Thoughts on the Pursuit of Happyness.

I cried on the drive home from seeing 'The Pursuit of Happyness', not for our hero, who sacrificed his wife and son for a fancy red car, but for all the people who sacrifice their wives and sons and don't get the car.
I've been on a sort of video and movie orgy which has caused my mind to go into hyperdrive. Mainly I have been surprised. How come a 1954 episode of Dragnet has a sympathetic portrayal of a pornographer who employs high school students as models, actors and distributors of his movies and photos? Their customers were junior high kids. And then 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' with Van Johnson from the same era, which out and out cries for an uprising against corrupt capitolist pigs. They went where all men fear to tread today, and surely at a dangerous time. I also discovered an actress I'd never heard of. Annabella. She was French. She made scores of movies between 1926 and 1971. I saw 'Dinner at the Ritz' (1936) with a young David Niven. She was very beautiful and accomplished, and the movie was fun and silly. Well worth the fifty cents I paid for it. Unfortunately my yearly viewing of my precious DVD of 'The Holly and the Ivy' was rudely ended by my computer which told me the DVD was dirty or scratched and unreadable. I am devastated. I need a shot of Margaret Leighton's tragic elegance at Christmas time.

It might snow tonight. A little fell earlier, and we had hail with some marble sized chunks falling. We went on the Posada on Saturday. There was a flat bed truck with a choir, a very loud generator, a sound system and three real guitarists followed by twelve year old Mary on a very nice mule and child Joseph followed by the mob with candles and song sheets. Some of the Spanish carols were new to me and very beautiful. We went from house to house seeking a place for Mary and Joseph to stay. It took quite a while. Then we recrossed the highway after Father John cell phoned the police to get them to stop traffic for us. Then back to the church hall for cocoa and menudo and tons of sweet stuff and mule rides in the dark which were the main reasons for the good showing of kids. I was astonished at how much they could put away! In the old days the Posada continued for nine days, then it died out until it was revived quite recently, but just for one day.

My dear and longest friend wants me to rewrite some of the dialog at the beginning of her book, which is about kids and reading. I did suggest the dialog was a bit stiff, but can I do better and still convey her meaning? I doubt it. I should have curbed my fingers on the keyboard. I like the book a lot. She touches on such subjects as the unspoken middle class fear of literate kids from bad neighborhoods.

I took the picture at the petroglyph site near here. They say there are 20,000 glyphs there. I went at sunset and had a lovely time springing about in the rocks until the light was entirely gone. One good thing about using a video camera for still photos is the light gathering capacity of the lens. Why can't they make still cameras that have the good qualities of video cameras and still give a decent resolution? 1.7 megapixels have their limitations.....