Hyde Park on Hudson

Some people are calling this movie "The Day the King of England Ate a Hot Dog."  We saw it recently at our little gem of an art theater, the Enzian.

I think it's about two distinctly different things.  But first let me remind you how I feel about Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I think, like most historians, that he was a great president.  I don't, personally, remember him but I remember Eleanor and she made a huge impression on me.  She was still writing her newspaper column and expressing her opinions long after FDR died.  Highly unusual for a woman at that point in our history.

OK, the first thing the movie is about is this so called "romantic" relationship Franklin (Bill Murray) has with his distant cousin, Daisy (Laura Linney.)  (As you know, Eleanor was also a distant cousin.  Her last name was Roosevelt before she married.)  I found the relationship between FDR and Daisy to be sad on many levels.  And a little bit disgusting.  It brings up the "character" issue that we never had to deal with in the old days because nobody knew that presidents had dalliances.  And, of course, nobody knew that FDR couldn't walk.

The other thing the movie is about is the weekend King George VI and his wife, Elizabeth, came to Hyde Park try to get FDR and therefor the country to get involved in the coming World War II.  At this time we were pretty much isolationists.  We didn't want to get involved.

By the way, King George VI was the stuttering king that the movie "The King's Speech" was about.  He was a reluctant king without much self confidence at the time.  He was also the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

So FDR, while entertaining the king and queen in his mother's house at Hyde Park for the weekend, along with his wife and two mistresses (that's FDR not the king,) manages, in very subtle ways, to help King George deal with his stuttering issues - and find a way to humanize the king's image in the eyes of the American public.

And that's why the King of England was served hot dogs.


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Football is Dangerous

By now, everybody's enjoyed their favorite bowl game.  As you know, I have a problem with football.  Fortunately for football, nobody cares.  I'm concerned about my young grandsons playing, I'm concerned about college players and I'm concerned about the pros.

It's a violent sport.

My husband, Ken, played football in high school and college.  I will admit it made him a better person.  But then, when he was in his fifties and needed abdominal surgery, there were big problems due to the massive amount of scar tissue in his belly.

It's a violent sport.  But nobody wants to hear about it.

Then the "Shouts & Murmurs" column in the January 7th issue of "The New Yorker" confirmed my feelings.   Jay Martel did a really funny parody of the top bowl games.  Below I've shared just one of them because he's teasing a team I like.  (Even though I have a problem with football!)

The...Catheter Cotton Bowl

    This may be the marquee bowl game, with the undefeated Texas State College of the Pacific Homicidal Maniacs setting their sights on the No. 1- ranked Tallahassee University Khmer Rouge.

 These two college programs consistently rise to the top of every major statistical category, including early-onset Alzheimer's, so expect a real donnybrook. 

The media-day disclosure that every player on the Maniacs, except for the placekicker, sustained a concussion last week - even though no game was scheduled - sharply raised the level of anticipation for this clash.  Look for the placekicker to get a concussion. 


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Regret

Yesterday I began leading a class based on the book, "The Gift of Years" by Joan Chittister.  We had a full house and a fantastic discussion.  This will be a six week lunch study discussing the positive things about getting older.

Yes, there are many positives.

Somebody in the class observed that, since it is such a positive book, why is the first chapter called "Regret."  Good question.  My take on it is that we have to deal with and put to bed our many regrets about the past.  We all have them but if we don't let them go we can't possibly move forward in a positive way.

For instance, those of us who are parents all know that we could have done it better.  I wrote the poem below in the 1970's when I had four little kids running and crawling around the house. I must have been feeling some pressure at the time.

INFORMATION I WISH I DIDN'T HAVE

Part of Adolf Hitler's
personality problem
was due to
poor potty training. 


***

Yesterday We Walked With Martin

In 1968 my husband, Ken, and I, along with our two preschool children, were living on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  Ken was a student at Emory's Candler School of Theology and I was working in the development office at Emory, as well as taking a couple of classes.

What a busy time!  The civil rights movement had played a large part in our decision to give up our former, comfortable middle class lives and move in this direction.  Atlanta was the center of activity for civil rights at that time.

Then, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., while on a speaking trip to Memphis, was gunned down.   Immediately, Atlanta, Dr. King's home,  was "electric" with racial tension.  But, as his body was flown home and funeral plans were made - and, thanks to thousands of local volunteers and those who streamed in from all over the country -  the days that followed were peaceful.

Following is a poem I wrote years later about that amazing time.

Yesterday we walked with Martin.
It was raining very hard.
Hundreds, thousands pressed against us,
As we neared the fenced churchyard.

