LOCAL 909er

Water, CA on Terrain.org

From Terrain.org:

Water, CA >> The Future of Creative, Place-Based Multimedia?

By Simmons Buntin, August 17, 2010 4:54 pm

Recently, artist Nicole Antebi sent us a little information about a new media/book website:

Water, CA: Creative Visualizations for a New Millennium
www.watercalifornia.org

Water, CA is a series of 22 contemporary projects engaging the history, mystery, and challenge of California’s water. Presented by Antebi and artist Enid Baxter Blader, Water, CA is a multimedia experiment in geography that incorporates mythological and playful understandings of complex histories. The enticingly interactive website features essays, painting, photography, video animations, and a California water timeline.

And I think we may just be looking at the future of creative, place-based multimedia. It is accessible, informative, artistic, and — once you’re familiar with the format — easy to move through. I admit it took me a while to figure out how to get into the individual projects (hover over the location of your choice then click the artist’s name). Ideally there should be a connect between the list of water projects in the blue box and the website visitor’s ability to then get into the projects — but they only indicate where in the state those projects are located. Just remember where they’re at, hover your pointer over that location, and you can dive in, so to speak.

That aside, we at Terrain.org think this is a pretty fantastic collaborative effort, and encourage you to check it out, pronto.

Planet Ord in the Monterey County Weekly

POSTED AUGUST 05, 2010 12:00 AM

MIND FULL: “Some people pressured me to take a stand [politically],” Blader says, “but I’ve decided my stand is just pro-art.” Photo by Nic Coury

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Art of War

An ambitious project captures the leftover murals and mystery of former Fort Ord.

By Ellen Huet

Enid Baxter Blader and a handful of intrepid CSU Monterey Bay students enter an abandoned barrack on the former Fort Ord. Their weapons of choice are cameras and adrenaline. Their targets are ghosts.

And while no Scooby-Doo-esque specters jump out at them, spirits are everywhere in these buildings: in the dusty rooms, drooping cots, shattered windows, orphaned papers and letters – and especially in the 583 murals that sprawl across the walls and hallways.

Blader, a professor in experimental film and chair of Teledramatic Arts and Technology at CSUMB, has spent more than a year exploring the abandoned base, documenting the buildings, art and miscellaneous traces that 60 years of soldiers and families left behind.

The project, once called Fort Ording, is now titled Planet Ord, inspired in part by the area’s otherworldliness. Its goal is simple, even if its completion will be complex: understand the fort’s history by immortalizing the buildings and community memories.

The indoor murals are particularly striking. Some are regiment insignias, but many others peek into soldiers’ minds, hundreds of expressions preserved in time and paint – men crouched in jungles, tanks and choppers, eagles, flags, and girls in bikinis on motorcycles.

“When we stepped inside, I felt overwhelmed,” says Nick Kova, a photographer and former student. “We quickly realized how much potential there was.”

That potential produced thousands of pictures, hours of videos and interviews, and an outpouring of community support, resulting in a website – with now almost 1 million hits – full of content Blader is turning into a series of documentaries and, eventually, a book.

Since the base’s closing in 1993, the buildings have been left at a standstill, with some systematic demolitions as the land is repurposed for CSUMB or housing developments. To Blader, the encroaching erasure instilled urgency.

“I felt this incredible anxiety that the buildings hadn’t been documented,” she says. Her enthusiasm for historical preservation, she says, comes from her home, a Revolutionary War reenactment town in eastern Pennsylvania.

When she joined CSUMB’s faculty in 2006, Blader felt drawn to the history and eerie presence of the fort. In 2009, she took her advanced video students on bicycle into the fort, encouraging exploration – and eventually asked some of these students to join her project once the class had ended.

“I told them, ‘You guys are going to college in a ghost town! No one else gets to do that,’” she says. “A lot of soldiers here were drafted, eligible for the draft because they weren’t in college. Now the fort is a college campus – what a change.”

Kova estimates that 60 to 70 percent of the site’s photos are his.

“It’s very real to see photos and video of the bases from years ago,” he says. “You look at how the place was built – I mean, some foundations were laid by prisoners of war. You realize that people were held here against their will.

