Questo e quello

by chuckofish

We are experiencing some lovely weather this week and–bonus!–the cicadas seem to be gone! I was working outside on Tuesday when I suddenly noticed how quiet it was. The incredible din was gone. Thanks be to God.

The boy and his family have been in Florida this week–first at DisneyWorld and then in Sarasota with the other grandparents–so, even without the cicadas, it’s been pretty quiet around here.

(I had no idea it ever rained in DisneyWorld!!)

But I am getting ready for a short jaunt of my own up to Michigan on Thursday to meet with my sister and brother at his lake house. It has been a decade since I ventured up there, so I am looking forward to it.

The summer moves along…

I watched the great Italian movie La Strada (1954) the other day. It is one of my favorites. Federico Fellini’s masterpiece about a traveling strongman who buys a young girl from her poverty-stricken mother in ugly postwar Italy should be depressing, but somehow it is not. Anthony Quinn plays the strongman, who is a brute, a beast without an inner monologue. Giulietta Masina gives a shining performance as Gelsomina, the simple girl who follows him, and Richard Basehart is the Fool who tries to teach her that everyone has a purpose in life. It is a hard lesson to learn under the circumstances. “The Road” is a metaphor for life, of course, and so it is full of sadness and comedy. Here is Martin Scorsese talking about it.

“And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.” (Isaiah 35:8)

Have a good day–enjoy the good (or bad) weather, watch an old movie, and remember that your most important attachment is to God.

*This and that