For me, this seemed worthy of a skim but not much more. I took notes on some of the outlined process concepts. In brief, Roam has taken the list of the “6 Ws”—a slightly different list of “Who what where…”—and mapped those to diagram types. EG: for who or what, you are drawing a portrait; for when, a timeline. He presents five different aspects one should consider in a diagram. EG: are you showing a change or how things are at the moment?. This systematic process of reflection before one begins drawing a diagram is appears quite useful.

He notes that there are many different comfort levels on using diagrams, and so if you aren’t used to simple diagrams in you meetings and communications, he has extensive explanations on how the process will enhance communication and help address the challenge of solving problems.

I finished this ages ago. And i seem to be locked into choosing worth or not worth consuming: no “unstated.” I’ll choose “worth consuming” as a pleasant SF diversion. I find Laumer entertaining.

She’s fascinating: a magical horrific tragic beautiful person.

I don’t often read biographies, but i had read some of Isak Dinesen’s stories and felt they addressed dilemmas and problems of a totally different cultural reality. And, in fact, they might, as her childhood might be considered a romantic rebellion against her bourgeois maternal family with in preference to her father’s aristocratic line, yet smack in the middle of the early Bohemian lifestyle of fin de siecle Denmark. Her stories are seeded then, and then she goes through another lifetime between 1913 and 1931: her life in Africa. When she returns to Europe, lover and farm torn from her, syphilitic, she creates something else out of herself.

A few notes from reading:

A mention of “Orm og tyr” by Martin Alfred Hansen in the book made me want to read it—“a history of Scandinavian religious literature and the relationship between pagan and Christian cultures”—but it seems to be only available in Danish.

Another marked page was about a challenge to write for the American magazine market. An English friend of hers, Geoffrey Gorer, advised her “Write about food. Americans are obsessed with food.” Thus, “Babette’s Feast”

Finally, through a struggle she learned, as she related to Marianne Moore, “When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, without faith and without hope . . . suddenly the work will find itself.”

Beautifully shot. The characters only slowly let themselves become known to the viewer, but the plot isn’t not the film. It is the visual meditation on distance, visual and emotional.

I think this would have been better as a short story. Over half the novel is a slow reflective narrative about the main character’s childhood and involvement with several women. I was never engaged as Hajime shares this back story with a flat sense of self-recrimination and self-pity. Once the story catches up to the present and the choices he must make as an adult do i find myself caring about the struggles.

When the women come back into his life decades later, the story begins. The character Hajime revisits the backstory—his childhood, his regrets—as he reconnects with a classmate and with the woman who was his childhood best friend. In his adult context, i can care about the self recrimination and regrets.

I will likely reread Kazo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World for contrast as another reflection on regret and choices.

I suspect this ended up on our Netflix list at one point because of Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom. At a later point we watched a trailer and were not impressed. I’m surprised we didn’t yank it. So, the recent batch of Netflix came without careful selection and this movie arrived. We sat down to watch last night with the lowest of expectations, and we were delightedly surprised. An entertaining and engaging story, which had me immediately turn to reading up on the time depicted.

The character played by Orlando Bloom is highly fictionalized compared to the historic person of Balian of Ibelin but provides a nice canvas on which to paint an ideal of a war leader, one who cares about the less powerful, one who makes intelligent use of his forces in defensive contexts. I regret to read the actual Balian did not quite win free passage for all the citizens of the surrendered city, but it was close enough.

I am struck by the speech given by Liam Neeson in the early part of the film, of the East being a new world where one could find opportunity. Apparently, the Ibelin family had achieved nobility rather quickly in the East. I contrast this with the social effects of the Conquistadors leaving Spain, ponder the origins of the United States, “The American Dream”....

What’s struck me so far is the work of Ishu Patel. “Paradise” and “Bead Game” are included.
http://www.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/filmmakers/filmmaker/overview.php?id=12772

This legacy must be part of why Christine and I are delighted whenever we see “Vancouver Film School” on a Channel Frederator short.

We’ve watched this slowly and found it absolutely wonderful. I find Bill Murray’s Polonious captures the pendantic pomposity and political posturing i associated with the character more powerfully than i’ve seen.

The movement of the setting and characters into year 2000 while keeping the language of Shakespeare provide wonderful ways to invite more commentary on the well known text. When Hamlet delivers the soliloquy in Block Buster, the repetition of the signs saying “ACTION” “ACTION” “ACTION” “ACTION” give a wonderful urgency to the familiar words.

When the library DVD started failing, we were completely unmotivated to try to fix it or get the movie running again. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and could not be compelled down the path of watching them transform. I preferred reading the community college catalog of courses; an ironic preference, i suppose. Why did Christine’s sister recommend this?

There are many reasons to find this book delightful, but i particularly found the evocation of place wonderful. San Francisco, Berkeley, Mill Valley, and—i was surprised to find—Rocky Mount. I know the landscapes myself, and i delighted in visiting them in the ebullient descriptions.

I’ve Turtle Island by Gary Snyder to read soon—that answers some of the question about where Japhy Ryder ended up.