Category Archives: Uncategorized

Natasha’s Excellent Summer Adventure!

black cat, cats, mischevious cats, Natasha, Nature, summer, tuxedo cat, Uncategorized, , , , , ,
The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, the chipmunks are chipping, and the temperature is climbing – Natasha knows it’s time to shrug off her winter lethargy and return to exploring and patrolling the wilds of our yard.
On the prowl, she determinedly sets off with her bodyguard, as any queen would do.  She’s always on the alert for danger and adventure, even if her guard is not!

 

Of course, she must look first one way . . .
Then another, for any signs of danger,  be it in the form of nefarious chipmunks, antagonistic avians, or ferocious ants.

 

What has Natasha discovered?  An insidious ant?  A taunting chipmunk?  A skulking mole?  We may never know!

 

 

 

Whew!  All that traveling and probing for danger is exhausting.  A rest is required.
Still, Natasha likes to check back with her human, to make sure he is not exhausted, frightened, or endangered.
Then, her other human (Me!) calls from the other side of the fence.  Like Lassie racing to Timmie or Fury to Joey, Natasha flies across the yard (at a brisk trot) and leaps over that fence to join me.

Later, her adventure completed, and the yard marked safe from rodents, insects, and feathered beasts, Natasha settles down, exhausted, to a well-deserved rest in my hat.  So there really is a cat in the hat!

Fare Thee Well, Winter Birds

Dunlin, egret, Eider ducks, Gold Crowned Kinglet, Halibut Point, herons, Horned Lark, Long Tail Duck, Loon, massachusetts, Nature, Sanderling, Swans, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Well, this title isn’t entirely accurate.  Many of the winter birds are still hanging out, as is the cold weather.  Still, I thought I’d better post on some of our winter visitors before the air conditioners snap on and the Baltimore Orioles start sipping mimosas and fanning themselves.  The first visit I want to mention was a local one:  the Swedish Cemetery in Worcester.  Here, we had the great pleasure of snapping some shots of Gold Crowned Kinglets.  These cuties are awfully fast, so Yang actually managed to end up with a few shots of a tree where the bird had been a millisecond before.  Nevertheless, he did get some nice photos, as you see.  Some were even “action” shots like the one below!

In January, we also made it to Gooseberry Island, one of our favorite spots.  Though, for the first time, we missed out on the Long-tailed ducks there, we did sight lots of other feathered pals.  We caught some Eiders on film.  There was a male, a female, and an immature male.  Note the immature male at the the top, right,  acting like a typical teenager – not wanting to be seen with his parents.

We also some adorable shore birds.  The Dunlins were real cuties.

 

 

 

 

 

And the Sanderlings were no slouches, either!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had to go to Halibut Point to see the Long-Tails and Harlequin Ducks.

 

 

 

 

 

We also made to the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, where we saw many a different waterfowl.  The Coots were in abundance – and they loved to hang out with the Swans.

 

 

 

We also got some closeups of these plump guys.  Their heads are black, their bodies are grey, they have a white streak over their beaks, and they have huge, lobed, yellow feet.  We couldn’t get a good shot of their feet because they were in the water.  Still, we did get some nice close ups of these guys.  They are still at the the Reservoir now, along with tons of Ringed-Neck Ducks.  The Ruddy Ducks have also re-appeared – but that’s a set of pictures for another blog.  For now, enjoy these rotund cuties.  By the way, they also love Horn Pond in Woburn – the forthcoming subject of another blog.

Their bodies may be plump and take-off may be skittery, but the coot can fly!

 

Last report is on our visit to Meig’s Point in Connecticut in February.  A week or so before, we’d gone there on an unseasonably warm Saturday – and, unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea.  There were tons of people but hardly a bird to be seen.  That was sad for Yang, because this was the place we always saw one of his favorites, the Horned Larks.  So, we went back on a colder weekday a week or two later and guess what we saw?

We got to see a whole flock!  We were so careful to approach them quietly, because these guys are very shy.  The the flock will fly off in a winged shape, much like the Snow Buntings that we saw on Deer Island.  It’s so neat to see that sweep of black feathers giving them a “horned” appearance, with that splash of chartreuse on their faces.  As you can see, it’s hard to pick them out with the way their brown feathers blend them in with the winter seared grass.  If you click on the photo, you’ll get a better look.

We didn’t just see the larks, though.  I wasn’t able to get a picture, but I did see a female Ruby-Crowned Kinglet close up.  We were  sighted lots of Loons (the avian not the human kind) swimming along the shore, like this chap.  At one point, we even saw three seals sunning themselves out in the bay.  Sorry, they were too far to photograph.  Here’s one of the many Golden Eyes we saw, along with tons of Surf and Black Scoters.  We also had the pleasure of watching a conference between a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret that, fortunately, ended without bloodshed.

 

 

So, winter may be past, or passing, but we did get some nifty bird sightings in!

