Good Stuff: Poldark, Monk, and the cure for dragon feet

ByJohn Brown

For all of you longing for just one more season of Downton Abbey, I’ve found a new series from the BBC I think you’ll enjoy (thank you Duane Robinson for the recommendation).

It’s called Poldark and is set in the late 1700s in Cornwall, that little southwestern leg of England that juts out into the Atlantic. The dark-haired and handsome Ross Poldark returns to England after having fought in the American War of Independence and finds that his father has died, and he’s inherited the estate. Except the estate is in ruins.

The house, which is a long way from being anything grand, is a mess and being inhabited by the deceased father’s last two servants. A man and a wife who are equal parts louts and lushes. The land isn’t producing. The mine is closed. And Poldark has very little money.

By the way, when we think of British aristocracy, we most often think of dances and fine clothing and large tracts of lands. We seldom think of mines. But Cornwall has been mining tin for a very long time, and so were its lords. In fact, Cornwall was known outside of the Isles anciently, and some historians suggest that Cornwall was probably selling tin to the seafaring Greeks and Phoenicians many hundreds of years B.C.

So our young and handsome lord has come home to a mess and very little money. But he immediately sets about trying to repair things. And what unfolds is a wonderful story with love, action, humor, injustice, and villains plotting Poldark’s downfall.

We loved Downton in part for the refinement and high society (and Lady Grantham’s hilarious one-liners). However, Poldark isn’t about the top of the aristocracy. It’s about a man almost at the bottom. And many of those of the lower class who are his friends. There’s a refreshing earthiness about it even while you still have scenes of the high society and all that goes with it.

We just finished the first season and are hooked. In fact, I stood up and cheered at the end of the last episode we watched. So if you love English historicals, you’re going to enjoy Polkdark.

*

The humorous detective series Monk debuted in 2002 and ran for eight seasons. It was a huge hit. But because I’m a cave dweller I didn’t get to it until now. But, boy, I’m happy I did.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re in for a treat. Monk is one of those brilliant detectives like Patrick Jane in The Mentalist or Sherlock Holmes who sees all sorts of details that so many others miss. But unlike those guys, Monk has obsessive-compulsive disorder plus a number of phobias.

And so he can’t just walk in and stun everyone with his brilliance because at any moment he might get sidetracked straightening pictures or moving lamps or trying to avoid germs. In one funny scene he’s being chased on foot by someone intent on killing him, and he can’t help but touch the poles as he runs by. However, he’s not all helpless because he’s hired a female nurse, Sharona Fleming, to help him. And the interaction between the two of them adds another enjoyable dimension.

And so you get to experience all the awe of watching someone like Sherlock solve crimes plus laugh along the way. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud during a number of episodes.

If you like The Mentalist, Elementary, or Psych, I think you’ll really enjoy Monk.

*

This last review is for all of you who have dragon feet.

That’s what I had until two months ago. Dry dragon feet. So dry and with such sharp and jagged calluses that I regularly wore the area on my sheets around my feet to shreds. Nellie’s side of the sheets were nice and smooth. My side, after a year or two, looked like the dog had attacked it.

The calluses were so bad I periodically sanded them off with 400 grit sandpaper.

I also got stress cracks in the winter, which I tried to heal with band-aides and Neosporin. And that worked a decade ago. But the stress cracks were just getting more frequent and longer-lasting. This last winter I had three that stayed for weeks and weeks.

And so when I went into my dermatologist for my annual skin cancer check, I asked him if there was anything to be done. He said, “Get CeraVe cream with SA, salicylic acid. It has to have SA.”


After the appointment, I promptly drove to Walmart and walked down to the cosmetic aisle and purchased a little tub of CeraVe Renewing SA Cream. And I began to use it that night, putting socks on after I applied it. I applied it every morning and night.

And, miracle of miracles, a few weeks later my feet were normal human feet again. The calluses were gone. The stress cracks gone. The pain gone. My sheets love me. My wife loves me. I’m saving money on sand paper.

Folks, if you have dragon feet and want to be human again, let me suggest CeraVe with SA.

