The un-screened life

By Caitlin Kelly

Great piece recently by Andrew Sullivan in New York magazine:

A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. And at times, as events took over, I’d spend weeks manically grabbing every tiny scrap of a developing story in order to fuse them into a narrative in real time. I was in an unending dialogue with readers who were caviling, praising, booing, correcting. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long.

And here’s a reply to his piece from The Federalist.

Like Sullivan, I went on a silent retreat, (and blogged about it, which broke a retreat rule!); if you’re interested, check out my archives from July 2011.

It’s a life-changing experience to withdraw completely from chitchat, both in person and online.

 

And, I know, it’s a bit rich to complain about our constant connectedness to screens on a blog you’re de facto reading on a screen, somewhere!

 

By now it’s become a counter-cultural act to:

not have a smartphone; not check it constantly; not feel compelled to post every thought and image on your multiple social media streams so that other people can like it, share it, re-tweet it.

It’s now also considered staggeringly rude, invasive and old-fashioned to use a telephone to call someone, let alone leave them a voicemail or message.

How dare you speak to me directly!

One of the best weeks of my life, working in rural Nicaragua — now still friends with these three

What are we, maharajahs?!

We had a party last weekend and it was a hit. We love to entertain and do it as often as we can afford.

A party?

You know, a room full of real people, sharing conversation and lots of great food and laughter and talking about everything from aerial yoga to the American Constitution.

Guests included several photographers — (one whose new book of pinhole photos I’ll soon feature here) — writers, three lawyers, editors.

Several had never met one another before and were soon deeply engaged in lively chats.

Yes, relating in real life is risky. Your joke might fall flat. You might be wearing the wrong shoes or not catch a cultural reference. Maybe you’re really shy.

But hiding behind a screen all the time is nuts.

This is what life is for: face to face connection, a fierce hug hello and reluctant good-bye.

Yes, I blog and tweet, and will continue to do so — because it’s now essential for me to have a lively, visible, provable digital presence.

But my phone is often off, left in a drawer or “forgotten” at home.

The un-screened life is my favorite and always will be.

The glamorous author’s life…

By Caitlin Kelly

Here’s a piece that opens the kimono on one of the sadder moments in many author’s lives, from The New York Times Book Review:

I assumed the humiliations had ended. They began even before my book was published, when network morning shows that regularly had me on now refused my pleas for some airtime to promote it. Once the book came out in 2012, it only got worse…

Less than a year after publication, my publisher, Hachette, told me they were mulching the tens of thousands of remaining copies of my book, “Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity,” and suggested I purchase copies while they still existed. I capitulated, sending a check to the very people who once paid me to write it…Perhaps the worst indignity is that Hachette sends me a statement each quarter listing my sales and charting my progress toward paying back my advance. Which is pointless unless Hachette pays royalties to authors’ great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren…

But after three years of suffering through my stupid quest to sell a book, I encountered an ignominy I didn’t even know existed. My 6-year-old son’s friend Livia came over for a play date, and her mom brought a copy of my book for me to sign… “Property of the Calgary Public Library.”

 

I’ve written two books published by major New York houses, and am delighted to have ticked the box on a life’s dream in so doing.

My first book, published in 2004. As someone who grew up with no exposure to guns, I was deeply intrigued by this most American of obsesssions

But, oy, it’s not what people think!

Authors are rich!

Hah. Some, yes, earn very great sums from their work, self-published or commercially-published. Often it’s not the books you’d think, but might be 100s of 1000s of copies of a self-help book, not just John Grisham or J.K. Rowling.

Those making serious bank see their work optioned for film and/or television and made into a major motion picture.

You get to choose your title and cover — of course!

Hah, again. Yes, if you’re someone they feel is important enough to their bottom line and whose prior sales offer proven clout. For the rest of us? Your contract offers only “consultation”, not “approval.” Luckily, in both instances, I absolutely loved the covers designed so thoughtfully by my publishers. The first title was mine and the second, (thanks!) came from the publisher.

You’d think every author knows exactly what to call their own book, right? Wrong.

