Exhibit in Toy Museum, Prague, Czech Republic

At the time we visited, the museum displayed an amazing collection of Barbie dolls in honor of her 50th anniversary.

Barbie's 50th anniversary exhibit

Lanie Tankard, in her essay on touchstones published here, said,”The adult is always searching for the child still within, as well as reminders that the person’s own adult children were actually smaller at one time.”

Toy Story 3 overflows with touchstones, or “luminous particulars” that will take you back to your own childhood or to your time of parenting young children, or both. It also evokes deep, universal themes of love v. fear, home v. homelessness, belonging and separation. The animation is so good, you will forget you are watching animation.

Click on the link in the paragraph above for a series of movie trailers that will give you a partial glimpse of these touchstones. Toys in general are great carriers of childhood memory–especially classic toys, like the telephone on a string (I remember this one from my little sister’s toybox as well as our own) to toys of a given era such as astronauts or robots. They carry first impressions of love, which, like all first experiences, go deep into the psyche.

If you have not yet seen this movie, I urge you to go. If you have some kids handy–your own, your neighbor’s, your grandchild, your nephew or neice, take them with you. If you have already seen the movie (or Toy Story I, or II), please tell us your thoughts! What nostalgia floodgates did the film open for you? What insight did you gain? Do you think you could construct a memoir on toys alone?

Three days after the Super Bowl, five parodies, from light to dark in tone, have reached Mashable! You can watch them here! Google must be bursting with pride, since every parody is another form of advertising for Google–except perhaps the last one in the list.

Which ones are best? Why? Do any of them topple the original?

I loved the music, graphics, and juxtapositions in this film. Petit is such a clown-like, dancer-like, Kokopelli-like character. The artistic decisions of Man on Wire emphasize contrasts and seem to play against each other–fairy tale on the one hand, extreme reality on the other. You can watch this film as an engineer, an athlete, an artist, or a philosopher. Amazingly, it will thrill you from any of these perspectives. It also manages to blend all of these into a complete, complex, whole.

The interviews with the friends and girlfriend at the end show us the evanescence of both beauty and love–but they also demonstrate that a great work of art is immortal. You may think of Fellini, Charlie Chaplin, even Jesus.

The poignancy of this film comes not only from a skillful rendering of an artistic triumph but also from the presence of absence. No one mentions 9-11, but it is everywhere, especially at the beginning, when we see film from the early 1970′s when workers in hardhats are digging the foundations and laying the first layers of the towers and then again when one picture frames Petit on his wire between the towers and a plane passing by that looks as though it could fly into the tower on the left.

The film was based on Petit’s own memoir, To Reach the Clouds, which I have not read. I think the film was so good I have no need to read the memoir.

I may, however, read the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, on the recommendation of someone whose literary judgment I trust. I know that Philippe Petit’s story is central to this novel also.

Have you read either of these, seen the film? What are your thoughts?

Come to think of it, NPR stories on the arts almost always fascinate me, and I can tell I am not alone. I am one of those people who sit in the garage in the cold after turning off the engine but not the radio–I want to hear the story to the very end.

So, of course, I loved it when Ben Yagoda’s new book got 29 minutes of NPR Talk of the Nation airtime on Dec. 24. Even though I was not listening at the time, I found the story in my Google Reader, and now share it with you.  I am reading the book on my Kindle and will review it in a few days or weeks. Have a more scholarly review to write now that is taking some time. In the meantime, enjoy this segment on your own by clicking on this link!

The Blind Side and Invictus, two films now in theaters, follow the heroic narrative of  players transcending mental and physical obstacles. They also happen to be “based on a true story” –and therefore belong in our category “memoir and film.” I highly recommend both of them. The key to a good sports story is making the familiar plot–overcoming obstacles on the path to victory–new again.

The trick to doing so, whether in a memoir or a movie “based on a true story” lies in the rendering of detail. In Invictus, the details have to do with the the many ways in which Nelson Mandela’s decisions to take a personal interest in the Springboks, the  national rugby team, transform a nation divided between black and white, into a nation united for the first time.

In The Blind Side, football plays the role of the transformation in the life of Michael Oher, a real-life left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, and in the lives of the Sean and Leigh Ann Tuohy family who befriend him and later legally adopt him.

Both of these films fit the Christmas season themes of hope and love. They are packed with action (although the rugby game goes on a bit long, especially if you know nothing about the sport), great acting (Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, and Sandra Bullock, especially), and social significance. You will think about them for a long time, and you just might find a tear sliding down your cheek as you watch.

Of course, I was watching and listening with a memoir lens. In this film we see pictures and home movies of little Michael Moore whose father was an auto worker at the AC Spark Plug plant in the 1950′s and ’60′s. We know his family is Irish Catholic, that he admires priests and bishops who speak out against ruthless capitalism, and that he looks back on his childhood with nostalgia. Since I am just six years older than Moore and often agree with him politically, I wanted to learn more about his life and the influences in it.

I went online to seek memoir details and uncovered more controversy than insight.  Many of his critics jump on gaps or paradoxes in the stories he tells about himself. Apparently, Moore did not grow up in Flint but rather Davison, Michigan, a more affluent, almost completely white, suburb. Though he has made millions from the success of his films, he claims not to have benefited from capitalism at all. This is hard to believe even though he has fought with the corporate execs who have funded him.

