Butch, Sundance and Painted Wagons

Last night Mel watched a movie we picked up, out of the cheap DVDs box at Walmart I think, sometime while we were home. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

He watched the movie while I listened to it and messed around on the computer. Usually I do cross stitch or weaving, but last night I was too wiped out to take a chance on messing up my handiwork. So, I listened. And then I started looking up info on the 3 characters (including Etta Price, Sundance's wife/mistress). The more I looked the more I was amazed. Then we watched the extras included with this particular DVD. Interviews with Redford, Newman and Katherine Ross. And again, I was amazed.

Amazed at what? you might ask. Well, I'll tell you! (when I get back from checking the washing machine)

Ok, back again.

As I listened to the movie, not watching the good looking movie stars who were portraying each of the characters, I was struck by how bad these guys really were. That's part of the reason I started looking up info on them on the internet. They were robbers, murderers, liars, cheats, immoral, profane. Etta Price may or may not have been married to Sundance and the movie hints at it, but does not come right out and say, that she may have slept with both of them off and on. (Info on the women who went to Robber's Roost indicates that the men there shared their women with each other and one site indicated that she was one of just a small handful of women who ever went to Robbers Roost.) Then when the commentary began, we listened to all of these people involved with the movie talk about what good guys the two outlaws really were, not nearly as bad as others during that time period, or else just two among the others in their actions.

I remember watching this movie in the theater. Don't remember what year it was, that was the time before things came out a couple months later on VHS, of course. I remember how good looking I thought Robert Redford was. Swooon! I remember how brave and daring I thought Etta Price was and how good it made me feel when people told me I looked like Katherine Ross (we had a similar hair style and coloring - she's always been much prettier than me). I knew these guys were bad guys, but hey - give them a break! Maybe they'd just had a rough time and fell into being bad guys kinda by accident. And if you had no chance of marriage and someone offered you a life of adventure, why not do what Etta Price did? (I say "Etta Price" because that is her name in the movie - no one knows for sure what her real name was.)

Last night it really dawned on me that these guys were no better than the Hell's Angels or gang members in todays gangs.

Sometime in the night while I was wide awake instead of sleeping, I remembered the time Mel and I went to see Paint Your Wagon.

Again, a movie I'd seen in the time after I'd left home and before I met Mel, a movie I had really enjoyed at the time. Sure it was "naughty" and sure, it was immoral, but it was a cute movie. Right? [Remember, I was raised in a Christian home where we didn't go to movies - ever - and I'd become a Christian when I was 8 years old and had been baptised soon after.] When I saw it with Mel, after a couple semesters of Bible college, I was shocked and embarassed. Here I'd told him what a good movie it was - and it was just a movie about glorified hookers and polygamy. Ei yi yi. Yet, I am so very, very well aware now that these two movies are very symptomatic of what was happening during the '60's. Cultural revolution, where good is bad and bad is good. These movies were cutting edge at the time - now they are very simple and "cute". When I think of the thousands of movies that have been produced since then, how immorality of all kinds is portrayed as "normal", it all makes me feel a little bit sick.


I still like these songs sung by Lee Marvin I Was Born Under A Wanderin' Star, and The First Thing You Know . There is something in both of these songs that tugs at my heart - maybe that is why I liked the movie so much, when I was still going through all of that teenage angst.
.


I Was Born Under A Wanderin' Star
I was born under a wanderin' star
I was born under a wanderin' star
Wheels are made for rollin', Mules are made to pack
I never seen a sight that didn't look better looking back.

I was born under a wanderin' star
Mud can make you prisoner, And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin' from, For dreams of goin' to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wanderin' star
Do I know where hell is? Hell is in Hello
Heaven is good-bye forever, It's time for me to go

I was born under a wanderin' star
A wanderin' wanderin' star

Mud can make you prisoner And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin' from, For dreams of goin' to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wanderin' star
When I get to heaven, Tie me to a tree
Or I'll begin to roam, And soon you know where I will be

I was born under a wanderin' star
A wanderin' wanderin' star

The First Thing You Know
God made the mountains, God made the sky
God made the people. God knows why

He fixed up the planet, As best as He could
Then in come the people, And gum it up good

The first thing you know,
They civilized the foothills
And every where He put hills
The mountains and valley below

They come along and take 'em,
And civilize and make 'em
A place where no civilized Person would go

The first thing you know
They civilize what's pretty By puttin' up a city
Where nothin' that's Pretty can grow

They muddy up the winter, And civilize it into a place
Too uncivilized Even for snow

The first thing you know
They civilize left, They civilize right
Till nothing is left, Till nothing is right

They civilize freedom Till no one is free
No one except, By coincidence, me

The first thing you know
The boozer's in prison, And the criminally he isn't
And only the rascals have gone

When I see a parson, I gotta put my arse in
A wagon that follows the tail of a crow

The first thing you know
I pick up 'n and blow!
The first thing you know

Photos, Jimmy Stewart, and Christmas Cards

Mel and I chose a fairly recent photo of ourselves to send with our Christmas postcards this year. Yesterday we walked down to the city center, to a little photo shop and had copies made. Took an hour, an hour in which Mel and I then went and had a nice lunch together. Kind of our date for the week.

