Post your slice or the link to your blogged slice on Schoology.com before class each Friday.
[TIMEOUT: Though, I will be running outside from now (6:51 p.m.) until it is decidedly dark so that I may savor this remaining hour of summer before wet, windy October reappears as its sometimes ugly, uncomfortable self.
TIME-IN: Back at 7:36 p.m. after a trip down the road with momentary pit-stops to take pictures of the watercolor sunset amid the tepid air.]
The important movies - not the feel-good, watched a million times, reciting lines from memory kind of movies (ie: Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones ["Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones!") 1990's Disney animated pre-Mulan stuff, E.T., The Sandlot, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation-a personal favorite, etc.]-I want to recommend are the films that made me stop and think and remember and reevaluate what I would do in that position. Whether the protagonists are an eight-year-old hipster wanna-be beauty queen, a widower in a late-life crisis, a dad who's hopelessly, yet liberatingly adrift while reinventing himself, or an ageless dreamer literally searching for himself in his endless, spiraling sleep, Little Miss Sunshine, About Schmidt, American Beauty, and Waking Life each told poignant stories of individuals, families, and relationships growing to love themselves and life more. Each film has an artistic, humorous flair that makes you feel akin to the every-man characters and the respective filmmakers who must be smiling thinkers we'd befriend effortlessly.
To describe the films' themes, here are two, evocative quotes from Marcel Proust:
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom," and "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."