Friday, January 17, 2025

"What is...a week-end?"

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Dear Readers, I had a really cool subject to write about for today, but I have to admit to you right now, I'm just too bushed to tackle it. 

The Shih Tzus and I drove to and from Logan Airport (Boston) to pick up Virginia yesterday (I did most of the actual driving), and either the lengthy drive or the pork chop bone I gave them yesterday morning caused an upset to their systems, because they woke me up two times last night with an urgent need to get out and do their business. And, uh, the one time I didn't wake up. At least that was in the bathroom...

Then it was teaching today, and cooking (Virginia: "You're going to make all my favorite meals, right?") and laundry and hauling in wood etc. etc. and the upshot is, my brain is transmitting thoughts about as well as a pot of slightly underdone polenta. 

So instead, we're going to catch up on what our plans are for the weekend (and beyond, if you want!) Tonight, I'm headed to a get-together/birthday party at a friend's house. Gotta make brownies for that. Maybe decorate them, if I an think of an easy way to do so?

 

Then Saturday, it's a funeral for a formidable elderly W.A.S.P. lady who took me under her wing when I was newly widowed. It'll be a nice service at our church, and then afterwards, Victoria and her wife are coming over to see Virginia (more cooking.) I'm going to insist on board games after. Gotta take advantage of having a total of four people in the house!

Nothing Sunday, yet, but on Monday I'm off to a friend's non-Inauguration brunch, where we'll stuff ourselves silly and drink mimosas and not watch TV. I'm beginning to think this may be the best plan for every major televised event.  Superbowl? Brunch and mimosas. Ball drop on New Year's Eve? Brunch and mimosas. I'll give a pass for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, because that's designed for brunch and mimosas.

How about you, dear readers? What on your calendar for the weekend?

Thursday, January 16, 2025

In Praise of Comedy, by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We started this week talking about the things that keep us going through the long gray days of winter: the green of houseplants, some mindful gratitude. Tilia Klebenov Jacobs has also put her finger on something we all need. In her new YA time-travel caper,  STEALING TIME, a present-day teen is tossed back to the 1980s, where she teams up with her 15 year old future dad to stop a thief and save their family's future. Comedy ensues, and action, and, maybe most importantly, optimism.

 

 

 

 

“Can’t tell you how much I needed this.  Fun!”

 

            This, my favorite review for Stealing Time, appeared right after Election Day, and I suspect the reader’s need for comfort reflected the recently-closed political season.  I was flattered to have provided such a tonic, because although our culture frequently values tragedy over comedy, I feel that the latter, being the genre of positive outcomes, is an essential service.

 

            By “comedy,” I do not necessarily mean that which is laughter-inducing.  Instead, I am hewing close to the Classical definition.  The Greeks and Romans used the term “comedy” to mean stage-plays with happy endings.  Aristotle believed that comedy was positive for society, as it brought forth happiness, which he saw as the ideal state.  It was seen as a profoundly valuable artistic expression in ancient society:  Plato quotes Socrates as saying that “the genius of comedy [is] the same with that of tragedy.”  

 

            Today we have drifted far from that conviction.  As novelist Julian Gough points out, “Western culture since the Middle Ages has overvalued the tragic and undervalued the comic.  We think of tragedy as major, and comedy as minor.  Brilliant comedies never win the best film Oscar.  The Booker Prize leans toward the tragic.”  Indeed.  Most bestseller lists confirm this, as does my local cinema’s schedule for the upcoming months:  their offerings for children focused on overcoming obstacles with humor, inventiveness, and courage; those for adults were mostly about serial killers, dystopias, and nuclear annihilation.  

 

            Aristotle defined comedy as “the fortunate rise of a sympathetic character.”  This upward arc, far from being inherently facile or immature, reminds us that order will prevail, that evil is transient, that good will ultimately return.  Tragedy, by contrast, focuses on chaos.  Tragedy happens when order falls apart, and those things we thought were secure (health, love, sanity) crumble.  To quote IamNormanLeonard, tragedy is “when the banana peel leads to a broken hip.  When the man betrays his family.  When the young woman succumbs to a mental illness.”  He adds, “Pity, bitterness, rage, sadness, fear, dread, and, worst of all, hopelessness—these can kill you.”

 

            Broadly speaking, tragedy deals with death, comedy with life.  It is thus the expression of optimism and resilience.  This was underscored to me in a recent episode of the podcast Where EverybodyKnows Your Name featuring an interview between Ted Danson and Lisa Kudrow, two comic actors of the highest caliber.  Both objected to the idea that their genre is inconsequential.  When Kudrow observed, “Entertainment is a service,” Danson replied that he had come to realize the value of his work when strangers told him how his comedy helped them survive tragedy.

 

Somewhere in the middle of [Cheers] or certainly after, people coming up to me and saying, “My father was dying, and he and I would lie on a sofa together and watch Cheers and be able to laugh.  So the old, “We’re not curing cancer”—I disagree.

