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The source of my step phobia/fear. Those front steps scared me as a child. Pretty church tho, with absolutely gorgeous stained glass windows.

"The First United Methodist Church of San Augustine, Texas laid the cornerstone of its first building on January 7, 1838. At the turn of the century, the congregation moved across the street to the current location, built in 1909.
The new land was donated by Columbus Cartwright in 1897 with the stipulation that a hitching post for horses be installed and standing room for buggies be made available. To this day there is still a hitching post outside of the sanctuary.
The architectural style of the building was ahead of its time, and used cast masonry stones for the outer walls. The imposing two-story stone structure features beautiful French stained-glass windows and chimes that play twice each day. The entire building was built by a shipbuilder, so the floor of the worship area slopes like the bottom of a ship, causing all focus to end up at the altar area. Indeed, this is a unique and beautiful addition to the history here in San Augustine."

from the book "San Augustine: A Texas Treasure" by Betty and John Oglesbee

Makes My Palms Sweat....

Ok,some of you who know me pretty well know i have this slight fear/phobia about stairs. I have decided that fear comes from the steps at the Methodist church where I grew up. At the time, I needed glasses and nobody knew. Anyway, there were steep,I probably couldn't see them very well, thus my fear. Anyway, I Stumbled Upon (like Facebook, a total timewaster) this picture. Oh dear god, yikes. Not EVEN for a million bucks.

The Awards.....

More to come....for the most part liked the show. Set was fabulous. Like the past winners thing....hated the memorium part. Too much going on.....
Detail thoughts to follow. Andi think this is the first time i did not win anything at the Oscar party i go to. What's up with that!

Oscar! Finally.

The Oscar show is only days away, and I am a little behind in my predictions.... so here goes.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Well, the only suspense here is who is gonna pick up Heath Ledger's statue.
Deserving no doubt, an incredible performance.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
There was an alarming bit of news this week from fivethirtyeight.com. That news was that Taraji p. Hensen had a 51% chance of winning. No no no. My hope is Viola Davis, who gave this incredible, powerful performance. It is the shortest screen time of the nominees, so that may work against her. The buzz is for Penelope Cruz, a great performance to be sure, but i want it to be Viola Davis. So i am gonna go out on a limb and say Viola Davis. Fingers crossed.

BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

The favorites seem to go back and forth between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke. While Mickey Rourke's role is fascinating, much of this seems to be about his back story.
Sean Penn channels Harvey Milk. I want Sean Penn to win, so i am gonna say Sean Penn.

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader

I am going with Kate Winslet. Too bad Sally Hawkins was not nominated for Happy Go Lucky.

BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Without a doubt...

Equal Pay.....

Gail Collins of the NY Times sezs...

President Obama is scheduled to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law today. (This is, technically, his second bill-signing, not the first. But you cannot possibly expect us to make a fuss about legislation fixing the salary of the secretary of the interior.)

“I’m so excited I can hardly stand it,” Ledbetter said recently after the bill passed the Senate.

Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter’s case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers.

(Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers’ salaries within the first six months on the job.)

Until the Supreme Court stepped in, courts generally presumed that the 180-day time limit began the last time an employee got a discriminatory pay check, not the first. In an attempt at bipartisan comity, the Senate decided to simply restore the status quo, rejecting House efforts to make the law tougher. Even then, only five Republican senators voted for it — four women and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is currently the most threatened of the deeply endangered species known as moderate Republicans.

Ledbetter, who was widowed in December, won’t get any restitution of her lost wages; her case can’t be retried. She’s now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit.

Another was Eulalie Cooper, a flight attendant who sued Delta Air Lines in the mid-’60s when she was fired for being married. Not only did a Louisiana judge uphold the airline industry’s bizarre rules requiring stewardesses to be young and single, Cooper was denied unemployment benefits on the grounds that by getting married she left her job “voluntarily.”

But she began a pattern of litigation that eventually ended the industry’s insistence that women needed to look like sex objects in order to properly care for passengers on airplanes. Next time you talk about US Airways Flight 1549’s spectacular landing on the Hudson River, remember that the three flight attendants who kept calm in the ditched plane were all women in their 50s and give a nod to people like Eulalie Cooper.

Patricia Lorance, an Illinois factory worker, went to court after her union and employer secretly agreed to new seniority rules that discriminated against the women who had been promoted in the post-Civil Rights Act era of the 1970s. Like Ledbetter, she lost her court fight because of a ridiculous ruling about timing, which had to be fixed by Congress.

Working at a series of lower-paying jobs after the factory closed, and then disabled by physical ailments, Lorance lost track of her case long before it finally wound its way through the Supreme Court. “But to this day, I am rather proud of myself because I was not a dumb person. I believe in just standing up and fighting for your own rights,” she said in a phone interview.

Ledbetter’s real soul sister is Lorena Weeks of Wadley, Ga. Weeks, now 80, had worked two jobs to support her orphaned siblings, then struggled with her husband to set enough money aside to assure their children would be able to go to college. A longtime telephone employee, she applied for a higher-paying job overseeing equipment at the central office. Both her union and the management said the job was unsuitable for a woman because it involved pushing 30-pound equipment on a dolly, even though Weeks regularly toted around a 34-pound typewriter at her clerical job.

