Hello, I’m Veronica
The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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Bon Voyage!
Every now and then I come up with a topic for my blog, and then the topic somehow surfaces in the natural course of conversation later the same week. It’s a little unnerving – perhaps divine intervention – to watch someone bring up something you hadn’t thought about in years, or at least until a few days earlier.
Such was the case this week when I opted for a (virtual) visit to Mont Saint-Michel, the majestic island commune and fortified abbey just off the coast of Normandy, France. Mont Saint-Michel came to mind because I received a mailer from my alma mater advertising a ten-day trip to the region next summer. The itinerary includes a stopover in Paris, a base hotel in the historic seaport village of Honfleur, extensive tours of Normandy focusing on the events of World War II, and finally, a full day exploring the island of “St. Michael’s Mount.” Mon dieu, what an adventure!
Mont Saint-Michel has a remarkable history on top of its dramatic architectural elements (which you can read about here). Its buildings date to the 8th century, with the Romanesque abbey and monastery at the very top (“closest to God”), literally supported by a vast network of halls for stores and housing, and finished elegantly at the bottom – outside the walls – with individual houses for the handful of fishermen and farmers who live there. The church inside the abbey is partnered with an open-air cloister (a square covered walkway for reflection). A statue of the archangel Michael watches over the land from the very top of the church spire. Magnifique, no?
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia about Mont Saint-Michel. You may think the following photo is a distant view of the island. Au contraire. The Mont has a “sister” across the channel near Cornwall. England’s island of “St. Michael’s Mount” is much smaller, but it still shares the characteristics of Mont Saint-Michel, including the significant rise/fall of the surrounding tides, the conical shape of the island, and a chapel at the top.
In today’s world Mont Saint-Michel is a little touristy for my tastes, so perhaps it’s just as well I’ve never made the pilgrimage. 2.5 million visitors descend upon the island every year, hosted by only 25 full-time inhabitants (monks, nuns, and shopkeepers). Tourism is literally the only source of income. Besides a walk through the abbey and the spiraling streets, you’re channeled into the requisite shopping area, for food (including the famous to-go omelettes), and for purchases that can only be labelled as “tacky”. I actually have one of these souvenirs (below photo). Sacre’ bleu! Maybe if they’d left off the sailboat…
To further detract from the mystique of the Mont Saint-Michel, a permanent walking bridge was built three years ago, allowing round-the-clock access from the mainland car-park. Once upon a time you had to wait until low tide and then quickly walk across the natural spit of land before the water returned. Now you just cross whenever you want. Too bad, but apparently the channel was filling in with silt and a bridge was the only way to keep the island an island. C’est la vie.
My first introduction to Mont Saint-Michel was forty-odd years ago on the shores of California, not France. San Diego County hosts elaborate sand-castle building competitions on its beaches, and one year I snapped the following photo of the winner.
To visit Mont Saint-Michel, you’ll need to drive four hours to the west of Paris, all the way to the coast of the English Channel. Unless you have a hankering for WWII history, there isn’t much else to draw you to the region. Which brings me back to the start, and my comment about topics resurfacing later in the week. Three days after I wrote this post, I was having a beer with some older friends and we got talking about the movie “Saving Private Ryan”. One of the guys said his dad served in WWII and he’d taken him back to the beaches of Normandy, where he’d spent part of his time as a medic. “Normandy?”, I said. “Yes”, he said. “You know, in the northwest of France near Mont Saint-Michel?” To which I almost said, “excusez-moi?”
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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You Can’t Walk and Chew Gum
In the local news this week, we learned Amy Wilson and her newborn – residents of our fair city – are in critical condition in a Salt Lake City hospital as victims of a head-on collision. Wilson and her newborn suffer brain injuries as they struggle to survive, while two of three teenagers from the at-fault car are dead. The heartbreaking interview with Wilson’s husband here in Colorado included loss of words as he tried to reconcile the happiness of a birth with the tragedy of the accident.
My reaction to this story – besides donating to the “Amy and Baby Wilson Support” GoFundMe campaign – was the teenagers must have been texting at the wheel. I wonder if they even left skid marks. Prayers be with them, Amy Wilson and her newborn will survive and their injuries will be short-lived. But the same cannot be said for the kids in the other car. As it turns out they were street-racing when they jumped the median. They might as well have been texting.
The victims on both sides of this accident will join the rising morbid statistics tied to “distracted driving”, which includes use of smartphones. We just can’t put them down, even with risk of life staring us in the face. By no coincidence, the Wall Street Journal published an article this week about rising insurance rates tied to use of smartphones while driving. 36% of State Farm customers admitted to texting while driving, up 5% from five years earlier. 20% admitted to taking a photo while driving; another 10% take videos. In those same five years smartphone ownership among drivers increased from 50% to 90%.
I will never understand the urgency to check a text while driving. Apparently I’m not as addicted as most. If I’m “late” in responding to a message, I can’t think of a better excuse than “I was behind the wheel”. When my phone rings or a text message dings, I will find a safe place to pull over if I can. More often I’m not going to answer until I get where I’m going.
