Old Williamsburg
VISITING THE OLD YARN SHOP IN OLD WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Month: April 2017
WHERE’S YOUR POWER?
WHAT EMPOWERS YOU?
When you’re worried, frightened. When you’ve lost your way and have no idea what to do, what’s your game changer? Is it a hug from a loved one? Encouragement from peers or colleagues? A visit to the doctor where he or she assures you that all is well, not to worry?
Information empowers me. Knowledge. Facts. You can hug me, praise me, love me, talk to me, but if I don’t understand what’s going on, I’m lost and miserable. You cannot comfort me unless I have information with which to process current events. For me, the mind rules and always has. This is how I have survived and how I continue to live in a world full of danger.
This is a fundamental issue facing us today. If you are knowledge-based and depend on science, history, knowledge … how do you survive in a world where facts are rare and truth has become as elusive as … white rhinoceroses? As we assassinate our wild species, we are also assassinating our ability to think. Collectively, we seem to be growing ever dimmer.
“Decades” is a show on “MeTV.” It’s for people our age who like remembering things that really happened in a world we recognize as ours.
Last night, they were discussing cults. I have written about the Jonestown massacre and it’s probably my most popular post over the past five years. Last night’s show included, among other cults, “Heavens Gate.” That’s where several dozen people killed themselves so they could arise and be lifted into the UFO following in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. Maybe it’s just as well that people this foolish never lived to create more children. I know it sounds cruel, but really? They believed that? Clearly these are not people for whom knowledge was the critical issue.
What makes you feel free? Secure?
Are you satisfied with “Everything looks great” as an answer? How about “It’ll be huge!” No details. No explanation of what it means, if it means anything. Our new, improved medical care will take care of everyone — except we’ll be lucky if it takes care of anyone.
It’s not that we aren’t asking questions. We ask and we ask again. We can keep asking until we are blue in the face. We aren’t getting answers and probably, never will. But don’t worry. Whatever comes, it will be huge. Magnificent. We’ll get tired of winning. Really! The future is all great stuff for everyone all the time.
If you are a believer, that is. For the rest of us, it looks pretty creepy.
Yet, we can look to the skies. Maybe we’ll see another comet coming our way with a UFO tied to its tail. One of its reclining seats has your name on it. Maybe mine, too. And then, we will have all the health care any of us will ever need.
What empowers me? Information. Knowledge. Facts. Truth.
The more I know, the stronger I feel.
The rest is gibberish.
TRAVEL ON – RICH PASCHALL
Where To Next? by Rich Paschall, Sunday Night Blog
Perhaps you have seen the commercials or print ads for a popular travel planning site that features a garden gnome. Yes, a garden gnome! If you have done any travel planning online, then they may have popped up on your computer too. The internet is smarter than we are and knows when to send us a picture of a garden gnome. For years I thought the ad campaign was silly. I could not imagine why a lifeless gnome was speaking to us from various locales from around the world.
Then a friend recommended the beloved 2001 French film Amelie to me (aka Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain) . Actually, he checked it out of the library, gave it to me and told me to watch it. Amelie was busy in her life solving the problems of others while neglecting her own. As the film progresses, one of the people Amelie turns her attention to is her father, a widower who rarely seems to make it past the garden and his beloved gnome. I will not explain the importance of the wooden figurine, but needless to say, Amelie has launched a great plan that includes the gnome. If you do not know French, watch it with subtitles. It is worth it.
Some years after discovering why the gnome is travelling the world, I had a conversation with musician Tom Joseph Law regarding his t-shirts and where they had been seen online. Perhaps it was just a casual conversation about the posting of a friend, I honestly don’t recall, but I do remember that I had a picture of myself at a local event in 2015 where I was wearing the shirt. So I posted it to Facebook.
In the picture, a stick figure Tom is falling off his surfboard while a large fish seems ready to greet him. It is based on a rather horrible surfing accident which Tom relayed to me one day in quite a bit of detail. Some of it is a bit amusing now that time has passed, but it was not pleasant. It affected Tom’s voice for a long time to follow. This is not good for a singer-songwriter.
The first time I went to Colombia, I took the shirt along and got several pictures throughout Medellin. I am not sure which one I posted at the time, so here is one with my friend and tour guide for the visit. Not only did John take a few pictures with my camera, but we also bothered his friends to get some pictures of us. It was the first time John and I met in person, after a year or more of conversation.
