An unequal trade

I am appalled at the recent trade between Hezbellah and the State of Israel in which live prisoners were traded for dead Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. All along Israelis had been led to believe that the captured IDF soldiers were still alive when negotiations were ongoing between the terrorist organization and their government. As short a period as a year ago Israel had been assured that the soldiers captured at the beginning of the war against Lebanon were still very much alive. The fact that negotiations were held in earnest for their release as live participants was verified by the United Nations and others. Yet, when the exchange was made for several incarcerated Lebanese terrorists, there was no mention of the soldiers having been killed until at the last possible moment. To the contrary, Israel was expecting to get back live prisoners of war for the live terrorists and numerous dead held in its jails. What they got were two coffins filled with the remains of the soldiers they had hoped to restore to their families. This was the most unbalanced trade that could ever be expected to be negotiated between Hezbellah and the State of Israel and has left Israelis dismayed. Imagine if these were U.S. Marines. Would Americans stand idly by and swap our honored dead for live prisoners in a similar exchange? I think not. I know how precious Americans regard those killed in the line of duty. Israelis are just as proud and because of the size of the country regard each death with a high degree of poignancy. What is most disturbing is that the ill-conceived 2006 war between Israel and Hezbellah, was set off by Goldwasser and Regev's capture. Following the ceasefire, posters demanding their safe return went up across Israel, the United States and elsewhere around the world. JTA reports that a forensic examination of the bodies suggests Goldwasser and Regev were killed due to injuries sustained at the time of their capure and might well have been dead at the start of the six-week exchange between the Iranian backed terrorist organization and Israel. Yesterday I received an e-mail message from the Israeli representative (Community Shilchah) to New Orleans. She closed it with the words "May G-d avenge their blood." In a war that is waged in the name of the Almighty, both sides can claim divine providence and intervention. I am certain that cries of "Praise Allah!" were uttered when the Lebanese terrorists were restored to their families. It is a shame that men and women must pay the ultimate price and all in the name of religion and politics.

Kindred Jewish Spirits

I am delighted that the Tales of the Cocktail, a festival comprised of a series of several events throughout the city at various venues and dedicated to celebrating spirits kicks off today. Headed up by the dynamic Ann Tuennerman, the Tales of the Cocktail's first major event launches this afternoon honoring the nation's first official cocktail of any city: the Sazerac. The history of the fabled Sazerac is in a way the history of New Orleans. Tuennerman has often called the Sazerac "history in a glass" and homage is being paid to the distinctive mixture that is made with Peychaud's Bitters (sometimes with Angostura Bitters too), rye whiskey, sugar (or simple syrup) and served in an Herbsaint coated rock glass with a lemon twist. The afternoon seminar on the Sazerac at the Monteleone Hotel will have a few politicians on hand from the Louisiana Legislature. Those stalwart ladies and gentlemen and our peerless governor who didn't sign the legislation but allowed it to become law by not vetoing it, were responsible for the recent bill that recognized the Sazerac as the official cocktail of the city of New Orleans. It went into effect a week ago. There are two rye whiskies bottled under the name Sazerac by the Buffalo Trace Distillery (the former Ancient Age Distillery) and distributed by Republic Distributors. The first is their regular 90 proof Sazerac Rye Whiskey, used by many to make traditional Sazerac cocktails. The second more pricey cousin is their 18-year-old version with an even higher alcohol content. I find that one more in the category of a sipping whiskey rather than one that would be used for a mixed drink. At the price that the 18-year-old commands and because it is exceedingly rare to find it available at a bar or hotel, it makes sense to savor its smooth and subtle flavors on the tongue in the confines of one's home. Among the local media people covering the Tales of the Cocktail festival will be Lorin Gaudin, a food and drink writer, who originally hails from Chicago. Lorin has lived in the Crescent City long enough to be considered a New Orleanian and surprised me when she let me know that she was of Jewish extraction. I suppose she was charmed by yet another suave and sophisticated New Orleanian gentleman. In addition I have become acquainted with another Jewish lady, Elyse Glickman, a writer (and fellow blogger) from Los Angeles who will also be covering many of the Tales of the Cocktail events for several national publications. We will all be looking forward to finding Jewish connections to the festival for each other for the various readership we serve. Republic Distributors and Buffalo Trace Distillery, for example, is owned by a well-known Jewish family from New Orleans. But I believe there's more to this story than that. I'm determined to find out more interesting tidbits and reveal other historical connections to the Sazerac and other famous libations. It doesn't matter how many bottles or glasses I have to empty in search of my story. In this way Lorin, Elyse and I are all kindred Jewish "spirits" on a quest. To which I have one thing to say: "L'Chaim!"

