Sample Letter To Neighbor About Fence: Fill & Download for Free

Design a nice advertising flyer on 8.5 x 11 paper describing your services and prices. Use an interesting large size font and color graphics. You want it to be attractive and professional looking, like a magazine ad. Include all the necessary information and include your name, phone and email address.You are selling YOU and your services, so do a bang up job on it. Get some help from your folks . You can ask a successful business person to mentor you, like a relative, family friend, or neighbor.Here’s a sample flyer. You can probably write a better one and find a nicer graphic using Google image search.Power Washing Your Driveway for $___Sidewalks $____Patio $____I will do a super job on power washing your driveway, patio or sidewalks. All you need to provide is an outdoor electric socket and water spigot and I will provide all the equipment and supplies.I can usually clean a 2o foot driveway in __ minutes. You can supervise, or I can do it while you are at work.Cash or checks only, payment in advance. Satisfaction guaranteed, or I will wash a second time. References available upon request.Call me at 555–1234 or email [email protected] to set up a consultation and estimate and make an appointment for washing.Thank you!(your name), Teenage Entrepreneur555–1234Buy a ream of 500 sheets of good semi-gloss paper at Staples or OfficeMax or another business store. Hammermill Color Copy 28 lb paper or something similar would be superb. Tell the clerk what you want the paper for.You can print the flyers on your home computer. Start with a small batch, maybe 25–30 copies. Later, if your campaign goes well, you can make color photocopies of your original, so you won’t have to use up all your ink cartridges.Now walk around your immediate neighborhood and adjacent streets. Dress neatly but look like you’re ready to work. If you want to catch people at home, do it after dinner time. Knock on doors and chat with the people and hand them a flyer.Offer to do a couple of neighbors’ driveways for free if they will agree to provide satisfied letters of references for your work. You can later make photocopies of those reference letters to show prospective customers.If no one is home, tuck a flyer inside the screen door. (Don’t use the mailbox; that’s illegal.) If there is a strip mall or supermarket near your home, you could put flyers on car windshields there.Every day print up some more flyers and expand your territory. When you have papered all of the homes within the range that you wish to operate, start all over again. You should deliver flyers every week until school starts. Advertisers know that you have to repeatedly put their ads in front of people before they will act upon them.If you think your flyer isn’t working well, don’t hesitate to redesign it.You can do better than just making pocket money! This is your summer job, so put your heart into it and try to spend 4–8 hours a day building your business and providing services. The more you put into it, the better success you will achieve. Make use of the public library to learn more about advertising, starting up a business, and marketing. Ask the librarian for help finding books.You are not too young to take this seriously. Remember the story of Huck Finn and the picket fence. You could get so good at this that you’ll have to sublet work!Good luck! I know you can do it. I started working in the summer when I was 12 years old. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t because you are a girl or too young. You’ve got your dad backing you up and I know you can find other supporters, too.

REAR WINDOW (1954) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey, and Raymond Burr.Rear Window violates many of the tenets of noir, having been filmed in color, entirely lacking in dark alleys and chiaroscuro lighting effects, without a hint of a femme fatale, and worst of all it contains many psychological bright spots in the psyches of the principals. On the other hand it does deal with obsession, voyeurism, murder, sex, gender roles, and the prickly issue of male commitment. If ever there was a perfect movie made to be watched in the wee hours of a warm summer night that movie is Rear Window.In the middle 1950s, in the staid and proper Eisenhower era, with Rear Window and Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock not only succeeded in thrilling and titillating audiences, he also made them his collaborators, his partners in perversion or at least in kinky obsession. The quirky director accurately referred to Rear Window as his “ultimate Peeping Tom story.” Let’s not forget that even today most municipalities still classify voyeurism as a prosecutable crime and the movie itself references the fact that in ancient times the voyeur was sometimes blinded for his offense!The challenge for Hitchcock was not just to avoid tripping his strait-laced audience’s taboos against “peeping,” but also to get them to actually participate in the vice. It’s fatal to the success of any narrative for the audience to feel alienated by the actions of the protagonist and “Hitch” avoided this pitfall by an approach that was at once sophisticated, clever, and multi-layered.It’s no coincidence that Rear Window begins with a stifling New York City heat wave. Although today’s urban population must face the new reality of global warming, powerful air conditioners are now ubiquitous. But few apartment dwellers in the 1950s possessed an air conditioner and many lacked even fans. The impact that sizzling summer weather often had in the past is now largely forgotten. Folks not only suffered and sweated during the “dog days,” but the rules of propriety were bent and behavior changed, at least for the duration.People became less formal, they removed as many clothes as was practical, and they spent as much time as possible outdoors, in backyards, on stoops, and even on fire escapes – anywhere one could at least hope for the prospect of a cooling breeze. “Tar Beach” was the common nickname given to urban rooftops. People ate light, drank heavy, and kept later hours as the stagnant air and suffocating humidity made sleep challenging and fitful.As the doldrum days grew longer, tempers shortened and police blotters document a predictable increase in the tempo of violence until the most extreme temperatures finally bludgeoned the populace into a state of passive torpidity. In the opening moments of Rear