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Archive for the Category »Culture «

Mar
27
Introducing Dinner and Movie: Alice in Wonderland
Ami Chopine

My husband Vladimir and I like movies. A lot. We like them for their stories and also for the fact that they are a great visual art form. Through Geekatplay Studio, we’ve started doing reviews.

We like to eat too. In fact, Vladimir was once a trained chef. He’s still trained, but doesn’t do it for a living. What this means? When he cooks I get to eat good. And he’s more picky than I am. Anyway, we like to try new restaurants, and we both like to blabber about what we’ve eaten and seen. So we’ve titled our review section “Dinner and a Movie”

They’re hardly exclusive, which means I’ll be posting them here as well. The first movie: Alice in Wonderland.

Because we went to the movie early and Vladimir was still quite full from his lunch, we chose to go to the movie before dinner. Still, I hadn’t eaten a lot so upon entering the theater I was easy pray for the scent of cinnamon roasted almonds in the table as one enters the theater. Kudos to that business. They’re always yummy.

The Movie:

Vladimir summed it up best when we walked out of the movie. It missed the magic of Wonderland.

The biggest reason for this is that writer Linda Woolverton, with director Tim Burton’s help, bent the whimsy of Wonderland to preach a message. There are two messages she seems to be going for. One comes in the silly frame story in which we’re shown that “marriage is the same as death of the imagination or intellect” line. Of course, to make the argument work she must ignore the fact that even though Alice didn’t like corsets or stockings and was easily distracted by beauty, she probably liked boys and looked forward to getting married and hoped for something romantic like most girls her age. And then, of course, the only choice she is given is between a nitwit of a lord and not getting married.

She follows the white rabbit again, having forgotten what happened before except as a dream. In fact, that is one of the problems. There is nothing new in Wonderland, so Woolverton and Burton must make her rediscover it all. This means we get to see her make all the same mistakes and introductions again though this time in a darker world. So while this is supposed to be about regaining imagination and believing in the impossible (another preached message, but one with more truth and common to “enter fairyland” type movies), there doesn’t seem to be much imagination in this movie. The quest turns out to be a cliched “Find the sword, become the champion, and slay the dragon” quest. Literally. Having a girl do it doesn’t redeem it.

Alice had two hero’s hesitations. One of them is another message: I must follow the path I choose. And it is a silly message here because she loves wonderland and has no reason not to choose the path of saving it, except to be obstinate about getting her own way. And this could have so easily been turned into the moral dilemma “Save Wonderland or Hatter?” Her second hero’s hesitation is even more flimsy. She says over and over again that she couldn’t kill if her life depended on it. It isn’t because she’s afraid, because she goes into great danger to rescue her friends. We’re given nothing, no where in the movie, to back up her protests that she can’t kill anything. It fades away for no real reason in the end, letting her accomplish the task they’ve asked her to do from the beginning.

Lack of motivation for actions runs through the entire movie. It is especially damning at the end. What in her world was enough motivation to make her go back to it? There is nothing that needs her up above, and in the movie Underland is real. She has no ties but the parental one she leaves behind anyway. Why didn’t she stay in Wonderland, where we see what might be a budding romance between her and the Mad Hatter. Where she could also be something strange and wonderful and powerful? Where there is a true happy ending? Instead, she comes back and decides to go into business with an old guy that accepts this 20 year old girl as an equal. In Victorian England. Yeah. We know what’s on his mind. Plus he gets to control her money too. So it turns out that despite the fluttering around and happy music at the end of the movie, this is a disturbing dark ending. Because either Woolverton or Burton hasn’t dropped the hint that it is a dark ending, because they might believe in their silly messages, it appears to be a happy ending. The ones least likely to see through it are the ones most likely to be harmed by the lie that a person with much more experience than a you, that for some magical reason is picking you, is doing it out of respect rather than the desire to take advantage. Did a girl write this? Really?

I loved Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter though. He is revealed to be in rebellion against the Red Queen and her harmful excesses. It’s fantastic how whenever he actually says something in that capacity he loses his innocent madness and becomes dark voiced and Scottish in accent. Plus he just looked interesting.

But the White Queen, played Anne Hathaway who I usually like as an actress, had bizarre hand fluttering which distracted so much from the character that I couldn’t take her seriously even as an eccentric. Mia Wasikowski does a competent but uninspiring job. But it might be hard to do anything with the often repetitive and whiny lines she had.

