Day: August 25, 2018

The critics are calling BlacKKKlansman Spike Lee’s greatest movie. I haven’t seen all of his films so I can’t say if that is true, but I can say it is by far the best of his movies that I have seen, and one of the funniest, most wrenching and also, surprisingly, one of the most entertaining of his films.

It is a powerful and painfully real movie. In a sense, it sets out to tell the story of race in America through the surprising and sometimes hilarious misadventures of the first African-American member of the Colorado Springs Police Department, who successfully manages to infiltrate a local Ku Klux Klan chapter with the help of a white and Jewish fellow officer.

Lee remembers to be funny even as he takes aim at America’s festering sore, race.

The movie could have been written by a thriller novelist,  Undercover Detective Stalworth not only penetrates the Klan, he also, astonishingly, manages to become telephone buddies with David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a supporter of President Trump, whose words he often quotes approvingly, and to devastating effect in the film.

If you love movies, you will realize quickly that Lee’s film is almost a direct counterpoint to the infamous W. D. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation, an American epic that portrayed blacks as crude and ignorant assaulters of white women and cast the KKK in so heroic a light that it triggered a revival of the Klan, which had gone dormant after the Civil War.

By contemporary standards, the movie would be considered brazenly racist, but President Wilson had it shown at the White House, and praised it as an important piece of American history. He was right, but maybe not for the right reasons.

If I had seen the movie three years ago, before November of 2016, I would have considered it alarmist and knee jerk. Today, I consider it restrained, especially for Lee.  Like many of us, Lee portrays quotes and  scenes that were unthinkable just a few years ago, it seems like another age.

Most of BlackKKKlansman is really a mainstream Hollywood cop movie, interspersed with sometimes chilling reminders that racism in high places is all too real and all too obvious.

The contemporary truth of the movie, and its real point,  hits home from time to time like a small series of bombs  exploding in the midst of a good and suspenseful yarn, a kind of tense and thrilling French Connection with heavy racial overtones.

In movie terms, it is really an amazing achievement, well worth seeing for a lot of reasons.

In the midst of all the intrigue and tension, there is even a car chase or two and love interest with a radical African-American revolutionary (Patrice Dumas, played by Laura Harrier). She wants to lead a revolution, he has wanted all of his life to be a police officer.

Officer Ron  Stallworth (Denzel Washington’s son John David Washington), who got inside the Klan using a fellow officer, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), did a compelling and heartfelt job portraying the idealistic but quiet Stallworth, who first job was filing reports in the police department basement.

Over the course of his investigation, Stallworth begins to wake up and comes to conscious, but never goes as far as the revolutionaries and radicals he  has started to befriend.

But it was interesting for me to see how careful Lee was not to alienate or exclude whites from the movies. Several of the police officers were honest and supportive of his hero, and the Denzel character was almost apolitical, he never uttered a radical or incendiary thought, even in the face of great provocation.

Like Griffiths, Lee uses all kinds of cinematic fantasy tricks to go back in time,  flashbacks, old films, music, dancing, news clips, to keep a good story moving.

Scene by scene, he reminds us more and more convincingly that racism is  not only deeply entrenched in our country, and now seems to reside quite openly in the highest levels of our government, especially the White House.

It was easy to watch, it was painful to watch.

It is truly horrific to watch Lee put these pieces to together, one at a time, as our worst fears and suspicions suddenly become so clear and incontrovertible. If you are awake and paying attention, you sort of know what is happening, but to see it presented so skillfully and in such a thoughtful way is still both shocking and sickening.

More and more, it seems that white nationalism – invoked skillfully and credibly in the movie through the spoken words of David Duke and  other white nationalists – is not a sideshow of the circus that is the White House, but perhaps the point of it and of the November election.

I didn’t believe it or want to believe it – or couldn’t believe it – for the longest time, but I am coming to believe it now.

There is a raging debate about racism in America, one of those interminable left-right things,  the movie may clear up the confusion in many minds.

In a way, the film left me heartsick.

