Monthly Archives: August 2008

Banksy’s Gift

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Sketch for Essex Road

This article caught my eye in today’s Independent Online:

When Banksy offered one of his highly sought-after canvases to Labour to auction for Ken Livingstone’s ill-fated re-election campaign, the party’s high command was jubilant.

They were left with a conundrum, however, when they realised that the secret identity of the famously elusive graffiti artist would cost their hard-pressed coffers tens of thousands of pounds.

The winning bid for Sketch for Essex Road, a canvas of two children with hands on hearts pledging allegiance to a Tesco carrier bag on a flagpole, was £195,000. But that meant Banksy’s painting would have to be declared as a gift to the party, requiring it to release his true identity on the internet along with hundreds of other donors – blowing apart his well-guarded anonymity.
He’s anonymous, so Banksy’s gift is impermissible – News, Art & Architecture – The Independent

The Collaborator of Bethlehem

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The Collaborator of Bethlehem The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees


My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I heard an interview with Matt Beynon Rees on NPR the other day and I am intrigued by his Palestinian detective, Omar Yussef. I like to read well written books about places I may never see. The Yacobian Building was a favorite of mine (and a fave film, too). I look forward to getting to this book and the sequels.

I have just finished the book and I must say I liked it a lot. Rees paints a lush and detailed canvas of Palestine. Bleak yet captivating. His character development is spot-on and his attention to detail is fantastic.

Matt Beynon Rees is the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine and it shows in his detailed perspective on the political realities of the Middle East. His prose range from the protean to the stunning. Here is a favorite passage of mine:

Yet the gunmen thrived, they whose accomplishments and talents were of the basest nature, they who would have been obliterated had there been law and order and honor in the town. Perhaps Bethlehem was there town after all, and it was Omar Yussef who was the outlaw interloper here, peddling contraband decency and running a clandestine trade in morality.

If you are at all interested in this part of the world, then this book should be on your list.
View all my reviews.

Teacher Man – A Review

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Teacher Man: A Memoir Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt


My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed Angela’s Ashes but was disappointed by ‘Tis. I had hopes that Teacher Man would return to the joyful optimism of McCourt’s first novel, and I was not let down.

Teacher Man covers some of the same time span as ‘Tis, but, as McCourt himself says in the preface, he realized after finishing ‘Tis that people may have gotten the impression that he suffered his life as a teacher, and he wanted to right that mis-perception.

Teacher Man is a celebration of what we can learn about ourselves when we help others. McCourt’s own suffering, which he celebrates here much as he did in Ashes, rather than lamenting as he did in ‘Tis, is more of a backdrop to the main story. In each chapter he picks out a story or two to illustrate how his teaching method evolved over the years, and as he learns to trust the pedagogue within him, we watch the shifting times and era of his life.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Angela’s Ashes. You do not need to have read ‘Tis to read this, and you might be happier skipping it.

View all my reviews.

Sharp Words From Evan Bayh

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Over at MickeyMouse.com, Rick Klien reports on Matthew Jaffe and Julia Bain reporting on Bob Scheiffer getting this cutting comment out of Sen. Evan Bayh on Face the Nation:

“We are not all Georgians now,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” per ABC’s Matthew Jaffe and Julia Bain. “If we were Georgians and the Russians were invading our country and killing our people, we’d be in a state of war. And clearly, that’s not what we want. And John sometimes, he’s a good person, but he’s a little bit given to this kind of bellicose rhetoric, which has a tendency to inflame conflicts rather than to diffuse them, and that’s not what you want in a president.”
Who’s No. 2? Obama Set for VP Pick

Elizabeth Edwards – Once More The Sting

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Pawn well remembers that night in 2007 when we all learned that Elizabeth Edwards had incurable breast cancer. We all felt for her then, and held a sheltered place in our thoughts and hearts for her. Seems we need to open those same places yet again. Here, from Elizabeth’s latest blog post at DailyKos:

…we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well.
Daily Kos: Today

What a shame that Elizabeth could not get her wish. John, I am sorry you succumbed as you did. Elizabeth, I am sorry your pain must once again be a public affair.

Bad Political Jokes

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Pawn was in a deli this morning, having breakfast, and another diner came in and took his seat at the counter. He leaned in conspiratorially and asked the waitress if she wanted to hear an Obama joke. He then proceeded to tell it.

Obama goes up to heaven and approaches the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is there waiting for him.
St. Peter: Can I help you?
Obama: I’m President Barack Obama.
St. Peter: You were president? I don’t think so.
Obama: Yes sir, I was.
St. Peter: When were you inaugurated?
Obama: Ten minutes ago.

The waitress looked at him with a blank expression. “Get it – he got assassinated. Ha, haha”

Pawn was inclined to offer this version of the joke:

McCain goes up to heaven and approaches the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is there waiting for him.
St. Peter: Can I help you?
McCain: I’m President John McCain.
St. Peter: You were president? I don’t think so.
McCain: Yes sir, I was.
St. Peter: When were you inaugurated?
McCain: Ten minutes ago.

Get it – he keeled over dead with a heart attack, or was it cancer…

Let’s face it, if the joke is offensive and just as unfunny when the shoe is on the other foot, then maybe it doesn’t need to be told.

Brooks on Obama

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Quite the interesting and though provoking piece by David Brooks in today’s Times. In a departure for Brooks, who is given to partisan cuts carefully buried 3/4 of the way through an otherwise thoughtful piece, here he is just thoughtful:

Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that has happened, does he have only a slim two- or three-point lead over John McCain, according to an average of the recent polls? Why is he basically tied with his opponent when his party is so far ahead?

His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they’re wary and uncertain.

And the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner. He opened his book “Dreams From My Father” with a quotation from Chronicles: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.”

There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.

Op-Ed Columnist – Where’s the Landslide? – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

Pawn has read all of those articles he references here, and must admit he is on to something…