Bright Lights, Big City

Last night, I attended the East Coast premiere of Please Give, a delightful independent film, directed by Nicole Holofcener, with wonderful performances by the entire cast, including Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt. The screening, part of the Miami Film Festival, took place at the Olympia Theater in downtown Miami. The theater is a work of art in itself, having been recently restored to its original 1926 glory, complete with ornate Moorish architecture, simulated night sky, and live pre-show performances on the Olympia's original Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

After the film, I left the theater feeling I'd been treated to a charming, sad, funny cinematic experience. But the real show was yet to come. As I walked around the corner and into the outdoor lot where my car was parked, I happened to glance up. There, in all its glory, stood the Bank of America Tower, aglow in white light, with clouds swirling around its upper stories. The building is an iconic presence on the city's skyline, lit in a varied array of colors during holidays. Last night, though, the tower loomed so close and the sight of it was so unexpected that it took my breath away. I recovered in time to snap the photo below.

Full Circle for Nomah

In a sweetly-contrived scenario, Nomar Garciaparra re-joined the Red Sox for one day and immediately announced his retirement, enabling him to retire a Red Sock. Nomar had approached Sox owners and General Manager Theo Epstein with the idea and during his press conference, he appeared genuinely thrilled and sentimental about having been granted his wish.

Most of the fans and even the media seemed to appreciate the gesture, given the coverage of the event. Leave it to Dan Shaughnessy to put a fly in the ointment, reminding us how truly unpleasant relations between "Nomie" and the organization became during the 2004 season, leading to Nomar's departure as part of a trade with the Chicago Cubs.

By returning to the Red Sox as the sun sets on his career, Nomar rekindles memories of his greatness during his early years with the Sox. As even Shaughnessy concedes, "A case can be made that he was Boston’s best home-grown player since Carl Yastrzemski." While the quality of both Nomar's play and his disposition suffered during that final season with the Sox, it may be that his subsequent experience with three other teams (the Cubs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Oakland Athletics) caused him to appreciate how truly special his years with Boston had been. He never regained the on-the-field greatness he achieved during the first five of his eight seasons with the Sox and he surely never encountered fans who adored him the way Red Sox Nation did.

Like most sports fans, I'm not terribly rational when it comes to players who leave my team. I never forgave Roger Clemens for bailing, or Pedro Martinez, or Johnny Damon, or even Manny Ramirez. I took it personally—a rejection of me and my beloved city and team. Nomar's departure technically occurred because of a trade rather than a voluntary decision to leave, but his own behavior clearly led to that happening. I was disappointed and angry when Nomar left, even though I agreed that he hadn't been performing well, on the field or off. When the Red Sox went on to win the World Series that season, I admit to thinking So there, Nomar. You didn't like us and now we showed you. Not my finest moment, but that's what a passion for the game can do to a person.

Now, Nomar has affirmed his love for my city and my team. If he can be humble enough to ask for the privilege to retire as a member of the Red Sox, I can be magnanimous. Welcome home, Nomar!

A Powerful TV Moment

E. and I have been watching a terrific television series, The Shield, on Netflix. The gritty, violent drama, which originally aired on FX Network, features a fabulous cast, great writing, and compelling story lines. It ran for seven seasons, from 2002 through 2008. We're in the middle of Season 3 right now. Last night, we watched an episode that featured a particularly heart-rending scene. I'm still thinking about it.

In the scene, the show's main character, Vic Mackey, who runs an L.A.P.D. Strike Team, visits a foster home where a friend's child has been placed. He finds the house in chaos and five children playing without supervision. He locates the toddler he's come to check on alone in a room, sitting on the floor and playing with a toy action figure. The foster parents are present but unconcerned. Mackey states the obvious—the couple is in it for the money. The stipends they receive for five children add up to a tidy sum. It's also clear that very little of the money is being spent on the children.

It's a horrifying scene, particularly because it has the ring of authenticity. We've all heard stories of similar situations found in actual foster homes. But it's one thing to hear stories, another to see such a situation convincingly dramatized. The couple in the television show isn't exactly abusing the children, just blatantly neglecting them. My dog gets far better care than these fictional children.

I don't regret taking good care of Cosmo. He's a living, sentient creature and part of my family. He deserves it. But surely foster children deserve to be lavished with at least as much love and attention as I give my dog. Few would disagree with that statement, but the reason I admire The Shield is that it presents painful material in a new way, one that makes me actually think about the terrible disparities that exist in our society.

Wake-up Call

I've been reading Tracy Kidder's book about Dr. Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, with great interest. But one passage toward the end of the book really took me by surprise. Farmer, then forty years old and married, was in Paris, spending a couple of days with his wife and daughter. He planned to catch an early-morning flight to Moscow the following day. Rather than set an alarm clock, Farmer called his mother, who was back in the states, and asked her to give him a wake-up call at 7:00 a.m. Never mind the weirdness of this request coming from a married forty-year-old man; it also meant that his mother had to stay up until 1:00 a.m. her time to make the call. Talk about a mother's devotion.

