Archive for Deborah Lipp

Full circle of service

June 12, 2009 / / 2 comments

Arthur’s senior year, he volunteered with the Rockland Family Shelter, in their SAEDA program (Student Activists Ending Dating Abuse). At the end of the school year, they had a Recognition Dinner, honoring their volunteers. Arth wanted to go, so I drove him and attended as his guest.

During the various speeches and presentations, I found out about their Rape Crisis program, in which volunteers go to the emergency room to advocate for and be with rape victims. Sometimes the volunteers meet the victim at the police department as well. And all I could think was “I gotta do that!” I mean, I was blown away. I had no idea such a program existed and it just seemed the most glorious work; brave and intense and needed and kind of enthralling.

(Arthur was bored out of his mind by the dinner, which was mostly older people, few SAEDA teens, no music, no dancing, and just generally not what a teen wants to do with his evening.)

Well, sometimes you think you’re going to do something and don’t get around to it, but with my only child going off to college, I was determined not to drop this ball.

The training course for Rape Crisis Counselors ran from October through mid-February, and we (the new RCCs) began volunteering immediately. I do three shifts a month, and am on the stand-by list. When there are open shifts, I take extra if I am available. With all of that, I have only done one emergency room visit, and one phone counseling call (both, ironically, when I was on stand-by; I have never received a call when I was actually on call). RFS does about 65 hospital calls a year; 1.25 a week, and there are 11 volunteer shifts a week, so you do the math. Nonetheless, when the need is there, it is incredibly real.

Last night was the annual Volunteer Recognition Dinner. There I was, back again where this work began. It felt so wonderful and good.

And although it was more or less the same as last year; buffet-style food in a community center, volunteer entertainment, no dancing, I was thrilled and delighted to be there. I had warm conversations with the other volunteers from my RCC class, I enjoyed the slide show of people I knew and events I’d attended or heard about, and I was touched by the speeches.

I went home (soaking wet, caught in the rain) feeling warm and fulfilled and like I’d completed a beautiful circle. Which I have every intention of completing every year.

Late edition trivia solutions

June 10, 2009 / / Comments Off on Late edition trivia solutions

It was Tuesday.

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Tuesday Trivia: The late edition

June 9, 2009 / / 18 comments

I guess it’s Tuesday, huh?

1. According to the IMDb, this is the first ever film released on DVD.
HINT: Musical starring a pop star.
Solved by Even (eventually) (comment #17).

2. A cult movie starring a rock star, the star of another cult movie, and the star of a movie about sexual fantasies and sexual trangression.
Solved by Ben (comment #7).

3. When this movie won an Academy Award, the recipient balanced the statuette on his nose.
Solved by Wendy (comment #1).

4. Manolo Blahnik created hundreds of specially made shoes for this film about a historical figure considered a fashion icon at the time.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #4).

5. Two acting sisters played a character in this film as a young girl and as a teenager. The older sister became famous. The younger sister became a Bond girl.
TIE: Solved by Hazel (comment #9) and Melville (comment #10). (Cut-off for ties is 3 minutes.)

6. In one scene, a band plays the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” in German.
Solved by Melville (comment #12).

7. “You mean you want me to shove my finger up that turtle’s ass?”
Solved by OhKen (comment #5).

Monday Movie Review: Last Chance Harvey

June 8, 2009 / / 2 comments

Last Chance Harvey (2008) 5/10
Sad, awkward Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) travels to London for his daughter’s wedding. He meets lonely, nervous Kate Walker (Emma Thompson) and they strike up a tentative romance.

I had high hopes for this one. Quirky independent romances appeal to me. It had some awards buzz. It has a good cast and I’m drawn to the idea of showing romance between people who aren’t 22 and perfect. Alas.

I am often struck by the observer effect as it relates to movie reviews. We do like to pretend that reviews can be objective, that there is a “good movie” and a “bad movie” on some absolute scale of Movieness that exists in some corner of the universe. Yet a review is written by a person who was in a mood of some sort during the time of viewing. That reviewer has life experience brought to the film (Ebert, for instance, hated Marilyn Hotchkiss because he hated ballroom dance lessons and could not imagine wanting to return there). In addition, there are the vagaries of viewing circumstances.

For the current movie, I confess that Arthur and I had a big fight over whether or not we would watch it, and I insisted, because DAMMIT I just wanted to return it to Netflix already. And within ten minutes he’d walked out of the room to leave me to watch it alone. So maybe I would have liked Last Chance Harvey better under better conditions—who can say?

Old movies often rely on a man meeting a woman and then, let’s face it, stalking her. This is why a movie like The Gay Divorcee can be uncomfortable to watch nowadays. Newer movies don’t cotton so much to stalking and so rely on Meet Cute. But Last Chance Harvey is more in the stalker mold. Harvey is small and mild and not scary, and checks in often with Kate to make sure he hasn’t pushed too far, yet push he does, and it doesn’t feel good to me.

The delicate, tentative connection that Kate and Harvey have is nice, but it doesn’t seem like all that much, and certainly not enough to inspire the kind of transformation we know these characters need, and we know (being an audience who has seen romances before) the film will deliver.

