THE SOPRANOS

Hasidic Jew (after telling the story of the siege of Masada): "And the Romans--where are they now?"

Tony Soprano: "You're looking at 'em, asshole!"

--The Sopranos

Did I say we dropped our subscription to Crave TV?  We resubscribed because Moira wants to watch The Sopranos. (She tried it before, but couldn't get past that episode with the Hasidic Jew.) Tonight we watched the first episode with him blowing up his friend's restaurant so the fried won't lose business from a hit being carried out there. (A Rhode Island gangster actually did that!) James Gandolfini would have made a good silent movie actor.

I must say that the first season was the best, what with the conflict between Tony and Uncle Junior, though Joe Pantoliano as Ralph Cifaretto did a lot for the third and fourth.  As with Six Feet Under and Mad Men, the later seasons have diminishing returns:  after Adrianna got killed in the fifth season the show couldn't really be funny any more.  And Carmela's character arc, in particular, got inconsistent.  That's what happens when shows get planned one season at a time. (One of many things I admire about Breaking Bad is that all five seasons were planned out from the start!)

I finally fixed the problem with Google Play not loading. (I did it by clearing the memory cache, or something like that.) I paid actual money for an Ebook with a translation of the Lusiades into modern Portuguese.  I've already found a few mistakes I made in my translation:  I thought "frauta" meant fruit when it actually meant flute! And "Parcas" wasn't parks but the Three Fates. I've also resumed reading that book about TV shows that only lasted one season.

We've been eating scalloped potatoes and diced ham almost all this weak!  And I never get tired of it, like Archie Bunker with Edith's meatloaf.

Kobo

"Once, when he had me pinned against a wall, I asked him straight out what had I done to make him dislike me so much; suddenly he relaxed, let me loose and said, 'You're a sissy.  I'm just straightening you out.' He was right, I was a sissy of sorts, and the moment he said it, I realized there was nothing I could do to alter his judgement, other than toughen myself to accept and defend the fact"--"The Thanksgiving Visitor"

I've been making slow, steady progress with my Portuguese translation of The Wizard of Oz on my Kobo reader.  Right now I'm at the point where the Tin Man has just joined the group.  It occurred to me that Charley is Steinbeck's Toto, except that Steinbeck was going from Oz (the New York metropolis) to Kansas (rural America)! I've also started translating "Desiderata" into Portuguese.

I noticed that the Kobo reader offers quite a few free ebooks, especially in Christmas week. Cheapskate that I am, I've been downloading quite a few of them, mostly history and "classic" literature. (Who knows how many of them I'll actually get around to reading?) I actually paid a few dollars for Dee Brown's famous Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a '70s history of the western frontier from the First Nations perspective, and that's a book I've long wanted to read.

I read two more Truman Capote stories in the same book as "A Christmas Memory": "One Christmas" and "A Thanksgiving Visitor." Now I want to read more of his stories, and might even do them in my book club!  I've finished Travels With Charley, and Steinbeck's Cannery Row is next on my list, along with the Lapham's Quarterly special issue about Alexander Hamilton.

On Acorn TV we've started watching a '70s TV miniseries of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with Geraldine McEwan in the Maggie Smith role.  The dialogue is a bit hard to hear.

JACKIE

"But Charley doesn't have our problems.  He doesn't belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself"--Travels With Charley

Thursday night I saw Jackie at the Yonge & Dundas. (I hoped to make it into a History Discussion Group event, but nobody else was interested.) It was pretty depressing, really--I basically got out of it what I put in.  Natalie Portman wasn't bad in the title role, considering that she was stuck with the job of imitating the inimitable.  I couldn't help noticing that the early 1960s was a very sexist time, when women were expected to be "charming" and "feminine."

John F. Kennedy strikes me as an oddly overrated president, along the same lines as Obama.  Maybe he did have a plan to get out of Vietnam, but if so he hesitated fatally.  You can only judge leaders by what they actually did while they had the chance, and he seriously escalated the Vietnam conflict in his time.  He's been praised for proving less hawkish than his advisers during the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet a better president wouldn't have surrounded himself with hawks in the first place! (The same applies to Ronald Reagan 25 years later.)

As for Kennedy's assassination, I'm an agnostic (on this as on many other things). For all I know Lee Harvey Oswald may have acted alone--I'm no oddsmaker--but we'll presumably never know.  As a motive for conspiracy, mafia payback seems more plausible than keeping the U.S. in Vietnam.  Anyway, Kennedy was no angel himself!

Last night I dreamed of watching a movie about a serial killer, with this one closeup of a woman he's about to kill who's wearing dark glasses, and we see in the reflection of her shades a car that she thinks will save her, but it drives away and we see her expression as she realizes she's about to die!  Why do I have such sicko dreams? (At Christmastime, yet!) It isn't like I'm a horror fan.

Acorn TV

"Once you are in Texas it seems to take forever to get out, and some people never make it"--Travels With Charley

We've started subscribing to Acorn TV, which has lots of interesting British shows.  Unfortunately we don't seem able to get it on our widescreeen TV, but we can still watch it on our computers.  Last night we saw the first of three episodes of a Waldemar Januszak documentary about Baroque art, which anticipated cinema in some ways.  But I couldn't get in into fullscreen on the downstairs computer, so we ended up watching it in my room. (I later figured out that my mistake downstairs was using the Safari browser instead of Foxfire.  B for Brains...)

Acorn TV also has some classic series like Upstairs, Downstairs.  It's one of my all-time favorite shows despite the occasional cliche.  I've started watching the third season, which is when it really hit its stride. (The first two are somewhat uneven.)  It begins with mother Lady Marjorie going down with the Titanic--most upper-class women actually survived!--and Captain James the jerky son taking an interest in father Richard's mousy secretary Hazel.  I fell in love with Hazel--why do I like mousy women so much?  Hazel soon married James, which was a mistake:  she should have married Richard despite his age!

My favorite character was Hudson the Scottish butler:  watch the ongoing contrast between his strictness toward the other servants and his deference toward the masters!  Anglicized Scots sometimes have a way of seeming more English than the regular English:  witness the Queen Mother and Colin Firth.

I still can't leave off the subject of Hillary vs. Bernie!  One Clintonite line is that Sanders wanted to get the Democratic nomination without doing the "work" that Clinton had done to earn the nomination over the past thirty years.  Yet, it seems to me, Hillary spent thirty years schmoozing and making connections and advancing within the party organization, while Bernie spent the same time actually promoting the policies that most Democrats care about, at a time when they've been in desperate need of that.  Which work is more important to the party?  The Clintonites who are still repeating "Sanders was not a Democrat" create an impression of the Democratic Party not as the famed "big tent" but as a high-class club that doesn't admit riffraff like Bernie!

4000 books!

Dialogue on a sweltering summer day:

"Carrie wanted a drink, but she pushed the cup away and made a face and said, 'Nasty!'

"'You better drink it,' Mary told her. 'I want a cold drink, too, but there isn't any.'

"'I wish I had a drink of well water,' said Laura.

"'I wish I had an icicle,' said Mary.

"Then Laura said, 'I wish I was an Indian and didn't have to wear clothes.'

"'Laura!' said Ma. 'And on Sunday!'

"Laura thought, 'Well, I do!'"

--On the Banks of Plum Creek

Aquilon Books, my father's used book-selling venture, sold its 4000th book last week after a dozen years of online sales through ABE Books.  We celebrated with a party, and the whole family was present, along with four nieces and a Chinese friend Moira met teaching English.  Father spent $140 on Indian food, which took three days to finish.  Moira also baked a vegan chocolate cake (accommodating brother John's family), and decorated it with the digits 4000.  I tend to find large-scale company tiring, and now I feel like I've gone through Christmas already!

