Monthly Archives: August 2017

Erin Go Bragh – – –

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When you get an email from an old friend saying they’re in New Orleans it wouldn’t normally be an occasion for puzzlement or surprise. But this was our good friend Erin, who is usually pretty much stuck here in town because of her medical condition. Erin has Marfan Syndrome and is also legally blind.

We first met Erin through her enthusiasm for amateur drama and our bookstore. She went on to be a stalwart of our weekly needlework night and eventually a great support to Chef Kelley’s ‘Second Story Cafe’. Many a time she slaved late into the night making desserts for the next day and then came in to help take orders, serve and clean up afterwards. She also makes hundreds of mini Cornish pasties for our annual Celtic festival!

Just a few years ago Erin, who trained as a classroom assistant, took on the local Presbyterian Church Sunday school and the kids love her. I love the idea that she is an example to them that not everyone is the same and that no matter the obstacles it’s possible to succeed in life.

However her greatest gift is with infant kittens. She has her own pets, of course, but she is also an expert with very young orphans. Because of her condition she doesn’t sleep well, so she can feed them at the required four hourly intervals. She carries the babies around close to her so they feel secure and even bought a special buggy to wheel them in when she’s out and about–frequently found parked outside our bookstore.

It’s not uncommon in a small rural town anywhere for folk who are seen as ‘different’ to be stigmatized, but Erin is the equal of anyone who looks at her the wrong way. She has kept us entertained many a time telling about the confrontations she has had on the highways and byways of Big Stone Gap.

nollins

A Spitfire and DC3 in D Day markings

The email she sent me this morning was from the WW2 museum in New Orleans and she included pictures of a number of historic aircraft of the period. She had remembered that I’m pretty crazy about classic airplanes. I replied asking her how on earth she had got there, and she explained that she had attended a Marfan conference in Atlanta and then got a Greyhound bus to ‘nollins’ because it wasn’t much further. She had an old friend there who was driving her around and would be back when she and the city were tired of each other- – –

Erin Go Bragh!

The Monday TV Show: OZARK

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When Netflix is pushing something, I tend to shy away from it, but I had two crochet projects due within a week, and Missouri is one of my favorite parts of America. So….

Portlandia meets Escobar, this show. Quirky, really great writing and acting, really funny moments with really human moments with some serious “mess-with-your-head” moments. The writing is so well done it encourages you to examine your own preconceptions of who is bad and who is good.

Yeah, this show is like a morality tale in Wonderland. The premise is a guy who winds up laundering money in a nice respectable illegal way in Chicago has to run for it to the Ozarks and do the same for his crime boss, or he’s gonna get it like his partner did – him and his family.

But when they get there, the place is lousy with people already either running drugs or laundering money, sometimes both. As one of the characters says, “People who weren’t born here only come here if they’re running from something scarier than living here.”

The ten-season show has a lot of violence, and the fact that one of the laundering schemes is in a strip dance club certainly won’t have hurt the ratings with certain demographics. But the interaction between urban and rural (two families wind up being the focus, the Chicago transplants and the local petty crime trailer dwellers) and the family dynamics (these people are more dysfunctional than the Munsters) invite lovely comparisons.

In short, the whole thing is one big morality play, along the lines of Breaking Bad but not so sure-footed. The scene where the nice husband and wife first discuss whether to launder money, and how it might affect their lives, is wonderful. The scene where the husband realizes what kind of mistake that might have been is brutal.

My only regret in investing time to binge-watch these ten episodes is that I was making a marriage afghan and a baby swaddler. Hopefully the vibes won’t scar the recipients for life. (Hi, Olivia and Alex!)