Noir Quotes

Tags

crime fiction, criminality, finnish, golf, helsinki, james thompson, morality, vaara

Just finished reading James Thompson’s Helsinki Blood (2013), in the Kari Vaara series, set in Finland. I couldn’t finish the previous book in the series, Helsinki White (2011), because it was too gruesome and the torture and violence too graphic for me at the time. This book is probably just as gruesome, but Kari is changing, becoming less morally depraved, as the effects of his brain tumour and the surgery to remove it dissipate.

That said, there is still a lot of killing, and his two companions are sociopaths. The humour is dark.

‘I cruised by Veikko Saukko’s mansion,’ Milo says. ‘Sure as shit, just like his calendar says, he was out behind the house, knocking golf balls into the sea. Kind of weird, isn’t it? I’m going to kill one man practicing golf and two men playing it on the same day. Generally, people don’t consider it a dangerous sport.’

and

‘Drove him [a corpse] out to the countryside, packed his mouth with Semtex to get rid of dental records, then duct-taped is hands to his face to blow off his fingers, the point of course being to destroy his prints. And then, well, you can imagine the result. I walked about ten kilometers through woods until I came to a road with a bus stop, so no one would recall me being in the vicinity.’

“With practice, we’ve become quite good criminals.

New Year’s Meme

Tags

2012, anesthesioboist, end of year, meme, new year's, questions, year-end

(Idea from Notes of an Anesthesioboist .)

I last did this on 1 Jan 2010, then forgot all about it. I’m a little late this year.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’ve never done before? Finished a bathroom renovation. I’d never had anyone else renovate anything in a house; this renovation started in Oct 2011 and ended in February 2012. Also, designed and planted my first permaculture garden. And met someone in person (Shelley and Gerard) whom I’d only known through Facebook!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don’t make them. I just do what I want when I want.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Our favourite vet died in January 2012. Bella bulldog (Shelley’s dog) died suddenly in July 2012, which was shocking to me.

5. What countries did you visit? Just this one… Jekyll Island GA, Boothbay Harbor ME, Ogunquit ME, Baltimore MD, Boston, NYC, Bath ME, Manchester VT, etc.  I would rather not use the carbon that it takes to fly.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012? Actually, 2012 was pretty great: lots of entertaining and time with friends; lots of walking, snowshoeing and exploring; took several interesting classes; went on a number of fun trips. It was a good year.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 29 July, when Bella died.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? A good balance of rest and exercise, inside and outside, solitary and social, planned and spontaneous, traveling and home.

9. What was your biggest failure? Always, a failure to love more, to be compassionate, to be fully aware and appreciative of what I am receiving.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Some upper back pain for several months.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I like my Razr Maxx droid phone quite a bit.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Journalists around the world in dangerous locations.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? My government’s.

14. Where did most of your money go? Housing/renovation, health insurance/care, retirement savings.

15. What did you get really excited about? Trip to Jekyll.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012? None.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you…

-happier or sadder? happier, I think
-thinner or fatter? same
-richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Loving. Letting go. Lightening up. Meditation. The usual.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Fretting. Acting out of fear. The usual.

20. How did you spend Christmas? At home with spouse and dog,  eating take-out Indian food. The usual!

21. Did you fall in love in 2012? Of course. Almost any time I look through the camera lens, I fall in love.

22. What was your favorite TV program? None … we have almost no channels and rarely watch TV. We have been watching Frasier on dvd but that’s been in 2013.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? I can’t think of anyone I hate.

24. What was the best book you read? When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir by Monica Wood, was very good. And the 4 books (so far) in the turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna crime novel series by Frank Tallis were excellent.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? None. Didn’t listen to new music this year.

26. What did you want and get? A dog caretaker who would stay at our house while we’re away and ease Gretty’s stress.

27. What did you want and not get? World peace. Again.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? None, really. A Late Quartet was nice, but rescreenings of Something’s Gotta Give and My Architect were my favourites.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old are you? Hung out at home, early 50s.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? I can’t think of anything. Perhaps more time at the ocean.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012? One basic uniform for winter, one for summer. Fall and spring are slightly problematic.

32. What kept you sane? Time alone. Time outside. The camera. The garden. Meditation. Exercise. Fiction. Friends. Stable marriage.

33. What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I still like Pema Chödrön a lot. And Rene Girard.

34. What political issue stirred you the most? US: gun control reform (please), drone killing, health care reform (more, please). Globally: Scapegoating, witch hunts, and all other forms of mimetic violence. Torture as legal punishment. Oil/resource wars.

35. Whom did you miss? My friends from my former community. My dad. Rachael and Charlie. The ocean.

36. Who was the best new person you met? Many … I met Caroline and Jim, Candis, Liz, Ann, Natalie, Mary Lou and Larry, and others between 2009 and 2011, but really got to know them all better in 2012.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012. Nothing stays the same.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

A new Moon leads me to
Woods of dreams, and I follow.
A new world waits for me;
My dream, my way…

I know that if I have Heaven
There is nothing to desire.
Rain and river, a world of wonder,
May be Paradise to me.”

– Enya, “China Roses

This is no consolation

Tags

"they don't know what they're doing", 10000 Maniacs, Bush doctrine, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, complicity, covert operations, drone strikes, forgiveness, Last words of Jesus, lent, mercy, Monroe Doctrine, oil, Please Forgive Us, Seven words, Truman Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy

I. Several years ago for a Tennebrae or perhaps a Good Friday service, I was asked to come up with contemporary songs to match the traditional seven words Jesus said on the cross as he was dying:

1. “Forgive them, Father! They do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)
2. “I tell you this: Today you will be in Paradise with me.” (Luke 23:43)
3. He said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ (John 19:26-27)
4. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
5. “I thirst.” (John 19:28)
6. “It is finished.” ( John 19:30)
7. “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46)

II. I can’t recall the songs I chose for any but the first, and it’s running through my mind and heart again this Lenten season. I chose the 10,000 Maniacs’ “Please Forgive Us:”

"Mercy, mercy," why didn't we hear it?
"Mercy, mercy," why did we read it 
buried on the last page of our morning papers?
The plan was drafted, drafted in secret.
Gunboats met the red tide, driven to the rum trade 
for the army that they created.
But the bullets were bought by us, it was dollars that paid them.

Please forgive us, we don't know what was done,
Please forgive us, we don't know what was done
in our name.

There'll be more trials like this in mercenary heydays.
When they're so apt to wrap themselves up
in the stripes and stars and find that they are able
to call themselves heroes
and to justify murder by their fighters For freedom.

Please forgive us, we don't know what was done.
Please forgive us, we didn't know.
Could you ever forgive us? I don't know how you could.

I know this is no consolation:
Please forgive us, we don't know what was done,
Please forgive us, we didn't know.

Could you ever believe that we didn't know?
Please forgive us, we didn't know.
I wouldn't blame you if you never could.
Please forgive us, we didn't know.
I wouldn't blame you if you never could.
Please forgive us, and you never will.

III. I CAN’T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD BECAUSE I just finished taking a “History of U.S. Foreign Policy” class through the local college, where we learned or were reminded of the many covert operations the U.S. CIA has led to overthrow governments and assassinate those it considered enemies. From the formal creation of the CIA in 1947 (and the creation of the covert arm in 1948), there are many examples, in places like Vietnam, Hungary, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Greece, Bolivia, Cambodia, El Salvador, and the countries below:

>> The overthrow of the IRANian government (1953): Under the Eisenhower administration, the CIA (featuring Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson, Kermit Roosevelt, and Brigadier General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.) and the UK worked to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, led by Mohammad Mossadegh, “who had attempted to nationalize Iran’s petroleum industry, threatening the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company” (now BP). The U.S. and UK imposed a boycott on the country and “conducted a massive covert propaganda campaign to create the environment necessary for the coup,” both in Iran and in the U.S. They portrayed it as a spontaneous popular uprising when it was anything but. They installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who formed a military government, ruled as an autocrat, and was heavily supported by the U.S. until he was overthrown in 1979. “Over the next 25 years, more than $20 billion in U.S. taxpayers’ money would pour into a decidedly undemocratic Iran, most of it military aid and subsidized weapons sales for the Shah’s armed forces and SAVAK, his secret police”(from The Oily American, referenced below).

>> GUATEMALA (1954): CIA overthrow of democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán because the powerful U.S. company, United Fruit Company — with whom both Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, Allen, the CIA director, had financial, personal and legal ties — objected to Árbenz’s plan to reappropriate (with compensation based on tax statements) unused land that had been taken from the Guatemalan people. Or as Schlesinger (see citation below) puts it, “Washington feared Arbenz because he tried to institute agrarian reforms that would hand over fallow land to dispossessed peasants, thereby creating a middle class in a country where 2 percent of the population owned 72 percent of the land. Unfortunately for him, most of that territory belonged to the largest landowner and most powerful body in the state: the American-owned United Fruit Company.”

United Fruit Company staged a PR campaign in the U.S. to convince us that Guatemala was a communist threat to the U.S. and pushed Eisenhower (and the CIA) to get involved, or they would seem “soft on Communism.”

As Wikipedia says (see also Watch Out for the Top Banana by Larry Tye, Cabinet, Fall 2006): “In 1954, for his clients, the Eisenhower Administration and the United Fruit Company, the public relations expert [and nephew of Sigmund Freud] Edward Bernays engineered American popular consent for the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état to overthrow a capitalist democracy in Central America. The propaganda operation used the North American press to frighten the US public into believing that President Árbenz was a Communist and a political puppet of the USSR, and, therefore, that Guatemala had become a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere, the backyard of the United States.”

The CIA harrassed Árbenz, cut off aid and embargoed arms (while increasing arms shipments to neighbouring Honduras and Nicaragua), planted Soviet-made weapons on the border to imply that Guatemala was getting arms from the Soviets. As noted in Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1993), “Such economic sabotage of Guatemala was secret, because economic warfare violated the Latin American non-intervention agreement to which the United States was a signatory party; public knowledge that the US was violating the non-intervention agreement would prompt other Latin American countries to aid Guatemala in surviving the American economic warfare.” The CIA also created a small mercenary army of about 500, which they trained in Nicaragua and Honduras. They hired pilots to drop propaganda about the army and they created a fake radio station to tout its supposed victories. Though this mercenary army was no threat to the Guatemalan army, the Guatemalan military feared that if they defeated the CIA invasion, the U.S. would intervene and occupy the country. Panicked Guatemalan officers sent Árbenz into exile. The CIA’s chosen man, Col. Castillo Armas, became the new president, massacring people and wiping out dissent until he was assassinated by his body guard in 1957, when Guatemala then went from military government to military government for the next 30 years, supported by the U.S.

As a review of Weiner’s book on the CIA (cited below) puts it: “Guatemala was made safe for United Fruit — talk about banana republics — but not for democracy. A series of military dictators followed the CIA coup, with death squads and repression in which perhaps 200,000 Guatemalans perished.”

>> The Bay of Pigs (CUBA, 1961), the unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba and attempted overthrow of the revolutionary leftist government of President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado by a counter-revolutionary military trained and funded by the CIA (still under Allen Dulles, with Richard M. Bissell, David Philips, Gerald Drecher and E. Howard Hunt), first authorized by Eisenhower and his National Security Council, and then continued under John F. Kennedy. It was defeated by the Cuban military, under Prime Minister Fidel Castro’s command, within three days. This victory for the Castro administration eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

>> The ‘secret war’ in LAOS (1961-1975): “As the Vietnam War raged, Washington noticed that communist forces had spilled over into Laos. In response, the Americans launched what was later called a secret war. At the time, Laos had been declared ‘neutral,’ but with a growing communist presence, the CIA saw it as the next front in the conflict. A handful of CIA agents were flown in to build on existing tensions between the Hmong and the Laotian government, led by the communist Pathet Lao” (Wikipedia).  The CIA helped train and arm more than 60,000 Hmong fighters, who were to disrupt communist supply lines while the Americans set up a major military airport in Northern Laos. The CIA gave the fighters their own airline, Xieng Kouang airlines, which aided the already bustling opium trade in the region. Even though the U.S. used the Hmong to fight — and was spending $2 million a day carpet bombing Laos — it finally admitted defeat before the stronger communist army and fled. The secret war lasted 15 years during which it’s estimated that nearly 100,000 Hmong died. There are apparently still Hmong people hiding in the jungles of Laos.

>> The overthrow/killing of Salvador Allende in CHILE (1970-1973). When Marxist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile (Sept 1970), U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered that he “not be allowed to take office.” Nixon “pursued a vigorous campaign of covert resistance to Allende, first designed to convince the Chilean congress to confirm Jorge Alessandri as the winner of the election. … Once Allende took office, extensive covert efforts continued with U.S.-funded black propaganda, … strikes organized against Allende, and funding for Allende opponents. … Following an extended period of social, political, and economic unrest, General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in a violent coup d’état on September 11, 1973; among the dead was Allende” (Wikipedia). The CIA says he committed suicide; others say he was massacred.

>> AFGHANISTAN (1979-1989): When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. “President Jimmy Carter, concluding that the Soviet army was passing through Afghanistan to seize the Middle East oil fields, sounded a warning: ‘An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.’ Reagan replaced Carter as president in 1980, his administration got money from Congress (based on a faulty 1977 CIA report of faltering Soviet oil production) to arm Afghan insurgents and establish a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf, and “the CIA began one of its longest and most expensive covert operations, supplying billions of dollars in arms to a collection of Afghan guerrillas (including Osama bin Laden) fighting the Soviets. At the same time, the U.S. was secretly supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran after Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980. The State Department removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism, so that they could buy weapons. At the same time, we were selling weapons to Iran in the Iran-contra scandal…

>> Iran-contra war against NICARAGUA (1981-1990): Attempts to destabalise and overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, whose democratically elected president was Daniel Ortega. The CIA created a group whose task was to “sabotage ports, refineries, boats and bridges, and try to make it look like the contras had done it.” That group is best known for mining Nicaraguan harbors, sinking several Nicaraguan boats and damaging at least five foreign vessels, which led to international condemnation of the U.S. in 1984. The contras, based in Honduras, were waging a guerrilla war to topple the government of Nicaragua. The U.S. financed, armed, trained, and advised them. And even though the Boland Amendment made it illegal under U.S. law to provide arms to the contra militants, the Reagan administration nonetheless armed and funded them, secretly selling weapons to Iran (also in violation of U.S. law) in exchange for cash that they used to supply arms to the contras.

