The 70s were a hopeful and optimistic time to be a little girl. Lots of things were possible. You could do anything--everyone said so. You could be an athlete, like Billie Jean King or Chris Evert. You could be a lawyer, or a politician. You could be a doctor or a businesswoman. The world was a wide-open place.
I was a vague, bookish little girl, so I didn't have any one particular ambition. I imagined all sorts of things. In most of my daydreams, though, I was successful, in some glamorous but undefined career. I imagined a life in which I dressed fabulously, drove my own car, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries (and sipped Coke in a glass, with ice) in restaurants any time I wanted.
I was about 6 years old when "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" first aired (you knew where this was going, didn't you?) My mother and grandmother watched the show faithfully, and I watched with them, sitting cross-legged on the floor and wearing a flower-patterned quilted bathrobe that buttoned all the way down the front. I didn't get most of the jokes, and I didn't realize at the time that any ground was being broken. I just loved Mary Richards, and I wanted to be like her when I grew up. I wanted to be smart and nice and pretty and funny and independent. I wanted a cute little apartment and a cute little car and an important job with a typewriter and a phone. And I wanted a best friend just like Rhoda.
So much has been written and said about Mary Tyler Moore and the show, especially since Mary's death on Wednesday. Most of what I've read and heard has focused on her pioneering portrayal of women in the workplace and in the world. This is right and proper, and I'm happy to have seen so many moving tributes to MTM by women journalists and broadcasters, including Andrea Mitchell and Oprah Winfrey. Mary Richards was a pioneer. And to little girls like me, she was better than any Barbie doll or Disney princess.
*****
So life happens, and most of mine up to now hasn't even vaguely resembled Mary Richards's. That's OK. Most of it has been better, despite my periodic bouts with depression. I was unable to sleep one night during one such period in my late 20s, and as I sat on my couch in front of my TV, flipping through the channels and looking for I didn't know what, there it was. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was on TV Land, late 90s small-hours refuge for the depressed and lonely. I watched it, hoping to feel for just a moment as I felt when I was a hopeful and happy 6-year-old.
I fell asleep on the couch that night, probably halfway through a third episode of the overnight MTM marathon that I'd happen to stumble upon, feeling a little better, and not just because I had remembered for a moment what it felt like to be six years old. It was because the show, to my surprise, was REALLY funny.
Mary Tyler Moore was already famous for her portrayal of Laura Petrie on the very popular "Dick Van Dyke Show," and she could easily have turned her own program into a showcase for herself. Instead, she found the funniest and most talented actors and actresses--Ed Asner, Ted Knight, Valerie Harper, Betty White, Cloris Leachman--and put the spotlight on them rather than herself, often playing the straight woman to Valerie Harper's wisecracking Rhoda, Ted Knight's buffoonish anchorman, and Betty White's promiscuous Happy Homemaker. Even the minor characters, especially Rhoda's mother, played by the gifted Nancy Walker, were brilliantly cast. Yes, the show was culturally significant and the character was groundbreaking, but "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was also one of the greatest TV comedies ever.
*****
Right now feels like less than a hopeful and wide-open time for women. The rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism in countries everywhere from Western Europe to the Philippines has created conditions of intolerable oppression for women and girls. Meanwhile, privileged women like me; white, middle-class American women who don't want for a thing, have only to contend with the fact that a self-proclaimed uninvited p&%$@-grabber is now the President of the United States. All of this, though, will pass. I'm sure of it. I'm still hopeful and optimistic. Love is all around.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Commentary and review
I never intended for this to become a book review blog, but I tend to write about what I do, and in the winter, I read. Well, I also complain about the cold and contrive to find ways to avoid taking my clothes off and/or going outside, but those things don't make for compelling content. So it's books for now.
*****
Books and current events, actually. Right now, half a million women, give or take, are marching on Washington, just a few miles away from the couch where I sit with my laptop. I sympathize with their cause, mostly, but the organizers of the march made clear that they don't want pro-life women anywhere near their protest, so I didn't go. Just as well. My son had a swim meet today, so I held a clipboard instead of a sign. Now I'm back home and about to return to my book: Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.
