After the Happily Ever After.

nito103 | Deposit Photos

For the past couple of months, I've fallen once again into the habit of watching holiday rom-coms in the evenings. This year, I even succumbed to the lure of a subscription to the Fount of All Rom-Com Bliss, the Hallmark streaming service. (I made a rule, though, that I would never watch a movie rated less than 4.1 out of 5. This was after clicking through, at the end of one movie, to one that "others have also watched", and discovering it was terrible. Turned out it was a 3.2 or something.)

I've seen way more than enough of these to have the formula down: boy meets girl; boy/girl hates girl/boy on sight; circumstances throw them together enough times so that they decide the other isn't as annoying as first thought; boy/girl tells a lie by either omission or commission; girl/boy says to sidekick, "He/she lied to me! I can't trust him/her!"; boy/girl redeems him/herself somehow; girl/boy forgives them; they kiss; roll the credits. The implication is that they're on their way to Happily Ever After ("HEA" for short).

By the end of this year's HEA rodeo (as in "this ain't my first"), I began to wonder about the long-term viability of some of these HEAs. To me, at least some of the couples had a glaring incompatibility or two. Sometimes it was "I've changed for you!" -- when of course change is unlikely to stick unless you do it for yourself and not some extrinsic reason like keeping a partner.

Last night I watched Bells Are Ringing for the umpteenth time. The film version was released in 1960. Judy Holliday plays Ella Peterson, an operator for Susanswerphone, an answering service in New York City. (Kids: Before voicemail, there were answering machines, and before answering machines, there were answering services -- companies that employed real people as operators to answer your phone for you and take a message, then give you your messages when you called in.) Instead of just taking messages, though, Ella needs to her clients: she pretends to be Santa for a little boy who won't eat his spinach; she takes messages for a French restaurant in a French accent; and so on. But with one client, Jeffrey Moss (played by Dean Martin), she adopts the manner of a little old lady and calls herself Mom to cover for the crush she has on him. Jeffrey is a successful playwright whose partner has quit working with him, and now he has a crippling case of writer's block -- he doesn't believe he can make it on his own. When he doesn't answer his phone one day, Ella goes to his apartment and, as Melisande Scott, encourages him to start writing again. Things progress from there -- she involves herself in other clients' lives, too, and there's a subplot involving a bookie operation -- but the main plot line is that Jeffrey falls in love with Melisande, and Ella can't bring herself to admit that she has lied to him about who she is. At the end, he figures it out on his own, the bookies get arrested, Jeffrey and Ella kiss, and the credits roll. Boom, Happily Ever After.

But Jeffrey is going to have to change his lifestyle a lot to keep her. He's involved in the New York theater scene, with women throwing themselves at him and calling him dahling, and Ella is no good at that game. This is 1960, so presumably Ella would give up her job when they marry, and they would live together in...his bachelor apartment? Would she suck it up and attend the glittering parties that she hates? Or would she convince Jeffrey to give up city life, and they'd find a little farm upstate and only travel into the city for premieres or something? 

I mean, I still love the movie -- "Just In Time" has been my earworm all day -- but it just makes you wonder how long the relationship will survive. 

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This is a post about the US invasion of Venezuela, too.

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Nicolás Maduro is a bad guy. He ran a brutal regime that sent millions of Venezuelans running for the border, and he refused to give up his power even though he was defeated in democratic elections in both 2018 and 2024. Venezuelans celebrated the news that the US had swept in under cover of night and snatched up him and his wife for trial; he'd been indicted in New York in late March 2020 on charges of running a cocaine narcoterrorism outfit. (If this is news to you, as it was to me, think about what else was happening in late March 2020.)

When asked what comes next, Trump didn't seem to have a clue. Nobody in his administration did, either. Then Trump claimed he would run the country. Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is acting as interim president, and the Venezuelan army backs her. US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is quoted as saying that the US is negotiating with her, although the negotiations sound a lot more like directives than dialogue. From the BBC: 

[Noem] tells Fox News the conversations "are very matter-of-fact and very clear".

