Tag: Sarasota

Tidy Tidbits: Bands & Birds

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We’re home.  I’ve spent the week sorting mail, stocking the larder, poring over all the cooking magazines and New Yorkers that accumulated, getting back on the treadmill (need to undue the effects of lobster and potato chips!) and soaking in the pool.  Florida is hot and humid, but I’m reveling in being in our own space!

Old-time Music

We just attended our first performance at the Florida Studio Theatre, a multi-venue outfit with a range of offerings from drama to improv to music.  This was The Swingaroos performing in their cabaret space.  A full menu was available, but not realizing this we dined at the Bijou Café around the corner, one of our current favorites.  I had never heard the term, “territory band,” before but they were small dance bands that toured in the U.S., primarily in the Midwest and west, playing in small towns and night clubs during the 1920’s and 30’s.  The Swingaroos are a group of six:  one female vocalist accompanied by musicians on piano, drums, clarinet, trombone, and string bass.  They gave an energetic performance, but we would have enjoyed it more had more of the music and songs been familiar ones.

Nature Note—Missed Photo Op

A robust thunder and lightning storm the other day lasted several hours.  It left puddles galore and, I noted that all the birds that are either in the trees, the sky, or elsewhere during the day had congregated near our pond and on the grass.  The white ibises always do this when the weather is threatening, but this time I observed many great white egrets, brown ducks. and also several of the smaller herons.  Quite striking to see the bright white birds all poking in the grass or stalking around the pond’s perimeter.  I always think there are more birds around when the people population here is down, but that may not be so.

White ibis in June
White ibis in June
Bird on the beach
Bird on the beach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Star Romp

For some light diversion, we rented “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”  While not quite as good as its predecessor, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” it delivers megawatt star power in the form of Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and a distinguished gray, but still very handsome, Richard Gere.  Sunny (Dev Patel), proprietor of this unusual Indian hotel where roll is called each morning to see who survived the night, is as exuberant as ever.  He is soon to be married and wants to expand his business.  And he is sure he knows the identity of the unannounced hotel inspector.  Pure fun with a tinge of the poignancy of the last stage of life.

 

Tidy Tidbits: Spies, Tribes & Trills

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AT THE MOVIES

“Madcap,” ” hilarious” and “fun” are all terms I’d use to describe just released espionage comedy, Spy.  The women are at the top of their game—mostly—and there is plenty of foreign intrigue and too many bodies getting shot to count.  The wonderful cast is led by Melissa McCarthy as Susan Cooper, a basement CIA analyst who inveigles her way into the field, supported by a tough deputy CIA director, Alison Janney (think CJ on West Wing,) and colleague and agent, Miranda Hart, better known to many viewers as Chummie in Call the Midwife.  Rose Byrne plays the prime target while the distaff side is represented by Jude Law and Jason Statham.  It’s perfect summer fare.

NOVEL DELIGHT

Heaps of laudatory adjectives, “enthralling, exhilarating, arresting, fiercely intelligent, steamy, compelling” have been applied to Lily King’s novel, Euphoria, and perhaps that’s why I had avoided reading it until now.  But read it I did and found it pretty much lived up to the praise.  And what a vivid cover and enticing title!  Using Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson’s time in the field in New Guinea in 1932 as a jumping off point, King has created a novel that celebrates anthropology (the title refers to a certain pleasure in the work), raises questions about the methods and motives used to study the primitive tribes there, and sharply delineates the amalgam of professional competition and jealousy, sexual tension, and friendship that unites and divides this talented trio.

The Mead character, Nell Stone, is married to Schuyler Fenwick, known as Fen, but is strongly attracted to Blankson, the younger anthropologist modeled on Bateson, and he to her.  The point of view shifts from the narrative third person to Blankson recalling events retrospectively to passages from Nell’s field notebooks.  It is worth remembering that these are characters and the story here is not real life.  Euphoria was selected as one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year, 2014.  Definitely recommend it!

As for Lily King, I was not familiar with her work, but have since learned she lives in Yarmouth, Maine and has written four novels, each of which has been cited for some award or other.  Here’s an interview with her from the Boston Globe.  Now I need to go back and find her earlier books.

SAVORING SARASOTA

The snow birds have gone home, the spring vacationers have departed the beach and traffic is down to a trickle.  But, for those of us still here, June abounds with delights both culinary and musical.  For two weeks, many Sarasota restaurants participate in Savor Sarasota Restaurant Week and offer three-course lunch and dinner menus at $15 and $29 respectively. These are seriously good deals!

We enjoyed lunch at Louie’s Modern (trendy cuisine such as kale salad with grilled salmon) and dinners at Bjou Café (scrumptious shrimp and crab bisque to start!) and Miguel’s (traditional fare with a French accent including plump snails in a gruyere cream sauce).  I’ve been impressed each meal with both the menu choices and the portion sizes—no stinting on quality or quantity.

Also in June, young musicians from conservatories across the country (who’ve competed for one of the coveted 60 slots) come to Sarasota.  They take part in master classes with noted musicians and performers and together present a series of public concerts of chamber and symphonic works.  All under the aegis of the Sarasota Orchestra.  We have been to one chamber concert already and are gearing up for two more.  Especially memorable was flutist Carol Wincenc’s performance last Friday evening.

