How’s the weather?

We’ve been gradually warming and expect some hot weather this week, but it is June! So, I can’t complain.

What are you reading?

I’m reading two print books and no e-books. That’s very rare for me. I’ve got some holds on e-books that I want to read, so I’m patiently waiting for those while finishing the print books that I’m excited to read.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. This is our June selection for my book group that specializes in books about race in America. We usually read nonfiction but deliberately chose some novels this year. This is a good one! I’m nearly half-way through. Our meeting is on the 18th, so I have plenty of time.

Should Have Told You Sooner by Jane Ward. Tina sent me this book after I said that I liked the sound of it based on her review. I’m about a third of the way through this one. I would be going a lot faster, but I don’t want to get too distracted from the book club book.

What are you watching or listening to?

We watched the 2022 docudrama about Abraham Lincoln on Netflix. I realized that while I’ve heard that the second inaugural speech is important, I never fully understood it. I may have never read it, even though it’s quite short. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, it felt important to me to realize that the Declaration of Independence is an incomplete story of the country and that this speech is vital to understand the journey.

Hank Green has a new podcast called Humans. For the first episode, he interviewed his brother, John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars and Everything is Tuberculosis, among other books).

What are you doing?

Last Sunday, I went to an event about protecting immigrants. I was thrilled to learn that there is a group working on that in my area. This work is best done as hyperlocal activism — protecting our neighbors and advocating with our city governments and police departments. Well, the work would best be done at the national level, but progress there seems slow in coming and there is much to be done, right now.

Last week, I reviewed the series We Are Lady Parts about Muslim women who form a punk band in London. Tina read Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner, finding it a slow read even though it’s only 184 pages long.

I want to explore A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare as we approach the summer solstice. I saw an abbreviated production last summer. This year, I plan to read the play. But, first, I prepared myself to make the process a little easier.

One episode of the BBC Radio show In Our Time is about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The entire archive of the show (over a thousand episodes!) is available on-line, even to those of us outside the UK. Since In Our Time explores all kinds of subjects — literature, history, and science among them — I find that it is a terrific resource when I want to learn about a new topic.

The original broadcast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” aired on April 18, 2019.

I learned from this episode that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is typically a British person’s first exposure to Shakespeare, often in the form of children’s productions of the play, usually outdoors. There is an estimate that 25% of Brits have participated in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Toward the end of this conversation, each of the presenters confessed to the role that they played in their childhood.

That contrasts sharply with my experience, which is probably pretty common among Americans. My first exposure to Shakespeare was reading Romeo and Juliet in a freshman English class in high school.

A magical early Hollywood production with a young Olivia de Havilland as Hermia and an even younger Mickey Rooney as Puck.

I can’t remember the first time that I heard the title of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but one cultural touchpoint for me came in the movie Dead Poets Society when one of the characters plays Puck in a school production. My first experience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was part of an exploration of Olivia de Haviland’s early career — the film adaptation was her movie debut.

Each episode of In Our Time is accompanied by a reading list. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the list proved to be very academic and a little intimidating. I added Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths by Helen Hackett to my TBR but it won’t be part of this month’s exploration.

In Our Time recently went through a big transition. Melvyn Bragg has been the host of this Thursday morning show since its inception in 1998. He retired last fall (at the age of 86!) and a new presenter took over in January. I’ve listened to a couple of the episodes with Misha Glenny and it seems that In Our Time will survive this big change. The format stayed the same and still provides an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation on the week’s topic.

If you want to experience In Our Time, the show conveniently compiled a list of ten of their popular programs, covering a variety of topics.

What was your first exposure to Shakespeare?

Last week, I reviewed the film Wicked Little Letters with Jessie Buckley, Olivia Colman, and Anjana Vasan. Since I mentioned Dame Eileen June Atkins in that post, Jeanie shared a previous post about her memoir, Eileen Atkins: Will She Do? Tina enjoyed a light read, The Mudlarkers’ Club by Jane Riley and shared photos she found of recent hauls by mudlarkers.

This is the third installment in a little journey that we took beginning with Hamnet. We liked Jessie Buckley in that movie, so we watched Wicked Little Letters. We liked Anjana Vasan as the police woman in that film. That led us to We Are Lady Parts, a series that was fun and fascinating.

