Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog, and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
First, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog, and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
We have had some lovely sunshine and weather where we are this week. It’s been a long week, though, because my mom fell at home Monday. She’s okay but has had some other issues and my dad threw his hip out while trying to help her so the kids and I have been over there every day trying to help out as much as we can. It’s been nice to visit with them and be told how to do things again. It’s like living with them all over again. *wink* (Just a joke…it’s been nice to be able to help them.)
On to the show….
Your hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
I love volunteering for disaster relief, delivering meals to the disabled, working for common sense gun violence prevention, and promoting better climate science legislation
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up, Lisa!
Everyone else, please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or even years ago. All we ask is that they be family-friendly!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Since we couldn’t get to Paris for Spring, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching movies this spring that take place in Paris.
This week we watched The Intouchables, a 2012 movie I suggested when I searched for movies that took place in Paris.
This was a rated R movie and had subtitles so it probably wasn’t the best choice for a movie watching event, but I’ll do a little better next time I choose movies. Despite those “drawbacks”, I really enjoyed this movie and felt it was fantastically acted and presented.
This movie was remade in America and retitled The Upside, starring Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston. I have not seen the remake, but from what I’ve read online and just watching The Upside trailer, the original is much, much better.
The movie is based on the true story of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his French-Algerian carer Abdel Sellou, which Philippe wrote about in his 2001 memoir A Second Wind.
In the movie, the characters’ names are Philippe (Francois Cluzet) and Driss (Omar Sy). Driss needs a job after getting out of jail and arrives at Philippe’s mansion after seeing an ad for the job of helping to take care of Philippe, who is a quadriplegic.
Driss doesn’t really want the job, he just needs his paper signed to show his parole officer that he is looking for work. He lets Philippe know that up front and not really in a very polite way. Not much is polite about Driss who has had a rough upbringing and was in jail for stealing.
Driss is in a for a surprise, though, because what Philippe’s assistant and others see as Driss’s rudeness, is refreshing to Philippe and he hires Driss to help care for him. He likes how Driss doesn’t pity him like others in his life. Driss doesn’t care about his disability and treats him as disrespectfully as he does everyone else.
Philippe let’s Driss know that part of the payment for the job includes a room in the mansion.
It’s a win-win for Driss who has recently been kicked out of his family’s home and needs money and a place to stay.
It’s also extremely overwhelming to him. At his family’s home he had to fight for time in the bathroom and to take a shower. At Philippe’s he is given his own bathroom with a large bathtub where he can relax and enjoy himself.
He definitely takes advantage of Philippe’s generosity, but he does begin to take his job seriously as he realizes all that it entails.
As the movie goes on the viewer learns how Philippe became a quadriplegic and more about his family, including his teenage daughter, who Driss often butts heads with, and how he became so rich.
We also learn more about Driss and his background, how he became involved in crime, his family, and what talents and dreams he has.
An unlikely friendship forms as Driss works to encourage Philippe to loosen up and live life again, while Philippe works to have Driss become a little more responsible.
Driss’s one big effort is to encourage Philippe to go on an in-person date with a woman he only writes letters to. Philippe is much more “sophisticated” and academic than Driss. He is “high society” and proper, but Driss dismisses all of this by asking him things like how he is able to feel pleasure if he can’t feel from the neck down, if he wants to be in a relationship again, and other off-colored topics that no one else in Philippe’s life would ask.
There is so much I loved about this movie, with the actors being at the top of that list.
They were both absolutely perfect for their roles.
Sly’s subtle and no-so-subtle expressions to convey his emotions were great. Cluzet’s calm delivery in response to Sly’s more boisterous personality was perfection.
The movie has many messages but for me it shoed how a life can be changed when a person is shown that they are worth more and capable of more than they think they are. Driss and Philippe do this for each other.
Philippe shows Driss he can do more than steal and scrape by for a living. He opens Driss’s eyes to his talents and his intelligence and even a kindness Driss didn’t know he had. Driss opens Philippe’s eyes to all that he still has left in life despite his hardships and trials.
Their friendship was unexpected and what both of them needed to survive.
