First Cow is a Dry Heifer

First Cow (2020)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

A24, 121 minutes, PG-13

★★

 

 I planned to see First Cow back in March, but COVID-19 closed the theatre before I had a chance to do so. Now I can officially say at least one good thing has come out of the virus. I didn’t spend $10 to see it.

 

Director Kelly Reichardt is known for both her deliberate pacing and her love of the West. Four previous films are, like First Cow, set in Oregon: Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), and Night Moves (2013). At her best, Reichardt gives us small slices of Americana that focus on the kind of ordinary people that Hollywood generally ignores. Her Certain Women, set in Montana, was one of my favorite films of 2016. But Reinhardt seriously misfires with First Cow, a film so slow you’re tempted to check if you have a pulse.

 

The setting is the Oregon Territory of the 1820s. That’s not the official U.S. region organized in 1848, rather a sprawling region stretching throughout the Northwest that encompassed parts of four eventual states, most of modern-day British Columbia, and parts of southern Alaska. At this point in history, the United States, Britain, and Russia all laid claim to the area, none of whom gave a hoot about indigenous peoples already on the land. Non-natives entered a place more akin to the Wild West than that mythical land ever was. Reichardt and cinematographer Chris Blauvet do a superb job of making us see how travelers, settlers, and fortune-seekers could get swallowed up in its very vastness. To the degree that Euro-American style civil authority existed at all, it was in scattered “forts” such as Fort Tillicum (present-day Washington State), which is where our two principals end up.

 

They are Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), the cook for a band of fur trappers, and King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese man on the lam for killing a Russian, whom Otis feeds on the sly. Otis cashes out and sets off for Fort Tillicum, where he again encounters Lu, who has a cabin nearby into which Otis moves. Fort Tillicum is not for the faint of heart. It is a muddy cesspit with a hard-drinking bar, a small native encampment, and whites living in ramshackle cabins and makeshift tents. The only substantial home in the fort belongs to the Chief Factor (agent) and life there is so rudimentary that the big excitement is the arrival of the namesake first cow. (Its partner died on the trip to Oregon.) Otis and Lu pass their days daydreaming of heading off to San Francisco to open a hotel or bakery, but they don’t have the wherewithal to get there.

 

When they observe the cow being milked by a lad named Lloyd (Ewen Bremner), Lu hits upon the idea of sneaking in at night to help themselves to the cow’s bounty. With the pilfered milk, Otis reverts back to being Cookie and his oily cakes, biscuits, and fritters are soon in high demand. See Otis bake. See Lu sell. See a key character have his cake taken by another. Not exactly what one would call heart-stopping action.

 

Just a few more batches, and it’s California here we come. That small detail is one of the biggest clichés in film. Therein lies a second major problem in the film. Foreshadowing is a time-honored device but in First Cow, the film’s ending is predestined by the modern find that opens the film and all that can possibly be revealed is how it happened. Once the cow’s owner is identified half way through, we know how and why as well. The only thing left is dotting the i’s.

 

First Cow also wastes some of its talent. Gary Farmer is a well-known Native-American actor, but he’s practically silent in this film. The Chief Factor is veteran British character actor Toby Jones, and his role is little more than that of Chief Egoist. You know anyone billed simply as “Chief Factor’s wife” won’t have much to do, and it’s a crying shame to subordinate the sublime Lily Gladstone (Blackfoot/Nez Perce). To add a note of solemnity, First Cow was one of the final projects for the late Réne Auberjohn (Deep Space Nine’s Odo) and it’s a mere cameo.

 

Metaphorically speaking, Kelly Reichardt painted herself into a corner with a poorly storyboarded tale. There is something to be said for making slow-paced slice-of-life films, but when anything remotely dramatic is taken from viewers, all that’s left is boredom.

