1/2/2014 Items

1.  We watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last night.  It’s an excellent movie, but it was uncomfortable for me to watch.  I was hoping that there would be peace and mutual understanding between the humans and the apes.  Caesar was fair-minded as the leader of the apes, and so was Malcolm on the human side.  But I knew that peaceful, tolerant co-existence was not to be.  And I dreaded what was about to come.

Incidentally, Rise of the Planet of the Apes also made me uncomfortable.  I just don’t like seeing animals being abused.

2.  Mario Cuomo passed on.  I have long known about him.  I first heard of him through a book of 1988 political cartoons that I loved to read and reread when I was a kid, since there was speculation that he would run for President that year.  Cuomo was also the father of my state’s current governor, Andrew Cuomo.

I don’t know much about his governorship, but I have been reading that he was able to balance the budget and lower the state income tax, all while making a society that cared for the vulnerable and marginalized.  I wonder how he did that!