tales from the route

One of the four widows on the route for whom I get out of the car and take their papers to the porch wasn't waiting for me as usual by the door today.  I was about to leave the paper there when I heard her calling.  "I fell down," she said.  "Can you help me?"

I went in the back door, walked through the kitchen and found her collapsed.  I had to struggle to lift her up ("Don't drop me," she said, afraid), untangle her legs, and half-way carry her to a place she could sit down.  She didn't want me to call anyone for her, but I found her phone and brought it to her.  When I persisted, she said she would call her niece.  I gave her dog a biscuit.  She's 90 and lives alone in this old farmhouse right out of a Grimm's fairy tale, like Hansel and Gretel. 

Then, a couple of hours later, I killed a gray cat who ran right out under my car.  I slammed on the brakes but it was too late.

Tonight, Lee and I watched Rush Hour 3; I finished watching Cloverfield; and I am re-watching part of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly now.  The DVD has Spanish, English, and French language tracks, so we can watch without subtitles.  I had read them to Lee when we saw it in the theater.  It's a beautiful movie.

We bought Miles two copies of Grand Theft Auto IV by mistake.  I'll have to take mine back. 

I spent this morning finishing reviews of Mishima and The Cell for the Ebertfest blog.  Still have one more to go, my wrap-up of the festival.

My book of poems by Thomas Lux came yesterday.  Portishead's "Third" came out today, their first CD in 11 years, but I'd downloaded it from Russia about two weeks ago.  I'm listening to it repeatedly, alternating with The Brief Life of Oscar Wao, the first novel by Junot Diaz.  He won the Pulitzer for it and it's in Spanglish pretty much and they interviewed him on PBS news tonight.  I turn off anything related to Pastor Wright and I haven't read the local paper in 10 days now.

trouble

Our MCC trip to Colombia in 2003 was supposed to be a War Taxes Learning trip, but it didn't apply to Colombia itself, which has a different tax system. Nobody seemed to realize this until we got down there. We were virtually locked in the hotel, whisked away to meetings morning to night, in churches, schools, meeting rooms, meetings, meetings, meetings.  We weren't even allowed to go outside to walk or exercise until I, representing the group, demanded a morning jogging hour, during which we had to be chaperoned.  I did like our trip to the U.S. Embassy.  Finally I demanded to go spend time with our sister church in Bucaramanga; they wanted to fly me up and back in one day.  I said, no, and stayed three days.

The next year I went by myself and spent a month in Bucaramanga.  I took buses and toured the countryside.  I walked the streets of Bogota at night by myself.

But that's me.  Anyway, as for institutional service trips, I much preferred the Presbyterian trips I took with Intercambio, working in Mayan villages in the Yucatan, building cinder block facilities and assisting with medical and dental treatment.  Hands on and hammocks.  I learned how to wire houses for electricity, too.

I still want to retire as some kind of MCC volunteer in Latin America, but I doubt if they'll have me after my Colombia experience.  I have a well-earned reputation as a trouble maker

I want to live in Mexico

The Real Matrix: The Pentagon Invades Your Life

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042508M.shtml

The Utopian Wars

By Thomas Lux
(from the March/April issue of The American Poetry Review)

Amish raiding party attacks a Quaker

Settlement at Muddy Crossing,

killing first the Quaker ferryman

(who is drunk, and never awakes until midstream

to find an Amish man tying an anvil to his neck)

before reaching the village

and killing dozens, quietly at first, by blade

and hatchet (hoping to blame the savages), and

burning nothing

as they work their way toward the center of

town. Kill on the way in, burn

on the way out. In the hills, meanwhile,

the Buddhists quick-change from bright orange

to camo robes, point their howitzers eastward

where they know the Episcopalians

milk cobras

to tip arrows

and fill their bullets' hollow-points.

The Baha'i sit back and sharpen their knives and

saws.

The wily Mennonites withdraw,

their leaders meeting for three days

in upstate New York,

while at the same time the few remaining Jains

turn their cheeks

to reveal slashed and bloody jaws

from the last time

they turned their cheeks.

enlightenment

To mother

There was a dream and I wanted you to be in it.
I would have put you in my pocket
So you would have been there.

But you were a little rocky mountain
That stood up against every storm
And stayed firm.

And so I dreamed without you
But always feel deeply
Our dreams could live together.

Now I see myself as always being
The dream of a dandelion
On the side of this mountain.

(c. 1969)

Everybody's a critic

I was privileged to write film reviews for publication for more than twenty years, starting with my first review published in the Champaign-Urbana Courier in 1976, eventually followed by a position as critic for Variety (my review name was "Pege"). Today, the field of movie reviewing is overrun, thanks mostly to the Internet. Even the Village Voice is letting its film critics go and smaller newspapers don't bother to pay for reviews, with all the people clamoring to write them for free.

Fine with me. Movies are so much more available than they used to be. I've been enriched by studying new Asian films this past year -- works by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-Liang, Hong Sang-soo, Jia Zhang Ke, and others. I recently ruminated to my heart's content on films such as "Lake of Fire" and "Southland Tales." I don't miss deadlines and the provincial editor's demand for "consumer reports" style writing, star ratings included. Movies have always been better than that and serious film criticism is still around. You just have to look for it. And not very far, at that.

from the New York Times

MOVIES | April 1, 2008
Now on the Endangered Species List: Movie Critics in Print
By DAVID CARR
The reviews are in: “A dire situation” for serious film.