Boccaccio's DECAMERON

Seward: "In my opinion--" Lincoln: "Which I always listen to..." "Or pretend to." "...with all three ears"--Lincoln

"Why did you hit me?" "Just because!"--One Piece

Wednesday night the History Meetup screened Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which I was seeing for the second time.  Sally Field as Mrs. Lincoln reminded me of my own mother. (Debi mentioned that she's started reading these blogs.  That makes two fans!)

I've started reading our translation of Boccaccio's Decameron.  It's written in 17th Century English but still pretty readable. (Boccaccio's account of the Black Death in Florence is unforgettable!) There's something pretty modern about it.

Had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzel Hub on Thursday.

Finished the third season of Sailor Moon, though I'm afraid Animelinkz may have missed one episode when they posted it online.  I've started the anime One Piece, which looks promising.  It's about a young man made of rubber who plans to become a pirate king.  It has something of the Dragon Ball spirit. (There's some McGuffin all the pirates are searching for, sort of like the seven Dragon Balls.)

I've moved the other big bookcase into my room and mostly filled that one too.  My bed currently has an extra mattress that was on the bed in the room that's being renovated! (It feels like the Princess and the Pea.)

The People's Vote

https://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/2018/12/07

I was thinking about this People's Vote movement in Great Britain. (I'm talking about it here because there isn't enough room on Twitter.) If you ask me, they should have a plebiscite with four options:

1.  Leave the EU by the terms of the agreement the government negotiated.

2.  Reject the agreement, and leave the EU without any agreement.

3.  Reject the agreement, and don't leave the EU until a new agreement is concluded.

4.  Don't leave the EU at all.

Eleven people said they were coming to today's Reading Out Loud Meetup, but I was the only one who showed up. Someone tell me what I'm doing wrong! (If I knew of more reliable people, I'd invite them...)

Despite that, I've been in a pretty good mood the last few days due to being busier than usual.  Friday I went to an Employment & Social Services office near Church & Jarvis to submit the form that'll give me an ODSP discount on TTC fares. (For me, finding a new place in the city is always a fun adventure!) And yesterday I moved one of those big bookcases into my room and filled most of it with the books that are taking up so much space. (Which meant moving some existing furniture to make room for it.)

I've finished watching the original Dragon Ball series online.  I don't dare take up Dragon Ball Z for some time yet!

One of the comic strips I follow, 9 Chickweed Lane, did a story the other week about a character who wanted to audition to play Jack Point (the clown who loses the girl) in a local production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard.  That piqued my curiosity, and I went on Youtube and found an exquisite clip of a Proms performance of a famous duet from that show! (That's it above.) Unlike with other strips I can only post a link to this one.

Moving furniture

I'm now writing this in my own room!  Yesterday Moira and I were moving furniture out of what used to be my room so John can tear out the walls and stuff.  (The biggest challenge was emptying the two big bookcases and toting the books out.) So I moved the old desk into my room and set up my computer on it.

I've moved most of those books into my room and I'm thinking of bringing in those bookcases too. (There's some older furniture now in my room that can take their place in the old room.) When John's finished, Moira can move her computer into that room from the living room so she can use it in the middle of the night with no fear of disturbing Father, who's now sleeping in the living room because the sun room got cold.

I've got to the last third of the third season of Sailor Moon, and the story's improving.  The first part moved pretty slowly, with one pure heart after another turning out not to have the talismans.  Finally the talismans turned up in the hearts of the three newest sailor senshi, including the newly-arrived Sailor Pluto. (Who's minding the Gate of Time while she visits the 1990s?  And why do I ask questions like that?) And Chibi-Usa met a girl who's the "Messiah" they're all looking for, and happens to be the daughter of the mad scientist we'd only been seeing in shadow! (He resembles a grown-up version of Melvin the dweeb--see above.)

I've started playing Forge of Empires again.  That's the computer game where you take a community from prehistoric times into the 20th century by building homes and industries, conquering provinces and upgrading technologies.