"You can lead or you can get out of the way. We're not going to allow you to continue to subvert our American influence."

Of course this has very little to do with drugs; it's really about control (read: plundering) of Venezuela's oil and mineral riches. And then there are Trump's threats about making Cuba and Mexico toe his line, too. And his administration is still talking about seizing Greenland.

In short, Trump's minions have gotten their HEA. But it doesn't look like they've thought through the consequences. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says we're not at war with Venezuela -- but will the Venezuelan army allow US troops on their soil, even as "peacekeepers"? Will the rest of the hemisphere rise up to fight us off?

We've been isolated from wars on other continents for hundreds of years due to our distance from the world's hot spots. Trump clearly believes the US is the 600-lb. gorilla in the Western Hemisphere. But the distance from South America is not that great; the distance from Mexico is a day's drive for me. And Greenland? There he would be messing with Denmark and, by extension, NATO -- a club we could be kicked out of if Trump's desire for empire building materializes into more aggression. 

We've seen their HEA, but we're not at the end yet. Not by a long shot.

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These moments of post-HEA blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The Neutral War: a holiday ficlet.

It occurred to me, here in the No-Person's Land between the holidays that we're living in right now, that I owed y'all a holiday ficlet last weekend. So I figured I'd better pay up this week.

But what to write about? I thought about it for a few days. Then Kat texted Amy and me a link to a Substack post by John Paul Brammer, an author and illustrator, opining on Pantone's ridiculous (or tapped-into-the-conservative-zeitgeist-of-the-moment, take your pick) choice of Cloud Dancer as their color of 2026.

Then I remembered that at the end of Beach Magic, the final book in the Elemental Keys series, that as a result of resetting the Earth, the world turned kaleidoscopic. 

And then I recalled that I'd made a glancing reference to that event in a previous holiday ficlet. (A ficlet, you may recall, is a very short story, between 750 and 1,000 words long.) 

In rereading that ficlet just now, I was relieved to learn that I hadn't painted myself into a corner. I was sure I'd said the world had already gone back its normal coloration, but I hadn't. Phew! And just because the Earth had been reset, it didn't change the people living on it. There would be complaints.

Here we go.

🌈

Sunglasses firmly on, Paisley Smithers squinted before opening the door of her home.

IndividualOne | Deposit Photos

When the world had first turned Technicolor, it had seemed almost charming. It was certainly new and fun. As an interior designer, she was used to her world upending every time a new trend came along. Cottagecore, grandmacore, cluttercore, alien core – she'd seen it all. In fact, she'd been asked to design it all. She had even liked them all, once – depending on the client, of course.

But that was three years ago, before everything got so bright outside. "Kaleidoscopes have their place," she had begun saying to her clients, "but when it's so colorful outside, I think it's better to have a calm space to escape to, don't you? Let’s look at some beiges or some grays. Neutrals."

She arrived at her office and sighed in relief as soon as the door closed behind her. Paisley had recently redone the space in a soothing greige. It had previously been done in baby blues and sage greens, but even those almost-neutrals had begun to grate on her.

So she squealed with delight when she checked her email and saw the newest Color of the Year. Cloud Dreaming! A "billowy white imbued with a feeling of serenity", the announcement stated. "A symbol of calming influence". A way to encourage the world to reset.

The world had just had a reset, according to the people in Hollywood working on that Elementals movie. But there was a growing sense that it had gone too far. Paisley didn't follow the news much, but she was aware that some conservatives had begun suggesting that it was all a communist plot. They had stopped calling the other side Radical Left Lunatic Scum in favor of Radical Left Rainbow Huggers.

Her phone's alarm went off, reminding her of her appointment with new clients in Malibu. She picked up her booklet of color samples, donned her sunglasses again, and headed out the door. These people were Hollywood types, she knew from her brief conversation with them. She hoped they wouldn't be too difficult to work with.

🌈

She parked in the alloted spot just off the road and headed through the gate. Nice, she thought. Right on the ocean. Although the fauna here seemed even more otherworldly than elsewhere, the palm trees weirdly shaped as well as strangely colored. She hoped she could convince them to use calmer colors inside.

