More Omens

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Brushing up on my eschatology, I watched The Omen again.  The original, that is.  One of the underrated aspects of cinema is that people learn their theology from it.  Movies tend to be more memorable than sermons.  It is opined among some that The Omen is responsible for the prevalence of dispensationalism among many Americans.  I’d put a bit of a finer point on it in that The Late Great Planet Earth was being raptured off the shelves all the way through the seventies (I personally bought two copies) and it caused a feedback loop with The Omen.  Many mainstream ministers, without benefit of a Fundamentalist upbringing, were caught unawares, I expect.  Scholars of religion have noted how several aspects of the narrative—the character of “the Antichrist,” the rapture, indeed, the Apocalypse—have been read back into the Bible by credulous believers.

What I found interesting in this viewing is the debt owed to The Exorcist.  Of the two there’s no doubt as to which is the superior film.  The name Damien in The Omen, I read somewhere once upon a time, was taken from Fr. Damien Karras.  During the late seventies and early eighties, unruly boys were routinely called “Damien” by frustrated camp counselors and others.  Apart from this nod, if true, is the fact that the abruptly introduced character Karl/Carl Bugenhagen is an archaeologist exorcist.  (He’s the guy who gives Robert Thorn the knives, if you haven’t seen it for a while.)  The scene shot in Jerusalem (said to be Megiddo) underscores that Fr. Merrin is also being channeled here.  I suspect that the film was getting a bit long in the tooth and some explanatory material on Bugenhagen was left out.

It has also been suggested that the number 666 entered popular culture because of The Omen.  I would temper that a bit with the fact that a lot of people were reading Hal Lindsey’s new apocalypse as well and the two of them got the job done.  There’s no doubt that after the film the evil number took off in a direction that would’ve left John of Patmos scratching his head.  This brings me back to the point that belief is influenced—sometimes constructed—by movies.  The Omen was a huge success at the time, despite the fact that many critics (also not raised Fundie) thought the premise was silly.  Most people aren’t film critics.  The Bible can be pretty impenetrable as well.  Preachers may not be inspiring.  Movies, however, wrap it up neatly and tell you what to believe.  Perhaps it’s some kind of sign.

Thinking Thinking

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Something that’s been on my mind (anticipatory pun) lately, has been thought.  More especially, the quality of thought.  We are conscious beings, although we’re not sure what that means.  Beyond a Cartesian self-awareness.  Everyone knows what it is to have times when you’re not thinking clearly.  Or are feeling confused.  Those of us who tend to live quasi-monastically (keeping to a routine, early rising, writing and reading daily before the 9-2-5 routine) notice the ways subtle things can influence the quality of our thinking.  For me, first thing in the morning is the best time.  (Although I must confess that lately I don’t wake up with the crystalline clarity that I have for years, as if sleep is beginning to intrude on my earliest hours.)  Once I’m up and going, though, routine, you’d like to think, would provide the same results.  But it doesn’t.

Photo by Pierre Acobas on Unsplash

I’ve written before how the quality of sleep can affect the quality of awake thinking—something we’ve all known all along.  But even when I have somewhat identical nights (same quality of sleep more than one night in a row), the subtleties of difference in thought persist.  To understand this, you need to realize that I’ve been rising well before the sun for a dozen years now.  I awake to a quiet house and spend a couple, sometimes a few, hours writing and reading.  (It’s how I write my books, as well as this blog.  And my fiction.)  Even on “identical mornings” where the weather’s pretty much the same, and all other factors seem equal, the quality of thought differs.  Sometimes it depends on whether I’m writing fiction or non.  As I transition into my reading time, that can make a difference in the reading experience.  I suppose that’s one reason I value good writing.

We don’t understand consciousness.  Identity is also somewhat negotiable at times.  We’ve all known a family member or friend to act “not like themselves.”  More to the point, to think not like themselves.  We have no real way of understanding thinking itself.  I think about thinking quite a bit, and I marvel at how intensely personal it is.  We may, at our will, keep our thoughts to ourselves (and that’s a good thing, in many circumstances).  Thought, it seems to me, ought to be a very high priority in our academic pursuits.  It’s a powerful thing, capable of more than we’re even presently able to imagine.  And it can differ from day to day.  Do you suppose I wrote this after writing fiction or non?

