The sun went down as we were driving back from visiting an old friend of my mother's. And when I say old, I'm not exaggerating. E is 99. She lives alone in her home, though her daughter lives not far away. She walks well. She looked good - certainly not anything like 99. She talks like she always has. Hearing's a problem, but her daughter was there and used voice transcription on her phone to help out. She gave up driving a few months ago when there was a problem with the steering wheel that she decided not to get fixed. I've known her at least 65 years. It was a delightful get-to-gether. She's one of the last of my mother's generation still kicking.
Even driving in LA traffic, nature puts on amazing shows.
While it's been sunny and the air has been clear (you can see the snow capped mountains to the east and Catalina Island to the west), it's been a bit nippy for LA (I'm using Santa Monica weather on my phone) - in the 50s (F) today. I did various odds and ends around the house as we get ready to return home and by 3pm I'd put off my bike ride to the beach. Chilly. But a call to a friend in Anchorage embarrassed me and I put on a windbreaker over my sweatshirt and got on the bike a little after 4pm and rode down to Venice Beach. The sun was directly in my eyes when there weren't trees blocking it. I had a right taillight blinking in hopes that blinded cars could see me in the bike line. Most people biking, skateboarding, scootering, and walking had on sweatshirts and warm coats. But there were a few bare chested runners as well.
The sun was getting very close to the horizon - which means there's about 30-40 more minutes of daylight. The surf was low. This is just north of Venice in Santa Monica.
And this is turning around with my back to the sun and the bike and my shadows stretched way out.
And finally, as I went up Rose Avenue from the Venice Boardwalk, I turned around to get one last picture. This time I was able to get the building to block the main part of the sun.
As some of you know, I've been monitoring COVID data since March 2020 and posting updates as the State updates their dashboards, which is now weekly on Tuesdays. Today I speculated that the folks getting sick enough to be hospitalized and to die are likely to skew older and unvaccinated. And I try not to say such things without back up data on here, so I looked it up. And it's supported by the data - boosted folks don't get as sick or die as often. Old folks get sicker and die more.
So here's today's update (yes, it's Tuesday). And in the tabbed updates there's also an introduction and some tables where I updated the numbers as they got posted. Early on it was every day, then three days a week, and now weekly as the state chose to update less frequently. I began the charts because in the beginning the state didn't put up anything except that day's numbers and you had no way to see if things were getting better or worse.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 - Positive tests up 132 from last week's 450, no new deaths reported (doesn't mean there weren't any, just not reported yet), and hospitalizations down from last week's 44 to this week's 35, but this week there's someone on a vent while there hadn't been for several weeks. Available ICU beds up by four to 33 statewide, but remain at two in Anchorage.
The takeaway? COVID is still here. Most people seem to be less sick, but some get sick enough to be hospitalized. I haven't dug deeply enough into the state data to know who is still getting hospitalized and who's dying. Presumably a) those with little or no immunization and those who are older, if we go by national trends.
From the CDC - you can see the odds of being hospitalized go up by age, and it's starker for deaths. (This chart is as of Feb 6, 2023)
Here's one from Washington State that shows both hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status. Again, those getting boosters were significantly, but not absolutely, better protected from hospitalization and dying.
"They rely on that connectivity for electronic health records, essential for treating patients."
I remember going to a focus group on electronic health records eleven years ago. At that time the hospitals here didn't have EHR and were pushing to get them. And now you can't treat patients without them? I wonder what all the doctors who practiced medicine before EHR existed would say about this statement or what all those doctors around the world who don't have electronic health records do? Shut up shop because they don't have an essential tool for treating patients?
Yes, electronic health records make it easier and faster to get patient medical histories and to share records when referring patients to other doctors. BUT they are NOT an essential tool for treating patients. If they are essential in some settings, it's only because hospitals have now made them the only records kept. But, if worse comes to worse, the doctor can ask the patient like they used to do. And they also mean that confidential medical records are now highly vulnerable to hackers. It's not a question of if they are breached, just when.
2. Does senior joy make older folks irrelevant to the young?
Charles Wohlforth had a piece on Tom Choate who climbed Denali five years ago at age 78. The article talks about older folks giving up ambition and competitiveness for happiness. He then writes,
"But Angell noted that his quality [being happy and not competitive)] has the perverse effect [of] getting old people ignored, as if contentment means you don't matter."