On the next trip to Colombia I may have forgotten this particular shirt, but I had another Tom Law shirt with me. It is the drawing that also appears on the cover of an album (EP, actually). I may have violated the true spirit of the gnome, but nothing says Colombia more than an American wearing the British guy’s t-shirt in front of the British store in a mall in Medellin. So here it is anyway.
When I finally got to travel to England and visit the area where Tom is from, he had already left the country. I am pretty sure that had nothing to do with our arrival. So we found our own travel guide and went on to Bath while Tom was hiding in an eastern European country. I guess it was his own personal Brexit. Anyway, I got my travel companion to take pictures of my gnome t-shirt with my phone. If you wish to see pictures of our tour of Salisbury, Stonehenge and a Roman Bath, you can find them here.
Last month I visited my closest friend in France. This brought the opportunity to get another picture of the traveling t-shirt with the gnome falling off the surfboard. On a sunny day in a week that was filled with clouds, we made it to Strasbourg where I coaxed the French guy into taking pictures of yours truly in the British t-shirt. Since the guy in the foreground is not much to look at, it is fortunate we were on the street that leads up to the magnificent cathedral in Strasbourg.
This historic building was started over a thousand years ago. It is awesome in its intricate details and is always a site to behold. At one time, it was the tallest structure in Europe. Now the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg should be on the tour of anyone passing through the Alsace region, whether you are carrying a garden gnome or not.
When considering all of the countries where this shirt has been, whether there was a postcard home from the gnome or not, Tom thinks it may have made it to more countries than he has. That’s not too bad, actually.
DESERT PATHS
Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge – April 28, 2017
In the course of events, I dove back into my Arizona folders and realized there are maybe a thousand more pictures ready for processing. So today, we are back in the desert … the gritty paths in the great Southwest.
ARIZONA DESERT IN BLACK & WHITE AND A PORTRAIT
A Photo a Week Challenge: Black & White
From Nancy Merrill:
Looking back through past challenges, I found that I have never done a dedicated black and white challenge. It really surprised me. I love editing in black and white. When I was still shooting with film, I loved using black and white dedicated film, especially for slides. There’s something amazing about black and white images. They are instantly nostalgic and artistic.
IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO OR TWO (OR MORE)
From Arizona, three landscapes and a portrait.
SOPHISTICATED SKEWERING
One of my pieces was posted on a highly political board elsewhere. You can look it up at INTELLIGENCE FOR THE UNINTELLIGENT – AND BANNON.
I gave permission and up it went. Before its time in the sun was complete, it had gotten dozens of responses. Being me, I tried to keep up with all the comments, but by the third day it was obvious the commenters had abandoned me and were arguing with each other. I drifted home to Serendipity.
Exhausting! While overall it was a better experience than (for example) Facebook, with fewer people ranting mindlessly, there were still more than a few of them. As an American, I’m proud to say the craziness was reasonably well-distributed between left and right-wing crazies, although in my opinion, right-wingers spew more bad language than left-wingers. This may be due to a weakness in their vocabulary. I encourage them to work on their language skills so when they spew hate, they can do it with more class and fewer references to fecal matter.
What it did remind me of, in full measure, was how hard it is to have a conversation about anything that matters. It isn’t just politics. It’s everything. The entire population of these fifty United States has hit some kind of edge. We’re all ready to pop. Whether it’s the slow driver blocking the left lane, someone stealing a parking space, or putting down too many items in the “quick” lane at the supermarket, we’re ready to blow up. That is unhealthy and sometimes, dangerous.
Personally, I need to take a breath, step back, and rethink how I deal with this.
I’m terribly unhappy with the political situation at home and almost equally upset at the way the rest of the world is drifting. We seem to be collectively heading for another world war, whether we do it nuclear or just kill each other in more traditional ways. Given what’s on the table here and abroad, it will get worse. Can I live in a state of fraught, hysterical insanity long-term? I don’t think I can. I know I don’t want to.
I’ve disliked a fair number of presidents and other heads of state in multiple countries. Locally, from Nixon, and Reagan (who I mostly missed by being overseas), and then through three terms of two Bushes, that’s a fair number of American presidents I would have happily lived without. Trump is the last and hopefully, the worst. He has raised our national temperature to such a point we are going to need a collective ice bath to just calm the fuck down.
There are people with whom I will never have a civil conversation. The things they say are so far removed from anything in which I believe, there’s no way to have a conversation. People who won’t believe in facts, science, or history, or even English spoken as a language, are not people with whom I’m going to chat pleasantly. Men who think they know what women should do with their bodies? Never going to be a pal of mine. The remainder of people who hold to something resembling rationality, with them, perhaps I can talk. If they don’t directly insult me, maybe I can avoid ranting at them.
