Time to talk about anything except the weather

June 4, 2015 • 2:00 pm

by Grania Spingies

Jerry said I ought to post the tweet I saw from @AstroSamantha yesterday, amusing for me because I live in Ireland; but possibly of no consequence to anyone else. I was aghast, as I really do not want to bore anyone to tears by talking about the weather of all things. Then he suggested that it might be time for an Open Thread anyway as he is currently on a plane and on his way to Vancouver.

Here’s the Tw**t. On a typical day, that sort of cloud cover stretches over Ireland. Sometimes it’s worse.

Hence this meme that was going around on Twitter too this week. So very, very true. And sad.

CGaGY7NXIAAwpME

On the subject of Neverland, has anyone actually read the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, rather than the various Disney treatments of it? The book doesn’t extoll the virtues of childish imagination and spontaneity  quite as much as Disney would have us believe. Peter Pan is also self-centered, irresponsible and cruel – and a whole lot of fun at parties. He’s rather more complex and interesting than the rather flat daring hero that we see in the movie versions. Such, I guess, is the fate of all book to movie adaptations. Unless, of course, Peter Jackson can be persuaded to try his hand at it, in which case we might get a trilogy out of it.

Feel free to discuss anything you wish in the comments below.

117 thoughts on “Time to talk about anything except the weather”

  1. On the subject of Neverland, has anyone actually read the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, rather than the various Disney treatments of it?

    Oh, yes. Not only is Peter Pan an asshole, but Wendy is rather shallow and Tinkerbell is a real bitch — but that’s no different from Disney’s treatment of any other faery tale.

    I do recall the book being a good read.

    b&

    1. I like the tinkerbell of the real story. She’s intended to be blue collar. Even her name – it doesn’t refer to the tinkling sound of bells, it refers to the fact that her fairy family are tinkers (makers) of bells. Lowly craftsmen.

      Another thing that struck me about the novel is that at one point early on, Barrie writes that Peter still has all his baby teeth.

      That means he’s 5 or 6, not the late preteen or early teen he’s normally depicted to be. This also means that neither Wendy nor tink should be interpreted as romantic love interests. Wendy is supposed to be a full-on mother figure (just as the lost boys and Peter say, but somehow she always morphs into a love interest). And while Tink may love Peter, she either doesn’t understand humans or doesn’t really expect it to be returned (in the same way).

      1. Been a while since I read it, so I’d be reluctant to comment further on what I thought of the characters. I do remember enjoying it, much more than the Disnified versions.

        b&

        1. Anyone familiar with the stage version? Barrie apparently adapted it for teh stage himself, so I’m not sure how closely it resembles the book rather than what Disney did with it.

          1. Interestingly, I believe the play came first, and Barrie turned it into a story some years later.

            It is decades since I’ve seen it, but I do remember two features that, I believe, go right back to the first production: the parts of Mr Darling and Captain Hook are traditionally played by the same actor; and Tinkerbell is represented by a flickering light accompanied by the appropriate sound effects.

            Barrie bequeathed the royalties from both play and book to the Great Ormond St children’s hospital – to its lasting benefit.

          2. Interesting. Regarding Mr. Darling and Hook being played by the same actor,that was repeated recently by Jason Isaacs on film. A nice nod to the original, I guess.

            Another perhaps unsurprising thing that goes back to the first production is Peter being played by an adult female.

          3. Yes: firmlly in the British pantomime tradition!

            Another factoid is that Barrie invented the name Wendy for the heroine, and it subsequently became wildly popular – not so much these days, I guess. Does anyone know any other names made up for characters in works of fiction that later became popular in the real world (apart from Adam, Eve, Abraham, etc)?

          4. Real father and dreamland villain played by the same actor: see e.g. Jumanji (came to mind easily with the Pan connection). Probably lots of other movies too.
            Principal Boy in Panto was nearly always a woman’s role from early C19, it didn’t start with Barrie.

