THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/16/07 -- Vol. 26, No. 20, Whole Number 1467
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Canadian Rockies Travelogues
Trivia Questions
For the Benefit of Those Who Came In Late... (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
MAURICE JARRE: A TRIBUTE TO DAVID LEAN (DVD review
by Mark R. Leeper)
YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
Backward Time Travel (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
Halloween Costumes (letter of comment by Richie Bielak)
The MT VOID and THE MERCHANTS' WAR (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
Things Versus Experiences (letter of comment by John Sloan)
This Week's Reading (Jorge Luis Borges, THE YEAR OF LIVING
BIBLICALLY, and TIME AFTER TIME) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Canadian Rockies Travelogues
Our travelogues of our five-week road trip to the Canadian Rockies
and back are available at:
http://tinyurl.com/2q3vbg (Mark's)
http://tinyurl.com/2wwwov (Evelyn's)
[These are on our web pages, but some mailer filters will not pass
through mail contain that site's name. Hence the tinyurl. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Trivia Questions
1) Name a movie with at least ten speaking parts that has no
female roles, only male. (There are several answers to this one.)
2) Name a movie with at least ten speaking parts that has no male
roles, only female.
In each case, I am asking for a well-known studio film, not an
independent movie.
Extra credit:
Name an opera by a well-known composer with at least ten singing
roles that has no male singing roles, only female. Name another
that has only male singing roles.
Answers will appear next week. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: HBO Series Life Cycle (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We recently watched the final seasons of two HBO series. We saw
the last season of THE SOPRANOS and the second season of ROME.
These are widely praised TV series, some of the best that have
ever been made for television. But I think I have discovered a
principle. I think that every good HBO series evolves to the
point where it has a lot of gratuitous nudity and copulation just
before it dies. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: For the Benefit of Those Who Came In Late... (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
Another fanzine reviewed the MT VOID very recently and said some
very nice things, but said that it was not really a "clubzine."
That is, it is not a fanzine published by a club. I am not sure
that is correct, though maybe I am just in denial.
It occurred to me that it made sense that we rarely explain some
of the vestiges of our ontogeny in our colophon. (Gee, I wonder
if I should tell my doctor that we have vestiges of ontogeny in
our colophon.) In fact, very few readers have been around long
enough to completely understand our colophon (that's the thing at
the top of each issue). The history of the MT VOID goes back to
1978. Evelyn and I had come to work at Bell Laboratories in
Holmdel, New Jersey, refugees from the cold winters of Detroit,
Michigan, where we had worked for the Burroughs computer company.
At one time New Jersey was not the center of exciting social life
that everybody knows it is today. But it was a good place to
work, funded by The Phone Company before the government broke it
up. They actually funded clubs and gave them a budget for
activities. In Detroit we had been active in the Wayne Third
Foundation, a science fiction club at Wayne State University. We
certainly expected that with all the visionaries at Bell
Laboratories they would have some sort of science fiction
activities. We looked anxiously for a science fiction club and
sadly found none. The closest they came was a group of fans who
chipped in as a group and bought books from the Science Fiction
Book Club and then routed them around through company mail so
each got a chance to read them.
We came to work in January 1978 and in December we attended a
science fiction convention in New York, Empiricon. On the way
home, full of affection for the genre, I suggested to Evelyn that
Bell Laboratories needed a science fiction club and we should
found one ourselves. Little did I realize how much worlds turn
on such suggestions. It certainly has impacted the rest of our
lives.
Bell Laboratories would let us found an official club, but we had
to find ten people who wanted to join first. I don't remember
how we found them, but we got the word around. Some people who
had minimal interest, but liked the idea that there was a science
fiction club, added their names to our list. So we got approved
and even a small budget. Once we were listed as an official
club, finding new members became much less of a problem. Getting
people to read the books and participate in meetings was less
automatic. We would meet every two weeks and discuss a science
fiction book. For the early days we would run the club between
us temporarily.