One spoiler I will give to relieve any worries that this movie will take a dark turn and end with Philippe’s death (which was my big worry) is that the real-life Philippe and Driss remained friends for years. Philippe passed away only two years ago at the age of 72, and lived a full, rich life as a philanthropist, friend, father, and husband.
From what I read online, this movie is beloved in France..
According to an article on Wikipedia: Nine weeks after its release in France on 2 November 2011, it became the second highest-grossing French film in France, after the 2008 film Welcome to the Sticks. The film was voted the cultural event of 2011 in France with 52% of votes in a poll by Fnac. Until it was eclipsed in 2014 by Lucy, it was the most-viewed French film in the world with 51.5 million tickets sold.
Film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film shortly after it came out.
He did and he didn’t like it.
“The success of the film, despite its problems, grows directly from its casting,” Ebert wrote. “Francois Cluzet, who acts only with his face and voice, communicates great feeling. Omar Sy is enormously friendly and upbeat. He reminded me of the African immigrant played by Souleymane Sy Savane in Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo” — a film that avoided the traps that “The Intouchables” falls into.”
Ebert continues, “The appeal of a film like this, and it is perfectly legitimate, is that when we begin to feel affection for the characters, what makes them happy makes us happy. Caught up in the flow of events, we allow many assumptions to pass unchallenged. The writer-directors, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, are cheerfully willing to go for broad gags, and their style is ingratiating. But at the end, by looking through the foreground details, what we’re being given is a simplistic reduction of racial stereotypes.”
Umm…okay? He wrote this a year before he died so maybe he was sick at the time.
Did I ever mention that sometimes I thought Ebert was a pretentious jerk? If not, then I have now.
I enjoyed this film immensely and did not see the things Ebert saw.
Up next, Erin and I will be watching Charade. We both have a ton going on with our families and have had to cancel the group watch of the movie we had scheduled for this Sunday. Instead, we will be watching it on our own and invite all of you to do the same and share your thoughts on our blog, and then link up here.
If you want to share your thoughts on any of our movies and have links to your blog you can share at the link up below.
She’s looking pretty good for someone her age, isn’t she?
The first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, was released on April 28, 1930. Two more books, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery. Since then, there have been millions of books published, TV shows and movies produced, spin-off series launched, and culture impacted.
Who would have imagined that children’s stories about a teenage girl sleuth would launch a worldwide phenomenon? I doubt even Nancy’s creator Edward Stratemeyer would have imagined it.
The concept for Nancy Drew was created in the 1920s by Stratemeyer who also created the idea of The Hardy Boys. Well, if it wasn’t Stratemeyer alone who created her, it was a combination of him and those who worked with him at The Stratemeyer Syndicate.
The Syndicate was Stratemeyer’s brainchild, created after he’d already found success writing stories for children, starting when he was a child himself.
According to a 2018 article in The New Yorker, Stratemeyer was born in 1862 in New Jersey. He was the youngest of six children. As a child he spent a lot of time reading the popular rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams (a.k.a. Oliver Optic). In his teens he bought his own printing press and created his own stories. At the age of 26 he sold his first story, “Victor Horton’s Idea” to Golden Days, a popular boys magazine at the time. He was paid $75 for the story and his father, who previously had seen his writing as a waste of time, suggested he write more.
He did write more, under a variety of pen names. Then he became an editor at Good News, another child magazine. Eventually he became a ghost writer for various children’s book authors, wrote many of his own, and turned out ideas for other authors to create characters. Many said he wasn’t a great writer, but he was great at ideas.
As his ideas began to sell books, he decided to form a syndicate or a publishing company which would produce books in an assembly line style. By 1910 his syndicate was producing ten or more juvenile titles with about a dozen different writers. By 1920 tens of millions of books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate were circulating with surveys showing that in 1926, ninety-eight percent of children listed at least one Stratemeyer produced book as their favorite.
