Domme: Small Village with a Big View

 

 

 

Domme, France

More Photos on my Facebook Page

 

Among the numerous eye-opening lessons learned when traveling is that places that are mere dots on a detailed map were once the center of very big historical events. This was certainly a takeaway from a visit to Domme. I suspect that most tours don’t even stop there, as its population is a mere 901. We were there to say goodbye to our tour guide, Bruno, who is among the few who live in the village.

 

Domme was founded by the French king Philip the Bold in1281 because of its defensive possibilities. It sits more than 800 feet above sea level and lords several hundred feet higher than the Dordogne River. It’s spectacular location earned Domme its title as “the Acropolis of the Périgord.” The village is perched atop a limestone cliff and even today the route to the top is so winding that most visitors take a special shuttle that fits through the narrow city gates. As I’ve emphasized in previous posts, the fate of many Périgord settlements were shaped by the loyalties of its strongest nobles. When Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to the French king was annulled in 1152, the region came under the control of England. Battles took place between the two kingdoms during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) but Domme, though, briefly occupied by English troops, was unscathed.

 

Actually, Domme’s major upheaval was sealed a century before it was built! During the Crusades (1085-1291) to liberate the Holy Lands from “infidels” (Muslims), Christian soldiers actually did gain control of the Levant (today’s Israel, Palestine Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria). But how were Christian pilgrims to get there safely? A series of Christian military orders were founded, the most famous being the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, better known as the Knights Templar.* They became the guardians of lands captured by Christian Crusaders and the protector of travelers. 

 

An important history lesson is that over time, many things that were once popular fall out of fashion and into revilement. By the late 13^th century, the Crusaders lost control of the Holy Lands; Saladin was such a brilliant leader that Richard the Lionhearted befriended his erstwhile Muslim enemy. Several popes, the most important being Clement V, wearied of the unconventional beliefs of the Templars (such as their support for the poor and renunciation of riches at a time in which the Vatican was becoming rich), accused the order of idolatry and corruption, and tried to merge them with the Knights Hospitallers. When the Templars balked, many were arrested. Domme went from strategic outpost to a prison whose graffiti persists as symbols etched onto stone walls. Clement V dissolved the Knights Templar in 1312, and numerous recalcitrant Templars were burned at the stake in Domme and elsewhere.

 

You’d never know about all of this hullaballoo and tragedy as you walk through Domme today. It is the quintessential “quiet village.” The reason to visit is that it has the proverbial million dollar (okay, Euro) view. It has a terrace that bespeaks its original intention of being able to see up and down the Dordogne River Valley. No raiders were in sight, unless distant cows grow disgruntled. Of course, being that it’s the Périgord, there are distant chateaux, tidy farmlands, and a vineyard or two. You can walk Domme’s main street in a New York minute and the main square has the townhall, an ice cream shop, a retailer of fois gras, and a statue of the valiant geese who gave their livers in the service of gastronomy. But what a view! It’s imprinted upon my brain.

 

As we left on the small shuttle that fits through the gates, I looked carefully. There were no Templars in plain view, but you never know. Most of the Templars shaved their telltale long beards and faded into the countryside. No one expects the Knights Templar!

 

Rob Weir  

 

* The Templars are gone but the name persists. London’s Temple Bar refers to the “bar(red)” gates into the City of London, and Temple Bank tube stations will take you to what is literally a major banking district, though the name probably comes from where an ancient temple to Mithras once stood.

Cell Phones, Hipsters, and Hollywood Have Killed the Movie Theater

 

 

Several years ago a Smith student told me she watched “Lawrence of Arabia” on her cell phone. “That’s too bad,” I replied. “You missed a film many consider one of the greatest films ever made.” I hasten to add that I don’t entirely agree with that; I find parts of “Lawrence of Arabia” ponderous. There is, however, no denying that it is a cinematic feast for the eyes. Or not, if you view it on a 2 ¾”  x  5 ½ ” screen.

 

The next blow came when “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won the Oscar as the Best Picture of 2023. Ugh! Hollywood honored a project I consider one of the worst movies of the entire 21^st century!  

 

Move the clock forward. Critics are currently trying to beat the holiday rush by listing their choices for the best films of 2025. Not only have I not seen a single one of them; I haven’t even heard of most of them. How could I? My town of 30,000 doesn’t have a movie theater anymore. The closest “art” theater is in Amherst, which is just 7 miles distant, but driving there when all five colleges are in session can easily take an hour in each direction. Plus, most of the films I might wish to see are tucked into smaller rooms that are sold out by the time I get there. Yeah, I could reserve tickets online, but that might mean having to arc my head upward from the front row.

 

The only other screens are at the bloody mall and I can assure you there is seldom anything of interest among its Marvel Comics, horror, military action, and comedies made for fourth grade education offerings. The less said about endless junk food, military recruiting, and local business ads, the better. These commercials–and that’s what they are–run 25-30 minutes before the feature starts. The previews of coming distractions are even worse; theaters pump up the volume to make the insipid sound more dramatic. Lately, if I see a Hollywood movie it’s several years later on a streaming service. From the little I’ve seen, there’s not much to entice me to subscribe to every bloody streaming service under the sun as if there’s virtue in seeing something on a 36” screen as opposed to my phone.

Movie theaters are a dying breed in part because they don’t show many films.  Films intend some sort of artistic and/or political statement, whereas movies are simply a way to anesthetize you for 90 minutes and have little enduring educational or redeeming value. There have always been scads of movies, but films that generally win awards. Of course, sometimes a trite movie like “Rocky” gets mistaken for a film, but overall merit used to be an award factor. Internet sites will tell you there are more cinema screens now than there were in the 1970s, but if you inquire about art houses or independent theaters, you get a different picture. Yes, there are more screens, but most of them are showing the same movies that every other American mall is showing. In the 1940s, often considered part of the golden age of cinema, there were 18,000 independent theaters. By the 1970s it was down to 4,000 and today it is half of that. In 1940, the U.S. population was about 132.2 million. It is now 342 million. Scale matters; today there are more than 200 million more Americans but your chance of seeing a serious film have decreased by over 60 percent.