Books tours are amazing

Maybe for some. The Big Names are flown to multiple cities and even multiple countries, met in each place by someone assigned to be their chauffeur and chaperone. The rest of us? That’s where a huge network of well-placed and enthusiastic readers, bloggers, reviewers and media pals is essential. Most “tours” today are by Skype, email, blog “tours” or phone.

Writing books rewards the solitary genius

Nope.

Today, the first question every would-be author needs to answer is: ‘What’s your platform? How many Twitter/Facebook/Instagram followers do you have?”

Until or unless you can prove a potential audience of thousands — minimally 10s of thousands, millions even better — you’re likely to hit a wall.

Writing books helps you make money for years to come

Again, wildly variable.

Write a textbook used by thousands of students? Maybe. Literary fiction? Maybe not. Today’s “advances” — money paid to the author upon a publisher’s acquisition of the right to publish a book — are now typically paid out over years. My final payment (not unusual now) on Malled came a full year after publication.

Very, very writers ever “earn out” — i.e. sell enough copies to actually earn money  beyond your advance. First, you have to repay your advance. That $25 hardcover price? You, the author, see only a small percentage applied from each book’s sale — meaning it can take years, decades or never to earn out and receive a royalty.

There’s also the visceral terror of turning in a full manuscript to be told it’s simply deemed “unpublishable” — and being asked for the advance back. I know someone it happened to, and have heard of others. Brrrrrr!

“Malled” needed a lot of revisions, so many I thought it might be impossible to achieve. Luckily, I had a smart/tough editor and we got it done. (Some readers, of course, savaged it anyway.) Tant pis, mes chers!

 

The one payment that makes me cry when it arrives, as it has for the past three years, is the royalty I get from the Canadian library system, basically a payment for library readership of my two books.

It’s deeply moving to me, and validating, to know my work is still finding readers years later.

Since a library book is bought once, (even multiple copies), it represents hundreds, if not thousands, of potentially lost sales and income.

Many nations offer this payment to registered authors — but of course not the United States.

Writing a book, especially of non-fiction, also establishes you as an expert; I was interviewed twice this past week, thanks to my books — by The Guardian (on retail) and The Christian Science Monitor, about women and gun use, thanks to Blown Away.

I really hope to write and sell a few more books. We’ll see.

Where do you feel most at home?

By Caitlin Kelly

How about Washington, D.C.?

 

A friend recently posed the question on her Facebook page — and the many answers she received were fascinating.

Many said “Mexico”, and I was among them, and yet almost all of us were Caucasian.

I miss Mexico, having briefly lived in Cuernavaca as a teenager and having visited various regions there many time; I also speak Spanish.

Or Donegal, where my great-grandfather is from…

But feeling most at home?

It’s always, since I spent a year living there on a journalism fellowship when I was 25, been Paris.

Seems unlikely, for a Canadian born in Vancouver and raised in Toronto, Montreal and London.

(For one American friend, it’s London or bust! If you aren’t reading her blog about life there, you’re missing out. For another, whose blog I also adore, it was a huge leap — from Portland, Oregon to Lisbon.)

It’s a cliche, I know, but I’m fine with it. I speak French, so that’s not an issue.

One of my Paris faves…

I love all the things many people love about that city: great food and wine, style, flowers, the architecture, history, its scale, ready access to the rest of Europe.

I know the city somewhat,  and feel bien dans ma peau each time we return. It’s also a place that changed my life and work for the better, forever, so it’s marinated in memories.

And I know it’s not an easy city — as this blogger who lives there is sure to remind me!

 

 It’s not always easy to feel 100 percent at home.

 

Factors to consider include:

• long, cold snowy winters — and/or hot, humid ones
• lots of rain and cloudy days
• jobs! And well-paid ones, a huge issue in this year’s Presidential election
• quality (affordable) education — at every level
• media — is quality journalism done there, and incisive reporting?
• shopping. If this matters to you, what’s the quality, price and ready access to the things you value most?
• food. Are there farmer’s markets? Great restaurants?
• culture! Can you afford to attend ballet, theater, opera, dance, concerts?
• style/elegance. If this matters to you, (as it does to me), a place where everyone schlumps around in sweats 24/7 is a lousy fit
• landscape. I stare at the Hudson River every day, grateful for its ever-changing skies and beauty. One friend posts astounding images of his life in Arizona’s Sonoran desert.
• history — is the place shiny new or filled with ancient stories to discover?
• politics — right/left/mixed (and it the place welcoming to those who vote otherwise?)
• guns. In the U.S., a serious issue; do your neighbors own them and carry one?
• drugs. A scourge in many places now, whether meth or heroin.
• public policies — what happens when you’re ill and/or out of work?
• citizen engagement, volunteering and activism
• the diversity of your fellow residents — ethnically, economically, religion, work, education
• personal safety from crime
• personal safety from natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and tornadoes
• Access to, price of and quality of housing, rental and owned
• Do people on the street smile and greet one another — or do you prefer anonymity?
• The quality (or lack of) urban planning and design
• Clean, safe parks and ready access to nature for recreation
• Clean, safe playgrounds, swimming pools, tennis courts
• Well-financed libraries
• Bike trails and lanes
• Air quality (New Delhi and Beijing are now hardship posts because the air there is so foul)
• Good medical care and safe, well-run hospitals
• Policing — how safe are you and your loved ones? These days, for many angry and frightened black Americans, it even means being safe from the police.

Terrorism is now a serious issue for many people.

 

A walk along the Palisades, on the western shore of the Hudson River

I’ve been living in a small town on the eastern edge of the Hudson River for more than 20 years, 25 miles north of Manhattan.

I love this town, (here’s my post from 2012 with 20 reasons why), and am very happy here, but it lacks, of course, the bustle and culture of a big city.

I chose Tarrytown on a recon trip for some of these reasons: it’s very diverse for a suburban New York town; its gorgeous location; its history and architecture and scale; easy access to Manhattan (40 minutes by car or train.)

It’s now become home to all the hipsters fleeing crazy-expensive Brooklyn!

I grew up and spent 25 years in Toronto, a large city that often makes lists of best places to live.

I didn’t hate Toronto, and usually return once or twice a year to see old friends there, but it has many ugly areas, a brutally expensive cost of housing, (and very poor quality below $1m), for purchase, crappy quality rentals and a long, grim winter.

More than anything, it held a limited set of professional opportunities — I know people still in the same jobs or workplace as when I left, decades ago.

As we hope to retire in a few years, deciding where to live and why becomes more and more a conscious decision, not just dominated by the proximity to enough decent jobs in our field.

I’ve long planned to spend some of that time living in France, some in the U.S. and some in Canada, with a lot of travel, as long as our health and finances allow.

 

I believe that beauty – wherever we find it — nurtures us deeply; this is a painting of northern Ontario, a landscape I know, love and miss

Where do you feel most at home and why?

 

Is it far from where you were born and raised?

 

I admit it: I still like The Breakfast Club

By Caitlin Kelly

THE BREAKFAST CLUB, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, 1985. ©Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

This can be a real vote-splitter or relationship dealbreaker.

It’s basically a movie about five white kids in suburban Chicago, detained for bad behavior for a full day in their high school library.

Who cares, right?

Made in 1985, it opens and closes with a great tune by Simple Minds, Don’t You (Forget About Me) and was shot in a set in the gym of a high school closed in 1981.

But it’s really about what it feels like to be a teenager — misunderstood or ignored or bullied by your peers and/or teachers. To feel at odds with your parents, whose lofty expectations of success and prowess — you know, living up to your potential — can feel like an elephant sitting on your chest.

The movie was shot within three months for a reputed $1 million, since earning more than $97 million in box-office receipts. I can’t imagine how many residual checks its actors are still receiving, decades later.

It’s also about something that really never changes, no matter where you live or when you grew up — how you can spend four years in high school and walk past the same people for days, weeks and months assuming you have nothing in common, nothing to say to them or vice versa.

The five students are each a “type” — the criminal, the princess, the brain, the recluse and the jock.

I identify most with the brain, the nerdy kid who geeks out over physics and Latin club. Not that I was so smart, but I definitely didn’t fit the other categories.

I arrived at my Toronto high school halfway through Grade 10, a terrible time to arrive — halfway through the second year?! Even worse, I’d chosen a school in a neighborhood so insular that everyone there had been attending the same schools since their first grade. The lines were well-drawn, the cliques established.

