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The book is The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin De Becker. I saw the author on Oprah this week, and he was fascinating. He's a security expert for high-profile clients, and he says that people almost always sense when they are in danger. But humans are the only animals who will give themselves over to the danger, usually because we're afraid of being rude. It's the woman who steps into an elevator with a man who she feels an instinctual repulsion for. It's the girl who lets in a customer just as the store is closing because she has no good reason---other than an instinct---to say no. We are taught to be nice, but these instincts should always be heeded.

De Becker stories remind me of a story my mom used to tell us. My mom was a straight arrow and a no-nonsense woman, always. Not listening to her instincts in order to please a strange man would never be in the mix. When she was a college student at the University of Maryland in the late forties/early fifties, she was walking across campus with a friend. A man pulled up in a car and waved them over. My mother said, "I'm not going over there. He can wave all he wants." The other girl didn't want to be rude, and went over to the car, where the driver exposed himself to her. This story always makes me laugh, because my mom was so sensible. There was something in her character that was able to resist the 1950s pressure for women to be accommodating. If she were a young woman today, you know she'd be saying "**** that!" as some jerk waved her over.

Here is a link to the De Becker book on Amazon; I'm sure it's in libraries too.

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I'm not saying I'm proud of the following email exchange, but I can't help it . . . it's funny. (For those woefully out of touch with quality television, Taylor Kitsch is the actor who plays the very smokin' Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights.)



FROM DEBBIE:
wanna volunteer with me for barack obama’s campaign?


FROM LYNN:
Sure! Do I have to sign up myself, or can you do it for me?


FROM DEBBIE:
hey, woman,
i would sign up for you, but i don't have all your info. (i mean, I have it SOMEWHERE, but lord knows on which floor. hence, this is just faster . . .)
i think this link should take you right to the volunteer sign-up page:
http://action.barackobama.com/page/s/volunteer
smooches,
barry’s girl


FROM LYNN:
“But . . . but . . . my HAND hurts!”
Okay, I'll sign up.


FROM DEBBIE:
OTHER THINGS LYNN WEBER SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GET OUT OF BECAUSE HER
HAND HURTS:
-chopping wood for fire
-churning butter
-washing crockery in steaming, sudsy water
-mech requests


FROM LYNN:
Also:
-answering questions
-being awake for too long
-feeding self


FROM DEBBIE:
LYNN: *in traction* *extremities bound in gauze* *moans piteously* *bats eyes* *is hand-fed peeled grapes by taylor kitsch*
TAYLOR KITSCH: *does not wear shirt* *does not hazard complicated math*
LYNN: *doesn't matter*
TAYLOR KITSCH: *soothes her fevered brow* there there, lady. i'm here. there's no need to freak out anymore.
LYNN: it's so haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. being meeeeeeeeeeeeee.
TAYLOR KITSCH: i know. it's time to sleep now.
LYNN: *little girl voice* will you read me a story?
TAYLOR KITSCH: . . .
LYNN: okay, fine, will you /tell/ me a story?
TAYLOR KITSCH: *brightens noticeably* well, this one time? at a photo shoot? they asked me to get in the water? . . .
LYNN: *beams* *snuggles in*

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So I went down hard when I was running with Rocky on the lead on Monday afternoon. I scraped off a good chunk of skin from my left palm, which was very, very painful. And continued to be so when I went home and had to pour water on it, lightly scrub the bare flesh with soapy water, and then pour---THREE TIMES---burning hydrogen peroxide on the open wound. Holy Mother of God. I'd always wondered, when watching movies where the hero has to pull a bullet out of his flesh without anesthetic, if I could do it. Though I couldn't bring myself to dig into the flesh to get out all the little fibers from my cotton glove out of my bare flesh, I did a good job of cleaning the wound, even though I was literally yelling and screaming the whole time. ("AH AH AH AH IT'S OKAY IT'S OKAY YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB KEEP IT UP YOU'RE ALMOST DONE IT'S OKAY LOOK HOW MUCH BETTER IT LOOKS AH AH AH AH")

I went to the doctor's yesterday and got more painful cleaning, and a scrip for a prescription-strength antibiotic ointment. Unfortunately the prescription ointment doesn't have a pain-relievers mixed in, as my Neosporine did, so it hurts more now than it did the first day. Am feeling extremely sorry for myself. I guess burn victims have this sensation all over their body.
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Audrey and KimBallSmith














Rebecca and Debbie
















A lovely shot of Rebecca

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The book club listens with alternating amazement and hilarity as D. tells the story of the pan-mystical baby shower she recently attended:

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I consider this to be genius. Jay's band is "Jay Eck" and his album is Suddenly It's about 'Doing':

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You may know this one:

1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit "Random" (or click the following link):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2. Go to Random Quotations:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on "explore the last seven days":
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is (safe for work, of course), will be your album cover.

