Update from the home front February 2022

It's been six months since I stopped working. Six peaceful months of not having to answer to someone else. Six months of reorganizing the way I look at my life and what I want to do with my free time. I don't think there was ever any doubt in my mind that I wanted to focus full-time on writing. So far that seems to be working out well. I just submitted a poetry collection (in Norwegian) to a publisher here in Oslo and am hoping for a positive response. If they don't want to publish it, I'll self-publish it as a Norwegian e-book and then I'll self-publish the English translation on Amazon. I've already translated all the poems into English so it's ready to go at any point. This poetry collection is entitled Movements Through the Landscape (Bevegelser gjennom landskapet in Norwegian). 

I've also finished writing my garden book as well as my book about growing up in Tarrytown NY. I started the latter well over ten years ago, but what with working full-time, personal challenges and other obligations, it's taken a while to finish it. Now I need to find a publisher for this book as well. I'm thinking about self-publishing my garden book. I tried to get a literary agent interested in it last summer but no go. The publishing world can be as elitist in many ways as the world of academia that I happily left behind. Once you get your foot in the door as a published author, your books continue to get published even though they may not be anywhere near as good as your last one. But that's life. As my friend's father used to say, don't let the turkeys get you down. Good advice. Another piece of good advice for building self-esteem and believing in yourself is to stay off social media. It's just a time-waster and a negative spiral that will drag you down. I'd cancel my social media accounts without any problem except that I have enjoyable contact with a number of American friends and family and I'd miss that. We'll see what time brings.

Here's to a productive 2022 for every creative soul I know. Creativity is hard work but it's incredibly rewarding, no matter what type of creativity it is. 

Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things

I found this the other day online and it resonated with me. Wendell Berry is a well-known American poet who is a firm believer in the importance of man's connection to the land via small-scale farming, and who lives that belief. You can read more about him online here: Wendell Berry - Wikipedia

I loved this poem and wanted to share it with you. 

Men who leave and men who stay

We're back in Elena Ferrante territory today. Apologies to her for paraphrasing one of the book titles in her Neapolitan quadrilogy--Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. I finished Days of Abandonment today; it was written in 2002, prior to the Neapolitan quadrilogy. The latter books are more riveting than Days of Abandonment, but Days of Abandonment has its riveting moments as well.

Men don't come off very well in Ferrante's books. They are mostly sexual predators at heart, constantly looking at other women, faithless, disloyal, and uncaring opportunists. They are not child-friendly nor are they really interested in family life. As Olga in Days of Abandonment says to Mario, who has abandoned her and their two children for a woman almost half his age (Carla), "you are an opportunist and a traitor". Which he is. Unfortunately he is not much more than that as written by Ferrante. The book is really about Olga and her breakdown after he leaves her. She must cope with all of the mess while taking care of her two children Gianni and Ilaria and the family dog Otto. She doesn't do a very good job of any of it and she knows it. Her identity unravels and she is forced to do the work of finding out who she is at the age of thirty-eight. She doesn't particularly like what she sees--a woman who gave up her writing career and her identity to marry Mario and have children. The roles of wife and mother became her identities. She thought her marriage was happy; perhaps it was. Even if marriages are happy, one partner can always be unfaithful and stay in the marriage, or be unfaithful and leave. Mario does both, actually. He starts his affair with Carla when she is still a teenager and leaves Olga for her when Carla turns twenty. He closes the door on one life and begins another. He does not tell Olga where he is or with whom he is living. She doesn't even get to know where he is living and does not find out about Carla until midway through the book. And then all the pieces come together for her. The description of her breakdown is disturbing and uncomfortable, perhaps as it should be, but it dragged on too long for my taste. Otto dies after being poisoned with something he ate that was laced with strychnine while Olga was out walking him in the park. Her son Gianni becomes ill with a high fever. She feels like she is falling apart. But this experience made its point. 'The only way out is through'. By the time Olga has gotten through it, she discovers she no longer loves Mario. It's as though she has stepped outside her own life and become an observer. She watches as her children visit Mario and meet Carla, she listens as they praise Carla, she eventually deals with Mario adult to adult, she reclaims her identity as a writer, she listens to him complain that his children will ruin his relationship with Carla, and she finds that she really doesn't care about any of it. She understands that Mario is an opportunist and a traitor and tells him that. She no longer needs him. In other words, she grew up. She grew out of a stale banal marriage that her husband abandoned years ago in secret. She stepped out from under Mario's shadow. The patriarchal dominance that has ruled her life for so long is gone. She finds that she does not want to date or be social or be with other men, at least not if she has no say in how these events are to happen. But eventually she starts an affair with the older musician who lives below her and that is how the book ends. She is nearly forty and she is writing again. The rest of it is just the life around her in all its messiness and discomfort. She learns to live with both. Days of Abandonment is an angry book, but the anger is directed both at Mario and at herself for giving up so much of herself. No one asked her to do that; she chose the prison of the wife/mother identity and became entrapped. She could have continued writing, she could have insisted that Mario help more with the children. So many things she should have done, but she didn't. She tries to understand why Mario left her, and discovers that she really didn't know him. She constructed the idea of a happy marriage around them; his idea of what their marriage was did not seem to interest her. Or if it did, she ignored his attempts to break free. But in any case, nothing she could have done would have kept Mario from straying. He was a man who leaves, not one who stays. 

