OneSaneVoice

Luddites Unite!

Posted on November 28, 2010 by onesanevoice

It was Wednesday evening, the day before Turkey Day, and the ads on TV were blasting “ALL STORES OPEN THANKSGIVING! FIND SPECIAL SALES 6 PM TO MIDNIGHT!!” The strident voice urging me to cut short my beloved family day to go buy iPods and PlayStations instantly pissed me off. I turned angrily to Husband, who was happily puttering around the kitchen fixing himself a nutritious sliver of the pecan pie we would be serving the next day.

“This is outrageous!” I yelled in frustration. “Thanksgiving is for families to spend eating together and annoying each other and reminiscing about holiday disappointments past. It is NOT for trekking off to superficial shopping malls that will still be there when they wake up with indigestion the next day. What is happening to our culture? When did shopping replace making memories? When did wanting what we haven’t got become more important than being grateful for what we have? It’s called THANKS GIVING for chrissake! Can’t the stores leave us alone?”

Husband looked up bemused at my outburst and said, “Nobody’s making people go shopping, hon. The choice is theirs. Stores are in the business of doing business, but they’re not holding a gun to anyone’s head to buy things.” I glowered at him and his reasonable attitude. “Oh, yeah?” I sputtered intelligently. “How would the stores like it if people started picketing them to close on Sundays and holidays so families could spend some uninterrupted time together?” Husband’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve become quite the little Luddite, haven’t you?” he asked.

My first reaction was to say, “Wha’chu talkin’ about, Willis?” since I had no idea what a Luddite was. I mean I knew it had something to do with old-time British politics, like the Whigs and the Tories and the Spellings. No, not the Spellings. That’s just some Hollywood humor. I told Husband I was going to the bathroom, but really I went into my study and googled Luddite. In case you are similarly challenged English history-wise, the Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early 19th century who lashed out at the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. They protested at the mills, sometimes destroying the mechanized looms that they felt were taking away their work and changing their way of life. Thank you, Wikipedia, and Hoo-rah, Luddites.

I strolled back into the kitchen and said to Husband loftily, “You think you’re so smart. I’m not a Luddite. I’m a Neo-Luddite.” My further googling unearthed Neo-Luddism, a modern-day personal philosophy for those who long for the days before technology turned the human race into droids with bionic thumbs for texting. My protest is more annoyance than defiance, though, since there’s no other way for me to post this blog entry other than on my sleek Toshiba Satellite laptop. That fact aside, I am still in some heady company in my protest against consumerism swallowing our humanity. Tyler Durden from Fight Club, fictitious as he was, felt the same way, and might I add I often feel fictitious myself. Also on board with me here is Nicholas G. Carr, author of Is Google Making Us Stupid? In answer to that possibly rhetorical question, I’m thinking it makes us smart in the moment, but stupid going far out. Husband was impressed by all my newfound knowledge and likeminded comrades, past and present.

OSV: I’m in good company, yes? Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nicholas G. Carr. . .

HUSBAND: Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski.

OSV: Have you read his manifesto? The punctuation is impeccable.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos lead us to Imagine images

trapped

mountains

fly

peeling the world

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged neo-Luddite, stores open Thanksgiving | Comments Off

The Stein Way

Posted on November 24, 2010 by onesanevoice

One of the cool things about being a middle-aged college student is that I am way more interested in just about everything I’m studying than I was the first time around thirty-five years ago. I always enjoyed exploring the roots of literature, but when I was in my teens and twenties, it all seemed somehow less dynamic and relevant to my life than it does now. How is it more relevant now, you ask? I have no idea. All the authors are still dead (deader even), and technology has propelled us to experience the dawn of their ideologies on Kindle screens instead of well-worn pages. Nevertheless, I hear their stories clearly, and their voices speak to me.

Then I observe the sold-out performance run of the Public Theater’s Gatz, the eight-hour live production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and I think it would have tickled its author to the max. It seems in line with the daring and different writing forms that the Jazz Age authors have come to represent. They stayed up all night at what we romantically imagine as an endless party, so eight hours at the theater hardly seems outrageous. Maybe Fitz would even rub Hemingway’s nose in it, calling out, “Hey Ernie, any producers giving you a holla about The Torrents of Spring? No? Bad break. Well, keep writing. Oh, and pass the gin.”

