THE YEARLING

I've started reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling for my Classic Book Club.  What a challenge getting it from the library!  I'd misplaced my library card, so I went to the Wychwood library to get a new one.  It turned out that I'd left it at the Bloor-Gladstone library a couple of months ago, so I went there to get it back.  Then I returned to Wychwood and was going to take out a copy of The Yearling, but it turned out that my library card needed renewal, so I had to go home to get a "proof of residence" document. (There ought to be an easier way of proving where you live!) So I got the card renewed, but the book still hadn't been reshelved.  I ended up borrowing it from the Oakwood branch.

I've only read a couple of chapters of the book so far, but it's vivid!

Wednesday night I saw the documentary Iris at the Bloor, about Iris Apfel, a 90-year-old designer with an enduring sense of style.  What a lot of objets d'art she's collected over her life!  They should build a museum just to fill it with the best of her stuff.

Thursday night the Classic Movie Meetup and I saw King Vidor's early talkie Street Scenes at the Revue.  It seemed pretty close to the stage version, which isn't such a bad thing.  I got more and more into it as it went along, and now I want to see it again!  They also showed a newsreel about 1936 aviation, a Betty Boop cartoon based on Snow White--with Koko the Clown (Cab Calloway's voice) singing "The St. James Infirmary Blues"--and a short made from the football scenes in the Marx Brothers vehicle Horse Feathers.

We had a long spell of dry weather for the last week, but it finally rained today, and the garden soil is a nice deep brown.

History discussion group

Wednesday night I saw Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd remake at the Yonge & Dundas, with Kenneth from the History Discussion Group and his blind friend John. The place was almost empty, so there was nobody sitting near us and we could whisper to John what was happening. (As I watched it, I kept wondering which parts you couldn't follow without seeing.) It was pretty good.

Thursday night the History Discussion Group Meetup met at my house. (I don't usually have Meetups there, and I'll find another place when the group's big enough.) We talked about the world in 1914:  I titled the event "The age of men." Two people came:  Leon, a Russian from Moldova, and Millicent, a Masai from the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.

Thursday I walked to Fiesta Gardens and bought seed potatoes and carrot seed.  Friday I planted the spuds in our back yard garden.  Then I gave them a watering, but the hose was full of leaks.  We'll clearly have to get a new one.

This afternoon I saw Marion Davies' silent comedy Patsy at the Revue.  She missed her calling in the sound era:  she should have been making screwball comedies!

I'm ready to start reading The Yearling for the Classic Book Club.  But I lost my library card and I'll have to bring a proof-of-residence paper and get a new one.

I'm also rereading Ken McGoogan's How the Scots Invented Canada in preparation for next month's history discussion group, which will be about Canadian history.

I've been watching the last season of Boardwalk Empire on DVD.  Patricia Arquette is great in it, but she's met the violent fate of Steve Buscemi's other witnesses.

Gardening time

The hot weather arrived last weekend.  I've been working a lot in the garden, extending it to where we used to have the planter. (There's good potting soil there.) I moved two rose bushes from there to the planter next to the front porch, and a couple of other flowers to the terraced area next to the sidewalk.

I just finished digging a trench around the whole area, and as soon as I level it out it'll be ready for planting.  There were a couple of stumps so deeply rooted that I had to saw them out, and there are also quite a few roots from our late cherry and plum trees.

This garden work is part of the reason it's been so long since my last post here.  Another part is my involvement with those Facebook groups.  Up to last week I followed up all my Facebook notifications, but that was taking up so much time that I stopped.  Now I'm trying to be selective.

Wednesday I saw Fred Zinnemann's movie of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! for the second time, but the first time in a cinema, at the Event Screen.  It's a bit square, best for the surreal ballet sequence.  I have to admit I felt sorry for Judd Fry. (Despite being the villain, there was something sympathetic in the way Rod Steiger played him.)

Thursday I went on Betty-Anne's art walk, in the Junction area for the first time.  I noticed a used-book store and visited it and another one on Saturday afternoon.  But I wasn't interested enough to buy anything.

I finished reading Our Mutual Friend on Saturday night, just before the Classic Book Club met on Sunday afternoon. (Why not cut it close?) There were seven people there, exactly the number in my reservation.  Now I've started reading the spring issue of Lapham's Quarterly, whose subject is con games.

The weather got cooler today, but that can't last forever.

