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Posts Tagged ‘PBS’

Country Life Reconsidered

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2014| 2 Comments »

Driveway before the rain

Driveway before the rain

Sometimes we get the juiciest bits of information as an aside. Most journalists know this, we get the agenda to the meeting, but it’s in the stuff we hear in the hallway where we will sometimes find the true story. Or at least, an alternate story. This is why I will always and forever love secretaries; (whoops, the Bride called here) insert – because they knew where the bodies were buried!

Take for instance the latest edition of “This American Life” with Ira Glass. The Bride and Groom happened to hear him speak at the Ryman over the weekend, and coincidentally I caught his latest show in the car. Normally  I’ll catch up with Ira on his older podcasts while driving to Nashville, rarely am I listening live stream. But there I was, left listening the other night in my driveway to “Except for That One Thing!” #518

I was hooked right away. A young couple buy their first home in New England – Check! Bob and I bought our first home in Windsor, MA. They were trying to furnish it by going to auctions, because of course there were no real furniture stores or malls – Check! She got carried away with raising her paddle and put them into debt. I used to go to estate sales and get so frustrated because dealers would outbid me and then try to sell to me afterwards, making a slight profit. What happens next, when she finds the perfect dining room table on eBay, will surprise and delight you. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/518/except-for-that-one-thing

And this is what Glass does so well with radio. We are better able to identify with someone we cannot see.  Judgement is suspended. Their story becomes our story. He manages to find that edge, where reality and humor can border on tragedy, that middle place where we find ourselves most days.

The place between arcane and insane.

Yesterday, I was visiting with my Richmond cousins and was almost trapped in the mud luge also known as my 1,000+ ft driveway when I returned home at twilight. Tires were spinning and my CRV was churning a mighty brown spray. Just a few short days ago Bob and I had sprinkled salt and sand down our steepest hill after the plow had scooped up most of the gravel and snow. I had just heard about my MIL’s weekend travails, cousins and friends sliding off her snow and ice-packed driveway sideways into the woods. A comedy of errors. And as I sit in my aviary listening to the slow and steady drip of snow melting off the roof, I thought of a new episode for This American Life –  “Life is a Driveway.” https://soundcloud.com/tadpoles-shouldnt-drive/rascal-flatts-life-is-a-highway

This is how Ms Bean feels about winter

This is how Ms Bean feels about winter

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Three Dog Night

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2014| 6 Comments »

It was a chilly 3 degrees this morning in our neck of the woods. The wind has died down and there’s a peacefulness about this arctic/polar/vortex. Ms Bean sits at the kitchen door and looks outside resignedly. No hawks circling, no sounds of woodpeckers, just the gentle whoosh of gas fireplaces upstairs and down.

Speaking of a house divided by a staircase, let’s talk about the latest Downton Abbey episode. It was near midnight by the time I got home from our expedition to the Paramount Theatre on Sunday. On my way to Kay’s house (she was driving into town with 2 other friends), the woman directly in front of me hit a deer. The poor thing was just sitting wide-eyed in the middle of the road, while we waited for the police to put an end to its misery.

The incessant rain/fog coupled with such a morbid beginning made me wonder if venturing out so late at night would be worth it – but the season premiere of Downton, surrounded by so many other like-minded-Edwardian-loving women, proved otherwise. We feasted on a substantial array of English appetizers, swigged champagne, and thrilled to a lecture by Richard Will, Chair of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia,.

‘The Music of Downton Abbey” and film scoring was on the docket before that hound’s white rump started wagging along to those famous opening notes. Will and two UVA students performed music of the 20s and 30s, explaining how American ragtime permeated Europe after the war. There was a tension between old and new, the Edwardian and the Modern age. Young women could be seen in a public restaurant unescorted, and all classes were mixing it up on the dance floor. The Jazz Age ushered in a staccato subtext to the romantic, sentimental music that dominated the turn of the century.

I’ll not ruin the plot for those of you without cable, but the new season is shaping up well. There is frisson between fathers and daughters, maids and lady’s maids, and one or two surprising losses. I for one, am still getting over the loss of Matthew, and have to remind myself that the actor is in fact alive and well and appearing on Broadway at the moment. Having just finished reading “Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey,” fact and fiction collide on a regular basis in my brain.

The only cure is take one of those Viking cruises and tour Highclere Castle for myself! Anyone else interested, maybe this Spring? http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/index.html

Today I’ll cozy up with Ms Bean and search for a Corgi rescue and a good Highclere tour. Stay warm everybody! In the words of Al Jolson:

“Come on along, Come on along, Let me take you by the hand.”

