Why I don't necessarily believe Christine Blasey Ford

Wow, what a mess.

First of all, I don't necessarily believe Christine Blasey Ford.

I know, I know---according to left-wing ideology, you're supposed to believe all women, regardless. Which is silly, because there are just as many crazy women as predatory men. (p.s. Left-wing goddess Hillary Clinton certainly didn't subscribe to the "believe all women" theory back when all of Bill Clinton's victims were coming forward in the '90s.)

In a November 2017 New York Times editorial, Bari Weiss made the point better than I:

...I believe that the “believe all women” vision of feminism unintentionally fetishizes women. Women are no longer human and flawed. They are Truth personified. They are above reproach.

I believe that it’s condescending to think that women and their claims can’t stand up to interrogation and can’t handle skepticism. I believe that facts serve feminists far better than faith. That due process is better than mob rule....

Thursday, I was able to watch almost all of the testimonies of both Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. Having gone to sleep the night before on the couch with C-SPAN on, I, unfortunately for my attempt to be nonbiased, woke up to Ford's whiny, pseudo-little-girl "vocal fry"---that hideous cross between the old "Pat" character on SNL and Kourtney Kardashian that for some reason is being affected all over the place today by both women and some gay men. (Back in the '80s, Frank Zappa mocked a similar vocal phenomenon with his very popular "Valley Girl" song---so successful a parody that its shaming put an end to that style of speech for decades...until recent years.) So my initial reaction was: "Geez, the woman is MY AGE. Why is a grown, professional woman talking like that??"

Other shallow, surface reactions: She seemed nice enough, but also neurotic and scattered. I didn't, based purely on personality, DISbelieve her, but her demeanor also, on the other hand, didn't particularly inspire confidence.

As for the meat of her testimony: Ford says that 4 other boys and 2 other girls were at the party at which she was attacked. Of these 6 people, not ONE says that they remember anything about a gathering such as this one, much less about a sexual assault taking place. And one of the girls, "Leland," was someone who was, and still is, a friend of Ford's. Leland even sent Ford a text recently, apologizing for having no memory of the entire event and for not being able to corroborate her story.

The fact that NO ONE else alleged to have been there, including a female friend still close to Ford today, remembers such a party is the main reason that I don't necessarily believe Christine Blasey Ford.

Other, more minor reasons:

(1) Ford doesn't remember how she got to the party, or how she got home. (According to her written testimony, she didn't live close to the house in question, so she didn't simply walk there or walk home.) In my own experience, and from what I've read about how most others process traumatic experiences, the victim will usually play and re-play everything about the event over and over and over again in their mind, trying to figure the whole thing out, how it could have been avoided, etc.

(2) I have been actually raped (in 2000, at age 35), which doesn't apply to the Ford case. But my own experience with a high-school "assault" took place at a Friday night school Halloween Haunted House put on by our Drama department when I was 15, the same age as Ford was. I was in the Drama dept and part of the cast, dressed up like a ghoul that popped out of a coffin and chased people. A guy that I liked came through the haunted house (held on the stage/backstage of our school auditorium), along with 3 of his friends; they were drunk. I popped out of the coffin, made spooky noises and moved toward them... They all four then surrounded me and started roughly groping me---boobs and, yes, trying to stick their fingers into my vagina (which was hard to do through whatever "scary" costume I had on, but they tried. It did hurt a little.). It was a Haunted House, completely dark, lots of weird music/noises and people milling about. Nobody noticed what was happening to me, which went on for about 30 seconds. And then another group of kids came up behind my attackers, and the guys moved on down the line. Afterwards, I thought, "That was weird." And it was the first time that anyone had ever touched my vagina (albeit through my clothes), so, at 15, I also wondered, "Am I supposed to have sexual feelings about this?" (I didn't.)

