Dreams

Barry often wakes up in the morning and tells me about strange dreams he has had. Tuesday night’s dream found him in India, where the corona virus outbreak is rampant. Why India? Who knows?

But whether I dream and just do not remember, or dream very rarely, I am always surprised when I wake up remembering a dream as I did a couple of mornings ago. In my dream, Barry and I had driven to a water park resort. When we arrived near the site, we must have made a wrong turn and found ourselves on a dirt road, but we eventually made our way to the entrance. Not surprisingly, there were long lines of cars and hundreds of people. And I suddenly remembered that we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic and wondered why in the world we had chosen to come to this place, and why so many other people had done the same.

This was especially puzzling because our children and grandchildren have visited such places and we have never gone with them because they are not a good environment for someone with pulmonary problems. It was quite strange.

We watched a couple of good movies over the past week or so, one old and one new. We were prompted to watch the 1956 film, “The Wrong Man,” after seeing the actual man on which the story is based, Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, on an old episode of “To Tell the Truth.” It is apparently one of the few films directed by Alfred Hitchcock that was based on a true story and whose plot closely follows the real-life events. Balestrero was played by Henry Fonda and his wife, Rose, by Vera Miles. It is a rather frightening tale of mistaken identity which nearly destroyed the lives of this perfectly innocent couple, the parents of two young sons. It was only through a stroke of luck that the man who actually committed the robberies in question was identified. It really is an outstanding film.

The second film is a new one titled “Bad Education,” available on HBO, Amazon Prime, and hulu, which stars Hugh Jackman as school superintendent Dr. Francis A. "Frank" Tassone and Allison Janney as his assistant, Pamela "Pam" Gluckin. Based on a true story, Tassone, an incredibly popular administrator, and Gluckin, unbeknownst to many around them, were found by a curious reporter for the high school’s newspaper to have embezzled millions of dollars from the school district. It makes for quite a sobering tale about how much we humans are able to overlook the obvious when alternatives better suit our desires.

Please continue to stay safe and well!

Love,

Rebecca