La Belle Époque

The past is always judged by the present. ~ Neith Boyce


When I was a young girl, I was completely enamored of the past. I wanted nothing more than to move back to a simple time of simple pleasures. This interest was mainly kindled into a fire when I read the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder in second grade. Using couch pillows and a sheet, I created a covered wagon and tried to enlist our German Shepherd and Border Collie into being my pretend team of horses to pull it. I daydreamed about log cabins, spinning wheels and calico dresses. As I continued to read, I fell in love with Colonial Virginia, when reading a biography of Martha Washington, Ancient Egypt from"The Cat in the Mirror" by Mary Stoltz and Victorian England following my lust for Jane Austen novels. I daydreamed about Ancient Greece and Rome, through books of mythology. I imagined life in Scandinavia as I mentally sailed along with Viking raiders around the North sea. I went on a spirit journey, reading about southwestern Native American rites of passage...envisioning my life amongst the Anasazi. The current age of my childhood seemed ugly, bitter, filled with anger and too fast a pace. I longed for a more quiet life, an uncomplicated life. I imagined restraint, gentility and honor in all the times past. 


My new favorite film is "Midnight in Paris", which was written and directed  by Woody Allen. "Annie Hall" this is not. It's one man's daydreaming past into 1920's Paris...the time of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Pablo Picasso. It was the era of the great Left Bank artists, poets, writers, musicians, designers...the time of post World War I ex-patriot "Lost Generation" great thinkers and creators. The film is brilliantly created. Each night, at precisely the same spot on a side side in Paris, at Midnight, Owen Wilson's character is picked up in a vintage car and driven into the past, where he meets all of his idols. He experiences the era with which he identifies so closely. He is desperate to be a part of this time in history, when, in his mind, life was ever so much sweeter and so much more imaginative. "Gil", Wilson's protagonist, falls in love with the beautiful Adriana...a muse to the 1920's artists. As they stroll through the Paris streets each night, Gil finds the evenings to be both sublime and transcendent. He's actually living in his dream time and can't fathom anyone else not being outrageously happy.  The pace of life, for Gil, is slower, more meaningful and far more beautiful. Adriana, on the other hand, ruminates on her own 'castle in the sky' period of history, La Belle Époque, the late 19th century until World War I. It's no wonder..."The Great War"  devastated the globe. As Gil and Adriana travel back in time to the 1880's, they come upon the famous artists of the day who dream about the Renaissance. Gil and Adriana have to decide; should each one remain in his, or her, own daydream, or return to their own present times?


The lesson of the film is quite simple: it's one thing to fantasize about the romance of the past. It is wonderful to appreciate those superlative individuals who help define an era, and help to create something completely new and original. It's quite another to run away from one's problems, one's dissatisfaction and one's melancholy by vanishing into a previous time...even if that disappearing is completely metaphorical. Each generation looks to the previous ones for inspiration and with longing. Every period in history has magically beautiful aspects to it. Yet, we forget, in our reveries, that each period in history has its own share of complications and horrors. No time has ever been perfect. Yet no time has ever been without hope. We exist, as human beings, somewhere between each of these states in our hearts and minds whenever we find ourselves living.


I continue to imagine life in past decades, in other places and spending my time in deep contrast to my present. I love to read, I adore movies and I treasure works of art and pieces of music...often from times and places different than Maine in 2012. However, the lessons I learn here and now are the ones that will create my happiness. I can take advice and admonishment from the past. But, I need to bring those into my everyday life. I find that I want to assimilate those past areas of simplicity, beauty, creativity and joie de vivre into my today, while still having a deep appreciation for the exceptional time I have the privilege of experiencing.  As romantic as Elizabethan England might seem, it's awfully nice to have running water, excellent medical care and relative safety. 


Daydreams are fun. They're a diversion from the mundane. They're a way to escape, even for a few minutes, from the stresses we are plagued with. The present, no matter how complicated and rushed, has the potential to be infinitely more wonderful than any daydream. Why? Because it's happening this very second. We can breathe the air, taste the food and hear the music. We can feel the snowflakes on our cheeks and smell tang of the ocean. As delightful as the past might seem, right now is what we're blessed with...and right now is pretty extraordinary.

If you can't stand the heat....

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russel Baker

There is nothing quite like painfully hot summer days to have even the most outdoorsy of folks daydreaming about winter. When the temperatures rise well into the 90's and the humidity is close to 100%, the thought of shoveling snow doesn't seem quite as wretched as it did in reality. Here in Maine, few spaces are air conditioned. We begin to reminisce anything that will bring cooler thoughts to mind. In the old days of life in "Vacationland", entire families would leave their homes in Philadelphia, New York and Boston to move to Maine to escape the heat of even warmer cities. There were entire towns that were summer communities that had their own churches, recreation centers, town halls and post offices. These spots would close down completely from Labor Day until Memorial Day, when they'd be reopened, reawakened and re-energized as city dwellers fled the oppressive, and painful, heat to the fresher air in Maine.

As a summer resident growing up, I vividly remember the long drive up from New York, smack in the middle 'hump' of my mother's car, sandwiched between my cousins. This trip seemed to take forever, as we played endless games of "ABC goes by" and License plate state bingo. The monotony was broken up by midnight stops at the old L.L. Bean building, which was (as it is now) open 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. My cousins and I would run around, trying out every tent, inhaling that particular rubbery smell that would forever associate itself with a hot summer night to each of us. I recall the magic we expected to happen, as we crossed over the Piscataqua River Bridge, just knowing that summer's official start began as we traveled that span of road between New Hampshire and Maine. The rest of the summer would be spent sailing, playing on the beach, exploring islands, going for long walks, stuffing ourselves with seafood and covering our many mosquito bites with pink calamine lotion. I can relive the days of going to drive in movies and trying to find the right balance of staying cool....if we had the windows rolled up, we roasted like a family of lobsters. If we kept them down, we were swarmed by marauding packs of insidious black flies, all of whom had been informed that we were 'from away', and therefore, tastier.