There is autobiographical content in her novels to be sure. Exactly where, in which novels, remains a mystery and that's fine with me. Ferrante writes under a pseudonym for reasons that only she alone knows. This places most of the focus on the stories, where it should be. But after having read a number of her books--the Neapolitan quadrilogy, Troubling Love, Days of Abandonment, and The Lying Life of Adults, it seems to me that she has dealt with a number of emotional and psychological issues (traumas?) that have preoccupied her throughout her life, through her writing. Men cannot be trusted to be faithful since they leave their wives for other (often younger) women. Love is mostly about sexual bonding and less about loyalty and empathy. Mothers and daughters have volatile relationships; mothers love their daughters but are also jealous of them, particularly if the daughters have the chance to pursue higher education while they did not. The relationships between mothers and children generally are also precarious; they are fraught with frustration, weariness, irritation and real anger in addition to the maternal bond of love. Ferrante makes it clear that children change everything in a marriage, for better and/or for worse. Her ambivalence about the roles of wife and mother is clear throughout her writing. She has no qualms about bringing up the 'worse'--being chained to these small beings who demand attention and love, the banality of childcare, the reduction of woman's role to wife and mother and not much else. Ferrante is an Italian novelist but her novels are international bestsellers, which is illustrative of just how relevant her themes are on a global level. The interesting thing is that Days of Abandonment was written in 2002; it could have been written in the 1970s, when the women's movement was dealing with many of the same issues--women's identities, self-realization, marriage versus single life, having children or not. It tells me that the issues that women face now are not so much different than those they faced in the 1970s or those that our mothers faced in their generation. Men left their wives and children back in the 1950s and 1960s too, for many of the same reasons as they do now. If you ask them directly, they will answer selfishly. They want a woman who is sexually exciting, who is interested in sex. They want a woman who pays attention to them. What they want is often at odds with what they get from marriage and family, where there is often limited time for both sex and personal attention. And so it goes. As long as couples have children and children become the focus of marriage, there will always be men who leave and men who stay. And perhaps women who leave and women who stay. Perhaps it's worth repeating that one should choose one's life partner carefully and marry a person who is faithful and loving. But how do you know that when you marry? How can you be sure of how the future will turn out? You can't, so you do the best you can and commit to the choice you make. How it turns out is often the stuff of novels. 

My Brilliant Friend and The Gilded Age

Both My Brilliant Friend and The Gilded Age are currently streaming on HBO Max, and I have to say that I am immensely glad for that. Both series make for a perfect streaming experience in the midst of the wasteland that linear television has become. Linear television is a joke; there is nothing of real value being offered for viewers. Bad reality tv has won out completely; most shows have no substance and no real value and are quickly forgotten. What happened to tv shows like Everyone Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, King of Queens, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Friends, and The X-Files to name just a few of the shows that were popular during the 1990s and early 2000s? I could continue, but it would be pointless, because it's unlikely that linear tv will ever invest in quality programming again. If there were no streaming channels, I'd quit watching tv altogether. 

That's not to say that everything on Netflix or HBO is of high quality. It's not. Many of the crime series on Netflix are trashy and easily forgettable. I have become much more selective about the crime series I watch; I simply don't want my mind contaminated by a continual rehashing of the same themes--rape, revenge, gratuitous violence, and so on. Women are nearly always the victims of rape and gratuitous violence. It gets repetitive after a while. Then there are the psycho films; woman meets man, woman marries man, man has a secret life/lover/past and a tendency toward violence. Woman ends up being the abused person until she grows a pair and fights back. I could write this stuff in my sleep. 

