Category: Books

Memorial Day 2020: Watching, Reading, Remembering

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READING A CLASSIC

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Partly out of response to the recent film version, my local book group opted to re-read Little Women.  Most everyone in the group had read it at least once.  As a girl, I was caught up in the lives of these four sisters and was stunned when Beth died.  And Jo was my favorite character.  As an adult, I found some of the early chapters slow going and a bit tedious (the plays they created didn’t appeal to me) and thought that Marmee was just too good to be true.  For me, it got better farther in, although since I knew the story, I admit to doing a lot of skimming.  Jo was still very much my favorite sister and agreeing to marry her professor fit her personality.  What I liked about the film version, which echoed the novel more closely than I initially realized, was the sheer energy and exuberance of Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy.  They are lively girls and re-arranging the order of events and letting Jo dominate added punch.  

WATCHING

Between my treadmill viewing and sampling other programs with the Chief Penguin, I’ve located some good viewing.

Inside the Vatican (PBS)

This 2-hour documentary focuses not just on Pope Francis, but also to a large extent on the individuals around him who work for the Vatican.  From the men who are tethered up high to clean the Bernini sculpture in St. Peter’s, to one of the interpreters of the pope’s speeches, to the Vatican’s social media director, to the head of security, to newly named cardinals from Madagascar and Pakistan, it is a fascinating portrayal of what is both enclave and enterprise.  Highly recommended!

Gold Digger (Acorn)

(rotten tomatoes.com)

It might seem like a classic May-December romance, except that the woman is 60, and he in his thirties.  Julia is a recent divorcee with unhappy grown children while Benjamin comes out of nowhere and chats her up at a museum exhibit.  What is he after?  Her money, say her children.  Or something else?  And what happened to this family in the distant past to generate so much angst?  Not knowing Benjamin’s ulterior motives or what scarred Patrick, Della, and Leo, her children, makes for underlying suspense.  I enjoyed this 6-part series, while finding Julia somewhat unbelievable in her unquestioning acceptance of Benjamin. 

Belgravia (Epix)

Anne Trenchard & daugher-in-law Susan (parade.com)

Belgravia is another series by Julian Fellowes, based on his novel of the same name, and written and directed by him.  Opening on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo and then fast forwarding to 1840, the series is set in the exclusive London neighborhood of Belgravia.  It’s a classic story of upper middle-class striving, gambling, thwarted love affairs, and subterfuge.  Mr. Trenchard is a successful businessman in trade with a married grown son, Oliver, and a deceased daughter, Sophia.  Unbeknownst to his wife Anne, he has provided financial support to a young cotton merchant, Charles Pope, who, subsequently, attracts the attention of the rich and titled, Lady Brockenhurst.  How these two families and their relatives become intertwined in each other’s affairs is the stuff of drama and intrigue.  While the first episode is a bit slow and the end results mostly predictable, it’s fun entertainment.  Recommended.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF SUMMER

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer.  Folks crowd beaches, friends congregate at barbecues, and parades abound.  Not this year.  In the midst of Covid-19, this year is different.  States are loosening up and lifting their shelter-in-place and lockdown decrees, while many people remain wary and businesses and restaurants open under restricted conditions.

As we pause to recall the reason for this holiday, may we also think of the 100,000 individuals in this country gone because of Covid-19.  The front of today’s New York Times is entirely covered with the identities of 1,000 of those people, a mere fraction of that death toll.  It is a sobering piece that makes me doubly appreciative of all that I have, especially my health. What follows is a small sampling of those who are no longer here.

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES MAY 24, 2020

One hundred thousand.

Coronavirus (new scientist.com)

So imagine a city of 100,000 residents that was here for New Year’s Day but has now been wiped from the American map.

Auditor in Silicon Valley. Patricia Dowd, 57, San Jose, Calif.

Great-grandmother with an easy laugh. Marion Krueger, 85, Kirkland, Wash.

Wife with little time to enjoy a new marriage. Jermaine Ferro, 77, Lee County, Fla.

Sharecropper’s son. Cornelius Lawyer, 84, Bellevue, Wash.

Cancer survivor born in the Philippines. Loretta Mendoza Dionisio, 68, Los Angeles

Former nurse. Patricia Frieson, 61, Chicago

Ordained minister. Merle C. Dry, 55, Tulsa, Okla.

Traveled often in the United States and Mexico. Luis Juarez, 54, Romeoville, Ill.

Bounce D.J. and radio personality. Black N Mild, 44, New Orleans

Vietnam veteran. Michael Mika, 73, Chicago

Conductor with “the most amazing ear.” Alan Lund, 81, Washington

Preserver of the city’s performance traditions. Ronald W. Lewis, 68, New Orleans

Loved to travel and covered much of the globe. JoAnn Stokes-Smith, 87, Charleston, S.C.

Liked his bacon and hash browns crispy. Fred Walter Gray, 75, Benton County, Wash.

Member of a Franciscan monastery. John-Sebastian Laird-Hammond, 59, Washington, D.C.

Squeezed in every moment he could with his only grandchild. Carl Redd, 62, Chicago

Followed in his father’s footsteps as a pipefitter. Alvin Elton, 56, Chicago

Jazz pianist, composer and educator. Mike Longo, 83, New York City

Educator and marathoner. Arnold Obey, 73, San Juan, P.R.

Co-wrote nine books about computing. Donald J. Horsfall, 72, Rydal, Pa.

Active in the AIDS Foundation. Kevin Charles Patz, 64, Seattle

Engineer behind the first 200-m.p.h. stock car. Larry Rathgeb, 90, West Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Could make anything grow. George Freeman Winfield, 72, Shelburne, Vt.

Early woman on Wall Street and a World Bank official. Carole Brookins, 76, Palm Beach, Fla.

Renowned for her business making detailed pins and corsages. Theresa Elloie, 63, New Orleans…

Loved reading, especially mystery novels.Peggy Rakestraw, 72, Matteson, Ill.

Preacher and blues guitarist.Landon Spradlin, 66, Concord, N.C….

Architect of Boston’s monumental City Hall. Michael McKinnell, 84, Beverly, Mass. …

Loved travel, mahjong and crossword puzzles. Carol Sue Rubin, 69, West Bloomfield, Mich. …

Taught math, English and history for over 30 years. Julia Maye Alexander, 81, Upland, Calif. …

Known for her Greek chicken and stuffed peppers. Helen Kafkis, 91, Chicago …

First black woman to graduate from Harvard Law School.Lila A. Fenwick, 87, New York City

Met Opera violist and youth orchestra conductor. Vincent Lionti, 60, New York City…

No one made creamed potatoes or fried sweet corn the way she did. June Beverly Hill, 85, Sacramento …

Took great joy in writing little ditties under her pen name, Penelope Penwiper. Susan Grey Hopp Crofoot, 97, Westwood, N.J. …

One of the few African-American corporate bond traders on Wall Street. John Herman Clomax, Jr., 62, Newark …

Loved his truck, Dorney Park, Disney World, model trains and especially California cheeseburgers. James W. Landis, 57, Krocksville, Pa.

Tidy Tidbits: Watching, Reading, Eating

JWF 1 Comment

VIEWING

The English Game (Netflix)

This is an excellent series and great “feel good” viewing for these strange times.  A whole series (6 parts) about football, (soccer, that is), you say; but I’m not a sports fan.  Well, there’s so much more to this historical drama by Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey. 

(Kinnaird & Sutor (metro.co.uk)

Opening in 1879, it focuses on two men, Arthur Kinnaird, captain and star player on the Old Etonians, a team of toffs, and Fergus Sutor, a mill worker from the north of England and the best man on team Darwen, and their competition to win the championship cup.  The rich men feel they own the game; the mill workers are passionate about it and capture the hearts of their town.  Add in the plight of poor women, often single and pregnant, and you get a picture of contrasting lifestyles.  For me, the last episode echoed the exhilaration of the finale of Chariots of Fire.  Highly recommended!

The Geniuses of Palaces (BritBox)

For armchair travelers (and aren’t we all today), this 3-part series written and hosted by historian Dan Cruickshank takes the viewer on a tour of historic palaces built by the English kings and queens down through the ages.  From the familiar Tower of London to Buckingham Palace along with the lesser known St. James’s Palace and Hampton Court, it’s visually striking, especially the interiors.  Note that captioning isn’t available, and Mr. Cruickshank’s accent sometimes hindered my understanding.

READING

Sea Wife by Amity Gaige

(flickr.com)

This new novel is rich and chewy with a lot of satisfying substance.  His wife, Juliet, reluctantly agrees, when Michael buys a sailboat and proposes that they with their two young children leave home for Panama and spend a year sailing.  Juliet is a stalled and depressed poet with an unfinished dissertation, worries about her success as a mother, questions about their marriage, and unresolved issues from her childhood.  Michael is restless and not loving his job in the corporate world, has fond memories of sailing on a lake with his dad, and feels he can never measure up or meet what Juliet demands of him.  Their children, Sybil, age 7, and George, 2, are resilient survivors.  

The book takes the form of Juliet’s musing and recollections about the voyage back at home in the present time interspersed with Michael’s very detailed and personal log of the trip on the Juliet, named for his wife.  We know from the beginning that Michael is not present, but we don’t know where or why or how the journey ends. There is that suspense plus the delights of the trip, the initial revival of their marriage, and then an unraveling.  It’s marvelously well written with the dominant and distinctive voices of Juliet and Michael punctuated by a conversation with Sybil.  

EATING 

With more time at home, I’ve been motivated to experiment with some new recipes.  Last week, I made a straightforward cauliflower casserole with cheddar cheese from Food & Wine.  I didn’t have sour cream on hand and so substituted Greek yogurt and was pleased with the results.  The Chief Penguin thought it was okay but would have preferred the richness of sour cream.  I also cooked a spicy chicken, celery and peanut stir fry which was a bit different. The celery was a main ingredient and we both found it delicious.  Lastly, I found an older Bon Appetit recipe for spicy-sweet sambal pork noodles which just tickled my palate.  It combined fresh ginger, fresh basil, soy sauce and chili paste in a sauce that I put over spaghetti.  It’s a keeper!

Spicy Pork Noodles (bonappetit.com)

We continue to do curbside takeout with an occasional variation in which restaurant.  We finally tried Harry’s Kitchen on Longboat Key and found both their meatloaf and the beef stroganoff very tasty.  The food is prepared ahead of time, so you have to re-heat it when you get home.  The portions are generous ones. 

At Home: Diversions

JWF 1 Comment

NOVEL OF THE WEEK

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

(Saigoneer.com)

Nguyen Phan Que Mai was born in North Vietnam in 1973, and when she was six her family moved to the South.  She received parts of her education in Australia, the UK, and Hong Kong and then returned to Vietnam to work on sustainable development.  A published poet and nonfiction writer, this novel is her first work written in English.  

Ranging back and forth in time between the present, the 1950’s, and the 1970’s, The Mountains Sing, is a collection of stories told by her grandmother, Tran Dieu Lan, to her now teenaged granddaughter Huong, nicknamed Guava.  Her grandmother was well off and residing on a farm when she was forced to flee with five of her six children during the Land Reform of the 1950’s.  Later, both of Huong’s parents and her uncles went off to fight in the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, and Huong stayed with her grandmother.  Tran relates these accounts of hardship, hunger, violence and suffering gradually as Huong awaits the return of her relatives.

 I found the book a bit hard to get into and had to adjust to the shifting time periods and different relatives, but eventually I got caught up in Huong’s life.  This is a different perspective on the Vietnam War than many of us may have.  The fierce fighting between South Vietnamese forces and those in North Vietnam was devastating for families when siblings were on opposite sides.  While fiction, it is based on the experiences of the author, her family and others.  Linking the story to her native language, she peppers conversations with a selection of Vietnamese proverbs.   

RECENT VIEWING

Michelle Obama: The Story (Amazon Prime)

(radiotimes.com)

I happened upon this hour long documentary, somehow thinking I was going to be watching the new film based on Obama’s memoir. But this was another work entirely and very talk heavy.  

I enjoyed seeing all the images of her dressed up, with Barack, with her girls, and hearing her heartfelt words.  She comes across as relatable and engaged, a point the film reiterates.  It’s also how the Chief Penguin and I felt when we met her in San Francisco for ten minutes with her and just us.  

On the minus side, the grating voice of the lead spokeswoman, an entertainment reporter, is annoying, and I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know.   The second commentator, who mostly echoes the first one, is another female, a professor in England who is much easier on the ear.  Is this worth the investment of time? No, in my opinion, since there isn’t enough of Michelle in her own words.

Much better to read Becoming, the memoir and then consider watching that film on Netflix. The memoir is noteworthy for her candor, the insights into her growing up years and her marriage, and her revelations of feeling that she didn’t ever fit in at Princeton.  