 

 

Christmas Noir Four: Lady on a Train

1940s mystery, Christmas film, Christmas Noir, Dan Duryea, David Bruce, Deanna Durbin, Holiday Noir, Jacqueline DeWitt, Lady on a Train, mystery, New York City, New York films, Patricia Morison, Ralph Bellamy, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,
Lady on a Train is more comedy than mystery; however, it possesses some nice dark touches that give its holiday setting a noir flavor.  The opening title cars starts us off with the blacks and greys, stark lines, and and dusky darkness of falling night so characteristic of noir. The essential plot gives us Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin), a sassy San Francisco heiress, witnessing a murder from her compartment window as her train pauses before chugging into New York’s Grand Central Station shortly before Christmas.  The image through her window is perfect noir.  An old man arguing with a  overcoated and fedored form lowering over him.  When the old man angrily turns his back, the menacing figure spots a crow bar on the table, pulls down the window shade without facing the outside, and then bludgeons his victim, visible only through  silhouette  on the drawn shade.  All just before the train pulls out and rushes toward the station.

 

 

Of course, no one really believes Nicki when she tries to sound the alarm, not fussy factotum Edward Everett Horton sent to meet her at the station and definitely not the  crusty desk sergeant (William Frawley at his crustiest best) – especially when the latter sees that Nicki is holding a sensational novel by her favorite mystery writer.

 

 

So, what is our undaunted heroine’s next step? Why, track down that mystery author, Wayne Morgan, to help her solve the crime.  Played by David Bruce, the author does not appreciate her throwing this strange tale in his lap and expecting him to solve the murder – especially since she hounds him by interrupting his meeting with his fiancee and then tracking the writer and fiancee to a movie theatre – where Nicki sees in the newsreel that the famous wealthy man recently found dead from “falling while decorating his tree” is the same guy she saw murdered!  Our poor author ends up really up against it while trying to fend off Nicki’s insistence he help her while he is under the gimlet eyes of a formidable fiancee ( the elegant but indomitable Patricia Morison) and a secretary (Jacqueline DeWitt), whose dry cracks and skepticism over the writer’s capabilities would do Eve Arden proud.

 

Even with Nicki’s feisty and cheery determination to get to the bottom of things, Lady on a Train has some deliciously noir moments:  Nicki’s incursion on the murdered man’s mansion through sharp contrast of black night shadows with stark white snow; the mansion itself’s cobweb of shadows and hazy grey lighting, twists and turns of its interconnecting rooms, and the startling contrast of double doors opening from a  foyer’s gloom into a brightly lit room  filled with relatives listening to the dead man’s will – themselves an disconcerting mixture of charm and menace.  A noir staple of mistaken identity comes into play when Nicki is taken for the old man’s gold-digger girlfriend, the singer in a downtown night club that itself will contain a two-way mirror for spying, dark and twisted corridors leading to shadowy basement rooms of hidden threats.  Of course, there’s no forgetting the estate’s caretaker, who also seems to run the nightclub and have master-minded a plot to con and murder the old man – a smoothly sinister sort who slides snakelike through back ways and hidden doors, bearing a white cat – I guess I mixed a metaphor there with the cat and snake thing.

 

One particular sequence squarely fits the noir motif when Durbin inadvertently lets slip as she rides a car up an elevator in an urban garage a clue she may be wise to the killer – who likely is her companion, the murdered man’s nephew Dan Duryea (a noir stalwart if there ever was one).  What follows is a pursuit through chiaroscuro shadows and interconnected rooms, people framed or trapped in doorways, people being pursued or unknowingly spied upon, even through the dunes of sand waiting to be used against the snow outside.  Another scene finds the other nephew, played by Ralph Bellamy, addressing her with a creepy smile and revealing that  that old stiff Aunt Sarah used to visit him at night and . . . we never find out what?! Brrrrr!!!!!

 

 

The mystery author does arrive on the scene to save our heroine; however, his doing so brings chuckles as well as anxiety over the result.

So, how is this playful take on noir a Christmas movie?  Well, we did see that Nicki arrives near Christmas Eve, and there are trees all over the place in this one – including the one that allegedly did in our murder, correction, our first murder victim.  Lots of snow as well.  Maybe the best connection is the lovely version of “Silent Night” that Durbin sings to her Dad over the phone.  Check it out here. Anyway, it’s a nifty noir to drive away the holiday blues.  If you want to see Durbin do full on Christmas Noir (more noir than Christmas, though), check out her and Gene Kelly  playing against type in Christmas Holiday.

Screen shots by author from the film Lady on a Train, Universal films, copyright 1944.

Check out my other Holiday Noir blogs:

The Lady in the Lake

Beyond Tomorrow

Coverup

Made for TV Horror 2: The Night That Panicked America

John Ritter, Orson Welles, radio dramas, The Night That Panicked America, The War of the Worlds, Uncategorized, Vic Morrow, , , , , , , , , , ,

The Night That Panicked America

October 30, 1938:  across the nation, Americans were sent into a frenzy of terror when they

mistook Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre broadcast of The War of the Worlds for the real thing.  Why did so many people run terrified, believing a radio program of a Martian invasion was actually happening?  One wag answered, “Because all the intelligent people were listening to Charlie McCarthy” (ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy) on another station.  Historians and social psychologists see some far less funny causes at play:  American’s very real fears of invasion after the devouring of Europe and Asia by fascist powers as well as anxiety over economic and social tensions.  The radio play embodied and thus brought to the surface the very fears so many Americans were trying to suppress: our nation’s weakness instability in the face of invasion by alien German and Japanese.  The 1975 television film The Night That Panicked America effectively conveys this insight by interweaving storylines of the radio show’s production and broadcast with the reactions of Americans across the country.