I saw film scenes interwoven into the movie that made me credulous to accept the fact that this is America, where hatred of black people is woven into the very fabric and history of the country, something we have never seemed to want to acknowledge or come to terms with.

The only truly violent part of the film comes when Harry Belafonte (playing activist Jerome Turner) makes a riveting appearance to narrate  the true story of a horrific lynching of a mentally retarded black teenager accused of lusting after a white woman. He tells the story to young African-American students, it is a wonder that there wasn’t a revolution.

I wouldn’t rule it out.

It seems that is our national horror story, race, is an awful ghost that keeps rising again and again while most people deny it, just like they deny what is happening to the earth. America has always seen what it wants to see and needs to see.

And why should race go away when it is being directly and indirectly invoked every day by people who claim to be our leaders?

At the end of the movie, Lee shows us harrowing images from Charlottesville, Va., and the Presidents stunningly moral-blind response to it. This is, of course, the point of the film, which starts out looking like a potential franchise, and ends up kicking us in the butt with truth.

In our polarized time, some people might wish to dismiss this movie – and the people who love it – as just another rant from the left side of things. I am not an ideologue in any way, I think this is a great movie and an important one.

The best way I can describe it as funny, righteously furious and very, very powerful.

Maria and I felt it so strongly that we couldn’t speak for nearly an hour as we drove home to the farm together.

We probably have not been so silent for that long after a movie in our decade of movie-going together. It took Spike Lee to do it.

The best scenes in our county fair, the Washington County Fair, one of the last great agricultural fairs in the country, is watching the families sitting with their animals, their cows and sheep and horses and goats. This big mule got my attention, his family took up camp next to him at the fair, they slept in a trailer just outside the tent.

Once again, I’m proud of my daughter Emm and the way she puts her life together and takes on complex tasks. Robin, my granddaughter, will be two tomorrow, and Sandy, their new dog, has been with the family just about a week.

Emma took a risk in getting this dog, she has an active and demanding toddler, a busy husband, a small apartment in downtown Brooklyn, where nothing about having a dog is simple or easy.

Emma rarely needs help from me these days, but we did strategize  back and forth for several days until Emma got Sandy housebroken, calmed down and at ease. Sandy is probably part cur, she comes from Eastern Kentucky where the curs – an actual breed – live.

Emma found her online, she adopted her from a rescue group that brings dogs up from the South.

She bays at pigeons and gets excited outside, where she can smell  a lot of things. Inside, she is a sweet and calm. She loves to sit on Robin’s bed she loves to curl up with Emma day and night while she works.

Sandy is a good choice for this family. Although the curs can get over-hyped outside – they are hunting dogs – they are great family dogs inside, they love children and they love attention. Emma loves it when Sandy curls up next to her on the couch.

Emma has worked hard to housebreak the dog, get Robin and Sandy used to each, and has begun training her not to jump on people outside. I think it’s the outside part that will be a challenge for Emma, Sandy already bays at pigeons.

But overall, a great match, love and growing ease all around. I’m proud of Emma, she has always loved dogs, and this was a good risk to take. It turned out beautifully, because she did the work and is continuing to do the work.

This photo makes me want to get down there. Emma wants me to Facetime Robin on her birthday, i’m balking at that, I really dislike Facetime, you can’t talk with somebody who doesn’t talk. All you can do is make stupid sounds and feel ridiculous.

Emma says Robin wants to see me, so I’ll try it again.

I’m very happy for Emma, and for Robin, Emma got the dog she wants and she did it in the right way.

The Mansion threw up a short and inexpensive new Amazon Wish List  list this morning, they are looking for help with art supplies and plates. The list runs from $8.95 to $19.99. Take a look. The Army of Good has triggered a massive movement towards art and art work among the residents.

That’s the good news. This art work has had a profound impact on the residents, their energy, communit and pride.

The other news is that because of this,  they are running out of art supplies. Take a look and see if you can help them get some  photos and matted frames for their art work and paper plates for their work sessions.

