Tag: Native Americans

More Than This

Wednesday morning and the midpoint of the week. Huzzah! Yes, I am back to wishing my life away, as my mother used to call it. But I can abide, you know? I wasn’t rested properly yesterday, I don’t think, or else it was the off-and-on rain/thunderstorms we had yesterday. That wet cold air inside the office just makes me want to curl up somewhere and go to sleep under my pile of blankets, which makes the workday a bit of a slog. Ah, well. It’s supposed to continue like this until the weekend or so, when it’ll just be hot and sunny and humid and miserable. Yay! And Monday is my next infusion (second of three). Soon I’ll be giving myself shots. Can’t wait…although everyone tells me it’s easy; it’s a pre-loaded pen-like device I just need to stick myself with. And it’s not like my job hasn’t gotten me used to sticking myself and other people over the years. Sigh. It’s hard for me, sometimes, to wrap my mind around the whole this is the rest of your life thing. But it could be worse–it can always be worse–so I will accept this and not let it bug me. I’m sure I’ll eventually get so used to it I won’t even give it a second thought. It’s always the first time, you know? Just like I was nervous about the infusion (when they tell you all the things to look out for during, it can be a bit scary: “if you can’t breathe or have shortness of breath”, you know, things like that) until I did it for the first time.

Definitely will be bringing my book with me on Monday.

I guess Ann Coulter got tired of not being a part of the ICE raids and so decided to glorify genocide on social media, suggesting that the European genocide of indigenous Americans didn’t go far enough? She wound up deleting the post, which is more shocking than the post, to be honest; she’s always been one of those “freedom of speech means I can say the most disgusting things without apology” advocates. Ann Coulter has always been hot sewage, and back in the day she used to compete with Rush Limbaugh to see who could say the most revolting, inhuman kind of shit. Back in the 1990s, as I saw my parents and family getting sucked in more and more by Fox News1, I used to actually read books by right-wingers, including Ann Coulter. (My primary takeaway was they needed to hire better ghostwriters.) Don’t ever forget that Coulter also wrote the introduction to Phyllis Schlafly’s autobiography, and Schlafly was a monster. Like attracts like, I suppose. But since she turned on Trump for not being racist enough in his first term (she probably orgasms with every news report about ICE and Alligator Auschwitz), she’s not as popular on the right as she used to be; how very dare she be critical of MAGA’s God Emperor? I mean, she can’t even get booked on her ex-lover Bill Maher’s show anymore. But she deleted the post. What the fuck, Fraulein Coulter? Outrage used to be what got you out of bed in the morning and paid your bills. I certainly don’t believe she grew a conscience in her sixties.

After the stolen election of 2000, I no longer needed to read right-winger’s books because I didn’t really know what I was gaining by reading them anymore–I used to think it was better to know what they were thinking and saying, but this century, they’ve pretty much started saying the private stuff out loud. It’s impossible to go on-line or watch any news or anything without knowing what the Right’s position on anything and everything is–but you can be sure it’s rooted in racism, misogyny, and homophobia…same as it ever was, same as it ever will be.

Plus, sharing what I learned from reading those books and proximity to right wing voters? I was never believed by anyone on the left, so I just wound up being Cassandra on the walls of Troy…and truly understood her madness. It’s horrible not being believed…but everything I warned about is coming true.

Sigh.

It rained off and on all day yesterday–we even got a flash flood advisory in the afternoon–and I wasn’t really fully and completely mentally functional yesterday. My brain was loopy and my body was fatigued; I felt all day like I could go back to bed without a problem. When I got home from work I did some chores (didn’t finish them, though–there’s a load of laundry that needs to be fluffed and folded, and I need to finish the dishes to load in the dishwasher), and then worked on editing for a while. It didn’t go well, but I made progress, and I do feel more awake and rested so far this morning, so maybe tonight will go super-well. Stranger things have occurred, after all. We also watched the second to last episode of We Were Liars after Paul got home (later than usual), and then I went to bed earlier than usual. I think I need to get back into the going to bed at nine thing again. I also didn’t read anything last night because by the time I sat in my chair my brain was misfiring again. Heavy sigh. Maybe tonight? I think I just need to get back into the writing habit again; everything is still rusty and the gears don’t shift accordingly. so I need to retrain my brain and my body and my creativity into productivity again.

