Author Archives: Grandpa Jim

New Year 2019: When Did That New Year’s Day Start?

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Good question.

The Answer is, “It’s taken a while.”

Four thousand years ago, around 2,000 B.C., in ancient Iraq, the New Year began on the vernal equinox in March. You may recall that “vernal” is Latin for “spring” and “equinox” means “equal night” because on that day the hours of light and dark are equal in duration. See the blog post of March 21, 2016.

So, New Year’s Day was the first day of spring (March 20th in this year of 2019), which makes a great deal of sense, because the first day of spring was the start of the new growing year — the grass was sprouting, flowers were blooming, the sun was shining and birds were singing (at least in the northern hemisphere, which is the locus of the present discussion).

But this very reasonable approach didn’t last forever.

In 753 B.C., Romulus became the first King of Rome in what is modern-day Italy. Romulus didn’t particularly like the then current Roman calendar because the counting of the months began on March 1 and ended on the last day of December. There were only ten months (“decem” means “ten” in Latin), and then a long cold dark time between the end of December and the beginning of March, a time with no name — which made some sense because there wasn’t much you could do back up to that time but wait for spring. Still, it was a bit untidy, especially for a growing empire with administrators at work all the time trying to record and date accurately a conquering here, there and everywhere. The expanding empire needed more months.

In 715 B.C., the second King of Rome, Numa Pampilius, fixed that. Numa officially established the months of January and February and stuck those new months right where the long uncharted dark had been. Now we had a regular year. Hooray, Numa Pampilius!

For more background on the new months and Kings Romulus and Numa, see the blog post of February 27, 2014:

Well, those administrators stepped back into the fray again in 153 B.C. and began appointing new Roman Consuls on January 1st. It’s not clear why they did this. Perhaps it was because everyone used to stop their old jobs at the end of December for the winter off-time, and our administrators wanted to keep the empire going by appointing folks to their new positions with a strong admonishment to, “Get to work. Now! No time off in this empire.” We may never know for sure, but Romans had already begun to date their years by these consulships. “Out with the old, in with the new,” you might say. So, the new date of appointing consuls became the date of the new year, and January 1 became New Year’s Day.

Between 153 B.C. and 1582 A.D., a lot of people messed with New Year’s Day. Some accepted the new date of January 1, while others continued to keep the March date of the vernal equinox. After Jesus of Nazareth, there were moves to Christmas Day (December 25th today) and Easter (today the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox — you can only imagine what those Romans administrators would say to a floating date). It all became quite confusing with people asking one another, “When does the New Year start?”

Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII effectively said, “Enough is enough.” Gregory cleaned up the old Roman calendar, which had become known as the Julien Calendar (after Julius Caesar, of course), instituted his newer version, which is called the Gregorian Calendar (the calendar we use today), and restored January 1st as New Year’s Day. Hooray, Pope Gregory!

Still, it took quite a while for folks to accept the Gregorian Calendar and January 1 as the agreed date for New Year’s Day. The British weren’t all in for some time. Even in the early American Colonies, the March date was New Year’s Day. This stopped about 1752. Since then, for some 267 years now, January 1 has been the start of the New Year in what is the modern-day USA.

Whew! That is a long way to 2019, which began on January 1st. Just a few days ago. I hope.

Happy New Year, wherever, whenever and however you celebrate it.

Perhaps, it is the thought that truly counts.

Except for administrators.

Of course.

Grandpa Jim

A Sister’s Second Christmas Story: The Remembrance Of Years Past And Here Again Now

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The 2018 Christmas Story is now here.

“Christmas Eve in the ’50s” had found its way to you.

‘Tis the season for fun and fun is here for you to read and enjoy.

If not on the front page just look under “Flashier Fiction” or try the link below.

https://www.unclejoestories.com/christmas-eve-in-the-50s/

This is our chance again to smile together.

And perhaps shed a tear.

For years past.

And those we all miss.

Merry Christmas to you and yours,

Grandpa Jim

Advent & The Advent Calendar: “Tis The Season To Be Jolly” — I Can’t Wait To Open The Next Door.

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“‘Tis the season to be jolly.”

That is perhaps the single short verse that musicallly defines the Christmas season. The song that started it all did not originally have any words. The tune is Welsh and dates back to at least the 1700s. The melody may be much older. At the time the notes was first strummed, carols were danced and not sung. In Wales, the sign on the dancehall door read in bold black letters: “No Singing Here.” It was only later that neon was invented. Before that happened, the audience simply couldn’t wait. The tune was just so good. People started humming along and then they added a word or two and a line and eventually, well, one Christmas season, they took the sign down and everyone started singing.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
‘Tis the season to be jolly,
Don we now our gay apparel,
Troll the ancient Christmas carol.

