The Adventure of the Speckled Wall: Sherlock, You're Needed

"On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Strand Magazine, 1892. Watson. Surely the great grandfather of bloggers.

By the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard. She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were dreadfully convulsed. At first I thought that she had not recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out in a voice which I shall never forget, ‘Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!’

Such was the dreadful end of my beloved sister."



2012: The Speckled Wall
I recently experienced a frightening speckled situation, which I feared might end in ill health for myself or my kin. "Oh, my God! It's the wall! The speckled wall!"

Like its predecessor, it was also a "locked room" phenomenon, my bathroom, to be precise.

I noticed a while ago, a strange yellow substance appearing around my medicine cabinet upon my lovely sky-blue renovated wall.  I looked to see where it could be coming from, but there was no discernible source. So, with 7th Generation cleaner I tried to spray it away. It lifted a bit, but there were still very strong traces of it.

Days went by, and the yellow staining returned. Plus, there was now yellow discoloring on all the plastic bottles in the cabinet. So strange. It wasn't a film, it wasn't "wet," even though it looked like smudges. It was like a corrosion, in that the yellow staining became part of the properties (in a chemical sense) of the plastic.

The Speckling Accelerates















I sprayed away the yellowing on the wall again and again, and yet a few days later each time, the speckling was back, with a vengeance. The drip pattern was more pronounced, and the area of the speckling had increased.

It was maddening that I could find no source of this "it looks like paint dripping, but how can that be?!!" What could be causing such a chemical reaction? And was it a toxic reaction?

Finally I got my super to come look at it, to see if we needed to get the EPA involved. He thought that maybe there was water collecting behind the medicine cabinet, and that's what was causing the streaking. He asked me to empty the cabinet, and then he would remove it and see what's going on.

That is how I came to take everything off of its four shelves. And that's when I found . . .

. . .


hiding on the top shelf . . . 

. . .

. . .


. . .



. . . a tiny bottle of Iodine.


Iodine is yellow. Hmm.

When I picked it up, it was empty.


My speckling was the result of the phenomenon of "leaching," when a liquid passes through another substance, in this case, the plastic bottle. And, somehow the liquid that was in the bottle on the top shelf INSIDE THE MEDICINE CHEST became air borne and then interacted with the paint OUTSIDE THE MEDICINE CHEST. The bottom of the Iodine bottle was completely corroded (yes, right below the red skull & crossbones). Chemistry is an amazing thing.


I have no idea what the catalyst was. Iodine sits on shelves in Duane Reades across the city and they don't suddenly leach out.

No wonder Sherlock Holmes was a chemist.

Hence some of the appeal of the Conan Doyle stories: everyone runs into strange things in everyday life, and wouldn't it be great if we could all figure out what's going on.

I love the reinterpretation of the BBC Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The premise is that the original Conan Doyle character does not exist in world literature but Sherlock Holmes is living now, in London. It has great energy and wit, and it will surely lead some of new generations back to the original.

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 Mapeel     5/14/2012     literature   

Everyone, Meet Floria and Sidney

I had two interesting professional engagements last week, thanks to Floria Lasky and Sidney Hillman. Each had a substantial career that included service to the larger community, and each had been such a force in their own fields that after their deaths colleagues took the time and effort to create something in their names that bring people together. That's the exciting part.

I greatly admire people whose very lives bring people together. We all try to contribute to the conversation and make an impact where it will tangibly help someone, but that's a talent some people have more than others. And then there's Floria and Sidney, who can do it from the grave.

Floria Lasky

Because Floria met Jerome Robbins as a young women last century . . . there was a workshop of people who run the social media accounts for many of the city's nonprofit cultural institutions.

Here's How:

Floria Vivian Lasky was born in the Bronx on April 24, 1923, the daughter of Polish immigrants, who named her after Floria Tosca, the heroine of Puccini’s opera. She entered Hunter College at the age of 14. After graduating first in her class at New York University law school in 1945, she joined the law firm of Fitelson & Mayers, where she would stay for the next 62 years, eventually becoming a principal.

A master negotiator, she was a leader in the field of entertainment law, representing such clients as Jerome Robbins, Jule Styne, Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers.

