Anthony Marr

We’ve been keeping busy with our friend, Anthony Marr, who arrived last Thursday for a visit. He will be staying here in WI until Saturday, which gives us plenty of time to visit, though I have less time to blog.

L has been anxiously waiting for this visit for many months and would prefer to have him all to herself. She’s not too thrilled to share his time or attention with others. She has allowed us some time to catch up with him, usually after she’s supposed to be in bed.

Daisy wasted no time in impressing Anthony with her special Daisy ways. Shortly after settling in for a nice long visit at our house, she decided it would be a good time to illustrate her magic skills by vomiting the crap and grass she ate outside, and making it completely disappear again before we got back with the cleaning supplies. Like most guests, after seeing that special trick of Daisy’s, Anthony wasn’t thrilled to share his lap with her, when she tried to shove her way in. M & I offered her the prime real estate on the couch right between us, and then she forgot that she wanted to crawl into A’s lap and lick him with her poopy-vomit tongue.

Saturday night was the Alliance for Animals’ annual vegan chili fest. It is normally a competition with everyone vying for the best chili title. M has won for three years. This year, rather than a competition, it was a chili of the champions dinner. Each previous award winning chili was there for our enjoyment. M brought both of his winners. I like them both, though I prefer his “lumpy fart chili” (he came up with that lovely title), because it’s a bit spicier than the “not on a first date” chili.

The event was very well attended. After filling the room, we had to seek additional chairs. Extra tables and chairs were added—as many as could be packed into the room, and we still ran out of seats. That’s awesome, both because it’s a fundraiser for AFA, and because there was a big crowd for Anthony’s talk.

M introduced A as the speaker and gave a brief bio and well-earned, glowing praise. I got a fun shot of M giving the introduction, holding up A’s first book, while A was taking a picture of M. A spoke for 1.5 hours, and could easily have continued, but for the time limitations of our room rental. The crowd was entranced for the most part, as his message is obviously true, dire, and frightening beyond belief! There were many, many comments after his talk about how much people enjoyed hearing his message.

I have heard much of the content of this talk before, though there was definitely some new information added. Still, hearing it again was not remotely boring. There aren’t many people who I can listen to talking for more than an hour (with me being forced to sit in one place and do nothing else!) without going stir crazy! As SHOULD any speaker who is confident in the accuracy and content of their message, he encourages his audience to research it themselves. There is no hiding behind a claimed ‘leader’ status and expecting the audience to just accept and swallow it whole.

Over and over throughout his talk, he repeatedly tells the audience to verify for themselves, Google the terms and statistics, and otherwise do due diligence in verifying the veracity of everything he says. At this point in my life, I believe nothing without verifying it myself, my way, and with my own sources. I greatly appreciate the confidence in someone encouraging such behavior, rather than so many who expect you to just accept their (often self-proclaimed) authority and simply digest and absorb their ‘facts’.

Even though I know A well, and know him to be a man of great integrity, I still feel it necessary to do my own digging and checking. The beauty of it is, I have found that he is absolutely correct (to my dismay, given the dire implications), and he is not remotely offended by my need to validate. And along with A, I urge you to do your own research and validation rather than just blindly accept my word on it. If everyone one in the U.S. did this—hell, if even a quarter of us did this on a regular basis—this would be an entirely different country!

Sunday was busy for A! He wanted to go along to L’s Bharatanatyam class on Sunday afternoon. He has, in the past, spent much time in India and had seen some performances in India. The music, movement, and costumes are so beautiful, once you’ve experienced that, you want to see more of it. It really is a fantastic art form! Meenakshi and the girls are working very hard this month to get ready for the big performance on the 23rd. They are spending twice as much time in class this month, and will have some additional practices the week before the event. A took quite a few pics of L in her class, and many of them turned out beautifully (other than the fact that she had not gotten enough sleep Fri or Sat and looked somewhat like a little dead girl). All of the photos shown were taken by A.