See the blazing yule before us,
Strike the harp and join the chorus.
Follow me in merry measure,
While I tell of Christmas treasure.

Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
Sing we joyous all together,
Heedless of the wind and weather.

That’s it. That’s “Deck the Halls.” “Yule” or “Yuletide” is interchangeable with “Christmas.” It’s the same song we hear everywhere in the weeks before Christmas.

Those weeks before Christmas are referred to as “Advent.” The word “advent” is Latin for “to come.” This is the time of year we wait for Christmas to come. In the West, Advent traditionally starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve, December 24th. The start date varies from year-to-year and place-to-place, but not on my Advent Calendar. On my Advent Calendar, Advent always starts on December 1st.

Advent Calendars started somewhere else, probably in Germany, and sometime earlier, possibly about 200 years ago, around the year 18-00-something. No one knows these things with precision. I suspect the first Advent Calendar was invented by a candy store owner as a way to dispense chocolates, because my first Advent Calendar years ago when I was a small child had tiny chocolates hidden behind each door. That’s right, each day of the month of December is a door that opens to reveal a surprise behind it. The surprise can be a toy or a chocolate or a Star Wars Lego figure or speeder or flier.

My 2018 Advent Calendar is a shallow box decorated with an alien, intergalactic landscape and twenty-four small doors on one side that each open to reveal a small Star Wars Lego construction. The Lego pieces are so tiny they hurt my fingers to assemble. Instructions are, I feel, minimal and more suited for the nimble fingers and minds of the young. Nonetheless, I have prevailed and built to this day’s surprise.

My Advent Calendar is gratifying and unusual and something of a conversation piece. “You’re doing what?” my guests question. “And what are those weird little creatures and things?” they point. “It’s Advent,” I respond, “It’s how I’m keeping track of the days to Christmas.” “Oh,” they answer and move quickly to the kitchen with concerned looks on their faces and muffled questions for my wife.

Not everyone understands. I love Christmas, the season, the preparations and the Advent Calendar. I love that this calendar is not the same as the one I had when I was a kid — although I do miss the chocolates. It’s the anticipation. Every day, there’s another door on the way to Christmas day. It’s a little like the melody of a song without the words, where the melody is so good and so much fun that you know when the words arrive they’ll be better yet, better each year and really worth the wait of opening all those little doors.

“Tis the season to be jolly.”

“The English Patient” (1996) — The 69th Best Picture: Two Star-Fated Lovers

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There were swimmers in the Sahara Desert. Not now. Long ago. In a cave, an ancient artist painted lithe figures — swimming, diving and floating weightlessly, where now there is only rock, sand and unremitting heat. The desert breaks the spirit of the traveler and pulls down those who challenge its domain.

Geographic explorers discover the swimmers near the start of World War II. Two of those explorers fall in love. The movie follows those two, Count Lazlo de Almasy and Catherine, into the war, to Italy and back to that desert cave.

“The English Patient” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1996.

This is a sad searching story of two star-fated lovers, Romeo and Juliet in North Africa, trapped by the warring families of the second world war.

Unlike Shakespeare, this tale can’t stay in the present. It flashes back and forth across the years, beginning where it ends and ending where it began. Our lovers are the swimmers. They exist and move above time and space in a place of their own, as lovers often do. Unfortunately, we, the viewers, are fixed. We would share and understand their world but the sands shift too often and too far, and we lose our way as they lost theirs.

A worthy undertaking, the beauty of the cinematography and poignancy of the acting render a breathtaking and heartwrenching visual and emotional experience. Alas, the challenge of the story-line is too great for us, the watchers, as it is was for Almasy and Catherine, the actors. In the end, we part unsatisfied and uncertain.

Were it not so and Shakespeare and iambic pentameter could solve the problem, but the film falters and does not reach the poet’s pinnacle. As one critic reviewed, this picture may be better watched twice. The moves forward and flashes back are too mixed and muddled to be seen clearly in a single showing.

