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Showing posts from May, 2020

Now for Something Really Interesting

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I'm gone. That's right, I'm away. I've escaped Corona-madness on my bicycle and will check in when WiFi access allows. Look for me in Iowa. South Dakota, North Dakota. Montana. Idaho. A sliver of Washington state. Oregon.

Normal People

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Normal People BBC available thru Hulu Normal People is based on the bestselling novel by wunderkind Sally Rooney.   I can’t seem to get the characters of Connell and Marianne out of my mind. There were so many Shakespearean “what-ifs” that beset their relationship. Miscommunications that led to tragedy. It seems like a great love story if it wasn’t so normal. I’m not s millennial but I get them. It is an age group that has had a lot thrown at them, though this series does not touch upon any historical milestones or events. Basically there are no terrorists. Or action, for that matter. Yet the dialogue and interactions rise above navel-gazing, I think because we are so emotionally invested in the characters. That said there were moments where the sex (and there is tons of it graphically depicted) nibbled at the edges of Fifty Shades of   variety, which for me was emotionally off-putting in the sense that I wanted to scream at Marianne WTF! Stop it! You’re better than thi

The Great Believers

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The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai Viking, 2018 “We were the great believers. I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation” A striking epitaph for Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel, The Great Believers about . . . . Imagine a mysterious virus suddenly besetting a population. The illness itself sets those people apart, publically identifies them. It hits with impunity, across all ethnicities and age groups. At first no one knows how it is spread . . . they have an idea formed from fear and panic, prejudices and assumptions. A mixing of fluids. And, because this population is somewhat small, though no one knows exactly because it can sometimes be hard to tell, and marginalized, the rest of the world carries on. Years later as the outcry grows for treatment, a vaccine, more is done to stop the spread, to

Trying to Remember

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From the Corona Files If this were 2018 I’d be leaving on one month for a month-long bike ride along the North Sea. If this were 2017 I’d be six weeks out from a cycle tour of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the coast of Maine followed by Art Week on Great Spruce Head Island. If this were 2016 and Obama was president we’d have no pandemic and I’d be going from John O’Groats to Land’s End in the UK. Even last year at this time I’d be planning my daughter’s wedding and a quick trip via the Adirondacks, Vermont, and a bit of New Hampshire. Now all memories as I stare out my window, wondering when I can get back on my bike, trying to remember who I used to be.

WHY is TURKMENISTAN reading my blog--be gone Internet trolls!!!

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