I Feel Fat

I would venture to say that most find it easier to eat sensibly and stay
active during the summer. Not me. Summer months are my fat
months. For one thing, I hate the heat and humidity of the midwest
and most times stay inside to escape. Then, the house must be
stocked with plenty of food for all the meat and potato eating guys
and their friends who are ravenous at all times of the day and night.
Picnics. Potato salad. I cook. I eat. I eat ice cream. I feel fat. I relish
the beginning of September with cool temps for walking, less cooking
and fewer people around to feed. I love fall.

Speaking of the end of the picnic season, I watched an interesting little
film directed by Peter Weir the other night, Picnic at Hanging Rock,
an adaptation of the novel by the Australian author, Joan Lindsay. It's
about an excursion by a party of girls from an exclusive private school,
who travel to Hanging Rock, in Victoria's Mount Macedon for a picnic
on St. Valentine's Day, 1900. The picnic ends in tragedy when three
girls and a teacher mysteriously vanish after climbing the rock.

Weir masterfully creates a beautiful film with a mystical dreamlike
aura and marvelous cinematography. It evokes a feel similar to
E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India with strange cave echoes
and sexual hysteria. Compounding the film's dreamlike quality is the
intriguing dialogue peppered with quotes from Edgar Allan Poe,
among others. This film, made in 1975, is a tad dated by Zamfir
panpipe music and a few women's hairstyles, but all in all is well
worth watching!

artwork: Picnic in the Mountains, Fernando Botero, 1966