 

Rob Weir

Rebecca Loebe, Silversun Pickups. Ellen Starski, Devil Makes Three, Salim Nourallah, Wonder Years

 

Perhaps you remember Rebecca Loebe from The Voice or caught her opening for someone like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, or Ellis Paul. These days she’s been headlining on her own, which is right and proper. As a kickoff to Give Up Your Ghosts, she made material available from her wonderful 2010 debut Mystery Prize. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with this rising talent who, after a stint at Boston’s Berklee College of Music now lives in Austin­. Loebe has a fondness for love songs–just not the ordinary kind. “Mystery Prize” is an example of that. It’s about a first date that might be the perfect man, though she’s not sure: I got my eye on the mystery prize. After all, love is a blood sport, you lose if you draw/You can only win if no one loses at all. “Marguerita” is a lovely song of two lovers. The catch? They are illegal immigrants who have been caught and separated. “California” is a love song to the Golden State, but one she’s leaving before the alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine drag her down. “Land and Sea” is wonderfully enigmatic. Does she wake up to second thoughts, or was it a very naughty dream? Loebe goes for a country vibe on “Married Man.” Its line You can’t knit socks for a married man/No matter how you tell yourself it’s fine is a dangerous attraction cautionary metaphor. Loebe has traveled and produced a lot since 2010, but she still likes to keep things a bit mysterious.   

 

Silversun Pickups engender strong opinions. Their newest record, Widow’s Weed has been called a “gem” and “emotionally satisfying.” It’s also been dismissed as “forgettable” and “mostly boring.” This LA-based rock band draws comparisons to My Bloody Valentine, which means they’re hard to pin down. Silversun has been labeled post-punk, indie, dream pop, and “shoegazing,” the latter of which fits, once you get past the silly handle and know it’s basically acid rock. In truth, their full electric sets can be ragged and there’s not a lot of poetry in their lyrics. Maybe they’re better unplugged; their four-song set at Paste Studios is good stuff. The quartet is stripped down to just Brian Aubert putting his voice and his acoustic guitar through the paces, and Nikki Monninger laying down aggressive bass and adding harmonies. One offering is their 2009 single “Panic Switch,” which seems to be about an anxiety attack, and the rest are from Widow’s Weed. The most enigmatic of is “Freakazoid” lyrics such as, And this freakazoid/Who needs a little relief/Relief, relief… don’t unlock a song about someone trying to believe he’s trying. (To do what?) “Don’t Know Yet” is a can-this-relationship-be-saved song. Perhaps not; and it’s time to reboot the machine. “It Doesn’t Matter Why” won’t win any literary awards either, but Silversun Pickups is about energy in the moment. Count me among the satisfied.

 

Ellen Starski has a unique voice that’s husky in a whiskey-steeped way. I adored her debut album, When Peonies Prayed for Rain (2018). And then she moved to Nashville. Sara’s Half-Finished Love Affair is a deeply disappointing sophomore release. I place the blame on the poor judgment of producers Lucas Morton and Max Hoffman. The album is well-written and it’s based on a cool idea. “Sara” is Starski’s composite of women she’s met plus some internal thoughts. She used these to imagine how life and love play out over the years. Alas, Nashville smoothed her edges and turned her into just another doggie in Generica Corral. “Come to Me Lover” cries out for gritty treatment, not echoey processed pop and little girl tones. This is almost as baffling as the faintly Liverpudlian accent we hear on “Have We Forgotten.” “Never Met a Ghost”has a bluesy melody that commands a soulful vocal. Instead, the mix is so thick that Starski could be singing cereal box ingredients. And what’s with the odd spaciness of “The Satellite That Changed Its Tune?” Was Sara in love with ET? The title track is pretty, if one overlooks the dreadful instrumental bridges and the outro with interstellar electronic crickets. Find Your Way” would be a great song if given a Bill Withers treatment and without intrusive percussion. There’s not a song on the album that’s not overproduced.    

 

Shorts

 

The Devil Makes Three hadn’t released a new album since 2013 until Chains are Broken. You can hear a few tracks off that record, including “Castles,” a nice song about a woman who keeps falling for Mr. Wrongs when Mr. Right is right in front of her. TDMT used to rock out more, but these days they are mostly an acoustic country folk trio (or quartet when touring) anchored by dry-toned vocalist Pete Bernhard. “Castles” features crystalline acoustic riffs from Cooper McBean, the go-to guy for leads, with Lucia Turino putting down the bass lines. Try also “Mr.Midnight,” (2014) with its rockabilly feel, and “This Life” (2011), a bit of country breakdown about making the best of what life throws at you.