I do equate what happened to me at the Haunted House with the same type of thing that happened to Ford: At a high-school party with alcohol, and with drunk guys, one guy (allegedly Kavanaugh) jumped on Ford and groped her through her clothes. The other guy in the room (allegedly Mark Judge) laughed and  jumped on top of both the male and female on the bed---which sounds like he thought the whole thing was a lark and a roughhouse rather than a truly scary experience for the woman --- allowing Ford to escape to the bathroom, after which the two guys stumbled back drunkenly down the stairs.

I didn't go to parties in high school (nerdy paper editor, not one of the "cool" kids --- which in my early '80s small-town high school were jocks and cheerleaders; there weren't any goths in small-town Texas yet), but I did go to many drunken parties in college. At which there were lots of gropings and flashings of body parts---dicks and boobs and asses galore. Sorry, but when young, drunken people get together, such things happen.

(3) When discussing her "trauma," Ford said that one symptom of her claustrophobia that allegedly resulted from the high-school event was a fear of airplanes and flying. Yet at the testimony on Thursday, it was revealed that she regularly (dozens of times) has flown to Hawaii, Polynesia, etc., for both research AND vacations. Ford also didn't remember that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had offered to fly out to interview her at her home, which they had.

(4) I looked up "Christine Blasey Ford" on Wikipedia. She graduated her private high school in 1984, got her BA in 1988 from UNC at Chapel Hill, Master's from Pepperdine in 1991, and doctorate from USC in 1996. In my personal experience and based on knowledge of other troubled people's lives, which of course doesn't apply to everyone but is a general indication, emotional trauma translates into trouble focusing and applying oneself to a goal. Ford, on the other hand, had no trouble proceeding on the exact expected timeline for her life as an academic. (Good for her! However, real trauma is real trauma and almost always slows you down.)

(5) Ford claims she has no political agenda. Yet she has attended at least 2 public protests against Trump since his election.

(6) Senate Judiciary member Diane Feinstein received information about Ford's accusation back in July. If it were so credible, why hold out with the info until the last minute? Politically suspicious.

As for Kavanaugh:

Surface reactions (dating back to when Trump first announced him as candidate for Justice): The guy seemed to me like, yes, an elite prep-school "goody-goody" asshole who partied a lot but tried to maintain a good face before family and community. Maybe he DID black out at a gathering in the summer of 1982 and jump on top of Christine Blasey Ford. But no one else at said gathering, including a current female friend of Ford's, remembers anything about such a party with Kavenaugh in attendance. In short, there's NO PROOF. You don't destroy a man's reputation based on someone's faulty, and perhaps overly heightened/exaggerated, recollections of "abuse."

[Full disclosure: I'm a bi female, and a feminist, with a Master's degree in English who works as a science editor for peer-reviewed publications. I voted for McCain in 2008 (Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primary), Obama in 2012, and Trump in 2016.]

Shaun Cassidy - Right Before Your Skies (1978)

The 1978 "Under Wraps" album by Shaun Cassidy wasn't particularly good overall, but... this song was VERY good! This and "Taxi Dancer" are classics, both written by Cassidy himself. To this day, I remember the lines "I hear the place was packed last night / But last night's group played basketball..." 40 years later (!), his voice is also lush and gorgeous.

Places please
The lights go down

A brand new town

And we all look the worse for wear

Hiding on the stairs

Holding on to all we know

Surrounded by the protocol

I hear the place was packed last night

But last night's group played basketball...

Taxi Dancer - Shaun Cassidy (1978)

From the 3rd album, "Under Wraps," by once huge pop-star Shaun Cassidy. (One of the first 5 albums that I bought as a young teen. I still have it. I still have all of my albums.)

Tonight while online doing something else, I started hearing this song in my head, and I remembered EVERY SINGLE LYRIC (before looking it up)---from 40 years ago! Shaun Cassidy wrote this himself.

Sheila was a girl misunderstood

A real operator

A legend in the neighborhood

She was bad

But Sheila had

Been taken by the wind

Dance all night

Hold me tight

Darlin'....

