Category Archives: Winter

Movies, Winter

Midwinter Calm, a Time for Movies

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On the Homefront 

Here we are in the middle of February, midwinter in Maine. I love this still, cold time of year when the house is surrounded by snow, and I can see the sky because the trees are bare.

Here is the view from the living room window during the blue hour

Another day, in the afternoon, I took pictures of our backyard through an open window in my bathroom.

The memorial bench is surrounded by and covered with snow.

Most of the garden is a sea of snow, an excellent protection from the extreme cold we had in December and January. (Not much above zero for those two months.) But there is some interest thanks to the hydrangeas that Judy of New England Garden and Thread gave me, some black-eyed Susans, and the ornaments I left in the garden.

Midwinter is a time for reading, getting together with friends, and going to the movies. All right, I pretty much do this year-round, but in the winter, I don’t have to worry about outside chores, which are often front and center.

Movies, Movies, Movies

The Academy Awards are coming right up—March 15—and we try to see as many of the nominees as possible. Even though we are adults, we are still keen on animated films. (Young at heart or arrested development?) This weekend, we saw three of the animated films nominated for Best Picture.

KPop Demon Hunters

This movie is loud and lively, filled with kick-butt female demon hunters who love to eat and sing. Perfect for its intended audience of tweens and young teens. For adults? Not so much. However, from time to time, I did find myself bobbing to the music. Available to stream on Netflix.

Zootopia 2

Can two detectives, a fox and a rabbit, work together despite their differences? And an even bigger question: should reptiles, who are even more different than mammals, be allowed to live in Zootopia? This film is beautifully animated. Most adults will certainly appreciate the message of tolerance and understand how it applies to our own human world. The movie is at times hectic, which children will enjoy, but there is enough in the story for adults to enjoy as well.  Currently playing in cinemas.

Arco

This is my favorite of the three, and I highly recommend it. A young boy named Arco lives in a future where time travel is possible. His sister and parents regularly travel back in time to gather plants, but they maintain Arco is too young to go with them. Does Arco sneak into his sister’s room and steal her time-traveling garb? Of course he does, and back to the past he goes, inadvertently landing in 2075 when the climate crisis is becoming a grave threat. There, he meets a young girl named Iris. Naturally, complications ensue, and he has a difficult time returning to the future.

This gentle, soulful movie does not preach, but it does not shy away from the worst of what the climate crisis could bring to Earth. How many movies, animated or not, examine this subject? Not very many. We saw Arco at the Maine Film Center, which specializes in independent movies, but it will soon be available on streaming services.

 

 

Food for Thought, Winter

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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Lately, the country’s eyes have been on Minnesota, in particular, Minneapolis, as federal agents—2,000 of them—run rampant, terrorizing the city’s citizens.

As a Mainer, I feel a special kinship with Minnesota, even though the states are 1,100 miles apart. To begin with, Maine and Minnesota are at a similar latitude—in the mid-40s. For residents of both states, winter is a fact of life, rolling around each year after autumn’s glorious blaze and hanging on for five months. We are intimately acquainted with snow and cold. (I was born in September, and was only months old when I experienced my first winter.) Even in the summer, Mainers are thinking about winter, and I expect the same is true for folks in Minnesota.

Late January morning

 

Frost waves on the window

It seems to me that living in a state that experiences deep winter gives its residents a certain pluck and fortitude. Sure, we sometimes hunker down to keep the home fires burning, especially if the temperature dips too far below zero, but we also venture forth in the cold to go to movies and restaurants, to visit friends and family. Some hardy folks drill holes in the ice to fish. Not my idea of fun, but each to their own.

Perhaps just as important, Maine and Minnesota are also considered liberal states, sharing concerns about the climate, gay rights, and equality.

When winter pluckiness is combined with progressive politics, the results are astonishing. We see Minnesotans go forth into the extreme cold with their whistles and cell phones to defend neighbors who have been targeted — often unfairly — by federal agents. They brave tear gas and sometimes bullets. They deliver food and other necessities to those who are afraid to leave their houses. And they march in protests.

On a recent Bulwark podcast, Adam Serwer, a journalist at The Atlantic, spoke beautifully about neighborism in Minneapolis: “It doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter what gender you are. It doesn’t matter what race you are. It doesn’t matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you.”

Serwer’s words moved me to tears. Although I am not religious, the courage and generosity of Minnesotans strike me as the best of what Christianity embodies. No small thing when we too often see the worst of Christianity via Christian Nationlists, the intolerance, the repression.

So let us follow Minneapolis’s example. Let us open our hearts to our neighbors, no matter their race, creed, or gender.