Every so often, I'll hear someone mention a book that I've never heard of, and I'll be curious about it. Then someone else, in a completely different context, will mention the same book, and I'll think about how odd that is, that twice in a day or so, I'm hearing two different people praise the same relatively obscure book. When I then see or hear a third mention of that same book, I consider critical mass to have been reached, and I immediately buy the book.
*****
Total non sequitur alert: I just watched Sean Spicer's first press room briefing. That was the type of performance for which the phrase "I can't even" was invented. No words.
*****
OK, maybe a few words. Was it completely unexpected that the Trump administration's very first concern was not how to reunite this very divided country, nor how to create jobs for the working-class voters who supported the new President, nor how to defeat ISIS or address any of the myriad threats to national security? Was it any surprise that on their very first full day in the White House, the Trump administration's very first message to the country was a petty, whining little complaint about the media's supposed misrepresentation of the allegedly huge crowds at yesterday's Inaugural events? Does Donald Trump ever do anything other than cry like a big orange baby?
*****
Anyway. Back to This House of Brede. It is, appropriately for today, a book about a group of women; specifically, Benedictine nuns in post-war England. The protagonist is a successful Oxford-educated professional woman who at age 40 or so abandons her high position in a government agency and joins the Benedictines as a novice. Although the action, such as it is, all occurs inside a quiet and isolated religious cloister, it's still page-turningly gripping. Like all great novels, Brede creates a completely self-contained world like no other, but still completely recognizable. I recommend it.
*****
Because I like to suffer, and Lent is still months away, I decided to take an online HTML class. It's still too soon. I graduated in 2014, but I find that I'm still all full up with book learning and can't do with any more just now, so no more HTML class. I'll just wing it. That approach usually works really well.
*****
Books, politics, and incompetent coding. If you were looking for sharply focused thought neatly distilled in spare and concise prose, then you came to the wrong place. Live and learn.
*****
Books and current events, actually. Right now, half a million women, give or take, are marching on Washington, just a few miles away from the couch where I sit with my laptop. I sympathize with their cause, mostly, but the organizers of the march made clear that they don't want pro-life women anywhere near their protest, so I didn't go. Just as well. My son had a swim meet today, so I held a clipboard instead of a sign. Now I'm back home and about to return to my book: Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.
Every so often, I'll hear someone mention a book that I've never heard of, and I'll be curious about it. Then someone else, in a completely different context, will mention the same book, and I'll think about how odd that is, that twice in a day or so, I'm hearing two different people praise the same relatively obscure book. When I then see or hear a third mention of that same book, I consider critical mass to have been reached, and I immediately buy the book.
*****
Total non sequitur alert: I just watched Sean Spicer's first press room briefing. That was the type of performance for which the phrase "I can't even" was invented. No words.
*****
OK, maybe a few words. Was it completely unexpected that the Trump administration's very first concern was not how to reunite this very divided country, nor how to create jobs for the working-class voters who supported the new President, nor how to defeat ISIS or address any of the myriad threats to national security? Was it any surprise that on their very first full day in the White House, the Trump administration's very first message to the country was a petty, whining little complaint about the media's supposed misrepresentation of the allegedly huge crowds at yesterday's Inaugural events? Does Donald Trump ever do anything other than cry like a big orange baby?
*****
Anyway. Back to This House of Brede. It is, appropriately for today, a book about a group of women; specifically, Benedictine nuns in post-war England. The protagonist is a successful Oxford-educated professional woman who at age 40 or so abandons her high position in a government agency and joins the Benedictines as a novice. Although the action, such as it is, all occurs inside a quiet and isolated religious cloister, it's still page-turningly gripping. Like all great novels, Brede creates a completely self-contained world like no other, but still completely recognizable. I recommend it.
*****
Because I like to suffer, and Lent is still months away, I decided to take an online HTML class. It's still too soon. I graduated in 2014, but I find that I'm still all full up with book learning and can't do with any more just now, so no more HTML class. I'll just wing it. That approach usually works really well.