Window a Greenwich Village is revealed to us in the throes of just such a heat wave. Things are about to happen which would never occur during a brisk autumn and even our protagonists will behave in ways that they might not in a chillier, chaster clime.Hitchcock’s seduction of his audience began even before filming with his casting of James Stewart as his leading man. Clean-cut and folksy, onscreen Stewart was the epitome of the “boy next door,” while off screen he was a bona fide war hero, having served as a bomber pilot in World War II. Charmed by his good looks and Pennsylvania drawl, audiences were willing to allow the lovable Jimmy to lead them into dark corners where they would have been less likely to follow another leading man (just as they would four years later when he starred in the sexually charged definitive paean to obsessive love, Vertigo).Hitchcock often played favorites using Stewart in a total of four films, but if he had employed any of his other leading men (Sean Connery, Rod Taylor, Ray Milland, or even Cary Grant) Rear Window would likely have taken on a smarmy, overtly sexualized tone which might well have proven fatal to the narrative. Only the often underrated Stewart could effortlessly project just the right aura of knowing innocence to have carried it off. To paraphrase a fatal conceit of Richard Nixon’s concerning the legality of presidential actions—if Jimmy Stewart would do it, then it must be wholesome!And yet the entire movie, and this is seen in all of the characters, is really about the powerful sexual urges, fetishes, and even perversions that lurk just under the surface of polite conduct. On the other hand, Vertigo, Hitchcock’s other Stewart-starring bookend opus on Freudian sex deals with the dangers that come with acting out some of these primitive urges. And now it’s time to give in to the demands of Grace Kelly halfway through the movie when she so fetchingly commands, “Now tell me everything you saw and what you thinks it means.”For starters Stewart plays the role of L. B. Jeffries, “Jeff” to his friends, an award winning photo journalist. He is first and foremost a “bachelor” to use a loaded word that has become largely obsolete in the last sixty years except in the shallow waters of reality TV. Jeff is also a chauvinistic adrenaline junkie with a taste for exotic travel and an aversion to commitment. Like many other now-extinct bachelors, he has a juvenile and highly exaggerated fear of a nagging wife which has kept him single into early middle-age. He embodies that quintessential American archetype, the naughty but lovable “man-boy.”It is a perversity of human nature that the opposite sex often perceives unavailability as alluring, and thus Jeff has managed to attract the interest of a beautiful younger woman named Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), a wealthy model and fashion columnist. The movie begins early one sweltering morning with the temperature already well above 90 degrees. Our restless adventurer is trapped in a wheelchair in a studio apartment by a badly broken leg encased in plaster.“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop” runs the old dictum and Jeff has been forced to maintain an unnaturally quiescent state for the last six weeks! In just seven days more the cast will come off and Jeff can reclaim his freedom, but in the meantime his roaming mind and caged libido badly need an outlet!Throughout the film the moral ambiguity of Jeff’s voyeurism generates tension within the audience, depending on each individual’s threshold of decorum and sense of appropriateness. To regularly bleed off this pressure Hitchcock cannily provides safety valves in the characters played by Thelma Ritter and Wendell Corey. They act as proxies for the viewers and they both identify and criticize Jeff’s kinky and growing obsession. When Stewart answers their remarks with either quips or logic it has the effect of soothing our own concerns about his behavior, allowing us to stay the course.Another rationale that develops over the course of the story is that while Jeffries is undeniably committing a minor crime, it is done in the interests of exposing a dangerous major criminal. Hitchcock’s final technique for suborning his audience is both subtle and yet so obvious as to avoid conscious notice and is accomplished with the director’s camera. “Hitch” actually pokes his lens out of the eponymous rear window so that we viewers become the ultimate voyeurs, powerless to resist our troubling urge to spy out the intimate details of the neighborhood.A peculiar phenomenon which may well deserve the attention of today’s sociologists concerns the contrasting “privacy threshold range” between Manhattan residents and those who inhabit the outlying boroughs that comprise New York City—the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. In these outer boroughs people are concerned not just with privacy but also with propriety. Accordingly, blinds are kept low and curtains are drawn except to let in a comfortable degree of light.But the island of Manhattan is different. The residents here tend to be wealthier and often younger than those in the boroughs and they pay far higher rents for the privilege of calling this island home. Many Manhattanites have moved there from all parts of the country and they want the world to know that they have arrived! Many newcomers aspire to the performing arts while many older residents fancy themselves to be aficionados. Regardless of the reason, many Manhattan residents are highly exhibitionist in nature, often only employing blinds and curtains to frame their stage. They clearly enjoy sharing the details of their anatomy and their social and sexual lives with their neighbors, curious or not.But lest any modern Manhattanite attempt to dismiss L. B. Jeffries activities as merely boyish mischief there is immutable proof that the character’s macabre obsession has spun totally out of control. What else but a dark and growing perversion can explain Jimmy Stewart’s preference for watching the portly, sweating form of Raymond Burr rather than giving his attention to the nubile and ever so eager to please Grace Kelly?When Jeff awakens on that first morning he quickly starts spying on his neighbors who include a composer and his piano, a statuesque and scantily clad blonde dancer, and a forbidding salesman and his invalid wife.It’s clear that Jeff has long since become accustomed to regularly indulging his