Anyway. As an adult, I appreciate that Piglet bent the gender a bit with his choice of attire.

As a mom, I also appreciate this outfit. Cutie Piglet, with fuzz. COME ON.

Piglets all over.

Baby AB is seven weeks old here. She took to tummy time early.

Mutant piglet booties.

If you know my daughter, you know that keeping ANY kind of footwear on her requires constant vigilance. Booties just haven’t a chance, so obviously this photo is staged.

I just noticed that those prints on the soles are not piglet prints. I guess tiny hoof-prints just aren’t as adorable for some reason.

What’s cuter than bum-face?

Totally shameless.

We – and by we, I mean Mommy – were sad to outgrow this one.

***

Image from urbancultivator.net – but it looks just like our sorrel.

To my knowledge, I had never cooked with or even eaten sorrel. It sounded like something from Outlander. But I figured, sorrel is a green leafy thing, must be good.

And it is! But rather strange, too. I was warned that it’s “tart”, and it is. Sour, actually, in a yummy way, but strong enough that I don’t think I could eat a whole salad of sorrel. We sprinkled bits of it in our salad the other day, but would take a long time to use up all the sorrel we have at that rate.

So yesterday, I looked up sorrel recipes, and read that cooking the sorrel tones it down a bit. I found some recipes that sounded all right, especially soups, but ultimately decided to wing it.

This is how I tend to cook: winging it. Like my mom and siblings, I rarely use a recipe except to bake. And I’m not good at recording what I do when cooking, at least not with any meticulosity. But when this particular soup turned out really well, some friends asked if there was a recipe. So here is something approximating a recipe.

• I coarsely chopped up a medium-large onion and two large cloves of garlic and sautéed them in melted “better butter“* on medium-high heat until they were getting brownish.
• Meanwhile, I chopped up two smallish potatoes (skins on) and then threw them in and crumbled half a head of cauliflower on top.
• I had some frozen vegetable stock (2-3 cups) so I put that in to melt into everything with the lid on.
• I took two big handfuls of sorrel, barely chopped them, and added them a few minutes later. The stock had melted and was a nice brown colour from the onions.
• Once the cauliflower was tender, I took out a couple pieces with one piece of onion and mashed it with a fork to feed to the baby. (This step is optional. I did notice that, with cauliflower for dinner, her night diaper a lot stinkier than usual, despite being just pee. Just in case you do have a baby and follow this step. Hmm. Was that an overshare?)
• By this time, all the veggies were tender and the sorrel had turned brown (the Internet warned me about this – it’s because of the oxalic acid). I added some whole milk (maybe a cup?) and then took The Wand (immersion blender) to the whole thing.
• It was a bit thick so I added a bit more milk and some water (probably another cup’s worth at least) until I liked the look of it, you know, sort of a restauranty consistency.
• The last thing to add was about a cup-and-a-half of grated old cheddar, which I stirred in until blended.
• Then I tasted it, and I was like, “Where’s the sorrel? I don’t even taste it!” So I took another modest handful of the sorrel and chopped it more finely and put it in and did not blend it. It quickly wilted right in and made itself at home.
• I added salt to taste. (Our salt is actually ground butcher salt, which contains soupçons of rosemary, sage, thyme, and marjoram, which were very pleasant but not necessary.)
• We also added fresh black pepper at the table.

I didn’t serve it like this originally. These are the leftovers we had today, shamelessly studiously dressed up for y’all.

Done!

Everyone at the table over the age of 4 called it delicious. I was frankly surprised that my experiment worked so well. We agreed it was very nice with the extra bits of sorrel, which still have an acidic kick but somehow work anyway. I like to think that the blended sorrel provided the context for them to shine.

Looks pretty good?

Try it y’self! Tirrah!

***

*My mom introduced our family to “better butter” ages ago: you soften some salted butter in a container and add vegetable oil in equal proportion, then (carefully) Wand them together. It cuts the saturated fat and salt of the butter while retaining good flavour; it’s cheaper than pure butter all the time; and most importantly, it’s much more spreadable.