That morning I had fed my babies,
Dressed them, hugged them with thanksgiving
Then drove us all to our day places
(You know I have to make a living.)

They were all alone in Memphis,
When the awful moment came,
Martin laughing by the railing,
At the small Hotel Lorraine. 

People came from everywhere,
Needing rides and food and bed.
We scrambled to find safe places,
For them to lay their weary heads. 

Yesterday we walked with Martin.
It was raining very hard.
Bobby, Ethel, Harry led them,
But hundreds, thousands swarmed the yard. 

This morning we made Easter eggs,
For our preschool celebration.
We'll play and sing and clap our hands,
While waiting for the resurrection. 


***

Stubborn Nightmares, Persistent Dreams

In many churches across the country, but certainly not all, probably not even most,  yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday.

My minister invited Dr. Sharon Austin to be our guest preacher.  Sharon is a district superintendent in the  United Methodist Church.  This means she supervises a couple of hundred ministers.

She's also an African American woman with a PhD.  Watch out!

But that doesn't automatically make her the right person to preach on MLK, Jr. Sunday.  But how about this:  Before becoming a Methodist minister she was a Baptist preacher.  Where?  At Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.  This is where both Martin Luther Kings, senior and junior preached.

Sharon was great yesterday.  Sh spoke about Joseph in the Old Testament and MLK, Jr.  in the more recent past.  One of her themes was "dreams."  Both of these guys were famous for their dreams.

If you've read this blog for a while you know that I read MLK, Jr.'s "Dream Speech" every year at this time. I read it this morning.  It always inspires me.  It always makes me want to cry.

We've come a long way since 1963.  But we still have stubborn nightmares as well as persistent dreams.

Thank you, Sharon, for reminding us in such a powerful way.


***

Silver Linings Playbook

So....this movie is about a man and his dad, both bipolar, who are loving, loud, funny, smart, quick tempered, highly emotional, loyal and risk taking.  They're played by Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro.

Bradley Cooper's  love interest is played Jennifer Lawrence.  She became an overnight star in The Hunger Games.  She is terrific in this movie.  Her character, Tiffany, is crazy smart and crazy. Period.  Along with all the other bipolar attributes listed above.

To me, the movie is very funny, very sad and very real.  And, because it's real, very scary.

However, I would have changed the ending a bit.  They take a crazy (bipolar type) risk and it turns out well. Unfortunately, that's not reality.  For every super successful bipolar person (like Ted Turner) there are hundreds of folks who've lost everything due to their risk taking behaviors.

There is one thing that Cooper's character did that I thought made sense.  The day he arrived home from the hospital he read Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."  After reading the ending he went berserk.

I remember. forty years ago, reading the book and feeling the same way.  I wanted to go berserk with that book's ending.  But I'm not bipolar so I just stuffed my feelings like us "normal" folks do.

Many of the people in this world who bring us color and light, beauty and art and out of the box thinking - are "different."

Many of them are loving, loud, funny, smart, quick tempered, highly emotional, loyal and risk taking.  This keeps the people around them exhausted and longing for peace and quiet.

So we  have to work at ways to find the "Silver Linings" in these relationships. That's what the folks in this movie are trying to do.


***

You Have To Want To

When I worked as a consultant much of what I did had to do with helping folks be - and stay - motivated.  To be unmotivated doesn't mean you can't do something.  It means you don't want to.  Ergo....to be motivated means "you have to want to."

Example:  You can make your kids do their homework or you can motivate them to "want" to do it.  So, eventually they will be self motivated so you can drop out of the picture.  Hopefully, some time before grad school.

All this to say, since being sick during the holidays...I am unmotivated. 

I can work out at the gym...but I don't want to.

I can have dinner and see a movie with friends...but I don't want to. 

I can get up and enjoy the early morning hours...but I don't want to. 

I love the comic Sally Forth.  This morning's strip says it all.  It wasn't the visiting family that did me in.  It was the traveling with the flu. But I think I'm almost well because I (finally) Want To Want To.

***

And I'm Not Alone Anymore

Following is a poem I wrote in 1974.

She appeared at the door,
With her children,
To spend the day
Because she had heard me say 
That I was lonely.

"Lady, you don't understand. 

I am lonely because
The earth is such a small planet
In the universe.

Because 20,000 people died
In the Guatemalan earthquake.

Because I am a middle aged,
Motherless child.

I though everybody felt that way
Sometimes.
Don't you?"


I didn't get to go to church this morning because my son was running in the Disney Marathon and my granddaughter was throwing up and...well...I was needed.