As CIA Director Bill Casey (1981-1987) said: “It takes relatively few people and little support to disrupt the internal peace and economic stability of a small country.”

IV. I CAN’T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD BECAUSE of our ongoing drone strikes in other countries, killing civilians and combatants without any due process whatsoever. We have two drone programs running now, the covert drone strike program, run by the CIA, and the military drone program, run by the Pentagon. The Pentagon administers its drone program in war zones of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and also in Yemen and Somalia, where it’s carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command. The CIA began its program in Yemen in 2002, expanding in Pakistan under President George W. Bush in 2004, and ramping up dramatically there and in Yemen and Somalia in 2011 under President Barack Obama. The CIA has never publicly acknowledged its covert drone program.

Estimates for the number of people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen vary widely — partly because the U.S. reportedly counts as a militant any military-age male killed in a drone strike — from about 2,500 to 4,800 — including militant/enemy deaths (2,300 to 3,900) and civilian deaths (170 to 900). Drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004-2012 are estimated to have injured another 1,300 people.

In May 2012, John Bellinger, former legal adviser for the National Security Council, said on the Diane Rehm show on NPR that the Obama administration “dramatically ramped up the program far more than the Bush administration, perhaps because they learned the lesson of what happened by capturing and detaining people. And we saw what happened with Guantanamo. So they’ve largely been focusing on killing them with several hundred drone strikes, killing thousands of people in several different countries … If the Bush administration had acknowledged a wide-ranging program to kill thousands of people in multiple countries around the world, including a number of civilians, the human rights groups and Europeans would have been outraged. I’m sure they would have accused the president of being a war criminal, grave breaches of international law. What we’ve seen up to this point, and even after this point, is at least European countries have just looked the other way.”

As Hina Shamsi of the ACLU said, on the same Diane Rehm show: “We believe [the drone strokes are] unlawful because the world is not a battle place and because people are being killed in places where the United States is not at war. … [T]he danger here is that the Obama administration, even though it has rightly turned its back on the nomenclature of a global war on terror, is essentially carrying forward the Bush administration’s claim of a worldwide battlefield.”

A detailed legal analysis — looking at legality of drone strikes in terms of Pakistan’s sovereignty, under international humanitarian law (which states, in part, that intentional lethal force is allowed “only when necessary to protect against a threat to life, and where there are ‘no other means, such as capture or non-lethal incapacitation, of preventing that threat to life’”), under U.S. domestic law (including in the context of the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), passed one week after 9/11), and in terms of accountability and transparency — is available in the Stanford report (citation below).

V. Perhaps in the past we didn’t all know about covert actions, “done in our name;” perhaps they were “on the last page of the morning paper,” hidden from all but the most diligent (and literate); but now we have no excuse. We do know what is done in our name, with our dollars, with our bullets.

Mercenary heydays.

Mercy. Mercy.

———————–

SOURCES

Drones

“Number of drone strikes is rocketing, but who’s counting?” by Michael Evans, in The Australian, 12 March 2013

Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2013, created by Bill Roggio and Alexander Mayer, in The Long War Journal, last updated 10 March 2013

CIA’s covert drone program may shift further onto Pentagon, by Ken Dilanian, in the Los Angeles Times, 17 Feb 2013.

Drones And Their Use In Counterterrorism, The Diane Rehm show, 7 Feb 2013.

Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes by Cora Currier at ProPublica, 5 Feb 2013

The Year of the Drone: An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2013, at New America Foundation.

Charting the data for US air strikes in Yemen, 2002 – 2013, created by Bill Roggio and Bob Barry, in The Long War Journal, last updated 23 Jan. 2013.

Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan (182-page PDF), a report by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic at
NYU School of Law, Sept. 2012. Summary here. Legal analysis here.

US Drone Strikes, The Diane Rehm show, 31 May 2012

Iran – overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh (1953)

“The Oily Americans” by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, in Time, 13 May 2003.

Guatemala – overthrow of Árbenz (1954)

“Ghosts of Guatemala’s Past” by Stephen Schlesinger, in The New York Times, 3 June 2011.

“Watch Out for the Top Banana” by Larry Tye, Cabinet, Fall 2006.

1954 Guatemalan coup d’état at Wikipedia. (Much the same version that I heard in my class this winter, from a history professor with a specialty in Latin American history.)

Bay of Pigs (1961)

Bay of Pigs Release, Freedom of Information Act – CIA, 2 Aug 2011: 769 documents (thousands of pages) of material, including the CIA Inspector General’s Report on the CIA’s ill-fated April 1961 attempt to implement national policy by overthrowing the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba by means of a covert paramilitary operation, otherwise known as the Bay of Pigs, and a commentary on that report written by the Directorate of Plans. Also National Security Council briefings.

‘Secret war’ in Laos (1961-1975)

The CIA’s ‘Secret War’ by William Lloyd-George, in The Diplomat, 25 Feb 2011.

Chile – overthrow of Allende (1970-73)

CIA Activities in Chile, from Freedom of Information Act – CIA, 18 September 2000. Includes Overview of Covert Actions (Support for Coup in 1970, Awareness of Coup Plotting in 1973, Knowledge of Human Rights Violations, etc.), The ‘Assassination’ of President Salvador Allende; Accession of General Augusto Pinochet to the Presidency; Violations of Human Rights Committed by Officers or Covert Agents and Employees of the CIA.

The Church Report: Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, from Freedom of Information Act – CIA, 18 Dec. 1975

Afghanistan (1979-1989):

“The Oily Americans” by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, in Time, 13 May 2003.

General Info on CIA Covert Actions

Covert United States foreign regime change actions, Wikipedia. Well-documented article.

TO READ

Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow, which summarizes fourteen government overthrows by the US during the past century and a half.

Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (2007) by Tim Weiner. Reviewed here.

U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA, 1945-53 by Sarah-Jane Corke, 2008. Reviewed here.

Invention

Tags

coffee maker, crime fiction, death in august, imgination, invention

He thought of Dante struggling with the napoletana and went into the kitchen. The inventor was trying to assemble the machine upside down.

“‘What an odd contraption,’ he said.

“‘Give it to me.’

“‘I was almost there, you know.’

“Bordelli took the pieces out of Dante’s hands.

“‘See? This goes here.’

“‘I’d thought of that, but it seemed too banal.’

“‘Not everyone has your imagination.’

“‘Compliment accepted….’

– from Marco Vichi’s Death in August (2011)

Expect the End of the World. Laugh.

Tags

climate change, complex systems, dakini speaks, disaster, Earth, environment, hopeless, loss, no hope, peak oil, resiliency, transition movement, transition town, vision, wendell berry

I’m in a local group reading through Rob Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook together. It posits climate change and peak oil — two separate but intertwined phenomena — and looks for ways local communities can become more resilient and vital in the face of greatly reduced energy resources and a planet where weather, habitat, and even masses like glaciers and seas are more and more in flux. (You can read more about the problem at Why Transition? There is also a 12-page leaflet that summarises the handbook.)

Hopkins’ suggestions and examples are meant to be hopeful, positive, creative, proactive, community-building. Ideas include generating fuel, food and housing locally, developing local currencies, sharing tools and skills, etc.  His vision is of an evolution in our vision and our systems that helps us to weather a low-carbon, End-of-the-Oil-Age future. It’s certainly worth reading.

I’ve also been reading some articles lately that have a different perspective from The Transition Handbook. The point of view of both of these — Quote Of The Year. And The Next. at The Automatic Earth and The Road Down From Empire at Resilience — seems to be more an expectation of adaptation or collapse — rather than the evolution Hopkins envisions and hopes for. These writers seem to expect that we’ll deal with it when it happens (adaptation) or we won’t (collapse).

And that feels most likely to me. I think we humans respond to what feels urgent, in our hearts, to our senses — and not what we are told or even what we consciously think and intellectually agree is urgent. And climate change and the waning of liquid fuel don’t feel urgent to most Americans, including me. If one year is 1 degree warmer than other years, it doesn’t feel like anything. And, as most of us have experienced, sometimes what does feel urgent in life isn’t nearly as important or critical in the long run as it feels in the moment, and I think this tempers our response to complex crises, as does hearing, year after year, that something is a crisis. We get weary of responding, even if we respond only in our imaginations.

I really gravitate to the acceptance that disaster will happen, whether environmental or otherwise. For me, expecting that we won’t avert disaster doesn’t change at all my desire to do more with less; to be continually less involved with a consumerist/capitalist/growth-focused culture; to want and to work for a strong community where I (and others) have strong connections with neighbours, acquaintances and friends; to be in physical touch with the Earth around me and the other animals and plants living here; and to live a creative, centered  and connected life.  Accepting that we humans will probably fail to make needed changes  — if we even really knew what they were, the system being so complex and dynamic naturally without even accounting for political, financial and economic, and technological complexity — feels freeing to me.

When I started making changes, years ago, to align my actions more with my values (still very much a work in progress), it wasn’t because I was afraid we were going to run out of oil, though I knew even then that we probably would if we kept doing what we were doing, because it is a finite resource, or and it wasn’t because I thought my actions would have any significant impact on the course of events beyond my life, and maybe not even in my own life. It was only because these actions brought me joy and made me feel whole(r), because they felt right (true, real, alive) to me. And that’s the only way I really want to speak about or “do” resiliency with other people, from the place of “what actions align most fully with what we/you value?”

I guess in perhaps a perverse way, I value relaxing and letting go of expectations in the face of probable impending doom. One of my favourite poems (The Dakini Speaks, by Jennifer Welwood), about personal loss, is applicable for me here:

Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple – how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability. …

For me, this isn’t a call to be passive, to do nothing, to roll over. Far from it. It’s a call to dance. We still act, every day, and it’s good to be aware of the stakes of our actions (for every being, insofar as we can know them) and to think about how to act well, and to do it. I’m an utter (yet subtle) evangelist for what I care about, but I harbor no notion that most of us will change our minds or our actions until it feels urgent to do so. And being told that a situation is urgent — in the words of TV infomercials, “You must act now!” — sometimes just increases the listener’s resistance to any message that follows (it does so for me, anyway).

For me, the poem I quoted is a reminder that no matter what we do, life (and “lifestyles”) will always always change, and everything will end, we will all end, in some way, even if we then begin again (or not). For me, it all starts with that in mind.

When people talk about hope, or try to find hope in situations or imagined situations, I can’t join in. I’m just not hoping for outcomes. More and more (though not fully) in the last 15 years or so, my practice goes another direction. It seems to be the direction of no-hope, at least when it comes to wanting or hoping for a specific outcome.

I’ve written about this quite a lot before. I wrote in April about environmentalists giving up. One, Paul Kingsnorth, says we need to replace “hope” with “imagination:” “I don’t think we need hope. I think we need imagination. We need to imagine a future which can’t be planned for and can’t be controlled. I find that people who talk about hope are often really talking about control. They hope desperately that they can keep control of the way things are panning out.”

Imagination is, I think, the basis of The Transition Handbook: communities envisioning their own rebirth and resiliency. But if we are envisioning the world we want for the future, if we are trying to find a way to make it less disastrous, isn’t that also keeping control? On the other hand, what else can we do? I do have a vision, of sorts, which I’ve written about before, of the completely gratuitous, prodigal embrace of the loving, forgiving victim. Of the joyous revelation of love. Of grace.

So “no-hope” doesn’t mean that I am in despair, though I may be grieving losses. It doesn’t mean I’m passive, though I may think that no action (or no speaking) is the best action to take. It doesn’t mean — in the context of transition, climate change and peak oil — that I’m not interested in being part of a vital community, in resiliency (personal and communal), in gardening, public transportation, being outdoors more, doing what benefits the web of all life, reducing and reusing, lightening my footprint on the earth, and so on. I’m excited about all those things.

It just means that I’m not looking for anything to give me hope. To the extent I have hope, or faith, or joy, it’s not related to outcomes, to a vision, to what might or might not happen in the future. I feel willing to receive what arises, and to the extent that I’m not willing, this is my practise, to open my arms wide.

It’s like Wendell Berry says, in his “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”:

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

So, you know, I’m FINE (Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical). And I have no hope that I will be much else, but I am opening my arms to receive what arises.

As I wrote several years ago, part of a longer poem:

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
(Margaret Drabble)

No hope.
No hope for the planet, for creation,
for my own violent nature,
for human progress,
for better living through science,
for community through technology,
for peace through meditation and prayer.

I pray, meditate, participate
virtually, locally.
When I notice, barely, my own violence
I offer it solace and wait in it, fidget,
pray for sustainable peace.
I am learning non-violence.
I am getting to know the Earth.

But: no hope.

Faith.
Faith that love will always embrace,
disarm, and absorb the power of hate.

What that looks like,
is looking like,
will look like,
is beyond me. Or perhaps within me.

Whatever it is,
I rejoice with the stars
to flicker for a moment.

