Interstellar (2014)

This is a movie with several big messages, and as is almost always the case in these instances, it is about twice as long as it needs to be to tell the basic story.  The rest of the time is devoted to hammering the message home.
Earth is becoming uninhabitable, and instead of looking for ways to halt that process, to reverse it, to make it better, because after all,w ho is to say that we will treat the next planet, should there be one, with any more respect than we have shown this one, there is a search for new habitats.  All the while those on earth are left to their grim existence of Depression Era dust storms and poor health care and social structure.
A group of former astronauts take on the task of finding new places and they are largely unsuccessful, with one major twist that happens at the end (but was really not part of the original plan).  So the message is mixed.  Yes, maybe we can find bliss somewhere else out there, but why?  What makes man deserving of a second chance when they have so royally messed up the first one?  The movie really does not tackle that philosophical question at all, and if you have three hours to spare, it is a good watch, with many good actors populating the screen/

Blink and You Are Dehydrated

I was moving into what is considered to be the "good" week of each chemotherapy cycle, defined mostly by the fact that one does not get chemotherapy and one can recover somewhat.  Well, in Round 1 that is exactly the opposite of what happened to me.
I was moving along fairly well, eating like a bird and drinking like a parched man, when suddenly I had diarrhea, followed by a skyrocketing white count (unbeknownst to me...I was having trouble keeping up with the bathroom trips to realize I might actually be infected), followed by a profound drop in my blood pressure, and then my kidneys basically said they had had enough and when you don't pee, even the most dense amongst us knows that something is wrong.  So within a very short period of time (days), I went from being pretty good to being in terrible shape, maybe having to go to the ICU if I didn't respond immediately to interventions.   It is so humbling to be ill, and while I most definitely want to do everything that I can to put cancer in my rear view window, I don't want to lose any vital organs in the process, and my kidneys are definitely on my list of things to retain.
Luckily, hydration and antibiotics did the trick, my kidneys bounced back reassuringly quickly, and lessons were learned about how to more accurately interpret warning signs in the future.  I am still on schedule to get chemotherapy next week, but I am really hoping that in the future my good weeks go better than the first one.

Vladimir, Russia

The ancient city of Vladimir is the keeper of the Russian land origin secrets. To some extent, Vladimir is the father of Russian cities, since it appeared before Moscow and other Russian cities. Its history is both fascinating and dramatic. It began in 1108, when the legendary Prince Vladimir Monomakh built a mighty fortress to protect the area from the south-east.
The peak of its greatness occured in the 12th century under the Prince Andrew Bogolubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky, who moved the capital from Kiev to Vladimir.
In 1158-1165 the new capital saw grandiose construction. New ramparts encircled the city; so did the wooden walls with the pass-gate. The Prince Andrei's cause was continued by his younger brother, Vsevolod III the Big Nest. He multiplied the city's splendor by creating the Cathedral of Saint Demetrius, the Nativity monastery with the white church, Kniaginin monastery, and the main shrine of the principality, the Assumption Cathedral.  Unfortunately the Mongols invaded, they had fire, and Vladimir was largely fortified with wood.  Not a good combination.  Modern Vladimir has some wonderful late 19th century brickwork buildings (one pictured above) that are well worth seeing.

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

We have been working on watching Hitchcock's body of work from the time he moved from England to the United States, with an eye to watching his progress as a film maker and to better get to know one particular director better.  So that entails watching a number of lesser known works, of which this is one.
That said, this is a very enjoyable movie, especially when you think about the time in which it was made and the man who made it.  Hitchcock had recently emigrated from a country that was reeling from World War I, not the least prepared for another war, and yet looking at a militant Germany on the march.  His adopted country, America, is adamantly neutral on the subject of entering the foray, and this movie most definitely aims to let Americans know that the British could use their help.
The story revolves around an American reporter, renamed Huntley Haverstock, with a reputation for being a man who relentlessly pursues a story.  He quickly gets embroiled in a conspiracy where there is a sham assassination, a kidnapping of a key Dutch diplomat, and as is almost always the case in a Hitchcock movie, falling in love with a woman who has a serious complication to their romance coming to fruition.  The story rolls forward with a nice momentum, a moment of peril, and a more or less happy ending.  A movie well worth watching, especially for the Hitchcock fans.

Suddenly I Have Cancer

Oh my god, it happened in an instant.  Really, while I had been having a number of small things that were bothering me, in no way did I guess that I had a very deadly disease.  When I read my abdominal CT report, which could not be interpreted in any other way than as very bad news, my first reaction was disbelief.  There I was, on a beautiful fall day, standing on my front porch and found out in the most unceremonious of ways that I was in very big trouble.

Last week I met with a woman who was treated two years ago and her reaction was almost the same.  "What?  Me?  I can't have cancer?"  She is actually an ovarian cancer researcher, so it was probably even harder for her.  Not to mention that she knows exactly where the science is and it is not where we might hope it would be.

