The Birds

The Birds
1963
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette



My Friend Amy's The Summer of Hitchcock




The first time I saw The Birds it terrified me much more than Psycho.

What are the chances I'd ever be checking into a run down motel off the beaten path where I'd meet a disturbed mamma's boy? Not good.

What are the chances I'd ever see birds all flocking together in great numbers on telephone wires or a school jungle gym, for example? Almost every blessed day.

That is what is so terrifying. You see birds "innocently" hanging out in a flock daily. By the time I watched Psycho for the first time, I knew there was a terrifying shower scene, but even knowing the birds are going to attack doesn't really prepare you for the reality. It's the flocking, the grouping. We expect to see flocks of birds and we normally ignore them. We know birds hang around in gangs, but how can we tell if or when these gangs might decide to turn to the dark side? I think The Birds, although it does have some blood and gore, is another good example of the story also helping to create the suspense and horror more than the actual blood.

My nephew, Movie Dude, often talks about remaking old classic movies (or even not so old or classic movies). Looking at the movie today and knowing about the many advances made in special effects, I'll admit that the bird attacks don't always look very real. What I'm afraid of in any remake, however, is that the blood, gore, and special effects will be the main emphasis, thus losing all that delicious suspense. Suspense, like in the scene where Tippi is sitting outside the school and every time the camera angle includes the jungle gym behind her... more birds. I feel the terror when the kids are running down the street. I'm not sure if more blood or realistic bird attacks would be an improvement. I've always found the birds terrifying enough just as Hitchcock filmed it.

Germs

Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War

by Judith Miller, William Broad, Stephen Engelberg

Simon & Schuster, September 2001

hardcover, 384 pages (including notes, bibliography, index)

ISBN-13: 9780684871585

nonfiction

very highly recommended

Synopsis

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad of The New York Times uncover the truth about biological weapons and show why bio-warfare and bio-terrorism are fast becoming our worst national nightmare.

Among the startling revelations in Germs:

* How the CIA secretly built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb, alarming some officials who felt the work pushed to the limits of what is permitted by the global treaty banning germ arms.
* How the Pentagon embarked on a secret effort to make a superbug.
* Details about the Soviet Union's massive hidden program to produce biological weapons, including new charges that germs were tested on humans.
* How Moscow's scientists made an untraceable germ that instructs the body to destroy itself.
* The Pentagon's chaotic efforts to improvise defenses against Iraq's biological weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
* How a religious cult in Oregon in the 1980s sickened hundreds of Americans in a bio-terrorism attack that the government played down to avoid panic and copycat strikes.
* Plans by the U.S. military in the 1960s to attack Cuba with germ weapons.

My Thoughts:

Germs relates frightening information about biological weapons not only today but in recent historical context and clearly shows why this threat continues to justify attention today. Since this book was released in Sept. 2001, we know we are, or were, taking terrorist attacks seriously, but perhaps we are failing to continue to stress the mass chaos biological weapons would cause. Much of the information found in this book is available in other books too so it's easily documented. There has been some discrediting of author Miller since the publication, but none of that deals with the biological weapons programs the Soviets were working on which are covered extensively here. The bottom line is really that we need to be vigilant in seriously considering the threat of biological weapons today. very highly recommended

Quotes:

In December 1997, six years after the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon announced that it had decided to vaccinate its 2.4 million soldiers and reservists against anthrax. opening

We quickly learned that the anthrax decision was part of a much larger government effort to combat what officials believed was a growing danger from germ weapons. pg. 13

By the end of the outbreak, almost a thousand people had reported symptoms to their doctors or the hospital; 751 were confirmed to have salmonella, making it the largest outbreak in Oregon's history. pg. 19-20

More than a year would pass after the outbreak before Oregonians learned that Rajneeshees had poisoned the town. pg. 23

Such progress had a price, of course. Painstakingly, the germ-development program at Fort Detrick had tested prospective germ weapons on nearly a thousand American soldiers, in sealed chambers and the wilds of the Utah desert. Reaching beyond the military, it had exposed prisoners at the Ohio State Penitentiary, where volunteers were carefully monitored. Clandestinely, it also sprayed American cities with mild germs to investigate the likely impact of deadly pathogens. pg. 35

Germs and warfare are old allies. More than two millennia ago, Scythian archers dipped arrowheads in manure and rotting corpses to increase the deadliness of their weapons. Tatars in the fourteenth century hurled dead bodies foul with plague over the walls of enemy cities. British soldiers during the French and Indian War gave unfriendly tribes blankets sown with smallpox. The Germans in World War I spread glanders, a disease of horses, among the mounts of rival cavalries. The Japanese in World War II dropped fleas infected with plague on Chinese cities, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of people.

