Best Christmas Movies in the Hunt House

This year, we are replenishing our Christmas movies supply. Not everything is on Netflix and most of our favorites were on VHS tapes and we haven't had a player in years. 

So Amy invested in buying DVDs of her favorites. Some are spendy, some are free for Netflix and for Amazon Prime users and some are just darn hard to find. Here's a list of our eclectic essentials for holiday viewing.

Every Year Mandatory Viewing in the Hunt House:
White Christmas
Christmas in Connecticut
Nightmare Before Christmas
Mickey's Christmas Carol

Christmas in Connecticut - Traditionally, Amy and I sit down to watch this every New Years Eve after the kids are in bed. Curled up on the couch with Amy looking at the tree and watching this black and white postwar classic. Barbara Stanwyck is perfect and the house in the country must have lived in the dreams of many couples creating a new life for each other after the war. The back and forth between Sydney Greenstreet and Cuddles Skall is as evocative of Christmas as gingerbread cookies to me. 

I love these postwar movies. There is a sense of hope for the future, while everyone is making do as best the can. White Christmas falls into this category of course. It is free on Netflix and one of the best Christmas movies of all time - if for no other reason than Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" twice. So does Miracle on 34th Street, which we don't watch every year. Here too, the theme is adjusting after the war - loss and hope. It goes without saying for this and other movies mentioned, that the remake is no where near as good as the original. 

Holiday Affair, staring Robert Mitchum  and Janet Leigh also deals with Americans coming to grips with loss after the war, while trying to have hope for the future. It's a neat little movie about a war widow and ex-GI with a toy train running through it. Robert Mitchum is one of my favorite actors. 
I'm not a huge It's a Wonderful Life fan, but I do like Jimmy Stewart in The Shop Around the Corner. 

As for the modern Christmas Movies, here's our list:

Nightmare Before Christmas - not sure if this is a Halloween movie or Christmas movie, but we watch it early and often. It's a movie that is culturally influential far beyond the holidays. We find ourselves singing Danny Elfman's wonderful songs all year 'round. That said, Halloween Town is an acquired taste and not for everybody. 
Love Actually - Some love it, some hate it. It's a grown up movie that doesn't sugar coat the jagged edges of loving relationships, yet is still funny and hopeful. You'll cry, which makes laughing so much better. Not for kids. 
Christmas Vacation - Brutal funny family Christmas classic that you can watch after all the family has gone home and the kids are in bed. 
Mickey's Christmas Carol - Amy's favorite. Expensive on DVD, but worth it. The kids were watching it this morning. 
The Muppet Christmas Carol - My favorite version of the Dickens classic, and one of the best in the Muppet movie cannon. 
Emmit Otter's Jug Band - Speaking of muppets. The girls claim they don't like this movie, but I love it and they watch it with me.

The Santa Clause - Tim Allen is great, which is good because he has to carry the whole movie. This scene in particular gets quoted around the Hunt house all the time.
Scrooged - Bill Murray, Carol Kane, Karen Allen Bobcat and Goldthwait doing a modern TV Executive version of Dickens. Awesome. Think Ghostbuster's Christmas and you get the idea. And Mary Lou Retton! 
The Polar Express - This movie kind of creeps me out - Uncanny Valley and all that. Let's face it, that's a lot of Tom Hanks. Still the songs and train ride are a blast. This one gets watched a lot on our house. 

Rare Exports - Finnish movie where "the real Santa" is dug up and children start disappearing. I don't think this one is for the kids just yet, but Amy and I loved it. Dark comedy and a lot of suspense. 
Arthur Christmas - originally I had no interest in this movie because I associated it with that weird TV cartoon with the rabbits living in the suburbs that the kids used to watch. It's not. It's English and from the creators of Wallace and Grommit  it's fun and Grand Santa is hilarious. Get and watch it. It's a blast. 
Rise of the Guardians - William Joyce has created THE coolest Santa ever. It's fun, brilliantly animated and designed and just fun to watch. 

