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Sunday, March 09, 2003
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Man - what unbelievable weather. It's 25 degrees and the North Wind is just howling. Gusts up to 50 mph.
Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. After all this is Alaska. And it is winter. Cold North Winds are deriguer. However, we have NO snow. zip. zilch. zero white stuff. As a result, all the road sand put down this winter by road crews and glacial silt have combined with the incredible wind to create a giant arctic dust bowl. The dust is so bad that we can't even see the mountains. It hasn't been this bad since the volcano Mt. Spurr erupted and covered Anchorage with ash 12 years ago.
I need a supply of toothpicks to pick the dust and debris out from my teeth.
9:28:24 PM 
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 This afternoon, Cheri, Peter, and I saw a superb production of Cabaret. Cabaret is one of my favorite musicals - fabulous music, dark adult sexy subject matter, and a one of the best dramatic vehicles I've ever seen that brings home the dawning horror of the Holocaust.
I was somewhat taken aback by the ignorance of the Anchorage audience. The crowd certainly did not seem hip to adult racy sex - there were several audible gasps when the men kissed each other. My goodness where have these people been? But what really struck me was the lack of knowledge regarding the Holocaust. Many people just didn't get what they were seeing - the rise of the Nazi Germany and the hatred directed at Jews. I'd feel a lot better about our society if people understood fascism better. But instead, we seem to be moving towards nationalism and marginalization of non-Christians
Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive. I've been on an unplanned Holocaust run for the past three weeks:
-The movie The Pianist. This movie gets my vote for the Oscar.
-Last week, I finished the book, Austerlitz. The book is the story of British man who late in life discovers that he is Jewish refugee from the Holocaust. His mother sent him away at age 4 on an orphan train just before the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. He never saw his parents again. He didn't even know they existed. It was a difficult book - a very isolated writing style that made it difficult to absorb. I know it's a great book, but I just couldn't access it.
-I am currently reading The Golems of Gotham. A fabulously delightful book that utilizes a very engaging literary device: The golems/ghosts of Primo Levy, Jerzy Kosinski, and several others return at the request of a teen age New York girl who is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. It is a sweet book with humor, sadness, and magic realism. It is certainly a different way of examining Holocaust. But it works well and inexorably drives home the horror.
9:07:18 PM
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