I can do it, I know I can.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Hump Day, Constant Reader, and I will be back again tomorrow morning.

I really appreciate the fact that the majority of pro wrestlers today focus more on their fitness–and have much better bodies than the ones in my youth did. I can easily see this dude dancing shirtless at Oz during Southern Decadence.
  1. In fairness, they were always right-wing; Rush and Fox just confirmed what they thought. ↩︎

I Love the Nightlife

I also love to boogie–especially in the disco round, oh yeah, baby.

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment after kind of a nice, slow and easy day around here. Paul stayed up late working so pretty much slept the entire day away again, and I myself got up late yesterday, too. I didn’t mind, even though I was a little perturbed that I got up so late. But I had a nice morning. I did some things I needed to do and cleaned and organized some more, and I got up pretty early this morning, too. I don’t know how motivated I feel today, but I am hopefully going to get some good writing work done this morning so I can spend the afternoon reading. Sounds like a winner to me. We did finish catching up with Reacher, Abbott Elementary, and Prime Target last night, too. Tomorrow I get to report to Criminal Court for jury duty in Mid-city, so I will be finding out what’s going on with that. I’m hoping to be dismissed before parade days start; I’d rather go to the office and leave early than try to get home at five from Criminal Court in Midcity, which would probably require taking I-10/90, getting off at Tchoupitoulas, and doubling back from there with no place to park. Ah, well, this too shall pass, and as a crime writer, it’s always interesting to see how criminal court–or courts in general–operate up close and personal.

It’s gray outside, and rain is expected, which should put a damper on any and all parades today. There are no night parades, so technically I could make a grocery run after King Arthur ends, but I doubt I’ll want to be out and about at that time anyway. I do have all kinds of things to do today–I want to spend the morning writing and the afternoon reading, if at all possible. It’s always so nice to curl up in my chair with a blanket and read while it’s raining, you know? I like feeling snug and cozy; which is why I am so particular about sleep arrangements. Want to know something weird about me? I sleep with four blankets, because that’s enough weight to make me feel snug and comfortable. I have a soft wool one on the bottom and one really velvety soft one on the top. I need two pillows, always, and also need the ceiling fan on and a little personal fan on my nightstand going. Weird? Just a little bit. But I think we all have things that we do, little rituals, that bring us comfort and joy. Just me? Probably. I always default to me not being normal, I suppose; the product of my youth. Thanks, bully trash!

I did work on an essay yesterday a bit, one called “Try That in a Small Town.” I started writing it when the Jason Aldean nonsense happened last summer, because that “real America” bullshit has always, always pissed me off; and essentially has always been used to demonize cities–you know, the economic engines that fucking drive the country–and reassure provincial types who stay in rural areas that they are more important than the city dwellers. This of course goes back to the lies that were always told to encourage immigration when white people felt the need to “fill the continent” with white people while exterminating the natives. You can be free, you can own land and property, you can prosper because the government will leave you alone to do as you please and not restrict your freedoms. No, the rich people needed more consumers, and they also needed population in the “empty” territories to produce and buy. The United States has always been expansionist; even the Founding Fathers assumed more states would be formed out of native land, after they were pushed out. Anyway, I actually lived in a very small town in a very rural county in an underpopulated state for five horrible years–and I will dispute to my dying breath this notion that small towns are the “real America” (fuck you again and again with razor wire, Sarah Palin)…because everyone acts like they’re like Mayberry when they are really Peyton Place–horribly judgmental with lots of cruel gossip and backstabbing, and the sexual perversions of these “good meat-and-potatoes Americans” not even Grace Metalious could have dreamed up–and Peyton Place was nothing more than a novelization of things she witnessed and experienced in a small town. It always infuriates me, you know, to hear this “real America” shit. Try to make it without Chicago, New York, LA, Boston, and San Francisco. The fucking economy would crater in about two seconds. But…cities are usually Democratic strongholds, so they must be demonized, always.

And there’s the rain! I knew it was coming. It’s just a drizzle but it’s enough for the gutter to drip water on the cat enclosure just outside my laundry room–and it’s only raining on that side of the house. This happens here a lot–it can be raining on one block but not the next; one part of the city can be getting a flooding rain while it’s sunny and bright in another–but I don’t remember the last time it only rained on the other side of the house. New Orleans, always so bizarre.

