Episode 9: I Spy

for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)

In the dining room, I spy some grungy little details:

super indelible lipstick stains on juice cup rims
a red "x" marking the only pan that doesn't heat-warp
a mop head on the floor to soak up a constant drip from the ceiling vent
a wedge of sheetrock missing from a doorway where the cart shaved it off
one burnt out bulb in the wall sconces
four clocks, all reading slightly different times
and a cupboard corner full of ownerless items:
   a black mug
   a white one with a blue stripe
   a squat, round vase
   a half-pint canning jar
   a floral-handled spoon
   a blue plastic cup.

This is not the rural Midwest of your homesteading blogs,
pristine white farmhouses and chickens and overalls.
This is where we are now.
Things are underfunded and worn out.
People are worn out and wearing out their complaints.

People with no place to be and no schedule to obey
asking sternly or frantically, mostly accusingly:
"Is my toast done yet?"

Episode 8: Staring Down the Dragon

for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)

This past weekend, I had the privilege of being at a family reunion where I ended up in a game of pretend with some gradeschooler cousins. We were sneaking toward the "forest" - a bush and four trees on the neighbor's yard - when one girl held her pointer finger to her lips. "Shh," she whispered, then gestured at a tree stump. "Over there, behind that stump...is a bear."
"A beaaar?" I asked, doing my best to look fearful. As I was a guest on this adventure, I turned to the other girls. "A bear! What do we do?"
They didn't lose a beat. In fact, one of them shook back her angelic curls and drew an imaginary sword. "Get your swords, girls," she commanded. "We'll fight the bear." She held the invisible sword above her head and yelled, "Charge!!" to which the others roared battle cries and rushed to meet their foe.

I barely know these kids, but I was so proud of them in that moment. I'd follow those fierce warriors into battle any day. It was their ferocity that I thought of today at work, when I was needing some ferocity of my own.

The time: ten minutes to noon
The place: the Special Care Unit
The foe: Dragon Lady

Sometimes the lunch cart comes together a little more slowly than expected. Today was one of those days. The cart was completed about ten minutes before noon, which is a whole ten minutes later than usual. It couldn't be helped and I wouldn't apologize for such a small issue. I navigated the cart through the dining room and into the hall, aiming it toward its first destination. That's where I saw her: The Dragon Lady, pacing and snarling just inside the door of the Special Care Unit.

The eternal fire of rage was clearly boiling just under the surface, as indicated by her sour expression and the puffs of smoke that wafted involuntarily from her nostrils and ears. The glassy dead look in her ebony eyes bored into me while I was still some hundred yards away. The metal scales of her forehead tightened, narrowing her eyes into almond shaped sections of the abyss, studying my approach. I continued forward, not flinching at her appearance, but noticing my heart skipping a beat and adrenaline filling my veins, ready for fight or for flight. Somehow I dared to not only keep my head up and my eyes unflinching in her direction, but I dared to stretch my lips into a grin. I aimed for a hapless-cheerful-oblivious sort of grin - my own expression of fearlessness. The clock on the wall screamed TEN MINUTES LATE, which is heresy in the vaulted lair of the Dragon. The ticking of the clock might as well have been a chatty crow screeching my doom and cackling derisively. I reminded myself to breathe as I passed through the door to Special Cares.
I slowed the cart to a halt. I glanced at the Dragon and at her helpless coworker, looking grim and depleted. Then I turned on my heel and left. I walked all the way down the hall to the kitchen door, still in one piece, hearing no thundering beastly footsteps behind me.

No one had said a thing.
The Dragon Lady had not pounced on me to tear my flesh with her clawed words.

I mentally checked for wounds or missing limbs and found I was alive. I had stared down the Dragon and survived.This time, anyway.

I'm thinking of those warrior kids again. They'll someday find in the adult world there are many ogres and dragons and bears. I hope they keep their ferocity and bravery, daring to look terror in the eye and not flinch. Maybe they'll do even better than that: they'll draw their swords and go into battle and change for the better the landscape of the world that will be handed down to them.

Here's hoping. Fight on, gals.

A River Run

The park was calling to me in the worst way yesterday, the last day of August. In a way it was the last hurrah of summer to get out jogging and photographing in a local park. It's been a very wet summer, so the water is still high in the river and the mosquitos are out in droves.

 

Minnesota may be the land of over 10,000 lakes, but it's also land of 10,000 millions of mosquitos. My bites are big as bagels, but it was worth it to have one last taste of August.

 

 

Episode 7: Wanderburg and the Bullies

for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)

It's breakfast time and I'm headed down the hall with a cart full of food. There's scrambled eggs and home fries, straight from the oven. There's milk and bananas and a stack of plates that keep clinking violently together. I'm on a mission...when I meet with an obstacle. It's Wanderburg, taking his time en route to a comfortable chair. I suppose old joints and old muscles and a lack of urgency in his schedule all make him prone to ambling. I slow my cart to a stop and wait patiently for him to get some headway. I know exactly where he's going. It's all part of his schedule.

Wanderburg usually begins the day in a chair in the main lobby, head to one side, snoozing. After awhile he wanders into breakfast where he rarely says more than one syllable at a time, and usually with an expression of bewilderment, as though he's just woken up and doesn't know where he is. He eats, says nothing to his fellow residents, and then scoots back out to the halls to wander. He'll stop in the kitchen and ask to have a burger for dinner. Then he heads for the other end of the building to another soft chair and falls asleep again.

Lately he was diagnosed with a contagious colon infection, so staff were required to wear gowns and gloves in his room, which were stored outside the door. Kitchen staff wore gloves and took care not to come in contact with his dishes and to sanitize anything he touched. No doubt other residents noticed these things, and gossip surrounding Wanderburg has been the topic of late among the residents, even though he is now no longer considered contagious.

Some residents tried to have him removed from the facility. Others requested to never be seated near him ever at meal times. Others simply shared whatever rumors they could about him at the breakfast table. Apparently it got so bad that several residents went to the administrator on Wanderburg's behalf to ask for an end to what had gotten out of control. The decision was made to have the administrator and several staff meet with the named Bullies and put a stop to it. The Bullies have also been required to sit with Wanderburg at his table this coming month. This all seems pretty just.

However, the sad part is that any of those things had to be done. It's disappointing to see members of what's called "The Greatest Generation" treating each other so poorly, displaying so little depth of character, and showing so little maturity. The hot topic in schools these days has been bullying, ending bullying, parents against bullying, etc. We all nod our heads, agreeing that children are brutal and need to be taught how to respect others. It's sad to witness people who haven't physically been children for 60+ years but are still acting like brutal third graders, needing someone to teach them what it means to respect another human being, no matter that person's level of popularity. 

On the upside, there's a portion who know how to be adults and didn't sit idly by. They took action to make a change and defend another person from the Bullies. As I grow up, I want to be one of them. 

It has been said that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing" (Edmund Burke, paraphrased), and it's good to know there's at least a few good ones out there doing something about what's wrong out there.

Robin Hood (2010)

This movie may have six years of dust resting on it, but it's one that keeps haunting my thoughts about stories and all they should be.

This version of Robin Hood starts out as a more realistic telling, complete with gray morality and human characters. Richard the Lionhearted is corrupt and power-hungry rather than gloriously noble. Robin is a soldier deserting the army rather than the usual green-clad superman chortling at his enemies. Maid Marian is pragmatic and opinionated rather than a helpless and bauble-eyed damsel in distress.

The grey-shaded characters are softened by sweeping British scenery, amusing sexual tension in Robin and Marian's faux marriage, as well as humorous moments that make the middle ages accessible to modern viewers. One example of this is when Little John and the merry men go to the village party and dance with the locals, drink hearty, and do a little carousing. When they meet Marian the following morning, she grins and asks them if they had an "epic night," to which they hurrah in affirmation of that fact. It is just one of many moments when the medieval world leaps from the screen and seems to belong in our own. Those people could be people we know, having a good time on the weekend at the local bar.

The single moment that first engulfed me in the world of the film was early on, the scene in which the real Robin of Locksley is dying on the forest floor and Robin Hood is listening to his last request. There's a camera shot of Hood from the view of Locksley, and the trees can be seen above him, rustling. The sound of the wind in the trees is dubbed into the film, giving the scene a sensation of realism and of heralding Hood's destiny as it is handed to him by Locksley. It was that epic moment that officially submerged me in the reality set forth by the film makers. I handed over my imagination, ready to experience this version of Robin Hood's world.

The road from there included a desperately intense bluff made to Prince John, the introduction of Maid Marian and her father, the wild party in the village, and Robin recalling repressed memories of his father. There's also tough-as-nails Marian killing in self-defense, timing the stabbing of her would-be rapist just so. The last "worth-it" moment in the film is Prince John declaring that it's his first battle. He declares that he'll lead the charge, saying so in his childish voice before galloping off to the scene of the fight. The battle itself marks the beginning of disappointing divergences from the reality and the character which the filmmakers spent so much time creating.

It was such a marked change that I wondered if they switched writers or directors for the battle scene.

Problems:

1. Marian, who never witnessed her father's murder or met his murderer, somehow gallops onto the battle scene chaos and instantly recognizes the culprit and pursues him for revenge.

2. Marian, who has been wise and pragmatic until now, gallops her fully armored self straight into the ocean, falls off her horse, and begins to drown.

3. Robin Hood, who should be busy trying to not get killed, somehow notices her fall and fights his way to where she is spluttering.

4. Once Marian is rescued, the realism of the story completely falls away and takes a leap into Fairy Tale. Instead of getting out of the water, getting to safety, and helping their comrades, they sit in the water and have a sloppy make-out session.

These examples all take place in the span of about 10 minutes and manage to completely destroy the reality the filmmakers had built.

Epic rescues and romantic scenes mid-battle work fine in films like "Pirates of the Carribean," which operate in a world that is consistently unreal. However, when the filmmakers set up the world of the film as realistic and then wait until the third act to depart into fantasy, they only undermine the effectiveness of their tale and break their unwritten promise to the viewer.

The makers of 2010 Robin Hood made this exact mistake. They set up an epic tale tamed by realism, delivered it for the first two-thirds, and then took the easy way out through Fairy Tale Hollywood gimmicks. As it stands, they poked so many holes in their story that its only practical use now is for rinsing vegetables.