Posts Tagged → self reliance
Two Hollywood legends I will actually miss
Normally I am not a fan of Hollywood in any sense. In recent times, including just days ago, America lost two Hollywood legends, two actors who personified Hollywood at its best and maybe its worst, but also at its most colorful. I will miss them both, for very different reasons.
First up is Rob Reiner, apparently murdered two days ago by his own son. Both Rob and his wife Michelle were found deceased in their home by their daughter. Their throats had been slashed. Their son Nick has been arrested and charged with their murders. Apparently Nick has had a long history of drug abuse and all of the resulting relationship challenges that come with it. We now see the gruesome result, and can easily imagine the victims disbelievingly pleading with their own son not to harm them…
…their murders are a tragedy on its face, as well as a statement about the unworkable culture that is “inside Hollywood.” A mix of libertine excess and constant parental indulgence and allowance followed by inexorable failure. What a symbol of the whole place.
Rob Reiner really began his Hollywood career as “Meathead,” the abrasively sanctimonious know-it-all liberal son-in-law of appropriately named American workingman archetype, Archie Bunker, in All In The Family TV sitcom.
Relying on a well-scripted, well-played political and cultural tension between old guard Archie Bunker and Hippie “Meathead,” Rob Reiner gave effective voice to his generation’s anti-war, anti-tradition, anti-religion, anti-America liberalism.
The show captured the “generation gap” of my 1960s-1970s childhood, where older Americans held the traditional values that built a fully functioning nation, and the younger Americans were utopian meatheads with unrealistic, unsustainable expectations guaranteed to derail the nation.
Confusingly, Rob Reiner never grew up or let go of his Meathead persona, nor his destructive goofball political views. I suppose to his credit, in a way, neither have nearly all of his contemporary eldering-in-place fellow ever-child meathead Hippies. I will miss his entertaining online rants against Trump, MAGA, conservatives, Republicans, regular working Americans, essentially against everything outside of the tiny bizarro world Hollywood bubble that Rob Reiner inhabited.
Rob Reiner created the living liberal strawman that conservatives easily use to prove their points. In essence, Meathead grew up proving that Archie Bunker was right, decade after decade. And so, as much as he was strange, he also contributed well to the American political discourse. Rest in peace, Mr. Reiner. I am genuinely sorry you left us in this horrible way.
The other Hollywood person who recently left us is actor, producer, film maker Robert Redford. Easily the best looking man in American history, and also the one Hollywood actor least addicted to plastic surgery as he aged, Redford inhabited a very different cultural place than Reiner.
Famous for playing a variety of all-American hero and anti-hero roles, from gritty to suave, from cowboy to playboy, Robert Redford was a fixture in Hollywood for a really long time. He also fueled the Sundance Film Festival, an alternative to Hollywood, where low-budget art films and documentaries could gain audience and funding outside of Hollywood’s metrics and politics.
One of my favorite Redford movies is Spy Game, with Brad Pitt. Redford plays the role of a CIA spook and patriot, who in a former job as Cold War spy went so far as to unilaterally murder/ execute a known American traitor in Europe. This role alone sends a loud message about Redford’s politics: He was no leftist, no Hollywood commie, but rather he was a true American patriot in every conservative sense of the phrase.
But Redford also promoted environmental quality, and public lands, two things that are close to my own heart and not always present in the conservative movement. Not that Redford followed the leftist doctrine of heavy regulation and anti capitalism, but rather, he simply said that these things are important. And of course, they are important. And there are other ways of achieving environmental quality and public lands conservation without following leftist doctrine. Such a moderate stance is unheard of among Hollywooders.
Redford played very well a famous, iconic role that still speaks to men of my generation, that of historic mountain man Jeremiah Johnson. Filmed right before the 1976 American Bicentennial, Jeremiah Johnson captured the spirit of the American frontier, Westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism, self reliance, urban vs rural, and the European-American conflicts with the western Indian tribes (Crow, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Lakota and others) in the Rockies.
Many of these themes and character traits are still central to the American identity that us older Americans have. Including Archie Bunker.
