No Highway in the Sky

Suspending Disbelief

Yesterday, while I waited for the rain to stop, I caught a favorite old movie on Fox Movie Channel. The TV guide in the newspaper doesn’t carry a listing for FMC (why is that?) so that many of the films I watch there are already in progress when I tune in. But I digress.

The movie was No Highway in the Sky with James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich and Glynis Johns. It came out in 1951 and I saw it then in the theater and several times since on television. This story was shot in the wonderful years of film making when airplane seats were as large as recliners and passengers got involved in each other’s lives. Also, during this period, actors did not feign accents. This story took place in England and James Stewart played an aeronautical engineer whose theory predicted this particular model of airplane would have its tail fall off after a specified number of air miles. Glynis Johns was the stewardess and Marlene Dietrich a famous movie actress and a passenger on the flight.  Though I am assuming all were supposed to be English, Stewart drawled and stuttered in his usual style and Ms. Dietrich responded in her German accent.

This suspending of disbelief happened often in the movies back then. The thriller Gaslight takes place in London, yet the stars all spoke in their native accents: Ingrid Bergman (Swedish), Charles Boyer (French), and Angela Lansbury (English).  Joseph Cotton (American) played the head of Scotland Yard.  (It is said that during the making of this film Ingrid Bergman spoke so little English that she learned her lines phonetically and often wasn’t sure what she was saying.)

Back to No Highway in the Sky. The reviews said one would enjoy it much more if one read the book first. So I investigated to find that the novel No Highway was written by Nevil Shute in 1948. He wrote many novels during the middle of the Twentieth Century.  His best known work was On the Beach, written in 1948 about nuclear war and the end of the world.  This book was made into a movie with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. Mr. Shute was never happy with the director’s (Stanley Kramer) interpretation of the relationship between the two main characters. (Gregory Peck agreed with the writer.) In the book, the two fall in love but do not consumate their relationship because of Peck’s feelings of loyalty to his dead wife. Mr. Kramer decided the audience would never believe that two people could resist the pull of sexual attraction for a higher feeling of loyalty. Too bad Stanley Kramer had so little faith in our ability to suspend our disbelief.

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A Bowl of Cherries, A Box of Chocolate and Tetris

When I was a child, there was a song titled “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” Then, more recently, Forrest Gump familiarized the statement “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Now, after some thought, I’ve decided to contribute “Life is like a Game of Tetris.”

Do you remember Tetris? It’s a highly addictive video game popular about ten years ago. The game consists of different shaped tiles falling from the top of the screen to the bottom. The object of the game is to arrange the tiles into straight lines, either by turning the tile or moving it to the right or left. Filling in a line results in earned points and creating more space to play, rack up more points but most importantly, stay alive. When tiles pile up high enough to touch the top of the screen and there is no space to move the tiles around – the game is over.

So while playing this game I came to see that the Game of Life and the Game of Tetris are very similar. In the beginning of the game, the tiles move very slowly. I have plenty of time to decide just where each tile will fit best. But sometimes, because my perspective is skewed, I misjudge and fail to hit the intended mark. Suddenly things are not as I planned. Then I must adjust my design to accommodate the error. I might even make other bad choices because instead of watching the coming tiles I am still thinking of my first mistake.

Often, I can’t seem to get a break.  Tiles appear that in no way fit the pattern I have going. I need a stick and a block falls. Then, I must decide what to do with the odd shaped thing. As the game progresses, the tiles fall faster. I have to make very quick decisions, despite the fact that my thumbs are tired and my eyes blurred. Then suddenly, the game is over.

If I follow this analogy a little farther, I have to conclude that Tetris (and Life) are not about winning. You just do the best you can with the tiles that fall your way and stay in the game as long as you can.

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Score a Victory for the Grownups

Everyone knows it’s against the law to discriminate in hiring. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I’m saying it’s against the law. An employer can’t refuse to give someone a job because of race, creed, ethnicity or age . . . and probably lots of other reasons I’m not aware of.  An agency I worked for once included in the hiring policy the promise to not discriminate against anyone for their “political stance during the Viet Nam Era.” I’m not sure that would be an issue nowadays, unless someone is running for public office.

