Tag: Elizabeth Gaskell

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The Best and Worst of 2014

By Jim Spiegel

It’s been another exciting year, and we want to thank you all for reading and, if applicable, posting comments on our blog. Once again, we would like to close out the year with some summary remarks about good and bad stuff related to film, music, books, sports, and family.

Best and Worst Film Experiences:

  • Jim:  This was a down year for me in terms of watching films. I viewed a lot of “tweeners” that wouldn’t fall anywhere near the “best” or “worst” categories—e.g., Interstellar, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.  Probably the best film I watched all year was the Israeli drama Fill the Void, a powerful story of a young Haredic Jewish woman who is pressured by her family to marry the widower of her older sister, who died in childbirth. On a lighter note, but just as memorable, is the endearing Jon Favreau comedy Chef. As for my worst film experience of the year, the choice is easy: Gone Girl, which Amy and I reviewed here and here.
  • Amy:  While Jim was in California, I pretty much anesthetized myself with any television series I could get my Netflixed hands on. While there was a great deal of loving or listing it, hunting for houses and cousins with kitchen, I did watch some quality shows, most of them dark and mysterious. I think the new paradigm of shows created directly for streaming and released in their entirety has real potential. Here are a few to which I became hopelessly addicted, with the usual disclaimer that since they are mostly British, they tend to be a wee smutty and anti-religious, but well-written and well-acted: Hinterlands, The Killing, Happy Valley, The Fall. My best experience, however, was watching Mockingjay: Part One with my older boys. I know it isn’t saying much to say it is the best in the series so far, but it was. There was popcorn and bonding, so take that and stuff it in your high culture hat.

Jim’s Best and Worst Musical Experiences of the Year:  The highlights for me were Morrissey’s World Peace is None of Your Business (despite the Moz’s increasingly sardonic perspective on life) the Black Keys’ Turn Blue (my review of which is here), and U2’s Songs of Innocence (despite the popular trend of hating this album just because it was simultaneously gifted to millions of people). The low point, as it probably could be most years, was catching “highlights” of the MTV awards. Blecch.

Amy’s Best and Worst Eating Experiences of the Year: Best: Finally got to experience (free range) pork belly and it did not disappoint. Like pork chops wrapped in bacon. Thank you, Barn Brassiere in Muncie, Indiana.  Worst: The hundredth Subway tuna sandwich on flat bread I ate with the kids while traveling back from California. Every woman has her fast food sub-sandwich limit and I reached mine somewhere in Kansas.

Jim’s Favorite Sports Moments of the Year:  It was a thrill to see both the Ole Miss and Mississippi State football teams in the top five, with the latter enjoying the #1 position for several consecutive weeks of the season.  I also enjoyed the Kansas City Royals’ exciting run to the World Series.  And as I write this I’m enjoying the Detroit Lions season culminating in a playoff appearance, though I expect the end of their run will make my “most disappointing sports moments” for 2015.

Amy’ Favorite Sports Moments of the Year:  Watching all my kids play soccer this fall. I had to step up my spectator skills in order to do play-by-play for Jim while he was in California. I saw Bailey score his first goal in a high school game, Sam play keeper (a position he and his high threshold of stimulation were born for), Maggie deceive many an opponent with her flighty demeanor, and Andrew take charge of his defense. So fun to watch them all, though the rides home were admittedly a little stinky (but only literally).

Jim’s Most Disappointing Sports Moments of the Year:  Although I’m not a Kansas City Royals fan, I got caught up enough in their improbable playoff run to be really deflated by their falling just short in game 7 of the World Series.  If Salvador Perez swings just half an inch higher on that final pitch, the Royals win the championship on a walk-off two-run homer rather than losing on a feeble pop-out. It’s a game of inches… And speaking of disappointments related to teams I don’t normally root for, it was also painful to watch Peyton Manning’s Broncos so thoroughly dismantled by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.

