Lately pink has become popular in home decor as an accent color, because it’s supposed to be calming, but it’s too trendy for me in the house. While I may admire pink kitchen cupboards in a decorating magazine I don’t want to live with them for years. Recently a house went up for sale in my neighbourhood with the original pink bathtub, sink, and toilet from the 1960’s and a younger person I know thought it was cool as all that retro stuff is back in. It was listed by the original owner, a man in his early nineties, who’d obviously never spend any money on it. It had the original wallpaper too – you could have filmed a remake of the Brady Bunch there.
But if do find pink to be cheerful outside. My garden is predominately shades of pink, which give a splash of color everywhere you look, with a bit of purple and blue. A wise gardener once told me that for maximum impact go for a single dominant color, although a variety of colors seems to more popular. I planted some of those too, with zinnias and gladioli this year.
My garden has been neglected for the past four years, but it’s starting to look in better shape now, and I actually bought some hanging baskets this year, which haven’t done too badly considering the strange weather we’ve had so far. So join me while we visit the pinks in my yard.
I bought these vibrant pink geranium baskets for the back yard, as I enjoy looking out my kitchen window in the morning and seeing this bright pop of color.
But I bought these mixed ones for the front, as I liked the idea of the two-tone color with the brighter centre and hoped it would go better with the roses, which it didn’t really, but it’s still a riot of color.
Impatiens are back in style, and seem to be more disease resistant now. I had mine in early so they’ve already spread out quite a bit. They like shade so they’re along the fence where my neighbours cedar hedge hangs overhead.
I bought these dianthus for the first time, as they looked so nice and they reminded me of carnations. The pink watering can has sun-faded over the years.
These pink peonies are my favourites.
Pink peony with visitor…
I never bring them indoors though, even if they look nice as a centrepiece, as the ants like them too!
Mosaic turtle hanging out with the peonies.
I don’t like these peonies as they’re too pale – sometimes the nursery tags can be deceiving, but they’re in and they flower, so there they will stay.
Rain soaked tree peony
A tree peony in my neighbourhood flowers in May – I tried to find one but they were out of pink and cost $60, and I’d already spent too much replacing nine of my pink Knock-Out rose bushes.
I am a Charlie Brown rose bush….
I had twenty of these at one time, but when they reach the end of their life-span of 10-12 years they get either spindly or woody in the centre. I planted gladioli behind them along the house as an experiment for some August color.
I’ve never seen the lavender bloom so early.
The bright roses came with the house, they must be over 50 years old, and are prolific bloomers. They can be fuchsia or red or sometimes both. I googled to see what causes roses to change color, and it can be a number of factors, the age, the grafting process, the soil Ph, the time of the season etc.
I tucked this pink climber repeat bloomer in behind it about ten years ago, and it has done well too.
This is a newer pink climber in the back yard, one of those end of season bargains that you think will never grow, and it has, although it’s taken awhile to get established.
But it’s doing well now.
An older John Cabot climber enjoying the early evening sunshine.
The Dipladenia has recovered from a very cold May. I saved the pink pots from a few years ago. It’s cheaper to make your own basket than to spend $40 on one, as they have become very popular the past few years due to being so drought resistant.
That concludes the pink tour, but later there will be pink hydrangeas, some phlox, and hopefully some pink glads and zinnias which I put in window boxes around the garden for later, so there will always be something in the pink.
Are you supposed to deadhead these things?
Now, you might think I am a wonderful gardener, because everything looks so bright and lovely early in the season, but later things will start to slowly die, as I lose my enthusiasm over the course of the summer and neglect to water because it’s just way to hot to go out, there are too many mosquitos at night and other assorted excuses. But for the month of June my garden always look pretty in pink!
And lastly, because one does not live by beauty alone….
I’m feeling nostalgic lately, and old, as with the passing of Brian Wilson and Sly Stone this month, the soundtrack of my youth is slowly dying.
The Beach Boys were always there in the background with their summertime music. I can’t pick a particular favorite song, as there were so many, (Let’s Go Surfing, California Girls, Little Deuce Coupe, see the whole Best Hits Album) but perhaps, Fun, Fun, Fun and Good Vibrations remind me the most of a summer day.
As for Sly and the Family Stone their hits Everyday People and Dance to the Music, were popular with lots of radio play, but my favorite was always Hot Fun in the Summertime.
The song was released in August 1969, around the time of their performance at Woodstock, which greatly increased their fame, and reached number two on the billboard in October, long after summer was over.
So where was I in 1969? Certainly not at Woodstock – I was 13, almost 14 and getting ready to start high school, so I was probably at the beach or in the backyard, working on my (very light) tan, lying on a scratchy wool blanket, and reading the latest copy of Seventeen, with the scent of Coppertone in the air, and Sun-in in my hair, because “Sun-In and Sunlight, and you’ll be blonder tonight.”
I tried Sun-In once but it never did much for me, as the formula was so weak and my hair was already kind of blondish, and I probably didn’t sit out in the sun long enough for it to work, as I burnt so easily. (Remember Noxzema? Deep dark tans were the goal, and many people applied baby oil, but after a couple of blistering sunburns I knew that was not an option for me.) Although one summer I dyed my hair lighter, with Summer Blonde, but the smell of the peroxide scared me and I ended up rinsing it out sooner than I was supposed to but it was still plenty light enough and it took forever to grow out, as we wore our hair straight and parted in the middle which showed the roots.
