Back To Madrid - Horses Are Resting

      . . . . As my personal record of this Viaje it is necessary to include more foto notas from Madrid, as Madrid was our first city on the itinerary.  It was an excellent preparation for all that came next, including getting over the worst of jetlag in the comfort of the 5 star Hotel Prado.  Additionally to the comfort, it was location.  The famous Neptune Fountain is in the circle plaza outside, and a few steps away, cross the street, walk through the tipica big Hispanic city leafy, flowered, grass covered with public toilets, cross the street on the other side, and there you are: at the Prado Museum.

At this time at least, Spain is inexpensive,  which is why we could do this trip as 4 and 5 stars -- the dollar is so strong against the Euro.  However, this isn't the case for changing money. Big fees are charged, so we used cards almost exclusively.

Spain was vastly less expensive than anywhere in the US, particularly NYC.  Last night at our local, we had only wine and an appetizer last night at our local. It cost significantly more than any full meal with wine we had in Spain, including the most 'splurge' meal we had in Cádiz, in one of the very best restaurants in Spain, with an international clientele. 

And, ya, the wine last night was not near the quality of the Spanish terroirs; Europe doesn't tax wine and beer to death as the US does, nor must they it travel across the ocean, or even land -- so much of it is made near the restaurants. Many of restaurants have on their wine list wines available only in that particular restaurant-bar-taberna, meaning a special relationship with the vintners.

First Cena (Dinner) in Madrid, a restaurant that specialized in regional wild mushrooms.  Along with the wine, of the Castile Terroir, this may have also been the very best, most delicious meal we had on this journey. The plates and other dishes all had individual regional mushrooms and surrounding plants as their design.

As she cannot go on such a viaji, the bird pin placed on the design was gifted to me by as friend in her place right before we left. She has for a year been fighting cancer, with extraordinarily difficult treatments, who is scheduled for surgery very soon. 

 The pin was always in my cross body bag. Throughout the journey, at different meals, I clicked this Bird of Passage and texted the fotos to her in real time.  She said they picked up her spirits after yet another round of chemo.

Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman (1526-1588), a hero of Lepanto, 33 years as General Admiral of the Spanish Navy, never was defeated.  I was so excited to encounter this monument to him in an enclosed courtyard on our way to visit the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  The Battle of Lepanto truly was a one of those most significant events in history.  Though almost a draw in terms of lives and ship lost, it did prevent the Turks from moving into the western Mediterranean.  It also increased, not only Spain's, but Europe's anger and disgust with France. She was not at Lepanto. Thanks to Francis I, France was allied, as she'd been for long, with the Turks.  Something we don't hear much of over here in terms of European history. Spain was one of the few European nations to send help to the Siege of Malta against the Turks.  France was begged to, but did not.

Most of all, I think, I was excited because I knew who Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman was! I didn't need to read the plaque to find out, I just needed his name. I knew about Lepanto and the Great Siege of Malta!  I felt the same way so often in the Prado, looking at portraits of different Spanish court grandees painted by Goya -- I knew who people such as Godoy and Floridablanca were.

This was the first time I noticed that Spain's historic sites have information plaques in Braille as well as print. It was the same at the 9th C Muslim wall remains.

This is one of Goya's historical interpretation of the battles with the French invasion forces. This one features Egyptian Mameluke Imperial Guard cavalry regiments. Yet another stupidity of Napoleon.  By the supreme Católica God who gave Spain back to the Christians after more than 7 centuries, how could he think the Spanish would passively accept a takeover that centered Muslim fighters?
[This is not my photo, as no photography or recording of any kind is allowed in the Prado.]

This Is Not the White House. The royal palace in Madrid, not far from the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  This was the weekend, and tourists from near (Spain) and far were present even as closing time was imminent.  No, one cannot go in.  Not sure though, whether the flag meant the king was in residence.  This palace is surrounded by vast gardens that are essentially woods. The Spanish kings were even more insane about hunting than the English and French ones. This tradition has continued into the present: recall the Spanish royal scandal not that long ago regarding members killing elephants.

Madrid, our first Flamenco performance in Spain.  We were seated next to a lovely Japanese American couple from Seattle.  This was their final night before flying home from their vacation, which began in Fez, Morocco.  They liked Marrakesh much more than Fez, and Spain more than that. The wife is a Flamenco aficionado, who takes classes back in Seattle.  El V and I were the only audience members who masked.

Red is Passion.  See those hands clapping that distinctive Flamenco cracking rhythm? Despite the late 19th C Spanish officials and intellectuals, and later, Franco's repressive attempts to stop the prevalent popularity of Flamenco music and dance with foreigners and tourists, it was a failure.  At this time there is no national Spanish music at all, except Flamenco.  It is everywhere.  Students come in droves from everywhere to study in every city in Spain, though particularly in Sevilla and Granada, of course.  No matter where you are, you will hear casual Flamenco clapping as men and even little kids practice, even in train stations.

From my seat I had a splendid view of the dancers' feet.  The dancers are percussionists.  They and the musicians and singers are on a particularly constructed platform called a tablao (pronounced tabl-ow! ow like meow). This platform is actually a drum head, with air space between it and the 'ground' that makes for a resonator, as the belly of a non-electric guitar is a resonator.  'Tablao' is used interchangeably to refer to the stage-platform and to Flamenco itself.

Sunny, Warm Interregnum

      . . . . For the first time since sometime in December, when Omicron arrived, here is unaccustomed cheerfulness. The day began early, with stepping into the outdoors, into sun and warmth. Today's an interregnum after a stretch of below freezing days, and prior to the plunge into single digit temps for the weekend, plus a wind, snow, then rain storm into Monday and temperatures below freezing for the coming week.  

Dashed out wearing the respiratory N95 -- no fogged glasses! --  to TJ's, first thing, in hopes of an emptier store.  Late in the morning I danced out to the library, for another armload of mysteries, just in time for the freeze. Followed up with a big shopping at MW, this time el V with me for the carrying.  

Everybody is masked up, even on the street -- the tourists must have gone home. We've all been hunkering in self-imposed isolation, our sort of NYCers anyway, due to the Omicron forest fire, and the cold, so we're all running around today to stock up on more groceries, for the next week of  bunkering against the cold, and in the likely case of borked supply chains due to weather.  Today, though, anything one wants and needs are on the neatly stocked shelves. I do hear though, from the elderly in our building and others, what can be harder to get -- meaning, so far, only they've had to wait, are prescription medications.  As for groceries, I've been hearing our persent, local, good fortune isn't shared everywhere across the country.

They Are Saying that maybe Omicron's peaking here?  We should be so lucky, since before Christmas. everyday we were told of at least one more person we know down with it, or someone calling with the news, "Family member/s/me positive and / or down with it."

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

     . . . . People elsewhere are also in self-isolation. 

Tonight's the first Postmambo Movie Night of 2022; Postmamboists across the country are saying, "Thank God! We're going crazy shut-in."  Tonight's program is NOLA Reconnect/Postmambo's first one of 2022.

