Category: TV

Boothbay Bits

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GYNECOLOGY A LA “MAD MEN”

We happened upon a PBS Mystery series last week called “Breathless.”  A three-parter set in England in the 60’s, it features a set of louche and callous medicos who practice obstetrics and perform back alley abortions.  The women are all either beautiful or flighty (or treated as such) and the men full of testosterone-fueled superiority.  The lead, Dr. Powell, does have a mysterious past, but it takes some time before that becomes apparent.  Overall, “Breathless” is a wonderfully realized period piece that will make you scowl and wince while simultaneously luring you in.

PORTER PRESERVE

The Boothbay Region Land Trust supports a network of preserves in the area open to the public with trails and paths that range in difficulty from easy and moderate to challenging.   The longest ones are 2.75 and 3.7 miles.

Last week, with my sister and brother-in-law, we did one of the trails at Porter Preserve on Barter’s Island which has a number of marked vistas that take you onto the rocks or at least overlooking them and the water. This trail was marked “easy” and last year we did one version of it with our then 3-year old granddaughter who navigated much of it on foot before resorting to her father’s shoulders.

This time we took more offshoots to explore more views and spent about an hour on the white trail with some blue diversions. I think the trail markings have been enhanced since our last visit and perhaps the trail lengthened.  Trail maps are available in the small parking area and are a handy reference. Basically, the main trail is a big loop around the acreage.

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NEW HOUSE

We have re-located to a new house for the second half of our Maine time. It has a totally different vibe and I feel as if I’ve gone from suburbia to the wilds. The first house was a comfortable modular one with lots of lawn and a sizable flower garden extending to a cove at the front edge of the property and at the back, beyond the garden, the open ocean.  This new house is part of a cluster of houses on the east side of the island and is situated right on the rocks. It was built in the 70’s and is more old Maine than the previous one, with even more spectacular ocean views.    A lovely stretch of rocks, almost flat in places, remains exposed even at high tide and is perfect for the nimble explorer. All day and even at night, one hears the lapping of the waves and can watch an approaching storm close up.  There are two lovely screened porches, one for dining. off the living room, and one above on the corner off the bedrooms, the ideal place to laze on a chaise and read.

GRANDDAUGHTERS

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This week our house was made lively with a visit from our son and daughter-in-law and their two daughters, now ages 4 and 4 months. E is a busy little girl, full of ideas, and always ready to move on to the next activity.  She was a great assistant chef for blueberry pancakes, adding the liquid to the batter, stirring it, dropping the batter in the pan and then topping each pancake with additional berries.

Together we colored in her coloring book, read several new books (multiple times for each), played with her ballerina doll, navigated two games of Old Maid, and watched her try out her pink shark bubble machine which produced a stream of tiny bubbles to a Chinese tune.   (This was her grandparents succumbing to a very nice and, obviously persuasive, street vendor in front of the Whitney Museum in May). In addition we re-visited the botanic garden, one of her favorite places from last year. This year she watched two puppet shows (one for older campers about pollination) and presented a brief show of her own.

Baby F  is full of smiles and very squirmy as she seems to want to take off on her own.  On the floor, she rolled over for only the second and third time, but couldn’t quite figure out how to get her other arm unstuck from underneath. She watches everything closely and finds her big sister a source of delight and laughter.

Photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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VIEWING

Dr. Thorne.  This adaptation of Trollope’s novel on Amazon Prime was written and produced by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame.  It’s a short series, only 4 episodes, but each one is introduced and closed by Mr. Fellowes.  Formally dressed sitting in a chair in what appears to be a library, his remarks are engaging and informative and delivered with a twinkle.  Mr. Fellowes is a talented man, witness the wild success of Downton, and recently his latest novel, Belgravia, was issued in hardcover, but first  serialized a la Charles Dickens on a downloadable app.  Pushing the envelope, as they say.

I don’t think Dr. Thorne is great television, but it was diverting and fun to watch while being on the treadmill.