Jeremiah Johnson promoted the now-underappreciated but still central role of undeveloped American open lands in forging the tough American frontier spirit and Yankee ingenuity that built our nation. That conservatives miss or ignore this link, or misunderstand it, is just as much a crime as leftist attempts to essentially shrinkwrap public lands and make them off-limits to humans.
Robert Redford represents an image and political philosophy almost at the other end of Rob Reiner’s place on the political bell curve. Both men played important parts in shaping American culture, and I appreciate them both. However, Robert Redford will forever be an aspirational icon, whereas Rob Reiner represents a dead end on the political evolutionary tree.
Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson, iconic American frontiersman
Harvest time is natural, healthy
Shirey’s blueberry patch in Linden, PA. You-pick for about two to three weeks every summer. Strawberries are across Rt 15
Until a hundred years ago, just about everyone in western civilization had some sort of garden and fruit trees. Growing your own food is as old as human agriculture, roughly ten thousand years. Maybe more. Point being, being self reliant and engaged with Nature in natural cycles is a healthy and natural thing for us to do today.
Our fruit trees have been ravaged by hordes of unnaturally over abundant squirrels this year. So far they have eaten all our cherries, all of our MacIntosh and Winesap apples, and two thirds of our peaches. None of the fruits were close to ripe, but to a verminous feral rodent, they are edible. It’s quite frustrating.
The garden is putting out regular vegetables now. Zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, butternut squash. A few groundhogs have tried to muscle in, and have found themselves in a very new and distant home.
The “Zen” and personal health of gardening is a well discussed subject, and all I can add is that I too find gardening greatly rewarding. Our produce is organic, natural, and the fruit of our own labors. We water daily and constantly fuss with the plants. We eat or can what we harvest. Very natural, and rewarding.
Last week I visited someone else’s garden, Shirey’s blueberry field in Linden, PA. In 45 minutes my bucket had 6.5 pounds of freshly ripe blueberries I myself had picked in the blazing sun. It was 99 degrees in the sun, and I had no more energy to stand in it picking fruit. On a cooler day I have picked roughly twelve pounds of berries, most of which go into blueberry jam I make. Some are eaten fresh, and some are frozen for eating with pancakes.
Being outside is healthy and necessary for all humans. Some sunshine is necessary for creating Vitamin D, critical to the function of our brain and body. Vitamin D is actually a hormone, and a deficiency is a big risk to your health. So being outside gardening, picking fruits and vegetables, cultivating and husbanding your own food, is essential to having a clear mind and a healthy body.
Sweet corn is coming soon.
Wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold said that he knew civilization had ended when people no longer had to split their own firewood to stay warm in the winter, and had only to rely on a tiny switch on the wall to achieve exactly the temperature they wanted. Hard work, self reliance, producing things of use and value, all add meaning to our lives. Growing and picking food is a small but important statement about not being historic roadkill.
Holocaust Remembrance & Israel
Last week had Holocaust Memorial Day, dedicated to remembering the millions of innocent civilians axe murdered by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. Jewish communities especially make a big deal about this, and all across America they read names of the victims for like 24 hours. A way of memorializing and not forgetting. Fine, easy to understand.
This week it is Israel’s Remembrance Day, to recall those who died fighting for Jewish autonomy and survival, from 1945 until today. In a tiny country that is smaller than New Jersey, this is a big deal. Every person who dies while fighting for survival is a big deal. Easy to understand.
Here is what is so hard to understand: All the (mostly liberal) Jews who spend all year long talking about the Holocaust as if it is a new religion, and who pour tremendous energy into Holocaust Remembrance Day like it is the holiest day of the year, are absolutely opposed to self defense, gun ownership, and self-reliance. It is as if they have no idea what is happening in Israel just a week later, because if they did understand it, they would have learned this simple lesson:
If you don’t like being a victim, and if you want to prevent things like cattle cars and Zyklon B gassing from happening to you or your descendants, then get a gun, get a pile of ammunition, and learn to use them together. Be self-reliant and coordinate your life with other Americans who feel the same way.
You could call it a civilian militia of sorts, which is all-American. Or call it the modern version of the Hebrew Aid Society. Whatever you call it, it will provide a decent immediate defense in tough times, and a reasonably good way to beat a tactical retreat so that you, your family, your friends can get some place safer and more defensible. So that you can survive.
If survival is what you really want….