Colorful red & green coleus

Tidy Tidbits: Immersion, Film & Books

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VIEWING

UPLIFTING FILM

On the Basis of Sex (Amazon Prime)

Somehow, I missed seeing this film about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s early career when it was first released.  This week seemed the right time.  Based on RBG’s life, it isn’t a documentary, but a wonderfully satisfying success story.  First in her law school class at Harvard and first in her class at Columbia Law, Ruth was nonetheless turned down by law firm after law firm (after all, she was a woman, a Jew, and the wives of the lawyers in the firm would be jealous).  

She became a professor at Rutgers and, from that position, worked with her husband, Marty, and the ACLU to take on a case of discrimination against a man.  She won that case and others that followed gaining more rights for women.  She and Marty were a great team.  Not only did she enable him to complete law school, but he was wholly supportive of her career and her rise to Supreme Court Justice.  Highly recommended!

A side note.  I am of an age that I recall being asked at my first job interview after graduate school if I planned to have children.  The questioner was a man and I was married.  It was a personal and inappropriate question, but not illegal.  I made some sort of oblique answer and was offered the job.  I also clearly remember celebrating when, several years later, I could apply for a credit card in my name only, based on my credit history alone.  I was married and working fulltime and, I didn’t really need that department store card.   I got it more on principle than need!

CRIME SCENE

Van der Valk  (PBS Masterpiece)

(variety.com)

Since most of us aren’t traveling these days, and certainly not abroad, it’s refreshing to see a television series set in a city that is familiar from past visits or future forays.  Yorkshire for DCI Banks, Dublin for Acceptable Risk, and now Amsterdam for chief detective Piet Van der Valk and his somewhat scruffy team of colleagues.  The canals and the streets of Amsterdam, jammed with bicycles, bring back fond memories of a week we spent there five years ago.  

This three-part series is the latest remake based on mysteries by Nicholas Freeling.  The suspicious deaths are complex cases, often political, with a tangled web of connections between family members and suspects.  Unlike some of the other series I’ve watched, the Dutch seem to resort to guns more frequently.  

Commissaris Piet is a striking man with steely blue eyes, a blond thatch, and a very prominent jawline.  Usually serious, with seldom a smile, his eyes look haunted by past tragedy.  Living alone on a houseboat, he has a close relationship with Lucienne, his right-hand person, and while fair-minded, brooks no sloughing off by his colleagues.

READING

TIMELY MEMOIR

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

(vanityfair.com)

Losing a parent to an early death is an event that stays with one ever after; losing a parent to violence is another level of remembrance and anguish entirely.  A former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Natasha Trethewey has written a poignant memoir about her mother’s death more than 30 years ago. Trethewey was just 19.  Her mother didn’t just die; she was murdered by her second husband.   For years, Trethewey carried around a load of guilt.  

In this work, she details her childhood as the offspring of a white father and a black mother and how the experience of walking around with just one of them differed greatly in other people’s responses.  The racism and mistreatment that were rampant during her mother’s childhood and the vestiges that persisted in Trethewey’s own life form the backdrop for this tragic story.  It echoes many of the cases portrayed in No Visible Bruises, an award-winning book by Rachel Louise Snyder.  (~JWFarrington)

CRIME IN YORKSHIRE

Careless Love by Peter Robinson

This is a recent crime novel featuring DCI Alan Banks.  I’d read a bunch of them some years back, but after watching the DCI Banks TV series, decided to re-visit Robinson’s work on the page.  This one starts out a bit too slowly for my taste, but then picks up.  A young woman and an older man are each found dead and abandoned in suspicious circumstances.   Both are dressed up and there appears to be no link between them.  When a neighboring crime team presents the suspicious death of another young woman, the circle widens and the hunt for clues is on.  Both DS Winsome Jackson and DI Annie Cabbot feature in the investigation along with Zelda, Annie’s father’s companion who closely guards her tragic past.  Enjoyable, but I liked some of Robinson’s earlier books more.

Note: Header photo is Florida fall foliage: colorful coleus.

Image of Sarasota Bay skyline

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Nature

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AN INCREDIBLE LIFE, A HUGE LOSS

RBG hung on for a very long time through multiple bouts of cancer.  What a trouper she was and what a magnificent justice and advocate for equal rights!  Such an impressive woman.  Thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for your powerful intellect, your undiminished passion, and for all you achieved.  You will be missed.  

The Chief Penguin and I had the distinct privilege and pleasure of hearing Justice Ginsburg speak in Aspen a few years ago, and it was both:  a privilege and a pleasure.

A RESTORATIVE

Tree trunk at Selby

Selby Gardens in Sarasota is a favorite place of ours and we often take family and visiting friends there.  Since Covid, we had not returned for a long while, but today made a brief visit.  I wanted to see the glass art on display and was very ready for a change of scene.  