When the porch is shoveled, please come for tea or coffee.

 

 

Food, Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

No Escape

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Dreary March has come to central Maine. We are in a no-man’s land between winter and spring, a time of dirty snow, fog, and gray skies.

On the other hand, northern Maine, the land of my ancestors, is still in winter’s firm grip. Last weekend, they got a foot of snow, and the drifting was so bad some roads had to be closed. Ah, winter! However, in a few weeks, March will come for them, too. In Maine there is no escape.

Behold the end of our driveway and across the road, both of which scream March.

Dirty snow or not, Snow-Gauge Clif must do his job.

In the front yard, the snow measured 17 inches, only 1 inch down from last week. The front yard is very shaded, and the snow melts slowly.

On the other hand, the sunnier backyard measured 7 inches, 5 inches down from last week.  More sun, quicker melt.

To cheer myself up from the March blahs, last Wednesday I headed to the little town of Wayne—population 1,189 and named after Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne—to A Small Town Bakery. On Wednesdays, a group of women meets to discuss matters big and small, and it’s so nice to get together with like-minded folks. Plus, I seem to be addicted to the bakery’s blueberry muffins. (Sorry, no picture! Next time.)

The bakery has a funky, mismatched, comfortable look that reminds me of bakeries in the 1970s. It’s a look that I’m fond of and brings back memories of my teenage years.

And I absolute love these chickens.

If my house didn’t already have an—ahem—abundance of ornaments, those chickens would be coming home with me. I can almost hear them clucking to each other.

But fear not. I didn’t come home empty handed. I brought back a loaf of the bakery’s utterly delicious anadama bread, a New England specialty. I could have a slice right now. Toasted, of course.

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Last week also brought something not quite as pleasant as bread and blueberry muffins. I had my annual sinus infection that for some odd reason usually arrives in March. It’s as though my body is mourning the end of winter and the beginning of purgatory. The infection begins gradually with the aching of teeth and then progresses to a painful throbbing that comes and goes in waves. No fun, but as it always goes away by itself in a week or so, I don’t bother with antibiotics. Don’t want to overuse them.

I mention this because I inadvertently found a method to relieve the pain, and I thought I would share it here with those who might not know about this method. (Took me sixty-seven years to figure it out.)

One night, when the wave of pain was bad enough so that I could not fall asleep, I decided to to do some deep breathing to focus on something else. To my astonishment, the pain went away. When the pain came back five or so minutes later, I did some more deep breathing. Again, the pain went away.  I did this off and on until I finally fell asleep.

The next day, I thought, what the heck. Is deep breathing really a solution to the pain brought on by sinus infections? To Google I went, and sure enough, it is. Also, headaches, too, which fortunately I seldom have.

So there you have it. An easy and natural remedy for sinus infection pain. Obviously, some infections must be treated by antibiotics, and it’s up to individuals to decide if treatment is necessary. But for me, who has a history of sinus infections and know that they go away on their own, the deep breathing method is a godsend. I only wish I had known about it sooner.

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Listening

What better way to say a sad farewell to winter than with Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”? (Remember, I’m a child of the 70s and a huge Led Zeppelin fan.)

I come from the lands of the ice and snow…where the harsh winds blow.

 

 

Art, Books, Winter

Some Thoughts on Shadows

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In Maine, we have moved from deep winter to late winter and will soon be approaching the purgatory that is mid-March. But we still have a few weeks to go until purgatory, and in the meantime winter reigns, that time of shadows on the snow. How I love to see the shadows in our backyard.

The way the slats from the fence register on the snow,

the way the blue shadows stripe the yard,

and the way the dark shadows fill the woods.

Such a beautiful season, and even though staying warm is expensive, I never wish for winter to hurry into spring. Each year, I  welcome winter with a glad heart and am always renewed by this still, cold season that encourages a person to turn inward.

While we don’t want to turn inward indefinitely—we need spring and the exuberant return to life—winter, for me at least, is a necessary time to examine personal shadows and try to come to terms with them.

If this sounds very Jungian, well, it is. Years ago, I blasted through the books of the late, great Canadian writer Robertson Davies, who was a great admirer of Carl Jung, author and psychiatrist, among other things. If I remember correctly, Davies maintained that Jung, with his emphasis on the unconscious, was the patron saint of artists, all of whom, one way or another, dig deep into the unconsciousness to produce art. The deeper the dive, the greater the art. (By art, I mean art in general, which includes literature, dance, music, theater, and, yes, movies.)

Therefore, as I am surrounded by the shadows of winter, I settle in to read and think and write.

