16
NovPraise for Paradise
I have dozens of DVDs in my personal at-home collection. On rainy or wintry weekend, I’ve watched my favorites over and over and over again. One of my movie marathons might feature some of my favorite actors – Pierce Brosnan, Diane Keaton, Amy Adams or Harrison Ford. I could begin with Working Girl, Sabrina and Indiana Jones and end the film fest up with Frantic and Air Force One. Both Brosnan and Adams star in musicals (Mamma Mia and Enchanted, respectively) which might be on my playlist, mixed in, of course, with their films of more serious work (The Thomas Crown Affair and Julia and Julia.)
My husband doesn’t understand my peculiar habit of re-watching the same videos. Viewing a movie once is enough for him (and sometimes once is too much.)
He’s not a movie buff, although I do usually manage to get him to accompany me to most of the Academy Award best picture nominees every year. However, the last way he will spend a weekend afternoon is watching LaLa Land for the umpteenth time, as much as he liked it the first (and only) time.
My movie routine began when my daughters were young and with the advent of VHS. We cheerily sang along with all Disney musicals during their childhood. The practice continued through high school when my daughters and I would movie marathon a Sunday away with American President, Grease and Steel Magnolias. Those films either had us swooning (over Michael Douglas), singing (with Olivia Newton John) or sobbing (after Sally Field lost daughter Julia Roberts).
My daughters’ favorites – the VHS versions of the Star Wars films and Grease, and others from their childhood, have been recycled and not replaced. I brought bags of tapes to my Friends of the Library book sales in the early to mid-2000s. However, DVD-format movies in my current collection are those that replaced the worn-out VHS of my old favorites from the 80s and early 90s – Sleepless in Seattle, Big, Four Weddings and a Funeral and countless others.
Last weekend I thought about a long-ago movie I adored and hadn’t watched in some years because I’d never replaced the VHS tape of Paradise. It’s a bit of a sleeper of a movie starring (then married) Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, released in 1991. It’s one of those romantic dramas that you love … or not. In fact, I’ve yet to find anyone else who has actually seen the film. It also stars a soon-to-be-famous child actor, Elijah Wood who was only 10 years old when Paradise was produced. Eight years later, an eighteen-year old Elijah was cast as Frodo in the Lord of the Rings.
Alongside Elijah is his summer friend, nine-year old actress Thora Birch. Although Birch is not as well-known today as Elijah Wood, she is recognizable in her roles in Hocus Pokus, Monkey Trouble and Now and Then. She’s also known for playing Jack Ryan’s young daughter in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
Paradise’s star Melanie Griffith has had a long and prolific career since infancy through her 50s to the present day. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, who we remember from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie. Having Hollywood parents, Griffith was cast in commercials as early as nine months and was cast as an extra when she was 12 and 16. At 18, she won serious speaking roles in the Drowning Pool (with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward) and Night Moves (with Gene Hackman). By 27 she had been married to and divorced from Don Johnson and was nominated for several Best Actresses performances for Body Double, winning the award from the National Society of Film Critics.
John and Griffith were married briefly while she was still in her teens (he was eight years older); that marriage was annulled in 1976 after only six months. In 1989, when Johnson had proved himself on screen (the television hit Miami Vice starred Johnson for four years), he and Griffith reconciled and married again. Griffith had just starred in the smash hit Working Girl with Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack.
In 1991, Griffith and Johnson worked together in Paradise. The film did not do well with critics or the box office. In fact, several critics gave it horrible reviews and Rotten Tomatoes has rated it only 36 tomatoes! I’ve found, however, that some of my favorite movies are never loved by critics. The film is actually a remake of Le Grand Chemin, a French film that received awards and audiences alike. Paradise follows the same story line, but apparently with a less powerful message to American audiences.
Griffith and Johnson play husband and wife, who having lost their only child, are well on the way to irreconcilable differences because of it. Griffith suffers unbearable grief and guilt. Johnson feels lost and unloved, suffering from the same unspeakable loss of their son. Bits and pieces of this story are revealed out throughout the film.
