Ms Potter

I lopped off the top of a seedless cucumber and said to FD, "Let’s eat and watch Miss Potter." (2006, directed by Chris Noonan, written by Richard Maltby Jr.)

I had taken it out for the kids.
Y thought R would like it but they left Chicago without touching the DVD. This branch of the tree watches little if any television when visiting the 'rents.

"It's a 2 day rental and Blockbusters is already spleening me," I nagged. "Come on, sit with me. Just a little."

Ugh, I believe was the reply. I have to get up early. Early for FD is earlier than for the rest of us and it was already after 10.

I stuck in the disk and moments later he sat down to watch along with Little One (18yrs old, 6’4”, 145 pounds soaking wet). The three of us sunk into the sofa with salad and tuna melts on rye waiting out the previews, commenting on how he and his dad are mostly leg, especially the younger version.

It’s bizarre like that, attending to the oddest things about your kid's genetics, as if discovering them for the first time, things like BMI (body-mass-index). He's home for the summer.

Of all of us, if anyone prefers clean media, it's this guy. So how could he resist Miss Potter?

How could anyone?

Well, if you need a nap, the movie is perfect. Very slow, extremely boring. 92 minutes and not a single act of violence (oh, a little verbal, I guess). And almost no plot. The plot summary at IMDb (I go there for credits) is empty, seriously. No one's filled it in.

But the pictures! Beatrix's pictures of Peter Rabbit and his friends! They’re just as I remembered them. I know that my mother read the rabbit books to me, and that Tales of Peter Rabbit was a grade school reader in my day. I imagine that now kids learn to read by computer.

And I know that I read Tales to my kids. But how is it that the entire wonderment of that simply got lost under the radar when I posted about children’s books just the other day?

It just did.

Miss Potter is a feminist movie and reminds us that women have worked for over a century to challenge the status quo, to become more than wives and mothers, home makers and socialites.

Beatrix, an unmarried woman in her 30’s, has a well-defined artist's identity even as a very young child. Her very difficult relationship with her mother, a woman we might consider to be the opposite of Lindsay Lohan or Brooke Shield's supportive stage moms, provides the only real conflict in the story.

Beatrix had to be her own agent, bucking social mores of her class to approach a publishing house in London. She didn’t go anywhere without an escort and dating without parental approval in the early 1900s was social suicide. Marriages were supposed to be arranged.

Of course that never happened in Beatrix's case.

The magic of the movie, however, has nothing to do with any of that. It happens as she sees her art come to life. Her rabbits, ducks and frogs are her friends. They have feelings and problems and as the ink leaves the pen, they jump off the page, but only momentarily so we wonder, Did that happen? Am I dreaming? Is she?

That’s how creativity happens for certain artists. A thought comes alive, only momentarily at first, a flash of whatever it is that needs to be said, and then it's colored in and all at once, it's beautiful.

FD and Little One watched the whole thing. I only nodded off once in awhile. It’s worth the 92 minutes of Renee Zellweger, I think, even if you tend to wander off a little down the garden path.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc

About It's Fictitious

Already the email is coming in, folks worried that their comments made me uncomfortable, like people are talking about the therapydoc family.

Like we're so important. Sorry about that. Let me clarify a little.

a) I love comments, there isn't a blogger out there who doesn't, except maybe one and I know him. The only exception would be if comments are "inappropriate" or I feel in any way immodest, I won't post or respond to them, likewise e-mail.

b) Gossip was the wrong word and too harsh! I wouldn't suspect my readers of that, honest. I meant that I'm not gossiping, exposing anyone.

(It's not about you.)

So I'm editing that part out about gossip. If you haven't read it already, the last sentence will say,

take it as a learning experience, a creative learning experience

As long as we're sharing and talking creatively, did I tell you I didn't make it as an art major? At UIUC I took about every type of course imaginable and chose art as a major because it was much more fun than anything else (tennis was good, too). I loved design and got A's but could not draw. There was a time you had to draw to be an artist. I called home in a panic, for at some point you really do need enough hours in one particular subject to graduate. Mom suggested social work.

Thanks Mom.

But of course, had I chosen art, you'd have a much better looking website to visit. No regrets.

therapydoc

The reality of lying

I don't know who brought this to my attention first, it might have been either FD or Empath Daught but one of them told me that my grandson, E., who is 4 years old has been lying.

They're a little concerned.

I let stuff like this pass through me, sort of like my body's not really a solid but a vapor and information passes right through, hardly registers. My family complains, sometimes, accuses me of not paying attention, but it's not that.

I hear it all right.

I'm just sort of a tolerant sort; it takes a lot to ruffle me. And when it comes to kids lying, it really is a So what, More power to them.
There's a post on this blog about kids lying and you can look at that too, if you like, but it's really a very simple thing.

A kid will start to tell a story. (Remember, kids are new to words and the process of talking to communicate the thoughts in their heads, well, it's all new!! )

They'll start talking and their sentences get longer and longer, and the creative parts of the story rank more and more attention, and their telling ultimately has very little to do with reality, and the story indeed, in the end, is quite far from the truth.

See, kids see the option to make a story a better story and they choose the better story.

To kids, editing really gets in the way! It's so boring to them, what actually happened. Editing to the truth is so limiting! Children understand this.

Even adolescents understand this. They're a lot like very little kids in that way. That's why it's best, when you catch kids in a lie, even when you catch adolescents, to try to thread back to the source of their thinking. Why did they say that? Why did they choose those particular words?

How incredible the fiction!

But be esteeming here. Give them credit. Rate them well. Good story. Credible. Three stars. Or perhaps, Four stars. Sometimes a story is a FIVE STAR STORY! Tell them!

But if it isn't, you can say,

Not bad, not a bad explanation, but it could have been better, seriously. If I were to write this fiction (you have to think up something now) I would have changed it like this. . . made it really good. You think this is good fiction? You're capable of so much more. Work on this, dear.

Mainly, why be so upset with kids for the way they present reality? The thing to keep in mind is that the way they present their reality to you personally may say more about you than it does about them.

Kids write for their audience.

Is it fair or even nice to deny them a chance to make you happy?

Of course not. Now, if you're really interested in your kid, then you are interested in your kid's reality, what it means to him, why he (or she) put it in those particular words. Sure, if it's about you, then you need to discuss that.

Isn't that what you really want, to understand where your kid is coming from? So you wouldn't want to stifle communication with an aggressive approach like You're lying!

It just seems a little mean to me.

More productive would be, Fascinating!

It's the same basic approach with adults, you know, although we would love to hold them to a different standard. Note I say different, not higher, for I think that talking creatively is the essence of having a sense of humor.

With adults, however, the standard is different. Another post, not for today.

But stifling a kid's creativity? That's beyond me, honestly. Passes right through.

No lie.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc