Something A Little Bit Different This Week

Years ago, I used to have a sidekick to my weekly “Incidentally, Iris” column called “Incidentals from Iris” – tidbits of information gleaned from a variety of sources. 
 
I’ve never quite broken the habit of looking for the odd, the distinctive, the tantalizing and the interesting bits of news. 
 
Here’s a few entries that have recently grabbed my attention: 
 
Lots of buzz around Ken Burns’ newest documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” which aired this week. The three-part series, which took years to make, focuses on the sticky question of immigration and Americans’ response to the plight of the Jews of Europe. While drinking my morning coffee and glancing through The New York Times obituary section in early September, an obit’s headline caught my eye: Amy Stehler: 67, Who Made Acclaimed Documentaries. 
 
She was married to Ken Burns from 1982-1993. She played a pivotal part in Florentine Films, the company behind Burns’ series “The Civil War.” In the last paragraph of the long obit, Ken Burns said the following: “I don’t think you’d have ever heard of me had she not been there.”
 
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Here’s another incidental also gleaned from The New York Times obit section. Remember Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Walnuts on “The Sopranos”? He died in July, 2022 at age 79. He was the eccentric gangster who didn’t allow anyone on the set to touch his two silver wings of hair, which he blow dried and sprayed himself. 
 
The interesting tidbit? In his youth, he started running with a bad crowd and ended up in Sing-Sing Prison, a maximum security facility in Ossinning, New York. While there, he saw a troupe of ex-convicts perform for the inmates. His reaction? “I can do that.”
 
He started as an extra in “The Godfather Part II.” And the rest is history. 
 
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These are hard times and many of us are exhausted, burned- out, and in need of re-charging. An article by Elizabeth Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal, on August 24, 2022, notes that neuroscientists are finding that water can help. Spending  time near oceans, lakes, and rivers can provide a range of benefits including reducing anxiety, easing mental fatigue and rejuvenation. Just being near water gives our brain a break from intense, focused attention that much of daily life requires and that is cognitively depleting. This is great news for those of us – myself included – who abhor water aerobics classes and swimming in general. 

 
Speaking of water, while in Mystic, CT recently, I was treated to a grand tour of the Mystic Seaport Museum, the nation’s leading maritime museum. Comprising 19 acres, the museum includes a recreated New England coastal village, a working shipyard, and is a repository for more than 500 historic watercrafts. 
 
A tour of one of the whaling ships made me realize how primitive and cramped the shipmates’ quarters were. But in spite of the claustrophobic conditions, works of art emerged. This is a picture of a keepsake made by one of the crew for his sweetheart back home. (IGNORE the baseball in the lower right-hand portion of the picture – no idea where that came from!) 
 
This item, painstakingly made from tiny bits of shells and rocks and what looks like beads, caught and held my attention – once again reinforcing man’s continual, primal need for love,  devotion and connection. 
 

 
I couldn’t resist buying a book to help me remember this awesome museum. I chose Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick, an exhaustive volume documenting the truth and tribulations behind the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. (Tee hee. It will take me all winter to read – over 350 pages plus Notes.) 
 
Incidentally, Mystic, CT has the best lobster rolls ever – not cheap, but utterly delicious.
 
Until next week, Keep Preserving Your Bloom.
 
Iris Ruth Pastor