All of which brings us to the subject of my current study, Gertrude Stein. You’ve probably heard the name, and may even be aware that she was a central figure in the art and literary circle of 1920’s Paris that was memorialized in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. These were the American expatriates who called themselves the Lost Generation, a term coined, as it happens, by Gertrude Stein. Between her Saturday night salons in Paris and her time spent in the States, Stein accumulated admirers like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Thornton Wilder, and many others, except possibly her literary rival, James Joyce. So now that you can place Gertrude Stein, what is she famous for?

Good question. The name Alice B. Toklas probably comes to mind, as in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written by Gertrude Stein. When you think about it, it really was a brilliant device by Stein, the idea of writing her longtime lover’s autobiography so she would have endless opportunities to refer to herself as a genius in the voice of the person who knew her best. So how could she be wrong? When Toklas informs the reader that the publication of Stein’s first novel marked the beginning of modern literature, it’s hard to have an honest first reaction. Who’s spinning this yarn, anyway? That aside, much of Stein’s writing is semantic gymnastics, as in “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Or, more abstractly, “Anything is something. Not coming to anything is something. Needing coming to something is something. Not needing coming to something is something. Anything is something.” It was Cubist literature to match the era’s Cubist art; Picasso in words.

Gertrude Stein was also the one who famously described California by saying, “There’s no there there.” Her collection of art was unparalleled, her salons renowned, her famous friends famously devoted to and inspired by her. She was a massive mound of womanhood with a grandfather’s wise countenance, a worldly lesbian with a passionate love for sentences. Her own biographer wrote, “Gertrude Stein had become world famous, but, ironically, many people did not know why.” Perhaps the answer can be found in one of Stein’s own statements early in life: “I want to be historical.” May all of our wishes become so true.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos border on Iconic

peace dolls

if Cher wore chocolate

american pie

the bling of it all

Posted in Skool Daze | Tagged Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, there's no there there | Comments Off

New York Cares

Posted on November 20, 2010 by onesanevoice

At lunch recently with a good friend, I mentioned that I will have a break between finishing up with my bachelors degree and starting on my masters. Grad schools don’t start until fall, and I’ll be done by the end of December. I mentioned that I’ve been doing some very local volunteer work, and I’d like to expand on that in the months I have available. A longtime volunteer herself, my friend suggested I join New York Cares, hands down the largest organization for volunteers in the city. Magnificently inspired, I logged onto their site when I got home and reserved a spot in one of their upcoming orientation sessions. I was amazed to discover that most of their sessions were already full to capacity, and the next available one I could attend was the day before I was registered to take the GRE, the standardized test required by grad schools.

On the subject of the GRE, which I wrote about preparing for in GRE Glee, airport security has nothing on that test. I had never taken a standardized test by computer before and it’s pretty intense. First, all of your belongings – and I mean down to your Chapstick – have to be locked in a locker, the lock for which is the ONLY thing you can have on your person beside your ID when you enter the testing room. How, you wonder, will they know if you sneak in the Chapstick? Three ways: one, they will see it when you turn all of your pockets inside out; two, they will see you smearing it on your face through one of the video surveillance cameras inside the testing room; and three, they will hear you smacking your lips with relief through the microphones positioned throughout the room. So the only thing you better have written on your hand is, “Remember to pee.” I also didn’t realize that all different tests would be going on at the same time as mine. A little girl taking an IQ test was sitting at a station near me, and at one point I heard her sigh softly and moan the word ‘math’. I felt her pain to the x power.

In contrast, the New York Cares orientation was feel-good and inspiring. The room was full of people of absolutely every age, appearance, and walk of life. The speaker, himself a veteran volunteer, truly imparted the spirit of the organization when he described the needs the organization meets. Volunteers can do everything from yoga with autistic children, library storytelling, deliver meals to homebound people, accompany city kids on urban outings, help with social events at nursing homes, paint outdoor murals, plant trees, assist immigrants studying for their citizenship test, and on and on. The best advice the speaker gave us was to get outside our comfort zone. If someone is a teacher, try gardening at one of the city’s 132 parks. If they’re an athletic coach, volunteer to record books for the blind. He said the most fun and the biggest connection often comes from trying something new.