Grade 8 Grad photo
I liked my grade 8 graduation dress – white lace dresses were in style then, and mine had a green satin bow and matching bell bottom pants, which I wore because my mother thought the dress was too short without them. I grew my bangs out in high school, but have worn bangs ever since.
High school photo
What an ugly uniform – white shirts with navy sweaters and skirts, although pants were an option later. They must have wanted us to look like nuns. A plaid kilt would have been much more preppy. I remember my mother sewing my early uniforms, out of some polyester material, a long open vest and a plain skirt, which got progressively shorter over the years so the skirt was the same length as the vest!
Vintage Seventeen Magazine – June 1970
I thought you might enjoy a peek at these 1970 copies of Seventeen Magazine which I rescued from the attic when my mom moved off the farm. They are summer issues, and the magazine was in a large size format then, similar in dimensions to Look and Life. They cost 50 cents and in the July issue they are already gearing up for fall clothes – and so was I as I prepared to enter high school that fall, with some trepidation, so it was important to look cool. The Fall issue of Seventeen was always a big deal, as although we girls had to wear those ugly uniforms, we had dress-up day once a month, which was like a fashion show, except for the guys who got to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time. Now the guys must wear ugly uniforms too, which is only fair.
I wanted to look like this ad, but instead ended up buying a brown striped t-shirt-like dress which I wore with a gold chain belt, an outfit I bought at a store in the mall called Cojana, which was so dark inside, that you could hardly see the clothes. It was the epitome of cool though, with beaded curtains and funky music. I was not happy with my first-day-of-high-school outfit, because it didn’t look like anything in the magazine, but we were always behind the U.S. in fashions by several years. Plus, my father, who never ever shopped, was along on our shopping expedition, and he said he liked it, and how embarrassing was that! (I suspect my dad only gave it the stamp of approval because he wanted to go home as I’d dithered long enough over the perfect outfit!)
Susan Dey prior to The Partridge Family
My fashion obsession started young, and because we were so behind in styles, I turned to home sewing, (yes, me an expert with one year of mandatory grade 8 home economics) and these issues are full of ads for sewing patterns. Only mine never turned out that great, and were usually finished by my ever-patient mother, who once smocked a dress for me, like this one only with sleeves, which I wore exactly once. I would enjoy picking out the material and the pattern, and cutting out the pieces, maybe a bit of straight seam sewing, but anything else was beyond me – blame the old Singer sewing machine as it was so temperamental, not like today’s sleek models with their electronic programs.
I was allowed to wear makeup when I was 12, and I remember a brief period when mascara came in a powder cake, and you added a bit of water and applied it with a tiny brush, so the advent of mascara in a tube was a big improvement, as you could always add an extra coat in the girl’s washroom between classes! I had the exact same eyeshadow palette as I got it for Christmas that year – looking back I’m amazed that my mother was so hip at forty-four! Although, I only ever wore the blue, as blue eyeshadow was cool….
Dig those blue tinted shades!
As were blue aviators. I’m sure I had a pair. I also had a blue checked summer blazer made out of seersucker material which I loved.
I had a two-piece bathing suit like this, made from some imitation blue jean material, which I thought was really hip and I had a poncho too, but who would wear a poncho to the beach? The wool blankets were already scratchy enough – I think blankets only came in wool back then, but if they came in synthetic or crochet or something softer, you certainly wouldn’t be allowed to take one to the beach! Beach towels were just old bath towels. Beverages came in a thermos, and were usually Freshie or Kool-aid in colors and flavors I cringe to remember. There was Tab or Fresca for those who were dieting, both tasted awful – pass me the sugar please. A snack on the beach was a bag of chips, french fries or ice cream. There were no beach umbrellas, if you started to burn you moved to the shade of a tree.
Nobody I knew went to summer camp, or if they did it was only for a week, not the whole summer like kids do now, with soccer camp, hockey camp, theatre camp, church camp, Girl Guide camp, and what-ever-else-so-we-don’t-have-to-pay-a babysitter camp. A vacation was a trip to Niagara Falls or renting a (rustic) cottage for a week, or perhaps a weekend trip to visit your cousins in Michigan. I wonder about kids living such a scheduled life so young. Do they ever get a chance to be bored, or is constant stimulation and no downtime just normal to them? It’s one thing to be influenced by reading a monthly magazine with pretty pictures, but quite another to be constantly bombarded every day with social media. No wonder so many kids are struggling with mental health issues.
13-14 is an awkward age anyway, with no wheels and when you lived in the country like I did, that could be a problem. My young teenage life was nothing like the magazines or movies. So, what did I do that summer while I was waiting for high school to start and real life to arrive?
I read a lot, (I would go to the library once a week and get a stack of books), and watched tv – reruns at night which were new to me as I never watched much during the school year as the bus came so early, and soap operas in the afternoon, (my mother’s General Hospital and Dark Shadows, a vintage vampire soap). I had a few chores in the house, and the garden (my mother canned a lot) but nothing on the farm, unlike my brothers and dad who were forever baling straw or hay, first cut, second cut, third cut if you were lucky, it was all hot dusty work. My cousin, who was three weeks older than me, lived right next door and she was always up for something. We would ride our ten speed bikes two miles down to the corner store to get ice cream, or I would visit with my grandma who lived across the road, for homemade root beer. And if I was really bored, I would go watch my younger brother’s baseball games, as my uncle was the coach, and there was an ice cream shop next to the baseball diamond.
On Wednesdays, my mother would drive into the city to go grocery shopping, and I went along to shop for clothes, although I seldom bought anything as we didn’t have much money and the styles were so boring. Although you could make 50cents/hour babysitting, I only did that occasionally, as the family down the road had 4 or 5 kids, most of them bratty. My mother would visit three different grocery stores looking for the weekly sales (something I do myself now that I’m retired and groceries are so expensive) and then afterwards we would go to Macdonald’s for a treat – a hamburger, fries and a chocolate milkshake. (75 cents) The only other fast-food restaurant in town was the A&W drive-in, where you could get a big refillable amber jug of frothy yeasty root beer which tasted far superior to their root beer now, and KFC, whose finger-licking-good buckets were usually reserved for picnics.
In fact my life in retirement looks a lot like my early teen years, and I’m okay with that, with no set schedule and lots of time to do nothing, except I can get in my car and drive someplace if I want to. The past few years have been challenging, so when people ask me what I’m doing this summer, I’m happy to say – I have no plans. A normal life is highly underrated – you don’t appreciate it, until it’s at risk. So, I want to do absolutely nothing until I’m rested and totally bored, and then I’ll figure out what I want to do next that’s fun.
PS. And every single Sunday during the summer we went to the beach – I don’t remember it ever raining on a weekend or being this hot? The weather was just pleasantly warm and if you were lucky your favorite song would come on the radio, the perfect soundtrack to a summer day.
I love this new TV ad for the retro Volkswagon, and the song lyrics are stuck in my head, Are You Having Any Fun? The shot of the little girl at the end with the beach towel, is priceless and says hello summer! Wishing you all a summer of leisure, simple pleasures and fun! As for me, I’m going to have an ice cream cone to welcome the season.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s last department store, and Canada and North America’s oldest corporation, closed its doors in June, after 350 years in business. There’s something sad about that. So how did we get from beaver fur hats, which apparently were all the rage in 17th century London and Europe, to a bankrupt high-end fashion chain?
Long lovely locks on men must have been all the rage in 1670 too!
HBC, otherwise known as The Bay, started as a fur trading company in 1670 and received a royal charter from King Charles of England to operate in what was known then as Rupert’s Land, a huge territory which extended from northern Quebec and Ontario to the Prairie Provinces and part of the Northwest Territories. I remember hearing about the fur traders and the Hudson’s Bay Company in grade school as its history is intricately linked to the development of Canada. Americans may have been taught about the pilgrims and Christopher Columbus, but we learned about Jacques Cartier and the French settlers in Quebec in 1534, which is why Quebecers still speak French today, although the French later ceded all their rights to England, and Canada became a British colony until 1867 when we underwent our own Confederation. The two French fur traders who initially formed the HBC had initially approached the French king, but after he declined, they took their proposal to Prince Rupert, a cousin of Charles the Second, the King of England, who knew a good real estate deal when he saw one, as the HBC initially had extensive governing authority over the district lands in which it operated.
Note the location of Greenland, another country rich in minerals and natural resources.
The charter granted the company a monopoly on trade and commerce over the region drained by all the rivers and streams flowing into Hudson’s Bay. This area had been of interest to the fur traders as being the best for high quality premium fur pelts, (probably due to the cold weather and the frozen sea to the north) and wanting to avoid the cost of transporting the furs overland, two ships were commissioned to undertake the northwest passage, landing in James Bay at the south of Hudson’s Bay, where they established their first trading post.
But about those hats….in no period drama have I ever seen a hat made from beaver fur….
…..except maybe I have and just didn’t know it? They were popular across Europe during the period 1550 to 1850 because the soft yet resilient fur pelts could be made into a felted material which was easily shaped into a variety of styles, including the top hat of Dicken’s day. (you can google the preparation of the felt if you want more detail, I didn’t – the whole idea makes me feel sorry for the poor beaver, our national symbol). And with the European beaver almost extinct all eyes turned to North America as a reliable source. It was big business for Britain to the tune of L263,000 pounds shipped to Spain and Portugal alone, in an era where the type of hat you wore denoted your rank and social status.
One of my mother’s paintings – Canoe on the River – AMc
The HBC set up many such posts to trade with the Indigenous people who traveled long distances by canoe to barter the furs they had caught for knives, tools, kettles, beads and textiles such as the popular woollen striped point blanket, (see photo below) but eventually someone had the bright idea to take the trading posts closer to the people. Initially they had competition from the North West Company, but eventually in 1821 those two companies amalgamated and then in 1870 HBC sold Rupert’s Land to Canada and focused extensively on setting up retail stores in the more populated areas as by then most of their customers were the early settlers. In 1913 they began to construct department stores, the first in Calgary. By the time they filed for creditor protection this past spring, they owned 80 large scale department stores, mostly in big city malls, and 16 Saks stores, and employed over 9000 people, many of whom had worked there for decades.
One of the more popular items of the early days was their iconic striped blanket, and Canadian Tire (another Canadian retail chain like a Home Depo plus automotive), has bought the rights to the blanket, the logos, and the historical artifacts for $34 million, a high price tag to preserve a part of Canadian history. I always thought the blankets were ugly myself, but they’re going for crazy prices on eBay now….
