Gary Tischler • July 10, 2014

If you pay attention to polls and pollsters and pundits and punsters, you’d think the American people—you know, us, you and me and yours and mine but maybe not the other guy and gal—haven’t been so depressed since the Depression.

Americans, these days, appear not to trust anybody in a position of authority or influence. The president, congress and even the venerable, black-robed members of the Supreme Court, are enjoying (if enjoy they can), their lowest approval ratings ever or in their lifetime. When it comes to President Barack Obama, not even Nixon was ever so low or unpopular, whether he was a crook or not. Lawmakers are creeping towards single-digit approval ratings, being compared not only to do-nothings but the famous know-nothings of the Civil War era. Only the pope and Angelina Jolie have consistently high approval ratings or score at the box office.

Things look so bad that you might have thought that everybody would have stayed home and sulked or snuck into their separate bathtubs at the beach and not bothered with the stuff that makes the Fourth of July so — I don’t know — uplifting and elevating.

Think again.

Americans may have no confidence in the president, and less in congress, but they still love a good, old-fashioned blow-out of fireworks, hot dogs by the dozens, the flag flying in the breeze at dusk and dawn, and aging rock-n-rollers. They still spread out their blankets, submit to searches, pop a cold one, sing old songs, and sit curbside as the parade marches by, tuba, cheerleader, mom and the kids, grandpa and the old slow-walking guy with all the medals from another time.

It may be Americans don’t trust their government—especially if the government spies on them with things that look like model airplanes. It may be we get a little lost in all our touch-screen gizmos which contain the world but with no directions. It may be if we’re most of us struggling to make the rent, we’re a little resentful of some 20-year-old making millions telling the manager how to make up his lineup. Maybe we can’t even trust General Motors—seriously. But, by God, there’s still nothing as American as apple pie (though British in origin), especially if your mother makes it or the market lady with her wonderful rhubarb pie from out in West Virginia a ways.

Here’s what happened on the Fourth of July in these parts—a phrase I don’t normally use except on the Fourth or watching a Memorial Day Parade, and remembering an old GI with a ribbon on his chest recall that “S.O.B. Patton” running into the Battle of the Bulge. It reminds of my adopted home, which is this country, this of thee as well as me. It reminds me of years ago when I sat around a wrinkled blanket full of afternoon holiday goodies with my Serbian stepfather and German mother, all of sort of crunched together in a mishmash of Ohio hot dogs, Serbian strong drinks, kraut and sausages and my mom’s potato salad and somebody’s apple pie.

In Georgetown, amid the many backyard parties, S&R Foundation supporters gathered Friday night at Evermay to watch far-away fireworks and cheer and clap amid beer, wine, water and barbecue, along with a lovely recital by acclaimed violist Ori Kam. Bill Dean’s house sat ready for its party-goers. Others were down at the Georgetown waterfront; still others were on the water with their boats in the Potomac. Shut down for the fireworks, Key Bridge was a cool spot for a huge, public crowd. Nearby, a small private group gathered at Halcyon House. Rooftops across town flickered with new visitors.

All across the country, I know, in those small towns and struggling mid-sized towns with a real main streets of shops, some shuttered, some sharing their wares, the Fourth was still a big day, and most people left cynicism in the wood shed or the barn, or gave it away at a yard sale.

Thousands showed up at the National Mall waving little and big flags, and listened to the Jersey Boy himself, 80-year-old Frankie Valli starting dangerously to look like a constrained Joe Pesci, but singing just like his high-pitched self, and watched the wholesome pretty Broadway star Kelly O’Hara sing the Sousa, the Cohan, the Berlin stomping like a red head, and the National Symphony Orchestra grooved out. Our heroes were lauded, sitting on the national front lawn.

They had parades that day or the next day everywhere, including the traditional one in Palisades, which always includes old cars, someone dressed up like a green Statue of Liberty, kids and their dogs, a feast of neighborhood Americans and the usual politicians trolling to be remembered in elections that come in near-winter. We always expect politicians in parades: they wave, they smile, they rush out to greet a familiar face, or unfamiliar ones. They are, forgive us, like the acrobats, the marching band and the clowns, out of costume, even as this particular occasion included a public endorsement of a candidate, which might have waited for a down-the-road press conference or e-mail, not a parade.

But no matter.

On this day, most of us managed to express that — despite the polls — we had a spirited, still optimistic sense of our country (this of thee and all that jazz, too), that we understood our virtues of inclusion without intrusion, that freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose but a word we embrace like a last stand, as if we were winged, flying free. We honor brave men and women. We love the endless expanse of sea to shining sea, and recognize, too, that it’s all, well, complicated, but also rich. We can sing and voice all that and come tomorrow, still might scowl and say none of the above.

Because we can.
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Gary Tischler • July 7, 2014

WAYNE CURRY

Wayne Curry, the transformative Prince George’s County executive for two terms in the 1990s, believed in the power of economic development and prosperity, and he fought for it with steel-strong toughness, charm, and authentic authority.

Curry, who died of lung cancer July 2 at the age of 63, gained wealth and prospered as a real estate and corporate lawyer, and held the firm belief that opportunities existed for others to do what he did. The result was that when he came to power as one of the first African American county executives in the nation, Prince George’s County, which is now more than 60-percent black, became one of the first county or city jurisdictions in the nation to go from a white majority to an African American majority with its economy prospering and improving, along with the level of education among its residents.

He also did something else that was unique. He stood up to the imposing and bullish Jack Kent Cooke, the owner of the Washington Redskins who was used to getting his way. In the 1990s, Cooke had already decided to bring the Redskins from RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., to Landover, Md., in Prince George’s County and demanded that the county pay for the resulting $175-million stadium. Curry bluntly said no, causing consternation among Maryland state politicians who were afraid that Cooke might back out. But Curry stood fast—and it was the state that ended up picking up the tab, not Curry or Prince George’s County.

