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Dîner en Blanc

Last night, I was having drinks in Bryant Park when suddenly, a sea of people dressed all in white took over the park.  My friends and I couldn’t help but stare in wonder and a little bit of envy, wanting to know what exactly was going on, and at the same time, wishing that we were a part of it.   It felt like it had come straight out of a movie, perhaps a Gatsby related event even.  Whatever it was, I was determined to find out: I needed to know.  My opportunity arose when, upon entering the ladies room, I saw one of those such white-clad people fixing her makeup.  She was happy to share the much coveted information with me.  The name of the event: Dîner en Blanc.

I had never heard of this event and immediately took to googling.  Dîner en Blanc is relatively new to New York, as this was only the third annual event held here.  It originated in Paris twenty-five years ago, by François Pasquier, who, having just returned home after living abroad for a few years, decided to throw a dinner party with all of his friends.  Each of his friends brought a friend, and everyone wore white.  Thus, Dîner en Blanc was created.

Dîner en Blanc is highly exclusive.  To be able to participate one must either receive an invite, or be randomly selected from their waiting list.   The events are held in public places that are usually crowded and were not meant to host this type of thing.  The locations are not disclosed until thirty minutes prior to the start of the festivities, then guests scramble from their designated meeting places in order to get there and set up.  Everyone is dressed head-to-toe in white, bringing with them everything that they will need: a table, two white folding chairs, a white table cloth, a picnic basket with food and tableware.

Last night, four thousand people were at Bryant Park for Dîner en Blanc.  Four thousand.  When I described it as a sea of people, I was not exaggerating.  I put myself on the waiting list and hopefully will be one of those people next year.

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Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black

After being introduced to the series airing on Netflix by a friend, and subsequently watching all of season one, I found myself wanting to know more of the story.  I did a little googling, and found out that it was based on the memoir Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman, who served thirteen months of a fifteen-month sentence for a nine-year old drug offense in which she traveled with a suitcase full of money.  If it had been one year later, her case would have been thrown out of court, a fact that we are made aware of both in the memoir and the series.

There was a slight bit of hesitation on my part, on whether or not to purchase the memoir, because I didn’t want to spoil season two, but almost instantly after I started reading it, I realized that that was not going to be the case.  Although the premise in the series runs true to the memoir, there are quite a few differences between the two.

The memoir tells the story of Piper’s experiences at a minimum security prison in Danbury, Connecticut.  While serving time, Piper works in electric and then later in construction, after she was sexually harassed by the prison staff member who was in charge of the electricity department.  She seems to be allowed some freedoms, because she is constantly running on the track.  At times you can almost forget that they are in prison because of such things as that, but that doesn’t last long.  Piper has a ton of support from the outside world, with people all over the country – some she even had never met – sending her books and letters, and visiting her.  Her fiancé Larry makes a point to drive up from New York and visit her once a week.  All of her visits seemed to be pleasant and lasted longer than what I had imagined they would (multiple hours).  At the end of the visits, after the visitors had all left, Piper and the other inmates were forced to strip, even going as far as having to squat and cough to make sure that nothing had been smuggled into the facilities.

Piper did not serve any time with her former girlfriend and ex-drug trafficker, Nora (Alex) while she was at Danbury, of which she was there for eleven months.  For the last two months of her sentence, she boarded Con Air, en-route to Chicago as a star witness for the government against a man who was higher up in the drug smuggling business than she had been; she had never met the guy and didn’t know who he was.  It was there that she ran into Nora and her sister, en-route to the same destination, for the same trial, except that Nora and her sister had actually known who this man was.  At first Piper refused to speak to them, even being seated next to Nora on a long flight without breaking their awkward silence.  Eventually, they become friendly for a little while, until Nora departs on her way back to what we can only assume is the prison where she has been serving her time.

A lot of Piper’s time in prison seems a bit mundane to me.  Perhaps this is because of the views that society imposes upon us of what prison life is supposed to be like, or perhaps it is because the series on Netflix has a bit more drama to it; the Piper in their seems to make more enemies than friends, but in the memoir, it isn’t like that at all.  The reason why she was able to survive came partially from her contacts with the outside world, and partially from the friends that she made on the inside, the women that were service with her.  Orange Is the New Black isn’t just a story about one woman, it’s really a story about all of them, and one that I highly recommend, as I have just loaned out my copy.

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Revenge (TV series)

For months, Melissa has been talking about the TV series Revenge, how she got into it with her boyfriend and then later her mother, and how, aside from it being utterly entertaining, it is also highly addicting.  I can vouch for both of those things, since I have now become an addict, but it took me a while to realize it and get passed the title, which does not bring pleasant things to mind…I had to open my mind, something that I have been starting to do more and more as of late.

I had caught part of an episode a while ago, but could not get into it at all since I had no idea of what was going on.  So, I dismissed Melissa’s offers of loaning me the first season…until last Tuesday when she brought it with her to my place.  I put it by my TV and forgot about it until she brought it up two days later over Red Mango, telling me to as least watch one episode.  On Friday, having a relaxing weekend of nothing spread before me, I decided to give Revenge a try.  I ended up watching six episodes that night and had to pry myself off of the couch…I was hooked.

For those of you that don’t know, Revenge revolves around main character Emily Thorne, who’s real identity is Amanda Clarke.  She is the daughter of David Clarke, a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for treason and later killed: a patsy.    Before he died, David Clarke put together a box of information so that his daughter would learn the truth, implicating, among many, the Graysons as having a huge part in his imprisonment; it had been their company that he had worked for.  Emily travels back to the Hamptons (where it all started) to see revenge, taking up residence at the beach house that her dad had once owned, which, coincidentally is right next door to the Grayson estate.  It is known that Victoria Grayson had had an affair with David Clarke and that she was in love with him; it is also known that she later betrayed him to save herself.