We got back in town with enough time for A to have a quick bit of lunch and then head to Beloit for his Sunday evening speaking engagement. He arrived back from that in time for a late dinner of tofurky roast with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Lone Wolf

Tonight's blog is written by the great Walter Bond and illustrations are from L's last group of digi art:

The Earth and animals don’t need any more soccer mom, potluck vegans. What is needed is an intervention on behalf of our mother earth and her animal nations. It is my opinion that nothing that has been done in defense of animals has gone too far. If we look at things from a biocentric viewpoint, the holocaust that humanity has ushered in against innocent life is the worst atrocity in world history!

All too often I feel animal rights’ activists get hung up on either “what’s going to ultimately win animal liberation in the long run” or a sort of defeatism over the fact that we cannot win their total freedom at this very moment in world history. While there is a lot to consider in either of these views, they are both far too philosophical for the task at hand. A warrior in a battle does not need to vex her or his mind with constant thoughts of ultimate victory. That is someone else’s problem. A warrior in battle need only concern themselves with thoroughly winning the battles at hand.

Tactical thinking is what’s needed, tailor-made to fit the practicality of the battlefield. There are relatively few people in animal rights that should be ultimately concerned with the “Big Win.” The rest of us should be concerned with fighting our guts out and winning battles on behalf of individual animals or against animal exploiters. Instead we have far too many arm-chair generals that think they are vanguards of the movement because they are vegan and have an opinion. This non-approach is quickly running its course.

Let’s frame it another way. I am not a rapist, do not participate in rape; I never have, and I never will. However I do not masquerade as a rape prevention activist simply based on my non-participation in said crimes, nor do I go amongst groups, in person or online, of accomplished rape prevention activists and expect my opinions to be received with the utmost reverence. Simply put, not partaking in a social injustice is absolutely the first and most important step, but that does not make you an expert in fighting against it. For that you need training and hopefully, but not always, the help of others with more experience than yourself.

Furthermore when too many people in a movement shirk their duty because they are on a throne staring across the vast expanse towards the “Big Picture”, the implication quickly becomes that the muck work is for someone else to do. When the bulk of the people in any movement take up this approach, then guess what? NOTHING GETS DONE, save a lot of speculation and philosophizing, not to mention pretentiousness.

We must let the few vanguards and accomplished leaders (by example, not title) do the job of leading and directing. It’s far easier (and personally safer) to not confront and fight the evil in your own neighborhood than it is to incessantly worry about what actions you can take to end all animal use, abuse, torture, murder, etc., while somehow simultaneously touching the hearts and minds of all people with our message, because you know what? You can’t.

Now here comes a hard lesson, especially for people in the middle to upper class of first world countries. You are not important. If you are sincere about animal liberation, then it’s animals that are important. What we can for them is important. The only thing of importance is what we are a part of.

ITA, Walter!

Digi wolves

...more of L's digi artWe finally had another Petland protest on Sat. It’s been way too long, but we just haven’t been able to work one into the schedule until now. Maybe our unusually long absence of a few months lulled the Sardine (the very unscrupulous and cruel owner, whose real name is Sardina) into thinking we gave up. It was great to be back! The weather cooperated very well, despite looking pretty dismal all morning. We had a great turnout and much positive feedback from the community!

Sat. night was technically our date night, so L & H stayed at my parents for the night. Given the fact that M had worked a long day Sat., was working again Sunday, and hasn’t had a day off for weeks (again, his own choice—nobody makes him do these things!), I decided to cancel our plans and just stay in for the night. I’d rather laze about the house with my babies than spend time & money going out, just to watch him barely function the entire night! It was a very uneventful night.

The kids came back Sunday morning, and L was feeling very unwell with the cold I had last week, and H was just starting to get it. She had a rough day Sunday, and I felt so bad for her. It was a miserable head cold with an exceptional amount of pain and pressure in the head and ears. I had a lot of nausea with it as well, and L was struggling with that yesterday. She attended dance, because they’ve had the last couple of weeks off, and they have a big performance coming up in a month. It’s making me fairly nervous that with only four weeks of class before the big annual day performance, they still don’t know the whole dance! In my non-dancer’s mind, they should know the entire routine by now and spend the next four weeks perfecting it. It’s such a very detailed style of dance that there is always a ton going on and lots of little things to pay attention to. I have faith in Meenakshi and her ability to pull it off. Her girls always look great at all of their performances, so I won’t mention to my girl that I’m internally freaking out a bit.