Peasant Worship

According to a seller on eBay, these icons were once worn by Russian peasants in the late 19th century through the early 20th century. Found recently via metal detector. I bought online for about $6 apiece, to ultimately hang by my Romanovs canonization photo.

As an aside: I've often wondered why people in jail turned to God --- obviously they had nothing else. Yet, perhaps there's a different take on that: Maybe once in jail, they were stripped down to nothing and then realized what actually mattered.

 

NIKA

Just ordered this Russian Orthodox sticker for my car: Christ/ Nika (victory).

In my mind, referencing the anti-Justinian revolt in AD 532, Theodora saving her husband's kingdom after the "Nika" riots.

My car is red, this sticker will barely show up. I'll know.

 

1898

Hekate

God Save the Tsar! (Russian natl' anthem 1833-1917)

Paul McCartney: Elegy for John Lennon (1982)

Elegy for Solo Cello (Andrei Golovin, 1988)

Tchaikovsky's Solemn March for Alexander III's Coronation (1883)

If you have speakers for your computer, turn the volume up for this grandeur!



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_III_of_Russia

A $4.99 victory!

For a month now, the fact that I lost $4.99 (I thought unfairly) to an eBay buyer has been hanging over me. A mild malaise!

I sold a "like new" CD to the guy on eBay. With photos to prove it was "like new." But when he got it, he said the case was cracked and so didn't want it. I'd mailed the CD in a bubble mailer. I didn't know what else I could do. After I refused to refund his money, he opened a case on eBay, which found in his favor, with the proviso that he mail back the CD to me (on my dime).

I was annoyed, because I didn't think I'd done anything wrong. (I mailed the CD in a bubble mailer --- could I help it that the post office cracked it?) But I was resigned to the result; at least I could try to re-sell the CD once it was returned.

Well, the CD never arrived back to me.

I was nervous about contacting eBay, thought they'd either not respond or brush me off. They do have a number to call. The hold time really was under 3 minutes, as they'd advertised.

Once I got on the phone with an agent: (1) Turns out the buyer sent the CD back to the wrong address, one that I had 11 years ago! Why was that address the one that showed up for him to send it to? I've had multiple addresses since then, and I've bought and sold 100s of eBay items since then, all coming to a current updated eBay address. I asked the agent to tell me what address eBay had for me, and it was my current one.

So that was probably the main reason I got my money back --- the guy on the phone couldn't figure out why an 11-year-old address showed up for the buyer to send the CD back to, when my current address was everywhere else in the eBay system.

But another reason: I was allowed to argue my case about why, if I mailed the CD intact in a bubble-wrap envelope, and the CD arrived cracked, that I was the one to blame for that...

At any rate, after 3 weeks of worrying about it, and waiting for the non-arriving CD, the eBay guy on the phone made things right tonight --- I got my $4.99 credited back to my account.

I feel better.

June 1985 (20 years old)

Offering

Rain, the air in echoed flight
spewed open, with a gulf to cross
the fog slipped deep into the night
and then, with shallow sigh, was lost

The druids gathered trash-can fire
to lend a lie to faceless storm
then burned themselves in monkish ire
the angry price for keeping warm

And to the sky in crimson ash
a message wrought in smoking skin
the warning lit an acrid path
and deigned to let the spirits in

But horrendous sights remained our flaw
and lost branches never meant a thing
we laughed at pain reserved for awe
and cared not what the clouds might bring

Our minds in dread of solstice bright
(the holy artists crazed, we said)
in acts ingrained, we kissed goodnight
denied the rites above, then fled.

Very first poem ever written (March 1981, age 15)

(written for a sophomore high school English assignment)

Fortitude

Take a trip to nowhere
Now will you be free?
It seems very doubtful
They follow all, you see

Enter your mind's time warp
Do you think you are secure?
Do not depend much on it
The safety is the lure

A trance cannot gain anything
A revolution will
How else are we to win our peace
Than to rape and loot and kill?

