No complaints

A few friends and I are going to give this a try. To go 21 days without complaining. (Some friends are stretching it to 35 days, but I'm sticking with 21 - the number of days it takes to start a habit.)

And that means I can do none the following: kvetch, hen-peck, nag, bother, backbite, bitch, grizzle, yammer, whine, gnarl, grumble, murmur, mutter, grouch, scold, protest, bellyache, gripe, grouse, squawk, holler, inveigh, rail, bemoan, bewail, deplore, lament. (Don't you LOVE a good thesaurus???)

I don't think I would undertake this all on my own. There's safety (and laughs) in numbers. On my own, I would be curled up in a corner, complaining about how hard it is to not complain. But now that I've announced it to the world (or at least to a tiny circle of family and friends), then I probably better give it my best shot. Stay tuned.

(I guess I can't mention that the new puppy is not quite as housebroken as was indicated by her foster mother...)

Click here for link to the book, A Complaint-Free World, on Amazon

Be Prepared...

This afternoon, my fortune cookie read as follows:



Today we adopted Molly into the Hummel family. She was a stray, taken in by a Boston Terrier rescue group. She's about 3 years old and is a teeny little one. She and Sparky have sniffed every nook and cranny of each other and are running around the house with what looks like glee. Molly likes to lick and, thus, Rob and I are covered in dog goo. All are happy. Here are photos.

Separated at birth?

Am I crazy in thinking that Claire's drawing of a park ranger looks eerily like a photo of one of my great uncles (I think) circa 1915?

ROB IS POPULAR!

I just looked at the Academy's website and Rob's 3-D presentation is already sold out. (I hope he saved a seat for me...)

Washed clean...

Some days, life gives you balance. Today started with me helping a young girl - Claire's age - surreptitiously retrieve her worldly belongings from her abusive boyfriend's place. I'd feel better about it if we hadn't done this same thing about six months ago. At that time, we brought Rob along, since it was thought that said boyfriend might become violent and she thought it would be good to have a man along, at least one with 911 pre-programmed into his cell phone. Thank goodness the boyfriend wasn't home that evening, and all went uneventfully. It was so clear back then. She needed out.

So, tell me, why were we doing this more than once?

This time, the boyfriend was at work. He lives in a converted section of his parent's garage. She asked me to go inside with her, "just in case," she said. The room is virtually windowless, with a small, filthy bathroom, and opens not to the outdoors, but to the garage itself. Two small lamps barely lit the room, making it impossible to find all the belongings she had kept there. But even with the lack of light, it was hard to miss the looming pile of beer cans and empty alcohol bottles that littered the center of the tiny space. What young girl could imagine that this could be right? How could this look attractive for even a fleeting moment? Who could imagine that they could fix this?

Our mission was accomplished, but I had a hard time shaking the mental picture of that room. And I had an even harder time shaking the picture of my young friend living there. With this guy. This slob. This abusive alcoholic. I felt like I needed to take a long shower. So did she. Or so she said.

That feeling lingered throughout the afternoon. But my day ended not with sadness and anger, but with joy and dancing. A friend from church has a grown daughter, Sandy, who is mentally handicapped. Each time I see Sandy she asks me to come to her group home and then, she says, we can go to Taco Bell and eat burritos supreme. So, tonight I went to Sandy's group home, we went to Taco Bell and we ate burritos supreme. She explained to me that she knew the Spanish word for "hello" which was "hola" and the Spanish word for "thank you" which, apparently, is "thank you." Then we went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream and called Rob so he could explain why he wasn't there with us (he's in Canada) and she could say, "I love you Robbie." We laughed and laughed, especially when she showed me how she is going to make ghost sounds on Halloween. When we went back to the group home, the lights were out, the strobe light was strobing, Shakira was singing "Shake Your Bootie" or something like that, and everyone was dancing. Sandy and I joined in and it was a moment of bliss that washed clean the earlier images of despair that had been swarming in my head. Shaking our booties in the dark with flashing lights and no one making much sense, somehow made a whole lot of sense.

To be grateful...

There is almost no traffic on Topanga Canyon this morning. Residents only, the sign says. Super Scoopers fly overhead to pick up water, and then to drop it on Malibu. It's alternately quiet and noisy. I listen to the news from those who've been forced to evacuate and they all seem to say the same thing - "We're all safe and we've got what's important." A reminder to all of us of what's important.