Amy’s Most Painful Sports Moment of the Year: Having to tell Jim, who was suffering from amnesia at the time, that Peyton Manning didn’t play for the Colts anymore. He looked so devastatingly baffled. At least he forgot about it five minutes after I told him.

Satisfying Reads of the Year:

  • Jim:  I was delighted to have the time to finally read Melville’s Moby Dick, my reflections on which you can see here.  I also enjoyed Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead—an achievement that is as subtle as it is profound.  The best work in philosophy I read this year was Jason Baehr’s The Inquiring Mind, a rich and insightful work on virtue epistemology.  Also, I greatly enjoyed—and was happy to do a back-cover endorsement for—the book Rethinking Hell, a compendium of important articles and essays defending the doctrine of hell known as conditional immortalism (the view that the damned are eventually annihilated, as opposed to suffering eternally).
  • Amy:  I read so many good books this year. From contemporary fiction to 19th century memoirs, this was a great reading year for me. Here are just a few of my recommendations: The Warden by Anthony Trollope, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (though I hated Brooks’ March), Where’d you go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, a couple by P. G. Wodehouse, 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice and The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Best 2014 Memories of Our Kids:

Amy:  Our trip out west was the big one. Sitting on the beach with Jim at Big Sur watching the kids playing in the water and looking for creatures was a near perfect moment. Looking at their happy and surprised faces when Jim told them we were getting a dog was priceless. Not being found first every time during Christmas bedtime hide and seek was pretty sweet too.

Jim:  Traveling through Arizona and California with my family in October, experiencing together such sites as the Grand Canyon, Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park, the Pacific coastal highway, and Alcatraz. Our kids have always been good travelers, but they blew us away with their endurance on this extended sojourn.

Best Maggie Quotes of the Year:

In the past we’ve reserved this spot for memorable quotes from all of our kids, but this was such a great year for quotes from our daughter Maggie (who is ten years old), we decided to simply list some of her more memorable ones:

  • “When I grow up, I’m gonna make an exact copy of the earth, then cut it in half with a big knife to see if the center of the earth is really so hot.”
  • “Sometimes being hungry can be satisfying. Unsatisfaction can be satisfying.”
  • “I never talk to myself when I’m alone in my room. I just talk to the Beatles and my stuffed animals.”

Most Satisfying Shared Experiences of the Year: 

  • Amy:  There were quite a few this year: Kayaking through the beautiful mangrove forest and onto the open ocean while in the Bahamas. Seeing so many beautiful places on our trip out west. The night Jim surprised me for my 40th birthday by driving me around to collect lovely, encouraging notes from my friends. However, number one has to be picking him up from the airport in December, knowing he was home to stay.
  • Jim:  Dittos on all of that.

New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Amy:  Somehow managing to maintain the new perspective Jim’s being gone gave me. Appreciate him more, worry about the little things less. Enjoy and encourage my kids more, criticize and hide from them less. Accomplish the fitness goals I set but didn’t quite reach for 2014. Watch more quality films with Jim. Put more time and energy into plans for my professional future and of course, read lots and lots of books.
  • Jim:  To read half as much as my wife did this year, which would mean reading twenty-six books next year. Good luck to me on that.

Happy 2015 everyone!

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The Best and Worst of 2013

By Jim Spiegel

It’s been another exciting year, and we want to thank you all for reading and, if applicable, posting comments on our blog.  Once again, we would like to close out the year with some summary remarks about good and bad stuff related to film, music, books, politics, and family.

Best and Worst Film Experiences:

Jim:  This was a slow year for me in terms of watching films.  Probably the best movie I watched all year was a very old one—The Killing Fields, a classic from 1984 featuring Sam Waterston in his signature role.  As for the worst film I viewed this year, that would have to be Gravity.  Though visually dazzling—the special effects are perhaps the best I’ve seen—it was almost entirely bereft of character development and a real story.  Even  Pacific Rim—also with brilliant special effects—had a far better story than Gravity, which is saying a lot (or, I should say, very little).

