Hawley will play her rendition of Ludwig von Beethoven's “Hammer Klavier Sonata Opus 106" at 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 17.

This is a very long work so only a few movements will be featured with short narratives by Hawley.

The performance also can be listened to online at www.kpfz.org.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

The persons we are when we are young are probably buried somewhere within us when we’ve grown old.

Denise Low, who was the Kansas poet laureate, takes a look at a younger version of herself in this telling poem.

Two Gates

I look through glass and see a young woman

of twenty, washing dishes, and the window

turns into a painting. She is myself thirty years ago.

She holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot

I still own. I see her outline against lamplight;

she knows only her side of the pane. The porch

where I stand is empty. Sunlight fades. I hear

water run in the sink as she lowers her head,

blind to the future. She does not imagine I exist.

I step forward for a better look and she dissolves

into lumber and paint. A gate I passed through

to the next life loses shape. Once more I stand

squared into the present, among maple trees

and scissor-tailed birds, in a garden, almost

a mother to that faint, distant woman.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Denise Low, from her most recent book of poetry, Ghost Stories of the New West, Woodley Memorial Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Denise Low and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

THE SITTER (Rated R)

Only recently, this column focused on family-friendly films. Not so now for a review of the incredibly raunchy comedy of “The Sitter.”

Not attributed to Judd Apatow in any way, “The Sitter” is nevertheless a fitting substitute in the cinematic department of crude humor filled with sexual content, drug use and profanity.

Still, a graduate of Judd Apatow’s school of vulgar laughs, the chubby Jonah Hill, is the starring titular character of an unfit babysitter.

This film recalls memories of Elisabeth Shue in “Adventures in Babysitting,” minus, of course, the rude, coarse hilarity that is more commonplace in today’s world.

Jonah Hill’s Noah Griffith, a college dropout living at home with his single mom, has little motivation to do anything other than to satisfy a would-be girlfriend.

Right from the start, “The Sitter” announces its intention to bawdy, vulgar behavior. Let’s just say that involves Noah in a compromising position with his wannabe girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor).

After setting the stage of the film’s lowest common denominator spirit, Noah finds himself dragged into a babysitting job for a couple that wants to introduce Noah’s mom (Jessica Hecht) to a blind date.

Very quickly, Noah learns that he has just inherited the babysitting job from hell for a trio of dysfunctional kids that would turn Mary Poppins into a serial killer.

The youngest of the bunch is the precocious Blithe (Landry Bender), who likes to dress up in sexy clothes and applies more makeup than a hooker. Sadly, she looks like a JonBenet Ramsey imitator.

The oldest child is the very proper and neurotic Slater (Max Records), a lonely teen who wears a fanny pack to carry his medications. Morose and depressed, Slater claims to have “serious issues.”

The third child is the volatile Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), a churlish malcontent who urinates on floors and blows up toilets with cherry bombs. That he’s adopted from El Salvador makes him feel out of place.

Hoping for a quiet evening of watching TV, Noah struggles to keep the kids out of his hair. And then a phone call from Marisa compels him to load the kids into a minivan and head off to New York in search of cocaine.

What follows, naturally, is a series of misadventures as Noah tracks down wacky drug dealer Karl (Sam Rockwell), a guy so insane and paranoid that he surrounds himself with bodybuilders for security.

Meanwhile, the troublesome Rodrigo steals a dinosaur egg full of blow from the deranged Karl, which in turn leads to Noah having to come up with $10,000 to save his own life.

For his part, Noah continues to make a series of bad decisions, one of which even results in bodily harm at the hands of an enraged kickboxer.

Noah hits up his estranged father (Bruce Altman) for a loan, and after being rejected he steals his Mercedes and then robs his jewelry store.

Other adventures result in gunplay, harassment by city cops, bar fights, theft at a bat mitzvah and the crashing of a fancy charity dinner-dance.

Without question, the antics in “The Sitter” range from the absurd to bizarre. But this is to be expected from the director who gave us “Pineapple Express.”

Jonah Hill, who has recently trimmed down, is playing the type of obese slacker with quick wit that he perfected in comedies like “Superbad” and “Knocked Up.”

During this upcoming season of holiday cheer, let’s face the simple fact that “The Sitter” is not, for the most part, a joyous celebration of life.

Then again, the film surprises with out-of-place life lessons that affect everyone in a positive way, especially the gloomy Slater and the explosive Rodrigo.

In the end, “The Sitter” is either an exercise in banality and bad taste or a supremely funny film, depending on your perspective with this genre of raunchy comedy.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

The film will be shown on Sunday, Dec. 11, at the Clearlake United Methodist Church, 14521 Pearl Ave/, in Clearlake.

Doors open at 5:30 [/,/ for socializing and snack-grabbing. The film begins at 6 p.m.

This fascinating and shocking 52-minute documentary is all the more impressive due to the quiet, even congenial manner in which John Perkins, former economic hit man, shares just how huge corporations, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the CIA (not to mention the School of the Americas) seize control in “developing” countries.

He quit in disgust years ago and now confesses the truth.

Perkins is the NYT’s best-selling author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.”

In his high-level job he would approach the head of state (and his cronies) in a poor country with lots of raw resources.

He would bribe them to allow US or multi-national businesses to exploit their resources in ways that benefited the corporations and the ruling class, but impoverished and sometimes poisoned their people.

If the ruler was unconvinced by the bribe, he would be told that next “the jackals” and then an assassination team would appear. Most often, the leader was convinced by this threat, usually with CIA help.

But not every leader has caved. In 1953, for example, Iran’s democratically elected President Mossadegh resisted and was forced out of office by Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA, to be replaced by the dictatorial shah.

Later, democratically elected President Allende of Chile, who wanted Chile's riches for his people, was assassinated at his desk with much CIA involvement on Sept. 11, 1973. He was replaced by the dictator Pinochet.

Kam Williams, writing in EURweb, says of this documentary, “Despite death threats, in this revealing expose John Perkins details exactly how America goes about cheating less powerful nations, exploiting their citizens while helping itself to their natural resources.”

This free documentary will help viewers prepare for Chris Martenson’s three-disc “Crash Course,” which Second Sunday Cinema will screen over three Sundays in January.

On Dec. 11, Second Sunday Cinema will show the first two chapters (only 17 minutes) of the “Crash Course.”

Using official US and UN graphs and numbers, this course shows why Martenson, a research scientist, believes “the next 20 years will be completely unlike the last 20 years.” This is due to the convergence of stark environmental realities, resource depletion, and capitalism's need for exponential growth.

For more information about Second Sunday Cinema call 707-889-7355.