The next thing that happened for me was to start to mourn all the things that I might very well miss,  things that I really thought would happen for me.  Like being able to retire, spend time late in life with the husband I adore, meet my grandchildren, who I am not even picturing yet.  In one moment all that future can slip away from you.  Fortunately, even though I am a terrible pessimist, I am also a realist and I did start to enumerate the many blessings that I have had, including that wonderful husband who I was very fortunate to meet early in life, so I have had many many good times with him, children who I would never ever have had if he hadn't been so insistent on it, a job that is meaningful to me, and the love and support of family and friends who have made this life so very sweet.  It was a very intense day indeed.

So pray that I get to make many more trips around the sun, that the treatment I get is good enough to keep me going because while I have have had a good life, I am not quite done yet.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

This is really a straight ahead romantic drama that I think is supposed to have comic elements, but really, when you get right down to it, most of them fall pretty flat, at least in the 21st century.   Very unlike most of Hitchcock's work, and I am not sure, having watched this, that I would have appreciated his sense of what marriage is and should be.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith discover three years into their somewhat volatile marriage that their marriage is not exactly legal.  It seems to me that in the early 1940's this would have been a big deal, but the whole living in sin thing seems to be shrugged off just so long as they get married as soon as possible.
Well, there is the rub.  The Smith's routinely have histrionic fights that when married there is only one real resolution for, but when that relationship is in question, leaves room for bad behavior and misunderstanding.  The end is very clear from the beginning, but getting there takes quite some time.

Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

In the interest of full disclosure, I read about half of this book while I was getting chemotherapy infused, which is not a state associated with a high level of attention to detail, but I enjoyed this thinly veiled fiction about working at Gourmet when the magazine closed.

Billie, the main character, is more of a cub reporter than an experienced editor (as Reichl was at the time), new to New York City and discovering all that is fascinating about the city from a food perspective.  She has many features of a young Reichl, including a beautiful mother who died young, an impeccable palate, and an insatiable curiosity about food.  The book is really very fun if you have something that falls into these categories of interest, and will probably seem rather pedestrian if you do not.  I very much enjoyed it myself.

Eating Like a Bird

I have always had a better than healthy appetite.  I am not one to skip too many meals, and I am definitely someone who would plan a vacation around the menu rather than a sporting event.  If I could combine it with a beautiful national park, an extraordinary musical festival, or a museum exhibit, so much the better, but those have been my life long priorities.  I do not get what people find enrapturing about sporting events, but I definitely understand figuring out where to get the pregame meal.

So now that I have had a monster abdominal surgery, spent nine days eating nothing but ice chips, and have been trying to gradually resume what I would consider to be a normal food intake, I realize that there is a lot that you miss when you take food for granted.  The ability to taste and savor each bite, while annoying if you are worried that you will slip into nothingness, is a nice way to look at and enjoy food.  Small bites well savored are a pleasure that I have rarely indulged in, but circumstances have changed, and now I get to slow down and take notice.

Quiz Show (1994)

This is a movie chronicles the real life fixing of what was supposed to be a game of skill.  The early quiz shows rewarded knowledge, and made celebrities out of people who knew a lot of things and could remember them.

The first show, CBS's "The $64,000 Question," was apparently on the level. But across the street at NBC's "Twenty-One" executives and sponsors watched the ratings, and realized that some contestants drew more viewers than others. A grating know-it-all named Herbert Stempel won for weeks on "Twenty-One," partly, if not mostly, because he was being given the answers. The executives decided his appeal was wearing thin. So they broke the news to him: He'd had a free ride long enough, and now it was time to lose.

Stempel took that news very badly.  He was, after all, known as a smart guy by all that knew him.  His success was believable, even if it was faked.   Unfortunately, America liked his successor, an attractive, disarming intellectual named Charles Van Doren, who was a member of one of America's great literary families: his father, Mark, and his uncle, Philip, were beloved and respected.  He was also well known to be smart.  Blinded not so much by money as by fame, Charles had agreed to cheat. And when Stempel blew the whistle on the whole setup, a Congressional investigator brought the deception tumbling down.  But to very little fanfare.  A well chronicled story and an entertaining movie.

Round About the Cauldron Go

In honor of the holiday, this passage from Shakespeare's classic play reminiscent of the holiday, Macbeth.
The Scots are all about Halloween.

Round about the cauldron go;   
In the poison’d entrails throw.   
Toad, that under cold stone    
Days and nights hast thirty one   
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,   
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.   

     Double, double toil and trouble; 
     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   

Fillet of a fenny snake,   
In the cauldron boil and bake;   
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,   
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,   
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,   
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,   
For a charm of powerful trouble, 
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.   

     Double, double toil and trouble;   
     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,   
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf  
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,  
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,  
Liver of blaspheming Jew,   
Gall of goat, and slips of yew  
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,  
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,  
Finger of birth-strangled babe   
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,  
Make the gruel thick and slab:  
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,  
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

     Double, double toil and trouble;   
     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.