Maitresse

...where there never was a hat

My day is getting off to a good start afte reading this review of Look I Made a Hat, Volume 2 of Sondheim's annotated collected lyrics at the New York Times Book Review:

...I can’t imagine how serious craftsmen in any field wouldn’t find both books inspiring. The quilt maker fussing over which shade of red to employ as a highlight; the cook experimenting on how most appetizingly to glaze a plate of scallops; the automobile designer sketching a streamlined new speedometer — all such people should experience a sense of kinship when reading Sondheim debating whether, when seeking a rhyme, he might fairly use “wood” rather than “woods”:

“What justification was there to use ‘wood’ here (and in the ‘Finale’) and ‘woods’ everywhere else? I finally hit on an explanation: ‘wood’ sounded statelier and therefore suited a lyric sung by someone outside the action.”

And there's a truly excellent, revelatory interview with Sondheim at the Daily Beast:

You write in Look, I Made a Hat about how your teacher, composer Milton Babbitt, taught you about structure, about how whole works are made from tiny increments.

From Milton I learned about the structuring of themes, what he or someone called one-line composition, which is that there is a guiding principle to the whole arc of either a symphony or a song, which is itself reflected in many ways—just like the way King Lear’s themes are reflected in its characters and subplots. So, we’d analyze, say, the Jupiter Symphony to see what Mozart was doing with structure, what Milton called the architectonic of the piece, the larger structure, and how it’s reflected in the smaller structure so it all holds together and doesn’t sound like something made of bits and pieces.

The whole idea is, how do you organize something that lasts over a period of time, so it seems like one piece instead of 20 pieces? And that period of time can be three minutes or it can be an hour; the principle remains the same. And that—using leitmotifs that develop out of smaller motifs—is something I’ve been doing for a long time, because in writing a score, you have music interrupted by dialogue, so what is it that holds the evening together? If you want to hold the score together—Cole Porter wasn’t interested in holding a whole score together. He just wrote a lot of songs.

(...)

A lot of times when I listen to cast recordings of your shows, I’m struck by how Broadway singers don’t hear the structure that’s in your stuff.

It’s absolutely true. It’s also because they’re not used to it. They’re not trained in opera. They’re not trained to hear scores. They’re trained to hear songs, and that’s what they hear—self-encapsulated pieces. When Mandy Patinkin gave his last performance in Sunday in the Park, there was a little party for him in the basement of the theater, and I can’t remember how it came up, but I mentioned that “Putting It Together,” in the second act, was a variation on “The Day Off” sequence, which occurs in the middle of the first act. And his eyes widened. He’d been singing it for a year and a half, and it had never occurred to him that the two pieces were related. Most singers on Broadway are just not trained to hear that sort of thing. They hear songs, they don’t hear scores.

I've yet to write the Sondheim memoir-essay that's been brewing for years, but I'll get there. This was an early gesture at generating one.

 

 

Vendredi, poésie: Department of Barely Perceptible Irony

To coincide with my most recent review for Bookforum on the Noel Coward Reader (just out from Knopf), here's one of Coward's greatest songs, "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans." Composed in 1943 as a work of patriotic satire, the song was initially banned by the BBC for being too pro-German.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans,
Now our victory is ultimately won.
Let us treat them very kindly,
As we would a valued friend.
We might them out some bishops,
As a form of lease and lend.

Let's be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That sterilization simply isn't done.
Let's sweetly sympathize again,
And help the scum to rise again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

We must be kind
And with an open mind,
We must endeavour to find a way
To let the Germans know
That now the war is over,
They are not the ones who have to pay.

We must be sweet
And tactful and discreet,
And now they've suffered defeat,
We mustn't let
Them feel upset,
Or ever get the feeling
That we're cross with them or hate them.
Our future policy must be to reinstate them.

Don't let's be beastuly to the Germans,
For they're civilized,
When all is said and done.
Though they gave us science, culture, art, and music, to excess,
They also gave us two world wars and Dr. Rudolph Hess.

Let's be meek to them
And turn the other cheek to them,
And try to arouse their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity,
And treat the rats with charity,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans.
You can't deprive a gangster of his gun!
Though they've been a little naughty
To the Czechs and Poles and Dutch,
I can't believe those countries
Really minded very much.

Let's be free with them
And share the BBC with them.
We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun!
Let's soften their defeat again,
And build their bloody fleet again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun! 

