M is for ...

After you watch the trailer, you may want to watch the whole movie.  While looking for the trailer, I saw that a "full version" of the movie is currently uploaded there at YouTube ... do a quick YouTube search for "The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain" -- it is a great movie ...

I mentioned that the DVD of this movie was one of two that my father-in-law actually liked (when he thought televisions were totally worthless ...).  Well, there was a third movie he liked when I played its DVD -- the Jackie Chan version of "Around The World In 80 Days."

Why did he like this movie?

Well, his father was a Courier during WWI.  He delivered messages from one outpost to another ... often crossing enemy lines in the process.  At least once he got gassed, but when he stumbled into the medic tent, he was told to get back to his duties since he was still on his feet.

After the war, and only one of four young men from his town that survived the war to come back home, it was difficult to fit into the farming community around him once again.  He encountered the families of those who did not survive, had to deal with survivor's guilt along with their inability to grasp the fact that (as hubby put it into words for me) "... in a war the elements of chance are massively increased.  There is no way to ensure your survival;  a soldier with the best training, the best equipment and the best support staff cannot guarantee that a stray bullet, a sniper's round, a landmine, an unexpected shell (theirs or ours) or fields of mud that drowned many a soldier won't get them."

Today we might recognize and try to help a victim of shell shock, but in those days it was not acknowledged in the US;  it was considered cowardice.  My father-in-law's father became an alcoholic.  On the 4th of July, during the town's fireworks display, my FIL's father would crawl under the porch and huddle there, shaking and afraid.  Even his family was appalled by this behavior.

Then, my FIL came over to watch this movie with me one night;  he had sat across the room in his chair, listening to it before but this time, he came to watch it. 

There is a thunderstorm in the movie and a young man back from the war who was shell shocked.  He lay on the ground having a "fit" ...

After we watched the movie, my FIL went back to his chair and eventually Charles (my father-in-law) said, "You've heard about my father?"  When I said I had, he nodded but did not say more but I realized -- this was the first time he ever understood his father and for decades he had dealt with the "shame" of having a "coward" for a father ...

The movie is billed as a comedy -- there are lots of comedic moments.  It, also, was a vehicle of healing for an old man.  For that reason alone, I am thankful this movie was made -- and if that one old man was the only person 'touched' and helped by that movie -- it was money well spent.

I better find a "lighter note" after all that ... :)

The video below is an instrumental, so you can keep on reading while the video plays out ...

The Mikado Overture

(sorry if an ad pops up at the beginning of the video -- that is something YouTubers can agree to have added to their videos -- lets the Tuber make a few cents per view of their upload ... recent ads, I think, are inappropriate for some audiences, but I have no say in whether they pop up or what it will be)

Monogram 

You have probably run across some of these (below) in your Internet travels.  I like them so much I decided to share some of them with you:

Mini People

Hubby loves trains.  Life-size to the two smallest gauges ... He told me that most of the figures in these photos are probably from the Hobby Shop (as in a place that sells trains and model kits for planes, ships and the tools and supplies needed for these hobbies -- not the "Hobby Lobby" that carries those things but also lots of art/craft items for wifey to spend tons of money on while hubby spends his paycheck on the important things -- planes, trains and ships ... and the incorrect color of paint for those ships, especially the submarines, can be found in the movie "Operation Petticoat"!)

I'm not sure if one of these three videos goes into it or not -- while I was going through a list of possible vids from YouTube, there was one that shows the figures being made.  I really did not think all those poses would be available in the hobby shop or the catalogs ... though there are quite a few in the catalogs!  Seems like the scale train hobbyists want lots of different types of scenes for their trains to visit ... (I had a watercolor teacher, for a group of students who met in his garage once a week in Flemington, NJ, who suggested we invest in HO Gauge animals if we wanted to include them in our paintings, since they would be "to scale" ... great idea!)

Monkey Bread

Today's Baker's Dozen Plus ...

1. monkey
2. money
3. mild
4. mill
5. marble
6. marmoset
7. marmalade
8. musical
9. marimba
10. mineral
11. minimal
12. manual
13. man
14. milliner
15. maximum
16. minimum
17. mount
18. mountain
19. maintain
20. mouth
21. moss

Today is ...

Thank you once again to brownielocks.com/april.html

* Rubber Eraser Day

* World Art Day (DaVinci's Birthday)

and

* Take A Wild Guess Day

Call to Action

There are 5 things you can do to earn a free gift (probably a selection of Color-Your-Own SuseDoodle postcards from a forthcoming collection to be released soon! WOO HOO!)  All five  Call to Action options can be found here -- two can be  answered in the Comments Section here or via the InLinkz section at the end of the post ... I wanted to set the closing date as May 7 but InLinkz would not let  me run a link list for that long ... so the deadline is May 1 ...