If It Don’t Hurt It Ain’t Comedy

What do Joan Rivers and Shane Gillis have in common?

 

I had never heard of Shane Gillis until he was unceremoniously dumped from the incoming cast of Saturday Night Live. I’ll bet you never did either. Gillis got the hook when it was revealed that he had done fake Asian accents and made some racist jokes. It begs the question of whether anyone associated with SNL actually bothered to do any research, but several other things strike me. Some of you won’t like them.

I wonder why the same people who want to rein in the Second Amendment don’t give a damn about free speech rights guaranteed by First. I despise haters, but I’m not on board with anyone who would replace dialogues with monologues. Those seeking to make the world “safe” for marginalized people often do more damage than good. Gillis was once obscure; now he’s a martyr who will get lots of opportunities to spread what they find objectionable. He will become the darling of the right. When his jokes start showing up on You Tube, Facebook, and elsewhere, PC warriors will have no one to blame but themselves.

Noam Chomsky was right when he said that the answer to hate speech is more speech. I’d put Gillis on SNL and let his work address the court of public opinion. It will decide whether he’s funny or just a jerk. Maybe he’d stick even though he’s conservative–like Dennis Miller,  Norm Macdonald, or Jeff Dunham. IMHO, Miller is funny, Macdonald not so much. I also think Dunham and his puppets are a paint-by-the-numbers embarrassment, but  he’s not going away as long as he’s filling auditoriums.

My second point is that good comedy always has a butt, even if it’s humanity in general, one’s in-group, or oneself. Rodney Dangerfield was the master of self-deprecation; his tag line, “I tell ya’ I don’t get no respect” signals it’s his rear-end in the line of the arcing boot. Comedy exists in the absurdity that lies in the gap between logic and how we actually live and think. Lucille Ball made that approach classic and Steven Wright’s career is built upon it. Did anyone ever do it better than George Carlin? Carlin was assuredly not a PC kind of guy.

Where did anyone get the idea that comedy is pretty? The best comics bring the pain and derail the train. They often use profanity and ribaldry, even when they had to invent or twist it to get past the censors. W. C. Fields coined the word “drat” because he wasn’t allowed to say “damn.” Mae West pulled a fast one on the humorless when she uttered the hysterical line, “A good man is hard to find, but a hard man is good to find.” Give me stuff like that any day of the week over the cloying “cuteness” often mistaken for comedy.

Groucho Marx is my favorite comic of all time. On You Bet Your Life–one of TV’s very first quiz programs–Groucho interviewed people for the sole purpose of making fun of them. He once had a male guest who had something like 14 children. A leering Groucho remarked that he and his wife must be mighty friendly. The guy bit and said that was the case. That prompted Groucho’s immortal riposte: “Do you have any other hobbies?” Priceless!

Comedy also has context. In films made in the 1930s-40s, the Marx Brothers lampooned everybody and everything. A sequence in Day at the Races saw the lads smearing their faces with axle grease and ducking into a black community to evade the law. Today this and the song-and-dance number that followed are viewed as racist. It makes me cringe when I see them, but here’s the deal: In its day–not ours–the controversy was that the Marxes included African Americans at all.

I weary of those who read history from front to back. To be sure, there are comics who have been either total jerks or just not very funny. I have never gotten Andrew Dice Clay, for example. Nor did I like Don Rickles, whose one-trick insult of calling his target a “hockey puck” was only funny the first dozen times he uttered it. Still, truly brilliant comedians rub your noses in things you don’t want to hear–and make you laugh. Richard Pryor’s take-down of white culture was sidesplitting; Dick Gregory’s was a stiletto in the back. Chris Rock certainly isn’t known for being polite. And while we’re at it, don’t you privately feel that Louis C. K. was speaking truth to bullshit in his now infamous “N-word” routine?

How about the brilliant Joan Rivers? She made fun of suicide, women’s bodies, her husband’s penis, and whatever else came into her path. She once told a joke about some terrible condition–I don’t remember if it was cystic fibrosis or autism–that made an audience member blurt out, “That’s not funny.” Rivers’ response was, “Fuck you!” She said she had a family member with condition X and that humor made things bearable. Actually, she wouldn’t have cared even if that hadn’t been the case. Comics such as Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, and Wanda Sykes are her children.  

