December Lockdown

Let's just call it a quiet holiday: wandering the house like a good citizen, going for walks in the woods daily, working desultorily on projects on the computer (as usual), making pre-dawn runs to the supermarket, figuring out new things to do with the left-over turkey, chatting with friends and family on the phone, streaming the occasional TV show, and taking advantage of the ample arts and entertainment events being offered online by local organizations in dire need of support.

We're used to hosting three or four generations for Thanksgiving, but this year it was just the two of us. We roasted a twelve-pound turkey nevertheless, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie topped with masses of fresh-whipped cream. Hilary put together a hearty assortment of leftovers for her mother, but we still had quite a bit of turkey to consume.

That first plate of leftovers is almost better than the original meal. The second one isn't too bad, either. A few days later I was eating turkey salad sandwiches heavily laced with tarragon. The next night turkey quesadillas were on the menu.  And just last night we finished things off with some delectable turkey pot pies.

The musical offerings have also been top-flight. We listened to several performances from the Schubert Club's Courtroom Concert series, which are traditionally staged at noon at the Landmark Center in St. Paul. One of them featured a local ensemble of musicians performing music from India, and another was a rebroadcast of a sterling performance of Debussy's String Quartet which lacked a video component. 

It might seem strange to be sitting in front a computer screen looking at a static image of four musicians, but it nevertheless gives one the feeling of attending a musical event. And the music itself was gorgeous.

On December 3 the Schubert Club will be streaming an outstanding vocal quartet, "To Joy," by local composer David Evan Thomas. We heard the original performance and were stunned by its exuberant accessibility and sensual appeal. The entire text was extracted from the Oxford English Dictionary's entries for the word "joy." And joyous it is.

The most unusual of the events we took in recently was a two-part performance by the Boston Early Music Society of Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo and —two days later—Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers. Oblivious to Eastern Standard Time, we tuned in to the first one an hour later, just when Orpheus is crossing the Styx, and we left the second one early ... because we'd heard the story before. But in both performances the singing was measured, stately, and haunting.     

After the second show I pulled my copy of Robert Graves' classic The Greek Myths off the shelf, and also Ann Wroe's Orpheus: the life and myth of humanity's eternal muse. There are quite a few variations to the tale, and no one seems to know exactly what any of them mean.

On another occasion we listened in on a poetry reading sponsored by Subtext Books during which Norita Dittberner-Jax and Mary Moore Easter read from recent works. In case you missed it, these two poets will be joined by Margaret Hasse and Emilio DeGrazia at Next Chapter Books on December 10 for a repeat performance. It should be a stunner. Tune in here.

The highlight of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Society's fall season has been the new documentary by Frederick Wiseman, City Hall. It follows a number of events taking place in the city of Boston, from firefighting to Veteran's Day gatherings to garbage collection to community zoning meetings. Sound dull? It's not. During the first hour we hear a little too much of mayor Marty Walsh's oratory, perhaps, but the film soon finds its pace and begins to direct its attention not only to people merely talking about doing things but also to people doing them. We watched it in installments over the course of three days,  and by the start of the fourth hour, we were hooked.

Just joking. But the film is four and a half hours long, so be prepared.

The best of the Netflix shows we've been streaming is a five-part series on dance called MOVE. Dance is not a medium of expression we explore often, but these shows are dazzling, high-energy pieces focusing on Jookin' (Florida and LA), Gaga (Israel), flamenco (Spain), Dancehall (Jamaica), and Kathak dance (England/Bangladesh).

Home-grown entertainment can also be top-flight. One Saturday evening our friends Tim and Carol put together a pub-quiz that kept us up well past our bedtime: politics, geography, and even a music round that required the identification of brief clips by Eric Satie, Neil Sedaka, and Sugar Ray (who?). Which, do you think, is the largest of these three countries: Chad, Sudan, Algeria?

The closure of bars and restaurants has been rough on proprietors and waitstaff, no doubt, but we've made it a point to explore a few new takeout options. We stopped in at the Mill Valley Market at the Trailhead in Wirth Park several times with my sister after hiking the circuit along "tornado alley" and under Highway 55 to the Wirth Lake Pavilion and back. The food there is much better than you might expect.

And the Japanese street food from PinKU, right across the steet from Surdyk's Liquor Store, is mighty fine. And just the other day Hilary discovered that a taqueria that had burned down in NE Minneapolis has relocated nearby.

Thus the days remain interesting. But it sure would be nice to see a few friends face to face, the way we used to do, sitting around a firepit, or even inside! The lockdown expires on December 18. Just in time for a solstice party?