Still Struggling Through Lincoln

 Hooray - they're off to the theatre. Now I can go to bed.

Struggling Through Lincoln

   Is what I am doing right now. Since the only cinema for miles around tends to be full of texting teenagers and shows the sort of stuff comprehensible only to them, I catch up with films six months late on dvds, (or a little sooner on transatlantic flights, that is if it's not Air Canada and the system's actually working).
  Now I am hugely interested in American history and it takes a lot to bore me where that's concerned. But I'm sorry to say that Lincoln is succeeding admirably.  I'm making myself get through half-an-hour at a time as a sort of penance. Hubby, who is a serious history buff, gave up from the start, saying he had better things to do. Apart from the usual melodramatic, heartstring-twisting Spielberg beginning, it's been so far nothing but a bunch of politicians sitting in a dark room arguing with each other, with occasional hysterical interjections by Lincoln's shrewish and unpleasantly dotty wife. By contrast, those old Hollywood biopics were wildly inaccurate but at least they knew how to tell a story.
   And a couple of years ago, there was a quite superlative TV drama series called John Adams  about the second President, which was serious history, beautifully acted - and beautifully enjoyable. It was as good, even better, than some of the best British dramas, which is saying a lot coming from me.  Lincoln, while trying for the same, slow-moving, detailed style, is not a patch on John Adams.
  OK, Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty convincing. But that's not enough. And incidentally I thought the chap in Silver Linings Playbook had a tougher role to play and should have won the Oscar. And SLP should have won Best Pic. I thought it wouldn't be my sort of film at all but it was complex, many-layered and unexpectedly terrific. The winner and its rival, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty were travesties of recent history. In my view. But that's another story.

A Very Western New York Discussion

  I was at the hairdresser today, which is my fount of local gossip. Apparently some woman from "somewhere near New York City" (that needs to be said with a hollow laugh) has moved in locally. She came into the salon in a state of shock, saying that woodchucks had eaten all her flowers. "Welcome to Western New York!" said the gals.
  There followed an exchange of horror stories of which mine were, though I say it myself, some of the most exciting. Take the blueberries. One year every single last  one was gobbled up by turkeys. The following year, every single last one was devoured by chipmunks.  This year, the sweet little rhododendrons I had been nurturing for a couple of years (special offer from Home Depot at 4 dollars each) have been eaten by deer. And to think they'd just started growing! That's the fun of living here; you never know what to expect.  Someone will always find something you haven't put a net around.  Can a rhododendron survive without leaves?  The hairdresser thought maybe. In my usual exhibition of the triumph of hope over experience, I'd been out to buy another one, checking first that it was hardy to minus 25F. (Yes F, not C). So much I have learned.
  "At least it wasn't bears", said the salon gals.

Western New York Spring Scenes





Are many and varied.

 

 

Uh Oh. This is a deer hoofprint (see previous) It seems to be headed for my garden.

Meanwhile butter wouldn't melt in someone's mouth. Tell that to the birds... I wish I was relaxed enough to fall asleep in a tree.

And in the flowerbeds, things are up and running at last. About time.

A Magical Walk

 Early spring morning on our lane - the air is still crisp, the sky powder-blue with Winnie-the-Pooh clouds. It's still the lull before the lawnmowers and you can hear every bird in the county chirping, two-tone tweeting, knocking on wood. Geese flying, honking happily, above.

On the lake, shimmering, silver water. Still bare, brown trees interspersed with feathery hemlock.

A slight hint of red in the trees means the maples will soon be in leaf. After last night's rain the stream is chattering. And the grey grass has suddenly turned green.

A faint scent of pine in the air, deer hoofprints in the mud, the roadside periwinkle in bloom and a mourning dove sits in a tree.

But in the fog this morning, the usual Western New York thing of people driving without lights. Especially if they've got a grey car. You take your life in your hands.

Driving North Again

  I passed up another puddle-jumping experience and hitched a lift with hubby.  It meant a circuitous country route to go back via Bradford Regional Airport to pick up my car. There were still no planes there. But on the way we stopped at a rest area we hadn't seen before, with something to cheer it up.

 

A few daffs and this chap...

who on balance doesn't look that cheerful but who can blame him? The plaque underneath says, "Dedicated to the American Indians (Seneca) ... But they won't be forgotten but will be remembered in our minds and in our hearts. Love is Life. " and is signed by "Peter Toth, June 30th 1973". (Peter Toth, it transpires, is an Ohio sculptor born in Hungary who has carved  anumber of such images of Native Americans.)

   The Senecas on our local reservation are these days known mainly for a large, ugly casino that just keeps on growing and exploiting the simple-minded and for holding up repairs to the motorway that runs through their land, which is why it has so many potholes.  They deserve better. 

Ohio in Bloom

 It's cold but they're a couple of weeks ahead of us.  I just couldn't get enough of it. No need for words.