TV
Charlie Brown Christmas - Nothing needs to be said here about this, other than I listen to Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack all the time - not just at Christmas. Yet driving over to midnight mass listening to "Christmastime is Here in the snow, with the lights of Astoria is one of my favorite moments on this planet. 
Anything by Rankin and Bass (Rudolf, Little Drummer Boy, The Year Without a Santa Clause and Santa Clause is Coming to Town are my favorites.)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (not the remake movie. Ick.) 
Santa vs the Snowmen - Weird, crudely animated, still like it. 
Prep and Landing - An Elf gets passed over for a promotion. Doesn't sound like a good plot for a Christmas special, does it? This is clearly one of the best of the recent Christmas TV specials all the same. 

Audio
A Christmas Carol performed by Patrick Stewart. - Dickens' original words are too good to allow the distraction of a movie. Listen instead. Stewart is brilliant. 

These aren't for everyone, and I'm open to suggestions of anything I may have missed. Merry Christmas!

Carrying The Old Woman

Today I was thinking of a variation of an old zen story. 

In the story, two traveling monks reached a river where they met a woman. The woman was wealthy and had porters for her litter, but the porters were afraid to cross the river carrying their mistress. The woman was bitter and cursed the servants. When she saw the two monks, she angrily demanded that they carry her to the other side. 

The young monk hesitated, uneager to help someone who appeared so spiteful, yet the old monk silently picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She did not thank him. Instead she continued to spit venom at the monk, complaining and cursing as he walked away. 

.

As the monks continued on their journey, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. 

Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out.

"That woman was cruel, and when you helped her, she offered you no gratitude. Instead she cursed you. You should not let her treat you that way."

"Brother," the second monk replied, "I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her."

I learned long ago that the way people treat you has little to do with your actions or your value as a human being. Our ego, constantly insists that we deserve respect. So much so, that we think this is the calculation of our worth. 

What I have found in my two careers as a journalist and as a nurse is quite different:

People will yell at you whether you do the right thing or the wrong thing.

People will resent you whether you tell them the truth or a lie.

People will treat you cruelly whether you help them or harm them.

Thus, if their treatment of you is independent of your actions, you should not let their attitude dictate how you proceed in the world. Particularly in nursing, people come into our care with a lifetime of emotional pain that we cannot expect to repair in our short encounter with them. Some live lives so fettered by darkness that they develop antibodies to kindness and light. 

People so often treat the world based on their pain and their ego, not on the human being in front of them. So we should not let their behavior dictate ours. Nor should we take personally the condition of their soul. They may have been broken long before you encountered them and they likely will be broken when you walk away. 

In the meantime, you do what is right, because it is right not because of expected praise or gain. The elder monk did not expect kindness from the rich old woman, nor did he let it bother him. 

We should help, we should be kind, we should tell the truth, we should do the right thing not in some expectation of reward, but rather, because it is the right thing. 

It is OUR actions that define us. Because we are kind, because we are truthful, we do not allow others to germinate unkindness, mendacity or cruelty within us. 

It is easy to allow mistreatment to fester in us, to claw at our awareness such that we do not see everything good around us. Resentment is a handicap to living. 

Ed's Note: The version of this story is from Zen Shorts a book by John J. Muth. The original story referred to a religious prohibition of monks touching women. Muth's version is much more helpful and the book is wonderful. 

Tinker's Lament

If I have one sin

I like to take it apart

Put it back together again

I could buy shiny an new

But I'd rather have rust

and a dent or two

I can't leave it alone

Got to see how it runs

Got to get my fingers dirty

therein lies the fun

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

"When I find myself asking what have I gotten myself into, that's when I know I'm on the right path."

My wife said this the other day while we were talking with some friends.

I often felt this way when I was in nursing school. Quitting my job and going to nursing school was a major change of course for our family. I was the sole breadwinner with an established career. I had with two other mouths to feed and another on the way.  It was an economic gamble as well as incredibly stressful event in our lives.

