alexandra alger

ABC

Archive for the month “July, 2017”

31 Jul 2017

If It’ s Tuesday, We’re in Tallinn

 

Actually, we were there on a Saturday, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration. Plus you know how it is when you’re doing one of those city-a-day trips. I’m on the tail-end of a cruise through the Baltic region with stops in Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm, Visby, Riga, Latvia and ending in Copenhagen. It’s been glorious, but here I am, sorting through my pics (uniformly mediocre… oh, well), and the trick is how to remember heart is didn’t about each city. They all have charming medieval old towns, complex intertwined histories, and, I couldn’t help noticing, pretty nice linens and knitted goods.

A stab at capturing each city in a few photos each.

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Helsinki’s Senate Square. That’s good ole Mom, looking quite youthful for someone nearing eighty (I have no fear about giving away her age; the chances she reads this are roughly and precisely zero). I didn’t count how many steps there were, but I’m glad I huffed my way up them. Mainly I saw rooftops but the sense of being high above the city was oddly exhilarating. The cathedral is beautiful in an austere, Lutheran way– but guess what, I can’t remember any of its history.

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Helsinki home furnishing store. The Finns put the fork and knife together on the right. And they eat this round bread that in centuries past was strung up on a rope in the home. They get really hard after a while. They look hard–inedible, really, but not to the Finns. Our guide Claimed he missed this bread when he spent time in the U.S.

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Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The medieval core is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and you can see why.

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Charm abounds in the old town, where shops play up the medieval theme.

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In front of St. Nicholas, a Russian church. Our guide claimed these grannies in peasant garb were paid to dress up and beg. Well, thats what someone told me. There were similar grannies inside, praying and crossing themselves, clearly not actors. Interesting historical note: When the Soviets bombed the city In 1944, they saw fit to spare their church. Estonians have had a rough time getting rid of the Russians, to put it mildly. In 1918, they finally declared independence after three centuries, only to fall under the yoke again in 1940 for another 51 years. Nonetheless they call 1918 the year of independence.

Think I’ll break this up into two posts. Stay tuned!

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16 Jul 2017

Thoughts on Tennis, Post-Wimbledon

Watching Roger Federer defeat Marin Cilic to clinch a record eighth Wimbledon title at nearly 36 years old, something that nobody would’ve or could’ve predicted a year go, including the great Fed himself, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we tennis fans are, to be able to witness this extraordinary period in men’s tennis, which is stretching on, with no end in sight. On the women’s side, though, I can’t figure out what’s going on.

Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated, posting after the Wimbledon women’s singles final:

“….women’s tennis is in a weird—yet oddly intoxicating—place. The sport’s alpha female (Serena Williams) is profoundly pregnant, hasn’t played since winning the Australian Open and almost certainly won’t play again this year. The player who started the year at No. 1 (Angie Kerber) has been a non-entity. The new No. 1 (Karolina Pliskova) just lost with a whimper in the second round here. One multi-time major champ (Maria Sharapova) has been idled by a doping suspension and then injury. Another (Petra Kvitova) is coming back from a stabbing suffered in a home invasion. And who has risen highest? A bold 20-year-old, Jelena Ostapenko, who was outside the top 40 memorial and is now inside the top ten. Venus Williams, who has been to two of the three major finals. And Garbine Muguruza, now a multi-Slam winner.”

I’m not sure I agree this is an “intoxicating” time. When the top women don’t live up to expectations in a Grand Slam, it’s hard to get excited about them. Simona Halep—what happened? She should’ve won the French; it didn’t happen. Wimbledon? Nope. I’m sure Serena will be back, after giving birth, as dominant as ever, and she’ll be a wonder to behold. But who will be up there with her, challenging her to play her best? Probably not Venus, who lost to Muguruza in a dispiriting way (bageled in the second set!). Muguruza, maybe, who beat her in the French Open last year, in a mesmerizing match. And Ostapenko—she is as powerful and aggressive as they come, but green still. Lucky us, we won’t have long to wait. The U.S. Open is just around the corner.

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12 Jul 2017

Second-hand Books

Honestly, I have no business buying books. I’m in the middle of two recently published novels (Susan Rieger’s The Heirs and Gail Godwin’s Grief Cottage) while taking a break from Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. This is a new low: three unfinished books on the nightstand! But release me into a second-hand bookstore, and I’m going to come away with something.

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How this for a highbrow/lowbrow pairing? The Poe volume was a beautiful hardback I couldn’t resist (five bucks). Then my eyes fell on a group of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books. A Reacher story is a summer treat, like chips and guacamole. I can gulp whole paragraphs at a time with minimal chewing. (Note: I see the point in chewing tortilla chips, but you get what I mean.)

Poe, now—no gulping here. I flipped to his famous 1845 short story, “The Purloined Letter” (when was the last time you heard someone use the word “purloined”?). Early on, the prefect of the Paris police is explaining his case involving the titular letter, and this is what he says to explain how he knows the letter remains in the possession of the thief: “It is clearly inferred from the nature of the document, and of the non-appearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber’s possession—that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it.” More careful, deliberate nibbling called for her. For now, I’m going to resist the siren calling of Reacher and the subtler pleasures of Poe until I finished these other extremely worthy works.

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05 Jul 2017

What do Bagels and Beyoncé Have in Common?

Firecrackers are popping outside my window. July 4, 2017 is drawing to a close.
I’m going to crib from onetime colleague and FB pal Joe Colacioppo, who posted his list of who and what make the U.S. of A. the U.S. of A. Here’s a list of my own—partial, on the fly, heavy on writers (and in a few instances inspired by Joe):

Joey Chestnut, the Coney Island Cyclone, Alexander Hamilton, New York bagels, Muhammad Ali,  E.B. White, Serena Williams, the Kentucky Derby, Toni Morrison, Diane Arbus, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson Pollock, Gerry Trudeau, David Foster Wallace, Barack and Michelle Obama, James Taylor, Nora Ephron, Jon Stewart, Long Island beaches, Georgia peaches, Quentin Tarantino, Truman Capote, FDR, Edith Wharton, Laird Hamilton, Ella Fitzgerald, Beyoncé, Joan Didion, Justices Ruth Ginsberg and Anthony Kennedy, corn on the cob, the U.S. Constitution (flawed though it might be), the First Amendment and all those who have and are and will defend it.

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