Elijah Wood is the young son of a friend who has dropped him off for part of the summer with her desperately unhappy friends, Griffith and Johnson. Thora Birch is their wild and precocious next-door neighbor. Through misdeeds and older-than-her-years insight, Birch helps Elijah deal with his own feelings of loss. In turn, Elijah is the catalyst for helping his older summer caretakers, Griffith and Johnson, heal.
I loved this story because it is raw and simple and set in small-town America. Watching a preventable tragedy (the end of a marriage), I’m always swept up in the story’s angst AND the charm of the easy solution. I want to yell at both the adults and care for and love the younger ones.
Johnson and Griffith, the real-life actors, ended up divorcing for the second time just five years after this film was released. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson (born in 1989 and now 28-years old) is, of course, a film star herself.
Not one of the Minuteman Libraries had a copy of Paradise when I searched to re-watch it last weekend. Fortunately, the Morrill Memorial Library has now purchased one. I hope you’ll take a chance and perhaps you’ll prove the critics wrong about Paradise. If not, it’s still a short afternoon or evening spent back in small-town America with a family desperate to heal their pain.
Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the November 16, 2017 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
9
NovThe Holy Grail of Grammar (and other Humdingers)
My family is big on wordplay—the sillier the better. Whether it’s deliberately mispronouncing or making up words for comic effect (only to us), overusing idioms (beating a dead horse), or simply quoting dumb movie lines, we delight in linguistic levity. As our Commander-in-Chief might tweet, “It’s just sad!” No doubt, but entertaining nonetheless.
My ex-husband and I had a thing for Monty Python and Charles Dickens–“that’s Dikkens with two K’s, the well-known Dutch author.” Certain catch phrases, like this one from the Monty Python Bookshop sketch, still make me smile. If I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, my former spouse would call me Mrs. Gummidge—the “lone lorn creetur’” in David Copperfield who “everythink goes contrary with.” The name stuck.
It wasn’t all fun and games, however. As a high school English teacher, his students’ misuse of the mother tongue was no joke. Those who committed the egregious sin of spelling “a lot” as one word received an automatic “F”. Harsh? Perhaps. But if they gave a rat’s…I mean, if they cared a fig about their GPAs I bet they made that mistake only once.
Our kids are forever quoting dialogue from favorite films–Old School, Airplane!, Wedding Crashers, and Groundhog Day top the list. Before I left to visit my youngest while she was studying in Paris, her sister in San Francisco texted me, “Bring me back something French.” Seriously? I hadn’t planned on buying any souvenirs, plus my carry-on was already crammed to capacity.
“Mom,” another daughter explained patiently, “it’s a quote from Home Alone.”
If you wish to showcase your talent for reciting random movie lines, there’s no shortage of material at the Morrill Memorial Library.
A font of hyperbole, my mother was renowned in the family for her own quotes. Spending time at the shore with Mom was no day at the beach. As we trudged from the parking lot to the water one afternoon she complained, “This beach has too much sand!” Eyeing the cot on which she was to sleep during a weekend visit, she muttered, “Prisoners sleep on thicker mattresses than this.” And the last time she saw her bearded grandson, the Christmas before she died, she told him, “You look terrible!” Mom did not mince words–or beat around the bush.
I may have said “I’ll eat my hat!” once or twice myself, and I’m especially keen on “colder than a witch’s…” er, you get my drift. If idioms tickle your fancy as well, give this one a whirl–I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms from Around the World by Jag Bhalla. (That’s a new one on me, too.)
But back to my maternal parent. Regarding her youngest grandchild, who Mom believed showed particular promise: “At least she’s not going to grow up to be just a librarian.” Ouch. My daughter enjoys her job in TV news but once admitted that her dream was to be an archivist (read: librarian who likes old stuff). Have you heard the expression, “turning over in her grave”?
No stranger to the pun himself, my partner called his own mother Cleopatra, Queen of Denial. Desperate for a girl after having produced three sons, she called her fourth child Mary for the first few days. The baby’s name was in fact Bill.
