'NO' TO CRAZYBUSY

A few weeks ago, feeling under increasing pressure from just about every area of my life, I decided to say 'no' to anything new, certainly until Lee and I finish the script we're working on (maybe beyond). Lee was ecstatic about this new idea.

The first test came right away. I serve on the board of directors for The Alliance of Women Directors. A worthy group, devoted to raising the profile of women directors in the entertainment industry. And a group full of insanely busy women, most of whom simply don't have time to volunteer to the group (or who have the time but use it differently). So those of us on the board pick up a lot of slack.

And they asked me to do something. I don't even remember what it was. Probably something to do with writing, as I'm the only professional writer on the board. Whatever it was, it had to be done right away. But I said no. "Sorry," I said. "I'm saying no to everything till my script is done." All of a sudden, whatever it was wasn't so urgent anymore. In fact, if it needed to wait till the end of May, it could.

Saying no is an oddly liberating, oddly guilt-inducing thing. It certainly makes me realize how often I say yes. 'Yes' because I like to be involved. 'Yes' because I know I'm good at certain things and if I do them, they're done right. 'Yes' because it matters to my kids, or to someone else I love (that would explain my being a Girl Scout leader). 'Yes' because I like to serve others, and feel it's good for me to do so. 'Yes' because I think I should. 'Yes' because it's just more positive.

So I've gotten to say 'no' a few times in the past couple weeks. Not to anything huge. But I said it.

And then I got in the mail the jury reel for a film festival I've been a judge for over the last several years. I was surprised to get it. You see, no one asked me to serve as a judge this year. I guess they just assumed my answer would be yes. (And why would they assume otherwise?)

I really debated how to respond. Should I say yes because I always had? Had I already said yes last fall and didn't remember? (The answer to that turned out to be no.) Was I thinking of saying 'no' because I felt dissed at being taken for granted? (I don't think so -- I think I was more shocked at the pure lack of manners -- especially from a Christian festival.) If there was even a remote possibility that I was saying no over feeling dissed, should I therefore say 'yes' out of humility? If I had said yes for several years running, did that constitute a pre-existing 'yes' for this year? (Was I overthinking this?)

I responded yesterday. I didn't exactly say 'yes.' I responded more along the lines of, "yeah, sure, why not, I guess."

And then in today's paper, I read a great op-ed piece by Edward Hallowell, author of the about-to-be-released book Crazybusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap!

Hallowell, a psychiatrist, says he has seen an upsurge in patients who complain of ADD-like symptoms (impatience, frustration, lack of organization, memory lapses, procrastination, failure to complete anything), but who don't have ADD. People who, in essence, are multi-tasking themselves into a mental breakdown.

He gives a great list of reasons as to why we keep ourselves so busy. He lists 14 in the article -- here are the ones that rang some bells for me:

--We imagine that we must be [busy]. All the smart people say that life is really insecure these days so we better get busy getting ready for the bad times ahead.

--We let too many leeches into our lives, Leeches are people and projects that waste your time and leave you feeling depleted and wondering why you ever got into this line of work,n or this family, or this town. (Tip: Think of at least one activity, meeting or event you can cancel right now, and do so. You'll be elated.)

--We overcommit, or others overcommit us.. Wouldn't you like to be one of those tough people who can actually say no and stick to it?

--Being busy is a status symbol. Isn't that strange?

--We are afraid. Will we be left out, miss something or see our standard of living decline if we don't do everything we're "supposed to"?

--We think if we go fast enough, we'll be able to create time when we won't have to be busy. A secutive idea, but delusional. The key is to slow down and thrive today. As that slowpoke Einstein said, "Creativity is the residue of time wasted."

Needless to say, Hallowell's book is going on my to-read list. (I'll probably get to it in, oh, 2008.) And Einstein's wonderful quote will definitely show up here as my 'Quote of the Month' at some point.

While I was writing this post, I got a phone call. It was from the Writers Guild, asking if I would read an arbitration. (When there's a dispute over screen credits, the Guild calls on its members to read all scripts involved and determine the proper credit -- a peer review system, basically. The process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.) Usually, when I get an arbitration call, I ask a little about the project -- What's the name of the project (i.e., Is it one I'd love to read ahead of time?) How many scripts?

This time, I just said no.

"NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED TO US YET..."

In my sporadic readthrough of C.S. Lewis this year, so far I seem to be drawn to the fiction more than the nonfiction. I made my way through The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe earlier this year, and had to skip Prince Caspian because Sabrina is reading it (at least it's sitting on her bedside table with the other books she's supposedly reading). So I jumped ahead this weekend to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The Narnia books really are slight, I must say. For kids nowadays, used to hefting around 800+ pages of Harry Potter, a Narnia book feels so lightweight. But there's still some good stuff in there.

