The jilting

The problem with Edith getting jilted at the altar is that it's boring.

Aha! We say. Edith can finally be happy! She finally gets her man!

Oh . . . he jilted her. What a surprise.

See? The surprise would have been had they actually gotten married. And Sir Whatever could have either

a) turned out to be a compulsive gambler. Edith, of course, would have either put a stop to it or she would have joined in and been an even better gambler and saved the family fortune. Now that would have been interesting.

b) Died. Left Edith all his money. She would have been distraught, but then level-headed. Hopefully had a child and they could have been financially stable while the Abbey was in dire straights. Everyone would have had to crawl to Edith for money. Now that would have been interesting.

c) encouraged Edith to get an education. She would have gotten a degree in something practical like botany and they could have turned their estate into a bed and breakfast. Now that would have been interesting.

But leaving her at the altar . . . boring.

Edith needs to move out. Edith needs to go to America and live with her grandmother. Edith needs to get of Dodge, or she's going to have to play her role that's pretty boring.

Run, Edith! Run away! The script writers haven't given you anything interesting in the past two seasons (except for burnt guy), so they probably don't have anything more for you in season three. Get out fast! Go Edith, go!

The Day I Became A Woman

In my quest for fascinating foreign film, I watched the Iranian film The Day I Became A Woman.

I didn't get it. Plenty of fodder for discussion, but it was very artsy and the creation of the meaning would be better done in a group setting.

It reminded me of the first foreign film I saw, as part of an Honors conference my freshman year of college. That film was My Life as a Dog.

As I was watching Dog, I was eavesdropping on the professors who were going to lead the post-watching discussion. They were sitting behind me and one said to the other, "Do you know what you are going to say?" And the other said, "No," and blurbed something about making it up.

Which was of great comfort to me that they didn't get it either.

Katy?

Anyone?

Let me know if you thought this was profound. You could convince me, really. I'm just sure there was more to get than I got, that's all I'm saying.

But I thought the whole tea on the beach scene was interesting and the girl with the headphones and the  shrinking shadow . . . well, we could all write a good essay about those, now couldn't we?

It's so hard to say good-bye to yesterday

So there's this box, waiting for me in our office, of old VCR tapes. It's time to let go. It's time to recycle. It's time to embrace the fact that I can request any movie via Netlix. It's time to come to grips with the fact that we don't even own a VCR.

Yet, still, I'm having a hard time. It's like a break up even though it's a relationship that's dead weight.

I think I'm clinging to these tapes because I spent so many hours with them. These were my mindless grading movies that made pleasant the hours of grading vocab. Not essays---I needed full attention for those---but other projects where I could give my attention to my grading and then let my mind wander off for a moment or two.

Some of these I even own on DVD for Pete's sake. But here is my list in farewell. These tapes will not last past my New Year's clean-up.

Really. I'm letting go.

Really.

So here's the list. If you haven't discovered these yet, I would recommend them. I've put *s next to the ones that some mild swearing. (That I remember)

1. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
2. Persuasion with Amanda Root.
3. What about Bob?
4. Twelfth Night with Helena Bonham Carter
5. The Scarlet Pimpernel with Anthony Andrews
6. An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant
7. The Man from Snowy River
8. Jane Eyre with Samantha Morton
9. Emma with Gweneth Paltrow
10. Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thomspsen
11. Ever After with Drew Barrymore
12. The Parent Trap with a very young and innocent Lindsay Lohan
13. Veggie Tales Very Silly Songs
14. Sabrina with Harrison Ford
*15. My Dog Skip (good, but some violence)
16. That Thing You Do
17. The Princess Diaries with Anne Hathaway
*18. Wide Awake with Rosie O'Donnell (Rather obscure, but worth seeing)
19. Return to Me with Minnie Driver
20. Corrina, Corrina with Whoppi Goldberg
21. The Sandlot
22. Karen Voight's Pure and Simple Stretch (that's a stretching tape for when I really needed a break)

See? Isn't that just a classic list?

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

(Burst into singing with me . . . )

So I'll take with me the memories to be my sunshine after the RAY-AIN-IN. It's so HAR ARD to say GOOD bye to yesterday AHAY.

Pressure Cooker, the movie

You should check out Pressure Cooker, a documentary about a high school foods teacher in inner city somewhere (Philly?) who teaches her kids culinary arts in preparation for scholarship competitions.

(Lots of prepositional phrases in that sentence. Sorry.)

I think there's some swearing. I think it's the teacher. :) Boy, is she feisty.

You'll love her.

And she loves her kids.

My favorite quote from the movie is one character chiding her teenage pals, "Ya'll's palate consists of Fritos and Cheetos."

Or something like that.

Just thinking about it makes me smile.

Mrs. Mike by the Freedmans

The day we visited Macchu Picchu it was not a busy tourist day. We didn't have the place to ourselves, but we didn't have a lot of company either. No one chased us down to tour guide us, so we got to wander. Sit by the llamas. Flip water with our fingertips from the still-flowing man-made waterways.

The discovery was what made it so magical.

So it is with books. I'd never heard of Mrs. Mike, written by the Freedmans. Turns out the book is famous. Turns out a lot of people love it. Turns out it's right up there with A Tree Grows in Brookln. But it's better because I didn't know that it was so renowned before I read it. That's what made finding it all the better.

Add this to your list if you haven't read it. It's sort of like These is My Words, except Kathy marries a Mountie and goes north, not west. The writing is good, not sappy. The plot is good, not overdone. The characters are good, neither too real nor too fake.

And that's a description that makes the book sound average, which it wasn't. It was heart-wrenching. It was great.

Here's what Peggy Orenstein* had to say about it:

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Mrs-Mike-Changed-My-Life

Definitely would work for book club. And not sketchy---your advanced teen readers wouldn't be scandolized. Would be just fine for a high school home school literature class if you home school, or Katy, if you needed something for early 1900 Canadian history---though it's not history heavy, just a period piece.

Happy reading. Let me know what you think.

*Peggy Orenstein writes about the caustic messages that modern-day society sends young women. She wrote Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-esteem, and the Confidence Gap. I used her work for my thesis. Good stuff, interesting culture commentary. Her other books, Cinderella Ate My Daughter and Waiting for Daisy are on my list to read. I don't agree with everything she thinks, but her outlook is interesting and, I think, worth considering.