After we picked up the photos, we went over to the local 'department store,' TsUM, to see if they might by chance have mailing labels in their stationery/school/business supplies section. They did not. In fact, the saleswoman seemed a bit insulted that I would ask for them. Told me she didn't know what they were called in Russian (I described them to her) and told me to go to the post office and ask there. She was - huffy. That's a nice way to say it, huffy.

Ha ha!

So, while Mel then went looking for The Nutcracker Suite in the music department, I looked at movies. I was very surprised to find The Far Country, starring Jimmy Stewart. Wow! I looked at the price - 39 griven - and decided to buy it. I had told Mel last week that he was not allowed to buy any more music or DVD's until Christmas, yet there we were, in the music/DVD section of TsUM, looking for both. He commented and I said something on the order of, you aren't allowed to buy any before you ask ME. :) :) Christmas is coming....!!!! He did not find The Nutcracker, but we did buy The Far Country.

We came home and I set to work getting some of the Christmas postcards ready to mail. I tried one time to send a postcard through the mail here just like we would in the States. The post office lady was horrified. It was not in an envelope!! Anyone could read what was written on my postcard! Put it in an envelope!!! So, since that time, I always put my postcards here in envelopes. Well, this time I'm sending a photo, too, so I'd need an envelope one way or another anyway. I still think it's odd that the postcards here have a place for postage right on them, but she insisted they need envelopes.

Whatever.

I am a Christmas card lover. I love to choose them. I love to prepare them. I love to cover the envelopes in all sorts of stickers. I love to write the addresses. I like to send them, I like to receive them. I like working with mail, actually, which is probably why I liked working in the mail room for so many years at Young Life.

There is something nice about mail. A letter is like a book in many ways. It is made of paper. You hold it in your hands. You can fold it and carry it in your purse or billfold to read again, altho you couldn't put a book in your billfold... :) You have to open it. The first time you read it, you are not quite sure exactly what is going to be in it. You have to read it. It is covered in written words and when those words are actually handwritten - oh! it is so personal, so nice to read, so mine.

The problem with sending all the postcards that we send from Ukraine, is that I have to write on them. They are not simple Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! from us. No, I write a brief note and thank you on each to our prayer and financial partners, possibly more to our family members and close friends.

That is the norm for me.

But this year - I am having really bad arthritis in my thumbs and holding a pen for more than a couple minutes becomes shear agony. It is still very easy to type and to use the computer, but holding a pen is a different story. It's the same reason that although I have crocheted for years and love doing it, I have switched to knitting over the past year. Holding a crochet hook really hurts now, but holding the knitting needles does not - yet. They are held differently in the hands.

So, I am writing a couple postcards and then resting for several minutes. I am taking my ibuprofen and using a pain-reliever cream on my hands (I like one better than the other, but Mel says when I use it, I smell like an old woman. ha ha! I like the smell because it reminds me of when I was a kid and my great-aunt would give me those wonderful pink peppermints to eat - smells just like them.) This Christmas is a bit different for me. Age is showing. The age of the body is showing more. My hands are betraying me. I know there is joint replacement for the joints in the hands, but I am not going there! Nope. No. Nyet. Nine. Nada. Non. And so forth in many languages where the negative seems to always begin with the letter N. I'm hoping to get all the postcards out by this time next week.

After I had been working on the postcards for an hour or so last night, Mel put on The Far Country. I don't remember ever watching this movie before. I wonder if my father has it? He has a lot of movies starring Jimmy Stewart. Near the beginning of the movie I told Mel I thought it must have been filmed at or near Banf National Park, in Canada. Sure enough, at the end there was a special thank you to Jasper National Park for allowing them to film there. I was just a few kilometers off, but in the right area. :) I really liked the movie, not for the story line, which was kind of hokey, but for the scenery. Oh, wow, it was really, really pretty. I want to be there! It was a nice movie to watch just now. I'm still surprised it was at TsUM, however.

And life continues.
I look forward to my perfect heavenly body, more and more each day, but I really like the holiday season here on earth.

The little things make life so good.

Havilah

Sergei and Olya K. came over tonight for dinner. Before they came, Sergei asked specifically if they could watch Fiddler on the Roof tonight. Of course we said yes!

During most of the movie, the middle daughter is called by a shortened version of her name - Havah. But during the section of the movie where she runs off and marries Fyetka, her full name is said several times. Tonight it brought a certain pain to me. Maybe because our oldest son will be 30 on Sunday, I was reminded that our Havilah's birthday was also near. I was reminded that in just a few days our oldest neice would have been 32 years old. Havilah Zoe. She died of SIDS at just 4 months of age.

I couldn't help but wonder, how would life be different for my only brother if his oldest child had lived? God alone knows. In some way, little Havilah was spared much pain by God taking her home so young. Someday I will see her again.

On a funny note, one of our very young cousins could not say her name correctly. He called her "Hellofa Zoo."