Daily Archives: May 17, 2008

Cinema and Television, Family

It Will End as a Novel Ends

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55  bar steep rise 0mph E dew-point 39  Beltane

           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

Kate cleared a bunch of dogwood canes, pulled up weeds, pruned out a juniper (yesterday), deadheaded the daffodils and generally worked herself into a stupor. (In Norwegian, this is a good thing.)  She’s been on vacation this week and has enjoyed herself immensely planting, pruning, carrying.  (Again, in Norwegian, this constitutes a vacation.)  I admire and appreciate her doggedness, but it doesn’t count as a vacation attitude in my Celtic/Germanic perspective.   Whatever turns your crank.

Battlestar Galactica is the most nuanced and unpredictable show on television, bar none.  It is a good science fiction novel brought to the screen and that is so rare as to be a marvel, a marvel that continues week after week.  There no good guys and bad guys, no bad robots and good robots.  No, there are humans and robots who, in some situations, act for the common good and, in other situations, act out of selfish or malicious motives. 

The Science Fiction channel will finish the Battlestar Galactica series this season, but it will not tail off into the land of unfinished television shows. It will end as a novel ends, with an ending that ties together various plotlines and provides a final surprise and aha.  How do I know?  Because that’s how good writing works, and this is good writing.  I would like to see this as a precedent for TV shows where the story has a trajectory, a climax and a denouement, not the eternal extension of the storyline in a cynical attempt to exploit viewer interest for every last drop of advertiser revenue.  Viewers will return if the fiction has characters with complex lives, difficult hurdles to overcome and a convincing fate.

More work outside tomorrow.  This may be the last big push for a while since Kate goes back to work on Tuesday and I have MIA and a docent class luncheon on Monday with Woolly’s in the evening.

Our Land and Home

Three Oak and One Elm Bite the Dust

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72  bar steady 29.56 4mph WSW dew-point 27  Beltane, cloudy

                     Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The younger folks, Steve and Aimee, worked the whole morning on the buckthorn.  I worked nearby on a 14 year old project, thinning the woods.  When we first moved to Andover, I had a state forester come out and advise me on how to manage our woods for wildlife.  His major advised involved taking out trees growing too close to each other, opening up the understory and getting rid of the buckthorn.  He also suggested creating brushpiles because small critters love brushpiles for home building.

I’ve made some progress against the demon buckthorn and we’ve created many brushpiles over the years.  The thinning of the woods, though, has taken a back seat to gardening, creating beds, planting, nurturing.  Last year I began to thin, starting in the northwest corner of our property.  I cleared it of buckthorn and black locust, cut out some other understory and now have it 3/4’s cleared.  I also began, again last fall, to develop midden heap park.  First I cleared out a whole variety of a plant life that had grown up on our compost pile.  Then I cut down and debarked three diseased elms.  I also removed buckthorn, cutting down the larger ones to 2′ stumps (which Steve and Aimee pulled today).  In addition I began removing, thinning trees.

Today three oak and one elm bit the dust.  Literally.  After limbing them, I cut them up into smaller sections–log sized–and lugged them onto a pile.  I slept well during my nap.

Our Land and Home

The Weed Wrench, a Well Traveled Tool

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67  bar steep fall 29.59 2mph W dew-point 32

          Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

“O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!” – William Shakespeare

The origin of schadenfreude.  A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.  When happiness turns about for others, then we discover this difficult side of our Self, the corollary to Shakespeare’s observation.

Steve and Aimee came over today.  They wanted to thank us for the loan of the weed wrench.  They returned the favor by showing us their moves for the morning, wrenching out buckthorn after buckthorn in the area where we have a fire-pit and midden heap park under construction.  They also cleared out the area where we will put in Ruth and Gabe’s playhouse.

Bright, good work ethic, a pleasure.  

Now for a nap.