I hadn’t even been in a public school, or in a classroom with boys, since Grade Seven. I had pimples and wore the wrong clothes and was far too confident, (having attended single sex schools and camps where I won every award available.)

I was nicknamed Doglin, barked at in the hallways, a dog bone laid on my desk. It was brutal. I cried every day after school and would crawl into bed with all my clothes on when I got home.

My torturers were all male, a gang of three or four, one a redhead with freckles whose 50s-ish nickname (and this long past the 1950s) was Moose.

I made a few dear friends, which kept me sane, and I made the team, two years in a row, for a high school television quiz show and our team did really well.

It finally got better in my senior year when — yay!!!!! — I even got chosen as prom queen, and will regret forever I have no photo of my gorgeous butter yellow chiffon gown, complete with matching scarf. I’m not sure I ever felt so pretty. Even then, a very long time ago, it cost $125, a bloody fortune.

By the time I graduated, I’d had a really cool boyfriend, sold three photos to a magazine for its cover and another to our school library. I’d rounded up my pals to create a school newspaper that fellow students were glad to have once more.

I still don’t know what turned it all around, but am so glad it had a happy ending.

Then, at our 20th. reunion, I re-met one of my closest friends and we re-ignited our friendship, which has continued on for decades more. We’ve visited their lake-side home in Ontario many times, in every season, and our husbands love spending time together.

Neither of us ever had children.

But our friendship is a joy and a pleasure I thought we’d lost.

How was high school for you?

 

Five years ago today, in a church on an island…

By Caitlin Kelly

We got married!

Why am I laughing hysterically just before I walk down the aisle? We married on Centre Island in Toronto, with a petting zoo very close to the church. All I could hear (instead of my processional) were cows mooing!

 

It was, as today has been — a gorgeous, sunny, warm September afternoon.

We chose a tiny wooden church on an island in Toronto, St. Andrew by the Lake. It’s surrounded by public parkland, so I could look out the window and see green grass and hear crickets during our ceremony, attended by 25 of our oldest and dearest friends, who came from as far away as New York, D.C. and British Columbia.

By late afternoon, the wood of the church was sun-warmed, and the place smelled wonderful, bringing back some of my happiest memories of other rustic, wooden places — the stage at summer camp, the costume cupboard, our cabins and the dining hall.

I grew up in Toronto and, even after living near New York City for decades, knew this was where I wanted to marry.

I walked barefoot from the vestry to the front door of the church, my burgundy slingback Manolos dangling from one hand. There, because my left hip hadn’t yet been replaced, the minister, (himself in Birkenstocks and ponytail), and my Dad helped me into my shoes.

My processional was Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace) and our recessional was Stevie Wonder’s You Are The Sunshine of My Life.

Our photographer? A young woman Jose had taught at the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, a talented young woman, now at the Houston Chronicle, Marie de Jesus.

I had never met her, she’d never been to Toronto and she’d never shot a wedding. No pressure! She did a great job and we were lucky to have her with us.

It’s been five years of marriage today — but we’ve been together since we met in March 2000; Jose’s move-in day to my apartment (no kidding), was 9/11. He moved in a week later.

We met, (how else for two career journo’s?), when I wrote an article for Mademoiselle magazine about online dating, then a new thing (1999) and he answered the ad I had to place as part of my research. (As did 200 others!)

My headline?

Catch Me If You Can.

We would never have met any other way, but knew many people in common, which eased our first few meetings.

It’s been a wild 16 years: he retired from The New York Times with a Pulitzer Prize after 31 years, and is now full-time freelance.

He’s seen me wheeled into the OR three times, (knee, shoulder, hip), with a right knee replacement now due in the next few years, maybe sooner.

We’ve traveled together to Paris and Normandy; to six cities in Mexico; to his home, Santa Fe, NM; to Ontario and Quebec many times, to D.C., to Texas, to New Orleans and Arizona.

He gave me a tent for my birthday one year.

Today we both worked, of course, even on a glorious Saturday; he at the computer editing images of several tournaments for the United States Golf Association, I sitting in the parking lot for a village tag sale.

We laugh a lot, share a fierce work ethic and hope for continued good health.

