Harry Potter – Don't Gel Too Soon

Sons and Brothers — and Star Wars

“I was raised to do one thing but I’ve got nothing to fight for.” — Finn – a Storm Trooper*

My sons are 40 and 36 and they’re going to Star Wars opening night together. It took some avid site refreshing and one wildly committed wife as deputy but they have tickets. I love knowing that they like each other enough to share this. The first films hijacked our family – much to our delight.

There was lots of stuff, of course. We had action figures and Death Star Space Stations, Landspeeders, Tie Fighters, Millennium Falcons, Light Sabers, Lego versions and about a billion little weapons all over the floor of their room. All the time. It was wonderful watching the two of them and their friends imagining all sorts of adventures as the toys carried them into battles between good and evil.

Once when he was around ten, I asked my older son, what he really wanted to do when he was older. He replied, with growing agitation, “I want…. I want…. I want to fight The Empire!

And there it is. Deep inside the battles and light shows and Yoda-isms is the simple truth that informs most wonderful stories: a battle fought for honor, justice, family, love, or even peace.

Is it any wonder why that nearly 40 years later, the fever has reemerged, the joy and anticipation like new?

It is with gratitude that one watches a child find joy in a story or a song, from Little Bear to Harry Potter. But Star Wars — well, that’s not just a wonderful tale, it’s the gift of a dream – something to fight for connected to the best parts of each of us, of hope, and courage and love. I’m grateful that it exists and that my grown kids still love it and I’m really really grateful that the person each wants to revisit that world with is his very own brother.

*A trained warrior desperate to escape his past, Finn is plunged into adventure as his conscience drives him down a heroic, but dangerous, path.” From the Official Star Wars Databank

July 28, 2008: The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Dark U.S. Days and Politics

I used to see Christ symbols everywhere. It drove my mother crazy; no matter what film or book, I'd find some kind of symbol in it. And Christ symbols were fashionable then (Ingmar Bergman, Robert S. Heinlein.) So I guess it's no surprise that I found implanted meaning, this time political messages, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the loss of Hogwarts students' freedom and rights to Dolores Umbridge) and the Lord of the Rings – listen to this:

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing. The shadow even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you. That really meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why, but I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. The folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something." "What are we holding onto Sam?" "That theres some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for"- The Lord of The Ring– The Two Towers

Now The Dark Knight joins my array of political films. Think about it. Irrational evil — the Joker (the late Heath Ledger,as good as the reviews but somehow a bit Al Franken-esque)– drives Gotham City to such anxiety that its citizens are willing to surrender freedom and privacy and even to turn on their Bat-benefactor, to return order to their streets. Sound familiar? Throughout the film members of the community at large, as well as Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal,) DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and even the sainted Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) face — and often fail — deep ethical temptations (including abusing prisoners — sound familiar?) — and, surprisingly, those who face the most horrendous choice are criminals and civilians whose behavior is far more laudable than that of any of us (including me) who know what's been done in our name in Iraq and have mourned but not acted to stop it.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] This gigantic challenge, issued from the Joker himself, is a formidable and hopeful moment in the film. Many have written that the film is dark and without humor but I don't think so. This scene, in particular – and I don't want to be too much of a spoiler — seemed to me to be there to remind us that there is always the potential for good. Even so, the film is crammed with talk, as in Sam's speech to Frodo, and especially from the wise Albert (Michael Caine) of the pain and sacrifice required in the battle against the troubles ahead.

Maybe it's a reach, and I can hear your saying "Hey, it's ONLY a movie!" but there you are.

One More Day!

BOOK BANNING: THIS IS NOT (EXACTLY) ABOUT SARAH PALIN

You know this photo: Nazis burning books in Babelplatz, a large public square across from Humboldt Universit y in the heart of Berlin. Germany was a highly cultured society, yet it wasn’t too difficult to get to the place where its students willingly burned the books they were to supposed to be studying if they had been written by Jews.

The U.S. wasn’t immune in those years either. In the 1930s there were huge battles about James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, a gorgeous and very moving book but so difficult to understand that I took an entire college course on it. Hard to believe that anyone would bother working through it for any but literary reasons. Even so, copy after copy was seized from trans-Atlantic passengers arriving on ocean liners in Manhattan. Finally, in 1932, after an edition of the book intended as a model for U.S. publication had been seized along with the others, Judge John M. Woolsey lifted the ban in a famous, highly cited opinion* that appears as a preface in many editions. There are many such stories, about many books, but most of them well before the 1960s. After that, it seemed we’d "grown out of" book banning. Wrong.

