The Blue Feather

When Donald W. Shimoda challenges narrator Richard to practice "magnetizing" things to make them materialize at will, Richard chooses a blue feather. He carefully pictures every aspect of the feather for several minutes and then broods all afternoon because no blue feather appears as Shimoda assures him it will. Finally, at dinnertime, a blue feather appears as a logo on a milk carton. Shimoda explains a real feather would have appeared had Richard pictured himself holding one rather than as an abstract thing.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

A classic 1969, film about two Western desperados, who end up surrounded by the Bolivian army as they seek to escape justice, Sundance is one of narrator Richard's favorite movies. He is annoyed when Donald W. Shimoda insists they see it at a theater in Hammond, Wisconsin, and more annoyed when Shimoda waits until he is engrossed...