Here’s to a few more decades…

Other people’s needs

By Caitlin Kelly

Silence! Solitude!

 

Rant alert!

Unless you live (as some of you do!) in a rural and isolated area, we’re literally bumping into one another all day every — in stores and elevators, on the subway and bus and streetcar, at the movies and opera and theater, at work and in the park, in our houses of worship, at airports and bus stations and the grocery store.

To stay sane, to function as a civilized human being, means being aware of how our behavior affects others all around us.

I’m getting burned out by a growing (?!) epidemic of selfishness, rudeness, destructiveness and endangerment — I see people driving and texting every day.

A few recent examples, some personal, some not:

— The three young men who thought it amusing to destroy an ancient rock formation in Oregon, their behavior caught on video.

— The family of six, with screaming baby and out-of-control seven-year-old boy who ignored two staff requests to be quieter and more considerate and much annoyed shushing from fellow diners and death stares from the rest of us.

— The cafe patrons in my gentrifying suburban New York town, (where some riverside apartments now sell for $1 million), who blithely leave the front door open, not even stopping to consider the heat and noise that inflicts on those already sitting inside.

— The bro’s at the gym, apparently illiterate, (signs on the wall forbidding it), who heave and grunt with effort then let their weights smash into the floor with a terrifying crash.

— The ((*^$@@@ at our Japanese music concert, whose music was so quiet and subtle I could hear the man next to me digesting, whose cellphone on vibrate kept humming. It was so bad the host had to remind everyone at intermission that “silent mode” isn’t.

Our restaurant meal ended up a disaster; the food was expensive, the atmosphere chaotic and we’d dressed nicely, anticipating a relaxing night out. It wasn’t! We arrived at 7:30 and the noisy party didn’t even leave, (one patron even applauded when they did), until 9:00 p.m.

I wrote a polite two-page letter, with four suggestions how to avoid such a mess next time, to the restaurant manager.

I didn’t just dump a nasty Yelp review; I wanted to give them the chance to respond.

He did, quickly and well. We spoke, civilly, for about 20 minutes. He apologized, assured me that it wouldn’t happen again and gave us a $75 credit for our next visit.

 

But this selfish behavior is rampant…and it’s ruining too many of our daily interactions.

 

It’s a tough call.

No one, (and you all know me to be feisty!), is anxious to confront people who are already making clear they’re rude and obnoxious, in the vain hope they suddenly won’t be, let alone think of apologizing.

They’re so oblivious to the needs of others, even as they share public space with us all.

And sometimes our friends or partners hate it when we do speak up.

Do you ever confront someone behaving badly?

How did it turn out?

Here’s a recent New York Times story about how bad it can get; the writer is describing her own encounter with a nasty little boy in a terrific, classic Manhattan restaurant, Knickerbocker, one of my favorites:

Then I put on my invisible Urban Avenger costume, muster my courage for a confrontation with a thunderbolt-throwing, flesh-eating, but otherwise pleasant New York City mother, and as Herb beats it out the door because he knows what’s coming, walk over to the table and ask the adults which one of them is the mother.

“You don’t seem to be aware of this, but for the last 20 minutes your kids have been annoying the entire restaurant,” I tell her. “This isn’t a playground. If they can’t behave like adults, they shouldn’t be in here.”

Now, here is where it gets weird. This New York mother doesn’t scream at me or insult me. She doesn’t apologize. She just makes a request.

“Could you tell that to [the spawn we will call] William?” she says. Then, turning to the largest kid, “William, this lady has something to say to you?”

What? Now I have to be the enforcer? How did this happen? Urban Avenger’s job is to tell people how to bring up their children, not to do it herself. William, meanwhile, is standing there looking at me…

“William,” I say, as sternly as I can, “you’ve been bothering everybody in here. This is not a playground, it’s not a place for you to run around and yell.”

William doesn’t bat an eye.

Friday night, West 13th St., New York

By Caitlin Kelly

 

You know how you sometimes, spontaneously, have a perfect evening?

Last night was one of them.

We ate at a new-to-us restaurant on West 13th. Gradisca, that sits in the basement of a historic brownstone.