We had meetings every two weeks and for each meeting we had to
send out two notices. One was before meetings to tell people
what book was coming up for discussion. One was after meetings
to tell people what had been chosen to read for next discussion.
So we had to write a lot of notices. Almost immediately I
started putting in little whimsical comments, news of science
fiction events, and film reviews. But we started publishing the
Friday mornings before and after meetings so that people had the
weekend to read. When people wanted to go to a three-week cycle
to have more time to read the books for upcoming meetings, the
notice would go out two Fridays in three, but from 1985 on we had
enough material to go weekly and it has been weekly ever since.
I don't believe we have missed a Friday. When we went on
vacations we made sure that someone sent out the notice every
Friday.
Meetings actually became varied in type. We might play Jeff
Wayne's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. On Friday evenings we might have
a group of members go to the new science fiction film that was
opening and then would have dinner afterward to discuss it. A
few Saturdays we set up field trips to the (now-defunct) F&SF
Book Company in Staten Island. They had a warehouse of science
fiction books at discount prices.
The notices started out hand-written, photocopied, and mailed by
inter-office mail. Our meetings were in Holmdel, whose company
mail abbreviation was HO. But we also brought in people from
nearby Bell Laboratories buildings Lincroft (LZ) and Middletown
(MT). Member Paul Chisholm suggested we combine the three postal
codes and call ourselves the MT HOLZ Science Fiction Society. It
was to be pronounced "empty holes". And the name of the notice
became the MT VOID or "empty void". We started getting a lot of
members who we knew could not possibly attend the meetings, but
who wanted the notice nonetheless for the articles.
Some people whom we could not reach by interoffice mail wanted to
get the VOID and we would exchange with other clubs. We would
send out about six copies calling it "company business." We
thought of it as company support for the club, possibly just a
bit longer than the company felt obliged to support its clubs.
We also used company photocopiers to copy the notice. I think
our management knew about it and considered a holdover from when
the company funded and supported clubs. But we tried to maintain
a low profile. And the truth is that many of the local
supervisors were members and really wanted to receive the notice.
One local supervisor was a member and donated some books to the
club library and in return got playfully insulted in the notice,
which was the usual reward. A few years later I went to work for
him and he remained my supervisor for something like fourteen
years.
Much of this was before Bell Laboratories had people doing email.
Once we could sent the VOID out electronically it was a lot
easier. One quick email would distribute to the entire club.
There was no copying cost. And we could have members anywhere
the Internet reached. That was good because AT&T was broken up
with divestiture, but we lost no members because we were working
for different companies.
It was about this time I started noticing that nearly every one
of our friends in New Jersey we had met through the club we
founded. In fact, we had few friends who were really outside of
the club whom we had not met through science fiction socializing.
It still is true to a large extent.
Over time fewer people in the club had time to read books for
discussion or to go to other science fiction activities. The one
constant has been the weekly notice that has taken on a life of
its own. There really are no active members of the MT HOLZ
Science Fiction Society besides Evelyn and me. But we still have
a lot of members who read the notice. If you get the notice by
email you are technically a non-active member.
