THE LEOPARD

"Things will have to change in order that they remain the same"--The Leopard

Wednesday night I saw Luchino Visconti's Risorgimento epic The Leopard (for the third time) with the History Discussion Group.  I guess it's a story about an aging man letting go as his world disappears.

Yesterday was a big opera rehearsal.  It started at 11:00, with a lunch break, and I quit at 4:30. (There was still a little more, but I was worn out.) I have most of it relearned, but the part at the end of the third act I need to do more.  Don't know if I'll be able to do this next year--I just don't have as much energy these days.

I was late for the singing group again today, and took the wrong music binder!  I need to shape up.

THE DIRTY DOZEN

"He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity.  Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision.  He chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and testing its mortifying flavour in secret"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Sunday was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  A Chinese girl called Lu came who wanted to improve her English.  She read a vivid chapter about giving birth from A.J. Cronin's medical novel The Citadel.

Last night I saw Robert Aldrich's unsubtle war movie The Dirty Dozen--for the second time--at the Classic Movie Meetup.  I saw it mostly for Lee Marvin, one of my favorite tough guys. (The New York Times capsule description says: "Entertaining as a blowtorch.") Did you know that this was the most popular movie in American cinemas during the summer of 1967 a.k.a. "the Summer of Love"?

I was just thinking about the early '70s British TV series The Adventures of Black Beauty.  I was thinking how I liked Dr. Gordon, Vicki's widowed father played by William Lucas.  He was always saying wise things like "Rome wasn't built in a day."

I'm pleased that Bernie Sanders is running for U.S. president again!  I have a feeling that this time he'll be unstoppable...

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

"'Hello!  It's young Dedalus!  What's up?' 'The sky is up,' Brother Michael said"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Monday I picked up James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at the Lillian Smith library, which I'm reading for my book club. (Never read it before.) I'm really getting into it:  twice already I've been reading it on the bus or subway and ended up missing my stop!  This Oxford World's Classics edition is helped immensely by the annotations, like when a family friend tells Stephen that he got his stiff knuckles "making Queen Victoria a birthday present" and a note explains that means he was an Irish rebel in a British prison picking oakum from old ropes!

The book really grabbed me in an early scene where a Christmas dinner is ruined by an argument about Parnell!  I don't care for the sort of novel that says at the start, "It was 1892." I prefer it when you read about something like Parnell, and figure out the time from that.  People at the time mostly weren't thinking, "We're living in 1892"--that's a hindsight construct--but they were thinking about Parnell!

At the same library I was looking for a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel 100 Years of Solitude. (Why? That's another story for the next post...) That book's in big demand:  Lillian Smith had three copies and they were all out!  The next day I was going out to Ali Baba's to buy some falafel wraps and went to the Gladstone library to find the copy there, but the libraries had closed early because of the ice storm.  I went again on Thursday but it turned out to be out there too.  Then today I went to the Northern District branch and that copy was also out--some book club must be reading it!  So I went to Indigo Books and bought a copy.

I'm still not quite over my cold.  Last night I went to opera rehearsal but had to leave early because of a headache. (It didn't help that I'd eaten too much spaghetti.)

I've been answering a lot of questions at quora.com . (Two or three times I've reached my daily limit!) I can't resist giving some smartass answers, like when someone asked "Why do people end sentences with '...or whatever'?" and I answered "Because they're airheads!"

The other night I was watching a PBS documentary on Youtube about Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian revolution.  There's another subject to discuss in my History Meetup!

Crowdread

Wednesday night at the History Meetup we discussed Modern Italy and the Risorgimento.  To help moderate the discussion, I made my winter cap into a talking stone and passed it around to whoever was in turn to talk. (Gotta find a better talking stone!)

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind arrived Friday and I've already read over 100 pages! Those teenage girls in Europe calling for action on climate change remind me of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke!

I've joined a new Meetup called Crowdread. (Yesterday afternoon we met at the Reference Library.) It's a bit like my Reading Out Loud Meetup:  we bring a text or two and read from them, and discuss them.  John had some Oscar Wilde quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray, Serge had a text about herd psychology, and Serge's girlfriend (how could I forget her name?) had a Marie Kondo passage about reducing clutter.

I've been reading the "Fear" issue of Lapham's Quarterly, so I read a couple of passages from that.  One was from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and involved the prisoner communicating with the next cell by tapping on the wall, so for dramatic effect I tapped my glasses on the table, which impressed John.  The other was from Richard Hofstadter's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." It's a fun group and I'll be going again!

This afternoon I went to the I Wanna Sing group. (Had to miss the last two practices because of my cold!) We sang "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and "You've Got a Friend."

Miriam introduced me to the Flanders and Swann song "The Armadillo." (I know several of their songs but not that one.) It's cute and haunting, in a slightly Noel Cowardesque way!

Fifty-seven

Today was my 57th birthday.  I got a strawberry shortcake from Loblaw's, but we ate the regular falafel wraps with it.

Yesterday, after the memoir session, I went to Indigo Books and ordered my birthday indulgence:  a box set of the manga version of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind. (I used my gift coupons to pay for most of it.) They'll ship it for free next week!

I've finished the anime seriesThe Rose of Versailles. (It got really compelling at the end.) Now I want to learn more about the French Revolution--I see a future subject for my History Discussion Group! (I've developed a cyclical system for event subjects:  pre-modern, then Europe, then Asia, then the New World.)

The other day my online friend Nikki introduced me to the website quora.ca .  That looks interesting!

I'm still getting over my cold. Yesterday Moira and I joined Pui and Gordon at King Noodle to celebrate the Chinese New Year.