Despite occasional grim successes, germ weapons have never played decisive roles in warfare or terrorism. Unintended infection is another matter. pg. 37-38

"We used to think about the Chinese and the Russians. And if we had known what they were really doing, we would have worked harder." pg. 65

Douglas J. Feith, a senior Pentagon official, told the House Intelligence Committee in August 1986 that Soviet scientists had begun rearranging germs to develop "new means of biological warfare." pg. 82

Graveyard

In the different areas of the country I have lived in as a child and adult, children have always played special games of tag under various names. The children always think that everyone knows their game of tag by the name they have given it. For us, for a time while living in Omaha, Nebraska, that game of tag was called Graveyard.

Graveyard was always played at night during the summer. It required running around our house, starting and ending in the light at the front of the house. The person who was “it” would be in the unlit, dark backyard, lurking, waiting to tag the kids running around the house. This would be the graveyard part of our game. Once tagged you would have to sit on the back step, under the swing set, or whatever area we had designated as the graveyard.

This was a noisy game. Knowing from walking my dogs how deadly quiet my current neighborhood is at night, I wonder why the neighbors put up with Graveyard. Of course, many of them would have had kids participating, but this was a late night game that could not start before 9:30 and normally closer to 10. It “had” to be played during the summer and in the dark. We would have been allowed to play it for at least half an hour. Running around in the dark almost guarantees screaming will be involved. I have a feeling that if my husband, the Snack King, and I decided to whoop it up now and make as much noise as we did back then, we’d get the police called on us for disturbing the peace.

Graveyard was also a game that was ripe for participants to incur injuries. Honestly, a game that requires children to run around a house in the dark almost screams “Be prepared for pain. You will trip and fall, or crash into someone else.” Even now my sister, Hipee (high powered executive) recalls it as being a fun game, as do I. But then I also remember crashing into people and tripping.

Now my brother, ED (El Dictator), was often “it”. I think ED enjoyed running up tagging people and scaring them in the dark. Much like Killer Tricycles, being it during Graveyard put ED in a position of power and control, only this time it was over many neighborhood kids. I seem to recall ED enjoyed doing some pretty vigorous tagging too – more of a smack-down time. Perhaps this is what made Graveyard a fun, daring game because we were really afraid of ED catching and painfully tagging us.

I don’t know if our younger siblings, sister Whiy (whiny) and later PB (pretty boy) ever really experienced a vigorous, serious game of tag played with many people. Of course, by the time they would have been ready to learn Graveyard, we were older. Additionally, in the neighborhood we were living in at that time there definitely would have been complaints over the late night noise.

I guess we could still try to introduce Graveyard to them at some family reunion, but I don’t know how that would work out. For the game to be fun we’d need a lot of participants. Everyone would have to play. I know the much younger PB, along with all our children, could run circles around the rest of us. And although Hipee and I might give it a go and do our best, Whiy would likely try to beg out of the game. Of course, ED’s getting old now and we could probably all relatively easily escape his clutches. Unless someone yells, “Coffee!” or “Peanut butter balls!” I don’t think he even runs anymore. It sort of makes playing Graveyard pointless, once the thrill of victory and agony of defeat have been eliminated…. Unless, of course, we were holding the coffee or peanut butter balls and ED had to chase us to get them. Hmmmm… thinking, thinking….

Roots

Roots by Alex Haley

Dell, 1976

massmarket paperback, 729 pages

ISBN-10: 0440174643

family saga

very highly recommended

From the Publisher

One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America's past.

Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy, which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly on the topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether Roots is fact or fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he addresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for plagiarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots were taken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ultimately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case.

My thoughts:

Roots is very highly recommended. I really should have read it sooner .

I'm not going to address the plagiarism and all the other controversies surrounding Roots and Alex Haley's genealogy research, other than to say that it reinforces the absolute necessity for writers to credit any and all sources they use for their books, even fiction, and there would have been no shame in admitting parts of his lineage were true and parts were unknown speculation. I read Roots knowing about the issues surrounding it and still would say that it is a book well worth reading.

