When we began this column in 2005, I determined not to include any of my own poems because I wanted to introduce our readers to the work of as many of the other American poets as I could. But from time to time someone has requested that I publish one of my own.
So here’s a seasonal poem, for those who’ve asked.
Christmas Mail
Cards in each mailbox, angel, manger, star and lamb, as the rural carrier, driving the snowy roads, hears from her bundles the plaintive bleating of sheep, the shuffle of sandals, the clopping of camels. At stop after stop, she opens the little tin door and places deep in the shadows the shepherds and wise men, the donkeys lank and weary, the cow who chews and muses. And from her Styrofoam cup, white as a star and perched on the dashboard, leading her ever into the distance, there is a hint of hazelnut, and then a touch of myrrh.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Arts Council will host its First Friday Fling of the new year on Jan. 4.
The fun event to introduce the community to local artists will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport.
The Linda Carpenter Gallery in January will feature art by clients of People Services.
Join the arts council for an evening of art, wine and music.
For more information contact the Lake County Arts Council, 707-263-6658, or visit the arts council online at www.lakecountyartscouncil.com .
If it weren’t for the “Mission Impossible” movies, Tom Cruise probably would not have yet established his bona fides as an action figure. “Jack Reacher” should eliminate any lingering doubts.
Readers, though, of British thriller writer Lee Child’s novels may quarrel with the selection of the diminutive Cruise for the role belonging to a physically imposing person tall enough to be an NBA player.
“Jack Reacher” may be a reach, at least with respect to the protagonist’s stature, but not for the end result of the gritty, emotionless realism that Cruise delivers with skillful intensity.
Cruise’s Jack Reacher, the film’s titular character, is an old-school operative, fascinating for his ability to live off the grid. He’s a drifter who only travels by bus and doesn’t have a cell phone or credit cards.
Having served in the U.S. Army with distinction as a military policeman, Reacher is now a loner who would prefer to forget about his past experiences, including his service during the Iraq War.
But the past rears its ugly head when former military sniper James Barr (Joseph Sikora) is the apparent shooter who picks off five people strolling along the riverfront walk outside of Pittsburgh’s baseball stadium.
When the shooter is arrested, based on a trail of evidence that seems all-too-convenient, his first request is scrawled on a piece of paper: “Get Jack Reacher.”
The mysterious Reacher, already a legendary figure, is not one who can be found. Oddly enough, when he is needed, Reacher materializes as if summoned during a séance.
The drifter has a history with the alleged shooter, but it’s not a favorable one. The case against the prime suspect looks to be solid, right down to the fingerprint obtained from a quarter deposited in a parking meter at the crime scene.
Brilliant in math, logic and the power of deductive reasoning, Reacher sets out on an investigative search to solve the case, regardless of where the evidence points to guilt or innocence.
The suspect is represented by Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), an able big-firm lawyer who just happens to be the daughter of District Attorney Rodin (Richard Jenkins).
Thus, the case is complicated by the personal and professional conflicts between the DA and the defense attorney. Add to the mix Detective Emerson’s (David Oyelowo) lack of enthusiasm for Reacher’s involvement.
Always a step ahead of everyone else, Reacher advises Helen to find out more about each of the victims. He’s also puzzled that an expert sniper needed six shots to kill the five so-called random victims.
As Reacher starts turning over rocks, suspicious characters just happen to show up in strange circumstances. Shadowy figures are increasingly nervous that Reacher’s probing will uncover some problematic facts.
A misunderstanding with a pretty girl (Alexia Fast) causes five guys to challenge Reacher to a fight outside a bar. Not a good move, since the ex-Army cop dispatches these guys with relative ease.
Of course, this won’t be the last time that Reacher is required to use his impressive physical skills for some intense hand-to-hand combat with mysterious assailants.
None of these encounters happens to be arbitrary confrontations with ordinary street thugs. Except to the authorities, it’s obvious that nefarious things are occurring to cover up the truth.
How come a creepy guy who looks very much like director Werner Herzog (well, actually it is him), a Russian villain with missing fingers and a glassy eye, is manipulating a bunch of trigger-happy bad guys so as to keep James Barr as the only suspect?
A nice touch to stir up a great action scene is a muscle-car chase in which Reacher’s pursuit of bad guys in a borrowed vintage Chevy Chevelle careens through the concrete canyons of Pittsburgh in the dangerous high-speed spirit of “The French Connection.”
Arriving late to the party is Robert Duvall’s gun-range owner, who unknowingly has evidence of a key person on the proxy grassy knoll and becomes an ally for the final showdown at a rock quarry.
Having not read Lee Child’s “One Shot,” the novel on which the storyline is based, I suspect that essential plot points are missing or distorted, causing fans of the “Jack Reacher” literary franchise a fair amount of dismay.