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  • Short Reviews: Icefall, Gravity, 42, Z, and Lynda.com

    ByJohn Brown

    The last few weeks I’ve been burning the candles at both ends with publication tasks. So no time for long reviews, but I still wanted to share.

    Icefall by Matthew KirbyIcefall by Matthew Kirby

    Wow. I loved this book. LOVED IT! It’s Norse historical fiction. A war is coming, and the king sends his children away to a remote fjord steading to keep them safe. He also sends a number of trusted warriors, a company of beserkers, a cook, a thrall, and a skald. But the fjord isn’t remote enough.

    It’s a fine tale full suspense, wisdom, surprise, and two lovely character arcs. It’s told from the point-of-view of Solveig, the king’s plain daughter. And her voice and the details Kirby includes totally transported me to their world. A wonderful tale, wonderfully told.

    Gravity

    I don’t know if I like 3D very much, but Bullock and Clooney do a marvelous job. Do you remember Tom Hanks in the excellent Castaway where he’s marooned on a tiny island? This is Bullock’s Castaway, except the physics of space are deadly. A great film.

    42

    This film is about Jackie Robinson, the first Black man to play in the White leagues of American baseball, and recounts his first year. It stars Harrison Ford as the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the guy who is determined to bring Blacks into the game he loves, as well as Chadwick Boseman who is new to me. I watched this with the whole family, and we were all enthralled. What a great story.

    World War Z

    I not a big zombie fan. So for me to recommend this means it had to be good. It was good. A delicious thriller with plenty of scare. I really liked the thriller feel to this. My wife and two youngest daughters sat on the couch holding each other’s hands. I sat in my La-Z-Boy throne heart pumping with the action.

    Lynda.com

    As I mentioned above, I’ve been working hard trying to get my books out the door. (Please, boys, just get out! It’s time for you to make your way in the world!) I’m using Adobe InDesign to format them for Kindle and EPUB, but I barely know the program. That caused some big problems. But then I subscribed to Lynda.com–a training website. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I did.

    For $25 per month (and you can just subscribe for one month), you get access to hundreds of high-quality online classes recorded by experts. Each class is usually a few hours long, made up of videos that are usually each shorter than ten minutes. The site allows you to create playlists of various courses you want to take, makes recommendations, and lets you know which videos in a class you’ve watched. It also includes a verbatim transcript so you search for the part of the video that’s interesting to you.

    The workhorse I’ve been using is “InDesign CS6 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad” by Anne-Marie Concepcion. It’s 7.5 hours long.  I’ve also been referring to parts of “InDesign CC Essential Training” by David Blatner and “Creating Long Documents with InDesign” by Mike Rankin. And I have 16 other courses in my playlist that I can’t wait to get to like “Designing a Book Cover” by Nigel French and others on graphic design, typography, and logos.

    If you need training on some software product, go out to Lynda.com and see if they have a course for you.

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    Good Stuff! The actual Christmas story

    ByJohn Brown

    It’s interesting how many things we’ve added to the accounts we have in the Bible.

    For example, nowhere does the Bible say that Mary rode a donkey. Mary might have walked. Or rode in a cart. Or gotten piggy back rides. We don’t know. We do know that there is no donkey mentioned in the record.

    It also doesn’t say she had the child the night they arrived.

    It only says she was “great with child” when they made the roughly 80-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And that “while they were there” in Bethlehem “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”

    So she had the baby sometime while they were there. That could have been during the first hour. But it could have also been a week or month later. We just don’t know.

    It doesn’t mention anywhere the word stable.

    Christ might have been born in a stable, or he might have been born in a cave, or inside the house, or out on the porch, or on the roof (lots of those places had flat roofs where they hung out). We just don’t know. What we do know is that he wasn’t born in a palace. And that they laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room in the inn. An odd circumstance for a king.  

    Notice as well that there weren’t multiple inns.

    It just says “the inn.” And if you look up that word in the Greek, it’s translated as “guest chamber” in the other spots where it’s used in Luke. So they could have been talking about the one guest room in the house where they were staying. Either way, we don’t have anything that says there was a mean innkeeper who later regretted turning the couple away or that Joseph went door-to-door looking for a place.

