Jim’s Jottings for the End!

[…of 2017, that is]

News and Notes: Roaming around in the NY Times recently, I came upon another death notice I had missed. The great Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky died on November 22 after a long battle with brain cancer. He was 55. With that unforgettable head of premature white hair and his gorgeous voice and stage presence…he’ll be deeply missed.

And, sorry, but I still have not seen an obit for Jim Benner…

The Opera House: Mark your calendar now…the Regal Hollywood cinema will have 3 showings of this documentary about the design and building of the “new” Metropolitan Opera House that opened in 1967. It will be shown on January 13 at 12:55 PM and on January 17 at 12:55 and 6:30 PM. I understand it is about two hours, and features great interviews with Leontyne Price, who opened the house with Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. I’m sure the film will also cover the development of Lincoln Center and the machinations of Robert Moses, who never saw a huge project he shouldn’t build at once!

Film Forum Note: If you heard about our two special member events planned around two special film showings, this is for you. On the flyer for the January 19^th showing of Lawrence of Arabia, I strongly urged really serious detectives to read one of two books: A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin and/or Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson. Both give readers a detailed explanation of the people and events that ended up shaping the Middle East and making it the lethal stew it is today, confusing most Americans and causing lots of arguments from TV bloviators. It all started with the end of the Ottoman Empire by 1919…and then chaos ensued. We’ll try to have copies of both books in the member lounge after the fact.  No special reading for the Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, a follow-up to the first documentary he did ten years ago and for which he and company won an Oscar.

Now don’t you snowbirds feel desperately guilty for being in warm places and missing out on this week of 5 to 25 degree weather? And think what fun it would be to go north to Erie where they had 110” of lake-effect snow in two days! Oh, but the sledding and snow-shoeing and ice-skating must be just too fabulous for words. My friends in Cassadega tell us they are on their roof using a sledge hammer to get at the ice…what a character-building time that must be! Yeah, p[laying soccer on a snowy field does get kind of slow when the drifts move or the wind takes the ball out of bounds, but hey, what else would we be doing? Making stained glass pieces for the spring church bazaar or reading War and Peace…again? Try hard not to send me lovely postcards from the edge of the Keys…curse you!

Just Jim, Again!