Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can is a 2002 movie Cliff and I watched on Netflix last night and thoroughly enjoyed.  It was funny, almost impossible to believe, and yet it was for the most part a true story based on a book written by the man portrayed by the  main character.  As we watched it, I faintly recalled reading about those happenings in the newspaper, but that would have been in the 1970's.  The man is Frank W. Abagnale, who began his life of crime at the age of 17 years old.  

"Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks, all before he was twenty-one."

I did a lot of googling when the movie was over and found out he's alive and well.  I checked to find out the library has the book the movie is based on, and I can't wait to read it, because the book is always better than the movie.

Way back then, there was a show called To Tell the Truth; there's a clip of that show that played in a scene near the beginning of the movie, so this morning I watched the whole thing on Youtube.  I'm placing it here because I know Cliff will want to watch it when he wakes up, so  he  can see the real person instead of Leonardo DiCaprio. 

I strongly recommend it.  It's hard for me to find a movie I really like, but this one fills the bill.  

And that's all I'll say about that.  Most likely,  all of you have seen it by now.

One more thing:  Cliff and I just watched a Johnny Carson show that had Frank as a guest.  It's very  interesting too.  Here's the LINK.

I miss summer already

We've had a hard freeze this week, but now we're having highs in the 60's.  I intend to get the garden cleanup started this afternoon.  I need to get the dead plants out of there.  I think it's too soon to put straw on the strawberries.  I doubt the soil temps are consistently below 40 yet.

Here's what I found with Goggle:

Apply straw mulch over the plants in the late fall, once the plants are dormant and soil temperatures are consistently below 40°F.Spring care of June-bearing cultivars begins with mulch removal in mid-April to early May.Remove straw in the spring when the soil temperature reaches 40°F and the first new leaves begin growing.

Wednesday Cliff and I got the current Covid shot.  The next day we both felt lousy.  Not sick, but I had a runny  nose and a throat tickle that made me cough, and Cliff just didn't feel good; in fact, he called and rescheduled his yearly appointment with his cardiologist.  By evening we were back to normal.  I've heard people saying that some shots have made them feel bad, but I've only ever had achey arms from the shot until this one.  We got our first shingles vaccine a month ago, and Cliff said he felt punk for a couple of days then, too.  We agreed that from now on we won't get any more vaccine shots on the day before a doctor's appointment, or any other scheduled plans.

I don't have much of anything interesting to say, so I'm going back to the book I'm reading, Black Boy... a book published in 1945.  I don't know how it happened, but lately every book I read is about the suffering of the African Americans.  Before this one I read Warmth of Other Suns. Before that one was Dreamland burning.  I really didn't plan it this way; some of the books had been on hold for quite awhile.  I'm learning to understand how bad they had it.  

Here's a funny  thing.  Yesterday I finally got a very popular book that's been on hold for a long time, not really knowing what it was about.  I looked it up after it showed up on my Libby  app, and here's how it was described: "Salvage the Bones is a simple, yet powerful story about a poor black family living in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi."

I guess Somebody Up There must be wanting me to understand the suffering these people went through, but it's really hard to read about people who treated their fellow human beings far worse than they would treat a dog.