Author: JWF

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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DINING ON THE BEACH

A venue for splurges, Beach Bistro in Holmes Beach has an unbeatable setting—literally on the beach—and a dining room that is charming even when filled to capacity.  And this chef delivers.  The food is delicious, something that isn’t always paired with a fabulous view.  We were with good friends and had a table almost at the window, perfect for watching the rolling waves and marveling at the tangerine sunset.  Especially tasty were the roast scallops in a bouillabaisse sauce and the spiny lobster done like escargots with a pinch of sautéed spinach.

MUSIC CONVERSATIONS

There seems to be a focus on opera in the Music Mondays series this year.  This past week we had the pleasure of hearing from Joseph Volpe, former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.  Mr. Volpe spent his entire career there beginning as an apprentice carpenter and then working his way up the trade ladder to master carpenter and then to assistant manager and so on.  As a child, he spent hours listening to opera recordings with his grandmother.  This, coupled with a bent for things mechanical, helps explain his unusual career path.  It was informative to hear his observations on working with the various singers and how he negotiated with them and their agents to determine what operas might be in the next season’s offerings.  Now retired, Mr. Volpe lives in the Sarasota area and just agreed to take on an interim leadership role with the Sarasota Ballet.

READING THE MORBID

Death is high on the bestseller charts this season.  Years ago, surgeon Sherwin Nuland, now deceased, wrote a fascinating book entitled How We Die, and I had the honor of hosting him for a lecture in San Francisco.  More recently, Atul Gawande, one of my favorite New Yorker staff writers and also a physician, gave us Being Mortal, a compelling and thought-provoking account of end-of life stories and how families and physicians either ignore, or don’t make the effort to understand, what the dying patient would like.  This book was enriched by Gawande’s inclusion of his own father’s last illness.

The newest books detail the untimely deaths of individuals who are far too young.  When Breath Becomes Air is Paul Kalanithi’s account of his battle with Stage 4 lung cancer.  A neurosurgeon in his late thirties, Kalanithi faces and describes his transition from doctor to patient.  He was someone who had a lifelong curiosity about death and what might be most memorable here are his ponderings about the meaning of life, what makes for a good life, and the decision to create new life, as he and his wife have a child after his diagnosis.  For more, here’s an interview he did in 2014, the year before he died.

The Iceberg by Marion Coutts is the wrenching account of her writer husband Tom Lubbock’s decline and then death after he is diagnosed with a brain tumor.  As her spouse begins losing words, their young son Ev (initially 18 months old) is embracing the world and words as he acquires language.  Coutts is an artist and I am finding her style somewhat too theatrical (who am I to judge, really, since I have never been in her shoes?), but believable nonetheless.  In some ways, it’s the harder book for me.

WHODUNIT?

As a change of pace, I’ve been mildly diverted by Walter Walker’s novel, Crime of Privilege.  Although the book cover reviews call it a thriller, that’s overstating the case.  It’s really a story of a murder investigation by a young assistant DA, set on Cape Cod in the context of the wealthy and powerful Gregory family who can silence people and pressure the police.  George Becket, the lawyer, has a guilty conscience over his own inaction years before in the face of a crime in Palm Beach and wonders if his life and position have all been a set-up.  The precipitating events are clear echoes of those involving the Kennedys.

COLORING FUN!

I included these mostly for Sally and to show the variety of images one can color.

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Tidy Tidbits: Stage & Page

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ON THE STAGE

The theater offerings in Sarasota are so well done and so polished that you almost don’t need to go to New York. This week we saw a stunningly good performance of Robert Schenkkan play, All the Way, at the Asolo.  I didn’t know of it before (not having followed Broadway closely in the past), but it was the Tony Award winning play of 2014.  It focuses on Lyndon Johnson’s presidency from immediately after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to LBJ’s election 11 months later.  Detailing Johnson’s determination to get a Civil Rights bill enacted, it is a linguistically colorful and dramatic account of all of the bullying, badgering, flattering and dealing that was required with stakeholders  as various as Martin Luther King and J. Edgar Hoover to the Southern Democrats in the House and Senate.  It was a turbulent period and timely in light of today’s discussions of racial profiling and the Black Lives Matter initiative.

As as a pre-Valentine treat, we enjoyed Living on Love, a musical romp about two self-centered aging celebrities, a flamboyant maestro and an equally narcissistic diva, long married to each other. Enter their ghost writers, an aspiring male novelist and an equally ambitious (for 1957) female editor, and you have conflict, comedy, and love.  Added in are the two male house staff whose Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine is a hoot!  At the end, besides singing and dancing, they offer up a revelation of their own.  Sheer fun!

BOOK REPORT

I admire Lauren Groff’s craft.  She is a creative writer and her staccato prose is full of picturesque allusions.  I read the first half of Fates and Furies, the part that is from playwright Lotto’s perspective, but then I abandoned the book after a few pages of Mathilde’s side of things.  I just didn’t care enough about these two individuals and their friends or their marriage to persevere.  It wasn’t fun nor, for me, rewarding.

On the other hand, I’m finding Beryl Markham’s West with the Night fascinating.  It’s a memoir, but according to the 2013 introduction by Sara Wheeler, a highly selective, edited one.  Markham had three husbands, but there’s nary a mention of any of them, and Wheeler states some events didn’t happen or have been altered.

