Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

    . . . . I haven't read the book -- it wasn't around out there where I grew up.  Whether that changed later, I have no idea.  However, considering what Out There is doing these days around women's bodies and reproduction, if it ever did show up on the library shelves after I left home, it's surely been removed by now.

I'm very curious, considering what Florida is doing around these same matters (as well as many others), including prohibiting school kids to even speak the word "menstruation" and have conversations in classrooms with each other about menstruation, will the film that comes out this coming Friday, adapted from Judy Blume's 1970 novel, be allowed to play in Florida?  Will media be allowed to write reviews of it, or even mention it?

P.S. Used copies of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret are selling for over a $1000!  This, as well as being perennially on the lists of books banned.

Chevalier - Not Recommended

     . . . Chevalier was a great disappointment for many reasons.  Its fast and loose playing with the known facts of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges's biography, and of history even -- Marie Antoinette did not give him his title, that was Louis XV -- are only the beginning.

It's such a shame that this man, who I first learned of via reading letters of (later to be President) John Adams, who was so accomplished, who did so very many important things, just starting with music composition and musicianship, was reduced to an affair with an aristo.

 He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Music. He will hit a button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistol Ball.

 Recall, that among his many achievements, he successfully led an all-black regiment in the French army -- until, Napoleon erased all Black people of achievement from their positions and out of history, particularly those of military achievement, not least, Alexandre Dumas's father. 

La légion de Saint-George

This film is the equivalent of making a film of the life of Frederick Douglass, and reducing everything he did and created to the single matter that he married a white woman.

Additionally, thereby, the filmmakers chose to navigate precariously closely those waters on which sail a mainstay of porn, the enslaved black stud and the white lady.

I am not the only person to feel this way.  For a single example our (Black, Haitian) friend who is a symphony orchestra director, composer and conductor, who has been conducting performances of the Chevalier's music in many cities, just HATES this film.  He, like el V, is particularly outraged by the cutting game between the Chevalier and Mozart that opens the film -- this is something Blues musicians only began, here, in the USA.  As per usual, movies, particularly made by Americans, cannot imagine a Black experience that isn't African American.  Moreover, it seems that the two composer/musicians were friends, not rivals, with Mozart even living in the Chevalier's house for a short time. But then, movies/tv very, very, VERY seldom know who and what musicians -- or artists generally -- are -- musicians particularly.  Really, as Joseph and Amadeus were about the same age, it is far more likely they joyed to make music together than tried to cut each other down.  Musicians really like to do that, you know?

The positive for the film is several really fine female actors with juicy roles, even though the characters' depictions are either utterly fantasy or historically wrong for the time -- or non-existent. The exception to this might be the Chevalier's mother. 

However, if only inadvertently, the above does point to the essential truth of  success in which Napoleon was tutored by those who survived both the Revolution and the Terror, into the Directorate, that in France, "Women are politics."  Alas one of the ways this point is made is the filmmakers claim that Marie Antoinette was the reason there was a French Revolution.

Gatos: Madrid and Cadiz

 

View From Our Room in the Hotel Prado's Out of Open Window; Madrid's International Women's Day Protest Started Here. Their Chant, in English, Was, "Madrid Will Be the Tomb of Machismo!"  It sounds much better in Spanish, particularly accompanied by a batteria of Cuban Drums and Polyrhythms, Played by Brasileras, Which It Was.
Next to this plaza circle is a typical Spanish city, "Prado", a boulevard dividing the highway, with grass and trees, as one sees in Mexico City or Bogota -- or Havana's Old Town.  Crossing over that, one arrives at the brilliant Prado art museum.  Which is why our hotel was there and we were in that hotel.
Also, the windows of all the hotels in which we stayed, with a single exception, the last one in Córdoba, opened to the outdoors, and did not have screens, excellent for fotografy.

Remains of 9th C Arab Wall Fortress located at present Cuesta de la Vega, near the crypt of the La Almudena Cathedral; Long Before Madrid, And After Both Charles Martell and Charlemagne.

 Above the Courtyard Which Is Below the 9th C Muslim Wall Remains.

A Member of the Cat Families That Live In and Around the 9th C Muslim Wall Remains.

Madrileños Declare Themselves Cats!

Inside this Bar-Restaurant of the Most Hip Cats.

Theatrical Cat Hangin' Out In Madrid.

Evening On Cádiz Popular Atlantic Ocean Beach

One of the Cat Houses And Villages Built for the Ferals Who Live In and Along the Cádiz Sea Wall, On the Atlantic Side!

Not Wednesday, But It Is A New Month, So Here Are A Few Books

     . . . .  Essex Dogs (2023)  by Dan Jenkins is the first in a projected trilogy set in one of my perennial eras of fascination, the 14th century. Jenkins has written many popular histories of the middle ages, many of which I've read, without being impressed; he's also written-narrated on camera quite a few history progammes for Brit tv.  This is his first foray into fiction. 

This first novel follows one very small troop of hired fighters -- the Essex Dogs of the title -- from the 1346 Normandy Beach landing, through this particular French campaign, to its conclusion with the Battle of Crécy.  So, the part of story of King Edward III I’m interested in primarily, the role the Black Death played in the War starting in 1348 and thereafter, particularly how the English monarchy handled the effects of the Great Pestilence, is not here. 

What we've got is the sort of debunking of the chivalry and prowess on the field and leadership with which we are all deeply familiar, at least in fiction, since at least the days of Glenn Cook and Abercrombie. OPn the other hand, let's be honest here: being a monarch, or merely a member of a monarch's family, is to be a monster. It cannot be helped.  Part of this debunking chivalry is the theme of what a twit, turd, and creep is the Black Prince, showing him as a thoroughly horrible youth not in least above raping and further degrading peasant girls. This goes against what contemporaries and chroniclers have written of him:  

"Contemporaries praised the Black Prince's chivalrous character, in particular his modesty, courage and courtesy on the battlefield. According to the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, after the battle the Black Prince held a banquet in honour of the captured king and served him dinner.

