Hitchcock (2012)

 Alfred Hitchcock is the acknowledged master of the suspenseful thriller.  He was never the recipient of a Best Director Academy Award (although they did honor him with a Lifetime Achievement award shortly before his death).  He was well known for sleeping with his leading ladies, for blacklisting them if they defied him, and for ruining careers.  Not a very nice man, all in all, but a very talented film maker.

This movie is about the making of the movie 'Psycho' in 1959.  He owed Paramount Studios one more movie on his contract, and they wanted to tell him what to make--he didn't take kindly to young actresses going against his will, but he was no happier when it was studio executives trying to wield power.  He ended up financing the movie with his own money, and with the full support of his wife, Alma.

This movie is equal parts Hitchcock and the obsession he had with this particular movie with the part that his wife played in his success.

Alma was in the film business when she met Hitchcock and she had a genius for editing--editing scripts, but most of all for editing movies.  The story goes that Hitchcock screened 'Psycho' for the studio executives and they hated it.  Worse yet, he hated it too.  So what to do?  Alma rolls up her sleeves and goes about editing the film scene by scene, frame by frame at times, and no surprise here, it worked.

What probably did not happen in real life (though it is depicted in the movie) is the thanks.  She was seen by people in the know as being the great woman who was standing behind the great man.  But how much of his greatness would have laid fallow without her--so part of his talent was to see what she brought to his work, and  kept her involved with him for his entire career.

This is not a magnificent film, but it is an enjoyable one.

Kidnapping, Rape, Captivity, and Rescue

I will grant you alive, but safe is going to be a long time coming. 
Three women were rescued this week from a captivity that spanned more than a decade.  They were kidnapped  at different times, and from disparate locations, but they have been chained up in a house in a lower income neighborhood in Cleveland for many years, undetected by neighbors.  Their captor was known to the neighbors who thought nothing of him.  He was uninteresting.  Except that he imprisoned and raped these women over many years, resulting in children who have never known anything but captivity.


They were rescued by a man who did what so many do not--he rushed into a situation that he thought was a domestic violence scenario.  Charles Rawlings has matter-of-factly described his rescue of one of the women, but in truth, it was brave of him to aid in her escape.  He said with great humor that he knew something was quite wrong 'when a pretty little white girl rushed into the arms of an unknown black man'.  He knew something was up with that.  The woman he rescued was miraculously clear about who she was, what she had been through, and that she needed the police--immediately.

So that is all good news.  But what comes next?  The book 'The Room' by Emma Donaghue was published in 2010 and nominated for the Man Booker prize.  It is a work of fiction, but it is a similar scenario--one woman, not three, but a child born into a room, raised by his captive mother.  When they escape, it is not the end of a nightmare.  Surviving unimaginable evil does not prepare you to re-enter the world.  Especially not a world that has you in it's spotlight.  The psychological road to recovery and safety is a long and arduous one, for the women themselves and their offspring.  Mothers and children born of rape have overwhelming attachment issues--imagine how this compounds that.  We should all just go away and leave them to their years of therapy in peace.  Wish them well, but pay no attention to them so they can get on with the impossible task of peicing their lives together again.

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

This is the first of the five New York Times Best Non-Fiction Books of 2012 that I have been able to read.  The subtitle is "Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity", but that is only a slight sliver of what he covers in this book, which he has been writing for over a decade.