Opening with a view of the earth from outer space, calmly tracking in to it, director Joseph Sargent evokes H.G. Wells’s opening to his novel War of the Worlds.  The film further establishes the links between a world on the verge of world war and a world about to suffer Martian invasion with a narrator intoning the state of earth’s conflicts in language similar to Wells’s novel.  The background of broadcasts of war news and Nazi rallies establishes radio’s power to show the impossibility of denying the fearsome inevitability of world war. 

Next comes a switch to the pre-production frenzy of putting on a radio program, following producer/director Paul Stewart into the broadcasting station and up the elevator to the studio with a network standards and practices rep hammering at him to keep things uncontroversial, then into the studio where he’s pulling together script changes and pressing the sound effects woman to create something ominous.  It’s an exciting vision of how live radio performances came together: actors, scripts, sound effects, orchestra, directing battling against time, censors, and technical limitations.  If you think about it, though, all this rush and pressure to make things perfect right up to the last minute also mirrors the sense of tension and uncertainty in the country itself.  A nice hint at the unspoken realization of the tinderbox of American fears is the S & P guy (Tom Bosley) insisting that they can’t have Roosevelt as part of the story; they have to go down all the way down to the Secretary of the Interior.  It’s never uttered, but, of course, having “Roosevelt” in their play about a devastating invasion lends it too much authenticity.  And isn’t it much less scary if you skip past vice presidents, speakers of the house, secretaries of state all the way down to Secretary of the Interior.  (Welles gets past this by agreeing to substitute Secretary of the Interior for the President, but he sounds like Roosevelt). Art liberates attempts to suppresses reality.

The stories interwoven with the broadcast are sometimes humorous, yet they also bring home that this radio play brought to the surface fears and uncertainties, not just about war but about belief in American exceptionalism.  John Ritter and Michael Constantine are son and father who are farmers at Grovers Mills, the site of the invasion according to the play.  Joining up with others to defend their country from invaders, the son sees his father and other farmers shoot up — a water tower.  This does not amuse the owner.  However, this son, who has been arguing he wants to go to Canada to join up and fight against Hitler before the war came to America, is the one who figures out this is only a radio program and tries to stop the others from acting hysterically.  The fellow who admits that half the world is in flames is clear-eyed enough to recognize a real danger, while those who try to live in denial find their fears breaking free of suppression to control them.

Other examples are especially interesting.  Two servants had been listening to the radio before their wealthy employer’s party.  So, they know that it’s only a play — which their general perspicuity would have told them anyway.  However, the snobby employer and  his equally snobby friends, frivolous, self-important, and even a little impressed with Hitler, buy into the program lock, stock, and Martian cylinder.  Their self-satisfied ignorance practically hits you over the head as the employer keeps refusing to listen when the butler tries to tell him it’s only a play.  Equally snobbish and obtuse, one of the guests decides the whole thing must be real because the professor reporting is touted as being from Yale — a fictional professor.  Eventually, the crowd of airhead snobs rushes off into the night, stealing their hosts valuables, while the servants chill, finishing off the hors d’oervres and champagne.

Not all the stories are amusing, however.  Will Geer is a Protestant minister who won’t let his daughter marry a Papist infidel, fearing a religious alien invasion.  His bigoted form of faith isno comfort when he believes aliens will destroy him and he loses his sanity for a time.  Perhaps the most poignant tale involves a middle-class family where the father (Vic Morrow) is leaving the wife (Eileen Brennan) and children to “go look for work,” but the suggestion is that he can’t handle supporting his family emotionally as well as financially any longer.  The American dream of family stability and work’s inherent dignity and security has fallen apart.  The fear of the family dying in the invasion pulls husband and wife together in an attempt to take their children to safety, until what they perceive as the approaching alien ship with its horrific heat rays draws them into the decision that mercy-killing the children is their only option.

Anyway, it’s an exciting film to watch that gives you something to think about.  I loved seeing all the clever improvisation and creativity of putting on a live broadcast.  Perhaps you have heard how the sound person created the menacing unscrewing of the Martian cylinders by having her assistant unscrew a pickle jar in a toilet in the men’s room to get just the right reverb?  Paul Shenar was dead on in his reading of Orson Welles’s sign off for the play, as the Mercury Theatre’s trick and treat. I especially liked that the writers (including Nicholas Mayer and Howard Koch, a writer on the original script) left me considering how suppressing rather than facing what unsettles us in this world actually leaves us prone to that that which we try to suppress.  If this can happen unintentionally by creative writers, actors, and technicians, what can deliberate manipulation through something like AI do, if we haven’t faced and come truly to understand the contentions of our world?

31 Oct 1938 — Actor Orson Welles explains the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds to reporters after it caused widespread panic. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

For an informative essay on the film, click here.