Perhaps I’m more motivated than most, because my son caused a distracted driving accident several years ago in high school. As he fiddled with the car stereo leaving campus, he braked too late when he saw the red light in front of him, causing a chain-reaction fender-bender involving five cars. Thankfully no one was hurt, but even at school-zone speeds my son caused a lot of damage. Because of that incident I chastise my children any time I receive a text from them and realize they are driving.
Technology is trying to improve things, of course. Voice-activated control is a lot better than it was just a few years ago. But we’re not there yet. Until it is commonplace to conduct a stream of communication from start to finish hands-free, the senseless accidents – and the insurance rates – will continue to rise. Even if you perfect the technology, you still have the distraction.
Sure, you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but not so texting and driving. I looked at the photo above and thought, “what if you saw that through the windshield of the car coming towards you?”
The next time you’re on the road and you get that familiar ding, just keep going where you’re going. No matter the message, it’s infinitely less important than the safety of those around you.
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
This April, a movie called The Circle will arrive in theaters, and it just might generate enough buzz to displace political headlines. The previews start innocently enough: a wide-eyed young woman “Mae”, who can’t believe her good fortune at being hired into the thoroughly glamorous Internet company “Circle” (a super-hybrid of Apple, Google, and Facebook). Predictably, things take a turn for the not-so-good when Mae realizes her new employer seeks a singularly “true” Internet identity for its consumers, revealing all there is to know about a person.
The previews for The Circle intrigued me enough to give the book a try, even though the reviews were mediocre at best. But no matter; the premise draws me in and keeps me reading. What resolution can possibly exist in a not-so-distant future where an individual’s “privacy” goes completely out the window? The Circle proposes an all-knowing (and therefore) all-exploiting Internet service; a corporate version of totalitarianism. I can’t imagine a happy ending, can you? As Ray Bradbury would say, something wicked this way comes.
Ray Bradbury authored countless short stories placing believable humans in not-quite-so believable circumstances, yet seeking a peek into a probable future. “Fahrenheit 451” is perhaps his most famous example, but I have my own favorites, including “The Golden Apples of the Sun”, “A Sound of Thunder”, “Skeleton”, and “The Veldt”. I own a collection of Bradbury’s “hundred best”, and find them just as compelling as when I first read them forty years ago. Why? Because they still aren’t quite believable. The presumptions and technologies and societies of Bradbury’s stories are still somewhere around the corner of the world of today. But I have no doubt they’re coming.
The same case can be made for the cult-classic neo-noir film Blade Runner, produced in 1982 but based on a book written decades earlier. Blade Runner made several far-reaching assumptions about a dystopian Los Angeles of the future: a) climate change, creating an environment dominated by darkness and rain, b) culture change, where its inhabitants, language, and food are decidedly Asian, and c) technological change, where “replicants” (robots) perform the mundane tasks humans no longer care to do. Blade Runner’s mystique is in the depiction of a familiar place transformed by radical changes; the kind that aren’t so unbelievable. Not now perhaps, but they’re coming. (Also coming: a sequel to Blade Runner later this year).
Here’s another example from Hollywood. Logan’s Run (which was an on-screen disaster just begging to be remade thirty years later), depicted a completely controlled, pleasure-filled world inside a giant, sterile dome – but only until age thirty, when its inhabitants were ceremoniously put to death (to conserve the resources of a supposedly dying planet). By default, Logan’s world is a society where everything is new and clean, everyone is “young”, and a day in the life is controlled by some behind-the-scenes, largely technological presence. “Logan 5” and “Jenny 6” (a delightful nod to the loss of individualism) are too dependent on the comforts of their world to ever acknowledge its limitations. Considering how technology shapes our actions and decisions today, perhaps Logan’s world is not so far-fetched anymore.
The appeal of Ray Bradbury, Blade Runner, and Logan’s Run – even today – is stories about worlds that are (still) not believable. We can enjoy them yet keep them at arm’s length, comforted by the thought “can’t really happen”. And that’s what makes The Circle a serious conversation piece (even if it’s a box-office flop): a taste of an all-powerful, all-knowing Internet – if governments and corporations let it get that far. Once we reach that point is there any turning back, or will “drones” more aptly describe humans than cool little flying machines? Terrifying foresight for sure, but hopefully not prescient thinking.
Okay, you’re done reading now. Back to your Facebook feed.
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For Heaven’s Snakes!
On a recent jog along the dusty unpaved roads of my neighborhood, I heard – and then saw – a couple of energetic dogs intent on chasing me down. They leaped off the front porch of a nearby house, tore across the wide-open acreage adjacent to the street, and came to a halt just inside what must have been an invisible fence. Barking and jumping, they made it clear I was intruding on their space. Not that I really noticed. I was scanning the road and the shoulder where I was running instead, looking for snakes.
Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m on the lookout for snakes in the dead of winter, when wildlife should be hibernating. Or maybe you’re wondering why I’m even running in an area where I might step on one. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely I’d come across a snake in my neighborhood, even in the middle of a hot summer running deep into the weeds. Colorado has plenty of the slithery ones, but they prefer the rocky habitat of the foothills to the west (up against the Rocky Mountains). Yet I still look for them out of a long-enforced habit.
Does my snake-dislike qualify as a phobia? Probably. It was my earliest face-to-face with a rattler that turned me to the dark side. Summertime, backyard of our house – living in the close confines of a narrow canyon – and I whacked a tennis ball into the neighbor’s yard. Didn’t mean to do that and needed the ball back. Nobody was home next door but a side gate meant I could sneak around unnoticed. As I moved beyond the house and into an unkempt grassy area, I spied the tennis ball and made a beeline for it. What I didn’t see was the five-foot snake nestled in my path, coiled and ready to strike. Peripheral vision or his rattle made me leap and hurdle at the last second. I landed on the other side of him and kept running. Someone came to my aid and the rattler was caught soon after, but the damage to my psyche was done. Snakes = not good.
There are four species of poisonous snakes indigenous to the United States: copperhead, coral, cottonmouth, and rattlesnakes (of which there are several sub-species). I’ve had the “pleasure” of encountering two of these four up close and personal. In California I came across several more rattlesnakes after my tennis ball adventure, including those big, nasty diamondbacks on desert hikes with the Boy Scouts. Then, years later, while visiting my wife’s family in North Carolina, I played a round of golf and discovered copperheads are fond of the short grass out there. I approached my ball on one of the fairways and just about left my shoes when a long, black snake sprinted across my field of vision. One of the locals I was playing with just laughed and said, “copperheads; get used to ’em kid!” Whether that was sage advice or mind games, golf in North Carolina lost all appeal.
Snakes have been in their share of films. I’ve never seen snakes on a plane and I never saw Snakes on a Plane so I’m still okay to fly. A friend dragged me to Anaconda, which killed any interest in seeing the Amazon. And in Raiders of the Lost Ark of course, Harrison Ford is asked “Indie, why does the floor move?” The following scene with all those snakes is a close-up I wish they’d left on the editing room floor.
Some say you’ve got to get your nightmares out in the open to get past them. Maybe I’m doing that by writing about them. Doesn’t mean I won’t keep looking for slithery ones when I run.
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There’s Something About Mary
Mary Tyler Moore passed away over a week ago and I’ve been thinking about her ever since. Countless actresses come and go, but then you have those who make indelible impressions with one or two jaw-dropping performances. Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews and Maureen O’Hara, just to name a few. Meryl Streep. And Mary Tyler Moore.
There’s something about Mary. I read her filmography from start to finish – a span of sixty years of television and movies – and came up with two roles of any significance to me: Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), and Beth in the film Ordinary People (1980). But I think most people would agree – those performances alone land Mary Tyler Moore in an acting class by herself.
Moore first became a familiar name as Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960’s, but that was a little before my time. On the other hand, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a weekend staple in my house. At an age when my father still controlled the TV remote (er, TV channel – no remotes back then), my brothers and I were treated to CBS’s Saturday night “killer lineup”, which included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show included memorable opening credits, if only because the theme song was so infectious (“…you’re gonna make it after all…”), as was the final scene where Mary spins and smiles and throws her hat into the air at a busy Minneapolis intersection. That throw – and Mary Tyler Moore herself – is immortalized in a bronze sculpture you can find at that very same intersection today.
In 1980, just as I was heading off to college, Robert Redford directed the Best Picture winner Ordinary People, one of the most gut-wrenching, powerful, “real-life” dramas I have ever seen. Timothy Hutton burst onto the Hollywood scene with an Oscar-winning performance as Conrad, the younger of two sons in a tormented Chicago family. Judd Hirsch was also nominated for an Oscar (losing to Hutton) for his portrayal of the determined therapist who counseled Conrad back to stability. But it was Mary Tyler Moore’s turn as the heartless and unforgiving mother Beth that stole the show. Her performance was so counter to the sunny demeanor of Mary Richards, I wondered if she was tapping the energy of some real-life bout of depression. That was the breadth of Mary Tyler Moore’s acting talents. I’ve only seen Ordinary People a couple of times but the scene where Donald Sutherland tells Beth he no longer loves her still haunts me. Moore’s silent, crestfallen reaction to that statement could’ve coined the phrase “verbal slap in the face”.
I am even more taken by Mary Tyler Moore when I read some of the details of her life. Clearly, she tried to embody the positive demeanor and “independent woman” of Mary Richards, but she did so in the face of significant personal tragedy. She dealt with alcoholism and smoking addiction, drug overdose (her sister), suicide (her son), and years of diabetes. She took up the baton to promote diabetes awareness and animal rights. Moore was even tougher and more outspoken than her little/big screen roles would suggest.
The theme song of The Mary Tyler Moore show begins with “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” Scroll back up to that first photo. Talk about ear-to-ear! And I can’t help but smile back, even as we now say goodbye to Mary.
Some content sourced from IMDb.com.
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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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