Wayback Wednesday: 1970s Events

Wayback Wednesday: 1970s Events

Pixabay/Brigitte Werner

I turned nine years old in 1970, and by the time the decade ended had graduated from high school. Most elementary school children aren’t attuned to national events, however, dinner discussions in our house didn’t seem to have limits, so I remember many of the incidents that occurred.

Failure of the Penn Central Railroad line, at the time the largest bankruptcy in the US started off the decade and a few months later, as an extension of the Vietnam War the U.S. invaded Cambodia. In May, four Kent State University students were killed and nine wounded during an anti-war rally. The following year saw additional anti-war rallies occurring outside the White House in Washington, D.C. Many people don’t realize is that America had involved since shortly after WWII, but by 1969 more than half a million troops had been stationed in Vietnam. By the time the US withdrew in 1973, over five million servicemen and women had served. President Jimmy Carter pardoned the war’s draft dodgers in 1977.

Scandal erupted in Washington, DC in 1972 with the Watergate incident, followed by President

Nixon’s resignation and Vice President Ford taking his place as president. Intriguingly, by November of 1972, the Dow Jones broke 1000 for the very first time.

Just after the U.S. bicentennial, on July 20, 1976, Viking 1 separated from the orbiter to touch down on the Chryse Planitia region of Mars, sending back the first close-up photographs of the surface. In September, Viking 2 entered the Mars orbit where it assisted Viking 1 with capturing images, eventually sending back more than 1,400 images.

Pixabay/Marcus Distelrath

For the most part, 1979 was a frightening year, beginning in March with the incident at Three-Mile Island during which equipment failures and a stuck open relief valve prevented the removal of heat from the Unit 2 reactor’s core. Inadequate cooling water to the core caused it to overheat and suffer a partial meltdown resulting in radioactive material being released. Subsequent tests and studies indicate there were no detectable health effects on plant workers or surrounding public.

Fall saw sixty-six American citizens taken from the U.S. embassy in Iran by militants. Fifty-two of the individuals would be held for more than a year. In December, the USSR invaded Afghanistan in support of the Afghan communist government in conflict with anti-communist Muslim guerrillas. The Russians would remain until 1989.

What events do you remember from this turbulent decade?

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Dial S for Second Chances

Can years of hurt and misunderstanding be transformed into a second chance at love?

Jade Williams agrees to be on the high school reunion committee because the-one-that-got-away is out of the country and won’t be home in time to attend the festivities. Now, he’s not only home, but joined the committee. Is it too late to back out or can she set aside forty-five years of regret and pretend she isn’t to blame for her broken heart?

One of the downsides of being rich means fielding requests for money and favors. But when an old high school buddy contacts Derek Milligan to be on the reunion committee as just one of the gang, no strings attached, he can’t resist. At the first meeting, he’s dismayed to find himself sitting next to his former high school sweetheart. He should be angry. Instead, he’s attracted. Can he risk his heart a second time?

Reunion festivities include calling into to WDES’s program No Errin’ for Love with fake relationship problems. When both use their real situation, the stakes are raised higher than either imagined.

Pre-order link: https://amzn.to/43tXBlp

Movie Monday: All the President's Men

Movie Monday: All the President’s Men

Photo: IMPA Awards
Fair Use

Typically, biographical films are produced years, sometimes decades after the person or significant event has long passed. Not so in the case of the 1976 film All the President’s Men, based on the 1974 book written by journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who investigated the Watergate scandal for “The Washington Post.”

While he was promoting his film, The Candidate, Robert Redford heard about the scandal (along with everyone else in the U.S.) and began asking questions. He delved into the newspaper articles, then contacted Bernstein and Woodward in late 1972. Two years later after having read their book, Redford bought the rights to the story for $450,000 with the intention to adapt it to a movie through his company Wildwood Enterprises.

Having worked with William Goldman on the Academy Award Winning Butch Cassidy and the

Sundance Kid, Robert hired him to pen the screenplay for All the President’s Men. His first draft secured funding from Warner Bros, but Redford wasn’t happy with the script. Bernstein and then-girlfriend Nora Ephron wrote their own draft which was presented to Goldman who didn’t like it and saw Redford’s action as “betrayal.” Ultimately, Alan J. Pakula was hired to direct the film, and he worked with Goldman to secure rewrites that everyone could accept.

Unlike the book, the movie only covers the first seven months of the scandal, from the break-in to President Nixon’s second inauguration on January 20, 1973, Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein were joined by an all-star cast including Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Stephen Collins, Ned Beatty, Meredith Baxter, F. Murray Abraham, and Richard Herd. Frank Wills, the actual security guard at the Watergate complex appeared in the movie as himself. Costing $8.5 million to produce, the movie would earn more than $70 million worldwide.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards and winning four, All the President’s Men would go on to win additional Golden Globe, BAFTA, and other awards, including Best Drama from the Writer’s Guild of America for William Goldman. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected the movie for preservation in the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” See the official trailer.

____________________

Dial S for Second Chances

Can years of hurt and misunderstanding be transformed into a second chance at love?

Jade Williams agrees to be on the high school reunion committee because the-one-that-got-away is out of the country and won’t be home in time to attend the festivities. Now, he’s not only home, but joined the committee. Is it too late to back out or can she set aside forty-five years of regret and pretend she isn’t to blame for her broken heart?

One of the downsides of being rich means fielding requests for money and favors. But when an old high school buddy contacts Derek Milligan to be on the reunion committee as just one of the gang, no strings attached, he can’t resist. At the first meeting, he’s dismayed to find himself sitting next to his former high school sweetheart. He should be angry. Instead, he’s attracted. Can he risk his heart a second time?

Reunion festivities include calling into to WDES’s program No Errin’ for Love with fake relationship problems. When both use their real situation, the stakes are raised higher than either imagined.

Pre-order link: https://amzn.to/43tXBlp