I've finished Blood of the Celts and now it's time to start The Decameron.  I'm also reading an E-book of Esther Samson's Black Country to Red China.  She's a Eurasian who spent her first years in Shanghai, then war came and her mother returned to England with her, where she got evacuated out to a Staffordshire mining household.  Then at age 17 she returned to China as the communists were taking over and started a new life in the People's Liberation Army.  But six years later she had to return to England--don't know the details yet--and became a West Country schoolteacher, rising to the headmistress level.  Her daughter Polly became a writer and married Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, whom she's written lyrics for.  Some stories you couldn't make up!

To bed

"She's not crying because I said she was 41.  She's crying because she is 41!"--On Approval

Saturday John and Kathrine came over and we had Indian food. (The nearby Indian restaurant has a December special!  We'll have to eat it with Donald too.) We ate what was left for the next couple of days, of course.

Yesterday we put The Marriage of Figaro to bed. (Someone brought a chocolate cake.) We got to keep our wigs so Anne may photograph me in my costume after all.  Moira came to the last show.  She said that the music is great--she loved the soloists, who were mostly new--but the plot gets silly in the second half.

This evening Miriam and I went to a Toronto Film Society double bill at Innis Town Hall. They were droll, sharply written British comedies from the 1940s: Clive Brook's On Approval and the Alexander Korda production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. (I saw the play at London's Old Vic about twenty years ago!)

It looks like I've finally straightened out my Prestocard account for now. (I paid $100 into it.)

Opening night!

The opera is underway.  Last Thursday we were rehearsing our stage movements again in the church gym.  Then Saturday morning we worked with the soloists. (The chorus parts were done first so we could leave early.) Monday night was the tech rehearsal at the Al Green theatre, then Tuesday was the dress rehearsal.  I got to wear my glasses with my costume, and the bright stage lights got to me.

And tonight was the opening! Someone brought some fudge, and it was addictive!  I finished the Lapham's Quarterly discovery issue, and during our long waits in the green room downstairs I've been reading Blood of the Celts for my History Meetup. (After reading the first chapter, I decided to read the rest in reverse order, first the last chapter, then second-last etc.)

Wednesday night was the History Meetup where we discussed Abraham Lincoln. Dora Keogh was crowded and noisy, so we moved to Timothy's World Coffee on Danforth and Jackman.

It looks like my new Prestocard monthly pass has registered on my online account.  But the TTC machines are still rejecting the card! (I'll have to phone them tomorrow.)

I'm now watching an online Geeknight series where two guys discuss that anime Revolutionary Girl Utena episode by episode.  Their analyses are as long as the original episodes, but fascinating.

I've given up those Facebook games Farmcliff and Golden Frontier.  I started the same company's Cloud Kingdom, but probably won't continue with it.

Ratzafratz!

George H.W. Bush, after winning the 1988 election through a nasty campaign emphasizing Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance: "No hard feelings.  It was all in a generous spirit of competition." (Do the American people know when they're being insulted?)

I was late ordering the new monthly pass for my Presto card. (The opera's been distracting me...) Last night I tried to order it, but kept getting a message that my credit card needed verification.  Funny it worked OK last month.  The message also showed a toll-free number which I called and started to get somewhere, but then our service provider (the well-named Fido) cut me off!

Today I tried to call again. There was a message at the start estimating that my call would take five minutes, but I ended up waiting twenty minutes before the phone's batteries went dead! (The thing we plug the phone into to keep it charged, it turned out, had itself been unplugged from the outlet...) Tonight I tried again, but the message said I could expect a 30-minute wait. Meanwhile, I can't even open my Presto account.

I haven't been in the best mood the last couple of days.  Only two people besides me came to discuss The Wizard of Oz Sunday, though Debi brought an interesting-looking annotated edition  that I should read someday.  I was going to watch episode 138 of the subtitled Dragon Ball, but couldn't open the Anilinkz connection, so I watched the dubbed version, which isn't nearly as good! (I saw the subtitled version today.)

