This, the flies, was not at all what I imagined when I pictured us traipsing through the rows of bushes heavy with plump berries waiting to stain our eager fingers.
I blame my romanticized notion of berry picking on Blueberries For Sal, which we re-read last week. I mean, who doesn't want to hang out with bears while gathering fruit?
We weren't in Maine so our berry excursion had no bears. There were some Amish women that Miss C stopped to listen to as they talked to each other, but that was brief because Miss C is a competitive berry picker. This also was not in my imagined experience, but as soon as her uncle taught her how to "tickle" the branch so that maximum ripe berries would fall into the bucket, it became a competition. Between her and everyone else who happened to be berry picking that day.
Anyway. Fruit flies. And 17 pounds of blueberries. And this awesome interview with the actress Helen Mirren.
The interviewer, Melissa Block, says,
"You have talked a lot over the years about roles for women, the paucity of good roles for women, and especially women who are older, at a different stage of their career..."
Helen Mirren responds,
"You know, I have to say I haven't talked a lot about that. Journalists have talked a lot about it to me, but I have not talked a lot about it. And I have always responded, for the last twenty years, with exactly the same response: 'Don't worry about roles in drama. That's not your concern. Worry about roles for women in real life. Because as night follows day, roles for women in drama will follow. And when you have a female president of America, which hopefully maybe you will very soon, when you have female heads of hospitals, of legal firms, of schools, of universities, you will have roles for women in drama.' And that has happened. That's absolutely happened."
I think what she's saying is: Art imitates life, yo!
With an English accent.
The rest of the interview is here.