          5. So-called “pants” roles have been a mainstay of opera for ages. The first two that spring to mind are Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel and Nicklausse in Les contes d’Hoffmann. Oh — also Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, the title character in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Offenbach’s Daphnis (Offenbach had lots of pants roles), and many more.

            b&

          6. –“Principal Boy in Panto was nearly always a woman’s role from early C19, it didn’t start with Barrie.”–

            Yes, and there are good reasons for it. It’s often a starring role which is physically and thespically demanding, and it would be risky to put a young boy in a role like that. If the show runs for a long time, you’d need to recast it. Much easier to cast a petite woman who you know is talented and can pull it off.

            Luckily, Maude Adams had the reputation, acting chops and box office appeal to help make Peter Pan(and many other Barrie plays) into big successes.

      2. Well, there is that strange give me a kiss / give me a thimble sequence between Peter and Wendy in the book. That is probably where the romance angle came from.

        1. That confusion comes about because Peter doesn’t know what a kiss is. So I would say that’s more evidence of a very young protagonist (though ‘not knowing what a kiss is’ is probably unrealistic at any age).

      1. Hey — I did note that I liked the book, no? And, last time I checked, a major character (Tinkerbell) actually is a faery…though, to be fair, her gender identity isn’t addressed (that I recall)….

        b&

      1. He would way, way, way predate the church.

        He does throw good parties though, I heard the last one was a really Big Bang.

          2. I’ll admit to them being one of my guilty pleasures. Not sure they’ve got any redeeming sophisticated musical qualities, but that doesn’t stop them from being good clean…er…dirty…fun.

            b&

          3. Always loved this title. Not sure there are many of us, Ben, who enjoy AC/DC and opera!

          4. Julia Child admitted to liking Big Macs (which I can’t stand), so I figure I don’t have to feel quite so bad about enjoying a bit of metal.

            …and, on that subject, I’d have to note that Jethro Tull really does have some really good stuff, and Rush has a lot of good stuff (with rhythmic complexity that would be worthy of a Master’s thesis), and more….

            b&

          9. uh, no, Ben. I did not know about those kind of cans…And I figured by cans you were going to post something about derrières. Got to get my mind out of the gutter.

  3. That Depp/Ireland photo is great.

    I have a friend here in NYC who just retired after nearly forty years of work at the Irish Consulate. As it happens, I’m going to his retirement party this evening at the apartment of the Consulate General of Ireland (I hear that the apartment, on Park Avenue, is spectacular). In the meantime, the photo has been duly emailed to Charles (who thought, by the way, that he might have to retire to Ireland. It looks now that he will be able to stay in New York).

    1. I work on Park Ave. This is the time to insert some cliché comment like “it’s a small world,” only it’s extra clichéd because Manhattan is small, and it’s actually not all that amazing to learn of someone nearby given hundreds of thousands of people are on Park Ave. on a daily basis.

  4. Speaking of Ireland, I’ve only been to Dublin once, it’s out corporate HQ. I’m trying to talk them into sending me again this summer. Had a great time, but I kept looking for the skyscrapers. 🙂

  5. Re: Peter Jackson and Tolkien:

    The Ring trilogy: Brilliant, no one will ever do them again.

    On stretching the novella The Hobbit into 3 movies: Shame on you Mr. Jackson! But I guess you can’t blame him that much for cashing in. I’m sure there was a lot of pressure from the studio.

    1. I live in Wellington, where the Tolkien movies were made and a lot of the money put into them was spent. Can’t complain about that part. Though, like you, I can’t quite fathom the conversion of The Hobbit into something it wasn’t.

    2. My personal theory, which is mine, is that he realised that he was in a unique position to engage in some shameless self-indulgence; so he did.

      He was never going to top LOTR, no-one can now, and certainly not with The Hobbit. So he set out to please the fans and himself.

      1. Yes, that seems about right. He certainly is in position to indulge himself in film making.

        I happened to see the 3D version of the last Hobbit movie (it was a fund-raiser) and the 3D effects were pretty amazing — I’d never seen a modern 3D movie.

        We rarely go to cinemas — I prefer to watch movies at home (where my beer and my WC are close by, and I can pause the movie!)

