AIFF2024: Opening Night, "Bob Trevino Likes It" Was A Crowd Pleaser

The Bear Tooth was packed.  The two new festival directors, Pat McGee and Adam Linkenhelt,  greeted the audience.  

Film maker Tracie Laymon was introduced, and then we saw Bob Trevino Likes It.

A 20 something woman whose mom was gone when she was young and whose dad, Bob Trevino, seems to be always disappointed with her.  

She looks up Bob Trevino on Facebook and befriends another one - not her dad.  The movie then focuses on their relationship.  He and his wife lost a baby years ago, and she needs a father.  He insists he is not her father, but they can be friends.  

On the one hand this was a small film - it looked closely at a few people and their struggles to connect with others and themselves.  But it was also a big film up on that screen.  Nothing pretentious, nothing glitzy.  Just a human story.  I didn't see any actors - the characters were real.  I heard more than one audience member say they would give it a ten out of five.  

Although the credits said it was purely a work of fiction, when Tracie got up on stage after the movie for Q&A, she let us know it was a fictionalized version of her own story.  Several of people said they 'knew' one character or another, that they were that character.  

This is the type of film that film festivals are for.  It was Tracie's first feature length film.  Below, she's talking with audience members after the Q&A was over. 

And here she's talking with three young film makers.  On the right is AIFF Board Chair, Rich Curtner.

I did an overview of the Saturday films schedule here.  

I'll try to get up something on Sunday tomorrow, but I'll also be watching more films.  

Subbing In San Francisco- USS Pampanito

The grandkids had contradictory ideas about  where they wanted to go yesterday.  She was more willing, but he adamantly didn't want to go to the Children's Creativity Museum.  

I googled 'San Francisco for kids' and pointed out that we could go visit a submarine.  Immediate mood change.  

So we got the 28 bus and rode it to Fisherman's Wharf.  

The USS Pampanito SS-383 is a WWII Balao Class Fleet Submarine.

There were something like 80 men aboard, and a sign outside said they were gone for long periods of time without a shower.  But on the tour we saw two showers.  One for the crew and one for the officers.  My granddaughter asked about that after the tour.  The lady said that the men who worked in the engine room and got oily and the cooks got to take showers, as well as the officers.  But water had to be rationed.  

Q:  Couldn't they use saltwater?

A:  When they surfaced, and it was safe, the men could just jump into the water.

Sleeping quarters for the crew.  There was one bed for three crew members since two were always on duty.  

This was the kitchen for the crew!

I saved this image below at higher resolution, but I still don't think you can read it.  So here's a link to a site on How Submarines Work.  It has a better animated version of how it takes on water to dive.

From the lower part of the sign below: 

"The United States submarines and the men who served on them represented less than 1.6% of America's al naval force during WWII, yet was responsible for sinking 55% of Japanese naval and merchant marine flees.  This extraordinary record was nt without cost.  Almost 23% of the submarine force was lost, comprising more than 3.500 men and 52 submarines."

Two subs were lost on October 24, 1944 and another on October 25.  The last one was lost on August 6, 1945 - the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, three days before the Japanese surrendered.  

The kids enjoyed the visit to the sub a lot.  And we kept them occupied on and around Fisherman's Wharf for several hours before getting the bus back home.  

A benefit of the 28 bus is that it stops, along the way, at the Golden Gate Bridge visitor center. 

$229 Million Settlement Is More Than 1/3 Of Santa Monica's Budget For Sex Offenses

The Richard Winton in the LA Times writes this week: (the link should be accessible) 

"This week, Santa Monica settled more lawsuits, bringing its total payout to $229.285 million — the most costly single-perpetrator sexual abuse disbursement for any municipality in the state."

Imagine what Santa Monica could have done for poor families, for the homeless, for schools, for health care, for $229 million.  That's more than 1/3 of the total Santa Monica budget for 2022-2023!

From the City of Santa Monica, 2022:

"The total adopted budget for the City for FY 2022-23 is $665.4 million."

There's a lot to untangle in this story.  I've got other posts in draft form lined up, but this one tugs at a number of issues I've been mulling over.  With good administration, this shouldn't happen. With good accountability mechanisms this shouldn't have happened for so long.  There are ways to, if not totally prevent such things, certainly to minimize their impact.   But there are also other societal issues that need to be addressed, particularly how we deal with pedophiles.  So let's look at some of the issues here.

1.  The Cost of poor oversight

One study said it was $3 billion over the last ten years.  That's just police!  That's an average of $300 million per year.  But I'm guessing with this single, one quarter of a billion dollar settlement, almost the average annual cost reported in this study, either that $3 billion figure is low, or awards are getting higher.  

