You are everything I could hope for.
Friday Catblogging: Light My Fire
Mingo has become mad for candles. Don’t know why; they’re not a new feature in our home. But suddenly, he must stare into the flame.
Our living room is two steps down from the dining room. There’s an open wall between the living room and the dining room. In the picture, what you’re looking at is Mingo standing on the back of the living room couch, gazing in rapture at a candle that’s lit on the ledge between the two rooms.
It’s pretty funny, as soon as he sees I’ve lit the candle, he races to this position:
Candle-gazing
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Answers to Tuesday Trivia of 3/20
Two unsolved this week! And Tom kicked ass.
Mrs. Edwards, my heart is with you
Elizabeth and John Edwards today announced that her cancer has returned and is in stage four. Which is bad. They also announced that Senator John Edwards will continue his campaign for the presidency.
I so admire this decision. I know it must be terribly hard, but can you imagine if your dying act was to rob your husband of his deepest ambition—your shared ambition? Of a chance to make a real difference for the American people? Perhaps, looking mortality in the face, she sees more than ever how important it is to keep going.
Whatever is in her head and heart, my admiration is tremendous and my healing thoughts are heading her way.
My extraordinary powers of political prophecy
Over at Tom’s place, we were talking about Bush’s supposed “constitutional showdown,” and I commented
All I could think of was, wow, Nixon’s war, Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, and now Nixon’s obstructionism. Soon he’ll have a permanent five o’clock shadow.
…and may I just say, this was before the 18-day gap story broke.
As another commenter said, soon he’ll be on Fox News saying “I am not a crook.”
Only he is. Just like Nixon.
Blessed Ostara
This morning I was stunned by the sky.
Half the sky was made up of dark rainclouds. The other half was blue.
But no, it was more startling than that sounds. The rainclouds were dark and roiling, angry-looking. The blue was a perfect gleaming torquoise, and the sun was streaking through. I love those sun streaks that look like a giant eraser had removed the blue and found the shining yellow underneath. The dark clouds were edged with bright yellow, as if in direct combat with the sun.
And this evening as I left work, the sun had won. The sky was a perfect blue.
That victory is as perfect a metaphor as I can imagine for the Vernal Equinox, which begins tonight at 8:07.
Tuesday Trivia: 3/20
1. The one-armed man knocks a bully down in the coffee shop.
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #2).
2. Singing “Killing Me Softly” at the school talent show is not a good idea.
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #2).
3. The fat hoodlum’s wife keeps messing with the boss’s laundry machines.
HINT: The actor playing fat hoodlum is best known for comedy and musical comedy, although this is film noir.
4. She is sent to “Camp Climax” for the summer.
Solved by Ken (but he cheated) (comment #5).
5. “I make you very best duck.”
HINT: There are three space launches in this movie.
6. A married couple locked in the basement of a hardware store.
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #2).
7. He has a friendship with an ice cream vendor in a park, but neither speaks the other’s language.
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #2).
Monday Movie Review: The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) 5/10
Bettie Page leaves Nashville for New York in the late 1940s and becomes a highly-successful pin-up model, until the Kefauver hearings on pornography in 1955.
The Notorious Bettie Page is an uninteresting film about a fascinating subject, so shame on director and co-writer Mary Harron for refusing to find a story and stick with it.
Is The Notorious Bettie Page a biopic? Is it the story of the pornography industry in the 1940s and 1950s? Is it the story of the way sexuality was suppressed and marginalized in that era? Is it the story of the Kefauver hearings? What’s the focal point here?
Since the movie refuses to decide, we spend a pleasant 90 minutes with Bettie, as portrayed by Gretchen Mol. The problem is that Bettie’s essential quality is that she’s pleasant. She’s chipper about posing in the nude, cheery about posing in five inch heels and bondage gear, smiling about walking into dangerous situations with strangers. Any insight offered into Bettie is incidental and brief. Bad childhood experiences. Bad early marriage. But these things are blipped past, and we never see Bettie integrate the experiences, they’re just dots on a map before she moves on.
Meanwhile, we’ve got the Kefauver hearings, the legal problems of brother and sister porn-producers Irving and Paula Klaw, and a few relationships that Bettie moves in and out of without much focus.
Thing is, any of these would have been terrific subjects for a film, but instead, it’s a light smattering, a bunch of little snacks instead of a meal.
Sunday Meditation: Dreaming the Earth
Another “guest” meditation this week, I found this lovely piece by Mara Freeman on Beliefnet:
Close your eyes and send your consciousness down through the room, down through the floor of the building, and down, deep down, into the earth. Be aware of the mass of rock that lies beneath the soil- shale, quartz, sandstone, granite; the black, white, and red-shot through with bands of minerals, darkly glittering; crystals that shine like stars within the stones ..Let your consciousness become one with the mineral kingdom: You might choose to become a mountain as old as the planet itself, once part of the seabed, thrown up by unspeakable forces now stilled, enormously, timelessly rooted in the earth, its head in the stars…Or a minute grain of sand, one among trillions and trillions, endlessly shifting, sifting, with the ocean tides .Or become a stone. the stone people are alive – it’s just that their hearts beat slower than ours .
Now become aware of the plant kingdom: algae and seaweeds, forests of kelp, grasses blowing in a savanna wind, yellow and orange lichens on a rock in a wood, prickly pears, an oak wood, a rain forest blooming with delicate orchids, vines hanging with fruit . Become one with the plant kingdom now – soft green moss on a rock by a stream, a mountain strawberry, a wild rose…..what does it feel like to be blown softly by the wind..or to split your husk and feel your seeds fall to the ground?
And now become aware of the animal kingdom.. listen to the voices of the wild: the roar of the tiger, the belling of the stag, the howl of the wolf; the cries of owls and the tapping of woodpeckers, the whirring of birds’ wings, the padding of soft paws…become one now with the animal kingdom, with the salmon leaping upstream, the fox gliding through the night, or the snake shedding its skin.feel what your new body is like and what it feels like to creep, walk, climb, run or fly in free motion..
And now become aware of the human kingdom .you are standing on two feet .notice how different that feels: you can stand like a stone, grow like a plant, move like an animal, but you can now create with your mind and your hands and you can sing and dance and dream in your heart and make that dream real upon the earth .and when you are ready, slowly open your eyes and come back to the room.
