Friday, September 22, 2006
Good Movie
Por Sie No Te Vuelvo a Ver (If I Never See You Again). Five geezers run away from a nursing home and play in a band for a cantina dancer. Poignant. Funny. Mexican -- they really make a great movie.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Othello
We watched Othello, Moor of Venice today. Lawrence Fishburn plays Othello and Kenneth Branagh plays Iago, the villain. Then we read the preface to Othello from the Complete Works in one volume from a dusty old book left at 510 Jefferson Street by Jill Woodburn. The film was mentioned by Jon Smith, the Hanover College professor of Shakespeare.
We loved it. Rozz was struck by the dramatic qualities of Larry Fishburn in an action-adventure movie we saw recently and so I decided to get the movie.
The performances of Fishburn and Branagh knocked my socks off. I think Fishburn surely must be one of the most powerful and underrated actors in movies today.
I've been aware of Branagh's talent for a good while. (He, of course, proved he was a fool by letting his bride Emma Thompson go, but you can't win 'em all and what do I know?) Now I want to see Branagh's Hamlet, which Jon also uses in his HC course.
I recently revisited an American classic of the fifties, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, by reading it aloud to Rosie. It has humor, an upbeat look at life, and beautiful prose-poetry about seaside New England. We both liked it and tonight we started The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Rosie fell asleep on the first chapter, which describes the Dust Bowl in almost King James language, with the cadences of the Creation stories in Genesis. My hypnotic voice and her weariness did her in.
Today got a phone call from my M.D. (medical daughter). She's like the Wyoming Gov -- Work! Work! Work! Also got a call from Warnie. He and I, we house-hubbies, will make one of our field trips to a greasy spoon about next week, I hope.
Fixed the toilet yesterday. Couldn't thread a nut on a bolt and found out it was threaded in reverse (counterclockwise to tighten). Took a trip back to Lowe's to find it out in a chance meeting with a competent and very amiable plumber there in the store. Came back home and promptly assembled the mechanism and soon we were flush in proper plumbing. Look what I did, Daddy!
Donated the twelve CDs of Mozart symphonies to the library. Those were the ones Shane sold me many years ago. Made copies for myself, so it's not the kind of giving that hurts. But I do love that library and am willing to make sacrifices for it.
Love to all and to all a good night.
We loved it. Rozz was struck by the dramatic qualities of Larry Fishburn in an action-adventure movie we saw recently and so I decided to get the movie.
The performances of Fishburn and Branagh knocked my socks off. I think Fishburn surely must be one of the most powerful and underrated actors in movies today.
I've been aware of Branagh's talent for a good while. (He, of course, proved he was a fool by letting his bride Emma Thompson go, but you can't win 'em all and what do I know?) Now I want to see Branagh's Hamlet, which Jon also uses in his HC course.
I recently revisited an American classic of the fifties, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, by reading it aloud to Rosie. It has humor, an upbeat look at life, and beautiful prose-poetry about seaside New England. We both liked it and tonight we started The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Rosie fell asleep on the first chapter, which describes the Dust Bowl in almost King James language, with the cadences of the Creation stories in Genesis. My hypnotic voice and her weariness did her in.
Today got a phone call from my M.D. (medical daughter). She's like the Wyoming Gov -- Work! Work! Work! Also got a call from Warnie. He and I, we house-hubbies, will make one of our field trips to a greasy spoon about next week, I hope.
Fixed the toilet yesterday. Couldn't thread a nut on a bolt and found out it was threaded in reverse (counterclockwise to tighten). Took a trip back to Lowe's to find it out in a chance meeting with a competent and very amiable plumber there in the store. Came back home and promptly assembled the mechanism and soon we were flush in proper plumbing. Look what I did, Daddy!
Donated the twelve CDs of Mozart symphonies to the library. Those were the ones Shane sold me many years ago. Made copies for myself, so it's not the kind of giving that hurts. But I do love that library and am willing to make sacrifices for it.
