The Trial of Mary Dugan and The Night of January 16th

Anne Heller's new biography of Ayn Rand says, without elaboration, that Rand's play, The Night of January 16th, was "largely modeled" on a prior hit play, The Trial of Mary Dugan.

The similarities seem to be that each is an intricately plotted courtroom drama, and each features a scandalous woman accused of murdering a millionaire.

Here's a plot summary of Mary Dugan:

A Follies beauty, Mary Dugan, is on trial for the murder of millionaire Edgar Rice. Her defense seems to be faltering until her young brother, Jimmy, a lawyer just beginning his career, insists he himself replace her present lawyer, Edward West. Mary admits to affairs with several men but wins favor with the jury when she reveals that the money she received was used to provide Jimmy's education. After it is determined that Rice was stabbed to death by a powerful, left‐handed man, Jimmy provides the reason for her initially weak defense. Rice, it seems, was murdered by attorney West, who loved Mrs. Rice, so decided to frame Mary. Time remarked that the play “moves more swiftly than the law with all its ruthless directness. Its plot has the fascinating features of a front‐page murder story.”

Here's a plot summary of January 16th:

Bjorn Faulkner has swindled millions of dollars from investors, by investing cash he didn't have in order to control the gold trade. In the wake of a crash, he is facing bankruptcy despite the injection of money by Mr. John Graham Whitfield, a prominent banker whose daughter, Nancy Lee Faulkner, married Faulkner shortly after the loan. On the night of January 16th, Karen Andre, Bjorn Faulkner's mistress of ten years, and Bjorn are in the penthouse at the top of the Faulkner Building in New York when Faulkner falls to his death. The purpose of the play is to decide if it may have been a suicide - or murder.

Rand's play also features a gimmick where an audience jury decides who is found guilty.

You can see the similarities
and also the disparities.

Sunday - Painting

This is a painting, "Sunday", by Jennifer Cronin. Here's a bigger version.

A young woman is standing in her bathroom painting flowers in the air, and the flowers are coming alive.

She explains:

...with Sunday, I was really interested in moments where the illusion of paintings fall apart and where characters within the painting realize that they are just painted. So, the character in this painting is using the decorative technique of one-stroke flower painting (as seen on PBS) to decorate the surface of the painting that she is in. It also speaks a lot to the roles of women within art history as the hobby artist (or the sunday painter), relegated to what has been considered lower generas of painting, such as flower painting.

And here I thought it was just a magical moment! But I found her point about relegation rang true. The art world is full of secondary competition - not just competition of talent and production, but fierce competition in criticism and gate-keeping.

It ain't
just what you paint
that wins you fame
and acclaim.

Midwinter Thaw

I have a question for you to ponder - you don't need to answer but I am interested if you feel like answering.

A:

Snow shrivels away to a sickly shade of gray, vanishing quickly.

B:

Snow shrivels away
to a sickly shade of gray,
vanishing quickly.

C:

Snow shrivels away
to a sickly
shade of gray,
vanishing quickly.

Everything's the same but the line breaks. Which is best?

Unhappy Returns

The budget chief of the USA has an explanation:

The public is getting a bad return on its tax dollars because government workers are operating with outdated technologies, Orszag said in a statement that kicked off a summit between Obama and dozens of corporate CEOs.

Interesting that he admits we're getting a bad return.

But, in my professional opinion, it's not the technology. You can make very good use of old crummy equipment. And you can muck things up with brand new equipment.

They've got a plan, and it's a beaut.
Sad to say, it won't compute.

Here's a truth that's often told:
garbage never turns to gold.

Tiny Houses

A 9.5 foot wide house sold in Greenwich Village for more than 2 million bucks recently. Edna St. Vincent Millay, the great poet, once lived there.

Chicago has a rather similar house in the heart of downtown. It apparently used to be a stable. It's set back in its own little alley, nestled among some good-sized buildings. You can see it here.

I'm not sure either place
has a lot of closet space

Rescue

Here's an American guy in Haiti, who drove 100 miles to find his wife:

He says he saw his wife's hand from under the rubble and heard her tell him to keep it together and just get her out. He describes it as terrifying.

I'm visualizing this. She's the one buried under the concrete. But he's the one freaking out.

Honey, don't scream and shout -
just dig me out.

Spine

 
Censors? We don't need no stinking censors!

Google gets righteous and stands
up to the rulers' demands.

Steppenwolf by Hesse

We read Steppenwolf for book club.

A man in a midlife crisis
indulges in various vices
and ends with a drugged out trip.
Wow, this book is hip!

Actually, I like the "middle" of the book, which is about the protagonist's relationship with a mysterious woman. It had a romantic edge. He is desperate and suicidal, but she throws him a mocking lifeline, and he agrees to submit to her will.

I cared much less for the angst ridden treatise at the start and the hallucinatory dream at the end.

The lone wolf seeks
spiritual peaks
by secret meditation techniques.

And by hopping in beds
and popping some meds.

Truly Living Green

Michael Richard Brown alerted me to this:

A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.

The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they've eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.

How thuggish of the slug to steal plant genes
and plug them into its cells to make itself green!

Granted, it's also one of the neatest genetic tricks that's ever been seen.

Blago Strikes Again

Blago is no slacker
when it comes to drama;
he's declared he's blacker
than Barack Obama.

That's right, the impeached and ejected Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich declared:

This guy, he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the f---? Everything he’s saying’s on the teleprompter. I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.”

