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Springtime Resolutions

I’ve made some ‘springtime’ resolutions, to replace the two New Year’s resolutions that I made — and promptly fulfilled.  If I could do those two things, those two very hard things, then I should be able to accomplish so much more.   So, for this spring, I will:

1.  Pay more attention to my career.

2.  Explore the area.  I’ve been to most of the United States — and yet, there are still so very many interesting places in the Philadelphia area that I haven’t seen.

3.  Get back in shape.  I’ve been attempting this one for two years, but this year will be different.  Because I’m not doing it alone, and I have a very powerful reason for doing it.

4.  Blog often.  Enough said.

5.  Knit out the stash.  Have yarn.  Found projects to match that yarn.  Now I just need to find the time to actually knit.

6.  Publish a book.  I’ve been writing, both original and fan fiction, for years.   I recently started expanding on a couple of those works, and realized that I could self-publish at least one, and see what people think of my writing.

7.  Re-organize my online life.  I’ve got accounts just everywhere.  But I can’t really spend all my life online, now can I?

8.  Learn a new language.  I once was fluent in several, but I’ve lost that edge.  Time to get it back.

9.  Break my habit.  I have this thing I do — not a bad thing, just a habit that I’ve long since outgrown.

And in 90 days, we’ll see how many of those I accomplish.

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Spring is coming . . .

At least I hope so. No one’s told the flowers about the maybe-snow storm next week. On my way into work this week I kept passing a house with green shoots of something poking through the dirt. This morning I finally got a better look.

Snowdrops. The first flowers of spring.

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Which led to the realization that in my enthusiasm at my promotion, and the accompanying increase in the workload, I have been neglecting this blog. No more. Let’s see if I can write something here for, oh, the next 111 days.

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Santa TCM grants half a wish . . .

A month or so ago, I requested that The Glass Key and several other movies, long unavailable on DVD, be released digitally.  TCM has given me half my wish — and released them on DVD this week.

The Glass Key, Dashiell Hammett’s commentary on election corruption, which starred Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, is part of a 3-movie compilation released by TCM.   Dark Crimes gives us The Glass Key, another Ladd-Lake film noir, The Blue Dahlia, and Phantom Lady, a wonderful old classic about a man accused of murdering his wife, whose alibi witness cannot be found as he does not know her name.  Filled with  twists and turns, it’s a movie I’ve not seen for close to a decade, and one which I cannot wait to watch again!  However, I can’t help wondering why TCM didn’t include the third Ladd-Lake film, This Gun for Hire, instead of Lady.

I still want TCM to partner with iTunes/Amazon and release these movies digitually, or go off on their own and provide an MP4-type service so those of us who love classic Hollywood films can have them on our laptops.   But I am extremely grateful to TCM for finally releasing them on DVD.   Now if some of my other (obscure) favorites would receive the same treatment!

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The trees know . . .

 

Trees must know when a bad storm is coming.  That’s the only explanation I have for what hapened yesterday.

My apartment complex is a lovely place to live.  We have wide lawns, a lovely stream winding its way through the center of the complex, and a lot of trees.  Pines, hollies, willows, elms and maples — and towering, majestic oaks that line our parking lots and tower over the buildings.

The oaks are my favorites.  They herald spring by being the first trees to show buds, even though they tend to leaf out later than the other trees.  In summer, they provide shade to the buildings and the cars, lowering the temperatures of our humidity-prone region.  Once fall arives, their leaves turn a wonderful, deep red-brown that provides a background for the fiery orange of the maples.  And winter turns them into fairy trees, their branches glistening in the night when are draped with snow.

They also produce bumper crops of acorns, which attract pesky squirrels that eat my plants,  Their beauty is worth the inconvenience of the squirrels.

However, the oaks tend to be the last trees to drop their leaves, often burdened with dried, brown leaves well into December.

And so they were on Saturday.  The entrance to my building is flanked by two of the larger oaks, and at the start of the weekend, their branches were still covered with masses of leaves.