And the news is full of toadying to the memory of the first President Bush, one of the biggest weasels to occupy the Oval Office--and competition is strong!  My favorite GHWB quote came after an American cruiser shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988. (Is it really a coincidence that terrorists blew up an American airliner over Scotland just six months later? But I digress.) The then-Vice President said: "I don't care what the facts are!" Think about that one a bit--Orwell lives.  

I also remember a 1989 editorial in the neoliberal British newspaper The Guardian contending that the President "seems to be more liberal than the policies he espouses." So he's just an enabler rather than a believer, see?  Scant consolation...

Oh well, the opera opens this Thursday.

This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm

Sunday was Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was British writing so  titled the event "This Blessed Plot, This Earth This Realm."  I read the opening passages of Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native and David Lodge's Nice Work (my shrink likes David Lodge).  Our other reading included Kipling's "Harp Song of the Dane Women" and W. Somerset Maugham's "The Verger." There was a British guy there with a lot to say--too bad I'm terrible at remembering names.  I like events where we don't just read texts but talk about them too!

Wednesday night I went to another Organizers Meetup, and met some more new people.

Thursday night we got the chorus staging straight for The Marriage of Figaro in the gym section of St. Matthew's. (I have the music down cold by now.)

Just today Miriam and I went to see the Lego mural people are assembling outside Union Station.  She likes talking with me a lot.

I've started watching online the third season of Sailor Moon, which I've never seen before.  There are two new sailor senshi, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who come across as butch and femme. This time the monsters are out to steal pure hearts to find talismans or something...

I reached a dead end in that Golden Valley game, so I quit.  Now I've started the new games Farmcliff and Gold Frontier, both of which remind me of the Zynga game Frontierville, which I used to enjoy greatly.

Geometric fun

I was doing some geometric figuring a few days ago.  Zero dimensions:  a point is a point.  One dimension:  a segment has two end points.  Two dimensions:  a square has four sides, with eight points coming together in twos to make four corners.  Three dimensions:  a cube has six faces, 24 segments coming together in twos to make twelve edges, and 24 points coming together in threes to make eight corners.

If you put all this together you can see a pattern:

Points      1     2     2*4/2=4     4*6/3=8     

Segments        1     4                4*6/2=12

Squares                  1                6

Cubes                                       1

Total         1     3     9                27

Horizontally, the number of points are exponents of two. But if you look at the diagonal lines upper left to lower right, you'll see a constant one, then a progression of even numbers, then the number to the left multiplied by the even number below and divided by two, then the same but divided by three, then four and five and so on.  And notice the total for each column:  exponents of three!

It follows that you'd get the following numbers for a tesseract and further dimensions. (Can't visualize it, but I can calculate it!)

8*8/4=16     16*10/5=32     32*12/6=64

12*8/3=32    32*10/4=80    80*12/5=192

6*8/2=24     24*10/3=80     80*12/4=240

8                    8*10/2=40     40*12/3=160

1                    10                   10*12/2=60

*                     1                    12

*                      *                    1

Total: 81          243               729

But then I thought about triangles, tetrahedra (four faces) and tetrahedral tesseracts!  It's the same for zero and one dimension, but then it gets different.

2*3/2=3     3*4/3=4     4*5/4=5

3                3*4/2=6     6*5/3=10

1                4                 4*5/2=10

*                1                 5

*                                   1

Total     7     15            31

This time, instead of 1, 2, 4, 8... the top row is 1, 2, 3, 4... Instead of 2,4,6... the first diagonal line is 2,3,4...  And the total is exponents of two minus one!

I suppose I could also do this for pentagons and docedahedra (twelve faces) and dodecahedral tesseracts and beyond, and even for the other Pythagorean solids: triangles and octahedra (eight faces), or triangles and icosahedrea (20 faces). This stuff fascinates me.

THE HAPPY PRINCE

"I've suffered a broken heart, but hearts are made to be broken.  That's why God sent sorrow into the world..."--The Happy Prince

Wednesday I saw theRevolutionary Girl Utena movieAdolescence Apocalypse (for the second time) on Youtube.  It's a rhapsodic mess, which gets bizarre in the last part when Utena gets transformed into a car that Anthy races into the outside world! (Nanami only appears briefly, alas, in her bovine form.)

