Living-Deliberately.com

Oh my that has got to be the driest title I’ve ever concocted. But, having googled how to find and watch downloadable movies many times, I’m familiar with where the search words go. I would have loved to stumble upon a post such as the one I’m about to write; would’ve saved me tons of time and aggravation. “So like to hear it? Here it go” (be the first to name the song that came from and I’ll send you a free coffee at Starbucks…no fair googling it!).

Once upon a time I was a Blockbuster store movie renter. Around that same time I also used the library extensively. And the same thing did me in with both of them: late fees. I could have bought quite the media collection had I instead just sunk my late fees into purchases. It was with squeals of glee that I signed in for the first time to Netflix…no more toddlers cleaning off the rental shelves while I agonized over which flick to choose. No more working in “just one more errand” in hopes of a movie date night. No more fighting over such an unnecessary expense. And most importantly, NO MORE LATE FEES. Like the Angels In Brown (UPS) who come to my door with my christmas shopping, I now had little red envelopes of sunshine in my mailbox each week. And best of all, their selection was fantastic.

I had fun compiling my “queue” of movies. I hit several categories…the obscure Oscar nominees, the foreign films, the shorts, the out-of-date family favorites. Netflix and I had quite the love affair going for a couple of years. My queue, indeed my entire Netflix account, became a casualty of the Divorce and the Year of Gypsie Living. He canceled my account, which cleared my history, and without a real mailing address, I couldn’t receive them anyway. And so it seemed that chapter of movie watching had ended (yes, I barely refrained from using a cheezy cliche involving a closing curtain..aren’t ye glad?).

Still, I heart Netflix. And when I can swing the monthly fee again, I’ll be back. For selection, they can’t be beat. And compiling that dream queue was tremendous fun for a somewhat-reclusive film buff too busy with a complicated life to chase down great films in the theater (of which don’t come to our area megaplex anyhow).

So that all led me to a Friday night in between road trips, needing some diversion that would allow me to cuddle under my blankets and lick my wounds in peace. I had the popcorn ready (organic yellow popped on the stove in olive oil, drenched in real butter and salt…is there really any other way to have it?). I think I even had chocolate handy. I set out to give downloading a movie a try.

Oh. This is where I twitch with the pang of my naivete. “Sure Tia. Just pick a flick and click ‘download’ and you’re all set for a cozy night in the camper with your laptop”. Ahem. Experienced downloaders can stop laughing now…

I searched and I searched. Too chicken, too conservative, too goody-goody to use any site that had asian writing on it or looked like it had been designed by a teenager, that eliminated about half of the options. I could hear the cars from the feds coming to arrest me for illegal downloads already coming up the drive. I almost backed out. After all, my popcorn was cold now and I had that old burned CD with Bridget Jones’ Diary on it that I could watch for about the 50th time. But I scolded myself for irrational fear and guilt and plowed ahead. I’d kept coming back to MovieLink. It looked like it had an actual design concept going, though it was a simple site. It had a good sidebar of categories and genres to choose from and current new releases front and center.

I chose a few and selected one to download. Here’s where they beat the online rental system: no monthly fee. You rent by the movie with no commitment. I paid for it (3.99 I think) and got excited about still having a movie to watch before my popcorn bowl was empty.

I had to download the player. You get this “Movielink Manager” loaded to your system and your rentals load into it. You have 1 month to watch it, unless you start it and then you have to finish it in 24 hours. Then it goes away. The player didn’t take too long to load but my movie took 11 hours.

No, that isn’t a typo. 11 hours. The little clock changed from something like, “6 weeks, 4 days, 2 hours, and 40 minutes” on down, until my popcorn was gone and I went to bed.

In the morning I had a downloaded movie. I emailed the company and they assured me it would go faster next time. On Saturday night I watched, with a second bowl of popcorn, and on Sunday I gave a new download a try. Indeed, it loaded faster. This time it took a couple of hours. I started it in the afternoon and had a movie to watch by bedtime. Not bad.

But like I mentioned above, selection is slim with download choices. At least, compared to hard-copy rental services. I’m sure it’s growing daily. But the selection issue is what had me googling again.

Next I tried Vongo. And I am not a fan folks. I don’t like having to download their stuff BEFORE seeing their whole selection, though I’m sure I’m not the first user to fall for the bait of what’s inside. I downloaded it (took another evening) and in the morning, the “reward” was disappointing. B-movies galore. A few mainstream hits that I could easily get elsewhere. Nothing much artistic or foreign. Vongo is different than Movielink in that you pay a monthly fee. Well folks, if I’m going to choose that over Netflix, the selection had better be stellar. And it wasn’t. The website is pretty, looks expensive, and they promote all the different devices on which one can access and watch their movies, but after comparing the choices with what I was looking for, I never even activated my account.

