It’s kind of fun, isn’t it, to look back over the year and note the high spots.  Here is a list of the best DVDs we watched, the ones that I would rate 5/5.  We studied WWII, we (she says) like food, we like Donne, we like Dickens and we like song. 

Our favorite DVD was I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal.  At the beginning of March it was the best DVD we had seen in 2009, and at the end of December I can still say it was the best.  My review.

The Singing Revolution documents the independence of Estonia through the power of singing.  It’s simply incredible!  Please!  Take two minutes, click on the link and watch the trailer.  I had the same response to this film that I had to a much different movie, Hotel Rwanda: these events took place during my (adult) lifetime.  Where was I? Why was I so ignorant?
In the case of Estonia, I just didn’t connect with the phrase, Baltic States.  Oh, if I was teaching the American War of Independence, I would show this film to compare and contrast America’s war and Estonia’s.

We rented one disc of Planet Earth from Netflix and decided we needed to own this series.  We gave the set to our sons for Christmas.  Extraordinary footage.  If you have kids in your life, it is worth owning this.  My review

Food, Inc. is an eye-opening look at what we eat.  Sounds appetizing, eh?  If you enjoyed Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you will like Food, Inc.  It comes from the same kernel as King Corn. The highlight of the movie, for us, was the segment with Joel Salatin on Polyface Farms.  Warning: if you watch this, you might change your food choices.

As a family, we often remember a season or a year by our viewing.  One summer it was the Jeeves and Wooster videos, one autumn was occupied with Foyle’s War.  Last winter it was Band of Brothers.  It took us a while to find a friend willing to lend it to us.  Curt had co-workers who owned this set, but it was too precious to them to lend it out. Gritty, war-violence, it is not for the faint of heart. If you can stomach the intensity of combat scenes, it is highly excellent.  Our son was very happy to get this from his brother for Christmas.  On a side note, the theme music is the most compelling, haunting, soul-grabbing collection of notes. 

It is ironic that I watched Valkyrie with my daughter-in-law and her sister.  They said it was the best war movie they’d seen.  Apart from the opening, there are no gunfights or battle scenes.  It is all spy and mystery and thriller.  Even though you know that this operation failed, you are sucked into the suspense and hold your breath.  After watching this movie I am left with the question, how many lives would have been saved if this attempt on Hitler’s life from the inside of the Nazi machine had succeeded?  There are many potential points of discussion.

I don’t know how I completely missed David Copperfield when it came out in 2000, but I did.  I love Dickens and I loved David C.  We’ve enjoyed Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby and have Our Mutual Friend waiting for me to finish the book. However, I don’t believe there is middle ground with Dickens: either you are a fan of sad, sordid, sorrowful scenes where one ray of light appears…or you aren’t. 

There is nothing funny about Wit but it is gripping.  This is, I believe, Emma Thompson’s best role….ever.  John Donne, the metaphysical poet, is worth exploring.  My review here.

File The Chorus (Les Choristes) under films that demonstrate the power of music.  A composer/teacher takes a job at a boy’s reform school after WWII.  The headmaster is a typical two-dimensioned cruel man, a foolish tyrant.  Singing in a chorus brings beauty into the students’ lives.  A few gritty parts, and a little heavy on sentimentalism, but I liked it.

A friend recommended Jamie Oliver – Oliver’s Twist to us.  It’s the first foodie show we’ve raved about.  Jamie Oliver is a guy’s guy who loves to cook.  Unpretentious. With a British accent.  What’s not to love?

I was delighted to receive (and watch!) Julie & Julia this Christmas.  Since Curt and I watched it in the theater, we rented a disc of Julia Child’s cooking shows. Having seen them underscored how brilliant Meryl Streep really is.  Perfectly delightful.  My review

What about you?  Which movies would you watch again in 2010?

Tucked in between the happy chaos and loud gatherings of the 22nd and the 24th was a quiet reading evening. 

It was reminiscent of my childhood: siblings sprawled in various positions between horizontal and vertical, the quiet occasionally punctuated by a chuckle, hum, or gasp.  Curt was working late, Carson had taken Noah out to look for who-knows-what. Those of us at home were at home with a book. 

Taryn, my daughter-in-law, was reading Kristin Lavransdatter.  Collin was chuckling his way through P. G. Wodehouse’s The Heart of a Goof.  I was dipping into Michael Ruhlman’s The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection.  The tree twinkled, the fire crackled; the only other sounds were barely audible breathing.

When the missing men arrived back home we popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate.  Son #2 toasted to God’s goodness in his life: three years of marriage and an inquisitive one year old boy.  While Carson was toasting I had a flashback to a day seven years ago when he experienced a rare bout of angst.  He knew what he wanted (a family of his own…I believe his words were “a wife, a house and a kid”) but it all seemed so very far off and unimaginable. 

