Category: Books

Yellow orchid blooms

Tidy Tidbits: Tropical Blooms & Exotic Settings

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When you can’t travel to new destinations, then it’s best to enjoy what’s local and watch or read about other times, other places. We did some of both this past week.

ORCHID SHOW—LOCAL COLOR

For their 45th annual orchid show, Selby Gardens honors founder Marie Selby and celebrates the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.  Entitled, Women Breaking the Glasshouse Ceiling, the displays in the conservatory feature purple, white, and gold, the colors most closely associated with the suffrage movement.  The orchids are beautiful as always, and this year, some of the arrangements revolve. There’s even a mobile of orchids and cut-outs.

Gold orchids

 Music from the 1920’s and period furnishings provide an appropriate backdrop. It’s all quite stylish.

The show runs until November 29 and is definitely worth a visit. There’s much more to see besides this exhibit.   For a a video preview, click here.

Creamy white orchids
Everyone must wear a mask!

EXOTIC LOCALES—VIEWING AND READING

The White Countess (Amazon Prime)

With a star-studded cast including Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson as the principals, plus Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, this is Merchant Ivory’s last film.  It’s set in Shanghai in 1936, and former American diplomat Todd Jackson is a recluse.  Now blind, his life marred by tragedy, he aimlessly whiles away his nights in sleazy clubs.  He’s well off, but a displaced family of Russian emigres lives crowded together in the ghetto.  

Among them is former countess Sofia, who works as a dancer and prostitute to support her young daughter Katya.  Sofia becomes Todd’s muse and inspiration for creating his own elite nightclub.  Watching these lost souls cautiously connect before the Japanese invade is a long drawn out process.  The overall great cast makes this an enjoyable escape from the everyday. Thanks to my friend Mary for recommending it!  

Singapore Sapphire by A. M. Stuart

Set in Singapore in 1910, this is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Harriet Gordon, a young widow and former suffragette, and Inspector Robert Curran.  Harriet is a relatively recent arrival in Singapore.  She volunteers at the English-style boys’ school headed up by her brother and takes on freelance typing jobs.  

When Harriet goes to retrieve her typewriter from a recent client, Sir Oswald Newbold, she finds him dead and his study ransacked. Curran, a former military policeman and cricket star, is assigned with his team to find the killer.  Other suspicious deaths and disappearances follow and Harriet, both curious and restless, gets involved too.  Add into the mix, art and artifacts, ruby mines, and gem dealers and you have an engaging, even exciting, plot.   (~JWFarrington)

Note: Photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Yellow trumpet flower

Tidy Tidbits: Reading & Culture

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THOUGHT-PROVOKING MEMOIR

Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams (2019)

Even before his marriage and the birth of his first child, Williams straddled, or at least experienced, both the white and the Black worlds.  His father is a Southern Black and his mother a white woman, and while mixed race, he identified as Black.  His writing career gave him opportunities to work abroad in Berlin, but mostly in Paris. Subsequently, he married a white French woman.  In France, he felt he was received first as American and then as something other than white.  

When his daughter Marlow arrived blond and blue-eyed, Williams’ views on race were upended.   Forced to confront his own sense of race, he explores how other writers and philosophers have described race—and how some have dealt with it in their own lives.  

Williams & daughter (Virginia Quarterly Review)

Given the mixed context of his own extended family, he asks the question, “What is race if a man, at various stages, can be either ‘black’ or ‘white’?  In my own family, when  I can look to my mother’s side and I see my aunt Shirley’s Facebook posts about our immigrant ancestors diligently pulling themselves up and out of German, or to my father’s side on Ancestry.com and stare into the abyss of chattel slavery, I concur that race is hardly more than the difference between those who descend from the free and those who do not.”  

He goes on to state that, “mental liberty, inner, mental freedom, is never something another person can give to you but rather something hard-won that anyone interested will have to take for herself, will have to seize with conviction, if she will have it at all.”

Reading his book, I found myself puzzling over the fact that if I meet another individual and I can’t immediately assess whether they are Black or white, it becomes a matter of concern.  As if I had to peg them in a particular slot before I could move on to any extended interaction.  Intermingling the scholarly with the personal, Williams has given us a thoughtful meditation for our polarized times. 

Williams also wrote the initial draft of the now much discussed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” signed by more than 150 public figures and published in Harper’s Magazine.  (~JWFarrington)

CULTURE NOTES—THE NEW YORKER FESTIVAL

I am somewhat late to the game in taking advantage of lectures and concerts available online.  This week that changed.  I registered and paid for tickets to two events in the annual New Yorker Festival line-up.  

Anthony Fauci (abcnews.go.com)

New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci. In the course of the interview, he played a few audio clips of Dr. Fauci’s involvement with earlier epidemics.  Specter and Fauci have known each other a long time which was evident from their warm interaction.  The technology worked, and it was an informative and enjoyable program.