***

You see, I’ve remembered embarrassingly little from the book, despite enjoying it – but I did remember the decadence. The impressions of glowing parties, visible for miles, full of sparkly people, under glamorous starry skies. (Glamour in the cloud forest comes in the form of quetzals and fireflies – but that’s another blog post or seven.)

I also remembered a tense, emotional scene in a hot hotel room. And I remember that Jay Gatsby is a mysterious man in love. That’s about it.

So really, when Skye and I went to see Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation, nothing about it was spoiled for me. From what I can tell via Wikipedia (since my memory does not serve), the film’s plot is very loyal to the book overall, and there’s tons of action in it that I did not see coming. Win!

Bullet Time, in which I do not spoil anything, in case you too have forgotten the entire plot of the book or never read it in the first place:

• Seriously, what an amazing cast. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson… all brought their characters to life memorably (unlike the book, apparently, for this lazy reader). Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan) and Elizabeth Debicki (Jordan Baker) were quite believable as well, IMO.

• If you’ve seen Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” or “Moulin Rouge”, you could immediately guess that this film was also by him. It has all the earmarks: the era-conscious style from the very credits; the deliberate juxtaposition of loyal period costuming and anachronistic music; the crowd/party sequences that make you feel like you’re on drugs. And he likes him some Art Deco.
• We saw the 3D version, not because we’re particular fans of 3D but because the showtime worked best for us. As I saw it, the 3D stuff is kinda contrived. The plot doesn’t exactly lend itself to OMGitscomingrightatme!! Nevertheless – the stuff they did was pretty cool. I found the 3D effective in illustrating connectedness, underscoring distances of space and time, making snowflakes look cool, and rendering those surreal scenes even more trippy.
• I’m going to have to read The Great Gatsby again. The film showcases (often with onscreen handwriting that’s coming right at you) a lot of direct quotes from the book, the kind of fascinating writing that makes you go “Aha. Yes. Legendary American classic. Bravo, F. Scott.”
• Did you know? The original book cover, designed by Francis Cugat, was commissioned while Fitzgerald was still writing it. Wikipedia says: The cover was completed before the novel; Fitzgerald was so enamored with it that he told his publisher he had “written it into” the novel. [You can't see 'em too well, but there's some nekkid ladies in those eyes, old sport.]

• In the movie, the effect of that billboard with the disembodied eyes is downright eerie, and is probably branded on my memory forever. Well played, Baz.
• I enjoyed the party scenes and the sweeping 3D vistas and so on, but I enjoyed even more the focused scenes with the hard-core dialogue and acting. Those were SOLID. And now that I think about it, Luhrmann is just as good at taking things down to their essential heart as he is at making a big fancy imagery-fest.
• And I guess Fitzgerald was also good at getting to the heart of things. The Great Gatsby was a commentary on excess and corruption and certain flaws in the American Dream, but it also is about people. What kind of attitude matters, what makes a person good or bad. It’s an interesting perspective that definitely provoked me some thoughts.
• We went to see this movie – at 4 pm on the day it opened, no less – because it stars Skye’s boyfriend, Leo. Kudos, Skye, I have to admit he’s looking mighty fine these days.

Leonardo and Carey

• Skye and I gave this movie four out of four thumbs up.

Riveting Real-Life Side-Story:

So. We went to see this movie at the UltraAVX (“Ultra Audio-Visual Experience!!!”) theatre, which has assigned seating. We got to pick our seats when we purchased them, and there were like six other seats booked in the whole place, so naturally we picked far away from anyone else. Upon arriving at our seats, we saw that there was an elderly couple in our seats. They had chosen not to sit in the seats they’d picked originally, because those were too close to another couple of people who were, in the words of the curmudgeon gentleman, “just yappin’.” He recommended we not sit near them (even though they were more than entitled to yap – the previews hadn’t even started).

We came up with a recommendation of our own out of this experience:

If you decide to move from your assigned spot in a theatre where there are approximately twelve-and-a-half zillion empty seats, proper etiquette does not allow for you to sit one seat away from the people whose seats you accidentally took, then complain about the noise level of some innocent moviegoers… and then proceed to SNORE THROUGH THE LATTER HALF OF THE MOVIE. No. Ce n’est pas acceptable. Just so you know.

