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Sunday is Mother's Day (yeah, I know, like you didn't know with all those flower ads blasting out of every teevee and radio).
Instead of the same ol' fast-fading flowers or nose-itchin' fragrance, give your Mom something she'll really enjoy...and can pass along and share.
Prairie (that would be moi) is in the wind for a coupla days, but before I go, I want to take a moment to recommend some reads I've got on my TBR list (to be read):
Teatime for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith. That's the latest in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books. Have you been watching the HBO series Sunday evening? It is fabulous. You don't have to be a mystery lover to enjoy these gentle and clever stories, set in Botswana.
Perfectly Imperfect by Lee Woodruff. When a member of the family needs caregiving, stepping up to the challenge isn't always easy. That's the life our family lives these days, and listening to Lee Woodruff discuss the challenges their family faced after husband Bob Woodruff's injury in Iraq whets my appetite to read more.
Sarah Susanka has a new book out, Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live. I'm an official slut for Susanka books...have 'em all. Including the Not So Big Life. Here is an architect who humanizes her profession and brings it to the scale of real people and real lives. The anti-Galt. We're tinkering a bit with tailoring our home this summer, so this will be a guidebook along the way. Whatever we do, there will always be an away space.
So step away from the keyboard and visit a bookstore. (Oh, all right, use the Amazon widget here if you insist.) And then on Mother's Day, take time to tune in the #1 Ladies. You'll both be the better for it! Now excuse me, Beagle Books and Sister Wolf Books are calling me....
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Showing posts with label HBO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HBO. Show all posts
Friday, May 8, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Taking Chance
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We are a nation forever defining ourself in our journey. The great American experiment. The immigrant voyages to these shores. The cross-country train rides to the frontier. The pioneer treks on oxcart trails and narrow footpaths.
Our culture celebrates the journey--from Wagon Train to boldly going where no one has gone before.
And this Saturday night, we watched another journey, the most basic, the most profound. The journey home.
Taking Chance brings to life the journal of Marine Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl, who volunteered for the duty of escorting the remains of 19-year-old PFC Chance Phelps to his home, his family, his friends, his community. His final resting place.
There is no shrieking shrill of partisans and pundits and politicians and gasbags of talk radio blustering about who was right, who was wrong about the decisions that led to the young man's death in this extraordinary HBO film.
No news cameras and pontificators opining.
There is only and solely the awakening of the Lt. Col. as he meets ordinary people along the way--airline ticket takers, fellow passengers, old vets, a funeral home director, his fellow soldiers. And the family of one fallen Marine. If there was any moment
We are a nation forever defining ourself in our journey. The great American experiment. The immigrant voyages to these shores. The cross-country train rides to the frontier. The pioneer treks on oxcart trails and narrow footpaths.
Our culture celebrates the journey--from Wagon Train to boldly going where no one has gone before.
And this Saturday night, we watched another journey, the most basic, the most profound. The journey home.
Taking Chance brings to life the journal of Marine Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl, who volunteered for the duty of escorting the remains of 19-year-old PFC Chance Phelps to his home, his family, his friends, his community. His final resting place.
There is no shrieking shrill of partisans and pundits and politicians and gasbags of talk radio blustering about who was right, who was wrong about the decisions that led to the young man's death in this extraordinary HBO film.
No news cameras and pontificators opining.
There is only and solely the awakening of the Lt. Col. as he meets ordinary people along the way--airline ticket takers, fellow passengers, old vets, a funeral home director, his fellow soldiers. And the family of one fallen Marine. If there was any moment
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Artistic License
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This evening, toward the end of the powerful HBO miniseries John Adams, the aging former president is brought to view a magnificent wall-sized rendering of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Adams castigates the artist Trumble for his work, pointing out that there was never an occasion when all the signers came together in such a fashion, signing one by one. There was a war on already, and the signers came when they could, quickly signing the document and hurrying away over the summer.
Artistic license, asserts Trumble, it makes for a better picture. And thus was propaganda given one of its "grander" moments.
There's a lot of artistic license going on these days, too, what Adams decried as the fiction of modern history in HBO's narrative.
