Elegy to Flower - May he have many happy travels in Bastet's Fields

Crossposted from Blogetary:

Above, Flower, sitting in state on "his" gold silk comforter, May 3, 2009.

No one really knew how old Flower was, or what his real name was. Heather, my sister, dubbed him "Flower" because of his sweet face. He was a wanderer who had other "real owners" who had micro-chipped him, but he always found his way to my sister's back garden and chose to spend most of his time there with her. He hunted, he slept. He spent four or five years working his way into my sister's life to make sure she was okay. He had adopted her and had plans for her. He had a schedule and he kept her to it and took care of her in that way. He was able to be with her through thick and thin, loyal and loving, never deserting her. Flower was a good cat.

No one really knew how old he was, not even his "real owners." Last week, my sister noticed he was limping and obviously in pain. When she contacted the owners of record through the microchip, there was no number left to let them know their cat was sick. So, Flower and my sister faced the vet together and found out he had bone cancer, and had probably had it, and been in pain, for quite a while, but was just now showing signs of being in pain. She went home with pain killers and options and started to think about how to deal with this. It's tough when our four-footed friends are ill. They can't really tell us what they want, so we have to figure it out as best we can on our own.

Saturday morning, she found blood in his urine. Saturday afternoon at the vet's they advised that it was time for Flower to go and my sister had to make that tough decision many friends of the animalkind need to face, putting them to sleep.

Flower will be missed — is missed — and I hope he's hunting and sleeping in Bastet's Fields and no longer feeling the pain he had probably been in for so long.

So, to Flower, who was a good cat and a good friend to my very dear sister.

To Flower, 2003 (?) — 2013, who was a good cat.

Larchmont Chronicle 50th Anniversary

 Crossposted from Blogetary:

Once upon a time there was this girl named Jane. She had a lot of what some people used to call “spunk”. She was outspoken (she was from New York state, after all). She was a Girl Scout. She worked on her high school paper in Rye, New York. She went to a good mid-West college (Beloit) and then moved to New York City and began working at Cosmopolitan Magazine. Eventually she joined the military as a Recreation Director and helped organize activities for lonely G.I.s serving overseas. This is where she met her husband, Irwin.

But, “Happy Ever After” doesn’t stop there. I mean, in the stories it does. In real life, there’s more to it. She and her husband eloped to Las Vegas and then went on to Denver where she became a copywriter writing advertising copy. She was bored. This was not what she went to school for. This was not the great career of the young woman who’d once worked for Cosmo.

So, she and Irwin pulled out stakes and moved to Los Angeles to see what dreams are made of here. They landed in a little known strip of L.A. suburbia (at the time anyway) in Hancock Park on Larchmont Boulevard. It was an old fashioned street. There was a gas station. A grocery store. Local merchants.

Jane befriended another ambitious young woman, Dawne Goodwin, who excelled at selling ads. Together, in a kitchen, the hatched an idea, a really big idea, to start a paper all their own. It was 1963. I wasn’t even born in 1963.

To keep people from getting all hinky about “gals” running a newspaper, they did the traditional first initial thing (because you know how nervous some guys get when women start to work in their wheelhouse). And set about creating a neighborhood newspaper. Dawne got the advertising. Jane wrote the copy. They presented it as the Larchmont Chronicle published by J. Gilman and D. Goodwin. Their first issue had 12 pages and the mailed it out to as many people in Hancock Park and the surrounding areas as they could.

The local businessmen gave the six months before they thought the paper might fold.
FIFTY YEARS LATER, the Larchmont Chronicle now averages 60 pages an issue each month. Still privately owned and operated by Jane and Irwin Gilman, it is read by approximately 77,000 people in the Los Angeles area. More if you count the ones who get it mailed to them all over the U.S.

Besides being a publisher of a paper that’s been around for 50 years, however, she’s also contributes to the community. She’s involved in Hope-Net (and started the Taste of Larchmont fundraiser that helps contribute to Hope-Net each year), is one of the founding members of the Windsor Square-Hancock Park Historical Society, is part of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition, the Wilshire Community Police Council and the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council.

