Quote

Emily: "You're a crazy driver."
Mama Leopard: "That's why there are seat belts."

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Our Australian host in London introduced Francisco and I to the Australian classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, which our host aptly described as the slowest thriller ever made. The film, made in the 1970s, is a supernatural thriller about the disappearance of several girls on Valentine's Day, 1900. I've never been so scared while watching a movie (of course, I avoid scary movies and remember being very frightened by Monsters Inc. back in college). Picnic at Hanging Rock is Terrence Malick-esque--a poetic, romanticized portrayal of life in at the girls' school in the Victorian Era and the contrasting draw of the wilderness--particularly the ancient rock formation called Hanging Rock.

A Random Assortment

~ "Some of My Best Friends are Germs" is a long, fascinating article by Michael Pollan. It is about the microbial composition of people's guts (including how breast milk and natural birth and the food we eat impact it) and some of the ways that scholars think our gut microbes impact us (which is more speculative, from possibly impacting our experience of allergies and asthma and autoimmune diseases to affecting our weight). 

~ I don't really have a strong opinion on abstinence-only education. I didn't have any sort of sex-education myself, one way or the other. (When I mentioned that to Mama Leopard years later, she shrugged and said, "You have the internet.") Anyway, this article makes some persuasive points:

But here’s the thing: it totally screws up the “good” girls, too, the one who wait until their wedding night. You can’t tell a girl that having sex is like being a chewed and regurgitated Oreo and then expect her to be totally excited when it comes time for her husband to chew her up and spit her back out. You can’t teach a girl that her sexuality is a prize for a man, that the whole purpose of her existence as a sexual being is to be used by someone else at the “right” time and in the “right” way, and then wonder where these silly girls get their “objectification” martyr complexes.

And her solution:

We need to create a new way of teaching children about human sexuality, a way that emphasizes their essential dignity as rational, spiritual, and sexual human beings. We should strive to teach them to grow in virtue, to gain temperance, to master their passions, and to love for love of the other, not out of desire for pleasure, power, or possession.

~ On the decline of Christianity in the Middle East.

~ On the French same-sex marriage debate.

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Today's wedding prep:

Intervals with Ilana
Yoga and tanning with Mama Leopard*
Weights with #1tomatolover
Tennis with Papa Leopard and Ilana and #1tomatolover

*She didn't actually do the yoga, but she did watch the yoga, which I think is a step closer to convincing her to join me tomorrow.

Airplane Movies

Francisco and I are back from our little (pre-)wedding tour. I guess that I have never flown Virgin before because it was definitely the most incredible airline I've ever flown on. From the real live bar at the front of the plane (ok, so it was only for "upper class" passengers, as they're called on that airline) to the Grinch-like hairstyles sported by some of the airline attendants:

Plus, there were so many wonderful movie choices that I didn't want to sleep at all. Which made for loads of jetlag later. (At basically 30, I don't feel as tough as pushing through the jetlag as I did at 18--how in the world do you fly when you're 60?)

On the flight, Francisco and I watched Silver Linings Playbook, which came fairly highly recommended and was underwhelming. It was a basic chick flick with actors who weren't too confusing as real people. It was set in Philly and they got that part right--the older actors had the right accents and the scene, a working class Italian home, was set well. The chemistry between the two main characters, however, as well as their struggle with mental illness, were simply not that compelling.

In contrast, we also watched the best movie I've seen since Vertigo: The Intouchables. The Intouchables (that's the original French name) also deals with disability, but the chemistry is perfect between Phillipe, a quadriplegic aristocrat, and Driss, a Senegalese-born man who begins by stealing one of Phillipe's Faberge eggs. The movie is charmingly funny and movingly emotional--we laughed, we cried--shamelessly in front of the fellow passengers. The relationship they form transforms both of them. And the movie is even based on real life (although in real life, Driss is Arab, not black). Go see this as fast as you can. Book a Virgin trip if you can't find it anywhere else. It will be worth it.

(Note: many American critics find the film to be racist. Here's Rolling Stone's response.)

We also watched The Promised Land. I had to--it's all about fracking. I was unimpressed, although sympathetic to the film's message. It just wasn't convincing to me--Matt Damon's grand change of heart, the film's clever twist which makes it seems like the natural gas companies are big and bad and all powerful and omniscient (I totally believe that they're big and bad, but I have to draw the line at all powerful and omniscient). In the really wonderful final twist of the film, it turns out that the film is partially funded by big oil:

[O]ne of the financial backers listed is Image Nation Abu Dhabi.
Image Nation Abu Dhabi is, in turn, owned by Abu Dhabi Media - a state media company for the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, an OPEC member, is the world's third-largest oil exporter.

