many nods as it is receiving now, but this is now, and not then or when.

 patricialesli@gmail.com

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Book review: 'Daughters of Yalta,' a must for Russian and WWII history buffs

Sex, lives, and history are all parts of the sagas in Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz who describes the lives of three young women who attended the 1945 Yalta Conference with their dads, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Averill Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The conference was a meeting of Great Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, considered the "Big Three" World War II allies, to discuss strategies on Russia's Black Sea for the ending of the war and what to do with Poland and Germany.

For those who may not be historians like I am not, the book sheds light on the ending of WWII and the division of Germany and how countries' borders are sometimes determined as much as cutting a pie to pieces.

The Daughters were Sarah Churchill, 30, who later became an actress; Kathy Harriman, 27, who lived with her dad in Moscow for several years before Yalta and spoke fluent Russian which came in handy at the conference; and Anna Roosevelt, 38, who constantly worried about her father's health. (He died two months after the conference ended.)

The book details the day-to-day (sometimes hourly) activities the trio enjoyed (or tolerated): their day trips, room arrangements, negotiations, love affairs, late nights and social hours with fine descriptions of meals including a Russian dinner which started at 9 p.m. and ended at 1 a.m., with 45 toasts, 20 courses (fried horse mackerel was one dish), 24 male guests, and Mss. Churchill, Harriman, and Roosevelt.


(The Russians always tried to outdo themselves with huge splashes of generosity, omnipresent vodka and the modernization of a Romanov palace for use as lodging at the conference.)

Kathy Harriman knew about her dad's affair with Pamela Churchill (whom he married 26 years later); Sarah Churchill knew about her sister-in-law's affair with the ambassador; Anna knew about her father's affair with Lucy Mercer, as daughter even helped arrange trysts and attempted to keep the relationship hidden from her mother, Eleanor. (Talk about mother/daughter relationships!)

The Americans and Russians expected their rooms were bugged. They were. Soviet spy Alger Hiss, a representative of the U.S. at Yalta, figures predominately in the book.

FDR worked hard to preserve his relationship with Stalin which Churchill resisted. The Americans and the British wanted to stop Russia from overtaking Poland to also serve as notice for other East European nations.

FDR worked out a secret agreement with Stalin for the Soviets to declare war in the Pacific which they did two days after the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima August 6, 1945. The Japanese surrendered August 15, 1945.

President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill both believed the conference was a success but worldwide criticism began almost immediately when it ended. French leader Charles de Gaulle was furious France was excluded from Yalta.

FDR looked exceedingly ill at the conference, and his constant smoking exacerbated his condition. When he died, Moscow honored his memory by hanging red flags with black borders throughout the city.

At the Washington History Seminar where Ms. Katz delivered her book in rapid-fire delivery last month (possibly trying to get as much in before her time expired), Allida Black, an Eleanor Roosevelt scholar and a panelist on the program asked Ms. Katz why she had mostly ignored ER in her book which Ms. Katz denied, but I have to agree with Dr. Black. Unlike the roles played by Clementine Churchill and Marie Harriman, mothers of the other two "daughters," "ER" commands little space.

Until I got going in the book, I thought (and hoped) Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, might be one of the main characters; nyet.

And it's hardly likely she would have been, said Serhii Plokhii, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard and another panelist at the WHS presentation.

At the time of the Yalta Conference, according to Dr. Plokhii, Svetlana was only19 and hardly one to be supported by her dad. Although she did speak English, she was traumatized as a teen to learn her mother had died from suicide. Svetlana had married in her teen years, and her father refused to meet the groom. It was not the best of times for father and daughter's relationship.

Neither Wikipedia nor History.com have any mention of the daughters on their Yalta pages nor does History.com list Averill Harriman.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until the end of the book that I discovered the listing of key delegates, but I found myself often using the essential map showing the lodging locations and the Black Sea and the Allies' meeting place. Thank you, author and publisher, for including!

It was difficult at times for me to keep the three women separate, and more in-depth biography about each at the beginning of the book would have helped and referencing them by whole names instead of first names only.

The book doesn't end with Yalta: Ms. Katz fills us in on the lives of the three women until their deaths; some, sad; some, happy and glamorous as is life, told in Sarah Churchill's autobiography Keep on Dancing, published in 1981, the year before she died, in Christopher Ogden's biography of Pamela Harriman, Life of the Party; and among the pages of Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt, edited by Bernard Asbell.

Biographies of Ms. Harriman and Ms. Roosevelt have yet to be published.

For the second Daughters' edition, I wish for photos of Clementine Churchill and Marie Harriman.

Ms. Katz said the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, became interested early on in her book and paid her expenses.  She spent 18 months conducting research, she said at the WHS, and 18 months writing.

patricialesli@gmail.com

No box office success for 'Nomadland'

Frances McDormand and David Strathairn in one of the livelier scenes from Nomadland/Searchlight Pictures

(This is not to knock the people who live and enjoy this lifestyle. This is about the movie.)

To each her own. 

Whatever floats your boat.

Fans your van.

Pandemic or no pandemic, the movie house hosted all of three people on a Saturday night, and there's a reason for that!

Carla, preserve your marriage with Thor and don't dare drag him to see this.

Why pay to sleep when you can do that at home?

This is another one of those flicks made for the critics, much like that awful cat movie by the Coen Brothers, one of whom happens to be married to Frances McDormand, the star and Nomadland co-producer. (I can just see the family sitting around a home bonfire and discussing how they will make their next joyless movie, like Woody Allen's which continue to bomb.)

Talk about a downer. This has got it all. The only thing missing was an attack or some other act of violence coming in the middle of the night which would have pumped up the adrenalin, at least a little.

In-between walks in the desert to contemplate dust, "Fern" urinates, she defecates (and where shall we put it?  There's actually a discussion of this!), and swims naked.  Naturally!  Where would a good art film be without the de rigueur full-frontal female nude?  Where's the male nude?

It would have been difficult to make Ms. McDormand look much worse than she does here, but I'll bet the makeup artist for Nomadland had nomakeland to apply, if one were even one hired for the show. Why bother?

Nomadland  has a few redeeming qualities like the music (by Ludovico Einaudi), the harsh and dry Western scenery (to match the dormant life of the protagonist), and the looks of David Strathairn, the faux S.O., a fantasy who is too nice, too perfect, too considerate to be real. (I mean, come on writers: Show a little life!)

Towards the end when "Fern" walks along a big, rocky coast with leaping, crashing waves jumping up to grab her, all I could wish was that she would just go ahead and jump in so we could escape early.

Like last year wasn't bad enough! Let's pay to see more!

Patricialesli@gmail.com