Images:

Broadcasting play:  https://musingsofamiddleagedgeek.blog/2022/10/07/the-night-that-panicked-america-1975-is-a-little-seen-tv-movie-about-the-greatest-halloween-prank-ever-played/

Dvd cover Image CBS Studios (c) 2014

Orson Welled news conference:  Public Domain image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orson_Welles_War_of_the_Worlds_1938.jpg

All screen shots are from The dvd The Night That Panicked America,CBS Studios, (c) 2014

 

Made for TV Horror 1: The Norliss Tapes

Dan Curtis, David Duchovny, Gothic, Halloween, Norliss Tapes, supernatiral films, suspense, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

The Norliss Tapes (1973)

In some ways, the 1970s were a golden age for horror on network TV.  Series such as Ghost Story, Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense, and The Night Stalker chilled us back then, though the over-plus of poster-vision, superimposition, electronic music, and a dizzying tracking in and out may seem a little cheesy now.  And why did everyone think harpsichord music was so scary?  The horror genre also heavily populated another 1970s television trend, the made-for-TV movie.  One of the most prolific purveyors of  ’70s TV horror in a series or a one-off film was Dan Curtis, the guy who brought us Dark Shadows, the first gothic soap opera, in the 1960s.  Many people know Curtis for Darren McGavin’s  The Night Stalker series, which actually started out with two TV movies:  The Nigh Stalker and The Night Strangler. Dan Curtis, quite the busy beaver, also wrote, produced, and/or directed quite a few other telefilms, including Trilogy of Terror, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Grey.  One film he wrote/directed/produced that was not based on a classic horror tale was The Norliss Tapes.  A pilot that never  made it to a series, The Norliss Tapes is a kind of upscale Night Stalker, based on the premise of writer David Norliss investigating  supernatural incidents in order to debunk them.  Kind of a Scully and Mulder in one.  It could have made an interesting series.

The movie starts with a tense David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) brooding over a foggy San Francisco landscape from the balcony of his apartment, then calling up his editor (Don Porter) to pressure him into a meeting about a book he was supposed to have completed on his investigations of the supernatural, with an aim to debunk.  He cryptically alludes to threats that have kept him from writing, which he now fears may even take his life.  When Norliss misses the meeting, the publisher seeks the writer at his apartment only to comes across a note telling him to play a set of numbered tapes (in the right order!) to understand what’s really going down.  After putting the tape in a handy cassette player/recorder (Now there’s a trip down memory lane!), the publisher and audience hear David’s voice narrating us to his first adventure into darkness — dissolve back into the past and away we go!  The tale unfolds with a recently widowed woman (Angie Dickinson) encountering a gruesome being in her late husband’s art studio, which of course she and her German Shepherd have to cross a hill and some woods in the middle of the night to access.  The creature whips the dog across the room and takes blasts from her shotgun as if it’s only a tackle from a linebacker.  Still, he’s down long enough for the woman to get away so she can tell her sister, a pal of David’s, that this thing is a creepy version of her husband.  He shows up to investigate, but for a skeptic he comes to believe the woman right quick — dazzled by Angie’s charms?  Before you can say Necronomicon (which actually is a long word), victims are being strangled and drained of blood, a new sculpture of something demonic in reddish clay appears to be gradually being finished in the studio, reports emerge of the husband’s prior involvement in dark arts once he learned he was dying, and creepy caverns and crypts reveal horrible secrets. All of which David pieces together, despite the local sheriff’s skepticism not his own.

Despite some of those annoying trackings in and out and a little too much screeching with the electronic music (Robert Colbert did his job much better on Dark Shadows), the movie has some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments as victims are stalked on dark, lonely nights; in a dank mausoleum; or to a lonely motel room.  The film even makes effective use of the traditional “We’ve got to find the monster  in this forbidding underground passage before he stirs.”  Roy Thinnes, no stranger to the eerie (The Invaders, Horror at 30,000 Feet), makes an interesting and capable investigator:  discovering the right people to interview and asking the right questions, as well as effectively using the library.  Still, Thinnes plays the guy a little too much on the low-key side; he could make Duchovny’s Mulder look peripatetic.  In all fairness, though, didn’t an ambiance of low grade, indefinable anxiety predominate many films of the era, especially mystery and horror? After tale number one ends, the film returns to the editor, ending with him selecting tape number two.  So, one wonders what new adventure in horror David Norliss would have faced had this pilot led to a series.  Though Chris Carter credits The Night Stalker as an inspiration for The X-Files, the sophistication and the detecting skills of Norliss suggest this film is a much closer match.  How might Carter have developed his series if The Norliss Tapes had become a series?  Thinnes did reappear on The X-Files as Jeremiah Smith, ironically, an alien, though one with good intentions for us benighted earthlings.

No copyright infringement intended by use of the properly attributed photos.  If you feel there is a problem, contact me about removing the images.

