By Sienna Beck / New York City Hello, readers! This is my April article, and it’s about my own life as a reader. I’m also a writer (duh), but I love reading! I love all the literary genres. For example, I love how fantasy adventure books pull me in and I feel like I’m really there. That’s what inspired my new story, “When the Sky’s the Limit” (which my parents say is my best story yet). Even though I get writer’s block a lot, fantasy stories give me a little hint about what to write. Nonfiction helps me in my studies. I love reading both biographies and autobiographies to inspire me. Here are some of the books I’ve read recently and loved: Space Dumplins by Craig Thompson (graphic novel): After Violet’s school is attacked by space critters, she goes with her mom to work. But soon after her school is attacked, Violet’s father disappears after a task to go on a dangerous journey. Along with her two pals, Zacchaeus and Elliot, she sets out to find her father. Can Violet save her dad before it’s too late? Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson: 14-year-old Mattie Cook lives in a coffee house with her mother, grandfather, and her silly cat Silas in 1793. But then, suddenly, yellow fever breaks out and everything flips upside-down. After an unfortunate afternoon tea with Mrs. Ogilvie and her two daughters, Mattie’s mother gets yellow fever. Mattie and Grandfather head out to the countryside for a while. Mattie suffers a case of yellow fever but heals. When Grandfather and Mattie come home, their house has been robbed. Soon after, Grandfather dies after two robbers strike. All alone, Mattie doesn’t know what to do. Will she survive, or will her story be cut short? Front Desk by Kelly Yang: Mia Tang, an immigrant from China, runs a motel with her family in Anaheim, California called the Calivista. They can’t afford very much, and only make $750 a month. Mia helps run the front desk. Aside from that, at school, she has bullies, such as her sort-of friend Jason and other kids who make fun of her second-hand clothing. Can Mia find a way to help her family survive this world or will Mia and her family have to return to China? Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger: An elf named Sophie Foster lives a human life until one day, another elf named Fitz appears and tells Sophie that she is also an elf. Fitz tries to convince Sophie to come live with the other elves. Sophie sneaks out of her house one day and never comes back. What happens next is a blur. Sophie discovers her abilities. She makes friends. And then she gets kidnapped by the Black Swan, their fatal enemy. Will she die under the Black Swan’s care or will someone come to rescue both her and Dex, the boy who came with her? Those are just a few of my favorite books! I love reading whenever I can, really. When I’m bored and there’s nothing to do, I drift into a world of fantasy for hours. When I finish a book, I simply collect a huge pile of books to read. If I really don’t like a book after three or four chapters, I put it back. If I do like it, I put it in the stack by my bed. I go to the P.S. 87 school library every Wednesday, pick out two or three books, and read them over the seven days I have. Sometimes, I renew one or two. I can get five books and one magazine at a time, and it’s pretty neat. My parents also check out books from the NYPL (New York Public Library). I also occasionally go to bookstores. I love writing stories, too, like I mentioned earlier. I wrote my new story, “When the Sky’s the Limit,” in 30 minutes. It was inspired by the new book series I’m reading, Keeper of the Lost Cities, and I wrote my story with lots of emotion and feeling. When I become an author (and president, don’t forget president!) I will aim toward writing at least one book for every literary genre. I’m hoping the books I write will become bestsellers. I just want to add, I guess all my readers are readers too because you’ve been reading my articles. Thank you for doing that, by the way. That wraps it up! Thank you for reading my life as a reader, reader! Three “readers” in a row! Well, four, if you include that one! Sienna Beck is a 9-year-old author who loves writing short stories. She goes to a camp called Writopia, and once entered a play contest and was selected to have her play professionally performed by trained actors. Sienna has two sisters, Willa and Olive, and they all go to P.S. 87 in New York City. Sienna likes animals, including pets and mostly dogs. She also wants to be THE PRESIDENT when she grows up.

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 78 By Laurence Lerman / New York City It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a good Viking film—well over a decade, by my estimate—and have instead subsisted on the occasional installment of the History Channel’s Vikings series. But there’s a rousing one coming to U.S. theaters on April 22 in the form of The Northman, the third movie from the American filmmaker Robert Eggers, whose previous two efforts were the lauded horror entries The Lighthouse (2019) and his 2015 directorial debut The Witch. With The Northman, writer/director Eggers graduates from the smaller, modestly budgeted cinematic worlds he previously created to Hollywood filmmaking on a much grander scale. Eggers’s third feature, initially budgeted at $65 million but pushed to closer to $90 million with Covid-related delays and pricey safety protocols, is, as it’s described on its official website, “an action-filled epic.” It boasts a major cast that includes Alexander Skarsgård, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang and Willem Dafoe. Written by Eggers and acclaimed Icelandic author Sjón, The Northman was reportedly inspired by the medieval Norse legend of Amleth—a figure who served as the direct inspiration for the character of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s dramatic tragedy by the same name. The story follows a young Viking prince (Skarsgård) who sets out on a quest to avenge the death of his father (Hawke), who has been murdered by his uncle (Bang), and to save his mother (Kidman) in the process. Hmmm…it sure sounds like Hamlet to me, which elevates it from “action-filled epic” to the “revenge thriller” category. The film was shot from August through December, 2020 on the Inishowen Peninsula in the Republic of Ireland, in Torr Head and Ballygally in Northern Ireland, and on the Svínafellsjökull glacier in Iceland. This lengthy schedule followed a five-month delay due to the pandemic. By all accounts, the shoot was as difficult it sounds and required filming many scenes in the wilderness. In early March, star Skarsgård told Total Film Magazine, “the days were really long and hard, and we were out in the mud and up on these mountaintops in the wind and the cold. It was definitely a waking-up moment and a humbling experience.” The Northman had its world premiere in London on last week on April 5, and though official reviews are still under embargo, the word is that film is a good one—brutal, violent, epic and audacious. That’s something you could possibly say about any good Viking movie out of Hollywood or Europe, even as most throw historical accuracy to the kind of winds that powered the real-life Northmen’s longships. As an appetizer for Eggers’s much buzzed about film, here’s a roundup of seven very watchable earlier Viking epics spanning nearly as many decades. The majority of them are violent, a couple of them are