May 2007 Travels, lectures, travels: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Toronto, Rochester, Texas.

In Texas: heat, and movies.

Movies I felt obliged to see on the big screen during May: the 3 3s, viz Spiderman 3, Shrek 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Movie that I & my mother enjoyed watching on DVD during May: Letters from Iwo Jima, which excellently complemented Flags of our Fathers. Who other than Clint Eastwood would have dared to unite inspiration and chutzpah to depict in two films how two governments exploited that brutal battle, ours choreographing it into a patriotic sideshow, theirs manipulate their men with it to rouse them for suicidal resistance.

Movie that I & my mother enjoyed watching on PBS during May: The Parrots of Telegraph Hill, which is (like Letters from Iwo Jima) a must-see.

Movie I & my mother enjoyed watching in Floresville’s Arcadia Theater during April: Meet the Robinsons, whose excellent graphics amply illustrated its main message: how grand it is to fail. Too few of today’s adults are willing to fail, and too many children are being taught today that to fail makes one a failure. Many “modern” educators deem “self-esteem” to be developable by praising children for even their most mediocre achievements, when genuine self-esteem almost always requires the dreaming of an impossible dream (however modest), and the moving ahead to make that dream a reality, by first not succeeding, and then trying, trying again, and again, and again until success comes to pass. Meet the Robinsons, which teaches that a good failure is a worthy pre-requisite for ultimate achievement, was thus a breath of fresh air. The Robinson family believed that, no matter what the situation, one must “keep moving forward,” as did the brave Americans and Japanese on Iwo Jima; and the “parrot man” on Telegraph Hill. So may we all, keep moving forward!

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