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"The publisher’s blurb introduces The Freedoms of Suburbia, Paul Barker’s enchanting and persuasive pictorial essay, with a nervous defiance as if the book were proposing free heroin for toddlers."

Hee!
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Jay had taken to calling himself Bartolomeo Cappuccino this fall, and I soon gave him a dashing sidekick, Panache Au Lait, a savvy and handsome beagle with whom he has many adventures in international intrigue. I found this calling card in my stocking this year:


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We had a great Christmas with family this year.


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My brother-in-law Tim has been going to Jordan (the Middle Eastern country) for work, and I just found out why.

Jordan has a favored trading status with the US, and we do a lot of importing of Jordanian goods. However, during the last administration, no one was paying much attention to labor practices, and companies in Jordan starting abusing workers. Apparently companies would recruit immigrants from poor Asian nations like the Philippines and bring them to a vast work center in the middle of nowhere. They take their passports and then basically work them to death. There is no escaping because they have no money, no means of exit, and no passport. It amounts to modern slavery.

Now that a new administration is in place, the Dept. of Labor is back to doing its job. And Tim, who works in the Dept. of Labor, is part of a work group trying to put an end to these abusive practices.

Another unsung hero of the federal bureaucracy. Yay Tim!
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Many of you know that the infamous snowball fight in DC last week (the one that resulted in a plainclothes cop getting out of his pelted Hummer and drawing his gun) took place a block and a half from my brother's house.

You may even know that Ed and Tim tossed a few snowballs themselves.

What you probably don't know was that a certain someone riled up the crowd by yelling "Get the Hummer!" before heading home.

That someone? My brother. True story.
























Just look at that face. You can tell it's the face of a troublemaker.
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I'm concerned about the number of flowers in this shot:






















Oh Catherine, Where Art Thou??

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Our backyard:



















Rocky in the front yard:




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At some point Jay turned the camera to the b/w setting, so the last few photos are in black and white:

















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My week of "Favorites" continues . . .

This is a song by Chris Rice. I love the lyrics, which express the heart of Christmas for me: the idea that there may be something beyond us that animates the universe with love, and that, for Christians, that love is manifested by God coming to earth and taking our burdens onto himself.

You'll have to imagine the music: quiet, lovely, poignant, acoustic:

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that you don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

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In no particular order:

1. Watching my sister Mamie play cards with 3-year-old Belle, both very serious and engaged as she would say, "Do you have a red card?" "Do you have a black card?"

2. Being at the Chris Cornell concert, soaking in this gorgeous music, watching the shirtless drummer pounding away like his life depended on it, and Ed leaning over and saying, "That drummer is working his ass off."

3. Playing cards with my sister Sally and her boyfriend Hoxie after Sally had surgery, and Hoxie and I making her laugh so hard her incision started bleeding (that may not be Sally's favorite moment, and my mother would disapprove of this health-threatening levity, but it was fun for us)

4. Waking up every morning to the coffee cup that Jay sets out for me.

5. All the life-affirming moments of love and affection from my friends over the course of the year.
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These movies brought me neither pleasure nor interest.

1. Russian Ark
The reviewers raved about this "journey through the Hermitage and Russian history," so I was expecting something innovative and artsy. What I got instead was two hours of a camera meandering through the museum while actors dressed in period costumes whispered. Seriously. That's it. For two hours. It was mind-numbing. Mind. Numbing. For Two. Hours.

2. Synecdoche, New York
I love Charles Kaufman, the writer. The movie Adaptation narrowly missed my Favorite Movies of the Aughts. But this bit of conceptual craziness was, what's the phrase? . . . MIND-NUMBING.

3. King Kong
Wayyyy too long and wayyyy too boring. What's the phrase I'm looking for? Oh, never mind . . .

4. Elizabethtown
A car crash of a movie from one of my favorite directors, Cameron Crowe. I have to quote a professional critic, who wrote about the reaction to the movie at a film festival: “‘Horrible,’ said one colleague, almost before my bags were in the taxi; ‘a parody of a Cameron Crowe film.’ Proclaimed another, well before the hotel was in sight: ‘People wanted to leave, to flee, but were riveted to their seats in utter disbelief and horror.’”

5. Sin City
As I was watching this uber-creative, uber-violent bloodfest, I was thinking, "These visuals are among the best I've ever seen in a movie. But I could never bring a DVD of this into my house." Such incredible talent applied to something so base.

6. Away from Her
This indie film about a couple dealing with the wife's Alzheimer's got a lot of critical respect. But it was so fundamentally wrong about how dementia works that it lost all credibility.

7. Signs
A watchable movie, but Shyamalan's tale of coincidence saving the day was philosophically corrupt, and that philosophical position was all there really was to the movie.

8. The Forgotten
Don't remember this one? It was a thriller starring Julianne Moore. You can see a hundred thrillers and think, "This isn't hard to pull off." But then you see a really bad one like this and you realize that constructing even a basic genre movie successfully requires tons of talent.

