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03/17/20 03:21 PM #6966    

 

David Mitchell

Can't let this day pass without mention of one of my all-time favorite films. I have watched this film so many times I have lost count - maybe 20 or 25 times. It was one of my dad's favorite films, so I first saw it as a kid. One of many great films directed by the great John Ford (John Martin Feeney), who also directed "The Searchers" (which French film critics revere as the greatest American film of al-time), "Stagecoach", "The Grapes of Wrath", "Mr. Roberts", and another of Dad's favorites, "How Green Was My Valley" - about Wales). There are so many more it's hard to count. One of his last films was "Donovan's Reef", a fun film with John Wayne, Lee Marvin, a tender yet subtle message, and another great fist fight.

So here is the great fist fight scene that is the climax of this film. 

If you watch the sequence in the video below - (at 5:33) - the old dying man, receiving the last rights in the bed is Francis Ford, the director's brother. And the young priest is Charles Fitzsimons, the brother of the female lead actress, Maureen O'Hara. I read somehwere taht many of the extras are cousins of Ford, who lived all around the area where the film was shot, I believe in the Connamara region, near the village of Cong (over towards Galway).

 I love the bit with the cops on the phone. "What'd he say? He said to put 5 pounds on Thornton."

A thousand pardons - it should have read "5 Pounds on Danaher's nose." - my bad



 


03/17/20 09:26 PM #6967    

 

David Mitchell

More PBS music show trivia,,,,,

I am watching the same PBS special on 50's music - "Moments to Remember" that I referred to a few days ago (where I sighted Mimi Rousseau). She definately sang with the Skyliners as they sang         "When I fall in Love"

But I learned more trivia tonight in my second go around with this re-run from 2011. (Lordy, I hope PBS isn't going to all re-runs during this "social distance" period. 

The host is George Clooney's dad, Nick, the well known host of TCM. I knew that much, but he just mentioned his "sister" Rosemary and it suddenly dawned on me that they were family!

BTW, the latter part of the show he co-hosts with Patty Page - "The Singin Rage", and she is still looks great.

NOW -  for those of you  in the St. Mike's gang, you may know that Nick Clooney lived in Worthington and worked for about 2 years for Channel 4, before moving to Cincinnati and working for WLW, where I think, his career escalated as a newscaster.  **(Fred?)

Somehwere I saw a St. Michael's class photo of the second grade (I think) with Father Burne(?) and the nun who was principal in each of the corners. I seem to recall it was a collection of individual portraits - instead of our group class photos. It had to be sometime in teh late 50's and includes a little blonde-haired boy named,,,,,,,,,,,,,,wait for it,,,,,

George Clooney

I think I heard somewhere that he went on to do okay on one of those TV shows about a hospital.

------------------

I promise to let this thing go with Mimi Rousseau, but here she is as she appears (as she did) on the program I am referring to. Frankly, I think she was better suited to her original Rock & Roll genre, but I think this is when she had moved to L.A. to try to elevate her career. It never quite happened. 

I assume you can figure out which one is Mimi.




03/18/20 11:45 AM #6968    

 

Michael McLeod

Dave: Aren't you a little old to be a stalker?


03/18/20 02:07 PM #6969    

 

David Mitchell

Busted!

 

Truth be known, it was her older sister, Susie - in your class - that I was attracted to. We grew up next door to each other. We played "House", and "Cowboys & Indians", and "Doctor & Nurse" from about age 2 or 3. I think I asked her to marry me when I was about 4. She was my first friend in life. 

Interestingly, we all thought Susie had the better voice, but she was so modest about it and never pursued it professionaly. I wonder how many of you I.C.ers remember her? she went on to St. Joe's instead of Watterson.

 


03/18/20 07:47 PM #6970    

 

Michael McLeod

I do remember Susan Rousseau, and their home, which was just to the west of IC, and that it was huge and they had a big family and were considered something of a mystery to us. This was back at a time when any family in the parish that didn't include at least one parent or child who a) hung out with my mom at Olympic all summer or b) bowled with my dad on Thursday nights or c) was friends with either me or one of my three sisters was considered a mystery. 

And I want to emphasize, Dave, that I remember Susan vaguely, not, you know, stalkerly. 


03/19/20 01:44 PM #6971    

 

David Mitchell

My next door neighbor's daughter, who lives in Park City Utah, and works at Deer Valley (which just closed all skiing operations about a week ago), sent me this. It's a normal warning to skiiers about steep terrain ahead. 

But how prophetic?

(for you non-skiiers, that is a chairlift coming uphill - see red seat backs)


03/19/20 03:00 PM #6972    

 

David Mitchell

This goes out to all you Shiney, Happy People.

