I’m a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar. Â Serenity –Â Hoban “Wash” Washburne
For this week’s photo challenge Cheri asks us to share our interpretations of serenity.  I’m sure the prompt was meant as an encouragement to explore calm, peaceful feelings and I’m happy to do that with a photo but I’ll admit my first thought was of Joss Whedon’s 2005 movie Serenity, an action packed western style space-opera set in the 26th century.
Set in the year 2517, Firefly explores the lives of the people who, on the outskirts of society, make their living as the crew of Serenity, a “Firefly-class” spaceship. The series’ original concept progressed after Whedon read The Killer Angels, a book on the Battle of Gettysburg.  An ever present element was Whedon’s injection of anti-totalitarianism, writing into the show a historical analogy of the Battle of Gettysburg; the “Battle of Serenity Valley” Two of the main characters, Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne, fought in the “Unification War” and were defeated by The Alliance, an authoritarian regime. The beaten soldiers were called “Browncoats” after the brown dusters they wore as their uniforms. Whedon said, “I wanted to play with that classic notion of the frontier: not the people who made history, but the people history stepped on – the people for whom every act is the creation of civilization”. Firefly was written as a serious character study, encompassing what Whedon called “life when it’s hard”, and in elaboration was about “nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things”.  Wikipedia
In 2006 Serenity won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and in her New York Times review Manohla Dargis said  “Joss Whedon’s unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas’s aggressively more ambitious screen entertainments.”
If you’re a fan of science fiction, popular culture, witty sarcastic dialogue or films that parallel current political events in imaginative settings I think you’ll enjoy Serenity.  If you’re a fan of misty days and winter beaches I hope you’ll enjoy my photo and interpretation of the word “serenity.”
Northwest Frame of Mind 
Leave a comment