According to the article in The New Yorker, this is how it worked:
“Stratemeyer would come up with a three-page plot for each book, describing locale, characters, time frame, and a basic story outline. He mailed this to a writer, who, for a fee ranging from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars, would write the thing up and—slam-bang!—send it back within a month. Stratemeyer checked the manuscripts for discrepancies, made sure that each book had exactly fifty jokes, and cut or expanded as needed. (Each series had a uniform length; the standard was twenty-five chapters.) He replaced the verb “said” with “exclaimed,” “cried,” “chorused,” and so forth, and made sure that cliffhangers punctuated the end of each chapter—usually framed as a question or an exclamation. Each series was published under a pseudonym that Stratemeyer owned. As Fortune later noted, it was good business for children to become attached to a name, but it would be bad business for that name to leave the syndicate with the ghostwriter.”
And this, eventually, would be where the name Carolyn Keene, the “author” of Nancy Drew came from. In reality, there was no Carolyn Keene. There were only a large number of writers who wrote the books the way Edward Stratemeyer, and later his daughter, Harriet, wanted, just like they had all the other titles and series.
Series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate included Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Motor Boys and some 50 others.
Nancy Drew’s first book came out April 28, 1930. Twelve days later, Edward Stratemeyer, who had already published millions of books was dead of pneumonia at the age of 67.
His two daughters were left with the question of what to do with the company. Should they continue it? Sell it?
Eventually, the daughters would take over the business, but Harriet would become the driving force behind the company, including helping to make Nancy Drew a worldwide phenomenon.
Grossett and Dunlap produced the books produced by Stratemeyer and they greenlighted the Nancy Drew series after receiving this memo from him:
“These suggestions are for a new series for girls verging on novels. 224 pages, to retail at fifty cents. I have called this line the “Stella Strong Stories,” but they might also be called “Diana Drew Stories,” “Diana Dare Stories,” “Nan Nelson Stories,” “Nan Drew Stories” or “Helen Hale Stories.” […] Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen, is the daughter of a District Attorney of many years standing. He is a widower and often talks over his affairs with Stella and the girl was present during many interviews her father had with noted detectives and at the solving of many intricate mysteries. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stella plunged into some mysteries of her own and found herself wound up in a series of exciting situations. An up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever, resourceful and full of energy.”
One of the first writers of the series was Mildred Wirt Benson (just Mildred Wirt when she wrote the series). In fact, Stratemeyer had her in mind when he conceptualized the series.
She wrote twenty-three out of the first thirty books in the Nancy Drew series.
This would become a source of controversy in 1980 when Harriet tried to claim she had written all of the Nancy Drew books herself under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym. A court case involving Grosset & Dunlap and Simon & Schuster about who owned the rights to produce Nancy Drew books drew Mildred out of the woodwork and made Harriet admit she’d helped to write the books, and at one point rewrite them, but she was not the primary writer for most of the books.
When Harriet rewrote the Nancy Drew books in the 1950s she changed the sleuth’s personality from Benson’s original vision of her being more spunky and assertive than Benson had made her.
Mildred had been working for the Syndicate since 1926 when she had answered an ad at the age of 21. The ad had stated that the publishing house was looking for young writers who could come up with new ideas for juvenile books.
She wrote for other Stratemeyer series, but it was Nancy that would become the breakout success. Not that Mildred told a lot of people about her role in the books, partially because she was not supposed to as part of her agreement with the syndicate, who she worked with the syndicate until the early 1950s when management changes changed her role.
Mildred wrote the first Nancy Drew book at the age of 24.
In an interview with WTGE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio, the city where Mildred eventually settled down, she said she didn’t know when she was writing those first books that Nancy would become as big as she did.
“In fact, I don’t think anyone ever anticipated the success such as Nancy Drew has had,” she said. “But I did know that I was creating something that was an unusual book. I knew from the way I felt as I wrote that I was writing something that would be popular.”
While Harriet took the opportunity in 1973, after her sister’s death, to claim she helped her father create Nancy Drew, the 1980 court case blew that out of the water and Benson was subsequently credited with helping to create Nancy. Harriet was, however, a contributor to changes to the books Mildred wrote (taming Nancy Drew down readers say) and the promotion of them, as well as helping ghost writers write later editions.
Later Benson would name the second book in the original series, The Hidden Staircase, as her favorite book to write. Over the years she agreed to sign Nancy Drew books, but only those she had actually written.
