April 6

ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY:
Syria Calling
Seymour M. Hersh

What can be done about the Middle-East. Countries that aren’t currently in a state of crisis are on the edge or dancing with touchy neighbors. Syria no less than any other. And likely, Syria has been directly involved as a bad player for many years. But to hear Seymour Hersh tell it, there are factions in Syria that are willing to negotiate better behavior…on their terms. One of their stated goals, as communicated to Mr. Hersh (among others) by President Assad, is the return of the Golan Heights. Whenever they raise this issue they blithely phrase it as a return to pre-1967 borders. Forgetting for the moment that we’re talking about rolling back the clock 33 years (parse that, numerologists!) it’s important to remember how that border move came about. To make this as clear as possible, look around your neighborhood. Look for the highest ground overlooking your home and imagine people throwing very big rocks down on your house. A lot of them. Explosives rocks. Damn hard getting up hill to stop them, ain’t it. Now imagine that you do get up there and stop them. Now the hill that looks over your home in no longer a threat. But the only way you can be sure it stays that way is to keep the hill for yourself.

In case I haven’t been blunt enough, here’s the deal…in 1967 Israel was attacked by 4 or 5 of its neighbors, Syria among them. Not only did Israel beat them back, she took control of some strategic property. From the safety of my Middle American upbringing, I can’t think of a single good reason to give that land back. Assuming Assad and his country are serious about being a bridge to other Arab countries, for both the US and Israel, I’d be looking for some goodwill demonstrations before I’d even discuss the matter. Let’s talk about how they fuck with Lebanon and Iraq for a minute.

Some possibly valid points are made on Syria’s behalf in Hersh’s informative piece, but as you can see, I need a bit more convincing.

A REPORTER AT LARGE
Message in a Bottle
John Colapinto

What’s an impossibly rich and environmentally well meaning dude to do in order to call (more) attention to our untenable life-style? How’s about making a boat out of trashed plastic water bottles and sail it through a floating plastic trash “bloom” that’s developed in the Pacific Ocean (there’s also one in the Atlantic, we learn). And how that’ll get the junk cleaned up, I’m still not sure. But more people will learn about it. I must say, John Colapinto’s article, Message in a Bottle, is detailed and entertaining look into David de Rothschild’s latest eco-venture and how he got there. It ends before they set sail, but I’m sure we’ll hear more about it this summer. And I hope this becomes a discussion for the mainstream press, because the impetus for this voyage is a difficult to conceive of phenomenon, that I’d rather see a rich guy raising money to fix than sail through. While I’m sure that’s his ultimate goal, any discussion of how to approach this problem was totally absent from the article. More time was dedicated to a competitor in the re-cycled plastic sailing world than to potential solutions.

Suffice it to say, there is a huge tract of ocean serving as a repository for waste plastics floating in from China, Japan, Mexico and the Western US. This gyre is an area where the currents capture the trash and keep it slowly swirling…indefinitely. Between this and other similar areas found in other oceans, researchers estimate “the amount of plastic marine waste to be a hundred million tons.” I can only say I am astounded.

FICTION
“Visitation”
Brad Watson

As a former single-parent I can say that Brad Watson’s fiction piece, Visitation touched me on several levels. He painted a rather complete picture of his main character and brought a couple of other characters into clear enough focus to share a reality with the reader. On one level it was a very stereotypical reality, that of the downtrodden non-custodial parent trying ineptly to make some thing of the snatches of time he has with his child. To his credit, Watson begins by beating his protagonist to such a depressed pulp before launching us into “the fix he was in now” that we want to like him. We want to like him a he takes his son to an inappropriate hotel, as he quietly gets drunk while his son watches TV, as he lamely wades through a day of not connecting with his son, and as he finally comes to a realization about his relationship with his son – one that may be relative to his overall connection to the larger world. As I began to write this I thought of several things I’d have done differently and better (and I did in my day), but the act of thinking about the story brought me back to the reality Watson created and, as when I read it the first time, my reality faded and his sat squarely in front of me. Obviously, this story is about more than a man who is not a part of his son’s life. And, just as obviously, Brad Watson wrote a good tale.

THE THEATER
Hilton Als

For several decades I’ve harbored a crush for Susan Sarandon. And the photo accompanying Als’ review of “Exit The King” did nothing to dampen it. Als, in his review gives a thoughtful and positive review of Ionesco’s parodic comedy. He also very quietly, but unmistakably, avoids discussing Ms. Sarandon’s performance. Which would have been difficult in a larger cast show, considering her name recognition. But in a 3-character jaunt such as this, his silent treatment screams paragraphs. Especially considering the long half paragraph he dedicates to the fun Geoffrey Rush and Lauren Ambrose had with Ionesco’s words. How much more praise can be offered 2 actors than “they perform little pirouettes around his concrete poetry”. I would love to see this play, first for the shear pleasure these pirouettes promise, but also in the hope that Ms. Sarandon plays to her character’s nature and for no other reason didn’t earn more mention in this review.

As for Als’ other reviews, the only one worth mentioning is his scathing swipe at Zachary Oberzan and “Rambo Solo”. I can’t for the life of me think of what would motivate anyone to hang their theatric hat on the Rambo movies, let alone craft a one-man show around them, but Oberzan did. And Als hated it. Did I say hated it? I’m sorry, I don’t think that properly describes the loathing which I am sure Als will feel for Oberzan for the rest of both of their lives. While “excrement” isn’t mentioned in the definition of execrable, it’s what I heard when Als used it to describe this show. My only regret about Als review is that I’ve seen reviewers absolutely wax poetic about things they’ve hated, but here Als merely detests it and moves on.