Guarda le stelle

So, as usual, I have a new interest. It will probably last another week or two before I find something else to focus on, but for now I'm suddenly very into learning about opera. For a couple of months now, in the back of my mind, I've been thinking that I would really like to be able to distinguish between the voices of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras (the famous "Three Tenors"). There's no practical reason to be able to do this, it's just something that sort of entered my brain as a kind of 'bucket list' addition several months ago and is still there. I've decided to act upon it. (Sort of like in high school when I decided I really needed to be able to sing all the words to the Barenaked Ladies' song "One Week" without having to have the lyrics in front of me. Ten years later, that one is still in the works.)

But, last night I had a bit of a breakthrough on the opera bucket list item. I can officially pick Pavarotti's voice out on "Nessun Dorma" from the opera "Turandot" as compared to Carreras or Domingo. It's a beautiful song and I had no trouble listening to it over and over and over last night. (Plus I have it on a mix cd that's in my car right now, along with "La donn' e' mobile", which has gotten me some interesting looks as the weather has been nice lately and my windows are down with the opera music blaring as I drive through campus.)

But, I love hearing it. My whole body turns into one big ear when I hear this voice and I just sort of sit as quietly as I think I ever have and just listen:

(How lucky are we to be able to pull up a video of him singing and hear this voice at a moment's notice? I sometimes really do marvel at the times we live in.)

I think I might be very close to being able to single Pavarotti's out from the other two. I think I just prefer it to the other two, also. This little task has also made me really want to see some operas. I've not really seen that many and I understand the story lines of fewer than I've actually seen. I took a music appreciation class in college as an arts requirement and was introduced to some opera, but mostly I am ignorant of opera as a genre. I plan to remedy this! I can't figure out which opera I want to see first, but I have a feeling it will hinge upon what I can find at the library. But, as a bucket list addendum, I think this is a good one that is making me slightly more informed of a genre of music in which I am mostly ignorant. I own the movie version of "The Phantom of the Opera", but that's such a new opera and it's in English...I don't really feel like that's much of a challenge. It's beautiful music, but I want more of a challenge than that. I don't know if my interest is because most operas are in a foreign language, or if it's just that I never paid attention, but I am going to try to pay attention while my interest is focused on it and see what happens. I figure if I can come out of this little foray into the opera world with even a smidgen of a better understanding of at least one full opera in a language other than English, it will be good.

Throwback Movie Night: The Mission

This week's Throwback Movie Night is "The Mission". It was done in 1986 and tells the story of a Jesuit mission in the 1750s in the jungles above the Iguazu Falls in South America.


 


 There was a tribe called the Guarani who lived in the jungle that the Jesuits were trying to convert to Christianity. The Guarani are not particularly welcoming and tie the first priest to a cross and send him over the waterfall. This brings Father Gabriel, played by Jeremy Irons, to the Guarani's doorstep. Gabriel has an oboe that he plays beautifully and the Guarani allow him to join them and live among them.

Jesuit missions were protected under Spanish law, but the Portuguese and the Spanish are squabbling about land rights in this part of the world at the time. The Jesuit order is also under scrutiny by the Church, who see it as extreme in some ways. While the missions are safe under Spanish rule, the Portuguese allow slave trading and have created a business in South America. Robert DeNiro plays a mercenary and slave trader who decides to become a Jesuit and live at the Mission above the falls. In the end, he tries to lead the Guarani resistance to the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers when they come to dismantle the mission and capture the tribesman for slaves.

Music-wise, this movie is top of the list. The music was composed by Ennio Morricone, and he integrated the native language of the South American Guarani into the music, at one point, having an entire chorus sing "Ave Maria" in their native tongue. When it comes to the music, I'm not sure there's a more beautiful sound than Gabriel's Oboe. The movie is intense and there is a lot of violence, but there is nothing intense about the music. It is all very smooth and outstandingly beautiful.

I was thisclose to being a hanger-on for an NPR story!

I (sorta!) made it into an NPR radio 2 minute story over the weekend! I'm between the lines in this story that ran over the weekend:

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/31/175808536/archival-find-could-shed-new-light-on-emmett-till-murder

"Houck and his students figured out the missing issues were in a state historical archive in Missouri."

 It's about 'missing' issues of the St. Louis Argus that the Society has and that I loaned out to Dr. Houck and his grad assistant, Jessica at Florida State. I wish NPR would have given us credit instead of just vaguely calling us a 'historical archive'. But, still, we know we're there between the lines. Another win for The State Historical Society of Missouri (and inter-library loan!). Plus, I've already gotten other people around the country writing me asking to see the film, before it's even back from FSU. We might make another positive copy of the film just so we can meet the demand now.