Presiding, via Zoom, is Dr. Elizabeth McAlister, author of Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora:

 

Funerary Rites in Haitian Vodou

Honoring Frisner Augustin, Legendary Priest of the Drum

. . . . The second January Postmambo Movie Night is Thursday, January 20, 8 p.m. Eastern. 

In honor of the Jack Kerouac centennial, Postmambo Movie Night presents Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank, 1959)."We'll talk to the film's composer, David Amram, who sat next to Kerouac in the studio as he improvised the voice-over narration. David is still gigging at the age of 91! We'll talk with him about his scores for The Manchurian Candidate and Splendor in the Grass, his friendship with Thelonius Monk, his visit to then-forbidden Cuba on the path-breaking 1977 "jazz cruise," and lots more."

Here are some, not all, of our recent NOLA Reconnect Sessions

Dec. 9: Richard Morse with Dr. Elizabeth McAlister

Nov. 11: Erol Josué with Dr. Elizabeth McAlister

Oct. 31: Jean-Daniel Lafontant live from Temple Na-Ri-Vèh on Fèt Gède

Oct. 31: C. Daniel Dawson

Oct. 14: Paul Beaubrun with Dr. Elizabeth McAlister

Sep. 13: A Conversation with Dr. Ivor Miller

Aug. 12: Rafael Delgadillo on 19th-century New Orleans

July 8: Gianluca Tramontana and Dr. Ben Lapidus on changüí

"Life Changing!" has become one of the most common responses to the Postmambo/NOLA Reconnect experiences, despite Zoom!

~~~~~~~~~~

P.S.  El V has become a convert to toast, via my sour dough bread discovery.  He wants toast with everything! 

Daily Depressions, Reading, Watching

      . . . . Our tiny but sublime vacation was followed immediately by non-stop crises of all kinds, all of them made by those over whom we have no control.  Death was bookended by Hurricane Henri and Hurricane Ida. Ida's hollowed out New Orleans's professional class. With no prospect for the return of power for perhaps months, they left the city.  They have the resources to do so -- Tulane shuts down for 6 weeks, but keeps remote learning going, so the faculty get paid.  You see what I mean?  So in crazy heat and humidity, no power, no a/c, no home, no money, no food, no water -- what do you think will happen to those in New Orleans left behind?  Not a scrap of a FEMA person on the ground has yet been seen.

Though we personally have been spared hurricane crises -- so far, as tonight and tomorrow we get a month's worth of rain wrung from Ida's tattered, passing skirts into our already overflowing reservoirs and saturated earth* -- there are the western wildfires, whose toxin-laden smoke we are not spared. The mid-west is dying of drought, while the Gulf is drowning in flood. The blob that calls itself the responsible media is determined to crucify our President in the name of ... what???? A man in a no-win situation had the guts to let go the wolf's ears (which T Jefferson, referring to slavery, said could not be done -- but then, TJ become quite famous in the South, in Virginia, for his cowardice ....) does so, and some how this is reprehensible, but the Jan 1 insurrectionists are merely mis-understood, and must be forgiven.

Then ... there is covid's Delta variant which relentlessly tsunami's across the country.  In Illinois, Bro says he and his cohorts are calling it the "Unvaccinated Pandemic."  They are not saying this good-naturedly. They are as furious abut this as I am  Then comes more death, not from covid, but from people who can't get treatment due to the Unvaccinated Pandemic taking all the medical resources.  This is not of any personal making on our part, or that of anyone we know.  In the meantime, more voter repression, more war on women's reproductive rights and health. In the meantime too, the non-stop crisis that is Haiti, and now also that of Cuba, keep rolling.

And now, I am staring at the approaching mouth of winter's tunnel, a third cold, dreary winter, pretty much enclosed in this tiny space with one other person.  All we're seeing at the end of this tunnel is more vaccinations, more masks and even more dangerous covid variants. Because of Those Ilks.  Well, even people in my family now believe that is how it is with the rethugs: if They don't get Their way one way, They'll get it by something even crazier, such as killing Their own.  Whatever it takes, They get 'er done. **

So I've not been of much use to anyone outside of what is, again,  a tiny circle of close friends who happen to be physically close by, close enough we can meet informally in one of the neighborhood's small parks.  And I'm good for cooking. We continue to eat very well.  I have a big pot roast in the slow cooker right now, with wine, beef stock, herbs, onion, potatoes, carrots and 'shrooms.  It was a home delivery error on the part of MW's interpretation of what I'd ordered back in the spring. On such a wet day, with night temps for the next 2 - 3 nights going into the 60's and even 60's, it made sense to get it out of the freezer.

~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . Fortunately there is a great deal of good reading, and good watching. Never in my past life could I possibly have imagined there would be an extended period of my in which television would be of the greatest importance! This is the state of reading and watching as of today.

FICTION

Continuing:

Penman, Sharon Kay (1995) When Christ and His Saints Slept.  The workout audio book.  I’m going to re-work my way through the Penman Plantagent series.

~ ~ ~ ~

New:

Walker, Martin (2021) The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel. The latest, for which I've been waiting since last September.

Walker just won a French literary prize for representation of Southern France and culture to the world.  I have an additional affection for Walker’s series now too.  I introduced these books to Mary F. back in the summer of 2020, and she loved them too.

NON FICTION

Continuing:

Herrin, Judith (2021) Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. This one I read alone.

Sampson, Fiona (2021) Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I have only a few pages left. I'd have finished it by now but the author is so irritating as she insists on being in the book, and she is not interesting.

Wickham, Chris (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. El V and I continue this aloud every night before lights out. 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

New:

Beran, Michael Knox (2010) Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life.

Clark, Christopher (2013) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.

Raven, Catherine (2021) Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship. 

WATCH

Watch for: Vera, season 11, 1st, every Tuesday – BritBox;  Frankie Drake Mysteries, season 4, 3rd – PBS; Midsomer Murders, season 22, part 2, ? – Acorn; Crooked House (2017 film fr, an Agatha Christie novel), NF – 1st; Lucifer, season 6/final, 10th – NF; Dear White People, season 4/final, 22nd - NF; 

Continuing:

My Life Is Murder, season 2, 3rd through the 10th eps, 1st – Acorn -- sundrenched Sydney, Lucy Lawless.  Nuff Said.

~  ~ ~ ~ ~

New:

King of Boys  (2018) season 1, "The Return of the King"; Netflix Original.  I started this 7 episode series last night.

Made in Nigeria, by Nigerians, located in Lagos. Even in the first episode the show is ‘showing up’ the endless traditional internal conflicts, such as Yoruba vs Igbo.  Complicating things further we have a Nigerian version of protestant evangelical Christianity (a prosperity church, you betcha, with all the prosperity going to the head minister, natch), and so much more.

It opens media res within a prolonged party, dancing to live music. Money is being ‘sprayed’ i.e. the guests are “making it rain” – they are shoving, pouring, sticking, thousands of dollars upon the giver of the party and the musicians, a tradition in the Afro Caribbean as well as West Africa. So right away there’s a lot going on with which I have a certain level of long-time familiarity.

It’s as multi-lingual as Lagos is. The show is mostly English, but Nigerian English as well as the traditional languages of Yoruba and Igbo. Subtitles are provided then. Plus there is the local pidgin, for which the viewer might like to take advantage of closed captioning. The characters who know each other long and respect and like each frequently lapse into pidgin, a Nigerian variant of code switching done among friends, in the same way African Americans do this among each other.  There is this too -- 'King' is a woman.  She's addressed as "Oba" which is a male gendered title in Yoruba.  If one knows this right at the start, a whole lot of information is provided just by that.

Vivid, intense and not the USA at all.

