A Seat at the Circus

We’ve been playing in the dirt this weekend.  I put out some tomato plants and Bill got the beds ready.  Yesterday he spread new mulch under our front yard trees and bushes.  His work produced a pretty yard and mine, I hope, will produce good eats in time.

We come from a long line of gardners/landscapers, but we are reluctant participants.  Both of our fathers grew stupendous gardens.  His dad went for certain things, such as corn, cabbage, tomatoes, some pole beans and cucumbers.  My dad was a frustrated farmer with plenty of land and that great 100 ft. deep East Arkansas topsoil.  That stuff allowed you to set out a fence post one day and by the next morning, you’d have a whole fence.  My dad gardened tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and three kinds of beans.  Both dads were known to experiment and succeed with strawberries.

Oue mothers helped with the gardening, but canning was their specialty.  Both of them thought it was sin if a single lowly cucumber was wasted.  They gave away plenty of fresh vegetables during the growing season and froze lots of stuff too, but their kitchens hummed all summer long with the sounds and smells of food preparations for canning. 

This came from the Great Depression.  All four of our parents were marked by it.  They grew up during it and came of age while it was in full swing.  Some of them knew hunger on a personal basis, while the rest toiled to keep it from their door.  Their parents took in family and other kids without parents to keep them from starving to death.  Not put in a garden or put back food for the winter when you had perfectly good soil to do it?  Perish the thought!

My own parents didn’t get into gardening on a serious basis until all of their four kids were gone.  I guess there was too much to do otherwise.  But retirement brought a need to plant.  My mother who would rather visit an unknown foreign capital than anything else and managed to go to every continent except Antarctica, garnered some infamy around her hometown as a maker of ripe tomato relish.  It’s an interesting contrast, I think.

I asked her one time about the necessity of calling it “ripe tomato relish” rather than simply “tomato relish.” Are there really so many recipes for “unripe tomatoes?” I wanted to know.  ”You’d be surprised,” she informed me.

Although Bill and I wind up feeling like we’ve been run over by a stampede of oxen whenever we do outdoor work, I understand that other people feel the health benefits.  My own cousin, Butch, is one such person.  Butch, now in his 70s, used to live in California.  He suffered with a heart condition for many years.  About 15 years or so ago his doctor told him that he had to retire and spend as much time relaxing and enjoying the tiny bit left of his life.

Butch basically came home to Arkansas to die.  But a funny thing happened.  First, he wanted to landscape around his and his wife’s house.  Then he looked across the highway at my dad’s large, lush garden and started to plant stuff in competition with him.  They played Dueling Gardens until my dad’s death.  Afterwards, Butch kept it up.  His body responded.  He’s still got a serious heart condition, but he’s  around and having a good time.  He’s made that better by taking on baby-sitting chores for a great-grandchild.  The last time he visited his cardiologist, the doc asked him, “Butch, what are you doing different?  Your numbers are better than they’ve been since I’ve been seeing you.”

Butch responded, “I can’t think of anything I’m doing differently, except for baby-sitting a two-year-old.”  So the doctor wrote on his chart: “Improvement due to baby-sitting a two-year-old.”  That’s got to be one for the medical journals.

All I want out of this deal is some decent tomatoes this summer.  You sure can’t get any from the grocery stores, and even farmer’s markets have fallen into the bad habit of growing varieties that travel and transport better.  All I need is something tasty that I can transport from the yard into the kitchen.  That would be really sweet.

Never let it be said that my husband does not know how to show a girl a good time.  The other day he told me to “put on my gusset”, his term for the kind of dressing up that involves putting on shoes and a bra, and get ready to go on an adventure.  We have time for lots of these adventures these days.

So then he took me to Sheridan, Arkansas where we looked for sustanence before venturing farther in the Arkansas wilds.  Finding no suitable restaurants there, we had lunch at the deli of  The Mad Butcher, a grocery store chain.

Afterward, he took me to two of the finest off-the-beaten-track cemeteries in Grant and south Pulaski Counties.  Woo-hoo!

Actually, it was a pleasant day.  Bill has delved deeper into his family history since he retired.  Genealogy is not a sufficient word for what he does, but that is another matter.  Sometimes I tag along with him.  Sometimes he announces intentions to do something or go somewhere in pursuit of this history, and I have no inclination to accompany him.  That’s okay with him.

I got into my own family history in my 20’s and it led to discovery, planning and executing the weird funeral of a family member thirty years after his actual death.  There also was a ghost, as well as the possibility of real but never to be obtained riches.  I got out of that with my sanity intact and I’m not certain I’m strong enough to go through that again, especially at this age.

But if you are wondering what retired people do, this is it.  Also, sometimes we pick up and go to Hawaii or New York City on little notice.  Retirement is like that.  Sometimes you get Sardi’s and a Broadway play; sometimes you get The Mad Butcher and a couple of cemeteries.

I’m pulling the plug of my movie blog www.myreelopinion.  In fact, if you attempt to access it, I thank you very much, but “Tha, tha, tha, that’s all Folks.”

It became clear to me sometime toward the end of last year that as much as I continue to love movies, talking, and writing about them, that I’ve been derelict in my duties as a web logger.  While I have little trouble conjuring up blog material for A Seat at the Circus, there are times when I just can’t find anything I want to watch at the movie-plex, or on DVD, or on the Video on Demand that we subscribe to on U-verse.  Doesn’t seem fair to me to readers expecting to see regular reviews when I might not have watched anything I wanted to write about for a month or more.

Therefore, I let my blog site for movies run out on February 17, 2009.  Never fear.  I still will do reviews of movies that I love or hate.  They’ll just show up on the www.aseatatthecircus.com site. 

I’ve yet to report my end of the year Best Movie List, so here that is in no particular order:

1.  Milk: Gus Van Sant’s direction, the art direction and set design would have made this a stand-out film even if it didn’t contain Sean Penn’s wonderful portrayal of the assassinated Harvey Milk or Josh Brolin’s performance of Milk’s stressed-out assassin.  This is a fine film.  People who have extreme discomfort with homosexual characters or themes should steer clear of this one.  It’s for true grown-ups only.  I have done a full review of this film, which you can access at this site.

2.  Zodiak: This one really came out last year, but I caught it on Video on Demand.  It’s a taut psychological thriller with excellent performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr.  The plot follows a reporter and cartoonist for the San Francisco Examiner who are drawn into the web of a serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the l970s.  Scary as all get-out. 

3.  In Bruges:Another thriller, mistakenly identified as a black comedy.  Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy.  In Bruges has some funny lines and bizarre situations, but those who characterize it as a comedy saw a different movie than I did.  However, it is a well-directed, extremely well-acted film with a fresh plot.  Two hit men Colin Ferrell, the inexperienced one, and  Brendon Gleeson, the old pro, perform a hit on a priest with unintended consequences.  They are sent away to Bruges, Belgium to hide out by their boss, Ralph Finnes, they think until the heat blows over.  Things are not nearly so simple.  The cinematography is gorgeous and the script is justly nominated for an Oscar.  Ferrell proves himself to be a serious actor alongside the always excellent Finnes.  Gleeson has the less flashy part, but is the standout.

4.  Cadillac Records: The tale of Chess Records, one of its founders, Leonard Chess ( Adrien Brody), and it’s many artists, including R&B stand-out Etta James (Beyonce’ Knowles), Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), and a slew of right-on-the-money portrayals of bluesmen Howlin Wolf (Eammon Walker), Little Walter (Columbus Short), and Chuck Berry (Mos Def).  This is a well-put-together ensemble piece is well-directed by Darnell Martin and has  a fine soundtrack, probably the best of the year.  It made it to the top of a lot of good reviewers lists and didn’t even register with others or with the public.  They all are missing something.  We see the coming out of Beyonce as a true actress.  She gets the essence of James, and her version of “At Last” is the next best thing to Miss Etta’s original.  It was just about my favorite movie of the year.  Jeffrey Wright should have gotten a best supporting actor nomination for his performance as the complicated Muddy Waters.

5.  The Bank Job: A no-name cast drives this bank heist caper that starts fast and never stops.  The story follows a loose group of working class folk who decide to rob a bank and fall into something they aren’t expecting.  They walk right into the middle of a government cover-up involving Princess Margaret (yes, that Princess Margaret), a menage a trois, and some incriminating photographs.  They are over their heads and things turn south quickly.  But dumb luck and street smarts carry them farther than Scotland Yard, the prime minister’s government, or the royal family could ever imagine.  It’s no comedy, but it’s great fun.

6.  Standard Operating Procedure: An Errol Morris documentary about the scandal of Abu Ghraib Prison.  Stunningly, this wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar in the documentary category, but every American should be forced to watch it.  If you think you know everything about this blot on American history or who the real villains are, you’re wrong.

7.  Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: A Frances McDormand vehicle that Amy Adams tries to steal right out from under her.  McDormand is an old pro who dazzles in this story of a down-on-her-luck governess in England between the world wars.  Adams hires her to help her manage her hectic life with three demanding lovers.  The art direction and set design are impeccable, and the scenes between McDormand and Adams are a joy to behold.  They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

8.  Kit Kittredge: A story from the American Girl Doll series of books, this is a vehicle for child star Abigail Breslin, who makes the most of it.  Kit is a young girl from Ohio whose family is disturbed by the Great Depression.  She’s a budding journalist and tries to learn the trade and make a little money for the family coffers while her family’s fortunes dwindle like all the others around her.  It shows the stress placed on children and families during that awful period and the lengths to what people, both good and bad, will go to survive.  This is ostensibly a kid’s movie, but adults should be able to enjoy this ultimately uplifting story as well.  It doesn’t play down to children. The great supporting cast includes, Julia Ormand, Chris O’Donnell, Joan Cusack, and Stanley Tucci.