Several of my colleagues laugh at the 'missing' issues and 'new discovery', considering this film has been here for years and that anybody could have looked at it, bought a copy of it, or asked for it via loan at any time. It's just been here, chilling out since the 1950s. But, it's sort of like Bingham's discovery of Machu Picchu, right? It's not so much a discovery, as bringing to light something that wasn't well-known before this. Like all things that are 'found' in historical archives. The stuff has been there for a long time and the 'discoverer' was not the first person to see it, they are just the one who found an outlet to bring it to light.

We've been curious about how this happened and from what I can tell, I guess one of the main microfilming companies in the nation, microfilmed the paper, but someone removed all the issues related to the trial and story of Emmett Till's death. And then that company sold their film to all of these places around the country. But, that film is not helpful since it's missing this huge event. We're hoping libraries and people want to buy a copy of our film now, since it's actually complete. Woot!

Throwback Movie Night: A Streetcar Named Desire

I wasn't sure if I'd like "A Streetcar Named Desire" because I don't really like Vivien Leigh. This movie is based upon the 1947 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tennessee Williams. It was a super successful play and Marlon Brando acted as Stanley on the stage and then transitioned his portrayal of the character to the silver screen in 1951. In case you've never heard of it, the story is not about a streetcar. The story begins with Blanche DuBois (played by Vivian Leigh), a former English teacher, arriving at the French Quarter in New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella. Blanche is bringing the news that she's lost the DuBois family home in Mississippi and she's taken a break from her teaching job because she's had a nervous breakdown. Stella's husband, Stanley (enter: Marlon Brando), is a rough (to say the least) sort of guy. Blanche, despite not having a family home and being thirty years old and unwed, still holds fast to the southern belle culture and is taken aback by her sister's husband. Both are strong personalities and the two end up on a collision course that you can tell is coming through the entire movie. (This house ain't big enough fer the two of us, kind of thing...) Stanley is not convinced that the DuBois family home was 'lost' and is sure that Blanche has cheated Stella and him out of money. In his snooping around, he uncovers more than a lost inheritance. The short stay of Blanche's turns into months and the relationships of all three become more strained than ever. Blanche's past comes back to haunt all three of them and leads to one of the most dramatic scenes (in a movie full of drama), when Stanley rapes Blanche and then commits her to a mental institution.

How's that for an ending?

For someone who doesn't like Vivien Leigh, I really thought she did a good job in this movie. By the end, I was sympathetic to her character. I thought she was much better in this movie than she was in "Gone With the Wind", and she did win the Oscar for this performance. This movie won three out of the four main acting Oscar awards that year, Marlon Brando being the only one of the four main characters to not win. Marlon Brando is great in this movie, too, but I'm sure I missed some words of his while trying to decipher his seriously slurred speech pattern.  The constant pessimism and strife of Tennessee Williams' writing, mixed with the dreariness of the setting makes for a rather depressing movie, but the story was good and I really didn't see the ending coming. It completely held my interest.

The thing that everyone remembers after watching this is Marlon Brando's desperate bellowing of 'STELLLAAAAA'.  All together now:




Incidentally, the 'STELLLAAAA' bellow is so well-known, that each year in New Orleans there is a Stella/Stanley shout-off. An actor stands on a balcony in Jackson Square and the contestants take turns screaming 'STELLLLAAAA' (men) and 'STAAAAANLEEEY' (women) at the actor from below. Not surprisingly, the top three winners each get a case of beer.

Haters gon' hate.

It is not easy being a librarian when people generally think the world has passed you by. That your profession is archaic and that you aren't relevant because of the on-set of Google. This is a problem for librarians everywhere. Historically, librarians aren't used to having to defend their profession. And because of that, it's difficult to get them to defend it. It's hard to fathom living without a public library. Can you really imagine living in a place without a library? Or within close proximity to a town with a library? Or a bookmobile? Something? They are so ingrained into our culture that it's really difficult for to imagine life without them. And, despite what you might have heard, 'digital libraries' have not taken over. I get proof of that every time I work the reference desk at work, fielding e-mails from people asking about authors of books, titles of books that include a chapter on __(enter obscure topic here)___, etc. And when I find those books and respond to the patron, I include a link to a digital library form if available. And more often than not I get a response from the patron saying "I don't understand about 'digital library', but that's all right." Granted, many of the patrons that I work with are of an older age, but that's the majority of the United States population and it will continue to be this way for a while to come. Yesterday, just before the close of business, the Secretary of State very nearly gutted the Missouri State Library, giving lay-off notices to most of the employees in the name of 're-structuring'. I won't go into all the details, but it's an ugly situation made uglier by the fact that they were all forced to re-apply for their jobs a couple of months ago and were told they were all able to keep their jobs. It's hard to have friends and colleagues go through lay-offs, but its only made worse when you know the situation was handled in a really callous way.