Here is what our ethnofamilymovieography viewers had to comment about “The English Patient”:

Set in the deserts of North Africa and hillsides of Italy leading into and during World War II, “The English Patient” was recognized for the beauty of the cinematography, the captivating accompaniment of the music and the pathos of the tragic love story presented; unfortunately, the presentation of that story failed the ethnofamilymovieography audience — they found the back-flashing to unravel the events tediously long, poorly presented, excruciatingly slow, overly complex, difficult to follow, overly dramatic and uninteresting; and the viewers did not like the graphic nudity, the glorification of adultery and the mercy killing at the end; a monumental undertaking, the picture did not reach its viewers and managed only an average rating of 6.00 out of 10.00, placing the show tied for #59 of the first 69 Best Pictures, very near the bottom of the Oscar-winning movies viewed to date.

The film is mature and not for children, perhaps unnecessarily so — a theme that seems to have been advancing in filmmaking since the ’60s. The story itself is fascinating, captivating — but perhaps more than can be managed in a cinematic presentation.

Another factor that may be relevant to both story and cinema is “message.”

One of the ethnographic survey questions is:

Do you feel the message of this film is still relevant today? Circle one:  YES  NO  Maybe

For this film, there were more no’s and maybe’s than yes’s. This is a difficult parameter to interpret, but it seems to happen with the less substantive shows. Think about that.

Enough for this show. There will be no Best Picture showings until after Christmas and New Year’s, when we return with the movie “Titanic.” I will continue to blog, but the ethnofamilymovieographers will take a break.

Back soon with something new,

Grandpa Jim



“Braveheart” (1995), The 68th Best Picture: Truth And Freedom Do Triumph

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On August 23, 1305, William Wallace, a Scottish farmer and minor noble, was tried in London as a traitor against Edward I of England, known as Longshanks. Wallace had led bloody uprising after bloody uprising against Longshanks to displace the English from his native Scotland. At the trial for his life, William’s response to the charge of traitor was: “I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.”

Wallace was convicted and carted to his public execution, where he was slowly strangled, allowed to recover his breath, and then viciously and repeatedly tortured.

Near the end, the chief executioner bends over and speaks softly into Wiliam’s ear, offering one last chance to lessen the agony. “Beg for the King’s mercy,” the black-robed figure whispers, “Just say, ‘mercy.'” William Wallace draws a final brave deep breath and shouts from his heart for all to hear: “FREEDOM!”

For that final free defiant act, Wallace was beheaded and dismembered. His head was placed on a spike on London Bridge, and the pieces of his body were carried to various cities throughout England and Scotland to be publicly displayed. This was done so that all could remember the traitor. It worked, but not in the way his executioners had intended. William Wallace was never forgotten then or now. His was the braveheart of a warrior who never stopped beating and fighting and bleeding and crying for the freedom of his native people and their lands, for his Scotland. He was and is remembered as a patriot, not a traitor.

Mel Gibson played William Wallace and directed the film, “Braveheart.” For that, he received the Oscar for Best Actor and film the Oscar for Best Picture of 1994.

“Braveheart” is a historical film. In the details of its presentation and players, the show may be as much fiction as fact. For that, the film has been criticized. Overall, however, the picture can be seen as telling a broader and, in its own ways, perhaps a more accurate story of William and the times he inhabited. They were, by all accounts, very difficult times, and the film reflects this. The battle scenes are surreal in their barbarity. The nobles, English and Scottish, are as false and unreliable as the power-grabbers of any age. The romance is touching, if fancified, and little different than the endearing and fleeting loves of more modern days. The companions of William Wallace are as good a group of companions as those of any friend at any place since the beginnings of fellowships. And the ending is as cruel and undeserved as the suffering of any true and honest person at any time and in any place. For all this accumulated agelessness and wisdom, the picture and the director deserve both merit and award.

But, I would not stand alone, this is ethnomoviefamilyography, and for that we must turn to our family of viewers to hear the summary of their reported comments:

This is Mel Gibson at his medieval road-warrior best as the 13th Century Scottish hero William Wallace, fighting and slicing his away across the highlands against the treacherous King Longshanks of England and the traitorous nobles to win the freedom of his beloved homeland; the film was most liked for its history (though much of that has been fictionalized) and its message that truth and freedom do triumph (which did happen and is the show’s redeeming grace); the picture was not liked for the cruelty, violence, brutality and killing (though much of this is probably accurately documented); as violent shows go, this one did well, receiving five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Actor for Gibson, and with our ethnofamilymovieography audience, an 8.50 average rating, placing the movie at #23 of the first 68 Best Pictures; the single word for this show is, of course, freedom.

Freedom: Freedom is more important than goods, power and wealth.

At the end and to the future: Truth and freedom do triumph.

This is a deep and not easily understood message.

Better seen than said, as many truths are.

Which may be why we have movies.

