Friday, May 1, 2015

Bard Teacher and May Day --- Day 4/92

Walk: Davis Foot Comfort (yes!), SF International Film Festival, 
Distance: 3.5 miles

The Kindergarten Teacher (Haganenet)

The film was by an Israeli writer/director, Nadav Lapid, and is thought provoking and multi-layered without being in the least ponderous. Almost creepy at times and quietly suspenseful throughout. Interesting Q & A with Lapid afterwards.

I'm often struck in watching international films with the comfort of many non-U.S. filmmakers with ambiguity/mystery.  Who is right? Wrong? Good guy/bad guy?  They often don't feel a need to go there.

Ciwt writes this on May 1 - or May Day, and it occurred to her that she didn't know anything of the origin of that distress call.  Here is what Wikipedia has to teach: Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications.
It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by mariners and aviators, but in some countries local organizations such as police forces, firefighters, and transportation organizations also use the term. The call is always given three times in a row ("Mayday Mayday Mayday") to prevent mistaking it for some similar-sounding phrase under noisy conditions, and to distinguish an actual Mayday call from a message about a Mayday call.
The Mayday procedure word originated in 1923 by Frederick Stanley Mockford (1897–1962).[1] A senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, Mockford was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word "Mayday" from the French "m’aidez" (Translates to: "help me!").[2]
Before the voice call "Mayday", SOS was the Morse code equivalent of the Mayday call. In 1927, the International Radiotelegraph Convention of Washington adopted the voice call Mayday in place of the SOS Morse Code call.[3] The Mayday was defined as corresponding to the French pronunciation of the expression “m'aidez”.[4]



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