A Love Letter to TCM

Happy Birthday TCM. You are 15 years old and I feel as though I cannot remember life before you arrived. That's probably becuase I was only eight, but still, you seem to have always been there with your classic movies, your upstanding hosts in suits leaning casually on an armchiar before the fire, your love of all things draped in old Hollywood glamour. You really are the most chraming channel and the one I am most grateful for and dare I say it, but you are the reason I have cable. Last night you played Gone With the Wind followed by Singin' in the Rain and I wonder if we are best friends you and I. And today you are all about Charlie Chaplin and a little Double Indemnity thrown in there. I admire the way you have stuck to your guns over the years and continued to broadcast and protect the classics as well as the forgotten would be classics. You remind us of what a move can do, of what a really good movie can do, of what a certain camera angle, a certain line, a certain scene of a sunset or a desert, or a certain note on the piano at just the right moment can do. I could not devote my whole evening to the saga of Scarlet O'Hara, but I did catch the last bit before the intermission, the great scene where she vows to never be hungry again and I cannot imagine my life without those words and that scene. It is a thing that always must have been and always must be. And it reminded me that when I got my wisdom teeth pulled it was Gone With the Wind that I chose to watch as my mouth was packed with gauze. It was the sounds of Tara that put me to sleep and the sounds of Tara that woke me up. It is a movie that is a close friend of mine. And TCM, you bring those close friends to me when I least expect, which is the most wonderful of all your attributes. You see, I love the ability to own movies on DVD and watch them whenever I want, but they always lose a little luster that way, they lose the luster of serendipity, of turning on the TV just in time to see exactly what I would watch if I could choose.

A Legend Made in Mid-April

Today is a very important day that raises very important questions. It was on this day in 1865 that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. You all know where and how and who and what and you might even know, like me, what play he was watching and what were the last words he heard. But the question is, can I celebrate this day while maintaining my love of Lincoln? Maybe I can observe this day and celebrate his life. That's how it's done, isn't it? Except, is it not also fair to say with Lincoln as with many other greats who are cut down in their prime, that the cutting down is part of what makes them great? I'm not saying Lincoln was important becuase he died, but that his death preserves his greatness and his memory and it made him legendary the way that only an untimely death can. Now he belongs to the ages, doesn't he? Would he belong to them that same way if he died in 1885 from the flu somewhere out of the way and quiet? Of course William McKinley and James A. Garfield also met a similar fate as Mr. Lincoln and have retained non of the popularity or mystique. Was that becuase even their deaths could not lift up uneventful lives? I suppose I just want to know why I love Lincoln the way I do. Maybe I just love the story. Know one really knows Lincoln the man, they know the hero, the legend, the myth, the creation, and then really the story of his life seems only like one that could be written. And so today I'll neither celebrate the death or the life of Lincoln, but the story of it all. The poor log cabin born rail splitter who grew up and saved the country.

I like to pretend that I have decent music taste, well it's all subjective I know, but yesterday I embraced what I know to be simple unadorned bad music. After spending last Friday night watching all 5 hours (I don't know where the time went) of VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80's, I had a craving to infuse my ipod with a few not so classic throwbacks. And say what you will about my choice, but yesterday I bopped to school to the tune of General Public's Tenderness. Us younger kids, not aware of it in the 80's probably know it from the Soundtrack of Clueless. It's crazy how good that song made me feel. I don't mind saying that I danced just a little bit. I tapped my fingers against my jeans, I bobbed my head, I did, yes, I did mouth the words. Call it a guilty pleasure, but however you want to classify music, however much sugar pop choruses annoy you, there is something to be said for infection. There is something to be said for the way a shallow catchy song from the 80's can make me realize all the happiness at my disposal. I wash the dishes to ABBA on occassion. I have a cassette tape of Barbie and the Rockers with possibly one of the most fantastic songs ever recorded by a doll and her backing band. I love Belinda Carlisle. I just bought Madonna's hits collection from the mid 90's becuase couldn't we all learn a little something from vintage Madonna? Is that even a question?

No News is Good News

I make a lot of vows to turn over a new leaf. I set goals like flossing more often, drinking water, moisturizing my elbows on a regular basis, and most recently catching up on the news. Now I don't have a subscription to the newspaper, which I know I should get, but I do dabble a bit in online news such as the New York Times website. I try to read a little of everything, even the boring sections, like business, but I find the more I read, the less I want to. I don't want to be ignorant of the world around me, but the news is depressing. I don't think I can read another shooting massacre story. I can't read any more about people killing each other. When I was little I would try to watch the news with my parents until my mother decided it was too upsetting. I don't want to ignore the world because it upsets me, but I find it hard to reconcile who I am with what the world is.