He gives an example of being ignored in conversations with younger men. Wohlforth muses:
"Interesting, isn't it, our tendency to patronize the old as we do the young? It's as if, like children, their joy disqualifies them, indicating they can't understand the true toughness of life. As if they don't know adulthood's difficult struggle for goals and status."
This seems to me a giant leap to a questionable conclusion. Is it the joy that disqualifies them? Is it even joy he means here, or rather contentment? I suspect other possible explanations. One, the contented senior doesn't have the need to push himself into the conversation as much. Or, if it is about the younger men's regard for the older, it's that he's no longer keeping current in all the details they think are important and/or he doesn't have power in the world that matters to them. This would be more consistent with Wohlforth's earlier (in the article) note that being ignored is a condition shared by women and that form of snubbing is much more about power than it is about joy.
Is there climate change? Of course. Earth's climate has always been in a state of change. Alaska was once a sub-tropical area that became an arctic environment. Puny man cannot stop or slow this change. One volcano eruption can put tons of greenhouse gases into the environment. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas produced by every animal that breathes air. It is used by plants and is needed by them to grow and the plants turn this CO2 back into oxygen that we animals breathe in order to live. If you want to really make a difference, plant trees, disconnect the natural gas and electricity to your house, throw away your vehicle keys and walk everywhere.
Charles Brobst
Anchorage [emphasis added]
But that's not my point here. First Mr. Brobst tells us that "Puny man cannot stop or slow this hang" and then he makes a list of how 'you' can make a difference (which I take to mean slow the change.) All the things he lists seem to imply - give up our modern life style.
So I'm guessing he really means to say, "If you want to stop climate change, we have to go back to the StoneAge." This is not the case. We just need to find alternative energy sources, cut back in consumption that isn't sustainable, an be willing to explore alternatives to how we live - and the Stone Age isn't the only alternative. The impacts of climate change - if we do nothing - is clearly problematic for our economy. The impact of actions to stop climate change actually improve our economy.
4. People really do hate cottonwoods In another letter to the editor, Patricia Wells laments to poor state of the Anchorage Coastal Trail - cracking asphalt, trash, leaves piled up on the trail, trees blocking views. And then she says it:
"Believe me, we do not need any more cottonwood trees."
I get her sentiment - particularly now when the sticky cottonwood catkins pile up on our deck and stick to your feet as you walk on them, using you as their way into your house. I've written a few posts on cottonwoods. (I just looked - there are 30 posts with the label 'cottonwood.' Here's one that takes an alternative look at these trees.) Ultimately, they are huge trees - an anomaly this far north - which grow fast (also an anomaly here) and clean the air, anchor the soil, provide habitat for birds and other animals. But I get it. Besides the catkins now, the fluffy cotton will start littering Anchorage later in the summer.
The Anchorage Daily News had the following short piece in its collection of short stories on Monday:
"THE WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON DIES AT 117
At 117, Nabi Tajima was older than modern-day Australia, and everyone else known to live on the planet.
Tajima, born Aug. 4, 1900, in Araki, Japan, and recognized as the world's oldest person, has passed on that mantle. She died Saturday, having been hospitalized since January, the Associated Press reported, and was the last known person born in the 19th century.
She was living in the town of Kikai on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, the AP reported.
The title of 'world's oldest living person' is a remarkable, if not fleeting, one. Tajima claimed the distinction in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica. Brown was the oldest person in the world for about five months.
Tajima straddled the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and is one of the few people who could recall a time before World War I. Two days after her 45th birthday, the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs northeast of her home island. Tajima's secret to longevity was “eating delicious things and sleeping well,” the group said. She danced with her hands at the sound of a samisen, a traditional three-string instrument."
This is the kind of story the paper clips from elsewhere and so when I looked for it online, I found it in the Washington Post, with a few more paragraphs and some pictures.
My thoughts when I read this were about what was not in this piece. What was her physical and mental condition when she died? How long was she able to converse and recognize the people around her. Did she still do the things she liked to do? What did she eat and did she enjoy the food? And how long has it been since she did those things? What parts of her body were still functioning?
I think about my own mom's two and a half year decline from going out, walking on her own, mental alertness. The physical mobility went first. She had some ailments which didn't bother her when she was in bed, so she started spending more time in bed. That led to loss of her muscle strength and ability to walk. For the last year or so getting into the car was a problem. Eventually eating got difficult - things got caught in her throat and she'd start coughing. Her mobility was via a wheel chair and someone to move it. She sat out in the sun daily, reading, and I would walk her up the street and back. Sometimes around the block, but the next street over was very steep and had terrible sidewalk breaks.
