Book Review: Moving in the Spirit by Richard J. Hauser, SJ

Moving in the Spirit by Richard J. Hauser, SJ

There's a bunch of self-help books that follow a basic strategy. The author has discovered some system that works very well for him- or herself to deal with a specific problem. That system has been in use for several years (if not decades) and has become easy to "put on paper." Maybe the author has been quantifying or "lecture-fying" parts of the system because of a career in academics or in guiding others. This book is an example of one such system. 

The author, Richard Hauser, developed a system for making important decisions over his lifetime, starting out of high school with the decision to pursue a college and family life or a vocation to the Jesuits. In January of his senior year, he favored the college/family choice but did not feel peace with that decision. The more he reflected on a vocation, the more certain he became of that was the right choice. He started a spiritual journal which at first was sporadic and mainly used during stress-causing parts of his life. The journal helped him search for peace, the peace that comes from following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He developed a system to track his moods and analyze his important life decisions. The journal became a tool to record his experiences and to plan for future decisions and actions. 

The book establishes the basic pattern of a Christian spiritual life, starting from the law-obeying level that is more external and superficial. Christianity is seen as a set of obligations to be met on this level. A deeper relationship is gained when Christians look for the movement of the Holy Spirit within themselves, imitating Christ not just in obedience to commandments but in patterns of action, quality of heart, and zeal for serving God and others. Prayer life also deepens on this path, working through stages of meditation and contemplation. Hauser then applies his personally successful technique to following this path. He gives detailed examples from his own life and specific tools to follow the technique.

I found his technique interesting but not inspiring for me. Certainly the goals of growing in awareness of divine inspiration and acting on that inspiration are important for everyone. The book provides one way to get there, just not the way for me.

Slightly recommended--there's also one or two ads at the end of chapters encouraging readers to buy the book in bulk for their parish. I found that off-putting.

Book Review: Usagi Yojimbo Book 5 by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo Book 5: Lone Goat and Kid by Stan Sakai

Another set of adventures for the rabbit ronin! Here's the story-by-story rundown...

Frost and Fire--Usagi is hired by a widow to recover her husband's swords. She's not interested in the body coming back, just the invaluable family heirlooms. Usagi agrees to the job. At the town where the samurai died, people are not forthcoming, except for one guy whose sister has the swords. She has her own sob story about why she wants to keep the swords but her brother is ready to cash in. Usagi slowly discovers more and more about the death and the characters involved. The story's melancholy ending is satisfying.

A Kite Story--A massive kite festival draws a master kite-maker, a dishonest gambler, and Usagi. The three cross paths two at a time, creating an interesting story, though maybe there's too much detail about the making of the kite.

Blood Wings--While traveling through the mountains, Usagi discovers a dead body. The fatal cuts are precise but the field has no footprints other than Usagi's and the corpse's. Usagi continues on to a small farming village where the man came from. The dead man discovered a cave full of ninja bats who are plotting to seize a gold shipment from a nearby mine. The ninjas are keeping the townfolk in town so the mine isn't warned. Usagi sets out early the next morning to try to get to the mine to warn them and get help for the village. Things don't go according to plan. The story is exciting and the bat ninjas are natural and interesting bad guys.

The Way of the Samurai--Usagi wanders into a town ruled by an ex-general. The general is a fine administrator but cannot fight the illness that's overcome him. He and Usagi share a connection--the samurai code. That code gives the story a poignant finale. This may be the best story in this collection.

Lone Goat and Kid--Lord Hirone's clan is potentially in disgrace if the ronin Yagi reveals the plot that had him and his son (the two are the titular characters--Yagi really is a goat!) banished from the clan. Three of the clan's lieutenants hatch a plan where a merchant will hire Yagi to kill Usagi, with the hope that Usagi will kill Yagi. The lieutenants watch as the battle begins but the backstabbing starts a little early on their side, throwing the plan into chaos. The story makes an exciting finale to this book.

Highly recommended--all the stories are entertaining and exciting.

