Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
Do you have a favorite bookstore?
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I do love a good bookstore, but I have to be careful of going too often if I want to stay in the black financially. I'm especially a sucker for bookstore/coffeeshop combos.
It all started when I was a college student in Morehead, Kentucky and found Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky.
This was 1990, so the "big box" bookstore wasn't such a common thing. Borders hadn't yet made it to my part of the country and I'd never even heard of Barnes & Noble yet. My hometown of Bellevue, Kentucky hadn't had a bookstore in years, since the one we frequented when I was a child closed. But Jo-Beth was heaven on earth, a palace for books and probably responsible for my first maxed out credit card.
These days, I'm not such a fan of the big ones, though they serve their purposes. I'm more interested in small, personally owned and operated bookstores. You know, indies. :-) The quirkier, the better.
There are a few near me and I love them all for different reasons:
Purple Crow
Flyleaf
Epilogue
Golden Fig
Quail Ridge
The Regulator
Letters
I've probably forgotten a few. What's key for me is something hard to define, the "vibe" of a place.
I don't want to feel hurried, but nor do I want it to be difficult to find something when I'm looking for something in particular. The staff should be pleasant to interact with and never respond with snobbery or disapproval about any requested book. It should feel like everyone, the workers and shoppers alike, enjoy being there.
My current favorite might not actually be one near me, but one near my parents' house. Roebling Books in Dayton, Kentucky. There are three of them in the northern Kentucky area, but the Dayton one is the one I like best. Unusual books on offer, lovely treats in the coffeeshop (that babke!), an old building that had been left unloved too long and has now been made special, and very cool and kind staff.
It's been weird, watching Bellevue and Dayton transform from the more blue-collar towns they were in my childhood into quaint shopping districts for the denizens of giant condos that no one I grew up would have been able to afford. Mostly, I'm ambivalent at best about all the development and change, but it's great to see a building come back to life and add value to the community, which Roebling definitely does.
I'm always seeking out the bookstore, wherever I travel, and I'm always glad I found the place where the readers are, because that's always the coolest place in town.
I began my dual career path as a teacher-who-writes twenty-six years ago, give or take. Honestly, trying to do both meant I didn't write all that often or all that much. Teaching, especially when you're new at it, will swallow all of you, if you let it--demanding your time, your energy, and your love and leaving you depleted. Not the best recipe for a creative life.
Like most teachers who survive in the field long enough to be called veterans, I did eventually learn to set some boundaries and work on that ephemeral dream we call a "work-life-balance."
That required being strict with myself, some compartmentalizing, and fighting off the guilt goblins barnacled to my soul. Not easy for a someone with an empathetic soul with a strong drive to help--you know, the kind of people who becomes teachers.
But, creative life aside, it's essential to avoid burnout and make teaching a sustainable career choice.
Failure to do so is how you win teacher of the year, but it's also how you end up quitting the career after only a few years.
Even after I'd established some boundaries and limited how many hours a day my teaching life got, my writing life still came in fourth most of the time, after teaching, family, and community.
Writing, after all, is solitary, just for me, and that seemed selfish. There are healthy forms of selfishness, but I was raised a lower middle class American woman in a blue collar family AND became a teacher, so finding a healthy level of selfishness and accepting the idea that self-care is not immoral . . .well, that took some time.
Until I was in my mid-thirties or so, writing was something reserved for moments of passion or crisis--a way of processing and coping, or expressing feelings so strong they could not simply be sublimated into other kinds of work.
Then, after my second marriage when my second child was born, I had a bout of post-partum depression. I'd never dealt with the more clinical, longer-lasting side of depression, and honestly, I wasn't doing very well. I didn't understand why I wasn't happy when I "ought to be."
Sweetman, ever observant and kind, had noticed in our courtship and marriage what a solace writing was for me. He pushed me to make regular space for it in my life, even helping me find a local critique group so I'd have a schedule. (It's like he *knows* me :P).
It worked, at least in terms of the post-partum. As it had always been, writing was a solace and I felt so much more balanced when I gave time to my voice and my heart's truths in this way.
And I started writing more regularly--still in fits and starts in the corners of my life, but SO much more often than I had ever done before. And my new writing community made my writing better than it had ever been before.
I might have stayed there--a happy hobbyist--the rest of my life if not for the next moment of crisis.
I turned 42.
Now, as all readers of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy know, 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Even though turning 30 and 40 had not phased me, turning 42 did.
So far as midlife crises go, mine was mild. A haircut, some new clothes, lots of fantasizing about exotic travels. I didn't run off and join the circus, adopt up any new addictions, or take up with a younger man.
I did, however, wallow in a feeling of dissatisfaction and low-key restless anger (mostly directed at myself) for a bit.
That's when I decided to make a commitment to my writing life. To give it a *real* go. So, what did that mean?
1. I stopped teaching English and become solely a Spanish teacher. Most of my jobs up to that point had been some combination of the two. The feedback load and external scrutiny for English teachers is crushing AND the literature and writing work pulls from the same energy as my writing life, so doing both was more than I could handle.
Spanish is an elective, and at the beginning levels, where I teach, feedback on writing amounts to reading a few sentences and assessing whether the kid said what they meant to say. MUCH simpler.
