RUTHFULLY YOURS

There are strong parallels between “45 Years” and “Away From Her,” a movie starring Julie Christie, written and directed by Sarah Polley and based on a short story by Alice Munro (”The Bear Came Over the Mountain”). “45Years” stars two other well-known actors from the 60’s – Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, was written and directed by Andrew Haigh and adapted from a short story by David Constantine (”In Another Country”). Furthering the link, viewers of a certain age will remember an exuberant Tom Courtenay and an exhilarating Julie Christie in a breakout performance in “Billy Liar.” Both “45 Years” and “Away From Her” deal with the dissolving threads of a long marriage; one triggered by the unexpected imposition of a tragic past love and one by the torments of dementia as it robs its victim of her very identity.

“45 Years” centers on the quiet intimacy between Kate and Geoff Mercer, a retired couple whose lives consist of walks with their dog, shared meals and time spent at home listening to music and reading. When a letter written in German arrives, we see the power of a withheld secret begin to erode the bond between husband and wife and eat away at each of them differently. All the action and revelations take place within one week that is scheduled to culminate in a party for their 45th wedding anniversary. These two are portrayed as very low-keyed, unpretentious people who don’t like to socialize much and who, at their own wedding, resented the notion of a special table for the bride and groom. One of the changes made in the screen adaption was framing a story about internal emotions around a too-large, too-festive party. These characters wouldn’t have wanted to even attend such an event, much less host it. It becomes difficult to reconcile the cranky personality of the scruffy husband with the tuxedo-clad bon vivant willing to make public proclamations about his feelings for his wife. Similarly one wonders who created the invitation list for this party – surely not the solitary, introverted Kate who eschewed the demands of raising children because her life consisted of a very tiny bond of two.

Ron Chernow is a superb biographer. I read his book on Washington as well as his biography of Hamilton. I saw “Hamilton” on Broadway and loved every second….rsk

Author Ron Chernow is seasoned at the art of signing books, from his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington to his best-selling, legacy-reviving portrait of Alexander Hamilton.

But in 2015, he scribbled his signature on something new.

“I never dreamed that I would be autographing Playbills,” he said.

Mr. Chernow, 66 years old, has been signing theater programs in his capacity as historical adviser to “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical about America’s first Treasury Secretary. The show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, read Mr. Chernow’s book and found inspiration, interpreting the founding father’s rags-to-riches story as a hip-hop narrative: An ambitious talent writes his way out of poverty but dies young, at the hands of a rival.

In 2008, Mr. Miranda invited Mr. Chernow to be a consultant, as a way to maintain historical accuracy while telling the story with contemporary music and stage technique.

The gig took Mr. Chernow out of his art-filled Brooklyn Heights home-office, where he is meticulously arranging his next book on about 25,000 4-by-6 index cards, and thrust him into the collaborative, sweaty process of creating a musical.

Thomas Hardy, in “Poems of War and Patriotism,” described an appalling refugee crisis in the heart of Europe a century ago. They were “pale and full of fear,” and came by the thousands to England’s shores: “From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, / No carillons in their train. Foes of mad mood / Had shattered these to shards amid the gear / Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.” They were families, mostly from Belgium, caught up in the German advance during the First World War.

As with the Syrian refugee crisis today, their plight touched the conscience of the West. Two of the 20th century’s greatest Christian authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, encountered firsthand the human suffering of the Great War and enlisted their literary imagination to confront it. Their epic works — tales of valor and sacrifice in a great conflict between Good and Evil — do not evade society’s moral obligations to the victims of war.

In October 1914, the German army entered the Belgian port of Ostend, bringing most of Belgium under German occupation. Soon tens of thousands of refugees were fleeing for Great Britain, which had entered the war to defend Belgian neutrality. Many arrived in the village of Great Bookham, where Lewis was being tutored in the classics before being sent to France to fight for king and country. He wrote to his father: “Everyone at Bookham is engaged in a conspiracy for ‘getting up’ a cottage for Belgian refugees.”

Currently, the United States has military personnel deployed in about 150 Countries… This song was written in 1943 by the lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent. Walter Kent was a Jewish American composer who also wrote the music for the wartime hit ” The White Cliffs of Dover.”

I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light beams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Notes from Old Lyme by Sydney Williams

This book is coming in February 2016. The author is an e-pal and friend and a wonderful essayist whose many columns have been posted in ruthfully yours. They appear on his own blog

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/, the latest is a lovely essay on “Christmas and Christianity.”