“The oddest question I was ever asked by a reporter was, ‘Did exploring the base make you want to enlist?’” Kova continues. “It didn’t really – but it changed the way I thought about soldiers. Every time you take pictures of their paintings, you see through their eyes. It humanizes them.”

The fort’s alumni have plans for further collaboration with Blader.

“We’re more than pleased that [Blader] is taking these pictures – it gives a totally different perspective to non-military people of soldiers’ lives,” says Colonel Bob Furney, a board member of the alumni association. “We’re not all just gung-ho; we have a softer side.”

To Doug McCulloh, who documents the now-closed El Toro air base in Orange County, the closing of a base creates unique artistic opportunities.

“These bases were central parts of communities and U.S. power, then they were suddenly ghost towns,” he says. “Cameras capture something before it’s gone. There’s a human presence even with half an inch of dust on the floor.”

Blader’s favorite feedback comes from former residents.

“I’m just trying to get the community to share their memories of Fort Ord,” she says.

Although the project will eventually expand from its current state – website, blog, short films – into a feature film and possible print publication, Blader says she won’t be finished once that’s accomplished.

“It’s never going to end,” she says. “I’m always so excited to talk about soldier art, and there are so many other aspects to explore. I look at the [Base Realignment and Closure] lists and I just want to visit them all.”

For a look at photo galleries, video, blog comments and more, visit http://www.planetord.com

Monterey Bay Film Festival

In 2008, I started the Monterey Bay Teen Film Festival. In 2010, Chris Carpenter, Mike Plante, Hayley Allison and I expanded it to become the Monterey Bay Film Festival. 

Here's a great article about the fest:

In the Shorts

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By Adam Joseph

The debut Monterey Bay Film Festival amasses a whirlwind of striking short films.

What do a group of teenage girls incarcerated at Salinas Juvenile Hall, Watsonville high school kids and an award-winning animator have in common? They are all filmmakers with short films screening this Saturday at the inaugural Monterey Bay Film Festival, an expanded version of last year’s Teen Film Festival.

“This year, the whole festival is framed to be intergenerational,” says Enid Baxter Blader, CSU Monterey Bay’s Teledramatic Arts and Technology department chair. “We have films by teens who learned from college students and films by college students and established filmmakers, who the college students learn from.”

CSUMB film students have been leading Young Filmmakers Program workshops at nine cites throughout Monterey County, including programs at Seaside Boys and Girls Club and the Salinas Community Center. The goal of it is to teach local 13-17 year-olds how to make their own short films. This year, there were 212 submissions competing for the festival’s 12 available spots. The college students running the workshops were tasked with a difficult selection process. “This is how [the students] get the experience of putting together a film festival,” Blader says. “The process is extremely selective, so all the films showing at the festival are amazing.”

The program will open with a film by an Armenian teen about a young boy who works in a tombstone factory. Another one of the standouts isLetters From Within, a collaborative effort made by two CSUMB students and girls serving time at Salinas Juvenile Hall. The film tells the gripping stories of the teen girls’ lives through their letters and poetry.

“[Letters] is going to win a lot of awards in the future,” Blader says.

There will also be a screening of five films by current CSUMB students, including a claymation short, The Sniffer, and a quirky music video shot on a local beach.

Following the teen and college short film segments, Blader enlisted of her longtime cine-pal Mike Plante—a programmer for the Sundance Film Festival—to put together an additional shorts program to complete the intergenerational triangle. “Right now, [Plante] is probably the most important film festival programmer in the country,” Blader says.

Plante explains that it’s important for the festival to begin modestly and grow a little bit each year. Currently, there’s a mobile application in the works.

“We didn’t want to go nuts the first year,” he says. “We wanted to do something we knew we’d be able to pull off.

Just by having the festival we’re going to start making connections with people in the area and interest will grow; we have to make it manageable so people can have a good time and not feel overwhelmed.”

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“I see it becoming a multi-venue festival featuring local content, literature and activism.”

---

The enthusiastic film fest guru says that he watches more than 5,000 films every year for Sundance and other festivals; he keeps an ongoing list of gems that sometimes don’t make it into festival lineups. For MBFF, Plante chose 11 stellar shorts that he considers to be “really good, unusual films” that locals will dig.

“These are great films that I want people to see,” Plante says. “I tried to hone in a little bit about what may play good in Monterey.”

