… according to Duolingo’s sentence generator. Karin was amused.
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It’s Labor Day weekend. There isn’t a day when Karin & I don’t have at least one event scheduled with this or that acquaintance.
For us, this is unusual.
Today, we visited my friend Dan’s family. We went to the beach. Although the water was supposedly infested with E. coli, it contained many bathers.
We didn’t bathe. We walked down a pier to where, between the cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, our own St. Joseph River empties itself out into Lake Michigan.
We also went on a carousel (I gather it’s impossible not to do so if one goes to the beach with Dan’s kids).
I rode the flamingo:
It had a slimming effect.
Dan and his wife, Lizzie, kindly gave us many things for our baby. Dan & Lizzie aren’t going to produce any more children. They have three who are cute but wild, especially at night.
Watching this story unfold, I was reminded of two others:
(1) Marilynn Robinson’s celebrated novel, Housekeeping (1980), in which two orphaned sisters are cared for by an eccentric aunt. I’ve not read it, but it seems all my friends have, and so I’ve absorbed it through osmosis (no doubt inadequately). Behold this trailer of the 1987 cinematic version.
(2) The Night of the Hunter (1955), in which an orphaned brother and sister take refuge with a not-quite-elderly spinster (Lillian Gish). At night, the spinster sits on her porch, singing hymns, grasping a shotgun, guarding the children against their pursuer in one of the all-time greatest scenes.
In Manny & Lo, it’s the children – two sisters – who wield the shotgun. They use it to force an eccentric spinster to fulfill their mother’s role.
Sixteen-year-old Laurel (Aleksa Palladino) is the instigator, the more desperate sister. She’s pregnant.
Eleven-year-old Amanda (Scarlett Johansson) is the movie’s narrator. She’s willing to go along with whatever Laurel does, apparently for the sheer pleasure of experiencing and contemplating it.
The sisters have illegally removed themselves from the fostering system and are out on the lam. The movie begins with them driving around in an old station wagon. (No, it’s nothing like Thelma & Louise.) They sleep in forests and model homes. They prefer not to stay long in the same place. As Laurel’s baby grows inside her, however, they realize they must choose a different survival tactic.
After Laurel decides not to have an abortion, she and Amanda kidnap Elaine (Mary Kay Place), a knowledgeable maternity shop clerk. They conscript Elaine to serve as a midwife for Laurel. They chain Elaine’s ankles together and imprison her in an empty vacation house in the woods.
Most of the movie takes place while Elaine and the two girls await the birth of the child in this hideout.
At first, Elaine is none too pleased, as shown in this still photo. (No, she hasn’t been decapitated. The girls are force-feeding cereal to her: she’s been hunger-striking.)
“I do not give in to criminals,” Elaine says.
She reiterates: “I don’t care what type of drugs are involved, or so-called religious rituals, or what have you. I do not give in to criminals.”
There has been no suggestion of drug use or religious ritual. This is just how Elaine talks: with unceasing, severe moralism.
Later, however, she cooks casseroles for the household.
Again, she underscores that she is not giving in to criminals. “I believe kidnap victims have just as much right to a balanced meal as anyone else,” she tells Laurel and Amanda. “And, if I am not mistaken, the same holds true for innocent babies.”
She adds: “If you two benefit in the process, well, that can’t be helped.”
In deed, then, if not in word, Elaine exhibits increasing sympathy toward her captors. (Does it count as Stockholm syndrome if she was rather cuckoo to begin with?)
Over all this hang various possibilities that the trio will be caught:
The owner of the vacation house might show up.
The neighbors might show up. (Rather foolishly, or perhaps daringly, Amanda has made friends with a little boy she has found in the woods.)
The fostering agency might show up.
Elaine’s friends and relations might show up.
What in fact happens is perhaps the most interesting thing that could happen. It leads the three women to understand their position in the world, and what they mean to each other.
At certain points, I thought I knew how the movie would turn out, and I was wrong (at least about the details). What does occur, and how, is immensely satisfying – and amusing. And a little sad.
I strained my lower back. It immobilized me for a couple of days.
Karin said, “My back always hurts.”
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I’ve been reworking my best dissertation chapter into an article. My committee advised me to try to publish that chapter’s argument in “one of the very top journals.”
