Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Three Beautiful Things 08/24/2011: Rural Decline, Winter's Bone, Broken Wheel

1.  I gave Carol a ride up to Wallace and I meandered back through Osburn and on home via the old highway,  thinking how much I'd like to stay in the Silver Valley for a length of time and take pictures as a means of historical preservation -- or as a means of recording images of the ongoing rural decline in Shoshone County -- and beyond -- I would imagine the decline in Shoshone County is happening in similar ways elsewhere.

2.  I decided that this afternoon, I would venture more fully into the dangers, criminal activity, and other dark realities of rural life and watch "Winter's Bone".  It was an unsettling movie, raw in its portrayal of how the codes that criminals in the Ozarks live by result in cruelty, ruthless cruelty -- and how one teenage girl touches something in these people deeper, even more humane, than the code in a way that is grisly, unromantic, and, for me, unimaginably grotesque.  It's a superbly made movie, a well-told story.  It touched deep fears in me.

3.  I think the last time I went to the Broken Wheel was on December 1, 1973 when Dad and I went out to dinner for cocktails, steaks, and stingers. Then Dad and I returned home to watch an epic UCLA vs Maryland basketball game, won by UCLA 65-64, their 77th win in their 88 game win streak.  I remember that evening as the perfect trifecta:  great time with Dad, great dinner and drinks, great basketball game.  Well, late this afternoon Mom and I had dinner at the Broken Wheel and I ate my first ever (to my knowledge) porterhouse steak and it was very good.  Mom enjoyed her jumbo prawns.  We didn't drink stingers and we didn't have an epic basketball game to come home to, but we had a good meal out on the town.

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