Which led me to one day googling another movie title, rather than the format. And there I hit consumer-confidence pay dirt. Amazon Unbox! I’m familiar with Amazon…they’ve been around long enough to be a trusted brand. My financial information is already in my account so paying for a rental was super fast. Again, I had to download their player, which was actually faster and less nerve-wracking than the others (trust is an issue when downloading anything to one’s machine). Later that evening I had my movie to watch and was happy as a clam.

So here’s the nuts and bolts of my adventure:

• plan ahead. It takes time to download this stuff, even with a fairly new and fast computer
• have more than one title in mind. Availability and selection is still an issue everywhere
• don’t bother with monthly commitments for this stuff. There’s competition out there that will let you do a one-time-only rental
• go with a trusted brand if you are even a little unsure. It’s worth the security, though you still need to be careful.
• make sure you have space on your computer for this stuff BEFORE you start. It’s a pain to get halfway into the download and have it stop because you’re out of room.

I’m rewatching a favorite: A & E’s version of Pride and Prejudice. I love this version…the newer one seems to breathlessly rush through the scenes, the little moments that really make the tension of the story.

For most of the years I’ve watched it (and since the kids love it too, we rewatch it regularly, having most of it memorized), my favorite parts have been the quick and witty dialog scenes, the dances, the dawning of the main character’s minds and hearts toward one another. Today though, I’m thinking about a different dynamic: the heroism of the active love shown, the love that ultimately saves the day.

Near the end, when the scandal that had been building through the story comes to a climax, and it explodes in devastating ugliness, Lizzy is faced with the unavoidable visibility and consequent loss that comes with it. Her life is messy: she has a disgraced sister whose choice reflects upon the whole family. Just before, and 3/4 of the story along, she and Darcy have lowered their guard…they have let one another in and fallen in love. Then comes the blow. He comes to see her at the moment she hears the news and the unspoken words are almost stronger than what is verbally said in that scene: she is desperate for her family, she is marked by the drama, and she sees him turn cold at the news. Understanding his predicament, she freely lets him go, knowing though, “I will never see him again”.

True to the age, she never would have. The bonds of propriety were too strong, as shown in all of Austen’s novels. And yet, unbeknowst to her, he is not running from her scandal….he is repairing it. Facing it. Freeing her from it. Saving the day. She does indeed see him again, and is proposed to, at that.

Jane Austen’s story is timeless because lives are still messy. We still form prejudices and suffer from pride. We still flee getting involved in others’ dramas and traumas. We still self-protect and attempt to make only “advantageous matches”. Hopefully there are still heroes out there, heroes who look beyond pride and prejudice and scandal. I think Lizzy was a heroine as well…without coercion she released him, she gave up her dream, even though it cost personal suffering.

It’s a whole level of the story I’d not considered before. It’s depth that defies time.

************

Ammended to say: it does still annoy me a bit that he couldn’t have at least told her something to reassure her when he left…some little tidbit of steadfastness and intent. Anguish would have been avoided and how could he exactly, have kept from at least uttering, “please don’t cry…it will be alright in the end”? Even heroes have flaws I suppose.

It feels a little bit delicously odd to sit in a movie theater with only a few other people in the middle of a weekday afternoon. The last time I did it I saw I’m Not There, in which Cate Blanchete was indeed brilliant, and the four other bodies sitting nearby in the darkness seemed to be there purely for a film class credit. Today I saw The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

Other than it was Oscar nominated in four categories, I really didn’t know that much about it. There is a theater here that gets some really neat films…in recent weeks they’ve had quite a few shorts and the more obscure award winners that most mainstream theaters won’t carry. True enough Hannah Montana was showing in the other wing. Narrowing down today’s choice to something intelligent turned out to be not so difficult ;-).

The story has a subtle, story-telling plot line…man in his prime suffers a massive stroke and becomes completely paralyzed head to toe, even while remaining totally mentally aware. Understandably he feels utterly imprisoned; the only way he can communincate is by a series of blinks with one good eye. Mercifully surrounded by people who support the retention of his own humanness, he overcomes self-pity and realizes there are two things that are not paralyzed: his imagination and his memory.

And thus, he finds a measure of freedom. Forced to reconcile his old, very vibrant life frought with relational mistakes he now mourns but can do nothing to repair with his new, entrapped existance, he retraces his steps. He writes a book (which became the movie; it’s a true story). He overcomes the submerged silence of the diving bell to soar with the beauty of a butterfly. His story is that study of contrasts.

He does what I think most of us hope we could do when faced with a catastrophic crisis: find a way to move on. The film is brilliant…much of it is filmed from his perspective (remember he can only move one eye) and when someone rubs his cheek or sews his eye shut, we as the movie viewer share the somewhat removed feeling of paralysis: we know the feeling should be there… we can plainly see they are kissing him/us, and yet it’s as numb to him on his skin as it is to us, watching only an image of it. I found myself aching for his release, some kind of miracle breakthrough that would restore him; feeling frustrated with him when the orderly shut off his soccer game at the height, leaving him mentally screaming but without a way to communicate or each time he found out who was truly a friend and who was…not. I thought empathy with him was impossible to resist…

that is, until the middle-aged guy with his cup of coffee two rows up sighed heavily and got up. There were only three of us there…a woman in her 50’s dressed like a Lands End catalog model, myself, and this guy. True, it’s got subtitles (it’s a French film) and true, it’s a little slow at the start (waking from a coma always is I suppose). I have no idea what his problem was; I’m not the type to pay for a movie ticket and ever leave half way. Ever. I saw her in the bathroom when it was over and we joked about him probably thinking it was a “chick flick”.

