Ted Kooser. Photo credit: UNL Publications and Photography. I’ve read that every time we call up a memory we tweak it a little, so that in the end what we remember is mostly fabrication.
Here Emily Ransdell, a poet from Washington state, touches upon this phenomenon in a poem that’s about much more than memory.
This appeared in “New Letters,” one of our best literary journals.
Everywhere a River
I do remember darkness, how it snaked through the alders, their ashen flanks in our high-beams the color of stone. That hollow slap as floodwater hit the sides of the car. Was the radio on? Had I been asleep? Sometimes you have to tell a story your entire life to get it right.
Twenty-two and terrified, I had married you but barely knew you. And for forty years I’ve told this story wrong. In my memory you drove right through it, the river already rising on the road behind us, no turning around. But since your illness I recall it differently. Now that I know it’s possible to lose you, I’m finally remembering it right. That night, you threw that car in reverse, and gunned it. You found us another way home.
Every summer the nation’s television critics gather at a press tour for a preview of what networks and cable channels have to offer for the fall season.
This year it is a virtual experience, but the major networks opted out of presenting fall programs for interviews.
A consortium of cable channels, along with PBS, has no problem stepping up to showcase programs from basic cable channels such as AMC Networks and Lifetime to subscription streaming services that include Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
Then there are what might be called, for lack of a better term, “boutique” subscription services that highlight programs from Great Britain and other nations. One of them is BritBox, created by British networks BBC and ITV, while Acorn TV is another option for British shows.
Waiting until the fall won’t be necessary to enjoy BritBox’s “McDonald & Dodds,” a British crime series with the ambitious DCI McDonald (Tala Gouveia) and the older, shy DS Dodds (Jason Watkins) teamed as mismatched detectives taking on puzzling cases.
In British police ranks, the DCI is a detective chief inspector and the DS is a detective sergeant. The younger, female DCI McDonald is the superior officer, which seems fitting because it appears DS Dodds has not been on a crime scene in forever.
As they might say in Britain, when considering whether to watch “McDonald & Dodds,” give it a go. After all, the scenery is lovely because the show is set in scenic Bath, where my sister lives now and which I enjoyed on a visit last year.
For a different take on a show located in Britain, AMC will offer limited drama series “The Salisbury Poisonings,” based on the incredible true story of an assassination attempt on double agent and spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Within three days of the deadly plot, key government agencies discovered that a lethal nerve agent called Novichok was used, just half a teaspoon of which could kill 20,000 people.
In March 2018, the British city of Salisbury became the epicenter of an unprecedented national emergency, and “The Salisbury Poisonings” tells the remarkable story of how ordinary people and public services reacted to a crisis on their doorstep.
As if there is not enough British programming, AMC will also debut in the fall the drama series “Gangs of London,” which has already been critically acclaimed for its successful first season in the United Kingdom.
The 10-episode series tells the story of the multicultural city being torn apart by the turbulent power struggles of the international gangs that control it and the sudden power vacuum that’s created when the head of the most powerful crime family is slain.
Award-winning filmmaker and show co-creator Gareth Evans observed during the panel discussion that “Gangs of London” was influenced by “all crime television and film” with a particular emphasis on the Asian cinema of “Triad movies and Yakuza movies.”
“Gangs of London” explores a dark world of action-packed thrills and violence, and if the pub fight scene in the first episode is any indication, the series looks like it will be a wild ride.
AMC’s first-ever anthology series “Soulmates,” set 15 years in the future, when science has made a discovery that changes lives by a test that unequivocally tells you who your soulmate is.
Each episode features a different cast and explores an entirely new story around discovering, or opting not to discover, the results of this new test and the impact of those results on a myriad of relationships.
If you are already happily married with kids you adore, why would anyone tempt fate to discover someone else should be your life partner. But if you are single and never married, would you give it a try? “Soulmates” may provide some answers.
Inspired by the iconic and unforgettable character of Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched in the 1975 Oscar-award winning film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Netflix debuts in September the suspenseful drama series “Ratched.”
The setting is 1947 and Sarah Paulson has large shoes to fill in Mildred Ratched, who arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind.
On a clandestine mission, Nurse Ratched presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she infiltrates the mental health care system, a growing darkness becomes readily evident.
From the clips made available, Sarah Paulson’s take on the evil nurse is truly unnerving, and while Louise Fletcher’s archetypal performance could never be duplicated, “Ratched” looks to showcase a nonetheless disturbing character.
