Even if you aren’t a film buff, this is your one shot each year to revel in what, arguably, is our film industry’s best. Prior to the Golden Globes (Sunday, January 15) and the Oscars (Sunday, February 26), I try to see the films/performances suspected to be award nominees. I make my picks, matching my wits (and, money) against other like-minded cinema groupies. On event nights, have a party, or, if distance is an issue, and, it is for me, keep in touch with film friends via Skype, Cell or E-mail.
This year’s potential award winners are worth the price of the buttered popcorn. A child who resides in a Paris train station, surviving only by wit (Hugo). The compelling visual of a terrified Joey (War Horse), conscripted into WW I, bound, wrapped, and trapped in barbed-wire fencing. Re-visiting the American South during the ugly height of the Civil Rights movement. Returning to Hemingway’s Paris of the Twenties. Kathy Bates portraying Gertrude Stein (Midnight in Paris). Films, honoring women: Marilyn (My WeekWith Marilyn) and Margaret (The Iron Lady) and Albert Nobbs (Albert Nobbs).
George Clooney? Honestly, the films in which he has a role don’t even have to be good. This year, however, they are worth seeing. (The Descendants and The Ides of March).
Get busy. Make a list of must-see’s and knock them off before Oscar Night. Maybe you’re no match for Roger Ebert but you can still giggle at the gowns, gasp over the jewels (all, borrowed, of course) and choose your own Winners. Your reward? An evening or two of fantastic film fun.
If this female could speak English, she might describe herself like this:
“Although I live in a harem, with about forty or fifty others, I am an extraordinary woman. Weighing between 1,200 to 2,000 pounds, some might call me pudgy, but I believe my weight is distributed quite nicely over my 10-foot long frame. My face is broad and round. Living near humidity keeps those tell-tale wrinkles away. My hearing is exceptional, perhaps because I lack external ear flaps. Rather than walk, I belly-flop-flop-flop, admittedly, a little ungainly. Every year and, rather abruptly, I replace all my hair and skin with a catastrophic molt. Hobbies? Swimming is my sport of choice. But, really, who has time for play when I give birth annually. Toddlers keep you busy, especially youngsters who are 75 pounds at birth and grow to 250-350 pounds in less than a month. Charisma? I’ve nailed it. People come from all over the world to see me. As Helen Reddy sang, ‘I Am Woman’. Definitely.”
An Elephant Seal Cow with her 75-pound-plus Baby
Four years ago, in January 2008, I registered for a five-day central California Elderhostel program entitled “Four Great Migrations Converge: Elephant Seals, Whales, Birds and Butterflies.”
Being a birder, I know my birds but am shaky on sea and coastal species. And, I knew that Monarch butterflies, living South-of-the-Border, are the only insect that migrates 2,500 miles north each year to a warmer climate and eucalyptus tree groves. Having taken whale-watching cruises in Maui, I had learned about the Humpback’s migration to warmer waters to breed and give birth.
But, elephant seals? Not in my vocabulary. No idea. A marine mammal? Hummm. (And, yes, I am totally embarrassed about my ignorance.)
Just hanging with the Harem at the Piedras Blancas rookery located near Cambria, California. Note the newborn.
Since that first January trip, I have returned each year, with grandchildren and friends in tow, to re-visit the Piedras Blancas rookery and the hundreds of ES who migrate there. The rookery is located on Highway 1, seven miles north of San Simeon and the Hearst castle where William Randolph used to hang out. Hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th Century, only 50 to 100 of them were left by 1892. Gracias to the Mexican government for giving protected status to the ES in 1922, followed by the U. S. granting the same a few years later. Today, there are approximately 160,000 northern ES.
You really haven’t ever met an Alpha Male until you’ve come nose to proboscis with an ES bull. Its proboscis, a sort-of-nose for “rebreathing”, is also employed to produce bellowing and hearty noises, especially during the mating season. Talk about never leaving the couch, these characters rarely leave the beach to feed when their harem is in residence! You get the picture? Since bulls are sometimes 16 feet in length and weigh about 6,600 pounds, the cow’s bark is quieter and more reticent. Probably, that’s “Yes, dear,” in ES-speak.
Life is Good for the Alpha Males.
The Elephant Seal’s Nose by Mary Ciotkowski
Restoring Order on the Beach. Keeping the Women in Line.
