Hallowe’en Horror Movies at the Alabama Theater

Grandaughter Gwen and I went to the Saturday, October 27, evening double feature showing Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931). Gwen is such a good influence on her grandmother: I had never seen either one. While I have always encouraged her to “try something new”, she has broadened my horizons, too.

To my mind, Frankenstein’s monster was more to be pitied that censured; even though I lost count of the deaths he caused by the time it was over. Dracula, on the other hand, had no redeeming features. Gwen is more well-read on the subject than I, having all versions of both stories, both cinematic and various books on the subject at her disposal and she was kinder in her assessment of Dracula. So many young people today have gone crazy (there is no other word for the obsession) over the Twilight movies and books, I am thankful, but not too surprised, that Gwen has explored many aspects of horror. It’s a big leap from Disney to Dracula, but at least it’s not Twilight.

Sunday afternoon, the 28th, we saw The Phantom of the Opera (1927). It was my first time to see this one, too. The Alabama Theater was almost full of fans of the movie and fans of the Mighty Wurlitzer. This was the 36th annual showing of The Phantom at the Alabama Theater. It is sponsored by the American Theater Organ Society, and proceeds from the movie (it cost more admission than usual) go to the preservation and upkeep of the Alabama’s theatrical organ.

The ATOS is such an enthusiastic group of people that they dress in costume and add a theatrical element to the show. We were amazed to see black crape draped figures bearing candelabras and pallbearers with coffin come silently down the aisle. They mounted the eerily-lit and tombstone-strewn stage and set the coffin down. It opened and the organist in white tie and tails climbed out, to great applause. It was a wonderful before-the-show show.

Organist Tom Helms had the original score that accompanied this silent movie; he made the instrument sing. Themes from “Faust” were an inherent part of the movie. I have never loved organ music before, but this performance made me a believer. For this afternoon’s presentation, the music, as performed by Mr. Helms on the Mighty Wurlitzer, ­­the Alabama Theater, was the undisputed star.

This console, with four manual keyboards and a pedal keyboard, 285 stop tabs and 85 pistons, is used by the organist to play the 29 ranks (2117 pipes plus percussion) of the Alabama Theatre’s Wurlitzer Pipe Organ. (Picture and specifications courtesy of ATOS.)

Brave

Granddaughter Kate and I went to see the new movie, Brave, today. It was from Pixar, and the only criticisms I had heard was that it was too heavy handed in lessons taught, and not as good as Toy Story.Well, for starters, nothing is as good as Toy Story. Toy Story had it all, courage (bravery),heart (compassion), and smarts (intelligence). That’s the lesson I learned from The Wizard of Oz. This what is required to let you figure out that home is where your heart is.

Same thing in Brave: our rebellious Irish youth, Merida, wants her mother to change. Unfortunately, she gets her wish. She is thrown head first into adventure in the wild, wild, woods, into danger but never bloodshed. Actually, she got a scratch near the end, but we didn’t see the blood. She ends up saving the Kingdom, saving her mother, and ultimately, herself.

The complaint about heavy-handedness doesn’t hold water because the story is set in the time of Celts, Vikings, Blue Picts, and for all I know, Gauls. Twas nothing subtle about those people and the usual over-the-top fighting among themselves seems right at home.

The touch of Magic played well, too. Will ‘o the Wisps are real, we know now, just marsh gas, but for the sake of the movie script, they led to the witch’s lair. She was the one who produced the Magic Cupcake (I kid you not) that caused all the trouble. Merida held fast to her faith and to her mother, and it all came out all right in the end.

Blog Update

This blog has mostly to do with family and activities with our grandchildren. Then a few articles about cooking emerged from my fingertips. Maybe I should start a separate blog for those, hmm? No matter, I will try to catch up on family activity, with the help of a notated calendar and much help from Gwen.

My last post about family was at the end of January, with pictures of all the tornado damage in our grandchildren’s neighborhood.  February is always a grim month for me… maybe it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder, my daughter offered.  There’s a name for everything these days!  Anyway, February was 29 days long this year which was adding insult to injury.  I dragged myself through February and when March arrived, wasn’t feeling any better, in spite of the bright light that I shone in my face two hours every morning.  I had promised to take Gwen to see “Wicked”… promised without knowing what it was.  Turned out to be the Broadway production at the BJCC Concert Hall downtown.  Felt weak as a kitten, but still, had to do it.  Our children were keeping a close eye on us then, as their father recovered from pneumonia in December, so I asked our youngest if he would put off his return trip home and ferry Gwen and me to and from the BJCC.