Other titles Benson worked on for the syndicate included Kay Tracey and Dana Girls mysteries. After leaving the syndicate she wrote the Penny Park mystery series, which was about the daughter of a newspaper editor who was trying to become a newspaper reporter herself. She called Penny the favorite character she’d ever created, even over Nancy Drew, because she considered Penny “a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is.”
In 1944 Benson began writing for the Toledo Blade and continued to work there for 58 years, focusing mainly on journalism for the rest of her life. It’s why the Toledo Public Library held a Nancy Drew Convention on Friday to celebrate her 95 years.
Benson was a true Nancy Drew and you can read more about her in my separate post here.
Though Nancy Drew was written during the Great Depression, her books didn’t focus on the struggles of everyday citizens. Instead, Nancy was jetting off on trips, driving nice cars, taking flying lessons, learning new skills, being bold. She loved fashion but she also wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty.
She could wear pearls and a dress one evening and wear jeans and sneakers the next.
Nancy Drew books never focused on the macabre. Very few books discussed murders. There was very little description of violence. There was absolutely no sex show or even discussed. Nancy had a boyfriend (Ned Nickerson) but they didn’t even kiss.
In other words, Nancy didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and didn’t go out with boys who did.
Nancy’s image was very important to Harriet, who wanted Nancy to be someone young women could look up to and strive to be like.
Cara Strickland wrote in a 2018 article for JTSOR Daily, that Nancy’s books were “intended to be safe for children, but also functioned as an escape from the heavy realities of their cultural moment.”
The mysteries in a Nancy Drew book were simple, yet also featured complex elements, such as red herrings and miscommunications.
They were fast-moving, full of minimal descriptions, and void of deep exchanges among the characters. They didn’t make you think much beyond what mystery was unfolding and how it was being solved.
The goal of the books wasn’t to address current events or push agendas. Their goal was simply to show the book’s heroes prevailing over evil and setting the world right again.
Young readers loved this, and now, many adults do as well.
The lack of mention of current events also made sure the books remained timeless.
Yes, the books, especially the earlier ones, are certainly dated. There are aspects that some in today’s world might see as culturally insensitive, old-fashioned, or out of touch.
They still, however, show us a young woman who is brave, curious, driven, and determined to solve mysteries to help other people.
From that first book in 1930 came 600 different titles, including spinoffs and updates. Later came movies (the first appearing in 1938), TV Shows, video games, comic books, podcasts, and, of course, merchandise of all kinds (lunch boxes, t-shirts, bookmarks, socks, etc. etc.).
Nancy Drew was originally published by Grosset & Dunlap, but during the lawsuit filed in 1980, as mentioned above, Simon & Schuster won the rights to publish Nancy Drew books after the first 56 because in 1979, the Syndicate had switched to Simon & Schuster. Grosset & Dunlap retained the publishing rights to the first 56 books and eventually Simon & Schuster purchased the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984.
The Nancy Drew Mysteries (original series) ran from 1930 to 2003 and produced 175 different titles. Nancy Drew Girl Detective ran from 2004 to 2012. The Nancy Drew Diaries started in 2013 and continue through today. Many fans of the original, more sanitized versions of Nancy, haven’t appreciated the more modernized version of Nancy. So much so that some of the series were discontinued.
The original Nancy Drew series, without the more modern social aspects the more modern series might have, remains the perfect escape from a world growing increasingly chaotic and frightening. Now, though, it isn’t only younger readers craving that escape. People, mainly women, of all ages, are losing themselves in Nancy Drew mystery books. Whether they are revisiting them from when they were young girls or finding them for the first time, they are filling a void that other books can’t for them.
“I guess I would say that I’m a fan of the Nancy Drew book series because it is a comfort to me,” Avery wrote to me this weekend. “Reading the books now as an adult instantly transports me back to a simpler time, when I was a girl, and Nancy was a constant companion to me, whether at school, on a road trip, or just laying on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day and reading one of her mysteries. Nancy Drew showed me from a young age that women can be capable, skilled and smart. She modeled all of the best qualities: how to be a good friend, a good daughter and a good detective! And it always struck me as really cool that my mother and grandmother, who got me into the series, read the books before I did and it was something we could share and talk about together.”