A little-known fun fact is that the filming of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” took place at the Oregon State Hospital in the state’s capital city of Salem, which has a Museum of Mental Health on the premises that offers insight into primitive treatment methods of the past.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
Drawing from life via Zoom and at MAC. Photo courtesy of the Middletown Arts Center. MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Lake County Campus of Woodland Community College has been offering studio art classes at the Middletown Art Center since winter semester 2019.
This fall semester, the college is offering Drawing and Composition, Beginning (Art-4A-K8843).
The class begins August 17 online so that participants are familiar with the tools and methods needed for remote learning.
It will be available as a hybrid choice online or on-site in the MAC studio (social distancing observed) in the coming weeks.
The course is taught by artist and seasoned instructor Lisa Kaplan MFA, who is also programs director, co-curator and an exhibiting artist at Middletown Art Center.
Drawing 4-A is a 3-credit foundation drawing class. Credits are transferable to other California Community Colleges, to UCs and CSUs. The class is appropriate for all levels of experience beginning to advanced and includes applications of the principles of art and design, figure drawing, still life, perspective, landscape and more.
“This course pushed me to grow in my artistic skills and become a better artist,” said Middletown High School student Erica Kinsel, who took Drawing 4-A in 2019. “I learned so many new techniques and ways of thinking that allowed me to produce quality artwork. It was a great use of my time after school and after sports, and I even earned three college credits. Plus, Lisa is an attentive and dynamic teacher who really makes this class worth taking!”
When the shelter in place was declared last March, Kaplan and her Beginning Painting (Art 9A) students quickly shifted learning activities to Zoom and Canvas. It was a rapid and necessary adjustment for everyone, but students came away with a sense of continuity, growth and accomplishment.
“I was impressed with how Lisa kept the class interesting and engaging when we had to shift online in the middle of the semester,” said Joan Hollywood, who will be returning to attend the drawing class this semester.
“With online learning now a norm, ‘best practices’ are being shared amongst educators, and more creative innovations can and will occur,” said Kaplan. “Nonetheless, each of us learn best in different ways. So being able to offer a hybrid option where students can practice at home connected to others virtually or choose to come to the studio and have creative space away from home, that is also connected to classmates online will make this semester’s class a particularly unique learning opportunity. I am confident that the parameters that social distancing imposes will also be a spring-board for plenty of innovative projects and creative problem solving, which is very exciting to me as an educator and as an artist!”
Kaplan taught for the Art Institutes at the San Francisco campus before moving to Lake County. After her move, she taught Drawing, 2-D Design and Color Theory for their online division for several years. “The school was mostly geared towards applied arts including Graphic Design and Web, Animation, Game Art and Design, Interior, and Fashion Design. All of those careers require a solid foundation in Drawing, and Art 4A is comparable to the foundation Drawing classes I taught in the city and online.”
Teens and adults who are drawn to any career in the visual arts or simply interested in honing their drawing skills are encouraged to sign up and take the class.
To see samples of student work from this class in 2019 visit www.middletownartcenter.org/art-4a . Work samples from the painting class can also be found on the MAC website.
Woodland Community College classes begin this Monday August. 17th and continue through Dec. 18. There is still time to register. Visit www.middletownartcenter.org/classes to learn more and find a link to the college registration page, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.
The partnership between MAC and the college provides additional quality arts education that is affordable and accessible, one of MAC’s key goals.
Support the MAC’s efforts to weave the arts into the fabric of life in Lake County by becoming a MAC member, or by attending one of the many arts and cultural events, exhibits, or classes at MAC or online.
MAC is located in the heart of Middletown at the junction of Highways 29 and 175.
Visit www.middletownartcenter.org or “Like” Middletown Art Center on Facebook to stay up-to-date with what’s happening at MAC.
Maybe we don’t have enough streaming service providers, so NBC Universal has launched the Peacock network, a three-tiered subscription service of which one is free if you don’t mind advertising.
Named after the ubiquitous colorful logo of NBC, Peacock gets its start with streaming a few original programs, one of them being “Brave New World,” loosely based on Aldous Huxley’s groundbreaking 1932 novel which imagines a utopian society.
Actually, while the intention of the new world order envisions a place that has achieved peace and stability, “Brave New World” realizes a society that is a dystopian nightmare for any sentient being who operates with free will and independent thought.
The citizens of New London live in a sanitized environment that is almost as cold and sterile as Stalinist architecture, which seems fitting for a place where real human emotion is frowned upon or taboo.
The series begins by noting the three rules to be followed by all inhabitants of New London: no privacy, no family and no monogamy. Follow these rules, and it is said that “everyone is very happy” in this faux nirvana.
Just like any authoritarian regime, New London functions under a caste system where the elite rule and are known as Alphas and the next level Betas exist with few worries other than when to pop a mood-altering pill called soma.