Meena is just now sending out the order for the ankle bells and jewelry that is needed for the performance. Everything is coming from India, and the timing on that worries me a bit, too. If L doesn’t get her bells in time for the performance, we may have a rough time getting her out there. The bells are quite a big deal for her!

While my mom and I were at dance with L, M had a very important task to take care of at work. Sunday was the day that the wooden flowers were auctioned off as a fundraiser for the gardens. L painted the tiger flower for the fundraiser, and it, along with the 25 or so other flowers have been displayed throughout the gardens all summer. We fully intended on purchasing her beautiful “Save the Tigers” flower. M had to run over to the other building during the auction, so he could bid on her flower. We both thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal, and we’d place a tasteful bid, slightly above the minimum bid and bring our flower home (where we would then have to fight over it with the grandparents. ;-) but we were wrong. There were other bidders for her flower. People we didn’t even know, and they really wanted it and were bidding very competitively!

My first bit of concern came when I realized that M should have already called with the good news, but there was no call. When the call came later, I received his news with mixed feelings. We got the flower! (Yay us!) His next statement was, “but you don’t even want to know what we had to pay to get it!” Umm, yes, yes I do need to know—I am the one that handles all of the family finances! It only cost us FIVE times more than the range we were expecting! The major upside of that is that we got to tell our girl that her art was the source of a hot bidding war and ended up costing a lot of money. She was shocked and dumbfounded and kept saying she couldn’t understand why anyone would pay that much for what amounted to $15 worth of supplies. Even with a miserable cold, she couldn’t hide her proud glow. I feel a little badly for the other parties who really, really wanted it and were disappointed by not getting it. I’m so glad we have it though—no matter what the cost, and will proudly display it our back garden until it crumbles away.

She’s been counting days until our friend, Anthony Marr, comes for a visit later this week. She adores him and has so many plans for him when he gets here. She’s absolutely giddy that her tiger flower is home now, so she can show him. Anthony has done some fantastic things with his work in trying to protect the Bengal tigers (much of it detailed in a documentary). They share a love of tigers, and she has been excited to show him her flower since she painted it months ago!

Molecule building

We had a really busy school day. We covered a ton of material and ran out of time, so we'll have to tack a little more on to tomorrow's work. L had some fun projects today that took up more time than I anticipated. Since she was having fun, I didn't want to cut her off.

I didn't get a chance to photograph all of them, but she had to design and draw a tartan for our family. She really enjoyed that and took a great deal of time choosing her colors and patterns. (We were talking about Mary, Queen of Scots, in history. While we were reading, Tica hung out inside L's sweatshirt.

Then she spent a good portion of time coloring her page on Hydrogen in her Periodic Table of Elements Coloring Book. (Love this!) She used colored pencils and the page turned out very nicely! I was impressed.

Our last project for the day took her quite a long time, because she was having so much fun. She was building molecules, with her on periodic table of gumdrops and properly labeling each of her molecules. I might have accidentally eaten some of her delicious orange atoms.

Digi cats

Tonight's art pics are from L's digital art collection. She's getting very good! She makes so many of these, but she's into doing animation with them, so it takes a whole load of frames to make a 2-minute animated film!

This week has been a little rough, as I’ve finally been hit with Dej’s cold virus. Head colds are just the worst, and I’m very crabby and bitter about having it. I also want to know why I get almost everything my children come down with and Mark gets almost none of it.

Petey continues to be in love with his new outdoor domain, spending much of the day outside, though he has to come in for frequent cuddles. He is able to hear the feeding routine from outside, so he comes scrambling in to eat. I have to come up with something to put on or over the cat door, though, so it’s obvious to the cats that the door is locked. I close it at around 9 (or rather set it for indoor entry only until everyone is inside), and we’ve seen Petey several times trying to bang his head into the door, seemingly confused as to why he can’t get it to work. Poor little guy. I’ll have to come up with a system for that.