It was a challenge, and we need to have challenges. 

Getting in over your head is how you learn to swim, and learning to swim is how you discover that other two-thirds of the world are covered in water. Learning and doing new things is how we grow.  It is not always filled with sweetness and light. Moreover, it is by necessity less comforting that staying in your rut and on your couch. 

The biggest confrontation I faced in nursing school was one of identity. 

I was a Writer (note the capital "W") for more than a decade. My words and creativity provided my sole source of a meager income. I edited and taught other young writers how to hone their craft of reporting and writing clearly and effectively. I appearing on talk shows and live gabfests as a pundit. I was good at my job and derived egotistical pleasure from the praise I received.

Giving all that up was hard. It wasn't just a different work schedule and routine. It was a major change in who I thought I was and what I thought I was capable of accomplishing. It was a direct challenge to the stories I told about myself. I even found myself rewriting my personal history - not inventing fiction, but noticing and emphasizing events in my life that reinforced the new "who I am" story. I reached back in my life for stories to reassure me that this was a path that I should be on.  

For when we leave our comfort zones, we are often confronted with how much of who we think we are is an artificial construct. 

Throughout our lives we make up stories about who we are. Things happen and we create a shorthand explanation for the path on which we find ourselves. We are constantly asking and answering the question "how did I get here." I am someone who can't do math - and that's why I didn't become an astronaut. I went into journalism because no one would hire me to do anything else. 

 It is the simplistic story we tell others, but if repeated often enough, our story is a big part of who we are. Our identity. 

As we grow older we create our identity through stories. The labile emotions of teenagers and young adults are lives that lack such stories as anchor points. We drift. We experiment. We substitute affectation -- trends clothes, and tribes of culture. Even our addictions become entwined with how we view ourselves. Notice how often people say "I am a smoker" rather than "I smoke cigarettes." We become what we say we are - to ourselves as well as others. Eventually we gather enough things that feel right and call it our story. 

That's fine, until you throw in a plot twist. 

Changing direction is a challenge to who you think you are. 

Facing a challenge in life -- doing or learning a new thing once your story is set -- requires us to overcome the narrative inertia that has taking the dear reader along a certain path for as long as you've been alive. It is hard to starting thinking of yourself as a new person, an alternate protagonist sowing chaos amid the predictable plot points thus far established. 

Those new plot developments are often for the better. The protagonist grows and sees-feels-learns something new about themselves, and the world. 

As such, it can be frustrating, but thrilling as well. 

what is poetry

poetry is 
playing with words
to make them say
what words 
can never say

Carpe Amorem

I don't want to sleep in no more

I want to see the dawn breaking over the hill

I want to steal every second of every day

I want to seize your love.

I don't want to live inside no more

I want to feel the rain upon my face

Want to jump in the puddles and let the wind howl

I want to seize your love

There's a quiet in the morning

A simple joy to those hours before the dawn

I want to break into song and wake the house

I want to seize your love

I'm tired of being asleep

While the sun shines on every blade of grass

Every falling leaf

Every invisible thing that comes to pass

I'm tired of being down

I'm tired of being tired

All this pondering and wondering and wishing and worry

Time flies when you're not having fun

Time flies when you're stuck in the past.

  

I want mix all my metaphors

I want to whisper when I should shout

I want to break all the rules

I want to seize your love

I want to conquer the day

I want to rule the night

I want to live my life like I'm really alive

I want to seize your love

I don't want to sleep in no more

I want to seize this life
I want to seize this day

I want to seize your love.