Learning to Write

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It’s a reciprocal relationship.  Ideally a symbiosis.  The publisher has a reach, and know-how, that an author lacks.  An author provides content the publisher needs.  Yet publishing is a business in a capitalistic world and has to (unless subsidized) turn a profit.  As an author who works in publishing I’m skewered on the horns of this dilemma.  It’s heartbreaking to see the lengths some authors go to only to find out their book is priced the same as a week’s worth of groceries.  Or three tanks full of gas.  Who buys a $100 book?  Libraries.  Well, some libraries.  Occasionally a publisher will run sales, if you order direct, but by then interest in your book (which may be timely) has passed on.  You become just another name on the shelf in the Library of Congress.

I’m looking for a publisher for my sixth book.  This has to be someone who understands that even $45 is beyond the reach of most intelligent readers.  “What the market will bear” feels like the death sentence to the years of your life you’ve put into writing the thing.  A friend once asked me, “Why do you do it?”  For authors the real question is “How can you not do it?”  The need for the validation through publication runs very deeply in some people.  More deeply than our national love for Taylor Swift.  It has to do with meaning.  Purpose.  A sense of what we’re put on earth to do.  

Image credit: Codex Manesse, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The standard “wisdom,” and practice, is to publish in hardcover, priced for the library market, and if it sells well at $100, perhaps offer a paperback.  Hopefully priced lower than $45, but don’t hold your breath.  “What the market will bear,” should be your mantra.  It’s a wonder that civilized people ever got educated.  I grew up on cheap books from Goodwill, which is all I could afford.  College, on borrowed money, taught me the price of reading seriously.  It was a lesson I never forgot.  I’d begun my faltering steps to writing books while in high school.  I started writing short stories even earlier than that.  It has been a life of writing.  Even series books, I’ve come to see, are too easily exploited in this way.  My shortest book is priced at $40.  At least I know that I’ve written some collectors’ items.  Take heart, my fellow writers trying to emerge from academe.  There are other ways of being in the world.  And some of them may even be symbiotic.

Lying Beneath

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If you wait long enough you can find successful films for free on Amazon Prime.  What Lies Beneath had big-name star power and still retains a “horror” classification, although “thriller” is used about as often.  I actually enjoyed it and found some parts as scary as I am comfortable getting.  Although I guessed who the killer was well before the climax, I wasn’t sure how this would end.  This made the last fifteen minutes or so very tense.  There may be some spoilers as I ponder this a bit, so be warned.  Of course, the movie is nearly a quarter-century old, so you may already have an idea of what happens.  I’m a purveyor of older culture, it seems.

Claire Spencer, and her new husband Norman, live in an isolated spot in Vermont.  Norman is a genetic engineer and Claire used to be a musician, but the death of her first husband and adjusting to being an empty nester lead to her neglect of playing.  She starts seeing a ghost in the house Norman inherited from his father.  She comes to believe the ghost is of a missing young woman from the area, and she begins to find clues that link her husband to this unsolved case.  At first you think it’s going to be like Rear Window, but it turns into something very different.  The sense of unease is quite effective—you know something’s wrong but you’re not sure exactly what it is.

This is another of those movies where the genre feels up for grabs.  There’s an actual ghost and there are stingers.  Yet it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, not really known as a horror director.  It’s stylish and has Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford in the leads.  It’s not really gritty at all.  There is blood and fear, though.  The more movies I watch the more I realize that genre is a tenuous thing.  Stories are forms of expression and sometimes they come in the varieties that explore some of the darker parts of life.  Norman’s tragic flaw is that he values his career above all else.  He tries hard to outshine his father’s accomplishments—he lives in his childhood home but refurbishes it.  He can’t get out from under that shadow and that drives him to extremes.  The movie received mixed reviews, but I found it gripping.  It’s well acted, as you’d expect, and hey, there’s a ghost.  It’s close enough to horror to work for me.

Easter Fools

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One of the most interesting aspects of Easter is its peripatetic nature.  It wanders around the calendar awaiting the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  By definition it’s always in spring, but it can range widely as to when it actually falls.  This year it meets up with another unusual holiday—one with very uncertain origins.  April Fools’ Day is poorly documented and understudied.  This is one of the reasons I find holidays so fascinating.  Scholars seldom take them seriously and, well, April fools.  Who’s going to look into that?  When working on The Wicker Man (which is about holiday horror), I found there was little to find about April Fools’ Day.  There’s no agreement as to why it’s called that or how it started.  I have a pet theory, but no evidence to back it up.

