Daily Archives: July 20, 2012

Cinema and Television

At Night

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Summer                              New (Hiroshima) Moon

Let the kids and the grandkids decompress from grandpop’s visit.  We wore ourselves out riding the train, eating pizza, driving a long ways.

I took the night off and saw a movie.  Dark Knight Rises.  Weird, I know.  The 6:05 time though.  Not the late one.

The Harkins Theaters are a multi-plex (what’s the plex mean?) not far from the hotel.  I settled into a seat, the theatre was not crowded.  As the previews began to roll, I looked around, imagining a similar scene, only the night before, only a suburb away.  Gas rolling in.  A masked gunman shooting.

As the movie started, a strange thing happened.  A man in a dark shirt walked in, looked around, went to the back of the theatre, pressed the exit door open, light spilled in from the outside.  He pulled it shut, turned around and walked out.  Gave me a moment.

After the movie, around 9:00 pm, this is a long one, I went over to a yogurt shop and had a dish of cookies and cream, sitting outside in a cool Colorado night.  No bugs.

There are odd reverberations in the movie given the Aurora event.  In it a man with a mask-like device over his face locks people in a room and shoots at them with an automatic weapon.

Commentary on the news, Family, Travel

arriving only as one has to go

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Summer                                      New (Hiroshima) Moon

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” – Anatole France

Visiting grandchildren, Ruth and Gabe, and their parents, Jon and Jen, underline the truth of this France quote.  To leave the days of kindergarten and pre-school, to venture off even to elementary school puts us in another world than the one left behind.  Anyone who has ever become a senior in high school or college can attest to the bitter-sweet feeling of arriving only as one has to go.  Sort of like becoming a senior citizen.

Jon and Jen were shaken by the news from Aurora this morning.  The shooter lived three blocks from Montview Elementary where Jon teaches still and Jen used to teach.  They do not know yet if friends or students or former students got shot or killed, but they know it’s not only possible, but likely.

Let this serve as a reminder to us.  Often we read of these acts and shake our head.  How could he?  Then, have a cup of coffee, a final bite of bagel and get ready for the rest of the day.  But, in each of these, someone’s friend has died.  Someone’s brother or sister.  Someone’s son or daughter.  These are people loved and loving, this morning’s news for a brief window, but dead forever.

However, as the world is, we got our things together and headed into the Rocky Mountains to the small, quaint former mining town of Georgestown, drove up a windy road and parked in the Georgetown Loop Railroad parking lot.

I picked up the reserved tickets and we rode this short rail line across a photogenic trestle bridge, up threw sweet smelling pines, beside rushing mountain streams.  Perhaps predictably the adults had a great time.  Gabe spent much of the ride with his fingers in his ears.  A steam whistle.  Ruth huddled next to me off and on.  She feared falling out of the train.  It has open to the air cars which offer an immersive ride, but do not provide the safety of windows and walls.

We had pizza at Beaujo’s in Idaho Springs afterward, a Colorado sacred spot for pizza lovers and I now know why.  Get there if you’re out here.  I had the sicilian.  Wonderful.

Commentary on the news, Family

In Colorado

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Summer                                    New (Hiroshima) Moon

Jon and Jen teach in the Aurora Public School system.  Their home and this hotel are on the northern edge of Denver which abuts Aurora.

As I ate breakfast this morning, the news flashed images from a shooting at a theatre.  12 dead.  64 injured.  I kept watching for a location but they never gave one.

Returned to the room, fired up the computer, headed over to Refdesk and, whoa.  Aurora, Colorado.  Right here.  Where we are.  If Ruth and Gabe were a bit older, it might have been a movie choice for us.  Unlikely we would have ended up in that theatre, but that it would have been possible?  Chilling.

My mind hopped, as I’m sure many others will, to Littleton, a southern suburb of Denver where the Columbine shootings occurred.

When you’re a predator, you go where the prey is.  Our dogs spend hours, sometimes whole days circling our far garden shed, digging, barking, trying to get at the rabbits and mice that use the space underneath it to breed.

If you’re a student predator, you go to a school.  If you’re adult, you might head to McDonald’s or to a workplace or to a crowded movie theatre.

The Dark Knight Rises.  The killer dressed in black, had a gas mask and came into the theatre in a cloud of smoke, a gas he dispersed.  Again, chilling.