http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 9 Sep 2003 17:31:22 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/09/173122.php Fran MasonWent to see the new Kevin Costner-Robert Duvall movie, "Open Range." Tom and I both liked it a lot. I'm mixed on Kevin Costner because, as Tom pointed out, he has such a droning voice. But I like his appreciation for expansive natural vistas, mountains, prairies, and so on, which are used beautifully in "Open Range," as they were in "Dances With Wolves."These movies are like a vacation for me. I really liked Robert Duvall in this one. He makes an excellent old-timer in this and in "The Apostle," which I'd like to see again. As the New Yorker review of "Open Range" pointed out, Costner defers to Duvall throughout the movie. I found that this created a warm (but not gushy) relationship between the two characters and also took the emphasis off of Costner's droning delivery. Annette Bening was fabulous too. "Open Range" was sort of like "Little House on the Prairie" with gunfights and other conflict. (I mean that in a good way. "Little House on the Prairie" was one of my favorite shows when I was about ten.) Video8246@blogcritics.org Tue, 9 Sep 2003 17:31:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/29/201721.php Fran MasonI've been reading the book Ann Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School. The author gardens in the Seattle area and writes books on the subject. A great life! This book is full of color pictures and specific examples of how she combined plants when landscaping around her home and school building. Because I'm in Seattle too, these examples and pictures are especially inspiring. I got so inspired, in fact, that I mapped out a 255-square-foot area of lawn on the far right side of our back yard, which I'm going to turn into a planting bed for small trees and tall shrubs that will screen the nieghboring yard. Books7961@blogcritics.org Fri, 29 Aug 2003 20:17:21 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/26/150706.php Fran MasonI was left with the feeling that I'd just watched A Hard Day's Night. Like the Beatles in that movie, the Blue Angels are shown always together, wearing matching clothes, always smiling, doing exuberant physical maneuvers (although in planes instead of on a grassy field), and traveling from place to place to put on shows for adoring crowds.Tom and I borrowed The Blue Angels: Around the World at the Speed of Sound from the library, wondering "How do they do that?" after seeing the Blue Angels perform in Seattle. It's a fascinating documentary that shows how the team develops the shows and how they do a meditative mental run-through of each show beforehand while sitting around a desk. Of course, there's lots of great footage shot from inside the canopy that lets you appreciate the pilots' experience of the rolls and other stunts. The final section shows the Blues visiting several Eastern Bloc countries soon after the Cold War ended. You can see their amazement at the sudden friendliness between societies that were bitter enemies just a couple of years before. Video7851@blogcritics.org Tue, 26 Aug 2003 15:07:06 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/22/202044.php Fran MasonMartin Seligman is the pioneering psychologist in the field of positive psychology, the study of mental health, happiness, and well-being. This much-needed field of study complements the established psychological study of mental illness and emotional problems. Instead of figuring out how to make people feel less rotten, positive psychology researchers are learning what it takes to feel more happy and to experience more joy. I found Authentic Happiness so uplifting the first time I read it that I'm rereading it now.True joy and life satisfaction are earned, or built, through use of an individual's signature strengths to experience "flow" and meet challenges. This book asserts that while each person has a set range of happiness, it is possible to use the controllable aspects of life to pull yourself up into the top of your range. It's imperative to learn to dispute pessimistic habits of thought in order to appreciate positive results and roll with their momentum. Most of the book's chapters contain a quiz to show the reader where he or she is on the spectrum being discussed, such as optimism, specific strengths, or the ability to love and be loved. Seligman is an unapologetic believer in self-improvement, so this book is both informative and instructive. His writing style is clear and charmingly self-effacing. I enjoy the book for his communication style as well as for his messages.It's still early in the course of study of positive psychology, so some of the statements made based on research results seem to be stretching things a bit. And I'd like to hear more about how these principles can be used to help people who are entrenched in long-term depression; the book touches on depression as a condition that usually lifts within several months. When that doesn't happen, or when depression returns more severely over the course of a life, there could be important opportunities to call on positive psychology if it develops effective tools for critical situations. But the author states up front that his mission is to study "how to go from plus two to plus seven in your life, not just how to go from minus five to minus three and feel a little less miserable day by day." Authentic Happiness provides an inspiring overview of that study. Books7777@blogcritics.org Fri, 22 Aug 2003 20:20:44 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/08/193751.php Fran MasonDecide! How to Make Any Decision is a short, quick read that is full of simple ideas about how to make hard decisions. Like other self-published books I've read, its tone is chatty and warm. It also wanders into related but off-topic self-improvement areas like becoming better