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Michael McLeod

Yo. Mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpCWs7H3NeE

Frank Ganley

Jack, i read with great interest your take on the openess, availabily of the destruction of life. It seems to me from the beginning of film how insatiable is our thirst for death and carnage. We couldn’t get enough film of ww1 , the blood and gore of ww11 where eventually it bothered us none. Now with out right killing games, car stealing , cop killing, zombies et al. Where does this lead us to. A 16 year old kid who’s been playing steal the car and shoot the cop, gets into the car for the first time . Is he aware that pole over there will leave a mark,? It really is rediculous to continuiosly glorify cowboys and indians, how many times do we have to have another remake of “Gun fight at the OK corral” i likes dances with wolves till the end, i was rooting for the Indians. You can’t get rid of the guns, but we don’t have to have 24 hour commercials with eradication of a neighborhood .children today don’t need all this blood and gore , giving young minds the idea hey, its cool, if its cool to kill on screen a target 1 mile away , how cool to do it for real

David Mitchell

Peggy,

I also love Dances with Wolves. And I really like all those actors you named, especaily Denzel Washinton and Robert Duvall. There is a scene in "Glory" where Denzel really captured my heart.

Here's a little movie trivia from one of my favorites "To Kill A Mockingbird" which I mentioned earier. I believe that is the first film Robert Duvall ever appeared in. He played Arthur "Boo" Radley, the shy introvert who saved Scout and her brother Jem. 

With some reading comprehension issues in school, great movies have always held a certain power over me.

And how about a few earlier ones  "An Affair to Remeber"   "On The Waterfront"

  "Magnificent 7"  - loved Steve McQueen - "It seemed like a good idea at the time"

Steve McQueen was just starting to film a movie in Hong Kong called "Tai Pan" from the novel by James Clavell (who also wrote "KIng Rat", "Shogun", "Noble House" and a few others), when he came down with cancer and the filming stopped. The book was just about the best novel I have ever read - about the Scottsman (Dirk Straun) who became the supreme leader (Tai Pan) of the Colony of Hong Kong in the early 1800's right after the British had won the Opium War. Everybody we knew was reading it at the time. The film sat unfnished for years and was sold to another production company. It came out years later with Austrailian star Bryan Brown (a very good actor from a PBS series). We werer so excited that this great novel was finally coming to the screen we could hardly wait. It turned out to be one of the worst films I have ever seen - by far! What a disappointment. 

Timothy Lavelle

All the mice say "Nothing could be better when the cat's away than a dinner of Negro Modelo dark beer and microwaved White Castle sliders fresh from the freezer case at Safeway". YUM!

David Mitchell

U dog, U !

Frank Ganley

I’d like to thank al for the kind words and thoughts for my upcoming hip replacement surgery. I am feeling pretty good and getting closer to play golf soon almost pain free

Mark Schweickart

Here's one for those of you who may have had siblings a couple years younger at WHS. My brother Bob, class of '68, sent me this the other day. Somewhere, he ran into this bio of one of his classmates, whom he remembered not at all, and wondered if all of this could possibly be true. If so, as he put it, "I feel as if I have been standing absolutely still these past fifty years." Maybe one of you Watterson historians will know of this remarkable alum.

Proud to be a Buckeye, I graduated with a BA in Anthropology from OSU despite the Kent State shootings and attending Woodstock. I built a sailboat and sailed into the Bermuda Triangle where our 6-person crew survived a 5 day storm, clinging to the gunwales in gale force winds. That was crazy. A few years later, I left a career as a museum director and joined the family ranks of the State Department when I married a US Foreign Service Officer.

  I moved to Oman and taught French at the International school despite the fact that I didn’t speak French. Also crazy. In Thailand I helped raise tigers, gibbons and slow loris – and found that they all can rip through flesh very easily but that rabies shots are not so easy. I decided that volunteering at an orphanage would be less painful but found that little kids bite really hard also. That was crazy too.

I helped re-write the International Tax Law in Indonesia while leading the National Radio Station English Language Unit but had neither legal nor media experience. Back on this side of the pond, I survived Mexico earthquakes and huevos divorciados. Dizzily crazy.

I became a full-fledged US Foreign Service Diplomat and single parent in the same year. In Venezuela I watched Hugo Chavez send tanks into the streets to dispatch demonstrators. While in Peru I interviewed over 28,000 visa applicants, visited Machu Picchu twice and did not eat guinea pig. Really crazy.

In the Philippines, I drove a moving van to safety during a typhoon as trees flew by vertically. In Burma I had the honor to meet Aung San Suu Kyi twice while she was still under house arrest and then in Hong Kong I met my first American President face to face. Amazingly crazy.