Image credit: Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

We tend to think of April Fools’ as a day for practical jokes.  Indeed, the horror movie based on it is a big, long practical joke.  I wonder, however, if it goes back to my other old avocation, the weather.  The weather led me to write a book as well, of course.  For those in the northern hemisphere—particularly up in the more temperate parts of that hemisphere—April can indeed fool.  Around here it’s been decidedly cool for spring after a real warm spell a couple weeks back.  One year while living in Wisconsin we took a family trip for my wife’s mid-April birthday only to end up playing mini-golf in the snow.  April fools, you see.  We’re not out of the woods yet, regarding winter.  This understanding of seasons makes me think April Fools’ Day evolved from a statement about the weather.

Irish Celts believed spring began at Imbolc, at the start of February.  In that viewpoint, summer begins on May Day (Beltane), just a month away.  Now that Easter has fallen on the last day of March we’re left with an April bereft of official holidays, other than April Fools’ Day.  In fact, work-wise it’s a barren period from Presidents Day, in mid February, through Memorial Day at the end of May.  Just as the weather’s warming up to make the occasional long walk through the woods a magical journey of discovery, we’re confined to our offices—virtual or physical—gazing longingly out the window as nature invites us out to play.  Well, April fools, does it not?

What Would Ostara Say?

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Easter is an uneven holiday.  In Britain it leads to days off work.  In the US, which prides itself on being religious, it’s business as usual.  Nobody closes for any days surrounding the holiest day of the Christian year.  That irony has always struck me about this season.  Of course, going to college there were breaks in the spring, and at a Christian school, special observances for sacred times.  In seminary it goes without saying.  In my case, working on a doctorate in the UK (an activity with few true breaks), we experienced the British sense of holidays surrounding Easter.  At Nashotah House you simply couldn’t miss it.  In fact, the Triduum was a contest of endurance with late night services and hours and hours in chapel.  Once I was forced into secular life, the shift was blinding.

Capitalism rolls right over Easter without even slowing down.  Who brakes for a Sunday holiday?  I am a believer in significant days.  I write about holiday horror, and holidays in general, because I’m certain of their importance.  The relentless pursuit of gain that is the American way is wearying.  Most everyone I know who isn’t retired is just plain tired.  Tired all the time.  We’re given few pauses and fed many worries.  So much so that resurrection from the dead can feel like something scary indeed.  Will work in the afterlife be as unrelenting as it is in this one?  All of this becomes especially evident to me on years like this one where Easter creeps up on me.  Not a fixed day in the calendar, sometimes you don’t even look up until you’re practically on top of it.

I remember in high school spending practically all day on Good Friday in church.  When working at Ritz Camera (after seminary, trying to stay ahead of student loan payments), managers looked at you funny if you asked for it off.  You see, I need spiritual time to recover from the onslaught of work.  Easter, however, is just another Sunday.  Watched on Zoom, with maybe special music.  If you’re able to be there in person there may be lilies with their distinctive Pascal scent.  Then the next day it’s back to work as usual.  Thinking about Easter always make me think about hearts being where the treasure is located.  When we take treasure too literally, it leads to too much work.  My mind, I fear, is that of a professor, with built in spring break.  And semester breaks.  Not exactly holidays, but unstructured time to catch up on work.  Holy days.

Movie Prophet

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Is there such a thing as a movie so bad that it can distort reality itself?  If so, I nominate A Haunting in Salem.  A little explanation.  I am trying to develop an aesthetic for bad movies.  I’m finding it not too difficult for movies that are so bad they’re good.  Usually such movies are fun—whether intentionally or not.  But there is a class of movie that is poorly written, poorly acted, poorly lighted, poorly set, poorly premised, poorly directed, poorly paced, and all without a hint of humor.  That’s this movie.  I watch bad movies because of my expensive habit.  I stream movies.  Since I work 9-2-5 and I’m tired by 5, I do this on weekends.  I’m not paid enough to afford renting movies every single weekend, so I look for what I can find on the services I can access—Hulu, Netflix, and, mostly, Amazon Prime.  I try to find something that grabs me.