Although Markham was a pioneering aviator, the book is primarily about her unconventional life in British East Africa (now Kenya) as a young child, as a racehorse trainer, and later as a mail pilot and tracker of elephants for hunters.  She was raised by her father, roamed the wilds with the natives, and learned to ride and hunt.  Originally published in 1942, the book was somewhat lost due to the war; when it was re-issued in 1983, Markham was still alive and the book had a surge of popularity.  She’s a lovely writer and the attention it got is well deserved!  It could easily be paired with one of Alexandra Fuller’s memoirs about her own haphazard upbringing in Africa.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Header image:  valentine2015s.blogspot.com

Tidy Tidbits: Diversions

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COLORING CRAZE CONTINUES

I knew that public libraries had signed on to the coloring craze for adults, but I was surprised to learn (thanks to my younger sister) that research libraries have joined in with a sort of challenge this week. Specifically, they are offering up images from their special collections for anyone to download and color, with the hope that the colorers will then upload their completed pages to Facebook or other social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections. Really nifty idea! It plays into the fascination with coloring and exposes a wider group of people to the treasures in these collections. Participating libraries include the organizer, New York Academy of Medicine, along with Biodiversity Heritage Library,  New York Public Library, Baylor University, University of North Carolina and several others. The contest ends February 5th, but I’d be willing to guess you can still find the PDFs after that date. Sharpen your pencils!

YOUNG MUSICIANS TO WATCH
We had the pleasure, and a pleasure it was, to see and hear sister and brother violist and violinist Elizabeth Beilman and Benjamin Beilman.  They are charming conversationalists and talented performers. Elizabeth was principal violist for the Sarasota Orchestra for two years and recently moved to Salt Lake City to join the Utah Symphony. She’s a graduate of Juilliard. Her brother, Benjamin, is part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is also pursuing a career as a soloist. He’s a graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Since childhood, they have played together many times and were totally in sync in the several lovely duets they offered us.

It was interesting to hear Elizabeth say that while she initially played violin into high school (beginning at age 5), she ultimately found the viola more to her liking and more intellectually stimulating. Both of them enjoy playing chamber music and stressed how important it was both there and in an orchestra to be very aware of the other players. I also learned that Elizabeth filled in for a violist in Maine one summer at the Bay Chamber series in Rockport (concerts I have enjoyed) which solidified her switch to viola and brought her a very noted teacher.

EATING AROUND
We’ve recently tried two new (new to us) restaurants for lunch, one in Sarasota and the other in Bradenton. Duval’s in downtown Sarasota specializes in seafood and offers a number of tasty and inexpensive lunchtime specials, including a soup/salad/half sandwich option. I sampled the Caesar salad and turkey sandwich (a very large half on a baguette) and my spouse devoured his gazpacho and Caesar salad. Service was friendly and swift, especially considering how busy they were. Good thing I made a reservation!

We also met friends at the Bradenton outpost of Cedar Reef Fish Camp. Located in a strip mall not far from an I-75 exit, but decorated as befits its name, it was perfect for the Pennsylvanians en route to Captiva and surprisingly delicious! Two of us had the daily special of cedar planked salmon (served with rice and some sautéed squash and red peppers) and the others enjoyed the crab cake sandwich and the fish and chips. If it were closer to home, we’d eat there more often!

Header image:  Page from Color Me Stress-Free

Tidy Tidbits: Tides & Titles

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WORDS ON WEATHER

Hunkering Down

Last weekend our friends and family cocooned in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York during winter storm Jonas.  We watched from afar, thanks to the Weather Channel and the Web, almost gleeful that we were here in Florida.  But, like men’s sympathetic pregnancies, we hunkered down too—staying indoors, feasting on forbidden foods (a luscious strip steak!), and savoring hot soup.  After all, outside was only 50 degrees with a cold stiff wind and white caps on the bay!

Minus Tides

Living on the edge of said bay, we get to observe the daily and seasonal variation of the tides.  The changes over the course of a typical day are not usually extreme, but the other morning I noticed that it was low tide and we were getting a “mud flats” effect.  This is unusual for us and it got me to wondering about the tide levels.  I checked the newspaper and the low tide that morning for just before 8:00 am was a negative .6 feet.  Getting even more curious, I did a bit of research (thank you, Google!) and learned that there is a mean low tide number for each area that is considered zero; high and low tides are measured up or down against this.   So my minus six meant that this tide was half a foot lower than the mean low tide!  Hence the mud, hence more birds at the water’s edge.

And since the tides are governed partly by the moon, this week’s very low tide was associated with a gorgeous buttery-colored full moon.  My citizen science colleagues in California were always keen to be observing life in the tidal areas during minus low tides and scheduled outings with our volunteers for those dates, even if it meant being on the water at 5:00 or 6:00 am.

TITLES STACKED UP

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As usual, I have too many books waiting to be read, but that only means that I’ll never lack for reading material!  Here is a small selection of those waiting in the wings.

Expatriate Lives by Janice Y.K.  Lee.  (A much touted new novel by the author of The Piano Teacher.)

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.  (I’ve put off long enough reading this highly praised novel from the author of The Monsters of Templeton.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  (The latest novel from the author of Olive Kittredge, one of my favorite books.)

West with the Night by Beryl Markham.  (A memoir by an early aviator, this will be a re-read for me for the local book group.  I first read it many years ago with the Penn book group.)

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr.  (From the author of several raw, lay-it-bare memoirs, this book supposedly informs the reader how to create a memoir.)

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  (A pass along from my sister and an important contribution to the national discussion about race in America.)

POSTSCRIPT

I also want to report that I finished A Master Plan for Rescue and it was wonderful!  There’s a parallel story about a passenger on the ill-fated and unwelcome ship, St. Louis, and this man intersects with the boy Jack in ways that are initially amusing and touching and ultimately, life-changing.