“A row of leafy ficus trees lining the sidewalk on Barham Boulevard, where striking writers have been gathering to picket, had been shorn of many of their branches and leaves. Those branches and leaves had cast a welcome shade, shielding them from the summer heat. Now they’re gone. The pruned trees left only skeletal shadows on the sidewalk as temperatures hovered around 90 degrees on Monday… ‘We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators,’ a Universal spokesperson said in a statement. ‘That was not our intention.’ NBCUniversal is working to offer picketers shade coverage, pop-up tents and water, according to the spokesperson. The company has maintained the trees for years and prunes them annually in partnership with arborists for safety ahead of the “high-wind season,” the spokesperson said. Temperatures in the San Fernando Valley have hovered around the 90s, baking the concrete sidewalks around the Universal Studios Lot, where throngs of picketers have gathered each weekday to protest. ‘You don’t trim or prune trees in mid-July in the middle of a heat wave,’ a Guild spokesperson said. ‘Those trees were butchered.’”
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Weekend Butler: Why do friends and lovers matter so much now? Best weekend book. Cruelty in Texas. “Negotiating” with striking writers. Closeness without sex? Glenn Gould and Seamus Heaney videos. A great combination: Scampi-and-corn.
By
Published: Jul 19, 2023
Category:
Weekend
THE OLDER YOU GET, THE MORE PEOPLE MATTER
In the last month, I have signed off on my novel about the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. My writing partner’s agent blessed the 20th draft of our book proposal and pitched it to editors. I revised my theatre/streaming adaptation of Bringing Home the Birkin just in time for Jane Birkin to die and a major entertainment company to find out about the book and express interest in the writer who optioned it. Every once in a while, I got to write a few paragraph of my next book. And suddenly it’s mid-summer….
Much of this writing is drenched in emotion. I’ve written enough books, plays and screenplays to know what happens when I finish — I’m in a heightened state, with emotions swirling internally and nowhere to put them. It’s worse this summer, because the weather is so rotten. New York is much more comfortable than China (126 degrees), Phoenix (19 days of 100 degrees), Miami (31 days of 100 degrees) and Rome (109 degrees), but the humidity is high, and between my work and the discomfort of the street, there are many days when I leave the apartment only to get the mail.
So my lifeboat crew and I exchange often, sometimes daily. And — this is one of the effects of finishing emotional writing — the people I love hear me express my feelings more than I used to. Their responses are also emotional. We understand: Much of the news is terrible and there’s every sign it will soon be worse, and it’s crucial that we support one another and are supported.
A few nights ago, reading before bed, I stumbled upon these lines from James Baldwin:
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
Just what I’d been trying to be for a few people: a clear-eyed loving person as a mirror and magnifier, beaming the love back. Try as I might, I can’t think of anything more urgent and useful.
WEEKEND READING: “LET’S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME”
Caroline Knapp was the author of Drinking: A Love Story. I wrote about it because some of you surely have issues with alcohol, and I thought it might be of use. There’s a painful irony here: Caroline got sober, only to die in June of 2002, when she was forty-two, seven weeks after she was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. I write now about “Let’s Take the Long Home Home: A Memoir of Friendship” — click for my review and Amazon links — because, in just 190 pages, it’s the most powerful account of a till-death-do-us-part-and-beyond memoir I know.
Caroline Knapp had a best friend. Gail Caldwell. Also a writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2001. She too had alcohol issues. Two women writers. Both dog lovers. Both recovering alcoholics. Both living alone, and liking it. Both athletes. Near-neighbors in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Best friends. One died. The other wrote a book. Of many memorable quotes, this sticks with me: “Near the end, I asked him [Caroline’s former therapist] what he thought was happening, and he said, ‘Tell her everything you haven’t said,’ and I smiled with relief. ‘There’s nothing,’ I said. “I’ve already told her everything.'”
“DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS…”
There’s a competition raging: Which state is cruelest to the poor, the migrants, and the people of color. This week there’s no competition. It’s Texas.
from the Houston Chronicle, via Jezebel:
“State police officers were patrolling the Eagle Pass area of Texas when they found a 19-year-old woman ‘in obvious pain’ stuck in recently-placed wire, one of many so-called “traps” along the Texas-Mexico border placed to physically stop migrants from crossing. Eventually, after she was cut free from the wire, troopers realized she was having a miscarriage. This was one of four injurious incidents in a single day… The trooper’s email said razor wire-wrapped barrels have been placed into the Rio Grande in areas with low visibility, leading to injuries like the woman’s…. The trooper also claims they’ve been told not to give water to migrants. In South Texas. In the summer. ‘Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,’ the trooper reportedly wrote. ‘I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.’ (A State spokesperson told the newspaper that no anti-water policy exists.)”
THIS IS HOW UNIVERSAL PICTURES “NEGOTIATES” WITH WRITERS
The previous winner was the executive who said that the writer’s strike would continue until the writers bled. “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” This remark was later repudiated. But what Universal Studios did this week is visible. From the Washington Post:
CAN YOU BE CLOSE WITHOUT SEX?
Sharon Bober, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in the Harvard Gazette: “In relationships that are intimate but not sexual, if both partners feel that they’re getting their needs met, and they feel close and mutually supported, then it works. It’s perfectly healthy. It’s also normal when some of the intensity or spontaneity that people experience in a brand new relationship settles into a dynamic that is more familiar or predictable. You don’t need to have sex in order to feel close…. The main goal, especially in intimate relationships, is that partners are able to communicate with each other around what it is that they want and need.”
WEEKEND MUSIC: GOULD ALMOST … DANCES
In this video, Glenn Gould is practicing Bach’s Partita No.2 in C minor. Two minutes in, he gets up and walks around. You can see the energy streaming off of him. Does he almost dance?
WEEKEND POEM
Seamus Heaney, watch him read “Blackberry-Picking”
WEEKEND RECIPE
Summer Scampi
This shrimp scampi comes together in one pan and takes less than 30 minutes. The corn gets nice and caramelized, the tomatoes blister and it’s all tossed together with shrimp in a delicious garlic butter sauce. This is a meal in and of itself, but if you want to serve it with pasta or bread, they’d be welcome additions.
4 servings
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
Kosher salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (from 4 ears)
5 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
¼ cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 lemon), plus wedges for serving (optional)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 5 pieces
3 tablespoons chopped parsley or chives, or torn basil leaves
Preparation
Pat the shrimp very dry and season with salt and pepper. In a large (12-inch) skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and lightly golden in spots, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the shrimp to a plate.
Add the tomatoes to the skillet, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring just once or twice, until they start to blister in spots, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the corn, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring just once or twice, until the tomatoes burst and the corn is golden in spots, 3 to 4 minutes.
Add the garlic and red-pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until you smell garlic, about 1 minute.
Reduce heat to medium, and add the wine and lemon juice, scraping any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook until nearly evaporated, then add the butter and stir until melted. Add the shrimp and its juices and stir until warmed through. (If the sauce breaks and looks greasy, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of water and stir until emulsified.)
Remove from heat, add the herbs, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve with extra lemon for squeezing over, if you like.