Anjana Vasan plays Amina, a Muslim woman in London who tries to meet the standards of her community by finding a husband to get married. The complexities of the variety of ways that people express their Islamic religion thwarts her efforts as well as her own awkwardness and her parents who aren’t as conventional as she would like them to be.

Two things happen that change the course of her journey. She develops a crush on a young man, a fellow graduate student. And she gets recruited, reluctantly, to play lead guitar for Lady Parts, a punk rock band (never mind that her performance anxiety is so bad that she literally gets sick).

I was surprised by how quickly we got pulled into the story because of how relatable the characters were — even though we are far removed from Muslim women in London. Maybe I should have been so surprised. Most of us experience awkwardness in love, desires for belonging that can be met in the most unexpected ways, transitions in friendships, questions about what we want our futures to hold and how to achieve that, and concerns about finding ways to express our authentic selves.

Besides Anjana Vasan, we enjoyed the performances of the other women in the band. I could continue this journey by watching the series Maternal that features Sarah Kameela Impey who plays the founder and lead singer of Lady Parts. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to Acorn TV, right now.

We loved the music. We’re a little old to be punk rock fans, but we liked the music in Riot Women, so we were prepared to enjoy this as well. Several of their songs are funny and nearly all of them comment on the struggles that they face as Muslim women in England.

Have you seen We Are Lady Parts? What did you think?

How’s the weather?

We’ve had some remarkably cool days with lots of clouds and some rain. We’ll have a warming trend but not that bad given that Monday is Memorial Day.

What are you reading?

I finished We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza in time for our book club meeting. We had a generational divide. The older folks accepted the friendship as it was written. The younger folks weren’t convinced that the friendship was as strong as it was conveyed. If it had been, the hard topics would have been talked about long before the precipitating crisis of the novel. The disagreement led to a more exciting conversation than we sometimes have at our meetings!

I’m currently reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ahead of the summer solstice.

For a quick overview, I got a graphic novel (Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Nel Yomtov, illustrated by Berenice Muñiz) from the library. I picked it, partly, because I liked the cover.

Since this is a graphic novel, I handed it to a 10-year-old in my life. He read it and, then, read it a second time. A few days later, I read it to his younger siblings. It went over well with that audience, too. So, that’s a lot of recommendations for this one if you’re looking for a bookish way to celebrate summer.

What are you watching?

We enjoyed the movie Wicked Little Letters with splendid performances by comic actors of multiple generations and from a variety of places in the British Isles.

What are you doing?

I went to the St. Louis Art Museum to see the special exhibit “Ancient Splendor: Roman Art in the Time of Trajan.” It’s an impressive gathering of sculptures, frescoes, and decorative household items from the second century. Many of them were borrowed from museums around Italy.

I learned that the statues were originally painted — the whiteness that we associate with ancient sculpture is an artifact of time not the intent. When these statues were in their original public spaces and private gardens, they sported flowers and perfume because they were meant to be a full sensory experience.

Here’s a glimpse of what I got to see in person:

For those of you in Texas, this exhibit’s next stop is the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Last week, I reviewed the series Maigret, a British adaptation of a French story that is streaming on PBS. Tina enjoyed traveling around the British Isles, mostly by bicycle, and exploring British breakfasts with Felicity Cloake in her memoir Red Sauce, Brown Sauce.

After watching Jessie Buckley in Hamnet, I wondered about her previous film appearances and discovered Wicked Little Letters from 2023. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t have that on my To Watch list since I also like Olivia Coleman.

Perhaps, I was a little turned off by the concept. I generally fail to find the humor in situations where one person is deliberately making another person uncomfortable for no other reason than to laugh at them. As it turns out, that’s not what this movie is about.

The concept is that someone is sending poison pen letters to upstanding spinster, Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman), and causing an uproar in the community of Littlehampton. Naturally, the suspicion rests on the recently arrived Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), an Irish woman.

There was a lot to laugh about in this film, often provided by the sly and wry performances of Jessie Buckley and Olivia Coleman. We also enjoyed Anjana Vasan as Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss who, despite the limits of that role in the 1920s, is more interested in solving the crime than her male counterparts.

There is a splendid supporting cast:

• Joanna Scanlan — we enjoyed her recently in Riot Women.
• Gemma Jones — active since the 1960s, you’ll probably recognize her most from the Bridget Jones and Harry Potter franchises.
• Dame Eileen June Atkins — another venerable actor who I’ve seen in various films and Masterpiece productions and loved her part in Tea With the Dames.
• Timothy Sprall — this terrific character actor (who I saw most recently in Goodbye June) plays the overbearing father of Edith in a deliciously vicious way.

