A Night In The Park

It’s almost 6 PM on Halloween. I've arrived a little early at the park because the light is already fading. Although there appears to be plenty of light in the pictures, that’s because the camera is holding the shutter open longer. That’s why some of the photos are just a bit blurry.

There was quite a throng tonight, more people than I’ve ever seen at one of these Halloween shindigs. There were lots of cheesy fun things to do. It’s not Disney World, but it was fun to walk around and see people … and some of the costumes were very good.

I took some pictures and put them into a little slideshow here. I’ve put captions under most of the photos. I mention this because the captions are easy to overlook.

Halloween

During the summer I often walked around the neighborhood after dinner (by which I mean supper). I could walk off a few calories and meet people and talk with them – and occasionally write about them. They were doing their evening activities: walking the dog, digging in the flowerbed, sitting on the front porch; just being outside the house.

Now that Fall has arrived, I walk earlier. If I wait until after dinner, I’ll be walking in the dark. Make that: the cold and the dark. (When the sun goes down, so does the temperature.) When daylight saving time ends next Sunday, I’ll walk even earlier, if at all. But as it turns out, I seldom encounter people in the hours between the end of the workday and the evening meal. People are at the store, or in their houses preparing a meal, or catching up on the news of the day, or any of a hundred things. It’s not until after they eat that they go outside to relax, and now that it’s getting to be cold and dark at that hour, they won’t be doing that.

The neighborhood association is throwing its 10th annual Halloween At The Park tonight. It’s a big Halloween party with “food, games, costume contests, a haunted house, and much more.” The park is practically across the street so I’ll stroll over there and see what’s going on. Maybe I’ll run into some of the people I’ve met on my walks around the neighborhood. At least I hope I do.

Mao’s Last Dancer

I recently saw a movie called Mao’s Last Dancer. The film is a drama based on the autobiography of Chinese (male) dancer Li Cunxin. I don’t really need to describe the plot; you can read the New York Times movie review here.

The question you’re probably asking now is this: is this film a guy movie or a chick flick? Well, let’s see. First we’ll take the guy-movie test:

The movie: 
  has a car chase: No.
  has car crashes: No.
  has shootouts: No. 
  takes place in the Old West: No.
  is about sports: No.
  is about male bonding: No.
  features beer-drinking, hot tubs, or naked chicks: No, no, and no.

No points. Let’s give it the chick-flick test.

The movie:
  was produced by a woman: Yes
  deals with relationships: Yes.
  has a love story: Yes. 
  has guys in tights: Yes.
  has ballet scenes: Yes.
  is a tear-jerker: No. (A woman might say “Yes.”)
  is a romantic-comedy: No.
  seems long: Yes.

Six points out of eight. “Chick-ish,” I would say.

Okay, I admit I’m being facetious here and playing with sterotypes. I found Mao’s Last Dancer to be an entertaining film. If you can relax and let the plot unfold slowly and not be impatient to get to the end, you’ll be entertained by it. And keep in mind, it’s based on a true story: the story of a peasant boy, born in the East, who endures hardship and struggle in his transformation into one of the great dancers of the West.

Chiclone

I lie awake at 3 AM while twelve hundred miles of severe weather moving east at eighty miles an hour passes through my small city. In the Midwest it spawned 24 tornadoes and created waves 27 feet high on the Great Lakes – a storm bigger than the one that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald. Time passes slowly when you can’t sleep. I listen to rain on the roof and watch flashes of light on my bedroom walls, and I count the seconds to the rumble of distant thunder. The thunderstorms are two or three miles away.

Thud. The electricity goes off. Normally, my front porch light casts a dim glow down the hallway to my bedroom, and suddenly that dim glow is gone. I roll over and look at the clock radio; it’s dark, too. The house was quiet before with only the refrigerator running, but now it’s utterly silent. I reach for my mobile phone and punch it on. It has bars; the time is 4:55 AM.

For a long while I lie awake. Finally I get up and go to the living room and light a couple of candles. I dig out my little Walkman-style radio I never use anymore and I sit in my recliner and listen to music. By now it’s 5:55 AM.

I flip open my phone and click onto the Internet. The Weather Channel reports it is 73°F in my central Virginia city at 6 AM this last week of October. (By noon it will be 84° with a heat index of 89°. By 3 PM it will be 86° with a heat index of 92°.) And my county is under a tornado watch.

