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A few days before July 4, my wife and I took ride down to historic Eads Bridge one evening to see the Mississippi as it flowed over the streets in front of the Arch.  At this point, the river was roughly 9 feet above flood stage.  Although the high water closed some casinos and attractions on the waterfront, it was nowhere near as devastating as the damage farther upriver and along the Missouri in St. Charles County. optical communications

I just happened to watching MSNBC this afternoon when Tom Brokaw interrupted the regular programming to announce the passing of Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press.

He was at work at the bureau when he collapsed suddenly. Attempts to revive him failed. He was 58 years old.

I stopped being a big fan of the Sunday morning talk shows some time ago but my wife, Janelle, never missed a broadcast of Meet the Press. On the other hand, over the years I’ve come to depend on MSNBC for its campaign coverage, especially through the ups and downs of this year’s Democratic soap opera. I strongly believe that the person who gave their efforts gravity was Tim Russert.

Who will ever forget the white dry erase board or “Florida Florida Florida?”

The coverage of American politics will not soon recover.

How very sad for his wife and son. How very sad for his father, Big Russ.

Rest in Peace.

If you don’t mind the occasional dry patch, life as a freelancer can lead you to some pretty wonderful places.

Last month I had the privilege of doing another stint as a script supervisor on the production of a demo for “Startide Rising.” Based on the first book of David Brin’s “Uplift Universe” trilogy, it tells the story of a group of humans and dolphins aboard the starship Streaker as they battle to survive and come to grips with the discovery of a long lost species.

The project is being realized by computer generated imagery artist Harikrishnan Ponnurangam. Since nearly all of the sets and effects will be added later on, the shoot took place on a green screen soundstage.

Besides working with the camera crew and the actors, I also helped map the walls and floors using little squares of white tape and tennis balls.

The project gave me the opportunity to work with Wyatt Weed, Gayle Gallagher and Bob Clark of Pirate Pictures. Jay Kelley used his state of the art Red camera to perform the cinematography. Tim Wagner lit the set and his daughter, Lanny, recorded the sound.

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Irises at the Missouri Botanical Garden last Sunday. Taken with my iPhone and scaled down in Photoshop.

For at least a week, I checked the weather every day. The night before we went, I could hardly sleep a wink out of fear that my father would change his mind.

I was ten years old and living for this day to come.

It was a Sunday, I think. Sometime in the early summer when the weather was not too hot. Through the Lincoln Tunnel (Link-it I called it) on the 61 bus. As I remember it, there were just my parents and three of my sisters - Mary, Helen and Kathleen. My younger siblings had to stay at home with my Aunt Katie.

We had no car; buses and trains were our only means of transportation. Whenever we traveled as a family, I always thought we looked like ducks and ducklings trying to cross the road safely.

At the bus terminal (the Port Authority - or Port of Authority as I thought it was called), we had to walk a long distance underground to get to the train. Down the ramp, onto the platform to catch the 7 to Flushing Meadows. The route was pretty much like the way to the home of my Aunt Annie and Uncle Jimmy in Elmhurst. For a kid growing up in New Jersey, I was pretty comfortable with the subway system.

Most of the trip was underground but I kept my attention on the windows, waiting for the moment when the train would roar out of the darkness and into the light, riding high above the busy streets.
At the end of the line, the train crept slowly into the station. The sleek new Shea Stadium on one side and the Unisphere on the other. We were finally here!

What if it was so busy we couldn’t get it? I was an anxious kid, born to worry about such things.
Although they were busy, the ticket booths moved along. $2.50 for adults and a dollar for the kids - reasonable but not cheap for a construction worker with a wife and nine kids.

I knew the layout and all the buildings by heart, having studied and re-studied the guide that came from the Sunday News. There had been numerous specials on TV. I even remember that the nuns at my grammar school let us watch President Johnson preside over the opening.

And then I saw one of the strangest sights I had ever seen: painted men in feathered costumes tethered by their ankles flew round and round at least four totem poles in some kind of native ceremony.

This was more than I could possibly have hoped for. My dreams were being realized and we had only been in the park for ten minutes!

The first place we visited was General Motors’ Futurama. To my mind it was the sleekest thing I had ever seen - a spaceship on the ground, with fins like those beautiful Chevy’s. The lines were long and it took the better part of an hour to get in. But once inside, we had a glimpse of the world 60 years in the future. People were living on the Moon! And not only that, they were living in under the sea, in deserts and the Antarctic.

At Ford’s “Magic Skyway” we rode in convertibles and toured the history of mankind from the age of the dinosaur to the world of tomorrow. On the way up to the ride, I remember seeing what appeared to be hundreds of Model T’s. It was all done with mirrors, of course, but it seemed real enough to me.
At General Electric’s “Carousel of Progress,” the audience actually moved around a core of stages on which animatronic characters demonstrated how was ever improving through the use of electrical power. At the DuPont Pavilion, “Better Living Through Chemistry,” I was amazed when a scientist shattered a rubber ball that had been immersed in liquid hydrogen.

As Catholics, failure to visit the Vatican Pavilion would have been considered a mortal sin. In fact, it was one of the most popular sites at the Fair because the Pope had loaned it Michelangelo’s “Pieta.” Once inside, visitors were shepherded onto several levels of conveyors that moved them through the viewing area. I remember that it seemed to float in a dark blue void surrounded by hundreds of candles. It was very beautiful and impressive and something I would have to tell the sisters who taught at St. Joseph’s, my grammar school.