"Hi," said the short, stocky man who answered the door. "I'm Collum. You must be Paisley."

"Indeed I am," she said. "Pleasure to meet you. Will your wife be joining us?" It was always better to get buy-in from both members of the couple.

"She's in the living room. Rainey, Paisley's here!" He led her through to the main living area. 

"Lovely view," Paisley murmured. The room overlooked a sparkling blue pool and the kaleidoscopic ocean beyond.

"We like it," said the tiny woman who rose from the sofa, extending a hand to shake. "Please, sit down. Coffee?"

"Water would be fine."

Rainey gave her a crooked grin. "A woman after my own heart," she said, and headed toward what Paisley assumed was the kitchen doorway. "Collum? Anything?"

"Beer," he said, and sat down.

"Should have known," she called over her shoulder with a laugh.

Paisley used the pause to gaze around the room. It was done in tasteful colors and gave off an air of serenity. "I'm not sure why you called me," she said as Rainey returned with the drinks. "It looks like you've had a designer in here already. Are you looking to do a gut reno? A kitchen redesign? Or maybe knock out that wall and make this fully open concept?"

"Oh, no," Rainey said. "Nothing that drastic. No, we just want to brighten it up in here a little."

"We want to make the inside of the house reflect what's going on outside," Collum said.

Paisley's eyes widened. "You mean," she said slowly, "you want to add color to this space."

Rainey nodded vigorously. "That's exactly right. You've got it!" She looked at Collum, who bobbed his head in agreement.

Paisley felt a bit faint. "I don't know if that's a good idea. A lot of people seem to be getting tired of what's going on outside. All that color. Buyers are looking for neutral interiors now, and if you're thinking of selling at some point…"

"Not gonna sell," Collum said. "Ever. This is our land."

"So this is your forever home?"

Both Rainey and Collum nodded happily.

"Well," Paisley said with a short laugh. "This is not at all what I was expecting. May I ask why you're so adamant?"

"We want to preserve it," Collum said.

Paisley frowned. "I don't understand."

Rainey interjected, "It's not going to stay this way forever. The world, I mean. It'll go back to looking the way it did before."

Paisley blinked. "It will? When?" She recollected herself. "I mean, it sounds like you two have some insider information."

Collum chuckled. "You might say that."

"We don't have a date or anything," Rainey said. "But it’ll be pretty soon. I mean, we need to finish the movie, and then we need to figure out how to make the new Keys…"

"And the new Door," Collum said.

"And the new Door," Rainey echoed. "But yeah. Soon."

"Will you help us?" Collum asked.

The moment felt like a turning point. It seemed to Paisley that these people were asking her for more than advice on paint colors and flooring. It was like the fate of the world hung on her answer.

Such a silly notion! She shook her head to dispel it. "I'd be happy to," she said brightly. "After all, my first name means 'colorful'."

The couple stood. "Awesome! Welcome aboard," said Rainey.

"Buckle your seat belt," said Collum.

🌈

Okay, so to be clear, I am not saying that a sequel to the Elemental Keys books is on the way. I did leave a door -- or Door -- open at the end of Beach Magic, but I have nothing in the works presently. This is just a holiday ficlet.

For now.

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Yes, alien core decorating is actually a thing. No, I am not redoing my place in any sort of "core" aesthetic. Santa Fe Eclectic still suits me just fine.

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These moments of anything-but-neutral blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And happy New Year!

Solstice musings.

 Happy winter solstice! Blessed Yule! 

Yurumi | Deposit Photos

Today is the day with the smallest number of minutes of daylight this year. From here on, the days get longer. It'll still be cold, but at least we'll have a fraction of an hour longer each day to experience it.

Tigs and I are having a less-than-chill Yule. This morning, I abandoned him to attend a winter solstice event at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture here in Santa Fe. The guy who was supposed to give the solstice blessing couldn't make it due to car trouble, but I did see the sun's first rays peek out around the mountains behind the museum. 