 

Art films do exist, but very few are made in America and even fewer are screened here. I, of course, exaggerate to suggest that theaters are dead, but for much of the USA that’s only mild hyperbole. One-third of all US movie theaters are concentrated in just three markets: Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas-Fort Worth. To add perspective,  Massachusetts is the most-educated state in America. In the Pioneer Valley where I live, if  you combine Amherst and Northampton, a whopping 70 percent of residents have graduate degrees. I wonder how few Heartland and Rocky Mountain towns have access to serious cinema.

 

As hipsters age and start paying their own bills, expect theaters to take a big hit. A generation hypnotized by their phones is one culprit, but Hollywood tripe is another. Cities such as London, Montreal, and Paris still have cinemas, a further indication that film has migrated. For the record, the nations with the highest numbers of movie tickets sold are (in order): India, China, and Singapore. When Hollywood celebrates itself at Oscar time, it is also talking to itself.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

  

The Old Fire (Release date 1/13/2026)

By Elisa Shua Dusapin

Simon & Schuster, 192 pages.

★★★★

 

The Old Fire comes out in a few weeks. I really liked this work by award-winning Swiss/French author Elisa Shua Dusapin, but unless I miss my guess it is a work that will prove polarizing.

 

It is set in the French countryside and involves two sisters who have had minimal contact in more than a decade. Agathe is now 30 and left home at 15 to study and ultimately live in New York where she now writes dialogue for adapted scripts. When she left, her younger sister Véra had stopped talking. It is not entirely clear is she has aphasia or has voluntarily chosen to be mute. I suspect Dusapin wanted this to be ambiguous because the very crux of The Old Fire is about what is said and what is unsaid, explained and unexplained, and what should be saved and what should be discarded.

 

Agathe returns to France in the autumn to help Véra clear out their father’s home several years after his actual death. The book’s title, like many things in it, carries several potential meanings, but the most immediate is that their childhood home sat on the edge of a chateau-like estate in the Périgord that was ravaged by fire. By happenstance, I visited the Périgord just two months ago. It is a beautiful part of France with a storied past but its economy now relies heavily on tourism, wine, and agricultural products, the latter two of which are weather-dependent. There are many chateaux, all of which are enormously expensive to maintain. Neither Agathe nor Véra have the money it would take to restore their home, though one of the many disagreements among the sisters is that Véra loves nature and would stay if she could, whereas Agathe is urbanized and plans to leave as soon as she can, even though her life in New York has been anything other than a bed of roses.

 

The book opens with Agathe’s observation that her childhood home and immediate surroundings look at once familiar, but are a tatterdemalion version of what she remembers. In any event, the die has been cast. The house has been sold and will be demolished as the value of land exceeds that of renovating the building. Agathe’s desire not to linger is bolstered by the fact that everything they want must be taken away within nine days before the bulldozers level everything. Agathe wants nothing from the house, but Véra is bent on saving way too many things.

 

It is a classic push-pull between a pragmatist and a sentimentalist. Try resolving that dispute via gestures, hastily scribbled notes, and messages Véra types on her phone. In essence, Agathe and Véra are sorting, but not sorting out. Among the things they can’t sort out are why their mother ran off when they were both girls, why Agathe promised to protect her sister but then abandoned her, and what will happen to Véra in nine days, though the latter bothers Agathe more than it does Véra. In the hands of a less confident and competent author, The Old Fire would have a Hallmark ending in which all disagreements melt in the face of an unearthed mutual love. Without resorting to spoilers, I will simply note that Dusapin seldom resorts to sentimentalism. Some “old fires” can’t be rekindled. Not to mention that Véra’s brain works better than Agathe thinks.

 

Dusapin has written an unusual work of fiction that has very little plot, a surfeit of action, no primary narrator, and contains more internalized thought than dialogue. It is a quiet book that is often sad, but is also a study in resiliency (or stubbornness–take your pick). Courtesy of her translator Aneesa Abbas Higgins, the book’s prose is clear and unadorned, yet evocative and poetic. It leaves us with questions such as those I’ve raised, plus one of how two people can see the same things differently. Some early readers have yearned for a longer book to resolve numerous issues; at 192 pages, The Old Fire is either a short novel or a long novella. In my mind, though, concision was a virtue. What can be said when there’s nothing left to say?

 

A trigger warning: One of the characters is asleep and awakes to find she is being penetrated. She finds this semi-romantic. Ouch! Romance or rape?

 

Rob Weir   

 

 

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy of this book.

 

 

Cruising the River and Meandering in the Garden

 

(More pictures will appear on my Saturday Facebook page.)

 

I’m getting down to the last few sites from my October trip to France. I was happy we signed onto a National Trust tour to get such expert specialists to enlighten us. Towards the end of any tour, though, companies usually scale back the activities. Those days usually involve something that most people will like plus something that appeals to some but not others.

 

Our something-for-all activity was a cruise down the Dordogne River at Beynac. Why there? The Dordogne is a demarcation river for the region, much the same way that towns near me identify as being in the Connecticut River Valley even if they are miles from the river. As rivers go, the Dordogne falls into the category of being more scenic than mighty. There are parts of it that are shallow or narrow or rocky, or some combination thereof. There is also a vast difference between a river such as the wide Garonne and the more humble Dordogne. The vessel used to transport Eleanor of Aquitaine to Beynac, coal, wood, food, and other agricultural products, would have been a flat-bottomed  gabare. Fishermen used it as well, and not coincidentally, that’s what still used to take goods downriver and the show tourists around. Flat-bottomed boats, of course, have very little draft, perfect for unpredictable water flows.

 

There were wide sections on our cruise, but the main attraction is that is a good way to appreciate how towns, shops, and homes hug the river. The castle at Beynac literally looms over the villages. It is not, however, the only seat of power in the region. We floated past several chateaux of those friendly to or bitterly against Eleanor and Richard, especially after Eleanor’s marriage to the Capetian French king was annulled and she became a member of the English Plantagenet family. Luckily for Eleanor’s opponents, not many had the moxie to take up arms against her or her son Richard lest they pay with their heads on a chopping block.

 

I enjoyed the cruise quite a lot. Large fish (catfish, pike, and varieties of zander) leapt from the stream or could be viewed swimming in the clear Dordogne waters. The sun felt so warm that most of us shed our jackets. The wise ones used thin scarves to prevent the sun from burning our necks.