Plante took into account the county’s rich literary history and diverse population to construct a tasty plate of mini celluloid samplings.

Notes on the Other, directed by Sergio Oksman, is a pseudo-documentary and quasi-autobiographical toast to the mysterious and romantic life (and death) of Ernest Hemmingway, starring a number of the author’s look-alikes and featuring the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Two-time Academy Award nominee Don Hertzfeldt uses stick figures with flashy backgrounds to tell a very human story in his animated short I Am so Proud of You.

Topaz Adizes’ Laredo, Texas is an 11-minute border story—which takes place in the biggest inland port city in the U.S.—about a the tension-filled interaction between an undocumented immigrant and a guy on his first day at a new job.

The Sundance-selected Charlie and the Rabbit—directed by CSUMB alumni Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck and Robert Machoian—delightfully follows a trotting toddler on a mission to hunt his own rabbit, Elmer Fudd style.

Next year, Plante already plans to add a selection of feature-length films. In addition to bringing subversive films to the area, the festival will pair CSUMB students with working filmmakers. “Students will get access to people working in film around the country on a similar level,” Plante says. “A lot of the stuff I’m showing was made for a few thousand dollars, with no studio backing and a small crew.”

Plante, who works with other festivals around the country besides Sundance, is making it his personal mission to spread the word around the industry about the MBFF and CSUMB the rising film program.

“I see it becoming a multi-venue festival featuring local content, literature and activism,” Blader says. “Mike and I have big plans and we think the community is going to rise to the occasion.”

The Monterey Bay Film Festival begins 1pm Saturday, April 3, at CSUMB World Theater, Sixth Avenue, Seaside. Free. 582-4580.

Pride and Joy: Don Hertzfeldt’s “existential’” film, I Am So Proud Of You, has previously shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

From Amoeba's Blog

posted on March 19, 2010 at 4:15pm

Celluloid Heroines - Fearless Filmmaking Females

POSTED BY ERIC BRIGHTWELL, MARCH 20, 2010 01:28PM | POST A COMMENT 

   

Every female director who's been nominated for an Oscar

On January 31^st, The Guardian published an article titled “Why are there so few female filmmakers?” Less than a month later, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the director’s prize at the 62ndDirectors' Guild of America Awards. Then, in March, she repeated that feat at the 82^nd Oscars, where only three women (Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola) have previously even been nominated. Although membership of the Academy remains secret, it’s probably fair to assume that it’s disproportionatly male. What is known is that, when it was founded in 1927, there were 33 male members and three females (Mary Pickford, Jeanie MacPherson and Bess Meredyth) – or 8%.

    The money-makers

Although women make up a large percentage of directing students enrolled in film schools, as of 2008, they made up only 9% of Hollywood feature directors. Of the 241 films that have grossed over $100 million in the US in the last decade, only five female directors made the list, Vicky Jenson, Nancy Meyers, Catherine Hardwicke, Anne Fletcher and Phyllida Lloyd. None of them enjoy the fame or recognition of most of their counterparts who appear in front of the camera.

    

Amoeba's female directors with sections

Here at Amoeba Hollywood, of the 97 directors with their own sections, only five are female -- Doris Wishman, Enid Baxter Blader, Johanna Vaude, Maya Deren and Su Friedrich. 

There are of course other female directors out there -- some are responsible for some of the greatest films in film history. So in honor of Women’s History Month (and given my completist's need to make long lists), here are a few more:

AFRICA

           

Anne Mungai, Cheryl Dunye, Cindy Magara, Fanta Régina Nacro, Gurinder Chadha, Khady Sylla, Ngozi Onwurah, Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima, Pratibha Parmar, Safi Faye, Sarah Bouyain and Sarah Maldoror.

