Dear family:
For what it's worth . . .
As you know, my friends and I all trade our "best of" lists each year, and here's mine. Lots of this probably won't be interesting, but you can skim over it to see which movies, books, etc. I enjoyed most last year.
Best Travel: Cappadocia in the heartland of Turkey: sleeping in cave dwellings, hot air ballooning at dawn, and particularly, hiking with a local Turkish guide, Mehmet, into a 10th-century Christian church hidden from persecution by being carved into the walls of the canyon. And a close runner-up: the Four Seasons Istanbul.
Worst Travel: Flying Olympic Airways' prop-plane service from Athens to Santorini, and, during a nosedive, telling Julia good-bye.
Best Acquisition: A Christmas gift from my Dad--an alarm clock that projects the time onto the ceiling, which I love much more than any adult should.
Overall Highlight of 2006: Kathy Griffin, Live at the Nokia Theatre. I'm absolutely the target audience for this sort of stand-up comedy, which consisted of nearly 2 hours of scathing commentary on celebrity culture and the Bush administration.
Best Movies: While in 2005 my favorite films were movies that explored Big Issues like race (Crash); or class/gender (Pride and Prejudice), in 2006 I had a very different experience: the movies I found most satisfying were not the movies that aspired to win awards (Babel; The Last King of Scotland; Little Children), but were instead movies aiming simply to be popular entertainment . . . and that so successfully revived and revised the conventions of popular entertainment--through great writing and acting--that they felt completely fresh and new and, yes, deserving of popularity. So of my top 5 movies of the year, only Notes on a Scandal has the sort of pedigree I'd think would merit a place on a Top 10 list, while the other four movies are solidly rooted in, while also transforming, the formulas of popular entertainment: the road trip move (Little Miss Sunshine); the romantic comedy (The Holiday); the innocent-in-the-big-city (The Devil Wears Prada); and of course, the Bond movie (Casino Royale).
Best Movie of the Year: Casino Royale
Top 10:
1. Casino Royale
2. Notes on a Scandal
3. The Holiday
4. The Devil Wears Prada
5. Little Miss Sunshine
6. The Queen
7. The Pursuit of Happyness
8. An Inconvenient Truth
9. Children of Men
10. Blood Diamond
Best Performances:
Actress: Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza, Babel
Supporting Actor: Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Most overrated:
Jennifer Hudson's performance in Dreamgirls. If good acting is simply SINGING REALLY LOUD, she deserves an Oscar. But it isn't and she doesn't. Moreover, she was so vacant and expressionless that I found myself actively rooting for her character's demise, which is not what I'd guess the filmmakers had in mind. I really wish I'd followed my gut and skipped this movie, which I thought was dull and meaningless.
Best DVD: Da Ali G Show [HBO]. I'd never heard of this show until the Borat film generated so much publicity for its creator, Sacha Baron Cohen, and while I'm not a fan of the Borat movie, I'd urge everyone to check out at least one episode of Da Ali G Show, which consists of Sacha Baron Cohen, in disguise, interacting with various American civilians and celebrities, none of whom know that he is not really the uneducated rapper (Ali G); Kazakh journalist (Borat); or Austrian fashion journalist (Bruno) he is pretending to be. While veering occasionally into poor taste, the jaw-dropping interviews he conducts with everyone from Donald Trump to Newt Gingrich are not just the funniest, but also the most morally penetrating, comedy I've seen in years. Netflix this--at least one disk. I've never seen anything like it.
Best Book: Gilead [Marilynne Robinson]. I can understand why some would find this book to slow or episodic, but I found immersion in the heart and mind of an aged, faithful Protestant minister in 1950s Iowa to be a deeply and quietly moving experience, and I appreciated the way this book treated with dignity and respect a protagonist representative of persons of faith, avoiding wholesale the cynicism towards organized religion found in most of the canonical art and literature of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Best Theatre: The Trip to Bountiful [Signature Theatre Company]. As is fairly typical, an Off-Broadway production trumped all the much-buzzed-about Broadway and West End shows I saw this year.
