Food for Thought

Three Brave Republicans Save the ACA—At Least for Now

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In yesterday’s post, I had indicated that today I would wrap up the movie reviews from last week’s Maine International Film Festival. However, last night’s vote in the U.S. Senate regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA)  made me change my mind. I just have to write, at least a little, about an issue that is important not only to me but also to millions of people in this country.

For those of us who depend upon the Affordable Care Act, what a weird, scary ride it has been since last November and especially this week. A headline from a recent article in the New York Times captures the way so many of us feel: “The war in Congress over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has brought anxiety to the people whose health insurance is at risk.”

Oh, that is to put it mildly. I have been in turmoil about this because  if the Republicans succeed in repealing the ACA, there is no Plan B for me. My husband is retired, and I would not be able to afford health insurance without the ACA. This means I would go without health insurance for a few years until I qualify for Medicare. As a cancer survivor, that is one terrifying thought.

This past week saw the issue brought to a fever-pitch in the U.S. Senate as Republicans did their best to repeal and replace the ACA. (Need I add that the replacement still would have deprived millions of health insurance?) The Republicans hold the Senate by the slimmest majority, and it would take the defection of three Republican senators to stymie their repeal plans. There were two stalwarts—Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and our own Susan Collins of Maine. (Bless her!) One more Republican was needed, and truthfully, I was not optimistic as the Senate voted last night on what was called “skinny repeal.”

But wonder of wonder, John McCain, from Arizona, returned to his maverick roots and  joined Collins and Murkowski in voting no. This was especially poignant as McCain has been recently diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer and had surgery about a week ago.

Who knows where the ACA will go next? But, for now, anyway, those three Republicans have ensured that millions of people will get affordable health insurance and thus affordable health care. Collins, Murkowksi, and McCain must have been under tremendous pressure. Hats off to them for not bending under that pressure.

In honor of those three Republicans as well as the forty-eight Democrats who held strong, here are some pictures of flowers from my gardens.

A day to give thanks, that’s for sure.

 

Movies

Three Things Thursday: My Nephew Patrick, A Movie, and Roger Deakins

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In Tuesday’s post, I had written that on Wednesday, I would post reviews of the other three movies I saw at the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF). However, for various reasons, including a trip to Lucky Gardens in Hallowell, the day got away from me.

No matter, I will post one more review today—of Prisoners—and the last two tomorrow. Because Prisoners was such a memorable event,  this piece will also do double duty for Three Things Thursday, my weekly exercise in gratitude. This, to me, is a winning situation as I love combining things.

First, a bit of backstory. My nephew Patrick, who is twenty-three, is a full-fledged cinephile whose taste in movies extends well beyond summer blockbusters. (He’s our nephew, that’s for sure.) Patrick is such a movie buff that he is even a fan of certain cinematographers such as Roger Deakins, whose films include No Country for Old Men, Kundun, and many, many others. At this year’s MIFF, Deakins  was honored with the festival’s brand-new Karl Struss Legacy Award for “distinguished achievement in cinematography.” Patrick wanted to go to the presentation of this award, which also included a showing of the 2013 movie Prisoners, featuring Roger Deakins’s incredible cinematography. Among others, the film stars Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Viola Davis. And so Dee, Clif, and I went to see Prisoners with Patrick and his mother, Rose.

Prisoners
U.S.A 2013—152 minutes
In English

From the moment this film opens in a bleak, dreary woods with a lone deer in the distance—a deer you know won’t be long for this world—the tone is set for this dark movie. Two families in a neighborhood join together for a Thanksgiving dinner. In each family there is a teenager and a young daughter. The Thanksgiving meal is the one bright note in Prisoners, where it is made clear that the families truly enjoy being together. After the meal, the two little girls go out, and they never come back. The families  descend into grief as the days pass, and the girls are not found. Hugh Jackman, one of the fathers, decides he knows who kidnapped the girls. Taking matters into his own hands, he crosses lines that should not be crossed.  Jake Gyllenhaal plays a tightly-wound detective who comes from a troubled background. This movie really does keep viewers on the edge of their seats, especially as there is even a scene that involves snakes. Deakins’s brooding cinematography adds a chilling menace to this disturbing film. Best of all, Prisoners never descends into cliché, where the cop and the frantic father become buddies and bring the movie to a heart-warming ending. Quite the reverse. The two men never warm up to each other, and this holds true for the entire film.

