I’m going to start with the watching and listening this time – because the way these digests usually end up, I’ve spent so much time on the reading part – I tire myself out and am ready to quit before getting to anything else.
But first – cooking.
Cooking: I want to recommend this pork-poblano stew to you. Yes, it’s got heat (which you can adjust if you want, by cutting the number of poblanos or eliminating the chipotle chile), but it’s ameliorated by the sweet potatoes and corn. I’m a soup/stew person anyway, but this is one of my favorites.
Watching: We are still working our way through Breaking Bad – almost done with season 4. (to new readers – it’s a rewatch for me – probably third or fourth time through – but new to my teen sons). Someone asked if I’m planning to write about the recently-concluded season of Better Call Saul, and the answer is “yes” – but after this Breaking Bad immersion experience is over. It’s really interesting to compare the two shows. The more I rewatch BB, the more the differences stand out.
The other night, I watched the film Chappaquiddick, which did not much more than make me rage-y about political tribalism and the hypocrisy of politicians – Democrats, of course, this time. Good God, I could never stand the Kennedy family except for Eunice, and this brings it all back. It’s a very interesting film, which skillfully walks a tightrope between known fact and speculation. I think, in the end, it’s successful on that score because it leaves us, ultimately, with what we know: we don’t know.
Heartbreaking – heartbreaking – are the brief scenes of Mary Jo Kopechne fighting for her life in the car, desperately praying the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Now, this is, of course, speculation – the official story was that she drowned fairly quickly, but there was no autopsy performed and subsequent testimony of the diver who recovered her body indicated that he believed that she had suffocated in a inexorably diminishing pocket of air, implying that if Kennedy had immediately sought help after the accident, she would have lived.
Effective, too, are the final scenes of the film in which the the scandal is wrapped up by Kennedy and his handlers, and we see archival footage of Kennedy’s constituents reacting to the events, mostly in a way that explains why, even if Kennedy was never elected president, he nonetheless enjoyed a long, successful career as “the Lion of the Senate.”
And after that was over, I noticed that one of my top five films, The Third Man, is also on Netflix right now, so I ingested a bit more cynicism about human nature as I skimmed through my favorite scenes in that one.
Listening: Lots of listening this weekend, as organist son begins to tackle a new piece – one of Bach’s “Little Preludes.”
I ended up listening to weird mix of albums over the weekend, thanks to Spotify:
This album by a saxophone quartet, featuring arrangements of Baroque pieces.
Eugen Cicero Swinging the Classics.
Live in Person Listening: Alerted by Bruce Ludwick, our Cathedral music director and my son’s organ teacher, we attended the first of four weekly organ concerts performed at the gorgeous Independent Presbyterian Church.
First, a word about the church: it was established in 1915 by a pastor dedicated to the Social Gospel movement, who found little sympathy for his views among Southern Presbyterians. Walker Percy’s parents were founding members of the congregation, and it was the church in which he grew up.
It’s not far at all from my home, and I was glad to have a chance to finally go inside the 
the gothic structure – always interesting to me to see how various Protestants deal with images and such.
The concert was wonderful, offered by Caroline Robinson, who is a doctoral student at Eastman School of Music in Rochester (where my son’s regular piano teacher is studying now). Of course, sitting in the pews, one can see nothing more than the top of the organist’s head up there in the loft, so they had a camera set up and broadcast her keyboard and pedal work on a screen set up down below.
What we particularly enjoyed were “Fast and Sinister,” a section of Symphony for Organ, No. 2 by Sowerby and the Allegro from Symphonie VI pour Orgue by Widor.
An educational bonus from the event: my son was introduced to the concept of “communion cups.” The morning’s were still in the holders in the pews, drabs of grape juice (I’m assuming) still clinging to the surface. He held one up with a quizzical look and whispered, “What is this?” So I briefly explained, and then continued later with some help from the internet. It all struck the Catholic Boy as pretty strange.
Oh, one more thing. Last Friday night, after the BB viewing, we spent some time, as one does, drifting through laughable old music videos. Separate Ways never gets old (remember my son played keyboard in a little band recital of it last spring – that’s when we started obsessing over the video) – and this time I introduced them to a couple more that over the weekend burst into heavy rotation: We are the World – which produces gales of laughter every time Bruce Springsteen busts out with his jaw-jutting intensity (sorry Bruce Cultists…) and, in an inspired move on my part , Safety Dance, which my 70’s and 80’s afficiandos here had never heard and which they report has now become a sort of earworm in their heads.
Aw….
There. Got you set for the week! You’re welcome!
Charlotte was Both 