      2. Grania, if you want to see Peter Jackson’s shameless self-indulgent side, watch Dead Alive. On second thought, don’t. The entire world is better off not seeing it. Some things cannot be unseen. 🙂

        1. if you want to see Peter Jackson’s shameless self-indulgent side, watch Dead Alive

          Or just re-watch the LOTR movies. They’re the very essence of self-indulgence.

          1. I have to agree there. I think LOTR was well over-hyped. Oh, and some of the characters were just… annoying.

            They could have been worse I suppose, they could have been Star-Wars-quaint.

            (“Not as bad as Star Wars” – that’s damning with faint praise 😉

          2. I couldn’t stand the Star Wars franchise after the first three (and they really went downhill quickly from the height of the first movie.) And I was almost exactly in the target demographic for the films.

      3. It was fan service. It is unlikely that any other works will make it to the big screen.

        It is also the only live action 3d that has ever worked for me.

    3. The Ring trilogy: Brilliant, no one will ever do them again.

      As a huge fan of the book, but not of the movies, I hope you’re wrong. I’d love to see a movie or mini-series treatment that understands and respects the material.

        1. There were the Rankin-Bass (no relation, that I know of!) productions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, and the Ralph Bakshi production.

          I thought the Rankin-Bass productions were quite good – they “right-sized” it appropriately for a younger audience. The Bakshi version, not so much. It was just – strange. Strange rotoscoped animation, weird dialog.

          3. It’s a great scene in the movie in my head, but those voices are… awful.

            My hope is that the Jackson productions (and the vast digital archive they must have generated) will one day be re-edited into something closer to the Tolkien story. Maybe in another hundred years, no rush.

          4. John Scanlon, FCD:

            Would you list the 10 most egregious deviations from the books (or your worst several) in Jackson’s movies and why you find them disturbing?

            I re-read TLOTR trilogy just 15 years ago. I thought and still think that Jackson’s movies are brilliant. But, then, I don’t expect movies to follow books in an exacting way.

            I’m still trying to figure out what people found so disturbing and why.

            Cheers, JB

          5. You didn’t address your question to me, and I’d have to re-watch the movies (which I haven’t seen in years) to come up with a list of ten…but the big omission that really stood out in the first one was the distinct lack of Tom Bombadil, and the addition I really hated was the Star Wars style wizard force battle between Gandalf and Saruman.

            And, in the Hobbit, the whole Radagast animal sled roller coaster ride especially grated.

            b&

          6. Hi Ben,

            Tom Bombadil is the one I’ve heard mentioned before. I honestly didn’t notice. I hardly remembered TB form the books. His story seemed like an ellipsis to me (I think Tolkien had a grab-bag of small stories he wanted to incorporate).

            Obviously: À chacun son goût.

            Thanks for your reply.

          7. Ben: I forgot your comment about the Hobbit movie(s). I found all three very lame and stretched to a thinness of transparency.

            I think one good movie could have been made in Jackson’s style — but he wanted to cash in. (And who am I to throw stones against that? People seemed to like the movies.)

          8. “for a younger audience”

            That is the key phrase. I saw those movies when they came out and was very disappointed.

          9. Me too. They made me cringe. I thought they were pretty awful.

            Ralph Bakshi’s attempt was definitely strange. His “proof of concept” film for working out the tools to do LOTR, Wizards, was pretty good I thought. I liked it much better than his LOTR attempt.

        2. The link you provided is to the Bakshi version. I actually recommend that people watch it, it’s just so odd.

      2. I agree. I thought the first Peter Jackson movie was pretty good, seemingly only making changes for the sake of compressing the story into a reasonable amount of time. But the second and third movies made changes that just seemed arbitrary, changing plot points for no apparent reason.

        1. Yes, ‘Fellowship was a good effort. Too bad the wheel’s came off after that.

          2. Agree entirely. I was pleasantly surprised by the first one (I always expect films of books to be shite, and I’m rarely wrong), but after that they made a complete pig’s ear of it. It was quite an achievement to get so many of the characters so totally wrong.

