"The Sisters of Auschwitz" ("'t Hooge Nest") by Roxane van Iperen (2018)

First thing first, let's face elephant in the room: translation by Joni Zwart is clumsy and there were few moments at the beginning of the book where I could clearly tell sentence does not make sense, but I persevered trough initially slow introduction and the patience paid off - once the story started cooking, I could not put the book down. It is fascinating that the authoress Roxane van Iperen accidentally discovered the history of the forrest villa where she just moved in with her family, but perhaps it was not an accident. Perhaps the house waited for her to tell its story. It could not have been anybody else but van Iperen who became deeply involved in her research and eventually created this exciting book.

During the renovation of the house, van iperen discovered way too many hiding places around the house - what initially she thought was perhaps just a storage, turned out much more interesting. It turned out the house was a hiding place for Jews during WW2 and there was a whole group of around 25 people. Here is what van Iperen have discovered: two sisters (Lien and Janny Brilleslijper) with their families, friends and whoever needed hiding space, rented this well-hidden summer house (their husbands posing as non-Jews and fooling some sweet old ladies who were the original owners) and were hiding here from February 1943 to the summer 1944 - while the rest of the country suffered horrible transportations, arrests and murders, these people lived pretty comfortable with their books, music and birthday parties, right in the middle of what was actually a wealthy Nazi neighbourhood. 

There were instances where group's activities and apparent carefree attitude alarmed me (you would expect a bit more common sense than banging on piano until neighbourhood hears it) but this is all just in hindsight. Its easy to see things differently from our present perspective, who knows how will posterity judge ourselves in a current position. Later the story gets even more interesting, as sisters encounter Anne Frank and her sister. It is a story that needed to be told and van iperen burns with desire to tell it: her fire and inspiration easily grab the listener and therefore I can't give it less than five stars - clumsy translation and all - its just too important to criticise it. 

The Redgrave Women

 

Natasha Richardson (left) with her grandmother, Rachel Kempson; niece, Daisy Bevan; mother, Vanessa Redgrave; and sister, Joely Richardson, photographed by Annie Leibovitz at Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson's home in New York, April 1998 for Vanity Fair.

Vacation time: Portugal

I have recently returned from vacation in Portugal.

It was interesting experience - not because of the usual desire to change the scenery and because of what we have seen there - in many ways Portugal is beautiful and definitely worth a visit - but because of what this experience taught me. To my biggest surprise, once when we actually arrived in Lisbon, I found myself perpetually tired and exhausted, since there were so many things to do but everything was so tiring - not to mention that the weather was against us and we were constantly drenched and wet from the pouring rain - Lisbon is extremely hilly and every single walk turned out to be a Sisyphus mythical climb, it was non stop one climb after another. Porto was just slightly less hilly but even here we puffed and panted and were constantly sweaty (and afterwards sick with cold, after riding sightseeing bus or such) - it was almost as we were punished for having a sunny day, immediately we started to cough. 

So yes, it was beautiful. And interesting. But the best part of vacation was our return home, to our regular comfy nest, shower that actually works, soft and comfortable bed, etc. We were so tired of physical efforts to manoeuvre hilly streets, that coming back to a flat surface was wonderful. Seriously, we had enough of this unexpected fitness and came to conclusion that in the future, vacation should be deserved rest which means that from now we might select a small town or even a village with no traffic jams, no crowds and no tourist traps everywhere. I would not mind a walk in the nature but walks we suffered in Lisbon were not enjoyable. From now on, we will plan the vacations differently and we might simply stay somewhere local, out of town, no planes, no stress, no climbing hills. To recharge the batteries and to rest properly, I need a tiny place with silence, perhaps a sound of the rain, open space, some nature and please dear God, flat surfaces. It took me another week to recover from all this climbing (and cold) and that last week of just resting at home was the best part of my vacation. 