After the movie, Roger Deakins received his award and was interviewed on stage by a journalist from the New York Times. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the journalist’s name.) Deakins spoke about how he didn’t want to achieve the same look in every movie and how he thought cinematography shouldn’t call attention to itself. For Deakins, the story is the thing. An illuminating interview with a true master.

When the interview was over, Clif, Dee, and I went to the lobby, but Patrick and Rose did not follow us.

“Where’s Patrick?” I asked.

“He wanted to shake hands with Roger Deakins,” Dee replied.

She had no sooner said this than Patrick came striding out of the theater, and there was a big, big smile on his face.

He said, “I can’t believe I just got to shake hands with the cinematographer for No Country for Old Men.”

Surely, this must be one of the best lines from a MIFF attendee.

 

 

Movies

Part I: Movies—A Political Thriller and a Doc

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This year, because our daughter Dee stayed for a whole week rather than a long weekend, I was able to go to five of the movies at the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF). Usually I am on dog duty as Clif and Dee start going to movies at noon and don’t come home until midnight. But because Dee stayed longer, the movies on their ten-pass were spread out, meaning they weren’t gone as long on some of the days. Hence, I,  too, could go on those days.

Each year, MIFF features nearly 100 films so picking out five movies is no easy task. However, I am happy to report that the five I picked were all very much worth seeing, and readers who are movie buffs might want to add them to their “to be seen” list.

Therefore, today and tomorrow, I’m going to post brief descriptions of the movies I saw, in the order in which they were viewed.

The Nile Hilton Incident
Sweden/Denmark/Germany 2017—106 minutes
In Arabic with English subtitles

This is a dark, political thriller set in Cairo during the time of the tumultuous 2011 revolution. The story follows Noredin (Fares Fares), a world-weary, corrupt detective who accepts bribes as casually and frequently as he smokes cigarettes. When a nightclub singer is murdered, and it’s clear the crime was committed by those in power, Noredin decides this is a line he can’t cross, despite his corrupt ways. While there are no true heroes in the film—the system degrades and punishes everyone at some level—Noredin, in the end, acts with bravery and compassion. With his magnificent nose and melancholy face, Fares Fares brings sympathy to a hard-edged, self-destructive character. The movie also shows—but never preaches—how government does indeed matter and how the bad ones pretty much make life impossible for ordinary citizens.

Lives Well Lived
U.S.A. 2017—72 Minutes
In English

This documentary came about as the director, Sky Bergman, started filming her ninety-nine-year-old grandmother as she cooked. Then Bergman began filming her grandmother at the gym “because I thought, no one will believe that my grandmother is still working out. I asked her if she could give me a few words of wisdom, and that was the beginning of this adventure.”

From there, as she approached her fiftieth birthday, Bergman became interested in the graying of America. On the film’s website she writes, “My grandmother was my guide for how to gracefully move through life and how to age with dignity, strength, and humor.”  Bergman wanted to find and film other people who were aging but who were still vital, creative, and engaged with the world.

And this she does, creating a film that is optimistic, inspiring, and moving. Many of the people profiled in the film suffered through dark times—through the Holocaust, through poverty, through racial discrimination, and imprisonment. Yet their resilient personalities somehow allowed them to not only survive but also to thrive.

If this doc comes anywhere near you, do not hesitate. Go see it.

Art, Food, Food for Thought, Movies

An Illuminating Week

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Last week was a week of illumination, where I learned so much and also had so much fun. I guess you could call it a nearly perfect week of good movies, good food, a wonderful play, a fine lecture, and time spent with my nephew and daughter. Who could ask for anything more?

Once again, I am grateful that we live in a rural area with lakes, rolling hills, and forests yet also have access to plays, art, lectures, and independent movies. This definitely falls under the category of having the best of both worlds. We are also three hours away from Boston and seven hours away from New York City. In short, central Maine rocks.

