Category: Nonfiction

Pond reflections at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Maine Time: Other Lives & Gardens

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READING BIOGRAPHY

When it comes to nonfiction, I read more biography than anything else.  I find historical biography often compelling and am regularly drawn into memoirs written by contemporaries.  The past few weeks, I’ve been dipping into two works in this genre.

The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson

Novelist Diane Johnson wrote this biography in 1972.  New York Review Books re-issued it this year with a new introduction by critic Vivian Gornick.  Mrs. Meredith, or Mary Ellen Meredith, was novelist George Meredith’s first wife.  She ultimately left Meredith for artist Henry Wallis, with whom she’d been having an affair—a scandalous act for a woman in the 1850’s.  

What makes this biography unconventional is Johnson’s attention to other individuals in Mary Ellen’s life, even those to whom she had only the briefest of connections. Mary Ellen’s journals and quotes from poems are included as well as tidbits of history and lore.  Johnson was fortunate in her search for material to locate a cache of letters from Mary Ellen to Henry secreted in the former home of their son Felix.  

It’s a quirky book and quite delightful, a bit like exploring an old-fashioned desk with pigeonholes filled with seemingly unrelated items.  It was also an inspiration for Phyllis Rose. She’s the author of one of my favorite collective biographies entitled, Parallel Lives:  Five Victorian Marriages, published in 1983.  

Flowers at the botanical garden
The Shadow in the Garden:  A Biographer’s Tale by James Atlas

James Atlas was a publisher and biographer whose works include the life stories of novelist Saul Bellow and poet Delmore Schwartz.   His Schwartz biography was nominated for the National Book Award.  In this work, Atlas talks about his approach to writing a life and, along the way discusses classical biographical works by Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Gaskell and others.  He also shares his conversations and encounters with noted critics of the 20th century such as Elia Kazan, Philip Rahv, and Allen Bloom.  

It’s a chatty book, written in an informal style. I quickly found myself warming to this self-effacing man who was persistent when on the hunt for source material.  I have yet to finish it (have been happily distracted by my granddaughters) but will enjoy continuing his journey.  The book was published in 2017 and, I just learned that Atlas died in 2019 at age 70.

THE MAINE GARDEN

Aluminum sculpture panels by Meg Brown Payson

The website for the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is mainegardens.org so it seems appropriate to call it the Maine garden.  Despite all the restrictions imposed due to Covid-19, the garden is beautiful and a draw for locals, tourists, and kids.  I was concerned that our granddaughters would be disappointed since the playhouse, story barn, and water pump in the Children’s Garden are not available. They loved the Fairy Village, however, and requested a return visit.  The village was the highlight, but they were also entranced by a waterfall, intrigued by hunting for and counting frogs, curious about the honeybee exhibit, and happy to traipse along the woodland trail noting the occasional sculpture or rock outcropping.  

Cleaning house in the Fairy Village
Waterfall over rock
Gazing at the Sheepscot River
Looking out at Sheepscot River

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Diversions: Other Lives on Screen & Page

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RECENT READING

EVOCATIVE MEMOIR

The Farmer’s Son:  Calving Season on a Family Farm by John Connell

(irishcentral.com)

I had read good reviews of this work and since we were originally going to Ireland this month, I was doubly attracted to it.  Connell’s account of the months from January to June working on his father’s farm in County Longford delivering calves and lambs is both precise and brooding.  The work is hard, physical and unending, the winter weather cold and damp, the unexpected expected, and the life isolating.  His father is a difficult man with a temper and they often argue and then go for long periods without speaking. 

One feels initially that Connell only reluctantly returned to the farm to deal with personal issues and to grapple with his writing.  The farm is a stark contrast to his previous life in Toronto and only gradually do his ties to the land and his connection to nature return to the fore.  His plain prose often surprises with its literary references while he conveys the details of delivering an animal, the evolutionary history of the cow, and shares his thoughts on his faith and his few friendships.  It’s chock-full of the endless round of daily farm chores and what they entail, but what remains with me is Connell’s journey to a fuller understanding of who he is and where he fits in.  Almost haunting.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

ILLUMINATING BIOGRAPHY

What Stars Are Made Of:  The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin by Donovan Moore

(nymag.com)

Like too many scientific fields, astronomy was a closed circle of men until well into the 20th century, open just a sliver for smart women (known as “computers”) whose job was to collect data.  Cecilia Payne was an exception.  Brilliant, driven, and not deterred by social mores or niceties, she barreled through, or navigated around, the hurdles designed to keep women in their place.  And, she was responsible for discovering the primary element found in stars.  