No one can ever say that the practice of chevauchee was ever anything but brutal in the extreme, destroying everything in the path, including ethics, morals, compassion, honor and that phantasm, chivalry:

Even in his lifetime, contemporaries challenged the Black Prince’s heroic image, recasting him as a villain. Criticism focused on his chevauchée raiding expedition [-- Me here: 'raiding expedition' mildly describes the murder, pillage, rape, burning and destroying everything within as 20 mile radius of the army's passage --but never fear, the novel revels in describing these matters, in detail, as Our Dogs do indeed participate.] in France in 1355–56, a brutal affair designed to demoralise the enemy. Starting in Bordeaux in September 1355, Edward moved across France passing Toulouse, Carcassonne and Narbonne. He focused his attention on towns where he could inflict the most damage with the least resistance. His troops looted, burned property and killed inhabitants. On campaign with the Black Prince in 1355, Sir John Wingfield wrote a letter to the bishop of Winchester proclaiming that “there was never such loss nor destruction as hath been in this raid”.

This novel is as gritty as it gets, i.e. gritty for gritty's sake – how many detailed phlegm balls are hawked on every page? It was neither interesting or revelatory.  It may be fiction but we’ve seen all of it depicted in novels many, many times before, and we know this first invasion of France by Edward III was successful, if only by the hair of winning at Crécy. Jones has a Name, has written many books of popular history, and television programs, but there is no fictional narrative drive, pacing or voice to this first novel by a guy who hasn’t written fiction before.  On the other hand, this novel details this “road to ruin for both England and France” as The Spectator’s reviewer labeled this 1346 campaign, the initiation of what became the 100 Years War -- though truly, the war began quite a few years earlier than 1346, at least as early as the Battle of Sluys, 1340 -- or even earlier.

Jones tells us he got the idea for how the book should work from a dinner with GRRM.

It was an interesting experience though, reading the fictional Essex Dogs by night, and three times a week working out to the audio version of  Ian Mortimer's Edward III: The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (2006).  I've read biographies of Edward III by other authors, who admire him for many reasons, while providing a fair judgment of the shortcomings, or downright evils that may have been committed -- though which is which, contemporaries, posterity and historians do not necessary agree to.

Myself am suspicious of Mortimor’s claims that Edward II wasn’t executed, but lived on as a wanderer for another decade + in Europe. I also admit to being skeptical regarding Edward III's expenditures on luxuries of every kind, including dressing people for the earlier decades' endless tournies being excused as necessary PR for the Crown of England who also must project an aura as the ultimate badass warrior king, rather than as bad for England as well as for the war -- I mean the expenditure is even more astounding than the accounts of what the Queen Mother spent purely on luxurious living, decade after decade, including her racing stables -- every year Queen Elizabeth had to pay off her mother's debts. Mortimer (one wonders: distant relative of the Mortimer family who highjacked Edward II's crown?) excuses his order to behead his uncle, the Duke of Kent, as something he had no choice about – that in particular, I’m not buying, since in a matter of less than a half year Edward III and his supporters arrested Mortimer and executed him.

Alas though, this biography doesn't answer my perennial question, which is how in the world were France, particularly, and England also, keep fielding armies for this war when the Great Mortality returns time and time and time again, crops can't be planted, or if they are the English burn them or steal them so famine stalks France. Where are the fighting men coming from -- particularly when so many French nobles are killed at the same time in such military disasters as Crécy and Poitiers? The plague came back to England too, crops weren't planted and / or the weather destroyed them, yet somehow Edward III manages to keep getting ever increasing taxation passed to fund his wars, while so many die and go hungry.

The writers / historians I've read haven't mentioned the supreme irony that Edward III, the supreme King of Chivalry, identifying himself and his court with mythical King Arthur, chivalry's values, and performative, at least, practices, was the European king to dethrone the traditional  aristo knight in shining armor as skilled swordsman and horse rider, by funding and encouraging in every way projectile weapons, from the long bow to gunpowder and cannon.  They Do Say there were early cannon used at Crécy.

Balancing out some of the lacks as perceived in Mortimer's biography of Edward III, are his frequent citations of the rather astonishing number of successful and effective warrior noblewomen that populate the 14th century, such as Joanna of Flanders.  Isabella of 15th C Spain did not come out of a vacuum.

     . . . . Two other books, one a novel, also written by a successful screen writer and director, as well authentically a novelist, John Sayles, and the other non-fiction as well, but these two are centuries apart:

John Sayles Delivers Epic Battles and Travels in a New Novel

“Jamie MacGillivray” gives readers a sweeping tour of 18th-century history, from Scotland to the American Colonies.

The reviews are quite good.

Then to the 19th century New York City:

MADAME RESTELL: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist (2023) by Jennifer Wright.

The title tells us what we need to know, which includes how pertinent this book is today, as the good people, male doctors killing women giving birth because they thought it cool to go from working with a corpse in a mortuary to deliver a baby, men just generally, of course, but particularly Anthony Comstock, battle to make this woman stop helping women.  Fascinatingly, at the end, when she's to be arrested, she commits suicide.  But, the author asks, "Did that happen? Or did she fake the suicide and escape, as for years her family hinted?

The Woman King

     . . . .  The Woman King (2022) on Netflix. 

The film has been shut out from all the awards and their categories – too womanly. All the criticisms that declared it ignored or distorted Dahomey’s slaving of Africa must be from those who don’t know this history. just heard something somethingv from somebody somewhere. This slave or be slaved history is central to the narrative. That criticism seems to be pushing the relentless attitude that Africans remain ahistorical until white historians inform them of their own history.

