Violence and Food...from Carousel to Life to Food Revolution..a mixed bag post

Watching Carousel in the background - forgot what a dark musical that is. The darkest of the Rodgers and Hammerstein oeuvre. It's about a Carousel barker who falls in love with a lovely gal in New England. He gets killed and goes to heaven. And is sent back to help his daughter whose in trouble. But before that happens, he has to tell his story to the star keeper in heaven who is responsible sending him back. In the story, we learn that he was abusive to his pregnant wife, stole, and didn't really work. He comes back to help his daughter who was hurt much like he was and could go down his path. It's a disturbing musical...on a lot of levels, that I hadn't noticed before. I'm willing to bet that one out of three women have either experienced physical or emotional abuse from a boyfriend or father or husband or male boss/teacher etc. Two of my great-grandmothers - one on my father's side, and one on my mother's were beaten to death by their husbands (my great-grandfathers). At least two aunts were either emotionally or physically abused by theirs. And I've heard the excuses. They are all the same. Usually out of anger. Or their own fathers were like this. Or lack of control. I think it's about power mostly...and having none, so they struck out. But it does not excuse it.

Our media gives us mixed messages...as if we ourselves can't quite decide. Is it okay to use violence to resolve our problems? Is it ever okay? And if not, why do we feel compelled or satisfied when we see it resolved in this manner either in a video game or tv show or a film?

Also watched Life on tv this weekend...it's reassuring in that it shows violence exists in nature as well. Perhaps the desire to resolve issues with violence is in the DNA. It is deeply embedded in our genetic code. Animals kill, fight, and chase each other and other animals. Insects do as well. Nature is extraordinarily violent, yet beautiful in its violence, there's a grace to it that is difficult to describe. It reminds me of watching the Jerome Robbins dances from West Side Story, yet here we see the grace of the cheetah landing on the ostrich or the lizard grabbing a pray mantis with its tongue or a pair of birds doing a mating dance of joy across a pond.

( Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution )

( NYC's battle to eat healthy ...it is admittedly becoming a rather absurd one, depending on your point of view. )

Sigh. People bewilder me. Apparently mother nature did not deem it fit to give everyone common sense. And particularly not those of us who decide to become politicians.

Kitchen sink post - Caprica, Buffy Comics, Religion, amongst other things..

1. This link touched me today in such a way that tears silently rolled from my eyes:

http://65redroses.livejournal.com/139488.html?nc=1147

It's the journal of a young woman who had cystic fibrosis and recently died. Her words remind me a bit of Cassie's from the BTVS episode "Help" except different.

2. Today is cool, but soft and springlike, with a bit of flower in the air, and a light dusting of rain...and I went to my new church to listen to a liturgical choir on Palm Sunday. The Choir was singing a new arrangement on Handel's Chandos Anthem - using the psalm from David in the Old Testament, My song Alway. Was quite lovely and I'm not a fan of liturgical choral music - tends to put me to sleep or just annoy me. But this was lovely, felt a bit like listening to a rumbling brook or a quiet breeze in a glade as swans swim by. Although, in reality, I was sitting on a cedar pew, with a red cushion beneath me, staring up at tiffany stained glass, with light streaming in, as the choir sang...their voices melding with the string instruments that backed them.

As I sat there, I thought on other things...

As a child my father used to entertain me in church by clasping his hands together and saying, this is the church, then steepling his index fingers, and here is the steeple, and...he'd open up his thumbs (open the doors), and then wriggle his fingers - "here are all the people".
Looking around the church - it struck me, not for the first time, that it was the people that made it what is was. The choir, the pastor/minister, the congregation...it always is, regardless of the religion.

3. Found this while looking for spoilage on Buffy Issue 35 - which I'm still being foiled on.
Dang it. I want to know where the stupid story is heading before I invest any more of my precious time and money on it. If it's heading towards Twuffy fighting the big bad and living happily ever after? Count me out. Because you know, that's just beyond my capabilities of suspenison of disbelief. Plus if I wanted to read that - I'd be reading the Twilight novels, thank you very much.

Anyhow, what I did find out, which you may already know about and chose to ignore...is what that one-shot I predicted would show up either in August or December would be.
( the Buffy one-shot spoiler - don't get excited, it's not that big a deal, no Spike mention whatsoever... )

4. Caprica - not much to say really. I liked last week's episode better.( Read more... )