Sunday Sundries, 254

I know: A day late. Deal with it!

1: AsOTW: People who share on Facebook (and other platforms) some memes (from Right or Left) whose veracity they have not bothered to check. Misinformation is a virus—a deadly one in a democracy. Just because we agree with something does not make it true.

2. I finished one book last week—Anne Tyler’s 2018 novel, Clock Dance, a novel I really enjoyed—and admired.

The novel is the story of Willa Drake at various times in her life (she's eleven when the novel begins--but it hops around). She gets older--marries (unwisely)--has a son, Sean. She feels, afterward, unattached. Her son grows up and moves away and doesn't seem to give a damn.

Then ... she gets a call from Baltimore. A former GF of Sean (Denise) has been shot in the leg and needs help at home--and with her daughter. Willa's second husband (also a mismatch) reluctantly goes with her--but doesn't stay long.

Willa ends up becoming very involved with Denise, her daughter, the neighborhood--and she stays and stays and stays--beyond the time she's really needed. In a way, she's found a new family.

Lots of things occur in Baltimore, but I'll leave it to you to discover what they are.

But the message here: an overpowering need for family. Most of us have felt it; I know that I have ...

3. On Saturday night, Joyce and I went to the first film we’ve seen since late October! The reason we’ve not gone out? Something about the post-equinox early darkness that has made us both prefer to stay indoors after supper—at home—and read and stream bits of shows we like. Comforting. And in my, uh, “advancing years” I find I often just plain don’t have the energy to do much in the evening hours. Yet another tribute to the Glories of Aging.

But … our son and his family gave us a generous gift card to Regal Cinemas for my birthday back in mid-November, and since there is a Regal Cinema only about two miles from our house, we decided to head out to see the Tom Hanks film about Mr. Rogers—Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

When our son was a wee lad, he had tolerated rather than liked Mr. Rogers. I’m not sure why. He loved Sesame Street and would eagerly watch it—but not Mr. Rogers. I kind of liked Mr. Rogers, and one of the things I especially liked: He was not far more skilled in some things than a child is. His drawings and handicraft things would not often surpass what his young audience members could accomplish. I liked that. Kids can relate to adult incompetence! (A scene in the film actually deals with this point.)

And I also remembered, watching the film, that one of my former Harmon Middle School students had later gone to Pittsburgh to work for Fred Rogers.

Anyway, the film. Really liked it—though it wasn’t what I expected. It was more or less a film about a relationship between Mr. Rogers and a journalist (a somewhat tormented man) who was interviewing him for a profile for Esquire magazine (this profile actually ran in the magazine).

But it’s through this relationship that we see how Mr. Rogers interacted with people—of all ages. And we also see the profound authenticity of the man.

Tom Hanks, by the way, did a great job; soon, both Joyce and I forgot he even was Tom Hanks.

One of the technical aspects of the film I really liked: When they changed locations (say, Pittsburgh to NYC), they would do so via fabricated scenery that looked lifted from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was initially surprising, then oddly moving.

The arc of the plot will not really surprise anyone who watched the old TV show, but both Joyce and I still found it very affecting—and there is a scene in a NY subway car that will dampen every human eye that encounters it.

Link to film trailer.

4. We finished streaming the first season of Fleabag on Amazon Prime. It was touch-and-go for a while: Would we keep watching? (Or would it gross us out?)

Gradually, gradually, both of us got hooked. The more we got to know the characters—and there are some oddballs in the episodes—the more we looked forward to our ten-minutes-or-so-a-night. Phoebe Waller-Bridge (a talented performer who plays the character known as Fleabag) also is the writer of the series, and the first season leads us through some dark emotional, deeply subterranean caverns—as well as offers some very funny moments and encounters.

It’s the story of a young woman in London, a young woman who’s recently lost a dear friend and who seems … unmoored. She steals, sleeps with about anyone who’s interested, runs with a total lack of interest the café she operated with her late friend, dangles like a marionette a young man who loves her, maintains a mostly fractured relationship with her family (including her sister—a great character).

One of the techniques we like—and it’s not, of course, original to this show—is how “Fleabag” turns now and then to the camera to address us—to say something or show us something that the other characters don’t see or hear. It’s one way to remind us that this is all a story.

Anyway, I occasionally find myself surprised by what I find myself liking. Fleabag is now one of them.

Link to video.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
5. The main reason I didn’t write-and-post this on Sunday: I was too worn out to write it. I’d devoted a chunk of the day, you see, to preparing and baking the Christmas tree bread that I’ve been making for, well, for decades. My mother had occasionally baked them for us when I was a kid—not the same recipe I use, of course. She did not use sourdough back in the day—although I did give her some starter back in the early 1990s, but she quickly tired of the substance’s insistence that she use it at least once a week.

Anyway, I loved her tree bread, and, after I married, I decided to give it a whirl myself. Made it with regular yeast for years; then after the summer of 1986 (when I acquired my starter) I began doing it with sourdough. The recipe has evolved over the years.

Basically, it’s just a sweet bread—honey, butter, salt, sourdough, flour, candied fruit, sliced dried apricots, some slivered almonds. I form “ropes” of the risen dough into the shape of a tree—kind of.

Since I make it only once a year, I’m always ... concerned ... about the outcome. And, to be honest, some years it’s better than others. (Which is a kind way of saying that it sometimes sucks.)

Anyway, yesterday’s batch looks good; we’ll find out on Christmas morning after I’ve iced (powdered sugar + water) and decorated it (candied fruit scattered across the top of the icing) if its taste matches its looks. (Meanwhile, it lives in the freezer.)

I bake three of them each year—all in one mega-batch: one large, two smaller. The large one I mail to my brothers in Massachusetts; one smaller one I keep for ourselves; the other I give to our son’s family.

And yesterday, as I said, just wore me out. Kicked my butt. So much so that I’m not sure I’ll be doing it again: I spent much of the day on my back, trying to recover. Really. So ... to make long story short ... no Sunday Sundries yesterday.

6. Last Word—a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org

inquiline (IN-kwuh-lyn)

noun: An animal living in the nest, burrow, or home of another.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin inquilinus (tenant, lodger), from in- (into) + colere (to dwell). Earliest documented use: 1640.

USAGE: “That he has never allowed himself to be absorbed fully into the English tradition is something many critics have misunderstood. Naipaul is best understood as an inquiline, as a man whom the English have tried to absorb, but a man who has clung to displacement like a floating buoy.”

“The Voyage in -- A Way in the World,” by V.S. Naipaul; The New Republic (Washington, DC); Jun 13, 1994.

“In ‘Talent’ a young English girl worms her way into the life of a Fifth Avenue extended family with theatrical and musical connections. Since they are dysfunctional, and don’t communicate with each other, they are unaware of what exactly the girl, Ellie, is up to. So when this inert inquiline turns up repeatedly at one of the family houses and sits in silence, nobody asks her to depart.”

Patrick French; “East Is West; Financial Times (London, UK); Oct 1, 2011.