He could be confrontational. He clashed with Wall Street over the county’s bond rating, but eventually prevailed. He laid the groundwork for the rise of National Harbor and made sure that the county was first and foremost prosperous. In addition, crime went down under Curry, and businesses came to the county. Washington’s loss of African American residents was the county’s gain. It is the country’s wealthiest black-majority county. What Curry sought was respect for the county, which includes College Park and Laurel among its cities. He got it with economic growth, the completion of the integration of schools, an integrated police force, and the raising of the county’s image and profile among its neighbors.

High praise for Curry came from Maryland leaders like Governor Martin O’Malley, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, who just won the Democratic primary for governor, GOP candidate for Governor Larry Hogan, the current Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Banker III, Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer.

PAUL MAZURSKY

Paul Mazursky, the noted American film director of the 1970s and 1980s, had a way with words. He also had a way with actors, and he was a keen observer of American social, sexual and cultural mores of those decades.

Which is not to say he was Woody Allen, although, oddly enough, he directed Woody Allen in a movie with Bette Midler. Mazursky’s best work was in some fleshy, colorful way, much warmer, less idiosyncratic, and without the cool and too-hip intellectual baggage that characterized Allen’s lesser work.

Mazursky took a long time getting started—it wasn’t until he and his writing partner Larry Tucker came up with the screenplay for “I Love You Alice B. Toklas,” a film in which the endlessly inventive comic actor Peter Sellers plays a middle-aged man getting lost in a cloud of acid, fringed jackets and a hippie goddess, played by Leigh Taylor Young, that his directing gear took off.

When he stayed away from self-indulgent, navel-gazing and semi-autobiographical films like “Blume in Love,” “Alex in Wonderland” and “Willie and Phil,” he ran off a series of films that were notable for their full-of-life, sharply observed, empathic, funny, often romantic as well as satiric films. They were small classics. First in line was the still famous but also slightly dated “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” (1969) about two cool couples wandering awkwardly into a sexual-swinging scene. The performance were top-notch—Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, young Elliott Gould and a surprisingly sweet Dyan Cannon. In its day, it was considered “too dirty” by some studio heads. Today, it would probably grace the Lifetime network.

“Harry and Tonto,” about an elderly man who embarks on a cross-country road trip with his pet cat after being evicted from his New York apartment, was a gem, and a triumph for Art Carney, previously known for his work on “The Honeymooners.” It was funny, warm, full of terrific performances—including Chief Dan George, and Larry Hagman and Ellen Burstyn as his children. It won Carney an Oscar for best actor.

In “An Unmarried Woman,” the luminous, sometime brittle star of the 1970s Jill Clayburgh plays a woman at sea in a changing sexual world after being dumped by her husband. She’s surrounded by wonderful actors, including Michael Murphy as the husband and Alan Bates, providing magnetic love interest as a bearded painter.

You go down that list, and you keep finding memorable work—“Moscow on the Hudson” with Robin Williams as Russian who defects in Bloomingdale’s and courts Maria Conchita Alonzo; “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” with Richard Dreyfus and Bette Midler as Hollywood types, whose lives are upended by the presence of a grungy, scruff Nick Nolte as a homeless person they’ve taken in.

His last really great movie was “Enemies: A Love Story,” based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel about a Holocaust survivor who ends up marrying three amazing women. At the same time.

Mazurzky died of cardiac arrest at the age of 84 June 30.

Gary Tischler • July 2, 2014

In the summer of 1978, I attended an alley party, a gathering of neighborhood friends on Capitol Hill near the Eastern Market Metro Station. Toward mid-afternoon, there was a buzz of energy in the crowd and you could see a thirty-forty-something black man in a summer suit making his way through the people, shaking hands, announcing himself. “Who’s that guy?,” I asked a friend. He came our way and stretched out his hand. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Marion Barry, and I’m running for mayor of Washington.” He looked me straight in the eye, no blinking, straight up.

Back then, not even Barry—who is neither humble, modest nor shy about his achievements and talents—had any idea of just how far he would go, how much of an impact he would have on his adoptive city, for better or worse, just how far he might rise and how low he might fall, or how much he would seep into the lasting imagination of the city’s residents, black and white.

Some 36 years later, here we were again. He walked into the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, and at first glance—walking carefully, but straight up, splendid gray suit and tie—he still had some of that charisma that makes you pay attention. But he was also, at age 78, a little diminished—by health issues and by time.

But we were all here together because of the book.

There is no end to the story of Marion Barry, or as the title of his book goes “Mayor for Life, The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr.”

The book—long anticipated and long put off—is what it’s all about now in Barry’s life: interviews, an appearance at the National Press Club, an unusual sit-down, “on-the-record” dinner with journalists at the Look Supper Club on K Street, a forum cum-love fest sponsored by the Washington Informer at the Congress Heights school on Martin Luther King Avenue in Ward 8, all part of a here-there-and-everywhere mini-book tour. The book getting its share of knocks from the media, and others, but also praise from fans. Wherever Barry goes, his story goes with him.

If you’ve lived in the Barry age, you get instant flashbacks encountering him. You remember the flamboyant first-time mayoral candidate, the politician in the dashiki, the job-maker for the city’s struggling African-American population, presiding over a construction boom, charming some but not all CAG members at their meetings; the infamous crack-smoking Vista Hotel tapes, the trial, coming back from a six-month prison sentence, getting re-elected to a fourth mayoral term, getting elected to the Ward 8 council seat, where he remains to this day, still drawing attention, still getting into trouble, still a force.

