"With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike ..."

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery issued this sharply worded three-page order today that is important to share and amplify for the historic record during this semiquincentennial year in our fractured nation. 

Biery's words are worth your time. 

Cat photo memories from 2020

In the COVID-19 summer of 2020, I tweeted this out with the caption "a Bergman film, but with cats." Someone wittily replied that it could be Purrsona. I have long since deleted my Twitter/X account, for obvious reasons. But I still have a record of this tweet because I printed it out and tucked it away inside a Roger Ebert film review book.

Titan, in the front, passed away in 2024. But Mr. Angelino (middle) and Monkey (back) are still with us as our two oldest kitty-cats. They are good boys.

Here's another photo of Monkey from that same year, when I documented all of my bookshelves in Shelfie 2020. My bookshelves have changed a good bit since then.

My Weekly Reader: "Kentucky Has a Singing Festival"

Kismet! This is a companion post to a Papergreat post from exactly nine years ago today. Nine years! Gosh, it especially seems like time flies sometimes. With regard to the June 10-14, 1940, edition of My Weekly Reader, I had previously featured the front page photo of photographer/folk festival promoter Jean Bell Thomas (1881-1982). 

Here's the entire front page of that issue, with the photo of Thomas plus the article headlined "Kentucky Has a Singing Festival." The article states that the festival is held not far from Ashland, Kentucky, "near a little log cabin" in which Thomas lives. The 1940 article indicates that the festival had been going on for 10 years. That jibes with what I read on this website, which states that the American Folk Song Festival, founded and organized by Thomas, was held from 1930 until her retirement in 1972.

The website (which seems to pull from Thomas' Wikipedia biography) further states: "The festival followed an unchanging script that Thomas said was intended to show 'authentic sequences in America's musical history.' Overall it reflected the belief of Thomas and many of her contemporaries that the speech patterns, songs, and other traditions of early British Isles settlers still survived in Appalachia." 

Fortunately, some recordings of the festival have been preserved.

My grandmother's 1981 trip to China

In 1981, the year before she took a safari trip to Africa, my grandmother Helen traveled from Wallingford, Pennsylvania, to China. My non-expert understanding is that tourism to China only began to be easily accessible to Westerners around 1978, as part of the "Reform and opening up" following the 1976 death of Mao Zedong, whose Great Leap Forward was arguably the deadliest and most disastrous policy implementation by any leader in world history.

This is a letter from Tours A La Carte that my grandmother received prior to the trip. It contains some "helpful tips" from another tourist who had recently returned from China. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but some of the highlights include encouraging anti-pollution masks, a reminder to take lots of Kleenex and a fork and knife (because some places offer only chopsticks), and a suggestion to pack granola bars to serve as snacks. 

It also has some tips on what to wear to the Great Wall of China, which my grandmother did visit, as you can see from some of these snapshots she took:

My grandmother's 1982 trip to Africa

Continuing with last week's theme of posting about some items I came across during the sorting and decluttering of family ephemera this month, here's the itinerary for my grandmother Helen Ingham's February 1982 trip to Africa, through Holbrook Travel of Gainesville, Florida. 

As you can see, the nearly-three-week trip involved parts of Kenya and Tanzania, including Serengeti National Park, Maasai Mara National Reserve and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. 

Here are some of my grandmother's better snapshots from that trip:

And here's a neat picture that someone else took of my grandmother...

Finally, here's a picture of my grandmother (left) and her good friend and companion on the trip to Africa, Betty Livingston. My grandmother died in 2003. Betty is still alive as of this writing and will hopefully be celebrating her 106th birthday this upcoming May!

My favorite first-time watches of 2025

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973)

I watched about 125 movies in 2025, topping the previous year by about 25%. The year started with 2017's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and concluded with the 1948 Japanese film Taifuken no onna (The Woman in the Typhoon Area), which is basically Key Largo but with Setsuko Hara.  