 

Cheers ended decades ago, but during Covid it must surely again have been Must See TV.  As soon as lockdowns went into effect, those of us who were able leaped to boardgames, streaming series of an unserious nature, jigsaw puzzles, and comfort novels.  We wanted art, dammit, and during the bleakest time most of us could remember, we specifically wanted escapism.  Because we knew without being told that comedy would keep us going until life returned to normal.

 

            Pain kills; laughter revives; and comedy reminds us that the gods are in charge and the world will right itself.  

 

            Let’s hear it for comedy.

 


When there’s no time left, you have to steal it!

New York, 2020. Tori’s world is falling apart. Between the pandemic and her parents’ divorce, what else could go wrong?

Plenty! Like discovering that a jewelry heist forty years ago sent her grandfather to jail and destroyed her family.

New York, 1980. Bobby’s life is pretty great—until a strange girl shows up in his apartment claiming to be a visitor from the future. Specifically,
his future, which apparently stinks. Oh, and did she mention she’s his daughter?

Soon Bobby and Tori have joined forces to save the mystical gemstone at the heart of all their troubles. But a gang of thugs wants it too, and they’re not about to let a couple of teenagers get in their way.

 

 

 

 

 





Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Travel, Then and Now

An American Abroad

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's a very exciting day here at Chateau Hugo-Vidal, because Virginia, aka Youngest, is coming home from the Netherlands on winter break! You may recall she got into her dream grad program in The Hague, and has been there since the beginning of September (after kindly taking care of me for a month post-knee replacement.) She didn't come home for Christmas because she wanted to both travel and bring the Million Dollar Cat back with her, so she spent New Year's in Berlin and Vienna before taking the long flight home (Amsterdam to Boston via Reykjavik.)

 

Having my child at school overseas makes me think of my own experience going to college in London back in '82-'83. Honestly, technology has changed things so much, it feels two different centuries.

Wait - it is two different centuries. Well, you know what I mean. Except for the fact I flew across the Atlantic instead of sailing, I'm pretty sure my time in Europe had more in common with a young woman traveling in 1924 than in 2024. For instance:

 



Paper tickets. I had my return Christmas time flight when left the US in August, and I lived in terror of that physical ticket somehow getting lost. Of course, I bought Virginia's tickets online, and she's using her Icelandair app to access them (along with weather reports, delay notifications, etc. etc.) At least the paper tickets didn't display ads.


 

Traveling across Europe. There were flights, obviously, but in the early eighties they were well out of the reach of students. At least, students whose parents had them on a budget. I traveled everywhere via rail, using my Eurailpass. I have no idea what it cost, but boy, it had to have been a bargain considering how many miles I put on it. Virginia, on the other hand, took advantage of one of the many discount airlines and flew to Austria. My nephew is going to university in Athens, and he's flown on every trip he's taken in the past two years. I love me some trains, but I have to admit I could have skipped sitting up all night while going from Rome to Paris.

 

Speaking of budgets: American Express Traveler's Cheques. Yes, there is a certain romance to the whole "stopping at the American Express office for your mail" thing. But I was convinced I'd lose my wallet (it was always happening in the commercials!) and would suffer the embarrassment of being the Yankee tourist who needed replacements. I wasn't any more organized then than I am now, and thinking back, I'm boggled my parents trusted me with what was essentially a booklet worth $2000. Everything is electronic for Virginia - in fact, she says the Netherlands are close to being cash-free.

 

Cash! The euro was only a vague idea in some idealist's minds when I was going to school. Every new country I went, I had to stop into a cambio to trade Traveler's Cheques for marks, lira, francs, and pounds. Ans then, of course, at the end of my year abroad, I had a weird assortment of different currencies that always seemed to be just under the amount an American bank would accept. 

Of course, possibly the biggest difference is communication. Before my term started in England, I took part in an archaeological dig in Tuscany and then traveled around Italy and southern France for a total of six weeks, during which time I sent exactly zero postcards or letters home. My poor mother! I was better once I had settled into my London lodgings, and wrote a dutiful weekly letter on crinkly onionskin airmail stationery. I called home twice in the fall semester; one for my brother's birthday, and then again when I had to let my parents know I had missed my Christmastime flight from Heathrow to New York. (The conversation went like this - Mom: Hello? Me: Pass the phone to Dad.)

Meanwhile, Virginia texts with me and her siblings almost daily, and we've had loads of video calls using WhatsApp (highly recommended.) I'm so grateful I didn't have to go through what my mom did (plus, I have no doubt Virginia will make her flight home with time to spare.)

 

 

There's one thing was was decidedly better back in the day - when I left and when I returned, my folks were waiting for me right by the gate as I came off the plane. (Those of you under the age of 30 or so will find this astonishing.) In 2025, I'll be circling Terminal E, waiting for my daughter to clear customs. But we'll be just as happy reuniting as my parents and I were.

How about you, dear readers? What are your travel memories from a bygone age? And what's better now?