It's been a while since I blogged. Could be years 'til I tweet, twit, whatever. Elizabeth Taylor's tweeting for Goodness sake. I believe I did twice. But why would anyone care about the installation of my shower door? I cared, because it cost me $795. But unless you were comparison shopping...

Public services for Michael Jackson were held today. Brooke Shields seemed to a real friend. I was moved that M.J.'s favorite song was the same as mine. Isn't that something? Charlie Chaplin's Smile from City Lights. Isn't that something? If only they had played the tape of Judy Garland's performance of the song. Oh, well. Perhaps the moment that over shadowed all - for me, perhaps equaled the two just mentioned - was Jackson's daughter's standing brave before the mike to say her daddy was the best in the world. That may not have been our first thought of the entertainer, but that the best friend, the best song, and the best daddy were all there today made M.J.'s last performance the real thriller of his life.

The tears that gushed today were from a film. Shenandoah. A reverent tale of a Virginia farmer who stays clear of the Civil War. But the war comes to him, ravaging his family. 1965. James Stewart. A huge talent who protected his gifts and gave of them unselfishly. Stewart was a brigadier general in the US Air Force Reserve. He would fly as an observer and additional pilot on one B-52 mission in Vietnam as part of his reserve duty a year after the film's release. Stewart's own son would be killed in action in Vietnam as a US Marine Corps officer a few years later.

Stewart loses much of his family while searching for "the boy," his youngest son who had been grabbed by Union soldiers who insisted he was a Confederate, because he was wearing a discarded cap he found and liked without knowing its origin. When his remaining family is spent, Stewart decides to go home, explaining their search thus far.

"If we don't try, we don't do, and if we don't do, why are we here?"

In the final scene, a repeat of the opening, the family arrives late at church, creating a stir. As the congregation begins its second hymn, the back doors open with the boy leaning on a crutch to compensate for his leg wounded in battle.

Shenandoah is a prayer against war. Something on which to lean every time we call up troops. There better be a damn good reason. But there never is. There never is. War is like a California wildfire: once started, it is almost impossible to end.

To get through almost any day we need crutches. Life is just that hard. But a magical performance by Jimmy Stewart, a performance nearly fifty years old now, the dreamlike dancing of Michael Jackson that moves from side to side in your brain, the beauty of a true friend and the unvarnished love of a daughter make a hard, tearful day almost bearable, leaning on a Smile.