Amy:  Going to see Hunger Games: Catching Fire with our two oldest boys on opening night ranks as my number one theatrical experience of the year.  While decidedly not the most intellectually stimulating film I saw this year, I am enjoying Bailey and Sam’s maturation into appreciating more complex story lines and mature content in film.  Since Jim stole my pick for worst film of the year, I will go with my second worst, which was City of Bones.  I didn’t think it was possible for the film to be worse than the book, but I was wrong.  However, I might have missed a few aspects of the film, since—after realizing it was reeeaaalllly bad—I speed watched the DVD in about 30 minutes.  Ugh.

Jim’s Best and Worst Musical Experiences of the Year: 

Topping my musical list this year are Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City and Arcade Fire’s Reflektor.  Coincidentally, both of these bands have a strong spiritual perspective, but this aspect of Vampire Weekend did not emerge until Modern Vampires, which is their third album.  Musically, it is every bit as rich and textured as their first two albums, but now they are tackling sublime themes, and the result is beautiful.  As for Arcade Fire, they’ve taken another dramatic musical turn, this time into a dance-funk direction, but it works.  Somehow, for all of their stylistic explorations, this band always sounds like they’re playing to their strengths.  As for the biggest disappointment of the year, it was the Killers’ Battle Born album.  Somehow this once magical Las Vegas DuranDuran-inspired foursome has lost their edge and inspiration.  Let’s hope they get it back.

Amy’s Best and Worst Eating Experiences of the Year:  

When I think of the good dining experiences I had this year they have a lot less to do with the food we ate and more to do with the people with whom we shared those experiences.  The worst experience of the year was not really an eating experience but rather our assistant pastor’s sermon on gluttony which has me doing some soul-searching regarding my relationship with food.  Perhaps this shouldn’t be categorized as a “bad” experience, but I haven’t reached the spiritual maturity to call it “good” either.

Jim’s Favorite Sports Moments of the Year:  It had to be watching Michigan State (my alma mater) defeat Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game.  I’ve always really, really disliked the Buckeyes (because I’m also, and more fundamentally, a U-M fan, despite my love for MSU).  Seeing the Detroit Tigers win their division for the 3rd consecutive year and also return to the American League Championship was a highlight as well.

Amy’ Favorite Sports Moments of the Year:  My favorite sports moments are a little closer to home.  I enjoyed watching Andrew’s and Bailey’s soccer teams go undefeated for the year and win their championships.  Its fun to now have all of our kids playing at a level that is actually enjoyable to watch.   Also, watching Andrew hit a home run in his coaches’ pitch league was fun, as well as seeing Sam play goalie on his soccer team—a role he embraced with relish.

Jim’s Most Disappointing Sports Moments of the Year:  It’s a three-way tie between (1) watching the now predictable Detroit Lions’ late season swoon, (2) seeing the eventual NBA champion Miami Heat slip by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern conference championship series, and (3) watching the Tigers falter to the bearded Beantowners.  Big Poppi’s grand slam in game two turned the series, and the Tigers never recovered.  But there are reasons to be hopeful again on all three counts:  the Lions will be getting a new coach, the Pacers are much improved from last year and now have the best record in the NBA, and the Tigers have improved their roster considerably with some smart off-season moves.  Hope springs eternal for this Detroit/Indy fan.

Satisfying Reads of the Year:

Jim:  One would definitely be Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.  This long-time naturalist philosopher has shown fair-mindedness throughout his career in pointing out serious flaws with the naturalist paradigm.  This penchant comes to full fruition in this book the subtitle of which is Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  Another is Herman Bavinck’s The Christian Family, which I reviewed on this blog recently.  Profound, practical and, now after 100 years, rather counter-cultural.

Amy:  With the kids in school and no home school prep to be done, I had a bit more time to read, so I was able to read over thirty books, which felt good.  Among the highlights were Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Charles Mann’s 1491 and 1493, and Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  In an upcoming post I will have more to say about all of the books I read.