I would find his critique of capitalism even more credible if he could acknowledge his own participation in the system. I would also admire him more if I knew he was generous with his wealth. He calls Ronald Reagan a “spokesmodel” for capitalism in this film–does Moore run the risk of being a “spokesmodel” for blue collar workers while he personally benefits from telling their collective story?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Warren Buffet, who loves capitalism and who lives simply, gave away most of his money, and Michael Moore, who hates capitalism but lives well, did not?

None of these questions about Moore’s personal life deny the power of his critique of a system that appears to be spiraling out of control.  His analogy to the decline of the Roman Empire, using educational film footage from a generation ago, strikes home. And the use of movie epic Ben-Hur footage depicting Jesus’ face but overlaid with capitalist language, is brilliant satire.

Arianna Huffington says in this blog post that Moore made this movie so that Barack Obama would see it.  I hope he does. Wall Street has so embedded itself in both the legislative and executive branches of government that even a community organizer like Obama has difficulty righting the wrongs of the system. I agree with Huffington, however, when she says the problem is not captitalism as much as it is corporatism.  I also resonate with Judith Warner’s blog in The New York Times which contrasts Moore’s love of a fight and his polarizing tactics with activist Molly Melching’s approach to social change.

But back to Moore himself. Even though he wears jeans and baseball caps, Michael Moore is a multi-millionaire who owns a Manhattan apartment and a lake house in Traverse City, MI. Does this make him a “limousine liberal”? And if so, what does this biographical inconsistency do to his message?

But on August 25, Roger Ebert came out to the world as a recovering alcoholic in his blog in the Chicago Sun-Times called “Roger Ebert’s Journal.” After 30 years of sobriety and an operation that left him physically unable to drink, he felt ready to go to step #12 of AA and share his story in order to help others. Judging from the response, he is doing just that!

The essay contains a brief history of AA itself and of Bill W., the man who founded the self-organizing “organization.” But the missing link between Ebert and AA was a wonderful doctor, “wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter.” Reading about a doctor who took an hour with each patient and who offered homilies about aspirin being the only drug which we know really works, who distinguished depression from manic-depression by giving him an appetitie test with grapefruit sections, who suggested AA, but asked for monthly updates from his patient–all this filled me with great nostalgia for the good old days of American medicine. In the midst of HMO’s, nasty fights between the right and the left in politics, insurance companies that drown both doctors and patients in paperwork and pour millions into protecting their profits, I want Roger Ebert’s kind of family doctor and the uncomplicated system we used to have in this country and that other countries enjoy more completely than we do now! Not only did the wise doctor’s medical prescriptions work in Ebert’s case, but they were also very inexpensive.

Roger Ebert’s memoir essay has touched thousands of lives and initiated a deluge of comments–1201 of them by this time! The comments include many long, revelatory essays from the alcohol experiences of readers. Many are from recovering alcoholics; some are from heavy drinkers who want to get help. Amazingly, very few of them are critical or cynical.

Here is a link to the full Ebert blog post, including three movie clips (The Long Weekend, The Days of Wine and Roses, and Clean and Sober), a list of AA locations, a diagnostic quiz for drinkers who think they might be alcoholic, and all 1201 comments.

And here’s an exchange between Ebert and a commenter that illustrates why I chose to highlight the essay in a blog about memoir:

Great memoir comes from just this kind of boiled-down experience.  Wordsworth and Coleridge called it emotion recollected in tranquility. A reader can sense when it happens, and so can the writer.

Passionate, controlled, honesty found in this essay jumps from the heart of the writer to the heart of the reader, who hears the ring of truth.  What more can any writer or any reader ask of language?

Ebert’s essay can save lives and deserves to go viral. (By hitting the share button in this blog, you can email it, send it to FB, Twitter or other social media sites). You can do the same by going to the original essay and hitting the share button there.

Apparently, the broadcast about illusion and reality in our current economic crisis, which included Parker talking about depression in his own life, cheered many people.  Funny how truth does that–in just the paradoxical way that Parker himself explains better than anyone I know.

Here is a Parker Palmer story from the transcript of the Bill Moyers Journal broadcast that has helped many people who, like myself, have known depression:

Parker: “I got tremendous help from a therapist at one point, in one of my depressions, who said to me, “Parker, you seem to keep treating this experience as if depression were the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Would it be possible to re-image depression as the hand of a friend trying to press you down to ground on which it’s safe to stand?”

The exchange between Bill and Parker that follows is one of the most honest depictions of the dark side of the inner life that you are ever likely to see on television. Be sure to check out the blog posts after you watch the video.  Notice how many of them appreciate this short segment about depression.

I have written about Parker’s important book, The Courage to Teach here before, when I was preparing to teach a workshop on reflective writing, but I have not written about him as a memoir writer.  His books all contain philosophical and social reflection, but they ring most true in their many personal narratives–often moments of self-deprecation, doubt, and fear.

Despite the fact that I have been a fan and then a friend of Parker’s for many years, I never placed him in the category of memoir writer until I began to notice–duh!– that even his most highly evolved political and social discourse finds its roots in questions and experiences from his own life.  Interestingly, Parker is seldom described as a memoir writer.  He is called author, spiritual teacher, educator, and activist.  It’s time to explore what he contributes to the field of memoir writing.

I will write more in future posts about several of Parker’s memoirs.  Until then, you can find more video, speeches, and interviews at the Center for Courage and Renewal website.