There are 53,000 volunteers with New York Cares, and they serve over 400,000 of their fellow citizens a year. Non-profits, public schools, and city agencies throughout the five boroughs depend on New York Cares to meet critical needs. Those bins you pass at firehouses this time of year that are filled with donated winter coats to be distributed to 70,000 people are part of New York Cares. This holiday season, if you want to feel the magic of helping someone, visit newyorkcares.org/winterwishes and answer one of the letters to Santa from a child whose only holiday gift might be yours.

Daughters Featured Fotos scream SWEET at the New York Chocolate Show

art

fashion

symmetry

perfection

Posted in Random Thoughts and Adventures | Tagged charity, New York, volunteer organization | Comments Off

GRE Glee

Posted on November 15, 2010 by onesanevoice

A portion of my time these days is spent preparing for the GRE, the exam many graduate schools require their applicants to take. Since I will have my bachelors degree by the time this year is over, I am currently applying to graduate schools that offer a Master of Fine Arts. The GRE, or Graduate Record Examination, is a four-hour test that evaluates general knowledge and critical thinking, and I am registered to take it this week. For the record, I am a 56-year-old mother of two grown children. I haven’t sat for a four-hour test since labor. I’m looking forward to this exam with the same enthusiasm.

The sticking point for me is math, as it is for many of my gender. Recent university studies about the math phobia that exists among otherwise intelligent females suggest it is largely the result of low expectations by teachers, parents, and society in general beginning at a very early age. This insecurity is even passed on by female elementary school teachers to their students. Girls are encouraged to excel in subjects like English, art, and music, while boys are expected to be the scientists and mathematicians. The studies aren’t even talking about back when I was in school; the data shows that those stereotypes remain in existence today. On the peer level, boys who are math whizzes are still admired, while their feminine counterparts with the same skills are looked on differently. Apparently, even when girls know the answer, they’re hesitant to raise their hand at the risk of intimidating future prom dates.

I know firsthand of one exception. All through her school years, Daughter always knew the answer in math class and always raised her hand. In junior year, she got a perfect score on the SAT. In senior year, she was a regular on a cable TV show that offered teen viewers on-air math homework support. Being smart and secure enough to show it never held Daughter back. So just like in Ghostbusters, I knew who to call. On Veterans Day, we sat in her studio apartment and loaded her Mac with the GRE practice math questions.

DTR: Have you in fact tried any of these on your own?

OSV: Oh, yes, quite a few. It wasn’t pretty.

DTR: No problem. Before we go over some strategies and basic formulas, let’s have a look at what they’re asking.

She read the first question. Then she read it again. Then she repositioned the Mac on her lap and read the next three. She turned to me with an impassive look.

DTR: Okay, so what they’re doing is wording the questions in such a way as to obfuscate what they’re really asking. You need to redefine the problem in a way you can understand it. Worst case scenario, leave it blank.

OSV: We’re not allowed. Every question has to be answered.

DTR: Okay. Then make a note so you can go back to it when you’re done with the others.

OSV: Can’t. We aren’t able to advance to the next screen without answering the question we’re on. No going back.

Daughter looked at me genuinely worried. I looked at her with despair.

DTR: (brightening) All right, new strategy. Remember how you always knew when I was lying? Or when you had a feeling something was going to happen and it did? Remember how you kept asking Son in high school if he got a tattoo?

OSV: HE GOT THAT TATTOO?!

DTR: Bad example, forget it. Anyway, it’s a skill, Mom, and you have it. You’re very intuitive. If you use your natural abilities, there’s a good chance you’ll do all right. Just look at each question, analyze it the best you can, and go with your feeling about which answer choice is right.

OSV: You’re telling me to guess.

DTR: I’m telling you to guess your ass off.