In the end, I think what I liked the most was how the women of the community played off one another. They were largely at each other’s throats, but repeated moments of shared glances indicated that they knew that each of them were doing their best in a world that was fundamentally unfair to them. There was a deep mutual understanding and admiration flowing underneath the actions. The men around them witnessed the actions but failed to see the undercurrent.

Have you seen Wicked Little Letters? What did you think?

How’s the weather?

We’ve had all the weather in the hour that I stood out for vigil on Saturday. Cloudy and sunny. Hot and humid. Breezy and cool. Rain with thunder. I came home wet but happy to have the experience. We feel bad ass when we declare that Black Lives Matter in all sorts of weather and we often get extra support from passers by, as we did today, when we’re clearly dealing with less-than-ideal conditions.

What are you reading?

I started and finished We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza for my book group on Thursday. I’m looking forward to our discussion!

Next up, I plan to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in several different formats ahead of the summer solstice. This is a play that I have only been exposed to in the last few years, so I want to dive in a little deeper.

What are you watching?

For my British Isles post, I wrote about Maigret. This feels like it shouldn’t fit because the characters live in Paris. But it’s a British/American production done in English, so it worked for my purpose. If anyone is looking for a series to watch for Paris in July, it would work for that, too.

What are you doing?

Since my birthday was on Tuesday, much of the week was spent setting goals for my Year 64. I love setting goals. It’s the closest we come to predicting the future.

In fact, I love setting goals so much that I volunteered to be the goal-writer for the equity committee that I’m on. That happens in May for us, so I got to do that this week, too.

I predict that in the next 12 months that I will improve my drawing skills and that my committee will increase awareness and action among the members of our broader organization for equity issues.

Here’s a drawing from this week so we can measure my improvement.

Last week, I traveled, virtually, around England with the Interior Design Masters.

Maigret is the latest of many films and TV shows made from the Jules Maigret series of novels by Belgian author Georges Simenon. The novels were contemporary mysteries published from 1930 to 1972, a total of 75, plus short stories. Jules Maigret is a detective in Paris and the novels were written in French.

I have memories of Maigret, but I can’t remember whether I read some of the novels or I watched the series from the early 1990s of 12 episodes over two seasons. That version of Maigret was created for ITV and for Mystery! on PBS. I might have watched the shows and been inspired to read some of the novels. This was long before I was keeping any record of what I read or watched, so I’ll never know for sure.

At any rate, this Maigret feels different because it is set in modern times. He still carries around a pipe, but he doesn’t smoke it. He doesn’t wear a hat (which is something I remember from my earlier exposure to Maigret) but he does wear a distinctive coat and rarely removes it, even when everyone around him thinks it’s too warm for an outer layer.

Maigret, played by Benjamin Wainwright, is quiet and observant. I liked how other characters were used to bring out aspects of Maigret that weren’t visible to the viewer when he was doing his detective work. His wife, who was a major character in the novels, has an important role as a psychiatric nurse who occasionally advises Maigret about the way people think. His supervisor, Prosecutor Mathilde Kernavel, prefers things to happen by the book but she gives Maigret just enough leeway so that he can effectively solve crimes in his own way and time.

Although this series is set in France, mostly Paris, Maigret is very much a British production by American-British company Playground Entertainment. The shows were filmed mostly in Budapest, but there are lots of fun flyovers of Paris for those of us who like a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower and other landmarks.

We watched Maigret using our PBS Passport, a benefit of belonging to our local PBS Station. A second season is reportedly in production.

Check out the trailer:

Have you seen Maigret? What did you think?

How’s the weather?

We’ve had a couple of beautiful days, if a bit windy. Sunday night might be the last night with lows in the 40s until autumn.

What are you reading?

I finished The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear, the 18th and final book in the Maisie Dobbs series. It felt a little like two books — one that tackled a case, like we expect from Maisie, and one that wrapped up a story that allowed us to let go of Maisie. This would be of little interest to anyone who hasn’t read the series, but it’s a satisfying end. If you would enjoy a mystery series set in the first half of the 20th century in England and you like a little psychology or, even, a bit of mysticism, I recommend the Maisie Dobbs series. I always found the books made an oasis of calm in my life.