The look of the movie was what drew us in and it is enough that we’ll probably own it. We’d bought a triptych of posters before we even saw it. The gnarly trees (a Tim Burton signature) were backdrop to “Underland” whether the land was ravaged or not. And either way, they looked good – contrasting lush scenes and emphasizing scorched earth. There were a few missteps. The CGI of the Red Queen’s champion on his horse looked fake through out. Not surprisingly with Burton, things looked more often decrepit than not, another disappointing detail in which the magic of Wonderland was ultimately buried by the conceits of its writer and director.

Dinner:

Usually, this section is going to be about some new restaurant we’ve gone to. But our plans to start reviewing hadn’t cemented yet and after the almonds, we really weren’t that hungry. It wasn’t late and we hadn’t arranged dinner for the kids or ordered them to scrounge the fridge and pantry. But it was too late for us to want to start dinner. So we picked up some Chinese food from Rice King Express in South Jordan.

You can already tell by the name what kind of a place it is. In the brightly lit and sparsely decorated dining room, there are a few token tables to let patrons eat there, but it is mostly a venue for takeout. Always clean, with friendly cashiers and a family dinner at $28, we go there relatively often. It’s certainly better than fast food chains.

The fried rice and noodles are average. The sweet and sour pork is sometimes overcooked, though this time it was perfect. But overcooked or not, there is always too much batter. This holds even more true for the shrimp that comes with the family dinner, which sometimes sport the sheen of more grease than I’d like to consume.

What we really like is their orange chicken. I’m not sure I’ve tasted better anywhere else. The chicken, this time with the breading just right for the purpose, is nestled onto shredded cabbage and all of it drenched in the sauce. The sauce sports just the right amount of hot and sweet and citrus, none of it overpowering. Besides being a compliment in both texture and taste, the cabbage serves as a way to taste more sauce without it just being sauce when all the chicken is gone. We sometimes just get a couple of orders of the orange chicken to go with rice we’ve cooked ourselves for dinner.

There are better sit down Chinese restaurants in the area, but Rice King Express is the best restaurant focusing take out around here.

Category: Culture, movies  Tags:  One Comment
Sep
30
The Killers Concert
Ami Chopine

 I’d said right after the concert was done that I would blog about it, so my oldest daughter has been waiting for this post. So I guess I must. It isn’t that I don’t want to write about it. It is just that I have had second thoughts about how much I want to say. Sometimes, writing about a thing can dilute it if we want to use the ideas somewhere else. And there are thoughts I want to express more in my fiction than in my blog.

But there are a few thoughts.

Watching Brandon Flowers up there on stage, I got a big dose of Artist. The feeling that he created, he performed, and is now connecting to people. It’s pretty powerful stuff, and is recieved differently by everyone. We put so much of our own stuff into the words and music we’re listening to. I realized that music, like story, had two sided creation. The artist creates their vision and then the audience experiences it through the vocabulary of their experience. I’ve always loved this aspect of artistic creation. Like one of the lyrics say “I don’t shine if you don’t shine”

Which brings me to an aside. The lyrics of Killers music, written mostly by Brandon, I understand, are very layered. A lot of different meanings can be taken from them. That’s some great writing.

There is only one problem with this. When we, as artists, make that connection with people we’ve never met, there is a lopsided relationship. The reader or listener feels that someone has understood them. And so often, the audience thinks they understand the artist too. They have found a friend. But it is a friend that can never give more than performances. They can’t be true friends to everyone in the audience, no matter how worthy that person might be.

There is one other thing I wonder too. Brandon is Mormon. So are we. The concert was in Salt Lake,  where there is a large minority of Mormons. I’ve noticed that his music has drawn from a lot from the well of religion. I wonder if he felt more understood in Utah and if those of us who are LDS get things a little more than others. Even as I wonder this, I berate myself for feeling elitist. True or not, the paragraph above still applies.

Then there is the other side. The downside of it all. The process of art has the deeply unfortunate side effect that it takes us away from our loved ones, even without factoring in performance and stardom. We live so much in our own head, we might find it harder to see how we are affecting our family and friends. This is not just arrogance. It is blindness, a native disability I must strive to overcome. A lot of artists, me very much included, are really introverts. Socially stunted in my youth from a variety of factors, hopefully less so now. Somehow, in me at least, this is part of the chemistry of living in our creativity and recording it in an effort to gain audience. It falls upon me, though, to try harder to give those around me what they need of me. Knowing my weakness is the first step to overcoming it.

I came out of there with a short story idea. Plotting it out, I’m afraid it might be a novel. But some of the elements are better suited for a short story, so I’ll have to rethink some things, as well as plot out the novel because that has great potential.   