The people of Dahomey/Ouida and Oyo knew why this condition was in place, and how it happened, and who was benefiting as well as how much Africans of every group were exploited and plundered as entire peoples. Those who benefited were the  Europeans and USians, as well as the Islamized tribes working in concert, such as the Fulani and the jihad of the time against the Oyo Empire, which too, was all about the riches from supplying the European slavers. 

The Agojie commander, Nanisca, played by Viola Davis, is brilliant, as advisor, general and warrior who is at the prime of her strength, but whose body is scarred and has aches and pains from so many wounds, whose heart and mind carries just as many scars and pains. As right hand to the king Nanisca is expected to have wisdom as well as battle skills. And she does; Nanisca sees the future, not only of her own Dahomey, but all of Africa, being slaved and enslaved by the Europeans.  She has this vision, but how to change matters so they – and other kingdoms – stop slaving themselves and each other, and instead create wealth and prosperity through other means. Ah, that is very difficult, not only to do, but to even envision, much less convince others to do, such as the 'nobles' and queens of the Dohomean king's palace.  Slaving is embedded throughout the continent as economy, offense and defense, and status.

The milieu of this woman army is a fascinating, welcome contrast with both Wonder Woman’s Greek vase and statuary fantasy landscape, superhero comic girlhood training, and with the super hero Afro Futurism of Wakamba. Those superhero comix adaptations are slick, smooth, cheesy and tacky when viewed in company with what we see here, as the film reaches to recreate the dust, mud and natural world of historic reality, including how women are physically, who have been trained from youth to be "Agojie",  warriors who command armies, who fight, kill and are killed – or are captured. Taking a famed Agoji ewarrior is a coup indeed.

As an army of warriors these women claim physical space in a way one never sees women who are to be good, traditional women do.  They claim physical space in the same matter-of-fact, unconscious way that men do. They walk differently, sit differently, move and are still, differently from traditional women. These women are like men, while – and this is what is so brilliant in the acting, one would never mistake them for men, ever.  They are fully womanly, women like all women, but who have all the masculine space and entitlement – except to have partners and children. 

Dahomey's indigenous religion is depicted in a most matter of fact manner.  This is what we know in the US as Vodun, as it was imported via slavery to San Domingue/Haiti, Bahia in Brasil, and to the US, via French slave owners who refugeed to Cuba. and, when Spain and France went to war, to New Orleans.  The altars where our figures meditate and meet on occasion are as much natural parts of their world, as the lands outside the walled city and palace. 

What follows is me interpolating, because I've not encountered this in any of the books I've read. However, presumably, such effective warriors and commanders must be prevented from having their own children because – in the end – even these women must be ultimately subservient to male power – the king.  A successful, brilliant commander, to whom the army is devoted and loyal, a woman with her own children might well be interested in taking the throne herself, or for her children, instead of merely serving a king's wishes and status.*  Indeed, the film includes the oral tradition that at least once Dahomey was ruled by a Woman King commander of an army of women warriors.

There was not, cannot be a happy ending for the slaving Kingdom of Dahomey, despite winning all the battles ... but happiness is allowed. Around the 2/3 point, the story line includes that of a mother and daughter finding each other, in this time when vision tells them both, the world will not get better. Yet, Viola Davis is recognized by the King again, as his chief advisor, no matter what his wives and courtiers want.  She may end her life free and honored, but we can almost sure thing bet her daughter's life is going to be even more difficult than hers, as the French become determined to take out the Dahomey kingdom, and are horrified by the women who go to war.

This film mesmerized me from start to finish, which I can’t say about hardly any film, television series or novel these day

*  There are many instances in history across the world where a ruler's successful military leader has taken power for himself and his family, so one will speculate!

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall Memorial, Whitney Plantation - January 10th, 2023

     . . . From the Great Scholar and historian, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's son: 

Hello everyone,

Thank you for agreeing to deliver a memorial address at Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's service this coming Tuesday.

I am contacting you to give you some logistical information in advance of the event.

The memorial will be held at Whitney Plantation, located at 5099 Highway 18, Wallace LA, 70049. You may park in our main parking lot and enter through the Visitor Center. The service will be held in the Antioch Baptist Church on our site, which is the first building that you see when you exit the Visitor Center.

The schedule is as follows:

11:00 - Music - Dr. Michael White

11:15 - Opening Remarks - Haywood Hall

11:25 - 12:25 - Memorial Addresses

      1. Ibrahima Seck

      2. Eileen Julian

      3. Kathe Hambrick

      4. Percy Pierre

      5. Steve Miles

      6. Ned Sublette

12:25 - Closing Remarks - Haywood Hall

12:35 - Music & Procession - Luther Gray

12:45 - Ashes Scattering 

         1:00 - Adjourn

Her ashes will be scattered particularly here, in the Allées Gwendolyn Midlo Hall.

Flying down tomorrow.  Hope the weather cooperates.  So many are still cleaning up -- looking for a new place to live, after the latest tornados.  OTOH, tomorrow is Three Kings, which opens the Mardi Gras season.

So much going on in New Orleans tomorrow, starting with the official opening of the season of the the Phunny Phorty Phellows riding the full length of the trolley route, music and champagne, etc. for the fortunate other riders! 

We're bringing French King Cake with us for our friends, so they'll see how much superior France's Mardi Gras Cake is.  Ha!  They are very different desserts.  The French version isn't actually cake at all, but pastry, made with the mille feuilles puff pastry, filled with almond paste.  It isn't in the colors of green, purple and yellow icing and sparkles either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

December was one mad-packed month.  It's going to keep going like this, pretty much until after February's New Orleans Postmambo "For The Funk of It", March's prospecting trip to Spain, and June's "Postmambo Gotham" is finished.

