Juliette & Julia

-
-



- -











I haven't seen "Julie & Julia" yet - the new movie about chef Julia Child and Julie Powell - and I think I need to, but I was thinking about two other movie women recently: Juliette & Julia.

Don and I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" a couple weeks past, and we were sure the daughter of Cate Blanchett's character was played by Juliette Binoche, which just shows that even an earnest fan like me can mix these two up. It was in fact Julia Ormond who played Caroline in Benjamin Button, of course. Well, can you blame me for mixing up two brunettes with chiseled cheekbones, dark eyes and names that sound similar? I mean, they were even born less than a year apart - Juliette in 1964 (March 9) and Julia in 1965 (January 4).

Two of my all time favorite characters in the movies are Binoche's Hana in "The English Patient" and Ormond's "Sabrina" in the revisit of Audrey Hepburn's 1954 role. These two movies, like the actresses, are also one year apart - 1996 and 1995 respectively. One reason they are favorites is because I'm a Francophile, and Sabrina goes to Paris to study photography, while Binoche is just, well, French. If I were an adolescent again mimicking actresses, these are the ones I'd want to see looking back in the mirror with their eager and eternal eyes. (I didn't mean to alliterate that.)

Both films are about women growing up. Sabrina is the chauffeur's daughter in love with the prodigal prince of the estate, David. She is viewed with class prejudice by David's older and steadier brother Linus, the way Mr. Darcy and his rich aunt viewed Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice. The pain she suffers in this romantic comedy starts in unrequited love as a teenager and develops into downright rejection for her station in life even after becoming a respectable career woman. In "The English Patient," Hana is an army nurse surrounded by death and injury, including her dearest loved ones. The dying burn patient she sequesters in an abandoned convent is upper class like David and Linus, a Hungarian Count. She is the listener to the patient's stories as he flashes back to before his accident. He educates her:

PATIENT: Heroditus is the father of history, did you know that?
HANA: I don't know anything. (She says this as she is peeling a plum to feed him, like a mother bird.)

It is an old fashioned theme - the feminine innocent being taught and shaped by wiser, more powerful male players, either in the male stratosphere of high finance in "Sabrina" or in the bloody fields of men's war in "The English Patient." Sabrina and Hana are written and played by Ormond and Binoche as modern women who make their own choices within the limits and flaws of a world that has been conceived for millennia by men. And more than that, just like Florence Nightingale who scrapped a life of wealth and ease to nurse the poor and helpless, there is a sense that these two want to transform the damage they find with their simple touch.

When Linus asks Sabrina where she got her name, she tells him her father found it in a poem:

"Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, in twisted braids of lilies knitting the loose train of thy amber-dropping hair."

Linus asks, "So, your little poem...what does it mean?"

Sabrina replies, "It's the story of a watersprite who saves a virgin from a fate worse than death."

Linus: "And Sabrina is the virgin?"

Sabrina: "Sabrina is the saviour."
















Here is a music video of Sting singing "Moonlight" from "Sabrina."

letting the deeps settle back down

-
-
Oh I loved my birthday weekend, thank you so much for the wishes you sent, which started it off very happily. I meant to write in that last post that the mercies around me are as plentiful as acorns, but it came off sounding as if I love acorns. Ha, well among other things I do love them . . .

It is also a terrific pleasure when three people can talk and laugh and there is still a balance, like when you step into a boat that sits so gently and alone on calm water but you are certain when you get in it will not let you remain standing long enough to sit properly, but it does. Then when three of you manage to get in, stay in the boat, stay afloat and even skim across the water, there is an ease that surrounds you.

