It's a Wonderful But Different Life

Who goes to the movies on Christmas day? Apparently everybody. My family drove 50 minutes to a 16-plex in Middletown, NY hoping to see Les Miserables at 3:30. The parking lot was surprising jammed, and when we went inside we found that the movie was sold out. We got tickets to see The Life of Pi instead. We'd all read the book so wanted to see how a film was made from the novel.

Since we arrived early, we were treated to a half an hour of local ads. Then we sat through 20 minutes of coming attractions. I was ready to leave at that point.

The film followed the book closely. Some of the philosophy was left out, and the action made the book
seem more exciting than it was, at least in my memory. The scene where the ship went down was breath-taking. The animal photography captured air, sea and land creatures in their natural habitats. Only the tiger and the surviving Indian teenager spend their time together in an unnatural habitat, a life boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The book and film end with two endings, one fantastical and the other amazing but more logical. Viewers are left with much to discuss; readers of the book have even more.

I told my sons that when I was young, nobody went to the movies on Christmas Day because they were spending time with their family. Jews go to movies on Christmas, although I didn't know that when I was young. My son Harry suggested that people want to get away from their families on Christmas Day because there was too much tension at home. Maybe we just aren't able to spend an entire day at home without spending any money.

We ended the day with Chinese food, the only kind of food you can get on Christmas Day in most of the U.S. My family had a wonderful day

Four Dead in Rural PA

Four people were killed this afternoon, one a woman decorating for Christmas inside a church. The gunman was eventually killed by police when he tried to ram their car with his.

They'll find the gun and see to whom it was registered. If it's the gunman, they'll search his house, go to his place of employment, check his car registration, and talk to neighbors who said either he kept to himself or was a nice guy. Don't you watch Law and Order?

Motivation? We'll probably never know.

Let's keep track of every murder in America everyday and not bury it as a stat in a newspaper. Do it on a National level so we can see which states have the most murders/per capita/per diem. Then we can move (not usually a choice), scorn the states with the most deaths by gun, identify the type of weapon and ammo,  whether or not it was in self defense and put pressure for gun control where it needs to be put.

MADD is an example of a successful grassroots organization that made drunk driving go from a wink and a nod from Officer Mensclubmember to a major crime. Do cars kill People?

It has to have a catchy acronym so people remember it. And group has to have the funding and the balls to fight the NRA.

Disaster Master

My brother Charlie has a tee shirt with the words Disaster Master on the front. I wish I had that shirt, because I'd be wearing it.

I am falling slowly, tortuously over the Fiscal Cliff. My husband lost his job in August and we can't staunch the bleeding. Every day I crank the tourniquets tighter and change the bandages, but the slow bleed continues. There's hope on the horizon, which is hard to see when you're hanging upside down. I think my husband has a job. There are checks in the mail, but you know how that goes.

None of this matters because tomorrow the world ends according to the Mayan calender. Hmm. The Mayans had a lunar calendar. There was no 12/21/12, which may seem special to us, although it's not a palindrome and 12/12/12 seemed more propitious as a doomsday. For the Mayans, tomorrow is the Winter Solstice, the day of least light but the beginning of more light. It's a happy day.

If by chance the world ends, my debts will all be erased.

Hallelujah.

Gallo Pinto In the Catskills

Yum!

Today we did what the Costa Ricans do. We took leftover rice and leftover beans, sauteed in olive oil with shallots and garlic, added some ground coriander (no fresh cilantro on hand) and cooked until hot. Added a splash of Lizano sauce and voila: semi-authentic gallo pinto, topped with fried eggs, accompanied by a side of toast.

We had our first gallo pinto at Steve and Lisa's, a small restaurant by the sea in Puntarenas. We stopped there every time we headed for the beach. It was a perfect place for families because the kids could play ouitside on the rocky beach, and we could see them from the window. Gallo pinto, we learned, is a breakfast food only. When Marty requested it as a side dish with a roasted chicken, he was set straight on this. However, the woman took pity on him and made up a batch.

Lizano sauce is liquid gold for people who can't get it. I can assure you there's no Lizano sauce in my local supermarket. When we first moved back from Costa Rica, we brought several bottles. Then we relied on Costa Rican friends to bring a bottle or two. We had to share with Mariel when she went to college and then had her first apartment. Of course you can by Lizano in Spanish markets anywhere, but we don't have one in our little town.

The Lizano quest continues. We used most of the bottle.

You've Been Booked

Has this ever happened to you?

You frequently donate books to your local library. Some books fill holes in their local collection, but most stay in a dusty box, free to anyone who wants to take one (or more).

You go into the library to return a book, when you see a sign for a holiday book sale in the basement. It won't hurt to look, will it?

When you scan the titles in the fiction section, your head swells slightly from the fact that you've read many of these books. Maybe you should read them again? No, you have many books at home waiting to be read, some snatched from the free book box at the library.

Then you see a book that you've read and realize you donated it several weeks ago. Danger! Danger! Go look at the non-fiction section. Most of the books make you sleepy, but one, by Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, attracts your attention. It's titled  On Literature and it's a series of essays and presentations he's made over the years. You start reading it once you get home even though you're in the midst of a re-read of  Cloud Atlas.

Do you escape with a $1 purchase? What do you think? You drift back to the fiction section. You see a book by an author you've read but haven't read his latest novel. Then you see an 800-page tome you've always wanted to read but never had the chance, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. If you buy both novels and the paperback, you'll escape with a loss of $5, but a gain of three books you want to read. You will lug them around town as you do your other errands.

When you get home, Infinite Jest, your albatross, mocks you from the bookshelf. You began reading it in 2007, getting to page 50. You picked it up again two years later and started over, reading the first 200 pages. Last summer, you read through page 351. There are hundreds of pages to go, but other books call you and you can't resist.

You're booked.