9.  W: Oliver Stone’s much anticipated tale of President George W. Bush.  I found it to be a much better movie than many reviewers did.  They seemed to seize on it’s less than stellar points rather than dismissing them as oh, so many did for The Dark Knight and others.  Maybe it was Stone fatigue or Bush fatigue, but this film is just chock full of good stuff, from Josh Brolin’s deft take on “W” and the spotless casting right down to the tiny parts, to the imaginative (and likely accurate) explanations of the 43rd president’s modus operandi.   Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, and James Cromwell as George H. W. Bush are right on target.  Ellen Burstyn gets the essence of Barbara Bush and Elizabeth Banks is very interesting as the enigmatic Laura Bush. Other stand-outs are Toby Jones as Karl Rove and Stacy Keach as the minister who presided over Bush’s “born-again” experience.  Most of what Stone brings to Bush’s story is public record stuff, but it’s an interesting take on things.  Brolin’s performance gives us a man who is both cocky and unsure of himself, cagey and out of his depth, unduly swayed by some whom he shouldn’t listen to and not swayed at all by some he should.  It’s a complicated portrayal of the man who presided over our recent history, and I really liked it.

And that’s it.  I couldn’t come up with ten to recommend out of a whole year of movies.  And that’s why I’m not doing a movie blog anymore.  Hope you’ll continue to visit this site for the occasional movie news.

Well, I can’t put it off any longer.  The Oscars Awards are presented on Sunday, so it’s now or never, as far as my predictions go. 

I approach this task with some sense of shame, because I haven’t seen all the nominated films and performances.  In truth, I’ve seen only two of the nominated for Best Picture of the year.  Two!  This is unheard of for me, and especially so for one who purports to review movies.

But there’s a good reason for this.  Very few decent, much less good, movies made it to the screen this year.   I found myself quite often talking with the spouse about going to see a movie and not being able to find one, not one, that we cared to invest the time and money in.  Something is seriously wrong in Hollywood to the point that one of the best reviewed and honored movies of the year is a Bollywood ripoff.  The independents did a little better than the Hollywood offerings, but not much.  It says something that some of my favorite movies of the year were actually released last year.  I’ll get to those in another blog.

But though I have been lax in actually viewing the nominated ones, I keep a keen ear out for what’s going on inside the culture.  I read reviews, listen to an inordinate amount of NPR broadcasts and podcasts, and talk with movie-goers, etc..  Part of the downside of this is that such knowledge can actually keep you out of the movie-plex.  But here we go anyway.

The Predictions: 

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz for Vicky Christina Barcelona.  She’s actually shown in the past few years that she can act.  Past Oscar history indicates that when a non-American gets nominated, especially in a female category, she’ll take home the prize.  I think it has to do with splitting the vote here at home.  The other nominees are Amy Adams for Doubt, Viola Davis for Doubt, Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler. 

I enjoy Adams in everything’s she’s in and figure her for a sure thing at a later date in a later movie.  Viola Davis’ turn as the mother of a possibly sexually abused student in Doubt has the makings of an upset, but she and Adams should cancel each other out.  I can’t speak to Henson’s performance or Tomei’s, but Tomei always puts in a knowing performance and could get the nod due to collective guilt over her being so dissed when she won for My Cousin Vinny.  This category is always the wild card in the deck.

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger.  No others need apply.  He was simply magnificent as the Joker in The Dark Knight.  It is an iconic performance for the ages.  People will be talking about it and watching it (and warning about it) in acting classes for all time.  As badly as the Academy hates to give the statue to deceased performers (Peter Finch is the only one to have won one posthumosly, for Network), the others may as well stay at home.  The others are: Josh Brolin for his excellent turn in Milk; Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thnder, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt; and Michael Shannon for Revolutionary Road.

One more thing about Ledger’s award, I must have been the only person on the planet who did not like The Dark Knight.  I thought it had good points, but coherance was not among them.  Ledger’s Joker sucked all the celluloid away from all other performers, and this included some heavyweights, such as Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Aaron  Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhall, and Christian Bale.

Best Actor: Mickey Roark for The Wrestler.  Roark’s back story of his own career demise and redemption, plus what evidently is a solid performance of a wrestler on the skids, will prove to be irresistable to voters.  Truly, I don’t see how anyone could have given a better performance than Sean Penn in Milk, but the Academy doesn’t like him.  It really, really doesn’t like him.  If there was ever any doubt about that, look only to last year’s remarkable Into the Wild, which Penn produced and directed.  It was a special film that Penn obviously took great pains with, and it showed in every frame.  He got zilch in respect from the Academy for that.  Besides, he already won a Best Actor for Mystic River only a few years ago, so he’s not due.  If you want a hint of how roundly despised he is, this is what I heard on NPR yesterday from an industry expert.  He said that Penn got an Oscar nomination for “impersonating a human being” in Milk.  Ouch.

Also in this category are Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Richard Jenkins for The Visitor, and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon.  Pitt is always good and might pull this one out, but I doubt it.  The film’s been criticised for being primarily a technical marvel and a replay of Forrest Gump.  Pitt deserved an Oscar for Babel, but he’ll probably have to wait a while longer for it like all pretty-boy great actors, such as Paul Newman or Sean Connery.

Jenkins was terrific in The Visitor, a small movie about a widower reluctantly being dragged back into life after he finds a couple of squatters in his New York apartment.  It’s a  moving gem of a film with terrific acting all around, and Jenkins carries the load.  He doesn’t stand a chance.

Langella is an actor whom I’ve both admired and cringed at.  I tried to go see Frost/Nixon, honestly I did.  However, I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to do it.  I lived through the Nixon era.  I saw every minute of the Watergate hearings, read All the President’s Men, as well as nearly every other thing written about Nixon and his henchmen at the time.  I watched the real Frost/Nixon when it originally aired.  And here’s the thing.  David Frost’s interviews with Nixon were not all that great when it happened.  It wasn’t a clash of titans, as the movie wishes us to suppose.  Plus,  the clips that I’ve seen of Langella’s performance look way over-the-top to me, and that’s hard to do with Nixon.  Langella should be forced into eternity to watch Helen Mirren’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.  She conveys the entire character of the queen with one turn of the head, one blink, and a stare into the camera.  It totally disintegrates Langella’s  blustery Nixon impersonation and overwrought vocal tics.

It looks to me that Roark’s a shoo-in.

Best Actress:  Kate Winslet for The Reader.  It’s her turn.  I haven’t seen either of her powerhouse movies this year, but it seems to be her year.  The others are Meryl Streep for Doubt, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married, Melissa Leo for Frozen River, and Angelina Jolie for Changeling.

Streep is always dangerous to other actresses.  She’s so good, always, that voters’ hands seem to voluntarily go to the box beside her name.  But she probably will not be able to beat Winslet for the sympathy vote this year.

Anne Hathaway is the dark horse.  She keeps getting better and better and got great reviews for a movie that got mixed reviews.  Now that she’s shown she’s really got the goods, she’ll be offered lots of heavy weight stuff over the next few years.  Like Winslet and Kate Blanchett.

Melissa Leo probably is pinching herself.  Her movie was so independent and small that it’s a wonder anyone saw it.  I hope she enjoys her Oscar experience.  Jolie is a movie star.  Not impressed.  The best thing I’ve ever seen her in was as a supporting player in The Good Shepherd.  She was terrific in that and proved that she could act, but she’s outclassed in this category by the others, even Leo.  We’ll no doubt see her nominated for nearly everything she’s in for several years, regardless of the quality of her performance.  It’s sort of like when Joan Crawford was the Queen of Hollywood.  Everyone may not like what she’s doing all the time, but they know she’s doing something.

Best Director: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire.  This one is a damn shame.  He’s getting all kinds of love from the Hollywood community for a flashy little film that doesn’t amount to much.  But Slumdog seems to be mopping up the honors, and Boyle is the responsible party.  Go figure.

The others: Gus Van Sant who did a marvelous job with Milk, David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ron Howard (his best days are over) for Frost/Nixon, and Stephen Daldry for The Reader.  This category this year seems indicate an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new attitude in the movie industry.  When Ron Howard is the old guy and Gus Van Sant seems to be headed that way, you know we’re on the cusp of big changes.

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire.  This one is a no-brainer and not because it deserves to be the best picture of the year.  The producers and director took a slight story and dazzled everyone with footwork.  To me, Slumdog is merely the extension of our amateur night (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars) culture… light on real substance and quality, heavy on the dazzle and quantity.

It’s a shame, because there’s a really good movie in this category.  It’s Milk.  Far more than the typical biopic, this movie recreates a time, a place, and a man and shows how they converged to form something important.  Penn’s performance as Harvey Milk, the first elected homosexual politician, and Gus Van Sant’s guidance through this remarkable movie are both eye-opening, horrifying, and uplifting.  The supporting cast is nearly flawless, especially Josh Brolin as the man who murdered Milk and the mayor of San Francisco.

I can’t speak for the other movies since I haven’t seen them.  Benjamin Button seems to have its admirers, but the detractors outnumber them.  Many are touting it as primarily a technical achievement, and it’s length kept a lot of people out of the theater.  I never could quite force myself to go see it when it was playing here because the whole premise just seemed so gimmicky to me.

Frost/Nixon doesn’t appear to have that many supporters, and The Reader got mixed reviews.  Don’t expect either of those to pull it out. 

 Of  course, every year the Academy fails to nominate some who should have been or doesn’t even offer a category for worthy work.  I hereby step up to that task with my own categories and winners.

Best Boy: Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire.  He is too winsome for words.

Best Love Story: The cross-species android romance between Wall-E and Eve in Wall-E.

Best Impersonation of Real People:  We have a trifecta. There’s Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters in Cadillac Ranch running against himself as Colin Powell in W., and Richard Dreyfuss in W.

Best Impersonation of a nasty-tempered, damaged, drug-addict: Beyonce’  as the nasty-tempered, damaged, former drug-addict but uniquely talented, Etta James, in Cadillac Ranch.