Les Miserables: the sequel

For my eleventh or twelfth birthday, my parents gave me a cassette tape recording of the musical Les Miserables.  This had three major consequences.

One, the fires of my love affair with musical theatre were stoked, sending me on a direct path to the conservatory at Syracuse University, where (predictably) I was miserable, and, thanks to the intervention of my best friend, packed up and left for Barnard. Thank goodness.

Two, I began to model my understanding of heterosexual relationships on the doomed love of Eponine for Marius, and got down to business cultivating doomed loves for boys at school.  Decidedly, Les Mis knocked the good sense out of me. What can I say? Eponine had better songs.  I sincerely hope I'm over this now-- but it wasn't easy.

Three, I checked out Hugo's novel in English from the local library, and when I finished reading it, set about writing a sequel in which Gavroche didn't really die, nor did Eponine, and instead these thwarted Thenardier children started an orphanage there in the slums of St Michel, where they lived not off the crumbs of high society but on the inheritance left them by Jean Valjean. Marius ditched Cosette for Eponine and they all lived happily ever after.

Lucky for all of us, that manuscript languished on a floppy disk somewhere that has probably, by this point, been thrown away.  But I am happy to find that a grown man has been similarly inspired: recently, the Hugo family tried to sue another author, François Ceresa, who "dared" to write his own sequel to Les Mis called Cosette, ou, le temps des illusions.  They lost.  Ceresa's lawyer won by appealing to Hugo himself, who, in a speech given on June 21st, 1878, said: "The blood heir is the heir by blood.  The writer, as writer, has only one heir: that of the spirit.  The human spirit is in the public domain.  That is the absolute truth."

The best part is that in his sequel, Ceresa also decided to resuscitate one of the main (doomed) characters: Javert. Come to think of it, maybe I should go looking for that floppy disk after all...

Why film can't compete with theater

“[T]heater — good theater — is rarer. If you see a really amazing production — there aren’t many, but if you see one — it stays with you forever and ever. Films are just consumables. The experience of living theater is more powerful.”

Sigh. From an amazing New York Times interview with Kristin Scott Thomas, who I worship, and who I once saw on the 85 bus. Talk about moments that stay with you.

Theatre review: Elle t'attend

Last night Elisabeth and I skipped over to see Florian Zeller's new play "Elle t'attend" at the Théâtre de la Madeleine. Zeller being the current darling of the French stage, my hopes were high. Alas, the play's energy was not, and though it started out on a promising note, it was pretty much downhill from there.

I'm not sure if it was the staging, the acting, or the writing that was to blame, but the production felt self-indulgent, self-important, and petulant.  It's set in and around a house in Corsica, where Anna (Laetitia Casta, who read every line as if it were Racine) has brought her lover, Simon (Bruno Todeschini) to meet her family, who have gathered there for what they fear will be the last time, for their father is suffering from advanced-stage Alzheimer's. Problem is, Simon has recently left his wife and children for Anna, and when he arrives in Corsica he realizes with a shock that Anna's family's house is right next door to the house he and his own family rented the previous summer.  Simon becomes withdrawn and distant and even calls his wife. 

We learn all this not through dramatic action but through Anna's incessent pestering: "Tu m'aimes? Tu me trouves belle? Tu aimes mes épaules? Mes seins? Et mon ventre, tu aimes mon ventre?" (It's safe to say there is not a person on earth who would not love, or covet, Laeticia Casta's abs.) To clear his head, and no doubt to escape Anna's encroaching clinginess, Simon sets out early the morning after they arrive to go for a walk in the mountains-- and does not come back. (Thus the title.) Cue much hand-wringing from Anna and her family. Oh yeah-- and Anna might be pregnant. (Was this ever confirmed?)

There is an endless amount of meaningless dialogue ("Maybe he went somewhere else." "What do you mean by that?" "Nothing." "What do you mean, nothing?" "Oh, nothing." "Why do you say that?" "No reason.") but this seems to be the point-- how much we can say without seeming to say anything at all! In fact, in so doing, Zeller has captured the pitch of French familiar relations perfectly, and no doubt the production could have been saved by a more original or energetic director. (Guess who the director was. Florian Zeller himself. Now I understand.)  But the actors are doomed to hang out on the bleak white set under what they keep assuring us is a scorching Corsican sun, but which seems to be having no affect at all.  There is zero dramatic tension, and we don't really care so much if Simon comes back, what happened to him, or where he could have gone. 

