Category: Memoirs

Tidy Tidbits: Winter Pastimes

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MOVIES—MEN AT WORK, PHYSICS & MUSIC

Oppenheimer ($5.99 on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, et al)

Einstein & Oppenheimer (Digital Spy)

Oppenheimer, one of the big films of 2023, is an almost mesmerizing portrayal of one individual’s huge impact on history.  Physicist Oppenheimer was a complex man and an intriguing one.  Brilliance, coupled with ego and drive, propelled him in overseeing the development of the atomic bomb.  This invention led directly to the end of World War II and, initially, accolades for Oppenheimer.  To what extent, Oppenheimer carefully considered the level of destruction use of the bomb would wreak is a question one can debate.  

Several years after the war, he was accused of being a Communist and a security threat. Based on the biography, American Prometheus,the film is multi-layered and nuanced in its depiction of Oppenheimer and those involved in the Manhattan Project.  And the special effects are stunning.  Highly recommended!

American Symphony (Netflix)

Suleika & Jon (Variety)

Until I read reviews of American Symphony, I had not heard of Jon Batiste.  He’s a composer, pianist, pop performer, and winner of numerous awards.  In this film, produced jointly with Higher Ground Productions (the Obamas’ company), the viewer experiences the creation of the musical piece of the title. Simultaneously, it follows the travails of Batiste’s wife Suleika Jaouad as she copes with a recurrence of leukemia.  Batiste is a dedicated and hard-working composer, but he is also tender and supportive of Suleika.  

I enjoyed parts of Jon’s creative process and admired her for her bravery and her willingness to share the raw as well as the joyful moments of her treatment.  Overall, I’d give the film a mixed review.  I thought it was unnecessarily long and would have edited out some of the composition scenes.  

As a side note, Suleika’s memoir Between Two Kingdoms about her earlier cancer journey was published in 2021.   I read it when it was released and included it in a blog post in Sept. 2021.

READING—GRIEF & LOVE

Lost and Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz

Memoirs are one of my preferred genres, so I approached Lost and Found expectantly.  It is both emotional and scholarly in tone.  Schulz focuses on grief and love.  Besides detailing how and why we lose or misplace objects and citing a range of research articles about loss, she delves into her grief over her father’s death and describes his long physical and mental decline.  Anyone who has lost a parent or other loved one can relate to this section.  

Her other main topic is love and how one goes about finding one’s true love or life partner: what makes two people click and how does one arrange to have the right circumstances at hand for this to happen.  Schulz had a long search, sometimes fraught with self-doubt, before meeting her right person and then settling down together.

I confess to skimming some; I was more interested in her personal experiences than I was in the scientific explanations for loss and love.  My response may be colored by being older than the author with several decades more life experience.  Overall, I give it a qualified recommendation.  

LOCAL CULTURE—GREAT MUSIC

The Sarasota Orchestra was in fine form on Friday night for their first concert of the season at Neel Performing Arts Center in Bradenton.  Their playing was spirited with all sections performing strongly.  This concert, under the baton of guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, included a recent work by composer Clarice Assad, an impressive rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by pianist Stephen Hough, and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.  All fourteen of them, each variation clearly delineated one from the other.  It was truly a great night for our local musicians.  Bravo!

Note: Header photo is of ducks over a pond in California in Jan. 2014 ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

Maine Memo: Maui, Mystery & Memoir

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BEAUTIFUL MAUI

Menu cover at the yacht club

Like many people, the Chief Penguin and I have fond memories of visiting Maui over the years and being treated to insider tours with good friends.  It is wrenching to see the wildfire destruction of so much of historic Lahaina and its residential neighborhoods. 

On those earlier trips, we enjoyed meandering Front Street, checking out the small shops, and then tucking into a tasty lunch at the fun and funky Lahaina Yacht Club, now completely gone.  

Other club pennants on display in Lahaina

Our hearts and thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones and their homes. (Our friends were fortunate that their property was not affected.)

RECENT READING

A WOMAN WITH AN INTRIGUING PAST

The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear

Author Winspear (Mystery Scene)

This latest novel by Winspear is a standalone one.  I’ve owned it for several months but put off reading it.  Now I wonder why as I found it fascinating, engaging, and occasionally suspenseful.  Elinor DeWitt, also known as Elinor White, was a practically a child during the First World War I when she and her sister were recruited to help the Resistance effort in Belgium.  Their assignments completed, not without danger or continuing mental anguish, they and their mother were taken safely to London, their mother’s early home.  