I may be just a librarian but my real passion is copy-editing. Put a red pen and the written word within my reach and I’m as happy as a clam at high tide. Knowing my penchant for proofreading, my boss presented me with this laminated keepsake: “My life is a constant battle between wanting to correct grammar and wanting to have friends.” While I usually manage to bite my tongue, it requires a Herculean effort to refrain from fixing typos in the margins of whatever book I’m reading. Were it not for the shame of getting caught defacing library property…
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night prevents me and my partner from playing along with Jeopardy every night with our favorite host, Alex…Trebek! The only categories in which I have a snowball’s chance in… well, of distinguishing myself, are those relating to language. “Proverbially Speaking” was a walk in the park, and I nailed “Words that Begin and End with N.” It’s extremely satisfying when I shout out the right answer, or rather question. Except that when I don’t, the correct response often gets drowned out in all the excitement.
I suspect this homegrown word game may never be ready for prime time. When someone uses a vaguely erudite or multi-syllabic word in conversation, the other will respond by saying basically the same thing minus the big words. For example, after a wedding we’d attended my friend commented, “Wasn’t the bride absolutely radiant?” Me: “Yeah, and she looked pretty darn good, too.” Upon hearing someone recently described as indigent, I couldn’t help remarking, “He probably didn’t have a ton of money, either.” I engage in this terribly witty repartee with just two people–my significant other and his ex-wife. It’s our way of poking a bit of fun at each other for using a ten-dollar word.
To learn the proper usage of “its” versus “it’s” or “me,” “myself,” and “I,” Strunk and White (The Elements of Style) are your go-to guys. But if you want to dig deeper and enjoy a few chuckles in the bargain, check out Lynn Truss’s British bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves—the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Another humorous read for the serious word buff is Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris, who chronicles her long career at The New Yorker and shares amusing anecdotes and helpful tips. I also really liked Kory Stamper’s Word by Word: the Secret Life of Dictionaries–a wonderfully irreverent inside look at the life of a lexicographer.
Regardless of your particular quest, make haste to your local library. And if you don’t find the holy grail of linguistic treasures, or whatever it is you seek, I’ll eat my hat.
April Cushing is the Adult and Information Services Supervisor at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Mass. Read April’s column in the November 9th edition of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.
3
NovKRACK Attacks
‘All wifi networks’ are vulnerable to hacking, security expert discovers
KRACK attacks, or Key Reinstallation Attacks, make Linux, Android, and OpenBSD device-users particularly vulnerable to having their information stolen.
“The security protocol used to protect the vast majority of wifi connections has been broken, potentially exposing wireless internet traffic to malicious eavesdroppers and attacks, according to the researcher who discovered the weakness.
Mathy Vanhoef, a security expert at Belgian university KU Leuven, discovered the weakness in the wireless security protocol WPA2, and published details of the flaw on Monday morning.
“Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted,” Vanhoef’s report said. “This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and so on.” -Alex Hern, The Guardian
Visiting the Giant Redwoods in California
Important news from the National Park Service hit the media (print, online and social) this past spring and summer. The $10 lifetime price of the America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Senior Pass was ending at the end of August. The cost of the pass was then immediately increasing for the first time since 1994 to $80.
The change was a result of legislation passed in December of 2016 which essentially stated that the cost of a lifetime pass for those over 62 years of age should be equal to the ANNUAL pass for everyone else. Included in the legislation was an additional level for seniors – $20 for a one-year pass.
Sometime in early summer I caught the bug with all the rest of America who was 62 years of age or older and I applied for our passes online. The extra $10 for an online application didn’t bother me, but I would have saved that money just by visiting one of Massachusetts National Parks that charge a fee – those in Quincy, Boston, Concord and others. The $10 passes were available at any one of them. Time was running out, however, and I wanted to make the deadline.
Within weeks, Gerry and I were official Senior Pass holders. I was excited to see our names printed on the back of our colorful plastic cards. Even more thrilling was the fact that each of our cards admits three others who can come along and visit one of the National Parks with us.