Ivica Krajač (1938 -2024)

Just found out a sad news that Ivica Krajač has died. Everybody who was growing up in the 1970s remembers his name, as Krajač was extremely busy and successful lyrics writer for anybody and everybody in Croatian pop music at the time. On every single than-popular pop festival, his name was often quited ceremoniously before the performance - "and now, the song composed by XY with lyrics by Ivica Krajač (and orchestra conducted by Nikica Kalogjera)!"

In a way, his zenith might have been 1970s when local, home-grown music enjoyed particular success and Krajač was particularly versatile as not only lyrics writer but also songwriter himself, serving everybody from peppy Ljupka Dimitrovska to big stars like Drago Diklić, Tereza Kesovija, Gabi Novak and zillion other names. In fact, without him it would be difficult to even imagine our local pop music, since he was one of the most creative people around. Apparently he was also a theatre director, which I didn't know. 

Krajač came to prominence in the late 1950s as one of the founding members of very popular vocal quartet 4 M - they were beloved as mainstream entertainers, but this was way before my time and I struggle to find any appeal in their recorded music. (They even represented Yugoslavia on Eurovision). When the quartet disbanded, Krajač created a name for himself as a songwriter and ever since he was a busy man, serving other singers with either lyrics or music or sometimes both. Basically, he is connected to every artist of his generation. While the posterity might remember him as lyrics writer of countless "schlager" pop hits of 1960s and 1970s, my connection to Krajač is his friendship and collaborations with Karlo Metikoš - as a tandem, they created two rock-operas (Gubec beg and Grička vještica) that I still own on the records and know every single lyric + in 1973 they teamed to create a debut LP album for than 23 years old Josipa Lisac and the result was "Dnevnik jedne ljubavi" (The diary of one love), to this day highly praised and beloved concept album and one of the first rock albums in a country. It was because of his collaborations with Metikoš that I noticed lyrics of Ivica Krajač - I also noticed that he carefully tailored his songs according to performer (very much like Arsen Dedić also did) so he would serve pop fluff to some and highly poetic lyrics to others. Decades ago, when I was young and hopeful journalist, I have actually meet and spoken to him, I still remember how excited I was when he mentioned casually that he still owns rehearsal tapes for both rock operas created with Metikoš - they will probably never be released in public, though I would love to hear how the work was created. 

Bonnie Raitt

 

A very young Bonnie Raitt during her 1976 visit to The Netherlands 

You can read ger interview here

"Pearl" by Ti West (2022)

It was a very long time since I was blown away by acting performance, specially in a horror movie - perhaps the last genuinely excellent horror I have seen was 2017 "Get out" and nothing since had thrilled me as much as 2022 "Pearl". After the movie I had to do some research and found out this is a part of movie trilogy directed by Ti West who decided that each movie will be created in a different style - "Pearl" is a tribute to classic sweeping old Hollywood movies - together, these three moves create a coherent story, but they can also be enjoyed on their own. Since I never heard of this, I simply dived in "Pearl" and later made my way trough the rest.

"Pearl" is happening on a desolate, isolated farm around 1918 and we know it because it is time of Spanish flu and everybody is keeping distance, their faces covered with face masks. The main character is a simple farm girl Pearl (Mia Goth) who lives with her impoverished German parents and waits for the return of husband from WW1. There is not much joy in her life - after the stroke, her father is basically a plant in the wheelchair, while stern mother suffers in silence and makes life hard by insisting its all the valley of the shadow of death & prayers before meals, etc. The only distractions happened when Pearl is sent away to the local little town to get medicine for the father and here she catches glimpses of glamour on the cinema screen and daydreams imagining herself as one of the chorus girls. Slowly, we also get impression that not everything is right with her, as she gets more and more sucked in her fantasies and things get really complicated when she finds out about the audition for a new dance troupe, which she feels is her way out of the farm life and into the stardom ... 