At Thursday night's opera rehearsal, we did some more acting exercises.  I pretended to put a pet mouse down Heather's back!

Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart and bought a new pair of pants, new slippers and a new tee and polo shirt. (I also got some bulk peanuts!) I'm finally wearing my winter boots now, what with the snow.

Today I saw Rupert Everett'sThe Happy Prince, about Oscar Wilde's struggling last years, with Anne and her friend Javeed at the Carleton. Bitterly compelling.

1920: THE YEAR THAT MADE THE DECADE ROAR

"Neither race had won, nor could win, the [First World] War.  The War had won, and would go on winning"--Paul Fussell, quoted in 1920:  The Year That Made the Decade Roar

"We're all trapped in our coffins"--Revolutionary Girl Utena

Friday night the History Meetup discussed Poland. There were ten people there! (One guy knew a lot about World War II aircraft.)

Sunday afternoon I visited Giuseppe, my former singing teacher, for the first time in ages.  I'd tried a few times recently, but this time he was actually in!

The other day I finished watching the series Revolutionary Girl Utena on Youtube.  It has a superb ending, reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. (Watch the clip above through to the end of the credits!) I have a feeling people will be talking about that show for centuries...

Today I went to Deer Park library and borrowed Eric Burns' 1920:  The Year That Made the Decade Roar. (It's a large print copy, like books for children.) The 1920s was a more complex time than people often assume.

The cold weather has arrived and I'm finally wearing my long johns and furry cap.

Fundraising

Sunday afternoon was my opera group's fundraiser at the Columbus Center. (Tatiana had a cute purple thing in her hair!) On the way home I took the bus to Lawrence West station only to see signs saying that the subway along that line had been replaced by shuttle buses.  So I waited for a bus to come, but none did.  Finally I figured out that the subways were running again, and I got home rather late. (Should have gone home by the Dufferin bus...)

Monday night the Celtic Culture Meetup discussed William Butler Yeats' poetry.  We recited quite a few poems, and I sang "Down by the Sally Gardens" a cappella!

Tuesday I went to the Royal Winter Fair.  It's the closest I get to visiting the country.

Wednesday night I had dinner with Miriam's Meetup group. We were going to eat at Japango, but that place looked too small and crowded, so we went to Kimchi House instead.

I finished the Lincoln book and returned to the Lapham's Quarterly Discovery issue.

Abraham Lincoln: A Life

Abraham Lincoln (running for office): "If elected, I will be thankful.  If beaten, I can do as I have been doing, work for a living."

I finally finished that book of Polish history, but it turns out that the History Meetup is next Friday instead of today.  Oh well, better early than late! (It could have used better editing: I noticed some spelling mistakes.)

The subject of next month's History Meetup will be Lincoln's America, so I've started reading Thomas Keneally's Abraham Lincoln:  A Life.  That's another book in the Penguin Lives series--like Paul Johnson's book about Napoleon--by the Australian writer who did The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Schindler's Ark.  It looks like another good read.

I'm always interested in reading about Lincoln.  I wish my mother were still with us so I could tell her how he "dropped a brick" when he came to someone's door and asked "Is Miss Rodney handy?" ("Handy" could mean at hand, but it could also mean a fast girl...) Or how he came to a party and said, "Oh boys, how clean those girls look!" Mother was interested in Lincoln too, and felt sorry for his unstable wife.

Last night at opera rehearsal we met our stage director for the first time.  She had each of us say his name and something interesting about him:  all I could think of at that moment was how good I am at Candy Crush Saga!  Then she divided us into four groups and had us do exercises like I've done in acting class, like throwing around an invisible ball.  We're going to be human maze rows in The Marriage of Figaro. (I have a feeling it won't be your normal opera production...)