Anna's brother (Nicolas Vaude) is on hand for some weak comic relief, and to remind us that Anna is like Circe and Corsica is like her island and Simon is like Ulysses-- he just wants to go home to his wife and kids. Except now it's not only Penelope but Circe who's waiting. And.... I'm sorry, what was the point? "Rien." "Pourquoi tu dis ça?" "Pour rien."

Good thing it's only an hour and a half long.

Seventeen Seventy-What?

I've just gotten around to watching the first episode of the much-touted HBO mini-series "John Adams." Not bad, even verging on impressive. The writing is sometimes stiff but sometimes very clever; I loved the part when Robert Treat Paine is trying to get Adams to join the patriots' cause, complaining, "They've taxed our paper, our glass... the lead in our paint!" which plays with anachronism without actually committing it; and John Adams's reference to "our forefothers" in his delegate acceptance speech. Who does John Adams have in mind as forefathers? Pilgrims? The soldiers of the French and Indian War? We forget that our forefathers had forefathers.

But I found the jumping-around in time a little confusing; in the beginning of the episode, it is 1770 and the Boston Massacre has just occurred, during which Adams has had to defend a group of British soldiers.  Then the case is over, and in the very next scene someone is talking about the Boston Tea Party-- which took place in 1773. Nevertheless, none of Adams's children has aged a day. Then, from one scene to the next, Abigail is heavily pregnant, and the already-born kids still haven't aged.

This small details aside, I would have to say my biggest regret is that, apart from a Massachussetts state hymn, there is no singing.

Theater review: Les Bonnes

"Les Bonnes" by Jean Genet, playing at Aktéon Theatre, 11 rue du General Blaise, 75011. With  Alice Dumont, Muriel Poletti, Laetitia Vercken. Directed by Henry-Anne Eustache. Playing until April 12th.

Last night I headed over to see a black box production of Genet's classic "Les Bonnes" ("The Maids"), and, well, I thought I'd tell you about it, in case you're into postwar avant-garde French theatre too.

For those of you unfamiliar with the play, it is a loose adaptation of L'Affaire des Soeurs Papin, a double murder perpetrated by two sisters, maids in a provincial French household, in 1933. (There's a grotesque description of the murders in Wikipedia which appears to have been written by a perversely imaginative soul rather than a responsible historian.) Essentially, the two sisters brutally murdered their mistress and her daughter, and then called the police and confessed to everything. The case was such a horrific example of the underlying social tensions in French society exploding into violence that the entire country was captivated by the trial, and spoke of nothing else for months.

The 1947 play is far more than an exploration of class tensions in France; the genius of it is in the transposition of the master-slave dialectic from Madame (here the mother and daughter are one single overbearing character) onto their  own sisterly relationship; this is what transforms a possibly preachy subject into a fearless exploration of human relations. 

The director of this production has obviously understood this; the actresses playing the eponymous maids were grotesque and touching; the actress playing Madame alternately flattering and bellowing. The staging was inventive and lightly handled; the sisters had a synchronized bunny hop they performed in front of Madame to demonstrate their servitude, and the violence is handled well. Genet left out the gory bits; in his rendition, one maid kills the other, rather than Madame, although the of the play takes place in such delirium that the audience is unsure if what is represented on stage is not a figurative murder of all three women.

Special mention has to be made of the costumes and make-up-- the girls' heads and faces were covered in white powder, and they were clad in white leather S&M outfits each topped off with the frame of a bustle, which, stripped of its overlying fabric, looks just like a wearable, portable cage. Madame's costume was less réussi, in my opinion; she was got up like a drag queen and covered in fake posies. We understand just from the language of the play that she is meant to be vulgar, and that her behavior is meant to belie her lofty social position.  Dressing her up like that struck too heavy a note. 

The dork in me

Oh, oh, oh. Remember how I said I was a big dork? Well I think it's getting worse. Check it: The Musical Theatre Dork's Guide to Paris.

And now, a song.

I think I'm going to cry all over my keyboard.

Vita vs Virginia

Here, The New York Times reviews the  revival of Eileen Atkins's "Vita & Virginia," currently running on Mondays Off-Broadway. And only someone who has never read any of Vita Sackville-West's writing could make the following pronouncement:

Virginia and her glittering words are the best reason for the play’s existence. Vita had an interesting life — traveling to Persia with her diplomat husband, dashing off for scandalous flings with other women — yet not such an interesting mind. As Virginia says to the audience, Vita writes “with complete competence and a pen of brass.”

