Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

Martin Scorsese, John T. Scopes, and Marc Maron walk into a bar...

This newsletter hasn’t been around for very long, but it’s already reminding me that we have the potential to create new experiences and meet new friends when we put things out into the world.

A few weeks ago, when I wrote about nature in New Haven, I received a comment from reader LB, who said the post reminded her of the writing of a man named Lary Bloom. She said she knew Lary and asked if I’d be interested in an introduction.

This was an intriguing offer indeed.

I knew of Mr. Bloom, a veteran Connecticut journalist (and Vietnam veteran), because of his book of essays, I’ll Take New Haven: Tales of Discovery and Rejuvenation, which was published last fall.

When I first heard about the book in November, I immediately bought a copy, then read — with great pleasure — its wonderful stories of our city and the people who live here. I recommended it to friends, and I know of at least one who bought his own copy.

I could easily figure out from his essays that Lary and his wife Suzanne Levine (and their dog, Lucca) live on my walking route to East Rock Park. But for whatever reason, I didn’t reach out to thank him for sharing his writing with readers like me.

Enter LB and her comment to my newsletter.

I responded to her and asked how she knew of Lary, considering she doesn’t live anywhere near Connecticut.

LB, who is a novelist, explained that she met Lary and Sue at a writing workshop a few years ago in Italy. They became great friends and have stayed in touch ever since.

So I eagerly accepted LB’s offer of an introduction, and I soon found myself getting to know Lary and Sue over grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup at Poppy’s, a recently-opened local eatery. We had a lovely time, and — instant social life! — they generously invited me to join them at an upcoming event honoring Lary and his book.

So that’s how I came to meet two Elm City neighbors — and new friends — thanks to someone who lives hundreds of miles away. All because I put this thing you’re now reading out into the world.

On to this week’s list…

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The Best…

…Audiobook I Listened to This Week

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Penguin Random House, 2017) — By David Grann

On a recent day, I realized that I was due for a new audiobook. So I opened the Audible app and came across Killers of the Flower Moon, a title I had only heard of in the context of the long-awaited Scorsese-DiCaprio-De Niro movie of the same name.

Not knowing anything else about the book, I thought I would give it a shot and downloaded it.

Well, two days later, I needed another new audiobook, because I had already polished off this one (though I didn’t really like the narration — I would suggest reading the book instead).

In the hands of journalist David Grann (author of The Lost City of Z, which I also recommend), the story unfolds like a mystery, primarily focusing on a series of murders that occurred within the Osage community in Oklahoma a century ago.

The Osage arrived in Oklahoma — then known as Indian Territory — in 1872, after they had been “removed” from Kansas. (The U.S. government preferred to have folks who looked like Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family settle on the rich and fertile Kansas terrain.) But ironically, the Osage’s new land turned out to be sitting on huge oil deposits.

So by the 1920s, with oil derricks sprouting up all around them, the Osage had become the wealthiest community per capita in the world. But the same mentality that had forced them off their land in Kansas also showed up in Oklahoma, as white people used every tactic imaginable to separate the Osage from their riches.

The ensuing conspiracy is astonishing and heartbreaking in its depth and breadth, encompassing not only local political, financial, legal, and medical leaders and institutions, but also state and federal law.

And a key part of it was only revealed because of the tireless efforts of Tom White, an investigator representing an agency that would become the FBI.

Grann follows White as he and his team piece together the evidence that would lead to sensational trials. These court cases, the author writes, garnered even more national newspaper coverage than the famed Scopes “Monkey” Trial, which had taken place just a few years earlier in Tennessee.

The tale remains fascinating a century later, with Grann’s research adding previously unknown insights.

There are layers to this story that I won’t spoil, but be prepared to be outraged as Grann unfurls them — especially in the third part of the book.

But I think this outrage is healthy and good. Because history has given us so many examples of genocide, human bondage, and other acts of people treating each other in sadistically inhumane (yet government-sanctioned) ways, it would be easy to ignore the story of a small Native American community from a hundred years ago.