An English woman who studied at Cambridge, England, she was urged to come to the U.S., specifically to Harvard, where opportunities for women scientists were marginally better.  Intending to stay just for the duration of her fellowship, she ended up spending her entire career at Harvard, becoming the first chair of the astronomy department and ultimately, being granted the rank of full professor.  

Cecilia came of age in the 1920’s and, in the U.K. academic world, women were strictly governed by rules of dress and conduct.  From being heckled on the way down the lecture hall to the front row seats, to not being able to work alone with a male student or scientist in the observatory, learning required persistence and boldness.  Moore’s biography is engaging and accessible, and while focused on Payne-Gaposchkin, is a lesson in astronomy and a history of notables in the field, both men and women.  Thanks to my friend Suzy for the recommendation. (~JWFarrington)

CHOICE VIEWING

PHARMACEUTICAL PUZZLER

Acceptable Risk (Acorn)

(rte.ie)

This is one of the best crime/mystery series I’ve watched recently.  When an executive for global pharmaceutical firm leaves his home in Dublin for a meeting in Montreal, he never returns.  Lee Manning’s violent death raises alarms in Sarah, his lawyer wife, and sets her on a trail for answers to what all his international travel entailed.  Sarah worked for the same firm, Gumbiner-Fischer,  and has two children.  Probing close-mouthed company officers and getting nowhere, she teams up with police detective Emer Byrne, who later is officially removed from the case.  What was really going on at the firm and why all the secrets?  Intriguing, fascinating and totally absorbing!

ESCAPE FROM THE MIDWEST

The Chaperone (Amazon Prime)

(pbs.org)

This film is adapted from a novel of the same name by Laura Moriarty.  It’s the early 1920’s and 16-year old Louise Brooks from Kansas City, has been selected to spend the summer with the Denishawn School of dance in New York.  It’s a long train journey from her home to the city, and she needs a chaperone.  Her mother recruits an acquaintance, Mrs. Norma Carlisle, to accompany Louise and stay with her during the auditioning process.  Louise is feisty and bold and challenges the very proper, straitlaced Norma at every turn, as they both explore a new world of experiences.  Louise Brooks is a real person who eventually became a popular silent screen star.  This is light fare, a pleasant diversion for a summer afternoon, and fans of Downton Abbey will enjoy seeing Elizabeth McGovern blossom as Norma.

Note: The header photo seen in a restaurant run by women, “Behind every successful woman is HERSELF” seemed appropriate for this blog which is mostly about determined women.

Still at Home: More Reading & Viewing

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RECENT READING: SCHIZOPHRENIA

Hidden Valley Road:  Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

I have always been interested in what makes people tick.  In college, that motivated me to take both the introductory psychology course and also an advanced course in abnormal psych.  This was the late 1960’s when so-called “refrigerator mothers” were responsible for causing autism in their offspring.  And in other research, a controlling mother supposedly was a primary factor in developing schizophrenia, nurture rather than nature (DNA) as the cause.

Hidden Valley Road is a riveting account of the Galvin family and their twelve children.  Of the ten boys and two girls, six of the males were at some point diagnosed as schizophrenic.  One may have had bipolar disorder and been misdiagnosed. They ultimately became the first family to be studied by the NIH.

(thetimes.co.uk)

Don and Mimi Galvin were products of their time, postwar years, and it was important for Don to be successful in his career and for Mimi to be the perfect mother with, to the outside world, a normal, happy, well-adjusted family.  In fact, the reality was quite different.  Don was often absent on business and the boys, beginning with Donald, the eldest, became mentally ill, delusional, violent, unpredictable in the extreme, and both physically and sexually abusive toward some of their siblings.  The girls, Margaret and Mary, were the youngest and while spared illness, suffered some of the worst abuse and emotional abandonment.  

Kolker’s account is based on intensive research and interviews with many family members.  Interspersed between the chapters, which generally focus on one or two family members, is an ongoing history over more than fifty years of the scientific research into the causes of schizophrenia and the evolving trends in drug treatment and therapy.  Even today, there is not a definitive answer.  This quest for answers is almost as compelling as the saga of the children’s path to adulthood.  That some of these siblings were ultimately able to lead “somewhat normal” lives is a testament to their resilience, despite being scarred.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

SMALL SCREEN: A GARDEN & PARIS CRIME

This Beautiful Fantastic  (Amazon Prime, You Tube)

(sandiegocan.org)

This feature film is charming and whimsical with no violence or sex.  Bella Brown, a rather strange young woman, rents a cottage and is charged with cleaning up the back garden, a task that far exceeds her abilities and her fears.  She’s a budding writer who works part-time in a special library.  Her crusty, gruff neighbor and his amiable dogs body take up the challenge of assisting her with the garden and all ends well.  This is a simple treat of a movie.