Weeks v. Southern Bell helped smash employers’ old dodge of keeping women out of higher-paying positions by claiming that they required qualifications only men could fulfill. But it was a long, painful fight during which Weeks was terrified that she might lose her job entirely. “I felt like I was so alone, and yet I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do. Going back to the fact my momma had died working so hard. And I knew women worked and needed a place in the world,” she said.

It’s a good day for the feisty working women who went to court to demand their rights and the frequently underpaid lawyers who championed them. They’re strangers to one another; most of them made their stands and then returned to their ordinary lives. But they’re a special sorority all the same. And Lilly Ledbetter got to go to the inauguration and dance with the new president.

“Tell her congratulations,” said Lorena Weeks.

Caroline...what's the deal? Taxes really?

All Things Considered, January 22, 2009 · Caroline Kennedy's decision to remove herself from consideration to fill New York's vacant U.S. Senate seat leaves a full field of contenders for the job.

The New York Times is reporting that problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during Kennedy's vetting process.

Nicholas Confessore, a reporter with The New York Times, says accounts vary as to why Kennedy withdrew.

"You have the governor's camp and Caroline's camp offering similar, but importantly different accounts of exactly what went down," he says.

According to Confessore, Gov. David Paterson's side said issues about Kennedy's household employees and possible tax matters prevented him from picking her. Kennedy's people, meanwhile, say Paterson had known about the issues for weeks and she withdrew because for personal reasons.

Confessore says Kirsten Gillibrand, Steve Israel, Carolyn Maloney, Thomas Suozzi and others are on Paterson's short list, noting that the governor has mentioned each of them favorably in recent days.

A decision is expected Friday.



Just because I liked the photo.

The Nominations... or Oops ( sorta).

Well, the Oscar nominations came out this morning. And, as some of you know, I sent out my predictions the night before. My results? So-so.
A number of surprises, I thought...

The Screen Actors Guild awards are this Sunday night. I should have a better sense of possible winners by then.

The recap. List of nominations will follow.

I did alright on Best Picture. 4 outta 5.
I had hoped for The Dark Knight, but The Reader was a total shock. I thought it was good, I grant you, but I was not expecting Best Picture. Tho, seeing Kate Winslet mostly naked during the first half of the movie is a nice treat. Don't see it winning. That honor will probably belong to Slumdog Millionaire.

Best Director.
Again 4 of 5. As in Best Picture I had included The Dark Knight. But, instead of DK,Stephen Daldry of The Reader got the nod. Again, a surprise.

Best Actress
Not as bad as I thought 3 1/2 out of 5. I thought Kate Winslet would get her nomination for Revolutionary Road but instead she got it for The Reader. No Sally Hawkins, that was quite a disappointment. But, my dark horse pick was included! Melissa Leo for The Frozen River. Have not seen this movie, or know anything about it.

Best Actor
5 outta 5!

Supporting.

Actress....
Pretty good. Again the 4 out of 5, I am beginning to think I'm not doing so bad after all. Instead of Kate Winslet for The Reader, which ended up in Best Actress, we got Taraji P. Henson from Benjamin Button. A disappointment....

Actor

I got 3 out of 5. I missed Robert Downey, Jr. That was fine.
And I debated and debated Michael Shannon from Revolutionary Road..


Screenplays.

Adapted..I got 4 of the 5.
Original. 2 of 5. Bummer.

Strictly speaking number wise, of the 40 nominations I got 29 1/2.

The Actual Nominations

* correct guesses
BEST PICTURE
*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
*Frost/Nixon
*Milk
The Reader
*Slumdog Millionaire

BEST DIRECTOR
*Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
*David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
*Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
*Gus Van Sant, Milk

BEST ACTOR
*Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
*Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
*Sean Penn, Milk
*Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
*Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

BEST ACTRESS
*Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
*Meryl Streep, Doubt
*Kate Winslet, The Reader

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
*Josh Brolin, Milk
*Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
*Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
*Amy Adams, Doubt
*Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
*Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
*Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River, Courtney Hunt
*Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh
In Bruges, Martin McDonagh
*Milk, Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E, Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Pete Docter

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Eric Roth
*Doubt, John Patrick Shanley
*Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan
The Reader, David Hare
*Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory — Lovestory
Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up

BEST ART DIRECTION
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Duchess
Milk
Revolutionary Road

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
Man on Wire
Trouble the Water

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En
The Final Inch
Smile Pinki
The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306

BEST EDITING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
The Class (France)
Departures (Japan)
Revanche (Austria)
Waltz with Bashir (Israel)

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
Auf der Strecke (On the Line)
Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland (Toyland)

BEST MAKEUP
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alexandre Desplat
Defiance, James Newton Howard
Milk, Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman
WALL-E, Thomas Newman

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
''Down to Earth,'' WALL-E
''Jai Ho,'' Slumdog Millionaire
''O Saya,'' Slumdog Millionaire

BEST SOUND EDITING
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

BEST SOUND MIXING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man