I wouldn’t have said that about this though. I mean, I guess there is the kind of guy out there who thinks anything with subtitles is a “chick flick”. But I think “chick flick” means a combination of romantic-comedy-with-a-gaggle-of-girlfriends-who-help-the-spurned-heroine-get-her-revenge. So it’s a *thinkers* movie. A *poetic* movie. But knowing guys who are both thinkers and poetic, I wouldn’t classify it a “chick flick”. Maybe he thought it was going to be about scuba diving?
There was one scene where he imagined he was back in a French restaurant with a woman…they ate oysters and champagne. See the last post and you’ll see why I took this as a nice coincidental sign that if oysters and champagne came to my mind two days in a row then I surely must partake of them soon!

After I left I still had the gentle piano soundtrack in my head. I kind of wished I’d stepped out to white birches in a snow field..something nice and still. The jarring traffic of a Friday afternoon just as school let out was too much of a shock. I took my grandma a slice of the blackberry pie I made last night and she told me of the summer she lived in a tent while thier house was being built. The sunlight danced outside her window, here where spring comes early and butterflies, I swear they do, remind us all to persevere and dream of greatness.

Netflix has a new service that we love and use often: those who are already subscribers to the mail service can watch movies right on the site. The selection is limited but for those of us with no-TV, it’s an option that skirts the delay in snail mail and offers something to watch now and then when we need a wind-down at the end of a long day.

That has led to getting a few more choices crossed off our Queue. One such option was Maxed Out. Needing a jolt in your Total Money Makover? This will do it. Dave’s on it too…a few radio listeners share their stories of the vicious role collectors and credit companies have had on their lives…in many instances all the way to death. A hard look is taken at the preferential treatment the credit card companies and banks get from the government and the horrid advantage taken of naive college students and poor people who should never be allowed the credit they get…but do because it’s that kind of customer that the credit companies make their most profit from.

Having been there/done that, I felt a sickening wave of relief at having paid off our cards. Sound ironic? Relief is supposed to feel good. But the desperate and overwhelmed feeling that the crush of debt causes is not so far away just yet…perhaps it is a bit like being held prisoner and abused, then given a reprieve, and then hearing the footsteps of the abuser walking just outside the door, feeling unsure if they are approaching or leaving.

What the movie does not delve deeply enough into, but does indeed tease at, is the overindulgence, stuff-itis medication method, and American tendancy to maintain a fascade of wealth-via-plastic that leads to credit ensnarement in the first place. Certainly lots of people get there by charging groceries, bills, and doctor’s visits (how most of our own debt came into being), but lots of others get there with lattes, movies, new clothes, manicures, and the mall (we had plenty of that too).

What I’ve learned is that poverty is a monster that does not like to let go…and there are plenty of souls out there that are comfortable with you in your impoverished state and want to keep you there, either because they profit from it or they are just plain used to you in that role and don’t want to change their perceptions and ideas. It’s true of your credit card lender, the collector, and sometimes friends and family. Credit debt is slavery of another kind and freedom is possible but it’s a clawing, digging fight out of the pit and honey, your manicured nails aren’t going to hack the journey.

They say that addicts of drugs and alchohol achieve the greatest success in getting sober when they change their friends, their hang outs, their routines, and their scenery. I think it’s the same for the enslaved debtor…you’ll need a like-minded support group, new hang outs, new entertainment, a new lifestyle, new scenery. When you finally acheive freedom, it will still be a daily fight to keep from returning and falling back. The old crowd will still send embittered messages of discouragement that ultimately stems from envy at what they can not also acheive. If they profited from your enslavement, you may also encounter anger.

One of my favorite Nina Simone songs says, “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s new life for me.” Indeed. But as Coldplay sings, “no one said it was easy…no one ever said it would be so hard.” Maxed Out makes the point well.

Not having access to FM radio, an ipod, or TV, I could get behind on what is currently on the airwaves. Or I should say more behind, because a: I’m very far from what’s cutting edge and b: I’m not even really trying to be close. I’ll settle for “this year” rather than “the moment”. Still, where I live it’s perpetually 1979 and I’d like to have a little more of an idea of what is happening in the cultural world elsewhere. Even living a relatively simple life I am still a People magazine junkie, which has the added benefit of music reviews. What I do is make a list of reviews that interest me and head over to rhapsody.com to give them a listen. This way, when I need new music I can find something not stale. When I need shot of Carly Simon or some other blast-from-my-past, I can get a song-by-song fix. And when I leave the land of 1979, I can still speak the language.

