Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here is a failure to communicate"

A few nights ago, I saw the 1967 movie "Cool Hand Luke" starring Paul Newman.  Several minutes into watching the movie, I was realized I had never seen it before.  I saw clips of the movie--I could remember Newman eating the last of 50 hard-boiled eggs. He ate the eggs in an hour in prison. The character Luke Jackson claimed he could eat fifty eggs in one hour.  All of the other inmates bet on whether he could or couldn't.

He could.  

For those who know the movie, that may be the most famous scene.  The most famous and still-quoted line form the movie is said twice by "The Captain" who runs the prison in rural Florida.

He says, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."  The Captain first says this when he puts the beaten Luke in "the box" after he was caught trying to escape for  the first time.  The next time the Captain says the same phrase, Luke is in the window of a Church waiting to be re-captured after this third attempt to escape.  After the Captain says, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" Luke is fatally shot in the neck by the prison sharpshooter.  

The movie has many funny moments. Paul Newman is funny even in the sadistic world of a southern road-gang prison. The movie is brutal and violent when it is not funny.  Newman's character Luke is a decorated World War II veteran with a silver star and a bronze star for gallantry under fire. But he has PTSD.

The movie opens with Luke drunk and drinking straight from the bottle. He is on a walkway between parking spaces in a southern town.  Parking meters mounted on 3-inch pipes lines the edges of the walkway.  Luke has a large pipe cutter. He staggers from meter to meter cutting the pipe and watching the meters drop to the ground. He doesn't rob the meters, just cuts them off.  After several sliced meters, he is arrested.  

In the military, in corporate offices and just kidding around at lunch, I have heard the phrase, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" and did not know its origin, until now.  

Swedish Emigres; Immigrants to Sweden

On Sunday I flew to Sweden, a direct flight from JFK airport NYC to Arlanda airport near Stockholm. I don't sleep on planes so near the end of the flight I was in the galley in the back of the plane talking to a couple who were flying to visit home.  

Johan and Alma are emigres from Sweden. They came to the United States in 2002 and setup a towing business in Vail, Colorado. Johan made a thriving business rescuing the cars of stranded skiers traveling to the Colorado mountains. They liked America and in 2010 applied for citizenship. That became a thirteen-year ordeal interrupted by COVID.  

Their daughter Emilia was flying with them. She was three when they arrived in America.  She went to a local preschool the following year and told her mother she would never go back to that school. "Everyone speaks Finnish at that school. Nobody speaks Swedish," she said. Alma assured her they were speaking English and she would soon learn.  The family spoke Swedish at home, but Emilia and her brother were fluent in English quickly.

The family moved to Jupiter, Florida, just before the COVID epidemic. Both Alma and Johan had bad cases of COVID but recovered and last year finally became American citizens.  This is their first trip to Sweden since becoming Americans.  Johan said he will be happy if he never sees snow again. Alma still likes seasons.  

The family has dual citizenship and breezed past those of us who are not EU citizens in the customs line. I waited ninety minutes for the first stamp in my new passport.  When I got impatient, I remembered the customs lines I walk past when returning to America.  

After I arrived, I ran into immigrants to Sweden from around the world.  At the airport train station, I got coffee from a women in a lavender hijab.  The next evening I got a pizza made by a Kenyan.  The following morning I got coffee from a woman from India.  

In the parts of the world that are free, immigration and emigration runs in every direction. People pursue the life they want to the ends of the earth.  On the other hand, no one is trying to immigrate to Russia, North Korea or almost any country ruled by religious dictators.  Freedom is its own reward.    

 

Lancaster to JFK Airport by Five Trains

 

Often, the cheapest direct flights to Europe fly from JFK Airport in Queens on the very eastern edge of NYC.  But that cheap fare and direct flight come with all the hassle and expense of getting to JFK.

The trip is cheaper for me and everyone else over 65 years old, than those not eligible for senior discounts.  

