The straight story about...

     The Straight Story. How long do you think it would take to ride a John Deere riding mower, with a top speed of 5 mph from Laurens, Iowa, to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, a distance of 240 miles? Alvin Straight did exactly that in 1994, when he was 73 years old and his riding mower was pushing 30. Alvin's sight was going, his hips could barely carry his weight and he didn't trust buses. He certainly couldn't drive, even if Iowa had given him a license. 
    So he rode his mower. Hitched up a wagon with supplies and a sleeping bag, drove to Wisconsin to see his dying brother, Lyle, and, along the way, met some interesting people and had some adventures.
    David Lynch made a movie about Straight's trip, a movie starring Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek as his daughter. You might know David Lynch as the writer and director behind Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Elephant Man. The Straight Story, distributed by Disney, is nothing like those other films. It's squeaky clean, nobody curses, and nobody even looks like they want to have sex. Alvin Straight took the slow road to Wisconsin. By slow, I mean s-l-o-o-o-w. He left Laurens on July 5 and pulled up to Lyle's place in Wisconsin six weeks later.
    Lynch shot the film in chronological order, featuring some of the same towns Straight drove through. There is lots and lots of countryside in this movie. Look carefully, and you can see the corn growing day to day as he crawls east. If anything, the movie actually feels slower than the trip itself. I can't say it's a great family movie, because half my family, i.e., my wife, found the movie boringly s-l-o-o-o-w.
    This is a movie for people who actually like slow movies, and I love good, slow movies. It's on DVD and available at Netflix and rental stores or from Amazon. You might think it's boring. And in a way, it is. But it's worth watching.
    I discovered, after seeing the movie, that my sensibilities were upheld by the fact that Richard Farnsworth, the actor who played Straight, was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal. In a sad note, the 80-year-old Farnsworth was actually suffering from terminal bone cancer while the film was being shot. Hobbling around on two canes was not an act for him, but a fact of his later life. A year after the film's completion, he committed suicide to escape the pain of his disease.
    And when Alvin Straight's heart gave out in 1997, his funeral procession was led by a John Deere riding mower.
    
    Pennsylvania's 25X'25 Alliance hosted a group of German farmers touring renewable energy sites in Ohio and the Keystone State. The tour stopped in Harrisburg to learn more about how the Alliance hopes to increase the state's use of alternative fuels to 25 percent by the year 2025. A report of their visit appears in our current edition. It was written by staff writer Chris Torres.

    Now you see yourselves. And now you don't. Können Sie sagen, "Count Dracula?" http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=20768775.