She mates and she kills. The question is, does she love?

Happy Birthday, Dad. You'd be ninety years old today.


Prison reform, sugar tax, and space ports. I was listening on the radio close to noon today Central Standard Time and heard that phrase encapsulating what the Parliament of the United Kingdom will be debating and acting on this session. I love that -- it actually sounds practical and certainly more useful than some of the issues going through Congress on this side of the pond! Of course, there are days here where what our own national government has to say, by the time it trickles down to fifty separate (and more separate all the time, but I didn't say that) state governments, is diluted so as to be useless. About as useless as some of the construction going on around my own area.


I'm sure I'm not the only person who says that.


It took me a few weeks to get up the moxie to finish one book I'd recently started, and if you know me that's saying quite a bit. From the twenty-three essays contained in 1991's The Movie That Changed My Life edited by David Rosenberg (ISBN 0670840874) regarding only three movies I'd heard of, I did learn quite a bit. Especially when I re-read the introduction suggesting you substitute "adult experience" for "movie" if it's hard to think of one. For me it was, perhaps that's why I was stalling. But as I finished half the book this weekend even if I had to skim, a couple of movies did come to mind, even though they had to bubble to the surface.

Black Widow.


Not the Avengers superspy who I understand will be getting her own film in a few years, nor the spider with that bloody red hourglass on its abdomen. However, the title of that 1987 movie -- and judging from its date of release, I saw it my freshman year of high school -- refers to the type of person who marries, or at least strongly attaches herself to, a man and when she gains his trust and the share in his estate kills him and moves on the next one. By the time the movie runs, an FBI agent is on her trail as she's on spouse and fortune #4, and the agent played by Debra Winger knows what the widow played by Theresa Russell is doing, but she can't prove it.


What was the adult experience for me in that?


Hurm. [Rorschach from Watchmen has got a great response when you can't think of anything to say yet you want to sound like you're on top of things. Try it sometime.] It's that sometimes people DO get away with murder. Maybe not literally, but they get away with character assassination, with bullying, with putting the people who they thought or even used to (or in a twisted way still) loved/love them and looked up to them, whom they in turn loved and looked up to, through a wringer that makes everything after it ... I don't know, like it's an act and we all have our parts to play.  Whether you're referring to people or nations this makes so much sense!


Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.


Acts 2:9-11. I usually get asked to read on Pentecost Sunday because others feel awkward pronouncing some of these! But Darla had already signed up to be lector at first service on Sunday; she did a great job with it, but later admitted to me that she felt tongue-tied around some of those names. At Saturday morning's Bible study -- I will SO MISS the fried onions until fall! -- I got asked to read this part too. The key is just to sound like I know what I'm doing, nothing big about that; unfortunately, a lot of people (heck, everybody about different things) don't like sounding like they don't know or don't know how, at least that has been my experience.


But the question is, do I love?


David