 

Movie Review: Army of the Dead (2021)

Army of the Dead (2021) co-written and directed by Zack Snyder

While moving a super-secret asset in Nevada, a military convoy has an accident and the asset escapes. That asset is a super-zombie, extra-strong and extra fast, and also extra-intelligent (well, probably just normal-intelligent, which is extra-intelligent for a zombie). The zombie bites and turns some of the soldiers, then the group of zombies heads to Las Vegas. The city is overrun and eventually sealed off with a wall of cargo containers, with one military crew led by Scott (Dave Bautista) just barely making it out in time. Months later, Scott is flipping burgers at a diner and mourning the loss of his wife (who he had to kill because she was infected) and his daughter (who left him because both he and she could not handle the situation). A private investor recruits Scott to go into Vegas for one last thing. A vault under one of the casinos has two hundred million dollars in cash. The president of the United States is planning to nuke Vegas to ensure the zombie infection does not spread. They have four days to go in, get the loot, and get out. Scott reluctantly agrees since he will get fifty million for himself and his crew. He recruits some ex-military friends and a German safe-cracker. The investor sends his own military guy (Garrett Dillahunt) who knows the layout of the casino. Scott runs into his daughter at the refugee camp just outside the Vegas wall. She wants to go in because the mother of some kids is lost inside. She argues her way into the crew. The group heads in, sneaking and fighting their way to the casino.

I saw a trailer for this movie and the "Zack Snyder" part turned me off but the goofy humor (they show a zombie Elvis impersonator and a zombie tiger, presumably from Siegfried and Roy's show) appealed to me. So I gave it a try. Unfortunately, the humor is very uneven and mostly absent for long stretches of the movie (which is two hours, twenty-eight minutes long). The movie is very gory and a little too glumly serious at times. Parts of it are creative and interesting. The safe is called "Gotterdammerung" and they use Wagner's work for some of the soundtrack (much like the "Ode to Joy" in Die Hard). The super-zombie has his own quirks and there's a sort of zombie society he runs, though he is mute and not much is explained. It's more of an excuse to pad out the film with tense zombie-menace scenes. The soundtrack is entertaining and well-used. The ending is a downer and the movie doesn't justify its long running time.

Mildly recommended for zombie movie fans, otherwise avoid!

TV Review: Pacific Rim: The Black (2021)

Pacific Rim: The Black (2021) created by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle based on the movie by Guillermo del Toro

Australia is attacked by gigantic monsters called Kaiju. A small colony of people is stranded in the Outback when the parents of two colonists head off to find help in their gigantic robot called a Jaeger. The parents promise to come back in a couple of weeks but five years go by with no word from the outside world. The children are now teenagers. They stumble across a Jaeger base that has a training Jaeger inside. Once they activate it, that draws a Kaiju to the colony, forcing them to fight. The colony gets wiped out in the attack and the brother and sister decide to go find their parents using the Jaeger as their transportation.

Their journey across Australia doesn't get very far before they run into other humans and other Kaiju. About halfway through, I realized I was missing some stuff since I haven't watched Pacific Rim: Uprising. Even so, the story was enjoyable enough, in spite of how unrealistically young the main characters are (they even pick up a younger, mute boy and an angry older teenage girl, both of whom have some mystery in their back stories). This series ends with the hint of new villains and another season to come. The show had enough entertainment value for its short running time (seven approximately 25 minute episodes) that I will watch the new season when it come.

Recommended, though really for Pacific Rim fans. I need to watch that other movie, I guess I'll do that in the meantime.

Currently (May 2021), this is only streaming on Netflix.

Book Review: The Planets by Dava Sobel

The Planets by Dava Sobel

In this quick read, Sobel gives a chapter-by-chapter tour of our solar system. The title is a bit of a misnomer, since both the sun and the moon get their own chapters. The book isn't solely scientific, either. Each chapter meanders around, with Sobel's personal experiences or historical anecdotes providing a broader picture of human knowledge. For example, the chapter on Saturn contains an ongoing discussion of Holst's The Planets, an orchestral work from the early 1900s. The early attempts to understand Saturn's odd shape (the rings weren't immediately discerned) and the discovery of separate rings follow a bit of a musical pattern, even half steps when subdivisions were found in individual rings. She gets into the controversy about Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet too, which still rankles people both inside and outside the astronomical community.

The book has a nice blend of historical and literary understanding along with scientific details. I found it entertaining but it does suffer a little bit from being written fifteen years ago. Sobel acknowledges the problem at the end: "But what book can keep abreast of current events in an active field of study? If reading these pages has helped someone befriend the planets, recognizing in them the stalwarts of centuries of popular culture and the inspiration for much high-minded human endeavor, then I have accomplished what I set out to do." [p. 231] I was already interested in the planets before this book. I have some more cultural appreciation for them and for Sobel.

