THE WEEKENDER-THE BEST AND THE WAY WE WERE

AS FRESH AS IT GETS

     The spring growing season has been good up here on the Pine ridge.  Our upper raised bed, on the back hill,  has yielded an abundance of great lettuce. 

      We call this upper raised bed "Indiana," because it is flat, tillable and produces well. I know the same can be said for the central valley, but we are paying tribute to some of our great gardens in years past.

FLYING ULTRA FIRST CLASS

   The Weekender Video was spotted by Beverly.  You've got to see this to believe it.

REEL NOTES

    THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

    If you were politically active, motivated or interested during the turbulent 70's, Robert Redford's THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, will register with you and may even ring a few bells.

    A former Weather Underground activist goes off the grid as a reporter pursues a story, the dimension of which he does not understand.  It is a superb reprise of the dilemma, how far do you go to stop a government that is doing wrong? That question ripped the peace movement, mobilized to stop the war in Viet Nam, when more radical elements amped up the fight to include bombings and violence.

    Susan Sarandon's monologue, shortly after she is arrested for an old crime, is a brilliant restatement of just that. You may wonder if much has changed at all?

    A thrilling intrigue, the film is smart, some of the dialogue plays back like history and is star laden. Robert Redford acts and directs. Great performance from Shia LaBeouf and superb smaller role performances from Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Sam Elliot, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Brendan Gleeson and Sarandon. 

    I took a personal interest in the side bar story of the role of the reporter. Back in the day I was assigned to cover the anti war movement which included New Mobe, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, SDS, Draft Resistance, the Black Panthers and more. Some of the questions and emotions Redford surfaces are flashbacks for some of us, and just old history to younger viewers.
    It came as an odd reminder that bombings in that era were done by Americans angry at the Viet Nam war. Deadly, disruptive and dangerous though they were, they seemed less sinister than those by modern terrorists. But America in the 60's and 70's was a vastly different place than America today. Redford draws that in a stoic way. It's a film that will make you think.

    See you down the trail.

THE CONSEQUENCE 

"The voice of the intellect is a soft one,

but it does not rest until it has gained a

hearing.  Ultimately, after endlessly 

repeated rebuffs, it succeeds.

This is one of the few points in which

to be optimistic about the 

future of mankind."

Sigmund Freud

      Analysts of the social scene, sociologists, psychologists, theologians and others have noted the apocalyptic nature

and almost obsession of film, games, literature and other

cultural symbols designed for and sought by people 18-35.

      To mine the deep implications and causes can fill books. But a shorthand version is an attitude about the future that is not all sunshine and roses.  Some of those reasons may smack us in the face if we look closely.

       Think of the impact on younger minds of just these events:

        THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF KATRINA

        WITNESSING THE WORST ECONOMIC COLLAPSE SINCE

THE DEPRESSION

         FUKISHIMA 

       I chose those three because they are linked by a seemingly helpless situations played out large and in detail in a media saturation. But there are multiple such examples and other complexities of modern life that also work to destroy optimism.  

       Bringing it back to Freud then, is the soft voice of intellect being heard?  Or is it being drowned out in a world of social media where Kim Kardashian has 9 to 10 million "followers?"

REEL THOUGHTS

THE HUNGER GAMES

       We became two of the most recent of the millions who are making this film a box office smash.  Talk about dystopian!  The Suzzane Collins young adult novel which was a sensation, is even more so in the hands of Director  Gary Ross who wrote and directed Pleasantville, Seabiscuit and Big.  Ross is a very good film maker and his screenplay with Collins is of a world that is a continuation of the bleak future theme.

        Lana is more enthusiastic about the film than I am.  It is  an entertaining, big budget action adventure thriller focused on kids surviving a decadent societies' game. She sees the hope expressed in the story line.  I see a clever portrayal of a society that becomes increasingly self indulgent, hooked on cheap thrills and riven with a wealthy elite controlling poor, working masses.

       And it is probably just me, but the brilliance in the film

is the parody of our obsession with "reality game shows."  How far will we go?  When I was ceo of a television production company we'd joke about how outrageous game shows could become.  This film is a punctuation point.

      Stanley Tucci as the television host, Caesar Flickerman

is delightful.  Jennifer Lawrence as the heroine continues to show remarkable talent, first seen in Winter Bone.  Elizabeth Banks as vacuous Effie Trinkle is superb.  She captures the empty values and superficiality of a society that can enjoy watching children kill each other.  Woody Harrelson as the burned out former hero provides a nice nuanced and textured performance.  And Donald Southerland as the contemptible president Snow is a poster boy for legalizing assassination.

       I'm struck by how this is a film for and about youth and even in a kind of victory there is an uncertainty and looming shadow.

"Have I not reason 

to lament what man has made of man?"

William Wordsworth

REALITY CHECK NOW

MORE OF THE SAME

     A new public awareness campaign has been launched.

It is the most recent voice in the escalating fight over 

fracking.  

     There may be places where fracking has not done harm.

But clearly, there are places where it is doing severe harm.

"A simple child,

That lightly draws its breath.

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?"

William Wordsworth

        I've been accused of looking on the bright side of things.   Not sure about that, rather I'm a pragmatist who understands the value of doing something. In engagement is opportunity, and hope. That attitude was honed in Paul Hamori's class on Hegelian dialectics.

"The history of the world

is none other than the progress of the 

consciousness of  freedom."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

See you down the trail.