2. I laid claim to more time. We had a family meeting. By this time, my kids were older: 14 and 7, so they didn't need me at the same levels they had when they were younger. They were able to take on a little more independence, and it turned out they were willing to do so, because a happy mommy who is sometimes unavailable was preferable to a grumpy mommy, even if she was there all the time.
Since it was hard for me to get enough separation and focus at home, I went elsewhere to write. Coffee shops, the library, the park, even just sitting in my car. When my own discipline got better, I started being able to work at home, even without an office. I shot for 250 words a day at first.
It worked! I began to finish things, polish them, submit me, and see them accepted and published! I collected external validations like books contracts and royalties . . .even an award! Over the next few years, I noticed the shift.
I was now a writer-who-teaches, instead of a teacher-who-writes.
My core identity centered around writing instead of teaching. When I met new people, I mentioned writing first. I've now written every single day for more than seven years.
I still love teaching, and I still invest in my students and their success, but I no longer base my own feelings of success and worth on it. Too much of it is beyond my control, and making it the center of my identity was eating me. Teaching has always been both a calling and a job, but I've decided it should not also be my identity.
Writing, on the other hand, is mine. And whether anyone ever accepts another piece of work for publication or not, I will still be a writer and I will still have all my creations, and what they have meant to me.
So, as I move into summer and shift gears into my yearly couple of months of being *just* a writer while I'm on summer hiatus from teaching, I feel a joy akin to coming home after a long journey.
Okay, well SOMETIMES I feel fifty, like when I squat to put away dishes and my hip doesn't want to let me get back up, or when I get winded climbing a big hill. I tell myself it's not the years, it's the mileage (and maybe a bit the baggage as well). It makes me feel more like Indiana Jones and less like Miss Marple.
But mostly, I don't even feel like a real grownup yet…yet here we are. Fifty.
Coco Chanel famously said that when we are fifty, we get the face we deserve. So, here's the face I deserve, picture taken first thing this morning when my hair was still shower-wet and I hadn't yet had any caffeine.
So far as faces go, it's fine. Neither glamorous nor off-putting. Pleasant, and sometimes quite pretty, in the right light.
The lines and creases don't bother me much, and any age spots just blend in with the freckles that were already there. I've started to get a little gray around the crown of my head which I confess I find a little startling when I notice, but otherwise, I still just look like me, a little rounder than I would maybe choose, given all the options, and way more like my Grandma Liz than I expected, given how much I always thought I looked more like my dad.
So, do I deserve this face?
When I look at this face, I see bright curiosity and a spark of adventure, a curve at the corner of the mouth that comes from laughing a lot and a squinty-ness about the eyes that comes from spending time smiling in the sun (and maybe from time behind a screen). The teeth are a little yellow from drinking lots of tea while reading and the jawline reveals a fondness for cookies. The woman in that picture looks like a lady who knows surprising things and has a kind heart.
If I didn't know me, I think I'd be willing to talk to me, based on this face.
More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) We've hit a few Disney movies I hadn't seen in this batch. While I remember The Fox and the Hound through a veil of tears, I had never seen The Black Cauldron,The Great Mouse Detective, or Oliver and Company. I'm guessing it's because I was a young teenager right as they came out. I'm sure I thought I was "too old" for "kid cartoons." Luckily I grew out of that misconception not long after. I was looking forward to seeing Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid again. I still know *all* the songs in the Little Mermaid. For me, that's when Disney became a double threat hitting my musical nerd and fairy tale fan buttons all at the same time.
My daughter had seen NONE of these, though she's familiar with the music from The Little Mermaid since our middle school put it on as a musical a year or two ago.
So here's what we thought of 80s Disney:
Fox and the Hound: We knew we were set up for heartbreak from the outset. Heck, Todd's mother didn't last as long as Bambi's! We sat and talked about this one for a while when it was over because it was pretty morally complicated.
The hunter and his dogs weren't just simple villains (though the movie is pretty solidly anti-hunting), but what hope was there for the doomed friendship between natural enemies? And what a bittersweet ending. Way more adult and nuanced than we were expecting.
The Black Cauldron: So, is Gurgi actually Smeagol? The vocal resemblance was uncanny, even down to some of the lines (munchies and crunchies? talking about himself in the third person?) This Disney film had a very different feel than any of the previous ones. It wasn't a musical--no songs at
all, actually. It was darker and more directly scary than any of the others, too. We found it a little sloppy in building character arcs, so lacking in the emotional impact it might have had, but definitely worth seeing. While we enjoyed it, it didn't feel like a Disney movie to us.
The Great Mouse Detective was definitely more for me than for my twelve year old. She knows who Sherlock Holmes is only vaguely, and certainly didn't know about Basil Rathbone, so some of the Easter Eggs remained hidden for her, while I was cackling with inner glee. We both love Vincent Price, though, and he was magnificent as Ratigan. Still she found our Dr. Dawson charming in the same way as The Rescuers' Bernard. A very satisfying little gem we would watch again.