fetish. But he’s not alone in this, either. Out the window and across the way he spots two young women sunbathing on their roof in the nude. A few seconds later a low-flying helicopter appears and hovers over them. Next Jeff’s nurse and therapist, Stella McCaffery (Thelma Ritter), enters the apartment and doesn’t even bother to say hello. Instead she instantly quips, “The New York State sentence for a ‘Peeping Tom’ is six years…” followed by, “You know in the old days they used to put your eyes out with a red hot poker!” She also opines that, “We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms.” She functions as a prophetess at this juncture predicting that trouble will come of his spying on the neighbors. She also advises him to marry his girlfriend Lisa, but Jeff says he isn’t ready to marry yet. Stella significantly retorts that people who are attracted should marry each other and not “read a lot of books, fence with a lot of four-syllable words, [and] psychoanalyze each other…”This is as good a point as any to mention that Jeff’s apartment door is never locked. Never! Stella, Lisa, and later, policeman Tom Doyle are free to come and go at will. And so is anyone else who might wander into the building. Even for the benign 1950s this denotes an excessively trusting nature for a helpless person, particularly if they happen to be at the center of a noir film. I know, I know, I sound just like Stella, but I sense trouble will come of this.The day passes and Jeff dozes in his wheelchair. As a reddish sunset lights the courtyard, a radiant Lisa appears in an extreme close-up and leans over Jeff and gently kisses him awake.They exchange quips for a few moments, but she is a breath-taking vision. By any standard, Grace Kelly in the mid-1950s represented the very best that Technicolored pulchritude had to offer, with her classic features highlighted by her corn gold hair, fair complexion and periwinkle blue eyes, all set off by the deep crimson lipstick favored by Hollywood at the time.Lisa wants to celebrate what will be Jeff’s last few days in the leg cast, promising, “I’m going to make this a week you’ll never forget.” As the story unfolds it becomes apparent that she’s also determined to press her marriage suit to the fullest while he remains a stationary and perhaps “helpless” target. She’s dressed in an expensive black and white Parisian dress and rather than show up empty handed she has arrived with a uniformed waiter in tow, along with French wine and a lobster dinner catered by the Twenty-One Club. One could surely ask for more, but I for one don’t know what that might be.Lisa tries to pressure Jeff to stay in New York as a fashion photographer, offering to help him get work with her connections, but he rejects the idea. He has in fact done fashion photography before as we can tell from his work displayed around the apartment. She goes into the kitchen to plate their dinner and Jeff’s attention wanders out the window.He’s developed nicknames for many of his neighbors and his eyes are drawn to a spinster neighbor he refers to as “Miss Lonelyhearts.” In an unconscious but pathetic parody of the tete a tete Jeff is sharing with Lisa, “Miss Lonelyhearts” has set a dinner table for two and even poured a glass of wine for an imaginary guest. Perhaps she’s hoping to conjure a genuine beau with sympathetic magic.Jeff ironically raises his own glass to toast her, just before she buries her head sadly on the table.It’s significant that Jeff chose to share this tender moment with an unknowing stranger across the courtyard rather than with Lisa who is standing just a few feet away.Next Jeff and Lisa have a conversation about their own troubled relationship, using his neighbors as proxies. As Lisa comes up behind him Jeff refers to “Miss Lonelyhearts,” saying that that’s something she’ll never have to worry about, assuming that Lisa will never lack for suitors, and unwilling to accept that she loves only him. Lisa responds, “Oh? You can see my apartment from here, all the way up on 63rd Street?” He draws her attention to the window of “Miss Torso,” a young blonde and busty dancer who is currently entertaining no less than three gentlemen callers. Jeff makes a crack about the apartment being as popular as hers but Lisa responds that “Miss Torso” doesn’t love any of her admirers. When Jeff asks how she knows that Lisa sharply answers, “You said it resembled my apartment, didn’t you?”Now through the window we see the heavy-set salesman, Lars Thorwald, serve his sickly wife dinner in bed on a tray. She continues to nag at him and flings away a rose he had placed on the tray. When he retreats to the living room to make a phone call we see Mrs. Thorwald first eavesdrop and then mock her husband for his conversation, presumably to another woman. This is the last time we see Mrs. Thorwald alive.Next we watch a middle-aged composer working at his piano. Lisa pronounces his melody “enchanting” and suggests that it’s almost as if it were being written for them. Jeff retorts, “No wonder he’s having so much trouble with it.” After dinner the couple continues to discuss their relationship and Jeff makes it clear that he won’t give up his globe-trotting ways for her and he won’t take seriously her offers to share his rugged lifestyle. Let’s not forget that as a photojournalist Jeff is actually a professional voyeur. Their discussion of their future grows tenser and more argumentative. By the time Lisa leaves they appear to be on the verge of breaking up for good.Jeff is upset but then distracts himself by gazing out his window at the now darkened courtyard. But our sense of anxiety is heightened by the sounds of a woman’s scream and breaking glass. Jeff finally dozes off but is wakened by a loud rainstorm, and he spends some time sitting in the darkness and watching his neighbors. He’s amused to see a middle-aged couple sleeping out on their fire escape and now caught in the rain. He also sees a rain coated Thorwald leave his apartment and return three times, always carrying his large sample case. Could he be throwing some things out? Jeff dozes off again towards morning and we see Thorwald leave his apartment once more, this time with a middle-aged woman. Could this be Mrs. Thorwald? Or perhaps a girlfriend?When Stella shows up later in the morning and gives him a massage, Jeff tells her of Thorwald’s nocturnal wanderings and wonders what might have been in the sample case. Stella jokes about it but