Mata Hari: the True Story by Russell Warren Howe

Here is a youtube video called the Best of Chopin.  The first piece on it, Ballade no. 1 in G minor, was the very first work by Chopin that I learned.  What a wonderful introduction.

Mata Hari, The True Story by Russell Warren Howe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is another book that started out strong, but lost its momentum somewhere in the middle.

Howe gives us chapter after chapter of Mata Hari, whose real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, rose from poverty, created a legend for herself, introduced the world to the strip tease act and ultimately was executed as a German spy during WWI.

Zelle was born and grew up in Holland with a father who ruined her mother by leaving her for a mistress and ruined his family financially by his extravagant tastes for luxury.

Margareth Geertruida turned out to be not so unlike her father and one has to respect her grit. In a certain way she reminds me of the character Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Despite adverse circumstances she fought her way through poverty to become a notorious stripper, but ultimately was made a WWI scapegoat.

When she was eighteen she married a British Lord, Rudolph John MacCleod, and moved to Indonesia with him. There they had two children, one whom mysteriously died while still a boy. It was suspected that their servant, in revenge for MacCleod sending away her lover (so he could have her for himself) poisoned the boy.

While in Indonesia, Zelle, now MacCleod, learned the art of exotic dancing as well as the language of the people. She used this back drop after she left MacCleod for his drunken rages and blatant infidelity, to create a saucy temptress that procured for her numerous lovers.

She accomplished this by leaving with her daughter to Paris because, according to her, "Where else could a divorced woman hope to make a living?" Later MacCleod retrieves their daughter and Maragetha never sees her again.

Mata Hari, as I shall now call her, became known for her so-called Indian (she now claimed to be the daughter of an Indian Princess and a European man) dance routines, which involved taking off her scarves until she was completely naked. Well, not completely. She never uncovered her breasts because they were so flat. I think that's kind of funny, but maybe that's just me.

Her life is one of traveling from man to man and living far beyond her or any of her lovers' means. Finally, at forty, she decided she needed a cool million to finally retire and settle down. Plus she had a twenty year old Russian lover, a soldier in the Russian army, who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She offered her services as a spy to the French.

To read Howe's telling, she was a complete incompetent and accomplished nothing. The Germans didn't take her seriously and the French didn't know quite how to use her, so they hired her as a "free lance" spy.

Nevertheless, she was eventually arrested and convicted of spying for the Germans.

Half of the book is not very interesting. It mainly consists of Howe describing every hotel and restaurant Mata Hari checked into, who she met, who she spoke to, who she slept with. It reads as fascinating as a grocery list.

However, Howe is convinced that as bumbling as Mata Hari was as a spy, she was not guilty of working for the Germans. She was rather a convenient scapegoat for the French who, perhaps to commander incompetence, lost thousands of French soldiers.

Perhaps this is true, but I have another biography I hope to read and see if I can glean another viewpoint before I make my own conclusion.

In addition to Mata Hari's life, this is a good history of life before and during WWI in Europe.

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Inside the Plaza by Ward Morehouse III

The delightful piano music of Franz Schubert.

It's been a wretched week.  Due to my lack of diligence my Quaker Sophie flew off and has not returned.  I'm afraid an owl got her.  Well, if one did, I promise you she didn't go down without a fight.  That owl will think twice before tackling a Quaker.  There's a reason why they're illegal in some states.

Hercule has been looking and calling for her.  Well, God has promised to restore the earth and I believe that includes his feathery creations.  I look forward to when the owl and the parrot can lie down together and be friends.

Enough of feeling sorry for myself.  Here's my review.



Inside the Plaza: An Intimate Portrait of the Ultimate Hotel by Ward Morehouse III

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Lately I have gotten interested in the historical hotels in New York. I had first read a couple of books about the Chelsea Hotel with all its hippy drippy occupants, plus its uncertain future.

Reading about the Plaza helped put the Chelsea in perspective. It seemed to me that you had to be pretty rich to live in the Chelsea, even if you were a drug addict, but now I understand that compared to the Plaza, the Chelsea would be vastly more affordable.

If I were to compare the two hotels, both of approximately the same age, both pieces of Art Deco architectural history, I'd say the Plaza was the good child who got a college education, married a doctor and has prospered ever since. The Chelsea was the rebellious child who ran off with her garage band boyfriend and has been living on that ragged edge of Bohemian disaster ever since.

While the Chelsea attracted the artsy, pop culture leaders and followers, the Plaza has always been classy and posh. Part of this would be location, but also darn, good business management by the various owners. The Chelsea had the son of the original owners manage it and he kept the reins loose and free and pretty much turned the hotel into the modern equivalent of an opium den, which may well have delighted the famous clientele that rented rooms there.

The Plaza was and is for the very, very rich. Not that it has not had its financial struggles, but so far it has been able to pull out of them.

Morehouse devotes much of the book to the business side of owning and managing a hotel like the Plaza, which I found a lot more interesting than I thought I would.

The rest is of course describing the famous people who have stayed there since its inception. Because his father, Ward Morehouse, a famous theatre critic and writer lived there with his second wife, he got to meet many of the clientele first hand. Consequently, we get more information about the people he has personally met and more second hand information about the rest.