Roger Rabbit, too, was filled with references that went right over my girl's head. She's not steeped in noir like I am. On the other hand, she is a fan of old animation, so she had a blast identifying old characters as they wandered through and where they are from. We were both so pleased to see Betty Boop. When I watched this one for the first time (when it was new), I had not predicted the big bad guy reveal until just before it happened, and I was pleased that my daughter didn't guess ahead of time either. She's far too good at guessing where a story is going, so she's hard to surprise with a twist! We were both lukewarm on Oliver and Company. We liked the relationship between Fagin and the dogs, and Sikes was a strong villain, but the whole thing just felt a little lackluster. Maybe too polished? It's the first time Disney used established singers like Billy Joel and Bette Midler as opposed to voice actors. It didn't feel like the characters were singing the songs, but like they were lip syncing, if that makes any sense. In fact, writing this now, a few days later, I can't remember a single song from the film. I guess music is a bigger part of what we love in Disney than I realized. That made The Little Mermaid truly welcome. It's the first of a new style of Disney princesses that dominated the 1990s and still continues today: spunky women with agency.
It really feels like a stage musical, too, hitting all the expected notes: a yearning ballad for our heroine, a gloating moment for the villain, a comedy number (the cook), a setting piece (Under the Sea), etc. Instead of the musical numbers being a break from the action as they often were in older films, the songs are the major vehicle for the emotional highpoints. We're only missing the hero and heroine singing their love together, but in most of the screentime they share, her voice is stuck in a seashell, so there are some limits there. My daughter commented repeatedly on how strange Ariel looks--giant headed with shockingly skinny arms, ridiculously small waist, etc. I have to agree--even in a long field of unrealistic portrayals of female bodies, Ariel stands out (swims out?) as ridiculously proportioned. And, as a Greek mythology buff, my girl was confused by this version of Poseidon, who seems to be less of a god of the sea and more of just the king of the merpeople, but who has some of Poseidon's traditional attributes and powers. But we really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to enjoying 1990s Disney with her.
If you've been reading these posts, you already know my husband got us a subscription to Disney Plus, so my daughter (age 12) and I have taken on a project of watching all the Disney animated features in order. I'm writing about the movies and our reactions here on the blog.
Since the United States was kind of busy in the 1940s, thanks to WWII, Disney produced mostly collections of short animations during this period. Even though the release dates are largely post-war, the artists must have working on these pieces during some tumultuous times, and the Disney studio did a lot of government propaganda work, leaving less time to develop popular features.
The compilation/anthology movies don't appeal to me as much as the more extended movies that tell a single story. My daughter doesn't mind though. She's a bigger animation fan in general, though, seeking out animators on YouTube in her spare time and drawing still images in the various styles she sees there. So, she enjoyed these more than I did.
The next one on our list was Make Mine Music (1946), and I was disappointed to find that it wasn't on Disney Plus. I know I've seen it because when I read the description on wikipedia, I remembered Casey at the Bat, Peter and the Wolf, Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet, and that one with the singing whale. I'll check back for it in the future. Maybe there's a distribution rights problem or something.
On the other hand, I wasn't at all surprised that Song of the South (1946) wasn't there. That one already felt weird in terms of race depictions in the 1970s when I was a little kid. It would probably be even stranger now.
I told my daughter about it, and we both wished we could have watched it for the animation study, to see if the integration of live action and animation had gotten any better after The Three Cabelleros in 1944. I remember thinking it was pretty amazing at the time, but then I wasn't the animation connoisseur she is.
Having learned about Uncle Remus stories, though, my daughter had an a-ha moment about the reference her dad and I sometimes make to being thrown in the Briar Patch, so hey--educational moment :-)
So, we jumped to 1947 with Fun and Fancy Free, which features several famous names of the era alongside two cartoons: Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk. I didn't remember Bongo at all, though I remembered Mickey and the Beanstalk quite well. The retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk has been released in other forms and shown on television over the years, though, so it's entirely possibly that I really never had seen Bongo.
My daughter and I both enjoyed Dinah Shore's reading and singing of Bongo, but were more than a little perplexed at the whole "Bears Say I Love You With a Slap" thing. My daughter's reaction was pretty much: Wait? What? Still, it was a fairly charming story and we enjoyed it, even if we didn't find anything especially memorable about it. We both enjoyed seeing Jiminy Cricket again. He's a charmer, that little bug.
Edgar Bergen introduced Mickey with his dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Now I've never found Bergen's schtick funny, but I tried to hold my tongue and let my girl decide what she thought uninfluenced by me. I guess she's my kiddo, after all, because she also wished they would just hush up with the creepy dolls and staged conversations and get back to the story.
Mickey and the Beanstalk was a charming telling and does a good job integrating the normal personalities of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy into the familiar fairy tale. The giant was such a goofball that he wasn't scary at all. We were happy to see him again at the end, pulling the roof off Edgar Bergen's house and then stomping off into the city to put on the Brown Derby restaurant as a hat.
Next we made it to 1948 and Melody Time, which was a string of music-centered stories: Once Upon a Wintertime, Bumble Boogie, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot, Trees, Blame it on the Samba, and Pecos Bill. I remembered Johnny Appleseed and Little Toot from childhood, and was happy to recognize The Andrews Sisters and Roy Rogers among the narrators.