Robbins was a particularly close client and friend. She knew him for more than fifty years, and continued to serve as executor of his estate as president of The Jerome Robbins Foundation and trustee of The Robbins Rights Trust until she died in 2007.

In her honor the Jerome Robbins Foundation created the Floria V. Lasky Award and Symposium. The award this year went to Paul H. Epstein, a partner at Proskauer Rose for nearly 30 years, he founded Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and was instrumental in establishing the George Balanchine Trust and the Leonard Bernstein Office as well as helping to bring Jerome Robbins' Broadway to the stage.

To have even more direct impact on the cultural life of the city, the foundation partnered with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to produce a workshop, Digital & Social Media Strategy: Strategy, Planning, & Implementation. It was a good Saturday afternoon at the Jerome L. Greene Space on Charleton & Varick, with presenters from leading digital agencies and the audience of people who run the social media accounts for cultural nonprofits across the city, which was excellent.

Sure I can always reach out to my social media counterparts--like Christopher Gruits at Carnegie Hall or Doug Reside at NY Public Library for the Performing arts—but in the hectic day to day of the Paley Center, I rarely do. So, thank you Floria, for helping me stay connected.

Livestream of some of the sessions.

Sidney Hillman

Because Sidney immigrated from Lithuania and became a garment labor leader . . . I met some excellent journalists whose work I might have missed, I learned something about Labor Union history, and I connected with fellow bloggers in person.

Here's How:

Sidney Hillman was the founding president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union of America, a predecessor union of Workers United, SEIU. An architect of the New Deal, he fought to build a vibrant union movement extending beyond the shop floor to all aspects of workers’ lives.

Hillman died in 1946. His passing was felt as a deep personal loss by men and women in every walk of life. Before long, the union, which he had led since its founding in 1914, was besieged with requests to create a living memorial to the man who had become the spokesman for progressive industrial democracy.

The Foundation is deeply concerned with the responsibilities of a free press, including radio and television. Since 1950, the Hillman Prize program has honored contributors to the daily, periodical, and labor press, as well as authors and broadcasters.

The very first daily press winner was the great liberal columnist Murray Kempton. In later years, photography and, most recently, blogging, were added as prize categories.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation has sought to illuminate the great issues of the day—from the search for a basis for lasting peace, to the need for better housing, medical care, and employment security for all people, the promotion of civil liberties and the battle against discrimination based on race, nationality, or religion.

And so I was invited to join the Bloggers Committee by old friend Tom Watson, joining Lindsay Beyerstein, Lance Mannion, Howard Greenstein, Marcia Stepanek, Jamil Smith, Jill Filipovic and others to bring some real-time attention to the winners, who included Frank Bardacke, Ta-nehisis Coates, Sarah Stillman, Katie Falkengberg, and Yoav Potash. Danny Glover and Sidney Poitier were inspiring presenters, and lovely to meet.

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 Mapeel     5/06/2012     blogs, current events   

Leap of Faith: A New Ministry on 44th Street

Elmer Gantry's greatnephew Jonas Nightingale has opened his tent on 44th street at the St. James Theatre to swindle chumps, I mean save souls. I went to the last preview courtesy of a very talented friend, whose company produced an important element of the production (which I can't specify because it's a spoiler).

There are many ghosts swirling around Broadway's new musical, Leap of Faith, and much infectious high school spirit, but for a story that is about religion/spirituality, there's not much of a presence of the real thing. It's Old Time religion for those who would rather not.

Leap of Faith was an original screenplay by Janus Cercone for the 1992 film starring Steve Martin and Debra Winger. The story is fairly simple: a crooked faith healer with a kick ass Gospel choir roams the midwest to bilk people out of cash in carefully orchestrated 3-day scams. It's an interesting choice of property to bring to the Great White Way.

"Can I Have an Hallelujah"

The culture of Evangelical revival tent meetings has little presence today outside of their television grandsons. One touchstone film buffs have for the crooked variety is Burt Lancaster's riveting Academy Award winning performance as Elmer Gantry, who manipulates the true believer Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) to tragic ends. (Not sure why these preachers gravitate to bird surnames.)

