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Twenty-five years ago today, I left most of my friends and my family and the place I called home for 20 years – Alexandria, Virginia. I never expected it of myself. I like to move and had many times, but mostly around Northern Virginia. (After the big move from my first life in Hawai’i, to my second life in Virginia.) It says something that I deliberately left on Friday the Thirteenth. In the few weeks prior, one of my best friends had given birth to her first daughter and my Mother had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (Had she not responded so well to her first treatments, I might not have left that day.)

I still love the friends I left behind and think often of my misadventures among them. I still miss the DC-area just before my birthday, when the flowers there are spectacular. I don’t miss the traffic, the crowds, or even the cultural amenities.

Twenty-five years ago today, I left comfort and security behind to join Merri in New Mexico. I love her, this place, and our friends here. It’s good to be home.

An ABC News poll released this morning shows that a vast majority — 69 percent — of Americans approve of President Obama and 72 percent view him favorably, "the best job approval rating at this point in 20 years, [and] the broadest personal popularity since Ronald Reagan." Fifty percent now say the United States is headed in the right direction, up 31 points since the end of the Bush administration, when only 19 percent thought the country was on the right track. Other figures from the poll:

— "Fifty-eight percent approve of Obama’s work on the economy."

— "Obama leads the Republicans in Congress in trust to handle the economy by a garish 61-24 percent."

— "A remarkable 90 percent say Obama is ‘willing to listen to different points of view’; fewer than half said that about George W. Bush."

— Seventy-seven "percent call Obama a strong leader, nearly matching Bush’s best a few months after 9/11."

A majority supported Obama’s decision to release the torture memos, but only 49 percent support his blanket ban on torture. That said, a majority still favors holding investigations into the Bush administration’s use of torture.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/26/obama-100-days-poll/

This is a long article on Poe, who remains complex the more he is explained.

What Poe most wanted was never again to answer to an editor.

The Humbug: A Critic at Large: The New Yorker

I watched Apocalypto tonight. This is a case where the small screen made some things more bearable than they would have been on the large screen. It is a relentlessly, horrifically violent movie that is mostly about our inhumanity, although some would see love and redemption under all the blood and cruelty. Not me. I don’t know how constant Mayan sacrifices were, but this seemed quite a sausage factory.

I imagine pre-Columbian cultures knew more about solar eclipses than Mel Gibson seems to. Sure, the masses might have been agitated, but the priesthood would have seen it coming well in advance. Gibson ignores the hours-long process of an eclipse and then speeds up the fun part. Of course, so did the Simpsons recently. Who has time for an eclipse anymore. (Heroes was worse with total darkness that lasted an hour. I stopped watching after that.) But, Jesus, Mel, how could you show a full moon the night of the eclipse? How have we become so disconnected from Nature.

And what exactly is the danger of a well filling with water, assuming you know how to tread water? I hope Mel never tries to drown himself in a slowly filling bathtub or pool.

Ah, but it’s not a documentary and it is Hollywood, so lighten up, eh? It is wonderful to hear two and a half hours of Nahuatl and to see a semi-mainstream American movie with subtitles throughout. And nothing but brown skin. That’s pretty amazing, in and of itself. And the perhaps subtle message about human-caused environmental degradation was interesting. The market and Coliseum scenes were pretty cool, especially some of the hairstyles. If you need a sampler of piercings and tattoos, this may be the biggest collection available. So what if the climactic beach scene was far less surprising than finding the Statue of Liberty half-buried. It’s only a movie.

peace,
mjh

PS: I’m reminded of a John Boorman movie, The Emerald Forest (1985). I highly recommend that over this, even if it made the central character a white guy. And Chac (1975), the only other all-Nahuatl movie I’ve seen. That one was more mystical and far less violent. Nyacola posh!

PPS: For readers: Daniel Peters wrote three books, one each about Azteca, Maya, and Inca, as well as a more modern story featuring an anthropologist. I liked the Mayan one most (Tikal: A Novel About the Maya). (I couldn’t remember Peters’ name, but I remembered I discovered his books in the library because they were near all the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. Ages ago, I read books by the shelf. Back before the Web.)