Hurricane

Irene essentials: flashlight, new books, shiraz

The rain and wind is currently pounding the windows of my apartment. I kind of feel as though I am adrift on a ship in the middle of the ocean (or in this case, my apartment). I am all stocked with goodies: eatables, wine, books, movies, and a bathtub full of water in the event of a power outage.

It's been quite a dramatic week - earthquake, hurricane, and tornado warnings - so I am looking forward to some quieter times to reflect and be grateful for my safety. I wish all those in the path of this gigantic storm (400+ miles wide!) safety and the company of loved ones!!

Harry

As a freshman in high school, I was having a difficult time in my Physics class. And then, to top it off, the only extra credit questions on our tests were based on a new book series about witches and wizards and a school with a disgusting-sounding name - Hogwarts?! I resented my teacher putting these questions on the test because it was unfair advantage. So I protested for the first two tests. But I needed those extra credit points. So one Saturday, I went to Bookland (a now closed independent bookstore in Brunswick, Maine) and picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I'll never forget the feeling of reading that first chapter. It grabbed me. Hook, line, and sinker. It was like when Harry was sucked into Tom Riddle's diary. Only this kind of literary gravity was good.

High school was not an easy time for me (as I am sure it was not for many) and the Harry Potter series became a place of escape.  A safe, accepting haven. The characters felt like friends, family even. And I, as I am sure many girls did, identified with Hermione Granger, from the bushy brown hair to her affinity for books and scholastic excellence.  For every book launch (except the last one), I dressed up as Hermione for the release party at a local independent bookstore where I worked during high school and college. For The Order of the Phoenix, we even created a sorting hat and made House badges for kids (and adults) to be sorted into Houses.  For The Half Blood Prince, my coworker, Jim, the spitting image of Ollivander, dressed up like the wandmaker and whittled wands for all the bookstore staff. Mine was cherry and filled with sand from Egypt. I still have it to this day.

The first film came out during my junior year in high school. I remember the thrill of hearing those first notes of John Williams' classic soundtrack (hands down the superior composer of the series). I had friends who refused, still refuse, to see the movies because they wanted to preserve their original image of the characters. I was worried about that myself, but have long learned to separate them.  I thought the films were impeccably made and the three of them - Dan, Emma, and Rupert - I've loved watching them grow up.

I saw the fourth film in England. The coolest. I brushed by Rupert Grint at customs in Heathrow. I visited many of the locations across England (including Oxford University) used for the films.

I kept every ticket stub from every film.

I planned my latest Maine trip around the fact that I wanted to see the final film with my family. It's tradition. Seeing this last film (yes, I saw it twice last week), I found myself choked with the sentiment of how much this story - books and films - has meant to my life. And as for the final scene, with the return of John Williams' music, forget it. I was a goner. Tears, choked up, wrought with the shear power of this world and the indelible mark it has had on my experience.

So as others have lately written, thank you, Ms. Rowling, for delivering such magic and the belief in ourselves to express the worlds we create every day in our minds. And for allowing us to believe that these worlds are indeed real and valuable and might be enjoyed by millions if we only take that first step of putting pen to paper.

The Romantics

I finally saw this film and really enjoyed its gentle, playful tone. It is frothy with its carefree band of characters - late 20-something friends gathering for a wedding. Formal liberal arts majors. So there are literature references galore, which I love. What I found most surprising and enjoyable were the moments of intense, beautifully written dialogue that carried on a bit longer than most dialogue in movies tend to go. At least, it felt that way.  

And the clothes. So pretty and funky. I think my favorite was Malin Ackerman's character's black and white strip dress she wears to the rehearsal dinner. The shot above shows the cast modeling J.Crew clothes - a style that definitely matches with the film's fashion! I found the movie entertaining and lulling with it's soundtrack of chill tunes.

Image found here.

Design Inspiration: Jane Eyre (2011)

The exquisite movie poster for Jane Eyre

I finally made it to the theater to see the latest adaptation of Jane Eyre. Friends, I am much more an Austen girl versus a Brontë girl, but give me a period English film and I am at the theater regardless of my literary preferences.  The day was perfect to see such a film - blustery and moody, dark clouds dispersed with stray lines of sunlight. I felt as though I was traversing an English moor as I crossed the Mall to get to the Landmark Theater in downtown DC.

I think the film did a service to Brontë's novel while casting it in a new, interesting light. Mia Wasikowsa does justice to the role of Jane -- being both reserved and revealing of her inner passions. Michael Fassbender as Rochester...well, let's just say I really enjoyed watching him smolder on screen in this role. Their passion was evident and well-portrayed. And Judy Dench was just adorable as Mrs. Fairfax.

