Sweet Thursday

Pam and I went to see The Kids are All Right at the beautiful Ambler Theater. We both loved it. Superb acting.



Parking is a problem that should be addressed by the Ambler town council. I parked for free on a side street and jotted down my location -- E. Ridge Street on Forrest -- cuz I had no idea in the universe where I was. Ambler is known for big b'ful houses that once reigned in the days when the city was the asbestos capital of the East Coast. Cough!

As always, we had a rousing discussion at the Willow Grove Giant Coffeeshop.

Afterward I bought 3 lemons for this morning's lemonade. I ran into Debbie, the Fish Monger (better than a war monger) and told her how delicious the red sockeye salmon was. Told her we grilled it on a cedar plank -- thanks Dan! -- that we'd soaked for hours in water so it wouldn't catch on fire.

A time to pause and reflect when you get stopped by the Willow Grove train.

Here's how it looks when you're simply waiting for the light to change. Since this is my home territory it has the sweet taste of familiarity to me.

Two minutes down the same road is the ongoing construction of the Settlement Music School. You may remember the b'ful turquoise infrastructure which has now been replaced by gray tile and plenty of windows. I wanted to get the cement mixer in. I've always liked manly earth-moving machines ever since I was a little boy. Actually, since Dan was a little boy.

When you're a parent, part of you becomes the age of your child. I particularly liked my construction man phase. A highlight was when we lived in the apartments, Dan was about 2.5, and a garbage man let Dan sit in the front of the truck and toot the whistle. Proud mom took pictures. Ironically, two of my very dear poet friends -- love ya Chris and Bob -- are indeed garbage men!

Did you watch Lord of the Ants on Nova? It profiled seminal thinker and entomologist E O Wilson -- Ed -- whose discoveries include how ants communicate with one another: thru chemicals. Wilson is not only a scientist but is an activist in preserving our rich cultural ecosystem.

I actually missed the program b/c I was on a 78-minute phone call to Helen but then I watched the entire show on my laptop.

Scott and I had a movie marathon over the weekend. Admittedly, we slept thru half the films, but we enjoyed what we saw.

Notable were:



Ingmar Bergman's 1966 Persona w/Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson. The commentary afterward was particularly helpful which took you scene by scene and was simply a verbalization of the thoughts of the commentator. Ingmar considered it his finest film, one in which he didn't care if he made any money with it. I thought to myself, that's sort of like me writing a poem I think is great and not caring if anyone else likes it.



Hard Candy with Canadian actress Ellen Page. This is a difficult movie to watch with equally repulsive main characters. The amazing actress Ellen Page played a woman bent on bringing her own vigilante justice to a suspected pedophile and killer.

Viewing a movie is such a private experience. When I saw Kids Are All Right at the Ambler thother nite, people were laffing at all these ridiculous places in the film. You were distracted from the movie by what I felt was totally inappropriate laffter. When you watch a movie w/someone, you've gotta ask yourself, How will they respond? Will they interfere w/my pleasure?

District 9 was an imaginative sci-fi film that was so choppy and hard to follow I gave up on it halfway thru tho there were lots of interesting things to watch: the sets in South Africa, the unique insect-like creatures from outer space and the growing of a crablike arm on the main character who was morphing into one of the creatures himself. Great idea, but poorly realized.

Two other notable films I highly recommend are David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross with the great Jack Lemmon and Tin Men with Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito.

Both are indictments against corporate greed and conning the public.