Girl Detective

From The Environmental Working Group:

The House is dangerously close to passing a bill that’s almost identical to the current unfair Farm Bill — the one that’s been paying subsidies to millionaires and dead people instead of family farmers.

Support for farmers transitioning to organics. Healthier school lunches. More funds to feed hungry children and seniors. Protection of water and wildlife. The 2007 Farm Bill could do it all, but time is running out for reform.

Call your Representative today and ask them to support the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment.

The “Fairness Amendment,” offered by a bipartisan group of legislators, will put America on a new course for family farm and food policy.

It will provide a more reliable safety net for America’s organic and family farmers at less cost to taxpayers and provide new resources to address our country’s hunger, health, environmental, and fiscal priorities.

Take action now. The Farm Bill is on the House floor this week.

If the bill being considered is passed, over 50% of all farm spending will continue to flow to just 4% of congressional districts. And too little will be done to fund organics, feed the hungry, help the environment, and promote healthy food choices.

Today, I’m presenting your 30,000 Grow Organics petition signatures to our allies in the House. But we need one more push for a fair Farm Bill.

Please make the call today. It only takes a few minutes to ask your Representative to support Farm Bill reform.

You can make the difference.

I’m still waiting on my English copy of HP7 to appear, and I found these helpful and amusing.

The Guardian’s Digested Read of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (HP5)

The Guardian’s Digested Read of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP6)

John Crace’s pre-review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HP7) (no spoilers at all):

The book will start with Harry making his way back to Hogwart’s for his final year and his scar will be hurting. Ginny and Ron will be flirting a bit, while Harry tries to take himself seriously by almost swearing. There will be loads more unedited, not very interesting back story that should have been cut and there will be a ‘terrifically, exciting denouement that I can’t reveal as I don’t want to spoil the plot in which two much-loved characters die’. Oh, and JK will make another fortune.

Here are my previous entries on Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince.

From Austenblog:

Mansfield Park can be a difficult novel to enjoy. We find most of the characters unlikable, and the story is perhaps a trifle preachy….while it is not our favorite, we cannot say it (or any other Jane Austen novel for that matter) is not worth reading.

Also we suggest that readers forget Edward Said and look at the single slavery reference in the novel, as well as other themes and images of imprisonment and restriction, in relation to the plight of dependent women in Jane Austen’s society. That might lead you down some interesting paths, especially when you read Emma in the same light.

This is the passage they refer to:

Fanny Price: “Did not you hear me ask him about the slave trade last night?”

Edmund Bertram: “I did–and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther.”

Fanny Price: “And I longed to do it–but there was such a dead silence!

I’m not sure why the authors at Austenblog discourage Said; they quote him as saying things that struck me as reasonable, sensible, and true.

I do agree that both Emma and Mansfield Park are full of references to female restriction, such as remaining at home during inclement weather. I especially noticed the many references to adding a pleasant shrubbery for walking the property. Irreverently, I was reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. More seriously, though, I felt pain for those women whose pinnacle of freedom and personal time was a brief walk in the yard.

Cows! Music! Tasty treats! Saturday July 21, 2007 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. in New Prague, MN.

Episode 4: Cooking by Numbers. Casey won the quickfire of what to pair with a Bombay cocktail (reminding me that I’m interested in What to Drink with What You Eat), and then promptly abused the privilege when she was put with Howie and Joey on a team. She got all bossy boots during the planning, didn’t encourage their ideas since she was immune, and then made the crappiest dish of all the chefs. If Howie or Joey had been eliminated, she would have had much to answer for.

Good for that team, then, that the dessert course was truly dreadful. Dale’s ideas–dessert and a pineapple theme–failed spectacularly. He admitted to feeling guilty about Camille’s elimination, but I thought she dug her own hole. She readily agreed to Dale’s idea of dessert, and claimed to know something about pastry, though her very basic idea of upside-down cake looked dreadful. She was inarticulate in response to the judges’ queries, and I thought she deserved to pack her knives.