I guess it’s a sign of the times, but I will miss The Bay, as even though I seldom visited as the nearest store was two hours away, I did order online – mostly PJ’s, socks, bathrobes. The quality was good, and the sale prices during the biannual Bay Days were great. And where else can you go to buy sheets and towels, kitchen wares, or to try on bathing suits. (and don’t say Walmart or Amazon, as I boycott both unless I absolutely cannot find something anywhere else). I miss having everything in one place, and checking out the fit and quality before I buy, and I can’t help but think that all those trucks delivering (and picking up) items every single day in every single neighbourhood must be contributing greatly to the ozone layer depletion.
Of final note, with the melting of the polar ice cap, there has been renewed interest in the Canadian Artic as a shipping lane, as a way to get our western oil and potash to new European markets. Running a pipeline from the oil sands across the northern Prairie provinces, (which are mostly all trees anyway), to a port on Hudson’s Bay, might be a viable alternative, assuming the agreement of the aboriginal peoples. (Not likely as they protest everything, even projects which would be good economically for their communities.) It seems things may eventually come full circle again….
PS. A Chinese billionaire who relocated to British Columbia and owns a retail investment company there, has since bought 28 of the Bay leases with plans to open a new type of department store, so there may be hope yet…I just wish she had stepped in sooner.
PS. I apologize for being so far behind in Reader, but the garden is taking too much of my time. A yard neglected for four years is not a happy place! At least we had some decent rain. Next week when the heat wave hits I plan on staying inside and catching up.
One of the joys of starting to blog again is reconnecting with some of my favorite bloggers. I’m happy to know most of you are still hanging in there, in your respective little corners of the world and I’m enjoying reading about what’s new in your lives. I had several blog topics in mind, but as they required research, and I didn’t have time this week, I decided to share a couple of posts from other bloggers which made me laugh, because I’ve been in need of a dose of humor lately.
It’s been a frustrating few weeks, nothing major just a lot of minor irritations – like why do things always break in threes? I didn’t live in my house for a few years while I was taking care of my mother (I have stairs, she does not) and then recuperating from heart surgery, (I was too short of breath to handle the stairs and after she went to a nursing home her house needed to be cleaned out before being sold), and my house was perfectly fine. I only live a few blocks away, so I would slip home and check on it for insurance purposes, and I have really good neighbours who kept an eye on things. And it was fine all winter, (as if it knew I was grieving), not a single peep, but maybe inside my house was slowly simmering with anger at being abandoned that long, because now that I’m home again and feeling better, it’s been nothing but bad behavior.
I had a new dual hot water furnace/tankless on demand water system installed last fall as my current boiler was 30 years old, and when I went into the furnace room, where I keep excess kitchen stuff, there was water on the floor right under where a valve had corroded, an old red valve which I’m sure came with the house as it was an issue before, so after spending $10,000 couldn’t they have replaced that part too? The furnace was still under warranty, so the owner of the company came out and fixed it himself, with a $25 part and many apologies. When I went to take a load of clothes out of the dryer I noticed the top of the dryer was wet from a pipe leaking overhead, right where the plumber connected the dishwasher during the kitchen remodel, which was only five years ago. It was a new valve then but it looks corroded as well. I don’t have hard water and I do have a maintenance plan under Reliance, for plumbing, electrical, A/C and furnace so today they sent someone out, but it was not covered, of course not – $315. I got a new fridge and stove in April, something I had been meaning to do after the kitchen remodel – the fridge is great, but the (extra large) oven is very temperamental and takes forever to heat up. I debated returning it within 30 days as per the Maytag guarantee, but the store talked me into keeping it, saying it’s a learning curve and the new convection types need to calibrate themselves initially. Meaning I guess that the more you cook, the better it regulates itself? The problem is I don’t cook that much, at least not in the oven, so it’s like starting over every week. So some days things turn out just fine, and other days the same dish is undercooked and takes twice as long. Plus, the small burner, the one I use the most, doesn’t seem to get very hot. I wish I had returned it, but it’s too late now, and a model with a smaller oven went up $700 in price the next week due to the tariffs.
Having exhausted their three strikes and you’re out(side) limit, the house demons moved onto the garage. On Wednesday last week, the one and only day when it was warm enough to need the A/C in the car it didn’t seem to be blowing cool air, which meant a trip to the garage yesterday. (All is good, the air is frigid now and my bank account is minus $170, but it could have been worse.) Then last Thursday when the weather finally got warm enough to plant all the stuff I bought in early May, the forest fire smog moved in, resulting in an air quality alert to stay indoors! (Don’t blame me, I don’t live in the northwest, but there are already 225 out of control fires, twice the normal number, and it’s only June!)
So I decided to stay inside and watch a movie only to discover that Netflix is not working, it won’t even launch. I know I’ve been negligent in updating the software but after trying everything, I finally called them only to be told my ten year old perfectly fine 55 inch TV is too old and is not supported anymore, so I must buy a streaming device stick in order to connect, or just get a new tv when they’re nothing wrong with this one, and I hardly ever watch TV. I ended up watching the movie on my 13 inch laptop, which is not the same viewing experience, but am thinking of canceling, as for $18 a month there’s nothing on Netflix anyway.
Then my grasscutter told me bees/wasps were trying to get into the crevices between the bricks at the back of the house in front of the hose faucet, (and didn’t I have that problem before – see Revenge of the Wasps). Hello duct-tape, until I see if they return. It’s been so cold it’s not even bee season yet!