Short-lived Facebooking

Emily wanted to show me some photos from a friend so she linked me to Facebook. I couldn't figure out how to view the photos unless I actually JOINED Facebook, so I did, and then I STILL couldn't view the photos. Then Em called to ask why I had "friended" her on Facebook, and her friend asked her why I was on Facebook, and all of a sudden I realized that I should not be on Facebook. So I figured out how to deactivate my account. When they asked why I was deactivating, this is the box I checked. I was trying to be honest. Really.

Abby Becker's summer job...

Our niece, Abby, worked as a production assistant on "Step Up 2" in Baltimore this summer. (In case you're wondering, it's the sequel to "Step Up".) She just sent us a link to the trailer, so here it is:
Step Up 2 trailer

Rob tells you everything you wanted to know about 3-D...

On November 6th, Rob is giving a presentation on 3-D for the Academy. One of the clips he'll be showing is a part of a 3-D movie from the 1939 World's Fair showing the assembly of a General Motors car.... Gloves and bow ties are optional.

Here's the link: Rob's 3-D Evening

From a book review...

Here's a snippet from a book review in the LA Times. I was struck by the wording:

"...a sense of how the well-ordered accommodations that too often pass for life sometimes can implode under the unimaginable weight of the unexpected."

To accommodate means:
1. To provide lodging or physical space to
2. Fit in with the wishes or needs of
3. Adapt to
(from the Latin "to fit")

What have a provided (unsuspected) lodging to?
What have I done to "fit in"?
What have I adapted to?

What things in my life am I merely working around, rather than resolving? What have I become comfortable with (that I shouldn't feel comfortable with)? And how have these accommodations become something that resembles my life, enough so that I have started to adjust to them?

That's where the unexpected comes in. We need to be caught off guard. We don't want to be caught off guard. But it's when we're tending to what we think is our life, that life takes over. Despite us. No choice, but in that moment to be reborn.

The Birthday Boys...

Since nephew Andy and Rob share a birthday (and a love of adventure) we decided to go see "Shipwrecked" at South Coast Rep Theater. It's a three person play starring the man who played President Logan on "24". In this, he played a Victorian man who tells tales of daring on the high seas but in the end the audience isn't sure if he's been telling us the truth or not. The other two cast members play multiple roles and for the most part are in regular modern day street clothes. One of our favorite parts was Bruno the dog. Most of the sound effects were done on stage by the cast, so it was fun to see them pull out bells and whistles (literally).

Emily's friend, Jennifer Sherman, was the Asst. Stage Manager for the show so she let us come backstage to see the props. Shadow puppets of all sorts were used, projected behind a large canvas. Very cool.



Here's Jennifer holding tentacles that were used as shadow puppets to show the giant octopus that devoured a shipmate.



Here's Andy learning the ropes (sorry!), raising and lowering the curtain.



Jennifer showed Andy how the trap door worked.



Some of the props...



And here are Rob and Andy with "Albert" who played a small, yet important, part in the play...



Followed it up with dinner at Ruby's, during which one of our group had a milkshake AND a hot fudge sundae. I'm not mentioning names...

Storaro/Caravaggio

I had been looking forward to it all week. An invitation by Vittorio Storaro (three Academy Awards in cinematography...) to Rob and me to come to Technicolor for a showing of the film he shot about the life of Caravaggio. I've been in love with Caravaggio for thirty years. And to have a chance to hear Vittorio talk about him was just too exciting....

It brought back so many memories of the Technicolor Friday Night screenings that Rob would put on. Same room, same people. Rob saw his old secretary, Pat, as well as the guard that was there the first day Rob went to work for Technicolor in 1979. Another connection is that on his first day at Technicolor, Rob sat along with Vittorio and Francis Ford Coppola and viewed the five hour version of Apocalypse Now, something that Coppola had been keeping under tight wraps.

We joined cinematographer friends Vic and Claire Kemper, Woody and Florence Omens, Caleb and Mary Jo Deschanel, Owen Roizman and his son Eric, Vilmos and Susan Zsigmond, and Garrett and Kelly Smith, Warren Beatty (in a cream colored suit with white shirt. I wouldn't normally mention the outfit, but it definitely stood out in a small room of dark clothes...), and Mike Medavoy, among others. I tried to remember how my friend Penny Peyser knows Warren, in case I was in a conversation with him and needed some material, but I couldn't remember. (Update from Penny - she and Warren used to date in the 90's...) I also know Warren's former neighbors, the Minears, so I was ready to play that card if needed. It wasn't. Kelly said that Warren walked by her and said, "When am I going to see you next?" which was a pretty cool thing to hear. But, sadly, Warren and I did not exchange any words. If I was really on the ball (which I apparently wasn't) I would have had something witty to say to Mike Medavoy about my script I've been working on for 5 - 6- 7 (whatever) years. Didn't happen.

