Daily Archives: July 5, 2008

Cinema and Television, Holidays

The Night After

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74  bar steady  29.73  0mph ENE dew-point 56  Summer night, too warm

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

This is the night after the fourth of July.  No bangs, pops, whistles, booms, showers of color, whirling fountains.  No patriotic music or patriotic festivals on the TV.  A night whose character takes its shape from the night it is not.

When I thought of this earlier, it made me reflect on all those night afters.   Each have their unique caste.  The night after Labor Day school begins for many, the serious, get-to-it season commences.  The night after Halloween the candy gets eaten or dumped, the costumes stowed, the lights taken down.  The Celts have begun their new year.  The night after Thanksgiving many of us groan and roll around on the bed or the couch, one too many turkey legs or dollops of mash potatoes or pieces of pecan pie still harbored somewhere in the digestive track.  The night after Christmas Santa has returned to the North Pole (where will he go if the ice melts?), no more presents and no more anticipation.  The night after Hanukkah the menorah goes back to it usual spot, the family gatherings end.  The night after New Year’s we settle into the next year, the hangover finished, the streamers and screamers and auld lang syne all put away until next year.

In each case we leave the sacred or festive time and return to what the Catholics call ordinary time, a phrase I love.  The value of ordinary time comes from the leavening, the spice that holidays bring to it.  On the night after the frisson between ordinary time and the festive, sacred time of holiday is at its most poignant, the memory still fresh, yet the moment has passed.  So, happy night after the fourth of July.  I hope the sense of patriotism embraced by the revolutionary generation seeped a little bit more into your bones.

While exercising today, I finished Lust,Caution by Ang Lee.  This film pushes boundaries like Brokeback Mountain, sexual boundaries and the question of love ignited in impossible situations.  It is a brave film, both for the director and for the two lead characters.  The context is the Japanese occupation of China.  Most of the film takes place in occupied Shanghai.  The struggle between the resistance and the Japanese, which forms the overall storyline, portrays the complex choices people make in situations that test loyalties at their core.

The technical skills in Asian cinema–Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Korean, Singaporean, Thai–has developed over many years.  We are now beginning to see films that push into the east/west osmotic filter from both directions.  This is a rich and interesting time for cinema from Asia and I feel lucky to participate.

Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Writing

Back In Its Own Stall

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79  bar falls 29.84 1mph ENE dew-point 61   Summer, hot, moving toward muggy

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

The cracks in the red car’s head were tiny.  I saw them.  They ran, in one instance, down the threads that hold the spark plug in place.  While threading in a spark plug or under pressure, these cracks could have broken loose and allowed oil and exhaust gases to invade the spark plug and generally foul things up.  Carlson was thoughtful in showing them to me.

We’ve sunk almost $5,000 in this car this year.   That’s almost a year’s car payments.  Even so, we could put in the same amount next year and still be ahead of the game.  It runs quite well now, though there is that piece that fell off on the way home.  No kidding.  A big chunk of something fell off.  I’m going to take it back and ask them about it, but not today.  It looks like a shield or rock barrier, not metal, rather some kind of composite, tarpaper like material.

It’s 31-32 miles per gallon on the highway alone justifies keeping it in our two vehicle collection.  The pick-up we’ll park for the most part in the not too distant future.  $90 a tank to fill it up.  Ouch.  And it sucks the gas down, too, with its v-8.  What were we thinking?  It is, though, a useful vehicle for errands and landscape chores.  Another advantage is its four-wheel drive.  (Oh, come to think of it, that’s what we were thinking.  In 1999, when we bought it, Kate still had call and  hospital duty.  She had to be able to get to where she was needed.) That makes it potentially important in a severe winter situation.  Besides, pick-ups and SUV’s have lost significant value.  We could get nowhere the value it is to us.  So, it will stay, too.

Our neighbor went to bed apparently healthy, then woke up the next day with MS.  A striking and sudden life change.  It has occasioned a major alteration in their lives.  They went from the salary of a 58 year old career civil servant at the peak of  his career to a fixed income household.  This was six months ago.

How it will affect their family dynamics over the long haul is an open question.  The prednisone  makes  him cranky.  He’s gone from an active guy who built his own observatory and sailed Lake Superior to a wobbly man who can no longer read.  His mental acumen seems fine, but for now he wanders, lost in the bewilderment of this rapid change, as well he might be.

Today is an inside day.  I’m going to write on Superior Wolf, get ready for my research on Unitarian Universalism in the Twin Cities and, maybe, crack the case and clean off my cooling fan.