Tired Road Warrior

When I was growing up in the 60s in East Lansing, Michigan, I had a friend whose parents were alcoholics.  My friend was a bit of a nerd.  He loved movies (this era was pre-tapes and pre-DVDs) and he would rent full-length movies on reels.  He would show them in his house for anyone who was interested.  We ended up spending a lot of time at his place.

His parents were always “three sheets to the wind.”  His mother once told me that she wished she had become a nun like she had originally intended.  His father, while I knew him, despite his drinking problem, was able to maintain a job with NCR.  But I understand he was let go after I left East Lansing.  Ultimately, I don’t know what happened to my friend’s parents, but the prognosis was obviously not good.

I was reminded of my friend’s parents when I recently watched the film Crazy Heart.  For his efforts, Jeff Bridges won an Academy for best actor for portraying the role of an over-the-hill country singer with alcohol and drug addictions.  When the film opens, the main character is playing the bowling alley circuit.  The movie also has a subplot involving a May-to-December romance.  Jeff probably didn’t deserve his Academy Award for this flic, but maybe he did for life-time achievement.

Anyway, I found the movie to be very derivative of an earlier movie:  The Wrestler.  The general plots are the same, just substitute a broken-down singer for a broken-down wrestler.  I’m not a country music fan, but I loved the music in Crazy Heart, which also captured an Academy Award.

I didn’t like the ending of Crazy Heart.  The “hero’s” rehab was way too easy and the ending was very unsatisfying.  The conclusion made logical sense (younger woman dumps older man), but lacked emotional punch.  Life just isn’t as clear cut and clean as the movie’s ending.  If movie goers want something that doesn’t pull punches, they should watch the classic movie The Days of Wine and Roses.  I saw the latter movie with some high school buddies, including the one mentioned above.  To this day, I wonder what impact the movie had on my high school pal.  I know I never saw him consume alcohol.

Cultural Definition of “three sheets to the wind”:

To be “three sheets to the wind” is to be drunk.  The sheet is the line that controls the sails on a ship.  If the line is not secured, the sail flops in the wind, and the ship loses headway and control.  If all three sails are loose, the ship is out of control.

The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

In twelve days, my Mother turns 90.  All her children (and their spouses), all her grandchildren (and their spouses), and all her great-grandchildren will be getting together for a birthday celebration in Zions National Park.  On my Grandmother Rees’s side (the Munk family of Benson, UT) of the family, it is not unusual to be a nonagenarian and more.  Grandmother (Mother’s mother) lived to 101.  My Mother has an older brother who will turn 97 this year (his wife is also in her 90s).  Her older sister, Aunt Alda, is 93.

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Two nights ago I watched the movie Everybody’s Fine, starring Robert De Niro as father and several other fine actors as his offspring.  In the movie Frank Goode, a widower played by De Niro, travels around the country visiting his adult children.  Learning their secrets leads first to introspection, then to a determination to make things right.  The important point for me was Goode’s desire to patch things up with his “less-than-perfect” kids.  To do this he needed to reconsider his past expectations for them.

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I occasionally witness or hear of primary and junior-sunday-school lesson horror stories.  Where very young Mormon children are subjected, to what I consider to be, very outrageous discussions of inappropriate topics.  Two notables examples:

• A lengthy and bleak discussion of the tribulations and horrors of the Last Days.
• A very descriptive lesson on the gory nature of the crucifixion of Christ, involving such details as driving nails in the hands and feet.

Kids need to be kids.  Growing up needs to be fun.  There is plenty of time to learn the details of the crucifixion and of the Last Days.  And I’m not sure that studying  the latter is ever necessary.  Learning to be good stewards of the Earth might be a better more positive subject.

The following was written in a review by Mary Pols of the book Devotion by Dani Shapiro:

“Devotion does not provide a template for finding your personal Jesus (or whoever).  It’s a history of Shapiro’s quest to explore her own faithlessness.  She grew up in an Orthodox household but cast aside her Hebrew religious study as a teenager.  As an adult, her sense of God was that if he existed, he was not a micromanager.  (”As far as I knew, he had never gotten me a parking space.”)  She wants to believe in something but doesn’t know what.”

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The following is an excerpt from an article by Peggy Fletcher Stack which originally was published in the SLTrib on Feb 13th, 2009:

(Daniel) “Fairbanks (associate dean at UVU in Orem) believes with most biologists that evolution is the unifying theory in the field. . . .

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Two articles in this week’s periodicals paint a less-than-flattering image of official and unofficial Mormons.  The first appeared in Time Magazine in a review of the movie “The Book of Eli.”  The second was the lead article (complete with cover photograph) in the National Geographic.  I have no particular comment on either article, but it is interesting to see how we are portrayed in the popular press.

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In response to your speech of October 13, 2009, at BYU-Idaho, I will not be joining you in the ”march” against Prop 8 proponents.  I realize that “there is a battle underway,” but I am on the other side, along with the likes of Harry Reid, Marie Osmond, and Steve Young’s wife.  For me this is a civil rights issue and not a religious one.  And I agree with Harry Reid, there must be more important ways for my church to spend its time and money.

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About the only official (or near official) Mormon publication I enjoy reading these days is BYU/Magazine.  The recent edition (Fall 2009) is an excellent case in point.  I really enjoyed the Commentary “Loving Our Neighbor” by Barbara Culatta, a BYU professor of communication disorders.  Ms Culatta is a convert to the Church from Catholicism, and has a brother who is a priest.  Her essay was a condensed version of a devotional address given in February.  After reading the one-page sermonette in BYU/Magazine, I decided to find the whole text.

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I feel strongly that members of the human race are co-creators of the Earth with God.  That we will be held accountable for the impact we have on this planet.  The creation was not a static event, but very much a dynamic event.  The earth is evolving even as I write.

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