ASIA

                                    

Ann Hui, Aparna Sen, Byambasuren Davaa, Dalia Hager, Deepa Mehta, Hana Makhmalbaf, Indu Krishnan, Ivy Ho, Jiayin Liu, Joan Chen, Kaori Momoi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Lee Suk-Gyung, Mahin Oskouei, Marguerite Duras, Maryam Keshavarz, Marzieh Meshkini, Mehreen Jabbar, Mira Nair, Mona Zandi-Haqiqi, Nadine Labaki, Naomi Kawase, Niki Karimi, Parisa Bakhtavar, Pouran Derakhshandeh, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Sabiha Sumar, Samira Makhmalbaf, Sepideh Farsi, Shamim Ara, Shashwati Talukdar, Shimako Sato, So Yong Kim, Soonrye Yim, Suma Josson, Sylvia Chang, Tahmineh Milani, Trịnh Thị Minh Hà, Vidi Bilu, Yasman Malek-Nasr, Ying Ning, Yu Li and Zero Chou.

EUROPE

                                     

Agnès Jaoui, Agnès Varda, Agnieszka Holland, Alice Guy Blaché, Annabella Miscuglio, Antonia Bird, Asia Argento, Beeban Kidron, Birgit Hein, Caroline Link, Catherine Breillat, Chantal Akerman, Christine Edzard, Claire Denis, Coline Serreau, Doris Dörrie, Elfi Mikesch, Floria Sigismondi, Germaine Dulac, Helke Sander, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Icíar Bollaín, Jacqueline Audry, Johanna Vaude, Leni Riefenstahl, Liliana Cavani, Lina Wertmüller, Lindy Heymann, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Lynn Ramsey, Mai Zetterling, Margarethe von Trotta, Marleen Gorris, Márta Mészáros, Martha Fiennes, Monika Treut, Phyllida Lloyd, Sally Potter, Sharon Maguire, Shona Auerbach, Susanne Bier, Ulrike Ottinger, Vera Chytilová and Zana Briski.

NORTH AMERICA

                                                                          

Alison Maclean, Allison Anders, Amy Heckerling, Amy Holden Jones, Anne Fletcher, Barbara Hammer, Barbara Kopple, Barbara Loden, Barbara Peters, Barbra Streisand, Betty Thomas, Caroline Thompson, Catherine Hardwicke, Christine Choy, Colette Burson, Connie Field, Darnell Martin, Dennie Gordon, Diane Keaton, Dianne Houston, Doris Wishman, Dorothy Arzner, Drew Barrymore, Eisha Marjara, Elaine May, Ellen Perry, Enid Baxter Blader, Euzhan Palcy, Frances-Anne Solomon, Grace Lee, Hilary Birmingham,  Ida Lupino, Jamie Babbit, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jessica Yu, Joan Darling, Joan Micklin Silver, Jodie Foster, Joyce Wieland, Judy Smith, Julie Dash, Julie Taymor, Jürgen Vsych, Karen Arthur, Kasi Lemmons, Kate Davis,Katherine Bigelow, Kelly Reichardt, Kimberly Peirce, Lesli Linka Glatter, Lizzie Borden, Loni Ding, Louise Alaimo, Maggie Greenwald, Maria Maggenti, Martha Coolidge, Mary Benjamin, Mary Harron, Mary Lambert, Maya Angelou, Maya Deren, Mimi Leder, Miranda July, Monika Treut, Nancy Meyers,Nancy Savoca, Neema Barnette , Nia Vardalos, Nicole Holofcener, Nisha Ganatra, Nnegest Likké, Nora Ephron, Patricia Rozema, Patty Jenkins,  Penelope Spheeris, Penny Marshall, Rebecca Miller, Shirley Clarke, Sofia Coppola, Sonali Gulati, Stephanie Rothman, Su Friedrich, Susan Seidelman, Tamara Jenkins, Tiffany Huang, Tita Poe, Valerie Faris, Vicky Jenson, Yunah Hong, Zahra Dowlatabadi and Zoe Cassavetes.

OCEANIA

  

Cate Shortland, Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion and Jocelyn Moorhouse.

SOUTH AMERICA

        

Ana Carolina, Betse De Paula, Carla Camurati, Eliane Caffé, Helena Solberg, Lúcia Murat, Lucrecia Martel, Marta Rodríguez, Nelly Kaplan, Sandra Kogut, Suzana Amaral and Tata Amaral.

Recent Press - DVD TALK

2009-08-25  DVD Talk 
By Nick Hartel

"A Film is Burning Place" collects the works of Enid Baxter Blader, who is described on the case as a filmmaker, painter, and bluegrass musician. It collects the various short films (both in complete form and excerpts) of Blader and presents them in three specific groupings. I'll be very upfront, I have little idea of what to make of the more experimental content here, but what does stand out is the fascinating short documentary, Local 909er. It's such a powerful piece of filmmaking that it could have been the feature piece and everything else considered bonus content. 

