#I should sit down and read Thomas Mann

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Wednesday 6 July 1836

6 10

12

no kiss heavy thunder rain in the night but all dry and fair this morning tho’ dull - F62° at 7 5 am wrote out a rent list to give Mr. Washington till breakfast at 9 in about ¾ hour - then had Mr. SW- till 11 had sent for him to go with Robert Mann and Frank Day and take the bay horse with 2 little hampers full of manure, and break down Mr. Wilkinson’s wall and shew my right of road along the top of my top Wellroyde wood - but SW- begged me to let him speak to Mr. Wilkinson 1st and I consented saying that if he could not bring Mr. Wilkinson to keep his promise and put up a gate for me to have a key of (I would not trouble him much but could not be shut out) I would send and pull the wall down on Saturday - took A- out - to the Lodge and about till after 12 - then had A- in my study - looked over her copy of new drain-agreement with Mr. Outram - sat with her at her luncheon - and with her till Mr. Harper came about 1 ½ - then after Mr. H- had luncheon with him looking about and at the rock-bridge, and the Conery till 3 ½ from where he set off to Halifax to go home at 4, and I staid with Matty Pollard - saw old James Greenwood’s house and John Booth’s - the windows (stone mullions of) wanted for the alterations at the hall, laundry etc - Matty to do what she could in getting James G- into the front cottage at Mytholm - shall not have much more to pay Booth in a/c of the Lodge - he is to begin about the house tomorrow - the alterations in the house and out-buildings to be done immediately, and the west tower and back Lodge and part of terrace wall - Mr. Gray to leave St. P- the 27th of this month via Hull, and be here about the 2nd week in August - Mr. Harper will be here during the week Mr. G- is here, and try to get all done - all under the beeches, near the glen-bridge, to be walled up and made safe before winter - a temporary common old gate to be hung at the Lodge before the centre is struck - Mr. H- to get the housekeeper’s bedroom done (the present phaeton house) to be ready for Mr. Gray to sleep in, and he to have the parlour for his sitting room - A- to order Messrs. Briggs to honour Mr. Harper’s drafts to the amount of £750 i.e. £500 for Water Lane mill and £250 for the 4 Hatters fold cottages - I to order the Yorkshire District bank to honour Mr. Parker’s drafts under the orders of Mr. Harper to the amount of £3000 - he Harper thinks £200 will carry Booth on till Xmas - Long talk about the Northgate hotel - H- heard at Skipton of the large hotel building for Carr - repeated what I had said to Mr. Adam that in my present mind, I thought Godley road would be mine before C- had the hotel - H- says everybody thinks (even Mr. Parker) that Carr would only be a temporary tenant - would not well pay the rent, but nobody else to set up and manage the  hotel - said what I should like best would be to get a good tenant quietly, so that when C- did apply, it might merely be said he was too late, the hotel being let - Mr. Harper to manage it - I would not object to a lease of 5 years - there is a Mr. Leaver in London law agent to Lord Grosvenor very likely to help us - H- to send me a sketch of the hotel on a foolscap sheet of paper -a little while with A- sketching and tinting the rocks again with Mr. Horner - a minute or 2 with my aunt - wrote all the above of today till A- came in at 6 25 at which hour came also Mr. SW- sat by us while we dined and took coffee

SH:7/ML/E/19/0072

with us staid settling with me after the rent day and reading over A-‘s Outram drain-agreement till 8 - then had Thomas Greenwood (who had been with my aunt  sometime) to pay his rent and he sat talking till 10 ½ pm F50° now at 11 ¼ pm fine day but coolish

[cricketnationrise]

Reading Roundup: June 2021

previous reading roundups

like 80% of these are from my local library | averaged 1 book per day

The Ladies Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite: book 1 in a series. romance. sex on the page. wlw lady scientists! historical! astronomers pretending to be men in order to be published!

Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes: book 2 in the Chilling Effect series. should definitely read them in order. rag tag cargo ship crew gets more and more embroiled in an intergalactic conspiracy

Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas by Mark Kurlansky: non-fiction, the history of milk and its by-products. examines how cultural norms around drinking milk has shifted as well as how gender roles in a dairy have shifted. contains delightful sketches of milk-producing animals and funny chapter titles.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston: wow wow wow wow wow wow i love this book so much. i didn’t know i wanted stuck-in-a-time-loop-wlw-riding-the-subway romance but that is for sure what i got. features a scene that directly makes fun of Bella Swan googling information about vampires. so that’s fun.

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite: book 2 in a series. romance. sex on the page. older women protagonists, a beekeeper and a woman who runs a printing press. interesting historical backdrop. don’t need to have read them in order.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman: alternating pov YA novel. what happens when you get contacted to do art by your favorite niche podcast and it turns out to be made by the person who lives across the street from you? chaos. chaos happens.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles: towles’ debut novel. set in NYC from Dec 31, 1937 - Jan 1, 1939. rich people problems as experienced by a person who is not rich. 4 parts, each labeled with a season.

Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All by Jonas Jonasson: a hitman, a motel receptionist, and a priest come up with increasingly convoluted ways to make money. they accidentally start a religion. humor.

People I Want to Punch in the Throat: True(ish) Tales of an Overachieving Underachiever by Jen Mann: non-fiction/memoir, taken from and expanded blog posts, follows Jen Mann through meeting her husband and having kids and having to deal with living in the suburbs and all that that entails

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld: reread. book 1 in the Leviathan trilogy. alternate universe WW1. the son of archduke ferdinand of austria is spirited away the night his parents are assassinated in order to protect him. deryn is a girl disguising herself as a boy in order to join the british air force. their paths cross. alternating pov. very cool worldbuilding that is vaguely steampunk-ish.

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch: non-fiction. a look at how the internet has changed language/writing. fascinating read.

Song for a Viking by KJ Charles: short story set in the Think of England series. follow up to Think of England. sex on the page.

Think of England by KJ Charles: historical m/m mystery romance. sex on the page. stuck in a manor house mystery. warnings for blackmail, kidnapping, murder, being left in a cave, violence, period typical anti-semitism/racism/homophobia

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld: reread. book 2 in the Leviathan trilogy. must read in order.

It’s In His Kiss by Julia Quinn: book 7 in the bridgerton series. historical romance. sex on the page. don’t need to read in order, but it helps.

On the Way to the Wedding by Julia Quinn: book 8 in the bridgerton series. historical romance. sex on the page. don’t need to read in order, but it helps.

Proper English by KJ Charles: historical f/f mystery romance. prequel to Think of England. sex on the page. stuck in a manor house mystery. warnings for murder, violence, period-typical racism/homophobia

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas: literally read it one sitting. YA m/m romance. trans male protagonist. accidental ghost summoning, dia de los muertos. warnings for youths with shitty home lives, homophobia, transphobia, kidnapping, violence against children/teens, blood

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn: book 1 in the Rokesby series, a prequel series to the Bridgertons. historical romance (revolutionary war era england). sex on the page. frenemies to lovers.

Sabriel by Garth Nix: book 1 in the Old Kingdom series. fantasy. when her father, the Abhorsen, who’s job it is to make sure the dead stay dead, goes missing in the land of the dead, its up to Sabriel to figure out what happened and how to save the Old Kingdom where magic is alive and kicking.

The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn: collected short stories. a second epilogue for each main book in the bridgerton series. also contains violet (the mom’s) story

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin: book 1 in the Inheritance trilogy, fantasy, with her grandfather stepping down as emperor, he names 3 heirs who must duke it out to the death. the gods are watching and in some cases, meddling.

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole: book 2 in the Runaway Royals series. do not need to read in order. f/f romance. sex on the page. sort of an Anastasia retelling.

To Seek and to Find by Tamryn Eradani: ...look its just straight up erotica okay? BDSM. safe/sane/consensual. m/m. book 1 in a trilogy.

Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg: non-fiction. growing up in the depression in NYC as a hearing boy with 2 Deaf parents and an epileptic younger brother. includes how his parents met and fell in love.

Nevertheless, She Persisted: Flash Fiction Project: tor.com published short stories by a variety of authors including Seanan McGuire and Charlie Jane Anders. All start with/feature the phrase: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

To Have and to Hold by Tamryn Eradani: ...look its just straight up erotica okay? BDSM. safe/sane/consensual. m/m. book 2.

To Love and to Cherish by Tamryn Eradani: ...look its just straight up erotica okay? BDSM. safe/sane/consensual. m/m. book 3.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan: YA f/f romance. private school. warnings for racism, homophobia, toxic relationship, alcohol use, teen on teen violence (one girl gives another a severe allergic reaction).

Highfire by Eoin Colfer: the last dragon in the world just wants to be left alone in the swamp where he is hiding to watch TV. Squib just wants the police officer to stop hitting on his mom and make some money. the crooked police officer wants to take over the local mob boss’ operations. their lives intersect. warnings for: kidnapping, violence against women/children, murder, blood, removal of toes, dismemberment

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[nkp1981]

Epilogue of a story with an angry cook named Joe and a quiet book nerd named Nicky

Part 5 can be read here: https://bit.ly/37J57Py

Part 1 can be read here: https://bit.ly/2TuJ5aQ

Even in his sleep Joe knew the way, and it was normally one of the first things he did in the morning. Making his way to Nicky’s tomb and sitting up against the tombstone for a bit no matter the weather. “So, I finally finished the last bit last night.” Joe said tired and looked at the paper, he was holding in his hands, while he thought back at the events that had unfolded the last couple of years.

Andy had been kind enough to let Joe stay with her after the funeral until he was ready to go back to the apartment again. Joe had just sat still in the corner most of the time holding on to the sweater, that still smelled like Nicky. “I think I'm ready.” Joe said on the tenth day and looked at Andy, who nodded. “Should I go with you?” She offered and even though Joe knew, she meant it well, he knew, that it was something, he needed to do alone. “I’ll call you.” Joe replied as the last thing, before he started to take one of the longest walks in his life.

It took Joe some time before he opened the front door, where the eerie silence hit him as the first thing, and it was with heavy steps that he made his way to the library. He looked around the room and sat down on the sofa, where he couldn’t hold back the tears again, but when he wanted to make an escape from the library, he knocked over one of the bookstacks, Nicky had made. “Sorry.” Joe said, but realized once again, that he was alone and started to pick up the books in the hope he could make the stack just like Nicky had done. When he picked up the last book a piece of paper and the picture of the house in Genova fell out from it, and when Joe picked it up, he sat down on the sofa once again with the paper over places Nicky wanted to see, that he had only read about in books, and the picture in his hands. After staring at it for a bit, Joe knew what he had to do. He looked at the clock, and since he didn’t want to wake Le Livre in the middle of the night, he went into the rooms with all the boxes, and started to sort out in them. He made two stacks: what he wanted to keep and what could be donated to charity. When he was finish, he called the nearest charity shop, so they could pick up the stuff, while he once again made his way back to the library and started to search for the five books on Nicky’s list:

'The Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann, 'Death on the Nile' by Agatha Christie, 'The Black Book' by Orhan Pamuk, 'Midnight’s Children' by Salman Rushdie, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' by Ernest Hemingway

When Joe had found the books, he put them in his backpack together with the sweater. Then he started to pack the entire library down in the empty boxes and wrote ‘Genova’ on them. The only time he got interrupted was when the people from the charity shop came to collect the stuff. “This is almost too much.” One of the women said, when they saw it. “I don’t need it, so if you can get something out of it, you can have it.” Joe replied and left them to clear the room, while he packed his own clothes in the backpack.

“Sorry for your loss.” Le Livre said, when Joe called him. “I need you to do something for me.” Joe replied and told Le Livre what he needed. “Are you sure you want to sell the apartment? I mean you can rent it out and earn some money on it until you're back again.” Le Livre said, but it didn’t interest Joe at all, because he knew that he wanted to live somewhere else. “Just get it done. That’s what I pay you for. And thanks.” Joe replied and ended the call. Then he picked up the backpack and looked around the apartment one last time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. “I promise you, Nicky, that I will get it done for you.” Joe said as the last thing, before he closed the door to the library and left the apartment for good.

Joe had five things he needed to do before leaving New York for a time. The first two was to make sure, that those places, he had met and visit with Nicky wouldn’t be gone, when he returned in the future, so he bought the two diners, and gave the deeds to Nile and Gina with the only condition, that they should have talk together, and that they always could reach him through Le Livre if they needed anything. They both promised him it.  

The third thing was to visit the spot Nicky had shown him, and stayed there until nightfall.

The fourth thing was to talk with Andy about his plans. “You’re welcome to join me.” Joe offered her. “No, that’s a trip you have to make alone, Joe.” Andy replied and gave him a hug. “I thought you would say that, so see this as the last gift from Nicky.” Joe said and handed her an envelope. “Nicky told me that you always wanted to become a Doctor, but because you didn’t have the money for it, you settled with becoming a nurse. This should get you through medical schools and if you need anything, you just call Le Livre or me.” Joe explained and Andy pulled him in for another hug. “Thanks to you both.” She muttered and looked at the papers for medical school. “Don’t mention it, but keep an eye on Nicky for me until I'm back next year.” Joe said and picked up his backpack. “I promise you.” Andy replied and watched as Joe got into a taxi through the window.

The fifth thing was to visit Nicky’s grave, where Joe placed a hand on the marble stone on the wall. “I promise to come back and get you home, but I need to make this trip first, and I got a plan, so you also are with me in every step I make. Andy will keep an eye on you as always.” Joe said and closed his eyes. “I love you!” He said as the last thing, before he walked towards the waiting taxi, but before he got into it, he looked back briefly and as the taxi drove off, he cried silently.

Joe spent the next year traveling to those five places that were described in those five books. He had decided to bury each of the books at a spot that overlooked the different cities, since Nicky had loved the skyline. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but with every new city, Joe felt a bit better, but he still missed Nicky terribly.

On his last night in Cairo Joe sat down in the chair at the balcony, while he absent mindedly played with their wedding rings, when Le Livre called him. “The house is ready for you. Sorry it took so long but they work at a different pace in Italy.” He complained. “And the permissions?” Joe wanted to know. “I got it in my hands, and I’ll email it tonight, so you won’t have any problems in the airports or else you call me if needed.” Le Livre replied sounding proud as always when he had done something for Joe. “Thanks for everything.” Joe said grateful. “Don’t mention it.” Le Livre replied and ended the call. When Joe was packing his backpack it was Andy, who called. “Are you still coming?” She wanted to know. “Yeah, and everything is ready, so we can take Nicky home.” Joe replied. “I hope that you will tell me more about your secret plans when you get here. I’ll text you the address.” Andy said as the last thing. She had been working somewhere north of New York the last couple of months.

Joe then took the sweater and sat down once again on the balcony. “We’re going home, love. And yes, I’ve thought about Andy.” Joe said out loud. He didn’t mind if people thought he were odd for having, what to them seemed like half conversations, but they meant everything to him, because he could still hear Nicky.