***

On Saturday, I’ll be thirty-five years old. (Holy smokes.) And of course, Sunday is Mother’s Day.

Over the past week or so, something has been making me feel slightly odd and touched in the head. There’s been a phantom baby inside me. Not that I have actual pregnancy symptoms (other than exhaustion and fluctuations in appetite, which can be chalked up to the baby outside me). I am definitely not pregnant.

But it’s weird – I feel movements. Convincing ones that make me involuntarily put a hand on my abdomen.

If at this point you want to take me gently aside and explain about my digestive system and gas bubbles, don’t worry. I know most of what I’m feeling is the normal business of the human body. I’ve been thinking to myself, Dilovely, you’re being ridiculous, you haven’t been pregnant for seven months.

And then it occurred to me: I have spent a large fraction of the last five years pregnant. More specifically, I have been pregnant for 4 of the last 5 birthdays and Mother’s Days.

In 2008, one of the years my birthday coincided with Mother’s Day, a cluster of cells the size of a poppyseed was growing in my womb, only to release itself 17 days later.

In 2009, I was rotund, less than a month away from the hardest and most amazing experience of my life to that date: delivering my firstborn son.

In 2011, I was expecting his brother, who would, as you know, arrive five weeks early, and leave us even before we held him.

Last year on Mother’s Day, I was halfway through my pregnancy with Baby AB, having monthly ultrasounds and periodic ECGs, hyper-aware of every signal she provided telling me she was okay. Now, she’s just over seven months old, and as healthy as rosy little piglet. She weighs over four times what Sebastian weighed at birth.

Once I put all this together, I stopped fretting about my phantom baby. No wonder when I sing lullabies to my daughter, I find myself reflexively imagining the sound travelling through my body to envelop a tiny person inside. It kind of makes sense that as my body takes in the thrilling fragrances of the blooming season, it should also remember its own blooming. It’s not a flight of fancy; it’s just a memory.

Baby Sleeping in a Rose by Catt Kyriacou

And why should I be the only one to feel this presence?

This morning, E asked me, seemingly apropos of nothing, “Mama, when is the new baby coming?”

There was an upside-down moment where I was right in step with his question, then a jolt as I reminded myself that it was a strange thing for him to say.

I had to ask him to repeat it, just to be sure I’d heard him right. I know he still wishes for a baby brother (one he can keep). Lovingly, I told him I’m not pregnant; he responded matter-of-factly, “Yes, you are.”

And it’s rational enough. Why shouldn’t I be pregnant every spring, like a mama duck? His memories of my pregnancies may be vague, but they might still inform his inner concept of spring.

***

My first uninhabited Mother’s Day since Sebastian. There’s something really hard about this.

***

In truth, I’m glad not to be pregnant. I definitely have my arms full as it is. If I feel emptiness as well… I can manage it. It hurts, but then – there’s so much joy in living with my scrumptious little progeny. This full-empty Mother’s Day is unique to this moment in my life, this golden babyhaving time that’s as tough as it is glorious – and brief.

I’m thankful for all of it.

***

Visit Yeah Write for some high quality weekend reading…

This ensemble comes from November. I dressed Baby AB for her six-week photopost and propped her up so it would look sorta like she was sitting. She was just barely starting to be smiley.

Six weeks old in Paris Daisy.

I call it “Paris Daisy”, not just because of the Paris-pink colour and adorable daisy buttons, but also because she looks très chic, n’est-ce pas? Additionally, it’s possible that the gorgeous texture is some version of the waffle stitch, which as you know takes me back to my European days. Tralala.

Waffle stitch? Belgian, perhaps?

Just so you know, the pants she’s wearing were also a gift from a good friend; they have a red heart on the bum. Sweet.

Now here’s a li’l bonus video from just yesterday: Baby AB learned to clap her hands! Together! (Big brother helped.) She is STOKED about it.

