Carolina Moments: January Diversions

January is a winter month, and very much so this year for much of the U.S. We cocoon more, spend more time reading and watching TV, and only venture out when the weather moderates. Here you’ll find a thoughtful novel, a comforting drama series, good food in Cary, and reflections on a noted chef.

NOVEL OF THE WEEK

Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett

Author Haslett (hatchettebookgroup.com)

Prize-winning fiction writer, Adam Haslett is the author of short stories and several novels.  I found his 2016 novel, Imagine Me Gone about depression within a family, compelling and sensitive.  His latest novel, Mothers and Sons, might simplistically be dubbed a novel about gay love.  But it is so much more than that.  It’s a novel of feelings, nuanced relationships, estrangement, violence, and secrets.  

Peter Fischer is a 40ish immigration lawyer in New York, dedicated to his work almost to the point of obsession.  He deals with individuals traumatized by the violence or abuse they experienced in their home country, who seek to stay legally in the U.S.  Peter has little social life outside the job and tepid relationships with his work colleagues.  He is estranged from his mother Ann and seldom in contact with his sister Liz.

Ann was an Episcopal minister who left her husband, Peter’s father, for another woman.  Together she and Clare founded and built a retreat center for women in rural Vermont.  In dealing with the case of Vasel, a young gay man from Albania, Peter finds himself reliving and agonizing anew over his adolescent friendship with his classmate Jared.  Haunted by his reflections, he at last visits his mother to explore their mutual past.

This is a deliberate novel with perhaps too many immigration cases leading up to Peter’s focus on Vasel.  Vasel’s elusiveness and withholding of details push Peter to review his own relationships and actions of twenty years ago.  Meanwhile, his mother misses her son but is examining her own love for Clare, while trying to shove aside her attraction to another community member.  The events of twenty years ago don’t really feature in her memory until Peter comes to visit.  

This novel probes its characters’ innermost feelings. They are complex individuals whose vulnerability and weaknesses the author shares. Chapters occasionally alternate between present day and Peter’s memories of his teenage years.  Recommended for fans of literary fiction!  (~JWFarrington)

COMFORT VIEWING

All Creatures Great and Small Season 5 (PBS Masterpiece)

Helen, Jimmy, & James (parade.com)

If you’re looking for something soothing and somewhat sentimental, Season 5 Of All Creatures Great and Small may be just right.  It takes place in a somewhat simpler time, albeit marked by James’ and Tristan’s war service and the anguished worry and waiting of their family back home. 

Quirky veterinary intern Richard Carmody provides additional color while security warden Mr. Bosworth’s gruff and exacting exterior masks a soft center.  Baby Jimmy ‘s cuteness appeals to everyone, and Helen and Mrs. Hall capably maintain the household and keep Siegried and everyone on an even keel.  It’s a heartwarming series with moments of poignance and levity.  Recommended!

ABROAD AT HOME: LUNCH IN CARY

Pro’s Epicurean Market & Cafe

Colorful olives

The weather on Saturday had warmed up enough that we walked downtown, by the park, and farther on to try Pro’s Epicurean. It’s a brightly lit, attractive restaurant that also functions as a market for wines, vinegars and their dishes.  The cuisine is a mix of French and Italian with charcuterie and cheeses, crepes, salads, pastas, meat and seafood entrees, and a host of specialty sandwiches.  The staff were friendly and very welcoming.  

Between us, we sampled the olive medley, the country pate, and a best-to-be-hungry sausage, peppers, onion, and melted mozzarella Raphael sandwich.  The sandwiches can be had on a baguette, seeded rye, or a soft roll; the Raphael would have been easier to eat had it been on a roll.   Wines, beer, mixed and soft drinks, and creative mocktails are also on the menu.  In warmer weather, you can eat out on their patio.  Recommended!

REMEMBERING CHEF CHARLES PHAN

The Chief Penguin and I enjoyed many delicious Vietnamese meals at Charles Phan’s Slanted Door restaurant in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Some of my favorite dishes were the imperial spring rolls, his signature shaking beef cubes, and cellophane noodles with crabmeat.  He was a pioneer who gave Vietnamese cuisine new prominence on the food scene.

We also got to know Charles a bit as he created and oversaw the first dining venues at the then newly open California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  Over the years, he opened satellite locations of Slanted Door along with developing other restaurant concepts.  Covid closed the Slanted Door in San Francisco, but other locations exist in Napa and elsewhere.  Sadly, Charles Phan died of a heart attack at 62 this past week.  We have fond memories of his cooking.

Note: Header photo of January sunrise and olive medley ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

Carolina Comments: Remembering & Reading

A SONG FOR THAT TIME AND OURS

Peter, Paul and Mary

It is not an understatement to say again that we live in interesting times.  We are about a week away from having the first convicted felon in the White House as president.  Much of the Los Angeles area is being decimated by catastrophic wildfires, and thousands of folks have evacuated from homes that may no longer exist.  Meanwhile, the Midwest and the East have been buffeted by snow and ice and a blast of arctic air reaching into the South.   Even snowfall south of the Mason-Dixon Line!