I won't spoil the rest of the movie (this is just a beginning in a nutshell) but after a slow start, it really gets extremely gripping and its all thanks not to excellent script but also to brilliant acting. First, I must compliment New Zealand actress Tandi Wright who is really powerful as a mother. She suffers in silence until the dinner where storm outside reflects the turmoil inside her mind and we find out she is literary as disturbed as her daughter. David Corenswet is also very good as a local cinema projectionist who flirts with Pearl until her bizarre behaviour turns him off (with dangerous consequences). But the movie belongs to Mia Goth who is so spectacularly brilliant in the main role that she became my new movie crush - her acting is out of this world, technically and physically a true perfection and honestly one would never expect such sensational acting in a horror movie. There are two scenes where camera is focused on her face and she just walks away with the movie.  I enjoyed this so much that I even watched the rest of the trilogy, but this one is by far the best of them. It could be also because other movies were created in different styles and happened in modern times, while this one has a certain artificial patina about it that makes is it so special. 

"Mexican Gothic" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)

Goodreads recommended this one, in fact the novel was winner of Goodreads Choice Awards 2020 as the best horror novel of 2020. And because I have so many books on my e-reader, it became difficult to choose what exactly to read so I decided (on the spur of the moment) not to bother with self-imposed tasks, classics, etc but to give chance to someone I have never read before. I even checked her pictures online and she looks incredibly young and fresh-faced, but the lady is actually 43 at this point so its just funny how everybody looks young to me now as I am over the hill myself.

"Mexican Gothic" is exactly what the title says: it is a heavy drama set in creepy house somewhere in Mexican mountains. It has a young, self-confident heroine (Noemi) who is sent by her father to find out what is going on with their cousin Catalina who is sending disturbing letters from her new home, where she got married despite family's objections. When Noemi arrives there, the scenery could have been Transylvania - not only that house is ancient, neglected and spooky but its inhabitants don't use electricity, move trough the house silently and demand no talks during dinner.  Being adventurous city girl, Noemi don't accept it easily and constantly clashes with them, asking too many questions, trying to help her comatose cousin (who is perpetually "resting" and should not be disturbed) and basically sinking deeper and deeper in trouble, until the reader starts wondering why she simply don't run for her life instead of staying in danger. Moreno-Garcia explain this is her loyalty to Catalina, but we never get impression that she actually care for Catalina in the first place (Naomi is described as strong-willed and somehow narcissistic, wealthy daddy's girl who probably until now never had any struggles in life) - we understand it helps the story that Noemi insist on her support for Catalina, but it stretches credibility a bit, since everybody else would run and bring some help. Moreno-Garcia is a pleasant surprise and she knows how to weave a very good, atmospheric and moody story - I read this breathlessly and (despite some reservations about credibility of characters behaviour) enjoyed it so much that now I am going further with another book by her. 

Gramophone records fair in RAI

 

Recently I found the advertisement for a big, second-hand gramophone records fair that was supposed to happen in Amsterdam - since I gave myself a brand new gramophone player for my birthday, it was just perfect occasion and I purchased ticket online, very interested to visit the place and have a look what they have there. My idea was to perhaps find and replace my old collection that I used to have as a teenager - I don't need anything that can already be found on Spotify, but would love to experience the thrill of taking the album out of its cover and enjoy the music the way I used to, a lifetime ago. So I was quite excited about the prospect of this and to be honest, anticipation was the best part of it.

When Saturday finally came, I took a underground to Amsterdam South where the fair was happening. Funny enough, I have never been to RAI building before, so this was my very first visit there. It turned out a bit different than I expected - namely, this was not just some second hand records sold for peanuts but a big business where sellers from all over Europe presented their collectors items and prices were just ridiculous - going on from € 20 to anything upwards, even € 90 and more. I mean, these were not just any old records but really something more like a status symbol. This quickly discouraged me and I roamed around a bit, until I found the bins with available second-hand records but here I had to be patient because the crowd was mainly focused on them and not on expensive records. 