If you were to make a list of truly great comics, there’s nothing “nice” about any of them. Henny Youngman was really sexist, but who can resist this joke: “My wife told me she wanted to go somewhere she’s never been for vacation. I said, ‘How about the kitchen.’” Remember the 1990s when every other standup pretender built acts around airline jokes. Nothing deathless about that prose! Who now recalls their names?

Let Shane Gillis do his act and we’ll decide whether he’s funny or not. If you want a monologue, talk to the mirror. If you need cute, watch cat videos. And if you need safe, join a monastery. But watch out for predator priests. Was that nasty? Yeah, but did it make you snort?

  

Curveball Resurrects the Story of a Female Baseball Player

Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone (2010)

By Martha Ackmann

Lawrence Hill Books, 211 pages + prologue, notes, bibliography, index

The recent dismissal of Boston Red Sox operations chief Dave Dombrowski touched off discussion that his place might be taken by a woman, Raquel Ferreira. The media has treated this as potentially path breaking, but that’s only the case if you don’t look very deeply into baseball’s past. As we move into time of the year where the World Series will be decided for the 115^th time, let’s look at something that’s truly unique: the first woman to play professional baseball. And I mean on men’s teams, not in all-female leagues.

Maybe you missed it when it was first published in 2010, but Martha Ackmann’s Curveball tells the story of Marcenia Lyle “Toni” Stone (1921-1990), a second baseman who made her professional debut in 1945. Ackmann is a Mount Holyoke gender studies professor. Yes, this is an “academic” book, though there’s nothing dry about it; Ackmann is far more interested in presenting a compelling biography than in displaying her (considerable) scholarly prowess. Stone grew up loving baseball and was really good at, when she got a chance to display her talents. That required great determination. It was hard enough being a girl decades before anyone even dreamed of Title IX; try being a black female during the 1930s.

Stone had a few things going for her. First, her family moved from West Virginia–which bordered Jim Crow Virginia–to Minneapolis when Stone was just 10. Second, Toni didn’t buy into gender roles. At a young age she acquired a nickname that stuck with her for the rest of her life: “Tomboy.” (Even as a pro player she refused to do ‘feminine’ publicity shots until 1954, and even then it was in her baseball uniform, not a dress.) The third break was that Father Keefe, a Catholic priest, talked Tomboy’s family into letting her play ball. Stone’s earliest organized play was in the Catholic equivalent of Little League. Stone was also a diehard fan of the St. Paul Saints, the local white minor league team. She began playing semi-pro and American Legion baseball at the age of 15.

Stone was known as a sure-handed second baseman. She was never a power hitter, but she was good enough to make her professional with the San Francisco Sea Lions of West Coast Negro Baseball League (WCNBL) in 1946, after stints working in Bay Area defense industries during World War II. Note the timing: In 1947, Jackie Robinson would break Major League Baseball’s (MLB) color line. Stone wasn’t dreaming of MLB; she just loved competing in all sports, especially baseball. She played in the WCNBL though the 1952 season, first with the Sea Lions, then with two New Orleans teams, the Black Pelicans and the Creoles.

Her big break came in 1953: an invitation to join the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League. A few explanatory notes are in order. The Negro League began its downward spiral when Jackie Robinson signed an MLB contract. The best talent soon gravitated to major league teams and by 1952 just six Negro League teams remained. But do not think of this brand of baseball as any sort of minor league. The year before Stone joined the Indianapolis Clowns, it signed someone whose name you probably know: Hank Aaron. Ernie Banks played for the Kansas City Monarchs before being signed by he Chicago Cubs. Tomboy Stone also one got a hit off a famous Monarchs pitcher: Satchel Paige. If you think he let her get a hit, you know nothing about Satchel Paige!*

Another matter in need of redress is the Indianapolis team name of the Clowns. To modern ears this sounds demeaning. That was only partially the case. The franchise came to Indiana by way of Miami, where they were known as the Ethiopian Clowns because of their proximity to the Florida Clown College associated with the circus, which wintered in Florida. Moreover, the Negro League’s “season” was so loose that its biggest game of the year was its All-Star game, not its World Series.** Money was tight and teams often barnstormed to pay the bills. On that circuit, the Clowns entertained with humor and razzle-dazzle analogous to basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters. Stone didn’t mind hamming it up during exhibitions, but she insisted on being treated as a real ballplayer.

