Lifestyle
In some Alaska villages, hunting and fishing season starts with a “throwing party”
For generations, Yup’ik women have gathered for “throwing parties” in the coastal villages of Western Alaska to celebrate firsts (like the first seal caught by a young family member). In late April, a group of women gathered for a throwing party in the village of Mertarvik to help Mildred Tom celebrate her daughter’s graduation and the recent accomplishments of her grandchildren.
Emily Schwing for NPR
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Emily Schwing for NPR
Traditionally, throughout many Indigenous coastal communities in Western Alaska, when a young family member hunts their first seal of the season, their family hosts a party to distribute that fresh catch to women and elders in their community. They’re known as “throwing parties,” “seal parties,” or — in Yugtun, the predominant Indigenous language spoken in Western Alaska’s Yup’ik region — “uqiquq.” Over the years, the tradition has expanded to celebrate all kinds of firsts: graduations, the birth of a child or grandchild, a wedding — and the wide array of gifts has also expanded beyond subsistence food to include candy, kitchen and household utensils and little toys and trinkets.
The villages of Western Alaska are roadless, reachable only by airplane and people here rely heavily on birds, fish and marine mammals for food. The season for subsistence hunting and fishing kicks off in the springtime, with the arrival of migratory birds and returning fish runs, and that’s cause for celebration.
Mildred Tom recently hosted a throwing party in Mertarvik, 12 miles from the Bering Sea coast. After months of ordering and stockpiling gifts in her house, she puts the word out on a Sunday afternoon. Women in the community slowly gather in her front yard.
Tom wanted to celebrate her daughter’s graduation and a few of her grandchildren’s more recent achievements. “This is for all my kids and my grandkids,” says Tom. “For all their first catches… everything, mosquitoes, flies, you name it,” she laughs.
Once the elders find their place in the middle of the crowd, Tom, her daughter Teddy Ann Bell and her niece, Amy Kassaiuli dig their hands down into a blue plastic box on the front porch.
“One two, three,” they count in unison and then lean way out over the porch railing to fling fistfuls of goodies into the air. It all rains down on the crowd of women below. According to elders in Mertarvik, these women’s gatherings have been happening in Alaska’s Yup’ik region in the spring and fall for generations.
Women enjoy a seal party, 1981
YouTube
Before anyone in Western Alaska could order things online, women used to toss out pieces of the first spring catch: chunks of seal meat, some dried fish, strips of hand-smoked salmon. What Mildred Tom’s family gives away is more modern: a rainbow-colored array of candy, little toys, kazoos, socks, gloves and other treats and trinkets. But, she says, some things just aren’t fit to throw at the elders.
“Those wooden spoons, you know I asked my son ‘if I threw this wooden spoon would somebody get hurt?’ and he’s like ‘yeah! …You better not throw them mom.” So, she stuffs canvas tote bags with larger items to hand out: not just the wooden spoons, but also measuring cups and mixing bowls.
While Tom hosted this party to celebrate her family, she also says it was simply something her community needed.
Tom is one of about 200 people who live in Mertarvik. In the years since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tom says there have been far fewer gatherings in her community. So, she found this one particularly energizing. “Since COVID, we haven’t gotten used to having visitors or visiting around,” she says.
After about an hour, all of the gifts are distributed and younger daughters and nieces comb through the slushy snow for any missed bounty. Then everyone heads home with something special, including renewed bonds that will last until the next throwing party, which will likely come in the fall.
Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White).
FX
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FX
There has always been a metaphorical parallel between The Bear, the television show, and The Bear, the fictional restaurant on the television show. Even as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) transformed the Italian beef joint into the fancy restaurant of their dreams and wished for a Michelin star, there were undoubtedly locals who thought, “This is great and all, and I’m sure the food is good, but … I liked the beef sandwiches.” There’s still a window at The Bear to get them, but the focus is certainly elsewhere.
When it started, The Bear was mostly about the work that took place in the kitchen. The stresses of too many orders, territoriality from Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the arrival of Sydney, and the tightly wound but undeniably talented Carmy, making everybody both extremely stressed and significantly better. Over time, it shifted and grew, putting together beloved departure episodes like “Fishes” in Season 2, which introduced a boatload of guest stars for a flashback story of a disastrous family dinner before Mikey (Jon Bernthal) died. It spent time with Sydney’s family, it explored the way Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Mikey originally met, it followed Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen, and it went with Richie to work for Andrea (Olivia Colman). All these episodes were excellent. And there was still a kitchen. But the focus seemed to be elsewhere.
