Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert

If you like history, war movies, action movies, and maybe something a little different, you might want to check out Moustapha Akkad's Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert (1980/1981). First, overall it's excellent. Second, it's set in Libya during Italy's fascist period, with Mussolini aiming to expand his "New Roman Empire" in Africa, focusing on the struggle between Libyan guerillas vs. Italian occupation and shot with meticulous detail. Third, none other than Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi / Qaddafi invested heavily in the film. Fourth, director Moustapha Akkad, who also produced the Halloween series of films, was, along with his daughter, assassinated by an al-Qaeda bomb in Jordan in 2005. Fifth, Lion of the Desert was not shown on Italian TV until 2009 -- nearly thirty years after its theatrical release. 

I have only minor issues with Lion of the Desert: early on there's a little bit of hokiness, some melodramtic music and a crazy affinity for zoom shots, sort of like a 70s TV movie. But once it kicks into gear, this film becomes mesmerizingly more effective. It's as if the director and crew settled down and really got to work after some initial adjusting. The cast is strong, especially Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar, the guerilla leader, and Oliver Reed as Rodolfo Graziani, the relentless, brutal and merciless Italian commander. Having earlier played Napoleon, Rod Steiger also does a pretty good impression of Mussolini. Let's not forget Irene Papas.

The conflict itself seems as old as humankind itself, though in the modern style, the Italians are fully mechanized and the guerillas move around on foot and horseback with light weaponry and explosives. One of the most impressively dramatic -- and horrific -- scenes is the 1931 Italian blitzkrieg assault on Kufra, starting with aerial bombardment (a prototype of Guernica, Spain, 1937), next ground artillery, then small Whippet-like tanks and machine-gun mounted armored cars followed by infantry. Other horrors include the creation of concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and flanked with guard towers, public hangings, poison gas, and a massive barbed wire "Hadrian's Wall" running north-south in Eastern Libya, cutting the rebels off from Egypt. It's nasty stuff, like so much of war is, made more nightmarish through use of modern weapons churned out by the 20th century's Satanic mills. Finally, there is also human decency in the film, epitomized by individuals on both sides of the conflict, an important touch.

Today's Rune: Defense.   

Food, Inc.

Robert Kenner's FOOD, INC. (2008) takes a trenchant look at agribusinesses and their impact on the average person's living conditions. As with Business, Banking, and Energy, so it is with Agriculture: Bigger is Not Better for anyone except those who hold and consolidate the reins of power and those who make the quarterly profits. Underscoring the importance of seeing this film, everyone has to eat to survive. 

FOOD, INC. doesn't come out and say it directly much, but people can choose to bypass the dominant system, or at least subvert it to a degree. Even while others are trying to change it from within.  

Support a victory garden (try planting without Monsanto-owned seeds), local organic producers and farmers, local vegan/vegetarian/organic co-ops and eateries, and so on. Reduce visits to fast food joints, cut down on superfluous driving, try some of the energy savings ideas Jimmy Carter put forth in the late 1970s -- they are still valid on this side of Ronald Reagan's diminishing shadow.   

In Fort Worth, there is an increasing buildup of certified organic food supply. For hamburger-lovers, Kincaid's cows "are vegetarian so you don't have to be."  Spiral Diner offers nicely-prepared and tasty vegan meals; the same owners will soon open an independent movie theater, The Citizen.  These foods are slightly more expensive than typical fast-food, but not by much -- and you can get them at most grocery stores to a surprising degree, and at mixed retailers like Target.

I am hopeful, actually, and predict that by 2060, organic vegetarian and vegan meals will comprise the majority of choices by the majority of the (mostly urban) population out of pure common sense, if nothing else.

Today's Rune:  Fertility.    

Writing Prompts: Some Days Are Smoother Than Others

Thank you, JR Tomlinson. More stuff is in the pipeline, but you left a comment on the last post, prompting this one.  Some shot-gun writing prompts most definitely go more smoothly than others. This one below is a complete mess, recounting (in 1979) how I lucked into tickets for The Rolling Stones Some Girls tour in 1978.

For some reason, over the years I have had a great deal of good luck with things Stones-related. This was the first time.

As for prompts, JR makes a good point: a lot of rough drafts are subjected to all sorts of on-the-fly editing, what Anne Lamott calls "the shitty first draft." Other times, things spring forth like immaculate conceptions or tiny smiling monsters.

This scrawled account gives some idea of how concert-goers had to acquire tickets pre-internet and cellphone era. The friend evoked was Marc Pinotti; a girlfriend at the time, Ariana B., was met through him.  Even then I was arguing with Republicans -- at that time, in defense of Jimmy Carter. The more things
change . . .