Sinclair Lewis's novel Elmer Gantry was published in 1927, the same year the theater Jonas is in was built by Abe Erlanger as The Erlanger. When he died in 1930 the Astors, who owned the land, took control and, great Anglo-American Episcopalian snobs that they were, renamed it the St. James Theatre, after London's St. James's Theatre (but wisely giving up what actually is the correct punctuation of a proper name ending in "s": an apostrophe with another "s.") And thus was the ground for Jonas's Broadway tent sanctified by the name of two of the 12 Apostles.

Another by-chance spiritual benediction for Jonas is Broadway history: the main set of Leap has a row of realistic cornstalks against the changing sky in the very theater that Oklahoma! debuted and played all 2,212 performances. Jonas is in Kansas, not OK, but surely the set designer is tributing the granddaddy of American musicals.

Sing It, Sisters

The centerpiece of the musical is the Angels of Mercy Gospel choir. The singing is uniformly excellent. What a thrill. It starts with Kecia Lewis-Evans as the Gospel song leader with the enormous range---the real, solid, alto notes up to the dizzy heights of the commanding soprano---opening up the first number, "Rise Up." Her two children, Krystal Joy Brown and Leslie Odom, Jr. (yes, of Smash) have effortlessly beautiful voices filled with rich musicality.

The music is by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, and it's good in what is for me a generically, pleasing Broadway way. There are no songs you will com out humming ("Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day. . ."), no song that matches "Popular" or "Defying Gravity," but nothing clunky. The songs move along the themes of how good people can talk themselves into doing bad things, and so book and songs are tight.

But. This Gospel choir should be singing some actual Gospel hymns. Where is "I Saw the Light," "Blessed Assurance" or "My Faith Looks Up to Thee" (both in the movie), "How Great Thou Art." Having the choir occasionally be, well, a choir, would have added a much-needed depth to the story. I didn't even hear a sample of a hymn in any of the songs, not even a nod to other faux Broadway hymns like Loesser's "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat."

(And, as if to underscore the point, on the subway home,  I realized the "doors are closing" tones are the opening notes to Swing Low, Sweet Chariot!)

Devil in the Red Coat?

This is a star-reaffriming vehicle for Raul Esparza, as though he needed one: he easily pumps up his natural charm to the snake oil variety for Jonas. His singing is thrilling throughout, but really powerful at the end when his devil side is being challenged by simple human decency and the power of faith in people and in Christ.

Everyone's favorite Glinda, Kendra Kassebaum, matches Esparza's acting and singing chops as his sister, and Jessica Phillips as the Sheriff is strong though given some less-than-believeable action points.

So, What Are We Worshipping?

The musical frames the action in a cute way: when it opens, it's as though the audience is in the tent, which is the main set, imaginatively constructed to sometimes blend into the proscenium curtains. The action is the present moment on 44th street, with Jonas calling everyone a sinner and testifying his tale.

Then the action goes back several years to Sweetwater, Kansas, and the corn stalks.

Besides the tent, there is one other piece of the set that dominates the beginning and end: an Arco gas sign at the gas station where the revival bus has broken down, bringing them to the town. It's enormous, it towers over the actors and the corn, like a real-life one is tall enough to be seen from a distance. It is cross-like in shape itself, and lists today's obscene prices of gasoline.

Contrast that with the small neon cross that hangs on the tent. Hmm.

It's true that tent ministries had very simple altars and the sign of the cross was modest. And the character Isaiah, who is visiting from Bible college, tries to confront the Angels that if the are scamming people, they are no longer followers of Jesus. Which is an important point: Sinclair Lewis was writing about a con man. For the early decades of the 20th century the likes of Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson brought true Christian community to isolated towns across the midwest.

But, in today's world, is it a subliminal accident that the symbol of much of modern life's power struggles--oil---hovers over this story of taking a leap of faith? One could argue that the love/need of oil is the root of much evil: Middle East conflicts; corporate greed/price gouging; environmental disasters from the Exxon Valdez to BP in the Gulf.

Everyone in the tent will have his or her own revelation in the St. James Theatre, and you can't ask for more than that from art. As they say, God works in mysterious ways.

