The Readers Digest Condensed Version of "What I Did on My Summer Vacation"

I wrote this for Samantha Brown’s travel group on Facebook:

We had an often wet but wonderful 3 weeks in Scotland & northern England this summer.

Took a bus trip to northwestern Scotland and the Isle of Skye. Saw the Kilt Cliffs on a sunny day. Found a family marker at Culloden Field & learned one of my Scottish ancestors was a Jacobite.

Attended a conference in Glasgow where we went to fabulous restaurants including Ubiquitous Chip, The Buttery, Mother India & the Butcher Shop. Drove to northern England with friends where we visited Hadrian’s Wall, the Beamish Open Air Museum & Durham Cathedral & stayed for 3 nights in a stone barn that had been converted to a cottage.

Went to the Lake District & spent two nights in a lovely B&B in Windemere. Took a boat ride in a restored wooden boat & got amazing gingerbread in Grasmere.

Returned to Glasgow, found Sloan’s, a pub that’s been open since 1797. Took the Hop On/Hop Off bus & got off at Glasgow Cathedral & the fascinating Kelvingrove Museum.

So while the trip was fantastic, getting there and back again was pretty miserable. Both British Airways & Heathrow Airport are at the very top of our “Never Again” list.

Movie Review: Firebrand - Great Performances Ruined by Historical Fiction

I was interested in seeing Firebrand, as I'm a fan of both Alicia Vikander & Jude Law who were terrific in the lead roles of Queen Catherine Parr and her third husband, King Henry VII. Most of the movie was quite good, until about the last 20 minutes, which goes way, way off the rails.

Catherine Parr was a well-educated, twice-widowed young woman who caught Henry's eye after he'd executed his fifth wife, Catherine Howard for adultery. When Henry pulled England out of the Roman Catholic Church (after the Pope had refused to annul his marriage to his first wife), his new Church of England was basically "Roman Catholic Lite" and not particularly Protestant. But Catherine leaned, mostly quietly, towards being a Protestant. WHen Henry asked her to be his wife, Catherine married him.

I know movies about historic figures are often not at all accurate. This one was very frustrating as it was careful with things like costuming, music, lighting and messy facts around religion in most of the movie. I couldn't quite understand how this movie could only have a 6.5 in IMDB ratings until the movie started to diverge from the facts.

[[spoilers]]

While there was a warrant for Catherine Parr's arrest for heresy, it got lost in the shuffle of papers and she was never arrested, never imprisoned, and certainly never had to prepare to be executed. But certainly she feared she might be arrested on heresy as an old acquaintance of hers, Anne Askew, had already been executed for heresy.

Catherine was kept away from Henry while he lay dying. So the scene with Catherine at Henry's deathbed, breaking his neck (I kid you not) was complete fiction.

[[spoilers]]

Two minor complaints about casting - it looks like they based the casting of Prince Edward on a famous Holbein painting of him when he was a chubby toddler. But by his early childhood, he was somewhat sickly and serious (he died at 16 probably of TB). And Princess Elizabeth was cast as a bit old, she was closer to 13 in 1546 when most of the movie was set.

So Firebrand could have been a stronger movie except that it was ruined by historic fantasy.

Movie Review: The Dead Don't Hurt (Directed, Written, & Music Composed by Viggo Mortensen, Who Also Co-Stars)

I really don't like Westerns. A few exceptions:

• The old TV show The Riflemen starring Chuck Connors.
• The Emigrants and The New Land (early '70s), a pair of movies starring Max von Sydow & Liv Ullman as a Swedish family who settle in Minnesota in 1850.
• Heartland (1978), starring Conchata Ferrell and Rip Taylor, about a widow who goes west to manage a household for a taciturn farmer in Wyoming.
• The Unforgiven (1992), starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman (directed by Eastwood) except that the violence was extreme.

These Westerns focus more on families.

The same is true of Viggo Mortensen's second movie as a writer/director, The Dead Don't Hurt. While it is violent in places, the focus is on the family.

This movie stars Vicky Krieps (Vivienne), Solly McLeod (Weston), Danny Huston (Mayor Schiller), & Viggo (Olsen). The movie is loaded with immigrants from Europe - Olsen is Danish. Vivienne is French via Canada.

