Wednesday Thursday

Movies: now we're more sophisticated, we call them "films" even though they're not on film, they're recorded electronically instead of on celluloid. And why did we call them "movies"? Because they move, they're not still shots like slides; people are moving. Or they seem that way until you examine a film strip with the thousands of still pictures that run by the projector fast enough to seem like movement. In my Time it was the Picture Show, can we go to The Show, there's a good Picture on at the Ritz? 

Like books, films have a way, if they're competent and the audience is responsive, of putting the viewer on the side of the protagonist. It's the objective of propaganda, in fact, to convince you of something without your realizing that you've been sold. 

Sometimes I read, sometimes I blog, sometimes I watch films on my computer desktop. Sometimes I sit here and look out the window at what's happening on St Andrews Bay. 

Almost never do I scroll Facebook.

This way too early morning I've come inside from a stay on 7H porch, sitting back out of the moonlight, to have a couple of saltine crackers lightly buttered, with cheddar cheese, and a 12 oz mug of half kefir, a quarter whole milk, a quarter whole buttermilk, and a light pour of half & half, stirred. The kefir is too thin, and this potion makes a decent sip at an hour when I don't want coffee yet and the kefir seems like a good message to the stomach: peace be with you.

Also, I think kefir is filled with tiny live bugs that are good for you, like yogurt. 

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Last night I watched a three-hour Finnish film "Unknown Soldier," about a phase of Finland's history that I didn't know, called the Continuation War, ongoing fighting between Finland and Russia in the early 1940s that had little to do with WW2. The film was placed 1941 to 1944 when Finland was allied with Germany against Russia, not so much as an ally of the Third Reich, but because both were fighting Russia. 

"Unknown Soldier" has been called propaganda, and it's been called an anti-war film. I don't necessarily agree, though it did succeed in bringing me in: for maybe my first Time ever, I found myself rooting for soldiers wearing the helmet that was a unique, absolute identification of the German troops we hated during World War 2, 

It was a decent film, a bit of a challenge to follow because the fullness of it didn't come across in the English subtitles translated from Finnish, and I had to go to Wikipedia and read about it in detail to make sure I'd "got it." But I appreciated it, and now I have a list of some half a dozen more Finnish war films to watch if I can detective around and find them for free as I did for "Unknown Soldier."

What appeals to me about this stuff, why do I read books and watch films, some true stories, some of it fiction, documentaries, and other coverage of the WW2 timeframe? IDK, but I've stopped trying to psych myself out about it and I just go with it, a fascination formed in the 1940s when it was all happening live, and on the radio, and on our streets with Army, Navy and Coast Guard installations being built here, and uniformed military folks in town, and the USO at the end of Harrison Avenue offering a meeting place with dances where the soldiers and sailors and local girls got together; and in the newspapers, and on the Newsreel screen at the Ritz Theatre, and in our comic books, 

and in the cautionary propaganda we saw in the post office and other places. "Loose Lips Sink Ships."

I do not so much appreciate the "short film" category that has sprung up in Germany and is available in quantity online. The 21st century actors are not made up into their early 20th century roles, wrong men's haircuts and women's hairstyles for the era, so they're not convincing. The uniforms are not always right, and there's a reluctance about showing the swastika symbol of the Third Reich. And some of the play a, to me, contrived, anti-nazi sentiment among Germans. Basically, the Germans were all Nazis until they started losing the war and needed to run to the Allied side before the Russians caught them and exacted vengeance.

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After our Tuesday visit to Malinda at Pruitt, Kristen came over for supper and we cooked ahi tuna steaks, quite nice, first time I've cooked them and tried to get some rare and some pink medium. The pink worked, but I cooked them a bit too long for rare. "Medium heat," the recipe read, olive oil or butter in the cast iron skillet, about four minutes then flip, then four minutes and out. But I could tell by two minutes that they needed to be flipped for rare, then one or two minutes and out of the pan. Surely I'll remember next Time, eh? The seafood section at Sam's nearly always has them, and a nice selection, especially salmon, tuna, usually a few others, cod, steelhead trout, tilapia. Sometimes snapper, but I only buy snapper at Tarpon Dock or Buddy Gandy's here in St Andrews. 

At the downtown intersection of Market Street and Avenue E in Apalachicola, The Grill restaurant used to offer "the world's biggest fried fish sandwich." It was piled high with fried tilapia filets. In my Time it would have been mullet, eh?  

This Time I did buy a pound of Sam's crabmeat, lump. But it's pasteurized and not much significant flavor. Lemon, mayonnaise, salt and pepper, maybe curry powder - - when it then tastes like the seasoning and you miss the elusive crabmeat flavor. Right now we're getting ready to cook a piece of salmon I also bought, and for the waiting Time beforehand I'm having a small bowl of the lump crabmeat with a glass of chardonnay. 

The salmon we'll prepare for eating about one-thirty or two o'clock.

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What's with all my waffling around The Subject? It's leap year, presidential election, and the fire's heating up. I used to think that it made no difference who was President, but man was I wrong. Yesterday I was googling friends and relatives from of old whom I've not seen in maybe ten, thirty-five, fifty, seventy years. To see who's still alive, and if they have Facebook, what they post that tells me about them and whether I might want to establish contact?

Mostly NO! because their postings are political rants of hate and contempt for candidates and viewpoints other than their own, which inevitably extends to they would hate me too because we are polar opposite on political views. 

I do work hard at keeping my mouth shut about my political and social viewpoints. Here's the thing, though. Christianity is as much a social / political movement as it is a religion of belief and worship, because Christianity is about people's relationships with God and with each other. It's not a rule-keeping religion like the Judaism of the Pharisees seemed to be, and it's not about claiming Jesus as your personal savior so you're as sure for heaven as if you were already there; it's about Jesus, who was/is about how we treat each other, the New Testament Greek word αγάπη ah-gah-pay, which is a sort of impersonal unconditional love that manifests in how we treat others, especially, as is the point of Jesus' parable of The Good Samaritan, those "others" whom we don't like because they are different from us.  

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Hey, it's dark early, not even yet three o'clock in the morning: I'm going back to bed.

RSF&PTL

T88&c