The last few hours of “Offline October” are upon me now. These weeks of pre-retirement have been very pleasant and now it’s time to start back to work. I have an early start tomorrow to catch the first flight down to Austin for the week.
The week started with Monday Movie Matinee, and this week I saw “The Old Man and the Gun” with Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek and a wonderful Tom Waits.
This is reported to be Redford’s last movie with him moving into official retirement. He’s 82 years old and still had the same twinkle in his eye as he had when delivering some of the entertaining dialog in “The Sting”, so many years ago. His chemistry with Spacek is excellent and, although he has a small role, Tom Waits had the few of us in the theater laughing out loud. I recommend this movie if you’re in the mood for some light hearted entertainment.
Some AIG friends invited us to join them for dinner on Thursday night. The only challenge was that they were staying over in Fort Worth and it was pouring down. McD and I persevered, driving through the downpour from downtown Dallas and McKinney to rendezvous at the Marriott close to the Texas Motor Speedway. We had a very entertaining evening catching up with Tim and Joe. I decided to redeem some hotel points to spend the night and avoid the long drive home – made for a slightly shorter drive for Diana in the morning and allowed me to have breakfast with the boys.
After workout, coffee and crossword on Saturday morning, we drove by Patty and Brent’s to check on the moving truck progress. Things were moving along quickly with an extra long truck almost fully packed. They leave early Monday for the long drive to Corning, New York.
On Saturday afternoon we were finally able to see “A Star is Born” – a movie we’d been looking forward to for a while. Both of us enjoyed it very much.
The movie features a lot of original music, performed by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. Both are excellent, with Cooper adopting Sam Elliott’s deep, scratchy voice and Gaga giving an unbelievably natural performance for her first full movie. I enjoyed Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real as the backing band. They have played with Neil Young for the last few years, and apparently Cooper saw one of those shows and decided to recruit them for his movie. Nelson also co-wrote many of the songs with Cooper and Jason Isbell.
For our last dinner before the move, Patty selected Jaspers. This restaurant is close to the old EDS headquarters in Plano, and has been the site of many and varied work dinners over the years. It was fun to reminisce about those with Patty – although she has a better memory than I do for many of them. We started with the always addictive maytag blue cheese chips – never any left over. Then I had scallops and shrimp with jambalaya risotto – also delicious. The restaurant is much less busy now than it was in the EDS heyday, due to all the new places at Legacy West, but the food is just how I remembered it.
My first book this week was “Small Great Things” by Jodi Picoult. The title is from a Martin Luther King quote, “If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way”.
The story begins as Ruth Jefferson, a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience, begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.
I enjoyed the way Picoult alternates narrators with each chapter – jumping from Ruth, to Kennedy to Turk (the white supremacist father). This 2016 book seemed very appropriate this week, as hatred and intolerance filled the news. Picoult does a skillful job of presenting all three narrators without judgement and with helpful insight into the background and basis of their beliefs. I did find the ending a bit trite and unbelievable but won’t spoil it for anyone who is interested and hasn’t read this book yet.
My second book was “Baby, You’re Gonna be Mine” by Kevin Wilson. This is a short story collection that was highly recommended recently by Anne Patchett (one of my favourite authors) and her staff at Parnassus books in Nashville.
The stories in this collection are certainly wildly varied and entertaining. “Wildfire Johnny” is the story of a man who discovers a magic razor that allows him to travel back in time. “Scroll Through the Weapons” is about a couple taking care of their underfed and almost feral nieces and nephews. “Signal to the Faithful” follows a boy as he takes a tense road trip with his priest. And “Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine,” the title story, is about a narcissistic rock star who moves back home during a rough patch.
I enjoyed the collection and the creativity in each of the stories but wouldn’t rate this book as highly as the Parnassus bookstore staff. I think I’m discovering that I’m not as huge a fan of the short story format as many of the reviewers that I follow. I do, however, still count “Walking Wounded” by William McIlvanney, a Scottish based short story collection, as one of my all time favourites.
On the music front, a new album from John Hiatt, “The Eclipse Sessions”, was released last week and is excellent from start to finish. Hiatt has been making music for over 40 years at an amazingly high quality. His song writing is as pithy and entertaining as ever. Here’s “Over the Hill”, a perfect blend of J. J. Cale style laid back guitar and Mark Knopfler guitar tone.
From the released long ago, but new to me this week bag, here’s some excellent Booker T and the MGs:
Apologies in advance if the blog posts over the next few weeks get a bit less interesting and timely as I get acquainted with my new job.