The Dead Don't Hurt starts very quietly. A woman, Vivienne dies, a man, Olsen, holding her hand. At about the same time, there is a shooting spree & a person is accused of the murders, tried, convicted & hung. Olsen lives nearby & seems wary about the verdict but doesn't say anything.

The movie jumps around and goes back in time to the childhood of Vivienne. She grew up in a cabin in Canada; her family don’t like the English. Her father disappears; the audience knows he'd been captured and executed by the English. The little girl Vivienne grows up to be a young woman in San Francisco. She’s with an upper class twit type but sees a man who introduces himself as Olsen. They chat & find out they’re both immigrants. They rapidly hook up. She goes off with Olsen into the wild. It turns out she can shoot, a useful skill in the wild. There’s a funny scene about how to have sex in the wild while wearing layers of clothes from the 1860s. After a few days in the wild, they arrive at property Olsen had leased. It’s in the mountains in a desert-like area & it includes a delapidated cabin and no garden.

The movie jumps between the "present," as Vivienne adjusts to living in the middle of nowhere, and the future, a trip Olsen takes after her death. The scenes in the town can be violent—-mostly due to Weston, the man who actually did the shooting spree near the beginning of the movie. He does every ugly, violent thing you can imagine. Some of the violence happens when Olsen has gone off to fight in the Civil War so Vivienne needs to handle things for herself.

The photography throughout is lovely; Marcel Zyskind is a Danish cinemetographer who captures the "splendid isolation" of so much of the West.

The production design is all very raw and western. One minor issue - western buildings at that time (1860-1865 for the most part) were a big mix of old and new construction, but almost everything in this movie looks old.

The music sounds like it was all played on old instruments evoking the feel of the place where the action is taking place--mostly old fiddles & a piano. Viggo also wrote the music & it works very well. Using old instruments like this was a good effect in two of John Hillcoat's movies - his western The Proposition and his dystopic The Road in which Viggo starred. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis wrote the music for the two Hlllcoat movies.

The movie was mostly shot in Mexico, with a few scenes shot in Canada.

I enjoyed this movie very much. The performances are all excellent, and the script works, though I have some quibbles around the climax.

Gender Assigned at Birth

I remember learning about trans people in the late 1960s in Time and/or Life magazine.  It made me think that they were talking about me.  After all, I was a loud, large, competitive, argumentative girl who loved reading and chemistry sets.  Within about a minute, I realized no, there was no reason those characteristics shouldn't describe a girl.  My issues over gender were never about the biological parts, they were over how SOCIETY dictated girls and boys should present themselves.  Particularly through the '60s, society obsessively pushed girls towards marriage and motherhood, and men towards careers with much less involvement in their children's lives.

In college, I fell in love with a smart guy who was funny but generally quieter and less assertive then I was.  Over time, he's become more gregarious and more assertive.  He's also a much better cook than I, something he enjoys flaunting now as he's retired and has more time to cook.

We raised our daughter to let her know she could do whatever she wanted to do so long as she went to school.  Like us, she gravitated to computer work and is an avid online gamer (with a gender-neutral name online).

I have mixed feeling about the very technical term "gender dysphoria," as it sounds too much like an illness. Given the extremely complicated issues around gender and genes for some people, it's not an illness but it is a difference.  With a small percentage of babies, it's impossible to immediately assign a gender at birth.  Instead of only having female and male on birth certificates (and many other forms we fill throughout our lives), there should be at least a third choice.  "Other" isn't the best name for this.  "Intersex" is accurate for some infants where the sex cannot be immediately observed. But many intersex children eventually do adopt one gender or the other seeing as our culture is so rigidly defined by two genders?

We do we have to have two genders?  This notion has really upset a very loud minority, especially in the south.  Many people in the south have always been rigidly attached to old ideas.

If people want to adopt their own genders, why not?  I know "they" is becoming more common as a pronoun, but it mostly seems to be used by people assigned female at birth.  In some ways, I should adopt "they" as my pronoun as I believe we over emphasize gender.  There is way too much fussing over it.  BUT, I don't want to see "she" become invisible either.

It probably would be better to worry about gender less often.

Adventures in Customer DisService

Spent most of today beating my head against a wall over bad user interfaces online.

