Luddism

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There are books you really want to read, and books you feel you should read.  There are authors who delight in telling you what’s going on, and there are authors whose writing obfuscates.  I’ve always preferred the former in both scenarios, but I felt I should read William Gibson’s Neuromancer.  I guess I’ve grown apart from science fiction.  (It’s not you, it’s me.)  Or at least some of it.  And I encounter too much jargony writing among academics.  I’m a simple guy with simple tastes.  Also, noir has never been my favorite.  Case, the protagonist, is difficult to like.  As a literary achievement there’s no doubt that Neuromancer is amazing.  And highly influential.  It’s the story of a thief/conman (Case) who’s hired for a mission that he doesn’t understand.  Along the way he falls in love (sort of), but, well, noir.  Dames.  The imaginative elements are pretty stunning, and some of them have come true.  AI being one of them.  And maybe that didn’t help sway me to liking it too much.  I’m no fan of AI.

I didn’t read the novel to critique it.  Admittedly, I’m a Neo-Luddite.  I use tech, and even enjoy it sometimes, but I prefer print books, movies (on celluloid) in theaters, and music, if recorded, on vinyl.  Old fashioned.  I do like some of the convenience, however.  Who isn’t addicted to getting tedious things done quickly?  Well, some of them.  In any case, I found the Molly character intriguing.  I couldn’t help but think of Blade Runner the whole way through.  William Gibson claimed that his novel didn’t copy the gritty texture of the movie, and  I believe him.  I’ve written books after thoroughly researching a topic only to discover, too late, that someone else had largely done the same thing already.  It happens.

The plot itself is quite good. Still, there’s an ethical element involved.  I wonder how much AI optimism comes from guys who read such novels as teens.  I have trouble thinking of any way that generative “artificial intelligence” can end well.  It seems a misguided and oversold idea.  Now commercials tell us how much we need Al, and he appears in new devices, wanted or not.  He’s not welcome in my home.  I’m slowly getting used to the idea of having a phone near me most of the time.  I use it seldom, but when I do I’m glad for it.  I don’t watch movies or read books on it.  My favorite times are when it’s sitting there, being quiet.  Some of us are dinosaurs in a cyberpunk world that’s become reality.  And dinosaurs, well, we prefer the world before the electronic revolution.  Maybe even before the rise of the primates.

The Storm

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I suppose it would be a fool’s errand to post today on anything other than the storm.  You know the one.  The snow/ice storm that has been affecting the greater part of the lower 48 for the last couple of days and is now set to target the most populous region of the country.  Power outages are expected (so if this blog goes utterly silent, you’ll know why).  Good thing FEMA has been dismantled by the Trump administration.  In any case, we’re all waiting to see what the outcome will be.  I guess we should ask AI.  In any case, our lives have become so completely tied to a constant source of electricity, we barely know how to get along without it.  I have to admit to being a bit puzzled myself.  Without electricity, the heat goes off.  The water pipes freeze up and burst, and a personal apocalypse ensues.

As my wife is fond of saying, the weather is still in charge.  A storm like this shows how fragile our infrastructure can be.  Especially since the last ten years of US history have been dealing with Trumpism or its aftermath.  And one thing that our elected officials don’t do well is deal with reality.  Nation-wide storms do occur.  Democrats do not control the weather.  The “woke” don’t have some great machine buried somewhere generating all the hot air that ultimately leads to global warming which, we all know, is really real.  And so we sit here waiting for the silence to come.  Funnily, having grown up in the Great Lakes snow belt, I remember these kinds of snow amounts not infrequently as a child.  Our house was little more than a shack and it was heated by a  single furnace in the living room, vented mainly by the leaky roof and drafty windows.  Besides, my step-father drove the borough snow plow.

Today things seem much more brittle.  What would we do without Netflix for a day?  And snow days from work are a thing of the past.  Offices never close because they never have to.  As long as the juice flows.  That is reality here in the world of 2026.  I can envision a different world.  One that might be a little more sane and focused on protecting one another instead of one percent of the richest one percent getting even richer.  A world in which snow is pretty instead of some insidious threat.  A world where being human is sufficient for the troubles of the day.