But the reverberations of this story are still felt today. And as we also know from history, what happened there could happen anywhere.

I’m hopeful (though a bit skeptical) that Scorsese’s retelling of the Osage story will be spiritually faithful to Grann’s book and will remind all who see it that history shouldn’t be ignored, no matter how uncomfortable it can make us feel.

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…Movie I Revisited This Week

Inherit the Wind (1960) — Directed by Stanley Kramer
Available for rent on various streaming services; available free on Tubi and Pluto TV

The reference in Killers of the Flower Moon to the Scopes “Monkey” Trial stuck with me, because it showed how the Osage cases, which were considered so sensational at the time — even more sensational than the Scopes Trial! — had fallen completely out of the public consciousness until the publication of Grann’s book.

Meanwhile, the Scopes Trial — in which a Tennessee high school teacher was tried in 1925 for violating a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools — remains with us today. Various iterations of the same debate have spun through our public education and legal systems at various times over the past century.

The trial was a showcase for two legal titans of the era: Clarence Darrow, who defended teacher John T. Scopes, and William Jennings Bryan, who led the prosecution.

I can’t think of those men without thinking of the original film of Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer’s fictionalized version of the trial starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March (based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, written as a response to McCarthyism).

I had loved the movie as a teenager but found myself wondering: would it hold up more than 25 years later? So shortly after I finished Killers of the Flower Moon, I fired up the ol’ Amazon Prime Video machine and rented Inherit the Wind.

Short answer: it still holds up. In fact, I found it to be far more profound today, now that I’ve lived in this country for as long as I have, than when I saw it as a more innocent high school kid in the 1990s.

I also have a greater appreciation for Kramer’s direction as well as Ernest Laszlo’s vivid photography, which brought the stage play to cinematic life. And the acting performances by Tracy, March, and Gene Kelly remain monumental (also: for the Bewitched fans, Dick York!). The film is worth your time.

(For a full review, I defer to Roger Ebert’s piece from 2006 in his “Great Movies” series. I miss Roger’s writing.)

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…Comedy Special I Watched This Week

Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark (2023)
Airing on HBO networks and streaming on HBO Max

I know, I know. You’ve tried listening to Marc Maron’s podcast and you don’t like him. You found him abrasive during his monologue, and you didn’t even get to the interview. Or if you got to the interview, you found him annoying talking to Keith Richards or Lorne Michaels or President Obama or whatever.

I get it. Believe me, I get it. Even though I haven’t missed a podcast episode of his in more than a decade, I wrestled with whether to write about his new comedy special at all, if maybe we were all best off if I just kept this one to myself.

And yet… here we are.

I understand if I’ve lost some of the audience at this point. But if you’re a fan of his work or if you don’t know his work, and you’re willing to hear jokes about aging, dementia, dying, suicide, grief, fascism, anti-Semitism, Christianity, abortion, drug-addicted children, climate disasters, and probably other potentially triggering topics, then have I got a comedy special for you!

Let me put it this way: the first words out of his mouth are, “I don’t want to be negative, but… I don’t think anything’s ever gonna get better ever again.”

And yet. AND YET. There is something life-affirming and inspiring about watching this man find comedy in the darkness, the sadness, the existential dread that we all contemplate (some of us more frequently than others).

Maron knows from sadness. In May 2020, his girlfriend and collaborator, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, unexpectedly died at age 54 from an undiagnosed form of leukemia. Seeing him grapple with how to integrate her loss into his life (and therefore into his comedy) is both moving and transgressive. It’s not for everyone.

But if you love art, and you’re up for the topics I listed above, this is an opportunity to quite literally watch an artist at work as he unfurls his magnum opus.

(Now that I’ve said all that, you can watch the trailer here.)

(But yeah, I get it if you don’t want to watch. It’s okay. I’m a little sad about it, but we can still be friends. No, seriously. It’s fine.)

(However, if you watch the special and want to hear MORE about it, ask me about a podcast episode that reader Zoë M. recommended to me.)

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