Best Impersonation of an Actress/Actor from a performer from another medium: Again, Beyonce for Cadillac Ranch.  If she keeps this up, she might actually become an actress.

Best Make-Up on an actor/actress making them a dead-ringer for a real person: Thandie Newton as Condolezza Rice in W.  I even liked her performance, although I was in the minority.

Best Attempt to Portray a famous person as a real person: Josh Brolin as George W. Bush in W.  He does a great job in what could have been a cartoonish role.

Funniest Character in an Intentional Comedy: Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, the amoral, over-sexed rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  He’s wonderful and if this performance wasn’t a fluke, then we should see much more of Brand.

Left Out Entirely for No Good Reason: Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, Kristen Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You for so Long, Francis McDormand for Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Josh Brolin for his W. role.  He was good in Milk, but outstanding in W.  Left out in the cold was Jenny Lumet, daughter of veteran director Sidney Lumet and granddaughter Lena Horne.  Her screenplay for Rachel Getting Married brought her into the big time.  Something must be in those show biz genes.

Go pop the popcorn and settle in for the big night.  I’ll try to stifle the yawns and hang in there for the whole shebang.

Okay, let’s everyone who cares anything at all about movies take a deep breath.  Praise for the Danny Boyle-directed independent movie, “Slumdog Millionaire” is cresting right about now.  It won the Golden Globe for Best Picture and has just been nominated as one of the five best movies of the year for Academy Award Best Picture.

It isn’t.  Nope, and I don’t care how many critics rave over it or awards it wins.  It just isn’t. 

To clear matters up a bit, it is a pretty good movie.  In fact, it is a very good movie, if you don’t mind images of people being set on fire, or children being starved or hacked up so that they can make more as beggars or having to crawl through poop.  That is a very big “if” for me and lots of other people, but obviously others don’t mind or see this kind of thing as proof of grander themes at work.

I think I saw a different movie than they did.  This film, for all of its pretentions otherwise, is a simple rags-to-riches/undying love story.  “Slumdog Millionaire” tells the story of a desperately poor young boy forced to grow up in the unforgiving streets and slums of India’s cities.  He and his older brother are orphaned when their mother, a Muslim, is killed before their eyes by maurauding Hindus. The youngest boy, the sensitive Jamal, befriends a young girl, Latika, who loses her parents and home in the same brutal riot. 

All grown up, Jamal gets by the luck of the draw to appear on the Indian television version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.  Through a series of flashbacks as Jamal is shown being questioned by the show’s emcee, the viewer learns of Jamal’s horrific previous life and his love for Lakita, whom he loses for a time (big surprise). Each correct answer Jamal knows is painstakingly laid out during the flashbacks as proof of how a simple boy of the streets could possibly have known the answer to each question.

It’s a clever device, and one of the big plusses of the movie.  Other plusses are the appealing actors who play Jamal (Dev Patel) and Lakita (Frieda Pinto ).  Patel, in particular is quite a good actor and convincingly conveys courage, desperation, and yearning for Lakita.   Pinto doesn’t have much to do other than look beautiful, which she does quite well.  Hers is the kind of beauty that Penelope Cruz can only wish for.  Dev Patel is pretty cute too.  He is a dead ringer, other than being Indian, for the young man who accompanied me to my senior high prom, so he endeared himself to me the first time he appeared on screen.

Acting kudos also go to Anil Kapoor as Prem Kumar, the Indian answer Regis Philbin.  Kumar is charming, manipulative, crooked, ego-centric, and thoroughly smarmy.  Those of us who can’t bear to watch Philbin, will have he same trouble with  the character Kumar.  Madhur Mattal the eldest actor of the three  who portray Jamal’s morally challenged but survival savvy brother also has good acting chops.  He is quite believable as the cruel gangster that you can’t bring yourself to dislike or wish ill to befall. Two younger actors play both Jamal and Lakita as younger children and they each have appealing screen presences.

The direction is tight, as is the editing, though I got very weary of all the jump cuts and extreme close-ups.  The cinematography is better than average.  I do have a quibble with the cinematography though.  I don’t know how one goes about making all of colorful India so drab, even the shots that one knows had to be made to show the beauty of the countryside.

So, if it has all of that going for it, why don’t I think it’s not any better than I do.  I mostly blame this on the director, Boyle.  He doesn’t seem to know when to let up.  It’s not enough to show how filthy Mombai is and how desperately poor or how violent that can be for its denizens, he has to rub our noses in it.  There are seemingly no people of good heart that cross Jamal and Lakita’s path.  A potential benefactor who cons the kids into coming with him to his “orphanage”  while they are picking thrugh a garbage dump, turns out to be looking for kids who he can maim and turn out as beggars.  We are treated to a scene in which he directs an underling who removes the eyes of a young girl with a spoon.

This same villain hangs on to Lakita so that he can turn her out for another profession.  Unbelievably, Jamal and his brother find Lakita and rescue her on the very night that she has been sold as a virgin to the highest bidder.  Lakita slips through Jamal’s fingers again only to turn up later as a servant/concubine of yet another disreputable character. There are way too many of these scenes throughout.

Also unbelievable are the scenes in which Jamal is tortured by local police who are attempting to get out of him how it was that he “cheated” his way to the top rung of the quiz show.  After days of beatings, electrical shock, etc., Jamal convinces the police chief of his innocence and he returns to the quiz show, with a smooth, unbeaten face and does not call out the emcee who set him up.  Come On!

This is all fairy tale stuff.  There’s lots of violence, but nary a drop of blood. There’s the implication of sex, but nothing truly convincing that it is taking place.  But Boyle subsitutes blood and true realism for excrement.  This seems to be a theme of Boyle’s. One of the most famous gross-out scenes in all of moviedom was in his “Trainspotting.”  The man displays an infantile preoccupation with poo-poo.  The scene in which the young boy Jamal crawls out of a locked (by his brother) outhouse and chases a movie star for his autograph, is just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen on screen.

So is this the new way to grab the audience’s attention?  Are we all now so innoculated against shock from violence and sex that this is the last frontier?  How did he pitch the movie?  “I tell you boys, this one is a real grabber.  The violence is merely suggested because you don’t see any real blood.  The sex is suggested, although plenty is suggested.  But I’ve got a scene that will have them heading for the exits to throw up.”

I’m not having it.  From here on out, let all moviemakers take note.  If I know ahead of time that there’s a scene depicting excratory functions, and this includes vomiting on camera, I won’t give you my money or my presence.  If I learn about it after I’m in the theater, I’ll leave and demand my money back.

Mostly I found the whole picture to be unnecessary.  It didn’t tell us anything new.  We know that India is desperately poor.  We know that people there, especially children, are brutalized and forced to live in appalling conditions.  We know that the so-called civilized world, such as America and others exploit people desperate for a living of some kind.  If that is the kind of movie that the producers wanted to make then they could have done better by going the documentary route and not with a modern day fable. 

I didn’t buy the whole premise, not for a minute.  And I can’t believe that so many in Hollywood did.

One thing that I did like about the film was the scene that ran over the credits.  Now this was truly charming, clever, and well done.  The two young principals in the cast led hundreds, or maybe it was thousands, of people in dancing a Thriller-like line dance at a train station.  This was actually filmed in a bona fide Indian train station while it was shut down between the hours of 2 and 4 in the morning.  This thing is a delightful masterpiece of choreography, direction, and timing.

If the whole movie had been like that, then it might have made my Top Ten picks of the year.  But it wasn’t and it won’t.  If you want to see a really good movie about India, then rent Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi,“  David Lean’s “A Passage to India,” or the PBS series, “The Jewel in the Crown.”  All of those are memorable. I, for one, won’t remember “Slumdog Millionaire” by the middle of next week.

Rating: B-

Ya’ll knew this one was coming.  This was a must-do blog.  I mean, how could I not mark the inauguration of the first African-American President of the United States?

It was epic.  It was riveting.  It was the most significant inauguration of a president since George Washington’s.  

I do not believe this to be hyperbole.  Think about it.  Washington stepped in as the very first president of our very young country.  We could not have been more vulnerable, hopeful, or ignorant about how to construct a new nation.  All of the presidents afterward, till now, were just also-rans. 

The other presidents had different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, viewpoints, political affiliations, and challenges.  But they all were white guys, with a mostly privileged white man’s outlook on the world and a white man’s sense of entitlement.  And nobody can do entitlement like a white man.  This one we just got rid of was the King of Entitlement.  No wonder he made hash of governing.

Who but the newly minted Barack Obama came in to the office of President with a totally new sensibility due to his race?  It is not just a new day, it is a new world.

I  waited until tonight to write my impressions of yesterday’s historical events because I was too busy watching them and being overwhelmed by them yesterday.  I needed time to process.  I watched every second of the television coverage from 11 a.m. Central Time through the ninth of the tenth or eleventh ball that the Obamas attended and danced at.

There are lots of impressions. Watching Obama prepare to walk into history, I was struck with how composed, confident, and graceful a man he was.  He was pleasant and inclusive with each person he greeted, but there was no silliness about him.  One could watch him closely for long periods of time without being uncomfortable or worrying about what manner of goofy thing he was going to do to embarass the country or diminish the proceedings.  What a change.

As the inaugural platform filled up with VIPs and invited participants, I noticed a barely contained jubilant feeling among those on the platform.  It was not contained at all in the crowd covering the mall.  It was wall-to-wall euphoria from the Capitol Building all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. 

I’ve watched a lot of inaugurations in my lifetime.  The first that I remember was the Kennedy Inauguration.  I’ve seen all of them since then, wouldn’t miss one, but I never saw this kind of investment or pure, unrestrained joy by so many people.  I don’t even remember seeing that many people at a political or historical event before.  And if preliminary numbers are correct, there never has been.

