The universal language is Farsi, with a little French thrown in. It’s spoken in the movie’s two settings Montreal and Winnipeg. But the audience is kept on its toes by characters who should be in one city appearing in the other.
If you’re a fan of straightforward narrative, Universal Language won’t be your cup of tea. There are a couple subplots to cling to. One a large denomination bill found by two children frozen into heavy ice. And there’s a guy from Montreal heading home to look up his mother.
More prominent is a series of odd scenes that have little to do with either of those stories. Like the Winnipeg tour guy who takes his group to a bland residential building and advises that the residents include an administrative assistant and a fax operator. Or the woman who boards a bus in Montreal headed from Winnipeg and finds the seat next to her has been purchased for a turkey. A live Turkey. Turkeys in fact have a prominent role in Universal Language. Who knows?
I thought of this as Wes Anderson in Farsi. It’s odd, eccentric and unpredictable. But it’s also fun and interesting.
(A Special Jury Prize for Cinematography was awarded to Isabelle Stochtchenko for her work in Universal Language.)
Dahomey
Twenty-six pieces of art from the African Kingdom of Dahomey are being transported from France back to Africa, to what is now the Kingdom of Benin. This is stolen art, plundered by colonialists. There’s royal statues and decorative, spiritual pieces.
The documentary starts with the process. The pieces are secured, crated and transported. They make the journey by air and then we watch as they are “freed” back in their homeland.
For me the most compelling part of the movie was the debate among students in Benin about the artifacts, but in a larger sense about colonialism. There are tears of joy as part of a people’s history is returned to them. But equally tears of rage, 26 artifacts being returned out of an estimated 7,000 that were plundered.
There is an eerie side to the movie as we hear from the statues themselves, speaking in total darkness from inside their crates, wondering, not unlike some of the students, about their identity.
The documentary is a bit slow paced but it is meaningful and provocative. I don’t think you can watch and then go see artworks in a museum that were made in colonized or indigenous lands without thinking about where those works legitimately belong.
Misericordia
The baker in a small French village dies. A former employee comes back for the funeral, which draws the appreciation of the baker’s wife and the ire of the baker’s son. These three are joined by the village priest and a heavy-set disheveled dude named Walter.
Why are the former employee and the son jealous of each other’s relationship with Walter? Why does the son hate the former employee? What was the latter’s relationship to the baker?
All of these relationships are mysteries that unravel during the course of the movie. But not entirely. It is never completely clear who is lying and who is covering up. We also are left with questions about who is sleeping with who and are these guys gay or straight.
There are some beautiful scenes in the French countryside and some very dark bedroom scenes (not sex just uncomfortable conversations). I found it pretty suspenseful albeit a head scratcher.
Asmundur Sveinsson was a 20th century Icelandic sculptor. He passed away in 1982. He spent a good part of his life living in Asundarsafn, his home in Reykjavik. It nows serves as a museum exhibiting his work, both in the building and on the surrounding grounds.
Weather TellerMother EarthWorshipWashing the FloorWar and FlightSorcererSpinning Wheel Poem
These photos were taken during a hike on the Myrdalsjokull glacier in southern Iceland near the city of Vik. It is Iceland’s fourth largest glacier, covering 232 square miles and is 1,500 meters at its highest point. Myrdalsjokull sits atop an active volcano, Katla. The volcano usually erupts every 100 years and, since its last eruption was in 1918, it is overdue. Having a glacier atop a volcano poses a potential serious flooding problem when the volcano erupts.
From the photography collection of the National Museum of Iceland.
Steinholt, Christopher Taylor, 2011
The Long Apartment Block in Upper Breioholt, David Barreiro, 2018
One, Valdimar Thorlacius, 2015An Eternity in a Moment, Runar Gunnarsson, 2023Asfjall, Peter Thomsen, 2011If Garden Gnomes Could Talk, Pordis Erla Agustsdottir, 2023Straumnes, Marino Thorlacius, 2022Roots of the Runtur, Rob Honstra, 2006
An exhibit of Icelandic artists at the Reykjavik Art Museum
(Note — most of these works include multiple parts and my photos only include a portion of the parts that make up the overall piece.)