I’m continuing to listen to Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I have a hard time explaining the appeal of this, even to myself, but it’s another book that is providing an oasis of calm.

Now that those two books have balanced the somewhat traumatic (but important) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, I’m ready to tackle two more harrowing books.

My book group is reading We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza that begins with the police shooting of a black boy.

I also started the new Ibram X. Kendi book, Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age. He examines the history of the Great Replacement Theory and how it is directly leading to authoritarianism all around the world, including in the US, to the detriment of us all.

What are you watching?

We are enjoying Mademoiselle Holmes on PBS. It’s in French with subtitles and is set in a world where Sherlock Holmes was real and has a great-granddaughter who happens to be good at solving mysteries.

What are you doing?

Our local public library does a program each year called One Author, One Kirkwood. This year we got to listen to a fun and funny interview of Kashana Cauley, author of The Survivalists and The Payback. She’s hilarious in person, so I’m looking forward to reading her books.

I’ll celebrate my 64th birthday on Tuesday, so this is my theme song for coming year:

Last week, I talked about the film adaptation of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.

Interior Design Masters is a competition show, kind of like The Great British Baking Show, for aspiring designers. I watched the initial season on Netflix.

The first episode gave me a very British quote that illustrates why this is fun to watch as an American: “In a show home, you can’t be that Marmite.” I think he’s saying that it’s a bad idea to do something that people are either going to love or hate. It’s better to do something less contentious and more appealing to the masses.

I enjoyed getting to know the competitors. The prize is bigger than a cake stand. The winner walked away with a high-value contract to design a bar in a historic hotel in London. This makes the competition a little more cut-throat than The Great British Baking Show, but not so much that it ruined the charm for me.

I suspect that the competitors have learned from The Great British Baking Show. No matter how one does in the competition, the show can be a career boost.  The participants were careful to not be so unpleasant that future clients will be turned off from working with them.

I tuned in hoping to learn a bit about interior design in ways that I could use in my own spaces. Unfortunately, that didn’t really happen. Implementing a design for a space is more complicated than baking a cake so there just wasn’t time to allow the designers to explain things like “I’m hanging these curtains higher than the windows in order to draw the eye up and make the ceiling feel higher.”

Instead, I learned more than I ever expected to know about what it takes to have a career in interior design.

The best part, for British Isles fans, is that they travel all over England to design everything from holiday homes to High Street shops. Interior Design Masters is an unexpected way to engage in armchair travel.

Netflix only has a Season 1 of Interior Design Masters. It looks like I can watch all six seasons on Peacock, which we currently have a subscription to, so I may watch the other seasons. First, though, I think I’ll watch Dream Home Makeover on Netflix, the very American show that probably will provide home design tips that I can use in real life.

How’s the weather?

Variable — sun, rain, temps in the 80s, temps in the 40s. We’ve had it all in the last week and next week looks similar. Last week, we had a severe weather alert day and that will be missing this week — one less stress in the world.

What are you reading?

I finished The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad. This book of essays and creative prompts is designed to be used daily for 100 days, so that’s what I did. I celebrated my 100th daily journal entry on Tuesday. I miss it already!

What are you watching or listening to?

We enjoyed Hamnet, the film adaptation of the novel by Maggie O’Farrell. This is a story about William Shakespeare’s family in Stratford-Upon-Avon, particularly his wife. You’ll see in my review that I’m recommending it, whether you read the book or not.

What are you doing?

St. Louis had a risk of severe weather on Monday. After a deadly tornado on May 16 last year, that people are still recovering from, we are all a bit leery about severe weather.

In my area, we just got a big downpour, but other areas got winds that blew down trees and there were a couple of small tornadoes on the Illinois side. it was a stressful day for the whole region. Some of the schools decided to send students home early ahead of the expected storms around 3pm, only to have something pop up right over us at 1pm — just as they were loading buses. That must have been quite the day for everyone involved.

St. Louisans are having fun with one of our weather guys who, when the weather gets worrisome, sheds his jacket and rolls up his sleeves because it gets hot standing for hours in front of the weather map tracking the storms roll through. Here’s how he thinks of it, now that it’s become a thing:

And here’s a fun meme that someone made.

I hope y’all have a great week!