So Much to Watch, How Can I Type?

“Where are you?”

A few friends have asked why I haven’t been posting on my site lately.
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Deep into the fourth year of the pandemic – the gift that keeps on giving – I have followed my wife’s lead and taken more advantage of wonderful stuff on television, letting creative people fill the head and eyes with ideas and images.
This is where I have been in recent weeks and months:
*** Last week on public television, we found “Doña Perón,” about Eva Perón, the legendary wife of Argentina’s president. It was presented by Ballet Hispanico, a company based on the West Side of New York.

Using tango music and the physical concussion of boots stomping on the floor, the ballet follows the unwanted little girl who grows into a dance-hall performer who captivates Juan Perón. But she is followed by her childhood self, a waif in a plain white gown, who quietly materializes at key moments, to haunt Evita.
Perhaps the best part of this ballet, from choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, is performed
by the eyes – with camera closeups revealing the emotions of Evita, (Dandara Veiga), fearing her past will be revealed.
My wife and I have decided that this ballet might be the best we have ever seen.
​                 ***

I have always been something of a snob about TV -- soaps, game shows, series (i was obsessed with "The Sopranos.")  However, while staying close to home in recent years, I have opened my mind, at least a bit. 

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, we seek out the Aerial America series on the Smithsonian channel -- hour-long views of the states. Sometimes we “visit” states we do not know very well – like New Mexico and Arizona.  My wife, born in Connecticut, with genes from early settlers of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, loves the aerial views of New England.

Today the series returned to Maine, which we discovered in the past decade from visiting her uncle Harold, who lived in Bath, a few yards from the Kennebec River, which he had helped dredge before World War II.
Harold is gone now, but the Smithsonian cameras take us to coastal scenes so familiar we could taste the fresh catch at Bet's Fish Fry in Boothbay,  A swoop over Brunswick showed the home of author Harriet Beecher Stowe near downtown Brunswick – with an old red-brick mill converted into urban offices and shops – “Look, there’s our Thai restaurant!”

If we were a bit younger, if there were no Covid, we’d be visiting more of Maine, and other parts of this blessed continent.

In recent months, we have seen documentaries of singers who have been part of our adult lives.
 
Joni Mitchell was honored by the Gershwin award, at the Kennedy Center, beaming in the front row, as people praised her music, her idealistic messages. Joni has been recovering from a stroke, but -- spoiler alert: -- on this recent night, she agreed to go to the microphone and in an older, huskier but still blatantly Joni voice, she totally aced the Gershwin standard, “Summertime.”
 
https://www.google.com/search?q=joni+mitchell+honored+at+kennedy+center&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS874US874&oq=Joni+Mitchell+honor&aqs=chrome.3.0i512j69i57j0i512l3j0i22i30l4.18076j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4cc10676,vid:C815lySYh9w

Another documentary showed how Roberta Flack started singing classical music – not an easy path for a young Black woman -- and over the years how she took control of her own career.
  
We try not to miss the series, “Now Hear This,” with American conductor-violinist Scott Yoo traveling all over the world to talk music with classical musicians.
In all the fields I have covered, I have loved shop talk – from coal miners, from athletes, from politicians, who know their field and, if encouraged, will divulge tricks of the trade.

The other night, Yoo explored how Robert Schuman may have been bipolar, interviewing a doctor/musician who can talk and play Schumann.

Finally, CNN has been running a series with the actress, Eva Longoria, exploring the food of Mexico, region by region. Longoria, born in Texas of Mexican ancestry, visits contemporary restaurants in Mexico City and is at her best visiting the countryside, chatting respectfully with the earnest women who farm and cook and also trek into the cities to sell their wares.
 
Recently, Longoria was in the Yucatan peninsula, not just Merida, but the tidal flats where she learned to sift for salt.  She also watched the deliberate process of the regional specialty -- baked pork, cochinita pibil -- in a covered pan, underneath a layer of dirt, overnight, for 8 to 12 hours.
 
https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2023/03/06/yucatan-mexico-cochinita-pibil-eva-longoria-origseriesfilms.eva-longoria-searching-for-mexico
 
It’s been two decades since I’ve been to Mexico – a soccer match against the USA.
It brought back memories of reading travel adventure books by Richard Halliburton in grade school. (Longoria did not mention the human sacrifices into deep wells that Halliburton explored so many decades ago. ) 

Longoria’s series makes me want to go back to all the places I've visited -- Puebla, Monterrey, and next time Oaxaca.
For the moment, I’m thankful to contemporary television for the documentaries that take us so many places, 
At the moment, Sunday afternoon, TV will take me to another corner of the world -- Oakland,  A's vs. Mets.