He has since apologized, sort of:

Using the word "stupid" dozens of times in an ad hoc five-minute press conference, the former Illinois governor called his comments a "metaphor," but defended the spirit behind them. He claimed that his comments were expressing a frustration with Barack Obama's policies, bailing out the banks but leaving everyday people behind.

When he beats his drum,
my mind goes numb.

I Loved You Once, By Pushkin

I know no Russian, this is just for fun. A Russian speaking friend passed the original to me. See more about the original poem here and here.

I loved you once. My love is not yet dead,
But lingers like a spark within my heart.
Perhaps that truth is better left unsaid.
I wish no tinge of sorrow on your part.

I loved you without words and without hope,
My tongue was tied, my brain insanely jealous,
Sincere and tender, too caught up to cope.
God grant you find another love so zealous!

Standing With A Sign

I attended an anti-Obamacare protest outside my congressman's office today. Brrr. Stood in the cold for 2 hours.

My sign said, "Hands Off". We had a good time.

Hands off our rights.
We mean to live by our own lights.

Not A Translation

This is just for fun, a very free take-off on a Pushkin poem. But I speak no Russian, and have only looked at 2 English translations to get the vaguest of ideas...

If life has cheated you badly,
Don't be blue and don't turn red.
Though gloom glowers, smile instead.
Face the future, face it gladly.
Let your heart live in next year.
Though the weather's far from sunny,
Soon enough it will be clear
And these troubles will seem funny.

Preferring Gitmo To Illinois

Here's a report that the Gitmo residents do not want to follow the President's plan and move to a "supermax" prison in Illinois.

Why would that be?

Climate might enter into it. But the big thing is "supermax". That's a miserable prison experience. Basically you're locked up in solitary for 23 hours a day, last time I checked.

That much solitary
doesn't make men merry.

Bold Girls

I went to see Bold Girls, tonight. It's an Irish play by Rona Munro, about 4 women. There are no men in the play. Why is that? Because the relevant men have been jailed, or killed, by the Brits.

The play is set in Belfast, during The Troubles, a grim time indeed. The director was joking that the situation was so depressing that Prozac would be handed out at the end of the play.

I liked it a lot. The storyline kept you guessing with secrets, and action, and revelation. The dialog was quite clever, in characteristic Irish ways. And the central character, played by Linda Novak, perceived by others as a long-suffering saint, deftly unfolded her true nature to us.

Jaimey Kennedy and Grace O'Neill
made Nora and Deirdre real,

and Colleen Winters was sexy and sassy
as Cassie.

Even Now, I Almost Believe Him

This video (also here) took me back to the good old days, when promises flowed freely.

Candidate Yes-We-Can
kept saying the health care plan
would be designed on C-Span.

But the deals were cut out of sight,
away from the TV lights 
like something wasn't quite right.

Tell The Aleuts To Smile When They Look Up

The CIA is sharing data - with climate scientists!

In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.

I've always felt
that watching ice melt
is a very wise
use of spies.

"Might And Ought To Be" Mystery Solved

Ayn Rand repeatedly, in The Romantic Manifesto, misquoted a phrase from Aristotle's Poetics. Chapter 5 opens:

The most important principle of the esthetics of literature was formulated by Aristotle, who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because "history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be."

In fact, Aristotle's account left out the "and ought to be". I and others had wondered, for some time, how she had gotten that quotation wrong. Had she read something misleading, or had her memory played a trick on her? Some even suggested she was purposely misquoting.

Jennifer Burns, in her new book on Rand, tracked down the original source of the error:

It appears that Rand drew this concept not from Aristotle, but from Albert Jay Nock. In Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 191, Nock writes, ‘History, Aristotle says, represents things only as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.’ In her copy of the book, Rand marked this passage with six vertical lines.

Note that Rand's Aristotle "quotation" actually comes word-for-word from the description Nock gives of Aristotle's position. She merely drops the "only".

So Burns has solved the mystery
of Rand's misquotation
of Aristotle's explanation
of why fiction is deeper than history!

UPDATE: Stephen Boydstun, in the comments, writes: "Robert Mayhew spoke of the Nock source in connection with his paper at the 2005 meeting of the Ayn Rand Society." Which would pre-date Burns, I guess!

Opening Tomorrow In Dubai

The world's tallest building - by far - opens tomorrow in Dubai:

The building is an engineering feat:

The Burj Dubai offers its own structural innovation: the “buttressed core.” A hexagon-shaped concrete core helps the skyscraper resist the twisting force of the wind while the internal structure of the skyscraper’s three wings buttresses the core and provides further wind resistance to the wind.

It was designed by "Chicago architect Adrian Smith and his former colleagues at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill".



I like the way it looks.

I suspect the elevator ride to the top
will seem to never stop.

It's taller than two Empire State Buildings combined.
which this brings this possibility to mind:

If they ever remake King Kong in Dubai
that poor ape will have to climb twice as high.

Tug of War with a Child

Complicated:

Miller and Jenkins were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000. Isabella was born to Miller through artificial insemination in 2002. The couple broke up in 2003, and Miller moved to Virginia, renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.

Jenkins was given visitation rights. Miller refused to cooperate.

Jenkins was then given custody. Miller now seems to have disappeared with the child.

You're not happy that your ex
happens to be same sex?

Tough beans. It's still mean to forbid
visitation with the kid!