Wives and Daughters...

Crafted by the same team who produced the famous Pride & Prejudice mentioned in about every other post on this blog, Wives and Daughters is a marvel. The costumes are amazing, the sets are unbelievable, the acting superb and the script, fantastic. If you were asleep like I was in 2003 and missed this, see it soon!

I loved the heroine of Molly Gibson so much. Her integrity and intelligence, her sense of right and fairness, her compassion and charm, her ability to be graceful in difficult situations all combine to represent that better self many of us hope to be.

The script explores many things, but most fascinatingly how we find ourselves in love with another person. Characters in the film represent so many differing avenues to this end. The father chooses love by appropriatenss and station. Cynthia chooses love by the desire to be desired. Her mother chooses love in order to be rescued. Molly chooses love by friendship and admiration.

I thought the following comments also presented very interesting aspects of the story:

"Davies, who wrote the scripts for such Masterpiece Theatre classics as A Rather English Marriage, Moll Flanders, the House of Cards trilogy, and Middlemarch, found Wives and Daughters to be perfect costume-drama material. It posed a rather interesting problem: Gaskell died just before completing the book. She was obviously aiming at a happy ending, and Davies has supplied the lost denouement with surprise and style. "

"Wives and Daughters is about the ordinary mysteries of life," says producer Sue Birtwistle, previously responsible for the BBC's Pride and Prejudice and Masterpiece Theatre's King Lear. "[It's about] where love comes from, how it grows, how it can break our hearts, how it can bring happiness and fulfillment. It's about the mistakes we make and the secrets we have to keep."

***This dvd is available through netflix and there are a few copies though Amazon.. for around $30..I think that if you liked Pride and Prejudice, you might find it worth owning.

Peace... and Kindness...

I have been so frustrated with my last few trips to the Post Office. I guess people are quite angry about the cost of fuel and the rate hikes at the post office and they were quite grumbly and really even nasty to the postal employees, as though they have anything to do with it at all. People can be so petty sometimes and sometimes they can be so generous.

Once my sister and I had decided to brave (we must have been nuts) the Mall with our babies and our mentally handicapped brother Josh. Josh is a big, big teddy of a guy with a big, big sweet tooth. He has a thing for soda and thinks it's right for everyone to share with him. He will swipe your soda if you are not guarding it with great care.

As we stepped off the elevator, Josh spyed a woman with a large soda in her hand and before anyone could even blink, he had it and was sipping away, nay gulping it down. We could not have pursuaded Josh that he needed to give it back if we thought the woman had wanted it back. People have not always been kind to us about these sorts of incidences. Sometimes they have been quite ugly and even made a scene, but this woman remained startled for just a fraction of a second and then with a big smile on her face said, "Let him enjoy it!" I think she visited with us for just a moment and then left. She will never know that her small act of kindness is something that I think of very often. What an example. It reminds me of that song that goes..."let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me..."

photo of The Peace Rose copyrighted 2007

Portraits...

Little C took a portrait class at school the other day and she came home and taught me what she learned. We made portraits of each other. I was so pleased with the things that she remembered. This is my first portrait and little c's second.