Lobster Art? Ayup!

 

 

Lobster by Donald Oakes. Photo by Rob Weir

 

 

Lobster Art

Wells National Estuarine Research Preserve

342 Laudholm Farms Road

Wells, Maine

Through November 4, 2024

 

Wait! Did I say, “lobster art?” Yes I did. Each summer hordes of people travel north to hit Maine beaches such as York, Ogunquit, Kennebunkport, and Old Orchard. Route 1 is the connective tissue, but most view it as something to endure whilst loading up on fast food, impulse retail purchases, and Congdon’s donuts. Too few venture off to find the Wells Estuarine Research Preserve. I’d be the first to say the name doesn’t sound inviting, but the last to say that it’s not worth visiting.

 

It truly is a research, educational, and training center for all things environmental, but it’s so filled with wonder that you don’t need to be bookish to enjoy it. It’s 2,250 acres that feature a cluster of buttermilk yellow buildings, barns, a water tower, a graceful home perched upon a hill with amazing views, and seven miles of trails that wend through a salt farm, orchards, woodlands, and the rocky beach of Drake’s Island (which is actually a small peninsula. Being that this is coastal Maine, there’s a lot of emphasis on all things oceanic and not much screams “Maine!” like its official crustacean, the lobster.

 

It might sound daft, but a small gallery on the compound features Lobster Art. Okay, don’t expect a Van Gogh of bib-wearing diners or a Rembrandt of a Dutch burgher pulling up his traps. Chances are good you’ve never heard of the artists featured in the exhibit, but take my whimsical remarks in the spirit in which most of the pieces were intended. Some are more serious and there’s a baby lobster on view (or not, it’s shy) but hey, it’s lobster art, so let’s have fun shall we?

 

As for you, next time you’re grabbing a box of donuts, Google the above address. You’ll be sad you ate so many sinkers, but you’ll be happy to walk them off at the preserve. If you get up that way before November, you can think of me and chuckle at the art.

 

Here are a few photos from famed photographer Rob Moi to introduce the preserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below are some of my favorite pieces from the exhibit.

 

Catch of the Day, Sue Rioux

Launching, Wade Zaheres

Photo of lobster filled with eggs

 

    

 

 

 

The Creation of Lobster by Peter Shepperd

Altar to lobster creation

The Women is (only) Half of a Great Book

 

 

The Women (2024)

By Kristin Hannah

St. Martin’s Publishing, 480 pages

★★★

 

U.S. troops left Vietnam 51 years ago, yet what the war meant continues to haunt. The debates are so intense I am reminded of what has been said of the Confederacy after Civil War. To paraphrase, if the South had fought with the vigor with which it erected monuments to its “heroes” after the war, it might have won. Like the Civil War, the Vietnam conflict is shrouded in anger, politics, myth, lies, and half-truths.

 

It takes courage to write about Vietnam and no-win foolishness to review such a book. Kristin Hannah has such a devoted following (me too!) that unexamined praise is a given. Now to jump into the fire. The Women is half of a great book; it’s also half of a mess. I was shocked, though, that many reviewers tagged it “one woman’s struggle to….” It’s nothing if not a paean to intense female friendships.

 

The Women opens in 1965, when Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a naïve nurse trainee from San Diego, shocks her parents by copying her beloved brother and enlisting to serve in the Vietnam War. As she repeatedly hears–even from military recruiters–women simply don’t go to war; heroism is for men! Frankie’s day one baptism of fire reveals the Army’s desperation, not her qualifications. She’s not ready for anything and no one cares. Hers is on-the-job training in life-and-death scenarios. Hootch mates Ethel and Barbara see her as new “meat” and couldn’t be more different from her. Ethel is a Virginia farm girl with a salty tongue and Barb an often-angry African American with no time for prissiness. That the three will later bond and become Frankie’s support group in numerous crises ought to put to rest any “one woman’s” story nonsense.

 

Vietnam forced men and women alike to grow up fast. This part of Hannah’s book is stunning. Think M*A*S*H with all the drinking, chauvinism, dark humor, and adrenaline, but with more drugs and little concern with who is winning the war. Doctors, helicopter pilots, grunts, and nurses hold a life-on-fast-forward mindset because death is all around. Hannah vividly answers the question of whether women can be heroes.  You need to read this section of Hannah’s novel to appreciate just how precarious and wrongheaded life and the military mission were in Vietnam. Even a good girl like Frankie ponders whether it’s worthwhile to hang onto her virginity or believe anything officials say after visits to Vietnamese villages, witnessing the Tet Offensive, and withholding treatment from soldiers certain to die.

 

Alas, the weighty gut-churning sections of life in-country give way to cliches, flag waving, stereotyping the counterculture, and catastrophizing of life outside of ‘Nam. Could we please bury the rant about no parade for Vietnam vets? How could there be? America: (a) left before the war was over, (b) sent new GIs to fight long after others were discharged, (c) lost the war. If Afghanistan vets get a parade it will be a case of more guilt than celebration. There’s no need to celebrate military branches (or politicians) who wasted and/or traumatized young lives with impunity. 