Time to get up, go outside and yell hello across the driveway to your neighbor. Do a few jumping jacks, take a walk, or a bike ride. Maybe put on some "Pointer Sisters" and then sit back and pop a cold one while you count your blessings. 

 

And if you really want to get crazy, check out John 16:33



 


03/19/20 03:19 PM #6973    

 

Michael McLeod

 

I think one of the reasons we are all engaged by our childhoods is because we might as well have lived on another planet given how different the world is today from what we knew back then.

This sense of that world that was once so familiar but seems so exotic, and charming, and intimately connected now is probably more pronounced in those of us who moved away from Columbus. My sister Katie, for example, lives just a few blocks away from our home on East North Broadway.  So she probably doesn't think of our childhood with the level of wonder and astonishment that comes to me when I do. Here's one thing that just bowls me over. Dave's posts about Susan Rosseau prompted me to write about it.

We lived on East North Broadway between Indianola and the railroad tracks. And what astonishes me is how many households along East North Broadway  - from the railroad tracks to High Street (what is that, about a mile?) were lived in by people I either knew fairly well or at least enough to tell you their name, and their kid's names, and whether or not those kids were popular, and who among those families had a miscarriage or any other among numerous tragedies large and small, and who among them was an alcoholic, or a blowhard, or had a scandalous subscription to Playboy magazine, or smoked when doing that was intriguing and somehow glamorous to us as children, or had a huge brood of children, or a kid I wasn't supposed to hang around with, but did, or a cabin with a lake in southwestern Ohio or or a window I broke or a bird feeder that I once blew to splinters with a firecracker, or taught first grade at IC, or had a daughter with encephylites (don't hold me to that spelling), or one with curly black hair I pined after. 

Just knowing so much about everybody up and down that street -- it just seems so amazing to me now, given how much I have moved around and about since then without staying in one place long enough to know that much about so many living souls in my neighborhood. I miss that. 

 

 


03/19/20 04:16 PM #6974    

 

Michael McLeod

By the way, Dave.

As you might well imagine that was one of those hits that a group winds up being embarrassed about.

 

Despite the song's success, the band members were ambivalent about being known for a pop song that lacked gravitas. "It's a fruity pop song written for children. It just is what it is," Michael Stipe told the BBC's Andrew Marr in 2016. "If there was one song that was sent into outer space to represent R.E.M. for the rest of time, I would not want it to be 'Shiny Happy People'".


03/19/20 05:03 PM #6975    

 

David Mitchell

Mike,

It is a well known scientific fact that Immaculate Conception Church and School, along with E. North Broadway and Oakland Park and parts of Indianola were the epicenter of Western Civilization back in the 50's. I am told that It is written on the walls of tombs somewhere in Egypt. Or is it in those caves in the South of France? Or maybe it was under the Bridge on Walhalla?

Whatever?

Even a kid from the far northern regions of OLP, Overbrook Drive, Yaronia & Glenmont knew that! 

Within a few blocks of your church, I could count 2 grandmothers, a family of cousins, and about 10 or 12 families of good friends. My dad dreamed of building our house in I.C. parish - (a house which he envisioned, and drew quite accurately in a letter to Mom from the "Pacific" in about 1944). His family had moved from 10th Avenue (Holy Name) in the late 20's or early 30's to a house on Acton Road. As a teenager, Clintonville was his oyser. He was devastated to finally build that wonderful stone house, only to be cut out of the I.C. parish when they drew the boundary line for the new OLP Church at Glenmont - a block south of us.

And how well I remember those long "trips" we used to take across W. North Broadway, or the Henderson Road bridge, to Olentangy River Road, to make that long traverse to a house all the way out on Lane Avenue, to visit my other cousins in that exotic land of Arlington.

* (and those side trips with Aunt Norma to Stew Harrison's for a hamburger).

Honestly, could life get any better than all that? 


03/20/20 02:24 AM #6976    

 

Michael McLeod

My dad was in the pacific too. Okinawa.


03/20/20 11:50 AM #6977    

 

Michael McLeod

Another thing - I promise I'll stop after this. I'm really writing too much here lately and the only reason I have gone on as long as I have about the subject I'm on right now is that I felt it was a subject of common interest, given our mutually shared upbringing and the general nostalgia factor involved.

Here's what comes to mind for me this morning: How my parent's adulthood, and the life the shaped for thier children, did not differ substantially from their own childhood and what their parents did for them.

This was particularly true for my mother.

Her father was a doctor -- an old-school general practitioner - who had an office in his home on East Main Street, just a half of a block west of Holy Rosary Church.

