Dora Kheogh

"All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged.  In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every businessman ought to belong to an employers' association and to the chamber of commerce.  In union there is strength.  So any selfish hog who doesn't join the chamber of commerce ought to be forced to"--Babbitt

Yesterday I went to the Celtic Reading Meetup for the first time.  The subject was Dylan Thomas, and we did quite a bit of reciting. (Future events look promising:  Angela's Ashes, Robert Burns...) The location was the Dora Keogh Irish pub near Broadview station, and we were in a room a lot like the one my groups had in the Mirvish Village Victory Cafe before it was condemned.  

I've decided to move my Meetups to this place too, though only after next week's events.  I discovered this place by accident:  we were going to meet at a Timothy's coffee shop a couple of blocks east, but it was closed because of the murder investigation there! (It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good...)

The new patio is almost finished.  I've hosed sixty tiles the last couple of days--after the noon session I forgot to turn the hose off!  John will soon be adding a back step. It's one of several improvements we'll be making before applying for a reverse mortgage. (Another is a spiral staircase to the attic.)

I've read the Classics Illustrated comic book versions of Lorna Doone--the romantic adventure set in England's west country in the late 17th century--and The Last Days of Pompeyi. (It does seem to me, that's a better way to spell it!)

The home issue of Lapham's Quarterly is excellent!  I've enjoyed the selections from V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas and Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt.

Yard work

Saturday morning John came over and rooted out all the bricks in our back yard patio. (He's going to put it back together so that weeds won't grow in it, not that I care about weeds.) That meant work for Moira and I, too:  she brushed the dust off the bricks and I hosed them down.

The catch is that we only have a short hose, so I have to tote all the bricks to the side yard where the hose can reach them.  Yesterday I toted and hosed 59 in total.  It was exhausting work, and I had to take long breaks, but nothing could stop Moira. (She runs a lot, and it keeps her in shape!) She puts me to shame...

Today it was raining so we left off the work.  Except that later I toted 24 more to hose tomorrow. (My shoes got muddy!)

The other night I dreamed of being the guest of an obnoxious Manhattan millionaire, a jerk in both his business  dealings and his personal life; seeing a Spy-style magazine devoted to saying nasty things about him, and wondering if he gave them scoops just so he'd be talked about.

Wednesday night when I was going to Debi's place to screen Peyton Place, I got off the University line at St. George station, as I usually do to get to stations on the Yonge line.  But I'd forgotten I was going to catch the King bus at St. Andrew station, so I had to wait for the next train to continue.  As it turned out I met my friend Betty-Anne (the art walk girl) on the next train, so my mistake actually worked out well for me!  When that happens I think, "What the old man does is always right." (That's the title of a funny Hans Christian Andersen story.)

Yesterday I read the Classics Illustrated comic book of Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff.  It's about a Russian scout delivering a message from the Tsar himself to the governor of Irkutsk urging them to hold out against a Tartar rebellion threatening his hold on Siberia, with various people out to stop him.

At one point the Tartars blind Stroganoff, but near the end it turns out that he isn't blind after all because the teardrops in his eyes protected them! That's a cheap narrative trick, just like in the Batman movie The Dark Knight where Commissioner Gordon got killed (an "anything can happen now" moment), but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family...

Justine Moritz

"Do you think this dress is too 'old'?" "No, you're just too young"--Peyton Place

Last night I screened the DVD of Mark Robson's Peyton Place for the History Meetup. (I was going to show it last year the same month as we were discussing the 1950s, but the place was unavailable.) Too bad that the disc went haywire just ten minutes or so from the end--oh well, you can find the whole thing on Youtube! 

It's the second time I saw it, and I must say it has some fine supporting actors like Arthur Kennedy (as the drunk who rapes his stepdaughter) and Lloyd Nolan (as the wise doctor--you can tell he's wise just from his line delivery!).

That movie climaxes with Kennedy's stepdaughter on trial for killing him, of course. And coincidentally, this week I read two Classics Illustrated comics with girls hanged for a murder they didn't commit.  

One of these was (spoiler!) Esmeralda the Gypsy in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame; the other was servant girl Justine Moritz in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Oops, Phoebus actually survives the stabbing of which Esmeralda gets convicted!) I'll leave off Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because I've decided to do it in my book club for Halloween.