The book tour is bringing out almost every Barry incarnation we’ve seen—as well as the familiar tropes in reaction to the book by his critics. Modesty is never an issue. At the book dinner he said, “Courage, tenacity and vision, that’s Marion Barry in a nutshell.”

Face to face over lunch, he’s a little quieter, although no less full of certainty. “I don’t want my life to be just about the Vista thing, it was a life of accomplishment, where I helped people get a fair share of what they’ve been denied, in terms of jobs, in terms of work, in terms of participating in the business of this city. When I came here in 1965, this was still a sleepy Southern town. It was segregated, and black people weren’t a part of the economy the way they should have been, and when I was elected mayor I changed all that.” Asked if he had any regrets, he almost scowls. “Sure, of course, I’ve got regrets, who doesn’t,” he says. “When it comes to that, I sure wouldn’t have gone up to that hotel room if I had to do it over.”

The book is a kind of freight train, going full speed around the curves, dropping cargo and information, with some empty cars on it. If you want Vista, it’s there in detail, according to Barry, if not according to other accounts and observers, often graphically.

But the book, written with novelist Omar Tyree, does touch on his early years, where you get a better sense of what may have formed Barry. He was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi. “I grew up poor,” he will tell you. His father was a sharecropper who died when Barry was four. “I didn’t have a role model,” he said.

He grew up in Mississippi, in Arkansas, in Tennessee, during his formative years. Those were also the years of real segregation and Jim Crow in the south, where blacks and whites drank at different water fountains were. “I tried it once, I wanted to see what it was like to drink water from the white fountain,” he says. “You just didn’t do that.”

In the end, Marion Barry became his own role model. Barry pursued science, has a master’s degree in Chemistry and became an organizer and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during some of the most dramatic years of the civil rights movement.

“My mother [Mattie Cummings] picked cotton, but she later became a domestic. She insisted to the people who she worked for that she would come in the front door, not the back door. She said to them “If I’m good enough to teach and raise your kids then I’m good enough to come through the front door. And she did.”

His vision about himself is heroic, in terms of the difference he made in the city for its black residents. “I knew what needed to be done and I did it,” he says. From the moment he came to town as a SNCC organizer with the reputation of a go-getter and firebrand, he kept moving forward. “People liked me, people followed me. I ran for the school board and won, I ran for the city council and won, I ran for mayor and won.”

“You want to know why I came back after all that, I was on the council again, but I went to Safeway on Naylor Road, to get some groceries, and I couldn’t get out of there for two hours. It’s true.” People said, “why don’t you run again, Marion? The city, the people need you. So I ran,” he says. That was his last mayoral run, in 1994, when he beat both Council member John Ray and Mayoral incumbent Sharon Pratt Kelly, who ran a distant third. That was also, after his victory, when he told disgruntled white voters “to get over it.”

The segregated South framed Barry’s political context. In the book and in conversation, he often refers to white folks and the white establishment as a kind of political antagonist, against himself and African-Americans in general.

He is asked about Mayor Vincent Gray’s campaign platform of “One City,” of bringing the city together racially and ethnically. “It’s not real,” he says. “Can’t be done. It’s just not real. It’s a slogan, that’s all, a pipe dream.” Barry endorsed Gray in the Democratic primary earlier this year, in which Gray, operating under a cloud, was beaten by Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser. Barry said he’ll be supporting Bowser.

Talking about the new demographics of the city and its neighborhoods in which the black population is declining, he says it’s “gentrification, pure and simple, that’s driving people out of the city, the people who made up the backbone of this city. It’s a disgrace. ”

“I’m not done,” he said. “I’m going to continue fight for economic empowerment. If you don’t have capital, you don’t have power.” [gallery ids="101797,140715,140713" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • June 30, 2014

The Georgetown Business Association will honor Ron Swarthout, longtime proprietor of Georgetown Floorcoverings, the durable business which he ran from 1967 to 2012, and which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

At its June 18 Leadership Luncheon at Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place, the GBA will present Swarthout with its 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Georgetown Floorcoverings has been one of those institutions in our city and village which practically defines the idea of several terms that are bandied about casually—“mom and pop store,” “family business,” “business business” “and “hard work and service.”

“That’s one of the things about our business,” said Swarthout, who lives in Spotsylvania, Va. “We don’t just have a product. It’s all about helping people, doing a professional job. We install as well as sell. It’s about being proud of how you do the work and gaining people’s trust. ”

Small businesses and family businesses are a dying breed in America’s economy, but Georgetown Floorcoverings is the essence of a family business. Swarthout’s father Herbert started the business in 1954 in a small space at 1417 28th Street, NW, with a warehouse in the basement. Herbert Swarthout started out in flooring by working as an installer, which served him well in his own business. He enlisted his son in his teens to work as a helper to the carpet mechanics for 50 cents an hour.

It took a while—a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps in the 1960s, and working with Western Electric for two years—but Ron Swarthout got in the family business in the 1960s, down at 3233 K St., NW, where his father had moved the store, and managed the store after his father’s retirement in 1979, before buying the business when his father passed away in 1979.

Swarthout was a visible part of the business community, with friends like Brad Altman, who ran Altman Parking and with whom he lunched regularly at Chadwick’s on K Street. The industrial atmosphere on the street had changed over the years. So, he moved the warehouse to R Street, SW, where it remains to this day.

“There have been changes,” he said. “You can’t get any parking anywhere, including K Street, for one thing. I guess that’s true all over the city. I think it’s probably harder for small businesses today, than it was when my father started.”

Swarthout made his wife Judy a half-partner in the business because he said he believed in sharing everything in their life. He has a son, Warren, who’s with the Fairfax County Fire Department, Marci, who’s a child psychologist and teacher and another daughter, Karen Swarthout Ori, who purchased and runs the business — and is GBA treasurer.