My daughter knew Johnny Appleseed, too--having had a babysitter in her preschool years who showed that cartoon alongside lots of Veggie Tales to the children when she needed a break. And I'm proud to say that she knows who The Andrews Sisters were, too. She's a fan of an electro-swing rendition of Mr. Sandman, which sent her down a historical music rabbit hole, so she's now probably the only twelve-year-fan of a musical group her great-grandmother used to love.
Among the other stories, we were both mostly just annoyed by Once Upon a Wintertime and couldn't figure out why in the world Jenny and Joe were all cuddly at the end when their disastrous ice skating date should have taught them both that they are ill suited for one another. The music didn't really go with the animation either. It looked slapstick and sounded melodramatically romantic.
Bumble Boogie was fun visually and would have been at home in Fantasia, but it's good that it's short.
The Legend of Johnny Appleseed was way more overtly Christian than I remembered, but still managed to be pretty charming, even though both of us don't usually enjoy art that proselytizes too much. Johnny was just so earnest and grateful for his blessings that it's hard not to like him.
Little Toot definitely benefitted from the Andrews Sisters' talents, because the story is a bit of a muddle. My daughter that Little Toot's parents were the ones were needed a talking to, maybe something about age-appropriate expectations and child supervision.
Trees was really pretty to look at onscreen. According to wikipedia, "To preserve the look of the original story sketches, layout artist Ken O'Connor came up with the idea of using frosted cels and render the pastel images right onto the cel. Before being photographed each cel was laminated in clear lacquer to protect the pastel. The result was a look that had never been seen in animation before." It truly was striking visually! We oohed and ahed over that one, but again we were glad it was short because the poem wasn't very interesting and there wasn't really a narrative hook.
Pecos Bill was the silliest piece. A tall tale story you might hear alongside something about Paul Bunyan or John Henry, it told the story of a cowboy who had been raised by coyotes, wrestled cyclones, and fell in love with a cowgirl named Slue Foot Sue.
We giggled quite a bit during this section, but its silly-ness really brought out how all over the map the tones were in this collection. It was very much a kitchen-sink production, probably having something for everyone since we threw everything in willy-nilly.
Next should have been So Dear to My Heart, 1948, but it too was unavailable on Disney +. So onward we went to The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949. Neither of us was sure why these two stories were paired for release. There's really nothing to connect them, though both are fun in their own way. I remembered both stories with some fondness from childhood. My daughter had never seen either one.
Mr. Toad is about, well, Mr. Toad. He's a madcap frog with an enthusiasm for speed and adventure that gets him into trouble. The portrayal of Toad's mania with the hypno-spinning-wheel eyes was entertaining, as was the whole frog running around the countryside dressed as a country gentleman from the turn of the century.
It was a light and entertaining story and we both enjoyed it, but thought it rather forgettable. (The introduction by Basil Rathbone delighted me, but unfortunately my daughter doesn't know who he is, so we'll have to try some old school Sherlock Holmes on her soon.)
Ichabod was a delight. Bing Crosby was perfect and we were both delighted by the portrayal of Ichabod (already a familiar character to both of us) as socially graceful despite his gangly appearance. The scene where he's dancing with Katrina at the party and stuffing himself with pie without ever missing a step and Brom is trying and failing to switch partners so he can squire Katrina around the dance floor? Priceless. So many moving parts in that scene and all so deftly handled. Brilliant.
Talking afterwards we wondered if Katrina's ploy worked and made Brom work harder to win her heart or not. We hoped that Ichabod found a warm hearth and good food in another town. He was a man of simple enough wants after all.
We're both glad to be done with the anthology pieces now. Check back soon to see what we think of Disney in the 1950s. I'm anxious to see how Cinderella holds up!
I had more exposure to classical musical as a child than was average for those around me. My beloved grandfather was a fan, especially of Wagner and Beethoven. You know how some kids sneak into the back of movie theaters to watch movies without paying? My grandfather, as a boy, snuck into the back of Music Hall to listen to opera and classical music.
I also took dance lessons. My parents hoped it would make me less clumsy, and I did enjoy it even though I didn't have much talent. Later, I was in the band and the chorus. All that is to say that I liked classical music more than many children around me, so the classical aspect of this film was not a hard sell for me, even then.
My younger daughter isn't particularly a classical music fan, but she appreciates music and animation in combination and does listen to quite a bit of instrumental music on her own. She was quite open to giving this film a chance, and remembered the Mickey Mouse sorcerer part from Fantasia 2000, which we watched kind of a lot when she was smaller.
For both of us, one of the oddest aspects of Fantasia were the bits between pieces. We were tempted to fast forward the man talking to us about the music (Deems Taylor) to get to the "good part" where we actually hear it and see what the artists did with it.
Program notes are tricky beasts. Classical programs always seem to want to combine education with entertainment, and the audience overall does seem to want that background about the composers and the times they wrote in. Neither of us found these particular program notes all that engaging though. The bit where Mickey came out and shook hands with the conductor was cute and charming. The bit where the musicians randomly knocked over their own instrument was weird. The rest was utterly forgettable. In fact, I don't actually remember anything said during this part now.