The first thing Joe did, when he landed in New York was to visit Nicky’s grave and placed a hand on the marble stone and closed his eyes. “As promised, I came back and I’m not leaving New York without you. Just gonna get Andy and we’ll be on our way.” Joe whispered and stood like that, while he thought back on the days in the library. Before driving north. Joe also made a stop at the spot to look at the skyline once again.

“Joe!” Andy said happy when she saw him and gave him a hug. “Hey, how are you doing?” Joe asked and leaned up against the car. “Better now that you’re here. Listen, I still got an hour left at work, so why don’t you take a walk around the park?” Andy asked and told Joe to just follow the path to his right and he would end up back at the car.

When Joe reached a meadow, he saw children playing and sat down on a bench for a moment to enjoy the sun. Suddenly he heard a noise behind him and thought first it was an animal, but when he heard a cry, he took a closer look and found a little boy in the thornbush, who was caught amongst the branches. “Someone is having a bad day.” Joe said with a smile and picked up the boy, who stopped crying the moment he sat on Joe’s arm and nuzzled into his shoulder, before Joe started to walk down towards the children in the hope of finding the boy’s mother. “Are you missing a child?” Joe asked the first woman, he saw. “Oh, thanks. That boy is always ending up in troubles.” She replied and shook her head, but when she wanted to take the boy, he held on to Joe, while turning his head away, but when she took him anyway, he started to cry. When Joe took his hand to comfort him, he saw that he had a bracelet on with a name, which made him smile, but before he could ask more about it the women had gone over to the group.

“I was starting to think that you were lost.” Andy joked. “Sorry, something caught my attention. Do you know anything about a group of children?” Joe wanted to know. “They’re from the orphanage, why?” Andy asked, but Joe didn’t give her an answer. “What do you say, we get something to eat, before we’re heading back?” Joe suggested. “Sounds like an idea, but only if you finally tell me about your secret plans.” Andy replied and Joe promised her it.

They found a diner in the town, but Joe, who hadn’t been really hungry, since Nicky had died ordered some fries, while Andy took the burger. They ate in silence, because Joe had drifted into his thoughts again, and Andy knew, he still was grieving in a different way, than she did, so she let him be, while she thought about, how to keep her promise to Nicky about never leaving Joe alone again. “Did it help? I mean with the traveling.” She wanted to know after she had eaten and placed a hand over his. “In a way yes but I need you to take the last part of the journey with me.” Joe replied and handed her a photo. “You bought the house. That’s what you meant about bringing Nicky home.” Andy said with a smile before handing Joe back the photo. “I’m bringing us all home, Andy. When you’re finished with the university, there will be a house waiting for you, because I’ve also bought every piece of land adjacent to the house Nicky loved. You find a spot you love, and I get it built. If it’s something, you want.” Joe replied not taking his eyes off the photo. “Thanks, I’ll make sure then, that you don’t turn into one of those strange hermits!” Andy joked and got a smile from Joe before they drove back to New York.

When they reached Genova, they buried Nicky’s urn in a spot that overlooked the town, before they sat down next to the grave. “Nicky would have loved you for doing this.” Andy said. “I hope so, Andy.” Joe replied. “What’s your plans now? I mean, I’ve still got some years left at the university before I can move out here.” Andy wanted to know. “I’ll show you, when I return to New York for the last time to get Nicky’s exam papers. The university has granted Nicky his bachelor’s in literature posthumous.” Joe replied and Andy knew that she wouldn’t get an answer out of Joe right now.

A noise from behind brought Joe back to reality. “Finally found it, daddy.” A little boy shouted with a big smile on his face. Joe had adopted the little boy, he had found in the thornbush back then, and he remembered the day he picked him up from the orphanage. The boy was sitting in the corner, where he was exploring the content of a potted plant by throwing soil out over it all. “Hey, remember me?” Joe asked and kneeled behind the boy, who first looked angry at Joe for leaving him behind, but after a couple of seconds the boy crawled over to Joe with a big smile and nuzzled into Joe’s shoulder once again, when he sat on Joe’s arm. “I’m never gonna leave you behind again.” Joe promised the boy. When Joe had taken the boy to visit Andy, she first thought that it was a joke, but then Joe handed her the bracelet with the boy’s name on it. “Incredible, you found another Nicky.” Andy said surprised and took the boy, who placed his chubby small hands on her face. “Actually, he found me.” Joe replied and told her about the boy in the thornbush.

“Are you sure it’s the right one this time?” Joe asked with a laughter in his voice. “I’m, look.” Nicky replied proud over, that he had finally found the right stone and gave Joe it, so he could take a closer look at it. “A mighty fine one. I think that he would love it.” Joe said and gave Nicky the stone back with a smile and watched as the boy placed the stone amongst the other stones he had found on the tomb. “I’m hungry.” Nicky said and tilted his head. “So am I and we better get a hurry on, so you won’t be late for school again.” Joe replied and watched as Nicky ran towards the house. “Be back soon, love.” Joe said as the last thing and placed a hand on the tombstone, before catching up with Nicky. “I want to fly.” Nicky said and Joe laughed. “Ok, but only two flights.” He suggested. “Three. It’s after all Friday.” Nicky begged and Joe gave in and threw him up in the air three times, before letting Nicky ride on his shoulders the rest of the way. “So, what do you want for breakfast?” Joe wanted to know. “Figs.” Nicky replied and looked down at Joe with a smile. “Seriously, you also got that yesterday and the day before that. What about eggs?” Joe asked and lifted him down on the porch. “No figs, daddy. Stop teasing me.” Nicky replied and ran towards the kitchen, where he crawled up on a chair. “Never gonna happen, but maybe Andy will help you to find a way to make me stop teasing you, when she gets here next week.” Joe said, while finding the figs and some honey. “Can’t wait. I do miss her.” Nicky replied and took the fig. “Me too, kiddo. Me too.” Joe said and found some cereal in the cupboard.

After getting Nicky to school on time for once, Joe returned to the tomb to sit there a bit, while he finished his drawings. “I already know, what you’re gonna say, when I tell you, that I got close to yelling at my drawing teacher yesterday.” Joe said with a smile, before he found some coal in the box.

my creation

[morallygreywrites]

My Top 30 Writing Quotes

30.) The scariest moment is just before you start - Stephen King 29.)  Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere - Anne Lamott 28.) There are three rules to writing: -  -  -  Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - W. Somerset Maugham 27.) Writer’s block is the greatest side effect of boredom - Jason Zebehazy 26.) You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it- with a club! - Jack London 25.) The first draft of anything is shit - Ernest Hemingway 24.) The art of writing is discovering what you believe - Gustav Flaubert 23.) Description begins in the writer’s imagination but should finish in the reader’s - Stephen King 22.) If I waited for perfection I would never write a word - Margaret Atwood. 21.) You fail only if you stop writing - Ray Bradbury

20.) I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it - Toni Morrison 19.) Quantity Produces Quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed - Ray Bradbury 18.) Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it - Edward Albee. 17.) Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action - Kurt Vonnegut. 16.) Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little - Holley Gerth 15.) Easy reading is damn hard writing - Nathaniel Hawthorne 14.) I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters I am not. I write to explore all the things I am afraid of - Joss Whedon 13.) A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people - Thomas Mann 12.) Editing is like killing your story and then very slowly bringing it back to life - Unknown 11.) No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader - Robert Frost

10.) Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it and sometimes you’re doing good work when all it feels like you’re managing to do is shovel shit from a sitting position - Stephen King 9.) Get it all down. Let it pour out of you onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self- indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft - Anne Lamott 8.) A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit - Richard Bach 7.) Real writers are those to want to write, need to write, have to write - Robert Penn Warren 6.) The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree and once they are up there, throw rocks at them Vladimir Nobokov 5.) It’s ok. Writer’s should be strange - Unknown 4.) Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingers - M.J. Bush 3.) The difference between the almost right word and the right word is… the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning -  Mark Twain 2.) Write while the heat is still in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with - Henry David Thoreau. 1.) Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass - Anton Chekhov. 

[completeandrandomshit]

Linda Ronstadt Has Found Another Voice

The singer on living with Parkinson’s, the perils of stardom, and mourning what the border has become.

It’s been ten years since Linda Ronstadt, once the most highly paid woman in rock and roll, sang her last concert. In 2013, the world found out why: Parkinson’s disease had rendered her unable to sing, ending a musical career that had left an indelible mark on the classic-rock era and earned her ten Grammy Awards. Ronstadt’s earth-shaking voice and spunky stage presence jolted her to fame in the late sixties, and her renditions of “Different Drum” (with her early group, the Stone Poneys), “You’re No Good” (from her breakthrough album, “Heart Like a Wheel”), “Blue Bayou,” and “Desperado” helped define the California folk-rock sound. Along the way, two of her backup musicians left to form the Eagles.

But Ronstadt, now seventy-three, didn’t rest on her greatest hits, experimenting instead with a dizzying range of genres. In the eighties, she starred in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” on Broadway, recorded a standards album with the veteran arranger Nelson Riddle, and released “Canciones de Mi Padre,” a collection of traditional Mexican songs, which became the best-selling non-English-language album in American history. The record also returned Ronstadt to her roots. Her grandfather was a Mexican bandleader, and her father had serenaded her mother with Mexican folk songs in a beautiful baritone. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona, close to the border—a place that has since become a political flashpoint.

A new documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and opening September 6th, looks back on Ronstadt’s adventurous career. She spoke with The New Yorker twice by phone from her home in San Francisco. Our conversations have been edited and condensed.

What is your day-to-day life like these days?

Well, I lie down a lot, because I’m disabled. I do a lot of reading, but I’m starting to have trouble with my eyes, so that’s kind of a problem. It’s called getting old.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Thomas Mann, “The Magic Mountain.” I somehow got to be this age without having read Thomas Mann, and I’m trying to make up for it. I read “Buddenbrooks,” and I fell in love with his writing. His books are nice and long, so it takes a couple of days to get through them.

Who do you spend most of your time with?

My son lives here. My daughter comes over. I have really nice friends; they come over and hang out with me. It’s hard for me to get out. It’s hard for me to sit in a restaurant or sit up in a chair. It’s hard for me to stand around, so if there’s a situation where I’m liable to be caught in a doorway talking to somebody for five minutes, I tend to avoid that.

What kind of music do you listen to?

I love opera. It’s so terrible—I listen to it on YouTube. I’m an audiophile, but I’ve just gotten used to the convenience of being able to hear twenty-nine different performances of one role. I listen to other music, too. I found this Korean band that I thought was sort of interesting on Tiny Desk concerts, the NPR series. They get musicians to come in and play live in a really tiny little space behind a desk. It’s no show biz, just music. They have great stuff. They had Randy Newman. Natalia Lafourcade, who’s a Mexican artist that I love particularly. Whatever’s new. The Korean band I saw was called SsingSsing.

Is it like K-pop?

No, it’s based on Korean traditional singing. It was kind of like David Bowie bass and drums, and then this really wild South Korean traditional singing. It’s polytonal. It’s a different skill than we use, with more notes in it. And a lot of gender-crossing. It looked like I was seeing the future.

When you sing in your mind, what do you hear?

I can hear the song. I can hear what I would be doing with it. I can hear the accompaniment. Sometimes I don’t remember the words, so I have to look them up. It’s not usually my songs I’m singing. I don’t listen to my own stuff very much.

           I listen to Mexican radio—the local Banda station out of San Jose. I mostly listen to NPR. I don’t listen to mainstream radio anymore. I don’t know the acts and I don’t know the music. It doesn’t interest me, particularly. There are some good modern people. I like Sia. She’s a very original singer.

How do you cope with the frustration of not being able to do everything you want to do?

I’ve just accepted it. There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I have a form of Parkinsonism that doesn’t respond to standard Parkinson’s meds, so there’s no treatment for what I have. It’s called P.S.P.—Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. I just have to stay home a lot. The main attraction in San Francisco is the opera and the symphony, and I make an effort and go out, but I can only do it a few times a year. It makes me sick that I’m ever not in my seat when Michael Tilson Thomas raises his baton, because he’s such a good conductor, and I miss hearing orchestral music. My friends come over and play music, and that’s where I like it best, anyway: in the living room.

As you tell it, the first symptoms you noticed before you knew you had Parkinson’s were in your singing voice.

Yeah. I’d start to do something and it would start to take the note and then it would stop. What you can’t do with Parkinsonism is repetitive motions, and singing is a repetitive motion.

You broke onto the scene with such a powerhouse voice. What did it feel like, singing with that voice?

Well, I was trying to figure out how to sing! And trying to be heard over the electric instruments. I had no idea that I sang as loud as I did. I always thought I wasn’t singing loud enough, because in the early days there were no monitors. You couldn’t hear yourself.

In the documentary, you talk about growing up in Tucson, Arizona, and how culturally rich that was. How do the current politics around the border resonate with you?

They’re devastating. I feel filled with impotent rage. I grew up in the Sonoran Desert, and the Sonoran Desert is on both sides of the border. There’s a fence that runs through it now, but it’s still the same culture. The same food, the same clothes, the same traditional life of ranching and farming. I go down there a lot, and it’s so hard to get back across the border. It’s ridiculous. It used to be that you could go across the border and have lunch and visit friends and shop in the little shops there. There was a beautiful department store in the fifties and sixties. My parents had friends on both sides of the border. They were friends with the ranchers, and we went to all their parties and their baptisms and their weddings and their balls.

And now that’s gone. The stores are wiped out because they don’t get any trade from the United States anymore. There’s concertina wire on the Mexican side that the Americans put up. Animals are getting trapped in there. Children are getting cut on it. It’s completely unnecessary. In the meantime, you see people serenely skateboarding and girls with their rollerskates, kids playing in the park. And you think, We’re afraid of this? They’re just regular kids!

I spent time out in the desert when I was still healthy, working with a group of Samaritans who go to find people that are lost. You run into the Minute Men or the Border Patrol every five seconds. The border is fully militarized. You meet some guy stumbling through the desert trying to cross, and he’s dehydrated, his feet are full of thorns, cactus, then you see this Minute Man sitting with his cooler, with all of his water and food and beer, and his automatic weapon sitting on his lap, wearing full camouflage. It’s so cruel. People are coming to work. They’re coming to have a better life. You have to be pretty desperate to want to cross that desert.

You were talking about this back in 2013, when your memoir came out, before it became such a national wedge issue. Were people not paying enough attention before?

Well, they didn’t live close to the border. They’d just go back to chewing their cud about it. It wasn’t their problem. I lived at the border then. I lived in Tucson for ten years. I saw what was going on. Putting children in jail—that’s not new. That was going on in the Bush Administration. Barack Obama tried to get immigration reform and Congress wouldn’t allow it. So people have been caught in this web of suffering, dying in the desert. They’re incredibly brave and resourceful, the people who make it. A C.E.O. of a big company once told me—when I said, “What do you look for in hiring practices?”—she said, “I look for someone who’s dealt with a lot of adversity, because they usually make a good business person.” And I thought, You should hire every immigrant who comes across the border.