Daughter’s Fotos venture into the Real and Imagined

grabbing as much money as i can

the great escape

needy

morning at the water cooler

Posted in Skool Daze | Tagged graduate school exam, GRE, humor | Comments Off

Chasing Shylock

Posted on November 11, 2010 by onesanevoice

Once again, my studies at school fall into a parallel trajectory with current events. No sooner do I finish readingThe Merchant of Venice, with its marathon of anti-Semitism, than I open the paper and read about a $42 million fraud against the Holocaust Claims Conference, a Jewish charity funded by reparation payments from the German government. On the same page as that disgusting news is a picture of Tammie Schnitzer, a social activist about my age from Billings, Montana, whose story was told in the documentary “Not in Our Town.” She is visiting local synagogues to tell about her city’s turbulent struggle with hate crimes over a decade ago.

Back in the 1990’s, homes in Billings that displayed menorahs during Hanukkah had their windows shattered, horrifically evoking Germany’s Kristallnacht, the frenzied attack on Jewish homes and businesses that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. Tammie Schnitzer, a Lutheran who converted to Judaism when she married, was invited to speak by a local rabbi in response to the growing climate of racial and religious prejudice and outright homophobia that seems to be sweeping across our city and our nation. New York in recent years has suffered a shocking number of brutal attacks on immigrant and gay citizens, as well as a rising tide of vandalism at Jewish houses of worship. In 2008, Ecuadoran immigrant Marcelo Lucero was murdered by a group of young men who were sent to prison for a hate crime. More recently, several gay men were lured to an apartment where they were tortured mercilessly. The most diverse and supposedly enlightened city in the country is sliding inch by inch back to the middle ages, and it isn’t going quietly.

In Shakespeare’s time, there were almost no Jews in England since they were banned in 1290 by King Edward as being a threat to the country. This exile lasted until 1655, meaning that in all likelihood Shakespeare never met a Jewish person in person. Which might explain why Shylock the money-lender is an epic caricature along the lines of Tonto representing all Native Americans. In collections of Shakespeare’s work, The Merchant of Venice is listed among the Comedies, which is not a place any Jewish reader would put it. For Jews, it’s a Tragedy. Vacillating between victim and villain, Shylock shows humanity only where Shakespeare feels it would serve his dramatic purpose. Yes, it’s a gut-wrenching character and Al Pacino gives a powerfully nuanced performance in the 2004 movie. But anyone who thinks the play does not have an undercurrent of anti-Semitism should notice that Shylock is only addressed by name 17 times. The rest of the time he is called “Jew” or referred to as “the Jew,” often with “dog” or “cur” in the same sentence. Shakespeare, above any writer in history, knew the power of repetitive phrasing.

On the train the other day, I overheard a cell call by a young woman, a city elementary school teacher. She was telling her friend that she had read her class an award-winning book that day about all the different kinds of families. How children can be raised by a mommy and a daddy, a mommy or a daddy, two mommies, two daddies, grandparents, or guardians. Some kids have half-siblings, step-siblings, foster siblings, etc. Afterward, the teacher was told by two of her fellow teachers that if any of her students decide to be gay after hearing that story it will be her fault, and she had no business forcing her views on innocent children. The young teacher was very upset as she told her friend the story. She said a third teacher seemed to be supporting her when she said she read the same story to her class. Until she added that she skipped over the page about the same-sex parents. Hello medieval times. Talk to me, Shylock.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

bklyn hip hot

asia society – nyc

navajo totah festival – new mexico

independence hall – Israel

gay pride parade

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged anti-Semitism, Jews exiled, Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare | Comments Off

In a Poe State of Mind

Posted on November 4, 2010 by onesanevoice

When I was a kid, my father used to sit on the edge of my bed at night and read to me before I went to sleep. No Goodnight, Moon or fractured fairy tales for us; no, in our Brooklyn housing project apartment I played audience at the age of six to The Charge of the Light Brigade, Annabel Lee, and our absolute favorite, The Raven. For me, the eerily Gothic poem by Edgar Allan Poe evoked lost love and eternal devotion in a rhapsodic cocoon of rhymes and alliteration. At an age so young, the agony of the phrasing was beyond me, along with the narrator’s descent into madness over the death of his beloved Lenore.

