This weekend Rob and I saw Doubt which stars Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman and was directed by John Patrick Shanley.  This movie takes place in the late 1960's in the Bronx and is set in a small catholic school.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Father Brendan Flynn, the priest of this church/school with a heart of gold.  He takes to the children with a heart of compassion and love.  Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the school principal who reports to the priest.  Her characters approach to life and work is fear driven. She works very hard to be stern and feared among the students and staff.  The contrast between her character and Phillip's is like night and day.A young nun/teacher has the first black student at the school. He's got the typical rebellious streak that kids go through at that age.  One day the child comes to class with the smell of alcohol on his breath after a 1:1 meeting with the priest.  The young teacher goes through the proper channels and reports this to Sister Aloysius.  Sister Aloysius breaks all protocol and takes this to be a sign of a molester in her midst.  She never trusted Father Flynn, what with his longish nails and seeks to prove that he is an evil man.Father Flynn fights against this vendetta on his reputation tooth and nail.  The drama that takes place is fascinating to watch and upsetting to think about.  The costumes in the film make the film seem more medieval than it is.  The power that Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep bring to their respective roles makes the story come alive.  The plot is a timeless one that could just as easily have taken place today and reminded me quite a lot of the film Milk with it's storyline that included witch hunts against teachers who were gay and those that were sympathetic to them.Without spoiling the movie, I will say that the story and characters are complex, the dramatic turns are riveting and every character on the screen is integral to the story.  There are no weak links in the film and from beginning to end you are engrossed in a story that shows the highs and lows of the human spirit.

A friend in Australia shares this video of a drive on a lonely highway in Oz. 
This footage is amazing to me.I've never seen a dust storm like that and can only wonder what it was like.Amazing huh?

Have you heard of netbooks?

If you haven’t yet, you will. A netbook is basically a smaller notebook computer that is CHEAP and miniaturized. How cheap you ask? 

Well I just picked up an Acer Aspire One this weekend from Staples for $299 US [Model: AOA150-1635]. This model included a 120 GB HD, webcam, 2 card reader slots and that includes Microsoft XP home as part of the package [which aint free!]

Why the Aspire One? Well I tried the EEE PC that Target had for $249 US and was horrified at how unusable the keyboard was. Sure it’s got to be smaller than a normal keyboard but it also has to be usable! That and the build quality left a lot to be desired.

Some folks recommended the Dell Mini 9 netbook which is getting a lot of press. The Dell looks like a good machine but when I added in all of the peripherals that the Acer had the price shot to above what I wanted to pay. My price point for a netbook was sitting at around $300. Above that and it seemed to be too close to the price of full laptops nowadays.

When I stopped in at my local Staples store, they had the Aspire One on display and the build quality, looks, and keyboard feel were way ahead of the EEE PC making it well worth the $50 premium over the EEE PC. I got mine in blue.

Being somewhat of a glutton for punishment, within hours of taking the Aspire One home, I was installing the Linpus lite distribution that Acer created for the Aspire One. I would have bought it over the XP version Acer sells but no one had it locally so I had to install it as part of a multi-boot system. After a few hours of tinkering and with a lot of reference material from the excellent aspire one users forums. After a day or so I had a triple boot system that had XP Home, Linpus Lite, and Ubuntu.

Of course my glory was short lived when Nerstalker a.k.a. @aforonda said:

“meh, get mac os on there then i’ll stand up and salute”

Not today I wont.

There’s always tomorrow though.

You may be asking, as some friends did, why a netbook when you have a Macbook white 13″?

Well, to be honest, I use the macbook as my main machine. Having to unplug it and plug it when I want to browse and tweet from the couch was overkill. That plus the heat of the machine made it uncomfortable for extended use on my lap. It is just too much machine for the light browsing and tinkering one does when vegging on the couch. That plus it is not really one to throw in the bag when travelling without feeling like you’re taking your life in your hands. What if it got stolen? Of course I do time machine backups but who wants that drama?

I took the netbook into the city recently and couldn’t help but notice that my anxiety about having a computer on the road was greatly diminshed. The difference between having a $299 laptop or a $1200 laptop stolen is HUGE. These netbooks are as close to disposable as one can get while still being useful.

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Well it's time for another big change in our house.  The time has come to say good bye to the brother and sister (ages 12 and 8 now) that we've been foster parents to for a year this month.   The process to get them back home has started with weekend visits and talking through the transition with all parties.It's not easy saying goodbye but in this case the adjustment wont be so hard for us as there was never any pretense about them being anything but foster children.  They are adorable and nice kids that any parent would be proud to call their own.  We'll miss them dearly.

We're also debating putting a moratorium on foster children for the short term.  We want to focus on adoption and it has been our experience that being foster parents has distracted both us and the foster care system we work with from our original goal.  The reality is that there are SO MANY CHILDREN that need safe places for the short term (foster care) that it is overwhelming.  There is such a pressing need to put these kids out of harms way that the adoption cases seem to get less attention.

