Thursday, March 31, 2011

Heard a Mockingbird today

Heard a mockingbird today singing its heart out in the middle of a bush as we walked east on 23rd St in the middle of the day.  At first we thought it was an alarm, the sound was so exaggerated and loud.  Then I located the animal, his head thrown back like Edith Piaf, going through its extensive repertory of imitations, including a catbird, a starling, a robin, a catcall, an engine warming up, a towhee, a whistler, and on and on it went.  Another man paused to listen. He didn't need to look, just to listen as the concert continued for five minutes.  No amplifier needed, this thing was singing for the upper deck.   The bird's white-streaked tail was tipped way up to the moon as it gave its heady aria to all passersby for free.  It was full of joy.


Morgan Library: Diaries

R and I went to the Morgan to see the Diaries exhibit.  Thought of the difference between diary and journal.  Both keep records, but diary implies daily, more everyday events, keeping track of what you did, who you saw, what happened.  Journals keep for writers records of what they mean to do, experiments, drafts of things, even. 

Examining three centuries of diaries made us want to begin keeping a diary right away. You could tell how successful the exhibit was by the expressions on the faces of the visitors.  Many were smiling that blissed out smile of surprise that comes with unexpected pleasure.

Some highlights:

--an oversize notebook of John Steinbeck kept while writing the Grapes of Wrath. 
His goal was to write two pages a day, so simple. 

--diaries of Thoreau whose beautiful penmanship wrote each carefully chosen word



-- E/B White's typescript of writing about his childhood every day which  led to the opening of Trumpet of the Swan.

--Walt Whitman's tender record of the wounded soldiers in the Civil War

--Samuel Pepys' writing in shorthand about the London Fire

--Charlotte Bronte's griping about her job as a teacher in a boarding house

--American record of the Boston tea party

--Hawthorne family diaries

Whether writing down history, or recording what your family had for dinner, diaries bring to life what has passed. 








Barney's Version


Barney’s Version
Paul Giamatti is having a great career.  He has played John Adams, Harvey Pekar,  and Joe Gould as well as the  misanthropic wine taster in Sideways.  In Barney's Version,  he plays a man whose life we see develop from youth to the onset of senility.  Sometimes because of certain plot elements, we wonder if the version Barney gives has something to do with a crime, but it turns out that we see things through his eyes as he falls in love and stays in love with the lovely woman he finds at his second wedding.

He really loves this woman, and she is worthy of his love, but is he worthy of hers? We are not quite sure with all the scotch drinking and cigar smoking if that is enough to understand his character.   It isn’t Giamatti's fault.  The men who create Barney's foursome of friends have more life together than the man and the woman at the heart of the story. The direction lingers too much on the scotch drinking and seems repetitive or draggy in ways that keep the characters from truly developing.  Giamatti is a fine actor.  Dustin Hoffman plays his father beautifully.  (Hoffman’s son plays his grandson and is also quite good).  Barney’s second wife, played by Minnie Driver, is delightful as a vulgarian with her master’s degree being waved in his face every other minute.  

There are fine details and charming scenes mostly between the men which create a feeling of poignancy, of a life really being lived.   For this I am grateful.  A movie about a realistic person who chased a woman for years until he could marry her and never fell out of love with her, that is a sweet dream many of us could wish for.  So I forgive the movie its flaws for its romanticism.  

Saturday, March 26, 2011

My Favorite Website: NYPL


Where else can you find important answers to reference questions and an image of the day and put all sorts of poetry books on hold for later pick up but the New York Public Library?
The image at left is of the McCoy Sisters, I know not more than that, but I find their movement and expression delightful since I take such delight in my sisters.

New York Public Library

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Cedar Rapids

We watched the movie, Cedar Rapids, at a 1 o'clock show in a theater where we were the only two there.  I guess the movie is at the end of its run.  How delicious to see a movie on a Thursday afternoon when everyone else is at work.  Another man sat in the back, who turned out to be one of the staff.  When the lights went down, he announced that the show would now begin, and we should enjoy ourselves, and then he left.  This is not usually how movies start at big chain theatres.

The main character, named Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), is a rube, simple,  naive,  a boy in man's clothing.  He has never left his home town of Brown Falls, Wisconsin, so when he is called on by the head of his insurance office to attend a convention in Cedar Rapids, which is a big town for this guy, he is so green he deosn't know that everyone, even him, has to go through security check, even when the security check guy is someone he knows very well.  

Once in Cedar Rapids, the blowhard, played by John C. Reilly, the hip woman, played by Anne Heche, and the stolid roomate, played by Isaiah Whitlock, give our hero  a little seasoning.   Alia Shawcat, who played Maebe on Arrested Development, does a fine turn as a hooker.  All the women, including Sigourney Weaver who bravely allows the camera to show her age, hold their own in this male id-centered comedy.  The comedy comes and goes, but at heart, the film is  a coming of age story for the sweet insurance salesman. It gives honest businessmen everywhere a reason to cheer. 

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Bill Cunningham New York (movie)

Bill Cunningham loves what he does.  Riding his bicycle through Manhattan streets, he locates fashion as it is evolving in the moment, then he photographs it, and compiles witty montages of what he has discovered every week in his "On the Street" column for the New York Times.  I had barely noticed that he also contributes the photographs for the society column which is made up of the philanthropists who donate to charities, and have special events to celebrate and garner more cash for their causes.  Three reasons to see this movie:  joie de vivre, fashion, how to ride a bicycle in NYC.