Best Opera: The Ring Cycle [Oper Koln]. Maybe, some year, I'll see a terrific opera production by someone other than the great Robert Carsen, but not this year. His humanizing and engrossing take on what could otherwise be a really long 4 nights at the opera was as good as opera gets, and I'll never think of Wagner's mythology again without seeing the tremendous imagery employed in this production: the desiccated Rhein river, reduced to a waste-choked trickle by environmental ills; the frozen corpses of the fallen soldiers rising back to life during the famous "Ride of the Valkyries," and especially the downpour of rain quenching the fires raging across the set in the final minutes of the 16 hour marathon. I'd felt a nervousness about climbing this mountain of an opera, and am glad to have had the experience in such a smart, relevant, and engrossing production.
Best Art: Americans in Paris [National Gallery, London]. Sheer, unadulterated beauty in room after room after room.
Best TV: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip I'm ashamed that this was the best TV I saw, which really speaks more to the fact that I didn't watch much TV, and clearly missed all the shows that people really seem to think are good: The Wire; 24; The Office; Heroes; Friday Night Lights. Glad there's such a thing as Netflix. And while Studio 60 is hardly a show to love, it doesn't deserve its status as the whipping boy of TV. I enjoyed it.
Best of Sports: Bleacher seats and rowdy crowds at the first Yankees play-off game. Good times . . .
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Our ancestral manor in England . . .
Dear family:
I thought you might be interested in seeing the Packer manor in England that our ancestor built and owned for several generations before losing it. It's now owned by another family. And if you remember that movie version of Pride and Prejudice that was released in 2005, you've seen "our" home--it's actually the home that Elizabeth and her sisters live in throughout the film, and they filmed all the interior scenes there, and the actresses actually lived in the bedrooms while shooting the film so as to really make it feel like their home. So you might want to rent the movie again--it shows a lot of the house.
Its real name is Groombridge Place, and the estate had been owned by earls and nobles for centuries, but then, the Earl of Dorset accumulated big gambling debts so our ancestor John Packer bought the estate in 1618 for 3,400 pounds. Then, the English King Charles I was beheaded in the English Civil War, and because our ancestors were supporters of the king, the castle at Groombridge was destroyed. But eventually, Cromwell and the rebels were beat and the royalty was restored, at which point, Philip Packer build the manor house at Groombridge, and named it Groombridge Place, which still stands today (and was used in the movie). Philip Packer was a friend of the famous architect Christopher Wren (who built St Paul's Cathedral in London), and designed the new manor house according to his architectural principles. Then, the Packers planted the famous gardens surrounding the manor that are among the most famous gardens to visit in England today--and Philip passed away sitting in his secret garden, at which point the younger Philip, age 19, inherited the manor. But apparently the family was in debt, so Philip tried to find a wealthy heiress to marry. He found one, Ann, who was 21 years older than him, and he secretly married her, but she went mad, and for some legal snag, Philip wasn't able to access her inheritance, so when he died in his early 30s, his descendants couldn't keep the property and it was turned over to court, where it was eventually sold to someone else.
Within this link, there are a number of small pictures, which you can click on to enlarge:
http://www.icangarden.com/pix/groom.cfm
http://www.enjoyengland.com/Attraction/Groombridge/Garden/136691/Groombridge-Place-Gardens-and-Enchanted-Forest.htm
A timeline:
http://www.groombridge.co.uk/his_time.htm
So, long story short, another family now owns the home, but they let people visit the gardens. The chapel on the grounds contains the tombs of Philip, his wife, and others. I'll contact the family that now owns it to see if they'll let me visit the chapel and tour their home next time I'm there.
Also, the manor shows up in a Sherlock Holmes story, if you're interested in reading it. The author of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, lived just 4 miles away, and spent a lot of time visiting friends in Groombridge Place. So he uses it as the setting of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Valley of Fear," and calls it "Birlstone Manor" in it.
The part of England where the manor is, about 1 hour south of London, is really and truly my favorite area of all England--each time I've been in that area, I've been just overwhelmed by its beauty and have thought, "This is exactly where I'd want to retire to." I had no idea til this week that this was where our family was from--I just assumed they'd lived up in northern England somewhere.
I tracked down a copy of Donna Packers book on our English ancestors on amazon.com. It's out of print, so the cheapest availabel version was going for $95, so if you ever need a copy, let me know and I'll photocopy mine for you, since the other copies were hundreds of dollars each.
