LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY

The other night I finally finished the fashion issue of Lapham's Quarterly.  Now I've started reading the spying issue from last winter. (After that come the disaster issue and the gambling issue.)

I also finished Pierre Berton's Canada.  Next I'll be rereading Bill Bryson's One Summer (about America in the summer of 1927) for the History Discussion Group.

Saturday afternoon I went on a march in Bloordale, from Jane to High Park stations.  It was a march to show support for Moslem refugees, in response to one by the anti-immigrant group PEGIDA the week before.

Sunday afternoon I saw King Vidor's Show People at the Revue, a Marion Davies silent comedy (for the second time).  What with her reputation as William Randolph Hearst mistress, it's easy to forget that she did have talent!  But in the sound era he ended up putting her in overproduced musicals.

I've recently started rereading my Menomonee Falls Gazette collection.  It's a weekly magazine from the early 1970s that reprinted the finest daily dramatic comic strips from the time.  (Stuff like Modesty Blaise and Rip Kirby and Secret Agent Corrigan and Tarzan...) I accumulated the collection by buying it on Ebay about a decade ago, and have all except a few issues at the end of its run of over four years.  There are still a few parts of it that I haven't read!  My new ambition is to compile an index showing all the strips the magazine carried, along with the writers and artists and capsules of all the reprinted stories for each strip.  The story strip was past its 1930s peak by then, but the art and writing were still way better than today!

Researching my Ph.D. thesis

Since John Snow is curious, I decided to do a blog post describing the research I did on my Ph.D. thesis twenty years ago.  It was on the treaty port of Chongqing in Sichuan, which was only opened in 1891.  And it was among the only treaty ports that hadn't been overrun by the Japanese when the system of extraterritoriality was ended in 1943.

The first thing I looked at was reports issued by the Imperial Maritime Customs, a department created by the Qing dynasty to handle the empire's foreign trade, including trade between treaty ports, which was mostly staffed by foreigners. (After the 1912 revolution it was just the Maritime Customs, and gradually got taken over by Chinese officials.) They issued five ten-year reports between 1891 and 1931, but also a long series of annual reports.

For me the summer of 1994 was the Summer of The North China Herald.  I spent the whole summer reading reports by that Shanghai-based English newspaper's Chongqing correspondents, on microfilm at the Robarts Library.  By the time I was finished, I had opera music going around in my head! (Wagner in particular, like "Elsa's Dream" and the Prize Song.)

Between May of 1995 and January of 1996 I was in London, staying at Goodenough College. (Lucky for me that my sister had stayed their the year before and put in a good word for me!) Most of my research was consular reports at the British government archives in Kew, which was quite a commute.  I also found some stuff at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

I often found interesting details in "throwaway" comments.  Like when they showed figures for passengers on the foreign ships sailing between treaty ports, they mentioned that some of the Chinese passengers were actually Japanese who passed themselves off as natives for the cheaper fare!

Some of the individual "characters" were interesting too.  Chongqing got "opened" as a treaty port, then opened to steamship trade, through the efforts of a merchant called Archibald Little, who wasn't so successful but did play the pioneer role.  His wife Alicia  was a travel writer, and one of the leaders of China's first anti-footbinding movement!

SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT

"What a strong little sugar plum you are!"--Smiles of a Summer Night

Wednesday was another History Discussion Group screening at Debi's place.  I was going to borrow a DVD of Tony Richardson's 1968 version of Charge of the Light Brigade from Malcolm, but we couldn't get together, so at the last minute I changed it to Ingmar Bergman's 1950s sex comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (which I saw for the second time).

It went over pretty well.  I was thinking that the '50s was the last time when they made subtly sexy movies. (After that came the '60s, and sex got obvious, especially in the movies.) This was about the time of the summer solstice, which was appropriate enough.

So the British have taken the plunge and voted to leave the EU!  It seems a boneheaded move:  the EU will still dominate the British economy, but now Britain will have no input!  Yet if I'd been a British voter, I would have been tempted to vote Yes just to "shock the system," as they said in the 1960s. (Sort of like heaving a rock at a beehive...)

Last night I had an unusually vivid dream in which I visited Chongqing (the Chinese treaty port I wrote my Ph.D. thesis about) just before World War II, and told a Chinese girl some of the things that were about to happen!

Tonight the choir did a concert at an old folks' home near Keele and Sheppard.  When we sang "Que Sera, Sera" I did the second verse solo! (That's the one that starts, "When I grew up and fell in love...") Oksana drove me and Clotilde up there and back.  Paolo always pulls a surprise or two, and this time we sang "You Are My Sunshine," which I didn't know except for the chorus.  Gary from my memoir group has now joined!

While I was there I also arranged to take singing lessons from Alexei, another choir member.  He lives up in Richmond Hill and could come to my house on Monday afternoon, but that's the time of the memoir group, so I'll have to come to him, on another day.  He charges $30 a lesson, which is very reasonable! (Even Giuseppe charged $50!)

BILLIONS & MANHATTAN

"What's the point of having 'Fuck you' money if you never say 'Fuck you'?"--Billions

Daughter: "It's Kafkaesque!" Mother: "At least she's reading"--Manhattan

We've started watching some new shows on Crave TV.  One is Billions, a really sharp show about Manhattan prosecutor Paul Giamatti about to take on Wall Street billionaire Damian Lewis.  The kinky opening scene seemed a bit gratuitous.