There is a profoundly moving moment at Harvey’s daughter’s wedding. I totally had to pause the film and wash the runny makeup off my face. But what led us there? It seems the simple act of having anyone to talk to allowed Harvey to step out of his shell and speak truthfully to his daughter. But he seems, I dunno, friendly. Surely he talks to other people?

Dustin Hoffman is good but not wonderful. Emma Thompson, on the other hand, is glorious. She is rich with feeling and really grounded; present in her body in a way that is always full and real and engaging.

Still, the romance is slight and not all that much to build a movie around. I mean, really?

Parenthetically, it is an odd comment on movie assumptions that Emma Thompson, 50, feels like an appropriate age mate for Dustin Hoffman, 72. They do briefly mention that he’s kind of old, but I suppose it’s so refreshing that she is less than 30 years younger than him, unlike, say, Harrison Ford’s leading ladies. Whatever.

Pagan Values Month: The theology of immanence

June 5, 2009 / / 7 comments

In addition to pluralism, I think the other core value of Paganism is immanence. And, like pluralism, I think it stands in strong contrast to the monotheistic society in which we live, and I think it provides us with an ability to shape values that the larger culture can easily mistake for having no values at all.

Let’s define two basic ways of viewing deity: Transcendent or immanent. Transcendence means that deity is outside of and apart from ourselves, and immanence means that deity is within and a part of ourselves. Although this is a binary, we can believe in more than two ways: We can believe that deity is transcendent, is immanent, is both transcendent and immanent, is neither transcendent nor immanent, or is unknowable. So I count five variations, and maybe I’ve missed some.

But we can still talk about the binary, because the binary is this: Either a belief in immanence is present or it’s absent. Every variation I talked about can be fitted into that binary, and that’s really important in terms of values. (I would say that most atheists and agnostics believe a form of immanence, in that they believe non-deity values are within.)

Fundamentally, if God is outside of us, then the rules of good behavior must come from outside of us. They are handed to Moses on stone tablets, or derived from Gematria, or received through divine inspiration. We can receive messages in prayer or study Scriptures or find some other method, but if you believe the gods are not within, then you believe that right and wrong cannot be found within.

Without immanence, people aren’t trustworthy. They will do the worst possible thing the minute they allow God’s Law to loosen its grip on them. That’s why Christians don’t, in general, trust atheists.

But if you understand the gods to be within us, in whatever way you understand that, then people have the innate capacity to be good. People can be good without Law! Now, that is not to say people will be good, or that there is no need for laws, but I am talking about values, not governance. Maybe at some point I’ll write about evil (maybe not). Right now, that’s not the point.

Okay, I’ll digress for a moment. Pagan religion is behavior that places us in touch with the gods. Through our ritual life we do things that allow us to experience closeness to deity. Because obviously, we don’t normally, day-to-day, get the I Have the Goddess Within Me feeling. We mostly get the I’m Stuck in Traffic feeling and My Kid Freakin’ Ignores Everything I Say feeling. So having a ritual life places me in a better position to have an experience of immanence (and transcendence). Many people who are atheists also do things that allow them to enhance the experience of inner goodness or wisdom, just without the deity part.

But okay, where was I?

The point is, the entire book on doing the right thing is within you and within me, and within every human being, because the gods are in there, inseparable from us.

That allows you and I to have different values. We aren’t going by an external rule book, after all, so we won’t necessarily find the same answers when we look.

Which brings us back to pluralism again, doesn’t it?

And again, it doesn’t mean there are no rules. It just means that the rules can vary, can be situational, and don’t have to be written down or handed down to be valid.

Department of Redundancy Department

June 4, 2009 / / 2 comments

Radio announcer said:

Tori Amos will perform live at Radio City Hall.

As opposed to?

Pagan Values Month: Putting the “poly” in polytheism

June 3, 2009 / / 12 comments

Pagan blogger Pax has declared June to be Pagan Values Month, and is asking Pagan bloggers to write about Pagan values.

Fundamental to our values, I believe, is pluralism. Everything we believe, even the lines we draw in the sand, must be rooted in plurality. There are many gods, many paths, many truths.

Monotheism has “mono” as a root value. One God, one Truth, one Right with all other things Wrong. This is a net negative for culture, I believe.

Polytheism allows us to worship many gods, few if any of whom are “jealous Gods.” None of them seem to demand that we worship Them and Them alone. Kali has never asked me to cease worshiping the gods of Wicca, and vice versa. Doing one thing fervently, wholeheartedly, with body, mind, heart, and spirit, does not prevent Pagans from doing another, very different, thing with the same wholeheartedness.

There are surely things that are wrong, but a pluralistic world view means that, once we have found something we know to be right, we do not know that everything else is wrong. One god worthy of worship does not make all other gods false. One life worth living does not make all other lifestyles inferior. One candidate worth supporting does not make all other candidates assholes (although, y’know, maybe).

It’s easier to love your neighbors if you’re a pluralist, because you don’t have to hate their choices. It’s easier to be a good citizen, because you aren’t judging your fellow citizens by rigid moral standards that don’t allow for cultural and personal differences.