Love,
Trev
I thought you might be interested in seeing the Packer manor in England that our ancestor built and owned for several generations before losing it. It's now owned by another family. And if you remember that movie version of Pride and Prejudice that was released in 2005, you've seen "our" home--it's actually the home that Elizabeth and her sisters live in throughout the film, and they filmed all the interior scenes there, and the actresses actually lived in the bedrooms while shooting the film so as to really make it feel like their home. So you might want to rent the movie again--it shows a lot of the house.
Its real name is Groombridge Place, and the estate had been owned by earls and nobles for centuries, but then, the Earl of Dorset accumulated big gambling debts so our ancestor John Packer bought the estate in 1618 for 3,400 pounds. Then, the English King Charles I was beheaded in the English Civil War, and because our ancestors were supporters of the king, the castle at Groombridge was destroyed. But eventually, Cromwell and the rebels were beat and the royalty was restored, at which point, Philip Packer build the manor house at Groombridge, and named it Groombridge Place, which still stands today (and was used in the movie). Philip Packer was a friend of the famous architect Christopher Wren (who built St Paul's Cathedral in London), and designed the new manor house according to his architectural principles. Then, the Packers planted the famous gardens surrounding the manor that are among the most famous gardens to visit in England today--and Philip passed away sitting in his secret garden, at which point the younger Philip, age 19, inherited the manor. But apparently the family was in debt, so Philip tried to find a wealthy heiress to marry. He found one, Ann, who was 21 years older than him, and he secretly married her, but she went mad, and for some legal snag, Philip wasn't able to access her inheritance, so when he died in his early 30s, his descendants couldn't keep the property and it was turned over to court, where it was eventually sold to someone else.
Within this link, there are a number of small pictures, which you can click on to enlarge:
http://www.icangarden.com/pix/groom.cfm
http://www.enjoyengland.com/Attraction/Groombridge/Garden/136691/Groombridge-Place-Gardens-and-Enchanted-Forest.htm
A timeline:
http://www.groombridge.co.uk/his_time.htm
So, long story short, another family now owns the home, but they let people visit the gardens. The chapel on the grounds contains the tombs of Philip, his wife, and others. I'll contact the family that now owns it to see if they'll let me visit the chapel and tour their home next time I'm there.
Also, the manor shows up in a Sherlock Holmes story, if you're interested in reading it. The author of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, lived just 4 miles away, and spent a lot of time visiting friends in Groombridge Place. So he uses it as the setting of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Valley of Fear," and calls it "Birlstone Manor" in it.
The part of England where the manor is, about 1 hour south of London, is really and truly my favorite area of all England--each time I've been in that area, I've been just overwhelmed by its beauty and have thought, "This is exactly where I'd want to retire to." I had no idea til this week that this was where our family was from--I just assumed they'd lived up in northern England somewhere.
I tracked down a copy of Donna Packers book on our English ancestors on amazon.com. It's out of print, so the cheapest availabel version was going for $95, so if you ever need a copy, let me know and I'll photocopy mine for you, since the other copies were hundreds of dollars each.
Love,
Trev
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
A Whole New World
Okay, this is my first time blogging and I'm sure it will be a miserable failure, but I'm not afraid. Spence and Sarah, the house is beautiful. It reminds me of mine, all except for the beautiful part. I do have a lawn, but it's dying. My wife's dog has ruined it. We're excited to see Matt when he gets here and Trevor, as soon as you figure out how to upload pictures I'd love to see some from your trip to Japan. In light of the successful trip to Hawaii that Mom and Dad took we have been talking with some of the other siblings about a trip to Hawaii in the summer of '08. What's the level of interest in something like that? It would obviously be a nightmare trying to figure out schedules but we think it could be a lot of fun.
I've probably just violated every rule known to blogging, and I'm not quite sure how what I just did differs from emailing, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in another decade. Peace, out.
Cam
I've probably just violated every rule known to blogging, and I'm not quite sure how what I just did differs from emailing, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in another decade. Peace, out.
Cam
Sunday, April 22, 2007
My first blog posting . . .
I'm not exactly sure how to do this, so this is a test run before I try uploading pictures. Tif: thanks so much for putting this together. I've loved reading the other postings.