2012 Book Summary

A la Jessamyn

number of books read in 2012: 50
number of books read in 2011: 55
number of books read in 2010: 34
number of books read in 2009: 74

(still have to compile 2006-2008)

number of books read in 2005:  37
number of books read in 2004: 46

average read per month: 4.2 books

average read per week: almost 1 book
number read in worst month: 1 (Jan)
number read in best month: 7 (May and June)
percentage by male authors: 40% (20)
percentage by female authors: 60% (30)
fiction as percentage of total: 88% (44 books)
crime fiction as percentage of fiction total: 82% (36 of 44 books)
non-fiction as percentage of total: 12% (6 books)
percentage of total liked: 56% (28 books)
percentage of total ambivalent: 28% (14 books)
percentage of total disliked:  16% (8 books)

Notes:

The limiting factor in my reading again this year was availability of books I wanted to read. I kept running out of books I was interested in and ended up reading what I could find even if the books didn’t much appeal to me. I feel like I spent a lot of time not reading much of anything.

As usual, most of my non-fiction reading is online these days, in the form of essays and articles. I read several hundred pages of law for a Constitutional change class I took in the fall.

Books Read 2012 – Final

Tags

book list, book year 2012, books 2012, books read 2012, reading 2012, what i'm reading

Once again (2011, 2010, 2009,2005, 2004, 2003, and 2002), I’ve kept track of what I read this year.

January

Red Mist (2012) by Patricia Cornwell, in the Kay Scarpetta series. This one is set entirely in Savannah, GA, which was fun for me because I’ve visited it four times and recognised street names and places. The first-person narrative doesn’t really work well at the start of the book, and the writing for the first 50 pp or so feels somewhat contrived, because “Kay” has to explain who she is, who her husband and niece are, and, particularly, what happened in the last book, Port Mortuary, because this one is directly connected — and I can’t say more without revealing too much. As usual, I wish Lucy were more present in the plot (she is there at the end, and off and on throughout). Marino and Jamie Berger are featured, with Benton in a small role. Some say the old Scarpetta is gone, that something is lacking in the more recent books, but I like this Scarpetta: I like her flaws, her need to shield Lucy and to not make any mistakes or let anyone down, her weird marriage to the too-calm, too-rational and too-jealous Benton (do they respect each other? does he treat her like a child while she hides things from him? are they dysfunctional or perfectly matched, secure with each other?), her often-too-careful negotiation of volatile relationships, her fearlessness (carelessness?) when it comes to her own safety and reputation, and so on. These things seem to me to flow directly from her childhood experiences and from the life she’s chosen since then, and for me, they make her soulful and human.

February

The Rope (2011) by Nevada Barr, a prequel in the Anna Pigeon National Parks series, this one set in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona and Utah. Anna, a New York stage manager, signs on as a seasonal worker in the park after her husband Zach dies. Unbelievable amount of damsel in distress in this book, from beginning to end. There is some character development for Anna, as she comes to love silence and darkness. This was a welcome return to the wilds — canyons, cliffs, lakes, sandstone, and trails — after Barr’s last book in this series, set in New Orleans.

Believing the Lie (2012), in the Inspector Lynley series. Lynley is covertly sent to Cumbria (northwest England) to investigate the apparently accidental drowning death of Ian Cresswell; he takes his friends Simon St. James and Simon’s wife Deborah (Lynley’s lover from a long time ago) to play undercover roles. Deborah is agonising about not being able to have a child; she and Simon are considering a surrogate, and though Simon wants to, Deb realises this route is not for her. Her angst about this, and their conflict about it, is important because  one of the many subplots involves the cousin of the deceased, a prodigal son whose wife is not getting pregnant, much as he wants her to. Havers stays in London, where her neighbors (her little friend Haddiya’s parents) are having their own conflict. I’ve enjoyed the last two books in the series; I think Lynley is a better character with Helen gone (even though she’s never far from his thoughts).

1222 (2011) by Anne Holt, in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series, set almost entirely at a hotel 1,222 meters above sea level during a snowstorm of historic proportions. Wilhemsen, almost 50 and somewhat misanthropic, is a former Norwegian police officer who was paralysed when shot on duty in 2002. She finds herself trapped with about 200 other people in a hotel (Finse 1222) after their train crashes into a tunnel on its way to Bergen. Two murders and several other deaths occur, but the focus of the book is as much on group behaviour under stress as anything else, with much description of and dialogue between people of various backgrounds, professions, roles and ages –  dog owners (and 4 dogs), a teenage girls’ sports team, a church group, doctors, a TV personality and her followers, some Germans, etc. — as they coexist together with life-and-death events and changing expectations.  This seems to be the first book published in the series, but the first book IN the series (which takes place before this one) is to be published this summer.

No Mark Upon Her (2011) by Deborah Crombie, 14th in the Kincaid/James Scotland Yard series. This one takes place mostly in Henley on Thames and involves the sport of rowing, as the woman murdered, Becca Meredith is a serious rower and possible Olympics contender as well as being a senior police officer with West London Major Crimes.  Duncan and Gemma’s domestic arrangements now that they’re married with 3 kids is also front and center.  Good plot, some interesting relationships.  A sort of cozy police procedural.

Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (2009) by Toby Hemenway. Non-fiction, philosophy and practice of permaculture gardening, which looks to nurture and cultivate conditions for natural processes to occur in the garden/yard/home forest. Helpful.

March

Before the Poison (2011) by Peter Robinson, a stand-alone about two people, primarily: Grace Fox, a woman who was hung in 1953 for murdering her physician husband in their home, Kilnsgate House, during a snowstorm that stranded them and their dinner guests for a night; and Chris Lowndes, a film score composer and native Yorkshireman, newly widowed, who returns from years of living in southern California and ends up buying that same house. He plans to write a piano sonata but becomes fascinated by Grace’s story.  The story alternates between Chris’s first-person narration (set in fall and winter of 2010) and both a contemporary account of Grace’s trial and her wartime journals. I love the Banks/Cabot series and found this novel a little lackluster for some reason.

Cutting for Stone (2009) by Abraham Verghese, about twin orphaned sons born in Ethiopia to an Indian mother who’s a nun and a father who’s a surgeon. Interesting look at Ethiopia (and Eritrea) in the 1960s-1980. Much description of various surgeries, diseases, and other medical whatnot. Read for bookgroup.

Helsinki White (2011) by James Thompson, in the Kari Vaara series, set in Finland. Kari has just had successful surgery for a brain tumor, leaving him unable to feel emotions, and he’s been asked to run a covert (extra-legal) operation that strays onto morally ambiguous ground. I couldn’t finish (no pun intended) this book; it was too gruesome and the violence too graphic. I got about 3/4 through it and decided I’d had enough. Very Nordic noir.

April

A Field of Darkness (2006) by Cornelia Read, first in the Madeline Dare series. This one is set in Syracuse, NY (a place Madeline despises). I almost gave up 10 pages in, because I felt I was reading a creative writing class manuscript, the phrasing and word choice seemed so self-conscious, but I had nothing else to read so I kept going. The plot, involving blue-blood Madeline putting herself and others in danger while trying to determine if her adored older cousin, Lapthorne, was involved in the killing of two young women years ago, was better than the writing. I’ll try another.

The Beginner’s Goodbye (2012) by Anne Tyler, a short quiet novel set in Baltimore, as usual. It’s a story of grief, ghosts, family, and negotiating relationships. After Aaron loses Dorothy in a freak accident, he considers their relationship and ponders how to go on in life.

The Crazy School (2010) by Cornelia Read, 2nd in the Madeline Dare series, this one set at a boarding school for disturbed teenagers in the Berkshires (Mass.)  I liked this one better than the first.

May

Death and Judgment (1995) by Donna Leon, 4th in the Commissioner Guido Brunetti series, set in Venice. “High-powered lawyer Carlo Trevisan is found shot to death on the Padua-Venice train. The police write it off as a robbery gone bad, but Brunetti isn’t so sure. When an accountant who worked for Trevisan is found dead a short time later, Brunetti sees a connection, which eventually leads him to an international drug and prostitution ring run by some of Venice’s most influential citizens” (per Booklist). This is my third try with this series and it’s just not working for me.

The Leopard (2011) by Jo Nesbø, in the Harry Hole series. Harry is retrieved from Hong Kong to help solve a two murders that look suspiciously alike. Quite grisly and atmospheric (some of the action takes place not in Oslo but in remote ski huts and in the Congo), with the usual internecine political machinations of Nesbø’s series.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), a novella by Edgar Allan  Poe, “one of Poe’s least accessible works … ‘at once a mock nonfictional exploration narrative, adventure saga, bildungsroman, hoax, largely plagiarized travelogue, and spiritual allegory’.” Later works Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), Conrad’s The Secret Sharer (1910), HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936), and Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi (2001) all seem to derive from this novella in some way.  Lots of inconsistencies, obvious fabrications and seemingly hallucinogenic scenes in this sea story, which winds from Nantucket to the South Seas to the Antarctic, to an island of natives, to a white, vapourous, and ashy chasm. Themes of order and chaos, natural and unnatural, white and black, satiation and starvation, water in all forms, etc.

Pym (2011) by Mat Johnson, a sort of satirical continuation of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, focusing on the racial aspects of the original (black and white, tropical island and snow-land, etc). Very funny, especially if you’ve read the Poe and if you’re familiar with the craft of American painter Thomas Kinkade.

Appointment with Death (1938) by Agatha Christie. Poirot. When I checked Wikipedia, I realised why it seemed familiar and yet not … the film adaptation varies considerably. Set in Jerusalem/Transjordania (?), plot concerns a tyrannical mother and her long-suffering children. Not one of her best, IMO.

The Writing Circle (2010) by Corinne Demas, for bookgroup. Set in New England. With some wariness, Nancy, who is writing a novel based on an event in her father’s life, joins a writing group and finds herself in the midst of minor dramas among her fellow writers and their families. The story is told from multiple points of view, but Nancy’s voice is the primary one. It was OK, though none of the characters felt entirely real to me, and the ending — Gillian’s response to events — felt out of character.

Invisible Boy (2010) by Cornelia Read, in the Maddie Dare series, this one set in New York City. This is the third book I’ve read in the series and the last … I can’t get past the unbelievable amount of drug-taking and constant swearing in the books (and swearing doesn’t offend me, but this feels very gratuitous, harsh and not in character with the ethos of the characters); and in this one, I couldn’t stop gagging at the constant exclamations of outraged pity for the victim. Not that one wouldn’t feel pity and sadness, but it was so far overdone and overexpressed as to be at best a sign of poor editing and hitting the reader over the head to make a point, and at worst, patronizing, self-congratulatory (“What great humans we are to care so much!”) and almost satirical.

June

Vienna Blood (2006/2008 U.S.) by Frank Tallis, second in a series featuring turn-of-the-century Viennese psychoanalyst, fencer and amateur crime-solver, Dr Max Liebermann, who helps his friend, detective Oskar Rheinhardt, solve a series of gruesome and seemingly unconnected murders. Lots of interesting elements here: Freemasons, Aryan sentiment and movements, opera and classical music, dueling, misogyny, Darwinism, Freud and psychoanalysis, HG Wells’ idea of a human and subhuman race (one living above ground, the other below), and so on. One of the better written books I’ve read in years. Highly recommended. Now I have to go back and read the first one, A Death in Vienna (aka Mortal Mischief).

Burned: A Novel (2010/2011) by Thomas Enger, set in Norway, with Henning Juul as an investigative reporter just back to work after two years away, following a house fire that scarred him and killed his young son. A woman has been murdered by being buried, flogged, and stoned, and her Muslim boyfriend has been arrested. But did he do it? Plot fairly complicated, writing pretty good, but I was spoiled by Tallis’s deftness.

A Death in Vienna (2005/2006 U.S.) by Frank Tallis, the first of a series featuring turn-of-the-20th-century Viennese psychoanalyst, fencer and amateur crime-solver, Dr Max Liebermann, who helps his friend, detective Oskar Rheinhardt. When a medium is killed, the locked room and vanishing bullet lead some to wonder if the murder was supernatural. The Riesenrad, a gondola-ferris wheel contraption also seen in The Third Man (1949), is mentioned several times.

Fatal Lies (2008/2009 U.S.) by Frank Tallis, third in the series featuring turn-of-the-20th-century Viennese psychoanalyst, fencer and amateur crime-solver, Dr Max Liebermann, who helps his friend, detective Oskar Rheinhardt. This one features trouble at a boy’s boarding school, some espionage, and Liebermann’s love life. Also waltzing, Freud, absinthe drinking, police politics. And I notice a lot of description of pastries in this series….

The Coffin Trail (Lake District Mysteries; 2007) by Martin Edwards. Daniel Kind, popular historian, and his new girlfriend, Miranda, leave Oxford and on impulse decide to chuck their jobs and settle in the Lake District, in a house where Kind’s friend Barrie Gilpin had once lived; Gilpin was the main suspect in the murder of an attractive woman several years ago, but he fell to his death before he could be questioned. Now that case is about to be reopened by Kind’s father’s protégé, DCI Hannah Scarlett. The detective story, and exploration of several relationships, are interesting enough but something is lacking.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011) by Stephen Greenblatt. Non-fiction, for a bookgroup. The book is about how Lucretius’s poem, On the Nature of Things — which is full of Epicurus’s ideas about many things, including how all things are made of atoms, the nature of the afterlife (a void) and the soul (material and therefore mortal), the un-centrality of humans in the universe, the cruelty and superstitious nature of all religion, and his proposal that the pursuit of happiness is the highest good in life — was rediscovered in 1417, centuries after it was written. Started out interesting, bogged down in the middle, and never quite grabbed my attention again. Felt very padded.

The Weird Sisters (2011) by Eleanor Brown, fiction for bookgroup. About the three grown Andreas sisters, all avid readers, daughters of a Shakespearean scholar who named them for characters in the bard’s plays and who often speaks in couplets (so do the girls, having been trained from an early age). All three are failures in their own ways, and they are not close to each other but now are spending months together at their childhood home with their parents, while their mother is undergoing breast cancer treatment. Light and engaging.

