friday, febmary 13. 1976
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page 11
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Rv Rill Roberts
Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women, by Nora
Ephron Alfred A. Knopf, New York, $7.95
Nora Ephron can get away with collecting in a book
these 25 articles she wrote during the early 1970s for'
Esquire, New York and Rolling Stone magazines. But
only because she's such a good writer.
Ephron is a feminist, but she uses the movement as a
vehicle for her excursions Into contemporary history.
Once she gets where site's going, her wit and good sense
make her the best occasionafwrijer we have.
Ephron takes the occasion of the first and last game of
Bemice Gera, the first lady umpire, and turns It into a
moving tale of courage and failure. The career of this
social pioneer was ended when she changed her mind on a
call at second base.
Admits to "rape fantasy"
"Bernice Gera turned out to be only human," Ephron
writes, "which is a luxury pioneers are noi allowed.".
In an article titled "Fantasies," Ephron answers the
question: "Is there sex after liberation?" She admits to
having a recurring rape fantasy, admits'it is unhealthy, but
says it's the only one she has.
"I'm not at all sure I wouldn't rather have an un
healthy sex fantasy than no sex fantasy at all," she writes.
When a writer like Ephron takes on subjects like fem
inine hygiene deodorants or prom queens, it is simply no
contest. She overpowers the retrograde ideas behind such
phenomena just by mentioning them.
Ephron proves she is a capable reporter In "Women in
Israel: The Myth of liberation." She proves she can move
beyond documentation and into political analysis in her
articles on the National Women's Political Caucus, written
during the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
Empathy for women
She combines her reporting skills with her empathy for
women in her articles on Washington D.C. women. "Wash-
Bach performance
is featured Sunday
"The greatest collection of organ music ever
whiten" ia George Ritchie's description of Part III
of Johann Sebastian Bach's Clavierubung, which he
will perform Sunday, Feb. 15 at First Plymouth
Congregational Church, 20th and D streets.
Ritchie, UNL associate professor of organ and
theory, will play the major pieces of this work
during a free public recital at 4 p.m.
The Clavierubung is a four-part collection of
music for various keyboard instruments. Only Part
III is specifically for organ. '
According to Ritchie, Part 111 includes 10 large
and 1 1 small-scale works between its opening pre
lude and closing fugue. He will play only the large
scale pieces.
The music is based on the German Lutheran
Hymns for Die Kyrlo and Gloria and on the six
hymns of Luther's Catechism.
"The organ at First Plymouth is a very Germanic
typa of Instrument and so it is very well suited for
tliis music,"- Ritchie said. "Also, the ch-rch has par
ticykr reverberation characteristics that make it an
Ideal place for this concert." ,
By Bill Roberts
A frequent complaint of those of us in constant con
fusion is that we do not know exactly which state of
mental disarray we are in. Surely there are differences be
tween not knowing where you are, not knowing what you
are talking about, and not knowing what to think,
Recently, I came across a term that m'ay help us out.
It came from the pen of a psychologist, not a poet, but
still it "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a
name." Leon Festinger invented the term in 1957 and
called it "cognitive dissonance"..
The first word comes from cognition, which refers to -thought
in the deepest sense, like thought about philoso
phy, politics or plumbing. Dissonance means lack of har
mony or agreement; discord.
Put them together and you have Festinger's term for
your particular state of confusion when you hold two
opposing ideas at once. A common example concerns
cigarette smoking.
Joe's tune a clunker .
Suppose Joe wants to decide whether to continue or
1 quit smoking. He likes the taste of cigarettes and the way
smoking makes him feel. But he realizes that if he
continues to smoke, his lungs will clog with nicotine and
hell drop dead.
Joe is experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Anyway, that's the definition. But what cognitive dis
sonance really means is that the mind is like a symphony.
When your mind is processing some cognitions that are
truly consonant, it's like an orchestra performing a work
of Beethoven. The aesthetic values of those sflee ting in
stants of clear thought far outweigh any practical results.
But when you mind is trying to muddle through dis
sonant cognitions, it's as if the trumpet and violin sections
traded instruments in the locker room and the guy who
plays the kettle drums showed up drunk.
Most of us probably fall into the second category, and
it's probably a good thing our. collective ' cognitive dis
sonance is not audible. But imagine-if our cognitions
were audible and fairly consonant, what would life be
"like?. ' : ' . . '
Each of us would walk around with an aura of back
ground music surrounding him. Like well-chosen cologne,
it would give you a quick insight into the personality of
the stranger beside you. No more Muzak in the elevators.
Strike up the band v,.
Joe the smoker; his conflicting melodies syncopated
with his wheezing breath, might walk past the presi
dent of the local heart and lung association. His cognitive
dissonance immediately apparent, Joe would discard his
cigarettes and his "I-want-to-smoke" strairi and fall into
harmony with the president's tune. They might strike up a
duet, joine'd occasionally by warbling passersby. . ..
