Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: May 2014

• Redskin What?

  Posted at 2:31 am by kayewer, on May 25, 2014

  To me, a redskin is what I use in potato salad, but from the controversy about the name of Washington state’s football team, you would think all we Americans ever do is battle over words. It doesn’t seem as if the term has the same derogatory connotation as some we’ve encountered over the years. If the team had been called, say, the Washington Savages or the Seattle Scalp-Takers, maybe there would be cause for an uproar (or dare we say the formation of a war party?), and we would be trying to think of some vanilla name for a group of men smashing each other around for possession of funny-shaped spheres of brown bumpy inflated bladders. As it is, the Atlanta Braves or Cleveland Indians don’t get the same level of controversy (at least not before now), because “brave” is apparently okay (denotes courage), and apparently it isn’t confusing to try to distinguish native Indians from people from Mumbai, but referring to one having the distinctive red flesh of our noble indigenous tribes is not proper.

  Being from Philadelphia, we have the Eagles (a noble bird and a national emblem–the bald one, anyway–to denote positive animal role models) and the Phillies. That was a no-brainer, because we could have gone with Quakers, but the University of Pennsylvania already had that one taken, and the Philadelphia Hoagies just sounds dumb. I guess we could have been the Bells or the Independents or something, but there you have it. The baseball team is from Philly, we say it two different ways and mean it. As for football, I sing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” with the best of them, and as long as nobody gets hurt by a beak or talon, we’re okay with it.

  For generations we have shortchanged the native people of this land, and I think we should show respect when we name anything for them. The emblem for Washington is fine the way it is, too. We have bigger problems in this country than mincing words over one word. Let’s just let the Washington Redskins play football with the name they have, let the Atlanta Braves play baseball, and we can all just enjoy the sports they so nobly represent. Now kindly pass the potato salad (skins on).

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged Washington Redskins

• Reviews About Reviews

  Posted at 3:22 am by kayewer, on May 18, 2014

  I don’t let movie reviews dictate my choices, but I do like to look at the occasional review just to see what somebody else thought of something I liked or hated. There are still good television reviewers, but I’m usually at work and they are on the later parts of the morning news shows, so I never see them. YouTube(R) has a great collection of videos designed to malign, laud, inform and parody the heck out of great and lousy movies past and present.

  A friend just sent me a review of a DVD celebrating “Phantom of the Opera” in its 25th anniversary performance in Britain. The reviewer, Bobsheaux, is astute, hilarious and silly at turns, thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to provide a synopsis and pick apart aspects of the production at the same time (in its first minutes is a sample, when the man responsible for the stage from above is called out, Bobsheaux quips, “You’re only the Chief of the flies? Couldn’t quite make Lord, huh?”) and make it work in a casual setting. I got a laugh out of it.  Good reviews, even if the reviewer hates it, are worth your time.

  Once in a while I will go to IMDB (Internet Movie Database) and provide a movie synopsis for a film without one. Some of my favorites were lacking a full overview or had none at all, so it was an enjoyable challenge to see what I could do to solve that issue. So far I’ve done four synopsis from scratch and padded out a half-dozen or so (my most recent being the great Paul Newman comedy “Slap Shot”). It might interest readers to know that not everybody seems to understand what a synopsis is (a description of the plot in detail–including giving away the spoilers–to allow people to see and know about the actual film in its entirety whether they have seen it or not). I’m sure that parents want to go over what happens in a film before screening it for the little ones, or they’re not sure they saw something correctly in a film, so it is a noble job to do a good synopsis and do it right. If a synopsis exists and I am padding it out, I don’t erase another’s work unless it’s to correct the spelling or a glitch in the retelling.

  The point is not to insert one’s opinion into a synopsis, though that is expected in a review if you feel people will benefit from how you feel about a movie. I try to keep out of dissing movies, even if I don’t like them. For example, the only movie I ever walked out on was “Altered States.” It was considered a good film, and for what it was I agreed, but it just wasn’t for me, so I would not go on record as saying the movie was bad. It wasn’t.

  I think movies are going into a strange grey zone of review-worthy quality these days. So many movies are remakes that it’s hard to take a step back and say anything about them without prejudice. A bit of humor helps, along with a willingness to strike at the un-opinionated truth. I hope there are more good reviews out there, and maybe I can throw in a few of my own. Now I think I’ll sit down and see “Lord of the Flies.”