Thus, my band Bornstedt just came out with their new album, I Think She Enjoyed It:


















I'm uninspired. I might quit and become a book production editor.

On Random Quotations, I did find this quote by Oscar Wilde, which I love: "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

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One of the many, many sad things about Heath Ledger's death is how now he will always be That Tragic Figure. Every film performance will be touched with it.

This death reminds me of hearing Bill Cosby talk about the death of his brother when they were both just little boys. He stood by the casket and just could not believe that his brother couldn't get up. It seemed impossible and wrong that this was permanent. Why should it be? One mistake, and it's all over? Why can't we press Undo? I felt the same way when I lost my unborn children. Why does such a huge loss hang on such a small thread? It's all nonsense, but that is how it feels, like we should get a redo.
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Famiglia e amici, what do we think of these nominations? My first thoughts are:

* Yay on Viggo's nomination.

* Yay on Amy Ryan's nomination for Gone Baby Gone; she was amazing. I only wish this film had garnered a few more noms.

* Yay on Julian Schnabel's nom for directing. That was a film where the direction, specifically, stood out.

* Big, huge boo-hiss for no Original Song nomination for Eddie Vedder's "Guaranteed" or any of his other work on Into the Wild. I wasn't expecting a nomination for Sean Penn or Emile Hirsch (though I think they deserved them), but was surprised to see the film passed over Best Song and also Cinematography.
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PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

DIRECTOR
Julian Schnabel: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jason Reitman: Juno
Tony Gilroy: Michael Clayton
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen: No Country for Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson: There Will Be Blood

ACTOR
George Clooney: Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis: There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp: Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones: In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen: Eastern Promises

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem: No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman: Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook: Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson: Michael Clayton

ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie: Away from Her
Marion Cotillard: La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney: The Savages
Ellen Page: Juno"

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett: I'm Not There
Ruby Dee: American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan: Atonement
Amy Ryan: Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton: Michael Clayton

DOCUMENTARY
No End in Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance

FOREIGN FILM
Beaufort: Israel
The Counterfeiters: Austria
Katyn: Poland
Mongol: Kazakhstan
12: Russia

ANIMATED PICTURE
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf’s Up

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

SCORE
Atonement
The Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma

SONG
Falling Slowly: Once
Happy Working Song: Enchanted
Raise It Up: August Rush
So Close: Enchanted
That's How You Know: Enchanted

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Atonement
Away from Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Juno
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
The Savages
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"I draw the line at amphibians."

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So my friend was checking out the Sojourners website, thinking about applying for a job there and checking out staff bios to get a feel for the office culture, when she came across this:

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.display_staff&staff=Spivey

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On Thursday I stayed home from work. I just could not make myself go out in that snow. I took a sick day. Rocky and I had a wonderful walk through the winter wonderland that is our neighborhood, and he romped and snuffled and had the best time. When we got back, I chased him all around the back yard, and we played with sticks. Then I came in, had some brownies and cold milk, and sat on the couch reading my mystery and watching Tivo. Then I made pizza from a mix I had gotten for Xmas, while I watched cars getting stuck on my street through the window. I actually thought at one point: "This could be the best day of my whole life." (Apparently I REALLY like brownies. And my dog. And not working.)
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Watching The Biggest Loser and even the movie Into the Wild made me start thinking about goals. I'm not usually big on new year's resolutions, but here are 12 goals for 2008:

1. Take tennis lessons.
2. Read at least half of the 44 unread fiction books on my bookshelves.
3. Take a bona fide road trip.
4. Go kayaking at least once.
5. Retain my Italian skills.
6. Watch at least 5 minutes of Univision every day.
7. Bulldoze through my Netflix queue.
8. Improve my homemade-to-Lean Cuisine ratio.
9. Make bread.
10. Make myself of use in the world.
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The English language has many glories, dished from the stone soup created by Danes, Angles, Saxons, Africans, and Romans. I’m partial to the Danish -gg- legacy: eggs, foggy, Wigglesworth. But my favorite word is Latinate: mystery.

A melange of vowels, liquids, and sibilants—not a plosive in sight—“mystery” is a beautiful word just in its sound and orthography, and its meanings even more so. From the time I was a little girl, I loved the mystery genre of books: Nancy Drew, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Even now I’m drawn to paperbacks with illustrations of cobble streets, fog, and English lamplights.