Purple glass vase
Artist is Duncan McClellan
Yellow green large vase etched in brown
Green Farm by Duncan McClellan

We arrived about ten minutes before opening and joined three other masked couples ahead of us in line.  The experience was wonderful.  Very few people, lots of plants in bloom (can’t recall ever coming in September), and I saw the glass on the exhibit’s last day.  

Shallow glass bowls on the pond

It was overcast with a light breeze and not at all hot.  We meandered through the conservatory and then outside among the plants, claiming a bench to take in this view of the bay.  I left feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.  For a time, life seemed normal.

Looking out at Sarasota Bay toward Lido Key
Sarasota Bay from Selby Gardens

NATURE ON SCREEN

Islands of Wonder:  Madagascar (PBS)

This is part of a series on unique islands around the world.  The listing caught my eye because the Chief Penguin and I spent three weeks in Madagascar in 2009 when we worked at the California Academy of Sciences.  The Academy had several research projects underway there, and our fellow travelers were the chief botany curator, a trustee, their wives, and a local guide.  We flew in and out of the capital city airport in Antananarivo, informally known as “Tana,” and then traveled by van to rainforests, desert, and mountains.  

Madagascar, east of mainland Africa, is the oldest island on earth.   Due to its isolated location, it has an astounding number of species found only there. Perhaps best known are the many varieties of lemurs, and they feature extensively in this visually stunning show.  From ring-tailed ones to dancing sifakas, one learns how lemurs have adapted to challenging habitats.  Add to that unusual lizards, strange birds, and the cute, hedgehog-like tenrec.  

Madagascar’s topography is also awe-inspiring from its dense rainforests on the east to the spiny desert in the west to the needle-sharp limestone Tsingy mountains.  For anyone interested in nature and biodiversity, this is a fascinating introduction to a very special place!

Note: Photos by JWFarrington. Header photo is the bay and Sarasota skyline.

pink hibiscus flowers

Tidy Tidbits: Escaping in Place

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BINGEING ON CRIME

DCI Banks (Amazon Prime)

This detective series is a BBC production from several years ago.  I think it is excellent.  Alan Banks is a middle-aged chief inspector in Yorkshire with a dour demeanor and a sometimes-sour look.  You’d think he’d be hardnosed, but underneath that façade, he is compassionate toward victims and diplomatic when necessary.  Yet, he drives his team forcefully in the hunt for any killer.  His primary colleagues are two women:  DS Annie Cabbot, a smart energetic individual who’s in love with Banks, and DI Helen Morton, a by-the-book precise person dealing with complexities in her own life.  

Banks with Helen Morton & Annie Cabbot (imbd.com)

 Each case is over two episodes.  The cases are complicated with multiple threads which is what makes them engaging.  There are crime scenes, but they are not overly gruesome.   The focus is on identifying suspects, following up links, and arriving at answers as to who killed a person and why.  The TV series is based on author Peter Robinson’s long running book series which now totals twenty-six titles.  Highly recommended!

The Fall (Netflix)

Set in Belfast, The Fall is a crime series about a serial killer and the detective from London who is brought in to oversee an earlier failed murder investigation.  Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson sees linkages between a much earlier murder and more recent ones, but they have no solid leads.  Paul Spector, the serial killer, is smart and ruthless.  He stalks young professional women and then breaks into their homes to do them in.  He leads a double life as a grief counselor and a married father of two young children.  Gibson is a complex character also, a sharp, high-ranking woman in a field dominated by men.  And the setting in Northern Ireland with its political issues adds another layer of tension.

What holds my interest is the police investigative work.  The enactments of the murders are graphic.  At this point, after four episodes of Season 1, I am ready to quit.  The pace is measured, the crime images troubling.  Although it received high praise as a psychological thriller, I don’t really recommend it, unless you are strong-hearted.  For those who are curious, there are three seasons.

CHANGE OF PACE READING

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

I stumbled upon a reference to this novel online and ordered it.  It is beautiful.   Set in Tehran in 1953 and in the Boston suburbs in 2013, it’s a love story.  But a love story marked by political upheaval, class distinctions, and the passage of time, decades even.  Roya and Bahman meet in a stationery shop in 1953 just before the coup that ousts the Iranian prime minister.  They are seventeen, passionate about one another, and eager to spend their lives together.  

With the political crisis, everything changes and Roya leaves Iran to attend college in California.  She marries Walter and has a mostly satisfactory life.  When she’s 77, an unexpected encounter opens a floodgate of memories and the chance to re-visit part of her past.  

Kamali has a delicate style. She weaves together strands of politics and Persian food and culture into a novel about parental love, familial obligations, and romance. For more information about Kamali’s childhood in Iran and her life in the States, follow the link on her name above.

MY STATIONERY SHOP

Like Roya and Bahman in the novel above, I too sought quietude, but no romance, in my local bookstore.  G. W. Ockenfels was located downtown.  They sold books, but also greeting cards and stationery.  It was a quiet shop, with a wooden floor and aisles with tall shelves as I recall, and the smell of paper and ink.   Mr. and Mrs. Ockenfels who owned and ran it were always welcoming.

