Home grown

Growing up in Los Angeles, Academy Award night was a citywide celebration.  By the time my brother and I would tumble inside, ready for our afternoon snack, the glamorous stars were already pulling up in their shiny limousines to strut down the red carpet.  My mom would prepare special dishes and drinks, and family and friends would crowd around the TV together.  Mostly we would gossip about the stars choice of wardrobe, but we would also root for our favorite movies and argue the merits of each one.

Going to the movies has always been something I enjoy.  Seeing any movie is like a stolen chunk of time where we get to travel to other worlds and experience others’ lives, leaving our own lives and worries behind, if only for a couple of hours.  

As I’ve grown, my mother and I still make the effort to watch the award show together.  As silly as it may seem to some, one of us will travel to the other and make a special night out of it, eating and drinking and enjoying the display before us.  

At times I have agreed that Oscar night is far out of touch with the rest of America.  Especially in times of hardship or tragedy, a night devoted to glitz and glamour seems unnecessarily excessive.  But instead of looking at it as a night where the rich and famous pat each other on the back, I think of it as a night to celebrate a classic American art form.  

Technically speaking, the only true American art forms are jazz, comic books, musical theater and modern dance.  And while the history of motion pictures is long and complicated, the United States, along with Britain and France, were early pioneers.

But with the advent of World War I, European countries couldn’t devote time, men, technology, or imagination to the movies.  And by the time the war was over, American technology and innovation had catapulted us far beyond any other country.  When movie houses finally reopened in Europe, they ended up showing primarily imported American films.  Ever since, for better or worse, American movies are known throughout the world.

One constant throughout the history of the movies is the challenge to overcome obstacles.  In an industry founded and maintained on technological advances, the introduction of the next best thing is immediately seen as a threat to the way things are.  I’m sure if you work in the industry this is frustrating.  But as a fan, I find the push to be ever better to be to our benefit.  Feature length films threatened the original short film.  Talkies threatened, and eventually eradicated, silent films.  Television shut down a fair share of movie houses across the world.  Computer generated animation threatened traditional animated movies.  And now, the industry is challenged by the availability of free digital media.  It should be no surprise that in the past decade domestic movie theater admissions are down almost 20 percent.  Why pay to go to the movies when you can stream it online for a fraction of the price?

As a fan, the details behind the movies are interesting, but not essential to know.  I loved Toy Story without knowing the monumental effort it took to make a feature length computer animated film.  I was awed by Avatar without getting caught up in the technology that got it to that point.  Knowing it is at its core a business that is subject to bottom lines doesn’t concern me as much as being transported into a different world for a couple of hours after a long day.

So when Oscar night arrives next weekend, I will gossip about the stars fashion choices and applaud those amazing new technological advances that make my movie-going experience that much better.  But mostly I will be cheering for an iconic American art form and tradition.  I will celebrate the passion it took to get an idea from a piece of paper to the big screen so it can transport me into another world.  If only for a few short hours.

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington.  February 20, 2013

The mythology behind parenting

 One day about a year ago, my daughter and I were in a pool at a hotel.  While swimming, I overheard a mother tell her son not to put his head under the hot tub.  “It’s bad for you, sweetie,” she told him.  I chuckled, remembering hearing something similar when I was a child.  But now that I’m a grown up, I disregard such a statement as myth.  It may be slightly gross to put your head under the water in a shared hot tub, but truly bad for you? 

The mother’s casual insistence made me wonder.  How much of what we tell our kids is simply a convenience to get them to follow our directions, and how much is actually true?  If we perpetuate a myth like that to our child, are we lying?

There are some classic parenting myths that are passed down the generations and almost every parent uses at one time or another.  Put your jacket on, you don’t want to catch a cold.  The store ran out of ice cream, honey.  If you make that face too many times it will stay like that.  They don’t make diapers in your size anymore. 

Most of these little white lies have a purpose.  The jolly man in the red coat is little more than a happy legend, but perpetuates important traditions.  Putting a coat on, or not eating ice cream after dinner every night are important boundaries parents must implement for health or safety reasons, but the true explanations for them might pass for over the heads of little ones.  So we spout off the one-liners we heard as children, and chances are, we get our way pretty easily.   They put their coat on, or stop complaining about dessert.

But when do we make the crossover from a myth into simply lying?  Is the act of passing down a myth you know to be untrue simply another term for deceit?  On a recent survey on parenting.org, more than three-quarters of parents admit to having lied to their children at one time or another.  Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t more.  But, at what age are children entitled to find out the truth?  Some myths fade on their own as children grow up, or their cover is blown by their peers, but what about things that might stick, like catching a cold or putting your head underwater in a hot tub? 

In fact, maybe many of the myths we perpetuate are in fact wrong, even the ones we believe to be true.  A recent study at the Common Cold Center in Wales found that if you get too chilled, you actually could catch a cold.  Last week weather forecasters across the nation tuned in to hear what the nation’s favorite groundhog would predict.  And although we were all cheered to hear Punxsutawney Phil predict that spring will come early, in actuality, he only has a 39% chance of being right.  A fun tradition, but hardly something to base any sort of truth on.

At some point in the past these myths we pass on to our children were developed.  Sometimes it is clear: the mythical Greek gods developed from legends about actual extraordinary human beings.  But not many among us believe that Zeus is an all-powerful god.  However the stories behind these legends, or the myths we tell our children almost always impart some important message. 

As children we believed our trustworthy parents.  Now that we are the adults, we use the same myths on our own children.  Is it lying?  Maybe, if you want to get technical.  But there’s not a parent among us who isn’t thankful that our children genuinely believe the grocery store ran out of ice cream.

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. February 6, 2013