 Yeah. So, wierd reaction to the concert maybe. But not for me, with the stuff that bounces around in my head. I hope your experience was a good as mine.

Category: Culture, It's a beautiful life, Writing  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
Sep
18
Who gets to define bad science?
Ami Chopine

If you know me, you know I’m religious. A faithful Mormon to be exact. And you know that I’m skeptical.

There is a church in the area I live that has a sign with sayings posted on it.

This week, the quote is “The real opium of the masses is bad science.”

Hmmmm. That could be true. How often do we see science invoked for a new drug, educational method, etc that turns out to have little benefit or be harmful.

But is that the opium of the masses? No. I don’t think so. The masses, I believe, really don’t care about science or about God. They care about cars, movies, gadgets, getting thin, eating good food, hair, facials, TV, etc.

But that is beside the point. I’m worried about what a church who is complaining about bad science thinks that bad science is. Is it  Creationism and flood geology*? I wonder how often that false doctrine has lead to the loss of faith by rationally thinking children who examine the evidence and realize that what their parents and Sunday School teachers taught them is wrong? If that is wrong, doesn’t mean everything else is? That is often the conclusion.

No. And it is a pet peeve of mine that many people hang the truth of Christianity on that. This means they must either hang on to a view of the world that has been proven false or give up their whole belief. Both reactions are the result of poor logic.

But then, maybe that pastor was making that point? That would be awesome.

Bad religion is limiting God to a universe that is small in time and scope, which is what Creationism does.

*A definition is probably necessary for anyone who might not be aware of that discussion, and think that I suddenly don’t believe God created the earth. By Creationism, I mean the idea that the earth was created in 7 days (even 1000 year long ones) and is only 6000 years old, and that the layers that imply a much older earth were laid down by the flood.

Category: Culture, Religion  2 Comments
Sep
01
First impressions of a really new school
Ami Chopine

So after some inspiration from my sister, Tonya, I enrolled my eleven year old daughter into a charter school. Her friend situation at the other school wasn’t the best, and I felt lukewarm about both the teachers and the principal who seemed less supportive of the accelerated program my daughter was in. Since I’d come to this conclusion later in the year, I figured there wouldn’t be any available for this year. But it turned out that American Preparatory Academy was starting a new campus in West Valley City and had several openings for 4th grade on up (to 9th grade). The educational philosophy of APA looked like it would be a great fit for both her and my precocious four year old who I knew just wasn’t going to be served well by traditional public schools.

Yesterday was my daughter’s first day there. It was everyone’s first day. I chose to go in with her, as many parents did. When we walked into the school, I became immediately excited. Because of the part of town the school is in, I knew there would be lots of Latinos. But there were also many blacks and Muslims. In Utah! Here, my child would be experiencing ethnic diversity that I never thought possible in this state.

Sweet.

The rest of the day I tinkered around, curious about what she was doing. The drive getting her was difficult, since I had to drop some kids off at one place just ten minutes before I could even go in her direction, and I knew she was at least twenty minutes away. New traffic difficulties made it thirty. I got a bit stressed on her behalf. I’d told her we’d be late, but I didn’t think it would be this much. And she gets a bit anxious about that thing. Then the carpool, since it was the first for everyone, was of course very backed up. We ended up parking and walking, and she was almost, but not, the last in her class. Looking out the window.

Eventually, we did make it. And their system looks good for safety: we now have a family number that we need to display. When it is seen, they will announce the number over the intercom and the kids can come out to load up. We’ll see how fast it goes in action.

She likes to talk about things, so she was all to happy to satisfy my curiosity. We already knew about the uniforms. They also have a school poem which is a parable rather than a list of virtues. Like that. Reading fluency is about correctness and speed, and they’re still working on that in sixth grade. The timing and method of correction is both strict and positive. Literature is a different subject than reading. Fantastic! History includes religion as an integral part again. Yay! So far math has just been drill tests, so we’ll see how that subject is taught. And science fell victim to first day of school instruction, so we’ll see there too. Desks must always be totally clean. Student must sit up straight while listening. Her papers came home in a soft case with folders inside already prepared. Keeping this organized is a must not a suggestion. I sign off her homework every day. Band is something everyone participates in every day. The teachers don’t just stand around watching the kids during recess, but play with them. Rather than interrupting class when the restroom is needed, there is a special hand raise, and the student can go when the teacher nods. How cool is that?

