Movie review: Pressure

How in the world can something as mundane as forecasting the weather turn into something so spellbinding?

Well, if nearly 300,000 lives are at stake waiting for the excruciating go or no go decision to launch the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe on June 6, 1944, then the movie Pressure is your compelling answer.

The flick focuses on the 72-hour span leading up to the D-Day invasion and the nearly impossible decision that Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had to make as a once-in-a-century storm threatened to dismantle the entire project.

Brandan Fraser (left) and Andrew Scott

 When I first saw the teasers about this movie on television and learned that Brendan Fraser was going to play Eisenhower, my first thought was "What?" There is hardly a physical resemblance between the two. Fraser is 6-foot-3 and solidly built. Eisenhower was 5-10 and less physically imposing than Fraser. How was this going to work?

But in a movie driven by both dialogue and actual history, the disparity disappears. Fraser, who won an Oscar in 2022 as the lead in The Whale, is a superior talent. Put him in a waist-length military field jacket and, presto, he's Eisenhower. It's that simple.

But the standout performance comes from Andrew Scott, who plays Group Captain James M. Stagg, a specialist in terrestrial magnetism and solar radiation. Okay. A weatherman. A meteorologist. Stagg is the person who says Operation Overlord (the code name for the D-Day invasion of France) must be postponed before it becomes one of the greatest military disasters in history.

The movie's principle conflict is drawn between Stagg and Irving Krick, Eisenhower's trusted meteorologist. Krick has correctly forecast military operations in Africa and Sicily for Ike, but he uses weather patterns from the past to draw his conclusions. Stagg, a British officer who was brought in by Ike to lead the weathermen, goes with science. He launches weather balloons and uses a network of meteorologists under his command to color his forecasts.

Scott, as the dour Stagg, gives us an exceptional performance as a man who knows he's right and who has to convince Eisenhower that he, Stagg, is right. The friction between Stagg and Krick (confidently played by Chris Messina) offers us the heart of the movie. Throw in Eisenhower, who wants answers now as the invasion clock ticks down, and the tension mounts. And it's all dialogue. Wow.

There are two other characters worth noting here. British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who wants to go ahead with the invasion come hell or high water (literally), is faithfully played by Damian Lewis. Does that name sound familiar? Yep, he was Lt. Dick Winters in the exceptional Band of Brothers television series. I'm used to Lewis speaking as an American, but he was born in London and is a subject of the Crown. He speaks naturally with a British accent, which is a little unnerving if you are expecting Dick Winters. Lewis must have had a great accent coach in BofB.

And then there's Kerry Condon as Kay Summersby, who was Eisenhower's chauffeur/secretary/possible paramour during the war. She shows up in a lot of the decision-making process here, which I'm not sure happened in real life. She knows a lot. She could have been a security risk. But in the movie, she is the voice of reason that keeps the ever-building tension in balance.

As in nearly all movies like this, history is compressed. Some facts are lost or discarded because of time constraints. Missing in this narrative is Sverre Petterssen, a Norwegian meteorologist under Stagg who actually foresaw the 36-hour window in the storm that allowed D-Day to happen on June 6, not June 5 as originally planned. But in a movie that is 100 minutes long, where is his own window to appear?

As a history buff, I knew the backstory about the storm that nearly cancelled D-Day. I knew of Stagg. I never heard of Krick. It turns out the rub between the two was real. Krick, in fact, was a founding professor of the Department of Meteorology at the California Institute of Technology (1933-48). I didn't know that.

I know a movie is good when I take my wife to see it. She is not a World War II buff like myself, but she appreciates history and even more to the fact, she appreciates a well-made movie. This flick had her attention from start to finish. 

In movies like this one, she is my barometer. 

 

 

What about the kids?

I don't know how this one got under my radar. My attention could have been distracted by the fire that swept through a block of Uptown Lexington Tuesday night, destroying both the iconic Candy Factory and Shoto's Japanese Steakhouse. That disaster was pretty devastating for our community.

But yesterday I learned that more than 100,000 American-citizen children could have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration's immigration detention program during the convicted felon president's 18-month second term in office. 

In a report that came out Monday, ProPublica – which describes itself as a "nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power" – cited the research and calculations of The Brookings Institution, a respected Washington, D.C. think tank that has been around for more than 100 years.

According to Brookings, about 400,000 people have been detained by Trump's accelerated "iIlegal immigrant" removal program, an administration action that mirrored his first term in office when family separation was actual policy. To this day, an estimated 1,360 children remain permanently unaccounted for or separated from their parents. Good God.