First, the food. When Dee comes for a visit, one of her favorite meals is a waffle breakfast. I know this is bragging, but Clif’s homemade waffles are pretty darned good. We bring the waffle maker and batter to the dining room table, and out the waffles come, hot and fresh. This time, for sides, we had fresh strawberries and veggie sausages. (Dee is a vegetarian.) We had this breakfast not once, but twice.

Dee is a pizza hound as well as a movie buff, and it seems this pairing is not unusual. Next to Railroad Square Cinema is Grand Central Cafe, which makes pizza in a wood-fired brick oven. I am not a pizza hound, but I have to admit that Grand Central’s pizzas are very tasty.  The pizza featured below, which Clif and I shared, had cheddar, chicken, mushrooms, and barbecue sauce and was served piping hot.

And as far as Clif is concerned, pizza and beer go together the way chocolate and peanut butter do. This particular beer came from Bar Harbor.

Now for the illumination. Colby College, a liberal arts college with an incredible art museum that has become a destination, is a major sponsor of the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF). This year, in conjunction with MIFF showing one of Disney’s most beautiful, films—Bambi—Colby hosted a lecture called “Bambi and the Art of Tyrus Wong” presented by the filmmaker and animation historian John Canemaker.

I had never heard of Tyrus Wong (1910-2016), a Chinese immigrant who suffered poverty, discrimination, lack of recognition, and at a young age, the loss of his mother. Despite the hardships, Wong became an animator extraordinaire who worked on Walt Disney’s Bambi. Wong’s luminous, Asian approach of soft, blended backgrounds enhanced the vivid, memorable characters in this movie.

During the lecture, I also learned that Bambi was based on Felix Salten’s 1923 Austrian novel, Bambi, a Life in the Woods. When I came home, I Googled Felix Salten and discovered that his book “was  one of the first environmental novels ever published.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend MIFF’s presentation of the movie Bambi, a 35mm Academy Archive print shown on the huge screen at the Waterville Opera House. It meant leaving our dog buddy Liam unattended for too long.

Ah, well! I really can’t complain as I learned two things I didn’t know about—the animation of Tyrus Wong and the Austrian writer Felix Salten.

And I saw some first-rate movies, which I’ll write about tomorrow.

Movies, News

Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!

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For this year’s Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), the chickadee, Maine’s plucky state bird—plentiful but never common, as my friend Barbara observed—is being used on programs, T-shirts, and other material related to the festival.

This giant chickadee is in the park by the Opera House in Waterville, where many of the movies will be shown.

Our own ChickaDee is coming from New York today, and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post next week as we are looking forward to a fun and busy week of movies and even a play—Othello–slipped in.

As we Mainers like to say, it will be some week.

And, as a sad side note…the great director Jonathan Demme, who was a good and generous friend of the Maine International Film Festival, died this spring. This year’s MIFF is dedicated to him, and there will be several of his movies featured at the festival. One of them, Stop Making Sense, is my favorite. It’s a wild, rollicking documentary of The Talking Heads, the fabulous new-wave group that was popular in the 1980s.

Same as it ever was. So long, Jonathan Demme, and thanks for all the movies.

 

 

 

News

Three Things Thursday: Rain, A Visiting Daughter, The Maine International Film Festival

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Three Things Thursday is a  weekly tribute to being grateful for the good things in life. This tradition was started by Emily of Nerd in the Brain and is currently hosted by Natalie of There She Goes.  

First, a deliciously rainy day. Now I like a sunny day as much as the next Mainer—especially in the summer—but we need  rain, too, and today it came. This morning I woke up with the covers tucked under my chin, a cool room, and the sound of the rain as it fell on the roof, against the house, and on the lawn and gardens. As soon as the dog and cats were fed, I headed outside to take a few rainy-day pictures.