    We have no record in the account of three wisemen.

    It just says “wisemen.” So there might have been two of them. Or twelve. We don’t know. And it appears they came sometime after Jesus had been born because they first saw the star of his birth in the east and only then set out to find him. They might have been coming from Persia, hundreds of miles away. Or they could have been living in Bethphage, a mile to the east of Jerusalem. Either way, they didn’t know they should travel to Bethlehem because it says they went and talked to Herod first, in Jerusalem, and asked “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”

    The question freaked Herod out (if you’re the current king, you kind of want to know who else is claiming your throne), and so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes to discuss it, and those guys said the prophecies said it would be Bethlehem. And so Herod met with the wisemen again and told them to go there. And only then did they go down to Bethlehem. So it doesn’t appear the wisemen were there the night of the birth.  

    There’s no record of camels hanging out with the baby either. Or sheep. Or goats. There’s not a lot there. But what is there is interesting.

    Now, I want to go on record stating I have no problem speculating about the event and imagining what it might have been like. I love to do it. Good grief, I write fiction.

    In fact, for many years I figured I needed to get in on the Christmas noun gig. You know what I mean. Every year we get heart-warming books about new Christmas nouns. We’ve had Christmas sweaters, Christmas jars, Christmas boxes, Christmas candles, Christmas carols. This year I see there’s one about Christmas fudge and other about a Christmas train. So I figured I’d do one. Mine would be about the Christmas rat. A little fellow who decided to snuggle up with the babe instead of giving him a nibble. One of these days I will get that hungry rat story written.  

    In the meantime, while there’s a lot of good stuff we’ve added to make the event special, it’s also nice to know what the record actually does say. Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s helpful when dealing with others to know what was recorded about this event that is so significant to the largest religion in the world.

    And so the last bit of good stuff I recommend this month are the two brief accounts we have. The first one is in Matthew 2:1-16 and tells the story of the wisemen. The other is in Luke 2:1-20 and features some shepherds.

    Merry Christmas!

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  • Brown’s Breakfast Burrito, The Way Back

    ByJohn Brown

    The Way Back

    GULag is the acronym for the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems in the early 1900’s. In Romanized Russian that’s “Glavnoye upravlyeniye ispravityel’no-trudovih lagyeryey i koloniy” which means “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”  The term “Gulag” quickly morphed to represent the camps themselves, which housed a wide range of convicts and many political prisoners.  It’s also come to stand for the repressive Soviet system with its arrests, interrogations, transport in unheated cattle cars, forced labor, destruction of families, years spent in exile, and early and unnecessary deaths.

    The Gulag was a meat grinder. An estimated 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.

    Some of those camps were in Siberia, one of the most remote and harsh places on earth. Sawomir Rawicz was one of those who claimed to have escaped such a camp in Siberia. He wrote about it and his subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India in The Long Walk. That story inspired Peter Weir to write and direct The Way Back, which tells the story of a group of men who attempt to escape out of Siberia, across the Mongolian wastes, and into India.

    The film stars Ed Harris (who is interesting in anything he does), Colin Farrel (also starred in Ondine), Mark Strong (the villain in Sherlock Holmes), Saoirse Ronan (the fabulous lead in Hanna), and Jim Sturgess (the boyfriend in One Day). One of the group is an outright murderer. The others are all political dissidents—a teacher, priest, businessman, artist, etc. I found the performances honest and believable. But it wasn’t just the characters–the screenwriters subtly used syntax and word choice to transport the viewer.

    But more important than the believability were the various tensions and stories contained within the escape plot. Each of the men, and the lone girl, has a story, and the film gives space for the stories to be told. As for the lone girl: Ronan was amazing in Hannah.  She’s amazing here. Furthermore, the role she played here leavened the whole film with something it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

    The story will surprise you, make you shed a tear, think, and laugh. When you’re finished, you’ll talk about it. It’s that kind of a film. If you like dramas with action and suspense, I think you’ll like this film.