Woolf could be very competitive and was often insecure about her own achievements compared with those of her friends and contemporaries-- and her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, whose writing was quite popular, was cmoplicated and ridden with jealousies. But if Vita's pen was not always as finely tuned as Virginia's, this is not an excuse to reject her altogether, certainly not on the grounds that Woolf once zinged her.  The mind that produced Seducers in Ecuador could be accused of many things but dullness is not one of them.

Event of the year

Paris and burlesque go together like champagne and caviar-- it can be a bit difficult these days to find them both in the same place.

But when you do, oh my word.

May I say that I am royally bummed to not be in Paris for the below event, coming to you from my dear friend Gentry and her posse of the fabulous, top-hatted and silken.

Former crush makes good

Back when I was pursuing theatre as a career, before I wised up and chose a stable field of work, like,  oh, writing , I spent a summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival working as an apprentice, alongside people who are now semi-famous.  During my time there, I developed a crush on Nate Corddry, who was then a fellow apprentice, a junior at Colby-Sawyer, and a complete doll, if a little shy, and who is now appearing on a television show whose existence I have just discovered called "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," which co-stars Matthew Perry, the sarcastic guy from "West Wing," and Amanda Peet.  And, of course, this kid I used to crush on.  He has scenes with Chandler, for crying out loud.  That is quite a meteoric rise, and as I sit here in Paris watching him on iTunes, I think to myself: I have good taste. 

I'll note here that back in 1998 Rob Corddry was not yet on the Daily Show (although our improv teacher  Lewis Black was), and so I developed my  crush in complete ignorance of any associated family comic genius. 

Check out this interview with Entertainment Weekly where the boys talk about Williamstown. 

no time for time part II

Happy new year, everyone!

I'm back in Paris and back to being busy as can be. Except what's occupying me right now is not my normal constellation of teaching-reading-writing.  We're in intense rehearsals for the musical I'm doing, which is called Sur les pas de Fame and bears, finally, little resemblence to either the television series or the movie.  We're not actually opening and running until March, but for reasons unexplained to the actors, we're doing a test run this weekend. The co-directors are ambitious: the show's nowhere near ready. But then, this would hardly be the first time a mess has been pulled together at the very last minute to become a passably good night at the theatre.  And they've even thought to put some fire beneath our bums: we're to perform on Saturday night for a group of so-called "professionnels."

So. Though that kind of bait doesn't do it for me, I do not wish to embarrass myself.  And so when I'm not at the theatre running through the show and filming the short movie they're showing during the finale, I'm working out the kinks in the aria I'm singing in my "audition" for the performing arts school and practicing the funk dance moves we have to launch into for the cafeteria scene. Me dancing funk is an image that I will, underscore, not be inviting anyone to witness, by the way.

Also, I have to learn to say this fast:

Petit pot de beurre
quand te dépetit pot de beurreriseras-tu?
Je me dépetit pot de beurreriserai
quand tous les petits pots de beurre
seront dépetit pot de beurreriseront.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't even make sense.  Nevertheless, memorize it I must.  And it ain't easy!

So I apologize for the relative ralentissement in blog posts, but as you can tell, I have crucially important things to do these days. 

I have been cast in

I have been cast in an amateur production of "Fame."

This has been a weird couple of weeks.

First rehearsal is tomorrow. Am undecided if I will stick with it. How much do I really want to know about the world of community theatre in Paris...

Then again, I suppose it's more productive than crying for hours or watching American television on iTunes.

born to perform

this maitresse was born a ham.  the earliest signs of it were manifested when I would come home from nursery school at age two and show my mom the songs I learned that day.

"head, shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes!"

as I grew up my music teachers were more and more impressed with my, ahem, perfect pitch, and uncanny ability to replicate different series of rhythmic claps.  my reward for this was getting to sing the solo in "edelweiss" at the third-grade chorus concert.

fast-forward to middle school and high school-- first chorus parts in all the shows, then lead roles.  then on to syracuse university to major in musical theatre and

I am stupefied

I am absolutely stupefied and deeply saddened to learn that Dana Reeve has died.

I spent a summer in the apprentice program at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1998, the very program where, once upon a time, Christopher Reeve himself began his acting career. I read his autobiography that summer and was thrilled to learn that it was through doing theatre there that he met his wife, the lovely Dana (then) Morosini. The way he wrote about her was so romantic, and the couple continued to have a strong association with the WTF. That summer I remember seeing Christopher wheeling around and watching Dana perform on the Main Stage.