Thank God for the good series like My Brilliant Friend and The Gilded Age. I've written about My Brilliant Friend before (A New Yorker in Oslo: My Brilliant Friend is a brilliant HBO series (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com); I've read the entire Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante and seen the first two seasons of My Brilliant Friend on HBO. Season 3 is now being shown and the quality of this season is just as good as the first two seasons. For me it is a perfect tv show; when I watch it I am transported to the world as it was in Naples Italy during the 1960s, a time when there was a lot of political upheaval and societal changes. The acting is excellent, likewise the storylines and the sets. I recommend the series for anyone looking for quality entertainment and a show that you will not easily forget. 

The Gilded Age was an era in US history extending from 1870 until around 1910. The HBO series focuses on the opulent lives of the New York City elite in the 1880s and the clash between 'old wealth' and 'new wealth'. The series is the creation of Julian Fellowes who was the creator, writer and executive producer of the multiple award-winning ITV series Downton Abbey (2010–2015) (info from Wikipedia). It has a Downton Abbey feel to it, but transferred to the fast-moving society of Manhattan. It is quality tv all the way, with very good storylines, sets, and acting. It mostly shows the rich as rather petty, snobby and vindictive, in other words, it's a soap opera offering quality entertainment. I've watched four episodes so far and am hooked. 

The Mixed Metaphor Marriage by Wiley Miller

 Another winner, Non Sequitur by Wiley.......

A commentary on pandemic mandates

This New Yorker cartoon by Peter Kuper from February 4th made me laugh. Perfect commentary on some of the pandemic-related stupidity we see around us. 

Todd Rundgren - Hello It's Me (1972)

Just a beautiful, classic song. Thank you to And Just Like That for using the song in such a poignant way. Raw and emotional scenes between Carrie and Big, not easily forgotten.  

And just like that, Big died

And just like that, I cried. I knew Big's death was coming, because it's all anyone who's watched And Just Like That (the Sex and the City reboot) has been talking about. It's been discussed on social media and media generally. He died of a heart attack after training on a Peloton machine, Peloton got involved and then uninvolved, and then the entire issue died once Chris Noth who plays Mr. Big ended up in real trouble with women who have claimed he sexually assaulted them years ago. But it is a testament to both Chris Noth and Sarah Jessica Parker (who plays Carrie) that they could enact such a moving scene--Carrie coming home to find her husband close to death. It follows earlier sequences that show Carrie and Big interacting at home, making dinner together, listening to music--Todd Rundren's Hello It's Me, Big singing along to the song, and both acting lovingly toward each other. They were finally happy, enjoying married life, doing the things that happily-married couples do. That's why the scene where she finds him slumped on the floor was so emotional and raw, it was preceded by happiness of a special kind, the kind of happiness that was the reward for years of pain and waiting. Carrie waited a long time for Big to acknowledge that he loved her. 

The reboot itself has been painstakingly dissected and either praised or panned. I've watched three episodes so far, and the first one was by far the most moving. I'm sure there's a lot to criticize but I'm not in the mood to do so. I'm in the mood to praise the series for what it gets right, because there are certainly things it doesn't get right. But the woke reviewers who demand complete social and racial awareness/relevance in every episode need to remember one thing--this show was always a fantasy show for many people. It wasn't meant to be a 'deep' or relevant show. I know many people who didn't like the show because it was not a real depiction of the lives of single women in Manhattan. The original show was about four friends living in Manhattan who worked, made decent livings, but who always had more than enough money for clothing, shoes, eating out, wine, expensive vacations, and whatnot. I don't think I ever heard any of them say they couldn't afford something. They dated men and talked about the men they dated and the sex they had; they married and divorced and then married again. There was never a dearth of male suitors waiting in the wings for these women. That's not reality for a lot of women. But a focus on reality wasn't what viewers required; I loved the show because it showed how four women remained friends through thick and thin, who were pretty much always there for each other. Men came and went, but the friendships survived. That was what was truly real about the show; when you have women friends like these four had, you know you are blessed. The Sex and the City films were a bit over the top, especially the second one. But I challenge you to prove to me that any of the adventure/crime thriller/drama films starring our reigning male heroes (Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, to name a few) are films that depict real-life. Get over it. They're fantasy films, pure and simple. We accept them as entertainment, knowing that most men will not be hanging off planes trying to save humanity, or jumping off buildings, or surviving being shot at by automatic weapons. We don't require these films to be 'real' and woke. These films are rather silly as well, yet we accept them. It's in that spirit that I watched the original Sex and the City series. I enjoyed the escapist fantasies of the lives these women led. 