~~~~~~~~~

*   Even as I type now, the rain begins. I hear it spraying against the window panes.

** See "The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America: The Old North/South Split Lives on in the Urban/Rural Divide"  by Will Wilkinson. Thanks to Lawyers, Guns & Money for tipping me to it.

. . . . One of the puzzles of the 2016 election, and the catastrophe of the Trump presidency, is how populist white nationalism finally prevailed at a time when Americans, taken altogether, were less racist than ever. This is one of the questions I take up in the “Density Divide.” But I left out one of my favorite answers to this question largely because it’s too speculative and I didn’t have the data to prove it. My hunch is that rural white culture, which was once regionally varied and distinctive, became more uniform by becoming increasingly Southern. I call this the Southernification thesis.

In the "Density Divide", I argued that the key to answering “Why did white ethnonationalism finally work to win the GOP nomination and then the White House when it didn’t even get close to working for Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul?” was that residential self-selection on ethnicity, personality, and education had made lower density parts of the country progressively more homogenously ethnocentric and socially conservative, which finally made it possible to unify and organize rural and exurban whites as a single constituency.

I’m confident that this is correct, as far as it goes. However, I think it’s an incomplete explanation without something like the Southernification thesis. Before it could be successfully organized politically, America’s increasingly ethnocentric non-urban white population needed to be consolidated first through the adoption of a relatively uniform ethnocentric white culture.

What I’m still groping for is solid empirical confirmation that the Southernification of white rural America did happen and, if so, how it happened. Now, I have few doubts that it did happen and is still happening. Indeed, it’s hard to think of better impressionistic evidence than the spread of Confederate flags far from the South into all parts of white rural America. But that doesn’t seem like quite enough.

But let’s suppose that it is enough. How did Southernification happen? I’m going to take this up at length in another, even more speculative, post. But here’s where I would start: When I was a kid, the Atlanta Braves somehow became “America’s Team.” Could it be that the media mogul who married Hanoi Jane took the critical first step in bringing non-urban white America together by beaming sanitized Southern culture into living rooms everywhere? . . . .

This is the most cogent explanation for what has happened that I've seen.  Of course, one doesn't see it in the Blob, which is what Lawyers, Guns & Money have taken to calling the so-called media, made up of people who have gotten whatever it is wrong almost every time, but still keep getting paid big money to keep getting it wrong.

Vacation, Friends, Delta, Postmambo, NOLA Reconnect, Books, TV, But In The Beginning We EAT!

      . . . . It's been a long time, so much going on, but in the end, IT'S ALL ABOUT AUGUST, which is all about -- 

CORN ON THE COB & HERITAGE TOMATOES!  Am I right or am I right? Reveling and gorging, with the best pots of beans, salads and sausages.  What a month this has been for eating, which has all been done at home, or even the first week, spent  at our Saratoga's friend's house. Delta made sure of that. We were not then and are not not now though, in the least deprived staying away all together from restaurants again.  So much delight in getting our produce and other foods at the Green Markets (and O! the green markets up Saratoga way!), and then, cooking together, as B and S and I did each day, with much lubrication provided by Host S's wine cellar, B's brought-alongs, local beers from the Saratoga Minogue's Beverage Center, and any and all music anyone could possible desire or have a yen to hear.

     Every second of Saratoga was more than splendid, even while asleep. The nights dropped into the 50's.  We slept with windows open.  The air was fresh and good smelling, any time day or night. The weather was just what one wanted for an August NYC getaway.  Then we came home, to roaring surges of Delta, and fearing yet again They will steal Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays from us.

Back in the City though, and back in our grooves. Every time we think, "Well, maybe we don't need any more Postmambo Movie Nights, or any more NOLA Reconnect events, because people will be going out now -- well, no.  Our Host S provided such a moving tribute to how important these Postmambo activities and events have been for him in the pandemic.  Postmambo and his dog -- his gf lives in another town, and has a full-time job, so he's alone mostly.  Imagine, being up there, snowed in, blizzards howling round these past two winters.  "Some very dark days," he said, and said nothing else.  It was kind of emotional for me to be watching Summer of Soul from Harlem, 1969 (film July 2021), and Leningrad Cowboys (1993, Helsinki) films in company with him, el V and Ben, people who have attended to many music events together over the years, and now doing it only by screen again, thanx to jerkwaddies who won't wear masks or get vaccinated, and watching in the same place Steve is when doing NOLA Reconnect and Postmambo.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

READING

Non-fiction

El V and I continue bedtime read-aloud of Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000 (2009); I continue for myself with Judith Herrin's Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (2021), 

both of which go so well with the content in the review of The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus: A Sixth-Century Sourcebook (2020) translated and edited by M. Shane Bjornlie, in the latest London Review of Books.  Cassiodorus -- bridge between Late Antiquity Rome and the following eras of murdrous kinglets, want-to-be emperors, etc.  Also the surviving literature, with emphasis on 'surviving', as it seems the 5th century is where everything changes and transmutes, assisted later by whatever literary focus Charlegmagne's scriptors possessed, thus what was lost. Reading this is far more interesting to me probably, than reading the book itself, as I'm not a Latin scholar.

Fiction

The Germans of antebellum New Orleans, how much have we thought about them?  Of course Germans arrived in New Orleans in the 1830's and 1840's as they did in so many cities here, such as St. Louis, progressive labor and political activists, bringing the information, messages and means of Revolution -- and then fleeing from the failure to overset the crowns and oppressions of Old Europe's old Empires and Kingdoms.  They also brought their arts and culture, as we see here in this astonishing work, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, translated and edited by Steven Rowan (2002).  It was originally serially published in 1854 and 1855, and then unavailable until 'rediscovered' in 1990. Why did it disappear? From the opening paragraph of the "Preface and Acknowledgments":

This edition began as a whim and ended as an obsession.  The memory of Reizenstein and his notorious book was preserved primarily by J. Hanno Delier. [ftn.1] It has long been known that Ludwig von Reizenstein wrote a book about New Orleans which offended the taste of its time and was quickly withdrawn from circulation; more could not be said. It is safe to assume that the book, Die Geheimnisse von New Orleans, remained unread for more than a century until 1990, when I managed to reconstruct almost of it from the microform files of the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung . . . .

We learned of this work via last week's NOLA Reconnect session which focused on the Spanish language newspapers of New Orleans.  However, as the featured scholar of the non-English newspapers of New Orleans's history further informed us, there were others, not just French, which we expect, of course, and Spanish, which still too few people think about, as for some reason the deep Spanish history and roots of New Orleans remains overlooked by American History (particularly by those who have positioned themselves as gatekeepers as what the narrative of US history is supposed to be).  German and Italian were among those publications in other languages.

As this cover art for the 2002 translation informs us, among the culture and traditions the Germans gifted to Victorian USA, is the gothic manner and sensibility.  Not only did that map finely upon New England's (think, Hawthorne), but so obviously, once one's attention is caught, with that of the most 'gothic' city of the nation, New Orleans. Late nineteenth Century New Orleans author, Lafcadio Hearn, with a tessara of backgrounds, wasn't New Orleans's sui generis. 

Three times a week, I am most satisfactorily re-immersed in the first novel of Sharon Kay Penman I had ever read, When Christ and His Saint Slept (1994).  am not re-reading the novel though, I am listening to it.  Be assured, this is a wonderful book to accompany 2 1/2 hour workouts!

This is a lively novel, deeply researched, which makes understandable to a non-scholar how and why the nineteen-year bloody tragedy, known as the Anarchy, descended upon 12th C England and her people after the death of King Henry I. Since I first read When Christ and His Saints Slept, I have learned a very great deal about everything even remotely connected with these years, and not only in England. I confess this has allowed for an even greater pleasure in the narrative, and admiration for Penman.

As is Penman's manner, the women are half of the principal characters, starting with Empress Maud, also named Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, to whom he bequeathed his crown, and Matilda, the queen of the usurping successor, Stephen, Henry’s nephew, and Maud's cousin. In many ways, as Penman shows the succession of back-and-forth battles, the successes and failures on both sides, this is as much a women’s war as it is that of their lords.  As women, they have to fight on multiple fronts, not only battlefields.

The set pieces of terrible violence make the suffering of the average Englander clear, as, per usual, lords and their ladies are spared the worst, except on the battlefield, and even then they can often be ransomed instead of just killed. That this civil war indecisively juttered on for nineteen years, despite so many furious, grim and grisly military encounters, leads the reader to consider, perhaps, most of the protagonists lacked any talent for strategy or for building coalition.  All of the men appear to be more than competent warriors, but as war commanders and statesmen, maybe not?  This includes Empress Maud-Matilda too. We see at each turn that failures emerge out of character defects of all the protagonists. Medieval nobles and royals were the not trustworthy or faithful to anyone, much less their inferiors, despite chivalric pretense, which was viewed as weakness if / when a figure practiced such behavior outside romances.

The blood of William the Bastard runs fast and thick in the veins of all the protagonists, that wild, fierce, cruel, violent and stubborn heritage, that cannot brook any thwarting of their will from any quarter, that will never compromise or negotiate. With Henry II’s coronation, Henry I’s grandson, and an Angevin – Plantagenet as well, this was the blood that would rule England and remained convinced for centuries their divine right to rule France as well. The more I read along in this novel, the more I see the same kinds of arrogant treachery and punishment, such as a willingness to use starvation and destruction as weapons upon one’s own people England that the Normans wreaked upon the English in the years and decades after Hastings – the plundering, and the theft too. The English did the same in France in the 14th Century during the Hundred Years War. Plantagenets Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, are historically (in?)famous for what came to be called chevauchée, but that sort of warfare was not by any means a new addition to tactics and armaments. It took until the 15th century before that Plantagenet blood was replaced in England’s royalty – though the desire to rule France as well continued through the 16th Century, with or without blood heritage of the Bastard and the Angevins.

One inevitably considers: if in 1066, Harold and his army hadn’t been so exhausted at Hastings, having just fought and won a previous hard pressed bloody battle against the Danes hundreds of miles away, from which they force marched immediately back south to take on the Bastard, mayhap England might have remained firmly within the North Sea and Scandinavian sphere of influence, and not have gotten pulled into those of France and Europe. How much blood and treasure England would have been spared, perhaps, if that hadn't happened. Yes, that would be a big alternate history, That Penman did not write alternate history, but did her best to bring us in a readable narrative what we think we know, I am deeply grateful.

AGAIN THEY WIN!!!!! AGAIN SHOGGOTH LOSES!

     . . . . It's Official!

 Biden-Harris Won! Again! and Again and Again and Again and Again They Won!.  Dayem! They must have over a thousand Electoral College votes by now they've won some states so many times!

They lost They Lost They Lost They Lost -- SHOGGOTH LOST HE'S A LOSER. A Cruel, sadistic, evil, horrible, ugly loser. But!!!! HE'S A LOSER!!!!! AGAIN!!!!!  He's Lost! So many thousands of times!  Because he's a loser!

HAHAHAHA! Sorry. I am being very silly, but gee, it feels so good to be silly for a change, for a while.

I'm also experiencing a very rare interlude of feeling Normal because They Say tomorrow a big winter storm with lots of snow is coming (maybe lots of snow or this being NYC maybe not).

We're laughing again because we've achieved the usual sense of comfy and cozy that we have always felt in the prospect of a snow storm over the years (when we were together anyway, and he wasn't off Somewhere Else). This afternoon feels Normal, just like the way we'd feel at the prospect of a snow storm, Before. Like I said -- Normal, because of course we can't go out because Storm. !!!! I grew up with this! And even though we're far from Normal and won't ever be able to go back to Before, for the moment I'm happy.  I'm humbly grateful to to take good moments when they come. 

Read, Watch, Eat: Thanksgiving 2020

      . . . . Ordered a newly published book today, first in quite a while; I'd put a hold on it from the NYPL, but it is still on order and there are 18 holds ahead of mine, so I gave in to temptation: The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown.

It's a harsh assessment --

The Last American Aristocrat,” a new biography by David S. Brown, “reveals how dynastic burden shaped the personality and career of the brilliant, bitter and thoroughly unlikable man who brought the prominence of the Adams family, and expectations for the endurance of political legacies, to an ignominious end.

Plus, how strongly Henry Adams despised and resented President Grant! Gore Vidal went right along with that, lifting (almost) entire paragraphs from Adams's presentation of Grant, in his novel, 1876.  (Yes, Henry and Gore shared unlimited reservoirs of vitriole, malice and envy of others' successes.)

This pairs nicely with the just finished, frustrating, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders At the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016) by Marthew Karp.  Karp quotes Adams frequently throughout. 

Brown's Last Aristocrat will go equally well with my most recent biography of a 19th century New England aristocrat, The Civil Wars of Juliet Ward Howe (2016) by Elaine Showalter.  Never mind that Julia Ward was from New York City, known both as "the Diva" and "the Belle" of her generation of wealthy heiresses.  She foolishly married Samuel Gridley Howe, a Bostonian, and suffered for that until he died. In fact, Howe didn't even live in Boston per se, but South Boston, surrounded by rough, laboring sorts, that was two and half miles away from anyone in their own social circles. Despite his intimate relationship with Charles Sumner, one of the most famous of Abolitionists, he didn't even like Julia participating in that movement. Already, during their honeymoon, Julia concluded Howe should have married Sumner, as "she" was more suited to him than she was.