When my daughter kissed me goodbye at the airport as I was bound for Baghdad for my last diplomatic tour, she said, “Mom, you’re crazy.” I was glad that she had been paying attention. While in Iraq, I dodged missiles, visited Saddam Hussein’s jail cell and learned that breathing 120 degree air daily is HOT. I “retired” from the diplomatic corps in 2015, except that I have gone back to work for the State Department in Papua New Guinea, Chad, China, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Gaborone and Kenya. Beyond that, I enjoy the challenges of doing whatever I want at home in Florida and continue to look for crazy adventures.

John Maxwell

Janie Albright (Blank)

Mark, that was my brother Tom’s class. I’ll see if he remembers her. I feel like a slacker  lol

Thought you might enjoy this list of Columbus and Central Ohio’s oldest restaurants  https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2018/07/25/countdown-here-are-central-ohios-oldest.html?ana=e_colum_bn_newsalert&u=CMRiY5%2FyTsrqlcpIl70ylA039202fc&t=1532536199&j=82901851#g/438740/1

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

I have just seen a similar CV on LinkedIn for Polly Emerick. Pretty impressive.

Michael McLeod

Ok first a psa:

Blood pressure meds: Get them if you need them. I'd been monitoring my own bp, but didn't have the self-discipline to deal with it with a diet when it gradually went into the newly-established danger zone. Wonderful that we have good meds to help. I'm continuing to do my part by watching my diet, excercising, and being happy.

Next: Mark - I'll reply to the Deerhunter essay you sent me here, since the general topic may be of interest to others.

I hope you got paid for that essay. If you didn't my hat's off to you and maybe I'll buy you a drink next time I see you. That's a lot of work.

As to your point that it was misunderstood: So was the frigging war! No wonder they missed the point of a movie that was based on the truth about it - and found a brilliant was to do so. Many people then, and perhaps even now, somehow managed to remain blinded to the utter blind self-destruction on our part that Vietnam represented from beginning to end. They chose to  miss the truth of the war and therefore didn't understand the core metaphor of the movie. The poison came from within. We have met the enemy and it is us (thanks Pogo). That terrible truth is symbolized in Apocalypse Now by a mad American colonel in the jungle, ala Heart of Darkness. The Deerhunter has its own, even more compact symbol for self-destructiveness: a self-inflicted bullet to the brain. Not for nothing is my favorite line in the movie tucked into a foreshadowing exchange that comes when Deniro's character, holding up a bullet to a nincompoop who came hunting without the proper equipment, enlightens him by saying: "THIS is THIS!" Out here in the wood, absent the prevarications you can get by with in so-called civilization, a bullet is a bullet and the truth is the truth. Ignore it at your peril. Everything about Vietnam was a lie, from the premise we came up with to get involved in the first place to all the secrets both Johnson and Nixon and Kissinger kept from the american public long after they knew full well that it was a lost cause. 

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- Two things: 1) Thank you for the kind words about my essay on The Deer Hunter. No I certainly did not get paid for this. I just knew I had this argument rattleing around in my brain all these years and decided to write it down. Actually, I remember making some of this argument at a party back when the movie first came out, and the guy I was talking to just looked at me a bit wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and said, "Man, you should write that down." So without haste, I waited 35 years, and did just that. But Mike, I have to ask you something. Did you buy my central argument about the allegorical nature of the film leading to its ambiguity or complete misinterpretation by so much of the audience? No offense, but your post sort of veered off into the reality of the war itself, rather than the issue of this particular movie's mesage.

2) How high is your BP? I have been doing the same thing as you this past year, exercising, cutting out alcohol (boo, hoo), losing about fifteen pounds, and monitoring my BP at home. Mine was in the 140s and now that I have my own monitor, the most confusing thing is how bloody erratic this bloody blood-pressure game is. Sometimes I am in the 120s sometimes 130s, sometimes 140s, although not very often in this higher range. (and of course it goes down by 10 or 15 points if you measue standing up versus sitting down.)  I try to take it the same time of day each time I do a reading in hopes of adding consistency (usually about twenty minutes after I get up in the morning) but consistency is never in the cards. I took my unit into the nurses station to see if it agreed with their BP monitor, and it seemed to be very close so I do not think it is the monitor that is the variable. Also, now  that you are on the BP medication, how are the side effects so far?

David Mitchell

Uhh,  excuse me!

Deer Hunter essays, BP meds, Columbus Oldest Restautrants, favorite movies, and Forzen White Castles be damned!  Let's get our priorities in order here.

Who is this cute, crazy, insanely well-traveled "sophomore" chick, AND more importantly,  is she single? We can get back to that other crap later, but first tell me how can I meet her?