*****
Books, politics, and incompetent coding. If you were looking for sharply focused thought neatly distilled in spare and concise prose, then you came to the wrong place. Live and learn.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Two peas in a pod
I didn't plan or intend this, but the first three books that I read this year were memoirs written by famous baby boomers (Bruce Springsteen, Ruth Reichl, and Carrie Fisher). I started this post as a comparison/mini review of the three books, but then I saw "Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds" on HBO, and decided to just write about that instead.
*****
I hate most fantasy and sci-fi books and movies. As a Catholic, for example, I'm supposed to love Tolkien, but I don't. Not the books, not the movies. No Hobbits, no Towers, no Lords of the Ring, and ABSOLUTELY NO GOLLUM. There are, however, two exceptions to my complete and utter disdain for science fiction and fantasy: C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and "Star Wars."
I love Star Wars, especially the original movie. And first among the many reasons that I love it is Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia. I was 11 when I first saw Star Wars, and I felt about Princess Leia the way I felt about Billie Jean King. Like young Billie Jean, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia was adorable, but not intimidatingly beautiful. Like Billie Jean, Princess Leia could stand up to bullies, fight and win the good fight, and still look impeccable in an all-white ensemble. I loved her.
*****
I read Postcards from the Edge years ago, and when Carrie died, I tried to buy a Kindle edition. Shockingly, no such thing exists. I hope and expect that Amazon is working diligently to remedy that situation. Meanwhile, I bought and read the Kindle edition of Wishful Drinking, It didn't surprise me that Carrie in her own words comes across as an old-time wise-cracking gum-snapping Hollywood dame. She was born and raised that way. What did surprise me was how much she really loved her mother. Not just out of a sense of duty and not despite whatever her flaws might have been. Carrie loved Debbie wholeheartedly, and vice versa. They lived next door to each other, on a property that they called "the compound" (because of course it was called "the compound") and they seemed to never tire of each other's company. Having read Postcards (and also having seen the movie version), I just assumed that Carrie was bitter and resentful about her mother, which seems to be the stereotypical attitude of old Hollywood children toward their movie star parents. Postcards is a novel, so maybe Carrie thought that the unabashed love and admiration of a daughter for her mother wouldn't have made an interesting conflict for a work of fiction.
"Bright Lights," a reality-style documentary with cameras and interviewers following Carrie and Debbie around, uses lots of the material that Carrie covered in Wishful Drinking, Having just finished reading it, I recognized some passages from the book in some of Carrie's voice-over narration. This is fitting. Carrie was a great writer, and there was no one better suited to write the voice-overs. Great writer that she was, though, she didn't really capture the day-in and day-out relationship with her mother as well as the movie does. Carrie and Debbie tease each other, interrupt each other, and break into frequent song and comedy routines that are at once impromptu and highly polished and rehearsed, because they spent 50 years perfecting their mother-daughter act.
My husband actually saw "Bright Lights" first. He found Carrie and Debbie's "schtick," as he called it, annoying. But I found their banter and silliness charming, and the genuine affection between mother and daughter is touching. I teared up more than once.
Just as remarkable is the role of Todd Fisher, Carrie's brother, both in the movie and in their lives. Although I liked watching Carrie and Debbie being themselves and performing together, I can also easily see that the relationship between them was a closed world, unwelcoming to outsiders, and Todd might have felt like an odd man out when he was with the two of them. If he did, he concealed it well. Debbie's quirks and Carrie's struggles with mental illness and drug addiction are apparent throughout the movie; and Todd's observations about his mother and sister come across as truthful, but kind and compassionate. The camera often catches him as he watches Carrie and Debbie doing their routine, both onstage and off, and his affection for both of them is obvious and moving. Debbie raised a generous man.
Carrie and Debbie were also generous with their great personal and professional gifts. There's a scene in which Carrie appears at a Star Wars fan fest where attendees paid $70 to stand in line and meet Carrie and get her autograph on posters and shirts and other memorabilia. It's easy to criticize athletes and movie stars who charge for their autographs at such events, but what's most striking about this particular scene is how much of herself Carrie gives to each of the fans--hugs, pictures, and genuine emotional connection, however brief. The punters got their money's worth. Debbie, too, was generous with her audiences. The camera pans the audience at one of her last Las Vegas shows, and every single face shines with love and happiness. As I told my son, who watched with me, this was Debbie's great gift. She was a good dancer, singer, and actress, but making people happy was what she did best.