Howe, an intimate of the intimate circles around Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which included Sumner, kept the future author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" fairly locked up in his school school quarters for his Perkins Institution, the first school for the blind and deaf in the US.  He believed with every fiber of his being that women were only wives and mothers, and had no desire for doing anything else except caring for her family -- and certainly no desire for sex or sexual feelings at all, much less a desire for personal fulfillment in work.  In fact, this much older husband, was remarkably like Julia's vastly wealthy banker father, whose more than handsome legacy to his daughter Howe busied himself in losing as fast as possible. Hawthorne and Longfellow, and Sumner too -- and so did William Wordsworth -- thought Julia was 'forward' and heartily disapproved of her having opinions and speaking them.

Julia's husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, was as wrong a husband for her -- or just about any woman as could be. He even (unlike Longfellow) objected to women using ether to escape the dreadful, prolonged agony of child birth. He was as wrong for Julia as Henry Adams was the wrong husband for Clover (and  would have been for just about any woman).  But Julia was of sterner stuff than Marian 'Clover' Hooper Adams.  Julia persisted.  She did not kill herself. She did become famous in the public sphere. and she outlived the appalling, Samuel Gridley Howe, with a reputation in U.S. history at least as well-known as his.

It's interesting, while the Longfellow biography I read earlier this year, was filled with so many loving, happy marriages in the circles around the poet, both these books feature deeply miserable, failed marriages.

~~~~~~~~~

When it comes to watching, some nights, as briefly as it happens in my dreams too, I soar and fly!  There are scenes in Nirvana In Fire episodes in which martial artists from the Pugilist World evoke what it must feel like for a human to fly -- that purposed weightlessness. This is as much a contrast with the scenes of Saraphina Pekkala flying in HBO's His Dark Materials, as we can get; Serafina straining to hold to her position, flying against the massive weight of air.  This is the best stuff in Nirvana In Fire; most of the productions scenes are pedestrian talking heads, in the way the BBC's early foray into historic, period drama was with I, Claudius.

I'm only up to episode 18 of 54. But at this point, the Turkish Ertugrul: Resurrection, has much more sophisticated, active cameras and a large variety of locations, many of them landscapes. The plotting is at least as intricate, but a lot more specific.  Nirvana In Fire can get claustrophobic at times.

~~~~~~~~

Busy days at home, trying to keep going, while we ascend upon wafts of hope, and then crash painfully again, smashed against the impermeable boulders of the idiocy of nearly half the nation's population when it comes to shoggoth and his equally cruel, determined to-destroy-the-country-and-its people, minions -- and the even larger portion of the nation's population determined that they are exempt from following guidelines and regulations, about covid-19 -- particularly about traveling, mingling, wearing masks and keeping Distance.  So many infected, hospitals and morgues overwhelmed, yet even otherwise smart people insist they will fly and drive across the country to, o, Minnesota, to spend the holiday weekend with their children, grandchildren, siblings and grandparents (including our own relatives). 

The white supremacist conspiracists and the flouting of Covid-19 sorts, merge with our state and city politicians who decided to lose the city yet another bunch of money by shutting down the public schools, but obeying the real estate moguls by leaving that travesty of  'outdoor' dining and restaurants OPEN. A construction with roof and ceiling, closed windows and walls and doors with heat lamps on the floor pumping out dry hot air is neither outdoors nor ventilated. Nor is it Distanced, as groups of 10 and more, without masks, dance to their own party around their 'own' table. Depressing. Distressing. Frightening.

We too are fighting off being depressed because for the first time in our lives we will not be spending this day with others whom we love, respect and admire, all of whom enjoy the company of each other socially and professionally.  But not possible this year.

Thus I spent a great deal of time fretting about dinner for tomorrow.  We are eating so well all the time.  What could I possibly come up with that we haven't done, if not frequently, still, not that long ago? Though it feels much longer, it hasn't even been a full year of Distance and constant anxiety and adjustment to this way of life, which starts with eating everything at home.  The stuffed refrigerator and freezer hasn't space for a turkey; the ten lb ones are running well over $50 (also, organic, free-ranged and local, so actually that's a good price, considering).  I like turkey but not $50 worth, not in These Times!

Ah ha! it came to me in the night: Moroccan CousCous Pilaf.  Have all the necessary ingredients including the almonds and pine nuts, lamb in the freezer, el V brought home fresh mint and parsley from the GG the other day.  I've never made this, though have enjoyed it in restaurants.  It will go well with bread, olives, salad and a bottle of a particularly nice Spanish wine that was stored away a couple of years ago.

Heavenly Perfume

     . . . . For the third week now, El V and B walked the three miles up and back to the Union Square Farmer's Market this afternoon.

El V asks B, "Why didn't we do this all summer long?"

B patiently answers, "Because it only re-opened a month ago."

I'm really glad for the stuff. But I wish ... el V understood that putting onions and garlic and shallots in the same bag with green stuff that gets washed and refreshed throughout the day is a wrong move. He has just learned that one cannot put away items like onions and so on wet. I will have to inform him of this many times before it penetrates. This must be how my mom must have felt teaching me to cook, garden, laundry, sew, clean house, etc.

So pleased to have local celery. Am really hooked on fresh out of the dirt local celery. Also the apartment is perfumed now by the heavenly basil as the bunch's leaves dry, before I begin dealing with it. Heavenly basil, O O O O! Very Happy with the variety of mushrooms too. With them came a lot of dirt, or whatever the growing medium was.

Now we have all the things on hand for this recipe, which we thought we'd try out early next week.

Gochugaru Chicken With Corn, Mushrooms and Zucchini

Media vita in morte sumus

     . . . . Continuing Reading Aloud: Diaries of John Quincy Adams. 

We are in the middle of his presidency. Again, JQ's got us laughing like silly billies. It's April and he’s drawn inexorably to the Potomac, wondering if it isn’t really warm enough to doff all his clothes and jump in. He’s president so people are always coming to see him about something or other which interferes with what he considers he’s supposed to do (though not, evidently, getting entirely starkers in public to swim in that filthy Potomac), which is be alone and write, and / or, now, study Trees!

He has discovered trees and wants to know everything about them. This office, this living in the White House, is eating all his time for study, and there won't be enough time left in his life when it is finished to learn all needs to learn about Trees!

No wonder Louisa is so often alone in her room, “unwell.” But clearly he’s the sort who believes recording history takes precedence even over he himself in the process of making history.  Hilarious.

But, it can't be foreshadowing as this isn't fiction. He's writing his Diaries in real time. Additionally, for us, there is significance in his recording of the multiple stirrings by and about Andrew Jackson. Dear JQ should be paying better attention to these -- as he seems to be doing to the abomination of slavery that offends him more every day.  He seems to have no inkling that the way presidents are voted for is going to change, despite now dealing with Martin Van Buren. The worlds of politics as he's known them since at least a very young man, is changing. But, he, he's all a-twitter about his discovery of Trees.  No wonder he was gobsmacked by how the next election for POTUS turned out.

