FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.
a simple cartoon with songs is exploding the internet.
Why?
we just watched it and it was enjoyable, and even better if you enjoy K pop.
this explains some of the Korean stuff in the film
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But I know my pious Evangelical relatives would worry this is about the occult.
Well, maybe, but the themes of despair/shame and redemption and the curative power of human friendship and music is universal, and this is a Christian interpratation.
I like Christmas movies but you know, all those G rated Hallmark Christmas romances seem to be clueless. Doesn't anyone in Hallmark land (or barbie land) go to church? It is all about decorations and happy romances between attractive people who never get their manicured nails dirty.
But there are a few stories out there that seem to remember the meaning of Christmas .
Here is one Anime one with various themes that would be considered PC today except that it is Japanese and made years ago:
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Based on the old movie Three Godfathers
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I read somewhere that LesMis was written because some objected to the evil priest in the Hunchback of Notre Dame: so the author knowing that most priests were good, decided to write a good priest into his plot: and that it is actually based on a bishop in one of the poorer areas of France.
if my fondness for such films seems to go against my screeds against the gay relationship blessing, it is because I suspect Fernandez actions are not about charity but about pushing the gender agenda that certain affluent Europeans have been behind for the last 30 years...i.e. a stealth way to destroy the idea of sin, and along the way will destroy the family (divorce, abortion, euthanasia) and the sacredness of the Mass and the Eucharist (downgrading it from Christ's body and blood to merely a symbol for anyone to take).
So in the midst of a scandal which threatens to break up the Catholic church, why have hope?
Christmas is about hope: About renewal, about family. and how God renews our life, and about the hope in times of despair, and the renewal of life that every child brings into the world.
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here everyone who can will return to their homes to celebrate Christmas with their families. The roads near Manila are full of traffic, and people are crowding the rail and bus terminals to get home. And not just from the cities to their rural villages:
PhilInquirer headline:
Near 60,000 daily arrivals in PH as holidays approach
some are tourists but most are Philipinos who are OFW working overseas on temporary visas, or who have immigrated overseas to find jobs and live in their new country: Many support their families here but try, like my husband Lolo, to return yearly to keep up family ties.
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and remember; as you give, so shall you receive:
but remember: there are always second chances in life.
No, I am not watching the Harry and Meghan soap opera on TV.
Poor them.
I am reminded of my oldest son who started reading a book about a rich Hong Kong family written by the middle girl, the youngest of the first wife, who felt she was neglected by the family and who related a lot of small things that hurt her feelings, such as the family wouldn't pay for expensive meals at her fancy school so she was stuck with ordinary food.
My oldest son was adopted from Colombia as a young teenager, and his comment: why is she complaining so much? She had enough to eat...
One feels the same way about these two poster children of narcissitic parents. They abandoned their job, fled to a nice area of Canada, and when they decided to move back to Hollywood, complained they were essentially homeless and no one would pay for body guards so Tyler Perry had to come to their rescue. Hmmm... I thought Harry had a net worth of 60 million, so don't ask me to feel sorry for him.
Don't they realize that a lot of people are hurting, all over the world, and the covid epidemic made things worse?
Here in the Philippines, we worry because the price of diesel and ferilizer is making cost of growing rice go up, and of course later this means that people who eat rice will have to pay more. (meaning that poor people might not be able to afford rice next year).
The government does help the poor with subsidized rice, But if an emergency such as an accident or illness hits, it can cause severe financial problems.
True, the city has a free hospital for major illnesses, and a free medical clinic for kids. That helps. But they still have to buy the medicine.
we have a couple people a day coming here for help with medical expenses. I mean, 7 dollars for a rabies shot for a kid bitten by a street dog, or five dollars for antibiotic for your kid with bronchitis, etc. This is not a lot of money, but it is in a country where the minimum wage is under ten dollars a day. And the farmers are usually short of funds because they are between grows (after selling the last harvest, which was poor due to a typhoon, money is tight because they need that money to replant, so cash is short for luxuries like medicines and school supplies).
Sigh.
The way people support themselves here is extended family and friends.
So when many lost their jobs in Saudi or other middle eastern countries due to covid, a lot of families hurt.
Things are improving now: yes, I know. Lots of anti Qatar articles about the mistreatment of their foreign workes, but you have to realize that the alternative is starving and no way to improve your life in beautiful eco friendly traditional lifestyle beloved by elite wealthy green types, but seen by the rest of us as a life of poverty and back breaking work.
How do people survive?
The families here in the Philippines care for their own.
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This is not just in the Philippines you know: I worked in poorer rural areas in the US for 30 years, and we saw people caring for their families nearly every day.
from the CDC:
22.3% of adults reported providing care or assistance to a friend or family member in the past 30 days. 24.4% of adults aged 45 to 64 years are caregivers ...
If you are tired of superhero/heroine movies, or (worse) the cookie cutter plots of Hallmark films where good looking rich people find romance over age 30, try watching Sam and Kate about two over 30s caring for their aging parents.
No cliches here. And probably too realistic to be a hit.
And unlike Hallmark movies where romantic happy ending with Mr/Ms Right is the aim of the plot, the people here have ordinary problems, and the family members take responsibility for their elders.