Donald was there and solved the problem of my computer not allowing you to open Google Play Ebooks and ignoring the prescribed steps to solve the problem.  Unfortunately, after he left the problem came back! (I don't have the heart to tell him...) But he did fix our widescreen TV set so that when you start the DVD player the screen no longer cuts off an outer ring.

Yesterday I went to the Lillian Smith library to borrow some books, but it turned out I'd lost my library card!  I thought I'd left it at the Yorkville library the day before, but I checked and it wasn't there.  I couldn't find it at home either, so it looks like I'll have to get a new one.

This afternoon was the last Reading Out Loud at the Victory Cafe. (Next month we'll try the Ryerson Hub.) It was December so our topic was children's writing, and I titled the event with the Whittier line "Blessings on thee, little man!" I read the Walt Whitman poem "There Was a Child Went Forth"; the middle part of "A Christmas Memory"; and the chapter of Huckleberry Finn where Huck gets separated from the raft in the fog, then tells Jim he's been dreaming, hurts his feelings and ends up apologizing.  You know, I think I'm pretty good at reading things aloud!

There was a new member called Beatriz from Argentina.  I gave her a chapter to read from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House book On the Banks of Plum Creek. (Unlike Huckleberry Finn, that's easy English for a foreigner.) It was "Rings of Fire," where their haystacks are threatened by burning tumbleweeds from a prairie fire to the west.  And I gave Max the chapter from The Wizard of Oz I've just been translating, where the Scarecrow describes his brief life before meeting Dorothy.  Afterward Doreen gave me some chocolates!

ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE

"Maybe everybody needs Russians.  I'll bet even in Russia they need Russians.  Maybe they call it Americans"--Travels with Charley  

 

Last night I saw the documentary All Governments Lie at the Bloor.  It's about the legacy of I.F. Stone among today's non-mainstream muckraking journalists like Green Greenwald and Amy Goodman.  I must look up the websites intercept.com and tomdispatch.com , which the documentary mentioned.

Today I went to Yorkville library to find a copy of Truman Capote's wonderful story "A Christmas Memory," which I want to read part of at Reading Out Loud Meetup this Sunday.  The snow was pretty heavy, suitable for Christmas. (At the Bloor-Yonge station the TTC set up a fancy Christmas exhibit with some electric trains!)

 

This evening I went to a Non-Fiction Meetup event where we talked about what we'll be reading next year. (I ordered a chocolate lava cake.) I mentioned my theory that the Soviet system of shortages, rationing and long queues may be our future!

 

Father and Moira can't find anything interesting on Crave TV, so I've been looking at alternatives.  Both Acorn TV and Fandor look promising!

 

As you can see, I've noticed how to use a larger font on this blog. (I like nice big fonts!)

THE NUTCRACKER

"I wanted to go to the rooftree of Maine to start my trip before turning west.   It seemed to give the journey a design, and everything in the world must have design or the human mind rejects it.  But in addition it must have purpose or the human conscience shies away from it.  Maine was my design, potatoes my purpose.  If I had not seen a single potato my status as vacilador [a Spanish word referring to someone going somewhere but not so serious about reaching his destination] would not have been affected.  As it turned out I saw almost more potatoes than I needed to see.  I saw mountains of potatoes--oceans--more potatoes than you would think the world's population could consume in a hundred years"--Travels With Charley

"My nerves are stretched to the breaking point! [PING sound effect] There goes one now"--The Goon Show

Sunday afternoon I saw a screening of the Bolshoi Ballet production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.  It was a terrific show, even better than the Royal Ballet production I saw screened a couple of years ago!  The Arab Dance was especially impressive.  I hoped to meet Mary of the Classical Music Meetup, but we came in at different times and only met briefly.

I thought I knew everything about The Nutcracker, but I learned something new the other week, with the usual help of Wikipedia.  In the original score, several of the dances are assigned a flavor:  the Trepak is peppermint sticks, the Dance of the Flutes is marzipan, etc.  Also, the musical suite was more popular than the ballet at first:  the ballet only became a North American Christmas staple in the 1960s following George Balanchine's New York Ballet production.

Back in 1974, when I was twelve, I saw the Bolshoi Ballet on their Canadian tour shortly after Mikhail Barishnikov defected. (We drove to Wolfville, Nova Scotia.) They had to change the program because of his departure, so I didn't know what I was watching!  Mother thought they looked demoralized.

I've started listening to The Goon Show on Youtube.  That was a zany BBC radio comedy in the 1950s, starring Spike Milligan (who also wrote it), Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers at the start of his career.  My parents were in Britain at that time, and Father liked it more than Mother.  Sometimes Father says "I don't wish to know it," and I just learned that was one of the show's many catchphrases!  Another BBC radio comedy they listened to was Take It From Here, and he often repeats Jimmy Edwards' line "'Allo, 'allo, 'allo!"

My Peyton Place DVD arrived today!

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY

"In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won't happen.  As the day approached, my warm bed and comfortable house grew increasingly desirable and my dear wife incalculably precious.  To give these up for three months for the terrors of the uncomfortable and unknown seemed crazy.  I didn't want to go.  Something had to happen to forbid my going, but it didn't"--Travels With Charley

 Yesterday I had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzelhub again.  He gave me a couple of books, and I wish I'd brought something for him!  We talked about the schedule for our book clubs (he has a new one), so we wouldn't conflict.  I was going to do The Dubliners in mid-March and Gulliver's Travels at the end of April, but moved them to late March and the end of May, after I get back from London.

I was going to show the DVD of Tom Jones at the next history event this Tuesday, but it turned out it wasn't on DVD!  So I changed it to John Ford's Stagecoach, to match our discussing the frontier earlier this month.  

Next month the history group's subject is the 1950s.  I've scheduled Lana Turner's Peyton Place for next month:  couldn't find it in the video stores, but I ordered a used copy online for ten dollars and some.  I'm now reading Steinbeck's Travels With Charley for the history group (for the second time), which actually takes place in 1960, but close enough.  The library was short of copies so this afternoon I bought a copy at Chapters in the Yonge-Eglinton Centre.  Some long queues there!

It bugs me that Clinton worshipers want to blame Trump's election on everything except the most obvious cause:  the Democrats chose a very problematic candidate.  Some of them are even blaming Bernie Sanders for promoting what they consider "false narratives" about Hillary Clinton!  And some are still insisting that Sanders was never a genuine Democrat.  I want to say to them, "Well, he's more of a Democrat than Trump, isn't he?  Who's being a 'purist' now?" And which candidate was the true Democrat when Congress was voting on invading Iraq?  If any candidate was cynically "using" the party to advance his personal ambition, it seems to me, that would be Clinton.  

But too many Democrats had a specious notion of loyalty to their "team," and chose the wrong moment to be clannish.  I say this as someone who had seen Hillary's weaknesses, yet actually ended up swallowing the line that she'd win anyway!  It wasn't so much that I was won over to admiring her political skills, more that I just gave up on doubting.  I've been accused of "gloating," but I'm really rather annoyed:  when the Democrats screwed Bernie Sanders--the Republicans have no monopoly on vote suppression!--they screwed themselves, and the nation.  