Times change, and we change with them

"Americans can't be whipped!"--How the West Was Won

Today I used our Metropass for the second-last time, went to Shoppers Drug Mart and bought a Presto card. (The last time was later when I went to Ali Baba's and bought falafel wrap takeout.  I've been getting their Tuesday special so often that they're getting to know me there!) Now I'll be able to get an annual subscription and even get the ODSP discount.

While I was at Shoppers Drug Mart I also renewed my Cipralex prescription and had another 20-minute wait.  This time I went to Wells Hill Park and read more of the Polish history book.  I've finally got to the all too exciting 20th century part.

Saturday night I downstreamed the Cinerama western How the West Was Won, a guilty pleasure of mine.  The HD picture was so crisp that I could often see the seams between the picture's three sections! Gregory Peck is amusingly cast against type as the gambler.  George Peppard is so (uncharacteristically) good in the Civil War sequence John Ford directed, and so weak in the rest of the movie, that he's like two different actors! Great musical score by Alex North.  Of course, Jimmy Stewart was too old for Carroll Baker...

Sunday was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I argued that Jekyll is actually worse than Hyde:  while Hyde acts evil because it's his nature, Jekyll makes a free choice to turn into someone he knows will do bad things, while maintaining "plausible deniability"!

Under the weather

"Nothing wrong with 'dead reckoning' navigation'--except for the name!"--The Spirit of St. Louis

"When grownups say something is "for your own good," don't trust them!"--Revolutionary Girl Utena

I have a bit of a cold, which has slowed me down. (I've been eating pomelo grapefruit for it.) I had to leave last night's opera rehearsal early, but before I did there was a fun bit where we walked around singing the Nabucco chorus, to get us used to singing and walking at the same time!  We've been rehearsing in the choir seats at St. Matthew's, but for this we walked among the pews.

I've finished two seasons of Dragon Ball and the first two-thirds of Revolutionary Girl Utena that I'd seen before.  But now I'm going to take a break before seeing the rest, and focus on finishing that book of Polish history before the Meetup a week from now.

Tuesday night I saw The Wife with Anne.  It's about a Nobel Prize-winning writer whose wife (spoiler alert!) has always been rewriting his drafts.  Seems to me they should do that more often:  two literary heads can be better than one.  I was thinking that I'd be good at the wife's job! Christian Slater has a good role as a nosy biographer.

Tonight I watched Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis for maybe the fourth time.  I streamed it through Google Play for just $5.00, and used Chromecast to watch it on our downstairs set in high-def, in all its Cinemascope glory! (Earlier versions I recall seeing with the sides cut off.)

Granted that the movie's uncharacteristic of Wilder, lacking most of his usual acerbic wit. And of course James Stewart was a lot older than the real Lindbergh.  It's more Lindbergh as Stewart than Stewart as Lindbergh, like Lisztomania was Franz Liszt as Roger Daltrey.  (That's a rather understandable choice, considering that the real Lindbergh wasn't big on personality:  as someone with Asperger's Syndrome, I think he had it too.) But I still greatly enjoy the movie, whose second half is mostly a Stewart monologue during his flight.  High adventure, with a striking musical score by the great Franz Waxman.

Don't go in the woods!

Today was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup, and the topic was scary writing:  the event title was "Don't go in the woods!"  We ended up going on for a full two hours!

I read the chapter in Huckleberry Finn where they find a corpse in a floating house and the one in Tom Sawyer where they're digging for buried treasure; Hemingway's "On the Quai in Smyrna" (about Greek refugees leaving Turkey); Robert Louis Stevenson explaining how Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came out of his dreams; Christina Rosetti's poem "Goblin Market"; and T. Coreghessan Boyle's "Greasy Lake." (About which, remind me not to move to the U.S.!) The others were reading Poe poems, part of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," and some Kafka.

We used Chromecast to watch a Youtube video of Pacific Overtures on our downstairs TV.  That's a 1976 kabuki-style Stephen Sondheim musical about Japan being opened to the west in 1853, and this video is of the original production!  We saw the first part, but couldn't make the Chromecast thing work later on.