On her website, Avery shares: “In Nancy, I saw a young woman who was not only capable, smart and resourceful when she solved mysteries, but a character that shared my strawberry blonde or “titian” hair color. Back in April 2023, my dad and I happened to go to an estate sale where I bought 70+ Nancy Drew books I had never read or seen before–later paperbacks from the 1990’s–and the idea for @TrueDrewPodcast was born!”
Laura Puckett, a reader and mom, also started reading Nancy when she was young.
“My memories of Nancy Drew started when I was quite young,” she writes. “Right after piano lessons my mother would take me to the library, and I would take the direct path to the sgelf with all the yellow book spines. Finding the next mystery that I hadn’t read, I would barely contain my excitement while looking at the cover to see which adventure I’d get to go along with Nancy on. These books accompanied me on road trips, in my hammock, in my bed before sleep, and so many other places. They are a pleasant part of my childhood and helped me fall in love with reading.”
Mystery author Trixie Silvertale started reading Nancy Drew books when she was five or six years old.
“It was very meaningful to read about a female main character. The fact that she was intelligent and broke a few rules, but did the right thing in the end, was a really great role model… Even though I didn’t realize it at the time! I always think of those books fondly.”
Are the stories in a Nancy Drew Mystery earth-shattering or life-changing? Not usually.
Are they hard-hitting and full of globally impactful wisdom? Nope.
Are they full of gritty stories and swoony romantic scenes? Not at all.
And all those reasons are why so many readers still find themselves reaching for them at libraries, bookstores, and thrift shops today. 95 years after they were first introduced.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The kids helped some friends of the family clean up their yard last week and while they helped, I took a tour on the dirt roads around the property. It was fun to look at the cows grazing on the hillsides, even though they aren’t fully green yet (the hills, not the cows), watch two young does walk in front of me slowly, admire the amazing sky and clouds that day.
I rambled a little bit more about last week in my post yesterday, if you would like to read it.
On Friday, we drove to pick up groceries. In other words, we didn’t do very much last week.
Yesterday, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I held our monthly Drop In Crafternoon with a couple of other bloggers. We will be holding another one tentatively on May 10 at 1 p.m. and definitely on May 24 at 1 p.m.
The crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. There is one woman who creates with beads, another who colors, I sometimes draw or color, and Erin has been embroidering lately. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on. No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
Our conversations are usually about light things, including books, but somehow I got us on racism, or maybe Liz did, but usually the conversations aren’t super heavy. You will probably meet our cats, children, husbands, and dogs during the drop in so be warned.
If you want to just drop in and say hello If you would like to join us shoot Erin an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com and she’ll add you to our mailing list.
Uh…nothing
I keep saying I am going to finish The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien the next week, but I am sure I will actually finish it this week.
I have enjoyed it but, oh my, is it long and wordy. I like the wordy at times too, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt like I might never make it to the end. I am only about three chapters away from the end and I do know that it will end on a cliffhanger since each “book” in the series is actually two books of one huge saga of six books altogether so in many ways I still won’t be done. But I will at least be done with this installment.
I am not sure when I will read Return of the King but probably not until fall or winter.
I’ll need a little break from fantasy books for a while I think. I need a few good mysteries and a romance up next, I think.
I didn’t read any of the James Herriot book (All Things Wise and Wonderful) this past week, except for last night, but I will be diving into it again this week.
I also started Grave Pursuits (Pennsylvania Parks Book 1) by Elle E. Kay as something quick to read and I am enjoying it so far. Elle is a writer who lives about 90 minutes from me, and she writes about state parks and towns near me. I am looking forward to one she wrote that takes place in the town I live in. I’m curious to see what she writes about our tiny town. I’ll be digging into that one next.
I’m also reading The Hardy Boys The Twisted Claw.
Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons (also called Caddie Woodlawn’s Family) by Carol Ryrie Brink, a collection of short stories about Caddie Woodlawn.
Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns
Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson
I watched a Hardy Boys from the 1977 show last week and will be writing about it later. I also watched a few episodes of Murder She Wrote from the last season and missed Cabot Cove. She was living in New York City in these episodes.