In Ackmann’s telling, Tomboy spent her life defying expectations. She played baseball with men, but broached no nonsense. When a New Orleans player harassed her on the team bus and her manager told her to settle the matter herself, she did; she took a bat into her hands and clobbered him. Stone showed little interest in dating and her clothing choices led many to assume she was a lesbian. They were shocked when she married Aurelious Pescia Alberga in December 1950. She was 29 and he was 67!

Curveball is also a rich trove of Negro League facts and lore. There are good books on Negro league baseball, but most deal with its “golden age” in the 1920s-30s when such legendary figures as Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, Josh Gibson, and Willie Wells were at the height of their powers, and Effa Manley smashed a few gender roles as owner of the Newark Eagles. Ackmann’s book takes us inside the waning years of Negro league ball. Stone’s elevation to the big time was motivated in part by the hope that audiences would come to the park to see the novelty of a female player, but Stone refused to be a sideshow act. She played for the Clowns in 1953, but left the team over a money dispute and the signing of Connie Morgan, who also played second base. Tomboy then signed with Kansas City, but quit when it was clear that they too only wanted to cash in on her novelty. ***

Did gender barriers prevent Stone from following other black stars into the majors? No. She was more than a PR stunt, but she hit just .243 and would not have held her own in stiffer competition. Nonetheless, hers was a fascinating life that we are indebted to Martha Ackmann for resurrecting it.

Rob Weir  

  * The Clowns were the last Negro league franchise to fold. It barnstormed through 1967. I saw Satchel Paige pitch when the Clowns came to my Pennsylvania hometown that last year. Even at age 60, Paige could pull off his diamond trick. He took the mound with a catcher, a first baseman, and one infielder and retired the side. The next inning, Paige threw a strike and then motioned the two fielders to the bench. In just 8 more pitches he struck out all three batters.

** Because teams needed to make money through exhibition matches, it was impossible to prepare any sort of normal schedule. Were you to look at league “standings” in a given year you’d discover that some teams played a 100 or more “league” games while others might play around 40.

***One more female player took the field before the Negro League disappeared. Between 1953-55, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, a pitcher, registered 33 wins against 8 losses.

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Prisoner of Heaven Reveals Triology Mysteries (but should it?)

The Prisoner of Heaven (2012)

By Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Harper Perennial, 273 pages.

★★★

If there were an Ambiguity Index in which 0 meant “I can’t abide the very hint of ambiguity” and 100 is “I see no reason whatsoever to engage in explanation,” where would you reside? If you are anywhere in the 0-50 range, you will probably be very satisfied with The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s concluding book of his The Shadow of the Wind trilogy. Lots of loose ends are tied up. We find out about Fermín’s life before he showed up at the Sempere bookshop and why David Martín was haunted. We also discover the nature and identity of Martín’s tormentor.

These things make sense of mysterious things in books one and two, but the vital question is whether or not one wishes to know these things. Is it perhaps more fun and more intriguing intellectually to speculate than to know? I’d read anything that includes the delightfully roguish Fermín Romero de Torres, but I come down on the side of wanting to keep enough hidden under the covers to make him at least partly inexplicable. Ditto David Martín.

Luckily there is enough intrigue in The Prisoner of Heaven to keep one entertained. Fermín and Daniel Sempere are off on another caper, one that could put Daniel in harm’s way. This one takes place on the eve of Fermín’s wedding to Bernarda and threatens to sandbag the nuptials. A stranger enters the bookstore and purchases the shop’s most expensive volume, one kept under glass. He also leaves a chilling message for Fermín. Once again, we are thrust back to the dangerous early days of Franco’s dictatorship; again, we learn that some things are never completely over, especially when we assume that they are. We pay another visit to the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books and again learn that those who appear to be the most dangerous aren’t the ones you should most dread. 