I finally concluded reading Ian Mortimer's biography of Edward III.  I'd begun this last year, always saving it, as we also do with JQA's Diaries, for times when nothing else appeals.  I was wondering what else I could slot into this space that would last so satisfactorily long as Edward III and the 14th C.  And it was here in the apartment, and gigantic, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, by David Abulafia.

~~~~~~~~~~

Stimulus, and, audio royality, chex, arrived today; the first via post office, and the second via email notification of direct deposit.

Bistro’s doors are open and action taking place inside, el V reported from going out for a breath of fresh air. The so familiar from so many years Chinese cook was sitting on our doorstep, smoking his break cigarette as I've seen him doing for so many years. Everyone in the Bistro family are fine and well, including the barista and wait staff, including brother, co-owner S, who was being given chemo and getting cosmetic surgery for the cancer on his cheekbone when this blew up. Some good news for a change!

Beloved B left a new batch of cornbread at our door (he has keys to the building and our mailbox and apartment).  I’m forcing him to use our laundry card to get his clothes washed this weekend!  So, including yesterday's grocery delivery of everything on the list, we are so fooded. It was advertised as on special, a 2 lb. bag of cleaned, split, cooked and large frozen shrimp!  We each ate three of those shrimp last night with the Spanish rice; they were y high quality: firm, textured, not in the least soggy. They went so well with the chili flakes among the herbs put into the Spanish Rice. So I made a much larger batch today to divide up among B, across the hall neighbor, and H, who is elderly, diabetic, just can't understand what is going on, can't cook, like mentally ill neighbor has none of the tools for cooking, and is dying not so slowly of loneliness.

~~~~~~~~~

Tore the month of April page off our wall calendars today.  How many more monthly pages will I tear off of 2020 before there is life outside this apartment for us?

I do fear though, for many of us, it will never be able to happen. Like the Bubonic Plague was never over for the vulnerable for nearly 300 years. The rich now experience with how they can deal with Covid-19.  Epidemic / Pandemic, etc. – it never changes whatever time of the world. The rich and powerful get away and sequester themselves in comfort, and are serviced by the poor and vulnerable. Like all the other of us nobodies, they get sick, they die, which is inconvenient and quite inconsiderate. Or with this one, even if recovering from the so-called mild forms can suffer kidney, heart, lung and many other ailments forever. Two of el V's students have gotten sick from it.  One fairly mild and recovered, sort of. The other just this week, and she's not doing well. They are both young, fit and healthy, or were.

We know certainly NYC will be pretty much locked down through May -- at least it should be -- though They Say that upstate, slowly, around May 15 maybe? They may begin to re-open some things in 'blocks', though certainly not the schools.

Gosh. Two months we've been living like this.  It's hard to believe.

Still Readin', Just Not Many Pages; Still Eatin', Just ALWAYS Food Cooked By Moi

     . . . . We continue to read books, meaning books that are not pixilated, but have covers, often with footnotes, indices, appendices, Forwards and Afterwards, with lavish or not illustrations, glossaries, maps, and even graphs and family trees.  History is like that.

But there isn't much time to read generally, because by my usual reading time of the day, we are thinking fondly of shutting off the lights and sleep.  We do a few pages or two of our personal reading, and then default to the reading aloud for a few more pages.  Light are out soon, sometimes after only a few paragraphs or pages.

So we continue so happily with the Diaries of John Quincy Adams.  We are up to 1825, the jiggering with Great Britain and the Holy Alliance.  This is the period in which JQ, while sparring with UK Foreign Minister, George Canning, will essentially guide and prod President Monroe into what becomes the Monroe Doctrine.  As JQ had sparred with Canning many times before, during periods of personal / official contact, and doesn't like Canning at all, as he's a blustering sob, rather like Senator John Clay (who is currently on hiatus to make money to pay of horrendous accumulated personal debt -- none of these guys were any good with money, and that includes JQ). JQ's adamant policy was that in this hemisphere the United States was The Power, the leader, the arbiter, and the UK had to follow, rather than being director of policy and actions with Europe in Latin America that Canning was assuming. 

Particularly for us, as the Monroe Doctrine was strongly about Spain wanting back her colonies in spite of revolutionary era independent Latin America, this is particularly of interest to us.  Plus we get such a delight out JQ's daily reports of his 'bath' in the Potomac, which got quite dangerous around now, due to higher water levels and stronger tides.

The jostling and competition for the nomination for POTUS to follow Monroe was already in play.  There is quite a bit about Florida and Andrew Jackson too.  At this period JQ remains still a strong supporter and admirer of Jackson.  And long before this time, and during this time he demonstrates his prescience the slaveocracy would divide and destroy -- via war -- these United States.

     . . . . What am I reading, or trying to read, personally?  Still locked in with The Perfect King: The Life of Edward II Father of the English Nation (2006). He has managed to get rid of Mortimer, become king in his own right, not a boyish figurehead, and be at war with the Scots.  It's early in the 1330's still.