 

Maybe it’s the times, but I lost interest in Let’s Be Miserable Together, the first of five planned EPs by Texas songwriter Salim Nourallah. The title track sets the mood with its tag line, If we can’t be happy on our own.. let’s be miserable together. That could be funny, but it comes across as embracing misery. Doses of irony and satire would help, but the EP is mostly a laconic pity party. “Winners” is another example. It could be a devastating take-down of hipsters, but feels more like an outsider’s jealousy. The melodies of two of the tracks, “Assassins” and “A Simple Love,” sound like raw acoustic Beatles tracks before studio enhancements. Wrong album for wrong times.

 

I can’t help contrast Nourallah to the power punk band The Wonder Years. They’re supposed to be filled with angst, right? They are, but these heroes of the Vans Warped Tour temper thrash and bang with wry commentary and the right touch of sentiment. “Washington Square Park” contains likes such as: The whole world’s full of losers/If you get a chance to win take it. “Hoodie Weather” is a very unflattering gottta-get-outta-here look at South Philadelphia, but there’s also sympathy mixed with the sadness. “We Look Like Lightening” is about being scared on an airplane. Yeah, I can relate. Caution: This is one loud band, so you might want to search for acoustic tracks; rest assured, Dave Campbell’s vocals will still raise the roof. And if you find the Paste Studio session, the tracks are mislabeled.

 

Rob Weir

Sienna Miller Redeems American Woman

 

American Woman (2019)

Directed by Jake Scott

Roadside Attractions, 111 minutes, R (language, drug/alcohol use)

★★★

 

 

 

With under $237,000 in ticket sales, American Woman didn’t exactly light up the box office. I suppose that’s understandable given its harrowing subject of a woman whose daughter goes missing. It’s also an uneven effort with a cast drawn from the B-list, though its central actor, Sienna Miller, is the real deal who papers over many of the plot holes. She makes American Woman worth a look, despite its translucent cavities.

 

American Woman is set in Pennsylvania, but Keystoners won’t recognize anything; it was filmed in Massachusetts. The central character is 33-year-old Deb Callahan (Sienna Miller), a single mother to 16-year-old Bridget (Sky Ferreira). Mom is a mess. She lives close to the margin, drinks and smokes too much, has a horrible attitude, and even worse taste in men. It’s not clear if she’s just easy or if she’s doing a little hooking on the side, but Bridget’s father is not in evidence. Deb is the sort to tell anyone to piss off, and that includes her mother Peggy (Amy Madigan), and her sister Katherine (Christina Kendricks) and her husband Terry (Will Sasso), who live across the street.

 

Bridget is no peach either. She’s rough around her dyed hair edges, hangs out with druggies, and has an infant son of her own. Deb and Bridget rocket back and forth between bickering and affection of sorts. The status quo changes over night, when Deb reluctantly agrees to watch Jesse and Bridget never returns. Joni Mitchell famously wrote, “You don’t what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,” and that’s Deb’s breaking point. Foul play is suspected, but there’s really no evidence for it–one of the film’s holes. The longer Bridget is missing, the more hysterical Deb becomes and the more Bridget becomes more mythical than real.

 

How does one recover from such a blow? Deb’s first instincts are in keeping with her play-tough and live-fast-and-hard patterns. She lights out after Bridget’s boyfriend, who is Jesse’s father, though there’s nothing to connect him to anything other than being a worthless druggie. Old habits die hard. For Deb, there’s always another boyfriend and it hardly matters if he’s married and/or abusive. It’s only when she hits the muddy bottom that she begins to consider crawling out of the pit. After all, someone has to raise Jesse.

 

Another film hole is that the passage of time is too rapidly truncated. Deb does begin to get her act together and starts to see Tyler (Alex Neustaeder), an affectionate ex-boyfriend who is a rehabbing addict. More bad things will happen, and Bridget becomes what detectives call a “cold” case. That will be resolved eventually and one wonders if maybe it would have been better had that not been the case. There are plenty of good things to say about this film, but Brad Ingelsby’s script is not among them.