Some people are denying that Sanders could have beaten Trump, but their arguments don't impress me.  Almost everyone who voted for Hillary would have voted for Bernie too; while almost everyone who would have voted Republican to defeat Bernie voted to defeat Hillary anyway.  Bernie would surely have managed a higher turnout among Democratic voters, especially in the all-important category of young voters.  And he clearly would have got greater support from the independent voters, a crucial group. (He probably would have won the nomination if independents hadn't been excluded from crucial state primaries.) I also think he would have grabbed more Republican votes than did Hillary, whom the Republicans had a longstanding hate-on for.  At the very least, it's very hard to imagine him doing any worse than she did--would he have taken Wisconsin for granted?  Sure, the Republicans would have thrown the works at him, but I think he would have won anyway.  Trump only had to outperform the polls by a couple of percentage points to upset Clinton, but to upset Sanders he would have had to outperform them by almost ten points!

Some people have been calling on the Electoral College to rebel and install Hillary as president, but I think they should install Bernie!  Democrats, who mostly supported Hillary, are about 30% of the U.S. population; Republicans, who mostly supported the Donald, are also about 30%; but independents, who mostly supported Bernie, are more like 40%.  The two-party system is a barrier to American democracy.

A Greek philosopher said: "The fox has a thousand ideas in his head.  The hedgehog has one big idea." It occurred to me that Trump is a hedgehog.  Hedgehogs are sometimes underestimated, though in this case it was more that Hillary Clinton was overestimated.

Gonks!

Since I have a second fan, I intend to become more prolific with my vanity press.

"What the hell is a gonk?" either of you may say.  It's a round toy that was popular in Britain in the '60s. (See the picture--I should attach more pics here!) My family spent a year in mod Brighton in the mid-60s, and we got one of those. They also figured in Gonks Go Beat, the sort of bizarre Swinging London movie where you'd expect Spike Milligan to turn up, but he doesn't.

Why am I talking about gonks?  Last night I watched Produced by George Martin on Crave TV.  That's a documentary about George Martin, the Beatles' genius producer who left us earlier this year. (He had a head like a sports car!) But he produced a lot more than the Beatles, introducing a sort of impressionism to recording.  He once produced a CD of Dylan Thomas' radio play Under Milkwood with Tom Jones doing a musical number:  the documentary didn't mention it, but I recall Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show doing an episode about it.  The '70s band America was also his project.  He built a recording studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat which produced some great music in the '80s--the Police and such--but got wrecked by a hurricane.

Back to the gonks... Early on he produced a lot of comedy records--Peter Sellers and such--and in 1962 came up with Bernard Cribbins' novelty single "Right, Said Fred." (That's also the name of a British band in the early '90s whose one hit was "I'm Too Sexy.") Anyway, they showed a bit of a video of the song with Gumby-type dimensional animation, using gonks!  I found the whole thing on Youtube, and looked at it so many times that the tune's going around in my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5XX9LX2es4 

 (I can attach links too!) 

We've also started watching a Crave TV documentary about Frank Sinatra, another musical genius.

I've booked a room at Goodenough College in London, where I'll be staying in May. (Sending them a scan of their credit card form with my signature turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected!)

Tonight was the history Meetup, where we talked about the frontier and the Little House books.  The political Meetup was at the same place (Scallywag's) but started an hour later, so we ended up seguing right into that one!

NORMA

Yesterday afternoon I saw a screening of the Bellini opera Norma at the Bloor, the one about the Druidess who holds sway over the rebellious Gauls but's been in love with an unfaithful Roman proconsul.  It was a Royal Opera production with a 20th-century design, which I didn't care for with this sort of story.  I remember seeing a Met production of Lucia di Lamermoor set in Victorian Scotland which didn't seem right either. (But I could imagine a Lucia production set in the antebellum South, what with its notorious feuds.) The lead soprano reminded me of Melania Trump!  

My favorite part of the opera, besides the famous "Casta Diva" aria, is the Norma-Pollione duet just before the finale.  I also like the war cry chorus, which reminds me of Indian music in westerns. (I suppose that Gauls were the Indians of the Roman world!) It's very challenging music:  I read that the first production had good singers in the lead, but they just weren't in their best voice and the show flopped.

We saw another library DVD with an episode of the Overland Trekker series.  Last week it was Australia; this week it was the Silk Road in central Asia.

This afternoon was the latest Classic Book Club event:  Dicken's Christmas novellas A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and Cricket on the Hearth. (I'd finished rereading A Christmas Carol just yesterday morning.) Karen even recited part of Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales"! Recitations are a useful addition to these events.  I ordered an omelette and when they were late bringing the home fries the Victory Cafe people generously threw an a free mulligatawny soup order to make up for it.  And I don't even care for home fries!

I met a new member called Ryan, who's an archaeologist.  What an odd calling archaeology must be!  It's all about the old days, yet it's one of the most modern sciences--to the extent that you can call it a science at all.  So much of it is conjecture which can't be proved or disproved that I think of it as an art!  You dig up the bones of your ancestors, and imagine how they must have lived.  In one sense it's the world of the dead, but in another sense it's all about life!  Ryan was amused when I mentioned a quote by Agatha Christie, who married archaeologist Max Mallowan: "An archaeologist makes a perfect husband, because as his wife grows older he gets more interested in her!" A gerontologist would make a good husband too.

In these events our conversation can go all over the place!  Karen mentioned how much she liked Fritz Lang's movie M, so Ryan started talking about Lang, and I mentioned Lang's film noir Scarlet Street, and mentioned how a couple of bits near the end of the Warner Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening were borrowed from that movie. (One with the hero sitting alone on a park bench in the winter; another with him plodding along the sidewalk, a broken man.) So we got into Warner Brothers cartoons, which Ryan and I both love.  We were also discussing the different movie versions of A Christmas Carol:  I'll have to see the George C. Scott TV movie someday!

Since the history group subject in January will be the '50s, I wanted to screen the Lana Turner movie Peyton Place.  But I couldn't find it in the video stores so I was thinking of showing Leo di Caprio in This Boy's Life instead.  But then I found out that Suspect Video has Peyton Place after all!  Suspect Video is closing at year's end, however, so I'll see if they'll sell it to me.

Daffy Duck

Last week was the American Thanksgiving, and some people online were mentioning things they were thankful for.  Even though Canada's Thanksgiving was seven weeks ago, I want to mention something I'm grateful for:  Daffy Duck cartoons.  The later, curmudgeonly Daffy is the greatest of all Warner Brothers animated characters, and not for lack of competition! (When I was young I would have named Bugs Bunny as my favorite, but now that I've grown up I prefer Daffy.)

The greatest Daffy Duck cartoon of all is Duck Amuck, with Daffy in a cartoon world drawn by a prankster cartoonist who keeps changing things around, to Daffy's indignation. ("Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!") At the end Bugs looks up from the drawing board and says, "Ain't I a stinker?" They tried making a similar cartoon with Bugs in the changing cartoon world, but it didn't suit his character as well.

There are some great cartoons pairing Bugs and Daffy, such as Ali Baba Bunny, in which they find themselves inside Ali Baba's treasure cave.  While Bugs just wants to find Pismo Beach and all the clams you can eat, Daffy starts pouncing all over Bugs and saying, "It's mine!  It's all mine!" What, share?  In the end Daffy offends a genie who turns him into a tiny figure trying to snatch the pearl from Bugs' clam. (Pismo Beach must have some oysters as well.) Such a fate has a Dantean logic, since Daffy's greed has already made him small!  And there's also Beanstalk Bunny, where Bugs and Daffy climb a beanstalk and tangle with a giant Elmer Fudd.  (At one point they run around inside Elmer's predictably empty head!)

Even the minor Daffy Duck cartoons have some great moments.  Take the late cartoon Aqua Duck, in which Daffy finds a big nugget of gold in the desert, but can't find water! (A parody of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, of course.) I like the bit where he starts hallucinating and saying things like "Belly up to the bar, boys!"

