BEARDS AND GEESE
23rd FEBRUARY 2012
Whenever I think of winters in Idaho, I will think of young to middle aged men with beards (because it’s winter) and flying Canadian geese, swooping and calling in the grey skies.
The younger slimmer men are largely those who work outdoors and growing a beard for the winter is the thing you do. It reminds me of “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers”, did you ever see that film? All the men were brown and hunky in the summer and white and hunky in the winter, looking older with beards. I loved that film, must have seen it ten times. I have just had a fence built at the bottom of the garden and my gardeners turned up looking older, to install it and I did not recognise them! Their blond hair was brown and they had winter beards and woolly hats, the last part of the wardrobe!
 I miss the BBC radio here very much. I know I can get it various ways, but I like to just turn on the radio and listen. So I listen to NPR, National Public Radio here, which has a lot of good and interesting programmes. Yesterday I was listening to the screen writer Justin Lance Black, talking about his screenplay of EDGAR J, with Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Clint Eastwood. It’s a really interesting film and Mr Black’s interview was fascinating. He was talking about Hoover’s paranoia and irrational thoughts towards the end of his life. He said that many powerful men who have little else in their lives except their careers often lose their moral compass. How right he is and hasn’t that happened to Syrian President Assad? What he is doing to his own people, beggars belief, it is a real tragedy. I look at my little six month old grandson, waving his little arms and legs with the sheer joy of being alive and think of similar babies in Syria, being shielded by their terrified parents, from the horrors they are enduring. How sad is this world..for so many.. and how lucky are we.
I am sorry too for the death of the brave journalists, who risk their lives to tell the stories and then lose it all. These are real journalists and I admire them. I dont think that war correspondents are always valued as they should be. We would rather watching a cooking show, read some more gossip, than deal with other realities.
Tomorrow is the Academy Awards, which are the peak of the Awards season and hopefully the public are not too burned out with all the other Award shows, to watch it. The audiences have been dwindling, as have box office receipts at the movie theatres. I am so pleased that they have Billy Crystal as host again, he is just superb, funny, but not nasty. The business is undoubtedly in transition and it will be fascinating to see where it all is in ten years. It’s a bit of a free for all at the moment and I hope we manage to preserve the best of show business and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I hear from people here about their children, just finishing film school and they are clearly being taught the artistic and technical side, but not the realities of the industry. One’s heart sinks when you hear about some of their thoughts and aspirations.... even art has to have a practical goal, if you have spend money on it, especially other people’s money!
That’s all for now friends.
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