Another Coincidence?

It's a twister, It's a twister
(Image obtained from www.weather.com)

    Recently I posted a article about being amazed and seeing the same camera shot in a tv show and movie I had happened to watch back to back. Well just yesterday I came across a similar situation, this time involving StarTalk and the movie Places in the Heart.

    StarTalk is a podcast hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. There are different segments, including live town halls with guests(though not recently due to covid) and others that have a specific theme. I subscribe to the channel on youtube, and if I may put in a plug for it, it’s a channel I think you should subscribe to as well. It’s very educational of course but also very entertaining. Neil gets very excited talking about science. The particular show I was watching is called Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains and is co-hosted by comedian Chuck Nice, who does a good job of throwing down the humor. The segment was called Force vs Pressure. In one part he talks about how when there is a tornado, the air around it has very low pressure and if it descends near a house, the pressure inside the house will be greater than outside. There is no equilibrium between the air inside and outside. The result is there will be enough force to blow out the walls of the house, “turning it into matchsticks” as Chuck had said. I did not know this. I thought tornadoes just rip roofs off, spin cows in the air and send houses to OZ. I guess they do some of those things but I never thought that it could explode a house. This brings us to Places in the Heart.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Places in the Heart is a 1984 movie starring Sally Field. She won her second Oscar for her performance. It’s the one where in her acceptance speech she said, “ ...And I can’t deny the fact you like me. Right now you like me!" So I watched the StarTalk episode in the afternoon, then in the evening I searched through the streaming services and came across this movie. It was another moment where I said, “Why the hell not.” I had never seen it but I did remember when it came out and that Ms Field won the Oscar. I had no idea what it was about. It takes place during the great depression era in a segregated small Texas town called Waxahachie. Sally Field’s husband is a sheriff who gets killed in the line of duty. Now with no income, in all probability she will have to sell her farm or be forced off it. With the help of a drifter, played by Danny Glover, who has the knowledge of how to plant and cultivate cotton, she eventually is able to pay her mortgage and keep the bankers at bay. In the middle of the movie there is a tornado. Everybody is running around and looking for shelter. In one segment, because of the tornado, because of the low/high pressure there are a few shots of some houses exploding just as Tyson described they would a few hours earlier. Now of course anyone familiar with tornadoes or who grew up in tornado country is probably well aware of this phenomenon. Certainly the producers were, since they included those two shots to show the devastation that tornadoes inflict. As I said I had not known that, but I had just learned about earlier in the day and now here it is that the first movie I picked to watch, a random pick mind you, shows this very thing that Tyson had mentioned.

"Right now you like me!" Sally Field 

    Maybe others wouldn’t be astounded at this. Or maybe they would just give a little chuckle and move on. With me I’m going on about how this occurrence is a sign or clue. That I must find some meaning to it. And to take it further, if it is a sign or clue, who’s giving it? It seems rather preposterous that there would be some force, some supreme being, some higher power, who has arranged for me to watch these events and conclude some sort meaning out of them. But yet I still ponder them and wonder about the probability. I should also admit I get very excited when I’m reading an article, while the TV or radio is on, or a youtube video and as I read a word, let’s say “longevity”, somebody on one of these mediums says the word “longevity”. I guess it doesn’t take much to get me going. Maybe these two incidents, this tornado thing and the similar camera shot should be examined together and not separately. Maybe in the coming weeks and months there will be more of these coincidences or clues. Maybe by the end I will solve the riddles of life. Well at least it’s something to do during covid.