[review] Mary Poppins Returns

From the opening overture, Mary Poppins Returns (Disney, 2018) was obviously written for the stage, where it will shine as brightly as it does on the big screen. This movie is the most wondrous thing Disney may have ever done. Delightful. The music is heartfelt and touching, the dancing welcomingly appropriate.

The one thing I had happily forgotten from the original was the live-action animated sequence, but Poppins returns to the technique with flair and style and I hardly noticed myself slip into a moderate dread, which subsided, for the most part.

Yes, of course there is a lost parent. It is Disney, after all, but the effort to remain positive is apparent, and the children’s trio sung to their grief-stricken father is most touching, as are most of the songs. Except for the one by Meryl Streep, in whose eyes I can now see only Hillary Clinton. So sad.

Lamplighters, however, sing and dance just as well as chimney sweeps, even better; no disrespect intended toward any particular sweeps by the name Van Dyke, who will forever remain as lucky as lucky can be in our hearts. #KickingMyHeels

Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins is London’s Lady Liberty, umbrella of whimsy held high for all to see and follow. I never doubt her in the role. Mary Poppins reminds us what is real and important, lighting the way through today’s seriousness fog. Just go see it. Jiggety-Jog!

Paul Guernsey Player, © 2018/12/31

[blank renku] apsides

[1, Janice]

another year
another Christmas
mulled with memories

[2, Paul]

As steamy mists arise from mugs abrew,
and dark reflective eyes stare back from depths,
unfathomed wishing wells of thought turn back
to looking outward once again, and on...

[3, Paul]

post christmas, post haste; 
the new year's spring compressing; 
perihelion;

---

[1] another year: haiku by Janice, On The Land

[2] Paul Guernsey Player, © 2018/12/28

[3] compression by Paul Guernsey Player

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*blank renku – a form of linked verse, written by one or multiple authors in alternating collaboration. Blank renku differs from renku in that stanzas alternate between haiku form, and blank verse. The shortest blank verse stanza would be a couplet. The longest would fill a Post It note, the original (fictional) medium of blank renku, as invented for The Blank Verse Mystery. Variations are expected.
Blank renku can be played as a game, in the original spirit of renku. It merges poetry from East and West. Writers can choose to write in their stronger form or in their weaker one, and in this way it is similar to Terry Pratchett’s game of THUD.

More on blank renku here.

[haiku] compression

post christmas, post haste; 
the new year's spring compressing; 
perihelion

by Paul Guernsey Player, © 2018

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More along these lines: another year: haiku by Janice, On The Land

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[edit] replace last line 'human perigee', with 'perihelion', since perigee refers to an Earth orbit and this metaphor refers to Earthlings orbiting the sun. Also, perihelion's five syllables fit, just so.
The idea is, of course, that we experience the sun's crack-the-whip effect each year during the holidays; #GravityAssist #CrackTheWhip
I know, the solstice runs independently of our orbit's cyclic apsides. #metaphor

[blank renku] dimness lights my steps

gulf coast winter's dawn
gentle rains upon my face
dimness lights my steps

As moisture laden southern winds shift east
the leading edge of cooler breezes speak
of days without a broiling summer sun;

precious is the light
day contrasts with darkest night
magic lies between

as newly risen golden rays backlight
the earth-bound clouds and under cast their silken
haze with subtle green and yellow hue;

waterfall of rain
droplets grow into cascade
splashes sing as one

a blank renku* by Paul Guernsey Player, © 2018/12/09

______

*blank renku – a form of linked verse, written by one or multiple authors in alternating collaboration. Blank renku differs from renku in that stanzas alternate between haiku form, and blank verse. The shortest blank verse stanza would be a couplet. The longest would fill a Post It note, the original (fictional) medium of blank renku, as invented for The Blank Verse Mystery. Variations are expected.
Blank renku can be played as a game, in the original spirit of renku. It merges poetry from East and West. Writers can choose to write in their stronger form or in their weaker one, and in this way it is similar to Terry Pratchett’s game of THUD.

More on blank renku here.

morning dip

 

 

soar hover dive strike
early winter's sunrise flight
chilly morning dip

water warms as talons sink
climb as earth turns toward the sun

any scavengers about
listen for their nasty caws
lazy seagull scum

living on their own they die
barely fly and can't catch fish

catch's gills still flare
osprey rips the eyes out first
lives another day

light grows warm below the rim
heart grows warm in early chill

Paul Guernsey Player, © 2018/12/06

Heather MacDonald: Today’s Education – License for Ignorance

Mark Levin interviews Heather MacDonald  2018/12/02

MAC DONALD: Well, the 80s was when it started in my view. That is when you got radical multiculturalism that hit. I was in college in 70s, I am grateful for because I was allowed to read John Milton, William Wordsworth and Shakespeare without anyone thinking to complain about the gonads and melanin of those authors. I got to lose myself in beauty, in greatness and sublimity.

Come the 80s, and students were given a license for ignorance. They were taught that the only thing they needed to know about a book was the race and gender of author to know whether it was thoroughly dismissible without even being read and they could go to instead wallow in their own delusional oppression, and it has only gotten worse since then, and what we are doing is breeding the grounds for I fear, Civil War because students are being taught to hate, to hate the greatest works of western civilization, and frankly to hate east each other.

From the moment a student steps on a college campus today as a freshman or a fresh person, I should probably say, the bureaucracy is determined to drum in to that student’s head, identity politics, which says, he is either a victim or an oppressor. Oppressors are obviously most famously white males, heterosexual white males. The only way they can get out to of their oppressor category is to become an ally – an ally of the oppressed.

The most preposterous delusion of all of this is student actually believe that they are at risk of their lives from circumambient racism and sexism on a college campus. This is an environment that in traditional liberal terms is the most tolerant environment in human history for society’s traditionally marginalized groups.

Yet, there is a massive bureaucracy dedicated to cultivating in students this delusional sense of their own oppression, which then they carry with them, it’s a chip on their shoulder that prevents them from seizing the magnificent opportunities to learn, to read every book that is ever been written, and they carry this chip, this delusional victimology into world at large, and they are going around blaming American institutions of endemic racism and sexism, when that no longer is true.