I knew the bird was bad news sitting there perched on the guy’s doorway croaking “Nevermore,” but lost in my father’s warm baritone, all still seemed right with the world. He would sit, his six-foot frame folded in half, cupping the tattered book of poems in one hand and gesturing dramatically with the other as he read:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”

At the present moment, I’m writing a paper for my American Lit class on the very same Edgar Allan Poe. The man who is credited with inventing the American detective genre with such stories as The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter. The author of not only haunting poetry, but gripping psychological horror classics like The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart, as well as the ultimate premature-burial-in-a-dreary-mansion tale, The Fall of the House of Usher. The really staggering story is that all this was done by a little man who struggled with alcoholism and erratic behavior in a lifetime that only lasted forty years.

Still, he managed to pack quite a bit of living into those few decades. In addition to his original and prolific writings, he sparred critically with fellow authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James, and married his thirteen-year-old cousin at a time in the 1800’s when it wasn’t considered a Jerry Lee Lewis thing to get arrested over. Not a very good husband, he lost his wife to death at a young age, and was about to remarry when he died himself. It reeks of repetition, but in the weary words of the black bird:

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Daughter’s Featured Fotos go A Little Halloween Underground

jack-o-lady

going uptown instead of up

jack says. . .

. . . boo!

Posted in Brooklyn is calling | Tagged American Lit, Edgar Allan Poe, nevermore, The Raven | Comments Off

People no smarter than us

Posted on October 30, 2010 by onesanevoice

There is much going on here in New York this week before the midterm elections. First, we had a gubernatorial debate impossible to caricature because it WAS a caricature. Next, we Cablevision subscribers are once again held hostage in a battle of power and greed between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and James Dolan’s cable empire. And before the weekend is over, there will be rug rats dressed as superheroes banging on our door in search of a sugar rush and higher dental bills, followed much later by marauding teens looking to amuse us with eggs, toilet paper, and shaving cream. In between all that, Husband and I will celebrate our tenth year of marital bliss, and I will write one of the final four papers that separate me from a bachelor’s degree in December. Good times.

The televised political debate was outrageous, and the only thing that would have made it more hilarious was if it took place in a state where I don’t live. The fact that the characters on stage displaying their inanity and insanity represent my options for leadership was harrowing. Andrew Cuomo, the forerunner, didn’t have to say much to look like the default least objectionable choice. He was flanked by challenger Carl Paladino, who uses the “n” word in memos and openly regards homosexuals as an aberration. I suspect he also thinks the word Jew is a verb. Himself the father of an out-of-wedlock ten-year-old, he publicly derided Cuomo’s private life as questionable. Well then.

Candidate Kristin Davis is a former madam who seems to be running on a platform of tattoos and specialty services. In her previous (and perhaps still current) profession, she supplied call girls for then Governor Eliot Spitzer, who ironically resigned over the scandal. Now she wants to be our governor. Did I already use the word ironic? She brought with her to the debate a bottomless sack of brothel one-liners. In response to no particular question, she announced, “The key difference between the MTA and my former escort agency is I operated one set of books and I offered on-time and reliable service.” I guess there is a correlation between mass transit and a businesswoman with a clever way of getting on and off, but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same vehicles.

Scooting over the other three candidates — the representatives of the Libertarian, Green, and Freedom parties — we arrive at an individual named Jimmy McMillan, self-proclaimed leader of the self-established The Rent is 2 Damn High Party. I know you wish you’d thought of it, but you didn’t, and you probably couldn’t pull off the black gloves and Snoop Dogg delivery that he did. In response to every issue and every question, his defiant response was “The rent is too damn high!” What can be done about taxation? “The rent is too damn high!” Can the next generation afford to live in New York? “The rent is too damn high!” Why do families struggle to put food on the table? Sing it out. At one point, he cupped his hand to his ear and said, “Did you hear that sound? Some child’s stomach just growled.” If ever there was a candidate for the You Couldn’t Make This Shit Up election, the New York gubernatorial debate would be it.