 

Speaking entirely for myself, I could have done without the visit to the gardens of Eyrignac. Some people love to wander through formal gardens, but I find they raise my working-class hackles. The only thing remotely French about Eyrignac was Sophie, our very enthusiastic expert guide. Sophie is 30, but she’s a teen in temperament. That gal loves plants and her favorite phrase was “ooo-la-la.” She made things more fun than they otherwise would have been. After all, we were there in October, so it wasn’t like we were bombarded by color. We were shown a formal Italian garden that dates from  the 18^th century. The manor house was also 18^th century, though it was made of the ubiquitous gold stone of the region. There were a handful of water features, but the big draw was a saw-tooth arrangement of boxwood hedges.

 

I would have been more impressed it they had sculpted them into topiary, but to my eye it was little more than parallel hedges where one block of green poked out, the next was indented, and so it goes. I again confess that formal gardens are just my thing and my idea of flower garden is one where seeds or bulbs are stuffed into the ground, somehow resist my ineptitude, and pop up when they’re supposed to. I could but nod and smile when the serious gardeners of the group said something about Eyrignac in English that was the equivalent of ooo-la-la. I snapped some photos, but was happy to get back to Sarlat for dinner and a nighttime stroll through its medieval sector. I guess the moral is never hire a historian as your gardener!

 

Rob Weir

 

Where Are My Choices?

 

 

 

Sometimes capitalism is enough to inspire communists! We’ve been told since were little that, unlike “socialist” countries, our economic system provides choices. The myth of capitalist choice is all around us. Almost every town has a gasoline alley with numerous stations cheek by jowl that are theoretically in competition with each other. Yet each sells gasoline that's a mere penny or two from other stations. Does anyone ponder over whether to pay $3.01 versus $3.02? It hardly matters given that pennies are being pulled from distribution!

 

The lack of personal choice dictates what we wear. The hot colors for 2026 will be teal, green, and blue. What if those colors don't flatter you? Millions of people will wear those colors anyhow, even though they think they look like they were mugged by park rangers. How about skinny jeans? They were hot just a few years ago until someone said you were supposed to wear wide legs that make you look as though you needed extra space to tuck in your peers when you go out. Trash ‘em; skinny jeans are back! For the record, I wear skinny jeans. It’s not because I think people wish to gaze at my physique; it’s because I'm old and my arse has disappeared.

 

Capitalism is supposed to work on a supply and demand principle. In theory, consumers drive the demand bus and suppliers respond by meeting their demand. As supply goes up, price is supposed to drop. In reality, capitalists create their own demand. They make “hot” items hard to obtain so the price skyrockets. It doesn't matter if the item is shoddily made; next year they will create a new demand and the sheeple will dump skinny jeans and wear construction worker pants with a tape measure in the side pocket once they see Kendall Jenner wearing them. Think I’m crazy? Explain why anyone would pay $100 or more for ripped jeans that look as if the wearer was mauled by raccoons. (I'll be wearing my skinny jeans unless I magically grow an arse.)

 

My rave  du jour is the size of automobiles. I need to replace my Prius Prime because disc surgery made me shrink by more than two inches  and I have trouble seeing out of it. I'm now around 5 foot 3 inches height and apparently the only person that short in all of America. My Prius Prime is now called a “compact” car. Dave Berry once joked about the new Ford Land-Grant, the first car to come with its own zip code. Maybe he wasn’t joking!

 

You might think that the answer to my dilemma is to look at subcontract compact cars. What are those? Yeah, I could buy a Smart Car. It should be called an Idiot Car as it gets less than 40 mpg. Who determines what mileage small cars get? In Europe the same vehicle that gets 30 mpg in the U.S. gets 50 or more. Maybe I should buy either an electric car or another plug-in hybrid. Have you seen the design of the new Leaf? Don't call it a Leaf; it’s more of a mature maple. I’ve viewed cars so wide that I need my phone GPS to find the glove box.

 

It's not hard to figure out who is behind big vehicles and low mileage; it's the oil capitalists of course. I'd say they lobby politicians to protect their singular desire to pump petroleum until they sell the last thimbleful to some rich fool who can afford $1000 per half oz. The truth is there’s little need to lobby because much of Congress is made-up of oil investors. They are the ones who answer the question of an old documentary: who killed the electric car? Anyone with more than 17 brain cells knows that large petroleum-consuming vehicles are not sustainable. Who needs big cars in a culture where a swelling tide of the people are taking Ozempic or Wegovy? Never fear; car dealers will regroup to sell us sailboats once the polar ice caps collapse and everything east of the Appalachians is under water. (Big Sale on Sails!)

 

I haven't completely given up. I can still check out Toyotas, Honda, and Kei. If they come through, I’ll  wait for retailers to offer skinny jeans with arse inserts. I'm sure I’ll be tempted to buy those at any price. Who needs choices?

 

Rob Weir

 

PS: Next year’s “hot” auto color is powder blue, if you believe marketers.

 

The Bookshop by Evan Friss

 

  

 

 

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (2014)

By Evan Friss

Viking, 312 pages + Back Matter

★★★★

 

An unusual aspect of the town where I live is that we have two independent bookstores and a large used bookstore in a place with just 30,000 residents. That didn't used to be odd, but many towns these days have no bookstores beyond a rack of best sellers at Walmart.

 

Evan Friss, a history professor at James Madison University, traces American bookstore evolution, proliferation, and reinvention. His title is slightly deceptive as he devotes much of his study to New York City. Of course, New York City dominates the publishing world, though the first bookstore of note was that of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. You wouldn’t recognize it; in 1742, it held but one novel, Pamela by Samuel Richardson. Franklin sold books at his printing shop, most of which were sermons, philosophical treatises, textbooks, religious tomes, self-help works, and political tracts such as Thomas Paine's Common Sense. But the scale was small; he once boasted of having sold 600 books in a year. As the American Revolution drew near, there were but two bookshops in the entire Chesapeake region.

 

Friss cleverly places interstitial asides between chapters that are devoted to such related topics as the smell of books, the role of buyers, eccentric shopkeepers, oddball customers, devotees, and “The Guy Who Never Buys Anything.”

