This was an unusual week that witnessed the incredible merging of fact and fiction in news happenings. In my report last week, I recalled how the remakes or reissues of familiar childhood stories in the movies and on TV took on new magic and significance portraying real life meanings relevant to our modern world. And that our modern sci-fi movies, while portraying future or advanced technological developments, reflect our own dreams and fancies, including our terrors of the unknown.
So Friday morning last week, I dismissed the first news reports about what happened at midnight Thursday in Aurora, Colorado together with the usual “Here we go again” regarding the daily headlined reports on crime and conflict. Until details described the midnight rampage in a movie theater there on the premier showing of the legendary Batman in the eerily titled “The Dark Knight Rises.” The result was the death of 12 adults and children and serious injuries to 58. The terror and chaos in the terrifying attack on hapless movie goers was perpetrated by a strangely clad, fully armed single person, a real-life dark knight/night (?) rising!
And so last weekend and the rest of this week as I write this, media reports have been mostly about the heartrending experiences of survivors, of mass mourning for the victims, and a lengthy personal and psychological description of the lone 24-year old shooter, as media here terms what Philippine media would blatantly call “gunman”. His looks alternating between bizarre and stolidity in his first public appearance in court with his lawyer. His unusual intelligent academic background, then dropping out, and his eerie, carefully planned acquisition of ammunition, and his fully booby-trapped apartment. Initial reports say as a loner, he apparently had “no terror ties.” All this as he faces formal charges against him in court on Monday.
Meanwhile, for the first few days this week, political events quieted down as politicians condoled with the mourning families, and cut down on their campaigning. But as I now write, they are back with it, sparring on more national issues, this time on health care and economy.
As the historic drought in half a century deepens particularly in the Midwest that produces 75 percent of the country’s corn and soybean crops, some farmers are auctioning off their young cattle due to the scarcity of feed for them. Temperatures there went as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaking of cattle/cows, I have seen them in other areas of the State, and the mention in mass media of cowboys (the name Cowboys adopted by one of the sports teams), the Mexican Spanish term vaqueros, and cowgirls. I am reminded of the early black-and-white silent movies I fell for in childhood, the cowboy movies, now also termed Western Oaters. How time also influences language!
Significantly, last Saturday marked the start of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month.
Today, July 27, marks the third time London hosts the Summer Olympic Games and opening ceremonies and detailed reports will be taken up in next week’s Bystander-ing. Americans are expected to play to their strengths there.
Actually, in 1908, when Rome was scheduled to host the Games, Mount Vesuvius erupted, and the Olympics were relocated in London. When the Olympics resumed after World War II, London was the host in 1948. Now, 54 years later, the Games are back in London. The US Olympic Committee released the 530-member Olympic team for London. Texas has 33 athletes, fourth behind California (128), New York (35) and Pennsylvania (35).
Personally, this has been a quiet week for me, reading and watching TV while my nurse daughter Amelia is busy as a she works weekdays at USMD Hospital in Arlington. Last weekend, we drove to Burleson, some 20 miles from where we live in Mansfield, to pick up her daughter Cherry Ann, who works with the Wells Fargo Bank, and who promised to take us out to lunch.
Along the way, as always when I have the opportunity to go on a ride, I always enjoy the passing scenery. In this area in the bi-i-i-g State of Texas, there is so much wide open spaces, many with signs advertising multi-acres, a few low houses off the road on huge tracts of land, lines of trees marking off tracts, more houses set back among trees, and a thick growth of trees close to the road in places. The blooming crepe myrtles in cities along the way, for which Texas is known, fascinate me with their varieties in color: red, pink, light lavender and white.
After a hearty lunch in a Chinese dim sum restaurant in Arlington, we went to the vast Parks shopping mall to do window shopping and wound up in the Barnes and Noble bookstore, where I picked up three crossword puzzle books and the paperback copy of Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy by John Julius Norwich. This book and that on American past president George W. Bush, constitute my serious reading these days, in addition to daily news reports in the papers and on TV to keep me informed.
Speaking of which, the papers this week featured reports about Sally Ride, the first woman in space, who died last Monday at the age of 61 in her home in San Diego in California. She had become the first American woman in space when she rode the Challenger space shuttle in 1983. She went up in the shuttle again in 1984, logging 342 hours in space. She was scheduled for a third shuttle flight but that was cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986. She was on the commission investigating that explosion and later was on the panel for the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident, the only person on both boards.
Since then, more than 42 other American women have flown in space, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. President Obama, in paying tribute to her, said, “Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars.” Ride was a physicist, writer of five science books for children, and president of Sally Ride Science. She had also been professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego. And one of her last legacies was allowing students to take pictures of the moon using cameras aboard NASA’s twin Grail spacecraft spearheaded by her company.
It personally moved me to learn that she died of pancreatic cancer, the same cancer that also claimed life of my daughter Raquel in San Diego last year.
And now we close, as always, with prayers for God’s blessings on us, one and all!