Tuesday 26 March 2019

Things on Netflix and YouTube

Anyone here like watching Queer Eye For The Straight Guy? Our household has been enjoying the new series on Netflix. I think the one called "Black Girl Magic" is especially good. It tells the story of a young woman whose mother gave her up for adoption as a baby. When she was sixteen, someone outed her to her strongly Christian adoptive family, who threw her out immediately, didn't even give her a moment to pack her things. She rebuilt her life slowly, but had to drop out of college because the accruing debt scared her. She got work as a waitress and food somewhere to live which she furnished from things people threw away, but life remained precarious because where she lived in Kansas she never knew if she'd be fired from her work because of being a lesbian. The Fab 5 from Queer Eye helped her with style and making her apartment lovely. It's a great episode, I recommend it if you have Netflix.

Also on Netflix is the documentary called End Game, that Greta told us about in a comment on an earlier post. It looks at end of life care in San Francisco, focusing primarily on two stories — one in hospital, the other in the guesthouse of the Zen Hospice Project, a Buddhist house where people could receive end of life care. I was so sad to read the guest house in the documentary had to close because it relied on donations, which kept it rolling but gradually dried up after the change of administration in America meant people's giving went more to charities for homeless folk and people in poverty. 

We have a hospice in Hastings where I live, which is also funded entirely by the local community. The other three people in my household, and Buzzfloyd, all belong to a choir that raises funds for the hospice. I was free-church chaplain (unpaid) there for a few years at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s. Our hospice is great but not as wonderful as the Zen Hospice project in the documentary. I have read about, but never actually come across, groups who sing for people who are dying, and they had one in the documentary — beautiful. When our Grandad was dying, I went with my family and we sang round his bed. The other people in the hospice liked it too. My family sang at the funeral of my husband Bernard, too, Good News Chariot's A-Comin', and they sang when Tony and I got married too, Bill Wither's wonderful song Lean on Me.

If you haven't got Netflix and are feeling sad because you have no access to the things I mentioned, here are a couple of my favourites from YouTube: a documentary about the work of Max and Charlotte Gerson called The Beautiful Truth (and just letting you know I don't publish comments dissing their work), and Bob Marley singing Redemption Song (sorry, no movie just a still to go with the song, but a particularly nice recording, I thought) and here talking to an extraordinarily posh English journalist who went to interview him in Jamaica, and adds an unintentionally hilarious contrast. 

Oh — and I've posted this YouTube video before; the wonderful Playing For Change song around the world version of Stand By Me.

2 comments:

greta said...

when i was working with my clients at a skilled nursing care unit we had several musicians who worked with hospice. we loved the days when they were on the floor because their music and singing brought such a sense of serenity to all of us. it was a real gift. yes, that group of women who sang at the zen hospice were amazing!

Pen Wilcock said...

I think it's such a beautiful thing to do. Has to be the right people, right kind of music, too.