Super Human

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There’s a line in the musical 1776 where Stephen Hopkins says “Well, I’ll tell you. In all my years, I never seen, heard nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about.”  Of course, there are many things that can’t be talked about; some of them so obvious that children can see the truth of the matter.  One of those subjects is what Jeffrey Kripal calls The Superhumanities.  Most of academia laughingly calls this the paranormal and dismisses it.  I have been following Kripal’s work since first encountering Authors of the Impossible, back in late 2011.  He is a brave scholar who argues that since encounters with the impossible have happened throughout human history, and still happen, we should study them.  Mainstream science, which is necessary and good, proceeds by discounting anomalies.  That doesn’t mean anomalies aren’t real, just that if you try to account for everything, well the engine stalls.  Because of this, most academics have followed the general public in ridiculing these things as magical thinking.

That doesn’t stop people worldwide, however, from seeing ghosts.  Or UFOs.  Or experiencing things that just shouldn’t happen.  Many of us are taught to brush off things like disappearing object phenomenon, precise coincidences that happen in a striking series, or episodes of picking up the phone to call someone you haven’t talked to in years only to have the phone ring and it’s that person calling you.  We tell our friends but generally conclude that it’s just “one of those things.”  Moreover, we don’t dismiss family or friends when they tell us about such things.  We know them personally and trust their integrity.  If a stranger walks in, however, we laugh about the event.  Kripal makes the case that something is going on here.  And we ought to pay attention.

The main idea of this book is that humans are “super.”  In order to rescue the humanities, which Kripal teaches at Rice University, we need to acknowledge them as superhumanities.  There’s a lot to ponder in this book.  It’s not an easy book, but it is an important one.  Kripal engages philosophers on their own terms, displaying an incredible depth of comprehension.  I almost didn’t finish the book because it’s so closely argued that I had to put it down for a few months.  It had become literally buried under a stack of other books I had in my to read pile.  I’m glad I picked it up again.  This is a profound book with important, essential conclusions.  It includes dangerous ideas, but, like Hopkins, I believe there should be nothing that can’t be talked (or written) about, especially in the academic world. Ridicule is never good debate.

Hearing White

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I really do need to start writing down either the year of movie recommendations or the year of the film.  Many movies share names and I found White Noise on my list and couldn’t remember who or where or when.  I watched the 2005 version knowing in advance that it was panned by critics but it did well at the box office.  Now, I tend to like ghost stories—I’m not much of a slasher fan—but this one was a bit convoluted.  Too much is stuffed in.  So Jon Rivers’ wife dies and he’s contacted by Raymond, who’s been receiving EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) messages from her.  So far, so good.  But then things spiral (including the camera; please, people, hold the camera still!).  Raymond is killed by unseen entities.  Jon finds another client of Raymond and decides to set up his own electronic superstation to hear and see messages from the dead.

A psychic warns him this is dangerous.  He persists, learning that his dead wife is, always cryptically, telling him to go to places where people are about to die.  He’s able to save a baby’s life that way, but he’s getting messages about an abducted woman and wants to save her.  All the while, on the computer monitors three shadowy figures keep appearing—evil spirits, presumably.  Jon discovers that a serial killer has been receiving messages, through a similar tech setup, from these evil spirits and has been torturing and killing people.  The spirits directly attack Jon, killing him, but the police follow the clues Jon has left and catch the killer.  But not, presumably, the three evil spirits responsible for inspiring said killer.  There’s some good ideas here but they aren’t handled very well.  The story is too complicated to really fit into the time allowed.

It is a good example of religion and horror, however.  There are lots of clergy around—there are a few funerals in the movie.  I found a few potential Bible uses, but nothing definitive.  I’m not sure Holy Sequel will ever be written, but the list of potential movies is growing long.  White Noise isn’t a horribly bad movie.  The 2005 version is at least worth watching for the spooky ideas.  The movie’s main claim to fame, at least according to Wikipedia, is that it made studio executives realize that early January was a good release period for horror movies.  If they’d read some history they’d know winter has always been a time for horror films and stories.  As the genre gains some respectability, perhaps those who produce horror will realize that it’s an all season phenomenon.  Even if it tries to base them on electronic voice phenomenon.