Yes, our rebellion was successful
But still they are not free
For now, in their hypnosis
It is from us that they must flee.

An extra $500 lying around

My god, 10 years ago, what I would have given for an extra $500 "lying around."

Today, it's some cash I have hidden away in a poetry book. Specifically for a day when or if I need to pay movers.

Years ago, it would have felt like a very great something. Today, it doesn't feel like anything. (Seriously: If you're living in a one-room apartment, it's major; if you have a decent job, it doesn't mean anything.)

$100 birthday bill from my mother a couple of years ago.
$100 bet won from my brother upon Trump's election. (Ha!)
Rest, petty cash from various Chinese college students and scholars that I've edited papers for over the past few years.

A Star Is Born

 

Friday, I went to a co-worker's office (one that I don't trust at all, but that I had to discuss some work with). She and another co-worker were, as it turns out, discussing the new "Star Is Born" movie with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

I said that I probably would see it, even though I didn't particularly like Cooper or Gaga, just because I wanted to compare it to all of the other versions.

"What other versions?"

"Streisand in the '70s, Garland in the '50s, Janet Gaynor in the '30s."

"Oh yeah, I remember that one with Kris Kristofferson." [We all agreed that he wasn't that good of an actor or singer.]

The two people I was discussing with were in their 50s and 60s. So, yes, the '70s version with Streisand/Kristofferson was the only one that came out in their (and my) lifetime.

Yet, how are you not aware that other versions preceded the one that you're aware of? How have you not ever seen them in your 50 or 60 years of life?

p.s.
My favorite movie versions pre the new one: (1) 30s, (2) 70s, (3) 50s.
My favorite leading lady in the role: (1) 70s Streisand, (2) 30s Gaynor, (3) 50s Garland.
My favorite leading man in the role: (1) 30s Fredric March, (2) 70s Kristofferson, (3) 50s James Mason.

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p.s.s. A melancholy thought: I would love to have a 30s/50s/70s/10s "Star Is Born" viewing marathon at home with a partner and discuss during and after! (Melancholy because I don't know anyone who would also like to do this.)

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p.s.s.s. A poem I wrote in 1985, at age 20, remembering the 1937 version on late-night television that I'd seen as a teen:

Norman Dies (A Star Is Born)

he will die within these waves
sunset-stripped to cloudy gray
and he will float beyond the tide
sinking to a stillness
not barren, not in need of hue

outstretched, he feels the cells divide
as the waters merge
as his salt explodes
as the ether
parts to let him live

Doing What I Can

My hairdresser of a couple of years recently moved back home to Ohio to become a dental hygienist and recommended a replacement, whom I've been to twice now. (The first time, 6 weeks ago, was a bit marred by the fact that my car wouldn't start -- battery -- and I had to take the bus, thus arriving 20 minutes late; today I made sure to arrive early to prove I wasn't a jerk!)

After two visits, the new hairdresser seems to be a decent one, perhaps a little better than the last. (The former would do two good haircuts in a row, then two very mediocre ones---it got so random that by the end of her "tenure," I'd see her once, then go to a totally different salon [also mediocre], then back to her... never totally satisfied.)

One thing I was struck by today was how utterly nice, and how utterly dumb, the new hairdresser is. Super-sweet and beautiful (she and a couple of the front-counter girls are extraordinarily beautiful, enough to make you stare and almost wish you were a 20-something amateur photographer, willing to falsely promise them stardom or at least a photo on the dude's blog), and super-conversational, with the ability to put the customer totally at ease, which is a fantastic quality for a hairdresser. But here's the thing: She would bring up a topic, and I would respond, and she would completely seem to be following, but then later indicate that she didn't really understand what was said...