Vittorio said to me, "From the very beginning, I feel something special about Rob." And he hugs Rob as a long lost friend.

Garrett brought party favors - dvd's of The Conformist, a Bertolucci film shot by Vittorio. Before the talk/screening, Owen said that after he had just shot French Connection, he saw The Conformist and decided that he might as well quit now and get out of the business because he could never get film to look that good. Funny because French Connection was a ground-breaking work itself.

We talked with Mary Jo Deschanel about our Emily's, and then she reminded us that Zooey's middle name is Claire, and Claire Kemper joined in and somehow it felt good to have such lovely representatives for the name Claire, and for the name Emily. I love that connection.

Then Vittorio stood in front of the screen which was projecting a slide of himself, along with a painting by Caravaggio, and the words, "Storaro/Caravaggio." He positioned himself so that the word "Storaro" was projected across his chest and he remained there for the whole talk. Whether it was by design or not, it was mesmerizing and perfect.

After he had left film school, he was in the Piazza Navona in Rome and went into the nearby Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. People were gathered looking at a group of paintings and Vittorio joined them. It was Caravaggio's series on St. Matthew. The first painting (above) was of the calling of St. Matthew and shows the moment in which Jesus sees Matthew and calls him into service. The rest of the group are unaware of what is happening. The mundane money-changing interrupted by the divine light.

Vittorio showed a version of the painting that didn't have the shaft of light coming from the right side. Then he showed the painting as it was painted. Then he went back to the one without the light. "I did that with Photoshop," he said. The light didn't come from the window. The light was divine, and no source needed to be shown.

Vittorio said that particular painting changed his life. He had never seen anything like it. And he began to explore the way artists, particularly Caravaggio, used light in their work. He said that without that painting, he could never have done Apocalypse Now, Reds, or Last Emperor.

(I love the way Vittorio says Plato, "Plah - toe" and Emmaus, "A - mouse"...)

Afterwords Vilmos said that all those years in school and he never learned so much about art as he did with Vittorio's talk. Rob announced that he was thinking about auditing the class, but now thinks he's going to take it for credit.

My favorite Caravaggio is in the Ufizzi in Florence. The Sacrifice of Isaac. He chose the perfect moment - the moment Abraham was willing to follow the command, but also the moment where he was told that he didn't have to. This painting makes me cry....



Postscript: Vittorio wanted to visit "the Dalsa" so he and his director, Angelo Longoni, spent the morning with Rob. Then Rob brought them by the house where they could throw toys to Sparky and I could recite the only Italian I know which is a poem I used to hear repeatedly on TV in Rome by Gabriella Ferri. Fortunately, Angelo started saying it along with me, so we must have been watching the same show in 1978...

A good quote

I read a review of "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs, an agnostic who decided to spend a year living... well... biblically. When asked what was the biggest lesson he learned, he replied, "Your behavior shapes your beliefs. If you act like a good person, you eventually become a better person. I wasn't allowed to gossip, so eventually I started to have fewer petty thoughts to gossip about. I had to help the less fortunate, so I started to become less self-absorbed."

It reminds me of a Dennis Prager quote that I've always liked which goes something like, "Your behavior shapes your thinking more than your thinking shapes your behavior."

Em and Anne in DC

Today Em and I went to the National Gallery of Art to see the Edward Hopper exhibit. It was an incredible show - the biggest assortment of Hoppers in 25 years outside of New York City. Here's Em in front of the exhibit poster...



I don't know how many Hoppers they had, but there were lots and lots. It started out with his etchings which we loved but apparently Hopper didn't. He did them because he couldn't sell his paintings and needed something that he could make multiple prints of since the painting thing wasn't working out and he needed money. He didn't sell a single painting until he was forty one. We saw so many paintings that you would never know were Hoppers - lighthouses, Victorian homes, barns. By the time you've completely fallen in love with him, then you enter the rooms with the iconic Hoppers - Nighthawks (the one in the exhibit poster), Automat, and New York Movie. It was great to see them in person since the reproductions don't always show the detail. The last painting of the exhibit is a blank room - no people. Hopper painted it when he was eighty six, and it was the perfect ending to the show. Just light in a room. Beautiful. When we left, somehow everywhere we looked, we saw some scene that reminded us of a Hopper.