 

Friss cites Boston as the prototype for modern bookselling, especially the Old Corner Bookshop (Washington and School streets), which opened in 1828. In less than 10 years Boston held 137 booksellers, the bulk situated on Washington Street. They catered to an increasingly literate post-Revolutionary War readership. William Ticknor and James Fields thrived by sprinkling notorious titles among its offerings such as Lydia Maria Child's defense of African Americans. (Racists smashed the window where it was displayed.) Hawthorne was a constant presence at the Corner Bookstore; Whittier, Longfellow, and Thoreau sold well. Still, there were just 1,553 American titles in the 1840s. By way of comparison, Penguin Random House alone publishes 15,000 new books a year.

 

As the 19^th century progressed, New York City passed Boston as the leader of the publishing business. No city does big scale as well as Gotham. D. Appleton had an elaborate 6,000 square foot shop in New York that combined publishing, wholesale, and retail. It anticipated a scaling up of the book business. Ironically, many future magnates began as peddlers: Roger Mifflin, Helen McGill, and Frank Collins. A post-Civil War observer could have predicted that department stores would become the future of book sales: Stewart, Wanamaker’s, Marshall Field…. They would be among the innovators for paperbacks, Pocket Books, and outrageous ballyhoo such as Julie the elephant flogging Rand McNally “slotties,” books that came with inserts like elephant puzzle pieces.

 

By the early 20th century, though, books were sold every conceivable way. Writers and readers crammed into the rooms of Gotham Book Mart owner Francis Steloff for fellowship, discussion, and new titles. Steloff introduced a Parisian touch, outdoor book stalls. This paved the way for a constant battle between vendors and NYC officials bent on getting rid of loiterers and unlicensed vendors. The streets and bookstore windows also became battlegrounds between moralists, surrealists, Beats, hippies, black nationalists, and gay activists. Friss also highlights famed and infamous bookstores such as the Oscar Wilde, the rightwing Aryan bookstore, and Drum & Spear.

 

Many will recall that the next stage was a surge of gigantism in the late 20th century. Elegant stores such as Scribner’s gave way to Walden, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. Then came Amazon, whose first venture was selling books and music from storefronts before it became the online retailer that swallowed Walmart.

 

Friss is not a pessimist. He shows us that bookselling has been an ever-changing pursuit. Of late, famous authors have bought bookstores. Ann Patchett started Parnassus in Nashville. Louise Erdrich followed with her own store in Minneapolis, Garrison Keeler in Saint Paul, Judy Blume in Key West, and Emma Straub in Brooklyn. These new ventures make venerable City Lights in San Francisco look like a grey beard, though it is still a vital concern.

 

To return to western Massachusetts, bookstores have reinvented themselves, some by going retro and selling everything from toys and cards to calendars and socks; others by sponsoring author readings and lectures. It is said that Americans don't read anymore. If you believe that, you're hanging around with the wrong people.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Etiquette: Don’t Be a Turkey

 

In movie terms, a “turkey” is a flop; in slang it means a foolish or obnoxious person. Thanksgiving is my favorite American holiday because it is the most democratic. It doesn’t overtly involve religion, gift-giving, commercialism, or anguish (beyond properly timing the bird). It’s devoted to food, friends, family, and thankfulness. Yet, a non-edible turkey can ruin the day. Here are some tips for hosts and guests, the common denominator being: Don’t be a turkey.

 

If you are hosting, advise guests in advance that politics are off the table for everyone. It’s not exactly breaking news that Americans are deeply divided, which is true even for those who think they’re on the same side. For instance, many liberals disagree vehemently about the Israel versus Palestine conflict. A metaphorical show of hands if an angry argument over politics ever made wish to emigrate to Mongolia. Hosts should remind everyone to avoid politics and shut down anyone who violates that wish. You don’t have to get huffy about it; just a friendly-but-firm reminder that everyone has agreed to leave political battles for another day.

 

If you’re a guest, remember that you are in someone else’s home and they get to set the house rules. Bringing up contentious topics when asked not to is just as rude as passing gas.

 

Guests should adopt a mind-your-own-business (MYOB) attitude for the day. Chances are good that someone will be gay, lesbian, transgender, an aluminum siding salesperson, have green hair, have ugly tattoos, or possess some other quality that makes you uncomfortable. It is hypercritical to MYOB if it’s a relative or friend of one. Poet Robert Frost once sagaciously observed, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Codicil: That doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk.

 

Whether you are host or guest, if you invite someone to dinner who might stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, stick close to them and sit with them. Every family has the equivalent of Oscar the Grouch, so don’t set up that person for a miserable experience unless that guest is comfortable dealing with cranks. Surprisingly, many people are, but let that be their choice not the product of some anal seating arrangement.

 

Never criticize the food– even if it sucks! If you’re vegetarian, vegan, or subsist on road kill, stay home. There was a recent Boston Globe article about a man who has hosted Thanksgiving for decades and has grown so sick of guests who announce their food preferences as they walk through the door that his invites come with the advice that if you are vegan or vegetarian, “Bring your own disgusting food with you.” That’s harsh, but we’ve all been there, yes?

 

Hosts, be chill; it’s a real bummer when the host collapses with a nervous breakdown. Get a large bunch of people in one room and chances are good something will go wrong–a spilled drink, a broken plate, a gravy spill…. These are trivial things. Don’t try to be Martha Stewart perfect. Even if you pulled it off you’d make your guests uptight. The point of the day is to be grateful for one another’s company.

 

It’s not necessary for a host to make so many dishes that a solid oak table bows in the middle. If you have enough food for all, it’s fine to make just a few side dishes instead of trying to replicate a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post Thanksgiving. For the record, the Saturday Evening Post ceased publication in 1969, about the time standards became less formal. It’s also not a good time to experiment with recipes you’ve never made before. Plus, inevitably numerous people will bring a favorite Aunt Edith recipe, even though you’ve said, “Just bring yourself.” Men will bring myrrh, which is actually a bottle of Johnny Walker.    

 

Guests, offer to help, be it carrying items to the groaning board or volunteering to wash the dishes. Chances are approximately 99.43 to 1 your offer will be politely refused, but it’s a nice gesture. 

 

Turn-offs for most: (1) Hogs at the trough. (2) Thinking your young kids are so wonderful that everyone will think so. (3) Young kids preparing food. (4) Discussing medical issues at the table. (5) Using cellphones at the table.