    As always, use KidsInMind.com to see if it contains things you might find objectionable.

    Brown’s Breakfast Burrito

    How about a meal that’s so good you’ll want to slow way down to savor each bite? A breakfast that will keep you full until lunch? A tasty repast that isn’t loaded with mind-numbing calories? Let me suggest the John Brown breakfast burrito. It’s full of succulent umami, bursts of piquant pepper, healthy mushrooms, and lots of filling protein. And it only takes about 10 minutes to prepare. The recipe below makes one burrito. Scale it up to feed more.  

    VEGGIES

    • 1/4th red bell pepper, chopped into small pieces
    • ½ to 1 cup of mushrooms, sliced
    • Dash of thyme

    EGGS

    • 2 eggs (120 calories)
    • 1 T milk or half-and-half
    • Salt
    • Pepper
    • Dash paprika
    • Dash garlic powder
    • Dash onion powder

     THE REST

    • Pam cooking spray
    • 1 tortilla (150 calories)
    • 1 ounce of Jimmy Dean Premium Pork sausage (90 calories)

    If you don’t have one of the spices, don’t freak out. It will still taste great. But the spices really take it to the next level. Here are the instructions. 

    1. Start with your veggies. Spray pan with Pam and sauté peppers for two minutes on medium high heat. Add mushrooms. Give them a spray of Pam and dash with salt. Cover until the mushrooms sweat (release their water).
    2. Next is the sausage. While mushrooms are cooking, start your sausage frying.
    3. Finish veggies. Uncover mushrooms. Just before you finish them, sprinkle with a dash of thyme. When the spice becomes fragrant (its smell rises up in delicious glory from the pan), remove the veggies from the pan and cover to keep them warm.
    4. Cook eggs. Turn heat down to medium low. Beat eggs, milk, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Spray pan you used for veggies with Pam, then cook your scrambled eggs on medium low heat, stirring and scraping the whole time. And keep it on medium low—no browning or burning of eggs allowed! Cook until the eggs glisten with the last bits of moisture. Remember: you don’t want dry desert eggs. You want soft succulent ones.
    5. Assemble the glorious concoction. Put the veggies, scrambled eggs, and sausage in your tortilla and wrap it up smartly. (What does “smartly” mean? I don’t know, but it sounded good, didn’t it?)
    6. Go to heaven and return singing. This means you eat your breakfast burrito, but you do it savoring each bite. This is food meant to be enjoyed, not gobbled.

     As for calories, I estimate about 360 for the main ingredients. Veggies really don’t count in my book. Come on! Nobody gained weight eating turnips. But I’ll round it up to 400 just to be safe. Add in a glass of water and a piece of fruit and you’ve got a 450 calorie breakfast that starts your day off with delight, gratitude, and the joy of redemption. It could also make those you cook for kneel down upon the floor in well-deserved homage. And that’s always a nice thing for the cook.

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  • Good Stuff! The winning Lady Rebels and Lady Tigers

    ByJohn Brown

    RichRebelsBB360x240Cody Lundgren, Jesse Calder, and Louie Stewart led our Lady Rebel basketball team to a 10- 10 record in the regular season and a 2-2 performance at the state tournament that earned our girls second place in our region and sixth at state.

    It’s interesting that the wins and losses were split right down the middle, which means it wasn’t a losing season, but it wasn’t a winning season either.

    Or was it?

    Now, I love it when our kids win. But I’ve never believed that winning should be the ultimate measurement or objective of high school sports. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it’s possible to win every game and become the state champion and utterly fail. Because, for me, high school sports are not about winning games. They are about the lessons that can only be learned by striving for excellence through competition.

    Lessons such as learning to:

    • Work hard
    • Work smart
    • Push yourself over a long period to obtain something you desire
    • Not give up in the face of adversity
    • Not give up even when you’re behind or the odds are against you
    • Play on a team, including supporting other team members in their roles, especially during the bad times
    • See mistakes and losses as feedback and triggers for learning instead of labels
    • Exert control over your future instead of feeling nothing you do makes a difference
    • Deal with both success and defeat
    • Deal with competitors who haven’t quite yet caught the vision

    I could list many more. The opportunities for learning key lessons about winning in life litter the ground in our gyms and on our fields and on our mats.

