With Mother’s Day behind me, it’s been back to the grind. The weather’s been warmer out here in the Northwest, but not exactly what I would call inspiring, and there’s been bad news round the globe this week. It’s enough to make a girl feel a little down. Certainly enough to make me run for some comfort food. But wait! I’m trying to eat more healthily and lose some weight. What I really need is some food writing that makes me feel the same way that comfort food does.
I’m happy to say, I’ve found my food writing fix. I’d read an article in the June 2008 issue of Bon Appetit on making homemade jam simply by Molly Wizenberg, also known to foodies as the genius behind the much-loved food blog Orangette. The jam article made me immediately mark my calendar for the U-Pick berry months and fantasize about fresh, warm, homemade strawberry jam oozing off a steaming buttermilk biscuit. My next move was to check out the Orangette blog. Her archives go on forever, so points taken from me for picking up on this so late. But better late than never.
Here’s what’s fantastic about Ms. Wizenberg’s blog. She sounds normal. She doesn’t sound like some prissy know-it-all who’s going to make me feel incompetent for not never having heard of green garlic. Instead, she sounds like an otherwise relatively well-adjusted human who happens to really dig cooking and food, and who can also write really really well about it. Check out a little bit from her post on soup (from 4/21/08):
It’s hard to know what to say about soup. I mean, it’s soup. It’s a liquid, sort of, but it’s eaten with a spoon. It’s not a steak, or chocolate, or fancy cheese, or an ice cream sundae. It’s what people eat when they’re sick or miserable or old, wearing dentures that clack like sad, weary castanets. Soup is a hard sell. But if I could, I would eat it every day. Sometimes, actually, I do. I never get tired of soup.
She goes on to describe a spinach and green garlic soup that she recreated from a bowl she’d had in San Francisco. Now, we could at this point head into “I’m so much more accomplished than you” territory, at which point, I’d have looked elsewhere. But she admitted to (a) having never bought green garlic before, (b) being cheap enough to wait to buy said garlic at Whole Foods until the price went down, and (c) not being all that great at recreating dishes. Then she goes on to give the recipe of this soup, which I will be trying one of these days.
So, if you’re looking for comfort food without the calories, give Orangette a read.
In the last Mother’s Day post before the big day (which probably for most moms, is still pretty much the same as any other day, and is just fine), I thought I would list a couple songs that pay tribute to moms everywhere. Once again, I blanked after I came up with a couple songs. I could cheat and start looking at country music lyrics, where mamas everywhere are revered. But since I don’t listen to much country music, it didn’t seem right.
The two songs that I remember, though, are terrific songs for celebrating mothers. Without further ado, here they are:
“Loves Me Like A Rock,” music and lyrics by Paul Simon (from the There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album, although Alison Kraus and the Cox Family do a great cover of it on their I Know Who Holds Tomorrow album) - Besides its lazy swinging beat, what I love about this song how it talks about the mother’s constancy of love through the years. From the little boy to the man to the president, his mama loves him like a rock. Not a clod of dirt that’ll disperse with the rain, mind you, a ROCK:
When I was grown to be a man (grown to be a man)
And the devil would call my name (grown to be a man)
I’d say now who do, Who do you think youre fooling? (grown to be a man)
I’m a consummated man (grown to be a man)
I can snatch a little purity
My mama loves me, she loves me
She get down on her knees and hug me
Like she loves me like a rock
She rocks me like the rock of ages
And loves me
“Good Mother”, music and lyrics by Jann Arden (from her Living Under June album; you can hear the song on her MySpace page) - Jann Arden is one of those criminally underrecognized pop/folk rock singer-songwriters of the Patty Griffin genre. In “Good Mother,” she writes about all the sneaking minutiae that can undermine your spirit - unless of course, you’ve had a mother who taught you to be yourself:
I’ve got money in my pockets,
I like the color of my hair.
I’ve got a friend who loves me,
Got a house, I’ve got a car.
I’ve got a good mother,
and her voice is what keeps me here.
Feet on ground,
Heart in hand,
Facing forward,
Be yourself.
So for all the moms out there, especially including my own, whom I feel is the very best mom of all, happy Mother’s Day.
As the second part of my Mother’s Day bonanza of posts, I recall getting forwarded the link to the following video by comedienne Anita Renfroe. Called “The Mom Song,” and sung to the William Tell Overture, it’s fairly likely that you may be among the seven million people who’ve seen it on YouTube. Just in case you haven’t, however, or even if you have but need a refresher of what you’ll likely say as a mom or hear from a mom in the next 24 hours, enjoy the following clip:
I had this great idea for a series of Mother’s Day posts: write about moms in movies, books and song who’ve inspired me. But then, disaster struck. I blanked. I couldn’t think of them. Try it yourself - you’ll see. You may see a film and think, “Boy, I LOVED the mom character in that film.” But dredging it up out of the memory of tomorrow’s schedule, the character story lines in LOST, the names of the seven dwarves, and other ephemera — ooph. It can give you a headache.