The passage that struck me while reading Dawn Treader occurs when the ship sails toward the Island of Darkness, the place where dreams come true (not daydreams, mind you, but something closer to nightmares).

The adventurers, of course, turn tail immediately and try to row away. But they find the trip out of the darkness taking too long... much too long:

...The same idea was occurring to everyone on board. "We shall never get out, never get out," moaned the rowers. "He's steering us wrong. We're going round and round in circles. We shall never get out." The stranger, who had been lying in a huddled heap on the deck, sat up and burst out into a horrible screaming laugh.

"Never get out!" he yelled. "That's it. Of course. We shall never get out. What a fool I was to have thought they would let me go as easily as that. No, no, we shall never get out."

Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, "Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little -- a very, very little -- better. "After all, nothing has really happened to us yet," she thought.

How often am I like those rowers! Looking into the future and seeing all the dire things that are waiting there... when in actuality, "nothing has really happened to us yet."

And just as with the voyagers on the Dawn Treader, these thoughts about the dire future awaiting me seem to happen in darkness -- in the middle of the night, when there's nothing one can do about anything, and when everything just seems so much worse, for no reason than that it's the middle of the night.

I was talking with a friend the other day about living in the past vs. living in the present vs. living in the future. We talked about people we know who are stuck in the past, can't ever seen to change, still bogged down or tied back by things they can't let go of. My friend commented to me that with all the yucky stuff that's happened to us over the last several years, it's a good thing I'm not one of those people.

And it made me realize that I don't think it's possible to be someone who lives in the past and survive in the entertainment industry. There will always be a job you lost, a person who screwed you over, a failure, a rejection, that will hold you back and warp you, if you live in the past. The ability to look at all those rejections and failures and say, "Okay. Done. Move on" is, it seems to me, essential for survival out here.

Yet living in the present, though I know people say it's what we're supposed to do, doesn't hold a lot of attraction for me right now. Because my severely demented mother is definitely living in the present. In the present of, oh, the last 30 seconds. Because she can't remember back any further than that. A five-minute conversation with her can take 40 minutes, because every bit of it has to be repeated over... and over... and over... And she's so lost track of time that she has no ability to look forward to anything. ("What should I get the kids for Christmas,?" she asked me last week. Um, Mom, it's March. Oh.)

So I guess I'll take living in the future, which is where I've always tended to live. Because living in the future is -- or should be -- living in hope. Looking forward to what comes next, anticipating the cool things to come. And not just looking forward to next week or next month or next year... I've actually gotten to the point where I spend not a little time thinking about heaven, and what that will be like. (Will I be able to ice skate in heaven?)

Living in the future should be about living in hope. But sometimes -- in the middle of the night -- it turns into living in fear. Anticipating the horrible things to come. (Because sometimes, they do indeed come.)

I guess I just have to look to Lucy and remember to remind myself, during those fear-instead-of-hope moments... Nothing bad has really happened to us yet.

WHEN IN DOUBT, FIND A MOM

I caught a few minutes of 20/20 (I think it was) last night on TV. The experiment they were discussing really caught my attention.

They staged several scenes of conflict: Men beating up on women. Bullies beating up on a kid. That kind of thing. And then they hid cameras to see how the people around them would react. Who would become the Good Samaritans and who would (like the Levite and the priest in the parable) just walk on by.

I couldn't watch the whole show. This has been an awful week, full of bad stuff. Bad drivers, bad news, bad stuff in the mail, bad behavior, bad phone calls. And I am on the edge of falling off into all of it and never coming up, it feels like. So I just couldn't handle watching a full hour of people mistreating people. But I did watch the first "experiment" -- the bullies.

In this experiment, one slightly chubby, bookish kid, around 12 years old, sits at a picnic table in (I believe) Central Park, with his backpack. Three other kids of the same age come along and start picking on him, pushing him around, taking his backpack apart. (All the kids are actors.) They actually ran the experiment twice, once with the three bullies dressed like nice school kids, once with them dressed a bit more like junior gangbangers. (All the kids were white.)

They found that lots of people walked by. Or even stood and watched but did nothing. They also found (surprisingly) that people were more likely to take action when the bullies were dressed as gangbangers, and therefore potentially more dangerous.

But they also found that most of the people who stepped in to interfere, to tell the bullies to get lost, to move along... were moms.

And that made me think of what I used to tell my kids when they went to the park. "If anybody bothers you," I told them, "If any adult says or does anything that makes you nervous or scared, go find a mom. Any mom. Tell her, 'That man is bothering me,' and the mom will take care of you."

Turns out I was right. And my advice still holds true, even though my kids are no longer of the age to hang out in playgrounds all that much.

So would I have stepped in to stop the kid from being bullied? Of course I would have. I'm a mom.