 

Guys, no football until the meal is done, the table cleared, and you are banished to the TV room. Rushing to the TV with your plate in hand makes you an inconsiderate gobbler and a sexist in the eyes of many women. You’re a double turkey if you see everything related to the feast as “women’s work.” 

 

Getting plastered or stoned is an absolute no-no. It’s not a bad idea for the host or a trusted friend to designate someone to deal with such an unfortunate event. Don’t let a loud-mouthed lush or rambling space cadet ruin everyone’s day. You can and should drive that person home, but first separate the person from others, perhaps a room where the turkey can return to the planet. 

 

Non-negotiable: You can have as many kinds of pie as you wish, but one of them must be pumpkin. Not squash. Not sweet potato. Not yam.  P-U-M-P-K-I-N. If you disagree, we can’t talk. Ditto if you think carob is “just as good” as chocolate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dream of the Middle Ages at Beynac

                                         

 

This might have been my favorite place that I visited. Like many places in the Périgord, it is rich with history but this one not only engages the imagination, it sends it into high gear.

 

The “et” alerts us that two small villages have been combined into a single administrative unit (commune), that collectively contain but 447 residents. When you are in the region through which the Dordogne River flows, wine, fois gras, truffles, walnuts, cheese, duck, goose, and pork roasted in duck fat are staples. To my taste buds, all but the fois gras (duck liver) are quite tasty.

 

The other unavoidable reality is that Eleanor of Aquitaine will be mentioned. When you hear that name, you know you are in an area that was contested during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). Some quick arithmetic will tell you that the struggles between the French and English crowns is misnamed, as it actually took 116 years. Is that because the “116 Year War” doesn’t roll off the tongue. Not exactly. During the period known as feudalism, you can’t think of “France” or “England” as you would like today’s nation-states. Wealth was measured by land and it didn’t need to be contiguous. The Aquitaine region of modern France often saw the English nobles and kings own more land than the French, which was sort of what was behind the Hundred Years War. (A bigger reason was dispute over the rightful heirs to the thrones of each country.) Eleanor factors prominently into this, as she was married to Louis VII, King of France from 1137-1152. Louis had his marriage to Eleanor annulled on the grounds of consanguinity (being too closely related), but she subsequently married Henry II of England. Though she was 11 years older (30) than Henry, she bore eight children between 1152 and 1189, five of them sons. Three, Henry the Young, Richard, and John, were anointed as English kings whilst William and Goffrey became the dukes of  Poitiers and Brittany.  Matilda, Joan, and Eleanor Junior, married into royal families (Saxony, Castille, and Sicily).  

 

One historian aptly labeled Eleanor’s children a “den of vipers” that allied with or fought against their father depending on how the winds of ambition blew. When Henry died in 1189, Richard became King of England, though he spoke Occitan and Gascon, dialects related to French. He spent less than six months of his ten-year-reign in England and perhaps never spoke a word of English.

 

What’s this have to do with Beynac? The Beynac line died out in the 12^th century and guess who inherited the castle. A gold star if you guessed Eleanor of Aquitaine. She gave the castle to Richard (as the third son he never expected to be king, but his older brothers predeceased him). A lot of what most people think of as medieval times occurred during Richard’s reign. He spent four years of at the Third Crusade (1189-93), battled Saladin, and was seldom out of armor. By the time of his death in 1199, English vassals owned more land in France than the French king, hence his sobriquet Richard the Lionheart. 

 

 

Alas for England, when Richard died in 1199, the crown went to Eleanor’s youngest son, John, often considered the worst king in English history for losing much of the land Henry II and Richard gained (including Beynac), and so much control over the English aristocracy that was forced to sign the Magna Carta. He is the only King John of England and a future monarch wouldn’t dare assume his name!

 

Getting back to Beynac, the château and castle sit high above the Dordogne River, prone to being swallowed by morning fog. It’s relatively empty, as most castles were. Few kings had just one castle. Most shifted royal residences several times a year, moves that entailed moving wall hangings, kitchen utensils, beds, chairs, etc. from one place to another. Only things like feasting tables were left behind because they were too massive to move. Beynac’s sparse furnishings allows you to imagine the dampness, darkness, rush-covered floors, fireplaces whose heat seldom filled a room, austere furnishings, the bustle of the kitchen, courtiers in echoey chambers, and servants and plotters clattering on stone steps. Build your own mental castle!

 

The village below is the usual assortment of small shops, eateries, services, and stone blocks. The riverfront village is built for ambling. Beynac is also a place where the Dordogne is wide and deep enough for boat sightseeing, the subject of a future travelogue.     

 

Rob Weir

 

State of the Union Isn't About Today. It Just Feels That Way!

 

 

 

 

State of the Union (1948)

Directed by Frank Capra

MGM, 124 minutes, Not-rated.

★★★ ½

 

State of the Union feels strangely contemporary. More’s the pity. This Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn vehicle is about a populist Republican presidential candidate who becomes a tool for a tawdry cabal bent upon self-enrichment. Relax, no one was anticipating the events of 2020s. First of all, this is a Frank Capra-directed film. Capra was a conservative and, for a time, sympathetic to both Franco and Mussolini. Most of his films champion the proverbial “little guy,” but what’s on the screen is more about fair play than partisanship. Within film history, Capra is the quintessential master of the screwball comedy (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It Happened One Night, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.)

 

As if often the case, the bloodiest politics took place off the screen. It wasn’t supposed to be a Tracy/Hepburn movie. Capra originally wanted Claudine Colbert (It Happened One Night) as his female lead, but the two quarreled and Colbert walked away from the project. Hepburn, an ultra-liberal, took her place and couldn’t stomach Adolph Menjou, a right-winger who outed radicals during the post-World War II Red Scare assault on Hollywood. Hepburn was upper-crust Connecticut civil to Menjou, frosty but proper. Ultimately, the film was a satirical take on the politics of its day, not ours.

 

Capra’s film was based on a 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name written by Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay. In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt began his fourth term as president–a subsequent Constitutional amendment limited presidents to two terms–but Roosevelt died in April 1945, with Vice President Harry Truman assuming the White House. By the time the movie was released, World War II had been won and smart money said Republican candidate Thomas Dewey would defeat Truman in the 1948 presidential release. It was such a given that several newspapers announced that Dewey won; Truman actually took the popular vote by 4% and the electoral vote by a 303 to 189 margin.

