A Penny For Your Thoughts

There is an episode from the old television series The Twilight Zone I’ve been thinking about lately.  It is called A Penny for Your Thoughts and stars Dick York as a man named Hector B. Poole who suddenly has the ability to know exactly what other people are thinking. 

Would I want to know what other people are thinking?  I think in some cases as Hector discovers this could work out positively.  

Hector is happy to find out that a woman he likes feels the same way about him.

For example Hector finds out that a woman in his office he admires has affection for him too.  It might be nice to know that someone regards you positively even if they don’t tell you. It could improve your relationship.  

Hector discovers that his boss has little respect for him.

It might also be good to know if you irritate and upset people or to learn they don’t respect you even if they are doing a pretty good job of hiding those feelings.  Then you could attempt to change your behavior and that could improve your relationship.  However knowing what people think of you might also prove so devastating that it could end a relationship. 

In the closing scene of the Twilight Zone episode A Penny For Your Thoughts Hector loses his ability to read people’s minds and viewers are left with the feeling that might be for the best. I think probably the courage to communicate openly with others and to share our feelings more readily may be a better way to work at relationships than trying to read minds. 

Other posts………

Calculator Conversation

Saying No

This is Us. Is it Like Us?

Dave and I are watching the second season of This is Us.  I think one of the reasons I enjoy the show so much is that although it is set in the present it keeps going back to the past. This means we are given new insights each week into the lives and experiences of the main characters and so with each episode we come to know and understand them more richly.  

In the last three episodes we watched, the set of triplets at the heart of the show are each facing a crisis. The show takes us back to when the three were learning to walk, when they were youngsters discovering their passions and interests, and finally the year they graduated from high school.  We see many of the same scenes over in each episode but each time we see those scenes from only one of the triplet’s perspectives.  It is surprising how each episode is so different. 

It really makes me think about events in my own family’s life. I am sure individual family members perceived them very differently. It also makes me think about things that have happened in my past and how they may have shaped the person I became.

I suspect This is Us a popular television series because as people watch it they are thinking about their own families and wondering how is this like us? 

Other posts……….

The Fosters

What’s a Bonus Family? 

Binge Watching

 

 

 

Nostalgia

I took my father to the Hymn Sing Reunion Concert on Sunday. For readers who don’t know, Hymn Sing was a Canadian television program from the 1960s to the 1990s.  Every year a group of promising young singers was chosen to present a weekly Sunday night concert of familiar Christian hymns.  The show, filmed in Winnipeg, was hugely popular across the country, sometimes garnering a viewership greater than that of Hockey Night in Canada.

I was definitely one of the younger people at the reunion concert at Bethel Mennonite Church on Sunday afternoon which featured sixty former Hymn Sing performers. It was sold out. What drew such a big audience to the concert?  I think it was nostalgia for hymns that may not be sung in churches very much anymore, nostalgia for the kind of religious and contemplative television programming we don’t see much of anymore, and perhaps nostalgia for a time when things were a little more black and white. 

I noticed in the Hymn Sing Concert program that one of the event’s sponsors was Nostalgia Radio CJNU.  Last Thursday I gave a group of staff and board members from Nostalgia Radio a tour of the French Moderns Exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. I asked them about their radio station and they told me it is run by retired broadcasters and other folks who were nostalgic for music of bygone decades, music that is sometimes hard to find on other Winnipeg radio stations. They play that kind of music everyday as well as lend their support to a whole variety of community and cultural groups including the Winnipeg Art Gallery. 

Shepherd Tending His Flock – Jean-François Millet- 1860

A painting I discussed with the Nostalgia radio crew was this one of a shepherd by Jean-Francois Millet.  Lisa Small, curator from the Brooklyn Museum where Millet’s painting makes its permanent home, says one of the reasons paintings like Millet’s of the shepherd were so popular in the late 1800s  was that the rapid rise of industrialization meant many families had left their farms and villages to move to the city. They were nostalgic for their country roots. Millet’s paintings took them back to their childhoods in rural France. 

This past week I’ve been reminded that music and art can be powerful inspirations for nostalgia. 

Other posts………..

On My Grandparents Farm

My Dad Was Once A Teacher

What’s the Buzz? 

That’s Not My Kind of God Either

I have been watching the American television series The Fosters on Netflix.  It frequently addresses current political issues as it tells the story of an American family in San Diego. In the fifth and final season of the drama many of the episodes revolve around immigration as two high school seniors from the Foster family provide support to a college student from a Mexican family.  Her name is Ximena. 

