We had a Mother and Daughter Tea at our Pastor’s house today. Victoria and I attended. It was her first-time to a “tea party”. The little girls all had Raspberry Tea, and the “older girls” had a choice of at least four. I drank Irish Breakfast. I can’t recall the other names … so if anyone reading this was there and knows, please feel free to fill in these missing details via “comments” below!
It was a very nice time, good fellowship, and excellent delicacies to eat. 
We’ve been watching more Clint Eastwood movies lately. I’ve liked them all along, but Frank wasn’t too keen on “buying” any DVD’s of them. He loves John Wayned movies, so that’s what we’ve been building a collection of for some time.
At church a few weeks back we were discussing movies with some other folks, and Clint Eastwood movies came up as a topic. One family then lent us “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” on DVD. It’s been years since I’ve actually seen any bits or pieces of that flick. It’s a movie you have to see the whole of as a whole. It’s great stuff.
We just watched “Hang ‘Em High!” last night. Rented. It’s a classic from 1968. I’ve seen it frequently enough on commercial TV. It’s much better as a straight run movie. [as all movies really are!]
So, we don’t outright own either of the ones I just mentioned. They are on my “want to get” list. We have a few others already. Mr. Eastwood makes a great western. He’s Mr. Man of Few Words, and often Man With No Name. He looks great in a hat and coat of the 1800′s western wear genre. He looks great with a Marshall star badge on his shirt.
He’s not a “Christian” man in any of his character portrayals. He’s a man. With morals, but not particular “Christian” morals. If that makes any sense. So why watch him? Why not? Why watch any other movie? Most movies don’t have “Christian Moral Characters” in them. Should they, now that’s another topic altogether.
John Wayne is another one to consider. He has good flicks too, some characters more moral than others. His westerns are a different genre than Eastwoods. Eastwood’s are reality-like, while Wayne’s are High-Character-like. Big difference in how it plays out on screen and in ones head. I like Eastwood, he’s subtle. Intense. Thinking. Action. A Good Guy. Wayne is louder, talks more, and is the other things that I listed about Eastwood, besides “subtle”.
Let’s put it another way. Wayne is American. In today’s Americanizational way of thinking. That’s why I like him some.
But why do I like Eastwood more? … he lacks that “Americanization” thing. It’s like this: He’s a guy living in his time, the time in the movie, be it 18– whatever. There’s no big flag waving kind of thing. That, I like. Lack there of, in other words.
Ok, the other thing: Eastwood and guns. I love the way he shoots.
I changed my desktop again, since I decided to have some fun with my cheap digital camera this morning.
I went out back to one spot and took overlapping pictures to come up with a panoramic shot.
It’s a cheap camera, and the exposure for each wasn’t very alike [I have no control over it, and it's hard to fix each photo to match afterwards also, cheap!], so guess how difficult it was to piece these together and fix the “sky”. Ugh. Anyhow, this is what it looks like as my desktop. I think it’s pretty cool, and I’ll work on a better version of it with my film camera sometime.
I’ll create a page with this picture on it some day soon. The house closest, the one in the middle that’s bigger looking, is ours, the blue roof is the top of the “Jungle”[a Cedar Works of Maine climbing/swinging structure]. You can’t see a whole lot in this version of the photo, since it’s the “desktop” copy. In a bigger photo you might be able to better make out the fence line. Our grass is long and short in different places. You see the weeds right where I was standing, the tall stuff –dying Thistle, can you say “Roundup”? And the white are natural wild daisies that come up in the back of the yard every Spring.
And yes, Frank, you have this same desktop, at a smaller resolution. It looks nicer on mine though, as I have an LCD 16.1″ view-able large screen, and you only have a 15″ CRT monitor from 1995. Sad, but true.
Here’s what my desktop looks like today:
Win XP 1280x1024resolution. Taskbar auto-hide [that is why you might see a tiny blue line at the bottom of the picture if you look close enough]
This is one of the Peony pictures from my Photo Log.
Judging from my previous posts about the Bluebirds this season, these new babies will be fledging sometime after June 6. I’ve picked that day as –day 13– after their hatching, so then I can expect fledging at *about* 17 days, but from day 13 on out monitor from further away so they don’t exit the box too early.