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The image to the left is front and center at Drudgereport today with the headline: SUMMER CANCELED, linking to an LA Times article about the spread of the gulf oil spill.  Ordinarily, Drudge and others reporting on the BP catastrophe accompany their articles with photos showing oil-drenched wildlife or enraged politicians. But this is something entirely different.

Summer canceled? Summer…as in families on the beach? Instead, we see the destruction of the United States, inundated in oily waters. When I saw this photo this morning, a chill ran down my spine. It reminded me of a dream I had last year….a dream that ended with terrifying words echoing in my mind as if their speaker were shouting in my ear. FAYIT, FAYIT, FAYIT. Indonesian words for BANKRUPT. In that dream, Washington DC (representing our government and in many ways, our commerce, our place in the world, our people) was lashed by storms and eventually flooded. (You can read the dream here).

As I write this, the United States truly is on the verge of ‘drowning’ in debt–in fact, the entire world sits upon the point of an economic knife. We could all wake tomorrow to find ourselves in a dramatically shifted ‘new world order’ where dollars are worthless.

So, what is Drudge saying? What might he REALLY be implying about ‘summer’ being canceled?

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Mr. Kwon, Jin's father, is one of the few 'good dads' in LOST

By SHARON K. GILBERT

SINCE Sunday is Father’s Day here in the US, I thought, rather than write about the next episode of the series, I’d discuss how LOST explores the issue of fatherhood. Overall, fathers get a bum rap in LOST, generally portrayed in a negative light. I’m not going to get into deep psychology here, but I will simply list the fathers and comment.

1. Jack’s Father: Christian Shephard is a stern, drunken, overbearing man who claims he’s treating his son like dirt to make him ‘better’. In the end, we learn that Shephard had truly loved his son, but had a strange way of showing it. Shephard becomes, as it were, ‘father to all’ as he leads the dead islanders into the ‘light’.

2. Kate’s Father: Wayne Jannsen is a drunken, wife-beating cowboy type who (it is implied) has tried to rape his ‘step’daughter more than once. It is possible that he actually had an incestual relationship with Kate and that she could no longer ‘take it’. Thus, she simply blew him up. After killing Wayne, Kate visits Sam Austin (whom she had believed to be her bio-dad). Kate had recently learned the truth: that Jannsen, not Austin, was her REAL father. Austin admits that he’d known all along. Neither dad gets high points here. Read the rest of this entry →

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The mummified remains of 'Eve' found in the caves.

Sayid: “If we tell them what we know, we take away their hope.”

By SHARON K. GILBERT

WHILE Jack leads the survivors in a move to the caves, this episode’s flashback centers around Sun and Jin. Deception is at the heart of this couple: Jin’s secret family background (the son of a peasant fisherman) and Sun’s infidelity and ability to speak English.

Before we delve into the meat of the episode, let’s explore the title: “House of the Rising Sun”. The ‘Rising Sun’ is a reference to the far East (the house from which the sun arises each morning). But if you’re my age, then you probably remember that Eric Burden and the Animals had a major hit record in 1964 with a song by the same name. Curiously, the song itself has a deep history of conflict and claim-staking. Burden asserts that the song comes from a 16th century English ballad about a Soho brothel and that English settlers brought the music to the new colony in America. American folksingers insist that the song has younger roots, going back only forty or fifty years before 1964 to the Eastern Kentucky region with the first known recording by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster in 1933. Read the rest of this entry →

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Locke tells Jack to follow his 'hallucinations'.

“Live together, die alone.”

By SHARON K. GILBERT

ANOTHER EYE opens the episode as Jack remembers a childhood event involving a bully picking on first another student, then Jack. Jack’s choice is to save the fellow student, which results in a major beating.

The flashback ends abruptly when island Jack hears Charlie calling for help. Boone is floundering in the water; Jack swims out to help, but Boone says that another swimmer, a woman, is further out, that Boone had been trying to rescue HER. Jack gets Boone to safety and then tries to reach the woman, but she is too far out and drowns. As Jack bemoans his inability to save everyone, he catches a second glimpse of his dead father.

This, of course, is Jack’s Story, and it begins a constant theme of ‘bad fathers’. Upon seeing Jack’s bruised and battered face (courtesy of the schoolyard bullies), Christian Shepard tells Jack that he shouldn’t try to be a hero because he “doesn’t have what it takes”. Read the rest of this entry →

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Locke wakes to find himself healed.

Hurley asking as Locke reveals his knife collection: “Who is this guy?”

By SHARON K. GILBERT

THE DIALECTIC of Jack vs John (Jacob versus Man in Black) is set up with the opening scene: Close-up on John’s right eye as Locke wakes to find himself lying in a field of burning plane debris; the screams of terrified fellow passengers surround him.

This is but a memory, though, for John is actually sitting by a campfire on the beach with the other castaways, surrounded not by screams but by barks: Vincent is alerting to an intruder, which turns out to be, according to Locke “Boars”.

Jack continues in his assumption of the leadership role, deciding that the boars had invaded the camp to eat the bodies of the dead. Jack orders his companions to gather firewood and burn the dead. Hurley’s announcement that the food is all used up offers Locke the chance to challenge Jack’s leadership with a knife: one of six that Locke had ‘checked’ with the airline. It is here that we glimpse John’s story… Read the rest of this entry →

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