At certain point, I got excited about a LP that was never released on CD and even went to ATM to get cash - it was pricy but I liked the idea of owning it - and than, because the way to ATM was so complicated, long and convoluted, on the way back I changed my mind. Why spending € 25 for a record that I already have in digital format and can listen at home anyway. So I keep to my inexpensive bins and found a handful of old records that simply reminded me on the childhood, like "We Are The World" , "Flashdance" and "Grease" that gave me kick of holding the original album covers in my hands. But I left the place thinking how perhaps these large fairs are not really for me - I will get much more excitement looking into second hand antique shops where something pops out unexpectedly and affordably. 

"The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World" by James Ball (2023)

 

I glanced at this out of curiosity and before you know it, the book was simply reading itself. It is a subject that always intrigued me and I have found it incredibly interesting, alarming and scary as any horror novel - except this is not a fiction, but our reality. 

James Ball is a British journalist and winner of Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, so he really has some solid background. His writing is exciting, inspired and straight to the point - in this book he elaborates about our virtual society that helped spread of all sorts of viruses that differ from other viruses in a sense that they spread trough our brains. He makes a good point that instead of bringing informations, the online world also spreads disinformation, fear, conspiracy theories and whatnot. To a big degree, it influences how people behave, what they think and worst of all, it can lead to serious crimes based simply on ideas, gossip or illusions. (Like father who kidnapped his kids and murdered them, to stop his wife from using them for satanic purposes) 

Unfortunately, we all know people who succumb to conspiracy theories. I personally know some old school acquaintances who got lost in the rabbit holes and surprisingly, every now and than I find out that even people I know as my work colleagues (for example) have weird ideas picked up online. Because computer algorithm always brings you more and more of what you searched for, its quite dangerous to succumb to these temptations - before you know it, it might affect your whole perspective on life and reality. I found this book to be very informative, interesting and quite disturbing. We are still learning how to cope with this sudden explosion of technical progress and it is very possible that its effect on human brains are in fact very dangerous and perhaps even self-destructive.

"Becoming Ella Fitzgerald" by Judith Tick (2023)

Impeccably researched but ultimately a bit dry, the latest biographer of beloved "Fitz" falls in the same trap as Nadine Cohodas in her biography of Dinah Washington - namely, lacking info about the subject's personal life, the authoress focuses on every single documented concert performance and studio recording. So after a few chapters it starts to get a bit repetitive, because there is simply nothing much to tell about Fitzgerald herself, except yet another concert, another tour, another studio recording. Because Ella was (pardon the pun) elusive, we can admire her, we can love her but we can not pinpoint anything specific about her outside of the concert stage. There might be a possibility that the great lady genuinely had no private life, since she was always working - you never read about Fitzgerald enjoying some relaxed vacation or such, until the very end when Diabetes forced her into a wheelchair and she was simply not physically capable of touring anymore.  

I was initially a bit alarmed already in the foreword, because Judith Tick had a currently fashionable way of expressing herself as being not lucky but "privileged" for having access to archives - you know, the type who is always on some spiritual quest, "learning" and "changing the narrative". Thankfully she did not turned the book into anything but biography of a musician, even though she occasionally tries valiantly to describe her subject as activist, where Fitzgerald was by all accounts everything but. Personally I did not find it boring but I can understand that some readers might find it a bit exhausting.

Curiously, Thick completely ignores what might have been genuinely interesting part of the story - Fitzgerald's teenage years spent in New York's reformatory school with other juvenile delinquents where she was allegedly frequently beaten and punished - Thick just breezes over this and never elaborates how this might have scarred and psychologically  shaped the singer always known for her quiet disposition. (According to the documents, teenage Fitzgerald escaped the institution.) 

A gift from me to me, with love

As a birthday gift from me to me, I decided to bite the bullet and bought myself something that I wanted for a very, very long time - a real record player so I can still play my old vinyl collection. Even better, I found something online - a nostalgic replica of an old fashioned radio with record player on top (under the roof) with added CD and cassette player so nothing has to stay in dusty boxes anymore and I can indulge in cherishing my old collection. 