Swarthout remains active in the day-to-day operation of the business doing billing and accounting and drops by the office and Georgetown at least “once a week.”

Gary Tischler •

It’s hard to think of two shows more different from each other than “Sideshow” and “The Lion King,” now settled in for longish runs at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre and Opera House, respectively.

One is a resurrection and renovated redo of a legendary 1997 Broadway show about outcasts and outsiders, in particular two sisters joined at the hip who rise from sideshow, carny attractions to vaudeville stars. The other is the enduring Broadway musical version of the popular Disney cartoon, in which brilliant director Julie Taymor not only resurrects the story — along with Elton John and Tim Rice’s music — but offers an entire dream of Africa at its most optimistic. The one show is attempting to rise out of its early critically approved but audience-sparse past. The other remains an unstoppable entertainment phenomena.

But the two shows share something: both are embraced passionately by their audiences, although the audience for the two shows are probably very different, too. But each show had more than its share of electricity coming not only from center stage outward but out from the audience, which were often noisy with spontaneous applause and whistles in the first case, and vocal delight by the youngsters—and their adult companions—in the second.

These kinds of occurrences in the theater—call them happy disturbances in the theatrical field—are always there, of course, but in these two instances, the infectious passions generated by the shows, setting, stories and music became impossible to ignore, unless you arrived minus curiosity, empathy, heart, brain and soul. It’s what makes live theater so precious when it becomes rich in a series of moments that you want to take home with you as a keepsake.

This is especially true in the best sense for “Sideshow,” which has new songs, a new more literal and dramatic concept—thanks in large part to new director Bill Condon, the Oscar-winning director of the film version of “Dreamgirls.”

“Sideshow” tells the wrenching, but also oddly romantic tale of the Hilton Sisters, Violet (Erin Davie) and Daisy (Emily Padgett), the alluring co-joined twins and carnival attractions when we first meet them. That’s when the sinister, twisted side-show master named Sir invites us, at the top of things, to “Meet the Freaks”—the bearded lady, the three-legged man, reptile man, tattoo girl, half-man, half-woman, fortune teller, dog boy, Venus di Milo, the world’s tinest cossack woman and man, the pin cushion and Jake, the cannibal king.

The stars of the midway, the Hilton Sisters, who sing in keening voices like sirens , and who will for two bucks let you see where they are joined at the hip

This is depression-era America, where two guys from the vaudeville circuit. Hustlers and salesman and agents and dancers named Buddy Foster and Terry Connor are enchanted and see them as potential stars of the vaudeville circuit. “We are very well connected, “ they tell the sisters. “So are we,” the sisters say.

So, the fairy tale comes true in huckster nation. They become stars, they fall in love, they go to Hollywood, except … that they’re not like everybody else … they’re exactly like everybody else.

The notion—cliché-like—that the sisters are us, as are their boon companions from the sideshow, just happens to be true. For instance, were the sisters not the joined sisters, this could pass for a classic story-boarded and story-book romantic musical, and musically, you haven’t heard impassioned ballads like “I Will Never Leave You,” “Who Will Love Me As I Am” and “You Should Be Loved” in many, many years.

Yet the first, sung in and out of tandem by the sisters, is loaded with irony and yearning, of the kind that is the hallmark of most romantic joy and friction—don’t leave me, leave me alone, I’m so alone, I want to be free, I love you, I hate you, that everyone can hear their own heart bludgeoned, flying, battered and bathed, in them.

“Who Will Love Me as I Am” is practically an anthem for the sisters and their friends on the midway, but separate from that, is also a grand musical expression of the hope we all carry around to our dying day. “You Should Be Loved” is sung by Jake, who accompanies the girls on their journey, and is a not-quite surprising declaration of love for Violet and Jake is a double-outsider, being an African American in Jim Crow America. Those songs are so affecting—with incisive, empathy-loaded lyrics by Bill Russell and music as an expression of the heart by composer Henry Krieger—that the audience all but levitates with feeling at their climax.

The show often dips in an almost nostalgic ways with bows to Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret.” The hair-raising “Meet the Freaks” is a little bit of an echo of Joel Grey in “Come to the Cabaret,” as is the ménage-a-trois song, “1 + 1 = 3”.

Here’s a special bow to Emily Padgett as Daisy, and Erin Davie as Violet: it’s a triumphant pairing, together and apart, voices a little different, emotions very different. They’re the big stars of this show, but there’s room also for David St. Louis to shine as Jake and the total stellar cast. I would bet too that the audience in the end is an equal star in this show—there’s a definite feeling of the audience celebrating itself here. Come to the Sideshow, indeed.

“The Lion King” is Julie Taymor’s signal triumph, before she met a handsome but difficult stranger named Spiderman. Even if you’ve seen the show before, the entrance opening of the show with stately giraffes and animals sidling down the aisle, and all the puppetized creatures of the jungle, along with live actors take the breath away.

This isn’t about outsiders, but all the members of the lion kingdom, celebrating the circle of life, the traditions of their life, in spectacle and stunning costumes and lighting—this is Taymor—who dazzled in cinematic versions of Shakespeare—at her totemic best.

The story and characters—the noble lion king, his son, his vile, affected brother, plotting to dethrone his brother along with his followers, the scary, lurching, leering hyenas, the female pride—make for just the kind of coming of age story for children, not yet coming of age.

The actors embodying the roles have presence: L. Steven Taylor’s human swagger as Mustafa, Jelani Remy’s high-spirited Simba, Nia Holloway’s appealing Nala, Patrick Brown’s sneering, whiny Scar, the meercat and the warthog. They are vivid and lively, but so are the puppets making magic in the landscape.