Sunday morning, as I walked out of the building, I saw that both trees were almost bare, and the grass and parking lot were filled with drifting piles of brown leaves.  That scene was repeated throughout the complex — overnight, all the oaks had lost most of their leaves.

One of the biggest concerns in my area with Hurricane Sandy is the strength of the winds.  With so many trees still full of leaves, the powerful winds of this storm are anticipated to knock major limbs off trees, dropping them onto buildings and electric lines, damaging homes and knocking out power.  And our oaks lean right over the buildings.

So did the trees know a hurricane was coming?  Maybe.  In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen so many leaves fall in so short a time.  And hopefully, that will make a difference in how the trees, and our buildings, make it through the storm.

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Digitize The Glass Key!

The Glass Key is a wonderfully dark film that must be digitized – especially since it is not available as a US-format DVD or even a VHS tape.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of bringing all my entertainment into digital form, to take with me when traveling and eliminate some of the clutter in my home.  Unfortunately, these three films, which include one of my Top Ten movies, are not available digitally.

Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake starred in three classic gangster/noir films – This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key in 1942, and The Blue Dahlia in 1946.  (The pair also starred in Saigan in 1948, a ‘doomed romance’ film, and guest-starred in three other films.)

This Gun for Hire set the tone for the pair – while they would be romantically interested in one another, they never got together until the end of the film (if then).  Something, someone – or both – always stood between them.  In Gun, Ladd played a hired killer named Raven, a cold and heartless man.  By the movie’s end, he’d come to feel something for Lake’s character, enough to spare people and extract a confession from his bosses (rather than just kill them in revenge) – because she asked him to do so.  And in Dahlia, Ladd’s character returns home from war to find his wife is cheating on him, was responsible for the death of their son, and is mixed up in crime.  He meets Lake while leaving his wife – unaware that she’s the estranged wife of one of his friends.  When his wife is murdered, he becomes a suspect, and things play out from there.

Both of these movies are well worth viewing, but for a variety of reasons, Key remains my favorite of the trio.

The Glass Key, like so many other wonderful books and films (like The Thin Man) was written by Dashiell Hammett.  The Ladd-Lake version was its second filming – I’ve not, as yet, managed to see the original version from the mid-1930’s.

The plot revolves around an election (timely, yes?).  Paul, a political boss, falls in love with Janet, the daughter of an ‘honest’ man running for governor.  By a strange coincidence, his sister is also in love – with Janet’s brother Taylor, who is deep in debt to the criminal running the city.

For love, Paul decides to ensure her father wins the election – and to also ‘clean up’ the city, removing his protection from the criminal.  However, Ed, his lieutenant, suspects that Janet is simply making sure her father wins the election by playing along with Paul – and he’s proven right when Janet becomes interested in him.

Naturally, something happens – Taylor is murdered, and Paul is the prime suspect.  The criminal tortures Ed to get him to reveal information.  A possible witness to Taylor’s murder is himself murdered, there’s a suicide, the criminal is killed by his own hired gun.  In the end, the murderer is revealed – the ‘honest’ candidate for office killed his own son.

No one in this movie seems to be completely free of corruption – or without a redeeming quality.  Paul and Ed run the elections – and try to do the right thing for love and loyalty.  Janet lies to get her father elected – and yet cannot continue to do so because she loves Ed.  Paul’s baby sister, the criminals – they all have good, and bad, qualities.  Even the ‘honest’ politician, who could have kept silent, confesses to save his daughter, who was arrested for her brother’s murder.

There are so many twists to the plot that it’s a movie that requires close attention – and when you play that much attention to a movie, you spot something new on each viewing.  And so it is with this film – each time I watch it, I catch a look I hadn’t noticed before on an actor’s face, a slight change in camera angle that adds nervousness to a scene – even a subtle vocal inflection that changes the meaning of a throwaway phrase uttered by a character.

