Picks for May 08 book: 'Secret Ingredients': a compilation from the New Yorker, going back to the 1930's, of essays on food. Oh, it's just fantastic. Every night, I read an essay and it's like eating a little morself of the best thing ever. A.J. Leibling, who was closely associated with the New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963, is my absolute favorite writer in this collection. He is so deeply knowledgeable and passionate about food that it is hard to believe that writing about food is only one of his many talents and areas of expertise. He also wrote about boxing and horse racing, among other subjects. I love reading writers on topics completely unrelated to music, and then learning about art, music and writing from reading them. For instance, M.F.K. Fisher, one of my favorite authors, wrote about the deepest and most subtle areas of her life by writing about food, in the same way that John McEnroe was writing about a lot more than tennis in his autobiography. In my next life--- sports and fine wines. No feelings. Enjoy. film: Okay. I saw the new "Indiana Jones". (I think I am required by law to do so, since I have a nine-year-old boy in my household.) I liked it. Cate Blanchett was scary as a Nazi. I was happy to see Karen Allen return and look like a normal 50-something year old woman, just as adorable as ever. I liked the special effects. I just generally like Steven Spielberg and whatever he does is okay in my book. It's not the kind of film that I'm going to THINK about, like "The Lives of Others" or even "Michael Clayton", but kudos to Spielberg for doing what he does, and being the best at it, as far as I'm concerned. music: loving "Momofuku", Elvis' new venture, and I'm not even saying that because I co-wrote a song on the record. It's just so exciting to hear Elvis do what he does, because everything is done with exuberance and full committment, and passion and Elvis-Truth. He's singing better than ever, and I really love this record. His emotional, musical and intellectual range is unbelievable. special event: The World Science Festival, here in New York City, May 29-June 1. WOW. This was so exciting. I attended the opening program, 'Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives', and one of the closing programs, "The Laws Of Life", and I was completely knocked out by both. I can't believe we didn't have this festival before now. A big round of applause to Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia, the author of 'The Elegant Universe', and one of the founders of the event, for bringing this science festival to New York. Check out some of the programs we were privileged to witness. Picks Archive

February 21 , 2008

Dear Friends,

I am so sick of reading about school shootings that I am ready to move to another country. Maybe I will go to Japan (Japan: rate of intentional gun deaths per 100,000 people: 0.7. Oops! I forgot a zero-- it's actually 0.07). Or I could move to Kuwait (0.37 intentional gun deaths per 100,000), or the land of my ancestors, Scotland (0.49 per 100,000), or even Northern Ireland (4.72 per 100,000). I might be happy in Australia (2.94 per 100,000) or Israel (2.56 per 100,000) or France (5.48 per 100,000. (Who would have thought France had more gun deaths than Northern Ireland?) It's a dilemna. I love my country but I don't feel particularly safe here anymore. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, aka the New Wild, Wild West (only this time with semi-automatic weapons) there are 13.47 intentional gun deaths per 100,000 per year. The country that is closest to us in this abysmal statistic is Finland, with 6.65 intentional gun deaths per 100,000 citizens. When you cross-reference the number of deaths simply with the number of households that contain firearms, it gets a little weird. Grumpy Finland, who still has about half the amount of gun deaths as the United States, shows that fully half its households contain guns which is more than the United States, at 41 percent. Japan, which has a rate of gun violence so low that the shooting of a single person is front page news, has only 0.6 households with guns, to match up with death rate of 0.07. But why do countries like Finland and Norway (32 percent of households with firearms) have all these guns and not use them, while we do? I don't have an answer for this, or even an opinon, but I do have a forecast: If our gun laws don't change, we are going to see more school shootings, mall shootings, street shootings, fatal domestic disputes, teenage suicides and all manner of horror perpetrated by people on the edge with access to firearms. This is not the kind of situation that gets better on its own. This is a public health crisis that demands intervention by people who aren't invested in the perpetuation of a myth, but take the long view on society and civilization. In other words, I'd like to see my children grow up without fear of gunshot when they go to school or a mall, and if I hear one more person cite the Second Amendment in defense of an emotionally disturbed young person with an AK-47, I'm going to puke.

You can bet that whoever gets my vote in November is not going to be in the pocket of the National Rifle Association, and will be someone who will look at the above statistics and say, 'we can do a hell of a lot better than Finland'.

There are lots of ways to get involved. I belong to PAX. (Paxusa.org)
You can check the above statistics at http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/
international.html.

Love from Mrs. L

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