Describing My House

I suppose I know my house better than just about anybody. At least three other families have lived there since it was built in 1914, but we have lived there since 1996. I remember pretty vividly the day I went to see it when the previous owner was having an open house. The first thing I noticed was the enormous tree in the front yard. I grew up in an area with lots of very tall oak trees, and went to college in a city with wonderful wooded parks. Montgomery seemed pretty treeless to me when I first moved here. A whole different ecosystem. So the tree in the front yard of this potential house was a big draw. Also I had seen the Miyazaki movie Princess Mononoke pretty recently and one of my favorite parts featured the kodama, little spirits that inhabit big old trees in the heart of the forest. Their health was an indicator of the health of tree and the health of the forest. So the tree had a lot of signifigance to me even before I got inside the house. When I got inside the house the first thing I saw was the marble mantle over the fireplace. That evoked The Serapeum, my group of friends that met for book discussions and so much more. I had visions of a library! The walls were dark red. I was in love.
More Anon.

Free Speech at Villa

If I were in charge of my high school . . . hmmm. Well, I've been back to visit my high school a number of times since I graduated in 1987, and a lot of the changes I would have made *have* been made since then. They built that new fabulous arts center in the mid-nineties. It's central feature is a theater space and quite a lot of audience seating. I remember there were also music practice rooms, and places to do things like pottery and sculpture and painting. That was one not so great thing about Villa in the 70's and 80's. They didn't exactly have a wide variety of course offerings or extracurricular offerings. If you weren't a big sports fan, there wasn't a lot left over.

One of my friends from high school currently works at Villa as head of Information Systems. One of her jobs is to get on Facebook and make sure Villa girls aren't posting naked pictures. When she told me that it made me wonder about the rights of younger people in regards to technology. Where do the obligations of adults to protect young people in their care run into the free speech rights of young people? Does the Principal of Villa have the right to curtail free speech rights of the young people in her care just to protect the school's reputation? Well, probably, yes. It would constitute slander and slander is one of the limits of free speech.

Villa Days

I remember when I was a kid . . . Well these two blog post ideas are getting fused in my mind: the I remember when I was a kid idea and the Sir Ken Robinson talking about schools. Also my daughter is four and a half years old and next year we are going to have to figure out what we are going to do about kindergarten. So lately, I've been thinking a lot about my little private Catholic school in Pennsylvania. Instead of what would Jesus do, I find myself thinking, "What Sister Regina Noel say?" She was my high school English teacher two years out of the four. Some nuns were mean, but she was of the warm and fuzzy persuasion. It was a benefit to me to have the same teachers year after year. I had the same math teacher three years out of four, Mrs. Jean Treisbach. She was familiar with my strengths and weaknesses as a math student, to say the least! I'd probably still be back there flunking geometry if it wasn't for her. She let me take the tests over and over again. She knew I was smart in other areas. so she didn't get down on me too mush for being bad at math. She must have been quite young when I had her. She was probably in her mid-twenties. I get the alumni newsletter from Villa and she is still there. Quite a lot of my teachers are still there. Most of the younger ones anyway. It was a really good school. we complained about it alot when we were there. We were the only ones for miles around who had to wear uniforms, at least it felt that way. They were strict without being Nazi-esque. We complained about the lack of boys! It's gets to be a drag asking boys to dances. But from the mature (ancient) perspective of forty, I can see that the uniforms and the lack of boys, allowed us to learn in a secure, quiet environment without distractions. I wish there was a place around here like that for my daughter, a place that didn't cost 10,000 a year.

