"Promised Land" with Frances McDormand and Matt Damon (2012)

Matt Damon and Frances McDormand both shine in this true to life story about a large energy firm coming to a small town with promises of big bucks for everyone who leases their land to the company for fracking. Damon plays Steve Butler, a hard charging rising star at Global Energy. His job is to visit towns which have the potential for natural gas deposits beneath the surface and then buy the lease rights from the cash strapped farmers with nothing left to sell but their futures.

There is a rumpled high school teacher Frank Yates; played with great effect by Hal Holbrook; in the town who shows up at the very first meeting between the residents and Steve Butler. He talks about the science behind fracking and why it is not in the best long term interests of the town. Steve challenges his assertions, only to become aware the teacher is really a retired MIT Engineer who teaches high school because he is bored.

As Steve and his partner, Sue Thomason, become more involved in the town they are drawn to different people. She is drawn to the local gun shop owner, while Steve is falling for a local school teacher named Alice; played by Rosemarie DeWitt;  he has met. These relationships have a way of undercutting Global’s sales pitch, and also manage to get under Steve’s skin as he comes to realize the full impact of what he is doing to another small town like the one in which he was raised.

When an unexpected environmental activist shows up to tell the town about all the dangers inherent in fracking, Steve is unnerved to the point of blowing the assignment. His partner has no such scruples, and is willing to continue in their efforts to deceive the town.

What happens next is unexpected and revealing. It puts a fine edge on the growing debate about fracking and what it means to the people who live in the areas affected. This is an important film to see as it tackles the issue in a way that is more revealing than just watching the news.

Very well written and directed, this film may not change your mind, but it will make you think about your opinion on fracking.

  

Me and Sue - Viva la Difference.

Sue and I have been married for a few decades now; and when you explore the differences in our respective childhoods, that’s pretty amazing, since we both could not have been brought up in places which were more different from one another. I’m a city kid, born and raised in Brooklyn; while Sue was born in Scotland, Pennsylvania; a small village outside of Chambersburg; which is just northeast of Gettysburg. That fact alone; having to explain; geographically where Sue is from, serves to underscore the differences; some good, some bad; in the ways in which we were raised.

Just look at Sue, in August of 1958; not yet 4 years old; swinging happily on the edge of the hayfield which bordered her Grandfather’s house. This was definitely a rural area, with an economy to match. Doors were unlocked and crime was relatively rare.

The nearest “town” was Chambersburg, located on Lincoln Highway, Route 30, and was where the residents of Scotland went, for the most part, to shop and run errands. It was an insular world; crossing the street was not something to really worry about; there weren’t all that many cars roaming the streets of Scotland during the day. Most of the residents with automobiles would have been at work until the evening. One set of her grandparents actually had a farm! It was, as they say, a simpler time and place.

Now, here I am, at the same age, in August 1958, mailing a letter. There were 4 different Post Offices within walking distance, but for the sake of efficiency we had mailboxes on each corner. The mail was picked up 3 times a day. Crossing the street was an art to be learned, and not taken for granted. Just look at the width of Kings Highway at Bedford Avenue. It’s got a service lane on each side; for deliveries and parking; bracketed by islands for the bus stops, and in between were two lanes in each direction.

In Scotland, Pennsylvania they got 3 TV stations. And even those were hard to tune in, as Scotland rests in between some mountains, necessitating an aerial “tower” for the TV in order to get a good signal. I remember going up on the roof of our building in Brooklyn with my Dad, this was about 1957, and watching him install our TV antennae by simply pointing it towards the Empire State Building; with its huge broadcast antennae; clearly visible about 10 miles away. And, at night, we even got channels from Philadelphia.

Food was very different in our lives growing up. Where I grew up the constant question was “What do you want to eat?”  Our choices ranged from Chinese to Italian, Jewish, Hungarian, Algerian, French and whatever other nationalities lived in the city. I once counted 30 different ethnic restaurants while walking with my Uncle in Manhattan. Sue shocked me when she revealed that she had not eaten Chinese Food; other than Chung King; until she moved to Baltimore in her late 20’s. I cannot even imagine that. And the first Chinese restaurant finally did arrive in Chambersburg about 1980.  

On the other hand, Sue has no recollection of the Teamster’s strike in 1960; nor should she. She grew up in an area in which they all grew their food locally, and simply trucked it by pickup to the local marketplace. During that same time in New York, we faced a severe shortage of eggs, butter, milk and meat. Sue’s Mom canned vegetables and fruits; mine went to the store and bought them frozen.

Transportation was also a big difference in our upbringings. The bus pulled up right behind where I am standing in this picture. It cost a dime and the driver issued you a “transfer” to connect with other lines which ran perpendicular to the one you were riding. You could literally; as with the subways; travel all day on one dime, connecting to each borough. You could even use your bus transfer to change over to the subway lines at certain points, making the trip even longer. The Boy Scouts used to do this annually, and I remember the record for the subway lines alone was 25 hours on a single 10 cent token. There may have been a bus line connecting York, Pennsylvania to Chambersburg, but I’m not really sure.

Culturally, our two worlds were galaxies away from one another. I grew up in an area where there were all kinds of languages and customs being observed by many different ethnic groups. We had Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic Churches and Jewish synagogues, not to mention a couple of Pagodas. While the United Nations was merely a clip on the evening news in Pennsylvania, it was a center of cultural diversity in New York, spilling out into all 5 boroughs of the city, spawning the myriad of foods and languages to which I was privy.

All differences aside, we did manage to find one another. The big secret? In the photo above I’m actually mailing her a letter, introducing myself, but which never arrived until we were much older.