But the cost isn't just in money.  The costs include:

• impacts on the lives of people who were harmed by the police and others.  In the Santa Monica case over 200 kids have reported the employee abused them.  Eighty were part of the settlement
• impacts on public safety since police were were spending time abusing citizens instead of protecting them, when people are wrongly convicted, the actual perpetrator isn't apprehended
• impacts on trust in government - among those abused and their families and among the general public when these crimes and settlements are publicized
• opportunity costs - the costs of things this money could have done (though one of the reports says most of this comes from insurance companies, which means all other organizations pay higher insurance rates, and I'd guess it spills over to the rest of us paying car, health, and other insurance

Here's another NPR piece looking at these issues.

2.  Why we don't see  

Most people see what they want to see.  

"The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. For example, if someone is presented with a lot of information on a certain topic, the confirmation bias can cause them to only remember the bits of information that confirm what they already thought."

We also have a truth bias.  Certainly honest people have a tendency to assume others are honest as well. (And there is evidence that most people are basically honest.)

So adding these two tendencies together, we tend to discount indicators of trouble and hold on to more positive interpretations of the behavior we see.  Especially of a person we've known and respected over the years.  "Nah, he couldn't have done that." 

And the people whose behavior is problematic are often (I'm guessing here) quite capable of giving us believable stories to explain away the problems.  This is why it's often a good idea to have outsiders, people who don't know the people involved,  come in to investigate problems.  

But we also have negative biases.  People who complain might be part of an out group - many of the kids in the Santa Monica case were from poor, immigrant families whose parents might fear deportation if they report and are less likely to be believed if they report.  

Most people, I would argue, take a long time before they realize that something is seriously wrong.  And then it takes a long time to report it.  How long did it take you to acknowledge that your (car, toilet, spouse) had a problem.   Then once you accepted it, how long to take action to fix it.

"But his biggest claim to fame was his work as a volunteer in the Police Activities League, where, beginning in the late 1980s, he worked with boys and girls in the nonprofit’s after-school program.

Uller was a familiar face at the PAL center that served Santa Monica’s Latino neighborhoods, often traveling in a police vehicle and befriending generations of youths.

It took decades to uncover that Uller was a sexual predator, the center of a stunning series of crimes that destroyed the lives of children and exposed grave questions as to why it took so long for authorities to uncover what he was doing."

3.  Why why don't act when we do see

Humans seem to have a basic loyalty built in to one's 'group.'  Betraying family, friends, and community (church, work group, etc.) are seen as moral violations and we have lots of negative names for people who do that - snitch, tattletale, traitor, stool-pigeon, etc.  Among law enforcement agencies, this is often known as "the blue wall of silence."

Competing against that loyalty, we have the Rule of Law - a set of moral expectations for people living in a community, in a society.  

When group loyalty comes in conflict with rule of law, individuals face a moral quandary.  Which set of rules should one follow?  We recognize this in the law with rules that allow spouses to not testify against each other, that ban nepotism and other forms of conflict of interest.  I'd argue that the group loyalty is built into our genes, our emotional make up.  The rule of law is something we learn logically.  And strong emotion generally beats out logic.  

“You have to understand in this liberal city, this is a Black and brown part of the city, and no one in the government was watching out for our kids. The Pico neighborhood was marginalized in that era,” said De la Torre, noting that Uller’s abuse occurred “under the shield of law enforcement” and “not one person lost a job” in response to the oversight.

Reporting people in our in-group for breaches of the rule of law  has real, immediate consequences on our families, our social circle, and even on our employment.  

This conflict keeps many from speaking up, even when they see wrong doing.  If you've ever lied to protect a friend, a family member, or someone else you have a close bond with, you understand what I'm talking about.  

3.  When Good Employees Also Do Bad

Seeing wrongdoing becomes particularly difficult when

• the employee is otherwise exemplary in their job performance

"In nearly three decades as a civilian employee with the Santa Monica Police Department and the city, Eric Uller was considered a standout public servant who won awards for his technological innovations."

• has work activities where they work independently, where supervision is not close - such as working with youth after school. (I should mention I was an after school playground director at an elementary school to help pay for college, and I was usually alone with the kids, without supervision. No, I didn't abuse that independence, and I suspect most people don't.)

4.  How the US deals with 'wrong' sex

 Right now in the US, there probably aren't many people considered lower than pedophiles. Gay sex used to have a similar stigma (which, given all the anti-trans laws were seeing introduced across the US now), isn't completely gone either.  Sex and marriage between people of different races was also illegal.  Despite a US Supreme Court ruling banning such laws, 

"As of February 3, 2021, seven states still required couples to declare their racial background when applying for a marriage license, without which they cannot marry. The states are Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota (since 1977),[42] New Hampshire, and Alabama."

