February was an odd month for reading, opening with another Box binge (this time reading through his other series, featuring a sheriff’s deputy turned private investigator) before drifting back a little into history. It was not a strong month for reading or watching films, though: a burst of inspiration for short stories and academic demands meant that I spent a lot of my evenings writing or doing schoolwork. It was also a weird month for weather: usually, February is consistently cold, but we had cold, then spring, then cold, then spring again. I anticipate a bit more cold in March — local folk wisdom insists there’s always a freeze before Easter — but we’re probably closer to tornado season than winter at this point.

America @ 25o

With Malice Toward None, Stephen B, Oates
Andrew Johnson, Annette Gordon-Reed

Classics Club

I’m halfway through The Confessions.

Bible in a Year / Lent

Following the Ascension program conducted by Fr. Mike Schmitz, I finished reading Genesis, Exodus, Jonah, and Leviticus. Also, halfway through Confessions as mentioned.

Coming up in March…

I’ll be continuing with The Confessions, trying to balance history, science, and the classics, and of course — getting ready for Opening Day. If you enjoy podcasts I’ve found a compelling one called The Midnight Library of Baseball, which is about the ‘human’ side of baseball: recent episodes I’ve listened to have been about how baseball has been used for storytelling, and a history of advertising’s intrusion into the sport. It’s a peaceful, contemplative, and smartly edited show if my listening experience to date is any indicator. Also, recent events in Iran (tongue placed firmly in cheek) may lead to me finally reading Trita Parsi’s Treacherous Alliance, on DC-Israeli-Iranian relations. They’re more complex than most people realize.

Nonbook Commmonplace Quotes

For those of us who still want to live a quiet and meaningful life, away from the seemingly ubiquitous rot and decay of modern America, we learn to live life in the ruins. We do not need an “alternative” right political answer to the nation’s ills: we must seek an alternative way of living, one that can ignore the cultural decay as much as possible. I don’t think the decay can be arrested at this point. I don’t think things are going to get better, at least not in my lifetime. This does not mean that one must seek out a commune to live in, or waste your life away becoming a doomsday prepper. It means that I have the power to say no to the mainstream cultural paradigm. Divorce, cities, slothfulness, indifference, historical illiteracy, rudeness, consumerism, industrialism, public education, trends, fads, glyphosate, and modern country music: these are some of the things I can say no to. – “America is Actively Dying“, Alan Harrelson

Each Lent, I walk a little further away from ‘the world’ and its concerns, which also means walking a little further away from my false image of myself, and all of my selfish concerns. Walk far enough away, and there is nothing left to shelter you but the Presence who lies outside the world, and is waiting for you to come home. – Paul Kingsnorth, “The Monthly Salon“.

Stanley Hauerwas has said that Christians will have done well if, in a hundred years, we are known as the people who don’t kill our unborn or our elders. That is true. But Kriss make me wonder if even that is too rosy an assessment of the situation we are facing: Perhaps Christians will have done well if, in a hundred years, we are known as people who still talk to each other face to face and without the aid of a machine, as people who still try to build worthy and beautiful things with their hands. Perhaps, assuming we ourselves can manage so much, we will be amongst the few that still do. – Jake Meador, “Confronting the Unman“

Moviewatch

Mr. Baseball, 1992. Tom Selleck is an aging Yankee traded to a Japanese team mid-season.  He has to learn how to be an outsider in Japan – both on and off the field. As a former star of ‘the show’, Selleck’s character is very bad at basic social graces, to say nothing of those the Japanese hold in high esteem – like a preference for cooperation and harmony. Much of the film is him wading in like an ugly American, sometimes making honest mistakes (like leaving his chopsticks up-ended in a dish, invoking funerary rites) to just being a jerk in general.  His ability to start adapting to Japanese culture is facilitated by a woman who turns out to be his coach’s daughter.   This reveal – to both men – is hilarious. It’s ultimately a sweet story.

Selleck: Japanese way: shut up and take it!
Hiroko:  [Selleck’s]’s Way: me, me, me! Sometimes acceptance and cooperation are strengths. 

Selleck: Four things I accept about myself: problems with authority,   the attention span of a gnat,   a bad right knee, and an inability to understand women.
Hiroko: Acceptance is only the first step.

Selleck: (sticks chopsticks upright in bowl)
Party crowd: (screams)
Me:  THAT’S BAD LUCK, JACK! 