Alas, life is not thus. We find such cognitive resonance
',: in our operas and musical revues, but nowhere else.
But I maintain Festinger's term can have good, prac
tical results, as does every improvement in our language.
The concept can spare us some vulgarity. The next
". time you reprimand someone for his confusion, look
him in the eye, shake his elbow, and say sternly, "Here
now ! Get your song together!" A
GlftfflinilS
v ington is a city of men and the women they married when
they were young," she writes, repeating an adage.
Rose Mary Woods, Martha Mitchell and Barbara
Howar, author of Laughing All the Way, are victims cf the
t city's high-powered politics and machismo, she writes.
, Another type of woman is Julie Nixon Eisenhower,
whom she calls a "chocolate-covered spider." During
Watergate, Julie was the "essence of daughter, a better.
daughter than any of us will ever be; it is almost as if she
is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who
still thinks her father is exactly.what she thought he was
when she was six."
Reading Crazy Salad resurrects characters from a near
but almost dead past. Remember Mrs. Pat Loud? Or
Bobby Riggs? Even the feminist movement is no longer
what it was when some of the articles were written.
But the book doesn't seem like a rehash. Ephron's in
telligence and terrific writing make her articles as fresh
as today's newspaper and worth preserving on a book
shelf.
Qfts8c
Film grimly forecasts Allende's fall
By Diane Wanek
Benefit screenings of Miguel Llttin's highly acclaimed
film, 77 Promised Land, will be today at the Sheldon
Film. Theatre at 3, 7 and 9 p.m. The film's proceeds will
go to the Emergency Committee for the Defense of Latin
American Filmmakers.
The Promised Land is based on historical events during
the 1930s when the world-wide depression created social
and economic upheaval throughout Chile and eventually
led to the establishment qf the first, although short-lived,
socialist republic in the Americas.
Told as an epic ballad incorporating processions, songs,
music, spectacle, myth, legend and symbolism, The
Promised Land follows a group of peasants and workers as
they travel throughout the countryside, looking for food,
work and a piace to iive.
Under the leadership of Jose Duran, they settle on
some unused government land, build their own communi
ty which they name Palmilla and develop it into a
flourishing agricultural cooperative. ' ' '
Soon Chile is "declared a socialist republic, and the
peasant's try to spread the revolution Into the nearby town
of Huique, only to be routed by the military when the
socialist regime falls and the old order is reinstated.
The military then arrives at Palmilla With orders for the
residents to vacate the illegally occupied land. But the
people of Palmilla decide to defend their new homes to
, the death. They are massacred by the army.
The final images of the film are an imaginative projec
tion of the future, when the peasants and workers of Chile
will finally control their destiny. , , .
Although Tlie Promised Land was completed months
before the military coup of Sept. 11, 1973, the film's con
temporary historical parallels are strikingly apparent.
Ironically, many of the peasants who appear in the film
were killed during the recent events in Chile which saw
the overthrow of the socialist Salvador Allende government.
Miguel Littin, the film's director, now is in exile.
Carmsn Bueno, an actress featured in A La Sombra del
Sol and The Promised Land, and Jorge Muller, camera
man, are jailed in'Tres Alamos concentration camp out
side Santiago, Chile.
The Emergency Committee to Defend Latin American
Filmmakers U working to free these and other Latin
American filmmakers.
Tomlin exhibition io open at Sheldon
By Charlie Kris
An exhibition by Bradley Walker Tomlin will open at
the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery Sunday, Feb. 15 and
run until March 14. The display includes 83 paintings
that cover Tomlin's career from 1920 to 1952. ' .
Tomlin's work usually is described as "abstract
expressionism" though his use of colors and a subtle hand ,
often cause disagreement about his definite style.
Bom August 19, 1899, in Syracuse, N.Y., Tomlin .
began his work as a child. He drew constantly but did not
decide to become a painter until high school.
At 15, ho won his first art scholarship to study model
ing in Hugo Gari Wagner's studio. '
When Tomlin was 18, he entered the John Crouso'
College of Fine Arts and majored in painting. His career
as a professional painter began when he was graduated
in 1921.
Tomlin's sophisticated style was nurtured by favorable
reviews and one-man shows in New York City, Paris,
and Woodstock, N.Y. In the late 1930s, he changed his
"reserved, elegant" stylo which characterized his portraits
to try work in the srreal and cubic modes. This evolved
into his latest abstract form that appeared in his last
works from 1946 to 1953. ,
In 1951, Tomlin suffered a heart attack which forced
him to stop painting for several months. He completed
more than 14 paintings before suffering s fatal heart
attack May 11,1953. '
The exhibit is financed by grants from the National.
Endowment, for the Arts, Harry Winston, Inc., The
Friends of IJofstra's Emily Lowe Gallery, The Jos and
Emily Lowe Foundation and the New York State Council
on the Arts.
The paintings are on loan from public and private
galleries and collectors throughout tho nation.