I knew that this wouldn’t be a typical “handing over the reins of power” when George W. Bush was announced and walked into the sunlight to his seat on the podium.  There was audible booing.  It was not the kind of booing that one hears at sporting events, in which single partisan observers of a team vent rage or disapproval.  No, this was something different, something I’ve never encountered before.  This was a low rumble that grew as people joined in unison and rippled all the way up and down the Mall.

It must have taken the clueless George a few moments to realize that he was the target of all that negative opinion, but he eventually did.  He sat down quickly and his face froze into that exasperated smirk that he wears when something doesn’t go to suit him. 

Now this is amazing.  We are not a people who boo our outgoing presidents.  We sometimes just wish they’d go away, but we generally are polite, if distant to those who have displeased us.  To boo an outgoing president, while he technically is still the president, is unheard of.

So much for Bush’s distain for polls and his seeming lack of knowledge about how the public feels about him and his policies.  For once, he had to sit in front of the country and take it while a lot of his country’s people vented their displeasure.

The mood changed when Barack Obama came in and took his seat.  This is to be expected.  He’s got a mandate and he’s got a clean slate.  So far, he hasn’t done anything to anger his constituents, except for those who hate him because he’s black and/or a Democrat.

Jumping over the program to Obama’s speech, I must say that it was not a gracious speech.  No, he called George W. Bush and his administration out, much like it’s done in some churches.  He didn’t mention any names, but one would have had to have been a total idiot not to know to whom he referred when he talked about failed policies and programs and personal failures.

And speaking of that, it took Number 43 a while to figure that out.  His expressions varied between Frat Boy smirk to fading of attention until the “amening,” cheering crowd broke through his inattention and he suddenly became aware that his administration and policies were being disapproved of in his presence.  And there was nothing he could do about it but sit there and take it.

If George was clueless, his daughters weren’t.  Video and photographs taken of the twins, Jenna and Barbara, during this portion of Obama’s speech show that first Barbara, then Jenna appeared to be shocked.  Then they whispered to each other as if saying, “Is he talking about Daddy?!”  They looked on with disapproval and concern for awhile before W. caught on.

Both Bill and I commented that these were the most untactful remarks that we had ever heard in an inaugural, and Obama is known for his tact.  We were stunned at the pointedness of the comments.  But we agreed that it didn’t hurt Bush to hear them.  Everyone in the country except for that roughly one quarter that still accepts everything he says as the gospel and George W. Bush himself knows that he’s ruined the country.  Ruined it.  It will take decades, a great deal of luck and hard work, and perhaps an entire generation to straighten it all out.

The chances that the man will ever suffer a day in his life or be brought to justice for any of his many missteps, mistakes, overreaching horrible decisions, or crimes are slim.   It wouldn’t hurt him and sure would help a lot of us if he was forced to sit in front of a bunch of us and learn once and for all that “We don’t like you, George.  We really, really, don’t like you.” Now take that back to Texas with you and live with it.

Other impressions: Can’t anybody from the outgoing administration get anything right?  Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts gave the oath of office to Obama.  It wasn’t a big job, but was an important one.  Just get up, say or read less than 40 words in the right order, and let the incoming president repeat them.  Roberts, this leading legal light heading up the Bush Court, flubbed it.  Flubbed it so bad that some thought that Obama flubbed it. 

The fools that write the editorial in my statewide paper reported that both men messed it up.  Not so.  Roberts has such a high opinion of his intellect that he came out without notes and proceeded to recite the oath in the wrong order.  Obama started, then stopped because he recognized it wasn’t correct and attempted to give Roberts the time to correct himself.  When it was obvious that Roberts either didn’t know what he’d done or didn’t know how to fix it, Obams started to recite the oath from his own memory.  Then Roberts talked over him, confusing both of them.  Finally, Obama repeated the oath as Roberts initially said it.

It was pitiful.  Also worrying because we all know that the conspiracy theorists were already onto this as the reason Obama was not truly the new, legal president.  Although according to law, Obama was already the new, legal president at the stroke of noon whether he took the oath of office or not.  But the verbal mix-up was discomfitting.  This morning they had a do-over.  Justice Roberts dug out his robes and came to the White House and he administered the oath to President Obama again, in the Map Room, in order to remove all doubt that he was the true, legal president.

Can you imagine this?  A do-over of the Oath of Office.  Come on! Obama was right in voting against Roberts’ confirmation to the Court.  The whole Bush administration and his appointments seem to be the “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

A definite visual spectacle on the podium yesterday was the estimable Aretha Franklin.  I definitely agree with singer/musician Melissa Etheridge, also on the podium as possibly an antidote to the Rev. Rick Warren, that when you’ve got an event as historic as yesterday’s inauguration that you need you some Aretha Franklin.

Aretha Franklin is my main woman.  I pretty much think she can do no wrong when it comes to art and entertainment.  And sure enough, she tested that with her inauguaral ensemble.  She downplayed the thing with grey, but topped it off with a huge grey bow with a hat attached.  The hat was a show-stopper.  I can imagine Aretha after the call that she got inviting her to sing.  Immediately after, she had to say to herself or whomever else was around, “I’m doing Barack’s inauguration.  I’ve got to get a new hat.”  What the hat said was, “I’m invested.  I’m here.  Back up and let me sing.”

All in all, it was not as big a fashion mishap as the one I saw Aretha wearing on television back in the early 70’s.  On some show, she showed up and performed in a dress that looked like a bright yellow chicken suit.  Well, we can’t expect our performing national treasure to be perfect in all things, I suppose.

Miss Franklin, who I’ve heard twice in person and wonderfully, was not in her best voice.  She had very little power and it seemed as if she almost croaked a lot of the notes.  We won’t hold it against her.  As Melissa Etheridge explained, “Nobody can sing in that kind of cold weather.  Outdoors is bad enough, but under frigid conditions the lips don’t want to move and the vocal chords all but freeze.

It was a tough gig, but Re’s a pro.  She’s also her late father’s daughter.  The late Reverend Claude Franklin was a confederate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Aretha, herself, was friends with both MLK and Coretta Scott King.  She sang at Dr. King’s funeral.  Miss the inauguration of the nation’s first black president or plead the inability to perform due to inclimate weather?  Not a chance.  She showed up, she r’ared back, and she let fly.  We were all the better for it.

The biggest impression I took away from the day was the crowd reaction.  Everyone seemed so well-behaved, so grateful, so moved.  For many, it seemed not only a dream come true, but possibly the best day of their lives.  When nearly two million people show up to witness an event and millions of others gather in halls and living rooms and public places around TV sets to “take part,” then it is a wondrous thing indeed.

I’ve talked with several people, friends and strangers and mere acquaintences in the past few days about the goings-on.  The reactions are uniformly encouraging.  Even the folks I know who are vehemently on the other side wish for Obama’s success.  They know we need him to be successful and our future depends on it.  But mostly, they are just charged up and happy to have witnessed a wonderful thing in our collective history.

We all seem to be feeling good about ourselves and our country, for the first time in….well, maybe since the moon landing.

I watched every broadcast and cable channel that carried the festivities throughout the day.  I thought all commentators seemed restrained, objective, and some even uplifted by what they were reporting on.  Even Fox News behaved itself while I watched. 

Juan Williams spoke on one channel, I can’t remember which one now.  Williams is a well-spoken, highly respected reporter with many gigs.  As I watched him discuss his impressions of the day, he began to weep.  Of course, as a black man, how could he not?  How could he not watch the faith the whole nation just put into one of his race after what he has seen people do to others like him in his lifetime.  How could he not remember his parents, grandparents, and others who fought and died to bring them to this moment.  Juan Willliams cried like a baby, but he kept reporting.

Maureen Dowd had an interesting column entitled “Exit the Boy King” in today’s (Jan. 21, 2009) New York Times.  It concerned the focus of the Mall crowd on George W. Bush’s exiting helicopter ride over the city.  She wrote that she had never witnessed anything like the total attention the multitudes gave to the lifting of the helicopter and the intense following it with all eyes until it was out of sight.  She wrote that those she talked with and listened to were dead set on making sure that he actually left…and had no intention of returning.

I noticed this myself, watching it on television from the confines of my home.  The television cameras homed in on the departing helicopter carrying the ex-president and followed it till presumably it left the D.C. air space.  I watched it intently, willing it back to Texas or foreign soil, whichever was most likely to keep him away from Washington the longest.    One sound picked up was the singing of that in-your-face anthem sung to losers in athletic contests, “Na, Na, Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Good-Bye.” 

It might not have been in good taste, but somehow it seemed entirely appropriate.

As a footnote, I should mention that before the Obamas stepped out for their parade, Obama did a little official business at the White House.  He signed papers that called for immediate transparency in government.  One directive stopped all criminal procedures involved with the inmates at Guantanamo Bay until his administration can review them (this should stop the torture, rendition, and secret trials) , one stopped all agencies from proceeding with any policy until his administration can review (this should take care of the rape of new federal lands), and the other involved stoppage of any of Obama’s incoming personnel from participating in future lobbying of profitting from their government positions with future civilian work (this would prevent anyone like Dick Cheney ever being able to work in government).

Those are amazing changes indeed. 

This has been a great day.  It’s hard to express why that’s so.  It’s not that anything in particular has occured on this day that has produced such a generalized feeling of optimism and well-being, not just for myself, but for so many others that I’ve encountered today,  but there it is.  The feeling is palpable.

Yes, it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  That is a significant day for most African-Americans every year.  But for even the rest of Americans who are sympathetic to their cause and respectful of the man for whom the day is named, it is not something that we usually focus on.

This is different. Tomorrow the first African-American in history, all of American history, will be inaugurated.  Barack Obama’s big date with history converged today with MLKing Day in a way that brings a sharpness of awareness on how far we have come as a nation and a people.  It’s there for everyone who wishes to see and feel.  It is not under the surface.  It is out there.