It also seems that the American people are getting fed up with what’s going on in Washington, and they are starting to push back. I’ve progressed beyond FAFO, to be honest1; the danger to the country’s future is that strong that the mocking and pointing fingers and laughing and atonement can come after the threat has been overcome. I think this is the kind of lesson we needed to learn; we’ve always taken our system for granted and always assumed the government was stable and would hold–forever smug about governments toppling and falling in other countries while we remained stable. The problem is that stability was only achieved through horrific compromises…and human rights should never, ever, under any circumstance, be left to public or government whim. The seeds of self-destruction were planted in the Constitution with the compromise on enslavement. Senators used to be appointed by state legislatures, not the people. BUT it was also designed to be a living document, changed and amended over time to clear up inconsistencies and always, always, intended to protect the people from government overreach. I also agree with something I saw on social media yesterday–every elected official should be required to have regular town halls to meet with their constituents, and they also need to remember they were voted in to work for their district, not the president. Separate but equal branches of government means nothing when elected officials in Congress abdicate their roles for whatever reason.

And really, what is MAGA but the modern Confederacy? Yes, they are also Nazis…but remember–the Germans learned about how to deal with undesirable sub-populations by studying enslavement and Jim Crow. There’s your heritage, rednecks. You were Hitler’s blueprint. And weren’t plantations simply concentration/work camps with a nicer name?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning (or night).

  1. I’ve not, and never will, forgive MAGA voters, to be sure–just like I’ll never stop mentally dancing and pissing on Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s graves. But I can put that aside for now to overcome this threat. But there needs to be a reckoning–unlike after the Civil War and 1/6/20. ↩︎

Does It Make You Remember

It is impossible for me to express how much books have always meant to me, and how grateful I am, to this day, to my parents and grandmother for encouraging me to read. We’ve always been a reading family–but no one ever has read as much, or as often, as I did. One of my aunts called me “the readingest child I’ve ever seen”–and she was a librarian. Books made sense to me; the worlds I escaped into whenever I opened a book made sense to me, and none of the worries or cares of my childhood bothered me when I was lost in a book. I also loved history, and thus read a lot of it when I was a kid; the basic overview history classes I had were pretty easy for me because I already knew the history in greater depth than the textbook provided.

The Scholastic Book Fairs were always my favorite day every month, and I was always so delighted when my mom would let me order a few–never all the ones I wanted, because I really wanted them all–and it was even more exciting when I found one that was also set in a period of American history. Johnny Tremain remains, to this day, one of my all-time favorites, and when I was a kid, I wanted to write both a mystery series (like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew) as well as historical fiction.

One such book that stuck with me over the years–and didn’t have as big an impact on culture as Johnny Tremain, which won awards and was filmed by Disney–was Margaret Goff Clark’s Danger at Niagara, which was set on the US/Canadian border during the War of 1812 (which few people write about and is mostly forgotten today). A few years ago I was looking for the original hardcover of Johnny Tremain I had read as a child, when a copy of Danger at Niagara was recommended to me by the eBay algorithm. It wasn’t expensive, it was a library remainder, and I thought, what the hell and shelled out the less than five dollars including postage, and the other day while they worked on the ceiling, I reread its 120 pages.

Sorry for the not-clear cover image; my copy is a library discard and there are no clear images of this cover on-line; at least not that I can find.

Exhausted from a day of fruitless hunting, Homan Reed ate a cold supper of cornbread and milk. Hastily he banked the fire and then fell into bed, forgetting his loneliness and the ever-present danger from across the river.

He awoke at dawn, shivering under the heavy quilts, awakened as much by the silence as the cold. He lay still, listening. Gray morning light had come through the small panes of glass Uncle Oliver had carried all the way from Connecticut. A sound that usually penetrated the log walls of the cabin was missing–a sound that was part of the background of his life in this lonely frontier clearing in western New York State.

His hear began to beat too fast, and he sat up in bed, reaching for the buckskin breeches he had laid on top of the quilts. Homan was a good-looking boy, rather small for his almost fifteen years.