For a break from all this political hilarity, Cablevision subscribers can turn on channels 5 or 9 and look at a blank screen while listening to the whiny disclaimers about how News Corp has pulled Fox programming because Cablevision is so devoted to its customers that they refuse to raise our already exorbitant rates to keep stations we have always received on the air. “News Corp is the one you should blame for this inexcusable lapse in programming because we, Cablevision, always have your best interests at heart.” To which the Fox ads respond that we should write Cablevision and demand a refund for channels we have been robbed of but are still paying for. Meanwhile, the screen is blank and there’s no World Series in our house, so I can be happy blaming everyone. I know this cable thing and the crazy election debate are what a capitalist democracy looks like in action, and I honestly wouldn’t want to live under a different system, but I do wish it looked like something else.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos show NYC Pre-Halloween

zombie crawl

resting in times square

shadows

tourist

zombies eat pizza too

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged Andrew Cuomo, elections, gubernatorial debate, New York | Comments Off

Look like th’ innocent flower, But be the serpent under ‘t

Posted on October 25, 2010 by onesanevoice

I recently reread The Tragedy of Macbeth for my class in Shakespearean Drama, and just for good measure I watched the stunning PBS production with Patrick Stewart broadcast earlier this month. Do me a favor and read this excerpt from Lady Macbeth’s Act I soliloquy in which she taunts her husband’s resolve about killing the king and assuming the throne as they planned. To drive home her point, she illustrates in graphic detail that she would kill her own infant before she went back on their pact:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Whew. Putting aside the obvious dearth of maternal instinct in the speaker, the cadence and heart-stabbing poetry of Shakespeare’s writing illuminates his brilliant talent, especially in light of the fact that in today’s disaffected texting terms, Macbeth’s response might be AYTMTB (and you’re telling me this because?) Thine eyes see that as not so gripping, eh Brutus? How about this passage from Juliet’s famous balcony scene with Romeo:

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Maybe if Romeo had hopped on his horse and looked down at his BlackBerry to find C U L8R HUGZ instead, he’d have just kept riding on to his friend-with-benefits gal pal’s house for a booty call and a Corona. I guess the point I’m going for here is that so much of history’s memorable literature has the effect of making the era in which it was written seem more exciting or romantic or intriguing than our own. One part of our brain reminds us that half the women back then died in childbirth and the plague took everyone else, but another part calls out fromThe Merchant of Venice in Portia’s dulcet tones:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

A product of my times, it’s hard for me to read that passage without imagining Meryl Streep delivering it. But not only is she not the right age for the part, she isn’t even the right gender. In Shakespeare’s time, the female roles were performed on stage by young boys. So like the plague, it could always be worse. It could be Justin Bieber.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos were taken Just Walking Around

wall of stickers

large and in charge

tables and chairs on the hudson

Posted in All the World's a Stage | Tagged Juliet, Macbeth, Romeo, Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice | Comments Off

PrimeCrime

Posted on October 21, 2010 by onesanevoice

There are only two television series that inspired me to purchase the complete box set. Although I adore The Sopranos and never had the opportunity to see the epic HBO original – I only had access to the watered down but still insane A&E version – I somehow don’t feel the need to own every episode. If I had to choose, I’d take the ones where Ralphie is dismembered and Pussy is deep-sixed, along with the essential dream follow-ups detailing Tony’s guilt over the latter. On that shelf of single episodes, I would also stack the JFK hour-long Seinfeld with Kramer’s stadium spitter, and The West Wing episode entitled “Noel” with Adam Arkin playing the therapist to Josh Lyman’s post-traumatic stressed White House staffer. There are others that come to mind, like The Dick Van Dyke Show in which Laura Petrie tells the world that Alan Brady is bald, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show one about Chuckles the Clown’s funeral. Those and almost any Simpson’s I would pretty much never tire of.

A box set is a commitment though, of space and time and relevance. The first set I ever bought was two years ago with The Wire, and I got it piecemeal on eBay, previously viewed. I watched it ravenously and then lent it to Daughter, who almost refused to return it. For a while, she kept the last three seasons and left me with the first two. With her upcoming apartment renovation, however, she brought them back to me along with Casablanca, The Big Sleep, and the rest of my film noir classics. Paring down your belongings is a both a blessing and a bitch.