Spring will come soon enough.

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Listening

Bob Dylan: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Bob Dylan, a musician who has been much in the news because of the bio pic A Complete Unknown, certainly dug deep to write his songs. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” beautifully illustrates this.

Food, Music, Winter

A Weekend of Weather Extremes

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Last weekend was a weekend of extremes. On Saturday, the weather was sunny and clear, which meant we could head to Waterville for a movie (A Light Never Goes Out, a sweet film about loss) and then afterwards a trip to Buen Apetito for lunch with our friend Joel.

We were lucky enough get a seat on the glassed-in porch, and I was struck by how the sunlight hit Joel’s pomegranate margarita.

Clif and I ordered our favorite, potato flautases. We had read online that the menu at Buen Apetito would be changing soon, and we asked our server about potato flautuses. Would they still be there?

“Oh, don’t worry,” she assured us. “They are staying on the menu. Besides, they’re my favorite, too, and I would fight to keep them on.”

Nodding, we smiled and left her a very good tip.

Sunday was a stormy day. The original forecast was for a foot-and-a-half of snow, and that, my friends, is a lot of snow even for a Mainer. Fortunately, we only got about six or seven inches, well within our comfort zone for cleaning the driveway and paths.

Here are some snowy-day scenes.

Pushing through the snow to open the door.

A shovel, ready and waiting.

The view from the front deck.

Our little red Fit under the trees.

Clif with Sno-Joe, our electric snow-thrower.

Dee and I cleaned the cars and shoveled the walkways, and I’m pleased to report that even with creaky knees, I did just fine. Somehow, I remain unfazed by the prospect of shoveling snow. I suppose it’s because I’ve done so much of it.

Afterwards, we had soggy hats and gloves. In our dining room, we have a handy place to dry some of them. (The overflow goes on racks down cellar.)

Long-time readers friends will be happy to learn that there is plenty of snow for snow-gauge Clif to measure come March.  In January, we weren’t so sure, but February has put that fear to rest.

Onward to the next storm!

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Listening

Northern Attitude: Noah Kahan with Hozier

Right about now, this song seems pretty appropriate. Noah Kahan is from Vermont, which, like Maine, knows a thing or two about winter and long dark days.

Celebrate, Movies, People, Winter

Flow: Pancakes, Pizza, Beer, and a Movie

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In Maine, January was a dry month with little snow, but February has been quite a different matter, with a flurry of storms every few days. It certainly looks like winter at our home by the edge of the woods.

This weekend, in between snowstorms, our daughter Shannon and her husband Mike came for a visit to celebrate his birthday.

We are big believers in celebrating, and the whole of Saturday was mapped out for Mike’s birthday.

It started with a pancake breakfast. I know this is bragging, but Clif’s pancakes are the best in central Maine. So light and fluffy and delicious. The veggie sausage patties and home fries weren’t too bad either.

After a leisurely breakfast and lots of time spent talking—no, we didn’t solve the world’s problems, but we certainly tried—we headed into Augusta to Cushnoc Brewing Co. for pizza.

We started out with snacks.

Then we moved on to pizza.

What to do afterwards? Why, onward to Absolem  Cider Company, which is right here in little Winthrop, Maine (population 6,000), about three miles from where we live. We still can’t believe such a terrific place is so close to us.

To get to the old barn with its tasting room, there is a pathway lined with lights and snowy picnic tables, and it felt like a magical winter scene in the still, cold night.

Inside, the barn was dark and cozy, filled with folks drinking beer, cider, wine, and cocktails as they listened to Maine musician Kevin Leary. In a clear voice, he sang covers of Neil Young and other musicians.

Mike and Clif each ordered  a special beer called Mott the Lesser, a Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Tributary Brewing. It is the most remarkable beer I have ever tasted, with strong notes of coffee and caramel. I can only conclude there was alchemy in the brewing process.

We left after the music was done and headed back home, where there were presents and an interested dog. We had cake, of course, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

As we Mainers would say, it was a finest kind day, with one event just flowing into the other.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

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Watching

And speaking of flow…there is a wonderful animated movie from Latvia, Belgium, and France called Flow. It’s won a Golden Globe and is one of my favorite movies of the  year.  The story revolves around five animals in a world without people and thus has no human dialogue. But there are plenty of animal and nature sounds. Into this world, which looks post-apocalyptic with remains of human civilization, comes a horrific flood.

The main character, a black cat, bands together with a dog, a lemur, a capybara, and a secretarybird to survive the flood. There are scenes both terrifying and humorous as the animals cope with the ever-rising water that forces them out of their homes. The very last image, following a rescue, is as precise and moving as the ending line of a haiku.