I guess the program notes were intended to add some gravitas? To make sure we didn't feel the serious music was disrespected by the animated interpretations? I don't know. Maybe it's a product of its times. It was 1940 and I'm watching in 2019. I think I'd have left this part out and just put in a title slide letting me know the name of the piece, the composer, and when it was written.
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Paul Dukas is still the most memorable piece in the collection. Perhaps this is because it has a plot, whereas most of the others don't really tell a story, or maybe it's because of Mickey Mouse. It's beautifully matched to the music and Mickey is sympathetic as the apprentice looking for a shortcut for his labor. My daughter was as charmed by those relentless water-hauling broomsticks as I had been as a child, and it ends on a cute laugh where Mickey is punished by the scary wizard, but in a "get out of here, you scamp" way which is a relief of tension.
"Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor" by Bach, the opening piece, probably did the least for either of us. It morphed from live action images of the orchestra into increasing abstract images. My daughter--the visual artist of the two of us--admired the moment of transition, noting that at some points it was difficult to tell if something was real or drawn, but I was impatient. It doesn't help that I'm not particularly a Bach fan, so the music didn't pull me in either.
"The Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky is by far the piece of music we both know best. Thanks to the popularity of the ballet, that score is etched into our brains. This one must have made an impression on me when I was a child, because it hit with a rush of nostalgia, especially the long-legged fairies the dancing mushrooms.
My daughter was especially charmed by the Russian flower people section. Overall, we both enjoyed this section immensely for the way it reinterpreted the music while still referencing the familiar and popular aspects of the ballet.
"Rites of Spring" by Igor Stravinksy or "the dinosaur part" as children remember it reminded me of Bambi. The part where the spike-tailed dinosaur fights for life and loses it to the T-Rex (who has larger "hands" than are usually depicted, which made him even more terrifying) was heartbreaking, with all the other dinos hiding in the greenery and watching him die. Disney really loves to get gruesome in its pathos sometimes.
My daughter's highlight in this part was the pterodactyls (who were pretty scary looking too) getting their comeuppance for torturing the squid they'd captured by losing one of their count to the large-jawed sea creature. It suited her sense of justice.
"The Pastoral Symphony" by Beethoven, in contrast, was so pastel-romantic that it was funny. The plot of this one involves little cupid babies trying to get centaurs and "centaurettes" (I kid you not: they actually called them that in the intro) together for a little spring romance, then everyone being attacked by Zeus with thunderbolts for a while. Oh yeah, and the bit with a chubby comically drunk Dionysus.
Now, my daughter is into Greek mythology. She's a fan of a Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube (whom I also really enjoy! She's witty and sarcastic and unapologetic in her interpretations and opinions). So, my girl was a little startled by this portrayal of the gods, though she thought Zeus randomly throwing lightning at people because he was bored was very on-brand. He's such a bro-dude.
I was more taken aback by these simpering, beauty-obsessed female centaurs. (Not that the boys did much either--they seemed to mostly mope about hoping one of the girls would notice them, or jump around athletically). In my first piece on this project, I talked about my ambivalence about Disney, some of which stems from portrayals of female characters. This is some of the kind that bothers me. Every Centaur girl was so passive and sweetly docile. How about just one with a little moxie?
Still, the art was idyllic, soft and pretty. And Zeus definitely looked like a jerk for attacking their party with lightning for no clear reason.
"Dance of the Hours" by Amilcare Ponchielli didn't sound familiar until we got to the bit that was stolen for "Camp Granada," but I did remember the dancing hippos fondly. This one was clearly meant to re-engage the younger children who might have lost interest during the pastoral languor. We have ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators dancing ballet. It's cute and funny. Watching, my daughter and I were a little confused as to the intentions of the alligators. Did they want to eat the hippos or date them? It seemed a bit of both.
"Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky was a surprise. Chernabog the demon/devil dude was pretty darn dark and scary looking. I recently read a book about Milicent Patrick, an artist who worked on this segment and later went on to create the Gill-man, my favorite old movie monster and I thought about that while I was watching, wondering what parts she'd been responsible for.
My daughter often creates demon OCs (original characters) in her sketchbook (though hers are usually cute-creepy rather than large-scary), so she sat up and took notice during this part, too. She ooo-ed and ahh-ed over the imagery of his drawing ghosts out, skeletons and ghostly figures swirling through the air.
We were both struck by the effect of the church bell sound on Chernabog. Such expression on his face! The animation work is just amazing here. In fact, there's much that I've seen echoed in later animations: the use of light to indicate power, the body language, the shapes of wing and face. From Gargoyles to Maleficent, lots of future Disney scares seem to have found inspiration in this demon character.
I confess that the Ave Maria that ended the piece put me to sleep, though. In part, this is because I was a tired mother at the end of a long day, resting under a cozy blanket on the sofa. In part it was just so soothing, both the music and the animation of the souls walking into eternity, which is apparently a beautiful wooded landscape with gorgeous bridges, reflective waters, and elaborate gateways. I missed the last two minutes because I had literally drifted off!
