New connection

Sunday was ROLT, the event title was "Love Is All Around," and the subject was romantic writing.  I wanted to read the ending of Nineteen Eighty-Four ("He loved Big Brother") but couldn't find the book.  All I could think of was a couple of fairy tales:  the Grimms' "Spindle, Shuttle and Needle" and a Hans Christian story about a snowman who loves a stove he sees inside a window, and after he melts it turned out that they used a dustpan from the stove to make his spine!  There were several new people there, and I hope they'll come again.

Monday night I went to a Toronto Film Society double bill with the Movie Meetup group.  The first was Charlie Chan on Broadway from a mystery series that's a guilty pleasure for me. (It's the third time I've seen that one.  Charlie Chan at the Opera and Charlie Chan's Secret are also pretty good.) Then we saw Elia Kazan's debut A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I'd seen once before on the small screen.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is about a girl who aspires to be a writer. I once saw a movie where a mother takes her daughter's writing to an established writer who asks, "Is she one of those people who talk about writing, or one of those people who write?" I thought that scene was in this movie, but it wasn't.  Then I realized it was probably in I Remember Mama!

I recently finished the third season of Hell on Wheels on Netflix.  That was a jaw-dropping season finale, with Cullen stuck in a shotgun marriage in a Mormon compound presided over by a bishop who's actually the Norse psychopath! (He murdered the real bishop and took his place.) I'm already watching the fourth season.

Yesterday we updated our computer connection, so now we have cable TV again.  If we pay fifteen dollars more a month we can get some extra channels like BBC World and Turner Classic Movies, but we'll have to think about it. (I really don't watch TV much.)

Our internet connection was off for several hours while they worked on updating it.  Oh well, that meant more time for reading The War That Ended the Peace.  It quotes French intellectual Remy de Gourmont on the loss of Alsace and Lorraine: "Personally, I would not give the little finger of my right hand for these forgotten lands.  I need it to shake the ash off my cigarette."