 

State of the Union begins with publisher Sam Thorndyke–modeled after William Randolph Hearst or Frank Gannett–about to die. His daughter Kay (Angela Lansbury) vows to take revenge on liberals (read Democrats) per her father’s wishes. She doesn’t bother to tell him that she’s having an affair with married aircraft manufacturer Grant Matthews (Tracy). Grant has folksy opinions galore. He utters nostrums with such conviction that they sound convincing even when they are short (or devoid) of detail. At times even his estranged wife Mary (Hepburn) is semi-convinced, though she doesn’t take it seriously when he considers running for president. Mary does not yet know that Kay Thorndyke is putting those ideas in his head. One wonders if Grant knows he’s being set up to become Kay’s puppet.

 

Grant comes off as for forgotten Americans and borrows other Roosevelt tactics such as fireside chats and appearing with his son Georgie, perhaps a substitute for FDR’s dog Fala. Kay uses her newspaper empire to sandbag GOP frontrunners such as Dewey, Robert Taft, Douglas MacArthur, and others. She also uses secret threats to align business interests with Grant’s burgeoning campaign.

 

The problem with the Matthews bandwagon is that Grant believes his own speeches about taking on both Big Labor and Big Business, bipartisanship, and his various promises to the proverbial “average” Americans (waiters, bellhops, his barber, and blue-collar workers). Kay’s next step is to manipulate Grant with campaign strategists such as Spike McManus (Van Johnson) and Jim Conover (Menjou). Kay even convinces Grant to go back to Mary and put their affair on hold until after the election. But when Mary gets wise, all strategy and counter-strategy passes to the women.

 

This being a Capra film in the era of the Hollywood Code, you can anticipate a “cat fight,” to use the sexist parlance of the day. Nor was Capra bashful about pouring on the schmaltz, and he simply didn’t do bleak endings. In other words, there’s little reason to think of State of the Union as serious political commentary. If there is a weightier moral to the film, it is that American politics have been an act of performed theatrics for a long time (as in, from the founding through 2025).

 

A final note, if one of the minor characters looks fainty “witchy,” it’s because she is Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz.

 

Rob Weir

 

What We Can Know

 

 

 

What We Can Know (2025)

By Ian McEwan

Alfred A. Knopf, 299 pages.

★★★★

 

I’ve heard people complain that the fiction market is saturated with lightweight junk. If you hunger for literary fiction, Ian McEwan might be your pheasant under glass, if you can stomach a bit of futurism. McEwan writes for a sophisticated audience that wants stylish and intelligent prose, not just a “good read.”

 

His latest, What We Can Know is set in both 2014 and 2119. The dual fulcrum in each time period is poet Francis Blundy and his wife Vivien. At a party not-so-modestly dubbed the “Second Immortal Party–the first in 1817 introduced John Keats to such luminaries as William Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb–Blundy reads his latest work. “A Corona for Vivien” is devilishly difficult poem. Coronas usually hail an honored person via a string of joined 14-line sonnets, 3 quatrains with alternating stressed and unstressed rhyme patterns followed by a rhyming couplet. In a typical corona, 7 sonnets are joined with the last line of the first sonnet becoming the first line of the second, etc. Blundy allegedly strung together 15 sonnets, a staggering 210 lines. One can only imagine that Blundy really loved Vivien. But according to records, Blundy presented Vivien with the original and then it disappeared. It was said to be brilliant and mentioned Francis in the same breath as T.S. Eliot. His corona became the most famous poem that nobody ever saw! For a literary scholar, locating it would be like finding the Holy Grail.

 

In 2119, British scholar Thomas Metcalfe teaches American history 1990-2030. The latter date is significant. A combination of climate collapse, dictatorial leaders, and nuclear blasts have altered the planet dramatically. Metcalfe and his on/off lover Rose seek to solve the problem of Blundy’s missing corona. Thomas thinks important clues are in the Bodleian Library where he and Rose teach. That would the Bodleian at Oxford University Snowdonia; the old Oxford campus is under water and the United Kingdom is an archipelago of disconnected slices of land. Most of the world’s digital archives are controlled by Nigeria, as are communications systems. Forget fancy dinners; the drastically reduced populace gets most of its nutrients from protein bars. The humanities are in crisis, though Thomas archly observes, “The humanities are always in crisis. I no longer believe this is an institutional matter–it’s the nature of intellectual life …. Thinking is always in crisis.” Ouch!

 

McEwan has written a mash up of Waterworld, a murder mystery, a (metaphorical) ghost story, and tales whose message is what goes around comes around. McEwan’s title encapsulates this. Can we know if there was there a corona in the first place? Metcalfe is a romantic who never considers the possibility that Blundy should have been named Bluffer. He romanticizes his area of study and imagines the 21^st century as inherently more creative and free than the 22^nd. At one point he enumerates the things that once existed that are now gone, a list that runs the gamut from music festivals and gardening to stupid sports (football comes to his mind), and tasty food. He is shocked by students who think he’s an old fogey who excused 21^st century people for screwing up the planet. Thomas and Rose find clues alright, but what really happened? What was Vivien like? Did she return Blundy’s affection? Are they replicating the lives of their quarry?

 

As a historian, it struck me that McEwan was writing about the dilemma of my profession. Consider Pompeii, which experienced what its citizens would have viewed a global catastrophe. If it is the nature of the humanities to be in crisis, is it not the nature of historical clues to lie hidden? Pompeii was lost until an accidental discovery in 1599 and wasn’t excavated until 1748. We didn’t even know the city’s name until 1763, and to this day new finds tell us more. What is lost in a disaster? We know precious little about social relations. What partners were faithful and which were libidinous? Who was gay? Who hated their neighbors? But the reason we write history is that not everything is lost. McEwan cleverly gives us an alt.version of Francis and Vivien to ponder.

 

McEwan may be guilty of being needlessly oblique. He definitely privileges style over narrative, a practice that will infuriate those who dislike ambiguity. What can we know? Like history, we sometimes paint with broad strokes to hide details that we don’t know.