The five trains senior fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $10.40

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  Free

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $7.50

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total:  $31.40 

The same five trains adult fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $20

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  $9.25

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $15

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total: $57.75

Amtrak direct from Lancaster (or Philadelphia) to NYC is at least $45 often more than $70, today was $120.  Not the cheap way to go.  

How many direct flights go from JFK? Here is the FlightsFrom map.

Wherever you are going, have a great trip.

Apocalypse Now? Or Later...

Why are so many people obsessed with the End Times, the Apocalypse, with Biblical Prophecy, with the End of the World? It seems crazy. In some cases it definitely is crazy. Is it more crazy than those who believe a secular apocalypse is coming? Those who see a future destroyed by an environmental disaster, a nuclear holocaust, or a global pandemic are just as sincere in their belief of impending doom.  

And yet....

In a very real sense, each of us will have a small apocalypse happen to us. We all die.  

At the point of our own death, we are at Apocalypse Now. Whatever the afterlife is, we are in it the moment we are dead.  Whatever end awaits the world we inhabit now is irrelevant to those who are dead. So those worried about either a secular or a prophetic apocalypse will stop worrying once this life ends. 

There is a grandeur to apocalyptic belief.  The Greek root of the word is revelation in the sense of revealed knowledge known only to the special ones able to understand. Knowledge of the future delights us, makes us  feel special, even though no one really knows the future--read predictions from any era of human history for a catalogue of complete ignorance.  

But living through a real disaster, a foretaste of apocalypse, is never grand.  Accounts of survivors of disasters and war talk about the narrow focus that allowed them to survive. I have read several accounts of survivors of the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.  People survived who stayed low, made sure they could breathe and kept some sort of barrier between themselves and the conflagration. 

The near-death experiences I had are funny in remembering how very narrow my mental focus was. After a 75mph motorcycle crash in 1980, I looked at my knees torn open so I could see the ligaments and told the guy who ran to help me, "I have to get up and walk around or I'll be stiff tomorrow." He convinced me to wait for the ambulance. But I was right, I was very stiff, the next day, and for months.

The religious people obsessing about the Apocalypse are not going to like it when it comes to their planet. 

Stopping pandemic, climate disaster and nuclear war require good people who care about the world to take power and influence from the worst people.  Power shapes policy. Fighting for good government everywhere will slow secular disasters. Preserving and strengthening democratic governments allows people to fight for good causes.  For tyrants, a good cause is what they want. 

Taking power is a messy business. Those in power in democracies have to work with others, make compromises, and choose the lesser of two evils over and over again.  But good government is much better than any kind of Apocalypse.

Meditating in a Train

On a sunny morning, I sat near the end of a train to Philadelphia and meditated.  I was sitting on the north side of the train looking across the aisle through the south window.  Eastern Lancaster County farm country spread out in my field of vision framed by the horizontal window and the tall seat backs on the opposite side of the train car.  

In the guided meditation we were told to see life as a river flowing past.  From my framed perspective a very green world flowed past. Sometimes that world was nearly still, as when a field of young corn spread far out from the window with a red barn and white farmhouse a half-mile away at the far end of the field. 

A moment later the train passed between two embankments.  The trees and shrubs near the track were a multi-hued blur of many greens and browns and yellows.  Then the train passed over a bridge and the view was of the tops of trees in the creek valley below.

The view I saw, like a river, was in one way almost eternal.  The passengers on the first trains to Philadelphia from Lancaster more than a century ago saw trees and farm fields and barns and horses and fences spreading on either side of the train. 

And yet, those farmers and horses passed away generations ago. The trees along the tracks and at the edge of the farm fields are different trees than those lining the tracks in the 19th Century.  As with a river, things that appear the same are very different just under the surface.  Since 1994, I have made the trip to and from Philadelphia thousands of times.  Most of that time I would have thought nothing changed along those tracks.  But both the landscape and I have changed over those 30 years. 