When these kids go home it will be a quiet house and for the first time in almost 2 years, it will be just Rob and me in our home.  Hopefully the tactic of not being foster parents will reinvigorate our attempts to become adoptive parents.Stay tuned!

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One of the unexpected benefits of getting older is the ability to reminisce about how things used to be.As a young gun growing up in and around New York City in the 1970's, one thing that made the 'CITY' magical was how many characters there were everywhere you looked.   By characters, I mean colorful people that defied what a normal person should look like, speak like, or behave.  Sometimes these people were strange and scary to a little one like myself but more often than not, they were endlessly entertaining to watch and think about.

Joe Ades was part of this dying breed.  His type would have been common place in the late '70s when I was waking up to people and personalities.  Wearing expensive suits, speaking in a loud and exotic voice, and selling something while sitting on the street.  Talk about defying logic and being endlessly fascinating.  Anyone who has spent any time at all in Manhattan has seen this person.  He traveled up and downtown faithfully selling his $5 vegetable peelers using a backdrop of press clippings about his life as his stage.

As I was saying, one of the best things about growing older is saying I remember when.  Well I'm going to say..."I remember when New York was vibrant and colorful and scary in a good way.  Before Giuliani turned NY into a big overpriced strip mall, New York was full of little shops that sold things you couldn't find anywhere else, people that wore clothes you couldn't buy anywhere else, and full of sights that you couldn't see anywhere else"Joe Ades could only have lived the way he did in New York.RIP Joe Ades!

Hat tips: 
His Stage the Street, His Rapier the Peeler      
Union Square Peeler Peddler Joe Ades Dead at 75

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There's too much focus on bad news.  I'm making a commitment to myself to begin looking for good news every day.   I'm going to look for more things that make me smile.Why this focus? I was listening to the radio recently and it was reported that the levels of stress among young people today tested at the same levels that people with mental health illnesses just a few decades ago.This is not a new finding. A quick survey finds this link that describes something similar.Why?  Have you turned on the news lately?I haven't.. Why not? Because it's all bad.  The economy, famine, disease, unemployment, and terrorism make up the top 10 most reported topics.In my quest to find things that are smileworthy instead of cringeworthy, here's Chita Rivera kicking up her heels with the best of the best in dancers back in the 1970's.You have to admire this clip for it's sheer camp.

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As someone who is a bit of a neat freak, I fight daily against the demons of clutter.  It probably roots back to my childhood when my parents moved us so often that we didn't bother unpacking things from boxes.I remember the stress of waking up and seeing boxes towering over me. Of course they didn't tower but that's what the stress does.  It makes small things seem larger and insurmountable.In my adulthood,  I've learned to appreciate simplicity and space.   Living spaces to me are only relaxing if they are relatively free of clutter and stuff that doesn't belong somewhere else.  I'm keen on visual noise and things staring at me screaming "MOVE ME TO MY RIGHTFUL PLACE!"It's never easy though.  You have to fight daily against the demons of clutter.  It goes in stages.  Here is a rundown of what you'll encounter:

   
1. See a huge mess and realize you have a problem
   
2. Deal with said problem but before you're done the problem has gotten larger!
   
3. Come up with organization system and places for everything
   
4. Realize your hiding places are overflowing and just storing junk
   
5. Empty out your hiding places and find yourself back at #1.

Something about our way of life really enables clutter to build up and take over our lives and living spaces.  I look at clutter as the cholesterol of our lives.  It clogs up our homes and minds and prevents us from doing what we really should be doing if we had freedom from stuff.We all struggle with this.  Some of us are at step #1 above and some of us are at step #3.  Nonetheless it's a daily battle like any other disease.

Where are you in the battle of clutter? Do tell...

Hat tip: 8 ways to kill clutter

What a sad thing...

Newscasters that have been on-air for decades are being let go as part of cost-cutting measures that are affecting us all in one way or another.

These are the people that stayed on air during crises after crises and talked us down from a state of fear back to reality.

These voices of reason and comforting faces reported from their anchor desks day after day to give us consistency and a feeling of normalcy as the world around us seem to twist further and further into chaos.

 

 

The world is changing quickly and not necessarily for the better.

 

Hat tip:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/media/01anchor.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

 

Posted by email from sean808080's posterous

Some folks were asking here and there whether I'd posted any video of my mandolin playing. Well after spending all of Sunday moving things around our family room, I decided to crank up the old photobooth and capture some rough noodling on the mandolin.
 
The first part of this is the first tune I learned to play called Red Haired Boy. My version is very simple but it comes easily to me as it's the tune that I know inside and out. The second part is just some messing around with a simple blues progression I have picked up from a Mandolin Blues book I have been meaning to work through.
 
Hope it doesn't hurt your ears too much!
 

Posted by email from sean808080's posterous

So retro, so camp, and so delicious.

 Enjoy

 

Posted by email from sean808080's posterous