Why did you decide to move to San Francisco from Tucson?

My children were coming home repeating homophobic remarks they heard at school. And they’d also heard other things, like, “If you don’t go to church, you’re going to go to Hell.” I thought, You know, I don’t need that. So I moved back to San Francisco. I wanted them to have a sense of what a community was like where you could walk to school, walk to the market. More of an urban-village experience. In Tucson, I was driving in the car for forty-five minutes to get them to school and then forty-five minutes to get them back, in a hot car. I didn’t want that life for them.

I can tell that you have a real sense of mourning over what the border used to be.

People don’t realize that there’s Mexican, there’s American, and then there’s Mexican-American. They’re three different cultures, and they all influence eachother. And they all influence our culture profoundly. The cowboy suit that Roy Rogers would wear, with the yoke shirt and the pearl buttons and the bell-bottom frontier pants and the cowboy hat—those are all Mexican. We imported it. We eat burritos and tacos, and our music is influenced a lot by Mexican music. It goes back and forth across the border all the time.

How did growing up in that hybrid Mexican-American culture shape you as a musician?

I listened to a lot of Mexican music on the radio, and my dad had a really great collection of traditional Mexican music. It made it hard for me when I went to sing American pop music, because rock and roll is based on black church rhythms, and I wasn’t exposed to that as a kid. I could only sing what I’d heard. What I’d heard was Mexican music, Billie Holiday, and my brother singing boy soprano.

So what drew you to folk rock in the sixties?

I loved popular folk music like Peter, Paul and Mary. I loved the real traditional stuff, like the Carter family. I loved Bob Dylan. And I tried to copy what I could. When I heard the Byrds doing folk rock, I thought that was what I wanted to do.

How did your recording of “Different Drum” with the Stone Poneys in 1967 come about?

It was a song I found on a Greenbriar Boys record, and I thought it was a strong piece of material. I just liked the song. We worked it up as a kind of shuffle—it wasn’t very good with the guys playing guitar and mandolin. But the record company recognized that the song was strong, too, so they had me come back and record it with their musicians and their arrangement. And I was pretty shocked. I didn’t know how to sing it with that arrangement. But it turned out to be a hit.

Do you remember hearing it on the radio for the first time?

Yeah. We were on our way to a meeting at Capitol Records, in an old Dodge or something, and I was jammed in the back with our guitars. Then the engine froze, and the car made this horrible metal-on-metal shriek. We had to push it to the nearest gas station, half a block away. The man was looking at the car saying it’ll never run again, and we were saying, “What will we ever do in Los Angeles with no car?” And from the radio playing in the back of the garage we could hear the opening of “Different Drum.” We heard which radio station it was on, KRLA, so I knew it was a hit, if they played it on the L.A. stations.

What are your memories of the Troubadour, in West Hollywood?

That’s where you went to hang out. We would go to hear the local act that was playing, or there’d be someone like Hoyt Axton or Oscar Brown, Jr., or Odetta. Nobody was anything particular at the time. We were all aspiring musicians. The Dillards were there. The Byrds hung out there. And then it started to be people like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor. Carole King would play there. When Joni Mitchell played, she played two weeks. I think I saw every single night.

In your book, you talk about being with Janis Joplin there and trying to figure out what to wear onstage.

Oh, I never could figure out what to wear. I grew up wearing Levi’s and a T-shirt or a sweater and cowboy boots or sneakers. And that’s what I left home with, and that’s what I wound up with. In the summer we’d cut the legs off the Levi’s and they were Levi’s shorts. When I got my Cub Scout outfit, that was a real change for me.

You say that you and Janis Joplin couldn’t figure out how to fit in—you didn’t know whether to be earth mothers or whatever.

We didn’t know whether we were supposed to cook and sew and embroider. Roles were being redefined. There were a lot of earth-mama hippie girls who knew how to do that stuff.

There’s a clip in the documentary of you being interviewed in 1977, and you talk about how rock-and-roll stars become alienated and are surrounded by managers who are willing to indulge them, and that’s how people wind up with drug problems.

They got involved with drugs because they felt isolated. Stardom is isolating. There are a whole bunch of people that you’re hanging out with who are trying to become musicians. And some were chosen and some were not, and it becomes a difficult relationship with the people who weren’t chosen. Sometimes they’re resentful, sometimes you feel uncomfortable. It’s like Emmylou Harris has in a song: “Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor’s yard but not on you.” The adulation made people feel disconnected. I also think that some people’s brain chemistry is more vulnerable to addiction. I was lucky. Mine was not.

David Geffen says that you had an issue with diet pills.

I had no issue with that. I just took them when I needed them. I didn’t like it. If I ate, I’d have to take a diet pill. It wasn’t something I did for pleasure.

There’s been a lot of looking back this year at the summer of 1969, with these big anniversaries of the moon landing and Woodstock and the Manson murders. What do you remember about that summer?

When Woodstock happened, I was in New York. I remember getting all the reports from people like Henry Diltz and Crosby, Stills & Nash. They’d come back with stories of everybody being in the mud. It sounded like a good thing to have survived, but I’m glad I didn’t go up there. Overflowing toilets and no food is not my idea of a fun time. I was playing some club—probably the Bitter End.

When the Manson family came through, they managed to murder my next-door neighbor, Gary Hinman. I was lucky I wasn’t home that night—they may have come for me. We knew those girls, Linda Kasabian and maybe Leslie Van Houten, too. I lived in Topanga Canyon at the time, and they would hitchhike, and they would talk about this guy Charlie at the Spahn Ranch. But I didn’t know him personally. We knew it was kind of a bad scene. But, when we found out how bad of a scene it was, we were horrified.

People must have been really scared before they were captured.

Oh, everybody was freaked out. We weren’t sure at the time whether the Gary Hinman murder was connected to the other murders, but we found out soon enough.

The music of that era was so intertwined with politics. How do you feel that compares with popular music these days? Is music addressing political upheaval?

Oh, I think so. Especially hip-hop. But I wish there was a little bit more political activism. I’m waiting for the Reichstag to burn down, you know? Because I was interested in the Weimar Republic, I’ve always been aware that culture can be overwhelmed and subverted in a very short time. All of German intellectual history—Goethe and Beethoven—was subverted by the Nazis. It happened in a thirty-year span and brought German culture to its knees. And it’s happening here. There’s a real conspiracy of international fascism that wants to defeat democracy. They want all the power for themselves, and I think that suits Donald Trump right now. He’d like to be a dictator.

In going through your history, I’ve noticed you’ve been selectively outspoken. There’s an interview from 1983 where a talk-show host in Australia asks you about deciding to perform in South Africa under apartheid, and you give this speech about how if you didn’t play anywhere with racism you wouldn’t be able to play in the American South or Boston. You also take shots at Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch. As a popular performer, was there a cost to speaking out?

I never talked onstage for about fifteen years. But there were certain causes that we as a musical community united against, and one of them was nuclear power. We did a lot of No Nukes concerts—James Taylor, me, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt—and if it was a particular cause that I was in favor of. I did what I could to help, but I don’t think my focus was particularly political. If somebody asked, I was perfectly happy to give my opinion.

I also found a clip from 1995 where you confronted Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s co-host, on the “Tonight Show” about her association with Stern. Do you remember what upset you so much?

Well, first of all, I never heard Howard Stern on the radio. I had no idea who he was. I didn’t have a television. I didn’t know who Robin Quivers was. But it had just been on the news that day, what he had said about—oh, the girl singer.

Selena? He said “Spanish people have the worst taste in music” and played her music with gunshots in the background.

Selena, yeah. And it just offended me. As a Mexican-American, it just offended me that he would say such a horrible thing about someone’s dead daughter. I didn’t realize that Howard Stern made a career out of making unfortunate remarks about other people. And I didn’t know what Robin Quivers was like. I didn’t know anything about it. I just went, “Hey, that really offended me.” It made me angry. I didn’t realize what kind of a hornets’ nest I’d stepped into.

Did you get any reaction from him after that?

Oh, yeah. He said horrible things about me.

Going back to your performing career, in the documentary, your former manager Peter Asher says that you would see people whispering at your concerts and imagine that they were saying, “She’s the worst singer I’ve ever heard.” Were you really that insecure?

I just didn’t feel like I could quite sing well enough. It was best when I forgot about everything and just thought about the music, but it took me a long time to get there. I didn’t want to see people that I knew in the audience. I didn’t like to see the audience, actually. I couldn’t understand why they’d come. It’s a different relationship than singers like Taylor Swift have. I think it’s a little bit healthier that they embrace their audience and sort of feel like everybody’s on the same team. We were encouraged in the sixties to think of us and them. The hippies started that whole tribal thing, and it was the straights against the hippies. It was unhealthy.

How did you overcome your self-doubt?

I’d just say, “Breathe and sing.” As long as I pulled my focus back to the music, I was fine.

Your relationship with Jerry Brown is covered in the documentary and in your book, but not your relationships with some other prominent people, like Jim Carrey and George Lucas. Is there a reason for that?

I was writing about the music. They didn’t have anything to do with my musical process.

What did Jerry Brown contribute to your musical process?

Well, he was there when Joe Papp [the founder of the Public Theatre and Shakespeare in the Park] called saying that they wanted me for “H.M.S. Pinafore.”. But Jerry [gave me the message] wrong—it was actually “The Pirates of Penzance,” which I didn’t know.

Do you keep in touch with him?

Yeah. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. He came over last Christmas.

What do you talk about?

Water in California. He said when he retires he wants to study trees and California Indians. I gave him my tree book, “The Hidden Life of Trees.” There’s a new history of water use in California that’s fantastic. It’s called “The Dreamt Land.” It’s like John McPhee-level writing. It’s really worth it for the writing alone.

The press always made such a big deal about the fact that you never got married.

I didn’t need to get married. I’m not sure that anybody needs to get married. If they do, I’m on their side. But I never needed to get married. I had my own life.

I have to admit, I was born in the eighties and I discovered you through “The Muppet Show.” What can you tell me about working with Kermit?

I had a crush on Kermit, so it was a problem because of Miss Piggy. He was her property. But we had a really good time on that show. There’s something extraordinarily creative about puppeteers. They’re fascinating, because when they do all their acting, they can’t let it go through their own body. I think they’re just loaded with talent. I loved watching them. It was a very coöperative experience. They let me help them with the story and the songs.

What was your contribution to the story?

This crush that I had on Kermit, they developed into a little storyline where Miss Piggy and I have a confrontation.

She seems like a very formidable rival.

She was. She was nasty! She locked Kermit in a trunk.

Because you’re a singer but not a songwriter, so much of your artistic expression comes through your choice of material. How did you choose songs for “Heart Like a Wheel,” including the title song by Anna and Kate McGarrigle?

I was just ambushed by that song. I was riding with Jerry Jeff Walker in a cab, and he said, “I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and I heard these two girls singing—they were sisters. They sang a really good song. You should hear it.” He sang me the first verse—“Some say the heart is just like a wheel / When you bend it, you can’t mend it / But my love for you is like a sinking ship / And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean”—and I just thought they were the most beautiful lyrics I’d ever heard. I said, “You have to send me that song.” And I get this tape in the mail, reel to reel, with just piano and a cello and the two girls singing their beautiful harmonies. The manager I had at the time said it was too corny. Somebody said it would never be a hit. And I don’t think it was ever a radio single, but it was a huge song for me. I sang it all the way through my career.

Were you surprised by the songs from that album that became hits?

I was surprised anything of mine was successful, because it always seemed so hodge-podge. I just tried different songs that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, but which expressed a real urgent feeling that I just had to express. “You’re No Good” was an afterthought. We needed to have an uptempo song to close the show with, and that was a song I knew from the radio.

What were the biggest challenges in becoming a public figure?

Not having the ability to observe other people, because people are observing you. I had to keep my head down all the time. It was kind of excruciating. I still feel that way. I don’t like to be on the spot. Also, relationships were hard, because I was always on the bus.

In an interview from 1977, you said, “I think men have generally treated me badly, and the idea of a war between the sexes is very real in our culture. In the media, women are built up with sex as a weapon and men are threatened by it as much as they are drawn to it, and they retaliate as hard as they can.” Do you remember what you were talking about?

No, I don’t! I have to say that when I look at my whole career, over all, what counted the most was whether you showed up and played the music. I saw it happen with Emmylou, and I saw it happen with Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell was threatening to everybody. She could play better. She could sing better. She looked better. She could just do it all. But it’s true, there was a certain amount of chauvinism.There weren’t a lot of girls in the business who were doing what I was doing, so my friendship with Emmylou Harris became so important.

Did you find that there were things that were harder for you as a woman than for your male contemporaries?

Well, I had to do makeup and hair. That’s a lot, because that’s two hours of the day that you could spend reading a book or learning a language or practicing guitar. Guys just shower and put on any old clothes. And then there were high heels. I have extra ankle bones in each foot, and high heels were agonizing. I used to wear them onstage, kick them off, hide my feet behind the monitors, and find my shoes again before I had to leave the stage.

At the height of your rock-and-roll fame, you decided to do Gilbert and Sullivan. What drew you to that?

My sister, when she was eleven and I was six, I guess, sang “H.M.S. Pinafore” in her junior high school. My mother had a book of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas on piano, and somehow I learned the songs. I heard my sister practicing them. So, when I heard of “The Pirates of Penzance,” I knew what Gilbert and Sullivan was.

Was part of you tired of being a rock star?

Part of me was very tired of it. I was singing loud in halls that didn’t sound like they were built for music. I liked the idea of a proscenium stage. I think a proscenium has a lot to do with focussing your attention. A theatre is a machine built to focus your attention and allow you to dream. You’re hypnotized, in a way, and the person onstage is your champion, is telling your story. You find emotions you didn’t realize you had.

Throughout the eighties, you experimented wildly with genre, everything from Puccini to the Great American Songbook to Mexican canciones. I’m sure your record label was surprised when you said, “I want to make an album of Mexican folk music.”

Well, before that, I wanted to do American standard songs, and they said, “No, it won’t work.” In fact, Joe Smith [the chairman of Elektra/Asylum Records] even came to my house to beg me not to do it. He said, “You’re throwing your career away.” I’d been away so long working on Broadway.

Were you worried that your fans wouldn’t go along with the standards, either?

I didn’t worry about it until after we made the record [“What’s New”] and we were opening at Radio City Music Hall. And I realized, all of a sudden, people might not show up. They really might hate it. I was ordering matzo-ball soup from the Carnegie Deli next door, and it gave me the shakes so bad that I could barely stand when I got onstage. I was holding hands with Nelson Riddle in the wings—he was nervous, too. He said, “Don’t let me down, baby.” I said, “I’ll do my best.” He was the best of those arrangers—worked with Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. He wrote beautiful charts for me. I was really lucky to have him. I went back to my apartment that night and just smiled, because we had gotten away with an evening of American standard songs.