Anyway, the whole system just thrills me. Lots of structure, and an emphasis on being positive as well. The best of old school and new research on how children learn and grow.

Yes. I’m an artist, the writing kind, and sometimes offbeat and even disdainful of some cultural norms. You might think this strict structure would bother me. But if there is one thing to know about being a successful artist it is discipline. No other skill or talent makes any difference if we don’t put in the regular time and effort, in both our thoughts and actions. And any skill or talent can be learned with discipline.

I’m kind of wishful. This kind of well thought out structure would have really benefited me as a child.

Category: Culture, Parenting  Leave a Comment
Aug
09
New Orleans
Ami Chopine

The city that never sleeps. I’d forgotten about that little tag. We got in on Sunday night at 10, worried about finding a decent place to eat. We shouldn’t have. We got out of the hotel room on Royal Street and the city was as busy as if it were day. It turned out that we would be eating about this time every night.

My first dish was salmon and crab at Royal House. I knew, coming to NO, my focus on meals would be on seafood, since I don’t get the good stuff in Utah (except in the form of sushi). The salmon was decently cooked, but the real treat here was the crab. I think that was the best I tasted while there. I also ordered some bread pudding to take back to the hotel room and enjoy. Our good experience with the food service there led to another trip later on. We were directed to a romantic corner that evening, where the air conditioning was perfect. The service once again excelled and our previous waiter also dropped by to see how we were doing. That night we shared soft shell crab, a muffalata, and hush puppies. Everything was delicious. I really want to learn how to make hush puppies.

Lots of things in NO in general are fried, which is a bit disappointing since that way of cooking can really drown out any unique flavors. But they do it well, knowing how not to make it greasy and the flavors manage to make it through mostly intact.

We also ate at a great place on Bourbon Street (about 1 block and a half down from Canal on the right side, wide open). The whole group of people at e-on software enjoyed the food on the balcony. Very fun. The blackened catfish there was another example, though, of the flavor of the real food being drowned out by the cooking. Don’t get me wrong. The hot spicy dish was superb. And next to it was jambalaya, which I mentioned in an earlier post, and is another thing I want to learn how to make myself.

One of the fun times there was going to Cafe Du Monde, where I had beignets. These pastries are basically deep fried bread with lots of powdered sugar on top. Lots of it. They were good, but I couldn’t quite finish all three of them. Coffee is also supposed to be good with them, but as we don’t drink coffee, I had some milk instead.

I suppose I have to be honest though. Since our idea of a good time is not going out to bars or visiting strip joints, except for the food, the night life at New Orleans didn’t appeal to us very much. As someone put it, not just sleazy but cheezy. This aspect of the city is depressing. We should have added on another day, so we could see some of the galleries, antique shops, and taken some tour during the day time. As it is, the things we want to see are mostly things we could see in other older US cities and even more so in European cities.

What we did enjoy very much was the people we worked with and the company we kept in the evenings during dinner. Overall, it was a very enjoyable time and we’re glad we went.

Category: Culture, Geekatplay  2 Comments
Jul
23
George Bernard Shaw quote
Ami Chopine

I follow John Cusack, an actor I’ve loved since I was fifteen, on Twitter. He tends to tweet a lot of quotes, to the point that this morning I complained that his massive amounts of tweets had drowned out my real posse, a bunch of writers mostly and some other friends and my sister (none of my other family is on it).

A quote this morning took up most of my brain while on my run. Now remember, this is my brain taking that quote only in the context it was given. So I might be missing something, but even so things like that get one thinking.

George Bernard Shaw: The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

I really don’t agree with that quote, on a number of levels.

First, success at what? Motherhood? Being a computer programmer? Car mechanic? Psychiatrist? Offending in any of these livelihoods is likely to lose you the job.

So, I suppose we’re talking about the arts. Now there is a sticky mess, and I’m not going to get into just what the arts are here, because that’s a whole other post. But something I do believe is that art should inspire us.

An offensive movie/book/painting rarely, if ever, inspires any good.

Maybe Shaw means that truth offends people. That can be right. But the more difficult art is presenting the truth in such a way that it is digested and integrated into a belief system. A slow process usually, and one where offense is not a good tool.

Does it mean making loads of money by being offensive? A small handful of people do that, but those are more the exception. And using shock or offense is, again, primitive and easy – appealing only to our baser instincts.

Then there is the offense we get if we see others harmed in word or deed. I doubt this is what Shaw meant.