Still, we get some fairly good stories about F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Beatles, the author of Eloise as well as several famous actors and singers who have since faded into the annals of time. Actually I found that interesting as well, learning about actors and singers I otherwise did not know about and then looking them up online to find out more about them.

Also, there were several movies that were filmed there, the most famous for contemporary audiences would be the Home Alone movies, but also Barefoot in the Park and a number of Hitchcock movies.

While the writing wasn't brilliant, it was good enough for me to give the book three stars. I liked it.



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The Secret Lives of the Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay

Here is Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces.

I cannot remember if I have told my readers that my son has been living the last year and a half in China.  And as much as grandparents and aunts would like him to come home, he wants to stay.  Me?  He's a man.  He needs to do what he wants.  He teaches English there and is learning Mandarin.  Here are a few of his photos from the past couple of months.

 Derek with a student.

 Derek with friends in Guangzhou

 Walking the neighborhood where he lives in Foshan during the quarantine.  Everywhere it's deserted.  However, things are slowly going back to normal.

 Derek's hair was quite long, past his shoulders.  He felt it was time to get it cut.  Above, getting ready for the cut.  Below afterwards with a friend, both sporting new haircuts.

View outside his apartment.

The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
During WWII England's MI6 recruited men and women from every walk of life to help break the German's code Enigma, in order to find out their battle plans and hopefully save lives, not to mention win the war.

Sinclair McKary introduces us to each person and type of person that was chosen to break Germany's enigma code.

Naturally people fluent in German as well as math professors. One prominent code breaker was Alan Turing. Others were people to become famous later in life, such as Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and Roy Jenkins, who wrote a fair biography of Churchill. I can say that because I read it. Apparently he was only a fair code breaker as well, according to those who worked with him.

We learn about the women, both aristocratic and middle class, or labor class who joined Bletchely Park to break Germany's code. We learn about living conditions, what they ate, their successes, their failures. Much of it reads like a high suspense novel.

Some of it dragged a little, but I think McKay wanted to be thorough.

I recommend this book to those interested in WWII and cryptology.

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                                   Sophie says, "Hi".

America's First Ladies by Christine Sadler

Here is

0:06 / 26:15

Beethoven - Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69

0:06 / 26:15

Beethoven - Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69

The nice thing about our new house is that the books are all in a room far, far away from my little raptors.

America's First Ladies by Christine Sadler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was written while JFK was president. It gives a brief biography of each First Lady up until then.

The writing style is dated, but in a good way. By that I mean that Sadler, while being honest about the flaws or criticism aimed at the different President's wives, she avoided the salacious gossipy tactic that seems to be popular today. She did not feel obligated to dig up dirt.

Overall, her presentation was a positive outlook on each wife with a focus on her accomplishments while she was First Lady. Prior to Eleanor Roosevelt, it seemed the primary function of the president's wives were to serve as hostess and entertain at the White House. We read a lot about each woman's taste in clothes and home decor. The White House got several renovations and re-decorations over the years.

Even though Eleanor Roosevelt started a new tradition of First Lady's being involved in the sociological conditions of the world, other First Ladies prior to her helped their husbands behind the scenes. Some wives were as politically adept as their husbands, and in some cases more so.

Each woman is presented as strong and unique in her own right in contributing to her husband's term(s) of office. I think Sadler also contributed in bringing attention to some of the lesser known wives.

She finishes with Jackie, which is bittersweet because this is written before her husband's assassination or the tragedies concerning the other Kennedy's.

All in all, an interesting book, although it ends abruptly with the death of Jackie's last baby.

It's valuable to read biographies from earlier eras because they provide another source of information where agenda's weren't quite so blatant.

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The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard

Here are the Vivaldi Mandolin Concertos.

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Like the previous book I reviewed on Squid, I had a certain expectation that this book would keep to facts.

Again, where strict science was applied, what is the mosquito, what do we know about it based on what we can see, hear, touch etc.. with our senses...what kind of diseases are they known to carry...death rates due to malaria, yellow fever...this was very interesting.

I also found interesting the author's dive into history...the battles of Rome with the various barbaric tribes from Germany, northern Africa and Asia.

The book is definitely slanted towards finding the mosquito responsible for winning every ancient battle, directing Alexander the Great's course across Europe and Asia, the spread of Christianity...all due to the mosquito.

I have no doubt that armies plagued with malaria certainly helped shape the course of events, just like Russia's winter fended off the Germans.

But his version of history took too much license and wasn't based entirely in fact. Or rather he took an ounce of fact and inflated it with a pound of guesswork.

According to Winegard, Christianity spread because Christians were a "healing cult" and did not shy away from ministering to the sick and dying. Paganism was more selfish and fatalistic.

He also has nothing good to say about the medieval church or the crusades. Well, maybe I don't either, but he excises every good they did, initiating institutions of learning, providing sanctuary for the poor and marginalized and shows only the corruption. There was horrible corruption in the leadership of the church then, but the average monk or priest was not necessarily a party to that corruption. Many a lay Christian and small village priest sacrificed their lives in poverty and died with his congregation when disaster struck.