So this is to let you know that if you are ever called before a
Congressional Committee and asked if you ever belonged to any
subversive organizations, you probably should stand up proudly
and in a patriotic voice announce that you have been and are a
member of the MT HOLZ Science Fiction Society. They will then
decide that you are not subversive but a harmless idiot. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MAURICE JARRE: A TRIBUTE TO DAVID LEAN (DVD review by Mark
R. Leeper)
I probably should start with the disclaimer that I have very
little technical knowledge of music. I am, however, very much a
film buff and I very much like the great orchestral scores of
older films and in particular epic films. When one thinks of the
great scores of classic films one naturally thinks of names like
Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Jerry Goldsmith, and Maurice
Jarre. Jarre's scoring career goes back to the early 1950s, but
some of his finest work was in the 1960s and 1970s. The best of
his best (in my non-technical opinion) include THE LONGEST DAY
(1962), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965), and THE
MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1970). David Lean directed two of these
four. Jarre wrote the score for only four of Lean's films in
all: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965), RYAN'S
DAUGHTER (1970), and A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984). But the director
and composer formed a close bond and a personal friendship. From
1962 on Lean had no other composers. A Maurice Jarre score just
became part of what made a David Lean film a David Lean film. At
the time of his death David Lean was planning a production of
NOSTROMO, of course with a Jarre score. Lean died in London
April 16, 1991. As a tribute to his friend Maurice Jarre put
together a 1992 concert featuring his music written for David
Lean. The London Philharmonic performed the music at London's
Barbican Center. The concert was recorded but to the best of my
knowledge was never released. As we approach March 25, 2008,
which would have been Lean's 100th birthday, Milan is releasing a
DVD and CD package of the concert.
Milan's package is really very inviting:
The concert itself is edited to 55 minutes in length. The DVD
features the following contents:
1. Remembrance
2. Ryan's Daughter Suite
3. A Passage to India
4. Doctor Zhivago
5. Offering
6. A Passage to India (Garden of Statues)
7. Lawrence of Arabia Suite
"Remembrance" is a piece of music written only for this concert
and allows Jarre to express his deep affection for David Lean in
the way Jarre does it best--in music. "Offering" was previously
written as a gift to be played at Lean's wedding.
The concert includes footage from the films as well as showing
the orchestra creating the music. Jarre wryly notes that he
synchronized the music to the visuals in a way that is backward
from what he is used to. For once, he has started with the music
and can move around the visuals to fit the music instead of vice
versa.
The CD, which comes included in the package, makes the concert
music a good deal more portable. It contains all the music of
the concert with the exception of the "Garden of Statues"
sequence. This sequence in the concert is actually a
demonstration of the task and process of precisely matching the
music Jarre has composed to an edited but un-scored film. This
took a certain amount of courage on Jarre's part to include since
in actual practice he does not have to get it right the first
time, but in front of an audience he does. This task is an
aspect of film scoring most people have never had an opportunity
to see. The entire concert was apparently unexpectedly difficult
for Jarre. He could not stop and re-do anything the way he does
normally when he works since everything was done before a live
audience and was all done in a single (if later edited) take.
Also included in the DVD is a complete and informative commentary
by Jarre on the concert in French with subtitles in English. The
commentary includes humorous anecdotes and diverse information
about the production. More information in the same vein is
included in a 35-minute interview in French with English
subtitles. (Sadly, they did not ask the question I have been
dying to ask Maurice Jarre for years. That is if one looks
individually at films that Jarre has scored, a high proportion
seem to have a train appearing somewhere in the film. For many
it is obvious where the train would be, but even a film like
SCHOOL TIES has Brendan Frasier stopped by a train on his way to
school. Peculiarly, even MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME and GHOST
manage to each get a train in. It is not all of his films. You
would not expect to see a train in SHOGUN. But most films in
which it would be possible do fit in a train or a subway or a
mine train. Is this all just a coincidence?) Maurice Jarre's
son, Jean-Michel Jarre, is also a popular composer.
Samplings of the concert are available on YouTube and can be
found at http://tinyurl.com/2wbbhg.
Samples are also available at the Milan Records site:
http://www.milanrecords.com/leanbyjarre/mp3/3.mp3
Amazon page: http://tinyurl.com/2k79pq
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Dan Katzir's documentary covers what might well be the
last eight days of the Folksbeine Yiddish Theater Company.
