Shall We Kiss?

No one does romantic comedy like the French. But this one is a little bit different. It is a bit darker than many French romantic comedies, with a real note of sadness that runs through out. There are two stories, one of a couple who meet today, and the woman tells the man a story over the course of the evening that is intended to explain why she does not want to kiss him. That a kiss can seem perfectly agreeable, and not necessarily rife with problems, but one never knows. Occasionally there is a dangerous kiss lurking out there. And that is the tale she tells. It is an awkward yet engaging story, that unfolds slowly and spasmodically. In the end it is both sexy and endearing. It is hard to explain. The contrasts are part of it's charm, and you just have to see it. Recommended.

The Chester Dale Collection

You know this is going to be a spectacular collection from the very beginning--there are two portraits of each of them (Chester and Maud Dale). He is painted by Diego Rivera and Salvador Dali, and she is painted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger (one of only two portraits he is thought to have done). They are heavy hitters with taste. Dale was reputed to have been an astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market. He thrived on forging deals and translated much of this energy and talent into his art collecting. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Art from 1943 and as president from 1955 until his death in 1962. Maud was his elder, and the one who had the final say in what was purchased.

Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included a generous endowment as well as one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. In the Washington Post article that is linked to above, the collection has not been shown together because without it, the French collection is empty.

There are many impressions that I carried away from the exhibit. The first was not wanting to leave it. We walked through it three times, and yet I was reluctant still to go. Fortunately, the catalogue for the collection has remarkably good reproductions of almost all my favorites. Monet is always tricky, because so much of the genius of the painting is the remarkable interplay of light and shadow, and often that does not come out well in a photograph--of the five Monet landscapes in my favorite room of the exhibit, only one (The Houses of Parliament) is stunning, and only one suffers terribly (Palazzo de Mula, Venice). George Bellow's 'Blue Morning', which is remarkably strong despite being amidst so much Monet, is gorgeous, both in person and in reproduction. In any case, the collection as a whole takes your breath away. It is a lush. It is magnificent. The breadth of genius represented is awe inspiring. The portraits hold their own with the landscapes. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, and the collection is worth traveling to the National Gallery to see.

Bitter Greens Soup

2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 c. chopped onions
4 c. coarsely chopped greens--beet greens, escarole, even celery
6 c. stock
1/4 cup short-grain white rice, like arborio
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional).
1. Add oil to a large, deep saucepan over medium heat. When oil is hot, add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add onions and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 5 more minutes. Add greens and cook, tossing gently, until it begins to wilt, about another 3 minutes.
2. Add stock and rice to the pan, bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and cook about 20 minutes or until rice is tender.
3. When rice is cooked through, season soup with salt and pepper, top with a grating of Parmesan and garnish with garlic slivers.
The short grained rice--Asian or Italian--is critical to the creaminess of the soup--which is more of a stew than a soup, although you can add more stock if desired. There is such a plethora of greens available this time of year--my favorite is beet greens, because I always seem to have more of them than I truely need, but there are wonderful ways to transform them into delicious dining options.

Hendrick Avercamp

The National Gallery has the exhibition of paintings from The Little Ice Age put together by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The collection presents the first exhibition ever devoted to Hendrick Avercamp. He was the first Dutch artist to specialize in paintings of winter landscapes, featuring people enjoying the ice. Some 400 years later, our image of life in the harsh winters of the Golden Age is still dominated by Avercamp’s ice scenes. Their splendid narrative details--of couples skating, children pelting each other with snowballs and, unwary individuals falling on or through the ice, are fascinating to look at and remarkably detailed. In addition to twenty of his paintings, the exhibition features twenty-five of his drawings from museums and private collections throughout the world.

The winter landscapes by Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585-1634 Kampen) are some of the most characteristic Dutch panoramas of the 17th century. It was shortly after 1600 that he developed his vistas of frozen rivers and canals into an independent genre of Dutch art. His paintings demonstrate to perfection the passion that natural ice has aroused in the Dutch soul for centuries: when the water freezes over, everyone takes to the ice - young and old, rich and poor. The Mute, as Avercamp was known by his contemporaries due to his inability to speak, had a sharp eye for a visual anecdote. There are always new details to be discovered in his theatrical settings: couples skating about elegantly, finely-dressed gentlemen playing kolf, children sledding, or a sailing-boat flitting past on skates.
As you exit the Avercamp exhibit, you are in a room with three Vermeer paintings, and a fourth attibuted to him--a sizable percentage (11%) of the world's collection by the artist most associated with the Golden Age. So all's well that ends well.