There are good reasons for our laws against adults having sex with children, though the lines get blurry as the age of the child gets higher and the age of the adult gets lower.  There's no question about why a 30 year old shouldn't have sex with a nine year old.  Yet according to NBC news in 2019:

"Idaho and California are not alone in not having a minimum marriage age. A majority of states, which issue marriage licenses, allow 16- and 17-year-olds to marry, a few allow 14-year-olds, and 13 states have no minimum marriage age as of September. Before 2016 — when Virginia became the first state to put its marriage age into law — more than half of the states had no minimum marriage age fixed by statute."

While it appears there are requirements for parental or court approval, it does appear that there are no minimum ages in these states.  I would guess that the proponents for allowing  young marriage often argue that pregnant girls should be allowed to marry the fathers - but I didn't look that up and could be wrong.  

My point in all this is that some sexual preferences are seen as evil while others are perfectly ok. (Though for many, still, sex outside of marriage is frowned on.)  

People don't choose at some point in their lives to be sexually stimulated by one type of sexual encounter or another.  Some argue some attractions are genetic.  Some argue that sexual preferences are based on early sexual encounters.  

People with heterosexual preferences would appear to be the luckiest.  These are what our society condones.  While some people frown on any sex out of marriage, heterosexual sex among the consenting, unmarried seems to be alive and well.   The kinkier the sex and the more people will disapprove.  As people's preferences stray from heterosexual, single partner sex, there is more disapproval.  

But imagine if a person were forbidden from having unmarried heterosexual sex and punished if they did.  Buzzweed lists a number of ways women have been punished in the US, some of which involved sexual acts.

For many people the sexual urge is very powerful, even irresistible.  I suspect that is probably the case of people who view child pornography and who engage in sex with children.  I would only request that people who have been in situations where they could not resist their sexual urges with another person, consider what it would have been like if that other person were legally a child.  Or for people who couldn't resist opening a porn site and watching porn that turned them on.  

I'm not defending pedophiles.  But simply labeling them monsters and locking them up forever is not a good way to reduce pedophilia.  I'm only suggesting that such urges can be hard to control.  And many such relationships that are considered taboo today, have in different periods of time been acceptable.  And sexual practices condoned today were in past times seen as evil.  

But we've evolved in our beliefs that sex should be consensual.  We've evolved in our beliefs that people in positions of authority have a power in the sexual relationship that makes consent, at best, a morally difficult determination.  

And we believe that adults having sex with young children is, without question, non consensual and also an example of an unbalanced power relationship.  

Child pornography is a problem because children have been exploited to produce the images.  Is viewing drawings of child sex as viewing photos and videos?

If AI could produce child pornography (I suspect it already can and does) without any actual children being involved, would that be ok?  Some will argue that such pornography would lead to actual sexual encounters.  But we really don't know how many viewers of child pornography actually go out and find victims.  

My goal here is to raise the question of whether there are ways to recognize some people's sexual attraction to children, even let them indulge in pornography that didn't exploit actual children, and also figure out ways to protect children from sexual predators?  

The person in this article excelled in some aspects of his job.  But he had a taboo sexual attraction to children.  What do you think his options were to seek help from a counselor?  In many situations people who professionally learn about child abuse are mandated to report that to the authorities.  

If this were not such a reviled and taboo attraction, would this employee have been able to seek and get counseling and treatment that would have helped him deal with his inappropriate attractions?  Psych Central says:

"Pedophilic disorder treatment options include medication, hormone, and psychosocial therapies. “Stigma often discourages people from seeking help, but resources are available."

Most mental health problems are stigmatized making it difficult for people to seek help.  Pedophilia  is probably one of the most stigmatized.  

That leads me to offer a few options for reducing sex between adults and children.

