A Rather Tangled Chrimson Field

It takes very little to pique my interest. Pique sends me down a rabbit hole of consumptive excess.  So let us back up and find out how The Crimson Field leads us to Edith Cavell and Oona O'Neil.

First let me dissuade you of the notion that I watched this thinking it had something to do with Alabama football. 

I get a very spotty PBS station from remote Ohio. Much of what they show is several years behind the rest of PBS and they are prone to start a series and not finish it which is both dumb and infuriating. To add insult to injury, they like to list Masterpiece Theater as simple that--Masterpiece Theater; with no mention of what they are actually showing.

Recently, I watched The Crimson Field. Like of much of this PBS fare, it just sort of appeared without warning in episode three. The Crimson Field is the story of nurses in World War I. I liked it quite a bit, but in in its native England it got lackluster reviews and never made it to a second season. One of the story lines was about a nurse whose husband is German. She desperately wants to know if he is alive and this leads to problems.  It also leads to Edith Cavell who was a nurse in World War I in German-occupied Belgium.  She treated both Germans and Allies soldiers. She also managed to help about 200 Allied soldiers escape the Germans which got her arrested. She was tried for treason, found guilty, and executed by firing  squad.

So of course, I wanted to read about Cavell. The major biography of Edith Cavell is written by Diana Souhami who was once described as favoring subjects of “grand lesbians and ragged mariners," having written about  Gluck, Gertrude Stein, Greta Garbo, and Radclyffe Hall.  Her major fame came from writing about the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe in her book Selkirk’s Island, which won a Whitbread Biography Award. Whatever the subject, Souhami is an excellent biographer and she does Edith Cavell justice.

And if that wasn't enough, one of the actresses in The Crimson Field was Oona Chaplin

who is the daughter of Geraldine Chaplin

 and the granddaughter of Oona O'Neil Chaplin.

So of course, I was "forced" to reread Jane Scovell's biography,  Oona.

The problem with writing a "Season 1" predicated on the notion that there will be a "Season 2" often means that story lines are left dangling. This happened with The Crimson Field. Our distraught band of nurses are left hanging as the war rages on. Too bad.

Actually, it might be a good idea that I don't get great PBS.

How Cool Are French Zombies?

My friend , Anne,  and I are Francophiles.  We both subscribe to Elle à Table and we are always discussing how the French can throw a handful of raw asparagus onto a plate and make it look like art.   I am always saying, "How does there food always look so good?"

Guess what?  Their zombies look good, too.


The Sundance Channel is showing Les Revenants as The Returned.  It is a French Walking Dead, but those who return from the dead are French.  French zombies.  Now one might inquire: "What are French zombies like?"

Well, of course they are far better looking than American zombies.  No rotting flesh, non!  That would be so undignified.  French zombies return intact, coiffed, well dressed and sporting jaunty scarves.

French zombies return from the grave ravenous, but they do not want to eat your fleshy underbelly. A French zombie is looking for a lovely, ripe Camembert and a crusty loaf.

French zombies do not shuffle slowly, but comport themselves like dancers.

Those returned, and those they have returned to, are faced not with a zombie apocalypse, but with an existential dilemma.  For instance, your dead wife returns and causes you to nearly die of a heart attack.

Do you find this to be an abomination and kill her? 

Do you kill yourself? 

Do you give her more Camembert?

Do you ask yourself, "What would Sartre do?"


While they might not be grotesque, rotting flesh eaters, the French zombie does seem to create havoc.    It is a little early to judge the exact nature of the havoc and whether it is more terrifying than a full on zombie apocalypse.  I must confess, however, the thought of a long-dead child showing up in the kitchen raiding the refrigerator may be far more terrifying than a rotting Sophia shuffling out of a barn.

Damn those French!

American Horror Story

I love American Horror Story.  It is creepy and funny, macabre and menacing, cruel and campy, and I can't get enough of it.  Three years ago when Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk first aired American Horror Story, my reaction was, "That guy from Glee is doing horror?"  Exactly.  While the show is often horrific, it is also terribly funny.  The writers walk that razors edge with remarkable skill.  Just when you think you need to look away, it becomes the height of camp.  At the moment you think, this it too silly, you are slammed back into the nightmare.  One would be hard pressed to ever think, "I know what will happen next."

