The final scene of the film Hostiles is one of the most powerful, I think, in recent times.
PTSD sufferer Christian Bale is saying goodbye to the woman( Rosamund Pike) and child he saved from an Indian attack and now finally after a whole lifetime of abuse he has the option to join her ( and salvation ) or carry on hating his Indian foes and perpetuating his hatred for ever ....at the very last minute he quietly chooses salvation, and I remember leaving the cinema after I had witnessed this , elated and rather hopeful
How many choices do we all have that actually shape our lives for the better like this
I am living a pretty solitary life because of COVID restrictions - always trying to stay safe. Before there was conversation, laughter, people to meet, things to do. COVID has stolen most of that away and you feel it more in these winter months as the virus continues to rage.
My main Sunday highlight was a walk down to our local "Sainsburys" convenience store. There I purchased a four pint carton of semi-skimmed milk and a pack of pork sausages. Then I walked back home. Whoopee-doo!
The second highlight was making the evening meal while listening to Chelsea v Manchester City on the radio. I grilled two pork chops and prepared delicious potatoes-dauphinoise with Brussel sprouts, apple sauce and gravy. Dessert was homemade apple pie with vanilla custard.
Ordinary things have become more significant than they used to be. Life has shrunk.
Over in America, Trump has been taped trying to bully Georgia's Secretary of State to "find" the votes he needed to defeat Joe Biden. Perhaps my way of looking at things is misguided but to me the contents of the phone call constitute attempted fraud. How ironic when Trump continues to bang on about how the presidency has been "stolen" from him! He used to lead an unjustifiable chant about Hillary Clinton - "Lock Her Up!" but in my estimation they really should lock him up instead. Disgraceful.
What will Monday hold I wonder? More of the same no doubt. More solitariness. It doesn't look like a day for a hike in the countryside. Besides, I now need to be at the end of the phone in case our Frances needs us. The grandbaby's due date is January 6th.
Shirley will be off to work today getting her health centre ready for the COVID vaccination marathon. I am so proud of her nursing career. She came to Sheffield at the age of sixteen to undertake a pre-nursing course. In March, she will be 62 years old with 45 years of nursing behind her - broken only by two maternity leaves. It is a hell of an achievement. As a nurse, she has had to change with the times but still maintains the girlish enthusiasm for her laudable vocation that brought her to this Yorkshire city in 1977.
Frank Sinatra was a man of many parts. Like The Laughing Horse Blogger of the Year 2020, Sinatra lived a full life. He drank the wine and he heard the music.
I was lying in bed the other morning when the radio DJ played Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year (When I Was Seventeen)". A difficult song, rendered so effortlessly. He delivered it with nostalgic echoes from his own life woven into the lyrics.
I might have posted that song with this blogpost but instead I have chosen "Ol' Man River". It is said that when Martin Luther King Jr heard Sinatra singing this song live in concert, he wept.
Though Frank Sinatra was a drinker, a womanizer, a gambler, a film star, a man who hob-nobbed with presidents and underworld criminals, he was also fiercely anti-racist. Undoubtedly, his early life in a poor Italian immigrant community in New Jersey, made him understand what it is like to be excluded - on the outside. He didn't just think in an anti-racist manner, he got involved, did things. For example he was key to the desegregation of hotels in Nevada in the late fifties and early sixties.
Sinatramania was before my time. By the time The Beatles and Bob Dylan came along, he seemed to represent an earlier era and I admit that I did not deliberately listen to him though I was aware of the reverence in which he was held by many.
When he was born he weighed over thirteen pounds. He had to be yanked forcibly from his mother's womb with steel forceps. They left a deep scar on his left cheek which you may see if you look hard enough at the video. You may also notice the tears forming in his eyes as the song finishes. In his mind he had just performed a protest song, a hymn of unity that he had sung for years as the river kept rolling along:-
