We made the first of this year’s visits to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens yesterday. It was lovely and mostly sunny. We were impressed with some new annuals and the expansion of beds near the entry bridge. These gardens get better every year!
Lisianthus in purple
Pink member of the canna family
This year’s highlight is the presence of some gigantic trolls. These wooden sculptures are the work of Danish artist Thomas Dambo. They were built on site over several months by the artist with assistance from garden staff and more than 150 volunteers. Dambo has been working with wood since early childhood, and his trolls are found around the world.
Soren Troll by Thomas Dambo
I was told that these five trolls will remain in place until they deteriorate and fall apart, estimated to be about five years, longer if they receive some maintenance. They are impressive works! We tramped around and found two of them, Soren and Birk.
I must confess to buying this paperback book partly because of its very attractive apricot-colored cover. It’s a novel set in Iraq in 2002 when Sadam Hussein was ruling the country. The author is a former international correspondent who spent a year living under that regime. Her depictions of the city and the environment are picturesque and chilling.
Wilkinson has created three female characters, one based to some extent on her own experiences. Ally Wilson is the wife of the Australian ambassador, Huda is a village girl who has advanced in life to working at the Australian embassy, but also acting as an informant for the government. Rania, born rich and privileged, has fallen on hard times; she and Huda were close friends as children. How these three women come to interact with one another and how Huda and Rania’s concern for their teenage children makes them compatriots is the heart of the novel.
I found the descriptions of daily life fascinating, but noticed a lack of tension in the narrative until about the last third of the book. Nonetheless, it’s worth reading about Bagdad during this brutal time. (~JWFarrington)
Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart and Detective Sunny Kahn are partners in solving cold case crimes. Bodies turn up years later in odd places, in this season, a freezer. This duo must identify the victim and then excavate his or her past to determine how and why the individual died. Was it an accident or murder? And who were the principals in this person’s life and what role did they play in the demise? One incident and one quick decision decades ago reverberated through the lives of four people.
From the haunting and ethereal opening song, “All we do is hide away,” to the detailed interviews with possible suspects, each season is gripping drama. This season is exceptionally so. Nicola Walker as the lead (familiar to some viewers from her role in Last Tango in Halifax) is superb, as is Sanjeev Bhaska as Sunny. This pair like and care for each other as friends as well as colleagues. Their mutual respect is echoed in the respect shown to victims, suspects, and family members. Complex, involved, and compelling—highly recommended!
This film by Ken Burns is a moving portrait of the sacrifices made by American minister Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha during the Second World War. In 1939, they left their children behind in Massachusetts and went on a secret mission to Berlin to help refugees in Europe escape the Nazis. It was a dangerous undertaking and a noble one, but one that splintered their marriage. They were an amazing couple and one that more people should know about. This film is a testament to their courage and their beliefs.
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of a comprehensive account of the human gene, how it governs life and its role in hereditary diseases. This series by Ken Burns brings the book to the screen featuring commentary by Mukherjee and others interwoven with real patient case histories. It’s a densely packed series and a good way to update one’s understanding of human biology.
Based on a book series by Julie Wassmer, these are cozy mysteries. Not much violence and little blood and gore. Pearl Nolan owns a restaurant and bar in small town Whitstable, England. She’s also a former police officer turned private detective. Known to almost everyone, she hunts for missing people and lost items. When detective Mike McGuire an urbanite from London, is assigned to a suspected murder case, Pearl offers assistance. Their unlikely alliance slowly morphs into a fragile friendship.
There are six episodes in Season 1. Many viewers like me are hoping for a second!
Alias is pretty much the extreme opposite of gentle Whitstable Pearl. Sydney Bristow is a double agent working for both SD-6 and the CIA. She was recruited as a spy during college, but when she discovered that SD-6 were the bad guys she thought she was working against, she went to the CIA. Sydney and her partner Dixson get sent on challenging and dangerous assignments around the world, everywhere from a mountain slope in Chile to Barcelona, Rome, and Cairo. They have nifty technical devices to jam signals, encrypt files, and the like. Despite innumerable physical fights, torture, and nasty encounters with the enemy, Sydney always manages to return home safely to Los Angeles.
Preposterous and fast-paced, with lots of action, this series is unbelievable, but good entertainment. There are five seasons and I’m about midway through Season 1.
Are you yearning to travel abroad? This 2-part series shot in some great European cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, and Rome, is a visual feast. It’s also a study of a marriage on its last legs and a coming-of-age story. Connie tells Douglas she wants out of their marriage, but reluctantly agrees to carry on with their planned family trip abroad. Albie at 17 is disgruntled, rattled by the tension between his parents, and eager to be on his own. Add in that relations between Albie and Douglas are tense and awkward at best.
I liked this series more the farther into I got. Initially, I found Douglas annoying and my sympathies lay with Connie. But each of them has faults and how they struggle to get along and be supportive of their son is very believable. As one summary put it, there’s humor and heartbreak here.
Note: Header image is waterfront in Whitstable, Kent, England (planetware.com)
The Chief Penguin and I are back in Manhattan after almost a year and a half. And it’s different. Covid-19 has taken its toll with more empty storefronts, favorite restaurants shuttered, fewer people on the streets, and less traffic all around. But, and it’s a welcome but, the city is becoming alive again! The Upper East Side seems more active than the West Village, possibly the difference between residents and schools in one area and more tourists in the other.
Dining space at Via Carota
Restaurant dining is reviving. We appreciated and benefited from the creativity shown in the various outdoor structures that have been built in the street or on the sidewalk.
We dined at two favorites, Sel et Poivre, very distanced from other diners, and Via Carota, which is serving exclusively outside. Sitting at a sidewalk table, we also sampled a Mediterranean restaurant new to us called A la Turka.
Fancy dining structure at JoJo
Reservations are essential since dining capacity is still limited by NYS rules. That can mean you need to reserve farther ahead (2 weeks out) or not until a day before. Overall, we’re delighted to be here, enjoying the bustle of the city and spending time with our marvelous granddaughters.
WATCHING AND READING
IN-DEPTH BIOGRAPY SERIES
Hemingway (PBS)
Ernest Hemingway was an incredibly complex man. Product of a dysfunctional family, whose father committed suicide, he, nonetheless, was a superb storyteller and masterful stylist whose novels made an indelible impression on American literature. Filmmaker Ken Burns has a reputation for delving deeply into whatever topic he presents from baseball to the Civil War. Here, this attention to detail and nuance is focused on one man’s adventurous life.
Hemingway had four wives and other women along the way, he fought in several wars, he loved Spain, and he lived in Cuba. Aside from his personal life, this 3-part series provides a close examination of each of Hemingway’s works from early novels to his account life in Paris (A Moveable Feast) to late works such as The Old Man and the Sea. Literary scholars offer additional analysis, but I found most intriguing the comments from other writers like Tobias Woolf and Mary Karr, but especially those of the Irish novelist, Edna O’Brien. It’s a fascinating journey from beginning to end!
WORLD WAR II MYSTERY
Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear
I’ve read all the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, and this is one of the best. I’m even wondering if it’s Winspear’s swan song for Maisie. But there’s an historic event at the end that leaves the door open.
Freddie, a young messenger boy, witnesses what appears to be a murder. Did he really see it? No body is found. While haunted by Freddie’s experience, Maisie is primarily working for Scotland Yard vetting special agents for Resistance work in France. Two young women she knows are among the interviewees. Maisie’s personal life is also more complicated. She has a young daughter and an American friend and love named Mark Scott.
This novel details more about what’s involved in fighting a war in 1940 when England is regularly being bombed. It feels more personal than Winspear’s earlier works with a minor theme of friendship and love. There’s a poignant quote about whether war makes one too brittle to relax and accept love.
If you like mysteries that focus more on the people and procedures with less high drama, then this is for you. I find Maisie endlessly fascinating! (~JWFarrington)
Here are several portrayals of women, four who are historical, that is real people, and one from a novel adapted for a television series.
BIOGRAPHY—OVERDUE RECOGNITION
The Agitators: Three Friends who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights by Dorothy Wickenden
One of the satisfactions of the times we’re living in is seeing women whose achievements have been overlooked getting the recognition they deserve. One example is the New York Times’ ongoing publication of lost obituaries. Obituaries of individuals, mainly women, whose accomplishments went unnoticed and largely unrecorded.
Dorothy Wickenden is the executive editor of The New Yorker and author of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. In The Agitators, Wickenden details the unlikely friendship and the overlooked successes of three women, two white and one Black. They all lived in Auburn, N.Y., an upstate town between Syracuse and Rochester. Auburn was more notable in the 19th century than in subsequent years. The women are Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward (wife of William Henry), and Martha Coffin Wright. They had a warm friendship and supported each other while working separately and together to abolish slavery and gain women the right to vote.
Tubman on the left, circa 1887 (GettyImages)
Most readers will know of Harriet Tubman’s work as a leader in the Underground Railroad and as a cook, nurse, and scout for the Union Army. They might not know that Frances Seward sold Tubman a house and that Tubman moved her parents from Canada to this Auburn property. Auburn was an appropriate way station between Maryland and Canada. Later on, Tubman turned her house into a home for the aged. When she stopped traveling, Harriet spent her remaining years in Auburn until her death in 1913.
Frances Seward (1805-1865) (sewardhouse.org)
Frances Miller Seward grew up in Auburn, a well-educated daughter of a judge. When married, she and Henry (as W. H. was known) moved in with her widowed father. Frances had strongly held views on the need to end slavery and also on women’s rights, but she was active mostly under the radar. Although she chafed at having to moderate her views publicly and not be as visible as she would have liked, she did it out of deference for Henry’s positions. He served as governor of New York State, U.S. senator, and ultimately, President Lincoln’s Secretary of State. Quietly, Frances helped fugitive slaves by lending their stately home as a stop on the railroad. She also participated in a number of the women’s rights conventions and several anti-slavery societies. Her views about how to combat slavery were stronger than Henry’s. She was a real hero whose many deeds were only fully acknowledged after her death and not even then by some powerful men.
Martha Wright, sister of the better-known activist Lucretia Mott, liked questioning institutions and upsetting the status quo. She grew up in Philadelphia and moved to Cayuga County to be a teacher. There she met David, her future husband and a lawyer. An activist and a feminist at heart, Martha was one of the organizers of the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. With Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, she played a leadership role in future conventions, and regularly spoke, wrote, and gathered petition signatures on behalf of women’s suffrage and abolition. Like Frances, she too occasionally contended with objections from her husband. These three women were each outstanding, and together they advanced these causes. Their gravesites are in Fort Hill Cemetery which was established in 1851.
This book has personal appeal for me. I spent most of my childhood until college in Auburn, attended Seward Elementary School, and have visited Harriet Tubman’s home. When Alaska, Seward’s Folly, became a state in 1959, Auburn celebrated in a big way. My father served on one of the organizing committees, and I spent an afternoon hawking statehood souvenir programs in front of the Grand Union supermarket. My mother was a volunteer at the Seward House Museum in her later years and is buried in Fort Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is as lovely as Wickenden states.
Personal connections aside, this is a superb book! It’s chock full of fascinating history: of the early women’s rights movement, the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, the Underground Railroad, and the battles of the Civil War, all presented with a female perspective. Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)
Early in the Second World War, Norway was attacked and occupied by the Nazis. The royal family split up and left the country for their safety. Crown Prince Olav and his father, King Haakon VII, joined the prime minister and his cabinet in London. Princess Martha and their children attempted to find refuge in Sweden (her birthplace and where her uncle reigned), but that became difficult and then politically untenable. She eventually made a safe crossing to the United States and lived first in the White House and then at a large estate nearby.
This 8-part series focuses on Princess Martha: her relationship with President Roosevelt and her attempts to gain recognition of Norway’s plight and get aid for the country. In the process, she becomes less reserved and a strong woman of consequence.
It’s a compelling piece of world history I was not aware of and makes for very dramatic viewing. Once again, Masterpiece comes through with a high-quality production that will have you anxiously anticipating what happens next.
This 8-part Netflix original series is about another powerful woman, this time a fictitious one who seems totally without morals. Rebecca Webb and scientist James Whiting develop a DNA match process that purports to match a person with his or her one true love, a love that happens instantaneously. They market it and call the company, The One.
How did now CEO Rebecca prove that the matches work? A body turns up in the river, a married couple get into difficulty when one of them signs up for The One, and a female detective gets matched, but then has questions about the results. These subplots all play into a larger sci-fi crime story revolving around the ambitious and ruthless Rebecca. Based on a novel by James Marrs, it’s fast moving, fascinating and grabs you from the start!
Note: Header photo is of Crown Prince Olav and Princess Martha of Norway in Washington, D.C. in 1939, courtesy of Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons.