Thursday at the opera rehearsal we were getting measured for costumes amid much confusion.  This year they're giving The Marriage of Figaro a Pop Art look, with everyone wearing wigs that are black on one side and white on the other, and it looks like I'll be the Andy Warhol type! We've been learning our few numbers from that show, along with the opening number from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, for the fundraising show the week after next.

We got the DVD miniseries The Night of... from the library, but couldn't get past the first episode!  It's about an Arab student in New York City who meets a fast girl and ends up getting charged with murder. Reminded me of the New York movie A Most Violent Year, which I couldn't sit through either: we get to watch things get worse and worse... (Remind me too not to move to New York.)

I've finally quit those Vikings and Throne games, and started another town-building game called Golden Valley.  And I finally gave up on getting past Level 1880 in Candy Crush Saga and went back to playing the early levels. (I see myself as the Son Goku of Candy Crush Saga--that's the young martial-arts prodigy in Dragon Ball.)

THE BLUE MAX

This evening the History Meetup screened The Blue Max, a mid-'60s movie about German pilots in World War I. (Once again, Malcolm provided the DVD.) The flying scenes were realistic, but George Peppard was a hopelessly lightweight lead!

I've started putting some compost on the garden.  It's pretty dry.  John's planning a big expansion of the garden next year!

A few days ago I saw some episodes of Dragon Ball where Goku visited Penguin Island, setting of the earlier Akira Toriyama anime Dr. Slump.  A couple of the characters looked familiar, and I found the intro of the show's second version on Youtube.  (For the record, Dr. Slump is a comedy about a scientist inventing a robot that looks like a little girl, like that low-budget '80s sitcom Small Wonder with the ear-worm theme song.) I'd seen this intro before.

Back in 1999, I came over to brother Donald's house to print out a draft of my Ph.D. thesis on his computer.  It took a long time to print, and to pass the time Donald showed me some anime videos he had. (He compared them to the "chaser" acts they put on at the end of vaudeville shows, encouraging the audience to leave.) One of them was that Dr. Slump intro, one of the stranger things I've seen in my 56 years.

Now you've seen it too, o reader!

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA

The other day I finished the second season of Sailor Moon and for a change started watching the smashingly bizarre series Revolutionary Girl Utena, a gender-bending "magical girls" anime about a lass who was orphaned at an early age but comforted by a "prince" who gave her a ring and promised they'd meet again. She was so inspired by him, however, that she decided to become a prince herself! "But was that such a good idea?" 

Now Utena's attending the prep school Outori Academy, where she wears a male uniform, plays sports with the boys and generally acts the tomboy.  Check out the names:  her surname, Tenjou, means "the heavens," while Outori means "phoenix"--though there's a good chances that it's also a reference to Outori Ran, who achieved stardom playing male leads in the Tarakazuka theatre's famous all-female musical shows. (The Japanese love those multiple meanings!)

At the school there's this mostly male Student Council who fight secretive fencing duels, whose winner becomes "engaged" to the Rose Bride (dark-skinned student Anthy) which means she has to serve him and do whatever he wants.  But Utena wins a duel and the Rose Bride belongs to her--why yes, the show does have lesbian overtones!-- and she ends up in successive swordfights...

Verbal description only scratches the surface of this show's remarkable style.  Directed by the flamboyantly gay Kunihiko Ikuhara, who directed much of Sailor Moon--with several of that show's animators here--it has an incredibly imaginative look, from the late-Meiji time a century ago when Japan's elite was superficially westernized, with lots of rose imagery. (The music is also impressively eclectic.) I also like the shadow puppets who comment on the story midway through! My favorite character of all is Nanami, a bitchy little blonde usually making trouble with her three-girl posse.  

I saw the first part of this show on video almost twenty years ago, but haven't seen the last third. (I've also seen the feature movie, which I recall was rather confusing.) BTW, that photo is of Sailor Pluto, my new favorite sailor senshi whom I mentioned in the last post.

