And, then I didn’t get around to picking it up until the following December.

And, then I put it down again in January and didn’t pick it up until the summer, at which point I decided that I needed to read at least five pages a day in order to not take a whole year in finishing the thing. The book starts out slow. Since it is an autobiography, Mandela starts at the beginning and, maybe this makes me a terrible person but I was looking for the action, the politics, the rebellion, the prison term which you don’t get to until at least 100 pages into the book. But, as I read further I was glad to have had all of that background. First of all, because I know nothing, less than nothing, about African history or family structure, unless you count the occasional paper on kinship terms one reads in Linguistics classes. I don’t know how the tribal system works (Mandela was originally brought up and trained to be an advisor to the King) and I certainly wasn’t aware of how bad it got in South Africa before apartheid was actually ended. The government opened fire on unarmed civilians non-violently protesting. And, in later years factions of the apartheid government covertly funded organizations opposed to unity that went out and slaughtered civilians. That is horrifying. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to live through that. And, to have been in prison for 27 years, missing the childhoods of your children, not being there to take care of your Mother before she died, not being able to go to family funerals, all because you wanted a government where every person, regardless of the color of their skin, has a vote. So, I guess the answer to the question is Nelson Mandela an amazing forgiving machine or is he a man is this: He is a man, a stubborn man, but a man who wanted the freedom that was his. But more than that, Mandela wanted freedom not just for himself but for every South African. As he says at the end of the book:

“It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.”

Freedom is something that must be protected and we must be mindful of all of the things that we do or say that can take that freedom away, from others and from ourselves. This was an amazing book and Nelson Mandela is a truly inspiring man.

The film was about a young woman during World War II who becomes involved with the resistance against the Japanese in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Wong Chia Chi and her friends from University start out as students in the theater who put on a play to raise money in Hong Kong to support the resistance back home. From there, they hatch a plot to assassinate a man, Mr. Yee, who is collaborating with the Japanese. To do this, Wong Chia Chi goes undercover as a business man’s wife and becomes Mr. Yee’s mistress in order to set up him to be assassinated.

This film was very exciting. Every time our heroine is with Mr. Yee, you’re afraid she’s going to be suspected or caught. And, the setting and costumes were divine. Every one of the Wong Chia Chi’s dresses is just gorgeous. I also enjoyed the contrasts that you saw in the film between her different lives. In one life, she is standing in a ration line forever and in another she is wearing the finest silks and being offered gems by her lover. That being said, and this is a little spoiler alert, I could have done without the first encounter with Mr. Yee/rape scene which was more than a little horrifying.

During this film, I managed to do quite a bunch of spinning. This was a bit of a surprise because of all of the drama on the screen. I made it through two balls from a sampler I want to finish this month and I also plied together one of the balls with some other wool I spun earlier in the day for a scarf I intend to make for a friend later this summer.

Merino and Tencel (50/50) from a Spinning Bunny Sampler

1. I have to eat a few times a day
2. I have to procure things to eat at least once a week
3. Aside from costs associated with shelter (and perhaps my car now that gas prices have gone up) much of my budget is consumed by procuring these things that I eat

It stands to reason that, since much of my income is spent on food that this is a place where I have an opportunity to effect how things are grown and transported and also how people that grow and transport things are treated.  Basically, it has occurred to me that with careful consideration I can not only be healthy myself, but that I can use my small amount of dollars to help the environment, the economy and farmers (all things I care about) be healthy, too.  But, I’ve been searching for things that can inform me about these issues and watching and reading them when I come across them.  It just so happens that one such thing is in my netflix queue.

This documentary was largely about genetically modified organisms used in industrial farming and the impacts they have had on farming.  Did you know that if you patent a crop and then your crop is accidentally (you know, via nature) cross-bred with someone else’s crop that they are violating your patent and they either owe you money or owe it to you to stop using that crop?  This seems unreasonable to me.  I understand a lot of time and science has gone into genetically modifying organisms, but to be able to basically patent offspring of something (and something that, once its out there in the world, the world is going to take it over and move it around places) just seems…well, unreasonable, illogical and mean.  I say this for (at least) the following two reasons: pollinating insects and wind.  We have no control over where pollen is taken by bees and wind and so have no way to stop a patented crop from cross-pollinating with an unpatented crop.  I find this whole situation (that I may have been aware of prior to watching this documentary) appalling.

I also find it appalling, the more I think about it, the genetically modified food is not labeled in supermarkets.  I understand that, following my previous little tirade, one might argue that this would require that all organisms that show up on the shelves be tested, but that isn’t what I’m thinking.  I’m thinking that when one specifically buys genetically modified seeds to grow that plants grown from those seeds (and the fractionated chemicals produced from the plants) should be labeled.  I say this because we have been thousands of years evolving to eat particular things and that we do not know what the long term effects will be of rearranging the DNA of those things and then continuing to eat them.

Both of these things were brought up while watching this documentary.  Aside from making me want to rant about these two topics, this documentary also taught me about the process of making a genetically modified organism.  Did you know that viruses are used to introduce the new genes into the host cell?  I didn’t before watching this documentary.  I find this an interesting and quite clever process, even if I’m leery of its result.

