Found from Swiss-Miss

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Read full article here: Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

I found this article via Metafilter, where users started snarking against the movie.  In the Metafilter comments, a user named Miko writes a great summary of the movie’s message:

Anyone who thinks of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a one-level, heartwarming Christmas feelgood movie has the wrong expectations – or just isn’t thinking about it. The author’s observations are obvious in the film; they’re the setup. George is a young man with dreams, but his sense of responsibility – overdeveloped, probably – and the needs of others make him sacrifice his dreams. There’s no smarmy sense that obviously one needs to sacrifice one’s dreams for the well-being of others; portraying that shallowly is what Hallmark Christmas Specials do. Instead, the sacrifice is slow, anguished, an excruciating death by a thousand cuts. Capra meant the viewers to notice, and be pained, every time George receives another disappointment… Capra wasn’t hiding this from the viewer.

…The heartwarming part is that George is able to make a conscious decision to accept the price. Can you say the same? When George decides not to die, he realizes the life he’s been despairing at – with the loud annoying kids, the dilapidated house, the “broken-down old building and loan,” the deferred dreams – is actually a pretty good, in fact damned lucky life. People love him; he has resources he never bothered to assess; his life has meaning. If you have never felt that way, suddenly profoundly appreciative of the basic goodnesses in your own life, I’d wager you’ve never yet nearly lost your life. Because that is exactly how a person feels when you realize that your day-to-day stresses and strains and disappointments and bothersome entanglements are not in the way of you living your life; they are your life. The fact that you never got to become and engineer and see the oilfields of Venezuelas, or whatever it is for you, tends to fall dramatically in relative importance.

The movie is dark and depressing for a reason. This is a challenging message, one a lot of people really don’t want to hear, and yet it turns out to be pretty true in most lives.

Miko’s last sentence sums up the reason why It’s a Wonderful Life is my favorite movie of all time.  There are challenges and difficulties, failed dreams and changed plans, but after all that, it is a wonderful life.

Also, some photos of the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center.

Taken on a nice October weekend that started in the city and ended in the country.

See the photo in context at: Schmap entry for Trident Booksellers & Cafe (now for iPhone!)

This is my view most Saturday mornings: breakfast at the Trident Cafe, with a coffee to wake me up and a book to read.

Real estate sources said the Southport, Conn., developer reportedly has a 120,000-square-foot lease deal with Cengage Learning, a developer of educational technologies and support products that previously operated as Thomson Learning. Cengage will be the first office tenant in the redeveloped Channel Center complex in South Boston.

More at: Cengage Learning lease is a lift for Channel Center

A quick Google search for Channel Center Boston brought up a few pics. Looks like a nice new home for the merged Thomson Learning and Houghton Mifflin.

The Google map below shows that the new digs (B) are only a short walk from the old digs (A). Not that far to move, though it’ll be a brisk walk back to Flour and Lucky’s.

View Larger Map

Good luck to all Cengagers involved in the move!

I thought others might like to have la Virgen on their computers, so I posted these images to Flickr for all to download and enjoy.

Schmap is an online travel guide, and they apparently use Flickr photos tagged with Creative Commons rights to create photo galleries.

See the St. Louis Schmap here.

It’s a pretty ingenious way to grab photos off the web for free.  I feel like a published photographer.

Taken from the side of the Charles river on July 4.

Toys that we play with when we’re children can affect our future career path, “in the same way that language is supposed to affect thought.” I’ve recently had similar thoughts – the work I do with content inventories and information design seems to follow the same basic thought pattern as assembling a gray, Mark I Iron Man out of Legos without reading any instructions.

Full talk below – beware that only about 1/30 of the talk has anything to do with the ideas above.

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Bonus link to this awesome video of the secret Lego Vault with every Lego set ever made, which shows several sets I remember as a kid.