Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: April 2022

• May Day, May I?

  Posted at 4:51 pm by kayewer, on April 30, 2022

  

  Some movies have traditional viewing dates: Star Wars fans like to watch their favorite episode(s) on May 4th (a pun on “May the Force be With You”), and a few weeks ago near Easter time ABC television aired The Ten Commandments. One year they didn’t run it, and the public protest was so great, they agreed to run it annually from then on.

  I picked up a tradition for May Day which has a multi-layered purpose. On May Day, I view a movie called The Wicker Man (1973). There is a newer version starring Nicholas Cage, and I do like the actor, but the original has an atmosphere which can’t be replicated.

  The film, directed by Robin Hardy, deals with religion, ritual, traditions, law, and is a combination horror and mystery. A police sergeant named Neil Howie (Edward Woodward, the original Equalizer before Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington) receives an anonymous letter asking him to investigate the remote island of Summerisle, where it’s claimed a young girl has gone missing without a care from her family or the island’s residents. He flies there by small aircraft and meets with ignorance at every turn; most people deny such a girl has ever lived on the island. When they do concede that she may be a resident, they don’t appear moved to aid him.

  Howie is a conservative, stalwart Christian, and finds his investigation on the island trying, as it is populated solely by pagans, and he witnesses several ancient rituals and topical songs at the local inn/tavern. He makes an appointment to meet with Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), who openly tells Howie of the island’s history and of the religious clerics having left because of paganism and the unnatural cultivating of the famous apples imported to the mainland. He invites Howie to continue hunting down clues, which begin to form a horrific truth from which Howie may not escape.

  The film contains sexuality, nudity and some interesting dichotomies as Howie navigates the search; he is warned and encouraged in various ways to lay off, but he is determined to solve what happened to young Rowan Morrison, culminating in the island’s celebration of May Day, including frivolity and sacrifices to assure their continuing livelihood amidst failing apple production, and Howie is a witness to it all.

  The story is disturbing, but I won’t give key points away. What does matter in watching an “art” film of this type is keeping an open mind to differing points of view; while Howie tries to get everybody to obey the law when they have other ideas, he stubbornly refuses to see the danger in front of him.

  It’s a coincidence that May Day falls on a Sunday this year. My watching this movie may seem rather out of place due to its content, but it has a strong message about faith on both sides. So it seems fitting.

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• At Decor of the Matter

  Posted at 4:35 pm by kayewer, on April 23, 2022

  

  I came upon an article online the other day which said in short, “If you are of a certain age, you must get rid of these things in your home, because they make you look old.”

  Gee, I already have enough going on in life to make me look old, and now I should also blame the stuff in my home for making matters worse?

  Apparently your floors say a lot about your age, and right now you should not have shag carpeting, or wall-to-wall carpeting, in your home. I have found nothing more comfortable in winter than having carpet under my feet. Bare floors, by their very nature, are cold. But no, carpet is banished from the kingdom because some unknown resource of questionable authority says so. The article also pooh-poohed little rugs on bare floors. It’s nothing on your floor, or nothing.

  In the kitchen, I am hopeless because my floor is linoleum. Heaven forbid! It isn’t even a dated pattern, or tiles: it’s one piece and modern enough to blend in with my current appliances, all of which are less than 20 years old.

  I committed a sin by buying a dust ruffle for the bed. However, I think I redeemed myself by throwing out all the old spices in the kitchen in one de-cluttering session. So they cancel each other out.

  A few items on the list confused me, such as toilet lid covers and pedestal mats for in front of the loo (by the way, I don’t use the latter), and frame-less pictures, as well as too many framed photos placed on tables around the home. Gee, if you have a home and a family, why wouldn’t you want to see some of their faces? As for the lid cover, there is nothing more jarring than the clank of the lid hitting against the tank when you want to eliminate in peace. I’m keeping that. Sorry.

  I was relieved to read that I am still somewhat cool, since I have no farmhouse-related decor, popcorn ceilings or glib phrases on wall plaques. I did recently purchase a wood strip sign from the shore, because I wanted to have something in the living room to remind me of my fun at the beach. I retain the right to keep that. I also have not kept old paperwork or greeting cards, paperbacks (it’s hardcover or nothing, unless it wasn’t published that way) or socks with no mates. I don’t wear socks.

  So I guess I’m decorating to look more my age. If I tried to look new age, I would probably appear immature.

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• Billed Again

  Posted at 5:35 pm by kayewer, on April 16, 2022

  

  I went to see a show, and a trend has arisen which bothers me. It’s about the programs we receive as we enter the theater, which are often the well-known and popular Playbills(R). An attendant will often hand one to you, and as you take your seat and silence your mobile devices, you can read about the cast and crew, learn about the playwrights and authors and catch an article or two about Broadway or the world of performance art. You may also find a place for dinner or a retirement home for Aunt Millie in the ads.

  Fans collect them; nostalgists keep them in a binder or box, and some people discard them. At the theater I visited, there is a large brochure holder full of them, on the wall near the door, and folks who don’t want their copies simply put them back.

