Ides of March

Today is March 15th.  In ancient Roman culture it would be the Ides of March.  

The Ides were a monthly reference point falling on the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and on the 13th day of all other months. Derived from the Latin for "to divide," the Ides originally marked the full moon. 

I learned about the Ides thanks to my Oswego High School Latin teacher, Ruth Young.

In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate.

Julius Caesar was assassinated because a group of Roman senators feared his immense, unprecedented power would destroy the Roman Republic and restore a monarchy.  

As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. 

On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "Well, the Ides of March are come", implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied, "Aye, they are come, but they are not gone."

This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."

Barbra

Barbara Joan (Barbra) Streisand was born April 24, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Diana Ida (née Rosaen; 1908–2002) and Emanuel Streisand (1908–1943). Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary.  Her father was a high school teacher at the same school, where they first met.  Streisand's family is Jewish.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand's first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier.  The family fell into near poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. 

As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an "outcast", explaining, "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day. Mine didn't."  

Her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved: "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

In September 1960 Streisand auditioned as a singer at the Bon Soir nightclub in Manhattan, after which she was signed up at $125 ($1,368 today) a week. It became her first professional engagement, where she was the opening act for comedian Phyllis Diller. 

She recalls it was the first time she had been in that kind of upscale environment: "I'd never been in a nightclub until I sang in one."

Streisand opened on Broadway on March 26, 1964 with an acclaimed performance as entertainer Fanny Brice in Funny Girl at the Winter Garden Theatre. The show introduced two of her signature songs, "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade".

Eight months later I almost had a chance to see Barbra at the Winter Garden, but didn't.  If I had played my cards right, I think I would have.

I was dating, off and on, another Jewish girl from Brooklyn.  I called for a date, but she couldn't because she was going home that weekend (from Penn).  

I hatched a plan.  I would go to New York as well, but to see the Penn-Columbia football game.  I would call her after the game to say hello.  I did and she invited me to have dinner with her and her parents at Barbetta's.  She said if she knew I would be in New York I could have joined them at the Winter Garden to see Barbra.  

When I called for the date, I should have invited her to the football game.  Even if she couldn't go, she would have known I would be in New York and I would have had my evening with Barbra.  I'm smarter today than I was in 1964 at age 19.  

Suddenly

Suddenly is a 1954 black and white American noir crime film.  The drama stars Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden.

The story concerns a small California town (by the name of Suddenly) whose tranquility is shattered when the train of the president of the United States is scheduled to make a stop there.  A hired assassin takes over a home that provides a perfect vantage point from which to assassinate the president.

This is Sinatra's first film after his Academy Award winning performance as Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity in 1953.  In Suddenly, he portrays a hired assassin, John Baron.

Baron boasts about the Silver Star he won in WWII for killing a large number of the enemy. He explains that he has nothing against the president but is being paid $500,000 (over $6,000,000 today) to kill him and money is his only motive.

It is worth noting that the president's name is never mentioned.

Sterling Hayden is the local sheriff of Suddenly.  He is also romantically involved with the widow who lives in the house Baron takes over.

Hayden's memorable films include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Killing (1956), Dr. Strangelove (1964) and The Godfather (1972).  

Paladin, Chapter 16

INT. GENERAL STORE - LATER IN THE DAY

CHARLES walks in.  GRACE is busy with a customer.  CHARLES retreats to his office.  Shortly, GRACE enters his office.

GRACE: Where were you?

CHARLES: I went for a walk.  To clear my head.  That's all right, isn't it?

GRACE: Were you alone?

CHARLES: What's that supposed to mean?

GRACE: Were you alone?

CHARLES: What if I was, what if I wasn't?

GRACE: Were you with POLLYANNA?

CHARLES: Why are you so obsessed with her?

GRACE: Why don't you answer my questions?

CHARLES: Why should I?  My business is my business.  Forget about POLLYANNA.

GRACE: I can't.  I'm jealous of her.  She's stealing my husband.

CHARLES: You're being ridiculous.

GRACE: Do you love me, CHARLES?

CHARLES: What a silly question.

GRACE: Well, do you?

CHARLES: Of course.

GRACE: Of course what?

CHARLES: (without emotion) Of course, I love you.

GRACE: Do you wish you were married to POLLYANNA?