Political High Point of the Year: 

Jim:  Watching Ted Cruz stand his ground in an effort to defund Obamacare.  He was excoriated for this, of course.  But now he’s being vindicated in what is, well, a political low point.

Amy:  The federal government shutdown—because it seemed like there was a glimmer of hope that Republicans would stand their ground.

Political Low Point of the Year: 

Jim:  Obamacare.  And it appears the worst is yet to come in 2014.  Gulp.

Amy:  Obamacare—especially the fact that so much has been made of the botched website when that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Best 2013 Memories of Our Kids:

Amy:  Our whole family and my dad kayaking the Hiawassee River in Tennessee, as well as camping at the Indiana Dunes with the kids.

Jim:  Taking each of the kids, one at a time, out to breakfast.  Something I try to do every summer.  Also, I enjoyed (nearly) all of the baseball and softball practices I conducted with the kids.

Best Kids’ Quotes of the Year:

Andrew:  “What’s so fun about life?”
Maggie:  “Don’t you hate it when scientists just guess?  I like knowing things.”
Sam:  “You need to brain up.”
Bailey:  After attending a seminar concerning sex and being asked what he learned: “I learned that when you’re married and you want to have sex with your wife, you have to talk to her for two hours beforehand.”

Most Satisfying Shared Experiences of the Year:

Jim:  Purchasing our brand new 9-year-old Toyota Sienna was a highlight, though it was done under duress (our Honda Odyssey having just broken down).  And refinishing the floor in what we are now calling our “den” was another highlight—domestic teamwork at its best.  However, I fear I lost millions of brain cells in the process.  Probably too much polyurethane for both of us, but just look at that shine!

Amy:  Enjoying quiet moments together after dropping the kids off at school and watching Jim transform an old dresser into a bathroom vanity for my birthday.  My ideas plus his elbow grease—a consistently strong combination when it comes to our home improvement.

New Year’s Resolutions:

Jim:  To spend a week in the Bahamas with Amy (as well as the Taylor baseball and golf teams) in January.  Okay, so that’s not really a resolution so much as a professional commitment.  Hmm…how about I resolve to post more frequently on this blog—especially book reviews.  Yep, that’s what I’ll do, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

Amy:  To be in the best shape of my life when I turn 40 next December.  Might not be saying much, but that’s my goal.

Happy 2014 everyone!

 

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The Best and Worst of 2009

By Jim Spiegel

It’s been another exciting year, and we want to thank you all for reading and, if applicable, posting comments on our blog.  Once again, we would like to close out the year with summary remarks about good and bad stuff related to film, music, books, politics, and family. 

Best Film Experiences:

  • Jim:  Slumdog Millionaire, Inglourious Basterds, and The Blind Side. Three very different films with one thing in common: a compelling story.  See my March 2 post for extended comments on Slumdog, and our joint review of Inglourious Basterds in our October 29 post.  As for The Blind Side, I confess that I went to see it begrudgingly, figuring it would subject me to two hours of eye-rolling melodrama.  On the contrary, this simple but powerful film had me in tears the entire evening.  And I’m no sentimentalist…
  • Amy:  Jim chose the ones you’ve heard of, so here are a few older ones you might not have seen: 1927 Academy Award winning Sunrise.  I am not a big fan of silent films but this one is amazing, a perfect movie. Another oldie but goodie is The Red Shoes.  Finally, Murder!  I am slowly working my way through all the works of Hitchcock and this was one I marked off the list this year.  It’s classic Hitchcock, which is to say, suspense with heart and soul.  Finally, this one isn’t an oldie, but since I spend a great deal of time watching children’s films I will give a shout out to my friends Charlie and Lola.

