The Long Game (2023)

I was test driving watching movies and sewing on my Featherweight while traveling by car for work-related reasons, and was restricted by what I could stream on Netflix and this seemed like a good bet. It is a film that is an an adaptation of a true story about the golf team from San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas, set in the 1950's. They're a group of Mexican-American boys who all caddied at an upscale private country club in their community where they were not welcome to play and certainly not be members. They aspired to play golf themselves, so they built their own crude practice course in the middle of the South Texas desert. They're brought together as a golf team under their coach (JB Peña), who has just taken a job as an Assistant Superintendent at the high school and is an avid golfer. He is a veteran of WWII and like many brown and black soldiers he was treated better abroad than at home, and aspires to membership at the (all-white) country club where the boys work, but is denied because of his ethnicity. They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays "Pollo", a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They're also helped by Frank Mitchell (played by Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments. It's a good story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It's a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy. If you're looking for a light movie to watch, it's worth your time.

Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

I was reading this book when Obama's 2024 Summer Reading list was released, and lo and behold, this was on it. I see this as an overlap with the movie that he and his wife's production company Higher Ground, supported making--American Factory. The theme is how are people making it with the shifting ground for jobs for the American work force. The background is reflective of the increasing concentration of resources in the hands of a tiny cluster of gargantuan corporations; the transfer of manufacturing operations from the American heartland to China and the Global South, where labor is cheap; the rise of online retail, with its seductive conveniences and its indifference to the environment, and what that leaves workers who have a high school education, sometimes less. Luxury at the top, fear in the middle, serfdom at the bottom, and nobody going anywhere. The main characters all work for Town Square, a big-box mega-retailer not unlike Walmart. The book focuses on the logistics team: the people who unpack delivery trucks before dawn and break down the boxes to line the shelves. There is no protagonist, this book is one where it is every man for themselves, not because they don't function as a team, they do, but because they are all vying for a leg up on the ladder, which is both a struggle and a lot like the jockeying for position that you would see at any organization, but the consequences of not moving up is loss of health insurance, living in your car because you can't make the rent, food pantry's and no leisure time because you have to juggle three jobs. It is harrowing and it rings true.

The Beautiful Game (2024)

If there is a sub-genre that is sure to put smiles on faces and often fit for family viewing, it’s a sporting underdog story. This one focuses on the Homeless Football World Cup, which has been held every year since 2001 and involves seventy countries--which is the ultimate underdog story, people who have no permanent housing getting together to play soccer. Bill Nighy is the star of the show--he plays Mal, an experienced Football Coach and talent scout who now oversees the England homeless football squad. The movie opens in a park in London, where Vinny catches his eye with some deft moves (albeit against a group of kids). Mal invites Vinny to join the squad with Vinny living out of the back of his car and struggling to find shift work. The bulk of the action revolves around the World Cup itself taking place in Rome with a ragtag mix of players, who do not seem to be able to work especially well together. This blend of hopeless players, inspired by their coach, feels reminiscent of other feel good movies in the genre. This tackles some deeper themes like addiction, with comments on belonging and cultural differences highlighted by some players from the competing teams being refugees. While, for the most part, there is plenty to admire in The Beautiful Game, it gets bogged down in some of its subplots, which can at times meander. Streaming on Netflix.

I Love Russia by Elena Kostyuchenko

This book is almost unbearably sad, from start to finish--the weight of that sadness begins almost immediately, and that is the thing that for me made it hard to read. The idea for the book was conceived in Ukraine. In May 2022, the author, a journalist, visited four locations—the Polish border, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa—on a five-week assignment for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. She witnessed destruction on an apocalyptic scale—apartment blocks reduced to rubble, orphanages emptied by the threat of heavy shelling, bodies scorched with “charred black [messes] for a face.” At the end of her trip, she was told not to return to Moscow. Because she’d transgressed Russia’s draconian new censorship laws specifically targeting anti-war media, a target had appeared on her back seemingly overnight. These conditions made her turn inward. She began to work on a book that contextualized her past reportage with personal reflections on Russia and the turn to fascism that Putin has been driving. The entire book has moments that cause the reader to reflect, but the section where her mother explains to her that Ukraine has always been Russian and why, which aches with both manipulation and naivete, is what runs through the book as a whole, and you leave with a better understanding of just how hard it is to escape a fascist leader once they have you in their grips.

Maple Syrup: Another Roadside Attraction

We love Vermont maple syrup. Especially the amber variety--which used to be called Grade B--it is darker and more full flavored than the more widely available golden syrup. The lighter variety is the more widely valued, but we prefer the amber syrup. The lighter syrup is collected when it is colder. Most of the sugar in sap is sucrose. When sap is tapped, naturally occuring yeast and bacteria break sucrose down into the smaller molecules fructose and glucose. The warmer the temperature, or the longer sap waits to get collected, the more sucrose gets converted. Fructose and glucose go through a Maillard reaction, or browning, when exposed to heat. Sucrose doesn't. The more fructose and glucose in the sap and the longer the sap boils, the darker the syrup.

Vermont makes more than half the country’s maple syrup, more than any other state. In 2024, Vermont’s sugar makers produced a record of 3.1 million gallons. All that maple is processed in more than 3,000 sugarhouses statewide, from smaller family-run operations to industrial syrup producers. We prefer to buy from a small producer, which is someone who has a sign on the street that they sell syrup. You knock on the door, tell them what you are looking for, they'll name a price and you pay in cash. It is so much funner than going to the super market, and the syrup is delicious.

Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle King

There is so much to learn in this book that centers on Fu Pei-mei, the Taiwanese woman who broke with tradition to show people how to cook. The traditional Chinese art of food preparation was something that you would not write down. It was instead passed down within the family, and the secrets were closely guarded--so when Pei-mei first wrote a cookbook, and then demonstrated the recipes on television, she was bringing Chinese food into the modern day. Her cookbooks were bilingual, so that they could be shared across language as well as being inter-generational. Then, like Julia Child and French cooking, she went on TV to demonstrate how exactly to make these recipes. Chinese cooking prioritizes two essential qualities: huohuo (“fire-time”) and daogong (“knife-skill”). The former is the precision with which a cook can control the heat of her stove, the latter the blade of her knife. Think of the perfectly sliced green scallions, thin and trembling like blades of grass, that accompany a Peking duck or the way beef sliced for a stir-fry instantly cooks on a heated wok, evenly seared on the outside, still juicy and tender within. Both of these skills were broadcast live on Taiwan Television in 1962, when a housewife and cooking instructor named Fu Pei-mei was asked by the network to host a 20-minute cooking show. The set was makeshift, decorated by a cloth fish stapled to the wall. Fu had been asked to bring her own ingredients and equipment, which included her wok, cleaver and brazier--it was just as low budget as the PBS shows that Julia Child made, but despite all of this, both shows were both ground breaking and wildly popular. The author has introduced a Taiwan icon to an American audience.

The Miracle Club (2024)

Here is an overall tip for watching movies you never heard of on Netflix--the higher percentage shot is to pick one with a cast of people you have heard of before. This one includes Laura Linney as well as Kathy Bates and the newly departed Maggie Smith, so hard to beat that line up. The story is less exciting than the cast. Set in 1967 in Ballygar, a hard-knocks community in Dublin, four friends have on tantantalizing dream: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French town of Lourdes, that place of miracles that draws millions of visitors each year. When Maureen dies, leaving her closest friends to mourn: Lily, Eileen, and Dolly, they skip the funeral and try to win a trip to Lourdes instead. The actual service in the actual church is therefore occurring unattended, save for Chrissie (Linney), Maureen’s long-estranged daughter, fresh from America and not at all on good terms with Maureen's neighbors. The story unfolds as to where the bitterness originated, and as is almost always the case, there is a misunderstanding and an assumption that is flat out wrong at the center of the dispute, and while the whole thing is fairly predictable, it is also a cautionary tale, because there are quite a few people in present day America who want to see a return to the morays and choices that women had then. This is a good watch in your living room movie, not something to seek out, but enjoyable in a quiet way.

Wait by Gabriella Burnham

I am on a roll. I am reading about how the other half lives--the half (or more) of Americans who live at or under the poverty line. The setting is Nantucket, that beautiful island off the coast of Massachusetts, which is associated with gorgeous estates, wealth, pretty boutiques, cobblestone streets, photogenic beaches, and clambakes. The other half of the story, less-told one, is the Nantucket of undocumented immigrants, broken families, housing insecurity and hopelessness--that is the half this book is about. The story is about a family where the mother is illegal and is raing her two daughters alone, working several jobs and barely making it. The story follows daughter Elise, who learns, days after her college graduation, that her mother, Gilda, has been deported to Brazil. She had overstayed her visa and, as she explains to her older daughter, was thrown out of the country "like she was nothing." Elise has no other family besides her sister, Sophie, a recent high school graduate. Together, they must find a way to support themselves on Nantucket, no small feat in a place where affordable housing is scarce and the cost of living high. The sisters are offered a lifeline by Elise’s college friend, an heiress named Sheba who has her own problems (such as getting rejected from a yacht club), which is how we see the stark contrast between the haves and the have nots.

Vermont: It Never Gets Old

Let's face it--Vermont is the best New England state--I feel somewhat chagrined to admist it, being of Maine roots and having recently driven from the bottom of the state to the top, avoiding the coast (which is both what Maine is known for and the attraction for the non-Mainiac to the state and not my thing, so take this with a grain of salt), Vermont has it beat. I was not a big fan until I met my future spouse and he took me there over four decades ago and I fell immediately and deeply in love with it. First there are the mountains, which are spectacular and everywhere. They interfere with it being much good for row crops, but the fields are ever green and so dairy cattle abound. They make for quaint scenery and also for excellent cheese. Artisanal cheese in Vermont has been a growth industry over the years I have been visiting. It started with excellent cheddar, which is always a winner with me, but now it is one of the best places to get a wide variety of high quality cheese that is locally made. Then there are the multitude of small towns that have good restaurants, a few breweries, a multitude of shops where people make things, and all in all, it is practically perfect. I hope to spend more extended time in state when I retire and have more time on my hands to fill with beauty.

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a fan of Ruth Reichl for a very long time, and across her career changes. I have read a lot of her previous written work, which includes mostly memoirs and food-related writing, and so to me, this feels like a work of fiction that has a fair amount of autobiographical back structure to it. As a number of other reviewers have noted, the author shines when she is describing food, and there is an awful lot of that (in a very good way). Stella had a very problematic relationship with her mother--she was essentially ignored her entire life, and Stella was left to manage herself. When her mother dies in the early 1980's when Stella is in her early 30's, she receives a small inheritance that comes with strings attached--it will be a plane ticket to Paris and travelers checks. France has no hold on Stella until she falls in love with a dress. Through haute couture, Stella finds her inner beauty, along with a mentor and spirit guide in Jules as well as a guardian angel in a book store owner. Stella doesn't quite know herself, and she certainly doesn't know her creativity and talents, and as her time in France unfolds, she finds all that and more. It is a charming story with some whimsy, a lot of wonderful food, a bit of romance, and quite a lot of history from that time period in the City of Light.