JPMorgan Chase: The GOOD Guys!?

Once the economy collapsed, JPMorgan Chase added new offices to help home owners stay in their homes? Wow! Who wrote this original screenplay? Best adapted BS. Special effects! The commercial is voiced over an animated storybook, and these guys are from fantasyland. Is there anyone anywhere who buys this? The Boots - full throttle, to one of the perpetrators of this country's economic collapse. I'm not sure I can watch the rest of the Academy Awards with these bozos as sponsor.

Women's Work in Movies

Movies today: tonight is the 83rd annual feast of praise and damnation, a celebration of the best & awfullest. I'm dusting off my tails. Francine LeFrak's article titled "The Mysterious Disappearance of Hollywood's Trailblazing Women" bemoans the lack of success for the movies about women this year. She points to Amelia, Conviction, Made in Dagenham, Secretariat and Fair Game. She writes in dollars: is box office the only criteria for 2010 being a "painful" year for women in movies? There are a thousand villains in a movie's supposed failure. The screenplay is the usual first suspect rounded up. Only two women writers: Pamela Gray (Conviction) and Anna Hamilton Phelan, second billed (Amelia). Maybe the director? Only one woman - Mira Nair directed Amelia. Nigel Cole has good woman movie creds (Calendar Girls, Saving Grace). Could be subject matter: Amelia Earhart again? Secretariat is a horse opera, I don't care who owns him. Conviction is a marginal story: sure there's a woman's struggle against possible injustice, but geez, did the brother do it or not? Is there anyone in this country who doesn't know the Valerie Plame story? How did these less than stellar story concepts get produced? This is no mysterious disappearance of women, trailblazing or other, in movies. It's a classic storyline. Moving pictures began in 1895. In 1896, Alice Guy-Blache directed her first narrative film. Frances Marion was scripting movies for Lois Weber, Mary Pickford, Marion Davies (as actors, directors, producers, studio executives) in the 1920s. Dorothy Arzner was admitted to the Directors Guild in 1937, after the money men had laid seige to Hollywood. Women have been, and continue to be, deliberately disappeared. Kathryn Bigelow won the first woman director's Oscar and DGA Award in 2010, a double first - 115 years after moving pictures began. In 2010 only 16% of directors, editors, producers, writers working on the 250 top films were women. I will wager a bunch that this year that percentage will be less by 2%. And we'll get still fewer movies about powerful women, brought to the screen by powerful women. 116 years of the movie business, with pioneering, trailblazing women working the majority of enterprising executive positions in the industry in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And here we are at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. Now that's a screenplay to be written, a movie to be directed, edited, produced, distributed. Women's work.

A Letter to a Friend

What to do with this snowing day? I can blog about microfinance, union-busting, my Dad's guybonics, the remarkable book I read "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. I sat at my desk, staring at my fountain pen. I have fistfuls of writing implements, reams of beautiful paper, art cards from galleries on my travels, notebox gifts from friends. Healing Garden Journal published my article about avoiding by collecting titled The Last River. Today I moseyed through the writing paper and notecards, chose some, picked up the fountain pen and wrote a letter to a friend. Then I wrote to another friend. And another. I used artcards I bought on a wilderness trip in 2003, never opened. I wrote on banana paper from South America. Wrote on Geri's Christmas gift notecards. A letter to a friend is the best possible use for beautiful paper, glossy ink and a full heart.

Wu Wei

Nondoing. Action without action. The phrase is in William Powers book Twelve by Twelve, and it is not the first time I've seen or heard the words. I understand the concept a little more now. Powers' cabin owner has a mantra she practices: see, be, do. Seeing is an acquired skill. Robert Heinlein had Fair Witness characters in his novels. If you asked one what is the color of that house in the distance? the Fair Witness would reply it is white on this side. She would not assume the other three, nor comment on the color. I am learning to see. Like the white space in a painting, there are stories to be told in seeing well. Being is a life's work; to be still and absorb. I can only be still when I am walking at speed - I am a rookie being stiller. My mind jabbers until I notice my lungs laboring, my heart pulsing, and then my mind shuts up. Probably checking for vital signs, at my age. Do is the last word in the mantra. We are a nation of doers. We labor harder for unseen corporate enterprises to increase productivity and profits, and to give us the lucre to shop, and work more. We're well trained. And untraining is the labor of the last quarter of life. Do is what I'm redefining. For myself, not for others. I am learning to see: body language, truth, sustainability. I am learning to be: still, contemplative, appreciative, grateful. I will learn to do: act when what is seen and how it is being can be improved for the highest good, in balance and harmony. While I learn, there is wu wei.

Depends or Attends?

I'll shop for diapers today. Scott has a new companion with ExpertCare, and I like her truthfulness, and she said it's time. Trolling the internet, can't yet find a good source for a purchase decision, so we'll wing it for now. I like the names of the drugstore brands. Good marketing creates comfort, whether the products do or not. I hope he'll understand the use, but am prepared to be serene about what's next. I remember laughing at my brother-in-law when he told my sister the week that their youngest child was potty-trained "Well, Susan, we're out of the diaper business: right up until the minute we both need them." Among the small joys of this time in our lives is that there is information to be had quickly, there are books to read that calm the spirit and help make adjustments like the one I just finished. Twelve by Twelve is about the luxury of enough. Scott's happiness with a cup of coffee out in the world, a dinner made especially for him, his music, his room, a warm shower, is a little piece of heaven. And today with the ice fully cleared off the path, my legs and back feeling good with the hard work, the sun is shining in a world of snow poofs in the trees. The luxury of enough.

Madison, Wisconsin

Our household stands in virtual solidarity with the people on the street in Madison, Wisconsin. Stay strong, brothers and sisters! Your voices are in the hearts of wage earners throughout the world, and freedom-loving American workers. Keep us safe, Wisconsinites!

Searching "Blogs for Women Over 60"

Blogs for women over 60 search top results: 1) Hairstyles, 2) Getting Laid, 3) Glamour, 4) Get a Job. Redo using advanced search to exclude the words fashion, style, laid, intimate, job, hairstyles results: 1) Menopause Decreases Sexual Desire, 2) nearly all women over 60 wear these traditional clothes, 3) martini skydiving, 4) more clothes 5) movies with women over 40. Next advanced search exclude words martini skydiving, clothes, movies, tummy tuck (tummy tuck?!), work. Results ditto but add makeup techniques, and man, 74 charged with assault on woman over 60. Thank the goddess and all her attendants for Lynne Morgan Spreen and Any Shiny Thing!