then they suddenly notice that the blinds are now up in Thorwald’s apartment and the man himself is staring at them. Jeff and Stella back up into the shadows and Jeff comments that Thorwald looks like a man afraid of being watched. Thorwald also gives his attention to a small dog sniffing in the garden below. Jeff asks her to pass him his binoculars as Stella leaves with a sour look on her face, intoning, “Trouble, I can smell it.”Not satisfied with the binoculars, Jeff grabs his camera and screws a giant, powerful telephoto lens onto it. Some critics with a fondness for Freud have referred to Jeff’s cast as the outward symbol of his sexual impotence representing his inability to act or perform. The same critics see the telephoto lens as an erection of sorts, affording Jeff greater power and pleasure and implying that he can only respond sexually in the context of his perversion, but I don’t think it’s necessary to get that clinical about it. With his vision artificially enhanced, Jeff sees Thorwald wrapping a long saw and a butcher knife in newspaper, and it seems that Mrs. Thorwald has left the apartment.That night Lisa returns, this time wearing classic pearls and a flawless black dress. We find the couple with the lights out, cuddled together in Jeff’s wheelchair and making out, but Lisa complains that she doesn’t have his full attention—and she doesn’t. Once again Jeff is more interested in what’s further away or in his mind rather than what’s physically right at hand.Jeff would rather be spinning his theories about Thorwald killing and dismembering his wife than tickling the tonsils of the blonde goddess who’s offering herself to him. As he expounds his theory she turns on a light and tells him that he’s scaring her. Jeff says that Thorwald has just returned and Lisa grows agitated and turns his wheelchair away from the window. She says that looking out the window from boredom is one thing but that using binoculars and obsessing about it is “diseased” – a polite way of saying “perverted.”As they debate the issue Jeff insists that Thorwald has murdered his wife. At that point they both notice Thorwald tying up a large steamer trunk with a heavy rope and suddenly Jeff’s wild theories don’t seem so irrational.From this point on Lisa will be acting quite differently in the relationship. From the Freudian point of view she has had an epiphany and now realizes that the only way to seduce Jeff is by giving him something he can see—the voyeur relates to the world through his eyes. Either way, she now opts to share the folle de deux and climbs aboard Jeff’s Murder Mystery Express and has him tell her the whole sequence of events in detail. Later, after leaving, she calls Jeff and tells him that the name on the mailbox reads, “Mr. and Mrs. Lars Thorwald, 125 West 9th Street.” Then she gamely asks for her “next assignment.” When Jeff doesn’t have one she asks what the guy is doing now and Jeff tells her that Thorwald is just sitting in the dark – exactly as Jeff himself is doing.The next morning Jeff takes things a step further by calling his old war buddy, NYPD Lieutenant Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) and asking him to stop by to investigate a murder. When Stella arrives she speculates that Thorwald must have cut up the body in the bathtub and she suggests that the trunk he put the parts in will soon start to leak. They watch as delivery men arrive at Thorwald’s apartment and take out the large trunk. Stella runs downstairs to capture the name of the freight company, but they drive off in their truck before she can get there. We next see Jeff discussing the case with Tom Doyle who is more than a little skeptical about the whole thing.He keeps referring to the lack of witnesses or evidence, and he doesn’t believe that Thorwald would be cool enough to hang around if he had done the deed. Doyle says, “Jeff, you’ve got a lot to learn about homicide. Why morons have committed murder so shrewdly it’s taken a hundred trained police minds to catch them.” Now there’s an encouraging thought! Nonchalantly, Tom promises to “poke into it a little,” just to be sure, but he feels certain that Mrs. Thorwald has simply gone off on a trip. And she may well have—we did see Thorwald leave with a middle-aged woman while Jeff was catching his catnap.Down in the courtyard Jeff spots the little dog digging frantically around the base of a rose bush, but Thorwald comes along and shoos him away. Later that day Doyle comes back to the apartment and deflates all of Jeff’s lurid theories. He relates that the building superintendent and two tenants saw Thorwald and his wife leave at 6:00 am the day before when he took her to the train station. Jeff pushes Doyle to search the Thorwald apartment for evidence, but the policeman explains that he has no evidence to justify a search warrant. On his way out he puts a final spike in Jeff’s theories, adding that he found a postcard in Thorwald’s mailbox from his wife, postmarked from the country. Exasperated, Jeff inquires, “Are you interested in solving this case or in making me look foolish?” Assuming a look of exaggerated innocence, Doyle responds, “If possible, both!”Disappointed, Jeff spends the evening spying on the neighbors. He sees Thorwald come home with some shirts from the cleaners and pack a suitcase. His suits are laid out as if for a trip. Jeff calls Tom and leaves a message with his wife; he feels sure that the killer is about to skip town. He also sees the salesman rummaging through his wife’s handbag and examining her jewelry, including what may be Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring. He also sees a well-dressed “Miss Lonelyhearts” having dinner alone across the street. At this point Lisa enters the darkened apartment, this time sporting a smart pale green suit, a small white pillbox hat, and, of course, her pearls, now with her hair caught up in a tight bun.Jeff fills her in and Lisa is quite disturbed by Mrs. Thorwald’s handbag, saying that no woman would go on vacation while leaving their “favorite handbag” behind. She also says that a woman would never leave all her jewelry in a purse, “getting all twisted, and scratched and tangled up.” She wonders if Thorwald doesn’t have a girlfriend who is also involved in the murder. Jeff is visibly excited by her willingness to share the adventure, and he says, “Come here,” pulling her onto his lap.They banter and kiss and she announces that she’s spending the night. She’s