Traditional Basque Headdress

I was blown away by the array of Basque headdresses for woman (a fraction of which are shown here).  How do they do it?
In ancient times the way women styled their hair and covered their head was distinctive of their social and civil status, and what is more, of the role they held and the consideration they received from a strongly hierarchical society. Within the rigid, stratified society, and subsequently in the traditional world until late into the 19th century, headdresses were worn by women to reflect their civil status.

That and other models gave way in the 14th century to a great variety of linen headdresses worn in villages along the Gulf of Bizkaia, all most splendid by their shapes and artistry. These women would be recognized and acknowledged by locals and foreigners here and beyond the territory of Bizkaia by their headgear.

Its function was affected by the pointed shapes of headwraps worn by women in Bizkaia, interpreted by the ecclesiastical authority as another instance that the body of women is “the devil’s door” (ie. too phallic) and hence became prohibited by bishops in the Basque dioceses. Nonetheless, the women of that time challenged the regulations over and over, for they looked upon their headdresses and dressmaking as part of the costume of their country and made its preservation subject of lawsuits and sanctions, for which they were mostly supported by the local authorities.

Rampage (2018)

Warning.  If you don't like either Dwayne Johnson or the King Kong style monster disaster movie, set this one aside.  You absolutely must be a fan to wade through this.
At the beginning, a scientist on a space station is struggling to save some genetically engineered samples from a mutated super-rat.  It is a definite indication of where this movie is going. The samples plummet to Earth, and land in three locations. One happens to hit ground in a San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary managed by Davis Okoye (Johnson). Davis’ favorite beast is a giant albino gorilla named George, and the clever animal happens upon one of the genetic samples. Before you know it, George is growing at a never-before-seen rate, accompanied by increased aggression and insatiable hunger. He kills a bear, escapes, and, well, lots of things go boom.
There are two other mutated beasts, and while the company who created the mutations and the US military are trying to kill the beasts, Johnson is trying to save them.  He has a former scientist-employee of the company who has a guess at where the antidote is kept, and there are a lot of battle scenes and up close encounters you would associate with a Johnson meets CGI film.  Very diversionary.

Juana and Lucas by Juana Medina

This is a book that my daughter-in-law read to her third grade class.  It is playful and inclusive, all while illustrating a point.
Juana, a Colombian girl takes on her greatest challenge—the English language—in this cheery series opener. She lives in Bogotá, where she enjoys life with her family and dog, Lucas. When English is introduced in school, Juana asks everyone she knows if she really has to learn another language. The author incorporates italicized Spanish words throughout Juana’s first-person narration, always providing enough context clues so that English-speaking readers can do some language-learning of their own (“When a grown-up says something is going to be a ton of fun, it means there will be no fun at all. Not even a single bit of fun. Nada de fun”). Enlarged words and phrases creative type placement help emphasize Juana’s lively attitude as she discovers the ways that English can be useful.
Let's all learn Spanish because that can be fun too!

Thanksgiving Thoughts

I really do love this holiday, even though this year I am kind of cutting it short in order to travel.  So I guess that I should start there, that I am grateful that the past couple of years I have been well enough to travel widely, and have managed to both travel to places that have long been on my to do list, and that I have been able to do things with family and friends as well.
The political climate has been such an incredible disaster that it is hard to know where to start being thankful and stop being angry, but I think that is the point.  Self-centered people who want power and control over people love the stirring up of great passions, both for and against them, and we have seen that continue to play out in our nation's leadership.  Fortunately, there have been some rays of hope with elections this month.  The first is that people showed up.  They weren't quite as outraged as I would have hoped, and seemingly decent people had very morally bankrupt ideas about what is and is not acceptable to perpetrate on your fellow man.  The attack on the free press and the incitement of violence has prompted not unsubstantiated comparisons with fascism and nationalism.  The youth vote in particular, was encouraging.  More to be done, but I am thankful for the engagement, and the fact that over a 100 women will be in the next Congress, many of them of color.  It is about time and I am very thankful about that.

Book Club (2018)

I watched this on a trans-Atlantic flight as a light diversionary film, and it fits that bill, but with some heavy hitting talent on the screen.  Much as how I feel about Grace and Frankie, this film doesn't add up to the sum of its talent, but it is good.
Each of the four lead female characters represents a distinctive romantic stage of older womanhood. Jane Fonda’s Vivian is a never-wed, fabulously successful luxury hotel owner who has a huge appetite for sex but steadfastly shuns commitment.  She is sset back a bit when Don Johnson, playing her old high school sweetheart, reappears on her scene.  Keaton’s character, who is also named Diane, is a recent widow after 40 years of marriage. Her two grown married daughters never consider that maybe she wouldn’t want to spend the rest of her days in the elder-care-ready basement in one of their Arizona homes. She meets a dead-heading pilot, Andy Garcia, and falls a little bit in love with him.  Candace Bergen’s Sharon is an outwardly intimidating federal judge who hasn’t had a relationship of any kind, save with her cat, ever since her divorce 18 years ago. But now that her ex and her son are both engaged, she decides to give online dating sites a try, and she find's her first outing with Wallace Shawn to be much more fun than she anticipated. Mary Steenburgen’s Carol is the only one of the bunch whose marriage is still intact as she lives out her dream as a successful chef with a bustling eatery. But she and hubby Craig Nelson have struggled with intimacy ever since he retired six months ago.So it is a quiet (and largely PG) exploration of end of life intimacy.