Tidy Tidbits: Film, Art & Vanessa

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FILM

I recommend Far from the Madding Crowd!  Beautiful countryside, beautifully filmed, and Carey Mulligan is a lovely Bathsheba, intelligent, definite and almost elfin.  And the men—Francis Troy has the required rakish dark hair and eyes, Boldwood (don’t you love Hardy’s choice of names!) is older, but not as sinister seeming as in the novel, and Gabriel Oak, well, he is all that the hero is supposed to be—strong, silent and ever reliable.  I prefer this version to the earlier one starring Julie Christie.  A good romantic film to get lost in!

ART IN SARASOTA

I believe that part of having a successful retirement life is creating something new or at least exploring and experiencing different activities and events.  My spouse and I call this aspect, “the frolic phase,” and we have developed gradations of frolics from micro to mini to mega. Frolics range from dinner at a new restaurant to a museum visit to a full-blown trip like the 5-week one we took to Asia.

This past week, we had what I’d term a mini frolic.  We had been to John and Mable Ringling’s mansion, Ca d’Zan, at Christmas time, but never to the Ringling Museum of Art.  We have now remedied that and were quite impressed.  The Ringlings’ personal art collection, which was bequeathed to the state of Florida upon John Ringling’s death in 1936, is primarily made up of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance religious art, mainly by Italians, but there are representatives of Dutch, French and Spanish artists as well. They are hung in a series of wood-paneled galleries, each of a different wall color, in the original building.  The building itself is modeled on an Italian villa with a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David looming over the courtyard and is worth seeing.

The addition of the Ulla and Arthur T. Searing Wing provides a contemporary museum space for traveling and temporary exhibits and we got caught up in “Re-Purposed,” sculpture and other art created from trash and cast-off items.  I would also note that we had the pleasure of meeting the late Mrs. Searing several years ago. She was then 92, elegantly dressed and very  proper.  We conversed over tea and Pepperidge Farm cookies on her balcony high up overlooking Sarasota Bay.

NEW BOOK 

Vanessa Bell about 1910 & Virginia Woolf, 1902 [by George C. Beresford/Hutton Archive
Vanessa Bell about 1910 & Virginia Woolf, 1902
[by George C. Beresford/Hutton Archive]
I dashed through Priya Parmar’s new novel, Vanessa and Her Sister, and was simply captivated!  This is Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, but with the attention on Nessa as she was called.  Parmar has created a chatty diary for Vanessa and her dated entries are interrupted by letters and postcards from other family members and friends (Virginia and Nessa to Violet Dickinson and Dorothy Snow,  Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf to each other).  The four Stephen siblings, who had lost both their parents and their half sister Stella, were extremely close and formed a tight little social group which was enlivened by close friends dropping by for their Thursday evenings.  The novel makes clear the steadying influence Vanessa had on Virginia and how much Virginia needed and wanted her attention.  Nonetheless,  death, madness,  Clive’s courtship of Vanessa, and betrayal all conspire to disrupt the balance and seeming harmony of the group..

These are 20 and 30-something writers and artists who, without Facebook or texting, are aiming to be successful in their endeavors and falling in and out of love with potential life partners, be they male or female.  Parmar brings their unconventional social milieu to life—so much so that I felt as if I were there and well acquainted with Vanessa.  It is probably helpful to know something about these noteworthy and ultimately famous individuals (I did, being a fan of the Bloomsbury Group), but even if you don’t, their story and their issues of artistic creation and love of all kinds will engage you.  I didn’t want the book to end.

Tidy Tidbits: Sarasota Music Scene

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We’re discovering a wealth of culture here in Southwest Florida!  The Sarasota-Bradenton area has a seemingly infinite array of music and theater opportunities.  In just the past two months we’ve taken advantage of several.  One Sunday November afternoon, we attended a string quartet chamber concert featuring members of the Sarasota Symphony.  It turns out that this symphony, previously with the bland name of  Florida West Coast Symphony,  has been around for more than 65 years and is the oldest in the state!   On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, we heard the full orchestra with a guest conductor and pianist in a symphony of American music including a work by Samuel Barber along with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.  A patriotic, but not overdone afternoon.  Before the holidays, we were delighted with the Asolo Repertory Theatre’s production of that classic, South Pacific.  With the heightened awareness of black-white tensions in several US cities, this performance was timely for sure.  It is part of the theater’s  5-year American Character project, now in its second season.

This week, we discovered the world of the Sarasota Institute of Lifelong Learning (SILL). As someone whose job on the other coast was all about lifelong learning, it’s fun to be able to take advantage of someone else’s programs.  SILL has been in existence for 44 years and we are signed up for Music Mondays.  Twelve weeks of conversation and performance related to many aspects of music!  Week one featured the composer Theodore Morrison whose latest work, Oscar,  an opera about Oscar Wilde’s trial, will be performed in Philadelphia in February.  He was joined by the countertenor understudy for the role of Oscar who sang several aria excerpts for the audience.  The host of this program, June LeBell, is dynamic, knows her stuff, and kept up a lively pace.

Before the week is over, we’ll be at another SO concert—this one conducted by the new and exciting Anu Tali.  Can’t wait to see this female conductor in action!