Two brothers in their late sixties are setting out on a journey they hope will "restore democracy to America." Starting out from San Francisco, Robin and Laird Monahan have begun a 3000-mile hike that will take them across ten states to Washington, DC.
Along the way, the Monahans hope to rally opposition to the controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC.
"The Citizens United decision was just a hammer blow to me," Laird Monahan told RAW STORY. "Frankly, I was despondent for a couple of days. I just thought the end of my country had come to pass."
After long talks with his wife, Laird was only growing angrier. "I just said, I gotta do something. I gotta do something physical, I gotta make a physical sacrifice to restore democracy to America."
The hike will total more than 3000 miles and the brothers plan to descend on the Lincoln Memorial before election day in November.
"The idea that appealed to me greatly was the idea of seeing the United States a much slower pace, perhaps three miles per hour as opposed to seventy miles per hour," said Robin. "For the most part, our route will follow very closely Highway 50. It goes through ten states, through middle America, and it gives us an opportunity to talk to people from the smaller towns in hopes of raising their awareness of the necessity of reducing corporate power by passing a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood."
Good luck to them—a sentiment I offer with unadulterated optimism and hope, despite the evident reasons for cynicism, because I support their cause 100%, and because I expect more.
By request, an open thread for tonight's finale of Lost.
(Just FYI, there will be the usual postmortem thread tomorrow morning too.)
And if anyone wants to get warmed up, give the proverbial spin to the Lostcast. Download it here, or play it in a pop-up if you're inclined. The show is available on iTunes.
Text Onscreen: On September 22, 2004, the journey began.
Daniel Dae Kim (Jin): When we first started, we were all so happy to kind of, uh, meet one another, because we were excited to take this trip together...
Yunjin Kim (Sun): And us being away from our family, our friends, our familiar environment, really brought us really close right from the beginning...
Josh Holloway (Sawyer): I remember we all went to a, to a bar, the cast, after the numbers came out from the pilot, and we celebrated that night. That was really the first night that I believed I could throw away my boxes [laughs] and stick around...
Naveen Andrews (Sayid): It's rare for something to be critically acclaimed and, I guess, acclaimed by the public...
Jorge Garcia (Hurley): When I read the ending, I was, um, I was pretty moved. I actually got kind of emotional...
Matthew Fox (Jack): It's an incredibly rare and rewarding experience, and I feel very, very fortunate to have had it...
Evangeline Lilly (Kate): I came in one person and I'm going out another person, and I'll be forever grateful...
Terry O'Quinn (Locke): I'll miss it terribly. I'll miss John Locke like, like hell...
Lilly (Kate): We want the last frame of the last show to be about these people, who we introduced you to six years ago and carried you on journeys with, um, and leave you with them, and leave you with their stories, which I, I, I think is honorable.
D.D. Kim (Jin): I don't think you could have a conversation about television in the twenty-first century without mentioning Lost.
O'Quinn (Locke): You close a book, and you don't want the book to come to an end, but you close the book, and you go, "God, that was great."
Fox (Jack): I'm so honored and proud to have been a part of it, and I think that it, [pauses, nods] to me, I couldn't have imagined, uh, it coming to an end in a, in such a beautiful way.
Portly Dyke and I were watching this together on the phone the other day, and I said to her, "I get the feeling that after tonight, I'm never going to be able to hear that music again without blubbing." And she laughed and agreed. We are so doomed, lol.
(NB: This thread is NOT about any particular episode, and I'd appreciate some thoughtfulness around not putting spoilers in it - I've seen the two Angels eps, but not the Venice one)
So, here's the problem, and I don't know if this happened to US viewers or not.
It's a holiday weekend here in Canada (Victoria Day - yay, happy colonialism day!), and as a result, Space didn't show the new episode last night (Vampires of Venice, or whatever it's called). It's showing next week.
Which means that at least Canada, now, is three episodes behind the UK's broadcast.
So, having not seen "last night's" show, I can't (and don't want to, really) host an Open Thread about it.
So I don't know what to do. I can put the open thread here anyway, and you folk where it's been shown, or those who download, can chatter away about it, and then you can find someone else to do the open threads, because I'm not going to be downloading (for personal ethical reasons), and I'm not going to host threads I can't take part in (because I don't want to spoil my viewing just so y'all can chat about shows I've not seen yet!). Or we can wait another week, and expect weaker discussion because for most of you it'll have been a week (or three weeks) since the episode.
"If I found myself face-to-face with the Smoke Monster I would activate my laser eyes and we would have an epic battle to the death. Who would win? Yet another unanswerable question."—Carlton Cuse, one half of Team Darlton, the masterminds behind Lost.
Reminder! For USians (and Canadians, I think?)...ABC is re-airing the two-hour pilot episode of Lost tonight at 8E/7C.
And, yes, there will be a Lost Open Thread during the finale tomorrow, by request. There will also be the usual postmortem thread on Monday.