Jasper and Lila continue to go out for short periods at a time. They tend to hang fairly close to the cat door and frighten easily, so they can quickly fling themselves back into the safety of their house whenever they need to.

Charlie and Basil have noticed the door and shown a little curiosity, but they’ve been easy to distract from it so far. I’m still not totally sure that their giant bodies will actually be able to fit through the small door, but I’m not about to try it to see! Charlie has decided to pursue his new hobby as a full-time lifestyle. He’s discovered the joy of unrolling the toilet paper roll in the bathrooms. Once it’s all in a big pile on the bathroom floor, he proceeds then to wrestle with it, rip it, bite it, and sometimes eats pieces of it! Just about the time Lila outgrew this activity, Charlie picked it up. He’s very cute when he does it, though. He seems quite proud of himself.

I will be introducing Oliver to the cat door over the next couple of days, though I’m thinking he won’t have much interest in it. I’ll still give it a try. Petey is a very social little guy and would enjoy having his friends out there to play with. He and Ollie have always been pretty close. As I’ve mentioned before, Oliver is the diplomat of the cat world. He is absolutely perfect and sweet! He has such a sweet way about him that he can change the whole tone of a room.

L kicked off math this semester with a different book. We’ve been using Singapore Math, which we like and will continue to use. I ran across a book that looked valuable enough that I decided to have her go through it before we return to her “regular” math. Math Doesn’t Suck, by Danica McKellar (who will always be Winnie to me), is SUCH a good book on so many levels. For one, it is one of few math resources available written by a woman, and it is targeted at approximately middle-school girls. Reframing the way math is looked at, as well as taught, with the female brain in mind is simply revolutionary. The book is very good, and McKellar explains difficult math concepts in a straightforward, interesting, and non-intimidating way. She also makes it clear throughout the book that math IS very useful throughout life—not just a class to get through and forget.

The book is not written for homeschoolers, but is as applicable to us as it would be to a traditionally-schooled child. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a daughter in or around the middle school years. I wish I had something like this when I was younger. It would have saved me years of math trauma. I didn’t really learn to love and appreciate math until somewhere around my grad school years but was required to take tons of it throughout college, as a computer science geek. We are looking forward to getting her other books on pre-algebra and algebra!

Ward, I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night.

Petey's two favorite things in the world are affection and sunshine. He's had a great week, and has gotten pretty spoiled. He now wants us to meet him outside when he goes into the enclosure, as he expects us to pet/scratch him while he's relaxing in his sunbeam. It's pretty cute, and we've been pretty accommodating with him, because he's so adorable when he's that happy!

Lila likes the idea of the enclosure, but she's still timid about the big scary outdoors. She's decided that the perfect solution is for her to lie across the cat door, so half her body is in the house, and half is in the enclosure. I'm working on breaking that behavior, which is problematic for many reasons. When I lay awake at night for hours thinking of all the possible bad, dangerous, destructive things the cats could do to/in the enclosure, a cat parking in the middle of the door never crossed my mind. I always miss something, and they always find it!

L finished her first week of school. She has a few new subjects this year, which I think she will enjoy (that's always my hope) and is taking on more responsibility for scheduling her own work. Rather than giving her a daily schedule, I'm now giving her a weekly schedule, and she determines her own daily schedule. It's good for her to take that responsibility and learn how to manage her time and work load on her own.

I had some activities and subjects planned for our Friday school work, but L woke up with a different idea. She returned from breakfast with a handful of things she had gathered from the garden and the house and her microscope. I skipped drawing and cut art history short, so we could spend all morning on the microscope. She was so into it! It is a lot of fun to look at various items. I thought the coolest thing we looked at was the aloe plant leaf that we split. We looked at the cells inside the plant, and it was pretty cool. She thought the most interesting was a bit of an robin's egg shell she had collected.

