Wednesday, September 18, 2019
MOYNIHAN Documentary (2018)
In 2018, I enjoyed seeing a trailer for a documentary about Patrick Moynihan, but it played very briefly in theaters so I waited a long time for it to appear on DVD and video on demand (VOD). Had a chance to see it this week.
I remember Moynihan from my high school years in the mid-70s (he served in both LBJ and Nixon administrations) and he was later a Senator from NY (replaced by Hillary Clinton in 2001); he died in 2004. He was an example of self-recreation, from poor/broken family, worked on docks while going to City College for free at night, ended up in military which paid for his PhD at Tufts, later served multiple presidencies and Harvard.
Was reminded many times of Shakespeare's observation, "What's Past is Prologue." Here are a few themes from Moynihan's life :
(1) Early case study in the pile-on phenomenon re political correctness, re his 1965 white paper on the Negro Family and broken households leading to "blaming the victim" accusations.
(2) Close to idea of Universal Income with Family Assistance Program (FAP) (not passed) and later Earned Income Tax Credit (IITC) which did pass. This is still a theme in 2019 Democratic debates.
(3) Theme of "democracy in crisis" was fully voiced in 60s, as it is in 2010s. In UN speeches, he said that democracies were about 25 of 140 nations, and there were "sharks in the water" for the rest.
(4) He was criticized as being an embarrassing and loud nutcase in his representation of US at UN, and saying too much, and in the wrong way, leading to worsening of situations.
(5) Ethnic groups vs melting pots. In writing Beyond the Melting Pot, he talked about the preservation of ethnicity in US, still a big theme today (balance of ethnicity vs melting pot; foreign language in public schools, etc). Similarly in US and Europe re: integration or isolation of Muslim cultures.
Film Website
http://danielpatrickmoynihan.com/
Hollywood Reporter Review
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/moynihan-1149047
LA Times Review
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-capsule-moynihan-review-20181011-story.html
Rotten Tomatoes
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/moynihan
Amazon (both DVD & VOD)
https://www.amazon.com/Moynihan-Daniel-Patrick/dp/B07MWQ9CMB
Trivia
Henry Kissinger is still around (96 in 2019) and is interviewed several times in the film. (So is George F. Will). For a very rare clip of Kissinger interviewed in German (2014), on Youtube, here.
I remember Moynihan from my high school years in the mid-70s (he served in both LBJ and Nixon administrations) and he was later a Senator from NY (replaced by Hillary Clinton in 2001); he died in 2004. He was an example of self-recreation, from poor/broken family, worked on docks while going to City College for free at night, ended up in military which paid for his PhD at Tufts, later served multiple presidencies and Harvard.
Was reminded many times of Shakespeare's observation, "What's Past is Prologue." Here are a few themes from Moynihan's life :
(1) Early case study in the pile-on phenomenon re political correctness, re his 1965 white paper on the Negro Family and broken households leading to "blaming the victim" accusations.
(2) Close to idea of Universal Income with Family Assistance Program (FAP) (not passed) and later Earned Income Tax Credit (IITC) which did pass. This is still a theme in 2019 Democratic debates.
(3) Theme of "democracy in crisis" was fully voiced in 60s, as it is in 2010s. In UN speeches, he said that democracies were about 25 of 140 nations, and there were "sharks in the water" for the rest.
(4) He was criticized as being an embarrassing and loud nutcase in his representation of US at UN, and saying too much, and in the wrong way, leading to worsening of situations.
(5) Ethnic groups vs melting pots. In writing Beyond the Melting Pot, he talked about the preservation of ethnicity in US, still a big theme today (balance of ethnicity vs melting pot; foreign language in public schools, etc). Similarly in US and Europe re: integration or isolation of Muslim cultures.
Film Website
http://danielpatrickmoynihan.com/
Hollywood Reporter Review
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/moynihan-1149047
LA Times Review
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-capsule-moynihan-review-20181011-story.html
Rotten Tomatoes
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/moynihan
Amazon (both DVD & VOD)
https://www.amazon.com/Moynihan-Daniel-Patrick/dp/B07MWQ9CMB
Trivia
Henry Kissinger is still around (96 in 2019) and is interviewed several times in the film. (So is George F. Will). For a very rare clip of Kissinger interviewed in German (2014), on Youtube, here.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Thoughts on Seeing Caitlyn Doughty Live (September 2019)
Sometime in the last year or two, I've run across several women with eclectic and richly informative YouTube channels and quite engaging video personalities.* Last night I got to see one of them perform live at a book reading in the Old Financial District in downtown LA (DTLA).
Overview
Caitlyn Doughty is a "mortician, author, blogger, and YouTube personality," the YouTube channel being Ask A Mortician, here. Her YouTube channel has 850,000 subscribers. Find her at Wikipedia here and her personal website here. She also co-founded a "death acceptance" organization called Order of the Good Death that runs a website and conferences - see also Wiki here.
Background
Born in 1984, Doughy grew up in Hawaii, where her father was a high school teacher, and went to college at University of Chicago.
After her degree in medieval studies, she migrated to Oakland (like you do) and worked in a low-level job in a crematory while, well, finding herself. She later went to mortuary school and migrated to LA, where she runs (ran) a small funeral service with several partners and specialized in both home funerals and green burials. She recently announced the funeral home Undertaking LA, was closing but may reorganize.
Live On Stage
On September 9, 2019, she did a book reading, book signing, extended Q&A at the funky old Regent Theater (built 1914; now a nightclub) at 4th and Main in the old LA banking district. The reading was sponsored by Skylight Books, one of LA's best independent booksellers, on North Vermont (Vermont and Hollywood Blvd). Caitlyn was a lively and natural on-stage presence, joie-de-vivre instead of joie-de-mort.