Watch the children and youngsters in the audience. They give in to entrancement and enchantment almost immediately with the first bird-wielding puppeteer. We sat next to a young girl, whose heart seemed to stop as she watched Simba ascend the throne, her hand to her mouth, eyes wide.

She told her companion this: “The first thing we have to do, really, is come back and see this.”

I might add a note to self: “The first thing I have to do as soon as I can is come back and see “Sideshow”.

— “Sideshow” is at the Eisenhower Theater through July 13. “The Lion King” is at the Opera House through Aug. 17.

Gary Tischler •

We lost two remarkable and gifted men in the last week: one a scholar, a charismatic, often lyrical, interpreter, celebrator and regretful critic of the Arab world; the other an exuberant, multi-gifted actor who was at home in both spaghetti westerns and the plays of Tennessee Williams.

We lost Fouad Ajami to cancer at the age of 68, and Eli Wallach at 98.

FOUAD AJAMI—Ajami was born in a small Lebanese village but grew up in Beirut and was, with all of his passionate connection to Middle Eastern history and culture, a citizen of the world and the United States, specifically, where he gained citizenship. Growing up in Beirut—once called the Paris of the Middle East—and Lebanon perhaps gave him the grounding for a generous, sometimes divided spirit, and made him a gifted interpreter of the deeply rooted and passionately held cultural and political strains of a diverse array of Middle Eastern countries.

As an academic, but also as a writer of historical and contemporary books on the Middle East and its relationship to the west, Ajami wrote with a literary gift and keen political analysis about the region in such books as “The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey,” “The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967,” and, most recently, “The Syrian Rebellion” and “Crosswinds: The Way of Saudi Arabia.”

Ajami became a familiar face during the first Gulf War and especially in the post-September-11 world on television, on CNN, PBS and CBS, talking about the complexities of the region, about the plight of the Palestinians and about the need for peacemaking. He was also a keen advocate of the U.S. war in Iraq, becoming closely involved as a kind of advisor to the likes of Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, the foreign policy intellectuals in the administration of President George W. Bush. He predicted, as did others, that Iraq would welcome the Americans. Recent events, among other things, have borne out neither that prediction nor the idea of an eventual outcome of stability in Iraq after the end of Saddam Hussein.

He abhorred Arab dictators and, after initial elation, was saddened by the results of the Arab Spring, especially in Syria and Egypt. Right or wrong—and he was more often right—he wrote about the Middle East with courage, with a poet’s emotion, with an intellectual’s sharp analysis and without malice.

Ajami’s gifts were to look at the world in which he was raised, with compassion that did not offend credulity. He carried himself often oozing bright charm , a pleasant charisma which came across as authoritative on television and with great impact in person. His friendships were not limited by religion, ethnicity or nation.

ELI WALLACH—Eli Wallach was 98 when he died this week, a son of Brooklyn and Jewish parents who did not entirely approve when their son decided to become an actor.

He became an astonishingly good actor—minus movie star looks—but fueled by Method acting, imagination and a gift for making very bad people appear very interesting. His life, which he shared with his wife fellow actress Anne Jackson for decades, was rich in parts, 150 roles scattered across theater, Broadway, television and films.

Wallach said that his popular film work supported his and his wife’s theater passion, which may be true, since he was acclaimed for his work by such playwrights as Tennessee Williams, Murray Schisgal and Eugene Ionesco. He and Jackson were often teamed up and were considered outstanding interpreters of Schisgal’s brand of middle-class urban angst as displayed in dysfunctional marriages, which they displayed in Schisgal’s hit play, “Luv”.

Like it or not, however, Wallach, with his raspy voice, his intense gaze, his fiery acting, will probably be most remembered for roles which he chewed up and spit out like a carny act. That would be the bandit leader in “The Magnificent Seven,” opposite Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, and in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” an epic Sergio Leone spaghetti western, in which he was both the bad and the ugly part.

A number of years ago, when Wallach and Jackson were co-starring in the comedy “The Nest of the Woodgrouse” at the Kennedy Center, the Georgetowner met the couple for lunch at Nathan’s Restaurant. We got a chance to see and feel Wallach’s natural gift for story-telling. He spellbound the table with touching, almost elegiac, memories of time spent in the making of “The Misfits,” which had in its cast Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and Wallach. John Huston directed a famously dramatic set, what with Arthur Miller, who had written the script for Monroe, on set, the fragile Clift barely hanging on, Monroe often struggling and battling with Miller. “She had a way about her,” Wallach said. “She was very sweet even when she had problems. That was an experience you’ll never forget.” At the time, Wallach was the only survivor of the movie. In the aftermath, Gable suffered a fatal heart attack, Clift died and Monroe followed soon after. It was the last film for all three.

Wallach recalled then the impact of “The Magnificent Seven.” “Unbelievable,” he said. “I was famous. I walked into my bank some time after the movie opened, and the teller greeted me with ‘You came back. Why?’” Those were the dying words of the bandit leader, played by Wallach, after Brynner’s all-in-black hero had gunned him down.

Even in his old age, Wallach continued to work. He played the memorable, double-crossing and candy-loving don in the last “Godfather” film. He performed most recently in Oliver Stone’s sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” In 2010, Wallach received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.

Gary Tischler •

It’s likely that Diana McLellan, when she wrote the dishy, witty gossip column, “The Ear,” may have had occasion to mention Howard E. Baker, who was at various time United States Senator from Tennessee, House Minority and Majority Leader  and White House Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan. She surely shared a one-of-a kind quality with the esteemed Republican stalwart, once deemed “The Great Conciliator.”

In the overheated, combative atmosphere of “Our Town,” where tiny celebrities are often writ large and without shame and where to reach across to across the aisle would be to have your hand singed, there are few  people with McLellan’s breezy wit and intelligence and Baker’s calming ability to bring opposed political types together to make things work and get things done.

