Here’s an observant and thoughtful poem by Lisel Mueller about the way we’ve assigned human characteristics to the inanimate things about us. Mueller lives in Illinois and is one of our most distinguished poets.
Things
What happened is, we grew lonely living among the things, so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, the table four stout legs which will never suffer fatigue.
We fitted our shoes with tongues as smooth as our own and hung tongues inside bells so we could listen to their emotional language,
and because we loved graceful profiles the pitcher received a lip, the bottle a long, slender neck.
Even what was beyond us was recast in our image; we gave the country a heart, the storm an eye, the cave a mouth so we could pass into safety.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press from <em>Alive Together</em> by Lisel Mueller. Copyright 1996 by Lisel Mueller. Introduction copyright 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Auditions for “Rocky Horror Show” are coming soon, and Lake County Theatre Co. wants to see you there.
The show brought the theater company fresh new faces onstage, new members and an expanding audience, and they are hoping it will again.
All roles are open, so get to practicing those rock-n-roll numbers and come show your stuff.
Auditions will be from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, July 17, and Friday, July 19, at Konocti Vista Casino in Lakeport, and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 20, at Gard Street School in Kelseyville.
Callbacks, if necessary, will take place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, July 22.
There will be no accompanist, so singers need their own accompaniment, either live or on CD.
Be ready to move, there will be group movement/dance auditions, and individual auditions as well.
For more information, call John Tomlinson, 707-355-2211.
LUCERNE, Calif. – Lucerne Alpine Senior Center is hosting “Open Mic Night” on Saturday, July 13, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The center is kicking off this monthly event with three local bands already signed up and sign ups for others starting at 5 p.m. that Saturday night. Interested performers also can call 707-245-4612 or 707-274-8779 to sign up in advance.
What’s your talent? Music, comedy, mime, any other activity that is family-oriented entertainment for all will be appreciated.
If you have no special talent you’ll make a wonderful audience member, come join the fun and watch.
There will be room for dancing and relaxing. There is no charge for attendance.
A spaghetti meal with beverage, salad and garlic bread will be available for purchase if you are hungry at $7 per plate.
Come on July 13 to enjoy the first monthly Open Mic Night. Let’s share Lake County’s talent and build a following for all involved.
All proceeds will benefit the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, a nonprofit serving the senior populations on the Northshore.
Sometimes you put your money on the wrong horse. It has happened to me, on more than one occasion, at the Santa Anita race track. It can also happen in making other choices in life.
That occurred most recently in picking to review “The Lone Ranger” instead of “Despicable Me 2.” A revisionist Western tale, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski, seemed like a sure bet.
The best thing about “The Lone Ranger,” produced at a cost to rival the GDP of a Third World country, is in fact the Lone Ranger’s beautiful white horse, Silver, an equine hero and great scene-stealer.
Possessing a distinct personality, Silver holds a beguiling combination of mystery, humor, majesty, eccentricity and heroism. This is a horse that suddenly appears in treetops and on the roof of a burning barn.
Now we don’t want to slight the human actors in “The Lone Ranger,” especially since the filmmakers put a lot on the line by casting Johnny Depp as the Native American warrior Tonto.
It is also apparent that the Bruckheimer-Verbinski team, which produced the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, put a lot of stock in getting mileage out of Depp’s essential quirkiness.
With heavy face paint and a dead crow sitting on his head, Depp’s Tonto, a proud Comanche with a quiet sense of humor, often looks and sounds like he’s channeling the spirit of Captain Jack Sparrow.
Armie Hammer’s upright, newly-minted federal prosecutor John Reid, soon to become the Lone Ranger, is returning from the east by train to Colby, Texas to start his legal career.
Meeting him in Texas is his older brother Dan (James Badge Dale), a hardened Texas Ranger whose rough frontier nature is a striking contrast to that of his refined and highly educated younger sibling.
At first, John Reid holds the naïve view that playing by the book will trump the extremely violent nature of the Wild West. His worldview is put to the test by a vicious outlaw in custody on the train.
Soon to be the arch enemy of the Lone Ranger, the fiendish Butch Cavendish (a horribly disfigured William Fichtner) is freed by Butch’s gang in a daring railway hijacking.
As a result, Reid finds himself chained to another prisoner onboard, which turns out to be Tonto, taken prisoner for a transgression that already I do not recall.
Setting up the inevitable pairing of Tonto and Reid as crime fighters takes considerable time. It happens most dramatically when Tonto comes to the rescue of Reid after a brutal ambush by Cavendish’s gang.
Once in Texas, Reid teams up with his brother and other lawmen to hunt down Cavendish, but unfortunately they are all gunned down in a desolate canyon.