Jane and Mrs. Fairfax looking lovely with their lace fashions

I adored the film's soundtrack by Dario Marianelli, which perfectly captured the mood of the film. The set and costume design were spot on, and I was so inspired by their use of lace -- curtains, dress embellishments. It made me consider how I can use lace in my own apartment in tribute to this fine English tradition. I could not find an image of the scene where Jane looks out a window decorated with the most exquisite lace curtains, but it was in that moment that I found inspiration.

The film also had the most beautiful flowers -- violets, cherry blossoms, and others -- a true tribute to an English spring. A floral influence is a heavy theme for my apartment decoration plan.

Jane and Rochester flirt amongst the blooms

Images found here, here, and here (copyright by Focus Features).

Great House

I read The History of Love for a women's literature class in college and loved it. The intricate storytelling, the colorful characters, and the lingering power of the story after the last page had been turned.  So I was thrilled to check a bright and shiny new copy of Nicole Krauss' latest book, Great House, out of the library.

Having just finished the novel, I am left with a sense of awe over the magnitude of the story that unravelled over the course of about 300 pages. Krauss writes like a modern Tolstoy -- vibrant characters acting in a plot that is rich with didactic moments.  The book is divided into a series of vignettes, each given two sections that are dispersed across the novel. The story traces the history of a great wooden writing desk with many drawers from owner to owner, stringing with it the story of a young Chilean man with mysterious origins.

You meet a struggling female writer, a brother and sister with a different sort of relationship, a man struggling with his writer wife's Alzheimer's, an Israeli man coping with his wife's death and son's return from abroad. All of these stories connect in such an intriguing way that was in no way predictable - at least through my intelligence.

Rife with memorable lines and literary moments, Great House  is a stunning story that is worth your time indeed.

Image found here.

The Weekly Marginalian (Ep. II: Madeline Albright + L.M. Montgomery)

Hello! I have here the second episode of the Weekly Marginalian. I had some sound trouble with this episode, so I apologize in advance! I discuss the modern woman in the context of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in the first part and then highlight Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery's incomparable ability to describe a natural setting and bring the reader to her beloved, enchanted Prince Edward Island. There is truly nothing like her writing.  Thanks for listening and have a glorious weekend!

 The Weekly Marginalian (Ep. 2 Madeleine Albright and LMM) 

Image found here.

The Look of Pride and Prejudice

{I love the light in this first scene and the fact that Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley)
is reading a book while walking- something I myself do quite often}

Many people hold that the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice is nothing in comparison to the 1995 BBC version. My mother is chief among them. For the reasons pertaining to the way the 1995 version paid such loyalty to Jane Austen's novel, I do agree with those naysayers for the most part.

However, I have a special place in my heart for the 2005 film. For the feeling it evokes through its incomparable cinematography, beautifully-composed music, and gorgeous set design.

On a personal note, I studied abroad in England near many of the locations used in the film, which also premiered in Bath during my time there. The film - especially the soundtrack - takes me back once more to a splendid time in my life. It feels like coming home to the England I love.

Watching the 2005 film calms my soul. A quiet homage to the simple joys of English life.

I love that the film reveals the Bennett's laundry, showing the authentic, chaotic nature of their family life.

The Bennett's home appears in constant disarray - ribbons spilling out of boxes, tea cups left on sidetables - which is a very realistic interpretation of the family conceived by Austen. Though the height of propriety was observed during these times, I do believe that a family like the Bennetts would have acted and kept a house in this manner. Another note is the costume designs. Every character - especially the women - wears outfits that suits his or her personality and generation. Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have clothes from the Revolutionary period (three-cornered hats and corseted blouses), while the younger daughters don empire-waisted gowns from the early nineteenth century. Jane Bennett's (Rosamund Pike) clothes are soft, flowing silk and chiffon in feminine pastels while Elizabeth Bennett's (Keira Knightley) attire consists of darker, earthier tones in linen and cotton. The cut of Elizabeth's clothes has a hint of masculinity, perhaps a homage to her progressive personality.

I love this realistic, unapologetic shot of the Bennett girls (Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike, and Jena Malone) as their disheveled selves are driven home from the Netherfield ball.

The thing this film does the best is capturing light. This incredible shot of Elizabeth and Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) frames the morning light shining between them and their newly realized love. Simply breathtaking.


What woman wouldn't want to stand on top of a cliff, getting a bird's eye view of her world? Perhaps this scene is a tad dramatic, but England offers such incredible precipices, so why not show them off? While living in Bath, England, I would often climb one of the seven hills surrounding the city to a meadow that looked down upon the picturesque buildings of Bath. There is something about being perched above your daily life that brings such perspective. I have not found such a place since but am always on the lookout!