Struggling to keep Yiddish theater alive in the United States,
the company desperately needs financial backing. We see the
company onstage and off. Along the way we meet some of the
surviving greats of the medium. It will be interesting to see if
this film can cross over and interest people not already
aficionados of Yiddish theater. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or
7/10
This is a very small documentary about what is today a very small
institution, Yiddish theater in New York City. At one time there
were no less than twelve Yiddish theaters in the city. Yiddish
theater was part of the foundation of Broadway. For that matter
many familiar film actors of Hollywood like Walter Matthau, Paul
Muni, and Sam Jaffe got their starts in Yiddish theater. There
were over two hundred Yiddish theaters or touring Yiddish theater
troupes in the United States between 1890 and 1940. But the
heart of Yiddish theater was in Eastern Europe and that heart was
killed in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. Nearly all the Yiddish-
speakers in Eastern Europe were murdered and the language was
nearly wiped out. Even after the war other countries suppressed
the use of the language. With so few speakers, Yiddish theater
almost died and is closer than ever the very edge of death. Of
the twelve New York Yiddish theater companies the only one
surviving is the Folksbeine. That is the oldest and longest
running Yiddish theater company in the United States and that
theater company is struggling to stay alive, or it was in the
eight days covered by the documentary YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE
STORY.
The film covers the last eight days of the year 2000. The
Folksbeine had been getting audiences of about forty people to
its performances and that simply is not enough to keep the
theater afloat. At the end of the year they had to move out of
their already very remote theater on East Broadway near
Chinatown. They needed another theater and to rent it they
needed money. To get the money they needed investors. But it is
not easy to get investors interested in plays performed in a
language that it itself dying out and in plays that are lucky to
draw audiences measured in dozens. The plays are presented with
super-titles in English and Russian, and that attracts some
people a little younger than 70. But most people who understand
spoken Yiddish are in their eighties and that does not promise a
long future for Yiddish Theater. Yiddish, someone says, is the
language of the dead. The people who know Yiddish are dying or
will be in the next few years. Most non-Jews do not speak it.
Young Jews learn Hebrew. Even most of the younger actors on the
stage are speaking lines phonetically that they would not have
even understood a few months before.
How can I have written two paragraphs on this review without
mentioning Zypora Spaisman? Spaisman was the core of the
Folksbeine. She was the chief actor, the manager, and who knows
what else of the theater company. She was the glue that kept the
company together. She is also the center of this documentary.
Documentary director, co-writer, and narrator Dan Katzir says he
did not expect to make a film when he came to the United States
in late 2000 but was caught up in story of the Folksbeine and its
efforts to survive. His film covers the last eight days of the
year, the last eight days of the Folksbeine's lease, and which
also happen to be that year the eight days of the festival of
Chanukah. In his very simply styled documentary we listen to him
talk to some of the greatest living actors of the Yiddish stage.
Sometimes he just puts a camera on them in their daily lives and
just translates with subtitles. Among the stars are Shifra
Lerer, Felix Fibich, and Seymour Rechzeit, once great names and
now hardly remembered to all but a few. We also get to know Roni
Neuman, who resembles a young Louise Lasser and who is a young
Yiddish actress of the current play. As with most of the young
actors, she does not speak Yiddish and learns her lines
phonetically. Dan Katzir just shows us the majors of Yiddish
theater and sits back and lets them talk and observes them.
We travel around New York City and see the efforts of David
Romeo, the company's theater producer, as he desperately looks
for backer money. To make the tone more melancholy, after two or
three days the city has a record-breaking blizzard with deep snow
choking the city and making travel even harder for the
octogenarians of the company. We meet people, we see Jewish
food, and we hear Jewish music against a background of falling
hopes and falling snow. This film is awash in Jewish music, much
of it Klezmer.
YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY is an engrossing documentary, but
one wonders if people who do not already have an interest in
Yiddish theater will be drawn to it. Yes, the Folksbeine did
survive and still plays in New York City. We can only hope that
the film draws audiences larger today than those we see drawn by
the Folksbeine. Certainly the film will be of some interest to
the enthusiasts of Yiddish theater. I rate YIDDISH THEATER: A
LOVE STORY a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Backward Time Travel (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
In response to Mark's article on backward time travel in the
11/09/07 issue of the MT VOID, David Goldfarb writes, "All the
discussions of conceivably-physically-possible time machines that
I've seen have one thing in common: they can't be used to travel
back in time before the machine was first built. So the lack of
time travelers in the current day doesn't really prove anything.