Image One – author’s collection

Image 2 – https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-norliss-tapes

Image3 – http://thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com/2013/10/norliss-tapes-1973-tv.html

Image 4 – https://cleigh6.tripod.com/CTP/CTP-grotesque.html

Image 5 – https://moviebuffsforever.com/products/the-norliss-tapes-dvd-1973

Gooseberry Island Redux – or Reducks?

birds, Ducks, horned grebe, Long Tail Duck, Loon, massachusetts, Nature, New England, Oldsquaw Duck, scoter, Uncategorized, winter, , , , , , , , ,
Yang and I returned to Gooseberry island on a sunny day for a change last Saturday – celebrating my birthday over the weekend.  This time, no fog and plenty of sunshine.  Also, plenty of water fowl!

One of the first sightings I want to discuss are the shore birds.  since we could actually get to the shore this time, we walked along the beach and saw a flock of shore birds whip around in tight and angular formation.  When we came around some rocks, we got a good look at these cuties.  I was surprised to find that we had a mix of Dunlins and Sanderlings together.  This time, I didn’t mistake their tummies for seaside rocks, so perfectly had they blended in with sand and sea-smoothed stones, when I saw them in December.  The Dunlins are brownish on top, with  buff tummies and long, slightly curved beaks.  The Sanderlings are grey on top with white tummies and shorter and straight beaks.  They were fun to watch scurrying about in search of dinner, all while seeming quite at home with one another. These images might look tiny here, but if you click on the pictures to enlarge them, you can see the birds much more clearly.

Apparently, the pickings were getting kind of slim, for Yang managed to snap a shot of some of these guys taking it on the wing for better dining.

We also saw plenty of birds in the water that day. With perfect visibility and trusty binoculars, we could sight dozens of Long-tailed ducks near the shore and way out in the bay.  Yang got some neat pictures of a few near us.  This male is a handsome specimen.  You can even see a little of his long tail in these photos.  Apparently, these ducks can dive as deep as 95 feet and can stay under water longer than any of the  diving ducks.  Wouldn’t Lloyd Bridges be impressed?  Yang took these pictures as we we heading toward the island along the causeway.

 

 

 

Coming back along the causeway, we found this Long-tail extremely close to shore.  I think it’s a nonbreeding female, but sometimes they are difficult to distinguish from an immature male.  I didn’t see a long tail on this duck, so I’m going to take a flyer and say this is a female.  She was quite unimpressed by the humans walking by.  She also didn’t seem to be much worried about the rocks towards which the surrounding waves  were shoving her.  Still, she did just fine for herself, bold duckess!

Another aquatic bird of which we saw tons were Scoters.  We saw Black Scoters, White-winged Scoters, and Surf Scoters.  Again dozens and dozens throughout the bay.  Yang was only able to photograph some of the Surf Scoters, but he got some good shots.  As we were coming back along the causeway, there was a trio: a male, a female, and an immature male (I believe). the female is brown with a white spot on either side of her head.  The males all have that unique pink beak with a white spot on the forehead, white on either side of the beak,  and one on the back of the head.  You can see that one of the males doesn’t have the white spots on his face.  We wondered if he were a Black or White-winged Scoter; however, neither type has a white patch on the back of the head like this fellow.  So maybe the younger males take time to get all their patches in?

You can see from this shot that the Scoters weren’t alone.  Here’s a  Loon photo bombing the Scoters.  We noticed him hanging out with this group from another species.  We also have a nice picture of the Loon by him= or herself.  I believe this is a Common Loon in winter plumage, but if I’m wrong, feel free to set me straight.

Another, smaller, diving water bird joined the show.  A horned grebe!  We saw one or two popping up (and back down again) amongst the various flocks of Scoters and Long-tails. Again, let me know if I misidentified the type of Grebe.

Last but not least, here comes the Bufflehead!  Usually there are big flocks of these guys around in the winter, but today, this chap seems to be swimming solo.  Well, it’s a big ocean and there’s room for everybody.  So where are the Harlequins?

Return to Riverside Cemetery: Autumn Leaves Bursting with Color

Autumn, Cemeteries, Connecticut, CT, Fall, Foliage, Gothic, Halloween, mausoleum, New England, tomb stones, Uncategorized, Waterbury, , , , , , , , , , , ,
This past October. we returned to the Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury with hopes of seeing the statuary complemented by gorgeous fall colors.  Yang and I were not disappointed!

The entrance was serene and gracious, with background colors hinting at the beauty we would find beyond.

The highlight that these fall colors brought t o the monuments was deliciously melancholy.  The leaves behind this woman leaning on a cross brought forth the saffron beauty of autumn.

 

 

 

 

 

Then there was the flame of orange encompassing this melancholy dame, flaring against the shadows of a of grey autumn day.

 

 

 

 

 

Or there was this lone, proud figure fronting a brilliant crimson of oak trees.

I loved this shot from behind of the woman gazing out over the rolling hills of autumn glory.

I think this deer must feel at home, encompassed by the gorgeous green morphing to yellow-gold of fall.

Likewise, this pensive young woman is lost in deep thought while greens turn to flame and yellow-green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was especially enchanted by so many trees that combined various colors as their leaves slowly shut down the ports to chlorophyll and let their true hues burst froth in brilliant glory.

Green and Gold

 

 

 

 

 

Orange and Red, like a flame reaching heavenward.

And then, some trees seemed to  us gifted with four colors at once!