funny and one is downright sweet. But all capture the physicality and spirited nature of that frequently savage group of Scandinavian seafarers who raided, pillaged and conquered their way across the Middle Ages. The titles are available on major streaming platforms and waiting for you to take the plunge. So, slip on your forged iron helmet, grab yourself a drinking horn of mead, and show no mercy! The Vikings (1958) Directed by Richard Fleischer Kirk Douglas is a Viking prince, Tony Curtis is a slave and his half-brother, and Janet Leigh is a distressed Welsh damsel in the granddaddy of Hollywood Viking epics. Shot in glorious widescreen Technicolor by the legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff, The Vikings is big, brawny, barbaric—and a whole lot of fun. And after all the sword-and-battle-axe-driven raiding, looting and violence, there’s a fiery Viking funeral at sea to wrap things up. Erik the Conqueror (1961) Directed by Mario Bava A loose remake of The Vikings, this Italian-French epic stars Cameron Mitchell and George Ardisson as long-lost brothers—Mitchell is a Scandinavian Viking, Ardisson an English general—whose peoples wage all-out war against each other on the English countryside. Italian genre veteran Bava, best known for his atmospheric horror offerings, also handled screenwriting, cinematography and special effects chores for this one and it shows in the film’s vivid and violent battle sequences. The Long Ships (1964) Directed by Jack Cardiff Based on Swedish author Frans Bengtsson’s seminal 1943 Viking adventure novel of the same name, The Long Ships retains very little from its source material as it capitalizes on the success of the Viking films that came before it. The story centers on the search for a giant golden bell by both a Moorish king and a shipwrecked Viking, portrayed by Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark, respectively. The performers are game and director Cardiff mounts some lively battle scenes, which are undoubtedly informed by his earlier gig as the director of photography of The Vikings. Erik the Viking (1989) Directed by Terry Jones Writer-director Terry Jones of the Monty Python troupe tapped his own 1983 children’s book The Saga of Erik the Viking for this British comedy-fantasy. Tim Robbins starts as the titular young Viking who realizes that he isn’t as interested in raping and pillaging as much as he is in traveling to Asgard to petition the Norse gods to delay the end of the world. A cult favorite of Python and Norse mythology lovers, Erik’s oddball cast also includes Mickey Rooney, Eartha Kitt, Imogen Stubbs, Python’s John Cleese and Jones, himself. Outlander (2008) Directed by Howard McCain This 2008 science fiction-historical epic mash-up stars Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien whose spaceship crash lands in Viking-era Norway, bringing with him a ferocious intergalactic predator who raises hell across the land. After settling in with the locals, Caviezel’s Kainan goes native, hooks up with a princess, forges a bunch of swords and axes out of alien steel and joins his fellow Vikings in hunting down the nasty extraterrestrial. Valhalla Rising (2009) Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn The always-compelling Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen stars as One-Eye, an enslaved Norse warrior in the Scottish Highlands who escapes his captors with a boy and joins a group of Christian Crusaders on a quest for the Holy Land. According to writer-director Refn, this most violent and merciless film of the bunch derived its title from combining of the names of underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s rough-and-tumble short films Scorpio Rising (1963) and Lucifer Rising (1973) with a Viking theme. How To Train Your Dragon (2010) Directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders This DreamWorks Animation hit focuses on good-natured teenage Viking Hiccup (the voice of Jay Baruchel), son of the village chieftain, who dreams of hunting dragons—until he becomes the improbably friend of a young dragon himself. This computer-animated fantasy adventure also features the familiar voices of Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill and Kristin Wiig and not as much blood, mud, fire and fierceness as its brethren. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Vladimir Putin is giving Atilla the Hun a run for his money--attempting to raze Ukraine to the ground. Though at the moment parts of Putin’s forces are in temporary retreat, no one with sense would wager that, if Putin ultimately succeeds, he’ll stop with Ukraine. Yet, NATO and the U.S.—fearful of expanding the Russo-Ukraine war into World War III—continue to dither about what kind of aid to give Ukraine, how much and when. They seem exceedingly reluctant to accept what the Ukrainians persistently shout from the rooftops—or should I say, from the rubble of their cities and their dead: Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russian expansion is all that stands between Putin and the rest of Europe. If Ukraine falls, it is highly likely that some NATO country will be attacked next. Russia’s War without Quarter Experts of every stripe have concluded that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a move towards re-establishing the Russian empire. The unexpectedly staunch resistance of Ukraine has led Putin’s forces to employ scorched-earth tactics. Failing to advance successfully with land forces, Russia has hit Ukraine with a punishing barrage from the air, deliberately bombing such civilian targets as a maternity hospital, apartment buildings, and even a municipal theater that had the word “children” painted in large letters viewable from the sky outside the building. Russia also agreed to humanitarian escape corridors from the besieged city of Mariupol, only to shell refugees who used them. That did not beat the Ukrainians into submission. Rather, Ukrainian forces managed to push the Russians back. So, the Russians moved on to even more barbaric warfare. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian soldiers have been shooting columns of civilians on the road and blowing up shelters where people were hiding from airstrikes. He has also said the Russian military has abducted over 2,000 children, as well as looted cities it has captured. In his address to the UN Security Council on April 5, Zelensky set out a litany of the barbaric horrors he saw in Bucha, after the Russians retreated from that city: civilians shot in the back of the head or in the eye after being tortured, some with their hands tied behind their backs; civilians blown up by grenades in their apartments or houses; civilians in cars in the middle of the road that had been crushed by tanks; people with limbs cut off or throats cut; women raped and killed in front of their children—Zelensky’s list went on and on. According to The Atlantic, not even animals have been spared. The Ukrainian government has accused the Russian military of intentionally striking dog shelters and horse stables and also leaving behind “bullet-riddled corpses” of cattle, horses, goats, and pet dogs—in the wake of their retreat from the Kyiv area. Sanctions—an Inadequate Response The most publicized aid given Ukraine by NATO and the United States has been in the form of incremental sanctions on Russia intended to cut into the wealth of Putin, his oligarchs, and the Russian economy. The hope has been that the pressure would change Russia’s behavior. So far, it has not worked. Nevertheless, in response to the Bucha slaughter, the U.S. has adopted new measures, coordinated with the G-7 and European Union, under which all new investment in Russia will be banned, and sanctions on financial institutions and state-owned enterprises in Russia, its government officials and their family members will be instituted and/or increased. Furthermore, because of the revelation of the undeniable atrocities committed in Bucha, the European Commission (EC) has agreed to adopt a ban on the import of Russian coal, a full transaction ban on four crucial Russian banks, and a block on Russian and Russian-operated vessels from access to European Union ports. But according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, a ban on buying oil and gas is the true key to stopping the financing of Putin’s war machine. However, Germany and Austria, dependent on Russian oil and gas, are not willing to go so far as a gas embargo. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the EC’s ban is “not really an adequate sanctions package to the massacres that are being uncovered.” He tweeted last week, “a feeble response is just an invitation for more atrocities.” I agree. Instituting economic sanctions as an auxiliary pressure is not a bad thing, but applying it as one’s main weapon will not stop a determined aggressor. Sanctions, by nature, will take a long time to work. But the Ukrainians don’t have time. They’re being murdered—annihilated—now. Likewise, since the Bucha atrocities, there has been talk of holding Putin accountable for war crimes. But that too takes time. So, accountable when? When every Ukrainian is dead, and Putin has replaced them by transplanting Russians to the area? Because that’s what it looks like the Russian aim is. According to The Atlantic, before executing some civilian men in Bucha, one of the Russians told helpless Ukrainian witnesses: “Don’t worry. You are all normal—and this is dirt. We are here to cleanse you from the dirt.” As The Atlantic put it, “the war of attrition has morphed into a war of annihilation. The Russian invaders are now treating the entirety of the population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed.” After President Zelensky’s strongly worded video address to the U.N. Security Council last week, in which he presented video evidence of Russia’s war crimes, that body voted to suspend Russia’s membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council. But Russia still retains its veto power on the U.N. Security Council. And condemnation or ostracism by the U.N. will not prevent Putin from continuing his Hitlerian, Stalinesque actions. Investigations and collection of data concerning the deliberate massacre of civilians is being collected in anticipation of war crimes trials—but that, like the effect of sanctions—will be a long time in coming. Would it not be better to stop the genocide rather than merely punish it after the fact? Practical Aid from NATO and the U.S.—Is It Enough? Last week, national security council special adviser Matt Miller enumerated on MSNBC some of the practical military aid now being delivered to Ukraine’s forces. He noted that Ukraine is not only being supplied Stinger missiles and more Javelin missiles like those the Ukrainians used to destroy Russian tanks, but also long-range air defense systems, and coastal defense systems that Zelensky specifically requested. Miller added that the government is also providing types of weapons it won’t discuss because our allies don’t want to disclose that they’ve provided them or because Ukrainians don’t want it disclosed. In addition, the Pentagon has trained a small number of Ukrainian soldiers, who were already here in the U.S. many months before the war for professional military education, on Switchblade kamikaze drones so that they can train fellow soldiers on their arrival home. Miller said that the U.S. has tried to “identify the weapons… that we think would be most effective and that the Ukrainians are trained on and know how to use, that we can get into the country quickly and they can deploy into the battlefield quickly without having to take weeks or months to train upon new systems.” Given Ukraine’s demonstrated level of sophistication, I find it hard to believe that Zelensky would ask for military aid Ukraine could not use. It seems like the height of paternalism for the United States and NATO to claim that we won’t give them something they desperately ask for on the grounds that they won’t know how to use it. President Zelensky and his government have repeatedly pleaded, argued, and tried to persuade NATO and/or the United States to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine. NATO and the U.S. have refused on the grounds that if such planes—which they would have to fly—engaged with Russian planes, that would be the beginning of World War III. NATO also appears to be cowed by Putin’s warnings a month ago that he had put his nuclear forces on high alert. But Ukraine’s argument that it is all that stands between Putin’s aspirations to expand Russia’s control to NATO countries is, in my opinion, a reasonable assessment. A number of NATO countries—Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, for starters—were formerly either Soviet satellite countries or incorporated into the Soviet Union. If Putin’s ambition is to re-establish the Russian empire, they surely would be future targets. And if Putin is not stopped now, he will have to be stopped later. Furthermore, as Alexander Vindman, former Director for European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, said on MSNBC last week, Putin’s nuclear threat is simply “nuclear blackmail.” Vindman suggested that Putin is trying to ward off us doing what’s in our best interest by “giving a saber rattle.” He argued that the fact that we have “as potent if not more potent” a nuclear arsenal renders Putin’s threat “hollow.” Vindman maintained, “The Russians will not wage nuclear war against us because they will be destroyed.” Still, regardless of the nuclear question, it is understandable that NATO does not want to be drawn directly into an arial fight for a non-NATO country. Fair enough. But President Zelensky has also asked for Russian MiG fighter jets so the Ukrainians themselves could combat Russia’s bombers. While the United States does not have these Russian planes, Poland does. But, apparently fearful of making the exchange itself, Poland wanted the U.S. to act as middleman. This would have involved Poland sending the planes further west, to a U.S. air base in Germany, and the U.S. making the transfer from there. On March 9, the U.S. rejected Poland’s proposal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The prospect of fighter jets at the disposal of the United States Government departing from a U.S. NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace contested with Russia over Ukraine raised some serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance…our goal is to end the war, not to expand it—including potentially expand it to NATO territory.” The result: Mariupol, Kharkiv, and a number of other Ukrainian cities are now rubble. It is expected that this may be a protracted war, continuing for months or years. How long can even a people with great fortitude hold out against such a barrage of bombs, missiles, and atrocities against the survivors who emerge from the wreckage? In refusing to find some way to get MiG fighter jets to the Ukrainian military, the Western NATO powers are being profoundly shortsighted, While they are so busy trying to avoid World War III, their timidity may bring it about. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. It appears that Donald Trump’s ironically named “Truth Social” app is already foundering on the rocks of technical glitches, administrative snafus, legal issues, shrinking consumer interest and dwindling investor enthusiasm. Even Trump and his family are rarely using the social media platform that was intended to give him the megaphone that Twitter and Facebook took away when they banned him. A Trump enterprise failing? Gee, what a shock. I don’t have the time or the stomach to wade into the Truth Social sewer of crackpot conspiracy theories, cheap insults and ugly unfounded allegations about anyone and anything that does not align with the Trumpian view. Truth Social is the ultimate echo chamber for the former President’s spiral-eyed followers, to whom actual truth and reality itself are like holy water and sunlight to vampires. Challenging Twitter and Facebook for social media supremacy seemed like a tall but predictably grandiose order. Even so, I thought Truth Social would at least establish itself and survive, given Trump’s millions of fans and sympathizers. All it needed was a little competence, but competence is not Trump’s strong suit, and in former Congressman Devin Nunes he appears to have enlisted a CEO who is equally overmatched. It hasn’t helped that a little more than a month after its launch, Truth Social has already seen its chief tech officer and head of product development quit. During the last 40-some years, The Donald has infamously laid waste to casinos, an airline, a university, a “charitable” foundation, and an assortment of branded products including steaks, mattresses, perfume, eyewear, and a personal blog. He is reportedly on the hook for upwards of a billion dollars of loans. Yet he has maintained the illusion of being a great businessman, so much so that many who voted for him expected him to bring that quality to his management of America. In many ways, Trump is the quintessential American “success story” and leader for a nation besotted by illusion (movies, video games, virtual reality gizmos, scripted “reality” shows, etc.). He is our greatest hyperbolic facade, and his longtime claim of being a master dealmaker is a sham unless you believe the Art of the Deal hinges on coercion and not the ability to skillfully make both sides feel like they got what they wanted from a negotiation. Consider Trump’s praise of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine as “savvy” and “genius” and an approach that the U.S. should use on its southern border to staunch the flow of migrants from Mexico and Central America. Or Trump’s “perfect” phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky in April 2019 during which Trump threatened to withhold military aid unless Ukraine’s president investigated the Biden family’s business dealings in that country. Everything about Trump reeks of someone who has been given everything his entire life. He shows no sign of interest in learning. He merely declares himself an expert in every subject presented to him, then blames others for the predictable results after he acts on his so-called expertise. He also seems impervious to any consequences. Can you imagine living like that? Would you want to if you could? I’ll concede that Trump has a genius for intimidation, making people grovel in his wake and accept whatever he says as truth, raising vast sums of money (it’s hard to go wrong in commercial real estate) by simply attaching his name to things, and, most of all, avoiding accountability and responsibility for even his most brazen acts. To paraphrase the old saying, everything you read, see or hear in traditional or social media is true except that of which you have firsthand knowledge. This makes Truth Social yet another breeding ground for dangerous delusion. Whether the app succeeds or not hardly matters. There are more than enough outlets to keep Trump’s message flowing to those who are eager for it. Trump, the GOP and their followers dwell in an intoxicating feedback loop: the seductive power of wishful thinking. They demonstrate the fragility of trusting others for reliable information about things we cannot “know” for ourselves, such as how viruses behave or the climate functions or votes are counted or anything that challenges, threatens, or merely inconveniences us. Trump is Exhibit A of the false security of always believing what you want to believe, facts be damned. This makes him yet another perilous figure in a world that has become a battleground over who controls our perception of reality. We are witnessing, in this country and abroad in places like Russia, what George Orwell described in his novel 1984: the power of lies to make you question everything, even what you’ve seen with your own eyes or even lived. Anyone who listened to Trump with a clear mind in the days before Jan. 6 and on that dark day itself heard an incitement to violent rebellion. Yet he and his allies have convinced millions of Americans that what transpired was largely peaceful and merely legitimate political discourse that is being unjustly prosecuted. If the parties were reversed, you can be reasonably sure Trump and Republicans would be calling for the death penalty for those involved in the attempted coup. Anxiety is growing about efforts to bring Trump to justice on a number of matters. The three-year-long tax fraud investigation of The Trump Organization has stalled under the leadership of the new District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, leading to the protests and resignations of veteran prosecutor-investigators Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, who insist there is ample evidence that crimes were committed. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is either wisely waiting until he has an airtight case to pursue against Trump for the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection or Garland is dragging his feet until the midterm elections in November when all of this will likely blow over. It’s widely expected that the GOP will win the House and Senate, and all inquiries into Trump’s nefarious activities such as election interference will cease. If that happens, truth (the real thing) in America will be mortally wounded. There could not be a more fitting murderer than Donald J. Trump. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Andy Borowitz April 8, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Brett Kavanaugh is “upset” that the newly confirmed Justice of the Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson has refused his invitation to a beer-pong initiation ritual he created for new members of the Court. “It’s a great way to bond with your fellow-Justices,” Kavanaugh told reporters. “And, if the game goes on long enough, you get a righteous buzz on.” Jackson reportedly told her fellow-jurist that she would be too busy studying the cases before the Court to participate in the beer-pong initiation, but Kavanaugh said that such an excuse “just doesn’t cut it.” “Amy Coney Barrett played beer pong when she joined the Court,” he said. “It looks like Ketanji isn’t going to be much fun. She’s probably gonna skip Beach Week, too.”