Artistic license played by media who call themselves tough but fair when they are little more than stenographers and tools of one-party rule. Or diggers into the same ol' garbage long after it's been debunked, like smelly rotted russet potatoes.
Artistic license by those who pose as respectable consultants or opinionizers only to be revealed as paid shills for special interests.
Artistic license on such a grand scale as done by Faux that it is breathtaking in its sheer audacity...as befits the propaganda arm of this most corrupt and fabricated of administrations.
There are a few, a very few who still remember what it is to be responsible reporters of modern history, the first telling as some call journalism. And they are worthy of noting...Moyers, Schieffer. You may know of others not weighted down by the corruption of their integrity in the name of "access" or "off the record...." or willful disregard.
The series ends with a soft-voiced notation by Paul Giamatti, in his magnificent Adams role, saying he hopes he doesn't repent in heaven the effort he put into establishing this democracy.
There is much to be learned from history, from understanding the Founding Fathers not as flat images clustered on a contrived wall portrait or selectively skewed for political policy partisanship, but as humans with their frailties and imperfections....and yes, accomplishments.
For if we fail to learn from history, then we, in this age, indeed give Adams cause to repent in heaven.
This evening, toward the end of the powerful HBO miniseries John Adams, the aging former president is brought to view a magnificent wall-sized rendering of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Adams castigates the artist Trumble for his work, pointing out that there was never an occasion when all the signers came together in such a fashion, signing one by one. There was a war on already, and the signers came when they could, quickly signing the document and hurrying away over the summer.
Artistic license, asserts Trumble, it makes for a better picture. And thus was propaganda given one of its "grander" moments.
There's a lot of artistic license going on these days, too, what Adams decried as the fiction of modern history in HBO's narrative.
Artistic license played by media who call themselves tough but fair when they are little more than stenographers and tools of one-party rule. Or diggers into the same ol' garbage long after it's been debunked, like smelly rotted russet potatoes.
Artistic license by those who pose as respectable consultants or opinionizers only to be revealed as paid shills for special interests.
Artistic license on such a grand scale as done by Faux that it is breathtaking in its sheer audacity...as befits the propaganda arm of this most corrupt and fabricated of administrations.
There are a few, a very few who still remember what it is to be responsible reporters of modern history, the first telling as some call journalism. And they are worthy of noting...Moyers, Schieffer. You may know of others not weighted down by the corruption of their integrity in the name of "access" or "off the record...." or willful disregard.
The series ends with a soft-voiced notation by Paul Giamatti, in his magnificent Adams role, saying he hopes he doesn't repent in heaven the effort he put into establishing this democracy.
There is much to be learned from history, from understanding the Founding Fathers not as flat images clustered on a contrived wall portrait or selectively skewed for political policy partisanship, but as humans with their frailties and imperfections....and yes, accomplishments.
For if we fail to learn from history, then we, in this age, indeed give Adams cause to repent in heaven.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
East Side-West Side Court Side Story
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After earlier today talking of a Shark, seems only a propos (that word isn't condescending, is it?) to speak of a man who's taken off like a Jet...
and judge a man by the company he keeps...on the basketball court. Pickup game with Ft. Bragg troops, courtesy HBO's Real Sports
After earlier today talking of a Shark, seems only a propos (that word isn't condescending, is it?) to speak of a man who's taken off like a Jet...
and judge a man by the company he keeps...on the basketball court. Pickup game with Ft. Bragg troops, courtesy HBO's Real Sports
Monday, March 17, 2008
Fire and Brimstone
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We saw a lot of fire and brimstone and tut-tutting among the media talkers this weekend about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary comments. The former pastor of Barack Obama's church and former advisor or whatever the honorary title is that candidates affix to people so that they can try to draw on their names for promoting their campaign has turned out to be toxic to the campaign these days.
Kinda like John Hagee to the McCain campaign. Oh, wait a minute. The media took a look, bought into the slippery dodge of the man they would most like to eat barbeque with, and moved on. As they should with the story of Obama's former pastor. Question's been asked and answered. Last time I looked neither of these preachers is on the ballot.