Little Miss decided she wanted to watch the 1982 version of Annie last night (not sure what inspired this, but maybe a meme she saw making fun of it or something). I told The Husband we were watching it while he was at a work event, and he asked if it was because it was Carol Burnett’s birthday. I said I didn’t know it was her birthday, but it was perfect timing.
When we started it, I realized I must have seen the movie as a kid more than I remembered, because I had it practically memorized. I also realized how old I am because a movie about an orphan hits different now that I am older and think about all those children out there who just want a place to call home.
Another realization was how manipulative that little Annie was. Daddy Warbucks is going to send her back to the orphanage? She adopts a sad look and says, “It’s okay. I’ve already had enough fun just in the short time I’ve been here.” Daddy Warbucks isn’t going to go to the movies with them? “Oh. It’s okay. I don’t need to go to a movie. I’ll just practice my backhand. That girl at the orphanage who said she’d been to a movie once is a liar anyhow.”
Of course, I know that’s not really how they were trying to play her. I’m just having a little fun. In all honesty, I was surprised how nostalgic I was watching the movie.
I couldn’t wait to show Little Miss classic songs like “It’s A Hard Knock Life For Us” and “Little Girls.”
Here were some of her quotes during the movie:
“Why are they dancing? She told them to clean. Hey! You’re supposed to be cleaning! Not practicing your flips!”
“Oh. The little orphan’s got hands!”
“No! Don’t fall for that man! He looks like Professor Quirrell but squared up!”
“No! You can’t marry him! It’s like marrying Jeff Bezos! He pretty much is Jeff Bezos!”
That and when Grace comes out in her yellow dress “oh that dress is beautiful! Slay, girl!”
Watching it and all the great songs (Easy Street with Carol, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters for one) was a ton of fun and Little Miss didn’t even make too much fun of it so that was a win!
At the end I asked her what she thought.
“It was kind of a strange movie. We went from, ‘oh these children are sort of being abused, but I guess we’re okay with that.’ To ‘Oh my gosh that guy is chasing her and she’s hanging off this bridge and going to die’ to ‘oh, she has a family now. That’s – uh – cool”
I am making some progress on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. You can find the other three here.
I don’t have a release date yet but I’m having fun pulling ideas together for the story.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Welcome to the blog for a Saturday Afternoon Chat, where I look back at my week that was.
Most of the time my weeks are not very exciting so don’t expect too much.
Would you care for a beverage while we chat?
I have a variety of tea – peppermint, chamomile, raspberry, and an orange turmeric (has a bit of a bite to it). I also have some milk, grape juice, and just plain water. But no ice cubes. Yes, I need to get ice cub trays because our ice maker doesn’t work.
This past week was fairly routine for us. We did homeschool lessons for most of the week, and then on Thursday I took the kids to the house of a family friend, and they cleaned up sticks and leaves from their yard and The Boy built a garden fence for the woman.
While they worked, I took a scenic tour on the dirt roads around their house. I’ve lived in this area my entire life, but don’t remember being on these roads. The roads had very Irish names like McKeany and Murphy, so I recorded a couple of videos saying the name of the roads in one of the worst Irish accents you’ve ever heard and sent them to Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. She and Wyatt had a good laugh over my horrible accent, and that’s what I was going for, so it worked.
I enjoyed looking at the cows and saw a couple of deer. I tried to film them but I apparently didn’t hit the record button on my phone correctly. Sigh. I did get a quick video but it wasn’t terribly exciting. The sky was amazing that day.
I’d like to say I enjoyed looking at the rolling green hills, but they aren’t very green just yet. The trees are just starting to bloom, and the grass is just starting to grow here. Today we have rain, so I have a feeling that by next week the hillsides will be much brighter and healthier in appearance.
Yesterday, Little Miss and I drove the 30 minutes one way to get our groceries from the Aldi pickup. We went back to my parents for a bit and then came home to unload while The Boy stayed to help my dad with fixing up a couple of lawn mowers to get ready for mowing season.
Today Little Miss and I will spend much of our day alone together while it rains outside. The Husband has assignments to attend and cover for the newspaper and The Boy is going to a friends for the rest of the weekend.
We have a tentative one scheduled for May 10 and a definite one scheduled for May 24. All you need to do is send an email to Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com or me at lisahoweler@gmail.com, and we will make sure you get on our list to email you the Zoom link.