***

Twenty minutes later, I was in a MUCH better mood. Sitting there examining these adorable sartorial choices and exclaiming to myself (and my kids, but they weren’t really listening) – “Oh come on. Look at this! Seriously! Who makes this? For a baby??” – it just made me smile. Girl baby clothes are ridiculous and awesome.

Then I had this idea. As a compulsive archivist, I’ve already taken many pictures of Baby A in her cutest outfits, so that I won’t forget them. After all, she only fits into them for a couple of months – she’s sort of a giant baby. Now she has so many delicious dresses, they’ll practically be single-use. Add to that the fact that she grins for the camera so readily that I literally can’t get a photo of a serious face…

What could be more apropos than a baby fashion blog??

Plus, they can be short posts (this will probably be the longest of the bunch) that I might actually have time to produce more often – and they could provide a counterpoint, shall we say, to the posts that are fraught with parental pouting or political ranting.

My hope is that they make you smile.

(BTW, I’m calling her Baby AB because her first initials are A.B., but also because it rhymes. It’s pronounced “Baby-aby”. K?)

So, we start off with the first actual outfit – i.e. not a sleeper – that Baby AB ever wore. I call it “Brownie Points.” A gift from a friend who knows baby girl fashion when she sees it. (Thanks, M! ) Baby is so new in this pic from October that she doesn’t yet know how to smile (!). But obviously, she knows how to wear yummy pink and brown with kicky polka-dots and a teensy bow. And obviously, she loves her family.

I Heart My Family – Brownie Points

 ***

I had to laugh. “Dude, I have no idea.” For the past few days, any time I get a little stern with E, he says something like, “Mommy, you’re scaring me!” or “But now you’re really making me cry!” as he dissolves onto the floor.

Usually, this is followed by a tragic “I just want Daddy!”

At the moment, Mommy is simply not the cool one. Unlike Daddy, she is ALWAYS here, which is boring. She is more strict with treats and screen time and pretty much all the fun things. She raises her voice more than she means to, because she never gets proper sleep and is often (for multiple reasons) unable to nap. She is the one likely to silently say Screw it when there’s a meltdown and just scoop up her beloved firstborn and stick him in his room because she can’t listen to more crying. Most of all*, she is constantly saying things like

“I would love to play dinosaurs with you, but I’m changing the baby’s diaper,”** or

“I can read you one story, but then I have to get the laundry started,” or

“You know what, buddy? I’m very, very tired and I would not make a very good monster for the monster game,” or

“Sweetie, I only have the energy for ONE galloping contest right now, okay?” or

“You may not crash your cars right outside the bedroom where the baby’s napping,” or

“How many times do I have to tell you to be gentle with your sister??”

(When I say things he doesn’t like, he’ll fill with wretched indignation: “But… you’re just… INTERRUPTING me!” or “You just don’t UNDERSTAND me!!” Sometimes I’m pretty sure he’s fourteen.)

Anyway, you get the idea. Daddy makes a great monster. He is an expert at car-playing, dinosaur-roaring, tickling, you name it. When he’s working days and can put E to bed, he doesn’t have to keep interrupting things (like Mommy does) to deal with THAT BABY. When Daddy comes home, there’s a sitcom-worthy ecstatic run to the door: “Daddy, Daddy! Finally, you’re home!”

It’s no wonder that the last time E loaded up his Lego car with passengers, he included Daddy, himself, baby sister, and someone called “The Mayor” (WTF?), but there was no room for Mommy.

It’s not that I’m evil. So far, I have not been locked out of E’s room:

Left: “People who are nice can come in.” (Couple of false starts on the S in “NIS”.)
Right: “Locked for bad people.” (Can you tell which is the bad person?)

And today, he even invited me to an even specialer place:

“Mom, you wanna come live with me in my clubhouse and sit on my crazy contraption-chair?” Um, YES.

But I had to say no because I was cleaning the effing kitchen. {This kitchen is a giant rock, and I am Atlas. It feels like I do dishes ALL THE TIME and somehow my counters are still never clean.}

I can still kiss the hurt places. I can still invoke smiles by making silly rhymes. I can still help with colouring, as long as I use the approved colours. I’m hoping these are the things that stick with him in life, the times when Mommy was fun and full of love.