This may actually prove the film's point after all--that energy companies are all powerful, it just isn't natural gas that's the only bad guy.

Traveling

I'll tell you all about it when I get back!

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Well played to the extremely nerdy man on the metro this morning with actual windshield wipers on his sunglasses.

And to the couple with identical safari hats who were sitting side by side.

A Random Assortment

~ These women sound just like the sort of cranky entertainers that I take after:

The Deans freely admit that they’re bossy. They worry that the next generation wants to entertain but has no idea how. “Yearning for cocktails, dressing up like ‘Mad Men’ characters, yet missing the road map,” says Pollak. 

If there is one thing that has the Deans shaking their heads, it’s people who won’t commit until the last minute. “It’s a two-way street: I can’t make something nice for you unless you tell me you’re coming,” Pollak says. “People who think nothing of canceling at the last minute or not showing up at all? That person is permanently off the list.”

Oh my goodness--I couldn't agree more. Facebook and text messaging and evites mean that people think that formal invitations to dinner or brunch are the sorts of things that they can respond to at the last minute.

~ Guys! I made biscuits and sausage gravy and, for only the second time in my history of making biscuits, they rose! I've made biscuits a dozen times and they never rise. This was the magical recipe I used (and will always use in the future). (They are called "Big Daddy Biscuits" and the description promises the biggest biscuits in the history of the world. It's true--they're like small towers.)

~ Oh my goodness--I love Nick Offerman every bit as much as I love Ron Swanson. In this piece, he recommends both Wendell Berry and Tom Waits. The man has fine taste. (via Hopkins)

The Elder Statesman

I have a google alert running for "T.S. Eliot" and "play." It paid off lately when I discovered that the Washington Stage Guild was performing The Elder Statesman. Eliot's plays are so rarely preformed that Hopkins, Stearns, and I took a trip to NYC when The Cocktail Party was in the theater there.

So we reassembled our little Eliot fan club and added Francisco and NK and EL to the group. Our friends, plus some of Hopkins' friends that she ran into at the play, were the only audience members under 60. Plus, we comprised a quarter of the audience.

I can't give it a rave review--It wasn't a great performance, due to a lack of chemistry among the characters and one character's bad British accent (why oh why do people fake that?).  And it wasn't a great play--I think that The Cocktail Party or Murder in the Cathedral is considered to be his best, and The Elder Statesman certainly didn't come close to those.

However, I wouldn't have missed it, if only to notice what the difficulties are in performing Eliot's plays. This play, even more than the others, was overtly pedantic. It punched you in the face with its preachiness and meaningfulness. And of course I had to see it because I'm obsessed with Eliot, and it's just of general interest to me to know his whole body of work.

Eliot's plays are, for the most part, interpretations and reworkings of classical plays. This one is based on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. The Greek elements of the play come out in the characters that represent the ghosts of the elder statesman's past. They are like metaphorical furies chasing him (both similar to and different from the actual furies chasing one of the characters in The Family Reunion). There is also a lot of fate in the play--the fate is worked through some of the play's quirkiest characters--Masie and Federico. (In The Cocktail Party, it was the psychologist and Julia.)

Naming is one of the big themes of the play--all the characters change their names multiple times, constantly reinventing themselves. The play pushes honesty as a necessary prerequisite for real love, and honesty is hard to achieve in a world aimed at public achievement and encouraging hidden pasts.

It felt fitting that this was his last work--it's about an old man facing his past and preparing to die in peace. It also felt somehow like it must be autobiographical, but it isn't clear to me exactly how. Is Eliot himself the old man? Who, then, is his devoted daughter? Is it Valerie, his much younger wife? Is Masie, the flamboyant love affair from his youth, Vivienne? Who knows, and perhaps it's useless to speculate.

The Cathedral Basilica

I'm packing up to move again, at least for the summer. (Which means that, by the time you read this, I should be in Central Pennsylvania, in my hometown.) I'm feeling dreadfully nostalgic for the wonderful things that I've been enjoying about STL this year.

The Cathedral Basilica is one of those things. It's lovely. And I hate leaving. And change.

The Cathedral Basilica sparkles. I can't capture it in photographs, but as you move around, you keep catching the light reflected off the mosaic tiles out of the corner of your eye.

This chapel is my favorite part.

