Author: JWF

Tidy Tidbits: Guthrie, Wilson & Itani

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It is high summer in Florida and that means temperatures of 90 to 92 every day with overnight lows never below 75.  For some of us, like me, that means more time inside; for the lizards among us, it’s great for basking, or baking, in the sun.  So I strive to take advantage of the smaller crowds with movies and museum visits, trips to the theater, and sampling new restaurants.  This past week we did nearly all of these.

FOLKSY AMERICANA

 

On Tuesday, we saw the traveling musical, Woody Sez:  The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie.”  The play opened in Edinburgh in 2007 and actually has been performed more often in Europe than in the U.S.  It is more like a concert with lots of narrative of Woody’s life using Guthrie’s own words.  Four actors comprise the cast with a whole host of musical instruments from guitar to banjo to mandolin to harmonica and more.  I found it a bit slow initially, but then I was captured by the music and the story of Woody’s rambling and roving life, full of social protest and a desire to record the hardship and determination of the farmers and workers of the Dust Bowl era.  The key to its success is its sparkling, loose-limbed star, creator and director, David Lutken.  It is clear he is convinced of the importance of Guthrie’s legacy.  For an interview with Mr. Lutken, see:  http://onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/woodysez.html

 

AT THE MOVIES

Woody Guthrie shone a spotlight on hard times and harsh conditions with his music.  Brian Wilson’s musical creativity set him apart, but personal demons, seeming madness, and unappreciative relatives and friends kept him from being fully recognized for that talent.  Love and Mercy, based on Wilson’s life, uses two actors to portray him, Paul Dano as the young musician and songwriter, and John Cusack as the middle-aged Brian under guard and coping with illness and bad choices.  Paul Giamatti plays a very convincing manipulative doctor and Elizabeth Banks is Melinda, a beautiful savior.  There are a few slow points, but overall it’s an absorbing, albeit not happy, film.  And for fans of the 60’s and the Beach Boys, packed with their songs.

INTERNMENT:  WHAT I’M READING

I was not aware that the Canadian government had also put individuals of Japanese descent into camps during WWII. But they did, some 21,000 of them.  Frances Itani has written a meditative novel Requiem, about an artist’s experience as a young boy in one of these camps.  It is 1997 and artist Bin is driving across Canada from Toronto to visit family on the west coast.  His wife died recently and he spends the drive reflecting on their life together, his boyhood and his son Greg’s upbringing.  It is a novel of relationships—fathers and sons and husbands and wives—looking back in time.  Itani has said that she enjoys researching her books and she spent six years reading source material and interviewing people before writing this. I also learned that her husband spent part of his childhood in a camp which answered my question about whether she had any personal connection with these events.

Tidy Tidbits: Spies, Tribes & Trills

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AT THE MOVIES

“Madcap,” ” hilarious” and “fun” are all terms I’d use to describe just released espionage comedy, Spy.  The women are at the top of their game—mostly—and there is plenty of foreign intrigue and too many bodies getting shot to count.  The wonderful cast is led by Melissa McCarthy as Susan Cooper, a basement CIA analyst who inveigles her way into the field, supported by a tough deputy CIA director, Alison Janney (think CJ on West Wing,) and colleague and agent, Miranda Hart, better known to many viewers as Chummie in Call the Midwife.  Rose Byrne plays the prime target while the distaff side is represented by Jude Law and Jason Statham.  It’s perfect summer fare.

NOVEL DELIGHT

Heaps of laudatory adjectives, “enthralling, exhilarating, arresting, fiercely intelligent, steamy, compelling” have been applied to Lily King’s novel, Euphoria, and perhaps that’s why I had avoided reading it until now.  But read it I did and found it pretty much lived up to the praise.  And what a vivid cover and enticing title!  Using Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson’s time in the field in New Guinea in 1932 as a jumping off point, King has created a novel that celebrates anthropology (the title refers to a certain pleasure in the work), raises questions about the methods and motives used to study the primitive tribes there, and sharply delineates the amalgam of professional competition and jealousy, sexual tension, and friendship that unites and divides this talented trio.

The Mead character, Nell Stone, is married to Schuyler Fenwick, known as Fen, but is strongly attracted to Blankson, the younger anthropologist modeled on Bateson, and he to her.  The point of view shifts from the narrative third person to Blankson recalling events retrospectively to passages from Nell’s field notebooks.  It is worth remembering that these are characters and the story here is not real life.  Euphoria was selected as one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year, 2014.  Definitely recommend it!

As for Lily King, I was not familiar with her work, but have since learned she lives in Yarmouth, Maine and has written four novels, each of which has been cited for some award or other.  Here’s an interview with her from the Boston Globe.  Now I need to go back and find her earlier books.

SAVORING SARASOTA

The snow birds have gone home, the spring vacationers have departed the beach and traffic is down to a trickle.  But, for those of us still here, June abounds with delights both culinary and musical.  For two weeks, many Sarasota restaurants participate in Savor Sarasota Restaurant Week and offer three-course lunch and dinner menus at $15 and $29 respectively. These are seriously good deals!

We enjoyed lunch at Louie’s Modern (trendy cuisine such as kale salad with grilled salmon) and dinners at Bjou Café (scrumptious shrimp and crab bisque to start!) and Miguel’s (traditional fare with a French accent including plump snails in a gruyere cream sauce).  I’ve been impressed each meal with both the menu choices and the portion sizes—no stinting on quality or quantity.

Also in June, young musicians from conservatories across the country (who’ve competed for one of the coveted 60 slots) come to Sarasota.  They take part in master classes with noted musicians and performers and together present a series of public concerts of chamber and symphonic works.  All under the aegis of the Sarasota Orchestra.  We have been to one chamber concert already and are gearing up for two more.  Especially memorable was flutist Carol Wincenc’s performance last Friday evening.

