On Virginia Hamilton's "The House of Dies Drear"

 Like many of a certain age, I was first introduced to this story by PBS’ “WonderWorks” version of the tale, put out in 1984. A few clips of it are available on YouTube, but they’re of poor quality.

Nevermind that.

This story is excellent and has drawn me back over the years to read and re-read it.

On this, maybe my fifth reading, passages from Chapter Fifteen stuck with me:

“[L]et’s get back to the nice Sunday-morning church folks who never once cared whether my father lived or died. No, you can have them. They’re the reason I left town. Even when I was small, I always hated them for their stupid ways. I guess I hated you folks before I saw you because I figured you would be no better than the rest.”

Mr. Small glanced at Thomas, who stared at Mayhew Skinner with something close to awe. Thomas had never heard anyone talk the way Mayhew talked, at least not in front of his father.

“You shouldn’t hate,” Mr. Small said. “It will destroy you.”

“That’s a well-meaning lie,” said Mayhew. “Folks have hated other folks for centuries, and the same business is still with us.”

That business, of course, is hate itself, in all its forms. And while perhaps its cynical to believe hate will always be with us, I think that’s a realistic point of view. And we can’t change that with platitudes; we have to change it in ourselves. We all know those Sunday-morning folks. Chances are, in some ways and to some people, we *are* those Sunday-morning folks. Maybe learning about them is a good thing, so we can learn about ourselves.

Further:

“We left [the land] finally,” Mayhew said, “but my father wouldn’t leave. I blame him for that. I still blame him for forcing us to leave. He had grown obsessed with the tunnels, with the haunting figure of Dies Drear. He became fanatical about protecting the house and its history and even its legend. I would say he is like you, Mr. Small, in his taste for what he calls our heritage.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Small softly. “We always tend to belittle that heritage in our zeal to be free.”

“I’ll take freedom any day over all the romantic nonsense about slavery,” said Mayhew.

“I mean not to glorify it,” said Mr. Small. “I simply want people to know about it. It’s a part of our history, and yet no one tells the truth about it.”

Here, two voices on one subject, opposed. Where do we see that today? Where there is zeal and glory, there is also heritage and freedom. All fine on their own, often fine in combination. But any put on too aggressively – even freedom – can lead to ruin.

That’s neither here nor there with Virginia Hamilton’s book, which I love for its description and storytelling.

I may address a few nits:

Some reviewers wonder why Thomas is so suspicious of others. Were they never kids who had to move into a new place and fret that everyone they meet is silently laughing at them behind their backs? I come from a family where the streak of paranoia is wide, so I understand the suspicion.

A few have compared this to a Scooby Doo story. So what? This kind of costume-party trap has been around in literature far longer than Scooby Doo has existed. The ending makes for a much more satisfying tale than if this had turned from a mystery to a police and law procedural, where the Darrows were legally barred from farting around on the Drear property for fear they might find something. This is fiction, and fiction sometimes needs to be a pinch overdramatic. One way to tell the story makes more logical sense. The other way to tell the story makes it a far better story to be told. So pooh-pooh to those particular Whos.

On The Great Pretend Coin Shortage of 2020/21

Walmart, c'mere a minute.

You appear to be the only retail entity in the universe still participating in the Great Pretend Coin Shortage of 2020/21. We shop at a wide variety of stores, both colossal and mom and pop. Everyone else -- and I mean everyone else -- has coins to pass out as change.

If you want people to provide exact change, or shop with their cards, or whatever, just say so. Don't hide behind a pretend, nonexistent crisis to justify a change in policy.

Also, you appear to be taking in a lot of change from your customers. Are you not recirculating that, or are you storing it in some big Scrooge McDuck-like money bin in Arkansas?

I had a long conversation in my head with the clerk about the stupid coin shortage but only managed to sigh out a "that's fine" to her question of "Since you're a loser and don't have change, do you want to round up and donate to Childrens' whatsis so we can add a corporate tax deduction insult to the no-change-back injury?"

What you're accomplished, Walmart, is shifting the blame from corporate policy or some nonexistent national emergency to the customer.

I don't want to yell at the clerks, because they do not set policy, they merely have to apply it. But if I demand change or refuse to round up for a good cause or make any kind of comment on the policy, it is me being rude.

I understand this might be wise corporate policy and that you may have learned something from the world of politics. But that doesn't make it right.

Signed,

An increasingly dissatisfied customer.

Way Too Late at the Movies: YouTube Edition

Since streaming is becoming a bigger thing -- we were Disney+ subscribers for an entire MONTH last year -- YouTube has been ramping up its offering of movies.