When I see something now like Lady Gaga recording a standards album with Tony Bennett, it seems like she owes you a debt.

Well, she owes me nothing. She’s got enough talent to make it on her own. But, up until then, attempts by female pop artists to go back and do standards had not been successful. And Joan Baez had tried to record in Spanish, and that didn’t work. It depends on what the audience is expecting of you. When I did Mexican songs, I brought in a whole new audience. I played the same venues, but it was grandmothers and grandchildren. People brought their kids. And the standards audience was older—they were in their fifties and sixties, which seemed impossibly old to me at the time.

Is it true that you recorded “Canciones de Mi Padre” at George Lucas’s recording studio, Skywalker Sound?

The second album, “Mas Canciones.” I chose it because they have a big scoring stage. It has good acoustics that you can tune with the wooden panels on the side. There was a lot of room ambience. Mariachi’s a folk orchestra, and it was a good orchestra sound. It’s hard to find.

You also collaborated with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. Do you keep in touch with them?

Emmy comes out to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which is a bluegrass festival here in San Francisco, so I see her about once a year. She comes over to my house. We used to sing together. Now she brings her laundry and we talk. When you’re on the road, you always have extra laundry.

Have you kept up with Dolly?

Emmy and I presented her an award recently, and I hadn’t seen her in a while. I don’t think she realized I’m as disabled as I am. She threw her arms around me, and I kept saying, “Dolly, watch out! You’re going to knock me down!” She thought I was kidding. I nearly fell down. I grabbed onto the podium that her award was on and knocked it to the ground. It was made out of glass and it broke. “Congratulations, here’s your award—smash! You get to take the pieces home.”

If you could wave a magic wand and record one more album, what would be on it?

It would be an eclectic mix. There’s a song called “I Still Have That Other Girl,” written by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, that I always wanted to record. And there’s a Mexican song called “Paloma Negra” I always wanted to record. I’d record all those songs that I didn’t get around to.

THANKS TO MIHCAEL SCHULMAN AND NEWYORKER.COM FOR THE ARTICLE.

[alovelesssummer]

Monday, 21st May 2018

I am in a rut. Artistically, physically, mentally and productivity. I haven’t done anything remotely satisfying or useful for the past three days since the previous entry. You could say I’ve been sitting in front of a glass screen for several hours each day, doing nothing. And I feel absolutely awful.

I am struggling to write this entry for A Loveless Summer. I no longer have the energy today, after spending my afternoon dozing off reading Norwegian Wood. I love you, Murakami and your books will always be my reference point for any narrative complexes. 

And speaking of which…I do need to finish reading Thomas Mann’s A Magic Mountain and Murakami’s IQ86. I’ve got a lot of reading to do this summer and I tend to hope I’ll finish it all but knowing myself…. I will probably just finish off the summer with A Magic Mountain…

For the past few days, I’ve been texting a lot with Stef. She’s been sharing a lot about the things she like and yesterday, sent me videos through Instagram when she was at a festival in Asakusa. Snaps like these make me miss Tokyo so much and I wish I could be there, to spend my summer break. It doesn’t matter whom I get to spend it with but I simply desire to float away, from Singapore and into a foreign land where I can barely speak its language. I want to be away from people…. I don’t know; I want to make new friends, fall in love, go crazy and start a career. Like yesterday evening, before I fell asleep I asked myself — is it worth my effort and time to create art? to take photos? To tell a story? My story? And yet, it seems funny because I’m here working on A Loveless Summer. 

And about Stef, the more I talk to her the more I seem to like her. When she was the festival in Asakusa yesterday, she sent me a snap of a white tourist decked out in green yoga pants with.a matching sports bra. Not only was it too revealing for anyone in Tokyo but her ass, was fine and mighty. If you’re reading this Stef — just so you know; I prefer to always be nekkid. Maximum Circulation. 

To end off the horrible past week, Jannah gave me some money yesterday because she was late for work (which she didn’t need too…) so I thought it would be nice to treat Iskandar to a drink at McD’s. We spent our evening rotting away at the plaza, outside of Civics Centre, talking away about life, romance and travelling while smoking away what remains of his Gudang Garam. A mighty way to end off the week.

It’s Iskandar’s last week here back in Woodlands before he heads back to Balestier but I know, at this age, we don’t have to go out to fancy places for lunch or dinner. A nice simple drink, paired with cigarettes are what we need to wind down the evening.

And today…well I’d say it’s been a lazy day. I can’t seem to start my Max for Live learning sessions or churn out techno beats. I have no desire to go out and take photos nor the need for it. It is as if, I was destined to stay at home, rotting my life away watching YouTube videos. But really, I need to work on a few visuals for my zine with Stef. I want this to work out so badly, like how two lives could be possibly intertwined through images, photography…through art. 

But the worst of all is how I can no longer feel. The looming sense of loneliness for this summer can never be evaded. It is the real essence of what I try to do — in everyday life that is; everything else is simply a distraction as a means to evade these feelings. Loneliness in this sense was never about the lack having people around me; it is the feeling that no person next to me is worthy of any meaning or purpose. And the presence of a someone, whom I can only have a connection through text messages cocoons this particular thought with even greater astray. As if, I can no longer feel a person by their own right, as if the consciousness can never have a real physical form but knowing that this is not true. But what is this sense of longing? The craving for a superficial need — to satisfy what could be the cure to my loneliness or perhaps it could all be as empty as how it should be.

And the absurdity of this all reigns solely on the fact of the things we do to cope with loneliness. The ennui that exists through our lives — my life. 

For the past few days, I haven’t felt anything close to emotions. But today, I realised, that being sad is what feels so normal to me. All these negative thoughts that I keep to myself makes me feel normal again. If I could take this all away, maybe I would never be the same again.

[awhilesince]

Friday, 27 February 1835

6 55/..

12 10/..

no kiss rainy windy morning – reading Sir Robert Peel’s capital speech – Fahrenheit 41° at 8 3/4 a.m. breakfast at 9 and staid downstairs with A– (Ann) (till 11) on her receipt soon after nine from Washington’s young man (surveyor) of his valuation and proposed manner of the division of the joint property – talked it over – told her how to make out a clear summary on one sheet so as shew at a glance the relative value and contents of every farm etc and wrote her copy of note to Mr Wilkinson about Mr W– (William) Priestleys ordering the Sunday school boys to stay at home from church on account of typhus fever at Priestley Green – 

Had Joseph Mann with Farrer’s bill paid for the rails I had of him – then Holt came and he and I and John and Joseph and Charles Howarth (at 11 1/4) went to Mytholm mill to see the engine pit – with a view to loose the coal there – a stream of water comes off the coal there = 1/2 the average annual quantity of water in the Red brook, at any rate = double the water from the Spiggs colliery falling into the Red brook under Well royde house and estimated at 1/4 of the annual average of the Redbrook water – Charles Howarth sight – no chance of loosing the coal at Mytholm – gave up the thought – all went to look at Mytholm damstones above the Stag’s head, and thence along Lower brea wood (Mr George R– (Robinson) who shewed us the engine pit and wheel and Thomas Pearson who happened to join us there followed us as far as Tilley-holme stile and where to put the dam in James Smith’s Ing – water wheel should be 12 feet – calculate to take up a breadth of ground to work in equal to the breadth of the rim of the wheel (not named) + 1 yard on each side – suppose the dam to be 20 yards square – the stuff of the drift from the wheel to the dam to be laid up about the wheel towards Tilley holme – the drift should be done for 4/6; a good price – but say 5/. said I for easy calculation’s sake, and not to be exceeded – Holt thinks the wheel with 2 pumps will not be put to level the ground from Mytholm damstones to Tilley holme stile and thence to the proposed site of the dam – from Mytholm dam stones to where the drift will strike in under the old road to Lower brea will not be above 20 to 30 yards of culvert which according to former calculations will cost stones and labour 10/. per yard in length – 

Suppose therefore 30 yards culvert at 10/. = £15.0.0

the 2 drifts from the water wheel to

pit to be sunk at Pump will

pay themselves by the coal gotten

Rails for the above 2 drifts supposing

1 ton to do 60 yards in length

Pump-pit sinking about 60 yards deep

Drift from damstones to wheel) =

at 5/.) =

Ditto from wheel to dam) =

at 5/.)

water wheel and setting up

Left the men to return by Charles Howarth’s and Holt and I came up the walk – a great deal has been said about the Spiggs Colliery – Stocks has bought Keighleys share – they are talking quite big about my not being able to stop the Loose – S– (Stocks) says they will get the paper I gave them stamped and it will be enough to secure the Loose for ever – I said before Manns and them all, I was quite satisfied – I laughed and I said I would put out a few handbills publishing the paper I had given them that everybody might know clearly what it was – if that was enough for the Spiggs people, I was contented – I did not wish to withhold it – Holt thinks he can manage to get Mrs Machan’s coal but not for £300 – thinks it cannot be had for less than £400 paid down – for Mr R– (Rawson) knows all about it and will bid up – tho’ he cannot get it for many years – well! said I, we must have it – cannot be settled till April – 1 son not of age till 9 April and one daughter now in York castle for debt – Rained all the while we were out more or less latterly pretty sharply – 

left Holt to go to the Manns, and I came in at 12 35/.. – wettish – changed my clothes – a little while with A– (Ann) then wrote all the above of today till 2 p.m. – fair for nearly the last hour – highish wind has blown the flags dry – at 2 wrote letter for my father to ‘Mr Freeman Brier Lodge Southowram’ containing copy of letter my father had yesterday from Mr George Higham of Brighouse addressed to him as one of the inhabitants of Southowram who signed the retainer employing Mr H– (Higham) to resist an indictment on account of road intended to be thrown upon the town – business concluded 18 months ago – bill £255.16 5 – sent in a month ago – no notice taken – Mr H– (Higham) now insists upon having calls for his money in a fortnight on 3 weeks from the date of his letter 24th instant – say my father is anxious to know what Mr F– (Freeman) and the other gentlemen who signed the retainer will think proper to do, and will be particularly obliged to Mr F– (Freeman) to call here as soon as he can as my father’s health does not at present permit his attending any public meeting – Read the above letter to my father and Marian and the latter kept me near an hour – John took the letter about 3 1/4 – 

Had Best Collector of poor rate for Northowram – my father paid 1/. for Breakneck cottage last 1/2 year from 10 October 1834 and I paid for Cowgate wood, but not pay for the cottages bought of William Green – desired the rates of these cottages and all the Staups buildings to be put in the ha[nd]s of the tenants – with A– (Ann) from 3 1/2 to 5 25/.. looking over her summary of valuation rents, etc.of the joint property – 

Snow shower and continued snow from 5 p.m. till now 5 35/.. – ground white again – dinner at 6 1/2 and coffee in about an hour – 

then had George in my study who wanted to speak to me – thought he ought to tell me what he saw not going right in the house  Matthew occasionally takes a glass of two of wine but says my aunt drinks more than anybody in the house  he helps to the meat at dinner and does not help fairly favours Eugenie and sharp  walks out with the former and plays cards with her after all the rest are gone to bed George does not like to see things go on as they do in this house thanked him warned him to take warning from all this and added much good advice – 

Just before dinner read from page 155 to 179 Philip on the Preservation of health and afterwards from 8 1/4 to 9 20/.. had Oddy up nothing more agreeable  about Eugenie and Matthew they sit on each others knee in the kitchen and all is ssad told Oddy I would try to find them out but if I could not in the course of a fortnight she really must tell me openly what was going on – and siding my writing desk till 9 20/.. –

left margin: wrote for my father

reference number: SH:7/ML/E/17/0171, SH:7/ML/E/17/0172

[spamzineglasgow]

SPAM Festive Special: tom leonard, 1944 – 2018, i.m.

In this special piece to move us towards the close of the year, Rhian Williams remembers the Glaswegian poet, writer and critic Tom Leonard, who passed away on the 21st December 2018. 

       lower case posits in-the-presence-of        lower case is presence        lower case is company[1]

> my friend, jane, records how, when leading seminars in modern poetry, tom leonard would ‘light a candle at the start in recognition of “the universal human as inclusive and absolute”’.[2] it is that flame – its quality of intensity and of fade, the darkness around the wick, the gold that haloes it, the soft white at its very edges; a trinity of light – that i think of, and that i write by, now, this day in december, as i remember this man of letters.

light, dense, warm, yellow. light, thin, white, attenuated. light, time, presence.

> it was a still, muffled day in december last year, as i was shopping for groceries, in the shop where tom shopped for groceries, when i checked my phone, and read an email from another friend, nicky, who let me know that tom had died the day before. the shortest day of the year. which had not been one of those when the light is bright and intense – the glorious winter sunshine – but one when a lead-like, restrained, grey light had leaked only blankly in the air. a quiet day. a brief interlude, a space between darknesses.  so tom had moved with it, solsequium,[3] a burnished ‘pot marigold’, a mothering light turning with the sun into the darkest space of the year – the edges of a diurnal pausing, according to shetland tradition, when one should set down one’s work for the holiest day, anticipating the miracles and translations of the holy labour, of the returning sun.

       stepping into that space        out of the past        surrounding        this place, become        an accompanying darkness;[4]

leonard’s work – radical, political, fiercely intelligent, sharply, sharply engaged by (and always advancing of) the ideological work of language, of its plasticity, of arrangement on the page ­(‘poetry is the subliminal history of linguistic shape | ahem’)[5] – was profoundly welded into presence. the ‘being here-ness’ of human experience: the light in which it stands (‘seductive bright light | of the evening narrative’)[6] and the breath – the spiritus – that marks its paces (‘poetry is the heart and brain divided by the lungs’).[7] his work was experimental in the most serious way, and i see its legacies in scottish poetry today, its sidelong glances at language, at its mendacities, the tell tales of public life. but also its vitality, its telling of stories, its bloodflow. (tom, a true intellectual, but never bloodless.) leonard’s legacy is clear and important: it is evident in a generation of poets (jenny lindsay, nick-e melville, iain morrison, kathrine sowerby, harry josephine giles, as well as jane goldman, come to mind) who regard poetry and poetics as actions, as interventions, as means of revelation.