If not, maybe he can at least remember things like searching for his sunglasses with Daddy and observing, “If only I’d hit something with them, then Mama would’ve put them on the shelf, and I’d know where they were.” Chalk one up for consistent confiscation.

Sometimes Mommy is helpful, even when she’s not fun.

***

*E is loving the phrase “Most of all” right now. One day he and Daddy came home from the grocery store and he showed me each item in turn: “Most of all, we got all these cashews! And most of all, there’s triangle crackers! But most of ALL, look! Shreddies!!” It puts pizzazz into the humdrum.

**A friend of mine who also has a little boy and a baby girl once admitted on Facebook that their family was getting a dishwasher so that she wouldn’t be that mom who’s always saying, “Sorry, kiddo, I can’t play with you, I have to do the dishes.” I think of it often because I AM TOTALLY THAT MOM. Sigh.

***

Shit, this is it. We are GOING DOWN FOR SURE THIS TIME. Humans are SCREWED.

I have thought this many times. When I was a kid in the ’80s, raised (and homeschooled) by liberal activist parents, I was pretty well-versed in environmental problems even before my age reached double digits. (We watched David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things regularly.) It seemed likely to Mini-Di that we would pollute ourselves to death pretty soon.

Then I took World Issues in high school (back when Ontario still had Grade 13), and was convinced that our little planet would not be able to handle the projected human population; we’d run out of food – and livable space – by 6.5 billion.

Amazingly, here we are. We’re still truckin’, well past 7 billion. I’m not quite sure how, but who am I to question?

This week, with another Earth Day behind us and May Day upon us, I’m mad at Nestlé. Again.

Yes, it’s Nestlé. “Good Food, Good Life.” Wholesome purveyor of Smarties, Perrier, and infant emaciation.

This mother was told she would only have enough milk for one of her twins. She ended up with only one twin.

There has been a boycott of Nestlé since the 1970s, because of their aggressive promotion of infant formula in developing countries, where mothers have been persuaded to formula-feed, but are unable to make formula that is safe for babies to drink, due to water contamination, language barriers, etc.

Boycott Nestle

Last week, there was news that this oh-so-virtuous company, the largest food company in the world, has chalked up another point for greed:

Nigella sativa — more commonly known as fennel flower — has been used as a cure-all remedy for over a thousand years. It treats everything from vomiting to fevers to skin diseases, and has been widely available in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia.

But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug. (From GlobalResearch.)

Classy move. Clearly they’re hurtin’ for cash. Nestlé has put a “clarification” (denial) on their website, because once the internet got ahold of this, it didn’t look very good on them. Gee, if it doesn’t look good… DON’T WEAR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Then there’s the incredible mercenary attitude that is jeopardizing the water that Wellington County relies on.

Nestlé Waters is the world’s largest bottled water company, and Wellington County in southwestern Ontario is home to its largest bottling facility in Canada. Under its current permit, Nestlé pays $3.71 for every million litres of water it pumps from the local watershed, which it then packages in single-use plastic bottles and sells back to the public for as much as $2 million!

Despite reaping enormous profits from bottling a shared public resource, Nestlé is now arguing for an even better deal. One of the mandatory conditions built into its water-taking permit requires Nestlé to reduce pumping by 10-20 per cent during times of drought. In a recent appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT), Nestlé has requested these restrictions be removed.

In a stunning move the Ministry of Environment (MOE) has agreed to a settlement which would weaken the conditions and potentially allow for Nestlé to pump at its maximum rate during droughts. We believe this puts Nestlé’s profit-making interests before the water rights of the people of Wellington County. (From The Council of Canadians.)

I live in Wellington County. It blows my mind when I see people in my very own city, drinking the same water that pours from their taps – out of bottles marked “Nestlé Waters”. It is an impressive feat, this brainwashing that has convinced us that water is automatically better from a disposable bottle.