          4. Jeff,

            I’ll pose you the same question I posed to John Scanlon, above:

            Would you list the 10 most egregious deviations from the books (or your worst several) in Jackson’s movies and why you find them disturbing?

            Thanks, JB

          5. Sure, although I’ll say it’s not primarily the deviations that bother me. It’s how the major themes of the book were handled, Jackson as a director, and then the deviations.

            The themes of the book – conservation, the nature of power and evil, friendship, irretrievable loss from war, etc. – were handled (when they were handled) in such a clumsy, caveman, hit-them-over-the-head with it kind of way – I wish those themes would’ve been handled with greater sensitivity.

            Jackson as director. He’s less an artist and more a logistician. I’m not a movie guy, but when I watch a movie, I like to be able to say, “Wow that’s a total {director name} shot!”. There’s no sense of style. He also quickly resorts to cliche – an obvious example being the oh so dramatic slow motion death scene of Gandalf in ‘Fellowship. That technique is almost caricature.

            In terms of deviations, it’s the additions that really get me. I mean, look Peter, your team of fan-fic writers won’t be able to improve upon Tolkien, so don’t try. Anyway, here are a few:

            1. Expanded role of Arwen. How about less Arwen, and we include Tom and Goldberry? Tom is arguably the most powerful creature in ME, and we could explore the nature of power and good/evil in such scenes.
            2. The decision of Faramir to take Frodo/Sam to Minas Tirith in TTT.
            3. TTT – the warg attack, Aragorn falling off the cliff, etc.
            4. General portrayal of elves as people always walking around in a daze.
            5. Gimli becoming a “wacky”, comic-relief character.
            6. Pretty much all of ROTK – that movie is just a blur to me.
            7. ROTK – the paths of the dead is a riveting chapter in the book, where there’s a real sense of dread and menace. In the movie, it’s cartoonish.

            There’s a lot more, I’m like Maru when it comes to LOTR and the movies, I have to jump in.

          6. 1) In concept, I don’t mind an expanded role for Arwen. I think Jackson went overboard with it though. But some addition to show the relationship, how Elrond felt about it, and what it meant for an elf could have been great. All of that is in the books and or appendices. Couldn’t agree more about Tom & Goldberry. That was really disappointing.

            2) Agree. I didn’t like the way Faramir was portrayed as much less dignified, and the whole taking Sam & Frodo to Osgiliath was a major part of that.

            3) I didn’t really mind that. Of the changes introduced I thought that one was fairly well done and fit the story okay.

            4) Agree. The techniques used to make elves appear as they are portrayed by Tolkien, compared to humans, were not entirely succesful for me. But I can see that achieving that on film is difficult. I think some of the things they did worked quite well at least in some scenes though.

            5) I agree. I thought the volume knob on Legolas got turned up a bit too high sometimes too.

            6)I can see that. My main problem with it was the over the top action scenes which began to make it seem like just another big production action film where the actual story is secondary.

            7)I thought those scenes were OK.

          8. I can’t really argue with any of your points. It’s a matter of taste I think.

            The general Hollywood bombast, I expected (he and the studio wanted a blockbuster, they got it). I also thought there was too much slow-mo in many instances. And too many shots of Frodo making anguished expressions.

            1. I didn’t miss TB. Jackson had to include a love interest (I personally thought it was a pretty good choice for that. My impression after reading TLOTR trilogy at least 4 times is, still, that it is an almost exclusively male operation. That probably wasn’t going to fly in the 1990s.)

            2. I think TTT was the weakest of the movies.

            3. I also thought there were too many new magical creatures, etc.

            4. I think he was trying to make the elves appear magical and slightly menacing (that’s what I remember from the books)

            5. I enjoyed Gimli as portrayed (I didn’t remember anything in particular about his personality from the books. My impression fo the Dwarves from the books was: Gold-hungry and brutish.)

            7. The dead army was definitely over the top. Was that part of the plot in the book? I forget. I just remember them passing the path of the dead.