Don't Eat This Book

I've been hearing a lot about lead lately and frankly I haven't been listening. But then a few weeks ago the recent lead hysteria that has gradually been growing in the country over the past year finally peeked in my kitchen. I was grinding coffee beans in the evening for a nice cup when I noticed a warning label on the cord of the grinder. It has been there since I bought it several months ago, but I've never bothered to read it assuming that it was warning me not to try to use the grinder in the sink or bathtub. But no! The label told me that the cord contains lead and that I should wash my hands thoroughly after each time I touch it. I suddenly thought back to all the times I had touched that cord and then made breakfast or touched my face or my lips, or the edge of my coffee cup. I thought perhaps I had already been poisoned. So I called my dad, explained the situation and he told me not to worry. He said back in the 1980's when he was making stained glass windows he handled loads of lead without gloves and never tested high for it. As quickly as the panic came it passed, but then just hours ago I was speaking to my mother and she told in fractured bits what she remembered hearing about school libraries in my dad's school district being forced to throw out books published before 1985 because of possible lead used. I have yet to get the full details, but I'm pretty upset and angry that such a thing is actually being considered. I don't claim to understand the lead panic, but fine, ok, in certain situations I can understand the caution. I can understand that small plastic toys made for toddlers that often get chewed on should not contain lead, but I don't think books belong in the same category as toys and I certainly don't think that books should just be thrown out. Think of all those wonderful books. I won't eat them! Can I have them?

Goodwill Gone Bad

I've had some strange experiences at the Goodwill before, but this Saturday tops the pops. I don't know why exactly, but the good people at Goodwill have decided to revamp their operation. There are no more clothing racks, no more hangers, no more neatly organized departments, no men's, no women's, no outerwear. What they have instead are bins. Giant green bins on wheels that are stuffed with a random assortment of everything clothing. I go to the Goodwill to do a little hunting, sure, I love flipping through the racks and racks of outrageously ugly stuff to find the stuff that is either pretty or just ironically ugly. So it isn't that I mind having to do a little digging for the good stuff, but something about grabbing through bins of clothes is more than degrading. And of course I am not the Goodwill's target shopper. I have the luxury of not shopping there. I have a choice, but their mission is to help people without choices. Their mission is to provide an affordable and dignified shopping expereicne to people with very little money. The Goodwill is suppossed to help the community. That's the reason they exist. And now they want shoppers to root through heaps of clothing like searching through the dumpster? As I picked up a few flannel shirts among the wreckage, I went from feeling uncomfortable to feeling angry. I think everyone deserves a better shopping experience. I'm pretty dissapointed.

Rain on Me

It's cloudy and overcast and rainy outside and I wish so much that I could put on Billie Holiday and curl up on the floor by a window just like a cat and read and doze and drink coffee or maybe eat a bonbon and watch the sky get so dark with rain that I need a lamp to read by. Everybody has parts about themselves that they share with everyone, everybody has that one story they tell a hundred times becuase it defines who they are, everybody has one tired attribute. For me it is this love of a gloomy day. It has become such an intrinsic recognizeable part of me that friends and family in all parts of the country will inform me when it is gloomy their way and say they thought of me.

I can remember so many perfect gloomy days. The edges of those memories are so crisp like the outline of a tree branch on dark sky. Someone once asked me about the best day of my life and despite all my other options, like the day I first arrived in Rome, or got accepted to grad school, or kissed a boy, or whatever, I chose the rainy day in ninth grade when I listened to Semisonic on repeat and read Anne of Green Gables underneath a big warm comforter and the rain kep falling and from downstairs the sounds and smells of a big family dinner in preparation floated up to me. And when I emerged from my sanctuary of rainy reading, the house was bright and warm and became Home, with a capital H, like true home.

Or there was that Friday morning my senior year of college when I got up early and sat on the fifth floor of the student union in an empty cafeteria drinking coffee and staring out the window at the leaves just begining to turn red and orange in backdrop of raindrops. I remember really wanting to remember that moment. I remember knowing it was important, that it could bring me an unstoppable joy even in fifty years.