Tidy Tidbits: Recent Reading, etc.

FEELING GRATEFUL

The Chief Penguin and I were extremely fortunate, lucky, actually.  We endured an anxious 48 hours in New York as Hurricane Irma moved closer and closer to our coast and to the possibility of obliterating our stretch of paradise.  But as Irma shifted eastward and the winds changed direction, we were the beneficiaries of good fortune.  We returned home earlier this week, and yes, there were big trees uprooted and a fair amount of debris, but our house was intact and dry.  We heaved a big sigh of relief while sympathizing with many of our friends nearby who lost power for 5, 6, 7, 8 or even 9 days.  And we feel for the many thousands of people in the Keys and Puerto Rico who were not so fortunate.

 MOMA

Before we left Manhattan, we walked the High Line and paid a visit to the Museum of Modern Art for lunch in their café (good food at a very reasonable price) and a tour around the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective.  It turns out we were there just before the exhibit closed.  Quite a range of works from paintings with objects like metal fans or a stuffed bird affixed to the canvas, to colorful textiles, and even a vat of brownish bubbling mud.  To read more about Rauschenberg’s work, here’s an exhibit review from the New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

CURRENT READING

 Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home by Amy Dickinson

Many of the memoirs I’ve read in the past year or so have dealt with the act of dying.  While Ms. Dickinson has had more than her share of hardship and disappointment, she has a basically positive attitude about life and this book ends on an up note.  I especially enjoyed her account of growing up in a teeny tiny burg in upstate New York (not all that far from where I grew up) and what it was like to choose to return there to live permanently as a middle-aged adult.  Not something I would have chosen for myself.

From finding love post 50 to navigating the shoals of gaining acceptance from her newly acquired stepdaughters, it is a heartfelt, candid book.  Dickinson also writes the “Ask Amy” syndicated advice column carried in many newspapers. (~JW Farrington)

What Happened by Hillary Clinton

I am a Hillary fan (not that I think she ran a perfect campaign) and was one of her supporters.  I got her new book immediately, have begun it, and am about a quarter of the way into it.  Two immediate observations.  One, she comes across as warm and flexible and human in a way that she has never been before in her public life.  Two, she shares her regrets, personal mistakes, and apologizes for her loss in the election.  She doesn’t take all the blame, but she says she’s sorry in a way I can’t ever imagine a male politician doing.  I can’t envision any man writing this kind of soul-baring prose.

But, it is a very long book and she is wordy and so determined to be comprehensive that I get bogged down periodically and have to set aside the flow of words.  Even though she lost, her candidacy was an historic first, a fact that may have gotten lost recently.  She provides a very good chapter on what the challenges and obstacles are for female politicians in general.  Some of those also apply to women scaling the corporate ladder.  I will persevere on the book.  (~JW Farrington)

ON THE HIGH LINE

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)