Well, Dan didn't get back until after 9PM last night, so we did not go to the charity dinner thingee. Instead, I cooked dinner and we ate at home. The triple chocolate brownies were a big hit.

The warehouse club near me (actually it is the closest grocery store to my house, so I go there fairly often) has been selling old movies newly released on dvd this summer. Most of them have won at least one or two Academy Awards, and it only costs a couple more dollars to purchase them than it would be to rent them at the little video place in town. So I have been picking them up one of two at a time...

Last night we watched an interesting one. It was the 1935 Best Picture winner, Mutiny on the Bounty. Three of the actors appearing in it were nominated for best actor, though I believe none of them won (they probably cancelled each other out in the voting). Charles Laughton was very good as the evil Captain Bligh. I have decided that Clark Gable was the Tom Cruise of his day. He was wildly popular, many women apparently found him attractive for mysterious reasons, and I have yet to be impressed with his acting in either movie I have seen him in (this one -- where he was nominated for an Oscar -- and I thought he was by far the weakest talent in Gone with the Wind).

While it was probably cutting edge in its day, it cannot even begin to stand up against modern movies like Master and Commander in its action shots at sea.

The sound track was interesting -- parts of the background music sounded like Gershwin tinged jazz -- and I was thinking if it were to be filmed again today they would either use John Williams or authentic period music, or a combination thereof. But I don't think they would use Gershwin style jazz.

Some of the actors used very dramatic arm movements. That mystified us for a bit, until I realized that they had only been using sound in movies for about five years before this was filmed. Most of the people appearing in the movie had probably been trained in silent movies, so had learned exaggerated body language and gestures.

So here is this very old black and white movie with some problems in comparison to modern technology and acting techniques -- but you know what? It was STILL enjoyable, in large part to the delightfully evil performance of Charles Laughton. And I am glad to have watched it.

 

Have made it back from the soccer game on this rather cool and cloudy fall afternoon. I have a bit more time now.

Bill's soccer team was crushed 8-0. Stevie's team did the crushing, 7-0 plus some more goals that were disallowed. Steven even scored one, which is unusual for him, as he is something of a defensive expert.

Steven is feeling better. He went back to the doctor a couple of mornings ago, and his urine was free of blood. So he fought off the infection, with the help of anitbiotics. My ear is much better, and I no longer have great big scabs all over it. I am glad for both of us. Dan's blood pressure is still out of control, or so he said the last time I asked.

Right now I'm just sort of chilling out, doing housework  and waiting for Dan to come home. He called to say he might be too late to go to that weird thing, as it is over an hour's drive away and dinner is to be served at 5PM. Not sure if we will go or not if we miss the food...

There will be another great jazz concert next weekend, with legendary pianist Dave Brubeck. A lot of my friends will be going to this, so I went ahead and ordered a ticket yesterday. The Rockefeller Cebter Jazz Orchestra was awesome, and I have the feeling this group will be as well.

Managed to make it through a pretty rough week. In the family, we all took turns being sick, among other things, and one night a friend got sick at work, and I took her to the ER of another hospital. She was pretty sick, and it was sort of frightening seeing someone you care about hooked up to a bunch of monitors.

Dan is off in my Jeep. He took Bill to a high school soccer game in Dexter. To save money, they are not providing busses for the Saturday games this year. In a little while, I will head down to town with Steven for his soccer game.

Tonight Dan is going to some weird fundraiser thing for the athletic programs for our school district. People paid $100 each for this...its at a hotel down in Ohio. They serve dinner and drinks, and every hour they pull someone's number out of a bowl, and that person wins money. The school district gets to keep all of the admission money, and the hotel usually fills up, so they make their money that way, and from selling dinners to the dates of people who bought the tickets. I have the feeling I'll be dragged along, and I don't particularly want to go. I don't usually feel comfortable hanging out with heavily drinking strangers, and knowing about the free open bar makes me a bit nervous.

A couple of quick quotes from books I have been reading lately:

from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door:

Quote: Idiot..Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do.

from Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter:

Quote: Roses are for love. Not silly sweethearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you, and pours out of you when you're given the best instead...