I watched A Haunting in Connecticut and A Haunting in Georgia, as well as their remakes.  The Salem in the title made me think this might have something to say about the Witch Trials.  Perhaps it did but I was so busy groaning that I couldn’t hear it.  Although set in Salem it was filmed in Pasadena (who would notice?).  They used a 200-year-old house as a 400-year-old house, as if there’s no difference.  There’s a scene where the daughter asks her mother about her father’s PTSD.  She says something like, “He shot that man in the war.  He thought he was a bad guy, but he was a good guy.”  It’s difficult to write this badly, even if intentional.  Sorry, I’m getting away from Salem.  Well, it turns out that the witches were buried on the property of Judge Corwin’s house and they kill every sheriff and all their families, when they move in.  This has been going on for four centuries but nobody has caught on?  Even a scene where the mayor is shown raising the flag outside his office had me scratching myself bald.  Is that one of the mayor’s duties?

Most of the time the actors act like there was no direction—showing the wrong emotions and not even remembering what was said just a minute ago.  And you can’t really feel for anyone other than the deputy who seems to be trying to be a nice guy.  Maybe this is my calling in life—to serve as a prophet warning my small band of readers what movies not to watch.  I can’t recall the last time I couldn’t wait for a movie to end so that I could wash my eyes out with soap.  Avoid A Haunting in Salem.  Don’t even consider it.

Tracing Writers

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Ratiocination.  Detection.  There’s something compelling about that clear, crystalline logic that leads to solid conclusions.  I was floored by Don Foster’s Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective.  I found the book by following up a reference to “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” aka “’Twas the Night before Christmas.”  Like most Americans I credited the poem to Clement Clarke Moore, but he did not, in fact, write it.  If you trust anyone with literary detection, it should be Don Foster.  Although this cleverly written book is not an apologia for the author’s personal accomplishments, it nevertheless builds trust in his methods and his sense.  It begins as he discovers an unacknowledged text was written by Shakespeare.  The evidence is carefully laid out, and is convincing.  Then others began to ask him to “prove” who wrote other pieces.  It’s quite a ride.

While Foster takes great care not to claim the ideas as his own, he’s nevertheless drawn into the case of the Unabomber, and Monica Lewinsky, and Thomas Pynchon.  His methods of ratiocination demonstrate repeatedly what he explains in his excellent introduction—our writing is every bit as indicative as our DNA.  With an adequate writing sample size, a piece with an unknown or disputed author can, with a great degree of probability, be attributed to the correct author.  You don’t even need to know of the cases to find the outcomes fascinating.  And those who disagree, being human, are simply not convinced by his conclusions.  They’ve already made up their minds.  In this regard the case of Wanda Tinasky (I’d never heard of her) is utterly compelling.

The Santa Claus chapter, the final one in the book, is a real pay-off.  Henry Livingston Jr., of Poughkeepsie, wrote the famous poem that defined Santa Claus as we know him.  Considering Christmas’ importance in our capitalistic society, this attribution is an important one.  Clement Clarke Moore was a very wealthy professor of Bible at the newly formed General Seminary.  Foster demonstrates probable cause in his claiming, and keeping alive, the mythology that he wrote the famous poem.  The way that this chapter is laid out and presented is especially witty.  Those interested in getting at the truth behind who wrote what will find this a page-turner.  Although he wasn’t seeking out the attention that came (most of us, as academics, are surprised when anyone show any interest at all in what we write) Foster has given the world a real gift in this book.  It reminded me once again why research is the most intriguing thing on earth.  And learning can be like reading a good mystery.

No Changes

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It’s one of those polarizing movies.  Well, maybe middling-polarizing.  For certain kinds of people.  I didn’t see The Changeling when it came out, but I watched it about a decade ago.  It struck me as lackluster then, but I decided to give it another try.  One of the reasons is that I’d read a couple of things about it recently and thought that maybe I’d misjudged it.  There are those who say it’s a very good haunted house movie—one of the most influential Canadian films of all time.  Hyperbole aside, it’s one of those vengeful ghost movies and the most affecting scene, to me, is when George C. Scott is crying in his bed about the death of his wife and daughter.  There are a couple startles, but nothing really that scary overall.  It is slowly paced and sophisticated, but not terribly so.  It still strikes me as lackluster.

I’ve seen many movies since that feature a child murdered seeking to have their story told.  The end result is, however, a feeling of “so what?”  The boy’s father got away with the murder and the beneficiary—who may or may not know all or part of the story—dies in revenge.  There are just too many questions left unanswered.  The haunted house tropes are fairly conventional, and the wheelchair chase scene is a bit strange.  I wondered if there might’ve been something I was missing.  There are critics with a “meh” response, but others rate it highly.  I did learn that, although the film makes no such claim, it is purportedly based on actual events.  That I’d like to know more about.