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Rotten Games

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on January 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

Normally, I’m not a scaredy cat. However, once my vision was affected by West Nile, I pretty much stopped driving at night. Which is why I’ll be car-pooling with some friends to see the first episode of Downton Abbey at the Paramount Theatre on the Historic Downtown Mall this weekend.

Added to my natural inclination to visit with friends and actually enjoy my Anglophile evening, is my revulsion at a local news story. A little past midnight on December 20th, a young couple leaving Millers was beaten severely right outside the Wells Fargo bank, a few steps away from the Paramount. This incident received national coverage when the victims discovered, nine days later, that the ball had been dropped by the City of Charlottesville PD. The woman took cell phone pictures of the beating and posted them to her Facebook page, initiating an investigation that has so far come up short on suspects.

The rotten part of the story is that the three attackers seemed to take great pleasure in kicking and beating the young man unconscious, and punching the woman in the head. They laughed, they joked and hugged each other. They didn’t take her purse or their money, even when it was thrown at them. The three attackers were Black and the two victims were White; which led some to call this another example of the “knockout game.”

“They didn’t want to rob us. They wanted to beat us. It was like it was enjoyable to them to beat us,” she said. “There was camaraderie to it.” http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/charlottesville-police-chief-orders-internal-review-in-mall-attack-case/article_87e5fdfa-71cf-11e3-a232-0019bb30f31a.html

This knockout game is just another example of a hate crime imho. Maybe it started when Brad Pitt made that fight club movie, or maybe it started as a gang initiation; pick an innocent victim and sucker punch them into oblivion. It’s caught on like wildfire around the country and states are trying to catch up – http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2013/12/30/state-introduce-knockout-game-bills/4249987/

It would be a shame if this news coverage served to deter people from enjoying a night out on the Mall. But calls are coming in for more widespread surveillance and a beefier police presence on the Mall. Our former Mayor Dave Norris had this to say:

…One other predictable outcome: expect another big push for a public camera surveillance system downtown. The damage done by those three jerks to our sense of community, to our sense of safety and to our civil liberties is likely to far exceed the physical damage done to their two victims. I hope none of this comes to pass and that we in Charlottesville avoid the temptation to escalate and overreact. Given human nature, I am not optimistic. I sincerely hope we find these criminals and put them away. I hope their victims’ wounds heal quickly. I hope ours do as well.

I’m not against more cameras, let’s just put them everywhere like London has done. And btw, let’s also ban guns like the Brits, and legalize marijuana like Colorado. But while we’re busy day dreaming, I wonder how our latest single parents will be coping this season?downton-abbey-season-52

 

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Before Fame

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2013| 4 Comments »

I remember once going out to dinner with the family, and arranged before us on the table were your typical paper placemats. Except that on these cute little mats were a number of what looked like high school portrait pictures. The mats were titled something like “Before They Were Famous.” There in the corner was the key, and you had to match the picture with the star. So long before smart phones and portable gaming devices, long before reality TV produced celebrities, a family had the chance to actually interact by guessing which adolescent girl was now Cher.

Tonight, if you’re lucky enough to live in the New York metropolitan area, or have access to WNET channel 13, http://www.wnet.org, you can tune into a documentary at 10:30 that shines a light on some of our generation’s most acclaimed modern artists.  But it’s like a dream within a dream, because we get a glimpse of the early life of these men, before Studio 54 threw stardust around them, through the lens of a friend and photographer, William John Kennedy.

Full Circle: Before They Were Famous
FULL CIRCLE: BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS is the story behind a series of photographs of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana taken by William John Kennedy in 1963/64 just as the 2 artists were on the cusp of fame. It includes terrific footage of a rare interview with Robert Indiana at his home in Vinalhaven, as well as moments with Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead.
The Director of the Warhol Museum, Eric Shiner, is interviewed and we gain his insight while we watch the evolution of an artistic icon. But if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the musical score of this film, and those of you who know him may recognize a certain something.  Because the music was created by my son, the Rocker, and like any good mom I’d recognize that sound anywhere. From the moment he picked up a violin in first grade, and our Corgi accompanied him, throughout high school with his band in our garage, I’ve become his biggest fan.
I was thinking about him yesterday, on the anniversary of 9/11. Because I knew where my daughter was; I had called her in DC to tell her what was happening and I knew she had left the federal building she was working in and started walking back to her apartment in Adams Morgan. And I knew where Bob was; he was waiting with rescue personnel at the dock in Highlands, NJ for burn patients who never came. But I didn’t know where my son was. He was supposed to start his first after-high-school job on that beautiful Fall day, and they had called to tell him not to come in, but I couldn’t find him.
He was out at Sandy Hook with his friends on the beach, watching the plume of the Twin Tower’s smoke drift out to sea. And the collective trauma of that day was familiar, that sense of suffering brought me back to 1963 when I learned that our President had been shot while I was in gym class at my NJ high school. What does that say about a generation marked by such a tragedy?
Because even before his band, The Parlor Mob, became famous, before the world tours and the Paris Vogue cover shoots and the iTunes Best Rock Band of the Year award, I was always proud of my son for following his own heart, for playing outside of the lines. As the Bard likes to say, and I may have quoted this in his senior yearbook, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
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At the Pillow

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

A quick post about a documentary “Never Stand Still” that will be on PBS next Friday the 26th at 9 on PBS.