 

American Woman could have been the turkey its box office suggests, were it not for Miller. She is an underrated actress, perhaps because she has played so many bit parts, has no time for the tabloid press, prefers London to Hollywood, and took time away from movies to perform in theatre. Her filmography isn’t impressive, but her acting chops are. In American Woman she invents her own cycle of grieving: blame, swear, give-up, clear out the garbage, reinvent, and cope. Hers is a portrait of hope tempered by realism. She makes the second half of the film as good as the first half is bad. Although we could use more films about the plight of the working-class poor, Inglesby misfires by writing Miller’s early role as akin to Julia Roberts’ bad-girl act in Mystic Pizza sans her heart of gold. It makes it harder to believe in Deb’s subsequent transformation, but Miller rises to the occasion. Best of all, it comes on Deb’s terms. Hold the metaphorical knight in shining armor or deus ex machina resolutions.

 

The dynamics between Miller and Hendricks are also quite good. Katherine is the good angel to Deb’s devil, with Terry acting as referee. Yet, we see genuine caring peeking through the seams, as well as evolving relationships. I wish the same could be said of Amy Madigan’s role as Peggy. She isn’t given much to do and responds with a walk-through performance appropriate for what was on offer. The same can be said of E. Roger Mitchell, who plays Detective Sergeant Morris. One could accuse director Jake Scott of tokenism, as Mitchell’s is the only black face in sight.

 

You can expect rocky moments, but American Woman is a great example of how a few good performances redeem a half-baked script.

 

Rob Weir    

 

See the Griswold in Old Lyme for American Impressionism

Florence Griswold Museum

Old Lyme, CT

 

 

Old Lyme, Connecticut, is one of the premier centers for American Impressionism. Unless you’re an art geek like me, you might be surprised to know there were any American Impressionists other than Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), and she hardly counts as she moved to Paris in 1874, and spent the rest of her life in France. You can be forgiven, as you’ve been inundated with posters, t-shirts, ties, and other paraphernalia of French artists such as Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir, but when was the last time you saw a coffee mug with a John eHenryHenry Twachtman or J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) image on it? (In case you’re wondering, the latter is no kin of mine; my family came over from Scotland just in time to fight for the Union during the Civil War.)

 

Impressionism is so thoroughly associated with France that it’s easy to forget that it spread across Western Europe and was even found in unlikely places such as Australia, Egypt, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia. If there is such a thing as the dean of American Impressionism, it would be Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Hassam was based in the Greater Boston area, but when American Impressionists gathered, it was in places such as Cos Cob and Old Lyme.

 

Why Old Lyme? There’s a reason why we joke about starving artists. Unless one is born into money or is one of the few to attract notice or better yet, a wealthy patron, it’s sadly the case that most “famous” artists only become so after being rowed across the River Styx. Luckily for a bunch of American artists, Florence Griswold (1850-1937) lived along the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme. She was born into wealth, but never married and when she approached 50, found herself the owner of a sprawling columned mansion in need of repairs, but no steady income. About the same time, Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) had the idea of forming an art colony. Griswold began taking in paint-splattered boarders and from this the Old Lyme colony was born.

 

Ranger was sort of a semi-Impressionist who called his work tonalist (whatever that means), and Griswold’s home attracted a variety of artists. It soon became a place where American Impressionists such as Hassam, Weir, William Chadwick, Bruce Crane, Harry Hoffman, Edmund Greacan, Lawton Parker, William Robinson, and Everett Warner dipped their brushes. Chadwick, Hassam, and Robinson even built studios on the site, though only Chadwick’s remains. From Old Lyme, they practiced their particular form of American vernacular.

 

Vernacular is the proper word. Impressionism has been called painting with light but of course, the light along the Connecticut coast isn’t the same as that in Provence or the Loire Valley. Nor is the weather. Benjamin Eggleston built a portable cart to work in Old Lyme, convenient for New England’s changeable conditions, not the least of which is her snowy winters. Impressionism is also marked visible brush strokes that make images “impressionistic” rather than “realistic,” and by its preference for ordinary subjects. “Ordinary” is also culturally determined. Neither the Seine nor Rouen Cathedral happened to be close at hand, so Old Lyme artists painted things such as the marshes and Bow Bridge, a humped stone structure that once spanned the Lieutenant. It is also interesting to see how the light changes when Old Lyme artists ventured overseas and painted in places sch as Venice.