I’ve been surprised at how happy I’ve felt recently.  I’m waking up in a good mood and generally staying in one the entire day.  I’ve known why.  We are about to get rid of George W. Bush and his gang.  I have been invested in Obama’s election and looking forward to seeing what he can do to bring the country out of the morass of the past eight years.

But today was special.  As I went about my chores outside the house, to the drug store, the grocery store, and to pick up a sandwich at one of the local restaurants, I was met with people on the verge of giddiness.  It was heart-warming and astonishing.

It started at the drug store where I noticed that many of the people I encountered were more cheerful than normal.  The atmosphere was brought into sharp relief at the grocery store.  I noticed that many kids were in the store with their parents, all of whom seemed to be getting the fixings for a party or some kind of bigger than usual celebration.  Many of the black people I encountered were all smiles.

As I checked out my groceries, I asked the young black woman who was checking me out if she was having a good day.  I don’t normally go about my daily rounds asking this question of people, but today it seemed appropriate.  The young woman looked up at me and gave me a half-hearted, “Yeah.  I guess so.”

I was startled, as was the older black man of about 50 who looked with surprise in the direction of the checker.  He said nothing, but I forged ahead.  I asked her if she wasn’t just the least little bit excited about the inauguration tomorrow.  She sighed and said, “I suppose.  I have to go to class tomorrow, so I probably won’t see it.”  I thought that only horrible personal news or a a bad attack of cramps could account for such a reaction or excuse.

The sacker helped me out with my groceries.  We had hardly cleared the store doors when he said to me, “Well, I’m excited.  And I’m going to find a way to watch tomorrow if I have to bring a TV from home to work with me.”  Then, mentioning the young checker, he continued, “Some of these young folks….they just don’t know.”

I agreed with him and said that the fact that she so off-handedly mentioned that she’d be in a college class tomorrow was evidence that much of the struggle had eluded her.  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” I told him. 

It was a strange conversation to have with someone that I’d just encountered at the grocery store, but we walked the rest of the way to my car in the sunshine, both of us with big smiles on our faces.  We wished each other a good day today and tomorrow, and it wasn’t perfunctory.  Both of us truly meant it.

The happiest person I met all day was at the drive-thru at the local Schlotsky’s.  He was a young black man, probably still in his twenties.  He flung open his window at the drive-through and questioned if I was enjoying “this beautiful day.”  I was.  His smile and mood could have lit up three blocks around us in a snowstorm. 

I asked if he planned to watch the inauguration on TV tomorrow and he said, “We don’t have a TV to look at back here.”  Then he turned around to whomever was back there with him and yelled, “Hey!  We need to bring us a TV in here tomorrow so we can see everything,”  There were calls of agreement coming from beyond the drive-thru window.  He handed me my order and wished me a wonderful day in the most sincere, enthusiastic way I’ve ever had it wished to me.

If Obama’s coming into office and Bush’s leaving it can make people feel like that for just a couple of days, then his election is worth it.

Figuring in to all this good feeling is the successful ending to the miraculous landing of the USAir Flight 1549 into the Hudson River in New York City.  When that plane ditched successfully into the Hudson late last week with the rescue and survival of all on board, the country seemed to experience a nationwide euphoria.  It appeared to me that the reaction went beyond the ordinary “Whew!” that is experienced when disaster is averted.  Everyone who witnessed what happened on television seemed to be riveted.

It was a dramatic situation, to be sure, but I thought it went beyond that.  I thought that everyone was overcome with gratitude, for the pilot, for the crew, for the waterways workers and the boat operators of the civilian Circle Line tours, for the Coast Guard, for the passengers themselves who from reports seem to have behaved themselves in ways that insured their survival and that of the others on board.

Do you know how rare a thing that is?  Ordinary people did the right thing.  And they did it in unison.  When is the last time you saw that happen?

I don’t know about you, but I know how I’d be inclined to behave if I had been on a plane that just ditched in the frigid river.  If you got through that, then there would be the plane quickly filling up with water to contend with.  Then standing on a wing in the middle of that river and trying to keep your balance and stay there while waiting on rescue boats to show up, all while standing ankle to knee-deep in near-freezing water and temps….well, the mind boggles.

I probably would have panicked as soon as I heard the pilot utter the words, “Brace yourselves….”  Not really.  I usually hold together pretty well during an actual crisis.  It’s immediately after the crisis that I fall apart.  I could see myself as the woman who panicked and fell off a rescue boat back into the river after she was safely aboard the boat. 

But the whole thing was amazing and everyone seemed to embrace the successful outcome as “our” victory.  I think I know why.  It’s been awhile since we’ve had a good one.  Maybe we can, individually and collectively, do something right again.  Maybe we’re not such a nation of screw-ups.  Maybe ordinary people can jump in and do the right thing while we’re waiting for the “professionals” come in and try to sit things aright.  It’s been some time since we’ve seen even the pros handle things so well.  Remember the FEMA response during Katrina? Maybe we’ve turned a corner. At least that’s what I and some others I know have been thinking.

As an aside about Flight 1549, I’ll relate an incident that happened to me and my sister the day after the plane landed in the Hudson.  My younger sister, Camille, has been undergoing treatment for leukemia.  She is responding well, but the whole episode has been a shock to her, our family, her coworkers and her vast network of friends and acquaintances.  Camille knows a lot of people and she’s friends with most of them.

One of the things she’s had to do since her diagnosis is to go in periodically for the dreaded “bone marrow draw.”  I don’t know what this procedure is officially called, but that’s what we call it in our family.  It is as odious as you might imagine, although Camille has been a real trouper through both procedures she’s endured to this point.

Camille, her son, and I were in a little cubicle in the outpatient treatment center of the hospital last Friday.  She was recovering from having just had the bone marrow procedure.  Camille was groggy from the conscious sedation she had been administered.  She kept drifting in and out of sleep, would speak coherantly to us when her eyes were open, but would drift back to sleep whenever she wasn’t talking.  My nephew and I were a little concerned about the low blood pressure that she’d been exhibiting.

Once she opened her eyes and said, “Hadn’t been a great day, huh?”  I answered, “It could be worse.”  “How?” she wanted to know.  I told her, “We could be standing on an airplane wing in icy water up to our knees in the middle of the Hudson River.”  Camille started to laugh and agreed that yes, that would be worse.  In short order her blood pressure leveled out and we were soon ferrying her home.

It’s been that bad the last several years.  We have been in the middle of a river teetering on an airplane wing…on a cold day in the middle of winter.  Not a bit of it has been fun and it’s all been as deadly dangerous as it sounds.  But on that day last week the grown-ups were in charge.  I’m taking that incident as proof that politically, they are again.  And boy, do we need that.  It’s enough to make a person euphoric. 

I had one of those odd cultural moments this afternoon.  Maybe this could only happen in Arkansas or the Bible Belt or California, which seems to be struggling with its own identity lately.  But I thought it was both weird and telling, always an interesting combination.

Paisley and I went to the movies this afternoon.  She hasn’t been working the past couple of weeks, and landed a job yesterday, so it was both a celebration and a relief thing.  We got a couple of burgers and went to a movie.

There’s a lot of note to see right now, so we discussed our choices.  We finally decided that both of us wanted to see Milk more than any of the other possible Oscar contenders at the multi-plex at the moment.  The movie has gotten almost uniformly rave reviews, with Sean Penn being touted for another possible Oscar for Best Actor.  I’ve been writing a semi-regular blog over the past year and figured that I needed to get on with it to finish my Oscar potential blog.

We knew that Milk was about Harvey Milk, the San Francisco politician and community organizer, the first gay person elected to public office in the United States, who was murdered by a fellow supervisor on the city board that regulated San Francisco.  The subject matter of the film was not a secret.  Besides the fact that I was alive and aware when the murder of Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone happened, I’ve read a book about the incident and have seen the excellent documentary about the subject.  There’s been advertising for the movie on TV, there have been newspaper reviews, information about the picture is all over the Internet, it’s mentioned on everyone’s best of year lists and all the prognostications for the Oscars.  The plot and subject matter are clear.

I mention these things because of what happened in the theater.  Going in to the theater, I said to Paisley, “We’ll probably have this showing to ourselves, because who besides us would go on a Thursday afternoon to see a movie about a gay politician who was murdered in the l970’s?”

Not many.  There was one other couple there when we went in.  They looked to be a man and woman in their late 60’s or early 70’s.  Paisley and I sat on the row behind them, off to the side.  Two other couples, a male and a female each, came in just before the feature started.  One couple sat right up front, while the other sat at the very back on the row behind us.

The movie starts with Sean Penn, as Harvey Milk,  sitting at his kitchen table dictating into a tape recorder.  He says that the tape is to be released only in the event of his death by assassination.  So if you were totally ignorant of history, that blew the plot wide open right there.  But what Milk is doing is reconstructing his process of coming out and moving to California to start a new life.

About a minute or two into the movie, Milk rounds a corner in the subway and passes a good-looking young man who he strikes up a conversation with.  Within a few sentences it is established that both are gay and that Milk wants them to spend the night together.  The two men kiss.  It is not a let’s-tear-each- other’s-clothes-off Brokeback Mountain type of kiss, but neither is it a peck on the cheek.  It sets the tone.

A second or two later I was aware of a body passing between me and the movie screen.  I assumed it was one of the people on the row in front of us getting up to go for popcorn.   Then seconds later, at the same time, Paisley elbowed me and the couple behind us started to snicker, I looked down and saw that the older couple was walking out. They only got a couple of minutes into the movie before they walked out. 

Now, this was their right.  But I couldn’t help but wonder and asked Paisley, “What did they think Milk was about?  A dairy farm?!”  The woman behind us laughed again and waved bye-bye in their direction.  The couple sitting down front also was looking in that direction in surprise.  After they had a chance to be thoroughly out of earshot, all of us laughed.  Then we all turned our attention back to the movie.

I know that they didn’t go demand their money back because as we left the multi-plex when our movie was over, we spied the same couple walking through the parking lot.  Obviously, they found a movie more their speed.