READING

The Rainbow Comes and Goes:  A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.  I had eyed this book in the store and was pleased when my friend Sue sent it on for me to read.  Gloria Vanderbilt is a famous name, but I didn’t know much of anything about her life, particularly her early life.  In this book, the sharing of a year-long e-mail correspondence between her and her son, she unloads about her lovelorn and tumultuous childhood and her rootless adulthood before her successful marriage to Wyatt Cooper.  You learn much more about her than you do about him, although he shares his feelings about the premature deaths of his father and his brother and about his coming out as gay to his mother.  What is remarkable about this book is that mother (at 91) and son (48) were able to have this frank discussion and to make themselves vulnerable in this way.

LOADED UP

As I get ready to be in Maine, I’m pondering which paper books to take as well as loading up my Kindle.  I will have far more books at hand than I will ever get to, but I relish having choices and never want to be without enough reading material.  You’d think there weren’t any bookstores in Maine!  Actually, there are branches of Sherman’s, an independent regional store, in Portland, Boothbay Harbor, and Damariscotta.

Anyway, here are a few of the titles I have waiting on my Kindle, all novels plus two mysteries and none looking to be too heavy.  Perfect for summer!

Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh.  A new novel about fracking by this talented author set in a small Pennsylvania town.  She also wrote Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, both excellent.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith.  A 17th century Dutch painting is the focus of this novel spanning several decades by native Australian Smith, who now lives in Texas.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave.  He’s the author of one of my all-time favorite best books, Little Bee.  This is his new novel set during WWII.

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson.  She wrote the very popular novel, Mr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand, about intercultural relationships.  This one is set in 1914.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.  An early Inspector Gamache mystery, as always set in Three Pines, Quebec.

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd.  This is the 7th in the Bess Crawford mystery series written by a mother-son team.

Tidy Tidbits: Bach, Beethoven & Clementine

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READING

And After the Fire by Lauren Belfer.  Belfer is one of my favorite novelists.  I had been thinking about her and wondering if she had published anything recently when I happened upon her new novel at Three Lives in New York.  This historical novel deals with music, specifically a possible missing cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the actions taken in the name of religion, be it Jewish, Catholic or other.  Going back and forth in time between New York in the present, Germany in 1945, and the Berlin of Sara Levy from 1776 to the1851, it is a tale of mystery and discovery and prejudice.

Sara Levy is a harpsichord student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann’s son, and a real person.  The gift of a musical score from Wilhelm to his favored student Sara and what becomes of it after her death is a trail that Susanna Kessler, a young foundation executive, must unravel after the sudden death of her Uncle Henry who was a soldier in WWII.  Becoming entwined in the search to validate the score are competing Bach scholars, a disillusioned minister, and Susanna’s own family.  I found this a most engaging novel and quickly raced through it.  The characters, both real and imagined, are well drawn and the book is rich with details of academic politics, foundation business, library research, and, of course, Bach’s music.

About a week after I bought the novel, I was surprised to see an article about Belfer and her husband in the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday NYT under the heading, Classical, and entitled, “A Literary Couple Grapple with Bach and His God.”  It turns out her husband is a musicologist and they both published books in May—hers this novel and his a book of scholarly essays, Bach & God.  The article is an interview with them.

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Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell.  I’m well into this fascinating book.  It’s significant and surprising that until now, other than an account of her life by her daughter Mary, there has been no other biography of this complex, strong, and accomplished woman.  She was smart and very intuitive about people, but devoted her life to Winston and to furthering his career, sometimes to the detriment of her health and certainly to the dismay of her children.  She was about the only person who could and would stand up to Winston’s forceful personality and without her, his ultimate success in government is questionable.  But she needed to escape him periodically and she would go away for several months at a time without seeing him or their five children.  In public and even with close friends, she came across as always composed and often remote, but she also had a temper and could explode over a small detail.  Theirs was a fractious and complicated marriage with more time spent apart than together, resulting in a legacy of letters and notes.

WATCHING

While I wait for the next season of my Australian series, I’m deep into U.S. politics with the absorbing and very well crafted, Madam Secretary.  Tea Leoni as Secretary Elizabeth McCloud is smart, effective, beautiful and not above the occasional use of spy craft.  With background as a CIA analyst and then a professor, she brings an unusual resume to the job.  Her husband Henry is a noted religion scholar and professor who also possesses intelligence experience.  Episodes about crises in various parts of the world and diplomatic kerfuffles echo real life events of the past few years.  Adding to the enjoyment of the series is the portrayal of the McCords’ three children, especially their older daughter Stevie, a college dropout who is learning about the harsh realities of the job scene, and Elizabeth’s lively office staff.  I thought there was only one season, but just learned that it continues on prime time TV.

