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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Bass Hall tour, Ft. Worth, Texas


After a week and half of traveling to Texas, Oklahoma, and back to Texas, I have settled into my grandmother routine at my Daughter’s house—until yesterday.

Nine-year-old granddaughter Jane and I dressed in our best planned to see Bass Hall before strolling Sundance Square and having lunch with members of Hope Church who arranged the two hour tour through the “fourth finest Performance Hall” in the USA.

While I was on the guided tour, I expected to buy postcards or a booklet with pictures of all the architectural designs presented I only took three pictures with my iPad; two of them of Jane and one of the Dome. Unfortunately, on this Saturday the bookstore was closed; therefore, I went home with no images except in my memoires of the beauty of Bass Hall.

Since I had never driven downtown, of course I got lost. I just followed the I-35 signs and exited to Lancaster Street. Lucky guess. It took us right through the almost deserted 6th and 5th streets blocks which I circled four times looking for Bass Hall parking building. Looking up Jane and I noticed the awesome Angel statues over the main entrance, so we turned the corner and parked. We were only 15 minutes late.

We tried to slip in quietly, but everyone knew Jane and smiled at our whispered apologies. A tall, gray-haired be-speckled guide in his muted maroon sports coat with an embroidered emblem of angel wings paused in his formal speech to the small group of CVVC members circled around him in the elegant emblazoned West Entrance foyer. He asked if we were the last of their group, and without waiting for an answer he stepped forward to ask sternly to me, “How old is the child?” The church bulletin stipulated that anyone “7 and older” could attend, so I spoke up, “She will be 8 years old in one week.”
His watery gray eyes stared at me as though he could see through my semi-lie. She would be eight in two weeks, but I returned his look boldly. She glanced up with a familiar correcting look. I took her hand and raised my chin to show this man, Jane was with me, the reason I was there, and I was not about to be stopped from taking her on the tour. He turned his attention back to the others in the group who were vouching for Jane’s maturity, and that she would be very attentive.
This guide expounded a long narrative of his experiences yesterday when they had over 100 youngsters in the hall for the annual Children’s Concert. He made it very clear that their behavior was quite improper for a formal performing center such as this. He repeated his triad two more times during the tour, each time when more church people joined us. including three more young girls aged 8-11.
Jane was the best dressed and best behaved of all. After all of that in the beginning, Bass Hall tour was well worth our attendance.
Next chapter--the Hall's design elements. 
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Monday, November 14, 2011

A great idea for Christmas 2011

 Christmas 2011 -- Birth of a New Tradition 
 
                  As the holidays approach, the giant Asian factories are kicking into high gear to provide Americans with monstrous piles of cheaply produced goods -- merchandise that has been produced at the expense of American labor. This year will be different. This year Americans will give the gift of genuine concern for other Americans. There is no longer an excuse that, at gift giving time, nothing can be found that is produced by American hands. Yes there is! 

                    It's time to think outside the box, people. Who says a gift needs to fit in a shirt box, wrapped in Chinese produced wrapping paper? 

                    Everyone -- yes EVERYONE gets their hair cut. How about gift certificates from your local American hair salon or barber? 

                     Gym membership? It's appropriate for all ages who are thinking about some health improvement. 

                    Who wouldn't appreciate getting their car detailed? Small, American owned detail shops and car washes would love to sell you a gift certificate or a book of gift certificates. 
 
                   Are you one of those extravagant givers who think nothing of plunking down the Benjamins on a Chinese made flat-screen? Perhaps that grateful gift receiver would like his driveway sealed, or lawn mowed for the summer, or driveway plowed all winter, or games at the local golf course. 
 
                  There are a bazillion owner-run restaurants -- all offering gift certificates. And, if your intended isn't the fancy eatery sort, what about a half dozen breakfasts at the local breakfast joint. Remember, folks this isn't about big National chains -- this is about supporting your home town Americans with their financial lives on the line to keep their doors open. 
 
                     How many people couldn't use an oil change for their car, truck or motorcycle, done at a shop run by the American working guy? 

                     Thinking about a heartfelt gift for mom? Mom would LOVE the services  local cleaning lady for a day.
 
                     My computer could use a tune-up, and I KNOW I can find some young guy who is struggling to get his repair business up and running. 

                    OK, you were looking for something more personal. Local crafts people spin their own wool and knit them into scarves. They make jewelry, and pottery and beautiful wooden boxes. 

                  Plan your holiday outings at local, owner operated restaurants and leave your server a nice tip. And, how about going out to see a play or ballet at your hometown theatre. 

                 Musicians need love too, so find a venue showcasing local bands. 