But I've never cared for Robin Hood Daffy, a cartoon which many people consider a classic.  Daffy's goofy Robin Hood and Porky Pig's derisive Friar Tuck are both funny in themselves, but the combination of the two isn't so funny.  There's a one-note story in which Porky wants to join Robin Hood's band but refuses to believe that someone as bumbling as Daffy is the one he's looking for, so Daffy sets out to prove he's Robin Hood by carrying out a robbery, but only confirms how goofy he is.

Tonight was the last opera rehearsal before the new year.  Some girls brought a box of chocolate treats that included some party hats.

The other day online I came up with this saying:  Who's the bigger fool, the fool or the one who underestimates his foolishness? (I admit that despite realizing what a weak candidate Hillary Clinton was, I still couldn't believe that American voters would be foolish enough to elect Donald Trump!  I wasn't alone there, of course.)

LOVING

Closing passage of Cricket on the Hearth:  "But what is this!  Even as I listen to them, blithely, and turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and I am left alone.  A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child's-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains."

 

Last night I saw Loving at the Varsity.  It's a quietly compelling drama about an interracial couple who challenged Virginia's law against mixed marriages, with heroic help from the American Civil Liberties Union, leading to a Supreme Court decision that struck down all such laws and formed the precedent for a similar decision regarding same-sex marriages a few years ago. (I couldn't help recalling attending that same-sex wedding last month, which wouldn't have been legal in Canada fifteen years ago.) The husband was like a cross between Dobie Gillis and Popeye the Sailor!

I finished Cricket on the Hearth the other day and started reading A Christmas Carol for the second time.  The part where Scrooge sees himself as a lonely schoolboy finding company in books is moving! (Was Dickens describing his own childhood?)

 

Moira borrowed from the library a DVD of an episode of the series Globe Trekker, about Australia's history of convicts and gold prospectors and outlaws.  I'm fascinated by Australia, the way everything's a bit different there. (We once bought some Australian fruit cocktail packed in pear juice!)

Tonight was the fundraiser concert at Christchurch Deer Park, the Anglican church near St. Clair station.  Besides the chorus numbers, there was also stuff like Frank Sinatra's "All the Way" and a flute arrangement of Carmen highlights!

We've taking to putting our unsaleable books in a box outside so anyone can take them. (One day the other week we put out about twenty and all but two moved!) The other day I noticed we were giving away Don't Know Much About History, which my history group will be reading in a couple of months, so I kept it.

I've started translating Walt Whitman's poem "There Was a Child Went Forth" into Portuguese, because, why not?

PARTNERS IN CRIME

 I've been watching Partners in Crime on Crave TV.  It's the new British series based on Agatha Christie's stories about the detective couple Tommy and Tuppence.  There was a lighthearted version in the early '80s, but this version is more about thrills.  While the earlier version was set between the wars, this one involves '50s Cold War intrigue. The supporting cast includes Alice Krige, whom I remember from Chariots of Fire, and Clarke Peters from the David Simon series The Wire and Treme.  It's handsome and taut, but I think I prefer the earlier version because it had Francesca Annis, who's major fine!

 

Sunday afternoon was Reading Out Loud.  The event's topic was American literature, and I titled it "The greatest country in the Whole Wide World!" (Some Americans will look at that title and take it seriously...) Attendance was reduced by the cold weather and the nearby Santa Claus Parade, and two people were late because there was a book release event upstairs and they thought that was our event.

 

I read Hemingway's "The Killers," the part of Tom Sawyer where Injun Joe's found dead in the cave, some Spoon River Anthology poems about soldiers, and let other people read Robert Frost's "A Servant to Servants" and Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor." Malcolm read the opening passage of Cricket on the Hearth with the cricket and the tea kettle playing a duet, Cathryn read from her self-published novel about the Smyrna crisis after World War I, and someone whose name I sadly forgot read from Kerouac's On the Road.  I didn't get the chance to read the chapter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie where she attends someone's birthday party.

I forgot to bring my Pierre Belvedere notebook to the memoir group, a mistake I've never made before, but someone gave me a couple of sheets to write on.  Afterward Helen was telling me about how she'd been a missionary in Pakistan.  It must be interesting to be a former missionary:  you'd see your old home in a new way!

Tonight was the last opera rehearsal before Saturday's fundraiser. (The chorus is doing the Habanera, the Vilja song and the Grisette number.) I told Beatrice about Noises Off because that sort of thing would interest her.  That glamorous Merry Widow music has been going through my head!

On Facebook I came in contact with Pena, whom I met on the New York tour.  Seems she's been reading this blog and likes it.  She and John Snow make two fans!

 

In Cricket on the Hearth I got to a part about a toymaker with a blind daughter who shelters her from knowledge of their decrepit house and harsh taskmaster.  I remember reading it in school over forty years ago!

I've started translating Walt Whitman's poem "There Was a Child Went Forth" into Portuguese.

NOISES OFF

Thursday we screened Anne of the Thousand Days for the history group.  Richard Burton's Henry VIII didn't have as much juice as Keith Mitchell in The Six Wives of Henry VIII or even Robert Shaw in A Man for All Seasons.  But Genevieve Bujold was a very pretty Anne Boleyn, and Anthony Quayle was in fine form as Cardinal Wolsey.

 

Yesterday afternoon I met with Bev at the downtown Spring Rolls.  She brought her spaniel Lily, and I couldn't help thinking of Toto. (Someone online said that Toto doesn't care whether he's in Kansas or Oz, so long as Dorothy is with him!)

This afternoon the Play Read-Through Meetup did Michael Frayn's classic comedy Noises Off.  I remember seeing it in London fifteen years ago.  My seat was actually too close to the stage--if I'd been sitting further back I'd have had an easier time taking in all that was going on.  I did the part of Frederick, the actor playing Philip.

It's about a theatre company doing a touring production of a third-rate "people coming in and out of doors" farce:  the first act is a very rocky dress rehearsal, the second is backroom dramatics as the play's performed, the third is a performance near the end of the run, with everything falling apart!    Some of the humor was inconveniently visual for reading through, and we skipped over most of the second act with its pantomime slapstick.

Tonight I saw Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge with the Movie Meetup. (I was hoping some people from the history group would come, but they weren't interested.) It's a square but powerful war movie about a hillbilly conscientious objector who serves as a medic in World War II, enduring intolerance, and ends up saving seventy soldiers on Okinawa and getting the Congressional Medal of Honor.  COs are an interesting subject to me:  morally, refusing to fight in an unjust war is an easy call--it's refusing to fight in a just war that takes the real guts!  Merlin in The Once and Future King says that the bravest people are the ones who aren't afraid of looking like cowards.

I've finished The Chimes (I have some questions about the goblins' motivation) and started Cricket on the Hearth.

THE CHIMES

"Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket-porters are unknown"--The Chimes

 

I finished Spoon River Anthology and started reading Charles Dickens' Christmas novella The Chimes for my book club. (It's actually about New Year's Day!) The goblins haven't shown up yet, but there's some acute social comment.

 

On the weekend I saw a PBS documentary Moira got from the library about the rapid emergence of 19th-century Chicago as a big city.  I hadn't realized that the big meat-packers like Swift depended on byproducts like hides for their profit.  It would be nice to continue it into the 20th century!

Sunday afternoon I went to visit Giuseppe again.  He's glad he won't be around in the future age.