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Supreme Court justices generally try to keep a low profile, particularly in the media, emerging only at dignified official events or in scholarly journals. For years, Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the court, stubbornly even refused to ask questions in the courtroom. But for the past month, the justice and his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas have made tabloid-style headlines at every U.S. news outlet because of revelations regarding her right-wing activism and its relevance to her husband’s judicial independence. Veteran political commentator George Will weighed in on the controversy in his Washington Post column last week. Will dismissed any need for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6, 2021 insurrection because of his wife’s involvement with the events of that day. Will deems this a mere “kerfuffle” over appearances. No surprise here. My impression is that George Will, like many in the Republican establishment, favors an oligarchy eternally run by the Republican party—but does not want low-brow Donald Trump or his yahoo followers and adherents to be the ones controlling it. The hypocrisy is hard to take. But Will’s facile, sophistic analysis that deliberately ignores facts and law, let alone the call of ethics, is intolerable. And a man with his resume should know better. Will, a well-established conservative journalist, has been a fixture on the Washington scene for decades. During his long career, he has served as the Washington editor for the conservative biweekly, National Review, written for and been a contributing editor for Newsweek, and appeared as a pundit on various political talk shows. He also was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for his Washington Post columns. Though a very conservative Republican, he acknowledged in a 2019 interview by Reason that he has moved in a more Libertarian direction, Will has shown nothing but disdain for Trump. In 2016, Will left the Republican Party, re-registered as an unaffiliated voter, and became an advocate for the “Never Trump” movement. In June 2019, he contended that the Republican Party had become a cult. And in June 2020, he wrote that Trump was a “low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter heath” who “has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.” He added that the Republican party had given its nomination to “a vulgarian.” Will not only announced he would vote for Joe Biden for president, but told NPR’s Rachel Martin, that Trump’s congressional enablers must be voted out of office as well. But one must wonder why Will’s distaste for Trump enablers does not extend to Ginni Thomas or her enabler husband. Ginni Thomas’s actions Between Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election on November 7, 2020, and the January 6, 2021 congressional certification of Electoral College votes, Ginni Thomas sent former president Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at least 21 texts. These texts urged Meadows to act to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Meadows responded in at least eight texts (a total of 29 text communications revealed so far). As early as November 6, Thomas texted Meadows, “Do not concede…It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” Among the most outrageously undemocratic of Ms. Thomas’s texts is one reading: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc.) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” To this, she added, “I hope this is true.” Ginni Thomas attended Trump’s January 6, 2021, Stop the Steal rally, but claims she left early because she was cold. According to The New Yorker, Ms. Thomas was respected by the different right-wing factions and “served as a kind of peacemaker and brought together different factions organizing [the January 6 rally] event.” If so, her involvement hardly seems to be that of an attendee who left early. The Need for Clarence Thomas to Recuse Himself Generally, the judicial code of conduct requires federal judges to recuse themselves—that is, disqualify themselves from judging a case if there is a potential of a conflict of interest or lack of impartiality. Supreme Court Justices are not bound by this code of conduct but, under 28 U.S.C. section 455, they appear to be prohibited from hearing cases in which their spouses have an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” The statute also states they are to disqualify themselves in any proceeding in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Despite the fact the statute states it applies to justices as well as judges and magistrate judges, there seems to be some assumption that it does not apply to the Supreme Court. Perhaps this is because there is no higher court that could enforce the requirement against that court’s members. Regardless of whether it can be enforced against Supreme Court justices, ethically, they ought to abide by it. It doesn’t matter whether Ginni Thomas’s involvement in the events of January 6 were legal or illegal. She has a personal interest in protecting herself in the January 6 cases and, therefore, her husband should not participate in adjudicating them. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand the ethical situation here. And given George Will’s long history as a political journalist and pundit, he cannot credibly claim ignorance. Yet he deigns to carry water for Clarence Thomas with the most transparently ridiculous arguments possible. Let’s knock them down, one by one. George Will’s “Kerfuffle” Will begins by dismissing Ginni as “politically mad as a hatter,” and groaning “beneath the weight of Trumpian hysterics.” He argues that to say she was “strategizing” with the White House is like saying “the guy in the stadium’s upper deck…shouting suggested plays is strategizing with Alabama’s football team.” But, mad as a hatter or not, Ginni Thomas was not just “some guy in the stadium’s upper deck.” She has been a high-level Republican operative for many years. According the The New York Times, she started out working for right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and moved on to the even more extreme right-wing efforts of the Tea Party. In 2013 she founded the organization Groundswell, after consultation with Steve Bannon, who later became Trump’s main strategist. In 2019, Ms. Thomas was appointed to the nine-member board of the conservative Council for National Policy (CNP). According to the New York Times Magazine, the CNP was active in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including circulation of a document in November 2020, urging members to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to challenge the results and appoint alternate slates of electors. In addition to disingenuously analogizing Ginni to a nonentity without influence, George Will whimsically quoted Dicken’s Mr. Bumble, who lamented that if the law assumes that a wife is under her husband’s direction, the law is an ass. Will went on to make the inapposite argument that Clarence Thomas should not be made responsible for