July

Vienna Secrets (2009/2010) by Frank Tallis, 4th in the Liebermann series, set in 1903 Vienna. Brutal beheadings amidst an atmosphere in Vienna of animosity between Christians and Jews, with anti-Jewish sentiment running through corridors of power. An Hasidic sect, plague statues, Jewish mysticism (kabbalah) and Freud, the myths of the golem and of Lilith, the domes of Brunelleschi, the Catholic newspaper Das Vaterland (which both advocated Catholic socialism and was anti-Semitic and anti-Liberal; capitalism and the ‘Jewish spirit’ were seen as synonymous; more here) all figure in the plot.

Walking into the Ocean (2012) by David Whellams, a debut novel and the first in a projected trilogy featuring Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Peter Cammon.  One of the better written crime novels I’ve read. The plot is complex –  a mechanic seems to have murdered his wife before himself drowning in the English Channel, and meanwhile several girls have been murdered at various intervals along the nearby cliffs, all leading Cammon back and forth from London to Dorset, and Devon to the island of Malta — but it’s almost beside the point. And don’t get me started on the several churches and priests, and the Annunciation-themed shadow boxes Cammon likes to construct in his shed. If you like atmospheric, careful (almost ponderous) prose, you’ll like this. Reminds me of some of Reginald Hill’s books.

Dead Scared (2012) by SJ Bolton. Bringing back characters DC Lacey Flint and DI Mark Joesbury from Now You See Me (2010) and psychologist Evi Oliver from Blood Harvest (2011), this novel is set at Cambridge, where too many students, mostly females, have been committing suicide in usually complex and violent ways. Lacey is sent in, posing as a student, and finds herself drawn into a deadly game.  A page-turner.

Murder in the Bastille (2003) by Cara Black, 4th in the Aimee Leduc series, set in Paris. This book was interminable. The pacing was off, the plot and cast of characters got so convoluted I had no idea and didn’t care whodunit, and the ending was completely unsatisfying. The only thing that kept me reading was the Aimee’s character is mildly interesting (and I had nothing else else to read).

August

Have Mercy on Us All (2001/2003) by Fred Vargas, in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series, set in Paris. This is the first book I’ve read in the series (the only one my local library had) and I promptly interlibrary-loaned the rest. Well-written, interesting plot — this one has a Black Death connection — and characters (not just the recurring flics).

Broken Harbor (2012) by Tana French.  Set in the languishing seaside development of Ocean View, at Broken Harbor, not far from Dublin, this novel’s protagonist is Detective Sargent Mick Kennedy (also in Faithful Place) of the murder squad. He and his new rookie trainee, Garda Richie Curran, are assigned to the case of a family killed in their home. The plot is complex and interesting, character development solid, philosophical musings and explorations somewhat nuanced. I think I still prefer French’s first book, In the Woods, but this novel is very good.

The Chalk Circle Man (1991 L’Homme aux cercles bleus/2009) by Fred Vargas, in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series, set in Paris. This is the first book in the series and very similar in many ways to the plot of Have Mercy on Us All. Someone is drawing blue circles around items on the sidewalks in Paris; eventually a corpse shows up in one, as Adamsberg has been expecting. This book introduces Matilde, Camille’s mother.

The Prague Cemetery (2010/2011) by Umberto Eco. Interesting book reminiscent of The Secret Sharer. Set in mid-to-late-1880s, mostly in Paris. Forger Simonini, at age 68, seems to have developed amnesia, or does he have two personalities (or states), or is he actually sharing his flat with a priest? To determine what’s up, he writes down his life story, hoping it will reveal what’s caused this gap in his consciousness. His life seems to have been spent spreading a conspiracy theory about the Jews/Masons/Jesuits. A bit difficult to follow, mainly because there are so many characters!, but interesting and well-written.

Night Watch (2012) by Linda Fairstein, the 14th in the Alex Cooper (Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor) series. Set first in France, then in New York, much of the plot is based loosely on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case in 2011, with the usual history lessons thrown in. Alex is still dating Luc, who is opening a restaurant in NYC.

September

Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand (2004/2007) by Fred Vargas, in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series, set in Paris. A killer from Adamsberg’s past commits new murders with the unmistakeable signature of a trident weapon. Set in Paris and in part of Quebec province in Canada.

Main Street (1920) by Sinclair Lewis, for bookgroup. A classic I had never read, the book takes on issues of conformity, anti-immigration sentiment, progressivism vs. conservatism, class stratification, sexism, reform vs. revolution, idealism vs. contentment, and more in the 1910s, before, during and after World War I.

John James Audubon: The Making of an American (2006) by Richard Rhodes: For a bookgroup. This was a slog. More than 400 pages of small print, but what made it difficult is that there are hundreds of names and dates that turn out to be insignificant to the layperson, but the (conscientious) reader doesn’t know what’s going to matter so has to read them all, and it’s slow going. I think the book is meant to be a scholarly, comprehensive biography of Audubon (1785-1851), but its audience is likely not scholars. I learned some things, like for how much of a marriage couples might live apart in frontier days (though the Audubons were unusually separated), and about early American economic crises and mass bankruptcies (e.g., following the War of 1812 and the Louisiana Purchase).

October

An Uncertain Place ( 2009/2011) by Fred Vargas, in the Adamsberg series, this one set mostly in Serbia and concerning a (true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Plogojowitz) vampire story.  Interesting, and well-written, as always.

When We Were the Kennedys (2012) by Monica Wood. Excellent memoir of one pivotal event in Wood’s own life in 1963 and its reverberations. Set mostly in the paper mill town of Mexico, Maine (near Rumford).

November

The Beautiful Mystery (2012) by Louise Penney, eighth in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, but this one is almost entirely set at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups monastery in remote Quebec, home of the Gilbertines, who sing Gregorian chants. One of their order has been murdered in a private garden, and Gamache and Beauvoir have to find the culprit while learning about neumes, chants, church history and chickens, and in the midst of tension between two factions of monks, between Gamache’s boss (who eventually joins them at the monastery) and his underlings, and between Gamache and a still-fragile Beauvoir.

Bones are Forever (2012) by Kathy Reichs, 15 in the Tempe Brennan forensic anthropology series. Not her best. A newborn baby found wedged in a vanity cabinet in a rundown apartment near Montreal leads Brennan and Ryan to the Canada’s Northwest Territories, to Edmonton and then farther north to Yellowknife in a convoluted plot that involves diamond mining, prostitution, Cornelia de Lange Syndrome, Edmonton’s growth and conflict with indigenous peoples, etc. Boring.

The Bone Bed (2012) by Patricia Cornwell: 20th in the Scarpetta series, set in the Boston area. Not a gripping read but pretty typical of a Scarpetta crime novel. In this one she does a harbor dive to bring up the body of a woman (who was attached to a very large sea turtle that was clinging to life when discovered), who might or might not be the wife of a wealthy man on trial for her murder, at whose trail Scarpetta has to unwillingly testify. Lucy figures a bit (not enough, IMO), Marino less than usual. Her relationship with Benton is as fraught with distrust and anxiety as always. Scarpetta spends a lot of time worrying about whether Benton’s had an affair, and he’s worried she is going to have one. Jealousy fuels their sex life and their dysfunctional marriage. I also noticed that the connector “and” is used entirely too much in Cornwell’s books.

DaVinci’s Ghost (2012) by Toby Lester. One of the worst books I’ve read in a long time. (Read for a bookgroup.) It’s disorganized, the writing prosaic in the extreme, and, like The Swerve, a book it strongly resembles — in fact, I am starting to feel that this sort of forced enlargement of one small historical work or event is the template for non-fiction these days — it fails to make its point, which is, I think, based on the subtitle, that Leonardo “created the world in his own image” — because he sketched Vitruvian Man based on proportions in a 1st-century B.C. text? There is so much conjunction and supposition throughout this book that eventually it felt to me that there was little substance here.

December

Introduction to Permaculture (1991) by Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay: Read this for my permaculture discussion group from Oct-Dec. Some of it was useful in a northern, temperate climate, but about 1/3 of it was really geared to tropical or desert areas. Mollison is from Tasmania and the frequency with which he talks of volcanoes, bamboo, acacias, etc., makes the book not quite as useful for most of North America as it might have been. There were also a few chapters devoted to raising animals, which is not something I plan to do. That said, it was a good reminder of some permaculture principles and practices. The chapter on Understanding Patterns in Nature was my favourite.

Phantom (2011/2012) by Jo Nesbø: In the Harry Hole series.  Harry returns from Hong Kong when he’s told that Oleg, the son of his sometime girlfriend and true love, Rakel Fauke, has been arrested for the murder of his flatmate and drug dealing pal Gusto. The engine of this book’s plot is an injectable drug called Violin, a homemade super-heroin now all the rage in Norway.  The story is told in the present and through the pov of the dying Gusto. Quite gritty, even for Jo Nesbø.

Kissing Christmas Goodbye (2007) by M.C. Beaton: In the Agatha Raisin cozy series set in the Cotswolds. A domineering, cruel matriarch contacts Agatha because she thinks one of her family will kill her, and, surprise, one of her (rather nasty) family does kill her. Agatha has a new assistant, Toni, 17. who is already a gifted detective but has family problems of her own. This is the first I’ve read in the series and it’s pretty bad, even for a cozy. The writing is pathetic (especially the dialogue), the plotting is fair, there are almost no descriptive passages, and this book — which was billed as Christmas fare — is set in late fall, with only the last 20 pages or so having anything to do with Christmas.

Busy Body (2011) by M.C. Beaton: In the Agatha Raisin series. I took this one and Kissing Christmas Goodbye out of the library before Christmas, so I went ahead and read this one, too. The plot — first an oppressive codes enforcement officer is killed; next, someone who hires Agatha to clear her name, and then that woman’s American relatives are involved and Agatha goes to Philadelphia, and so on — was slightly more complex than KCG but it was also quite preposterous in places. The writing was slightly better, I thought, though there were some dialogue clunkers. Again, purported to be set at Christmas but only the first and last bits were (though it is somewhat central to the plot motivation). Probably my last of this series.

A Holly, Jolly Murder (1997) by Joan Hess: In the Claire Malloy cozy series. Malloy runs a small bookstore in Arkansas (though the place hardly matters) and solves murders in her spare time. This one really is set at Christmas: the subplot involves a mall Santa, while the main plot involves a small community of neo-Druids, Wiccans, and other assorted solstice-celebrating pagans who keep involving Claire in their business then accusing her of being involved in their business. This book is much better and more amusingly written than the Agatha Raisins (above) but the plot device of the amateur sleuth being unable to say “No” to the most ludicrous, dangerous and inconvenient requests is old.

Sugar Cookie Murder (2004) by Joanne Fluke: “A Hannah Swensen Holiday Mystery with Recipes.” Predictable plot and disappointing ending, but amusing writing, interesting cast of characters (Hannah, her boyfriends, her mother, her sisters). Set in small-town Lake Eden, Minnesota, the action begins at a town-wide Christmas recipe-testing buffet party. The whole book is 341 pp but the mystery is only 168 pp … the rest is recipes! If you like culinary mysteries or are looking for something with a Christmas feel, this one’s for you.

Movies Screened 2012

Tags

films 2011, movie list, movies 2011, movies screened, movies watched, movies year 2011

As previously (2011, 2010, 2009), I’ve kept track of the dvds (TV series and movies) and first-run movies I watched this year.

January

Agatha Christie’s Poirot, starring David Suchet (re-viewings):

• The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993) with Hastings and Miss Lemon, set in Egypt, mostly. Mysterious deaths among several former Yale classmates, centered on  the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
• The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (1989), with Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Japp (who calls Poirot “Mr Poirot” – an early story). Wealthy couple receives notice of their son’s imminent kidnapping and police force tries to prevent it, to no avail.

Beginners (2010) with Christopher Pummer, Ewan McGregor, Mélanie Laurent. Sweet story of a son who can’t commit and his father who was married for 44 years, and who comes out as gay after his wife dies, then himself dies after 4 years of lung cancer.  A Jack Russell terrier is in almost every scene.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 2 (1971/1972):

• The Slaughter Affair: Murray works two jobs
• More Than Neighbors: Ted might move in to the apartment building
• The Care and Feeding of Parents: Phyllis coops Mary to get Bess’s essay published
• You Certainly Are A Big Boy: Mary dates a man with a 24-year-old son.
• Some of My Best Friends Are Rhoda: Mary’s new friend Joanne won’t invite Rhoda to her Country Club.
• His Two Right Arms: Bill Daly guests as a clueless local councilman.
• I Am Curious Cooper: Lou breaks his rule about not fixing people up, but when he fixes up his friend Mike Cooper (Michael Constantine) with Mary, there’s no chemistry.
• And Now, Sitting in for Ted Baxter: Ted’s vacation fill-in is a lot better than Ted.
• Don’t Break the Chain: Mary conjures up a men from her past when she reluctantly continues Mr. Grant’s chain letter.
• Ted Over Heels: Ted is in love with the daughter of Chuckles the Clown.
• The Five-Minute Dress: Mary’s new love interest, an assistant to the governor, keeps breaking their dates.

February

Good Neighbors: The Early Birds (1976): Barbara and Tom try to adjust their schedules to early morning farming while keeping it quiet so the Leadbetters can sleep.

Get Low (2009), with Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black and Bill Cobbs. Duvall plays a hermit who has isolated himself because of his shame about his actions 40 years before. He wants to get his story off his chest before he dies, so arranges his own living funeral party. Good acting, some good lines, but something was missing for me.

The Goodbye Girl (1977), written by Neil Simon, with Marsha Mason, Richard Dreyfuss, and Quinn Cummings. Haven’t seen this in about 25 years. Jilted dancer Paula (Mason) and her 10-year-old daughter unwillingly share an apartment with struggling actor Elliott (Dreyfuss) and romance blossoms.