THEN I read this article in the Guelph Mercury, written by a Community Editorial Board member, Cynthia Bragg, who happens to be a friend of mine. I highly recommend you read the whole thing, especially if you live in Wellington County, but here are some highlights:

The Syncrude tailings pond and oilsands facility seen from a helicopter near Fort McMurray, Alta., in 2012. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

Let’s zoom in on one area of Canada: the Alberta oilsands. To produce one million barrels of oil a day, industry requires withdrawals of enough water from the Athabasca River to sustain a city of one million people, every year. But by 2020, the oilsands are expected to produce five million barrels of oil a day. In spite of constant recycling, most of the water never returns to the river. It ends up in toxic tailings ponds. [...]

Las Vegas and the entire State of California are under real threat of running out of water this century, and the Hoover Dam will stop producing electricity if the water level falls by about 12 metres.

In all the Great Lakes, water levels are at an all times low as hot dry summers cause more water to evaporate than our reduced rainfall and snowmelt can replace. Cargo ships have had to reduce their loads to avoid being grounded. At one popular Michigan fishing spot, salmon were seen flopping in the mud.

In Ontario, 65 major creeks and rivers that flow out of the Oak Ridges Moraine already have lost as much as two thirds of their water. Yet golf courses are still permitted to draw three million litres a day for 180 days.

In case you don’t know, extraction of oil from the oilsands is what necessitates fracking, a process that imbues water with so many chemicals that it actually becomes flammable.

Just add a spark.

Fracking, or horizontal hydraulic fracturing, is cleverly and understandably illustrated here.  It is being committed all over Canada.

This article rounds up a whole buffet of threats to our water. It’s a reminder that if you add them all up, it’s one lethal situation. It makes me want to use melodramatic terms like evil and doomed. YOU CANNOT JUST FUCK WITH THE WATER SUPPLY. (Yes. I used the actual word for once.) Forget car crashes and drug addictions and bullying and anorexia and sexual assault. If we don’t have a system of drinkable water, that’s it. We – and countless other species, both animal and vegetable – are DONE.

I know it’s a bummer that I’m bringing this up. I know this is really depressing reading. I know we’d all rather think about the spring flowers and sunshine and our plans for next weekend. And that’s very easy to do, when you live far away from any tailings ponds or flopping salmon.

But we need to make sure that we, as a species, are not so dumb and arrogant as to forget our dependence on existing natural systems, forget that we can indeed poison ourselves, if we’re not careful.

Here’s the good news, though: we are not that dumb. We are still growing, still polluting, but also innovating all the time. That’s the thing about humans: we manifest all the idiocy and brilliance in the world. We can do almost anything we can imagine, healing or toxic.

I admit, I’m not the kind of exemplary environmentalist that Mini-Di could be unequivocally proud of. I drive a car on a regular basis. There are bananas in my kitchen that travelled way too far to get here. I sometimes buy beverages in disposable cups even though I totally know better. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take small steps to help. All of our small steps add up, just as surely as those taken by the fracking oil execs.

Dear Wellingtonians, please click to visit Wellington Water Watchers and learn, donate, volunteer, or even just read Nestlé’s Twitter-based attempts to pretend they don’t suck. (A bit of comic relief.)

To learn more about fracking and/or sign a petition against it, please visit the Council of Canadians.

Thank you so much for reading.

P.S. I’m aware that eating Smarties does not actually light your tap water on fire. But all the water in the world is connected. And so are all the Smarties.

***

42 is the story of Jackie Robinson’s rise to fame in 1947 as the first black player in Major League Baseball – and it really is an amazing story. I must admit I knew nothing about it – his name was familiar to me, and I probably could have told you he was a baseball player, but I had no idea of his pivotal role in the civil rights movement, “just” playing ball.

Jackie Robinson in 1954

In case you don’t know, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an athlete who was raised by a single mom in Pasadena, California. He attended UCLA and served in the military, and was known as “combative” when it came to being treated with racism. (He was even court-martialed once for this, but was acquitted.)

He was hand-picked by Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to be the man to break the colour barrier in Major League Baseball. And by gum, Jackie broke that barrier, using solid talent and incredible restraint.

