March 27, 2022

TECHNICOLOR

 

 

How do you see life?   In black and white or in technicolor?

 

How do you dream? In black and white or in technicolor?

 

I’ve heard people say that they dream in black and white.  I didn’t believe them – because I assume dreams are scenes from everyday life – much of the time – jumbled up – but based on real life – and real life is in technicolor.

 

Movies have been in black and white – and television programs – and you can still catch them that way.

 

Then there’s the comment that some movies have been ruined – because they have been colorized.

 

One day my nephew Michael said something that really surprised me.  He died back in 1977 – so I don’t remember if they had a color TV at the time or not.  

 

I had taken him and his brother and one sister at the time to the movies.

 

The movie was Popi.

 

We got home and at supper his dad asked, “Well, how did you like the movie”?

 

Michael said something that intrigued me. He said, “The movie began in black and white and then switched to technicolor.”

 

I didn’t notice that as I watched that movie with them that afternoon.

 

Afterwards I checked it out. The whole movie was in color.

 

I asked myself, “What got a small kid to say, ‘The movie  began in black and white and then switched to color.”

 

So I asked Michael, “When did it switch to color?”

 

He answered, “When they left  Spanish Harlem and moved to Florida.”

 

How do you see life: in black and white or in technicolor?

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 

 

March  27,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“The heart speaks in many ways.”

Racine

 March 26, 2022

Reflection

 March 26, 2022

Thought for Today

 

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”

 

Jean Anouilh

 March 25, 2022

 Thought for Today

 

“Returning in 1894 from an inspiring trip to Pikes Peak in Colorado, a minor New England poet named Katharine Lee Bates wrote a verse she titled ‘America.’ It was printed the following year in a publication in Boston to commemorate the Fourth of July.
 
“Lynn Sherr, the ABC News correspondent, has written a timely and deliciously researched book how that verse was written and edited and how it was fitted to a hymn called ‘Materna,’ written about the same time by Samuel Augustus Ward, whom the poet never met.  In America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song, Sherr reveals rewriting by Bates that shows the value of working over a lyric.
 
“’O beautiful for halcyon skies,’ the poem began. Halcyon is a beautiful word, based on the Greek name for the bird, probably a kingfisher, that ancient legend had nesting in the sea during the winter solstice and calming the waves. It means ‘calm, peaceful’ and all those happy things, but the word is unfamiliar and does not evoke the West. Spacious, however, not only describes Big Sky country but also alliterates with skies, so Bates changed it.
 
“The often unsung third stanza contained a zinger at the acquisition of wealth: ‘America! America! / God shed his grace on thee/ till selfish gain no long strain / The banner of the free!’ Sherr writes that Bates, disillusioned with the Gilded Age’s excesses, ‘wanted to purify America’s great wealth, to channel what  she had originally called “selfish gain” into more ennobled causes.’ The poet took another crack at the line that der-ogated the  profit motive, and the stanza now goes:  ‘America! America / May God thy gold refine /  Till all success be nobleness / And every gain divine!’
 
“The line that needed editing the most was the flat and dispiriting conclusion: ‘God shed his grace on thee / Till nobler men keep once again / Thy whiter jubilee!’   That cast an aspersion on the current generation, including whoever was singing the lyric. The wish for ‘nobler men’ to come in the future ended the song, about to be set to Ward’s hymn, on a self-depreciating note.
 
“In 1904, ten years after her firsts draft, Kathleen Lee Bates revised the imperfect last lines of the final stanza.  The new image called up at the end not only reminds the singers of the ‘spacious skies’ that began the song but also elevates the final theme to one of unity and tolerance.  Her improvement makes all the difference, especially in times like these:
 
           America! America!
           God shed his grace on thee
           And crown thy good with brotherhood
           From sea to shining sea!”

 March 25, 2022

 

A CASE OF UH OH’S!

 

I figure in every person’s lifetime, they get a case of uh oh’s – 24 in a case.

 

We’re driving down Interstate 95 - going 13 miles over the speed limit – listening to the raidio – minding our own business - just as we go flying by a state trooper – obviously with his radar on.

 

“Uh oh!” is our immediate reaction.

 

We’re watching the evening news and there is a segment on breast cancer or prostate cancer or melanoma.   We go, “Uh oh!”  Or we’re taking a shower and we feel a lump in our neck and we go, “Uh oh!”

 

Or we’re at a family picnic.  We start talking to our cousin Tom.

 

He answers our “How’s the family question with, “Didn’t you hear?”

 

And we begin to hear him tell about his marriage.

 

“We separated. Then we got back together a bit.”

 

We get nervous a bit when he says, “I’m scared. She could reject me again.”

 

He adds, “I won’t date. Yet I don’t want any more rejections.  Half a loaf is better than none. She can be lovey dovey.  Then she starts screaming at me. I just don’t know….”

 

We say, “Uh oh!”

 

Life has lots of them. At least 24.

 

Like seeing the principal. Like getting a call from the IRS. Like the phone ringing at 2:30 in the morning – knowing our kid is driving back to college and it’s an icy night in January.

 

“Uh oh!”

 

Like being on vacation and we can’t find our wallet.

 

But I suppose we’ve also had the opposite. Total glorious surprises. What do we call them?

 

“You wouldn’t believe this ….”

 

In a life time we  have at least two dozen of these as well.  Isn’t that the case – 24 in a case as well?

 

“Surprise!”

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 March 24, 2022

PURPLE

 

Some nights - all looks purple – especially the water on the cobblestones and the lipstick on the teenagers outside the drugstore.

 

Some nights – all looks purple.

 

That’s the way it looked the night they arrested Jesus.  They dressed him in purple.   They wanted to mock him, needle him with thorns, crown him as a king.

 

Some nights all looks purple – especially the purple cuts and chunks of flesh of Jesus’ back – after they scourged him – and beat him.

 

Then there was purple blood flooding and flowing down his back and onto the purple stone below.

 

Some nights all looks purple.

 

And Judas that same night turned purple. His purple tongue hung out of his mouth  as he gave his last shout.  He hung himself – the very same night he drank the wine of Jesus – the very same night he heard Jesus’ words of love.

 

Judas’ hands were purple – hands that touched the bread – hands that fondled the coins till they bled – turning his hands red – becoming  purple in the night  - hands  that threw the coins head first back at the high priest – hands that tightened the rope as he put it around his neck.

 

Some nights are purple.

 

Father forgive us – for we don’t know what we are doing.

 

Forgive me my sins – for wearing purple vestments and white linen – while  not seeing Lazarus at my door step.

 

Purple – the color of my sins.

 

The Dark Night of my Soul is colored purple.

 

Purple is the color of the King – the King of Kings.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022