MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Yum Marmalade

I liked this one better than the first Paddington film

quick before the copyright cops find it.

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Agatha Christie Indult 2.0 Blame Bianca Jagger

the Agatha Christie Indult was a Catholic decree in response to a petition signed by many artists and writers not to cancel the Latin Mass back in 1971

Supposedly, Pope Paul had read the letter and exclaimed in excitement, “Ah! Agatha Christie!”, and so decided to grant it, thus giving the indult its nickname.

Well, history repeats itself LINK

They agree that not everyone appreciates its value, "and that is fine", but "to destroy it seems an unnecessary and insensitive act in a world where history can all too easily slip away into oblivion"... 

. "The Old Rite's ability to promote silence and contemplation is a treasure that cannot be easily replicated and, once gone, cannot be reconstructed".

and some signing it includes 

Bianca Jagger (wife of Mick Jagger), Lord Lloyd-Webber (musical composer), Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (opera singer), Steven Isserlis (Jewish cellist), Princess Michael of Kent (member of the British Royal Family), Sir Andras Schiff (Jewish pianist), Tom Holland (historian), Lady Antonia Fraser (author) and Sir Paul Smith (fashion designer).

So I guess we can call this the Bianca Jagger Indult?

Yum. Gobs.

Aka whoopie pie

Kuya brought this up yesterday as we were eating a chocolate cupcake, where the cake part was very dense and sweet, and the icing melted in your mouth.

When he was a kid growing up near Johnstown, their favorite snack was Gobs.

Gobs, you say? 

Where I grew up they were called Whoopie Pies.

it is two cakes with the icing part in the middle of the cakes. Usually the cakes are chocolate, but in other areas they use various cakes and filling for their Whoopie pies.

from WTAE Pittsburgh:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — JR Harris' uncle told an employee a story about the origins of the gob. He said a worker for his family's bakery was on break. They were permitted to make and eat anything they wanted to at the bakery. "He had two small chocolate cakes and put icing in between," Harris said. "And then the company saw what he had done and started doing what he did with the gob cake."

The term gob was trademarked in 1927 by the Harris-Boyer bakery.

Gobs are inherently part of the fabric of (western) Pennsylvania's culinary landscape....

 

,In the 1930s, the sailor-boy image associated with the Johnstown gob was developed for the wrapper.

Gob can also be used as a synonym for sailor, though no one with any knowledge of the company knows if that was why it was given its original name. "Gob" was also used within the mining industry in reference to refuse coal. It is possible that miners gave the dessert its name in the region.

a similar confection is called whoopie pie and has it's origin in Amish cooking, or maybe the confection came to America with German immigrants. 

Susan Kalcik, a folklorist and archivist in Johnstown, said the recipe for gobs traces back to Germany in the middle ages. She thinks the recipe was brought to the United States by immigrants.

so why was this popular in Johnstown area?  

Regardless of where it was started, it was perfect for coal miners in Somerset and Cambria counties who didn't want their lunchtime dessert's icing to melt on the wrapper. Kalcik said gobs predate any bakery's claim to have created it.

Putting the country ahead of politics

Hillary raised the question years ago:

 

from Legal Insurrection: 

Can you imagine an emergency situation where immediate military decisions that only a president can make need to be made in seconds or minutes, and the military having to go to diminished Joe for a decision?....

 

 It’s time to put America first. This situation of a cognitively diminished president cannot continue. There is a solution, the 25th Amendment.

he then goes on to discuss the legal way this is done.

Sigh. 

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This morning, Jeh Johnson, the former Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama, went on MSNBC to make the case for Joe Biden to stay in the race.

"A presidency is more than just one man… I would take Joe Biden at his worst day at age 86 so long as he has people around him… pic.twitter.com/1nWI3CCHci

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 2, 2024

Don't mess with the Alligators (unless you are a Cajun)

the joke about alligators in the sewers of NYCity refers to an urban legend.

This urban legend claims that alligators have been living underneath the bustling streets, having been flushed down toilets as unwanted pets and growing to monstrous sizes in the damp labyrinth below. Despite its persistence in popular culture, thorough investigations and urban research have consistently disproved the existence of sewer alligators. The New York City sewer system, while vast and complex, has not provided any concrete evidence of an alligator population within its confines.

there is even a statue to commemorate this urban legend in Union Square Park there.

here local news discusses:

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this urban legend is found in various short stories and novels, but the saddest reference to the alligator in the sewer myth is Harlan Ellison's story Croataon:

which is about our throw away culture, regrets, and maybe hope at the end: where pet alligators and unwanted fetuses are thrown away carelessly but found later by the antagonist:

And the light came nearer, and the light was many lights. Torches, held aloft by the children who rode the alligators.

audio link but donot say I didn't warn you

The Boy and the Heron

 Like a lot of Japanese films by Miyazaki, to understand the Boy and the Heron requires cultural background so will need several watchings, 

but visually it is beautiful.

and many of the themes are universal: not fitting in your world, questing through danger, and seeking your lost mother, and of course the way greed and power over nature results in distorting the good people into monsters: 

the uncle used the magic stone from outer space in order to make realities: but what he actually has done is to make realities full of horrors, 

an example of how the uncle's manipulation has resulted in horror is shown in the sequence of the pelicans who kill the innocent warawara because they have no other way to survive. (the Warawara  are "unborn human souls who reside in the Sea World. Once they mature, they fly up into the sky to be born as humans.") 

Behind all this symbolism is the story is about a middle school boy who leaves Tokyo after his mother dies in a bombing, and who is having trouble adjusting. 

But when his stepmother goes missing, he goes to rescue her, and enters a strange magical tower meeting all sorts of weird animals and helpful people, including the fire girl Lady Himi, who turns out to be his mother, who entered the tower from a different time line and must return to that timeline before the tower crumbles.

according to this discussion on the CBC, Miazaki made the film as a way to teach his grandson. And ironically it is inspired by a book about a boy seeking truth, but unlike Miyazaki it was written before WWII...

The story of The Boy and the Heron is inspired by the Japanese classic novel How Do You Live?, but they don't tell the same story; the book follows 15-year-old "Copper" (nicknamed after Copernicus) in the wake of his father's death. In a series of vignettes, he questions whether a classmate is a lesser person because he lives in poverty, experiences how to be a good friend in difficult situations and wonders what makes a person great. ,,,

the details are different but the theme is the same: Young people seeking the meaning in life and what is meaningful in living. 

Another theme is mourning death of a loved one:  the voice he follows turns out to be his mother, the fire lady.

and that is what I take from the film: That we confront life but it is through our relationships that we find redemption.

The Shinto love of nature is not as strong in this film as in previous ones by Miyazaki, but it is there:

Earthday website explains this aspect of the film: 

 Everything in this place, we learn — from the land to the sea, including the Grey Heron himself, after whom the film is named — is managed by Mahito’s Granduncle, a Wizard-of-Oz-like sorcerer who receives his power from a magical stone, which fell from the sky decades ago and possesses awesome properties. In a way, one could say that, through the stone, Granduncle serves as the steward of nature’s power. Without the stone, a (super)natural object, Granduncle is no more than a man; with it, he becomes a godlike figure, able to shape the world in whatever image he chooses.

There are a lot of explanations on Youtube, but most of them seem to be from a western point of view, whereas Miyazaki infuses his worlds with Shinto symbolism and Japanese way of thinking