Reading and then more reading

As you probably know by now I have very diverse taste in my reading, currently I finished a short biography on the Painter and father of German realism in painting Otto Dix, entitled Otto Dix, The art of life by Philipp Gutbrod.  A fascinating man who led an incredible life in Germany, acclaimed as a great artist and condemn by others dodged by controversy and terrible dangers for himself and his family during the Nazi dictatorship to received accolades and honours after the War but was generally ignored by the Art scene. I wish I could have met him.

I am also reading Teaching in the Art Museum by Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee. This to help me in my volunteer work at the National Gallery of Canada. A very good guide to develop techniques  on interpretation of art works and how to entice the public in participating and looking at pictures.

I started on a novel entitled to Wake the dead by Marina Belozerskaya, her book is the history of archeology as she follows a man Cyriacus da Pizzicolli also known as da Ancona,(1391-1455) a merchant who has a keen interest for all things antique especially the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome. He wrote but never published many manuscripts on ancient monuments and was read by many powerful people of this time, friend of Popes and Princes, he was highly respected. The story is around 1421 when the Renaissance in Italy was about 120 years old and the Popes in Rome where returning from  their exile in Avignon and rebuilding Rome. There was no archeology before the Renaissance and little knowledge of what the classic Roman or Greek had been like before the start of the Middle Ages around 500 AD. It's an easy read and it is fun.

I am also reading about Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrona, daughter of Tsar Alexander III and sister to the last Tsar Nicholas II. She fled the Revolution in 1920 with her family to Canada and lived until her death in 1961 in Toronto. The family still lives in Toronto today and are active within Romanov Circles promoting the restoration of the Dynasty in Russia. This book entitled; 25 Chapters of my life: Memoirs of my life,  is a diary of the Grand Duchess and her life in Russia when her father was the Tsar and then under her brother and the violent end of the Monarchy and aftermath. It is an interesting read as it gives you an idea what life was like at the Imperial Court.

I also finished reading the short stories of Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Professor and the Siren. What an incredible writer he was and it is so sad that his greatest literary success came after his death and that he wrote only in the last years of his life. Imagine what a success he could have been during his lifetime. He is the author of one of the most famous modern Italian novel The Leopard. Lampedusa is the archetype of the Sicilian nobleman, stuck in the past and unable to move forward or even wondering why he should move at all. I remember one passage where he explained that all the Nobles in Sicily and there were quite a few, did not see any reason to change after Sicily was annexed by Italy in 1870. They had lost everything but since they were Princes, they did not see why they should change just because now they were part of Italy. Many cloistered themselves in their Palaces in Palermo and continued to live as if nothing had happened, life became more and more financially precarious but it never occurred to them to find a job.  This was his world, educated, erudite, well traveled, it is and was the dilemma of Sicily then and now. Not really belonging to Italy and no longer part of a greater Kingdom with ties to Spain.
I find him a fascinating character and his writing is beautiful.

I have many other titles waiting for me to read and I have to be more disciplined in my reading schedule.

Je ne veux pas travailler

Well I don't have to I am retired. Love this song, it is ironic and funny. It came out 20 years ago but it has kept its freshness.





I have also finished reading two other books and started on two others.

I finished the book by Prof. Donald Savoie, Whatever happened to the Music Teacher which tells the tale of how our democracy in Canada has been transformed since 1970 and is now a one man rule with the veneer of Democracy and free elections. Savoie is a well know University Professor and he has written extensively on government operations, Cabinet, the machinery of government and its transformation from the era of Policy driven and Cabinet consensus to a one man show and the continuous measurement of processes. The problem for me is that I saw this happening during my career and know well how things have gone off the rails. Unfortunately the public is so apathetic and so not interested in what is going on that it is quite possible to rule without opposition as our current Prime Minister is doing. Savoie advocates a return to policy initiatives and abandoning the Private Sector approach as ineffective for government operations and also stopping the continues process measurement which is useless and wasteful. It is difficult to do this many politician including the Harper government believe in the miraculous solutions of the private sector in all things governmental.


