Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Thank You for Saving 2011

A man performed a random act of generosity for me today, saving this putrid year from going out in an unmitigated stink. It was a simple experience, but it is this kind of rare moment that allows me to breathe in a life that is too often pressing down on me. I am usually thinking about the state of the economy in general – and in particular how nastily it is impacting on my own peeps; about the pandemic of cancer among women while those in power wage a war on women and our bodies; about the difficulty in distinguishing between Democrats and Repuglicans. I’ll stop there.

Today I went out grocery shopping. I parked in Davis Square (Somerville, MA) to pick up some meat at McKinnons. I keep a roll of quarters in my car for the meters and I took out two. Somehow, though, I clutched the quarters in my hand as I started to cross the street to the grocery shop.

Behind me I heard someone say “She forgot to put money in the meter,” and I stopped in the middle of the street and turned around. There’s a guy who occupies a bench on that street pretty regularly. He is homeless and he quietly holds out an empty paper cup in case anyone wants to help him out. He had jumped up and I watched him dig a quarter out of his cup and start to put it in my meter.

I rushed back and tossed both of my quarters in, instead, thanking him almost inarticulately for his bigheartedness. As I set out again for the store, he said, “Look, they come around constantly, so I try to keep my eye on these two meters here, ‘cause I sit right here and I can help. If the meter runs out while you’re shopping, I’ll take care of it. ”

When I returned to my car with my bag, I pressed a couple of bills in his hand and wished him a warm and safe New Year. He didn’t have to make a sweet gesture to a stranger, but it is my experience in life that those who don’t have share, and those that do have try to get some more. In my mind he (and the Occupy movement, of course) has single-handedly rescued the reputation of 2011.

FILM REVIEWS: “The Artist” (yay!) and “The Debt” (boo!) on xmas eve

We decided to break tradition for Jewish xmas eve and instead of going to an early Chinese meal, we went to the movies. “The Artist” had, at last, arrived in the area and was playing at Dedham Community Theater, in a middle class suburb of Boston. The last showing was at 4:45 and we assumed that we’d have a more or less empty theater to stretch out in. After a fabulous hot chocolate at the Mocha Java cafe next door, we entered the movie in time to watch it fill up – with other Jews. I even ran into a couple of my senior fitness students.

(David Moss poster via Lucinda Marshall)

“The Artist” is a black and white silent film, a Belgium/France production, about Hollywood’s transition to talkies and a romance that weathers the change. In fact, there is a lot of loyalty in this film – between the leading man George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) who refuses to adapt to talkies and the ascending young Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, wife of the director) he discovered; between Valentin and his life-saving doggie; between Valentin and his driver Clifton (James Cromwell); and, even on a gruff level, the producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman) and his stars.

The original music by Ludovic Bource is tone perfect – building the plot but never intrusive, and allowing for powerful silences. The actors are just over-expressive enough not to flounder without dialogue, but never over-hysterical. Berenice Bejo’s confident star turn is so full of irrepressible energy and joyful smiles that you would think the film was conceived to melt the winter chill.

The shimmery photography, the superb acting, the magical score, and the bow to a long-past form of artistry makes this just the flick to see when you want an upbeat, visually handsome experience.

The Artist trailer:
 

We came home, still in the movie mood, and decided to catch up on things we missed this season, by browsing the On Demand availables. “The Debt” was something I avoided, since I’m never keen on inviting the Mossad into my home. But like so many, my interest in Helen Mirren – the nominal star – ultimately became a consideration, despite my repugnance for security forces.

I will be brief. The film sounds like one in which every actor was told to do an accent, any accent, and pretend it was a Hebrew accent. What a load of goofy –sounding dialogue, almost comical in the range of manglings permitted, if not encouraged. The multiple timelines felt more like a function of very bad writing and directing than of sophisticated depth. We were constantly saying, “Wait. When is this? Where are we?”

The “moral dilemmas” were a bit silly and self-serving. The only intensity was in awful scenes of women being abused that I looked away from. And the idea that kidnappers would sit around listening to the manipulations of their hostage, a disgusting war criminal, beggars belief.

Mirren doesn’t do much of anything except sport a scar and look despairing. Jessica Chastain who plays the youthful version of the Mirren character and has much more facetime in this movie is stuck in a kind of innocent depression that eventually gets on the nerves. In fact, there is not a single light moment in this gray and annoying “thriller.”

The one piece of praise that I can give with conviction and some personal expertise is that the fight scenes are beautifully choreographed and very convincingly executed. I would bet that Chastain is a real-life martial artist – or else they brought in a skilled stuntwoman.

The Debt trailer

 

Occupy Boston Moves: Eviction Eve

The Occupy Boston camp is gone, replaced very quickly with a little used park in the middle of the financial district. The old neighborhood had been blown away by skyscrapers years ago. Occupy Boston was the liveliest thing to ever happen in this drab glass and concrete home of Boston’s 1%.