 

Well, last night turned out to be interesting. Even driving into Ann Arbor was interesting. The western edge of hurricaine Ivan was about a mile west of our house, and the northern edge was about five miles from our house, near the intersection of the two freeways, US23 and I94. So the huge swirl of clouds in the sky was fascinating to see. Like seeing the edge of a big gray plate curving across the sky. It was like a knife edge, the hurricaine spiral and the blue, cloudless sky to the west and north...

We ate dinner in an Ethiopian restaurant. They bring out a big tray covered with something like a pancake, and the various foods are arranged on the pancake. You break off bits of the pancake and dip it into the foods and eat. The foods are things like ground chick peas, spicy red lentils, shrdded and spiced beef, etc. They bring out hot, scented towels to wash your hands both before and after you eat, so your hands can be clean...we washed the food down with mug after mug of piping hot, spiced tea. It was a cold day yesterday, so the tea was quite wonderful.

The concert was at Hill Auditorium, a magnificent old building with perfect acoustics. From the balcony you can hear the footsteps of people on stage, and their whispers, rattling their music, moving their chairs, etc. The music was great -- the members of the Rockefeller Center Jazz Orchestra must be, without question, some of the most gifted musicians in the world. They played a lot of Duke Ellington...Black on Beige and other longer pieces you don't get to hear very often. The encore was literally mind blowing. Five trumpeters    came out with the drummer , the bass player, and the pianist. The trumpet players took turns playing searing hot solos, tossing the solos around like a ball, all playing impromptu and building off of each other. It was the most awesome thing I have ever heard in my life...

This is a week I am glad is over. The air is filled with pollen, so both my and Stevie's  allergies have been cookin'. My ear is still bleeding from the infection...Stevie has a weird skin rash (allergic dermatitis) on his lower legs, and is on amoxicillin for a bladder infection... and Dan's blood pressure is still out of control, he is his fourth or fifth medication now...they keep putting him on stronger and stronger things but nothing seems to help...he is currently on a lisinopril/hydrochlorothiazide combination product...

Not a happy week...

Tomorrow I hope to do little other than rest. Although, besides resting, I will still be going to the concert, and hope that my health allows me to enjoy it. At least it is jazz...if it were hard rock, I think I would be scrambling to give my tickets away. It's funny how life works...when I bought the tickets I was squirming around and bouncing up and down I was so happy...now I just want the ear infection to go away, and Stevie to feel better, and get about 12 hours of sleep...

Last night work was a weird one...

Two of my coworkers went outside for a smoke. While therey were there, a moving van backed into the ambulance driveway. Of course, the first thought of anyone who works for the government when something like that happens is "Oklahoma City. Bombs. Someone is coming to kill me!" The driver hopped put and threw some stuff into the trash. And of course the thought, "More bombs. Slimeball hates the govennment and is going to take me out." It turned out to be two women in the truck. One of them claimed to be a patient and wanted to know where to park the truck for her morning appointment. My coworkers told her, then went to try to find the police officers. When the police officers were found, the woman had vanished, but the truck was parked in the suface employee lot. The cops called the moving van company, and the truck was supposed to have been turned in a week ago in Massachusetts, so might have stolen...a few hours later I noticed two women sleeping in recliners in a little used (at night it is little used, anyway) patient waiting area. I told my coworkers what they looked like, and they said it was the two women from the truck. They immediately called the police, but it was near the end of the night, so I didn't hear what happened after, and if the women were actually patients, or if they really were driving a stolen vehicle...

Th VA was in the news a week or so back as being on the short list for terrorists to hit. The Washington office sent a followup email, telling people not to worry, and just to come into work as usual. I found out last night that we really are on the short list. We are a soft target among federal government facilities because we have to have at least an entrance or two open 24/7 for the emergency rooms. The VA where I work is thought to be on the short list for the short list, because we are located directly across the street from a small nuclear reactor. Since the news came out in fact, there have been two (at least) incidents where suspicious people have possibly been checking us out as a target -- by the time people thought to notify the police, the suspicious people are gone...

You know, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job. I have been there nearly my entire adult life, and I love some of my coworkers like family, and I love working with the veterans -- so many of them remind me of my father -- but in this age of Oklahoma Cities and September 11s-- is it enough to love your job to stay there when you know there are people who would gladly kill you because of it?