SPELLS AND POTIONS: SHAPE-SHIFTING AND APPARITION: SET-UPS AND PAYOFFS

There are, of course, myriad spells and potions that we could look at in Harry Potter, many of them fascinating. I'm focusing here, however, on only those that struck my attention as having potential implications for Book 7 when I was doing my pneumonia-induced intensive read-through of all 6 books back last fall...

Among those were the Shape-Shifting Spells.

We all know about the Animagus Transformation, of course, having seen it used repeatedly throughout the books. Frankly, we may have seen it used almost too often, IMHO.

Animagi are supposed to be registered with the Ministry of Magic, we learn. And in fact, there are six registered Animagi during the 20th century [PA-19] -- but there are just about as many unregistered Animagi running around than registered ones. Rita Skeeter, for one, as Hermione cleverly deduces in Goblet of Fire [GF-37].

And setting Hermione up to be able to put the pieces together about Rita was the fact that James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew were all unregistered Animagi, as Lupin explains:

"and they didn't desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."

"My dad too?" said Harry, astounded.

"Yes, indeed," said Lupin. "It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong -- one reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it..."[PA-18].

Would Hermione and Ron do the same for Harry? Absolutely. But will they? Well, I have to say I doubt it, given that we learn here it takes 3 years (okay, for Hermione, maybe 2, but still...).

So while it might be easy to think Snape could turn into a bat and fly away, or the like (many such Transformations have been proposed in the HP blogosphere), I don't think it's going to happen in Book 7. I think our Animagus transformations have all been paid off, and frankly, I think it would be jumping the shark for one more unregistered Animagus to turn up.

But we have another shape-shifter to pay attention to: Tonks the Metamorphmagus.

We didn't learn about Metamorphmagi until Order of the Phoenix -- pretty late in the series to introduce something like that -- and we've seen absolutely no plot significance to Tonks's strange abilities. Yes, Metamorphmagi are rare. Okay, fine.

But I have to ask: Why bother to introduce abilities like this if they're just going to be 'cute'? Because that's all Tonks has really been so far. We haven't seen her disguise herself for a real purpose,. We haven't even seen her disguise herself to a point where Harry couldn't recognize her. Does a magical ability like this exist only to provide a fashion statement?

I hope the answer is no. I hope that in Book 7 we will see Tonks go undercover in some way, get some information or do a brave deed or rescue someone by virtue of her self-disguising ability. Or -- another potentially satisfying payoff -- I hope that Harry will recognize that someone else he is dealing with is also a Megamorphmagus and is disguising him/herself -- with Harry able to see through the disguise because of his knowledge of Tonks.

But the set-ups regarding Tonks have been so weak, so unfocused, that I fear we could end up with her abilities serving as no more than a fashion statement -- and perhaps a way for her to relate to Lupin and his involuntary shape-shifting problems.

But oh, I hope not. Because if that's all Metamorphmagism is good for, what a waste!

Let's jump from Shape-Shifting to Apparition.

You can't Apparate into or out of Hogwarts. Yeah, yeah, we know. We've heard it already.

But In Half-Blood Prince we learn that this proscription carries beyond just Hogwarts:

"Professor, why couldn't we just Apparate directly into your old colleague's house?"

"Because it would be quite as rude as kicking down the front door," said Dumbledore. "Courtesy dictates that we offer fellow wizards the opportunity of denying us entry. In any case, most Wizarding dwellings are magically protected from unwanted Apparators. At Hogwarts, for instance--"

"--you can't Apparate anywhere inside the buildings or grounds," said Harry quickly. "Hermione Granger told me."

"And she is quite right..." [HBP-4]

But wait a minute! If this is true, then what's the location you would expect to be as protected as Hogwarts, if not more? The Ministry of Magic, right? And especially the Department of Mysteries, right?

So how do we explain this, happening at the moment Harry takes the Prophecy into his hand:

Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around them, blocking their way left and right; eyes glinted through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand tips were pointing directly at their hearts...[OP-35]

Okay, sure, maybe all these Death Eaters knew how to make themselves invisible -- but it sure looks like Apparition to me, based on everything we know about it. And if it's not Apparition, how does Voldemort suddenly appear in the atrium of the Ministry? How does he disappear? How do he and Dumbledore have their whirling, disappearing/reappearing battle? And where did Bellatrix go at the end of the battle without being caught by all those wizards arriving by elevator, anyway?

So it certainly seems that one can Apparate at the Ministry of Magic. And if at the Ministry, why not Hogwarts?

After all, every Hogwarts student has heard and heard and heard: You can't Apparate at Hogwarts. Even when they actually begin to learn to Apparate, the lesson is drummed home:

"As you may know, it is usually impossible to Apparate or Disapparate within Hogwarts. The headmaster has lifted this enchantment, purely within the Great Hall, for one hour, so as to enable you to practice. May I emphasize that you will not be able to Apparate outside the walls of this Hall, and that you would be unwise to try." [HBP-18]

But what if -- what if -- this is bogus. We have seen exceptions, after all: The House-Elves. Fawkes. Dumbledore when holding on to Fawkes. (Can Fawkes Apparate on his own? He didn't do so in Chamber of Secrets when he carried the whole gang up from the Chamber.)