Lynne Cantwell | 12/21/25

That's either Sun Mountain or Moon Mountain. Pretty sure it's Moon Mountain. But don't quote me.

Anyway, I had time to see the newest exhibits, buy a 2026 wall calendar (yes, I am so old that I still use a wall calendar, thanks), and see part of a performance by a troupe of dancers from Acoma Pueblo before rushing home to let in a worker to reassemble part of my deck. The guys who built it used finishing nails or staples or something not very sturdy, anyhow, to attach the fascia boards below the banco seat, and they literally fell off this past week.

How it started. Then it fell off entirely.
Lynne Cantwell 2025

Tigs was a little too interested in the gap; it wasn't wide enough for him to get his head in, but it wouldn't stop him from trying -- so it needed to be re-fastened. With screws this time.

It's done now, but it did throw a crimp into my morning.

Anyway, as soon as I write and post this, we'll have the rest of the day and evening. Dinner will be pork tenderloin, mashed cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts with Parmesan (thanks, Trader Joe's!). Might watch a movie tonight; I meant to rewatch The Princess Bride after Rob Reiner's death earlier this month and haven't done it yet, so that's a possibility. We'll see.

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Two things I wanted to comment on, though, before I'm off to pursue frivolity. 

1) Earlier this month, although I just saw it today, the Washington Post ran a story about how religious leaders are seeing a trend among people in their 20s returning to religion -- and not necessarily the religion they were brought up in.  That's a gift link, if you care to read the story. Two things struck me:

• Although the story highlights Catholicism, the writer mentions that "esoteric" religions like Wicca are drawing new members, too. The point -- although it may be largely anecdotal and is never explicitly stated -- is that these young folks are turning away from mainline Protestantism and evangelical Christianity because they're not finding the answers there that they need.
• Then there's the woman who is joining a Catholic church based apparently on some erroneous assumptions. "Because the Catholic Church is the church Jesus Christ started, the teachings stay consistent over thousands of years," she says. Well, um, no. Jesus didn't start the Catholic church; his followers did, or the followers of his followers. St. Paul did as much to push the Gospels as anybody, and he had never even met Jesus (although he said he heard Jesus' voice in a revelation on the road to Damascus, and because we're so close to Christmas, I will refrain from mentioning how such a claim would be met today). Her idea that the "teachings stay consistent" is also wrong, of course; one example is the first Council of Nicaea, which decided which gospels to canonize in the Bible and which to throw out. But okay -- this woman is young. She'll learn.

2)  Sometimes the Mensa newsletter has some interesting links, like this one to a Psychology Today article, "The Existential Crisis of the Gifted". I read this article a few weeks ago, and a lot of it resonated with me -- including this opening paragraph: 

The existential crisis for the gifted often begins as a subtle, recurring awareness, a quiet hum that says, "I am more than this." Or some varying version: "I am in the wrong place," "I do not have any equals here," "I am wasting my potential." From time to time, you feel the deep, cellular knowing that you were meant for something more expansive than your current circumstances allow. These instincts are not groundless. Your unconscious has accumulated information about your giftedness for years, from the moments when you grasped concepts others struggled with, when you saw patterns invisible to those around you, when you understood the unspoken dynamics in a room. And yet, here you are, perhaps in a role where you simultaneously burn out and bore out, burdened with responsibilities but given little authority, your days filled with tasks that require you to dim your brightness to fit in.

"In a role where you simultaneously burn out and bore out" is a fairly accurate description of my job at the big law firm. And thinking back on the jobs and other situations I've become dissatisfied with, I can see now that I was in positions that didn't allow me to fully shine, partly because I'm a woman and partly because I'm intelligent. And my acknowledging that doesn't make me a snob.

One of the most precious things I've gained as I've aged is knowing that I have no further need to hide my light under a bushel basket. I learned to do it as a kid and continued to do it for decades -- but no more. I've had a lot of experiences; I know a lot of stuff; I think faster and make mental connections faster than most people. That's just who I am. 

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Anyway, happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, and happy whatever-else-you-may-celebrate!