But I'm feeling spiritual and blessed anyway.

I spent a few hours this weekend researching Neil Shubin's new book, The Universe Within...Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People.

Dr. Shubin's big on what we have in common rather than what separates us.  Me too.  In a nutshell, he says that since the big bang happened, about 3 and a half billion years ago, we've all (meaning rocks, planets and people) had a common history, a shared similarity.

I actually know a couple of folks whom I might describe as having similarities with a bag of rocks, but, as Dr. Shubin says, we all do.  Even me.  But, like I said, this makes me feel good.  Because I lived a lot of my life feeling kind of alone in the universe.

Even though Dr. Shubin is an Evolutionary Biologist, and really, really smart, this book, as far as I can tell, is pretty readable for us regular folks.

He wrote a best seller in 2009 called Your Inner Fish.  One of my favorite writers, Oliver Sachs, said of this book "It will change forever how you understand what it means to be human."

I think he's saying we all come from the same source and we're all in this thing together.


***

The Round House

Louise Erdrich is a prolific writer.  Her latest book, The Round House, has won countless awards.  It was this month's pick for my book club.  Most of us found it a bit tedious and slow going at times.   But when we got together to discuss the book, the conversation was rich.

In a nutshell The Round House is about Joe, a 13 year old Native American boy, whose mom is brutally attacked and almost killed in the Round House.  This one event changed his life, the lives of his mom and dad and the entire reservation.

I learned so much from this book:

• I learned how Native Americans and whites still live uneasily together.
• I learned that Native American woman in this country are brutalized on a regular basis. 
• I learned that spirituality comes from many sources; in this case from Catholicism mixed with Native American lore and Joe's dad's great respect for the law.
• I was reminded that justice and revenge are sometimes so intertwined that many people can't tell them apart.

I loved the descriptions of food.  Joe and his friends are fed wherever they go.  They're sometime given jelly sandwiches to tide them over until breakfast comes.....a platter of bacon and a pan of her one breakfast specialty - a mixture of grated potatoes, eggs, diced peppers and ham, laid up out in a baking pan and broiled until the cheddar cheese topping bubbled up and toasted.

I loved the stories of the grandfather, Mooshum, who said he was 112 years old.  For instance, he tells a story about Liver Eating Johnson...How that old rascal used to track down Indians and kill us and take out and eat our livers.

But The Round House is a serious and important book.  One that I most likely wouldn't have read if it hadn't been assigned to me by my book club.


***

How Did This Happen?

Remember the O.J. Simpson trial and how almost every person who had anything to do with it became an overnight success?    That was the beginning of a strange phenomena.

The Casey Anthony trial has done much the same thing.  Her trial was the first to be carried world wide, in real time.  Remember, she had her own camera trained on her at all times.  The Casey Cam.

One of the stars to emerge from Casey's trial was the judge, Belvin Perry.  He's been an excellent judge for a very long time but now he's a rock star. (By the way, he's going to be speaking at my church on Friday.)

On another note, a member of my church is leaving his job this week.  It's Casey's fault.  Lawson Lamar, the state attorney for Orange and Osceola Counties for the past 25 years, and a man who was considered to be unbeatable each and every time he ran for office, is stepping down.  He leaves a brilliant career.

One of his own prosecutors, Jeff Ashton, beat him in the last election.  How did this happen?

Easy.  Jeff was the prosecutor in the Casey Anthony trial.  He became an instant rock star.

I'm grateful that Jeff Ashton seems to be a good and competent man.  I'm grateful that Casey wasn't prosecuted by somebody like Honey Boo Boo.


***

Promised Land

Dave and I saw this movie on Friday night.  It's about fracking, i.e., extracting gas from our nation's farm lands.   Since it was written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski I was surprised at how even handed it was.
By the way, there is a documentary out called "Gasland" that must have inspired these guys but I haven't seen where they've acknowledged it.

It was slow moving.  There were no overtly bad guys (until the end when we're surprised by how evil one character is.)

  Matt Damon's character is a gas company guy coming into a poor community trying to get farmers to buy into fracking by offering them boat loads of money.  He honestly believes it's the right thing for them to do.  His partner, played by one of my favorite actors, Frances McDormand, plays a good person on the surface but, as far as the fracking goes, she doesn't seem to care.  She's just doing her job and trying to keep her son in private school. This makes her character a little amoral to me.  But my guess is she represents most of us in this respect - sometimes.

John Krasinski plays a different kind of character all together.