Well, maybe that’s a Japanese maple photo bombing the sugar maple.

Just gazing across the cemetery, you see slopes rolling with gorgeous fall glory:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trees were so gorgeous, Yang decided to stick one in his back pack to carry it home.

Just kidding:  optical illusion.

 

I particularly loved this sage woman’s pensive and imposing presence, her blue-green copper complementing the reds and greens of the trees behind her.

And that, my friends, is all she wrote.

 

 

Autumn in and Around Auburn

Uncategorized
. Yang and I do travel around the Northeast quite a bit to enjoy the fall colors; however, we’ve also enjoyed some striking foliage almost in our own backyard.  Actually, our back, front, and side yards are turning gorgeous shades of red, yellow, orange, and maroon, but that’s material for a different blog.  So, two local spots where we’ve enjoyed some leaf-appreciation are Dorothy Pond in Auburn and the forest and reservoir across from the stone church in West Boylston.

Dorothy Pond is circled by trails and is bisected by a berm of earth that once carried an older railroad.  In the summer, we’d seen lots of ducks and other birds in the area, even a beaver.  This day, we mostly saw the foliage, though there was this gorgeous Great Blue Heron that was too distant for a photograph.  Only binoculars let us get a good look. There were lots of splashes of brilliant red amidst the green and yellow.  Leaves and beautiful berries contributed scarlet – as did a male downy woodpecker who would not deign to show his face.  Or maybe he was just showing off his patch of crimson feathers.

 

 

We also saw this friendly Garter Snake.  The cold day made him (or her) a little sluggish, but the little critter sure had a friendly face.  It was also fun, when we passed along a marsh, to see the eyes and heads of frog peeping through the fairy moss greening the waters.  A great place for a morning walk in crisp autumn.

 

And there’s not much more pleasing to the eye than the harmony of gold, autumn green, and pure October blue. 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone flocks to the old stone church in West Boylston, but they often don’t realize that there’s a lovely forest across the road, displaying the other half of the reservoir and forest trails of wonderful fall colors.  As you leave the parking lot, there are the gorgeous orange flames of sugar maples, even before you enter the woods.

 

 

 

 

 

Moving toward the forest, you can see  red flaming up through the green and yellow …

… while greens give way to golds, oranges, and reds of autumn.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even I can get into the act! But I can’t compete with autumnal glory!

Along the way, we paused to take in the soft orchid of wild asters, with a bumble bee seeking out a last pollen catch.

 

 

 

 

Now, we’re in the forest. This is the chartreuse light of an autumn trail that I tried to describe in in my WIP Shadows of a Dark Past.

 

 

 

 

 

How beautiful to be the one scarlet leaf amongst a thicket of green.

 

 

 

 

 

I was so moved by this bouquet of young maroon oak leaves.  Why is it that oak leaves only seem to be this deep red when the tree is very young?

The woods were also filled with feathered fauna:  Chickadees, Nuthatches, Kinglets, Yellow-Rumped Warblers.  Unfortunately, the little critters moved so fast, we could never get a picture of them!

Here’s my favorite fauna – and my favorite picture!

 

 

Smart Talking Gal #4: Susan Hayward

Film Actors, Film Noir, Heat of Anger (1972), House of Strangers (1949), Rawhide (1949), Smart-Talking Gals, Susan Hayward, Top Secret (1957), Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

