Monday, February 1, 2010
Good question
posted at 8:56 AM | Permalink | 3 comment(s)
A train friend was musing and thinking out loud. He asked me a question for which I have no better answer than to say that I have observed the same thing. This is the question: why is it that if a relationship starts to sour, it is precisely the personality traits that attracted the two people to each other that make them want to beat their heads on the wall and plead, "Stop!!" This guy's current significant other was charmingly outgoing, smart, chatty, inquisitive, always in motion (his words) but now he reluctantly describes her as pushy, bossy, noisy, nosey and never calms down. It's an intriguing and interesting point partly from seeing opposite nuances of adjectives and partly from the personality and relationship points of view.

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Monday, January 18, 2010
P.S. to 18
posted at 11:43 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Since I wouldn't dream of disobeying my conceit of the one-sentence-a-day format, I must write this separately. When I got on the Parkway leaving Chatham, I knew I'd need gas before I got home but I didn't realize it was quite as low as it was. I didn't see a station in town at least in the direction I went (there may be one the other way, of course) and I didn't see any cute little tank icon on any exit sign as I drove along muttering to myself that I'd go to the first one I came to. It was going to be about 40 miles on the highway til I got to my own exit - I was on the Taconic State Parkway (or Takanak, as my GPS's voice pronounces it). And then up popped the dreaded lighted gas tank sign. I looked it up one time and my manual reassuringly says you have 20-30 miles after the light goes on but mile after mile went by and no gas sign or station. It wasn't until around 27 miles from when the light went on that a sign indicating gas at an exit and it nearly made me jump up and down except that it's hard to drive carefully at gas-conserving 55 mph while jumping up and down, if you've ever tried it. Anyway, lovely day despite having to hold my breath so long. And I do wonder what impressively powerful group that cherishes pristine countryside holds so much sway in all those nice towns that there's absolutely no cell reception for almost the whole distance from Clinton to Austerlitz and not one single gas station.

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Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Closer
posted at 1:04 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Love the show, love Sedgewick, love the candy thing, love watching and understanding (or trying to) the myriad relationships. Cried like Brenda when her cat died. Loved the niece and the visible complexity of the family during that sequence. Loathe the violence and gore like last night's massacre. The truly adorable new kitten helped but the contrast was a little too obvious, among other things, even though it made a good and apt point.

Why is it that shows like this are posing such interesting and complex ethical and moral questions these days?

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Remembering things
posted at 8:58 AM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't remember things without -er- remembering to remember them. I swear I'm going to bring back dance cards strapped to wrists, except I'll call them something more 21st century, of course. I have figured out how to remember when there are things I want to remember to do (I switch rings to uncomfortable fingers and it usually works pretty well). But I have not figured out how to remember what they are. Thus the idea of a list attached to my wrist. (There you go: "wrist list"!) I had a list of things to post about, for example, but I didn't write them down anywhere. Oh, I know: I could write a title and/or subject and then set the schedule for several days hence. That might work. Oh, this has been a good session. Thank you.

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Monday, August 24, 2009
Moral quandary
posted at 9:15 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Having just finished Danial Silva's engrossing current best seller, The Defector, I find myself in a moral quandary about good and evil as far as doing evil deeds in the service of good. I won't go into details about the plot in case a rare reader or two will read the book (the word "spoiler" never prevents me from reading on and then inevitably being sorry I did). Silva's books follow the life and experiences of a grandchild of German Jews who has become a superbly skillful soldier. Gabriel Allon and his mentor go through their lives trying to correct the significant evils done to people they love and to all the other millions attacked and killed by Hitler and Stalin, among others. They champion the bravery of those who withstood the attacks and profess to be doing everything in the name of people who went before them. Theirs is a tone of deep and intense beneficence and the moral high-road.

And yet they perpetrate great violence and kill many people, often viciously. Does God (if there even is a God, of course) distinguish between a bad man's prayers and a good man's prayers? Is it, in fact, morally acceptable for A Good Person to perform vicious and violent acts, to annihilate a many people, simply because he is good and they are not?

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Monday, August 10, 2009
Asking questions
posted at 9:16 AM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
Phrases like "calm down" and "what the heck" rarely accomplish much and are nowhere near as good as asking questions that get the reader / questionee to ask his/her own questions. To that end I refer you to:
--CGHill (a/k/a Dustbury) here on various recent events, and
--John Galt here on the healthcare debate (for want of a better word).
These are admirable pieces of writing to me. When I write questions, no matter how carefully I think I have crafted them, evidently they often sound as if I have an answer in mind and that particularly distresses me when I really do not. The actual problem I know I have, however, is that no sooner do I pose or even write a question, I hear a rebuttal or a follow-up question or a comment or an argument in my head, and from there on I almost certainly pose phrases with those in mind. Which makes it hard to write about subjects with many nuances and sides and shadings.

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Thursday, July 2, 2009
News of the week (not quite in review)
posted at 5:45 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I LOVE CNN's weekly news quiz. Take this week's here.

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Sunday, May 31, 2009
Great movies
posted at 1:30 PM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
One of my all-time favorite movies is on TCM tonight: The Winslow Boy. Written by Terrence Rattigan, it stars Robert Donat as the defense attorney, at his articulate handsome bemused and intense best. The always wonderful Cedric Hardwicke (after whom I named a small stuffed whale when I was a girl, for a reason I no longer recall) and the huskiest-voiced-wide-eyed-woman-in-movies Margaret Leighton are the boy's parents. It's thoroughly engrossing, attractive and engaging to watch, and it poses compelling questions which are interesting to ponder and fun to discuss.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Ethical conflict?
posted at 9:06 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
There was an article in yesterday's NY Times about Greta Van Susteren and Sarah Palin and their husbands. Its point is that the two families have had personal and business interactions while Van Susteren was reporting on the Palins. It poses the question as to whether, when news reporters and news subjects become entwined, in whatever way(s), there may be a huge, dangerous and ominous cavern that sucks down reliable and objective news reporting.

It does seem self-evident that objective reporting is impossible when investigator and investigatee are friends or associates. Of course, 24-hours-around-the-clock coverage demands constant verbiage, which doesn't help.

My personal favorite is Alan Greenspan and his wife (i.e., the woman with whom he presumably shares a bed as well as breakfast and dinner and all manner of casual conversation and intimacy). Andrea Mitchell, premiere NBC news reporter, was his close friend and then his wife for years, all the while he held the country's chief financial post. She wrote hundreds of pieces on politics and the economy and one wonders how any of them could possibly have been neutral or objective. Even more, one wonders why it was never a cause for alarm and the subject of loudly-voiced concerns.

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