Well, it was their loss, in more ways than one.  Milk was an outstanding piece of movie-making, but it also went a long way in humanizing gay people and showing that they have more in common with straight people than not.  Maybe this is what the older couple feared or found distasteful.

Later, Paisley and I remarked to each other that we hadn’t much questioned prior to seeing it whether either of us might have been uncomfortable at this movie together.  We each thought about it ahead of time, but decided independently that we doubted it so much that it wasn’t even worth mentioning it to the other.  And any doubts sure didn’t warrant us opting to see another movie.

Maybe the country has made some progress since the ’70s.  Out of four sets of people in the theater, only one set left in protest.  But one still left. 

Since there’s only a few hours left for this year to torture us all, let’s assess the damage before we pat this one on the fanny and send it off to the place that all bad years go to live.

This one was worse than most…..for nearly everybody.  That’s what constitutes a truly bad year.  Certain years may gang up on this person or that, but when one comes in and spells disaster for all, then you’ve got a whopping one for the ages.  That’s what 2008 was.

2008 was so bad, it was damn near ridiculous.  Let’s go through some of them, starting with things that in 2007 you would have called someone crazy if they had told you we were destined to witness or experience in the coming year.

1.  Hillary Clinton did not get the Democratic nomination for president, nor did she become president.  As far back as a few years ago, Miss Hillary reportedly had such a substantial war chest and lead on all other comers that she was supposed to be a shoo-in.  It was hers to lose.  And….she lost it. 

She and some pundits might try to lay the blame at her staff’s unraveling at inopportune times, but it all comes back to her.  She picked them.  They followed her lead.

It was all as I expected.  Hillary Clinton does not hold up to close inspection.  Her arrogance, given a chance to show, which it always will in a protracted presidential campaign, turned off just enough people that a relative newcomer to the national stage slipped right around her.  Then she hung on for so long in the primary when she had no chance of winning, that she allowed the severely weakened and inept Republicans to pull even and make it a race.  She made a sense of entitlement look as if it were invented by white women.

2.  Bill Clinton’s posturing during the primary on his wife’s behalf made one wonder if he really ever had any political savvy.  He often looked so eager and out-of-control that he looked like last decade’s show dog who wanted more than anything else to jump into the ring to show the others how it’s done.  When he wasn’t doing that, he was insulting a whole race of people, which formerly claimed him as their own. 

3. But for the All-Round Political Tin Ear, the prize goes to the Republican candidates for president.   All of them.  Let’s see.  We had a Mormon who looked so good and switched his beliefs so often that even his own party didn’t like him.  There was the Arkansas ex-governor who alternated between telling inappropriate jokes and speaking like a man who was lining up Christian mullahs to take over the country.

A special case was was Rudy Guliani, who separated himself from the pack in a number of ways, first by cleaning up New York City and then behaving like a leader during 9/11, something George W. Bush couldn’t quite manage for a couple of days.  But then, there was the matter of Guliani in those videos in which he appeared in dresses, make-up, and ladies wigs.  Did he really think those wouldn’t surface? For a while there, it looked as if the race would be between Guliani and Hillary Clinton and the one least likely to show up in a dress was Hillary. 

John McCain shot himself in the foot so many times that he nearly sank his campaign midway through the primary process.  But for sheer audacity, my favorite Republican candidate was Fred Thompson.  Thompson showed up, well, he never quite showed up, which was the problem.  Thompson, not only ran while being in full bore cancer treatment, but his most recent gig was as an actor.  “I used to be a lawyer and a politician and now I play one on TV.”  He was as wooden a candidate as he is an actor, and the “Law and Order” people ought to be taken to the woodshed for yanking the wonderful Dianne Wiest and inserting the teleprompter-addicted Thompson in her place.  Thompson’s campaign philosophy was “Show me my mark.  Give me my line.  Call me when you’re ready for my close up in the Oval Office.”

It’s little wonder that old, and I do mean old, warrior John McCain bested this bunch for the nomination, not that he honored himself in any way other than picking a sorry running mate, stumbling around during the debates, and single-handedly summoning the ghosts of both “Grumpy Old Men,” and ruining a perfectly good word like “maverick” from overuse. But more about Senator McCain later.

4.  The Democrats had their share of screw-ups and yawns too.  Joe Biden nearly bored everyone to death.  Chris Dodd, a good and longtime legislator with a nice record never excited.  Dennis Kucinich looked like an elf in a suit and kept getting himself entangled in questions about what that UFO he saw looked like. 

Then there was John Edwards, who emerged as the biggest hypocrite since Henry Hyde or Eliot Spitzer. His public face spouted concern for the poor and love of family, especially his wife who was fighting her second and terminal battle with cancer.  All the while, Edwards was living in one of the biggest most outlandish houses in the country and messing around with a younger videographer on his campaign. 

When he was caught, Edwards confessed, though denied that the resulting baby was his.  He did, though, go to see the woman and her baby, in whose bank account was suddenly infused with a great deal of cash.  The man who was named as the father on the birth certificate was an Edwards campaign operative and friend who once professed that he’d “take a bullet for John Edwards.”

5. The Sex Scandal Hall of Shame Award goes to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.  Spitzer, a former prosecuting attorney who specialized in prosecuting prostitution cases, especially when they featured well-known, well-placed or well-heeled customers, found himself named as Client #9.  He may have been Client #9, but he was John #1.

Spitzer was a busy boy.  He was arrested for being on the receiving end of a prostitution ring and had to resign his office.  The saddest part of this whole tawdry episode was the look on his wife Silda’s face as she stood up beside him during his resignation news conference.  It was a look of pure disillusionment and humiliation.

Just once, I wish that one of these women would stop the proceedings and either turn and whack her hubby across the face with a fish or tell him and all the assembled, “Nope.  Not going to do this.  You’re on your own, Buster.”  I wish it had been Silda.

6.  John McCain was a spectacle in his own right. His campaign should be studied by political science students as a case study in how not to do it.  First, his campaign for president nearly folded out of incompetence and financial problems, not a good sign in a potential commander-in-chief.  Then he let slip that he didn’t quite know how many houses he and his Stepford Wife had.

He tried to keep selling himself as a war hero, and he did survive five years in a prison camp in Vietnam. But he never quite explained successfully how that made him presidential material nor did he ever mention that of his five  airplane crack-ups, in four of them, including the one that resulted in his capture, the planes were shot out from under him.  In most cases, Navy fliers lose one plane and that’s it for their flying days, but McCain’s father and grandfather were both admirals, so I guess that entitled him to keep flying and then to run for president. 

There’s that word again….”entitled.” I’m not sure if it should be the word of the year, but it sure is in the running with “hubris” and “greed.” 

7.  Sarah Palin got foisted on the American consciousness by John McCain when he named her as his running mate.  This was after an hour or so of his interviewing her on the banks of a river.  Her qualifications: she was the governor of our least populated state in the Union, she was cute, she had a big family that included a baby that was a special needs child, she had good legs.  And er…..that was it.

8.  This Palin woman duped the McCain people by not telling them that she had a pregnant 17-year-old daughter until the annoucement was made of her being on the ticket. The McCain campaign claimed later that they knew ahead of time about young Bristol Palin’s preganancy.  Sure they did.  If so, then they had lost their collective minds.

Then Gov. Palin duped them into springing for $150,000 in clothes for her and the family to run in.  But apparently this is nothing to people used to seeing the prime candidate’s wife show up at the big moment in the Republican convention wearing a $300,000 outfit.  Yeah, that represents the “real” America.  Right.

9.  Lest we forget that this was George W. Bush’s final turn around the world stage, let’s try to remember some of his finer moments. He continued to come forth throughout the year as bad economic news came to the fore and tell us that the economy was sound.  The Bear Stearns debacle was just a little blip.  “We’ve  got it all under control now.”  Congress and the financial markets weren’t so sure, but W. was confident enough to take his month long summer hiatus in Crawford while Wall Street was about to burn.

Then when the climate heaved and spewed once more as when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit Texas - Texas! - he did just what he did during Katrina.  He said it was well in hand and he took a powder.  Coastal Texas is still awash in debris and they are still finding bodies.  That’s our boy!

10. There was more bad news from the Iraq War.  Despite everyone’s hopefulness over the surge (not as many of our people are being killed and maimed as they had been previously), they were still being killed and maimed and the government of Iraq  didn’t appear to be any more eager to take over the mess we had made and to try to step in and straighten it out themselves. 

11.  Then in mid-September the bottom fell out and the Bush Administration nationalized the banks.  Yes, they did, just like a Communist country.  Think about that for a moment.  The federal government nationalized the banks.  They can call it what they want, but that is what it was.

In between massive bail-outs of banks and insurance companies, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke decided to let Lehman Brothers fall through the cracks.  Then they bailed-out insurance giant AIG.  Craziness followed.  By the end of the week the economy was in free-fall and it hasn’t stopped.  Hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression.

 Of course, the banks took the money that Paulson and Company threw at it with no plan for oversight and they ran.  The people who held those bad mortgages have yet been offered a bail-out or help to stay in their homes, so we suddenly have a subclass of  homeless middle-class people, increasing joblessness, etc.  

It was so bad that when Congress hauled all of the suspects in for a “What the Hell happened and what did you say you were going to do about it?” moment, they summoned the former Teflon Fed chairman Alan Greenspan.  Greenspan was brilliant.  He looked at them all and said something like this, “You mean everything we’ve been doing since Reagan was destined to bring us to the point of economic collapse?  Who knew?”  Great job, guys!

So what we’ve got is an administration out of touch and out of ideas.  A president who thinks everything is hunky dory.  A VP who does a great Darth Vader impression and thinks that a snappy comeback to legitimate questions about whether his part in the Iraq War, Guantanamo, prisoner torture, spying on Americans, rendition, and oh so many other delights was  a snarling, “So What!”  Now is this an America we can be proud of?

