Yes there were irritations. Some people in the small rich town were jerks (shoving past us in the market), and some people in the small not-so-rich town were also jerks (parading around maskless at Swain's). But we tried to take it in stride, laughing at the holiday decorations in the rich town (they look like pooping crows) and going for a misty waterfront walk in the not-so-rich town.
You know how when you break up with someone and they say I'm not ready for a relationship and then a month later they're all cuddled up with somebody else and you realize what they meant was I'm not ready for a relationship with YOU.
Everything is timing and time and I'm being as selfish as I can with writing time. So, I haven't been writing here, but I have been writing. Another story accepted. More editing done on my big project. Yes.
Don't miss Geena Davis' documentary on Netflix, "This Changes Everything." About the stranglehold men have had on TV and film for the past seventy years. It's intentional and despite the gains of the past few years, don't think the sphere of power is about to change.
When the mens don't get their way, they cry, and everyone panics.
A friend of a friend recently co-wrote a book titled, What's Up with White Women? Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice. I watched the Town Hall event where Karena Smith interviewed the authors, Ilsa Govan and Tilman Smith. It's a lively and incisive discussion. I felt uncomfortable for most of it, because I had to interrogate myself.
I've been that Karen, enforcing "the rules" set up by some white guy somewhere.
Two days I go I was re-watching an old season of "Top Chef" and during the Restaurant Wars episode, the white guy chef who works front of the house is lauded (and is declared the week's winner) for his charm, the way he interacts with diners, smiling and laughing and managing, while the Black woman chef is scolded and sneered at for the way she interacts with diners, smiling and laughing and managing.
Huh. The franchise is trying to do better but it's taken too long and these old episodes are hard to watch.
Watch, read, ask, learn.
So much goodness, honesty and wisdom, especially writing about trauma. At 37 minutes: it's gonna be horrible, all you can do is make it the least horrible as possible.
Documentaries continue to bring me so much joy. They can be the visual equivalent of a memoir, I think, in the sense of bringing order to real-life events. Here are a few I've watched recently.
"Found," about three young women adopted from China as babies. They find each other through 23andme, and eventually travel to China to meet a genealogy researcher and even a family who'd thought one of the girls was theirs. None of the three find their birth parents, and there's a kind of tacked-on scene at the end where a different girl does, but I don't think the movie needs it. There's already so much insight and feeling and beautiful warmth. Here's a review. I need to watch director Amanda Lipitz's earlier movie, "Step."
I also watched "Finding Kendrick Johnson." This was an infuriating one to watch. I remember reading about this story when the young man first died, and thinking how could this possibly be accidental? The filmmaker, Jason Pollock, smartly weaves this story into the broader history of racism and white supremacy in America, and the American South. And, the young man is still gone, and there are no real answers for this grieving family.
The last movie I want to mention is fiction (I think): "Carmen y Lola." I've been waiting to see this, since it first appeared on HBO but in Spanish only. Finally, English subtitles are available. It's not breaking a lot of new ground but the film is shot beautifully and lovingly and I enjoyed learning more about Roma culture.