Some ways to lessen the incidence of work related pedophilia:

1. General education to let people know that there are treatments for people sexually attracted to children and reducing the stigma connected to it so people are more likely to seek such treatment  (I realize that this is a long term solution, since people with more common, more visible mental health problems also avoid getting help because of the stigma involved.)
2. Education in schools that teaches children how to recognize inappropriate touch, acts of grooming, and steps to take when they encounter such behavior.  Erin Merrin came to Alaska in 2015 and got such a program (Erin's Law) adopted, despite the obstacles set by then Senator Dunleavy, under the guise of 'parental rights.'  Now Governor Dunleavy is still using 'parents rights' as a cover for trying to weaken Erin's Law.  Erin's Law has been adopted in a number of states and seems like one of the more promising ways to reduce pedophilia, by educating the potential victims. 
3. Increased vigilance for situations where children are vulnerable to predatory adults - situations where adults work with children such as playgrounds, social services that care for children, recreational activities such as sports and Boy Scouts.  
4. Changing the laws that give public employees immunity for lapses at work.  There do need to be protections against lawsuits or people wouldn't become public servants.  I think the bulk of monetary punishment still needs to be born by the agency.  But individuals who make serious mistakes, who don't report abuse they know about (not just sex related) should also have some monetary consequences.  

That's a start.  I'm sure others can think of other ways to do this sort of work.  

Bearings And Sunshine - And Some Oak Park Houses

We're in Chicago/Oak Park, Illinois visiting a long time friend (we were roommates in Peace Corps training over 50 years ago) and J's brother who we haven't seen since well before the pandemic.  We arrived Wednesday evening, on a cloudy night.  My internal compass wasn't working.  The next day the clouds were low and leaking.  I just couldn't sense north or south, east or west.  

Then this morning I pulled up the shades.  

Blue sky and sunshine!  When we went out I was able to figure out directions much easier knowing my shadow was generally toward the north.  

We went off for a walk which gave me a chance to take some pictures of a few houses and other objects that caught my eye.  I'd note, for people who don't know anything about Oak Park, it's the town where Frank Lloyd Wright lived and had his studio.  There are a number of his houses and other structures in Oak Park.  

This is a WW I monument in the park next to the public library.  Monuments like this one glorify war by suggesting all who fought in the war were heroes.  They give young boys and men the idea that fighting for your country is noble and makes you a hero.  There are times when that is true.  I think those fighting in Ukraine now to keep Ukraine free from Russian conquest are noble.  

But far too many wars are fought to protect business interests or access to raw materials in other countries.  The only people who always benefit from war are arms dealers - whether guns, tanks, planes, and the people who supply all the needs of soldiers.  Those folks don't worry about the people - civilians and soldiers - killed or wounded or psychologically damaged.  They don't even care about the destruction that war causes.  In fact, they may even get contracts to reconstruct the cities their products destroyed.  

Kids around the United States and other parts of the world tend to see a lot more statues honoring the military and war than statues that treat doctors, teachers, artists, or scientists as role models whose paths are worthy of following.  

The sun was nice today, but the temperature never got more than mid-30s, The wind today was not much more than a breeze.   Also got to do some surrogate cramping today as we picked up my friends' granddaughter from pre-school and wandered around through parks and neighborhoods until her mom got home.  She decided she was going to eat my knee and so I said I'd eat her ear.  Five yer old ears are the tastiest I said.  And she responded without a pause - I'm four.  (She's five.) We did have fun.  

Still Alive - Grandkids Keeping Me Busy

 I've got several posts to put up, but no time.  We drove up from LA along the coast to SF.  The big highlight was Elephant Seals at a beach just north of Cambria.  Lots of pictures coming eventually.  San Francisco is a great place to spend time with the kids.  Doing lots of walking.  There are Alcatraz pics to post - interesting but Elephant Seals so much better for the soul.  There was time with the kids at the Botanical Garden.  Went to Knife Shop Sharpening today, a garden shop, playground.  Tomorrow we're taking food offerings to monks at a Thai Buddhist temple nearby and then to the Cal Academy Science Center.  Here's one pic from driving around today.  Well two, to give it some context.

18th and Mission, San Francisco.

AIFF2022: Dealing With Dad and Bering Family Reunion

 Watching movies from noon until 8pm leaves me a little spacey.  The wifi was working today in the auditorium at the museum, but there just wasn't much time between events.  There were lots of short films during the day. Please excuse mistakes, it's late but I want to get this up already.

I'm finding I am mentally resurrecting an old evaluation standard for films:  

1. There are films that are technically well made 
2. There are films that have something important to say or to contribute
3. Films that do both 1 and 2 well
4. Films that do neither
5. And most films fall somewhere in the continuum of both those factors

Dealing With Dad did both 1 and 2 well.  The film is technically good enough to easily fit in on Netflix or another streaming channel.  The acting and pacing are all high quality. Yet it's much more than a slick formula film. It's a poignant story told with love and humor. 

