OUT AND ABOUT: POCKET PARK IN CARY
Kay Struffolino Park
Initially, this parklet on the edge of downtown was named “Meeting Place Park” for the sculpture in its center. Later it was renamed in honor of Kay Struffolino, a long-time Cary resident and active volunteer with the town’s parks and recreation and the cultural arts.
The Meeting Place is a ceramic sculpture house by Danish artist Nina Hole (1941-2016) commissioned by the town. Building and firing it involved 36 volunteers and 175 hours over three weeks from mid-October to early November 2012.
From the town website: Her method of using slabs as modular building blocks enable her to make very larger sculptures which she raku fires in situ wrapping the structure in a blanket of high temperature refractory fabric that acts as the kiln during the firing. She uses a number of assistants and considers the process, including the stimulating communal experience of working with a group of people, as important as the final product. Fired through the night, the spectacular effect of the glowing form as it is unwrapped is the peak moment of the event.
VIEWING: A BROTHEL IN WARTIME
Madame K (Prime Video & PBS)
In this dramatic series, a group of young women with diverse backgrounds work in an elite brothel run by Mrs. Kukk aka Madame K. The setting is an elegant villa in Tallinn, Estonia, beginning in October 1939. Foreign Ministry Counselor, Mr. Metsla, friend and suitor to Mrs. K., is instrumental in moving the brothel to this house. Their clients include Baltic Germans and then high-ranking Russians. New girls are added, the war intensifies, dark secrets are revealed, and events at hand take on a deeper, somber tone.
The 10-part series is in Estonian with subtitles and presents yet another facet and face of WWII. Recommended!
READING: CARRYING ON AFTER A SUDDEN DEATH
Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide by Rachel Zimmerman
When Rachel Zimmerman’s 50-year-old husband, without any warning, jumped off a bridge, she was both devastated and worried for her two daughters, ages 8 and 11. Seth was a noted and driven robotics professor; Zimmerman a seasoned reporter who worked for the Wall St. Journal at one time.
Trained to be observant, Zimmerman becomes hyper focused on looking for answers to why he did it: contacting experts, raising many questions, and, along the way, excavating the layers of their courtship and their marriage. Simultaneously, she embraces parenthood and seeks to be both mother and father to her girls.
In part, the book is an exploration of one’s public persona versus one’s private self, Seth’s especially, but also her own. A no-holds-barred discussion of their lives, it describes how she and her resilient girls re-surface and re-engage with the world. It is raw reading at points, but ultimately uplifting as this threesome moves forward. (~JWFarrington)
Note: Header photo is a close-up of the sculpture in Kay Struffolino Park. All unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)