District 9

I saw District 9 yesterday, which also happened to be my 40th birthday. I was just blown away by it. WOW! There were echos of older movies, and yet it was utterly original. At different times watching the movie, I was reminded of the original Terminator, 28 Days Later, Independence Day, and The Office TV series. And as a life-long Star Trek dork, I couldn't help but compare the first contact experiences in this movie to those of various Star Trek series. The Aliens arrive in giant spaceship that looks kind of like those that appear over major cities in Independence Day. There's no "We come in peace" or "Take me to your leader" or even "Shoot to kill" or "We will share our superior technology with you." The aliens are sick, weak, and physically repulsive to the humans. There's no kind benevolent Federation to welcome them, no Star Trek universal translator, there's only Johannesburg, South Africa, a city with it's own turbulent racial history, and limited funds like a lot of cities today. I mean, hell, our mayor just cancelled curbside recycling and parts of the school bus system, and God knows that we here in Montgomery Alabama have our own turbulent racial history. What would we do if suddenly a million refugees suddenly showed up in the airspace over the state capitol?

The director sets up the story quickly with a realistic, faux-documentary style that is reminiscent of something on the History Channel or The Office. We get "experts" telling us of how the aliens came 20 years ago and they seemed like refugees, so in an effort to help they were put in refugee camps and fed, but the camps turned into tent cities and the tent cities turned into a permanent festering slum. Attitudes that were once pretty common in South Africa became common again, but with the aliens on the receiving end of a lot of the nastiness instead of blacks. Into all this the director introduces the main character, Wickus Van De Merwe, a nerdy office worker guy in a short-sleeved shirt and a sweater vest, universal signifiers of middle management. He works for MNU, MultiNational United, a company like Blackwater. They're supposed to go in and evict the Aliens from District 9 and move them to a new camp farther away from the city. We see Wickus and a "documentary" camera crew walking through District 9 knocking on shanty doors, trying to get the aliens to sign eviction notices. He comes across pretty badly during this part, like a slightly retarded anthropologist. He talks into the camera, excited to be on TV, acting like he's a big expert on the aliens, but it's clear that he's not, and really, that no one is. At one point he sets fire to one of the shacks that is being used as some sort of hatchery or incubator for alien young. You can hear a popping sound in the background and he cheerfully explains that the sound of the alien babies dying sounds like popcorn!

Shortly thereafter we see two aliens talking in one of the shacks about an all important cannister of the fluid that must not be lost. Here comes Wickus, officiously stumbling into the middle of things. He gets sprayed with the fluid from the cannister. Things start to change for Wickus. More later.

Well, I'd have to say that Galaxy Quest is one of my favorite movies. I think you have to be a serious dyed-in-the-wool Star Trek dork to really appreciate Galaxy Quest. But that's the beauty of it, even if you don't know that much about Star Trek, it's still just a fun adventure movie. But if you love ST, then you know just exactly how funny the parody is. Tim Allen is dead on as a WIlliam Shatner/Captain Kirk-esqe guy. He basically a good-hearted, happy-go-lucky guy, and he doesn't really realize that he has a giant ego and that his ego often annoys or even really hurts the feelings of his costars, who are equally if not more talented. Alan Rickman is brilliant in the Spock-Like role. He does aggreived so well. And the parts where he declares that he's quitting or committing suicide are just hilarious. Then there's the whole discussion of the nature of stories with the child-like, incredibly literal-minded aliens, who that the Galaxy Quest show is real and that the episodes constitute historical documents. Our guys go along with it at first, but the bad guy forces them to dissolution the friendly aliens. It's a tremendously effective horrible moment. It's like telling a bunch of little kids there is no Santa Claus. It leads to one of the most heart-rending moments when the alien assigned to Alan Rickman's character is killed in action and he tells AR's c that he's just honored to have know him. Then I love the bit at the end when the teenage uber-smart dorky fans are helping the Captain and Sigourney Weaver's character through the bowels of the ship, which the kids know better than the actors because they have a more thorough knowledge of the "schematics" of the "ship." Tim Allen's character says, "It was just a chair on a set! With Christmas tree lights!"

Brand New Day.

Ok, this is really exciting. I've been wanting to do this forever. OoooooH the Power! Welcome to the first day of the rest of my blog. I'm about to have 42 young bloggers join me, give or take a few. This is mostly just to get some practice ahead of time. No more excuses. This is going to be a great year.