Tag: South Florida Museum

Tidy Tidbits: Around Town

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MARVELOUS MUSEUM

The name may be bland, but the South Florida Museum in Bradenton is doing big things!  The Chief Penguin and I were delighted to be at their groundbreaking this week for a new addition.  It’s an education wing with several new classrooms along with the Mosaic Backyard Universe.  The classrooms will enable them to build on the wonderful partnerships they already have with the local schools and the Backyard Universe is an innovative indoor and outdoor space that will provide new ways for younger children to explore their world.  The new center adds more exciting development to downtown Bradenton (the museum is practically on the Riverwalk) and will attract families with very young children.  It’s a win for everyone!

  

 

The project has been in the works for more than five years and there are a number of forward-looking leaders and partners who’ve made it happen.  Current leadership includes two stellar women, museum CEO Brynne Anne Besio and board chair, Jeanie Kirkpatrick.  It was great too to see the museum’s class of kindergarten children wielding their own little shovels.  

 

 

TIMELY MOVIE

The Post

I like films about journalists and the press and I will see any film that stars Meryl Streep.  Predisposed toward The Post as I was, I found it excellent!  Meryl Streep is superb as Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks captures gung-ho editor Ben Bradlee.  It was also fun to see Matthew Rhys of “The Americans” showing up as Daniel Ellsburg.

But Streep gets my vote for conveying all aspects of Graham.  Graham was a product of her time, a woman who was raised to be a wife and mother and therefore, invisible; she was a gracious and skilled hostess, and she, like her late husband, was a friend to politicians and presidents.  She never expected to be thrust into the job of publisher and in the critical scene where Graham must decide what to do, Streep’s lips purse, her face wrinkles, she hesitates, and you feel the thought process as this woman weighs all she and the paper stand to lose and what might be gained.  In that instant, Graham becomes a publisher to reckon with.

There are some other marvelous scenes too:  when she’s the lone woman meeting with the bankers and when she has a telling and poignant conversation with her good friend Robert McNamara.  

I remember the controversy surrounding the “Pentagon Papers” and so probably did other moviegoers as the audience clapped at the end of the film.  With all the castigation of the press today and the emphasis on “fake news” by some, this film about freedom of the press is a must-see!  I also recommend Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, published in 1997.

 

 

Note:  Photo of Graham from cronkitehhh.jmc.asu.edu

Of Manatees and Movies

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It was a week for birds, manatees, and several very good films.

WILDLIFE

My sister Ann is more of a nature person than I am. She and Paul visited us this past week and they both enjoyed seeing the shore birds from our lanai.  Lots of great white egrets, white and a few brown pelicans, gulls, a few herons, and even a flyby of three roseate spoonbills.  Of course, after they left, I got to watch three spoonbills up close, foraging for fish in the low tidal mud!

My sister also wished to see a manatee or two, so we drove up to Apollo Beach and the Manatee Viewing Center, near Tampa and adjacent to the Big Bend power station.  Manatees, also called sea cows, are large marine mammals related to elephants.  In the winter, manatees seek out warmer waters and the water around this power plant attracts them in droves!  We probably saw at least a hundred lolling in the water and surfacing every few minutes for air.  They looked brown, some with algae on their backs, and are somewhat bullet shaped, rounded and with very small heads and prominent nostrils.  They are quite an impressive sight.  The viewing center includes a boardwalk nature trail through shrubs and grassland and a 50-foot viewing tower.  

Another day we took our guests to the South Florida Museum to check out their manatees. The museum is part of a network of facilities that provide care for injured manatees. Critical care is done in Tampa and three other locations.  This museum provides intermediate care and rehabilitation before the manatees are ready to be released back to the wild.  Manatees are most often injured by boat strikes and there were three on view, one weighing only several hundred pounds.  The goal is to get them to 700 pounds at least before they leave; they are released near where they were rescued so that they can learn which warm waters to return to the following winter.  We heard a presentation while the manatees, here appearing more gray in color, were feeding which was fun to see.  Among them, these three manatees devour 200 pounds of lettuce a day!

MOVIES

Lady Bird.  You might pair this film with Call Me by Your Name as both feature teenagers grappling with questions of identity and seeking love.  Call Me limits itself to focusing on the intense relationship Elio (Timothee Chalamet) has with Oliver, a visiting older student, while Lady Bird tracks Christine’s (aka Lady Bird’s) senior year, her desperate desire to escape from dull Sacramento, her longing to go far away to college, her battles with her strong-willed and occasionally abrasive mother, and her sexual explorations.

It’s a very fine film and Saoirse Ronan gives a marvelous performance at this girl from the wrong side of the tracks who wants more from life.  Chalamet is also here as one of her boyfriends.

Darkest Hour.  This is a totally absorbing film about Churchill’s early days as prime minister and deciding how Britain will deal with Hitler and his expanding empire.  It’s about leadership, party politics, and the events surrounding Dunkirk.  I felt as if I was really there at that time.  Gary Oldman is superb as the stubborn, irascible, inappropriate, but often brilliant (and right) Winston.  Kristin Scott Thomas is his understanding, bemused, and sometimes frustrated wife, Clemmie.  Highly recommended!

All the Money in the World.  I’ve just seen this film and now want to Google the Getty family and find out how much of it was fiction and how much fact.  Teenage Paul Getty was kidnapped in 1973; his divorced mother implores his grandfather, J. Paul Getty, to pay his ransom money.   Although he was the favorite grandson, grandfather Getty is adamant in his refusal to offer the money.  Christopher Plummer, recruited on short notice after Kevin Spacey was booted out of the role, gives a bravura performance while Michelle Williams is young Paul’s self-proclaimed “ordinary” mother.  The film is too long and slow at the beginning, but I’d see it just for Plummer.

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).