Monday, October 29, 2007

Johnny Tremain


Well, an endless mobster movie is on, a real slice of gangster life with some big name Hollywood stars...and a soundtrack of sixties songs...their pertinence I dont understand...but then it's a drug plot and rock and roll has a lot of that, and I suppose it's a dark side thing that so many groups that made lovely songs supported the gangland culture...still the case.

Episode two unfolded at Last Chance...kinda predictable. sigh.

Wretched...that's the word I thought about today...I heard a bagpipe playing Amazing Grace in the Valley, and I remembered that word is in the lyric, let me check...brb...

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me...

Wretch is a pretty powerful word to be in so gentile a song...but it's an old song from a time when words were used differently...

It is one long lasting wretched move about wretched people, and I suppose it's wretched just to watch, however disinterested!...sigh..

But to the Gray Owl...

I have this Great Gray Owl poster on my wall, and have been thinking maybe someday I'll see one, but today I read the caption on it for the first time...it says there were only 52 sightings, only in Yosemite (greater Yosemite I believe, not just the Valley), and it's an endangered species...and I dont know how old that poster is...letmesee if I can get pic...

Well, I did google images great gray owl, and the first is a photog's site with great nature pics, and of a great gray in Minnesota!..so I'm a bit confused....brb...

They live across the Northern Hemisphere, and Yosemite has the southernmost branch of 100 or so...this from wikipedia.

Well, the movie is over! with credits to Layla tune...

I did a lot of gangster posts over in JFK, trying to figure it out, and how the mob configured in, and came to the conclusion that they just got included as they get included in anything sensational, but...the things I found troubling were the suicides of Iris Chang, whose work on Nanking touched on the Panay, and the journalist Gary Webb, I think that was his name, who delved into conjecture of the CIA role in peddling drugs in poor neighborhoods.

Now, Gibson is on in The Patriot, a visually pretty movie, but too brutal for a Johnny Tremain fan!!

In Mexico journalist are often killed for delving into expose of organized drug cartels there..

It's wretched.
Here's wiki's Tremain discussion...whole thing as it fits the post, and the times...
quote
Johnny Tremain, the title protagonist of the novel, is depicted as an apprentice silversmith. Originally skillful at his craft, Johnny is forced to give up his apprenticeship after Dove, a fellow apprentice, plays a harmful joke on Johnny and causes his thumb and palm to fuse together from exposure to molten silver. The combination of cruelty and condescending kindness that Johnny faces after this mishap is one of the most vividly drawn sections of the novel.
After descending into psychological depression, Johnny is rescued by a kind family who owns a hand-operated printing press, where they do job printing and publish a newspaper, the Boston Observer. Young Tremain joins this household, becomes part of the printshop, and delivers papers to the people of Boston. From this vantage point he and the novel's readers can look on as the unfolding events of the American Revolution move forward. Along the way Johnny befriends several historical figures including Paul Revere, Samuel Adams,John Hancock, and Joseph Warren.
The novel was written during the regionalist period of American fiction, and includes many examples of local color in Boston during the 1770s. The novel was also written during World War II, and includes an oration by one of the principal characters on why some warriors have to die so that their friends and survivors can live in freedom.
The novel concludes during and immediately after the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and the battles are treated as the climax and catharsis of the themes of the novel.
unquote
lot of good links there...
Well, in revisiting the stories of Webb and Chang, I didn't realize how close together they died, both in November 2004...but their stories are far apart, and similar in that they tell how stories are altered.
I was kindof harsh on Chang in the Panay weblog for poor scholarships, and some infringements of other's works...I have to get that Gingrich Pearl Harbor book....
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 28, 2007

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