You could see the playground from their backyard. They had the priests over for dinner on a regular basis. My mom walked to school at Holy Rosary -- just as we would, years later, to IC. In college she went to what was then St. Mary of the Springs. I think she and her sister may also have gone to a boarding school up north. I remember the name Stella something. Stella Niagara? There were aunts and uncles galor. The calendar and the social circle revolved around the church. 

As an adult, the pattern of her life was close to a carbon copy. It just took place on the north end of town rather than the east. Once again she was living on the same street as her parish church. She wasn't having the priests over for dinner but pretty much everything else was the same. I went to school at St. Mary of the Springs, which by then had become Ohio Dominican.

I'm sure I have classmates who can say something similar about their own adult lives echoing their childhood.  But our generation went through so many social and conceptual upheavals that it surely, in general, is not quite as consistent of a passed-down pattern as was for my mother and for many of our parents.

I don't think I'm saying anything new. I was just struck, mainly, by the solidity and rhythm of my mother's lifespan. The world is spinning faster and faster. 

 

 


03/20/20 01:58 PM #6978    

 

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Day 7 of our Lockdown.     This time I will be brief and to the point.  Friends, please pay attention to what doctors and specialists, NOT politicians, are telling us about the seriousness of this pandemic.  It is here, it is a reality that is changing our lives quickly and will continue to do so for a very long time. I have friends who are now fighting this virus and unfortunately you will probably soon be saying the same. This is a time for the truth, for leadership, for clear messages and for solidarity.  Stay in and Stay well.


03/20/20 03:51 PM #6979    

 

David Mitchell

Yes Donna,

I hear you. My young Doctor friend in Germany is telling horror stories about his hospital staff. And he his now home, sick in bed with a horrible cold and can hardly talk - yet they keep calling him to get back to work in the hospital. Everyone on staff is being worked to exhaustion.

And meanwhile his legal issue in Texas grows ever more complicated. 

Anyone who is really bored take a while to read "Red River Justice" - Texas Observer.  About a lawyer who beat the County in court so often they finally arresed him and his wife on false charges -which he also won and got big settlement. We are actively attempting to switch to that attorney, who has a much more promising approach to my friend's defense. 

 

Or this article - about a different sherriff (who went to prison) in a different county - the article is titled,

"Is There a More Corrupt County Than Red River?"  

 

Or, this article; "If You Want to Get Away With Murder, Do It In Clarksville"

(the Red River county seat)

 


03/20/20 05:23 PM #6980    

 

David Mitchell

My best friend Roger and his wife (Cobra Pilot from Vinh Long and boat builder) just sent me this very important video from their boat down in the Bahamas. 

Be sure you all head this critical advice!!!!!!!




03/20/20 07:34 PM #6981    

Timothy Lavelle

God, life is suddenly so much different.

It is a beautiful day here but...

I was out getting my dope supply up to quarentine level but...

In my 20s at OSU, the harbinger of spring was girls in jean shorts and tank tops but...

My new harbinger of spring is old men with gray beards riding motorcycles. 

Sooo sad.

Party on.  

 


03/20/20 11:20 PM #6982    

 

Joseph D. McCarthy

Dr. Jim, if I'm stepping on any toes please correct me ad then send me to the corner.

This CoronaVirus (Covid-19, and NOT the China Virus) is no laughing matter.  But neither is the MANDATORY Home confinement.  Be prepared for it.  In Northern California it started with a few counties declared emergencies, spread to Sonoma County, and now includes the whole state. 

What that means is that ALL but essential businesses are closed.  Medical facilities, which are understaffed and overworked, can try and help.  Police and Firefighters are working, many overtime.  Gasoline stations are open, but since most people cannot go anywhere the prices keep dropping (were under $3.00 now).  restaurants can operate IF they are handling the Drive through lanes or Some form of takeout (GrubHub I guess).  Groceries are allowed to TRY and stay open, but the shelves are empty of many things - especially toilet paper even though the stores can restock it within days.  Drug stores are allowed to remain open.  Police shut down, and were ready to issue a fine to a Gun & ammo store in San Jose that said it was there Constitutional Right to remain open.  Just one example of businesses that do NOT fall under any exception.

Mike please forgive me for my writing but my Editor is on leave.

Suggestions, because this (Mandatory stay at home) will be coming to your state.  Make sure NOW you have at least a months supply of any of your, or relatives or friends, medications.  Make sure you have enough food for about three weeks to a month; beans and soup, or something better don't forget bread and canned goods that will last for awhile.  While you still can find some get Isoporpyl alcohol, Clorox ( or any that kill 99% of germs, and a few packets of wipes that are basically the same strength.   Fill your vehichle with gas now and keep it filled for emergencies.  Go to the hardware store, Lowe's or Home Depot, and purchase a BOX of N95 masks, and use them when you have to go outside to a store. etc.  