PROJECTS:  Journals & Photos

The Chief Penguin is into organizing photos from our various trips and creating a document for each that includes them along with appropriate text.  He took lots of photos in the early years, and I not as many.  But I have always been a judicious recorder of the details of our travels and have journals from the international trips we’ve made.

The current focus is on Corsica.  He was invited to give a talk at a NATO scientific conference in Ajaccio in 1975. We spent two weeks in Corsica and then went on to Florence and Vienna with a few other stops ending in Zurich.  We were gone for four weeks, the longest we’d ever been away.  

I’m now transcribing my handwritten journal into a Word document and marveling at some of our adventures.  Everything from almost missing our charter flight from Paris to Ajaccio (we had to get from Charles de Gaulle to Orly airport quickly since our overseas flight was hours late); having his suitcase fall out of the trunk of the car on the way to the train station in Ajaccio; and standing in the back of the train car for the first 2 hours of the 12-hour journey from Florence to Vienna!  Believe it or not, but TWA gave us cab fare to get to Orly, and we arrived at what we thought was only 15 minutes before the flight and were dropped off right outside the gate.  No elaborate security then! 

 I also recorded the menus for almost every lunch and dinner we ate—the beginning of becoming a foodie.  Since we are stuck in Florida for now, it’s a fun armchair adventure to re-live that long-ago journey! 

Note: Header sunset photo ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Still at Home: More Reading & Viewing

JWF 1 Comment

RECENT READING: SCHIZOPHRENIA

Hidden Valley Road:  Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

I have always been interested in what makes people tick.  In college, that motivated me to take both the introductory psychology course and also an advanced course in abnormal psych.  This was the late 1960’s when so-called “refrigerator mothers” were responsible for causing autism in their offspring.  And in other research, a controlling mother supposedly was a primary factor in developing schizophrenia, nurture rather than nature (DNA) as the cause.

Hidden Valley Road is a riveting account of the Galvin family and their twelve children.  Of the ten boys and two girls, six of the males were at some point diagnosed as schizophrenic.  One may have had bipolar disorder and been misdiagnosed. They ultimately became the first family to be studied by the NIH.

(thetimes.co.uk)

Don and Mimi Galvin were products of their time, postwar years, and it was important for Don to be successful in his career and for Mimi to be the perfect mother with, to the outside world, a normal, happy, well-adjusted family.  In fact, the reality was quite different.  Don was often absent on business and the boys, beginning with Donald, the eldest, became mentally ill, delusional, violent, unpredictable in the extreme, and both physically and sexually abusive toward some of their siblings.  The girls, Margaret and Mary, were the youngest and while spared illness, suffered some of the worst abuse and emotional abandonment.  

Kolker’s account is based on intensive research and interviews with many family members.  Interspersed between the chapters, which generally focus on one or two family members, is an ongoing history over more than fifty years of the scientific research into the causes of schizophrenia and the evolving trends in drug treatment and therapy.  Even today, there is not a definitive answer.  This quest for answers is almost as compelling as the saga of the children’s path to adulthood.  That some of these siblings were ultimately able to lead “somewhat normal” lives is a testament to their resilience, despite being scarred.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

SMALL SCREEN: A GARDEN & PARIS CRIME

This Beautiful Fantastic  (Amazon Prime, You Tube)

(sandiegocan.org)

This feature film is charming and whimsical with no violence or sex.  Bella Brown, a rather strange young woman, rents a cottage and is charged with cleaning up the back garden, a task that far exceeds her abilities and her fears.  She’s a budding writer who works part-time in a special library.  Her crusty, gruff neighbor and his amiable dogs body take up the challenge of assisting her with the garden and all ends well.  This is a simple treat of a movie.

Balthazar  (Acorn)

(decider.com)

Balthazar is a recent French crime series about a forensic doctor.  Balthazar is a quirky coroner who talks to corpses and has animated conversations with his dead wife.  He is sexy and brilliant, loves to cook and eat, and is often seen snacking.  Chief inspector Helene Bach finds him exasperating, but she and her assistant, Delgado, must work with him and do recognize his talents.  

These are complicated murder cases and always involve an autopsy, graphically portrayed, which causes me to look away from the screen.  Once the autopsy is over, I’m back involved.  As I have only watched two episodes, it’s an open question if the gore will turn me off completely or if I stay with the series.  The repartee between Balthazar and Helene, married mother of two, is well done and one of the delights of the program.  So, the jury’s out.

Note: Header photo of a great blue heron ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).