And the there’s the deck….I was scrubbing the mildew off it again (it faces north and doesn’t dry out), something I clearly remember doing last November (the ambulance came when my Lifeline detected a fall and I didn’t hear the phone), and some of the wooden structural boards under the Veka-composite-decking-which-is-supposed-to-last-forever, are rotten – they’re soft and soggy in maybe in about ten places. The company went out of business long ago, so I don’t know who I can in get to fix that, as most deck companies don’t want to be bothered with small jobs like that. It’s so hard to find a handyman these days, it might be better just to move.
Maybe that’s what’s what the house is trying to tell me! It’s time to downsize into something smaller and less work, with a wee bit of a garden, not a big lawn which has been overtaken by creeping charlie. (We’ll leave the gardening update for another blog, but I’ve already replaced nine of the twenty dead-or-dying Knock-Out pink rose bushes which are at the end of their life span.,…okay I admit some of them might have died of neglect.)
And just to top off last week, the hinge on my eye glasses broke on Friday afternoon, ten minutes after the eye place closed. It doesn’t look fixable, leaving me with a pair of progressive bifocals I got last summer but could never wear, and an old pair of readers from five years ago. (Update -the new ones will take two weeks.)
So I needed a dose of humor and Kate’s sassy three cats from Views and Mews by Coffee Kat, always make me smile. I think it’s a great idea to have a cat write your blogs when you don’t have time, and if I ever get a cat I want a tuxedo cat like Sasha, who has personality plus, and told me she is in fact a Pulitzer prize winner!
And then there’s Dave’s humorous travel post, (of Life in A Word), which reminds me of why I should be content staying home for the summer keeping my house company, until both of us are in a better mood. It’s been so long since I’ve stayed in a Marriott I’m sure I have zero status.
Jodi Picoult’s latest bestseller, By Any Other Name, is a historical novel which deals with a controversial literary topic – were some of Shakespeare’s plays actually written by a woman? While the idea was intriguing I wasn’t sure if a 500 page book about the Elizabethan era would interest me, but I found it fascinating and very convincing.
Publisher’s Summary: Two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—are forced to hide behind another name to make their voice heard.
Synopsis
In 1581, Emilia Bassano—like most young women of her day—is allowed no voice of her own. But as the Lord Chamberlain’s mistress, she has access to all theater in England, and finds a way to bring her work to the stage secretly. And yet, creating some of the world’s greatest dramatic masterpieces comes at great cost: by paying a man for the use of his name, she will write her own out of history.
In the present, playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. Although the challenges are different four hundred years later, the playing field is still not level for women in theater. Would Melina—like Emilia—be willing to forfeit her credit as author, just for a chance to see her work performed?
Told in intertwining narratives, this sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire asks what price each woman is willing to pay to see their work live on—even if it means they will be forgotten.
THE THEORY BEHIND THE BOOK:
The inspiration for the novel came from an article Jodi Picoult read in Atlantic magazine – Was Shakespeare a Woman – by Elizabeth Winkler. – an article which many distinguished scholars (mostly male tenured university professors) seemed to find deeply upsetting to the point that it was widely condemned. But it was enough to pique her interest into doing more research about Emilio Bassano, who was a real-life person living at court in Shakespeare’s time, and who in her later years published the first book of poetry by a woman in England. Documentation about women’s lives in general was scarce in that era, but the author was able about to reconstruct her fictional life from a single documented source – an extensive medical record written by a physician whom she had consulted for female ailments.
Would a full time actor and producer, who was not formally educated, have had the time and the skill to write so many flawless plays – 37 in total? Jodi Picoult says She. Does. Not. Buy. It. and outlines her reasons in the Author’s Note (ten pages at the back of the book), which summarizes what we know of Shakespeare’s life, and is well worth reading on its own.
Apparently Shakespeare had a reputation for being a bit of a jerk, not just towards his pregnant wife, Anne Hathaway, but for petty things like evading taxes, restraining orders, and being fined for hoarding grain during a famine and price gouging, according to records. There are pay stubs for his acting. There are references to other famous playwrights and poets of the time – their names appear in theatre ledgers, or they were publicly praised at the time of their death, or buried in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey. They left behind books and manuscripts in their wills. But there is no record at all in his life that Shakespeare was an author. He left not a single shred of literary evidence upon his death, not a single manuscript, revision or book was found among his belongings, although he left an extensive will dividing up his household goods. He played no musical instruments, never spent time at Court or in the military and had no knowledge of the law. Could someone who never traveled outside of England, had no musical background, and left his daughters uneducated, have written plays that had such strong female characters, (Lady MacBeth, Juliet, Portia, Beatrice, Cleopatra etc), were set in foreign countries such as Denmark, or Italy, and contain numerous references to music. It does seem strange, given that most writers write from what they know, or if not specifically, then indirect references will often make their way into their work.
Picoult’s theory, among that of other scholars, is that many of the plays were written by a writer’s room, organized by The Earl of Oxford (nobles were not allowed to write or publish either), and that Shakespeare was an allonym used by them all. The plays we credit to a single person, were penned by multiple writers. (Sort of like a group of writers working on a weekly sitcom, which is what plays were at the time, being the chief source of entertainment). There were no copyrights, so plays were often revised and adapted multiple times and collaboration was common among playwrights – except for Shakespeare. She believes Mary Sidney Herbert (a noble woman), and Emilia Bassano were among these writers. In other words, Shakespeare was paid for the use of his name. His early documented plays seem uninspired compared to the richness of the later masterpieces. The First Folio of his work was compiled and published in 1623 a few years after his death, by two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors, but Picoult speculates in her novel that playwrights of the time might have tried to correct this misconception that he was the sole author. Because by then it probably irked them that he had become famous.
