The party's over | The Spectator

Ganging up on Israel

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. At the end of January, the owner of Hull Kingston Rovers — an English rugby club that plays in the multinational Super League — wrote to the Catalans Dragons, a French club in the same competition. He explained that he would sue for damages if Hull experienced any financial loss as a result of the Dragons’ decision to sign the Australian player Israel Folau: ‘For example, if a title sponsor withdraws, or external investment is not secured, or quantifiable reputational damage is caused to the brand of Super League and its members.’ According to one source, ‘nearly all’ the Super League clubs felt the same way.

James Jeffrey

Addicted to Addis

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. In the Entoto hills high above Addis Ababa, the lights of incoming Ethiopian Airlines planes are evenly spaced in the night sky. Behind me in an abandoned restaurant, the DJ cranks it up and the dance floor goes nuts. EDM (Electronic Dance Music), a style popularized at American festivals and raves, has landed in Ethiopia. I’ve been a dance music devotee since college. But when I first visited Ethiopia in 2000, I lost my heart to a different scene: mesinko-playing troubadours who mask political satire in witty innuendo, the hypnotic melodies of Ethio-jazz bands and the traditional shoulder-shaking of iskista dancers.

Bill Kauffman

The remarkable Martha Treichler

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Batavia, New York Shrouded in legend, Black Mountain College was an experimental school outside Asheville, North Carolina. For almost a quarter century (1933-57) it incubated, nurtured and disgorged the holy fools, ragged prophets and pretentious frauds of the American avant-garde and the (in some cases reactionary) counterculture: John Cage, Paul Goodman, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning and Buckminster Fuller, to name a few. Yet for my money, the most remarkable couple to pass through Black Mountain were Bill and Martha (Rittenhouse) Treichler, two farm kids, the former an Iowan, the latter a daughter of Maryland, who met and fell in love at Black Mountain during the 1948-49 school year.

Andrew Stuttaford

Do cry for her, Argentina

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. The odds of becoming a cult figure improve with the speed of departure. Among musicians, Jimi, Jim, Janis, Kurt and Amy played their last notes at 27. By dying at 33 and later becoming the subject of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Eva Perón joined an even more exclusive club. ‘Half a million people kissed the coffin,’ says the Argentine novelist Tomás Eloy Martínez in Santa Evita (1995). ‘A million-and-a-half yellow roses, stocks from the Andes, white carnations, orchids from the Amazon, sweet peas from Lake Nahuel Huapi, and chrysanthemums sent by the emperor of Japan… were thrown from balconies.

Godfrey Elfwick

I fell out with my friend Chrysanthia over abortion

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Portland, Oregon My pansexual cisgender nonbinary friend Chrysanthia (pronouns: she/her/they/thym) called to tell me she had some exciting news, and would I meet her for a coffee? Off I went, wondering what her announcement could be. As we cradled Espresso Loco’s hot and eco-friendly cups of locally sourced, organic Locolatte, Chrysanthia could contain her excitement no longer. She withdrew from her hemp satchel a used pregnancy test and thrust the urine-encrusted paddle into my face. Once my eyes had stopped stinging, I could see that it was positive. ‘OMG, are you serious?!’ I asked, my eyes filling with hot tears. ‘Yes!’ she cried ecstatically.

Life