(Someone on Usenet recently observed that we know time travel
into our past isn't possible, because records prove that when
Shakespeare was active as an actor and playwright, his
performances didn't all play to sellout crowds.)" [-dg]
Mark responds, "Not that modern physics has to make sense, but
this time travel limitation makes less sense than much of
physics. The physical universe does not care when a machine was
built. Does that interval start when construction starts or when
the last screw is twisted into place? It might matter when the
machine was turned on. A machine may somehow be creating a path
back to itself through time. But up until the startup point a
time machine is just one more hunk of metal, or whatever. As for
the Shakespeare point: Word might travel fast (whatever that
means for time travelers) that the plays were over-hyped."
[-mrl]
David replies, "The schemes that I've seen involve creating
wormholes in space and suchlike--they aren't metal things that
you turn on and off with the flip of a switch. The distinction
between 'building' and 'turning on' thus becomes fuzzy, perhaps
nonexistent. If you *were* applying such a limitation to a
Wells-like time machine, I agree that its first activation makes
much more sense as the boundary." [-dg]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Halloween Costumes (letter of comment by Richie Bielak)
In response to Evelyn's comments on costumes in the 11/09/07 issue
of the MT VOID, Richie Bielak writes:
Some comments on Halloween costumes...
Seems like serious "cosplay" has moved to conventions such as
these:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richieb/Otakon20072
http://picasaweb.google.com/richieb/Kids/photo#5018966876643903234
Both of Caroline's costumes were home made--as are many of the
costumes at Otakon. She has used the Zelda getup for Halloween
too. [-rb]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The MT VOID and THE MERCHANTS' WAR (letter of comment by
John Purcell)
In response to the 11/09/07 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
In the latest ASKANCE, now posted at http://www.efanzines.com, I
reviewed your newsletter-zine, and quite favorably, too. Go to
that site and read it to your heart's content; I think you'll be
pleased.
Way back in the first issue of AND FURTHERMORE (Feb 2006; not
*that* long ago, technically, but it sure feels like it) I
reviewed VENUS, INC. by Pohl and Kornbluth. The two novels make
a good continuous narrative, and I am quite glad, actually, that
Pohl wrote THE MERCHANTS' WAR in 1984 because it clarified a few
things in The Space Merchants and tied up some loose ends. The
nice thing about the second novel is that it can stand very well
on its own; but if you read them sequentially, it makes a lot
more sense, of course. Pohl is one of my favorite SF writers,
and I still can't believe that Kornbluth died so young. Very
sad. He was a fine writer; imagine what he might have done If
Only.
Not much else to say here, but once again I enjoyed your efforts.
Good stuff. If I had more time--gotta do some grading and my
son's soccer tournament is this weekend--I'd probably make more
comments. Oh, well. I am sure you will survive without them.
[-jp]
Mark replies:
We are very pleased. You said some very nice things. You
probably are right that we are no longer a clubzine, but we have
not admitted that to ourselves. We founded the Bell Labs science
fiction club in 1977 and the notice of the upcoming book to read
for discussion which became a weekly notice.
Each Bell location had a two-letter code for mail purposes.
There were three Bell Labs locations right near each other and
most of our members came from Holmdel (HO), Middletown (MT), or
Lincroft (LZ). We were not allowed to call our club the Bell
Labs Science Fiction Club for legal reasons so we took the three
location codes and called ourselves the MT HOLZ Science Fiction
Society. We gave the notice the name MT VOID ("the empty void").
There is little activity left in the club. It withered away with
time. All that is left is the weekly notice. And that seems
unkillable. It is time we admitted to ourselves the club is no
more, but it isn't really dead. In fact you and every other
subscriber is a member. (For more details, see my main article
above.)