Emilia Bassano was from a Jewish family (think Shylock – Merchant of Venice) of court musicians, (if music be the food of love, play on, Twelfth Night), highly educated by a countess, which was unusual for a girl at the time, and as a mistress to the much older Lord Chamberlain, a man who oversaw all theatre productions in England, had access to court literary circles. She was also Italian, (there are numerous plays set in Italy) and the man she was a ward to as a child, travelled as a diplomat to the court of Denmark, (Hamlet) where he met two noblemen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. There are just too many coincidences and things that Shakespeare would not have had knowledge of. Picoult credits about 10 or 12 of the plays to Emilia, the ones with strong females, Italian settings and musical references – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew etc.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THE BOOK:
I loved how the author wove famous words from the plays into the dialogue. If you want to see how the events of Emilia’s life, might have inspired the writing of the plays, there are 20 pages of Shakespearean references and their corresponding page numbers at the back of the book. It was fun to see how many I could catch. I did okay considering I was not an English major, other than 3 years of Shakespeare in high school – Merchant of Venice (grade 9), Romeo and Juliet (grade 10 – the year the first movie came out with the cute Romeo), MacBeth (grade 11, where I played a witch with my cousin, and another girl). In fact, my entire acting career consists of being one of the three witches in MacBeth (Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble…). We were to recite or enact a scene from Shakespeare and there was safety in numbers. Back then it was difficult to find black nail polish, but the witch costume was easy, courtesy of Halloween. The cauldron was a big pot covered with black crepe paper. I wonder if kids today even take Shakespeare in high school anymore? Many of the references in the book were common ones, but I will never hear, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” again without thinking of her preparing her ten month old daughter Odyllia (Ophelia) for burial. I had always thought it to be a romantic sonnet.
Speaking of romantic love, the one thing I did not care for in the book were the love scenes between Emilia and her true love, The Earl of Southampton. In the authors interview Picoult says Emilia lived such a miserable life, that she decided to give her some joy, so she created this fictional love affair with a real-life earl, based on one obscure reference to their meeting in a courtroom. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of romance, but how many times can two people crash together, on a bed of pine needles, in a public park no less, with her skirts billowing around them, before it just becomes laughable. She says it’s her steamiest book yet, and I’ve noticed this in her last few books, that she is trying to write romance (she says in the authors interview that Romantasy sells), but it is not her forte. There were too many such scenes, and the book is already long at 500 pages, as she was trying to show the whole scope of Emilia’s life. Admittingly it must be difficult to write love scenes, but I found it cheapened the writing and distracted from the story – a bit of allusion would have been better. I suspect that is the problem with editing a famous author – who is going to tell them when it doesn’t work. The book will sell regardless – this is her 29th novel. I don’t read romance novels, but the trend now seems to be to make novels span as many genres as possible, historical novel/romance/mystery in order to widen the readership appeal. The most interesting thing about this fictional love story was the addendum to the author’s notes. After the book was finished, she was in London on business, and paid a visit to the curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the only known miniature portrait of Emilia Bassano, painted around 1590, and beside it was a portrait of the Earl of Southampton plus a hidden clue that the romance might actually have existed in real life. She was thrilled and wrote that it was like the fates were conspiring to make their story love told four hundred years later.
I read some historical fiction, but had never read anything about this particular time period, 1581-1620 so I found the history part interesting. The plague was raging in London at the time, (Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died of the plague) and childhood mortality rates were high. Marriages were often abusive, as women were considered property and had no voice or money of their own. She said she was so immersed in her research that she had to write the two stories separately and then alternate the chapters later, a different technique for her, as it was just too difficult to switch back and forth between the eras.
I enjoyed the modern-day story, about Melina Green, a young female playwright trying to get a play accepted, when most theatre producers are male, which mirrors Jodi Picoult’s own struggles. Picoult branched into musical theatre in 2020 and her daughter has had a play produced, so she’s writing from her own experiences with the theatre world. She discusses this in a one-hour long interview which I watched on Wordsmith and Wonders, a series of virtual author talks on public library websites. Hers was their 100th interview, and I found it fascinating as well, especially with respect to women in the publishing industry and the topic of AI. (She mentions ongoing litigation over the use of author’s books without their authorization or compensation, in order to build AI databases.) I found the whole interview interesting, so if you don’t want to read the book, search for the interview. You may have to be signed onto your local library website to view it though, so I won’t share the link here. There was also access to previous interviews, and I bookmarked some of my favourite authors for future viewing, as well as general topics. As a frequent library patron, I don’t know why this site isn’t advertised more.
All’s well that ends well, so to end with, the book had the BEST ending ever, really well done. She did a brilliant job connecting the two stories, 400 years apart. I love a book with a satisfying ending. I would rate the book 4 stars (would have been 5 except for the steamy scenes) and although it is historical fiction, she certainly spins a compelling tale that makes you think differently about Shakespeare.