The series was criticized for portraying independent single women whose lives revolved around having men in them. But the show never pandered to those who thought it should be about women who didn't need men at all. Because the reality of life for most women is that their lives often do revolve around men in one way or another. And many women make foolish choices when it comes to men; many make stupid mistakes as well (sleeping with men too soon, that sort of thing). When they're older, they may look back and regret that they did both, but the fact remains that these choices and mistakes are part of their past, part of who they are. They learned from them and moved on. We cannot require perfect women, any more than we can require perfect men. There is no perfect world. What does exist is forgiveness, of others and of ourselves. 

And that leads me to the few things that the series could omit. Some of them are the cringe-inducing scenes where Miranda (played by Cynthia Nixon) tries to show that she's not a racist. She's trying too hard, and that is rather out of character for Miranda, who always seemed to be the sensible one before. So far these are the only scenes that I've wanted to fast-forward. But I haven't, because I'm giving the series a chance and trying to understand why they're included at all. Why can't there just be important black characters without all the hoopla, as was the case in the first Sex and the City film (Carrie's assistant Louise, played by Jennifer Hudson)? There's no need to try so hard to make it all so relevant; just introduce the characters naturally and it will be fine.

And now I've seen all ten episodes. All I can say is that the show dragged me back into their messy lives again and I'm better for it. Watching it was cathartic in some ways. Perhaps you need to have lost a loved one to death in order to relate to it on some level. I don't know if there will be a season 2. Even if there isn't, season 1 did a bang-up job of reintroducing us to Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte. There are critics who wrote that the show was too sad, too flat, lacking fun, and lacking sex. I disagree. I'm not sure what those reviewers wanted, but Big was a huge part of Carrie's life, and to make a new show that honors the death of a loved one, grieving and trying to find meaning in life again needs to be applauded, not panned. But I think it's because you either like the show and the characters, or you don't. I happen to be one of those who loved the original show and the first movie (not the second). The reboot deals with the lives of these characters who are now in their 50s, with all that entails--menopause, teenage children, sexless marriages, happy marriages, childless marriages, not being on the same page, new friends, old friends, and just change that is part of life. Change plays a big role in the reboot, not surprisingly. Miranda changes (divorces Steve and falls in love with a queer nonbinary stand-up comedian and podcast host), Charlotte's life changes (her daughter Rose changes her name to Rock and does not want to be labeled a girl, a boy, a nonbinary, Jewish, or a New Yorker), and Carrie's life changes (Big dies and the rug is pulled out from under her). The show would have been roundly criticized if Carrie had just bounced back from Big's death and went out dancing a month later. Real life isn't like that. It takes her a year to grieve, and the last episode ends with her taking his ashes to Paris to spread them in the river Seine from the Pont des Arts bridge where he found her at the end of the original series. I wish Big could have made a final appearance but that was not to be. I think Sarah Jessica Parker did a great job with a tough storyline for Carrie. She made it real, emotional, raw, and heartbreaking at times. Just like real life. Perhaps the objections of the reviewers lie there. This time around the show was more like real-life. I want more of that, and they want less of it. That's fine, we can agree to disagree. 

Voodoo by Chungking

Another favorite of mine--Voodoo by Chungking from 2005, with lyrics. The vocalist is Jessie Banks, and she's got a great voice. 

Voodoo

I feel strange
Dancing again
Next to you
It's your voodoo
I won't let my eyes well up with tears
Seems like yesterday
It's been a hundred years
How you doin', what's been goin' on?
Can't believe I've been away for so long
And I feel if I let ya
Something good's gonna get ya
So I gotta decide
And I'm telling ya somethings
Always better than nothing
Go on give it a try
Never mind lookin' stupid
'Cause there's always a new kid
And you're just gettin' old
Gonna be who I used to
'Cause I don't wanna lose you
And tonight's gettin' cold
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
I feel strange
Laughing again
Feel brand new
It's your voodoo
I can see what you're saying
'Bout the game that we're playing
No one said it was cool
And I'm tagging along
I don't know where we belong
It used to be next to you
Are you looking at her?
Tell me, would you prefer to be with somebody else?
Come on, give me something
'Cause I'm waiting for loving
Shouldn't be by myself
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
(fade)

Twilight World by Swing Out Sister

Twilight World

Swing Out Sister

Time out
World in a hurry
There's more love than money changing hands

Lights out
Thinking out loud
Turn your back on the world outside

Night thoughts
No one can share
As darkness breaks through another day

Secrets
Talking out loud
Silence waits just a dream away

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Time out
World in a hurry
There's more love than money changing hands

Lights out
Thinking out loud
Turn your back on the world outside

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Martin Jackson / Corinne Drewery / Andrew Connell

Twilight World lyrics © Union Square Music Songs Ltd.