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

History and Myth at Rocamadour

 

 

Rocamadour is a tiny place, but one full of wonder. It perennially shows up on lists of the most beautiful villages in France. It is indeed a village–just 604 residents–but it has a dramatic setting and a rich history. In some ways it’s more like a small Italian town in Tuscany in that part of it occupies a hilltop. Quite an imposing one. Tour buses wend their way to a small parking lot at the summit. From there you can walk through a parklet devoted to the 14 Stations of the Cross devoted to the life and passion of Christ. Even if you’re a scowling heathen you can appreciate the devotion and artwork of believers.

 

The view from the top is enough to inspire religious fervor. Rocamadour is crowned by a 12^th century château. That building isn’t open to view, but you can walk about the defensive ramparts. One wonders how often they needed to rely upon them as this part of Rocamadour is built into the cleft of a limestone cliff that sits nearly 500 feet above the Alzou, a tributary of the Dordogne River. If you time your trip correctly you can view the Alzou Valley cloaked in fog in the morning and appreciate the panorama when it burns off by the afternoon.

 

If you’re not a mountain goat you can take a lift to the bottom, but I recommend you strap on your knee braces and brave the 216 stairs of Le Grand Escalier as there are important things to see on the journey down. Plus, you can take solace the medieval pilgrims climbed up those stairs on their knees. Despite its small population Rocamadour holds an oversized importance in French medieval history. Its name derives from Saint Amadour–the name is linked linguistically to amor, French for love–who might or might not deserve sainthood depending on what variety of Catholic you ask. He was either a devout hermit from sometime in the first century AD, or a complete invention. What we know for sure is that in 1162 an unmarked grave was found near the entrance to the 12^th century Our Lady (Notre Dame) Chapel that looked quite old, though the body therein had not deteriorated. It was declared to be the body of Amadour who was venerated as a saint. (FYI, the 1969 Vatican II council removed some 200 saints’ feast days from the calendar as it could not be verified they actually existed. Try telling that to someone wearing a St. Christopher medal!)

 

Whether Amadour existed or not is just one of Rocamadour’s mysteries. Pilgrims have been coming there since the 10^th century because of miracles–I warned you in an earlier post it would come up again–associated with its version of the Black Madonna (above). In this case, it is a statue inside the church carved from walnut of Mary and the infant Jesus. Rocamadour was also on the road to Compostella and a veritable parade of medieval luminaries: kings, queens (including Eleanor of Aquitaine), and holy men.

 

Both St. Dominic and St. Bernard of Clairvaux visited and wasn’t often the founder of the Dominicans and reformer of the Benedictines and founder of the Knights Templar set up shop in the same place. The Black Virgin carving is said to be over a thousand years old. Who carved it? Some say Zacchaeus, a tax collector disciple of Jesus. His wife was Veronica who supposedly wiped Jesus’ face on his route to his crucifixion and left his facial imprint on the cloth. You might recognize that as the famed Veronica’s Veil. Still others claim the Black Madonna was carved by Amadour, whom Mary commanded to live as a hermit. Why a Black Virgin? No one is quite sure. Is it because Mary and Jesus were darker-skinned Semites, soot from candles, the age of the artifact, or…? Will someone please call Sherlock Holmes?

 

As if all of this weren’t enough, Rocamadour is also connected to Charlemagne (748-814 AD). There are few medieval literary works more famous than the epic poem La Chanson de Roland, which appeared in the 11^th century. It tells of a trap set by enemies at the Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD. An advance guard led by Roland held the pass long enough for Roland to blow a horn warning Charlemagne of danger. History or myth?  Were the attackers Basques, Saracen Muslims from Arabia, or from Spain? Who wrote the poem? Sense a theme here? To add another romantic flourish, visitors are shown cleft in the rock from which iron protrudes. It’s said that an angel gave Roland a sword called Durandal, said to be the sharpest blade in existence. Roland was able to hold off scores of Saracens until Charlemagne counterattacked. Imagine Western history had Charlemagne died at the age of 20.

 

Whew! If you make it down to the main street of the village after all that, it’s lined with small shops, artisan ware, restaurants, and places to sample fois de gras (non, merci), its famed goat cheese (oui, s’il vous plait), and wine (encore, encore!). Then it’s time to board the toy-like Quercy Rocamadour train, which just barely fits through the town gate to be shuttled back to the top.

 

Rob Weir

 

Southcentral Pennsylvania versus Western Massachusetts

Scrapple. 

 

The official bug of New England.

 

I will take a break from October’s trip to France for a digression to last week’s trip to Southcentral Pennsylvania. I’ll spare you the details, but circumstances led us to consider whether we’d ever move back to Pennsylvania. I didn’t think so, as we’ve spent the past 47 years as New Englanders. We’ve also spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania because we had many (and still have a few) relatives in the Keystone State. The semi-scientific way was to consider the two (sort of) objectively. For comparison’s sake, PA means Southcentral Pennsylvania from greater Harrisburg/Lancaster to the Maryland line and MA means Massachusetts west of Worcester to the Berkshires.

 

1. Scenery

 

Both states have beautiful areas and depressing spots. Although I am enamored of the Connecticut River Valley, PA has a lot of active farms that afford sweeping vistas. As a result it feels less cramped than Western MA towns that run into each other and close-to-the-road forests.

 

Winner: PA

 

2. Susquehanna or Connecticut River

 

At 444 miles the Susquehanna is the longest river east of the Mississippi; the Connecticut is the longest in New England at 407 miles. The Susquehanna dumps into Chesapeake Bay and the Connecticut into Long Island Sound. The Susquehanna is deeper as well (>200’ at its greatest depth vs. about 130’ for the Connecticut) but because the Susquehanna also has numerous shallow sections, most of it is not navigable. The Connecticut has been a working river for boats, water power, and fishing.

 

Winner: Toss-up. What’s your watery pleasure?

 

3.  Boston or Philadelphia

 

In Benjamin Franklin’s time Philly would have won by a landslide. I regret to inform you that Ben has been moldering in the ground since 1790. Boston has been called the American Athens for its vibrant intellectual life that includes more colleges than any other U.S. city. Western MA isn’t far behind. The Five Colleges (UMass, Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire) have more than 30,000 students and adjacent Springfield 13,000 more. If you extend it to Hartford, CT (26 miles) it balloons to 170,000. Young people make the area more vibrant and (to some extent) recession-proof. Of course, all cities have urban challenges such as crime, but Boston is much safer than Philly and Springfield/Holyoke is safer than Harrisburg.