Murder by Death (1976): Comedy. Five famous literary detective characters and their sidekicks are invited to a bizarre mansion to solve an even stranger mystery. Written by Neil Simon. Stars Peter Falk, Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker. Amusing, especially if you’re familiar with Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, and Sam Spade.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 3 (1972):

• The Good-Time News: Mary’s for a more entertaining news format, Lou’s not.
• What Is Mary Richards Really Like?: Mary is interviewed by a hypercritical newspaper columnist.
• Who’s in Charge Here?: When Lou is promoted, Mary has to decide whether she wants to be promoted
  to producer.
• Enter Rhoda’s Parents: Rhoda’s mother walks out on her father, in Minneapolis.
• It’s Whether You Win or Lose: The poker game.
• Rhoda the Beautiful: Rhoda loses weight and enters her dept. store’s beauty contest.
• Just Around the Corner: Mary’s parents are moving to Minneapolis.
• But Seriously, Folks: Mary’s new boyfriend (Jerry Van Dyke) quits his job writing for Chuckles and tries to go into stand-up.
• Farmer Ted and the News: Ted gets a change in his contract so that he can now do cheesy commercials.
• Have I Found a Guy for You: Mary’s friends the Fosters split up and he wants to date Mary.
• You’ve Got a Friend: Mary tries to make her dad and Mr. Grant friends, but they’re more like rivals.
• It Was Fascination, I Know: Bess’s date falls for Mary.
• Operation: Lou: Lou goes in to get some shrapnel removed and comes out with Ted as a friend, briefly.

The Big Chill (1983): re-screening. Gotta love the soundtrack. Seven former college friends (including Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place), plus a few others (Meg Tilly, e.g.), gather for a weekend reunion at a posh South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends. But I always forget that it’s mostly about finding a sperm donor for one of the women.

Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), dir. David Susskind, with Richard Castellano, Gig Young, Cloris Leachman, Anne Jackson, Beatrice Arthur, Bonnie Bedelia, Anne Meara, Marian Hailey, and Diane Keaton (her film debut). The Carpenters wrote “For All We Know” for this movie. The focus is the wedding of Mike and Susan, who have been living together for a year and a half, but the relationships of their parents, cousin, brother, and sister are also explored. Very much a period piece. Funny.

March

Charade (1963) with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau.  Rescreening after many years. When Hepburn’s husband is murdered, several men show up to claim the $250,000 they feel he owed them. A comedic thriller, I guess you’d call it (reminded me in places of Foul Play). Set mostly in Paris.

To the Lighthouse (1983), from the Virginia Woolf novel, with a young Kenneth Branagh, Rosemary Harris (looking very Meryl Streepish), Michael Gough, Suzanne Bertish, et al.  The Ramseys — a professor, his wife and their 6 children — plus Aunt Lily, an old friend of the professor’s, and Mr Ramsey’s rather stiff student, Charles Tansley (Branagh), spend the summer in rambling seaside house in Cornwall just before World War I.  Mr. Ramsay is mercurial and prone to temper and sternness, while Mrs. Ramsay is the heart of the family, warm, understanding and giving.  The family talk about sailing to the lighthouse, but the trip is always postponed, leaving young James always disappointed.

Desk Set (1957) with Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Gig Young, and Joan Blondell.  Romantic comedy. Efficiency expert comes to observe a broadcasting reference department to determine how to best use a massive IBM computer there. Some of it set around Christmas, with drinking, musical office parties.

The Great New Wonderful (2005), with Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan, Judy Greer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Naseeruddin Shah, Tony Shalhoub, et al. Set in Sept. 2002, the film “weaves five stories against the backdrop of an anxious and uncertain post-9-11 New York City.” I liked it, especially the security guard story and Judy’s story.

Nuts in May (1976), dir Mike Leigh, with  Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman. “The comical story of a nature-loving and rather self-righteous couple’s exhausting battle to enjoy what they perceive to be the idyllic camping holiday.” Very conflictual. Not that funny.

rescreening of Something’s Gotta Give (2003), with Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Keanu Reeves. I’ve seen it 4 or 5 times and really like it. It’s a love story.

April

rescreening (many times over) of Manhattan (1979), dir. Woody Allen, with Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway.  Black & white. Entire soundtrack of George Gershwin, and lots of Manhattan cityscape and locations. Another love story … Allen chooses the neurotic, overly cerebral woman (Keaton), who’s been dating his married best friend (Murphy), over the wise teenage girl (Hemingway, who was only 16 at filming). As one critic wrote: “the … visual beauty of his films is part of their grace and sweetness.”

rescreening of They Do It with Mirrors (1991), a Miss Marple (Agatha Christie) mystery, with Joan Hickson.  When Miss Marple is invited to the manor house — now also an institute for young offenders — of an old friend, Carrie-Louise Serrocold, she finds an assortment of characters there, and then of course a murder takes place. Inspector Slack and Sgt. Lake appear in this one.

The Third Man (1949), dir. Carol Reed, with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. 1949 British film noir set in Vienna after World War II. Atmospheric. Welles is great as a sociopath, Cotten as a romantic hero.

May

Frenzy (1972), dir. Hitchcock, with  Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt. A man is raping and strangling women with his necktie. The police have arrested a suspect … but are they right? Graphic in places (has an R rating – not sure if it was for nudity or depiction of rape and murder, or both), and also humourous in places.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), dir. Hitchcock, with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Need I say more? Schmaltzy. WAY too many verses of Que Sera, Sera. Starts in Marrakesh, with local bus and market scenes, then moves to London. An upper-middle-class couple from Indiana and their son (perhaps aged 8 or 10) are travelling around Europe and northern Africa when they run into a stranger whose death leads to their son’s kidnapping. Much of the last hour or so is reminiscent of Foul Play (or vice versa, really).

Midsomer Murders: Death’s Shadow (Season 2, #1 – 1998), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Richard Briers (of Good Neighbors) guest stars as the vicar.  “Barnaby and his wife are planning to celebrate their 25th anniversary by renewing their vows at the church in Badger’s Drift. When a controversial local property developer is gruesomely murdered there just hours after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Barnaby and Sergeant Troy are called to investigate.”

Midsomer Murders: Dead Man’s Eleven (Season 3, #1 – 1999), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy.  “Tragedy strikes when the Fletcher’s Cross [Cricket] Captain’s wife is found beaten to death with her step-son’s cricket bat.” Robert Hardy (from All Creatures Great and Small) guest stars as cricket team captain Robert Cavendish and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Harry Potter, Return to Cranford) as Christine Cooper, a woman with a secret.

Midsomer Murders: Judgement Day (Season 3, #3 – 2000), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Barnaby’s wife, Joyce, is one of four judges of the Perfect Village contest, for which Midsomer Mallow is in contention, but murder(s) may ruin their chances. Josephine Tewson (Elizabeth in Keeping Up Appearances) guest stars.

Midsomer Murders: Strangler’s Wood (Season 2, #2 – 2000), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Joyce is away, but Barnaby doesn’t get much time to spend with his visiting daughter after a tobacco company actress is discovered murdered in Raven’s Wood — renamed Strangler’s Wood by the locals after three young girls were killed there nine years ago. Trudie Styler (Sting’s wife) guest stars.

Midsomer Murders: Blue Herrings (Season 2, #2 – 2000), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Barnaby is on vacation, painting his house, but he still finds time to investigate a few deaths at the Lawnside Nursing home, where his aunt Alice Bly is a resident.  I found this episode weak, though I enjoyed the cast of old people.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), with Judy Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Dev Patel et al. “British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways. ” It sounds better than it is, which is so-so, with some predictably good acting and vivid cinematography, and too many platitudes (e.g.: Evelyn: Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected. Muriel: Most things don’t. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff), bouts of awkward scripting, and somewhat caricaturish portrayals. Pleasant enough. (Saw this in the cinema while on vacation.)

June

Midsomer Murders: Garden of Death (Season 4, #1 – 2000), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. “When an arrogant aristocratic family’s decision to develop a memorial garden into a commercial tea shop has the villagers up in arms, murders past and present rear their heads.” We recognised two of the actors (Frederick Treves and Margaret Tyzack) from two Agatha Christie: Miss Marple episodes.

rescreening of The Trouble with Harry (1955), dir. Hitchcock, set in New England in the fall, with John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick, Jerry Mathers, and introducing Shirley McLaine. Harry’s dead, but who did it and what should be done about his body? Black slapstick comedy.

Midsomer Murders: Destroying Angel (Season 4, #2, 2001), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. A hotel is left to four beneficiaries, who are being murdered. Somewhat complicated plot. A Punch and Judy show and mushroom-foraging (and eating) figure in the plot.

Midsomer Murders: Market for Murder (Season 5, #4, 2002), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Women in an investment group, disguised as a reading group, are being killed off. Angela Thorne (Marjory in To the Manor Born), guest stars.

Midsomer Murders: Ring Out Your Dead (Season 5, #3, 2002), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. The bell ringers of the parish church in Midsomer Wellow are being shot, just before the big bell-ringing competition. Graham Crowden (Waiting for God) and Gemma Jones (Bridget Jones’s mother, among many roles) guest star.

Midsomer Murders: Who Killed Cock Robin? (Season 4, #4, 2001), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. “Barnaby and Troy are drawn to Newton Magna where their search for a horse whisperer allegedly struck by a car is complicated by the discovery of a body in the town well.” Ian McNeice (Bert Large in the Doc Martin series) guest stars.

New in Town (2009), with Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr. and Siobhan Fallon. Young Miami businesswoman goes to New Ulm, Minnesota to oversee a reduction in the work force of a food manufacturer. She is ill-suited to the wintry climate and low-key social interactions of the small town; crow-hunting, making and eating tapioca, scrap-booking, eating together, and winter sports seem to take up most of the villagers’ time. Sparks fly between her and the head of the labor union. Eventually, she sees the charm of the place and takes a stand for the plant and the community. Connick Jr. plays a very similar role (sexy blue-collar guy, who’s really more complex than he seems, underestimated by independent citified woman) in Hope Floats. Saw it on the commuter bus. Not bad.

Midsomer Murders: Dark Autumn (Season 4, #5, 2001), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Local mailman – also village Lothario – is almost beheaded, but he’s just the first to die. Dance hall music. Celia Imbrie (Ab Fab) guest stars.

Midsomer Murders: Murder on St. Malley’s Day (Season 5, #3, 2002), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. When Daniel is murdered the day after his grandfather dies, all eyes turn to the secretive Pudding Club at the prestigious Devington School.

Midsomer Murders: A Worm in the Bud (Season 5, #5, 2002), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. The fate of Setwale Wood seems to be at the heart of village murders.

Midsomer Murders: Written in Blood (Season 1, #1, 1998), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. The morning after a meeting of the Midsomer Worthy Writers’ Circle, Gerald Hadleigh is found battered to death. The guest speaker for the meeting had been a best-selling novelist that Gerald did not want invited. No one seems to know much about Hadleigh …

Midsomer Murders: Death of a Hollow Man (Season 1, #3, 1998), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy.  “The Causton Players are readying their production of Amadeus when Barnaby must inform lead actor Esslyn Carmichael (Nicholas Le Prevost) that his cousin Agnes Grey (Denyse Alexander) has been murdered.  … Then on opening night, Esslyn is tricked into killing himself on stage.” Janine Duvitski (Jane in Waiting for God) guest stars as the harried and verbally abused stage manager.

Midsomer Murders: Faithful unto Death (Season 1, #4, 1998), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy. Co-investors in a new  craft centre have a public argument, and soon after, the wife of one disappears. Lesley Vickerage, who plays Helen Lynley in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, guest stars.

Midsomer Murders: Death in Disguise (Season 1, #2, 1998), with John Nettles and Daniel Casey as chief inspector Barnaby and sergeant Troy.  The co-owner of the  New Age commune the Lodge of the Golden Windhorse is found dead with a broken neck, lying at the bottom of a staircase – was it an accident or murder?; a few days later, a definite murder takes place.  Judy Cornwell (Daisy in Keeping Up Appearances ), guest stars as a past-life regression guide.

July

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Season 3, #1, 2004), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small  as DC/DS Barbara Havers. When the daughter of a retired police officer and her male friend are found beaten to death at a camping site, Lynley brings in the recently demoted Havers to help.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: A Traitor to Memory (Season 3, #2, 2004), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DC/DS Barbara Havers. Lynley and Havers (who plans to resign from the force) are assigned to the hit and run of a woman, the estranged mother of a concert violinist.

To Rome with Love (2012), dir. Woody Allen, with Allen, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi . A sort of “charming trifle,” as one reviewer put it, and a version of a Decameron, set in the city of Rome, separate tales of several couples, with one unifying theme: what is the role you were born to play? Most of the characters take on (voluntarily or not) new roles, then revert to their previous roles. The funniest is Leopoldo’s story.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: A Cry for Justice (Season 3, #3, 2004), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DC/DS Barbara Havers.  Havers is reinstated and goes undercover as a secretary at a private club to investigate what looks like suicide but is actually murder.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: If Wishes Were Horses (Season 3, #4, 2004), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DC/DS Barbara Havers. “Lynley investigates the car bomb murder of a womanizing forensic pathologist whose list of former lovers includes Helen.”

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: In Divine Proportion (Season 4, #1, 2005), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DC/DS Barbara Havers. “The unusual shotgun murder of an interior decorator is linked to the rape and subsequent suicide of her sister fifteen years earlier.”

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: In The Guise of Death (Season 4, #2, 2005), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DC/DS Barbara Havers. Lynley is visiting the family estate and doesn’t tell his mother that he and Helen are separated after the loss of the baby. Havers is at a spa in the same area after being shot. Both assist local police with a suspicious death related to the local horse world.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: The Seed Of Cunning (Season 4, #3, 2005), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. “Lynley and Havers investigate the beating death of a doorkeeper at Parliament.” Fascinating look behind the scenes at the working of government underlings. Lynley starts to get involved with another woman.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Word Of God (Season 4, #4, 2005), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. “An illegal Jordanian immigrant is found strangled in a meat locker with a page from the priceless ‘Golden Koran’ found on his person.”