After Hours by Swing Out Sister

Swing Out Sister is one of my favorite groups from the 1980s. Their album It's Better to Travel from 1987 is a masterpiece. I bought it as an LP and it got a lot of play time on my stereo back then. I just downloaded some of the songs from that album onto my iPhone; one of them is called After Hours and it's a beautiful song, sung by the vocalist Corinne Drewery who has an incredible voice. Here are the lyrics:

After Hours

Swing Out Sister

Day time surrenders
And the shadows fall
Your cigarette lingers
You spent the night alone
With no one at all
Another mellow mood
And the silence calls
Another fleeting glance
Another call long distance
To no one at all
No one at all
Day time surrenders
And the shadows call
Your cigarette lingers
You spend the night alone
With no one at all
After hours, after hours

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Andrew John Connell / Corinne Drewery / Martin Boyd Jackson

After Hours lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Remembering my brother

My brother Ray died seven years ago today. I still remember the shock of hearing about his death. I was at work and it was all I could do to gather together my belongings, call my husband, and find my way home. Seven years. So much has happened in that space of time. Too much to write about here; there is a lifetime of sadness that has occurred during that time. However, his two children seem to have survived the tragedies that unfolded around them during these years and are now flourishing. Ray would have been so proud of them both. 

I published a poetry collection in 2019 entitled Cemetery Road dealing with his death and with death generally (https://tinyurl.com/muxk95hb). One of the poems in this collection is called Photo of You in a Manhattan Café . I wrote it in 2017, two years after his death, and am including it here. 

And on this day, the second anniversary

Of your untimely death

A long-buried photo of you surfaced

Causing me to catch my breath

 

We had met for lunch in some downtown Manhattan café

That you frequented—eager to share with me your find

Proud that you were working there in that melee

Of New Yorkers milling about with their own kind

 

The contours of your face, your photogenic smile

Your youth that emanates from a decade ago

Your furtive smile, the one that could beguile

And persuade the most stubborn of us so

 

Your hidden secrets that remained unearthed

You did not give them willingly away

And those of us who tried to probe and came away

Unenlightened frustrated rather gone astray

 

If walls could talk, and photos likewise

Perhaps you would still walk upon this earth

And smile your stealthy smile for all to know

That happiness was yours, there was no dearth

Achtung. Dismissed. And a special place in hell

There is a special place in hell for men who diss women just because they're women. It doesn't matter what the age of the man or the woman, nor does it matter whether they're wealthy or not. I've seen this behavior at social functions, parties, dinners, and at work. Men can deny all they like that this behavior goes on; it does, to the detriment of both sexes. Dissing is a power play; it says that men are smarter/better/more articulate than women. Dissing women in front of others is reducing women to nothing and making sure that 'they know their place'. 

Does this really occur in 2022, you might ask? It does indeed. It happens everyday. Men and women are in conversation, mostly one-sided from the start (a man is talking), a women tries to insert her viewpoint only to be told that 'no, that's not the way it is' or even better, the man just keeps talking over her. He dominates the conversation and criticizes any attempt on the woman's part to contribute to it. You might think this happens mostly among older couples, but no, that's not the case. I've seen it in younger couples as well, where the women concede to the men's behavior rather than challenge it. If women have an opinion about what might be wrong with a car/plumbing/stove/oven/electrical gadget, their opinion is overlooked or pushed to the side in favor of men's opinions about what might be wrong. It also can happen with certain male doctors, those stuffed-shirt types who think they are high and mighty; the ones who dismiss you before you've even had a chance to make a statement or express your opinion. They know best. Achtung. Dismissed. Or what about those men who write emails with no greeting or no signature, just an order 'barked out' in an email, like the one I got recently from a man who shall remain unnamed, who wanted me to send him data files he could open easily. This is what he wrote: 'Send me attachments that I can open without any problems'.  No 'hello', no signature, no 'I'm sorry to bother you but I'm having problems opening the files that were sent to both of us'. These rude emails are the kinds of emails I got on a routine basis from a former boss who never addressed me by name. Achtung. Do as I say. Dismissed. How much intelligence would it take for these men to figure out that basic courtesy and respect would go a long way toward dealing with and getting results from the women from whom they want/need something? 