Books x 3
Her three books are "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," a coming-of-age memoir, and "From Here to Eternity," subtitled, "Traveling the world to find the good death."
And newly, "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" - in the format of Q&A about unusual death situations for, ah, "young readers."** All are available with author-read audiobooks. See a video where she talks about her career path, here.
Further Thoughts
Jessica Mitford
I went to med school and became a pathologist, but my encounters with Death Theory precede and follow.
Long ago, in high school in rural Iowa, our library had a copy of The American Way of Death (1963) by Jessica Mitford, a fascinating book that I couldn't put down as a 16 or 17 year old circa 1975. The book is an expose of the American funeral home industry and its sales methods.
In addition to the morbid curiosity and the business strategy value, it occurred to me this week that the book may have been formative in another way, because it revealed an elaborate web of drivers, levers, and machinations going on behind the surface of something as simple-seeming as a funeral home in a small town. It was a trigger to think about everything (How does this bus system work? Why is it this way?) to which I owe a lot.
Thomas Lynch
Later, in the 2000s, I ran across the essays (and a PBS video) about Michigan mortician and wonderful essayist Thomas Lynch. See his essay books "The Undertaking" and "Bodies in Motion and At Rest" and "Booking Passage" (most circa 1995-2005). I saw him on stage downtown at the LA Public Library in 2005 (paired with Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball) - here. I drew on Lynch's writings as I went through the experience when my mother died in 2011.
Caitlyn Doughty
And that brings up to today, where in the past year or two I've found the works and videos of Caitlyn Doughty both enlightening and meaningful. That, and bike rides now and then through the fabulous Hollywood Forever Cemetery, just a mile from my home, where on the last pass through I ran across both the 93rd annual Valentino Memorial underway (August 26) and the crypt of Mickey Rooney.
___
* Other women with serious/eclectic YouTube channels include Cari with Easy German (460,000 subscribers), an entertaining and education intermediate-German series - here. And Anja, who runs the similar-but-different eponymous Learn German With ANJA! channel - here. 450,000 subscribers.
** For another woman's book on cats and death, see "Waiting For My Cats to Die" by New Yorker Stacy Horn, here. Though not related to cats, another woman writing on the death topic is Mary Roach with "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers."
Overview
Caitlyn Doughty is a "mortician, author, blogger, and YouTube personality," the YouTube channel being Ask A Mortician, here. Her YouTube channel has 850,000 subscribers. Find her at Wikipedia here and her personal website here. She also co-founded a "death acceptance" organization called Order of the Good Death that runs a website and conferences - see also Wiki here.
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| click to enlarge |
Born in 1984, Doughy grew up in Hawaii, where her father was a high school teacher, and went to college at University of Chicago.
After her degree in medieval studies, she migrated to Oakland (like you do) and worked in a low-level job in a crematory while, well, finding herself. She later went to mortuary school and migrated to LA, where she runs (ran) a small funeral service with several partners and specialized in both home funerals and green burials. She recently announced the funeral home Undertaking LA, was closing but may reorganize.
Live On Stage
On September 9, 2019, she did a book reading, book signing, extended Q&A at the funky old Regent Theater (built 1914; now a nightclub) at 4th and Main in the old LA banking district. The reading was sponsored by Skylight Books, one of LA's best independent booksellers, on North Vermont (Vermont and Hollywood Blvd). Caitlyn was a lively and natural on-stage presence, joie-de-vivre instead of joie-de-mort.
Books x 3
Her three books are "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," a coming-of-age memoir, and "From Here to Eternity," subtitled, "Traveling the world to find the good death."
And newly, "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" - in the format of Q&A about unusual death situations for, ah, "young readers."** All are available with author-read audiobooks. See a video where she talks about her career path, here.
Further Thoughts
Jessica Mitford
I went to med school and became a pathologist, but my encounters with Death Theory precede and follow.
Long ago, in high school in rural Iowa, our library had a copy of The American Way of Death (1963) by Jessica Mitford, a fascinating book that I couldn't put down as a 16 or 17 year old circa 1975. The book is an expose of the American funeral home industry and its sales methods.
In addition to the morbid curiosity and the business strategy value, it occurred to me this week that the book may have been formative in another way, because it revealed an elaborate web of drivers, levers, and machinations going on behind the surface of something as simple-seeming as a funeral home in a small town. It was a trigger to think about everything (How does this bus system work? Why is it this way?) to which I owe a lot.
Thomas Lynch
Later, in the 2000s, I ran across the essays (and a PBS video) about Michigan mortician and wonderful essayist Thomas Lynch. See his essay books "The Undertaking" and "Bodies in Motion and At Rest" and "Booking Passage" (most circa 1995-2005). I saw him on stage downtown at the LA Public Library in 2005 (paired with Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball) - here. I drew on Lynch's writings as I went through the experience when my mother died in 2011.
Caitlyn Doughty
And that brings up to today, where in the past year or two I've found the works and videos of Caitlyn Doughty both enlightening and meaningful. That, and bike rides now and then through the fabulous Hollywood Forever Cemetery, just a mile from my home, where on the last pass through I ran across both the 93rd annual Valentino Memorial underway (August 26) and the crypt of Mickey Rooney.
___
* Other women with serious/eclectic YouTube channels include Cari with Easy German (460,000 subscribers), an entertaining and education intermediate-German series - here. And Anja, who runs the similar-but-different eponymous Learn German With ANJA! channel - here. 450,000 subscribers.
** For another woman's book on cats and death, see "Waiting For My Cats to Die" by New Yorker Stacy Horn, here. Though not related to cats, another woman writing on the death topic is Mary Roach with "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers."
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