Miss Pettigrew and Pay Equity

From Garnette Arledge

Do you read Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster especially Howard’s End, Jane Austen and enjoy the film Cold Comfort Farm?

If your response to the above list is positive, go see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, now playing in Woodstock. The main character reminds me of the AAUW mission, spirit and spunk. The underlying theme relates to our recent telephone conference call on Pay Equity – something only distantly addressed in the ‘merry romp’ as the Washington Post critic called it. Neither of the women character’s have economic safety nets, hence their desperation as well as their wiles.

Click here for a cheeky review, anti-ageist although it means to be cute. Read it, if I haven’t convinced you that you might enjoy this bittersweet comedy on the last few moments before Hitler’s Blitz. Somehow we leave the cinema knowing Miss Pettigrew and her ilk will triumph, just as they did, and we will, this epoch as well.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

From Garnette Arledge:

Here's a NY Times movie review for an important film. So important to me that I signed up to review the review at the on-line NY Times Forum. My first ever step-out into the erudite world of the Times.

Here's what I wrote:

Butterfly Effect Butterflies are more than metaphors to those of us who have first hand experience with the Hospice philosophy of patient-centered compassion. As a Hospice Chaplain, I provided staff, volunteers and families with this amazing book so we could remember, confronted with dying, inside that cocoon is vast consciousness. We can communicate, even non-verbally, through our presence, care and attention even to an eyelid flickering and pressure from a dry hand.

Highly recommend this brilliant and life-affirming movie which was first mentioned to me by AAUW member Denise Springer. The movie is in French with subtitles.

MOVIES | November 30, 2007
Movie Review | 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly': Body Unwilling, a Mind Takes Flight
By A. O. SCOTT
With “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” Julian Schnabel demonstrates his own imaginative freedom in every frame and sequence.