Snow Days and Disasters.....in the Movies!!!

Well, its been a heck of a winter especially the last two weeks here in beautiful downtown Brooklyn.  I woke up (well, actually, I was woken up by a text and email blast from the university that there would be no classes or administration going on), at 5:30 AM on Friday morning to a world of white outside my windows.  The good thing is that I got to stay home and read, eat when and what I want, watch movies and make my cat Marco happy by keeping him company and playing with him.  Besides, all the birdies and squirrels he watches or tease him from the windows have disappeared to wherever those creatures disappear to when there are big snowstorms or heavy rain.  In any event, its pretty for the first 24 hours and since it snowed for 24 hours it was pretty to look at and take photos off.  I wish I could play in it but these not so spry and not so resilient bones of mine can't take that sort of thing anymore.  What my bones are really asking me is why don't I take them to some warm sunny beach or warm sunny anywhere!  And they say there's more snow to come this week.  Aaaarrrgghhh.... My granddaughter will be going to school till July if this keeps up to make up for lost school days.

Then I had a slight heart attack (figuratively) because Thursday night it was snowing heavily already and my Direct TV dish was burried under the heavy WET snowflakes and I thought I would miss the ladies figure skating final at the Olympics but milagro! It came back on just about 9:30 pm.  Wasn't that Korean girl just exquisite?!!

Nothing much else exciting is going on.  Well, there is this earthquake in Chile, which is not exciting but horrid for those people and that tsunami scare because if it is supposed to reach Hawaii and Japan, the Philippines isn't far off but so far, it hasn't happened. 

When I was a kid in Manila, really young, I had seen a movie called "Fair Winds to Java" and it was about a tsunami and for years and years I used to have nightmares about a tsunami rolling over us thru Manila Bay.  When the real thing happened not so long ago in Banda Asche (Sp.?), I thought - some nightmares do become real. I know I may be a trifle weird but I rather like watching "disaster" movies like the original "Poseidon", "Earthquake" with Jennifer Jones/Charlton Heston, "Twister" (I like watching the movie but I can't relate too much to tornadoes not having really experienced or seen one in real life and I don't live in Oklahoma or Kansas),  "Impact" or something with an impact about asteroids hitting the earth, which are a bit scary, and the two movies about nuclear bomb explosions, one had Jason Robards in it, "The Day After" and those are scary too. And then there's "The Towering Inferno" which those nasty terrorists made all too real and a thousand times worse by giving us a taste of the real thing.  But I have the movie in video and I like it because of all the actors in it: William Holden, Fred Astair, Steve McQueen, Jennifer Jones, Susan Blakely, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway and even OJ Simpson, who had a good supporting role.  I like ""Dante's Peak" wth Pierce Brosnan (I like anything with him in it), "The China Syndrome", "On the Beach", "Titanic" and "A Night To Remember" (to some even better than Titanic by Cameron), "The Devil at Four O'Clock" (Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy), and "When Time Ran Out" with Jacqueline Bissett, Paul Newman and William Holden (talk about the dream team actors!).  Anyway, I'm into a disaster mode and I haven't even included movies like "The Hot Zone" or "The Adromeda Strain." 

I guess I'm from the older generation because I'd rather watch any of the above movies again than something about Iraq (The Hurt Locker), or blue people with a "message" (Avatar).  Which brings me to the (drum roll) the Oscar's next Sunday.  I have my favorite actors and actresses but none will win because everyone is now so "PC" (I HATE that term), but I like the spectacle and like looking at the dresses and who makes it or doesn't.  I wish I could work the red carpet as an interviewer just for that night.  As I'ved said previously, I like the Golden Globes awards better but the Oscar's are a tradition, so something to look forward to.

And for those of you who ARE "PC" and think that I should be talking about more serious stuff in here than old disaster movies, well, we get the serious stuff in our faces every day in the news, on TV and in our lives so I can indulge in old fashioned harmless memories of rotten and not so rotten movies that do what movies are supposed to do - entertain.  Your entertainment may be French noir or Italian comedy or Merchant/Ivory films (I love them!) or Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.  Whatever works, I say.

And then there's always my Kindle.  Just finished reading a lot of non-fiction like "The Lost City of Z" and "The Johnstown Flood" so yesterday I indulged in a bit of chic lit called "Very Valentine" and loved it.  The second of the trilogy by the author of this book releases in the middle of March and I can't wait. 

Last but not least, last night I watched "The V.I.P.s" with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Orson Wells, Maggie Smith, Elsa Martinelli and Rod Taylor and fell asleep watching Cameron's "Titanic" and hated Billy Zane all over again! Besides, not a thing to watch if you hate the cold!

