Blog 2015 – 04.01.2021

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 5

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n_FJzcZ-kKvbW45XpTNEcF75oyGbLukd/view?usp=drivesdk

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 5

“Home At Last” now there is a phrase that warms the heart. It used to be said that the three most beloved words in the English language were home, heaven, and mother. Steven Spielberg’s move Super 8 is one of my favorite movies because as a boy who loved his mother I can so appreciate the main character, a boy named Joe’s great and abiding love for his mom who was killed in a tragic steel mill accident.

For many of us the idea of home centers around one individual. I always preferred the term homemaker to housewife for describing the profession of the nineteen-fifties stay at home moms. In a world where death, divorce, desertion, and for some just a determination to go it alone have created more and more single parent homes. Fewer and fewer women even get the opportunity to be exclusively homemakers still most of our thoughts of home and heaven revolve around the other of the three beloved words – mother.

In the movie Elle Fanning portrays Alice Dainard, the also herself motherless girl that comes into Joe’s life and in whose lovely and loving eyes he finds himself real again as he did in his mother’s eyes. She is the real scene stealer in both movies, Super 8, and the movie within a movie, The Case. From her first rehearsal scene she captives us all, especially Joe.

In the end of the movie Joe is forced to surrender his mother’s necklace, given her by his Dad when Joseph was born and worn ever after, even when she was crushed to death. Miraculously the necklace is found and returned to Joe’s father, then carried by Joe as a comfort and remembrance of his mom. We see as the necklace is pulled away from Joe, the last bit of metal needed to complete the space craft, the picture in the locket that both Joe and his mom found so compelling of Baby Joe in his mother’s arms and the look of love beaming in both their eyes.

The reassembled spacecraft finally launches taking the homesick adventuring alien home, and with no necklace to hold onto Joe’s hand reaches out for Alice’s and they both find together a touch of home.

See the movie for yourself and I think you will find it quite touching even if you are not a sci-fi fan.

Your friend and fellow time and space traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lUqgqaCQwFcJ9u_187kXQNLYBbf6OKQv/view?usp=drivesdk

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