The "highlight" for me of the past week was getting a physical for the first time in 7 years or so. Last time I had blood drawn, I actually passed out, so that added to my reluctance. I told the nurse about passing out, and she said that never once had a woman passed out when she was drawing blood, but that guys passed out every once in a while. I tried to keep her talking the whole time to distract my mind from the thought of test tube after test tube (6 in all!) draining me.
My doctor loves Mormons. He married a Japanese woman, and he says they had lots of positive interactions with Mormons in Japan. Also, since this is New York, several minor celebrities come to his office for their check-ups: Morgan Freeman, Jean Smart (from 24), etc.
I'll get the results this week, and I'm sure they're fine. That said, he told me that my hearing was "not great." I said, "What does that mean?" And he then said, "It's normal, but not great." And so I said again, "So which one is it? Normal or not great?" This is the WRONG THING TO SAY TO A HYPOCHONDRIAC. I never figured out what he meant, exactly, but since he says there's nothing to be done, I guess I'll just keep tracking it over time. I haven't noticed not being able to hear as well as others. Weird.
I'm going to click "Publish" to see if this works, and will upload pictures when I can figure out how to do so--
Love,
Trev
The "highlight" for me of the past week was getting a physical for the first time in 7 years or so. Last time I had blood drawn, I actually passed out, so that added to my reluctance. I told the nurse about passing out, and she said that never once had a woman passed out when she was drawing blood, but that guys passed out every once in a while. I tried to keep her talking the whole time to distract my mind from the thought of test tube after test tube (6 in all!) draining me.
My doctor loves Mormons. He married a Japanese woman, and he says they had lots of positive interactions with Mormons in Japan. Also, since this is New York, several minor celebrities come to his office for their check-ups: Morgan Freeman, Jean Smart (from 24), etc.
I'll get the results this week, and I'm sure they're fine. That said, he told me that my hearing was "not great." I said, "What does that mean?" And he then said, "It's normal, but not great." And so I said again, "So which one is it? Normal or not great?" This is the WRONG THING TO SAY TO A HYPOCHONDRIAC. I never figured out what he meant, exactly, but since he says there's nothing to be done, I guess I'll just keep tracking it over time. I haven't noticed not being able to hear as well as others. Weird.
I'm going to click "Publish" to see if this works, and will upload pictures when I can figure out how to do so--
Love,
Trev
Friday, April 13, 2007
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Cousin Sleepover
We finally had the cousin sleepover that has been in the planning for a while. In fact Brayden said to me, "Mom I planned this party when I was 7 and now we are having it when I when Im 8!" So it took a while but it was worth the wait. We started out with pizza then moved on to dirt dessert which consist of ice cream, oreo cookies and gummy worms. Then we headed outside for a very creative fort making which included a jacuzzi. We also dug some holes, played some games, won prizes, had a dance off, watched 2 movies and finally fell asleep after midnight. The Packer boys can party all night long! It was a fun night but it wasn't complete with out our cousins Caleb, Ameila, and Olivia. So next time you guys are in town we will do it again. Enjoy the slide show!
Lisa
Lisa
APRIL FOOLS DAY
As most of you know April Fools is my second favorite holiday (Christmas beats it by just a hair) but I just love a good joke! Life has been a bit crazy and I didn't think I had one in me this year until I remembered a particular picture of Zak that was just to good to pass up. So with the help of my husband (who has insisted on being my partner in crime instead of recipient of all jokes) we came up with this. For those of you who are out of state I hope you can enjoy it and I want to give a big thanks to Zak for being a great sport about the flyers going on the doorsteps of all his ward members. His bishop even posted it on the bulletin board at church. Thanks Zak for making this holiday one of the best!!!
Chip and Lisa
Halloween
We had a Halloween party at our house and here are some of the fun pictures. T.J. & Nikki won the prize for best costume as the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Victory!!!
It was a long, hard fight! Coming from 7th place to claim the gift card, and the coveted title of Packer Family March Madness Champion. ZakATTACK warns all to beware of pride because you will eventually fall!
St. George - May 06
These are some pictures from when we went down to St. George for Grandma's funeral. A few of us went to hike "The Narrows" one morning, and thanks to Zak, we only had to hop 2 "No Trespassing" signs to make it up there!! Once up there we found out that it's actually not hikable anymore, however, and we still had a very pretty little hike!!! -Tiff-
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