All of this is well and good, but at heart The Prisoner of Heaven is a beat-the-clock caper book. This puts it into the category of being an exhilarating read, but lacking the literary excellence of The Shadow of the Wind or the spine-tingling creepiness of The Angel’s Game. Fermín and Daniel are decidedly take offs on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, so there’s plenty of irreverence, mayhem, and unorthodox adventure when they get together. One can also count on Fermín for ribald and snarky remarks, and like the previous two novels it’s up for grabs just who the namesake Prisoner of Heaven might be.

For all of that, the concluding novel is simply too neat and too conventional for my blood. I guess my Ambiguity Quotient rests in the 90^th percentile.

Rob Weir

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David Newbould: September 2019 Artist of the Month

David Newbould

Sin and Redemption

Rock Ridge Music

Note: This album is not yet supported by any new videos except for the title track. The album version of the other links are different on the album.

Yes, this is a new cover!

David Newbould’s newest album honors its title through vignettes of individuals pushed to the limits and facing moments of reckoning in which staying put is no longer an option. The dilemma, of course, is which direction to turn.

Newbould has faced a few of those decisions himself. He grew up in a Toronto ‘burb he couldn’t wait to escape. His journey took him to New York City and beyond, though he’s lately been ensconced in Nashville. The album’s most biographical song is “RunaroundTown,” in which he admits he chose to follow in the footstep of some of his heroes: Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young–who respectively fled Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Ontario. Ironically, the song’s vibe is more Springsteen than any of the folks mentioned in the lyrics. It’s hard, though, to find a particular category that contains Newbould. You can find, for instance, a video of Newbould performing an acoustic version of “Runaround Town” that reminiscent of Springsteen in his Nebraska days; but the album cut is more like Bruce with the E Street Band.

Mostly, Newbould is a storyteller who lets the tale dictate the musical style. “Diamonds in the Dark” is a swampy blues offering that is short on poetry and long on pain. He sings Sometimes a man’s got to move before he knows where to go, yet moments later laments I don’t know where to go. There’s a new version of “Long Road to Barstow,” which appeared on an earlier album. The previous also evoked acoustic Springsteen, but the new one is rocked out with its traveling clothes on. Barstow isn’t necessarily the destination for the story’s antihero whose life on the hard road is fueled by booze, pills, and tragedy. “Sweet Virginia Morn” is another in this vein, with its chilling reminder There’s something that happens when dreams don’t come true. And don’t be fooled by the singalong feel of “Oh Katy.” Its parenthetical subtitle is “Just Getting’ By” and it reminds me of an updated version of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. The heavy bass lines alert us that is a dialogue/rant against a life that should be but isn’t working: Running in circles like the hands of time/O Katy this ain’t living life/We gotta find something more.  

Newbould has a big voice that he reels in for sensitive material “Love You Too Much (Henry’s Song)” or the gospel-influenced “Smiling in the Rain.” But if you want to know how much sound Newbould’s vocals can generate, listen to him rise above the electric version of the title track. It’s another hair-raising tale, this one of a sister and brother in a family where the first–as viewed through paternal eyes–could do no wrong and the second could do no right. The latter is the path to sin and, eventually, yearning for redemption. My favorite track is “Sensitive Heart,” about the woman who got away and now looks for love in the arms of another. The arrangement pulses with the plucked energy of a backing guitar and features both a memorable melody line and some serious noise. Newbould booms above it.

Rob Weir

Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me Raises Questions about Sentience

Machines Like Me (2019)

By Ian McEwan

Doubleday/Random House, 332 pages

★★★★

But remember, please, the Law by which we live;

We are not built to comprehend a lie…

We are nothing more than children of your brain!

Rudyard Kipling “The Secret of Machines”

Is artificial intelligence (AI) actually “intelligence” as humans understand it? In the world Ian McEwan builds in his new novel the answer to that question is, “Probably not.” His is a very smart book that blends science, science fiction, actual history, counterfactual history, philosophy, mathematics, and imagination.