At times, the show seemed to have disappeared up its own nose, to the point where you weren’t watching the show The Bear as much as you were watching the phenomenon The Bear. There were too many real-life chef cameos, until it seemed like those chefs were checking a box on a list of “things all the cool kids do.” There were too many other cameos, culminating in a rare miss from the reliably charismatic John Cena. The show placed a lot of narrative weight on Carmy’s love interest, Claire (Molly Gordon) — weight that the underwritten character couldn’t support. But even if every experiment and every diversion had worked, viewers couldn’t be blamed for missing the close focus on the kitchen and the camaraderie — for thinking, “This is all really special, but I do miss the beef sandwiches.”
The fifth and final season dispenses with the departure episodes, and it mostly dispenses with cameos. It all takes place on one day, just after Carmy tells Richie and Sydney that he wants to step back from the restaurant and give it to them and Sugar (Abby Elliott) to run, and it mostly takes place right there at The Bear. Now that the clock set by Jimmy (Oliver Platt) has run out, his money has run out as well, and a series of cascading disasters puts Sydney, Carmy and Richie behind the 8-ball from very early in the day, not least because of the tension hanging over all three of them as they prepare to tell the staff about Carmy’s decision to leave.
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas).
FX
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FX
We spend this day mostly with the people we know best: our three leads, along with Sugar, Tina, Marcus, and the rest of the staff — including Luca (Will Poulter), who has stayed around to keep working with Marcus. Jimmy is running around with Computer (Brian Koppelman) and a young apprentice of his named Cheese (Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade), trying to figure out what to do about his finances since it is Jimmy, and not just the restaurant, who’s out of money.
This day takes a while to get cooking, so to speak. The first three episodes of the season are slow, the first two in particular. It’s pouring rain outside, the lighting is dim, and the score maintains the same contemplative melancholy for a long, long time. For about two and a half episodes, it feels like one extended, low-energy scene.
But after that, there’s a shift in tone as the staff looks to get through service, and through seven episodes (FX did not make the finale available in advance for critics), the rest of the season is terrific. What you see is the core story of The Bear, which is people trying to serve food and overcome problems, but through the lens of everything that has happened over the show’s run: Carmy’s retreat from his obsessiveness, Richie’s expansive (and inspiring) discovery of his gift for hospitality; Sydney’s stepping forward from second-in-command to leader; Tina’s complex relationship with the restaurant and her grief over Mikey; Sugar and Carmy’s relationship with Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis); the arrival of Marcus as a high-end pastry chef.
The question the show asks over the last four episodes is: Given all those digressions and flashbacks, given all those visits with families and others, given everything we know about where all these people have been and what they’ve experienced, how does a high-pressure service — of the same kind we used to see in that first season — look now? How do they behave differently, and how does their behavior read differently? How are they the same people we have always known, but at a different juncture, in a different context? How do their wins mean more to them, and to the audience?
On the one hand, making a season this way, there are fewer surprising grace notes, like “Napkins,” the Tina/Mikey flashback episode in Season 3, or “Worms,” the episode in Season 4 where Sydney hung out with her cousin (Danielle Deadwyler) and her cousin’s kid. The Bear feels less daring and more conventional.
But oh, when they have victories under pressure? Victories, large or small? It is immensely, richly satisfying. There’s also more comedy other than just the goofy Faks family than we’ve had in a few seasons; Richie is perhaps the MVP of the season, and that’s partly because of how often he gets to be really funny. Ayo Edebiri continues to be the show’s best reactor, showing Syd eternally a little bit surprised (dismayed?) that she’s chosen to throw in her lot with these people.
There are a couple of questions yet to answer in the finale, both little plot items and broader character resolutions. Over these seven episodes, though, there is much to cheer.
Lifestyle
John Cena wanted to step away from the WWE ring before he became ‘too slow for the show’ : Wild Card with Rachel Martin
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: First a confession: I have never watched a WWE match in its entirety. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the athleticism and the performance, it’s just not my thing. But there is something about John Cena I’ve never been able to shake.
Yes, he is a wrestling legend, but he has built a career as an entertainer that transcends the ring. The first time I saw him lead a cast was the 2019 family movie “Playing with Fire” and his rapport with kids in that film didn’t seem like acting at all. The man contains multitudes!
He co-stars with Eric Andre in his newest film, “Little Brother.”
Xie Miao and Yang Enyou in The Furious.
Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate
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Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate
There have been some fantastic movies released this year, and we know you can’t see them all. So we’re recommending four recent movies we missed that you should add to your watchlist: The Furious, Tuner, She’s The He, and Heresy.
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