27.7.17

Throwback Thursday: Flour Babies

Back in the mid-nineties - hell, it probably still happens - our public middle school in Saint Tammany Parish Louisiana conducted a program meant to curb teenage pregnancy.
The program was called Flour Babies. Every kid in our Seventh Grade class bought a six-pound bag of flour from the grocery store, we dressed it up to look like a boy or a girl and propped a head on it. I guess we gave it a name.

We carried the flour baby with us everywhere we went. We took it to class, brought it home with us, and made sure we didn't leave it behind.

Leaving behind your flour baby was tantamount to committing childhood neglect - I think kids who left it on the bus or in homeroom had to endure after school suspension. Or maybe they were told, "Don't have kids."

Here are two photos from my flour baby days:
I hold onto my flour baby like it's my own dear baby, baby.
Younger brother and Mom pose with the flour baby.
Did you have a flour baby growing up? I'd love to hear about it.

26.7.17

Video Post: Feeding Ducks in Robertsdale, Alabama

Ducks hang out in a parking lot in Robertsdale, Alabama
Off of US Highway 90, my mother Pamela, my older brother Bradford, and I stopped at an old, dilapidated building with a sign out front that read "Interdenominational Church." We fed the ducks. Greig (that's me) conducted an interview.

- Posted on BlogPress

25.7.17

Family Photograph: "Mamaw"

There's a photo in my mother's album of my paternal Grandmother, Veronica Greig sipping a cup of coffee.
In 1992, my family moved to a new house in Mandeville, Louisiana.

Mamaw and Pawaw came to visit us very soon after we moved. Mom made sure the house was spotless. My brothers and I were more or less happy because we liked our new neighborhood. And we had a new dog - Maggie.

I must have been in the Sixth or Seventh grade.

Veronica Greig Roselli is my paternal grandmother - from whence I get my name, "Greig"!
There's a photo I found in mom's album. I like how Mamaw is holding her cup of coffee gingerly. I love her glasses. She used to get dressed up on Sunday to go play BINGO. She'd put powder on her face, and it would smudge her glasses but she wouldn't notice.

Mamaw was very sweet. Pawpaw wasn't so nice. He was gruff and vindictive. I'm not sure why - probably a fight between my father and Papaw - but I don't think my grandparents ever visited us again in our house on Live Oak after the day this picture was taken.

22.7.17

Take a Ride on the Nanjing Metro: A Photograph of "Happy" & "Forlorn"

A photographic selfie of that time Amira Booth-Soifer and Greig Roselli navigated the Nanjing metro system.
Without a guide, we navigated Nanjing's subterranean transport system.
Amira and Greig on the Nanjing metro (ca. 2017)


Logo for the Nanjing Metro

Summer Travel Attire — From Brooklyn to Raleigh

Greig Roselli wears a Garden School Walk-a-Thon t-shirt in Raleigh.
A photograph of me in Raleigh evidences how I basically wore the same t-shirt all Summer long.
I've been traveling this Summer dressed like how I look in the above photograph. I made it to Raleigh, North Carolina after a long trek by train from New York. I'm wearing the tee of my school — I am a teacher (but you would know that if you read my blog often.

18.7.17

The Man is Lightheaded

We put our hands in the air.

And no. I didn't photoshop out his face. The shot came out this way.

Electric lightbulb dance factory!

8.7.17

That Time I Arrived in Beijing to Begin a Six City Tour of China

Grill work from a door 
in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

In the Summer of 2017, we took a month-long tour of China. Here is the first post of that journey:

I feel relieved and at peace today.

It's been four days since we landed in La Guardia after a twenty-one day, six-city tour of China.

Coming home on the Sunday before the Fourth of July, we first landed in Detroit, went through
immigration retrieved our luggage and grabbed our connecting flight home.
Monday was the Fourth of July. You'd think I
would've been journey-weary; but, I scooped up
whatever energy I had left and watched Macy's fireworks on the East River with my age-old buddy Anthony Charles who was in town for work.
I hadn't sorted through all the photographs we'd taken, ticket stubs, leftover RMB notes, and select tchotchkes bought and packed, but sitting in the park before the fireworks started, I told Tony about our trip.