But now, let’s flip it around, to those theoretically being offended and therefore providing success to the offender. In fact, isn’t it one of the ideals that we should be hard to offend? Willing to listen to something, evaluate it critically, willing to find out we are wrong and then move forward? To accept other people’s differences? Willing to forgive the illspoken word?

The quote in that context then also becomes a statement that any successful artist is “holier than thou”, who would be so offended by the truth. That angle makes it a quote not worth quoting.

If it is the truth we’re spreading, then we use reason, love, and patience. Story telling, if rooted in truth, is one of the best mediums for teaching.

And one last thing: there might always be a group offended by some piece of art or some truth. So, we also shouldn’t bend over backwards to create pablum. But we shouldn’t be trying to stick it in their face either.

Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me of Shaw thought I’d over thought something he might have said without thinking. But I enjoyed the journey, and learned a tidbit more about stuff, so that’s okay.

Category: Culture  Leave a Comment
Apr
01
A bad trip
Ami Chopine

On the way home from my book club tonight, I saw an advertisement for Impact Training. Oh man, did that bring back some memories. I’m not sure whether to be thankful or angry. You see, my parents did this, way back in the mid eighties, when it was but a young company on the crest of this trend of New Age seminars meant to replace the spirituality that people had left behind in their pursuit of success. My parents were informed that this was the Mormon version.

I’ll start with the good. I learned two things from them. First, I am responsible for the way in which I react. Second, I should not be afraid to be exactly who I am, and conversely I shouldn’t want other people to be like me. Okay, a third one: guilt is not helpful.

These are excellent things to know, and I’m very glad to have learned them.

I learned them because my parents kept on bringing this message home and it really resonated with me. For them, it was good for a short while. But one of the problems was that this Impact Training wasn’t structured to give you the information and then let you go on your way. No. It was a situation where you’d need the next step, and the next, and the next – but without much substance in any of them beyond the initial teachings.

My parents brought my sister and I to the teenager/parent one. I was curious, at how great this must be. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed. There was nothing much going on here than object lessons, relaxation techniques, and team building techniques brought together in what was actually a bit addictive. And what was worse, the leaders manipulated the bond built between these people so that social pressure was put on everyone to attend the next training. Each of these, of course, costing more money. One interesting and alarming side effect was that integrity was deemed very much less important than how one felt.

Wrapped up in some very excellent truths was a technique meant to enslave people. I saw people lose their religion, friendships, and marriages over it. I’m a bit older now and recognize it better.

My parents started to get clued in to what was actually going on. We had to move out of state to get away from it.

Most everything my parents had gained in self esteem and drive through these trainings faded. It had been artificially inflated, based not on real gains, but on junk spirituality.

Category: Culture, Religion  5 Comments
Feb
05
Bill Gates
Ami Chopine

I have liked Bill Gates for quite a while now. He was a true geek: excited about what he did. Occasionally stepped on some toes. But when he really grew up and then found himself a billionaire he started doing what we all wish we could do.

This stunt was just too cool.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/microsoft/4524578/Bill-Gates-unleash-swarm-of-mosquitoes-at-TED-2009.html

Who here thinks it is deeply wrong that more money is spent curing baldness than malaria?

THAT is all about what we are doing. What we personally care about and how those data points build up. Of course, we don’t really THINK about how worrying about our personal appearance can impact the market and therefore what jobs are out there for people to get and make a living on. We all just want to have our families and live. But what if we could change it so that it became easier for people to make a living in more helpful fields?

Category: Culture, Philanthropy  Leave a Comment
Jan
30
Guilty reading, Ysabel, and Ender in Exile.
Ami Chopine

My fiction reading life recently has been conducted nostalgically under the auspices of guilt. Many of my moments were stolen from time I should have been dedicating to the book I was writing. And yet, I think they were part of what kept me sane. I’m far less burnt out than I expected to be, writing wise at least. I really, really want to tackle the last little bit of a short story I started before the contract got real and the short story that needs a revision. Plus a genius editor nudged me in the direction of turning one of my short stories into a stand alone novel that would probably be a better first novel to market than my beloved trilogy.

My house is a thorough mess though. This weekend we should have the companion website complete and so my work with that book will be lessened. Not finished, alas, since there are promoting things to do for it.

The two books I’ve read during this time were Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay, which I’d hoped to finish for a book club but didn’t make. I sort of doubt I’ll be able to do the next one in my club, which is Kay’s Summer Tree, but at least I’ll show up.