Tidy Tidbits: Birds, Beaches & Books

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NATURE

My sister and brother-in-law, an avid birder and an apprentice birder (self-named), visited us this week and the focus was on birds.  It’s the off season for good sightings, but my sister kept a list of birds seen in Florida anyway.  I think she got to forty before they departed.  Lots of shore birds as we had breakfast at the beach cafe, walked the beach, strolled the loop at Leffis Key, and then made a before-dinner excursion to the tip of Longboat Key.  For this last, we were on a quest to see a roseate spoonbill.  I have actually seen these delectable-looking pink birds twice now, but she had not.

Unbeknownst to me, my spouse had packed a cooler with champagne glasses and a bottle of rose’ champagne to toast the sighting of said spoonbill.  No luck, lots of terns and gulls, but no spoonbills.  We returned home for drinks on the porch, the rose’ now having been poured, and, with binoculars in hand, spotted the usual egrets and, noteworthy for me, a wood stork, a bird I’d never seen before.  Then, lo and behold, my sister spied a bit of pink fluff in the water and we had our roseate spoonbill!  We kidded my husband about arranging it, but it was sheer happenstance.

www.carolinabirdclub.org
www.carolinabirdclub.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier in the week, we made the trek down to Myakka River State Park where we walked the nature trail and across their short, but high canopy walk.  The suspended walkway is 25 feet above ground and at the end you climb to 75 feet for an expansive view of field and trees.  It was clear and for us earth-bound creatures a rare view.

Closer to home, we explored the small, but lovely, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, right in downtown Sarasota.  Their specialty is epiphytes and the conservatory had many, many examples of these dependent plants including lovely orchids along with some bromeliads (pineapple, for example).

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Outside, there’s a children’s rainforest area, a canopy walk, and a meandering path down to Sarasota Bay along which we studied the white ibis pictured here.  We had the added good fortune of being able to view their annual juried photography show, “Found in Florida,” which we all loved.

READING

Having just completed David McCullough’s new biography, The Wright Brothers, I am more closely observing birds in flight, something Wilbur spent many hours engaged in as he and Orville designed their early airplanes.  Hard working, quite modest, and very determined, with a smart sister who both encouraged and sustained them, the Wright Brothers persevered in isolation to get it right.  They were not showmen like some of the more daring French aviators, but rather avoided the limelight as long as possible.  Neither brother ever married and their sister, Kate, only did so late in life.  They all lived together in Dayton, Ohio, with their father, a traveling preacher.

McCullough’s writing is solid and matter of fact, making for a straightforward account of the brothers’ journey from being bicycle builders to inventors of successful flying machines.  I’m certain I will be more appreciative (perhaps “awestruck” is a better word choice) at the marvels of air travel the next time I fly.

 

[Note:  All photos are the author’s work unless otherwise indicated.]

On the Road: Here & There

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NEW YORK

The streets of the Big  Apple were thick with tourists and the weather was sunny and warm. A pleasant change of pace from our quiet island life.  We walked briskly down 6th Avenue, joined the High Line at 23rd Street, and then decamped to Chelsea Market, an adventure in food and eating we had not previously explored.  Lunch at Cull and Pistol Oyster Bar was a savory salmon burger for me and a very large bowl of gumbo for my spouse—just perfect.  We continued our walk through the angled tangled streets of the West Village ending up in Washington Square Park.  On the way, we paused for some serious browsing, and of course a few purchases, at Three Lives, my current favorite NY bookstore.  Have to qualify that since I have favorite bookstores here at home, in Maine and elsewhere!

Most of the weekend was spent on the green lawn of suburban Connecticut enjoying the bright sun and the crisp air and celebrating our granddaughter’s birthday.  At three, she fully gets and embraces the concepts of birthday (“I’m not two, I’m not four, I’m three!”) and party.  She and her young friends romped and ran and had a very lively time.  It was an afternoon of balloons and bikes, of ice cream cake and candy, of bubbles and chalk.  What could be better?

On Tuesday evening,back in New York,  we had the extreme pleasure of seeing Helen Mirren in The Audience.  She was marvelous, effortlessly capturing the novice queen in black with Churchill, her first prime minister, and then moving forward and back in time over the years and the prime ministers, aging to how the queen looks today and then reverting.  I thought Churchill and Harold Wilson were particularly notable, although the scene with Tony Blair contains a wonderful moment of contemporary humor.  The accents can make it hard to get all the dialogue, but the theater does display a transcription which, if you are seated close enough, is most helpful.

SARASOTA THEATER

Last week we immersed ourselves in the music of Frank Loesser at Asolo Rep’s production of the new musical, Luck Be a Lady.  Loesser wrote words and music for more than 700 songs and a number of Broadway musicals including Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business...  Familiar favorite songs include:  “Standing on the Corner” and “Once in Love with Amy.”  This play does not have a standard plot, but rather follows two couples, one older and one young, as they re-visit an old ballroom.  It was a most pleasant afternoon.

RECENT READING

I quickly read poet Elizabeth Alexander’s new memoir, The Light of the World, about the life and sudden death of her 50 year old husband, artist and chef, Ficre Ghebreyesus.  Unlike some memoirs about the death of a spouse, the tone is not unrelieved sorrow, but rather the sadness is tempered by her account of his joy in living, his nurturing love for their two sons, and his experience as a child of war and an immigrant several times over.  I learned much about his homeland Eritrea, his African roots and her African American heritage.  As you might expect, her writing is lyrical, almost musical at times.

[Source of image:  www.gtkp.com]