If you're told over and over and over again that you can't possibly Apprate at Hogwarts... and you're warned of vague but horrible things happening if you try... and you see someone get splinched (which probably happens at least once in every Apparition class)... Well, you're darned unlikely to even try! I mean, do you want to be the character on Lost who fails to push the button at the end of 108 minutes?

Let's think about Montague for a minute. Stuck in the Vanishing Cabinet, he managed to Apparate out [HBP-27]. But where was the "inside" of the Vanishing Cabinet at the time? We know it traveled magically between Hogwarts and Borgin & Burkes, based on what Montague was able to overhear from within the cabinet. So there's a 50% possibility that he was actually within Hogwarts when he apparated out of the cabinet.

And in any event, he ended up in Hogwarts, in a fourth floor bathroom. So no matter how you look at it, Montague either Apparated within Hogwarts, or from Borgin & Burkes to Hogwarts.

Can't Apparate in Hogwarts? Hogwash. I'm going out on a limb and saying this is a huge, beautifully set-up lie.

How will we find out? Well, it won't be via Hermione, I'll bet. She's the one who's been telling us lo these many books that Apparition is impossible in Hogwarts. Hermione believes what she reads, believes what she's told, and really doesn't break rules without great provocation.

But Harry... I can easily see several situations in which Harry, who has announced he's not going back to Hogwarts as a student, might need to get into the school by stealth. He might want to chat with Dumbledore's portrait. He might want access to Dumbledore's old Pensieve. He might (probably will!) want to get the Half-Blood Prince's old potions book out of that carefully-marked cabinet in the Room of Requirement...

And can't you just see Harry, unable to figure out another way in, announcing that he'll Apparate in (to Hermione's shocked gasps and warnings)? After all, Harry was there on the Lightning-Struck Tower. He heard Draco's whole story about what Montague did. He has all the information he needs to figure it out, and the courage to try it.

Am I ready to put money on this as a bona fide prediction? Not quite. But I'm getting there...

...Next post, we'll leave spells and look once more at potions. Let's go back to look at that potions book a little harder... and the Draught of Living Death.

SPELLS AND POTIONS: THE UNFORGIVABLE CURSES: SET-UPS AND PAYOFFS

While it would be fascinating to log all the spells and potions used or mentioned in Harry Potter, it probably would not yield as much food for discussion as we might wish when it comes to our purposes of looking at dramatic set-ups and payoffs.

There are a few spells and potions, however, that have had ample set-up and maybe not quite the corresponding level of payoff yet, so I'd like to focus on those. And first and foremost, we have to look at the Unforgivable Curses, especially the Imperius Curse and the Cruciatus Curse.

The Imperius Curse

The Imperius Curse has given the Ministry of Magic trouble in the past, we learn from Fake-Moody in Goblet of Fire [GF-14]. Back in Voldemort's first heydey, the Ministry couldn't figure out who was doing bad things out of their own free will, and who had been Imperiused into doing them.

We get a set-up in Order of the Phoenix that we might be in for some Imperius action soon when Harry wonders if the Death Eaters have put the Imperius Curse on Lucius Malfoy [OP-9] -- just a nice little mention, something to remind us that this Curse, which allows the spell-caster total control of the victim, is still out there, still a threat.

And that little set-up gets a pretty full payoff in Half-Blood Prince when Katie Bell is Imperiused to get her to carry the deadly necklace into Hogwarts [HBP-13]. We actually learn quite a lot about the Imperius Curse if we look at this incident closely.

First, we learn later that Madam Rosmerta was the one who cast the curse on Katie -- but Rosmerta was herself under the Imperius Curse at the time! This tells us that someone under the Imperius Curse can actually cast the Curse, which would seem to allow the original spell-caster enormous amounts of power.

We also know that, in GOF, Victor Krum was Imperiused into performing the Cruciatus Curse on Fleur during the Third Task [GF-31]. Can we therefore assume that someone can be Imperiused into casting the final Unforgivable Curse -- Avada Kedevra? If so, the caster of the Imperius Curse is in a position to go around killing people without ever being linked to the crimes (go solve that one, CSI!).

I wouldn't be surprised, given these two set-ups, if we see exactly that in Book 7: Someone Imperiused into performing Avada Kedevra. Should we see an unexpected murder, from an unexpected source (say, Percy, leaps to mind), let's keep that in mind.

(Did we already see just that in Snape's killing of Dumbledore? I would say not. I think Snape knew exactly what he was doing -- even if we may not know exactly what that was yet.)

