I always thought that Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind ended where it should have begun, with the first contact between human and alien civilizations.
Well, this afternoon Bart and I went to see Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, which finally resolves that problem.
It’s a terrific science-fiction suspense thriller with an underlying message of hope for humanity.
I remember that when I was a teenage deejay at WCRA radio in Effingham, IL, I wrote to United Artists to ask if they would send me the James Bond soundtrack albums I didn’t have. I figured they wouldn’t, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
About a month later, a big, white package arrived at the radio station addressed to me. In the return address spot on the package, there was only a big yellow comic book word balloon that read, “Who will save the world?”
I couldn’t imagine what it was. I ripped it open and found the first four 007 soundtrack albums — Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball. I was, as you might imagine, giddy with delight.
I also recall that I was a little disappointed in the album for Thunderball, my favorite Bond movie, because it didn’t include some of the most exciting music from the second half of the film. Why? Because they hadn’t given composer John Barry enough time to complete the score before they had to press the album.
Film composers were often really under the gun to get the music finished.
Why superheroes? Why have fictional characters who cannot possibly exist in real life?
It always amazes me that some people seem to think that good works can somehow magically appear in a corrupt world without idealism and dreams of courage and daring.
In fact, superheroes are metaphors about the soaring human spirit, born of necessity in times of powerlessness and despair like the Great Depression. Their function is the same as the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies from that era — to enable the downtrodden to fantasize about defying gravity in fancy duds.
Our “heroes” now slaughter lots of people, because an evil society tells itself evil stories.
Superheroes represent enduring moral values required by the human condition, among them courage, honesty, decency, wisdom and compassion. Those don’t “evolve.” They merely become clarified or confused, depending on whether our society advances or erodes.
Superheroes are those who, when something horrible is about to happen, step in to stop it. They transform themselves, sacrificing their ordinariness. They are the people Mr. Rogers called “the helpers,” writ large.
“If one takes away the violence of superheroes and strips them of the modern perception of their obsessive vigilantism and unwavering punishment of evildoers, what’s left?” asked wrote Alex S. Romagnoli and Gian S. Pagnucci in Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture and the Canon of Superhero Literature. “What’s left is a character that represents the best qualities of humanity: altruism, self-sacrifice, perseverance and responsibility. Superheroes fight because they have to, but their messages still resound without the violence and without the hard-edged personas.”
Superheroes are mysterious figures who suddenly appear to inspire humanity, then vanish until they are needed again.
What are you waiting for? Shine the signal.
“Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in.”
― Ashly Lorenzana
1961’s The Invaders is one of the best-remembered Twilight Zone episodes, with an ending like one of those five-page Marvel Comics science fiction tales.
This fantastic story is sold by Agnes Moorehead’s silent performance as a woman Richard Matheson’s script describes as having “…been alone for many years; a strong, simple person whose existence is primitive and whose only problem is acquiring enough food to eat.”
Director Douglas Heyes recalled, “The reason I suggested her was that she had done a radio show called Sorry, Wrong Number which was a half-hour tour de force where she used nothing but her voice, and I said, ‘Here’s a half-hour tour de force where the woman doesn’t use her voice at all!”
"The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time."
— Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould
"People don't realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind."
— Eckhart Tolle
"Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is."
— Thomas Szasz
— Saint Francis de Sales
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
—e. e. cummings
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.’
— Thomas Jefferson
“George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks — the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living. They don’t know their luck, these people on the sidewalk, but George knows his — for a little while at least — because he is freshly returned from the icy presence of The Majority, which Doris is about to join.
“I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life-energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body — even this old beat-up carcass — that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh! The scowling youths on the corners see him as a dodderer, no doubt, or at best as a potential score. Yet he still claims a distant kinship with the strength of their young arms and shoulders and loins. For a few bucks he could get any one of them to climb into the car, ride back with him to his house, strip off butch leather jacket, shirt and cowboy boots and take part — a naked, sullen young athlete — in the wrestling bout of his pleasure. But George doesn’t want the bought unwilling bodies of these boys. He wants to rejoice in his own body — the tough triumphant body of a survivor. The body that has outlived Jim and is going to outlive Doris.”
— Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man, 1964
In the 21st century, luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four of those things.
Now that I’m in my 70s, it occurs to me that my actual job, for the rest of my life, is to have some peace of mind and enjoy myself.
I mean to work at that with some determination, whatever the vicissitudes that come my way.
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My mother used to write some of those magazine articles — “I Lived in My Car,” “I Married to Get a Green Card,” that kind of thing, and she enjoyed doing it.
For the reader, this kind of thing can generate personal interest along the lines of the old Ann Landers or Dear Abby newspaper columns.
I feel exactly the same way. Long ago, Survivor got busy teaching young people that cheating, backstabbing and phony, devious "affection" was the way to get ahead.
happiness is not:
perfection, control or determined
by external events and people.
happiness is:
a product of your perception and
inner balance. When you define your
own energy, you bring your harmony
with you wherever you go.
— yung pueblo
Key Natural Coping Strategies:
Grounding & Relaxation: Practice deep breathing exercises, the 5-4-3-2-1 sensory technique (five things you see, four feel, three hear, two smell, one taste), or use a weighted blanket to trigger the body’s relaxation response.
Lifestyle Adjustments: Prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep, maintain a balanced diet to avoid blood sugar drops and limit caffeine and alcohol consumption.
Physical Activity: Regular, moderate exercise or yoga helps metabolize excess stress chemicals and boosts endorphins.
Mindfulness & Routine: Meditate, journal thoughts or use a set daily routine to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed.
“What-If” Analysis: Actively challenge anxious thoughts by asking, “What is the worst-case scenario?” to stop repetitive, worrying thought cycles.
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist and author who was called the "father of mindfulness." He popularized Engaged Buddhism, which applies Buddhist insights to social, political and environmental issues (Ai summary).
— Joseph Campbell
So far, sounds just like Fox News.
In an era when journalists are being arrested by a totalitarian GOP government merely for reporting the facts, I don’t think the problem is that the reporters are insufficiently “folksy.”
“The customer is always right” is a rule of thumb that may work for grocers, but it decidedly does not work for professionals like physicians, lawyers and journalists. The journalist’s mission to provide accurate, important and relevant information to the public, particularly information that the public does not know it needs to know.
Obviously, Trump’s real goal is to start a civil war and use it to seize totalitarian power. If his goal was deporting undocumented aliens, he would have sent his masked secret police from ICE agents to Florida and Texas, not Minnesota.
And think of all the things the nervous corporate news media now refuses to report on, starting with Trump's obvious cognitive collapse. They've gone Pravda on us.
Funny that Trump says he has to take Greenland to keep it out of the hands of the Russians, but Russian state propaganda applauds the idea of Trump's seizing Greenland.
Add that one up and see what you get.
I am amused by people who think there is something called “the law” the Trump will obey. This dictator will obey nothing.
By granting Trump total immunity, the Supreme Cult has rendered itself irrelevant, and the law impotent. It has wrecked the country.
Those of us who have seen this disaster headed straight at us for many years have felt like the mythological Cassandra, able to predict the future but cursed so that no one would ever believe us.
As Austen Leigh said, the hardest part of descending into fascism is bearing the weight of those who don’t see it.
David R. Hawkins: “The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going.
"When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates."