The scariest scene in the movie is when Krasinski's character performs a demonstration of what fracking does to the earth in an elementary class room, in front of the kids, on the teacher's desk.

Hal Holbrook's in the movie and he's great, as always.  Only, at almost 90 years old in real life, it's hard to accept him as a high school science teacher.

I think the movie is telling us - do your homework.  Don't be blinded by fast money.  Beware of big corporations.  They don't usually leave anything to chance.

If you've ever tried to keep a Walmart from coming into your area you already know this.

I liked the movie.  It made me think.


*** 

Jerry Seinfeld - Hard Worker or OCD Victim

As you know, I am a huge Seinfeld fan.  Both the long running sitcom and the comedian himself.  I think he's kind of a genius and I know he's a perfectionist in his work.  In 2002, after "Seinfeld," he made a documentary called "Comedian," in which he let us see the hard work involved in getting back into stand-up.

I've shared with you before that I used to study stand-up comics.  As a platform speaker, I learned much from them about how to hold an audience.  I learned that, no matter how important my material was, if it wasn't entertaining, I wouldn't get hired.  

However, after reading an article on Jerry Seinfeld in the December 23rd issue of the New York Times Magazine, I'm a little nervous about what motivates him.

When does pursuing perfection become an obsession?  Seinfeld says, "If I have one weekend off from stand-up ...I completely forget who I am and what I do for a living."  He still drops in at small clubs, trying out his material, working at perfecting every little nuance.  As he says, "Refining a tiny thing for the sake of it."  I do appreciate that, since his material is clean, it's harder.  But when is enough enough?

In the article he shared a bit that he doesn't think is quite right.  I think it's very funny and insightful.  I would say it's ready.  Here it is:

Marriage is a bit of a chess game, except the board is made of flowing water and the pieces are made of smoke.  

He thinks it still needs tweaking.

Jerry Seinfeld is 58 years old, has a beautiful wife and two children.  In 2010 Forbes Magazine estimated his income at 800 million dollars.  His response to this is "I like money but it's never been about the money."

What is it about?


***

Obituary Top Spot

For years now, our local paper only "lists" the folks who've died.  If you want a real obituary, you have to pay for it.  Except, every day, one person is given the top left hand corner spot.  A full obituary.  Free.

My husband, Ken, got this coveted spot.  I'm sure it made him happy.  Although, as a theological concept, since he had died and was therefore in paradise, I don't know how he could be any happier.  But then I don't know exactly how that works.  I only know that he loved having his name in the paper, listing all the extraordinary things he'd done.  And he'd done plenty.

But I digress.

I've often wondered how the choice is made as to who gets the coveted spot.  Is it an important editorial decision or does some low level guy choose?

I love the choice that was made for this morning.  A lady named Mary Roberts Truitt made the top left hand corner spot.  Her claim to fame is that she spent much of her adult life, over 40 years, working in a Burger King and, during that time, served over 600,000 Whoppers!  And greeted more than 12 million people.

In 2002, Burger King named Mrs. Truitt, the Burger King Queen.  At her coronation they even sang "God Save the Queen."

The obituary went on to say that she was a devout Christian, which shaped her love of people.  Her friend, Debbi, said that "She believed with all of her heart that she was to love God with all of her heart and to love people as God loved her."

Mrs. Truitt died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.

This obit made me smile.  It made me wish I'd been one of her customers (although we go to a McDonald's that has a similar kind of person who make us feel wonderful when we walk in the door.)  And it made me hope that my life has been loving enough to merit the Obituary Top Spot.


***

Other Planets

As you know, I'm generally overwhelmed with anything having to do with astronomy.  But, on the other hand, I get excited about what's out there and what it might tell us about ourselves and about our creator.  This photo is of space based telescopes.  Cool.

I get my facts about a lot of things from the science page in the comic section of the Sunday paper called "Just for Kids."   Sunday it was about exoplanets.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit a star in another solar system.  Cool.

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992.  That's not very long ago.  By the way, the article says that looking for a planet orbiting a distant star is like looking for a mosquito circling a car headlight when both are more than 2,500 miles away.  And in order for a planet to be confirmed, scientists must be at least 99.9999% sure that their calculations are accurate.

One more fact:  The first Earth-sized exoplanet was discovered in 2011.  These recent discoveries are very exciting to me because who knows what more astounding things will be discovered in my lifetime.

You're aware than I'm constantly expanding my concept of God and the universe.  I hope you are as well.  But if this is all too much for you, I'll leave you with a little 3rd grade science joke.

Why did the star abandon the planet?

It needed to get it out of his system.  


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