Mildly recommended.

Gwynn Falls Trail, Baltimore, Maryland--Carrollton Viaduct

The Gwynn Falls Trail runs from the Inner Harbor of Baltimore out to a park and ride in the suburbs. We parked at Trailhead 6, which is right next to the Carroll Park Golf Course. The trail follows along Gwynn Falls, a river that feed into the harbor. The trail at this point is paved and large enough for a car or truck. The kids loved playing on the gate keeping just anyone from driving down the path. 

Entering the pathway

The trail has a few interpretive signs that tell the history of the area. This particular part of the river was flat enough for people, including the natives, to cross. 

Explaining how they used to cross the river

The river hiding in the foliage

We came to this part of the trail to see the Carrollton Viaduct. We saw a model of the viaduct last time we visited the B&O Railway Museum. On the way, we saw some cool stuff.

A budding tree

A modern way to cross the river

View of the river from the bridge

The other view

Further on we saw the Viaduct. It was built in 1829, just two years after the founding of the B&O Railroad. The bridge was part of the first train route out to the town of Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City). The cornerstone was laid by Charles Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amazingly, the bridge is still in use almost two hundred years later. The locomotives and trains are much heavier than they were back in the day.

Our first sighting of the viaduct, and in use!

The span for pedestrians in 16 feet; the span over the river is 80 feet.

Spanning the river

A small beach is nearby and we took the opportunity to throw stones into the river.

A popular pasttime

I wanted to go further down the trail. My older son decided to go the hard way to the other side of the viaduct.

Another popular pasttime

Closeup of same

My younger son led me through the pedestrian span, which had an appropriately spooky echo inside. 

Heading for fun

The other side of the viaduct has a ramp up to another bridge that goes over both the river and the railroad tracks.

View of the tracks

View of the river

The other kids didn't catch up until we headed back to the viaduct. They had trouble making it through the dense foliage on the other side.

Finding at least one other child

On the way back, we saw the other side of the map, which had some useful local information, including stuff about the B&O Railway roundhouse (now the museum) and the nearby home that Carroll built (now called the Mount Clare Mansion).

Information everywhere!

We'll probably hike more of the trail in the future!

Book Review: The Way of the Househusband Vol. 2 by Kousuke Oono

The Way of the Househusband Volume 2 by Kousuke Oono

The adventures of Tatsu, formerly the Immortal Dragon of Yakuza fame, continue. He faces challenges like shopping for cars, working out at the local gym, and playing volleyball on the homemakers' team. The greatest challenge faces him in this issue--not the ex-con turned crepe-maker who Tatsu put in jail. The real challenge is hosting his in-laws on short notice!

The stories are very entertaining if very slight. The comedy premise works well and made me laugh out loud several times.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Airlift (2016)

Airlift (2016) directed by Raja Krishna Menon

It's 1990 and Ranjit Katyal (Akshay Kumar) is an Indian businessman living a successful life in Kuwait. He's rather self-centered and imagines himself a Kuwaiti rather than an Indian. After taking his wife Amrita (Nimrat Kaur) to a lavish party, he's woken up at three in the morning by a call. The Iraqis have invaded Kuwait. Since Ranjit is well-connected, he's certain he can take care of things with the Kuwaiti government. By the next day, the government is gone and Ranjit races with his driver to the Indian embassy to find a way out of the country. They are stopped at a checkpoint and the driver is killed. Ranjit has to deal with an Iraqi Republican Guard officer (Inaamulhaq) who was once a bodyguard for Ranjit during a visit to Baghdad. Ranjit gets some assurance that his family will be safe; when he returns to home, he discovers it's been ransacked by Iraqi soldiers. Desperate to find his wife and child, Ranjit looks everywhere, eventually going to his office. His family is there, along with his employees and their families, a rapidly growing group of people. The Iraqis are killing anyone who is Kuwaiti and the Indians are worried about being mistaken for locals. Ranjit has the chance to flee with his wife but he realizes there's 170,000 Indian citizens in Kuwait City with no way out. He rises to the occasion, forming a refugee camp at a school campus and looking for a way for everyone to escape safely.