And here we have a shamelessly gratuitous shot of Mr. Darcy. . Though Colin Firth will always be THE Mr. Darcy, Matthew MacFadyen did a fine job in the role. This scene where he walks through the mist will ALWAYS set my heart aflutter.

The first proposal scene was shot at the Temple of Apollo, part of the Stourhead Estate in Wiltshire - not far from where I lived in Bath. I remember visiting the Temple and standing in the very spot where Elizabeth stands in the above photo. I recall feeling the history and utter romance of it all in this immortalized place.



Images found here, here, and here.

Old Poems, New Songs

I was sleuthing around TED, looking for some inspiration, when I came across this video of Natalie Merchant singing songs from her new album, Leave Your Sleep. Natalie chose children's poems from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and set them to music - a modern twist on some verses, many of which would have long gathered dust in obscurity. My favorite is "Janitor's Boy," a song based on a poem written by a ten year-old Brooklyn girl, Natalia Crane, in 1927. I love Natalie's soothing, unique sound and hopefully you will too!

First-Class Wives

{Glenn Close and Christopher Walken in the film version of Sarah, Plain and Tall}

To this day, one of my favorite books is Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (as well as its sequels, Skylark, Caleb's Story, and More Perfect Than the Moon). Jacob Whiting, a Kansas farmer and a widower with two children, places an advertisement in the paper for a "good, kind woman to share a life with a widower and his two children. To make a difference" Sarah Wheaton, a single woman living in Maine, answers the notice and travels to Kansas to see if she can make that difference. I always thought it was so romantic and courageous for Sarah to travel to a new land to marry a man she had never met.

Sarah's character is strong-willed, intelligent, independent - almost as though she didn't need to marry but wanted a change in her life so she chose to embark on this journey of her own accord. MacLachlan's writing is beautiful on the page in its honest simplicity. Across the series, a family forms and the bond between Sarah and Jacob is particularly compelling as is the relationship develops into an incredible love. Though it's a children's book, I highly recommend it to those who haven't read it. It's a reminder of simpler, sweeter times.

Though the book certainly conveys the struggles Sarah, Jacob, and his two children, Anna and Caleb (my favorite boy's name), have as they get to know each other, it really romanticizes the whole mail-order bride experience. I realized the other day how incredibly scary it must have been for a single woman to travel to a strange land to live with a man she has never met.

Mail-order brides have been glorified and parodied on the page and on the screen for decades. In The Harvey Girls (1946), Judy Garland's character arrives in Sandrock, New Mexico, to meet the "man of her dreams," with whom she found in a newspaper advertisement and began corresponding with letters. In the film, the "man of her dreams" actually turns out to be a dud, so she joins the Harvey Girls, a troupe of women who traveled out west to work for a chain of restaurants owned by the Fred Harvey Company in the late nineteenth century.

{Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls}

As much as I love both of these stories, they are romantic versions of a business that, while lucrative, can sometimes extremely scary (not to detract from these wonderful stories). In the 1800s and early 1900s, mail-order brides were often women who left highly developed areas to marry men in underdeveloped areas such as those pioneers forging a new life on the western frontier of the United States.

Today, the reverse is true. Women from underdeveloped countries are traveling to the developed world to marry established, successful men. In particular, mail-order bride companies from the Ukraine and Russia have seen a booming business exporting willing ladies to the West, including the United States and parts of Europe. While the majority of the mail-order brides enter legitimate, prosperous marriages, but there have been a number of human trafficking cases, instances of marital abuse, and situations where the women are brought to marry a man under false pretenses like Nika, who traveled to Canada from the Philippines to marry a man only to discover that she would be his fifth wife and would be beaten and severely abused.

{An ad against Filipina mail-order bride abuse}

In this case, Canada's marriage laws relating to immigrants are much less stringent and there is little regulation of these overseas marriage agencies. The US has a better record of regulation around mail-order bride abuses, but it still remains a questionable practice and means of relocation for women in underprivileged situations. But sometimes it may be a woman's only option. We think we have come so far with women's rights (although it has been only 90 years since we've earned the right to vote in the US, a fact that still shocks me). Then we realize that the majority of the world's women still suffer in cultures who have either removed their rights or limit them so much that they are forced to marry men who may do more harm to them than good.

Images found here, here, and here.

Love Scribbles

In the spirit of this romantic holiday, I offer you famous love notes by New Yorkers being featured around New York City. The note above is a scribble by e.e. cummings to Marion Morehouse, a fashion model. The New York Times article references Mark Twain, whose love letters will be read aloud in the city in celebration of the holiday. His sweet note to his wife expresses his gratefulness over her being born so that he could love her - how marvelous is that?

I adore historic love letters, especially ones expressing ardent passion for another. Sigh. If only Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley would write me a feverish missive (although I daresay their ladies might have a thing or two to say about that - and I know better than to cross the path of Elizabeth Bennet!)!