CHARLES: (laughs) Don't be ridiculous.  

They hear customers enter the store.

CHARLES: Why don't you take care of the customers, GRACE.

GRACE: This discussion isn't over.

GRACE leaves office to deal with customers.

GRACE: (talking to customers) How can I help you?

Carnaval

It is Carnaval season in Brazil.

Carnaval in Brazil is an annual festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter.  Carnaval is the most popular holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. 

The country unifies completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.  

Rio de Janeiro's carnaval alone drew 6 million people in 2018, with 1.5 million being travelers from inside and outside Brazil.  Rio's world according to Guinness World carnival is the largest single carnaval parade in the Records.  

Meanwhile, the carnaval of São Paulo is the largest street carnaval celebration by number of participants.

In the southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Vitória, huge organized parades are led by samba schools. Those official parades are meant to be watched by the public, while minor parades (blocos) allowing public participation can be found in those as well as other cities, like Belo Horizonte, also in the southeastern region.

These parades are contests between the samba schools and are taken as seriously as any football (soccer) game in Brazil.

We are in Guaruja and not Sao Paulo where crowds (blocos) are marching through our neighborhood of Pinheiros. 

Barbetta

 On Saturday, November 14, 1964, Joan Freedman, a college friend, invited me to join her and her parents for dinner at the Barbetta restaurant at 321 West 46th Street in Manhattan.  

Many years later I returned to Barbetta with my ex-wife Bonita.

More recently I again, this time with my wife Cristina, had dinner at Barbetta before attending a Broadway show.

During all three of my trips to this restaurant, I was impressed by the image a woman who acted as a forceful manager.  It turned out to be Laura Maioglio, the owner of a restaurant that was opened by her father in 1906.

Laura, the second-generation New York City restaurateur whose Barbetta became a theater district mainstay and, with its European-style grand décor and rich Piedmont-region cuisine, one of the city’s first upscale Italian restaurants, died on January 17th at her home in Manhattan. She was 93 years old.

The restaurant is expected to remain open to the public only through February 27th.  Laura had no children to continue her family's legacy.

After the death of her father in 1962, Laura took over Barbetta and directed its chiefly male staff.  Few female restaurateurs have remained so intimately involved for as long as she did.

“She was as strong as a nail, the toughest woman I ever met in my life,” Leopold Frokic, a former sommelier at Barbetta, said of Ms. Maioglio. “Imagine a woman managing 50 men, immigrants from countries where the woman doesn’t tell them what to do. None of those men could take her for a ride.”

Laura was born and raised in New York. She attended the Brearley School and graduated from Bryn Mawr College magna cum laude with a degree in Art History.

Throughout her life, Laura continued to frequent her family home in Piemonte, spending extended periods in Europe and Italy, including a year studying at the University of Florence. Her long sojourns in Italy, particularly in Piemonte, have provided her with first-hand knowledge of Italian food and wine, especially that of her native region, Piemonte.

He Ran All the Way

He Ran All the Way is a 1951 American crime drama and film noir starring John Garfield and Shelley Winters.  It was Garfield's final film before his death in 1952 at the age of 39.

Petty thief Nick Robey (Garfield) botches a robbery, shooting and killing a policeman. He escapes with over $10,000 and, deliberately loses himself in a crowd.

Arriving at a local swimming pool, Nick meets bakery worker Peg Dobbs (Winters) and accompanies her to her family's apartment. Peg's mother, father and young brother leave to see a movie. When they return, Robey takes the family hostage until he can escape from the police search for him.  Peg's initial attraction to him is replaced by fear.

As a manhunt for Nick intensifies outside, he becomes increasingly paranoid. 

To save her family Peg agrees to go away with Nick.  He gives her $1,500 to buy a new car.

Influenced by Peg's father that Peg will not buy the car, Nick refuses to believe Peg.  However she insists that the car will be delivered to the front door after the dealer has the headlights repaired.  

The following day, Nick violently takes Peg down the stairs toward the exit, terrifying her.  When Nick's gun drops beyond his reach and he orders Peg to hand it to him, she shoots him instead. Nick, mortally wounded, crawls outside to the curb in time to see his new car arrive as Peg said it would.

As life imitates art, John Garfield died in May of the next year.  The cause of death was a heart attack.  He Ran All the Way was his last film.