Three Years Later, Memories of 9/11

It was a perfect crisp, cool fall morning. The sky was cloudless and as blue as only an autumn sky can be. I think I will always remember that -- the contrast between how lovely the world was, and how horrible (and how heroic) people can be...

I was spending my morning washing dishes and doing other housework, not really thinking about anything, other than taking the dog for a long walk as soon as I got done with my chores. At that time we lived very close to a large airport -- Willow Run, which carries a lot of the freight for the Detroit area. I noticed that it was even noisier than usual, and seemed to be extremely busy that morning.

We had put a bid on a house the day before...a nice house in a nearby small town, out in the country, with a bit of land...

My husband called, frantic. He told me to call the realtor right away, to find out what was happening to the financial markets and the interest rates. I asked him why and he told me what had happened...

I watched television for awhile, numb. Then, since I work in a federal government hospital, I called work to see if I needed to come in early, or if there were going to be any strange security clearances I would need to pass to come into work that afternoon...I was told to just report in at my normal time. When I got there, the internet server had crashed, and everyone asked me what was going on. One of my coworkers was married to a police officer, and she broke down and sobbed when I told her of all of the rescue workers who were feared lost in New York.

My older son had to go into counselling for awhile after it happened. Since I work for the govenment, he was literally worried sick that someone would try to blow up the hospital where I work, and that something bad would happen to me.

The weirdest thing was how quiet the first few days were. Living so close to a big airport, the quiet was eerie. It was hard to sleep without all of the usual noise, and without the windows rattling as jets would come in and out for landings. And fighter jets from the National Guard flew over our house several times a day, making a circuit that covered Detroit Metro, Willow Run, and the commercial airports in Lansing and Grand Rapids...

Only one jet took off from WillowRun that week, after that busy morning when they all scrambled to get "home". It was carrying blood and burn supplies to Washington for the Pentagon survivors, being sent from the big burn center in Ann Arbor...

Another cool quote from Life of Pi  (actually its chapter 25) :

Quote: And that wasn't the end of it. There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if the Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.

Once an oaf chased me away from the Grand Mosque. When I went to church, the priest glared at me so that I could not feel the peace of Christ. A Brahmin sometimes shooed me away from the darshan. My religious doings were reported to my parents in hushed, urgent tones of treason revealed.

As if this small mindedness did God any good.

To me religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.

I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went instead to Our Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my brethren. I went to temple at crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me.

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Found out tonight that a friend and his girl friend will be going to the same jazz concert I will be going to later this month -- Wynton Marsalis and the Rockefeller Jazz Orchestra. We are now planning on going to the Firefly Club and listening to more live jazz after the concert. Me happy.

 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Started reading this great little novel a few days ago. It is about a boy from India who is a practicing Hindu, Christian, and Muslim all at once. He sees great truths in all three religions and sees them as complementary to each other.

Here is the description from the back of the book:

Quote: Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship. Alas, the ship sinks - and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?

Here is a quote from near the beginning of the book to give you a flavor of it:

I was at the Indian Coffee House, on Nebru Street. It's one big room with green walls and a high ceiling. Fans whirl above you to keep the warm, humid air moving. The place is furnished to capacity with identical square tables, each with its complement of four chairs. You sit where you can, with whomever is at a table. The coffee is good, and they serve French toast. Conversation is easy to come by. And so, a spry, bright-eyed elderly man with great shocks of pure white hair was talking to me. I confirmed to him that Canada was cold and that French was indeed spoken in parts of it and that I liked India and so on and so forth - the usual light talk between friendly, curious Indians and foreign backpackers. He took in my line of work with a widening of the eyes and a nodding of the head. It was time to go. I had my hand up, trying to catch my waiter's eye to get the bill.

Then the elderly man said, "I have a story that will make you believe in God."

I stopped waing my hand. But I was suspicious. Was this a Jehova's Witness knocking at my door? "Does your story take place two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the Roman Empire?" I asked.

"No."

Was he some sort of Muslim evangelical? "Does it take place in seventh-century Arabia?"

"No, no. It starts tight here in Pondicherry just a few years back, and it ends, I am delighted to tell you, in the very country you come from."

"And it will make me believe in God?"

"Yes."

"That's a tall order."

"Not so tall that you can't reach."

