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!"