What is it about him that was so universally adorable? I don't think it was just "Superman." When he died in 2004 I cried-- I loved him more for "Somewhere in Time" than for "Superman," but either way he was the epitome of masculine beauty for me, growing up in the 1980s, and I fancied Reeve as Clark Kent even looked a bit like my dad. I felt terrible for his wife, for his children, for his accident.

When I heard last year that Dana Reeve had lung cancer, despite never smoking, I was shocked, but assumed that, at 44, with today's medical miracles, she would be fine.

I can't believe I was wrong.  I barely knew this woman and I'm shocked to my core.

I once heard her sing "Meadowlark," from The Baker's Wife at the WTF Cabaret.  It's one of the most beautiful songs in musical theatre, and she was captivating.

My heartfelt condolences go out to her family.

only connect

As a 6-year-old at my first Broadway play I received from Sondheim the directions my life would take-- musical theatre, art history, France-- like the Jews receiving the Torah.  I look back and am amazed that one play--Sunday in the Park With George--could determine so much for me.

At the center of the play:  Georges Seurat, who visits the park on the island of La Grande Jatte (today called simply Ile de la Jatte) every Sunday in order to sketch the Parisians enjoying their days off, as preparation for his masterpiece, Dimanche apres-midi sur l'ile de la Grande Jatte.  Sundays, you see, have a very particular feel in France: with most stores closed, it is the day for family lunches and outings to museums and the cinema in winter, and parks in the fine weather. Sundays are the days I most miss my family.  Sunday is the day I most want to connect, and the day I feel the most disconnected.

But back to the play.  Read more about it here, the New York Times discusses the new, more intimate interpretations of Sondheim that are currently being mounted in the States and the UK.  There's a pared-down revival of Sunday on in London now and I am so there.  So there, in fact, that I'm going to buy tickets as soon as I can find someone to go with me. 

Any takers?

525,600 reasons to be SO EXCITED...

...for the film adaptation of RENT to be released in November!

coulda woulda shoulda?

Part of the joy of having once acted in the outskirts of the professional theatre world means people I knew back then often go  on to become famous.  In one summer (1998) at the Williamstown Theatre Festival as an apprentice, I was in a group that included the lovely and talented Britt Shubow, who has been in the Broadway production of "Mamma Mia!" since she graduated from NYU in 2002 and Kate Moenning, who that summer we all knew as Gwyneth Paltrow's cousin, who since 2003 has been better known as Shane on "The L Word."  Various other apprentices from that year have gone on to score roles onstage and in films. 

But I had to have been hiding under a rock to have missed the fact that Logan Marshall-Green, one of the studs of the group, has apparently been appearing regularly on "The O.C." and "24," to the extent that he now has a couple of fan sites (check one out here).  I didn't watch "The O.C." in the States and I don't watch it here, where it's dubbed into French; I watched it once and was left with the impression that it was doing an inferior job filling the void left by "90210."

"24," however, I love, though i've only watched the first season.  Looking forward to telling all my Frenchie friends who are so obsessed with "Vingt-quatre heures," as it's called here, that their American friend has rubbed shoulders (and done improv) with a bona fide American TV star! It kinda gives me cred, I think.  Of course, some people over here think all Americans know each other, and as a result I get asked to introduce them to my friend Paris (Hilton).

Williamstown is always crawling with celebrities.  The summer I was there we had Scott Wolf, Eric Stolz, and Tate Donovan.  The summer after saw Paltrow and Ethan Hawke.  But they're just up there doing their thing, having a nice summer away from the Hollywood rat race, and you never want to bother them with their celebrity.  Nevertheless, hordes of local teens make it their business to stalk the stage door for a glimpse of their beloved, and I try to distance myself from this as much as possible by never approaching any of the actors.

So when I'm in the States in August, I'm heading up with the fam to the Berkshires for a weekend, where we will go see Mr. M-G in William Inge's "Bus Stop." And I will have the honor of seeing Logan turned into Scott Wolf!

I'm just a Broadway baby...

There's an article in today's Times about the "super-sizing" of the high school musical.  And would you make fun of me if I told you it was too painful for me to read all the way through? All those scattered dreams, now nothing more but shredded film on the cutting room floor of my life.  Alas! I can't bear to contemplate it for any longer than is necessary to provide you with the link.  I'm going to go sing "On the Steps of the Palace" to my rubber ducky now, if you don't mind...