Fall Out Boy has a wiki! How handy is that!? The magazine review gave them 3 stars out of 4 so I though I’d give them a try. “Emo” music fits a mood of mine; a play-it-loud-while-alone-in-the-house-cleaning-and-recovering-from-the

-frumpiness-of-my-mid-twenties kind of mood. And indeed, they have strong vocals, good melodies, and mood-appropriate analyzing. But reading the lyrics (I do this for every song I look up), I found myself a bit bored. If someone talks about their lonliness, their suicidal-tendancies in the past, their rejection and rejectability ad nauseum, it gets, well frankly, boring rather than resonating. A song or two and I was ready to move on to more substance.

I didn’t necessarily get it with my next choice. Katherine McPhee, of last season’s American Idol, has her debut album out. And deep? No. But fun? Yes. Melodic and well done? Yes. Catchy and lasting? Probably. She’s world’s better here than she ever was on the show and she seems the heir apparent to big voices like Whitney or Mariah, but with a fresh edge. Another mood for me; not a purchase.

The “Critic’s Choice” in this issue of People was The Good, The Bad & the Queen. They got 3.5 stars in the review and includes member Damon Albarn from Gorillaz, a group that I like quite a bit, albeit in the very, very limited exposure afforded on a Grammy compilation disc from a year or so ago. The name-drop was enough to pique my interest. The recommended download was “Herculean” and I gave a few of them a listen. “Northern Whale” and “Kingdom of Doom” included. Enh? Okay. Not bad. Not as interesting as I’d hoped. Maybe I wasn’t in the right “zone” or something; I put them on the “try again another time” list. Jury’s out.

That led to toodling around Rhapsody for a bit and I found a list of videos from the Brit Awards. And what a find! I’ll save the best for last. But next up is Corrine Bailey Rae. Smooth. A little like Nelly Furtado but a little less catchy so maybe with more staying power. David and I loved the warm, sunshiny video for Put Your Records On; my goodness that will make a sufferer of winter-blah’s desire sunbeams and warm grass! Her kind of music is more than mood music; it’s purchase-and-use-for-afternoons-grilling-food music.

And the best? The best of the day was Lily Allen! She’s infectious fun, with that accent that even makes it through the music. A little edge of jazz, a rhyme and meter like sing-song rapping poetry, she takes us along her observations and makes the listener want to join her for a ride through the paintings of city scapes, outdoor cafes, fun shops, and youth. Dr. H, if you’re reading, head’s up for fun “chick music”. That term doesn’t do her justice of course, but he’ll get the idea. The bright colors, fashion, and lightness put a spring in the step, even when she’s singing of lover-revenge in Smile. Definite purchase-music, I’d have her on while cooking (which would lead to dancing with my wooden spoon I tell ya), while cleaning, while hanging out, while throwing a party. Fun Stuff! And anyone who liked the movie Love Actually, should especially give her a listen.

Movies: Last week we watched Memoirs of Geisha. I won’t spend a lot of time on it or even link to it today. It was ho-hum okay. Pretty? yes. Well cast? yes. But I thought they really, really needed to explain better the mistique and attraction of the Geisha life from the start. The viewer was left asking, “yeah, but why?” especially after the main character had a chance at freedom and chose willingly to return. At least it ended with a bit of resolution; real torture would have been some stupid existential open ended mess. We’d maybe give it a 3 out of 5.

Last night we watched North Country. Charlize Theron stars and tells the story of the first sexual harrassment class action suit. And how. The point, of course was not if women belong in mines, which was the fight the miners apparently were trying to have. That had been decided in a court room. If we’re getting distracted about points, let’s start with the rightness of ravaging the earth through the process of mining and mountain removal, shall we? But no, the point was, once women are in the mine, how should they be treated? And my goodness what a horrific time they had. The character Josie, based on a true story, had already had quite a life which seemed to come to a nearly defining head in her mine experience. The story was well done, well written, well acted. Worth a watch, worth more was the telling, and I was glad it ended the way it did. If you only watch a few movies a year, I’d probably skip it. But if you’re interested, it’s not a waste of time. I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5.

We recently watched four “big name” movies that had been on our Netflix list for what seemed like ages and then they all came in at once. They all were movies that had a lot said about them, showed up in the awards nominations of previous years, and were hailed as quality films. I’ll give them all that. I can also say that they all have stuck in my head until this point, a week and in the case of one, two weeks, later to be written about and thus purged. So as far as “impact” goes, they perhaps all had some, and a couple more than the others.

Ray. David and I just about fell asleep in this. The music made us want to listen to Ray’s music, the real stuff. Jamie Foxx did indeed do a good portrayal. But the writing? Ugh. The story seemed to drone on and on. There isn’t much satisfying about watching someone languish away into addiction, even if it was true. The same story could have been told in less time though it may have been; we watched the version with the extra scenes added in. I still would have cut about an hour off and the extra scenes didn’t amount to that much. At the end, I found the change of the Georgia decision to ban him little solace for the downer the story emphasized.