 

I rented Anne of the Thousand Days from Queen Video for Thursday's History Discussion Group screening, and the package included Mary, Queen of Scots, which I watched today for the second time.  It's a great story with a cast to match:  Vanessa Redgrave in the title role, Glenda Jackson (reprising her Elizabeth R triumph), Timothy Dalton, Patrick McGoohan, Ian Holm, Trevor Howard and Nigel Davenport, who also played George III in the delightful British series Prince Regent and here reminded me of Billy Bob Thornton.  But the result is on the dorky side, with cheesy touches like Queen Bess smashing a lute.  I did like the line where Cecil (Howard) says about Bothwell (Davenport): "He can't be bribed?  I hope you take him alive, my Lord.  I'd like to examine such a specimen!"

At tonight's opera rehearsal we learned the rest of the Merry Widow score.  The highest tenor notes are still a bit of a challenge for me.

At Salon and The Huffington Post people are debating the Democratic Party's failure in this election.  I'm rather sore that the Democrats ignored the polls showing that Hillary Clinton had a narrower lead than Bernie Sanders over Republicans like Trump.  Rather predictably, the Clintonites are trying to scapegoat the pro-Sanders dissidents.  Someone posted that Sanders is back to "bashing Democrats" and I responded, "Let's hope he bashes some sense into them!"

The day after

"Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see

That the branches of a tree

Spread no wider than its roots.

And how shall the soul of a man

Be larger than the life he has lived?"

--Spoon River Anthology

Some years back Lilliana the psychologist was interviewing me for her doctoral dissertation on Asperger's Syndrome.  She was a Serb in Croatia and ended up a refugee in Canada as a result of the 1991 war.  She told me that when the war started nobody could believe it--they all thought someone would stop it!  I guess that's how a lot of us feel after Donald Trump's election as U.S. president.  I was thinking about the poem W.H. Auden wrote about seeing war break out in Europe in 1939.  I went to the Meetup of political discussions tonight, but I didn't have much to say.

It's interesting that I've been reading The Wizard of Oz just now, because Trump seems like the Wizard:  a tough-talking humbug.  For someone like me who supported Bernie Sanders during the primary contest, it's a great temptation to say, "I told you so." I could see all of Hillary Clinton's weaknesses back then, yet on the election's eve I just couldn't believe that they'd take the plunge! (Could there have been fraud?)

This morning Moira and I walked down to Puitak's apartment and took her to lunch.  It was nice weather for November.  But I had a big headache today.

The other night I had a dream where I was visiting my old Sackville home. (I often have that dream, and sometimes meet a friendly, non-existent woman living there now.) In this dream I said, "Viewing your old home is like visiting a parent who's too senile to recognize you"!

We're now learning The Merry Widow at opera rehearsal. (This week I remembered my score!) When we were rehearsing the Habanera from Carmen, Beatrice sang the solo part.  It was nice to hear her sing again--she was a soloist before taking up directing, and Carmen was one of her roles.

THE WIZARD OF OZ

Dorothy: "But, Aunt Em has told me that the witches were all dead--years and years ago...."

The Witch of the North: "... In the civilized countries I believe there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians.  But, you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from all the rest of the world.  Therefore we still have witches and wizards amongst us"--The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Well, just after writing the last post I downloaded the Kobo app and was able to read my Wizard of Oz ebook.  I got the idea of translating that book into Portuguese, since children's books have fairly simple language, and I've finished the first chapter! (The Portuguese word for wizard is "feitoceiro," and I've translated "munchkin" as "munchinho," using the Portuguese diminutive.) One thing I noticed is that for a children's fantasy, the first paragraphs about Dorothy's Kansas home are amazingly realistic!  I thought of the Joads.

I'm still reading Spoon River Anthology, which I imagine is best for older readers. (Gore Vidal said you have to be over thirty to enjoy Proust.) I've started imagining what my posthumous Spoon River poem might be.  I translated the first poem, "The Hill," into Portuguese ("A Colina"). I've also been translating the first chapters of Julius Caesar's Latin account of the Gallic Wars into Portuguese.  Yes, I know that I start more things than I finish. "That a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Wednesday night the History Discussion Group met to discuss Tudor England, but the rain depressed turnout severely. (Someone marked the wrong date as well, and Debi is working on a play on Wednesday nights just now.) But loyal Jane did show up.  She's said that I know everything about everything, and my response is that I know about everything except life...

Saturday I went to the Royal Winter Fair for the first time in years. (It got me out of the house.) Outside there was an animal rights group protesting against "speciesism," and I took their pamphlet.  I remember that years ago I got some nice bread at this Mennonite bakery display, but they don't seem to have it any more.

Margaret came over this weekend because her son Alec was in a foot race, where he finished twelfth in the province!  I was hoping that Donald would come over too and figure out my ebook problems, but he had a cough and didn't want to spread it.  I hope he gets well soon enough.

I finally got through Level 315 of Candy Crush Saga.  That one's a lulu!

Bits and pieces

Last Thursday I went to the Non-Fiction Meetup at the Reference library, where we discussed Barack Obama's Dreams About My Father.  I read the book several years ago but kind of remember it. (Obama makes a better writer than a president!) Afterward we went to Jack Astor's where I ordered the root beer float!

Sunday night I was hours getting to sleep. (Serves me right for napping in the daytime!) When I finally slept, I had this dream where I was playing in some forested, sloping land near my hometown of Sackville, but I kept noticing corpses all over the place!  Maybe Halloween had something to do with it.

At the memoir group yesterday one of our subjects was The Wizard of Oz. (We managed to say a lot about that!) The other day I downloaded a free Ebook of L. Frank Baum's original version, but it was at Kobo and I don't know how to read it on this computer.  Looks like I'll need Donald's assistance again.

Today was my last singing lesson with Andriy for a while.  I was a bit less tense than usual.  The day was pretty warm for November!

I finished reading By the Shores of Silver Lake and started reading Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. (I'm reading the copy the Burkes from Newfoundland gave me.) Once you start reading those poems, it's hard to stop!

At opera rehearsal tonight they were tarring the roof over the auditorium so there was a bit of a smell.  We started learning The Merry Widow but I forgot to bring the score!  Fortunately, the other tenor had an extra copy.

The Lusiades is the sort of poem Russians might like, what with its bombastic style!

Os Lusiadas

The other day I finished Duolingo's Portuguese "language tree" course.  I felt rather disappointed:  I was hoping it would go on longer.  So what do I do now?  (Duolingo doesn't have a higher-level course.) I found a blog where someone suggested Readlang and Memrise.  I got into Readlang, and read a Portuguese version of Aesop's "The Fox and the Grapes." The problem with that site is that it needs an App made for my Chrome browser, where my ebook Googleplay app hasn't been working. (Actually, it hasn't been working on my regular Firefox browser either.)

Out of curiosity I found Os Lusiadas on the Gutenberg website.  That's Portugal's national epic, written in the 16th century by the one-eyed poet Luis Vaz de Camoes. (There's a bust of him in the Portuguese neighborhood on College Street.) The language wasn't as tough as I feared, considering that this was the age of Shakespeare.  I've even started doing my own translation of it!

The Lusiades is written in iambic pentameter, with each stanza using an ABABABCC rhyming scheme.  I've managed to use a similar scheme, except that I also use ABBAABCC and BAABABCC and such.  Lucky for me the Romance languages tend to be more verbose than English, so you can often say the same thing in English with fewer syllables.  It's easier to pad out a line to fit the same length than to cut it down.

Here's my translation of the first stanzas:

1

I sing of arms, I sing of barons outstanding

Who from Lusitania's western shore

Set out on oceans never sailed before,

Yet beyond Taprobana sailing, landing, [Taprobana: ancient name for Sri Lanka]

Perils grave and many a war withstanding,

Beyond mankind's familar strength to endure,

Among those faraway lands to erect

The New Kingdom so sublime, and protect;

2

And also of the memories sacred, glorious,

Of those successive dauntless sovereigns spreading

The Faith, the Empire, in desperate war victorious,

Africa and Asia's vicious lands left bleeding;

And of those others with their work so valorous

Winning immortality, not conceding;

My song shall spread away through every part,

Should I be blessed now with the skill and art.