As a cinematic enterprise, the Christopher McQuarrie-directed “Jack Reacher” delivers the basic pleasures of an action film with enough vigilante justice, fights and car chases to satisfy the indispensable formula.
And so what if Tom Cruise comes up a little short for the size of the hero? If the “Mission Impossible” days are over, “Jack Reacher” is the answer for an aging action hero’s quest to stay in the game.
TELEVISION UPDATE
As a writer, director, producer and actor, veteran funnyman Mel Brooks is getting some well-deserved recognition for his canon of work.
HBO is currently running a special program entitled “Mel Brooks Strikes Back!,” a conversation between Brooks and Alan Yentob, creative director for the BBC.
“Mel Brooks Strikes Back!” features clips from some of his classic movies and TV work, including “Your Show of Shows,” featuring Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner.
In the conversation with Alan Yentob, Brooks discusses his family and upbringing, his experiences during World War II and background stories about his films.
Brooks is one of the few artists who have received an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony. These awards attest to a career of comedy greatness.
Coincidentally, Shout Factory recently released the DVD/CD box set “The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy.”
This DVD/CD combo includes his memorable short film “The Critic” which won the 1963 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Animated). To my knowledge, this short has never been released before.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
Like most holiday seasons, this year has a few epics and a bunch of passable comedies.
In the former category, you’ve got “The Hobbit” and Russell Crowe singing during the 1832 Paris uprising, in a movie nearly as long as the French Revolution itself.
“Parental Guidance” falls into the grouping of the ostensible family comedies suitable for all ages at a time when kids are out of school and everyone is in a festive holiday mood.
There was a decent reason to believe that the pairing of Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, as traditional-minded grandparents with love in their hearts and hell-bent for family-oriented fun, would result in more than acceptable entertainment.
To a decent extent, Crystal and Midler bring a generational dimension of old-school parenting to the fore in a way that is alternately amusing and frustrating, the latter more so for their own kids than grandkids.
Artie and Diane Decker (Crystal and Midler) have been the type of carefree yet caring parents that proved embarrassing to adult daughter Alice Simmons (Marisa Tomei), now married with three children of her own.
The Deckers live in Fresno, Calif., where the sports-obsessed, motor-mouthed Artie has been the baseball announcer for the Fresno Grizzlies. Diane is as equally brash and loud as her husband.
Meanwhile, Alice and her husband Phil (Tom Everett Scott) live in Atlanta, which is almost as far away as you can get from Fresno while still remaining within the continental United States.
Alice and Phil want to slip away for a week’s convention trip, and Phil’s parents are not available for babysitting duty. As a measure of desperation, they call for help from the “other grandparents.”
Possessed of the Type-A parental gene, Alice and Phil are reluctant, to say the least, to turn over their three precious children to parents who may not follow their indulgent ways.
The kids have their own set of issues. The oldest, Harper (Bailee Madison), is pushed constantly to practice her violin. The older son, Turner (Joshua Rush), has a stuttering problem that causes him to be bullied at school.
The youngest, Barker (Kyle Harrison Breitkopf), is oddly attached to his invisible best friend, a kangaroo named Carl. But Barker is also the cagiest sibling, as he cleverly blackmails his grandpa into forking over hush money.
Before Alice and Phil can even pack their bags, the grandparents clash with the overly protective parents over child-rearing tactics. As a result, Alice becomes a nervous wreck, adding to the discomfort that is mined for comic effect.
Phil has designed an ultra-modern home where a computer monitors everyone’s movement, sort of a creepy Big Brother-is-watching surveillance system that decides, on its own power, to disrespect Artie.
Meanwhile, Artie decides to tackle problems with his own blunt methods. For one, he candidly confronts Turner’s speech therapist over her questionable techniques.
Since Artie was also recently fired from his announcer job, he makes the unwise choice of taking Barker with him on an audition with ESPN, making a fool of himself for trying to fit in with the extreme sports crowd.
Naturally, the grandparents make a ton of blunders in caring for the grandkids. Though sugar has been banned from the household, Artie figures that the sugary treat of a nice cake won’t do any harm. Big mistake!
What’s not a mistake, however, is that the loving grandparents and the kids finally reach a level of familial connection, though it involves something as simple as a backyard game of kick the can.
Artie also helps Turner overcome his stuttering with a clever use of a radio replay of Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run hit on a pitch by Ralph Branca during the 1951 Giants-Dodgers pennant playoff series.
“Parental Guidance” falls into the trap of forging some of its comedy with the formulaic use of certain bodily functions. Apparently, the filmmakers had to resort to juvenile humor to fill the vacuum in a movie that is well short of two hours.
On the other hand, this is a minor quibble with a film that is, for the most part, a family-friendly entertainment that offers plenty of laughs and heartwarming moments.