The bottom of the rung belongs to the custodial class known as Epsilons. Their lives are regimented as they march in order and take their meals in a communal dining room where they act no more animated than robots.
For the amusement of the privileged, Alphas and Betas may take a vacation to a remote spot known as the Savage Lands Adventure Park, where people you might find living in trailer parks are gawked at like circus freaks.
Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd), an Alpha Plus, and Lenina Crowne (Jessica Brown Findlay), a Beta Plus, take a trip to Savage Lands, where visitors may be amused by the staging of the frenzy of a Black Friday melee at a big-box store.
Things go awry when Bernard and Lenina become embroiled in a harrowing and violent rebellion, only to be rescued by John the Savage (Alden Ehrenreich), who along with his alcoholic mother Linda (Demi Moore) escapes with them back to New London.
Wary of the attention coming his way in New London, John the Savage can’t help feeling out of place when cybernetic locals proclaim their desire to help him “transition from the primitive world of hardship, strife to ours…a society of harmony and happiness.”
Were “Brave New World” to have a rating for its language, violence and rampant promiscuous sex, it would deserve the letter R. The shiny veneer of New London is not paradise by any measure, unless being braindead is a good thing.
The deeper one gets into the episodes, the more interesting it becomes with John the Savage the catalyst for stirring up cosmic disturbances in the neatly-ordered world that the residents take for granted.
“Brave New World” charts a fascinating journey into a dystopian world of scary groupthink. At one point, John mentions to a leader, “You’ve got the whole thing rigged.” As an outsider, will John mess up the tidy order of New London?
‘EAST WING’ ON STARZ
The East Wing is part of the White House complex that has office space for the First Lady and her staff, and better-known West Wing serves the president’s executive office staff.
“The West Wing” was a popular series on the NBC network that worked its way through countless political donnybrooks and scandals during two terms of the fictional Democratic administration of Martin Sheen’s President Jed Bartlet.
The Starz cable channel has announced that Debra Messing will star in the half-hour comedy “East Wing” currently in development, with no particular premiere date in mind.
“East Wing” is created and written by actress and author Ali Wentworth, who is drawing from the experiences of her mother, Muffie Cabot, who served a couple of years in the White House as the social secretary for First Lady Nancy Reagan.
As with any of these types of programs, expect dramatic license with the story of Messing’s fictional Hollis Carlisle, a hostess extraordinaire who juggles her threatened husband, rebellious children, Nancy Reagan’s Chief of Staff and a crippling social anxiety disorder.
Wentworth has a reoccurring part as Hollis’s best friend, Kelly Forces, a stay-at-home mom who is threatened by Hollis’s success. Apparently, the husband is not the only threatened party. Maybe there will be others as well.
For promotional puffery, the president of Starz programming claimed the show is “a whip-smart comedy that despite its 1980’s set dressing is a pointed commentary on politics and the politics of being a woman today.”
Starz also claims that Messing, Wentworth and other cast regulars “will most definitely not be pulling any punches,” whatever that means. When the times comes, the audience, as it always does, will render its own judgment.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
“Elemental” exhibit with “Sieve” by Scott Parady in the foreground. Photo by Middletown Art Center staff. MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center is opening its first exhibit since the shelter in place, “Elemental,” on Saturday, Aug. 8, from 6 to 8 p.m.
A second capsule exhibit, “Postcards from Isolation,” will be featured in the small gallery.
The public is invited to participate in an evening of arts and culture with artists and art appreciators online, via Zoom and Facebook, or onsite at MAC. Social distancing and masking will be observed at MAC indoors and outdoors.
“We are excited to launch our hybrid event model with this exhibit,” said MAC Programs Director Lisa Kaplan.
The Elemental show includes work by several new artists in addition to veteran MAC artists. Selected works on view are about or of the elements: water, earth, air, fire (light), metal, and wood. The exhibit will feature works on canvas, paper, photography and sculpture.
Concurrently, “Postcards from Isolation”, a community-wide collaborative exhibition documents a broad variety of artistic responses to the current pandemic and experiences of isolation, social distancing or other related COVID-19 themes.
The public is invited to create their own postcards Friday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at MAC during gallery hours, or if you are still sheltering in place, send a 5-inch by 8-inch postcard to MAC in any medium. Postcards will be selected for addition to the exhibit.
The remote opening will feature a guided virtual tour of the gallery. Napa Valley-based art and design professional Nicola Chipps is a new addition to the MAC staff and has recently been named curatorial advisor.
Chipps will host a livestream conversation with the Elemental exhibition artists via Zoom and Facebook beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. Some artists will be present at MAC while others will be joining via Zoom.