 

You can get a fine introduction to American Impressionism by touring Griswold’s home and the separate Krieble Gallery on the grounds. If you need a break from art, there’s also a picturesque trail along the Lieutenant, a barn repurposed as a landscape photography center, well-kept gardens, a small orchard, and (on occasion) environmental education programs. Below find a sample of art on display at the sites. (All photos are mine. You can click on them to see larger images.)

 

Rob Weir

 

Hassam, Ten Pound Island

Chadwick's studio

 

 

 

Lawton Parker, Laurel

 

Warner, Studios Behind Griswold House

Will Foote, Fish Houses Maine

Hoffman, Bridging the Lieutenant

 

Hassam's Studio by Hoffman

Metcalf

 

 

 

 

All Adults Here an Ironic Title

All Adults Here (2020)

By Emma Straub

Riverhead Books, 368 pages.

★★★ ½ 

 

 

 

In books with titles such as All Adults Here, smart money is that grownups will be AWOL. In Emma Straub’s new novel, most of the characters are legally adults, but it speaks volumes when an 8^th grader is more mature than most of them.

 

All Adults Here opens with two crises. Widowed Astrid Strick is jolted into rethinking her golden years priorities when she witnesses a school bus fatally strike Barbara Baker. It rattles her even though she didn’t even like Barbara. Shortly thereafter, her granddaughter Cecelia is sent to live with her, after being bullied at her Brooklyn school by a former friend and her rich parents. Cecelia actually did a good thing, but add those rich parents to the list of adults behaving like children. Cecelia loves her “gamma,” but she doesn’t know anyone her own age in Clapham, a close-knit Hudson River town north of Poughkeepsie. (It’s fictional, though it bears similarities to Rhinebeck.)

 

Astrid, 68, has been having a closeted relationship with her hairdresser Birdie and has been contemplating coming out to her three adult children. It might have happened sooner had they not been so deep into extended adolescence. Oldest son Elliot is married to Wendy Chan, a lawyer, who put her career on hold to care for their twins. He is a developer with megalomaniacal dreams who immerses himself in work, and is hellbent on proving his manhood. Daughter Porter has a goat cheese enterprise but no partner, so she decides to have an in vitro impregnation. Astrid’s youngest, Nicky and his French wife Juliette, are Cecelia’s parents. Nicky is a heartthrob who was once in movies, but now he and Juliette are quasi-hippies who are more like friends to their daughter, who’d actually like less empathy and more help in growing up.

 

Other important characters include August, whom Cecelia befriends, and whose parents are a bit like Nicky and Juliette in their laissez-faire parenting skills; and Rachel, a past and renewed friend of Porter’s. Clapham also functions as a character. It is insular, but in a way in which locals fret over preserving its uniqueness rather than closing the gates. Such places lend themselves to a soap opera treatment; locales seeking to put a cloth over the clock generally have things going on under the covers. In addition to Astrid’s relationship with Birdie, Porter has been sleeping with Jeremy, her high school boyfriend who is married with two children; Rachel’s husband left her for a younger woman; Wendy is losing patience with Elliot, who seems perpetually pissed off at everyone. At times it feels as if All Adults Here is an updated Peyton Place.

 

The novel has been branded as a mother-daughter book and women’s literature. It is certainly true that Straub celebrates female resourcefulness and that men often appear as predators, libertines, or jerks, but this is not a work one should derisively dismiss as “chick lit.” Straub has something a bit weightier in play. Her female characters don’t have their lives in order either. Porter is a wonderful aunt to Cecelia, but her own life is a shamble. Astrid is conflicted over things to the point of paralysis, Wendy was content to act as a perfect bourgeois wife before she cracked, Jeremy’s wife Kristen is anything but a walking poster for sisterhood, and her daughter Sidney is a little shit.

 

My major criticism of the novel is that Straub mechanistically ticks politically correct boxes, even if they’re not crucial to the novel. Vivian is Chinese American, Birdie is Latina, August is gender fluid, Porter’s obstetrician is African American, and Astrid and Birdie are lesbians. One way of looking at this is to note that even small-town America is diverse; another is to say that Straub undermines the world she built. Much of Clapham’s insularity vanishes in a matter of weeks, which is not the way change usually occurs. There are dollops of tokenism throughout, as the novel’s diversity is surface deep. Vivian could have been Australian, Birdie Icelandic, August a burly football star, and the doctor green with yellow polka dots and it would not have mattered.