3.7.17

Self-Portrait at the Simatai Portion of the Great Wall of China: Photo Post

It was friggin' hot that day ... just saying (at the Great Wall at Simatai in China).

Greig Roselli poses in front of a tower at the Simatai portion of the Great Wall of China

3.6.17

Photo: I Wish I Were the Camera's Eye


A straphanger waits for a train at the 36th Street subway station in Brooklyn.
A straphanger is focused on his phone as he waits for a subway train in New York City
I wish I were the camera's eye. I would watch the world the way a film camera surveys its filmic world.

I would be a rare film, one that danced when it surveyed the world, but rarely seen, not distributed like a Hollywood classic.


I am a fan of the long take. Maybe it is because I admire the way some filmmakers are able to capture a moment for as long as it can last.


I'd be the eye on a Max Ophul's film-watching Madame wind a staircase. Or, I'd be the eye in Raiders of the Lost Ark, inventorying lost treasures.


I imagine the camera's eye is lonely and I'll admit I don't agree well with loneliness - who does? - but every once in a while I just want to zoom out and take on what the philosophers call "The God's Eye View."


I'd catch myself in a frame shot - kind of like what happens when I dream. I see myself in the corner of my eye. It's me. In my own dream.

Location: Brooklyn, NY
Photo Credit: Greig Roselli

11.5.17

A Monster Calls (2016) - Movie Review

Production still from "A Monster Calls" (Focus Features)
A boy learns to face his fears (© Focus Features)
Wanna see a movie that gives us a twenty-first-century version of a Grimm's fairy tale?

In the book Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim lays out a psychological argument that fairy tales are useful in helping young children understand adult fears. Fairy tales are couched in childlike verse, but beneath the surface lies deeper, troubling psychological truths.

For example, why is every stepmother in fairy tales evil? Well, according to Bettelheim it is because it is all about the fear children have that our parents don't love us. But. This is too much to bear for the children, so the storyteller replaces this fear with a substitute - the stepmother.

In J.A. Bayona's fantasy flick, A Monster Calls, the logic works similarly. However, the metaphor is not as thickly veiled. There are no evil stepmothers; but, there is a strident grandmother (Sigourney Weaver).

The story, based on a novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, centers on a young boy named Conor (played sensitively by Louis MacDougall), a waifish boy attuned to the visual arts but prone to being bullied at school. He is dealing with the impending tragedy of his mother's death. 

While his family seemingly falls apart all around him, Conor falls deeper and deeper into a sullen depression. In one scene, he destroys his grandmother's sitting room, tearing the furniture apart. The boy is distraught and anger is an easy anodyne.

In order to help Conor deal with the reality of his grief, every night around midnight an anthropomorphic yew tree monster voiced by Liam Neeson) uproots itself from a nearby cemetery to dole out three fairy tales to the lad. The tales - à la Bettelheim - are meant to help the young boy deal with the very real fear of his mother's death.

That's all fine and dandy. There are lots of films and books that help children deal with the reality of death - take My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia as potent examples.

A Monster Calls is a little different because the plots rend open a deeper and more destructive fear. The inevitable death of Conor's mother also triggers within Conor a kind of death drive. The yew tree monster's stories are meant to help the boy realize his own wish to die and to counteract this drive with a life-giving "yes" living.

So it's intense material. I won't go into the content of the tales - but suffice it to say the film's visuals are stunning and I think the movie succeeds in driving home its central psychological thesis.

I am not one to censor films; however, I would caution against viewing this film with young children. I think the deeper themes of destruction and not-so-subtle hints about suicidal ideation should give parents pause. However, if parents know the content of the film deals with these themes, it could prove to be an enriching experience for both child and adult.

If Bettelheim is right, then fairy tales are meant to ease the more horrific facts of life - death, murder, suicide, decay, entropy, and estimated taxes - and, thus; films just may be our twenty-first-century version of sixteenth-century Grimm's fairy tales.
A Monster Calls (2016)
Focus Features
Directed by J.A. Bayonna
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, and Lewis McaDougall
Written by Patrick Ness (Screenplay) and based on his book.