Trying to Write

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Realizations dawn slowly sometimes.  From childhood on I wanted to be a writer.  Teachers encouraged me because I seemed to have some talent, but in a small town they didn’t really know how to break through.  Besides, terrified of Hell, I was very Bible and church focused—not really conducive to the worldliness needed to be a writer.  The realization that recently dawned is that I’m competing with people who can put full-time into writing.  I’m trying to squeeze it into a couple hours before dawn every day because 9-2-5.  9-2-5.  9-2-5.  It’s exhausting.  I often read about writers, wondering how they get noticed.  Even the people I try to get to publish my fiction read stuff others likely have more time to write than I do.  Why do I keep at it?  Sometimes it’s just impossible to keep ideas inside.

I’ve got ideas.  Some of them would make fascinating movies.  I even had an editor of an online journal that published one of my stories say that.  I’ve got a cinematic imagination trapped in the aging body of a day-worker.  Oh, I’ve got a professional job, of course.  What I really want to do is “produce content.”  I know others in publishing with the same dream.  One of my colleagues has managed to break out and she’s now publishing novels that are getting noticed.  I’m still writing for academic presses because I know how to get published by them.  My fiction has been suffering from neglect.  To stay sharp you have to keep at it.  I’m a self-taught writer.  I’ve not taken a course in it my entire life, and it probably shows.  Not even Comp 101.

Fairness is a human construct and ideal.  Reality lies with Fortuna (cue Carl Orff).  I’m better off than most people in the long human struggle with equity, I realize.  For that I’m grateful.  I do have to wonder, however, if struggle isn’t essential to making us what we need to be.  The writers whose work endures often had to struggle to get noticed.  Many died in obscurity.  I wonder if they ever realized that they were leaving a legacy.  You see, writing is a strange blend of arrogance and self-doubt.  Many of us go through intensely self-critical times when even our published books seem to mock us from their shelves.  The realization, now fully day, that I will always have to struggle to do what I know I’m meant to do sheds light.  Even in the world of privilege, the struggle inside is real.

Seeing Seagulls

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It was a seventies thing.  Even though I lived in a small town, even I had heard about Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  At first I didn’t know it was a book.  (A similar thing happened to me in the nineties with a character named Harry Potter.)  It was probably in college that I learned this was a book I should read.  I did, and I followed it up with Illusions, also by Richard Bach.  Now, this was unorthodox stuff.  These novels consider what some would call superhumanities and others self-deification.  The two are related.  In any case, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a story about a seagull that overcomes limitations.  An inspirational book.  The publisher had no great expectations for it but it ended up becoming a number-one bestseller without any real marketing support, largely through word of mouth.  You’d have had to have been living in a cave in the seventies not to have heard people mentioning Jonathan Livingston Seagull, whether bird or book.

I got a hankering to read it again but alas, it was one of the books destroyed in the flood.  I went to a local bookstore and was disappointed to see that it was out in a new edition—larger, and, of course, more expensive.  Longing eventually overcame reluctance and I bit the bullet.  I’m glad I did.  The story is still as empowering as I remembered it, but the fourth part, the new one, strikes me as very necessary.  In it, rumors of the disappeared Jonathan Livingston Seagull have turned him into a god.  A god, moreover, whose followers are more interested in the orthodoxy of ritual than what he taught.  This was published before Trump’s first election, but it accurately describes what “Christianity” has become under his two-pronged reign of terror.

The idea of Christianity itself has become deified to the point that Jesus—what he did and taught—have become completely irrelevant.  Now, you don’t have to walk all the way with Richard Bach (I read the two books after Illusions as well, The Bridge Across Forever and One), but this book has a message that still rings true after all these years.  The book is over half-a-century old now and I am glad that it’s having a small resurgence.  The message, when the book ended at part three, was perhaps a little lighter.  We still, however, have to learn to overcome limitations.  And there’s a fair amount of wisdom in this little book.  Even though it was a seventies thing, it remains a good thing.

Blushing Brides

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Death does strange things.  But first I have a confession to make: I had never seen The Princess Bride before recently.  Since it is a favorite film of many people and since Rob Reiner had been murdered earlier that week, my wife wanted to see it again (for her).  Given the timing, she must have seen it shortly before I proposed to her, or maybe shortly afterwards.  Perhaps I owe a debt of gratitude to the movie.  I entered into it not knowing anything about the story or even the genre.  Rob Reiner was eclectic in his tastes, directing everything from comedy to horror, Spinal Tap to Misery.  As for Princess Bride, it felt like a light fantasy, generally comedic but with no laugh out loud parts.  It’s a sweet story with intriguing characters.  And a cast of big names.  I have to assume that since I may have been the last person on the planet to see it that the plot is already known.

