Gary McGath

About Gary McGath

I am a freelance technical writer in Plaistow, NH.

Life continues

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged philosophy on by

The first quarter of the 21st century has ended. Statistically, I’m unlikely to see the end of the second quarter. This makes me think about the end of my life. As far as I know, I don’t have any conditions that will kill me in the near term, but I’ve probably got just a couple of decades left at most. How should I look at the unpleasant topic of death?

“When I die, the world ends.” That’s one way to think about it: that nothing matters after you’re dead. It’s bleak but tidy. However, people make out wills, think about how the people they love will get along, and so forth. We think about the future beyond our lifetimes. Science fiction writers and fans think about what the world will be like centuries or even eons in the future and hope it will be a good one. People risk their lives to promote a cause. What happens after we’re dead matters to us.
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Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged music New Hampshire silent movies on by

That’s the exact title of the 1922 movie — Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood — that I’ll be accompanying at the Plaistow (NH) Library on January 13. They called it that because anyone could make a movie called “Robin Hood” to draw off confused moviegoers, but no one else could legally claim superstar Fairbanks was in it.

Many movies have been made about Robin Hood, and there’s no canonical story. Some emphasize his “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.” Others show him as a partisan of King Richard, fighting against the encroachments of Richard’s brother John. This movie is in the latter category. Robin Hood is the Earl of Huntingdon, fighting the tyranny John exercises while Richard is away for a Crusade. The first part of the movie shows John plotting for power and achieving it, and Huntingdon becomes Robin Hood only after reluctantly deserting his king. His chief enemies are Prince John and Guy of Gisbourne. The Sheriff of Nottingham is basically a walk-on part.
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It’s Trump or America

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged law liberty Trump on by

As 2025 comes to an end, we can review the wreckage of freedom under Donald Trump. At this point it’s clear: Support for Trump is enmity toward America. This isn’t a case of a president being terrible as usual; it’s an existential threat to what the United States stands for.

Let’s make a list, in the style of the Declaration of Independence, of the outrages he has committed.
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The Flying Classroom

This entry was posted in Book discussion and tagged books Christmas German on by

Every December I reread Erich Kästner’s Das fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom). It’s a Christmas novel set in a boarding school (an Internat in German). It has some of the elements that later showed up in Harry Potter: feuding groups of students, strong friendships, wise faculty members and some who are less wise, and efforts by students to overcome their limitations. Boarding school stories have been popular for a long time.
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New on YouTube: A Christmas Carol (1910) 2

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Christmas movies music silent movies on by

It’s that time of year, so I went looking for Christmas-themed silent movies. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was adapted multiple times. The earliest known version was directed by Walter R. Booth and released in 1901. It survives only in a five-minute fragment. A 1908 treatment is considered lost. That leaves Edison’s 1910 film as the earliest treatment that survives in a reasonably complete form. Marc McDermott is an enjoyable Scrooge, and Charles Ogle, better known as the first actor to portray Frankenstein’s monster on the screen, is Bob Cratchit. This is the film I’ve combined with my accompaniment on YouTube.
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