Tag: Muse

Tidy Tidbits: The Local Scene

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This was a fun week filled with theater, opera, dinners out and in, and long conversations with old and new friends.

SMALL SCREEN

After war in early 20th century Morocco, I’ve taken up a Kiwi crime series.  The Brokenwood Mysteries (available on Acorn) are set on the North Island in a very small fictional town of the same name.  Detective Mike Shepherd is new to the area and has two junior colleagues, Kristin Sims and D.C. Breen.   Often turning up to provide background information and assistance is Jared Morehu, a young Maori man who doubles as a handyman.

Murder is on the docket whether it be drowning in a wine vat, dying on a golf course, collapsing on stage, or cast adrift on the sea.  With four ex-wives and a bit of the city around the edges, Shepherd is passionate about country music and always has a cassette tape or two to pop in when he hops into his car.  These episodes are long, an hour and a half each, but I’m caught up in the experience of life and death in this beautiful somewhat rural area.

NOT TO BE MISSED

Rhinoceros at the Asolo Theater.  Ionesco’s absurdist play, first presented in 1959, has a simple plot line, but raises challenging questions for our time.  How does one remain an individual and true to one’s values when everyone around you is joining the herd?  Creatively staged and wonderfully acted, this production is both humorous and thought-provoking.  We had the added pleasure of seeing this with good friends from Philadelphia.

As a graduate student, the Chief Penguin was a volunteer usher in Boston for five nights when the Metropolitan Opera came to town.  He credits that performance of Bellini’s Norma, starring Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, with sparking his love of opera.  Earlier this week, we were at the Sarasota Opera’s production of Norma, and it was wonderful!  The singing is not quite the level of those divas, but it was very good, especially Joanna Parisi as Norma.  The staging was also nicely done.  There are more performances of both Norma and Rhinoceros.

 

PRE-THEATER DINING

Two of our favorites for pre-performance dining are Muse at the Ringling and Louie’s Modern in downtown Sarasota.  Muse is consistently very good for both lunch and dinner, and we’ve recently enjoyed both.  The quesadilla is a frequent choice of the C.P., and I’m partial to their salads, particularly the green salad topped with grilled chicken and their Caesar.  In the evening, entrees include trout, salmon, and short ribs plus they have crab cakes, always good, as an appetizer.  Service is pleasant and efficient almost to the point of briskness. But they do want to be sure you make it in time for your play!

It’s “the season” as they say, so Louie’s is again offering their Modern Theater Menu (3 courses) for $30.  It’s a good deal!  The portions are a nice size and for each course there is a choice among three options.  We’ve eaten this menu twice recently and the North Palm salad with grapefruit is a light starter, while the salmon with couscous and the chicken breast are both excellent.  The chicken is accompanied by a silky mascarpone polenta and root vegetables.  Dessert offerings include a warm chocolate cake and polenta cake with berries, both of which we’ve sampled.  Muse and Louie’s are both part of the Tableseide group so there can be a bit of overlap between the menus—one example being the delicious and attractively presented burrata with heirloom tomatoes on a coral Himalayan salt block.  

WHAT I’M READING

Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells. Watch for more about this 1909 novel about a modern young woman in a future blog.

 

 

 

Notes:  Brokenwood image from all3mediainternational.com, principals in Norma from mysuncoast.com, and burrata photo from sarasotafoodies.com.  Header photo ©JWFarrington.

Maine Musings: Books & More

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ON THE MAINE COAST

After the humidity and heat of Florida, the Maine coast is a welcome change—even when you have several days of gray skies, continual fog, and temperatures that don’t climb out of the 60’s.   We’re on an island here and that means it’s more susceptible to foggy, misty conditions. Sometimes just going across the bridge into town brings one into sunshine. The other day town was foggy too, but farther inland in Damariscotta we were plunged into warmth, even heat. There it was bright sun, humid and 85 degrees!

Our days here are punctuated by hours of reading, dinners with friends, bingeing on The Americans, and the occasional special activity such as a craft fair, the library’s annual book and bake sale, or the house and garden tour, an always enjoyable peek at how others live. The Chief Penguin and I each have projects. We’re both spending time weeding our online photo collections and deleting both duplicates as well as lesser photos. I also brought with me one of the many handwritten journals I’ve kept over the years and am transcribing it on my laptop for posterity—or at least for our son and granddaughters. It’s a jaunt down memory lane for sure. This one is from 1990 and although that sometimes seems like recent past, it’s actually more than 25 years ago! 

Finally, I’ve been tracking the box of books I mailed from Florida on July 8th. It’s been to Jacksonville, FL twice, three times to Springfield, MA, and now is on its second stop in Jersey City, New Jersey, all while supposedly on its way to Maine!

Frustrated, I belatedly put in an e-mail query about it and then I talked to an authoritative woman in the local post office. She said the address entered (I’m assuming this was done by the woman at my local substation) was my home address, not Maine! She and another postmistress are trying to get it out of its loop-de-loop travels and delivered here. Fingers crossed! Update—it finally arrived at the local post office after its two week journey and I am delighted to have my lost books.