His dream was out of my sight too, but I encouraged him to wait and hope…and to work while he waited.  Seven years ago I couldn’t give him a snapshot of his life today.  But it is glorious to look back and see the gifts, stacked to the ceiling and spilling over, he has been given.  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.   

We learned a new Advent hymn today.  The words are by St. Ambrose (397) and the music was written in 1524.  The tune is easy to learn without being facile, really very singable.  The harmony, rich in interior movement, is luscious.  Of course it is — J.S. Bach wrote it. 

If you go to Youtube (type Savior of the Nations Come in the search engine) you can see many renditions of this ancient Advent hymn which is new to me today!

Her name is Precious. 

When I was 13, she hired me to clean her house on Saturdays.  She was getting a break from vacuuming and dusting, but in reality she was giving me relief from the confusion and tension of my family life.  The highlight was eating lunch together.  She introduced me to oyster crackers while she told me the secret of her long marriage was growing up with her husband. She was 15 when she married Roy.  After two years as a Saturday maid, I took a “real” job at a store. 

When I got married, of course I invited Precious to my wedding, unaware that she had changed churches and no longer mixed with most of the folks attending.  She was so glad to be included.  Her wedding gift – a Presto Pressure Cooker – is a gift I continue to use 31 years later.

On one of their jaunts around the country, Roy and Precious visited us in Klamath Falls, Oregon.  Always radiant, she woke early and cleaned up my kitchen before showing me her daily floor exercises.  A stickler for good posture, she would urge me to “look up at the third story, Carol, and keep your shoulders back!”

Every year I look forward to receiving a Christmas card recycled into a postcard from Precious.  When I read her unwavering handwriting, I can hear her voice.  She let me know of Roy’s death, of her move to Mississippi, all with her own special grace.  And as she has aged, I always wonder while I wait, if I will hear from her this year.  In the funny way of friendships, we have no one else in common, no other link to each other.* 

This is the card I received this year:

Ersatz is one of my new favorite words.  It only became mine a few months ago.  A German words, it means:

Here’s the word in a sentence.

This is a season of joy, but there are abundant examples of artificial ick that just come out tinny.  When heaven and nature sing don’t you believe it is something that could be accurately described as…music?  Today I’m getting out the Christmas music and the first one to be played will be the orchestral overture of Handel’s Messiah followed by a tenor singing Comfort Ye.

Repeat the sounding joy!

Winner of Carol’s Best Christmas Music – Category: Mellow
The Gift by Liz Story
Windham Hill.
Solo piano.
Sensitive.
Evocative.
Contemplative.
Recommended first by sister Dorothy.
New to me this year.
Exquisite.

(This post is from the archives.)

One of my favorites is In the Bleak Midwinter, a piece that James Taylor also does very well.

I know you are very, very busy.  You should be wrapping gifts instead of reading blogs.

May I tell you a story?  Why this song means so very much to me?

It is a family story that I only know from the telling, because, sadly, I was not present.  Twenty-one years ago, my father received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer from Mayo Clinic on Christmas Eve.  The following weekend, those of my siblings who could, gathered at my dad’s place in Dubuque. That Sunday Dan sang  In The Bleak Midwinter at the chapel.  A Capella.  He’s a professional, my brother.  But when he came to the last verse, (What shall I bring him, poor as I am?) he broke down and wept.  Unable to continue. My father walked up to him, put his arms around him, and held him.  No words.

So this piece, which has a mournful tone already (and that is not a criticism), always  takes me to that Sunday, to a sad family, a very brave brother, and a father who was a father in a most public act of comforting his son; to my Father who gave His Son, to his mother who worshiped him with a kiss, and mostly to the poverty of the writer who offers what she can give–her heart.

In the Bleak Midwinter.

Snippet of James Taylor singing it (scroll down).
30 seconds of Liz Story playing it.
Better yet, Glouster Cathedral Choir singing it:

 

Lyric Confusion.

Have you ever been singing your heart out and had someone squint, frown and stare at you?  What did you just sing?  That is a way of life with me. Sometimes I even embarrass myself, hot faced, when I catch myself in lyric confusion.

One afternoon early in our relationship, my boyfriend and I were driving, listening to the radio. Paul Harvey came on.  Curt had never heard Paul Harvey, a staple of my home life.  Far from home, excited to hear someone familiar, I gushed. 

He has this signature sign off, I explained. He ends each broadcast by saying The Deck!

Curt looked confused and asked *why* he said The Deck!  

I didn’t know, but I’d been listening to Paul Harvey for decades and that’s what he said every time. It’s just his thing.

Curt listened carefully and never heard him say The Deck!  But he was twitterpated, so he kept silent.

A few weeks later Paul Harvey came on and Curt thought it was time to tell it to me straight.  Babe, he said, He isn’t saying The Deck!  He’s saying Good Day!  That was the first of many corrections.

Here are a few more zingers followed by the true lyrics.