Episode 5: Latin Lunch. When the cooks are given frozen pie crust for the quickfire challenge, Joey admits he knows a little about pastry, which he didn’t cop to on last week’s ep. I was bothered by the fact that he later lied outright to the guest judge and said he didn’t know pastry. In any case, he won the quickfire challenge, and immunity, and went on to almost win the elimination challenge, but graciously gave kudos to his new best bud Howie. I suspected that either Lia or Casey would be eliminated because of the clip shown early on where they commented how close they’d become, and how they had each others’ backs. Casey’s dish sounded quite bad–dry chicken, overcooked rice, and a bitter, unpleasant sauce. But Lia’s polenta was deemed worse, perhaps because it was both ill-prepared and not very Latin, so she was asked to pack her knives. I would have preferred to see Casey sent packing, since she abused her immunity the week before while Lia won. But that might just be mean-spirited me; I dislike Casey’s overly coiffed, made-up, and accessorized presence. I also suspect Hung is going to go sooner than later. Not only is he a spaz in the kitchen, but his self-awareness is pretty dim.

P.S. Padma Lakshmi has requested a divorce from Salman Rushdie. Quel surprise.

According to Austenblog, in January 2008, PBS will be airing new versions of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility along with the Kate Beckinsale Emma and the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice. The new adaptations were shown previously on ITV in England, to mixed reviews. Does any Austen adaptation NOT get mixed reviews?

“The Minimalist” Mark Bittman lists 101 easy summer recipes. (Link from A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago.) I met Bittman at a cooking demo and book signing, and he sent me a copy of his How to Cook Everything that included the CD after I said I couldn’t find it. I then failed to find an address for him and so have never thanked him. He’s a good cook, a good food writer, and a good guy. I can’t wait to try these recipes.

#24 in my 2007 book challenge was Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.

My book challenge is a self-set goal of fifty books for the year. It’s July and I’m not yet halfway, so my goal is more challenging this year than it’s been in the past. I set the goal to remind myself that reading is a priority, though it can be hard to make time while caring for two small children.

We all have a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.–Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.

Why is poor Fanny Price so reviled a heroine? That strikes me as blaming the victim, or kicking someone when she’s down. This was my sixth major Austen novel, of six. I found it more intricately plotted than Austen’s earlier works, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. I didn’t enjoy it nearly so much as I did the latter, but it impressed me more. Written ten years after the drafts of the previous three, Mansfield Park sustains a strong undercurrent of dread up till the end: what will happen to Fanny, the poor relation of the Bertram family? Like other Austen heroines, Fanny is admirable, but flawed. She is ethical and thoughtful to a fault, but frail, sickly, and shrinking. Many critiques of the book decry that she does not change, but she does. She is both physically and emotionally stronger by the end, and has a greater appreciation for her worth and her powers of discernment.

Mansfield Park defied a quick reading; I was often frustrated by my slow progress through it. In the end, though, I found it both intriguing and rewarding. I felt spurred to further research about it because I found it so different from the other five Austen novels I’ve read (complex, sinister, judgmental) and yet the same (nice girl marries nice boy in the end; good things happen to good people, and bad people get their just deserts!)

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.

I wonder at my auto-didactic leanings. Have they come to me with age, or were they imparted to me later in life by wise teachers, which I mostly lacked for in my youth? If I’d read this in high school, I would not have finished it. I would have used the Cliff Notes to write my paper, for which I’d earn an A. I’m so glad I’ve learned patience and appreciation. Both helped me persevere through a tough read, and beyond it to additional study.

In case you haven’t heard already

Gerber Products Company, a division of Novartis Consumer Health, is voluntarily recalling all packages of Gerber ORGANIC Rice and ORGANIC Oatmeal Cereals due to a potential choking risk. A limited quantity of product may contain lumps of cereal, which do not dissolve in water or milk and pose a potential choking hazard. Gerber has received choking complaints, but no reports of injury. The FDA is aware of this recall.

According to The London Free Press,

Gerber dominates the U.S. baby-food market, with the company holding a 79 percent share, according to Morgan Stanley.

Instead, look for Earth’s Best Baby Food, a brand of the Hain Celestial Group, owned in part by the HJ Heinz company. This is one of many examples of corporate-owned organic food companies.

My friend KT sent me a link to the Environmental Working Group petition. I’m very anti-forwarded email, but I’m very pro-organic and anti-junkfood, so this is a cause close to my heart.

From the EWG website:

Are you satisfied with having just 3% of the fruit you eat free of potentially dangerous pesticides? How about 2% of vegetables? Or less than 0.02% of corn?

Right now, those are the percentages of organic produce available in grocery stores.

Fortunately, the EWG Action Fund is working with Congress to make sure organic farmers get their fair share of federal funds to improve access to healthy alternatives.

You can help right now by signing the EWG Action Fund’s Grow Organics petition. Their goal is 30,000 signatures by July 15!

More information on what they’re doing is in this article from the New York Times.

A great way to support organics is to buy them! Increased demand results in increased supply, which results in lowered costs. I buy organic, local food whenever possible at my local grocery cooperative.

From Suicide Girl News: Brad Pitt wants to channel Steve McQueen in a remake of Bullitt. I agree that it’s a bad idea. Remakes are a bad idea in general, and revisiting McQueen specifically requires a lot of chutzpah. Can you think of any remakes that are better than the original? I’m sure there are some, just as there are a handful of movies whose sequel outstrips the first (Godfather Part II), and even a few third movies that are the pick of the litter (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Off the top of my head, though, I can’t think of one movie substantively improved by a remake.

At the end of the Suicide Girls piece, the author notes that many may not even have seen the McQueen movie from which his nickname is taken. It made me realize that there are a few great war movies that don’t make the top 100 lists, yet which I’ve appreciated far more than I did the carnage-strewn Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, or Saving Private Ryan.

Three Unsung War Movies:

The Great Escape: great ensemble cast, unforgettable theme song, and the origin of The Cooler King, a critical piece of filmic cultural literacy.

Stalag 17: Surprisingly, NOT the basis for Hogan’s Heroes, whose creators were sued over similarities, and won. Holden thought his character was too cynical, but he won an Oscar for the role.

The Thin Red Line: Terence Malick’s beautiful filmic meditation on the brutal rift that war creates between humanity and nature.

#23 in my 2007 book challenge was Hetty Dorval, a gift from a kind friend who visited Persephone Books on her recent trip to London. Like all Persephone editions, it is a beautiful book with a dove-grey paper cover, with end pages and matching bookmark in a complementary textile pattern.

It is a slim but powerful novella of a young girl who develops a friendship with Mrs. Dorval, a woman who has a questionable past. The girl’s fascination is easy to empathize with. Her development into adulthood, and her increased understanding of human nature and behavior, contribute to a fascinating example of the coming-of-age novel. Mrs. Dorval’s sexuality is offered as proof of her bad nature; this troubled me. But the rest of her character so thoroughly completed a portrait of a self-involved, self-serving individual that it made sense in the context of the story.

#22 in my 2007 book challenge was Jim Crace’s Being Dead. The book opens with a couple that has just been murdered, and floats back and forth in time to detail what happened before, how they met, and what happens to their bodies afterward. Crace’s command of narrative is impressive. He switches time and perspective, yet the book is seamless. It is an involving story of the couple’s relationship, as well as an often gruesome, but still compelling, description of the biology and zoology of death.

#21 in my 2007 book challenge is Kris Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali. I know the author, since we attended high school together, but I would admire this book in any case. Holloway details her two years in the Peace Corps in Africa working with a local midwife, Monique. Holloway shows how important and influential Monique was to her village, and to Holloway, whose prior training had been in agriculture, not health. The book is extremely well researched. The bibliography has recent and classic works on international women’s health, birthing traditions, and the ethics of ethnography. Holloway respectfully avoids both criticism and romanticization of the Africans, though she makes clear at the end which cultural differences she’ll miss and which she won’t. The influence of each woman on the other, and the different insights and information they share, make this a moving and detailed portrait of two women’s friendship that crossed cultures. Additionally, it’s a fascinating portrait of birth and childcare practices in another culture.

This book is not easily categorized, but it’s garnered a great deal of attention in spite of that. It was the first nonfiction book chosen by the Literary Ventures Fund, a nonprofit foundation that presented at BEA earlier this year. It has already been included in several college reading lists. I highly recommend this book. It provides a refreshingly different perspective on friendship, birth, men’s and women’s relationships, family and community relationships, and more.

#51 in my 2007 movie challenge is Jean Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu, an aptly great film for hitting the big five-oh so early in the year. I saw the newly restored 35mm print, which will be shown later this summer in Vancouver, Ft. Worth and more. If you have the opportunity to go see this film’s restored print, do so. How good is the print? I could see exactly how frizzy the wife’s perm was, the shadow of a mustache above the mistress’s lip, and where the husband’s eyebrows had been redrawn.

In addition to the high quality of the print, it’s a great film. Like Citizen Kane, with which it’s often compared, it’s amazing both for the story and its technical proficiency. Like Renoir’s earlier Grand Illusion, it has a startling prescience for the coming war. Altman was a fan, and its influence is apparent in the ensemble casts of all his films, but most obviously in the upstairs/downstairs manor house of Gosford Park.

#50 in my movie challenge for the year was a re-watching of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. I agree with the final comment from the Terri Sutton City Pages review when it came out:

Your cake is so stale it makes me sick–but oh, the frosting…

Yes, the center story is a boring and predictable love story about a hooker with a heart of gold, a penniless poet, and a lecherous rich duke. But the Bollywood-esque excess, McGregor’s charm, Kidman’s occasional and surprising comedic turns, and Luhrmann’s famous musical madness, make for a movie that so enthralls me that I watched to the end on this multiple viewing, even though I was exhausted, and kept vowing to go to bed after the VERY NEXT SCENE.

I also admit, guiltily, to singing along.

#49 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Illusionist. Like The Prestige, it is about magic shows in the 19th century, was well reviewed, and stars a famous actor (Edward Norton, Jr.), a hot young thing (Jessica Biel), and an older, skilled character actor (Paul Giamatti). My friend B wondered if she liked this movie less than The Prestige because she was in labor when she watched it. B, I don’t think it was the labor; I found The Illusionist boring, predictable, and overlong. I nearly stopped watching towards the end, and I didn’t care about any of the characters. The Prestige made me think. The Illusionist made me annoyed.

My husband G. Grod thinks that Jessica Biel’s lips are natural. Awful Plastic Surgery and I think otherwise.

#48 in my 2007 movie challenge was George Cukor’s Gaslight, a costlier remake of the 1940 UK film that was released in the US as Angel Street. MGM tried, unsuccessfully, to have all prints of the earlier film destroyed. It is included as an extra on the 2004 DVD. Ingrid Bergman is the niece of a famous singer who is murdered. Years later, a singer herself, she marries her pianist, played creepily by Charles Boyer. Cukor shows the audience Boyer is up to no good, though Bergman is kept in the dark, both by the story, and by Boyer, who is slowly trying to drive her mad. Joseph Cotten is the good guy policeman who decides to meddle, much like the policeman in Laura, then solves the mystery. A young Angela Lansbury stands out in her first role, as a saucy, sulky housemaid.

#47 in my 2007 movie challenge was Laura, which had been lounging on my Tivo drive for some time. Based on the novel by Vera Caspary, it’s another classic noir. Story doesn’t matter so much as character and atmosphere, and the latter is exemplified by the famous theme song. On the surface, it’s about a detective who becomes obsessed with a dead woman’s portrait; he feels compelled to solve her murder. Less obviously but more interestingly, it’s about women and power, both in business and in personal relationships. Vincent Price is unsettling as the handsome, well-mannered man who Laura was engaged to marry, but Clifton Webb steals the show as the pretentious man who “made” Laura.

From Laura Barton’s “Girl Wonders” in The Guardian:

If there is a single thread that links these fictional girl heroes, it is surely that they were all people who knew, very clearly, their own state of mind, who were brave and strong and articulate

The article leads off with images of two of my favorite titian-haired heroines, Anne (with an ‘e’) and Nancy. As a girl, I aspired to be a tomboy, like George in Edid Blyton’s Five mysteries, but I knew I didn’t have it in me–I didn’t like bugs, dirt or mess. My favorite was Trixie Belden. She had unruly hair and said dumb things, but still solved the mystery. Nancy Drew was great, but always very tidy. Trixie walked a middle ground between George and Nancy that I could relate to.