On other blog matters, I discovered this week how to add a blog roll to my sidebar since WordPress removed the ability to do that a couple of years ago. You can still add a blog roll, but only if the blog is on WordPress. I follow blogs that are on a variety of host sites so I wanted the option to add them as well. After a quick search online, I found directions on how to do that:
Create a Navigation (Link) Menu for Your Blogroll:
Navigate to Appearance > Menus: in your WordPress dashboard.
Create a New Menu: Click “Create a new menu” and name it something like “Blogroll”.
Add Menu Items: Use the “Custom Links” section to add links to other websites.
Enter the URL of the website and a descriptive label for the link.
Click “Add to Menu” to include the link.
Save the Menu: Click “Save Menu” to save your changes.
It was pretty simple, and it is sad it took me this long after they took away the official blog roll feature for me to figure it out. Now I just have to add more of my favorite blogs.
I don’t understand why WordPress is always changing things. I feel like if it isn’t broke there is not need to fix it while they seem to think, “it’s not broke but we can improve it” and then it’s like they wander off in the middle of improving it to improve something else and the thing they said they were going to improve just sits there now broken.
So, to me, WordPress is like a person who says he’s — I mean they — are going to fix something in a house but he — I mean they — wanders off in the middle of one project to start another project and eventually there are like ten projects in the house and around the property that are in various degrees of progress/finish status.
Maybe one day WordPress will actually finish a project and stop messing around with it.
So how was your week?
Do anything interesting or exciting?
Let me know in the comments or leave a link to your weekly round-up post. Tomorrow I will be sharing what I’ve been reading and watching, etc. in my Sunday Bookends post.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog, and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Your hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Debbie and her blog: I am a Victorian Soul, who lives in a small townhouse that was built in the mid 1970’s, not a huge Mega Mansion!! I just recently lost my Hubby Joe, who was a Retired Letter Carrier. I worked night shift as an RN on a Hospital based Rehabilitation( Physical Medicine) Unit for 37 years before I had Knee Replacement Surgery and officially Retired in 2019 after 41 years working in Direct Patient Care … I am so glad that we retired at 62 years of age and got to spend that time together before he passed….I still do love Retirement!!!! I DABBLE IN A BIT OF THIS AND THAT!!!!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
Everyone else, Please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or even years ago. All we ask is that they be family-friendly!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!
*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs. Proper credit with a photo and link back will be provided.
I had vaguely heard of this one before, but really didn’t know what it was about until Erin suggested it. I don’t know how I didn’t know more about it since it was nominated for eleven Oscars, including best director and best picture, in 2012. It won five for things like cinematography and design. (Thanks to Cat from Cat’s Wire for letting me know I looked at the nomination list instead of the win list when I originally posted this. ooops! hahaha!)
This was a magical children’s movie with beautiful imagery and cinematography. It was much different than I expected based on the movie poster and trailer. I watched it before I read any descriptions. I often don’t read detailed descriptions of movies or books before I jump into them. It can make it either a pleasant or a disturbing surprise. Ha! This was a pleasant one.
First, a quick Google description of the movie: Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo’s job is to oil and maintain the station’s clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father (Jude Law). Accompanied by the goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz) of an embittered toy merchant (Ben Kingsley), Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.
This is one of those ensemble casts with several well-known actors including Ben Kingsley, Sascha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Jude Law, Helen McCroy, Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Emily Mortimer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Richard Griffiths.
Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie was released in 2011 and was based on the 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The book sounds like a visual marvel. It has 284 illustrations mixed in 500 pages of a story.
Selznick once described the book “not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.”
Though I’ve never seen the book, I did see some photos online (such as those pictured above) and Scorsese seems to have captured the magic of the illustrations almost exactly as they are in the book.
The cinematography, the costumes, and the sets in Hugo are gorgeous and magical. There are a variety of unique camera angles and filming techniques that give much of the film a soft and dreamlike feel. It is what some might call a visual smorgasbord.
Close-ups on Hugo’s (Asa Butterfield) big blue eyes are frequent, and draw the viewer into his world, making them wonder what he is thinking behind those eyes.