But I would not have minded the broad brush stroke except that Winegard brushes the Muslim world with an entirely different broad brush. It was the Muslims who enlightened Europe, the Muslims who were free of corruption, invented education etc...This is not exactly true either, although no doubt considerable contributions were made to Europe via the Middle East.

The biggest sweep he makes is when he asserts that people became Christians because they had to and converted to Islam because they wanted to because it was such a merciful, enlightened culture produced by Mohammed. Really? Think again.

This book was not written for someone with anything other than a cursory knowledge of the mosquito, and certainly not for anybody with an informed opinion of the history of the western world. So would I recommend it? I guess read it for yourself, but arm yourself with other sources of information.

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Marilyn: the Classic by Norman Mailer

This is not classical music, but I love the masterful guitar playing of Leo Kottke in his rendition of Eight Miles High.

Marilyn: A Biography by Norman Mailer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Norman Mailer was part of the group that changed the style of writing non fiction to make it read more like a novel.

In that respect, he does a great job. His writing is brilliant, if cynical and a little superior. It's also geared, I think, toward the "hip and groovy" set who think reading books like this puts them in a certain "cool" category.

Having said that, I still like the book. The photographs, if nothing else are worth the price of the book alone (which in my case was a used book in mint condition for five dollars, heh heh).

Mailer admits that his book is largely a compilation of previous biographies and speculation based on her movies and photographs. This is evident when he writes out the thoughts that Marilyn and others involved in her life could be thinking at any given time.

But much of what he writes can be verified. He certainly is successful in conveying what a complicated, tragic and fascinating person she was, and he also gives a thorough biographical time line of her life.

The only thing I found surprising was that he makes no mention of Marilyn having an affair with President Kennedy and barely hints at an involvement with Bobby Kennedy. Other sources I read declare that she was so involved with JFK she thought she was going to be the next Mrs. Kennedy.

But this was written back in the early seventies and maybe it was still too sacrosanct a subject to touch upon.

He explores all the possible reasons Marilyn could have died, overdose, either accidental or intentional...suicide or murder...who knows what really happened. Accidental overdose is the most likely cause based on her history of barbiturate addiction and previous close calls. Arthur Miller even wrote a play about it (After the Fall) and was censured for it. Listening to him talk about "the need to sacrifice others in order to save yourself-a justification for letting someone go ahead and kill herself- revealed a cold-hearted man.

Although Mailer actually portrays Miller as the victim of Marilyn's contempt and verbal abuse. Maybe he was, she was no angel. It is speculated that she had a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her making everyone else wait hours for her on movies sets is one indication.

But ultimately she is a portrait of tragedy. Her persona was so powerful that it completely possessed her and when you act intimate with everyone, you can be close to no one.

Aficionados of Marilyn will enjoy this book.

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Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or the Escape of Ellen and William Craft from Slavery by Ellen and William Craft

Here is Concierto de Arnajuez, Allegro de Spirito by Joaquin Rodrigo.

One of my most popular postcards, that I send out all over the world.  



I feel that my last few reviews have been negative.  Here is a book I think everyone should read.

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the escape of William and Ellen Craft from slavery by Ellen Craft
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is powerfully and eloquently written by a woman who did not learn to read or write until she was an adult and had escaped the monstrous oppression of slavery.

William Craft and his wife, Ellen were slaves in the South, but they determined to escape so they devised an extraordinary plan. Ellen, even though a slave, was as white as her masters, so they decided to dress her like a white man and William would pose as their slave as they traveled to the north.

How they attained their liberty is as harrowing and suspenseful a tale as any you could hope to read, all the more so because it is true.

Many things struck me when reading this story.

One, I finally understand where and why the "one drop" rule was invented. For those of you who don't know, the "one drop" rule states that if a person has any black blood in them, even 1/56th or less, any at all, they are legally black.

Think how convenient this was for the slave trade. There was so much interbreeding between slave masters and female slaves who many masters obviously viewed as their harem, that an increasing number of slave children were mostly white. In order to justify this, as well as increasing the number of free labor on a plantation, slaves had to be considered black, even if for all practical purposes they were as white as the plantation owners.

This also increased the amount of kidnappings among newly arrived immigrants from Europe who, not speaking the language, were sold as slaves as well as poor white families selling their own children into slavery for money. I don't think this part of the history of slavery has been given the attention it is due.

What I love about William and Ellen Craft's story is their lack of rancor and, more importantly, their discernment between real Christianity and the fake Christianity the slave owners espoused.

They used the Bible to justify slavery, yet they conveniently ignore the scripture that said an owner had to free his slaves every seven years, not to mention the strict guidelines as to caring for and not abusing slaves. An abuse that was to be severely punished if exercised.

Because of certain laws passed about returning slaves to their owners, even if they were in the north, the Crafts moved to England until after the Civil War.

This narrative is short but spellbinding and I highly recommend it.

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And with this corona virus keeping children home, here is one for all my homeschooling bloggers: