Category: TV

Tidy Tidbits: Viewing and Vittles

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We attended a fun concert of Cole Porter songs, explored new dining options locally, and I’ve been sampling a number of different television series.

MOTHER’S DAY FUN

We four were sans our mothers, but we enjoyed very much the Hot ‘n’ Cole concert at the Sarasota Opera House that afternoon.  Featuring six undergraduate musical theater majors from Penn State and two pianists, this was a lively celebration of Cole Porter’s songs.  It was nicely choreographed and the singers were both exuberant and talented.  An audience favorite was Sarasota hometown star, Maria Wirries.  To cap off the day, we had dinner across the street at Bijou Café.  Elegant and gracious, this restaurant always pleases.

SMALL SCREEN

I’m guessing that the image most of us have of Albert Einstein is of an older man with a frizz of wild white hair shooting out in all directions.  This is not what you see in Genius, a new TV series from National Geographic based on Walter Isaacson’s biography.  In Genius, we get Einstein as a young man, brilliant, but frustrated by his inability to get any scientific notice for his work.  And as a harried husband and father who depends upon his wife, Mileva, for her scientific knowledge and insights, but fails to credit her publicly.  It’s an extremely well done, fascinating series! 

I’ve also been sampling a variety of Netflix and Amazon offerings during my treadmill time.  Nothing has truly captivated me and earned an A.  Mostly they are B’s.  They run the gamut from Z: The Beginning of Everything about Zelda Fitzgerald’s coming of age and her tumultuous marriage to hard-drinking novelist Scott,  to Longmire,  to When Calls the Heart.  Z is an Amazon production which I found slow going initially.  It picked up a bit and I did watch the entire first season.

Based on a recommendation, I watched the first season and a bit more of Longmire.  Set in remote Wyoming, it’s a modern day western crime series.  Sheriff Walt Longmire and his two deputies deal with murders and runaways all the while doing a delicate dance in their relations with the nearby Indian reservation.  I was engaged for quite a while, but then decided I’d had enough of the west–at least for now.

Lastly, I’ve gone back and forth between a very wholesome drama set in the Canadian Northwest about a Mountie and a school teacher.  I thought it should be a Hallmark offering which it didn’t seem to be at first, but the second season opening shot credits the Hallmark Channel.  Set in the mining town of Coal Valley, When Calls the Heart brings together wealthy Elizabeth Thatcher, who leaves her upper class city life for adventure in a rustic town, and Jack Thornton, a handsome Mountie, son of a Mountie, who isn’t sure marriage fits in with his life plan.  Add in a host of townspeople (mainly women) and the “bad guy” mine owner and troubles and conflict ensue.  I’m now well into season 2 and I find that the narrative has gained in complexity over the first season.  It’s diverting entertainment.

CASUAL EATERIES

In our dining around, we lunched twice at Chicken Salad Chick and once at Judy’s Restaurant.  Chicken Salad Chick is a chain (headquartered in Alabama) new to this area and very pleasant and attractive.  We’d had one of their many varieties of chicken salad as takeout, but these times we ate in their dining room.  And calling it a dining room is not a stretch.  The front area, in particular, with big windows is light and bright.   We tried the jalapeno chicken salad, the barbecue chicken salad, and the lemon basil version.  We had them over a green salad with a choice of dressings and several packets of wheat crackers.  Each bowl came with a dill pickle and a frosted sugar cookie on the side.  Good value and quite tasty!  My favorite salads thus far are classic and jalapeno.

Judy’s Restaurant, in a small strip mall in Cortez, is run by locals and popular locally.  Lunch here offers up all those good things you aren’t supposed to eat along with some healthier salad options.  Our waitress stated that they had the best Reuben around which the Chief Penguin promptly ordered (with fries) and devoured.  I had a yen for a burger, something I don’t indulge in too often, and found it hit the spot.  Overall, Judy’s was more appealing both in terms of décor and menu than I anticipated. I’m told they serve a mean breakfast!

 

Credits:  Header photo (jacaranda blooms) and Chicken Salad Chick ©JWFarrington; Einstein photo from web via Daily Mirror.

Tidy Tidbits: Friends & Family

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Being socially engaged with others is a key to good health and perhaps a longer life.  We entertained very good friends recently and I spent several days inhabiting J. D. Vance’s head in his disturbing and engrossing memoir of growing up in Appalachia.

FRIENDS

As is certainly evident in Vance’s memoir (noted below), we don’t get to to choose our parents or our grandparents.  Some of us are luckier than others.  But, we are able to select our friends.  One of the greatest pleasures of retirement is the gift of time and with that the opportunity to spend more time with good friends Last week our good friends, Mary and Joe, came for an overnight visit.  We’ve known them probably twenty years and, although we hadn’t seen them since the end of last summer, we picked up where we left off and had an easy, delightful time.  We’ve met and are acquainted with each other’s children and grandchildren and we share a common interest in good food, good books, and being by the water.  Conversation flowed effortlessly, and we parted knowing more time together awaits us come summer.

FAMILY

Hillbilly Elegy:  A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance

This is a remarkable book.  Remarkable for its unflinching candor and remarkable for the story it tells.  How J.D. Vance was able to escape from his family’s cycle of poverty, violence, and instability is amazing and riveting.  He describes hillbilly culture:  its mores, values, and attitudes, and both defends it and then holds it accountable for the ongoing problems experienced by this segment of society in Appalachia.  What enabled him to succeed at all was the relative stability provided by his grandparents.  They were strict and, to some of us, would come across as mean, but they loved him and, his grandmother in particular, instilled in him the value of education.  Also key to his survival (and he was surviving rather than thriving) was the protection his older sister Lindsay offered.  For a long time, they were a team, and Lindsay more the adult than his drug-addicted mother with her series of live-in boyfriends and, eventually, five husbands.  

Studies have demonstrated and Vance is evidence that constant disruption in childhood and daily exposure to loud arguments and violence leave scars that carry over into adulthood.  Vance was not only socially and culturally out of step when he went to college, but he lacked the necessary skills for developing a loving, long-term relationship.  He occasionally cites from the literature on poverty, but it offers few solutions.  Ultimately, he believes the answer lies not with the government, but with hillbillies themselves re-evaluating their conduct and facing the fact that it is harmful to their children.  His is a success story fueled by resentment and anger, but success none the less.  He had advantages many children from Jackson, Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio do not.

Published in June 2016, Vance’s memoir has been singled out as describing individuals most likely to be Trump supporters; read with that in mind, it offers an up-close look at lives most of us have little familiarity with.  The book jacket states that after law school, Vance became a principal at an investment firm in Silicon Valley and lived in San Francisco.  I thought this was one of the unlikeliest milieus for him and was puzzled.  My wonderment was partially answered by his op-ed piece in the March 16 New York Times in which he writes about deciding to move back to Ohio, but Columbus, not Middletown.

DIVIDED LOYALTIES

On the small screen, I just finished watching the five-part Netflix series, Rebellion.  Set in Dublin, it focuses on the Easter Rising of 1916 and three women who are caught up in the Irish rebels’ fight against the British government.  While these young women, a government employee, a doctor in training, and an activist, are all involved, two brothers are fighting on opposite sides while an upper class husband and wife have sharply different views on how they should participate or not.  I found it totally engrossing and well done and hope that there will be a second season.

Notes:  Header photo and coloring ©JW Farrington; downtown Middletown, Ohio from Pinterest.

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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ROYALS—WATCHING AND READING

qe2  I read so much about the Netflix series, The Crown, while I was in London, I couldn’t wait to start watching it once I returned home.  And now, I’m enthralled!  It is so well done, elaborate, lavish even, and the family dynamics (exiled Duke of Windsor, Prince Philip’s role in their marriage once she’s queen) and back stories are fascinating.  Claire Foy as Elizabeth is mesmerizing too.young-victoria

I also just read Victoria by Daisy Goodwin.  It was for sale in the UK in paperback and just was published here in the U.S.  I believe that Goodwin wrote the script for the upcoming “Masterpiece” TV series before she wrote the novel.  In any case, the two are linked.  The novel is about Victoria’s first years as queen.  She was only 18 when she ascended to the throne and had been protected and managed by her mother, her mother’s special friend, John Conroy, and her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland.  They were all seeking power and influence over her.  Victoria, if this account is to be believed and questions have been raised, became reliant on, and perhaps even developed a tendresse for her prime minister, Lord Melbourne.  Whether all true or not, it’s an absorbing and enjoyable read.  And one realize politics always exists whether in the foreground or background!

OTHER RECENT READING

The Past by Tessa Hadley

This novel has been much touted.  Initially I wasn’t sure I liked it.  The writing was lovely, full of imagery related to the English countryside, but there didn’t seem to be much of a focus.  And I wasn’t fond of Alice, the first of the four siblings to be introduced. She seemed too diffuse and scatterbrained.  She and her sisters, Harriet, the eldest who never married, and Fran, mother of two young children, plus their brother Roland are to spend three weeks at a summer cottage that belonged to their grandparents.  They are gathering partly to decide whether or not to sell the cottage.

Roland arrives last with his third wife, the Argentinian Pilar, who is different and definitely an outsider.  The other sisters both want and don’t want to like her and her very difference gives her status.  Roland brings his 16-year old daughter Molly, and Alice has included Kasim, the son of her former boyfriend, who is in his early 20’s.

It’s a novel of shifting relationships, more than action, full of undercurrents and nuanced encounters.  These now middle-aged adults engage and assess and disagree with one another all the while observing or not the attraction between Molly and Kasim. And ignoring to some extent what the children, Arthur and Ivey, are hatching.  In three sections, the first and last are the present and the middle section is The Past.  It focuses on Jill, the adult siblings’ mother, long since deceased, and is to me that which links everything together.  I liked this section best and it made it possible for me to re-appreciate the first part and to really enjoy what Hadley does in the closing section.  img_0062

Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

I have been working my way through Harrod-Eagles’ Morland Dynasty series, but have just discovered her police detective series.  Where the Morland series is measured, detail-laden prose steeped in English history from the 12th century on (there are 30+ volumes), this first Bill Slider mystery is contemporary, fun, and romantic, all at the same time.  Middle-aged Slider is on the cusp of burnout when he is assigned the case of the murder of young violinist Anne-Marie Austen.  Her death haunts him personally more than most cases although he soon discovers that she was unlikable and had few friends.

Slider is well-drawn and appealing while his partner and friend Atherton, O’Flaherty, the desk sergeant, and Joanna, Anne-Marie’s colleague and Slider’s love interest, are also well fleshed out characters.  Harrod-Eagles here writes with a verve and feeling which outshines her other series.  I’m looking forward to Bill Slider’s future adventures.

Note: Queen Victoria photo–www.yareah.com

Tidy Tidbits: Fall Memories, Reading & Viewing

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BACK TO SCHOOL

It’s September, the first day of fall is upon us, and everyone who’s going back to school is there by now.  I always liked going to school and happily anticipated the end of summer, the cooler days of autumn, and the challenge of new subjects, new teachers, and sometimes even new friends.  And while it’s still summery here in Florida, the official change of season reminds me of some incidents from elementary school.

