LEAVING HOME

"As for Pierre Gringoire, he not only managed to save the goat, but he became somewhat a success as a dramatist.  It appears that, after delving into astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics, and having tasted every variety of silly pursuit, he returned to tragedy, which is the silliest of all.  It was what he called coming to a tragic end....  Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a tragic end--he married"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Sunday night I saw a documentary at the Bloor about A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the East Indian who brought the Hare Krishna movement to '60s America, then the world. (I couldn't remember his name and had to look it up on Wikipedia.) 

Then Monday night I saw the documentary Hitler: A Career on Netflix.  (They were rather opposite personalities, of course.) It mentions that part of the reason the Nazis caught on in early '30s Germany was because their activities were more fun than the other parties!

Yesterday I ran through David French's Leaving Home with the Play Reading Meetup at Yorkville Library. (We had to move out to a park in the middle because a book club had the room.) It's a 1972 play about a Newfoundland family in Toronto, and I was Ben, the son about to leave home.  I saw the play on the CBC back in the '70s, or maybe it was the sequel Of the Fields Lately.  At any rate I remember the grace: "Bless this food that now we take and feed our souls for Jesus' sake!"

I've finished Hunchback. Its style is rather theatrical, almost operatic! (I wasn't surprised to learn that Victor Hugo wrote a libretto for an opera version.)

I now have over 500 Twitter followers!  I guess I reached a critical mass after following a thousand Tweeters...