The actual Hampton Coliseum concert on June 21, 1978, was a wild experience, to which I'd conveyed other peeps as well -- including JC, Ken Randall and Scott Jones.  I was seventeen at the time.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Shock Delivered: Respect Yourself

Back to McGuinn's English class, I'm eighteen and it's 1979. Our "shot-gun writing" prompt on D-Day + 35 involves a response to Joan Didion's 1961 essay* "On Self-Respect." The touchstone I go for: "[T]he willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own

life . . . is the source from which self-respect springs." I think this choice underscores my early embracing of Existentialism, which may be grounded in religion, spirit or secular humanism.

I scrawl out three single-spaced pages, including this: "It is easy to [choose] not to have self-respect. For a person without self-respect is a person without independence [or] responsibility to himself." I then go on to use the word "cop-out" a couple of times, slang for shirking and, really, cowardice.  Freedom and Responsibility must walk hand in hand, or we are lost. I hold myself to that way on down the line from there to here. Be Free, Take Responsibility for your arc.     

*In Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).




















The Staple Singers say it all right here (1971):



Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

You May Want to Erase Old Messages

Retracing steps from there to here by sampling books I read and things I wrote or have written, from then to now, has been enlightening. Looks like I had the core foundation in place since my teens but have added layers of nuance to the worldview based on life experience. Oh, yeah: and I became a Catholic. How about you?

For the many depressed people I know, here's a little more Walker Percy:

You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other . . . species which inhabit the earth -- and who are luckily exempt from depression -- would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age -- more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. (Lost in the Cosmos, 1983, p. 76).

Out to lunch? How about this little observation: Westerners, that is, Europeans and Americans, own more pets than ever and spend more money on pet food and veterinarians than the food costs of the entire Third World. (Ibid, p. 80).

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Signals and Signs: Detroit Rollouts

Rhonda Welsh, Red Clay Legacy [Poems](Crimson Kairos, 2010). http://www.rhondawelsh.com/fr_home.cfm   Rhonda, a former co-worker, is awesome!

Mark C. Durfee aka The Walking Man, The Line Between (Motor City Burning Press, 2010) Go here: http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/  
 












Cassandra Swiderski, Passengers (2011). This "novel features two stories set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in Kansas." Swiderski (Spieles) is Collections and Resources Librarian, Macomb Community College (South Campus), in Warren, Michigan, USA.  As an adjunct, I taught English at Macomb for several years and heartily support a fellow librarian!













Storylandia 3, The Wapshott Journal of Fiction: Michelle Brooks, Dead Girl, Live Boy, a 2011 novella; Ginger Mayerson, Editor. Here's one way to order it: https://www.createspace.com/3547683













Finally, here's an artifact from Super Bowl XL (2006) "Motown Style." It's a bar napkin scan, but as such, is it a signal or a sign?

Today's Rune: The Self.

Your Voicemail is Full

With teachers at all levels in the USA under siege these days, I remember being eighteen years old, a freshman in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, learning the intermediate ropes of the American English language -- and rhetoric. Like yesterday. I remember the instructor's last name -- McGuinn -- (I don't think he ever told us his first name). Mr. (Dr.?) McGuinn gave this class many gifts of knowledge and learning, and I'd like to laud him, wherever he is.  

I'd like to thank Mr./Dr. McGuinn specifically for three things that have stuck with me ever since 1979. First, how to refine an argument or proposition and defend it, how not to suffer fools gladly. Second, his pointing out the Oxford English Dictionary and making us actually explore it. (My first randomly assigned word: maverick. Pretty funny now, given its subsequent absorption into the political lingo of today.) Third, his bringing a portable record player to class and having us write a response to Tom Waits samples. Somewhat shocking at the time (I loved it), which reminds me also that only now, this year (2011), will Tom Waits finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This act of playing records in class showed me how a little drama and interdisciplinary showmanship could keep people engaged, or at least more ready for anything. 

McGuinn also pushed the idea of "shotgun writing," what we'd now call impromptu, a wonderful way to loosen up just about anyone's writing, if just for a moment. Little did I know then how much I'd employ the same methods down the line, and for probably the same reasons he employed them himself -- they worked.

It's a wonder he could read my scrawl, which hasn't gotten much better over the years.

Isn't it a bit weird and wunderbar that anyone reading this can probably write and comprehend both "long hand" and word-processed typography in multiple fonts and styles?

Today's Rune: Movement. February is out the door. Hello, March!