Unveiled, Deepa R. Iyengar
Everything Just Is- Atlas, Margret M. NorddahlBombaljos, Stymir Orn GudmundssonOn the head’s mind. Sigtryggur Berg SigmarssonClasping Her Lifeline, Haila BirgisdottirVisio-Roses, History Spectrum, Bjarni Porarinsson
The Charles J. Muth Museum, which was built as part of the Hinchliffe Stadium renovation in Paterson, N.J., opened last year. The stadium which it is attached to is part of the Great Falls National Historical Park. Built in 1932, it is one of the few remaining stadiums that hosted Negro League baseball.
The museum is a single gallery exhibit that commemorates the Negro Leagues, Paterson’s baseball legacy and the stadium itself. It is operated by Montclair State University. Its public hours are limited but it is open to patrons of the minor league baseball team that now plays at Hinchliffe for a hour before game time.
Two Negro League teams called Hinchliffe Stadium home: the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans. The latter featured players not just from Cuba but from other Latin American and Caribbean countries. (They also started the tradition of housing teams in New Jersey while calling them “New York,” as in the NFL’s Giants and Jets.)
Atlantic City Bacharach Giants were one of the charter members of the Eastern Colored League, founded in 1923The New York Cubans made Hinchliffe their home park in 1935-36
Roy Campanella plaiyed at Hinchliffe as a member of the Washington/Baltimore Elite Giants. He would go on to become a Hall of Fame catcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers.Monte Irvin played at Hinchliffe as a member of the Newark Eagles. He later had an 8-year Major League career mostly with the New York Giants and was elected to the Hall of Fame.Satchel Paige made an appearance at Hinchliffe as a member of the Pittsburgh Crawdads. He had a 20-year career in the Negro League before making his debut with the Cleveland Indians at age 42. He is also a member of the Hall of Fame.
Any discussion of baseball in Paterson starts with Larry Doby. Doby was a three-sport star at Paterson’s Eastside High School (football, basketball and baseball). Upon graduation, the color barrier had yet to be broken in Major League Baseball. He joined the Newark Eagles in 1942 and continued playing with them until 1946, interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
In 1947, Bill Veeck, the owner of the Cleveland Indians and a man who had long supported the integration of baseball, bought Doby’s contract from Effa Manley of the Eagles. Doby became the second Black major leaguer and the first in the American League. He would go on to become a seven-time all-star and be elected to the Hall of Fame.
Here’s Veeck and Doby shaking hands.
Hinchliffe Stadium would by the 1990’s be shutdown as it had been neglected and seriously deteriorated. Eventually the stands surrounding the playing field were condemned. I took this picture in 2014.
The stadium’s inclusion as part of the national park helped pave the way for a $100+ million renovation. It now looks like this.
During its heyday, mini race cars like this one at the Muth Museum were popular attractions.
And it was not just Paterson ball players who drew crowds to Hinchliffe. Patersonian Lou Costello (right) and his partner Bud Abbott performed their “Who’s on First” routine there.
In was opening day 1981 when a 20-year-old pitcher from Sonora, Mexico, took the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers and hurled a victorious nine-inning shutout against the Houston Astros. Fernando Valenzuela went on to win his first eight games, In that season he would become the only major leaguer to win both the Cy Young award and the Rookie of the Year award in the same season.
(Tony Barnard, Los Angeles Times)
Valenuela had a long career as a major league pitcher, lasting until 1997. His first ten years were as a Dodger. During his career he would be an all-star six times and a World Series champion in his rookie year. An all-around athlete, he won a Gold Glove award as the American League’s best fielding pitcher and two Silver Slugger Awards as the league’s best hitting pitcher. In 1990 he pitched a no-hitter.
But Fernando Valenzuela’s greatest impact on the game may have had nothing to do wins, losses, pitches and awards. Rather, he changed the game because of the so-called “Fernandomania” that followed his emergence as a star.
“…the Dodgers lefty did something that went beyond the playing field, and you could see it in the stands and across the United States and Mexico.