*****
I saw "Rogue One" today, finally, and like last year's "The Force Awakens," it was a fitting continuation of the franchise's great tradition of fearless and beautiful female heroines (don't get me started on Episodes 2 and 3. As much as I love everything Star Wars, I believe that Episode 2 is one of the worst movies ever made; some other time, I'll tell you why, at considerable length). Young Princess Leia has the last word in "Rogue One." I'm sad that it's one of the last times that we'll see her on film (she finished filming Episode 8, which will be released later this year), but I'm happy to have seen Princess Leia one more time. Rest in peace, Carrie and Debbie. You'll be missed.
*****
I hate most fantasy and sci-fi books and movies. As a Catholic, for example, I'm supposed to love Tolkien, but I don't. Not the books, not the movies. No Hobbits, no Towers, no Lords of the Ring, and ABSOLUTELY NO GOLLUM. There are, however, two exceptions to my complete and utter disdain for science fiction and fantasy: C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and "Star Wars."
I love Star Wars, especially the original movie. And first among the many reasons that I love it is Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia. I was 11 when I first saw Star Wars, and I felt about Princess Leia the way I felt about Billie Jean King. Like young Billie Jean, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia was adorable, but not intimidatingly beautiful. Like Billie Jean, Princess Leia could stand up to bullies, fight and win the good fight, and still look impeccable in an all-white ensemble. I loved her.
*****
I read Postcards from the Edge years ago, and when Carrie died, I tried to buy a Kindle edition. Shockingly, no such thing exists. I hope and expect that Amazon is working diligently to remedy that situation. Meanwhile, I bought and read the Kindle edition of Wishful Drinking, It didn't surprise me that Carrie in her own words comes across as an old-time wise-cracking gum-snapping Hollywood dame. She was born and raised that way. What did surprise me was how much she really loved her mother. Not just out of a sense of duty and not despite whatever her flaws might have been. Carrie loved Debbie wholeheartedly, and vice versa. They lived next door to each other, on a property that they called "the compound" (because of course it was called "the compound") and they seemed to never tire of each other's company. Having read Postcards (and also having seen the movie version), I just assumed that Carrie was bitter and resentful about her mother, which seems to be the stereotypical attitude of old Hollywood children toward their movie star parents. Postcards is a novel, so maybe Carrie thought that the unabashed love and admiration of a daughter for her mother wouldn't have made an interesting conflict for a work of fiction.
"Bright Lights," a reality-style documentary with cameras and interviewers following Carrie and Debbie around, uses lots of the material that Carrie covered in Wishful Drinking, Having just finished reading it, I recognized some passages from the book in some of Carrie's voice-over narration. This is fitting. Carrie was a great writer, and there was no one better suited to write the voice-overs. Great writer that she was, though, she didn't really capture the day-in and day-out relationship with her mother as well as the movie does. Carrie and Debbie tease each other, interrupt each other, and break into frequent song and comedy routines that are at once impromptu and highly polished and rehearsed, because they spent 50 years perfecting their mother-daughter act.
My husband actually saw "Bright Lights" first. He found Carrie and Debbie's "schtick," as he called it, annoying. But I found their banter and silliness charming, and the genuine affection between mother and daughter is touching. I teared up more than once.
Just as remarkable is the role of Todd Fisher, Carrie's brother, both in the movie and in their lives. Although I liked watching Carrie and Debbie being themselves and performing together, I can also easily see that the relationship between them was a closed world, unwelcoming to outsiders, and Todd might have felt like an odd man out when he was with the two of them. If he did, he concealed it well. Debbie's quirks and Carrie's struggles with mental illness and drug addiction are apparent throughout the movie; and Todd's observations about his mother and sister come across as truthful, but kind and compassionate. The camera often catches him as he watches Carrie and Debbie doing their routine, both onstage and off, and his affection for both of them is obvious and moving. Debbie raised a generous man.
