Today’s photograph... I thought was a Madagascar palm... Turns out that I’m probably wrong. I Googled and found that the Madagascar palm in the pictures is not like this one at all... but I like it anyway. I like everything about it: the trunk, the fronds that hold up the great leaf structure, and especially the way the whole thing looks against the sky.

It’s how things look against the sky... and especially from the sky... that must have fascinated people like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.
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I don’t go out to many movies. Netflix and a very good television screen at my house keep me watching at home, but occasionally a movie comes along that I can’t wait to see. Amelia is one of those. Is there anybody my age, or perhaps any age, who hasn’t been fascinated by the Amelia Earhart’s story.

And the reviewers are saying Hilary Swank IS Amelia Earhart; so I’m not likely to wait for the DVD. The actress has talked about how she has been changed by “becoming” Amelia for the movie. She said, “Amelia lived her life the way she wanted to live it, and she made no apologies for it... I guess what I took away is -- you only live once so you might as well be doing what you love.” About herself Swank said, “I was a troubled kid. I felt like an outsider. I didn’t feel like I belonged, especially in the classroom. I just wish that I would have been more secure. It’s that trap of thinking there’s nothing beyond high school. Then I paid my dues for nine long years before I finally got that career changing role in Boys Don’t Cry. Now I long to play characters that challenge me and scare me and make me learn new things about the world, about myself and about my art.”

I especially like to apply Hilary Swank’s statement to retirement: Now I long to... do things that challenge me and scare me and make me learn new things about the world, about myself...”

(...from an interview with Hilary Swank by Jeanne Wolf... for PARADE magazine, October 23)