controlling his wife’s beliefs and actions. In that, Will is correct. But the justice can and should be responsible for his own actions. And since Thomas has an interest in protecting his wife, his impartiality could “reasonably be questioned” under 28 U.S.C. section 455. Without question, that militates that he recuse himself from judging any cases that may affect her. Justice Thomas has already refused to recuse himself in the case in which Trump tried to get the high court to block the National Archives’ release of his documents to the House January 6 committee. Thomas was the sole vote in favor of Trump’s position. Will’s defense of Thomas is that he “is comfortable in lonely dissent.” And Will asks, rhetorically, whether there is “any reason to assume that Virginia’s obsessions rather than his jurisprudential convictions determined his dissent.” My response: there may not be reason to “assume,” but there absolutely is reason to question whether it was protection of Ginni or his “jurisprudential convictions” that determined Thomas’s dissent. Despite the Thomases’ insistence that they keep their professional lives separate, it beggars belief that, with all Ginni’s interactions with the White House and the Stop the Steal rally organizers, her husband did not know there was a possibility that her texts or other mentions of her could turn up among Trump’s documents. But even if he didn’t, he had a duty to inquire. Stephen Gillers, a law professor at N.Y.U. and a prominent judicial ethicist, told the New Yorker that Justice Thomas can’t just claim he was not aware of his wife’s interest in the outcome: “It was Thomas’s responsibility to ask Ginni what she was doing to help overturn Biden’s victory. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is not an acceptable strategy for the Thomases’ marriage.” Gilers said, “Thomas should have realized that the public would assume that he and Ginni did discuss Trump’s ‘stop-the-steal’ efforts and Ginni’s participation in those efforts. Thomas does not avoid recusal by stuffing his ears, assuming he even did so.” Gillers added that judges often say that “intentional avoidance of knowledge is knowledge.” Despite these gaping holes in Will’s arguments, the columnist ploughs ahead, maintaining that the only problem raised is “appearances” and proceeds to argue that appearances should not be relevant to recusal. Will dismisses the long-standing legal ethic that judges should eschew even the appearance of impropriety, trying to turn the tables by writing, “Fussing about such things is often what people do to justify unjustifiable actions.” Contrariwise, he also labels those who would prevent the “appearance of corruption” morally fastidious people whose grumpiness is no reason to proscribe the behavior. Will argues that the confirmation of someone for the Supreme Court “presumes” their impartiality. And thus, there is no need to for them to recuse themselves. This effort at sophistry is more than intellectually dishonest. It is idiotic. One wonders whether Will ever heard the old adage, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?” Or perhaps he should be made familiar with the saying, “When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.” Supreme Court Justices, appointed for life, have a degree of power that no one else in the United States has. They are human just like the rest of us and can be just as prone to the temptations of power or calls upon family loyalty as anyone else. Ethical requirements exist so that society does not have to rely on a judge’s ability to self-regulate. Such requirements and norms are adopted to ensure, to the degree possible, that we maintain a government of laws, not men. But George Will insists that Clarence Thomas’s dissents on the January 6 cases so far are a result of his “starchy independence,” and that those who consider his judicial behavior a problem are the ones who “have a problem.” I agree with Will on one point. We have a problem alright. Our problem is that we are saddled with the presence on the Supreme Court of a justice who has shown himself anything but fastidious when it comes to judicial ethics. And the facile sophistry of George Will in no way adds to an intelligent analysis or resolution of the situation. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area Every Sunday when I was growing up, my dad would pile his three little girls into his car (the fourth hadn’t been born yet!) and go to the car wash he shared ownership of with his brother-in-law Benny. Our reward for tagging along was receiving a small bar of halvah wrapped in chocolate. I was smitten from the first bite! Fortunately for us, Dad clued in Pro, his longtime friend and University of Michigan baseball teammate (1939-42), that we enjoyed such delicacies. Whenever Pro would visit our busy household in suburban Detroit during the ‘50s and early ‘60s, his coat pockets were filled with halvah bars. That’s how I began my lifetime love affair with this Middle Eastern candy, made of crushed sesame seeds and sugar syrup. For the uninitiated, the texture is a bit sand-like. I know, it sounds unpleasant at best. I have offered it to people who have never had the pleasure and they make a face. I tell them “It’s an acquired taste and texture.” Well, I sure acquired the taste as a young girl and it’s been my weakness ever since. Recipes for halvah were first developed in the fifteenth century in Persia, maybe even centuries before. The word is Arabic for sweet. Its popularity slowly spread across the Mediterranean. Now you can get halvah from Israel, Greece, Turkey, Syria, and most of the Arab nations, each claiming it as their own. The taste and texture varies from country to country, but it is always recognizable as halvah. Popular flavors include vanilla, chocolate, vanilla chocolate marble (a crowd favorite!), pistachio, almond, or any combination of these. Nathan Radutsky, a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant, began making halvah in his house back in 1907. The business quickly outgrew his house and eventually he had a thriving factory in Brooklyn in the 1950s. That’s when Radutsky named his product Joyva, the leading halvah manufacturer in the United States to this day. I’ve had some memorable moments searching for halvah while traveling the world. One of my favorite memories is of the summer of 1973, when my school friend Margie and I hitchhiked (we did that back then!) around Europe. We landed in Athens, where I sought out a halvah shop, bought a hunk, and went straight to the Acropolis to enjoy the entire experience. Fast forward to the 21st century, July 2015, when my sister Marcia and I flew to Tel Aviv for a cousin’s wedding. A visitor would be remiss if they didn’t visit the Carmel Market or the “Shuk,” one of the finest outdoor food markets in the world. Stall after stall offer fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, dried fruits, legumes, spices, and even clothing. I was strolling down an aisle and in the distance was the mecca of all meccas: a halvah stall. It almost had a halo over it! My heart began to palpitate at the possibilities with all of