There really isn’t much to the story, really. Homan wakes up to realize he has slept through a raid on his little family farm, and their livestock is gone. His uncle brought Homan and his brother up here after their parents died, and his brother is off fighting in the American army in the War of 1812. The Reed place is right across the river from Canada–and of course, at that time Canada was the enemy. Putting myself into Homan’s place was exciting; trying to imagine what it was like to know that not only was the British army capable of crossing the river at any time, their Mohawk allies were also out and about and a constant threat. Shortly after the opening of the book, the American army burns a Canadian town and turns out women, children, the sick and the elderly out into the cold with no shelter or food; to the author’s credit, she makes it clear this is horrible and a war crime; Homan, who witnesses this from inside Fort Niagara (he’s gone looking for his brother and to try to enlist), is horrified and ashamed Americans could do something so heinous–and everyone on the American side of the river knows there will be retaliation and retribution.

As I reread this short book, I paid very close attention to what we now would call propaganda for American supremacy–and there was some, but not as much as I would have thought, and there was less problematic language than I would have expected for the time (it was published in 1967 originally). Yes, Clark refers to the Tuscarora and Mohawk peoples as “Indians,” as do the characters (which is what they would have said at the time, so historically accurate, if offensive) but she treats the natives with respect–no references to them not being human beings, or being savages or uncivilized or anything like that; Homan even has a friend his age from the Tuscarora people. The Mohawks are referred to as the enemy, but in the same way the British are. There are a few mentions of pro-American exceptionalism propaganda–things like “we are a growing power the world needs to respect”, that sort of thing that Americans have always believed and never questioned until the last few decades or so. But Homan is likable enough, and the story itself, of worrying about your safety and losing your home and so forth, resonates still, even if technically Homan and his family were colonizers.

I really do need to reread Johnny Tremain…

Now That The Buffalo’s Gone

I know very little about the culture, history, values, and faith of the native American population of this continent. Most of what I do know isn’t reliable; being gleaned from books and histories and television shows and movies and other media, most of which were steeped in racism and white supremacy, and cannot really be depended upon for any kind of accuracy whatsoever.

If anything, it should be looked at with a highly jaundiced and very critical eye.

I’ve been trying to educate myself more about the indigenous natives of Alabama, for example; as I delve more deeply into writing about my fictional Corinth County, I need to learn more about the area and the natives who originally lived there–and what they believed and their spirituality. I do not want to write–or even imagine– anything rooted in white supremacy and racism. I never played “cowboys and Indians” when I was a child–I was never into little boy things, ever–and was never terribly interested in Westerns, but was aware that white people wore thick make-up to play Native-Americans on film and television…which even as a child made me wonder why they didn’t just find Native-Americans who wanted to be in show business (because I found it incredibly hard to believe there weren’t any). I always assumed Cher was at least part Native because of “Half-Breed,” so you can imagine my shock and surprised to find out she’s actually of Armenian descent. The Village People had a non-native in native garb as part of their nod to gay masculine archetypes (probably this came from the book and movie Song of the Loon, plus decades of Hollywood’s sexualization of the loin-clothed Native warrior).

And as you get older, and do more reading and studying on the subject, you begin to see things that were plainly obvious all along, but somehow you never really connected the dots.

The first time I ever read anything that treated the native population with dignity, respect and understanding was James Michener’s Centennial*, which remains my favorite of his works and one of my favorite books of all time. The hit movie Billy Jack, which came out while I was in junior high school, was also about mistreatment of modern-day Natives by bigoted white people and their government, but I think the social message of the movie got lost in white tween boys’ fascination with Billy Jack’s fighting skills, because that was all they talked about. I don’t think I ever heard anyone ever say “It’s terrible how we treat the natives.” The late 1960s and 1970s began to see a change in how we see the native population, as well as the history of the European conquest of the continent–not everyone, of course, but at least with those who were trying to be better about racism and racial issues and the long history of oppression of the native populations.

I had heard a lot of great things about Stephen Graham Jones, a native American horror writer who has taken the genre by storm. I’ve been wanting to read him for quite some time, and so I decided to listen to The Only Good Indians on my drive to Panama City Beach and back this past weekend.

And it did not disappoint.

The headline for Richard Boss Rivs would be INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR.

That’s one way to say it.