What else do we learn about the Imperius Curse from the Katie Bell/Madam Rosmerta episode? Well, we learn that the spell can have some duration, and that the spell-caster doesn't have to be physically present for the spell to continue to work (as Fake-Moody was present when Victor was Imperiused). No wonder the Ministry had so much trouble sorting things out!

Another lesson from this episode, and one that our characters would do well to heed: We now know that when someone is Imperiused, it's important to sit down right away and figure out who did it. Hermione is on the right track when she figures out that it must be a woman who cast it, given that Katie Bell received the necklace in the ladies' room of the Three Broomsticks [HBP-24]. But she shouldn't have let it sit there! If only everyone had thought through what Hermione just said, and moved on to ask the obvious question: What woman is most likely to be in the ladies' room at the Three Broomsticks?... the cursing of Madam Rosmerta might have been solved much earlier.

Dumbledore does figure it out, of course, moments before his death [HBP-27]. But it's a little late. Let's hope the characters learn the lesson we've just learned: When someone is under the Imperius Curse, figure out who cast it!... A potentially important lesson, if indeed Book 7 fills out the 1-2-3 pattern set up in OOTP and HBP, giving us someone casting Avada Kedavra while under the Imperius Curse.

We also learn from the Rosmerta episode, incidentally, that Draco Malfoy is a much better wizard than we might have expected, to cast an Unforgivable and get such exact behavior.

Or is it that Draco is just average, and the problem is that Rosmerta is especially weak?

This matters, because while the Imperius Curse may be Unforgivable, it is not unbeatable. We learn from Fake-Moody that people with strength of character can fight the Curse (while those without strength of character cannot). We see the set-up that Harry can fight the Curse right away, when Fake-Moody teaches it [GF-15]. This set-up is of course paid off when Harry manages to fight against the Curse with Voldemort himself casting it in the graveyard [GF-34].

This gives a hint we can use if it turns out that we have Imperiused people running around Book 7. Who is weak enough to be used and manipulated in this way? (Again, Percy comes to mind. Also Slughorn. Trelawney. Pettigrew. Crabbe and Goyle. Go ahead, add to the list.) It also can help us figure out who would not be Imperiused -- McGonagall, Neville, Snape. Anyway, this is something to keep in mind for Book 7.

It is interesting, by the way, that Harry can fight against the Imperius Curse, and he seems to have beat back Avada Kedavra as an infant, but he appears to be helpless in the face of...

The Cruciatus Curse

The Cruciatus Curse has a special appeal to Harry from the moment he hears of it. Only four chapters after first learning about it, he begins to fantasize about perfecting the Curse on Snape, in response to Snape's having given him detention [GF-18]. (A nice set-up for his later attempts to cast the Curse on Snape in HBP!)

Harry is nonetheless shocked to see Victor perform the Cruciatus Curse on Fleur in the Third Task [GF-31] -- again, anice set-up, because it gives us a chance to see what happens when the victim is a human rather than a spider. We also begin to learn in GF and much more in OOTP what the consequences of the Cruciatus Curse can be, as we learn about and see the insanity of Neville's parents.

The Cruciatus Curse is Harry's go-to when he wants to really harm someone he hates. He tries it first on Bellatrix in the Battle at the Ministry:

Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before. He flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed " Crucio!"

Bellatrix screamed. The spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville had -- she was already on her feet again, breathless, no longer laughing. Harry dodged behind the golden fountain again -- her counterspell hit the head of the handsome wizard, which was blown off and landed twenty feet away, gouging long scratches into the wooden floor.

"Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. "You need to mean then, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain -- to enjoy it -- righteous anger won't hurt me for long -- I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson--"[OP-36]

We hear much the same response in HBP when Harry tries to use the Cruciatus Curse on Snape, and Snape blocks him:

Twenty yards apart, [Snape] and Harry looked at each other before raising their wands simultaneously.

Cruc--"

But Snape parried the curse, knocking Harry backward off his feet before he could complete it; Harry rolled over and scrambled back up again as the huge Death Eater behind him yelled, "Incendio!". Harry heard an explosive bang and a dancing orange light spilled over all of them: Hagrid's house was on fire.

"Fang's in there, yer evil--!" Hagrid bellowed.

"Cruc--" yelled Harry for the second time, aiming for the figure ahead illuminated in the dancing firelight, but Snape blocked the spell again. Harry could see him sneering.

"No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!" he shouted over the rushing of the flames, Hagrid's yells, and the wild yelping of the trapped Fang."You haven't got the nerve or the ability--" [HBP-28]

(Note, by the way, that Harry, perhaps unconsciously, follows Snape's advice. He next tries to cast Incarcerous, Stupefy, Impedimenta, Sectumsempra, and Levicorpus -- but he does not try an Unforgivable again.)

From these two incidents, we learn that blinding hatred isn't enough to successfully cast an Unforgivable -- because Harry certainly has enough of that to go around in both cases! Apparently one needs nerve, ability, and the enjoyment of causing pain to successfully cast an Unforgivable... And note, by the way, that Draco does have the prerequisites.