Life takes turns and twists that we could never have predicted in childhood. As a full time Maine resident for almost two decades, I now feel the heat of summer bearing down upon me, heavy and wretched. The humidity saps my strength and makes me forget why I fantasize about July in January. Remembering is a funny thing; we believe that the air was cooler when we were kids, just as we forget how depressing ice storms can be. We seem to remember what we want to recollect when it suits us. We also seem to forget the positives of any situation when our minds are waxing poetic on another train of thought. We find ourselves mired in mental muck, and in doing so, we allow precious moments to slip through our fingers as they are happening.

This summer, I'm trying something a little bit different.I'm attempting to drink in the ever present warmth, as I would a cool drink that will melt if I leave it aside for too long. I'm trying to appreciate even the "dog days", knowing that the heat has the ability to free me from worrying about heating bills, finding warm coats and the size of our wood pile. I'm investigating new recipes for summer meals, and trying them out at dinner time, which I'm serving on the deck. I'm reminding myself how wonderful the humidity is for my skin...which gets so dry in winter. All in all, I've chosen to live by Celia Thaxter's words, "There shall be an eternal summer in a grateful heart". Instead of cursing the heat, I'm embracing it. The fascinating part is that once I've gotten over complaining about how sticky the air is, I discover that I can actually feel a cool breeze.

A House to Die For

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Growing up in the 1970's feels as if my generation was the last one to have a truly nostalgic sense of time and place. The innocence of the 1950's may have been lost. The changing times of the 1960's had passed. An era of 'new and improved' was upon us. It was a generation that fell in love with Hostess Fruit Pies, Pet Rocks, Big Wheels and waking up on Saturday mornings to watch "Super friends' in the Hall of Justice on color TV. Our mothers wore long, wildly printed Maxi-dresses with platform heels. Our fathers eschewed ties and wore open neck shirts. Evil Knievel attempted to jump to Snake River Canyon. Nadia Comaneci was cheered on for Olympic Gold in gymnastics. But, most of all, I remember an enormous treat that happened every weekend: the NBC Friday Night Mystery. It was a huge thrill to stay up way past my bedtime and get to watch MacCloud, MacMillian & Wife and the other thriller series that would take turns airing each weekend. These one hour programs would always reveal an underlying plot, solved bravely by our heroes, who were really just 'regular folks' trying to do the right thing. TV shows today don't have the same innocent, but multi-layered, approach to mystery. We are now told, in graphic detail, by forensic specialists, what happened. The only question remaining today is: "What techniques will they use in the lab?".

In the great spirit of well told stories, underlying character traits, hidden agendas and the need to dig for clues on a personal level, comes "A House to Die For" by Vicki Doudera. Doudera has authored several excellent non-fiction books, worked as a freelance magazine writer, has owned and run a successful Inn, and has worked in selling luxury real estate. Her varied life experience has brought a wonderful amount of charm, perspective, humor and knowledge to her first mystery novel. In many ways, Doudera's book, "A House to Die For", reminds me of those Friday Night mysteries that I grew up watching...or even a Nancy Drew for grown ups. This book is deeply compelling, sensual, entertaining and amusing. But, its style hearkens back to a time that didn't overwhelm the reader (or viewer) with horrific 'too much information' about the wounds on the victims. The protagonist, Darby Farr, solves the mysteries the old fashioned way: good old sleuthing. She asks questions, she digs deeper into all possibilities and rather than relying on crime scene lab, she goes to people's homes and asks questions. Is she a criminologist, working for a secret government agency? Nope. Darby Farr is a realtor...and just like Nancy Drew, just can't help but solve the mystery of the deadly, historic Victorian house on the point.

Comparisons to Nancy Drew aside, "A House to Die For" is *not* a children's book. It's a well written, imaginative grown up novel. However, the style and prose reminded me so strongly of the mysteries I grew up loving, I couldn't help but make the connection. It's a read for a rainy day, with a cup of tea, and a roaring fire. It's a novel to immerse yourself in, on a beach on vacation. It's a step back, nostalgically, because it's not an onslaught to the senses. It manages to be thrilling, and takes unexpected twists along the way. But, "A House to Die For" is not brutal in the way that a Lee Child or Robert Crais novel might be.

Mysteries are compelling for most of us. We all love unsolved puzzles and we admire the intelligent truth seekers who can ferret out the truth. Above all, we love being privy to the process surrounding the "whodonit". Since very few people will actually pursue investigation as a career, it's spectacularly entertaining to tag along, on a literature journey, with a character who does uncover dastardly plots. In the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Darby Farr is mystery solver for the 'rest of us'...for those who have a nostalgic spirit and love a well told pot boiler...without the graphic violence that besieges far too much in modern novels and movies. We can safely try to solve the crime, along with Darby. In doing so, we can imagine ourselves to be 8 years old again...curled up on the floor, watching television on the 1975 RCA with built in cabinet that had the remote control that actually was "a clicker".

Just make sure to make some Jiffy Pop for a snack while you read...you will want it!