Capote. GREAT movie. I was intrigued by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s high-voiced depiction of Truman Capote. He’s one of my favorite actors and the performance was, I think, Oscar winning. It certainly was a risky role for him to take. I know little about the actual Capote so I can’t compare how “lifelike” a job he did. But I do know that he was entirely believable. The story was very tight and well written and moved along. Capote gets tangled around the criminal he’s investigating; it comes to consume him yet there is this cool reserve he tries to hold onto. Catherine Keener plays Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and she provides a strong, even voice of conscience. By the climax of the movie the viewer is both fed up (like she is) with Capote’s obsession and rooting for him at the same time. Delicious complexity.

Walk the Line. As far as biopics go, this one was hands down better than Ray, with a similar theme of “watch the brilliant musician struggle with addiction”. Love triumphs beautifully but the ending felt a bit abrupt. Really good acting, good enough in fact, for David to set aside his dislike for Joaquin Phoenix roles and enjoy watching. ;-). I think I realized again though, through watching all four of these movies, how impatient I am with any addiction, and destructive behavior in general, even my own. It makes me angry to watch stupid choices repeat themselves.

Maybe that’s why I need to purge these movie reviews out of my skull. They all share a common theme that I struggle to tolerate. Before I forget, images are from imbd.com.

I save the biggie for last. Brokeback Mountain. This one has confounded and frustrated me the most. Last year when it came out, I listened into quite a few of the long and heated discussions about it. I hesitated when putting it on my netflix list. I hesitated even more letting anyone know I’d watched it. Most of the reviews I’ve read about it went similar to this one:

” While “Brokeback Mountain” seems startlingly unpretentious for a movie about homosexual cowboys, closer reflection reveals that it’s not really about this at all. It’s a simple, tragic story about two men in love. Ennis is a man torn by his affection for Jack and his inability to open up emotionally.”

The review’s source was lost in transit from a forum to my email so I apologize for not crediting the author. It makes my point though…feeling the complete opposite, I didn’t see this any kind of “tragic love story”. It was certainly tragic, but for different reasons in my opinion.

The movie opens with two cowboys getting a lonely job guarding sheep on a pretty mountain. They are essentially fatherless, hurting boys, and as the story goes on, we find out that even the years they did spend with their fathers were not nurturing, healthy relationships. They are bored, hurting, raised a culture that would never have allowed for expressing that let alone healing it, and they have lots of time on their hands. What happens is nearly violent, both physically and emotionally, and goes on to impact them in (yes, addictive) ways for the rest of their lives.

Neither was happy in the “relationship”. One romantacized it but his was a character in love with escapism across the spectrum of his life. The other (in an honestly stunning performance by Heath Ledger) fought against it from the start and not unlike the drug addictions in two of the other movies I watched that week, was haunted by a choice that destroyed anything else he cared about. It was consuming and destructive, not because (dare I say it) it was a homosexual relationship but because it only intensified the lonely disfunction that led him there in the first place rather than doing anything to heal him.

I kept thinking, “stick his fiance up there on the mountain with him and instead they’d have had a beautiful memory while he purged his pain.”

Other than that, Brokeback Mountain was just gorgeous scenery and predictable, boring plot. Take away the “queer cowboy” element and what was left was the stunning cinematography and fantastic soundtrack. But I anticipated every plot shift and that got really old fast. In the light of other movie nominees that same year, and Crash, which ultimately won (and never bored me) and I think the outcry that claimed it was some kind of homophobic bash denying it’s “great classic” movie status pretty much unfounded. The parts were played extremely well and Ang Lee’s films are all beautiful. But I’d never put this film in the “classic” category, as quite a few film critics wanted to.

Both Capote and BBM displayed people-as-addictions and the other two films portrayed drug addicts. I found them all the same. All sad. All raw and honest. The hang up with BBM is that I’ve heard few say that this was a destructive force in their lives. Blame the culture, blame the times. I felt myself recoil at the “pity us” stance BBM seemed to want to pull from the audience.

Well, perhaps what I take away from all four is a deeper compassion for those who struggle with addictions that are so much larger than they are, that consume and control them. Being more merciful is certainly an area where I myself need to grow as a person. I’d choose to do that through empowerment rather than pity though, and that may be where the movies and I part.

I debated: should I write a review of this while it’s fresh or should I sleep on it? I’m here now, at 9:30 pm, so you know which one came out on top.

I’m stunned. I’m gagging on corn products…corn and soy that I know sneaks into our diets everywhere. I’m invigorated to plant the biggest garden I can next spring, with seeds from Seeds of Change and Seed Savers. I want to loudly outcry the fact that life (food, things that grow) has been patented, that so many of the government officials have worked for or accepted money from companies like Monsanto, that so far there is no mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods and seeds.