The 16-year-old restaurant, named for a character in Fellini’s film Amarcord, has deep red walls, dark wooden tables and the kind of atmosphere that signals you’re going to have a good time — attentive and professional staff, delicious food, reasonable (for Manhattan) prices, funky posters and filament bulbs on the walls.

The kind of place they let you have a taste of your wine and still (reasonable for this city) charged $11 a glass for it; ($15-20/glass is fairly standard now.)

I had vitello tonnato, an item still hard to find in many Italian restaurants, then tiny, perfect tortellini — handmade by a woman standing at a table near the front door, her worktable fronted by a black velvet rope. The tortellini were the size of a fingernail. Amazing!

Outside the restaurant, grips and make-up people and technicians ran up and down the stairs of the brownstone next door — filming an episode of “Younger” a television show (how fitting!) about a 40 year old woman trying to pass as 26 to get and keep a magazine job.

It was so utterly New York!

On many streets here, especially the gorgeous older ones in the West Village which are lined with elegant old houses, tree-shaded and cobblestoned, you’ll very often see the enormous white trucks (grrrr, no free street parking!) for the stars, and director and make-up and wardrobe, lining entire blocks while a film,  TV show or commercial is being made. If you’re nice, maybe you can snag a cookie from the “craft table”, the tented area where the crew finds food and drinks during hours of shooting.

It was a very humid 90-degree evening last night, so it must have been exhausting to work for long hours.

We walked a block east to the Tenri Cultural Institute — 43A — with a doggie day care and spa next door and another Italian restaurant, completely blocked from view by one of the enormous white trailers, in front of it.

I’ve lived in New York since 1989 and keep finding new-to-me things to enjoy.

The Institute, an astonishingly cool, modern white space with 20-foot+ ceilings you’d never suspect was in there, was hosting a concert of contemporary shamisen, shakuhachi and flute music, played by a 2012 MacArthur genius grant-winner, Claire Chase.

It was astounding. The room held about 75 people, an intriguing mix of Asian and Caucasian, an age range from 20s to 60s. Everyone was artistically stylish, many sporting wrinkled cotton mufflers (worn by men and woman alike; mine was silk), lots of little black dresses and a great pair of platform lace-ups on the 60-something-year-old woman sitting in front of me.

The shamisen player was a young man visiting New York on a fellowship, heading back to Japan 2 days later. I’m no expert in the instrument, but he played with terrific attack and speed. The three-stringed instrument sounds mostly, to Western ears, like a banjo, but also adds percussion when the soundbox is hit with a large wooden pick.

My favorite piece was The Universal Flute, written in 1946, by Henry Cowell, an American composer who died in 1965.

I had never heard of him and his biography is extraordinary; the piece is a duet between shakuhachi, a Japanese wooden flute, and a traditional metal flute, the one we know from orchestras worldwide.

As we listened, I kept thinking about Pearl Harbor — 1941 — and how that attack, and the resulting attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wondered how it might have affected his composition.

The evening was everything I love, at its best, about multi-cultural New York: a great meal, an intriguing and affordable ($20 tickets) concert; discovering a wholly new set of experiences with Jose, my husband; a night in cozy,  historic Greenwich village.

 

 

Three great cop shows — all European!

By Caitlin Kelly

I’m not, per se, a huge fan of cop shows, (although I enjoyed, and miss, NYPD Blue.)

But three shows have really caught my attention: Wallander (the Swedish version), The Tunnel and Inspector Lewis.

There are two versions of Wallander, the Swedish one (with English subtitles), filmed in the small southern coastal town of Ystad, and the English one, with Kenneth Branagh. For a variety of reasons, I prefer the Swedish.

I love the craggy, grumpy Wallander (pronounced Vall – AN -der), played by Krister Henriksson, who always looks like he could use 10 more hours of sleep, some coffee and a shave. He supervises two young detectives, Pontus and Isabelle, and their relationships form an interesting backdrop to the storylines.

I love the moody gray, blue and black palette of each 90-minute episode, which feels — to a North American viewer accustomed to 30 or 60-minute shows punctured with ads — luxurious and immersive, like a movie.

I love seeing Sweden’s gorgeous landscapes and beaches, and I like the way they say “Tack!” like a gunshot (Thanks, or please) into their cellphones.

