Movie Review: ‘The Father’

The story of ‘The Father’ resonates globally with people trying to cope with the fast-paced modern life with its high demands on time and energy of individuals, and the slow-paced aging parents.  In the movie, the father has dementia and is suspicious of his caregivers; the daughter is torn between modern life, finding love for herself, and taking care of the father.

The story is complex, and it is hard for the audience to differentiate between reality and the father’s imagination. Did the daughter really try to suffocate the father with a pillow?  Did the son-in-law really slap the father?

But no matter how enigmatic the story is, the movie is a five-star because of a brilliant performance by Anthony Hopkins.  Hopkins knows how to remain relevant at every stage of his life. 

Image: 'The Father' poster, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Teenager Day Traders Pandemic

Robin Hood is the new Pied Piper.

The mystery of the dinosaur extinction solved!

 This Corona pandemic has made me rethink about prehistoric events

What made the dinosaurs disappear all of a sudden?

Corona Jurassica

 

 

Firing rockets from a concentration camp is illegal

 Firing rockets from a concentration camp is illegal

The Palestinian evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem Why are the Palestinian families being evicted from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Do Israeli laws discriminate on the basis of ethnicity? What kind of modern state is Israel?

 

Flying with Tom Lincoln

 

You can walk, you can run, you can ride a bicycle, or drive a car…you can go fast but you are still at the same level where most of us live most of our lives.  But if you fly you leave your de facto elevation and  see everything from a completely new perspective.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning today. Tom Lincoln, an avid flyer, and owner of a beachcomber airplane took two high school students and yours truly on a flight to see the Lake County from the air.

Lincoln says he started flying when he was only 13; he has been flying for 57 years. Lincoln is an insurance agent by profession and is a partner in the insurance firm Lincoln-Leavitt Insurance Agency, Inc.

In the 25 minutes plane ride Tom Lincoln first took us to the ‘Geysers’ and the thermal power plants, then turned around to go over Cobb and reach the lake and go all the way to Nice, then turned to go over Lakeport and land at the Lampson Field Airport.

Why California Pet Shops and Ag Stores don't have any baby layers (chicks) to sell?

 Why California Pet Shops and Ag Stores don't have any baby layers (chicks) to sell right now?

 

Every spring California Pet Shops and Ag Stores sell baby chicks to customers raising chickens in their backyards or at small farms.  This year I have been calling Ag Stores in our area for almost a month, only to find out they still do not have any baby layers to sell.  Why?  Because many of these Ag Stores and Pet Shops get their chicks supply from hatcheries located in Texas.  Texas had a freak snowstorm in February that disrupted shipping operations and hurt Texan farms and hatcheries in multiple ways.  Many hatcheries ended up killing the baby chicks that had just come of the eggs but could not shipped to Ag Stores around the country.

Why am I not getting vaccinated for COVID-19?

 

Why am I not getting vaccinated for COVID-19?

 

The pressure is mounting. Get vaccinated.  Soon there will be travel restrictions only allowing COVID-19 vaccinated people to roam freely, I am told.

 

I love science—science that I do, not the science that someone else has purportedly done and I am being asked to believe in.  Scriptures are to be read from the books, not science.  Science is about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and analyzing the data coming from these experiences.

 

With that kind of love for science, knowing that each one of us is unique in their body composition, and not believing in general medications, I ask myself what scientific data about COVID-19 I trust.  The easiest answer is obvious; I should trust the data that is most relevant to myself: my own body, my own experience with COVID-19.  I have over twelve months of this data to review—considering the end of February 2020 to be the start of the global pandemic.  In these twelve months this body has traveled nationally and internationally, has met people in groups big and small, and is still free of the feared infection.  If by taking small precautions, this body has been able to ward off Corona for 12 months, why should I believe this body will not be able to do so in future too?

 

A second level of comfort comes from studying the other set of data most relevant to me: the COVID-19 experience of my immediate family members. Parents, both over 80, active, meeting people, going places, are doing fine; siblings with similarly active lifestyles are also doing fine; all cousins are faring well too—the only infection being experienced by a 29-year-old man who ran a fever for a few days but got well within 10 days.  Why must this relevant medical history of immediate family members not console me?

 

The third set of COVID-19 medical data that I trust in, comes from studying the experiences of friends who attended college with me.  They were born around the same time I came in this world; they come from social backgrounds like mine.  Thanks to a WhatsApp group I am aware of things happening in their lives. Of these 195 people only one person got infected but got well within fifteen days.

 

My own medical history, the medical histories of my immediate family members and my close friends, tell me to decline getting the COVID-19 vaccination till long term effects of this vaccine have been analyzed.  And if there is something deep inside me that makes me susceptible to COVID-19, I am willing to take the risk.  I have lived a quirky life that gamblers live and am ready to lose this time.

 

A future Olympian revealed

A future Olympian revealed

February 24, 2021. In a practice run that took place between cross country runners from various schools of the Lake County, one athlete stood out as a possible member of the future US Olympics team.  Hannah Garrity, a Clearlake High School freshman who finished the three-mile race in roughly 15 minutes made her competitors look little kids in diapers.  The race took place at the Six Sigma Ranch in Lower Lake.

Oat Hill Mine Trail

 As the name suggests Oat Hill Mine Trail is a hiking trail previously used for mining operations.  We walked it starting from the trailhead at Highway 29, before the town of Calistoga.  At higher elevations you see a lot of burned trees.  Here are a few photos:

Ignacio Valley Preserve, Novato, California

 Ignacio Valley Preserve is a big park and there are various entrances.  Still, the directions given by the Google maps were incorrect.  The main entrance of the park is at the west end of the Fairway Drive.  Here are a few photos taken that day.