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Well, after being in pain most of the weekend, and waking up to a big wet spot on my pillow from ear leakage, I finally called the doctor today. They only had one appointment available, for while I was suppose to at work. So I went to work, left to go to the doctor, got my prescriptions filled , then went back to work...

An ear infection, at my age!

The sun was actually out for awhile today, though has been raining steadily through most of the night.

Labor Day was a quiet day. Bill had a soccer practice (supposedly the school district was going to crack down on mandatory practices on Sundays and holidays this year, but they are apprently not). Steven's best friend came over for a few hours. We barbecued our dinner and ate outside until the mosquitos came out...

The Prince and Me

A Cinderella story with the lovely and talented Julia Stiles as the Cinderella girl, who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and is now a very serious pre-med student at U-Wis Madison. There she falls in love with the disguised Prince of Denmark, and he with her.

Parts of the movie are unintentionally howlingly hilarious. At Thanksgiving, Wisconsin is portrayed as sunny and green, with shirt sleeve weather.Following the movie time line, Denmark is shown at Chrsitmas break at the height of summer, filled with green grass and butterflies.You got to wonder if people from a place like Southern California, without real seasons came up with all that...

Didn't rain today, though it was cloudy. Managed to get out of the house a bit, and that helped me feel a lot better. Went into Saline with the kids. We visited a great little gift/toy/book shop called the Calico Cat. The kids enjoyed looking at all of the stuffed animals, and visiting with the two pretty and friendly cats who live in the store, Callie and Duchess. We then went to the best ice cream place in the world, Cold Stone Creamery. They make the ice cream fresh each day. You pick a base flavor, and then they mix in extra ingredients. I got white cholcolate ice crean with Oreo cookies and chocolate chips mixed in. Steven got French Vamilla ice cream with Oreos, gummir bears, and Reeses's peanut butter cups. Bill just got mint chocolate chip. Dan got strawberry ice cream with Nestle's crunch bar.

Afterwards, I took the dog for a walk, and bought fresh peaches from the orchard across the street.

Continued cleaning and doing tons of laundry. The water heater had such a bad leak that the concrete of the bathroom floor is still soaking wet. I set up a dehumidifier, and am hoping that it will help...I have never seen concrete become saturated with water like that before...

Cold Mountain

Finally caught up with this one tonight on dvd. It hit me in a completely unexpected way...

I was born very late to my parents. I am still in my 30's (for a little while longer ) and my father served in World War II, and his father served in the Spanish American War. My other grandfather was born something like the 16th out of 17 kids in his family, and was a World War I vet...his father tried to serve in the Confederate army but was rejected due to a bad lifelong limp from a childhood injury but one of his brothers died at a young age in a Union prison camp...so my parents were not far removed in time or generations from the Civil War in Virginia back in the mountains...

I just wanted to say that the oral history I grew up with from them closely matches some of the events shown in the movie. The civilian population was terrorized by men who "supported" one side or the other, but who more or less took advantage of the chaos of the war years to rape, steal, and murder. When I was little my father showed me a place near Iager, West Virginia, where one of his ancestors was shot down in the middle of the road by some of these vigilantes/terrorists -- whatever you wish to call them. The people promised to shoot anyone who took him away for burial - he was supposed to be some sort of example -- but one of my female ancestors buried him right there in the road where he was killed...this man left behind his pregnant and unmarried sweetheart, who was the direct female ancestor of my father's mother...the road still runs right over where his grave supposedly is...

What happened in the mountains of the South is not a particularly well known or proud piece of American history. A lot of innocent people suffered greatly.

As for the movie, there wasn't enough chemistry between Law and Kidman for the love story to work for me. However, the friendship between Kidman and Zellweger's characters was portrayed very well. And the scenes of the innocent suffering were very well done, and, if the oral history passed down from my parents has truth in it -- very authentic.

Second day of a four day weekend...second day of rain.

I could have been someplace with the children this weekend, as I had originally planned almost a year ago when I asked to have it off, but Dan forbid that. Said I could do local things like the Detroit Jazz Festival, but that obviously isn't going to happen, either. And he has yelled at me twice so far today.

We finally have hot water this afternoon, so how are the kids and I spending our precious four days off of work and school?

I want to run away from home.