Fer instance: She's in a book club along with fellow hairdressers (the same book club that the former hairdresser was in). I asked what current book her group is reading, but she couldn't remember the author's name or the exact title of the book. She said she found it hard to follow books, and I wondered if it was because younger people today (she's early 20s) had shorter attention spans because they grew up with the Internet, which encourages people to skip from thing to thing rather than focusing on one topic for a longer time. Once she got in the practice of reading, she'd get better at it.

She agreed, and added that her mother (probably about my age) was a big reader and would get in trouble for sneaking books into bed --- reading too late into the night. Me, too, I told her, and then also shared that I used to sneak listening to "alternative music" after hours in the early '80s in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, when FM radio stations played only Top 40 or else "album rock" --- except for one late-night Sunday show that played then-up-and-coming bands like U2 and The Clash and REM from midnight until 2am.

"Oh, U2, I've heard of them!" OK. So I thought I'd established that I was a teen in the early '80s, sneaking listens to U2, etc.

Then she asked me what music I liked to listen to today. For simplicity's sake, I did NOT AT ALL want to say "Well, for the past couple of weeks, Tchaikovsky cello music because I've been reading a lot about the last of the Russian tsars and that's a great soundtrack." NO. What I did say was, "Well, Aretha Franklin just died recently, so I've been listening to her debut album a lot. And my favorite band of all time is the Beatles."

"The Beatles! Did you ever get to see them in concert?"

Their last concert was in 1966, when I was a year old. I don't think she knew who the Beatles were.

But... she's super-nice, and beautiful. And she was concerned because it was her turn next to recommend a book for her book group, but she didn't know what to suggest. "Life of Pi," she had finally come up with. I told her that I'd heard good things about the movie, but hadn't seen it or read the book. Who was the author? She didn't know. All I could offer was: "If you're not sure, you should check out the reviews for the book on Amazon, to see how other people liked it. If it got good reviews, then maybe your book-club members would also like it."

Thunderclouds (Official Video) ft. Sia, Diplo, Labrinth

This Samsung-ad song on TV kept giving me goosebumps. I finally had to go find out who it was!

Like Kites (2012)

Today smells like kites,
mesquite trees, tumbleweeds, my spotting the secret fort,
wrecked within weeks after my treason.

Ice-cream, too. The Dairy Queen man, with his wife and kids,
ordering me a cone, despite my own sundae.
I threw his "gift" away.

And it smells like the rocks that I picked and picked
from our new two-story lot, throwing in paper bags.
Neighbors mocked: "You'll never make a yard!"
I did, we did. Grass grew. And then we moved.

I like the smell of kites in January, a month
used to things still hanging around, useless.


514 W. Rebecca, Iowa Park, Texas

(A photo of the house for sale today --- that big corner lot is where I picked up all the rocks!)

1941. "A Woman's Face."

I slept with this person, my first lover, from 1989 to 1991.

I was 23 in 1989, she was 36. She was awful to me. I was obsessed with her for the next 10 years. I slept with her once again in 2000, for old time's sake.

Here she is in 2017, at age 66. Photos from a local writers' group meeting.

She's repulsive-looking now! What if she'd wanted me back when I was 23, and I was stuck with this today?

Back when I was 23 and a virgin and she was 36 and an ex-con skank, she was very attractive, physically. And she painted and wrote, which was attractive on the surface. But she painted and wrote very badly. An example of her "verse": "...if at all I hear the call, juice brings me like a bull." This type of thing she would "read" at local gay clubs. It was just constantly stupid. I tried to be supportive (I designed flyers for her "performances," etc.). At the end of it all, I got dumped in '91. Didn't get over it for 9 years. When I look at her and think about her now, I'm repulsed. But... back in the day I had mightily profound feelings for her.