3

No longer do the wise Greek and the Trojan

Sail great voyages on the threatening seas;

No more do Alexander and great Trajan

Reap glory from their armies' victories;

I sing of Lusitania on the ocean

Whom even Neptune, even Mars obeys;

The song of the ancient Muse at last ceases

When a new, higher valor in my breast rises.

4

And you, my Tagides, you who created [Tagides:  classical nymph-muses]

In me a new and blazing inspiration,

Your joyful river of odes and declamation

Ever in my humble verse celebrated,

Give me now a high sound, sublimated,

A grandiloquent, flowing style of creation,

Because great Phoebus decrees that your waters [Phoebus:  classical sun god]

Shall be unmatched in Hippocrene's quarters. [Hippocrene:  spring on Mt. Helicon sacred to the Muses]

5

Give me a fury grand and sonorous,

No tones of rustic oats and rude fruit's seeds,

But a tuba singing and bellicose,

Sparking hearts with the sound of daring deeds;

Give me a song that's worthy of your valorous

People, that in honoring Mars succeeds;

Which spreads and sings all through the universe,

If words sublime enough can be fitted to verse.

Cold weather

"'I don't think Jerry steals horses,' Pa said.  But Laura thought he said it as if he hoped that saying it would make it so"--By the Shores of Silver Lake (sounds like some American liberals today!)

 

It's finally getting colder.  I brought out my warm autumn jacket and scarf on the weekend and my furry winter cap the other day.  Sunday it was warmer so I managed to get the last potatoes from the garden. (I got a few more beans, but they probably weren't good enough for eating.)

Friday night I saw The Birth of a Nation at the Carlton. (As I mentioned before, I tried to make it a History Book Club event, but nobody else was interested.) Frankly, it was pretty conventional:  William Styron's novel The Confessions of Nat Turner may be "appropriation," but it was far more original and imaginative.  At one point they even had the flashback montage cliche--of course, Cabaret had that too.

Today I've started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake (for the third time) History Book Club.  It's one of my favorite Little House books, and I've already read about half of it!  It's the one where they move to Dakota Territory where Pa has a clerking job in a railroad under construction, then spend a winter in isolation and get a homestead claim near a place where they're about to build a new town.  I recall that there's a Silver Lake near my hometown of Sackville, N.B. 

At opera rehearsal tonight Beatrice came up with an exercise where we sang scales while extending our arms out and kicking our left and right legs in alternation!

On Duolingo I've been learning Portuguese business words ("loja" means shop), and just started learning political words.  Portuguese has a subjunctive mood in the future and pluperfect tenses, which I haven't seen in other languages.  I hope they'll soon be teaching nautical words, considering Portugal's illustrious seafaring history. 

 

I just learned on Youtube that the treaty of friendship between Portugal and England goes back to the 14th century!  Something else I've found on Youtube is a channel about dating different nationalities.  Seems that if you date a German girl she'll be brutally honest ("Don't you think it's time you got a haircut?") while a Mexican girl will expect you to walk with her on the outside of the sidewalk.  I don't know how true such generalizations are, but it's fun to watch.

I put a hold on a couple of books of Roald Dahl stories at the library, but the holds expired and I got fined two dollars.  They tried to phone me, but I hadn't updated my phone number! (I wish they'd email you too.)

Acting class

"You're about as fatale as an after-dinner mint!"--Cabaret

 

I'm now reading Bill Bryson's short biography Shakespeare:  The World as Stage (for the second time) for the History Discussion Group.  It's one in a series of Eminent Lives biographies, which could be convenient as background for future events in this Meetup.  Seems that in Elizabethan theatres it was customary to follow up a play by dancing a jig, even after tragedies!

 

Tuesday when I went to Alexiy's singing lesson the transit was against me!  First I just missed the St. Clair streetcar and had to wait twenty minutes for the next.  Then the Yonge subway line was moving slowly.  Then at Richmond Hill Centre I had to wait over fifteen minutes for the High Tech Drive bus.  When I finally got to Alexiy's house I was over forty minutes late, and got him to postpone our lesson till next week so he'd have enough time for a full one.   At least my York Region transit ticket was good for two hours, so I didn't have to buy a return ticket.

 

Half of Tuesday's opera rehearsal was an acting session, for which we divided into three groups.  Each group pretended to play a sport, and mine did baseball. (I was either shortstop or third base.) Then each group formed dioramas displaying given emotions.  We also did improvised dances, and did emotions with (non-verbal) sounds alone, then facial expressions alone, then body movements alone, then all three at once.  Those sessions are always fun.

It was really warm on Tuesday, then got cooler again the next day.  These temperature swings give me headaches!

 

Last night the Political Meetup met to watch the last U.S. Presidential debate on a Scallywag's screen.  I came just to hang with the others and didn't stay for the debate itself.  I was talking a lot to Carron, who resembles Cecilia Bartoli!

 

Tonight the History Discussion Group showed Bob Fosse's Cabaret. (I scheduled an event for next week where we'd go to the movies and see Birth of a Nation, but nobody was interested.) I'd seen it quite a few times, but it's always worth seeing again.  It's a terrific production, and the scene where the young Nazi sings "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is jaw-dropping!  I want to read Good-Bye to Berlin someday! (But the two flashback montages near the end are definitely a cliche.)

 

I brought in some more potatoes and all the carrots from the garden the other day.  There are still some spuds and one head of cauliflower left.

The other day I was learning scientific Portuguese on Duolingo.  But scientific words are particularly easy because they tend to come from Latin and Greek in both Portuguese and English!

A wedding

"Those people who were previously in the habit of complaining about the ever-increasing traffic problems, pedestrians who, at first sight, appeared not to know where they were going because the cars, stationary or moving, were constantly impeding their progress, drivers who having gone around the block countless times before finally finding a place to park their car, became pedestrians and started protesting for the same reasons, after having first voiced their own complaints, all of them must now be content, except for the obvious fact that, since there was no one left who dared to drive a vehicle, not even to get from A to B, the cars, trucks, motorbikes, even the bicycles, were scattered chaotically throughout the entire city, abandoned wherever fear had gained the upper hand over any sense of property, as evidenced by the grotesque sight of a tow-away vehicle with a car suspended from the front axle, probably the first man to turn blind had been the truck driver"--Jose Saramago, Blindness

 

I'm in a good mood just now.  I've been getting several things done the past few days. (I'm in a good mood whenever I have much to write about here.)

On Thursday I visited Dr. Hassan and in the evening went on Betty-Anne's art walk.  We were at the premiere of an exhibition of Joseph Connelly paintings of abstracts and flowers. (I liked the flowers painting with trees and clouds in the background.) We even got to talk to Connelly himself!

Friday I got a filling at the dentist.  I was scheduled for the afternoon, but there were a couple of morning cancellations and Dr. Hrabalova wanted to end early, so I agreed to do it in the morning.  The sooner started, the sooner finished!

Saturday afternoon I went to the Play Read-Through Meetup and we did Arthur Miller's great play The Crucible.  I had to leave early because of the next event, but I'm going to find the text in the library and read the last act I missed, along with some prologue stuff we had to skip over.

Then I went to John Snow's wedding at City Hall to his longtime companion Rene. (I've hardly ever been to straight weddings even!) I  gave them the coffee table book 100 Years of American Comics as a wedding present, as I happened to have two copies of it!  Mother once told me she didn't care for weddings.