Marinated Carrots

1 pound carrots, peeled, quartered lengthwise and cut in 2- or 3-inch lengths
Salt, preferably coarse sea salt, to taste
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon slivered fresh mint leaves
1. Steam the carrots for five to six minutes until just tender. Refresh with cold water, and toss with the salt, vinegar and olive oil. Marinate for 15 minutes, then toss with the mint. Serve at room temperature, or refrigerate and serve cold.
I was inspired by the New York Times article on marinating vegetables as a way to get more of them into you and your children's diet (click on the title to link to the article). I take a salad to work for lunch about three times a week and I am always varying what to put in it, and these will do nicely for that.

Pirate Radio

I am on a streak. Movies that failed to garner either critical acclaim or commercial success appear to be something quite attractive to me. Maybe that is not entirely true. Certainly there are whole genres of movies that I dislike, and many examples within them of things that fit both these criteria. However, I feel like I am swimming against a tide. Not that I dislike things that others like, but perhaps my tastes are either broader or more forgiving--neither of which intellectually makes sense to me, which is why it feels weird.
This is a movie that my offspring and I agree on emphatically. The music is sensational, the story is enough to hold the whole thing together, and the cast of oddballs and music misfits matches up to my real life experience.

Pirate Radio is a fictitious comedy set in Britain during 1966, but is very loosely based on the real pirate radio station named Radio Caroline, in an era when the BBC was the only licensed radio broadcaster on the UK mainland, restricted by union agreements to playing a very limited amount of recorded music each week. In the story, a pirate station called Radio Rock began broadcasting pop music twenty-four hours a day from a boat anchored off the coast of England in international waters. Hosted by a colorful band of disc-jockeys, it soon gains an audience of millions and angers the government in the process. It should be noted that when offshore broadcasting began off England in 1964, the musical output and style of presentation of the first station (Radio Caroline), was very similar to the BBC. So the movie takes liberties with what actually happened.
In 'Pirate Radio', a group of odd-ball disc jockey's are living on a dilapidated cargo ship, broadcasting music that they love for an adoring audience of Brits who can't get enough of what is coming out of England and the U.S. Think of it as a rock radio mocumentary.

The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper

Joe does not lead a charmed life. His mother commits suicide when he is twelve. His father and brother bond over their mutual athleticism, and leave Joe out. His brother manages to feel that bedding cheerleaders makes him a superior person and they never really manage to develop a good brother-brother relationship. Joe does have friends but they tend to be a bit on the margins, and one triad in particular goes terribly wrong. Joe hides at the time in his relationship with a girlfriend, but in the end he leaves home, and channels a fair amount of his anger into a book that he writes about the home town he grew up in and the people who inhabit it.
Joe puts a thin disguise on everyone, as much for legal reasons as anything else--but he wants everyone to know who they are and what they did, at least his version of it. The book gets published, it is a big success, and his home town in universally pissed off, for outing them to the world and for embarrassing them. No one thinks that what he said was actually true.
So Joe wisely stays away. For seventeen long years, during which his anger doesn't dissipate, nor does he make any effort to heal past wounds. So when his father abruptly has a stroke and Joe returns home to be at his side, he is bombarded by angry citizens and he hasn't really managed to move past his past either--so they are all kind of stuck there, with the bullies still thinking that they can use fists to win, and Joe not being able to show them differently. In actuality he and his brother are just as stuck in high school as everyone else. It is a sad book, a funny book, and a wise book. I very much like this author.