___________

p.s. Tom Litzinger introduced me to Nancy's years ago while we lived in Columbus. A Classic!

James Hamilton, M. D.

Michael McLeod

Mark: Yes, I bought into your argument. I think allegory can go over people's heads, and it's no big deal if it does -- if the fish is just a fish and the old man in the boat is just an old man, no prob, still a good story.

David Mitchell

Please forgive me!

That comment on my page above on post # 3618 was my other brother Daryl, using my I.D.  And he is so sleep deprived he doesn't know what he is saying half of the time. The ohter half of the time he makes no sense at all.

Janie Albright (Blank)

Mark, I found your comment that your BP drops significantly upon standing interesting. Has the doctor commented on this? Mine is virtually the same. 113/64 sitting 107/60 standing. But my husband had autonomic problems and his would drop dramatically when standing and rise significantly when lying down. The specialist said he wasn’t interesting in sitting BP. Jim is it common to have your BP drop significantly when standing without an underlyiing cause? 

David Mitchell

Mike,

With reference to your post #3616. You left out my "good buddy" Robert McNamara. The biggest liar of them all !

James Hamilton, M. D.

Michael McLeod

To Dave: mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

PS to Mark - sorry, in a hurry before:

BP always in the "pre-typertension" range. say, 140s & 90s.

But they have revised the range to be more anal about it.

Just now on the new meds. Doc says no side effects. He'll adjust dosage depending on my new readings. Haven't read Dr. Jim's take on this yet so if anything I say differs, you know which one of us to pay attention to and which one of us to ignore.

And just to elaborate a bit on Deerhunter: I think how you worked through it was very thorough and accurate. I think it went over people's heads. I'm going to do some reading; I'm sure the two guys that collaborated on that were very interested in leaving an allegorical bread crumb trail and I think you did a good job of tracking them.

David Mitchell

Wow Mark!

I read your essay on "The Deer Hunter". Good grief man, are you sure you didn't dig too deep? That's a hell of a lot of work to comment on. I will even go so far as to say I think you are going into too much detail. You make so many points that I think you may dilute the force of some of your more important arguments. And maybe I should do this off the Forum, but here goes anyway. Maybe this will entice a few others to read your essay.

First, I do invite others to read it. And be prepared to stay alert - it's deep and detailed. Well written, but long!

Second, You've made some points I agree with strongly - and one I have to challenge you on.

Third, It may be awkward debating between us - one who was "in country" vs. one who was not. The obvious gap between a more conservative vs. a more liberal point of view is clear and fair - I can handle that, and I am sure you can too. But the difference between "been there, done that in person", vs. the purely academic observation may be too great a chasm to come to terms with and be fair with one another. Oh well, here goes anyway.

First, I agreee with the notion of "male macho-ism" and that it has many men in a - what was that quote - "psychological headlock". We were raised with a good deal of (televised) American Hisotrical characters who left us flush with what I will call  "the romance of the conquering hero". I myself admit to a degree of this. I thrilled to the sight of Rin Tin Tin leading the cavalry into the rescue. Men charging on horses and trumpets blowing and battle flags flying - wow!  Or Robin hood saving Maid Marian with swords. And who could not love "a firey horse and cloud of dust" ?

(or was it - "A cloud of dust and THEN a firey horse" - damn! I just hate when this happens.)

And our fathers fought in what may have been the last "Clear" war. Pretty hard to make the argument that Hitler didn't need to be stopped, and that it was going to take a hell of a military effort to do it. So I grew up in the house of a B-29 Flight Surgeon and attended his reunions year after year. That really left a "mark" on me!  

This was one of several reasons I went off to flight school - so I could "save the world from Communism." But that is only one of three or four motives, and not the main one. And this macchoism can become a dangerous trait, even in combat. I believe a certain degree of real fear is a healthy trait in combat commanders - (a whole 'nother topic of discussion)

Second, I think I read your (very compex) sentence about our "American Imperialism" correctly. Although I think you are saying that was NOT prevelent in Viet Nam (did I get that right - or not? -  it's a tricky sentence as written?) Still the use of that term in the same sentence with Viet Nam is, I believe completely innacurate and off base - WAY OFF! 

I think one could argue much more honestly that that applied to how we treated most of Central America and the Carribean nations than in Viet Nam. We supported the "butcher" Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, the  "robber barrons" Samoza family in Nicauraugua (interesting goings-on there right now!), or a number of successive "goon squad" leaders of Guatamala (mosty for the benefit of the "United Fruit Company" bannana profits - now "Chiquita"). But our involvement in Vietnam was anything but Imperialism!  Incompetant leaders, liars, egomaniacs - on all sides - yes. But Imperialism? I beg to differ.