> at this time of year – at the marking of the winter solstice, the miraculously burning oil in the temple, and the birthing of a messiah – i find myself thinking about the domestic space ­– the hearth – that fuels that birthing (‘the sacred heart | above the winterdykes | set roon the fire’).[8] of the shifts around presence, being, light and time that i see in leonard’s body of work as comparable to parenting through reciprocity (‘i wish you would touch me more | it makes me feel happy | and secure’).[9] of the vestal work of home-making that i find infusing leonard’s writing: what we might call radical mothering, where mothering is a verb for attentive nurture, for the act of nourishing, for advocacy, for the defence and advance of storytelling. labours which may be (and are) taken up by carers regardless of gender and whose object need not be a child as such. i am talking specifically about the passion contained when leonard remembers his shame at his father’s vocalising during private reading and is encouraged by an audience member to find the use of phonetic urban dialect, ‘rather constrictive’: ‘The poetry reading is over | I will go home to my children’.[10] i am talking about his remarkable feel for the rhythms of daily domestic duty, peeling spuds, going on messages, controlling one’s breath as one walks to the shops. over and again, leonard’s poems mark the habits of a particular class of daily life, intimating the textures and fabric of a life of cooking, laundry, ‘sitting in the garden | behind the toolshed | reading Thomas Mann’,[11] listening to the wireless. fiercely attentive, and alive. now, of course, leonard’s poetics were exquisitely sophisticated – i’m not even remotely saying that his work is ever uncomplicated reportage of private domesticity – but it didn’t surprise me to learn from his sons at his funeral of tom’s presence in the home, of his habit of taking a breather in the day to listen to radio 3, sat on the sofa with tea and a biscuit. or to be gifted his recipe for lentil soup.

       the roar of a lawnmower        pause        the roar of a lawnmower        pause        the roar of a lawnmower[12]

for what i learn from leonard’s poems, and from leonard’s writing about poems and poetry (verse, from vers – to turn – as in ploughing a field, or mowing a lawn), is that there is a selfhood in poetry that is its animus, its means, its occasion, and its strength of expression. that poems come about from there being a story to be told (‘I was really relaxed talking to the young man I know the story of this place | I grew up in it I have eyes and ears’),[13] and the process of that telling may be quite unselfconscious as it drives towards enunciation, or even be ‘mechanical’ in the sense of algorithmic experimentation. but that self – or ‘a’ self – then becomes conscious as it manifests. that the lyric self – by which i mean the sign of presence in poetry – is not absorbed utterly by private experience, but rather it enters the rhythm of the poem and its shape on the page (all poems have rhythm as all living things breathe, and everything takes shape), and thereby intersects with time, with history, and with material records (‘in our own being | but never wholly separate, only a part | of the time we live in, and with others occupy’).[14] it comes into the world (is birthed?) and so it becomes an agential position: the expressive, poetic subject is an action, a vortex, a meeting point.

       But then he began to accept that he was a writer.        It was a matter of language and consciousness. The link between the                                                                                                               two.[15]

even as this process hints at abstraction (‘as he grew older he stood in separate relationship to himself’), it is actually a return to the flesh, in leonard’s beautiful, active verb: ‘he was able to body himself conceptually as a totality’.[16] … so i learn from leonard that poems are things that are done with and for bodies (‘Gin a body meet a body’),[17] and are caught in the dialectic of giving and of standing back, like mothering.

> jane also told me that tom loved the work of psychoanalyst, donald winnicott – i hadn’t remembered that consciously; it was just a feeling of correlation i had when reading leonard’s work and when reading winnicott’s work on physical touch and play, on the parenting labour that is simply, exhaustingly, that of helping our children to find their own pace and breath. but today my copy of leonard’s Reports from the Present: Selected Work, 1982-94 actually falls open here:

Breath, breath, breath, breath, breath. If only Winnicott had gone further with that aside about the baby’s first perception of breath, median between inner and outer, its role as the point at which the defences are down. Maybe he did, I just haven’t seen it. So much of his stuff is great, so exciting to read. All that stuff about the sucking-blankets (his ‘guggie’, mine used to call it) ‘transitional objects’ and their elation to culture, the first experience of symbols in time. That ‘potential space’ where play occurs … ‘It is play that is the universal, and that belongs to health.’ Good on you, Mr Winnicott. A very healthy man.[18]

in Winnicott, in leonard, in breath (that which brings together time with flesh), and in play, then, we find the scene of reciprocity:

        this time         breath

        held         between us

        each time         familiar

        each time         new[19]

so often violated – as leonard’s work distils in startling realisation – by institutionalised aggression and belittling, by militarism, by capitalist ideation (‘jesus christ that cunt was a cop!’),[20] in leonard’s poetics, reciprocity is staged through timely proximity, and is a route towards settling into the ‘now’. ‘we lightly hold hands as we sometimes do | until the first to be falling asleep begins to twitch and tonight it’s Sonya’:

        I am aged 51 years and nine months and nine to ten days[21]

reading of one of the longest days of the year from the dim of one of the shortest, i find the milky light of glasgow at 3am in june (‘the sky in the north is translucent like a lake’) illuminating the ‘now’ as a quiet scene of resistance, outwitting interpellation; an experience of the self, of the body, and of time that has evaded capitalist value. ‘from within he came to realise himself as an instance of the universal human’.[22]

> the calendar turns, light thins out and attenuates, darkness creeps (‘The three wise kings, who have travelled | All the way from Burns & Oates in Buchanan Street, | Peer at the infant under a torch-bulb’),[23] but rhythms and habits persist:

       the future, knitting the future        the present peaceful, quiet        as if

       the same woman knitting        for a thousand years

tom, i miss your voice, i miss your wisdom, i miss your knowledge. i miss your compassion, i miss your understanding. your not here-ness is painful.

> and the world keeps turning, the sun keeps rising. the marigold blooms.

                                                                               glasgow, 16 december 2019

~

Text and Image: Rhian Williams

Published: 23/12/19

[1] Tom Leonard, ‘the case for lower case’, Outside the Narrative (Exbourne & Edinburgh: etruscan books & Word Power Books, 2009), p. 178.

[2] See Jane Goldman’s contribution in Tributes to Tom Leonard, ed. Larry Butler (Glasgow, PlaySpace Publications: 2019).

[3] ‘To follow the sun’ and the term for the marigold in Middle English. It is used in a conceit by Ayrshire poet, Alexander Montgomerie (1550-1598) that is used as an epigram to Leonard’s ‘The Present Tense: a semi-epistolary romance’, Outside, p.110.

[4] ‘respite in the reading’, Outside, p. 107.

[5] ‘100 Differences Between Poetry and Prose’, Outside, p. 63.

[6] ‘Plasma Nights’, Outside, p. 196.

[7] ‘100 Differences Between Poetry and Prose’, Outside, p. 63.

[8] ‘An Ayrshire Mother’, Outside, p. 209.

[9] ‘Nora’s Place (14)’, Outside, p. 156

[10] ‘Fathers and Sons’, Outside, p. 54

[11] ‘Pollok Poster 1’, Outside, p. 13

[12] ibid.

[13] ‘The Fair Cop’, Outside, p. 189

[14] ‘proem’, Outside, p. 65

[15] ‘A life’, Outside, p. 214.

[16] ibid.

[17] Robert Burns, ‘Comin thro’ the Rye’

[18] ‘The Present Tense’, Outside, p. 113.

[19] ‘touching your face’, Outside, p. 182.

[20] ‘The Fair Cop’, Outside, p. 189.

[21] ‘June the Second’, Outside, p. 181.

[22] ‘Three Types of Envoi: A humanist (2)’, Outside, p. 213.

[23] ‘My Parents’ Living-Room at Christmas’, Outside, p. 53.

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Friday 3 May 1839

7

12 5/..

fine but hazyish dull morning F54 ½° inside and 48 ½° outside at 8 ¼ - brushing my pelisses had A- a few minutes – low again as before we went to York but not worse than then – siding till breakfast at 9 in ½ hour – then had Harper of the Stump x Inn wants a chamber over his brew-house? and the outside of his house painting, and his brewing pan resetting – would not listen to any of these things but a nice civil stirring man – said his house ought to have been outside painted when he went to it, and I would see about that – out with A- at 10 ½ to 12 ½ (at the meer, and seeing the men loaden in Charles Howarths’ field the thick end of the blown down oak at the meer) then luncheon in 6 or 7 minutes and then had A- with me in my room all in tears and terrible but I manage her tolerably she wished today she was under somebodys’ care thought she ought to be in a place of confinement that she could do no more mischief should bring misery on me and every[one] ought to take up her cross etc. etc.   her reason is very weak - had just written so far at 1 20/.. – then about while A- dressed for riding and got off at 1 ¾ to Cliff hill, and thence to go to see Jenny Fitton -  Edward Waddington and Robert Wharton masons and Grey labourer finished the laundry this morning and this after began taking down the hall fireplace – then pothering and cleaning my inkstand till now 2 ½ and then out – to the meer, and with Robert Mann and Jack Green (poorly yesterday the reason why he was not here) and Thomas Sharpe, till after 7 finishing the drain at the hut and damming up the water there and taking down and rough-rock-walling up again the mouth of the road water drain that falls into the meer just below the hut – dressed – dinner at 7 ½ - A- read the first 4pp. of De Gérambs’ pelerinage to Jerusalem and Mt. Sinai in 1831, 32, and 33 – then went into the cellar – 1 claret – then a little, A- with me in the tower study sitting over the fire there – then coffee at 9 ¾ asleep a little while on the sofa – then wrote the last 6 lines till now 11 25/.. pm very fine day – A- back from Jenny Fittons’ at 5 ½ this afternoon – note this evening from the philosophical society meet on Monday next, and paper will be read on the Mythology of the ancients – very fine day F52° inside and 45° outside at 10 ¾ pm – took two teaspoonfuls of salts

[wadestone]

The Devil’s Arrows are a row of three prehistoric standing stones located in a field on the outskirts of Boroughbridge. They sit in a landscape that has been occupied for over six thousand years.

The stones exist in a wider, complex, prehistoric landscape, a recent archaeological survey of the surrounding area uncovered a number of features including a double timber post row and an associated ditch, extensive flint scatters and grooved ware pottery.

The tallest stones is 22.5 feet high making it the second tallest stone in the UK after the Rudston Monolith which is 26 feet tall. Graeme recently discovered that the Rudston Monolith, 44 miles away, is aligned precisely due East of the Arrows.

One of the earliest records of the stones comes from the antiquarian John Leland. He  visited the town sometime between 1535 and 1540  and described the row as four upright stones.

..little without this Towne on the west part of Watiling-Streate stadith 4 great maine stones wrought above in conum by Mannes hand. They be set in 3 several Feldes at this Tyme. The first is a 20 foote by estimation in higeth and an 18 foote in cumpace. The stone towards the ground is sumwhat square, and so up to the midle, and then wrought with certen rude boltells in conum. But the very toppe thereof is broken of a 3 or 4 footes. Other 2 of like shap stand in another feld a good But shot of: and the one of them is bigger then the other; and they stand within a 6 or 8 fote one of the other. The fourth standith in a several feld a good stone cast from the other, and is bigger and higher than any of the other 3. I esteme it to the waite of a 5 Waine Lodes or more. Inscription could I none find yn these stones; and if there were it might be woren out; for they be sore woren and scalid with wether. I take to be a trophaea a Romanis posita in the side of Watheling Streat,as yn a place most occupied in Yorneying ad so most yn sighte.

  Thirty years later another antiquarian, William Camden visited the stones but only three were left upright

Neere unto this bridge Westward wee saw in three divers little fields foure huge stones of pyramidall forme, but very rudely wrought, set as it were in a streight and direct line. The two Pyramides in the middest, whereof the one was lately pulled downe by some that hoped, though in vaine, to finde treasure, did almost touch one another. The uttermore stand not far off, yet almost in equall distance from these on both sides.

The fourth stone, toppled by treasure hunters, is thought to have been broken-up and used as the foundation for the bridge over the nearby River Tutt in 1621. There is an account of the top of the stone being taken and placed into the garden of Aldborough Manor.

John Aubrey’s notes in his Monumenta Britannica complied between 1665 and 1693. Aubrey thought that the stones may have been part of a great stone circle. No evidence has ever been found to support his theory.

 Graeme and I have recently been discussing the fate of the fourth stone and decided to take a look to see if we could locate any traces of the missing stone.

We started at the stones themselves. There is currently a crop of beets in the field so we followed the well worn path around field margin. Whilst we were looking at the possible cupmarks on the northern stone we got chatting to a woman who told us that, whilst walking her dogs in the area, she had once experienced an ‘energy’ at the stones that was so powerful it had made he feel ill.

I have enhanced this image a little to highlight the cupmarks on the stone.

We also noticed that there were lots of ladybirds on the stones, it turns out that these are Harlequin Ladybirds, an invasive species that are said to be responsible for the decline of our native species.

I’ve recently read that the grooves on the tops of the stone were caused by The Devil trying to hang his grandmother from the stone.  The tale does not say why he was trying to hang her or whether he was successful. I’m just suprised that the price of darkness had a grandmother

The road beside the field is currently being improved to provide access to a new housing development. It is always a little disturbing to see a development encroaching on an ancient site.

We took a walk down to the bridge over the River Tutt to see if we could spot any remains of the stone.

The Arrows are made of Millstone Grit and are thought to have been brought to the site from Plumpton Rocks, a distance of over 8 miles. The local building stone is a fairly uniform fine grained sandstone so the coarser grained gritstone with it’s large quartz grains is quite easy to spot. We didn’t spot any evidence of gritstone in the bridge but Graeme did spot three large dressed gritstone blocks in the kerbing leading from the bridge.

We decided to head over to nearby Aldborough to see if we could track down the top fragment of the fourth stone.

Aldborough is a small village on the outskirts of Boroughbridge. It is the site of a walled Roman town called Isurium Brigantum. We enquired at the Manor House regarding the whereabouts of the stone, the owner told us that they have looked for evidence of the stone in the manor grounds but not found any trace of it.

In the centre of the village is a large column called the Battle Cross. A nearby plaque states that the cross commemorates the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. The plaque also mentions Thomas Earl of Lancaster who was in collusion with the Scots. A Yorkshireman rarely passes up the opportunity to have a pop at his Lancastrian neighbours.

The local church is reputed to be on the site of a Roman Temple, there is a carving built into the church was which is thought to portray Mercury.

Having arrived at a dead end in our search for the fourth stone, we decided to visit the site where, according to legend, the devil stood when he threw the Arrows, How Hill.

How Hill is just over 7 miles west of the Arrows. The first written reference to How Hill is from 1346 and refers to it as the site of a medieval chapel, possibly a place of pilgrimage. The site became a ruin after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. The tower was rebuilt in 1719 and further domestic buildings were added to it during the 19th century.

What surprised both Graeme and I were the views from the hill, although relatively low lying it has a fantastic viewshed, the Pennines in the West, the North York Moors in the east and as far south as Drax power station.

The tower itself is currently boarded-up, It’s a substantial building, quite singular in design it has a slight air of malice about it. I’m not sure I’d like to visit it in the dark, as Graeme once did. On checking the BGS website I discovered that the bedrocks around the hill are Plumpton Gritstone, the same stone as the Arrows, perhaps the folklore is right and that Arrows did originate from here.

The Devil’s Arrows should be viewed as one of a number of prehistoric monuments that extend in a roughly north-south alignment through North Yorkshire. I recently found this lovely pdf booklet which details this alignment of monuments in North Yorkshire.  Booklet

I’m not sure if anyone has ever tried to tie-in the Arrows with the Neolithic monuments that extend eastwards towards the Yorkshire coast, both Graeme and I believe that it is not unreasonable to think that there may be a connection.