Selleck: There any reason you couldn’t tell me they were from the same gene pool?
Translator: I told you, Jack-san. I said ‘Many difficulties surround her’.
Selleck:….just  because you know English does NOT mean we speak the same language.

 

Richard Jewell, 2019.  A drama based on a true story: a security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta finds a mysterious backpack filled with pipe bombs, and is accused by the media and the Fibbies as having planted the packages himself.  Part of the tragic drama of this movie is that Jewell, who wanted to be a cop and respects federal agencies, is unwittingly supporting their attempt to railroad him: in fact, it takes an hour and a half before he starts getting mad at their obvious abuses of power in their pursuit to get a conviction rather than justice. I watched some original 1990s footage of Jewell and must say that the actor got him pretty well, though the actor’s accent and belly were more accentuated. 

“I was raised to respect authority, sir.”
“Son, authority’s what’s outside that door waiting to eat you alive.” 

Lawyer: And stop calling them ‘sir.’ No more deference than they’re due.
Jewell: They’re still the United States Government.
Lawyer:   No, they’re three pricks who work for the US Government.  There’s a difference.

Tom & Viv, 1994. This is one of the most uniquely unsettling movies I have ever watched:   beautifully done, wretchedly sad in many ways. The last shot has haunted me for twelve years.  It’s a drama about the rise of T.S. (“Tom”) Eliot, and his first wife – and specifically, the part she played in his rise,  to his embrace of England and his flowering as a poet  – but then, how he fails her when her mental and hormonal disorders so overwhelm him in his newfound focus on his career that he effectively puts her away in the loony bin. I know that sounds awful, but the execution of the movie is such that the viewer is hooked and tortured along with Tom and Viv,  and left feeling both sadness for the couple and a slight contempt for Tom.  Great movie, will leave you miserable.  This was my…fourth viewing in twelve years, I think. Seeing Tom yearn for more stability and purpose  even as his wife becomes progressively more unhinged is such excellent emotion-wracking. 

Morris: Are you a virgin, Bertrand?
Bertrand Russell: …not exactly.
Morris: Do you suppose Tom is?
Bertrand Russell: …very probably.
Morris: I am.  Awful business, the sex thing.
Bertrand Russell: ….forgive me, Morris, but are you doing some sort of survey?

(This scene is unintentionally funny because you’ve two very well-dressed chaps drinking wine on a picnic blanket while they wait for Tom and Viv to stop making out on a little gondola thingy in the bulrushes.)

Bertrand Russell: “I’m sure Tom’s intentions are entirely honorable.”
Morris: “Hm. Not sure about Vivie’s, though.” 

Stardust, 2007. My first movie-with-a-friend for this year!  To think I used to do three in a week. This is a…fantasy/romance film about a star falling from the heavens into England, only when she’s in England she’s  a blonde woman. To my disappointment there was no “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven” type pickup line. My favorite element was the ghosts who kept hanging around and commenting on things. Robert de Niro had an…um, unusual role. 

The Children’s Hour, 1961.  A ten-year old ruins two women’s lives and drives one to suicide after she accuses them of being lesbians.  Shirley MacClaine, who I primarily know as a silly drunk in Ocean’s Eleven, is quite impressive here, and of course I love Audrey. That’s how I found this movie, actually. I was checking to see if she was in any films I hadn’t yet seen.  Truly a terrible way to follow Tom and Viv, for reasons I won’t disclose but which are obvious to anyone who has seen the film. I was very surprised at the premise of this film, given the time setting: I wouldn’t have expected such a compassionate take in ‘61.  One thing that stands out is how insidiously permanent and fecund the “J’accuse!” mentality is in humanity –  the eager, lusty desire to ostrascize people not on evidence of wrongdoing, but on mere suspicion.  It made me think of Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox.

“The wicked very young….and the wicked very old.  Let’s go home.”

“God will punish you.”
“He’s doing all right.”

“There are lots of people in this world who have trouble. We happen to be three of those. We could sit on that trouble for the rest of our lives, and get to where we had nothing else, because we wanted nothing else.” 

As much as I want to watch more Kore-Eda, after the deep tragedy of Tom & VIv and Children’s Hour, I’m probably going to open March with light-hearted stuff.

Camp, 2003. Anna Kendrick. Musical theater. That one time at band camp. Continuing to watch movies I should have seen as a teenager but didn’t. Comic Sans. I needed a mood break after the last few movies. (Also: Stephen Sondheim cameo.) I don’t know that this movie has a plot beyond ‘musical pieces and teenage drama’.