Book of the Week: O My America! Six Women and their Second Acts in a New World by Sara Wheeler. This is a delightful romp through the 19th century with six middle-aged women, each of whom re-invented herself in the United States and either published a book about her experiences or journaled extensively. Wheeler is primarily a travel writer who was prompted to write this work by her own anxiety about turning 50 and her uncertainty about her identity at this stage of life. She not only researched the travels of Fanny Kemble, Fanny Trollope and four other women most of us haven’t heard of but, an English woman herself, she followed in their footsteps over the course of several years traveling in the South, New England, Colorado, the Midwest, and lastly, California. None of her “girls” as she calls them had an easy time of it, but they persevered and her wry comments about them and herself add a distinctive personal note to these accounts. I found the descriptions of Oakland and San Francisco in the 1870’s particularly intriguing given my familiarity with that region.
Movie of the Week: We went to see Selma and I highly recommend it. Whatever you might think about the film’s portrayal of President Johnson (accurate or slanted), it is a powerful and grim reminder of the events of 1965 and extremely relevant given the ongoing national discussion about race and the police. I was a teenager when these events took place and while I knew about them at the time, they happened far away and did not impinge on my daily life. Seeing them on the screen was chilling—that we put up such barriers to allowing people to vote and inflicted such brutality on innocent individuals. Unfortunately, there are some states today enacting legislation to again make it more arduous to register to vote. See it!
Music Scene: Rich and Brandon Ridenour are a father and son music duo. Father Rich is a pianist and son Brandon, a former member of the Canadian Brass, is a trumpeter and composer/arranger. They are also lively personalities with a wry sense of humor. We heard them in conversation and performing their versions of Rhapsody in Blue, Chopsticks and a meld of Simple Gifts and Amazing Grace. For Rhapsody, Brandon alternated between the trumpet, the piccolo trumpet (or baby trumpet as they called it in their household), and the flugelhorn (or pregnant trumpet). Upcoming concerts include Sarasota later in the spring.
Local Discovery: We made our first visit to Artisan Cheese Company on Main Street in Sarasota recently and it’s a treasure! The cheese mongers are all women and their selection is modest in size, but carefully chosen. We went home with a creamy Camembert, perfect Roquefort, and a new-to-us cheese from upstate NY (specifically Cazenovia, near where I grew up) called Lorenzo. It is a semi-hard mild cheese and a counterpoint to the other two. I foresee regular stops at this shop.