That can be seen in their ways:

To be more fiction than fact.

And more true even.

Than the facts.

Perhaps?

 

Grandpa Jim

“Forrest Gump” (1994), The 67th Best Picture: “Run, Forrest, run!”

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Forrest Gump was born with an IQ of 7 and little chance of success in the world, except he had a loving, caring, encouraging mother who never stopped believing in him and helping Forrest find his way.

And what a way it was.

We meet Forrest Gump in 1981 on a bench in Savannah, Georgia, with a box of chocolates in his lap waiting for the bus to take him to Jenny, the love of his life. He offers a chocolate to one stranger after another as he proceeds to tell them each some of the memorable moments in his life.

About 1954, Forrest, in his childhood knee braces, teaches Elvis Presley how to swing his hips and become famous. Older and having run through his own braces, Forrest receives a scholarship to be a running back on the University of Alabama football team. He literally runs out of the stadium to become an All-American shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in the White House. After graduating, Forrest is drafted to Vietnam where he saves lives in a firefight and ends up in 1967 back at the White House to receive the Medal of Honor from President Johnson. Recovered from his war wound, Forrest becomes a world-famous ping-pong player and is invited back to the White House in 1972 to be recognized for ping-pong diplomacy by President Nixon who upgrades Forrest’s overnight lodgings to the Watergate Hotel where Forrest observes and reports the Watergate break-in that costs Nixon the Presidency. Back home, Forrest buys a shrimp boat in 1974, founds Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, and invests in “some kind of fruit company” called Apple becoming financially secure for life. Distraught over his on-again-off-again relationship with Jenny, Forrest in 1978 escapes to become a world-famous long-distance runner with a devoted following and his picture in the news. Jenny sees a picture and invites Forrest to visit her in Savannah.

Now we’re back to 1981, where we first encountered Forrest Gump at that bus stop, the chocolates are almost gone when Forrest learns Jenny’s place is just down the street. He jumps up and runs to arrive at her apartment and the surprise. The rest of the film is no less surprising in the small way it ends on another bench waiting for another bus.

That’s Forrest Gump and it’s just part of what you’ll see, hear and wonder about his life on film. This is a show that tracks, through the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, one the most famous persons who never lived in some of the most famous events that actually did occur.

Tom Hanks won the Oscar for Best Actor and the show the statuette for Best Picture of 1994.

Admittedly, there is an element of incredulity here — perhaps more than one, perhaps many more.

Still, before we judge let’s see how our ethnofamilymovieography audience reacted to Forrest and his portrayed life, if I might summarize their peruses as follows:

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump sits at a bus stop and tells the story of his life with flashbacks while offering his listeners to share in a box of chocolates and telling them: “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”; a curiously sweet movie, it is too good to be completely true and too unbelievable to be fully believable — many of the great events of the later 20th Century are attributed to the running abilities of Forrest who with an IQ of 7 is the unlikely recipient of praise, recognition, adulation and even Presidential award and amazement; at the end, the goodness, virtue and love of the characters and their story prevail over the unreality of the unbelievables and we, the watchers, become believers because this is just too much fun; overall, the ethnofamilymovieography audience could not resist the charm and awarded the film a 9.27 average rating, placing “Forrest Gump” at #9 of the first 67 Best Pictures; maybe it is true, as one viewer commented, “In some ways, you make life what it is, and in others, it just happens.”

In some ways, you make life what it is, and in others, it just happens.

I think that just about summarizes Forrest Gump’s life.

The only thing missing may be a happy face.

As Jenny said, “Run, Forrest, run!”

He did. Thanks, Jenny.

And thank you,

For you each reading.

Consider watching this show.

It’s always good to stretch the imagination.

 

Grandpa Jim

 

“Schindler’s List” (1993), The 66th Best Picture: Reluctant, Haphazard, Unexpected Good

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5.9 Million: The estimated number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II.

2.1 Million: Jews in Poland killed by the Nazis.

1,200: The number of Polish Jews saved by Oskar Schindler.

SchindlerJuden. Schindler Jews. The Polish Jewish workers who survived in Oskar Schindler’s factories and whose names were recorded on his lists. In 2012, there were over 8,500 descendants of the original 1,200. Today, hopefully, there are more, many more; and they are all alive because one man did everything he could and spent everything he had for them. A righteous man, one righteous man, among many who were not.

It was a hard movie to make. It is a hard movie to watch. Steven Spielberg was reluctant to direct. The movie, “Schindler’s List,” was released in 1993. It received seven Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Director to Spielberg, the reluctant director.