 

Keepin' the Home Fires Burning

     . . . . Could this actually be a week in which decent people can have some joy?  The retreat from Kherson, inflation seeming to have hit peak, our midterms giving us the "Something not turning as out as bad as it could necer felt so good."

Somehow, the three feel related, along with the outcomes of both Colombia's and Brasil's presidential elections. Even so, I'm probably centering, wrongly, the US here?

OTOH, covid infections are increasing like mad here.  Glad I did the late autumn hair stylist visit early.  Also we are going back to NO next week.  Back in time for Thanksgiving with some friends -- who had covid, but are over it  But we won't have the usual second Thanksgiving we usually have with other friends, as they both have covid presently.  Pax is doing its job, but as one is so run down from years of caregiving and job, and the other is still recovering from emergency brain surgery, it's not so easy.

Another amiga has been subjected to round after round of chemo since June/July. She and I have email discussions about the books and television likes we have in common. The latest was around learning we both had liked The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) by Megan Marshall, is another of those biographies that work beautifully for me as well. I've read it, in fact, three times. 

Sophia Hawthorne was one of the sisters. She spent her life in Boston being sick, unable to walk or do housework.  The only treatment that worked for what ailed her was spending the winter in Cuba on a hacienda.  The further her ship got from the Boston, the better she felt, until, by the time she reached Cuba, she was quite, quite well.  She adored spending her mornings a-gallop on spirited horses of her host, across the river valley fields. Then, returning to Boston, the closer her ship got to US shores, and the closer to Boston, the more unwell she became.

 Reading this in the biography back then, sent me looking for Sophia's journals, and I found some material that el  V was able to use in his Cuba And Its Music. Sophia Hawthorne was as racist and non-condemning of slavery as she could be, without coming right out and saying she believed slavery was a positive institution, but she was observant, so there were bits that were of use. Her remarks on the enslaved form part of the unlovely picture of our nation's history of Black hatred. 

I want to blame her husband, since Sophia's sisters were quite concerned with slavery and abolition.  Nat. Hawthorne, though, was quite a piece of work. All his life he was in bromance with Franklin Pierce, and, even, quite possibly, his lover.  Hawthorne wrote Pierce's presidential campaign political bio for excellent pay, received sinecure government posting from Pierce, was with him on his deathbed -- he asked for him, not Sophia -- was totally in the slaveocracy's pockets.  Hawthorne was vocally anti-abolitionist, and decisively told people discussions of slavery were boring and a waste of time, and he didn't care about slavery one way or the other.  Quite out-of-step with fellow Concordians.  Though Sophia's Cuban trips began before she knew Hawthorne, of course, so it was more like-to-like than caused by Hawthorne. My, this book, and the experience of it, like everything before 2016 and covid feels far, far away in time.  

Coincidence: as I finished Sister Novelists, another biography of sisters appears --a new book about the Grimkés: The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery In An American Family, by Kerri Greenidge.  It seems to be a study intended to debunk their reputations as anti-slaverites -- the review I read suggests they profited immensely from slavery.

So, this morning, receiving the news the library had The Grimkés available, I dashed off to the library to pick it up, because it wasn't raining much, despite we being in Tropical Storm Nicola predicted wind and rain. I knew it was Veterans Day, but didn't stop to think this is a holiday and the libraries are closed.  Duh.  I'm smart that way.  Though I was wearing the rain-snow-storm boots I got last week, so I'm not so dumb that way!  Had on rain coat and carried umbrella too.  Which was good because the storm hit hard as I was returning home, due to the fog and heavy cloudfs, dark came even earlier than the roll back of EDST makes it. We're currently in fog, as well as dark, since the temps are fairly warm -- in the 60's. Well stocked with what we need, and even what we want, we are happily cozy and comfortable.  How lucky can we get?

The week was quite lively, while we ignored the pre-election and pre-results backbenching with all our hearts.  El V did another Postmambo Zoom last night, this time with live guest and his film,  from Lome, in Togo, Africa.    He also went out to several music gigs, and we taught two classes.  

Hope the internet stays on -- it's gone out twice now in less than 24 hours.  If no problems I plan to watch more Crown, season 5, 2022. This is the season to turn the mythologies of Di and Charlie inside out. The first two eps dull and dreary.  The actor doing Di is lacking in all that made cameras and screens bewitched by her.  We see her being acidly mocking and mean, o so not quite subtly (due to the bile and acid of bulimia?). It got interesting in the 3rd episode which was generally only about the Al-Fayed family and the man who was the Duke of Windsor’s valet until death – Fayed sr. hires Black Barbadian, Sydney Johnson, whom the Duke had taught everything that makes an English gentleman.  According to the show, Johnson was the one who advised Al-Fayed to buy palace estate, Villa Windsor, decaying on the outskirts of Paris – and Harrods Department Store, then finally buy some position in a most prestigious equine something or other so he can sit next to, and, finally, meet and speak with the Queen. Queenie’s not about to allow this unworthy vulgarian colonial his reward. She and her Equerry send Diana instead. The Princess insults him, and they get along famously.  Di and Elizabeth are equally nasty in this sequence. Later, at E’s court, the members eagerly check with each other as which possessions in the Villa belong to Them/the Crown/ -- and they go over the lists with the same avid attention any grocer would go over his delivery lists and invoices.  The Court looks small and grasping, petty and avaricious. And, always, deadly dull.

The other character is Charles (now Kingwingy Charles III). Played as he is by Dominic West – as Charlie then as now lacks all charisma, electricity and interest, whilst West can’t help splattering it everywhere just standing around -- this doesn’t work. Can you imagine The Wire's Jimmy McNulty having a temper tantrum over a ... pen?  No, we cannot, but Charlie did. Immediately on being king, even not yet crowned. 