ProPublica's own calculations indicate that at least 11,000 children have had a parent detained in the first seven months of the current administration. The publication gathered its data through a public information lawsuit by the University of Washington. ProPublica notes its own figures might be undercounts for several reasons: the government depends on detainees self-reporting whether or not they have children, or agents might not even ask if families have children.

The data is important when considering a child's health, or how many are leaving the country or how many are staying with family members.

Here's a kicker: The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) often tells us that it doesn't separate families and that it gives parents the option of being removed with their kids or to have their children placed with a person the parent chooses. Some option. 

Worse yet, ICE guidelines have changed. Under Trump, the guideline known as the Parental Interests Directive has been retitled to the Detained Parents Directive. In its preamble, which instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was "humane," the word "humane" has been eliminated.

What does that tell you?

We are in the midst of the Memorial Day weekend, where we take a moment to reflect on those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Now the question arises, would those who gave their last full measure even recognize their country now? Because of a paranoid government administration, we've created detention centers and deportation centers mostly for the removal of brown-skinned people. It's Project 2025 in full bloom. 

It's our latest Trail of Tears.

 

Fire storm

For one brief, precarious moment, you could see the clench in Jeanne Leonard's throat as she tried to speak. 

Her eyes moistened.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I get this way sometimes when I think about it."

Leonard, like the rest of us, was already deep into the Tuesday twilight. But she couldn't even get a block away from her house as she walked her dog when consoling friends collected around her in ones and twos to offer comfort or to lend an ear.

Less than 18 hours earlier, around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, a large part of her life – and the Ebelein family legacy – vanished in a devastating fire that destroyed the iconic Candy Factory and next-door neighbor Shoto Japanese Steakhouse & Seafood. Also affected by the blaze were Bagels and More on Main as well as Main Street Pizza and Deli as both of those flanking businesses suffered substantial water and smoke damage.

The second floor of Shoto's and The Candy Factory.

 All four businesses were located on the same block of North Main Street, side by side by side by side. 

Most of us probably walked past them a 1,000 times in happier days without a second glance, never once thinking they were the beating heart of Lexington's Uptown economy. 

"I was always afraid of a fire," said Leonard. "We had restaurants on either side of us. I always made sure we were heavily insured.

"And the buildings were very old, dating back to the 1890s," said Leonard. "(The threat of fire) was always there."

These days, Leonard no longer has a physical connection with The Candy Factory. She and her sisters, Leigh Foster and Beth Dean, sold the business to Wynn and Annette Conrad in 2018, and the Conrads faithfully kept the character and nature of the place intact throughout their ownership.

Ahh. But there's still the emotional connection. And all that history...

Did Robert Ebelein know he was creating something special when he bought the old Lexington Hardware store in 1979 so he could move his Candy Factory storefront from Talbert Boulevard to Main Street? His wife, Frances, decorated the place with antiques and loaded the display cases with chocolates and gum drops and nostalgic candies from everybody's childhood. Mary Janes. Mallow Cups. Clark Bars. Chuckles. Chunkys. Jelly beans. The front door of the place became a portal for time travel to our youth. It was irresistible.

When Frances died in 2002, her daughters took over. The place was already a destination point that was known across the state. No, make that across the southeast. There were newspaper articles, television interviews, even a story or two in Our State Magazine. Iconic doesn't even begin to describe the place, or what it means to Lexington. Even though the business is less than 50 years old, it feels like its been here since 1890. And that's intentional. That's the point.

The whole block is essentially an anchor for Uptown Lexington. Shoto's, operated by the Huynh family, has been in business since 2001, and Main Street Deli has been going continuously by the Hearn family since 1978. Bagels and More is the youngest kid on the block, less than 10 years old and is the only bagel shop in town.

•  •  •

The fire could have been worse, although I suspect the Conrads and the Huynhs might feel differently. The roof collapsed on both places, ensuring total destruction. And probably lengthy recovery.

Frankie Nance was standing outside the Army-Navy Store Tuesday morning, directly across the street from The Candy Factory, watching firefighters put out stubborn flames that somehow kept resurrecting themselves.

"This is awful," said Nance, who owns the Army-Navy Store. 

Was he concerned that embers could fly across Main Street and endanger his place?

"You bet I was," said Nance. Full disclosure: he was much more colorful in his answer than I just gave him credit for. 

"I was here this morning when the firefighters opened the door to the Deli," said Nance. "The water came out in a torrent. It was like watching the Mississippi River come through."

Mayor Jason Hayes was also on hand Tuesday morning, taking stock of the disaster to his city.