Second, this Saturday, our daughter Dee is coming to stay with us for a week. (Dee does not like having her picture taken, so I’ll have to make do with words. ) Both of our daughters live far away, and we don’t see them as often as we would like. Sigh. But the good thing is that when they do visit, it’s a treat. Dee, a movie buff, has timed her visit to coincide with an event that I’m ever so grateful for, and this brings me to…

Third, the Maine International Film Festival, better known as MIFF. In Waterville, a town about twenty-five miles away, is an independent movie theater called Railroad Square Cinema. The Square has brought to central Maine movies you would never see at the cineplex. The Square, in partnership with Maine Film Center, also started MIFF, which is in its twentieth year.  At Miff, for ten days in July, there are movies, movies, movies, as well as speakers, special events, and all kinds of folderol. For various reasons, I am on dog duty during MIFF, which means Dee and Clif get to see more movies than I do. However, I’ll be going to three movies as well as to a talk about the art of Bambi. I’m very much looking forward to MIFF, and, of course, to spending time with daughter Dee.

Here is a picture Clif took of MIFF at Railroad Square Cinema many years ago. It is one of our favorites, and the Square even uses it on the opening page of  their website.

For readers who live within driving distance of central Maine, maybe I’ll see you at the movies!

News

Of Sunny Skies and Bluegrass

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Yesterday was a lovely, hot summer day with a blue sky, puffy clouds, a slight breeze, and not a hint of humidity. To paraphrase a Facebook friend,  yesterday’s weather more than made up for the misery of March, and it’s why people come to Maine in July. So far, summer in Maine has been splendid, and may it continue.

The first order of the day was to go on an eight-mile bike ride. Slowly, slowly, Clif and I are building up our strength. But after two years of being sedentary, we can’t expect to be super bikers after only two months of steady riding. Still, I am impatient to be the strong biker I once was, and by the end of the summer, I hope to be going on much longer rides.

Our town sponsors summer concerts at Norcross Point, a little park by the lake in town. This week’s featured group was The Sandy River Ramblers, and they play bluegrass and country music.  We therefore decided to bring a picnic lunch to have after our bike ride and then go to the concert, which started midafternoon.

We ate at the Winthrop’s Public Beach, just down from Norcross Point. When our children were young, we spent many happy summer days here, and it was fun to watch children and their families swim and play in Marancook Lake.

After our lunch, we headed to Norcross Point. The Sandy River Ramblers comprise two men and two women. The men had decent enough voices, but my how those women could sing. “She’s a good-hearted woman with a good timing man. She loves him in spite of his wicked ways, which she doesn’t understand.” The downfall of many a woman.

Unfortunately, The Sandy River Ramblers don’t have a website, and their Facebook page isn’t up to date. Also, there was no program. The long and the the short of it is that I am not able to identify any of the singers.

Ah, well, the concert was free, and it was a fine thing to listen to this band on such a nice day. We sat in the shade of a flowering tree.

Two boys played soccer at the edge of the park. In matching smocks with smiley faces, little twin girls ran by, tumbling over each other like puppies. On a nearby swing set came a steady creak, creak, creak and the laughter of children. By the lake, a boy rested on a large branch of a birch tree. And on the lake, there was a cluster of boats full of people who had come to listen to the music as it carried over the water.

A day in Maine in the summer.

News

Three Things Thursday: Farmer Kev, Strawberries, and a Most Awesome Bag

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Three Things Thursday is a  weekly tribute to being grateful for the good things in life. This tradition was  started by Emily of Nerd in the Brain and is currently hosted by Natalie of There She Goes.  

First, a box of goodness with vegetables straight from the gardens of our own Farmer Kev. Longtime readers of this blog will recall that Farmer Kev is an extraordinary young man who has been gardening since his early teens and is now a full-fledged farmer with his own land. The most amazing thing is that Farmer Kev isn’t even thirty yet, but through hard work he now has a farm. He offers delivery farm shares, and every other week from now until September, we will be getting a bin of his local, organic vegetables. Yahoo!

Second, it is strawberry season in Maine. Need I write more about these red gems of deliciousness?

Third, and so exciting, a shopping bag from across the pond. It was made by Jan of The Snail of Happiness, and I won it in a contest she sponsored on her blog. Such a treat to get this snappy bag, and soon I will be using it to pick up tea and biscuits—or cookies, as we call them here—from a shop in a nearby town. I’ll be sure to include pictures. In the meantime, here is a shot of this little beauty, sans tea or biscuits. And, for the cherry on the sundae, so to speak, Jan also included a lovely, handwritten letter. Thanks so much, Jan!

 

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