In my childhood, we had something very similar in the kitchen - it was an old fashioned radio and once you open the top, there was a record player there. I had discovered music via this old, crappy record player and played my singles non stop (the ones I got for the seventh birthday), later built a cute little vinyl collection that unfortunately got lost, along with many other things. Now as i opened some old boxes, I see some old LPs and was thinking "I might as well find some record player, since I still have records". And not just records, I also own cassettes and CDs because I am coming from another time when listeners were actually buying music in order to listen to it - there were no streaming services online, where is enough if you only know the title of the song - no sir, in my time you had to walk to a record store and browse with dusty fingers until you find something that appeals to you. 

Spotify had changed all of this and now we listen our music differently. I have almost completely stopped listening to the radio but I still enjoy Podcasts. So now when I have a brand new record player, I decided not just to dust off my old vinyl collection but to treat myself with occasional browsing in a second hand shops, which are very popular here.  In fact, I browsed today - and for the first time I was happy because I could actually purchase something. There were some self-imposed rules:

- nothing that is already available on Spotify (what would be the point)

- only the records that were never released on CD

- nothing too expensive (its only nostalgic hobby, after all)

- maximum € 10 at once

- records must be in passable condition 

- if possible, try to build the same collection I once had (that would be neat)

And immediately I am faced with the fact that my LP collection is hopelessly old-fashioned and uncool. But this is who I am. And my uncoolness is the deliberate part of my personality, since I always followed my own path and declined to follow the herd. This means that my collection will be mostly 1960s and 1970s oldies and this is perfectly fine by me, since it makes me happy. I did listen to my CDs from time to time, but now is the first time that I listened my old cassette tapes since 2004. That was exactly 20 years ago! The sound - must admit - is not the same as on some first class stereo system but to be honest, its perfectly fine for my little study room and the idea is simply to enjoy my old collection, not to impress anybody. + I am going deaf anyway + I don't need super clean sound for my collection of 1920s blues. There is a Blue tooth option so eventually I might figure it out, so far I tried to connect it to my Iphone and got spotify playing on the record player instead the other way around ha ha, well it takes some time. Happy Birthday to me!

"The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu" by Sax Rohmer (1913)

For a simple change of pace, I decided to try something else completely and turned my attention to a 100 year old pulp novel, originally published in magazines chapter by chapter as serialisation in magazines like "Colliers" and this explains why the novel feels like perpetual high-adrenaline adventure chase, since each chapter ends with a cliffhanger. It was a huge sensation of its time and inspired sequels and movie versions, but I'm afraid it did not age very well. 

Sax Rohmer (real name Arthur Henry Ward) perhaps wanted to write something similar to Sherlock Holmes novels, a story with two heroes who are both fighting the evil. In this case we have Sir Denis Nayland Smith (a sort of well-wheeled government agent who inspires instant respect from everyone he meets) and his accidental helper, Dr Petrie who actually tells the story from his perspective. Nayland has just returned from Burma - all tanned and worried about a certain dangerous individual who is danger for the whole white race (!) and here is where things go funny. I cannot possibly imagine how was it a 100 years ago, but in a present time this sounds fairly ludicrous - back than, it served the purpose of creating "us against them" perspective, where good guys fight an obvious enemy who must be different, as to easily distinguish it from "our boys". It would actually work better if Rohmer created an antagonist who can easily hide in a crowd, instead of making every single Asian character instantly suspicious - but who am I to say, Rohmer became wealthy and successful with these novels and it just doesn't make sense to judge a 100 year old novel by our current standards.