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Natural Causes (Season 5, #1, 2006), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. Now Lynley is suspended from duty; Havers is assigned to DI Fiona Knight (love her!) on a case in the hinterlands, but Lynley helps solve the case. Helen (new actress) comes back on the scene (boo, hiss).

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: One Guilty Deed (Season 5, #2, 2006), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. The holiday trailer park murder mystery. The mob, drugs, ghosts in the marsh, and a seedy trailer park — fun!

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Chinese Walls (Season 5, #3, 2006), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. Lynley investigates the murder of a young girl after she quit her job with a high profile lawyer to work for an on-line sex site.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: In the Blink of an Eye (Season 5, #4, 2007), with Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small as DS Barbara Havers. “The murder of a former war photographer turned paparazzi seems linked is Bosnian war crimes and a prominent London crime kingpin.”

August

Fawlty Towers:

• Series 1, Ep. 1 : A Touch of Class (1975): Aristocratic Lord Melbury is not all he appears but Basil fawns over him nonetheless. Sybil orders Basil to hang a picture.
• Series 1, Ep. 4: The Hotel Inspectors  (1975): Basil becomes increasingly obsessed with trying to determine which guests are hotel inspectors.
• Series 1, Ep. 6: The Germans (1975): Sybil’s in hospital for toenail surgery. Meanwhile Basil is bashed on the head by a moose he’s hanging on the wall and offends his German guests after he escapes from the hospital to the hotel.  “Don’t mention the war.”

Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (1985), with Joan Hickson. One of my favourite Marple stories. Peter Davison also stars.

Song of the Thin Man (1947) with William Powell and Myrna Loy. Also Kennan Wynn and Jayne Meadows. When a band leader is killed after a charity benefit aboard a gambling ship, suspicion falls on Phil Brant, who had argued with Drake earlier in the evening, but there are plenty of other suspects. Best exchange (among many): “Nick: If the party gets rough, duck.” Nora: “I’m practically under the table now, but not the way I like to be.”

My Architect (2003), re-screening of one of my favourite movies, about architect Louis Kahn, by his (publicly unacknowledged) son, Nathaniel Kahn. Beautifully filmed, scripted and paced. “Kahn led an extraordinary career and left three families behind when he died of a heart attack in a Penn Station bathroom.” Appearances by Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stern, Philip Johnson.  Best quote: “There are very few people you will find anywhere who will talk about matter in spiritual terms. Nothingness mattered to him, silence mattered to him, the engima of light mattered to him. So those are not normal discourses, but these are what we liked and we talked about it. And when somebody understand this, he can not be an ordinary person. he has to be highly cultivated soul who we call guru, we call him a yogi.” –  B.V. Doshi, architect

Fawlty Towers:

• Series 1, Ep. 2 : The Builders (1975): Over his wife’s objections, Basil hires his usual firm of incompetents (O’Reilly’s) to do some carpentry work in the hotel lobby.
• Series 1, Ep. 3: The Wedding Party (1975): Basil’s puritanical streak comes out when a young couple he suspects of not being married tries to book a double room.
• Series 2, Ep. 2: The Psychiatrist (1979)
  Confusion arises when Basil tries to catch a girl in a playboy’s room after hours, all the while unnerved by a psychiatrist’s presence. Lots of Basil skulking in the hallways.

Ab Fab (all re-screenings):

• Season 2, Ep. 4: New Best Friend (1994): When Eddy’s old friend Bettina, a notorious minimalist, and her husband Max come to visit, they turn up with their new baby, filling the house with clutter. Eddy leaves and she and Patsy try to make each other jealous in a restaurant.
• Season 2, Ep. 5: Poor (1994): Eddy has to economise, so she and Patsy go off to do their own supermarket shopping for the first time.
• Season 2, Ep. 6: Birth (1994):  After Patsy burns down Eddy’s kitchen with a cigarette, Saffy, Patsy and Eddy are locked into the main living living (by Eddy’s mother) and exchange stories of their births.
• Season 3, Ep. 1: Door Handle (1995): To Saffy’s annoyance not only has Eddy forgotten her birthday but has failed to redecorate the kitchen after the fire. Eddy agrees to start work but ends up flying to New York with Patsy on the Concorde in pursuit of a suitable door knob she once saw there.
• Season 3, Ep. 2:  Happy New Year (1995): Eddy and Patsy are about to go out for a New Year’s Eve party when Patsy’s older sister Jackie arrives, claiming to be homeless and asking to stay at Eddy’s until she can get the money together to start a shelter for stray animals.
• Season 3, Ep. 3: Sex (1995): Patsy and Eddy decide to have an orgy with (unenthusiastic) male escorts. A video tape of a prior orgy they were involved in gets mixed up with Saffy’s science presentation at the university.
• Season 3, Ep. 4: Jealous (1995): At a dinner to award the prize to the best P.R. consultant Eddy is not happy when she loses out to rival Claudia Bing. Later, at a P.R. meeting, Eddy loses her speech but makes another one. (A male teacher tries to seduce Saffy.)
• Season 3, Ep. 5: Fear (1995):  Despite their frequent conflicts Eddy feels lost when Saffy moves out to live in college and drinks herself unconscious. When she wakes up she finds Patsy and her colleagues in her kitchen as their magazine has gone bust and Patsy is considering a move to New York for another job offer. They start out bonding in the bathroom but end up arguing; Patsy takes the NY job and Eddy decides to do her own thing. One of my favourites.
• Season 3, Ep. 6: The End (1995): Eddy goes to live in a commune but doesn’t fit in (“stick! stick!”) Patsy’s not enjoying New York, either. (Bo, Eddy’s ex, Marshall’s, girlfriend, marries the richest man in town, Patsy’s publisher, right before he dies … or maybe right after.) Eddy turns up in a helicopter and finds Patsy drinking on a skyscraper rooftop.

Ballykissangel (all re-screenings):

• Season 1, Ep. 1: Trying to Connect You (1996): Father Peter Clifford arrives at his new church in Ballykissangel, meets Assumpta.
• Season 1, Ep. 2 The Things We Do for Love (1996): While trying to save a caravan family from losing their home, Peter is greeted by a young woman from his past and rumors begin to circulate when the two are seen together.
• Season 1, Ep. 3: Live in My Heart and Pay No Rent (1996): After a near miss from a falling statue of a saint, Ambrose feels he has a vocation, being pulled towards the priesthood. However doing so means ending his engagement to Niamh.

September

Ballykissangel (all re-screenings):

• Season 1 , Ep. 4: Fallen Angel (1996): Ballykissangel gets its own underground, unlicensed radio station, and Father Clifford takes driving lessons with Assumpta.
• Season 1, Ep. 5:  The Power and the Gory (1996): Following the death of a local politician, Brian Quigley begins campaigning for the vacant position, while his assistants find some bones on the site of Quigley’s new development. Assumpta’s college boyfriend,  Leo, a reporter, comes to town.
• Season 1, Ep. 6: Missing You Already (1996): Brian Quigley brings a fair to the town, along with his own bar and grill, putting Assumpta out of business for the weekend. But while Assumpta contemplates the possibility that she might lose her business, Father Clifford must accept his possible departure from BallyK.
• Season 2, Ep 1: For One Night Only (1997): Sparks fly when Father Peter casts Assumpta in the village play.
• Season 2, Ep 2:  River Dance (1997): Brendan may lose his job as head school teacher, and Liam & Donal open Our Lady of the Bonanza.
• Season 2, Ep 3: In The Can (1997):  Former one hit wonder Enda Sullivan takes Assumpta out on a date, and Fr Peter recruits him to play at a Gospel Mass.
• Season 2, Ep 4: The Facts Of Life  (1997): Peter finds an abandoned newborn on his step and attempts to reunite the family. Ambrose slips in the tub and a new Garda arrives in BallyK.
• Season 2, Ep 5: Someone To Watch Over Me (1997): Quigley gets a overly flirtatious housekeeper.
• Season 2, Ep 6: Only Skin Deep (1997): Quigley sets up a town beauty contest as part of the village festival.
• Season 2, Ep 7: Money, Money, Money (1997): A fire guts Kathleen’s home and the villagers help her rebuild. When Peter gets wrong information on a dog race, the town turns to a poker tournament to help her out.
• Season 2, Ep 8: Chinese Whispers (1997): Two strangers cause chaos when the villagers think they are from the revenue service.
• Season 3, Ep 1: As Happy As A Turkey On Boxing Day (1998):  Everyone’s Christmas plans fall apart when Padraig’s son, Kevin, falls down a mine shaft, and Fr. Mac’s nephew Timmy, a priest in training, visits.
• Season 3, Ep 2: When A Child Is Born (1998): With the birth of Niamh’s baby approaching, Ambrose’s mother arrives to help. Meanwhile, Kathleen discovers a ‘miracle’ at the Church. Peter experiences some doubt about his vocation.

Doc Martin, Season 5 (2011):

• Preserve the Romance: Martin drives Louisa and their baby son back to her house in Portwenn, where Martin’s nervous replacement, Diana Dibbs, is already having problems. Then Martin learns that his aunt Joan has died, causing him to stay for a week for her funeral.
• Dry Your Tears:  Portwenn gathers to pay its last respects to Joan at a less than perfect funeral. His parents do not show up but Joan’s sister Ruth does, and is surprised to find Joan has left her the small-holding.
• Born with a Shotgun : Ruth is disturbed when reclusive neighbour Shirley Dunwich tells her that her surly young son Michael is trying to poison her.
• Mother Knows Best: As the first annual Portwenn charity fun run leads to unfit casualties and a price war between Bert and publican Mark Bridge.  Louisa’s feckless, long-absent mother Eleanor turns up at the surgery.
• Remember Me:  Joe Penhale is shocked when his ex-wife Maggie, seemingly amnesiac and believing that they are still married, arrives in Portwenn. Heavily in debt, Bert Large falls in with the local loan shark.
• Don’t Let Go: As Maggie regains her memory and aims to leave Portwenn, a desperate Joe tries to impress her into staying by being assertive. Louisa returns to school where the children fall prey to a mystery illness which Martin links to demented caretaker Mr. Coley, who has inhaled carbon monoxide fumes and cleaned the school floors with fertilizer.
• Cats and Sharks: Al is shocked to hear that his father is in debt to loan shark Alistair Tonken and his menacing son Norman and lends him the money that Ruth gave him to buy a new fence. Eleanor keels over with a hernia that needs emergency repair.
• Ever After: Mrs. Tishell volunteers to mind Louisa and Martin’s son but she has long nurtured a hidden love for Martin – even creating a shrine to him in her wardrobe – and now, after an excess of self-prescribed drugs, she flips and runs off with James.

October

Ballykissangel (all re-screenings):

• Season 3, Ep 3: Changing Times (1998): Brian’s latest venture to attract Korean investors is bulldozing a local beauty spot where badger sand orchids live.
• Season 3, Ep 4: Stardust in Your Eyes (1998): Quigley tries to impress potential investors while his daughter struggles to balance work and motherhood.

Hospitalité (2010; orig title: Kantai). This review at Hollywood Reporter describes the plot well: “Mikio Kobayashi runs a small printing business … in [a] house that doubles as his workshop and shop-front. One day, a dodgy-looking man [Kawaga] turns up, ostensibly to offer news of the parakeet that Kobayashi’s daughter Eriko lost. … Kobayashi hires him as a temporary replacement for a sick employee. The expression ‘give him an inch, he’ll take a mile’ seems to be coined specifically for Kawaga. First, he asks to move in with his employers, next he brings home his Brazilian wife Annabelle (she says she’s Bosnian to someone else) who loves parading herself naked. Together, they stir up the hornet’s nest in the household, and lay the groundwork for an ‘alien invasion.’ This docile, non-descript petite-bourgeois family may seem like the bedrock of society, but all the members have a past that they prefer to hide. What Kagawa achieves is not just to drag skeletons out of the closet, but to decree a Saturnalia that liberates them from their conventional mindsets and behavior, symbolized by wimpy Kobayashi talking back to his busybody neighbors who are paranoid about homeless and foreigners.” I was underwhelmed but maybe that’s how the movie is supposed to work.

Ballykissangel (all re-screenings):

• Season 3, Ep 5: The Fortune in Men’s Eyes (1998): Quigley takes an interest in Ambrose’s mother after learning she inherited some money.
• Season 3, Ep 6: I Know When I’m Not Wanted (1998): Assumpta returns home with her new husband and Peter returns home to find his lodgings have been re-let and the townfolks are at each other’s throats.
• Season 3, Ep 7: Personal Call  (1998):  Assumpta’s marriage is faltering and she starts a women’s empowerment group; Father Mac has heart problems; and Quigley’s financial situation worsens.
• Season 3, Ep 8: Lost Sheep (1998): Siobhan is stunned when she discovers she is pregnant and is confused as to what to do. Assumpta’s marriage takes a turn for the worse.
• Season 3, Ep 9: The Waiting Game (1998): The whole town waits for the anonymous lottery winner in Ballykissangel to claim their prize. Ambrose goes undercover at a pub in Cilldargan.
• Season 3, Ep 10: Pack Up Your Troubles (1998): Brian starts up a paint ball camp. Assumpta returns to Ballykissangel a single woman.
• Season 3, Ep 11: The Reckoning (1998): Peter finally admits his true feelings for Assumpta while the town participates in a Far East cooking competition.
• Season 3, Ep 12: Amongst Friends (1998): Ballykissangel is in mourning after the recent tragedy when a journalist stumbles into the town searching for a story. Peter must come to a decision about what he must do as a priest and the choices he must make for himself.