The fact that it is based on a book makes me want to read it, but I understand it is quite long.  One of the debates that constantly seesaws in discussions of pop culture is whether it’s better to read the book or see the movie first.  Typically I fall on the book side (but you already guessed that).  I think that might’ve enhanced my experience here.  I do try to enter movies fresh, without reading about them in advance or watching trailers.  But then again, I tend to watch horror films as a kind of default.  In The Princess Bride, things turn out alright.  Definitely better than they ended up in Game of Thrones.  Fantasy is a genre that I sometimes read, but the sword and sandal scene isn’t my favorite.  The comedic aspect, however, makes Princess Bride work.

I also wonder if the initial impact had something to do with the cultural moment.  1987 stands out in my mind as a year of cultural significance.  It was a formative year in my life: I went to Israel that summer to work on an archaeological dig.  Pop culture was also in an odd place.  In my mind this mostly tracks with music of that year.  U2’s Joshua Tree came out early, and I recall a number of albums I purchased that were formative to me as a twenty-five-year old.  The one that most spoke to me, as a dark fantasy was Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, which I still listen to every October.  I saw a lot of movies that year, but Princess Bride wasn’t one of them.  I feel like I have, in a small measure, temporarily caught up.

In Praise of DVDs

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Streaming has made movies very widely available, which makes my life easier.  Since I’ve been writing books about horror movies and such, being able to see them now that video rental stores have disappeared, helps.  (At least when they’re available.)  But I’m not ready to stop singing the praises of the DVD just yet.  (Or Blu-ray, if you roll that way.)  They definitely have their advantages, at least until the disc goes bad.  When you watch a movie as a form of research, and you haven’t been taking adequate notes, you might need to stop afterwards and watch a scene again.  What I’ve noticed with streaming services that include commercials is that if you rewatch you have to be subjected to two minutes of commercials first.  And if you only vaguely remember where the scene was you may need to sit through four or six minutes of advertising.  Maybe more.

The humble DVD had the chapter menu.  And no commercials that you couldn’t skip.  My books have involved using DVDs whenever possible for that reason.  Quite a few of the movies discussed in Sleepy Hollow as American Myth had to be viewed via streaming.  Going back and finding that exact scene where the question mark lingers can be quite time consuming.  There’s a reason you can only write a limited number of such books!  The DVD was, naturally, an improvement over the VHS tape with its endless rewinding.  Of course, streaming has reintroduced having to scan back through a movie to find a spot instead of picking a chapter close to where you remember the scene.  First world problems, I know, but no less annoying for being so.  It’s the world in which I live.

Then there’s the bonus of extras.  I know some streaming services offer side menus with additional information, but those of us who are focus-challenged need to watch the story.  Extras were for afterwards.  Does anybody else feel old for having grown up with the only way to see movies being either the theater or a grainy black-and-white small rendition on television several years later?  Now movies are whipping past me through the ether all the time.  Landing on devices and beginning to play if your cursor hovers too long on the spot.  I used to avoid going to movies alone—they were a social occasion as well as an entertainment one.  Now I stream alone, often at the price of commercials, and during those interludes I’m thinking of DVDs, and how they were made for research.  A strange thing to say for a guy who used to trust only books.

Togetherness

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Over the holiday break I watched three very good movies and I noticed that Domain Entertainment was one of the production companies for each of them.  The final one I saw (after Sinners and Weapons) was Companion.  I’m going to have to look into Domain a bit more.  In any case, Companion is sci-fi-ish horror with a somewhat comedic twist.  I say sci-fi-ish because we are rapidly approaching the point where this is possible.  What is this?  A sexbot that functions like Siri but who’s better in bed.  Josh and Kat have been planning to murder Kat’s very wealthy boyfriend and to blame it on Josh’s bot Iris.  Iris doesn’t know she’s a robot.  Viewers learn that Josh has tampered with her programing a little, allowing her, for example, to attack a person in self-defense (violating Asimov’s rules for robots).  When Kat’s boyfriend tries to rape Iris, she kills him.