Susan Hayward

One of my favorite of all the smart talking gals is that lady with the baby face, biting talk, and magnificent mane of auburn hair, Susan Hayward.  Hayward started out specializing in types meaner and more inventively spiteful than a pack of Heathers:  Sis Hopkins, Adam Had Four Sons, And Now Tomorrow, I Married a Witch, and Forest Rangers.  She persecuted the dickens out of Judy Cannova, Ingrid Bergman, Loretta Young, Veronica Lake (the real witch), and Paulette Goddard.  Yet she had something that almost made you root for her.  Actually, many of us probably were rooting for her in Forest Ranger, where she set out to fix Paulette’s wagon after the latter unknowingly stole boyfriend and big dope Fred MacMurray.  More than one critic found unbelievable the feisty Susan wimping out in the midst of fire so Paulette could prove herself by saving her.
Filmmakers came to see that spark of something special in Hayward, upgrading her to roles where she might connive but still definitely win our admiration for her smarts and heart.  That snappy wordplay, that piercing insight into the heart of things, that defiant glare and tilt of her auburn-crowned head were combined with tenderness and integrity that had to be earned.  The men impelled to this Susan aren’t allured by a femme fatale but drawn by her strength, clear sight, and straight talk.  In They Won’t Believe Me, she snares philanderer Robert Young, but insists on a commitment to match her own .  Deadline at Dawn shows her tossing off cracks as a dancehall girl blowing away creeps, outfoxing a deceptive dame, and going toe-to-toe with gangsters. Still she ends up helping a näive sailor on leave who’s gotten himself caught in a murder frame.  She may dismiss him as “only a baby,” but she sticks around to show him the ropes and clear his name.  Then, Robert Montgomery in The Saxon Charm finds her too much for his slick, con artist charm when she coolly stands up to him and calls out his phoniness for her writer husband.
Three Hayward films that especially show that tough and smart look good on a gal are House of Strangers (1949), Rawhide (1950), and Top Secret Affair (1957).  In the first film, Hayward may initially seem to be your typical vamp, sporting slinky sequins and silks, lush red tresses, and clever with her cracks, especially when she temps tough-guy lawyer Richard Conte away from his Italian banking family and docile fiancée.  However, she’s the best thing that ever happened to him, getting him away from a family that has always been a hotbed of resentments and manipulations. When Conte goes to prison for trying to bribe a juror to save the father he’s defending for fraud, the fiancée promptly ditches him for one of his brothers.  Completely blind to having brought on his fall through oppression and disrespect of his other sons, the father (Edward G. Robinson), feeds the imprisoned Conte a steady diet of hatred and vengence in letters.  Our Susan sees right through things and marches straight past the portals of the father’s hollow mansion, to give Edward G. Robinson hell for destroying that son.  Finally, it’s her tough love that inspires Conte to leave behind his self-devouring family.  In fact, she’s independent enough to follow through on her promise to leave for good – his choice whether to wise up and join her.  One of my favorite of her lines comes early in their relationship. Conte tries to keep her in her place by bragging he’s too much for her to handle. Defiantly she retorts,  “Nothing hurts me.  That’s one of my complications.”
Rawhide is an especial favorite of mine.  In the mid-1800s, Susan is traveling cross- country by stage, on her own, with her toddler niece.  When at one stop she’s told a recent jailbreak makes it too dangerous for a woman to be allowed to go on with the stage, she not only refuses to disembark, but it takes two guys (including Tyrone Power) to get her off that stage.  Our Red is some determined woman.  Later, she insists on taking Powers’ gun with her when she goes for a bath in a hot spring.  He snidely comments, “What are you afraid of, coyotes?” and she shuts him up with, “Yeah, the ones with boots on.”  He tries to imply she’s a weak little lady by challenging if she knows how to use a gun, and our smart talkin’ gal of the West puts the man in his place with cool understatement, “I’ve seen them around.” Susan’s stay gets tougher as the jail breakers take over the waystation, but she is undaunted.  One guy tries to rough her up, and she smacks him good. After the jail breakers shoot Powers’ partner when he tries to escape, she sneers at the leader, “We won’t run away.  We’d hate to get shot in the back.”  She stays cool and strong and smart throughout, taking over from Power in secretly digging a hole in the adobe of the room where they’re being held prisoner. When the knife accidentally flies outside, she grabs the baby and pretends she has to take the kid outside to “do her business.”  That also inspires one of her smart cracks.  To her, “Got to take the baby out,” Zimmerman, the leader growls, “Where?”  She growls right back, “Where do you think?” Best of all, our smart talkin’ gal proves she’s smart actin’ at the end, as she reveals what she meant by “having seen guns around.”  Power is helpless under the gun of lowlife Jack Elam, so she manages to by grab a rifle and plug Elam, saving the day.
Top Secret Affair comes later, in 1957, and there is some talk from Hayward’s Dottie Peele about always wanting to meet a guy she could respect, marry, and have a family with.  Still, the only guy who can go toe to toe with her is Kirk Douglas’s general.  As the top of a media conglomerate that drives public opinion, but mostly for the better (no female Rupert Murdoch, she!), Susan gives us a smart, strong, articulate woman.  A newsreel featuring the general leaves her unimpressed with military propaganda, as she dismisses him with, “Look at him apple polishing the President (FDR).  I bet he voted for Wilkie.” Or “Bang, bang.  Like a kid with a space gun.”  The oversized image of his face doesn’t cowe her as the army might intend, as she instead dismisses him with, “Get back in your tank, turtlehead.”  The director gives us an intriguing cut to emphasize that Dottie Peele is no weak woman to be cowed by military might.  Right after General Goodwin tells his adjutant, “There’s only two kinds of women in this world: mothers and the other kind,” we cut to Dottie saying, “There’s only two kinds of men in this world – and I can handle both of them.”  Of course, the two end up together, but not before they have to plow through misunderstandings and reconciliations, the latter from mutual respect rather than deceit or submission.  Some remarks from Dottie let us know that even if she retires from media in marriage, she’ll not retire from speaking her mind and maybe a plunge into politics, though perhaps indirectly.

All the way to 1972, and our red-haired dynamo is still taking charge with wit, integrity, and insight.  In Heat of Anger, Hayward plays lawyer Jessie Fitzgerald, “the Portia of the Pacific.”  An established defense lawyer who’s not afraid to partner with rebel lawyer James Stacey for defending cantankerous Lee. J, Cobb, Susan is still on her toes, zipping around in her sports car and working the system with verve and smarts.  When the prosecutor attempts to cowe her with a sarcastic, “Your integrity overwhelms me,” she shuts him up with, “Well, I’ll embroider that on a pillow in needlepoint.” Partner Stacey tries to call her on snowing a jury into freeing a murderer, and she sets him straight:  “You win with the best case.  Juries decide.”  If Jessie raises an objection in court, it sticks. If the prosecutor tries to spring newly discovered information about her client in court, she turns it into evidence that could win jury sympathy and respect with, “No more coddling. Straight to the nerve.”  She even beats James Stacey at pool, as well as presses him to come out with what he hates about the client so that he finally gets on board with her.  And you better believe that client Lee J. Cobb, as much as he lumbers over her and snarls his anger, backs down under her steady and determined personality.  Yep, our auburn-haired whirlwind still had it!