undoubtedly sensed a turning point in her campaign to seduce (and capture) Jeff and she’s determined to press her advantage. “We have all night… I’m going to stay with you.” She also threatens that if he objects that she’ll stay for two nights. I object, I object! Sorry, I’ll try to stay out of it. And in order to prove that she can “live out of one suitcase” she produces a handbag-sized Mark Cross overnight case containing a frilly nightgown and a pair of slippers.Coyly she offers to trade, “My feminine intuition for a bed for the night.” Jeff responds, “I’ll go along with that.” She goes into the kitchen to fix them some coffee and brandy.Now Tom Doyle comes in and sits down to talk to Jeff. But this streetwise detective who doesn’t blink at murder can’t take his eyes off Lisa’s negligee spilling out of her smart black leather case. Jeff introduces Lisa to Tom and she announces, “We think Thorwald is guilty.” Before answering her, Doyle again looks at the negligee and Jeff cautions him, “Careful, Tom.” But although ready to jump to conclusions regarding the lingerie, Doyle is unconvinced about the supposed murder.He reveals that they found Thorwald’s trunk and that it only contained his wife’s clothes. Doyle speculates that Thorwald and his wife may have broken up and she might not be returning. Jeff asks why Thorwald didn’t inform his landlord about his wife. For the umpteenth time Doyle stares at the negligee and says, “Do you tell your landlord everything?” Jeff replies, “I told you to be careful, Tom.”When Tom categorically dismisses the murder theory, Lisa stands behind Jeff’s wheelchair to show her solidarity with him and Doyle realizes he’s now outstayed his welcome. He cracks that if Jeff needs more help he should consult the Yellow Pages. From the doorway he delivers his parting shot, “Don’t stay up too late.” One wonders if good lieutenant may now be contemplating a transfer over from the Homicide Squad to Vice?Lisa and Jeff are both let down by the way the conversation has gone and they turn their attention again to the neighbors. They see “Miss Lonelyhearts” bring home a male companion. They kiss and at first all seems well, but then he assaults her. She slaps him and shouting she ejects him from her apartment. The raw emotion of the episode makes them both Lisa and Jeff doubt the propriety of their voyeurism. Jeff says, “You know, much as I hate to give Thomas J. Doyle too much credit, he might have gotten ahold of something when he said that was pretty private stuff going on out there. I wonder if is ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens… even if you prove that he didn’t commit a crime.”Lisa suggests that they should both be happy to discover that a woman wasn’t murdered. She mentions the dictum, “Love thy neighbor.” Jeff picks up on it and responds, “… I think I’ll start reviving that tomorrow. I’ll begin with ‘Miss Torso.’” Lisa rises to his bait, “Not if I have to move into an apartment across the way and do the Dance of the Seven Veils every hour.” This shows that now at least she well understands how to get and maintain Jeff’s attention.She lowers the bamboo blinds and announces that the show’s over for the night—at least the one outside. She picks up her black leather lingerie case and coyly asks, “Did Mr. Doyle think I stole this case?” showing that the policeman’s apparent fascination with it hadn’t escaped her. Jeff responds, “No, Lisa, I don’t think he did.” She disappears momentarily; returning clad in a scrumptious white satin nightgown in the Grecian mode, complete with a diaphanous over-jacket and asks Jeff what he thinks. Tongue-tied he responds with a non-sequitur that’s not entirely inappropriate. “Thank you,” he stammers.But their tender moment is broken by an awful scream from the courtyard below. All of the neighbors rush to their windows where they see the woman who owns the little dog standing on her fire escape, looking down on its body. Someone has snapped its neck! The grief-stricken woman berates her neighbors, yelling that they’re not real neighbors at all and that one of them has killed her friendly, harmless, little dog. They all watch for a moment and then grimly turn away; all but Lars Thorwald who has never moved. He sits quietly in the recesses of his apartment, his cigarette intermittently glowing cherry-red in the thick shadows like a persistent danger signal.The following afternoon we see Stella and Lisa, who now looks fresh and dewy in a white print dress with gold flowers, watching Thorwald out of the window as the salesman scrubs down his bathroom—where he may have dismembered his wife.We’re left to wonder whether Lisa scooted up to 63rd Street for a wardrobe change or if her little Mark Cross case has tesseract-like qualities? Meanwhile Jeff compares a recent photographic slide of the courtyard garden with it present state and announces that the ground has been disturbed. He’s convinced that Thorwald has buried something incriminating there—and that this is why he killed that nosy little dog. Lisa suggests that they wait until it gets dark and then dig up the suspicious flower bed.Seeing that Thorwald is now packing with purpose, Jeff becomes anxious to stop the killer’s escape. He prints out a note in block letters to flush out the murderer: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?”and puts it into an envelope addressed to Thorwald. Lisa bravely offers to deliver it and the others watch as she enters the building across the way and slips the message under Thorwald’s apartment door. Thorwald hears Lisa outside his door and she is very nearly caught when Thorwald checks the hallway. Immediately he reads the note and he shows no surprise, only anger.Meanwhile Stella urgently asks Jeff if she can use his telephoto lens. She sees “Miss Lonelyhearts” laying out some red pills, and can’t help but wonder what her intentions are. When a now out of breath but exhilarated Lisa returns she gushes, “Wasn’t that close?” Jeff says nothing but he’s grinning and staring at her with a positive glow. It’s obvious that he’s very excited that she’s now sharing his own risk-taking behavior. Speaking voyeuristically, he’s literally coming to see her with new eyes.Thorwald has gone back to packing and he puts his wife’s handbag with his suitcase. By now both Lisa and Stella are convinced that the handbag holds the most incriminating evidence of all—Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring! And both women