Song for an Old House

What were they thinking?
we ask the ghosts
previous owners
handyman, repair man
helpful neighbors with tools

question and ponder
surprise and wonder
mysteries of forgotten strategies 
longed for yet stillborn 
renovations and repairs

Love, will you?
Honey do
this will do
this will do, for now

how is this house still standing?
when others have crumbled
in the face of the storm
still standing when others
abandoned, uncaring
thorned vines curling
through holes in the walls

crossing the threshold
wide smile and a kiss
remember how empty
how dusty and open
to possibilities
waiting, just waiting
for twigs and ribbons
to make the nest our own

care and tending
painting and sanding
windows and plumbing
dry roof above
wallpaper and carpets
fire in the wood stove 
bread in the oven
as we watch the snow

one small bed, then two
one room pink
one blue
pictures to posters
growth marks on the wall

sleepovers and parties
and how many birthdays
Christmas and Easter
quiet evenings alone

when we grow old
together
God willing
and others have crumbled
in the face of the storm

newlyweds will question
our ghosts

will make plans and dream 
of repairs and renovations

Love, will you
Honey do
this will do
for now 

Missing Kevin Weeks

It's been said that real friends help you move. I contend that real friends help you scrape paint off the floor, or drag a cast-iron bathtub across your living room and dining room.

The man who came to my house and helped me do those things - on his precious weekend time no less -- died suddenly a few weeks ago without warning. With him went a wry sideways view of the world that could always lift my heart and make me laugh. For twenty years it was his face and voice that came to mind when I thought of the word friend. 

We met at WSU. I worked down in the newspaper and lived in the newsroom where I met Kevin who worked upstairs at the radio station. He had black hair and wore his grandfather's rumpled suits every day. He had a deep resonant radio voice and an elastic face.

Kevin turned out to be a good friend. He was there when I needed him for support and commiseration.. One night he found me after a girl had rejected me. I was sitting in a surplus swivel chair outside the Edward R. Murrow building. Somehow we decided to see how far we could ride the chair down the street - I ended up riding it down C-street, with Kevin running behind laughing and saying "Dude, I don't think this is a good idea."

Kevin was always analyzing the world around him and finding it strange and wanting. With a few words of interrogative, he could change your worldview. He was smart and funny and never unkind. When I met my future wife, he was the guy that said "go for it." He and Stacey came to our wedding, and then a week later, we came to theirs on the way back from our honeymoon.

We both married above our station and we knew how lucky we were.

We both bought beat-up houses and worked at low paid jobs so we couldn't afford contractors. We spent weekends at each other's place drinking beer and learning how to remodel and restore a home by the dimmed wisdom of old Handyman books culled from thrift store shelves.

He and I put the clawfoot bathtub in our bathroom -- dragging it up the back steps and into the house. We helped them paint their bungalow down McMinnville. We killed a shed in his backyard and danced on its haunted bones.

He is still a presence in this house. I can see him standing in my kitchen looking out the window at the rain, in what my dad calls "a ponder." He was a deep and introspective person that constantly analyzed the world around him and pointed out its strange permutations with wry wit.

I  keep expecting him to turn to me and say "You know, Ed ..." and tell me something surreal and bizarre.

Thinking of him no longer with us, is surreal and bizarre.

When I went to nursing school, had kids, there was less time to visit. My first two years out of school, I worked every Saturday, leaving little time to get together. He and Stacey adopted a daughter and she thrived with the structure and love that he and Stacey provided. We saw each other less and the visits were often just a few hours rather than a weekend of laughing and talking.

We don't have many friends like that, Amy and I. We have few people who we would welcome into the our home. Few people whom I would ever call just to talk with. I don't remember the last time I talked with him.

Facebook has changed the way we think of our friends. It blurs our relations so that we feel closer connections from further away. Kevin was a daily presence in social media interaction. Yet, I don't remember that last time I talked with Kevin in person or on the phone. An hour chatting by the river in Astoria while the girls played in the park. I hear his voice, but don't remember the last words we spoke to one another.

It is the time not spent with the people that we love that we regret the most. The things not said. The weekends when we just couldn't get together. It's the drifting apart. Days of silence growing like weeds in an untended garden.

Stacy says it is the time we had that matters, and she's right. But that doesn't mean that I don't wish there was more of it.

Dude, I'm going to miss you.