The elephant seal’s nose
Is floppy and inflatable.
Most people say he’s homely
But I’d say that’s debatable
He weighs a ton or more
He settles where he pleases.
The beach is rather crowded,
So I hope he never sneezes.
Elephant seals spend about 80% of their lives in the ocean and, this is hard to believe, can hold their breath longer than any other non-cetacean mammals*, for more than 100 minutes. They can dive 5,000 feet beneath the ocean’s surface, but usually are content to stay at depths of 2,000 feet while searching for food. Their average life expectancy, both male and female, is 20 to 25 years.
The Piedras Blancas rookery is one of the largest mainland breeding colonies in the world. The area is open for viewing every day of the year with no admission fee or reservation required. According to the website, the total population for Piedras Blancas at the turn of the 21st century, as they come and go, was estimated to be around 8000 ES.
This past week-end, I returned to Cambria and, on a warm and wondrous Calli day, viewed some of nature’s most magnificent creatures and experienced their joyful conservation success story. Hounded to the brink of extermination by humans, it’s only because of humans that ES were also able to replenish themselves.
A Cow with her new baby, born during our Sunday Visit to the Rookery.
MOMMY, A BOY IN MY CLASS CALLED YOU A NAME. WHAT’S A “POWERCHICK”. www.CartooonStock.com
Since the national spotlight is on Iowa and its Republican Caucus, I had planned to Post my Essay on being an Iowan, a hat I wear proudly. That Post can be saved for another day. Instead, I decided to share this Essay, written by my daughter, Melissa, a pass-it-on treatise which speaks to so many women of my generation also. We knew we could have it all. Today, we realize that Life is all about compromises and choices, many we were unwilling to realize or make. Most of us were not and will never be satisfied with being “good e’nuf”, we wanted to be “best”. We were anxious to bring home the bacon and throw it in the pan. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. What is ironic is that our daughters are struggling with those same issues. Tree. Apple. Fall.
YOU ARE ENOUGH: Elizabeth Gilbert recently wrote an article describing how the all women she knows–powerful, successful, talented women–are riddled with anxiety and fear because they feel they aren’t doing enough with their lives. She wrote that they are “stressing themselves sick” while on a “mad quest for perfection.” Gilbert confessed that even though she has written five books, one of which is an international best-seller, she still second-guesses herself and wonders if she’s gone about it all wrong.
It broke my heart to read her words, just as it breaks my heart to watch all the smart, funny, wise, creative, kind, intuitive women I know be chased all day long by doubt and insecurity. I want to cup their faces in my hands and say, “You are enough. You don’t have to do all this. You give plenty to the world just being who you are.” I imagine them replying, with tears in their eyes, “Really? Is it true? I would so like to be enough.”
Perhaps I want to have this conversation with the women I love because it is a conversation I would like someone to have with me. I want to stop being chased by the fear of inadequacy toward some unknown, and I am beginning to think, unobtainable goal. I want to pause now and then without feeling like I’m going to fall behind. I want my mother to stop emailing me imploring me to slow down.
This past fall, my oldest daughter who shadows me so closely it frightens me, told me with weary resignation, “I will never do everything as perfectly as you.” As my heart contracted with pain for her and for me, my mind whirled with the thought, “What have I done? What have I done?” I don’t want my daughters to, as Gilbert writes, “twitch with near-constant doubt, somehow worrying that they are failing at life.”
So this is my New Year’s wish for my daughters, for myself, for all the brilliant and amazing women I love and the women they love: I want you all to know that you are enough.
I say to Emma, Clara, Mary H., Ardyth, Cody, Jenny, Corrie Kate, Haven, Psalm, Gabi, Jillene, Autumn, Natasha, Emry, Delaney, Carrie, Tawni, Kelly, Lyn, Hannah, Andrea, Jara, Lexi, Barbara, Susan, Ivy, Mary D., Olivia, Diane, Katie, Kim, Rachel, Lindsey, Kris, Annie, Nancy S., and all the other women out there: You can stop. Take a breath, slow your pace, sit awhile. You don’t have to do everything. You only need to be whatever is uniquely easy for you. And that is enough.
It is a strange concept for most of us, but I ask you to try it on. Embrace the idea of being enough just as you are. Practice doing less and being more. For your own sake, and for the young women who are coming up fast behind us.