are determined to dig up whatever Thorwald has hidden in the flower bed below. To lure the heavy-set salesman away, Jeff calls him and identifies himself as the person who wrote the note. He asks Thorwald to meet him right away at the Albert Hotel bar so that they can “settle the estate.” Thorwald immediately leaves his apartment. While Lisa and Stella now head down to the garden, Jeff calls Doyle again. The policeman is out with his wife, so Jeff leaves an urgent message with their babysitter. We see the women climbing over the high wall that protects the garden, both of them as agile as monkeys despite their dresses, and both of them acting intrepidly and dynamically—like men! Below Jeff Stella begins to dig at the base of the rose bush with a shovel.At this point Lisa impulsively decides to enter the heart of the beast’s lair and climbs up the fire escape to enter Thorwald’s apartment. She’s determined to examine the contents of the purse. She makes quite an incongruous house-breaker, too, gliding up the fire escape in her full-skirted designer creation and high heels. But she’s going too far now, even for Jeff, and he vainly signals for her to stop. When she reaches the platform of the fire escape she finds that window to be locked, so she actually climbs over the fire escape rail and acrobatically levers herself into the open living room window. Meanwhile Stella returns having found nothing in the flower bed. She tells Jeff that Lisa wants him to ring Thorwald’s phone once as a signal if he sees him returning.But just at that point Stella becomes convinced that the despairing “Miss Lonelyhearts” is definitely about to commit suicide and she presses Jeff to call the police. He does call the local precinct, but this distracts him from watching for Thorwald.In the next few seconds several things happen simultaneously. “Miss Lonelyhearts” pauses, distracted by the soothing music she hears from the composer’s apartment. In the living room of the Thorwald apartment, Lisa proudly holds up some jewelry she’s found for Jeff and Stella to see. But out in the hallway the sinister Thorwald himself has reappeared and he heads for the apartment door. Lisa hides in the bedroom when she hears him enter.Across the courtyard Jeff is literally beside himself with fear for Lisa. But he handles it by gasping and clutching his balled up hand in front of his mouth in a tortured but very feminine manner. Suddenly realizing that he has the police on the line he frantically tells them that a man is assaulting a woman in the Thorwald apartment, and he gives them the precise address. Meanwhile, Thorwald enters the bedroom and sees the ransacked purse and finds Lisa hiding. Like some melodramatic tableau acted out in pantomime, we watch a frightened Lisa first argue with Thorwald and then back away from him into the living room. The powerful Thorwald follows, grabs her arm and twists it, wrestling with her, and finally forcing her down onto the sofa. He wants that jewelry! He attacks her and faintly she can be heard crying out, “Jeff! Jeff!” Powerless, Jeff watches in an agony of desperation as Thorwald turns off the lights – the final act demands privacy! “Jeff! Jeff! Jeff! Jeff! Jeff!” her insistent cries never end. At just that moment the police arrive in the hallway and pound on the apartment door preventing things from going further.Explaining things to the police, Lisa deliberately positions herself with her back to the living room window. With her right hand she points to her left and wiggles her ring finger which now wears Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring!This is a heavily loaded image! Not only is she showing Jeff and Stella that she’s finally found the crucial evidence that Mrs. Thorwald has been done away with, but even more importantly she’s showing Jeff a revolutionary new aspect of herself. She’s no longer just a glamorous model and society girl; she’s also now an adventuress, a partner, and above all, a wife! For his part Jeff can at last see her as a woman he can completely love and his block against commitment melts away in that moment. But Lisa’s mating display also attracts the attention of Thorwald. He not only spies the fatal ring, but he also sees that she’s signaling to someone else. He looks up and gazes directly across the courtyard, directly into Jeff’s prosthetic “tele-phallic” lens where he sits helpless in his wheelchair. And he recognizes for the first time his mortal enemy.The police take Lisa away, presumably under arrest for burglary.Stella heads to the precinct with Jeff’s cash, hoping to bail her out. Now Tom Doyle calls and Jeff tells him everything that’s happened, stressing the wedding ring and the killing of the dog. Doyle promises to “run it down” and also to get Lisa out of jail. The darkness deepens and Jeff notices that the Thorwald apartment is dark too. When the phone rings he assumes its Doyle calling back. He says, “Tom, I think Thorwald’s left. I don’t… Hello…” No one speaks and the connection is broken, but Jeff knows who it was.Just moments later, the front door of Jeff’s building can be heard to slam, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Slowly, very slowly they climb ever higher and inevitably draw closer. Finally they stop just outside Jeff’s front door. Frantically he grabs the flash attachment for his camera with a package of bulbs and backs his wheelchair up to the rear window.This is the spot where he’s been voyeuristically interacting with the world; this is where he chose to poke and goad the Minotaur in his labyrinth across the way, and here’s where he’ll make his last stand. Slowly the door opens and the hulking form of Thorwald invades the shadows of the darkened apartment. Thorwald plaintively asks, “What do you want from me? Your friend, the girl, could have turned me in. Why didn’t she? What is it you want? A lot of money? I don’t have any money. Say something. Say something. Tell me what you want! Can you get me that ring back?” Jeff responds that by now the police have it.Stymied, Thorwald begins to lumber forward to end the confrontation in the only way that he can – by goring this obsessed cripple who’s been tormenting him. Jeff can’t fight back. He’s not physically capable of confronting the bull-like Thorwald. And he may not be emotionally capable either. After all, it’s his talent and his handicap to be a voyeur and he can only relate to the world visually. So it’s through the eyes that he’ll make