I read Catcher in the Rye in the 7th grade. Years later I had the privilege of reading it aloud with my own son at precisely the same age. Nearly 20 years apart, we both loved it. Yet efforts to ban it in both school and community libraries have gone on almost as long as the life of the book itself. BlogHer and book blogger SassyMonkey, in a detailed BlogHer post, reminded us that Banned Books Week is here (September 27 to October 4, 2008). The American Library Association created this week in 1982, and sadly, we still need it today. Sarah Palin was not the first, nor will she be the last, government official to fire a librarian after a discussion about removing books from library shelves. There’s a long history of such behavior, and other, more overt attempts, both here and around the world.

Try to imagine a time where you had to hide the books you love. Or where you couldn’t get Harry Potter from the library to re-live the Hogwarts adventure with your own children. Or you couldn’t get access to published health information from books like Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Imagine no Huck Finn, no Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison or John
Steinbeck or — and this is a biggie in the book banning world, no Judy
Blume. Right now there are community and school librarians risking
their careers to fight to protect their shelves from marauding
moralists. Right now.

Continue reading BOOK BANNING: THIS IS NOT (EXACTLY) ABOUT SARAH PALIN

THE DARK KNIGHT, HARRY POTTER, LORD OF THE RINGS, DARK U.S. DAYS AND POLITICS

I used to see Christ symbols everywhere. It drove my mother crazy; no matter what film or book, I’d find some kind of symbol in it. And Christ symbols were fashionable then (Ingmar Bergman, Robert S. Heinlein.) So I guess it’s no surprise that I found implanted meaning, this time political messages, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the loss of Hogwarts students’ freedom and rights to Dolores Umbridge) and the Lord of the Rings – listen to this:

"It’s
like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of
darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end
because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it
was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it’s only a passing thing.
The shadow even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun
shines it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with
you. That really meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why,
but I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. The folk in those stories
had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because
they were holding on to something." "What are we holding onto
Sam?" "That theres some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth
fighting for"- The
Lord of The Ring– The Two Towers

Now The Dark Knight joins my array of political films. Think about it. Irrational evil — the Joker (the late Heath Ledger, as good as the reviews but somehow a bit Al Franken-esque)– drives Gotham City to such anxiety that its citizens are willing to surrender freedom and privacy and even to turn on their Bat-benefactor, to return order to their streets. Sound familiar? Throughout the film members of the community at large, as well as Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal,) DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and even the sainted Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) face — and often fail — deep ethical temptations (including abusing prisoners — sound familiar?) — and, surprisingly, those who face the most horrendous choice are criminals and civilians whose behavior is far more laudable than that of any of us (including me) who know what’s been done in our name in Iraq and have mourned but not acted to stop it.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] This gigantic challenge, issued from the Joker himself, is a formidable and hopeful moment in the film. Many have written that the film is dark and without humor but I don’t think so. This scene, in particular – and I don’t want to be too much of a spoiler — seemed to me to be there to remind us that there is always the potential for good. Even so, the film is crammed with talk, as in Sam’s speech to Frodo, and especially from the wise Albert (Michael Caine) of the pain and sacrifice required in the battle against the troubles ahead.

Maybe it’s a reach, and I can hear your saying "Hey, it’s ONLY a movie!" but there you are.

HOW OLD ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU CALLING A ELDER?

We live in a community where many of our closest friends are well under 40 – several the ages of our sons. Because we are culturally united, age isn’t such a big deal, which is strange. I’ve always identified very strongly as a Baby Boomer. Born in the first year of the cohort, I cherish the experiences and adventures and acknowledge the shared rages and disappointments that bind us. Even so, I’m struggling with my place.

There’s a group of bloggers led by Ronni Bennett, a wonderful writer and observer, through her blog Time Goes By – and she’s working to build a community she terms "Elder Bloggers."

I hate it. Hate it. I admire Ronni; I’ve always been OK with where I stand in age and presence but this is tough. I can’t decide if I’m being immature and clinging to a world I don’t belong in or I just don’t have the same sensibility. I moved online in the early 90s, I read science fiction and love Harry Potter; I listen to all kinds of music; I cherish every experience. When my kids were little I often felt I had more in common with their teenage babysitters than with the parents of many of their friends.