What does it contribute? The director Tom Huang said after the film that the story is adapted from his own family experience with a domineering immigrant father who works hard so his kids can have a better life.   After Dad gets laid off and goes into a deep depression, the two older kids fly home to try to deal with this only to find that Mom and the 30 year old younger brother still living at home find life much easier now that Dad just stays in bed all day watching television.  The family reunion reveals old tensions among the siblings.  The younger brothers accuse the older sister of being a lot like Dad.  The younger brother has a long time crush on a high school friend who just returned from the Peace Corps, but is afraid to ask her out until the older sister older sisters him into asking her out. (That was the one part that didn't ring true to me - she had been in three or four different countries.  And while a volunteer can sign up for a second tour of duty after completing one, it's not common, and the way it was described in the film, she seemed to move around from country to country as part of her assignment.) The mother has already set up the middle son, who's having marital problems, with a date.  While there are dynamics that may be more common in a Chinese American family, the story is really a universal one.  It moved along quickly moving from heavy drama to humor and back seamlessly.  The humor wasn't added on, it was just part of the relationship.  Often it was funny to the audience, but often not to the characters themselves.  I think it was easier to watch than The Last Birds of Passage, but Birds, probably had a much weightier story to tell.  

The other full length film was the documentary Bering, Family Reunion.  Bering followed Etta Tall, an Inupiaq woman from Little Diomede as she searched for her relatives from Big Diomede.  These are two islands a few miles apart, Little D in Alaska and Big D in Russia.  Before WWII people from the two islands visited each other frequently and there were many family relations across the two islands.  The Soviet Union, at the beginning of WW II removed the islanders to the mainland and maid Bid D into a military base.  When Gorbachev and Reagan opened the border between Alaska and the Soviet Union, some of the first to travel across the border were Inupiats going to visit their relatives they hadn't seen in many years.  We see how the plans were made, how a family company that arranges arctic travel got asked to look for relatives when in Russia, and slowly how the reunion eventually comes to be.  This film involves families who were cut off from each other by war and geopolitics.  It considers culture, language, and people's undying compulsion to find their families.  A little slow at points, the film nevertheless has very high significance, documenting this story, a story that has been repeated around the world as national governments ignore indigenous and minority people's needs.  

The first question in my mind was "How did a Mexican film maker come to make this story?"  It just seemed odd.  And it was the first question asked of the woman who'd carried a list of names to Russia with her when she went to the Russian far-east, who answered questions after the film. She was a friend of the film director Lourdes Grobet (who passed away in July 2022) who wanted to make this film.  You can learn more about her at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia site where the film was show in October.

There were lots of shorts.  Some were well made.  Some told important stories. Some did both.  Some left me scratching my head.  I'll note a few that I reacted to most.

Queen Moorea had to be the most compelling, and one of the longest.  It told the story of a high school homecoming queen who was born with a genetic condition that made her different.  It wasn't clear to me exactly what her disability was (it was mentioned briefly I didn't catch it.)  The film was another with the theme of people who don't fit in.  Another audience member after the film said that people tend to categorize people with disabilities by the disability and that often keeps them from reaching their full potential.  This film portrayed Moorea was living up to her potential.  

Never Again Para Nadia - shows how the Jewish community in a Rhode Island prison town team up with the local Latino community to protest against immigrants being housed in a local prison.  To be clear, they are protesting that the prison is nearby, but that immigrants are being put into this private prisons for the financial gain of the prison owners and their shareholders.  The film documents the protest, a car driving through some protestors whose driver eventually gets acquitted.  It's an important record as far as it goes, but more statistics on the private prison and its profits and the numbers of immigrants housed in the prison.  

I liked Sunday With Monica - an interesting short story of a movie that left this viewer wanting to know more about.  I'm guessing this could be an early version of a future feature film.  The divorced father picks up his daughters from his ultra-orthodox Jewish ex-wife and takes them to meet his non-Jewish girlfriend who has horses and a riding rink.  One daughter is drawn to the horses and the other is thinking how Mom wouldn't approve.  

Gina is a brief portrait of a homeless woman in LA. We get to know this woman a little beyond what we might imagine of her if we just saw her on the street.  The Pastor who befriended Gina while handing out food to the homeless and eventually is impressed with Gina again reminds us not to judge people through our stereotypes, but to get to know them as people.  

Rain was a beautiful chocolate of a film - lots of beautiful animated images of rain and a little girl who plows through the puddles.  

And then there was Snowflakes another light animated film made for the Make A Wish Foundation, about a little girl with cancer just admitted into the hospital.  Another girl invites her to play but she's not in the mood, but does eventually get enticed.  It was all pretty innocuous, but I couldn't help being struck by the perfect faces - pretty lips, big eyes, and what appeared to me as lots of make-up. Someone connected to the film was there and answered questions.  My wife discouraged me from asking whether these perfect, make-upped images of very young little girls didn't perhaps send the wrong message.  So I didn't.  But someone else asked less directly about how the images of the little girls came about and we were told the animator determined that.  To be clear, their heads were shaved, but they were still model quality.  