Ysabel feels to me to be a more realistic “Harry Potter”. The main character is a young man who has discovered that he is gifted with magic. If there were magic in the world hidden from most people, I feel more it would take the form of this than a society which so isolates itself it doesn’t even know how “muggles” live. Another way it parted from the cliche Cinderella archetype is that our main character has a fairly good family and it naturally becomes a family affair to help in the quest of this book. The boy experiences a true coming of age through the experiences of the book and we come to appreciate what kind a man he is becoming. These two depictions (a family coming together and the taking up of hard responsibilities) is worth the read all by itself.

Still, in some ways this book seemed to be a bit slow. The action and problems didn’t build up enough. When I discovered I was near the end, it surprised me and I wondered how it would resolve quickly. The problem itself seemed to simply dissolve upon reaching the 1st goal. There had been expectation that they’d need to DO something after it was reached and our hero was given tools as well. This made the end, while interesting, a bit dissatisfying and even more so considering how some aspects of the magic system were explained.

The next book I finished was Orson Scott Card’s Ender in Exile.

I have to admit that I’ve been reading Card since I was a teenager. At this point, that is more of my life than not. His writings, to me, always feel like the comfortable coming home. This isn’t just a matter of nostalgia. He isn’t the only favorite author from my youth, but he is always the cleanest and quickest read.

This one came home a bit too much for me, but I don’t think my problem would transfer over to many. Well, actually I kind of hope that a lot of people would have at least a similar problem since that would mean more success for his InterGalactic Medicine Show magazine. (You know, the one where MY story is…) Card wrote several short stories set in the Enderverse in the hopes that this could bolster the magazine up. These found themselves in the book as well, with some slight revision.

This means that in the middle of the book I reread passages I’d read not just once, but a very thorough second and sometimes third time for the sake of helping with Jake Black’s upcoming Authorized Ender’s Companion.

After having experienced that, I have to admit that while I felt some feelings of “Please, lets get through this” it opened up to me Card’s talent for editing and melding all of these stories into one. The book flowed rather well. I doubt that anyone who hadn’t read the other stories would know their origins.

The story itself was as always with Card a satisfying exploration of character. From a boy shattered by his unintentional act of xenocide to a young man with hope of redemption, we see here finally the story we didn’t know we wanted: Ender’s growth into Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead.

We see the parents who, though desperate for their lost son, know he can never return. I must admit to being somewhat irritated at Ender in regards to his reaction to this. Where he was so smart before, he is suddenly oblivious? Of course, he doesn’t know what readers of the Shadow books know. Still I expected more, but maybe not. Aren’t we all oblivious to our parents? Maybe there is some kind of strange veil over the workings of those who have cared for us since before our brains knew how to distinguish between color and sound.

It was Valentine that they send in their stead to care for Ender. Valentine who is still healing herself. She and Ender have not yet found the familiar relationship that carried them through millennia, but we see its beginnings here.

The familiar scene of Ender finding the cocoon fares well under Cards extended treatment and the planet Shakespeare (formerly known as Rov) also thrives in the heart of the reader.

The story of Virlomi and Randall Firth on Ganges, which becomes the ending of this book, unfortunately suffers. What page time they had was undeniably good but I felt it was glossed over. This was probably in favor of adding already written material.

There is talk of Card milking his Ender books. True or not (and if true I suspect the publisher of pushing it) this addition to the Enderverse is not a flimsy add on to the same universe, desperately trying to achieve the same blockbuster success simply be being associated with its predecessors, but is satisfying deeper look at Ender that seems to know its place.

Category: Culture, Reading  Leave a Comment
Dec
15
Social thoughts
Ami Chopine

Something happened in the store Saturday with some individuals who’d been stressed out, gotten angry at each other.

My first reaction was to go home and tell my husband about the situation in detail. And then on the way back I started to wonder why. Why did I feel like recounting how these two had acted? What did I think to accomplish with this?

Is it gossip when they are strangers? I think it is, now. So what if the reputation is of anonymous people. The purpose, on some analysis, had been to elevate myself above them. The result would have been a little more negativity in the world.

It is sometimes these little kinds of decisions that build up, create the place we live. We can be joyful, productive, creative, without putting others down no matter how others have acted.

I say this wondering how I have behaved in this way in the past.

I have pointed out things I think are wrong. Sometimes I’ve been irritated or angry, but a great deal of my reason is because people are publicly acting in ways that I feel can harm other people. While I think it is still important to point out things that I think are scams or untruthful, I need to rid myself of irritation and anger. It serves little purpose other than to perpetuate itself.

Category: Culture  Leave a Comment
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