If Flow comes to a theater near you, don’t hesitate to see it. And if it does not—Flow is, after all an indie film made for a few million dollars—do watch this beautiful, moving film when it is available through a streaming service.

 

 

Celebrate, Television, Winter

The Return of Snow-Gauge Clif

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Well, it happened. The weather gods decided to play one of their little tricks on us, and on Saturday a storm blow into the state. Where we live in central Maine, we got mostly snow, about ten inches, and we kept our power the whole time. The coast was not as lucky. From New Hampshire to mid-coast Maine, they got freezing rain, enough of it to knock down trees and power lines.  At its worst, after the storm, 184,000 Central Maine Power (CMP) customers were without power, and today, Monday, 80,000 still don’t have it. (CMP has 675,000 customers.)

However, as the saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and so it is in Winthrop. Ten inches of snow means the return of Snow-Gauge Clif.

How long will it take for this snow to melt? I’m guessing it won’t be long. Rain is in the forecast as are temps in the 50s. Will Snow-Gauge Clif return next week? Stay tuned!

During the storm, from the bathroom window, I snapped a picture of this pretty fellow, a cardinal. The cardinal is not as clear as I would like him to be, but nonetheless I thought the red against the snow was pretty.

Last Tuesday, March 19, was our forty-seventh wedding anniversary. Holy cats, Clif and I have been together for a long time. Because Tuesday was a work day for Clif (he does book design), Me (I write books), and our daughter Dee (she does web work),in the evening we had a simple celebration of nuts and drinks as well as veggie sausages and dairy-free ice cream. The goblets were given to us by a good friend on our first wedding anniversary, and we bring them out every year for a celebratory drink.

On Friday, before the storm, we took the afternoon off and had a fried day. Both Clif and I love fried food, and we are lucky enough to have a digestive system that easily handles this kind of food. (I know from previous comments that not all my blogging friends can eat fried food.)

However, this capacity for fried food has its downside. Without vigilance, we could eat way more fried food than we should.  However, I am happy to report that we do use restraint and only have fried food a few times a year.

Here was our line-up for Friday: fried onions (Clif), fried mushrooms (me, although I shared a few), and fries (both of us). And a whoopie pie to share for dessert.

The food was very, very tasty and served piping hot. So cheer to us! In another three years we will have been together for fifty years. Yikes, that’s a long time.

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Watching

The Gentlemen, television series, 2024
Created by Guy Ritchie
Available on Netflix

Along with having an enthusiasm for fried food, I am also keen on quirky crime dramas. The Gentlemen definitely qualifies as a quirky crime drama, and Guy Ritche’s fingerprints are all over it. Clif and I were so caught up with the story and the acting that we blew through four episodes on Saturday morning while it snowed outside.

Eddie (Theo James), an aristocrat, is called home to the family estate where his father is dying. After his father’s death, Eddie learns, much to his surprise, that he has inherited the estate. He is a second son, and always thought his elder brother Freddie would be the one to get the estate. Neither Freddie nor Eddie is pleased with this turn of events, but the will is clear. Eddie gets the estate.

Eddie also receives another surprise. For some years, his father has been renting out a barn to a weed enterprise run by the delightfully deadpan Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), who is about the same age as Eddie. Eddie wants the weed business to move; Susie does not.

To complicate matters, they both have brothers who have a knack for getting in trouble. Naturally, complications ensue as do murder and mayhem. James and Scodelario have a wonderful chemistry. Are they attracted to each other? Are they out to get each other? Or maybe both? This tension gives the show a nice energy.

The supporting cast is equally delightful, with each character, no matter how brief the performance, being distinct and memorable.

I’ve read that season two of The Gentlemen might be in the works.

Fingers crossed.

 

Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

Enter…Snow-Gauge Clif

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First, the good news. All around the world, blog readers have been waiting for Snow-Gauge Clif, and this week he is making his first appearance on the first Monday in March, the way he has for many years.

But—and I expect readers knew there would be a but—I’m not sure how many more weeks you will have of Snow-Gauge Clif. Normally, he goes into April, sometimes to the middle of the month. This year, unless there are some major snow storms, he’ll be lucky to make it to the middle of March.

Let’s begin with yesterday’s temperature. (This year’s photos were taken on Sunday, March 3.)

For Mainers, this is an eye-popping temperature in March. Heck, once upon a time, we were lucky to get this temp by the end of April.

Not surprisingly, the mud is in full swing. In the backyard, the footprint left by my Sloggers tells the story. Squish, squish. I’m itching to get back there and do some clean-up. Not until the mud dries up.