organized; using visualization to help achieve goals; asking for what you want; asking questions of doctors; and exercising. All of these worthwhile steps can add up to an easier time making decisions, so I can't complain about their being included; but it all adds up to a stream-of-consciousness text flow.A few of the ideas I thought were useful ones for decision-making included:1. Keep a journal--even if it only amounts to a series of lists. List-making could be a great tool if you don't like to write, providing some of the benefits of "writing to think" without the tedium of grinding out paragraph after paragraph if that's not your bag.2. Ask yourself a series of questions related to your decision, and phrase each one so that the answer is yes or no. Listen to the internal answers that arise, instead of agonizing over repetitive indecisive thoughts. These answers can add up to the decision you'll be happiest with.3. See "days of doubt" as "nothing more than a roadside stop" instead of as signs that you made the wrong choice.There are many more and I shouldn't give them all away. If you're stuck in a decision, the friendly and practical suggestions of Karen Okulicz could help you adjust your thought processes to fresher ones and help you through the maze.Also by Karen Okulicz: Try! A Survival Guide to Unemployment Books7459@blogcritics.org Fri, 8 Aug 2003 19:37:51 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/26/230340.php Fran MasonI learned one of my favorite tree facts from this book: the explanation of how water rises to the topmost, thinnest twig of the tallest trees--and does so with no energy expenditure on the part of the tree. Adhesion and evaporation of water molecules provide the mechanism. A water molecule is absorbed into a root and pulls other water molecules behind it; meanwhile a water molecule evaporates out of a leaf in the top of the tree. The next water molecule is pulled up by adhesion, pulling all the water behind it in a chain reaching all the way back to the tree's root. Water moves hundreds of feet straight up, one molecular step at a time.Bernd Heinrich is a biology professor who grew up loving the woods of New England and was eventually able to buy his own large piece of forested land in Maine. Over a period of decades, he's studied and managed his forest. He plants for healthy native diversity, thins areas of rampant growth of a single variety, plants seeds to see how they develop over years, and marks trees for further observation. He makes detailed and beautiful drawings of hundred of trees and their flowers, seeds, and leaves, some of which are included in The Trees in My Forest. He supplements his experimentation with readings of the research of others, speculates on the influence of natural selection on the trees in his forest, and presents the results of his passionate study in this book. Heinrich's writing style is so relaxed that I felt as if I were walking with him through his woods, with him pointing out amazing details and explaining their significance. He has strong opinions about lumber companies' replanted "forests," which aren't really forests but homogeneous crops of identical, cloned trees of the same age, and little else. A forest is a mind-bogglingly complex system, not a farm. But Heinrich doesn't raise the reader's blood pressure by stridently harping on the mistakes of the modern economy; instead he adds to our understanding and appreciation of forests. Most of his more activist-styled writing appears toward the end of the book and is as well-mannered as the rest of his writing.Take a walk in the forest with this author. Books7233@blogcritics.org Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:03:40 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/24/133437.php Fran MasonWhat I Loved is a slow-moving novel that tells the 30-year story of two families who are friends and neighbors in Manhattan. The first-person male protagonist, his thoughts, and his personality are consistent and totally convincing. I can only imagine the deep and sustained concentration it must take to develop such a real-seeming character in a long work of fiction like this one. In this way, the book reminded me of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha with its incredibly real, though fictional, female narrator. The lives of Hustvedt's characters are filled with the dramatic and the quotidian alike, but the significant, plot-moving events are usually sad or tragic ones. The characters' lives progress in a thickening haze of disappointment and helplessness to change situations. Still, the book was an enjoyable read because of the author's apparent affection for her characters and the details of their lives. The portrayal of the New York art world was entertaining as well. Books7174@blogcritics.org Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:34:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/23/154320.php Fran MasonThe Rural Life portrays each month of the year--weather, wildlife, garden chores, mood--as it's lived on farms or ranches in various parts of the U.S. The author has lived all over the country and apparently collected his writings from each place into this essay collection. The book begins its January chapter with a contemplation on journal-keeping. Klinkenborg states up front that it is his worst writerly instincts, rather than his best ones, that makes him want to keep a journal. This seems charming but disingenuous, as we're about to continue reading what is essentially a collection of journal pieces. More candidly, he acknowledges that "What drives the impulse toward New Year's journal keeping is also the shocking realization that the only thing left of the old year is a few tufts of wool caught in the barbed wire." The reader is set up to imagine that a year's journal will follow, but in fact, as mentioned earlier, the essays jump all over the