When the movie starts, Hugo is spying on the activity in the train station through the numbers in the clocks high up in the walls and a tower in the middle of the station.
We see that he seems to live in the walls behind these clocks, getting food from vendors he steals from throughout the day to survive.
Eventually, we learn that he’s been living in these makeshift spaces since his father died and his alcoholic uncle took him in. It appears, though, that the uncle is no longer around, and it isn’t until later in the movie, we learn why. Hugo is continuing to keep the clocks running so a new clock repairer isn’t hired and he is discovered.
Towards the beginning of the film, we meet the toy maker who accuses Hugo of stealing from his booth. Hugo is indeed stealing small pieces of machinery from the toy maker’s booth. When the toymaker catches him, he makes Hugo empty his pockets and one of those pockets includes a small notebook with drawings inside about how to repair the automaton that his father found at the museum he was working at before he died.
The drawings trigger something in the toy maker, and he takes the notebook and refuses to give it back to Hugo. This leads to Hugo chasing the toy maker home to try to convince him to give the notebook back. The toy maker refuses but Hugo sees who he thinks is the toymaker’s granddaughter and begs her to ask her grandfather for the book back. He learns that the girl is not the man’s granddaughter, but his goddaughter who was taken in after her parents died.
We are never really told what actually happened to her parents. The girl’s name is Isabelle and she and Hugo become friends. She goes to work with her godfather and encourages Hugo to stand up to him to get his notebook back. Hugo does and the godfather tells him that if he will work for him in his shop then he will give him his notebook back.
Isabelle and Hugo become friends, and eventually Hugo will tell her about the automaton and how he needs a special key to turn it on.
Isabelle takes him to the library, where the librarian gives her books. Hugo looks bewildered as she talks about books, which prompts Isabella to ask Hugo, “Don’t you like books?”
He assures her he definitely does.
Books, movies, and art in general are very important to Hugo because they were things he and his father did together before his father passed away. His father was a clockmaker and repairer and also worked at a museum and was well educated. We learn toward the beginning of the film through flashbacks that Hugo has not only lost his father, but years before he had also lost his mother.
When Hugo isn’t working at the toy shop, he is avoiding the station master (Baren Cohen) who enjoys capturing orphans he catches in the station and then sending them back to the orphanage. At first glance the station master seems like a very angry bitter person but we will later learn there is a lot more to him than we realize.
This movie could be a real downer if it weren’t for the quirky characters and the constant striving of the movie (and the viewer) to get to an ending we hope will be full of some happiness for Hugo. Had this been any other Scorsese film, we might not have gotten that (like Hugo might have ended up at the bottom of the river. Ya’ know what I’m sayin’?), but without offering too many spoilers I can assure you there is a happy ending.
I loved the scenes where Isabelle and Hugo were walking around the old library, by the way. Oh, to walk in a library with books piled up high like that.
There are several little storylines going on throughout this movie. The big one we have is with Hugo, of course, as he tries to figure out how to get the automaton to work again and then find out what message it might be sending when it does work.
(He hopes it is a message from his father or from anyone to help him not feel so alone.)
Then we have the friendship between him and Isabelle and the antagonistic relationship Hugo has with her godfather. Then there is the godfather’s story and the story of the godmother. Then there are the characters who work inside the station and their relationships.
The story from the book and the movie does feature real life characters including the real life filmmaker named Georges Méliès. To avoid spoilers, I won’t share which character portrays Georges.
Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?
You can learn more about Georges Melies on Cat’s blog here.
I can’t believe we are winding down with our Springtime in Paris feature!
Next week we are writing about The Intouchables, a French film with subtitles. It is rated-R for language and sexual discussions (but no on screen sex or violence…I previewed it *wink* Right now it is streaming for free if you have an Amazon Prime membership. You can also find it on DisneyPlus, Fandango, Plex, YouTubeTV, Google Play, AppleTV, and Hulu
The week after, on May 4, we are having a group watch of Charade with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant via Zoom, and then we will share our thoughts on the movie on our blogs May 8.
If you watch any of the movies on our list for this feature at any point before May 10th, you can find the link on this post below or at the link up in the menu at the top of the page. You don’t have to watch the movies the same weeks we do to write about them.