“When Fernando lifted his eyes toward the sky with each windup, Mexicans everywhere watched him with pride.
“This was the first time I could see with my own eyes the passion Mexicans had for baseball as they cheered for Valenzuela at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, New York’s Shea Stadium and even in Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium.
“Their presence transformed big league parks, waving Mexican flags, cheering on the young lefty who possessed a pitching style quite unlike what most fans had previously witnessed.
“While most fans might remember 1981 as a strike-shortened season, for me it will remain the season Valenzuela allowed Mexicans and Latino fans everywhere to openly show their passion for baseball through the artistry of the young hurler from Navojoa, México.” (La Vida Baseball, Adrian Burgos, March 2, 2019)
A story in the Los Angeles Times (April 1, 2011) tried to quantify Fernando’s long term impact:
“The Dodgers, who said they drew more than 3.5 million fans last season, have survey research that indicates about 40 percent of their fan base is Latino.
“Although there is no way to directly quantify Valenzuela’s effect, former team executive Derrick Hall guessed that attendance at Dodger Stadium would be 10 percent to 20 percent lower had Valenzuela never played.”
Where is Valenzuela these days? If you’re a Dodgers fan, you know where to find him. In the broadcast booth calling the games in Spanish. He’s also no stranger to the playing field. In 2013, he was the starting pitcher in an old-timers game between the Dodgers and the Yankees. That same year, he threw out the first pitch in the Caribbean Series game between Yaquis de Obregon of Mexico and Leones del Escogido of the Dominican Republic. In 2018, he threw out the first pitch when the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres played a three-game series in Monterrey, Mexico.
Honors have continued to come his way in his post-playing career. He was inducted into the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013. One year later he entered the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame. California Gov. Jerry Brown inducted him into the Golden State Hall of Fame along with others, including Joan Baez and Robert Redford (2018). The Mexican League retired his #34 for all teams (2019). The Dodgers honored him as one of the “Legends of Dodger Baseball” in 2019 and they retired his number in 2023. At the same time, the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed Fernando Valenzuela Day.
In 2015 he became a citizen of the U.S. Dodger Insider (July 22, 2015) had the story.
“The Dodgers’ legendary lefty raised his right hand and took the Oath of Allegiance at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) naturalization ceremony to become a U.S. citizen this morning in downtown Los Angeles. While a private and smaller ceremony could have been an option, Valenzuela chose to join nearly 8,000 Angelenos hailing from more than 130 countries in taking this big step.
“Valenzuela also shared this special day with his wife Linda, who became a U.S. citizen a few months ago and with whom he’s shared every major moment of his life and career, and his family.”
Fernando Valenzuela with President Ronald Reagan, 1981
In 2017 Valenzuela was part of a group of investors who bought the Mexican League baseball team Quintana Roo Tigres of Cancun. His son Ricky serves as the team’s general manager.
Despite his popularity and his visibility, Valenzuela is not one to call attention to himself. Jill Painter Lopez, writing in the New York Times (Aug. 30, 2015), commented:
“Although he works as a Spanish-language broadcaster for Dodgers games, he rarely does interviews and, outside calling games, keeps a low media profile. He doesn’t have a Twitter account, he hasn’t written an autobiography and he declined to take part in a news conference about his new status (as an American citizen) or to do any interviews, including one for this article.”
Asked about being a hero to Dodger fans, Valenzuela told Cary Osborne of Dodger Insider (Aug. 11, 2023):
“Heroes are in cartoons or something like that.
“I think the ones who are heroes are people who rescue people. That’s a hero. If the little things I did in baseball helped people, if it helped them by never giving up, keep continuing, helped them think you can do anything, that makes me proud.”
A story by Dylan Hernandez in the Los Angeles Times (April 1, 2011) noted:
“As a player, Valenzuela spoke regularly at Los Angeles-area elementary schools, many of them in heavily Latino areas. ‘In sports, you win and you lose,’ he recalled telling the children. ‘But in education, you only win.’ On a couple of occasions, he said, he has been approached by someone who heard him speak. ‘Because of what you said, I studied hard and became a doctor,’ he recalled one person telling him.