Local 909er isn't a standard documentary though, like many of Blader's works, it is filmed and assembled in a very unique fashion, consisting of varying film stocks as well as still photographs. Blader begins our journey at the Salton Sea and mud volcanoes that reside nearby. This area is part of Inland Empire, California or the 909 (the area code that serves the cities and communities featured here) and Blader shows us through still photos that this was once a thriving upstart community that quickly became abandoned when the environment did what it does best: the unexpected. As we watch footage taken by Blader of the amazing mud volcanoes she mentions everything is "under shaky ground." It's a theme that takes on multiple meanings over the course of the film's 25-minute runtime. 

The heart of the story being told here lies in the surrounding areas. It is chilling to watch footage of Victoria Gardens, a corporate shopping mall designed to resemble 1950s downtown America. Blader films portions of the footage here in a fashion that resembles what you would expect from a 1950s home movie, but we are quickly reminded, visually, this is not 1950s America. Victoria Garden and other nearby chain stores like Wal-Mart and Target leave a wake of destruction in their path. Blader explains that when Target decides to build a superstore in an area, it's cheaper to abandon the old store and start anew. The result is a shell of a building that spreads its lonesome disease to other nearby business resulting in an area of dead buildings. The parallels between this modern upstart community and the Salton Sea become very apparent to all but the developers themselves. 

Blader's own home and community in Upland is an ironic contrast to the manufactured luxury communities popping up in nearby Norco and Chino. Corporations seem to think these fancy homes and luxury amenities will recapture the 1950s spirit the same way Victoria Gardens is supposed to. However, Blader's simple description of her own community reveals its not how things look that makes them special, it's the people themselves who are the heart and soul of where we live. 

I honestly can't heap enough praise on Blader's work on Local 909er. It is made from the heart, tells a story that I'd likely have never known, and sends a subtle message. Blader's narration never panders or preaches, it's honest and objective. The mix of varying experimental film styles gives the film a truly unique, rough, and real look. Out of all the pieces featured in this collection, this is the one that shows Blader has great talent. 

I don't want to take away from the rest of the collection though, either, but as I stated previously, I don't really know what to make of most of it. Local 909er is presented with two other films Secret Apocalyptic Love Diaries and an excerpt from The Revival of Lee Mackey. The former is a collection of brief episodes examining human lives. It's filmed very roughly and like Local 909er (and the other pieces for that matter) doesn't pander or explain itself. 

The second collection of shorts on the disc are present under the sub-heading CB Transmissions and Other Faith Healing Aids. These are very short, non-narrative pieces, half of which are excerpts, running under one-minute each. I didn't feel much connection to any of the material here. If nothing else, they show the range of Blader's filming and editing style, as well as her unique use of sound in many instances. 

The final sub-heading, Burning Films, contains one short film, Lucille and an excerpt from Letter from the Girl. Lucille is an obvious homage/tribute to the infamous scene in Cool Hand Luke, where and unidentified blonde washes her car in front of the prisoners. In that film, Dragline (George Kennedy) dubs the woman Lucille, ironically calling her innocent, when its very obvious as to what her intentions were. The excerpt from Letter from the Girl feels like an homage to a 60s/70s thriller and while filmed very straightforward, highlights Blader's unique use of sound and music. 

As a whole the complete collection is a little on the weak side, with the second set of short films just not making much of an impact. However, Local 909er is really the crowning achievement here and so good, it makes the disc worth checking out.

Recent Press - Pop Matters

Recent reviews of 'A Film is a Burning Place' include:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/94245-a-film-is-a-burning-place-works-by-enid-baxter-blader/

This compilation of short pieces and excerpts by Blader not only pushes boundaries between media – film, different types of video, still photography, sound and music – but also the edges of what is conventionally considered “good” moving imagery. Her short films and videos are full of occluded and out-of-focus views, oblique angles, and digital artifacts. In most narrative contexts, such devices, especially if used pervasively, would seem out of place, but here they raise questions related to perception, how we see in the world and how we use cameras to alter or augment our perceptions.