A 1990 poem I wrote for her after a weekend at the Texas coast:


Water Signs

We stood and watched the waves --
the gray maze of our unknowing
swirling below our boots and beach-coats
twirling in the wind

Such whiplash sand -- our gale-torn faces
bled dry but for the frothing whiteness
on your lips and at the edge of where
the sea had dared to go

Given such boundaries, I choose
the warmer shore to drown by -- your mouth,
no eye to my erosion from your force:
I wake, I want -- my fear washed
in the whirlpool of your certainty

And I say I have never been sure,
so sure as this moon-locked tide
that pulled us 'til we met and swept
the distance out to sea.

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And a 1992 poem I wrote for her after our breakup:

Melting in March

I
In the winter things congeal and drops that started apart
(but weren't always real) freeze together briefly, order
winter's waste, prove creation possible out of once
dead gray. (The world shimmers and winks, lit by pale thighs,
the glow of stars atop tinselled trees. No resistance to this, or
if there is: "It's Christmas...")

It's the melt of this that takes me away, the last mush of
Valentine's Day, squish of my fists, velvet hearts soon to
crack in the long dry stretch. Such months need no holiday, fade
to sameness under scorch of sun, dumb leisure for the one who
wanted less.

II
Cracking doesn't work. Crying, once cure, degraded to last gasps;
I gag to show how much I love, shut down on knees before basins
porcelain and pristine, not the murk and mold of my own bowl.
More subliminal, she wipes my ashes clean, asks me to lie
beside her, blames me for a lighter
I did not take. Misconception is criminal.

The way my eyes, your whiskey howl, precede fists and last pleasure.
Twisted face in full-throat lust, the must of deception,
throttled pardon hardened into
the capture you want, crass enchantment in its
last throes. You say I'll regret what I've thrown away -- how can I
lose the one who loses me.

III
But ask for the lawless to depart
and blindness of ages let loose the suffer
to pardon one most vicious and desired. Come unto me,
let mounting be desire and not impending
doom, construction of flounder in this
black pool, oh drool of nonsense and wisdom soon to wed and bed
in other constructs of forgiveness. Let no wanting be
the earthen hell, oh lovely threat, fangless wonder,
imagine the joyness of it. No? Oh YES, a miracle of
white skin, dress sliding off one shoulder, the whiteness,
the giveness of spring, new things in this, the kindest season
after all, the wine, and whiskey lips to sing, not howl, the
late-night call to ask, or whisper, not beg. Beg is the bludgeon,
the dungeon of love, the weak last encroachment that is no song.
Derive this, the drivenness, as past last, no trust, or
Christmas. To sing this well with eyes so wide, see her face
without fear, clear-eyed strength and smile. A gift.
A real Christmas.

IV
(In this spring the miracle is the certainty of small triumphs.)

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She really was a creepy, low-life person to begin with. All the verbiage devoted to her? I think I was in love with the new intense feelings --- obsession and being inspired to write. Today,  not obsessed, I look at these photos and remember my old writers' groups in the '90s and am happy that this now-old, untalented person has found a sympatico local group that wants to listen to her.

p.s. Upon re-reading after two decades, I still think "Melting in March" is a classic poem.

Aretha Franklin 2015 Kennedy Center Honors

The phony reactions of Carole King and Obama nearly ruin this for me. But Aretha is great, especially in the moment when she tosses the coat off.

From "A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution" by Orlando Figes (1996)

Only on p. 271 of 824 so far, but here are some passages that I've noted:

When people learn as adults what children are normally taught in schools, they often find it difficult to progress beyond the simplest abstract ideas. These tend to lodge deep in their minds, making them resistant to the subsequent absorption of knowledge on a more sophisticated level. They see the world in black-and-white terms because their narrow learning obscures any other coloration. Marxism had much the same effect on workers...It gave them a simple solution to the problems of "capitalism" and backwardness without requiring that they think independently.

The underside of this idealism [of the Russian intelligentsia at the turn of the last century] was a badgering didacticism, a moral dogmatism and intolerance, which in its own way was just as harmful as the censorship it opposed. Convinced  that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of "progress" and "reaction," friends and enemies of the people's cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world view.

