Life

 On the Tenacity of Plants

Tenacious Plant: photo by Cliff Hutson 

"Life, uh, finds a way”  -  Dr. Ian Malcolm

Year of the Rabbit

  家幸福，安康吉祥，万事如意

Rabbit: photo by Cliff Hutson

Lunar New Year

Yesterday ushered in the year of the Water Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac. Celebrations may last up to 16 days reaching a peak with the Lantern Festival on February 5th. So, this is still a timely post.

Some say that, overall, a Rabbit Year is a time of peace. However, a person (such as myself) born in a Dog Year should expect ups and downs. You can check your own prediction at Year of the Rabbit: Horoscope Predictions 2023 and Personality.

I hope that it will be a good year for you.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

 We can all dream

We Can All Dream: photo by Cliff Hutson

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day did not become a reality as a federal holiday until nineteen years after he won the Nobel Prize, and fifteen years after his assassination. But, now, each year on the third Monday of January, many Americans honor his birth, life, and dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

Sadly, events of the last few years make that dream seem as distant as ever to me.

Looking Back: At the Movies (2022)

Movies Watched in 2022

On Location: photo by Cliff Hutson

1. The Cheap Detective 
2. The Angry Red Planet
3. Lowriders (2016)
4. Rushmore
5. Ghostbusters: Afterlife 
6. Jesse Stone: Night Passage
7. Sahara (1984)
8. Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs 
9. Jesse Stone: Stone Cold
10. Fantastic Mr. Fox
11. Coyote Waits
12. Silverado
13. The Grand Budapest Hotel
14. Sherlock Holmes:  The Sign of  Four
15. Hell or High Water (2016)
16. Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold
17. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
18. Sheena (1984)
19. Fugitive Nights: Danger in the Desert
20. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
21. Sushi Girl
22. The Tragedy of  MacBeth  (2021)
23. The Lost City
24. Kiss the Girls
25. Skyfall
26. Savage Island
27. Monster Trucks
28. The Day The Music Died: The Story of Don McLean's 'American Pie'
29. King Solomon's Mines (1985)
30. The Ghost and the Darkness 
31. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
32. Legend of the Lost
33. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
34. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
35. Samaritan 
36. Shanghai Noon (2000)
37. MASH
38. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
39. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
40. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
41. Harlan County, USA (1976, Barbara Kopple)
42. American Factory
43. Salesman (1969, Maysles Bros.)
44. The Fog of War (2003, Errol Morris)
45. Hearts & Minds (1974, Peter Davis)
46. They Shall Not Grow  Old
47. Battle of the Little Bighorn  (Smithsonian) 
48. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room 
49. Inside Job 
50. Twenty Feet from Stardom
51. The Hunt for the Skinwalker
52. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
53. Smokey and the Bandit
54. Don't Look Back 
55. Gimme Shelter
56. Space Cowboys
57. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
58. The Decline of Western Civilization 
59. The Rundown 
60. The Wolf of Wall Street
61. Die Hard 

I watched sixty-one movies, which is fairly typical for me. However, much unlike previous years, only two of them were from my personal collection, Silverado, and Hell or High Water. They are among the half dozen films that in the past I have made a point to watch every year. So, this year was almost completely different. 

Many of the films that I did watch were as a result of my belonging to a Skirball Cultural Center movie group. Among those were four by the director Wes Anderson and ten documentaries - there is a different focus for each series of sessions. Most of those movies were new to me and the group discussions were very stimulating. 

The rest of the list was derived from suggestions by Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Paramount +, reviews in the publications I follow, and random mentions in other media.

The Good:

The best of these that were new to me was Harlan County, USA (1976, Barbara Kopple). A documentary film covering a 1973 strike of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for 1976.

However, I must (if I haven't already) give a shout out to both Hell or High Water and Silverado. They are, in my opinion, among the best Western (my favorite genre) films ever made.

The Bad

This distinction goes to another documentary - The Decline of Western Civilization (1981). All in all, it was not badly done and almost everyone else likes it. And, I learned quite a bit about a subject matter that I do not care for. But, it seemed to me like taking a dose of bad tasting medicine. 

The Ugly

There are two movies that cry out to be included here.

The first is Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs in which dinosaurs run amok in a present-day Western town. I like Westerns and I like SciFi, but it all goes wrong in this film. It garnered a which got an audience score of 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so I am not alone on this one. 

The second is another documentary (or is styled as one) - billed as science confronts the unexplained at a remote ranch in Utah. It is The Hunt for the Skinwalker.  It is such tripe that I turned it off about half way through as it seemed it was only going to get worse. 

That is a wrap for 2022!

Reading Log: December 2022

 The books I finished reading in the month of December 2022

December 2022 Books: photo by Cliff Hutson

"The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions," David Quammen 

"Seven Brief Lessons on Physics," Carlo Rovelli 

"Andrea Hoffman Goes All In," Diane Cohen Schneider 

"The Power of Myth," Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers

"Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living," Nick Offerman 

"When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management," Roger Lowenstein

Cliff's Notes

"Dodo"

A friend and I recently discussed the books that have had an impact on our lives and this one immediately came to my mind. I first read it in 1996 and it shaped my outlook on the world and informed my work as a "nature interpreter" at the botanic garden where I volunteered. So, I decided to reread it to see how I feel about it after all this time.

It is still a great piece of writing combing scientific reporting with travel writing. Sadly,  many of the situations it covers seem to have gotten worse rather have been ameliorated in any fashion. So, it is still highly relevant. 

"Brief Lessons"

This book did not do much for me. This lessons are brief and as such lack much substance. We learn that the theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are both true, yet contradict each other.  The author seems to want the reader to accept this on faith; a word he disparages in other contexts.

One reviewer said that this book is a much better read than "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. I don't find that to be the case.

"Andrea Hoffman"

This book came to my daughter's attention because the name is very close to her own and she decided to give me a copy. 

I very much enjoyed it. While, at heart, I guess that it can be called a young woman's coming-of-age story it also provides a very interesting the world of finance in the 1980s. The author has a marvelous way with words. As an example; she describes as looking like ". . . he's been playing on a dusty floor with a toddler and a golden retriever." I very much recommend it.

"Myth"

Some say that this is a book that everybody should read, and now I have done it. Both Campbell and Moyers like to use words and drop names that send a reader such as myself to the dictionary or encyclopedia. That lies on me. Your mileage may be different. 

"Paddle"

While I have still have not watched "Parks and Recreation", I am a fan of Nick Offerman. This is the third book of his that I have read. It is, in my humble opinion the least of them. That may be because it was the first one that he wrote and, dare I say it, it took him sometime to find his voice.

Part memoir and part his advice on how to live a fulfilling life it is immensely interesting. I certainly recommend to anyone aspiring to get into acting. However, while I do not think of myself as a prude, I learned far more about his martial relations with Megan Mullally than I care to know. Though, I am happy for them that their sex life seems to be mutually enjoyable. Also, I am the first to admit that I swear, cuss, or use foul language more than I should, but find these pages to just a bit too full of it.

[Note to self: Figure out the difference between "memoir" and "autobiography".]

"Genius"

Last month I read that this is one of the two books that was required reading for the people on Enron's trading floor, so I wanted to see what it was all about.

This book, originally published in 2000, details the rise and and fall (which nearly took the financial system with it) of LTCM. This 2011edition has an Afterward which shows that lessons were not learned. As James Cramer has noted, "perhaps the term genius should be reserved for Mozart and not for arbitrageurs."

I had already learned from Andrea Hoffman that this business is neither logical nor fair and that the party won't last forever.