The Saboteur by Andrew Gross

This is not really my sort of story.  My father and my father-in-law were huge fans of the unsung heroism of some during WWII.  I did not know, but this story was an epic movie starring Kirk Douglas called the Heroes of Telemark (yet to be seen).

This is a work of historical fiction based on the true life stories of the Norwegian Freedom Fighters assigned the seemingly impossible task of destroying the Nazis’ supply of heavy water before it could be used to produce an atomic bomb. I read it because my parents were reading it for their book club, and we also had family in town.  They read the book that is the actual account of this actual event, and so it was nice to juxtapose that with the elements of the book that are added for propelling the story. 
Kurt Nordstrum was an engineering student in Oslo in 1940 when the Nazis invaded. His whole life changes as he fights with his friends in the Norwegian resistance. The friendships, bravery and strength of these men and women is highlighted in this story.  The book allows one to feel the tension between love for country, the resistance to the Nazi's and the atmosphere of evil that comes about with an occupying force.  Who to trust, who not to trust, how to balance impending casualties and the risks that everyday people took in the war.  While the Nazi's were really not on the right track when it came to developing an atomic bomb, these men knew that not, and risked everything to stop them. 

Basque Tombstones

The San Temlos museum touts itself as having the largest collection of hilarria, or ancient Basque tombstones.  They are disc shaped atop a trapezoidal shaped stand, and they face the rising sun, which is a cool way to think about how they want to think about their dead, basked in light each morning.
There are lots of designs that are represented, the most common being either rosettes or geometrical designs, and they often have a design that incorporates motion, going clockwise or what is thought of as a forward direction.  Other popular motifs are the sun and moon, and things that are natural.
I like the idea of carving something for a loved one once they die.  It is somehow more beautiful to me than a name and a date, and perhaps an epitaph about their character.  It is more about saying something with pictures rather than words.

Hearts Beat Loud (2018)

I really enjoyed this quiet independent movie that focuses on a young woman about to leave her single parent home and go to college.
Frank is a widower who owns a record shop in Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood far removed from the bustle of Manhattan. If you go to Red Hook, you can feel the past of rock and roll, when vinyl was all we had and the quality of an artist was judged on their boy of work.  However, it is unsustainable, and as with all things, the winds of gentrification are blowing.  So Red Hook is closing and his daughter is going far away to college.
Before she goes, they record a song that she has written, and Frank, on a whim, uploads it to Spotify, and sometime later it ends up on an indy music play list.  He starts to get performance fever, the thought that he and his daughter could make it big, that she wouldn't have to leave, they could just play music, and he runs with that for a while, but then they settle back into the real world, a bit grumpily, and move on.

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

JK Rowling's murder mystery series is starting to resemble her Happy Potter series in at least one aspect.  While the first three books of the series grew incrementally longer and more intricate in plot, the fourth book exploded into something that could actually be used as a weapon if necessary.
If you are a murder mystery fan who likes character driven books, this is a great series.  Rowling is probably suffering from a lack of proper editing,  but Strike and Robin continue to grow into people that the reader feels like they know.  They are characters who come across as knowable, and who I like, despite some very irritating qualities.
The book weaves and winds in and out and around both a current mystery as well as a few hidden secrets.  We know who we want to be guilty, but it isn't until the end that the exact nature of the crime emerges and the reasons for it all may be the weakest part of the book, but it is a good read, easy in the way that Rowling's other books are to read, they suck you in and while they are heavy to lift, you don't want them to end either. 

Basket of Fruit and Vegetables, Andrés Ginés de Aguirre

If ever in San Sebastian in the future, check out the Museo San Temlas, which is devoted to all things Basque, going back to ancient times, and bringing it into the present.  Almost all aspects of a cultural heritage are covered in the three floors of the museum, and the art works go from medieval times to the 20th century.
I loved this painting by Basque painter Andrés Ginés de Aguirre, which is on loan from the Prado museum. It is from the early 19th century.  I have always had an affection for still life paintings.  There is something very beautiful and telling about what is composed in them, and they can reflect a lot about what the culture and the place and the time were all about.  This one has an outdoor setting and abundant vegetables, which is much like what you see today, with farming and gardens everywhere you look.