those flavors. How does one choose? Now that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, my search is on for great halvah out west. I’m struggling with this task. My solution: when friends from Detroit come to visit, they ask “Do you want anything for here?” Of course! Go to Babylon, a lovely Arabic market in West Bloomfield, Mich., where they sell fresh hunks of halvah from a few different countries. Bring me some. But be careful what you ask for. My old school friend Mitch took that request to heart. He bought me a 2.2 kilo block of halvah (5 pounds!) and stuffed it in his luggage. Of course the TSA stopped him when it went through screening. Is that a C-4 explosive in that bag?! As the agent removed it, she said “What is THAT?” Mitch replied, “Halvah, want some?” If that halvah block wasn’t enough, I received another 5-pound block in the mail, but a different flavor, . I shouldn’t be deprived. The 10-pound gift of halvah inspired me for today’s column. Truth be told, the best way to eat halvah is to shave off pieces from the block. It has been a tradition of sorts at bar and bat mitzvahs in suburban Detroit to display a 10-pound wheel of it on the sweet table after dinner. Forget everything else, I zeroed in on the stuff. Today, I am incorporating halvah chunks into dense chocolate brownies. What could be a better pairing? Take the liberty to try different flavors of halvah or to add nuts to the batter. Let us know here at The Insider what you come up with. Then call me…with your address! Chocolate Brownies with Halvah Yield: 16 pieces 4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, cut into bits 4 oz. butter or margarine, room temperature 3/4 c. sugar 2 lg. eggs, room temperature 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1 c. flour 1/4 c. cocoa powder 1 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 lb. vanilla or nut halvah Preheat oven to 350°. Spray an 8” baking dish with pan release. Reserve. Melt the chocolate in the microwave, being careful not to burn. Reserve. In a mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Beat together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, allowing the first egg to fully blend in before adding the second. Stir in the melted cooled chocolate and vanilla. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the dry ingredients, using a wooden spoon or spatula. Spread batter into prepared pan. Cut up the halvah in 1/2” chunks. It will crumble, don’t worry. Distribute the chunks and crumble all over the top of the brownies. Bake for 25-30 minutes. For fudge-like brownies, bake less. For cake-like brownies, leave in the oven longer. Cool completely in the pan. Remove the brownie square from the pan and put on a cutting board. Trim the edges. (Good snacks!) Cut into 16 squares. Serve at room temperature. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By Naomi Serviss / New York City They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. -Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse” In 1971, British poet Philip Larkin tickled the poetry universe with his cynical worldview. His salty humor shaded a preoccupation with death, a favorite topic. Poetry is having a moment this April despite T.S. Eliot having decreed it “the cruelest month.” Not so, according to the Academy of American Poets a national, nonprofit, member-supported organization founded in New York in 1934. The group launched National Poetry Month in April 1966. The rationale for all the hoopla? To remind humanity that poets deserve respect as essential chroniclers of history and heart. This literary celebration has drawn millions, from K-12 teachers to families eager to share poetry’s magic. You can locate poetry readings and events in your nabe on the Poetry Near You calendar on the website If you sign up for Poem-a-Day emails, in April’s selections, they’ll have been curated by award-winning poet Naomi Shibab Nye. Budding poets ready to socialize again (baby steps) might get a charge reciting poetry to strangers for Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 29th. Keep an original or favorite poem in your pocket and share it with random or familiar people you encounter in bookstores (ask politely), libraries (quietly), parks (outside voices acceptable), neighborly encounters (mask-muffled) and social media (# PocketPoem). Poetry has been trending-plus this past year. It’s not just a thing. It’s cool. Ubiquitous. Subway verses above masked riders. Spray-painted hieroglyphics bleed on a Brooklyn moving van. When I was a Shoemaker Elementary school kid, my family of origin moved from one decrepit apartment to another. I attended two elementary schools and three high schools. The schools and neighborhood libraries were my sanctuaries. I lost myself in stories and poetry. Reading then writing them. Emily Dickinson sparked me so hard I resolved to name my daughter after her. A few years after moving to the Upper West Side in Manhattan, I noticed a flyer advertising a poetry reading organized by the Riverside Poets. It was being held in a small, nondescript community building across from the subway on W. 96th and Broadway. I wandered in, charmed by the run-down structure and by Caroline, painfully shy as she jotted down names of poets who wanted to read their work. That serendipitous encounter led to me becoming a Riverside Poet. The group has been run by husband-and-wife Anthony Moscini and Norma Levy and continues to this day, despite the Covid-restrictions. Weekly meetings were held, pre-pandemic, in the Riverside Library near Lincoln Center. We’d each meet with a new poem, bringing copies to share. Then we’d take turns reading our work. Gentle critiques followed, along with complaints about being short-shrifted timewise. The best poets (imho) were Saul and Peter, whose writings were muscular and sobering. One heavily made-up woman would get dolled up in flamboyant outfits that crossed the border of gawdy. Her poetry was provocative. The median age was about 70. A former Rockette in her 70s wrote witty verses about bar toadies and their flirtations. Anthony played ringmaster, oiling the momentum for two hours. A former actor who wrote soul-bearing verse, Anthony’s remarks were attention-getting and often eyebrow-raising. He got a kick from blurting out “masturbation” and singing its praises. He knew that was a no-no, but it amused him. After one time too many, I took him aside and let him have it in no uncertain terms: he’d have to knock it off or I’d quit. He stopped. Anthony was also amusing. And morbidly death-obsessed. His quips were memorable: “It’s very hard to write a good Holocaust poem.” “It’s arch—you need a raised eyebrow when you say that.” “You convey pain very well.” “I think you’re talking about sex as a confection.” “It’s like blatant subtlety.” “I feel dread.” Since leaving the group in 2018, pre-hip surgery, I miss my poet buddies and worry about Peter’s health. And I miss the camaraderie and dinners at Old John’s after workshops. Maybe I’ll write a poem for “Poetry in Your Pocket” day and swing by the Riverside Library with my offering. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