Allegheny County Real Estate - their database on properties, assessments and taxes is very good and easy to figure out. But if you want to actually talk to anyone, you're screwed. Went to different phone numbers, and the first real estate number I reached said that the person hadn't been in since April 5 and no you could not leave a message. Really helpful. On a fairly random page, I found the phone number that should've pointed me in the right direction. But no one answered and there was no way to leave a message.

Yes, I know that agencies/companies really don't want to talk to customers. And this would be OK if they had a lot of useful information online that was searchable. These days, they just add "AI" to the end of a search as if they were really using Artificial Intelligence. The two "AIs" I've used recently (Meta AI on Facebook and the one on Ancestry.com that writes your life story based on genealogical facts a few weeks ago) were worse than the existing search and, Meta AI chats endlessly to you. AncestryAI can't figure out the difference between facts and errors. At least you can turn Meta AI off if you want and AncestryAI is optional.

So on the Real Estate questions I had, I had to open an account in order to send them a question. Also documented the many problems I had just getting that far. [[A month later - I still haven't heard back from them.]]

Next issue - my bank. Again, no real search online, but also no claim that AI was available. Found a number labelled CONTACT, used it...and, within a minute, had suspended access to my account because it said I gave them the wrong info. Tried again but pressed 0 right away. Got a nice guy and we chatted about my frustration. It turned out there was another page of phone numbers beyond the CONTACT Robot (and it sounded like he was getting a lot of complaints about that). But he answered my question and removed my suspension from my account. Two problems solved reasonably quickly!

I've used Quicken for nearly 35 years, mostly because I hated mailing out checks and wanted a record of where our money went. It's pretty easy to attach banks and other financial institutions to Quicken...except for the company that holds Jim's 401k. I went to their Website and found info about attaching the 401k account to Quicken. But following their instructions did not work. I called one person and made the mistake of calling the account an IRA account. That took me around in circles for a while with a guy who insisted they knew nothing about Quicken. Tried again and got a person attached to 401ks. He, too, knew nothing about Quicken. I was extremely unhappy and sad I could not hang up on him as definitely as we could back in the old phone days. For this one account only, I have to manually update the amount in the 401k in Quicken every few weeks.

Yes, first world problems. But computers and the online world have been available for over nearly 40 years now. Why can't online customer service improve????

Why Can't Death Certificates Be "Partially Completed" Before We Die?

 I was reading Shaina Feinberg & Julia Rothman's excellent New York Times article "I Asked My Mom if She Was Prepared to Die."  It had a lot of practical information on "getting ready for death," like making sure your financial accounts have other signatories, and reminding the survivors to order more death certificates than they think they'll need.  Yes, you will need more than 10, trust me.

 Which made me wonder - why can't we complete our death certificates with all that family information in advance?  Granted, we don't know when or how we'll die, but most of us know our family information better than our significant other might.

A few years ago, after our father died, my brother completed the death certificate.  Except...he listed the wrong state for where our grandmother was born.  This error, though minor, will drive future genealogists nuts.  I actually added a note to my Ancestry.com record for our father saying that his death certificate had this error.

Many decades ago, after my husband's grandfather died, his grandmother listed the wrong country for his birth.  He was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she listed his country of birth as Germany, since he came over speaking German when he was a boy.  I added the same note to my grand-father-in-law's Ancestry record - wrong country on death certificate.

The notion of filling out a death certificate in advance may seem macabre but we all will need one some day. Collecting this information, which is later certified by a doctor or funeral home after death with information around a death, should be reasonably trivial due to the World Wide Web.  Each state can set up the appropriate online death certificate online. I believe every state has a different death certificate format. Each person could set up a death certificate account for the state in which they live, fill it out with the accurate info while they're alive, and tell their next-of-kin that they have such an account and how to access it.

And even if this information can't be immediately imported into an actual death certificate, when the doctor/funeral home goes to complete it, they could have all the accurate information for that person readily available. 

I tried to find out what a current state of Pennsylvania death certificate looks like.  I could not find one at the Pennsylvania records Web site.  I've seen recent Florida and Massachusetts death certificates, and many old death certificates as part of doing genealogical research. I understand the reluctance to not display an entire current death certificate online (fraud) but why not display the portions that could be completed before death?

Let's use the Web for some useful record-keeping for survivors' families by letting people partially complete the "life" part of their death certificate while they're still with us.  It'll save their next-of-kin hassle when they have to complete someone else's death certificate.

Body Breakdown...