Maybe the quip that best sums up Susan Hayward’s smart gal screen personae comes in one of her earlier films, Tulsa (1949).  Her character, Cherokee Lansing, becomes partners in wildcat oil drilling with Robert Preston.  When he calls her by her Native American name, Seenotawnee, her friend Jim Redbird replies, “In Cherokee, it means redhead.”  She correct Jim and says to Preston, “But to you, Mr. Brady, it means boss!”  This smart talkin’ red head will always be boss with us!

 

 

Color Image cover art for Alpha Video (2003)Tulsa
Black and white photographs of Susan Hayward from The Films of Susan hayward (Eduardo Moreno, Citadel Press, 2009)
Screen Shots from the following films:  Top Secret Affair (Warner Brothers, 1985, 2009) and Heat of Anger (Quality Video, DSSP, Inc, 2002)

 

josna's avatarTell Me Another

I suppose I had thought that a person accumulated her experiences over the years and then, when retirement afforded her the leisure to go through her diaries, miscellaneous writings, and correspondence, she would have all that she needed to write her memoirs. I, that is, not she. All those boxes of papers I haven’t organized going back to the year dot, they could all wait until I had the time to go through them. Once I had the time, I had supposed, the floodgates of memory would simply open, and all the flotsam and jetsam of life would more-or-less fall into place. I realize now that I was counting on it. But as it turns out, events are conspiring to present a wholly different picture. 

For one thing, my mind seems to have gone completely blank. After all, over twelve-plus years Tell Me Another has accumulated more than…

View original post 907 more words

Late Winter Birds, Far and Near

American Black Duck, birds, cardinal bird, Common Mergansers, Downy Woodpecker, Ducks, goldfinches, hooded merganser, Kingfisher, Red bellied Woodpecker, Uncategorized, wood peckers, , , , , , , , , , ,
These waning days of winter have given Yang and I some fun bird watching, whether at home or away.  For instance, Yang went for a stroll one day on a canal that runs perpendicular to the Blackstone River and sighted some interesting ducks and the peripatetic Kingfisher.  So, the next day, I had him take me back there. Sure enough we saw some swell birds.  Yang got some really nice shots of a pair of hooded mergansers.  At first we thought they were both females, but I noticed that one had a distinctive long, pointed tail sticking above the water, as well as a fluffier brush of feathers at the back of the head.  I suspect that one was a juvenile male.  We either had a Mom and her teenage son or a Cougar duck.  Who can tell? Enjoy the pictures!

 

I also got to see the Kingfisher, a male.  I heard his excited chatter way down toward the end where the canal ran into the Blackstone.   I kept my eyes peeled until I saw a blob of white way ahead in a tall tree over the waters.  Training my binoculars confirmed my suspicions, bringing into focus a magnificent male Belted Kingfisher.  Yang came up and got some shots with the binoculars he could attach to his cell phone.  We had a great time watching His Majesty swoop down into the water, skimming along to fly off with his fishy dinner.

Further from home, we visited Forest Park in Springfield on our way to lunch in Montague.  This turned out to be the mecca for Common Mergansers. We saw tons of them in one of the ponds.  They were shy guys, as whenever we got  close to the shore, they paddled off to the middle of the pond.  Yang did get some nice pictures of them, though.  I love how the males gleam white, their green heads almost black.  Their head feathers in the back are far smoother than those of the male Red Breasted Mergansers.  In both these types of Mergansers, the females are beautiful, with their Rita Hayworth-red locks! Yang loves the ducks’ red beaks.

We also found some American Black Ducks enjoying the same pond as well.

Unfortunately, a nice swim almost ended in a trip over the dam! Can’t you just hear his wife yelling, “Dam/n!” Her husband responding, “Don’t you cuss at me . . . Whoa!!!”

 

 

 

Closer to home – as in  the bird feeders next to my house –  we’ve been seeing some nifty birds, old friends and new.  The Mockingbird and the Redwinged Blackbirds are back.  Would you believe that even in the snow, the Robins have been scooting about for at least two weeks?  Here we have a Robin and a Downy Woodpecker chilling (literally with all the snow)  in a tree outside my sun porch window.

I must say that this Robin loves his/her? suet.

 

We also had the pleasure of this Red Bellied Woodpecker’s company. Since it’s a female, it wouldn’t be the one who was stunned after hit our sun-porch window.  We brought him in in a box and let him warm up for about an hour then set him free. Whoosh!  He was in great shape and off to the races.  We see him and his mate here quite a bit.  They’re also big suet lovers.

 

Now, here some of our other visitors.  There are cheeky Goldfinches,

 

 

 

 

caring cardinals,

 

 

 

and perky Downy Woodpeckers.

 

Bring on the Rose Breasted Grosbeaks!