Margaret Atwood (curtisbrown.co.uk)

The conversation between Margaret Atwood and Jia Tolentino was less successful.  It was a treat for me to see and hear Ms. Atwood, a long favorite author.  But, Ms. Tolentino had problems enabling the audience to hear the author, resulting in several long delays.  And she came across as a less skilled interviewer, with long-winded questions and not always giving the author time to finish her thoughts. Fortunately, Ms. Atwood was gracious and patient. She shared her insights into the current political climate vis-a-vis her novels on the Gilead dystopia and why she signed the Harper’s letter mentioned above.

HOPE FOR A DYSTOPIA

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)

(amazon.com)

I read The Handmaid’s Tale when it was published years ago and have not watched the TV version.  I purchased this sequel several months ago, but it has been languishing on a stack of other to-be-read volumes.  Prompted by the upcoming conversation with Atwood, I started it.  Why did I wait so long to read it?  

I found it utterly fascinating, even gripping.  Once the linkages between Baby Nicole, taken to Canada and raised there; Agnes Jemima, a Supplicant and aspiring Aunt; and the elderly Aunt Lydia, keeper of a secret journal, were clear, I became even more immersed.  How will these women fare?   What happens to Gilead, the corrupt totalitarian society that has taken over the United States?  It is a magnificent novel and a more than worthy successor to its precursor.  And it can be read on its own.   Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo of yellow trumpet flower ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Deep pink flowers on Tidy Island

Tidy Tidbits: Reading & Jaunting

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THIS WEEK

Some of my readers will recall the satirical political TV series hosted by David Frost, “That Was the Week that Was,” affectionately dubbed TW3. Certainly, this past week in the U.S. was a TW3! From the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett to the revelations about Trump’s tax returns to the embarrassing brawl of a presidential debate to the sight of the president leaving the White House for the hospital, it was a week of drama, outrage, and high emotion. With such a muddle of events, one wonders what will happen in the few remaining weeks until the election.

In these circumstances, turning to history (in this case, an historical novel) or exploring new places in one’s home state can provide relief and a welcome change from politics.

READING–OVERLOOKED BUT FAR FROM A LIGHTWEIGHT

The Wright Sister by Patty Dann

The Wright Sister is a delightful novel.  I felt as if I were living with Katharine Wright and thoroughly enjoyed her company, her musings about her role in Wilbur and Orville’s phenomenal success, and her reflections on life as a married woman.  

For her first 50+ years, Katharine was her brothers’ younger sister.  After their mother died when she was only fifteen, she became “mother” to them, and ran the household. More than that she worked with them on their first airplane and traveled with them to Europe, acting as their front person or PR man.  Of the three, she was the only college graduate (Oberlin), was smart and outgoing, but also constrained by her father’s traditional views.  Wilbur died young and then their father. Katharine continued to live with Orville in Dayton until her marriage at age 52 to Henry Haskell, a widower and college friend.  At this point, intellectually keen and socially active, Katharine blooms and comes into her own sexually.

Dann’s novel takes the form of Katharine’s marriage diary and her chatty letters to Orville from her new home in Kansas City, Missouri, where Henry is a newspaper editor.  Orville was always quirky and strange and became even more so.  Author Dann claims not to have done a lot of research, but the novel is true to the basic facts of Katharine Wright’s life.  I am now intrigued enough to read another novel about Katharine by Henry Haskell’s grandson entitled Maiden Flight.  (~JWFarrington)

EXPLORING THE SUNSHINE STATE

Florida Fling—Bradenton to Zolfo Springs

In the time of Covid, it doesn’t take much in the way of variety to qualify as a fling.  This was a mini-fling, possibly just a micro-fling.  In any case, the Chief Penguin and I decided we needed to explore a bit more of Florida.  Hence, the initial proposal to drive over to Lake Okeechobee for lunch in that area.  

After a bit more research on what might or might not be an attraction worth a two-hours plus drive, I proposed we only go as far as Zolfo Springs with a stop in Arcadia on the way.  Fortunately, Arcadia came first.  It’s a small town, the county seat of DeSoto County, with a distinguished historic district.  Especially noteworthy are the county courthouse and the stunning pink arcade building dominating a main street intersection.  The arcade houses several purported antique shops along with the Rattler Saloon.  It was a quiet morning and I only glimpsed one other pedestrian.

Mary Margaret’s Tea and Biscuit occupies space on the short side of the arcade and boasted a welcoming signboard.  It was really too early for lunch, and we didn’t want breakfast.  We stuck our heads into the charming quaintly decorated tearoom and inquired of the young hostess about lunch hours.  Although it was not quite 10:30, she kindly offered to serve us lunch.  There was one lone diner finishing an omelet. Our round table in the corner was a safe distance away.  We enjoyed a tuna melt with a green salad and a ham and cheese sandwich and fries and ordered homemade baklava and a scone to go.  No one else came in while we were there.  It was a most pleasant interlude.  