Iambs and dactyls

Thursday was going to be the History Discussion Group Meetup.  I hoped to have it at the Victory Cafe but they couldn't fit in my reservation.  So I moved it to the Ryerson Hub cafeteria area, where we used to have Games Meetups.  But the place turned out to be undergoing renovation!  Leon was the only other person I could find.  So I rescheduled the event for two weeks later, and chose our home because I couldn't think of any other place!

The Bloor is having a retrospect of documentaries by the Maysles Brothers.  Friday night I saw Gimme Shelter (about the disastrous Rolling Stones concert at Altamonte in 1969) for the third time, but the first time on the big screen.  Saturday I saw the deeply strange Grey Gardens for the second time.  They're showing Salesman on Thursday, but that's at the same time as Betty-Anne's latest art walk!

This afternoon was the latest ROLT Meetup.  This month the topic was poetry again, and I titled the event "Iambs and Dactyls." I read Rupert Brooke's sonnet "The Soldier," John Greenleaf Whittier's "Barbara Freitchie" (since it's the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War), Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells," Walt Whitman's "Miracles" and Robert Frost's "The Code." Henry read a passage by Charles Bukowski about style, and I had to point out that Poe was someone with style!

In one of my Facebook groups I started a thread with "You know you're getting old when..." And I offered this post: "...when your dreams are in reruns." I'm in a group devoted to ocean liners and posted about travelling on the Arkadia on its last voyage in 1966.  If I can find the menu the parents saved from the Empress of Britain in 1957, I'll have to scan it and post it in the group!

Twenty years ago

Last night I dreamed about Goodenough College.  Twenty years ago last weekend I flew to England to spend eight months at Goodenough College in London while researching my Ph.D. thesis.  It was the best eight months of my life!  It still feels recent to me.  I've never done anything else quite that exciting.

But one thing that has me excited now is Bernie Sanders' candidacy for the American presidency.  For a couple of months I've kept writing comments at The Huffington Post and Facebook saying "Run, Bernie, run!" and "You can do it, Bernie!" (After he announced, I wrote a post saying "I knew he could do it!") Don't be too sure he can't win the Democratic nomination and even the presidency.  People who dismiss his chances aren't just underestimating him, they're underestimating the American voters.

Sunday I went to a brunch with Paula's Fun Loving Friends Meetup.  We went to the Universal Grill at the corner of Shaw and Dupont, which is within walking distance of my house!  Afterward I went to see Giuseppe, but he didn't seem to be in.  At one of the houses along Shaw Street they were giving away their excess books, and I found an interesting book about someone biking through rural France and learning about French history.

Our choir is doing "Mambo Italiano" and a new arrangement of "Santa Lucia." And we're also doing that Russian song "Kalinka" again, which is one of my favourites!

I've been spending too much time on Facebook groups lately. (I've stopped posting Captain Snark pieces.) It looks like I'll have to quit at least some of them.  But they've been having some interesting discussions on subjects like Robert Mitchum.

I've finished rereading Our Marvellous Native Tongue, and now I'm rereading How the Scots Invented Canada.

Maytime

The warm spring weather has arrived, and I've started wearing my summer jacket.  I'll have to start preparing the garden pretty soon.  I think I'd like to plant a birch tree in the back yard since we've cut down the cherry and plum.

The Classic Book Club is meeting again in a couple of weeks, so I'll have to focus to finish Our Mutual Friend in time.  But two chapters a day will be enough, and I hope I can read faster.  I couldn't get the Victory Cafe for the History Discussion Group, so I'll use the Ryerson Student Hub instead. (I've gone there for Board Games Meetups.)

The other day one of the federal NDP candidates uploaded a poster promoting Israel with the line "67 years young." I posted "67 years of ethnic cleansing" and he accused me of "hate" and "trolling." He challenged me to provide links showing Israel's guilt on this charge and I provided three, but he ultimately deleted two. (He kept the one from Haaretz because it showed what a great democracy Israel is.) He ultimately closed the thread and said he'd delete any more of my comments, and I wrote a last post saying "Delete away, you Stalinist!"

Father found the misplaced Metropass at the post office with just a couple of days left in the month.  But it's just as well, since we'd run out of tokens.

Thursday night, on a whim, I went to the Nonfiction Book Club Meetup.  The book was Abundance, about anti-Malthusian theories of the future.  I hadn't read it and I don't think it would have convinced me.

At the memoir slam Monday, the Burkes from Newfoundland gave me a copy of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology! (I'd mentioned the previous week that I wanted to find a copy.) I've encouraged them to think of a book they'd like, since we have such a big collection.