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...)