Category: Memories

Tidy Tidbits: Lost, Missing, Unforgotten

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READING—SIOUX REVOLT IN THE WEST

The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore

Author Moore (The Guardian)

This spare historical novel focuses on events leading up to the Sioux Uprising of 1862.  It is loosely based on a memoir by Sarah Wakefield who with her children was held captive for six weeks by the Sioux Indians.  In The Lost Wife, Sarah Butts, later Brinton, leaves an abusive husband in Rhode Island and travels the long distance to the Minnesota Territory to make a new life with her good friend Maddie.  Maddie has died and Sarah marries the local doctor who is physician to tribe members at the Indian agency.  

How Sarah adapts to life among the Sioux, learns their language, and works with the women, will affect her reception later by both the white women and the tribe.  Told from Sarah’s perspective, the novel is full of details of the physical landscape and both mundane and grisly aspects of her daily life, but short on emotion.  The one exception to this is Sarah’s relationship with Chaska, one of her captors.  This relationship colors how she is treated upon release by her former neighbors and her husband.  

The novel is short, but not a fast read.  It highlights a shameful incident in the settling of the American West. (~JWFarrington)

VIEWING—UNSOLVED MURDER CASES

Unforgotten, Season 5 (PBS Masterpiece)

Jessie & Sunny (PBS)

I miss Nicola Walker.  Her role as DCI Cassie Stuart in the first four seasons was central.  She has been replaced by prickly Jessie James, played by Sinead Keenan.  DI Sunny Khan is grieving Cassie’s death and has personal issues at home.  Newbie Jessie’s dismissive approach to her team is harming morale, but she has a personal crisis of her own.  

The case of a body part found in the chimney of an empty house is complex and many layered, and some of the varied cast of suspects have complicated pasts and questionable issues.  This season has six episodes, all focused on this one case.  Despite the tension between them, Sunny, Jessie, and the team eventually solve it.  I like this series but didn’t love this season as much as previous ones.

NOVEMBER REFLECTIONS 

In the Northeast especially, November brings dark nights and cold days.  Around Election Day each year, I reflect on my father’s short but impactful life.  This year was the 50th anniversary of his death, more years gone than he lived.  And yet, he remains vivid in my memories.

November is also a time to celebrate.  Thanksgiving Day provides us with an opportunity to be mindful of and thankful for all that we have.  This year, I am especially grateful for my extended family:  son, daughter-in-law, granddaughters, siblings and their spouses, nieces and their families, and especially my Chief Penguin. 

This week we unexpectedly lost a sibling, the Chief Penguin’s brother, a doting uncle.   Siblings share experiences from their past lives; when one is gone, the puzzle is missing a piece, and a space remains unfilled.  I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving with family and friends filled with joy and love!

(Wildgoose)

Note: Header photo of November dawn ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

Tidy Tidbits: Spring Things

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EASTER THOUGHTS

Girls in spring dresses

As a child, I grew up going to Sunday School and celebrating Easter in church.  Spring usually meant a new dress, but always a new spring coat.  Spring coats then were pastel colors, pale blue, yellow, or pink.  Made of lightweight wool, you wore it over a pretty dress along with a fancy hat to church on Palm Sunday and Easter.  Of course, our parents also gave us Easter baskets.  Fake straw ones with jellybeans, Peeps chicks, and little foil wrapped chocolate eggs nestled in the grass.  If you were fortunate, a good-sized cream-filled Cadbury’s egg was a bonus.

Trumpet flowers
Gorgeous tulips

Today, I welcome the coming of Easter as a sign of spring—rebirth and renewal—with a lifting of the spirits if the winter has been long and cold.  In Florida, we have some version of spring all year, but there is still something wondrous about warmer temperatures, more late light, and the bursting forth of blossoms.  

RECENT VIEWING

FROTHY CONFECTION

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Amazon Prime)

Ada has a fitting (NPR)

Based on the novel, Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris, by Paul Gallico and published in 1958, the latest movie version is a delight.  It’s fun and full of fashion without being too silly or overdone.  There are moments of poignancy midst Ada Harris’s dreams of a different life.  

