FAMILY ROUND-UP

Pictures
Rulizow's weblog promises pictures "if her dad gets a scanner". The scanner was purchased and installed a few weeks ago and we've learned to use it (and the accompanying image-manipulation software) well enough to essay our first picture postings. Since Blogspot doesn't seem to afford us the ability to upload images, we have created a Geocities site for Rulizow's pictures.

David's AIDS Walk
David has registered to join AIDS Walk New York, to be held on Sunday, May 20th. He has begun to enlist sponsors, each of whom pledges a minimum of $25 to support his efforts. This is the second year David will have participated. He got involved in AIDS Walk, last year, entirely on his own... without any prodding from us, without even requiring any encouragement from us. He came home one day and told us he was thinking of doing it and the next thing we knew he WAS doing it.

Richard Nixon
All the President's Men has been a favorite DVD of David's for a while now. After having seen the movie five or six times he went on to read the book...and then viewed the movie several times more. Rulizow has, in her way, caught the bug. She has latched onto the movie Dick. Though well-reviewed in many quarters it sank without a trace after its release in August, 1999. It deserves a second look -- it is a funny take on Nixon, Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein, and the early Seventies. We rented it, once again, this weekend. Rulizow watched it one-and-a-half times and then invited her friend E. over to the house and watched it again. Then, for good measure, they watched All The President's Men.

Almost Famous
The practice of journalism in the early '70's was a second theme of the weekend. We rented Almost Famous and watched it with David on Saturday. Although much has been made of the film's affection for the Rock music scene of the time somewhat less attention has been paid to its story of the protagonist's coming-of-age as a journalist. His first and enduring mentor is Lester Bangs, a journalist who loves the music but who will not compromise his integrity by getting too close to the people who make the music. Towards the end of the film William, Cameron Crowe's lightly fictionalized stand-in, faces the conflict of loyalties to the people he's been covering on one hand and to the ethics of dispassionate journalism on the other. Although the film was rich with the atmosphere of the period it depicted we in the Baslow family found ourselves just as interested in young William the chronicler.