Media didn't have a whole lot to say about McCain's politically opportunistic trip to Iraq. Wonder if they'll bother to ask who comes to his fundraiser in London?
Selective fire and brimstone and faux [or is it Fox?] media outrage have worn thin among the voters who are actually paying attention this season. Which is to say most all of 'em. So we have high hopes that Issue #1 moves up to the front burner instead of more driven by the competition drivel designed to drive up somebody's negatives.
Don't know about you, but I'm fed up with media who let politicians' oppo research teams drive their reporting. Grow up, fellas.
We're seeing glimmers of change, like the series CNN is launching this week on the economy. How's that for timing?
Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan and the Fed will provide plenty to talk about, on top of the subprime mortgage story. Because, contrary to what the Current Occupant believes, no financial meltdown is an island, and the ripple effect will be felt by us all. As the global markets are showing even as I type.
So just as Obama says his pastor's rhetorical style is old school to be condemned for its over-reaching hyperbole, the ways of the media have been over-reaching as well. Too much 4-T and G. Tabloid Tramps, Taunts, Titillation, and Gotcha is old school. It's childish when we are in serious times and need responsible reporting instead of infotainment. Information instead of spin and Rush-ian hyperbole.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I Corinthians 13:11
The people are way ahead of the pols and the pundits. The political partisans and old-school media can perpetuate the hypocrisy of lambasting fire and brimstone with their own inflammatory gas-baggery. Or they join the rest of us grown-ups in a new generation. Not defined by age, but by ideas. And hope.
And for those who shrug and say so what, I recommend HBO's series on John Adams. A worthy lesson in just what it is we're trying to preserve and protect here. Democracy, if we can keep it, has been on shaky ground for a while now.
So enough hyperbole about hyperbole and let's get about the business of restoration...and reality.
We saw a lot of fire and brimstone and tut-tutting among the media talkers this weekend about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary comments. The former pastor of Barack Obama's church and former advisor or whatever the honorary title is that candidates affix to people so that they can try to draw on their names for promoting their campaign has turned out to be toxic to the campaign these days.
Kinda like John Hagee to the McCain campaign. Oh, wait a minute. The media took a look, bought into the slippery dodge of the man they would most like to eat barbeque with, and moved on. As they should with the story of Obama's former pastor. Question's been asked and answered. Last time I looked neither of these preachers is on the ballot.
Media didn't have a whole lot to say about McCain's politically opportunistic trip to Iraq. Wonder if they'll bother to ask who comes to his fundraiser in London?
Selective fire and brimstone and faux [or is it Fox?] media outrage have worn thin among the voters who are actually paying attention this season. Which is to say most all of 'em. So we have high hopes that Issue #1 moves up to the front burner instead of more driven by the competition drivel designed to drive up somebody's negatives.
Don't know about you, but I'm fed up with media who let politicians' oppo research teams drive their reporting. Grow up, fellas.
We're seeing glimmers of change, like the series CNN is launching this week on the economy. How's that for timing?
Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan and the Fed will provide plenty to talk about, on top of the subprime mortgage story. Because, contrary to what the Current Occupant believes, no financial meltdown is an island, and the ripple effect will be felt by us all. As the global markets are showing even as I type.
So just as Obama says his pastor's rhetorical style is old school to be condemned for its over-reaching hyperbole, the ways of the media have been over-reaching as well. Too much 4-T and G. Tabloid Tramps, Taunts, Titillation, and Gotcha is old school. It's childish when we are in serious times and need responsible reporting instead of infotainment. Information instead of spin and Rush-ian hyperbole.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I Corinthians 13:11
The people are way ahead of the pols and the pundits. The political partisans and old-school media can perpetuate the hypocrisy of lambasting fire and brimstone with their own inflammatory gas-baggery. Or they join the rest of us grown-ups in a new generation. Not defined by age, but by ideas. And hope.
And for those who shrug and say so what, I recommend HBO's series on John Adams. A worthy lesson in just what it is we're trying to preserve and protect here. Democracy, if we can keep it, has been on shaky ground for a while now.
So enough hyperbole about hyperbole and let's get about the business of restoration...and reality.
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