Film is a Burning Place organizes Blader’s works into three categories: “A Video is a Place”, “CB Transmissions and Other Faith Healing Aids”, and “Burning Films”.

Included in “A Video is a Place” is the aforementioned “Local 909er”, which is easily the most accessible piece in the collection. Blader uses a mix of sounds and images – photos, film, video, voiceover narration, a radio tuner – to sketch a historical geography of California’s Inland Empire. She pulls together a picture of a region defined by collisions between humans and nature. These collisions have created a home for both Frontier-types looking to escape conventional culture and those desiring a more domestic version of the American Dream.

She explores the corporate exploitation of the latter desire, and the implications of that exploitation for public space, freedom, and community. While Blader provides narration for the film, she remains matter-of-fact, allowing her critique to develop as much through her images as her voice. This piece is a beautiful, nuanced, and thoughtful look at place in contemporary America.

The first section also contains the four-part “Secret Apocalyptic Love Diaries”, which, next to “Local 909er”, is the other extended, complete work on Film is a Burning Place. Here, Blader juxtaposes black and white shots of extreme weather and flooding with more intimate images of people seemingly in love, falling out of love, or perhaps simply yearning to be in one or the other state of being. These shots are gauzy and desaturated, but flecked by red, green, and blue. Views are obscure and obscured.

In the opening episode, a woman, played by Blader, provides tense narration, seemingly involved in some kind of love triangle, but never appearing directly on camera. What to make of the scenes that constitute the “Secret Apocalyptic Love Diaries” will likely hinge on what you see as the relationships between the characters, and who they are, or want to be, to each other.

The idea, or at least suggestion, of people living in a natural world beyond their control runs throughout the selections in the compilation, including in the excerpts from “The Revival of Lee Mackey” that complete “A Video is a Place”, and the short works that make up “CB Transmissions and Other Faith Healing Aids”.

As its title implies, the second chapter to Film is a Burning Place is fragmentary, both within and between films. The first selection, “They Will Cure What Ails”, starts with a fuzzy long shot of birds in flight, cuts to an extreme, slow motion close-up of a woman’s eye, then moves to a long, high-angle shot of a car accident, a shot of Gordo Cooper (Dennis Quaid) in a space capsule from The Right Stuff (1983), and finally to a long distance view of fire on a flat plain before returning to the birds.

The films and videos in this part of the DVD, whether complete works or partial renderings, are all devoted to such particular and momentary perceptions of the world: a pixelating shot of corn stalks blowing in the wind, trees through a dirty windshield, a blue-toned waterlogged landscape, all appearing to be rooted in some thought to capture how the world looks from a particular viewpoint.

The final section, “Burning Films”, contains two pieces, both easily read as experiments in narrative. The first, “Lucille”, references Cool Hand Luke (1967) as it self-consciously plays with the conventions of soft core pornography. This slow motion short is devoted to a curvy woman, attired in a partially-sheer black slip dress, washing a motorcycle in a series of deliberately erotic poses. Despite, or maybe because of, the absurdity of the scene, she appears to own her ritual more than she appears to be on display.

In fact, when a presumptively heterosexual male does make an appearance, he appears severe, maybe angry, rather than aroused. Lucille (Michelle Maaske) returns his gaze with equal ferocity, resisting the role of passive sex object.

Film is a Burning Place ends with an excerpt from “Letter from the Girl, Mailed from the Gas Station”, a film that seems to be another exercise in genre play, drawing on B-picture tropes, and using “borrowed” sound to create an unsettling and surreal landscape.

The Microcinema DVD includes a short biography of Blader and an essay by Ben Ehrenreich printed on the inside cover, but no other extras. Of course, in the context of works such as these, maybe the thought is that less is more when it comes to elaboration . On a related note, the case holding my copy of the disc quotes a total running time of one 101-minutes, but the 55-minutes noted on the accompanying flier is more accurate.

It would be difficult to promise “satisfaction” from a collection like Film is a Burning Place. The works are highly individual, and operate in an aesthetic realm that is radically different from what many are likely to think of as “film”. At the same time, if part of the power of film lies in the ability to show people the world in ways they cannot and do not normally experience, then these short works by Enid Baxter Blader are exactly what they should be.