I know. I’m supposed to be on a vacation from this blog. But I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of this sign at Fast Eddie’s, a retro restaurant and food drive-in not far from where we live. A sign of summer, indeed, and it couldn’t be more true.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that over the weekend, we saw two British movies with very different approaches to the subject of aging. What I forgot to note was that our British weekend coincided with Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. What good timing!

Anyway…yesterday I wrote about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a straightforward look at aging in today’s society. The other movie we saw was Snow White and the Huntsman, which, as the title suggests, is based on the fairy tale “Snow White.”

When most people think of Snow White, I expect the Disney version will come to mind, a beautiful classic in its own right, with a touch of evil—the queen—and quite a lot of folderol and cleaning—Snow White and the seven dwarfs. For avid readers, the Grimm version will come to mind as well.

While Snow White and the Huntsman is more Grimm than Disney, it forges its own dark way, blending modern concerns of aging with a mythical, medieval setting. Those concerns were always there, both in the Grimm fairy tale and in Disney’s cartoon. After all, the desire to be “fairest of them all” implies youth not old age and wrinkles. But in Snow White and the Huntsman, the evil queen (Charlize Theron)wants to be young with an intensity that is truly chilling. Vampire-like, she not only sucks the life force from young victims, but she also drains the life away from the land, leaving it bleak and barren. Her obsession with youth is a death sentence for all that is around her.

The movie, filmed in Wales and Ireland, starts out in happier times, and the early scenes, full of color and vitality, do a nice job of illustrating how good rulers—Snow White’s mother and father—are good for the land as well as for the people. Then Snow White’s mother dies, and things go downhill fast. Enter Charlize Theron as Ravenna, who quickly becomes the new queen and just as quickly murders Snow White’s father and takes over the kingdom with her own army. Theron has the sort of cold beauty that can easily be used to portray evil, and that’s just what she does in this movie. When she was on the screen, it was as though some malignant, poisonous creature had burst forth, and Theron certainly commanded attention.

Unfortunately, Kristin Stewart of Twilight fame, was less effective as Snow White. Stewart’s rather goofy looks combined with her wooden acting style make an odd combination, and “the fairest of them all” is not the first thing you think when you see her. However, the movie gets around this, to some extent, by suggesting that beauty resides primarily within. Still, an actress with more snap, if not beauty, would have been better as Snow White.

The dwarfs, on the other hand, were brilliant, to borrow a term from the Brits. Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Ian McShane and other British actors played them to perfection. As A.O. Scott put it in his New York Times review, these dwarfs were portrayed as cockney thugs who definitely did not whistle as they worked. No, they didn’t, but they certainly brought a lot of life to the screen, and I wish there had been more scenes with them.

With his scruffy good looks, Chris Hemsworth did a fine job of playing the huntsman. The movie suggests that he, in fact, might be Snow White’s true love, and it’s easy to see why this might be the case.

I don’t think I’m giving too much away by revealing that in the end good overcomes evil, and death comes even to those who are obsessed with youth and eternal life.

Snow White and the Huntsman is not a perfect movie by any means. More care should have been taken with the story, which has some serious plot holes. Nevertheless, good fantasy movies are far and few between, and this one is worth seeing. Our society has practically made a fetish of youth, and Snow White and the Huntsman captures this fetish and shows us how ugly and damaging it is. The cinematography and special effects make this a big-screen movie, and fortunately, they were not a distraction, the way they are in some big-budget films.

So, if time allows, and you like dark fantasies, go see Snow White and the Huntsman.

Last weekend, we saw two very different movies about aging—The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Snow White and the Huntsman. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is considered a “realistic” movie. All of the events featured in the film could have happened, and while all stories involve some contrivance there is no huge suspension of disbelief required to enjoy Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. On the other hand, Snow White and the Huntsman is pure fantasy, and a disturbing one at that.

In today’s post, I’ll cover The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and in the next one I’ll write about Snow White and the Huntsman. Now, I’m not sure it’s accurate to state that Snow White is a British film as the two leading actors are American. However, the director originally comes from Great Britain, it was filmed in Wales and Ireland, and many of the actors—notably the seven dwarfs—are British. So I’m calling it a British film.

And, in keeping with the spirit of England, I’ll conclude with a recipe for fish with parsley sauce, which I made on Sunday. It’s one I’ve refined over the year, and Clif deemed this version “company good.”

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel includes a dazzling cast of some of England’s finest albeit aging actors—Judi Dench, who can do anything; Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, and Penelope Wilton. The story explores a subject that is a major concern for many people and is only going to get larger in the upcoming years. That is, as people age, how do they make good lives for themselves, lives that are full and meaningful rather than ones that are filled with loneliness and boredom? Especially when they live on limited incomes and have flats so small that they can be cleaned in a half-hour. What to do with the rest of one’s time?

In Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the main charters set out for India. They have been lured by a brochure that only has a vague connection with the truth—there is a Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but let’s just say that it’s somewhat shabbier in reality than in how it’s presented in the brochure. As Muriel, Maggie Smith’s character, indignantly observes: “The hotel in that brochure was photo-shopped.”

Yes, it was. Unlike the gleaming hotel that was advertised, the real one is dirty and falling apart. One of the rooms doesn’t have a door, which leads to a comical situation. However, the hotel is the way it is not because of malice or laziness but rather because the young owner, Sonny Kapoor, played extremely energetically by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire, has no money for its upkeep. However, Sonny really does yearn to run a beautiful, refurbished hotel, and it is this sincerity, at least in part, that keeps the travelers at his hotel. (Also, there is really nothing for them back home in England, and most of them don’t have enough money to move elsewhere.)

All the travelers have come to India for various reasons, and in the course of the movie, they find their footing and have small but meaningful epiphanies brought on by the astonishing vitality of Indian life. Some of the transformations are more believable than others, but the movie is so beautifully and movingly acted that I was was willing to overlook this and can without hesitation recommend Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is probably not a young people’s movie. However, it certainly resonates with the over-50s crowd. I went to see it at Railroad Square Cinema, a small art cinema in Waterville, Maine, and the house was packed, but let’s just say there was a predominance of wrinkles and gray hair in the audience. According to the staff at Railroad Square, almost every showing has been packed, and on the night we went, the audience applauded when the film was done.

In the upcoming years, there are going to be many old people, too many to ignore. While not all of us can or indeed should go to India to find our footing, we really do need to give some thought as to how we are going to live the last part of lives. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel chronicles this exploration and leaves viewers with a sense of hope. Perhaps the movie will encourage viewers to have little epiphanies in their own communities, where they can remain active, vital, useful, and connected for as long as possible.

Last night, I had a discussion with Scott Davis, a neighbor who lives just up the road from me. His son Ian went to school with my eldest daughter Dee, and we exchanged information about the two “kids.” Ian married a women from Switzerland, who is fluent in English, French, and German, and at home she speaks French to her little children so that they will be bilingual. Both Scott and I agreed that this was a terrific thing to do, that nobody regrets being able to speak more than one language.

However, when I think of Switzerland, I quite naturally think of chocolate, and I mentioned this to Scott.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “They practically serve it at every meal. But you know what? The obesity rates in Switzerland are much lower than they are in the U.S.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“Well, when my wife and I went to visit our daughter-in-law’s family, we noticed that the Swiss walk everywhere, for fun and to get to places. Their portion sizes are much smaller, and their meals are leisurely. They don’t eat on the run.”

To sum up: The Swiss exercise more, eat less, and have more relaxed meal times. Sounds like a winning combination to me. The only thing I would add is that some countries make this healthy lifestyle easier for its citizens than other counties do. For example, it is my understanding that Switzerland has good public transportation and less sprawl. As a result, people don’t use cars as much and walk more.

Also, the Swiss government has mandated that all employees get 4 paid weeks of vacation a year. In the United States, the number of mandated paid vacation weeks is zero. Employers are not required to give their employees any paid vacation or holidays at all, and indeed I have worked in several jobs where I have had neither vacation time nor sick time. I know all too well that old, stressed overworked/underpaid feeling, and it is not a good one.

Let’s just say that it’s easier to have relaxed meals when you have a more relaxed schedule, with plenty of paid vacation time and some paid holidays thrown in to boot.

Now, this does not mean I think that individuals aren’t responsible for healthy and unhealthy habits. Quite the reverse—we are responsible for what we eat and how much we are exercise. But I also believe that we are societal beings as well as individuals, and some countries are better at promoting healthier, more relaxed societies than others are.

These countries, like Switzerland, usually have a high standard of living. They are not fringe countries where people are scrapping to survive for basic necessities.

And need I mention that Switzerland has universal health care for its citizens? No, but I’ll do so anyway.

So my question is, why don’t we do it more like the Swiss, when the benefits are so obvious?

Last night, I watched the first two parts of the excellent Frontline‘s four-part series on the financial crisis. No one does it like Frontline, where they tirelessly lay out the facts and put them together in a way that is comprehensible and enlightening. Last night was no exception even for someone like me, who is not exactly clever when it comes to money and math.

Frontline traced the origins of the crisis to a meeting in Florida in the early 1990s where young financial “geniuses” got together to figure out how financial institutions could avoid risk and make more money. From there, the law of unintended consequences, combined with greed and stupidity, kicked in, and some very powerful people came mighty close to wrecking the world’s economy and causing a world-wide depression.