Will the city help with the recovery of the businesses?

"We're already looking into possible grants," said Hayes. "There are Main Street programs that might offer grants, as well as state-funded fire recovery grants for businesses."

No matter what happens, Lexington's Uptown history took an unexpected turn Tuesday morning. Rebuilding might be problematic for some of these places. How do you bring back creaky wooden floors and brick-and-mortar walls that gave texture to the history of the town? How do you replace one-of-a-kind antiques that silently told us stories about our past?

How does your throat not clench? How do your eyes not water? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China syndrome

I'm not sure what to make of convicted felon and adjudicated rapist president Trump's recent two-day visit to China.

It should have been an opportunity for serious foreign relations in a dangerous world of exploding economies and threats to peace and stability, but all we got, I think, was beans and Boeing.

Maybe. 

As far as I can tell, all that came out of the visit was that China would be purchasing 200 Boeing jets and lots of soybeans.

Apparently, there was no serious discussion about the disputed independent island of Taiwan, whose ownership is a point of contention with Communist Chinese leader Xi Jinping. China doesn't have it, and Xi wants it. This should have been the central focal point of the meeting, but it wasn't.

Well, other than to say that China feels as though the Taiwan question is being mishandled by the United States.

Trump said Xi asked him if the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of conflict. Trump's answer? "I said I don't talk about that."

American diplomacy at its best. I feel so much better now.

But even the sale of Boeing jets seems to be, well, up in the air.

After announcing that China agreed to purchase the planes, Trump began equivocating.

It's the art of equivocation. 

"I sort of, I think it as a commitment," said Trump in his broken grade-school approach to English. "I mean, you know, it was sort of like a statement, but I think it was a commitment. It's a great thing. It's a lot of  jobs."

Great. A definite maybe. He travels to China to improve relations and, by his own words, he's still not sure what he's coming away with. This is the art of the deal? This is leadership?

China hasn't even confirmed the purchases of the jets, as yet. But it's a great thing.

The visit did seem to fuel Trump's excessive ego. He loves nothing more than pageantry, and he got it in China with three ceremonies in two days. There was flag waving and brass bands and a lot of pomp and circumstance.

From this side of the Pacific, it looked like Trump – who brought a passel of family members and corporate CEOs with him, but no China experts – was being rolled tighter than a Spring Roll.

And most of us could see that. 

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is coming to China hot on the heels of Trump's departure. It'll be interesting to see how this visit plays out by comparison. 

History lesson

I was gifted a book not too long ago by a friend of mine titled "The Road That Made America." It's about the Great Wagon Road (or the Great Trading Path), written as a revealing first-person account by North Carolina author James Dodson.

This was an intriguing read, mostly because of what I knew about the Great Wagon Road dealt primarily with my Moravian heritage. The road, which began as a single-trail transportation artery in the 1700s, gradually evolved to become, as the book flap describes, "America's first technology highway" and became a precursor to the nation's Industrial Age.

Moravians, who founded Bethlehem, Pa. on Christmas Eve in 1741, used the trail to travel south to a tract of land called Wachovia and established Bethabara on Nov. 17, 1753. Bethabara eventually spawned Salem, and then Winston-Salem.

The road is nearly 800 miles long, ranging from Philadelphia to Augusta, Ga.

Dodson found himself shadowing the trail in a multi-year quest to find more details on his family history, and this is what his book is about. He speaks with museum curators, historians, B&B owners and anyone else who has a sublime knowledge of the road. There are discussions about the Conestoga wagon, McCormick's thresher, Woodrow Wilson and other facets of interest along the road. It's great stuff.

Then I came to a chapter entitled "The Past Cannot Be Unremembered." Look, I like to think of myself as pretty well-read on American history. It's hard not to be when you've lived most of your life in the cradle of the country's democracy and traveled the Great Wagon Road numerous times myself without even  knowing I was on it.

But this particular chapter was eye-opening. It was about the Slave Trail of Tears.

I never heard of the Slave Trail of Tears. It was never taught to me in school or in college. It is not to be confused with the Trail of Tears, that 1830s abomination created by President Andrew Jackson to relocate approximately 60,000 Native Americans, mostly from the Cherokee tribe in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, to what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Essentially, it was a government-approved program of ethnic cleansing in the United States.

But the Slave Trail of Tears is something completely different. Google it. According to what Dodson learned, the Slave Trail of Tears is the greatest migration of a peoples in American history. Dodson quotes an excerpt from a narrative written by Edward Ball for Smithsonian Magazine in November 2015.