Emotional consequences of the war on first-generation Holocaust survivors This story originally ran in Psychology Today and is reprinted with the author's permission. Posted March 8, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster By Dr. Barry Lubetkin Key points Adults of Holocaust survivors are contending with physical and emotional reactions to television and social media images of the war in Ukraine. Some patients report a deeper understanding of what profound terror their parents endured, accompanied by a sense of sadness, shame, or guilt. Patients have also had various somatic complaints, wonder if they should stop watching news completely, and elevated anxiety. As a practicing psychologist, I have treated many children and other close relatives of holocaust survivors for various emotional and behavioral problems throughout my fifty-year career. Many such problems have included coping with parental silence about their war experiences, or conversely, feeling overwhelmed with guilt and helplessness when parents were open and honest about their trauma. But this is different! I am currently treating three first-generation female survivors aged 64, 66, and 70. All three have acknowledged regularly watching television news reports of the physical and emotional devastation of the Ukrainian citizens caught up in the barbarism unleashed on their country. Each has reported similar reactions : A deeper understanding of what profound terror their parents endured, accompanied by a sense of sadness, shame, or guilt at the lack of having had such understanding earlier in their lives. This was particularly powerful during the first few days of the war, as they recognized the pure shock their parents must have felt as their lives changed completely. Various somatic complaints (e.g., headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, etc.) often seemed temporally related to the television viewing. A cognitive conflict about whether to continue watching the news regularly or attempting to avoid it altogether. In observing this particular real-time war, they were aware that they experienced anxiety that felt qualitatively different from the anxiety they had felt watching old World War II films of similar bombings and refugee displacement. The difference was particularly acute when observing women and children crowding onto trains, traveling toward safety, or leaving their husbands and sons at border crossings to defend their country. Each pointed out that their parents had never had those opportunities. Clinicians working with this population need to be particularly aware of the potential for the unique effects of the current invasion and war on their patients. Barry Lubetkin Ph.D. founded The Institute For Behavior Therapy in New York City in 1971. He has written Why Do I Need You to Love Me in Order to Like Myself and Bailing Out.

By Naomi Serviss / New York City Sometimes a soupçon of a gourmet repast is just the ticket. Same for live theater. Food for Thought Productions (FFTP), the brainchild of playwright Susan Charlotte, is proof that less is more. On March 28th, the East Village’s Theatre 80 at St. Mark’s Place marked its 22-year opening with the always-smartly coiffed and put together Blythe Danner. Predictably hangdog comedic actor Bob Dishy played the foil. FFTP celebrates snack bites of one-act plays by Neil Simon, George S. Kaufman, Arthur Miller, and other legendary talents. Pre-Covid, FFTP offered a buffet lunch before a performance. On May 24th, the buffet tradition will relaunch, enthused Charlotte. The March 28th souffle of three one-act plays was delightfully filling. Danner and Dishy have worked together before, their affable chemistry was palpable. Laughter often erupted from an enthusiastic crowd. The trio of amuse-bouches was recorded for an upcoming FFTP documentary. Watching two pros pitch zingers was a delicious affair. They played off one another with witty dialogue and gestures. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. I was so close to the stage (aisle seat, natch), I could hear the rustling of the script’s pages as they turned. It was like eavesdropping on old friends. Or relatives you still like. Danner embellished her lines by fussing with her hair. Dishy’s lived-in face spilled every emotion. Expressive eyes and eyebrows telegraphed astonishment or delight. By turns he played cranky, exasperated, generous and forgiving. All convincingly. Stage directions were read by Michael Citriniti. The performances were directed by Antony Marseilles. The three one-acts were: Amicable Parting by George S. Kaufman and Leueen MacGrath Forward by the authors: “This is meant to be high comedy. It should be played lightly, gayly. Never emotionally. Thank you.” The action unfolded in Alice and Bill Reynolds’ sumptuously decorated living room. The couple oozes wealth. They have all the trappings: expensive books, art and domestic dismay. Agreeing to separate, they determine to split possessions amicably and without rancor. They put dibs on the stuff they want with a name sticker. Fireworks ensued, resolutions offered, and a good time was had by all. Commercial Break by Peter Stone Oscar-, Tony- and Emmy-winner Peter Stone pitches heat on another couple, Catherine and Harry Crocker, wed for 15 years. Harry is an advertising executive, or a “professional liar” according to his wife, the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs. Catherine suspects Harry is carrying on with his secretary And lying about most everything, to boot. In a last-ditch effort to save their union, Catherine demands Harry create a commercial on the spot. The product? Himself! If Catherine rejects Harry’s ad, she’ll shop for a better deal. Sidebar: What do Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant have to do with Commercial Break? Peter Stone wrote a monologue for Hepburn, recorded it for Stone’s classic Charade. In a cruel twist of fate, the monologue didn’t make the final cut. But wait, there’s more! Stone revised the monologue for Grant, who also starred in Stone’s Oscar-winning Father Goose. Grant recorded it, only for it to be, once again, edited out. Stone then developed the monologue into the one-act play, Commercial Break. That’s show biz! Tallulah Finds Her Kitchen Written for Tallulah Bankhead by Neil Simon, Danny Simon and Joseph Stein. This is a monologue written for Tallulah Bankhead. It’s about a woman’s sparkly new relationship with her kitchen! The problem to be solved: how to use it. A cast Q&A followed the lively two-hour presentation. Beginning with FFTP’s May 24th performance, both Theatre 80 and a former venue, 3 West Club, will offer buffet lunch. Like the days of yore. Covid killed everyone’s appetite. We’re still cautiously baby-stepping into literal life, as opposed to two-dimensional Zoom life. After the last one-act, Danner and Dishy greeted giddy fans on stage. This scene was the most filling repast without having consumed one calorie. As the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland urged: “Feed Your Head.” Duly noted. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com