Lesley Manville plays cleaning woman Ada Harris, a hardworking woman who dreams of owning a beautiful gown (preferably one by Dior) and whose husband never returned from the Second World War.  Nor was he declared dead, and so she is ever hopeful.  Ada saves her coins and when she receives an unexpected windfall, she trots herself to Paris and brazenly bursts into Christian Dior’s atelier.  She’s a memorable character, full of spunk, and perhaps her dream will come true. In the 1992 film, Angela Lansbury was Ada Harris.

SPYCRAFT

A Spy among Friends (MGM+)

Philby & Elliott (The Guardian)

The Chief Penguin and I read several very positive reviews of A Spy among Friends about notorious double agent Kim Philby.  Hence, we sprang for the 7-day free trial of MGM+ through Amazon Prime to watch the series.  It’s six parts and we are halfway in.  Based on a nonfiction work by Ben Macintyre, it unwinds slowly going back and forth in time.  Philby is seen primarily through the eyes of friend and fellow spy, Nick Elliott, who is being interrogated about his knowledge of Philby’s activities over their 23-year friendship.  Guy Pearce is Philby and Damian Lewis is superb in the role of Elliott.  Recommended!

Note: Flower photos and header photo from JWFarrington.

Tidy Tidbits: Political & Personal

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WATCHING: POLITICAL HISTORY

Argentina 1985 (Amazon Prime)

Prosecutor Staserra & his deputy

This political film is inspired by real events. It focuses on the groundbreaking 1985 civil trial of nine Argentine military leaders.  These individuals were charged with being responsible for the kidnappings, torture, and disappearance of hundreds of people during the country’s dictatorship period.  The main character is prosecutor Julio Stassera, a man who didn’t want the job and felt pressured into it and is also fearful.  It’s a gripping story of how Julio and his deputy and a team of young lawyers gathered accounts and assembled a group of individuals willing to testify in open court.  Recommended!

EXCAVATION: LIFE IN SCRAPBOOKS

Packrat Tendencies

I took a long trip down memory lane this past week.  I’ve made it my January project to sort, toss, and scan the contents of a closet.  This closet has essentially been untouched since we moved to Florida more than 8 years ago.  It was filled with stacked black plastic bins and one large cardboard carton. The large carton had not been opened since it was packed for a cross country move in 2007.  What I have discovered inside these boxes is a treasure trove of memorabilia going back to the 1960’s and earlier:  loose photos, scrapbooks, and photo albums. The pages in the oldest albums are fragile and crumble easily.

As a teen and through college, I was an inveterate saver and scrapbook keeper.  Every postcard I think I ever received or purchased from 1961 to about 1968, lots of programs for school plays, and concerts (Chad Mitchell Trio, for one), sports nights event lists, church choir festivals, birthday and graduation cards and selected correspondence.  To this day, I’m still a saver, but perhaps a more disciplined one.

Winter Wonders

I was reminded of the Christmas our family of six drove to Michigan with a stop in Ohio to visit cousins.  We had three Christmas celebrations, one with each set of grandparents and another with our cousins. We stayed in a motel one night each way. I saved postcards from the Tally Ho Motel in North Kingsville, Ohio (so cold a room we almost froze!) and from the Tiptop Motel in Canton, Ohio.  In Canton, we were all squeezed into the one available room.  My younger sister and brother shared a twin bed, one at each end.  The radiant heat (advertised on this postcard) was so hot, we departed at dawn’s crack.

Midst the many black and white photos were images of my siblings and me playing outside and running around with the neighbor boys (for a time, very few girls lived our street). Also black and white snow scenes of our driveway and yard after the Blizzard of ’66.  We lived in town and that was the only time I can ever remember getting three days off from school for the weather! 

I also discovered class photos and report cards from kindergarten through 4th grade from my elementary schools in Syracuse and Auburn.  I remember fondly my two favorite teachers, attractive young Miss Rosa (2ndgrade) and seeming-to-me very old, Miss Peterson (3rd grade).  Miss Peterson lives in memory for her teaching, but also for falling forward, fainting,and hitting her head on my desktop.  It was scary, but she was fine.