If Charlie was in the least like West’s presentation, none of the messes would have happened in the first place.

So, history's revisionism continues apace, even revisionism of what we've 'always known' because we were there.  Ha!

Speaking Rings Of Power - Episode 7 "Udûn"

     . . . . Ep. 6, "Udûn".  Moveth now the Second Age's Doom.

Nampat arrives with vengeance in this episode. No dwarves, no Harfoots in this sequence of events, only orcs, Númóreans, other humans, one High Elf, and one Sylvan Elf.

In the Black Speech, the official language of Mordor, nampat means Death. The orces pound out Nampat as their war-chant, marching behind Adar. Soon they arrive at Sauron's Tower of Ostirith, taken over as a watchtower over the Southlands by the sylvan elves after Sauron's defeat in the First Age. Our villagers have taken refuge there from the coming of Adar and his orcs.

Reversal after reversal, twist after twist, come quick and fast. Halbrand, Galadriel and Arondir fight with particular skill and heroism. Yet, yes, it ends with Doom bursting upon the Númenóreans and the Southland humans. To save his mother Bronwyn’s life, Theo gives Sauron's sword hilt- key to Adar. Somehow it gets passed to traitor villager, Waldreg, who activates it. The waters of the earth above ground and subterranean are loosed through those dreadful tunnel excavated underneath the the Southland over a long stretch of time via enslaved human labor. The underground waters meet a molten region under the Southlands, thus a mountain explodes into volcano – Mt. Doom  comes to life – flood, fire balls and orcs pour into the village. Galadriel is subsumed into fiery darkness. She was right. Sauron lives.  Cue episode 7.

Only two more to go, and I'm very sorry about that.

Just as old school LotR readers will likely be shocked that Galadriel can have what appear to be threshold romantic moments with not just one man, but two – Elendil and Halbrand -- how could this distant ice queen of Lothlórien, married for so long to that dull fellow, Celeborn, behave like this, any more than she does hand-to-hand combat and has a hot temper, which desires to wipe every orc off the face of the earth?

Elendil

Galadriel and Halbrand, King of the Southlands

LotR lovers equally could  have a difficulty accepting that the orcs are elves, actual beings, Adar says, “as worthy as the breath of life and just as worthy of a home.”

It was  clear cut in LotR as the Big Bad Dark and all its creatures, were unadulterated evil, and the Big Bright Virtues of the Light, the elves, etc. were unadulterated Good. But here in Rings of Power's Second Age of Middle earth, both Adar and Arondir plant alfirin seeds, which elves traditionally plant on the eve of battle so that new life can grow "in defiance of death". That Adar does this too -- is it a sign that he's potentially redeemable? Or just that he holds onto to a bit of his elven heritage despite all the evil he's committed? Arondir too plants some of the seeds in Bronwyn’s wound to help them heal after they are cauterized.  This is imaginatively involving and very different, while still, to my mind, consistent with what Tolkien created.

Hal is recognized as King of the Southlands, but Adar doesn’t recognize him at all, despite their shared past, in which he inflicted some dreadful hurt upon Hal.  Adar confirms he one of the elves who are the “sons of the dark,” the first orcs, a Uruk, a Moriandor,  made by Morgoth’s torture, and evidently Sauron's too. Adar advises Galadriel that she own her own darkness, that he isn't "the only elf alive who has been transformed by darkness.” Yet, prior to the Doom, Halbrand and Galadriel save each other from their respective urges to commit murder, in an affecting scene. While horse Berek, ridden into battle by Isildur, and his father Elendil bond. Previous to this, Galadriel speaks Words to her horse and it speeds so effectively she catches up with Adar fleeing with the Key.

May Queen Regent Míriel escape the flood and fire emergence of the Dark, but one fears she did not survive, so Pharazôn has his way open to rule Númenor, to institute his ambition to dominate the elves, dwarves and all the rest of Middle Earth.

At this moment the only one of this group of heroes seemingly entirely beyond the effect of the dark, is Arondir. Galadriel and Halbrand are touched by it, as is Theo, who admits how Sauron's sword hilt-key draws him by the sense of personal power he feels when holding it. This is a morally complicated world, with characters who aren’t black and white, which LotR was as well, at least in a sense, as with Boromir and his father. But the LotR's world constantly harks back to the treasons, corruptions and destructions within various characters of the heroes legendarium of the Second Age, that brought about its fall. There's a great deal of viewing satisfaction watching this roll out, despite knowing how it will conclude.

This episode gave me shivers of doom – but then the Second Age is doomed, particularly these very Southlands. Nevertheless, it was satisfying and effective; it moved the plot along swiftly, while we learned quite a bit more about some of our principal characters, including how Elendil's wife died -- drowning.  What we see and learn in this episode has been set-up in the previous ones.  The episodes are building on and out from each other.

Among the fireballs of bitter bile and malice relentlessly released by Some upon this series are the accusations that the lines spoken by are our heroes are stupid-silly. Patience, Watchers! High Language dialog can -- and probably will -- feel forced and artificial in our own wizened rhetorical age. But read aloud the same efforts in the revered LotR, and if they aren’t among the current elderly who first discovered LotR back when it first became a publishing phenomenon, and they themselves were young, so young, people shudder.  So what do we want? Pseudo hipster quippage a la PJ, or occasions in which heroes speak in fabricated, skaldic poetics?  Myself, I vote to apply judiciously,  "the glorious ground of Endill . . . . "

What You Got There? A Book?

      . . . .  Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billy Holiday (1998) by Angela Davis. 

