Under the weather

Mr. Blind-Man: "I see clearly that this man is a heretic"--The Pilgrim's Progress

I was sick Saturday and worried that I'd got the COVID bug.  But now it looks like a false alarm.  I did get slowed down with my reading and writing this blog and such.  Once again, I've been eating huge pomelo grapefruit.

The week before last we rented a bin to get rid of the mud in our back yard. Lucky we shifted it to make room for the tip when we did, because soon after there was a cold snap and it froze so stiff that John had to loosen it with a jackhammer so we could move it!  But that turned out to be an advantage, because this way we could pick up big pieces and tote them at a faster rate than shovelling.  We filled the whole bin in one day, and a second one the day after.  Once again our timing was fortunate, as it snowed the day after.

So what have I been watching on Youtube lately?  The Lennon Sisters from The Lawrence Welk Show!  It started when someone in my music group was singing "You Belong to Me." (We were doing an online karaoke, in which I sang "Limbo Rock"). That's the song that Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters are singing in that guilty-pleasure movie The Jerk.  So I listened to it on Youtube, then the software brought up the Lennon Sisters version, and after I heard that it produced more of their songs.  I particularly liked their version of "Till the End of Time," Perry Como's first hit with a melody from Chopin's Heroic Polonaise.

I finished watching Dragon Ball Z.  I also finished the One Piece Ennies Lobby story:  some compelling episodes with the crew saying goodbye to their ship the Going Merry, and Ussop rejoining them.  Now I'm going to look at the movies and specials based on both shows.

My book club discussed The Pilgrim's Progress the other day, and our next book will be The Handmaid's Tale.  Last night I saw Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, for the third time, with the Watch Party in connection with Indonesia being the History Discussion Group's subject. (The week before we showed Peter O'Toole in Lord Jim.) It's food for thought that improves with repeated viewing, and Linda Hunt's gender-bending performance was ahead of its time, though she did win an Oscar.

I'm pleased that Jeremy Corbyn's started a "Peace and Justice Movement." (They should bring it to America!) Just the other day I read a Tweeter who said "I hope this is the last Tweet I write about Corbyn....  Why doesn't he just f**** off?" Methinks thou dost protest too much.  That Tweeter has since blocked me, like I care.  These days the Corbyn-haters are looking like sore winners!

Another movie cliche I hate

Our work in the back yard is almost finished.  Last weekend we laid the pipe from the downspout and filled the space around it with rocks and put a layer of styrofoam insulation on top.  A few days ago we were mixing concrete in the basement!  And yesterday John and I combined forces to lift our biggest rocks and wheelbarrow them to the far end of the pipe zone.  We'd made another big mountain of basement dirt in the back yard and also had to move some of it to make room for the tip that'll carry it away.  And talk about muddy--it was like the Grey Cup championship game of 1950!

I just finished the book on Indonesia, and I've got to the part of The Pilgrim's Progress where they're going through Vanity Fair.  I'm also reading a book about Hayao Miyazaki and his anime creations.  I'm going to start A Little Princess in the Saturday afternoon reading-aloud Meetup event, but decided to delay it till the new year.

Last night my historical movie watch party showed the British musical Half a Sixpence, which I had to see because I liked the stage show's revival.  It was handsome but rather pedestrian. (Besides Tommy Steele in the lead, the cast included Cyril Ritchard, who was Captain Hook to Mary Martin's Peter Pan.) I just saw the thrilling climax of the One Piece Enies Lobby story, and now I'm watching the last episodes of Dragon Ball Z.

What's another movie cliche I hate? Plots that require characters to be passive at key moments!  Like in Dirty Dancing (which I liked overall despite its cheesiness). This dance teacher in a fussy Borscht Belt resort gets knocked up by a fellow staffer and has to get an abortion quick before management finds out and sacks her, but the responsible guy won't help her out because he believes in Ayn Rand.  All she has to do is say, "If they find out, I'll naturally tell them of your part and you'll get fired too!" then he'll have to do something about it.  But the plot requires Jennifer Grey to save her...

Another example is the 2002 Spider-Man movie.  In this version Peter Parker needs money for some reason I don't remember, so he enters some event where you win $200 if you can last two minutes in the ring with the Champ.  He KOs the Champ, but when he comes to get his prize the manager, who's made a fortune from the show, stiffs him on the grounds that he didn't stay in the ring for the whole two minutes!  Well, all Peter has to do is say, "I want that $200, and if you keep resisting imagine what someone who just KOed your champ can do to you..." But he doesn't, because his getting stiffed is absolutely crucial to the plot (which also requires the manager to be an extreme jerk, of course).