“Virtual Tours are an exciting new digital step forward for MAC,” said Chipps. “The 2020 pandemic has accelerated the need to innovate and continue to assure accessibility to the arts for all. This exhibit is another way that MAC continues to broaden its audience and uphold the mission to provide rich cultural experiences, whether virtually or through safely distanced protocols.”
The 360-degree virtual tour is provided by Third Eye Visuals and will be available for the duration of the exhibit and archived on MAC’s website.
MAC’s doors will open at 6 p.m. and the virtual exhibit will be launched at that time for home viewing. The guided tour and livestream begin at 6:30 p.m. promptly. All are invited and encouraged to join free of charge. Visit www.MiddletownArtCenter.org on Saturday evening for the zoom link.
Visitors to the gallery will enter in their “bubbles” or independently, with masks and social distancing observed. A limited number of visitors will be allowed in the gallery at a given time. There will also be refreshments and live music outside in the MAC Art Garden.
“Elemental” will be on view through the end of October. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday or by appointment by calling 707-809-8118.
In addition to “Postcards from Isolation,” a mini-exhibit of a selection of work from “Being Leonardo,” an Artists in School project with Middletown schools is also on view in the gallery. Being Leonardo was funded with support from the California Arts Council.
The MAC is located at 21456 State Highway 175 at the junction of Highway 29 in the heart of Middletown.
Visit www.middletownartcenter.org to stay up to date on all that is happening at MAC and learn more about upcoming calls for work, exhibitions, classes, events, and ways to help support and sustain MAC and its work weaving the arts into daily life in Lake County.
“Postcards from Isolation.” Photo by Middletown Art Center staff.
More than 20 Bay area jazz aficionados will present a livestream musical tribute on Saturday, Aug. 8, from 2 to 4 p.m. (PST), 5 to 7 p.m. (EST), to memorialize their friend and mentor jazz trumpeter Eddie Gale.
The tribute sanctioned by Gale’s family to extend love and peace to friends, fans and the communities he served, is being coordinated by jazz pianist Valerie Mih with two notable Bay Area jazz men with their own jazz family legacies: Clifford Brown Jr., and Doug Ellington, the great-nephew of Duke Ellington.
Gale, a celebrated jazz recording artist, performer and educator who served as San Jose’s Ambassador of Jazz since 1974, succumbed to cancer July 10 at age 78.
“We have created this collaborative online musical memorial as a way to come together and celebrate Eddie Gale’s life, music and spirit,” said Mih who performed with Eddie Gale’s Band and Inner Peace Orchestra from the late 1990s to 2019.
This event will be hosted by Clifford Brown, Jr. and livestreamed from Doug Ellington’s music performance space in Oakland.
Performances will include pre-recorded musical videos contributed by various musicians, along with livestreamed performances. Some 20 musicians influenced by Gale have pledged to participate.
Clifford Brown, Jr., the son and namesake of the legendary jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, will serve as concert host. Brown continues his late father’s legacy through youth outreach programs under the Clifford Brown Jazz Foundation, and as an award-winning jazz broadcaster.
Raised in a home steeped in creativity, Brown’s musical education was nurtured by his famous father and family friends such as Donald Byrd and Herbie Hancock. As host of The American Jazz Countdown on the Bay Area jazz station, KCSM, Brown has earned the Golden Mic Award as the San Francisco Bay Area’s Top Radio Personality and the Ampex Award of Excellence for Jazz Programmer of the Year.
Doug Ellington, the great-nephew of jazz legend Duke Ellington, has been a contributing musical force on the West Coast for over 20 years. As a trumpeter, bandleader of A New Urban Groove, and composer for stage and screen, Ellington has shared the stage with artists ranging from B.B. King, to pop star Solange, and various jazz artists. “The family tie allows me to have a unique perspective on what it means to Love Music,” he says.
Valerie Mih, professor of animation at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, is a multitalented artist in the fields of music and animation. She is composer and script writer for the animated children’s series “Treetop Family” and founder of the educational company “Quantum Physics for Kids,” which provides STEM classes and learning products for kids ages 7-13.
Confirmed concert participants include Faye Carol, India Cooke, Bill Crossman, Andre Custodio, Doug Ellington, Karl Evangelista and Grex, Mark Farley, Kathleen Farrell and Chuck Cunningham (Soul Tones), Karlton Hester, Vernon Hohenstein, Dante James, Michael James, Carolyn Jones, Diem Jones, Dennis Kyne, David Leikam, Eric Marshall, Valerie Mih, Hafez Modirzadeh, Destiny Muhammad, Sandra Poindexter, Marcus Shelby and Len Wood.
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