 

Well, as we get older and our bodies break down, things happen we don't expect.

I've been a fat person most of my life, and took up walking seriously about 10 years ago. While it didn't really help me lose weight, I wasn't gaining weight, my back improved dramatically, and it gave me a lot more confidence about what I could do. I walked 16 miles in a day on two different days in 2015, and at least 10 miles a day a few dozen times over the years. My average was 4-5 miles a day over 10 years.

 

The last few years, I've not had the energy to walk as much as I'd like. My legs hurt or just felt funny. 

 

The first few times this happened, it seemed to be due to being on statins for a long time. I was on statins for 11 years without any side effects, and then started taking statin breaks. After a few weeks, I'd start feeling better and I could increase my walking. But then my cholesterol would zoom back up again so I'd go back on statins.

 

Yes, I have improved my eating habits. But that's no enough.

 

Anyway, last year when I took a statin break, it took 4 months before I started feeling better, which was weird. I also had very severe pain in my legs at night a few times. My old doctor sent me for some testing (including a nerve conduction test, yuck). Everything came back normal. 

 

I felt better in September and October, got a new doctor, and went on a statin-like drug (Xetia) which is supposed to not have the side effects that statins have. But within a few weeks, I was having trouble with my legs again. At Boskone, I could not keep up with a group walking a few blocks away for dinner one night and I had leg pain all weekend long.

 

After dithering, I went back to my new doctor, complaining about the problems I was having. She wanted me to have another nerve conduction test which I resisted since the one last year added up to nothing. But she told me to get a spinal X-ray and a bunch of blood tests. And then she said she didn't think I was having side effects from the drug, she thought I might have spinal stenosis.

 

Got my blood test and my X-ray. X-ray confirmed spinal stenosis. It basically means some nerves to other parts of my body are getting compressed by the vertebra. It's degenerative, but for severe cases (and mine is just mild), sometimes they do surgery. A hallmark of this condition appears to be back pain, which I haven't had; so far it's mostly been leg pain. All the blood tests came back fine, so the constant fatigue seems a little odd - my sleeping has generally improved over the last 2 years.

 

This is a very odd condition, because some days I feel pretty good. But just 2 nights ago, I had pain bad enough I couldn't get out of my chair to get aspirin, I had to ask Jim to get it for me.

 

Just 5 years ago, we hiked for 3 days on the Dingle Penninsula. I'd hoped I could still do hiking like that, but since the fall, I've been having trouble standing for 2 hours of volunteer work.

 

The good news is, we have excellent insurance and a house where I can mostly avoid stairs. But I would rather spend our retirement money on travel than on rehab.

 

Today I'll be calling the physical therapy folks at the nearby hospital to set up some PT sessions.

Barbie vs. Bella. (Spoilers Galore)

I saw Barbie last summer and really enjoyed it.  It was charming, delightful and a bit threatening.  It had the production design of a Malibu Barbie Dream House. Margot Robbie gave an excellent performance.  It had two very touching moments - the famous America Ferrara speech (which most women were silently cheering as she spoke) and the "Blue Fairy" scene with Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, made Barbie a real, live person.  As I was never a Barbie kid, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

The ending:  Funny, Barbie makes the choice to be an utterly mundane women.

I saw Poor Things last fall and really enjoyed it.  It was sometimes charming, fascinating and very threatening in places.  It had the production, costume and make-up design of a crazy child, as if Bella herself was designing the movie.  Emma Stone gave a very raw performance.  Poor Things wasn't touching in the way the Barbie was, but it was much more dangerous.

The ending: A bit creepy but mostly uplifting.  An average rich Victorian afternoon with overtones of The Freaks.

Both movies have a very similar theme - a woman creating herself.

Poor Things was a better movie as it's much more audacious than Barbie, but Barbie was very enjoyable and much more accessible.

Post 2024 Oscars:  I predicted Poor Things would win Best Make-up, Best Costumes and Best Production Design.  I really enjoyed Emma Stone's committed performance in Poor Things, but thought Lily Gladstone would win for her very quiet performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.  But the Oscars followed the BAFTAs in almost all ways and Emma Stone won.

Even though it won only 1 Oscar, the cast/crew of Barbie made the Oscar Ceremony more fun than it had been in years.  Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken" was an absolute riot and it was great to involve the audience the way it did.