Quotes:

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte. opening

While Binta planted her onions, yams, gourds, cassava, and bitter tomatoes, little Kunta spent his days romping under the watchful eyes of the several old grandmothers who took care of all the children of Juffure who belonged to the first kafo, which included those under five rains of age. pg. 18

No matter how bad anything was, Nyo Boto would always remember a time when it was worse. pg. 21

Kunta's home-training had been so strict that, it seemed to him, his every move drew Binta's irritated finger-snapping - if, indeed, he wasn't grabbed and soundly whipped. pg. 31

That afternoon the harmattan wind began. It wasn't a hard wind, nor even a gusty wind, either of which would have helped. Instead it blew softly and steadily, dusty and dry, day and night, for nearly half a moon. As it did each time it came, the constant blowing of the harmattan wore away slowly at the nerves of the people of Juffure. And soon Parents were yelling more often than usual at their children, and whipping them for no good reason. pg. 57

So frightened was Lamin by his father's talk of slave-taking and white cannibals that he awakened Kunta several times that night with his bad dreams. pg. 73

"When you return home," said the kintango, "you will begin to serve Juffure as its eyes and ears. You will be expected to stand guard over the village - beyond the gates as lookouts for toubob [white man] and other savages, and in the fields as sentries to keep the crops safe from scavengers. You will also be charged with the responsibility of inspecting the woman's cooking pots - including those of your own mothers - to make sure they are kept clean, and you will be expected to reprimand them most severely if any dirt or insects are found inside." The boys could hardly wait to begin their duties. Pg. 123

Kunta wondered if he had gone mad. Naked, chained, shackled, he awoke on his back between two other men in a pitch darkness full of steamy heat and sickening stink and a nightmarish bedlam of shrieking, weeping, and vomiting. pg. 166

To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within Roots is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents. Those documents along with the myriad textural details....have come from years of intensive research.....Since I wasn't around....by far most of the dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what my researching led me to plausibly feel took place. pg. 726-727

Nest building

It was a giant work of art, a true thing of beauty that was intricately constructed out of natural materials. There were really only two problems with it. First, it was a giant bird’s nest of the likes you’ve only imagined, and second it was built on a neighbor’s patio - a neighbor who had moved out and was trying to sell their house.

I don’t know who first thought of it, but one summer my best friend, Scott, and I decided to build a bird’s nest. It was going to be a giant bird’s nest constructed out of mud, grass, clay, sticks, leaves, and any other natural materials we could find. When trying to find the perfect spot to construct our bird’s nest, we decided the best place, the most private, secluded site would be the patio of the house next door. It had a nice thick hedge all around the back yard for privacy. The house was empty, for sale, and quiet. In short, it was an ideal location.

This was before Sesame Street, so it’s not like we were thinking about Big Bird. If anything we would have been thinking a robin, at first, and then maybe an eagle, just because, or perhaps, eventually some prehistoric bird. I know the size of the nest to begin with was quite modest, the size of a normal bird's nest, only much sturdier and heavier because of all the mud and clay we used. Then Scott and I got busy and that nest building project took on a life of it’s own. It sort of helped us see how other big construction projects may have started with just an idea to build something nice, like a pyramid shaped marker for example, and then suddenly became a huge undertaking that required slave labor.

There were no slaves around, unless we talked younger siblings into helping, and we really only trusted each other with our top-secret bird’s nest project. This meant that we had to rely on each other for the construction. The thing is that we were both hard workers and very diligent and industrious. While we kept tirelessly working on it, that bird’s nest kept growing and growing. Eventually it was large enough that we could sit in it, if we wanted to. It was magnificent. It was a superb feat of construction and imagination. We were very proud of our accomplishment.

Just like many things that are truly so good and great that you can’t keep them a secret, our top-secret bird’s nest project was discovered. I wish I could tell you that it was found by a naturalist, or art gallery owner, or Marlin Perkins and the Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom film crew, but, alas, we had to get discovered by a realtor, a realtor who was not amused or in awe of our great summer art project. No, this was a realtor who wanted the mess cleaned up right away. This was a realtor with a hose and a shovel and an attitude.

Before we could even confess that we had made the huge, gigantic bird’s nest, it was no more. I wish someone had tried to find out whose nest it was and asked if we wanted pictures taken of it before it’s demise, but I don’t think that thought crossed anyone’s mind. Great artists are often misunderstood. The cursed realtor cleaned it up, and at least a month’s worth of work was gone, hauled away in several large garbage cans, I would imagine, depriving the world of something that was truly unique and grand.

Psycho

Psycho

1960
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh

My friend Amy's the Summer of Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock in the transcript for the documentary "The Making of Psycho":

Good evening. I have some news that will delight you. Murder is not dead. I do not refer to the ones splashed all over the front pages. Those are in such bad taste. I refer to those exquisite murders that have a touch of the bizarre and which take fiendish ingenuity to solve. Those are alive and well. One will be presented for your shivering delight immediately.