 

Hannah falls prey to dubious facts and makes curious character choices. She shows little love for the counterculture, yet several of her characters jumped on board. War critics included Vietnam Veterans Against the War whom I echoed in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. It’s also time to lay to rest several other Vietnam myths. Few on the homefront were blissfully unaware of the war, though very few vets (if any) were spat upon by antiwar protestors. It might have happened somewhere, but Jerry Lembcke couldn’t confirm any incidents when he wrote The Spitting Image. Other writers remind us that vets did not come back to the States on civilian aircraft and were not required to wear uniforms when not on base. As Lembcke noted, these myths came from movies; most protestors sided with vets and demanded, “Bring the boys [sic] home.”

 

Hannah dazzles highlighting the horrors of war and the ineptitude of the VA, but her throw-in-the-kitchen sink approach in part two weakens the connective bonds of her novel. There’s entirely too much one-sided patriotism at play. How about less flag waving and more attention to avoiding needless flag-draped coffins? Like legions of others, Frankie was a foul-mouthed, substance abusing, lovesick, PTSD puddle when she returned home. Luckily she had close female friends to guide her.

 

Rob Weir

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone Messes with Mystery Genre

 

 

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2023) 

By Benjamin Stevenson 

Penguin: Mariner Books, 366 pages. 

★★★★

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is the ultimate meta mystery. In 1930, several prominent British mystery writers–including  G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie–created a dinner group called the Detection Club. Author Benjamin Stevenson draws upon a lesser-remembered member, Ronald Knox, who developed a 10 Commandments for mystery writers. These are detailed in Stevenson’s foreword and include:  Murder mysteries cannot involve supernatural or preternatural agency or have more than one secret room, and the detective’s clueless sidekick–think Dr. Watson–can only be very slightly less intelligent than the average reader. 

 

Stevenson has written a very clever and snarky mystery involving the Cunningham family. He complies with Knox’s commandments and frequently breaks the fourth wall by telling us what he will do and what he won't. In other words, he messes with the entire mystery genre. There are no guns on the mantle–and certainly none of Chekhov's. Stevenson is the dominant voice and point of view of the novel, but you can forget about the unreliable narrator convention. Stevenson is so reliable that he seems unreliable! He tosses unexpected curves, but none are unforeseeable or illogical.

 

The title should be taken both broadly and literally. Stevenson doesn't mean that every Cunningham is a murderer–though some might be–merely that everyone in the family has committed acts in which someone dies. That alone makes them toxic, but they are especially so because paterfamilias Robert killed a policeman. A dead brother haunts the family, but the book's main character is Ernest. He is a candidate for the only “good” Cunningham, though–meta alert­–he does write books about how to write detective books. His mother Audrey doesn’t think he’s good; she blames Ernest for betraying his brother Michael. But everyone in the family seems to have a screw or two loose. Audrey is now married to Marcelo, a snobbish money-obsessed attorney. Sofia, his daughter from a previous marriage, is a surgeon with a lawsuit hanging over her. Katherine, Ernest's aunt, is married to Andy and both are up to something. Maybe. Michael’s ex-wife Lucy has her own agenda, as does Erin, Ernest’s about-to-be ex-wife. 

 

Does this sound like a group of people game for a family reunion at an Australian ski lodge? There's plenty that could go wrong and does. It begins when Ernest is about to drive up the mountain; policeman Darius Crawford issues him a traffic ticket. Ernest wends his way to a resort operated by Juliet to greet the other Cunninghams, though he’d rather be anywhere else. Crawford also shows up at the mountaintop just in time for a big storm to strand everyone whilst an unknown serial killer with a unique way of dispatching victims might or might not be practicing his art. There’s a competing resort on the other side of the mountain and several Cunninghams take a trail grooming machine to meet the McAuleys, whose  daughter Rebecca was a murder victim. They are being continually extorted to be told of the location of her body, yet they seem content to pay for bad info.

 

Let's throw in a bag filled with lots of cash, no cell phone reception, false identities, unusual motives, lust, and enough Cunningham family drama to make the Corleone clan seem like Rotarians. Although little is quite what it seems to be, Stevenson guides us through the muck without violating any of Knox’s commandments. But he doesn’t make it easy. For example, when it seems obvious that a killer has been fingered, Stevenson breaks the fourth wall to  direct attention to how much of the book remains, thus it’s way too early for such a revelation. After all, would Agatha Christie reveal a killer before the end of the book?

 

This is both a compelling mystery and a very funny book­. It retains thrills and tension, despite the humor and in-your-face conventions. The effect of reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is reminiscent of trying to solve a Rubik's Cube the first time you were handed one. Ironically, though Stevenson does a deep take-down of mysteries, he breathes new life into said genre. I can imagine that both readers and other writers will be equally enthralled by this book.

 

Rob Weir