On our recent trip to Hawaii this past October, we spent a few days on both ends of our trip nursing our jet-lag in Northern California. The beginning of our trip was unfortunately hindered by the tragic wildfires that raged across wine country and it seemed the entire northern half of the state was plagued by choking smoke. By the time we returned 9 days later, however, the fires were well on their way to containment. We spent a lovely, warm fall day in the city of Napa and the town of St. Helena – places spared from the devastation in Santa Rosa and the surrounding hillsides.
We were on our way to a red-eye flight that would leave San Francisco later on our last night, when we drove up and over the mountains that snake up through the towns in Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. There we wound down the steep incline on the Pacific side to enter Muir Woods, nestled only a few miles from the ocean.
Muir Woods, home to some of the oldest and tallest coastal redwoods*, has been a lifelong destination for me. Beginning in the early 1960s, my mother insisted that every visiting aunt, uncle, or cousin walk among the tall and graceful redwoods just across the bay from our home. We made many trips to Muir Woods over decades as I continued the family tradition and visited many times during my years in California and nearly every visit “back home.” *Note that the very tallest, widest, and oldest coastal redwoods are found farther north up the coast in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Muir Woods National Monument (in the town of Mill Valley) is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area that is just one of the 400 national parks across the United States. After the Great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, crafty contractors and businessmen looked to the redwood forests just north of San Francisco for trees that would provide building materials for a city nearly burned to the ground. Soon-to-be Congressman William Kent and his wife had purchased 611 acres of coastal redwoods in Mill Valley just a year before the quake. In 1908 the Kents donated that land to the United States. They insisted that conservationist, philosopher, author and scientist John Muir receive the honor of the name. It was President Teddy Roosevelt who used his executive powers to create the park we know as Muir Woods.
At the time when Muir Woods was created and dedicated, many of the redwoods were already hundreds of years old. Currently, the tallest tree in the park is over 250 feet tall and the oldest may be over 1,200 years. Their ancestors have been on the planet for more than 240 million years. These beautiful trees with reddish bark and coniferous needles stand majestically throughout the park. They allow beams of sunlight to filter down to the forest floor which is rich in wildlife, plants of all kinds, and soil that was created by the dying trees of past centuries. When walking among the needles and leaves on the park trails, one can imagine this lovely place as home where an early Native American family could sleep among the hollows of trees and where their rituals were held in the redwood cathedrals.
The library and Minuteman Library Network has many recent books for you to enjoy about our national parks: National Parks of America (with suggestions on how to experience all 59 of them) by The Lonely Planet; and Lassoing the Sun: A Year in America’s National Parks by Mark Woods. Both were published in 2016.
You can read more about Teddy’s Roosevelt’s environmental crusade in The Wilderness Warrior by Douglas Brinkley (2010). John Muir’s story is told in the Wilder Muir by Bonnie Gisel (2017); The Wild Muir (22 of his greatest adventures) by Lee Stetson (2013); and John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire (his efforts to conserve the glaciers of Alaska) by Kim Heacox (2015). The California redwoods are championed in The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston (2008).
While only 118 of 417 of our national parks have an entrance fee, the National Park Service is particularly generous to Americans. In addition to the Senior Pass, four other free admission passes are available to citizens of the United States and permanent residents: the Every Kid in a Park pass (4th grader); the Annual Pass for US Military; Access Pass with free admission and discounts on other amenity fees for U.S. citizens or permanent residents with permanent disabilities; and the Volunteer Pass for those with 250 hours or more volunteer hours with federal agencies that participate in the Interagency Pass Program.
Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the November 2, 2017 issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
26
OctThings That Go “Bump”
“Don’t worry, all the hauntings here are friendly,” the curator reassured us at the start of the tour. He felt the need to offer this calming statement because we were just about to be led on a paranormal ghost tour of the Fairbanks House Historical Site in Dedham, MA. The date was Friday October 13th.