  It’s a funny type of recycling, and I find it confusing.

  Though I’ve never heard of anybody catching a disease from a written work, some may wonder if germs can be picked up from a glossy billet which has been held by somebody else. The fact that an attendant handed it to you in the first place doesn’t seem to bother anybody. Sometimes the theater employees wear dress gloves. However, we are still in the waxing and waning of a global illness, so we have unknown fears to contend with.

  The number of trees used to print theater programs is likely not the same as magazines or books, but with the house filled with people who I saw actively engaging their mobile devices to place them on silent, maybe it’s time to go digital with Playbill(R).

  I experienced a digital program during the holiday season, and it was easy to access. Of course, I didn’t have something to take home as a souvenir or to add to my collection. There are pros and cons for both.

  I just hope that we can always enjoy Playbill(R) and the experience of live theater well into my old age. Or at least as long as I have room to collect my programs.

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• Good Clouds

  Posted at 4:39 pm by kayewer, on April 9, 2022

  One of the best inventions in our modern world is cloud storage. It’s aptly named, because everything in cloud storage is like that fluffy stuff in the sky that you can’t touch but seems to exist as some mysterious aura above our heads. The purpose of cloud storage is to hold cyber stuff so you can find it from anywhere. This means that if I wrote something in Abu Dhabi, I could retrieve it from Costa Rica.

  Unfortunately, if I left my keys in Costa Rica, I probably couldn’t find them using cloud storage. It isn’t lost and found.

  At first I was distrustful of cloud storage, which is how I found myself with stuff on more than one device and no way to retrieve them all. Now, I sign on, and there it is like magic as if, by prestidigitation, somebody pulled stuff I wrote in 2014 out of a hat.

  And it’s not on paper, so the magician’s rabbit (or the dog) didn’t eat it. This means that homework can be stored on the cloud, which eliminates the excuse that the dog ate it, because writing won’t be on paper anymore.

  The trees have one more thing to be grateful to the clouds for, even though they’re not the same clouds. Going digital will help the forests regrow, because we won’t use as much paper.

  For authors, not using paper adds a new perspective to the craft. Looking at words onscreen is not the same as on paper, and even with new digital writing devices, it’s not the same experience while proofreading. Some devices try to replicate the experience of paper, with paper sound effects and the look of pencil or pen drawing. Submitting manuscripts is going from paper to sending PDFs via email. In the “good old days,” manuscripts came in a stack of pages in a special box, much like senate bills, only smaller. Reports used to be white papers stacked inside a folder and given eye-catching covers. One of the first things we learned in school was how to prepare a report. Now report covers are also going away.

  You can also save artwork to the cloud, which frees up refrigerators from children’s artwork. This means we’re still not fully free of paper, but we are using it as backup.

  I admit to missing some of the old-fashioned ways of doing things, but I have a good feeling about cloud storage and going digital. My latest device was so easy to set up, I was amazed. I took it out of the box, and within minutes, the cloud brought all my stuff to me.

  And these clouds are so smart, they don’t even produce rain.

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• Walking Chairman

  Posted at 2:38 pm by kayewer, on April 3, 2022

  

  I realized this week that I have to get out of the chair more often. Research shows that sitting for prolonged periods can cause obesity and insomnia, which explains why we’re all getting fat and sleeping fewer hours than we’d like.

  At least I know that I can still walk quite a few miles when motivated: I just walked a good 6-8 miles while carrying about ten extra pounds of stuff in a shopping tote. Which I had to pay for, because of the new bag rules going into effect everywhere. Shopping is costly, and so are bags.

  After I bought the bag, I went to an employee appreciation event and they gave me a free tote bag. I had to hold back from being an ingrate and saying to them, “You should’ve been with me an hour ago, when I could’ve used this tote bag to haul my purchases for free.

  This is how my car has become a repository for bags which never seem to leave the trunk.

  We’re in the habit of going into stores empty-handed and coming out with bags full of stuff. Some ancient idiocy has programmed us to feel silly carrying empty bags into a place, so we’ll have to get rid of this mindset.

  It could become a fashionable, socially acceptable habit to actually have a bag for each store, and proudly take it inside to fill up with purchases.

  The next big thing will be to come up with bags that won’t embarrass people when they bring them inside. The more expandable (and collapsible), the better.

  The habit of walking is a healthy one to cultivate, and I have done my share, but when my job requires my presence in front of a computer screen for a full day, it’s hard to get any steps in. I usually work some in by doing errands during my breaks and lunch. The time doesn’t seem to slow down, either, during breaks, but fly as if somebody has accelerated the natural order of its passage.

  A friend of mine retired and now walks daily, and she walks across entire town borders. Because she has the time. I don’t even think she owns a watch anymore, unless it’s a fitness device.

  So I’m now committed to stepping out a bit more, and the warmer weather will make it easier to do. I just have to remember that, if I stop in a store, I must bring a bag with me to put my purchases in. I wonder if I should use a plastic bag, or would that be considered unfashionable?

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