The documentary itself was pretty good.  It was the basic voice-over, image, interview style that you would expect from a documentary.  Stylistically, it did not push any boundaries.  But, it was still full of useful information and I enjoyed that.

This morning, while I was bundling up to go out and brave the cold and the snow I thought to myself, “Getting all bundled up like Nanook of the North.” And then I thought, “huh, wonder where that came from?” Now, in the Kateolect, I know exactly where it came from: My Mom used to say it when we were little and we had to put on our snow pants and coats before we went out to play. But, that isn’t interesting. what is interesting is that Nanook of the North is the title of the first feature-length documentary film. It was made in 1922 and is a silent film about Inuk man living in the Arctic circle in Canada. Apparently, some of the sequences may have been staged by the director, but even so it was one of the first twenty-five films to be added to the National Film Registry.

And, potentially also interesting is the fact that my Mom probably got it from her Mom, not being a big silent movie buff. It was fun, sometimes, to chase down where these expressions come from and speculate about how they came into and then why they stayed in the language.

Especially if it will mean more of the above. Every time I’m reminded of that clip and its “swish it up a bit” I giggle to myself.

And, thank god for Quentin Tarantino for providing me with an opportunity to listen to spoken French and German while also enjoying the funny and violent film Inglorious Basterds. In case you are unaware of this film, it is about a guerilla squad of Jewish American soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine who are terrorizing the German army in France. They become involved with a plot to take out the German high command at a movie premiere. So, the film is amazing. As you’d expect. Its funny and its violent and if only this had actually happened. Right. But, my favorite part of the film is Christoph Waltz’s performance. Waltz plays the SS Colonel Hans Landa who has been given the task of hunting down all the jews left in France. So, you should loathe him. He’s loathsome. Except he’s not. I think he’s funny and kind of charming. And, that’s a pretty big deal turning a character you should hate into someone you could maybe relate to.

Oh, and, of course, waking up out of hypersleep and into space travel sometimes causes “Pandorum”, a disorder that involves shakes and delusions. From here on out, I’m going to call it Space Madness.

Okay, I’m on board (metaphorically). Its not the most original thing, but I enjoy good makeup and a good pop-out-of-the-shadows scare. I put it in my Netflix queue. It wasn’t bad. The makeup was in fact good. There was some choreographed fighting, which was totally a bonus. The flashbacks to things as Bower slowly starts to remember everything from working with his lieutenant to his wife was interesting (Although, cheesily filtered.) The twists, were not so twisty, they were kind of predictable. And, they were predictable mostly because I have seen every episode of Futurama.

It is bad if your Sci-Fi thriller makes me quote Futurama. And, the climactic twist, where we are shown what we guessed happen 45 minutes before, made me think of a certain episode in the second season of Futurama. Don’t read between the brackets if you don’t want the film ruined before you.(“Well, its a spaceship, so I’d say between 0 and 1.”) The other twist, well, they could have done so much more with it. But, that would have made it a completely different film and so I won’t hold it against the filmmakers. But, the Futurama thing, yup. That I’m going to hold against them

I love the film because you are so happy when Sam (played by Thomas Sangster) and Jamie (Colin Firth) triumph in love. You’re touched by Daniel’s (Liam Neeson) devotion to his recently passed spouse. You want to smack Sarah (Laura Linney) for letting Karl’s (Rodrigo Santoro) hot, mostly naked (Brazilian) personage go. You feel a sense of catharsis when Mark (Andrew Lincoln) finally says what he needs to say and moves on. You’re touched when Billy Mac tells his manager, whom he calls Chubs, that he’s come to realize that he’s spent his whole life with his fat employee, and in truth, “The People I love is, in fact, you.” And, you are devastated when Karen (Emma Thompson) is herself devastated after discovering her husband’s possible infidelity. (Oh, and the Prime minister/Natalie stuff is hilarious and wonderful.) But, you feel all of these things because of the soundtrack.

Karen tells Harry near the beginning of the film, after he asks why she still listens to Joni Mitchell, “I love her and true love lasts a lifetime. Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel.” And, Joni Mitchell sets the tone of their relationship. Her heartbrokenness is set against the background of Mitchell’s hauntingly beautiful “Both Sides Now” (which by the way, if you’re never actually listen to the lyrics, I really recommend it). Her heart breaks and so does yours while Joni Mitchell croons about having looked at love from both sides and after this coming to realize that she really doesn’t know love at all.

Karl and Sarah are set to Eva Cassidy’s “Songbird”. This was apparently the filmmaker’s second choice. He had imagined the scene to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Come on Come on”. But, this tune really does end up being perfect and fitting in completely with the feel of the scene.

And, the ending of the film gets me every time, calling back to its beginning with the arrivals at Heathrow while “God Only Knows” plays on in the background. “God Only Knows what I’d be without you” the Beach Boys tell us as we see image after image of husbands, wives, daughters, sons, brothers, mothers, sisters fathers, friends reunite. Its such a powerful and all encompassing sentiment, What would we be without the people in our lives who love us? What would we be without the people in our lives that we love?

Its a good film, but how the music plays into the action really makes it remarkable.

Song: Both Sides Now
Performer: Joni Mitchell
Album: Both Sides Now

Song: Songbird
Performer: Eva Cassidy
Album: Songbird

Song: God Only Knows
Performer: The Beach Boys
Album: Love to Love