        2. You mean ‘the first LOTR Peter Jackson movie’ (obviously). The guy actually has a body of work preceding it. Some okay, some quite terrible (but then again, those were intended as schlock horror, similar to Frankenhooker. So I guess he “succeeded” if one takes into account the genre.)

    4. I watched the first Hobbit movie. I am waiting for a fan to cut together the three of them into a single film that is just the book. My theory is that he was smarting so much from not including “The Scouring of the Shire” in the last of Lord of the Rings movies, that he went overboard on the Hobbit.

    5. I was very taken by Tokien’s works as a kid through young adult. I would still rank him as one of the best world builders in literature. His vocation and love of linguistics as a source and viewpoint for his story making was fascinating and, I think, a key factor enabling him to create such a rich and complex world.

      I do like Jackson’s LOTR movies. There are aspects of them that I don’t mind calling amazing. But at the same time I am disappointed in them. The over the top action scenes just got out of hand. Changes to the story that did not seem necessary to facilitate the change from book to film and did not improve the story (for me). Such epic potential, and then not quite completely realized. Makes me kind of sad.

      Regarding the Hobbit movies, pretty much the same, except maybe two-fold. Though I don’t mind the expansion to three films so much, as other people have criticized. Much of the extra story in the three Hobbit films was inspired or derived from various references from the Hobbit and LOTR stories and their appendices. Often highly interpreted, of course.

      1. I most recently read the Ring trilogy at about age 40 and I still loved it. (That was about my 4th reading.)

        In my opinion pretty much all fantasy world writing since then has been a pale facsimile. I tried to read Game of Thrones, I really did. Heck, Sam Harris liked it; and I figured that would mean I would like it. But it just didn’t work for me. (And the G.R.R. == J.R.R. thing really made me want to gack.)

        I don’t expect movies to be the same as books — I never do. I don’t mind at all if the film maker does something different with it.

        I did not think that the action in the LOTR films by Jackson were out of proportion with the story (I’m not a big action film lover; there has to be a real story for it to interest me); but the Hobbit films really seemed like nothing but a vehicle for over-the-top action scenes (I’ve seen all three).

        1. Yeah. I’ve never come across anything in fantasy that comes close to The Silmarillion — Unfinished Tales — The Lord Of The Rings. I was one of those kids that deciphered dwarvish and elvish writing and learned how to write in them. I must have read them something like 20 times or more between ages 8 to 22. I have collected a variety of interesting editions of LOTR & The Hobbit. My favorite is the Silver Anniversary Edition of LOTR. Unlike the red leather bound edition, I’ve never seen another copy of it anywhere else. But I have no idea if it is actually rare or not. (google) Guess not. Looks like it’s only worth $200 – $300.

          I am with you on movies not needing to be exactly like the book. But when the film maker’s changes or additions aren’t done well? That seems to happen often. And when you are relating a story and you make changes and additions, your story telling talents will be displayed right next to the original story teller’s. When the original is very high calibre, like Tolkien, that becomes more risky.

          Interesting about Game Of Thrones. I don’t know much about it, but I guess it is inevitable that anything that becomes as popular as it has will be compared to LOTR.

  7. Irish weather: Last time I was in Ireland (Tipperary), it was in May. Rained nearly every day; but I had one lovely evening hiking.

    Wet and muddy on every hike I took in the hills.

    On my last hike, I was at about 1000-feet (300m) elevation and was snowed upon. In mid-May!

      1. glendalough to camaderry to turlough hill and then back into Glendalough. Overcast, rain, hail, sun, snow and then sun splitting weather into the valley and back to the car.

  8. In June of 1987, which Europeans remember as “The Year Without a Summer,” my partner and I took the ferry from (IIRC) Fishguard to Rosslare, and spent six weeks touring the perimeter of Eire on motorcycles. We went CCW, first all the way to Donegal and then down all the way to the Ring of Kerry, before making our way around and back up to Dublin. We saw maybe six days that it didn’t rain. And there we chanced on another couple who had made roughly the same trip, but clockwise. They saw almost no rain.

    From there, we took the ferry to Stranraer (probably from Belfast). And we spent seven weeks in Scotland, where there were seven days that it didn’t rain. And two days that it snowed–in July.