                 Honestly, people, do you REALLY need to buy another ten thousand Chinese lights for the house? When you buy a five dollar string of light, about fifty cents stays in the community. If you have those kinds of bucks to burn, leave the mailman, trash guy or babysitter a nice BIG tip. 

                 You see, Christmas is no longer about draining American pockets so that China can build another glittering city. Christmas is now about caring about US, encouraging American small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams. And, when we care about other Americans, we care about our communities, and the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn't imagine. 

                  THIS is the new American Christmas tradition.  
This is a revolution of caring about each other, and isn't that what Christmas is about?
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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Family Funeral facts

When you move away from your childhood home and state, you have to go home to different people and memories.

I had to fly and drive from Colorado back to Oklahoma for my first father-in-law's funeral this week. The trip alone took two days with plenty of time to recall memories of growing up, marrying my high school sweetheart, losing him to Viet Nam, remarrying, having all my children loved by my first in-laws as well as  my family and second in-laws.

I have been blessed with so many people who cared and shared their love equally to me and mine.

But each funeral has brought its unique quirks and events that you never forget. Lon's was no different. Of course we had more time to prepare and plan. We had traveled back last month to visit him when he went home from the hospital in hospice care. He wasn't expected to live for one week, but he made an amazing recovery. When I greeted him for the last time (I thought), he smiled and his eyes sparkled with recognition when he said, "Well, hey there, Miss Brenda!" He knew me and asked about the kids and how things were going.

For three more weeks he sat up and recognized each family member, talk and smile, and even watch his son and grandsons work around the farm. We had come to help, so now we didn't want to be a bother. Byron and I drove back home, to let them enjoy his recovery that the doctors said, "If he does not eat, he won't last a week. If he can eat, he could last two to three weeks." I checked every day by phone, and the news was "he is still doing good," or "he is maintaining." Of course, we knew that could not last. The cancer was eating away at his body, but not his spirit.

 When my sister-in-law called, I knew before I heard her tear-filled voice, "He's gone." It was Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011, at 7:35 Oklahoma time. Exactly one month since he had come home from the hospital.
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Thursday, November 3, 2011

The article "The Help: film dividing America" by a British reporter really torqued my tongue

This morning my Facebook messages posted a criticism about the book and movie by Kate Stockett, The Help. I really liked the book and the movie, but the article torqued my nerves. 
This is my response I shared on Facebook.

What's the concern really about?
1) A white woman writing in the voice of a black woman? Really, whites have written in the voice of Native Americans for years. Granted, those voices probably did not give exact wording or depth as the live witness account, but those books, like Stockett's have given awareness and enlightenment to the events and feelings that were "swept under the rug" and not talked about. 
Stockett also wrote in the voice of the ALL women who were bound in the traditional roles of sexism, verbal plus physical abuse, and social prejudices. Her book and movie could not emphasize all of those, so instead she presented the strengths and determination of THE WOMEN who dealt with their own personal civil rights in their own way.
2) The viewers were insulted by how the help was treated, and how “. . . it undercuts the real heroes of the era by ignoring the real horrors.” Kate Stockett’s characters were the real heroes going through their real horrors, which may not have been the lynching, the assassinations, but the indignities, abuse and loss of jobs to support their families were real horrors to them at the time.
Yes, the treatment was insulting and mean and cruel, but it was as real as could be to make the point that THE  Help and The WOMEN struggled and survived; ALL of them in their own way. Kate Stockett gave the help the voice to say what most of the women of that Era could not say or did say without stronger consequences then.  In the book and movie, Skeeter is telling her story while letting Viola, Minnie and others tell their stories to her. The white woman is not their savior; she is chorusing the voices so their stories will be heard.
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Westley's Graduation - One Year later

Westley's Graduation - One Year later
Westley gets a hug from his mom the minute after he receives his diploma from Fruita Monument High School, Class of 2010.