Dissing is one of the main reasons I let my husband handle all of the problems relating to car engines, oven repair, instrument repair, etc. Whenever I have tried to explain a problem that has arisen to a repairman, I've been pushed aside or ignored by the men involved. When my husband takes over, they listen. Simple as that. Maybe repairmen feel more comfortable talking to men. I don't know. It happened early on in my career as well; when I called a major flow cytometry company for service and explained the problem, only to be told that I should check to make sure the instrument was plugged in. Achtung. Dismissed. What I knew then and know now is that I didn't and don't like being treated this way. But protests are often to no avail. The same company blamed the women in my department who were running the instrument for its failing to work; but one of the service engineers they sent out (a man) told me the truth--that the company had marketed a half-assed product that didn't work optimally. So not all men diss women. When my husband looked at the instrument and concluded that it didn't work, just as we women had, the company took the problem seriously. So if my husband complains that he has to handle all of these things, I say, yes you do, because they don't listen to me. Simple as that. 

Two years ago there was a renovation of the bathroom in the apartment above us. The couple involved had hired a Norwegian firm to do the work, but this firm employed foreign workers who could not speak Norwegian and who had a rather outdated view of women to put it mildly. I have no problem with foreign workers generally, but I do have a problem with them when they cannot speak the language of the country in which they are working and when they diss women. These workers fit that bill. I called them the Neanderthals after I had dealings with them; they behaved crudely and were hired simply to do a wrecking job, in this case, smashing a concrete floor to bits. The problem was that when they did that, all of the small bits rained down into our bathroom that was directly below the one being renovated. When I went up to talk to the workers about my concerns that something was wrong, they and their leader did not take what I said seriously; the head Neanderthal was particularly rude and 'in my face'. Achtung. Dismissed. After that I called them the Neanderthals. When I spoke to the woman whose bathroom was being renovated, she told me that she had problems talking to them and she let her husband deal with them. What a great world we live in. What happens to women without men in their lives? Do they get pushed around all the time and get ripped off? Update, two years later; as I predicted, there are problems with the bathroom upstairs. The job that was done at that time by these workers was shoddy and there is now a mold problem in the floor tiles. Which means that the tiles need to be taken up, which means more hammering and smashing and removal of the smashed pieces. Which means more noise and bother for God knows how long. What about if my concerns had been taken seriously two years ago, when I wondered if these Neanderthals really knew what they were doing? It might have been possible to get rid of them then or to have changed to another bathroom renovation company (they're a dime a dozen in this country now). Because obviously they didn't know what they were doing. And in my experience it's always the case that when you ask men who really don't know what they are doing about what they are doing, they get angry and dismiss you as a know-nothing woman. So here we are two years later; I only hope that the mold hasn't made its way all the way through the concrete floor such that it ends up in our bathroom ceiling at one point. What could have been a minor problem has now become a big problem all because one Neanderthal controlled the show and refused to communicate with two women who expressed some concerns about the work he and his team were doing. He would never have admitted he was wrong. I blame him and his team of Neanderthals, but mostly I blame the Norwegian firm that outsources these jobs to illiterate foreigners in order to save money. You can bet that I will make quite a stink if it turns out that our bathroom ceiling is teeming with mold. 

And don't get me started about my former workplace. Three of the men in my former department had very low opinions of women; I know for a fact that they had pretty much decided among them that they did not want to hire women for career development positions when they could hire men instead. Why? Because women got pregnant and disappeared for a year or more on maternity leave. You ask again, does this really happen in 2022? Yes, I'm sorry to say that it does. These men were also experts at ignoring women in other ways, regardless of their age. The only women they didn't ignore were the young ones who were pretty and with whom they could flirt. So those young women had some advantage, but not much in the final analysis, not once they got pregnant or moved up on the career ladder and suddenly posed a bit of a threat to these men. Because that's when men get testy and start to diss women, when they feel threatened. God forbid a woman should be smarter than they are, or question what they do or how they do it. Crisis. Achtung. Dismissed. Such men just have to bring those women down, and my former workplace allowed/condoned that behavior by never confronting these men about their Neanderthal behavior. 

The older I get, the less interested I am in conceding to this behavior. I don't want to be nice anymore or ignore the behavior or turn the other cheek. I will call out men who diss women and who generally behave badly. I'm tired of the bullshit they dish out. In the cases where I have been dissed by men, nine times out of ten I was right about a particular problem. But I'll never get the credit for being right. If women experience enough of this treatment, they become disempowered and that is not good for them or for men. You can dismiss me or make light of this problem, I really don't care, because I hope there is a special place in hell for Neanderthal men and for the women who support them, because they deserve to exist there for eternity.

