Return to San Francisco and more...

Even though I may already know the subject I'll write about in my next post, by the time I write it I have thought about so much more, that I usually go on a tangent and end up with an "eclectic" and longer post - this is another one.  I'll start then with the "more" from my title.  Let me hasten to say that the day after I published my last post, on the rain in Georgia, it stopped raining.  It has been sunny every day since with mild temperatures and low humidity.  This morning it was 65 degrees F (18 C) and now, in the afternoon, it is only 78 degrees F (25 C.)  It is not warm enough for my figs to ripen on our tree but our potted plants are flowering more than usual.  (Click on any collage twice to enlarge.)

Since I am not sure if there will be enough figs to make jam this year I went ahead and made peach jam - but with a difference.  I used a large mango, ripe Georgia peaches and finished with two tablespoons of "Safari" liquor.

I bought this liquor in Amsterdam a couple of years ago because the label said "Safari - Exotic liqueur spirit with tantalizing flavor of exotic fruits - maracuya, mango, papaya, lemon and lime."  It is produced in the Netherlands.  I thought an "exotic" touch would do well in my peach jam.  I was not sure what "maracuya" was and saw on Google that it was "Fruta de la Pasión o Maracuyá" and is also called Passionfruit, Pasionaria or Grandilla (Passiflora Edilus.)  The fruit is either yellow or purple at maturity.  It is a climbing plant originally from Central America but produced in many countries.  Photos below courtesy Wikimedia.

The Sunday before I wrote my last post, Sunday 18th August to be exact, it was raining so we decided to go to the movies.  We had not been since last November and there was a film I wished to see called "Blue Jasmine."  It was playing in Atlanta.  Early in the afternoon we drove there and saw that another film I had seen advertized on TV, called "Lee Daniel's The Butler" was also playing.  We purchased our tickets for Blue Jasmine but saw that the film The Butler was sold out until the evening show.  We were early for Blue Jasmine so we peeked in the theatre where The Butler had started.  I did not know that the 5 minutes or so we stayed there would create more time spent on the computer for research.  I'll explain below.

First - Spoiler Alert! for The Butler film.  As we started watching the movie I thought that it was telling the story of the butler's ancestor - it was a scene in a cotton field.  A boy was there with his parents - I thought it must be the butler's great grandfather on a plantation.  The mother is taken in a shack by the overseer and I guess, raped, as we hear her screams.  The boy asks the father if he will say anything about that, the overseer comes out, the father gives him a bad look, and the overseer shoots the father in the head point blank and kills him.  That's it, that's all we saw - we left to see our movie.  But I wanted to find out later what time period this scene was.  I did find that this scene was supposed to be in 1926 when the Butler was a boy and this tragedy happened to his family, on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia.  There are many fields of cotton in Georgia now but I rarely see any people working in them as production has been mechanized.  Below is a field of cotton I photographed last autumn, about 15 miles from my home.

Since I like history and research I read more on the movie and The Butler himself.  I found out that the original Butler was named Eugene Allen, that he was not born in Georgia on a plantation, but on a farm in Virginia.  His parents were farm workers but his mother was not raped and his father was not murdered.  Seeing on the poster (at the very top) that it says "Inspired by a True Story" I wondered what was authentic.  I found out that in the movie the Butler, re-named Cecil Gaines (I guess to avoid

slander) has 2 sons and one of them died in Vietnam.  In truth Eugene Allen only had one son and he came back from Vietnam alive.  In the movie Cecil's wife is an alcoholic and has an affair with a neighbor.  In truth Allen's wife of many decades was a lovely woman.  I wondered what else is not true and I guess about 95% of the movie is fiction.  In the movie the other fictional son is an activist, joins the Black Panther, is roughed up several times and spends some time with Martin Luther King, Jr.  He also pushed his father to quit his butler job - none of it true.  Actually I found out that the real Butler was a Republican (!)  Below are more photos of cotton fields but in vintage postcards from 1905.

All this research has brought many conversations with my husband.  He feels that if a film says based on or inspired by a true story or true events then only 2% needs to be true.  I disagree and feel that if the studios advertize the film this way, at least 60% should be true.  I understand that there is poetic license and that to make a film more dramatic some liberty can be taken with the story.  To me it shows not much respect to invent a promiscuous drunken wife to this real butler.  It cheapens the story and hurts the reputation of the true butler.  I think the audience is owed more "truth" if the studios market the movie as such - I saw TV interviews saying that most of this film was true.  I am also afraid that young people in this country, and other countries where this film will be shown, may not take the time to research the story as I have and believe the plot to be a true rendering of what happened to this American butler and his family (with all the African-American stereotypes) - then will see the word "true" in there and will believe it is.

When I go and see a movie founded or based on a true story I don't expect to watch, for more than two hours, mostly fiction and lies freely added to manipulate and rile up my emotions whether the actors are good or not.  Forest Whitaker is one of my favorite actors - I am sure he gives a strong and moving performance in this movie but I would enjoy it more knowing that it is a fictional tale showing the history of race in America, even if the idea for this film came at first from a butler's life in Washington, DC.  Any thought on that?  (Picture below of Forest Whitaker courtesy Entertainment Weekly.)

I really liked the film we went to see - "Blue Jasmine."  The main character, Jasmine, is played by Cate Blanchett.  She shines in this Woody Allen movie.  Her performance as a fragile emotional socialite is flawless.  The rest of the crew were well chosen and give great performances too.

As you can see from the poster above Blue Jasmine takes place mostly in San Francisco.  This brings me back to the subject of this post.  When I finished my 3rd post of San Francisco in the 1960s (click here to read it) we had left on the last day of 1969 thinking we would be back.  We never went back until this last June, and 43 1/2 years had passed.  The main reason I did not go back is because I had to go to Paris at first once a year then twice to three times a year to visit my mother as she became ill.  San Francisco was not on the way - it is in the opposite direction.  My mother passed away in 2002.  Last February I saw flight sales to San Francisco from Atlanta.  Tickets were bought - a hotel was found, and we went.  By air the distance from Atlanta to San Francisco is 2,138 miles or 3,440 kms (driving distance is 2,472 miles and 3,977 kms.)

To give some perspective I tried to see which town is about 2,138 miles from Paris.  I was surprised to find out that the flying distance between the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, and Paris, France is exactly 2,134 miles.  During that flight one does not fly over several states like in the US, but over separate countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Turkey and others.

It was raining as we left the Atlanta airport on May 30th, 2013, but sunny when we landed in the San Francisco airport.  I took many pictures from the aircraft along the way,

When landing into San Francisco airport you feel that you will land in the bay as it is close to the water, but everything went fine.  The airport did not look like it did in the 1960s.  It has been much improved.  We had never been on the BART rapid transit either.  We used it to get to downtown San Francisco.  Below at the top of the collage is a vintage postcard of the airport in the 1950s or early 60s, and the way it is now.

The five hour flight had gone by quickly.  It was only about 2:30 pm when we arrived downtown so there was still time to walk around the city after we checked into the hotel.  That will be in a future post.