 

All Adults Here is a coming-of-age tale for its central characters. Who says that such a story must be about adolescents? Can Astrid’s brood come to terms with their lives? She gave each what she thought they needed but apparently, she bred hurt and/or resentment–except for Nicky, a man-child, whom everyone loves in the way they’d love a large puppy. Even cute puppies must eventually become dogs. Straub suggests that until adulthood happens, parents risk passing their failings to their offspring.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Small Towns: Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, CT

 

Only a bridge separates Old Saybrook and Old Lyme and most visitors to the Connecticut shore will likely spend time in both, so it makes sense to talk about them in the same column. They lie about 45 minutes southeast of Hartford and about 35 minutes due east of New Haven.

 

This is a part of Connecticut known for its wealth, though the median family income of both towns is slightly below the state average of $76,348. This puzzling statistic is due mainly to the huge gulf between those who make their living on the water versus those who simply by the water and only venture offshore in pleasure craft rather than rusty fishing boats. If you’re of liberal persuasion, note also that each town is about 97% white, Republicans outnumber Democrats in both places, and you’ll see giant Trump flags flying from the sterns of boats tied up in private marinas. If you can stymie your gag reflexes, you can spend a nice day out in the region.

 

Old Saybook’s population of 10,242 makes it the larger of the two. It’s where you’ll find some elegant old homes in and near the center, and downtown is where you’re most likely to find food options. Other than nearby beaches, there are two major attractions in Old Saybrook, the first of which is the ruins of Fort Saybrook. It was destroyed by Pequots during King Phillip’s War (1636-37), a devastating conflict between English settlers and a confederation of Native Americans in which roughly half of all English settlements were attacked and many were destroyed. The destruction of Fort Saybrook resulted in 20 English deaths, but colonists responded disproportionately by setting fire to the Native settlement at Mystic, killing more than 500–nearly all of whom were women, children, and elderly, as the warriors were off fighting the English.  

 

 

 

There’s not much left of the fort except foundation walls and the park in which it is located is nothing special, so why would one wish to visit it? Mainly, because it’s located at the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it empties into Long Island Sound. (See top.) The Connecticut is
New England’s longest river and is often impressive along its 410-mile length, but nowhere does it rival its estuary at Old Saybrook, where it turns into a saltwater bay. That’s worth a look. Plus, you are near Fenwick Point and the Saybrook Breakwater Lighthouse. You can’t go onto its grounds at present, but you can drive nearby and see the side of the town that drives up the median family income. If you

know what you’re looking for, you can see the back of thehome where Katharine Hepburn once lived. It recently sold for a cool $15.5 million. That’s a bit obscene, but Hepburn’s name is all over Old Saybrook, including the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center and Theatre. It has a museum to the divine Miss Kate but, alas, it too is off-limits until the COVID crisis passes. 

 

Old Lyme (7,603) is artier than Old Saybrook, as it was once the home to the Lyme Art Colony, which I will discuss in an upcoming piece. As is often the case of famed New England art colonies­–including Cos Cob, Dublin, Mantunuck, Monhegan, Ogunquit, Rockland, Rocky Neck, and Seguinland–artists continue to congregate in Old Lyme long after the colony evaporated. Works from up and coming artists (and some of modest talent and dreams of grandeur) can be viewed at the local Old Lyme Art Association and you can park there to see a nearby sculpture garden. Overall, Old Lyme is leafier and more quaint than Old Saybrook. Tune in soon to see my review (and pictures) from the Florence Griswold Museum, the region’s biggest non-beach attraction.

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Random Autumn Thoughts 2020

 

Every now and again I like to clear out my bookshelves, my reviewing backlog, and my brain. This column is one of the latter. Call it, if you will, a list of musings and low-level rants.

 

☛ Literature seems to be the first place we notice that women are outstripping men in the brains department. The academic achievement level of girls has surpassed that of boys, too many of whom are shuttled into the brawn side of things. Visit a bookstore and you’ll see what I mean. The vast majority of new fiction titles come from female authors.