Celebrate Administrative Professionals

I am 1000% dependent on my administrative right hand man. He is wise, intuitive, and nothing like me. So when he and I make collaborative decisions, they tend to be far better than a decision that I would make independently. He has a balance of common sense and good humor that makes him a joy to work with. That sounds a bit over the top, I know. But it is entirely true. He is also not afraid to tell me when he thinks I am wrong, and he is excellent at keeping me on track and out of trouble. We are decades apart in age and do not share a gender or much in the way of common interests, but that is entirely unnecessary for an idealic working relationship (from my standpoint. He may think I am impossible!).
So when my husband called me to say I needed to recognize him during this week of celebration of Administrative Professionals, I responded immediately. Lunch it would be. When I invited him, he said, "You know, this is Secretary's Week, renamed." Really? I had no idea. Well, he is definitely not my secretary. Not that I don't need that--I do, and I have a great one. But that wasn't my first thought when I heard the term--really, my administraive professional does nothing that I associate with secretarial duties. He doesn't answer my phone, take message, or organize my calendar. He is much more of a co-conspirator in keeping the organization on track. My expertise is in the area of what we provide, the content, whereas his is in finance and management. Without one, the other is more or less powerless to go on for any length of time. That is an administrative professional, in my mind.
So, how did a holiday get so successfully renamed that almost no one recognizes it? No idea. But I took him out to lunch--which was only partially successful--the lunch was very good, but he ruined his tie in the process, so financially it may actually have cost him more than he gained. Next year? I am thinking a gift certificate.

The Impressionists

I am a big fan of BBC dramatic mini-series to begin with, which is how I ended up bringing this home from the library in the first place. While I like impressionist art, and have traveled specifically to see exhibits, it was not a topic that I was burning to know more about--not 3 hours more about, certainly. Yet at the end of this, I was so sad to have no more. It is engrossing, and enchanting. Filmed in locations where the artists themselves painted, sometimes painting together, producing canvasses of the same place on the same day, and then we are able to see the different styles they brought to the genre. The six painters who are focused on are: Eduard Manet, Federic Bizzelle, August Renoir, Eduard Degas, Claude Monet, and Paul Cezanne. The story is told through the eyes of Monet, being interviewed in his garden in Giverny at the end of his life.

Richard Armitage plays a very engaging young Monet. The story is kind to him--he does not come off as a womanizer--his love life is not perfect but it is very good. He is supported emotionally, especially in his second relationship, to pursue his vision of art, and he does become well off and famous in his lifetime, so he gets a chance to live more comfortably as a result. The roots of the movement, the reaction to it in Napoleonic France (not warmly received) and the progression of each painter's ideas and thirst for fame build throughout the movie. There is an appropriate emphasis on the paintings that came out of each period, so that we can see the changes, and what was happening when. I particularly liked the parts about Monet at the end, building his own settings within which to paint in the gardens in Giverny, and therefore being able to stay put in one place and paint endlessly different versions of what he was surrounded by each day. Bravo!

Hamish Macbeth

I very much like the book series, penned by M.C. Beacon, that this BBC series is based upon, but it is one of the few instances where I think the movie is far richer, deeper, insightful, and entertaining than the books. Robert Carlye plays Hamish--he is less of a wild haired redheaded idiosyncratic Highland copper and more of a lean, intense, loyal, and committed man, who is balancing life as a village policeman, keeping people on the mostly straight and modestly narrow path, one which may not be entirely consistent with the letter of the law, but in concert with the spirit. Hamish is a man I would love to have dinner with, to know over a lifetime, to hike with, and to drink with.

The series is filmed in Plockton, Scotland, and while the books do not lure me to the Scotish Highlands, this series definitely tugs at one. It is entirely consistent with my experience in the Highlands--the richly green yet very rocky hillsides, the beautiful lakes and rivers, and more beautiful still shoreline--not the sandy beaches that bring tourists but rather the kind that lure me--a beachcomber more at home in hiking boots and a rain coat than a bathing suit. By the time I was halfway through the second season, I was already thinking of a return trip--maybe to walk about Scotland, maybe to rent a small cottage for a month, maybe both. It is a place with a bit of gloom in the air, but one that only serves to highlight the natural beauty all the more.

The first season starts off a bit weakly, but in the second the series starts to mine the range of human experience. The murder side of the murder mystery is a bit lagging, with more emphasis on the people, the community, and the relationships that develop over time there. Hamish himself is one who has complex relationships with women and a great deal of difficulty navigating them in a way that directly reflects his feelings. In his work as a man he is unaided and often stumbles. In his work as a cop, he is aided by a side kick, who has the gift of second sight, and his reading of human nature is pretty good as well. Hamish trusts him and his gut implicitly, and their relationship is one to look for in one's professional life. I loved this, more as it went on than at the beginning, and highly recommend it.