Today is Saturday, October 1, 2022. Yesterday I was not seen here because of my attending a Yankees game in the evening with Elliot. We had a dinner reservation at Sylvia’s in Harlem at 5, then from there, we took the subway to iconic Yankee Stadium. Even though we experienced a few glitches with taking the right train to 125th Street (we took the D train in Manhattan which left us about 15 minutes away from Malcolm X. Boulevard where the restaurant was located) and almost getting on the wrong train to take us to the stadium – we are forever grateful to a woman straphanger who told us to get off the 3 train to take, instead, the 2 to 149th Street and the Grand Concourse where we switched to the 4 upstairs. We arrived at the stadium a little after 7 where we had to join a long line of ticket holders before being able to enter the stadium. The second glitch occurred when I tried to present a paper copy of our tickets to the ticket taker who said I needed to show him a digital version of the tickets on my phone. So I just got off the line awhile and took pictures of the tickets and then reentered the line. This time our tickets were accepted.

We didn’t enter the stadium until about 7:20 and we had to walk up ramp after ramp (we failed to find an elevator to take us up to our seats) to get to our section, which was 216, right behind home plate. We easily found the row we were in, but we sat at two different seats since somebody must have been sitting in our seats in the row. We didn’t bother to ask someone to get up, but we should have because, close to 9 p.m., two people first approached our row and claimed we were sitting in their seats. So at that time, we got up and walked to the back of the stadium and found two seats in the last row. Thank God no one came up to us then to claim those seats. We only stayed until about the 7th inning when the score was 2 to 1 in favor of the opposing team, the Baltimore Orioles. We did see the remarkable Aaron Judge at bat, but he did not score another home run this time. As any baseball fan would know, Judge hit his 61st home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto on Wednesday, September 28, tying Roger Maris’s home run record. We were at the stadium two days later.

We thought the stadium was quite full. In terms of COVID-19, I still wore a mask throughout the game, while I saw many baseball fans without them. Elliot preferred to go maskless this time.

The only downbeat associated with the game occurred during the seventh inning when “God Bless America” was played and everyone stood up to remove their hats and caps in obeisance to the patriotic lyrics encapsulated within. However, a man standing next to us responded by not removing his cap immediately. Within minutes, two people shouted at him to take his cap off – a man and a woman. Eventually, the man did cave in and removed his cap. This moment illustrated, to me, the overarching reach of the jingoistic police as exemplified by those two angry Yankees fans. Who are they to demand compliance from other people toward removing their head covering? I just thought this was too extreme an occasion of patriotic belligerence. Maybe this man had a reason for not removing his cap right away. We’ll never know since he decided not to resist the call to take off his cap. I thought for a moment that this could have escalated into a fistfight or who knows what. I’m glad it didn’t.

Except for that one incident, Elliot and I got home without any issue – around 10:40 or so. We did experience a problem with the E not running at 53rd Street, so we took the 6 to 59th Street, where we transferred to the R train. We then switched eventually to the E at Jackson Heights. By the way, both commutes into the city and into Queens boasted crowded train cars. It was almost like it was before the pandemic. Ridership has had to have increased within the last few months, I would presume.

So there was my evening out with Elliot in all of its tumult and chaos. The food at Sylvia’s was good; I had the spare ribs, while Elliot had their famous chicken. My two sides, potato salad (there was no garlic mashed potatoes anymore) and macaroni and cheese, were very good. We also had very tasty corn muffins served with our meal. I learned that the restaurant was celebrating its 60th year in business from reading what was written on the menu. The interior was not glitzy at all; the room had dim lighting and many, many photographs on the wall.

As for shedding more light on the film I saw the other day, God’s Country, I now have the time to report more about it. The film, as I later learned, is based on a short story by author James Lee Burke called “Winter Light,” and was developed into a film by cowriter and director Julian Higgins, who was dismayed by the surge of racism, sexism, and misogyny transpiring in the country in the last few years to adapt the story into a record of one woman’s fight against such toxic forces in the open spaces of Montana. Higgins changed the original protagonist of the story, a retired white male, into a fortysomething Black female, played by Thandiwe Newton, who confronts a couple of hunters trespassing on her property. The face-off escalates into a volatile situation in this modern-day Western that really sticks with you long after the end credits pass by.

Newton plays college professor Sandra Guidry who lives alone in the snowy rural American West, where her isolated home lies nestled among the towering trees and mountainous landscape. The film opens with the death of Sandra’s elderly mother, who relocated from New Orleans against her wishes at the insistence of her daughter. So Sandra is initially dealing with her grief over her deceased mother as the movie opens.

The protagonist of the film has only a dog to keep her company; he accompanies her on her daily runs through the woods. Her mourning is temporarily buried in her focus on establishing a diverse environment at the small university where she teaches. Soon she discovers that the all-white and mostly male faculty are not so progressive as she originally thought.

The action of the film begins slowly with the discovery of a red pickup truck parked in Sandra’s driveway. The unoccupied vehicle belongs to brothers Nathan (Joris Jarsky) and Samuel (Jefferson White), hunters who trespassed on her property to gain access to the nearby woods. She first leaves a note on the truck’s windshield, asking them to kindly not park on her property. You would think that she had every right to do this, but tensions escalate when she confronts them when they come down from the mountain, and one of the brothers makes a sexual innuendo to Sandra’s face, as his brother holds him back.

Of course, that is not the end of the confrontation between Sandra and her trespassers. In dealing with the ever-escalating situation, Sandra confronts the ugliness of racism, misogyny, and the ole-boy network where the acting sheriff is reluctant to do anything about her problem with the two locals. At one point, Sandra discovers even that her department head is chummy with the two hunters who have been harassing her.

An online film critic, Robert Roten, offers his take on what the film’s message is basically about. He writes, “It is a cautionary tale about a society where certain people do not respect others, but at the same time insist on privileges and respect as a birthright which they have not actually earned. That is the root of this drama. It is also the root of forces that are tearing this country apart.”

The title of the film, Roten points out, harkens to many places around the United States that are called “God’s Country.” He adds insightfully, “One thing they all have in common is that most of the people who live there just happen to have white skin. That may have something to do with the title of this movie.”

You’ve probably noticed by now that I did not write about current events or the political sphere. I deliberately left that out because it’s Saturday and I’m too depressed over what I’m hearing and reading anyway. I hope you don’t mind.

Have a good Sunday.

Stay safe and be well.