Will Harry successfully cast the Cruciatus Curse? I think that depends on what "Unforgivable" means.

So far, all we know is that casting an Unforgivable Curse on a human lands one in Azkaban. But that's a pretty strong term for a life-sentence crime. Is there something more about casting an Unforgivable Curse? Who is refusing to forgive? Is it just the Wizengamot? Or are there deeper, more spiritual consequencs of casting an Unforgivable?

We know from Slughorn's memory about Horcruxes that "Killing rips the soul apart. [HBP-23]" This tells us that casting the Avada Kedavra does indeed cause harm to the spell caster. But is this true for all the Unforgivables? Would it harm Harry's soul in some way to successfully cast "Crucio"?

I don't think the answer to the question necessarily makes our predictions for Book 7 any easier. If the answer is "Yes, it would harm Harry's soul," I don't think that would prevent J.K. Rowling from having Harry successfully cast it. As Harry's face is scarred, so his soul could be scarred by the successful casting of an Unforgivable -- a consequence he would have to live with and deal with.

So I don't know if Harry will land "Crucio" in Book 7. But I would bet a large sum of money that he will try. And given that once again we have a 1-2-3 pattern (of set-up/set-up/payoff -- just like in any good joke), I would expect that he will successfully cast it. (Not on Snape, is my guess. I don't think Harry can beat Snape wand-to-wand. My bet would be Draco.)

One last Unforgivable Curse to give at least a quick glance to:

Avada Kedavra

We have all realized, haven't we, that "Avada Kedavra" is etymologically related to "abracadabra"? As a former linguist, I have to mention it.

I think we actually have very little in the way of set-ups for Avada Kedavra in Book 7. We do have questions to be answered: How did Harry beat the Killing Curse as an infant?

But I can only think of two potential set-ups involving the AK. One I mentioned above: The fulfillment of the pattern of Imperiused wizards casting Unforgivable Curses. The other involves Draco's inability to cast the Avada Kedavra on Dumbledore [HBP-27]. I suspect that we may see Draco try again. Whether he succeeds depends, I think, on his redeemability. If we see him succeed, we will know that his soul is indeed, "ripped apart," and I would expect we can count on a very bad end for Draco.

And Draco is who we will turn to in these posts, as soon as we wrap up just a few more Spells and Potions of interest.... Coming soon...

FOUR PAWS FROM HEAVEN

Some friends of mine have written an absolutely charming devotional, aimed at those of you who really love your dogs. It's called Four Paws from Heaven, and it's really nicely done.

Here's their press release:

TRICKS DOGS CAN USE TO TRAIN THEIR HUMANS

A top canine expert on "people behavior" claims dogs can teach even old humans new tricks, because we've got a paw up on training techniques. "Human trainers just teach short commands," says Morgan Wells. "We canines communicate complex concepts: True friends are forever; Don't growl, trust; We are useful, whatever our age. We can even help the two-foots get to know their Master better." To bless your pet humans and help them grow, and get extra treats and snuggles too, he urges you to try these tips.

1. When you're hungry, don't stare at your food bowl. Gaze at your food bowl-fillers. This will help your humans to look to their food bowl-Filler too.

2. Keep woofing when you think there's danger, even if your people don't take the hint. If you're right and they get robbed, at least they can't blame you. They'll learn to heed your warning barks... and God's... more closely next time.

3. Learn the names of your toys. Fetch them on command, and lay them at your masters feet. It will help them obey and lay things at God's feet when He asks them.

4. Treat your humans like rock stars, especially when they see extra wrinkles, more white hair, and a bigger "spare tire" staring at them in their mirror. If you love them for who they are inside, it reminds them God does, too.

5. Buy a book called FOUR PAWS FROM HEAVEN: DEVOTIONS FOR DOG LOVERS (M.R. Wells, Kris Young & Connie Fleishauer, Harvest House Publishers). It has tons more training secrets. Morgan and six other canine experts wrote it through their people. Most booksellers don't take kibble in payment, so you'll have to use your master's credit card. Just input the number online or by phone with your nose. Then lie by the door till the book is delivered -- because if your humans see it first, they'll grab it and read it and pass it friends -- and you'll never get your paws on it!

APOLOGIES FOR THE DISTRACTIONS

So sorry I haven't been blogging this week. Every spare minute I have has been taken up by my mother, now severely demented, who broke her wrist three weeks ago and has taken off five, count 'em, five casts so far (and is in agony that cast #6 appears to be unremovable!). Between keeping her from calling 911 for no reason, reminding her that she has actual pain pills available for when her wrist hurts, calming down her nosy and furious neighbors, and trying to hint that perhaps she is not the center of the universe ("But from my point of view, I am," she replies puzzledly), well, blogging dropped a bit down the list.