Ricky had hired on with a drilling crew over in North Dakota. Because he was the only Indian, he was Chief. Because he was new and probably temporary, he was always the one being sent down to guide the chain. Each time he came back with all his fingers he would flash thumbs-up all around the platform to show how he was lucky, how none of this was ever going to touch him.

Ricky Boss Ribs.

He’d split from the reservation all at once, when his little brother Cheeto had overdosed in someone’s living room, the television, Ricky was told, tuned to that camera thay just looks down on the IGA parking lot all the time. That was the part Ricky couldn’t keep cycling through his head: that’s the channel only the serious-old of the elders watched. It was just a running reminder of how shit the reservation was, how boring, how nothing. And his little brother didn’t even watch normal television much, couldn’t sit still for it, would have been reading comic books if anything.

First of all, I want to address what a terrific writer Jones is–although this is hardly ground-breaking news. For me, the strongest part of the story was the authorial voice and the tone set by it. I can’t say whether something like this–like anything written by people outside of my own experience–is authentic or not, but it was completely believable. I truly got a sense of what it is like to be a Native-American living in North America in the present day; the mind-numbing poverty and dealing with the incessant racism from white people. His characters were three-dimensional and fully realized; the dialogue sounded right, the rhythm of the words he used to create a melody of syllables and sounds sang from the page. I felt like I was there in every scene, in the room with the characters and bearing mute witness to what they were experiencing, and what they were going through and experiencing, with the fully-realized life experiences coming into play with every word they said and every action, every thought, every movement. The deceptive simplicity of the prose was powerful and resonated; it sounded like poetry coming through my speakers.

I also found myself really interested in basketball–which is very unusual.

I also realized, as I was listening, spellbound behind the wheel of my car, that there was also commonality of human experience here; the poverty, the worries about money and the future and the bleakness of the helpless acceptance of despair–this is definitely a horror novel, but it’s also a stinging indictment of poverty and societal inaction in the face of it; their resigned acceptance of their fate mirrors the more callous resignation most people feel when thinking about poverty in these United States–“nothing I can do about it.”

While telling a strong story that is almost impossible to step away from, Jones also educates us cleverly with a sentence here and there–I’d never thought about where the term buck naked came from, and there are so many of these sprinkled throughout the book; terms and phrases that white people use without a second thought but come from a long history of racism and prejudice; the title itself is taken from the horrific saying “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” I myself am always careful not to refer to the native population by the colonizing name assigned to them by the lost Spaniards looking for spices; it was jarring hearing it over and over again, and made me a bit uncomfortable–but I suspect that was the entire point. (I think the worst was when the junior high school basketball prodigy Denora was thinking about playing a game against white schools, and the horrible signs and things their students yelled at her and her teammates–the one that was particularly offensive was Massacre the Indians!, which reminded of the trash Chicago Bears fans holding up signs when playing the Saints in the NFC title game after the 2006 season: “FINISH WHAT KATRINA STARTED!”, which turned me from someone with a nostalgic affection for the NFL team in the city where I spent most of my childhood into someone who wants them to lose every fucking game they play.

Massacre the Indians.

There’s no doubt in my mind reservation kids have to deal with this kind of bullshit all the time, and its embarrassing and infuriating at the same time. The cruelty is always the point.

But I digress.

I really enjoyed this book. I felt like reading it somehow helped me reach a better understanding of a situation I was already aware of, while being incredibly entertaining at the same time. I cannot state that enough: what a great experience this book was from beginning to end. The tension and suspense were ratcheted up with every chapter and sentence; the monster was terrifying and horrifyingly relentless, and the characters were all strongly rendered in both their strengths and their flaws.

When I finished the book, I couldn’t help but wonder if this book, and others by Jones, were being pulled from library shelves because reading them might make white people feel bad. The book made me remember again why controlling access to what anyone can read is about control more than anything; we can’t let people read diverse points of view or see opposing opinion is the underlying message of the banners, and quite frankly, grow a fucking pair already! Seriously, who is calling who a snowflake?

Read this book! You can thank me later. And now I want to read more of Jones’ work.

*Centennial may not have been historically accurate in its depiction of the Arapahoe tribe, but I feel that it showed how the US government broke promise after promise to them, and the depiction of their systemic extermination was not done in a “manifest destiny” way. The ugliness of the US and its racism was right there on full display.