9. SWAT
You probably don't remember this one either. It was a thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson. And it stands in for all the crappy movies that Samuel L. Jackson has been in over the decade. His career represents the greatest example of talent squandered.

10. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
In the end, it's all about storytelling, the most ineffable talent of them all. Some movies, like this one, have all the elements to be great: talented actors (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law), visual style (a sepia-blue tone applied to sets both futuristic and nostalgic), a winning concept (Paltrow as a plucky 40s-style girl reporter finding adventure and romance with Law's cocky pilot). But there's something missing, and it's storytelling talent. It's like cooking a wonderful dish for dinner that fails because, despite the fresh herbs, tender seafood, baby steamed vegetables, and French sauce, you forgot to add salt. It falls flat.
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These are the films that brought me the most interest and pleasure this decade---and ones that I believe I'll still be watching with interest and pleasure ten years from now:


1-3:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Pride & Prejudice
Twilight

There is no way I can choose between these three for my favorite movie of the decade, so I've listed them in chronological order. All three are based on beloved books that really mean something to their fans.

Fellowship of the Ring was a movie that I was dreading. It could not be done well, and it would be inescapable---ridiculous images of these characters that meant so much to me would be everywhere. But I began to feel a glimmer of hope when I saw some stills and then some previews: Frodo looked the part, Sam looked the part, and the early scene when the hobbits hide on the side of the road from the Black Riders captured perfectly the terrible foreboding of the same scene in the book. After not one but several reviews called it a "masterpiece," I was ready to take the risk and see it. And from the very first moments of the movie, from the credits, really, with that watery font and atmospheric music, I knew this was something special. And then the voice of Galadriel starts to speak, and the story of Isildur and his great battle is told, and you are already experiencing something rare and wonderful. By the time that prologue ends, you feel that you've already seen something complete that was worth the price of admission.

Pride & Prejudice is one of the greatest stories ever told: the story of learning what you really want (an interior process) and then getting it (an exterior process). When what you really want is a person, and that person wants the same, and obstacle after obstacle is surmounted, and you leave the realm of loneliness and enter the realm of intimacy . . . that's a love story, my favorite story of all. The artful direction (for example, the sadness that accompanies the scene of Bingley's house at Netherfield being closed up after he departs, dashing Jane's hopes), the touches of realism, and the unbelievable chemistry and acting genius of the two leads makes this one of my favorite films of all time.

Twilight is another love story, and it's again the story of a young woman determining what she wants and what she believes. Catherine Hardwicke is one of my faovrite directors, and she was the perfect director for this movie in particular. Like Peter Jackson with The Lord of the Rings, her most pivotal contribution was a deep respect for the source material. Like Jackson, she told a story of fantasy as if it were really happening; found actors who perfectly embodied their characters; provided a rich ensemble of supporting characters and comic relief; and employed an atmospheric, gripping narrative style. Like Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen created a character who seemed real and particular without sacrificing any of the nobility that is the core of his nature. I'll never tire of this movie, and I can only hope that some of the other movies in the series live up to its artful beginnings.


4. Sideways
Alexander Payne is another of my favorite directors, and Sideways has everything: humor, observation, pathos, realism. The movie begins with a middle-aged man who is late to meet his friend, but sits in the bathroom reading the New Yorker and then stops at Starbucks, because these things are, you know, essential. Later that character has to stand in front of his ex-wife and her new husband and absorb the news that she is having a baby; the pain in his face and how he deals with it is one of my favorite moments in film. Sideways is episodic, but adheres. It feels rich rather than fragmented.


5. Casino Royale
Another movie in which everything is done Just Right. Another movie in which any of several extended scenes (the foot chase in Africa, the resort scene in the Caribbean, the airport scene in Miami) would be worth the price of admission alone. And yet you get through all of these scenes before the main action even begins. The action, the feel, Daniel Craig, Judi Dench . . . it is for me the best action movie ever made.

6. Love Actually
One of my favorite comedies of all time, along with Hairspray (the original) and several below. Funny, rich, and moving.

7. Amelie
Although I'm not a big fan of French drama, I love French comedies and thrillers. This romantic comedy starring the luminescent Audrey Tautou left me feeling a sense of wonder at the world and reawakened to all the possbilities that life and human creativity offer.

8. Bridget Jones’s Diary
Structurally perfect and very, very funny.

9. Y Tu Mama Tambien
The acting of Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna in this road trip movie is unbelievable. As teenage friends full of themselves and bursting with wild energy, they make you marvel at how real cinema can be.

10. Into the Wild
Lyrical, beautiful, joyous, sad. This telling of Chris McCandless's years roaming the U.S. unmoored from society gives perfect due to his poetic soul, the wondrousness of his experiences, and the cruelty he inflicted on his family.