LISTENING

It’s June in Sarasota and that means the Sarasota Music Festival is in full swing along with the restaurant scene’s Savor Sarasota.  Last week we went to three concerts, all enjoyable, but the best one by far was the Saturday night symphony concert.  The orchestra was comprised of summer music students and the program included a simply  marvelous performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major by Noah Bendix-Balgley.  Bendix-Balgley is a former festival student of about a decade ago and joined the faculty in 2013.  In 2014, he was named the 1st Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic.  His is a career to follow!

 

Tidy Tidbits: A Melange

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WILDLIFE

One of the pleasures of living on the coast overlooking the water is having nature all around us.  Not only is it  peaceful, but I love seeing the variety of birds that live or find their way here:  Great Egrets, White Ibis, scaups and other ducks, wood storks, herons of several hues, white pelicans, turkey vultures, swifts, and the occasional spoonbill.

Great White Egrets
Great White Egrets
Ibis
Ibis
Wood stork
Wood stork

I knew less about the inhabitants of  the waters of northern Sarasota Bay until we were treated to an excellent presentation on the flora and fauna of this estuary.  Not only do we have red, black and white mangroves lining the shore, but these brackish waters (I always thought it was salt water, but no, it’s a mix of river water and sea water) are home to snook, tarpon and red drum fish and lots of horseshoe crabs.  You can also spot sting rays, sea turtles, and the occasional Bonnet Head Shark.

Horseshoe Crab Remains
Horseshoe Crab Remains

IMG_8170I haven’t always been a nature lover, but working in a science museum that focused on the natural world, made me much more aware of and interested in the life around me.  The  other week, much to my surprise, I happened upon an armadillo—out on a bright sunshiny morning!  As I got closer, it quickly scurried into the bush.

 

 

 

 

CULTURE NOTES

The Sarasota Orchestra racked up another triumph last evening in a sold out concert featuring Israeli violinist Guy Braunstein in an energetic performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major which includes a haunting oboe solo in the second movement.  After intermission, the orchestra gave a rousing rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.  Under Anu Tali’s baton, the orchestra continues to engage and please its patrons and definitely deserves a concert hall of its own.  We hope that Sarasota and its community leaders will find the wherewithal to make this happen.

The Verdi Cycle has come to an end.  And we ended this year’s Sarasota Opera season with the seldom performed and, we believe never recorded on DVD, performance of The Battle of Legnano.  The plot of this early Verdi opera is somewhat cobbled together and seems a bit silly at times, but, if nothing else, you come away with a sense of fervent patriotism, Viva Italia!  As always, the sets were impressive and there was some wonderful singing.

SMALL SCREEN

Given all that I had read and heard (including a friend’s recommendation) about the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, I decided to give it a try.  I had just completed the 66th and last episode of Gran Hotel, the Spanish series set in 1906, that I’ve been living with for several months.  I got so I was hearing the voices of Dona Teresa, Julio, Javier, Dona Angela, and Alicia echoing in my head and could anticipate every note and swell of the theme music.  It was soap operaish; there were murders and murderers and not everyone was punished; and secrets and coincidences beyond belief, but I’ll miss it!

To be fair, I watched two full episodes of “Orange.”  It is raw, brutal, graphic, and probably somewhat true-to-life in its portrayal of the prison environment as experienced by women.  I found I was more drawn to Piper Chapman’s back story—how this privileged young white woman ended up doing time—and to that of Red, the tough head cook who aspired to be someone of import.  Despite this, it won’t keep me on the treadmill so I’ll be looking for another option.

LUNCHTIME

After hearing a fast-paced presentation on the U. S. military budget, our brains scrambling to keep up with the speaker, we had worked up an appetite.  Lunch at Pho Cali was delicious!  I ordered the rice noodle bowl with chicken.  It brought back warm memories (spicy and nostalgic) of the many days I bought this same Vietnamese dish from the food truck at Penn that was right outside my office window.  Lots of choices here—everything from stir fried chicken or tofu with broccoli or other vegetables to the very spicy lemongrass and shrimp soup that the Chief Penguin sighed over.  We’ll go back for sure.

All photos copyright JWFarrington