The other “Our Town,”  the one we remember, but perhaps not the one that is, lost both Baker and McLellan this week; Baker at 88 from complications from a stroke and McLellan to cancer.

HOWARD E. BAKER, 88

If achievement were all to a life story, you might not have to write an obituary. You could just put down the facts:

= Republican Senator from Tennessee (1967 to 1985).

= Senate Minority Leader (1977 to 1981).

= Senate Majority Leader (1985 to 1985).

= White House Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan (1987 to 1988).

= Founder (with Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole, Tom Daschle and George Mitchell) of the Bipartisan Policy Center (2007).

= Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984).

= Vice Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee (1973 to 1974).

= Husband, father and family man.

And, not to forget, photographer of note.

Baker was—not to forget, either—a member of what writer Ira Shapiro called “The Last Great Senate” in his book of the same title, whose members included Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Joseph Muskie, Gaylord Nelson and Robert Dole, to name a few.

In the Watergate hearing, it was Baker who framed the issue for the members, with the famous comment,  “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Baker, while a stalwart and dependable conservative in the GOP ranks, was never a die-hard ideologue in any of the sense and examples we see today. He worked with Democrats, and often cast votes (on the Panama Canal issue, for instance) that did not serve him well politically within his own party, and in the service of his political ambitions, which included a brief run for the presidency.

He came from a state that had its own political giants in history from Andrew Jackson to Estes Kevauver.  He was not a table-pounder, but he had a persistent, and insistent authority and authenticity—the good, honest politician,  a giant rich in the respect of colleagues and presidents. When Baker spoke, his peers tended to listen in a time when the Senate was still a collegial place where its members, Democrats and Republicans, gathered together over lunch, at receptions and social gatherings. It was not a place full of dropped gauntlets and paralysis, a perception much in vogue today.

It was James Baker, Secretary of State under President Reagan, who dubbed him the “quintessential mediator.”  We don’t have any of those today.

DIANA MCLELLAN, 76

When it comes to McLellan, author, gossip columnist, blogger, poet, biographer, and just about the most enduringly fresh glass of water—spiked, possibly with something stronger—that you might ever run across, we don’t have many of those today, either.

British-born McLellan had also been, among other things, a dress designer and telephone operator. She worked at the long defunct but still nostalgically remembered Washington Star, where she began writing a gossip column, called “The Ear,” which was the best (and at first only ) real gossip column in town.

She wrote with great, zingy, bubbly zeal, often referred to the Washington Post as the O.P.—as in the “other paper.” She had a lot to write about with people like Henry Kissinger, Ted Kennedy, the Kennedys in general, the Bradlees and others around. She was not always entirely accurate, but she did not as far as we can recall have a malicious bone in her body.  Which is not to say that she did not skewer and sometimes embarrass people, but she did her duty and damage with good cheer and humor so that, sometimes, her victims did not lie bleeding.

She took “The Ear” to the Post, when the Star was extinguished—and, then, to the Washington Times.  We would often run into her, and she was always gracious, funny, full of news, a little out of breath and telling tales not entirely out of school.

Later, she wrote for the Washingtonian—sometimes profiles of just plain folks or city oddities. We recall a touching and compelling tribute to the life and passing of a Capitol Hill waitress and single mother, which was done with such empathy, eye for detail and big heart that was far removed from “The Ear.”

She also wrote a book called “The Girls,” a gossipy, but also insightful multi-bio of movie personalities, often rumored to be ladies who loved ladies, like Greta Garbo.  A book that could have been merely sensational proved to be something a little better, written, as was everything by McLellan, with style and wit.

Finally, there was “Making Hay,” a thin, but rich poetry collection, whose contents flew like a fluttery, slightly wobbly, but sharp arrows straight to the heart of matters.

We can add this: no matter what might be going on with her, papers dying,  this and that of daily life, Diana McLellan was always a welcome sight, a beautiful noise, the lady with the coat of many colors. “This Ear” could talk, but she could also listen. 

All of us, I think, whoever had occasion to be around her, in our profession, miss her already and forever and a day.

Gary Tischler • June 27, 2014

Former at-large city council member Carol Schwartz, who hasn’t run for mayor in 12 years, has duly noted that she’s often referred to as a “perennial mayoral candidate” in the media, having run against Marion Barry twice and against Anthony Williams once, both of whom were Mayor of Washington, D.C.

While the reference isn’t necessarily a happy one, Schwartz used it today when she announced that she was: running for mayor. Again. The announcement, which arrived by e-mail, was in its own way dramatic in the sense that it appeared to be unexpected and surprising, and dropped like a summer bombshell in the city’s political and electoral scheme of things. In her announcement, she said, “Well, it’s been 12 years since I ran for mayor. That was in 2002; It’s now 2014. That’s a long time. But since I’m still referred to in that vein, I might as well be what I’m called. So, today, I am announcing my candidacy for Mayor of the District of Columbia.”

“This city has been a major cause of my adult life, not only as an elected official for 24 years (with some gaps in between) starting in 1974, and ending in 2009, but also as a citizen.” Schwartz said she had repeatedly been asked by both friends and strangers to come back and run for mayor. “Plus, having the knowledge, the long-term experience, the commitment, a real record of proven results, and a love for this city and all its people, I could no longer stand aside.”

Schwartz stated three concerns for running this time: “the ethics in our city, or lack thereof and its effect on us and our reputation, 2) watching our town grow and thrive, which is good, but at the same time seeing many of our fellow citizens not be part of the growing and thriving, and 3) not seeing in this general election the leader we need.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Democratic primary in April, which Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser won handily, shedding of her early rivals in the homestretch and running right by the scandal-plagued incumbent Vincent Gray, Bowser had the look of a favorite, if not a sure thing, even though the formidable Independent at-large council member David Catania had already announced that he would run.