Episodes

When we lived in the Berkshires, summertime meant we’d drive over to Jacob’s Pillow every week for an evening of astonishingly beautiful dance.

You may remember, I used to dance. First at the Martha Graham studio, and later I minored in dance at SUNY Purchase when Bill Bales was the Dean. When the Bride was little, I would dance in the Nutcracker when she was a little reindeer.

So it’s more than thrilling to let you know that a dear friend, Nan Honsa from Rumson, Imagehas produced this dance documentary with her husband. http://mpny.tv

I hope you tune in, and imagine the wall at the back stage opening up and the wind and the sounds of birds and insects coming through with the twilight. Imagine the music as the dancers float onto the stage.

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Take Me to the Mountains

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 11, 2013| 1 Comment »

Summer festivals are in full swing, so let me “walk the Blue Ridge” and tell you about a roots music festival starting tomorrow in Natural Chimneys Park right here in the Shenandoah Valley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Figqdfr3c0Y&feature=player_embedded

The Red Wing Roots Music Festival decided to call this more of an Americana music event, and make its premiere debut family friendly to boot. Music styles encompass Blues, Cajun, Old Time, Bluegrass, Early Country, Gypsy Jazz and all variations on a theme. Unfortunately, the Rocker will be busy hosting his sister this weekend for a friend’s Bridesmaids Party Spectacular Jersey Shore Style. I’m figuring he would have been here in a heartbeat otherwise! http://www.redwingroots.com

And speaking of Melissa McCarthy, who seems to be everywhere at the moment, there is one movie I highly recommend this summer amidst blockbuster action thrillers. Go and see The Heat! It’s a really funny, good old fashioned buddy/cop movie except both cops just happen to be women. I always loved Sandy Bullock, but now I’m head over heels gaga over McCarthy:images

“…it also doesn’t deny McCarthy the delightful contrast between her dimples and her dirty mouth, because her combination of sweetie-pie and vulgarian has always been a major element in her comedic style (which wasn’t entirely obvious before Saturday Night Liveand Bridesmaids). It’s a movie that respects her, but doesn’t patronize or try to protect her from the acting-a-fool elements of making broad comedy in order to be adequately feminist about her body.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/28/196571148/the-heat-is-absolutely-revolutionary-for-being-mostly-ordinary?sc=tw&cc=share

And finally, if the real heat and humidity lately has got you down, and left you gasping for air inside your nicely air conditioned home, tune into PBS and prepare to be amazed by the latest Ken Burns feature “Lewis & Clark; the Journey of the Corps of Discovery.” If only history had been taught like this when I was a wee one. Did you know that Sacagawea (yes, that is the correct spelling) was only sixteen years old when she tagged along with these men? Did you know that she carried her newborn baby on her back, and that her knowledge and language skills were essential to their success? When you think about it, she had been enslaved and sold by her Native People, then “entered” into a plural marriage with a French fur trader who was conscripted for this expedition into the unknown – there are so many human rights violations here, they are too numerous to count.

Meriwether Lewis was born on a farm right around the corner, in Albemarle County, VA. Monuments in his honor speckle the landscape. He and Mr Jefferson were good friends, and Burns’ narrative kept me glued to the first part of this PBS documentary long past my bedtime.  http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/

It was a staggering feat to walk, ride and keelboat their way through the northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean; a herculean task in 1804 to set off from St Louis’  “…Camp Dubois “under a jentle brease, Clark writes.” And only the small Native American bride has seen the mountains to the west of the Mississippi.

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Anglophile Love

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on February 5, 2013| 4 Comments »

Forget about the asteroid hurtling towards earth today. Or even the discovery of King Richard III’s bones under a car park in Leicester. I’ve been immersed in past royalty of the historical fiction-type. In my zeal to de-clutter all things, Goodwill received a truckload of books from my bedroom. And while donating tomes I’ve read, I managed to uncover those books I’d always planned to read when I got the time. Like the 532 page winner of the Man Booker Prize, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. And of course, I had to start with her second book about Henry VIII, Bring Up the Bodies, written from the POV of his Master Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell.