Thursday night she came downstairs, a good hour or two after she went to bed, all excited to show me something. She had used her watercolor pencils to draw a tattoo on her leg that matches the one on my thigh. I'm surprised she was able to get the watercolor pencils to draw that well on her skin. It still looked good after she woke up the next morning, too, which surprised me as well.

M has been slaving away at his fall plant sale, along with a high number of night-time speaking engagements. He's working seven days a week again. We see glimpses of him, but not much more these days. We'll get a brief break (maybe) for a few weeks next month between fall cleanup and putting up the light show, where he will work almost like a normal person with a full-time job. Those are nice little respites for us.

I had to wake the kids early yesterday, so we could attend Logan's first football game at 9:30 am. I still don't know how this child ended up so determined to play football! Neither of his parents is into football or any other professional sport. We certainly aren't in this household either! He's always been strangely enchanted by football, though, and at 8, wanted to play full contact through his school. We braved the damp, rainy weather to watch his first game. It is VERY hard for me to sit calmly when kids are getting knocked down, piled upon, and hurt. It upsets me a lot and triggers this primitive urge to run out to the field and pull the small child on the bottom out. By the time one little guy got out from under everyone and stood up, he was hurt and crying. It really took everything in me to NOT run out and grab him and baby him. Somehow his grandma restrained herself. If it had been my own child, or maybe even Logan, I'm not sure I could have stayed back (though I know that would be the single most embarrassing, scarring moment for a young boy). While I'm the complete opposite of a football fan, I am a Logan fan, so I'll probably be going to more of his Sat. morning games.

Peter Young B-D, king of the cat house

After placing the padlock on the door (for my own neurotic peace of mind) and dispensing Frontline, I unlocked the cat door on the window. We showed Petey, Jasper, and Lila how it worked.

Petey is the number one reason we got it. He loves to be outside, but other than a few brief minutes after his two great escapes, he hasn't been able to. He was a stray when he came to live with us. He begged to get into the house, but it's very clear that he longs to wander outside sometimes. He loves the cushy life, but he's always trying to sneak out the door. He was the first one out the cat door tonight. He was surprisingly tentative at first, given his normal adventurous personality. He seemed pretty confused by the sudden opening in the window.After a couple of minutes standing there, he started hopping around the shelves and exploring. He found the shelf that was bathed in the biggest sunbeam and sprawled out and took a nap. After the sunbeam moved on, he decided to explore and play with the maple sapling with put in there for him. We are looking for a thicker-trunked tree that needs removal, so it's sturdy enough for him to climb. He really fancies himself a jungle cat.

He came back in willingly when I called him in for dinner. I locked the cat door when it got dark. I think I will stick with that. There's no good reason for them to be outside at night!

Jasper and Lila each went out for a few minutes. They kept coming back to the cat door, as if they were checking to make sure it was still there. They jumped around to check out the shelves, sniffed around for a bit, and came back through the door with HUGE eyes. I've had both of them since they were tiny kittens, so being outside was pretty new and exciting to them.


I don't see Ivan going out there. He's afraid of everything. I'm hoping Basil and Charlie don't figure it out--I definitely won't be pointing it out to them. I would love if it could be Petey's little Basil & Charlie-free haven!

I also don't plan to point it out to Tica, because I'm always terrified of her falling. The cat house is very high, and the upper shelves would be too far for her tiny little body to handle. She has no desire to be anywhere near an open door or anything that might go outside. She lived a rough stray's life for long enough that she has no interest in returning.

The rest of them will hang out there (after I show them), I think. For now, I'm going to leave it with just Petey, Jasper, and Lila. They always get along well, and once they establish ownership, I think the others will stay in line.

It's been so fun to watch the cats experience this new world! I am at my happiest when my animals and children are happy.