Turn the Beat Around

Tuesday morning, came with no warning, of what was to beeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Heh, heh, couldn’t resist riffing on “Monday Monday”; I personally prefer Mondays to Tuesdays, always, quite frankly. Although as far as Mondays go, yesterday wasn’t a bad one. We had our usual flash flood warning/severe weather watch yesterday afternoon; and it did pour for a while, but by the time I got off work and drove home it was all over. Paul was working on a grant last night so i sat in my chair with the cat purring in my lap while I …didn’t really do much of anything. I cleaned the kitchen when I got home, wrote in my journal for a while, and watched some stuff on Youtube before we watched Hulu’s new show about life on an Oklahoma Native American reservation, Reservation Dogs, which was interesting. I wasn’t quite sure about the tone they were going for–it seemed like it was a comedy but perhaps a bit of a dark one? We’ll watch some more–the young Native actors were all appealing, and it’s an America I certainly have never seen before, or know much about (much to my own shame), but it was also nice to see a show about Natives written and produced and starring Natives–something pretty far overdue in American culture, to say the least.

College football looms, with all of its stadium super-spreader potential (sadly), and I am curious to see how this LSU team is going to do this year. Texas and Oklahoma have officially joined the SEC, effective 2025–so we have four years left of the SEC in its current iteration. I understand why the expansions have happened and why they feel they are necessary, but (and with no offense intended whatsoever to any of these schools) but it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around Arkansas, Missouri, Texas A&M, and South Carolina as SEC schools, let alone this latest addition of Texas and Oklahoma. Who knows what college football is going to look like in 2025? it will be interesting….if I live that long.

But I only have two more days of my work week left after today–yay for the long weekend they gave us–and next week will also be a shorter week. As my birthday is looming on the horizon, I am trying to slowly treat myself to things as little birthday gifts for myself; I scheduled an indulgence for myself this Friday–and I am also planning on getting phô at long last this Friday as well–and I think Friday might just be my Greg does nothing day this weekend. I have errands to run; Vietnamese noodles to get; and of course my indulgence. I may wind up spending the rest of that day just reading and kicking back around the house, saving the writing for the rest of the weekend. I have to get serious work on #shedeservedit at least underway that weekend, hoping to finish during the Bouchercon vacation week I now have (it’s so weird, I have all this time off from work around my birthday, but the birthday itself remains a work day–but taking the day off from work seemed a bit extreme given how much other time off I have this month, and Labor Day is also looming on the horizon) because I had promised to have it finished by the end of the month. It’s definitely do-able, don’t get me wrong–it’s just going to be a lot of work along the way.

Which is fine. Right now it seems intimidating, but every project seems intimidating before you start on it.

I don’t even want to think about how many projects I have in some form of development at the moment. Seriously. If it weren’t for the fact that ADHD medication wires you–which could affect my sleep–I’d seriously consider going on some. There’s another couple of them, in fact, that were sort of in suspended animation for awhile that are also going to be kicking into gear this fall….which could change my planned writing schedule for the rest of the year, so I am going to have to take a long hard look at everything and reconfigure and plan and so forth. Heavy heaving sigh. But this is a good thing, and it means that there will also be lots of writing and so forth to get done next year as well.

Running out of ideas and projects is never going to be an issue for me.

I am hoping to make it to the gym tonight for the first official Leg Day in a long time; I’m not going to overdue it (I do need to be able to walk tomorrow and climb stairs, etc.) but introducing new exercises is never an issue as long as it is done properly, and I think it’ll be easier to squeeze in a Leg Day in the evenings than it is to do upper body; everyone is always doing upper body (which explains their legs, LOL–YES I WILL ALWAYS SHAME PEOPLE WHO SKIP LEG DAY) it seems, which is part of the reason I decided to break the workout in two to begin with. By the end of the year I am hoping to have it to the point where each workout is specific: arms and shoulders; legs; chest and back, and that’s when the real changes to my shape will actually start to develop.

Of course, I could also start eating healthier…..HA HA HA HA. It had to be said, in fairness.

And on that note, I am going to dive headfirst into my Tuesday. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Love is a Catastrophe

Friday morning and I am home from work.