McEwan’s fictive tension rests in part on a real problem in AI research, that of P/NP. To the degree that I understand it, P is polynomial (computing) time and NP is nondeterministic time. What happens if a computer quickly identifies a problem, but cannot compute the solution to that problem at the same (if any) speed? Moreover, how does a machine deal with moral dilemmas or situations in which the answer is indeterminate, immoral, or morally ambiguous? My computer science friend reminded me of a central programming dilemma for self-driving cars. What if its cameras detect a child running into traffic and there is insufficient time to brake the car? On the other side of the road there is a group of 10 people waiting for a bus. What decision is made? Should the car be diverted straight and kill its powerless occupant, run over the child, or plow into those waiting for the bus? How can a machine make a decision that is ethics- driven rather than one resolved by an algorithm?

If P≄NP, one interpretation holds that a machine could never become fully sentient. If, on the other hand, some genius figures out a way in which P =NP, machines might acquire the ability to simulate human thought. That holds the potential to do away with human creativity, intuitive thought, and moral reasoning. The latter is the scenario implied in many dystopian novels in which androids overthrow humanity.

McEwan steers more toward the first assumption. He presents an alt-version of the late 20^th century that’s intriguingly counterfactual. In that realm, Alan Turing refused chemical castration for violating Britain’s anti-homosexuality laws and did not commit suicide in 1954; it’s 1982 and he is an esteemed member of the intellectual community. That’s not all. John F. Kennedy narrowly escaped assassination, Jimmy Carter defeated Reagan in 1980, and Margaret Thatcher leaves office in disgrace after Britain loses the Falklands War to Argentina. John Lennon lives and The Beatles have just reunited. Self-driving cars have navigated British roads for nearly a decade, the Internet is already ubiquitous, and the first human-like robots have just gone on the market: 13 “Adam” models and 12 “Eves.”

The last of these is the hook of McEwan’s riveting tale. An Adam–he had hoped for an Eve but most of them were purchased by Saudis–comes into the hands of the brilliant-but-disappointing 32-year-old Charlie Friend who impulsively spends all of his ₤86,000 inheritance to purchase it. His Adam is a blend of Star Trek’s Mr. Data and Philip K. Dick’s replicants.* Adam is a quick learner and soon Charlie’s equal in the sort of abstracted banter Charlie favors instead of trying to recharge his drained finances through day trading. Even worse, a love triad emerges between Charlie, his 22-year-old grad student girlfriend Miranda, and Adam, who writes Miranda puppy love haiku. (He is also, as Mr. Data once said, “fully functional” sexually.)

If only this were Charlie’s only worry. Adam becomes increasingly secretive, mildly disobedient, and seems a bit morose at times. Charlie will discover–through Turing–that the robots are “not thriving” and that several Eves in Riyadh committed the android equivalent of suicide. (You can read your own politics into that!) Is it because Adam is in “love,” or is it because humans are simply too unpredictable for his P≄NP processors? A major moral dilemma involving Miranda puts both of these possibilities to the test.

Even if your head spins from some of McEwan’s philosophical flights and forays into theoretical mathematics, Machines Like Me is both a provocative and compelling novel. Its content begs discussion of what the title means and its unexpected resolution is surprising on several levels.

Rob Weir

* Philip K. Dick authored Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was the basis of the film Blade Runner.

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The Italian Teacher Instructs on Art, Ego, and More

The Italian Teacher (2018)

By Tom Rachman

Penguin/Random House, 352 pages.

★★★★

If the child is the father of the man, as Wordsworth famously put it, poor Charlie has no chance. He is the offspring of Natalie, a scattershot Canadian ceramicist, and Bear Bavinsky, a celebrated but bombastic modernist painter. We first meet Charlie and his sister Birdie in Rome in 1955, and to say that their household was unorthodox is akin to saying that chaos is unstable. Rome just happens to be where Bear has flung his paint pots at the moment. His is an enormous ego and before this novel winds to an end in the 2010s, his residences will have included Toronto, Rome, New York, London, France, and the Basque country. (Charlie’s nickname “Pinch” is an Anglicization of the Basque pintxo, the Basque version of tapas.)