  9. Oh, great! Now we’re doing, “Spot the Entire Country” and I still can’t see it.

    I recommend all of J.M Barrie’s works, very enjoyable reads. Picked up an entire set at a library sale for $2 one time and spent the summer zipping through them.

    1. Oh, great! Now we’re doing, “Spot the Entire Country” and I still can’t see it.

      Its the second to the right.

    2. I never thought of looking into other works by him. Sounds like a good idea!

  10. > On the subject of Neverland, has anyone actually read the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, rather than the various Disney treatments of it?

    Tom Lehrer says it’s smut: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHDBL7dVgs]

    1. Man, his teeth were bright white in a time when there weren’t easily accessible whitener/brighteners.

  12. Joe Wright has a version (or re-imagining, or something) coming out later this year. For those to whom the name means little, he was the director of the Pride and Prejudice everyone was rightly praising a few posts back.

    Also: I haven’t read either, but aren’t the screen versions more based on the play than the book? And what’s that like?

    Disney, in any event, wasn’t the first sanitiser of the story: from what I gather (although I haven’t seen it either, I’m afraid) the same kind of criticsms could be directed at the silent version, and Disney was willing to make Tinkerbell more spiteful.

  14. That’s a funny on the Ireland weather. I think it was Mark Twain who said (I won’t get this exactly correct) The coldest winter he ever spent was one summer in San Francisco.

    I spent more than three years in England many years ago when apparently we are able to take all kinds of weather and I worked outside most all the time. Summer last for maybe a month or so as I remember.

    1. I lived on Treasure Island, just off the S.F.-Oakland Bay Bridge, from October ’74 – August ’76, when it was still a Navy base. Was often breezy & chilly in the summer there. Recall reading an observation long ago that Eric Burdon couldn’t have spent that many summer nights in San Francisco when he sang about a “warm San Francisco night”.

  15. Trilobite Plushie Kickstarter

    This is not a paid endorsement, and the Paleontological Research Institution is a non-profit organization which is very evolution friendly, so I hope this posting is not mistaken for spam.

    I like spam, the Hormel product, but that is another topic.

  16. I read Peter Pan for the first time about ten or twelve years ago. I’ve never actually seen the Disney movie all the way through, and I haven’t been on the ride at Walt Disney World in over twenty-five years because it has the worst line-length to ride throughput in the park! I won’t grow up.

  17. Here’s an open question I’ve always been curious about. Is anyone here a (de)convert to atheism late in life? Or, do you know anyone who has had this experience? From anecdotal experience, it seems to me once people get into their fifties, sixties and beyond, they become more religious (assuming there’s religion there to start with) rather than less.

    I ask in part because I frequently find myself wondering whether there’s any rational way to approach religion with people such as my mother, who is nearing 70 and is one of those people who posts stuff like the “I’m a Christian…you can’t change my mind” meme that Jerry shared the other day. I think when people say something like that and there’s good reason to think they’re honest, any further discussion is pointless because you won’t get past the stark conflict in epistemology, and it seems that would only become more ingrained as people age. As an aside, I think there’s good reason in many cases not to believe that there’s necessarily nothing that can change their mind because a great number of religious people have a “God box” and act with rationality towards just about everything else they do, and there’s ample evidence for that cognitive dissonance.

    1. I’m the life-long Atheist but still would say that age makes it harder to change or at least make big changes regardless of what the issue is. Also, don’t think the religious would naturally become more so with age. I’ve know some that became less….not total but not so much and that might be due to getting smarter with age?

    2. I don’t really have any advice on how to approach (de)conversion attempts with people who are obviously very committed to theism and obviously very closed-minded.

      But I do have 2 more anecdotes for you: both my parents have significantly intensified their religiosity over the last eight or nine years. They are both in their mid 60s. It’s particularly puzzling in my mom’s case, as she was a very casual theist when I was young.

