Get Low, the movie

A few weeks ago at my annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Birthday/Girls' weekend event, a friend brought along the DVD of a short film directed by Aaron Schneider, based on Faulkner's story Two Soldiers. It is a beautiful film, and a number of the scenes in it were shot locally. Turns out that Schneider's latest film is showing at our local independent theatre. Get Low, starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black and Bill Murray, is a story of an old codger in the 1930s who comes out of his hermit-like existence in order to plan his pre-death funeral party. Terrific movie!
Here is a synopsis and review from MSNBC:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38431937/ns/today-entertainment/

Back to Widor, slowly

As posted previously, I am a fan of big, booming pipe organ pieces, and particularly of the Widor Toccata. Charles-Marie Widor was the organist at St. Sulpice in Paris from 1870 to 1933. My favorite recording of Widor's Toccata is on "The Sounds of York Minster," a CD recorded in York, England. What is notable to me about that recording is the pace of the piece is much slower and deliberate than what is typically heard in performances of this work. I have gone so far as timing the piece by a metronome, and suggesting to Ray (otherwise known here as Organist Extraordinaire), as I handed him the number on a scrap of paper, that he try the Toccata more slowly. But when you are an Organist Extraordinaire, your artistic interpretation (including the meter at which you play pieces) does not necessarily yield to outside influences. Today, almost exactly one year after my first post about Widor's marvelous Toccata, my husband has sent me the following (from Wikipedia), specifically addressing the meter of the piece:

“Widor was pleased with the worldwide renown this single piece afforded him, but he was unhappy with how fast many other organists played it. Widor himself always played the Toccata rather deliberately. Many organists play it at a very fast tempo whereas Widor preferred a more controlled articulation to be involved. He recorded the piece, at St. Sulpice in his eighty-ninth year: the tempo used for the Toccata is quite slow.”

And here's Widor at the keyboard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8vz1D_L_OE&p=11AADBF440782809&playnext=1&index=27

Reading Henry James in Venice

While I was in Venice, I read Henry James’s novella, The Aspern Papers. Set in Venice and published in 1888, it is narrated by an unnamed American man who is devoted to the memory of a fictional American poet, Jeffrey Aspern. The narrator comes to Venice in search of Aspern’s long-lost papers, which are reportedly in the possession of the lover of Aspern’s youth, now an elderly woman living in Venice. By placing the home of the woman and her niece in a remote, run down palace on a side canal, James introduces readers to the quiet corners and hidden alleyways of Venice, far from the bustle and crowds of San Marco and the Grand Canal. The idea for The Aspern Papers came to James after he heard a story about an American who schemed to obtain letters of Byron and Shelley, and who became entangled in a marriage offer in exchange for the letters.
James wrote The Aspern Papers while a guest at Palazzo Barbaro, a home on the Grand Canal just off the Accademia Bridge.

James was frequently hosted by the American couple Daniel and Ariana Curtis at Palazzo Barbaro, one of several sites where the American intellectual elite gathered in Venice. The social life that wealthy traveling Americans likely experienced while in Venice in the late nineteenth century would have contrasted starkly to the hermit-like existence James creates in the lives of Juliana Bordereau and her niece Miss Tina in The Aspern Papers.
Here are some pictures I took outside Palazzo Barbaro - the main entrance, decorative grillwork over the door, and even the door knocker. The Palazzo is directly on the Grand Canal, but the rear side of the house, adjacent to the side canal, is a lovely, quiet alcove.

Bella Venezia

I just got back from nine days in Venice. Our group stayed in a house on the Grand Canal. We kept busy covering all of the sights of the city, and also enjoyed times when we could wander around on our own.

And yes, Midge went, too.

Vintage Sewing

Last weekend, I finally finished the two baby quilts that have lingered in my sewing "to-do" stack for over two years. As a reward, I splurged this week and made an ensemble for my Midge doll. For more pictures of Midge, her history, and her escapades in the last year, you can look at my prior posts. I am fortunate to have two vintage Barbie clothing patterns from my childhood, and I used one of them for the dress I made for Midge. Once the dress was complete, it was obvious that some type of accessory was needed, so I designed a little box-bottom tote out of the dress fabric. Midge seems very pleased.

I used the pattern for View A, but I did not make the detachable collar which is shown in this view. (A Barbie-sized detachable collar??? Unbelievable.) The bag was so much fun to make, that I immediatey made a second one for my friend LoLo's Barbie.

National Short Story Month

May is National Short Story month. I didn't realize this until today, but fortunately I happened to bring home two short story collections from the library yesterday. My unwitting salute to NSS month began last night, when I read one story each from the following books.

A friend recently told me how much he has enjoyed reading Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. In reading about Ms. Ogawa, I was impressed that she has won "every major Japanese literary award." The Diving Pool is a collection of three novellas. The first story, also entitled The Diving Pool, is a coming of age tale narrated by an unnamed adolescent girl, as she experiences the curiosity, angst, and ultimate devastation of a youthful crush.

Press 53 just announced the release of Pinckney Benedict's latest collection of short stories, Miracle Boy and Other Stories. Having never read anything by Benedict either, I checked out Town Smokes, his first short story collection published in 1986 when he was 23. Benedict sets his stories in the bleak, often brutally hard-scrabble rural south. Sutton Pie Safe is the first selection in the book, and contains iconic southern-lit components: a snake, a gun, a beautiful woman, an angry father and his son.

Molasses

My kids have a byline for molasses: "They are so bad they're good." There is debate at our house about whether or not the word molasses is treated as a singular or plural noun. I tend to favor plural. But that's not to say that I won't occasionally lapse into a singular usage. I do like to refer to molasses as a "they." Quite a number of our kids' friends have had their first exposure to molasses at our house. We are sort of self-appointed molasses ambassadors. Ambassamolassadors, you might say. Once we realized that other families were not providing molasses to their kids, we became somewhat aggressive whenever we had kid-friends over at meal time. We would insist that they take at least a small spoonful. Some would resist, and we would cajole and plead and ultimately insist. Inevitably the looks on the kids' faces would range from skepticism to outright hostility upon viewing and smelling the black liquid on the spoon. We tried many times, but I don't think we ever had any true converts. Oh, what they were missing. There is nothing more delicious than a warm buttermilk biscuit, cut open and buttered, then drizzled generously with rich, dark, sweet molasses. Mmmmm....they are so bad, they're good.