While she had moments of confusion - particularly when she woke up in the morning and transitioned from her dreams to being awake - for the most part she was lucid and understood what people were saying and responded pretty normally. She could answer our questions about the past as we found things in the garage whose history we didn't know. My mom passed away at 93 after a vigorous life, which included working at a job she loved until she was 85.
My father had a distant cousin who lived to 102. The last time we saw him he was 101 I think and we picked him up at the assisted living home where he lived. He was dressed in a suit - how he dressed himself every day - and we drove to a nearby Thai restaurant where we talked and he ate with relish. I dropped him and J off and then parked the car. But he walked, without a cane, the quarter mile or so back to the car. At that point, I'd say he was in great condition and he helped fill me in on a lot of family history I hadn't known. So living that long isn't necessarily a painful thing, though i don't know how the last year or so went.
After watching my mom's decline, I read these stories about 'the oldest person on earth' with some skepticism. I guess it's a remarkable thing to live that long, but is it something anyone would want to do? The article says,
Tajima claimed the distinction [of being the oldest in the world] in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica
I suspect people claimed it for her and I wonder what she thought about that title. Our Guinness Book of Records Syndrome makes us note these oddities, and I realize that for medical researchers there is significance. And if the title brought Tajima any joy, that's a good thing.
“She passed away as if falling asleep. As she had been a hard worker, I want to tell her 'rest well,'" said Tajima's 65-year-old grandson Hiroyuki, local media reported.Tajima was in the exclusive group of supercentenarians, people who have crossed the 110-year threshold. The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group, which tracks certified people who become supercentenarians, reports 36 worldwide. All but one of them are women, and 18 of them are Japanese. Good diets and supportive family structure have been linked to Japan's world-leading life expectancy. Her legacy is similarly expansive; she had nine children and 160 descendants, including great-great-great grandchildren, the Gerontology Research Group said. Chiyo Miyako, also in Japan, has become the world's oldest person, according to the group. At 116 years and 355 days, she has about nine months to reach her countrywoman's mark of 117 years and 260 days. Miyako would not have to travel far to visit her male compatriot. Japan's Masazo Nonaka, at 112 years and 271 days old, was confirmed to be the world's oldest man by Guinness World Records this month. The organization had been set to recognize Tajima before she died, the AP reported."
One study in the journal Aging Research Reviews notes a deep-sea sponge from the species Monorhaphis chuni lived to be 11,000 years old.
"Ming, a quahog clam, died at the age of 507 when researchers tried to dredge the bivalve up from Icelandic waters."
"As far as mammals go, bowhead whales seem to have the most candles on their cake—over 200. It makes sense, since the marine mammals live in chilly waters, says Don Moore, director of the Oregon Zoo in Portland. . .
A cold environment causes a low body temperature, which in turn means slow metabolism—and thus less damage to tissues, Moore says.
I knew there was a good reason to move to Alaska.
"Currently the world's oldest known land animal is Jonathan, an 183-year-old Aldabra giant tortoise that lives on the grounds of the governor’s mansion in St. Helena, an island off West Africa."
Here's a picture of the still living Jonathan taken in 1900 [!] that I found at a website called ODDEE. (It also has picture of the oldest clam.)
I'm afraid the title question was not answered in the passing note of Tajima's death. The missing Washington Post does hint at the research interest in such people. For the ADN, it's just a newsy tidbit like the picture of Jonathan.
My wife was an audiologist part of her career. Her stories were about
how hard it was for people to adjust to hearing aids. Problems with background
noise and lots of other issues. I learned that putting on hearing aids doesn't
magically improve your hearing the way glasses immediately improve your seeing.
Opening 2
Glasses aren't called Seeing Aids, so why don't we have a word for hearing aids that isn't so clunky and off-putting?
Opening 3
As I grow older, the people around me mumble more and more. Some people speak clear as a bell. Others sound a little fuzzy. I can catch most of what they're saying, but key words stay sounds without meaning.
The Story
So I went to Costco to have my hearing tested. Then the technician, The higher frequencies weren't within normal range. Aaron programmed a hearing aid, showed me where the ignition was, and let me take them for a ride around the warehouse. Despite my expectations of annoying noises and difficulty pulling out the things I needed to hear, it was, in fact, like putting on glasses. All the gauze that seemed to muffle some people's voices disappeared, and those high tones needed to interpret certain words or certain voices came through loud and clear. (Not too loud, just loud enough.) The technology is much better than it was. The aids are programmed to boost the frequencies my ears have trouble with, they dampen the background sounds, adjust to different backgrounds, and they even boost soft voices. We shopped and went back to the hearing center where he started taking the aids out. I protested. I can't keep them? No, these are ours, yours should be here in two or three days. I was really disappointed. But they came soon and now it's been a little more than a week.
So, now I'm looking for a good name for these little guys who ride behind my earlobes, hooked into my ear canals by little clear tubes. I narrowed it down to 'ears' and 'hears' and after a tiny sample sized opinion survey, I've decided to call them my 'hears.' [I'm still open to better suggestions.]
And today I went to the doctor for a slightly longer ago than annual check up. No serious issues and all the lab results came out in the normal range. (I didn't plan it, but I kind of like having 'out in' in a sentence.) He did mention that lots of men won't get hearing aids. I understand not wanting to display one's infirmities to the world. But I figure every time I say, "Pardon?" or "What was that?" or "I didn't catch that" I'm doing that anyway. And I can hear everything now. Particularly noticeable is the alarm on my watch, which is in a high frequency. I could hear it faintly under good conditions, but if it's covered by a sleeve or there's a lot of background noise, they only way I knew it was going off was when people told me it was. Now it's really loud! So are paper and plastic sounds.
The three rules I was given was NO swimming, showering, or sleeping with the hears in.
I used to say that I didn't need hears because what I heard was much more interesting than what people actually said. This picture is like that. And it gives you a sense of what high frequency words and voices sounded like before I got my hears. You get a lot of the info, but it's fuzzy.
Oh yes, one more cute feature - there's a red mark on the hears for the right ear and a blue one for the left.
Shorts are fiction 10 - 55 minutes. In competition means they were selected to be eligible for a festival award. Super Shorts are under 10 minutes.
Shorts are generally shown in groups, called programs. The shorts in competition this year fall neatly into two programs. The first is "Shorts on the Edge" but it's also called "Opening Night Soirée."
The second program is called "Love and Pain." I've color coded them to make it even easier.
BUT, I've combined the shorts and super shorts on the chart below, since they are showing together in the programs. The super shorts have an * after them.
To make it easy for you to figure out when and where to see these films, I've divided the list of shorts in competition into two groups so you can see what program they're in, and when and where each program is shown.
[NOTE: I try to be completely accurate here, but there's a lot of details and I can make a mistake. To be safe, double check the times and locations before you go. If you see an error please let me know in the comments or via email - in right column above blog archive.]
The first program is:
Opening Night Soiree
Fri Dec 1 Bear Tooth 7 pm
Shorts on the Edge
Sat Dec 9 AK Exp Sm 9 pm
Shorts In Competition
Director
Country
Length
Cold Storage*
Thomas Freundlich
Finland
9 min
Game
Jeannie Donohoe
USA
15 min
Whoever Was Using This Bed
Andrew Kotatko
Australia
20 min
Iron
Gabriel Gonda
USA
17 min
Must Kill Karl
Joe Kick
Canada
12 min
The Robbery
Jim Cummings
USA
15 min
8:AM*
Emily Pando
USA
5 min
Brain Storm*
Christophe Clin
Belgium
6 min
Couples Night*
Russell & Robert
Summers
USA
4 min
Temporary
Milena Govich
USA
12 min
Remember, the blue ones are in the program called:
Love and Pain
Which shows:
Sat Dec 2 AK Exp Large 12 pm
Fri Dec 8 AK Exp Small 7pm
* means it's a Super Short.
###############################################
This first group of shorts in competition all are part of the Opening Night Soirée which repeats as the program "Shorts on the Edge." I've done it this way to help you identify which films are shown together so you can easily find when and where to see them. If they are in red, they are together in this program. Also, both Shorts and Super Shorts* are together in the same programs, but they are eligible for separate awards. The * marks the Super Shorts. These are films under 10 minutes long.
Opening Night Soirée
Fri Dec 1 Bear Tooth 7pm
Shorts on the Edge
Sat Dec 9 Ak Exp Small 9pm
**********************************************
Cold Storage* (*Super Short)
Thomas Freundlich
Finland
9 min
This one should appeal to all Alaskans, especially ice fishers, glacial archeologists, and dancers.
"Thomas Freundlich is one of the leading practitioners in Finland’s vibrantly growing independent dance film scene. Mr. Freundlich’s work ranges from dance shorts, documentary work, performance videography and 3D projects to music videos and projection design for the stage. His work has been seen at dozens of film festivals worldwide as well as broadcast TV both in Finland and internationally. From 2012 to 2014, Mr. Freundlich was the co-artistic director of Finland’s Loikka dance film festival."
This story takes place during tryouts for the high school basketball team. It's a very well made film. To add a little moral crunch to all this, the Weinstein Company was involved with this film. Just yesterday (Nov 20), I read an article from the Paris Review, "What Do We Do With The Art Of Monstrous Men?" I suspect that the Weinstein Company, particularly Harvey Weinstein had little to do with the making of this film. But it's something to think about as you watch this gem of a film. I know this film is good because you can watch it online, and I did. Below is a trailer. I'd note, watching it online probably won't take anything from the experience of seeing it on the big screen opening night of the festival. There's lots I'm sure I missed the first time.
**********************************************
Whoever Was Using This Bed
Andrew Kotatko
Australia
20 min
Go to the the film's website. Scroll through the credits and connections of the cast and the director and others. This is NOT a film by new faces showing what they can do in hopes of making it. But the fact that these aren't newcomers to the film industry tells us something about the competitiveness of the world of film-making.
"Iron is a short period drama set in the Pacific NorthWest inspired by the true stories of women railroad workers during the early 1900’s.
Lily Cohen escapes the the crowded tenements of New York to take on a demanding railway job. Determined to work on a steam engine, a position not traditionally held by women, Lilly faces the hostility of her fellow railroad workers while finding her own inner strength.
While America is very familiar with the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter, the women laborers of the First World War are mostly forgotten by history. The American railroad represented freedom and adventure in a time when most women had very little opportunity for either. These opportunities disappeared when the soldiers returned home."
I haven't seen the whole movie, but the trailer . . . judge for yourself. I had it up here for a day or two as I worked on the rest of the films. I decided to take it down because I thought the thumbnail was gross and I didn't see any redeeming features that would make it worth keeping up. I'm not censoring it - you can go watch it here. Remember, the programmers thought it was worth being 'in competition'. I'm waiting to be pleasantly surprised.
**********************************************
The Robbery
Jim Cummings
USA
15 min
Cummings won the best Short Award last year at AIFF with his film "Thunder Road." It also won at Sundance which led to a slew of opportunities which are described in this IndieWire article. The article also includes a full version of of The Robbery. I don't recommend seeing it now if you plan to see it at the festival. I'm not sure how much it offers with additional viewings.
It's about a robbery that goes badly. It's well made. It spoofs our national (global?) cell phone addiction among other things.
###############################################
This second group of shorts in competition all are part of the program "Love and Pain." I've done it this way to help you identify which films are shown together so you can easily find when and where to see them.
If they are in blue, they are together in this program Also, both Shorts and Super Shorts* are together in the same programs, but they are eligible for separate awards. The * marks the Super Shorts. These are films under 10 minutes long.
In this group, all but "Temporary" are Super Shorts.
Love and Pain
Sat Dec, 2 12pm AK Exp Large
Frit Dec 8 AK Exp Small 7pm
**********************************************
8:AM*
Emily Pando
USA
5 min Can't find much on this film, though it was at the festival in August 2016, the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival's Shorts Fest this year if I'm reading the Facebook page right.
**********************************************
Brain Storm* (Remue-Meninges)
Christophe Clin
Belgium
6 min
(Also Showing at Martini Matinee - Friday December 8, 2017 2:00pm - 4:00pm)
Another film that's got few internet footprints. From Augohr:
"What happens in our heads when we are about to meet someone on the street? Anguish, prejudice, expectation, surprise, disappointment … These few very brief moments are the nest of a real brainstorm!"
I had to look much harder to find Christophe's Vimeo page. (His Youtube page was blank. You really don't need a link to a blank Youtube channel.) But it was worth the effort. (Actually, if you only google his name, there's more, mostly in French.)
This is one of the most tantalizing trailers I've seen. It could be a super short all its own.
This is a four minute movie. What do you want? A ten second trailer? Christophe Clin found a way to do a trailer for a six minute movie (above) but . . . And why would you want a description? This is part of a program of other shorts. Just sit back and watch it. I can give you one hint - it's been in some horror movie festivals.
**********************************************
Temporary
Milena Govich USA 12 Min
The first few minutes of this probably tells you what you need to know about this film. It comes from her Kickstarter page and I found the embed code at Vimeo.
I'd also note there are other Shorts programs. Global Village has a series of international shorts.
There are Made In Alaska shorts. And Martini Matinee will play a mix of narrative shorts, short docs, and animation. I'm not totally caught up (and probably will never be) with all these programs but I did want to give you an alert that the narrative shorts and super shorts in competition aren't the only shorts.
"In competition" means these films were selected by the screeners to be eligible for awards at the festival. "Features" are 'stories' that are 55 to 140 minutes. "Shorts" are stories that are 10-55 minutes. Super shorts are stories under 10 minutes. 'Stories' are fictional and distinguished from documentaries. This looks like a particularly strong group this year. Danny DeVito is in one, Ed Asner in another, Valerie Harper in yet another. Bruce Springsteen played a role in getting one to screen (because of issues over music rights.)
Here's the list and below is a bit more about each.
Shorts in Competition
Director
Country
Length
Curmudgeons
Jake DeVito
USA
17 min
Gorilla
Tibo Pinsard
France
14 min
Il Campione (The Champion )
Boming Jiang
Italy
12 min
Like A Butterfly
Eitan Pitigliani
United States
28 min
My Mom and the Girl
Susie Singer Carter
United States
20 min
Thunder Road
Jim Cummings
USA
13 min
Since shorts are short, they are grouped into programs. These are the programs that the films are in and when those programs show: Hard Knocks, Love and Pain, and Global Village. The Martini Matinee is a regular AIFF event and takes a few shorts from different programs. Also, there are some super shorts mixed in some of the programs.
This chart is my attempt to help you find which program each of the shorts in competition is in and when you can see them. I'd note that those shorts not in competition can also be really good. I often find films at the festival that are not in competition that I think should have been. But seeing the ones in competition is a good bet. And the others are mixed into the programs.
Program (right)
Film (below)
HARD KNOCKS Saturday - 1st
Dec 3, 2016
11:30am -1 pm -
AK Exper Small Thursday -2nd
Dec. 8 5:30-7:30pm AK EX Large
MARTINI MATINEE Friday. Dec 9
2-4 PM
BEAR TOOTH
LOVE AND PAIN Wed. 1st Dec. 7
5:30-7 pm
BEAR TOOTH Sat 2nd
Dec. 10
5:45-7:15pm AK Ex Small
GLOBAL VILLAGE
Sunday, DEC. 13
1PM-2:45PM
AK Exper Large
Curmudgeons
Jake DeVito
USA
0:17:00
✓
Danny DeVito is actually listed as the director and an actor in the film. Jake is one of the producers and one of several other DeVito's in the credits.
"THE INSPIRATION. I love apes. Not you? I love real monkeys, but also "fake" apes, like the old King Kong, those played by actors in the original The Planet of the Apes, or the wonderfully created apes by makeup master artist Rick Baker for Greystoke, with Christopher Lambert and Ian Holm. All these films and these movie apes have profoundly marked my viewer's imagination, the universe they live in, the dangerous and fascinating jungle, but mainly because it talks to my "inner ape". We do not think enough about our "inner ape". Do we ?"
Il Campione (The Champion )
Boming Jiang
Italy
0:12:00
✓
I'm having trouble finding much about this film, so I'll just leave you with the trailer for now.
"About a man who dreams he's a butterfly and he becomes so involved in this dream that he no longer knows if he's a man dreaming he's a butterfly, or if he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man."
"the reason why I became a director, which is the need to capture the essence of life and of what life could be and then put it on screen, through a special medium: the film. What is great about films is that you make them together with other people, in my case with wonderful and special individuals that helped me take the idea I first had to the final stage. The story of the film came from a series of personal experiences that I have had over time, that I then jotted down in words together with the screenwriter Alessandro Regaldo. There were so many things that inspired me while I was writing the story."
------------------------------------------------------------------ My Mom and the Girl
Susie Singer Carter
USA
0:20:00
"MY MOM AND THE GIRL is a true story based on an odd encounter my East Coast mother, who suffers with Alzheimer's, shared one evening on the streets of East L.A. The story takes off after dinner with family & friends takes a dark turn and my mother is led to a proverbial crossroads where 3 very disparate, desperate women are unpredictably pulled back into the light. It's a funny, poignant and surprisingly rich story where apparent disabilities can be seen as gifts."
"As Cummings tells it, the film very unexpectedly got into Sundance, where it then won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film. Of course, this brought some heat to the short and Cummings, which meant attention was also paid to a major question from the film: If he’d secured the rights to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” which plays during a pivotal scene. After paying $7,000 for the rights to the song so it could travel the festival circuit, Cummings was faced with a $40,000 to 50,000 licensing fee to put his short online. This prompted Cummings to take his case to Springsteen in the form of an open letter he posted on the internet."
*When I first starting blogging the film festival, films that were available online were not eligible for most festivals and there was some concern when I would find the whole film somewhere. But online video has gone from the dark ages to the present in just a few years. If a film is good, you should want to see it several times, and on the big screen as well as on your computer.
LA Times article about medical error being the third highest cause of death behind heart attacks and cancer
all have come together this week. Their topics overlap somewhat, but more important, they all are great examples of the theme of this blog - how do we know what we know? Being Mortal is a doctor's reflections on how the medical profession thinks about and thus handles older patients. Doctors, he tells us, are trained to cure people, but old folks aren't going to get better. Doctors are technicians he tells us, so they fix the various discrete parts rather than the whole person. By extension, as old folks begin to fall, get frail and forgetful, safety, not happiness, becomes the main concern of doctors and nursing homes. What older folks need though, is to have some feeling of control of their lives. Being ripped out of their environments and moved into sterile nursing homes takes away that control and all the cues that remind them of who they are.
He writes extensively about the kinds of care available for people in the latter stages of life. And he gives examples of places that are changing, compromising safety a bit to make being human the top priority - such as the doctor who stuck living (instead of the plastic) plants in every room, parakeets in every room, and dogs and cats throughout the facility and witnessed people coming back to life. He had to overcome staff resistance as well as board and regulatory concerns, but it had huge positive effects on the people in their institution. Here's an excerpt:
"The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine's focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet --- and this is the painful paradox --- we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. For more than half a century now, we have treated the trials of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It's been an experiment in social engineering, putting our fates in the hands of people valued more for their technical prowess than for their understanding of human needs.
That experiment has failed. "
Having just watched my mother go through this, I find all this very compelling. I first learned about the book about a year ago when my mother's neighbor recommended it and said, "Steve, keeping your mom at home was the right decision." It was reassuring at the time, but I didn't start to read the book until it became this month's choice in my book club.
Keeping her at home where she could eat what she wanted to eat, when she wanted to eat it, at her own dining table, on her own dishes, seemed important. Letting her sit in her wheel chair on her front porch among the plants and flowers she had tended for 60 years, seemed important. We were incredibly lucky to find a caregiver she clicked with and to be able to pay for the caregiver and regular flights to Los Angeles. That's a luxury.
And now I'm reading it with myself in mind. How will my family and I deal with me when I get to that point of not being able to care for myself? Ideally, I'll just sleep in one morning never to awaken just as I'm getting to that point, but that's wishful thinking.
Healing Voices was a film we saw this week at the Bear Tooth about how the medical field thinks about mental health, the influence of the drug companies on doctors, and the need for patients to be treated as whole people and not to be labeled in ways that dismiss them as unable to be a part of their own recovery. Here's the trailer:
Finally, the identification of medical error as the third highest cause of death after heart attacks and cancer, is another example. Error wasn't considered a disease, so it wasn't listed as the cause of death, and so it wasn't identified as something to be addressed with the same urgency as diseases. Again - how one sees the world, classifies what one sees, affects profoundly what one notices, and thus the options available for making effective changes. An excerpt:
"The CDC currently has no good way of tracking deaths that result from medical mistakes, the authors wrote. The agency’s statistics are pulled from the International Classification of Diseases codes that appear on death certificates. These codes were instituted in 1949 and do not include any that indicate a death was the result of a mistake in the hospital."
All three examples involve a mental picture of the world that tells the person (or group of people) what the important values are and what parts of the world to pay attention to. In each of these cases, those models left out very important aspects of the situations they were trying to improve. Thus their solutions were inadequate and even harmful.
Each of us filter the world around us with various models that focus on some things and block out other. I find no other explanation to why people watching the same presidential election, come to wildly different conclusions about whom to vote for. It's important to constantly be testing one's own models. It's also important to avoid simply dismiss the other guy as 'crazy,' but to try to understand the model he's using to rationally get to his very different conclusions. That's when communication and change can happen.