The series is labeled as an evening soap opera, and in many ways (betrayal, secrets, lies) it is, but it also resembles that of a thriller, which is why I think I like it so much (Tana French).  Behind all of the drama is a story, and although I, myself am nothing like Emily Thorne, I can’t help by root for her.  There is a vulnerability to her that she barely shows, but you can feel it bubbling underneath the surface, just waiting to explode.  Something interesting for the literaries, as I have been doing a bunch of googling in regards to this show, I found out that it was inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the character of Emily being based on the main character Edmond Dantès (a female version of course).  I have not actually read this book, but I know people who have and they loved it.  It also kind of makes me want to add it to my reading list.  Season three starts at the end of the month and I plan on watching it, in the meantime, I’ll be starting season two by next week at the latest.

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Visiting Red Hook Winery

This past Saturday, I dragged my boyfriend to Red Hook Winery for a private tour and barrel tasting.  It was a hot and humid day, and the walk was around twenty minutes each way.  I immediately regretted showering and putting on makeup before we left.  I showered not too long after we got home, but, to my chagrin, I spotted a pimple the next morning.

Upon our arrival, I was sad to see that it did not look exactly as I had expected – the word rustic in my head carved up a darker, cozier feel than the winery that I was presented with.  I had imagined exposed beams and brick (the urban rustic), and low, vaulted ceilings.  Instead, there were a few barrels in the center where a small group was doing a tasting, counters with a kitchen-like feel along the side, and ceilings that were neither low nor vaulted.

It took a few minutes for someone to attend to us, and my vision of the experience started to falter, but thankfully, it ended with that.  The guy who did our tasting and tour was very knowledgeable about the wines and the different processes of how they were made.  The wines that we tasted were chosen mostly to my preference, with a few others mixed in for comparisons (each time he gave us a comparison, it ended up being a wine that I didn’t care for).

After tasting seven different wines, he took us on the tour, showing us the machinery they used, explaining how the grapes went from being on the stems to being separated and crushed (sometimes with feet), to being in vats and barrels (French oak and steel).  He explained how they had faired last year after the hurricane had hit, since they are directly on the pier.  They had just finished their harvest and the wines were already in barrels, but they are not sure how those will fair and it is too early to tell.  Then, we went to the barrel room, where we tried three different wines directly from the barrels (my favorite part!).

I ended up purchasing a slightly buttery chardonnay (of which I was first introduced to the likes by Billy’s parents and now love) and a cabernet franc, although sadly, my favorite wine had to be left behind as it was sitting in a barrel.  It was a fun thing to do and I definitely plan on doing it again, but perhaps when it is a little cooler out.

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Mary Alice Monroe’s The Summer Girls

No matter where you go in the world, you cannot run away from the people that are close to your heart and the secrets that they keep for you.  In Mary Alice Monroe’s The Summer Girls, we are shown just that with the reunion of three half-sisters Dora, Carson and Harper, at the request of their grandmother, Mamaw, for her eightieth birthday.  All three girls travel to Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina, to their beloved Sea Breeze, in search of a glimpse into the carefree summers of their youth, and rediscover the bonds they once shared with each other.

Dora is a stay-at-home mom, caring for her autistic son, Nate, and facing the start of a divorce from her husband, who claims that she didn’t pay enough attention to him, which was true.  She is obsessed with caring for Nate, who is a smart child, but at the same time isn’t comfortable in group settings and, heartbreaking to Dora, can’t stand to be touched.  Dora lives in South Carolina, under an hour away from Mamaw, and therefore is the only one of the granddaughters that still visits every summer.  She brings Nate to Sullivan’s Island even though the invitation specified that it was a girls’ only weekend, because he husband refused to spend any time with him.  Dora is depressed over the way that her life has turned out and becomes jealous when she sees her son bonding with Carson.

Carson is a photographer living in California who recently lost her job due to the cancelation of the show that she was working on, and is in need of a change of scenery.  Unlike her sisters, Carson grew up a bit differently.  Her mother died in a fire when she was little, which led to her spending a few years with Mamaw at Sea Breeze (the name for Mamaw’s house on Sullivan’s Island) before her father (their father) Parker, came back to claim her and they moved to California.  Carson loves the ocean, and takes out her surfboard whenever she has a chance, until a close encounter with a shark frightens her and she retreats to the bay.  There is a good thing that comes out of the shark though; Carson makes a new friend, a dolphin, whom she names Delphine – which is how she and Nate start to connect a little: the dolphin fascinated him.  Carson starts dating Blake, a marine biologist who works with dolphins, and struggles with the possibility that, like her father, she too may have an addiction to alcohol.

Harper lives in New York with her mother, working at a major trade publisher as her mother’s assistant, describing their work relationship as Andy Sachs and Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.  Harper’s mother was displeased that she had decided to go to Sullivan’s Island, making it clear that she was only to be gone for one weekend.  After a phone call between the two, Harper decides to quit her job – further angering her mother – and stay for the duration of the summer.

From the beginning, Mamaw seems like she is hiding something, that this visit with her granddaughters is more than what it seems.  She unearths family secrets – mainly of Parker – that had long been buried, which threaten to pull them even further apart than they already had become…but will they be able to resurrect their strong bonds in order to move forward together?

The Summer Girls is a great novel for the end of the summer season, because throughout it, you get a sense that something is fleeting, life as each of these characters knows it is fleeting, and I feel like that sense that something is fleeting is felt around this time of the year.  The carefree days of summer are fading and the winter is on the horizon, moving towards us faster than we would like.  Monroe brings us back to the beginning of the summer season, where the hopes and anticipation still exist, and, as this is the first book in a trilogy that is set to revolve around these characters, it is only the beginning.