 

☛ In a related vein, although I applaud women’s intellectual accomplishments, there are too many books from young female writers written about the same subjects. Two in particular are those dealing with motherhood and/or trying to settle into a career. The first is, for obvious reasons, not a subject to which I can relate; the second is way too often expressed from a whiny privileged Millennial POV. It’s not like Millennials invented 20s-something career anxiety. I miss having more male fiction writers on my to-read shelf. It would be nice to read some male scribblers who aren’t sportswriters or political pundits.

 

☛ The guy who mows and plows for me has kids of various ages that he and his wife having been trying to help with their online schooling. He told me recently that they had no idea how hard it would be and would never again badmouth teachers. I hope others remember this the next time they’re tempted to vote down a school budget or use ludicrous statements such as, “Teachers only work six hours a day and they get their summers off.”

 

☛ Thanks to all the folks who’ve been making home concerts available during the lockdown. One thing, though; for heaven’s sake, take Jim Henry’s advice and don’t start playing until you get the sound right. You won’t keep listeners if the vocals are as muddy a frog’s living room and the mix as lumpy as cookie dough.

 

☛ I know people are getting antsy and feeling housebound. Here’s some easy advice: It’s October! If you can’t appreciate the beauty of fall foliage, you deserve to be cooped up. Go for a walk. Take a drive. Hike. Getting “out” means more than driving to the mall.

 

☛ Is anyone beside me sick and tired of fools who think it’s their “right” not to wear masks? Who the #%!&$#! do you think you are to risk my health? Your “right” does not extend to endangering others.

 

☛ I’m also exasperated with government officials and college administrators whose idea of protecting public health is to “educate” the public, perhaps even hire someone to “remind” people they need to wear masks. Educate? Jaysus, Mary and the goat! There are just three things to know: (a) wear a mask, (b) maintain at least six feet of distance from others, and (c) wash your damn hands. Anyone too dumb to do these things shouldn’t be allowed outside without a keeper. I suggest they sit inside with weak-kneed politicians.

 

 ☛ I typed the comment above before Donald Trump came down with COVID. I do not wish this virus on anyone, but there is an old adage that if you play with fire, you will get burned. Trump has consistently ridiculed the ideas of masks and social distancing by holding meetings and rallies in which he practiced none of the above precautions and made no demands of those around him. Another adage: Science is true whether you believe it or not. Enough said. 

☛ Since when did a “church” become a building? Shame on ministers who fan faux discrimination flames, defy public meeting guidelines, and spread both hatred and the virus. Being a good Christian should mean respect for humankind. Insisting on opening the building doors just means you’re a jerk and a technophobe. Take a spoonful of WWJD and get a teenage parishioner to show you how to do online services.

 

☛ Nine members of Tennessee’s NFL team tested positive for COVID. Gee, who could have seen that coming? I’d call the NFL season the dumbest idea in sports, were it not for the fact that UMass still has a football team.

 

 ☛ One of the few joys of aging is that you can stop trying to accumulate cultural capital and admit you don’t like things that supposedly make you a more “sophisticated” person. Here are a few things I just don’t like:

 

·      Opera: I appreciate its complexity, but if you give me a choice between operatic soprano and a herd of screeching cats raking their nails over a chalkboard, I’ll go with the felines.

 

·      Hip hop and rap: If music doesn’t have a melody, it’s not my thing. Once upon a time, rap and hip hop were the voice of the urban black experience. That time was the 1980s. Today it’s just processed pop that legitimizes antisocial behavior. If I want more bad verse, I’ll add to the rotten poetry I’ve written myself.

 

·      Shakespeare: This one drives some of my good friends crazy, but I don’t speak Elizabethan, okay. I don’t get why so many intellectuals who scoff at Biblical literalism treat every word from the Bard of Stratford as if it was pulled from the Gospel of St. Billy Shakes. Plus, do you have any idea how hard Shakespeare is for someone with hearing loss?

 

·      Comedy for idiots: One blessing of Covid-19 is that fewer “mainstream” comedies are being made. Can we legislate this as a permanent condition? Other than films with camouflaged Hollywood stars pretending to be warriors, nothing makes me slump in my seat with my fingers in my ears as often as a trailer for a “comedy” written for people with IQs of 60.

 

Rob Weir