A Powerful Movie

This week I am going to go to the BCR Board of Trustees meeting so I took Cely back to visit her Mom this weekend. Cely was going to stay here but I had already booked a flight to the Quad Cities next weekend. People must not be travelling much this weekend. We had great luck getting to the Quad Cities even though there was a big snowstorm and cancelled flights on Thursday. It was just like flying normally in each direction.

The biggest thing was the movie we saw this weekend. Cely heard about this musical that is playing on Broadway called Grey Gardens. It seemed really odd because it is based on these two eccentric women called "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" they were Jackie Kennedy's aunt and cousin respectively. The musical is based on a documentary done in 1975 by Albert and David Maysles
titled Grey Gardens. IMDB does a better job at providing a description of the movie than I can. This documentary was so funny yet deeply disturbing all because of the two women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale. The Maysles brothers put together a film that shows truth can be stranger, and sometimes more powerful, than fiction.
The women live on their slowly disintagrating mansion in the Hamptons along with a spectacularly overgrown garden, racoons in the attic, cats aplenty, a mother daughter relationhip that takes disfunctional to new levels of madness. Cely, June and I watched it together at June's and we could not stop talking about it. It had as much drama and depth as a Tennessee Williams play. In fact, aspects of the relationship between the two women reminded me of the Glass Menagerie. This gets my recommendation as a must see movie. There will be plenty of opportunities to see the women's story as there is now the Broadway musical, the 1975 movie, a recent release of outtakes from the documentary, The Beales of Grey Gardens and a fictional version now in production staring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

Last Trips to the Midwest

Over the past month it seems like I have been in the Midwest for about 3 of the last 4 weekends. Cely has just been back in Corvallis for the last two weeks. We spent a really nice and quiet Thanksgiving.

Before that, though, we spent some time in the QC with everyone together and one weekend with Alexis in Milwaukee. Here are some pictures.

This picture of Alexis is after she streaked her hair. When we arrived in Milwaukee at her apartment I thought it was one of her roommates answering the door. I really experienced doing a double take. We were in Milwaukee it was November 19, Alexis' birthday. We took her out for a brunch at a great restaurant on Water Street, the Trocadero. The food was just yummy and French. Cely and I shared a Bloody Mary that had something going on flavorish that I couldn't place but it was good. I recommend this place to anyone who travels to Milwaukee. It is another on our list of great places to visit there.