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These moments of bloggy equality (day/night and so on) have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Welcome, Yule!

The newest Frankenstein: a review.

Sorry that I forgot to put up the usual and customary "on vacation" graphic for last week. But I assume y'all figured out that I was gone.

This week, I want to talk briefly about a movie I watched last night -- the newest remake of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror novel, Frankenstein; or, a Modern Prometheus. 

Movie poster image stolen from Wikipedia

I'm not a huge fan of horror films these days -- too many of the new ones are slasher flicks -- but I have liked Guillermo del Toro's work in the past. I thought Pan's Labyrinth was very cool, and I liked The Shape of Water well enough to buy it (high praise for me!). So I knew I needed to watch his version of the Frankenstein story eventually, but I'd been putting it off. My favorite Frankenstein movie is Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, after all, and I knew this wasn't going to be anything like that. 

(We pause now to recite some of my favorite dialogue from Young Frankenstein: 

• "What hump?" 
• "Ovaltine?" "NOTHING! THANK YOU!"
• "Blucher!" neiggggghhhhh!

That's enough for now. Thank you for your indulgence.)

It has been lost on generations of students required to read the original novel that the Creature isn't the real monster in Shelley's story -- it's Victor Frankenstein, the Creature's creator. Del Toro gets it. And unlike many film directors of the past, he gives the Creature's version of the tale as much weight as he gives Victor's. Victor tells his side of the story to the Danish captain whose ship, stuck fast in ice in the frozen North, rescues him from the Creature's latest attack. But then the Creature -- who has suffered multiple attempts to end his life, discovering in the process that he cannot die -- climbs aboard the ship and tells the captain, and Victor, what happened to him after surviving the fire that Victor set to destroy him.

The Creature had holed up in an abandoned mill attached to a home, and through chinks in the walls, he watches the family who lives there care for each other. He develops an attachment to the blind grandfather, and poses as a traveler to spend the winter with the old man after the rest of the family departs for warmer quarters. This is not far afield from Shelley's story. The blind man cannot see the Creature, so he bases his interactions with him on his gentle nature and naivete. He teaches the Creature to read. He also teaches him the Christian tenet of forgiveness. But when the family returns, they try to kill the Creature, setting him on a path to find his father in the hope that Victor will make him a companion.

But after the fire, Victor renounced his life's work, and he is in no way interested in making another creature. So the Creature, enraged, chases him into the frozen North to kill him.

Unlike in Shelley's novel, however, del Toro's Creature has learned about Christian forgiveness. And Victor has realized he was wrong about his creation; he's not an it, but a human being. Victor apologizes to the Creature -- to his son. And the Creature in turn forgives Victor.

It's not all sweetness and light from there -- the ending is still tragic, as befits a horror movie -- but it's a lot more hopeful than Shelley's ending. In the book*, Victor is consumed by hatred of his creation, and that hatred kills him. There's no apology; by the time the Creature catches up to him, Victor is dead. The Creature creates a funeral pyre for his maker and then leaves to kill himself.

I'm not enamored of Shelley's Victorian morality, but I'm not sold on del Toro's relationships-turning-on-a-dime ending, either. The movie is two-and-a-half hours long, and I get that del Toro needed to wrap things up pretty fast. But a little foreshadowing of Victor's change of heart toward his son would have gone a long way for me.

So my favorite ending for the story is still the one in Young Frankenstein, in which Frederick, Victor's grandson, and the Monster swap brains. Frederick ends up with the Monster's giant "schwanstucker", delighting Inga, while the Monster gets Frederick's sophistication and his intended, Elizabeth, who fell for him in this immortal scene: 

Madeline Kahn was gone far too soon.

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*Don't @ me about spoilers from Shelley's book. It was published in 1818.

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I probably should mention the acting in del Toro's movie. Oscar Isaac is a force of nature as Victor; I loved him in Marvel's Moon Knight, too. And Jacob Elordi turns in a wondrous performance as the Creature.

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We are not going to talk about the fact that Young Frankenstein is 51 years old.

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These moments of monstrous blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!