After Life (Wandafuru Raifu;1998; in Japanese with subtitles) – Perhaps my 5th and 6th times watching this little gem, a light-hearted, sweet  (but not funny) film envisioning one version of an afterlife. So many ideas explored in this movie: the nature of memory, the purpose of life, what makes a good life, what happens after we die, what is happiness?

November

Rescreenings of AbFab:

• Season 3: Happy New Year ; Sex
• Season 4: Parralox ; Fish Farm ; Paris ; Donkey; Small Opening ; Menopause

Rescreening of Poirots:

• Taken at the Flood (2006): A young widow is left in sole possession of her late husband’s fortune, and her controlling brother refuses to share it with her in-laws — so they enlist Poirot to try to prove that the widow’s missing first husband might not be dead after all.
• Third Girl (2008): After a seemingly neurotic young heiress tells Ariadne Oliver and Poirot that she thinks she may have killed someone, her ex-nanny is found with her wrists slashed.
• Cards on the Table (2005): The enigmatic, sinister Mr. Shaitana invites 8 guests, 4 of them possible murderers and 4 ‘detectives’ (incuding Ariadne Oliver) to his opulent apartment. Then a murder takes place.
• The Adventure of the Cheap Flat (1990): A young couple is surprised to find such an amazing flat to let for such a reasonable price. Then they’re caught up in the FBI’s tracking of stolen plans for a U.S. Navy submarine. Includes Hastings and Japp.
• Death in the Clouds (1992): After spending a bit of a holiday in Paris, Poirot finds himself on a flight to London with an odd assortment of people, some of whom he had met during his stay. When one of the passengers, Madame Gisele, a well-known moneylender, is murdered during the flight by a poisoned dart, Poirot is asked by Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard to assist with the investigation.
• One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1992): After Poirot pays a routine visit to his dentist, the doctor apparently shoots himself to death a short time later. Includes Chief Inspector Japp.

December

Rescreening of Miss Marples:

• Murder at the Vicarage (1986): Faced with two false confessions and numerous suspects after a despised civil magistrate is found shot in the local vicarage, Detective Inspector Slack reluctantly accepts help from Miss Marple (Joan Hickson).
• Nemesis (1987) : Miss Marple (Joan Hickson) receives a cryptic letter requesting her to right an unknown injustice, but receives no hint other than a ticket for guided tour of historic homes.

A Late Quartet (2012 – new) with Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Mark Ivanir, Imogen Poots. Really a sweet gem of a movie, something most artists will appreciate seeing, though a little soap-operaish. For me, the central question of the movie involves control and disciple vs. risk and passion in art … and in life. The plot is simple: a string quartet is losing one of its members and the loss precipitates other changes among the group members and relationships.

Auntie Mame (1958; rescreening): An orphan goes to live with his free-spirited aunt (Rosalind Russell). Conflict ensues when the executor of his father’s estate objects to the aunt’s unconventional lifestyle. Set in the Roaring 20s and the Depression. One of my favourites.

Hitchcock (2012) with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren. “A love story between influential filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and wife Alma Reville during the filming of Psycho in 1959. ” The story felt pretty thin to me but the acting was fun to watch.

The House Without A Christmas Tree (1972). A favourite from my childhood. Ten-year-old Addie Mills (Lisa Lucas) wants a Christmas tree but her grieving, widowed father (Jason Robards) thinks she needs to learn you can’t have everything you want in this life. Her grandmother (his mother; Mildred Natwick) wishes he would change his mind. Set in 1946 rural Nebraska. Charming.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989): Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) just wants his family to have a fun-filled good old-fashioned family Christmas. With Randy Quaid, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Beverly D’Angelo, Juliette Lewis, EG Marshall, Doris Roberts, et al.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945): Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Reginald Gardner, Robert Shayne, S.K. Sakall. A navy war hero comes to the Connecticut countryside for a homey Christmas with a magazine food writer, her persistent beau, her obstreperous boss, her Hungarian cook, etc. Hijinks and cat-a-strophe ensue as she tries to hide that she isn’t married, doesn’t have a baby (or two), can’t cook, and doesn’t live in this house …. as she and the war hero fall in love.

Teletubbies’ Christmas in the Snow (2004), with videos of kids in Finland, South Africa, Spain, and the UK celebrating Christmas with their own traditions.

Bob Newhart episode, Season 2: I’m Dreaming of a Slight Christmas (1973): A power outage and blizzard keeps Bob at the office late on Christmas Eve.

Bob Newhart episode, season 3: Home is Where the Hurt Is (1974): Carol spends Christmas Eve telling Bob and Emily all about her depressing childhood.

Mary Tyler Moore episode: Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid – II (1970): Mary has to spend Christmas at work.

Family episode: The Christmas Story (aka On the First Day of Christmas; 1976): Doug’s father brings a much younger woman, with a high-profile past, to join in the Christmas festivities at the Lawrences’; Nancy is upset that Jeff plans to take Timmy on a cruise for Christmas.

Good Neighbors’ Christmas Special (1977): One of the best. Margo sends her Christmas from Harrod’s back to the store and she and Jerry are invited to Tom and Barbara’s for some simple holiday fun.

Dame Edna’s Christmas Experience (1987): Spooky fun with Lulu, Roger Moore and Dennis Healy MP.

One Special Night (1999), TV movie with Julie Andrews and James Garner. Catherine, a widowed pediatric cardiologist, and Robert, a builder whose wife has Alzheimers and is in failing health, meet and are stranded together overnight after leaving a nursing home in a blizzard on Thanksgiving, then run into each other again on Christmas. A favourite.

Fascination with the Apocalypse Now

Tags

alison, apocalypse, armageddon, common enemy, death, doomsday, end of the world, james alison, repression, richard beck, sacred center

THE QUESTION

Someone recently asked, at a sort of salon conversation gathering on 21 Dec. — the day that some believed the world was going to end (as implied by the Mayans’ calendar ending on that date) — why we humans are so fascinated by speculation about the END OF THE WORLD. It’s a good question.

After all, although the Mayans didn’t really predict the end of the world — their  ancient calendar simply rolled over, beginning a new 394-year century (baktun), which some believe may usher in a new and perhaps more peaceful age — lots of groups and people throughout history, since 2800 B.C.!, have predicted and prepared for Doomsday, Armageddon, the Rapture, the Second Coming, Judgement Day, the Apocalypse, the End.

THE HISTORY

Plenty of religious folk in particular — popes, cardinals, rabbis, prophets, nuns, Shakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventist forerunners the Second Adventists, the Nation of Islam, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Millerites in the 1840s, Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God (in the 1930s, 40s and 70s), Billy Graham in 1950, Hal Lindsey in his bestselling The Late, Great Planet Earth (my mom had a copy), Pat Robertson on the 700 Club — but also others, like 16th century seer and apothecary Nostradamus (who may have said that the world would end in July 1999), UFO cults, numerologists, pyramidologists, alien channelers, the white-supremacist group Aryan Nations, John Napier (the mathematician who discovered logarithms), scientists who expected comets and asteroids to wipe us out — have been predicting the end of the world practically since humans have existed on the planet.

Some contemporaries of Jesus interpreted his words as written in Matthew 16:28 (“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”) and in Matthew 24:33-34 (“So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.  Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled”) as a prediction of the world’s imminent demise then, and religious people have been predicting specific dates ever since, despite Jesus’s assurance immediately following (Matthew 24:36) that ” of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

Perhaps the “the first bona fide Christian doomsday cult” was founded around 156 AD and lasted for several centuries even though Jesus didn’t show up. Some thought the world would end 6000 years after it was created, or no later than 500 A.D.  There were “end dates” during the 800s, 900s, and every century thereafter, dozens and dozens of them. New England preacher and witch hunter Cotton Mather predicted it would end three times (1697, 1617, and 1736), Christian preacher Harold Camping has predicted “Judgment Day” on May 21, 2011, and again in 1994, and they’re not alone in their serial predictions.

Some people still interpret the books of Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel in the Bible to be apocalyptic prediction, with a heavy focus on events in Israel seen as ushering in the end times.

(Lists of predictions are available online for those interested, via Wikipedia’s List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events and Chris Nelson’s rather more detailed A Brief History of the Apocalypse.)

THE FEARS and THEORIES

Many people, families and small groups now  (religious and not) are quietly planning for a cataclysmic end to life — either globally, nationally, or regionally — as we know it. There are so many ways we imagine we could go! To name just a few:

• the consequences of climate change, ranging from scarcity of water, food and oil to a new ice age or extreme flooding caused by glaciers melting;
• government attack on gun owners or on non-Christians, or conversely, an armed citizen insurrection against the government;
• a terrorist act or series of them, involving nuclear or chemical warfare;
• widespread natural disaster like an asteroid hitting, or a super volcano, or a massive earthquake or shift in tectonic plates;
• widespread public health disaster such as antibiotic-resistant infection or highly contagious and lethal disease;
• technological (or Congressional?) disaster that could freeze the flow of money and keep us from accessing bank accounts, causing worldwide panic;
• the planet Nibiru could enter our solar system and become a second sun;
• the magnetic poles could shift again

And the list goes on. The Telegraph, in its Dec. 2010 article, “Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories,” listed and rated some of the most popular doomsday theories.

We recognise the dangers of being mortal and of living on Earth, and some of us spend a lot of time thinking about it and preparing for threats. Even those of us who don’t do much to prepare may feel perennially anxious in the shadow of a cataclysmically disastrous future.

As a recent CNN article noted, there are a number of popular TV shows about preparing for the end, including Doomsday Preppers (a reality show, on National Geographic Channel), Falling Skies (fiction, TNT), Revolution (fiction, NBC), and The Walking Dead (AMC, fiction about the zombie apocalypse). The article also reminds us of the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins that are based on the dispensationalist idea of a rapture, or the Second Coming, and the years of tribulation on earth afterward. Post-apocalyptic fiction and tales of werewolves, zombies and vampires abound. Disaster movies have been popular for many decades, from the first apocalyptic film in 1916, The End of the World.

JUST AMERICANS?

Of course, some think it’s just Americans who are obsessed with doomsday prophecies. In July 2012, the BBC considered “America’s Fascination with the Apocalypse — “There is a long tradition of such apocalyptic thinking in the US. But … it has now moved beyond religious prophecies into the secular world. … [A]ctivists from both the political left and right have embraced apocalypse thinking, issuing dramatic warnings that everything from the traditional American way of life to the very existence of the planet is under threat” — and in Sept. 2012 at Fordham University in NYC a lecture was held with the title “Apocalypse Now: America’s Fascination with Doomsday and Why It Matters,” with Elaine Pagels, Jim Hoberman, and Andrew Delbanco speaking on the topic. In the BBC piece, author Matthew Barrett Gross (The Last Myth) calls it “an idea that unites all Americans” and says it has “played a central role in the American story since the very beginning.” Apparently there are 3 million “preppers” in America, preparing and stockpiling for an apocalyptic future.

EXPLANATIONS

Scientific American also covered the phenomenon this month in a collection of  articles, essays and blog posts (originally published from 2009-2012) on its website and devoted a print issue to it, with the headline “the end. or is it?,” in Sept. 2010, including Michael Moyer’s “Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We’re Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise,” which suggests that “[t]he impulse is partially a consequence of our pattern-seeking nature … It is in our nature to weave a simple story from a complex set of data points.”

That CNN article I referred to earlier, and many other sites online, offer a number of other explanations for our obsession with the end of the world, despite the fact that “apocalyptic prophecy behavior is puzzling at first glance because people tend to be optimistic, rather than pessimistic.” They boiled down to a few main ideas:

• Apocalyptic tales give us a safe theatre to explore death and the unknown, as they “embed a tale of fantasy into reality.” This might be called counterphobia, “the idea that we pursue what we are most afraid of in an attempt and effort to control anxiety over it. I think at some level, the fascination with the end of the world – whether a book or in movie form – gives us a way to control the uncontrollable, to master anxiety over death which is inescapable. For that reason, it provides us with a degree of comfort,” says psychologist Lawrence Rubin, quoted in The Apocalypse in Popular Culture: What’s the Fascination? by Calum Robson.  Richard Beck discourses on length and with great insight on this idea in his series of posts The Theology of Monsters, including “Monsters, Horror & Death.” More on this below.
• Related to and deriving from the first but diverging slightly: Apocalyptic scenarios and predictions give us a sense of greater control, not just over death-anxiety but by offering an opportunity to reimagine and remake our world, to change our lives, to become more self-reliant, to feel we can control and co-create our future and mold it so that we feel we are not victims but survivors. In this last — seeing selves as survivors rather than victims — it’s still very similar to the first idea, that we can face (the possibility of) our own death and yet live. We can expect the end of the world and prepare ourselves so well for it that we survive it. And it’s similar to the last idea (below), that our lives feel humdrum, so we long to shake them up by imagining — with that delicious frisson of terror we experience when watching horror movies or telling ghost stories — the unimaginable. But there is also a New Year’s resolution feel about this explanation, a belief and feeling that we can co-create a new and improved world, that whatever comes may be better. In a way, that’s still a strategy for reducing death anxiety (like a belief in a happy afterlife), by means of imbuing us with a sense of renewal and even hope.
• Another explanation is that these doomsday scenarios allow us to rise above our petty differences of gender, colour, race, creed, class, etc., and cooperate for the good of all against a powerful adversary. (Rubin, again, in The Apocalypse in Popular Culture: What’s the Fascination? by Calum Robson). It’s a narrative that captures our sense of the heroism of humanity. We feel good about ourselves because we are in the struggle together, making communal and noble sacrifices against a common enemy.
• Finally, for some, these stories may offer a way out of despair or simply the boredom of a humdrum, unsatisfying life: “[T]hose who hope the world will end [may] need a little excitement in their lives or secretly want society to start over.  ‘There’s a lot of benefit that may come for some if the world ends, unfortunately, and some people look forward to that.’” (CNN) And along the same lines, we like to imagine the world ending on our watch (as people also did in ancient times and ever since) because it enhances or validates our sense of being a key part of something absolutely monumental: “We all believe we live in an exceptional time, perhaps even a critical moment in the history of the species. Technology appears to have given us power over the atom, our genomes, the planet — with potentially dire consequences. This attitude may stem from nothing more than our desire to place ourselves at the center of the universe. … Imagining the end of the world is nigh makes us feel special.” Cracked magazine (go-to source for this sort of thing, right?) says it this way:

As a species, we like the apocalypse in the same way that a mopey teenager might like the idea of their own funeral: We want to see our decaying remains and revel in the tragic glory that we couldn’t appreciate until it was too late. We want to see crumbling skyscrapers and flooded metropolises and know that, once upon a time, we built those things.