The only other complete series I own just arrived from Amazon and I’m knee-deep in it even as we speak. It’sPrime Suspect, a British import from the 90’s starring the brilliant Helen Mirren. In it, Mirren gives a gritty and realistic portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, a middle-aged career woman battling a very low glass ceiling at work on London’s police force, and self-absorption, commitment phobia, and an outright broken picker in her private life. Woven through it all is an assortment of engrossing murder cases, a revolving door of station house workmates, and an escalating personal addiction to alcohol. It is riveting, unsparing, and more than sometimes infuriating in its accurate portrayal of good old boys’ networks everywhere.

Not promoting a female officer because “she can’t take a joke” was commonplace in recent decades before sexual harassment laws were instituted, and departments set up to address those issues. Aside from the shudder of recognition those of a certain age and experience may feel watching familiar scenarios, the swell of gratitude for the real-life Jane Tennisons is just as powerful. Her motto could be ‘I don’t give anybody shit, and I don’t take anybody’s shit; I’m not in the shit business’. Standing in England’s unremitting drizzle in wool skirts and minimal makeup, Detective Tennison stoically takes on serial killing monsters and career killing superiors. It all depends on how you prefer your brutality; with a knife or a smile.

Daughter’s Fotos give us a taste of her life as an inner city school teacher

position statement

goals

countries with better education than us

one harlem morning

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged DCI Tennison, HBO, Helen Mirren, Prime Suspect | Comments Off

Lessons from Above and Below

Posted on October 16, 2010 by onesanevoice

A story about one of the candidates in New York’s state senate race made us laugh out loud at breakfast today. Husband read me the article about a campaign debate between an incumbent Democrat and rival Republican in which the rival accused the incumbent of being inconsistent on key issues. To assure the voters that he was nothing like that, he said, “I haven’t changed my views on anything in my whole life.” Yes, that’s what the public wants making decisions on their behalf, a rigid doofus immune to growth. Note to candidates: If it’s really true that none of your views have ever changed in your entire life, for chrissake don’t brag about it. Get some help, read a book, something.

Then I read a story to Husband about the passing of a woman who became a nun at 92, just six months before she died. She had always wanted to be a nun, but was never able to realize her dream, so in 1997 she began saving her money and reaching out for donations to build a Greek Orthodox monastery. It was completed in 2005, and she moved in a year ago with her wheelchair and three times weekly dialysis. At a ceremony this past April, she formally became a nun and lived her dream for the last six months of her life. Before you feel sad for her, think of all the people who don’t ever reach their dream, or sadder still, don’t even have one. I found the story sweetly joyous.

Even more joyous to read were all the stories about the 33 rescued miners in Chile. We have all lived through accounts of horrific atrocities upon mankind that serve to unite the world under a cloak of brotherhood; things like 9/11, Darfur, Sarajevo, and Rwanda. We keep reaching into our bottomless pit of outrage in reaction to the regular onslaught of misery unfolding somewhere in the world. How incredibly uplifting to have a daring rescue of Everyman heroes to bring us together. The stories of how these men survived far under the earth’s surface in the face of the unknown have made the whole world’s heart beat faster.

“Los 33” rewrote both Survivor and Lord of the Flies as they ticked off 69 days of existence over 2,000 feet underground. They worked out, played games, talked of babies waiting to be born, and soccer games waiting to be watched. They kept each other going, rationing their food, thinking positive thoughts, and voting on issues in their own microcosm of democracy where a group decision took 16 + 1 vote to pass. When the story broke that they were arguing about the order of the rescue – who would be first and who would be last – it turned out they all wanted to be last. Each one wanted their fellow miner brothers to reach safety first. Seeing the newspaper photo of all 33 miners in their hospital robes posed with Chile’s President Pinera was a sight for sore eyes. In their sunglasses and hospital slippers they somehow managed to look like the real life heroes the whole world needs.

As this blog begins its FIFTH YEAR of words and pictures, Daughter’s Featured Fotos return to Comic Con

dead soldier

white angels

tough

and one for my buddy snake eyes

Posted in All the World's a Stage | Tagged Chile, Comic Con, Los 33, New York senate | Comments Off

OneSaneVoice

Luddites Unite!

The Stein Way

New York Cares

GRE Glee

Chasing Shylock

In a Poe State of Mind

People no smarter than us

Look like th’ innocent flower, But be the serpent under ‘t

PrimeCrime

Lessons from Above and Below

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Recent Comments

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Meta