Josh and Kat will blame the robot, with their friends Eli and Patrick as witnesses to corroborate their story.  Since the deceased boyfriend has 12 million dollars in cash lying about his house, it won’t be missed.  But Iris, it turns out, has a conscience.  She escapes.  It turns out that Patrick is Eli’s sex bot, and he is sent to bring back Iris after she kills Eli, also in self-defense.  A police officer who finds Iris is killed by Patrick, complicating matters.  Then, Josh changes Patrick’s programming and he accidentally kills Kat.  Planning to blame all of this on Iris, Josh calls the robot’s maker to have Iris returned.  The technicians see the holes in Josh’s story and one of them restores Iris after Josh shoots her.  Iris then confronts Josh.

This will give you a taste of the story without giving away the ending.  This is a smart, sympathetic treatment of technology, including AI.  From the beginning, before it’s revealed that Iris is a robot, the viewers’ sympathy is with her.  She seems to be the wronged party and Josh is slowly revealed to be pretty much an all-round scumbag.  While not the most profound film of this genre, Companion nevertheless raises many of the issues that merit discussion when technology outraces ethics.  We see this unfolding in real time with artificial intelligence companies deciding on profits over any sense of what is good for society, or people in general.  What makes the movie so interesting is that the robots seem to be far more morally concerned than the humans are.  Although I turn this around the other way, I do wonder if sometimes that may be the case. Especially in the context of a movie that’s barely science fiction.

Literalism

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I struggle with literalism.  It may be naïveté.  I’m not sure there’s a difference.  I grew up being unsure of anything.  This isn’t unusual among those in an alcoholic family.  It’s probably the reason I spent my teenage years, praying as fervently as John Wesley for certainty with my faith.  My gray matter simply wouldn’t allow it.  I’m skeptical, with advanced training in critical thinking, but still terribly naive.  A family member recently told me something that sent me into a mini-panic.  It was only when I realized that he was being ironic that my ruffled feathers began to smooth out into flight readiness.  And that’s just one instance.  I used to tell my students, when we pick up something to read the first question in our minds is one of genre.  What is this?  Is it fact or fiction?  Serious or satire?  With interpersonal interactions it’s not always so clear.

People are natural actors.  They have to be.  Family time is quite different from alone time.  At least it is for me.  I try to shelter those I love from the darkness, but sometimes it surfaces.  I literally don’t know who I am.  There’s a certain continuity to the “Steveness” of my everyday existence, and that essence, for lack of a better word, accepts many things literally.  I trust people I know.  For the most part, I trust those I meet in their professional capacities—the store clerk, the mechanic, the professor.  I realize that they have inner lives as well, and they may or may not be unfurling the banner for all to see.  We all have filters.  Some use them more regularly than others.

My knee-jerk literalism generally lasts only a second or two.  My brain catches up and says, “this is where your critical thinking should kick in.”  Often that works, but it’s tied in with emotion as well.  The human thought process is certainly not all logic or reason.  Even the most Spock-like among us have emotion constantly feeding into our thoughts.  That’s one reason that artificial intelligence isn’t possible.  Those who think they can logic their way through falling in love are sadly mistaken.  We can’t explain it because we don’t understand it.  And we’re nowhere near being able to.  For business dealings we expect literalism.  But then there’s always the fine print.  I’m not that naive.  I do struggle with my literalism.  It’s set me on the wrong path before.  But certainty still eludes me.

Second Wednesday

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Season two of Wednesday isn’t quite as fresh as season one, but it is still chock full of monsters and fun.  The rest of the Addams family is more present in this season, but it is still focused on that dark academic Nevermore Academy.  The Poe connection comes up more than once as well.  I am curious what they will do in season three, besides rescue Enid, that is.  The concept of the series, it seems, wouldn’t really be possible without dark academia.  Nevermore clearly draws from Hogwarts, but Harry Potter is in the dark academia universe as well.  And this season brings a new threat to the Hyde, the nemesis monster of season one.  The presentation of the Adamses is, in many ways, superior to that in the television series with which I grew up.  I’ve only seen one of the movies.

The whole premise behind the show goes back to a series of cartoons drawn by Charles Addams in the late 1930s.  The television show from the sixties was in reruns by the time I grew up, and we didn’t watch it religiously.  I did enjoy the weird aspects of the family, but I didn’t get behind the mythology.  Of course, the mythology really began to grow with the big-budget films of the 1990s, which edged into comedy-horror territory.  Wednesday moves things into the realm of monsters with a dash of the X-Men thrown in.  Even so, the show works.  Wednesday continues to build the back story of various family members, and does so well.  The basic idea of the season is that Gomez’s roommate, a mad scientist, is reanimated and is attempting to cure his mother from being a Hyde.  This clashes against the Addams family.  Also, the new principal at Nevermore is a conman.  Hmm, wonder where they got that idea?