PS. Elizabeth Winkler has expanded her Atlantic article into a new book, Was Shakespeare A Woman and Other Heresies, which Picoult highly recommends, and which also deals with the thornier issue of historical truth. Jodi Picoult says she is used to getting hate mail, as her topics are usually controversial, but I can sympathize with her frustration with academics who vilify her but refuse to read her book. I can understand tenured professors getting upset, their whole livelihood is dependent on the myth of the one-man wonder, but surprisingly I have had similar unwelcome responses from a few people I have mentioned the novel to. One, whom I consider a die hard feminist, remarked that she liked her Shakespeare to be a man, thank you very much, and the other simply wouldn’t even entertain the theory, just flat out said no, that is not possible. Why do people get so upset at the thought of anyone tampering with their Shakespeare, let alone that some of the plays could have been written by a woman? Because it requires us to re-evaluate everything we have been taught. I find as we grow older, it’s best to try and keep an open mind.
portrait of Emilia Bassano
‘Let husbands know, their wives have sense like them.’ Emilia, Othello
July 3 – Edited to Add – I have since read Elizabeth Winkler’s non-fiction book, and found it absolutely fascinating. If you are interested in the alternative theories of who was Shakespeare, I highly recommend it. Interestingly, she only devotes a few pages to Emilia Bassano, most likely because little is known about her. She reviews the other possibilities, Frances Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Sidney, etc. in great depth, but the one who stood out the most to me was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, as being the main playwright as well as the organizing force behind the group. Everything about him just seems to fit. This is a very detailed analysis coming from a well-respected journalist. She interviewed (or tried to) many Shakespearean scholars, on all sides, but was frequently stonewalled by those who refused to allow any shred of doubt to enter their world. I suspect we’ll never really know the truth, unless some secret stash of documents is uncovered, (highly unlikely after 400 years) but I would like to think that if some doubt existed as to the authorship of say Jane Austen’s manuscripts for example, that literary scholars would keep an open mind and want to get at the truth, instead of bury it. Note the sub-title – How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature. It might be a case of many scholars are secretly in doubt but are afraid to come out and say so, as to do so would be career suicide. That seems to be the curse of our time. But what’s the big deal? The world was thought to be flat for centuries…… (5 stars)
A walk in the spring woods on a day in early May is a delightful way to spend a Saturday especially when you have gotten up way too early to attend a plant sale where you buy your usual assortment of specimens that you know are going to die anyway because you’re just a plop-them-in-the-ground-and-hope-for-the-best-kind of gardener. Those horticultural society gardeners are serious folks, and early-risers too, (worse than garage sales), and usually by the time I get there everything is picked over and the half-price sale is on. They are quite horrified when I ask for something in pink, blue or lavender. The best they could come up with was some purple iris, a wilted Virginia bluebell, a day lily of unspecified colour, and a spinster gooseberry. (There was only one left, and the guy did warn me that his did not bear fruit because he didn’t have two, but hey that’s the way nature sometimes works.) He also tried to interest me in some leftover red and black currant bushes, but I passed on those as I remember having a row of those on the farm. Mainly because it was my job to pick them so my mother could make a red currant pie, which only my father ate as the currants were so sour. The birds ate the black currants. The single gooseberry bush did produce 2 or 3 berries occasionally, so I have faith.
Anyway, as the sale was winding down, several of my friends who belong to the Hort. Society invited me in for pizza, but I declined, because I didn’t really know the rest of the volunteers, and they might think I was just there for the free lunch, (people can be funny that way) so I went for a walk in a nearby park instead. It was a perfect spring day – sunny, a light breeze, not too hot, not too cold.
This particular park is about 100 acres in size and borders Lake Huron, and although I have been there many times – to the animal farm, the picnic pavilions, and of course the beach, I had never walked the densely wooded trail which is where these pictures were taken, (with my new camera which I am still figuring out). Early spring is best, when the trees are just starting to leaf out, and before tick season starts. The rest of the park contains more typical open areas, with lots of walking paths and tall trees. The wooded area is a favorite spot for birders, and there was certainly plenty of birdsong that morning, although I only saw two other people. Everyone else must have been out buying gifts for their mothers.
This area is an example of a Carolinian forest, a type of deciduous forest which spans the eastern US from Northern Carolina up into southern Ontario. (Wikepedia link) You can go either right or left on the trails, I chose right.
There were lots of pretty spring wildflowers in the woods.
And quite a bit of dead wood off the trails.
There were patches of white trilliums, which are our provincial flower, mostly seen on drivers licenses and heath cards, except for a few short weeks in the early spring. (These pictures were taken May 10). Trilliums have 3 flowers and 3 petals, hence the name, and also come in other colours. You are not supposed to pick the flowers, because they only have a few short weeks to store up enough energy and nutrients for the rest of the year, which is why they bloom in early spring when the tree canopy is lighter and sunshine is at the max.
Tree canopy – the only time of year you can see that particular shade of chartreuse green.
I remember the bush on the back of my parents farm being full of trilliums and one year my cousin and I picked masses of them and brought them up to the house for our mothers for Mother’s Day, only to be told by my dad that it was against the law to pick trilliums. I was about eight and had visions of the RCMP hunting us down! White trilliums are a favourite food of white tailed deer which is why the provincial parks often use annual trillium surveys to monitor the local deer population.
It is against the law to pick them in provincial parks, where they are so plentiful they probably deserve their own blog. Maybe next spring…
I didn’t do both trails, as like the trilliums I wanted to conserve enough energy to visit the turtles, so I drove the car around to the small lake in the middle of the park, and parked in front of it, (there were no signs – I checked). There were wild crab-apple trees along the path to the spot where the turtles like to hang out.
There’s nothing like the smell of apple blossoms.
