This last weekend Betty and I spent quite a bit of time at the movie theater because she and Mary Ann were about to leave for St. Petersburg, Russia for 10 days. We saw Young at Heart and The Visitor. Mary Ann won accommodations in St. Petersburg at the meeting of a music society here in La Jolla. One of the members has an apartment in the city with a car and driver, so they will get to use that. This is an unusual experience for me since I don’t remember my wife being away from me for this long within the last 30 years. Friends and family are filling in during their absence. I have two sons here who are taking up the slack for now. Maybe Betty and MA will bring me back a nesting doll.
The movie Young at Heart is a true story of an old timers musical group in New Hampshire by the same name. They sang and danced and traveled to prisons and other events trying to make especially old people feel good. The characters in the movie were the actual members of the group, so in a sense it was a documentary. There were lots of happy moments and some sad ones when people died. As far as I know, the group is still in existence.
The other film is what I call a lose-lose movie. The Visitor is about a college professor in Connecticut whose wife has died. He suddenly finds his apartment occupied by a family of Middle Eastern illegal aliens. This professor, since he had no other demands on his time, took an interest in helping them, eventually befriending the husband. One day while they were traveling on a subway in New York , the husband was arrested. No matter what anybody did to try to help, in the end the man was deported. This was not a true movie so I can’t see why they couldn’t arrange a happy ending. But that’s not the way it was done.
I have included some photos from the recent Heart of San Diego event. There are also some new photo slide shows for you to visit.
— Bob