And since I'm a cheap bastard, as with the other services I use (IMDB, Amazon Prime, etc) I'm only watching those things that are free (or in Prime's case, what comes free with the subscription we have). That means, of course, I don't get to see a lot of new movies, but I do get to see a lot of movies that I would never pay good money to see, as you'll see in just a moment.

First up, Space Raiders.

I'll confess, it took me a while to get past the, uh, rather female characteristics of the ship. Not that it really matters. Nor does it matter I can't remember what the ship is called. Or the names of any of the characters. Roger Corman made sure this film was completely forgettable.

We're supposed to cheer, I suppose for the crew of roughs that ends up kidnapping a kid from a "company" planet or station or whatever run by a woman in a Clintonesque pantsuit. Because the "company" is bad or something. It just IS; trust the movie. And trust the conglomeration of space aliens and hippies and others who live or whatever on some space station because they're actually the good guys. Or something.

Then there's  Earthquake: Nature Unleashed.

Two things let me know right away it was going to be a winner:

1. Ah, Tibor, how many times have you saved my butt?

2. The film's Wikipedia entry reads as follows: "The people arrives at the Russian Nuclear Power Plant called the Kasursk Nuclear Power Plant. When the most catastrophic earthquake of all time rips through Europe, it levels Russia and sends shockwaves through the lives of Russian people who live there. An earthquake destroys a Russian Nuclear Power Plant and people in Russia need to survive. The cinematics of the film rely on other films scenes to hash out the story. Most notably, scenes of collasping (sic) buildings and highways from 'Dante's Peak'."

This tells the believable tale of an American company brought in to refit a Russian nuclear power plant whose core shield blocks covered maybe 20 square feet and looked as if they were made from DUPLO blocks. There's much more on this Facebook thread I did live as I watched. Can't seem how to figure out how to embed it. So much the pity . . . 

Also, there was 2004's Fat Albert.

I very much enjoyed the cartoon from the 1970s.

The film, well, it's meh.

Typical fish out of water stuff, including a long trip to the mall where lots of comic hijinx and product placement can take place. I guess it's better than bringing them to now when malls are dying and all that shopping occurs in the basement thanks to Amazon and wifi.

And the characters -- popped out of the cartoon to help a real-world girl gain friends -- are worried they're "losing their color" or at least they were at one time. The color changes, to their trademark bold cartoon clothing, is subtle to say the least.

OH NO THEY'VE LOST COLOR SINCE THEY TOOK A PICTURE OF THEMSELVES AT THE MALL AND QUAINTLY PRINTED IT OUT BECAUSE THEY CLEARLY DIDN'T GET A CELL PHONE PROMO FOR THE MOVIE.

Also quaint: They popped out of a CRT to come into this world.

More to come.

We Need MOAR Speilberg Preaching

It’s been a while since I watched Steven Speilberg’s “The Terminal,” so when I came across it on YouTube today, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I saw it today in maybe the light Speilberg intended. Rather than a simple tale of a man without a country stuck in an airport, this is a tale of a compassionate society forming around a man stuck in an “unacceptable” situation.

That in microcosm comes when the characters played by Stanley Tucci and Tom Hanks confront the Russian man caught in a bureaucratic snafu not of his making. Simply because his plane from Toronto back to Russia had a stopover in the United States, he found himself – and the medicine he needed for his father – trapped in the bureaucracy. Tucci’s character, bound by the rules, wants the medicine confiscated, making this desperate man’s trip to Canada – likely only to buy the medicine his father needs – futile. Hanks’ character finds a loophole and urges the man to take it. Not because it’s his habit of taking loopholes, but because he can see that compassion, not strict adherence to the rules, is what is needed in this situation. Innocent ignorance of the rules should, in many times and cases, call for compassion, not a strict interpretation of the rules, and Viktor Navorsky knows it.

From there, a compassionate society builds, symbolized by Viktor’s photocopied palm, spread throughout the airport. Many people there begin to see Viktor – and each other – through a lens of compassion, of respect, that leads them to behave as humans ought to behave in a world so bound by rules they often rule humanity out of the equation.

Tucci’s character also shines through in this scene – but as a man who uses others as tools for his own advancement and means to an end that he wants. His boss advises him he ought to show more compassion, see the humans in the story that he’s watching, but that’s advice that is not heeded.

I’m sure that message was there all along, but it took a casual viewing years after the fact to notice it.

I know Speilberg gets chastised for being preachy. Maybe we need more preaching.

On Patriotism

Patriotism is the freedom to play John Phillip Sousa's "Washington Post March" in front of Richard Nixon.