This weekend, the Force was with me.  And vice versa, I guess.

With a couple of high school friends, I went to the historic Tennessee Theater downtown to see Return of the Jedi on the big screen.  It was only eight bucks, a comparative bargain.  We had lunch beforetime at the Downtown Grill & Brewery, now celebrating its 30^th anniversary, although it's operated under several sets of owners, and names, in that time.  It's been under present management for the longest – about 20 years – and that's the best, although I do kind of miss the cigar-and-single-malt room upstairs tha the original version had.   It was Knoxville's first microbrewery and I remember being so excited.  Now I literally couldn't name all the breweries in town off the top of my head.  Progress!

I don't think I'd seen Jedi since it was in theaters, and it struck me quite differently now.  When I saw it before, the explosions and the space battles, the destruction of Jabba the Hut, etc., seemed to be the big story.  But watching it again I realized that the real story was Luke's effort to – literally – save a man's soul, in this case Darth Vader/Anakin's.