Love to all and to all a good night.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Olio
“I have seen the very bottom of life,” she said. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn’t. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing.”
Ann Richards was a recovering alcoholic from 1980 on.
She died Wednesday, September 13, at the age of 73, of esophageal cancer.
“Poor George, he can’t help it,” Ms. Richards said at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, speaking about the current president’s father. “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Them was the days.
"We support Sojourners and have read Jim Wallis (and not James Dobson) for many years. In terms of a national movement of spiritual progressives, I am most optimistic about TIkkun, the grassroots interfaith group headed by Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God. My own experience from working with motivational interviewing is that direct argumentation with the likes of Dobson only tends to reinforce and publicize their extremism. What is badly needed, and sorely lacking in the Democratic party at present, is an alternative vision of how we should be together. Perhaps God will find a way to use us both in that regard."
-- Private communciation with a distinguished fellow psychologist
Ann Richards was a recovering alcoholic from 1980 on.
She died Wednesday, September 13, at the age of 73, of esophageal cancer.
“Poor George, he can’t help it,” Ms. Richards said at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, speaking about the current president’s father. “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Them was the days.
"We support Sojourners and have read Jim Wallis (and not James Dobson) for many years. In terms of a national movement of spiritual progressives, I am most optimistic about TIkkun, the grassroots interfaith group headed by Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God. My own experience from working with motivational interviewing is that direct argumentation with the likes of Dobson only tends to reinforce and publicize their extremism. What is badly needed, and sorely lacking in the Democratic party at present, is an alternative vision of how we should be together. Perhaps God will find a way to use us both in that regard."
-- Private communciation with a distinguished fellow psychologist
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
"Courage"
"Courage," Dan Rather used to say.
Sometimes it takes courage just to write a post for a blog. I have a small readership but a vital one. "I love you guys," as Coach Norman Dale says to the Hickory Huskers just before the Indiana high school basketball final game in Hoosiers.
I'm grateful for The Daily Show, "Tonight's Word" on The Colbert Report, and the "Worst Person in the World" on Keith Olbermann's Countdown. It takes a village of comedians and people with a wry outlook on this bunch in charge.
My wife justifiably told me to quit ranting last night and I went for a walk in downtown Madison to give her a break. I recalled the time when the University of Utah was favored to win the NCAA and was upset by UK. (Ugh! Sheesh, with all the odium residing in Washington and Crawford these days I'd forgotten all about the fanatics of Lexington and everything within a 100-mile radius, including of course and more's the pity Madison, Indiana.)
I took a long, sad, lonely walk that night. The occasion of "9/11" and the way it has been bungled and the likelihood that the bums in charge then will continue to be in charge for God knows how long but probably until the River Styx is a solid ribbon of ice.
Lord deliver us. Take care. Courage.
Sometimes it takes courage just to write a post for a blog. I have a small readership but a vital one. "I love you guys," as Coach Norman Dale says to the Hickory Huskers just before the Indiana high school basketball final game in Hoosiers.
I'm grateful for The Daily Show, "Tonight's Word" on The Colbert Report, and the "Worst Person in the World" on Keith Olbermann's Countdown. It takes a village of comedians and people with a wry outlook on this bunch in charge.
My wife justifiably told me to quit ranting last night and I went for a walk in downtown Madison to give her a break. I recalled the time when the University of Utah was favored to win the NCAA and was upset by UK. (Ugh! Sheesh, with all the odium residing in Washington and Crawford these days I'd forgotten all about the fanatics of Lexington and everything within a 100-mile radius, including of course and more's the pity Madison, Indiana.)
I took a long, sad, lonely walk that night. The occasion of "9/11" and the way it has been bungled and the likelihood that the bums in charge then will continue to be in charge for God knows how long but probably until the River Styx is a solid ribbon of ice.
Lord deliver us. Take care. Courage.
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