Life goes on

On Beth in her last days: "The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the schoolchildren daily passing to and fro--to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers up the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs"--Little Women

The other day I got my hair cut again.  I told Margo, my Hungarian barber that Father had passed on, and she said she'd really liked him. "I'll light a candle for him." I hope he can hear her.

John fell and hurt his leg a few weeks ago so he hasn't been coming around as much.  I was in an accident of my own--the wheelbarrow tipped over and one of the handles caught me in the chest--and I think maybe I broke a rib.  He was here on Wednesday and we had something to talk about: I've started watching the Ennies Lobby storyline of One Piece, which he also loves.

I'm now up to Level 8 in the Royal Conservatory's music theory series!  Just the other day I learned about the alto and tenor clefs.

I finished Little Women and the Russian Revolution history, and now I'm reading John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (for the second time) and an entertaining history of Indonesia.

The History Meetup on the Russian Revolution was a zoo, despite the much-appreciated assistance of Maria and Sergey.  But the second book club discussion of Little Women was successful.  I'm pleased that Farshad has restarted his Short Story Meetup:  on Monday we discussed some famous Gogol stories. (A fortnight ago our subject was Tolstoy's "The Forged Coupon," a revelation for me.)

I'm really appalled about Keir Starmer's witch-hunt attempts to purge Jeremy Corbyn from Britain's Labour Party! First he got him suspended for making comments on that EHRC report which the report itself says he's allowed to say.  Then, when the National Executive Committee reinstated Corbyn anyway, Starmer improperly denied him the caucus whip.  All this is arbitrary and heavy-handed, and may backfire badly. (I recall someone saying last spring when Starmer got elected leader that in one year he'd end up getting removed...)

I've bought enough Ebooks from Kobo to qualify for a free one, so I got a graphic-novel treatment of Mata Hari.

Short Story Meetup

"Mr. Tudor's uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a living lord, and Amy regarded the whole family with great respect, for in spite of her American birth and breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best of us--that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which set the most democratic nation under the sun in a ferment at the coming of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled"--Little Women

Last Thursday I braved the rain and the virus and went out to Remenyi's music store.  I bought Book 5 (and 6 and 7) of the Celebrate Theory series so Carolyn wouldn't have to do it for me.  I had to get out of the house for a little while, to be honest.

Saturday afternoon I started a Classic Book Club Meetup event for reading Jane Austen's Persuasion.  We're going to read four chapters every Saturday for six weeks.

Monday night Farshad resumed his Short Story Meetup online.  Remember last March when I read Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" in a single day for his Meetup that night but it was cancelled because of the virus? (Of course you don't, unless you're a rare regular reader!) Yesterday I again read it in a single day beforehand, though that's a bit less of a challenge the second time.  I couldn't help being reminded of my father's death last month.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Buy & Sell place north of St. Clair Avenue run by an Iranian-Canadian Father was friendly with, told him of Father's death and mentioned that he talked about the Iranian a lot.  I was there because my neighbour Emma tipped me off that he had a huge Dictionary of Canadian Music for sale.  I paid $20 for it--I might have haggled the price down but it felt like a shame to pay less for such a handsome volume!

Moira and I usually watch an episode of One Piece around 6:00, but I cancelled that night to make sure I'd have time to finish the novella.  We're getting really close to the end of the exciting Alabasta story, which will also be the end of the episodes on Netflix.  To see more, we'll have to go elsewhere online.

I'm also watching subtitled episodes further on, and just got into the Water 7 story, which is already getting good. (In one scene an enemy gang attacks the crew with The Everything Cannon!)

Today I washed the windows.

Last post

This'll be the last post on this blog for a while.

Fall cleaning

"Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by the exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty"--Little Women

Chichi (on her son Gohan): "Even if he saves the earth, he won't get into a good school!"--Dragon Ball Z

This weekend we've been setting the house in order.  We dismantled Father's old bed, moved it upstairs and reassembled it.  Now our dining table and old buffet are back in their old room.  I've been uprooting the grass just next to the house in case mice nest there. And John finally managed to split apart this huge rock in his basement digging and we moved the pieces outdoors together.

Unfortunately, I got so caught up in the home improvement that I completely forgot that I'd scheduled Fire Over England for my watch party screening that night! (My name is mud.) I'll just have to reschedule it for November.

Saturday morning my new History Meetup group was discussing China in the early 20th century, a discussion of great interest to me.  But right when it finished was the start of the Meetup where we're reading What Maisie Knew aloud, so I didn't have time for lunch!

I've been watching the Cell Games story of Dragon Ball Z online.  I think my new favourite character is Goku's wife Chichi, who's taken over the diva role from Bulma in the first series. (You have to feel sorry for her--she just wanted a normal family...)

The weather got warm again, so I've been able to open my windows some more!