By entering the race with emphasis, Schwartz, who has always had a wide and broadly-based following in her time on the council, on the school board and in her runs for mayor, brings a true potential game changer to the race. The Texas native, who served on the council as Republican at-large member, was always ran as a Republican who looked an awful lot like a populist Democrat with fiscal conservative stripes, always brought a real energy to her work on the council and in her electoral runs. She had a passion for the elderly, education, she ran on anti-corruption issues, and engaged voters and her colleagues as well with a great deal of up-close intensity.

In three runs against Barry, she piled up impressive results, getting more than 40 percent of the vote in her last challenge to Barry, now serving on the District Council as Ward 8 member.

She brings a certain depth of experience and a thick track record to the race, the kind of experience, for instance, that Bowser can’t hope to match, having had a hand in, debated, or tackled issues the current council is still dealing with, from the budget to to earmarks, to transportation, and education.

Schwartz, too, like Catania, is running as an Independent, after being a Republican.

She has been out of office since 2009, having lost a convoluted race for re-election which first saw her lose a GOP primary contest to newcomer Patrick Mara, who was backed strongly by the business community, and failing in a write-in attempt, which saw the Browns, Kwame and Michael, win the two seats available. Both, as we know, have since been ousted from the council.

Schwartz’s entry into the race brings a renewed energy to the city’s political buzz and the campaign, which has been mostly quiet as summer moves along.

Gary Tischler •

When we still can, we always remember in the days of our lives. People come and go, sleep next to us. They change our diapers and love us and leave us, too. People come and go, out there in the world, making history of note. We hear about their feats and their departures and we remember them as we remember those near to us, but not in the same way. We are all, in this time, making history, remembering it, forgetting it, too.

We are always reminded of this every day of the year. Yet for a time over a weekend, we saw how things work: for those left behind in history’s backwash, barefoot in the tide, death is always about remembering, long ago, and a day ago too. We remember the lives led, and in doing so, add up a life and count our losses.

Everywhere on television and in newspapers, and in those with memories going back far enough, we remembered the events, the heroes, the history and the survivors of what is remembered as D-Day, the storming of the beaches and assault of Fortress Europe on June 6, 1944, 70 years ago. We watched as veterans of that battle, frail, thin, weighty in medals, still in uniforms. Some, we saw, be interviewed, talk the memories, watched as Herman Zeitchik who was there lay a wreath at the World War II Memorial, a bus ride away, decades gone. We talked with him last year on Memorial Day, and shared his memories, and watched him talk with another veteran who was in Egypt doing different duties.

The remaining veterans—and there are fewer still every day—remember what actually happened, and still grieve over friends and comrades who lie in the fields of Normandy under rows of white crosses. We ourselves remember the events as history, trying at the same time to imagine who they were then.

It is one way of remembering. Another is when we note the passing of people whom we did not know, but remember nonetheless as being a curious imbedded part of our lives, singers, athletes, young movie stars in their prime. We count them as losses, and remember who we were, when they cast a kind of spell of memory on us. They are people like Don Zimmer, the inveterate, almost ideal ball player, as opposed to baseball star, a man who played for almost every Major League team, plus some in Japan and South America, who carried nicknames like “Zim,” “Gerbil” and Popeye” as player, coach or manager for the Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees. When he played he was a utility infielder, which is to say that he played shortstop, and all the three bases which is only fitting. By the time, he passed away, he looked like baseball itself and was 83 years old, and we remember him and his teams when we spent our time trading baseball cards.

Mona Freeman was an actress in the movies, on television, and on stage, but mostly she was the petite All-American blonde girl in movies during the 1940s and 1950s. She charmed teenage boys who may have not ever dated not only a starlet, but the cheerleaders in their high schools. It irked her some, this wholesome image, those same parts opposite everyone from Tab Hunter to Jerry Lewis, because she had talent, but it’s a hard game to beat. You may note that she played a young woman having an affair with Edward G. Robinson in the theater, but it’s all those pictures with the curly blond hair, the modest two-piece swim suits, the optimistic energy of her films and face in films when we too were young, and so in noting the deaths of Freeman and Zimmer, we remember ourselves as well as them.

More immediately for those of us on the newspaper and in the neighborhood was a June 7 gathering at F. Scott’s on 36th Street. It was a “Memory-All” in celebration of the life of Suzanne Johnston Causey Dwyer Gookin, a Georgetown luminary and vivid presence in Washington, D.C., a woman who, when she wasn’t being called mom or grandma by her daughters and their offspring, was still called Suzi by just about everyone else she knew.

At the Georgetowner, we certainly never called her Suzanne—we called her friend, respected her talents as a reporter, a gadfly, a talker and conversationalist, a bright star shining, and perhaps less kind names when she irritated, which as her daughters agreed, she also had a gift for. Suzi wrote the Georgetowner social scene column, “EEN&T,” as in “Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat,” a play off another popular column in the Washington Star, “The Ear.”

The gathering included the family, daughters Liza Lowndes Gookin Hodskins of Arlington, Va., and Allison Dwyer Utsch of New York City, as well as grandsons Philip and Adrian Utsch, and great-grandsons Josiah, Lucas and Phoenix, and friends, people she knew, who knew her, who got a.m. phone calls from her, who worked with her, and traveled with her and had adventures with her.

When we heard that she had passed away, it was kind of a shock—not matter what the age. It was hard to imagine that Suzi would deign to die. She knew everybody and was not afraid to use bluster, charm, bullishness, her considerable intelligence to get to do what she wanted—crash a party, get back stage, start an argument, rally for a cause, meet the most handsome man, or make you, if you were a grandson, a little dizzy on an outing.