So even though I know how and why the reign of the imposter Queen Anne Boleyn ends, I’m now learning more about her beginnings. How she helped the King to sever his relationship with the Holy Roman Church and its Pope, to start up his own church where the priests could marry. Because in Catholic school I was not taught that priests and popes kept hidden mistresses and children, so the Anglican idea was only legitimizing the culture. And of course, helping Henry to annul his twenty year marriage to his first Queen Katherine.

Chock full of intrigue and political schemes, I was caught up by something the King’s future paramour Queen says while she is still just a lady-in-waiting for Anne. Cromwell asks Jane Seymour 2 questions, “What have you been doing? Where have you been?” A shy woman, she answers the first, “Sewing mostly.” But of the second she says, “Where I’m sent.” And being a sly councillor, he knows she has been sent to court by her father in order to spy on the King.

Going where one is sent was true of women both royal and peasant in Tudor England. Queen Katherine of Aragon was sent to live out her life in a damp manor at Kimbolton, where she dies either of cancer or poisoning. And we all know that Anne is sent to the Tower, where she loses her head. They were guilty of growing old, of flirting and most importantly, not producing a male heir. But not so much of Queens in the Twelfth Century. Last night I happened to watch a PBS show called “She-Wolves, England’s Early Queens.”

I know I’m growing old when I much prefer this type of documentary to say, the Super Bowl. But after reading about the powerlessness of Britain’s Queens, it was remarkable to find that earlier Queens, like Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine, actually raised armies and fought off their Kings, even managing to escape from their prison/castle. One finally being restored to the throne, after her estranged husband dies, by her son, the new King. You see, her son was off fighting the Crusades, so she had to rule the country…in her 70s!
http://www.rmpbs.org/content/index.cfm/show/304740/She_Wolves-__-England’s-Early-Queens

Which makes the current Queen Elizabeth’s proclamation so sweet more than 800 years later. HRH the Queen issued a Letters Patent to make Kate’s baby bump (should it be a girl) a “Princess” and not just a “Lady.” So that whole trouble with Henry VIII should never be a bother again because even if the new royal first born is a girl, she will be next in line, behind William, to the Throne. Can we have an Amen Sister!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kate-middleton-royal-baby-will-be-princess-1526521

“Charles Kidd, editor of Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage, said the alteration was expected, especially in light of moves to pass legislation removing discrimination surrounding women succeeding to the throne.” Now just think, where have we heard of Debrett’s before? http://www.debretts.com/people/essential-guide-to-the-peerage.aspx
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Whose Side Are You On?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on January 7, 2013| 5 Comments »

Busy, busy weekend; but the best so far this year! True to my resolutions, I started off with some slow flow Vinyasa yoga at Studio 206, followed up by a dose of slow knitting at the Needle Lady. Even managed to have some famous Peanut Tofu soup at Rev Soup for lunch. But wait, the best is yet to come…last night I attended the Paramount Theatre’s simulcast showing of the first episode of the 3rd season of, tada, Downton Abbey!

You probably already know I’m addicted. And I’ve never really been addicted to a television show before, well maybe a fling with Grey’s Anatomy? But this is serious: I’ve watched episodes I missed online; sat through the 1st season again (on Netflix) when the Love Bug was born just to ensnare my daughter in its spell; I bought the 2nd season on disc to watch over Christmas with the Bride, fueling her addiction and mine; and I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the PBS Masterpiece Classic http://www.npr.org/2013/01/03/167528679/downton-abbey-cast-its-more-fun-downstairs.

But last night was a girl’s night out, and some of us dressed to the nines for the occasion! I had a long velvet skirt in my closet, and an old rust colored silk jacket that I topped with a tulle millenary confection!photo copy Felt so very Lady Grantham. Kay Parker is one of my first friends in VA, and she drove our little group of 4 to the Downtown Mall where we met up with my friend Karen and her daughter-in-law Kath. Grown women totally excited to see what will become of Bates and the wedding of Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley. I won’t give anything away, except to say that I adore the Irish chauffeur Tom who stole the youngest Lady Sybil away and we all hissed at the evil valet Thomas. And of course Maggie Smith is sublime!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/downtonabbey/

Why do we Yankees love it so? Because it has everything, Shakespearian drama mixed at just the right spot in history. We all secretly love the royals and their quirky landed gentry precisely because we waged a war to separate from them. A Turkish diplomat dies and a scandal is averted, but just barely. A generation returns from WWI and suddenly a life of service doesn’t seem all that great. Cars are replacing horses. Fortunes are lost and others are won. The same themes of life and love, and particularly last night, loyalty, ring true today. Sometimes we all need to be reminded whose side we are on. A good story will resonate with us forever, so thank you Julian Fellowes. Thank you for imagining these characters and putting pen to paper.

Here are the 3 “K”s – Kay, Karen and Kath http://www.katheats.com!
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