We are all enough just as we are. Do less, be more.
Pass it on.
MELISSA MYERS PLACE
“ASK YOUR FATHER FIRST, DEAR, THEN WE’LL PLAN OUR STRATEGY.” www.CartoonStock.com
A gratin refers to a dish that is baked with a golden-browned topping of seasoned breadcrumbs and cheese.We’ve all heard of potatoes au gratin, a very popular American dish. But, many of us don’t remember that vegetables such as cauliflower, green beans, eggplant or tomatoes can be prepared as a delicious and nutritious gratin, as well.
Let’s salute and wish Happy New Year to the cauliflower. For Christmas dinner, I served a Cauliflower Gratin that was quite different from this week’s recipe chosen by Dorie. Both are delicious but this was far easier to prepare.
Oven-Ready
Golden-Brown, A Wonderful Aroma, Ready for the Table
As Dorie relates, “Simply made, appealingly rustic and very tasty, it can sit alongside a main course or, with a little salad, take the stage for brunch, lunch, or supper.”
Happy New Year to all you Clever and Creative Cooks, who keep bringing good food to our tables.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. P.J. O’Rourke
Since moving to Nevada in 2004 and for the first time in forty years, I’ve not found a book group to join nor met anyone who even belongs to one. In medical terms, while this is not a life-threatening problem, it’s like having a perpetual sprained ankle. And, yes, it’s painful. I miss mixing it up with literary chatter.
That’s the bad news. The good news is my friends, avid readers, themselves, are bookclub-belongers who do send constant, “Mary, you’ll love this book” e-mails. In addition, Judy Grossman and Jean Harding, both francophiles, find foreign-language books to match my French skills. Neighbor Michelle Morgando, inhales cookbooks. Every time she excitedly calls with, “Mary, I just found ……..”, I know it’s going to cost me $25. And, God Bless Ardyth Sohn, a PhD and journalism professor, who makes sure I don’t lose my scholarly edge!
I love to give books as gifts and, even better, receive them. As I wrote in my last Santa Snap, today’s Post will offer enough book suggestions to read you through 2012. Whether you use your library, buy second-hand, download on a device, or stop by your local and on-line bookstores, these books are available and must-reads. Grab your liquid-of-choice, settle in by the fire, and read on………
YOU HAVEN’T READ THESE BOOKS? OH, MY!
In early December I sent this e-mail to the readers in my life: “Because you’re all voracious readers with an appetite for good literature, I am asking for your assistance. Would you send me the title of ONE of the books you have read this year that you would recommend to an adult audience, 40-70.”
As for me, don’t miss In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and An American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. I’d also recommend Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton. You’ll sit down to a culinary and literary feast. As I move into 2012, I am finishing Ken Follet’s, Fall of Giants and just beginning the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s delicious. I’m anxious to dig into The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt and John McPhee’s classic Encounters with the Archdruid, both sitting on my bedside table.
WINTER IN THE ROCKIES: SKIING AND READING
I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. Anna Quindlen
My Colorado friends were all over the literary map with their picks. “I loved MarchandCaleb’s Crossingby Geraldine Brooks,” wroteDexter Cirillo, an Aspen-based writer. “I would especially recommend Caleb’s Crossing because of the historical perspective it gives on life in the early Puritan settlements in Massachusetts and the interplay between the Native Americans and the settlers. The depiction of Harvard in its infancy is also fascinating.”
Another Aspen writer, Cathy O’Connell, offered an emotionally-compelling choice. “If you’re looking for something a little different,” she wrote, TheThousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell,was fantastic. Nagasaki in 1800 with the Dutch East India Company. There was one scene about a kidney stone surgery that was so intense I literally fainted. No kidding. Ask Fred [her husband]. We were on an airplane, totally jet lagged, and I had drunk two cups of coffee. With the combo, all of a sudden I felt myself getting woozy. The next thing I know I hear Fred saying, “What’s your problem?” as my head is lolling forward. (Loving husband!) Anyhow, fantastic book, great characters and great insight into the closed culture of Japan.”
I always value Donna Grauer’s recommendation. Donna, who lives in nearby Basalt, has a knack for discovering new talent. She was reading Swedish author Stieg Larsson long before the rest of us could spell his name. “Just finishedField Work by Mischa Berlinski,” she wrote. “I loved this book, which deals with the intersection of missionaries and anthropologists in the backwater of Thailand and Burma. What a great story told with some humor and a very smart book. It is a murder mystery which may be beside the point but turns out to be the “delivery system” for a great story.”
