Hunger Games the movie versus book

The movie: heroine nearly shoots a deer but misses, heroine yells when small sister is chosen to join other children in a fight to the death for the amusement of the rich audience. Heroine grimaces, frowns and frets a lot, while dressed in spectacular clothes. The games begin: almost all children die off camera except for a few boys who fight hand to hand combat, their movements blurred and choppy concealing detail until the camera looks away and then pans to someone lying face down in the grass as the other limps away. A few corpses are shown, a cannon announces each death, hero declares love for heroine, appears to betray her, saves her, then is saved by her twice. Game over. The end.

The book: heroine shoots deer, rabbits, squirrel, wild dogs to feed the sister and mother she loves and help the people of the village, with the help of a boy she loves. On-screen hunting  might shock people more than the graphic violence of children being killed, but except for shooting a bird in flight which she fails to collect, no animals were harmed in the making of this film, even for pretend. The graphic violence described in detail in the book was softened or moved out of sight in the film. I was glad for that.

The movie does not capture emotions, complexities, conflicts and feelings and without that, the movie is just another action flick in which the hero and heroine have narrow escapes from sudden death as minor characters get devoured or blown to pieces.

 





 

Nook Tips

Before we developed the same eye disorders, my sister read a book or two each week and I read two or three books in addition to daily newspapers and weekly magazines, from the time we were kids until we both developed the same eye problems, cataracts and Fuchs dystrophy.

Surgery restored my vision for driving and using a computer, but I couldn't easily read books or magazines without my eyes crossing.

Thanks you e-readers, my sister and I can read again.

Tips I learned at a seminar held at Barnes and Noble:

1. A Kindle only handles books downloaded from Amazon.com, and Nooks take books from Barnes and Noble. If my sister and I both bought the same kind of e-reader, we could share many books.
2. Books stored on an e-reader do not effect the speed of downloads or internet use  and each e-reader can hold thousands of books.
3. A charge holds for about ten hours if the internet connection is turned off when not in use. This also protects the e-reader from hackers and viruses. When setting the book aside, turn the book off using the button in back of Nook Basic or on the top left side of Color Nook.
6. Inside the store using the Barnes and Noble website, it is possible to browse and read any single e-book for an hour.
7. To access a list of free e-books to choose free books, on the home page choose "buy" and then select the desired topic and enter 00.00 as the price.

What is the appeal of The Hunger Games?

My grandson and I began to read "The Hunger Games" together, but it was too disturbing to me.

What disgusted me fascinated him, the idea of an America in the future where time has led the rich to crave combustible celebrities, extraordinary fashion and televised drama at the expense of the poor whose labors, resources and even children are given as "tribute" to atone for an uprising 75 years before.

In the story, children chosen in a yearly lottery to be given training and weapons, then set into a huge arena to fight, maim, kill each other until only one remains standing for the entertainment of the rich and to win food for the victor's district.

The children are forced to kill each other while followed by cameras depicting the drama and carnage until only one survives, although most of the children die by The Capital's nightmarish booby-traps.

The author wants to shock people into recognizing the nature of war itself; how innocent children suffer, how for soldiers the wounds never heal, how inequality and cruelty eventually lead to insurrection, but I wonder whether children raised on Hannah Montana can grasp such lofty themes.

I expect the movie to focus on beauty, fashion, teen romance and carnage, unable to convey the narrator's anger, commitment, conflict between wanting to love and hate, wanting to fight or run which made it possible for me to skim the violence to get the story.

Dustin might never be told that his other grandmother survived bombs, German soldiers grabbing anything of value, Russian soldiers grabbing peasant girls, the loss of her home and homeland, the hunger in a decimated nation, the pain of exile.

Or how my husband's mother, Dustin's great grandmother, witnessed soldiers on horseback killing her mother and other women and children of her Russian neighborhood while she hid in a tree.

My dad had it easy compared to my son-in-law's and husband's mothers, on a hospital ship at the Invasion of Okinawa, less than 500 miles away when the atom bombs fell upon Japan.

My grandson is 75% Russian and 25% early American colonist, but if he ever thinks war is entertainment, or even if he believes this movie is, I might tell him.

It's not.

How we lost $17,000 on St. Patrick's Day

About a month ago, I read a newspaper headline to the effect that nearly every home has an antique, art, heirloom jewelry or SOMETHING worth more than the owner would expect.

I read past the headline, certain we have nothing of value at my home or in the home I bought for my daughter, who lives across the street because she in unable to take care of herself and son alone.

Yesterday without asking, my daughter sold a resin sculpture I bought in 1994 from an art gallery in Rochester Hills for $800, to a neighbor for $300.

It is called "Yesterday's News With Magic," a limited edition sculpture by Michael Garmin.

She turned her heart to art after a string of romances ended badly and she sought something safer to love than men for a few years.

The sculpture depicted a man resembling her latest ex-boyfriend slumped against the wall of an old bar, reading a rumpled newspaper.

An optical illusion created the perception of a changing panorama behind the window of a cheap hotel.    

The size was three feet tall by two feet wide and in the mid-90's, mostly sold to bars and nightclubs.

The last time I checked the artist's website, about four years ago, it sold for $3,000 in mint condition.

Now the piece sells for $17,800.

I was angry with her but when I went to her house to tell her the mistake, I saw her without make up for the first time in months, her cheeks blistered and a sick yellow to gray complexion, so instead of scolding I just asked why.

She feels loved, she said, and didn't want to remember the past.

"It was Saint Patrick's Day," she added, "and the man who bought it is Irish, fixes my furnace for free and his wife invited me to their home for a party where everyone drank green beer, which made all of us a bit impulsive.It needed restoration I couldn't afford and if I move in with you and Dad, or died, you will throw it away."

