Tidy Tidbits: Stage & Page

ON THE STAGE

The theater offerings in Sarasota are so well done and so polished that you almost don’t need to go to New York. This week we saw a stunningly good performance of Robert Schenkkan play, All the Way, at the Asolo.  I didn’t know of it before (not having followed Broadway closely in the past), but it was the Tony Award winning play of 2014.  It focuses on Lyndon Johnson’s presidency from immediately after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to LBJ’s election 11 months later.  Detailing Johnson’s determination to get a Civil Rights bill enacted, it is a linguistically colorful and dramatic account of all of the bullying, badgering, flattering and dealing that was required with stakeholders  as various as Martin Luther King and J. Edgar Hoover to the Southern Democrats in the House and Senate.  It was a turbulent period and timely in light of today’s discussions of racial profiling and the Black Lives Matter initiative.

As as a pre-Valentine treat, we enjoyed Living on Love, a musical romp about two self-centered aging celebrities, a flamboyant maestro and an equally narcissistic diva, long married to each other. Enter their ghost writers, an aspiring male novelist and an equally ambitious (for 1957) female editor, and you have conflict, comedy, and love.  Added in are the two male house staff whose Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine is a hoot!  At the end, besides singing and dancing, they offer up a revelation of their own.  Sheer fun!

BOOK REPORT

I admire Lauren Groff’s craft.  She is a creative writer and her staccato prose is full of picturesque allusions.  I read the first half of Fates and Furies, the part that is from playwright Lotto’s perspective, but then I abandoned the book after a few pages of Mathilde’s side of things.  I just didn’t care enough about these two individuals and their friends or their marriage to persevere.  It wasn’t fun nor, for me, rewarding.

On the other hand, I’m finding Beryl Markham’s West with the Night fascinating.  It’s a memoir, but according to the 2013 introduction by Sara Wheeler, a highly selective, edited one.  Markham had three husbands, but there’s nary a mention of any of them, and Wheeler states some events didn’t happen or have been altered.

Although Markham was a pioneering aviator, the book is primarily about her unconventional life in British East Africa (now Kenya) as a young child, as a racehorse trainer, and later as a mail pilot and tracker of elephants for hunters.  She was raised by her father, roamed the wilds with the natives, and learned to ride and hunt.  Originally published in 1942, the book was somewhat lost due to the war; when it was re-issued in 1983, Markham was still alive and the book had a surge of popularity.  She’s a lovely writer and the attention it got is well deserved!  It could easily be paired with one of Alexandra Fuller’s memoirs about her own haphazard upbringing in Africa.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Header image:  valentine2015s.blogspot.com

Tidy Tidbits: Diversions

COLORING CRAZE CONTINUES

I knew that public libraries had signed on to the coloring craze for adults, but I was surprised to learn (thanks to my younger sister) that research libraries have joined in with a sort of challenge this week. Specifically, they are offering up images from their special collections for anyone to download and color, with the hope that the colorers will then upload their completed pages to Facebook or other social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections. Really nifty idea! It plays into the fascination with coloring and exposes a wider group of people to the treasures in these collections. Participating libraries include the organizer, New York Academy of Medicine, along with Biodiversity Heritage Library,  New York Public Library, Baylor University, University of North Carolina and several others. The contest ends February 5th, but I’d be willing to guess you can still find the PDFs after that date. Sharpen your pencils!

YOUNG MUSICIANS TO WATCH
We had the pleasure, and a pleasure it was, to see and hear sister and brother violist and violinist Elizabeth Beilman and Benjamin Beilman.  They are charming conversationalists and talented performers. Elizabeth was principal violist for the Sarasota Orchestra for two years and recently moved to Salt Lake City to join the Utah Symphony. She’s a graduate of Juilliard. Her brother, Benjamin, is part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is also pursuing a career as a soloist. He’s a graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Since childhood, they have played together many times and were totally in sync in the several lovely duets they offered us.

It was interesting to hear Elizabeth say that while she initially played violin into high school (beginning at age 5), she ultimately found the viola more to her liking and more intellectually stimulating. Both of them enjoy playing chamber music and stressed how important it was both there and in an orchestra to be very aware of the other players. I also learned that Elizabeth filled in for a violist in Maine one summer at the Bay Chamber series in Rockport (concerts I have enjoyed) which solidified her switch to viola and brought her a very noted teacher.

EATING AROUND
We’ve recently tried two new (new to us) restaurants for lunch, one in Sarasota and the other in Bradenton. Duval’s in downtown Sarasota specializes in seafood and offers a number of tasty and inexpensive lunchtime specials, including a soup/salad/half sandwich option. I sampled the Caesar salad and turkey sandwich (a very large half on a baguette) and my spouse devoured his gazpacho and Caesar salad. Service was friendly and swift, especially considering how busy they were. Good thing I made a reservation!

We also met friends at the Bradenton outpost of Cedar Reef Fish Camp. Located in a strip mall not far from an I-75 exit, but decorated as befits its name, it was perfect for the Pennsylvanians en route to Captiva and surprisingly delicious! Two of us had the daily special of cedar planked salmon (served with rice and some sautéed squash and red peppers) and the others enjoyed the crab cake sandwich and the fish and chips. If it were closer to home, we’d eat there more often!