Balthazar  (Acorn)

(decider.com)

Balthazar is a recent French crime series about a forensic doctor.  Balthazar is a quirky coroner who talks to corpses and has animated conversations with his dead wife.  He is sexy and brilliant, loves to cook and eat, and is often seen snacking.  Chief inspector Helene Bach finds him exasperating, but she and her assistant, Delgado, must work with him and do recognize his talents.  

These are complicated murder cases and always involve an autopsy, graphically portrayed, which causes me to look away from the screen.  Once the autopsy is over, I’m back involved.  As I have only watched two episodes, it’s an open question if the gore will turn me off completely or if I stay with the series.  The repartee between Balthazar and Helene, married mother of two, is well done and one of the delights of the program.  So, the jury’s out.

Note: Header photo of a great blue heron ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Tidy Tidbits: Staying Home

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COVID-19 & STAYING HOME

Other than one trip to the supermarket, we have not left our island neighborhood for the past week.  We are fortunate to be having gorgeous weather (sunny and warm) and have walked our boulevard each morning and then gone to the pool in the late afternoon—always mindful of keeping an appropriate distance from each other.  In between, cooking or baking, reading, and viewing have been the main activities.  Plus, a lot of shopping online.

With restaurants only allowed to offer curbside pick-up or delivery, we will be experimenting with that in the next few days.  For my local friends, both Alice’s Ristorante Italiano (formerly A Casa Tua) and Bonefish Grill either are already or will be offering revised menus.  

SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE!

Like restaurants, independent bookstores face the challenge of staying in business since they can no longer invite customers into their physical spaces.  If you value your own local bookstore, order books from them online.  You can probably pick them up curbside or have them mailed to your home.  Yes, it will cost you more than going the Amazon route, but thinking ahead, don’t you want them to still be here when the pandemic subsides?  Here’s an article about this topic.  And here’s a link to my favorite Sarasota bookstore where I just ordered several titles to be mailed.  

IMMERSED IN A BOOK

Say Nothing:  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Jean McConville (thetimes.co.uk)

When there are no lectures, plays or concerts to go to, it’s possible to spend more time reading.  I mentioned this book about the Troubles in my last blog and this week, I devoted myself to completing it.  Once I got fully into it (it took me a chapter or two as there are a lot of factions with different names and acronyms to keep straight!), I got caught up in the lives of the principals:  Dolours and Marian Price, Brendan Hughes, and Gerry Adams (all IRA members who participated in deadly violence), and in the impact on the McConville children whose 38-year old mother, Jean, was dragged from their home one evening in 1972 and never returned.  She was one of the aptly called “disappeared.”  For decades her children sought to locate her body.  

This is a tale of religious conflict, hatred of the British, bombings, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and double agents.  For thirty years, Northern Ireland, especially Belfast, was not a safe nor a pretty place to be.  Even after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, lingering resentment and outrage were the order of the day for some. 

 I found Keefe’s narrative nonfiction both compelling and chilling.   He explores the actions and interactions of the infamous Price sisters over several decades along with the transformation of Gerry Adams from revolutionary commander to savvy politician to elder statesman, Adams all the while denying he was ever a member of the IRA.  Also fascinating for me, a former librarian, was learning about the secret archival interview project housed at Boston College.  The interview with Dolours Price, for example, was intended to be unavailable until after her death.  What protections were not put in place and what the college didn’t know later resulted in subpoenas and lawsuits.  A long read, but absorbing and rewarding. (~JWFarrington)

CURRENT VIEWING

With movie theaters closed, it’s now possible to rent and watch first run movies from several different streaming sources.  The Chief Penguin found Vudu.com (I had suggested Hulu, but somehow, he ended up here), and together we created a list of films to view.  First up last evening was Emma, which is also available through Apple TV.

Emma

(dailymail.co.uk)

I’ve seen several versions of Jane Austen’s Emma over the years, some I liked and some I didn’t (Clueless).  This Emma is Jane Austen on a romp.  For a story that is about emotions, meddling, and misunderstandings, there is a lot of physicality that makes it visually exciting.  The repeating line of schoolgirls in their long red capes, the twisting, twirling patterns of the ballroom dancing, the running or flinging onto grassy slopes (witness both Emma and Knightley). Add to this scenes of Knightley or Emma in various stages of dressing or undressing.  Coupled with this is a soundtrack of rousing folk melodies, almost hymns, providing transition between scenes.  

Against this visual and aural background, you have an Emma who is always perfectly coiffed and stylishly put together, arrogant, convinced of her rightness, and rude.  You don’t dislike her totally; you see her gradually become aware of the error of her ways, thanks in part to Mr. Knightley.  And, as is the norm for Austen, all comes right in the end!  I found the film a perfect entertainment.  (~JWFarrington)