I had gone downtown a few days before to refresh my memory on drop-off points, and route through the BJCC to the Concert Hall, and that’s when I   noticed they had installed a ramp from the upper to the lower level in compliance with the ADA.  We arrived just in time, not too early.  Gwen had a great time.  We had seats in the Grand Tier (Thanks, Julie) right in the middle.  There are no bad seats in the Concert Hall.  Gwen loved seeing a full-fledged Broadway Musical.  She takes Musical Theater in Dance, and has been in a school production of Music Man, but this was the Real Thing. The stage setting included a dragon’s head clock, with wings and sometime-glowing eyes, above the stage  She loved that there was an orchestra in the pit; being in the Grand Tier we could see the musicians.  She loved the story and the characters as portrayed, even the always-scary flying monkeys. Yikes! Gwen tutted in disapproval that her grandma was not familiar with the books set in the universe of “The Wizard of Oz”.  No matter. I napped through the first act, but enjoyed the second.

2012 Book Club Selections, 1st six months

Dear Ms. Librarian,

Thank you for your intriguing list. According to my scan through it, there is not a single first time author to be found. Bravo! All of the ones I wanted to read are available on Kindle, which is a real plus, as I have lately been reduced to reading the Sookie Stackhouse series. This is not because of an overwhelming desire to read about vampires, but my granddaughters are caught up in the Twilight craze and I don’t want to seem to be too snooty to read about them, too. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading Twilight. No pun intended. Stephen King said Harry Potter is about facing your fears, finding inner strength and courage to do the right thing; Twilight is about the importance of having a boyfriend.

Showplace of the South

I’ve been telling Gwen that her next ‘new thing’ would be to see the historic Alabama Theater, the Showplace of the South.  This elegant old building in downtown Birmingham, built in the 1920′s, was saved from the wrecking ball by volunteers and contributors from all over the area.

  http://www.alabamatheatre.com/ 

One of Gwen’s favorite movies, “The Wizard of Oz”, was showing this afternoon, so we undertook the next step in her cultural enrichment!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/3628484235/

Before the movie we rubbernecked and took pictures; everyone else was taking pictures, too. 

Pops Concert in Railroad Park, June 2011

This is the third concert I have been to this year, thanks to Julie inviting me to go with her and Toni to one of the Beethoven series last month.  I remembered then how much I enjoyed symphonic music, and decided to share this with Gwen, our oldest granddaughter. 

The last three concerts of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s season were presented in the new, much-loved Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham. The park was designed with concerts in mind: in the center plaza the musicians face a rising grassy expanse where the audience spreads quilts, unfolds chairs and unpacks picnic suppers.

Friday evening we arrived early, to make sure of parking nearby and getting a good place to sit.  We settled in about halfway up the slope, in the middle, an ideal place, the “sweet spot” where the left and the right speakers of the humongous sound system met.  The concert of symphonic music began at 8, which is about dusk.  It was full dark when, after the break, the orchestra concluded with Dvorak’s New World symphony.

Making a Shirt of Mail

This is a picture of Granddaddy wearing his chain mail coif. He used to wear it to SCA events. It took three of us to make it.

Jerry used 16 gauge fence wire to make the rings. First he made a little machine with a stick and a handle that turned the stick. He wrapped the wire around the stick and then turned the handle and turned the handle until the whole stick was wrapped in wire.

Then he took his wire cutters and snipped them all off the stick. They fell into a little pile of rings, ready to be woven into mail. Mail was a sort of armor knights of old wore. It was supple, it moved when you moved and wasn’t as constricting as solid metal armor (plate armor). Mail protected the knight pretty well from the weapons of the day.

An SCA friend, Gary Fowler, was our teacher. I did a lot of the weaving of the rings together; I pressed the ends together in a fashion know as “butted mail” as opposed to “riveted mail”. Our tools were needle-nose pliers and my daddy’s electrician’s pliers.

First we made a shirt of mail, using the four-rings-in-one weave. It was like a tunic, straight down the front and back to mid-thigh. It had long loose sleeves. Being made out of metal (the wire is metal, right?) it was a lot heavier than your cloth or leather coats. To help carry the weight, the knight would put a belt around his waist to hold up the bottom part of the mail shirt and take some weight off his shoulders.

I just did the flat weaving; Gary put the pieces together and added a gusset under the arms so they could move freely. Gary also started on the coif, above. He wove the rings together in a circle, bigger and bigger, until time to decrease and weave the sides and back of the coif. Then it came together in front over the chin and was woven in rows around and round, adding rings in each row so it would lay out over his shoulders until it was enough. I added a row of brass rings around the bottom edge and around the face opening, for decoration.

It took us all winter long, working every night.

(As nearly as we can remember, we made this in the late 1970′s)

Railroad Park v East Lake Park

Last Saturday our granddaughter and I had several errands to do.  We had washed, dried and folded two carrier bags full of outgrown, gently-worn clothes, mostly girl’s size 8.  These clothes were to be dropped off at the Salvation Army station on Highway 11.  It’s always open in the daytime and there is always someone on duty to help unload, if necessary, and to list the donations on a receipt.  We always get a receipt for tax purposes.  Our grandchildren are generous with their outgrown clothes, toys and books and know they will find good homes with children less fortunate than themselves.