I was in my teens, and didn’t have much spending money.  Customers were few and I could browse uninterrupted for long periods.  Over time, I became a regular, known to them by face and then by name. After I had selected and paid for a book, it was always carefully wrapped in pale blue paper and then meticulously tied up with very thin twine. 

In later years, Mr. O. became a bit confused.  He also began dispensing bear hugs that then were uncomfortable, but today might be reportable.  It was a sanctuary for me that became a little less so and then, as often happens in small towns, the Ockenfels went out of business.

Note: Header and book jacket photo ©JWFarrington.

View of cove at Molly’s Point

Departing Maine & Arriving Florida

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WINDING DOWN MAINE

Our airline threw us a curve when it changed our departing flight from a very civilized 12:45 pm to before sunrise at 6:00 am.  Thus, we left our rental house a day early, drove down to Portland and spent the night at the airport Hilton Garden Inn,.  We’d been told that the hotel was offering no services (no food, no shuttle) and that it was mostly empty.  Imagine our surprise, when we arrived and learned that they were sold out that night!  Granted, it was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, but early in the week, the hotel gentleman had said everyone’s gone home, back to school and so on.  

We took an Uber to downtown Portland, the Old Port area, our first time there this summer, and wandered around a bit.  Many streets in that neighborhood are closed off and restaurants abound, offering food and drink outside in properly spaced tables and booths.  There were more people on the street than I’d seen anywhere.

Creative way to offer drinks and food

We had booked an early table on the patio (really in the street) for dinner at Petite Jacqueline, a bistro we’d frequented in the past.  The tables were appropriately distanced, and all the staff were wearing masks.  It was a treat to be waited upon and served.  We enjoyed a panzanella salad and roasted Brussels sprouts followed by lobster rolls with tarragon mayonnaise and a stack of sinful skinny fries.

FLYING IN THE AGE OF COVID

Maine is serious about social distancing and wearing masks and there were signs and announcements galore at the Portland airport.  It’s paid off because they have one of the lowest numbers of cases and deaths of any state in the U.S.  

American Airlines was also serious.  Although they don’t block off any seats on the planes, they required everyone to be wearing a mask. The flight attendants on both flights went up and down the aisle several times checking.  They also warned that noncompliant passengers could be denied the right to fly with them in the future.  No food or drink was offered.

In the Charlotte airport, there were also announcements about masks, but they didn’t sound as forceful as those in Portland.  I did see a couple of individuals without masks.  And I was struck by how busy this airport was—-many more people traveling than when we’d flown on a Tuesday in mid-July!  

Both our flights boarded efficiently, left on time, and arrived on time or few minutes early.  Deplaning was done by rows from the front.  Passengers were requested to wait seated until the row in front of them had been vacated, and folks seem to cooperate with this instruction.  All in all, I felt as safe as was possible given everything.

FLORIDA RE-ENTRY

mangroves along the bay
Mangroves overlooking Sarasota Bay

When we left home in July, the state of Florida was a Covid-19 hotspot.  Our area wasn’t as bad as Miami-Dade, but still far too many new cases each week and very spotty mask requirements or enforcement.  Now, there are more signs about masks and, it seems more people are being observant.  Before we left town, Fresh Market required masks to enter, but Publix supermarkets did not.  We are pleased that now masks are required for entering a Publix.

The Hannaford stores in Maine made their grocery aisles one way with green arrows on the floor on one end and red exit signs at the other.  I’d gotten so used to this that I kept expecting to see a green arrow in Publix allowing me to proceed down the aisle, but not so.  

It was 57 degrees when we woke up in Maine on Saturday, 82 the afternoon before in Portland, and 80 this morning here in Florida with a predicted high of 94!  Boy, did I love the cool pleasant air of the Maine coast!

VIEWING

Radioactive (Amazon Prime)
Rosamund Pike (the guardian.com)

I didn’t realize until this film was almost over that it is based on Lauren Redniss’ 2010 graphic novel of the same name.  That’s a colorful arty book chock full of information.   I had read it with science book club I facilitated at the Academy of Sciences in San Franciso. 

Marie Curie, its subject, was a passionate, arrogant, brilliant, driven woman.  She loved science and was determined to do science no matter who or what might get in her way.  The film recounts her struggle to get lab space, her attraction to and then marriage to Pierre Curie, and their joint work on radium.  That same radium sickened them both and he died an early death.  Madame Curie was passionate in her personal life also. Her later affair with a married man sullied her somewhat suspect reputation as a “dirty Pole.”  

The film is gripping and full of emotion.  It is less successful with the interjection of more contemporary events, such as the use of radiation to treat cancer or the tragedies of Hiroshima and Chernobyl.  While these events highlight the positive and negative sides of the Curies’ discoveries, they are jarring interruptions in the arc of Marie’s life.  Nonetheless, definitely worth watching! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo and other unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).