Scrapbook Maven

My mother had a special talent for creating noteworthy scrapbooks for anniversaries and other special occasions. I smiled and chuckled as I re-discovered these works.  The first one was for my Hancock grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary in 1961.  It was done in the format of a magazine called ”Family Fortune” with an image of John Hancock on the cover. Contents included family photos, cartoons, and humorous anecdotes, plus letters from the grandchildren.  \

In 1972, for my other grandparents’ 50th anniversary, she designed a scrapbook as a yearbook in recognition of my grandfather’s long career at the University of Michigan. My siblings and I and our cousins contributed to both of these volumes. 

In later years, the Chief Penguin and I were the recipients of “International Cooking with Jean & Greg” on our 10th anniversary and then “Father and Son” (Dec. 1986) highlighting life with Tim.  Birthday scrapbooks followed for me (2001) and each of my siblings illustrating our individual life stories along with photos of our grandparents and great grandparents.  

Whether these volumes will be of interest to the next generations or not, they document lives well lived.  And thanks to the Chief Penguin, scanned copies will now live in the cloud. 

Note: Header image of scrapbook spread by JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

November: Celebrations & Politics

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CELEBRATIONS

Covid Thanksgiving

For most everyone I know, Covid-19 put a crimp in their holiday plans.  Travel cancelled, gatherings reduced in size, no family present and on it goes.  It’s probably the strangest Thanksgiving most of us have experienced.  But ours was still a very good one.  

We are healthy (priority one, I’d say), and we enjoyed a tasty turkey dinner with one other couple.  We shared in the meal prep, toasted one another, hoped for a more normal 2021, and appreciated being together in lovely Florida.  Add in a FaceTime call from our son and family.  In 2020, you can’t ask for much more!

Age and Anniversaries

When she was around seventy, I remember my grandmother telling me that she aspired to grow old gracefully.  She didn’t like the thought of being old and said that she certainly didn’t feel old in her head.  Even then, when I was in college, her comment struck me.  Not that it was so profound, but that one could attain a certain chronological age and mentally still see oneself as young and unchanged from decades ago.

My grandparents & my parents at the 50th anniversary event

When the Chief Penguin and I had been married for not quite two years, we and my extended family of siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles attended a festive luncheon for my grandparents.  They were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and were both 75. My, they seemed old!  But Grandma and Grandpa weren’t stodgy people, and they were definitely intellectually engaged with the wider world.  They ended up enjoying almost 55 years together.

(Etsy.com)

Yesterday, G. and I marked our golden wedding anniversary, and we aren’t old at all—or so we think!  New medications and a greater emphasis on exercise and healthy eating make it possible for our generation to stay youthful longer.  While Covid upended planned trips for this anniversary year and cancelled a family Christmas in New York, we look forward to more years of globetrotting.  We are optimistic about 2021, post vaccine, and will strive to stay fit and healthy as long as possible!  

READING

Momentous Memoir

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

(en.wikipedia.org)

I have missed Barack Obama’s intelligence, eloquence, and grace these past four years.  I pre-ordered his memoir, A Promised Land, and it arrived the day it was published.  I’ve often thought that political memoirs are informative, but dry, with ultimately mind-numbing detail.  That is not this book.  Obama is an engaging and agile writer.  He captures the feel of a room, notes a telling detail or two about the scene or an individual, and doesn’t stint on his own gaffes and faults.  

I am now about 250 pages into this six-hundred-page tome and finding it highly readable and a fascinating review of recent history.  Obama is also compassionate and concerned about his family and those with whom he works in the government.  It is a refreshing and most welcome change!  (~JWFarrington)

VIEWING FOOTNOTE

Politics in Sweden
Unhappy family (pro-test.nl)

This week I finished the third and last series of The Restaurant.  I found this season especially powerful for its depiction of the radical fringe movement of the 1960’s, the protests against the war in Vietnam, the expanding role of women in government, and the lessening of prejudice against gays and lesbians.  Yes, it’s fiction.  The three siblings, Gustaf, Peter, and Nina, continue to war with each other and have more than their reasonable share of crises.  And perhaps the ending is too neat, but it’s a very good series and a great way to forget about Covid.  You’ll even learn a little Swedish along the way, the words for thank you and hello, if nothing else.

Note: Header photo of reflections in a pond ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).