“Parental Guidance” is not a film for jaded cynics. Sure, it is rather generic, but it is a welcome relief to some of the corrosive junk that’s out there.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
The first winter my wife and I lived in the country, I brought a wild juniper tree in from our pasture and prepared to decorate it for Christmas.
As it began to warm up, it started to smell as if a coyote, in fact a number of coyotes, had stopped to mark it, and it was soon banished to the yard.
Jeffrey Harrison, a poet who lives in Massachusetts, had a much better experience with nature.
Nest
It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree into the house and up on the stand that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest tucked among its needled branches.
Amazing, that the nest had made it all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck mashed together with hundreds of other trees without being dislodged or crushed.
And now it made the tree feel wilder, a balsam fir growing in our living room, as though at any moment a bird might flutter through the house and return to the nest.
And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors, we’d turned the nest into the first ornament. So we wound the tree with strings of lights, draped it with strands of red beads,
and added the other ornaments, then dropped two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport’s Soper-Reese Community Theatre provided a jam-packed venue for this year’s Christmas concert of the Lake County Symphony, presented by Clear Lake Performing Arts.
The event took place on Sunday, Dec. 16, and also featured vocal performances by a number of local artists.
The concert opened with a tongue-in-cheek rendition of the late Burl Ives’ hit “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas” sung by four artists dubbing themselves The Men of Soper-Reese.
The group included Mike Adams, Wally Fuller, Nick Jeremiah French and Doug Rhoades, backed by Nick Biondo on mini-cymbals, Tom Aiken at the piano and 5-year-old Taylor Parkinson, granddaughter of symphony Conductor John Parkinson. At the song’s conclusion she graciously presented each of the singers with a flower bouquet.
The 15 members of the Clear Lake Performing Arts Youth Orchestra then took the stage, under the direction of Susan Condit.
They delivered an impressive presentation of “Believe,” the theme from the movie “Polar Express,” and a special salute to the holiday season called “December Fanfare,” written by contemporary composer Andrew Dabczynski as a demonstration of fusing elements of classical music with old-time fiddle playing. The youngsters delivered a highly professional job on both pieces.
The more serious side of the concert then took place, with a symphony string section (which includes a harpsichord played by Tom Aiken) launching into Arcangelo Corelli’s classic Christmas Concerto, Op 6, No. 8. I.
Corelli wrote the piece shortly after the invention of the violin, and since he was an acknowledged master of this instrument his composition was arranged almost exclusively for strings, in this case 36 players.
A hallmark of Corelli’s work is “The Concertino,” a trio of musicians whose soaring notes both contrast with and blend into, the full orchestra. These parts were played ably by violinists Andi Skelton and Eleanor Cook, and cellist John Weeks.
At the conclusion of the Corelli work, the balance of the musicians filed in to bring the orchestra up to its full strength of some 65 members, including brass, woodwind and percussion players.
Parkinson then led the group through a series of popular Christmas favorites including “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland” and others, ending with the familiar strains of Victor Herbert’s “March of the Toys.” with outstanding solo support from Catherine Hall on piccolo and drummer Scott Wise.
During intermission Doug Rhoades assisted Kim DeAlba, representing the CLPA Auxiliary – the fund-raising arm of the organization – in auctioning off a hand-decorated violin, painted by local artist Jay Jackson. Richard Birk submitted the winning bid.
The concert’s second half was opened by featured vocalist Shelly Trumbo-Mascari, who delivered jazz versions of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here,” “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow! And “Santa Claus is coming to Town.” Dressed as she was in a sleek, raspberry-colored gown, Mascari won extended applause.
Showing that music is often a family affair, Mascari’s father Walt Trumbo then sang Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” backed by the soaring trumpet of Gary Miller, and also won enthusiastic audience support when he shifted from baritone to an upper register for a big finish to the traditional Bing Crosby favorite.
Tenor Carl Stewart next delivered a flawless presentation of “O Holy Night,” followed by Sarah Cunningham singing Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song” and a scat version of “Jingle Bells” where she was expertly backed by her husband Cory Cunningham on trombone, Tom Aiken on piano and David Ferrario on electric bass.
Next was the popular vocal group EarReverence, made up of Bill Bordissso, Valerie Reid, Nick Reid and standing in for ailing Carol Cole Lewis, Bonnie Trumbo (Shelly’s mom).
This time they were joined by Carl Stewart, and they then took over in leading the audience through a medley of sing-along favorites, ending with Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” where most of the orchestra members donned traditional Santa hats, except for Conductor Parkinson, who sported a fur-trimmed black version labeled “Bah, Humbug.”
As has been a tradition almost from the symphony’s founding in 1977, the Christmas Celebration finale was the singing of George Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” this time led by all the singers.
The next performance of the symphony will take place on May 18, 2013, when Clear Lake Performing Arts presents the annual Mothers Day concert.