Just curious...

After not having had sex for so long (years!) and being so isolated from everyone, and liking to think and read, was it meant that I should be a nun or monk of some sort? I'm serious: What I've been going through for years now isn't just a "drought" (when I think of "drought" I think of a period of a year or under).

I don't think I'd make a very good nun/monk, though. I constantly have intellectually rebellious  thoughts that I have no desire whatsoever to quench. And upon recently reading the letters of Tsar Nicholas and Alexandra and the memoirs of Alix's closest friend, Anya: Alexandra's constant references to praying to god for guidance/salvation are both stultifying and annoying --- they certainly didn't do any good in her situation!

I don't know what it is. I'm puzzled. Many people, when confronted by a deeply troubling emotional situation, do turn to God. But they're often lifers in prison or very old women --- with nothing else left to hope for. I still have a decade or so left before I'm at that utterly decrepit stage, still some free will left.

Aretha Franklin - Freeway Of Love (1985)

Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (1967)

One goal of my five days off...

...aside from the usual weekend goals of "do laundry" or "clean a bathroom," was to "get the damn 'study' in order."

I moved into this 2-bedroom apartment in April 2017, with one express purpose being to devote the extra room to a study holding most of my books. I did set it up that way. But in October 2017, a couple of 20-something guys moved in right next door, and there was constantly bass from stereo coming from that side of my apartment, so I kind of stayed away from what was supposed to be a nice peaceful reading room.

Over my 5-day holiday, one of my goals (sadly) was to finally report the guys next door to apartment management for their ongoing loud music. Most often coming from the wall next to my bedroom, but also affecting the study. I've kept a list of disturbances since last October, when they moved in; things were in the realm of "normal" until the past month. During August, though, I've had to go over and knock on their door twice to ask them to please turn their stereo down. Twice in a month was finally the tipping point, and I went in to the management office and asked what could be done about the disturbances: (1) A written notice; (2) a request to move out.

Given the confidence of someone in authority supposedly being able to DO something, I finally re-approached the room and spent a few hours in there, rearranging things. It looks nice to me. I hope to be able to finally spend time there. (It appears like a perfect place for fall/winter reading, especially of my recently ordered Romanov books.)

TCM's Summer Under the Stars: Mastroianni and Crawford

Friday, August 31, was my beloved Joan Crawford's day, which I'd planned for for months, taking that day off, and the Thursday before, for a 5-day Labor Day holiday. I knew I'd enjoy the Joan Day, but I was pleasantly surprised to be inspired by the Marcello Mastroianni Day on the Thursday before, which I spent on the couch with a hangover, initially feeling miserable.

Most interesting and life-inspiring: Ginger and Fred, La Notte, 8-1/2, A Special Day.

Why so inspiring? The films were thoughtful and surprising. I was lying around sluggish and hateful, thinking that both my life and the world had gone to hell --- the latter landscape currently controlled by shallow and dumb Twitter mob opinions, for one.

And then all of these Mastroianni films allowed me to see a fresh (albeit decades-old) view from some actually intelligent people. (Intelligence not being "trendy.") The films I mentioned above did not in any way have happy endings (I cried especially at the end of "A Special Day"), but they were all so beautiful in their honesty and humanity. If such representation of a complicated and intelligent world/personal view could exist once, it could exist again.

6:00 AM	Le Notti Bianche (1957)
8:00 AM	Priest's Wife, The (1971)
10:00 AM	Ginger and Fred (1986)
12:15 PM	Slightly Pregnant Man, A (1973)
2:00 PM	Family Diary (1962)
4:00 PM	Marriage - Italian Style (1964)
5:45 PM	La Notte (1961)
8:00 PM	8 1/2 (1963)
10:30 PM	Special Day, A (1977)
12:30 AM	Organizer, The (1963)
2:45 AM	Pizza Triangle, The (1970)
4:30 AM	Place for Lovers, A (1969)