  The Devil’s Arrows The Devil's Arrows are a row of three prehistoric standing stones located in a field on the outskirts of Boroughbridge.

[hiddleshoneybunny]

Kong: Skull Island

Journey to the center of the Heart of Darkness.

SPOILERS! photo credit [X]

This film for me delivered on everything I expected it to, it had all the trappings of the good old fashion Saturday afternoon monsters flicks that I used to watch laying on the floor in front of the tv as a kid, it was also reminiscence of my favorite explorer team films such as Journey To The Center of the Earth and Jason and the Argonauts. It had all the prerequisite elements, the “mad scientist” with the hidden agenda, the jaded military commander, the conflicted and dashing hero, the feisty female who is the moral compass, the wise cracking side kicks and a motley crew of befuddle misfits tagging along because they are ordered to and of course the misunderstood creature,Jordan Vogt-Roberts didn’t miss a trope, but he did it all with what I thought was a clever and refreshing spin.

The Dawning Age of Aquarius.

The film begins with a montage during the opening credits that sets the stage for the atmosphere of the post WWII baby boomer generation of the late 60s and early 70s, having been conceived and growing up during these times in american culture,a lot of those images resonated with me. I had one Uncle who served in WWII and another Uncle who served in the Korean war some of my cousins were civil rights activist and conscientious objectors to the war in Vietnam.It was the waning years of the cold war and the dawn of the era of political and social upheaval that was beginning to challenge the male patriarchal status quo, we were beginning to become increasingly aware of the damage that was being done to our natural environment and women were branching out into areas that were traditionally held by men, all elements Jordan used through out this story.

One thing I keep hearing a lot about this film is the lack of character development and when I watch movies like this I wonder just how much effort should realistically be put into it. I can understand a tight ensemble film like Aliens where there was only a handful of people in a very claustrophobic setting in the middle of outer space, so character development was vital to driving the plot but in a film like this where you literally have about 20 plus people in the cast how much energy should you commit to that at the risk of losing the focus of the plot, which is basically going to an uncharted Island to find a giant ape? if you are going into this story looking for 3 dimensional character development, then I believe you may be expecting too much. I think just enough of an individual character’s back story to get you to understand what motivates them is sufficient and I think JVR did a pretty acceptable job of this.

You have Samuel L Jackson doing his classical “SJL” thing as Colonel Packard a man with an exemplary war record who is on the verge of being sent out to pasture, Captain Chapman (Toby Kebbell, trivia: he also did some face capture for Kong) a loyal and dutiful soldier who is anxious to get home to a secure job his wife and young son, battle weary men who were drafted into a war we had no business being a part of in the first place, who did their duty to their country and and are ready to go home, John Goodman as Bill Randa a war vet still haunted by his demons,Corey Hawkins as Houston Brooks the young idealistic Harvard grad still naive enough to think he can make a difference, Slivko “the kid” played by Thomas Mann, Brie Larson as the irrepressible Mason Weaver! a photo journalist who is looking for that Pulitzer prize winning photo and last but not least Tom as Captain James Conrad a lost soul trolling seedy bars and brothels still looking for a purpose to his meaningless life, all thrown together on that fateful “last mission” all with their individual reasons for going and for getting the hell out!

The Loki Syndrome

Another aspect of this film that I want to address is the mixed reviews and reactions to Tom’s portrayal of Captain Conrad one of the comments I’ve been seeing mostly here, in this fandom, is that his character’s been given “throw away” lines and offers no real “dramatic substance” to be fair this is a “monster munch” (Toms own words) ensemble piece.I believe we have been spoiled into expecting Tom to deliver some type of Shakespearean Henry V emoting that elevated Loki to a great 3 dimensional character, but not every role he is going to play is going to require that, and with that being said,Tom always shines no matter what he’s given and he did a damn good job at anchoring this cast as the Alpha Male Good Guy.

Another comment which seems to be made almost exclusively by male reviewers is Toms lack of believable “butchness” to pull off the role of an action hero (insert annoyed sigh) again we are in a genre which is still predominated by men, who’s idea of an action hero is a Call Of Duty video game cartoon, from my own… ehem, personal experience, men who become a part of the special forces are, need, to be extremely intelligent, they require a little more finesse than your average army grunt and if any one is doubting Toms virility and athletic prowess…my God, the scene where he runs to grab the gas mask and katana for the now famous ‘gas mask samurai’ ( and I have a feeling this scene is going to become iconic) sequence is orgasmic, the testosterone was blasting off that screen, I think only Tom could pull off that delicate balance of intelligence grace and masculinity.

As for his character’s “depth” there is a level of deepness there, that at first, is not very obvious it is only later on in the film about the 2nd act when we get a little more of Conrad’s back story that we truly understand his pain.We learn that his father was an RAF pilot in WWII who was shot down during a mission and was never recovered. Conrad is a tracker because he is trying to find and bring home his father, he is trying to live up to the legacy of a man he admired and his motivation on this mission is a last attempt to give his life some purpose.

Apocalypse right now!

Once the helicopters breach the treacherous weather barrier surrounding Skull Island the audience as well as the team are quickly entranced by its unspoiled and breath taking natural beauty,but Jordan wastes no time plunging everything into chaos the minute the research team gets” boots on the ground” it all goes “tits up” fast,and he does not hold back with a visceral and brutal depiction of Kong’s rage the audience gets to experience first hand the terror and confusion of combat the sequence was heart pounding, suddenly a scientific expedition years in the planning has within minutes been reduced to a fight for survival against “hostiles” the likes that none of them have ever encountered, and this is where the secondary cast of characters come to life. Cole (Shea Whigham) and Mills (Jason Mitchel) provide the classic war buddy comic relief but also an eerie sense of foreboding as you know one of them is not going to make it back.

There were so many great references to Apocalypse Now too many to go into detail here (and believe, I got a whole gif set coming based on that) but the one Jordan lovingly lifted from the film was that of the “lone surviving outsider usually a white male” trope in the character of Lieutenant Hank Marlow. but unlike the character of Colonel Walter E Kurzt in AN who reduced the Vietnamese inhabitants he embed himself among into slaves and concubines, Lt Marlow respected and deferred to the customs and wisdom of the indigenous people he lived with for 28 years, and it is his knowledge that becomes invaluable to helping the survivors navigate the dangers of Skull Island. This was a trope that could have been reduced to the cliche of the “great white god” but he avoided that disaster beautifully and John C Reilly is true to form, his performance is endearing and hilarious and he steals every scene he’s in! I’ve read somewhere in one of the many reviews that he is the heart and soul of this film and he truly is!

Yin and Yang

I don’t know if it was lost on some that this story takes place in Asia, a culture that is heavily influenced by the concept of Yin the feminine energy and Yang the masculine, and Weaver and Conrad’s relationship was a beautiful balance of this! Again Jordan avoided the traditional done to death trope of the damsel in distress, who has to be rescued by the hero. Instead we got something so much more compelling. Weaver is the embodiment of the feminine Yin energy that of compassion, spirituality, love and the higher consciousness she wants to show the world the horror of what is happening through her anti war photography this compassion and instinct of the earth mother nurturer protector are seen in the scenes where she interacts with the indigenous people,the trapped water buffalo and Kong.

Conrad is the masculine Yang energy that is physical protection, aggression the intellect, he goes beyond and above the call of duty to physically protect the women( Weaver) men and animals (Kong) under his care, Conrad continuously surrounds her with physical protection (Yang energy) so that she can be the moral compass (Yin energy) and it is Weaver’s spirituality that elevates Conrad’s intellect, which sets them both on a path together (balance) to save Kong.

Colonel Packard on the other hand is an example of the negative effects of Yang energy, he too cares for his men and wants to protect the world from the threat of a creature like Kong, but when the Yang energy goes unchecked as it inevitably does in a war without the balance of Yin energy it becomes destructive. Then there is Kong a symbol of the natural world that we have to strive to truly understand and respect. Kong too has been spared the cliche of the angry beast killing indiscriminately but is portrayed a creature who is living instinctively in balance with his environment, there is a scene where we see Kong sitting alone looking out into the stars  and we can see and sense his loneliness, this creature has a soul.

All’s well that ends well.

I think the film wrapped it all up nice and tidy! The hero and heroine make it off the Island alive and Kong lives to kick ass another day.I think Jordan accomplished his goal of keeping this beloved motion picture legend relevant,he very successfully side stepped all the outdated cliches and tropes while still staying true to some of the original films most iconic moments,one of the most memorable being the “girl in the palm of an ape” but instead of the heroine being some shiny blonde object that Kong wants to posses he instinctively understands that she is part of the natural order he is there to maintain as Lt. Marlow puts it: “Kong, he’s a pretty nice king” Jordan has given us a Kong franchise for the 21st century!

 We’ve all by now have read most of the reviews and heard the word of mouth raves. The film is visually stunning the special effects are superb the soundtrack is retro gold! it is fast paced and action packed, I saw this film twice (each time the theater was packed!) and both times the audience loved it! they cheered and laughed in all the right places and I am beside myself with joy for Tom and the cast he now has a bonafied Hollywood Blockbuster with his name as the head liner and is on his way to solidifying his status as “Leading Man!”

Do I have any valid complaints about this film?..honestly not really! But I will say this, leave all your preconceived expectations at the door grab a huge tube of popcorn kick back and willfully suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours and you’ll have a great time!

All photos and gifs used in this post were all found on google search. except where credited.

The End…

or  

is

it…..

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews… Fargo (S03E03) The Law of Non-Contradiction Airdate: May 3, 2017 @fxnetworks @fargo Ratings: 1.169 Million :: 0.36 18-49 Demo Share Score: 9.5/10

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

A little word of advice… You know, besides the worst cities in America for heartless bastards, bright lights, big skylines, and broken dreams are Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami… Never cut checks to a man sitting behind a desk snorting massive rails of cocaine assuring your fate is fame and fortune. The businessman in me, who is still very much learning as I go, understands that this is probably not exactly what one would refer to as ‘business savvy’. Wanna know a secret? I’ve actually watched 'The Law of Non-Contradiction’ three times, not because it struck me as an incredible piece right off the bat, even though I admittedly love every second of it, but because I feel like taking on shows like Fargo, American Crime, American Gods, etc, deserves my full and upmost attention. There are details in the details within those details that sometimes bring you to Point B, and sometimes they lead you to nowhere, but who’s to say that Point B is where you should’ve been heading anyway? Maybe nowhere is exactly where you were supposed to be after all.

My appreciation for 'Fargo’ runs deep, but I don’t just hand out praise just because I expect a series or an episode of that series to be good. A lot of times I’ll watch a show with an impact like Fargo, and I’ll be too tired to truly give it the TLC that it needs. I won’t 'get it’, those are the moments when I know it’s time to turn to a comforting Dick Wolf series, no offense as I love it all and believe that there’s a place for almost anything. With the 'Law of Non-Contradiction’, there’s really not a whole lot going on… In terms of pacing, Fargo is never in a rush to get anywhere. It’s the nuance of the show, and the irony that it plays as straight forward like a doomed, violent pulpy tale where things will turn expected and drastic corners right when they need to, even if that’s exactly what you are expecting… And in this particular story, the main focus is Gloria Burgle. We stay with her on her quest to hunt down a lead that could crack the case of her dear (sorta), grumpily departed step-dad (sorta, as Burgle would say in her best version of 'Minnesota Nice’) Thaddeus Mobley, who she knew her whole life as Ennis Stussy. While Gloria is the obvious epicenter of the episode, she searches for clues in a dumpy part of the 'should-be’ glamorous part of LA, tracing a young, naive Thaddeus Mobley (Thomas Mann - A man I sing high praises of, he’s a keeper) and his tragic tale of lesson learned in and around Studio City.

Young Thaddeus is tricked into signing away his book advances to a slick talking, trashy LA producer, Howard Zimmerman - they even got the name right (Fred Melamed) and his *at the time* sexy sidekick, the young, manipulative, cocaine fueled Vivian Lord (Francesca Eastwood), whose job is to lure him in, keep him put, keep him high, while Zimmerman bleeds him dry with the promises of making one of Young Thaddeus’ books into a major motion picture. While all this is going on, Gloria is in the present navigating the same streets and hotels that Young Thaddeus lost his mind, his dreams, and his faith in human beings… A beautifully sad, perfectly simple, but brutally honest parallel cross-narrative, stained with cocaine, dead-ends, tears, desperate Santa Clauses (yes plural), fear, illumination of a different kind, anxiety, a horrible act of well deserved violence and vomit… A perfectly edited dual-vomiting cut-scene that leads to an accidental clue… The 'Dennis Stussy & Sons’ name barely visible from all the repeat usages and beachings on the back of the inside rim of the toilet, the D faded to almost nothing… Reading 'Ennis Stussy’.

Now, all of this would make for a fantastic tale of 'Fargo’ by itself, but the show decides to add another fork in the narrative’s road… Gloria is reading one of Thaddeus’ novels and it plays throughout the episode like an animated dream, beginning and ending as Gloria sleeps and wakes. A robot roams the world after a crash on a foreign planet, with no master to give it purpose or direction. After surviving millions of years, he sees the fall and rebuilding and falling of humanity, ultimately an invasion, and a group of aliens that beam up the robot and honor him for being the oldest sentient being ever. The only thing the robot says… 'I can help’. He’s told his journey is complete and he is to shut down operations, ending his life with a single switch on the inside of the top of his head. Is this an exercise in futility? Im not sure, it’s nicely weaved in and gives the whole episode an existential punch… Along with a visit to a very old and very disabled Howard Zimmerman (now played by Roger V Burton), of whom a nurse claims that she wasn’t sure on the details but he was involved in a horrible accident that left him unable to walk and speak without the assistance of a wheelchair or a voice-box for the ghastly hole in his throat. Zimmerman gives a compelling speech about 'quantum science’ and being made of particles that roam freely, and every now and then collide into each other. He used to think these collisions meant something, but now… Well, 'don’t let the door hit you on the way out’. All is tied up when the once cocaine-fueled, seductress Vivian Lord, now a down on her luck, regretful diner waitress (Frances Fisher) finally meets with Gloria and tells the story of Young Thaddeus’ Hollywood demise and barbaric reaction. Gloria realizes that none of this is connected to the death of her (sorta) late, step-father and the world keeps turning and moving and atoms & particles continue to collide.

