Midlife Meditation

Today I did something I haven't done in many years: I saw a movie for the third time in less than four months. The movie was Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  I saw it in a tiny second-run theater in Boise because there just weren't any first-run movies left in town that my son and I were both interested in seeing, and we needed to fill a few hours while my grandbaby napped after entertaining us for most of the afternoon. The first time I saw this movie, I wasn't completely sold on it. I'd not liked the first installment of this trilogy, which felt abbreviated, unnecessary, and a real downer to me, as the grand victory of Return of the Jedi  turned out to be hollow and temporary, with a resurgent empire not just overthrowing, but destroying the galactic republic. And this second movie certainly takes the depressing direction of its predecessor to a new level: by the end of this installment, the resistance has been reduced to a few dozen people, all of whom can fit on th...

Mid-twentieth century students practicing for the apocalypse. No, I'm not that  old. Duck and cover drills ended before I started school. I did get a heavy dose of "Your Chance to Live" lessons, courtesy of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (formerly the Office of Civil Defense), during my middle school years. This lessons took the forms of films and filmstrips about a variety of disasters: earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods and, yes, nuclear war, the existence of which made the whole series necessary. Curiously, I don't remember any of those lessons taking place once I started high school, which leads me to wonder if having them be such a large part of public school was just an Idaho thing. (My family moved to Oregon the summer before my freshman year.) Whatever the reason for exposing impressionable young students to so many ways we could all die, the result was probably not what the preparers of the curriculum intended. Being prepared didn't...