Inertia

If there is one intransmutable law of nature that defines my life, it must be a vindication of Newton's First Law of Motion. The Law of Inertia states that a body in motion will stay in motion and that a body at rest will stay at rest. For me it's all about change. While most people are afraid of change, I love to act as an agent or catalyst of change. It's what makes life so interesting to me, but I must admit it does have its fallout from time to time. One of the reasons I got so involved in Boy Scouting is that it serves to make young boys into responsible young men and I can see these changes in a relatively short order. These days it is a sad fact that many parents are so involved with their work and other social networking that their kids are left to do a lot of growing up on their own. The pecking order of pre-teens and teenagers can be very cruel without several safety nets put into place that allow them to just be themselves. It seems to me that Scouting is one of those activities that keeps boys (and sometimes girls, in the case of Venturing) safely involved and committed to a set or series of goals. It becomes evident that these goals, which are closely allied with achievements of rank like First Class, Star, Life and Eagle become essential formulas for success in later life for many of these Scouts. The other evening at the JCC gym, I was pedaling my stationary bicycle and looked up at the young man doing the same adjacent to me. I recognized him as one of my former Scouts. He is one of my son's classmates, a 22 year-old recent graduate of Harvard University, who is in New Orleans for a short summer before leaving to work as a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs in New York. I remember how he was hounded as a kid, even by some of our Scouts, because he was different. He was always thinking about something, but one could tell there was a lot of cogent thought going on in his head. One night, during one of my Scout meetings when the other Scouts were playing ball, he asked me to "explain" Judaism as a religious concept to him. He was asking from the standpoint of an inquisitive Christian who needed to know in his mind where and how Judaism could exist without accepting Jesus as the Messiah. His school was full of boys and girls and faculty members who were Jewish. Yet, he felt compelled to ask me. I am not sure if my carefully chosen words were as well crafted as those that might be given by a rabbi or other Jewish lay leader, but he seemed satisfied with the answers I gave him. I believe a child should always be answered with truthful answers, but that discretion should temper the truth should it be too painful to hear. Invariably, there are those questions in life which cannot be answered without peril. "Do these pants make me look fat?" is a good example of a question whose best response is a quick dash for the door. In any event, I am so glad to have been a small part of this young man's early, formative years. He might well have become a Harvard graduate without me, his Scoutmaster or the other adult members of his troop. But I would like to think that we all helped to shape him into a responsible, independent member of society and that kind of change, as Martha Stewart would quip, is a good thing. It's part of the small changes that we can all undertake every day to make life memorable and satisfying.