I’m fascinated by the growth of such phenomena in popular culture.  Tim Burton has a way of bringing dark Americana into his orbit, and this is another example.  The thing is, this set of cartoons began what has now become a large franchise.  You never know when you put something out there, whether it be a poem (“The Raven” is clearly a major part of American culture), a story, an obscure novel, or cartoon, if someone in the future might not see the potential in it to make it a big thing.  And since dark academia is having a moment, the time is right for Wednesday and the growth of more dark Americana.

Being Saved

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Historians of media will have much to contend with now that streaming services, such as Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon are producing their own feature-length films.  There are movies I’m still waiting to catch up on, but freebies on services already available are enticing, economically.  So it was that I watched Hulu’s No One Will Save You.  It’s an unusual horror film that has, as many recent ones do, a message.  Personally, I find home invasion films and alien films particularly frightening and this one does scare pretty consistently for the first half or so.  For me, anyway, at that point questions start to arise and curiosity about what’s going on starts to overcome the fright.  The movie is heavy on symbolism, almost to the point of being a parable.  The main character speaks fewer than ten words of dialogue in the film, another unusual feature.  The story, with spoilers, goes like this.

In chronological order (not as presented in the film) Brynn accidentally killed her childhood best friend in an argument.  She has remained in the area, living in an isolated house, and making a living as a seamstress.  Then the aliens come.  Brynn, among those in the rural area, is the only one to have successfully fought them off.  The alien home invasion is about as scary as that in Signs.  As the title already warns viewers, nobody is going to save Brynn.  She manages to kill three of the aliens, but they want to explore her mind.  They do so, finding the isolation and sadness because of killing her best friend.  She forgives herself and the remainder of the townsfolk, controlled by the aliens, welcome her back into society.

One of the features that stood out to me was that when the police chief—his daughter was the girl Brynn killed—refuses to help, Brynn goes to the church.  For all its problems, Christianity is based on the principle of forgiveness.  The problem is that the church is locked and Brynn can find no salvation there.  When forgiveness does come, it is through the manipulations of the aliens.  In the end, the people of the town are the ones who have to change their behavior and accept the one who has learned to forgive herself.  This is why it feels like a parable.  At the same time, it works as a horror movie.  It was better than I had anticipated it might be.  Even though it wasn’t on my list of films I need to watch, I’m glad I did so.

Orkney

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The Orkney Library and Archive was one of my first followers on Bluesky.  (I tend to follow back.)  I’m not sure why they followed me, but I am grateful.  I’m grateful to all followers on social media.  Or at least those that aren’t out to scam or stalk me.  In any case, seeing the Orkney Library posts always takes me back to the two vacations I took to the Orkneys and I thought it’d be nice to plug a little tourism with personal recollections.  



Photo by Maxwell Andrews on Unsplash

My wife and I lived in Scotland for a little over three years.  As grad students we didn’t have a lot of money, but we did have the presence of mind to realize that as we got older and settled into family and career that just picking up and going somewhere would become more complicated.  I’ve also been a firm believer that travel is a form of education and that people who go places learn by doing so.  Hopefully they learn to accept difference rather than to fear it.  In any case, after my wife began to work and figure out the British tax system, we found out we had enough money to go somewhere exotic.  The Orkney Islands.

The Orkneys are the antiquities-rich, once Viking-inhabited islands north of mainland Scotland.  You can either fly or take a ferry to get there.  Since we’d had a small windfall, we flew.  That was a mistake, given my history with small planes, but I recovered once we landed.  One of my fond memories was hiring (renting) a car in Kirkwall, the largest city.  When I went to unlock it the dealer said, “It’s open.  Nobody locks doors.  We live on an island.”  That comment has stayed with me all these years.  Orkney represented what happens when population size (the islands have only about 22,000 inhabitants) doesn’t grow to the point of creating natural stresses that lead to “big city problems.”

