Movie night is a Friday night extravaganza.
Charlie and Sharon host and we often watch what Hollywood has cooked up to modify our behavior, influence our thinking, stir up emotions, entertain, or put us to sleep.
This evening we watch Spenser Tracy in ” Bad Day at Black Rock, ” an early movie about injustice, race relations, and government cover up.
It is an eerie feeling watching movies where everyone in it, and everyone who made it, are now ghosts.
Seeing things that happened, but are no longer here, is almost the same for me as reading Scotttreks moments that are behind me in time’s tunnels.
Is a remembered and re-remembered moment better than the real thing?
Do postcards accurately report what I have seen or done, or just reflect how I want to remember it?
Strawberry Shortcake, as I remember it, or like to remember it, was spectacular and movie night is always worth doing.
Art, in many localities, is given a budget by city hall. Artists are then commissioned to produce public art for public consumption. Public art springs up in parks, in downtown open spaces near city halls, by busy streets and intersections. The art is most often not controversial, but can sometimes raise eyebrows.
This modest sculpture, of kids climbing a rock feature, is close to shops by the business side of the Fountain Hills park. Over six foot high, the installation has been positioned in a flower bed,close enough to be noticed, but not so close that it can be tripped over.
The little boys in this sculpture are climbing a rock feature..The little girl cradles her baby sister below them and admires a flower, not paying the boys much mind.
Boys and girls, for those who would wish otherwise, were never made the same.
We all love to climb, but we don’t all have to climb the same mountains.
Do women really want their men riding in the back seat?
Is caring for your little sister less important than climbing a rock?
Without looking deeper, and making a mountain out of a molehill, this sculpture fits the kid’s I’ve seen.
Boys climb and girls watch their baby sister’s, and, when they grow up, men do watch the kids and women put do on a business suit and go to the office.
They will never, however, be the same.
At the entry to the Fountain Hills Park are a number of statues, some seated on benches, some standing, all with commemorative plaques and praising comments. The figures cast shadows, some longer than others. Most of the statues are of men and most have been Presidents of the United States.
Presidents, as we know from watching those we have voted for, have lots of good speechwriters, lots of philosophy and confidence.They enter office with one mindset and leave with another. Leading the United States, on a day to day basis, is like trying to keep water in a glass that keeps springing holes. You enter office believing you can benefit the country knowing that half the voters believe you are aren’t worth the time of day. Presidents leave office hoping they didn’t have to deal with war, a disastrous Depression, or any number of calamities that come upon a nation. You are glad, when your term is up, to let someone else drive the stagecoach.
This morning Lincoln and Reagan look like old friends and it would be revealing to sit on a bench on a moonlit night listening to their stories about unruly cabinet members, hostile Congressmen and women, an unrelenting negative press, and military misadventures.
There are those who would like to cart these two men and their memories away, store them in a warehouse providing props to the movie industry,
We expect far too much from our Presidents, and our Government.
This country will rise and fall on the efforts of us who will never have a statue of ourselves in a park..
Lonesome George is a famous tortoise from the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, many hundreds of miles off the Ecuador coast. He was the last of his species and died in 2012 at the ripe old age of 100, one of many species of living things to become extinct throughout the history of this planet Earth.
According to a recent television documentary, dedicated to George,there were efforts to find him a mate to continue his species, but it was a losing effort. Either George was too old, liked his own company too much, or just had those problems men get past the age of fifty.
How is it to live to a hundred years and be the last of your kind alive?
If George had had a video camera he would have been able to show his changing world. In his younger days, there would have been men in wood boats rowing to the island to collect his relatives for the soup pot. In later years there would have been processions of scientists with recording instruments taping wires on his back to follow his movements and record his vitals. These last days there were mostly noisy tourists with cameras and sunscreen, sunglasses and notebooks packed with observations..
George passed in 2012, and, in this local park, a local artist has donated a sculpture to his memory.
Lonesome George lived long enough to outlast his entire generation.
Whether he was really lonesome is something he never talked much about.
Real estate has always been investment worthy.
People want to own a home and homes are assets that, in America, have historically appreciated in value. In retirement communities like this, there are always For Sale signs in yards though. People die, move back home to be with the kids, decide they don’t need a second home, look to downsize, decide their second home experiment isn’t going to suit them anymore.
This is typical Arizona suburbia with wide streets,cactus, stuccoed- patio homes with two car garages, covenants,property taxes, newspapers still thrown in driveways, mail delivered daily by mail women driving little white vehicles.
There is a rock in a flower bed in this home’s entry way with the word ” Harmony ” engraved on it.
Harmony, as used here, means no crime, living in a gated community, not having noisy neighbors after ten in the evening, good schools for your kids and grand kids.
Marie shouldn’t have trouble selling this home. It is on the internet and her sign gives her phone number in large print.
This house comes with a nesting bird and all the Harmony you bring with you on move in day.
Houses don’t become homes till you move your coffeemaker and tooth brush in.
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