   

   

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  Posted in Commentary, Theatre/Movies/Entertainment | 0 Comments | Tagged IMDB, movie reviews

• Bullying and the Old Wounds

  Posted at 1:26 am by kayewer, on May 11, 2014

  Folks who were victims of bullies over the past few decades likely have mixed emotions about the subject being a hot topic today. Back in the old days, the excuse for bullying was that “kids are cruel,” and faculty members threw up their hands and just doled out detention to the instigators, telling victims to “suck it up.” Recent studies, however, have shown that child victims of bullying abuse become adults with psychological and sociological issues; suicide numbers among adults trying to overcome the terrors of bullying are disturbing, and subjects in a decades-long National Child Development Study for Great Britain found that anxiety, depression, under- or unemployment also plaque victims long after the caps and gowns have been put away. Study subjects often cite poor health, few friends and limited social contact. I’m providing a link for those interested in a brief detail of the actual study (other articles, published in April 2014, are available by search):

  http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1863836

  Today’s victims can be assaulted on social media, something not available to us older citizens when we endured the pains of childhood, thank God. Another recent report shows that victims are desperate enough to bring weapons to school to combat the traumas dealt them by savage underage bullying cretins. The idea behind victim retaliation is possibly to see what it is like to be the giver of pain, rather than the recipient. It certainly seems like a bully has a balance of power, as they laugh over the victim and often have the support of others. Unfortunately, weapons often cause death rather than apologies, and the dead can’t tell a victim they’re sorry. Not once in any article about bullying retaliation did it ever come out that the victim got satisfaction from the acts they commit: no resolution from those who bullied them. In fact, when the faculty, police and/or strike force teams come in, the victim often commits suicide. The bully, in a sense, commits a delayed murder by proxy. The faculty still doles out detention.

  In order to combat bullying, some think it might be helpful to learn directly from the bullies themselves, and work to create an environment of cooperation. If a bully thinks that a fellow student doesn’t wear the right clothes, let the bully finance some new ones. Some think that implying a stigma to bullying will encourage tolerance, which might be an interesting point: discrimination of any kind, even to the most minor difference in human nature, implies that there is a majority among humans, which there is not and never will be. We will never have a this state or a that state, nor can a school of kids ever have a one hundred percent perfect ideal, no matter how much anybody wants it.

  Besides, why on earth would anybody go out of their way to deliberately create a human being who will be their personal burden later in life. If you bully Billy at age twelve, and he winds up on the dole at 22, whose taxes are keeping food on his table? It’s a pointless exercise in trying to put one’s personal issues at ease at another person’s expense. The real issue is with the bully, not with somebody else. When it comes down to basics, WE ARE ALL SOMEBODY ELSE’S SOMEBODY ELSE. Put that on a shirt with my name on it, and I will feel that I have created a message that matters.

  A bully needs to look within and decide the put a stop to all the negativity that they can spread non-stop like a cancer. It takes a lot of negativity to be a bully, and it’s time wasted. Go bone up on the school subject that most troubles you, take a long walk or something. Bullying is pointless and just creates more problems than it’s worth. Studies prove it.

   

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged bully, bullying, bullying suicides, National Child Development Study for Great Britain

• Cold Duck (Or Goose)

  Posted at 7:43 am by kayewer, on May 3, 2014

  Normally at this time of year, the area around the building where I work is full of geese. In spring, Canada Geese land at their favorite breeding areas, mate, promptly lose their flight feathers and spend the next few months raising their families. By May there are goslings up the wazoo. Some parents have five or more young to look after. It was a privilege to witness the miracle of birth from inside the office, as some nests have been built close to our ground floor windows. Once all the goslings hatch, the mother destroys and abandons the nest, takes the youngsters to the nearest body of water and the fast lessons in how to become geese begins. By September, the youngsters look just like the parents, and soon they take flight, along with their parents with their new flight feathers grown in. The process has gone on that way for years.

  This year I have seen one nest with one egg in it, and the mother abandoned it days later. So far, no baby geese have arrived. It might be the late onset of spring, and there could simply be a slight delay, orchestrated by Mother Nature, to give the wildlife a chance to catch up to what they should have been doing in March or so. Darned snow inconvenienced everybody.

  We often don’t think about wildlife, but creatures who don’t have houses actually had to survive in the horrendous conditions we detested from indoors (with the occasional power outage). It’s amazing they can stay alive, let alone make little versions of themselves. Outside, in the cold, with no accompanying Barry White music.

  Of course, we humans will likely see an uptick in births starting in August and running into next winter. We don’t wait until the call of spring and nature, and we have the Barry White recordings when there is no power outage. We’ll have to wait and see if nature comes through. I know that some folks don’t care about geese. With all those birds comes bird poop, after all. But their place in the animal kingdom does matter, so I hope to see some good signs soon.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged canada geese

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