The movie is based on a true story about the 170,000 people trapped in a country that's no longer its own country. The story is powerful and inspiring, how one man rose to the occasion and organized the people to survive and escape. Even though he starts as dismissive toward India and has a lot of trouble getting help from the Indian government, he sees other people (including bureaucrats in the Indian External Affairs Ministry) rise to the occasion too. By film's end, Ranjit has a sense of pride in his homeland and his fellow Indians. 

The movie is both exciting and well-told. The acting is great. Kumar and Kaur have good chemistry and play the dramatic moments just right, showing both the tension and the love in their relationship. The production values are top-notch, especially the war-torn streets of Kuwait City. As a Bollywood film, there is one song-and-dance number early on. The rest of the film is more straightforward, with the songs giving emotional heft to visual montages. 

Highly recommended.

The movie is discussed on A Good Story Is Hard to Find podcast #255. Check it out!

Middle Patuxent Environmental Area, Wildlife Loop Trail

Previously, we hiked the South Wind Trail of the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area. We went back to try out the Wildlife Loop Trail to see how it compared.

Sign at the entrance

Building at entrance

I guess this graffiti is okay?

This entrance has some bathrooms and a maintenance facility. The path into the park is paved but only for a short way.

Leaving the paved trail

An open meadow attracts many butterflies. It has both sunshine and protection from the wind along with some plants good for cocooning caterpillars and others good for nectar-gathering butterflies. Early spring was not a good time for seeing the beauties.

Butterfly habitat (not sure why they included a birdhouse)

The next field is good for woodcocks and other birds, giving shelters and food opportunities for them.

Woodcock info

A cool budding tree

The trail is very well marked and led us further into the forest. 

A can't-miss sign

The area has a good variety of trees. Previously, the land was used for corn farming. Once the farmers left, Virginia pine trees were planted. The deciduous trees are outgrowing them and squeezing out the light. Competition can be fierce in nature.

A tree getting overwhelmed by vines (another problem)

A spikey tree

Signpost 4 marks a spot with a deer exclosure. The deer are overpopulated and eating up a lot of the smaller bushes and plants, taking away not only the plant species but the other animal species dependent on the plants. The "gated community" in the forest is part of a long-term research program at the MPEA.

Barely visible deer exclosure

Further along is an area with spicebush. The berries are popular with local birds and the bushes are larval host plants for spicebush swallowtail butterflies. The bushes taste bad to deer, so no need for fencing.

Again, too early for butterflies

The marker for spicebush

The path gets steeper as it heads down to the river. The water from this area drains into the Middle Patuxent River which eventually goes to the Chesapeake Bay.

Drainage area

We go "down the drain"

A raised walkway kept our feet out of the muck and the strange plants in the flood plain area, yet another habitat for other plants and critters.

Easy to follow the trail here

What are these?

Near the Middle Patuxent River is the remains of an "oxbow," a curve in the river that is no longer part of the river because the course of the river bed changed. One end of the oxbow might have had a log stuck across it that accumulated other fallen limbs and detritus that dammed the river flow, sending it on another path. This particular oxbow is also spring-fed, so it has water in the late spring and early summer.

Used to be the river

View from the bridge

The actual river

Why do I find these tree root systems fascinating?

More of the river

Cool reflective part of the river

The area cut off by the oxbow had some interesting vegetation, including this tree with lots of vines.

Tarzan's paradise

Bridge over the other end of the oxbow

The other end of the oxbow only had some big puddles.

Definitely not a river

Another invasive species in the area is the multifloral rose taking over the area around post 14.

It's coming to get you!

Some drainage in the area

Evidence that the area used to be farmland--the remains of a concrete wading pool! It was turned into an amphibian habitat by local students. 

Marker for the habitat

Frog pool (not related to Deadpool)

We saw another example of previous human habitation.

Um, I don't think you are allowed to park there

Along with the frog pool, this might make a good horror movie location?

Further up the hill is a clearing that is being taken over by invasive species. The interpretive sign nearby shows some local heroes fighting the good fight.

When does an invasive species become a local species?

Eco-Goats to the rescue!

A nearby field is set up as an outdoor classroom.

Open space and shady!

The park is fun to visit but the kids like the other trail better because the river area had a lot of boulders and beaches to explore. If we come back, we will definitely go to the South Wind Trail.