  • In grade school, going back to school meant the purchase of a new dress, at first just for me and then later for me and my two sisters. These dresses had full skirts, short sleeves, and were almost always plaid.  I recall fondly one green and red plaid with a separate red belt that I thought was particularly smart.
  • plaid-dress
  • From kindergarten through second grade, I walked several blocks to school. It seemed like a longer walk than I’m sure it was.  One morning I arrived to find the school door tightly locked.  I knocked vigorously several times and then in tears walked back home.  My folks had not realized it was a school holiday.
  • My father’s job called for him to be transferred to another town about an hour away. Before I left for school one morning, my mother told me the name of my new school was “Seward,” and that I should tell that to my teacher.  I don’t know why she didn’t write down the name, but she spelled it for me and said she was sure I could remember it.  All the way along the sidewalk, I went, chanting, “s, e, w, a, r, d, s, e w, a, r d,” until I reached my classroom.  I have no recollection of actually giving Miss Rosa the name nor did I at that point have any idea who William H. Seward was.
  • Even when I went there, Seward School was an old building (constructed in 1911 and long since torn down) with a basement that was dank and dim and a bit scary.  Mr. and Mrs. Steimle, older German immigrants, were the school janitors.  Always cordial to the students, they assisted with any drills.  When we had air raid drills, a regular occurrence in those years, we had to wind our way down the stairs to that dusty basement and kneel along the wall with our heads down.  I don’t think most of us realized what we were preparing for or the potential seriousness if such a drill were for real.  It was just another drill, like a fire drill, only we stayed inside instead of exiting the building.
  • Seward School had classes through 6th grade before we moved on to one of the three high schools in town. Graduation from 6th grade was a big deal—white shirts and ties for the boys and for the girls fancy dresses, and probably stockings.  For many of us, this was the first time we had worn stockings.  In this pre-pantyhose era, that also meant garters to hold them up.
  • Sixth grade is also when I had my first male classroom teacher. Mr. Loretan was a young good-looking, capable teacher—liked by all of us, especially the girls!

READING:  SIBLING SQUABBLES

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

cynthiasweeney

I received this book, on the bestseller list for some weeks, as part of my First Editions book club membership.  After aging it for a few months, I brought it out of my stack and read it over several days.  The four Plumb siblings, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice, are somewhat at war with each other over the money they are due to inherit from a family trust in several months.  The problem is that their mother has given or loaned a significant portion of said “nest” to Leo, who had a car accident while drunk and caused serious injury to his passenger.  Each of the siblings has financial issues of his or her own and has been counting on the money.  They collectively gang up on Leo to make him do the right thing, but aren’t sure he will.

Often novels about dysfunctional families, and this lot qualifies, are downers and downright depressing.  This novel is actually frothy and fun, despite everyone’s problems.  I even found myself liking some of them!  This reflection of Leo’s on life after sobriety captures his personality:

However he parsed it, his future in New York could only be a diluted reflection of his before, a whiter shade of pale.  Evenness defined his present, the by-product, he often thought, of small minds and safe living.  In his new after, there would be no ups and downs, no private jets…or walking home from a riotous evening under a pinkening sky.  It wasn’t luxury he missed, it was surprise.  The things money could buy weren’t the reward; the reward was to feel lifted about everyone else, to get a look at the other side of the fence where the grass was rarely greener but always different and what he loved was the contrast—and the choice.

For some insight into this first-time novelist, check out this brief interview in the LA Times.

VIEWING

Thanks to my friend Mary for recommending the Netflix series, The Time in Between, which I just finished watching.  Set in Morocco, Madrid, and Lisbon between 1937 and 1941, it’s the story of a talented young Spanish dressmaker who ends up being a spy for the British and infiltrating the German community in Spain.  It’s subtitled and the pace, compared to most American productions, is measured—at least until the last few episodes when tension builds and events race to the climax.  Adriana Ugarte as Siri is beautiful and the clothes she creates are gorgeous, part of the fun of watching this series.  The novel of the same name on which it is based was written by Maria Duenas.

Notes:  Header art: www.clipartix.com; plaid dress:  www.etsy.com; Sweeney’s photo from Harper Collins author web page