Worst Film Experiences: 

  • Jim:  Little Children—Three of my pet peeves in contemporary Hollywood films are:  1) stilted dialogue, 2) gratuitous sex scenes, and 3) plotlines that encourage viewers to root for a character to commit adultery.  Well, this movie features all three of these vices.  Some thematic originality or insight into truth might have helped to redeem the film despite these flaws.  But, alas, this one was disappointing down to the last, contrived and implausible, scene.
  • Amy:  The Reader, Japanese Story, and Summertime are three that standout in their badness.  There are bad movies which are flawed in one way or another (poor writing, bad acting, etc.) and then there are movies that are faulty on a deeper level; like people who are really smart that you enjoy being with as long as you don’t think about what they are actually saying.  These films would fall into the latter category.

Best Musical Experiences of the Year: 

  • Jim:  Wilco (The Album).  Jeff Tweedy & Co. have been making great music since the mid-90s, and their latest effort is more of the same.  2009 is also the year that I discovered the Kings of Leon.  Thanks to Jason Fortner for his insistent introduction to the beauty of the Followill brothers’ musical world.
  • Amy:  It isn’t a specific album but I loved my Christmas music this year. One of my faves included Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas, “What Child is This” by Andrea Bocelli, and Mary J. Blige and Emmylou Harris’ Light of the Stable.  They all strike the chords of awe, sadness, and rejoicing that I love about the season.

Favorite Songs of the Year:

  • Jim:  “Breathe” by U2.  This song slaps you in the face, spins you in circles, then sits you down and caresses you into ecstasy.  What begins as an almost tuneless rapid-fire narrative resolves into one of the most melodically satisfying songs in the U2 repertoire.  Check out that entrancing combo of cello and guitar as well as the memorable lyrical images—e.g., “people born of sound” wearing songs “like a crown” and “the roar that lies on the other side of silence.”  Oh yeah.
  • Amy:  See my comments above about Christmas songs.

Jim’s Favorite Sports Moment of the Year:  The season-long dominance of the Saints and Colts (two of my favorite teams), both of whom earned home field advantage throughout the NFL playoffs.  I’m not naïve enough to think both will make it to the Super Bowl (#1 seeds almost never meet in the championship).  But I’m hopeful that one of them will play on Super Sunday.

Jim’s Most Disappointing Sports Moment of the Year:  The Detroit Tigers’ squandering their division lead on the last day of regular season.  It wasn’t so much a moment as a week-long, fated collapse.  Ugh.

Amy’s Best Eating Experience of the Year:  New Orleans’ restaurant Mona Lisa’s eggplant parmesan.  Spicy marinara sauce, crispy eggplant in a creative setting with friendly folks.  And the service is great—at the Mona Lisa everyone is treated like a regular.

Amy’s Worst Eating Experience of the Year:  “Zucchini and Basil Soup.”  In an attempt to cleanse our bodies of toxins, Jim and I did a cleanse diet which excluded all cheese, eggs, wheat, soda, and basically anything you might enjoy eating.  The diet was actually not that bad, but this cold “soup” was definitely the low point.

Most and Least Satisfying Reads of the Year:

  • Jim:  Antony Flew’s There is a God, in which the former atheist chronicles his journey to belief in God and masterfully summarizes the three main considerations which prompted him to embrace theism.  I’ve also greatly enjoyed the Arts and Letters Daily blog.  My least satisfying read was Kwame Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism—an attempt to salvage shared moral values while affirming cultural relativism.  I kept waiting for an argument, but it never came.  And until the very end I hoped Appiah would rescue his project from incoherence.  My hopes were never realized.
  • Amy:  Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Same Kind of Different as Me were all inspiring.  They just don’t write them like that anymore.  I didn’t like The Girls from Ames.  Also, on three separate occasions, I began reading The Shack, but I couldn’t complete it.  Bad theology and even worse writing.

Political High Point of the Year:  Our hopeful sides want to celebrate the seemingly grass roots movement afoot in our country against government expansion and irresponsibility.  But our cynical sides tell us that it’s all just more talk that will, in the end, be undermined by profiteering.