I didn't know I would need this time away with friends before embarking on a new fall semester of university activity. But I did, and the post-wedding restlessness I felt has settled. I am ready for a new school year. (Please remind me of this in a few weeks.) I feel a sense of composure returning, as if there are forty feet of cool, still, fresh water under me the way there are in our pretty lake.
-
-

be back soon

-
-


Friends, forgive a slight delay responding to your gracious comments and reading your newest posts. I will be romping in the oak trees at the lake cottage for a few days with friends, very nice friends who are driving hours and hours to be together. It happens to be my birthday weekend (which you might guess from my URL), and I am taking stock of the many mercies around me like acorns.
-
-

cherry, cherry

-
-

The light red ones are tart and mouthwatering with sugar in pie. The dark ones are sweet - a delectable snack. A lock box waits for payment in the honor system. We drove up North for the day Sunday, looking for good things.

Michigan produces 80% of the world's tart cherries. That little finger (Mission Peninsula) in the yellow circle is where we spent the day Sunday after a three hour drive north from the farm.

Stopping by the road on a summer evening

-
-

It took us almost six years to stop. Every time we drove an hour to the Detroit airport or to Trader Joe's in Ann Arbor - the first 30 minutes on country roads - we passed by the Genuine Broaster Chicken place that also sells ice cream. "What's Broaster Chicken?" I asked myself somewhere in my parietal lobe as we curved out of town. If I'd known it's a fancy method for frying chicken, I would have slammed on the brakes long before this.

Our waitress, who talked with us a while, explained how Broaster Chicken is cooked. This is a specific brand, and vendors buy their chicken, mixes and machines directly from the company. First the chicken is marinated in Broaster's special mix, then deep fried in their special pressure cooker ". . . in the chicken's own natural juices, limiting the absorption of cooking oil and driving the marinade deep down to the bone while searing the chicken with a golden, crispy-crunch coating."

Ahhhhh. Did I say I love fried chicken? I think this is the best I've eaten.

To top off the salivary heaven, we sure enjoyed chatting with the owner Doug Mills, as well as with the waitress (the lady smiling in the photo with model cars, above). Doug is not describing the size of a fish he caught but his gorgeous flower plantings and how our chilly summer has inhibited growth. He also explained how he's been fixing the place up like a genuine diner.

My mom, who moved from metro NY to the South when she married Dad, would mimic Southerners who appreciate good-but-not-always-healthy food, "sometimes I just need somethin' FRAHed." It may not be the healthiest, but once in a while, aahhhh. Stage Stop's Broaster Chicken is a short ten minute drive from the farm. Don't worry, I'll try to limit myself to no more than once a month. I wonder if this really was a stage stop back in the day, since it is on one of the oldest roads in Michigan.

Both times we've eaten at the Stage Stop, Mr. Mills the proprietor has been busy weeding outside, which explains his dirty dungarees in the photo below.

I think when Doug painted his restaurant these colors he had ice cream in mind. The ice cream I chose to balance out the savory chicken? Moose tracks.

Begonia ice:



Stage Stop Broaster Chicken
Stockbridge, MI

Not getting to Woodstock

-
-

In August 1969, a couple days after Woodstock ended, I turned 13. I would have my first real kiss the next summer. I was a straight kid, didn't carouse in high school and only went to one drinking party in a farmer's field one hot summer night where I took a couple of nasty sips of beer from a flimsy plastic cup. My older and wilder brother had taken me to the party, but he watched over me. That Michigan meadow party was about as close as I got to Woodstock, and the girl in this photo is about as far from my experience as she can be. For years I bemoaned my protected life, being a preacher's kid. But any secret grains of recklessness never took root.

For different and very annoying reasons, Joni Mitchell never made it to Woodstock, yet she wrote the song about it, which David Crosby said captured the gathering better than anyone who had been there. She said herself that the deprivation she felt not being there, watching it on television, provided an "intense angle" for writing it.

In writing classes, my mentor Diane Wakoski always said it is hard to write a good, happy poem. It's difficult to avoid cliches. Truly, I found it easier to write poem after poem venting angst about growing up in a churchy life. She also said the best art and writing comes from those who have had to overcome obstacles. Think of your favorite artists and writers and see if that isn't true.