The ice on the patio is m-e-l-t-i-n-g.

Will the ice be gone by next weekend?  We shall see. At this rate, we’ll be having drinks on the patio by the beginning of April.

And, now, the man you’ve all been waiting for—Snow-Gauge Clif!

In the front yard in 2024, where there’s  a bit more snow than the backyard.

For a comparison, here’s last year’s picture taken on the first Sunday in March 2023.

Now to the backyard this year, 2024.

In the backyard last year, 2023.

In March 2022, on the first Sunday of March, front yard and back.

This is an El Niño year, which always brings a warmer winter. But. Not. This. Warm. I can’t recall a March with so little snow.

Stay tuned for next week.

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Reading

The Curse of Pietro Houdini
By Derek B. Miller
Originally published: January 16, 2024

I have read some very good books this year—An Owl on Every Post (Sanora Babb); Offshore (Penelope Fitzgerald); Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett)—but if I read a better book than The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B, Miller, I will be surprised. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, The Curse of Pietro Houdini follows the perilous journey of fourteen-year-old Massimo, orphaned during the American bombing of Rome in 1943.

Fleeing Rome, Massimo meets Pietro Houdini, who saves the teenager from a vicious beating from thugs. Onward the two go, first to Montecassino, a Benedictine Abbey, where Houdini presents himself as a “Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican.” After that it’s on to a little village. Along the way there is an art heist, gold theft, murder, and great sorrow. But there is also wisdom and humor, love and generosity, which Miller deftly balances with the horrors of World War II.

The characters in The Curse of Pietro Houdini—among them Massimo, Houdini, Brother Tobias, and even the mule Ferrari—are vivid and quirky but never cartoonish. The shifts in perspective among the characters are nothing short of brilliant, and, yes, I have a serious case of writer’s envy.

This is a book to buy for yourself and a book to buy for others.

 

 

Movies, Winter

Three months of March

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For most Mainers, March is the worst month of the year. After the long dark cold of December, January, and February, what we would like is a softening, some sign of spring. Instead, what we traditionally get is wet heavy snow, sometimes lots of it, followed by snowbanks packed with pebbles and dirt and then worst of all, at the end of the month, thick, dirty, oozing Mud. And, yes, I intended the capitalization. In March in Maine, Mud is a force of nature to be reckoned with. I have lost a shoe in the mud going out to the compost bin.

This winter, it feels as though we have had three months of March, with so little snow that some outside events in the area have been canceled. This February, we’ve had mud. The chickadees are singing their spring song, and friends have spotted red-wing black birds. Really? In February? So it seems.

Readers, fair warning: This does not look as though it’s going to be a good year for Snow-Gauge Clif. More about that next week.

Here is what our backyard looks like right now.

So many pine cones had dropped that I decided to go outside to gather them for kindling for our wood furnace down cellar.

How to cap this odd month? With a trip to Absolem to meet friends for drinks. My drink, which is featured below, was a delicious blueberry cider.

What will March bring? We shall see.

Watching

Drive-Away Dolls
Directed by Ethan Coen

Ethan Coen is one half of the talented Coen brothers team—the other brother is Joel—and together they have made and directed terrific movies such as Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski.

Recently, they have parted ways creatively. Joel Coen would go on to direct a striking version of Macbeth. Ethan has given us Drive-Away Dolls, a stinker of film that leads me to conclude that Joel was the talented brother of the team, and whatever Ethan might have contributed was guided and controlled by his older brother.

The plot is a classic Coen brothers set-up and should have been fun: Two young women, an odd couple, decide to go on a road trip and hook-up with a company that allows them to drive a car for free to Florida. In the trunk is a brief case hidden with the spare tire, and it turns out the women were given the wrong car. A bickering pair of gangsters come after the women, and what mostly ensues is explicit sex, lame jokes, and a stupid denouement, which all come together to make the movie seem far longer than its 1 hour and 24 minutes runtime. However, in all fairness, I must add that some people at the cinema were laughing away at jokes we thought were lame. Even though the jokes left us cold, they tickled the funny  bones of other folks.

I decided to write about this movie for two reasons: One, to warn fans of the Coen brothers what they are going to get if they decide to go to Drive-Away Dolls and are expecting a quirky, snappy movie reminiscent of the brothers’ past films. And two, if readers do decide to go see this movie, I would be very interested in reading what you think about it. Did you love it or hate it?

I enjoy reading opposing views as much as I enjoy reading views that match mine. So do let me know what you think of the movie if you see it and have a chance to leave a comment.