Review: Mayors’ 33rd novel featuring Vermont Bureau of Investigation stalwart, Joe Gunther, is a beaut. If you are a fan of: Archers’ works, police procedurals, great character development, serial stories or New England settings-this is for you. Gunther and his band of pranksters cross the big river to the land of Live Free or Die in this elaborate story of intrigue and mystery. Mayor would be a very good writer regardless of the genre, but he owns this genre sand is generally regarded as being at the top of his class by all the major reviewers. Just gets better and better.
Notable People: Sigourney Weaver, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Leah Purcell, Frankie Adams Created by Sarah Lambert
Title:The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Review: Late career smash role for Weaver as the haunted and dominating matron of a remote flower farm that protects and engulfs abused women. Carey is wonderful as the young adult version of Alice Hart, the child who burns down her house with her abusive father and pregnant victim mother in it and is taken in by grandmother Weaver. The cast is exemplary, the story powerful and profound. This is not a show for the lighthearted – takes a very strong look at domestic violence and its very complicated inter-generational patterns. Could have benefited from more fleshing out of the suppurating characters- especially the wonderful Twig and Candy (Purcell and Adams). The opine-off mins-series is based on the best-selling novel by Australian author Holly Ringland
Notable People: Giuseppe Zeno, Giusy Buscemi, Alessandro Tersigni, Christiane Filangieri, Created by Gianandrea Percinelli
Title:Paradise- “Il paradiso delle signore”
Review: Small town girl from Sicily comes to Milan to help with her aunt and uncles’ textiles store and winds up as prestigious salesgirl at the magnificent “Ladies Paradise” shopping Mecca. Classic 1950’s post war Italy lighthearted drama from a 1980s Emile Zola set of novels. Fantastically done; the acting is marvelous; the people are exceedingly beautiful. A very nice show. Currently four seasons available on PBS, with four more in the hopper-so could be a winter watch. Like this a lot.
“To know you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease” …Lao-Tzu
“Blind man running thru the light of the night, With an answer in his hand. Come on down to the river of sight, And you can really understand” ………………………Neil Young
“Happy Trails to you…. until we meet again” ……………………………………………Dale Evans
We have reached the fork in the road…and should probably take it…. Stick Season is upon us……the days are darker and shorter the nights filled with the lonesome sound of cold coyote…..last leaves flutter to the ground as diamonds and rust….It is the season of the witch…….
Despite the frailties of leaving, it has been a varied and good week here in our hometown, where The Queen presides over the Mountain Court.
Vermont music has been reimagined this year and the Monday Night Rambles became A Groove when the varied and talented gathered of an evening to make the music of the folk……I will miss Belmont jammers and the often tri-mandolin frenzy….
I may have negated to fully mention, in the last missive, that we went to see the legendary Bruce Cockburn last week at the splendid Paramount Theater in Rut-land…dare I say that the power of imagination and spirit live wildly in the age-bent Canadian icon…..and that who knew has so many rabid-and still breathing- fans…….of an age…touch of grey …or a bit more…..and along with that discovered the House of Tokyo..…an improbably genuine Japanese eatery on Merchants Row for the last 30 years….how observant we sometimes are?
Amongst my fare thee wells this week, will be the sad parting with my semi-permanent loaner car.……which I have had for over two months this summer/fall……which the legions of Jeepaholics have tried to diagnose and correct to determine the source of its alien-derived misery….the little dealer in on The Mount, has asked for one more chance to find the multiple ghost issues….so I will probably trade them back tomorrow…or I may just take the beloved loaner on a Heartland jag……call it a fair trade ….perhaps I can visit my ghost once in a while?
We will certainly mis our step-dog, li’l Ivy, who now shows up every morning at 7 am to knock and see if Lucy can come out and play….and then spend her time half in and half out of the house…. alert to any possible appearance of the wicked beast, Saffron, who might show up and terrorize her any minute….