Elinor completed her education and embarked on a career as a language teacher before being importuned to assist the war effort, this time against the Nazis.  The book goes back and forth in time between the war years, and the present London setting in 1947.  Elinor finds herself drawn to investigate a neighbor family’s business dealings. This leads to re-connections with former colleagues and reflections on her wartime experiences.  

I found Winspear’s more recent Maisie Dobbs’ mysteries a bit tired.  Thus, I was pleased that Elinor White is a complex and intriguing character.  I stayed involved wondering what her fate and that of others would be.  Recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

CREATIVITY OUT OF MISERY

Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (Published in 2003)

Author Mantel in 2000 (ew.com)

It was an interesting pairing to read Winspear’s novel right after Hilary Mantel’s haunting, graphic, and sharp-edged memoir.  Mantel was born in 1952 in a Britain still suffering the shortages and exigencies of the Second World War.  Much of her childhood was spent in a politically provincial village outside Manchester.  The tensions between Protestants and Catholics reigned supreme, and which you were governed your schools and your daily routine.  Living near multiple sets of older relatives, Hilary received much in the way of family lore and readily accepted that there were ghosts, even recounts personally experiencing sightings.  And to a great extent, she took the teachings and warnings of the family’s Catholicism to heart.

As a teenager, her mother moved her and her siblings to another town along with her live-in partner, Jack.  A life that was already fraught (her father and Jack had both lived with the family before the move) continued to be so in the new setting as Hilary worked to stay under the radar and quiet, if not invisible. Plagued by illness which became severely painful in her late teens, she spent years being misdiagnosed, mistreated, patronized, and ultimately operated on.  

Having lost the ability to have children, she turned to writing.  For anyone who has read Wolf Hall or Bringing Up the Bodies, award-winning novels in Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, it’s easy to see the seeds of those historical works here in her approach to life.  

This is an unconventional and brilliantly written memoir.  Those novels came much later. Hilary Mantel died in 2022 at the age of 70. Thanks to my friend Margaret for passing this book on to me.  (~JWFarrington)

West coast of Maui, Wailea

Note: Unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Tidy Tidbits: Biography, Mystery, & Memoir

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INTIMATE PORTRAIT

The Chancellor by Kati Marton

Kati Marton (The Guardian)

Members of my local book group enjoyed reading Marton’s portrayal of Angela Merkel.  It’s an accessible biography of an intensely private woman in a prominent public position.  It isn’t a comprehensive biography and does not provide detailed analysis of some of Merkel’s questionable decisions and actions.  And the author is perhaps too admiring.  

But it’s an amazing story of how Merkel, raised in then East Germany under the repressive Soviet system, was smart, determined, and motivated, and able to go beyond the constraints of her upbringing to serve Germany as chancellor for 16 years.  

Marton’s style is engaging. I particularly enjoyed the later chapters about Merkel’s genuine friendships with the younger George Bush and Barack Obama and her tussles with Trump.  In occasional footnotes, Marton comments on her own experiences.  Originally from Hungary, Marton was a news correspondent and married to diplomat Richard Holbrooke, giving her some closeness to international leaders and events. Some reviewers found her personal comments annoying or inappropriate, but I did not. Recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

SEEING THE UNSEEN

Exiles by Jane Harper

Jane Harper (Geelong Advertiser)

Exiles by Jane Harper is a fascinating crime novel built around a close-knit family full of revels and rivalries.  Friend and financial detective Aaron Falk returns to the Marralee Valley in South Australia for a christening. It’s a year after the disappearance of a mother, Kim Gillespie, whose baby is left in a stroller on festival grounds.  Friends and relatives have been interviewed and their recent interactions with Kim parsed, but there has been no answer to what happened to her or where she might be.  An older unsolved crime in the same area is reexamined for possible linkages to Kim.  

Like Harper’s other novels, the behavior of family and friends and their motivations are the primary focus.  Teenager Joel, whose father was killed in a hit and run accident, is convincingly cast. Falk is a likable guy, and his personal life gets some satisfying attention here.  I found myself pondering these characters and events anew after I finished reading.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

ADDICTION AND PRISON

Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger

Keri Blakinger (by Ilana Panich-Linsman)

The title of this book and the fact that it is a memoir caught my eye while browsing in my favorite bookstore.  I had not read anything about it, nor did I know the author.  Reading the flyleaf and seeing Ithaca and Cornell mentioned further piqued my interest. I worked in Ithaca two summers during college, one on the Cornell campus.  