Today I was googling Justine Moritz. (When did I develop these lurid tabloid tastes?) I found an illustration of her fate that I thought of posting at the top, but decided it would be in bad taste.

Oh, what the heck--here it is!

I tried to scan a similar image in the comic, but for some reason I can't save the scan!

...and the world well lost

Friday afternoon Miriam and I saw the documentary Always at the Carlyle at the Bloor.  It's about a high-class New York City hotel where the whole barroom was decorated by Madeline author Ludwig Bemelmans, and Bobby Short became a famous singer performing at the cafe.

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was love, so I titled it "...and the world well lost." Eleven people turned up, the best showing in several months.

I read the part of Goodbye to Berlin where Christopher and Sally got to know Clive the rich American; the chapter in Tom Sawyer where Tom took the rap for Becky's offence; the folk poem "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington" and Tennyson's "Lady Clare." Joanna brought a book of Yeats poems, so we read several of those too.

I've brought out my collection of Classics Illustrated comic books and started reading them.  Some of them we had when I was young, but there are quite a few that I bought in recent years and haven't yet got around to reading! (Yesterday I read the comic of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.)

THE BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ

"It was like a dogma in a newly adopted religious creed:  Sally adores Clive.  It is a very solemn undertaking to adore a millionaire.  Sally's features began to assume, with increasing frequency, the rapt expression of the theatrical nun"--Goodbye to Berlin

"You don't have much, Stroud, but you keep subtracting from it"--The Birdman of Alcatraz

At the memoir group yesterday afternoon, they were showing the movie version of M*A*S*H in the next room and we could hear the noise. (That scene where they drop the walls of Hotlips' shower tent with everyone watching is cruel, not funny!)

I've finished King Leopold's Ghost and now I'm reading Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin for the Classic Book Club.  The musical Cabaret is based on it, and I keep seeing Liza Minnelli and Michael York.

Tonight I saw John Frankenheimer's The Birdman of Alcatraz (for the second time) with the Movie Meetup group at the Eton House. That's the one with Burt Lancaster as a sociopathic convict redeemed by his study of birds.  It's occurred to me that Robert Stroud was autistic! Such people sometimes have a way with animals.  When I saw the panda movie on Saturday with fellow Aspie Bev, they showed a New Englander who specializes in reintroducing bears into the wild, and Bev thought that he was autistic too.

I'm now past Level 1800 in Candy Crush Saga!

Salsa on St. Clair

On a rich family's Gruenewald house: "The place is like a power-station which the engineers have tried to make comfortable with chairs and tables from an old-fashioned, highly respectable boarding-house....  Herr Bernstein probably ordered the villa from a popular avant-garde architect in a moment of recklessness; was horrified at the result and tried to cover it up as much as possible with the family belongings"--Goodbye to Berlin

This weekend was the nearby Salsa on St. Clair festival, so things were pretty noisy in our neighbourhood.  (I turned on the air conditioning since the windows were worth closing anyway!) Of course, it's just once a year.

It was a good afternoon to get away from the noise and join Bev and see that Imax movie Pandas at the Ontario Science Center that was sold out last time.  The Omnimax system gave me a headache. Afterward we had Thai food at the Lime restaurant again.

Today I just stayed home and napped quite a bit.  I was also learning about Guam on a Youtube video.  Not much to write about...

Dog days

The hot weather is here!  In recent nights I've been sleeping with the windows open. (Opening and closing them is a bit of trouble.) We haven't been using the air conditioning, but I've turned on the fan a few times to spread the cooler basement air through the house.

Today I went to Shoppers Drug Mart and refilled my Cipralex prescription.  It takes a while to get it ready for pickup, and I usually go over  to Whychwood Library to kill some time.  But that branch has closed for renovations for a year or two.

What will I do to kill time now?  I went over to the parkette on Wychwood Avenue, across the street from Wychwood Barns, and read some more of King Leopold's Ghost, about how the rubber boom began.  That book's a real jaw-dropper!

Today was Tuesday, so I went to Ali Baba's near Ossington Station and bought four falafel wraps for our dinner.  It's getting to be a Tuesday ritual for us. (I get them with lettuce, cabbage and pickled turnip--don't like onions or tomatoes--and two with the hot sauce and two without.)