Of course, watching this film is difficult, if not nearly impossible for many.  It was released only for a limited time on VHS tape.  There is a DVD available from Amazon – but it’s an import with foreign language subtitles locked onto the screen, and according to the reviews I’ve read, those subtitles block some of the action in critical scenes.  If it ever was released as a US-format DVD, it’s certainly no longer being listed for sale anywhere that I’ve found.  Gun is available on DVD, while Dahlia appears to be in the same fix as Key.  And none of them are available by digital download.

I do have a copy of Key’s VHS tape, but, as we all know, tapes wear out.  I was able to burn a DVD of Gun and Dahlia when they were shown on Turner Classic Movies, but Key has not turned up on TV as yet (or if it did, I missed it!).

Meanwhile, I watch my tape sparingly, and continue to hope for the digital release of The Glass Key, as well as This Gun for Hire and The Blue Dahlia.  Movies I love, watch often — and want to keep instantly available.

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She’s baaack!

Having survived both the nasty bug and the joy that is corporate tax season (I do corporate taxes, among other things), I now resume the irregularly scheduled updating.  Actually, more regularly scheduled updating, as things have quieted down a bit.  That won’t last long.

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A public thank you

Today is my birthday, and looking back, I have so much for which to be grateful.  And so, in a bit of a rambling entry, because I’m still recovering from this bug-thing, let me say thank you for the important things in my life.

My family, to start.  My parents both worked, on opposite shifts, so that they could provide the best possible life for their children.  My father has never, ever, let a setback keep him down long.  He goes over, around, throughit to get to where he needs to be.  My mother was incredibly smart, and she taught me to never stop learning, to explore everythin that interests you, no matter how obscure.  To this day, my brother hints, nudges, and will outright push me to make sure I succeed.  And my grandparents demonstrated exactly how much you could do even if you only had a little bit of money or a second-grade education.

I received an excellent education, went to Catholic grade and high schools, with an emphasis on college-preparatory courses — and the tuition was not cheap for my parents.  They covered part of my college education and sent me to Penn State’s main campus, where I studied journalism, then on to a paralegal course.  And my father supported me through four years of a law school evening program, and then another two years of a master’s program, with words of encouragement, and love, and yes, nagging when he felt I was maybe waivering a bit.

My friends, online and in the real world, are fantastic.  They are with me through sorrow, and joy, with advice, and tissues and chocolate when needed.  They never ask what I need — they know.  And the simple fact that they are there, that I can call them for help, or to talk, or just pull them out for an adventure, means the world to me.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with very smart people and to have a wonderful mentor.  People who showed every day the right way to do things, how to make a solid plan for any situation, and how to deal when the plan falls through.  How to juggle thirty tasks in one day with the two screaming emergencies that walked through the door around noon.  And most importantly, how to face the defeat everyone inevitably experiences at some point in life with courage and class.

By this birthday, I’ve been to 37 of the United States.  Not just flying visits.  I’ve explored the Wisconsin Dells and the Grand Canyon, the entire Eastern Coast and the beautiful mountains of New England.  Wandered the streets of Chicago and Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Savannah, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Richmond, DC, San Diego, Los Angeles and Phoenix.  Stood in awe before phenomenal museum exhibits, like the original King Tut tour, manmade monuments like Mount Rushmore — and Thoroughbreds with names that echo in the record books.  Some of this was thanks to my parents, and their belief that a vacation was a time to see something or somewhere new and exciting (and also thanks to an almost godlike patience for driving two bickering siblings in a car eight hours at a time).  That sense of adventure now inculcated in me, I still pick a spot and go — and as a result, have seen how wonderful a country we live in.