The Goodbye Girl

Today was a sad day for all of New Orleans, but especially for those in the theatrical and cabaret communities. Today we laid to rest one of our most cherished children, a little girl who grew into a woman with talent brimming from every pore. Today Cynthia Owen was eulogized as a wonderful singer and actress and the outpouring of grief inside Trinity Episcopal Church where hundreds gathered to remember her was palpable. There were moments of levity because wherever Cindy (as oldtimers recalled her original name) went, she brought laughter. There were few dry eyes inside the church as a choir sang a collection of many of the Broadway and cabaret songs she made popular in her powerful, yet brief career. I thought about Cynthia a lot as I comforted her family members, most notably her mother, Lyla Hay Owen, a noted local playwright, director, actress and singer herself and her sister Robin, who also had tread the boards as a child. The Christian rites associated with burial differ from those found within Judaism in several ways. Jews are every bit as much in mourning as their Christian brothers, but the deceased is never put on display for people to see. It is more important to recall the loved ones through the veil of memory rather than to see their remains through the prisms of our eyes. It is felt that this is a respectful gesture of love and a fitting way to ease the transition for friends and family. I wish this were the case for Cynthia because there were video tributes playing on monitors and beautiful posters and pictures on display at the same time as the mourners had to pass in review and witness the now lifeless body confined to its final resting place. How better for me would it been to have had the glowing tributes to my dear friend heard aloud without the image of her corpse burned into my psyche. When I had first heard that Cynthia had died and a memorial service was discussed, I had been told that her body had been cremated by her grief-stricken mother. I bemoaned the fact that I would not have closure; that it were as if a page in a treasured book was removed without my knowing it. But when I found out Thursday night that the memorial service was a funeral service complete with an intact body and a wake, I began to think that my original complaint may have been in error. I wanted to mourn the loss of my friend without having to view her remains. I wanted to remember Sally Bowles, Annie Oakley, Charity Hope Valentine, and the chanteuse who could make you laugh or cry with her amazing singing abilities and stage persona. In Orthodox Judaism there is a tender ritual of burial that many outsiders and less observant Jews find troublesome. Out of reverence for the deceased member, the body is lowered to the ground in a plain coffin without nails. Once deposited into the grave, the casket is covered with dirt until it is no longer seen in any way. Some think this as heartless, but the opposite is the case. It is intended that the deceased be covered by loving family and friends as a child would be clothed by any parent. It is an act of extreme love and it also symbolically separates the period of loss when prayers become a necessary part of paying tribute to the dead. It is then that a special prayer called Kaddish is first uttered and the period of mourning known as sitting shiva begins as family members exit the cemetery. Mirrors in a house of mourning are covered so that we keep our thoughts away from being self-centered and to help us cope with the final separation. Cynthia was a lady of deep faith and a former teacher at Trinity Episcopal. I know that the service prepared for her was in keeping with the dictates of her religious background. I am certain for most it was a deeply moving experience. For me, though, I wished it were more in keeping with my faith and that I would have been able to say goodbye to one of the loves of my life in a less visible manner and keep those memories inviolate in my heart.

The state of theatre

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the city of New Orleans was reeling from devastation no major urban center had ever withstood. All of the major performance venues for theater were either detroyed, severely damaged, or in serious doubt of being able to sustain a season with a population that was widely dispersed in other towns and cities. Yet, within six months the acting community was back in businesss staging theatrical productions for the psychological benefit of the weary populace and the uplifting of the scores of dedicated theatre professionals and volunteers who had returned to the city they loved. While I was not able to be here in the early days, I was able to witness several productions in 2006 and many more in the 15 months since I returned. Recently, a spectacular version of "Cabaret," originally meant to be staged in the September that followed Katrina, was restaged at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre. What made this production so special was that virtually every original cast member (Jessie Terrebone, Roy Haylock, and Jimmy Murphy among them) were back for this production, almost three years later. Tulane Summer Lyric Theatre is in the midst of their run for "L'il Abner" this weekend and this follows a well received "Pal Joey" that opened the season less than a month ago. The Tulane Shakespeare Festival mounted two very strong productions of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "As You Like It," both cast in innovative settings that, for the most part, worked very well. Barbara Motley, the proprietress at Cabaret Le Chat Noir has been featured on the latest cover of New Orleans Magazine, a credit to her skills as a cabaret operator, member of the Downtown Development District, and a promoter of local theatre. Uptown, the Anthony Bean Community Theatre and Acting School have served up "Unplugged" with original music and lyrics by young peformers of the current hip hop generation. Several new production companies have opened and one of them, InSideOut Productions is mounting a moving performance of a Southern death row drama titled "Coyote on a Fence" by Bruce Graham. Directed by Ashley Riccord and starring her husband Michael Aaron Santos, this small cast with big production values shows what is capable in a post-Katrina theater environment. Across town a new staging of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya" is playing and a new production of "Private Eyes" opens this evening at Southern Repertory for their City Series. Another new company, FourFront Productions, will be presenting their first offering, "Gutenberg! The Musical!" in August. I've left out a number of others, but not intentionally. It's just that the theatre scene is so varied here that I wanted to give examples of all of the contrasting choices on a present-day menu that almost three years ago lacked basic ingredients or even a serving menu. It is a credit to the amateurs and professionals who tread the boards that theatre has rebounded so well in this city that needs so badly to be entertained and for its collective imagination to take flight.

Computers running s-l-o-w ?

