Unobtainium

Every year at this time we begin our quest to see most of the movies which have or will be nominated for Oscars. We know it's silly; we know that a nomination doesn't make a movie better or worse, or even more likely that we'll like it, but it's what we do, and it's kind of fun. Plus, the weather is cold and dreary, and we don't feel guilty about spending time inside. So, so far this week we've seen Up in the Air (loved it), It's Complicated (liked it a lot), and we saw Avatar today. I really liked it, despite the way it was a mash up of every other James Cameron movie and Dances With Wolves, too. Or maybe I liked it because of that; it's hard to say. Either way, it was a cool, totally absorbing way to spend three hours. Ten feet tall blue folk, who woulda thunk it?

A Good Start

Our family always has the same New Year's Day dinner. We have the traditional ham to remind us to look forward, black-eyed peas for luck, and greens for money, but we've added our own touches to the menu over the years, too. We have pan-fried chicken, corn, and rice, and there's always hot sauce to go with everything. We have holiday crackers on the table, champagne with the meal, and clementines and the last of the Christmas cookies for dessert. One year we made up a significance for each thing, but I've forgotten what we decided they all stood for. I know there was health, happiness, laughter, whimsy, and comfort, and fortunately for us, those five were all present at the table tonight, making this meal an excellent first of the year.

Decisions, Decisions

It's always a dilemma how to spend New Year's Eve: which of our actions on this night are symbolic and which are not? Should we do something special, or should we welcome the new year in stride, doing the things we always do that make us happy? Is it important to stay up until the clock turns, or is it better to get a good night's sleep and greet the first day of the year well-rested?

Here are some wishes for the coming year that Neil Gaiman posted on his blog:

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

I hope so, too.

Cold Case

I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie a couple of days ago, and coincidentally, I recently happened to catch a few episodes of the TV show The Mentalist, as well. There is something about the deduction that these characters demonstrate that resonates with me. I have the sense that the all clues we need to decipher most situations are always there, if only we have the patience and intuition to find them, and I like it when those guys amaze us with how it can be done.

A few days before Christmas, my mother and my nephew, Richard, made a gingerbread house. With the extra dough, they cut out two gingerbread people to go with the house. One was liberally decorated with green sprinkles and the other just as festooned with red. Later that day, Richard approached my mother with concern. "Grandma," he said, "the green cookie is missing! We have to start an investigation."

Naturally my mother considered the most likely suspects. "Let's ask your mom and dad and sister," she suggested.

"I already talked to them, and they didn't do it," he assured her. "I have a clue, though. I found a little yellow feather by the gingerbread house, and I think it was a duck!"

By the time I arrived that night, there were two clues: a yellow feather and a quack that Richard heard around the time of the disappearance. Believe me when I tell you that we pursued the case of the missing cookie all weekend long. How did the duck get in? Where did it go? What had become of the cookie? And even when we were at the park, Richard questioned the geese, but they hadn't seen any yellow ducks.

In the end, we gave the cookie up for lost, ignoring the trail of green sprinkles that led to a certain four-year-old detective.

Ehhhg-cellent

I'm a big fan of David Sedaris, mostly because he's such a master of the personal narrative. Yesterday on the plane, I finally had the chance to read his latest piece, Loggerheads, that was published in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago. In particular, I admire the way he weaves seemingly disparate anecdotes together thematically to construct an integral whole. (Way to go, Dave!) On the same flight, I also read an essay about creative nonfiction by Marion Winik in the Winter 2010 edition of Teachers and Writers. I've long been a fan of hers as well; I know her from her personal commentaries on NPR. In the article, her analysis of the genre is fascinating, wide-ranging, and even forgiving of James Frey. All of this is exceptionally timely, since I plan to start on memoir with my students when we get back in January.

In the spirit of Sedaris and Winik, I like this genre because it is so accessible and yet so powerful. It validates kids by giving them a chance to tell a story that is important to them, and encourages them and their readers to find a greater meaning in the tale. Not to mention that it offers so many opportunities for writing instruction, both in craft and convention, as well. Pardon me while I rub my hands together in gleeful anticipation.

The Myth of Objectivity

I had the occasion to fly today in the wake of the failed underwear bomber. It was a domestic flight, and honestly? There was no discernible difference between this trip and the one we took on December 23rd. Strange experience, then, to get home and watch the news where the lead story on at least 2 national broadcasts was how much our traveling lives will change because of this incident.

The older I get, the more critical I become of the media. There is a saying that goes something like, if when you're young you're not a liberal, then you have no heart, and if when you're old you're not a conservative, then you have no brain. I'll never agree to that, but I do believe that as we gain experience, it often becomes harder to trust people, while at the same time it's much easier to see that institutions are made up of those same people.

This Is America, Dinosaurs

My four-year-old nephew loves The Land Before Time series of movies, and in general my sister supports his fondness for them (he owns several of them on DVD), but the dino-speak drives her crazy. For example, to dinosaurs, the moon is the night circle and snow is frozen sky water (never mind the sky puffies, pointy seeds, and sinking sands). Why can't talking dinosaurs speak regular English?

Think of the harm on impressionable children... for a while, my nephew referred to volcanoes as "smoking mountains"and earthquakes as "earth shakes." But maybe they're trying to translate real dinosaur mouth talk into something we can understand-- in that case, I guess it's just the price we have to pay for extreme prehistoric realism.