Now I'm quoting it:

"The Slave Trail of Tears is that great missing migration – a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them Black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South – Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky – to the Deep South – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama ... [a forced resettlement that was] 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson's "Indian removal" campaign of the 1830s ... bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century and even the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900."

What? What? How come this doesn't get into the classrooms? How come this isn't seen on roadside historical markers? Smacks of the sanitation of our history by a bunch of white... oh, wait. Never mind.

Then Dodson digs up another quote from Ball (a White man), detailing the role the Great Wagon Trail had here:

"The gang headed down the Great Wagon Road, a route that came from Pennsylvania, already some centuries old. ... Along the way, the coffle (a coffle is usually a group of enslaved people chained together) met other slave gangs, construction crews rebuilding the Wagon Road, widening it to 22 feet and putting down gravel. They were turning out the new Valley Turnpike, a macadam surface with ditches at the side. ... Today the Great Wagon Road, or Valley Turnpike, is known as U.S. Route 11, a two-lane road that runs between soft and misty mountains and pretty byways. Long stretches of Route 11 look much like the Valley Turnpike did in the 1830s – rolling fields, horses and cattle on hills. ... Today, a few plantations survive. I stop at one of the oldest, Belle Grove. ... Relatives of President James Madison put up the stone mansion of Belle Grove during the 1790s and it lives on as a fine house museum run by historian Kristen Laise. ... Thanks to Laise, Belle Grove is not a house museum that shorts the story of slaves."

Then Ball ends his narrative with the sentence, "The past cannot be unremembered."

I can't believe I'm in my seventh decade and never knew this stuff.

I bring all of this up – the Great Wagon Road and some of the history behind it – because of where we are in our own moment of time. We're about to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation, which was theoretically (and ideologically) built on the principles that all men are created equal.

And yet, we're a nation that had to endured one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever in Dred Scott in which African-Americans were declared non-citizens. We're going through court-approved gerrymandering that diminishes the strength of the Civil Rights acts and Black representation in government. We're seeing a rewriting of American history that would love to wipe out any mention of slavery. In the meantime, the American demographic is turning browner and browner, which apparently frightens a lot of white people who are afraid of losing power and control over them.

We are at a crossroads on our own Great American Trail. 

 

 

 

 

 

The eyes have it

"Basically, you have two options," explained Dr. Charles Richards, an opthalmologist at Piedmont Retina Specialists in Winston-Salem, after a brief exam of my wife's, Kim, right eye.

"We can do nothing for several months," he said, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Or we can operate."

Operate? Wait. You mean, like eye surgery?

You could have scraped me up off the floor. I'm pretty squeamish about eye stuff. I don't even do eye drops very well.

Kim immediately after surgery.

 "You don't have to decide right now," said Dr. Richards. "Take the weekend to think about it. If you decide to have the surgery, call us next week and we'll set up an appointment."

The surgery was for something called macular pucker, the child's primer description for those of us who are not opthalmologists. As Dr. Richards explained it, macular pucker is when the retina develops a wrinkle on the membrane, a result of the aging process. It can cause blurry or fuzzy vision in the eye. "There are no drugs or drops to treat it," said Dr. Richards. "Surgery is the only way."

I got up off the floor and raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"Is it laser surgery?" I asked, hoping to calm Kim's anxiety. And mine. She's squeamish about eye stuff, too. Laser surgery didn't sound too invasive. I mean, this is her eye we're talking about.

"No, it's mechanical," replied Dr. Richards and I immediately had thoughts of little hammers and chisels and scalpels at the ready as if we were still living in the Paleolithic Period of medicine.

"Oh, OK," I said, nodding my head like I knew what he was talking about. There might have been further conversation at that point, but I'm not sure. I really didn't hear anything after the words "eye surgery."

Kim 24 hours after eye surgery.

 On the drive home, Kim and I tossed around the idea about having the procedure. Finally, Kim kind of surprised me.

"Let's go ahead," she said. "I just want to get this behind me. But don't tell anybody. I don't want the attention."

So of course, the first thing I did was tell everybody I knew. One of them was Larry Lyon, my former editor at The Dispatch who, in mid-life, became a Presbyterian minister. He's retired now, but his advice was sage. "Be calm for Kim," said Larry.

I have no idea how he knew by that point I was running wildly through the house screaming "Eye surgery! Eye surgery!" while waving my hands in the air. I was a mess. But I did settle down after that.

So we made the appointment. On Wednesday, we checked into Medical Park Hospital in Winston-Salem at 5:15 a.m., where the procedure would take place. By 7, we were called into the pre-op, where we met the attending nurses and the anesthesiologist. Then Dr. Richards came in with some soothing words.