Here's Em underneath the giant Calder mobile that hangs in the lobby...



And here we are by the mirrored sculpture in front of the museum.



Rob called to say that tonight he was driving across the border into Canada, as was every single Canadian citizen. They had a three day weekend, had gone south to spend their newly valued Canadian dollars in the US, and were returning to their homeland. It took Rob 2 1/2 hours of waiting in his car, just to get across the line.... (No photos available. Which is probably a good thing....)

Sunday Trip to Boston

Sunday morning we drove up to Boston to go to The Mother Church for a service. Our friend, Curt Wahlberg, has just begun his term as First Reader and we were thrilled to be able to see him in action, and to see his family.

But before we even got out of the parking structure, Rob was enthralled by The Mother Church's snowcats....



Here are some of us in front of The Mother Church...



Lindsey Wahlberg in the Sunday School....



Rob and JJ Wahlberg....



Em and JJ run wild in the Sunday School while Claire and Xander draw...



And here we are all together in one spot. So fun! We look forward to seeing them again in May, after they've moved into Mrs. Eddy's home that she gave to all future First Readers.

Parents Weekend - Day Three

Today was the Alumni/Student Sale. Claire and friends had worked through the night to put together a wealth of art for their booth. Here she is trying to sell some notecards to an unsuspecting customer.



We decided that with her park ranger hat on, she looked just like the character in her comic strip mentioned in yesterday's post.





Here's her part of the booth. You might notice the Sparky cards which were good sellers last year... If anyone is looking for World of Warcraft character notecards, I know a good source....



Here's one of many people that stared at Andrew's alien fetuses with grave disbelief.



Rob found an artist who takes large bugs (dead, of course) and replaces their insides with mechanical gears. He loved them so much that we are now proud owners of a large bug filled with mechanical gears. Here is an example of the guy's work, though our bug is a bit different.



Claire said that the sale reminded her of selling shells on Balboa Island, where her best customers were her relatives. (Yes, notecards for everyone this Christmas...)

Later, we went to WaterFire, which started out as a one time art installation and has grown to be a yearly event in Providence, taking place over a four month period. It is 100 fires lit on the river that runs through town and it's hard to describe its strange beauty. You can see the faint outline of a gondolier in the last photo.

Parents Weekend - Day Two

We love going to classes. So since it was a Friday, Claire has her comic class from 1 to 6. They put their work up on the wall and the teacher critiques it in front of the class. Claire's was first, and the teacher suggested that the protagonist needed to look younger and more "Bambi-like" so he took one of Claire's sketches of the character and meticulously painted over it to show her what he was looking for. It was so fun to watch it transform. Here he is at work and then his final product.





We visited the RISD Nature Lab and Rob found a friend...



Here are Em and Rob outside of the Illustration Building.



For dinner the flatmates and parents all tried to fit into Claire's kitchen.



Then we wisely moved into Kate and Erika's room to talk and eat while Andrew worked on finishing up his "Alien Fetus" project. He was planning on selling them at the RISD Student/Alumni sale the next day. So, while we all talked and ate, Andrew painted the fifteen alien fetuses he made. Later he would cover them with more latex, put them in bottles with formaldehyde-looking liquid, and add aged labels. (You'll see the critters in the center of the next photo on the floor...) Somehow, in the dormroom, all they reminded me of were jumbo shrimp covered in cocktail sauce. Needless to say, there were more than enough alien fetus jokes throughout the evening...

Our last Parents Weekend.... or is it?

It's Parents Weekend at RISD and I'm feeling sad that this will be our last one.... Took the flatmates out for dinner (with Emily, and Kate's boyfriend, Andrew, and Andrew's roommate, Alex) at a great restaurant called Downcity @ 50 Weybosset. Everyone was filled up full with plenty of leftovers to keep them going another couple of days.

After dinner we went over to one of the theaters to watch Andrew photograph Kelly wearing one of Kate's creations. Kate custom made the corset and skirt and needed a photo to send to the person who was going to be purchasing it. I love this photo because it shows all three of them working together to get the right shot.



Then we went to the dorm and Claire showed us her latest drawings. We had admittedly been less than excited to hear that her classes this semester were: comic books, crayons, and scratch boards (or something like that... I tried to block it out of my mind). But seeing the results made us once again happy to send in the next tuition payment (sort of...). The ammonite and the nude were both done in crayon, and the Victorian couple and the Egyptian-themed piece were done for comic class.









We have so much fun at Parents Weekend that we are going to adopt Andrew and Alex so we can come back next year.....