Valentine's Day, February 14, 2010 (The Romantic Valentine, not the Familial One)

If you notice, the title of this posting doesn't say "Happy" only because I don't think Valentine's Day is a happy one for everyone.  I mean, I know we all truly love someone - husband, child, parent, etc. but I am thinking that some have lost a truly loved one, hence, though not a tragic day, not the all hearts and flowers one for many people.

I received a sweet email valentine from an old love a few days ago and though in email and short, it was sweet - and since none of you who read this know who he is - I will quote from part of it - to share -
"Happy Valentine's Day Love. It doesn't seem possible that this will be the sixth one since our flight. Thoughts of you give (me) as many goosebumps as they did V day '05. Maybe more. I think memories of a relationship grow with the years as the mind gradually erases any flaws in the relationship and constantly homes in and magnifies what was, and still is, wonderful about it.  Stay warm love."

The above sure made my day as any woman, or guy, reading it can appreciate.

And speaking of loves - and in my case, a love lost, I wrote this poem truly spontaneously one summer morning about two years ago.  I woke up from dreaming about this particular person and the first lines of the poem were literally already in my head.  I had to go to the office but as soon as I got to my desk, I took out a notebook and started writing and in about 45 minutes it was done - just as you see it below.  The power of love or love lost is strong indeed.  Probably this all came about as "closure" (I truly hate the word but I can't think of a better one for now), when this man finally placed a period to the long relationship we'd had since I first met him in 1969.  The why, how and where is not important because its done with but this poem lingers as a testament to what it was and how I felt.  Those close friends who I sent it to and to others who knew nothing about my life or didn't know that I had written it, where skeptical that I had actually written it, though impressed.  Because I wanted to preserve the integrity of this poem and the emotion that conceived it, I had it copyrighted and received my official copyright # from the US copyright office about 6 months later.

Well, here it is.  An old friend of mine who passed away not long ago (God bless him), thought it a little raunchy but that's a guy for you and the only man who read it.  The women all understood.

Antonym


I hate you.


I hate you because you come to me
In my dreams
And take over the night


I hate you because you waken memories
Long dormant
And take over my day

I hate you because I taste your mouth,
Your skin, your maleness,
And it’s only a memory


I hate you because you always walk away from me
In my dreams, in my life


I hate you because all others diminish in comparison
And they are nobler than you

I hate you because our past obscures the present
And denies the future


I hate you because there is no present
There is no future


I hate you because I look for you
When I know I will not find you


I hate you because you once were mine
I hate you because you now belong to another
I hate you because you were only on loan to me by Fate

I hate you because we breathed the same air
I hate you because we don’t breathe the same air


I hate you because our bodies joined lifted me
To heights unknown to mortals


I hate you because I knew your body
Better than mine


I hate you because you completed me
I hate you because now no one does


I hate you because we connected without words
I hate you because we now cannot connect at all


I hate you because I will not watch you grow old
I hate you because I only remember our youth


I hate you because you took the best of me
I hate you because I didn’t take the best of you


I hate you because you never heard my silent song to you
I hate you because I never realized yours to me


I hate you because I cannot,
No matter how much I try,
Learn to hate you.


Lea Bowie
Summer 2008

And this is the person I wrote this poem about.  The photo was taken in the summer of 1974.

SNOW DAY!!! February 10, 2010

Hey there folks,

Here I am, still in my pajamas while the world outside my windows - all five of them - is just a blizzard of white!  I don't remember snow like this since my first winter in New York in 1966!  Let me see if I can attach a picture or two I took from my windows, earlier today, though now, at 2 PM, its snowing even harder and the wind is picking up. 

The picture above was taken from my kitchen window of my back yard.  The screen is still down outside of the window pane hence the criss-cross lines, but that tree that is bent down from the weight of the snow is a lovely "butterfly tree" (I call it that because all during warm weather butterflies gather to it, especially Monarch butterflies) which is so lovely during the spring and summer.  This was taken at 8 this morning but now at 2 pm half of it is practically on the ground and the other half is hanging over my neighbor's fence.  Hope nature does its thing and it comes back to its glory in spring.  It has beautiful violet flowers when it blooms.

I took more pictures of my front yard facing the street but since the windows face north,there are droplets of water of melted snow flakes and everything is a blur of white.  Wonder of wonders, the mailperson who fails to deliver mail on nice days, actually delivered mail in a blizzard.  Go figure but, goodie for me, I got two Netflix DVDs that I can watch.

I know, this is all pretty boring but for my friends in warm climes, this is a little taste of life in the Gran Manzana.  I hope my friend Cora Arando Frattali, who is supposed to fly to Nevada made it out of here today.

Nothing much else going on but now that I can download pictures, I will see if I can download some more later on.

Happy snow day everyone!