The other book is a bit of a piece of fluff, not so much a book as a conversation with an elderly aunt.
In this case its Margaret Rhodes, cousin to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The book The Final Curtsey tells in very general lines, the story of her life, but it is very general and not much details are offered. She speaks mostly of her aunt Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother who was the sister of her mother. She spent her life going from one great house to another, the war years shuffling from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle and being a lady in waiting or a lady of the bedchamber to her aunt. There are few passages which are interesting if only as a curiosity, per example she tells us about the day the Queen Mother died and what happened. She died in the late afternoon and Margaret Rhodes was asked by her cousin Queen Elizabeth to come to dinner that night, en famille, at Windsor Castle. The next morning she returned to the house of the Queen Mother and found that the body had been left overnight in her death bed, so a full 12 hours passed before she was taken away by the undertakers. She was also the one to go to Windsor Registry Office to register the death of the Queen Mother. Though you would think the Royals are above such things, not in Britain apparently. The registrar asked Rhodes what was the occupation of the Queen Mother's husband, the question is on the form to be filled out. Taken aback by the question, she hesitated and finally said he was the King.

Her husband Dennys did not appear to work much and it is not clear from what income they lived on. But since they were always with the Royals, they were sort of taken care of. The book of Mary Lady Soames, who is the daughter of Winston Churchill was far more interesting and more in depth, though it also had its moments of vapidity.

It seems that her life was that of an observer not that of an actor, always witnessing never doing much.
She is now 88 years old and lives in a ''grace and favour'' house on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
You come away thinking that Rhodes is not going to say anything nasty or revealing about her cousin the Queen or the Royal Family which is her family and her bread and butter.

I am now reading slowly the book on Prokofiev by David Nice and the book on Machiavelli by Niccolo  Capponi, a descendant of the author of The Prince.
I also want to start reading the book of Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar, sort of summer reading type of book.

Books

Since my retirement I have read quite a few books it seems that I now have the time and can focus on what I wish to read. When I was working I did a lot of reading but not what I wanted to read, it was mostly what I had to read for my work. A very different affair all together and not always interesting.

I also had work obligations which ate into my leisure time, you know the propaganda from the employer about balancing work and play or work and family or whatever, well its just propaganda, totally meaningless. My employer never intended to be serious about such issues or any other issues, their were just mouthing the words because they had to be perceived as caring. Always optics and perceptions in the Government not reality.

So since end of 2012 I have read 8 books some brought to my attention by friends and others I discovered by reading columns in literary sections of the newspaper or on the web. In the last couple of weeks I read books translated from Russian by Ludmila Ulitskaya, Ben MacIntyre and by Nigel Slater, a cook not a chef. All books I can get in seconds with KINDLE, beats going out to the bookstore in this awful weather. Since my fall on polished ice about 2 weeks ago, Winter and I are not talking, I do not know what people find so fascinating or attractive about living in a country where frostbite can happen in less than 10 minutes or unpleasantly bitter cold weather which despite the bright Sun is thoroughly inhospitable that nothing can be enjoyed unless you stay indoor and drink yourself senseless. That probably explains why about 5 million Canadians live in more warmer climes all year round. For a country of 35 million people that is a significant portion of the population.

So I have read the Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya. World War II espionage by Ben MacIntyre, AKA the story of Eddie Chapman,criminal of the London under-world, turned Master spy, double agent, who despite being brave did not charm me at all, too much of the lucky con artist double dealing everyone, his lovers, MI5 and the Nazis.

Just finished reading the bio of Nigel Slater, Toast: A boy's hunger. I first saw on BBC a video of Nigel Slater cooking and fell in love with his simple yet wonderful dishes. I have tried some and they are very good. His website at: www.nigelslater.com

He has won many awards and written much about cooking and all is recipes are simple but beautiful and he has an herb & vegetable garden at his home in Highbury, North London. He is the sort of person I could get along with, witty, funny and down to earth about food and life. His life also has some strange similarities to mine. On the BBC site you can see the different videos on cooking. Well done. SEE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/nigel_slater

The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya is earthy in the sense that life is just like that, no fancy stories or fantasies, plain and ordinary but so touching and so human on so many levels. The people in her stories are very real and you can relate to them. The people she writes about are either her friends or people she knows or has known. They are very real, ex-pat Russians in the big Apple, immigrant community who long to return to mother Russia, but will not for multiple reasons. I was very much taken by this story.