      1. My parents are the same age, I suppose I pushed it a bit with “nearing 70.” 🙂 But, I’ve seen the exact same trend over the last decade. Over that time, my father decided to become a Catholic Deacon (an unpaid job requiring 5 years of study!). My mother seems to have become even more devout than him. Her FB wall is littered with ridiculous religious posts about things from “feeling angels arms around her in a car accident” to apologists knocking Stephen Fry and of course that ridiculous post about being refusing to change her mind.

        I can’t figure out if part of it is a passive aggressive backlash against my lack of religion (she knows we don’t regularly attend Church but I’ve never broached the topic with her than I don’t believe at all). The good news is, despite her best attempts to fill my kids’ heads with this nonsense is that my oldest son, who is 8, already appears not to buy any of it. I discussed the gospel reading with him a few weeks ago when my parents were visiting–it was the story about Jesus ascending into Heaven and “a cloud taking him from their sight.” He immediately declared it fake. 🙂 It makes one wonder how religions have adult converts who actually take this stuff seriously when even (unindoctrinated) children find it all to be absurd. And that was before we got to the part of the reading about snake handling and poison.

      2. I think we should be every bit as wary of an reluctant to engage in personally-targeted deconversion attempts as we would like the faithful to be of converting us.

        If you have somebody approaching you with perceived curiosity about potentially “coming out,” but who hasn’t yet worked out details like where morality comes from or is still hung up on thinking the Bible is history or what-not, then, yes, proceed with caution — just as you’d want a Christian to be honest and open with you if you approached with curiosity about what this whole “saved by the blood of the lamb” thing is all about.

        But to go after somebody who’s not interested…not cool.

        This is entirely separate from public outreach efforts like Jerry’s new book, of course. It’s just the personalized version we should be distrustful of. Think wholesale, not retail.

        b&

        1. Agreed, and this goes even more for family members you have an interest in maintaining a hospitable relationship with. Of course, with the extremely religious, they don’t follow this rule. The best that can be hoped for is mutual agreement not to broach the subject.

          As is pointed out so many times on this site, any conversation around the topic is basically for the sake of others who hear it, like kids. The fact that my 8 year old is calling bullshit is great. He’s well on his way to being inoculated against nonsense. And this all happened quite naturally without my explicit persuasion one way or the other. All I tell him is to think for himself and ask what reasons there are to believe something is true. Thinking thst a resurrected zombie floating off to Heaven in a cloud is fake soon follows…

    3. Well, I’m going to be 71 next month and have been an atheist since I was 17 or so, despite being raised Irish-Catholic. I can’t imagine turning to religion for any reason at this stage in my life.

      I wonder if atheists who turn to religion were really atheist or lapsed religionists having a worry about the future.

    4. I was raised in a family of moderate, liberal protestant Xians.

      I don’t think any of my siblings’ faiths survived university, as mine did not either.

      My mother is still a believer; and, at age 80, she isn’t going to change her mind.

      I recently commented supporting an atheist biologist friend on FB. He was going back and forth with a Xian friend who laid out the usual nonsense talking points from her religion and some Creationist websites. It really floors me that the believers think they are going to convince anyone with save yourself nonsense and Jesus of the Bible.

      I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

      I suggested that she read your book (WEIT) and I even offered to mail her a copy. We’ll see …

      1. I would probably still have some sort of faith today were it not for the sharp increase in my parents’ faith. I should point out that this is a sharp increase in what was already a pretty conservative and strict interpretation of Catholicism. They were already the types who’d attend daily Mass during Lent, taught Natural Family Planning, obviously completely anti-birth control, etc.

        As soon as I left home for college, the word that described me best would probably be apatheist. I immediately stopped attending Church and always had some vague deistic notions when I did believe; e.g. wondering what the point of praying for “God’s will” is. Won’t he do as he wills anyway? But about 7 or 8 years ago as my Mom’s faith really started ramping up, it seems every conversation involved something about God, I started thinking about things more. Plus, having a young son, I was doing the typical thinking that goes through the minds of people who have “fallen away” about maybe better adhering to my religious faith. So I decided to start learning about it and lo and behold, I came to the conclusion that religion is, as George Carlin puts it, “the greatest bullshit story ever told.” I might add that Catholicism is far and away the leader in this category with mountains of theology built upon a foundation of bullshit (with a good deal of blood to hold it together).