Peter, Paul and Mary (lmtonline.com)

Peter Yarrow, tenor in the folk trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, died this week at 86.  The group had many hits during the 1960’s and 70’s including Leaving on a Jet Plane and Puff the Magic Dragon, and I was a big fan. Probably their most memorable song and the one that resonates still is the lovely and haunting Blowin’ in the Wind.”  It was composed and recorded by Bob Dylan, but the trio’s recording quickly surpassed his in sales.  You can watch Peter, Paul & Mary sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” in this video from 1963.  Note the words and how the quest for freedom and justice for all remains a work in progress. 

In an interview from two years ago, Peter Yarrow relates that Harry Belafonte invited them to sing at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.  Yarrow eloquently expresses what their intent was in singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  It was not to entertain but to share something about the times they were living in—before the Civil Rights movement really took hold and before the anti-war (Vietnam War) movement.  R.I.P. Peter Yarrow. (Thanks to Dan Rather for providing the YouTube links in his weekly e-mail letter.)

RECENT READING

Parallel Lives

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante

(wikipedia.com)

Author and Bard College professor Lucy Sante outwardly lived her life for 66 years as Luc Sante.  Inwardly, she led a parallel life as a woman.  When she saw herself pictured as she might look as a woman, she took the plunge and began revealing her “true” female identity to close friends and colleagues. 

Her memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, is on several best books of the year lists.  Beautifully written, it is both sensitive and direct.  Sante doesn’t stint on the details and experiences of her teens and and through her 20’s.  She consciously performed and presented herself as male, married twice, and partook of drugs and alcohol while exploring and enjoying the bohemian music and arts scene in New York.  When she did transition, she was deeply committed in a long-term relationship with her female partner Eva.  She freely shares her fears and doubts along the way, while at the same time acknowledging how very right this transition was.

Although some readers will be unfamiliar with her literary and other references, her work is a compelling and revealing addition to the literature about gender transitions.  (~JWFarrington)

18th Century Midwife Extraordinaire

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Ballard (thedailygardener.org)

Martha Ballard was a dedicated midwife living in Hallowell, Maine in the late 18th century.  She would not be known to us today were it not for the handwritten diary she kept.  She made almost daily entries about the weather, where she went, and the babies she was called out to deliver at any hour of the day or night.  As a midwife, she was one of the few, if not the only, woman who could be called on in court to testify to the details of an unmarried woman’s pregnancy and childbirth.  Scholar Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Martha called A Midwife’s Tale.  (I own that work but have not yet read it.)

This novel, Frozen River, is an intimate depiction of a marriage, of childbirth with all its attendant messiness, and of daily family life in wintry Maine when the Kennebec River is iced over.  It is also a murder mystery.  Rebecca Foster claims two men raped her.  When one of the supposed perpetrators is found dead in unusual circumstances, there are numerous court cases, and Martha Ballard and her diary play a role.  

When Ariel Lawhon learned about Martha Ballard, she was motivated to write this novel.  It is one of the best historical fiction works I’ve ever read.  As Lawhon makes clear in her Author’s Note, the events in the novel are inspired by rather than based on Ballard’s life.  She adjusted some dates, invented some situations, and presented Martha as what she thought she would be like as a person.  

I found it totally absorbing and an engaging multi-layered story about the role of women, seeking justice, and New England’s early court system.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

READING: WHAT’S NEXT

These titles are on my list waiting to be read.  Watch for comments on them in future blog posts.

The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths (Book 6 in the crime series featuring English archaeologist Ruth Galloway)

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley (a memoir about a close friend’s suicide)

The Wildes by Louis Bayard (historical novel about the family of Oscar Wilde)

Note: Header photo of winter in Wake County, early Jan. 2025, from wral.com.

Carolina Comments: 2024 Favorite Books & More

READING: MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

On average, I read a book or more a week, a mix of literary fiction, thoughtful nonfiction, and the occasional light stuff.  Here are the twelve books I liked the most this year along with the covers of some of them.

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray (historical novel about Labor Secretary & Mainer Frances Perkins; her homestead in Damariscotta has just been named a national historic landmark)

Challenger by Adam Higginbotham (nonfiction, deconstruction of a space shuttle disaster)

Codename Charming by Lucy Parker (just for fun romance between a body guard & a personal assistant to a royal couple)

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear (the last Maisie Dobbs mystery)

Forty Autumns by Nina Willner (family memoir, living on both sides of the Berlin Wall)

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan (Ku Klux Klan dominance in 1920’s)

Gray Matters by Theodore Schwartz (nonfiction, comprehensive brain anatomy by a neurosurgeon)

James by Percival Everett (re-telling of Huckleberry Finn story from slave Jim’s perspective)

Long Island by Colm Toibin (sequel novel to his Brooklyn)

Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson (memoir by this Supreme Court Justice)

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Pulitzer Prize winner, post-Civil War novel)

An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin (memoir of her & Dick Goodwin’s involvement in 1960’s national politics with JFK and LBJ)

WATCHING: MOVIES CLASSIC & CONTEMPORARY

White Christmas

In honor of the season and because, surprise, we had never seen the entire film, the Chief Penguin and I watched White Christmas.  Two men and two women, in a break from their usual singing and dancing commitments, take the train from Miami to Vermont to a charming inn to see and enjoy snow.  The inn is being overseen by their retired Army general friend and is suffering from a lack of guests.  Principals Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, along with Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, decide to bring their entire show to the inn.  