The other one is Manhattan, about the World War II scientists developing the first A-bombs, and their families living in top secrecy at Los Alamos.  This subject interests Father since he's been a nuclear physicist.

Tuesday we watched Listen to Marlon, a documentary built around the voluminous voice recordings Marlon Brando made over his lifetime. (I read Peter Manso's Brando biography some years back, but I couldn't quite finish it because it got too sad!)

Wednesday night I went to John Snow's lecture on Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt at the Gladstone library.  I ought to do his Main Street in my book club someday.  He asked me to become assistant organizer of his two book clubs, for what it's worth. (I take a much more casual approach than he does, and maybe we need to combine both approaches!) I've just been shipped half a dozen books to read for his upcoming American book club.

Six days since my last post and I can't think of anything more to write about!  It's one of those weeks...

A chip off the old tooth

Barbra Streisand: "Don't you know who I am?" Officer Bar Brady: "Well, if you aren't Fiona Apple I don't give a rat's ass!"--South Park

Wednesday night I chipped a back tooth.  It happened when I was flossing. (Maybe it happened because I was using waxed dental floss for the first time in quite a while.) Yesterday morning I went to my dentist and Dr. Hrabalova gave me a filling to replace it.

Wednesday night I went to the Politics Meetup at the Fox and Firkin near Eglinton Station.  It was interesting enough, but the place was so noisy that it was hard to follow conversations!  Thursday night I went on the Art Walk, back on Queen Street for the first time in months.  Friday night I went to the Scottish Meetup, which was at the Piper's, just a short distance from my house!

I've been binge-watching South Park on Crave TV.  It's no big revelation that the show is highly uneven.  Funny about suspension of disbelief:  I can accept that Stan's goldfish keeps sneaking out of his bowl and going around killing people, but I can't accept it when he brings the bodies back to Stan's room!

Since we still have Netflix till the end of the month, I started watching Aquarius, a series with David Duchovny as a square 1967 LAPD detective whose investigations involve Charles Manson.  It's pretty scary, of course:  I don't know how many more episodes I'll see.

I'm really appalled about the DNC's systematic vote suppression in the Democratic primaries! (Just because The New York Times doesn't report something doesn't mean it isn't happening.) They're asking Bernie Sanders to run as an independent.  If I were American, I'd vote for him!  The Clintonites are acting like "sore winners."

Crave TV

(to Brigham Young) "Did those golden tablets teach you to lie like that, or were you born a sonuvabitch?"--Hell on Wheels

Saturday I planted the rest of the potatoes and the peas, sunflowers, beans, carrots and onions. (I did all this just before a big downpour that night.) All that's left is some head crops like cabbage and broccoli.

After Monday night's choir rehearsal I saw a big rainbow in a full arc from left to right, with a dim second arc!

We've finished Bloodline and Hell on Wheels so I ended our Netflix subscription.  But we'll continue to receive it until July 6.  If we'd cancelled it a day earlier we'd have saved an extra month's payment, but them's the breaks!

We're going to subscribe to Crave TV for a while.  They have a lot of interesting shows, including the Clair Danes series My So-Called Life from the early '90s.  They even have Twin Peaks!  I've already started watching South Park again. (It's a guilty pleasure, a subject I was just writing about in my memoir group.)

Tonight the choir and the Columbus Centre band did a concert together, including the big "La Grande Guerra" medley. (Those are pretty good songs:  I'd like to learn more about them!)

I'm depressed about Hillary Clinton winning the California primary.  Be afraid of November, Democrats, be very afraid.  If Bernie Sanders decides to run as an independent he'll get no objection from me.  At the very least, he'll quickly overtake Mrs. C in the polls, then she'll be the spoiler! (Will the "pragmatists" practice what they preach and get behind Sanders to defeat the Republicans?  Or will it be "Hillary or bust"?)

Pax Mongolica

Tuesday night the choir did a rehearsal with the Columbus Centre band for the first time, before next week's concert.  They seemed impressed by us.

Sunday I got a message from the Schnitzel Hub that they wanted a $300 prepayment before Wednesday's History Discussion Group event, so I provided the payment through my credit card.  Maybe it was the wrong decision, but I didn't know what to do so close to the event, and didn't want to screw things up.

When we met on Wednesday night, there was a big kerfuffle, and in the end they refunded most of my payment and we moved to the Jester nearby.  The event, titled "Pax Mongolica" was a discussion about the Mongolian empire and its legacy, starting from Jack Weatherford's book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.  It was a very interesting discussion that went on for almost three hours.  There was a new Chinese guy with the name Mega. (His parents saw a Megabucks sign in Las Vegas and decided that would be a good name--would I lie to you?) We'll have future events at Scallywag's, where I've gone for the Political Meetup.

Netflix has some new episodes of Hell on Wheels, with the hero overseeing the building of the railroad from California east to the prairies, and dealing with Chinese workers. (I guessed that the Chinese boy was actually a girl because the lead cast included a Chinese female!)

I started planting the garden today, and did half the potatoes. (I would have started yesterday, but I was feeling unwell for some reason.) Moira's going to plant some herbs as well!