Who Knew?
I’m reading a novel set in Russia, which I will blog about when I’m done. The main character, a teenager, frequently cites a figure named Berea, and the fear he struck in people’s hearts. Why hadn’t I ever heard the name alongside other Soviet butchers? Had I simply forgotten it? I wondered if he were fictional. No, he was all too real, a monster. Lavrentiy Beria was state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier in 1941. At Yalta Stalin introduced him to FDR as “our Himmler.” After Stalin’s death in 1953, Beria formed a troika with two other apparatchiks. They weren’t in power long, toppled by a coup engineered by Nikita Khrushchev. He was arrested on 357 counts of rape, and treason, and was executed by the end of the year, one the Soviets actually got right. He was 54. He was the type of person who makes me hope there’s a hell.
Here’s something that will disappoint radical environmentalists, from an article at foxnews.com, edited by yours truly: The coronavirus has killed more than 3000 in China. Factories have been shuttered, and many people have been quarantined. There has been an unexpected side effect to the decline in economic activity. Satellite imagery shows pollution has diminished dramatically. Greeniacs now have to fight the temptation of rooting for the virus… In a related issue, many folks have attributed the lack of snow this winter to global warming. According to Fox News Senior Meteorologist Janice Dean: “It’s all about the Jetstream — this year the storm tracks have not been favorable for snowy weather to hit the Northeast.” In order for snow to hit the Northeast from a typical winter storm the systems coming from the West need to take a different track (tract?). I hope this happens every year until I shuffle off this mortal coil.
Headline at FN: “Marie Osmond reveals she plans to leave her fortune to charity, nothing to her children.” Kudos. Just make sure government gangsters get the minimum allowable.
I support President Trump and hope the job he’s doing is as good as it seems, but the deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan probably won’t be worth the paper on which it’s written. I hope he doesn’t gloat about it. I don’t object to a pullout, but I believe we should have forces somewhere in the region ready to carry out lightning strikes against bad actors.
RIP Jack Welch, 84, who during his tenure as CEO guided GE to the top of the corporate world, the most valuable company on the planet. Here’s a quote from him that sounds like a warning to those Americans who think Socialism is a good idea: “Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
I know this will sound like a broken record, but I can’t say enough about the fresh titles Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antennas in NYC, has broken out lately. Last night in prime time it continued its Sunday Night Noir series with two films I’d never seen: Mystery Street (1950), directed by John Sturges and starring Ricardo Montalban and Marshall Thompson; and Angel Face (1953), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and a host of familiar faces. Both were solid entertainment. I don’t understand why channel five didn’t run these flicks back in the day. I suppose they weren’t able to acquire the rights. Whatever. Sturges went on to helm classics such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) and Preminger The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Here’s the late, incredibly beautiful and enormously talented Jean Simmons:
No luck selling books curbside today. My thanks to Gary, who donated a Russian-English dictionary, and to the home attendant of the Braniac Brothers, who dropped off three works of non-fiction; and to the retired super who gave me a study guide for the postal exam. The highlight of the session came when I was able to repay in part a woman who’d given me a slew of cook books, all of which sold. She’d cited three books she wanted. Today she received The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
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