I’ve decided to take this entreaty seriously – even if my committee members tell the same thing to every student who finishes the Ph.D.
Tonight, I remarked to Karin that I thought the article would take several years to complete.
Perhaps our greatest gain from Saturday’s shower, apart from the gift-haul for our son, was the huge plate of cheese that the guests hardly even nibbled at.
Since then, I’ve been snacking on delicious little leftover squares of cheese.
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Mary came over tonight to help rearrange our apartment for the baby. I don’t wish to brag, but, during our entire tenure at this property, one of our bedrooms has gone unused – except as a receptacle for cat toilets, books, and various exotic items.
Well, Karin & I can no longer afford such extravagance. Every inch must be drafted into service or stripped of clutter.
(There is a Shinto teacher, I’ve heard, who tells us how to do this with joy.)
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One thing I learned tonight: I need a bigger, better clothes dresser. The bottoms have fallen out of several of my drawers. The remaining drawers are bursting with clothes that survived this evening’s culling.
(NOTE: Some clothes were transported from another dresser that we emptied out to fill with the baby’s clothes.)
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Notoriously, many bloggers and social media users, upon achieving parenthood, become very tedious, unable to look up from the minutiae of daily living. I shall strive to avoid this fault.
Rest assured that I’ll continue to discuss the great subjects, such as morality and metaphysics.
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My favorite sentence in this entry:
“The bottoms have fallen out of several of my drawers.”
Karin & I held the first of two gift showers for our son. This shower, organized by Mary, was attended by friends and family members who don’t worship at our church. (The church’s shower will occur next month.)
As the gifts were being unwrapped, I realized what a large proportion of the clothes from Karin’s wish list were fox-themed. Our boy also received some Fighting Irish onesies from my Domer cousin, Vickie; some Star Trek-themed Little Golden Books and clothes from Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol, who are die-hard Trekkies; and a few tiger-themed items, including a Cincinnati Bengals outfit (the Bengals are Carol’s team).
Not only have our son’s gender, nationality, and religion – the standard identities – been settled well before his birth, but also, apparently, his mammalian, collegiate, intergalactic, and athletic preferences.
I was the only man at the shower. I tried to watch Manchester City vs. the Potato Tots on my computer, but the flash player wouldn’t work.
Tomorrow, Karin & I will spend some time with my high school friend, Dan, and his wife and three young children. They recently moved from Vermont to southwestern Michigan.
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My current reading:
(1) Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves (1957), revised by some other dude (2007).
(2) Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars.
“Robert Graves’ Penguin version … is entertaining, but has to be used with caution.”
Yes, I expect that Graves sneaks in a few extra poisonings.
(3) Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise.
True crime.
Vacationing from Yale, the author camps out in the Oregon desert and is mutilated by a mysterious axeman. Decades later, she returns to the scene to seek out the axeman, his motive, and cosmic meaning.
The book is highly introspective: was the author’s trauma due to herself, or to the axeman? The author writes 100+ pages before even considering the latter possibility.
Still, it isn’t bad.
(4) Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall, original 1974 version.
This classic gothic school novel is by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Stranger with My Face.
(The 2011 update incorporates new technology – email, cell phones, etc. – NO GOOD.)
The fount of college teaching jobs for this year has pretty well dried up – as it should, since most colleges will begin instruction in two, three, or four weeks.
I continue to apply for some full-time jobs that trickle out. (I can’t move my family across the continent to take up a part-time post.)
I’ve tried advertising myself as a hybrid laborer who could do some full-time combination of clerical work and adjunct teaching. No dice. Colleges want specialists, and they don’t want to pay benefits.
I’ve also been applying for college advising jobs and jobs with the public library. I’m having trouble imagining how to go about finding any other sort of job, except the kind you do in a grocery store.
(But wouldn’t a job like that also be part-time, and, therefore, inadequate?)
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Half Price Books is opening a store in Mishawaka. I love Half Price Books.
I think I’d be delighted to work there, even on a half-week schedule.
Unfortunately, the store won’t open until after my son is due to be born, by which time I’ll need to be collecting paychecks.
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I was about to post another YouTube video of a techno song – there was almost no time left to write today’s entry – but I dug deep and found things to complain about.