I got sent home yesterday; I started feeling bad on Tuesday afternoon, took a vacation day on Wednesday and got up yesterday morning to go to work. I felt terrible; dehydrated, exhausted, and some stomach issues I’d really rather not explain. I didn’t see how I was going to make it through the entire day, but of course, once I got to work they recognized that some of what I was experiencing could be COVID-19; so I was sent to get tested and then sent home to wait for the results to come back. This morning I am not as exhausted; I slept really well last night, but going up and down the stairs makes my leg muscles ache, and my joints are all achy, so today I am going to continue to try to take in as many fluids as I can–still dehydrated this morning–and rest.

Since I was so tired I decided to just sit in my easy chair yesterday and watch movies–the streaming services to the rescue! I watched the film version of Mary Stewart’s The Moon-spinners on Disney; they adapted it as a starring vehicle for a teenaged Hayley Mills, and thus had to make changes to the plot and story that didn’t really work as well as the original plot, plus having her be a teenager took away one of the main strengths of every Stewart story; the agency of the heroine. She was still pretty capable, but it came across as a watered down version of the kick-ass heroine I remembered from the book. But Crete looked absolutely beautiful.

I then moved on to a rewatch of Cabaret, which holds up really well. It’s a really chilling film, and visually it’s stunning; but the more times I watch the film the more I appreciate Michael York and Joel Grey, and the less impressed I am with Liza. Don’t get me wrong–she’s fantastic, and the musical numbers showcase what a powerful performer she is, but I don’t think she really brings as much depth and sadness to the character as is warranted; but she certainly has star power. I think that Sally is actually a rather sad character, and while Minnelli beautifully captures the vulnerability, the sadness isn’t really there…and I found myself not wondering, at the movie’s end, what happened to her from there on; which isn’t usually a good sign. But she probably didn’t wind up happily married with a brood of children, did she, and who wants to think about that?

From there I moved on to a rewatch of How the West Was Won, one of those sprawling epic pictures from the time when that was what the Hollywood studios churned out to compete with television. Even small parts have stars in it, and I remember watching this movie when I was a kid and being impressed by its sprawl and sweep. I decided to watch it again, partly because of the recent discussion about Gone with the Wind and its problematic depictions of the slave owning South, the Civil War, and its aftermath; so I wanted to rewatch this picture through a modern lens and as an adult. I remembered in the second half of the film there was a scene where a US Army officer, who negotiated with the natives (Indians, of course, in the film) being angry because the railroads kept breaking their promises–which was pretty progressive for the early 1960’s, and to see how that could be viewed through the modern lens. The movie doesn’t really hold up, plot-wise; it’s very cheesy and corny, but there are some good performances–particularly Debbie Reynolds–and Spencer Tracy’s narration is quite excellent. The scene I remembered was there, and plays very well through a modern lens; George Peppard in all his youthful beauty plays the officer. Just the title itself is problematic though; but this, you must remember, was how the white settlement of the western part of the continent was viewed: the west was won by white people. I suppose How the West Was Conquered doesn’t have the same ring, but “won” is essentially the same thing. Anyway, the story hinges on the Prescott family–Karl Malden, Agnes Moorhead, Carroll Baker, and Debbie Reynolds–setting out for the west and encountering the problems of the frontier as they go; mostly white people who prey on those moving west. The parents are drowned when their boat encounters rapids; Carroll Baker has fallen for James Stewart, playing a mountain trapper, and they decide to settle on the land where the parents are buried while Debbie Reynolds keeps going west, winding up in St. Louis, where she becomes an entertainer and eventually winds up in San Francisco. As an older, bankrupt widow she moves to a ranch she owns in Arizona, and invites her nephew (the George Peppard character) and his family to join her there…and so on. I think it was nominated for a lot of Oscars, primarily for its high production values and it was a big hit at the time…but yes, definitely doesn’t hold up.

Paul came home shortly thereafter, and we watched the finale of 13 Reasons Why, and the less said about that the better. The cast is appealing and talented, but the finale was so manipulative emotionally–it does work, by the way, because of the cast; I was teary–as was the entire season that it’s hard not to be angry. Plus there was some serious misinformation included…maybe I will post about it, but it needs its own entry.

And now I am going to go lie back down again because I am not feeling so hot again.

Happy Friday, everyone!