But, I noticed a small article this week on the AARP Magazine website (www.aarpmagazine.org) regarding a court victory against age discrimination. This is a direct quote from that website:

A major legal victory, won by AARP Foundation attorneys and television writers, may affect age-discrimination cases for years to come. For nearly a decade, a group of 165 writers ages 50 and up – with the support of the  AARP Foundation litigation department – has argued in court that TV studios conspired to shut out older writers via a so-called “graylist.”  Now, in a landmark settlement, the studios have agreed to pay $70 million in damages to thousands of writers.

“The network told me I didn’t know how to write for young people,” says Tracy Keenan Wynn, 65, who won an Emmy for 1974’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. “Shakespeare wasn’t 15 when he wrote Romeo and Juliet. Writers get better with age.”

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What Was That Again?

Listed on a breakfast menu in Cordoba, Spain: embezzled egg

Sign in a restaurant in Cebu, Phillipines: We Han Sop-Drink in Can and in Batol

Often, in moving from one language to another, something is lost in the translation. Other times, even though we’re all speaking English, there is still a breakdown in communications.

A few years ago, when winter snows came upon us rather quickly and unexpectedly, a friend’s daughter called to let her mom know she was going to begin her trek home from the city. She asked if she should stop at the store on her way – was there anything her family needed? My friend told her to please pick up a 10 pound bag of cat litter. When the daughter arrived home several hours later, the mom assumed the bad wheather must have made it a harrowing trip. Seeking to be sympathetic, she said, “Oh, I was worried about you, it took so long for you to get home.” The daughter replied, “Well, I had to go to several stores to find 10 pounds of calves liver!”

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A Story About Love

Earlier this month, just before the Ides of March, there were two significant occurrences that I neglected to write about: the onset of Daylight Savings Time and my youngest son’s 21st birthday.

When these two events happened on the same weekend, for some reason I was reminded of another clock-moving-forward Sunday a few years ago.

Easter Sunday and the beginning of Daylight Savings Time both fell on April 4, 1999. This was also the day before what would have been our 20th wedding anniversary.

My husband Ed and I married in 1979, when we were in our forties. From the beginning, we knew we would never have a 50th wedding anniversary with the traditional big celebration. So we aimed for the 20th, when we planned to “party like it was 1999.” We warned our large blended family that it would be a big event, so they should mark their calendars and get ready for it. But, as life has a way of turning out differently than what we plan, Ed died in October 1996. I lost my companion and Phillip lost his Dad, three years short of party time.

So on the Easter Day I’m talking about, ten-year-old Phillip and I arrived at church at 8:00 that morning (having lost an hour of sleep). I sang withthe choir in the early service, taught a class, then sang again at 11:00. After lunch with friends, an afternoon of telephone calls from adult children and supper at McDonalds, I wanted nothing more than for Phillip to go to bed so I could sit and ponder my life and loss. Of course, whether it’s Spring Forward or Fall Backward, DST always messes up a kid’s bedtime. Eating a ton of candy eggs doesn’t help any. So, bedtime didn’t happen as soon as I wanted, and when he came creeping back into the living room after I thought sure he was asleep, I was irritated.

“What is it?” I asked, not too kindly.

Big tears welled up in his eyes as he said, “I made you an anniversary present.” He held out an old Happy Birthday gift bag, stuffed with the Sunday comics rather than tissue paper.  I motioned for him to sit next to me in “Daddy’s chair.” When I could, I apologized for being crabby. From the bag I took out the tiny toy bear, a souvenir of a vacation several years before. I twisted the key and the bear clapped the cymbals frantically at first, then gradually slower. Our foreheads together, we watched until the bear finished playing.

That was eleven years ago. The toy sits in a special place in my room. A symbol of a little boy’s tenderness, generosity, and love.

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