It’s not that I deny my age — or my friends who are peers. Or my responsibilities. I’ve had a successful career raised great, honorable and capable kids. It’s that I cherish the energy, openness and curiosity of those whose lives are more ahead of them than behind. I remember maybe 20 years ago when a friend of mine was about to take her youngest son to college. Eyes welling up, she said something over lunch that day that still haunts me. "It used to be that everything in my life was about beginnings, now it seems that most of it is about endings." It was a devastating moment. I swore I would never feel like that.

It’s no battle really. It’s my nature to be curious — I have a short attention span and, as my blog header says, "There’s always more." Remaining open is easy. Realizing that it’s sometimes time to surrender some options is harder — even, or maybe especially, stupid ones like clothes. I have a "style." It took years to develop – not on purpose just by trial and error. Often, I was in the fashion moment. I went through the 80s in leggings and tunics and arm-loads of black rubber bracelets. Oh and Reebok high-tops and thick saggy socks. And that was at work!

One day though, you begin looking at those cool of-the-moment clothes with the thought "I wish I were young enough to wear those" instead of "wow how much is that one?" It’s never said out loud (or at least not by anyone you’d listen to) – you just kind of know it. A friend of mine with daughters says it happens to moms with girls much earlier because, as she put it "you don’t want to look like you’re competing.") I, however, resisted as long as I could, then surrendered (except for jewelry and shoes, of course.)

Music too. I was in the loop until hip hop, then got shoved pretty far into the margins. My kids send me music now – from Great Big Sea to Jack Johnson to Green Day and I’m grateful. But these days I don’t even know who many of the Top Ten folks are — and don’t care.

That doesn’t make me an elder though. Or a grown-up. Just a responsible adult, defined by nature and interests, not age. So Ronni – I’m with you with great admiration as you bring all of us together and continue to build the world’s coolest Boomer+ blogroll. But the title — the title — not for me my girl. At least……..not yet.

WILLIAM GIBSON, NEUROMANCER, THE WEB AND THE NEWSPAPER

I’m a big William Gibson fan. His new book Spook Country —
just arrived and I’m struggling to wait to start it on an upcoming beach
weekend instead of plunging in like I did with Harry Potter. It was
he – and his book Neuromancer,
published in 1984, that led me onto the Internet in the early 90s, well before most of my
friends. Once I dove into cyberspace (Gibson coined the word) I never
looked back.

Neuromancer was Gibson’s first book . Much of his early work was a dark view of a connected
world full of data pirates and megacities ("the Sprawl" in the US and
"Chiba City" in Japan) with skies, in one of his most famous quotes, "the color of television, tuned to a dead
channel."
I believed as I read Neuromancer and then all of his subsequent work that it was a preview of a
possible future and that parts of it were already on their way.

This appeared in Reuters today: U.S. consumers this year will spend more of
their day surfing the Internet than reading newspapers or going to the
movies or listening to recorded music, according a study released on
Tuesday. The report comes from the highly-regarded private equity firm
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, which examined consumer behavior to inform investment strategies. Where would future ad money (hence revenue, hence good investments, I assume) go?

When I began working online, I encouraged clients to include
their URLs in their ads and on their business cards. In the 90s, a major LA newspaper ran ad trailers in local movie theaters. Of course I urged them
to include their website URL at the end of the ad. Concerned about cannibalizing the print product , they declined to do so. I tell you this just to demonstrate how much has changed and how little many thought leaders realized what was going on around them (I also once heard Michael Eisner – on a public panel – call the Internet a fad – but that’s another story.)

The study goes on to report
that TV still rules: “in 2006 consumers
spent the most time with TV, followed by radio, which together combined for
nearly 70 percent of the time spent with media. That was followed by recorded
music at 5.3 percent, newspapers at 5 percent, and the Internet at 5 percent.” It then predicts that this year “the Internet will move up to 5.1 percent,
while newspapers and recorded music each move down to 4.9 percent.”

Except for the fact that it appears to have omitted consideration of the many of us, particularly younger people, who multi-task and have the TV, radio or music playing while we’re online, it makes sense. More and more, our lives are online — and our identities too. More and more the world emerging from the imagination of William Gibson is becoming our world.

Here’s a final thought – a little out there but not totally unreasonable considering the Gibson constituency. Wikipedia tells us "in his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far to suggest that Gibson’s vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the internet developed, (particularly the World Wide Web) after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks: What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"