My daughter laughed at me, but confessed it had left her feeling sleepy, too. So, I'm not sure what to make of that as an end note.
Since this piece contained so many different stories and styles, it's hard to compare to the single-character-arc stories of Snow White and Cinderella. It's just too different a critter to compare easily.
An interesting aspect of any anthology piece like this one is the effect of the order of the pieces: knowing what emotion to draw in your audience with and what to send them out with, when to up the tension and when to throw in comic relief or something else to calm the audience. Fantasia is beautifully paced for the most part in this way, balancing the different pieces. It's still so well worth viewing!
Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop.
If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.
If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
December 4 question - Let's play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve?
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I've always had a lot of dreams about what my life would be like when I grew up. If you went back and talked to six-year-old Samantha, you'd have heard about the giant house she'd have on a cliff above a raging sea, with a tower room where she kept her art supplies and dancing shoes. The gardens would rival the ones I'd seen at Biltmore that one time on vacation and there would be a waterfall in my backyard.
I planned to finance all that by being a teacher, which shows that I didn't have much of a practical understanding of money, but was full of optimism. That's probably still true to some extent :-)
I wasn't much older than six when I decided I'd be a writer, too. Of course, my dreams about how that looks have changed a bit since then.
When I was a kid, I imagined that a writer spent all her time walking around in long sweeping dresses across gloomy landscapes (like a Brontë sister), then went home and wrote passionate poems (like Emily Dickinson). I didn't spare a moment imagining how this writer bought her pop tarts and hot chocolate. I probably thought my mom would keep taking care of that for me.
Now, I'm closer to living the dream of my writing life than I have ever been. I've had my first taste of success with three of my novels accepted for publication. They sell at least a few copies every month and I get invited to author events several times a year.
I'm a "real writer" by nearly anyone's estimate and I have to say it feels good. I write every single day and I get my words into print regularly. I'm more confident in my work every day, and know I'm building a career that will see me through to the end.
My imagination, at least when it comes to imaging my own future, doesn't run as wild and free as it did when I was six. Even my "crazy dreams" are a little more realistic. They are possible, at least, even if they're unlikely.
I imagine the Menopausal Superheroes getting picked up by Netflix and made into a series with Kathy Bates and Helen Mirren in the cast. It's a huge hit of course, and Hollywood realizes that there's a huge market for stories about strong women of all ages and they've been missing out on millions of dollars by only marketing to and casting the young.
(Menopausal Superheroes as drawn by Charles C. Dowd)
I get more offers than I can find time to fulfill to write more stories. I make so much cash that I send my second daughter to college without borrowing any money and pay off everything I borrowed for the eldest! I take my husband and family on wonderful trips to all the places we've always wished we could go see. I drive a car during the same decade it was manufactured!
Ellen DeGeneres calls and I charm everyone with my genuine awkwardness in my stint on her show. I use the opportunity to raise money for my foundation that sponsors women creators to produce the work they were meant to make. My foundation frees thousands of women from the struggle of making ends meet and their creations change the world for the better.
I still teach, because I love teaching, but I do it part time, only for students who care about learning what I am trying to teach. I still write every day, because that's the fun part. How about you? What do your dreams of superstardom look like?
The company has created a lot of stories that I've enjoyed in my life, but they have also helped feed a narrative of women either as helpless and needing rescue or objects of censure for being anything not considered "wholesome."
Even as a little girl, I chafed at some of the underlying messages. But there's a magic about this films, especially when they get you at a young age.
I'm a sucker for a musical, and Disney has more than a few out there that made up the soundtrack of my childhood. Even if I don't always like how the "princess" narrative goes--Disney has a long history of female led stories that garnered huge audiences, crossing generational lines. The cultural significance of that can't be ignored.
Since Disney now owns Star Wars and Marvel--two fandoms that dominate our household, we got the new Disney+ service.
So, I've decided to watch the Disney animated features in chronological order with my younger daughter. She's into animation, and hasn't seen some of the older ones at all, so I think it'll be an interesting view on the body of work.
So, that starts us out in 1937, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We'll need to watch 11 films to get to 1950, the year my parents were born.
Those first five I know well. I've seen them all many times, starting in early childhood, and moving through VHS and DVD and streaming services with my cousins and friends and eventually my elder daughter. We don't think our youngest has seen any of them before, though she's seen a lot of Disney's more recent movies.
I don't remember ever seeing Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, or Fun or Fancy Free, at least not by title. The Three Cabelleros, Melody Time, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ring only vague bells.
At this writing, the youngest Bryant and I have watched Snow White and Pinocchio.
Some thoughts:
Snow White is weird-looking. She is portrayed as neither a woman nor a child, but some sort of hybrid: adult-sized and apparently considered marriageable drawn as if she is wearing eye makeup and lipstick, but with a chubby baby-fat kind of look more like a toddler, no womanly curves, and a very childish voice.
It's disconcerting. The animation on the dwarves is more expressive than on our princess.
We noticed that sometimes when Snow turns her head, something strange happens to the planes of her face, as if it does not actually have three dimensions. It reminded us of hieroglyphic art in that the face was always to the front, no matter what. We began to wonder if there were any ears under her hair because of all the moments when her movement made us expect to glimpse them, but none were seen.