Continuing too, with Herbert Hoover (2009) by William E. Leuchtenburg, in the Times Books Presidential Series. Learning a whole lot to fill in these, for me, blank decades in the history of the US. What a quite horrible person was Hoover, But Lordessa, was he an effective organizer on vast scales, from feeding Europe and Russia after WWI, to pulling a good third of the country together during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927-1928. Which was how he got to be POTUS, and the very worst one we could have skippering the ship of state in 1930.

~~~~~~~~~~~

   . . . . We strive to keep as much to our normal schedule from Before as we can.  It helps immensely having the Zoom History of Cuban Music course twice a week, and the once a week faculty cocktail party.  But Zoom is awful for parties, because only person can talk at at time.  At parties there are all kinds of conversations going on at once, that's why they are parties.  Sigh.

Today's normal was the usual 7 or so AM wake-up (for me -- el V will always sleep later if possible; plus I am sleeping much better now, possessed of masks, gloves and not having to Go Out Where The People Are for a while). 

Got half of the accumulated laundry together as first task of the day. Laundering is more time-consuming and difficult than one might think, because of all the steps involved from "suiting up",  disinfecting and so on, which has to be accomplished every time one goes to the laundry room, plus then the disinfecting and washing when returning between washer and dryer loads -- or even to pick up mail. Beyond that, one wishes to pick a time when the other tenants seem more quiet, not running up and down the stairs, making sure nobody else is down in the laundry facilities, and so on.

At the same time we entered for the first time the thickets of ordering groceries online for home delivery.  I'd been declared the Greatest Goddess of the Hearth who ever lived, as we ran out of milk -- producing already thawed a quart of nonfat that I'd put in the freezer some weeks ago (still better than Parmalat, of which we have 3 quarts too).  We are going through milk much faster than Before, with el V home all the time, making coffee here all the time, and so on. We were also hoping not to do Morton Williams this week due to the massive number of deaths and infections online for this week, and April generally, but particularly last week and this one -- and nobody has a clue as to how many are positive, are sick, seriously sick, dying, dead, at all, as we still have no testing, and the medical people are still without PPE and supplies.

However the more pricey and specialty Gourmet Garage does local deliveries with its own people, not a service.  So we put in an order, which should arrive tonight between 5 and 7 (Wine Wednesday, o o).  It's pricey for delivery, and then we tip very good the person who brings it. But it is so worth it for us at this time, in easing stress, blood pressure (mine, according to the home testing machine, is still in the lower-healthy range), and keeping Isolation and Distance.

Goddessadamnit we are privileged.

Ha! the order is being delivered right this minute!

So, now the items have been disinfected.  We have washed and washed ourselves, and put things away. It's nearly time already to start thinking about what to do for dinner.

Only two items they didn't have.  But now we possess again, yellow corn tortillas!  With ample rice and beans on hand, and until we eat it or it goes bad, now we can always eat well.  Ya, boy, howdy, are we every lucky and privileged.  But we're looking at living like this very likely at least until September . . . .

I Shall Be Released (at least by exercise)!

     . . . . I had a lot of plans for yesterday because nothing for Zooming needed to be worked out for the students, no laundry needed to be done, and grocery shopping not again until Wednesday probably.  So I wanted us to start some work in here.

We both ... just crashed.  We took a time-out day, which we both needed.  It's been non-stop survival and work mode for a whole month already, without a breather.

So, instead -- Yesterday became ... 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  

I gave myself a pedicure, did about a quarter of the usual work-out, took full bath and washed hair. The last time I did all these things one after another like this was March 6th, a Sunday.

The relief from being on my knees, spine and face and arms stretched out as far as possible on the mat – it sounded as if I had an orgasm. Not to mention the release of physical tension. Upright -- how good it felt to do the combo very light weights and cardio-respiratory and dance moves, that all use a lot of my core muscles.

My entire body went limp and turned into a warm puddle, and my brain shut off. The endorphins kicked in so strongly from the release of weeks of physical tension. I was asleep by 11 PM for the whole night.  I couldn't even make through the John Quincy Adams's Diaries reading, in which he is predicting the War of the Rebellion in 1819, and so is Henry Clay and Calhoun and others (this is while JQ is Secretary of State to Pres. Monroe).

I cannot begin to describe the difference in my mental and physical state since the workout. I'm so used to doing this, it's normal! I did hear music instead of my audio book, but that can be remedied I just didn't have one up and ready to go yesterday, having let all that lapse in the non-stop survival mode. And yah, I feel it in the muscles this AM. It's been a whole month without working out at all, and hardly walking -- to the supermarket and back. But if I get back to my regular schedule I'll be back up to where I was pretty quickly.

El V's going to start work too, his neck is such a wreck, and he needs to do something since we can’t go out due to crowding and no masks. I will have to coach.

It's essential for we must stay in as completely as possible for at least another month.  Governor Cuomo predicted today it will be at least another two weeks before the curve begins to flatten.

As well, yesterday, wonderful LA cannabis entrepreneur / chemist / amiga package came in, full of incredible goodies including the 1thc-20cbd tincture. I like the tabs better, but holy cow! Recreational for him, so to speak, medical for me, plus lots of balms and teas and other things.

Last night made London Broil, carrots and mashed for dinner. It wasn't that cold, but it was raining. Also made a huge amount of rice yesterday, always good for lunches and snacks.

Today I'm making a pot of black beans. Among the flavorings are the leftover liquids and meat from last week's pork roast.  The excellent left-over lentil soup of earlier this week made lunch -- and there's still another serving or so left, which is great.

Tonight it is Saturday so it will be pasta and jazz per usual.  Just not the wine.  Still not feeling wine for whatever reasons.

Puuurfect for Mardi Gras Season -- “George W. Chadwick’s Tabasco: A Burlesque Opera”

     . . . .  In the Smithsonian Magazine online:

"Long-Forgotten Opera About Tabasco Sauce Heats Up Stage Again After Almost 125 Years

Thanks to some musical sleuthing, George W. Chadwick’s ode to the now ubiquitous hot sauce brand has been revitalized by the New Orleans Opera"

Cover art for sheet music from the original Tabasco opera, 1894. (Courtesy McIlhenny Company Archives)

Tonight [January 25th] the New Orleans Opera will revive the 124-year-old production for the first time in over a century as part of its 75th-anniversary season. Called “George W. Chadwick’s Tabasco: A Burlesque Opera,” the already sold-out production runs through January 28  [which was yesterday] at the La Petit Théâtre de Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The tongue-in-cheek burlesque opera promises to bring Chadwick’s artistic vision back to life with a full orchestra, chorus and cast of characters, including the protagonist, a hot-tempered grand Pasha, who threatens his personal chef after taking a bite of his dinner only to find it boring and bland. (A blind beggar quickly remedies the chef’s faux pas by selling him a mysterious liquid that turns out to be Tabasco sauce.)

This is how the opera came to be in the first place -- and it was Boston, not New Orleans that was responsible:

Interestingly, McIlhenny’s company had no involvement in the original making of the opera. In fact, Shane Bernard, the McIlhenny Company’s historian, says that a group of military cadets commissioned the production as a way to raise money to help build a new armory in Boston, and they ended up pulling out all the stops.

“These well-to-do cadets hired an actual composer and librettist to create the show,” says Bernard. “We don’t know how they came up with the idea, but what it does tell us is that by 1894 Tabasco must have been a household word, otherwise it wouldn’t have made sense to everybody and the opera would have needed an explanation, but clearly it didn’t.” 

Watching Reading Wednesday: The Affair - Season 2 No Spoilers

The Affair is a television series from Showtime that mimics perfectly on screen the dynamics of a certain kind of middle-brow literary fiction.  Beyond the narrative and plot, the dynamics include the milieus that publishers, consumers and creators of such fictions inhabit, or presumably inhabit, or fantasize they inhabit -- or even aspire to inhabit as their entitlement as publishers, consumers and creators of such fiction.  This latter presumably is particularly the case if the writer is male (despite, as it seems, according to sales, the buyers of such novels are predominately female though the "critics" of these novels remain predominately male).