Then, there’s the more cultured approach, which I strongly favor. Before we blow up, rage, rant, and foam at the mouth, think about British comedy. That’s where everyone skewers and guts one another without murmuring a single foul word. If they can do it, surely we can too. It’s time we upped the ante on insults. Time to get out of the gutter and move into the parlor. More wit, less raving.
There are so many delicious, witty, and sometimes charming ways to insult each other. Let’s see if we can find some.
You think?
VAMPIRE COP IN TORONTO – FOREVER KNIGHT
I discovered Forever Knight when it was in reruns on the Sci Fi channel. It was showing around 2 in the morning. Garry was working the dawn patrol and had already left for work by the time the show came on. I was working from home, allowing me to sometimes see my husband before he was off to work … and indulge my taste for weird TV shows you can only see in the middle of the night.
I became an addict. I needed my knightly fix. They were showing season two when I found the show. I didn’t see the first season until I bought the DVDs (used) on Amazon. We watched them last winter when the ice and snow locked us into the house. It proved a good antidote to cabin fever.
How cool can a cop show be? This one is extremely cool. A vampire, repenting of his formerly evil ways, joins the Toronto police department. How does he get around the whole “vampires can’t be in the sun” business? Not to mention they “only drink blood” thing?
He has this big old American car with a huge trunk in which he can hide in a “sun” emergency. Drinks cow’s blood. Works the night shift. Invents a massive allergy to the sun to explain his inability to work days.
Nick Knight is more than 800 years old. A vampire working homicide. He is trying (with the help of Natalie, a lovely young coroner) to regain his humanity. Knight is not his name, of course. He was an actual knight in the 13th century when he became a vampire.
The show ran from 1992 to 1996, though the pilot ran in 1989. The DVDs divide into three seasons and no, I don’t understand how they count seasons. There are 22 shows in the first season, 26 in the second, 22 in the third for a total of 70 episodes.
The original broadcast channel in North America was CBS — May 5,1992 to May 17, 1996. The show also ran in Germany, England and Australia (I don’t know if it was ever shown in Canada). It has been rerun in several places since including the Sci Fi channel here. The DVD sets originated in the US and Germany. The sets are different in length, and how they were edited. The German versions are longer and sexier. Mine came in boxes that say made in USA, but the DVDs were pressed in Germany. This link (in Wikipedia) gives a full list of episodes.
A cop show with a vampire as the lead detective? It isn’t just a guilty pleasure. It’s a good show and ahead of its time. And last, but not least, it’s witty and clever.
Geraint Wyn Davies plays Detective Nick Knight. He also co-wrote and directed many of the shows. Nigel Bennett is Lucien LaCroix, Knight’s maker and the weirdest overnight DJ in radio history. Deborah Duchêne plays Janette DuCharme, Nick’s sexy vampire “sister” and sometimes lover. Catherine Disher is Natalie Lambert, the police coroner and Nick’s sort-of love interest.
The acting is good. The scripts are coherent, thematic, often with a moral twist and some interesting philosophical speculations. And who would have guessed Toronto was crawling with vampires? Fortunately most of the show’s undead are surprisingly circumspect showing far more restraint than they have shown in their pasts, which are seen in flashback.
During the show’s final season, when the producers, director and cast knew they were not being renewed, they methodically kill off the entire cast. That third season is memorable. Fascinating. Also, unavailable.
Forever Knight Season 1 and Forever Knight Season 2 can be purchased via Amazon Instant Video. Season 3 is not — for the moment — available anywhere I know of. Netflix has some part of it on DVD, but I don’t have a DVD plan and they won’t let me search to find out which seasons they’ve got. I’m betting they rent it DVD by DVD. There are 5 or 6 DVDs per season with 5 or 6 episodes on each disc. I suspect they don’t have all three seasons.
They may have to call me to get the final season because I own all three seasons, having bought the last known copy of season three. It was used and I’d been looking for it for years. I thought it was too expensive and was reluctant to pay the money but eventually realized it was now or never. When there’s only one of something, you don’t have a lot of bargaining power.
As Garry and I have been watching our way through the series, I think it may have been a bargain after all. It’s a lot of entertainment … a lot of bang for the bucks.
It’s fun. Well-written. Original, Unique. Sexy. Creative. It won’t gross you out with gallons of blood and gore but I love it when Nick’s eyes glow orange or green, depending on circumstance. I like the music and Toronto is a lovely city.
I recommend Forever Knight, though I’m not sure what you can do about season three. You might have to come to my house and watch it with us.
