December 11, 2003
Dear Everyone:
As Charlie Brown would say, “Good grief!” How did it get to be so late in the year so fast? Last week we had the company “Year-End Holiday Luncheon”. It’s not “Christmas” anymore. That’s too politically incorrect. You have to include Hanukkah, which technically was around long before Christmas. And Kwanzaa, the name of which is based on a Swahili word meaning “first fruits”. And Ramadan, should it happen to fall in December. (Being the ninth month of the lunar calendar used by Muslims, it doesn’t always land in the same place in the Gregorian calendar.)
So everything gets lumped together under “Year-End Holiday”. Are we “valuing diversity” or just homogenizing it?
Last night the Mt Diablo chapter of ARMA held its December meeting, which had a “holiday” theme. Everyone was asked to bring an inexpensive ornament to be exchanged. We also had three small centerpieces to raffle off. But half of the people either didn’t get the word about the exchange, or forgot, or (best in class) got the ornament but forgot to bring it. So instead we raffled everything and everyone got something. And I got the centerpiece that I really wanted by the simple expedient of announcing, when my number was called, “No, I don’t want that one, I want this one.” Luckily, everyone was amenable to this.
Today we had our group Holiday Luncheon.
And Christmas (the real
I need to get cracking.
One reason I haven’t done cards, shopping, etc. (apart from just forgetting to do them) is because “Jeannie” and I spent all day last Sunday going to the movies and, well, shopping.
The movie was
Timeline.
(“Jeannie” was not in a
Tom
Cruise mood.) Based on
the novel by
Michael
Crichton, it’s about a group of archeology students who are
excavating a French castle which was at least partially destroyed in
1357, during the
Hundred Years
War. The Hundred Years
War (you may recall) was not a war that lasted 100 years.
Rather, it was a series of armed conflicts between
They would fight for a while, then peace would
break out. Everyone would go
home and rest for a bit.
Then, when they didn’t have anything better to do, they’d start fighting
again. Sometimes one side
won, sometimes the other. It
was said at one time that if an English household boasted a
featherbed, it
meant that some male member of the family had been to the wars in
So, in the movie, these archeologists are recruited to go back in time on a rescue operation. Seems their professor sort of “accidentally” went back in time and only these kids would know how to behave in 14th Century France. In the book, Crichton spent pages explaining in minute detail how this time travel would work. In the movie, it’s “there’s a wormhole. Accept it.” The book also detailed how the young woman was the expert on the architecture of the building because she had excavated it. So, naturally, she should be the one to climb out a window and cross the roof. In the movie, it’s “she’s the girl. She should climb out the window.”
In other words, a lot got lost in the translation. However, when it comes to the actual battle, the movie’s special effects beat Crichton’s prose all hollow. Especially the trebuchet. Historians know about trebuchets because they’re mentioned in the accounts and chronicles of the times. But, because trebuchets were made of wood, none have ever survived to modern times. So no one really knows what a trebuchet looks like.
The general idea is some honking big slingshot of some sort. So the English are in charge of the castle and the French have trebuchets. They load big boulders into the sling, douse the rock with oil, set the oil on fire and fling the whole kit-and-caboodle at the castle. When the English see the flying objects approaching, they shout, “Trebuchet!” which may be medieval French for “Duck and cover!”
Obviously, this is not the best time for strangers from another time to be wandering around looking for their missing professor. To make matters worse, something happens to the Way-Back-Machine that threatens their ability to get safely back to their own time.
In other words: Fun for all ages. Except for the history major sitting in front of “Jeannie” who kept muttering, “No, that will never work!” It’s possible to take a movie too seriously for your own good.
One more week at work. (I gotta get started on those holiday greeting cards, aka Christmas Cards.)
Love, as always,
Pete
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