In dated chapters alternating between her years in prison (2010-2012) and years before and after, Keri Blakinger shares in painstaking detail her drive for perfection in schoolwork and competitive figure skating and her descent into heroin addiction.  In 2010, nearing completion of her degree at Cornell, she is arrested with a large wad of heroin on her.  

She describes the cruelty, pettiness, and nastiness of life in a county jail, what it means to be transferred to another county jail and why, and how time in a state prison is different in yet another way.  Throughout, there is a loss of personhood that comes with being in the penal system.  For Keri, who had hit rock bottom in terms of self-esteem, it took a long time after becoming clean and sober to realize that she did have something to contribute and had had an easier time than less privileged Black inmates.  It was a long journey to becoming the accomplished and recognized journalist she is today.  

This is not an easy book to read; at points the prison scenes are painful and unending, and one wonders both why she made some of her earlier poor choices and if she will ever be able to turn herself around.  It is a graphic account: candid, reflective, and wonderfully written.  (~JWFarrington)

Tidy Tidbits: See, Read, Watch

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FOOD FOR THE BRAIN

Barbara Stephenson (UNC-Chapel Hill)

This week we attended in person the first program in the Sarasota Institute of Lifetime Learning (SILL) 2023 Global Issues series.  It was the first time we’d been back live since Covid.  Attendance was sparse compared to earlier years, but the speaker was excellent.  

Former Ambassador Barbara Stephenson is the inaugural vice-provost for global affairs at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  During her 30 years with the foreign service, she served as ambassador to Panama, deputy ambassador in London, and as president of the American Foreign Services Association among other assignments.  

Her talk on the special challenges the U.S. faces in dealing with superpowers China and Russia was informative, well-illustrated, and well delivered.  It was a great beginning for the series.   She exemplified the kind of speaker who merits a return invitation.  

RECENT READING

Spare by Prince Harry

I pre-ordered Prince Harry’s memoir before we watched his Netflix series.  With all the leaks about the book’s content and the somewhat negative, or at least, mixed reviews, I half wondered if it would be worth reading.  For me, it was.

While most of us know Harry was traumatized after his mother’s death and have read and heard a lot about his and Meghan’s departure from the U.K., there is much about his military service and his family life between age 12 and meeting Meghan, that was new. 

After Princess Diana’s death, Harry did not receive the necessary help nor figure out himself how to move forward in a balanced way.  The Windsor royals eschew showing emotion publicly and even privately are reported as not a demonstrative family.  Harry’s memoir is all about feelings and emotions and yes, he overshares.  

Reading it, I felt empathy for the troubled teen and young man he was and admired his efforts to want to do some good in the world.  Notable examples are his work in several African countries (where he felt free) and his establishment of the Invictus Games for wounded service members and veterans. 

As expected, he puts a lot of blame for some of his anxiety and issues on the British press and on a few individuals in the palace’s communications office.  While being in the public eye and putting up with press attention are expected of the royal family, the hurtful and false media articles and constant surveillance, especially targeting Meghan, come across as beyond the usual and unwarranted.  With their escape to California, perhaps Harry and Meghan and their children will be able to enjoy more peaceful settled lives.

A word about the writing in the book.  It is compelling and even elegant at points.  Thanks to the laudable work of collaborator J. R. Moehringer, Harry’s memoir has an arc and a shape that make it very readable.  For one of the better reviews, I recommend Rebecca Mead’s piece in the January 23rd issue of The New Yorker, The Haunting of Prince Harry. (~JWFarrington)

FOOTNOTE ON VIEWING

Characters Joon-ho & Woo Young Woo (soompi.com)

I finished watching all sixteen episodes of Season 1 of Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix and still highly recommend it.  It’s engaging, the legal cases are intriguing, there’s underhanded politics, and occasionally, it’s even funny.  Over the course of the series, Attorney Woo astounds, annoys, and sometimes badgers her colleagues.  She is uneasy and often blunt in social situations causing embarrassment, yet she has a phenomenal memory for case law.  Part of her coming into her own is learning how to accept affection. Her fragile romance with colleague Joon-ho is beautifully played out and even sweet. 

Note: Header photo of Meghan and Harry is from Global News.