Image from here (The New York Times).

A Birdhouse

All this talk of Little Women has got me wanting a birdhouse mailbox like the one Laurie gives to the March girls as a means of communicating between "adjoining nations." My parents are in pursuit of a new mailbox and I have tried desperately to convince them to get a birdhouse mailbox, a tribute to our family's love Louisa May Alcott's novel. Speaking of Ms. Alcott, I recently saw an American Masters' tribute to the author - the story of her life, which was actually quite sad as she was forced to not only be her family's breadwinner (to compensate for her father's idealistic, fool-hardy whims) but to also write in the genre of children's literature, when her creative soul craved so much more. Do check it out if you can!

A Cooney Christmas

It's not Christmas until I snuggle into one of our squashy couches with a piping hot mug of tea to read The Year Of The Perfect Christmas Tree and The Story of Holly & Ivy, both with illustrations by Barbara Cooney (1917 -2000), a Maine illustrator and author of children's books. The stories celebrate the importance of family and love at Christmastime. Their emphasis is more on appreciating all that you have been given rather than materialistic wants. Cooney's delicate, quiet illustrations provide comfort and authenticity to these tales.

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree is a tale of how little Ruthie, a feisty little Appalachian girl with coal-black curls, and her mother manage to procure the town Christmas tree despite her father being away fighting in Europe during World War I. The Story of Holly & Ivy takes place in England, where a little orphan girl, Ivy, on her way to stay with a family for Christmas, steps off the train a bit early at Appleton, a tiny village ,and encounters a new friend, Holly. Appleton is a charming town captured with all the magic of the Christmas season with Cooney's deft hand. Both stories are ones to cherish! I hope you can enjoy them and share them with those you love! Happy Christmas reading!

Image found here and here.

Lit Love: Karin's Christmas Walk

Christmas is a time to snuggle in with the ones you love and enjoy the magical stories you've read every year. One of my favorite books is Karin Christmas Walk (Dial Books, 1980) by Susan Pearson with illustrations by Trinka Hakes Noble. It's a story of a young girl in Minnesota who walks through her town to get groceries on Christmas Eve in anticipation of her Uncle Jerry arriving for the holidays. A basic plot line, but rich with illustrations and descriptions of her snowy walk. The mood set by the snowy day and her quaint interactions with various town people connote a sense of those simpler days of yore. My parents live in such a town, which makes the Christmas holiday all the more special for me when I visit from the big city.

I can walk from our house into town to purchase groceries at the local market, grab a yummy coffee, and skate on the town green, which is lit up with twinkling holiday lights. I grew up in a two hundred year-old farm house in the Maine woods, which was lovely and quiet, but it's nice to now have the experience of a quaint town during this magical time of the year!

Image found here.

The British Accent

{The Dashwood sisters - all with enviable British accents
in the 1994 film Sense and Sensibility}

Do you ever hear a voice or accent and think, "I wish my voice sounded that way?" Or hear a voice and feel like you are home. My home and comfort lies with the British accent. Oh, how I wish that I one! I can do a fairly good one but I always feel like a poser. While I was studying abroad in England, my poetry tutor told me that I seemed more British that himself - as I would always arrive to class with my "wellies," a pale blue trench, a copy of The Guardian, and a piping hot thermos of tea! I've been thinking a lot about England lately - how much I miss it. How I long to be back there, hearing that gorgeous accent (we'll leaved the Cockney and Northern English accents off that list) once more. I know that I will live there again - now it's just a matter of figuring out how to accomplish that dream! Below is an NPR recording of British author Neil Gaiman - hearing his voice inspired me to write this post! Also, the segment on reading for audio books is worth a listen!

Image found here.

O.Henry

{A young couple, Jim and Della, celebrate their love for
each other during the holiday season}

As we approach the holiday season, I have been thinking about the simple goodness celebrated during this time of year. I look forward to reading the many traditional holiday books, and the one I love the most are the stories by O.Henry. These tales honor the redemptive and generous qualities of the human spirit. In particular, I love his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi," about a poor young couple who sacrifices their most beloved treasures in the name of their love for each other. Their life is simple and sweet and full of a truly devoted love.

I highly recommend you watch the 1952 film O.Henry's Full House (available here on Hulu), a series of movie vignettes based on a few O.Henry's stories, including "The Gift of the Magi." The movie is narrated by none other than John Steinbeck (author of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men), who introduces the stories in a deep, mahogany voice as smoke from his cigar casts a hazy veil around his face. This film reminds me of another era where people worked hard and reaped the benefits of their good, moral characters. In many ways, I feel like our culture has lost those types of values. The stories are classic and humbling and make me appreciate the more basic joys of life in this coming holiday season.

Image found here.