Stepping Back In Time

 Flying from Anchorage to Seattle in October is like stepping back in time.  The flowers are still blooming profusely and it's light at 7am.

We're here helping out with child care and food prep and other such chores while my son-in-law is out of town for work, so my daughter can concentrate on her own work.

The last two days, J managed to get out of bed early enough to walk our granddaughter to school.  Today she got to sleep in while I was up at 6:45am.  

Once getting out of bed is accomplished, it is pure pleasure to walk with Z to school.  

Only a few late and hardy bloomers were still smiling in Anchorage when we left, that's not the case down here.  (We hear it snowed after we left.)  While I'm pretty sure the ones above are hydrangea, I'm not sure what the ones below are.  But their dainty beauty helps lift my heart so beset with human failures.  

My granddaughter took the picture below.  Since it's her shot, I didn't crop it, and she's in school now so she's not here to make it look the way she wants.  Perhaps she'll want to make an adjustment later.  

The Woman In Gold Has Special Meaning For Me

Bear with me as I wander a bit.  In the end I will recommend you watch Woman in Gold on Netflix.  

My mother used to send me clippings about a woman, Maria Altman,  in LA who was suing the Austrian government to win back paintings by Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis from her family, with the main attention on the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who was the beloved aunt of Maria Altman.

It turned out that Maria Altman was someone my mother knew.  My mom would shop at her small dress shop.  They became acquaintances, if not friends, because they had both fled the Nazis as young women and they both worked most of their lives. Sometimes my mom just related things Maria Altman told her about the progress (or lack of progress) in the proceedings to get back the paintings the Nazis stole from her wealthy family's Vienna house.  The problem was, the main painting was valued at an estimated $100 million and was considered the prize painting by an Austrian artist in the eyes of the Austrian government.

One of the ironies of the story is that this great Austrian painting so valued by the Austrians, is of a Jewish woman.  But her name was removed and the painting was called  Woman in Gold.

Because I'd been hearing about the lawsuit, when the movie was released in 2015, we immediately went to see it in Anchorage.  At that time, we were flying monthly to visit my mom who was then 93 and pretty much bedridden.  I really wanted her to see the film, but taking her to a theater would have been a real production.  

I'd been hearing about how good Netflix was and googled "Netflix, Woman in Gold" and got a page which suggested we could watch it there.  So that was when I signed up for Netflix.  But then when I searched for Woman in Gold, they didn't actually have it.  My initial experience with Netflix wasn't a good one.

However, there are other modern German language films which my mother and I did enjoy watching together on Netflix.  She died that July never having gotten to see this major film about someone who knew and whose story she had followed for years.  

I'd note another connection in the film.  The attorney Maria Altman engaged for this battle was  the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg the giant of 20th Century classical music..  Arnold Schoenberg had been a guest in Altman's family home in Vienna before he too fled to the United States and California.  My mother also knew this family, though she ever met Arnold.  My understanding is that they were either relatives or close friends of Melanie Swinburg who had been a stage actress in Vienna.  I knew her well because she became the baby nurse of my younger brother and remained a close family friend until her death.  Her crypt is with my family's in LA, next to my brother's, who died in an accident at the age of 23.  

So this film has lots of family connections as well as parallel family experiences, though Altman's family was fabulously wealthy in Vienna and my mother's father owned a modest men's clothing store in Dortmund, Germany.  

So when I saw that Woman in Gold was finally playing on Netflix this week, we watched it.  It was a very emotional experience for me for all the reasons mentioned above.  Plus Helen Mirren who plays Maria Altman looks and sounds like lots of women I knew growing up. And I'm a sucker for stories of great injustice being righted.  And, of course, I was sad again that my mother couldn't watch this film with us.  

One final example of how the film spoke to me - a more tangible one.  As a child, my parents would read to me, and translate from,  Struwwelpeter, a book with tales of very 'bōse' (something between naughty, wicked, and evil) little boys.  

The cover story is one I remember well - the boy who never cut his hair or fingernails.  The consequences for these behaviors was grim and perhaps tells us something about the German psyche.  For instance, the boy who sucks his thumb and is forbidden to suck it again, of course sucks it as soon as he is alone.  And it gets cut off with giant shears and blood dripping.  

I had a strange affection for this book.  If the intent was to scare little children into obeying their parents, it didn't work on me.  