Books I read lately

Lately I have read 4 books on people who lived at the same time during one specific period of history in different countries, Canada, the UK, Germany and Poland, the period 1930 to 1948.
The books are; King: William Lyon Mackenzie King, A life, by Allan Levine, A daughter's tale: the Memoir of Winston Churchill's daughter, by Mary Soames, Letters from Berlin: A story of war and survival by Kerstin Lieff and Fifteen Journeys Warsaw to London by Jasia Reichardt.

As a complement to those books, years ago I read 2 memoirs of the Princesses Marie and Tatiana Vassiltchikoff who were born in St-Petersburg before the revolution and whose father was attached to the Household of Czar Nicholas II.
The family escaped Russia in 1918 on a warship sent by King George V to rescue his Russian relatives and they settled in Germany.

Both Marie and Tatiana will work as secretaries at the German Foreign Ministry for many years and will become involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, barely escaping arrest out of shear luck. Their books, The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 by Marie and A purgatory of fools by Tatiana gives their account of Berlin and Germany under the Nazi dictatorship and their comments on some of the Nazi high officials they met in the course of their work.
At the end of the war Marie will marry an Englishman and move to the UK while Tatiana will marry Prince Paul Metternich-Winneburg and live out her life at Joannisberg Palace, her Wine Estate in Southern Germany.

I love this passage from Princess Tatiana's book; When all was over, we learnt that horror was not the sum of human experience. Those who survived would only remember the flashes of light in the darkness: the warm comradeship, the selfless gesture of love or courage which seemed the last reality in a world gone mad, where finally simplicity and gentleness remained the only valid sounds in a man's heart.


While living in Warsaw, I read around 1999 a book by a famous German media personality, Countess Marion Dönhoff, entitled Une enfance en Prusse Orientale. Her family is famous since the Middle-Ages, an old Aristocratic Prussian family, linked to Frederic II the Great of Prussia. She was for many decades the Editor and Publisher of the liberal weekly DIE ZEIT, her nickname was la Contesse démocrate. She was closely associated with the war time history of Germany, involved in the plot in 1944 to assassinate Hitler. Her book is wonderful to read, it gives an impression of life in old Prussia on her family estate in Koenigsberg today Kaliningrad. I remember writing to her after reading her book and getting a very nice reply from her. At the end of the war she rode her horse from Eastern Prussia all the way to Hamburg, an incredible distance, fleeing the advancing Soviet army. Near Berlin she stopped at the estate of the Bismarck family in Varzin, Pomerania and spent just a few hours. She tried to convince the aged great grand daughter of the Chancellor to flee with her. The old lady pointed to the garden of the Chateau and said, I am very old, I would not get far and I asked my gardener to dig my grave, so that if the Soviets shoot me, they can bury me quickly.

Here is one quote from Countess Dönhoff's book on the futility of revenge; I also do not believe that hating those who have taken 
over one's homeland...necessarily demonstrates love
for the homeland. When I remember the woods and
lakes of East Prussia, its wide meadows and old shaded
avenues, I am convinced that they are still as
incomparably lovely as they were when they were my
home. Perhaps the highest form of love is losing without
possessing.

These books got me interested in what it was like to live under the Nazi regime, they tell their individual story which is quite different from the usual story about that period. As life goes it was a messy time and nothing was simple, some Germans were fooled into believing that since they were a law abiding society, governed by processes, nothing bad could happen, until it did.


What I find also very interesting is that all the writers are all more of less the same age but all from different milieu. All oppose the Nazis and Hitler and by their tales allow the reader to grasp what it must have been like to live in a society dominated by ideology, cruelty and the rule of the arbitrary.  There is also explanations of the beliefs and attitudes of the time which stand in sharp contrast if not total opposition to what we believe today. It is at times difficult to believe that the world in Europe and North America was so very different from today.

I started with the biography of our longest serving Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, 22 years in office. Based on his own diaries, which total more than 2 million pages, we have the picture of a very insecure man, who could be petty, mean and very self-centered, who never seemed to appreciate those who worked for him and did not suffer the slightest criticism real or imagined. It is well known now, but not so during his life, that he was deeply involved into the occult and spiritualism, his dead mother and his dead dog Pat 1 figure prominently into his diaries. In June 1939 King George VI and the Queen had lunch with Mackenzie King at Laurier House is home in Ottawa and then the Official Residence of our Prime Minister, he apparently gave a tour of the large house to the King and showed him where he held his séance. I can just imagine what the King must have thought.

