Walked Kimball, ate breakfast, then had a fine day with Ellen and Ronnie. El picked me up at 10:30 and we drove to Simi Valley for the Titanic exhibit at the Reagan Library. The setting is just gorgeous, with far, far vistas of mountains and hills stretching in every direction. I've been there before, but still thrill to the scenery.
What we didn't bargain for were the crowds. There were just thousands of people there--Trump fans, all, probably--and we had to park way down the high hill from the place. Luckily, there were shuttles and we got one very quickly. When we got to place itself, though, we waited in various lines for a total of--I kid you not--roughly an hour and a half. However, we finally got it and had an enjoyable day.
Incredibly though, the Titanic exhibit was ninety percent the movie, for Pete's sake. I find it disturbing that so much of history is rewritten, reshaped, and fictionalized into a kind of bastard stepchild of fact. Movies out right now include the Queen Victoria one (which Nancy and I saw a few weeks ago) and something called "Finest Hour" with a resurrected Winston Churchill. Not long ago, there was one on Jackie Kennedy. Doesn't anybody read or view actual fact anymore? But we enjoyed it, especially the relatively small room with actual artifacts and information about the ship. It's amusing that the "fiction, not fact" thing carries over into Reagan's personal background: In the entire enormous place, there's just one mention--on a cardboard about 8 by 10--of his first wife, Jane Wyman and his first two children. Nancy's influence, no doubt. The Reagan Library itself is a monument to an intellectual pygmy who got lucky in life. It's just impossible to be there and not have Shelley's Ozymandias come to mind.
Got home about 5:00. Betty called and she'll come today; Carolyn will bring her and she'll stay over two nights, then Steven will pick her up on Friday.
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