• This movie is not subtle. It is unabashedly earnest, like a kid telling a story: the characters are whole, clean, deceptively simple. They speak plainly and their lessons are clear. We don’t see the nuances of every mood and quirk.
• I personally think this is a positive thing – not every movie has to be gritty and fast-paced just because we’re in an era of gritty, fast-paced movies. Even if the real-life story was more ambiguous (and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that it was), I enjoyed THIS version of the story. Isn’t that why we go to the movies anyway?
• Besides, the subject matter has quite enough layers and puzzles in and of itself. It endows each character with the fullness of history, and that’s complex enough.
• Look at that, I’m waxing cheesy, and I don’t care. That’s the kind of film this is.
• The music goes right along with that unequivocal sincerity I mentioned: it’s full-on epic, swelling emotionally at all the right moments, designed to jerk those tears. Just as you’d want it to be when you combine sports with moral metamorphosis.
• Can you bring your kids to it? I would say yes, it’s a family movie. There’s almost no violence included, and it puts tough messages in very watchable terms. To my recollection, there is but one (well-deserved) S-bomb. The N-word is used in abundance, as it would have been at the time.
• Chadwick Boseman is endearing and convincing as Jackie. And looks a lot like the real one.
• Harrison Ford does as great job as Branch Rickey, a rather less curmudgeonly character than usual for him. A daring and innovative guy.

Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey

• By the way, how does a guy born in 1881 get a name like “Branch”? It seems so hippie, like Meadow or Rain. Well, Wikipedia says his name was actually Wesley Branch Rickey, so I’m guessing it’s a family surname somewhere. There’s no evidence that his parents smoked weed.
• I really enjoyed John C. McGinley in the role of commentator Red Barber. You could tell he relished all his folksy expressions. (In stark contrast to his role as Dr. Cox in Scrubs, who is only remotely folksy in sarcasm, right before he says something really mean.)
• I also enjoyed Christopher Meloni as the Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher. Now there’s a character who’s weirdly honourable and dishonourable at the same time.

Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher

• I did not so much enjoy my dear Alan Tudyk (a.k.a. Wash in Firefly and Serenity) in the role of racist asswipe Ben Chapman, the Phillies’ manager. But he did a good job, you know, as an actor. That’s why I disliked him so much.
• One of my favourite elements in the story was the idea that Rickey asked for Robinson because he needed a Negro player “with guts enough not to fight back.” As a Quaker, I dig this concept of fighting assholery with dignity – MUCH harder than responding in kind.
• Like my friend lola, I am way more affected by watching movies now that they tug at my mama-strings. There is a lovely scene where Jackie stares through the nursery window to tell his newborn son that he will be there for him, unlike his own father was… and all I could think about was generations of babies and their mamas who didn’t cuddle together RIGHT AWAY after birth, dissuaded from breastfeeding or taking any ownership of each other… those babies just lying in their separate little bassinets, waiting for someone to come pick them up, because that’s how it was done… I could cry just thinking about it. Not really on-topic, though.
• There are so many well-executed inspirational moments in this film. I lost count of the number of times I found myself just grinning at the screen.

Lucas Black as Pee Wee Reese and Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson.

• Even having absorbed lots of pop culture revolving around the civil rights movement, I found it eye-opening to realize how truly brave Jackie Robinson had to be, simply to do his job as a ball-player. Had he been possessed of less self-control, or had one of his aggressors been just crazy enough to cross that oh-so-fragile, invisible line… this could have been a tragic story.
• Further to that, it’s eye-opening to realize how much his teammates took on, just playing with him. Racism in America was OFF THE HOOK back then. (I wish I could say it’s disappeared now.)
• Makes you wonder what humankind as a species could have accomplished if we hadn’t spent so much time, energy, and brain power trying to keep people segregated. So pointless.
• Further to that, it makes you wonder what humankind as a species could be accomplishing right now if we didn’t spend so much time, energy, and brain power protesting gay marriage. And so on and so forth.

So, to sum up: TOTALLY FRIGGIN’ HEARTWARMING. You should go see it.

