Yesterday we drove down to the University of Miami to hear the head of mission at the Polish embassy speak about Polish-American cooperation. The talk was held in the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science on a part of the campus I had never been to before. I had never been a fan of the UM campus; it always seemed a modern and uninteresting hodgepodge, with none of the stately beauty of northern colleges, or even UF and FSU. But I was charmed yesterday when I found, on the lawn in front of the institute, a collection of hammocks strung between palm trees. Some were green, others were orange, and a number were occupied by students, their bags resting on the grass below them. The hammock is a symbol of languid relaxation, and to find it in rows – like al fresco carrels – on a university green was as endearing as it was surprising. Of course, it’s exactly what one needs after a lecture on molecular science.
There have been numerous stories on social media about Tom Stoppard, who died on Saturday at the age of 88. My lasting memory of him is from 1999, when he won the Oscar for best screenplay (Shakespeare in Love). He accepted the award shortly after Roberto Benigni had accepted his (for Best Foreign Film), climbing onto the backs of seats in delight before arriving manically on stage. Stoppard, standing tall and composed at the microphone, said: “I’m acting like Roberto Benigni, only inside.”
Yesterday I remembered my first Thanksgiving away from home – in France. I was spending the year learning French, at a language institute in Aix-en-Provence, and eating my meals in the dreary university cafeteria. The meal that Thursday, as I recall, was liver and lentils. As usual, I filled up on baguette and cheese (La Vache Qui Rit) and, on the long walk back to my dorm, treated myself to a Toblerone bar, biting off each triangle, one by one, and then letting the chocolate dissolve between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, without any further contact with my teeth. That was the year I discovered the perfect diet plan: Walk a very long distance to a very bad meal and then walk back.
Last evening, coming out of a Publix we rarely shop at, I stumbled slightly stepping off the curb.
“I thought there was a ramp,” I said to Hania.
“Indyk myślał o niedzieli, a w sobotę łeb mu ścięli,” she replied. (The turkey thought about Sunday and on Saturday they cut off his head.)
It was not the ideal situation for the proverb, which is more about living in the moment and not looking ahead. But hearing it – for the first time – on Thanksgiving Eve pretty much made my holiday.
I heard Godwin speak in the main auditorium on Saturday, where he was paired with George Packer, the journalist who used to write for the New Yorker and now writes for the Atlantic. Despite the highly credentialed panel, led by a superb moderator – the novelist John Burnham Schwartz – the place was less than half full. There was the same disappointing turnout in the morning for Geoff Dyer, the brilliant writer on a myriad of subjects who most recently wrote a memoir. Do South Floridians have a bias against nonfiction? (Though Packer’s new book is a novel.) Or do they not like male writers?
The crowds came at 3 pm to hear the novelists Susan Choi, Kiran Desai, and Gish Jen. Then it was hard to find an empty seat, and where there was one, it was usually between two women. Though for the Q&A, only men made their way to the microphone.