Bear’s egoism has no bounds. He deplores contemporaries such as Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and especially Picasso (“that clown,” in Bear’s judgment) though his lifestyle closely aligns with Picasso’s. That is to say, every few years Bear has a new wife and sires new children, so many that Pinch is later surprised to discover the final tally of his stepbrothers and stepsisters. Charlie/Pinch is our tragic central character. He knows his father is a rogue, yet he admires him and yearns for his approval, a need he nurtures across 7 decades. Think of it as an addiction, as Bear is always all about Bear. He makes promises he has no intention of keeping, expects to be fawned upon, basks in pubic adulation, refuses to sell his art to anyone other than museums, barricades himself in his studios, burns most of what he creates, yet claims Pinch is the only one of his children who “understands” him. He also gives Pinch a few art lessons, then crushes the lad’s dreams by telling him he will “never be an artist”–though it’s not clear he ever actually did more than glance as his art–and rudely dismisses Pinch’s academic desires to study Caravaggio.  

Like a moth drawn to the flame, though, Charlie wallows in the old man’s glory. He even attempts to write Bear’s biography. If you imagine this won’t give rise to a healthy adult, you are right, though perhaps not in ways you’d imagine. Rachman’s sprawling family saga takes us to a lot of places metaphorically as well as geographically. Rachman’s title is deliciously ambiguous. On the surface, it references Pinch’s one unassailable talent: his facility with languages. He is, for instance, Cilla Barrows’ Italian tutor at university. She is Pinch’s deepest love but one of several failed relationships. But maybe the book’s title draws us toward a different kind of teacher: Charlie’s childhood lessons? His artistic desires? An affirmation of his own inadequacies, real and imagined?

If you are an art fan, there’s a lot of “dish” in this novel. It certainly takes the piss out of pompous art critics, fashion-driven dealers, and deceitful gallery owners. There are also provocative observations about art itself. Bear delivers one of many opinions when he expounds that concrete isn’t necessarily less beautiful than a leaf: “Not that nature is better than artifice. Because art is artifice.” Later he opines, “There’s a gap always between what the object is and what the picture isn’t. That gap … is where the art is.” These two quotes alert us that this is also a novel about art, artifice, and whether there is a difference. If you can’t tell, does provenance matter?

Other themes include questions of self-worth, the blurry lines between right and wrong, the complexities of family, the corrosive toxicity of greed, and questions about the purpose of art and how we define an artist. Looming large above it all, both physically and metaphorically, is Bear Bavinsky, as thoroughly an unlikable figure as literature has seen in many a moon. You’ll hate the self-centered SOB, yet he fascinates to the degree that you can’t wait to flip the page to see what he does next.

Rob Weir

The Biggest Little Farm: Evicted from Santa Monica

The Biggest Little Farm (2019)

Directed by John Chester

Neon Films, 92 minutes, PG.

★★★

I think Emily and I may have been the last two people in the Connecticut River Valley to have seen this film. If you live outside of the region, it’s a feel-good documentary about one couple’s decision to leave the L.A. rat race and dive head first into organic farming.

It could have been subtitled “Evicted from Santa Monica.” John Chester is an accomplished figure in the greater Hollywood film industry. In 2011, he and his wife Molly, a private chef, adopted a rescue dog named Todd. Todd was a “barker,” a talent unpopular with neighbors. The Chesters were eventually evicted from their apartment and decided to tap into their savings to pursue Molly’s dream of living on an organic farm. The Biggest Little Farm documents their 7-year struggle to bring Molly’s dream to realization on Apricot Lane Farms, a 230-acre mixed-use holding in Moorpark, California, about 40 miles from Los Angeles.