Four and a half years ago I had used up the last of my unemployment, hadn’t found a job yet, or been able to build up my freelance business. I got desperate and from desperation comes inspiration. I sent out emails to businesses in my neighborhood who might be looking for part time or occasional office work or proofreaders, freelance or otherwise. One of the places I contacted was the Larchmont Chronicle. Jane emailed me asking if I’d be interested in a receptionist job. I said sure. She asked if I could make it for an interview in 15 minutes. It was the end of a hot summer. I hadn’t showered. I brushed my hair, pulling it back into a ponytail, changed my shirt, pulled on a skirt and walked down to see if she’d have me. I was hired as a receptionist/Girl Friday and I’ve been there ever since.
I have learned so much from this woman. Not just here, but to be able to work with all the phenomenal women who have worked at the Chronicle for so many years has taught me so much. And to be able to be at this gala event at the Ebell of Los Angeles with many of the people Jane has worked with in the community to celebrate all the work she’s put into this paper was wonderful, astounding, fantastic, and a lot of fun.

Below are a couple of pictures from tonight.

 

Above, Assistant Editor Laura and Associate Editor Suzan. They kick my ass every single month.

Jane Gilman, publisher and editor of the Larchmont Chronicle with Yvonne, our accountant. They can both drink me under the table, swear like sailors and behave like the ladies they are. They also kick my ass every month.

I missed getting pictures of Maria (graphic designer) and Pam (Director of Advertising) because I got distracted, but you get the idea. It’s a special group of people, of women, of ladies, and I treasure the time I have spent them and have learned from them. And I know that through the years they have made positive impacts on others as well.

 I had a great time tonight and I wanted to share this so people would understand what I mean when I say:

I. Love. My. Job.

Star Trek Reboot – Mark II

Crossposted from my Blogetary:



Just as Ryan Harvey stated about "Iron Man Three" in his Black Gate review earlier this month, it's hard to really write about "Star Trek Into Darkness" without letting out a bunch of spoilers (and we don't want to do that, do we). And no matter what I say there will be people who won't like it for various reasons: it doesn't fit into the traditional canon, they don't like J.J. Abrams (Yeah, I don't either, but, as with Tom Cruise, he often makes a good movie), it's not the Kirk/Spock/Bones/Sulu/Uhura/Chekov/Scotty they grew up with and they are uncomfortable with this reboot.

Well, if you didn't like the first prequel reboot you probably will hate this movie even more and you should probably quit reading now and find your nearest streaming provider to watch the other Star Trek movies or series, or see if KDOC/MeTV is playing reruns to get your ST:TOS or TNG fix. Really, don't read anymore or you'll probably get apoplectic.
Otherwise, read on.

First, before we begin, did you notice a few weeks ago this little meme going around? The mashup of Torchwood and Star Trek?


For anyone familiar with the Doctor Who and Torchwood series, the long-coated form of the delicious Captain Jack Harkness is a familiar sight, however not one normally associated with Star Trek per se. And yet, once you watch this second prequel (as it was called at the screening at Paramount I went to), you wonder where Captain Jack and the Doctor were during the entire movie (indeed, about halfway through I started wondering why Benedict Cumberbatch hasn't been tapped to play the Doctor as yet, although he's still got that Sherlock thing going on....).

As stated at the screening, this is a "second prequel" – we see Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Sulu in an opening sequence. They have moved beyond the new recruits in the first prequel, but are still raw and young and don't think things out. They think with their hearts (even Spock) and all view the world through their various moral POVs. They are all trying to do the right thing, however they all have different ideas of what the right thing is (isn't that just life?). They are practicing the shoot-from-the-hip "cowboy diplomacy" that Picard accused the original Spock of doing in The Next Generation (Season 5/Episode 8/Unification II). Where an older and wiser Kirk may have thought through his moves first, this younger more impetuous Kirk is just beginning to learn when to jump into the fray and when to back down. And he hasn't gotten it down just yet. This is classic Star Trek. Several times at the beginning Kirk and the audience are both reminded that he is not good at playing by the rules and during his last command he didn't lose any of his crew. More classic Trek and a prompt as to just how young James Tiberius Kirk is at this point.