his fight! Again and again and again and again, as Thorwald looms closer Jeff fires off flashbulb after flashbulb, repeatedly blinding his brutish opponent and stalling for time.Glancing behind him through the window Jeff sees Doyle and Lisa entering Thorwald’s apartment. Desperately he shouts to them. Now Thorwald grapples with him, ripping him from his wheelchair and stuffing him bodily out the window. Jeff whimpers and struggles to hold on, now dangling three stories above the courtyard.Detectives enter the apartment as Thorwald tries to push Jeff to his death. They grab Thorwald just as Jeff loses his grip, but his fall is partially broken by policemen down below. Lisa rushes to Jeff and cradles his head.He looks up at her and says, “Lisa, sweetie, if anything had happened to you… I’m proud of you.” From above a cop yells down that Thorwald has confessed to dumping the parts of his wife into the East River. It also turns out that part of his wife had been buried under the rose bush, probably her head, but he popped it into a hat box after the problems with the dog.In the next scene the camera pans the courtyard and we share an “epilogue” with the neighbors. “Miss Lonelyhearts” is now half of a couple with the composer. The middle-aged couple who had owned the dog now have a new puppy. “Miss Torso” is reunited with the love of her life, Stanley, a short, chubby soldier with glasses. And painters are busy refurbishing the former Thorwald apartment.Although lacking some others, one of the key characteristics of film noir that Rear Window does possess is moral ambiguity. Jeff’s compulsive voyeurism disqualifies him from being a standard, mainstream protagonist and relegating him to the status of obsessed noir anti-hero. When Thorwald attempts to kill him at the story’s climax it can be viewed as just punishment for his many voyeuristic sins. It’s also been rightly remarked that having participated in Jeff’s illicit spying that the audience feels that when Thorwald comes for Jeff that he’s also coming for them. This film spotlights the urban anxiety of living at close quarters with numerous strangers and casts serious doubt about the wisdom of trusting one’s neighbors.But more substantially Rear Window also has a number of interesting things to tell us about gender dynamics, making it a favorite of feminist film studies. Jeff’s irrational fear of marriage bears exploring. He repeatedly claims to not want to be shackled to a nagging wife as if this characterization of all marriages was reasonable. And nagging wives is only what women become if their spouses reduce or marginalize them. So what is it about women, or specifically about Lisa that so threatens Jeff that he just might have to repress it? On the surface he expresses doubt that Lisa can appreciate his rough and tumble adventurous life style—or be able to keep up with it. But in an unguarded moment he confides to Stella that he thinks of Lisa as “too perfect,” and bemoans, “If she was only ordinary.” So just what is the real issue and why is Jeff so commitment-phobic? And perhaps an even better question is why the gorgeous, intelligent, and accomplished Lisa is so smitten by Jeff with his obvious flaws?There is quite a range of windows into which Jeff gazes at the private lives of his neighbors. Some of these windows are higher than his own on the third floor, others are lower, with some to the left and more to the right. But the windows directly across the courtyard from Jeff’s, at precisely the same level as his own are those of Mr. and Mrs. Thorwald. This reinforces the notion of a rough equivalency between this couple and Lisa and Jeff, but their relationships are mirror images of each other. Both Jeff and Mrs. Thorwald are invalids, but the first is adored while the second is abused, murdered, and hacked to pieces. Lisa is beautiful and affectionate while Lars is homely and brutish. But this analysis only covers the surface aspect of things and offers us no deep insights. Perhaps the best way to understand the dynamics between Lisa and Jeff and their strange behavior is to view them with a Jungian lens.One of the most basic tenets of Jungian psychology is that all of us, regardless of gender, possess both masculine and feminine sides. As one would expect, in most women the feminine side is dominant while the reverse is true of most men, but this isn’t always the case. It’s important to note that the precise balance of masculine and feminine qualities is unique to each individual, but that in order to function well each of us require the seamless integration of both aspects.For example, nurturing may reasonably be defined as a feminine characteristic and therefore one may realistically expect to find it operating in more pronounced ways in women. But a man entirely lacking this ostensibly feminine ability will make a poor and emotionally distant father to his children and be capable of providing only cold comfort to those around him in need of emotional solace. And yet not all women are nurturing. By the same token aggression may be defined as a male character trait and yet women lacking the ability to stand up for themselves will certainly be disadvantaged in life.In Rear Window Jeff is outwardly quite macho—a “man’s man” in all the obvious ways. A world traveler and compulsive risk-taker, the face he shows to the world is aggressive and fearless. But what if this isn’t the whole story? What if Jeff unconsciously possesses a highly developed feminine side? And what if his choice of careers and constant need to put himself in jeopardy are really just the telltale signs of classic overcompensation? It’s no coincidence that throughout the action of the movie Jeff’s role is largely passive, which is another way of saying feminine. In fact Jeff arguably displays a full range of feminine behavior.Throughout the film Jeff is coy and sexually passive—the traditional feminine role, while Lisa is not only sexually aggressive she’s also been courting him quite insistently, one could almost say “in the manner of a man.” She is independently wealthy and offers to find him a job that will allow him to stay with her in New York. She regularly appears in his apartment wearing high fashion creations; she brings wine and has a gourmet dinner catered by a fancy restaurant; she even spends the night with him at a time when all good girls were taught to save “it” for marriage. And how does Jeff respond?In Richard III Shakespeare has Buckingham