Be that as it may, I persevered, googled everyone else’s list of Mother’s Day movies, and came up with my short list of films where the moms rule. My only requirements for inclusion were that (a) I actually had to have seen and enjoyed the movie; and (b) I had to have felt the movie was not blatantly manipulative in its depiction of the trials and tribulations of motherhood (i.e. thus disposing in my own eyes of perennial weepy favorites like Terms of Endearment and Beaches).
So what made the short list? Reflect upon the following moms with aplomb:
Mrs. Parker, aka Ralphie’s mom (Melinda Dillon): In A Christmas Story (1983), Jean Shepherd created the quintessential all-time-great mom. As played by Dillon, Mrs. Parker knew the name of the Lone Ranger’s nephew’s horse (Victor - “Everybody knows that.”), knew when to hide Ralphie’s fight with Scott Farkas from the Old Man by distracting him with football, and allowed little brother Randy some alone time to hide under the sink. She is a model for us all.
Beatrice Henderson (Debbie Reynolds): In Albert Brooks‘ riotously funny film Mother (1996), he and Monica McGowan Johnson wrote a fully-realized character in Reynolds’ Beatrice. The main character John (Brooks) has moved back home after two divorces and a failing writing career, only to discover in some achingly mortifying ways that his mother has her own life (She tells John about a date, “We’re not intimate, dear. We just have sex occasionally.”) and own unfulfilled dreams. Brooks has said of the film:
There are two kinds of mothers on the planet. The first kind thinks that every single thing their children do is perfect and their children are God’s gift to the world. And then there’s the other kind. This is about the other kind.
By the end of the film, John and the audience come to realize that John and his mother have deeper ties than he has known, and that her love for him is realistic but unwavering.
Lillian Gilbreth (Myrna Loy): In Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), Loy portrays the wife of efficiency expert Frank Bunker Gilbreth (Clifton Webb). The true story of the adventures of a family with twelve children (written by two of them - Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey) the mom is portrayed as being an efficiency expert in her own right, and the bastion of sanity in the storm of chaos that twelve children brings. To be truthful, it’s been years since I saw these films, and summaries of these classics are hard to come by. But I recall loving Myrna Loy in that film, and in awe of how she handled the running of a household big enough to be its own school. Note: If you rent this movie, rent the early version. The 2003 film with Steve Martin is cute enough, but the original is the real charmer.
Now you have my picks. What are yours? Who are your favorite movie mothers?
Drug addiction. A superplague pandemic. Chicken farms. Vikings. Reincarnation. Does this crazy melange of elements sound like the makings of a comedy to you?
Well, it is. A darned fine one, in fact. I have to confess, when a friend recommended Last Last Chance, the debut novel by writer Fiona Maazel, and I read that it was about drug addiction and recovery, my first reaction was “Ugh.” Having never been there nor done that, I can’t say addiction/recovery novels are up there in the top tier of favorite genres for me. But, I trust my friend’s judgment and taste, so started to read. I loved it, but think I gave myself whiplash from the number of times I shook my head going “Wha-huh???”
The novel’s protagonist is Lucy, daughter of a former scientist at the Centers for Disease Control who took his own life after vials of a plague he’d developed were stolen from his lab. Lucy is the kind of person who misses her best friend’s wedding because she transposes the dates - or maybe is too high to remember the date. But she’s got nothing on her mother Isifrid, whose habit makes Lucy’s own addiction look like the Tinker Toy version:
It was not often I looked at her anymore. The woman in my head had been gone for so long, I seemed to forget Mother didn’t die with her. Surely no one would believe they were the same person. The woman in my head could open a beer bottle with her teeth. No chips or cracks. She’d leave the house with no makeup and get praised for it. A guy who made wigs for celebrities frequently petitioned for her thicket of hair, which she could wrap around her head like a scarf. How long since I’d seen that woman? At least fifteen years. But I still missed her.
The reason I chose that excerpt is that it shows how, as messed up as this family is - and trust me, I haven’t even dented the surface of the dysfunction - there is an underpinning of love that steadies the novel in all its whacked-out craziness. Lucy’s mother Isifrid, her grandmother Aggie, her half-sister Hannah, and Lucy are painted with very deft strokes, so that even as you cannot believe how screwed up they are (except for Aggie, who’s a rock), you still reallylike them and root for them.
Maazel has written a seriously dark comedy that leaves you cringing as you laugh. But she manages to insert some true poignancy into the book as well. The ending of Last Last Chance is one of the most moving conclusions I’ve ever read in a novel. It’s that good.