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 Mapeel     4/26/2012     Film, theater   

Hit It, Handel

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 Mapeel     4/08/2012     music   

The Madness Parties On @Paley Center

I helped to throw the day job's Mad Men season premiere viewing party last Sunday. It was a smash success because it rode the wave of Mad-ness that viewer's have for Don Draper and associates. The combination of the sixties universe, great writing, and the ever-compelling, good-looking cast has made Mad Men that most enviable of series: event TV.

We didn't know that the premiere itself would focus on a party at the Drapers, and ours did not have a Zou Bisou Bisou number, but the party grooved before the screening—-complete with candy cigarettes, a special Maker's Mark cocktail, and red carpet photos with the cast—-and watching it as a group was a lot of fun. We also treated people to commercials from 1966 instead of the current ones.

For more photos pop over to the Paley Center NY Facebook page.

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 Mapeel     4/01/2012     television   

"Each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die" Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was one of those special people who knew a lot about love, and she enriched the world by sharing her deft perceptions channeled into exquisite poetry. She knew the female experience in all its potential: young wife, mother of 3, then awaking in midlife to her erotic desire for women.

I discovered Rich in college, amid the operatic intensity of life that is the coed's lot. I formed a bond with her collection The Dream of a Common Language that has never been duplicated. I'm not alone in that connection. Here's Cheryl Strayed from her memoir Wild (via John Williams in NYT):

“I’d read ‘The Dream of a Common Language’ so often that I’d practically memorized it. In the previous few years, certain lines had become like incantations to me, words I’d chanted to myself through my sorrow and confusion. That book was a consolation, an old friend, and when I held it in my hands on my first night on the trail, I didn’t regret carrying it one iota — even though carrying it meant that I could no more than hunch beneath its weight.”

Here's one of my favorites, but so much of her work is brilliant, haunting, comforting, provocative, helpful.


XVII

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone.

The accidents happen, we're not heroines,

they happen in our lives like car crashes,

books that change us, neighborhoods

we move into and come to love.

Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,

women at least should know the difference

between love and death. No prison cup,

no penance. Merely a notion that the tape - recorder

should have caught some ghost of us: that tape - recorder

not merely played but should have listened to us,

and could instruct those after us:

this we were, this is how we tried to love,

and these are the forces we had ranged within us

within us and against us, against us and within us

Love Poems, Dream of a Common Language
Adrienne Rich

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 Mapeel     3/29/2012     current events, poetry   

Madness Contained Until Tomorrow(land)

Some thoughts from back when we last left Don, a year and a half ago. And the Mad Men tag will take you to posts from various specific episodes over the last four years. It helps to be reminded why people are making the season 5 premiere an event. More about that later.

Another season, another reason, of Mad Men whoopee is over.

It began with a reporter asking “who is Don Draper?” and ended with this answer: A father of three who fell in love with a French-speaking, child-loving 25-year old Maria Von Trapp of a brunette, while he seemed to have saved his business by a stunt ad in the NY Times about Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce not taking tobacco advertising.

I’m glad to see Don find focus. He hit rock bottom this season, with the vomit on his shirt. Then he began the journaling and swimming, and the man regained some of his beauty and charisma. He’s much more interesting as a man interested in his life than a drunk trying to throw it all away.

Betty continued to be a damaged, cruel, lost woman; Joan chose to be a mother rather than not; Peggy is horrified that her work still is undervalued; and Sally is the best actress on television.

We’ve come a long way from seasons 1 and 2, when Weiner’s love of style trumped his ability to tell a story. Now the storytelling is compelling, and we may all be with these characters for the long run, into the seventies and beyond.

Other moments:
•The real Don Draper’s engagement ring coming to our Don Draper

•So many pop culture references: The Sound of Music; Hogan’s Heroes; Beverly Hillbillies (swimming pools, movie stars), Abe Beame!

•Poor Faye. She starts the episode with Don, but It’s not to be.

•Don roping Peggy into his happy news. Megan reminds him of Peggy! Megan admires her the way he does. What's that about.

•Bobby’s desire to ride a jet in Tomorrowland, and Don’s wistful look at the window at the end. Is he feeling The Graduate (the blank stares at the back of the bus), or truly Sonny & Cher (and then look what actually happened to them)

Not a cliff hanger, but a nice plateau for the characters to rest on until next season.

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 Mapeel     3/24/2012     Mad Men