Playwright Russell Hunter (who lends his name to Scott’s character), alleged that these kinds of things happened to him while living in the Henry Treat Rogers mansion (in Denver).  A local, Katie Rudolph, has done some fact-checking that casts doubt on the story.  Hunter claims to have found human remains (as in the film) and this would seem to be something that could be checked out as well.  In all, there’s not a ton online about the story and its supposed authenticity.  The house was torn down some time ago.  It would seem that any author (Hunter co-wrote the movie) would see the benefits of claiming actual events.  Even if the film doesn’t play that card.  Was there a murder in the mansion?  From what I’ve been able to find, there are about as many unanswered questions as there are in the movie itself.  Although next time I’m in Denver, that’s not to say I won’t be tempted.

Squeaky Clean?

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A New York Times story, apart from the expected misunderstanding of actual Evangelicals, made me sad.  The article points out that, especially since 2016, “Evangelicals” have taken to soft-core porn, cussing, drinking, and premarital sex.  In other words, Trump has given them license to behave like secular folks while still claiming the name “Evangelical.”  Why should this make me sad?  I lament the loss of place for those who grew up, like me, striving for clean living.  It’s an image—a mirage—rather than a reality, of course.  But still, if conviction holds, you can get pretty close to the ideal.  That vision of life has been occluded by a guy who runs for President because he cares only for himself.  Jesus, on the other hand, was all about caring for others.  Going as far as, if the Gospels are to be believed, sacrificing his own life.

Like fiscal conservatives, such legitimate Evangelicals now have no public voice.  One of only two political parties has become identified with an individual rather than ideals—what used to be called a platform.  I have Republican friends.  I grew up identifying as a Republican.  I also grew up as an Evangelical.  I studiously avoided things like bad language, sex, tobacco, and alcohol.  Even at Evangelical Grove City College I was a bit of an outlier for how seriously I took all these things.  Of course, studying history can be dangerous, particularly for ideologues.  Still, “clean living” had its own virtues.  Those who continue to try to live that way are swimming into a rip tide, it seems.  For some Trump seems like the Second Coming, sans the white horse.  And this, above all, is sad.

There are those who claim, often loudly, that religion is bad.  I agree that when a religion tries to force others to obey its standards it can quickly become evil.  Still, the baby should be left behind when the bathwater’s discarded.  Religion has led to much good in the world.  Hospitals, charities, and yes, “clean living.”  These things, along with retirement homes and affordable apartments for low-earners in their autumn years, are necessary to pick up the slack that the government leaves.  It is cause for sadness that the clean living camp has succumbed to Trump-style hypocrisy.  Heck, religion gave us the word “hypocrisy.”  The standards of classical Evangelicalism are often impossibly high.  If we look at current Evangelical leaders we find many, many skeletons in a house with many closets.  And a wagging finger warning the young, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

As We Know It

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The end of the world, as we know it, is really more recent than we think.  Yes, Christians of a certain stripe have been looking for the second coming since the first leaving, but that detailed map of how we’re living in the end times, courtesy Hal Lindsey, is a new thing.  Here are the fast facts.

First and second centuries, Common Era: early Christians tended to think Jesus would “be right back.”  When that didn’t happen they began to look in the Bible for reasons why and started to develop theologies to cover the bases.

Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages: settled in for the long haul, theologians developed eschatology.  Although that sounds like a disease, it’s actually a system for thinking about how the end of the world will come down.  There were conflicting theories.  The two main flavors were premillennialism and amillennialism.

Early Modernism: Protestants came along and searched the Bible for minute clues to make into a system.  In response, postmillennialism became a thing.  Now there were three options.  Various phases were discussed: tribulation, resurrection of the dead, and the already-met millennium.

1820s: William Miller, a Baptist minister, began number-crunching and figured the end of the world would take place by 1843.  His followers, “the Millerites,” continued on after what was called “the Great Disappointment.” 

1830s: John Nelson Darby, a Plymouth Brethren leader, came up with Dispensationalism, a scheme that divides history into eras, or “dispensations.”  He thought we were living near the end of that scheme about 200 years ago.  The idea of “the rapture” was added to the other phases.

1917: Cyrus I. Scofield, published the Scofield Reference Bible.  A man with little formal education (and a “colorful” background), he applied Darby’s dispensations in his Bible, giving the United States a road map to the end times.