Chin up, librarians, and remember:

Throwback Movie Night: Waiting to Exhale

New series here on the blog! I watch bunches and bunches of movies. I own bunches and bunches of movies. So, Throwback Movie Nights is an event that happens a lot around here. I decided that I'd finally share some of them with the blog-o-sphere. Because...I work well with weekly editions of things. Thanks to scheduled blogging, I plan to have a new Throwback Movie Night review published each Saturday night for the foreseeable future...or until I get bored and find some other thing I want to do.

So, that's my intro. The rules for Throwback Movie Night are very few:
-For a movie to be considered 'Throwback' it must be at least 15 years old.
-If possible, I will include a video of a great scene, the original trailer of the movie, and/or a song from the soundtrack.
That's it. Onward!
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Tonight's Throwback Movie Night is "Waiting to Exhale". I love this movie. It came out in 1995 from Twentieth Century Fox and was based on the Terry McMillan novel of the same name. (Fun fact: McMillan also wrote "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"). This movie stars Angela Bassett, Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon as four friends living in Pheonix, each dealing with their own man troubles. This is a great movie to watch with your girlfriends, especially if one just had a (bad) break-up. Forest Whitaker (think "Last King of Scotland" Oscar winner) directed the movie and gave himself a very small role in the it as one of the short-lived romances of Lena Rashon's character. He also directed some of the music videos for the awesome soundtrack (more on that down the post). As a general rule, I don't like pansy-ass female characters in anything. I like strong female characters who stand up for themselves and try to solve their own problems. These characters are strong women, part of which makes the story so good, but when times get rough, they lean on each other. (This is why it's a great girls night movie!) Although, it's not all feel-good, happy scenes. I think Angela Bassett's character has the most complex story line and she was outstanding in this entire movie. One of the most memorable scenes is when her character, Bernadine, goes into a rage after her husband admits to an affair with his secretary and announces that he's divorcing Bernadine to marry his (white) secretary. Bernadine throws her husband's belongings into his car, backs his car onto the driveway, and sets the thing on fire (nsfw!):



Of course, with Whitney Houston in the movie, you know the music was good. Babyface wrote the new songs on the soundtrack and 7 of the songs were released as singles, all of which landed on the charts. "Shoop Shoop" by Whitney Houston was the only one to make it to the number one spot for one week before being knocked out by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day", but it held at #2 for 11 weeks. I've always liked "Shoop Shoop", but while watching the movie, was really excited to hear Brandy's "Sittin Up In My Room" as background music on a scene! I didn't remember that her song was from the soundtrack. I really loved this song, and am so glad to be reunited with it through Throwback Movie Night!:

Something I'm working on is being more aware of the world around me.

I'm working on paying more attention to the world around me. A situation last week made me realize that I don't pay attention to what's going on around me. I get caught up so easily in my own world. I know everyone does this, and it's probably impossible to stay outwardly-focused because humans are simply inherently selfish but it seems to me that I could do with a little less self-absorption and a little more observational skills. And, if I am able to try to teach myself to be more observing of the world, maybe eventually, it will become a habit? In an attempt to be more aware, for the last week or so, I've been actively looking around me when I'm walking places and trying to notice my community as I would if I were a tourist and didn't see all of this stuff every day. It's helping me to be more outward-facing, so to speak. I want to make sure I actually notice things that happen, you know? I feel like I can get so caught up in my own little world that I completely miss things. So, I've begun keeping track of things I see, hear, smell, etc. each day in the hopes that I will not take things for granted as much. This has (thus far) been really hit-or-miss and I'm not sure its always a bad thing to miss noticing what's going on around you.

Sights:

- A guy on the shuttle bus to campus picking his nose.

- How beautiful Memorial Union at Mizzou really is. It's phenomenal, really, to have a building so pretty right next door to where I work.

- An owl in a tree watching traffic on Providence Road.

- Smiles from patrons.

- Two episodes of "Rosemary & Thyme".

