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The neighbors are on the warpath. What’s a homesteader to do?

You carve out and clear a swath of land from the forest – back breaking work to say the least – then you struggle to put up a house, capture and save water, and grow a few meager crops. It’s an ongoing battle to keep out rodents, stay warm in the winter, and if you need to go shopping for supplies,  it’s next to impossible, as there’s no nearby shops. Besides that, as I said, you’ve got to worry about those troublesome neighbors on the warpath.

Such is life in upstate New York. In 1757. (more…)

It is early 1969. The colorful word counter-culture had begun to creep into your consciousness. Your name is Dennis Hopper. You are 33 years old and have a growing acting career. But you haven’t gotten ‘there‘ yet. Stardom is still around a few more corners. Somehow you, fellow actor Peter Fonda, along with writer Terry Southern write a screenplay for a movie about hippies, bikers, pot, and the freedom of the open road. You’ve hounded enough suits or backers to raise about $400,000. A paltry sum by Hollywood standards even then, in 1969, but enough to enable the production to begin with you as the film’s director. The movie is entitled Easy Rider; and becomes a runaway success, both artistically as well as at the box office. It would become the definitive counter-culture road movie.

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way

40 years later, Steppenwolf’s classic Born to Be Wild, still comes to mind as the anthem of Easy Rider. Powerful music and a powerful film, thank you Mr. Hopper. So Dennis Hopper went from being a rather unconventional actor to being a sought-after, fair-haired, wunderkind. Ka-ching! But success is quite hard to sustain, and Hopper went from being an A-List actor/director to someone whose work and personal life headed downhill. He became someone who might be found at a rehab center during the aftermath following Easy Rider’s release and rise.

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Recently I watched the movie, The Hunt for Red October (1990). This is a real man’s movie filled with submarine warfare, geo-politics and its offspring – political brinksmanship, as well as great heaping gobs of pure testosterone. There’s no sex or romance in this tale, in fact there may not even be any speaking roles for women in the movie.

As the movie begins, we learn that the Captain of The Red October, which is the USSR’s newest and most technologically advanced nuclear powered submarine, has disobeyed his orders, and is heading for the United States. The question is – is he defecting or is he a madman who will bring about Armegeddon by firing nuclear war heads at major US coastal cities?

Sean Connery portrays the Russian submarine Captain Marko Ramius whose real mission is to defect to the United States and bring with him the invaluable submarine and most of its officers. We learn this from a discussion at a dinner in the Captain’s Mess aboard the Red October.

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