One month after Woodstock, at the Big Sur Celebration, Joni sang her new song for the first time publicly. I wonder if she isn't partly glad now that she didn't get to Woodstock, so she could write such a song as this. Below is that Big Sur performance.

And no, I'm not sorry I was protected. I've gotten over the regret of being a goody two shoes. I also recognize the oddity of seeing the thoroughly good life of a pastor's family as an "obstacle." Another funny thing is that I looked the part of a hippie in my tattered blue jeans and long wavy, wildish hair, and many people - including the staff at the church camp where I worked one summer - were convinced I smoked pot with the best of 'em.

By the way, did you know that Joni Mitchell considers herself "a painter first, and a musician second"? See her paintings.

double fisted French apple pie

-
-

These are my apple pie tools.

Apple pie may be very American, but this is French apple pie, needing special considerations. The buttery crumb topping makes it French, according to Mme. Betty Crocker. I always thought crumb topped pie was called Dutch apple (remember double Dutch, in jump rope?). Dutch apple pie is actually when you pour cream in through slits in the top crust during the last five minutes of baking. Wow.

I rolled the dough out on the cutting board that I carried home on the Metro from the Paris flea market. People on the train looked at me like I was carrying a weapon. I tried to look nonchalant, as if a) I weren't an American tourist and b) it is perfectly normal to get on the Metro with a big round board with a handle. Travel tip: no matter how you try to blend in, those Parisians pick up your Americanness every time. I is what I is, I guess.

The apples I used were our yellow transparent apples, what was left of them by the deer and the kids playing knock-the-apples-off-the-tree at the wedding. I used Don's ice scraper to pull the high, remaining apples within reach.

I see that the winner of the national pie championship was made with yellow transparent apples. I don't think you can find them in many shops or farmers markets, so we are fortunate to have this very (French)-tart variety right in our little orchard. (I don't think they're really French apples; I just threw that in with the tart.) You can use Granny Smiths, another tart apple, if you can't find transparents. But really, wouldn't you rather have a French tart than a Granny Smith?





This is Don's ice scraper tool co-opted for pulling apple boughs down.



















Here are the yellow transparent apples, so pretty, with Don counting sunflowers in the background. (It's over, Don, the wedding is over, it doesn't matter how many we have now.)













The weapon.









French apple pie before adding ice cream.

The recipes:

Instead of a top crust, I topped it with crumbly yums, making it French apple.
I added chopped, salted pecans to the crumb topping:

along the way

-
-

Out of somewhere
light finds its way
in

whether I stop for it
or not.

the wedding

- -






We planned and rehearsed.














It took a lot of coordinating.




Some things didn't go according to plan. For instance, Don planted a thousand sunflowers, some for the ceremony site, some behind the barn for cutting for the reception tables. These by the ceremony bloomed. The hundreds behind the barn did not. What would we do for the reception tables? All those empty canning jars, bottles and vases we'd collected.





The morning of the wedding Don welcomed the fellow with the straw bales for a farm wagon our good neighbor Bill loaned us. I watched Don climb high up to help the power line stay clear. I pictured him breaking a leg.


We set up table and chair groupings around the yard with the chairs we collected through Freecycle. Remember when we were going to collect enough chairs for all the guests? We didn't get that far. You can see rental chairs set up for the ceremony there in front of the tent. We used old doors we found in the barn on straw bales for tables.






















Flowers from the florist waited in my studio.





Lesley's paper lanterns floated and tossed in the wind that started picking up on Saturday. Clouds accumulated, the sky darkened. The wedding was at 6, and by 5:30 we had phone calls from folks driving in through a torrential downpour. We women were in the house getting dolled up, and Lesley and I tried not to stress about rain.










By the time guests arrived, a soft rain had begun to fall. The chairs had been moved from the original ceremony site into the tent around tables. Most guests never knew it was meant to be outside.

They picked up their table seating cards from the laundry line.