And thanks. A chance to do good with small acts of great kindness. Check  it out here.

Almost every day, I get messages from people thanking or praising me for deciding to “rescue” Bud rather than buy another dog from a breeder.

The idea seems to be that I’m  somehow (finally) virtuous or noble for rescuing a dog rather than buying one for any reason. The messages all say there are so many lovable dogs who need homes, it is good of me to rescue one.

I guess most people don’t know that I have rescued dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, even chickens and cows for years. I even rescued two Swiss Steers and a beef cow I had absolutely no business rescuing or owning.

These messages and this point of view is alien to me, however well meaning. It is just not the way I think of dogs.  I have never written a message to anyone in  my life thanking for them getting a dog from a shelter, or a breeder, or a rescue group. Why would I do that?

I think everyone who can read and sit up knows by now that some dogs are in need of  rescue, but I never use those terms to describe my dogs, I never say they are rescued or abused.

Why?

Because I think every dog is a rescue dog in one way or another, at least to me.

Dogs lead hard and fragile lives, there are minefields everywhere for them, and every time a loving person buys or gets one or walks into one on the street or goes to a shelter, they are “rescuing a dog.”

From abusive, lazy or ignorant people.From people who don’t pay attention to their health, or who over feed them, or who train them so loosely that they bite or hurt people and other dogs, or run into the street where they are hit by cars and trucks.

I am a steward of my dogs, not a rescuer, and I have  seen lots of rescue people mistreat their dogs – as in condemning them to the cruel fate of a no-kill shelter, where many languish in crates for years or for the rest of their lives.

I’ve seen breeders mistreat dogs, and shelter workers misrepresent dogs to get them adopted. And I’ve seen countless people keep their dogs alive beyond reason and in great pain for selfish reasons, project all kinds of mindless human neuroses onto them, confine them in yards or tied to trees, ignore health care, or feed them unhealthy foods.

I know of many people who shout at their dogs rather than train them, or turn them into furbabies, emotionalized representations of dogs that were once proud and useful. The manner in which I get a dog does not make me a saint, or in any way better than you.

People buy dogs on impulse, because they saw one on TV or in the movies, or because they think they will go to heaven sooner than the rest of us. Or because they just want to rescue something.

I don’t love a rescue dog any differently than one that comes from a good or bad breeder. I get the best dog for me from wherever I come across it and I love every dog I have ever had.

It’s something of a minor miracle when a dog gets into a really good home where people will learn about the dog and love it and train it in a knowing and healthy way and give it the life a dog deserves.

Nobody has a lock on wisdom and caring or righteousness when it comes to dogs: not me, not breeders, not rescue groups, not shelter workers. In my heart, I thank every person who gives a dog a good home, I could care less whether they bought one or rescued one.

Red is a rescue dog, he was saved from a farm in Ireland that was not good for him. Frieda was a rescue dog. Pearl was rescued from overbreeding. But was rescued from an irresponsible owner.

Purebred dogs are often rescued from lives that can be improved upon; from overbreeding, confinement, lack of attention. Every dog needs to be rescued from any of the scores of pitfalls that could affect and befall them.

The animal world is slipping into the same tarpit that our political system has fallen into: labels, judgment, dividing other people into warring groups.

Do us dog lovers really need to turn each other into members of warring factions who spend time and energy judging one another rather than taking care of dogs.

My job as a steward of my dogs is to ensure that they have the very best possible lives. That they are healthy, well-trained, much-loved. I am an equal opportunity dog lover, I don’t need to label them or polarize people by telling them what they must do.

Bud is not a rescue dog, he is a dog to me, that is what I call him. My dog.

And I would not ever thank anybody for getting a dog. Any yahoo can get a dog, from almost anywhere, and for all their talk of screening, no breeder  or rescue dog can be 100 per cent certain that a dog up for adoption is going to the right place. Nobody is inside, reporting out.

I thank people for getting a dog in a thoughtful and deliberate way and taking the best possible care of the dog. I thank people for being a steward of their dogs, not a hero.