The movie points out that if they label, they can trace the adverse effects, and if they can trace where it came from, they can hold corporations liable. Did you know that these companies are allowed to voluntarily conduct and submit their own research to the FDA?

And yes, the thought occurred to me more than once that those yellow fields of corn are also being hailed right now as the next best thing: biodiesel. But I fail to agree that GM corn is necessary to use corn oil products for fuel. It’s one thing to compromise that it might be a better way to use monocropping than say, using foreign oil. But it’s another to say that these lengths need to be gone to in order to get there.

Okay, heads up: the movie is not unbiased and doesn’t try to be. It an expose type documentary on the way science is changing how we eat, who grows it and how, and where. Little researchers with budgets of 2k stand up against corporations with 25 million and sometimes get heard. The wind blows GM canola over to another farmer’s field and if it grows, he’s infringed on the patent law. The only way to tell if it’s GM or not is to spray it with the Round Up the same company produces. What will die is his own crop and what will not is the “round up ready” canola. Plant diversity and individual farmer’s rights are what’s gone and super weeds that require even more spraying with even more toxic chemicals are what’s left.

Breathless moment: watching a slug ingest corn and die. The corn itself is classified as an insecticide (thanks to it’s modification) so if it eats the corn, it dies. NOT: it was sprayed and it died. But IT ATE THE SAME CORN I ATE and died.

The biotech companies sell their product’s image by saying it can feed the world. But think about that. Much of the third world countries were once ag-rich. They kicked small farmers off their land to grow exports so they could pay debts to 1st world countries. The problem is more accessibility to food, not growing methods, as food regularly rots in abundance in this and other countries.

“Go Local” has simple wisdom behind it that can be applied in just about every setting. This movie shows what happens when an approach, that has never been voted on by the people (and the majority of people do not want GM food, or at least want labels on it), for global methods takes over. When four companies control ALL of the food supply. The seed supply. The retail. Sound free to you?

Never mind how much better something locally grown tastes. That isn’t the primary focus of this film but it will leave you longing for something grown in your own yard. The beauty of a variety different than the beige monotony of a typical produce section is mentioned at the end, when the counter-movement is emphasized: farmer’s markets, CSA’s, and organics. When the reminder sounds that the “consumer is still king”, that we have power with our dollars and how we spend them, hope springs. I remember that I can refuse to buy canola oil (not good for you anyway), items with high fructose corn syrup, soy-everything, and non-organic grains.

Even if you read most of this and thought, “blah, blah, blah”, or felt overwhelmed at something that might cause you to pause more in the store, or simply thought it didn’t interest you, it’s still an important film to watch. It will take one hour of your life and will leave you more motivated to support what could save our future, our children, our food supply. It will dawn on your mind what a world-economy controlled by a few could look like. It occurred to me how ironic it would be for the apocolyptic kind of world catastrophe that we sometimes hear predicted to come from not a big bomb and nuclear power but from corn seeds….little kernels of science fiction.

The movie: The Future of Food. I got our copy from Netflix. I’m wondering what my friend the botanist would say….I think I need to watch Path To Freedom’s new video brochure again for a little inspiration and encouragement.