It maybe true that we are but nothing in a vast special construct of rocks and stars and suns and moon… But coincidences are something aren’t they? I mean they ARE really something, they have to be, right? Once upon a time I had traveled from city to city, Midwest to West Coast and back again and again, finding myself stuck in Kansas City. I was cold, almost had a job, but was told I couldn’t work without pants I couldn’t afford. I considered stealing them, but I was a tourist in the ghetto, and couldn’t risk the possible drama. The job and potential to continue to stay in Kansas City faded away, the person I was with locked me out of the roach infested hotel room, the now demolished Cherry Street Inn in The Government District on 9th & Cherry in Downtown KC… Funny, I had a key, but the latch was on. I reached in and grabbed the bag belonging to the person inside and pulled it into the hallway just to set it on fire, Angela Bassett 'Waiting to Exhale’ style… So I was willing to do that, but not steal a pair of black pants I should’ve packed anyway. Human emotion is a strange thing, wouldn’t you say? My stuff was thrown out of the back window, half of it at least. My birth certificate and social security card were kept and sold. It was November and it was cold. A jolly, homeless man of color kept appearing asking me, 'Why ya so down, Ginger Boy?’ I told him my tale and he would point me to where I could food, he’d disappear, he’d show up again when I was close to frostbite and he showed me to a shelter. He’d disappear again and out of nowhere, weeks later, he walked me to a market where I could get fruit and vegetables at night. It sounds crazy but the man would just appear out of nowhere, he never asked for one thing, just directed me to the vital things I needed at that time to stay alive.

Maybe that man was my more assisting and meaningful 'Ray Wise’, you know, '6 flights since Tuesday!’ He was a conversation when Gloria needed it the most, or a comforting glance/buffer at the bar when the scummy LA Cop (or fellow law enforcement agent) was looking for a cheap thrill instead of actually trying to help Gloria on her circular quest. Maybe signs are really sent from some higher power or cosmic entity that is everything science wishes it could explain, like the box Gloria found in her hotel room that switched on and off, green to red… Maybe that box was there to connect Gloria’s dreams to her current reality. Maybe our collisions DO mean something, and maybe they mean nothing at all, or maybe, just maybe they give us exactly what we need. Or maybe when we’re cruel to something helpless and weak one too many times, those collisions of atoms that give the world a tiny spark in its ultimate infinity, dwindle like the end of disappointing sparkler on the 4th of July. Maybe.

[twh-news]

ComingSoon.net | CS Discovers an Uncharted World and New Adventures on the Kong: Skull Island Set

[worth reading in full, Tom's interview included in the article]

There’s a sort of wonderment that fills you when you begin to see Hawaii coming into sight from the airplane window even for a movie fan who didn’t quite get the attraction of the island’s recreational mystique. You know, when you’re of the sort to prefer the inside of a movie theater more than toasting outside in the sun. So you could imagine my surprise when all of a sudden the Jurassic Park theme started playing in my head upon arrival to visit the set of Kong: Skull Island.

It really makes you think about how we look at iconic locations as movie fans.

Here is this place that, like many, I first gazed upon in a movie theater experience with Jurassic Park and continued to watch over and over again on a quickly-fading VHS growing up in urban Inglewood, CA. The sort of place where going to Hawaii didn’t quite appeal, perhaps because it’s not as accessible.

And yeah, arriving there you do get compelled to take part in some of the island’s offerings, like walking out into the beach in a swimsuit, because you know if you don’t try to do “Hawaii things” people back home, who would if they were in your shoes, would be sorely disappointed. Just don’t Hawaii so hard that you fall off some rocks into a shallow section of the ocean, and have a minor brush with genuine coral while face-timing loved ones. Already, this visit was off to an adventurous start.

The next day as the press group was driven out of touristy Waikiki through the island mountains to the north side of the island of Oahu, the John Williams score started mentally playing again. Okay, it’s hard to avoid bringing JP, but everyone in the van also thought it and I’m pretty sure we hummed along to the tune at some point in the long drive.

The Kong set itself was nestled in Kualoa Ranch, where – yes JP was shot. What? We totally saw the Indominus Rex enclosure RIGHT THERE! And drove by locations with O.G. JP signs STILL THERE!

Okay, geeking out aside, it makes perfect sense. A different side of the Island’s mystique starts to creep up on you. Away from the city in the middle of the jungle of Kualoa, you’re transported to another world. That’s when it hits you: The realization that the only human things there are the people on set, equipment, and transportation, but that there’s so much more of everything else made by nature that’s bigger than you. So, it’s no wonder that this place is so often used as a backdrop for a fictional fantastic violent landscapes where predators have the upper hand over prey and prey must scramble to find ways to survive.

And that’s where Warner Bros. and Legendary‘s Kong: Skull Island starts.

Kong The Story

Making the choice to keep the focus on man meeting Kong in the wild post-Vietnam war appealed to director Jordan Vogt-Roberts as something that’s never been explored. Standing on a beach — much like the one his film starts on — he explained, “You’ve seen Kong in the ’30s before, you’ve never seen him against modern-issue weaponry.” He painted a scene as it would unfold on Skull Island. “Just the aesthetics of choppers, and napalm, and Hendrix playing while you’ve got Kong punching down helicopters is something that I’ve never seen and I think something that could only exist in our movie. Because obviously choppers, napalm, and everything that is ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Platoon’ mixed with ‘King Kong’ is awesome – just from like a genre mash up perspective.”

Already the colors and palette he was drawing inspiration from attracted our interest. Kong plus lots of explosions? Awesome. In between his break and before the lot of us were to be taken to a hot set, leading man Tom Hiddleston sat down on the beach to affirm the choices that were being made. “I think we were all talking the other day about the size of these movies and the fact that you can contain incredible spectacle, human drama, jaw dropping visuals, and really deliver something entertaining”. he echoed Vogt-Roberts. However, Hiddleston did remark that this interpretation is much more than just action and war. “You’re also retelling a story that we keep telling ourselves. Which is that man is small in the universe. There’s something really powerful about that. I think that Jordan’s master stroke in his conception of the story was post Vietnam 1972.”

Back on the other side of the beach Jordan shared, “Specifically what got me really interested in it was thinking about taking characters and taking the thematics of the time period in which the world was kind of in chaos and we were sort of one foot in the old guard and one foot in the new guard and people were trying to find their place in the world.”

With that, we were already beginning to see a departure from the original 33’s gentle giant tale and Peter Jackson’s beauty and the beast take on the icon we’re familiar with. Even with touches of the action in the Toho universe, Vogt-Roberts aims to re-imagine Kong’s mythology for a new generation that looks back on a time gone by while mirroring things happening today.

Later, while we were tucked in a tent away from set, actress Brie Larson came over to share her excitement about the film. “That’s the interesting thing about this movie. It’s a group of misfits that are all coming from different angles looking at the same thing,” she observed in agreement with Jordan’s vision. “You get to see many different views in regards to nature and how we should handle it and how it’s dealt with from many different perspectives.”

Offering the film’s antagonistic perspective, as his character represents man’s militaristic ambition to sit atop the food chain, is star Samuel L. Jackson, who described the clash in the film as, “The misunderstanding of what one beast’s purpose is in nature as opposed to another.”

Coolly sitting in military regalia of the film’s era, Jackson gave us insight about how his character functions to illustrate the timelessness of civilization’s pursuit of power in the story. “We live in a world that we control a little too much” he elaborated. “ When we get rid of one thing it allows another thing to proliferate. We put things out of balance. Hopefully this will speak to that and people will understand how we do that and what the consequences of us doing those things are.”

Unconsciously prescient, as we visited this set over a year ago, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts pointed out how his film speaks to a time where the country pushed against forces bigger than it. “We were losing wars for the first time, we were in sexual revolutions, and racial riots, and political scandals and things were crumbling and then presenting people with an island that’s untouched by man,” he explained.

To Jordan the film’s conflict is represented by man finding an island that seemed ripe for the imperialistic agenda of the time but would prove to be not as easily overpowered because its nature is, “Something pure in a very impure time” that the characters find. To him, it’s a way in for the audience that gives both the people in a theater and the on-screen ensemble, “…a sense of catharsis with this island. ‘Oh my gosh what a wonderful place this is!’“, he exclaimed. “One of the most incredible accomplishments that we don’t talk about as people is that we don’t get eaten by things anymore. We used to get eaten all the time and now we don’t. Swim out in that ocean and you’ll get back in the food chain, but while they go to this island and they’re presented with this beautiful catharsis – very quickly they’re back in the food chain and that ties back into what happens when you see a god. What happens when you’re back in the food chain how does that make you react? And then realizing that, ‘We should have never come here.’”

The World Building of Skull Island

Not yet having seen much of the set, the scope was still a little bit just in the words being pitched to us, a group of slightly-jaded film nerds who have had to put up with CG landscapes that promised immersion but haven’t been able to meet the level of films we grew up on – films like Jurassic Park where we knew the characters were actually there.

Sure enough, that changed when we visited the Boneyard set, which was testament to the dedication behind the film. Utilizing the rugged terrain, a heap of giant gorilla bones lay littered across a huge field. There were giant rib pieces sticking out of the dirt, leg bones you could walk around of an incredible 80-foot beast and majestic skull nestled nearby that you could stand right in front of.

Okay, now we were in the world, now we were in Skull Island.

Because he’s awesome and decided to hop in our van to set, Tom Hiddleston shared on the ride over that he had the reaction we were about to have and he was right. He described the moment as he hung over the passenger seat enthusiastically, “There was a day about two weeks ago when the entire troop of about 15 of us were trekking across over these ridges and we stop at the top of the ridge and look down into a boneyard. I was at the front of the line and we all stopped and fanned out and I was next to Brie Larson, Thomas Mann, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins,Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Eugene Cordero, Shea Whigham – it was like this is a gang!” he praised, “I’ve made big movies like this on sound stages surrounded by a green screen where you supply everything with your own imagination and the other day we were in that crater in the valley of the volcano and there’s beautiful mountains on every side. Blue sky and nothing left to imagine – you’re just there. Sam and I were saying if you can’t get excited for this, you can’t get excited by anything! This is as good as it gets in terms of big movie making.”

When you’re used to the small-screen version, being planted in the actual landscape was bonkers. Just to give you an idea of my size walking among the artistry, I was as small as Simba in the Elephant Boneyard scene from The Lion King and laughing-in-the-face-of-danger small. Vogt-Roberts wasn’t kidding back on the beach earlier. “We’re framing for a giant ape and also having humans in the frame. I just want to have a lot of imagery in this that’s the same and also feels unique to our movie with the action and with the composition. We want to make a lot of stuff that really could only exist within the confines of the movie we’re making. This is our Skull Island, this is our Kong, and you couldn’t find these sequences or this imagery in another film.”

Hiddleston supported the sentiment. “When Jordan and I met we talked about aspiring to make something that was like the best adventure stories, ’cause he and I are the same age, we talked about Raiders and we talked about Jurassic Park and those films take you to a place, put you into a context, and give you a great time. You just follow the story,” he described as we drove into the familiar wild of Isla Nublar and further away from civilization. The legacy of which, Hiddleston bears in mind as they prepared to unleash Kong into the world. “I think of that first Jurassic Park and it really is about man coming face to face with what he doesn’t understand. All that stuff that Jeff Goldblum says you know it’s a simple idea, but it’s a big idea. We can only hope to make a film as good as that and we’re trying,” he said.

Samuel L. Jackson, who happened to be in the first Jurassic Park, did share an interesting tidbit of info about the Spielberg shoot while we hung out in Hawaii with him. “I never got here,” he laughed, “never got to come here, because the set that I was supposed to work on got destroyed in the hurricane that season. Hence my arm hanging in some anonymous place.”

And he’s finally here for Kong, no less! But yeah – whether it’s Sam Jackson versus Dinos or versus Shark or snakes on a plane, the cult hero actor chalks up his resume of taking on the animal world to a love of adventure stories. “I’ve always liked King Kong movies. I like big things that roar and scare people. Running from things and shooting back at them,” he explained.

As Jackson prepares to be the character aiming to go toe-to-toe with Kong, Jordan Vogt-Roberts imagines the visuals of the war between them as one of bad-ass motherf*cker proportions. He revealed, “When you look at King Kong, that original movie there’s frames you could pause. Almost every one of those scenes – there’s a frame that you remember, there’s a frame you could blow up, and there’s a frame you could put on your wall. As we’re framing for a giant ape and also having humans in the frame. I just remember like when I was in college whatever the frames were from Pulp Fiction – those single images you would have as your desktop background, or that you would print out in middle school to put in your trapper keeper binder and be like, “I love that image!” he said of bringing two cinematic icons together.

Totally game, Jackson looks forward to bringing that to life, “The fact that we’re on location and not in a studio is totally different. It’s out in the elements. It’s happening and you can actually see that and I think the difference will be very palpable to an audience.”

Back in the press tent with Larson, the future Captain Marvel praised the production, “Every time I look in the monitor I’m so excited by, and in awe of, and it’s so much bigger in scope and in scale than anything else that I’ve done. I’m doing things I’ve never done before, like working with CGI and doing things that are very physical. Everything I’ve done before is more visceral and more emotional and more subtle. There’s such a huge group of us and everyone is just like at the top of their game, and I’m learning so many new skills.” After our conversation with her, we saw her work in action when we watched a scene where her character would not stop snapping pictures in awe of Kong, though she should probably run away.

And while yes, Kong is the only star not on set (He’ll be CGI of course), Vogt-Roberts assures that everyone is on the same page to create real reactions to the mighty God of the Island, “Really to me a lot of it is about being able to linger on these characters’ faces, seeing how not just this creature, but this island is affecting them. We truly want Skull Island to feel like a tangible, tactile place and that’s why we’re shooting so much of this practically as we go from Hawaii, to Australia, to Vietnam, it’s to really feel these guys within that space. So it’s a huge help for the actors just to be in real jungles and real settings and things like that. That just adds to that reality when you’re staring up at this completely fictional fake thing.”

And being there on the Hawaii set, I couldn’t agree more, because it does transform and transport you. I totally felt like the kid who’d look at ripples from shaking water cups as a sign that a T-Rex was near. No really, you divert into that mentality when you’re standing deep in the dark jungle legitimately anticipating a great beast whenever the wind would rustle leaves around you.

“We’ve never seen King Kong in that arena,” Hiddleston summed up, “it gives every character somewhere to come from.”

And as I looked down at the Island on my way home, I was filled with great excitement for the movie and to see Kong charging through where I stood. And yes, also with a newfound appreciation for Hawaii as a movie nerd.

[how2to18]

ON SEPTEMBER 12, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced what amounted to a plan to dismantle the public education system. American schools, she explained, suffer from a “mundane malaise” that denies children a future and leaves them “stuck in the 1800s using a model courtesy of Prussia,” but the days of students sitting in desks, in brick and mortar schools, with school boards and the like, are coming to an end, shortly to be replaced by market-based solutions such as vouchers and charter schools.

In Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, Johann N. Neem defends the American public school system by recovering the ideals of its founders. The book provides a compelling account of how Horace Mann, Reverend William Ellery Channing, Catharine Beecher, and other antebellum advocates of the United States’s common schools brought what amounts to a liberal arts education to the nation’s children. In the face of widespread cynicism about public education, Neem reminds us that public schools can liberate children’s minds from prejudice or vocational preoccupations.