Tonto stumbles upon the massacre scene and proceeds to bury everyone, including a presumed dead John Reid, who rises from his makeshift grave just in the nick of time.
At this point, Reid dons the famous black eye mask and wide-brimmed white hat, transforming himself into the fabled Lone Ranger, seeker of justice on the dusty plains.
Motivated as much by desire to avenge his brother’s cold-blooded murder, the Lone Ranger also has an odd longing for his brother’s widow (Ruth Wilson), who had once been his girlfriend before he moved east for law school.
While Butch Cavendish is the ultimate badass outlaw and the obvious target for a manhunt by the Lone Ranger and Tonto, other dubious characters populate the landscape.
Helena Bonham Carter has an impressive turn as the peg-legged Southern madam running a house of ill-repute that follows the railroad as it is being built. She’s flamboyant and has a shotgun concealed in her fake leg.
A superb actor, Tom Wilkinson appears as railroad tycoon Latham Cole, hell-bent on his vision of finishing the Transcontinental Railroad in great haste.
Whenever Wilkinson is in a film, he’s almost invariably a person of dubious moral character, if not an outright villain. For “The Lone Ranger,” his railroad builder is kind of what you would expect.
“The Lone Ranger” is a distended exercise in long, drawn-out action, though the climax on a runaway train offers the dramatic heroics that are most worthy of the Lone Ranger’s mythological history.
A lot of money was spent to give “The Lone Ranger” a spectacular look in its setting in Monument Valley and other locations that recall the cinematic brilliance of John Ford Westerns.
My guess is that “The Lone Ranger,” which is oddly uneven and not very satisfying in the end, won’t have the success necessary to launch a new franchise.
DVD RELEASE UPDATE
In perfect timing for this week’s movie review, another story of the Old West is being released on DVD, the television series “How the West Was Won.”
Based on the 1962 film of the same name, this TV show was a rousing action saga and moving family chronicle about the post-Civil War era (the same time period for “The Lone Ranger”).
The TV show starred “Gunsmoke” legend James Arness as a mountain man accustomed to the harsh realities of frontier life, while his widowed sister-in-law, Kate (Eva Marie Saint), struggled to maintain a home for the family.
Kate’s eldest son, Luke (Bruce Boxleitner), is pursued by the law for deserting the Union Army.
“How the West Was Won,” a beloved TV series of the American West, plays out during a hard-hitting period when laws were frequently broken and progress was charted by individual suffering and survival.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Second Sunday Cinema and Move to Amend will host a showing of the documentary “Heist” on Sunday, July 14.
The film will be shown at Clearlake United Methodist Church at 14521 Pearl Ave. in Clearlake.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m., with a locally written play to be featured at 6 p.m. followed by the film at 6:15 p.m.
The cost is free.
The shuttling of wealth from the have-nots to the haves continues to go very smoothly over many decades. This dramatic, well-researched documentary exposes the reason and the start of this process, which debilitates our nation as a whole.
In 1971 then-Justice Lewis Powell wrote a lengthy secret memo detailing what should happen and how: Corporations should, he said, take wealth and power from the people by taking control of all major institutions in the United States, including the military and the judiciary – even religious organizations.
The most recent blow was the SCOTUS decision of January 2010, Citizens United, declaring that corporations are persons, just like you and me.
Move to Amend disagrees, and is working hard nationwide and locally to amend the US Constitution to clearly state that only people are people.
For more information call Shannon Tolson at 707-889-7355.
One of the most distinctive sounds in small-town America is the chiming of horseshoe pitching.
A friend always carries a pair in the trunk of his car. He’ll stop at a park in some little town and start pitching, and soon, he says, others will hear that ringing and suddenly appear as if out of thin air. In this poem, X.J. Kennedy captures the fellowship of horseshoe pitchers.
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes
Back in a yard where ringers groove a ditch, These four in shirtsleeves congregate to pitch Dirt-burnished iron. With appraising eye, One sizes up a peg, hoists and lets fly— A clang resounds as though a smith had struck Fire from a forge. His first blow, out of luck, Rattles in circles. Hitching up his face, He swings, and weight once more inhabits space, Tumbles as gently as a new-laid egg. Extended iron arms surround their peg Like one come home to greet a long-lost brother. Shouts from one outpost. Mutters from the other.
Now changing sides, each withered pitcher moves As his considered dignity behooves Down the worn path of earth where August flies And sheaves of air in warm distortions rise, To stand ground, fling, kick dust with all the force Of shoes still hammered to a living horse.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2007 by X.J. Kennedy. Poem reprinted from In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, by permission of X.J. Kennedy and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