Anime

"The problem with the world isn't the existence of evil, it's the existence of good--otherwise nobody would care"--Fargo

I've almost finished rewatching the second season of Sailor Moon.  I used to think that my favourite Sailor Scout was Venus, but now I think I prefer Pluto, the one in black boots who perpetually guards the doorway to time. (Saturn would really have been a better name for her.) I'll soon be looking at later seasons I didn't see back at the time!

I really like the song they play over the end credits of the Japanese version of the second season.  I even came up with a translation of the lyrics. (Translating Japanese into English isn't as hard as some translation, since they tend to say in ten syllables what we say in five and it's easier to stretch lines longer than squeeze them shorter.) Allcaps indicate an accented syllable, dashes one that's stretched out.

DON'T give UP, NO matter WHERE you are, whatEVer preDICament YOU may SEE!
THAT'S-ME, that's WHO I AM, that's the PRETty young MAIDen's POliCY.
SOME-DAY I'LL meet the SPEcial one, for HIM I'll do ANything, I won't FLEE,

FOR-HIM I'll RAISE my CHIN and LEAP inTO the FIGHT!

Down IN my BE-ING,
There's A sad YEARN-ING,
But LOVE will SOON come OUT aGAIN!

I'm aFRAID of NOThing FEARsome, of COURSE,
It's BETter to LIVE with PASsion, of COURSE,
I have DREAMS that are MANY and BIG ones, of COURSE.
THAT'S-WHY I'll BE a courAGEous GIRL!

ALL will COME, MONsters, DisASters, I'm GOing to FACE it all MANfulLY!
IN these TESTS-IS my CHANCE to SPREAD out my WINGS and fly GRACEfulLY,
For EVeryONE-LOOKS twice as BEAUtiful WHEN they apPROACH their task MINDfulLY.
I'LL beLIEVE-IN mySELF as I TAKE on the FUTure PLIGHT!

In SIDE my NA-TURE
Is A strong CREA-TURE,
And SOMEday OUT she'll POUR like RAIN!

I'll beCOME whatEVer I'm SEEKing, of COURSE,
It's BETter to conTINue perSISTing, of COURSE,
There will ALso be SORrow and WEEping, of COURSE,
But ANyWAY, I'll BE a courAGEous GIRL!

(So what if "continue persisting" is redundant and "everyone" is singular rather than plural?  It fits the rhythm.)

I've also started the second season of Dragon Ball.  As I said before, it's really a show for little boys, but I do find it fun.  My favorite character is the teenage girl Bulma, probably because she's usually getting pissed about something. (Siegfried the enemy agent was my favorite Get Smart character, for much the same reason.) She generally has reason for her annoyance:  Japanese men seem to treat women a lot worse than in the west! (Even when a Japanese lady gets appointed to a corporation's Board of Directors, she's still expected to serve the tea for the men...)

I finished harvesting the potatoes the other day and brought in the carrots today. Today I also gave our lawn a last mow. (Unusually warm weather for October!)

Finished Fargo.  I got caught up through seeing two episodes a day--the closest I can get to binge-watching--and we saw the last episode together.  The third season may be the best of all, though the Hollywood episode and the bowling alley scene were pretty odd.  It got rather Lynchian, to the point of having Ray Wise (the possessed lawyer on Twin Peaks) show up both times!

The greatest people of the 16th century

I shall now make my incomplete list of the greatest people of the 16th century:

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and Vasco da Gama (1460s-1524): Explorers who greatly widened the scope of the world as seen from Europe. Columbus, a Genoese working for Spain, discovered the sea route from Europe to America in 1492 and claimed Caribbean lands for his king, setting a precedent for brutal colonialism; da Gama, sailing south around Africa for Portugal, reached India in 1497, transforming world trade and starting a golden age for his kingdom.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), and Rafael (1483-1520):  the three greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, towering figures in Europe's art legacy.

Francisco Pizarro (1471-1541) and Hernan Cortes (1485-1547): The two most successful Spanish conquistadors.  Cortes conquered Aztec Mexico in 1521; Pizarro Inca Peru in 1532.  These conquests, both greatly aided by the accidental introduction of European smallpox, greatly increased gold and silver production in the Spanish empire.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543): Polish astronomer who published (on his deathbed) a theory that replaced the classical view of a geocentric universe with a heliocentric solar system.  This theory, resisted by the Roman Catholic Church, is central to modern astronomy and ultimately led to the theory of a universe with NO center.