The moment we entered into her thesis, there was all kinds of self-kicking going on.  It was so obvious.  Prior to abolition African American music was primarily a communal expression,  done in the fields, in worship, at funerals.  It was also primarily spiritual.

After abolition, African Americans needed a whole new musical discourse.  They had to make it up because never before had there been opportunity in these lands for them to make music that wasn't communal, that wasn't about the lament of the condition and the yearning for that condition to have passed away, leaving them free to do as other people did.  

For Black women in particular, there was and could be no tradition that was about love, about sex, about romance, about what she wanted for herself, for Black women didn't have choice until after abolition -- and certainly wouldn't be allowed to sing about wanting to marry and raise her own children herself while cooking, cleaning, digging, and having her children go on master's credit side of the ledger and sold off any old time. So post abolition Black women had to invent a gendered, individual, popular musical expression  for themselves.

This was particularly necessary for Black women who would have preferred women as their sexual partners.

And thus, here we come to the Blues, performed by a solo singer, with a single instrument, the guitar, played by herself.  Of course these women couldn't afford more complicated set-ups, but this they could. 

Of course a man got the credit as "inventor of the Blues"*, Robert Johnson, with a powerful legendary tale of meeting the devil at the crossroads as to how he did it to boot.  

Why haven't we read this book before?

* Musicologists of course, know better.  They all know there were a slew of performers.

Ridiculous Dressing: Cheering Oneself Up During Weeks Colder than 17°

     . . . . I'm watching Beyond Ridiculous Clothes. Laughter is a warming activity!

Agatha Raisin's Christmas Murder Mystery. 

The protagonist's blindingly color blocked wardrobe could kill all by itself at 20 paces.

The Eyes of Tammy Bakker (2022). Chastain takes 18-20 Tammy in perky, cute, cheerleader 1960’s outfits all the through the increasingly ridiculous outfits Bakker sported as her talons grow ever long and more pointy, her make-up every thicker and more permanent, and her hair goes from natural to peroxided to what red wig piques her fancy that day – the Tammy Bakker everybody pictures when her name comes up.

Plus My Fair Lady, which is about Clothes you betcha, but over the top brilliant costume design, not ridiculous, well, not quite, not really.  After all, Audrey Hepburn's no Lily Collins (EIP) or Sarah Jessica Parker (AJLT), both of whom urge the viewer to bitch slap them with every moue, which is their idea of acting, in every beat, every scene.* 

     . . . . So, as is evident, the contest for Most Ridiculous Clothes On Television Today is more than competitive.  But we have ... a winner!  Two winners in fact, co-winners, all due to the efforts of just one man.

And Just Like That, sequel to Sex And the City, and Emily in Paris (skipped the first season, so I'm in ep. 4 of the second one).  They share the same inspiration and producer, Darren Star, queen of portraying women as more shallow than a dish drainer. 

Gosh these clothes are -- foolish, So are the characters, so it's all one thang. The best Emily in Paris character is the mixed Asian friend, Mindy, who busks with two fellas, as the vocalist. And is a Madame PeePee (yes, her job as the daughter of a supremely weathy father, is to take a teeny coin in return for handing a square of tp to the people entering the Toilet) at a Drag Queen Club.  She sure can sing though, if the actor is indeed the singer.  The only thing is in the show worth watching is Mindy singing. Yet the songs always take second place to whatever Mindy is wearing. The purpose of the songs is to give the half hour episodes more opportunities to show More Paris so no one has to strain the brain for much plot, character or doing anything at all -- just like Instagram, which is the real star and real concern of Emily in Paris.

     . . . . SATC -- Ep. 6.  These characters, even if they are not White, are just like the White Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte – so well off, so consumed with what we call First World Problems.  It’s not as though we see these new characters behavior as informed by their heritage. They have the same never enough status and privilege as their White counterparts, which of course they would, but isn’t there something more the show could show us? At Seema’s family’s Diwali party, we see only her family’s desire Seema marry a rich fellow and produce grandchildren, etc. and nothing cultural at all, except the saris – one of which Carrie wears in the same way she wears those silly tulle skirts we are still seeing little girls wear with their fairy wings in the street, unless the temps demand coats, even though Carrie's now in her mid-50’s, showing how she can pull out her edgy at will. 

The exception is the stand-up comic star-podcaster character, Che Diaz. Same as in their real life, Sara Ramirez plays a non-binary Afro-latino butch-bitch sort. Except this character are only about their sexuality, and anyway, we don’t see Che much now, except in Miranda’s fantasy replay sex life, and unanswered texts. As is often the case with White people, the point of the Other is my sexual fantasy.  The show just doesn’t do culture/people wrong, even its all-and-nothing-but-surface is wrong.

 Charlotte reacts like a Karen or something to Miranda’s outing of her Che sexcapade – "Are you a lesbian now or what?!?!!!!!!??????" The show -- and Charlotte, like Carrie and Miranda and the show itself, has written out memory of the episode in which Charlotte was partying hearty w/lesbians.*

This surface is neither fun nor interesting, since there's no evidence any of the character have learned anything since the glory days of the friendship, i.e. the 7 season of SATC, or during the last 15 years.  Moreover, its brittle depiction of the good life on the verge of snapping and splintering at any moment – quite as the USA YAY has done.

Worst of all, as with SATC, they appropriate downtown / SoHo. In AJLT, there's scene in the very costly sari shop here on West Broadway.  As per usual it’s weird to see this perspective on where I live. Totes consumerist vision for Carrie, etc., not at all mine Another big boulder of superficial in this episode, is that Carrie buys a millions of dollar coop "downtown. Even as she does so, she says, "I used to come downtown all the time, but I never thought I'd live here." Yet the show keeps making a huge deal out of Carrie wanting to cocoon her husband-bereft self back in her first apartment -- which, while show called its location "the Upper East Side," it is in reality a real brownstone in the West Village.  This is something even casual watchers of SATC know -- see: the endless convoys of tourist buses and tours on that block.  And truly the watchers of And Just Like That were anything but casual watchers of Sex and the City.