As I write, 25,970 days of my life are behind me. The river of life keeps flowing in my life and in the world outside the window. The world changes, I change. My senses only connect with the world and my own physical life in the current moment. All the rest is memory and anticipation.  

I know life can change radically in a moment, and yet as long as I am alive, there will be a continuity, like a river, flowing.  

 

What a Changed Trip Looks Like: A Weekend Car Trip Expands to Include Six Train Trips and a Metro Ride

 

On Memorial Day Weekend, my wife and I were supposed to make a trip to Richmond on Saturday the 25th and return on Sunday the 26th. The occasion was the retirement of my friend Stanley Morton, a Presbyterian Pastor. He will leave his Richmond pulpit next month and return to Lancaster.

Stanley and his wife Terry are Godparents to the three of our six kids and longtime friends.

Trips with me can get complicated and I love the change process. This simple trip became a bit more complicated when my son Nigel came from Minnesota for a visit. He joined us. We stayed with our daughter Lauren who lives in Richmond.  She just had to take out a sleeping mat for Nigel. Then my father-in-law had a medical procedure on Tuesday, the 28th, so my wife decided to stay with him after we left Richmond.  And Nigel decided to stay till the 28th with his sister.

Now the trip got really complicated.  On the morning of Sunday, the 26th, my wife and I left Richmond and drove together to Arlington, Va.  She dropped me at the Metro station and drove north to her dad’s house in Damascus, Md.  Arlington allowed her to take the shortest route north while I continued northeast. I took the Metro to Union Station in DC. When I got there, I looked at taking a MARC local train to Baltimore to save money, but taking a later Amtrak train to Philadelphia was the same price as two trains. So I took Amtrak to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, I took a Keystone train to Lancaster.

 
On the 27th the three of us were in three states: Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

 
On Tuesday the 28th, Nigel took a train to Philadelphia from Virginia, and I met him at 30th St. Station. We took a Keystone train back to Lancaster.  Annalisa drove from Damascus to Lancaster, picked up Prewash from my daughter Kiersten’s house and went home.  She picked up Nigel at the Lancaster train station. I rode home, since I rode to the station.

 
Three people traveling and staying in five states, three long car trips, one Metro ride, two short bike rides and six train rides of 70 miles or more.

That is my kind of changed trip.   

ChatGPT on Scott Perry and January 6

 

Congressman Scott Perry at a "Stop the Steal" Rally

 two days after the  2020 election

I told ChatGPT to write a letter saying what Scott Perry did wrong on January 6, 2021.  The result is below. AI knows Perry supported the insurrection at the Capital.  

--------------

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to address the events of January 6, 2021, and to express my concerns regarding your actions on that day.

As you are aware, January 6th marked a dark moment in American history, as the United States Capitol was stormed by a violent mob. The chaos and destruction that ensued resulted in the loss of lives, injuries, and significant damage to one of the most sacred symbols of our democracy.

While I understand that individuals may have differing perspectives on political issues, what cannot be denied is the responsibility that elected officials bear in upholding the rule of law and protecting the institutions of our democracy. On January 6th, it is my belief that you failed to fulfill this responsibility.

Your decision to object to the certification of electoral votes from certain states, despite there being no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud, contributed to the false narrative that the election was illegitimate. This dangerous rhetoric fueled the anger and frustration of those who ultimately stormed the Capitol, undermining the very foundations of our democratic system.

Furthermore, your failure to swiftly condemn the violence and unequivocally denounce the actions of the rioters further exacerbated the situation. As a leader, it is imperative to speak out against acts of insurrection and uphold the peaceful transition of power, regardless of one's personal political beliefs.

In the aftermath of January 6th, it is crucial for elected officials to reflect on their actions and consider the impact they have on the nation as a whole. Moving forward, I urge you to prioritize the principles of democracy, respect for the rule of law, and the well-being of all Americans in your words and actions.