• Our church has a fellowship twice a month; we call it the “Psalm Sing”. Basically we get together at someone’s home, the kids play, we share a light potluck supper, and then we sit and sing together for a few minutes. Usually we are going over the new Psalm and hymn of the month. Our kids practically live for these fellowships, checking the bulletins each week and begging to go even though we’ve almost never missed. It’s a particular joy for our whole family; I love sitting in the back and looking over our church friends gathered and here us all sing together. I like knowing that we have a great, functional, and healthy group. I like seeing women chit chat, men banter, and children frolick. It’s beautiful.
• Beauty of a different kind: Shannon’s Pimento Cheese!!!! OH. MY. GOODNESS. It wasn’t just the sangria talking (though that was absolutely fabulous too!); I really could have sat in a corner by myself and scooped out that whole entire bowl with a big slap-happy grin on my face! Wow! This was pimento cheese in it’s heavenly body, I”m sure. Usually it’s got too much mayo. It’s a bit sloppy. Not spicey enough. Not sharp enough. THIS PImiento Cheese was Sharp. Creamy, not dry, not wet. A perfect bite of spice. It was too late to schmear it all over my hambuger but I delightfully dipped my kettle chips into it. By thirds. Unapologetically; I think many there weren’t sure either A: what it was and B: that they were in the presense of greatness.  See, when food, even simple food, is done WELL, it shines like a thing of true beauty. Who said Pimiento Cheese couldn’t have such great aspirations? I will post the recipe just as soon as Shannon sends it my way.
• On the way home we had a perfect rainbow. It was a totally intact semicircle and every color of the prism was visible. While one child begged to go find the end of it and another sat dumbfounded, we found even the highway a pleasant place to be. Down the road there is a construction site that has the dark red clay open and exposed. And somehow the view to the mountains there is amazing. It will all be blocked by some building soon but for now you can see red clay, with dark green trees, a thin silver-blue line of the river and then periwinkle sky. It glows and pulses in that spot, a place over faster than you glance if you go the speedlimit.
• Today is a day of rain. Non. Stop. Rain. We’ve needed it for weeks so one tries not to complain but it can make a cooped-up family that was suposed to have moved go even more nuts. So we packed it up and headed out to the movies. There was that mist again, that smokey mist sneaking between peaks. I don’t know how I survive driving around, looking everywhere but the road. I can’t believe we LIVE here!!!
• Cars: Long. Cute in the middle. Boring at the beginning and end. Then again, first consider this: I have never, ever gotten the idea of car racing. It seems like it must be the most boring thing in the world, lap after lap of traffic, concrete, heat, noise, blaring lights. YUCK. Methinks the real talent of the drivers is in their attention spans to be able to stay sane, going in a circle like a hyper rat that many times. So….the begining and end of the movie is actual racing and the middle is character driven, and that’s what had my interest. There are some cute jokes and ideas in the illustrations. I was thankful I understood story arc well enough to guage perfectly how much time was left halfway: Our hero still needed to discover the wealth of the ones around him, hit his crisis and humble himself, fulfill his destiny, get the girl,  and save the day. Perfect time to get popcorn for Baby, who didn’t like it after all and preferred instead to run back and forth in the empty last aisle.
• You’ll never beleive what we did next! I still can’t beleive it!!! We went to Walmart to do nothing but hang out. Really. We just wandered around looking at stuff at the stuff-mart and waited for it to be Baby’s nap time. I’m probably the only person who left there without buying anything; I imaged all kinds of suspicious cameras on me as we left, our cart empty. Maybe not.
• A true miracle occurred yesterday. Last week Andrew was accidentally shot in the eye with a pellet gun at close range. We thought it hit the outside of his lid; it was swollen for a few days and red. He squinted more as the week went on but he could see fine and we thought it was going to be just fine. His mood was awful though; by Saturday night he was crying and angry and a total bear. Again, we didn’t think it was his eye; he’d also had his feelings hurt so we thought that was the cause. But Sunday in church, a PELLET CAME OUT OF HIS EYE. A little chess-piece-shaped metal pellet had been wedged inbetween his eyeball and lid this entire time!!! And it never got infected, never cut the skin, never seemed to affect his vision. I can’t imagine how much it hurt,  knowing what it feels like when my little contact lens gets up there. He is like a different kid, saying, “It feels sooo much better Mom”. Well YEAH. I’m just overwhelmed with close a call it was. A hair in a different direction and he could be blind or dead. He must have a posse of angels on him all the time….

We caught this little story on PBS last night and I’m so glad we did! See more here. It was a pretty captivating display of how times have changed and how the American Farmer has to change and adapt ahead of the curve to survive. And really, it’s beautiful to watch, because his farm is more than suriviving, it’s thriving beautifully and having a real impact. He’s a creative soul, quirkly and contemplative, and in more ways than one an example of agrarians of our time.

I wanted a better picture but this was the only one I could get to let me use it’s location:

From the website:  “THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN is the award-winning true story of third-generation American farmer John Peterson’s hero’s journey of success, tribulation, failure and rebirth, through his childhood in the ‘50s, the tumultuous ‘60s, the hippie-influenced ‘70s, and the farm-crisis ‘80s, culminating in his transformation-based creation of a biodynamic, organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm serving 1500 families in the Chicago area with weekly fresh produce.”

I watched this tonight, intentionally choosing a time when I’d be alone. I knew going into it that it was going to touch my deepest nerves. It’s the story of the two men who developed and performed the first heart surgery. More specifically, the surgery was the proceedure that makes it possible for doctors to restructure a child’s heart so that blood flow is propery oxegenated. Meaning blue babies become pink. And more specifcally still,  it is the operation that was the predessor to the Norwood Procedure, the sugery our daughter Clara had. If she had lived to her third year, she would have gone from blue to pink.

This is an amazing film, powerful and beautifully written.  Surprisingly, while the pioneering heart surgery is a major part of the story, it is only half. Interwoven throughout is the social changes of half a century. One of these doctors is white and it is his name that history primarily knew. The other is black and without him there would have been no surgery. He developed the clamps, the technique, did the research, and provided much more than just support. He was an integral, yet mostly invisible, element.

It wasn’t too gory or gross and it didn’t focus on the difficult aftermath of heart surgery. Then again, those are words from someone who has seen much more than the average person so ymmv.

On the superficial level, it’s got Alan Rickman. Absolutely irresistable in just about any role he takes. The rest of the cast is superb as well, the details are tended to, and it’s just really a quality film. I vaguely remember it coming up at Oscar time; I’d have to go do some digging to see exactly why but it should have won something ;-).

I’m so grateful for this true story. Even though my own child didn’t make it past 9 weeks, even though we never made it to all those churches to tell a happy testimony, even though that world is lost to me now, I’m grateful that when they called us into that panelled room that there were more than 2 options. We had hope and a place to go and there were people who’d devoted their lives to saving others’. Cardiac surgeons are notoriously optimistic and driven to keep trying; they will always fight for your child’s life until the last breath.

