Calories and carbs be damned! Tuesday was my sixty-third birthday, and for the first time this year, we went to my favorite ice cream stand—Fielder’s Choice, where I got a hot fudge sundae made with their fabulous peanut butter ice cream. So, so good!

On a less caloric but still delicious note, Clif has come up with an omelet that uses four simple ingredients—eggs, water, crumbles, and sriracha sauce.

This morning, Clif made me one for breakfast. How tasty and satisfying it was.

This year, my birthday was a little on the quiet side. Usually the kids come from New York and North Carolina, and we have a jolly celebration as we combine three birthdays—mine and Clif’s, both in September, and Dee’s, which is the end of October.

This year, of course, there was no jolly celebration with the kids. And, yes, I missed it very much. We’ll be having a Zoom party on Sunday, but it’s not the same as having everyone at our cozy home in the woods.

Therefore, on my birthday, I gave myself the gift of time, something I rarely do. The day was fine, and instead of doing household chores in the afternoon, I allowed myself to take time out for reading.

Mike, my son-in-law, had recommended Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and relaxing on the patio, I read several chapters of this book.

What a snappy, excellent novel! As the title suggests, this is a Gothic story story set in Mexico in the 1950s. Noémi, the spunky heroine, must travel to the hinterlands of Mexico, to find out why her cousin Catalina, recently married, has sent Noémi and her father a desperate letter begging for help. Off Noémi goes, somewhat reluctantly, from Mexican City to an old, shabby mansion high in the mountains.

Catalina’s husband, Virgil, and his family are satisfyingly creepy, and it isn’t long before Noémi is determined to rescue her cousin. From what, I will not say. I don’t want to spoil the story. I will, however, add that Moreno-Garcia manages to weave in class and race in a satisfying way while never detracting from the vividness of the various characters, especially Noémi, the determined star of the novel. I always admire a heroine who can run in high heels, something I could never do.

While this is a horror novel that builds to an exciting conclusion, Moreno-Garcia allows her characters space to breathe, something I think is essential for any novel, regardless of genre. For me, a story with relentless action is tedious, and the characters are usually flat.

Moreno-Garcia is a young writer with a good writing style and a keen sense of who her characters are. I definitely will be keeping an eye out for her next book.

And click here to read about Thistles and Kiwis small pleasures.

As regular readers know, we are family of film buffs. We keep up with current movies, and we also like to go to film festivals. For many years we have been going to the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), held in Waterville, Maine, about twenty-five miles away from where we live. Dee, from New York, usually joins us, and we have ten days of nonstop movies. When Mike and Shannon lived in Maine, they would also join us on the weekends.

This year, MIFF had to scale way back and hold the festival at a Drive-In that was fifty miles away from our home. Much as we like movies, a 100-mile round trip was too far for us. Also, the kids were not able to join us because of the traveling hazards associated with Covid-19.

Without MIFF and visits from the kids, our summer sure felt flat. What to do to perk things up at least a little? How about a virtual film festival, via Zoom? We would follow MIFF’s lead by starting on a Friday and ending ten days later on a Sunday.

Naturally, we couldn’t pack in the movies the way MIFF does. Shannon and Mike were still working, and so was I. (Books don’t write themselves). So here’s what we did: We each picked a movie, which we would watch one night and then discuss the next.

This worked like a charm. Or, as we in Maine might say, a chahm. What a fun week we had! We each chose five thought-provoking films, beginning with greed and ending with greed. (No, we did not plan it that way.) After watching each movie, I couldn’t wait to hear what the others thought.

Here was our line-up and a brief description about each movie:

Atlantics, 2019. Country of origin: Senegal. Directed by Mati Diop. Available on Netflix. English subtitles.

Atlantics is a moody exploration of love, gender, greed, and money.  A wealthy developer, who is constructing a giant, looming tower, refuses to pay his workers. This sets in motion a migration that separates two lovers, Soulieman and Ada and leads to a startling conclusion. Atlantics has a slow beginning, but it isn’t long before the story snaps into an unexpected place.

Hoop Dreams, 1994. Country of origin: USA. Directed by Steve James. Available to rent on Prime Video.

This extraordinary three-hour documentary came out in 1994 and follows two young men in inner city Chicago through four years of high school as they try to realize their dreams to play professional basketball. But Hoop Dreams goes beyond sports to cast a piercing gaze on poverty, racism, money, and the willingness of some coaches to use and then discard young men. A seminal movie even twenty-six years later.

Transit, 2018. Filmed in France. Directed by Christian Petzold. Available on Prime Video, included with Prime. English subtitles.