“Another, he said, was a lawyer. ‘I told them I was glad they listened, that they were able to improve their lives, that they were able to take better care of their families,’ he said. ‘That means more to me than winning a game or being elected into the Hall of Fame.’
Valenzuela married a schoolteacher from Mexico, Linda Bustos, in 1981. They have four children. In Osborne’s Dodger Insider story he quoted Valenzuela’s daughter Linda:
“He’s a dad and a grandpa — and I think he feels that’s his biggest accomplishment. He’s proud of his kids and grandkids. He shows up to my niece’s softball games at 7 in the morning. She has a game, and he’s there.”
In the stories about Venezuela there are some first hand accounts of his importance to young Mexican-Americans. Here are two examples:
In the New York Times story by Jill Painter Lopez cited earlier, a Dodger employee had this to say;
“Polo Ascencio, 40, who works for the Dodgers as a statistician…grew up in Tijuana and four years ago became an American citizen.
“‘I grew up idolizing this guy,’ Ascencio said. ‘I wanted to be a left-handed pitcher. I was that kid who was a Padres fan but turned into a Dodgers fan’ because of Valenzuela.
“‘I looked just like him,’ he said.”
Jose M Alamillo, who is a professor of Chicanao Studies at California State University Channel Islands, had this to say ( La Vida Baseball, April 19, 2017)
“Even before I learned about César Chávez and other civil rights leaders, I had one Latino role model ― Fernando Valenzuela.
“As a skinny immigrant kid back in the ’70s growing up in Ventura, California, north of Los Angeles, I did not speak English very well and was told to ‘Go back to Mexico.’ To avoid being hit by racial slurs (‘beaner,’ ‘wetback’), I downplayed my ethnic background.
“But that all changed in 1981.
“Valenzuela inspired the Latino population of Los Angeles. His humble demeanor, combined with his improbable success as an unassuming son of Sonora, helped to instill a feeling of unity and optimism among recent Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born Mexican-Americans.
“Fernando Valenzuela taught me to feel proud about being both Mexican and American without having to sell my cultural soul. When I met Fernando, he spoke perfect English but was very proud of his Mexican heritage. He confirmed for me that I did not have to run from my Mexican heritage, but embrace it, while also embracing American culture and, especially, its favorite pastime.”
(Fernando Valenzuela passed away in Octoer 2024, a little more than a month after this was published.)
Is there a more iconic ballad than Ode to Billie Joe. The tale of how “Billie Joe MacAllaster jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge” is to me the epitome in storytelling through song. Bobbie Gentry wrote and performed this song which would knock the Beatles “All You Need is Love” out of the top spot on the Billboard charts. When Gentry released an album by the same name it overcame “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” to become #1. Gentry won two awards at the 1967 Grammies: Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The song was named one the 500 greatest songs of all-tine by Rolling Stone magazine and Gentry would eventually be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Whatever Happened to Bobbie Gentry? We don’t really know. In the early 1980’s she decided to adopt a private life and has made no public appearances or statements. Prior to that decision, Gentry had a creative and diverse entertainment career, one that belies the thought that this woman, who was partly raised by Mississippi grandparents who traded one of their cows to get her a piano, was some one-hit wonder hick country singer.
While never again reaching the commercial heights of Ode to Billie Joe, Gentry produced seven albums. Perhaps the best known song of her post ‘Ode’ career is Fancy. Gentry recorded it herself but it later became a huge hit for Reba McEntire.
In udiscovermusic.com (April 6, 2023), Jeanette Leech describes the song as “a tense, often unsympathetic portrait of the lack of choice poor women have in America. It’s also a powerful critique of one of the only ways a woman could earn good money and mix in the company of powerful men – as their courtesan.”
She quotes Gentry saying “‘‘Fancy’ is my strongest statement for women’s lib, if you really listen to it. I agree wholeheartedly with that movement and all the serious issues that [it stands] for – equality, equal pay, day-care centers, and abortion rights.”