I think the impetus to write the book was his relationship with his parents and his search for identity.  In the first chapter he divulges that he has a personal history of depression, and that he is gay.  His parents were very unhappy to learn that their son was gay.  So unhappy that it made him wonder if there was a genetic test for gayness and they had gotten that information that he might have been aborted in utero.  He was getting in touch with what it might be like to be an unlikable child.  On top of that, he considered the challenges of raising a child that was different from yourself in a significant way.  Every couple has one member who is a different gender from their child--in my case all of my children are a different gender.  But that wasn't the sort of difference that interested him--he was looking at more unusual differences, things that wouldn't appear frequently that parents had to cope with.  He did extensive interviews with families of children with 6 different medical conditions--deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome children, autism, schizophrenia, and then children with multiple and severe disabilities rendering them unable to care for themselves in a serious way.  These chapters deal with issues about love, connectedness, making decisions about child rearing and transitioning children into independent lives.  He asks them questions like what have you learned, what have you gained and what have you lost, and would you do it over again if you had a choice. Very disturbingly, there were parents of autistic children who had murdered their children, feeling like it was their only option--the desperation is palpable in some stories, and the wells of resiliency are equally compelling in other stories.

The next four chapters deal with issues that are different--one of them is transgendered children, which the author has an intense interest in.  One is based on raising a child prodigy, which comes across as being just as challenging as raising a child with a disability and in some ways less rewarding, because so many of the children end up being estranged from their parents.  The other two chapters are on children born of rape, and children who become criminals.  There is a lot of emotion in this book, but the stories are compelling, well told, thought provoking, and you do not walk away from this book unscathed.  You look at yourself, your parenting, and the results of that parenting in a different light as a result.

Django Unchained (2013)

Only Quentin Tarantino could do a movie that was about slavery (at least as a backdrop to the story in the movie) that was at once brilliantly scripted and a spaghetti Western.  It is very challenging for me to describe his film style, but I know it when I see it, and it just keeps getting better.  I loved 'Inglourious Basterds', despite thinking that I surely would not, and I loved this movie even more (again, not having learned from 'Inglourious Basterds', I though this one would be out of my wheel house, but it most certainly was not).

So you should definitely see this one.  I watched it one early evening, and that was a mistake.  It is quite lengthy (2 hours and 45 minutes, with the last 45 minutes being almost non-stop action), but I thought starting at 6:00 pm would combat that, but no, it is really quite a revved up movie, and I felt like I had just downed 2 espressos in rapid succession once the credits were finally rolling.  Admittedly, I am someone who is completely emotionally available for movies.  If you are supposed to cry, I cry.  If you are supposed to be scared, I am scared.  I have no ability to filter when it comes to films. 

I am not going to run through the plot of this movie--which almost seems extraneous to its melllfluous dialogue.  The writing is brilliant, really impressive, and in the hands of Christoph Waltz it is brilliantly and deftly delivered.  He is the Jack in the Box, the man who pops out of nowhere with all knowledge that sets the film in motion, and who equally unexpectedly exits it, leaving Jamie Foxx to finish his job alone.  But Waltz is the stunner in this movie, the man who leaves you slack jawed, open mouthed that he could be so silver tongued.  The script and the actor both won Oscars for this film and they are wildly well deserved.  Brace yourself for the signature Tarantino blood splattering--it is excessive, even by his standards, but the film is so well crafted that even though the blood is improbably and the movie goes on forever, you won't be dissuaded to stay with it until the very end and leave hyped up but satisfied at the end.

The Joy of Reading

Today is my sister-in-laws' birthday, and I am reflecting on all the things that I value about her--the first and foremost is that she is the very best of friends to have.  She is fun, friendly, funny, talented, kind, generous, and she would do anything you needed without hesitation.  The older I get, the more I realize just how unusual this array of talents and characteristics are.  When you are related to somebody, you really don't get much in the way of choice about them, and my SIL is a great example of when that really doesn't matter, because anyone would be lucky to have her in their family.

In addition to all of that she gives one of the very best of presents.  She sends me 4 books that she has read that she thinks that I would like.  There are several things that I like about this gift.  The first is that a good book recommendation is always appreciated, and even more so when the book is actually provided.  I am always looking for an interesting book to read!

The very best thing though is that a book from someone tells you something about what they like, and what they think you would like--it is a gift that tells you something intellectual about the giver.  That is something that is very nice indeed.  So thank you so much, Tonie, and have a wonderful birthday!