More times than not, I am asked about why computers that formerly zipped along doing their thing have slowed to a virtual crawl. There are several answers, but most have to be determined by a spate of different questions. Are you running anti-spyware? If not, has the computer been compromised by downloading a spyware program that seems innocuous, but in fact is acting like a parasite on your system? Many times a flashing box warns "You have been infected. Check your system now!" and end users scared into thinking they are doing something wrong click on the "scan" only to find out that they now are truly infected with a spyware that demands $29.95 for removal of suspicious files. More times than not, the suspicious files are anything but and these programs will remove non-infected files to appear to be doing something important and vital. Spyware is not unlike a virus in the way it compromises a computer's ability to function, but unlike a virus it does not replicate itself by sending itself to other nodes on the local area network or by e-mailing itself to contacts derived from a computer's address book. With viruses no longer able to compromise many of the security holes in Windows products, virus alerts have become fewer and fewer. Even if a new virus rears its ugly head, anti-virus script writers are able to bash it in little time. The adventurous virus writer finds his moment of glory or ignonimy has faded. Aside from the vile threat from spyware, another problem with aging operating systems is the fact that temporary Internet files and cookies need to be deleted on a regular basis. The way to accomplish this easy task is to go to the Control Panel and click on Internet Options. Then click on the General Tab of Internet Properties, go to Browsing History and click on the Delete button. Click on Delete Files and wait a while. Then click on Cookies and delete those as well. If you're not running Windows XP Service Pack 2, it is slightly different. You'll have to click on Internet Options and go to the middle of the General Tab and click on View Files. Click on Select All, which should highlight them all. Then delete the Files with the Select All and delete keys found under File and Edit. Once they have been deleted, delete the Cookies in the same fashion. This should increase the speed of most computers, but in many cases the difference will be noticeable, but slight. Sometimes a reboot of the computer will yield great results because it will free up the RAM that has been allocated previously by other applications. Again, it may be a slight increase in speed, but could be just what you need. These are fairly simple practices, but should be considered from time to time (at least once a month) to keep computers running faster than they are at present. A good anti-virus and anti-spyware program is vital today. Good practices of deleting temporary Internet files and cookies and an occasional reboot will also help. Good luck.

My Dear Sweet Cynthia

I regret that I must report today the loss of one of the great stars of New Orleans, nay, of America, Cynthia Owen. Cynthia died late Sunday night in Las Vegas on the eve of her 45th birthday. Her death remains unclassified, according to a report in today's edition of the Times-Picayune. Click here.
As a performer, Cynthia was without peers on the local stages. She possessed an extraordinary voice and a stage presence that made her a local luminary ever since she was a teenager in her hometown here in New Orleans. Cynthia, the daughter of local performer and singer Lyla Hay Owen, also achieved some fame as a featured performer aboard the American Queen and Robert E. Lee riverboats as well as in St. Louis at the Theatre Factory there. Cynthia also performed in a national touring company of "Nine," based on Fellini's film "8 and 1/2." Above everything else, she was a dear friend and I am blessed to have shared my life with her. A beautiful lady with an indomitable spirit, Cynthia charmed her way into the hearts of local theater goers for most of the decades of her life. She was a belter, but she could finesse the most difficult of intimate songs too. It is painful for me to think that she is gone. I remember her as a teenager coming into my family's record store and I was taken with her charm and irrepressible spirit. I caught most of her stage work through the years and counted her as among my closest of friends in the years leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Sadly, since the passage of the storm and my stay in Cleveland, I had not seen her. In the interim I had heard she was in St. Louis, had married and was now living in New York commuting between the East Coast and the West Coast. Yet, I was gladdened to hear that she would be performing as part of the cast of Tulane Summer Lyric Theatre's "Pal Joey." Unfortunately, she was ill just prior to the show's run (an attack of sciataca I was told) and her part and her song, "Zip," were hastily cut from the production. I will forever mourn the fact that I was not able to see her perform in that show. I feel certain that I would have seen her after the show and caught up with what had been going on in her life. Cynthia was a dynamo whether it was part of an ensemble or doing a cabaret show that spotlighted her abilities as a solo performer. I am overwrought with the thought that I will never see her smile or listen to her laugh again. She was a joy to me and the thought that she has passed so suddenly brings wave upon wave of inconsolable sorrow. I will cherish the great times we shared and remember her as a beautiful and charming lady. We have lost one of our truly great ones. God bless you, my dear sweet Cynthia.