Hey, other people pay upwards of $65 to go to Disneyland for a day. You can get into Building REsources free any day of the year. And not only do they have broken glass, but they also have broken doors (and some not so broken…), counter tops, tiles, doors, windows, chandeliers, globes, wooden flooring and many, many plants growing out of old bathtubs, cement stuff, and fountains made of — who knows what.

There are wind vanes made out of old metal barrels and others made from tiny signs, whirling above you.

There are the folks who welcome you in — funnier and more personable than the jokesters on any Disney trams. The guy in the shed built the chandelier that looks like a filthy jellyfish that greets you when you enter. We sought him out when we could not figure out how to get into the Paradise of Broken Glass. He introduced us to Angel, who gave us a tour of the glass and the machines that break it.

Dear daughter was absolutely transported by the glass. Angel was very supportive; gave hints about which types of glass would work best for various projects, backed us up when we parents warned that sometimes projects take longer than expected, made our daughter feel welcome to take samples of the various kinds of glass so she can experiment with grouts and adhesives.

Our visit was about two hours of thrills and chills. I kept reminding my daughter not to run up and down the aisles, not to jump on the carts, not to put her hands into the bins of broken glass (it is rounded down, but still…)

Oh, and the oak moldings we got (slightly worn, but much nicer than the ones at Home Depot, we thought), cost a fraction of what we’d have paid for new ones.

For more information.

Man On Wire is the true story of how Phillippe Petit and a group of his friends snuck into the World Trade Center and strung a high wire between two of the towers so that Petit could dance nearly 1400 feet in the air over New York City. And was then arrested and charged with trespassing. It was the “Artistic Crime of the Century”.

We took our 13 yr. old (younger) daughter, the one who likes to climb to very high places, with us to see the movie on condition that she “not get too many ideas”. Luckily, the movie features shots from above the “crime scene” so we could all experience what it might feel look like to look down at the streets of New York from 1400 feet. Dear daughter shuddered with the rest of us.

Man On Wire is hilarious, exhilarating, terrifying, inspirational, and, to those of us with a previous relationship with the World Trade Center, nostalgic and sad. Anyone trying, for any reason, to sneak into any New York landmark for any reason these days would no doubt not get even the modicum of support that Petit did. And they might indeed be shot on sight. Sad, very sad. Petit’s lovely graffiti gone, all gone, along with the terrible smells of the subway under the WTC and the soaring views above.

Man On Wire is like a real life Mission Impossible, told in flash-back. It is the story of a team of friends who are very, very, very good at what they do and have to learn to be very good at other things too (like sneaking into buildings), so they can do the thing they love to do.

There’s Petit at 17… Already obsessed by walking the high wire in challenging places, he reads a story about the plan to build the World Trade Center (the towers were going to be the tallest buildings in the world at that time). Before he even knew what they looked like, he knew he had to wire-walk between them.

When he gets out of jail after wire-walking the Sydney Harbour Bridge, he learns that the WTC is about to be completed. We hear Petit and some of his co-conspirators reflect back on their adventure. (The interspersing of live footage and photos with “re-creations” of some moments is confusing, but does not detract from the authenticity of the film.)

The lessons taught by this documentary are plentiful and satisfying:

• That one with a true gift should be honored, but that challenging that person to exercise that gift is permissible. (Petit’s friends worry that by helping him perform this walk, they might be abetting a suicide. The policemen who arrest him let him dance on the wire for a good long time before they drag him in for psychological evaluation.)
• That competent co-workers and friends you trust are not easily replaced, so you should treat them well, appreciate their advice, take their counsel. That you never truly lose them, but you can through your own carelessness, lose them as true friends.
• That hard work and planning, in addition to raw talent and drive, are key to success.

Maybe I’ve said enough about this movie. See it. And take your teenage children. (There is one very, very short scene in which a man and woman romp in the nude. But the real reason you don’t want to take youngsters is that you probably don’t want your three year old to get ideas. Also because a fair amount of the film is in French with English subtitles.)

And, if your child has a gift, even if it is a scary one, you might as well help him or her to do it well and with competent support. We want our children scaling great heights. We don’t want our children breaking into high buildings and jumping off roofs but feeling all alone.

– Emily

The Invention of Hugo Cabret solves this problem. A Dickensian fairy tale, told in words and beautiful, complicated charcoal drawings, Hugo Cabret tells the story of the rediscovery of a silent film director and a young boy in Paris of the early 1930s.

A lovely celebration of train stations, automata, clock mechanisms, and film.

The depictions of:

• The rocky but eventually trusting relationship between the siblings,
• The Gang of Five who are obsessed with writing a computer game,
• The dilemma of parents who are concerned that perhaps their children are possessed (most parents must believe that sometimes) and that their children's friends might not be the most upstanding citizens,
• The life of an old-fashioned gentleman who lives on a remote island in a remote community in Scotland,
• The hard work of a regional acting company, and
• The interesting character of the Boggart, who really does love his humans, even as he schemes to come up with more annoying tricks to play on them,

Note: The limitations of the personal computers that existed when this book was written play a significant part in the story. And for that reason, the fact that the author's descriptions of how computer operating systems work are a bit off deflated the story a little for me. If I were to make a movie of this book (and I think it would make a fantastic one), a slight change in a couple of the nouns would resolve this issue.

Highly recommended.

The nightmare we inhabit in Oryx and Crake is an ecological one. Intense, violent, horribly sad. Just what we expect from the best of Margaret Atwood.

A bit of a spoiler, below.

The germ of Oryx and Crake, and yes, in this context, that is a pun, is that at some point, pharmaceutical companies might worry if all disease were wiped out. After all, if no one ever gets sick, then, what would Big Pharma sell?