A word on ethnofamilymovieography. Ethnography is the study of a people thing from within the people experiencing the thing. In its manner, ethnofamilymovieography is the newest branch of ethnography. The people thing being studied is the encapsulation of all the Academy-award-winning Best Pictures — viewed sequentially one-by-one. The people are the movie watchers within the study group, who themselves represent in microcosmic form the cultural amalgam all those to have viewed the film. To a real extent, the studiers are the studied. Each reviewer fills out a form after viewing a film reflecting his or her participation in the movie, individually and as a member of the group, as much as their appreciation of the Best Picture. A curious endeavor, this is the 66th film to be so ethnoexperienced, evaluated and recorded.

One of the questions on the post-film survey is this:

“You stop at a crowded intersection during rush hour in the rain. This movie approaches as a panhandler. Assume you have unlimited cash on your person and you regularly give to panhandlers. Circle how much money you would hand through the window:  NONE  $10  $1,000,000  More”

The coordinating ethnomovieographer collects, collates and presents the data in different formats. One “form” is a sentence of no less than 100 words that summarizes the “Likes” and “Dislikes” of the audience with a brief explication of how the movie fared with respect to the other Best Pictures studied to this point.

For “Schindler’s List,” this process resulted in the following sentence of 209 words. It was a long movie.

Steven Spielberg shares his personal view of the murder of Jews during WWII in Poland; our audience was captivated by the story, the acting, the cinematography, and the music, as they were saddened and horrified by the cruelty, killing, torture, brutality, hatred, and evil presented in this largely black & white picture of the Holocaust; yes, the movie is too long, but only one person commented on the length — the story is too captivating and too unbelievable to be as true as it really was; at the Oscars, Spielberg received the Best Director Oscar – this may be his best work of so many excellent films; the movie was awarded Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original score; the acting, which was great, did not take home a statuette — the story is so much that the individuals are lost in the overwhelming tragedy of the mounting scenes; at the end, our ethnofamilymovieography audience filled out their forms in a still room, awarding the show a 9.69-of-10 average rating, placing the move, in their estimation, at #2 of the first 66 Best Pictures, and, influenced by what they saw, they handed to the panhandler through their open car windows more money than a movie had ever before received.

Only “Ben-Hur” fared better in average rating, and no movie has inspired greater generosity on the part of its viewers than “Schindler’s List.”

“Schindler’s List” is a deeply troubling piece of filmmaking, a picture of good emerging reluctantly, haphazardly, unexpectantly and never completely in the midst of such horrible wrongdoings that to have survived and to be able to walk freely over the hillside in the bright sunshine at the end can only be seen as miraculous.

It is our reluctant director’s best work.

Grandpa Jim

Veterans Day: In Flanders Fields The Poppies Blow — To All Veterans, THANK YOU

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November 11th is Veterans Day in the United States and other countries around the world.

One hundred years ago, World War I ended. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the armistice to end the conflict went into effect. One hundred years ago.

What did we learn? What happened next? What did the world do? What did we do?

More war. World War II. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. Iraq. Afghanistan.

On Veterans Day, we honor all those who served in the Armed Forces.

Many countries do the same on this day or others of their own.

We honor the fallen in service on Memorial Day in May.

Many countries honor their dead on their days.

A favorite poem young and now is:

“In Flanders Fields”

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
    Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

A sadness pervades these verses penned in 1915 during the dark days of the first World War. I liked the poem for the flow and rhythm and imagery. I didn’t understand the words then. I understand them less today.

My family has its veterans and we have our fallen. I remember and honor them on Veterans Day in November and on Memorial Day in May. It is enough that I understand they served and died for us. I believe they did this for all of us. In some mysterious way, those veterans offered themselves for others.

This is a great gift, a very great gift, and I thank them for their service and their sacrifice.

May we not break faith and may they, whenever their time, sleep in peace beneath the poppies in Flanders Fields, row on row.

Grandpa Jim

The “Unforgiven” in Big Whiskey, Wyoming: Eastwood, Hackman & Freeman in the 65th Best Picture of 1992

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It’s been a long time since we talked movies.

Our film society continues to view and review the Oscar-winning Best Pictures. We last left you at #64, “Silence of the Lambs,” with Hannibal the Cannibal, a particularly scarey person in a particularly frightening film. That was 1991.

Let’s move on.

The next Best Picture, #65 in 1992, is perhaps just as dark, in its own ways, as #64 was in its time.