We were set to go.

I had a book with me and I was prepared to knock off a chapter or two, but about 20 minutes later the waiting room monitor came up to me. "Kim's back and she's waiting for you."

Huh? Already? My colon surgery several years ago took more than three hours.

Dr. Richards came into the post-op cubicle and told us that everything went well. "She did great," he said.

Kim later told me that she never felt a thing, even though she was under a conscious local anesthesia that was delivered intravenously. She remembers having a bit of a coughing spell during the procedure and hearing Dr. Richards tell her, "Let me know when you're done coughing so we can continue."

Oh, my.

When I got into her cubicle, she was awake and, well, smiling. She was wearing a protective eye shield held on to her face with yards of medical adhesive tape. She looked like a pirate. Shortly thereafter, we were discharged.

We were home before lunch. What a morning. Kim promptly went to bed and slept for several hours. That gave me time to think about what had just happened:

My wife just had eye surgery, the first surgery she's had of any kind. She was at times nervous, scared and afraid. In spite of all this, it was her decision to proceed. She confronted her fears and conquered them full on. I thought she was incredibly brave.

She's my hero. 

 

Send in the clowns...

 "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you."

               – Jules Winnfield, a fictitious character reciting fictitious Bible verse remotely based on Ezekiel 25:17 in the movie Pulp Fiction.

               –  Also, Pete Hegseth, erstwhile Secretary of Defense, reciting fictitious Bible verse during a Pentagon prayer service last Wednesday.

 "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."

               – Ezekiel 25:17 (KJV) 

 So this is where we are.

Pete Hegseth, our pompous, self-righteous, full-of-himself Secretary of Defense, is now leading Pentagon officials in prayer by reciting a passage from the movie "Pulp Fiction" when he actually thought he was quoting Ezekiel 25:17.

A quick scan of the room showed some uniformed officials with heads bowed, eyes closed, as if Hegseth knew what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he did.

The context for the actual scripture is said to deal with foreign nations who gloated over the destruction of Judah. It's supposed to emphasize God's role in executing justice. Hegseth somehow thinks this verse – either the cinematic or the Biblical – justifies the United States' current military misadventure in Iran.

Meanwhile, as this Hegseth nonsense continues, there are reports that the U.S military is dealing with morale issues, specifically a lack of proper rations aboard several ships deployed in the region. The U.S. Navy denies these claims, but just the suggestion that troops are being poorly fed might raise concerns about morale. The military, after all, marches on its stomach.

Navy chow. Yummm. (USA Today).

 Complicating matters is that the U.S. Postal Service has indefinitely suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the attacks on Iran, so for the time being, military families can't even send care packages to their relatives in uniform.

I guess you can believe Hegseth when he tells us there are no issues with morale, but I have a hard time believing anything this arrogant clown says. So do I believe there are substandard meals being served to sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli? I do.

 While all this mess (pun intended? Maybeeeee) is going on, we have the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance warning Pope Leo XIV (warning?) that he, the Pope, should be careful when talking about theology.

OMG.

Vance apparently is upset that the pope is not in alignment with the administration's war of choice against Iran. You know, the war where children are blown to bits in their elementary school and civilians are killed by the thousands. Instead, Pope Leo responded with Blessed are the Peacemakers and pointed out that Jesus "is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs."

Vance, citing World War II as an example, said, "I think it's very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."

This statement got a rise out of Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "When he (the pope) talks about matters of theology? Isn't that his job?"

Indeed.

The week didn't let up. We also learned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, continued his fascination with road kill. In a new book titled "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise," revealed in a diary entry that he stopped his car on a New York highway in 2001 to cut out the genitals of a dead raccoon for further study, all while his kids waited patiently in the car.

So here's Kennedy, the vaccine denier who holds the very health of the nation in his hands (I hoped he washed them first), adding another chapter to his dead animal fetish. He's fascinated by dead seagull corpses. He once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale. And he confessed to dropping a dead bear cub off in Central Park make it look like it was killed by a bicyclist (who I assumed would be pedaling as fast as he could in the opposite direction).

Then we learn that FBI Director Kash Patel's alcohol problem has staffers concerned about his well being. Apparently, according to a story in The Atlantic, Patel has dealt with bouts of excessive drinking, at times allegedly locking himself in a room.

These are the leaders of some of the most important departments in our government. All of this should make my head explode. Except that it already exploded several years ago.

Only 198 days until midterm elections.

Release the unredacted Epstein files.