I watched the first season last summer, a year ago on dvd with ice packs held to my jaw, during three hot evenings. This was in the wake of an infected mess under the crown of a long ago root canal, which had so damaged the bone of the gum that an emergency bone graft had been done along with the emergency extraction of the final pieces of tooth to which the crown had been anchored.  Antibiotics, pain meds, ice packs (to keep off swelling and bruising -- this worked!).  The day after the extraction el V had to leave for Cuba.  In this context there was nothing that would have worked so well to distract myself from myself, particularly as much of the location of much of The Affair took place by swimming pools and the ocean of Long Island.

 Lots of beautiful cool water to look at during the heat of those August nights. As appropriate for this literary work, water imagery is all over this series, starting with the opening credit sequence, accompanied by music, composed and performed, lyrics written by Fiona Apple.

It's the same this August -- warm, steamy evenings, and el V's in Cuba, but -- no dentistry.  Still, this summer is also different. At this time last year we'd just turned in the final ms. for The American Slave Coast to ye Editor, but this August we're working on the script for the stage version, with music by Donald Harrison, at Symphony Space.

 Due to last summer's antibiotics and pain meds,  I couldn't drink, and due to the wound, I couldn't eat many things either. This summer I can drink chilled Verdejo, from Spain's Rueda region, which goes so well with oil cured black olives, cantaloupe, Jamón serrano and Manchego cheese -- with crusty bread and a Calabash tomato from  Chiapas.  I couldn't have any of these last year.

 

Last summer The Affair seemed to me slickly produced superficial "quality" tv,  centered on families and communities who generally have more of everything than they need, and who aren't the enthralling people they believe themselves to be.  It demonstrated some pretension to edgy narrative craft, in which plot lines and events arrive for the viewer in fractured chronological sequence and crucial information is withheld.  This latter has become technique of choice it seems in the last few seasons of television story-telling.  But too often, as with, say, Bloodline, there is no organic need to put off telling the audience essential facts. When these less than compelling facts arrive, the viewer makes a moue -- that's all ya got? -- since the surprising info falls flat and does nor enhanced or expand of anything that's gone before.  This willful withholding drags on the pacing and prolongs a season, which would have been much better as six episodes instead of 10 or 13.   

Noah Solloway, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, outside his wife's brownstone, before his second novel, Descent, becomes a sensation.

The Affair is presented through the perceptions of a variety of characters who rotate around the planet figure of Noah Solloway, played by Dominic West, who is -- a novelist! Most of the episodes are divided into two parts.

Alison, in a state of misery.  Perhaps.  She's supposed to be mysterious to everyone, mot of all to herself. But who knows? Since she's so often given to us through the eyes of the men in her life, particularly by a man who is a novelist basing what will be a blockbuster on his interpretation of Alison, and ultimately presented by the writers of a television series, who manipulate her feelings and maneuver her actions for the purposes of the series.

The initial episodes' parts are divided between Noah and Alison Lockhart, played by Ruth Wilson, the married woman with whom he falls into an overwhelming, passionate sexual affair. This life disrupting adultery happens while on the annual family summer vacation at his father-in-law's luxurious Long Island estate, the summer in which Noah is hoping to finish his second novel.  Alison, like her husband, Cole, and his family, are native for generations to Montauk and Long Island.  They are not fond of summer people, but they have no choice but to serve them for their livelihood.

Noah's father-in-law, Bruce Butler, played by John Doman, who like West, is recognizable from his role in David Simon's The Wire, is also a  novelist.  Unlike Solloway, Bruce's writing is highly successful and richly rewarded.  Films are based on his novels, and he writes the screen plays too, which is why he was able to buy this Long Island luxury (since it seems his wife's WASP family are currently down on their financial luck) and hang out with other successful and vulgar figures who summer in Montauk.

Helen Solloway, crossing my hangout, Washington Square Park, looking for a bench on which she can vape some weed.

Noah's wife Helen, played brilliantly by Maura Tierney, is dependent on her father's money, while her mother, still controls her life to a degree that Helen has not yet understood, starting with paying for her grandchildren's private school education (while Noah teaches in public school).

Helen's perfectly horrid mother, Margaret Butler, played magnificently by Kathleen Chalfant.

Helen and Noah have 4 children.  Noah teaches English in a public high school in Brooklyn; Helen has a boutique new-agey store stuffed with useless stuff of interest only to Precious Mummies with husbands who run hedge funds, so can afford to spend their days in spin classes, yoga studios, the hair stylist, while drinking wine, shopping and trundling their very special children from one place to another.  The store does not make a profit, but Helen has a (very big) trust fund, set up -- I think -- by her wealthy grandfather.  Her wealthy father is a self-made man who married into a WASP family.  

So here we are, located in a classic cesspool of seething class conflict and family dysfunction -- opportunity for lots and lots and LOTS of drama, which there is, and emoting about it, which the characters do. Nevertheless season 1 involved me enough that I requested the second one when it became available from Netflix.

The first season ended on a cliffhanger, with no conclusion to the primary plot line, and leaving puzzles of what happened, and to whom? not to mention who did it and why.  Ah, this viewer said to herself, "Not literary fiction at all, but serial fiction, long the most popular form of narrative."  Just like, as it turns out, we will perceive, with Solloway's own novel by the end of season 2, despite having been declared the bravest and most interesting voice to appear on the literary scene since Philip Roth. I get a kick out of trying to figure out if the writers are being sly and satirical or if they themselves believe that this is what "literature" is.

At first diving again into the roiling waters of The Affair again seemed too daunting.  But once I dipped into season 2, I went happily all the way to the bottom of the pool.  A great deal of this is because Helen Solloway gets to have her own parts in almost all the episodes.  Tierney nails and dominates every scene she is in. 

A scene in which Helen, already stoned, is drinking her wine, entirely miserable and angry after a terrible time in the divorce mediator's office, trying to get undressed, while karaoking along to "I Changed the Locks" is one of the most brilliant things ever put on television. Not to mention the courage of Tierny to do it, the way she does it.  Her Helen is the most interesting person in the series. 

Noah's the writer, so most of the time he's feckless and dull, while demonstrating his extreme selfishness, which is ruled by his dick, and petty egotism.  Alison's neither deep nor complicated -- she's too much like an opera's tragedy queen, or least that was how she came across to me in the first season, and I've probably not gone beyond that first impression.

However, her ex-husband, Cole, gets his own parts in season 2 as well, and he gets more interesting all the time. There is a new character, Louisa, brought by her parents from Ecuador when she was 11, who is anything but tragic, and who adds a great deal. Her insertion into the narrative is organic and plausible.

The other reason I fell happily into The Affair's season 2 was my slow comprehension that this wasn't actually a television thriller, but a portrait of how a certain kind of novel gets written, and the obsessions of a writer writing this kind of novel.  It goes so far as to dwell with even boring detail on the novelist's manner of moving his characters around, manipulating them and maneuvering them for the sake of the plot, not for the sake of psychological plausibility at times.  There is as much dwelling on these matters as plot given to the viewer, in the way many writers bang on too much, too long, too minutely,  to be in the least interesting about how they are such good and conscientious creators, who work,  Work, WORK!

If one can enjoy this sort of thing presented dramatically on screen, with a highly glossy surface, then this series is for you.  It evidently is for me.

The third season of The Affair premieres in November. 

Other reading, of real books, not watching on tv,  includes The Romanovs 1613 -1918 (2016) by Simon Sebag Montefiore; for the second time, Napoleon: a Life (2014) by Andrew Roberts; Grant (2001) by Jean Edward Smith; and, for the first time since an undergraduate, Travels Through France and Italy (1766) by Tobias Smollett.  I haven't finished any of them yet, but all 4 are wonderful.