 

Winner: MA by a sizable margin.

 

 

4. Cultural Life:

 

Both Philly and Boston have cultural opportunities and, as a fan of art, their respective museums of fine arts are wonderful. However, Western MA has tons more art museums (the Clark, the Springfield Quadrangle, and the Norman Rockwell to mention just three). It is a center for independent music, folk and jazz clubs, theatre, classical music, and high-end galleries.

 

Winner: MA

 

5. Friendliness:

 

PA by a mile.  As an old joke goes, “It’s untrue that New Englanders aren’t friendly. We’d tell you if your feet were on fire. If’n you asked.” We make friends slowly and selectively. Once you are a friend, we are very loyal and go out of our way to make sure your tootsies aren’t aflame, but until then you’re on your own.

 

Winner: PA

 

6.  Tolerance and religion:

 

The corollary to #5 is that Pennsylvanians are much more likely to be judgmental. Folks in MA tend toward an MYOB (mind your own business) attitude. Gay, straight, trans, socialist, pro-choice …. Far fewer care in MA. I’ve interviewed conservatives up this way who have told me, “They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.”

 

In MA, the first comment upon meeting someone is either, “Tell me about yourself,” or “What do you do?” In PA it’s “What church do you go to?” Not all of PA is like that, but there’s an old saw about PA that says it’s Philly in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and Alabama in the middle. I grew up in the Alabama part, home of anti-choice activists. Heaven help you if try to proselytize in MA. At best you’ll get an “I’m not interested.” From there is goes downhill to “MYO F-in’ B,” or a door slammed in your face. Also, PA has tons of non-aligned churches; MA runs the gamut from Congregationalists and Quakers to Buddhists and Wiccans.

 

Winner: MA

 

7.  Politics and sports:  

 

That’s not to say MA citizens don’t get riled. In Western MA politics are as much a contact sport as ice hockey. MA is a deep blue state in which the GOP almost disappears. If we elect a GOP governor it’s because the occasional Democrat is so loathsome we hold our noses and vote against them. We also tend to follow politics as deeply as Pennsylvanians follow sports like football.

 

In Western MA we have a weird relationship to sports. UMass football is the worst program in America. The Patriots get some notice, but the Red Sox are a religion. It’s odd, though, because Western MA hates most things about Boston except the Sox, Pats, Bruins, and Celtics. I’m a Yankees fan, so I’ve learned to hold my tongue. That said, I’m a democratic socialist and the place in PA where I once lived is so Republican it went well over 80% for Trump.

 

Winner: MA.  

 

8.  Transportation:

 

MA has pretty decent public transport, whereas Southcentral PA has nearly none beyond Amtrak and you have to go to Harrisburg to get that. It’s a good thing we have public transport because there’s a reason why MA drivers are called “Massholes.” We are the worst! If you’re ever driving in MA and see a car or two or three to your left or right, don’t wonder if they are going to pull out in front of you. They will! Do not fall for the deception that stopped vehicles have yielded the right of way. They are merely doing Massmath and calculating how close you can get to them to generate the most anger before they pull out and you have to stand on the brakes to avoid a crash. If you have the temerity to blow your horn, they will flash the middle digit.

 

Winner: PA despite walls of trucks and slow traffic around Allentown, Easton, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, and rinky-dink places you’ve never heard of.

 

9.  Beaches:

 

Winner: MA because a beach in PA is called New Jersey, whereas MA has the North Shore, the South Shore, and The Cape. (We never say, “Cape Cod;” it’s always “The Cape.”

 

10. Food and Beverages:

 

Call it MA gourmet vs. PA gourmand. PA food is heavy, starchy, and supersized. Many people in MA grow herb gardens; in PA the only spices are salt, pepper, and maybe cinnamon. They also eat things like scrapple, mincemeat, and hog maw. Don’t ask; you don’t want to know! New Englanders have fresh seafood; Pennsylvanians rubbery facsimiles from Red Lobster. (They don’t even have the grace to pronounce it properly. It's “lobstah.”)

 

PA coffee is an abomination to God and humankind. It resembles coffee only in that it’s brown. MA has cafes that grind freshly roasted beans and skillful baristas who serve works of art.

 

PA “beer” means Rolling Rock, Iron City, or Budweiser. MA mainstream beer is Sam Adams, but it seems as if every town and hamlet has at least one microbrewery. I enjoy trying stuff that doesn’t have to be chilled to Arctic levels to mask their lack of taste. 

 

MA has Herrell's ice cream; PA has Turkey Hill. What does a fowl know about ice cream?  

 

PA does have much better fresh fruit. I’m amused when people up here get excited about local peaches that are about the size of what is removed to create a steer. MA cherries aren’t much better. But MA veg is superior. Butter and sugar corn is delish; PA yellow corn is starch on a stick. Hadley asparagus is the best on the planet and we know that green vegetables should be, well… green, not pressure-cooked gray. We also love arugula, which some in PA think is a type of Chevrolet.

 

Winner: MA

 

11.  Taxes

 

MA has been nicknamed “Taxachusetts,” which isn’t actually true. PA residents also hate taxes. Show of hands for anyone who just loves to pay taxes.

 

Winner: Toss-up. If you want services and schools, ya’ gotta pay for ‘em. We just make ourselves feel better if we vent about them.

 

12. World views:

 

I’ll be partly charitable on this. In PA, folks  think the key to happiness is family and owning stuff. In MA we are happiest when we are with friends and are doing stuff. 

 

However, Pennsylvanians simply don’t get irony. Faced with irony the faces are either blank because they don’t get it, or because they confuse irony with sarcasm. Not so. Sarcasm is a reflexive act; irony is premeditated, conscious, and intellectual. It is intended to be humorous commentary on the gap between what is commonly believed and reality.

 

Winner: MA because I simply don’t know how one can live without irony!  

 

If you do the tally, you’ll know why I call myself a New Englander. No irony intended. Had I added a weather category, PA might have won, though with climate change that’s less true than it used to be. You can call that tragic irony.

 

Rob Weir