This is just aesthetics, an inborn proclivity such as liking the color red more than green. But there’s more to mystery than atmosphere and book genre. I first thought deeply about it when I was a college student studying poetry. When I was a teenager I tended toward a kind of ecstatic oblivion, getting high, putting on huge headphones, and listening for hours to Nights in White Satin and other head music. When I became a Christian at age 16, I put that away, gratefully, and came to appreciate the beauty of clarity. I saw how sinking oneself in that kind of vague but powerful emotion could drain you of energy, truthfulness, and virtue. And I lost patience with those who preferred to hold vague unsubstantiated notions about life, actually preferring not to examine their beliefs, maybe because nailing them down might require commitment and narrow their ability to pick at the buffet of life.

When I became an agnostic at age 19, one of the first things I did was to abandon my practical, help-the-world major of economics and become the English major I was at heart. Still critical of the world and a devotee of clarity, I loved Jane Eyre and hated Madame Bovary. But the first crack in my armor came while studying poetry with a textbook called Western Wind. This text/anthology became my bedside companion for years to come; I’ve probably spent more time reading it than any other book I’ve owned. In one section, the author, John Frederick Nims, discusses two lines of poetry by William Blake. The two lines are:

The Son of Morn in weary Night’s decline,
The lost traveller’s dream under the hill.

About these two lines Nims says something quite profound. Without the rest of the poem, we can’t really know what these lines mean. And yet despite the complete lack of context and, in effect, meaning, we are deeply moved by these lines. They are beautiful, and heavy with meaning that we feel even if we can’t think it.

How does that happen? The individual words are somewhat archetypal—son, night, dream—but not extremely so. “The lost traveller’s dream under the hill” is fairly nonsensical and yet doesn’t feel so. It feels evocative, sad, nostalgic. There’s word choice and there’s rhythm, but in the end these dark shapes on paper translate to sounds in our minds, then images in our heads, concepts and feelings, that somehow, you feel, they shouldn’t be able to. It’s a mystery.

I started thinking more about this in the year or so after Jay and I got married. I had read about the role that some artists thought dreams and the subconscious played in their artwork, but tended to pooh-pooh it. (As a lifelong non-artist, I was uniquely unqualified to do so, but when did that ever stop me?) Then shortly after getting married, something new started to happen. At night when I would start to fall asleep, in that woozy half-conscious state, full-blown works of art would appear in my mind’s eye. This happened time and again for a good year or so, and each time I was amazed. These weren’t images of famous works that I had seen somewhere else; they were coming from my own mind. It kind of opened me up in a way, made me see that there’s so much more there than we experience most of the time.

I thought of mystery again while reading the novel Atonement a few years ago. There’s a scene in which the young Briony sits in her room and again and again moves her finger or arm. She can’t understand how she can make that happen. She thinks about moving her finger, thinks, thinks, thinks, doesn’t do it, considers it, thinks, considers, but then does—and the finger moves. I used to do this very same thing as a child. I freaked myself out! Just as I’d stare at a mirror and almost faint thinking about the relationship between that image and the mind that was staring at it. Craziness.

This mystery of consciousness and will is just a part of the greater mystery of our entire existence. And the question of God trumps all. Believers often use the famous watch analogy to try to prove the necessity of God’s existence, but this has always seemed like the absolutely worst argument to me. You may know the analogy:

A. A watch is complex.
B. A watch does not come into existence by itself because it is so complex.
C. Man made the watch.

Likewise:

A. Man is even more complex.
B. A man cannot come into existence by itself because he is so complex.
C. God made man.

The reason this is such a poor argument for God is that it builds a pyramid, in which the more complex the entity, the more impossible it is for it to be self-created. And yet what does this analogy do but ratchet up the complexity one more notch to God? God is most complex of all. If God the Most Complex can be self-created, why can’t the universe, which is infinitely less complex, also be self-created? It has to be easier for one atom to come into being than for God to.

The truth, of course, is that it is not easier. Complexity is beside the point. Believers cite the intricacy of the human brain and the beauties of the natural world, but if nothing existed in the universe except for one single atom, we would still be faced with the same problem: where did it come from? Invoking the term “God” solves nothing. But dismissing the term “God” solves nothing as well. Leibniz famously asked “Why is there not nothing?” Even to think of nothing is impossible, as we inevitably imagine some sort of universe-box that is empty. But here we are, here are the atoms, there is the Grand Canyon, and they're both impossible and undeniably true. That’s mystery.