It starts fairly well and the game of cat & mouse reminded me strangely on French detective novel "Fantomas" (written more or less at the same time as this one) but at certain point it became repetitive - chapter after chapter, our guys follow Asian characters into a dangerous, dimly lit places and opium dens, just to narrowly escape sure death by poison, etc, etc. Each time mad genius of Dr. Fu Manchu almost gets them, but than something (or somebody) helps them so we continue to more chapters of exactly same premises. There is an obligatory young beauty who for no apparent reason falls in love with Dr Petrie and she usually helps when everything seems lost. Towards the end I even got a little bored, it might be that certain old novels (like this one, or "The Phantom of the Opera" from the same time) are just too old. 

God's children: Josephine Clofullia

 

Josephine Clofullia was a famous "bearded lady" displayed in a travelling show by P. T. Barnum. She was born in a small Swiss village, apparently lived quiet and unremarkable life until her mother died - this was beginning of her involvement with travelling circuses. It was probably a sheer necessity as there were not many options for single women + she had a very unusual handicap that would always isolate her from the society, so the offer of businessman P. T. Barnum was probably the best thing that could happen to her. 

Long walks and discoveries: Vlooienburg

I have mentioned on this blog several times how much I enjoy my walks trough old historical centre of Amsterdam and how much I admire the beautiful old houses - however, the more I learn about it, the more I realise that a lot of the old town was totally demolished (for various reasons) and what has survived was a complete accident, because the whole streets and neighbourhoods were moved away to create space for new buildings. The understanding that historical area must be preserved did not really occur before 1970s - before that, quite a lot of beautiful old houses were simply gone forever. I have already mention the area of Kattenburg where the whole street disappeared, but how about the whole neighbourhood that was gone?

Recent visit to Stadsarchief where they had exposition "Déjà vu" reminded me that actual photographs still exist about the Jewish neighbourhood that once existed around what is now Watterlooplein with Opera House/City Hall. From what we know, it was one of the few artificial islands in the city centre and it was overcrowded with the poorest Jewish inhabitants - it was also close to local Synagogue that still stands there. It was one old photograph on that exhibition that fascinated me (a beautiful view on the whole island from the tower of Zuiderkerk) and the impression stayed with me until I did some research and found an excellent documentary called "Vlooienburg, the history of a Jewish quarter".

https://npo.nl/start/video/vlooienburg-de-geschiedenis-van-een-joodse-wijk

What a joy! Not as in joyful story but as in archaeological discovery - apparently I am not the only one interested in the old buildings and the history of the city - the documentary was everything I always wanted to know about the now disappeared neighbourhood. It explains that the whole area behind De Blauwbrug was originally Jewish and how these particular Jews were actually relatively well-off until refugees from other places around Europe started coming in, making it a overcrowded slum. (Later some of these families would move to a new neighbourhood in the South of Amsterdam called Transvaalbuurt which had beautiful new houses and spacious rooms, but it was far away from historical centre with Synagogue) There was a large number of Jews from Portugal's city Porto and everybody had to adapt to the rules and traditions of the new city. 

Vlooienburg was an artificial island of rectangular shape and it had four blocks with tightly squeezed houses next to each other - it housed around 7 000 people and it was a very poor area, as Jews were prohibited from most of the crafts and were only allowed several options, including diamond cutting. Where for centuries Amsterdam was a safe haven for all the Jews escaping dangers, pogroms and inquisitions, it all changed in WW2 when Germans occupied the country and eliminated 75 % of Amsterdam's Jews. Not only were the inhabitants all arrested, deported and murdered but the houses were also pillaged (for firewood) and left empty and demolished until the City Hall eventually decided to turn the whole area in the parking lot, than used it to built a new City Hall & Opera House there.

What we now call Waterlooplein with its Flea market, was in fact a totally different neighbourhood and there is absolutely nothing left of it (except old Moses and Aaron Church) - in the documentary, archeologists were digging in a cesspits left behind these demolished houses and discovering traces of food, pottery and cutlery that showed traces of imports from Portugal and other places. I ended up watching not one but two documentaries about history of Amsterdam and had a great time.

"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck (1937)