tell Richard in regard to the crown, “Play thou the part of the maid; say no and take it.” Jeff too is perfectly willing to play “the part of the maid.” On the night that Lisa stayed over evidence suggests that he eagerly slept with her even while rejecting her marriage proposal. Granted that he has the bum leg, but Jeff has chosen to spend the last six weeks dressed only in pajamas—not the most macho of wardrobe choices and certainly not something that most men would have done. Jeff correctly intuits that Thorwald has killed his wife, even though he initially lacked all direct evidence of the crime, with intuition traditionally identified as a feminine trait.From their banter about the war we learn that Doyle was the pilot of the reconnaissance plane from which Jeff was to make photographs for Army Intelligence. So Doyle had assumed the active or male role, while Jeff was in the passive, feminine position. And most significantly of all, Jeff waited passively again as Doyle, Stella, and particularly Lisa acted for him and even as Lisa recklessly put herself into danger. While his broken leg provides a convenient excuse, and he may well be unconscious of it, this is unmistakably a man with a highly pronounced feminine side!This being the case, Jeff is correct in sensing that for him a marriage to a typical or conventional woman would never work. A wife of this sort would be unable to satisfy his most important emotional needs and he in turn would reject her. The inevitable result would be the creation of the shrewish, nagging wife of his nightmares. But one of the more interesting revelations of the story is that Lisa too is a person of contradictory depths. She is no typical or conventional woman—far from it!On the surface she may seem delicate and frilly, pampered and accustomed to comfort. As a model and a fashionista she seems to have devoted her life entirely to appearances. But what if she too has been overcompensating? In her world it’s unlikely that she would be well rewarded for displaying aggressive or masculine characteristics. But what if she were to turn out to be a mirror image of Jeff? What if she is a woman with a highly developed masculine side, in her case one that she is aware of, which she wisely keeps largely hidden? This would certainly explain her fixation with Jeff, who, warts and all, is one of the very few men capable of making her happy. And when Jeff sees her being active, taking risks, and even daring to “beard” Thorwald in his den, it changes forever how he views her. He recognizes her masculine side as well as the fact that he loves her! In Lisa he has found a remarkable woman with whom he can share risks, adventure, and the rest of his life.All throughout the movie the tortured composer neighbor is working on one piece of music which he only finishes late in the story. This music saves his career and also the life of his new girlfriend, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” who was prevented from committing suicide by the beauty of the piece, which allowed the couple to find each other. All during the narrative this artistic work was in the process of being created or perhaps it would be more accurate to say being revealed. By the way, the name of this revealed work of art which saves lives, effects epiphanies, and enables transformation just happens to be “Lisa’s Theme.”In the final scene we see Jeff, clad as always in pajamas, back in his apartment, back in his wheelchair, right where he started but now with two broken legs.But there are important differences in his situation, too. The thermometer tells us that the heat wave has broken; the fever dream we’ve been watching has at last ended. And Jeff isn’t spying out the window any more, instead his back is to it telling us that his attention is now directed inward. Jeff is sleeping, but with a large smile on his face—telling us that he is a man who is now content, both consciously and unconsciously.And just why is he so happy? The camera pans to reveal Lisa, reclining on a sofa and wearing no couturier’s creation, but a pair of jeans! She’s literally wearing the pants in this family. She’s also reading a copy of, “Beyond the High Himalayas.”Noticing that Jeff is asleep she smiles and replaces her book with an issue of Harper’s Bazaar.Why the substitution? Because despite her masculine side Lisa will always, always, always be a girl! The soundtrack plays “Lisa’s Theme” and the rear window’s bamboo shade now rolls down to cut off the view of the most incorrigible voyeurs of all—us.

I have been very successful buying a place sight unseen as long as I had a friend there on the ground. The internet is pretty awesome.Key things I had/need to worry about (make sure to ASK the neighbors, no realtor around, after your tour of a house you like — and yes, these are ALL REAL PLACES IN THE UNITED STATES ):How many times have neighbors shot local horses (an actual problem, and an actual reason why I rejected TWO places — two my horses have been shot, thankfully only by a .22.).Is there a housing association? Run, don’t just walk away. The living hell they put you through is not worth it.Check all fencing to see if elk have simply broke through it / pushed it down. This will be your fencing situation. I walked away from 2 properties like this.How many hoops you need to go through to shoot pit bulls murdering and mangling livestock on your property.Commute is okay off-rush hour, but doubles or triples during rush hour.The cops are corrupt as all hell, and won’t even go upstairs to check for warm gun, even when there are two of you who were shot at, the probation officer saw the hole punched in the wall when he arrived to collect the urine sample, and you are standing there showing the cop the video footage of them breaking into your floor and stealing things, all while the young blond male cadet next to him has a tear running down his cheek while I plead for help.Zoning literally counts horses per acreLaws are so biased toward renters, no one dares take on roommates, it is such living hell to extract themYou aren’t allowed to even keep an RV on a vacant lot while you build your home — all you are allowed is a portapoddyThe state sends you a letter demanding you list your guns (I threw it out and moved)The state demands you list your animals (so your rich competitor can raise a false alarm about a disease, and the cops will shoot and burn all of your animals the day before the result come back negative)