I'm convinced that Tiffany did this chapel because the colors are sublime.

P.S. I wish that I had energy to write more lately, rather than just giving you this barrage of pictures. But it seems that the alternative to pictures would just be silence. I really don't have as much to say as usual. Or all that I have to say is related to wedding details and the anxieties of Francisco and me sorting out career and life for the fall. We could talk about what gifts I should get for my little flower girls. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. We can talk about how I could find cheap tablecloths for cocktail tables. We can't talk about NFP, for Mama Leopard forbids it. Although I think it's hilarious that when you google image search "cervix" a picture of a cherry and a picture of a plate of little donuts are amongst the mix. Oh! We could talk about my being taken on an hour-long detour by a Philly cab driver, but it actually still makes me furious to tell the story. We could also talk about how Facebook is really going downhill fast. (It's half the way to Myspace, I think, what with all this sharing of photographs that you didn't take that have "funny" words on them. Stop it people.) All this to say, I hope to write more soon.

A (Short) Random Assortment

~ Above--What happens when you wring out a washcloth in space?

~ Pizza Hut's craziest crusts--cheeseburgers, chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks, shrimp rolls, etc. Ew.

~ I don't know about these objections to that Dove Real Beauty Sketches commercial, but I have my own. Cardigan said that some of her co-workers cried as they watched it. I don't really want to criticize something that helps people have a healthier view of themselves. But: while I like how I look a lot, I'm still fairly intimately acquainted with all my wrinkles and moles and grey hairs and the way my nose is a little pug (Stearns is always happy to point that out to me). These things don't make me think I'm unattractive, but they're facts about myself that I see up-close in the mirror every morning. Someone who meets me randomly and then is asked to describe me may very well miss my blemishes. Or, she may simply focus on the positive as we are, in polite society, taught to do. But part of knowing (and, I might add, loving) yourself is knowing what's good and what's a little quirky and coming to terms with it all.

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Allergies and indecision. Not a good week.

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Guys--zumba! I'm just as bad at it as I anticipated, but it was more fun than I thought it'd be.

Also, if you want to talk on the phone (to me), Thursday and Friday will be excellent days for that.

NYC: Random

Here are the random, unaffiliated pictures from our trip. Above, a churchyard in the heart of the city (I think near Trinity Church).

I love people used as pillars (or, in this case, as pillar extensions).

The contrast of subject matter with complementary colors delights me.

We went to mass in a very much under-repair St. Patrick's Cathedral. This man was arranging flowers afterward.

I don't think that the picture above captures it well, because they turned off the lights immediately after mass, but I love the canopy over the altar--such graceful, airy gothic.

By Francisco.

The Chrysler Building. (What a gorgeous spire!)

NYC: Roosevelt Island Cherry Blossoms

The cherry blossoms were in bloom on Roosevelt Island, which was nice, since I didn't get to see them in DC this year.

I love spring.

NYC: Four Freedoms Memorial

I think that this memorial opened last fall. It was designed by Louis Kahn in the 70s and was one of his last works--he died in 74. It was just now finally built.

(You can just see the small pox hospital below the bridge.)

The memorial is a bit futuristic at places--the built environment seeks to shape and contain the natural one outside. (I really don't know what that strip of black is doing on the photo above--I think it's an addition by this silly Chromebook, which really is hard to manage sometimes.)

Wikipedia says, 

"In a 1973 lecture at Pratt Institute, Kahn said:

I had this thought that a memorial should be a room and a garden. That's all I had. Why did I want a room and a garden? I just chose it to be the point of departure. The garden is somehow a personal nature, a personal kind of control of nature. And the room was the beginning of architecture. I had this sense, you see, and the room wasn't just architecture, but was an extension of self."

The hovering bust of FDR makes me think of the Wizard of Oz.

There are some great views of the city from the memorial:

NYC: Roosevelt Island, Smallpox Hospital

We went to Roosevelt Island to see the new FDR memorial. This preserved ruin of a smallpox hospital is just adjacent to the memorial.

NYC: Roosevelt Island

We took an ariel tram to get over to Roosevelt Island. It is delightful--it is free when you transfer from the subway and reminds me of the gondola we took at Squaw Valley when we got engaged. There are some nice views of the city and the bridges as you ride.

Here's the tram:

And here's from walking around the island:

We passed this great old (apartment?) building that is now being turned into a hospital. I would say that this is Streamline Modern architecture, huh Hopkins?

I bet Francisco took this one.

Probably this one, too.