1970: Hal Lindsey, a seminary educated evangelical, published The Late, Great Planet Earth.  It became the best selling book (classified as nonfiction) for the entire decade.  New ideas, such as “the Rapture” and “the Antichrist” began to be read back into the Bible.  The book was made into a movie.

1976: David Seltzer, a Jewish screenwriter, penned The Omen.  The movie made use of Lindsey’s adaptation of Scofield’s adaptation of Darby’s ideas.  The wider public, seeing it on the big screen, believed it was about to happen.

2000: the world still didn’t end, either with a second coming or Y2K, as many predicted.  Round numbers will do that to people.  It didn’t stop predictions of the end of the world.

2012: the Mayan calendar gave out.  A movie was made.  People believed. Apocalypse averted.

2024: you fill in the blanks.

Image credit: Albrecht Dürer

Gather Round

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The church has been keeping secrets.  That’s the basic premise behind a fair raft of horror films.  Apart from giving those of us watching religion and horror quite a bit to talk about, it reinforces just how close the two are.  The Gathering is a film I missed when it came out, but one which has an interesting, if unlikely premise.  At times it reminded me of The Reaping, and at other times, the prequels to The Exorcist.  Cassie is a young American woman who loses her memory after being hit by a car near Glastonbury, England.  At about this time a deliberately buried church is being explored by an art history professor.  He asserts that it is the church Joseph of Arimathea built and represents, in its altarpiece, the earliest rendition of the crucifixion.  The clergy seem quite disturbed by this.

Meanwhile, Cassie recovers and is taken on as an au pair for the art historian and his wife (the one who hit her with the car).  The people of Ashby Wake stare at Cassie, as if they know her.  She has premonitions of several local people dying violent deaths.  The clergy learn that the altarpiece depicts those who came to watch Jesus’ crucifixion, not out of love or devotion, but simply for spectacle.  Since then they’ve been cursed and show up to watch various historic tragedies.  The clergy want the church, the earliest representation of the spectators, reburied.  The people of Ashby Wake include those of “the gathering,” indicating tragedy is about to unfold in that small town.  There is a twist ending I won’t reveal, but this is one of those horror films that rely on religion to make them work. 

Critics tend to dislike the film while viewers are divided on the question.  I actually enjoyed it, personally.  The concept of the watchers committed to bloodlust seemed different, particularly when put in the context of nascent Christianity.  It doesn’t handle religion as well as some horror does, but it’s a serious effort.  Why Joseph of Arimathea would want to have portrayed gawkers rather than those loyal to Jesus is one of the bigger questions left unanswered.  After the ending some of the unusual scenes earlier on make more sense.  But still no reason is given why an early church would have portrayed those not to be emulated.  As a horror film with no jump startles, but a slowly building dread, it fits the bill for some of us.  The “church keeping secrets” theme is one that should be explored further.

Showing Gratitude

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Stealing is something that we all, except some capitalists, know is wrong.  I think quite a lot about the land that was stolen to make America possible and I know that simply giving it back isn’t an option.  Nevertheless, I do believe that we should listen, and listen attentively to those who’ve been here longer than Europeans.  Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is an important reflection of this dilemma.  Kimmerer is Potawatomi and she’s also a professor of Environmental Biology.  The book is a series of essays that focus mostly on plants and what we can learn from them.  It also brings in indigenous teaching, contrasting the outlook of gratitude against that of greed.  By turns sad, funny, and profound, Braiding Sweetgrass contains a message that is vital to counter climate change.  To correct our attitude before it’s too late.

There’s so much in this book that it’s difficult to know what to touch on in this brief notice.  Throughout, Kimmerer notes that the First Nations viewed life as a gift.  The earth is constantly giving and the native way was to be thankful and to accept the responsibility of being given a gift.  Seeing how the European attitude was “take until there’s no more to take,” she points out that taking what you need and leaving for others is a way out of our current dilemma.  She does this, most strikingly, by the story of the windigo.  The windigo has become popular among monster fans as a consuming beast, but Kimmerer shows how the story has a profound point.  If all you do is consume you become a monster.  You stop a windigo by showing gratitude.