Before I interject skeptical notes, let me say that I liked this film and I understand why it is so beloved. I admire what the Chesters did and they are right that among the things we must do to save the planet is discover ways to live in harmony with Mother Nature. Bolivian president Evo Morales put it best, “What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” A lot of young folks here in Western Massachusetts are deeply interested in sustainable farming and distrust the industrial agriculture complex that rapes the land, relies upon toxic chemicals, and is more concerned with shelf life, scale, and profit than resource management, product taste, or consumer safety. I find those youthful values admirable and their efforts heroic.

If you want to make a film like Biggest Little Farm, it helps to have a filmmaker, cameraman, and cinematographer on board, which is what John Chester was before he also became a farmer. He knows how to build drama, wring emotion from an audience, and cut and sequence raw footage. What we see on the screen took 16 months to edit and assemble. If you think you can’t get nervous about a pig giving birth, shed tears over a scraggly rooster, or get excited by a hand full of worms, see this film and get back to me.

What the film does best is drive home the message that living in harmony with nature is both an act of surrender and one of balance. Life and death are integral to farming; when a coyote kills sheep, you slice away the pelts and move on. Do not get overly attached to that ever-so-cute calf that you will one day butcher and consume. Sustainability also requires a rewiring of standard operating procedure. What’s the first thing most farmers do when coyotes kill livestock? Easy: Load the guns and set out poison bait traps. Problem: Kill all the coyotes and you have a rabbit problem. Solution: Accept that a balanced number of mutton- and poultry- eating coyotes are necessary. Love fruit? So do snails if the trees aren’t sprayed. But there’s an answer; snails are like crack cocaine for free-waddling ducks. Are gophers undermining root structures? Build owl houses.

Once we get past the drama, herculean labor, and ingenuity, different sorts of balance conundra emerge that highlight the gap between what we wish to see and what is left unexplained. First, there are a few internal personnel issues. The Chesters’ role model was the late Alan York, who may have been wise and prescient about all things biodiversity, but comes across as beloved but also like a blissed-out cross between a hippie and a guru. Maybe you have to be from California to get him, but to this Easterner he seemed more flake than prophet. Second, the farm was Molly’s dream, but the movie quickly places John at its center and reduces Molly to the often-peripheral role of worrier and Earth Mother. Finally, there is only an oblique reference to the fact that Apricot Lane Farms has a staff of 60. This makes it a small big farm, not a big small one.

One should also acknowledge that John Chester so skillfully assembled the film that it takes a sharp eye to recognize its Edenic qualities. There really isn’t any drama as to whether the farm will succeed. It is telegraphed in part by the drone shots of the lush concentric circle orchards. It is even more overtly presaged with an early establishing shot of a green pasture in which sheep and other farm animals lie contently in the grass as a venomous snake slithers among them. Check out Edward Hicks’ famed painting “Peaceable Kingdom” and you can infer divine sanction of the experiment.

Here’s the biggest little lie of the film. What you really need to replicate what the Chesters did are deep-pocketed investors. The land wasn’t really as barren as the documentary implies. Yes, the soil needed revitalization, but most of the property was run-down, not dead. Conspicuously absent from the film are specifics about money. Those who’ve looked into this say that the farm’s purchase price was a cool $10.5 million. I would imagine it also cost quite a sum to build the state of the art composting facility that led to soil replenishment. How much more to buy animals, farm machinery, seedlings, feed, fencing, and miscellaneous supplies? There is a reference to crowd sourcing, but that could not have paid the bills. Who are the mysterious “investors” who are merely mentioned? I’d like to know, because we need thousands more of their like before Apricot Lane Farms can be replicated on a significant scale*.

Let me reiterate that I admired John and Molly. I also admired the film. It is an inspiration, but let no one blindly see it as a blueprint. It is where we should go, but not where most can go at this moment in time**.

Rob Weir

*The investors must be in for a really long haul. The farm’s classification is that it makes less than $250,000 revenue per year.

**Here’s something that’s more immediately attainable. As we strolled through the fields of our CSA farm share in late August, every step among the cherry tomatoes raised dozens of birds. Clouds of butterflies and bees were busy amidst the flowers in the adjacent field. Hawks soared above the mountain ridge on the other side of the road. If you build habitats, Mother Nature’s creatures will come.