The first season of American Horror Story, now called Murder House revolves around the the classic haunted house that fills many a horror story.  That became a self-contained mini-series.  The second installment, American Horror Story: Asylum, took on another great horror trope, the mental institution.  While the story remained horrific, the setting and local were very different.  The actors (many of them) remained the same.  American Horror Story: Coven, is set in New Orleans at a finishing school for witches. Over the three incarnations, Murphy and Falchuk have kept together a repertory-like collection of actors that appear and re-appear.

With a television landscape that is often formulaic and filled with cookie cutter actors, American Horror Story breaks the mold.  First, many of the actors are women of advanced age.  Remember in Hollywood, after age 25, an actresses age is measured in dog years.  Rarely does one see a television show where the lead actress in in her 60's, much less a show where several of the pivotal characters are actresses in their 60's.  

As for younger actresses, they all seem to blend together in one homogeneous pot of straight teeth, straight hair and Size 0 dresses.  It doesn't really matter which Jennifer is Chloe, which Jessica is Madison, nor which Madison is Jennifer.  In the American Horror Story world there is a diversity that one rarely sees.  Jamie Brewer, who was in Murder House and now in Coven, has Downs Syndrome.  Oscar-nominee Gabourey Sidibe is no Size 0, yet they fill the screen with the likes of Lily Rabe and Emma Roberts, bringing a complexity to the casting that is liberating. 

My favorite actor in the bunch is Frances Conroy.  Best known for playing the long-suffering wife, Ruth, in Six Feet Under, her various roles in American Horror Story have been a joy to watch.   In Murder House, she played Moira, the maid who came with the house, no mater who the owner.

When Moira crossed paths with  Dylan McDermott (not to be confused with Dylan Baker but quite interchangeable with Dermot Mulroney) he saw Moria in the form of Alexandra Breckenridge, leading

to some rather comical encounters.


In Asylum,  Conroy was the Angel of Death, appearing in a prim black suit and veiled hat.

At the moment of death, however, she sprouted enormous black wings before planting a literal kiss of death on the lips of her intended.

Our first glimpse of Conroy in Coven is as the grandmother of young witch, Taissia Farmiga, and her appearance is memorable.

The first year it was televised, I had a real-life American Horror Story moment.  On Wednesday, Murder House began with a knock on the door.  The owner answered to find a man with blood dripping from his head. He said he had been in accident and needed help and they let him in.   Everyone in the house was, of course, tortured and murdered.

Two days later, I heard a knock at my door.  No one comes to the house after dark!  I went to the door and opened it on to the mudroom.  Standing at the door was a man who said his friend was hurt and needed help.  My heart almost exploded.  But I live in the real world and not the television world.  I called an ambulance and told them they needed to get to the post office, as the ambulance won't go out to farms in this area.   It was midnight before my heart stopped racing.

The next day, two of the guys came back with flowers for me.  They thanked me or helping.  They were on 4-wheelers when one of the group got hurt.  He was an EMT so he knew he was in bad shape.  Before they could get down off the mountain, night fell and they couldn't find their way out.  An old logging road led them to my light.   Their friend made it to the hospital with sever injuries and was air-lifted to Pittsburgh.  I told them about American Horror Story and they gave me a big hug.  "I'm not sure I would have opened the door, " one of them said.   Indeed.

A Wake For Elmore Leonard

We had terrible weather last night.  Thunder that sounded like a plane crashed on the front porch.  Today the sky is overcast and dreary.  It is too wet to paint, my goal for the day.  The cloudy weather is messing with the satellite and I have watched my Apple spinning paint wheel for hours as it tries to decide what to do.   So I have decided to hold a wake for Elmore Leonard.

I am going home, it is a Friday afternoon in August.   I am going to put on Season 2 of Justified with the luminous and deadly Mags Bennett.  The produces of Justified originally conceived of the deadly Mags as the patriarch of the Bennett clan, but with the aid of Margo Martindale, they soon saw the error of their ways. 

While I do not posses any Apple Pie moonshine I do have some Calvados.  And some vodka... And a big bag of Trader Joe’s Beurre Meunière popcorn.  Cue the banjo.

On this lonely road
tryin' to make it home...