So even if the strongest drug you’ve ever ingested is Tylenol Maximum Strength, and even if thinking about chicken farms has you contemplating veganism, find this book and read it. It’s a wild ride.
Every once in a while, a movie haunts you to the extent that you find yourself thinking about it long after the credits have rolled and the DVD has been returned to Blockbuster. For me, that movie was Once, which I saw a couple of weeks ago and haven’t gotten out of my head since.
Why does this movie stay with me so? A large part of its staying power is its music. For those who either haven’t seen the movie or didn’t watch the Academy Awards this year, Once is about two musicians in Dublin who spur each other to stretch their talents over a single week. Its stars are Glen Hansard of The Frames and Marketa Irglova, two musicians who now tour together as The Swell Season. The music is unapologetically romantic and gorgeous, and all the songs in the movie were composed by Hansard and Irglova or Hansard alone. Like the movie itself, the lyrics paint a kind of tone poem, create a delicate mood, such as these from the Oscar winning song “Falling Slowly”:
I don’t know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can’t react
And games that never amount
To more than they’re meant
Will play themselves out
But as fabulous as the music is - and the music comprises more than half the film, mind you - Once’s story, written by its director John Carney, is stunning in its simplicity. If you expect some big and horrific conflict to interrupt these characters’ lives, think again. No death, no violence, no sex. The only conflict is the very mild tension coming from the characters’ own heads and their unrequited attraction. It’s the visual movie equivalent of a tone poem, and it’s exquisite in its detail and lack of gimmickry.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go rent it right away. You’ll thank me.
I just watched Gone Baby Gone last night. It was our weekend treat rental and it did not let us down. I’d read the book by Dennis Lehane long enough ago that I’d forgotten most of it. The screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard seemed to keep pretty close to the book, to the best of my knowledge, and Affleck did a terrific job of directing the action so it seemed real, with Boston as much of a character as the human ones. I can divulge very little of the story without it turning into spoiler city over here at WordHappy, so suffice it to say that the story, whether you read the book or watch the movie, deals in a billion shades of gray - no black and white conclusions for this writer. As I watched it, I was certain that as David Simon was dreaming up writers for THE WIRE, he’d read Lehane and thought, “We have to get that guy. He gets us.”
But after I finished watching the movie, I was left with a severe jonesing for some more Lehane. And while I’d loved the film, I was left thinking that as good as it was, it missed a lot of the humor that I seemed to remember the Lehane books having. So I went back to the last of the Patrick Kenzie-Angie Gennaro series, [Note to Dennis Lehane if you read this: WHEN is the next Kenzie book coming? You promised there would be another one. You promised.] Prayers for Rain, and just skimmed it for the style, tone, and humor:
Cody Falk drove a pearl-gray Audi Quattro, and at nine-thirty that night, we watched him exit the Mount Auburn Club, his hair freshly combed and still wet, the butt of a tennis racket sticking out of his gym bag. He wore a soft black leather jacket over a cream linen vest, a white shirt buttoned at the throat, and faded jeans. He was very tan. He moved like he expected things to get out of his way.
“I really hate this guy,” I said to Bubba. “And I don’t even know him.”
“Hate’s cool,” Bubba said. “Don’t cost nothing.”
I love that in the space of a paragraph, Lehane throws off just enough details to make us despise this Cody character, then has Patrick mirror that reaction, thereby making us love Patrick. Slick, that.
For anyone who hasn’t read Dennis Lehane, get thee to the library or bookstore immediately. I love the Patrick Kenzie series, so start at the beginning, with A Drink Before the War. Of course, don’t blame me if you ignore your loved ones and professional obligations while you plow through the series.
Anyone who has ever owned a pet knows that the bond they share with that animal isn’t simply a projection of human qualities onto their pet, but part of the animal itself. Just like we brag about our children, we brag about our animals as well. My current cat will snuggle in front of the fireplace by burrowing under the area rug in front of the hearth, with just her nose peeking out. Considering she has no opposable thumbs with which to pick up a throw blanket and wrap it around herself, this solution seems like pretty smart problem-solving to me.
You can imagine my happiness, therefore, at picking up the March 2008 issue of the National Geographic magazine and reading Virginia Morell’s wonderful article “Minds of Their Own.” In this article, she profiles some of the latest research looking at the behaviors of many different species of animals. The expected brainiacs of the animal world are in profiled - dolphins, dogs, chimpanzees - but evidence of more complex cognition can also be found in animals such as sheep, not normally associated with being terribly bright. Not only is this information on the intelligence of animals really fascinating, but I found it enormously moving as well.