When Kidder later asked Farmer's mother about her reaction to her son's request, she said, "I just think it's so cool that at forty he still does that. I'd miss it if he didn't." Fortunately for Farmer, his wife seemed more amused than annoyed by this particular mother-son interaction. If I were Farmer's mother, though, I might have been a little concerned that he still required such long-distance care-taking. On the other hand, a mother loves to feel needed by her children, so in that regard I can totally identify with her enthusiasm about his habit of requesting wake-up calls.

I'm always inordinately delighted when one of my kids asks my advice or assistance and I'll drop everything to help. Fortunately, their requests are normally reasonable and doable and, so far, none has involved staying awake after my bedtime. It also makes me extremely happy to see my children, now in their twenties, living as independent adults. As an overprotective mother, I found it difficult to let go, but tried very hard to give them the space they needed. Now, I revel in their ability to make decisions on their own and not infrequently I ask their advice, since in many areas they're now more competent than I.

Farmer's quirky connection with his mother surprised me because he hardly seems the type to be tied to his mother's apron strings. Quite the opposite, in fact. Since his teen years, he's lived in Haiti and other third world countries, engaging in challenging work, often at great personal risk. Yet, at the age of forty he apparently still longed to be awoken in the morning by his mother. Or, at the very least, she was the only one he trusted to make sure he got to the airport on time. Peculiar, yes, but also rather sweet.

This Leads to That

Most of us, at some time in our lives, start out doing one thing and find ourselves unexpectedly led in a different direction. In my case, I could say that's been the story of my life, at least of my writing life.

Back in the 1980s, a part-time job writing law book supplements led me in a different direction than I expected. I'd been out of law school for a few years, had two young children, and thought I'd get back up to legal speed by writing about torts and no-fault auto insurance. However, after a couple of years of legal writing, I realized that I loved the writing part more than the legal subject matter. While I was pondering what to do about that, a friend mentioned a poetry workshop she'd heard about and wondered if I might be interested in joining it. I signed up immediately. Soon after, I quit my law job and began focusing seriously on writing poetry.

Among the people I met in that workshop was a woman from a neighboring town. In addition to writing poetry, she also wrote a personal essay column for her local newspaper. That sounded like a lot of fun to me. At the time, my own town had two community papers. I kept thinking that one day I'd look into the possibility of writing for one or the other. After a few years, though, one of them suddenly folded, and I realized my chances of writing a column like my friend's had just been cut in half. That mobilized me and I contacted the remaining paper. I landed a job and began writing a column entitled "Passing Thoughts." The column ran for almost three years, until the arrival of a new editor who wanted to dictate more about content than I was comfortable with.

The personal essay concept later morphed into my first blog, "Famosity," where I had total control over content, and finally I landed here, writing daily entries about all sorts of topics. Now, I wonder where this might lead. My daily entries may taper off. Or they may not. I may opt to devote more time to my breast cancer website and related projects. Or I may give up writing altogether and take up photography. The only thing I'm sure of is that this daily blog will lead me somewhere I hadn't expected to go.

The Winning Comment

The Academy Awards have barely begun, but I've already heard my winning comment of the evening, from none other than Meryl Streep. During an interview on the red carpet, she was asked what she looked forward to most about the Oscars. Her reply—getting to her seat and slipping off her Jimmy Choo's. (For those few who aren't aware, Jimmy Choo makes gorgeous high heels.) Clearly, Meryl Streep is my kind of woman. And her white evening gown wasn't too bad, especially if you like the Greek goddess look.

Happy Oscars!

And the Winner Is

I love watching the Academy Awards. I particularly like seeing what the female celebrities wear, how they do their hair, what fabulous jewels they borrow for the event, and whether they've chosen bright red lipstick or pale purple eye shadow. Even though I'm old enough to be an AARP member, on Oscar night I fantasize about being young and glamorous and the object of adoration.

What's wrong with this picture? Anyone who knows me would consider my Oscar fixation anomalous. I'm the antithesis of glamor, unless you consider dressing mostly in black glamorous. In my case, I do it so I don't have to think too much about clothes. As revealed in my recent post, "If the Shoe Fits", I would limp across the red carpet if forced to walk in the stiletto heels favored by many actresses. I wear almost no makeup, adorn myself with very little jewelry, and still style my hair pretty much the way I did in high school. You'd think the last thing I'd want to do is watch a bunch of pampered stars strut their stuff.

But for me, that's entirely the point—that I'm nothing like these women is why I find them so enthralling. That's why I still watch reruns of "Sex and the City" and why I look at Vogue magazine in waiting rooms. I'm captivated by  fashionable women in the same way that an anthropologist might be fascinated by scarification practices among primitive tribes. I especially look forward to studying the Hollywood tribe during its annual preening ritual.

It will be interesting to see how Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin perform as joint hosts at this year's ceremony and I'll enjoy finding out who wins the golden statuettes, with all the attendant drama and frothy speeches. But those aspects of the awards fest pale in comparison to what I really care about—whether Meryl Streep will choose another frumpy dress and whether Anne Hathaway could possibly be any thinner.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.