In that moment when Patti Smith missed a lyric, apologized, nervously began again and was met with a warm applause that grew even warmer upon completion of A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall at the Nobel literature presentation the love of this season was personified. Sincerity, compassion, tenderness, love and joy were all in that moment.
The grand spiritual and philosophical architecture of this epoch of human habitation on this planet is constructed by singular acts, one at a time. They exist and in fact they abound if only we will see them, or create them.
Regardless of your most intimate and deepest belief please allow me to wish you and yours Merriment at this Christmas season. May you all experience joy, peace and the light of love.
The little gray cells were massaged nicely in the last few days and they can't refrain from sharing a few tips for you.
DOUBLE INSPIRATION
He Named Me Malala is a spellbinding and inspiring documentary of Malala Yousafzai, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Though the world knows her story, gunned down by the Taliban for speaking up for education for girls, the film takes you into her life and deeper into the context of the shooting and her extraordinary recovery and travel since. She is special and so is the film. The animated sequences are especially well done. You'll be left with a sense of hope despite the presence of the damnably wicked Taliban and Isis. Here is how good wins out. Bridge of Spies combines Hanks and Spielberg in a script written by the Cohen brothers and young Brit Matt Charman. James Donovan was real and engineered and negotiated an extraordinary spy swap at the height of the cold war and the fear of nuclear war. Hanks gives life to an American who's effort and accomplishment is also inspiring. The Hank's as Donovan conversation about the "rule book"- the Constitution-with a CIA handler is a classic defense of a constitutional government that is forced to play by its own rules. At the apex of US-USSR tension and toe to toe, when the Soviet's test was to push until they got resistance, Donovan's insistence to do it properly was seen as a strength by both the East Germans and the Soviets who were also at odds. Again doing and saying the right thing wins. Great to see history told in a Spielberg film. Mark Rylance as Col. Rudolph Abel, the Soviet Spy, creates a character who defines what it is to be laconic but also riveting. Hanks is masterful, but so is Rylance. Spielberg knows how to entertain and inform. The visual look, even the light in the scenes, puts you back in 1962. We think this is a great film.
OTHER REEL THOUGHTS
Tobey Maguire's portrayal of Bobby Fischer in Pawn Sacrifice is one of the outstanding acting performances of the year. Director Edward Zwick gives us an enthralling film about the 1972 world Chess championship and the intense mental game it is, including the haunted mind of Fischer. Liev
Schreiber scores as Russian Boris Spassky.
Nancy Meyers (As Good as it Gets) new film The Intern is nothing but entertaining, a bit touching and a great study of values. De Niro and Anne Hathaway are great together as generational antagonists and eventual allies. A tag line or a working title could have been Baby Boomers meet the Millenials. This is a feel good film.
My first viewing of this film was in my head as I read Jon Krakauer's Book Into Thin Air. Krakauer is not pleased by the film Everestthat was written independently of his book, though it is based on the tragic incident in spring of 1996 when 8 climbers died in a ferocious blizzard on Mt Everest.
Director Baltasar Kormakur tried to film some of the movie at 15 thousand feet but said he and the crew were so oxygen deprived most of the film was unusable. The real life episode played out at about double that altitude. The film underscores what Krakauer and other journalists have said of that ill fated day-too many people trying to summit, and too many bad judgements including by veterans who knew better.
This is an intense adventure-disaster drama with a host of great actors making it powerful. Jason Clark, Thomas Wright, Josh Brolin, Jake Gylenhaal, Robin Wright, Keira Knightly, Emily Watson, Tom Goodman-Hill, Ang Phua Sherpa, John Hawkes, Michael Kelly and believe or not, even more. More than a couple of people I know came away from this film wondering even more strongly, why would someone put themselves through all that? That answer remains elusive.
I hope Cambrians will avail themselves to the rollicking and even poignant comedy, VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE that is playing the CCAT. I wish all could see this production.
The work by Christopher Durang was the 2013 Tony winner and is perfect for the Cambria demographic. It is fresh, timely and "speaks" to us.
Under Nancy Green's directing the cast provides what is a stunningly entertaining evening. Talented Jill Turnbow combines her ability to own a character with her brilliant comedic timing and punctuates the night with laugh after laugh, while also breaking your heart. Oz Barron is perfect as her brother and his climactic rant and harangue had the audience howling. Susie Fulton as the third sibling was perfect as the glamorous movie star famous sister bound for a big change of life. Some of the best moments of the evening came from Priscilla McRoberts as the hilarious "psychic" house cleaner Cassandra. Kathryn Gucik brought a fresh and idealistic Nina to life, endearingly and Wade Tillotson was perfect as a boy toy who had trouble keeping on his clothing.
It is splendid when a full cast excels and in this case it made a brilliant script jump off the stage in a masterful and enjoyable way.
ALSO IN THE VILLAGE
Lana's recent poster design, now an oil painting, is hanging at Cutruzzola Vineyards wine tasting room in Cambria's west village.
As this post is a series of reviews, I thought I'd tell my favorite artist that she can add Poster Art to her resume that includes Plein Air, abstract, expressionism and ceramic work. She is a talented woman with an inexhaustible creativity.
Fewer of us write checks or letters so there is less need to annotate the date. Artificial intelligence via phones and computers do it for us. But there is always that hump of getting over the correct last digit.