Republican Strategy--Don't Let Young People Vote

Ohio may welcome you, but please don't vote if you are 18-22 years old.  In a budget amendment filed  by Republicans in the Ohio House, state universities that provide documents enabling students to register to vote in their college town, rather than in the state where their parents reside, will be forbidden from charging those students out-of-state tuition.  This is the second GOP attempt to restrict college students from voting in just the past month. About a month ago, a North Carolina Republican lawmaker filed a bill that would raise taxes on families with college students if the student registers to vote at school rather than in their parents’ hometown.

Two thoughts--other than the one whereby in order to remain in office you have to impede people's ability to vote--what about the concept of democrasy did you miss in school? 

The first is that universities are in the business of transitioning students into adulthood.  They are encouraging them to make their own decisions and to move away from having their parents control them.  Any parent of a college student knows that except for being responsible for the bills, you have no rights.  You get no information about grades, classes selected, housing, you name it.  The kid is over 18 and that is the way it should be.  Voting is a small part of all of this, to be sure--but it has a role.  A democrasy needs people who vote and encouraging college students to vote--either at school or at home--is important for our country.  And since most elections take place in November, college students are in the place where they go to school, not the place where their parents live when it comes time to vote.  They live a majority of the year where their college is, and encouraging them to register gets them invovled with their community.

The second thought is that it is unconstitutional.  The aim is to dissuade universities from providing information to college students about voting, and the Supreme Court decided in Symm v. US in 1979 that discouraging college students to vote where they attend school violated the 26th Amendment.  What were the facts of the case?
At the time, Waller County, Texas was a small rural county west of Houston, and had a population of approximately 15,000, of which a slight majority was African American. Prairie View A & M University is a state-supported, predominately black university located in Waller County. Symm was responsible for registering voters in the county. Persons personally known to Symm or his deputies as county residents, as well as persons who were listed on the tax rolls as owning property in Waller County, were routinely registered upon filling out the state registration form. Those who fell within neither of these categories were required to complete a residency questionnaire, which asks whether the applicant is a college student and, if so, inquires into the student's home address, property ownership, employment status, future plans, and so forth.  Not okay, the Appellate Court said and the Supreme Court agreed.  So cut that out.  Considering how many lawyers we have in government, you would think they would know better.

Adaptation to Life

I first became aware of the Grant Study when the book by George Vaillant entitled 'Adaptation to Life' was published.  The study is a project that started in 1938.  They interviewed 268 Harvard freshmen and then proceeded to follow them longitudinally for years to come.  They looked at all sorts of factors that they thought might be associated with a successful life, including physical features, family relationships, financial resources, intelligence, drinking habits, personality traits, and a host of other factors.  They defined a successful life in a number of different ways.  They tried to include various aspects of 'success'. including happiness, building and sustaining a successful marriage and friendships, fame and fortune, and so on.  True, this is a very select sample, and true it is only men, but there have been some very interesting lessons learned.  There have been various publications over the years but now that the project is 75 years old, it might be coming to an end.

 

Vaillant has shepherded the project over the past several decades and has published a book "Triumphs of Experience" to delineate the major findings of the study--the condensed version of which were published in 'The Atlantic' and the powerful correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your health and happiness in old age--so live generously. Some of the other outcomes include the following:

 

Above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t matter. There was no significant difference in maximum income earned by men with IQs in the 110–115 range and men with IQs higher than 150.

 

Aging liberals have more sex. Political ideology had no bearing on life satisfaction—but the most-conservative men ceased sexual relations at an average age of 68, while the most-liberal men had active sex into their 80s.

 

Freud was right--a good relationship with your mother matters long into adulthood. Specifically:

• Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers earned an average of $87,000 more a year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
• Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old.
• Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers—but not with their fathers—were associated with effectiveness at work.
• On the other hand, warm childhood relations with fathers correlated with lower rates of adult anxiety, greater enjoyment of vacations, and increased “life satisfaction” at age 75—whereas the warmth of childhood relationships with mothers had no significant bearing on life satisfaction at 75.

