Movie Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

A ‘respite movie’ from 1945 with a solid message (7.5/10)

A Tree Grows in BrooklynKatie Nolan: Flossie Gaddis died last night.
Johnny Nolan: The poor baby. It was nice that her Mama got her all them pretty dresses.
Katie Nolan: Only now the poor thing will have to lie in Potter’s Field!
Johnny Nolan: But at least she had the dresses!

Novel by Betty Smith
Written by Frank Davis
Directed by Elia Kazan

Peggy Ann Garner … Francie Nolan
James Dunn … Johnny Nolan
Dorothy McGuire … Katie Nolan
Joan Blondell … Sissy Edwards
Lloyd Nolan … Officer McShane
James Gleason … McGarrity
Ted Donaldson … Neeley Nolan Continue reading

Guest Column: DTE Power-Shutoff Attacks Continue

Michigan Nazis deprive elderly and infirm of electric power for disobeying orders

PusteIn the same month a 92-year-old disabled and blind Lincoln Park woman, Ms. Olga Puste, had her power shut off by DTE for refusing to allow a harmful-radiation-emitting surveillance electric meter to be installed on her home—feeble corporate apologetic from WXYZ-TV on 9/19/15 still conveys the atrocity committed on this poor woman by DTE—several Michigan citizens have been assaulted for the same reason.

This is a letter sent by David and Glenna Lonier (shown below right) of Auburn Hills to WXYZ-TV informing the station that they, too, have had their power stolen by DTE gangsta scum—accompanied by two local police officers also behaving like gangsters, violating their oaths of office to protect the life, liberty, and property of residents—under pretense of law… for the same reason as Ms. Puste.   Continue reading

Brian’s Column: Boyhood Visits to the Farm in Iowa

Reminiscences in response to Cousin Jim for his journey thru Kansas

A_Iowa_Farm_Boys_w_Tuton

Bro Forrest (R) and Me (L) with Tuton (Twoton)

[In the 1950s and 1960s my brother Forrest and I would go with Mom and Dad to my grandmother’s farm in Iowa. Cousin Jim and his wife are on a cross-country roadtrip heading ultimately down to New Orleans to visit his daughter. He has been trying to locate Gram’s step children, and now seems to have located them in Western Kansas. So he asks for memories and photos of the time, which I feel sans any real identifications, are appropriate for me to share out as a broader good will gesture to the rest of the human family.]

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Those were golden years in my childhood… except for the time that you and Forrest ganged up on me, when Aunt Donna slapped me for being sassy, and feeling totally out of it when the men would retire to the parlor after the big meal and talk in ‘man code.’ [It sounded like they were discussing very important matters, especially Grandpa Al. He seemed to lead the discussion, and had a way of sounding authoritative, though I’d have no idea what he was talking about. I expect my dad and Uncle Ted and the other younger men didn’t know what he was talking about either, but respectfully kept their end of it up.] Continue reading

Book Review: A Tan and Sandy Silence (1971)

Middle of the pack, lesser Travis, but good enuf
by John D. MacDonald

TanSandyFrankly I don’t remember the plot too well on this one. Travis does reflect quite a bit on life and love, but these philosophical passages did not seem central as in so many others in the series. The plot involves a search for a missing person, a woman with whom Travis has had a relationship long ago… which ended amiably.

I would have to say this novel, which I believe is number 13 out of 21, reveals the beginnings of Travis’s anxiety over slowing down with age. As a salvage expert, McGee has made a career from helping people in distress. But in so doing—and not being a man of conventional methods—he runs into considerable danger and damage. Indeed it’s somewhat of a conventional ending to witness McGee suffering broken bones, cuts, gunshot wounds, knife stabbings, and even beatings. His adversaries are practically as physical as he is and sleazy cunning. Continue reading

Movie Review: Gran Torino (2008)

Academy ignores one of the better ones (8.5/10)

Gran TorinoWalt Kowalski: Oh, I’ve got one: A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Get the fuck out of here.”

Walt Kowalski
: Take these three items, some WD-40, a vice grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone.

Walt Kowalski: [to Father Janovich] The thing that haunts a guy is the stuff he wasn’t ordered to do.

Walt Kowalski: [to Father Janovich] I think you’re an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life. Continue reading

Brian’s Column: Notes to the 2d Edition of After 9/11 Truth

Accommodating Toto Worldwide and The Truman Prophecy

After_911_Truth_Cover_Front_ReducedThe best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry… as the poet Robert Burns (1785) put it. So, too, the summary book I wrote on the 9/11 attacks and my concept of what actions best to take to achieve ‘truth’ most efficiently. Well, not awry exactly, but in need of UPDATE based on subsequent discoveries and actions. A significant part of those discoveries have been ‘of self,’ namely that yours truly, being a writer and affected by a modest engineering habit of mind, tends to look at the world a certain way. That is with a naive remote impartiality that says, “after solid study and effort, I see or have derived the following grand process that, if followed, will produce the desired result.”

The desired result, of course, in the case of 9/11, yielding general truth and freedom.

And if you read the Amazon review comments to After 9/11 Truth—excerpts of many of them are included as testimonials with this imminent second edition—those readers of my liberty and reason milieu do completely get the message. The problem is I want and need to cultivate a larger audience, which is what I thought my ‘engineering plan’ of the second half of the 1st edition would accomplish. Alas, people—readers and doers—are not items in an equation, however elegant or ironclad the solution appears. Continue reading

Book Review: After 9/11 Truth, 2d Edition (2015)

Review and comments attending 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks

After_911_Truth_Cover_Front_ReducedIt’s September 11, 2015, and we still have not had a fully empowered special grand jury investigation bringing indictments of legitimate suspects of the human species-altering crimes of the 9/11/2001 attacks. Still, something tells me that by this date next year, we WILL see such a development… and those truly responsible for the act—including foreign government personnel at the highest levels of military and intelligence organizations who acted as architects and prime movers of the plot—will be brought to trial, conviction, and justice.

In honor of the many victims of 9/11, including the thousands who have suffered and/or prematurely died from lung and other diseases from breathing the asbestos-laden air following the disintegration of the World Trade Center towers, I am slightly editing and also repackaging the original book into this latest edition (which will be available on the Amazon book link by the end of next week, 9/18/2015). Truly I am only making changes to how I am fitting After 9/11 Truth into the integrated truth movement… including my own movement I am calling Toto Worldwide. Continue reading