Made a three-day trip to Baltimore this week…. reliving past glories and staying at the very cool Hotel Indigo…. a top floor room with a view of the city and the monuments…and sampling the cuisines of Ethiopia and Afghanistan….who knew there were so many colors in the world…. not here in the Brave Little State where everyone pretty much looks like Bernie……did I mention it hit 87 degrees while I was there?……clearly living in the wrong place……
My two biggest recent pet peeves are Ballots and Tolls…. took me three weeks to get nan absentee ballot…. and then have only day to get it is a in order to count…do you feel like your vote is wanted?……who comes up with this shit, these barrier-rules……. feeling totally voter-repressed…. Is it possible that the wee-weenie- controllers of Ohio don’t really want to have my vote count on Abortion Rights and Pot legalization……… Hmmm?……….and then……. try traveling anywhere these days without an “easy pass” ……. Just try paying your toll on line….do you have to demonstrate an under 80 IQ to work for the state in these capacities…let me pay…please let me pay…I really want to pay…..ok, full disclosure: I also just happen to want to pay so that the dealer dos not get the dreaded “pay my toll” billing…….and find out I took the beloved step-child out of state…..
Speaking of farewells……pr…et…. tty…. exhausting process……. I second that emotion…make it stop……
And it just one week, we had ongoing issues with Comcast Cable, Amazon and Verizon……. say……. Representative……. Representative…. Representative………what language exactly are hey speaking?……phones, cars and packages…all feel the pain of mountain life…………………………. can I get a signal?……….
Goin’ down to Ol, Ol Woodstock…..feel the cool night breeze…..made the trek yesterday down the mountains……to the bend of the mighty Hudson….back, back to Big Pink….and to the Midnight ramble…..though Levon is gone, it is now the Helm Family Ramble…….th players were mostly new from our heyday in the 90s, except for daughter Amy and the great horn guys who have been coming up from the city for 50 years of Alan Toussaint charts…but art and beauty are still in the air……100 privileged members of our Tribe gathered in the acoustically perfect candle-lit barn seeming to move back and forth in time…and re-visit the Angels of Saugerties…..to rejoice in the music of The Band, in the holy-land from whence it came ….it amounts to a few hours of rapture and togetherness…….spent the day trolling diners and challenging any possible notions of low carb….how good is it to find a full page of dinner specials at the classic Greek-run diner…tucked inside the 12 page menu…and server with soup, salad, sides and dessert for about 15 bucks…….and then to Levon’s again….oh my; he has a namesake grandson …..a teen angst belter with Joe Cocker like moves…and when he and his mom duet on Ophelia, with young Levon on grandpas kit…..Ophelia, please darken my door…..did I mention the uber-hip 60s revival of Saugerties and the lighthouse?… it a thing after a forest walk…who knew there were lighthouses on the Mighty Hudson……
Well Hallo-Weenie has come and gone, as you can see from the little-dervish pictures of all the heirs….and thus……………………it is really time to go….but, then it is also time to come….endings beget beginnings….and that is where we are….
Stay warm and in touch…see you somewhere on the other side….
Reviews: Suggested to me by my old friend, Budley, the first novel from the acclaimed journalist and later the winner of the National Book Award, tells the story of Th Underground Railroad, through its protagonist, Hiram Walker, a slave born of the union of” The Quality” (owners) and “The Tasked “(slaves). Rich in imagery and filled with magic and mysticism, it’s an utterly compelling portrait of a part of our shared history full of eternal shame. Walker is an inheritor of the powers of “Conduction”, allowing him to transport people out of their bondage, but with great risk and costs, the book, centered in slave ridden Virginia and free Philadelphia, is utterly compelling and brilliantly conceived, but very complicated and, at times, hard for me to read, which I did in short bursts. Took a long time, but extremely revealing. The abundance of horrors is unfathomable.
“Bad pennies don’t tell you their motivation, until they wear a hole in your britches” …James Lee Burke
“A traveler. Let my name be thus known, This autumnal shower …………………………Basho
“The days re growing shorter, the nights are getting colder. Got to get myself back home, put my head back on your shoulder” ……………. Jesse Winchester
Oh my, my…..been a frolicking two week and last week got away from me living I your five –year-old manna…..had a last blast of warmth this week, but won’t see 55 again for the duration….12 days and counting till takeoff……71 years of American Dreams…… the world is a stinker these days…too much hate….but I am pressing on with hope and Elam in spite of…..