Entry area, Mary Margaret’s

The hostess told us that in season they are very popular.  And they serve afternoon tea every day and high tea with 24 hours’ notice.  It’s the sort of place that would seem to attract “ladies who lunch.”

Mary Margaret’s dining room

From Arcadia we proceeded the approximately 20 miles to Zolfo Springs.  It looked somewhat sad with one closed Mexican restaurant and not much else.  In its heyday, Pioneer Park, with a lake and camping, a small museum, and a pioneer village, would have been an attractive Zolfo Springs destination.  Now the park looked neglected and, due to Covid, was closed.

On the return drive along part of the Florida Cracker Trail (named for the cowboys cracking long whips who drove cattle west to the coast), we detoured slightly.  Our hope was to perhaps get a view of the famed and whimsical Solomon’s Castle.  I knew it was closed until October 1, but thought we’d at least get to see the exterior.  It’s well hidden down a dead-end road, and all we could view were the gates.  Another time, another trip.

Gates at Solomon’s Castle, Ona, FL

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Colorful red & green coleus

Tidy Tidbits: Immersion, Film & Books

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VIEWING

UPLIFTING FILM

On the Basis of Sex (Amazon Prime)

Somehow, I missed seeing this film about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s early career when it was first released.  This week seemed the right time.  Based on RBG’s life, it isn’t a documentary, but a wonderfully satisfying success story.  First in her law school class at Harvard and first in her class at Columbia Law, Ruth was nonetheless turned down by law firm after law firm (after all, she was a woman, a Jew, and the wives of the lawyers in the firm would be jealous).  

She became a professor at Rutgers and, from that position, worked with her husband, Marty, and the ACLU to take on a case of discrimination against a man.  She won that case and others that followed gaining more rights for women.  She and Marty were a great team.  Not only did she enable him to complete law school, but he was wholly supportive of her career and her rise to Supreme Court Justice.  Highly recommended!

A side note.  I am of an age that I recall being asked at my first job interview after graduate school if I planned to have children.  The questioner was a man and I was married.  It was a personal and inappropriate question, but not illegal.  I made some sort of oblique answer and was offered the job.  I also clearly remember celebrating when, several years later, I could apply for a credit card in my name only, based on my credit history alone.  I was married and working fulltime and, I didn’t really need that department store card.   I got it more on principle than need!

CRIME SCENE

Van der Valk  (PBS Masterpiece)

(variety.com)

Since most of us aren’t traveling these days, and certainly not abroad, it’s refreshing to see a television series set in a city that is familiar from past visits or future forays.  Yorkshire for DCI Banks, Dublin for Acceptable Risk, and now Amsterdam for chief detective Piet Van der Valk and his somewhat scruffy team of colleagues.  The canals and the streets of Amsterdam, jammed with bicycles, bring back fond memories of a week we spent there five years ago.  

This three-part series is the latest remake based on mysteries by Nicholas Freeling.  The suspicious deaths are complex cases, often political, with a tangled web of connections between family members and suspects.  Unlike some of the other series I’ve watched, the Dutch seem to resort to guns more frequently.  

Commissaris Piet is a striking man with steely blue eyes, a blond thatch, and a very prominent jawline.  Usually serious, with seldom a smile, his eyes look haunted by past tragedy.  Living alone on a houseboat, he has a close relationship with Lucienne, his right-hand person, and while fair-minded, brooks no sloughing off by his colleagues.

READING

TIMELY MEMOIR

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

(vanityfair.com)

Losing a parent to an early death is an event that stays with one ever after; losing a parent to violence is another level of remembrance and anguish entirely.  A former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Natasha Trethewey has written a poignant memoir about her mother’s death more than 30 years ago. Trethewey was just 19.  Her mother didn’t just die; she was murdered by her second husband.   For years, Trethewey carried around a load of guilt.  

In this work, she details her childhood as the offspring of a white father and a black mother and how the experience of walking around with just one of them differed greatly in other people’s responses.  The racism and mistreatment that were rampant during her mother’s childhood and the vestiges that persisted in Trethewey’s own life form the backdrop for this tragic story.  It echoes many of the cases portrayed in No Visible Bruises, an award-winning book by Rachel Louise Snyder.  (~JWFarrington)

CRIME IN YORKSHIRE

Careless Love by Peter Robinson

This is a recent crime novel featuring DCI Alan Banks.  I’d read a bunch of them some years back, but after watching the DCI Banks TV series, decided to re-visit Robinson’s work on the page.  This one starts out a bit too slowly for my taste, but then picks up.  A young woman and an older man are each found dead and abandoned in suspicious circumstances.   Both are dressed up and there appears to be no link between them.  When a neighboring crime team presents the suspicious death of another young woman, the circle widens and the hunt for clues is on.  Both DS Winsome Jackson and DI Annie Cabbot feature in the investigation along with Zelda, Annie’s father’s companion who closely guards her tragic past.  Enjoyable, but I liked some of Robinson’s earlier books more.

Note: Header photo is Florida fall foliage: colorful coleus.