The Kidnapping Of An Era

F O R A G E R The Kidnapping Of An Era 15 October 2020 Now we understand a little better what being in prison must be like. We are not permitted. We may not go. You cannot attend the entertainments. You may enjoy your friends and family at a distance for only a short period, which is used only to commiserate and practice more gallows humor. Plexiglas confines our transactions and interactions. We douse our hands in sanctifying gel as we enter the church of transaction. Scattering is employed to safeguard the willing. We are all vectors that must break our breath to shield the future. We step back. If the reflex was fear it would be understandable, but retreating is more like the tentative movements of ants who have lost their way while following the broken scent of lost multitudes. Congratulations, Mr. President, you built a wall made of disease around the country. This kind of community stress is having notable effects on our personal relationships and our economic health. The pandemic is proving to be a far greater risk to our democracy than Vladimir Putin. To surmise that the challenge to voting was planned back in March by the Trump Administration may be giving too much credit to people who, up until now, never demonstrated they understand cause and effect. Take the trade “war” with China, which we lost. Iowa will demonstrate a very short memory of farm equipment forfeitures and rural economic and family hardship if Iowans insist on voting for Trump and every other Republican who wrecked corn-belt farms due to the senseless tariff disputes with China. The only thing that saved the farms and towns was sudden Socialism. The USDA was forced to pay out nearly 15 billion to farmers and farm enterprises in 2019 alone. The limit was $250,000 per farm. $500,000 if you had hogs and grew their feed. That doesn’t sound very MAGA to me. More like bribery. We had a chance to solve Covid 19 and the evidence of success elsewhere is a pedestrian fact. Japan has been a model of health courtesy since the 1919 flu pandemic, when masks were first introduced. Japan has 125 million residents, which is roughly one third the population of the US. The current pandemic in Japan has claimed 1,700 lives and caused 90,000 cases of Covid 19. At a factor of three, in comparison to Japan, US fatalities would be 5,000, not 215,000, with 270,000 cases, not 8 million, if we had handled this crisis with any other measure of scientific acceptance and political will. Instead, we are looking more like India. At least India can be excused for not being the number one economic power in the world. Our hypocrisy will never be matched. This pandemic life is a just compensation for laziness, ignorance and selfishness. It apparently can happen here. Four years squandered while we helplessly watched a lunatic kidnap an era. Nothing was accomplished because that has been the deliberate goal of capital for decades. Do nothing to alter the upward trek of wealth accumulation. Build myths with medieval symbolism and promise a return to an ideal that never existed. Pile imaginary threats on the rampart to distract the viewership while the heist can continue. Flout the law. Accuse your adversaries of larcenies and lies you are actually committing. Vilify cooperation and common sense as if they are challenges to personal freedom. Do not as you say. And now the ultimate threat is to drag us all down with you, openly encouraging domestic terrorism, shielding criminal associates, questioning the keystone of democracy: the vote of every citizen. The FORAGER is the weekly newsletter of The Farmer and The Cook which usually speaks to the current availability of vegetables from the farm and how to prepare them. -- Steve Sprinkel www.farmerandcook.com

Film Review: A Song for Marion Healed by Music: Lives in Progress Steve Sprinkel Ojai, California 12 August 2012 Unexpected outcomes, never foretold by character or plot, are the audience’s most memorable rewards delivered in A Song for Marion, a new film written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams. The vitality of the film is borne by the struggles, conflict and survival of English working-class characters living out mortal inevitability. Amid the pathos, Williams provides a perfect amount of fun as antidote, diluting any sense of dread. The story is about overcoming personal loss and bringing oneself back into equilibrium, becoming a decent, caring, patient member of the human race when self pity would have been easier and self-justifying. Terence Stamp plays Arthur, the husband of Marion, played by Vanessa Redgrave. Marion has cancer, eventually in its last stage, and has found many friends and great distraction from her dire straights by joining a neighborhood chorus. Arthur barely facilitates her attendance at chorus practice and is churlishly dismissive of the other chorus members and their young director, Elizabeth, played by Gemma Arterton. The supporting choral cast of retirees sample out human perspectives and explore subtly in song other themes that are left otherwise unsaid. Elizabeth asks them all to take chances on stage and in life they might never have confronted on their own. Arthur is so cold, selfish and petty that one wonders why such a wonderfully charming woman like Marion puts up with his rudeness. Arthur is both brash and burdened, taking on the terminal doom that Marion refuses to oblige. He is protective to a fault because that has always been his role and now he plays it with a blundering vengeance. Terence Stamp smolders in these early scenes, barely able to control a rage not prescribed by simple circumstance, but evoking older pains as well as the one to come. Yet Marion loves him for good reasons known only to her. Their son, James, played by Christopher Eccleston, is losing a loving parent who will be survived by one he has never been emotionally safe with. Marion’s passing cleaves them more apart. By degrees we discover the emotional complexity that mercilessly drives their relationship, speaking without thinking, acting hurtfully without self-reproach. Redgrave’s Marion is dear, compelling and brave. Though she leaves the screen just past the midway point, her performance continues to inform the questions that need to be answered after her character dies. The denouement thereafter is a string of surprises. When the septuagenarians roll out a rendition of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, it’s brilliant. So is it also that writer-director Williams never turns to a predictable sentiment that film formula falls prey to so often. When it is revealed that Elizabeth is single and alone, like James, that they might, or not, live happily ever after is for us to vaguely consider. When Arthur intends to repent of being a beast to his son, He is rebuffed. But we have allegiance to neither character because Williams has shown us heretofore no inclination to take sides. Williams let’s his people be as they are. When Arthur miraculously changes course and begins to sing with those he once despised, his redemption is not complete but shown as a life in progress. And Terence Stamp’s authentically moving solo singing performance at the end is the best surprise of all in a film about personal challenge and how we often act not too human and sometimes, despite our personal prologues, can surprise ourselves with our own humanity.