Obviously animation of human-appearing characters has come a long way since this first feature film.
The Blue Fairy has a similar plasticity, but it is less disturbing since she's a supernatural character: a
fairy who lives in a wishing star. Pinocchio only looks "real" for a couple of minutes at the end, so there wasn't time for him to pull us too far into the uncanny valley.
Story-wise it was interesting the parts of the story that weren't portrayed.
My daughter and I are very familiar with Snow White in thousands of iterations, from the Grimm fairy tale telling through hundreds of reinterpretations in books, movies, and other media.
In the Disney animated feature, we never see Snow White interact with her stepmother until the stepmother comes to the dwarves' cottage disguised as the apple peddler. That's an interesting storytelling choice that really adds to the stepmother/witch's malice.
Neither of us has read The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, however. When we talked it through, we realized that the only other version of Pinocchio either of us could remember seeing is the character in the Shrek movie series. We did both feel like we already knew this character well, though, despite exploring him far less thoroughly. We must have absorbed him through cultural osmosis.
In the movie, we wondered why we didn't get to see Geppetto get swallowed by the whale. His whole adventure happened off screen. Both of us agreed that would have been more interesting than the whole Pleasure Island sequence that went on too long.
Some parts of the stories didn't age that well.
The ick-factor of Snow's awakening by a kiss from a complete stranger is alleviated by having the prince meet her early in the movie with the wishing well scene. Thank goodness. It really did help with that moment.
The evil gypsy puppeteer Mangiafuoco in Pinocchio definitely made the movie feel old, and not in a good way. Racial stereotypes like that don't play as simply as they once did and we both felt squiggy watching that part. And the cartoon logic of having a pet cat that acts like a cat in the same movie as a talking fox who acts like a human is something we don't often see any more.
Also, is Geppetto the worst dad ever? He sends a boy who was literally a block of wood yesterday off to school alone and wonders why he doesn't get there? I mean, I don't like the helicopter parenting we see these days either, but a little preparation and leading the way might have been a good idea.
"Heigh-Ho", "Whistle While You Work", and "I Got No Strings" still had our feet tapping. Those songs hold up well. The warbling love bits, less so.
I'd love to hear what you memories and experiences surrounding these films are like and hope you'll come back to talk about the rest of the project. There are more than 50 movies in the list, so it might take us a year or so to watch them all!
Some of the new I liked: a bit of whimsy down an alleyway
As I write this, I'm just returned from a trip to visit my parents who still live in my childhood home of Bellevue, Kentucky, located four blocks from Ohio. It's a small town still, but with easy access to the big city. We used to walk to Reds games and other downtown events rather than pay for parking. In fact, lots of what people think of as "Cincinnati" places are actually not in Ohio, but in Kentucky (like the airport and the Ohio River for starters).
I've been trailing the nostalgia fairy. I imagine her as a mermaid, beautiful on top and a stinky old salmon on the bottom, who will delight you with a beautiful memory one moment, then turn around and swat you in the face with the smelly fish tail of the ugly side of change.
Fairfield Mrkt where Mom used to bank.
Like a lot of small towns, Bellevue has seen a lot of change in recent years, some for the good, and some that make my stomach churn.
Bellevue's avenue seems to be flourishing with independent restaurants and small businesses and that makes me happy. I like seeing Fessler's hoagies and pizza (I knew it as Pasquales, but the food is the same as always) and Schneider's Sweet Shop still serving the delights they've served my whole life from the same locations and that any changes have been expansions and improvements.
It's kind of fun that the storefront that used to house my childhood used bookstore is now a Thai restaurant, the first apartment we lived in is now a pretzel restaurant, and my mom and dad's old bank is now a chi-chi dining place (chi-chi here is defined as too "fancy" to take my blue collar Dad to), still with the bank vault (now a wine cellar). I spent my week's visit eating lunch in childhood haunts that weren't restaurants then.
We've got art galleries, coffee shops, restaurants, craft shops, and funky gift shops in all the old buildings along the avenue and most seem to be doing strong business. That's good to see. Good for the life of a town.
At the same time, swaths of old houses along the riverfront are simply gone, wiped off the map and replaced by tall, expensive, and horrendously ugly condos and apartments that are completely out of character with the look of the town. More are being built as we speak, and they look even uglier and suck up the skyline so us plebeians who have always lived here can no longer see the river. My dad's childhood home was nothing special, but it's just completely gone now, along with all the neighboring houses that used to offer something lower rent for those who needed it.
With them we got a bunch of chain restaurants and a lot more traffic and parking problems.
I don't like rich people generally (in my admittedly limited experience with wealth, rich people do not become rich by being kind, generous, or noble) and I don't really want them to move to Bellevue…but I do want the town to continue to exist and be a safe place for my parents and old friends to live. "And so it goes." Here's hoping Bellevue can keep the heart of what it has always been while staying afloat in the 21st century.
Bellevue houses: lots of brick, with charming details. From the tiny to the giant. I used to dream about owning that top one when I was a kid.
The first apartment I lived in with Mom and Dad, now a pretzel sandwich place.