A few minutes after 6 it was time to go! Don and I escorted Lesley from the house to the tent in the sweet rain, under a big golf umbrella. The photographer wouldn't let my hair get wet, although with all the product on it I don't think anything could touch it, nor could it possibly frizz.





The ceremony inside was cozy and romantic under the high reach of the tent.

Lesley's dad and grandpa, and Brian's grandpa (pictured here) joined them in planting a wedding plum tree. At that moment I knew the rain was a blessing, watering the tree at the start of a new marriage. Several guests informed me that rain is considered auspicious for a wedding.

Many people expressed how special the rain was. And I agree.









When the couple were married and the ceremony ended, the rain had stopped.

It was time for appetizers, wedding portraits and running around the farm.
This wedding arbor Don built saw a lot of people walk under and get their pictures taken.

Guests sat and chatted at the seating areas. These are Brian's relatives from Texas, including his mom in brown. Lesley is so fortunate to have Julia for a mother-in-law.














My three sisters and I had our picture taken with our daughters.







These vintage windows from the farm were hung with some snapshots of Lesley and Brian.






















Lesley's brother Peter was Man of Honor, and her best friend since age 10 Michelle was Matron of Honor. If happy, fun energy made the world go 'round, these three alone would keep it in operation.

Peter was also in charge of the music at the reception and played his guitar in the ceremony. The wedding party processed to "Viva la Vida" the Coldplay song, Peter playing it on guitar.

It was fantastic connecting with old friends we don't see often, as well as family from distant places. Dennis, below, was Best Man at our wedding.









My dear friend Inge made the rounds. Here she is with my nephew Nathan who officiated the ceremony.






Twenty-five percent of the guests were children. You think they didn't love Don's birds?

I wish someone had gotten a picture of just the parking lot next door. Our neighbors let us use their field.



When the sun set and the moon rose, the tent and the farm became like a fairyland. I love this photo of my nephew Paul's.

Don and I completely missed the cutting of the cake. We were looking for crayons and paper for the kids playing in the studio. You can see that there are sunflowers on tables. At our suggestion, a few guests cut some of the ones by the original ceremony site and placed them in the glass vessels.

Lesley's cousin Todd and his wife Lisle were host and hostess. Lisle is a teacher, so they played the role of teacher and principal, it was so cute.

I wish I could dance. Well, I did dance, but that doesn't mean I can dance. Now Julia, Brian's mom above in the brown silk suit, she can dance. Peter's playlist was fabulous, and I think most of the guests danced, especially the kids. He had some special songs so Julia could show us her line dance steps. I have no idea where they got all their energy. You can see Nicholas here dancing at Peter with his grandma, my sister Ginnie, looking on.

What is a wedding?

Is it flowers? Hairdos? Lights, cake and a lovely homily? The loving, attentive guests who fly in from around the country?

Yes, those things make up a wedding. But the marriage - now that it is different matter entirely. But wow, I love how this one began.











I have to acknowledge the "it would not have been possible without them" gang:

Lesley (planning) Brian (planning)
Don (everything)
Peter (music, painting, cleaning, organizing, humor)
Nancy (envisioning, planning, scraping, painting, cleaning, sweeping, light hanging, what did I miss . . .)
Jennifer (painting, weeding, weeding and weeding)
Bootsie (scraping, painting, staining, photographing, what did I miss . . . )
Grandpa (hanging windows)
Pam (lights, etc.)
Barb (lights, etc.)
Sally (lights, etc.)
Dan (lights, etc.)
Diane (lights, etc.)
Mike (lights, hanging windows, barman, etc.)
Chadd (bar - oops)
DeeDee (taking pictures with my camera)

Special thanks to Bootsie (Ginnie), Paul and Jaclyn for sharing their photos. I did not have my camera in hand, of course. And the official photographer's images are a couple of weeks away. I tried to label each picture with their names, but I had a hard time with formatting and gave up, I apologize to the photographers. You can see their albums at the sites below.

Ginnie's wedding album is here.
Paul's wedding album is here.