More when I can remember or someone asks.  Remember that we are supposedly in the class most at risk.  BE SAFE, not sorry. 

Joe


03/21/20 09:00 AM #6983    

 

Jeanine Eilers (Decker)

Thanks for the good words, Joe.


03/21/20 11:39 AM #6984    

 

John Maxwell

Taking a moment in the life goes on catagory. Yesterday, my son William and his wife, Camille birthed a eight pound, fourteen ounce baby boy in Los Angeles. Betsy and I had to cancel our flights due to travel restrictions and will be skyping soon. He's a beautiful baby and all systems are "go". This is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy situation. Particularly in LA, where the virus is dangerously close to getting out of hand. For those who haven't accepted the gravity of this situation, smarten up! This is equivalent to meteor strike, near extinction level event. Politics aside, we all have to come together and be mindful of each other if we are to survive this. There is no blame here, just a cautionary situation. We cannot allow ourselves to become lax in our vigilance against this virus. Proper planning of trips and timing are crucial to everyone's well being. Love thy neighbor works even you dislike your neighbors, your health will depend on them at times and vise-versa. In time the infrastructure will right itself and begin to run smoother. By now many of us have researched what to do and if you haven't heard anything about what to do, there are plenty of sources. First don't panic, hoard or try to profit from this. Be attentive, careful and expedient. Develop good clensing habits and schedules. Get organized as best you can. I know in many cases I know I'm preaching to the choir, but you never know. If you feel like you can't stand it anymore, the ask for help. Don't give up. Pray, meditate, whatever works. God bless you all and I look forward to seeing you all again when this emergency is over. Take care.
Jack

03/21/20 11:53 AM #6985    

 

Michael McLeod

Congrats Jack.

And we do well to philosophize about our situation.

Things have been awfully abrasive in our country and in the world at large for a while.

I'm not religious but if I were I'd say God decided that we needed a time out.

 


03/21/20 12:23 PM #6986    

 

Peggy Southworth (Townley)

Great post, Jack.   Congratulations on a healthy grandson! I'm grateful we all have the Skype option to keep in touch with our loved ones.   If you get a chance, post a photo of that new little one.   Blessings on you. 


03/21/20 01:55 PM #6987    

 

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Congratulations, Jack!    

  Jordi Evole, a Catalan journalist, had a Skype interview this week with Pope Francisco about the pandemic. One of the Pope's comments was "God always forgives. We sometimes forgive.  Nature never forgives."  An interesting perspective.

 

 


03/21/20 02:07 PM #6988    

 

Robert Berkemer

It's good to read all the posts which for me provides a sense of comfort and home... except maybe the idea of a "Bob roast"!  Thanks for that Tim...   What I want to suggest to you all during this difficult time is to stop and consider the many millions who are far less fortunate than us. I'm going to guess thats its very difficult for most Americans to go to the store and purchase a months supply of food. I am very, very fortunate to be able to do that but so many can't do so under normal conditions let alone whats coming with most people being out of work. Our local food shelf charity can purchase $10 dollars worth of food for every $1 dollar donated. I encourage all of you to contact your local charity food source (by phone) and donate what you can. Starving people are desperate people. This need not happen in our wealthy country. Bless you all, Peace.....


03/21/20 02:35 PM #6989    

 

David Mitchell

Strange times!

I happen to have a local family that I formed a bond with some years back - long story. She is Black, and poor, with two daughters (one employed - one not - one with a husband who will be a ward of the State of So. Carolina for life). And she is gradnmother to about 6 kids, who are now old enough to drop out of school, get in trouble with the law, and get pregnant. And on my last visit, a new great granddaughter.

* (Added later:  and the house is a ramshackle mess) 

I enjoy the priviledge of making little "deposits" (not much really - sometimes little flat envelops - sometimes bags marked Kroger on the side) at her house from time to time and I always get a warm hug.

Now, the hugs will have to wait. But the visits won't - envelopes on the porch are pretty safe

Writing checks or making donations to charities is a wonderful thing. But finding just a single person to make a real one-to-one contact is reallly a life-changing eperience. I urge you to try it - it's a hoot!

Life is happening at a "theater" near you this week. Don't miss it! 

-------------------

p.s. Last I heard, they are urging us NOT to buy the masks, as medical personael are unaable to get enough for critical needs.


03/21/20 02:46 PM #6990    

 

David Mitchell

My favorite piece of vocal music ever! And Pavoratti nailed it every time.

Nessum Dorma (Let No One Sleep)

And those last words  "Vincero! Vincero!   ("I will win. I will win") 

Leave it to the Italians to come up with this spectacular adaptation.

 


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