I think 1982's Missing by Costa-Gavras was the best and most shattering first-time watch for me, but the top seven or eight were all pretty brilliant and interchangeable, and it would be a fool's errand to try to rank them. It was a year in which I finally caught up with a number of classic or iconic films I should have seen years ago. Following on the heels of the 2024, 2023 and 2022 lists, here, in chronological order by release year, are my 25 favorite first-time watches of 2025:

• The Immigrant (1917, directed by Charlie Chaplin)
• Yuwaka, aka Temptation (1948, Kôzaburô Yoshimura)
• Othello (1951, Orson Welles)
• Tokyo Sweetheart (1952, Yasuki Chiba)
• Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges)
• The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, Terence Fisher)
• A Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960, Mikio Naruse)
• High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
• Blow-Up (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni)
• Daisies (1966, Věra Chytilová)
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973, Ivan Dixon)
• Enter the Dragon (1973, Robert Clouse)
• Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973, Richard Blackburn)
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, Jim Sharman)
• The Ninth Configuration (1980, William Peter Blatty)
• Missing (1982, Costa-Gavras)
• Fanny and Alexander (312-minute TV version, 1982, Ingmar Bergman)
• Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
• Parasite (2019, Bong Joon Ho)
• Godzilla Minus One (2023, Takashi Yamazaki)
• The Vourdalak (2023, Adrien Beau)
• Riddle of Fire (2023, Weston Razooli)
• The Life of Chuck (2024, Mike Flanagan)
• Weapons (2025, Zach Cregger)
• One Battle After Another (2025, Paul Thomas Anderson)

One Battle After Another is the only one of the 10 nominees for Best Picture that I've seen so far, so don't consider the exclusion of the other nine to be a criticism or dismissal. I'll catch up with most of them eventually.

Special high honorable mention: Tokyo Godfathers (2003, Satoshi Kon) was a rewatch for me. But it had been 20+ years since I had seen it and I remembered nothing other than it involved a lost baby. So it felt like a first-time watch. If I were including it in the rankings, it would have made the Top 10.

Honorable mention: Murder by Decree (1979), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), Paperhouse (1988), La Jetée (1962), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), Leptirica (1973), Lake of Dracula (1971), The Vampire Doll (1970), The Damned (1962), Detour (1945), Cisco Pike (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Corridors of Blood (1958), Creature from the Black Lake (1976), Easy Street (1917), The Celluloid Closet (1995).

Vincent Price Is Always Good honorable mentions: Theater of Blood (1973), Diary of a Madman (1963), The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

Bizarre but mostly entertaining: Psychomania (1973), The Amusement Park (1975), Don't Look in the Basement (1973), Nothing But the Night (1973).

Bizarre and only entertaining while Roddy McDowall is in it: Arnold (1973).

Best movies that I just didn't vibe with (aka The Asteroid City Award): Giants and Toys (1958), Carmen Comes Home (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953). The two 1950s Japanese films, in particular, I think will hit much better on a rewatch. In the case of Invaders from Mars, I'm not sure if it works if you didn't first watch it as a kid, through the eyes of childhood.

Surprisingly fun family Christmas films: Holiday in Handcuffs (2007), Spirited (2022).

Historically important horror but not great films: The Cat and the Canary (1939), The Raven (1935), King of the Zombies (1941), Frankenstein (1910).

Dreadful films with good casts: Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996) and Puppet Master (1989).

Best rewatches: Popeye (1980), The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), Seems Like Old Times (1980), Trafic (1971), Boogie Nights (1997), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ed Wood (1994), Erin Brockovich (2000), Fright Night (1985), Casablanca (1942), Cat People (1942), Amadeus (1984), The Long Goodbye (1973), Nashville (1975), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), The Exorcist (1973), Spirited Away (2001), Trick 'r Treat (2007), Midnight Mass (2021), The Godfather (1972), King Kong (1933), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Superman (1978), The Godfather Part II (1974), Black Christmas (1974), Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1961).

Most fascinating rewatch of a train-wreck film: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), featuring St. Elsewhere's Kim Miyori in a small role.

Rewatch I truly didn't need to rewatch: Hot Stuff (1979). But at least it has Ossie Davis.

WTF did I just watch: Italian Spiderman (2007)

Watching and listening...   

High and Low (1963), with Tatsuya Nakadai on the right.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Parasite (2019)