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Hardcover –byJocko Willink (Author), Leif Babin (Author)

I plan to read this book and post a review in January. It is the story of two combat proven U.S Navy SEAL officers, who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. The book was sent to me by one of the authors Leif Babin with a lovely inscription. This will be a holiday treat for me….rsk

Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming is Bankrupting the Western World (New, Revised…Nov 25, 2013 by Rael Jean Isaac

I have long suspected that that common sense conservation has been coopted by the climate changelings whose entire agenda is an assault on industry and capitalism.
Many good writers have exposed this duplicity, but none as concisely as Rael Jean Isaac. In this book all the corruption, the hypocrisy and the faux science of the cult of global warming are laid bare. It is essential reading and should be distributed widely in the academies. rsk

The Road to Serfdom: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman

The Road to Serfdom is an astonishing book. I had to remind myself that it was not written yesterday as it details the incompatibility of democracy and central government rule, as well as the ineluctable path from socialism to totalitarianism. planning. rsk

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin

This is absolutely the very best book I have read on the subject of history and the Middle East. The alliances and deceptions and betrayals of history’s major players in the Middle East- Turkey, France, Great Britain, Germans, Arabs, Zionists are brilliantly cataloged. I could not put this book down- all 600 pages are a must read…. rsk

Churchill: A LifeOct 15, 1992 by Martin Gilbert

The late, and greatly lamented historian Martin Gilbert wrote a three volume biography of Churchill, and this book packs much into one volume on the life of one of history’s greatest statesmen-who for all his warts with respect to Palestine and the White Papers, was the greatest leader of World War II and the last century.Elegantly written and full of detail…rsk

Garibaldi: Hero of Italian Unification by Christopher Hibbert and Ross King

I once heard the late Menachem Begin state that his favorite statesman was Garibaldi-a fact that intrigued me enough to read this biography of Italy’s hero. Giuseppe Garibaldi was praised for his military genius, his courage, and his charisma. Known as the “Hero of Two Worlds,” Garibaldi’s military prowess extended to the Americas, where he played a major role in the Brazilian struggle for independence. During his fight for Italian unification Garibaldi personally led an army of local untrained rebels to victory in Palermo, Naples, and Sicily. If this bio is a tad too lavish in praise, the history of the unification of Italy is amazing. rsk

Jews Against Themselves by Edward Alexander

Who could have imagined that in the heady and optimistic days following Israel’s victory in 1967, the “progressive” and radical Jewish anti-war groupies would turn their attention and venom towards the state of Israel?Israel became the target of libels, bias, calumny, and its unrelenting enemies and oppressors became victims. What were marginal organizations and individuals are now “mainstream” while those who proudly defend Israel citing its pluralist, advanced and civilized society are pushed to the margins. How this came about is described in meticulous detail by Edward Alexander in this essential and eloquent narrative.

Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide by Michael B. Oren

The President Against the Historian Michael Oren’s candid account of Obama’s Mideast policy has won him the right enemies.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11486026120286184909004581077992565304976

Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947Feb 24, 2015 by Bruce Hoffman

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/08/02/david-isaac-a-review-of-anonymous-soldiers-by-bruce-hoffman/
By David Isaac a Review

Bruce Hoffman’s Anonymous Soldiers is a deftly written account of the Jewish revolt against the British in 1940s Palestine. Despite its scholarship—it draws heavily on recently declassified British documents—and its significant bulk, it is a page-turner that leaves the reader feeling sorry once the book is finished.

Unlike most accounts of the Jewish underground, this one tells the story from the British point of view, though without taking Britain’s side. It leaves the reader with no doubt that it was the Irgun, and to a lesser extent the much smaller Lehi, that drove the British from Palestine, and not, as the longtime mythology of Israel’s Laborites would have it, David Ben-Gurion’s skillful politicking.

The Four-Front War: From the Holocaust to the Promised Land Hardcover –by William R. Perl (Author), Menachem Begin (Foreword)

William Perl is more than a historian, more than a simple eyewitness. He stands among a few key figures before the war who organized and directed The Action who played a vital role in its highest levels of operation. Using the texts of secret official memoranda, most never before published, his personal diary of the period, as well as notes and dozens of taped interviews, he presents an astounding chronicle of this unknowing aspect of the war.