Callie, one of the girls from the Foster family holds a photo of her friend Ximena at a rally to support young people in the DACA program.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested Ximena’s parents who are illegal immigrants. ICE officers arrive at a highschool dance to take Ximena into custody too. Ximena is acting as a chaperone for her younger sister at the dance.  Ximena has had DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) status in the past but is waiting for her status to be renewed. The younger sister who was born in the United States is taken away by Child and Family services but two teenagers from the Foster family help Ximena slip out a back door and drive her to a church where she receives sanctuary. The pastor of the church provides the young woman with food, clothing and bedding. 

At one point the pastor says, “If you want to talk or pray, I’m here.”  The young woman replies, “I don’t want to pray to a God that would allow my family to be torn apart like this.”  The pastor replies, “I don’t pray to that kind of God either. I believe in Immanuel God with us and God is with you always, in your family’s strength to keep going, in your hope for the future and in the people who have helped you tonight.”  

I  think along the same lines that fictional pastor in the television program did. I find it really hard to understand people who say they believe in God and yet support the current American administration who are arresting desperate asylum seekers, separating refugee parents from their children, and refusing to fully respect and honour the DACA policy established by their country in the past.  I admit it makes me want to ask, “What kind of God are those people praying to?”  I realize of course that they are probably saying the same thing about me. 

Other posts………

Tolerating Other Christians

Standing Up For Children

Doing Something

I am so dismayed at what is going in the United States.  A man seemingly without a moral compass in his personal, business or political life is leading the country and………… nearly half of its citizens have no problem with that. The members of his party follow their immoral leader like fearful sheep anxious that not doing so might cost them their own political jobs.  An American speaker in our church on Sunday said it is hard to have hope in a time like this, hard to believe that God’s love will triumph when vulnerable people are being placed in ever greater jeopardy and racism of many kinds flourishes in a way many Americans thought was relegated to the past.  

As a Canadian who wants to help people like our speaker have hope, and as someone who could have my own life effected by the president’s actions on climate change, free trade, immigration, and military action I feel helpless.  What can I do?  I decided one little thing I could do was to buy subscriptions to a couple American periodicals that seem to report with integrity. 

I decided to subscribe to The Atlantic and The Washington Post since both I believe offer a fairly measured and honest view of what is happening in America.  I admit I was attracted to The Washington Post by the recent movie about it and also by the fact they just won a Pulitzer Prize for their story about defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore of Alabama.   I figure by supporting the efforts of the free American press with my subscription money I can encourage  journalists to keep reporting the news in an honest way even when their country’s president is constantly calling them ‘fakes.’  

Purchasing a couple of news subscriptions isn’t doing a whole lot.  But it’s doing something. 

Other posts………..

Seeing The Post in Lisbon With People Who Truly Understand What Freedom of the Press Is

A Prayer for Journalists

Her Worship

The End

One of my favorite pages in Macleans magazine was the last one called The End. It featured the obituary of an interesting Canadian, not a famous Canadian, but one who had lived their life in a special way.  Macleans will no longer publish the beloved feature. 

As a kind of farewell for The End writer Michael Friscolanti read twelve years worth of obituaries and  made a short list of life lessons gleaned  from other peoples’ lives. 

1. Find love.  It is life’s greatest privilege and reward. 
   

   My parents with their family in 2008

2. Be yourself.  Follow your own path. 
   

   My niece climbing a steep path on her own on a Arizona hike.

3. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. 
   

   My Mom dealt with severe health problems for many years but remained our greatest cheerleader till her dying day.

Good advice from people who lived their legacy.  

Other posts……….

A Life That Adds Up To Something

Lessons from Leonard

Lessons from the Sydney Opera House

The 4 Ms

Dave and I had supper at an Academy Road restaurant last week.  Adjacent to us a young family was having a meal.  Throughout the supper the parents were talking with one another but the two children were on their i-pads the whole time.   They put down their devices only to take bites of their food.  That’s a phenomena I also observe often with children who are traveling on the bus with their parents.  Both parent and child have their eyes fixated on their phones and don’t interact at all.  

The Canadian Paediatric Society has published sensible guidelines for the use of electronic devices for kids with warnings to minimize, mitigate, be mindful and model  behavior when it comes to screen time.  Sometimes I feel like printing  copies and handing them out in restaurants, on buses and in other public places. 

Other posts…………

Technology and Family Time at a Resort

Technology Transforms Travel

What’s the Best Way to Raise Children?