Though my street is dark, a street lamp operating on a nearby street casts enough light my way to reveal many leaves littering the street. So there has been wind. Sometimes the power goes off and stays off for days. I recall the time I entered a grocery store and found all the fruits and vegetables gone, all the coolers and freezers empty, and the odor of spoiled food in the air … and I recall the way I felt knowing every grocery store in the city was like this one. This outage doesn’t have that kind of feel: that nearby street lamp is one clue power will be on soon. Still, I don’t open the refrigerator door. Power may be restored in two hours or four hours or six. Until electricity is back on, there’s no TV, no computer, no Internet, no cooking, no snacking from the fridge. There’s only FM radio.

After two hours the lights suddenly come on, digital clocks start flashing, the computer starts booting, the refrigerator starts humming. God bless those power company linemen.

Red Dawn

You know the rhyme:

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning.

The eastern sky casts a red hue into my house and colors the houses across the street. I’m often awake before dawn and can therefore state: the sky is unusually red. No big deal, just pretty.

[Edit] Now, 12 hours later, I can report: early sunshine, strong winds gusting to 35 mph at noontime, passing severe thunderstorms and brief heavy rain showers in the afternoon: not good sailing weather. Score one for the rhyme.

Samsaya

The song of the day is ADHD (love me not) by Indian-Norwegian singer and actress Sampda "Samsaya" Sharma. She was born in north India and moved to Oslo at the age of 11 months.

Around the block

It was a great day to be outside today: 74°F, sunny, a clear blue sky without clouds – except for a few thin, white streaks that had once been jet contrails high in the southeastern sky. I walked to the CVS store and bought a magazine – Scientific American. Walking back, I saw my neighbor Carey working over flowers and pots and soil in her front yard. Making her yard beautiful is her passion. Carey is an artist and her yard is her canvas. I told her if I was putting that much work into my yard, those plants had better produce something edible. It’s a female thing – making things look pretty. Guys just want comfort.

Carey

Today, Carey was busy planting pansies. She was pulling up plants, planting new plants, and re-planting old plants. Some plants went into the ground, some went into pots. Her front yard was a minefield of pots, plants, and soil. It was obvious she still had much to do and I didn’t want to take too much of her time. But she seemed to be in a mood to talk, so we talked for a while and I took a few photos. The sunlight was too bright making it difficult to get good photos. I may go back sometime and try to get better photos of her flowers.

Some of Carey’s pansies seem to have a face. Is that spooky or what? Well, it is almost Halloween.

Anouk

I’ve been a fan of Dutch singer Anouk Teeuwe (known professionally as Anouk) for years now. So when I decided to post one of her songs on my blog, I went to Youtube to see what was available. This is called Nobody’s Wife.

Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel is an internationally-known actress, singer, and songwriter. She has won a Tony and other awards for her Broadway performances. She seems so upbeat that she’s wonderful to watch. Her voice is amazing; check out 2:14 – 2:24 below. I tivo’d one of her PBS concerts. In this video, Idina sings I Stand.

(For the acoustic version of I stand, click this link.)

Another song I like is I Dreamed A Dream from the musical Les Misérables. (What a great song!) Wikipedia says this song “has been translated into twenty-one languages, including Japanese, Hebrew, Icelandic, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Castilian, and Estonian, and there have been 31 cast recordings featuring the song.” You may also remember this song as the one that catapulted Susan Boyle to fame. In the video below, Idina sings a duet with Lea Michele of the cast of Glee.

Katie Melua

Once I had HD video clips of musical performances by Katie Melua, described by one critic as “the Soviet Georgia-born, Belfast-based singer-songwriter and pan-European star who is virtually unknown in the United States.” Unknown in the US maybe, but I’ve been aware of her music for about five years. One early song was 9 Million Bicycles, written by Mike Batt for Katie’s second album. It is simply a sweet song. The music video for the song is one of those that make you wonder, “How’d they do that?!” and it can be found here. (Be sure to select 360p and either expand or full-screen). If you prefer less in the way of special effects, a live performance from AVO SESSION Basel, October 2007, is below. If you like songs that have recognizable melody and lyrics, you’ll probably like this music.



Another Mike Batt song performed by Katie is her debut single The Closest Thing To Crazy. Watch her performance at the Echo Music Awards, February 2005. Again, be sure to select 360p and either expand or full-screen.