danshamptons.com
DAN’S PAPERS
March 15, 2013 Page 35
The Many Delights of the English Garden By StACy DERMont
By the time you read this you may already know that I was not elected Pope. I am, however, ensnared in an Old World maelstrom of tradition and intrigue. This morning I woke up with a newfangled English expression in my head. Apparently now as I sleep I make up nonsensical English expressions. Before I make an appointment to meet with my friend the psychoanalyst every week at the same time, let’s try to figure this out. This morning a man’s voice in my head said “Her better half tided me over.” He was telling me about how he’d gotten home after a party and what he meant was that his wife, his “better half,” brought him home. Presumably she drove him home. Last night I held a small dinner party. One of the memorable topics of conversation was the popular hypothesis that Lyme Disease began on Plum Island and was brought to the mainland by deer. Local deer ride the ocean tides around to get from land mass to land mass. I also drank more wine than is my custom. But I think that my manic Anglophilia goes deeper. In my bid to realize my first-ever garden I’ve become obsessed with reading books and watching videos about English gardens and
English gardening methods. I figured that England may have a similar climate, and some of our early settlers were English, so maybe we tend to grow many of the same things. Then I got hooked. I watched every episode of the BBC drama series Inspector Lewis (when Inspector Lewis’ sidekick Hathaway said “Call a spade a shovel!” I melted) and every wacky episode of the BBC’s The Vicar of Dibley, scanning, searching every frame shot outdoors for clues about English gardening techniques. I picked up a few pointers—but my husband “just says no” to keeping sheep. I’m obsessed with a particular English how-to garden video. It’s about 45 minutes long and features a beautiful garden inside a fruit cage. (That’s right, Peter Gabriel did not make up the term “fruit cage.”) I find the host of this gardening video really unattractive, so I have to fast-forward through the part where he groans while he eats a strawberry. That’s okay—I get to the part about the “melon nets” faster. Little melon-filled twine hammocks hang from the greenhouse ceiling—love it! Turns out the “English garden” as we know it came about in the 1700s. The manor houses had formal gardens—bounteous flowers and other plants bursting along narrow pathways in loose color schemes was borne out of the aristocracy’s reinterpretation of peasant life. The “little people” had little space and little time to tend their home gardens, so they made the most of them. Flowers were more likely
grown for medicinal purposes than for looks. And roses can be tasty. So in addition to my reading, I tried to go further back in my video pursuits. Now I’m headover-heels hooked on the original television version of Upstairs, Downstairs. I remember my grandmother and her friends chattering incessantly about this series 40 years ago. I’d hoped there would be a lot of outdoor shots a la Howard’s End but no—it’s a simplistic sort of soap opera but features outstanding English actors of the day. Gordon Jackson plays the butler Mr. Hudson, who acts as a father to everyone, and Jean Marsh plays Rose, the longsuffering house maid. (You may remember these two from Sesame Street—they were featured in Ernie’s star-studded “Put Down the Duckie” number.) Mrs. Bridges, the matronly cook, and Ruby, the daft scullery maid, keep the home fires burning while Edward the footman is off fighting World War I. Right now it’s 1917 at 165 Eaton Place and the whole house—and I—are extremely worried about “Eddie” on the front in France. I don’t know what I’ll do if he dies. There’s only been one “major garden sighting” in the series so far. The garden had been largely converted over into a cemetery—not a good direction. The servants hardly ever get out, but they have fabu kitchenalia! Every weekend now I go off to estate sales buying crocks and wooden sppons because I have such pantry envy toward Mrs. Bridges. Is that crazy?
Why I Prefer Twitter to Facebook By MAttHEW ApFEl
People often ask me what I think of Twitter. I like it more than Facebook, mainly because it’s a great way to curate the web. Instead of reading one newspaper or even 10 of them, I just check my Twitter feed in the morning to see what all the people I’m following are talking about. This usually sets me off in the right direction. The key is to follow the right people to match your interests; my list has about 50 people on it and is pretty weird. I follow comedians and TV writers for humor—folks like Rainn Wilson and Chris Rock. I also follow hip-hop stars and pro athletes for unintentional comedy; trust me, Kanye West is a funny tweeter, whether he knows it or not. On the more serious side, I follow tech writers and business leaders (Pete Cashmore, Mark Cuban) who throw out random ideas and insights. I also follow a few close friends just because it’s lonely out there. I don’t tweet, though. Maybe it’s an age thing. Or an ego thing. My attitude is, I’ve never said anything original, so why start now. I also struggle to find a regular use for sending terse, written messages when so much of our world is about photos and videos. Who cares if I’m enjoying my veal piccata at La Parmigiana?
This might be changing. I’ve recently Here’s another cool thing about Vine: Each discovered an application that might be cool clip can only be six seconds long. Yes, this seems enough to get me tweeting. It’s a free app called awfully short. But that’s the point. Anything Vine and it’s definitely worth checking out. Vine longer would take forever to upload and consume wants to do for video what Instagram does for tons of space on your phone. This is how Vine photos: build a video-driven social network by can change the game—by training us to think making it incredibly easy to shoot and share differently about video and the world around us. clips from your phone, on the fly. Not surprisingly, Twitter is an investor. There are several cool features driving Vine represents the “here and now” of this movement. First, Vine is very easy to mobile video, but what’s coming next? Check use. You launch the app and a out a technology called Memoto. really simple tutorial appears. You It’s hardware—a tiny camera that won’t need it. Just press the camera mounts on your shirt collar, jacket icon to instantly start recording. or bag. You can even hang it from Here’s where it gets fun. Vine lets a necklace. It automatically snaps you make what I call “stop-action photos at 30-second intervals, videos.” You touch the screen whether you like it or not. It only and it starts recording. Let go shuts down when it gets dark or is and the recording pauses—but placed inside a pocket. The unit is you don’t lose your place. Touch vine: video and social media priced at $279 with one year of free again and it starts recording again, online storage. picking up right where you left off. You can Think of it this way: Memoto turns you do cuts, panoramas, wide shots to tight shots, into a walking security camera that captures whatever you want. It’s all controlled by images of the world around you just in case tapping and releasing the face of your you want them later on. Most images might phone; Vine stitches the clips together into a be lame, but it will sure come in handy during single video. those spontaneous moments when you Once you’re done, you can preview the don’t have a chance to pull out your phone. clip and delete it by tapping a large X onscreen. Sound creepy? Perhaps. But for sheer If you decide to post the clip, Vine lets you convenience, it’s pretty interesting. And as the type in a caption and share it instantly—to Vine’s use of web video continues to explode, don’t own social network, to Twitter or to Facebook. be surprised if future generations of Memoto Everything is right there for you, no need to capture videos instead of photos. save to your home computer or name the file. And then we’ll all be filmmakers.