...I might have dropped out of the theatre, but I'm still a drama queen! (and just, you know, for self-respect's sake, I don't actually have a rubber ducky)

My name is Rachel...

Rachel Thaler, 16, blown up in a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall, February 2002.  Rachel Levy, 17, blown up in a grocery store; Rachel Levi, 19, shot while waiting for the bus; Rachel Gavish, killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Pessah meal; Rachel Charhi, blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children; Rachel Shabo, murdered with her three sons aged 16, 13 and five, while at home.

--And those are just the Rachels who were murdered in Israel in the months surrounding Rachel Corrie's death in 2002.  Since the Second intifada began in September 2000, there have been many more Rachels than those 6.

Some of you might remember Rachel Corrie as the 22- or 23-year old International Solidarity Movement worker who died when she threw herself in front of a bulldozer in Gaza.  The Israeli army was razing a house suspected of covering a network of tunnels used for smuggling weapons.  There is some disagreement about whether or not the driver actually saw Corrie. 

Nevertheless, Rachel Corrie had a choice.  She was instantly martyred (in both the Christian and the Islamic fundamentalist sense), her diaries published in The Guardian, and her memory sanctified by none other than Yasser Arafat.  Now, her diaries have been turned into a play that is currently being performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. 

The play is getting the kind of reviews that indicate Corrie has been canonized beyond criticism, like the Mother Theresa of the radical flag-burning set.   

Where is the play about the Rachels who had no choice? The Rachels who died in the way we all dread the most-- while doing nothing more radical than going about their daily lives?   

I strongly urge you to read this article from today's Jerusalem Post, which details just how friendly the ISM (Corrie's "peace group") is with the Hamas and the Palestinian suicide bombers.   

Clive David in the London Times is apparently the only British critic to call the play  "unvarnished propaganda," citing, for example, Corrie's declaration: "The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance." As Davis notes, "Even the late Yasser Arafat might have blushed at that one."

The play is being produced by Katherine Viner, editor of the weekend magazine of The Guardian, and the actor Alan Rickman (Snape in "Harry Potter"; Sheriff of Nottingham to Kevin Costner's Robin Hood; most recently of "Love, Actually"). Normally I'm a big fan of Rickman-- there's something so sexy about his hollow cheeks and sonorous, British-accented voice.  But apparently his critical thinking apparatus is missing. 

And as for Rachel Corrie-- it's funny it's an interesting dilemma [NDLR: to clarify, I didn't mean funny as in "amusing," I meant funny as in "odd"; I certainly don't think it's funny that the girl got run over by a bulldozer].  I was appalled by her death.  I find the entire scenario disgusting.  However, this is during wartime, and the Israeli army was doing what an army does, trying to protect its citizens and win the war.  For Corrie to jump in front of an oncoming bulldozer-- well, you have to admit it's as stupid as jumping in front of an oncoming bus in midtown Manhattan to see if the driver will stop.  He might, hopefully, but then again, he might not see you, and he might not.  Definitely nowhere near on the level of Tiananman Square, although I surmise that's the image she was working off of.

But after reading her diaries I realized-- I would have absolutely hated this girl.  I would have loathed her.  If I had met her somewhere and then heard she died, I would have been relieved to hear that there was one less deluded, anti-Semitic, self-aggrandizing person on the earth.  Isn't that a terrible thing to think about a person? But when I meet these self-important champions of the Palestinian people who call for the destruction of the state of Israel-- I mentally place them in the same category as the blood-thirsty Romans who destroyed the Second Temple of Jerusalem.  These people are not the champions, but the enemies of the Palestinian people, who I would like nothing more than to see safely, securely installed in their own country, running it in such a way that they are so prosperous and happy that they no longer give a shit about their nieghbors, the Israelis.   

I'm not excusing the deeds of the Israeli army.  I do think, however, that no other army on earth is more concerned with its public relations and its world image, which certainly curbs any impulse they might have to act out of protocol.  But I wear my Israeli army t-shirt with pride because I believe in the right of Israel to exist and to do what it has to do to defend its citizens.  When dumb American girls named Rachel stop helping kill innocent Israeli girls named Rachel, then we'll be getting somewhere in the Ghandian non-violence.  But not until then.