Carrie and Debbie were also generous with their great personal and professional gifts. There's a scene in which Carrie appears at a Star Wars fan fest where attendees paid $70 to stand in line and meet Carrie and get her autograph on posters and shirts and other memorabilia. It's easy to criticize athletes and movie stars who charge for their autographs at such events, but what's most striking about this particular scene is how much of herself Carrie gives to each of the fans--hugs, pictures, and genuine emotional connection, however brief. The punters got their money's worth. Debbie, too, was generous with her audiences. The camera pans the audience at one of her last Las Vegas shows, and every single face shines with love and happiness. As I told my son, who watched with me, this was Debbie's great gift. She was a good dancer, singer, and actress, but making people happy was what she did best.
*****
I saw "Rogue One" today, finally, and like last year's "The Force Awakens," it was a fitting continuation of the franchise's great tradition of fearless and beautiful female heroines (don't get me started on Episodes 2 and 3. As much as I love everything Star Wars, I believe that Episode 2 is one of the worst movies ever made; some other time, I'll tell you why, at considerable length). Young Princess Leia has the last word in "Rogue One." I'm sad that it's one of the last times that we'll see her on film (she finished filming Episode 8, which will be released later this year), but I'm happy to have seen Princess Leia one more time. Rest in peace, Carrie and Debbie. You'll be missed.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Bridge and tunnel
Maryland Route 200 connects with I-95 North via a long, curving ramp that is very high at its topmost point, before it curves downward, depositing northbound drivers onto the interstate. Maryland 200 is a fairly new road; it opened to traffic in 2009 or so, and I began driving it regularly about a year later. The first time I saw the ramp to 95, I nearly bailed and headed south instead; that's how high the ramp looks from the exit lane. Oh HELL no, I thought. And then I screwed up my courage and got on the ramp. Like lots of other things that look really high or long or wide from a distance, it wasn't quite as high up close. Like lots of other things that seem scary at first, it wasn't so bad.
Patience has never been one of my chief virtues, and I'm never less patient than when I'm driving. "AAAAAUUUGHHH! GOOOOO!" are the two words that I yell most frequently when I'm behind the wheel. But every so often, when I'm on the on-ramp to 95 North from Maryland 200, I'll be stuck behind a driver who will hesitate, and then drive very slowly up the ramp. I never honk at those people; in fact, I don't even roll my eyes or heave a great big long-suffering exasperated sigh. I drive that ramp every day now, so I'm used to it, but I remember my own trepidation the first time I saw it from a distance, and how tightly my hands gripped the steering wheel.
*****
I'm a recreational worrier. Not only do I worry about things that are likely or certain to happen; I also conjure up elaborate worst-case scenarios, and then worry them almost into existence. I wish this weren't so, and that I wasn't like this, but it is and I am.
Sometimes, the penchant for advance worry has its advantages. If you run out of anything, anything at all, then come on over. I have enough toilet paper, bottled water, and non-perishable food to withstand a siege, and I'll share. Some people have too much of everything because they're compulsive bargain-hunters, or hoarders. I, on the other hand, actually believe that I'll have to withstand a siege at some point, and I'm just planning accordingly.
Preparedness aside, however, most times the pre-emptive worrying takes me down ridiculous rabbit-holes of unnecessary panic and anxiety. I used to have to drive through the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore pretty often. I never lost sight of the fact that I was DRIVING A CAR UNDER A HARBOR, and the sight of the tiled walls could induce an attack of hyperventilation. TILE. Because just in case the tunnel was breached, the nice tiled tunnel tube could easily accommodate the deluge of water, in which I would drown. Did you ever see the movie "Atonement?" (1, 2, 3) If not, then you should. There's a scene in which a character dies in a bombing raid during the London Blitz. A bomb hits a water main in the Underground (which doubled as a bomb shelter), filling the tunnel and drowning all of its occupants. I've driven through that tunnel enough times now that I don't panic anymore. Just the same, though, I seldom go through it without momentarily imagining my bloated, dead body floating in fetid harbor water.
*****
As always, there's little to no point to any of this. But if you read this blog on any regular basis, then you knew that going in. There went three minutes or so of your life, which you're never going to get back. I offer no warranties, and I make no representations.
But wait, there are several points here:
A. When it all hits the fan, and the end of civilization as we know it is at hand, then stop by. I'll have food, toilet paper, and soap to spare.