The Family Way--a touching film from 1966

The film The Family Way, starring Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett as a young married couple who have problems consummating their marriage, is billed as a comedy/drama/romance. I watched it yesterday and found it less a comedy than a serious drama with some comedic moments included. My first thought when I saw that it had shown up on Netflix was that I will finally get to see this movie. When it was released in 1966 my parents told me that I was too young to see it, and after having seen it, I understand they were right because I wouldn't have understood it. But I was old enough to have read about the film in The New York Times, and because it starred Hayley Mills, I wanted to see it. 

Hayley Mills was an actress we grew up with and whom we all wanted to be. She starred in so many films that we loved as children--Pollyanna (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), The Moon-Spinners (1964), and That Darn Cat (1965), to name a few. Pollyanna was shown in our grammar school, in the auditorium as I remember. Schools did that way back when--got a hold of a film for general audiences and gathered us all together to watch it on 'movie day'. We didn't see it in 1960, rather around the late 1960s. The Moon-Spinners was shown on television's The Wonderful World of Disney and we were fascinated by the story as I remember, which was a crime adventure, a romance, and a travel film. We saw it on television in the late 1960s. I liked this film especially since it also had a romantic interest for Hayley Mills who was already a teenager (18) by that time. My mother took us children to see That Darn Cat when it was released in 1965; I remember the lines to get into The Music Hall on Main Street in Tarrytown. We enjoyed that film as well, as we did most films because going to the movies was always a fun time. 

Hayley Mills was 20 years old when she made The Family Way. The film was quite a departure for her in terms of theme; it was a 'grown-up' film because she played a young woman, Jenny Piper, who marries a young man, Arthur Fitton (played by Hywel Bennett), about her age. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they cannot go on their honeymoon and they end up living in her husband's parents' house. There is very little privacy, and Arthur has a difficult relationship with his father Ezra Fitton, played by Hayley Mill's real-life father John Mills. Jenny and Arthur do not consummate their marriage on their first night together, and as time goes on, it seems less and less likely that they will. The reasons for this are not completely clear--lack of privacy is one of them, a practical joke played on them involving a collapsing double bed is another (Jenny laughs but Arthur doesn't), but his overall  inexperience with women is another. He is the bookish sort, a quiet, non-rowdy, serious young man. It is hinted at one point that he might be homosexual, which turns out not to be true. What he really needs is a push, but that doesn't come until close to the end of the film, after both sets of parents have gotten involved and after his humiliation (as Arthur sees it) is complete. When he finally gets angry and expresses his feelings, he overcomes the hindrance in the way of his being a true husband to Jenny. While this storyline could have been played for laughs, it wasn't, and that's why I liked the film. It made viewers feel sorry for the couple, it made them want to wish them well, to try and work out their marriage. It also presents their parents as real human beings with problems and regrets of their own. I won't give away the film's ending, but suffice it to say I'm glad I finally got to watch it after all these years. 

 

The film Orders to Kill--a morality tale from 1958

Netflix Europe has been expanding its repertoire of classic films, especially films from the United Kingdom. Many of them are black-and-white films from the WWII- or post-WWII era. Orders to Kill from 1958 is one of them that made a lasting impression on me (Orders to Kill (1958) - IMDb). It's a morality tale about an American soldier during WWII who is ordered by his superiors to kill a French lawyer (living in Paris and married with a teenage daughter) who is thought to be collaborating with the Nazis. The information that the US Army has on the lawyer is that several agents working in the French resistance movement have been killed after having had contact with him. The army believes he has sold out these agents to the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. The soldier who agrees to kill him, Gene Summers (played by Paul Massie), has flown bomber planes and is considered to be a good choice for the mission. 

The first hour of the film deal with the Summers' preparation for the task before him--assume a French name, familiarize himself with all the details about his new persona and the person he is to kill, connect with Léonie (played by Irene Worth), the woman in Paris who helps him with the practical aspects of being there (a place to live, having a 'cover' job, necessary papers to present to the Gestapo in case he is stopped on the street, getting him out of Paris when the job is done). This part of the film moves rather slowly in contrast to the last hour (the film is almost two hours long). When he finally makes contact with the lawyer Lafitte (played by Leslie French), the suspense builds as the viewer wonders when (or if) Summers will kill him and if in fact Lafitte is actually guilty of collaborating with the Nazis. 