On the other hand, and this is the much harder lesson to learn, when they are with me, they shop at the Thrift Stores run by these charitable organizations.  The small allowance I give them for helping me around the house goes much farther at a Thrift Store.  Make no mistake, they earn the allowance I give them.  Bending and stooping is hard enough, carrying heavy loads is almost beyond Granddaddy and me, so the work they do for us is real.  They are getting bigger and stronger all the time.

One granddaughter likes to read, and heads straight for the book section.  She always finds a book or two in the Babysitter Club series that she hasn’t read yet.  They cost just a few cents rather than a few dollars.  The other granddaughter likes pretty things… jewelry, a pretty perfume bottle or decorative vase, and she can find the best bargains in blouses!

After our errands, I had to swing back by the house as I had left my cell phone recharging.  Kate ran in and got it, and checked to make sure the crock pot with our dinner in it had been turned down to Low.  We had put a small chuck roast in the crock earlier, and cleaned out the fridge looking for veggies.  Cloves of garlic went in, and carrot pieces (first because they take longer to cook and most of the heat, too), then I cut up and Kate added onion, celery, bell pepper and potato on top.  She sprinkled in the S&P and a half cup of water, and we were off!

With our errands done and dinner taken care of, I wanted to go downtown to see the newly opened Rainroad Park.  I had wondered what kind of park it would be.  Our local park in East Lake has a big lake with fingers of land one could go out on to fish; a long wooden pier and gazebo; a mile-long walkway around the lake for jogging, strolling or ambling.  There are picnic tables scattered under the trees, and a whole flock of ducks and geese who live and nest on an island in the lake.

The waterfowl come to attention whenever someone passes by.  Woe be to the uninitiated who brings a sack of stale bread to feed them.  Word spreads like wildfire and every goose,  gander, gosling, duck, drake and duckling converges like they had not eaten in a week!  It can be scary.  The small children you brought there for a treat have to be put on top of the low lighting structures that line the path around the lake.  Your best defense is to give them all your bread and stand still until their little brains forget what they are there for and they leave.  Honestly, you feel like you have been mugged.

(Image: The public enjoys Railroad Park, by Susan Clayton)

Becoming One’s Own Person

We are watching our grandchildren grow up, watching them rebel against authority, and listening to their pleas for autonomy.  It made me remember my own coming of age.

I lived at a time when you could not get your Social Security Number until you were sixteen years old.  It followed that you could not get a job until you were sixteen, as you needed a Social Security Number for tax purposes.  (Exceptions were if you lived and worked on a dairy farm, which I didn’t.)

So I lived in anticipation of  being “Sweet Sixteen”.  I wanted to work, to make my own money.  By this time in my life, my father was not strict.  I had kept house and cooked supper for him since my mother died a couple of years before.  Money was tight–I received a small allowance.

While finishing high school, I envied the students–usually Seniors, who attended school only half a day, leaving at noon for their jobs.

Great Food on the Gulf Coast

Our recent vacation to the Florida Gulf Coast was so full of wonderful things that I have forgotten until now to mention the great food we enjoyed.

There was a restaurant called The Boar’s Head fairly close to Sugar Sands where we stayed. I really did not want to drive to Thomas Dr. and all the new traffic patterns and strange (to me) intersections.  It was just as well, as while we were there the main attraction called the Treasure Ship burned to the ground.  It had contained various entertainment venues, I think, as well as three restaurants.  Then there was the clog of sightseers driving slowly by to goggle at the late, great Treasure Ship.

So we went to The Boar’s Head and it was Good.  Jerry had sirloin steak and I had prime rib with shrimp cocktail for starters.  The next evening, our last, we were caught in torrential rains and rather than look for something new, we went back to the place we knew served good food in a relaxing, quiet atmosphere–The Boar’s Head.  I dropped Jerry off under the portico and parked the car.  Partially sheltered by a big pink rose of an umbrella (birthday gift from friend Rebecca), I waded through ankle-deep puddles to the front door.

Usually when one gets wet feet, one gets a chill and comes down with a bad cold, or at least that’s the way it was when I was growing up sixty years ago.  I guess it’s different when the water is warm, the air is warm, and the restaurant is not chilly.  I was never uncomfortable (my pedal neuropathy may have kept me from feeling my damp feet) and I didn’t get sick.  Of course, that old saw about getting sick from a chill is silly anyway, one gets sick from a bacteria or a virus, everybody knows that.  Anywayyyyyy…

There we were: I had raved so much about the prime rib that we both ordered it this time–mine was medium rare, yum! Creamy horseradish sauce accompanied our prime rib with sides of garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. It sounds pretty pedestrian, but wait!

We shared an appetizer of fried alligator; it was sort of like chicken, mild and tender.  We forewent the wine this time and had coffee both before and after the meal.  It was all good, and if you are even in Panama City Beach FL, I recommend The Boar’s Head restaurant to you.