Here's Part 2, and a reminder - no Festival movies at the Bear Tooth today, but there are films at the Snow Goose, so don't go to the wrong venue. An * means the film is in competition. Here's the grid, with details below. Grid is screenshot, so no links. Go to the original here to get links for everything. For Saturday Part 1 - the morning and early afternoon, go here.
Since this is the second half of the day's grid, the locations got cut off.
Left is AK Experience Large, Middle is AK Experience small, Right is SNOW GOOSE
Animation Program* - All the animated films are in this program. I haven't seen it yet, but these usually have some of the most interesting films. And they're short, so if you don't like what you're watching, a better one will be soon. All the 'in competition' animated films are in this program. For more on each film, click here. 5pm AK EX Large No Greater Love - A military chaplain's movie about his work with the soldiers in war and going home. 5:30 pm AK EX small.
Where Do We Go From Here? - A 25 year old moves into an nursing home. 6pm Snow Goose.
Magic Utopia* - I saw this Thursday night and have some video of the co-directors during the Q&A that I haven't had time to put up yet. This is a beautiful film, but definitely NOT a Hollywood film. A lot of loving attention is paid to details. Art is part of the fabric of this film. And strange things happen - levitation, a phone call from a dead person. But I'd note, they played the trailer for Die Hard before this film, and there's nothing more unreal in this film than there is in Die Hard. If you're looking for a strong plot line and plenty of action, skip this film. If you want to see the kind of artistic film you can't normally see, then this is for you. 7pm AK EX Large
Love Between The Covers* - I haven't seen this documentary yet. It didn't get the audience I expected when it first played. It's an exploration of romance novels and novelists, why they aren't taken seriously, and why they are such an important part of the fiction market. I'm told this is a serious film to be watched. And I'm looking forward to seeing it. 8pm AK EX Small They Look Like People - Here's the blurb:
"Suspecting that those around him are actually malevolent shape-shifters, a troubled man questions whether to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself." 8pm Snow Goose
Living With The Dead - I still have some of my mom's ashes. Does that mean I can relate to this film? The blurb:
"Max McLean is eighteen years old and can't get out of bed. Since her boyfriend Adam killed himself over a year ago, Max has been using sex, drugs, and parties to ignore the pain until one day she wakes up in a hospital, haven taken a nearly lethal dose of sleeping pills. While being haunted by visions of Adam, Max runs away from home and ventures into the forest with a bizarre but endearing boy named Ish."
As you can see, I can't post the trailer here, but just go to the link below. 9pm AK EX Large
Billie Holiday was born 8 months before Frank Sinatra who was born a week before Edith Piaf.
It's always interesting to consider at all the folks who were born in the same year. We don't normally think about famous people in terms of their birth year cohorts. As kids, had they been in the same school, the months they were born in would have mattered quite a bit. And it would be interesting to know which ones would have been friends. How many actually got to meet each other? How many were good friends?
Three of these folks born 100 years ago in 2015 appear to still be alive - Herman Wouk the novelist who wrote the WW II novel The Caine Mutiny, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Charles Townes who was part of the team that created laser beams, and banker David Rockefeller and could have their 100th birthdays in 2015.
Some of the best known are singers Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and Billy Holiday. Also best known are actors Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, and Anthony Quinn. There's Moshe Dayan and guitarist Les Paul.
Sargent Shriver, as the first director of the Peace Corps, has special meaning for me. And I actually got to meet Nobel Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller in the Anchorage museum when we were both waiting for our wives. [UPDATE See Oct 17, 2015 post, Miller's 100th Birthday, with Alaska connections in Death of a Salesman.]
We've got some heavy thinkers like philosophers Roland Barthes and Thomas Merton.
*Picture sources at bottom of post
The women, not many, are all entertainers.
I cherry picked the names from NNDB which has a much longer list. And most of the links go to NNDB. I've sorted this table by the age they lived to. It's always interesting (and a little creepy) to think about why some people live short lives and others long ones. I know Thomas Merton was electrocuted in a hotel shower in Bangkok in 1968. I was in Thailand at that time too, but didn't know anything about him then.
And there are some who are there simply because they were big names and their roles have had some influence on American culture like Barbara Billingsley - June Cleaver, the mother on Leave It To Beaver - and Lorne Greene, the patriarch of Bonanza.
There are several Nobel Prize winners, no US presidents (but a Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart), and at least one villain - Augusto Pinochet.