        1. Having a child helped me crystallize my thoughts as well (I’m responsible for this little person?! Yikes!) I’ve been a de facto atheist since university. I don;t think my wife ever believed any of the nonsense (though her mom and dad appear to!).

          We talk very openly and very clearly with our son about religion, especially I do. I’ve read all the major religious texts, been to countries where they are practiced, etc.

          I bought an excellent kids book on it that I can whole-heartedly recommend: The Kids Book of World Religions by Glossop and Mantha. A decent overview of the world’s religions and what their adherents believe.

          We’ve gone through the book with him (and had many, many other conversations) and told him that people believe this stuff, it’s all different and contradictory, and we don’t believe any of it. But it’s important for you to know about it because your are going to be surrounded by people that do believe it and those beliefs affect their behavior.

  18. At this point, I’m dismayed but no longer surprised by the sanitation/Disneyfication of many otherwise tragic tales (Pocahontas? Hunchback? REALLY?)

    I probably did read Peter Pan years ago, as I started collecting children’s books illustrated by Arthur Rackham back in college, and Peter Pan is on that now-dusty shelf.

    Finding Neverland really grabbed me, as stories of motherless boys tend to do. So after seeing the film, I researched the back story.

    Whatever Peter Pan suggests, whatever happy ending is kind-of implied in Finding Neverland, it’s nothing compared with the heartbreaking story of the real Lost Boys. Of which Barrie himself was one.

    http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/findingneverland.php

    http://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/j-m-barries-lost-boys

    Just reading the summaries was enough to prevent me from wanting to read the stories in depth.

    Jeannine

  19. I read the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, and I’ve never seen the Disney version. The book is responsible for at least two other books: The Wendy Dilemma and The Peter Pan Syndrome by psychologist Dan Kiley.

  22. I live in the N/West of the UK and we get our fair share of rain, but I must admit Ireland and Scotland are two of the wettest places I have been to. lol

  23. I was going to read the original PP as a child. I was all excited finding it in the library and everything. I was disappointed at how dense it seemed and didn’t try. (I was a good reader, but even as a 6 year old or whatever I had limits …)

    As for Ireland, well, from what I understand it is like the northwest coast of NA – one trades having lots of rain for having lots of green stuff the rest of the time.

    My friend Raven pointed out that there’s no way Disney could have done the original verison of virtually anything – depicting them on screen would make them no-longer kids movies (some relative to the US at least, like Pocahontas: Raven as a native american felt obligated to point out that tribes in the area in question likely would have had topless women during the summer, for example).

  24. Barrie was once known for more than Peter Pan–he was a massively successful playwright, with hits like “Quality Street” and “The Admirable Crichton,” both of which were adapted as films.

    The hidden treasure among these is “Mary Rose,” which I very highly recommend. It’s one of the most poignant ghost stories you’ll ever read. Alfred Hitchcock was besotted with the play and tried to film it, but the studios decided the project wasn’t commercial enough. Perhaps they were right, because “Mary Rose” is less concerned with horror or spookiness than with expressing a deep sadness at the transience of love and memory.

  25. The movie, Finding Neverland, is among my favorites, It features several minutes of the Peter Pan stage play, brilliantly done. The actress playing Peter makes my hair stand on end with her performance.

    I actually hate the “believe in fairies” sentiment, but damn, the stagecraft is powerful.

    Makes me want to see the play.

  26. I’ve not read the book, but I did see the UK’s National Theatre Production of Peter Pan back in 1997 (twice).

    It was the first time I’d ever seen such amazing theatrical wizardry for the huge sets, and I was suitably impressed. However, what really stuck with me was how dark the story was, and the closing moments of the play sent shivers down my spine. It’s not a pleasant story.

    In the book, there is apparently this passage: “The boys on the Island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two.”

    “Thins them out”? That’s a rather scary phrase, don’t you think?

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