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A friend's comment that she wanted to learn the cello led me to an explanation of all the various musical instruments I have around the house (trumpet, flute, several violins, clarinet, and, most recently, mandolin). The violins came from my grandfather, who played all his life and served in the Ft. Myers Orchestra in his retirement. My grandfather collected violins, so all of his grandchildren were able to have one or more when he passed away.

My grandfather came from a strict, dour, no-nonsense German family in Cumberland, Maryland. He was the black sheep of the family---fun-loving and eccentric. When he went to St. John's College in Annapolis as a young man, his father found out that he was taking violin lessons there. His father was livid that he was pursuing such a light-hearted pursuit and contacted the college to put a stop to it. My grandfather responded by running away from college and living hand-to-mouth in Baltimore until his father tracked him down and sent him back to St. John's. It still makes me laugh that violin lessons were considered (at least by my German great-grandfather) so frivolous---and that my grandfather "ran away" from college.
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I'm so in love with this song. Not only does it have the usual Swiftian virtues but it's a love song to her mother. Not the easiest thing to pull off, lyrically, without sounding like a sap factory.
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This interesting note from my friend Catherine:

There's a Twilight discussion raging on a video gaming message board I follow (a lot of speculation on why chicks dig it so much, interspersed with fewer people who are actually familiar with the books/movies), and it spawned the following comment from someone:

"Has there been a cultural phenomenon that didn't have an important gender bias?"

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Find the beagle in the woods:


















And these, just for cuteness' sake---


Rocky scrumbling:



















Rocky sticking half his body in a bunnies' den:







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I never tire of looking at snow!



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"Imagination was given to men to compensate him for what he isn't, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is."

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Here are some good covers of Possibility on YouTube:

This is nice

I like this one even better

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I've been in a funk this week and trying to make the most of it. I put together a playlist called Depressing Music, which contains the following songs:

The Story, by Brandi Carlisle
Disappearing Act, by Chris Cornell
Mad World, by Michael Andrews
Where the Colors Don't Go, by Sam Phillips
Edge of the World, by Sam Phillips
Five Colors, by Sam Phillips
Black Light Blue, by Shelby Lynne
Hearing Damage, by Thom Yorke
Possibility, by Lykke Li
New Moon (The Meadow), by Alexandre Desplat

I think a little Lucinda Williams would fit in nicely too.

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Stolen straight from Deb's blog. I hope it's real because it is HIlarious.



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I was thinking this morning of the handful of books that have really affected me over the years. Not necessarily books that have had a lasting influence on my thinking or even books that I love in the long term. I was thinking of those books that have left me depressed or sad for days after I finished reading them. They're not necessarily the best books (though sometimes they are), but they do have at least this one strength: their ability to affect the reader emotionally, which is something of a trick and not that common.

Anyway, here were the books I thought of:

The Last Battle
This is the last installment of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I was unable to read it until I was in college. I started it several times as a kid, but it was so sad I couldn't continue. When you start the book, Narnia is corrupted and everything has gone to hell. I could never read past the first two chapters or so.

Gone with the Wind
I read Margaret Mitchell's novel somewhere around 12 or 14 years old. At the end, it felt tragic. Scarlett comes to the great realization of her life, that she's been a fool and that Rhett is the man for her, at just the moment when Rhett cannot try for one minute more.

A Thousand Acres
This farmland take on King Lear by Jane Smiley left me with the feeling of stupid, unnecessary waste that is the heart of tragedy.

The Iliad
Bernard Knox wrote the introduction to the Fagles translation, which I read after I had finished it. He perfectly captured how I felt at the end. Although the epic ends on a note of humanity when Achilles allows Hector's father to take his body and bury it with honor, it doesn't make up for the sense of emptiness and loss (and foreboding) that accompanies the golden prince's death.

New Moon
The first third of this novel is unbearably sad to me. I think it contains Stephenie Meyer's best writing.

In the Woods
This is just a run-of-the-mill police procedural, but the characters are really vivid and really longing . . . they are so needy and they are so close to getting what will satisfy that need. And they just waste it.
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That GUS VAN SANT has signed on to direct Breaking Dawn.

[insert ecstatic screaming here]

No official announcement has been made yet, so please, everyone, put aside the African orphans and world AIDS crisis for a minute, and for the next few days, concentrate on praying that this is true.

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Winter Reading

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Here are three books that I really loved this season.

Child 44: Mystery/thriller that takes place in Stalin's Russia. Children start to go missing, and a career KGB agent finds himself blocked in the investigation. Like any good historical novel, it makes you feel what it must have been like to live in that (nightmarish) world.

In the Woods: Police procedural involving the murder of a child twenty years after a group of children went missing in the same area. I cared so deeply about these characters.

Ghost Story: I read about this novel by Peter Straub in one of the Halloween lists of "best scary novels." It's a mass market paperback with a typical mass market cover design, so I wasn't expecting it to be so well written. It's very engaging, and it's also great as just a novel---the writing is fantastic, and the characters are well drawn. Also: One section took me back to what it felt like to have a nightmare as a child in a way that no other book ever has.
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