But I do have my next HP blog (the final "Spells and Potions" post) ready to go (almost). And I'm sure I'll have something else to say soon. Hang in there! Thanks for reading!

OSCAR RSVP'S

One last little vent about the Oscars...

We had a lovely party. Wonderful people came. We enjoyed each other's company.

But I'm a little ticked at the people who didn't come. Not the people who RSVP'd with regrets that they weren't going to be able to come. But the people who said, "Yes! I'm coming" and then didn't show.

A couple people called in sick just before the show started. They're excused.

But we had 4 people who RSVP'd, some in the last couple of days before the Oscars, and then didn't bother to change their RSVP by e-mail (even with an automatic reminder two days ahead of time), didn't bother to call, didn't bother to apologize afterward.

'Just 4 people,' I hear you say. But no. Because those 4 people RSVP'd on behalf of 9 people. And for a party planned for 30 to 35 people, that's a severe chunk of bodies not in the room.

We bought food for those 9 people. We bought liquor for those 9 people. We set out chairs for those 9 people. We didn't invite other people because those 9 people had spots reserved for them.

All of them, by the way, were Christians. All of them were people who are supposed to treat others as they would wish to be treated.

Forget teaching Christians how to be screenwriters and executives. Let's start with some basic manners. How 'bout that?

OSCAR POST-MORTEM

One more year, one more Oscars.

Before I even talk about the program, let's get to the important stuff: What did we have to eat?

Well, Brokeback Mountain may have lost Best Picture (thank God!), but it sure provided a lot of food at our house. We had Brokeback galore. We had chili, we had beans, we had "dead sheep" (roast lamb), we had shepherd's pie, we had trail mix. We had hot dogs (which caused odd looks on all the adults, making the connection -- but the family that brought them insisted, no! It was for the campfire scene!). We even had "Broke Baby-Back Mountain" (a mountain of piled up baby-back ribs).

The Chronicles of Narnia was also well-represented, with animal crackers and Turkish Delight. We had a "Constant Garden-er" spinach salad. We had chips with very hot salsa in a "Goblet of Fire." We had bananas for King Kong (accompanied by a stuffed gorilla hugging a Barbie doll). We had absolutely luscious poached salmon w/ dill sauce, what the "Penguins" ate on their "March." We had "Tsotsi" Rolls. We had Red Vines for "Walk the Vine" (with little Lego figures walking a line of Red Vines). We had -- of course -- CHEESE! for Wallace and Gromit, with a little Wallace figurine in the middle of it all, exulting in his good fortune. And we had yet more hot dogs, these from the actual restaurant in which the first scene of Crash takes place.

And the very best 'themed' offering... We had "Toasted Hero" sandwiches for (... wait for it...) Anakin Skywalker.

We had absolutely no sushi. I figured that would be the 'go-to' for everyone picking up something on the way (for Memoirs of a Geisha). But no. I was shocked.

As for drinks -- well, we had the makings for martinis, and martini glasses, but no shaker. So I have a bottle of gin and a bottle of vermouth, just waiting... We had Scotch and soda for Good Night, and Good Luck, and I also found a bottle of "Smoking Loon" merlot, which I bought because everyone smoked so much in the movie! We had beer brewed in "Munich, and beer from Kenya to represent The Constant Gardener. We had a pitcher of Vodka Collins in honor of Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice (very popular!). We also had tea (for Narnia), hot chocolate (for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and "Brokeback Mountain Dew."

Oh, wait, you mean there was a show to go with all that food?

A few brief thoughts--

------You probably heard the scream that went up from our living room when Crash won over Brokeback Mountain. Today all the critics are trying to figure out why the Academy didn't agree with them. From what I've seen, they're basically calling the Academy cowards for not voting for the "issue" movie.

Um, here's a thought. Maybe they voted for the better movie -- as with the last big upset, when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan.

And maybe the Academy doesn't want to be forced into feeling they have to "make a statement" with their vote -- even forced into agreeing with a statement they might not feel all that comfortable with. (Kenneth Turan, in today's LA Times, chides the Academy for feeling uncomfortable with Brokieback Mountain -- what, now even our personal emotions have to line up with today's version of political correctness?!)...

And maybe, just maybe, the Academy doesn't like to be told how to vote. (I think this last one on its own could be enough to explain Crash's win.)

------I thought Jon Stewart actually did quite a good job. Not crazy about the opening montage, and I thought he seemed overwhelmed by the size of the room initially. But a lot of his remarks ("And none of these issues was ever a problem again!" after the 'issue movie' montage) were hilarious and right on point. The fake ads were also very good.

------What was with the "film noir" and "issue movie" montages? Was the Academy trying to make the point that Hollywood doesn't make marvelous movies like these anymore? Or do they have Chuck Workman on retainer and had to give him something to do?

------Glad to see Mel Gibson could poke fun at himself.