At one point in the movie, when Mrs. Altman, at her  small home,  is trying to persuade Randy Schoenberg to take her case, he sees a copy of Struwwelpeter and picks it and tells her that he too was read the stories as a child.  

I'd brought the family copy of the book back from my mom's house last time we were there.

So, I'd recommend folks watch Woman In Gold if they have Netflix.  (Or if they find it elsewhere.)  

The scenes of the Nazis publicly  humiliating and beating Jews, breaking into their houses and stealing all their valuables, is a reminder  of what could happen here if Republicans don't let go of their obeisance to Trump and his calls for attacking those they disagree with. And if voters don't come out in droves to overcome the GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The mob that broke into the Capitol and tried to overthrow the election doesn't look that different from the Austrian citizens we see.  Well, actually the Austrians look rather reserved in comparison.  

Thank You Vin Scully For Making The World A Better Place

Before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, my dad and I would root for the Hollywood Stars, a Pittsburgh farm team, at Gilmore Field in Los Angeles, near the Pan Pacific and Farmers Market.  My dad was a very amateur artist and this picture of Gilmore Field was a birthday present the year the Dodgers moved to LA.

From then on it was the Coliseum to watch the Dodgers, and later Dodger Stadium*.  But most times it was Vin Scully over the radio.  I knew I enjoyed listening to him call the game.  He knew all the players' stats, stories of their personal lives, their training, and lots of other baseball trivia,  that he would weave together to make listening to a baseball game on the radio exciting.  And there was that voice.  He was like a family friend.   Many nights I had my radio under the cover to hear the end of the game when it was supposed to be off. And if you went to the game you would hear his voice echoing from transistor radios all around you.  

What I didn't know at the time was how special he was.  That came over the years as I grew up and moved off.  I'd come back and Vin Scully was still doing Dodger play-by-play.  And he was at it, it seemed, forever.  A part of my history kept alive by that voice calling plays.  Even my grandson has heard Vin Scully calling Dodger games live.

So thanks Vin Scully.  You enriched my life and millions of others for so many, many years.  

My main Scully years were all radio and I tried to find some audio to post here, but here's a complication of Scully calling different games on television.  Best I can do for now.  

*The story of Dodger Stadium is not one to be proud of.  It involved the displacement of an important community of Mexican-Americans near downtown LA.  

It's Been A Great, Busy Week With The Grandkids

A quick review of things we did.  

On the only day with any rain at all, we went downtown and walked the solar system from the sun to Mars, via the other planets on the way.  The next ones were too far away to walk.

There was a lot of time at the playground at Elderberry Park (where the Mars sign is), then off to watch people at Fish Creek, but folks said there fish weren't biting.  We went to the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service farm in Mountain View to pick up some veggies and a Burmese soup.

We hiked up the Wolverine Peak trail to just above tree line.  We saw a moose in the distance.  

They all enjoyed watching the power of the water in Campbell Creek from the bridge on that trail.  

Then we met old friends who were headed for a three day backpacking trip and walked part of the way along Powerline Pass near Glen Alps.  

We went to the botanical garden where I gave S my old camera and she took some great pictures.  (I'll put five stars under her pictures. Two stars for the pictures her brother took.)

*****

*****

Then on up the road to the Campbell Airstrip bridge where they rode their bikes.  They also dropped sticks into the water from one side of the bridge then raced over to see it come out the other side and down the creek til they couldn't see it any more.  

**

We made wishes before blowing the dandelion seeds.

Then yesterday, on their last full day here we headed south.  A short stop at McHugh Creek.

*****

Then to the Wild Animal Park.  I'd been there once, a long time ago, with a group.  Then it was all drive through.  Now you can walk or drive, but walking lets you see things you can't see driving.  

*****

And finally to Byron Glacier.  We've watched it shrink and shrink over the years.  But yesterday was a great day to visit.  It was shorts and t shirt weather and you could walk up the remaining ice.  There's a skeletal remains of snow and ice still on the mountain above.  This won't be here much longer, but the kids loved climbing up through the snow.  

That's some of the highlights.  There was a lot of biking too which they seem to truly love.  It was a good week sharing Alaska with the little ones (and their parents too.)  Sadly took them to the airport today.  

Grandkids Are Like Vitamins

 We've got two grandkids (and their parents) visiting since yesterday.  My phone weather app predicted that our glorious weather would end Sunday.  But it didn't.  Nor Monday.  Nor today.  Sunny,  short sleeve and pants weather.  Tested the borrowed bikes last night to go to the playground.  His is fine.  Hers has foot brakes and she tends to use her shoes instead of the brakes.  But otherwise she's a great rider.  Then an epic battle.  Though I did point out that we used to play just as well with paper and pencil. 