Martin Luther (1483-1546):  German heretic whose 95 Theses started the Reformation, which resulted in most of northern Europe breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church.

Babur (1483-1530) and Akbar (1542-1605):  The two greatest rulers of Moghul India.  Babur, starting from today's Afghanistan, established the Moghul Dynasty in India with his 1526 conquest of Delhi; Akbar brought the empire to its pinnacle, dominating northern India.

Ismail I (1487-1524):  First Safavid Shah of Iran, unifiying the nation for the first time in centuries under the Shi'ite sect distinct from its Sunni rival the Ottoman Empire.

Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556): First Superior General of the Society of Jesus.  The Jesuit order he founded, with an emphasis on intellectual rigor and assertive salesmanship, became one of the leading organs of the Counter-Reformation and is still active today.

Henry VIII (1491-1547) and Elizabeth I (1533-1603):  England's two great Tudor monarchs, father and daughter, who reigned for over eighty years between them.  Their age was a turbulent time for England, marked by the Reformation, cultural advances and the beginnings of England's overseas empire.

Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566):  Long-reigning Turkish Sultan who brought the Ottoman Empire to its peak with the conquest of eastern Hungary, dominating the eastern Mediterranean and posing a challenge to Christian Europe.

William Tyndale (ca. 1494-1536): Reformation scholar known for his work translating Biblical scripture into English. Though put to death by Imperial officials, his legacy lives on in the greater part of the King James Bible.

Gustav I (1496-1560): First king in the Vasa dynasty, establishing Sweden's independence from the Danish-Norwegian union and overseeing the society's conversion to Lutheranism.

Charles V (1500-58): Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain for almost forty years.  He assembled a huge realm but faced increasing pressure from the Reformation in northern Germany, and ultimately bequeathed the Empire and the Spanish kingdom to different heirs.

John Calvin (1509-64): French-born theologian who became a Reformation leader in Geneva.  He founded the tradition of Dissenter sects that would be carried on by churches such as the Baptists, the Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed Church.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-64): Flemish physician whose publication De Humani Corporis Fabrica established modern anatomy.

Philip II (1527-98):  Habsburg king of Spain for over forty years, ruling an empire that included much of the Americas, Italy, the Netherlands and eventually Portugal.  His challenges included the Counter-Reformation, economic absorption of inflationary bullion from the colonies, new English rivalry and a persistent insurgency in Holland.

Ivan the Terrible (1530-84): First Tsar of Russia, he turned the Grand Duchy of Muscovy into an empire, defeating Tartars and rebels and starting the eastward expansion into Siberia.  During his long reign he became notorious for tyrannical methods and explosive rage.

William the Silent (1533-84): Prince of Orange who led the Dutch rebellion against Spanish Catholic rule, becoming first Stadtholder of the United Provinces.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92): French philosopher whose essays stand as an early example of modern thinking.

Domenikos

Theotokopolous "El Greco" (1541-1614): Greek-born painter who became the greatest artist of Habsburg Spain.

FARGO

"'If he be Mr. Hyde,' he had thought, 'I shall be Mr. Seek'"--The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"Surmise!"--Fargo

We've started watching the library DVDs of the third season of Fargo, the loose and surprisingly adept reworking of the 1996 American gothic absurdist movie.  We started watching it together but I fell behind the others. (Usually, I'm the one who's ahead.) This one has Ewan MacGregor playing two brothers!

I'm in the last part of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  We get shown surprisingly little of Hyde, like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. (Less can be more.) There's something Nietzschean about this double character!

Monday night I went to the Celtic Culture Meetup.  We were discussing Samuel Johnson's account of visiting the Scottish Hebrides, which I hadn't got around to reading. But it was still a good discussion, with a full turnout! (My mother was very interested in Samuel Johnson.)