------The In Memoriam reel seemed light this year. Or was it just a year when no real "greats" died? Who were they missing?

------Was Tom Hanks Botoxed out of his mind or what?! Not a good look, Tom.

------Finally, the most important issue of the evening (certainly for Sabrina!): Best gowns: Jennifer Lopez and Reese Witherspoon. Runner-up: Keira Knightly (who would have made it to the best list if her hair and make-up had been better). Losers: Michelle Williams for that ghastly mustard thing, and Jennifer Garner -- not for the gown, but for not knowing (or learning) how to walk in it.

And an honorable mention to Nick Park and Steve Box for their matching bow ties, not to mention their taking the time and bother to accessorize their Oscars to match as well! (And if you're counting, that's four nominations for Nick Park... and four wins.)

Cracking cheese, indeed!

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE -- "ZEN SARCASM"

Someone passed this on to me, and I thought I'd share the top ten with you...

10. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may
not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell
alone.

9. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's
newspaper, that's the time to do it.

8. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

7. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the
same night.

6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

5. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.

4. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away, and you
have their shoes.

3. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish,
and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

2. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was
probably worth it.

And the number 1 piece of "Zen Sarcasm..."

1. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

EATING THE OSCARS

As Oscar time rolls around every year, I get very concerned about the nominated movies. No, not about their quality, not about the message or morality. But about the really important question: What kind of food or drink do they inspire?

Once again we are having our traditional Oscar viewing party/potluck, where guests are asked to bring food based on the year's nominated movies. This is a tough year (oh, for Babette's Feast, Big Night, or Chocolat!).

In previous years, we've had haggis (yuck) for Braveheart, Tang and freeze-dried ice cream for Apollo 13, iceberg lettuce for Titanic, grasshopper cocktails for A Bug's Life, doughnuts for The "Lard" of the Rings... even the D-Day invasion, complete with tiny plastic soldiers climbing all over meat loaf and blue-colored mashed potatoes, for Saving Private Ryan.

But what to do this year? Heath Bars for Heath Ledger? Bananas for King Kong? Endless rows of sushi, because no one can think of anything else, for Memoirs of a Geisha?(Please, no haggis for Paul Haggis, I beg you!) I mean, really, it's a tough year.

So here is a list of the nominated movies (I didn't bother with the shorts). If you've got ideas (and if Squawkbox is working), shoot 'em over!

Batman Begins
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (thank goodness for this one!)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Cinderella Man
The Constant Gardener
Corpse Bride
Crash
Darwin's Nightmare
Don't Tell
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Good Night and Good Luck
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
A History of Violence
Howl's Moving Castle
Hustle and Flow
Joyeux Noel
Junebug
King Kong
March of the Penguins
Match Point
Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Munich
Murderball
The New World
North Country
Pride and Prejudice
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
The Squid and the Whale
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Street Fight
Syriana
Transamerica
Tsotsi
Walk the Line
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War of the Worlds

Go to it, folks! Show us your creativity!

LENT BEGINS

I try to take my Lenten sacrifice seriously, but as it turns out, I am very good at fooling myself.

So if I virtuously give up chocolate, I find myself eating lots of Fig Newtons or rainbow sherbet. Or if I give up French fries, I end up eating potato chips, and debating with myself over whether curly fries are really French fries. One year I gave up playing Tetris -- and just ended up switching over to Bookworm.

What this means is that I have to dig just a tad deeper, and not be so obvious. Last year I felt very strongly the urge to sacrifice talking about myself. How incredibly difficult that was!-- for oh, the 6 days or so I managed to keep the sacrifice. Unfortunately, Lent last year was the time when our lives were falling apart, and I just couldn't keep it all inside and maintain my sanity.

So this year, I am repeating last year's sacrifice. I will avoid talking about myself, turning conversations into opportunities for me to tell cute stories. (Already I hear my tricky mind trying to figure out of telling cute stories about my kids qualifies. Hm.)

As for this blog... well, I mean "talking" quite literally. I will continue to blog. But once I get into a conversation -- well, the book of Proverbs says it's good to keep our mouths shut, doesn't it?

But that's really last year's sacrifice. So I'm doing a dual sacrifice this year. I do feel it's good for me to make a sacrifice regarding food, but the mere giving up of one ingredient never seems to do what it should spiritually.

So for Lent I am giving up eating by myself. I have done this before (not for Lent), and I found it really turned my awareness toward God's provision. If I cannot provide my own meals, whenever/wherever I want, then I have to think about Who is providing them. Think of it as a modified fast: I will eat with my family, or in social situations. But I don't get to choose the details -- I have to wait for God to provide.

So there you have it. Lent is beginning (as I suppose we can tell by the rather disgusting heaps of trash in New Orleans). And if my Lenten sacrifices do what they're supposed to, I won't end up on Easter pigging out and talking about myself incessently.

Happy Lent to you all!