A Daddy/Daughter Adventure

My wife allowed me to be a "guest blogger" to share my recent travelling experiences with my younger daughter, Luciana. It is important to note that this is a repeat of the same excursion that we enjoyed back in 2006 when Luciana was quite a bit younger. We had so much fun on this recent trip that we've decided we'll do it every four years until I get too old and decrepit or she (heaven forbid) loses interest in being a "nature girl". I'm so glad she is so in to the outdoors when so many her age have sadly, never even developed an interest. Well, back to the adventure. The shot above is one of the few shots of both of us and was taken on a ferry from the tip of Door County travelling to Washington Island (more on that later). We left home around lunch time last Sunday and drove about 5 hours up to Sister Bay, WI. Door County is a great place to visit and while "touristy" at times, it will never lose its charm. The drive went fast as we chatted the entire time. We stayed at the Open Hearth Lodge and did some serious swimming (see below) in their pool (in the evening and on the morning of our departure). We like staying in a hotel at least one night and found some local Italian food and had snacks as we watched TV in to the evening. Once we were up, had swum and packed up, we hit the road after re-icing all of our coolers. We then travelled another 45 minutes or so and just caught the ferry to Washington Island (www.washingtonisland.com/) which is six miles off the tip of Door County.
Once we got on Washington Island, we decided to drive around a portion of the coast that we missed on the previous trip. The island is very neat and everyone is quite cordial (the finger wave from the steering wheel) and in the past, we've checked out some of the museums and other attractions. There are many summer residences on the island and the winter population (the heartiest of souls) of 660 is just a fraction of the summer population. Tourism is big business on the island. We quickly stumbled upon the Sand Dunes Park on the south portion of the island and spent a good two hours there (see below). We didn't swim (waded of course) but made a neat "rock castle" and saw a huge snake (36"+) on the way out of the park. The weather was great and our snake discovery would be one of many that we made during the entire trip. We then hightailed it over the the passenger ferry to Rock Island and made the one mile passage quickly.

Another family took the ferry over to the island for camping and our collective gear was quite impressive. I was surprised at how HEAVY all our stuff was although we had a nice cart for hauling everything. The ferry employees were very helpful with loading and unloading and are no strangers to observing significant camping gear going over to the island (no vehicles). We reserved our original campsite (#28) from four years ago as we loved the view (facing due west) and the proximity to the water. Our campsite is also one of the closest to the docks which was still a good 300 yard jaunt. We had to make two trips to haul our gear and the other family made some trips too (their campsite was quite a bit further away too). As veteran campers, we set-up quickly, or I should say that I set up while Luciana was drawn immediately to the water and water snakes nearby. Rock Island is a 912 acre island that is a WI State Park. It has a long history and I recommend reading www.portalwisconsin.org/archives/rock_island.cfm for some informative tidbits. There are some neat buildings (see the water tower, boathouse and lighthouse further below), awesome trails and lots of neat plants and animals. We walked all 10 miles of their walking trails and had a total blast. See below for "burgers on the beach" which was a nightly occurance. The sunsets were spectacular (see all three below) and my favorite picture of the entire trip was the one with Luciana wading out in to the sunset as a truly free spirit. Well Rock Island.....we'll see you again in 2014.

We essentially camped three evenings and had great weather with the exception of early Wednesday morning (midnight until 3 am) that was essentially a hurricane that scared me more than I would ever admit to Luciana. It was brutal and everything was wet by morning. Anyway, we had a sunny day that dried everything up and we did some very significant hiking. We saw snakes along the beach and ran across the rarest snake on the island, a red-bellied racer. A DNR Ranger chatted with us on one of the paths and we just noticed this little 12" snake. The small staff on the island was very friendly and you could tell they all had a deep love for the island. I didn't note any invasive plants and saw some neat ferns, moss and woody plants that you find more often over in Michigan (including giant American beeches in the interior of the island). We also hiked the Fernwood Trail for the first time and enjoyed the "prehistoric" appearance of this rustic trail. We were amazed at how quite it was along this path. This sheltered location had no surf noises and was devoid of insect or bird noise. It was weird. In fact, although we saw various wildlife on the island, it was a very quiet place. While we didn't run in to many mosquitoes, the biting black flies were annoying (as they were 4 years ago). The picture directly below is a neat spot that Luciana scouted out and later returned too the following day for a picnic and swimming.

Do you want to ride in my Mercedes, boy?