I sat riveted every Sunday evening to see The Tunnel, a BBC production that is — a first — bilingual, half in French, half in English. It’s also the first time that officials allowed anyone to film inside the undersea tunnel that runs between England and France.

I missed the first episode, but it begins with the discovery of a woman’s severed body, half on the English side of the tunnel and half on the French side.

“Ah, les rosbifs“, sigh the young French female detectives as the grizzled English cops arrive, as they now, resentfully, have to work together to solve a bi-national crime.

I saw no North American press coverage of this amazing show, and think Clemence Poesy is astounding as Elise Wasserman, the pale, taciturn blond who leads the French investigation. Her leonine face seemed to be make-up free, her hair always un-brushed, focused laser-narrow on her work.

Her British counterpart, Karl Roebuck, is a tough old thing who has multiple children with multiple women — and can’t keep his trousers zipped. He’s used to charming his way through most situations, a tactic Elise (even tougher) is utterly immune to.

The storyline is complex , with a surprise twist at the end.

It’s violent, of course, at times but emotionally compelling, and I found myself deeply involved with the two key characters.  This 10-episode series also had a very distinctive aesthetic — pale, washed-out, everyone wearing blue, black, green or brown.

The scene switches constantly from England to France, from one culture and language and procedural style to another. (As someone who’s lived in both countries, and speaks French, I loved this element of it.)

Inspector Lewis, (simply called Lewis in the UK) is so English!

Set in and around the gorgeous city of Oxford, and on the university campus, its three major characters are as likely to head to the pub for a pint as to gather at a murder scene.

I haven’t yet been to Oxford, (or Ystad), so I enjoy seeing the gorgeous scenery and the creamy stone buildings of the university. There are endless little digs at class difference and a wry perspective on the insularity of academic life.

Like Wallander, Morse plays a somewhat avuncular role with his younger sidekick, and it’s interesting to watch that relationship.

These shows allowed me to enjoy visiting Europe each week, without a long flight or jet lag.

Do you have a favorite police show?

 

 

What would you grab?

By Caitlin Kelly

The climate is changing.

If you watch national television news, as we often do, (and/or read thoughtfully and listen carefully), every single North American broadcast now carries yet another enormous forest fire and devastating floods.

Add hurricanes and tornadoes, and the very human wish to remain in your home, surrounded by objects you enjoy, stands in growing opposition to the forces of implacable nature.

Culturally, there’s now, additionally, the cult of Marie Kondo, a Japanese woman whose fetish for de-cluttering has millions of (affluent) people studiously deciding what to keep and what to toss, donate or sell.

Here’s a recent post by Grace, author of the blog Cultural Life, who recently Kondo’ed her closet.

And then there are tiny houses, a trend that has some people sneering in derision at people who can afford much better choices deciding to live in 200 or 300 square feet, some with children or pets. These micro-homes are all the rage, but also, de facto, demand severe paring of all possessions. (Or renting a big storage locker!)

These are all privileged decisions, of course. Some people live with so very few possessions or don’t have a home, or the things they own are so worn out and broken they long to replace them — and cannot.

I often wonder what, if I had to make a snap decision as fire swept through the woods around my house, or flood waters started rising, (neither of which, thank heaven are likely), what I would try to grab.

(We live on the top floor of an apartment building, on top of a high hill, several miles from the Hudson River. Nor is New York a zone typically, historically, prone to hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes.)

Some of my most valued, (not all monetarily valuable), possessions:

— my Canadian passport and my green card, which allows me to live and work legally in the U.S.

— several battered stuffed animals from my childhood

— a pile of journals I kept in my 20s and 30s

— a dress I bought in L.A. years ago and later wore to marry Jose in

— my jewelry

— the paintings of my mother done by my father (small, easy to carry!)

— my framed National Magazine Award

— an original print of The Loneliest Job in the World, taken Feb. 10, 1961, an iconic portrait of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy standing silhouetted in the Oval Office of the White House. Ours is signed by the late photographer George Tames, who Jose worked with at the Times.

No matter how minimalist our lives, we do choose and enjoy certain items, some of them markers or identity and status, some  of them inherited or hard-won.

Here’s a list of 20 things to ditch tomorrow.