Dear readers, your reaction to the idea of a ghost tour of the oldest timber frame structure in North America on the night of Friday the thirteenth is probably similar to the reaction of my friends when I suggested it. For some strange reason, this was the date with the largest block of unreserved tickets – go figure. The tour was very interesting, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for an evening with a bit of seasonal atmosphere, a lot of history, and a large dollop of local flavor.
Personally, I love haunted history tours. I will go with friends to a ghoulish jump-out-and-say-boo haunted house every few years, but I will visit macabre historic locations any time of the year, and especially during Fall. From the Lizzie Borden house to Salem to the oldest graveyards in the country, New England has a lot to offer those looking for spooky entertainment. If you’re looking for ideas of local haunted treasures, check out “Haunted New England: A Devilish View of the Yankee Past” by Mary Eastman and Mary Bolté, or the ever popular “Weird Massachusetts” by Jeff Belanger. For thrill and chill seekers looking for something off the beaten path, I also recommend the website www.AtlasObscura.com, “the definitive guide to the world’s wondrous and curious places.”
Or, perhaps you’re more of an armchair explorer? There’s nothing quite like cracking open a scary novel, or better yet a nonfiction book about haunted places and first-hand paranormal accounts, all alone on a dark chilly night, candle lit, the house creaking in far-flung corners…then in your room…then right behind you! Author Colin Dickey is also fascinated with our nation’s ghosts and where to find them. His recent book, “Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places,” chronicles his treks to suss out not only some of our most haunted locations, but also how we continue to live with and in these spaces. What stories do we tell ourselves about these ghosts and spaces, how do these stories change in the telling, and how can these ghost stories inform our understanding of our own history?
Why are we entertained by hauntings, monsters, curses, paranormal activity, and the undead? These are all things that, by rights, we should run screaming from every time. Yet culturally and as individuals we are fascinated by death and the dark to the point of seeking it out for entertainment. Literally millions of people spend countless hours and billions of dollars every year scaring themselves. We can’t seem to get enough of horror and the things that go “bump” in the night.
According to Walter Kendrick, author of “The Thrill of Fear: 250 Years of Scary Entertainment,” horror has been part of moral and religious instruction for millennia, but has only been seen as a form of entertainment for about the last 250 years. Fans of the Lore Podcast by Aaron Mahnke, author of the new book “The World of Lore,” will agree that scary stories have long served as cautionary tales and to explain the things in life that can’t otherwise be explained. Two books in particular tackle the question of monsters and the human psyche: “On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears” by Stephen Asma, and “Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting” by W. Scott Poole. Monsters have compelled and repelled us for centuries, embodying our deepest vulnerabilities and anxieties while also representing the obscure unknown beyond our safe, rational thoughts. For a more in-depth discussion of one of the most famous creatures in literature, Frankenstein’s monster, check out “The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpieces,” by Roseanne Montillo.
So how is it we can find fun in horror? Kendrick points out that the growth of horror as entertainment has “paralleled the almost total removal from most Western experience of the aftereffects of death, leaving them to cavort in the imagination.” Ah-ha. When there’s room for our imaginations to play, we will be entertained. In Western culture, horror and the supernatural really came into their own as entertainment in the Victorian era. According to Simone Natale in her new book, “Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture,” cultural fascination with the macabre was strongly tied to the rise of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century, including print media and photography.
Once established as a genre for popular consumption, horror has been nearly unshakeable in film and literature. Tastes and trends have certainly evolved over time, from Gothic vampires to stranger slashers to the unquiet undead to unstoppable cyborgs. In his book, “The Horror of It All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead,” author Adam Rockoff discusses our obsession with horrific tales played out on the big screen, and how trends in horror have shifted with our changing culture.
Whether your tastes lie with books, audiobooks, or movies, the library has you covered for thrills, chills, and horror – and just in time for Halloween! Our horror novels are interfiled with the rest of fiction, but feel free to check with a library staff member to help locate books by your favorite authors. Hoopla Digital has a plethora of ebooks, audiobooks, movies, and TV specials about horror, paranormal investigations, and more, all available for instant streaming and download. Be afraid, dear readers. Be very afraid.
Liz Reed is an Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz’s column in the October 26th issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.