In one section, Morell describes the work Irene Pepperberg did for more than thirty years with Alex, an African gray parrot. Pepperberg theorized that if she could teach him to “learn” English by imitating its sounds, humans could gain a better understanding of avian cognition. As a result, Alex was able to demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of same and different, higher cognitive skills generally only ascribed to higher mammals. He also was able to assert his personality:
For the next 20 minutes, Alex ran through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). . . And, then, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird’s brain, Alex spoke up. “Talk clearly,” he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching mispronounced the word green. “Talk clearly.”
“Don’t be a smart aleck,” Pepperberg said, shaking her head at him. “He knows all this, and he gets bored, so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be obstinate. At this stage, he’s just like a teenage son; he’s moody, and I’m never sure what he’ll do.”
“Wanna go tree,” Alex said in a tiny voice.
Alex had lived his entire life in captivity, but he knew that beyond the lab’s door, there was a hallway and a tall window framing a leafy elm tree. He liked to see the tree, so Pepperberg put her hand out for him to climb aboard. She walked him down the hallway into the tree’s green light.
“Good boy! Good birdie,” Alex said, bobbing on her hand.
“Yes, you’re a good boy. You’re a good birdie.” And she kissed his feathered head.
That passage made my eyes leak a little, I must confess. I am absolutely thrilled that the National Geographic website has posted this article online. But as wonderful as the story is, the photo portraits by Vincent J. Musi are equally amazing. Be sure to check out the photo gallery and accompanying video.
I was driving along in my car, listening to the radio, zoning out and thinking deep thoughts as advertisements played. Suddenly, a woman’s voice crashed through to my consciousness, comparing her laundry’s rinse cycle to the cycle of life, only with a spring air scent:
Now comes my time. It’s just me, my washer and dryer, and five days worth of dirty laundry. Time to remember that life isn’t about meetings and deadlines. . . it’s about making whites whiter, and folding towels to perfection.
As I shoved my eyebrows back down from the ceiling, the announcer came on and said, “A weekend is not a vacation,” and proceeded to tie in the Washington State Lotto’s Weekend Getaway contest. You can listen to the commercial by going to the Washington’s Lottery website, and truly, you should. It is hilarious. I couldn’t find the persons responsible for this ad, although I suspect the culprits to be Publicis in the West, who’ve handled the advertising for Washington’s Lottery in the past. What I love about the ad is how it shows you the effects of a person having utterly snapped, then ties it in with a covert suggestion that a vacation might be in order.
I don’t know what it is, but after months of silence, I’m craving music — all my old favorite songs. Maybe it’s the weather with its tease of sunshine and heat. Maybe it’s seeing people walk around dressed in jeans and t-shirts instead of disappearing under the Michelin Man folds of a down parka. But there is music bubbling up inside of me, so if I don’t give it an outlet of singing along to songs that I love, I will be like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, bursting into song and spinning around with no provocation.
Weller’s excerpt of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King is fascinating reading; I’ll certainly be putting the book on reserve at the library to read the whole account. It’s the story of a different time and place for women singer-songwriters, when perhaps it was easier to be heard, particularly by the community of upcoming singer-songwriters. But from the article, it also seems like each of these women succeeded as much by the romantic entanglements and/or musical alliances she formed as by her sheer talent. Joni Mitchell was connected with members of the Blues Project, Leonard Cohen, and David Crosby; Carly Simon dated Cat Stevens and Kris Kristofferson before falling in love with her future husband James Taylor. Even Carole King, who seems the most rooted of the three during those times, co-wrote some of her seminal songs with her first husband, Gerry Goffin. It’s hard to imagine how these women, if placed in a time machine and transported to the future, would fare if trying to make it today. American Idol material, they’re not. I think the singer-songwriter who embodies their spirit most today is Seattle’s own Brandi Carlile.
The More article, “I Was the Girl in the Song,” was written by Peter Knobler and profiles Diane Lozito, the inspiration for Bruce Springsteen’s “Rosalita”; Rikki Ducornet, who inspired Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”; Sharona Alperin, the muse for the Knack’s “My Sharona”; and Judy Collins, who inspired Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” Hearing about the chance meetings between these women and the men who wrote the songs lends a powerful voice to how brief a moment needs to be for inspiration to spark.
Neither of these articles are up on the magazines’ websites yet, and may never be. Go look for them at your newsstand, or find Weller’s book, which was just released last week. Certainly, I’ve got my play list for the next several months.
What are the songs you’re listening to this spring?
With Mother’s Day behind me, it’s been back to the grind. The weather’s been warmer out here in the Northwest, but not exactly what I would call inspiring, and there’s been bad news round the globe this week. It’s enough to make a girl feel a little down. Certainly enough to make me run for some comfort food. But wait! I’m trying to eat more healthily and lose some weight. What I really need is some food writing that makes me feel the same way that comfort food does.