The Fairgrounds were also a nice place simply walk around and we stopped at several other venues. I remember seeing cows and other farm animals - and lots of cheese - at the Wisconsin Pavilion As a Korea veteran, my father wanted us to see the South Korea Pavilion. Since he also knew some Masons, we also stopped at the Freemasonry Pavilion, which featured a statue of George Washington sporting an apron.

The feature that was probably best known and got the greatest number of visitors was Pepsi’s “It’s a Small World.” Like so many of the attractions at the Fair, it was built by Walt Disney and had been featured on “The Wonderful World of Disney” which aired on Sunday night’s on NBC.

By the time we got there, it was getting late. But in one of my father’s rare fits of patience, we endured the wait. We were mesmerized by the ride on the boats, cute animatronic characters and a song that took days to get out of your head.

I returned to the Fair at least two more times but nothing was as good as that day with my parents. It remains one of the most vivid memories of my childhood.

At this point in my life, the world’s troubles lay at the fringe of my notice and certainly beyond my concern. I knew that America was competing with Communists led by a man named Khruschev, that we were fighting a war against Communists in Vietnam and that there was trouble in America with the Negroes - who were probably working for the Communists.

I vividly remember the assassination of President Kennedy, although they were still trying to figure out how and why one man named Lee Harvey Oswald did it. And that was going to be pretty hard since he was killed a few days later by another man named Jack Ruby.

But we were living also in the Space Age, the Jet Age, the dawn of the Computer Age. It was a time when America’s motto seemed to be “Go! Go! Go!” A visit to the Fair imbued my mind with a belief in progress, that the treasures of the planet were inexhaustible and the future would be an uninterrupted march toward global peace and prosperity.

If I hadn’t been watching the Independent Spirit Awards on the night before this year’s Oscar ceremony, I would likely never have heard of “Starting Out in the Evening,” Andrew Wagner’s rich and beautifully realized film about the loves of an aging writer.

Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) is a once-promising artist racing against time to complete a final novel. But his life is turned upside down by his daughter, Ariel (Lilli Taylor), and a brilliant and beautiful graduate student, Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose).

On verge of her fortieth birthday, Ariel desperately wants to have a child.  She’s returned from Los Angeles to be near her father and soon rekindles an uneasy relationship with Casey (Adrian Lester), who despite his love for her has already broken her heart by his refusal to start a family.

For her part, Heather breaks into Leonard’s cloistered existence with the force of a hurricane.  In love with every word in his first two novels, she believes she can re-ignite public acclaim for his work through a critical study.

Yet despite their lengthy conversations and budding friendship, Heather can’t account for an emotional and stylistic shift that took place in the middle of his career.  She’s infatuated with the younger Leonard, not the man who secretly carries the scars of a terrible disappointment.

Based on the novel by Brian Morton, Fred Parnes’s screenplay is as emotionally true as it is intelligent.  Many years ago, I saw Frank Langella create the role of Dracula in  an acclaimed Broadway production and I’ve always enjoyed his work since then.  He’s  never been better in this film.

“Starting Out in the Evening” is about being true to the yearnings of your heart even when it means losing the people you love.  It’s also about faithfulness to one’s artistic vision, no matter where it leads you.  It’s a must see film for the artist in all of us.

 

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This clip is a pared-down version of a longer video I produced and edited for a fundraising auction for the Kodner Art Therapy Program at Ranken-Jordan Hospital.

It tells the story of a painting created by the children under the supervision of artist Chris Martin.

The morning after a March snowstorm. After years of relatively mild winters, we’re just not used to the frequent precipitation and prolonged cold.

At least we’re getting our money’s worth out of our snowblower.

I was going through some digital photos yesterday and discovered this image of the Arch.

I only get this close to the monument once or twice a year. This picture was taken when my sister and niece came for a visit late last fall.

Whenever I take photos of the Arch, I usually focus on just a part of it because it’s just too big to take in all at once. No two views are ever the same. Perhaps because of it’s incompleteness, this one has an edgy, disorienting quality.

William F. Buckley died today at the age of 82.

When I was an undergraduate, I read “God & Man at Yale,” his first treatise on the role of the university in shaping public discourse, morality and conscience.

The book was published in 1951, little more than a year after his graduation from Yale. It was his first shot over the bow of liberalism as it had evolved in the post-New Deal era. There would be many others. As a student in the mid-1970’s, however, it seemed to me that his prescriptions had little effect on academic life.

But that was Bill Buckley - always something of an anachronism with his patrician speech (he was actually a Catholic) and high-falutin’ vocabulary. Along with politicians like the Kennedys or artists like Mailer and Dylan, Buckley, founder of “The National Review,” host of the popular “Firing Line,” was a fixture of a very seminal age.

In time, his work and influence would be felt when conservatives finally came into their own with the election of Ronald Reagan on 1980.

American conservatism has come a long way down since then. An individualist in the vein of Ayn Rand and a believer in the power of free markets, I’m not so sure that Buckley was totally comfortable with the rise of the religious right, corporate corruption, the politics of fear and the unchecked power of the executive branch.

He took a lot of positions that he eventually changed. A foe of voting rights during the civil rights struggles of the 60’s, he later repented of that view. He also admitted to trying marijuana - just the once, mind you - on his yacht, beyond the territorial waters of the US.

And that was his special charm: as much as he valued tradition and orthodoxy, he could still learn a thing or two.