He's BACK! Billy Crystal is 2012 Oscar Awards Host

Remember Bohemian Rhapsody Mountain Dew parody Ad

The Help: the film dividing America

By Philip Sherwell 7:30AM BST 23 Oct 20115 Her book has sold 1.3 million copies in Britain and 10 million in the States, the film adaptation has already earned $160 million as the movie hit of the summer in America, and now Oscar buzz is mounting ahead of its release in the UK this week. These should be heady days for Kathryn Stockett, author of bestselling debut novel The Help, a publishing phenomenon that earned the devotion of book clubs and legions of predominantly female fans on both sides of the Atlantic. The Help is the emotive story of black maids in the segregated world of Sixties Mississippi at the height of the civil rights struggle – their narratives recounted by a sympathetic, young white woman who rejects the virulent inbred racism of her old school friends. There are clear autobiographical parallels with Stockett, 42, herself, a blonde Southern belle raised by a beloved African-American nanny in Jackson, the Mississippi state capital where the story is set. And her success is all the more remarkable, as the manuscript, five years in the writing, was rejected by some 60 literary agents (she stopped counting at 45). The Disney film version is being marketed as an inspiring mixture of chick lit and civil rights, based on a heart-warming sorority between the races. And there is growing speculation about Oscar nods for Viola Davis (who plays the central character, Aibileen Clark), Octavia Spencer (her feisty friend, Minny) and newcomer Emma Stone (as white socialite Skeeter Phelan). But not everyone in the US is feeling so good about the “feel-good” juggernaut that is The Help. Certainly not Ablene Cooper, the black housekeeper for Stockett’s brother, who brought a lawsuit against the writer, claiming she was the unwitting and humiliated model for the similarly named lead figure. Nor a leading black actor, or the commentators – many of them also African-American – who view the book and film as patronising portrayals that sugar-coat one of the most violent eras in modern history. Those visceral responses reflect deep and enduring fault lines about race in a country where the horrors of segregation, a painful living memory for many, were not washed away by the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president. In Mississippi, the scene of some of the most brutal acts of the freedom struggles five decades ago, those sensitivities are particularly raw. And that violent past reared its ugly head again recently when a black man was viciously beaten up by a gang of young whites and then mowed down and killed by a pick-up truck in what prosecutors claim was a racially driven hate crime. Against that turbulent backdrop, Stockett was perhaps always courting controversy. Most poignant among the objecting voices is that of Mrs Cooper, who sued the writer for $75,000, a humble sum by America’s litigious standards, for using her likeness without permission. She said she was distressed that in the book Aibileen lost her son – just as she had – and that in one exchange the maid said her skin was blacker than a cockroach. The case was thrown out under the statute of limitations, as Mrs Cooper failed to lodge it within a year of being sent the book. Still, she was not alone in her complaints. Wendell Pierce, New Orleans-born star of The Wire and Treme, launched a blistering attack on the film after watching it with his mother, who told him afterwards for the first time that she too had once worked as “the help." In a series of scathing tweets, he called the film “passive segregation lite that was painful to watch”, said his mother thought it was an “insult”, that it was a “passive version of the terror of the South” and a “sentimental primer of a palatable segregation history." Mr Pierce was at pains to praise the cast, particularly Davis and Spencer, but added that Hollywood often seeks films with black actors as long as there is also a “great white saviour." The most damning verdict on its allegedly saccharine version of reality was delivered by Max Gordon, an African-American, New York-based writer, who described his outrage as he watched the film. “The phenomenon of The Help is so depressing, as it undercuts the real heroes of the era by ignoring the real horrors,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “This is not the South of lynchings and beatings, it’s the comfortable Hollywood take of the civil rights era. “I don’t think you can compare suffering and oppression, but what would people say if there was an executive decision to make a movie about the Holocaust and the Nazis without brutality, featuring only German officers’ wives and Jewish women, with no concentration camps or trains to Auschwitz?” But the two black stars are defending the film. Spencer, a friend of Stockett, was particularly combative. “We’ve gotten so PC and we’ve gotten so weirded out. We start labelling. You have to be a black person to write about black people, you have to be a white person…” she bemoaned in one interview, not needing to finish the thought process. “I have a problem with the fact that some people are making that an issue.” The book also received the imprimatur of Oprah Winfrey, the Mississippi-born talk- show queen whose views carry great weight with her overwhelmingly female and African-American audiences. The Help was described as a “favourite book” on her website. Stockett, a recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old daughter who worked in the magazine industry in New York before moving back to the South, is now working on her second novel, another tale of women, this one set during the Great Depression. The writer addresses some of the criticisms of The Help in a newly published version of the book. She denied that, despite the coincidence of names, her brother’s housekeeper was a model, saying she had barely met the woman. Rather, she wrote that the inspiration for the character was Demetrie, her beloved childhood maid who largely raised her after her parents divorced when she was six. “The Help is fiction, by and large,” she continued. Yet as she wrote it, she wondered what her family would say – and also what Demetrie, by then long dead, would have thought. She acknowledged that she was breaking what some have seen as a cultural and literary taboo. “I was scared a lot of the time that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person,” she said. “What I am sure about is this: I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the Sixties. I don’t think it is something any white woman at the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand.” But, she concluded, “trying to understand is vital to our humanity”. Loyal readers and cinema-goers might agree with these motives. Her critics, as adamantly, do not. As British box offices prepare for a lucrative new release, the polarisation shows no signs of abating. 'The Help’ is released on Wednesday in Britan.