Today after a tour of the backyard, some time in sprinkler, we went to Kincaid.  They biked down the hill and we walked along and then down onto the beach,  The tide was very low.

We walked through the sandy part, to the rocky part, to the muddy part.  

Two sleeping vitamins on the way home.  Wonderful day.  Lots of fun.  

It's good to take a break from the world now and then.  Especially now.  

There are construction projects in the living room.

And I was told to find something on my computer.  I opened the paper and found this:

This And That, Ups And Downs - San Francisco And Seattle

 We're back on Bainbridge Island.  San Francisco was great.  We tried a new rental car option.  Actually we've used BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and buses in past trips, but we were going to different places over the four days, so a car seemed to make sense. Kyte is a company that delivers the car to you.  And they were cheaper.  Everything worked well except two things.

• They aren't allowed to deliver to the airport so they deliver to Daly City BART.  That's pretty close to the airport and sounded ok.  But it turns out it costs $9 per person one way from SFO to Daly City BART.  So we went to the information office in the airport to get senior BART passes.  In the past a $9 senior BART pass would get us into town and back, plus a trip to see friends in Oakland.  But they aren't selling them at the airport any more.  So the two roundtrips added almost $40 to the bill.
• We were a bit earlier than our appointment and the pick up site is listed as 500 John Daly Blvd.  Well, that includes the entire BART station and two parking lots.  Finding out where we were supposed to be was hard and the driver was late.  

This would be great if we needed to get the car at a residence or anywhere besides SFO.  

Overall, we had a great time visiting good friends on the Peninsula one night and staying with an old Thailand Peace Corps buddy I've known since 1966.  Saturday we walked to the top of Twin Peaks from his house and my son and the two grandkids met us up there.  We spent the rest of the day with them on a glorious sunny T-shirt warm day at Golden Gate Park.  

Twin Peaks involved lots of steps

And flowers - there's a bee in there, but the resolution is too low.  Sorry.

Cool trees.

And birds, like this hummingbird.

And this crow enjoying the view from Twin Peaks

Red tailed hawk?

And for my friend Jeremy, I take pictures of towers like this that interest him much more than the trees or the birds or even the view.  

We also looked at a couple of houses.  My son's family is growing out of the confines of a two bedroom apartment.  It's interesting to visit open houses, but the prices are depressing.  Everything is super staged with furniture, paintings plants.  I discovered it's useful to look behind things - the stagers use items to hide things they don't want you to see.  

Getting altitude is favorite of my grandson.  This was sunny Saturday.

Back in Golden Gate Park Sunday, but it was cloudy and windy and chilly.  That didn't stop the kids from having a great time.  

Monday was sunny again and we had more park time.  Even though it was a much smaller park, there was enough room to play monster and the kids were good at changing the rules if they thought they were going to get caught.  

Broken glass, from my experience, is not an uncommon sight in San Francisco.  This is at a bus stop.  

Dropping off the car was much easier than picking it up and we got to the airport with plenty of time.  An advantage to walking instead of taking the sky train is getting to see the art exhibits all through the terminals.  

Most of these Tabitha Soren pieces didn't excite me, but I did like "Emailed Kiss Goodnight".

This should be larger and clearer if you click on it.

Alison Saar's Flourish

Thought this was interesting.  This isn't far from where my son lives now.  Filmore near Geary.

Finally, we got to our gate and had some ramen.  And I also finally had some time for yesterday's Wordle.  So I started with RAMEN.  

I got two right - one green one yellow -  and I figured I'd try to go through the possible words and make it in two or three tries. 

But as I discovered when we got off the plane and onto the ferry in Seattle, that I'd used the wrong letter as the yellow (A instead of R) one.  An almost totally wasted turn given the two words I'd boiled it down to - ABBEY and ALLEY.  For the first time I got it only on the sixth round.  Bummer.  

But I made up for it today with 99.99% luck.  

Meanwhile, it was 54˚ F in the condo when we got back last night.  A good part of the trip was being away while we waited for the plumber to fix the boiler.  And they called this morning to see if it was ok to come earlier.  YES!

But then they reported it needed parts they had to order.  The fireplace and the two space heaters we got have gotten it into the low 60s.  Oh, and there was fresh snow on the ground.  The weather app reported 32F on Bainbridge and 40F in Anchorage.

So, that's all you missed while I've been gramping instead of blogging.

Oh, my book club met last night.  It was a book I just couldn't finish. Reading it wasn't fun nor was it telling me anything I needed to know.  I didn't want to keep reading.  But that's a different post.