And unlike the religionless Hallmark films, they actually quietly attend church as just part of their routine life...(which is where the two families meet, when Hoffman and son offer Spacek and daughter a ride home).
The children are played by the actual Children of the leads (Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek).
So not a happy film per se, but does show the reality of American life, and unlike too many modern films, shows the goodness of ordinary people who are caregivers
Been there, done that.
And now, after that bout with Dengue fever, I find that I was the one who neded to be cared for by family here in the Philippines.
I find a lot of modern books boring.
Actually, not just "modern", but maybe I should say "popular" books that someone is pushing as reading for their lady audiences.
Not a new problem: I read a lot as a child, but when the local library had a "win a prize" for reading books, I found I had no interest in the books on their list. Usually the ones for girls were existential angst about boyfriends and growing up. I preferred biographies (you go girl role models), or borrowing my brother's Sci Fi books, which introduced me to Asimov, Heinlein and CS Lewis.
Now, of course, teenage fiction has lovely characters to encourage girls to get a back bone, while not making them into amoral isolated individuals but including the importance of family (e.g the Hunger Games Triology) and it is the highfalutin adult books I see recommended to me on Scribd that make me roll up my eyes and wonder why I should care about a 30 year old attractive blond yuppie's existential problems. (yes, I hate Hallmark movies for the same reason), or pushing cliches about the gay lifestyle or racism themes that have little or nothing to do the humanity of the protagonists, and the racism stuff has little to help you understand the the problem of keeping your kids safe from drugs and gangs and promiscuity and the amorality of today's world.
It's not just me, of course:
One writer pointed out why K Dramas are so popular: They tackle complex modern problems, stress working to get ahead, and everyone has a family, even if it was 800 years ago in a past life (e.g. Goblin). And there is an underlying sense of right and wrong. Heh. Who wudda thot?
Well, anyway, what brought on this rant was an essay on this blog: about Elizabeth Goudge.
Cynical Modern types would dismiss her as a writer of fluff, but you know, they aren't: and the characters are quite detailed in some of her books.
another blog with related essays with photos of Devon are HERE and HERE.
I brought two of her books with me: The Dean's Watch, and the Scent of Water, but now I have discovered more of them to read at ScribD, and enjoyed them.
the Scent of Water is about a woman retiring to the country who finds renewal in her life (i.e. the water here refers to the living water of the Scriptures). And I believe it was one of Oprah's book club selections.
Some of them can be found on internet archive, for your reading pleasure: most need sign in to borrow, but a few of them are posted by the Library of India so you can actually download them to read at your leisure/ including the Eliot family saga the Bird in the Tree Pilgrim's Inn
Two of her books were made into popular movies, both of which are under copyright and not available for free: Green dolphin street and the Secret of Moonacre, Probably guarded by copyright cops.
The first is an oldfashioned melo rama, but alas I never watched the second one all the way through, because the cinematography was ugly, but fans seem to love it in youtube reviews...
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another old fashioned book I ran across on archives and on a webpage HERE is the old novel: the World the Flesh and Father Smith.
A Bread and butter story of a priest working in the slums of Scotland, and those he works with..., and like Goudge, the people are not twisted and evil as one sees in "modern" novels, not even the bitter veteran who is executed for murdering his wife. Despite being a pre WWII era novel it does bring up a lot of the way that the church gives lives meaning: meaning that the PC post Vatican II types get it wrong when they see the church as merely something to manipulate to push their pc agendas.
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and for those interested in the pre Vatican II cloister story: Mother Catherine Thomas' book My Beloved can be read at Hathi Trust.
more cheerful and like most of the nuns I have worked with, she is more down to earth than the usual books of this type, which tend to hagiography or emphasis on scandals.
and of course living in an Oklahoma cloister is less dramatic than a more famous story popular in the 1950's: The Nuns story LINK which was made into a movie with the luminous Audrey Hepburne.
that is a fictionalized biography of MarieLouise Habets: the Wikipedia page suggests the story is a bit more complicated: But it is interesting to note this part:
...(she) later moved to California, where she nursed Audrey Hepburn after a horse-riding accident which occurred during her filming of The Unforgiven.
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Finally, I am listening to the Summer of the Great Grandmother, by Madeline L'Engle. (at Scribd) I brought the book with me along with several other of her "Crosswick journal" books. This one is about her mother's slow dying of Alzheimer's disease, and the story of various ancestors and members of her extended family. soundcloud excerpt
Like the previous books, the anti Christian bigots will simply shrug and ignore her books, but actually it was recommended to me by a friend, an agnostic Jewish psychiatrist, who knew that I was facing the problem of an aging parent.
Some of her essays including some of the Crosswick Journal books can be read for free registration on internet archives LINK and her scifi/fantasy books are there too.
Youtube has several of her sci fi books as audiobooks LINK
Alas, the main book A Wrinkle in Time, was made into a film that not only had bad cinametography (Svorski crystals on Oprah's eyelids? Give me a break... and WTF is that part about the flying cabbage?) but my main problem is that, although it was recasted as a biracial family (ok with me) they made the important character of Charles William a white kid. What? No young black child actors available? The movie explained this as saying he was "adopted". Sigh.
so anyway skip the film and listen to the audiobooks on youtube.
and here is Ms L'Engle discussing her writing:
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