I was surprised to learn that Hitchcock wanted to film Psycho in black and white because he wanted to make a low budget movie for under a million dollars (it only cost $800,000 to make). Additionally, he felt it would be too bloody in color. It's still impressive how he made the shower scene horrific and memorable without resulting to the gory scenes you would likely see in most other horror movies. Psycho still proves that in a good horror movie the gore and violence should always be secondary to the real terror found in the telling of the story.
Since I have seen Psycho several times before, I was also quite aware of how the musical score by Bernard Herrman really influences you when you watch the action in the whole movie. At the beginning, when Marion is running, the music makes you feel hurried, nervous, tense that something is about to happen, for example with the police officer following her. Compared to the tension created by the cop, Norman seems socially awkward, but safe.

Psycho still has the power to terrify you even when you know what's going to happen.

All those who still get a chill every time they step into a hotel shower, say aye. That, you see, is the power of Psycho. - Salon.com

Watership Down

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Scribner Classics 1996, originally published in 1972

Hardcover, 448 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0684836058

modern classic/fantasy

very highly recommended / reread

From the Cover:

Set in the once idyllic rural landscape of the south of England, Watership Down follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by the doughty Hazel and his oracular brother Fiver, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators, hostile warrens, and worse, to a mysterious promised land known only to them as Watership Down. From their travails, they forge a more perfect society, made stronger by the vision that drives them.

A stirring tale of adventure and an imaginative tour de force that conjours up a world and its folklore with the force of myth, Watership Down is a modern classic. Through its masterful storytelling, it stands for all time as a powerful parable about society and its relation to the natural world.

My Thoughts:

Watership Down is truly a classic epic adventure that is also an allegory. If you have never read it don't let the fact that it is a story "about rabbits" stop you. It's so much more than that. Having read the book originally in paperback back in the 70's and several times since then, I am surprised to see it now being categorized as children's literature. I would certainly never say that about Watership Down. It is a book for adults that children may also enjoy. Certainly an adult with the literary background in folk stories and cultural mythology is going to gain a great deal more from the story than the younger reader. Perhaps this is one of those books that you can encourage children to read and then hopefully they will go back and read it again as an adult. I've reread Watership Down (again) for the Summer Lovin' Challenge.

Very Highly Recommended - one of the very best

Quotes:

The primroses were over. Toward the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and the oak-tree roots. On the other side of the fence, the upper part of the field was full of rabbit holes. In places the grass was gone altogether and everywhere there were clusters of dry droppings, through which nothing but the ragwort would grow. A hundred yards away, at the bottom of the slope, ran the brook, no more than three feet wide, half choked with kingcups, watercress and blue brooklime. The cart track crossed by a brick culvert and climbed the opposite slope to a five-barred gate in the thorn hedge. The gate led into the lane. pg. 3

"Fiver?" said the other rabbit. "Why's he called that?"

"Five in the litter, you know: he was the last -- and the smallest. You'd wonder nothing had got him by now. I always say a man couldn't see him and a fox wouldn't want him. Still, I admit he seems to be able to keep out of harm's way."The small rabbit came closer to his companion, lolloping on long hind legs.

"Let's go a bit further, Hazel," he said. "You know, there's something queer about the warren this evening, although I can't tell exactly what it is. Shall we go down to the brook?" pg. 4-5

"Oh, Hazel! This is where it comes from! I know now - something very bad! Some terrible thing - coming closer and closer."

He began to whimper with fear. pg. 6

It was Hazel who replied. "Fiver and I will be leaving the warren tonight," he said deliberately. "I don't know exactly where we shall go, but we'll take anyone who's ready to come with us."

"Right," said Bigwig, "then you can take me."

The last thing Hazel had expected was the immediate support of a member of the Owsla. pg. 13

To rabbits, everything unknown is dangerous. The first reaction is to startle, the second to bolt. Again and again they startle, until they were close to exhaustion. But what did these sounds mean and where, in this wilderness, could they bolt to? pg. 21

"No, we need to cross the river, Hazel, so that we can get into those fields - and on beyond them too. I know what we ought to be looking for - a high, lonely place with dry soil, where rabbits can see and hear all round and men hardly ever come. Wouldn't that be worth a journey?" pg. 30

One watch succeeded another through the day, though how the rabbits judged the passing of the time is something that civilized human beings have lost the power to feel. Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather; and about direction, too, as we know from their extraordinary migratory and homing journeys. The changes in the warmth and dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beans in the light wind, the direction and strength of the aircurrents along the ground - all these were perceived by the rabbit awake. pg. 40

Fiver gave no sign of having heard him. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. When he spoke again, it was as though he were talking to himself. "There's a thick mist between the hills and us. I can't see through it, but through it we shall have to go. Or into it anyway."

"A mist?" said Hazel. "What do you mean?"

"We're in for some mysterious trouble," whispered Fiver, "and it's not elil. It feels more like - like mist. Like being deceived and losing our way." pg. 47