Month: August 2010

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I have been thinking of the movies of my childhood and “The Great Caruso” starring Mario Lanza came to mind when I thought about the flicks that have in some way “steered” my life. I first saw this film when I was around 9 years old and home from school for some reason and watching the afternoon movie on one of the three TV stations we could get with our rabbit ears atop our black and white Zenith. I had earlier discovered Caruso while listening to old Victrola records in my grandmother’s attic. I was in short, already in love with Caruso. If you haven’t seen “The Great Caruso” it’s really worth your time and a click with Netflix. Of course Mario Lanza had matinee idol good looks like the young Placido Domingo and Caruso did not. But Lanza has the voice and in some moments sounds eerily like Caruso. What’s clear is just how much Lanza loved the great tenor from Naples. And that’s what I love about the film: it’s a devotional study rendered in music of the joys of influence in art. In short the film is poetry. By God. We are once more in love.

S.K.

http://movieclips.com/watch/embed/to-kill-a-mockingbird-1962/scout-meets-boo-radley/0/94.636

Last night my sister Carol and her partner Michelle and my guide dog Nira gathered on the sofa to watch the classic film “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I was on that sofa too. It’s amazing how many people and creatures you can squeeze on an old couch at the summer house. But I digress.

It’s been many years since I last saw TKAMB or last read the novel by Harper Lee. I’ll bet the last time I read the novel was when I was in high school, or perhaps even earlier. So it’s been since 1968. I think that’s a pretty good guess. I was 13 in ’68. That was also the year I read “Animal Farm” and “1984” and the stories of Franz Kafka. I had to hold the books about an inch and a half from my left eye. Nowadays I can hold them three inches from my left eye. But I digress.

1968 was the worst year in American history if you discount 1861-65 or 1929-39 or 2010’s “Depression” which is still leaving some 30 million of our citizens unemployed, perhaps permanently, but I digress. I digress.

My sister (who is a physician) and I grew up in a disturbingly dysfunctional family. Our mother was outright scary though brilliant. Our dad was a highly successful college president but he was largely an absentee persona, leaving us to fend for ourselves with his terrifying wife. Although I owe much of my irreverence and nerve to my mother I also inherited from her a furtive and uncomfortable depression that segues with my vision impairment. Like tens of millions of Americans I work hard every day to navigate this depression with grace and candor and steadfastness. Who knows how far back our collective depressions go? Perhaps in ancient times depression kept you in the cave on days when going outside was statistically unsafe. Cheerful Ogg went out and was devoured by the saber toothed tiger but depressed Oog stayed inside on that day, probably licking the stalagmites for natural lithium. So Oog went out the next morning when the tiger was asleep.

Last night watching TKAMB I saw for the first time how the movie is about the capacity of children to stake a claim to a soulful and nurturing inner life against the backdrop of sinister adults. At 13 I understood it only as a story of racial intolerance and injustice. But watching it again with Carol and MIchelle and Nira I saw the remarkable individuated intelligence of Harper Lee who crafted a narrative of magic stones, sub-conscious empathy, childhood curiosities, and deep love and compassion. We are living in a time now when the these human qualities need as much narrative dispensation as they did in the 60’s. Post-modernity and political factionalism cannot take the place of brotherly and sisterly love. Of course. And yet, and yet, watching the film you feel it–a marrowed sense of loving’s urgencies and that Harper Lee’s summer long ago can get you right.

I want our troops out of there now!  I want the war over now! I want our troops to come home and the war to be over and all the women and children of Afghanistan to be safe from retaliation by the Taliban when they take over after we go and…

via lancemannion.typepad.com

The moral calculus for American troops to stay in Afghanistan is drawn rather clearly on Lance Mannion's chalkboard. Which is to say that the story is as muddy as Dick Cheney had hoped.

The following article comes to us by way of the Inclusion Daily Express. The full article is in the NY Times.

A School District That Takes The Isolation Out Of Autism
(New York Times)
August 2, 2010

MADISON, WISCONSIN– [Excerpt] Garner Moss has autism and when he was finishing fifth grade, his classmates made a video about him, so the new students he would meet in the bigger middle school would know what to expect. His friend Sef Vankan summed up Garner this way: “He puts a little twist in our lives we don’t usually have without him.”

People with autism are often socially isolated, but the Madison public schools are nationally known for including children with disabilities in regular classes. Now, as a high school junior, Garner, 17, has added his little twist to many lives.

He likes to memorize plane, train and bus routes, and in middle school during a citywide scavenger hunt, he was so good that classmates nicknamed him “GPS-man.”

He is not one of the fastest on the high school cross-country team, but he runs like no other. “Garner enjoys running with other kids, as opposed to past them,” said Casey Hopp, his coach.

Entire article:
A School District That Takes the Isolation Out of Autism
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02winerip.html

I am sitting in Sawyer’s Dairy Bar awaiting the delivery of my first lobster roll of the summer. The lobster roll cannot be had in Iowa. Waiting for this delicacy is almost as good as the thing itself for the delay strengthens my character. I still believe that there is modest hope for my character.

S.K.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I have come to New Hampshire where I was born for a three week stint of writing and daily swimming in Lake Winnipesaukee. My mother was from the nearby town of Laconia and I have come to the lakes region of New Hampshire since early childhood. I am lucky to own a cabin on one of the islands on Winnipesaukee and currently a construction crew is rebuilding my two decks that offer a view of the Ossipee Mountains. The old decks were badly damaged by snow and ice and had come to resemble the latter scenes in the movie Titanic, though without the screaming passengers and the brass band.

As soon as I got here yesterday afternoon my guide dog Nira jumped into the lake. And after lugging the groceries and suitcases up to the house I followed her example. As I swam for the first time this summer a dragon fly came and settled on my head. I swam carefully with my noggin out of the water so as to protect him or her, though what a silly thought, as if a magical insect that resembles a WW I bi-plane and has changed little since the Jurassic period should need my sentimental help.

S.K.