Not to mention the afternoon a SATC shoot shut down my entire block, forbidding me to leave my apartment building or re-enter it, because Somebody in the crew was standing there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Though to be honest, Audrey Hepburn no longer enchants me, but gets on my nerves. Which is neither here nor there, not now or then.

**

Eileen: Are you gay?

Charlotte: No, I'm not. But I do so enjoy the company of all these women. Everyone's so smart and funny. After spending too much time and attention on men......it feels like such a safe, warm environment. And while sexually, I feel that I am straight......there's a very powerful part of me that connects to the female spirit.

Eileen: Sweetheart, that's all very nice. But if you're not going to eat pussy, you're not a dyke.

                   -- Season 2, episode 6, "The Cheating Curve," Charlotte meets Lesbian                                 Chic

Learning the Craft From the Greats Gone Before + Weather

      . . . . In a sense this is a follow-up comment to the observations concerning Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery/crime series, and Andrea Camelleri's final novel in his very long Comissario Montalbano series, writers teaching writers how to write.

     . . . . Iconic US author Joan Didion passed away December 23, 2021, of Parkinson's and being 87. Since the announcement, I've been pondering her work, which, if it were music, could justifiably be said was a soundtrack to the years I have observed play out in this same nation her fiction recorded.  Perhaps not the only soundtrack -- there's the entire playbook of alternative soundtracks from out of Spanish and African heritage people handling things differently, but Didion's was the one that underscored the major themes of violence, cruelty, lies, isolation, betrayed hope and refusal of responsibility -- our national white, determination as white people since the Vietnam War, to never grow up, to remain forever immature, and expect every wish to be instantly gratified, that there won't be consequences for selfish harms inflicted upon others, even the planet -- and above all, our national god given right to be FAAAAAAYMOUS! Most of all, our national delusion that WE/ME can never die.

 In many ways, I feel, she was the real and only inheritor of Hemingway’s mantle, the only American writer who understood his diction, his syntax, his rhythms, how and why he used them. She was able to make that authentically her own too, through diligent, brilliant, long study and practice.  She, being she, wasn’t distracted by the bs of the masculinity cult, of winning and losing, as were other writers -- not surprisingly, all male -- who were determined to wrest Hemingway’s mantle for themselves, such as Norman Mailer.

For which, it seems, there were women who wrote, who would forever resent Didion (ironically, quoted in The New Yorker, for which both did write):

“Ridiculously swank,” Pauline Kael described the novel “Play It as It Lays.” “I read it between bouts of disbelieving giggles.”

 

Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Play It As It Lays (1972)

But yet, dear Pauline, no book of yours was adapted for your beloved films, and nobody ever asked you to write a script.

Alas, though, you both died of Parkinson's.  RIP, both of you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . Why, yes, it is January.  All month.  A nasty weather wise, which is the normal for NYC,  health wise, where once ya, flu and colds, but now, holy cow Omicron in combination with an utter idiot as NYC's mayor -- can you believe I am missing Bill de Blasio???????-- psychologically-wise, utterly despairing, as tomorrow is the first anniversary of the first all-out violent coup attempt, with many more being planned.

I did manage to get myself out today, early, to Trader Joe's for certain essentials, and then to the library to pick up Holds.  This despite the rain.  At least today the bitter cold is in abeyance, though it is scheduled to return even more bitter, after the Maybe Snow here Thursday night - Friday morning.  Good to have the milk, eggs and sour dough bread here already, as the already borked supply lines and deliveries have been further borked by the Big Snow that happened in and around D.C.    That TJ's sliced sour dough makes the best toast!

Well back to fund-raising planning for Tierra Sagrada.

Crime In Our Hands (Books), Crime On Our Screens (TV)

     . . . . Horowitz, Anthony. (2016 in the UK, 2017 in the US) Magpie Murders.

In some ways this is an odd, if clever, duck of a crime novel that is two novels in one.

There is The Magpie Murders itself, the last novel by Alan Conway, a best selling crime author whose series features Atticus Pünd, a detective much like Poirot, though German, not Belgian, and rather younger than Poirot, having gone through internment in a nazi death camp. His rescue by the British allowed him to remove to England, thus the series's plots are set in the 1950's. The second, the framing novel, is set in our present, narrated via Susan Ryland, the verging on middle-aged editor of Conway's Atticus Pünd series.

Throughout the two novels, past and present, do homage to the golden age of British crime fiction divas such as Christie and Allingham. They also reference constantly the crime novel series that Horowitz has been instrumental in producing, adapting and writing series for television, which are many, and all of which I've watched, just starting with Agatha Christie's Poirot, Foyle's War and o my, but not only! -- Midsomer Murders!  To be sure, the opening chapter of the framed Conway novel feels right out of the opening shots of the pre-Neal Dudgeon Barnabys of Midsomer Murders, with a pan of the village and the character-suspects

Magpie Murders was a thoroughly engaging whodunit until -- soon in the second section of the framing novel, with us back to Susan Ryland's pov and narration. It sags then, going on too long, and ultimately the solution of the crime within it and who did it, is as unsatisfying as the one at the conclusion of the framed Atticus Pünd Magpie Murders. 

.... Horowitz first developed the concept of Magpie Murders during the first season of Midsomer Murders, which premiered in 1997. He has stated that he wanted the novel to "be more than just a murder mystery story" and to be "a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. How the writers come up with the ideas; how these books are formed."[1] ....