Spoilers ahead--Summers gets to know Lafitte, an extraordinarily friendly man who takes Summers under his wing, allowing him to stay overnight in his office when the Gestapo are searching for a young man in that area of Paris who has killed a Nazi officer. Lafitte invites him home for a drink to meet his wife and daughter. Lafitte has had a cat stashed in his office that he feeds, which is against his wife's wishes since food is rationed and she does not want another mouth to feed. She finds out that he is keeping the cat in his office and tells him to get rid of it, so he tells his wife that Summers will take the cat to live on a farm outside of Paris, when in reality Summers is to return the cat to Lafitte the following morning at his office. Lafitte's friendliness, empathy and compassion (for both animals and people) creates a picture of Lafitte as a decent man, which Summers finds confusing. Summers is in a quandary--is this man a traitor who deserves to be killed, or is he innocent? He delays killing him as he tries to sort out his feelings and thoughts. He tries to share his hesitation with Léonie who is horrified that he is sharing any details of his job with her, since the less she knows the better off she will be if she is captured by the Nazis and tortured into giving them information. Ultimately she tells him that he is too sentimental and that Lafitte could in fact be a traitor. She reminds Summers that he has killed innocent people before when he has dropped bombs and that he had no qualms about that; her point is that in war, both innocent and guilty people get killed. When Summers brings the cat to Lafitte's office the morning following his visit to his family, he sees a Gestapo officer leaving the building. When he arrives at Lafitte's office, he sees him handling a large sum of cash and he assumes that he has gotten it from the Gestapo officer. He doesn't let on that he thinks this, but when he hands over the cat, Lafitte bends down to pet it and Summers hits him on the head with a heavy object. Lafitte falls facedown and the cat runs for cover, but when Lafitte moans and turns over on his back and faces Summers, he asks him 'why?' before dying. This pierces Summers to the bone as it tells him that Lafitte was innocent. He messes up the office to make it look like a robbery, and then takes the money that Lafitte had and goes to a cemetery where he buries it. Too late, he receives a message from Léonie telling him to not go through with 'the job', and when he tries to reach her, she uses a code word on the phone to warn him that she and he are in danger (she ends up captured, tortured and killed by the Nazis without revealing any information about the resistance). For the next month he drinks himself into a stupor, using the money to purchase liquor. When he is finally rescued by the US Army following the liberation of Paris, he ends up in a military hospital, where he is visited by two of his superiors, one of whom tells him that he has done a good job and that Lafitte was in fact a traitor. The other one tells him the truth when the first one leaves the room, that Lafitte was innocent, as Summers had surmised. Summers insists on knowing the truth, and when he understands that he has killed an innocent man, he absorbs the information and asks for all of his pay that has accrued. The film ends with his visiting Lafitte's wife and daughter and giving them this money, and telling them that Lafitte was his colleague and a hero in the French resistance and that they should be proud of him. 

Watching this film, especially the scene where Lafitte asks Summers 'why', was gut-wrenching, as it was intended to be. The knowledge that you have likely killed an innocent man must really break a person, mentally and emotionally, if not physically as well. But Summers, once he finds out the truth in the hospital, seems to 'accept' the reality that he murdered an innocent man. Perhaps he had to accept it in order to go on living. It made me realize what soldiers have to deal with during wartime, the moral quandaries that arise and that have to be dealt with every day. It is not always easy to know who is the enemy; in this film, based on circumstantial evidence alone, Lafitte could have been guilty. Even though Summers suffers knowing he killed an innocent man who looked him in the eyes before he died, was it any better that he flew airplanes that dropped bombs on people he could not see? Women and children died, men too--some of them enemies and most of them innocent civilians. The film doesn't answer these questions as much as it asks them and then shows the results of certain decisions in the life of one military man. It also raises the question of following orders; soldiers must do that, but sometimes the orders are wrong or immoral or both. If they follow orders that result in the deaths of many civilians and even fellow soldiers, what then? Who is responsible? Can one argue that all deaths are acceptable in a war? How many innocent deaths are acceptable? One need only look at some of the atrocities of the Vietnam War committed against civilians to know that this is a real problem in wartime.

Films like this are uncommon in today's world. We have become used to watching war and spy films where mass killings are de rigueur. The body count mounts and there is little reflection on that fact. We are witness to the atrocities, the violence, the brutality. We see arms and legs lost, soldiers shot up, twisted bodies on the battlefield. We rarely get a glimpse into the workings of a soldier's mind, much less into the workings of the minds of ordinary civilians. Orders to Kill is worth seeing, and I hope to watch more films like it, even though I know that most of them will probably be classic films like this one.