    The question is: did our coaches help our kids seize those opportunities? Did they help them learn what really matters and have a good time doing it?

    I’m pleased to report from what I and others observed that the three amigos listed above helped our girls do just that.

    They built positive and fun relationships.

    They asked the girls to meet high standards of performance and kept the girls busy in practice with useful drills that built skills.

    They taught them instead of yelled at them, and they praised them when they did well and when they attempted to do well but weren’t yet able to execute the skills right.

    They taught them to play with skill, not with cheap shots, as was displayed by one team at the state tournament that had learned to punch the opposing team’s stomachs when they went up for shots.

    They demonstrated, by example, how to deal with losses and mistakes.

    Coach Lundgren also worked in a demonstration of how tricky the lines on the court can be for old guys, tripping them and causing them to slide across the floor (grin).

    This was a winning season for me. Coaches are really just a certain type of teacher, and I’m sure they have things they want to improve in their curriculum. But this was a fabulous season full of opportunities to learn the things that really matter in life.

    TabionaTigersBB360x240And it wasn’t just the Lady Rebels learning these kinds of lessons. For those of you that didn’t go to the tournament, you should know about the Lady Tigers from Tabiona. They’re one of our region opponents. One that we beat both times we met them in the regular season.

    In our second game of the tournament, one of our girls, one of our top rebounders, a demon under the basket, broke her hand. She knew it hurt like heck, enough to bring tears to her eyes, but didn’t know she’d broken it, and so she played the last quarter and a half with a broken hand. (Is there a lesson there?) Well, Tabiona was our next game.

    Now stop and think about this. We beat Tabiona both times this season. I think we’ve probably beaten them a lot more than they’ve beaten us these last few years. You know what you feel when a team keeps beating you.

    So the Lady Tigers found out that one of our starters, one of the players that was supposed to have played them the next day, had broken her hand. And the girls, not their coaches, decided to get her . . . flowers.

    Flowers. For a player on their region opponent’s team.

    Who does that?

    Well, the Lady Tigers do. I talked to their coach, and he said it was all the girls’ idea.

    They’re learning things down in Tabiona that go far beyond basketball.

    And they’re learning things that go far beyond basketball here, thanks to Lundgren, Calder, and Stuart.

    That’s good stuff, baby. That’s excellent stuff.

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  • Good Stuff! Just Mercy

    ByJohn Brown
    Just Mercy movie poster

    In other countries, the government can throw you in jail for no cause. It can keep you there indefinitely awaiting trial. And it can manipulate the trial to prevent you from mounting a defense.

    In other countries, there is no trial by your peers. Instead the government is prosecutor, judge, and jury. 

    Our criminal legal system has so many wonderful protections in it. But there are times, as good as it is, when it convicts people of wrongs they didn’t do. Including murders they did not commit.

    I can’t imagine being in that position. One day I’m pursing my dreams, enjoying my family, going to the movies, walking my dog, hiking. The next I’m hauled off to jail, convicted, and put on death row.  And nobody will listen to me.

    Luckily this doesn’t happen in the vast majority of cases. But it does happen. And if it happens to you, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone show up one day and say, “I’m going to work like a dog to reveal the truth and get you out of here.”

    The movie Just Mercy tells the true story of just such a case. Walter McMillian is on death row for a murder he did not commit. And then one day a young defense attorney shows up and says he’s come to help.

    This movie will have you on the edge of your seat and make you think. There are two or three moments where some crass language is used. So check it to make sure it meets your requirements. If you end up watching, I think you’ll really enjoy this tale. We did.

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  • Cranford, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Nebo Grotto Falls

    ByJohn Brown

    Cranford

    For those of you who love stories like Pride and Prejudice, have I got a TV mini-series for you—the BBC’s five-part Cranford.