country and obviously encompass many different years. I read reviews that complained about this. I found that it made the book seem sketchy. I had the sense that Klinkenborg wanted to publish a book of rural essays about his New York farm but didn't have enough material, so he built out the book with essays from elsewhere. Still, I enjoyed the writing throughout because of the author's long-practiced contemplations of seasons in the country and how they are reflected in human emotions and activities. Happily (to me) lacking an overt political agenda, the book focuses mostly on positives through description and reporting of natural events and farm routines. But the author also sums up ways in which developers and housing planners destroy farm lands and culture even as they try to evoke its peacefulness in the minds of new-home buyers, and his anger at this destruction and exploitation is apparent. Most of all, though, he displays clear-sighted, down-to-earth devotion to farm life and its setting within the natural world that it modifies but does not blot out.Read this book slowly and enjoy the mental trip to the country; let the author show you the details you might miss on your own:You usually see robins tugging at earthworms as though they were anchor chains, but now the robins run along the edges of gravel roads, picking off [grass]hoppers as they go.... In the morning, as the sun is getting strong, the hoppers climb from the high grass onto the eastern walls of ranch buildings, where they wait until they're fully charged, ready to go off. They're easy to capture in the morning.... Look near enough and it's possible to see your own reflection in the impassive, oval eye. Books6439@blogcritics.org Mon, 23 Jun 2003 15:43:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/07/192653.php Fran MasonLet's say I state an opinion (Point 1). You present an argument addressing it and disagreeing (Point 1a). I respond by abandoning point 1 and, not addressing your Point 1a, instead I introduce a new Point 2. Have I in effect conceded point 1a (admitted I'm wrong)? Example:She: The violin is no harder to learn than the guitar. (Point 1)He: The violin is fretless and requires more sight-reading skill, so it is harder. (Point 1a)She: You don't even know anybody who's learned the violin. (Point 2)Rather than argue for point 1 or against point 1a, she changed the argued point to whether or not he has the credibility to be right, whether he has the expertise to prove the violin is harder. Did she in effect give a little on point 1a, implicitly saying that the violin may in fact be harder but arguing that he can't prove it? Yes, but if she won't acknowledge this verbally, is there any point in continuing the debate? Though she might be as willing to continue arguing as a pit bulldog is to continue biting, she's actually abandoned her original point with her second statement. And what would it take to make her say, "Okay, maybe you're right?" She'd have to resist being defensive--a hard but not impossible task under safe circumstances.I dread arguments. I've often preferred to concede any point, or perform a switcheroo like the above, rather than think through the emotions that can arise during an argument. Since September 11, as my Internet news-commentary reading expanded, I've read hundreds of arguments on weblogs and in weblog comments, and I've started to see the difference between constructive arguments and ones that lose direction and raise the blood pressure pointlessly.Continue reading Sci/Tech5996@blogcritics.org Sat, 7 Jun 2003 19:26:53 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/05/115127.php Fran MasonJust finished reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, by Gregory Maguire. Very entertaining! It's the Cinderella story told from another perspective, the entire thing narrated in flashback with short later-in-life portions at the beginning and end. It's out in paperback and makes a great summer read--meaning it's as easy as watching a made-for-TV movie. That's not to diminish it. Characters grow and develop, relationships evolve, and some events are happy while others are devastating. The story is not as simple as the fairy-tale version.The stepsisters' mother, Margarethe, starts out as a fiercely protective mother, determined to make a good life for her girls, and ends up ... different (to avoid giving away anything). The main character, Iris, shows artistic promise and, as a teen, longs to study under the local painter who is the family's first protector. I especially loved the early scenes describing his studio, his paintings, and Iris's growing response to them.Maguire shows great imagination and creativity with detail, not relying on the bare-bones Cinderella tale, but developing it into a full (and thick) novel. Book-group discussion notes at the end refer to it as an historical novel. I wouldn't go that far in that direction. It does portray excellent period detail from the time of the Dutch tulip-investment bubble, and when the awesome Dutch painting style we are so familiar with was just developing. But the book was fanciful enough that I didn't feel I was learning history; I had no sense for whether or not the historical details were accurate, and didn't care. I was caught up in the plot--as I like to be, regardless what I'm reading.This book was the choice of the book club I belong to, and I suggested it, so I'm responsible for leading the discussion. If I rely on the book-club discussion notes provided, it will be a cop-out, because they're lame as usual. Don't those discussion guides make you feel like you're back in ninth-grade English class, when the teacher asks one of these reaching-for-symbolism questions and the class responds with dumfounded silence?Anyway, I think I'll add Maguire's latest book, Lost, to my list of books to read soon. Books5926@blogcritics.org Thu, 5 Jun 2003 11:51:27 EDT