ON THE SMALL SCREEN

Crime in the Shetlands

I’ve recently been immersed in an excellent crime series set in the rugged Shetland Islands, appropriately titled, Shetland. Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is a widower with a teenage daughter who works with Tosh (Alison McIntosh) and Sandy, two junior detectives. Also starring in this thoughtfully produced series is the stunning scenery. Cliffs and peat and simple shingle and stone buildings against a backdrop of serious sea and gray skies. Most episodes are two-partners and you get the flavor of the culture and a sense of life in this isolated rural environment with the ferry the lifeline to the mainland. I find the character of Perez in particular to be very well drawn. He’s a detective with a mission to solve the latest murder, but he’s got a compassionate soul.

RECENT READING

Mishap in Saudi

Thanks to the extensive mystery section at Bookstore 1 Sarasota, I picked up this first detective novel by Zoe Ferraris published in 2008. Entitled Finding Nouf, it’s set in Jeddah and the nearby desert. Desert guide Nayir ash-Sharqui is asked by the wealthy Shrawi family to help locate their missing teenage daughter, Nouf. He knows the family quite well and is friends with Othman, one of Nouf’s many brothers. What is most fascinating about this mystery is its depiction of this segregated Muslim society where women’s lives are cloistered and separate from the world of men. This is a challenge for Nayir in his investigation which is somewhat overcome as he becomes acquainted with lab technician, Katya Hijazi, an independent career woman, who can provide entrée and insights. Author Zoe Ferraris was briefly married to a Saudi man and lived in Saudi Arabia for a time. This was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year and is the first of three mysteries set there.  (~JW Farrington)

The Muse by Jessie Burton

This novel was on a display labeled beach reading at Longfellow Books in Portland. I was aware of Burton’s earlier novel, The Miniaturist, so decided to take a chance on it. Like other historical novels, it links characters from two different time periods, in this case London in 1967 and Spain in 1936. Olive Schloss is a young English woman living in Spain who becomes friendly with Isaac Robles, a painter and a political activist and his sister Teresa, who adopts the Schloss family and works as their housekeeper. Like Isaac, Olive also paints, but is extremely reluctant to share her art.

Odelle Bastien is from Trinidad and has been in London for five years. She gets hired by a prestigious art institute and is mentored by a quixotic older woman named Marjorie Quick. Odelle brings to the attention of the institute a painting thought to be by Isaac Robles and finds herself immersed and enmeshed in a net of secrets and deceptions.

Well researched, and intricately plotted with a myriad of relationships and liaisons, The Muse explores questions of creativity and ambition midst tangled love and desire. Why is Olive so determined not to have her name on her work? Is it simply her reluctance as a woman at that time? What price does she pay for her love for Isaac? Can Teresa be seen as evil? I found this an engrossing book even though I sometimes found it hard to accept the characters’ motivations.  (~JW Farrington)

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Booknote: Summer Reading

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For some of us, summertime is an excuse to read something light or more frivolous than we usually would.  For others, it’s an opportunity to devote time to delving into a serious tome, perhaps one that’s been languishing on the shelf.  I view it as a chance to do both—indulge in lighter fare and stretch my brain with something more challenging, usually a nonfiction title.  When I was working fulltime, Maine was my time for extended reading.  Now I have more available time, but I still see Maine as a gift for long spans of reading, whole mornings or whole afternoons.

Before leaving home, I load up my Kindle with new books, pack a few paper books in my luggage, and, don’t tell my spouse, even mail myself a box of assorted novels and nonfiction to await my arrival.  On the day we arrive at our rental house, a priority is to assemble all the books I’ve brought or mailed and put them in stacks on the living room end table with another stack in the bedroom.  There’s something very appealing about having all those choices laid out from which I can choose what to read next!

Here are some titles I’m considering.  More to come in a future post.

Flying Shoes by Lisa Howoth.  A first novel about an unsolved murder in Mississippi in 1996.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose.  A novel about a lesbian and cross dresser that seems appropriate reading given today’s ongoing conversation about gender and gender roles.  On the “2014 100 Notable Books” list from the New York Times Book Review.

Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival by Jennifer Chiaverini.  Chiaverini has written several historical novels set in the time of the Civil War as well as a series of books about quilters.  Lighter fare and this will be my first of hers..

Muse by Jonathan Galassi.  A new short novel about the world of publishing.

Ashley’s War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon.  Nonfiction account of women on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2010.

The Secretary by Kim Ghattas.  Published a couple of years ago, this is a reporter’s account of traveling with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.   Timely given her candidacy.

WHAT I’VE READ RECENTLY

What is it like to work in the White House?  The Residence by Kate Andersen Brower is a quick read  based on interviews with butlers, seamstresses, housemaids, valets, and other White House staff from FDR and Truman to the present.  For the most part, the closer you get to the present day, the more restrained the staff are in their comments about the President and First Family, but you still get an intriguing glimpse of that enclosed world.  Each family has its own distinct personality and its own preferences and some families were definitely friendlier to the staff.