Warren Roberts Blog

Posts

Tina Howe and Norman Levy

An article in yesterday’s New York Times, “Alzheimer’s and Other Late-in-Life Storms,” (7/23/17) is about Tina Howe and her husband, Norman Levy, who has Alzheimer’s. The article doesn’t say much about Tina and Norman’s life together, aside from a few comments on how they met and on Norman’s medical condition, which was diagnosed in 2013. There is a picture of them together in the article; they are in their apartment in the Upper West end of Manhattan; this is where my wife, Anne, and two Albany friends visited Tina and Norman in 2009. Norman was a colleague of mine in the History department at the University at Albany for a few years, before he and Tina left Albany and moved to New York city. We never lost touch with them and we saw them several times when Tina was invited to Albany to give talks. She had written plays when she and Norman lived in Kinderhook; she showed Anne one of her plays, which Anne thought was funny but a bit bizarre; men licking whipped cream from the

Regarding Jane Austen

I was surprised to see a reference to one of my books in yesterday’s Book Review section of the New York Times (7-17-2017): “In 1979, Warren Roberts produced a thoughtful study called “Jane Austen and the French Revolution.” The great event is never mentioned in the novels, but it is there, Roberts argues, invisibly woven into the narratives. Kelly (who wrote the book under review) makes the same point herself to support her “secret radical” thesis. But Roberts conclusions are cautious. Kelly’s are adventurous. Some work better than others.” My book on Jane Austen came out in 1979; I wrote it after spending a sabbatical year in England in 1970-71. I had just completed my first book and had no idea what I would do next. We lived about fifty miles from Steventon, where Austen grew up; I had read her novels and decided to drive to Steventon, even though her village house no longer stood. But the chapel, just outside the village, still stood; seeing it, being inside it, made

I am posting my blogs, written over a period of some nine years, I believe. I am posting them in the order in which I wrote them, I say to anyone who might have gotten this far going through my blogs.

Torture: A terrible price

Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a summary of a committee report that investigated enhanced interrogation techniques, EIT , in a nicely bureaucratized and sanitized acronym that refers to what can properly be called torture. The debate is no longer over whether the CIA used torture when trying to extract information from those suspected of terrorism. Visuals that have been released make it painfully evident that torture was used to get information deemed essential to national security. The argument has shifted at least in part to whether the information wrung from prisoners was effective, with particular attention given to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. I think it is important to frame the torture issue in the larger context of America’s response to the horrifying and sordid death of some 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2011, a day whose impact on America was not unlike that of December 7, 1941. We girded for war after Pear

Trump fires Michael Flynn

The dismissal of Michael Flynn as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor last night raises some interesting questions, although the CNN report did not raise those that seem most important to me this morning. What prompted Flynn’s dismissal was his claim that he did not discuss conversations with Russian officials with Vice President Mike Pence after the November election; this raised questions about Flynn and the Trump relationship with Russia during the election, although this wasn’t discussed in the CNN report that I saw this morning. It is now clear that Flynn did discuss security issues with Russia; as National Security Advisor he would hardly have done so without the knowledge of President Trump, or so it would seem. What does this say about American-Russian relations at the time of the November presidential election? When I got up on the morning of November 11 my wife told me that Trump had been elected president, although Hillary Clinton had been considered

Barnum and Bailey Circus

I don’t know if the forthcoming demise of the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Circus was reported in Albany, but it certainly was in Sarasota, Florida, where I, a former Albanian, now live. This is where John Ringling, who became head of the circus, lived; this is where the Ringling Museum, which he founded, is located. And this is where there is much memorabilia commemorating the circus has been gathered. John Ringling became head of the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Circus; he was one of the wealthiest men in America before the 1929 depression. The story of the Circus begins with Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1889), who was born in Bethel, Connecticut; he moved to New York City in 1834; he moved into a house on Hudson Street. He wrote in an autobiographical account that “I had no pecuniary resources, excepting such as might be derived from debts left for a collection with my agent in Bethel, and I went to the metropolis literally to seek my fortune.” Someone told him abou