We grieve differently, David and I. He doesn’t like to watch things like this, go back there, focus on the hospital so much. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that he went home while she was there, went back to work and wasn’t there the night she died. I lived and breathed it much more; it was our only reality…the halls, the smells, the sounds, the faces.  Sometimes it felt like such utter madness and still I clung to it because it was all I had of that little girl.  I tried to embrace it and accept it and not waste any time with stupid questions.

But after all the emotion is dug around, there is a fascination and a gratitude underneath. When I drive past a children’s hospital I’m deeply aware of the secret life pulsing within. It’s a whole ‘nother world in there, a forgotten place where there is no margin. This movie contrasted an accaimed doctor with an invisible one but I think there is a greater point to be realized.  Every moment of every day there are real battles being fought. They are within walls that block our view and in a way, all the players are invisible.

And maybe one day you take a breath and your whole life changes within a few seconds. Maybe all it takes is one little sentence…..”we definately only see two chambers in your daughter’s heart.” And life will never be the same. And you’ll meet people fighting wars you never thought of before. And you’ll find gratitude that overflows.

One of the reasons I love Netflix is that I can peruse lists and lists of movies that I otherwise would have little access too. And I’m a so-called “movie lover”…I love the powerful ability of film to communicate and I’m willing to sit through and commit to a story and characters that I”m not always sure of where they are headed, or even if I like them, in the interest of discovering  some quality of the human experience articulated well.

For the most part, our Netflix selections have been pretty good choices. Not always orthodox or mainstream but usually evidental with merit. David’s a trooper, sitting through (or at least mostly through before fallng asleep) some pretty wrenching stories. I  have a penchant for selecting films that delve into some of the tangents I’d rather not actually live through but think I can glean something from the observation of. Or, alot of times, characters will follow something through to an end I would have halted, and it’s interesting to see some of the “roads not taken” and how they play out.

Not sure about this one. Thirteen is not a “movie”. It’s not entertaining and it’s not comfortable. I’m certainly not about to recommend it to people who have very different tastes than I. I’m not going to postulate that it’s an “important” film that everyone would benefit from seeing. What it is is part social commentary, part biography, part glimpse into an area most of us would like to pretend doesn’t exist. It’s not lovely but it is true. Teen age girls not only really have a potential for this kind of experience but it was the story of one of the primary character’s actual life.

Wrenching it is. I’d heard the performances were compelling (one reason I chose it) and they are…they capture effectively the frailty of youth, the desperation for attention and where the pain of rejection can lead. I wanted several times to reach into the screen and protect these characters from thier own destructive choices, from the dangerous threats all around them, from thier own demons. As hard it was to watch (and very uncomfortable at times), I was invested in that girl’s story and I wanted to see that she’d make it through okay. Or at least better.

It was, I think, suposed to be very shocking. Yet, even to my christian homeschooler in the middle America self, it wasn’t. I see the outward manifestations of girls like that all over and even though I don’t want to really “go there” in my head of how they got to the place where they appear that way, seeing it played out didn’t shock me. And even if was 18 or so years ago now and not as extreme as what the characters went to, my own transition into the teenage years was similar enough (and shared several of the underlying themes) to be believeable.

Which led me to another reason to select this film. I’ll soon have children in this age range. And while they may not face many of the outward displays many teens today do, they may have friends who do. And then there is the whole area of parental blind spots. We see what we want to see and often see past what we don’t.

I met a very sweet lady this weekend who became pregnant with her daughter at 16. She didn’t tell her parents until she was 25 weeks along. I asked her if her parents suspected anything in all that time and this was her answer:  “They probably saw it but they didn’t want to admit it and they never would have asked so it just never came up until I was getting so big and my walk was changing.” In other words, until it was staring them in the face.

In Thirteen, the mother sees past much as well. That tongue piercing on the movie’s poster isn’t discovered for weeks. She comes home high, steals, doesn’t eat for long periods of time, lies, and cuts herself right under mom’s nose. And Mom wasn’t clueless. She was a single mom trying very, very hard to reach her daughter and yet respect her. She’d thought she’d raised a trustworthy child, one who got good grades and had nice friends and wrote nice poems. The change, to the audience, seemed to happen rapidly but it was communicated well that in the pace of life and the hope we all have that our kids will be alright, it was easy to miss signs that outsiders would think were obvious.

Seeing it all grew my compassion. It reminded me of the reality of unlovely things I’d like to pretend didn’t exist. It educated me on what probably is very realistic of at least a portion of today’s young teens. It had merit but not like some of the other films on our list of late. I’m left wondering how much I really gleaned and yet hesitant to call it a “dud”.  David was wiped out…said it really was okay if I wanted to throw in Dumb and Dumber or a Bruce Willis, you know, just for some light hearted variety.