She looked at my scowl as I stared at the tremors in her hands.

"You always said it was depressing," she concluded.

She was right.

So was the newspaper reporter who wrote that homes hold treasures unrecognized by their owners.

But the greatest treasure in a home is always its inhabitants.

Sometimes it takes a tornado or a health crisis to recognize that.







         























           

Life Signs

I retired a year ago, after my husband went into a medical crisis. Jerry spent time in intensive care at Crittenton Hospital, where the nurses were wonderful and probably saved his life. Diabetes, heart and artery disease, small strokes, sepsis and sudden kidney failure had all taken a toll on him and working full time with a disabled daughter and dangerously ill husband was taking a toll on me.
The first week of official retirement, my ten year old grandson came to spend winter break with his mom, grandpa and me.
Dustin played happily all week while my husband recovered in his recliner and our daughter rested or slept on our couch because her furnace was out again and she sleeps most of the time.
Suddenly boy's chin clunked to his chest as he replicated a skateboard jump with twist off a 12 inch high jogging trampoline.

"I'm okay," Dustin said, but his face turned white as a hard boiled egg. Chills shook his body. He couldn't turn his head or lift his chin.
I put him to bed but became alarmed a few hours later when he said he couldn't raise or turn his head.
His dad took him to Beaumont Hospital, where X-rays showed two dislocated vertebrae, C2 and C3. The doctor said, "Any sudden movement could sever his spinal cord."
His dad feared losing his job if he missed work that night, so I arrived in time to ride the ambulance that transported Dustin from Troy to Royal Oak, where he was admitted to intensive care.
The ambulance driver said sometimes little boys have conditions that look very serious, but they recover very quickly. It reassured me, but then I went numb with panic when we were met at the Emergency Room by a team of pediatricians and specialists, plus a Chaplin who offered me "grief counseling."
Dustin looked small in a blue cervical collar big enough to be a flotation device. He hardly spoke, except to ask for help drinking or sitting, and how soon before he could skateboard again and when his parents could come. The hospital said the insurance would only pay for 48 hours care, so Dustin was being sent home when he should have stayed in the hospital.
He slept most of the ten days until the collar came off, until the danger of paralysis passed.
He recovered.
Not me.
Thumps, cries, screams, any threat to his head or neck made me panic.
Cries and screams were usually reactions to the Lions game on t.v., a missing remote control device, or Dustin's $19,000 bill from the hospital which, due to disputes between medical and homeowner's insurance, hospital billing and two divorced parents, I feared having to pay,
Today when Dustin screamed, everyone ran. We found him bent over the bathroom sink, crying, "A scar! On my chin! I can't go to school!"
"It's a scratch," I said.
He put his face up to the mirror. "It looks like a tattoo! I zipped my skin when I zipped my hoodie. Cool!"
Trying to prevent another crisis created contagious panic.
 I'll try to remember thumps, cries and screams are signs of life.
And remember to embrace life instead of bracing myself against the bumps and detours on its rocky, awesome road

Mom versus the wheelchair

For two years, Mother refused to use a walker or wheelchair, but she could barely walk. She wore an alert button to summon help when she fell, but that didn't stop her from getting concussions and injuring her knee.

"Give me one good excuse why you won't get a wheelchair." I said.

"People will think I'm old," the eighty three year old said.

"I'll get you a helmet with a sweatshirt that says "Test Driver," I said.

"People will feel sorry for me," she said. 

"No they won't. They'll get mad you're blocking their way with the chair."

"I don't want people to get mad at me," she said.

"Too late. Each time you fall and get hurt, you block hallways and grocery aisles until the ambulance arrives."

"I heard someone got electrocuted in an electric wheel chair," she said.

"I heard anacondas dwell in the plumbing of Rochester Hills," I said, "but I still go barefoot in the bathroom. In the dark." 

"But you screamed like an idiot when you stepped on my sponge roller the other night. Take no chance, have no fear, that's my motto," Mom said.  

The phone rang.

My younger sister, calling from California.

Mom turned on the speaker phone. She said she had good news.

"Oh!" Mother said, "did the doctors find out what's wrong with your knees so you can go back to work?"

"No! I can shop, cook, clean, my knees stopped hurting, I've stopped falling, and I don't need surgery. All because I bought a wheelchair," my sister said.

"But you're so young!" Mother said.

"I looked older hobbling and falling down every day," Sis said.

Mother finally went to an orthopedic specialist to see what she needed.

  

Caregiver Survival

Being somewhat ambulatory in a household where everyone else is less than somewhat, I've found the following  choices to be especially helpful.
First, faith.
Faith in God.
Faith in a better future, even if the future is as close as tomorrow and the "better" is as small as a cup of hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, an entertaining television show, laughter following a night of tending to someone in pain or a day of taking reluctant people to doctor appointments and blood tests.
Faith that what I do for incapacitated or young relatives matters, even though mostly it's cooking, cleaning, driving, reassuring and making sure medications are properly taken, appointments are kept, reckless behavior is quashed, each chore is completed in time for the next chore.

Second, brief flights of freedom.
Hobbies that make me forget everything for awhile; for me, reading, art and creative writing.
Meeting a friend for lunch, because after people in my house are fed, they hardly notice my absence until dinner but in the evening they all want to tell me something or need help with forms or homework, and they fear the dark and my disappearance into it forever if I leave.
Sometimes a nap or a long, hot shower in the middle of the day constitutes escape and rejuvenation.

 Third, the Caregiver's Golden Rule: Remember to do unto one's self as one has given and done for others.

Fourth, faith.