So back to the beginning….weekend before last we gathered via invitation from The Mountain Activist and The Retired Czar of the Postal Service for a Sunday date on a fine fall afternoon….made our annual trek up to Redding, and the flood ravaged-now reopened , and most unusual Hall foundation, for the Warhol extravaganza and a slightly less compelling Susan Rothenburg (are those really all vaginas?) exhibits…all in meticulously restored 200 year-old barn/ galleries…..after which we drifted back to Ludlow to the Hometown Hotel for the areas classic family style, farm to table feast in a private dining room…what is not to like?
That day saw the return after a week or so absence of Lucy’s Pitty suitor, Ivy……who has been wandering into the house at times but is deathly afraid of the fearsome Saffron, who reared up at her once like the Queen of Sheba…. Ivy typically drifts down twice a day (escaping the clutches of Dennis the Menace and Proud but Silent Mary, up the hill), to kick on our door and request Lucy’s company…. should we just take her back with us on the QT?
Monday, we strode out bright and early for the required yearly pilgrimage to the Champlain islands…where Cozy-Cottage Alan (whom we have now visited for 20 years running)….put us in the Big-Ass family deluxe cottage right on the Big Lake…with three bedrooms and FIVE couches…gas woodstove and very large TV….enough for the whole miscpachah……I managed to nap on each of the couches over our three days….along with rollin’ and driftin around the deserted Islands…finding the brilliance of autumn colors we have missed this year near home….the whole thing is a homely wanderlust for us….with our annual stops at The Apple Man and the Happy Bird, and dreamy hikes at all the ghost-town like state parks…we don’t even go out to eat when there any more…lazy and hangin’ at the very non-tropical islands…it’s not Jamaica, after all…..
Made day long drive back thru several of the mid-state mountain gaps on way home and worked on putting our proverbial house in order for the arrival of the post nuclear family on Thursday….TQ stayed home to fanatically clean, whilst I buzzed down the i-91 corridor to The Hartford, the pickup Tess, Sloanie and great niece, Lena, Lena, Bo-Beena at the Big (for us) airport….made a stop to dawdle with Dr. Seuss and lunch at the surprisingly hip Springfield , Mass and then bore a mostly cold and wet four days with jaunts to the Sparkle Barn, charming Woodstock shop (T and L only), hunting for late-season Creamees, multiple meal negotiations, mounds of wet leaves to jump in, Ramuntos, the Vermont Country Store, Ramuntos, and a quaint trunk or treat event in Rutland..…either we kept Sloanie very busy or she kept us hopping-in-place…not sure which one….the birthday fairy (she just turned FIVE) visited daily (initially leaving her gifts for wake-up time- bur adjusting to only while we were out eventually- after Sloane demonstrated her intent to be up at 6 am daily to greet the fairy) and NanaPapi also produced brand new pair of flashing, noise-making roller skates that portend many calamities to come…..shuttled them back down to Albany on Monday, with Diner stop and finding a park to minimally rid the energy…though might have found one of the worlds’ great playgrounds with every kind of climbing apparatus, super-sized swinging devices and a zip line……all of it attracting the young and youngish adults as well as the kiddo…the post-airport drive home was VERY quiet….and led to significant lie-downs once arrived….could say a lot more, but every picture tells a story, story….
Have I mentioned I got my ghost-symptom car back for the fourth time……after dealer had it four weeks and consulted with the striking Detroit experts..…pronounced cured….again….and next day all the error lights came back on and created the usual associated multiple problems…..scheduled to try again this week and get my Ferlin-dedicated loaner, but having my doubts and thinking maybe I can live with the flashing lights and related chaos…or need to visit the big boys in the Heartland….…trying to decide how to respond to the Jeep survey on my dealer experience,…they’ve TRIED….
No sooner had they all left, then I bore back down the mountains to Albany for a quick two-nighter in lovely Baltimore (85 degrees) for my re-invigorated Casey efforts at changing the world..…back in the saddle again…..very bad at retirement…..stayed at the very chic Hotel Indigo in the wonderful Mt. Vernon area, with nations of diversity and associated restaurants, and had a god daylong meeting with an age group ranging from 22 to early 70s (guess who), and including our own rainbow……dinner at a grand Ethiopian joint with my great nephew and budding sports magnate, Matthew…and then at the legendary afghan Helmand’s, owned by the self- lf proclaimed Brother of Karzai….it’s not Vermont anymore, Dorothy….am I really re-he re-entering the consulting world?
