Back when movies were really about the celluloid, a director's vision, light, and shadow. The image of a mechanical stairway unfolding from a plane in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold got me thinking.



Thinking is good. Today I think I will think in the park upon a shaded bench. My iPhone - my first smart phone - was activated Wednesday. Now I can listen to Peter Rowan and Don Edwards croon away their favorite High Lonesome Cowboy songs while scribbling disjointed sentences in my spiral notebook. In the park.

I'm celebrating, in a way. After finishing up a larger cello refurbishment project for an arts school yesterday, and being emailed by the senior secretary that they are "currently in a fiscal year lockdown", The Dean jumped into the thread. Said "It's OK" to the money gal ...

Celebration is no longer beer and pizza. Not even a Coke and a bag of chips. But I'll find time to sit in the park, think about that cool mechanical stairway unfolding from the plane - major cutting-room decision, to give that many seconds to a landing and parking airplane, then the stairs, then disembarkment.

Martin Ritt, director, is a true historian, to include the steps unfolding. A friend of long ago, a pilot, told me that since the discovery of winged flight there has been an image of an airplane in every issue of National Geographic.

I have not seen the pilot in almost two decades. How long? A small single engine plane cost $55/hr wet to rent the last time we spoke ...