On The Marquee

       Visiting son Charlie in Southern California at this time of year has lots of perks.  The weather, of course, is the most obvious.  It has been sunny and warm – in the mid-seventies during the day – while we have noticed on our handy-dandy i-phones that it is rainy and twenty degrees cooler in Oysterville.
     Along with the weather, of course, go the flowers in bloom, the lemons and oranges on the trees, ripe for the picking.  People in their shorts and shirt sleeves look tan and fit and energetic and, somehow, I feel more upbeat, as well.
     Another of the perks, however, has to do specifically with visiting Charlie.  As a member of the Screenwriters’ Guild (he’s an animation script writer – remember “Pinky and the Brain”?), he has free passes to films which are under consideration for the Academy Awards.  He had not yet been to see “True Grit” so yesterday afternoon we took it in at a matinee in Pasadena.
     We loved it – especially the very formal use of English which happens if you leave contractions out of your spoken language.  It made me wonder how long we’ve used contractions (for always according to what I could find out online) and how texting is gradually changing even our spoken vocabulary and what implications there are for the future.
     And then I wondered if these sorts of thoughts are what they are talking about when they say that “travel broadens one.”  Probably not.