12. It was so bad that the majority of people in the United States finally shrugged along about November 4 and collectively sighed, “Well, this Obama guy sure can’t make it any worse.  Let’s try him!”  And for the first time a Black man with a Muslim name was elected President of the United States. 

It doesn’t matter who you voted for, your participation in taking back your country was a high water mark in American history.  The scene in Grant Park in Chicago with Obama, his family, and the multitudes was inspiring enough to bring tears to many across the country.

And John McCain never looked or sounded so much like a statesman as when delivering his wonderful concession speech.  It truly looked like a new day, and we could all use one.

Make no mistake about this incoming president.  He may have been the best candidate.  He may have run a brilliant campaign.  But the reason Barack Obama is cruising toward his inauguration is that the other guys screwed it all up so much that the electorate was desperate for somebody, anybody, who looked and sounded different from the Bush gang.

After eight years it became obvious to all but the most deluded that George W. and his administration had made the administrations of U. S. Grant and Millard Fillmore look downright whiz-bang competent.  

13. Also adding to our end-of-year entertainment, and who can forget it, was the sight of one of George W.’s infrequent but always showboating turns in Iraq  when an angry, frustrated, Middle Eastern journalist hurled his shoes at W’s head.  The whole episode wound up played on an endless tape loop and became one of the funniest sight gags of the year with Bush bobbing and weaving, all with that perpetually goofy look on his face. Then he showed how wrong he can be by stating that he wasn’t nonplussed, and the shoe-throwing incident was all one man’s grab for attention.  Huh?

14.  While we’re on the funny bits, some of them funny because you had to laugh or else you’d cry, we lead with Tina Fey’s star-making, dead-on impression of the surprise candidate for vice president on the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin.  Her Palin was so spot-on that when they once appeared on screen together on Saturday Night Live, viewers had to stare at the set for a second or two to see which one really was which.  

Fey’s genius was to use Palin’s own words to skewer her.  Every thinking person in American had to be wondering through their laughter, “Can the country really afford to have another person as dumb and deluded as this one attempt to lead the country?”  The final answer was a resounding “No!” and in large part we have to thank Tina Fey and her equally talented partner-in-crime, Amy Poeller.

15.  China took it’s chance to shine in the Summer Olympics and turned it into a bid to crack-down on Tibet and on dissenters at home.  Then they gave us a spell-binding opening that seemed to say, “Pay attention, World!  We have all of these people. They all have a drum and they know how to use it.  We think nothing of taking little girls under the age of 10 and presenting them as our teenage gymnastics team, and even less of ripping the heart from a 7-year-old singer who’s not cute enough and putting in her place a cuter lip-syncher. Do not provoke us!”

And what could be more stirring than Michael Phelps with his little boy face and his big boy physique?  The sight of him standing after a race with the top of his skin tight swimsuit dropped and threatening to reveal even more of Phelp’s personality was particularly stirring. And worrisome.  Phelps once and for all proved that freakishly long arms and huge feet are not a deterrant to success.  If you weren’t screaming as loudly as his mother for him to win in those last two races, then you have no soul.

And while we’re on the subject of the crossroads of athletics and polictics, here’s one for the books.  After their final win, the U.S. women’s beach volleyball duo met with President Bush.  One of the gals offered W. her butt for a congratulatory pat….and he did it!  Now that’s class, isn’t it?

As for pastimes, such as movies, music, and TV, I hope I haven’t seen the best movie of the year yet.  None that I’ve watched so far measure up enough to even be in the Best Movie category. I do have a favorite for best movie performance of the year and that is Heath Ledger as The Joker in “The Dark Knight.”

Television just gets worse and worse with more and more channels to choose from.  I still think that cable’s “The First 48″ is the best thing on the tube.  Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” is terrific.  “The Closer” with Kyra Sedgwick is still a fine way to spend an hour.  “Law and Order,” in all its incarnations remains highly watchable.

In the realm of music, I’ve sort of fallen off the bandwagon.  I listen to an extraordinary amount of music, but most of it is from bygone eras.  I’ve tried the younger acts, but find them wanting.  My favorite new musical finds of the year are hardly newcomers, just new to me.  Betty Lavette is stunning and versatile.  I love Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.  The Dap-Kings backed up Amy Winehouse in her huge debut album and with Jones fronting them, it’s as good as the old soul music out of the Stax-Volt Studio in Memphis. 

I spent some time in New York City this year seeing some great musicals, “South Pacific,” “Gypsy,” and “Spamalot.”  Sadly, both “Gypsy” and “Spamalot” are closing in January due to the downturn in the economy.   Don’t miss seeing these shows and the terrific “South Pacific” while you still can.

On the personal front, I weathered the world’s longest, most stubborn urinary tract infection at the first of the year while husband Bill waited for the hole in his leg from last year’s surgery to heal up.  There were broken toes and a strained back which ruined our plans to turn ourselves into the next Fred and Ginger.  We had to drop ballroom dancing lessons.

For bad news, to me nothing compares to the news that one of my beloved sisters has leukemia.  She is in treatment and doing fine, but has nagging peripheral problems, some of them very serious.  We hope that the coming year brings nothing but good health, for everybody.

The bad economy and resulting massive changes in employment prospects hit my immediate family hard.  We are all waiting for the other shoe to drop.  My speculation on agricultural futures is focused solely on the price of sweet potato slips and turnip seed.

We had bad trips and good trips.  We started some things that have worked out, like our blogs.  We’ve met some nice people as a result and look forward to corresponding with even more. 

To everyone who to took the time to read this blog this year and especially to those who commented, thank you so much.  I don’t need much encouragement, but it is nice occasionally.

I wish you all a Happy New Year in 2009.  Good Lord, how I wish that.

Yesterday my family finished up with the last portion of our Christmas season.  This year, pleasant though it was,  seemed to go on forever.  We had the family dinner and gift-opening with my immediate family on Christmas Day.  It was quiet and nice.  On Saturday we went to my husband’s sister’s house in the country in western Pulaski County for grazing and games, also nice because these people know how to behave and have enough attention span to be able to get through a couple of hours of an intense board game.

The biggest gathering, the one with my siblings and their kids and grandkids, in Marianna was without doubt the loudest and the most entertaining.  These people have difficulty behaving themselves and riotous times usually ensue.  They did yesterday with an inspired “Dirty Santa” gift-giving, barbeque and all the fixings, and the reviewing of a twenty-year-old videotape made one Christmas that featured our late parents and grandmother, when they still had it together, and a mess of kids now all grown.  The inability to behave was evidence by the two “boys” in the bunch sneaking outside to shoot B-B guns at each other with some young nieces’ pink B-B guns.  It’s always a struggle to bring good influence to this side of the family.

Driving over I talked of Christmases long ago with my sister, Camille, while my husband slept in the back seat.  Some of these memories revolved around the family grocery store.  My father and grandfather went into business together as F. L. Johnson and Son on September 15, 1943.  My dad  bought his portion of the business from money he saved from his G.I. paychecks while in the war. 

In his World War II diary my father marked the occasion by writing,  ”Dad and I are going into business today.  Here’s hoping we don’t go down.” They didn’t. Through good times and bad, that store on Poplar Street in Marianna, Arkansas sustained two families, then three when my brother grew up and joined them.  Then my grandfather retired and my sister entered the fray.  That place rocked along feeding a large number of folk from Lee County until it was destroyed by fire in the early 1990’s.  When the place burned, it was as if we had lost a family member and the whole town mourned with us.  I was in town recently and heard someone state that “they’re building a new police station on top of Johnson’s Grocery.”  Where the store was has been a vacant lot for more than a decade, but to many, it’s still there.

My brother, my two sisters, and I, along with a few cousins all worked in the store when we were growing up.  It gave us not only spending money and job experience, but a working knowledge of how to deal with all sorts of people.  We learned to accommodate a wide range.  There was the man who came in once a week and while his wife shopped for groceries, he’d get a small jar of mustard (12 cents) and a wooden ice cream spoon (free) and eat it for lunch.  There was the couple who came in weekly to buy groceries, bringing along their whole brood, which included a new baby, or two, every year.  When I left for college they were up to 19 kids, all birthed at home.

There were the wealthy women of the town, especially the ones who held the lease on the store building, who never came to town unless attired in stylish clothes and high heels.  It was fun to watch them teeter around in heels on the creaky wooden floors that we oiled twice a year.  Then there were the poorest of the poor.  I don’t think my dad ever turned down anyone who needed food.  Some he knew he’d never collect from.

Many’s the head of household who’d come in and ask to speak to my dad.  Then they’d buy groceries and tell the checkers to “Hang it on the wall till Spring” which was when the planting season would restart and there was money to be made again.  When food stamps came in they were not only a boon to poor families but also to the merchants who served them.  My dad told me once that he was able to send me to college because of food stamps.  What he actually said was, “You went to college on food stamps.”

I began working at the family grocery store at the age of thirteen, going after school and band practice and on Saturdays.  A lot of customers would want to “hang it on the wall,”  so I’d hand them the receipt to sign or “X” (in this case, the checker then had to write the customer’s name under the “X”).  Then I’d file the receipt alphabetically and place it in a little red plastic box that we kept on the back cash register up against the wall next to the Prince Albert Tobacco and the King Edward cigars.  We may have lived in one of the poorest counties in the nation, but we hob-nobbed with royalty.

The biggest trouble I ever got into with my father was over that little red box.  Once when the male store workers were oiling the wood floors, which was done after closing late on a Saturday night in order to give the oil two undisturbed days to realllyyyy seep into the wood cracks, I was told to jump up on a counter to get out of the way.  As I jumped upon the counter,  I knocked off a five gallon jug of black strap molasses (and don’t ask me who would ever need that much molasses for anything) and it broke all over that freshly oiled floor.  Besides making the biggest mess anyone ever saw, the smell of the combination of heavy oil and black strap molasses sent several of the guys outside for air. 