B. Things that appear to be scary from a distance are often not that scary up close. (Imaginary snakes are a perfect example.)
C. Just because something CAN be done, it doesn't follow that it SHOULD be done. Should we really dig tunnels to run beneath large bodies of water? Maybe not.
*****
Three pieces of valuable life advice. Your time was not wasted after all.
NOTES:
1. I've never been actually angry at an author for a plot twist or a surprise ending; that is, until I read the end of Atonement. It's been at least eight or nine years, and I'm still a little annoyed. Unlikely that I'll ever meet Ian McEwan, but if I ever do, he'll have some explaining to do.
2. When I love a book, I usually assiduously avoid the movie version. "Atonement" was an exception and it's almost as good as the book. It made me even angrier at McEwan, though. He's on my list.
3. "Atonement" vs. Atonement. MLA training dies hard.
Patience has never been one of my chief virtues, and I'm never less patient than when I'm driving. "AAAAAUUUGHHH! GOOOOO!" are the two words that I yell most frequently when I'm behind the wheel. But every so often, when I'm on the on-ramp to 95 North from Maryland 200, I'll be stuck behind a driver who will hesitate, and then drive very slowly up the ramp. I never honk at those people; in fact, I don't even roll my eyes or heave a great big long-suffering exasperated sigh. I drive that ramp every day now, so I'm used to it, but I remember my own trepidation the first time I saw it from a distance, and how tightly my hands gripped the steering wheel.
*****
I'm a recreational worrier. Not only do I worry about things that are likely or certain to happen; I also conjure up elaborate worst-case scenarios, and then worry them almost into existence. I wish this weren't so, and that I wasn't like this, but it is and I am.
Sometimes, the penchant for advance worry has its advantages. If you run out of anything, anything at all, then come on over. I have enough toilet paper, bottled water, and non-perishable food to withstand a siege, and I'll share. Some people have too much of everything because they're compulsive bargain-hunters, or hoarders. I, on the other hand, actually believe that I'll have to withstand a siege at some point, and I'm just planning accordingly.
Preparedness aside, however, most times the pre-emptive worrying takes me down ridiculous rabbit-holes of unnecessary panic and anxiety. I used to have to drive through the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore pretty often. I never lost sight of the fact that I was DRIVING A CAR UNDER A HARBOR, and the sight of the tiled walls could induce an attack of hyperventilation. TILE. Because just in case the tunnel was breached, the nice tiled tunnel tube could easily accommodate the deluge of water, in which I would drown. Did you ever see the movie "Atonement?" (1, 2, 3) If not, then you should. There's a scene in which a character dies in a bombing raid during the London Blitz. A bomb hits a water main in the Underground (which doubled as a bomb shelter), filling the tunnel and drowning all of its occupants. I've driven through that tunnel enough times now that I don't panic anymore. Just the same, though, I seldom go through it without momentarily imagining my bloated, dead body floating in fetid harbor water.
*****
As always, there's little to no point to any of this. But if you read this blog on any regular basis, then you knew that going in. There went three minutes or so of your life, which you're never going to get back. I offer no warranties, and I make no representations.
But wait, there are several points here:
A. When it all hits the fan, and the end of civilization as we know it is at hand, then stop by. I'll have food, toilet paper, and soap to spare.
B. Things that appear to be scary from a distance are often not that scary up close. (Imaginary snakes are a perfect example.)
C. Just because something CAN be done, it doesn't follow that it SHOULD be done. Should we really dig tunnels to run beneath large bodies of water? Maybe not.
*****
Three pieces of valuable life advice. Your time was not wasted after all.
NOTES:
1. I've never been actually angry at an author for a plot twist or a surprise ending; that is, until I read the end of Atonement. It's been at least eight or nine years, and I'm still a little annoyed. Unlikely that I'll ever meet Ian McEwan, but if I ever do, he'll have some explaining to do.
2. When I love a book, I usually assiduously avoid the movie version. "Atonement" was an exception and it's almost as good as the book. It made me even angrier at McEwan, though. He's on my list.
3. "Atonement" vs. Atonement. MLA training dies hard.
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