Perhaps the most striking thing, to me, was how Kimmerer describes her own experience becoming a scientist.  How standard academics refused to believe they had anything to learn from Native American outlooks, especially when borne by a woman.  How she was told she couldn’t be a scientist, not with that outlook.  And how she learned the European way but didn’t give up her native understanding.  How she brings two worlds together and does so with a sense of urgency and hope.  Things have gone too far simply to turn back the calendar and say that our ancestors had it all wrong, but it’s not too late to learn from those who lived for millennia on this land and were untainted by ideas of private ownership.  Those who knew how to live sustainably with nature.  Those who knew, and still know, how to defeat monsters.

Hellish Fears

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Aporripsophobia, the fear of rejection, and the fear of punishment (mastigophobia, or as I prefer, “spankophobia”) are closely related.  They define me.  Much of this comes from the fear of Hell, which I internalized early in life, along with the Calvinistic theology that backed it.  Some have thought that I’m “thin skinned” or afraid of criticism.  That’s not quite it.  I’m afraid of what criticism implies—I did something wrong and therefore may be punished for it.  What brings this on, all of a sudden?  Well, as I was getting ready to jog the other day a police car stopped in front of our house on a routine traffic violation.  My immediate thought was that I had done something wrong.  They were here for me, not the guy whose car they were attending.  Then this brought back that time in Boston.

I moved to Boston on my own, with all I had in a VW Beetle (old style).   I know now that the headache I had after that long drive was a migraine.  (I’ve had maybe a half-dozen in my lifetime, and they’re unmistakable.)  I parked the car, stumbled into my new apartment and went to bed.  The next morning I had a ticket for parking with the left tires to the curb (against the law in Boston).  I didn’t know it was illegal.  Even with a migraine I would’ve not parked that way had I known.  The receptionist at the police station actually said to me “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”  That terrified me.  I thought it was only something Gilligan said.  If you don’t know all the laws how can you possibly avoid punishment?  And isn’t punishment rejection?

Some think I always have to be right.  They may not know the underlying cause—being wrong is to be subject to punishment.  And punishment leads to Hell.  When I was in Kindergarten the first time, I was held back partially because I was four but partially because I colored the triangle in the left corner purple instead of yellow, opposite to the verbal instructions.  It was because I don’t know my right from my left—I still don’t.  To me that first ever school correction was seared forever into my gray matter.  I’d done something wrong.  I was held back in school.  More likely than not, I was going to Hell.  I’ve known people to suggest, as does Richard Dawkins, that raising a child in a religion is child abuse.  I understand parents’ motivation, however.  You don’t want your child to go to Hell.  If they end up living in it all their lives I guess it’s a small price to pay.

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

Which Witch Where?

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I like to think of myself as a kind critic.  I’ve been on the pointy end enough to know how it feels when those who don’t like my work are unkind.  I’ll try to find a nice way of saying Witches of Amityville, or Witches of Amityville Academy, must’ve been shot on a very modest budget.  It must’ve been written by someone who’s still working hard to master the craft.  And the actors are continuing to improve as the director gets better at that role.  Why did I watch it?  Amazon Prime gives it four stars.  The incongruity of Amityville and witches suggested it might be a bad movie, and in that regard it did not disappoint.  So what’s going on here?

There’s a witch academy in Amityville.  Although all the cars have steering wheels on the right, everyone speaks with American accents, apart from a couple of characters.  The interior shots, however, are also pretty British for the most part.  There does seem to be some awareness that Amityville is in the new world.  In any case, said academy is run by an evil coven that is seeking to release the demon Botis.  To do so they have to sacrifice college-age women (and no, it’s not that kind of movie).  One of their intended sacrifices escapes and is found by three white witch sisters who also live in Amityville.  They decide to train this young woman who, as it turns out, is a very powerful witch.  Problem is, the director of the academy can’t release the demon without sacrificing this particular victim.  So she kidnaps her back.  The three good witches burst on the scene, actually more like just walk on, and prevent the sacrifice.  The bad witch kills herself and releases the demon, but the young witch is so powerful that she destroys him.  In the end the witches must go to Salem.

What’s not to like?  Some of us, day by day, year by year, work to improve our writing skills.  We write stories that incorporate whatever ability we’ve managed to scrape together.  And we struggle to find publishers.  I like bad movies because they are a great place to find hope.  The world’s a big place.  Even the entertainment industry is large enough to absorb movies produced by Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, among others, including the big studios.  They’ve got to be looking for content, right?  Those of us who channel our creativity towards writing, and who keep trying to get it published, have a chance, don’t we?  What’s the harm in believing in the power of magic?