Actually I am curious. How did you find out about the VOID in
the first place?
Oh, and the other thing is that Evelyn does nearly all of the
invisible work on the VOID. That can add up. I probably spend
more time overall, but then I am a slow writer.
Thanks again for writing and for the MERCHANTS' WAR information.
[-mrl]
John answers, "I think I ran across the VOID while browsing the
fanac.org site, reading an issue or few, then finally subscribing
to it last year during your Holiday special rate of 'free.'
Works for me." [-jp]
And Mark notes, "It is always free. I think it might have been
at half price then. (I have to be honest, though. It wasn't
really half price. We charged you twice.)" [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Things Versus Experiences (letter of comment by John Sloan)
In response to Mark's article on things versus experiences in the
11/02/07 issue of the MT VOID (and the responses to it in the
11/09/07 issue), John Sloan writes:
I have to go with Mark on this one.
In 1995 I spent a month working and travelling in the People's
Republic of China. Kathleen and I recently spent three weeks in
Japan using the Nippon 2007 WorldCon as our excuse. My time in
China fundamentally changed my perspective. For example, since
then I've never taken potable tap water and electrical power for
granted, even in a major city. Spending time in Japan's Tokyo-
Yokohama corridor, the most densely populated area on the planet
according to the United Nations, made me think of the Motie home
world in THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. Both experiences were as close
as I will come to being on another planet. The differences
between Eastern and Western culture are much wider than that of
other places we've been, including Europe, Australia, and French
Polynesia, although those places had their exotic moments too.
The size of America, and its geographic isolation from Europe and
Asia, is both a blessing and a curse. We can travel for days and
never leave the confines of the United States. The United States
is so big that there's a fair amount of cultural and dialect
differences just within our borders. Travel to Europe and Asia
is, relatively speaking, difficult, time-consuming, and
expensive. Yet Americans in my opinion would be much better
served by buying fewer SUVs and spending our money and carbon
emissions on foreign travel. We spend way too much of our time
in the sleep-work-television cycle which does little but
reinforce our existing perceptions and misconceptions. We should
get out more. Way out.
Photos from China, Japan, and elsewhere:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnlsloan/sets
A journal I kept during my month in China in 1995:
http://www.diag.com/ftp/China_Journal.pdf
Blog article on our trip to Japan:
http://tinyurl.com/2d7pvb
[-jls]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
If science fiction is the literature of ideas, then the
quintessential science fictional author is Jorge Luis Borges.
This occurred to me when someone cited a short story by Borges,
"The Library of Babel", and I realized once more that many of
Borges's stories are not really stories, but "merely" ideas or
concepts, unfettered by characters or plot. "The Library of
Babel", "The Babylon Lottery", "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius",
"Funes the Memorious", ... so many of the "stories" are ideas
presented so beautifully as to convince the reader that they are
complete in themselves.
And speaking of "The Babylon Lottery", I was also reminded of it
when I read someone's comment that as far as government health
insurance goes, all they want is the same medical plan their
Congresspersons get. This would be far more likely in a
"Babylon-Lottery" situation, because the Congresspersons would
know that with the next roll of the dice, *they* could end up
with whatever health plan a random person in the society gets.
THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW
THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY AS POSSIBLE by A. J. Jacobs (ISBN-13
978-0-7432-9147-7, ISBN-10 0-7432-9147-6) is both fascinating and
irritating. Fascinating, because some of the things Jacobs
learns over the year are unexpected. Irritating, because Jacobs
seems fairly clueless about a lot of facts, starting with the
fact that lots of people have been following the Bible (or at
least the Hebrew Bible) as literally as possible, starting with
Orthodox Jews. Yes, there is some disagreement about
interpretation, but why is Jacobs so surprised that (for example)
Orthodox Jews care about the rules against mixing fibers? Jacob
also seems to interpret his mission as not just following the
rules that intersect with his life, but going out of his way to
follow rules that don't. For example, he eats locusts, not
because he is commanded to, but because they are allowed.