Political Low Point of the Year:  The revelation that (now former) Green Czar Van Jones was a Marxist…or perhaps the revelation that (now former) White House communications director Anita Dunn was a Marxist sympathizer.  Or (speaking of Marxism?) perhaps the real low point was the health care bill.

Most Outrageous News Events of the Year:  The balloon boy hoax (what can you expect from a couple who would name their kid “Falcon”?) and Bernie Madoff (an appropriate surname, until the Ponzi schemer artist got busted) and climategate (when scientists feel they have to fudge numbers, this should give pause to even the most dogmatic believers in their theory).  Ah, the hits just keep on coming, don’t they?

Our Kids’ Most Memorable Statements of the Year:

Bailey:  “I think cussing is just adults’ way of whining.” 

Sam:  “Dad, just try to name a breakfast cereal I don’t like.”

Maggie:  “I think the wind is God whispering ‘I love you.’”

Andrew:  “I never want to get married, ‘cuz you have to kiss someone every day.”

Most Satisfying Shared Experiences of the Year: 

  • Jim:  Walking around the French Quarter together at the ETS conference in November.  Also, our August vacation in Houston with the incomparable Newcomb family. 
  • Amy:  Our various bike rides together as a family; also, seeing two of our kids become communicant members of our church and sharing the communion experience with them.

New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Jim:  To get to bed before midnight more than half of the time
  • Amy: To put Ranch Pringles behind me once and for all

Happy 2010 everyone!  And happy new decade as well!!

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Snapshots

By Amy Spiegel

Brief comments on film by Amy.
Some old, some new.  Domestic films and foreign too.

Atonement — I went into this movie with pretty low expectations, but wanted to give it a try since it was nominated for several Academy Awards. When will I learn? This movie was like a puzzle that should fit together nicely but somehow everything doesn’t come together. The lovers separated by lies and war, the soldier trying to get home to his girl, the wrongdoer trying to make things right. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, a lot. For me the characters were difficult to understand and the ending was one of the most dissatisfying I have ever seen. It seemed as though the makers of the movie and the writer of the novel (that’s right, I read the book just to make sure I wasn’t missing something; I wasn’t) were trying to say “Atonement isn’t possible in the real world. Everything is senseless and without meaning. Atonement is just the fantasy of a sick mind.” Uplifting, huh? I don’t mind “depressing but true” but this one only qualified for the former.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — Now here is a depressing but true movie. True in both the sense that it is based on a true story and in its themes and message. I want to give as little away as possible but the basic story regards a man trapped in his body with only a limited means of communication. He faces the choice of sinking deep inside himself or struggling to the surface in order to touch those around him. Ironically, while The Diving Bell would certainly never appear on any “Top Ten First Date Movie” list, and movies like Atonement (am I beating a dead horse, here?) are touted as great love stories, I believe The Diving Bell portrays the truest, deepest love and makes Atonement look like a cream puff (a stale cream puff, no less) by comparison. One disclaimer, however: the technique used to film this movie can be a bit tough on the stomach. If you are prone to motion sickness, grab a Dramamine beforehand.

The Privileged Planet — Our boys are forever watching a Discovery Channel something or other and have learned to patiently listen as I drone on about how just because the narrator says we evolved from primordial soup it doesn’t mean that it’s true. So The Privileged Planet was a nice change of pace. Lots of really smart guys talking about how perfectly placed (as in by an intelligent designer and not the lottery of the cosmos) our planet is both for sustaining life and observing the universe. While not as detailed as others of it’s kind, such as Planet Earth, it was interesting and informative.

 Sense and Sensibility — I know what you are thinking: how many versions of the same story line can you watch? Answer: at least one more. This recent adaptation of one of my all-time favorite books somehow manages to tell a story that I have read and watched innumerable times and still have me in tears and breathless to see everything turn out all right. Whether you have failed to see any of the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works or you are a diehard anglophile, this is a winner. I would also recommend Miss Austen Regrets, a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s later life, and Cranford, an excellent adaptation of several Elizabeth Gaskell novels.