3/12/23

 Sunday, March 12, 2023

Daylight Savings Time

In bed around 10:30, up at 6:45 with the annual discombobulation from time-shifting.  2 big glasses of wind-down zinfandel after Tom and Sue departed. 32℉  and snowing, high of 35, SE wind at 10 mph, gusts up to 20 mph today, the wind chill at 24℉ now.  2 to 4 inches of snow expected by tomorrow morning.  Sunrise at 7:07, sunset at 6:54, 11+44.

Anne Frank is said to have died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on this date in 1945 On Aprile 15, the camp was liberated by the British Army.  On April 30 that year, Hitler killed himself.  By May 8, Germany had surrendered unconditionally.  My father was on Iwo Jima on this date in 1945, 5 days before being taken off the island on March 17th, body intact, spirit shattered.

“Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!” 
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. 

W. B. Yeats, The Stolen Child 

LTMW a a gorgeous Eastern Bluebird perched atop our double shephard's crook., a flock of goldfinches on the niger tube, and snowbirds feeding on the ground.

Empire of Light We watched this Sam Mendes movie last night.  Olivia Coleman was terrific as Hilary Small, a middle-aged spinster being treated with lithium for bipolar disorder.  She works at a movie theater in Margate and is involved in a shabby sexual affair with the owner of the theater played by Colin Firth, but falls in love with Stephen, a much younger Black staff member and she starts a socially perilous affair with him.  He is harassed and beaten by White racists and is hospitalized.  She goes 'off her meds' and in a manic episode humiliates herself at an important regional premiere of Chariots of Fire.  She also discloses her long-term affair with the theater owner to his wife (and the rest of the world.)  She is re-hospitalized and put back on lithium, and her young lover takes up with a younger girlfriend and goes off to college.  It's hard to characterize the film and it got mediocre reviews upon its release but I enjoyed it, especially the acting of Olivia Coleman and the depiction of White racism in the UK.