Bowie wrote "Kooks" for his son when he was born; we won't be providing Dudz with a crib or enrolling him in school, but if the analogy isn't perfect, the sentiment is nonetheless appropriate: Welcome to our kooky family; we hope you like us and want to stay awhile.
The scene spliced throughout the piece, of Dudz sniffing at a milkbone I've got on offer, then backing up, then coming forward, which eventually ends with his "sitting" to get the treat, took place in our small downstairs bathroom. Although many greyhounds aren't great sitters, because their large thigh muscles make it a rather unnatural position for them, Dudz was a very quick learner with the command. But he'd back up a lot to "sit," sort of backward-walking into a sitting position, and sometimes bump something and startle himself.
So I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, where the hallway wall blocked any real opportunity to backward-walk and necessitated his having to "sit" in place. After we practiced that a few times, he had learned to "sit" on the spot without any backing up or startling himself at all.
Now, whenever he wants anything, he "sits" and looks at us with his most adorable face, and if it's treat-, walk-, or dinnertime, and we present him with a treat, leash, or bowl of food, he collapses from his "sit" into a play-bow, with the hugest grin I have ever seen on a dog.
We started the day on a bright note and I thought it would be absolutely lovely to end the day (Virtual Pub notwithstanding) with another swell story:
For Gary Oppenheimer, 2007 was a year of plenty.
His backyard garden produced a bountiful harvest with a surplus of spaghetti squash, melons, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers for his family. At the end of the season, Oppenheimer had 40 pounds of excess fresh produce -- and nowhere to take it.
…Oppenheimer took the produce to a local food pantry at a battered-women's shelter. When he dropped off the food, he was struck by the response he got from the shelter worker.
"[She] thanked me profusely, and as I left she said, 'Now we can have something fresh to eat,' " Oppenheimer recalled. "That stuck with me because I remember walking away thinking, 'What? They have canned stuff only all the time?' "
…In 2008, Oppenheimer became the director of the West Milford Community Garden in West Milford, New Jersey. He learned that toward the end of the summer, plots were often abandoned and good food was sometimes left to rot.
He tried to find a list of his town's local food pantries online where the extra produce could be donated. A Google search showed the nearest food pantry was in another town, 25 miles away -- when in fact there were six food pantries in Oppenheimer's town of West Milford.
Oppenheimer knew he had stumbled upon a gap in information that could rescue fresh produce from a wasteful end and potentially save lives.
"I realized that if I'm having this problem as a gardener, then other people across the country must be having the exact same problem," he said. "I got up the next morning, and I went on the internet, and I grabbed the domain of AmpleHarvest.org."
…The free online resource enables food pantries to register and be listed in a central nationwide directory, and makes it possible for American gardeners to easily find the local pantries where they can donate extra produce.
Blub.
You know, there are a lot of people who think that social justice work is futile, because people are fundamentally bad, or ruthlessly selfish, or incorrigibly apathetic. Or all of the above. I don't believe that. I believe that the vast majority of people are good—or would be, given the opportunity and the inspiration and the expectation that they aspire to kindness.
I frequently say of ugly things that nothing happens in a void. But decency doesn't happen in a void, either. There are good people doing good things all over the place, and that goodness has the capacity to be infectious every bit as much as hatred does.
Have a wonderful weekend, Shakers—and try to put a little bit of something good out there. I shall endeavor to do the same.
I don't know what makes people happy, but I do know that you have to be a dude to be considered a faith leader worthy of quotation at CNN on the subject of what makes people happy.
"If you use big words like Thanatos and refer to old-time sadomasochistic porn you can discuss a snuff movie as art, something to do with the desire for sex and the desire for death. Except that it's only women who get beaten to pulp, not men."—Echidne, being brilliant as usual.
Okay, that's not a surprise at all, but I never figured he'd be so nakedly and uncreatively misogynist:
What are your thoughts on women directors? After you saw Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, you tweeted that you might have to reevaluate your preconceived notions about them.
I did. And after I saw [Floria Sigismondi's] The Runaways, too.
Really?
I loved it.
I wish I'd loved it.
Well, I wasn't looking forward to it. I avoided it, and then I was with some people and they said, "It starts soon at the Arclight. Let's go." So yeah, I do have to reevaluate that, but for the most part I'm not totally convinced, [except for] Andrea Arnold, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola…
Not Mary Harron?
Mary Harron to a degree. There's something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze.
What would that be?
We're watching, and we're aroused by looking, whereas I don't think women respond that way to films, just because of how they're built.
You don't think they have an overt level of arousal?
[They have one] that's not so stimulated by the visual. I think, to a degree, all the women I named aren't particularly visual directors. You could argue that Lost in Translation is beautiful, but is that [cinematographer Lance Acord]? I don't know. Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn't a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don't know. I think it's a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors.
Yawn.
I can't even muster the energy to get angry when I read someone saying something as blatantly stupid as "[Film] is a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility." All I've got in response is a low chuckle of reverberating contempt.
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