    The series is set in the 1840’s in England in the fictional village in North West England and focuses primarily on a handful of the town’s single middle-class ladies who are forced to deal with lace-eating cats, marriage prospects, and prank valentines, as well as death, loss, and a changing culture. There are also two stories about the male inhabitants woven in as well—one about a new doctor and another about a young boy of the lower class who has a chance for something better.

    I will confess that when I saw this arrive in the Netflix envelope, I wasn’t at all excited. The cover’s too cold–all blue with a bunch of sour-looking women. In fact, I decided not to watch it. But the laughter of my wife and daughters lured me back upstairs to the TV, where it took about seven seconds for me to revise my earlier decision. The characters are delightful. In fact, some of their lines are such a joy to listen to, we had to rewind many parts to watch them again and again.

    The series is based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, a British novelist, which were published between 1849 and 1858. The sets made us feel as if we where there. For example, one of the things I noticed was the lighting. Incandescent bulbs weren’t invented until the late 1800’s and took many more years to find their way into most houses. So the directors, instead of making it feel all Hollywood, seemed to rely heavily on the light at hand, as those inhabitants would have. When a scene was in a house, it felt as if they were only using the natural light coming in the windows or the candles being burned. Of course, this is just one of the many details that made this series an excellent period piece.  

    The best news of all is that I just found out there’s more–a two-part special called Return to Cranford. I can’t wait until it comes in the mail. Don’t let the cover fool you. This is a wonderful mini-series. It has poignant and sad moments, but is also full of humor and wit.  And the ending is perfect.   

    Kroger’s Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

    I love balsamic vinegar and oil on bread. But I never think to make it. And I never thought of what else it might go with. That was until a relative left behind a bottle of Kroger brand Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.

    I just happened have a homemade bagel handy, squirted out a bit onto a plate and dipped.  Lovely.  So then I tried it on salad and even splashed some on tomato or turkey sandwiches. It’s delicious. Only 80 calories for a whole tablespoon. In fact, it was so good we bought four more bottles because I don’t want to run out.

    Kroger, of course, is a grocery conglomerate. In Utah, it owns the Smith’s, and that’s where you’ll find this delight.

    Nebo Grotto Falls

    The mountains and canyons of Utah are literally desert oases. That’s where our clear streams run, the forests grow, and the wildlife congregates. In the summer, the canyons are a refreshing source for cooling winds. All this meant that, as I grew up, “forest” and “refreshing” became intertwined in my mind. Only when we moved to Ohio did I learn that some forests can also be muggy and hot and not at all refreshing to a desert boy perishing in the humidity.

    Because I love Utah’s canyons so much, we hike and walk them all throughout the summer.  We recently went down to enjoy the Stadium of Fire and the heat (yes, I love dry heat) in Provo. However, we didn’t just hang out in the city. We made time to hike a few trails in the surrounding canyons.

    We love Rock Canyon (just above the Mormon temple in Provo), Hobble Creek Canyon (Springville), as well as Mapleton and Santaquin canyons.  However, there’s another special place that you’ll want to visit should you find yourself in the Provo area. It’s a short little hike just off of S Canyon Road (also known as Nebo Loop Road) which runs from Payson south through the Mt Nebo Wilderness area to Highway 132.

    The trail head is just a few miles into the canyon south of Payson and is marked with a simple sign that says “Grotto.” There’s a little bit of parking on the side of the road. The hike is 0.6 miles along a wooded stream.  The grotto itself is more than worth it.  You can find directions here: http://www.utah.com/thingtodo27245.htm

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4 Comments

  1. You sucked me right in with your teaser, but I’m so glad I found out about the creme!

  3. Love it when you find cool stuff and share, John -It is how i found you in the first place ( your ‘Simply Three’ review).

    Will definitely check out Poldark.

    As for Monk: A family fav of ours years ago. Watched it real time when it was on. Then introduced daughter to it as she grew up -we binge-watched it to its conclusion [2x for me]. Hope you and yours enjoy it as much as we did.

    Lastly, good review of what sounds like a good product. I never had those specific problems -but i know folks that do; i’ll pass along the suggestion.

    Always a joy to see an update, John -keep’em coming.

    Best of success on your current initiatives,
    Regards,
    Steve

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