The creativity! The imagination! The practical achievements! The mind boggles at how much was accomplished in two-plus months. There were the inventions: The pedal-powered generator (see pic) used to charge cell phones and laptops was exported to other Occupy camps, including Occupy Wall Street. The battery-operated grey-water sink (pic) specially created by some MIT engineers to meet city standards whose installation was prevented by city police. The human services – from medical to literary – that were an oasis to many and kept the camp a humane, livable community.

But it is now gone. On Thursday morning December 8th, a judge lifted her injunction which Occupy Boston had requested to prevent their expulsion. The Mayor right away announced that they would be evicted that night at midnight. A camp that has been running – and quite brilliantly so – since September has to be dismantled in a matter of hours. Barry receives a call for help from one of the key activists, Rita, who has been his main contact in his work as a member of our National Writers Union and as Massachusetts UAW’s liaison to Occupy Boston. Rita was, incidentally, also my contact when I organized a demonstration entitled “Occupy Boston, Not Palestine” a month ago or so (see pic).

At first Barry suggests that the National Writers Union offer to take responsibility for dismantling and storing the Library. Who can forget the way the NY police ravaged Occupy Wall Street’s beloved Library (see pic)? We had been in the OWS Library just days before Occupy Wall Street was trampled, and the aftermath photos of the books torn and wet and violated still stick in our minds.

But there isn’t time on our side to organize trucks, storage and folks. And besides, the Occupy Boston people have long had their plans in place. By the evening the main tents housing the core services – food, medical, library, media, spiritual – have already been taken down and transported to the garage of a volunteer.

Occupy Boston asks people to come to the camp Thursday night as the midnight deadline approaches. We are there from around 10:00pm to 2:00am, together with about 2,000 others. I am surprised at how few people I run into that I know – just three or four from the Middle East justice movement, a few Union sisters (see pic) and brother, and one of my niece Oona’s best friends, Jenn, who organizes around economic justice.

Many of the smaller, individual – shall we say, residential tents - are still up in the camp at midnight. People have intelligence that a great force of riot police is staged nearby but out of sight in Chinatown, while the friendly, community-oriented older cops are at Occupy Boston itself. The joyful and angry energy is intense and I am sorry that the idea of a massive dance party had been “blocked” in the GA (General Assembly) earlier that evening.

Luckily Cambridge’s Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band (see pic) turns up with their powerful mix of New Orleans and New Left and people sing and dance along. It is freezing as we stand on both sides of Atlantic Avenue chanting, although I am bundled up in countless layers and winter accessories in a way that is very rare for me, being an “indoors” kind of girl. At a certain point people pour into the street and close it down. Someone later describes to me how the cops had to back out the cars and trucks that were caught by the sudden change from a major road to a dance floor.

The chants and the profoundly democratic “mic checks!” go on way past midnight, past 1:00am, as we wait for the arrival of the cops to clear us out. Anyone who feels like it can yell “mic check!” and instantly have dozens of surrounding demonstrators repeating anything she wants to say so that dozens more are able to hear her message. Many young people express their love (see pic) for Occupy Boston, taking turns, until they are too hoarse. I’m flagging, my feet hurt, and I’m shivering, but it’s good to be here.

Around 2:00am a TV reporter tells us that there will be no bust tonight. Immediately the different media teams pack up to take their equipment back to the trucks, and the supporters of Occupy Boston stream towards their homes in different directions. My feet are frozen dead as we limp to the parking lot many blocks away, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

Barry’s phone rings at 5:49am two mornings later. It is Rita. A few dozen people have stayed these last 48 hours and the eviction is now taking place. It is all very “civilized” – probably because so many of the Boston occupiers are students and suburbanites and because of the respect that has developed between the occupiers and police who were thrown together in daily contact these many weeks. Mayor Menino was heavily criticized a few years ago after his police killed a student while quelling a sports riot. White middle class folks are not supposed to get hurt around here. He is more cautious about the targets of police actions ever since. People who wanted to leave were free to do so. Those who wanted to be arrested were also accommodated. It was all so collaborative that when three women who insisted on being arrested changed their minds once they were seated in the police van for awhile– or so the rumor goes – the police let them get out.

I miss the Occupy Boston camp already, perhaps because I was only an occasional visitor. I wouldn’t wish a Boston winter inside a tent in the windy financial district near the sea on anyone. But the clever signs, the good will, the innocence and the sophistication, the mixing of people in their 20s and Boomers (those appeared to be the two main groups), the spawning of a new language and an invented set of rituals (mic check!) – all of these will continue as the Occupy movement searches out its new forms.

All photos (except "Mic Check") from Barry Hock