She liked beautiful things, smart people, and convertibles and in Georgetown, maybe most of all—she was one of the people that deserve a hall of fame for most memorable. She had a challenging and consistent kind of courage which when encountered was often a little fearsome. Columnist and pundit Eleanor Clift was here, remembering getting early morning phone calls from her. Reportedly, Lyndon Johnson, having read her writings, said, “Suzi writes with more perception than the other reporters.”

At the restaurant, a grandson read parts of a short story she had written—“The Rumble Seat”—and its description of time and longing, and material and what an old car looked and felt like and what it meant. It had the after glow of champagne from a Fitzgerald story.

So, when we know and care, as family, as friends, we don’t think of history or old movies, we think squarely and sweetly of them—and that’s what everyone did at the “Memory-All” for “Suzi.”
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Gary Tischler •

Legendary jazz pianist Monty Alexander is in town Friday night at 8 p.m. for what’s billed as a 70th birthday celebration and concert at the renovated Howard Theatre.

Naturally, when we start to talk on the phone, I congratulate him on his birthday, which was officially June 6 and allow that I’m a little older than he is.

“Yeah?” he responds good naturedly. “How old are you? Ninety seven?”

Right away, after laughing a little, I get the sense that this might not be your everyday interview with a jazz legend. Indeed, it turns into a free-wheeling talk about this and that, Duke Ellington and Jamaica, starting out in New York at Jilly’s, which was owned by a guy named Jilly Rizzo, about playing at Blues Alley in Georgetown in the 1970s and today, about seeing Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole, when he was a teenager, about the connection between reggae and jazz, about B movie cowboy stars like Wild Bill Elliott and Tom Mix, about Errol Flynn and Clint Eastwood and what life experience means to playing jazz.

This and that, indeed.

What’s probably more important than the 70th birthday celebration aspect of Alexander’s concert is its other two titles: “Two Worlds, One Love” and “My Jamaica to Jazz,” all of which are expressions of two of his latest albums, “Harlem-Kingston Express,” volumes one and two. Also, there will be musicians playing with him that accentuate that connection and ride, such as Tony Rebel, Bob Andy, Duane Stephenson, Etienne Charles and Wayne Escoffery.

“It’ll be great, you wait and see,” Alexander said. “We’re doing the concert at B.B. King’s in New York the night before, and this is going to be even better.”

Alexander is a great believer in the idea of life experience informing art, about life as an improvisation of the jazz kind, and that jazz had in some ways a kind of glory time because of some incomparable stars, performers and musicians who came to the jazz life armed with the kind of often rough-and-tumble, even tragic life experience from which they drew their musical inspiration. We’re talking about anyone from Louis Armstrong—“Now there, there was a great musician,” Alexander exclaimed. “He was something”— to Duke Ellington, “Bird” (Charlie Parker), Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. “All of these guys”, Alexander gestured. “Plus, they had charisma to burn.”

“I’m trying to make that connection to what I grew up with.” Alexander said. “I saw many great jazz artists when I was a kid in Jamaica, and when I came to Miami, starting out. Lot of them inspired me. My life inspired me.”

Some folks might be a little leery of the prospect of a 70th birthday. Alexander doesn’t sound like the type. He’s doing some of his liveliest, most interesting work these days, especially the Harlem-Kingston Express albums and tours. “You don’t stop,” he said. “You keep learning. You keep doing. You keep playing, you know. You get up there, and you embrace it.”

As Alexander’s biography indicates, his career spans five decades and is notable for collaborations, working with other high-flying jazz luminaries and dipping freely, joyously into other genres of music. One critic has pointed out that there’s hardly any music that Alexander doesn’t like. “It’s never one thing,” he said. “You can draw from so many different forms of music.” He helped Natalie Cole with her Grammy-Award-winning tribute album “with” her late father Nat King Cole, worked with Sinatra, provided the piano track for Clint Eastwood’s “Bird”, an astonishing film biography of Charlie Parker, is listed by Hal Leonard as one of the top five jazz pianists of all time (about which he demurs), and worked on 12 Bob Marley composed pieces and filled with rich jazz piano arrangements. One of his albums, “The Good Life,” is a collection of songs written and made popular by the ageless Tony Bennett.

The Harlem-Kingston Express albums have been on top of the jazz charts for two years now.

Viewing some videos of old and new efforts by Alexander is to get a good look at a way cool master, an embracer who makes things look both lively and effortless, intense and easy. Listen, really listen to his version of Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry”—it has the lightest, most tender feel to it, or catch him doing “Satin Doll” on the piano, lightly, very cool like champagne touched by deep love and a little whiskey, the man himself sporting a thick Afro. Look at him now, joining a whole band on stage, jumping on the stage, directing everybody. Here comes a trumpet solo. There he is on the piano, high energy, his hair a whiter shade now.

You can see and hear in that voice of his over the phone that he gets deep into anything that catches his fancy. For some reason, the subject of old B-movie cowboy stars came up, and you could just hear him getting caught up in it. “Tom Mix, Lash LaRue, Gene Autry, oh, man,” he said. “Wild Bill Elliott, man, don’t get me started. We’re going to be on the phone all day long.” He had a similar attitude about one of this writer’s childhood heroes: the swashbuckling movie star who died young and very old at the age of 50.

Just take a look at some of the tracks, just for the titles of the Harem-Kingston albums—“Freddie Freeloader,” “No Woman No Cry,” “Redemption Song,” “Strawberry Hill,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Day-O,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown,” “High Heel Sneakers” and “Hurricane Come and Gone.” You can see him sifting, mixing, bringing onboard, sliding through and re-arranging all kinds of music, all kinds of people. Moving right along.