Alcoholism is a disorder of great destructive power.  Alcoholism was the main cause of divorce; it was strongly correlated  depression ); and—together with associated cigarette smoking—it was the single greatest contributor to their early morbidity and death.



Butter (2012)

This movie is set in Iowa and the central part of the story is based on an Iowa State Fair tradition, so while it gets most of the facts wrong, I couldn't watch it and not write a review of it.  It just wouldn't be right.  The movie is about an Iowa State Fair tradition of carving butter--which sounds both odd and unattractive, but in person it is really strangely cool to see, and amazingly, the movie really does convery that (all of the butter carving that is depicted is spectacular).  There is always a cow, constructed on a chicken wire frame, that is a marvel to see.  Butter turns out to be a nice medium to sculpt in--and readily available in a farming state like Iowa.  The things about the movie that are irritating from the stand point of an Iowan are that the Johnson County fairgrounds are absolutely wrong--way too big and completely unlike what our community looks like. What is entirely accurate is that there is pretty much everything you can think of that is fried and on a stick--including, rather improbably--butter.

I think there is an interesting thing to think about that runs through this movie --it is to what extent do we nurture and value children in our society.  The competition is between a rather unlikable woman, Laura Pickler (played nicely by Jennifer Gardner), and a nine year old child named Destiny.  Destiny has been in and out of foster care, abandoned by one family after another, but she is finally in a house that genuinely appears to want her.  She discovers that she has an artistic side, and that sculpting butter comes naturally to her.  Laura has absolutely no mercy in her pursuit of winning the state prize--she stoops to cheating and lying in order to try to beat Destiny.  Barely a grown up in the crowd says anything about this ruthless approach to the competition--we really need to value and nurture our children if we want to succeed in the future.

Economic Austerity's Lynch Pin Paper Used Bad Data

This falls into the category that the magazine The Week would call "Boring But Important".  Paul Krugman has been saying this for a long time, but a 28-year old economics graduate student just showed that the classic paper upon which economic austerity as a solution to debt crisis is the way to go made a fundamental error in calculculation, leaving it's conclusion equally flawed.  The paper is Reinhart and Rogoff's 2010 paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt,".  Grad student Thomas Herndon picked the papaer to analyze for a class on econometrics in part because it has been one of the most politically influential economic papers of the last decade. It claims, among other things, that countries whose debt exceeds 90 percent of their annual GDP experience slower growth than countries with lower debt loads — a figure that has been cited by people like Paul Ryan and Tim Geithner to justify slashing government spending and implementing other austerity measures on struggling economies.

 

Herndon was able to get the data used for the paper from Reinhart, and when he pulled up an Excel spreadsheet containing it, he quickly spotted something that looked odd.

"I clicked on cell L51, and saw that they had only averaged rows 30 through 44, instead of rows 30 through 49."  Oops.
 

What Herndon had discovered was that by making this error error, Reinhart and Rogoff had forgotten to include a critical piece of data about countries with high debt-to-GDP ratios that would have affected their overall calculations. They had also excluded data from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — all countries that experienced solid growth during periods of high debt and would thus undercut their thesis that high debt forestalls growth.  Double oops.  So maybe we should try to fix some of the things that are broken about our current system, but worry less about the debt and more about what we need to do to be competative in the future.

 

Green Grocer

The question is whether having your groceries delivered is good for the environment and the answer is yes--and if you allow for the deliverer to pick the time of delivery, then it is a huge savings.  There are a number of services available on-line to have groceries delivered--Amazon and Google are just two, with grocery stores getting into the act as well.  This doesn't have to be a luxury--it can be a reduction of our carbon footprint.

This falls into the 'have your cake and eat it too' category.  Researchers Anne Goodchild and Erika Wygonik in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington published their findings in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.  They
 compiled data in Seattle and the outlying areas (urban and rural households) and assumed that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.
Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

“We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well,” Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store.