a very good year

A Man And A Woman (1966) Original title: Un homme et une femme Languages: French English Spanish Synopsis A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other, finding that each is a widow/widower. Each is slow to reveal anything personal so that each revelation is hidden by a misperception. They become friends, then close friends, and then she reveals that she can't have a lover because, for her, her husband's memory is still too strong. Much of the film is told wordlessly in action, or through hearing one of their thoughts as they go about their day. Awards 1966: Oscars Awards: Best Foreign Language Picture, Original Screenplay. 4 Nominations 1966: 2 Golden Globes: Best Foreign Language Picture and Actress (Aimée). 5 Nom. 1967: BAFTA Awards: Best Foreign Actress (Anouk Aimée). 2 Nominations 1966: Cannes Film Festival: Palme d´Or (Golden Palm) & OCIC Award 1966: New York Film Critics Circle: Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film 1966: Directors Guild of America (DGA): Nominated for Best Director.

Dated every Monday, The New Yorker magazines come weekly, I think forty-eight issues a year with a double-week issue once a quarter as I recall.

When I first read it I don't remember, but I started grabbing a copy at the front magazine rack every Time I walked through First Class into Coach and headed for my seat flying anywhere my years in business after retiring from the Navy on 1 February 1978.

In due course I started looking forward to buying both The New Yorker and The Atlantic at the shop in Washington National Airport before boarding my flight, usually for places west, Pacific Coast or Australia.

Living in Harrisburg and WashingtonDC and doing my own thing, I was 42 and a busy young man about town! With the Canadian Department of Industry, Trade & Commerce as a client, their Consulate in Philadelphia, as well as the Australian Department of Defence, their Embassy in Washington and their office in Canberra, a Navy torpedo manufacturer in Cleveland, aircraft manufacturers in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle, somewhere in Kansas, and way out on the north end of Long Island, an aircraft equipment manufacturer in Texas and one in Melbourne, South Australia, a tool manufacturer in Australia, a steel company in New South Wales, Australia, an aircraft manufacturer in Victoria, Australia. Flying or driving down from Harrisburg or Washington, I was teaching two graduate courses in defense acquisition management at the University of West Florida; from fall 1980 through spring 1984 I was a full Time student at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg and Virginia Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria; and the last year of it, 1983 to 1984 I was transitional deacon then priest in training at our home parish in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. All of this simultaneously, full Time, at the same Time, most importantly, with an infinite variety of cars, two Pontiacs, two Oldsmobiles, a Lincoln, a Chevrolet, a Buick, a Renault, a Plymouth, and finally three Cadillacs to complete my youthful dream.

My disillusion came with my new 1980 Cadillac as the vinyl roof bulged up ridiculously by the wind at speed on the highway, and the windshield wipers stopped during a snowstorm on the Pennsylvania turnpike and I had to drive to the next exit with my head out the driver's window in the snowstorm and off into a town to find a dealership who did the repair under warranty; and I realized that any relation between cost and quality is an illusion, a car is just a car. Yet I had five more Cadillacs after that one, my two favorites a white Cimarron with red leather seats and the most recent one an SRX station wagon, that I gave to son Joe a couple Christmases ago.

All of this I've told here many Times, but The New Yorker stirred it all up again for me. I need to go back either to forty-two or to seventeen, eh? Sinatra again: when I was seventeen, it was a very good year, and also forty-two.

Wandering again, Bubba. Where was I?

Oh, The New Yorker magazine. This week two issues arrived a day apart, April 28, 2025 and May 5, 2025. Just starting my browse through the May 5 issue, I stopped on page 10, 11 to read THE PICTURES, "Make-Out Movie" about French director Claude Lelouch starting a new film at age 87 and hoping to finish it by the Time he reaches 90 if he lives till then and if the film holds his interest that long, a film about luck. The article went into some detail about his life with his mother working to keep the Gestapo from finding them, and his 1966 film "Un homme et une femme" "A Man and a Woman" and the writeup was so appealing that I went online, found it available free, in French with English subtitles, and watched it with the sound muted because of the early dark predawn hour. I'll have to go back and play it again because of the music and songs that I missed, maybe later. The film stirred memories, including chronos features such as everyone lighting up cigarettes, and the man thinking to himself, "I guess I don't understand women," which would be too anti-DEI for today. The man, a Frenchman, drove a bright red Mustang convertible.

If you thought you were getting a Bible study this morning, you were wrong again.

RSF&PTL

T89&c