 

Afterward we had dinner at the Hot House, where I ordered the salmon fillet.  I was sitting next to Gaby, whom I hadn't seen for months, and we got to talk a lot (by my standards anyway).  I might have ordered tiramisu for dessert, but I had a bit of a headache and wanted to finish up.

Someone else I hadn't seen for months was Bev, and last week I finally got around to emailing her.  I mentioned my next Reading Out Loud Meetup event, and she was interested enough to come! (She brought a Halloween lamp.)

That event was today, and titled "Skin Crawlers":  scary stories for Halloween.  Twelve people showed up, one of our best turnouts ever!  A lot of people said they enjoyed it.  I read the Scottish ballads "The Twa Corbies" and "The Cruel Sister," originally collected by Walter Scott, and C.S. Forester's "The Turn of the Tide." (The latter was from Murder, Short and Sweet, an anthology of murder stories that I found in the library.) I also gave Malcolm and Bev two more items to read:  Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," from the same collection, and Robert Southey's poem "Bishop Hatto." Bev says she'll be coming again.

In addition, I finally finished the disaster issue of Lapham's Quarterly, where I read the Saramago quote.  And I finally passed Level 254 of Candy Crush Saga, which was a real bearcat! (My friend Blanche has been stuck there.)

In Duolingo today I was learning Portuguese medical words!

Free samples

Sunday night the Google Player problem righted itself.  It must have helped that I upgraded the Mac operating system to the new Sierra and moved to the Foxfire browser.  I got some worm in the Safari browser so that whenever I reopened the window it took me to some page I didn't want.

I've been reading that book about short-lived TV series.  After the first season in 1948, I went to the 1978 end and started working backward.  It only goes into detail about a minority of them, and not always the most interesting ones. (With ebooks you don't get the luxury of flipping through them to get an overview.)

One interesting thing about ebooks is that they'll give you the first six pages free as a sample.  Do you remember when I talked about those French comics featuring a little bear called Petzi who sailed over the world with his friends, which was based on a Danish comic about Rasmus Klump?  I've been looking at the start of some Rasmus Klump adventures in their original Danish, and using Google Translate on the captions.  The catch is that I don't know how to enter the "A" with a circle on top or the "O" with a slash.  I've also been looking at some French comics. (None of the Spanish Mortadelo y Filemon comics, alas.)

Tonight I went to the Political Discussion Meetup, which they've now moved to Scallywag's.  I mentioned that after the Clinton-Trump debate someone online asked "Who won the debate?" and I posted, "I won, because I didn't watch it"!  On Salon and The Huffington Post I've been writing, in effect, "Trump's going to lose anyway so go ahead and vote for Jill Stein!"

I've been having some more unusual dreams.  In one I was on a luxury ship with my father (we'd got booked at the last minute) and following him down a long escalator a short distance behind, but when I got to the bottom I'd lost him and couldn't figure out which of the two possible ways he'd gone.  In another we had a house in Amherst, N.S., near my hometown of Sackville, N.B.--we never had a house there--and I was in the basement and found a lot of interesting books there, including some Classics Illustrated comics.  And I was also dreaming about that cheesy scene at the start of Dirty Harry where Clint Eastwood challenges a punk to guess whether or not his Magnum is out of bullets...

On Duolingo I've just been learning how to say "I've been doing" in Portuguese.  In that language you say it as "I've done" instead! (In French I think you say it as "I do"...)

The other day we ate scalloped potatoes, cauliflower and carrots out of our garden.

The world of Ebooks

The other night I weakened and bought an Ebook online.  I feel a certain loyalty to paper books, but there are some books you can only get in this format!  The book I bought was Short-Lived TV Series 1948-1979. (Why yes, I am interested in reading about shows like Cool Million and Anna and the King.) But when I tried to read it on the Safari browser, I got nothing but blank pages!  So I downloaded the Chrome browser and tried to read it on that.  But now I got a message that I couldn't open it and had to go into the browser's settings and specifically enable cookies on the website play.googleusercontent.com .  So I did exactly what I was supposed to, but I still had the same problem!  I had to phone brother Donald and ask him to come over once more and fix the problem.

Today I started digging up the russet potatoes in the garden.  The first row was a whole bowlful, including one big enough for baking.  I also brought in a really big head of cauliflower.  The carrots are looking good.

On Duolingo I've been learning the past tense and the imperative mood in Portuguese.  I've been doing about a dozen lessons a day. (There's a tongue-in-cheek clip on Youtube suggesting that Duolingo is a tool of the Devil, and Moira got a big laugh from it.)

My history discussion group met on Wednesday night and we discussed Ten Lost Years.  We got half a dozen people. (Our discussions tend to go off on tangents, but we have a good time.) I suggested some new year subjects to Jane, and she said that she's always skeptical about my ideas but gets won over when I explain them!  A few days ago I posted Cabaret, Anne of the Thousand Days and Tom Jones as movie events for the rest of the year, and I just posted the subjects for the first three months of 2017:  the 1950s, the United States and Ireland.  The background books will be John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, Don't Know Much About History and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.  For movie events the same months, I'm thinking of Peyton Place, The Crucible (the version with Daniel Day-Lewis) and David Lean's Ryan's Daughter.  I guess maybe I'm getting ahead of the game, but I do enjoy planning this stuff!

Now that I've finished Ten Lost Years and the Frost poems, I'm back to reading the Lapham's Quarterly about disasters.

Deadlines met

"My speech will be like the old woman's dance, short and sweet"--Young Mr. Lincoln

Well, I finished the Frost collection on Saturday night, though I skipped his two masque plays. (I finished Ten Lost Years yesterday, with three days to spare.) Yesterday afternoon the Classic Book Club discussed Frost, and we ended up reciting a lot of his poems, which was something new.  A newbie called Karen is really enthusiastic about the group.  Frost with his sensibility reminds me of my mother.

Last week I saw a documentary at the Bloor about the Barbican estate in London.  The Museum of London is located near there, but didn't get mentioned.  I was thinking that it's time for me to visit London, probably in May.

Friday the History Discussion Group screened John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, which I've seen quite a few times.  It's Henry Fonda's first great role!

Yesterday on Youtube there was a video about this puzzle they give to engineering applicants:  an alien arrives on earth, and each day the aliens on earth have a 1/4 chance that you'll die, a 1/4 chance that you won't die or reproduce, a 1/4 chance that you'll reproduce one alien, and a 1/4 chance that you'll reproduce two.  What are the odds that the aliens will die out on earth?  I guessed 40%, which wasn't so far off from the right answer, which is the square root of two minus one, or about 41.4%.

The puzzle intrigued me so much that I did some more figuring.  The chance that they'll die out in the first two days is 85/256, just under 1/3.  The chance that they won't increase is 112/256, or 43.75%.  The chance that they'll go from one to either two or three will be 76/256, or close to 30%, so the chance of a bigger increase will be the remainder, or something over 26%.  And the chance of dying out in three days is something under 37%.

In the long run, once the alien population gets critical mass the trend will become more predictable.  They'll increase about 50% every day, which virtually guarantees doubling after two days, tripling after three days and quintupling after four days.  I love numbers!

Facing deadlines

Next Sunday my book club is discussing Robert Frost's collection, and next Wednesday the history group is discussing Ten Lost Years.  So I'm anxious to finish my complete Frost collection by Sunday, and Ten Lost Years in the next week.  To tell the truth, I work pretty well under pressure.  Reading Frost's poetry gives me a desire to write my own poems. (Please don't laugh!)