I took pics tonight of some of the new art L put up on her wall. The fur seal anti-clubbing pic is my favorite (of course). The others are characters from her new wolf series and a tribute to Baxter & Hallie.

The dogs are especially naughty when M is gone! The cats are always very naughty. They’re driving me CRAZY! They’ve continuously interrupted my sleep all week. I’ve been working on getting ready for my class (which starts tomorrow) and L’s homeschool year (which starts Tuesday). So despite the extra work and loss of sleep, I’ve been pretty productive.

I still have a ton to do, though! I was hoping to have it all done, along with some painting I wanted to do, before they get home tomorrow night, but I don’t see that happening.

M & L are having fun and doing a lot of hiking, in spite of the rain they’ve had. They are at Rock Island again, so there are no vehicles on the island at all. That means no vehicle to keep dry in if the tent gets wet and no way off the island, other than the few daily ferries that run, should bad weather hit. They took the small three-person tent, instead of the big family tent, because they are limited to what they can carry on to the island from the ferry. They haven’t had as much rain as we have gotten this week, at least! L calls each night before bed, and tells me about all the cool things she’s found while hiking. So far, she’s found lots of snakes and toads, which are very thrilling for her. They also found a ‘secret beach’ and were planning to go back today for a swim.

Dej and I went to see, “The Last Exorcism” Monday afternoon (I was off work on Monday).

I hadn’t read about it, so I didn’t really know what to expect. It started out being a very different movie from what I had expected. It wasn’t really a scary movie, but was good. It creeped me out, not from the typical “creepy” factor, but because that church, that pastor, the screwed up family—those were all too familiar to me. I know all of them. The movie was really making a very powerful and honest statement of what these people really are and did a great job with the sadness, pathos, rage, confusion, and desperation that lead people to such twisted fundamentalist beliefs that so often completely destroy the children--particularly the females.

I loved the character, Cotton Mathers (? not sure on the last name), because he is exactly the smarmy, dishonest, sly-as-a-fox Svengali that reigned throughout my nightmarish evangelically-destroyed childhood. It was not at all the movie I was expecting, but I was enjoying it. Not all “flock leaders” are as entertaining and theatrical as Cotton, but they are ALL as fraudulent, and they ALL get off on the power and require more and more to be happy. I’ve seen it happen to someone I would have previously thought immune to that seductive call. Though arguably, Cotton was, as he proclaimed, providing a much-needed and very helpful service to the deluded weak, ultimately the damage done by those playing god (otherwise known as ‘pastors’ in fundie churches) far outweighs any benefits they may provide.

[I am honor bound to say that I knew one minister, though more liberal than evangelical/fundie, who I exempt from my statements. He is the one who married M & I. Though I haven't seen him for years, and things could have changed, JD is excluded so far...I hope he stays strong!]

They also threw in some unexpected twists, and Dej and I both liked the element of surprise. We liked the creepy feeling evoked throughout part of the movie, when we weren’t really sure where they were going or what happened next. We were both enjoying it, and though a little creepy, still wasn’t scary at all.

Then it was like they switched gears completely in the last few minutes of the movie and it changed into a different movie that we didn’t like so well. It switched from being different, honest, innovative and telling an interesting story with very broken characters, and decided to slap on a very cliché, typical “scary movie” type ending. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the end was like they slapped on a five minute scene from Rosemary’s Baby. WTF?!? Dej liked that it was not a happy ending. I liked the fact that it was a surprise, but as far as the content of the surprise—unoriginal and lame and somewhat confusing as we were left to wonder about many of the characters. Had they really stuck with the movie that they started and crafted an original, surprising ending that was more in line with the movie, it could have been good. Instead, it was an interesting diversion from my curriculum work, but not a good movie. It had potential, though.

H called this afternoon, as soon as I walked in the door from work. Today was his first day of school--a new school, so he had lots to tell me. I SO wish I could have seen him this morning before he went! We talked the whole time I was doing my afternoon critter cleaning chores, which was nearly 1.5 hours! I know this because H likes to periodically read the time from the phone to announce how long we've been talking. Very long phone calls, those more than an hour, get him quite excited.