Not only do we feel part of something incredible, but imagining THE END — whether of our own life or of everyone’s life all at once — boosts our appreciation for what we have in the here and now.

ONE EXPLANATION TO RULE THEM ALL

I said before that these explanations boil down to a few main themes, but really I think there is only one underlying theme: Seeking to comfort ourselves by controlling anxiety about what we can’t control. And what we most can’t control, and what everything else we can’t control hints at, is our own death and the death of those we love. We want to be survivors, but history and medicine tell us that we won’t be, if surviving means that our hearts keep on beating. Most of us won’t even be remembered beyond a generation or two.

We want to be the heroes of our own stories — noble, good and strong — but in the end we will be bones, ashes, compost (if we’re not locked inside titanium vaults).

DEATH, DEATH, DEATH

In the past, and in less developed countries now, people have been more in touch with death, because it was ordinary. It happened in the home, it happened often, it happened accompanied by a lot of pain and undeniable suffering. People feared it but they were also conscious of it.

Now, in modern times and places, we still fear death and dying, even though we rarely see it first-hand, in our homes, in the streets, every day. Still, the absolute threat of death is just as prevalent as ever — we are all still going to die — but now we are much more able to repress the thought of death from our conscious minds. Most of us don’t smell its stench. We rarely see it and when we do, it’s often in antiseptic hospitals, or on a mediated screen.

Beck’s post on Monsters and Death, mentioned above, addresses this:

Thanatologists, those scholars who study how cultures deal with death, call our current era ‘the pornography of death.‘ That is, modern life in America is typified by systematic cultural death repression. That is, death is systematically pushed out of consciousness. Consequently, to discuss death in the public sphere is inappropriate. Like pornography, talk of death is illicit.

He sees the Industrial Revolution, which changed the way we got food from killing and processing it in our yards (“Farm children lived with death on a daily basis”) to buying nuggets that look nothing like a chicken (“Boneless meat fosters a kind of death repression”) as one thing that distanced us from death, and the other is of course the modern hospital: “Before the rise of the modern hospital we died at home in our own beds. After death, the body was prepared and displayed in the home. The wake was in the home. In short, death and dead bodies were common features in every American household.” Now we have a funeral industry and we’ve moved corpses out of our back yards and into memorial gardens.

In short, “In modern America [and elsewhere], one never comes into contact with the dead. This lack of contact fosters death repression.”

DEATH REPRESSION

The ways most of us do come in contact with death are precisely through our imaginations (as humans have always done — including when we lived daily with actual, ubiquitous death — through “grimm” fairy tales, ghost stories, fables, doomsday books, art imagery, and so on) and now also through the media, which present us with stories, photos and videos of plane crashes, natural disasters, terrifying encounters with sharks and grizzlies, mass shootings, tragic highway deaths, acts of terrorism and war, etc. We also have extremely violent and popular video games where people kill and are killed over and over.

I think the glimpses of death we get through the media, even through those video games, only serve to keep death safely in the unconscious realm. We think if we rehearse it, if we acknowledge its existence in fantasy, in the lives of other people in other circumstances than ours, that we will somehow defeat it. But we don’t. And we won’t.

THE SACRED CENTRE

I said earlier that I think that apocalypse-speculation all boils down to one explanation, which is seeking to comfort ourselves by controlling anxiety about what we can’t control. I’ve explained how I think that motivation underlies our urge to explore death in a “safe” space (far away, in imagination, non-immediately) and our preparations and affirmations that lead us to believe we are survivors and not victims; and I think that the same explanation also underlies the satisfyingly noble feeling we have when we feel we’re cooperating together, rising above our differences, against a common enemy (aliens, comet, germs, NRA, government, terrorists, etc.) as well as how special we feel to be part of something extraordinary. Whether religious, atheistic, pagan or other, we humans seem to want a “sacred centre” to give our lives meaning, to give us a feeling of transcendence, goodness, unanimity in righteousness. To give us identity.

As always, I feel James Alison explored and expressed the psychology of the “sacred centre” and the unanimity, grief and fear attendant with it — all of which are important to us when speculating on all things ending — in his talk on contemplation in a world of violence, after 9/11. I’m quoting at length because I think his insights are complex, deep, and widely applicable:

I would like to take us all back in our memories to the afternoon of September 11th — the afternoon, that is, for those of us who were on this side of the Atlantic. What I want to suggest to you is that we were all summoned to participate in something satanic. Now, by ‘satanic’ I don’t mean an over-the-top figure of speech, but something very specific, with very specific anthropological content, something whose very ability to be decoded by us is a sign of its failing transcendence. …

“[I]mmediately we began to respond, and our response is to create meaning. It is our response that I am seeking to examine. Our response was sparked by two particular forces: the locations chosen for the suicide with collateral murder — places symbolic of power, wealth and success (never mind that many of those killed were neither powerful, wealthy or successful); and the omnipresence in the cities in question, and particularly New York, of rolling cameras and a hugely powerful media network which enabled a significant proportion of the planet to be sucked in to spectating from a safe distance. An already mimetic center, drawing more attention than ever towards itself, on that day became virtually inescapable.

“As we were sucked in, so we were fascinated. The “tremendum et fascinosum,” as Otto described the old sacred, took hold of us.  … And immediately the old sacred worked its magic: we found ourselves being sucked in to a sacred center, one where a meaningless act had created a vacuum of meaning, and we found ourselves giving meaning to it. All over London I found that friends had stopped work, offices were closing down, everyone was glued to the screen. In short, there had appeared, suddenly, a holy day. Not what we mean by a holiday, a day of rest, but an older form of holiday, a being sucked out of our ordinary lives in order to participate in a sacred and sacrificial centre so kindly set up for us by the meaningless suicides.

“And immediately the sacrificial center began to generate the sort of reactions that sacrificial centers are supposed to generate: a feeling of unanimity and grief. Let me make a parenthesis here. I am not referring to the immediate reactions of those actually involved — rescue services, relatives, friends, whose form of being drawn in was as a response to an emergency and a family tragedy. I am referring to the rest of us. There took hold of an enormous number of us a feeling of being pulled in, being somehow involved, as though it was part of our lives. Phrases began to appear to the effect that “We’re all Americans now” — a purely fictitious feeling for most of us. It was staggering to watch the togetherness build up around the sacred center, quickly consecrated as Ground Zero, a togetherness that would harden over the coming hours into flag waving, a huge upsurge in religious services and observance, religious leaders suddenly taken seriously, candles, shrines, prayers, all the accoutrements of the religion of death. …

“And there was the grief. How we enjoy grief. It makes us feel good, and innocent. This is what Aristotle meant by catharsis, and it has deeply sinister echoes of dramatic tragedy’s roots in sacrifice. One of the effects of the violent sacred around the sacrificial center is to make those present feel justified, feel morally good. A counterfactual goodness which suddenly takes us out of our little betrayals, acts of cowardice, uneasy consciences. And very quickly of course the unanimity and the grief harden into the militant goodness of those who have a transcendent object to their lives. And then there are those who are with us and those who are against us, the beginnings of the suppression of dissent. Quickly people were saying things like ‘to think that we used to spend our lives engaged in gossip about celebrities’ and politicians’ sexual peccadillos. Now we have been summoned into thinking about the things that really matter.’ …”And there was fear. Fear of more to come. Fear that it could be me next time. Fear of flying, fear of anthrax, fear of certain public buildings and spaces. Fear that the world had changed, that nothing would ever be the same again. Fear and disorientation in a new world order. Not an entirely uncomfortable fear, the fear that goes with a satanic show. Part of the glue which binds us into it. A fear not unrelated to excitement.“What I want to suggest is that most of us fell for it, at some level. We were tempted to be secretly glad of a chance for a huge outbreak of meaning to transform our humdrum lives, to feel we belonged to something bigger, more important, with hints of nobility and solidarity. What I want to suggest is that this, this delight in being given meaning, is satanic.  … A huge and splendid show giving the impression of something creative of meaning, but in fact, a snare and an illusion, meaning nothing at all, but leaving us prey to revenge and violence, our judgments clouded by satanic righteousness.

“When I say satanic, I mean this in two senses, for we can only accurately describe the satanic in two senses. The first sense is the sense I have just described: the fantastic pomp and work of sacrificial violence leading to an impression of unanimity, the same lie from the one who was a murderer and liar from the beginning, the same lie behind all human sacrifices, all attempts to create social order and meaning out of a sacred space of victimization. But the second sense is more important: the satanic is a lie that has been undone. It has been undone by Jesus’s going to death exploding from within the whole world of sacrifice, of religion and culture based on death, and showing it has no transcendence at all. … [W]e no longer have to believe it, we no longer have to act driven by its compulsions. It has no power other than the power we give it.

I think speculation about the end of the world enables us to explore death from a safe vantage point, to prepare for it “if” it comes, and mostly, to feel better about our humdrum existence, to feel we are part of “something bigger, more important, with hints of nobility and solidarity.”

UNCOVERING and DE-SACRALIZING

Alison goes on in his remarks to offer another alternative:

We are given a very specific and very commanding example of the divine regard: it teaches us to look away, not to be ensnared, to de-sacralize. It is the very reverse of apocalyptic.” … We are tempted to imagine that suicide planes, collapsing buildings, increased security, the unanimity of the rich and powerful, and of course, bombs and more bombs and more bombs, are signs of power. Are creative of a new world order. … But what Jesus suggests is that all that power is a dangerous illusion. His talk is of a quite different power coming, scarcely noticeably, in the midst of all those things, weaning us off our addiction to the sort of crowd desire which makes that power possible and apparently all englobing.

In short, Alison says that fascination with the sacred centre is “a distraction, dangerous to us, but of no consequence to God, a distraction from the real coming into being of an entirely gratuitous, peaceful, creative meaning, and one in which we are invited to be involved.”

For myself, I think the “apocalypse” is ongoing, every day. It’s, literally, the uncovering, the unveiling, the revelation of a world that we can be part of all the time, when we notice that the sacred centre and its attendant grief and drama is a lie; when we resist the temptation of feeling morally good and right, either because of what we do or what we believe, and instead let that go entirely so we can receive what’s freely given; when we look through the illusion of meaning, identity and security that’s gained through violence, unanimity, and sacrifice; when we stop locating evil in others, justifying our own violence, and making distinctions between good and bad violence. When we stop looking for the end of the world as we know it … and just live it.

As Mary Oliver writes:

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:

to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

The Lives of the People

Tags

arrests, boxing, camacho, choice, dangerous vocations, how we choose to live, kathy kelly, mary oliver, peacemaking, violence

I read two essays yesterday that reminded me how differently we live our lives (as if Facebook weren’t reminder enough!). Of course, the variety of viable choices available to different people can differ wildly depending on when and where we’re born and how we’re raised; and while I don’t think we necessarily have as much choice about what actions we take and even what attitude to adopt as we sometimes think we do, yet I think that each person has some choice in these matters, and a life is shaped by these small and large choices.

* * * * * * * *

The first piece I read was an essay about “opting out of the national religion” of the U.S., i.e., shopping, which described a bit of Kathy Kelly’s life and accomplishments before offering her suggestion that Americans might stop our devotion to buying things for a bit and instead focus our undistracted energy and attention on the poor around the world, “especially those who are stuck in warzones.”

Kathy Kelly

is a three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and lives a fascinating life. She is an advocate of nonviolence on a global scale and has been arrested more than 60 times in the US and abroad for nonviolent protests. Kathy has traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq more than 26 times, remaining in dangerous combat zones during US led military strikes. She risked her life by going to Baghdad during the United State’s infamous ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign. … Just a few hours after our interview, Kathy flew to Kabul, Afghanistan, to meet with young Afghans about building peace in their country.

* * * * * * * *

Very soon after reading about Kelly, I read the obituary for the boxer, Héctor “Macho” Camacho, who was gunned down in a car in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at age 50. His friend Adrian Mojica Moreno was also killed. There were nine bags of cocaine in Moreno’s pockets, plus a 10th bag open in the car.

Camacho, a boxing champion in three weight classes, was flamboyant:

He was known for his hairdo, which featured a spit curl over his forehead; his clownish antics at news conferences; his brashness and wit, especially whenever a reporter with a pad or a microphone was around; and his dazzling outfits. He variously entered the ring in a diaper, a Roman gladiator’s outfit, a dress, an American Indian costume complete with headdress, a loincloth and a black fox fur robe with his nickname, Macho, stitched across the back in white mink.

He was also

a brawler, a serial shoplifter, an admitted drug user and a car thief …. He was arrested numerous times on charges including [car theft], domestic abuse, possession of a controlled substance, burglary and trying to take an M-16 rifle through customs. This year he turned himself in after a warrant charged him with beating one of his sons. A trial was pending at his death.

I notice a couple of similarities in the lives of Kelly and Camacho, even within these very cursory accounts: both were arrested over and over again, and both to some extent chose dangerous vocations, in the midst of violence.

I can’t help but think of lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day:

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

More on Kelly and Camacho at Wikipedia.