Transit is about persecuted minorities fleeing occupied France. I don’t want to reveal too much about this unsettling film. It is best watched without any spoilers. Transit examines the notion of Fascism and how easily societies can succumb to this terrible, repressive ideology. At the same time, it is a deeply humane film as it focuses on how the main characters grapple with the terror of fleeing capture and death and then the tedium of waiting for transport that will take them to countries not in the grip of fascism. Finally, it is a haunting, touching love story.

Silent Running, 1972. Country of origin: USA. Directed by Douglas Trumbull. Available to rent on Prime Video.

Silent Running is a 1972 science-fiction tale that takes a stern environmental stance. Earth’s green and growing spaces are gone, and the last biomes are being stored in space on huge freighters. When an order comes to destroy the biomes, Bruce Dern’s Freeman takes matters into his own hands to try to save the last forest. The special effects are astonishing, given the time and the budget. The acting is over-the-top, but the environmental story still resonates today.

Jean de Florette, 1986. Country of origin: France. Directed by Claude Berri. Available to rent on Prime Video. English subtitles.

Jean de Florette is the first movie in a two-part series that concludes with Manon of the Spring. Jean de Florette takes greed and personalizes it with the excellent Yves Montand as Cesar, who yearns to own the land that the hunchback Jean de Florette has inherited. Cesar plots and connives to get that land from the stubborn, unsuspecting Jean, and there is nothing Cesar will not do to get what he wants. All the acting is excellent, but as my son-in-law Mike pointed out, Yves Montand is outstanding, showing how evil can be both banal and ruthless.

Here is what our yard looks like two days after a big tree came down, doing very little damage to the things we love.

And to see what our  yard looked like two days ago, click here: https://hinterlands.me/2020/08/31/if-a-tree-falls-in-your-backyard/

As my Yankee husband might say, not too bad.

You most certainly hear a crashing sound when a tree falls in your backyard. Clif and I had just finished breakfast when we heard a loud bang. It didn’t take us long to discover what had happened—the dead tree at the edge of our yard finally came down.

Why this morning, when there was hardly even a breeze? Why not in the past two weeks when we had extremely windy weather? Who knows? But once again, we got lucky. The tree fell on the gardens, but no real damage was done. The tree missed the bird feeder and my beautiful blue fountain. It missed our glass table and the solar panel.

Here are views from the back.

Sherlock, of course, had to inspect the damage.

Clif and I were oh so glad Sherlock wasn’t out there to get hurt when the tree fell. Ditto for his sister Miss Watson.

Now there is much clean-up to do, and because of this, my day has taken a different turn. I was going to write about our Family Virtual Film Festival, but I will save that for Friday as the Film Festival made me very happy indeed, a bright spot during these isolated times of the pandemic.

So out back I go, to help clean up the wood, which we’ll be able to burn in our wood furnace.

When it comes to the weather, living in Maine requires a lot of flexibility and a certain amount of stoicism. One week it might be 90° F, and we need to use the AC to be comfortable. The next week it will dip down to 55° during the night, which calls for blankets at night and a wee bit of heat in the house.

After a spell of dripping hot weather, I woke up this morning to find this delightful temperature:

This afternoon, it is 74°F—dry, bright, sunny—and tonight it’s supposed to go down to the midfifties, which I am sure it did last night.

This is typical late summer weather in Maine, and how I love it. In truth, I could have 350 more days just like this, with some rain thrown in, of course.

In a couple of hours, Clif and I will head to the patio for drinks and some nibbles.  We’ll listen to the crickets sing and watch the hummingbirds zoom to their feeders. Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal will come, red against the green of the woods. What a wonderful time of year.

The second thing that is making me happy is by far the best. Clif went to see a nurse practitioner this week for a test to check his blood sugar. Good news, good news! After two months of a very low-carb diet, Clif’s blood sugar is down. Way down.  In February, his number (A1C)  was so high that the nurse practitioner wanted to increase Clif’s medication. Now, the number is so low that Clif is in the pre-diabetes range. We are hopeful that Clif will be able to bring his numbers down to the non-diabetic range and will be able to stop taking medication all together.

So happy day! I will admit that it has not been easy to shift our diet away from pasta, rice, and potatoes. It’s been very hard. But we have done it, at least in the short term, and we are determined to continue with this regimen.

Last, I will leave you with Norah Jones, a fine, fine singer. I especially like the first song—soulful and melancholy.

And here’s what’s making Thistles and Kiwis happy this week.