No place is perfect, of course, but Orkney impressed us so much that we returned, with friends, a few months later.  This time we took the ferry and, thankfully, they drove.  We visited antiquities, met locals who were open to outsiders, and saw some of the most spectacular scenery that the British Isles has to offer.  Seeing the posts of the Orkney Library and Archives on Bluesky always takes me back to a happy place.  It’s one of the good things social media has to offer.  And since I check it in the morning, it starts my day off well.

In the Yard

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The search for “free” horror has a few more reasonable offerings, it seems, if you follow the reviews.  I try not to read about movies in advance, and I avoid trailers.  The Woman in the Yard had higher scores than several movies streaming on the services I use.  It’s Blumhouse horror, so it has a bit of substance.  Substance but also some confusion.  Trying to make sense of it will involve spoilers.  Here goes: Ramona and David have moved into the country because Ramona found the city suffocating.  Once there, however, she doesn’t take to farm living and becomes depressed.  She tells her husband this and on their way home from a restaurant, he dies in an accident while she’s driving.  Ramona, herself injured, tells Taylor and Annie, her son and daughter, that their father was driving.  She lives with the guilt and is still struggling with depression.

A mysterious woman shows up in the yard.  Draped in black, including her face, she tells Ramona “Today’s the day.”  Feeling threatened, Ramona tells the kids to stay inside, but it becomes clear that this woman is supernatural.  The power is out and no phones work.  The car won’t start and the nearest neighbors are a couple miles away.  The family, alone, grows frightened and the woman’s shadow begins to manipulate items in the house, threatening them all.  Ramona confesses to Taylor that she was responsible for his father’s death.  When the woman’s shadow attacks they have to get into the dark where her shadow is powerless.  Ramona is drawn through a mirror where David is still alive, but frees herself to get back to her children.  The woman tells her that if she kills herself, which she’s been praying for the courage to do, her children will thrive.  Without showing the death, the family is back together and the power comes on, only it is the mirror world.

A few things to note.  There are a few scary moments but the movie as a whole isn’t that frightening.  It is, however, dealing with suicide—it actually has, in the final credits, a note urging anyone contemplating suicide to seek help.  There’s no clear indication of what happens but the ending might be interpreted rather darkly.  Depression is difficult for those of us who struggle with it.  The movie seems to indicate that the woman in the yard is the flip, pro-suicide version of Ramona.  She appears to resist and overcome the depression, but it’s really left open at the end.  Still, this isn’t bad for “free” horror.  It’s thoughtful, if not exactly cheering.  And it gives viewers something to think about.

Stories in the Snow

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Birds are quite capable creatures, but some have learned that by hanging out around human dwellings, some of our species give handouts.  For me, the sight of a cute little junco shivering outside the window leads me to break up the hardened bread slices that I save for them and toss them outside when things are either buried in snow or ice.  This year we’ve had a bit of ice and some snow on top of it, which makes a kind of canvas for seeing who’s come to visit our crumbs.  My daughter pointed out to me that we had some feather prints as well as footprints, so I thought I should go ahead and record them.  If this were mud and a few million years had passed we’d perhaps have ended up with fossilized feathers.  And nature’s canvas is endlessly beautiful.

I imagine people tend to be partial to birds because they look so delicate and fragile.  Well, at least the little ones do.  Our natural sympathies make us feel sorry for them when nature makes finding food difficult.  The survivors among them, however, are tough.  Birds skirmish over food and can be quite aggressive around both a bird feeder or a crumb pile.  They were, after all, once dinosaurs.  And around here winter locked in before Christmas and has stayed around for quite some time, temperatures barely rising above freezing for many days in a row.  And I look for feather prints in the snow.  Try to find the beauty in the starkness of harsh weather (while looking askance at the energy bills).  Our animal companions can teach us much about life.  Their stories leave traces for us to follow.

Our species has often tried to advance itself at the expense of others.  I think of the tremendous environmental damage that we’re willing to inflict to enable AI.  What pollution we’re willing to dump out for using fossil fuels.  How much forest we cut down for our own use.  We drive vulnerable species extinct.  This makes me think of those creatures that have adapted to us.  Who speaks highly of rats, pigeons, or cockroaches?  Even sparrows, which can be quite aggressive, or even mean, reflect our attitudes toward the rest of nature.  I’m sure some sparrows come for the crumbs, even though I put them out with the juncos in mind.  Those that appear here in winter have likely migrated from even further north.  They handle cold I have difficulty tolerating.  And they leave art in the ephemeral snow.