Saturday I went to a late-season barbecue Margo from Russia was hosting. (She warned us to wear jackets against the cold.) She lives a bit north of Bathurst & Steeles, and getting there was an adventure!  There were a dozen people there.  She got a game going where everyone had to name a fruit or vegetable with the same initial as his first name.  All I could think of was "juniper berry," though I don't know if that fruit is used for anything but flavouring gin.

Sunday afternoon I went to a "town hall" discussing electoral reform, hosted by MP Adam Vaughan in City Hall council chambers.  I left a printout of the post I uploaded here last October with my proposal for a mixed proportional representation scheme.  Here's a pet peeve:  When people sit in those plush benches for the spectators, you might think they'd go to the middle, but half of them just sit down next to the edges, so I have to step past them to get a seat!

At opera rehearsal, Beatrice added some makeshift taijiquan to our warmups!

Duolingo can be odd.  I was recently learning some romantic pickup lines in Portuguese, and one of them translates as "If I could see you nude, I'd die happy!" (Is that what Brazilian girls want to hear?) Another is, "I'm not a pirate, but I've found a treasure!" I also learned an expression that translates as "helpless as a blind man in a shootout," except that they translated it as "helpless as a nun on honeymoon"!  Just today I learned Portuguese sentences that translate as "She sleeps in an empty room," and "You don't exist!" I'm now officially 27% "fluent." To tell the truth, there seem to be a lot of Portuguese words that are easy to learn:  guess what "companhia" means?

Another thing that bugs me:  the Duolingo logo for the section teaching about the verb "to be" is a skull.  Sure, Hamlet does say "To be or not to be..." and hold a skull, but he does it in different scenes! (Very persnickety of me, I know...)

Back to the opera

Sunday was Read Out Loud.  It's September, so I did banned and challenged books again.  Someone was reading from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita (I should read that again someday!) and someone else was reading a rant by journalist Oriana Fallaci.  I read the chapter in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye where he's travelling on a train and bullshitting the mother of a classmate, a section from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale that was reprinted in the Lapham's Quarterly spying issue, and the chapter in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn where the judge tries to reform Huck's father.

Tuesday was the first Toronto City Opera rehearsal.  We started on Bizet's Carmen, and did pretty well with it. (We did it three years ago, so I guess it's still fresh in our memories.) This year I'm singing tenor for the first time, and Beatrice is grateful:  the chorus has three members this year, as opposed to none last year!

Andriy is now charging $50 per lesson, which is reasonable since we go on for an hour and a half! (He'd go on even longer if I didn't get tired.) We've mostly been doing Gluck's "O del Mio Dolce Ardor," and he suggested the exercise of singing the song in vowels alone, without consonants, which seems pretty useful.  The other day we started on Pergolesi's "Nina" too.  It's actually just a guess that Pergolesi wrote it:  if they had no idea it would be a folk song!

Last night I went to a new Book Club Meetup at the Bedford Academy.  It turned out that I was the only boy there! (I quipped, "Book clubs are a good place to meet girls!") This was just a meeting to discuss what to read next, and I suggested Maria Chapdelaine since I just finished it.  Denise is the organizer, and I invited her to join my Toronto Bookshelf group on Facebook.

On Facebook today someone mentioned a report that a public school employee quit because she was forced to deny a school meal to a kid who couldn't pay.  I pointed out that that's the sort of thing I've been reading about in the Great Depression history Ten Lost Years!

The other night I dreamed about being in Glasgow (where I spent a year almost thirty years ago) and remembered an actual toy store called The Jolly Giant!  I also dreamed about travelling around in a London Routemaster bus with double deckers, like Cliff Richard did in the movie musical Summer Holiday, but in this dream it was painted blue.

Square dancing

My new interest is square dancing.  They started a Square Dance Meetup group, and I went to the first event on Thursday night at the community centre near Church & Wellesley.  Then I went to a second event last night at Dovercourt House, with live country music!

To someone who's taken ballroom dancing lessons, square dancing isn't so complicated.  The main thing is to keep in step with the music, left-right like in marching.  I've been learning stuff like promenade and allemand left and peekaboo, and of course do-si-do.  The Thursday night group had enough people for three rings (at eight dancers each), but back twenty years ago when there was less competition, they got over a hundred people!

I've been learning Portuguese on duolingo.com .  I learned that in this language cobra means any snake, not just one breed.   The word "banana" must come from Portuguese because it's the same in that language.  Xicara means cup, while copo means glass, which can be confusing.  They say I'm now 17% fluent, whatever that means. (Did you know that there was a period in the 16th and 17th century when Portuguese was a lingua franca in a lot of Asian commerce, like English today?)

This afternoon the Play Read-Through Meetup did Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.  That was pretty fun, and we got almost ten people!  Next month we're doing Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

I've started re-reading Ten Lost Years, Barry Broadfoot's oral history of Canada in the Great Depression.  This is what reading history should be, full of compelling stories about people trying to survive unusually hard times. (Maybe we should do Six War Years too.)

I finally got around to buying a new set of pajamas.  I'd tried to buy one at Walmart, but they only had them in extra-large size!  This evening I went to Yorkdale Mall--had to take a shuttle bus because the subway's being serviced--and found a pair at the Bay.  They're a bit tight, but cost only twenty bucks!  I'm wearing them right now.

Two TV shows

I've been looking at two new series on Crave TV.

Deutschland 83 is a German miniseries about a 1983 East German who gets manipulated into spying in a West German general's office under a stolen identity, so the East German government will give his mother priority for a kidney transplant operation.  It's a terrific show, intelligent and exciting. (We rarely appreciate how lucky we were to survive the irresponsibly hawkish Reagan presidency.) Those little East German cars looked curious.

I've also started the remake of Roots.  It isn't as cheesy as the 1977 original, but it still lacks subtlety.   Alex Haley's book is way better than either version.  Forrest Whittaker has a good role as Fiddler. (It was a good role for Louis Gossett.) At least it lacks the bad acting of white stars like Edward Asner!

Last night I found a puzzle at brilliant.com where you have to figure out x where (x+1)^1/2 - (x-1)^1/2 = (4x-1)^1/2.  I think their answer is that there's no x that fits the equation, but that assumes that these are all positive square roots.  x=5/4 works, when the second term is a negative root while the others are positive, or when the second one's positive while the others are negative!

Odds & ends

Monday night we saw the movie of August:  Osage County, which Moira borrowed from the library.  The cast included Dermot Mulroney, whom she calls "my favourite goon." Unfortunately, the video skipped several times in the second half. (She says library DVDs are notorious for that.) The soundtrack included the Eric Clapton song "Lay Down, Sally," which I always thought went, "Way down south"!

Tuesday night we saw Rene Clair's And Then There Were None, from the Agatha Christie play, also from the library.  It's pretty scary, with a tasty cast. (Moira said, "The cat did it!") It turns out that the play has a different ending from the book!

Wednesday I had lunch with Pam at Butler's Pantry.

Yesterday I finally got my eyes tested at a clinic near St. Clair & Dufferin. (I tried to wait until after my OSDP interview, in hopes that a new health care plan would pay for it, but it's been taking forever!) My long-distance sight is still improving, so I got a new prescription.  The eye doctor expects that my headaches will be reduced, but they never seem to go away.

Today I got my hair cut.  When she was finished, the Hungarian barber said, "Now you look ten years younger!" My gray hairs are a bit more visible near the temple, but I find that look dignified!

I saw a video on Youtube by someone talking about the best and worst national flags.

Last night I dreamed about meeting an American fundamentalist and pointing out that Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson was a deist.  I said, "Deists think that God is like that rich uncle who never takes you out to dinner!"