When we finally got to the movies-Jonestown

Well, we didn't get to the movies last Friday.

We went Sunday evening and saw Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Not the feel-good-movie-of-the-year...I was especially struck with the need for accountability of leaders. There was just no one in a place to tell Jim Jones he'd left the bounds of sanity and orthodoxy and decency.

Watching the events unfold in this documentary, which showed a lot more of the back story of the group that I'd previously seen, still didn't lessen the impact of hearing: "Mother mother, mother, mother, don't be this way..." as you knew that infants were being wrenched from their mothers to be poisoned. I felt with/for those mothers, who were so distraught that they accepted "the Koolaid" rather than live without their children.

Powerful stuff. I'll likely not again refer to the events of November 18, 1978 as a mass suicide--watch to see why...

Check it out sometime when the video comes out, and make yourself watch it all the way through without interruptions. Read the sign in the Pavilion: Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." Shudder once or twice and pray for the souls of those 909 poor people.