And most of all, there are the amazing things that happened for no reason but the best of reasons.  Things that I needed that just appeared — like a new sofa when I was unemployed and mine collapsed.  My neighbor was moving overseas — and offered me her brand-new sofa.  The person who called out of the blue with an offer, somone I didn’t know, but had been directed to me by a contractor with whom I’d briefly worked years ago.  The unexpected check that just arrives in the mail — a refund on an overpayment from a closed account — at a time when I’d just gotten a large bill for a car repair.  To who, or what, makes those things happen — thank you.

So, rambling a bit, courtesy of the heavy prescription I’m on.  But I did want to take the opportunity to say a public thank you for everyone I’ve known, and everything I’ve received, throughout my life.  I’ve been blessed.

Tomorrow, when I’m told the effects should finally be wearing off, I’ll be posting this year’s tasks.  It’s — an interesting list.

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You Can’t Take Back Hate

My mother taught me an important lesson when I was a teenager.  You Can’t Take Back Hate.

On this anniversary of 9/11, we should be remembering and honoring the Americans who selflessly tried to save their fellow citizens, some of whom paid for their valor with their lives.  The firemen and policemen who went into the Towers, the soldiers at the Pentagon who tried to help their trapped comrades, the ordinary people who went to work, or got on an airplane, only to be caught up in the events of that day, and who did their best to help their coworkers survive, or were able to prevent another plane from destroying the White House or Capital Building.

And many of us are doing that.  But so many others, as has become more and more common in these past few years, are taking any opportunity to make hateful, nasty comments on otherwise respectful stories, advocating their viewpoints as to who and what is at fault for whatever is their particular cause of the day.  Just as they do every day, on blogs and news stories.

After 9/11, we were not Red or Blue, Democrat or Republican, rich or poor, north or south or western states.  We were Americans.  We stood together, ready to defend our country and do whatever it took to help our fellow citizens.  Sadly, that didn’t last long.  Cracks crept in.  Sides were taken.  Today, it seems that no matter what subject you raise — the economy, religion, sports, real estate, the weather — people can find a way to blame those on the opposite side of their narrowly-defined ideological spectrum for the perceived problems of that subject.  No one wants to have an honest discussion about ways to solve our problems.  All we want is to blame someone else.  Preferably in the most vitriolic, venomous words we can find in the dictionary.

Compromise is a word not even to be considered in these conversations.

We seem to have forgotten how our country was formed.  The men who gathered to declare our Independence, and later to write our Constitution, came from different backgrounds, religions, social brackets, ideological convictions.  They wanted different things to be incorporated into those fundamental documents.  But they compromised — they yielded on things important to them so that they could achieve that over-riding, important goal of declaring us a new country, independent of Great Britain, and establishing us as a country and government of, by and for the people.

We couldn’t do that today.  Not when all we seem to want to do is spew hateful words about anyone who doesn’t match our particular set of beliefs and expectations.  And all that happens when you do that, ultimately, is that you hurt yourself, and the ones you love.

When I was 17, I had an argument with my mother.  I don’t even remember exactly about what we were fighting — but I remember snapping at her, in my superior, know-it-all voice, that it was her fault we were so poor that I couldn’t buy a dress but had to wear what she made for me.

And then I watched my mother start to cry.

I tried to apologize. I did.  She just looked at me and told me that once you say something hateful, you can’t take it back.  Then she walked out of the room.

We never spoke about that day again.  I wasn’t brave enough to ask her if she forgave me for what I said.  And now, years after she died, I can’t.  All I can remember is what I said, and the look on her face.  I can’t take back those hateful words, and they festered between us, unresolved, for years.

To anyone who reads this entry, I ask you to do one thing.  The next time you want to make a snippy, arrogant, nasty comment about anything, before you press the send button, before you open your mouth to yell at someone, whether it’s something political or religious or just the merits of your college football team  — Please. Stop.  Think.

Would you say those words to your mother?  Your husband?  Your son?

Would you want someone to say it to you?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t express your opinion.  I’m asking that we find a way to have a civilized, respectful dialogue.  In the spirit of those who gave their lives for this country, on 9/11 and in every war we’ve ever fought.