It is beyond the scope of this post (and perhaps this writer) to lay out exactly how the financial crisis happened. I would encourage readers to watch this special and learn for themselves. I’m even seriously considering buying this documentary so that I can watch it and learn at my own slow pace.

But I do have a couple of thoughts. First, the people and firms responsible for this misery have not paid restitution. Just the reverse. They are as rich and as powerful as ever, and they continue to stack the deck, via laws and regulations, in their favor. In my opinion, all the financial institutions involved should have been forced to pay a financial crisis tax, large enough to do some good, to in turn help states deal with the shortfalls that came as a result of this crisis. I also think the individuals leading these firms needed to make restitution, not by going to jail, but instead by paying hefty—and I mean hefty—fines that could also go to alleviating some of the harm they caused. Hours and hours of community service would also have been appropriate. None of this will happen, but it should have, and it galls me that it hasn’t.

Second, and almost as galling, is that we are all part of this horrible system. There is no way we can opt out. Even the most avid, green back-to-lander is somewhat dependent on the money that comes from Wall Street. It might not be directly, although it is the rare family that will not rely on pensions or benefits funded from investments. But the dependence on Wall Street is there all the same.

For example, let’s say we have Joe and Josephine, alternative farmers, who grow, make, and barter pretty much everything they need. Such people are rare, but they do exist. (Often in a farming family, one person works outside the home to bring in a steady income and health insurance, and the other person tends the farm.) To continue with our mythical couple: The money Joe and Josephine need for operating expenses comes from the products they sell, and it really seems as though Joe and Josephine should be able to thumb their noses at Wall Street and the rest of the world. Yet, Joe and Josephine are still a part of the system because they are dependent on the rest of us, whose jobs, at various levels, depend on the financial system. Without us to buy their products, there would be no Farmers Joe and Josephine.

Perhaps I’m being cynical. Maybe by buying local and second hand, by reusing and recycling, we can at least slow down the system and do some good. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is both frustrating and scary that the shadowy men and women of the financial world should have so much power to ruin so many lives, not just in our country but also around the world.

I wish the Occupy Movement the best of luck. They are going up against formidable and dangerous opponents.

“If we are going to have better for ourselves, we have to find it in things that are not vulnerable to collapse—in beauty and community, in the pleasure of good work and family, in things that are low-cost, simple and available. We’re going to have to find a new definition of better.”
—Sharon Astyk

I couldn’t agree more, and it seems to me that our whole anniversary weekend exemplifies the above quotation by Sharon Astyk. Accordingly, I’d like to share a picture of another gift we received last weekend—a very snazzy tote bag that Tim—Farmer Kev’s father—gave to me when I went to pick up two dozen eggs.

I’ll be carrying it proudly.

And stay tuned for Farmer Kev T-shirts.

In the New York Times, there is a piece by Julia Moskin about being a ghost writer for cookbooks. As I read her descriptions about what it was like to work for various chefs, I thought, “There is no bloody way I would want to do that.” Many of the chefs she worked with were rude, difficult, egocentric blokes, and one even had a wife who was so insecure that she didn’t want Moskin’s name on the cover of the book. Why do writers do it? Because it can “be a gateway to better things.” (Sounds a little bit like a drug, doesn’t it?) Regardless of the “gateway,” most cookbook ghost writers don’t last very long in the job.

But perhaps the most damning statement is that in some cases, the chefs don’t even supply and test their own recipes. “At the most extreme level, a few highly paid ghostwriter-cooks actually produce entire books, from soup to nuts…One recent best-selling tome on regional cooking was produced entirely in a New York apartment kitchen, with almost no input from the author.” Makes you want to run right out and buy a chef’s cookbook, doesn’t it?

But even more curious, at least to me, was the following: “The authors most likely to write and thoroughly test their own work are trained cooks who do not work in restaurants, like Molly Stevens, Deborah Madison and Grace Young, and obsessive hobbyist cooks like Jennifer McLagan and Barbara Kafka.” (The emphasis is mine.)

The obsessive part I get. Many cooks are food obsessed—I plead guilty to that charge—and cooking can be a natural extension of that obsession, especially when you can’t afford to eat out very often. It’s the “hobbyist” part that brought me up short. Cooking as a hobby? I had never considered something so essential as cooking to be a hobby. To me, a hobby is a slightly frivolous albeit enjoyable pastime such as collecting stamps or flying model airplanes.

Cooking, on the other hand, is what you do to ensure that your household has meals that both taste good and are good for the body. In addition, what we eat influences not only our health but also the health of the planet. (Pesticides, hormones, industrial animal farming with its manure lagoons. You know the drill.) When we buy local, when we buy organic, when we buy eggs from hens that have been treated humanely, we go beyond the personal to a larger way of thinking that can have profound effects on our society and even the world.

Cooking as a hobby? I don’t think so. Cooking is far too important to be reduced to a hobby.