I could apply the core value of pluralism to lots of specific issues. Pagans tend to support same sex marriage and GLBT rights, because it is consistent with polytheistic values to support a plurality of ways to love, and a plurality of expressions of gender. Even heterosexual Pagans, even Pagans like me who are part of a Pagan tradition deeply rooted in gender polarity. Because even though my tradition works on the basis of gender polarity, mine is not the only right tradition. If someone found something incompatible with my tradition, whether it was the gender polarity thing, or the skyclad thing, or anything else, they could find a different tradition, and they wouldn’t be less blessed, less spiritual, less beloved of the gods.

I could continue in this vein, of course. GLBT issues are just one example. Reproductive freedom is another. Surely I know Wiccans who are against abortion because they find it incompatible with a fertility religion, but most Wiccans and Pagans are pro-choice because the very concept of choice is rooted in plurality; we can each make our own choices even when they differ from one another. (And by the way, when I say “most” are this and that, I am not pulling that out of my ass, there are actual statistics out there.)

So, pluralism, as expressed in the sacred (polytheism) and the mundane (politics, community relations) is a core Pagan value.

Actor mash-up: All solved!

June 2, 2009 / / Comments Off on Actor mash-up: All solved!

Well done. I screwed up one of the questions and you still got ’em all.

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Tuesday Trivia: Actor mash-up

June 2, 2009 / / 18 comments

Because clearly you guys are teh suck at round-robin lately.

1. Silent film star and crazed general never get the Kentucky horse farm.
Solved by Hazel (comment #9).

2. Cute toddler and bass player member of a rock band have terrible shotgun marriage.
Solved by Wendy (comment #14).

3. Respected country lawyer and comedic spy have wartime adventure.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #4).

4. Fussy roommate and dance hall girl meet at work, play cards.
TIE: Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #3) and Hazel (comment #5).

5. Nurse to a dying man and wife of a famed researcher are siblings.
Solved by Wendy (comment #12).

6. Famed prisoner and “a virgin” meet in New Jersey.
Solved by Melville (comment #10).

7. Former president pursued by gay poet.
Solved by Melville (comment #13).

Monday Movie Review: The Anderson Tapes

June 1, 2009 / / 2 comments

The Anderson Tapes (1971) 7/10
Duke Anderson (Sean Connery), released from prison after serving ten years for safecracking, plans the intricate heist of the entire luxury apartment building he lives in with his girlfriend, Ingrid (Dyan Cannon). Directed by Sidney Lumet.

Anderson is angry at the world, but he loves robbery. He describes it in sexual terms, admitting frankly he’s aroused by it. Immediately upon being released from prison he is ready to put together the next job. On his crew are Haskins (Martin Balsam), a flamboyantly gay interior designer, “The Kid” (Christopher Walken, in an “and Introducing” role), who is an electronics expert, and Spencer (Dick Anthony Williams), the coolest driver in Harlem.

Anderson is also being taped. To be specific, everyone Anderson encounters is being taped; Ingrid’s apartment is bugged by a private detective who is bribing the building doorman, Spencer is being watched because he lives above Black Panther headquarters, and the mobster (Alan King) to whom Anderson goes for financing is being investigated by multiple sources.

There’s a lot going on here. The paranoia about a society that watches and tapes everyone and everything, all of us filming and spying on each other, was very new and fresh in 1971, and it’s filmed with that sense of newness. Anderson has been in jail for ten years, so it’s all an unknown to him; it didn’t exist in 1961. Quincy Jones‘s score highlights moments of surveillance with electronic sound effects that are like warnings and alarms. As dated as it is, it still succeeds in conveying a sense of overwhelm at the amount of electronic data being gathered.

At the same time, there’s an amusing and quirky cast who behave in a naturalistic way. There’s a late scene where someone has to use a rope to scale a ledge; it’s done awkwardly and without heroic grace. There’s a guttural quality to the sexuality, and a pleasant sloppiness in the way people talk and move.

Let’s pause for politics: We fail the Bechdel test badly in terms of major characters: Only one woman, and she’s a whore. We pass on a technicality; two elderly women live together in the building (this was Margaret Hamilton‘s last film appearance). The attitude towards women is pretty negative. There’s also the gay thing. There are two gay designers in this movie, both constantly and casually referred to as “fag” by several characters (but not by their friends). And these men are both insanely stereotyped in their queeny clothes and gestures and, well, everything. I know people can easily say this is homophobic. But there’s something delightful to me about it; so few movies of that era showed gays at all, or identified them directly as gay, or liked them as characters (and we definitely like Balsam). It strikes me as real; that yes, there are gay people, and yes, they will be called fags, and yes, they might be campy. It’s also homophobic in that, of course, they are only campy and only stereotypes, but for 1971 I’m giving it a hurrah. (It’s pretty much consistent Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a brilliant movie with a frank but problematic portrayal of gay characters).

On the whole, the heist and small character stuff works better than the efforts at meaning and deeper stuff, but the movie is richly entertaining and wonderfully gritty. I love New York City locations in the 1970s, I love heists, and Chris Walken, by the way, at the age of 28, looked like a god.

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