As you slide into acceptance that we've reached the midway point of the second decade of the 21st century, consider our blue marble 100 years ago.
World War I raged. The British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. 1,195 died. Woodrow Wilson was President, the New York Yankees wore pinstripes for the first time, the Boston Red Sox won the world series, "Typhoid Mary" was finally arrested, Lassen Peak in California, seen here, exploded in a volcanic eruption with debris still evident,
Ralph DePalma won the Indianapolis 500, fire destroyed most of Santa Catalina Island, the one millionth Ford came off the assembly line in Detroit, a court in Georgia accepted the official formation of the new Ku Klux Klan, City Hall in
San Francisco was dedicated, Cornell was the NCAA Football Champion with a 9-0-0 record, Wimbledon was cancelled due to WWI, Regret won the Kentucky Derby, William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State, a mob lynched a Jewish man in Georgia, unemployment was 8.5%, the Germans first used poison gas as a battle field weapon, DW Griffiths The Birth of a Nation was released and created the foundation of modern film making, Audrey Munson, portraying a model, became the first actress to appear nude on screen, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Romain Rolland of France, the Vancouver Millionaires won the Stanley Cup, 600,000 to 1 Million Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers and the cost of a first class stamp was 2 cents.
Do you wonder what this new year will be remembered for 100 years from now?
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
Welcomed rain, warm days and more recently cool evenings have prompted the local variety of mushrooms, toad stools and fungus to arrive.
THE LESS COLORFUL COUSINS
AND THE WEE TINY LAD These are growing out of a pine cone-notice the thumb?
Wishing you well being, mindfulness, celebration of the moment, light, happy adventures, and good hours in the blogosphere in 2015.
2014 THROWBACK
"1-9-6-4-We're the class of '64" fifty years later. Warren Central High School Class Reunion-Milano Inn, Indianapolis, June, 2014.
Some of us are bewildered by the almost instant division that appears on practically every thing anymore. Politics, religion, social structure, meaning and significance are all points of departure. It seems more so now than ever.
Henri Bergson, a writer and philosopher in the early 20th century and a Nobel winner for literature wrote of the power of intuition over mechanized intellect. He also wrote of the continual force of creative and evolutionary energy, calling it "elan vital." I like the concept; never ending expression of new, original, life, birthing, a driving force to creation and understanding. Mix that with my opening premise above and I'm left to conclude "some people get it and some just don't."
Some adapt, learn, evolve, grow, expand. Some don't. Some see differences as a space in which opportunity exists, others see boundaries. While we all probably "get set in our ways," as rapidly as science is expanding and cognitive understanding is occurring and computer assistance advances, getting hung up in "old thought" seems to be counter to progress. But then there are those who find "Progressive" a frightful term. So we come full circle.
What's it mean? Maybe we are indeed from different hemispheres of the brain, or different planets!
VIEW POINT ON SUNSET
From a vineyard hill top, watching the painted sky.
Even the shadows enjoy the moment.
There may be better acoustical stages, but none with a better point of view.
THE ULTIMATE EXERCISE IN POINT OF VIEW
THIS IS LOTS OF FUN
Thanks to my long time friend, artist and musician Jim for forwarding this video. We are probably from close to the same planet.
The young man is the old man. He is Gregorio Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway's first mate, bar tender, confidant and life long friend. Some think he was the model for the old man in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.
"The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the
back of his neck,"
Hemingway described his central figure.
"The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had
the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none
of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless
desert.
``Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same
color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated."
Gregorio was 101 when we met. It was 3 years before he died in his home in Cojimar, a fishing village east of Havana.
He lived modestly, but comfortably. He was hailed as a man who had mastered the sea and who "was a symbol of Cuban fishing and of human brotherhood, thanks to all of his years of friendship with Hemingway,'' Reuters quoted Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, who runs Havana's Hemingway International Nautical Club.
A school of Hemingway scholars discount the idea that Fuentes was the model for the
old fisherman in the 1952 Nobel Prize winning novel. He was only 55 the year the book was published. There are those who say, however, that Hemingway used Fuentes' hands as the inspiration for his character.
Fuentes became Captain of the Pilar, in 1939 when Hemingway began his life in Cuba living in the Hotel Ambos Mundos. They fished the Gulf Stream together. During World War II Hemingway outfitted the Pilar with special gear so he and Fuentes could hunt German U-boats in the Caribbean.
When not patrolling the Caribbean, Hemingway covered the war. He accompanied Martha Gellhorn, a photo journalist and his love at the time, to China. He returned to the Pilar and Cuba but later went to Europe to work as a war correspondent.
After the war the writer and his captain spent extensive time in the Caribbean waters where Hemingway was said to have a special sense or enhanced vision that enabled him to spot deep Marlin which he battled from this chair.
The pier in Cojimar where the Pilar was docked was all but abandoned.
The La Terazza was a favorite Hemingway hang out. It was still a vibrant tavern and favorite of the locals. Many of them had Hemingway stories.
Cojimar has memorialized the famous American, not far from where he and the Captain launched their many adventures.
Gregorio Fuentes had a unique knowledge and relationship with one of the 20th Century's most influential writers. He outlived his old friend and fishing mate by many decades. He was there, in the moments, when Ernest Hemingway drew from life, from practical experiences to create literary images that live on, as Gregorio did for 104 years. An old man of the sea. See you down the trail.
