The Unclad Soul

I have started watching Season 6 of the Netflix series, House of Cards. President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is dead, and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) is the new president. She takes charge with ferocious scheming using all of her wily skills, which are sometimes frightening, to make sure people know she will not be denied. Anything. This series closely identifies our own emotionally and spiritually bankrupt political system, although in HOC things are, well, dramatically excessive. The characters in the Claire Underwood (which she changes to her maiden name, Clair Hale) administration are about as corrupt as a gang of Capone criminals in the 1920s. Like those guys, they’re all in nice suits with clean looks, but underneath the urbane clothes beat hearts of stone. The tortured and deranged Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) returns from prison and ruin and God knows what else, to pick up his old expertise in doing relentless damage to those Claire Hale finds in the way...

The new Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens,” is in theaters this weekend. I was a huge fan of the first three movies. I tried to keep up with the following ones but eventually lost interest in them. This new one though I will see. It reminds me of the earlier films. In the second movie in the original trilogy, “The Empire Strikes Back,” Luke Skywalker crashes on the planet Dagobah with his mentor and guru warrior, Yoda. Luke is in training to be a Jedi Knight and at one point Yoda instructs him to enter a dark cave without his weapon. Luke looks at the cave and then looks around. He says, “Something is not right. I feel cold. Death.” Pointing to the cave Yoda says, “That place is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.” Luke hesitates, “What’s in there?” “Only what you take with you,” Yoda says. Once in the mysterious cave Luke is confronted by Darth Vader. He draws his light saber and comes at Luke. They wrestle and Luk...

Memorial Day is not a time for bragging. It is not a day of rolling out the big ships and the stealth bombers and waving flags. It is not a day to rile the enemy or to make threats to others in the world. It is a day to remember the fallen. To mourn those who gave their lives in the always bloody and violent dread and horror that war is. My father, two of my uncles, one of my aunts, and my older brother all served in the military and made it through WWII and the Vietnam War. I lost two boyhood friends in Vietnam. I helped carry the coffin of one of them and could not believe his 19 year old life was gone, forever. War is an offense to humanity. A brutal and often senseless act of murder and destruction.   Einstein once said, “ "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." We have not yet learned that in our country or hardly anywhere in the world. Today we should mourn that too.  Copyright 2015 Timothy Moody