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

On April 18, 2006, Carl T. Wittwer was a guest speaker at USU.  (Carl was the the 2006 recIpient of the Department of Chemistry/Biochemistry’s Alumni Achievement Award.)  In his talk he reminisced about the academic experiences that shaped his professional journey.  Carl earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a doctorate degree in biochemistry from USU.  According to Insights (a publication of the College of Science):

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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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French artist Jean Francois Millet painted haunting, and sometimes bleak, scenes of ordinary rural life in the 19th century.  His painting The Sowers became the symbol of European liberalism and socialism.  Millet’s work, while popular in his own century and later with French Impressionists, gradually fell out of favor.  Modernism lost interest in images of the rural poor.

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Former Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, the principal supporter of US involvement with anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan, died on Wednesday of this week (10 Feb 2010).  He was very much the endearing rascal that American voters seem to adore.  His exploits in southcentral Asia were recently chronicled in the underappreciated movie “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

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I found the following short bio in the book “Strength is What Remains” by Tracy Kidder.  The book is about a Burundian refugee’s horrific experiences in his homeland and in New York.  While the story of Deo is very inspirational, it is the life of one of side characters that really haunts me:

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While I was on my Mormon mission in the Franco-Belgian area in the 1960s, I found somebody’s list of the 100 most important novels of western civilization.  On the list were two novels by the french writer Albert Camus:  The Stranger (or The Outsider) and the Plague.  I purchased a copy of The Stranger and in short order read it.  I found it very compelling, perhaps in the same way other young people find J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” haunting.

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“The legacy of (Alan) Turing the mathematician rises above any possible sensationalism.  His contributions were supremely elegant and foundational.  He gifted us with wild leaps of invention, including much mathematical underpinnings of digital computation.  The highest award in computer science, our Nobel Prize, is name for him.

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The Sunday before last, there was a one-hour tribute on 60 Minutes to the recently deceased Don Hewitt.  Don created and was the inspiration behind TV’s longest running show: 60 Minutes.  While I don’t usually watch shows that pat themselves on the back, this one caught my eye.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the whole show.

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I left Provo on Friday.  Luckily, I didn’t have to drive.  I was physically and emotionally beat.  I needed a break.

After I crashed in Page AZ for 36 hours, the crew from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) headed out to the lands of the Navajo Reservation.  The first day we spent with tribal members living in the very isolated Navajo Canyon.   The area is a Garden of Eden, blessed with several springs (of living water).  The families living there ned help with further developing their water resources.  In the past, there had been water development, but much of the infrastructure is now deteriorated.  The old orchards need pruning.

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