Playing Martha Washington: Behind the Scenes

Westover freight train

Double click on the video to go to  youtube and enlarge it and read more about the trains.

Westover miniature train

Double click on the video to go to youtube and enlarge the picture and read more about the trains.

Into The Wild - Theatrical Trailer

I just re read the book this movie is based on. 

Read the book then see the movie. 

Then go to Youtube and look at all the related videos. There is one with an interview with his father. One with an interview done with his mother. Both done at the site of their son's death at the old school bus out in the wilderness of Alaska.

   Chris is a hero to many and considered a fool by many. He went into the wilderness unprepared and
unwilling to listen to older wiser heads who could have taught him.

Chris McCandless reminds me a great deal of Jim Morrison. Both grew up in the wilderness of the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Chris in Annandale, Va. and Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Va. Both had hard driving highly successful fathers. Morrison's father was a Navy Admiral. Chris's father was a NASA scientist.  Both had "Daddy Issues". And extended that to society issues.
Both Chris and Jim chose a path that led to self destruction.
They never had a chance to grow up.
I saw Morrison and the Doors at the Alexandria Rollerrink  back in 1967 or 1968 on The Doors first tour.
He was on the cusp of fame and it would destroy him.

 Annandale is a bedroom suburb where there is "no there there" as Gertrude Stein said of another place in America. Oakland, Ca. I believe it was.

  If I had grown up in Annandale, Va. I would have wanted to get out of there also. There is no town there. I can understand Chris's longing for solitude and a wilderness devoid of endless suburban homes that all look alike. A suburban desert with nothing but fast food joints and K Marts and middle middle middle class people. Sadly much of America is now like this. WalMart has killed off most all of the small towns in America. 

INTO THE WILD would be a good book for English teachers to teach to high school seniors and also college English profs to have their students read to discuss.
Was Chris a fool or a really brave young man or both?
Was he simply too smart and too headstrong for his own good?
How can young men grow up in a suburban wilderness and not want to get out and explore the world and try to find something that is "real" and not fake.

Betty Bennett, Nobody Else But Me

I once found original copy of this LP at a flea market near Front Royal, Virginia. It was at a location known as Double Toll Gate. Dinosaur Land is near there.
http://www.dinosaurland.com/gallery.html
  The guy selling had a nice selection of original jazz from the 1950s.
This is a very rare jazz LP on Atlantic Records. Now available on CD. And now on Youtube.
See my four posts below this one for more little known songbirds of the 1950s and some stories of being a record collector looking for these rare and little known jazz LPs that the Japanese record collectors want so much.

Patsy Cline In The 1957 Shenadoah Apple Blossom Parade In Winchester, Virginia

In the video above there are many good pictures of some of the best Pasty Cline LPs.

The picture above must be from another parade since she is wearing different clothes.

Patsy Cline's Restored House Opening August 2, 2011 in Winchester, Va.

http://news.yahoo.com/patsy-clines-restored-house-opening-va-193532152.html

Link below is a complete history of the Shenadoah Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Va.

It lists all the past grand marshals and celebrities that have ridden in their parade.

http://thebloom.com/celebrities-past.html

The link below tells how Patsy was not always appreciated in her hometown. It has taken over 45 years for her home to finally open as a museum. I remember driving by there over 40 years ago.

http://www.grubstreet.ca/articles/index/848/grub-street-profile-patsy-cline-invisible-immortality

Many of these hometowns of famous people choose to ignore their own until it becomes possible to make money off them. Then then go all out to exploit their hometown celebrities. A case in point is Oxford, Mississippi where as long as he was alive William Faulkner was referred to as "Count No Count". A nickname locals had for him. A short version of "Count No A Count".

Now they have festivals in his name and put a statue of him on a bench in the courthouse square.

William Faulkner On Not Driving to Washington D.C. From Charlottesville, Virginia

"Why that’s a hundred miles away. That’s a long way to go just to eat."
On declining invitation to White House dinner honoring Nobel laureates, as quoted in Life magazine (20 January 1962)