Something for everyone in this past-due posting! Tomatoes first: from my very tall, very skinny tomato plants I have picked three (!) home-grown tomatoes! One beefsteak and two Brandywines. They could have all benefited from another day or two or three on the vine but I couldn't wait and they were all delicious! So red inside, juicy, sweet, and for me, a genuine gardening triumph. There are many more still ripening and I could pick one a day for the next month and still have some left over.
Book: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer is a very good read and a very strange tale. When I say it involves time travel, I know many people will roll their eyes but it's just a tool to give us Greer's take on actions and consequences and control. Greta gets to zip back and forth between 1985, 1918 and 1941. She encounters the same people in each era but because of how the world is (or isn't) she must deal with them in different ways, given the constraints of the time. What results from a particular action in 1918 is totally different from the result of that same action in 1985. The world in 1918, just as World War I ends, is not like the world in 1941, just as the US is joining WWII, and nothing in the past is like 1985. Greta sees what the past, the present and the future can hold and yet cannot change what happens in any way, no matter what decisions she makes.
Can we change the past? Can the past change the present? Greer points out that we change the past all the time: we have memories that we can tweak so that the past is better than it actually was, or less painful, or more colorful. So, yes, we change the past in our minds more often than we realize and that becomes the reality. And we, as flawed beings, ask ourselves the "what if" questions: what if we had taken the later train or what if we had stopped for five minutes to finish that cup of coffee? How would our life be changed if we had simply made a different decision that at the moment seemed so insignificant? Would arriving ten minutes later have made any difference? Or are our lives already mapped out in the larger time-space continuum?
Movie: "Robot and Frank" sounds too silly to be good. An aging man is given a robot that should help him with daily tasks and offset his encroaching battle with memory loss. It's funny, poignant, serious and totally enjoyable. Frank Langella is great as the crotchety old guy, teaching the robot how to pick locks and break into houses in exchange for the robot making him more nutritious meals. The lovely Susan Sarandon is whimsically charming as the local librarian. I can't say too much about it without giving it away, but rent it from Netflix or from the library and watch it. It's a fine film.
TV show: "Orange is the New Black" is another Netflix series that you can instantly download and watch. Following their earlier series "House of Cards" (which was excellent), Netflix is getting into producing their own shows. "Orange" is crazier than "House of Cards" and rather far-fetched in the depiction of prison, but it's like eating popcorn, you just keep reaching for a little more. Women in prison, cut-throat deals, sex, drugs, despair, intrigue, laugh-out-loud scenarios, it's all here. I hope Netflix keeps making series like these, they are smart, quick and addictive.
OK, that's the report for today. I have the morning off from work, going in for the afternoon shift for the next few days. As much as I dislike working the late shift, I do like having a morning at home. Good coffee, a book, dogs curled up on the bed, it's all good.
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