HOWEVER, while the storyline at the beginning is classic Star Trek, the movements on the screen are classic Star Wars. And this mashup continues throughout the movie. This isn't just a movie for people who love Star Trek. It's a movie for people who love the genre. There were so many inside references that I noticed at the screening that I wondered how many other allusions I was missing. I do believe that, in part, this was a love letter from J. J. Abrams to all the scifi/fantasy fan boys and girls out there in the 'verse. When this movie comes out on DVD I'll be sure to go through it and see what I missed. The opening scene where Kirk and Scotty (I think it's Scotty?) are running from pre-industrial beings on a planet and trying to obey the Prime Directive and make it to the ship at the same time is straight forward Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, while the tiffs and interactions (chemistry if you will) between Uhura and Spock is reminiscent of Princess Leia and Han Solo or (if you liked the new ones) Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker. There are also some flying sequences that are straight out of the Millennium Falcon playbook. And then let's not forget Scotty's little friend who looks like a grayed-out Ewok.

But it's not just Star Wars. There are also references to the Original Series episodes (definitely a tribble on the screen) and movies, as well as inside jokes (like when Kirk tells Chekov to "put on a red shirt" at one point and at another, tells some security guys they're just big targets in their red shirts and to change into civilian clothes) and appearances by other Star Trek characters. And at one point there was a character who said, "What do you think I am, a Peacekeeper?!" I just about lost it. Now, if there was a Farscape reference in there, then there must have been Stargate SG-1 references, because both those series were very faithful in alluding to Star Trek as a nod and a wink to genre fans. In my perfect world, there would also be Buffy/Angel/Firefly references. As it was, I'm pretty sure some of the verbal altercations between Kirk and Spock were ripped off from Leonard and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Things were just moving a bit fast for me to catch everything though.

Now, we don't watch movies just to see mashups and insider references, though they do make movies lots of fun. But if that's all we saw, those movies would get old and insular. Don't worry if you're not a fan boy or girl, though. If you like scifi action adventure this is a nonstop roller coaster ride. There are great lines, a couple of flashes of skin for those looking for it, fights with the bad guy, fights with the good guy and even a couple of tearful scenes and twists in the plot. On the whole, an enjoyable ride if you are just a straightforward fan of scifi action adventure.

Not everyone likes roller coaster rides, however. And to give the naysayers their due, Star Trek as a whole is just as much about the drama as it is the action. Whether it's Picard fighting Cardassian torture in TNG (There Are Four Lights! ), the low-budget but suspenseful TOS Doomsday Machine, or Commander Sisko considering his options in the Season 6 episode "Far Beyond the Stars" where his visions show him as a science fiction writer of the 1950s who's work has been suppressed, Star Trek traditionally spends just as much time on thoughtful suspense and drama as they do on action. And there really isn't much of that type of drama in this movie. But, these characters have not built a chemistry on the small screen in front of a weekly audience, either. Television series can take the time to build relationships and create arcs where movies don't have that luxury. The Star Trek movies were able to harvest and glean the chemistry and story lines built up over the series to add depth to their movies. In "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," people watching Kirk hearing his son being killed over the 'com felt the drama of that moment based not just on the movie, but on three years of a tv series and at least two other previous movies.

And yet, I don't think we should give up on expecting good drama out of the Star Trek franchise. I just think that J.J. Abrams is to the Star Trek reboot movies what Chris Columbus was to the Harry Potter movies. He got the series going and he told a good story with some fun hooks. Just as with Harry Potter, there's lots of action and lots of kids screaming and much of what is included in the movies is for the benefit of "the youngsters." However, also like the Harry Potter movies, both the fans and the characters will grow up. I think eventually, if Paramount continues in this new reboot, they will move onto another director who will tell more grown up stories with more depth, more drama, more suspense and maybe a tiny bit less action. The characters aren't going to be raw new kids anymore. You can pull out the screw ups and screaming kids pulling a victory out of their butts a limited amount of times before it gets old. Then it's time for the grown up stories.

So, I enjoyed this one. I look forward to the next, should it come to pass.

And I leave you with this Audi commercial depicting the relationship between the "old" Spock and the "new" Spock that gives a good indication as to some of the fun mashup available in "Star Trek Into Darkness."