Mackenzie King was a bigot and an anti-semite by today's standards but then many in his Cabinet and in the general population in Canada had the same attitudes, Fascism was popular to counter the Communist threat and unemployment. Mackenzie King met several times with Churchill and his daughter Mary Soames, who in her book describes him as a bit of an old Aunt. Rex as he was known to his friends really believed that he was a big player in the conferences that were held during the Second World War in Quebec City at the Chateau Frontenac. In 1938 he met with Hitler in Berlin and with Mussolini in Rome. He thought Hitler a nice chap and told him not to abandon his good work for Germany and advised him not to launch a war. Strangely enough at the end of the war when he is told that Hitler has committed suicide, Rex writes in his diary, I told him not to start a war, such a mistake.

The book of Mary Soames is about her life, that of great privilege, of her family and her father Winston and her mother Clementine. Her cousin the Duke of Marlborough and life at Chartwell or at the Admiralty or 10 Downing street. Christmas parties at Blenheim Palace and life for a young girl leading up to the war. Then she joins in the war effort and gets involved manning anti-aircraft guns in the defence of London. It is somewhat surreal to read this book, she describes how while stationed with her company, her father, the Prime Minister, would appear for an inspection tour. She would know he was coming before her Commanding Officer. She will often accompany her father and she is privy to State secrets. She meets FDR whom she likes a lot and many other important people like DeGaulle. Her memoirs are a special more personal access the world of the Churchill family, her father and mother.

She describes her fellow soldiers as nice middle-class people, good mannered. Her weekends are at parties given by friends in high society, much dancing and frivolities. The reader wonders what did her mates thought of all this, they lived in very different world. In Mary Soames world there was no great rationing, her mother always has some specialty food treat. Tragedy did strike during the war years, she writes in her diaries of the sadness and sacrifice of British people, but there is a stiff upper lip tone to it all.

Then the story of one German girl about the same age as Mary Soames and the story of another girl, a Pole living in Warsaw under difficult circumstances due to her family being Jewish.

In the book Letters from Berlin, we have the life of  Margarete Dos, born in Pomerania (Prussia) now part of Poland. Her family was well to do and her life story is told through a series of letters and recollections she gave to her daughter before she died in 2005. She grew up during the Nazi dictatorship and the family moved during that time to Berlin. Her father had in 1933 told the family that Hitler and the Nazi party would ruin Germany, that these people were no good, but Margarete being a child did not pay much attention. Her mother remarried when her father died after falling off his horse. Her step-father was an Officer in the German Navy and worked at the Navy HQ in Berlin.

Like all children she had other interests and pre-occupations centered on teenager concerns, though in September 1939 at the start of the war she becomes aware that the adults are worried and that her mother is frightened of what is coming.  Her younger brother and she will witness from their home the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 and how they as children are uncomprehending and see that the adults around them keep quiet out of fear. At the same time, she describes the life of her school friend Hilde, who is half-Jewish and who remains in Berlin with her family until the end of the war, with the help of friends and neighbours.

She has vivid recollections of being told by her mother to be afraid of the SS and the Gestapo and to avoid them at all cost. As the war progresses she is a University student in Jena and then works as a Red Cross nurse and sees friends die in the bombing of cities. She like so many Germans trapped in this turmoil wish to be rid of the Nazi and their lies but feel powerless. At the end of the war, she and her mother are deported to Siberia by the Soviets and will spend two years in a work camp. Only to return to Germany in 1947 to a new world, at this point she decides to immigrate to Sweden where she has family. This book is interesting because of he detailed eyewitness account of her life and of events, of the terrible sadness and of all the lives destroyed.