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Jay and I love to comment on how Baltimore is portrayed in film and TV. We love our hometown, but let's face it, it's got its problems. Prominent portrayals include:

Homicide: Life on the Streets: A gritty look at drugs and murder in Baltimore City
The Corner: A gritty look at drugs and murder in Baltimore City
The Wire: A gritty look at drugs and murder in Baltimore City
The John Waters oeuvre: A gritty look at drugs, transvestites, dog poo, and people who call the Motor City "DEE-troit"
How Do I Look?: The fashion makeover's show only bona fide Baltimore contestant was a confessed drug user and possibly prostitute

Adding to this esteemed body of artistic work is that of my friend who has been fighting a mouse problem in her Baltimore City home this year. To wit:

"when i got home this morning from the train station, i saw a RAT corpse at the foot of our (external) basement stairs. then i trudged up the stairs, speckled with pigeon turd. then i walked into the dank, unwelcoming house to hear insane squeaking and find a mouse straddling two sticky traps, gyrating madly across the kitchen floor. i left him for spouse to take care of when he gets home. as i type, i hear the little effer screaming. it's HORRIFYING."

I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help myself. It's the "perfect storm."
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I'm reading this novel by the Somali author Nuruddin Farah, and came across this bit:

"A number of African myths centered death on two oral messages, the one given to a hare and guaranteeing uninterrupted life, the other to a chameleon and presaging mortality. In the myths, the chameleon delivered the message, in obedience to an ancient dark fear. The hare, however, was distracted by its playfulness and failed to pass on the message of life."

I love this little passage because it captures so well how hard times grab out attention, but so often the good times flow by without us paying attention.
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Late 2007 gave us some great films, after what had been, imho, a mediocre year. Tonight we saw The Savages, Tamara Jenkins' amazing film about sibling relationships. I can't even think of another movie that is primarily about sibling relationships, but this one is a whopper. Besides the art with which is was made, I loved it for its central thesis: that when you grow up with someone, you develop mental ruts---like wheel ruts, trenches into the ground that a vehicle is bound to slip into---that dominate your relationship with each other and can threaten to destroy it if you can't find out a way out.

For Jon and Wendy Savage, the brother and sister in this film, he's practical and can't help rolling his eyes at her emotionalism and idealism; she can't help resenting his constant dismissal of her every bright idea and reacting with increasing frustration and resentment, which makes her more emotional, which makes him dismiss her more. She craves validation, and the more she craves it, the less she can get it. He craves effectiveness, and the more he demands it the less he can get it.

Lest this sound like a heavy O'Neill drama, let me mention that it's a really funny movie too, and a really interesting one. This writer/director knows how to make art---how to convey meaning with images and dialogue and sound and editing. It's a dense movie, and pretty riveting. My favorite family drama since The Squid and the Whale, and even more realistic and satisfying.

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I'm subcontracting out today to my friend Debbie, who writes on the subject of Netflix and how their DVDs are always damaged these days:

i know! netflix says they check/clean each DVD after each use. but frankly i think they are a bunch of big liars. and it's not like they'll send you extra DVDs for free if their effed up discs slow down your monthly viewing-pleasure queue. you pay the same for a month of effed DVDs as you do for a month of working DVDs. subpar. and? have you noticed that their website (well, at least as of the last time i checked, which was well over a year ago at this point) doesn't even have a customer-support phone line? they have a foolish comments page. oh yeah, that SCREAMS caring-about-our-customers. "you have a problem? blog about it! we may check that page out when we have a moment. we're meeting the folks from The Motley Fool down at zensations for a group chai-steam treatment." whatever, netf**ks (<-- ooh! sa-NAP!). good luck, disgruntled netflix patron, getting any sort of response there. oh. and when i called them once (googled Netflix Complaints and found websites devoted to hating them for their crooked business model and awful service, with phone number included, happily), they informed me that they have a policy of No Refunds, but because i had received so many ruined discs (an anomaly, they assured me) they were going to comp Twelvebrick half a month's fees. what is that, like, seven whooping dollars? anyhoo, i get steamed when i think about them. crooks.

SERVICE-BASED GOODS SHOULD BE A SERVICE, NOT A REASON TO CHEW HANDFULS OF VALIUM!!!! <-- things deb believes in mightily

off soapbox (for limited time).
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Fake Club Names

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One of my never-to-be-realized dreams over the years has been to open a club or lounge. Over the years here are some of the names I've considered (which is, after all, the most important part of running a business, right??):

Club Soda: This one is a total ripoff, I admit. But I've always loved it. Would have to be a peppy, straightforward dance club.

The Bolt-Hole: A term used by Sherlock Holmes for the little rooms around London that he kept so he could dart in and change costumes or hide out from enemies for a few days. I imagine lots of low sofas and dark lighting.

Ragnarok: This is a term I just became acquainted with. The Vikings believed that the world would end in a cataclysm one day in which even the gods would be destroyed. The name for this cataclysm: Ragnarok. I'm thinking "deep house" and maybe black lights.
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