Set in 1954, it’s sentimental, patriotic, and dated, but also fun.  Songs are interspersed throughout with masterful dancing by Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen, and finally, near the end when there’s snow outside, you get to hear “White Christmas” in Bing’s mellow tones.

Anora (Prime Video or Apple TV, $19.99)

Ivan & Ani (phoenixfilmfestival.com)

As my regular readers know, the Chief Penguin and I try each year to see the most noted films and particularly those that have a chance of being nominated for an Oscar.  Anora showed up on a list of five possible nominees and, since it was available online, we watched it.  Not our usual fare, for sure, but worth it for the stellar performance by Mikey Madison as Anora or Ani, as she prefers.  Also of note is Russian actor Mark Aleksandrovich as Ivan.

Ani, a stripper in a gentlemen’s club, lives a hard life in a downtrodden Brooklyn neighborhood. When she engages the attentions of Ivan, son of a Russian oligarch who asks her to be exclusive, she snaps up this chance for the high life.  How this Cinderella tale plays out once Ivan’s family knows about them is action-filled with an ending rife with ambiguity and open to multiple interpretations. The film is billed as a comedy, but I didn’t find it especially funny; expect lots of foul language and sex.

Note: Header photo of bookcases ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.) Book covers all from Amazon.com except for Lovely One from Random House.

Manhattan: Food, Art, & Drama

SPLURGE-WORTHY DINING

The Modern

In a delayed celebration of our anniversary, we dined at The Modern, the restaurant next to the Museum of Modern Art.  With a table by the window, we looked out at MoMA’s sculpture garden and December’s bare trees. Lunch was a three-course prix fixe. Everything was beautifully plated and delicious.  I opted for the cold lobster salad with citrus and burrata followed by sea bass with some agnolotti and then a cheese course. 

The Chief Penguin had hamachi over basil to start and then roast chicken on a sweet potato cake followed an elegant lime parfait.  Service was impeccable, and we enjoyed chatting with our young waitress.  This is a wonderful venue for special occasions!

MATISSE AND MORE

Hanging Out at MoMA

The other morning, we walked down to W. 53rd Street and spent a most pleasant hour exploring several exhibits.  We headed first to the 3rd floor for a look at Matisse’s Cut-Outs: A Celebration, works from late in his career.  These paper cutouts are amazing.  His paper “stained glass” window, Christmas Eve (Nuit de Noel) has vibrant colors, but the glass version he had crafted is most impressive and so luminous. 

Christmas Eve, Matisse, in glass

Also of note are the figures he did for his swimming pool.  Rather than add a swimming pool to his home, he created blue leggy figures and adhered them to a band of paper around the perimeter of his dining room.  The overall effect was feeling like being in the water.

The Swimming Pool, Matisse, 1962
Rothko, No. 16, 1958 (Black, Red, Brown)

Leaving Matisse behind, we looked at some works from the permanent collection from around the world.  I was struck by the muted intensity of Mark Rothko’s No. 16 (Red, Brown, and Black) and by the mysterious figures underlying Blue Composition, c.1966-68, by Ethiopian artist Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian.  There appears to be both a horse and the snout of an alligator or crocodile. 

And No Shade but His Shade by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi is a compelling work all in browns including a man’s head with a bird perched on his scalp.

LIVE DRAMA

Left on Tenth (James Earl Jones Theatre)

I read Delia Ephron’s memoir, Left on Tenth, when it came out and was pleased when I saw that she was writing a script and working with Good Wife TV star Julianna Margulies.  The Chief Penguin and I went to the play and enjoyed it immensely.  The cast is small, just four people; Margulies and Peter Gallagher as the leads, two others who play cameo parts, and two dogs.  It is a story of newfound love, but it’s also about serious illness, specifically leukemia.  (A variety of that same disease took the life of Delia’s sister Nora.)

While one might expect this to be a depressing drama, it is not.  Yes, there are sad and tense moments, but there is joy and lightness.  The staging consists of a simple set, minor costume changes, and creative lighting and projection to change the mood or the season.  Margulies carries the work, projecting a full range of emotions, while Peter Francis James in brief roles as a friend, a gruff doctor, and a waiter adds a bit of humor and dance. 

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.) Header photo of trees for sale along 3rd Avenue.