Marsha Jacobson's Blog, page 2

Hot Takes

This old badass is lovin’ these reviews!

A Friend’s Theory

A friend opines that the coldest temperature people are comfortable at is equal to their age. I laughed it off, but now I’m not so sure. This (young) guy just walked into the coffee shop—where I’m wearing layers and have kept my coat on!

Podcast Coming Up!

I’m thrilled to be a guest on Susan Guthrie, Esq.’s very valuable podcast, “Divorce & Beyond.” We’re recording today. Stay tuned for the drop date!

Kvelling

So proud of this 5-star review. Thank you, Reader Views!

A 60-Year Friendship

We laugh, we cry, we dumpling.

Spring is Springing?

Strange to be twelve days into Spring in New York when we didn’t really have a winter.

Productive?

I might not be the most diligent person working in this coffee shop, but I bet I’m the most hydrated.

Gardens and Me

A seed catalog addressed to “Current Resident” came today. Garden season is approaching the northeast, and this current resident is not buying. I’ve learned that my inner gardener likes her gardens provided by lovely walks through the parks and two lush botanical gardens nearby. I planted my final garden some years back. It was too far from the spigot, making watering arduous in the summer heat. The shade of too many trees came at it from all sides. (Why had I thought that patch was sunny?) It lured rabbits. (What? We had rabbits?) I grew garden-weary. So very garden-weary. What on earth had driven me to carve out a garden in the far reaches of the yard? Oh, right. The celebratory table at summer’s end, all the kids home.

That final dinner—the green beans, the marinated cucumbers and piles of tomatoes, the roasted eggplants—all of it, except for one woody zucchini among the good ones on the grill, came from the supermarket. I lifted my glass to the approaching autumn and the leaves that would soon cover both the garden and the regret of a non-gardener who thought she could remake herself.

On The Cutting Room Floor – Joke’s On Me

As readers of my memoir, The Wrong Calamity, know, my years in Japan transformed me. Here’s a Japan incident that didn’t make it to the book: On a day she couldn’t make it, I substituted for a friend who had a gig dubbing Japanese movies into English. In a darkened, empty movie theater, the other dubbers and I had music stands with clamped-on lights illuminating thick English scripts. I was to dub two women, and someone had highlighted the star’s lines in yellow and a minor character’s in pink. As we watched the film, listening through enormous headphones, we were to speak our English lines into our mics, in synch with our assigned characters’ Japanese lines. I threw myself into it. Like the trained singer I was, I breathed from my diaphragm, hoping this was how actors breathed. My voice soared, dropped, lilted, turned crisp, fearful, exasperated—whatever the plot required.

At the end, the other dubbers were given their pay and escorted out. I was asked to stay. Two guys appeared from the projection room and asked if I could come back the next day. I couldn’t. I had to work. The day after that? “Sorry. I’m free only Tuesday mornings.” “Okay! next Tuesday!” Obviously I’d killed it. They loved me! I could act after all! Not one to leave well enough alone, I asked the man who handed me my pay, “Was I okay? Did I interpret the characters the way you wanted?” “Oh,” he said, “we don’t care about that.” Why had they asked me back? Because I’d been the only one who could speak English smoothly, without getting thrown off by the Japanese playing in my ears. There went my acting career.

A Hot Tip About a Great Read

I’m always on the lookout for a new book by Marcia Biederman, and with her recent release, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, she’s outdone herself. With her outstanding journalism credentials and sly wit, Biederman skillfully untangles the knotty mix of seamy characters who transform themselves like escape artists, chaotic trials with locked-up witnesses and free-to-wander suspects, bungling investigators, foxy journalists, and deadly consequences. In the very beginning, young boys see some bags floating in the water, and off we go. What follows is a story of desperate women, those who broke the law to help them, and those who broke the law to help themselves. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.