Cincy views from around Bellevue
My childhood movie theater.
Van Voast bridge still scares the heck out of me. Worse when a train is running beneath.
There are a few times of year where excitement vibrates in the air, maybe especially the air around children. A kinetic joy bubbles up and it's all we can do to move forward in the ordinary things we have to accomplish before our anticipation pays off and boom! It's Halloween.
The second October began, that half-crazy energy settled on the middle school where I teach. As the month goes on, it will build. Kids will make plans for costumes, parties, and pranks. They'll tell each other scary stories and wax poetic about the good old days when they weren't "too old" to Trick or Treat (some of them will still Trick or Treat this year, "too old" or not).
Sometimes adults catch it a little, at least some of us. The playfulness of it all is contagious. The "let's pretend" license that comes with a time of year where even adults often dress up as something scary, shiny, or just really different than whatever they usually are.
The giddy energy exceeds even Christmas in some ways. Maybe it's because it's more of an everyone holiday (less tied to religious traditions), and celebrating is less reliant on how much money is in your bank account than the more avaricious commercial side of that December festival.
Generally, I visit my parents in my childhood home of Bellevue, Kentucky at least once a year, for a longish visit in the summer time. But in 2018, I hadn't made it up there at all yet. I was extra super busy with writing related events, and Mom and Dad came down often to my neck of the woods often enough that I wasn't feeling like I hadn't seen them. But I hadn't visited home yet this year.
So, when my school district closed down in anticipation of storm effects from Hurricane Florence, I decided this would be a great time to visit my parents, who live considerably further north and inland. That would keep us safe from any ill effects of the storm and relieve my worried husband by getting two of his girls out of harm's way, and maybe get us a little spoiled at the same time.
Because I live so far away (by the standards of a family that nearly all lives in a single 1 hour radius), coming home is often a pretty big deal, full of family gatherings, trying to see everyone I grew up with. It can be exhausting. But not this time. It was a last minute decision to come. It's a short visit. I hardly told anyone.
It was nice being home and not scurrying around to see everyone, but just relaxing. I saw only my parents, my husband's mother, and one cousin and her family (that last bit was a coincidence: she came by to talk to my dad about her car).
You'll be relieved to know that we've developed all new plans for world domination. We're thinking we'll achieve it with cannis. Simple, beautiful, and pervasive.
As much as I love my extended family and old friends, it was super chill, sneaking in a little daughter time with just my parents. In 2019, I think I want more simple, quiet family time like this.
Eighteen years sounds like a long time, but when you spend it raising a daughter, it goes by in a blink.
I delivered my girl to college on Saturday.
I know she's embarking on another adventure, but I don't get the ringside seat I've had for her other adventures and that's leaving me a little sad.
But I know how fortunate I am.
She's healthy, smart, and capable. She's found a college that seems like a great fit that will prepare her for a future doing what she wants. Bursting with pride and feeling melancholy is a weird combination of feelings. A hard one to describe, which is an odd feeling in and of itself for a wordsmith.
So, here's a verse I wrote for her when she was still very small, and I was struggling with my feelings after divorcing her father. She still saves me all the time.
For my daughter
You save me from bitterness, sweet girl. Without you, how I might rail against heaven and rue the days I spent in your father's company as wasted days, lost time.
But if it took all those sad, difficult days to make you, it was little enough to pay. If I had to cry to bring the joy that is you into the world, it seems a fair price, a bargain. I would have given so much more had it been asked.
When my heart wants to brood on might-have-beens, my breath stops to think that you might never have been.
I'm going through another transitional phase. This one doesn't have a new name or category, not like "teenager" or "graduate" or "mother" or "divorcee" or "wife" did.
I don't get a new title, just new circumstances to adjust to.
Daughter, the elder, graduated high school and will be leaving for college in August. Daughter, the younger, completed elementary school and will become a middle schooler this fall.
These changes in educational venue are coming with changes in our house, a room shuffle, changing a bedroom into an office and changing who sleeps in which room.
I feel weird.
I mean, I always feel weird, but this is a weird I'm not used to.
I'll still have a kid at home, so I'm not an empty-nester, but my first fledgling is flying on her own now. On any given day, she will prepare her own lunch, plan her own schedule. I won't know, necessarily, if she's had a good day or a bad one.
That feels so strange. We've always been so close her whole life. I want her to go to college and be a successful adult, of course, but at the same time I want her stay right here and be my little girl forever. Parenthood and teaching, two roles where the goal is to make yourself obsolete.
On the other hand, my other daughter will attend the same school I teach at now. I'll know MORE about her school day than I've ever known before. I'll know all her classmates and her other teachers. I'm probably even going to be her teacher at some point, since I'm the whole Spanish department at my school. She'll spend time in my classroom with me instead of at aftercare after school.
And me? I don't know what this means for me yet. Will I have more time to myself? Will getting that office make a big difference in my writing productivity?
Throughout my life, I've been told that I was going through a phase. I guess I thought I would be done going through phases when I became an adult. I guess I'm learning that life isn't a game you can learn to play well and just keep playing. The rules change all the time. Here's hoping the next phase is a good one!
