through the bare trees

This shot is from Frank’s balcony, looking west, and it’s the first time I’m seeing the steeples.

Winter in Canada is a miserable season. The ticket-clerk at Union Station commented on the cold, but it was a throw away line, because her tone suggested the freezing weather was nothing out of the ordinary. When I got off the train at Bloor, it was -100 Celsius and with the wind-chill factor it felt much much colder. In the one-block walk to Frank’s, it was so cold my face hurt.
 


 
Spielberg’s movie, The Post, is an interesting period piece. It reminds us, that the publication of The Pentagon Papers was the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency; that women in the 1970’s were absent from the decision-making process (Katherine Graham’s father – Eugene Meyer – chose her husband – Philip Graham – to head The Washing Post, rather than his own daughter. And she didn’t see that as wrong or unusual.); that analogue technology ruled; that the entanglements among journalists, politicians and policymakers in Washington is normal.

I generally don’t like Spielberg movies. They are too romantic, too sappy, too pretty, too long. I hated what he did to Thomas Keneally’s book on Oskar Schindler. A character that in the book is anything but attractive, is impersonated in Spielberg’s romantic retelling by gorgeous Liam Neeson. Talk about making Schindler a superhero; talk about manipulating an audience.

The only over-the-top, sappy scene in the current movie is his having a reporter repeat out-loud the Supreme Court decision – In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

Yes, Mr. Spielberg we get the message. Thank you Mr. Spielberg for making sure we don’t miss your elitist liberal views, because they weren’t on display throughout the film. (Frank says that I’m being too harsh and that normal people need the repetition, the pointing out of the obvious.)