Picture a Small Cowboy Town in the West when the West was Wild. A girl offends a boy with a casual remark. The boy does not forgive the girl and hurts her bad. The girl’s friends do not forgive the boy, and they hire some gunmen to hurt the boy and his friend even worse. The gunmen hurt the boys badder still. The townspeople do not forgive the gunmen, and they hurt one gunman even more worse, baddest yet. The remaining gunman does not forgive the town for hurting his friend, and he proceeds to really hurt the Sheriff and the townspeople, even more worser and badester than ever before. Then, that last Unforgiven person, the notorious gunman William Mundy out of Missouri, played by Clint Eastwood out of California, rides out of that town into the dark and rain leaving behind this threat:

“All right, I’m coming out. Any man I see out there, I’m gonna shoot him. Any(body) . . . takes a shot at me, I’m not only gonna kill him, but I’m gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his . . . house down.”

That’s unforgiveness on steroids, with no one willing to break the cycle; and everyone is unforgiven, to the very last man, Clint “Mundy” Eastwood, in his very last Western movie.

It takes a while to recover from something like that.

The natural tendency is, I think, to say, “I’m sorry,” or a similar attempt, or maybe just to hide until it’s all over.

Okay, now let’s see how our ethnofamilymovieography group of viewers commented on and reviewed this film. Ta Da!!!! The summary sentence is:

“Unforgiven” has four things to its credit: Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and the scenery, and two things not easily seen: the violence and killing; this is “Classic Eastwood” with “the killing everyone;” Western opera at its best and worst, the bodies are strewn on the barroom floor at show’s end; bad people killing badder people and vice versa, and none of them really good, except the acting and filmmaking, to wit: Best Picture and Best Director to Eastwood (who almost got Best Actor, to boot), Best Supporting Actor to Hackman (who liked to use his boots), and Best Film Editing (thankfully some scenes were booted) — the beautifully shot violence of the West with sweeping vistas framing the grimaced moral that: “Bad is bad and may not get much better”; all of which provides little comfort and did not comfort our showtime movie audience, who managed to award the film only a 7.10 of 10, placing Clint and the gang at #49 of the first 65 Best Pictures; perhaps it may be said of the film, as Eastwood says at the end as he pulls the final trigger, “Deserves has got nothing to do with it.”

Perhaps the movie did not fare so well with our audience (in the bottom third), but I will say this, however, that on re-seeing the picture, I saw a strong show, a firm film, with a sound moral message, a message I think I’d missed before. I, like the rest of the timid watchers, was waiting and wishing that someone would stand up and simply say, “I’m sorry.” Maybe that’s the positive moral, the real message of the movie:

Don’t wait, don’t wait to say you’re sorry. If you do you may wake up in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, in the rain, in the wet dark rain. You look up through the heavy drops of moisture dripping off your Cowboy hat and see Bill Mundy riding back into town down the street with that Spencer rifle cradled in his arms. Then I bet you’d wish you’d said, “I’m sorry.”

I guess you have to forgive first or you may end up Unforgiven and back in that same dream in the sequel you never wanted to see or be a part of.

Or you may just move on to the next movie.

Which we will do again soon.

In time — stay tuned.

This took time.

I’m sorry.

 

Grandpa Jim

“The Ghost Who Hated Blueberries”: The First ChildTell Story Is Here — Read, Enjoy &Tell!!!!!!!!!

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Around a camp fire on a dark night in a silent wood or in the still of a sleepy child’s bedroom, there’s nothing like a good story to captivate your audience and build memories into the future.

And the best stories are your stories.

ChildTell Stories provide the materials for you to tell and build your own special and unique stories.

A ChildTell Story can be read as written to children and adults from ages 2 to 102, or — and this is the preferred and intended use — you can first read the story to yourself and then tell the story using your own words. Tailor the story to your hearers. For example, an older child or adult may receive the full content of the story with all the sound effects. Those sounds may and should be personalized and exaggerated for even greater impact. For a younger child, shorten the story and lessen the sounds, but be sure to include your own words and sounds.

Children of all ages love to be surprised and sound is a wonderful way to surprise and captivate.

A ChildTell Story is one your surprised audience will want to hear over and over again.

The first ChildTell Story is entitled “The Ghost Who Hated Blueberries.”

It’s posted right here on this website, unclejoestories.com.

Touch the ChildTell item on the menu bar just above.

Select “The Ghost Who Hated Blueberries.”

Read, enjoy and get ready to tell.

Make the story your own.

That’s ChildTell.

For You.

 

Grandpa Jim