Memoirous

I left off my last post in the Bebelplatz in Berlin, atop the glass covering the Empty Library below. The swirling colored lights bouncing off the buildings added to the hallucinogenic feel to being there. I wasn’t quite sure where I was. Yet, watching the movie Origin , I recognized the location and déjà vu—personally and historically—washed over me. It’s happening again. Book banning. Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste , upon which Origin is based rests on the premise that the othering of Jews in early 20 th -century Germany and how we treat people of color here in the States informed each other, The writing and examples in the book are irrefutable. The end of the film goes back to an interview Wilkerson did with a subject who as a young boy, white, growing up in what is presumed a southern town, though I guess it could have been Illinois, when his Little League team wins a championship and is rewarded with a day at a town pool. The whole team goes, even the star player who score...

I went to see the fictionmentary: Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based upon Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: Origins of our Discontents . It takes a particular skill to adapt nonfiction to the screen; you’re actually telling a couple stories at once and most or all of it has to be TRUE. On a personal note: I couldn’t stop crying through the entire viewing. Am I highly emotional? Maybe, but I’m the kind of person you want in the middle of a disaster because I tend to keep my head without panicking. But once you start intuiting a lynching—I’m gone, and the movie opens with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the young man/teenager who was killed merely for walking home in the rain on a dark night wearing a hoodie. You know the end of this story before it even begins, and you get a sick thud in your belly just watching the Skittles slide across the convenient store counter. It’s all going to go so bad. It is a complicated story to tell, weaving the history of black oppression in...

I watched the Netflix release, NYAD, about the endurance swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempt(s) to swim from Cuba to Key West. I found the main character to be annoying, narcissistic, and one-dimensional. Like most exceptional professional athletes. If this were a man we’d think nothing of it— She was driven by internal, psychic forces to do this incredible feat not for any monetary reason, but only to prove to herself that she could. Of course, she had to bring others into her over-achievement orbit and hold them there in order to accomplish her goal. There is a certain tension in the film of how she viewed relationships. Yet, she was fully human; we saw her warts and all. I think what made me keep watching was that she and I (in the film) are close to the same age—and I, too, feel a sense of wanting to get things done, or at least attempt to. My Rhine River Ride (search here at blog for posts) portrayed this: Despite rain the first day, I had to do 100 km to Koblenz and 100 the next d...

For readers of this blog, both of you, you know I like metafiction. Well, there is a film within this film, just as there is an island within an island. The film references Bergman’s films, which become a sort of jumping off point for the film, where about half way through the main characters, both script writers and directors, begin to tell another story. Confused yet? Just hang in there. Because I’m about to tell you what I think the movie is about—or the theory it provoked. I’m a writer who was once married to a writer. Just like in the movie, we were both at different stages of our career. BUT, and this is an important BUT . . . women who choose to have children have chosen to put their art aside at least for a bit. The adage that we can have it all, well, that person was in lala-land. It is possible to be a mother and create, but what I’m talking about is the person who desires to devote themselves full-time to art and at the same time mother. Yes, there are nannies and gr...

First, let me say I’ve been to Bergman’s Island. All by accident. I was in Gotland, a place I hadn’t first planned on. You see in 2014 I went to Sweden to see some old friends. While visiting with Lotta in Tronas she said to go to Gotland, it made more sense to insert it into my itinerary than my original plan. So I quickly booked tickets on a ferry leaving from a town south of Stockholm, went on a hike, got lost, almost missed my train, arrived late for the ferry, ran to catch it, and was the last passenger aboard. The man in the safety vest closed the door behind me. Or was it a gangplank? Anyway, I rented a bicycle in Gotland, even though it was after the tourist season and at first seemed impossible. It was only the second week in September and the skies were blue and the weather wonderful. Nevertheless, many restaurants and accommodations had shuttered. I was given a map of the island and stopped at little churches and a local harvest festival on my first day. The harvest fe...

Nomadland Director, Chloé Zhao For viewers of a certain age, this film will scare the bejezus out of you. Nomadland highlights the tenuous thread keeping older Americans from completely unraveling. Starting with the Great Recession of 2009 up to today when many of those same people decided to storm the American capital, there is a segment of society that feels forgotten and marginalized. Unheard. Desperate. The character of focus in the film, Fern, is laid off from her job in a gypsum sheetrock factory in Empire, Nevada, a place she remembers as being on the fringe of the desert, where her house looked out onto . . . nothing. Desert. She loved it. And, she loved her husband. She is grieving so much. A facet of most everyone on her same journey, a slew of losses that they are trying to reconcile or run from. Fern decides, or else fate has decided for her, to convert an econo-van into a tiny house and sets out to make a living as an itinerate worker. She works the seasonal shift at...

I sort of hate it when movies, books, media reduce complex issues down into easily digested bites. That’s the trouble with Hillbilly Elegy, the movie now playing on Netflix: distilled into the Hatfield and McCoys. In fact that piece of mountain myth is referenced in the first 15 minutes of the film. My book Cloud of Witnesses and Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance follow the same character arc—sort of. Hillbilly Elegy came out in an election year, 2016, and talk shows turned to it as a way to understand how Trump became President. I’m still not sure how that happened or why still 74 million people voted for him this time. Vance’s memoir served as an in-road to understand people who live paycheck to paycheck in forgotten, dried up manufacturing towns. I guess. I was simply irritated by the book. Because no one story tells the whole story. But from Elegy people (media, Ron Howard) derive memes. The truth depicted just as in Cloud of Witnesses is that Appalachia births resilient peop...

Dancing at Lughnasa, a review Movie review Written by Brian Friel, whom Wikipedia describes as one of Ireland’s greatest living dramatists, likened to an “Irish Chekhov.” These are pretty big pants to fill. It was made into a film in 1998 where Meryl Streep, though superb with accents and can carry almost any part, was cast in the lead role—perhaps not a choice that would be made today. #intheirvoice It is a play: about nothing. Five unmarried sisters trying to survive in County Donegal in 1936—just prior to World War II in which they did not fight. Brian Friel drew from his memory to write several what has been termed memory plays about a made-up place: Ballybeg. Also from Wiki: A memory play is a play in which a lead character narrates the events of the play, which are drawn from the character's memory. The term was coined by playwright Tennessee Williams, describing his work The Glass Menagerie . These can be a little tricky as the play prologue is voiced by ...

When They See Us Ava DuVernay, director, screenplay When I say “Central Park 5” you know what I mean. When I cryptically mention “wilding”, you get it. Same thing if I say southside or westside. Code words for African Americans. POC, people of color. In mid- to late-April there was a news story about groups of roving black kids downtown. A warm April night (a rarity this past spring, not even goin’ to get into the fact it’s June and we’ve barely broken into the 70s yet) add social media and the mayor and the police chief were calling an emergency. According to the Chicago Tribune: What happened? About 500 teenagers  gathered downtown  early Wednesday evening. Police were ready for them because of social media posts, strategically staging patrols and calling for transport vans. The teenagers spread out across Millennium Park and near the Lake and Grand Red Line stops, passing packed restaurant patios. Some teens got in fights among themselves. In one case, po...

The Wife Movie review Almost typed The Good Wife , a TV series I never watched but can tell from the title and synopsis—a typical story of the wife who stands by her man who has gotten himself into trouble. The definition of a good wife. Faithful, loyal. Thus, The Wife , originally a book by Meg Wolitzer, a very intuitive writer. She’s able to bring readers into her characters using few words. Much like a good actress. I once read an interview where an actress told a director—I can communicate this without words. With her eyes, small gestures, she acted. Glenn Close did the same thing in The Wife . To be fair, I saw this movie on the plane from Seattle to Minneapolis. It left me shaken—or was it the turbulence? The time change? The shifting taking place emotionally within me. As a writer I’ve lived a lot of The Wife . A recent conversation about the #metoo movement with a feminist friend: I’m not all in. Me too, no pun intended. Yeah, I’m afraid this might come b...

The Greatest Showman Director:  Michael Gracey Starring: Hugh Jackman Zac Efron Michelle Williams Zendaya The Greatest Showman is a made for the movies musical about P.T. Barnum, the king of bunk and humbug, the creator of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The late great circus. Kids now will grow up wondering what’s a circus. This is the kind of movie I wouldn’t normally go to, but, what the hey, it was 7 below zero, I was out with the girls, and I was desperate for something different. For another world. For magic. Besides it was $5 Tuesday. From beginning to end this movie extravaganza is a miracle of motion. It has all the exuberance and appeal of a great, big Glee. A show stopper. What does that phrase even mean? But from the first number to the credits it was engaging. No slow moments. And the theater was packed. People wanted to see this movie. Whole families, classesmates, youth groups, etc date-night. I was surprised as I’d not really h...