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After my last post, two of my philosophical readers had a discussion in the comments. One wrote:

Imagine you live in a small, impoverished village in a third-world country like Pakistan or Afghanistan. Imagine that one day you hear a noise overhead, and several seconds later your village and its residents, including your parents and siblings and husband and both your small children, have been mutilated and dismembered. Bodies and parts of bodies are everywhere. You hear horrible screams expressing unimaginable pain and traumatic suffering. Somehow you yourself are spared, and you subsequently learn that everything you lived for and cherished has been destroyed because of a U.S. drone-fired missile. What would be your feelings about the United States of America? Would you ask yourself how this could possibly be allowed to happen? Would you wonder how the most privileged people in the world could be so cruel? Would you do everything in your power to seek retribution?

If not, you would be a truly exceptional human being.

Understanding what happened in Boston could be as simple as this: “Don’t be baffled when others do unto you as you have done unto them.”

I absolutely agree that in that situation, in addition to being engulfed in sorrow, I’d be enraged at the perpetrators. But who are they? Whom should I blame? And what should be done about it?

I know that some people, terrorists especially, lay blame thick and wide. It’s understandable, if not quite rational. But as the second commenter put it,

…the urge/need to retaliate “in kind” is also NOT going to serve any useful purpose. Will it bring your family back? NO. Will it stop the future bombings? NO…in fact, if anything, it will escalate the cycle and create more heartache for OTHER innocent families. This whole idea of “he/she/they started it” to justify such planned atrocity is EXACTLY the problem.

My feeling of frustration the other day stemmed mostly from the fact that these lives were lost and these people were maimed – and we didn’t even know why. It’s not like the finish line of the Boston Marathon is a bastion of capitalism, like the Twin Towers.  Horrible as the 9/11 terrorists’ message was, at least it was obvious. What kind of a protest is it that sheds so much blood without leaving us a clue as to the message? What an incredible waste.

We have been told that the bombers were two brothers who came to the U.S. about a decade ago. Before that, they lived in a refuge for those fleeing the violence of rebellion – but then the refuge too descended into violence.

The younger brother, Dzokhar, who is said to be in hospital and unable to communicate, is 19 years old. That means he came to the United States when he was barely older than Martin Richard, the 8-year-old who died in the bombing.

It’s painful to look at this now-famous picture of Martin, not just because he died so tragically, innocently, and unexpectedly, but also because his message, wonderfully well-intentioned, is not one he could have fully understood as an American boy. The brothers Tsarnaev, when they arrived in America, would have known first-hand what real war looks like. The idea of “no more hurting people” might have seemed like an unattainable dream.

I’m not excusing what they did. I’m not saying they had no choice. I’m saying… it’s sad. The older brother, Tamerlan, would have arrived in the U.S. as a teenager; it would not surprise me if he already had a chip on his shoulder, and probably a large one. Dzokhar came of age in the U.S.; he has now lived on this side of the ocean for longer than in his native land.

How does a decade go by and lead to this? A kid huddling in a boat in someone’s backyard, covered in blood. That image weighs on me: part hide-and-seek, part wounded animal. Although his brother Tamerlan was apparently a radical Islamist and quoted as saying he had no American friends, Dzokhar was reported to be a quiet, nice boy, a good student, a talented wrestler, relatively well-liked. So how is he also a man who concocts a bloodbath by filling pressure cookers with shrapnel?

Every aspect of this makes me sad. It’s so broken. The “immigrant experience” should not end like this.

According to The Centre for Research on Globalization: The Chechen origin and reported military training of the two brothers raises some pointed questions about past U.S. support for the Chechen insurgency and who sponsored the brothers to live in the United States, paid for their college tuition, receive [sic] military training abroad, and paid for Tamerlan’s Wai Kru martial arts training in Boston.

It does seem like when we pay to arm people in developing countries, it comes back to bite us eventually.

There are lots of people praying right now. Of course we pray for the victims and their families, but there is a movement to pray for Dzokhar as well. I’m glad about that, even though there is a certain tone of Let’s pray for the enemy because we’re good Christians/Catholics, or Let’s pray for the enemy, as long as he repents.

Insofar as I pray, I will pray for him, as well as the victims and their families, because his life is obviously a nightmare in which he has no idea what to do. If he survives, this will still be true.

Such a waste.

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