It is that indeed, which is entertaining and even useful in itself for anyone who likes to read and watch such series, and anyone who wishes to read them.  Additionally, the book is as overstuffed as candied fruit in a Christmas fruit cake with real life best selling crime series writers’ and reviewers encomiums to Pünd, such as Ian Rankin, Ann Cleeves, etc.  Does one need to say Horowitz is adapting this novel for Britbox and PBS? 

.... In July 2020 Deadline announced that PBS’ Masterpiece would adapt the novel into a six-part drama series and air it in the US, and will air the series on BritBox in the UK.[12] ...

This Horowitz guy, never stops writing!  Check it out here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . And yet more village crime!

In For A Murder - W Jak Morderstwo in Polis (2021) Netfix Poland Original.

It revolves around a murder that takes place in a small town in Poland and Magda, a resident in the neighbourhood takes it upon her to investigate the case and solve the murder. However, when the case draws back to some past incidents, the events that follow seem to get complicated.

An updated, Polish Agatha Christie given the screen treatment we know so well by now from Brit tv, like Midsomer Murders etc. and by now later updates such as the Daniel Craig Knives Out.   We even begin with long tracking shots of a lovely youngish blonde woman, riding a bicycle on lovely wooded tracks, getting lovely veg and fruit and honey from the street market, returning home to cute kids in a lovely house. But the husband, nope, not so much . . . 

The W/V necklace we see here is significant to the crime and mystery In For A Murder.

I enjoyed this very much, not least because of its location, which isn't either England or the US,

 in the same way I so enjoy Candice Renoir, the French policier featuring a blonde verging on middle-age detective who is a divorced mom, kind of messy, anxious about her weight, but not that much! brillian  -- and whose smile should be registered as a dangerous weapon.  She turns that smile on someone and any resistance goes out the door.

Women -- Lucan (2013) ITV-Britbox. 2 episodes.

     . . . .  “I’m an Earl!  This country’s gone to hell when an earl can’t get his wife committed into an insane institution just on his say-so!”  Scripted drama around the late 1970’s disappearance of a Lord Lucan who lost everything gambling and can’t understand why he should lose just because he lost.

So, yes, I’ll kill Veronica, he thinks, because she harshes his joys of losing all their money to his gambling, and because she doesn’t like he hits her, and doesn’t like that he chases around, and he's afraid she'll ask for a divorce. Damn this country where the courts will give guardianship of HIS children to the mother. So murder is the only solution. Plus, you know, I am LORD LUCAN, the courts won't / can't touch me -- except they'll take away guardianship of MY CHILDREN, so what the hell insanity is going on here?  Gotta kill her.  That what manly sorts who are at the top of evolution like gorrillas do!

Such ignorant, entitled, hereditary horrors these aristo Brit males of the 1960’s and 70’s! Stupifyingly stupid, incompetent to do anything, except cheat, whine, whinge, and blather endlessly about their infinite super manly superiority. Imagine this guy – he killed Sandra, his children's beloved nanny, ‘by mistake’ because he couldn't tell the difference between Sandra and his wife, Veronica. He then does his best to kill, Veronica, right next to Sandra's dead body, on the same floor, when the wife comes down the stairs to investigate what happened.  When Veronica brilliantly incapacitates him by squeezing his balls even as he's viciously beating her, then talks down this evil manbaby, he politely suggests Veronica kill herself with an overdose of pain medication, and is somewhat bewildered and quite bothered that she rejects this proposal.  She made him lose the money and kill Sandra, strive to get her institutionalized, and finally he had to kill her because there was no other choice, because MY CHILDREN. I OWN THEM! I AM A MAN!  A lord man! A man kills! A man is entitled to kill! A man must kill because he is a man!

He and his circles are all up in alpha male, white eugenic nonsense that only the entitled aristos are entitled by birth blood and breeding to rule all those inferior to them which is everyone, plus All women. This is the BS we hear out of these same groups here and the UK about what makes a manly man manly – being white and rich is a good start!  Good grief you’d think it was 1900, an era of the perpetual boy, with ilks of the forever-boy child such as Teddy Roosevelt, blathering on subject. Are these the same blind to anything but their own childish, temper tantrum desires man babies who are running England now and got the country the disaster of Brexit?

One of the narrators matter-of-factly observes that in those days “the toffs just hated women”.  The women in their circles hated women too, echoing their men's perceptions and judgments like the successful, good women they are. That was what was wrong with Veronica, they tell us, which certainly qualified her to be institutionalized – she had thoughts of her own that didn’t agree -- including not like having all their assets gambled away, while having three small children to educate and start in life.  One might speculate this hatred of women, rife among the aristos, young, middle-aged and elderly, male and female, had something to do with the trajectory of Princess Diana’s emotional wreckage upon entering the royal circles. 

This is an unpleasant, disturbing watch, though it is a fascinating period piece, which, alas doesn’t seem that period-y in our time, filled with incels and other overtly women hating groups and men -- and women too! -- who think it perfectly obvious, sane and right that women, gotten uppity, like the Speaker of the House, should be removed, punished and even killed. These ilks are the reasons women are marching today for their reproductive rights and their personhoods, all over the country,  as well as in D.C. for yet again, as they had to do in the 1970's.

     . . . .There was an earlier television drama movie with these events as the subject, The Trial of Lord Lucan (1994). Also on Britbox.

"An imagined trial of a man who, in 1974 London, is thought to have killed a woman he mistook for his wife in order to regain custody of his children. He disappeared the day after the killing and was never found."

Anthony Head, beloved Giles the Watcher, from the beloved 1990's US television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, plays Lucan.

However, this is what Lucan really looked like, flabby and soft as any other manbaby who assaults women, whining whimpering, tantruming, because barred from Twitter . . . .