The other book is the story of a Jewish girl in Warsaw, who is protected by her parents from the harsh realities of life in Warsaw and then in the Ghetto itself during the war years. This book for me brought back memories of Warsaw, the streets mentioned in her book, I knew well. The family lived around the area where the Canadian Embassy is located. With my knowledge of Warsaw I could see her travels in the city. She also describes life in the Ghetto but appears unaware of the harshness, her parents shielding her from the daily horrors. Like all children she is aware of changes and understands that it is best not to ask questions, it might be dangerous or troubling. Her 15 journeys will take her around Warsaw during the war and the last one to London after the war. She will be hidden by Catholic Nuns and will learn a new identity as a Christian child so that she can hide from the Nazis. In a city like Warsaw which will be totally razed in the course of the war these journeys have an unbelievable quality. Courage, discretion, fortitude, faith in the future, will help her survive. Towards the end of 1943 she says in the book that she knew, she does not know how, that her parents were dead. They had stayed behind in the Ghetto unable to escape. Many friends and family members will also die, some choosing to commit suicide like her grandmother, knowing what the future will bring. She only killed herself after ensuring that her grand daughter would survive.

All these books speak of a different experience of a deeply troubled time, all are interesting for the personal details and descriptions they bring to the reader. They also show that our perception of that period is often wrong or we have jumped to conclusions with the propaganda offered by Hollywood or by people not really interested in understanding history.

 

!ndigo Bookstore tribute to Canada

!ndigo has made this video showing famous Canadian authors and Canada. A tribute to Canada and our Canadian literature.



WE NEED MORE CANADA! Happy Canada Day!

Charitable causes and luncheons

This week has been busy with dining out for charitable causes. First there was the luncheon in Aylmer for the Heritage Association, not a charity per see, more of a conservation of our early heritage in the Gatineau Hills-Ottawa valley area. It is important to remember that without such groups there would be precious little heritage to talk about or look at.

Italian Peonies imported and given to me by Will

Then on Wednesday night we participated in ''A taste for Life'' which was supported by the Toronto Dominion Bank and by hundreds of people attending the event throughout Ottawa with 45 restaurants in the Capital giving 25% of the nights proceeds to Bruce House and Snowy Owl Foundation. We went to Absinthe on Wellington Street West which as the name implies has a lot of drinks on its menu made from Absinthe. It is also a very good restaurant, they have knowledgeable staff and Chef Patrick presents an imaginative cuisine in a modern zen décor. The turnout was very good our friends A and R were the hosts at Absinthe. The goal of Bruce House which opened in 1988 is to provide supportive housing and care to people living with HIV-AIDS. This service is unavailable through any other agency in Eastern Ontario.  Their belief is that everyone is entitled to live and die with dignity.

Snowy Owl Foundation's goal is to establish and maintain a financial resource available to organizations dedicated to HIV-AIDS education and prevention.

It was a very enjoyable evening and all for a good cause.

Today I participated in the Writers Festival (www.writersfestival.org) luncheon given at TABLE 40 at Fraser Café on Springfield Road, in the New Edinburgh area of Ottawa. Vincent Lam, winner of the Giller Prize for his first book Bloodletting and Miraculous cures was presenting his new book The Headmaster's Wager published by Doubleday Canada. I know Vincent through his parents, A & R who were on posting with me in Beijing a few years ago. Vincent is an Emergency Room Physician in one of Toronto's largest Hospital and a writer, he also plays the violin. He was raised in Nepean a suburb of Ottawa and his parents were Boat People from Viet Nam who came to Canada at the end of that war.

His book is based on his grandfather and grandmother, who were Chinese national living in Saigon in South Vietnam about 80 years ago. As he explained some parts of the character are real to life and other parts is fiction.  The critics are raving about this book and it seems like he may very well get another award. I was very happy to meet Vincent, who is charismatic, with an easy manner and very approachable.

Vincent Lam, author, medical doctor, musician

The Writers Festival is in support of Children's Literacy and events like this one provide funds for various programs on literacy. It also brings writers like Vincent to schools to engage children and give a positive image of reading and books. A chilling statistics was given, the rate of literacy in children in Ottawa, the Capital of Canada is lower than that of children in Cuba.

I knew that Cuba had better health care for its population compared to the USA but this one on literacy I was unaware of, though I notice all the time how children have no vocabulary, cannot spell, cannot put a sentence together or read without stumbling on every word and have problems with critical judgement in general.

The restaurant Table 40 ( table40@frasercafe.ca) is a unique place, the tables are made of Western Maple fished out of rivers in British Columbia, the trees where cut diagonally and the wood was finished to give this high polish rough look showing all the variation and gradation of colour in the wood. The light fixtures are antique with naked filament bulb, lots of natural light and the kitchen is a modern lab setting at the back where the brothers Ross and Simon Fraser, both Chefs cook.