- Gwynn, the resident white-tailed squirrel at work.

- Ginormous pile of laundry in the bedroom.
- Spider web inside a rolled-up poster from a newly-accession collection.
- Red blotch on my left forearm that looks suspiciously like a spider bite (could be a bug bite of some other kind, though).

- Dead spider on a box lid in the newly-accessioned collection.

Sounds:

- Accordion music in the Speaker's Circle.

- Geese honking near the apartment.

- The squeaky wheels of the cart I always seem to get stuck with when I needed to move things around at work.

- The very fast footsteps of two of my co-workers who always seem to be in such a hurry wherever they go.

- Blink-182's music as today's 'getting ready for work' soundtrack.

Smells:

- A chemical-ish smell in the main hallway at work. (Cleaning fluid? Air freshener?)

- Something really awful that might have been stale bread sticks from the student union that the guy that sat next to me on the shuttle bus home had with him.

- Pizza coming from Shakespeare's (this was tempting enough that I ventured in for lunch).

- Vanilla Febreze. 

Quit fooling around.

It's snowing. Again. Spring is starting this week. I think it's supposed to snow on that day, too. I'm over this Winter. We got a tease of Spring on Friday when it was in the 70s, but that didn't last long at all.

There was an intriguing job opening (well, is an intriguing job opening, actually since the job is currently open) in Canada this week. I'm not actively searching for a job, mind you. I have one and I like it a lot, but I do keep an eye on new openings and I'm on a committee at work that looks at pay equity and I've spent oodles of time lately looking at jobs. But, this one was really intriguing to me because I think I mentioned that I was feeling restless? Kind of adventure-needy of late. This was was in the town of Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. It's north of the Arctic Circle and I was seriously imaging myself trying to live there for a while. It sounds like a real adventure. The town is relatively young, only being created in the 1970s for an army outpost that is no longer there. About 3500 people live in this town that has 59 days of total sunlight each year and 30 days of total darkness. It's built on the permafrost, so all the buildings are either on pilings or on deep gravel pads to add stability. The job is for a librarian at a college in the town. And the area is a hub for two of the native communities around there, so there are three main languages, which I think is kind of cool. It sounds like quite the adventure, in all. I wonder how difficult it is for them to get people to stay? I showed the job to a couple of my co-workers, none of whom were interested in living in a place like that. Still, I bet there are plenty of people like me who are completely taken in by the idea of living somewhere so extreme. But, then I remember that I'm tired of this Missouri winter, which is nothing like what it would be like up there. I looked at their weather this week and the high was -5 Fahrenheit. I think my imagination romanticizes a lot of places and thinks 'Oh, exciting! Living north of the Arctic Circle! Like an adventurer! You'd probably see the Northern Lights! You could snowshoe!' In actuality, my skin would never forgive me and I would probably never ever be warm again. And, if I could snowshoe, I'd probably only be able to stand to be outside long enough to walk out the door of my mobile-home-on-pilings to get the mail, before I'd freeze to death.

I have no idea where I'd get groceries or anything. It didn't appear to have any sort of grocery store on Google Earth. No Wal-Mart. I went to Wal-Mart this morning and I hardly ever go there. In the town I grew up in, going to Wal-Mart was the must frustrating experience because the store was built in a sort of pit. And it was always crowded and you felt as though you had driven down into this hole and were now crawling all over people to get some discounted food or shoes or something. It was not a good experience. So, I just never did it. Well, here, there's a Wal-Mart not very far away from me and I'm on the hunt for some decorative wall shelves for my dining room. I'm kind of particular about them. Goodwill had nothing, which I found surprising. Kohl's was over-priced and didn't have anything that really fit what I'm looking for. So, I thought I'd try Wally World today. It was a bust, too. They only had black shelves. That was it. I was disappointed. But then I decided to wander around a bit since it was a snowy Sunday morning. They carry all these brands and grocery items that Gerbes and Hy-Vee don't carry! Things that I've missed for so long, never realizing that they were still around. I just wasn't going to the right places. So, I'm wandering around and each time I see something I've missed for years I sort of let out a chortle and a 'ohhh!' before rushing my cart over to pile things in. Going from aisle to aisle, I found myself silently apologizing to Wal-Mart for all my disparaging remarks about them. Anybody who carries Sunbelt granola bars and Hamburger Helper singles has my support. They also had the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show for 10 bucks. HELLOOOOO. I own that now. So, although my walls are still bare, my cupboard is full and I am a happy girl.