(However, he does not seem equally driven to eat, for example,
duck just because it is allowed.) He seems more interested in
seeing just how bizarrely he can interpret the laws, and how he
can make his book more interesting, and less in trying to create
a coherent, meaningful Biblical lifestyle. (And why is it so
difficult for him to avoid reading his email for even an hour on
the Sabbath? Surely he goes that long if he goes to a party or
something.)
Jacobs did not have his wife's whole-hearted support,
particularly when it came to the laws of marital purity. Jacobs
could not touch his wife during her period (and for seven days
after), or share the same bed, or even sit in the same chair. So
one day when he got home, he started to sit in his favorite
chair:
"I wouldn't do that," says Julie.
"Why?"
"It's unclean. I sat on it." She doesn't even look up from
her TiVo'd episode of LOST.
OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn't appreciate these
impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.
"Sat in that one, too," says Julie. "And the ones in the
kitchen. And the couch in the office."
In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in
the apartment, which I find annoying but also impressive. It
seems in the biblical tradition of enterprising women--like
Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead
him when he was drunk.
Not every experience is this amusing, of course. And while
Jacobs seems to work hard on some laws, he also seems to skimp on
others. Although Jacobs eschews pork and shellfish, there is no
mention of his requiring special slaughtering techniques to drain
all the blood from animals destined for his table. He interprets
Leviticus 19:32 ("Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and
honour the face of the old man, ...") as meaning he has to stand
up whenever an older person enters the room. So when he is eating
pasta in a Boca Raton strip mall restaurant, he decides he has to
stand up whenever "a gray-haired person enters the restaurant.
Which is pretty much every forty-five seconds. It looks like [he
is] playing a solitaire version of musical chairs." And what is
he doing eating pasta in a (presumably non-kosher) Boca Raton
strip mall restaurant? Well, he seems to be following a lot of
the laws consecutively rather than concurrently for the entire
year!
(Jacobs spends most of his time working on the rules in the Hebrew
Bible, but spends a couple of months at the end working on the New
Testament.)
The most interesting parts are not Jacobs's reactions to the laws
and living them, but the conversations, interviews, and
experiences he has with other people who have their own
perspectives on what it means to follow the Bible. And I
discovered the existence of "Red-letter Christians", a movement
which tries to emphasize Jesus's words (often printed in red in
Christian Bibles [*]) and teachings, rather than those of
St. Paul or the other apostles. The Red-letter Christians are a
bit of a contrast to the conservative evangelicals who get the
bulk of the publicity, since the Red-letter Christians emphasize
anti-war, anti-consumer, anti-poverty goals. "They point out
that there are more passages in the Bible about the poor than any
other topic save idolatry--several *thousand*, in fact," says
Jacobs. Pastor Tony Campolo complains, "Many of us in the
evangelical movement believe that the evangelical Christianity
has become captured and enslaved by the religious. Its loyalty
seems to be more to the platform of the Republican Party than to
the radical teachings of Jesus."
[*] Leo Tolstoy produced a version of the Bible called "The
Gospel in Brief" consisting only of Jesus's words and enough
narrative to connect them together. It can be found at
http://tinyurl.com/28lvut.
I recently watched the film TIME AFTER TIME and have a couple of
comments. First, the "vaporizing equalizer" on the time machine
is similar to the planetary ignition switch in FORBIDDEN PLANET--
both of them seem like amazingly bad designs. (In Karl
Alexander's book TIME AFTER TIME, the plot purpose served by the
"vaporizing equalizer" is handled in a more realistic manner.)
Also, it is often said that some people are too dumb to live, and
I would say that anyone who knows they are in danger and has to
leave in an hour and still takes Valium and brandy together may
fall into this category. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says
is never accurate because he unconsciously
translates what he hears into something he can
understand.
-- Bertrand Russell