The Stuffed Bears

Jason's First Christmas

Jack and I gave him some stuffed bears that I made. Aunt Leah helped me at the last minute getting the pieces together as I finished knitting them.

Hazel with her Cousin Bailey

They had a great Christmas together!

Lowell D Smith Obituary in the New York Times

Hallowe'en 4 x 4

Even though movie lists are so common, I thought a list of scary movies for Adults along with a list for Kids would be good for Hallowe'en.

The Kids list has 4 movies that will satisfy the scare factor but won't give lifelong nightmares. Actually, each one gets campier the older you get. So, if your kids are fascinated (and scared) by horror movies, give them these to watch. You'll be starting a lifelong love of the fiendish and creepy. 3 of them involve outsized creatures. I think for kids, seeing something they recognize but in a grotesque fashion, can be horrifying.

The Crawling Eye (1958)
aka The Trollenberg Terror

This one scared me as a kid. The image of a young girl in a room by herself and the alien eye on the other side trying to get her with its tentacles was so scary. But it is all tolerable in the end.


Food of the Gods (1976)

Just the TV commercials scared me. Nothing like giant rats gnawing on your arm or crawling all over a farm house to terrify young minds. Bert I. Gordon was known for directing these things. Love his initials, don't you?


Them! (1954)

The last on my list of overgrown things. Nuclear waste in the U.S.A. didn't create new species like Gamera or Rodin. It just made our creepy crawlers bigger and deadlier. Them! is a classic. Don't let your kids miss it.


The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

Even Disney can make an effective thriller for kids. Bette Davis shines in this spooky tale.



And now for the Adults.....

Creepy is definitely what gets me most as an adult. While Leatherface stars in the best of the true terror for me, these 4 films have a more lasting creep factor.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Without a doubt, the movie that can give me nightmares. Candace Hilgloss plays someone so miserable at life that she is equally miserable in death. Herk Harvey the director is the ghoulish man she envisions throughout the film. Get the Criterion edition since it has some interesting extras.


Suspiria (1977)

If you can let go of a dependence for strong narrative and give yourself wholeheartedly to a film, get this one. No film has a more beautiful use of color with a more repulsive subject matter. That juxtaposition is at the heart (film allusion) of what I believe is Argento's best film.


Peeping Tom (1960)

Come on...a photographer taking shots of the women he tortures and kills as he's doing it by the Director of The Red Shoes! Oh, but it's true. And what a creepy film this is. I seem to remember that it had been banned in several locales. The subject matter alone is enough to turn your stomach. But the shots are so well designed you just have to keep watching.


Les Diaboliques (1955)

Only get this original French version. You will be so immersed (film allusion) in this film that you won't know what's going on. See it now.

Survey for Women Experiencing Hot Flashes

The cooling strap for hot flash relief and other episodic body heating problems is getting closer to becoming a reality. I'm writing with two requests:

(1) Would you mind spending about 5 minutes between now and Monday completing a brief user-preferences survey (see link below), and
(2) will you ask 3 of your most reliable, flashing friends to do the same? All answers will be strictly confidential and no one will be contacted later.

Your help will give me the critical number of respondents that I need for the marketing survey portion of my business plan.


You'll find the survey at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=X2n1ZNOpQWZx1_2buD5aV_2fSA_3d_3d>


Some recent developments with the company:

--Thanks to a grant from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA, Villanova U. thermal management engineers will deliver a finished prototype by January.

--The Keystone Innovation Zone/BioLaunch611 is providing funding for marketing and PR consultation for Life Quality Technologies (LQT) to get it going faster--website coming soon.

--LQT will get a little press in the next supplement to The Scientist (what--you don't get The Scientist?), which features economic development/innovation in the SE Pennsylania technology cluster. LQT was chosen as an example of an interesting start-up technology company with high growth potential.

Please pass this link to anyone who might benefit from it.

Lowell Smith

Yesterday at UCLA Medical Center, our friend Lowell Smith died after a bout with lung cancer.
He was 56 years old, or at least that's what he was admitting to. Lowell and I had a unique friendship. I was one of the few people to know him after his dancing career. He still had a dance career as choreographer and ballet master. But, I met him after he retired from dancing himself.
I was fortunate to spend a couple of weeks with him in L.A. before he went into the hospital. Those weeks were some of the best I've had.
This still is from some footage I shot while we were together. Hopefully, I can edit something meaningful from it.

Irene Williams on LOGO's Real Momentum