In Rolling Stone magazine (Aug. 21, 2017) Tara Murtha offers this summary of Gentry’s career:
“Producing a hit record was only the beginning of her pioneering career. Gentry was the first woman to host a variety show on the BBC (later, she hosted her own show on CBS). She was a DJ on Armed Forces Radio. It’s widely believed she painted the portraits used as the covers for her albums Fancy and Patchwork. After leaving Capitol, she headed to Las Vegas, where she spent a decade creating and starring in shows critically acclaimed for over-the-top set design, outrageous costumes she often designed herself and stellar choreography – including a gender-bending tribute to Elvis Presley, performed in a skintight glittering pantsuit. The real Bobbie Gentry was not a country bumpkin pin-up who lucked into one big hit, as she was sometimes described in profiles that read as condescending from a modern perspective. Bobbie Gentry embraced the success of ‘Ode to Billie Joe,’ but spent the rest of her career trying to transcend the hillbilly persona that was created with it.”
Rick Hall, a well-known producer at Muscle Shoals worked with Gentry and produced Fancy. In an interview with Billy Watkins of the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion Ledger,Sept.18, 2019, he offered this recollection:
“I was expecting this Southern, backwoods, Delta woman. She was anything but that. Sophisticated. Bright. She had studied at UCLA and then studied music and composition (at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music). We hit it off and became really good friends, in a professional way. She and I were raised the same way so we spoke the same language.”
What Gentry was not very successful at was marriage. Her first marriage, in 1969, was to Bill Harrah of casino fame. It lasted four months. She married Thomas Toutant in 1976 and divorced him in 1978. That same year she married singer and comedian Jim Stafford. They had a son together, but divorced in just short of two years.
Gentry did know how to take care of her money and retain the rights to her music. She also got a 10% cut on the proceeds from a movie that was based on “Ode to Billie Joe.” She was one of the original owners of the Phoenix Suns basketball team.
In 1981 she performed a song as part of a TV special “An All-Star Tribute to Mother’s Day.” It would be her last public performance. The following year she attended the Academy of Country Music Awards. After that she pulled down the shades. The public has not seen her since.
In his interview, Hall said, “I can sort of understand why she quit music and went into seclusion. She had a lot of bad memories of the music business. She didn’t like the way things worked with record companies and all that. Didn’t like what she was getting paid.”
Various musicians, collaborators and journalists have tried to track down Bobbie Gentry, who would have turned 82 on July 27 of this year. The one who thinks he came the closest to finding her is Washington Post reporter Neely Tucker. He offered this story (June 2, 2016) :
“Bobbie Gentry lives about a two-hour drive from the site of the Tallahatchie Bridge that made her so famous, in a gated community, in a very nice house that cost about $1.5 million. Her neighbors, some locals and some real estate agents know who she is, although it’s not clear which of her many possible names she goes by.
“Today, computer databases clearly show that perhaps the nation’s most reclusive pop star lives in an 8,000-square-foot house with a great pool not all that far from the old homestead. Real estate agents confirmed it.
“So, yesterday, I found myself looking at a phone number on my computer screen for several seconds. No reporter, to the best of my knowledge, has spoken to Gentry in decades.
“I punched the numbers.
“After a few rings, a pleasant woman’s voice said: ‘Hello.’
“I introduced myself and my newspaper. I said I was looking for the person whose name appears on the property owner’s record.
“There was a dead pause of several seconds. My fingers clenched open and closed.
“‘There’s no one here by that name,’ she said, finally.
“I apologized and started to read back the number, to make sure I had dialed it correctly, and she hung up.
“But there isn’t really any doubt.
“I talked, for about 13 seconds, to Bobbie Gentry.
“Some mysteries can be solved. What Billie Joe and his girlfriend threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? No. That can’t.”
“Known forever as the voice behind the haunting classic ‘Ode to Billie Joe,’ Delta lady Bobbie Gentry is the J.D. Salinger of Deep South pop. She came, burned incredibly bright and disappeared, abandoning the business and declining every interview request for decades since.” (Jeff Myers, Buffalo News, Aug. 6, 2004)
off the leash 