Got back late Friday and spent Saturday doing ready-to-bolt chores and then a dinner party (really, like in the movies) hosted by The Mad Scientist and the Self Proclaimed Trophy Wife…and featuring eight pieces of silverware at each setting……all under the protection of the biggest Harvest –Moon is recent memory…. signaling it’s time to leave?
Nuked our planned trip to Maine for this week…enough is enough……and now in the arrangin’, fixin’, plannin’ mode…walk a mile in our shoes, if you please….25 miles to go now…it’s late, it’s late…. gotta go, before the snow…
Enjoy the Autumn dwindle wherever you are….and make good hay…
Review: This 2023 standalone novel from the legendary and aged American icon is a wonderfully told story about the damages of war. Focused on the waning days of the War Between the States and told thru the eyes of five compelling characters, the book is classic Burke, one of the most eloquent and evocative voices of his (or any ) generation. Very fortunate to still have him around.
Notable People: Michael Alona, Irit Kaplan, Swell Ariel Or, Hila Saada, Tom Hagi, Created by Oded Davidoff
Title: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem
Review: Initially reviewed the first season of this series back in March and then they unexpectedly released a second season-which was magnificent. Original review is below- but this was so good I raised the rating to an A. Don’t usually review any series more than once- but this is an exception. Well, well worth it.
Based on the best-selling Israeli novel by Sarit Levy, Yes dram Israeli production company produced this as daily show with 44 episodes in the first two seasons. Netflix adapted it into on long season of 20 lengthier episodes. The series tells the captivating story of the Armoza family, intertwined with the history of Palestine during Ottoman rule and the British colonial empire It explores the family’s fortunes during the subsequent periods of depression and war. The series takes place simultaneously on two timelines wherein present and past stories are presented alternately (from 1919 thru 1942- encapsulating the role of both world Wars). Beautifully filmed, with intense dialog and action, the show dramatizes a very complex family living in very complex times and is wonderfully historical. Kaplan shines as the detestable “Bubby” and the cast is generally dead on. It won’t make you fond of the British rule. I found this show to get better and better as it progressed. As second season is in the works in Israel to pick up in the post war 1940’s and into the founding of the Jewish state.
Title: Will the Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album”
Review: This beautiful coffee-table size photo and story book came out earlier this year in honor of the 50th anniversary of this 1972 album that immortalized country music for a whole generation. Full disclosure; I am quite biased for anything to do with this record that turned me onto a musical journey and shook my counter culture brain open to a cultural phenomenon I had previously ignored. The recording sessions brought together the prototypical LA county rock band with the surviving royalty of founders/ giants of the bluegrass and country music world in late 1971, and made Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Mother Maybelle, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin and Vassar Clements a new kind of audience and was cutting edge in Its ambition at the time. The book is a wonderful narrative of behind the scenes anecdotes, history and brilliant photos by McEuen’s late brother and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band manager, Bill. I started out perusing the book the local librarian had gotten for me while watching a baseball game on TV, and could not stop reading every inch until I was done and then looked back at all the photos yet again. An absolute must for any fan of the album and a pretty illuminating read for other music fans; only held back a wee bit by it being too McEuen-centric.
Review: If is not yet apparent, I simply adore these Walker “Bruno” mysteries of the French countryside. Set in the fabled Perigord gourmand region of southwestern France- they ruminate on history, culture, food/wine, and inside dope on the French way of life. Walker is an excellent writer and food/wine connoisseur. This one includes terrorism from Spanish radicals (maybe Russia induced) to undermine the historical Catalan culture that has existed as a Spanish part of France for many centuries- derived from the Occitan language and descended from Elinor of Aquitaine. You will leave these books entertained and informed, and they are hard to put down. After years of barriers the Bruno cookbooks (only previously in German) are being released in English soon- a blessing to us all.