For Judy Schramm, an Aspen Wilderness Ranger, picking a winner was easy. “I’ve read a lot of books this year but one that stands out to me is Mao’s Last Dancerby Li Cunxio. “The book is so informative about China in the 60’s and 70″ but, more importantly, how a child is plucked from an impoverished family life and becomes a great ballet dancer.”
Judy Zanin, my hiking soul mate, who also lives in Aspen, picked her book club’s recent choice. “My book club just finished reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacksby Rebeca Skloot, she wrote. “Was very interesting.”
Occasionally, I receive an e-mail suggesting a book to read, an article not-to-be-missed or “a concept” to embrace, from Mary Berglund, a valued friend with both Iowa/Colorado connections. She makes me think. “Last year’s reading faves were all over the place,” she writes. “From the classic “big” novel to some shorter works that could add a bit of diversification to your list. #4 below is a quick read as each chapter is pretty self-contained and very interesting to almost everyone—I give this book as gifts.
On everyone’s list of course! Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Jim [her husband] loved it too.
I read a lot of non-fiction related to my economics training that is probably a bit boring for your needs but one financial book is pretty accessible: The Big Short (one of the better books about the past financial melt-down) by Michael Lewis. [I read it, too, and agree.]
Love the Scandinavian thrillers, too: The Snowman by Jo Nesbo (translated in 2010 from Norwegian) His earlier book was great too:The Redbreast.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It is several years old but If you haven’t read it, it is about successful people and how the story of success isquite complex. Each chapter shows some of the different elements that have affected the lives of these outliers (those unusually successfulpeople). If I’d only known one of those “secrets” (the ten thousand hours), it might have improved my life!
Cutting for Stonewas also my Aspen neighbor and library board member Austine Stitt’s choice. “It is the novel I have enjoyed most this year,” she wrote. “An Indian nun gives birth to twin boys in Ethiopia. We follow these boys from their childhood through their adult years. Both become doctors, living on different continents. The nun dies in childbirth.The boys’ quest for their father takes different paths.”
Myglobe-trotting friend, Nancy Alciatore, is a Bridge aficionado and woman-of-many-interests. That’s why I’m interested to read her choice by Louis Sachar. “My favorite book of the last 90 days or so was TheCardturner,” she says. “It’s a real page turner (no pun intended) especially for Bridge players, but anyone will enjoy this book. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it made into a movie because it would have great roles for character actors. You’ll be thinking about who will play each character as you read the book. I’m suggesting Joan Cusack for the mother.”
Betty Schermer and her husband, Lloyd, two treasures in my life, are always reading big books – those tomes with 400-to-600 pages. Although Betty liked reading Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China,she chooses another. “I think I will recommend “Fall of Giants” by Ken Follett, the first of a trilogy. It follows five families through World War I and is very informative. Can’t wait for the next one.”
For newly-retired Ann Harris, a former Dean at Colorado Mountain College, it’s all about author Lisa See. “Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy-about the same family of 2 sisters,” she explains.
MOVING ON FROM COLORADO READERS
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. Charles W. Eliot
Mary Ann Foust will meet me in Iowa next Fall to celebrate our 50th high school reunion. [Translation: we’ve been reading together a very long time.] “Unbrokenby Laura Hillenbrand—–wonderful read—a book you “can’t put down” once you begin it,” she says.
Another high school friend, Gayle Fader recommends all books by her daughter, successful author Molly O’Keefe. http://www.molly-okeefe.com/ Gayle is one proud Mama. [note to all: Molly’s books certainly spice up my life!]
Former Iowan and chef Mary Sue Salmon, who owns Cuisine Cooking School in Moline, Illinois, has me intrigued with her choice. “My favorite book among many this year isPope Joan by Donna Cross. It will no doubt be very controversial and that is the fun of it. The author does a good job at the end of the book telling how herresearch supports this as true.”
When my neighbor, Michelle, a lawyer, judge and chef, finds time to read is a mystery. But, she writes “I just finished The Violetsof March by Sarah Jio, a wonderful story that combines love, history and a mysterious red velvet diary. I loved it!”
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. Groucho Marx