The turtles like to sunbathe on a log that juts out into the mini-lake. They have their own fan club on sunny days. There are baby turtles too, but I didn’t see any that day. (I’m not sure why the water looks that shade?)
This was on the opposite side of the water so I was happy to have the camera with the 30X zoom lens, and the optical viewfinder so I can frame shots on sunny days. (It’s hard to find a digital camera with both – mine’s a Panasonic Lumix – Model DMC-ZS60 with a LCD rear view screen and a old-fashioned viewfinder in the top corner. I bought it in 2022, so there may be newer models out now.)
This turtle pond at a local nursery also has the same putrid looking water, but is home to 12 turtles waiting for their “forever pond.”
I’ll add one of mom’s paintings for old time’s sake. I really missed her on this first Mother’s Day without her, and the first time I hadn’t bought a card in fifty years.
When I returned to the car a group of nice young park rangers were gathered around it debating whether to ticket me for parking illegally but as they had not yet installed the warning signs, and I pleaded that I’d had heart surgery and couldn’t walk that far, I got off on a promise of good behaviour. (Really, that excuse could be good forever.) I concluded my walk with a short visit to the beach, because you know summer is just around the corner! Then I went home and had a two hour nap from all that fresh air!
One of the things I missed about blogging was that it encouraged me to focus on the positive things in life – good books, good food, new experiences and the beauty of the nature. I’ve started walking again, although my stamina isn’t what it used to be, and one of my favorite sights this spring was this expanse of wild daffodils nestled among the wooded acreage of an old mansion. Whoever planted these heirloom bulbs years ago, deserves credit for spreading such joy every spring. The video is only ten seconds, but it’s my first time uploading video so I hope it works.
These are from my garden, which has been sadly neglected over the past three years. No spring clean up going on here! I did plant 100 bulbs last fall, so I would have something to look forward to, but they barely made a dent. The daffodils were cheerful though, and the Siberian squill/wood squill/scilla bloomed at the same time. The woods above also have scilla, although they must have bloomed earlier this year. It’s always nice to have the contrast of yellow with blue or purple.
Although my grape hyacinths didn’t bloom until after the daffodils were done.
And the purple vinca later still.
These bell shaped blue flowers I bought at the horticultural society plant sale five years ago, are faithful spring arrivals.
There, I remembered how to do media. I bought a new camera in the fall of 2022, but I never really learned how to use it, so when I shot the photos in the woods, the camera setting was mistakenly on burst 4K video. So I had to figure out how to make screenshots of the video bursts and then crop the bottom play part out, which took more time than I care to admit. I hope you enjoy these early signs of spring. Stay tuned for next week, A Walk in the Spring Woods.
Hello Dear Readers….if I have any left after 2 years? Yes, it’s been that long since I posted – April 2023. So much has happened since then, which I will leave for another post, but I just wanted to reblog a book review I wrote in the summer of 2022, Miss Austen – by Gil Hornby. Masterpiece Theatre will be showing a 4 part mini-series adaptation of the book starting on Sunday May 4, at 8/9pm on your local PBS station. It aired previously this year in England on the BBC.
Just before I stopped posting, WordPress had changed to the new block editor, so it may take me awhile to navigate here and learn all the changes since then, and banish that evil AI from my WordPress kingdom. Plus I bought a new laptop this week, also a learning curve, so please forgive me if you leave a comment, and I don’t reply right away. I promise it won’t be two years! Joni PS. There that wasn’t so bad. I may be rusty at this blogging business, but it seems I still know how to write a long run-on sentence!
If you have not read the 1923 book or seen the 1992 movie it’s a charming story set in Portofino on the Italian Riveria.
First sign of spring.Wild woodland daffodils“If thou of fortune be bereft, and in thy store there be but left two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.” More soul food…..Grape hyacinthsThese two red tulips have been blooming in the same spot for thirty years. I’m glad I got the rose bushes pruned in early April as we had five days of summer-like weather. Okay, so it’s not the Mediterranean, but the water was blue and it was 82 F…. ….and there were people on the beach, in bathing suits in mid-April! The warm spell brought all the magnolia blossoms out, but was followed a few days later by wet flurries and since then two weeks of cool cloudy rainy weather. Chartreuse spring green against a blue sky.It was nice to sit outside and listen to the birdsong and read…and enjoy the longer hours of daylight. (Photo taken at dusk with the zoom lens I have not quite mastered yet!) I enjoyed this book, although not as much as her first book, WinteringLooking forward to May and more flowers!
For more on the book and movie Enchanted April see link to my 2018 blog here.
Valentine’s Day tulips enjoying a sunbath.Snowdrops in early March…..a promising sign.But then it snowed…..covering up the crocus tips.And then it snowed some more – 3 snow storms and 3 ice storms in March. I’m more than ready for spring. The only good thing about this time of year is that it melts quickly, allowing for a walk in the park.These seagulls are tired of freezing their tails off. Some winters the bay freezes over deep enough to allow ice fishing, but this year it was just thin sheets of shifting ice. The resident ducks foraging for food….there’s a shortage of french fries this time of year.It makes you want to fly south….. (action shot taken with old camera, it’s been too cold to take the new camera out when I’m still trying to figure out the settings)….or stay inside and bake bread…(my new favorite find – good with chili or soup)….and dream of summer days again. (The Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of my favorite paintings, but I don’t know about this puzzle, the pieces are so tiny….)
thehomeplaceweb 