* (and how can so much be said in criticism of us without even mentioning the 2 million North Vietamese, plus Cambodian and Laotians executed by their own dear "Uncle Ho"? (I believe he even admitted to, and apologized for this to his own people years later)

Though I struggled to keep up, I enjoyed your essay very much. 

I was completely gripped by this mesmerizing film. And I never want to see it again!

David Mitchell

Jack,

Speaking of movies, did you ever see "Crash"?  

One of my more contemporary faves.

A film that snuck up on everybody in about 2004 and won the oscar for best picture. Very cutting edge portrayal of racism and biggotry in America with an all-star cast (Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Terrence Howard, etc.) and a fascinating plot that connected the entire group of strangers in a circular relationship - all back to the same point of beginning in one weekend in L.A.

A lot of people didn't like it. I thought it was brilliant !

Michael McLeod

It's nice that I can tuck my observations about Ken Burn's Vietnam doc into this ongoing discussion.

One thing I appreciated about the doc was how fair-handed it was and how many bases it covered. I wanted MORE in several categories, including the air war, most especially your end of it, Dave, and the medical side of it, however horrific it may have been. But they did touch on such a broad range of the events and issues of the conflict - they captured the swath of it so well I can't complain too much. One thing in particular I want to note: They did capture the "good" part of war: The heroism, the way men followed good leaders, sacrificed themselves, and the sheer thrill of it. But they captured that in context of how frigging awful and useless it all was. Getting contradictory elements into a story fairly -- that is the goal of great journalism, and I know how hard it is to achieve, and when I see it, I salute. 

One other thing I noticed was how they selected characters to focus in on to tell the story fully through the eyes of single individuals - to use them to lead us through, one-to-one, which is the best way to tell a story. In particular I loved the Marine who was very much a hero, who came back to have his heart broken by anti-war protestors, who came very, very close to committing suicide, and who then became an anti-war protestor himself. 

I think that The Deerhunter struck a similar balance. It developed, very well, the camaraderie that people experience in conflict -- and also developed the long-term destructiveness and utter uselessness of the conflict itself. 

I've always honored and appreciated your willingness to share your experience, Dave. I felt so fortunate to have the luck I did: The class before me out of basic training and AIT went to Vietnam; most of us went to Germany, as I did. Others of us who did not go to the war but lived through that time period have an obligation of a different sort, I think, to bear witness, and hope against hope that doing so lessens the chances that history will repeat itself -- to dream, as John Lennon did, that someday people will wake up.

Oh and yes, Mark. Dave's right about the level of detail being a bit over the top. If I had been your editor, and we were looking to publish this piece, I'd be thrilled to get my hands on it because of how rich the detail is. But I'd also start the process with a come-to-Jesus lecture on brevity, then make you cut it down in half. We refer to this process, in the trade, as "killing your babies." An icky metaphor -- but understandable to a writer who has given birth to prose and then fallen in love with it. Brevity is the soul of wit, as some dead european white guy once said.

Mark Schweickart

Dave -- I think the sentences that you took issue with was this: But what they are saying in this movie is important. It was important then, and it is obviously still important now. And to miss this point, and instead read the film as a racist, jingoistic, cheerleading screed in favor of our imperialistic foreign policies is a sad misinterpretation, but I must admit it is an easy one to make.

I would agree with you that I should not have added the word "imperialistic" before "foriegn policy," because, as you rightly point out, although guilty of this many times in other parts of the world, this was not our driving ambition in the Vienam conflict. Sorry about that. I stand corrected. My focus in that sentence was not to make a point about US. imperialism, but rather to simply point out that unfortunately it is quite understanble why so many misinterpreted the film as being a flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it, jingoistic screed, when in fact it was saying something quite the opposite.

If anyone else out there would like to read this essay, send me an email: sparto@ca.rr.com

Jim-- regarding BP, what's your take on why readings seems so inconsistent from day to day. I use a monitor called I-Health, which connects to your I Phone and keeps a nice log of the readings. I range from being in the 120s/70s to 140s/80s. When I take readings I do them about 20 or 30 minutes after getting up in the morning before I eat breakfast, or drink coffee (decaf).

Mike -- I will take your "Brevity is the soul of wit" with a grain of salt if you don't mind, since Prince Hamlet says this in one of Shakespeare's longest plays, clocking in at over four hours if not abridged. Am I comparing myself to Shakespeare, am I arguing that I am never long-winded and in need of editing, am I just being an annoying little shit reveling in his smugness? Hmm?

Michael McLeod

Mark:

Yes.