But that wasn’t all.  When my dad saw this he yelled, “Stephanie!” in a tone that told me I was in a world of trouble.  In a panic, I jumped off the counter to try to find something to help clean it up.  When I did, I knocked off the little red box and scattered its contents all over the floor and throughout the oily, sticky mixture on the floor.  Disaster!

My dad wasn’t exactly what I’d call a model of restraint.  He had a quick, strong Irish temper that he usually tried to control, which he did in this case.  But his head turned several shades of red, settling into a dark maroon.  And his lips disappeared.  His voice shook when he told me to go outside and wait for him in his old Willys Jeep truck till he came out to drive us home.  This, in itself, was proof of his anger.  Normally, he’d never tell me to go outside late at night on a Saturday night and sit by myself in the truck in the dark.  There were drunks about at that hour. 

As I sat there in the truck in a lonely, dark parking lot pondering my sins, I figured that he probably secretly wished for me to be hit over the head and drug off by one of those drunks.  But all was forgiven by the time we got home and as far as I know, he never even mentioned it to my mother and never said a word to me about it again.

Christmas time was always fun around Johnson’s Grocery.  For days leading up to Christmas day, longtime customers would come into the store and shout the greeting, “Christmas Gift!”  This meant that the proprietor was supposed to give the askee something, a sort of minor Christmas present.  Dad didn’t like the custom.  He told me that he resented carrying people through the winter months and yet being expected to pony up something to those folks simply because they wanted a present from him.  But he’d do it.  He’d pass out an orange, an apple, and to his really steady customers, a cigar or a can of Garrett’s Snuff…three notch.  The notches on the bottom of the bottle were supposed to signify the strength of the snuff and no explanation to the contrary could convince any snuff-dipper otherwise.

My favorite Christmas memory of the store involves a doll.  My dad always kept some toys at the front of the store.  He featured these toys high on a rack above the fruit and vegetable bin, up near the ceiling.  Each year there would be different toys, but you could always figure to see some boy toys, such as fire engines or cowboy paraphenalia, along with girl toys of dolls, batons, etc.

The dolls were dolls that I never saw at any other store.  And they were good quality, necessary because the girls I knew, my sisters and I included, played with our dolls.  Most Lee County dolls had to be hardy enough to survive a good bath and hair-washing by the end of the first day of ownership.  I was nearly twelve years old before I ever saw a Madame Alexander doll, bestowed upon one of my better-off friends.  And then I wondered what in the world she could do with it.  What’d ya mean you just look at it?

On my Christmas list I usually asked for one of the dolls that Daddy ordered for the store.  The last year I got a doll, I was in the fifth grade and had already stopped believing in Santa Claus or playing with dolls.  That year, the store featured a “look at” doll.  She was tall, about 2 1/2 feet, and regal.  She had short, curly blond hair and wore a beautiful pink, sparkly gown.  I thought she was beautiful.  When I got her for Christmas, I immediately named her “Elizabeth Fairfax,” which I thought befitted her obvious nobility, and then I placed her on a shelf in my closet to preserve her for eternity.

Elizabeth lasted a good long while.  In fact, she’s still around.  My daughters discovered her when they were kids and asked to play with her.  I saw no reason not to let them.  Elizabeth, with a rotting gown and one drooping eye, became an honored guest at many a tea party and witnessed countless hours of play between my girls and their friends.  One of my daughters wrested her from the clutches of the other and treasures her to this day.

One Christmas that stands out for me occured when I was past the toy stage.  I was about fourteen and was more interested in watching the humanity that moved through Johnson’s Grocery year after year.  Among the most fascinating was a trio of females who walked everywhere.  For simplicity, let’s refer to them, oldest to youngest, as Norma, Martha, and Mary.  They lived many miles out in the country and had no transportation.  Thus, the walking. 

One could see them frequently on their way to or from town.  They were slight women, short and with darkish skin, like someone with an American Indian in their recent background.  The older two had heavy black brows and black hair, straight and pulled back tight. They lurched with long strides when they walked, as if they were fighting against a heavy wind or rain or had to bull through the blazing sun before it overtook them, which often was the case.  They stomped along the highway toward their destination in single file, looking neither left nor right, and refusing rides from all offerers.

When I first encountered them, I assumed that they were from three generations of the same family.  Not so.  They were from the same family, but the oldest one was the mother of both the next oldest woman, Martha, and the little girl, Mary. 

These people were dirt poor.  I used to think that the expression of “dirt poor” meant that they were too poor to have water and thus, to wash off the dirt from their bodies.  This certainly was an apt description of these women.  They had nothing but a falling down old place to live and maybe a water well and pump, obviously not convenient to the house. They subsisted by planting a garden and doing field work during the growing season.

The older two smelled sour all of the time.  This was sour as in either bathed in milk that had dried or in soaked on sweat that had been there for possibly months.   

They had few social skills and the two younger ones were painfully shy.  The mother, Norma, was the picture of dogged determination.  She seemed resolved to ensure their survival by sheer force of will and she refused to be beholden to anybody.  It was in studying her that I began to learn that this quality, taken to the extreme, bordered on a sin.

Martha mimicked her mother in appearance and actions.  But while Norma had a scowl for everyone, Martha began to smile slightly at me after I had been doing so to her for more than a year.  The little girl, Mary, was cute, blond, curly-haired, and sweet.  It was hard to see how she fit into this family, except that when they came in or out of the store, Mary was lined up behind the other two and trudging in the same gait.  Yep.  They were definitely blood kin.

But the Christmas I’m referring to is the one that my dad made the mistake of bestowing a Christmas gift on little Mary.  For more than a month she had been coming to town with her mother and older sister, walking into my dad’s store, and gazing lovingly up at a doll on the shelf.  She was about six at the time.  I doubt that she had any notion of Santa Claus or had ever gotten any kind of gift from anyone.

One day my dad walked up to her and asked her if she liked that doll.  Mary replied, “She’s the prettiest thing I ever seen.” 

“Well, Kid,” I thought, “You just got yourself a doll for Christmas.”  For if it was one thing my father had a soft spot for, it was kids, and especially kids at Christmas.

A week or so later Norma and her crew were back in the store.  While Norma shopped and Martha trailed after her, Mary took up her position under the doll she admired.  I saw my dad come from behind a counter and crawl up to where the doll was perched.  He took it down and gently placed it, heavily packaged and gleaming new, into Mary’s chubby hands, telling her “Merry Christmas.”  The little girl smiled broadly and seemed to not breathe for a minute.  Then she turned and skipped down the aisle to Norma and Matha to show off her one and only Christmas gift.

My dad turned in my direction and winked.  The reverie didn’t last long.  From halfway through the store we heard a rumble and a screech.  “Mr. Bob!”  It was Norma and she was mad.  Soon Norma appeared, dragging Mary by her free arm.  Mary clutched the doll in under her other arm.

“Well, damn,”  I heard my dad say under his breath.  Norma marched her little girl up to him and shouted, because Norma always shouted.  It was her manner of speaking, as if she didn’t practice speech enough and had to exert great effort to force words from her body.  She shouted, “Mary can’t have that.  Mary you give that thing back to Mr. Bob so he can give it to who gave it to him to give to you!”

I was confused.  What was she talking about? Besides, this was about the cruelest thing I’d seen anyone do to a child in public.

My dad seemed to understand what was going one.  He told Norma that he was giving Mary that doll and that he’d appreciate it if she’d let the little girl have it.

Norma wasn’t buying it.  So she shouted some more.  “I know who’s giving her that doll.  It’s Joe Wilson!  And this girl ain’t taking nothin’ from Joe Wilson.  Or anybody else.  But especially not Joe Wilson!”

Joe Wilson?!  This was a quiet, gentlemanly man who came into the store occasionally.  I had waited on him several times.  He was a nice man, a country man, but at least two levels up the social strata from Norma and her kids.  I wondered what she had against Joe Wilson so much that she wouldn’t let a little girl have a doll over it.

Norma was still hollering when my grandfather limped up in her direction.  My grandad, Paw Paw, was the store butcher.  He ran the meat market at the back of the store and seldom came to the front unless it was something truly important, like an attempted robbery or quitting time.  He waddled up to where all the commotion was going on and  said, “Norma, that’s a present from me and Bob to Mary.  It’s got nothing to do with you.  So just hush and let her have it back.”

Norma studied on that for a bit then announced that she “didn’t know it was from both of you.”  Then she took the doll back from my dad and thrust it toward Mary, who took it gingerly and cradled it, packaging and all, in both arms.  And they went on with their grocery shopping.  When they left, I watched the two women stomp out of the store with the little girl walking behind them.  Before they were out of sight, Mary turned and gazed through the store window at my father with the biggest smile any little girl ever had.

I was still dealing with that when my dad came over to me and told me something that I heard for the first time.  He said, “Remember this.  No good deed goes unpunished.”  Boy, was he right.  I have to be reminded of that every now and then. 

On our way home that night my dad told me that he suspected that Joe Wilson had fathered Mary.  He said that Joe was a decent man and he couldn’t figure why he’d ever want to have anything to do with the likes of Norma, but he knew that Joe had tried from time to time to help her out and to give things to the little girl.  For whatever the reason, Norma wouldn’t allow it. That was all he’d say about it.

I wish I knew what happened to that little girl.  I know that she got less cute as she grew older.  Her face grew into the same blank expression that the two others had.  One day, on her way to town after a hard rain, Martha, the middle one, was absent-mindedly stepping around a mud puddle on the road shoulder and she stepped directly into the path of a car.  She was killed instantly.

None of this could have been easy on Norma and Mary, but then nothing about their lives had been to that point.  I’ve always hoped that Mary was different from her older sister and that someday she’d been able to break away from that life.  Maybe she’d grown up to accept rides to town, to get a job, to have her own family.  And to let her little girl have a doll for Christmas.