Jims of Wyzdom for December 14, 2018

The olde year is dying, the new year is coming. The season changes, we change and do our best to change with dignity or at least in a warm place.

Opera: I looked up the Times review for the new Met production of “La Traviata” and it was fairly glowing about this new production and its cast of Diana Damrau and Diego Flores. It’s at the Regal Hollywood cinema tomorrow at the usual time—12:55. As a designer, I am supposed to love the new concept-driven productions, but I have to agree with most others that the last production of this well-loved opera was not to my taste.

Beyond the age of eighty, the perspectives of a lifetime wither and shrink like all else. You feel that your mortal car is straddling the median line and the right-hand wheels are rumbling in this world with the other two in the other one. [Writer Saul Bellow]

Cinema: The 2019 line-up of TCM’s monthly showings in cinemas has been announced. I’ll put the whole list in my last column for this year, but I will tell you that the January selection is “The Wizard of Oz.” Those of you that are regulars with our Film Forum will know that I am putting together a season of 1939 films. The two most popular films of 1939 were “Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind,” [that opened on Dec. 15 of that year, just in time to get all those Oscar nominations]. I’ll admit I worry a bit about including both on our series, mainly because we all remember the annual showing of “Wizard” on TV, and they are both on TCM regularly. If anyone has strong opinions one way or the other, please do shoot me an email Jim.Held@mail.wvu.edu

Perhaps the most important things are those we don’t remember in a precise way, that we remember unconsciously. [Writer Jorge Luis Borges]

Memories: I have been a regular at our Writer’s Interest Group for a couple of years. Most of what I have been writing has been in the area of personal memoir. As you may know, the AARP magazine suggests that we aged ones write our memories to hand over to our loved ones before we go on to the next adventure in the spirit world. I have been amazed that, as I sit and focus on some topic--as I am typing--the memories just seem to wake up and want to be set down in the essay. I am remembering things and events I thought I had long forgotten. Then we ask ourselves, “Who would want to read this stuff?” Your life partner for one, and members of your family, the grandchildren, et al. If you have an I-phone or I-pad, I think you can even write by talking to your device, no typing needed. Give it a try, won’t you?

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one’s talent, to one’s affections, and to one’s inner happiness. [Writer George Sand]

Happy Winter Solstice!

Jim