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Bette Davis: Champion of the Pictures

I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked.
–Bette Davis

Today, April 5th, is Bette Davis’ birthday. If you’ve never seen a Bette Davis movie, your life is not complete. In a career spanning five decades, her legacy includes a dozen movies that are all classics. The hallmark of a Davis film is that you can’t take your eyes off her when she’s on screen. As the Internet would say, “You won’t believe what she’ll do next…” Whether playing a vixen, starlet, waitress, apple seller, murderer, nanny, queen, or washed-up film star, Davis could squeeze every drop of drama out of a line. She would work a scene like nobody’s business, and that was the hallmark of her talent – in that way, uniquely American and uniquely female. Her characters always had to defeat the odds and they had to work like the devil to do it. Continue reading “Bette Davis: Champion of the Pictures”

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In Line

Gentle Readers: today’s entry is my annual/semi-annual Fiction entry. This was in response to a Chuck Wendig challenge to write a story about “going against authority…middle finger up…Chaos and Rebellion….”  I confess it turned out longer than requested (but it’s me, so who’s surprised?) and also to be gentler in the end than the challenge suggested, although I’m not always as grim as I appear to be, either.]

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Miz Berenson was the meanest, strictest, recess monitor that ever carried a steel whistle onto the playground. The asphalt at Robert Taft Elementary School was her territory, and woe betide anyone who broke her rules. No gum chewing. No going up the slide the Wrong Way. No Boys vs. Girls contests. And she was super strict about how we lined up to go back to class.

She would end recess like ten minutes early just to allow enough time for the line to meet her standards. There had to be eighteen inches between students. There had to be No Talking, silence, people. There was to be no what she termed Horseplay. If she didn’t like it, she’d make us line up again even if we were late to class. Or, she would make us spend part of our lunch hour lining up.

Continue reading “In Line”

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The Acceptance Letter

Last night, I reminded my ACT prep class students that this is THE time of year. I teach an eight week course on test-taking strategies to help improve scores, mostly to high school juniors.  I took a minute to step away from studying trigonometry, punctuation errors, author’s purpose, and scientific experimental design to point out that a year from now, they will decide where they’re going to college. Their eyes widened at the thought and there was a lot of nervous laughter. These juniors are in what seems like the 20th mile of a marathon. They can’t see the end in sight yet, despite thinking about it for years and working so hard right now on grades, tests, and applications. This is what seniors in high school – and seniors in college – are doing in the next 4-6 weeks. Many have Acceptance Letters in hand and are deciding where to start the next big journey.

Acceptance letters change lives. If you went to college, you probably remember yours, “Congratulations, future Gopher/Bear/Banana Slug/Spartan! We are pleased to announce that you have been accepted into….”  Some of us also still remember the Ding letters: “…unfortunately, we receive so many applications from worthy candidates….”

Why go to college?

Even though costs have skyrocketed, the earnings potential for a college degree still far outweighs that of no degree. As of 2014, according to a Pew Research study published in the New York Times¸ the cost of not having a degree was about $500,000 over an earnings lifetime, even factoring in today’s high cost. People seeking jobs know that it is a huge barrier to a job, to a better job, to higher pay or a better title in their current job. Continue reading “The Acceptance Letter”