But this book may be too late. The federal government has increased its power over local schools in the last 50 years and pushed a “college and career ready” agenda that is at odds with the liberal arts. Democrats may be the last, best friend of “the system,” but they must confront the fact that it is hard to defend public education in its current configuration.

¤

Neem is himself a product of a public school education. His family emigrated from Mumbai, India, to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was a child, and he recalls warmly the day that the teacher and students handed him a signed card after his swearing in ceremony to become a US citizen. Public schools, Neem affirms, “prepare all young people to take part in the shared life of our democracy” and “democratize access to the kind of liberal education that was once reserved for the few.”

The hero of his book is arguably the Whig politician Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, and so-called father of the Common Schools movement. Mann traveled to Prussia in 1843, and in 1852 he helped Massachusetts adopt the principles of the Prussian education system.

On Neem’s account, Mann was a tireless advocate for democratizing the liberal arts and making it possible for most children to have the kind of education that was traditionally offered only to children of the elites. Mann and other reformers wanted public schools to “develop the potential of each human being” and “orient young people to higher purposes.” A society that trains children strictly for “the workshop or the field,” Mann believed, “will be disrobed of many of its choicest beauties.”

Ordinary citizens sometimes opposed education reform on the grounds that common sense and real-world experience would prepare most children for life’s challenges. Others, however, argued that reformers had an agenda that would destroy the democratic tenor of American life. Mann’s critic Orestes Brownson observed that nearly everyone on the Massachusetts Board of Education was a Whig and a Unitarian. For Brownson, Democrats and Baptists were right to be wary of a public education system that emanated from “despotic Prussia” rather than the democratic United States. Brownson was following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson and other early small-d democrats who wanted families and ordinary citizens, rather than bureaucrats, to control the local schools.

To his credit, Neem refuses to take sides in these early conflicts between systemic reformers and participatory democrats. On the one hand, Neem sympathizes with the reformers who thought that all American public schools should provide an education for democracy — that is, that schools should impart the skills and content necessary for children to eventually perform their role as citizens. For these top-down reformers, the state has the power and the responsibility to make democratic citizens.

But Neem gives a fair hearing to the democrats who maintain that schools should provide children an education in democracy — that is, raise them in an environment where parents, neighbors, and local educators make crucial decisions about how to raise the next generation. For these democrats, public schools must transform our country from the bottom-up, infusing democratic norms in the schools and then the rest of society.

Neem argues that the tension between the two sides — reflected in today’s argument — made education a “central issue in American politics,” and that is how it should be in a democracy.

¤

Like Neem, I had, on the whole, a positive experience in public school. I still think often of a fourth grade teacher who asked me to play the role of Doctor Dolittle in the school play, as well as a high school librarian who often recommended the right books for me to read at the right time. If I have become an education activist in the past few years, it is mostly to protect children, but also to protect the kinds of teachers who inspire children to be their best.

But my enthusiasm for public education has waned. The Every Student Succeeds Act requires annual testing of students in grades three through eight and once in high school in English Language Arts and mathematics, and states around the country have or are planning to administer these tests on computers. Though the Every Student Succeeds Act does not specify what standards qualify as “college and career standards,” most states use some version of the Common Core. Public education around the country now means preparing for or taking online Common Core tests. This seems like a dystopia to my wife and me.

Our family has begun to home school this year so that our children can grow and learn at their own pace and so that they may do many hands on activities. In teaching our children, we follow Jean Piaget’s theory of childhood development, Maria Montessori’s pedagogy of placing children in situations where they can concentrate on completing a task, and John Dewey’s principle that education should harness a child’s interest to motivate intense study. We teach our children to read, write, and do math, of course, but we tailor the curriculum to each child in a way that is contrary to the Common Core’s expectations that all children should meet the same performance expectations at the same time.

I believe Neem and I want the same general kind of education for our children. I will continue to fight for sensible education policies and against the school choice agenda advanced by Republicans and Democrats alike. But I do not have much energy to defend the public education system as it currently exists. By entrusting distant professionals rather than local citizens to run the schools, Mann and subsequent reformers must take some responsibility for weakening popular support for public education.

¤

Democracy’s Schools ends with a benign-sounding call to defend American public schools in whatever form they take: “We should watch over them, and reform them when they fail us. But we also depend on them. We cannot evade our responsibilities to and for them and, by extension, each other.”

The problem with this conclusion, however, is that much has transpired in public education since its formation in the antebellum period. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act assigning the federal government a larger role in public education. Each subsequent reauthorization of the law, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, has ramped up federal intervention in the school system, and the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 requires that “all students in America be taught to high academic standards that will prepare them to succeed in college and careers.” Betsy DeVos, notably, has less interest in challenging standards-based education reform than she does in changing how public education is delivered.

Education reformers such as DeVos aren’t much different from their 19th-century counterparts — they still claim to have a plan to give all children a liberal arts education that has hitherto only been available at the finest private schools. One such reformer is David Coleman, the lead writer of the Common Core English Language Arts standards and presently the head of the College Board. According to a portrait in The Atlantic, he is “an utterly romantic believer in the power of the traditional liberal arts.” On this account, the Common Core will revolutionize education by making it possible for all children to read humanity’s greatest works of literature and nonfiction.

But the bloom is off the Common Core rose. Few people of any party actually believe that it has democratized a liberal arts education. According to one critic, it is “whittling away the democratic and human purposes of education,” claiming to prepare children for college and career, but failing to promote citizenship or learning as a good for its own sake. The Common Core has confirmed democrats’ fear that the state is primarily interested in training workers and subjects, not energetic citizens.

The critic in the above paragraph is Johann Neem. He knows that economic and political elites are transforming public education to serve their own needs. According to Neem, democrats need to defend public education at the same time as they seek to revive its founding ideals. He makes this clear in a recent op-ed: “The Founding Fathers saw freedom as the cornerstone of the nation and public schools as essential vehicles to secure it. Guided by their vision, we should work to fix America’s public schools, not abandon them.”

¤

Nicholas Tampio is associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

The post Does Public Education Have a Future? appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[totesmccoats]

Batman #36

Batman and Superman avoid calling each-other to talk about the recent engagement, each making their own excuses to their better halves, and placing the responsibility on the other to avoid making the first move.

It shouldn’t be surprising in retrospect, but who knew Tom King could be this adorable? King makes it obvious how much each man respects and adores the other by how intimidated each is to start this conversation despite knowing that they should. Besides, they’re busy with superheroing – the other’ll call if it’s that important. Meanwhile, Catwoman starts to feel like Bruce might be ashamed of her; and Lois just really wants to meet her!

Clay Mann draws the two heroes in a way that fits each’s opinion of the other. Both are imposing figures, larger than life, mythic. Superman swoops into action, catching trains before they fall off cliffs, as Batman poses dramatically on Gotham’s gargoyles, leaping through skylights to kick criminals. Even in the same room, Superman glows and Batman seems to carry shadows with him.

  Batman: White Knight #3

New Harley can’t accept that Jack no longer wants to be Joker, and decides to take up the mantle for herself. Meanwhile, Jack moves forward with his plan to discredit Batman and the Gotham establishment, using the mind-controlled supervillains as both a distraction and a cudgel. While Batman chases them through Blackport, causing untold damages to people and property; Jack raids the city records office to look for exactly how much those damages cost Gotham, and finds his answer.

The next day, Jack reveals that Batman costs the city three billion dollars a year in taxpayer money, and is still completely unaccountable for it, or the priceless emotional damage he costs the city, further widening the divide between Batman and Gotham, including close allies like Gordon, Dick, and Barbara. Continuing with his plan, Jack and Harley head to Blackport where they find an ally in Duke Thomas – in this universe, ex-military, ex-police, and Blackport native who organized a grassroots police-force for the part of the city Gotham forgot.

This issue further reveals that Jack may not be as squeaky clean as he presents himself to Gotham, but he still makes a heckuva strong argument against Batman’s continued existence; especially as Batman’s methods become more and more reckless. SGM also adds another stir to the pot with new Harley, who becomes an element that neither Jack nor Batman have figured into their equations, and could become a spanner in either or both of their designs.

As of now, turning Duke into Luke Cage-lite could go either way, but the big-black guy stereotype is a fine-line to walk. SGM’s other big diversion from canon in this issue, however, really changes who this Batman is and what his relationship to the rest of the Bat-family and the Joker is compared to the norm.

  Superman #36

A not-great conclusion to a not-great arc. The war on Apokolips is ended by deus ex machina, and Superman sits on Darkseid’s throne just long enough to abdicate it to the people. Gleason gives a bland version of a “truth, justice, and the american way” speech for Superman to say, then booms things to Metropolis. The last couple of pages are a cliffhanger for a much more interesting story development than the past four issues.

Also, I’ll be skipping the next two issues that will be part of a crossover – so hopefully #39 gets things back on track!

  Green Arrow #35

Aww yeah, Ferrerya’s back! And he’s illustrating Oliver’s adventure to the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean to raid the vaults of the sunken Ninth Circle base, the Inferno, with his used-to-be-evil-and-also-dead mother, Moira. Meanwhile, detective Shuffleton follows the dirty detective Ros when he tails Oliver’s lawyer, and the two discover that Wendy Poole – whom Oliver is charged with murdering – is still alive. One of them can’t say the same for themselves much longer. And when Moira inevitably betrays her son, Black Canary and Henry team up and follow him into the trench to save him.

This issue is a little all over the place, including one flashback that I think turned into two different flashbacks without much to signal the transition, and an abrupt – even for comics – ending. Also, for the amount of space it’s given, there just isn’t much going on below the surface. The opening helpfully provides enough exposition to catch-up any new readers, but the amount of plot actually going on leaves a lot of room to be filled by Oliver’s self-flaggilating over his wealth; which, while appreciated in a way, disappoints compared to what’s going on above the waves, where people are uncovering secrets and blowing each-other up.

Still, a book of new Ferrerya art is never a completely bad thing, even when he isn’t allowed to really play to his strong suits and deliver high-octane action sequences. Also, I guess Moira Queen just looks like a woman in her late 30’s forever now?

  Justice League #34

Bruce hasn’t had a full rest in three days, and still insists on being the brains of the Justice League. He sends Superman, Flash, and Jessica Cruz to help people trapped in an earthquake, while he, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman rescue some kidnapped nuns. Meanwhile. Simon Baz monitors what appears to be a massive alien invasion. But in delegating these tasks, an underslept and overworked Batman may have made a tactical error – one that could cost lives.

This is Priest’s first issue on Justice League, and he immediately makes it a distinctly “Priest” book, with parallel storytelling, stakes that matter, and sharp dialogue. Appropriately, his Justice League run starts off lighter than his time with Deathstroke, with a lot of that credit going towards artist Pete Woods, who draws with bold lines and saturates his colors to heroic proportions. We even get some daytime Batman action!

  Black Bolt #8

Black Bolt finally returns to Earth, but isn’t given exactly the warm welcome he expected. A lot has happened during his absence, including an attempted holocaust under Hydra, and the disappearance of much of the royal family; and his people that once looked to him as a father now regard him as a deadbeat. And, before he can tend to the needs of his people, he has a promise to keep.

To use a cliché, you can take the Black Bolt out of prison, but you can’t take the prison out of Black Bolt. He is still trapped by the effects of his brother, by the loss of his voice, the trauma of his imprisonment, and the suffering of his people in his absence. Though Black Bolt has changed, he still isn’t whole.

Blinky adjusts better, wide eyed and slightly overwhelmed by her new home. Though she’s experienced the same trauma as Black Bolt, her advantage is in being better able to communicate her emotions – being a telepath helps with that.

And Ward’s art doesn’t suffer at all for being contained to Earth. He trades the neon blues and pinks for golden yellows and browns, bathing the issue in sunshine for the first time in the series. And Lockjaw is as floppy and adorable as ever.

  Hawkeye #13

Like all great Hawkeye stories involving Clint Barton, this one starts off with Hawkeye(s) falling from a great height. But before they were falling, Clint and Kate had just reunited, and were discussing whose problem to solve first when Clint’s problem popped up to try to kill the two with arrows. So, Clint’s problem takes priority. After Clint fills Kate in on who might be trying to kill him this time, Kate deduces that it’s Eden, the Swordsman’s apprentice from the Generations: The Archers issue. Unfortunately, she’s able to find them again before they can find her, and her teleportation powers make her an extra tricky baddie to nab.

If you’ve liked how Thompson wrote one Hawkeye, then you’re really going to enjoy how she writes two. She writes Kate and Clint with a familiar rapport, but still manages to give each their own character, Clint being looser and chiller despite being hunted, while Kate continues to be the more sarcastic one.

This even translates to their body language, and is immediately clear on the first page we see them falling together. Even while falling, Kate is poised and ready to shoot, while Clint is still grabbing at his quiver and is falling freely. And her style, with Bellaires’ colors, continue to give Hawkeye a distinct sunkissed tone regardless of how dark the book may go, but never to its detriment.

  Paper Girls #18

The Girls are able to escape Charlotte while the giant mech fight still roars invisibly around them, and Tiff admits to Chris – her future husband – that she’s his wife, or will be in 12 years. On their way to Tiff’s house, Mac tells Erin that she suspects KJ might be a clone or something of the real KJ, mostly because of the shock of her coming out of the closet last issue. And, in the mechs above the town, the Old Timers suffer a blow that may prompt them to forfeit what already passed for proper rules of engagement.

Despite the very fast-feeling issue (it’s amazing how the pace of a comic can vary so much considering they’re all about the same length!), each of the Girls get a moment, from KJ trying to talk down Charlotte, Erin ninja-throwing a newspaper, Mac’s newfound skepticism, and Tiff negotiating the politics of time travel with her Goth husband. Tiff actually seems to be the focus of this issue, which is a welcome shifting of the spotlight. BKV’s dialogue continues to be some of the best in comics, with everyone but the Old Timers reading as completely natural, and Chiang can draw the heck out of girls wandering through the woods and giant robot fights equally.

  Uber: Invasion #10

For better or worse, things are gearing up in Uber: Invasion. The Nazis recover Siegfried’s body, and the burning corpse of the Zephyr that killed him, and plan their counter-attack for before the United States can create enough Zephyrs to win the war. In Boston, while the US army celebrates Siegfried’s death, Stephanie wonders if they have the time to make enough Zephyrs and complete the Colossus II before the inevitable Nazi response. As a stalling tactic, she suggests that the army set up ghost-armies to make the Nazis think that the US already has the numbers. In San Francisco, a small team hunts the Japanese Battleship Yamato, and discuss whether they should search a Japanese Internment Camp for him.

Like many great war stories, some of the most dramatic moments of this issue involve people looking at maps and trying to outbluff the other. And, for the first time in Invasion, instead of sticking with one army for the entire issue, we get multiple concurrent threads, ratcheting up the tension even further.

Comic Reviews 12/5/17 Batman #36 Batman and Superman avoid calling each-other to talk about the recent engagement, each making their own excuses to their better halves, and placing the responsibility on the other to avoid making the first move.