dual personalities

Well, as of Sunday, most of our leaves are off our trees

and on the ground.

Boy oh boy, are they all over the ground. We had quite a storm on Sunday morning. When I came out of church, the sky to the west was awesome.

It was a record-breaking 80-degrees and sunny, but the wind was whipping up. I said to the man next to me, “We better batten down the hatches!” and my friend Carlos, stepping outside, exclaimed, “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Indeed.

I hurried to my car and as I drove the 5-minute trip home, the leaves seemed to attack my car. It was bizarre. As I reached my garage, the raindrops started to fall. I rushed inside to get my camera and headed back out the front door. But the rain began in earnest and then the hail, so I quickly retreated back inside. It was an amazing storm with lots of wind and hail, but it was over in about 8 minutes. Then the sun came out and the storm moved on, picking up strength on its way to Illinois where the really bad business hit–including an EF4 tornado.

I spent most of the weekend recovering from last weekend in NYC and a busy week at home. I watched When Harry Met Sally, which as you know, is a classic Nora Ephron romcom shot in and around the city. You gotta love old Billy Crystal, especially in this scene:

I also watched Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz (1978) which is a filmed account of the Band’s farewell concert appearance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976. The Band (Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel) were joined by a dozen special guests including Bob Dylan (they were his back-up band in the 1960s), Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and more. I was not cool enough back in the day to know about it, much less appreciate it, but I can now. It was really great and I highly recommend you watch it…perhaps on Thanksgiving! (I, of course, will be watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles.)

Van, Bob and Robbie

I also watched the new documentary about J.D. Salinger on Netflix Watch Instantly.

I watched the whole thing, but there was nothing new to me. They go into some detail about his horrible war experiences in WWII when he participated in the amphibious landing on D-Day and fought on through the Battle of the Bulge for over 200 days, including the horrendous Hurtgen Forest, and concluding in the liberation of Dachau. This is legit as it had a great effect on him. Who wouldn’t be affected by that? But mostly it is a lot of second and third-rate writers who are jealous and resentful making comments. Awful people like Gore Vidal. Why is it so hard to understand that a writer who is largely misunderstood wants to be left alone? It makes perfect sense to me. People have always had such ridiculous expectations of him. I guess it is all that unrequited love.

He was not crazy. (And neither was Holden!) Personally I think it speaks volumes that the local people of Cornish, New Hampshire closed ranks around him and protected him for all those years. They liked him. He went to the bean suppers at the Congregational Church. Also his friends, like Maxwell Perkins’ sister, protected him. It’s all the rest–the ones he wouldn’t talk to–who are so resentful. Who suggest he was pretty weird. I don’t think so.

*Franny and Zooey