Header image:  Page from Color Me Stress-Free

Tidy Tidbits: Tides & Titles

WORDS ON WEATHER

Hunkering Down

Last weekend our friends and family cocooned in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York during winter storm Jonas.  We watched from afar, thanks to the Weather Channel and the Web, almost gleeful that we were here in Florida.  But, like men’s sympathetic pregnancies, we hunkered down too—staying indoors, feasting on forbidden foods (a luscious strip steak!), and savoring hot soup.  After all, outside was only 50 degrees with a cold stiff wind and white caps on the bay!

Minus Tides

Living on the edge of said bay, we get to observe the daily and seasonal variation of the tides.  The changes over the course of a typical day are not usually extreme, but the other morning I noticed that it was low tide and we were getting a “mud flats” effect.  This is unusual for us and it got me to wondering about the tide levels.  I checked the newspaper and the low tide that morning for just before 8:00 am was a negative .6 feet.  Getting even more curious, I did a bit of research (thank you, Google!) and learned that there is a mean low tide number for each area that is considered zero; high and low tides are measured up or down against this.   So my minus six meant that this tide was half a foot lower than the mean low tide!  Hence the mud, hence more birds at the water’s edge.

And since the tides are governed partly by the moon, this week’s very low tide was associated with a gorgeous buttery-colored full moon.  My citizen science colleagues in California were always keen to be observing life in the tidal areas during minus low tides and scheduled outings with our volunteers for those dates, even if it meant being on the water at 5:00 or 6:00 am.

TITLES STACKED UP

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As usual, I have too many books waiting to be read, but that only means that I’ll never lack for reading material!  Here is a small selection of those waiting in the wings.

Expatriate Lives by Janice Y.K.  Lee.  (A much touted new novel by the author of The Piano Teacher.)

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.  (I’ve put off long enough reading this highly praised novel from the author of The Monsters of Templeton.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  (The latest novel from the author of Olive Kittredge, one of my favorite books.)

West with the Night by Beryl Markham.  (A memoir by an early aviator, this will be a re-read for me for the local book group.  I first read it many years ago with the Penn book group.)

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr.  (From the author of several raw, lay-it-bare memoirs, this book supposedly informs the reader how to create a memoir.)

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  (A pass along from my sister and an important contribution to the national discussion about race in America.)

POSTSCRIPT

I also want to report that I finished A Master Plan for Rescue and it was wonderful!  There’s a parallel story about a passenger on the ill-fated and unwelcome ship, St. Louis, and this man intersects with the boy Jack in ways that are initially amusing and touching and ultimately, life-changing.

Tidy Tidbits: Childhood Memories

CURRENT READING

Hold Still:  A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann

I am one of those individuals who was offended by Mann’s photos of her children when they first appeared about twenty years ago.  I felt she had exploited them and that the photos were totally inappropriate for public viewing.  Yet, on the recommendation of a very good friend (another avid reader), I decided to try her memoir.  I’ve been dipping into it slowly and am beginning to have more appreciation for her as a person and some greater understanding of the aims of her work.  Close in age to me, she was a wild child, unconventional, very much a rule breaker, and not someone with whom I would have bonded.  That said, her connectedness to her southern roots (Lexington, Virginia) and her strong passion for this particular geography along with her explanations of her craft are keeping me engaged.   So I will continue with her life’s journey.  Reading this goes along with my strong interest in the art of the memoir.

A Master Plan for Rescue by Janis Cooke Newman

I think that creating a child protagonist who is believable and rings true is a difficult assignment for many fiction writers.  Emma Donoghue did it wonderfully in her novel, Room, and Ms. Newman, a San Francisco based-writer and mother of a son, does it here in this recent novel set in New York City in 1942.  At almost 12 years old, Jack is a dreamy, unpopular kid (regularly bullied) who has an active, even overactive, imagination.  He is captivated by the radio (a Silvertone monstrosity) and the dramas its programs bring into his living room.  On the cusp of adolescence, he is extremely close to, almost worshipful, of his father.  It is this relationship and the growing publicity about the war emphasizing the possibility of enemies among us that drive how Jack plays out his grief over a death in the family.

HOUSE KEY

With retirement, the number of essential keys on my key ring has dwindled.  No more keys for work (three or four), no traditional car key, just a front door key and a mailbox key.  This got me to thinking about the role of certain keys as markers of one’s stage in life.  Certainly, the first significant key I acquired was a house key.  My parents planned and built a new house in the 1960’s and it provided more space for our family of six in an attractive neighborhood.  This key enabled me to come and go alone and reflected both a measure of independence from my parents and my sense of ownership of this house.  I returned home here during college and, after I married, my husband and I, and later our son and his family, visited and stayed in this house at holiday time and in the summer. If no one was home, there was another house key hidden for family members to find, but it was comforting and familiar to have my own.

The key is plain and easy to overlook, very thin gray metal made for a simple non-deadbolt lock, a lock that has remained the same for more than 50 years.  I still have that key on my key ring.  My parents are both gone, the house is empty and up for sale, and the key will not be used again.  But still I have it and I will probably keep it.

Along the way, I’ve had other keys—a series of car keys, but not that many as we tended to keep our cars forever (where forever could be as long as 18 years), and car keys now are fobs; office and file cabinet keys; and several other house keys.  But none, I would say, carries the emotional weight of this unprepossessing little key.  It has become a talisman—a pleasant reminder of the transition to adulthood, a last link to a home full of memories of father, mother, sisters and brother, a connection to a past in a small town.

 

Header photo:  Orchids at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota (copyright JWFarrington)