More home improvement

"There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind"--Little Women

Friday I saw the Declaration of Independence musical 1776 (for maybe the third time) in the History Meetup watch party.  Back in 1972 a movie with the Founding Fathers singing didn't "play in Peoria," but it's pretty intelligent overall.

I'm glad John's home improvement project still brings him to our house.  Now he's been doing more basement work to prepare for a new sump pump.  On the weekend we were toting more earth up to the back yard.  Today we were mixing concrete again, but we didn't do enough to get bored with it.

This evening Sergey and Maria had me over for dinner, which they say they've never done before with any friends! Afterward we got dessert at an East Asian shop called HK Sweets.  Then we played that card game like Scrabble whose name I can never remember (Quidditch or something) across the street in front of the building that was originally Montgomery's Tavern. Unfortunately, it got too cool for me. (Should have worn a sweater!)

Got my new credit card today.  I've started writing down my everyday expenditures as an experiment, but there isn't much to worry about:  my bank account has gone from some $3000 to some $5000 in recent months, what with not going out much to buy stuff.

I really like the book version of Little Women.  The chapter where Jo wouldn't forgive Amy for burning her book of stories Jo had written hit home with me, as I have a tendency to hold grudges.  Jo and her mother had a wonderful "heart to heart" conversation where the latter confessed that she'd once had her own anger problems.

THE SEARCHERS

"Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went down to parties, and, informal as this little gathering was, it was an event to them.  Mrs. Gardiner, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly and handed them over to the eldest of her six daughters.  Meg knew Sallie and was at her ease very soon, but Jo, who didn't care much for girls or girlish gossip, stood about, with her back carefully against the wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower garden.  Half a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed to go and join them, for skating was one of the joys of her life.  She telegraphed her wish to Meg, but the eyebrows went up so alarmingly that she dared not stir.  No one came to talk to her, and one by one the group near her dwindled away till she was left alone.  She could not roam about and amuse herself, for the burned breadth [on her dress] would show, so she stared at people rather forlornly till the dancing began.  Meg was asked at once, and the tight slippers tripped about so briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suffered smilingly.  Jo saw a big redheaded youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess, intending to peep and enjoy herself in peace. Unfortunately, another bashful person had chosen the same refuge, for, as the curtain fell behind her, she found herself face to face with the 'Laurence boy'"--Little Women

Ward Bond: "I say we do it my way!  That's an order!"

John Wayne: "Yes, sir.  But if you're wrong don't ever give me another!"--The Searchers

A lot happening for a single paragraph in that first quote, isn't there?

A few days ago I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to refill my Cipralex prescription. There was a 20-minute wait, so I went to the park and read Little Women for a while.  As I went back to the drugstore I realized I'd lost my face mask, so I had to hold my hat in front of my face when I went back in. (I felt like a felon!)

Thursday night my History Meetup discussed the First Nations.  In connection with that theme, our watch party showed John Ford's The Searchers last night.  I'd seen it several times before, but it's as powerful as ever!

Tuesday I went to the optometrist and chose the frames for my new glasses. (They'll be ready in a week or two.)

Moira and I went shopping for food together the other day.  I want us to do more stuff together now that we're alone.

My credit card expires at the end of this month.  They sent me a replacement, I think, but I can't find it so I called their hotline and they're sending me a new one soon.  In the meanwhile I'll have to rely on my debit card.

The last anchor

"Our ancestors planted trees;

We sit in the shade"

--Chinese proverb

My father passed away Sunday morning at age 90.  His death was fairy peaceful, and not connected to COVID-19.

When your parents die, you feel a bit like a boat that used to have two anchors: you lost the first one, and now you've lost the last, and all you can do is sail forth and steer as best you can.  Your parents are your strongest connection to that vast era before you were born, and without them it seems even more remote.

Yesterday my friends Maria and Sergey came to visit and we had lunch at the Aviv restaurant.  It's good to have friends at times like this!  And John and Kathrine brought over falafel wraps.

Our house feels big with only Moira and I living there. (It reminds me of the time when we first came there as house-buyers 27 years ago and I thought, "This place is huge--we'll never be able to afford it!") John was building a new room for Father, complete with a shower, and he was almost finished!  Maybe we'll take in a lodger or two in the future.  I went food shopping with Moira today, because it seems more important to do these things together now.

Remember that song "Ol' Rockin' Chair's Got Me"? Last week I joked about Father, "Ol' rockin' chair's got him!" but now I feel bad about it a little.

Under the weather

I've been under the weather the last few days.  I have a bit of a headache just now.

Last week my watch party showed Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII.  Tonight we showed Stanley Kubrick's 18th-century epic Barry Lyndon.  It's the third time I've seen it, and it benefits from repeated viewing, though the second half gets lugubrious.  It's a great visual achievement. (Production design by Ken Adam, who did all those James Bond sets...)

Tuesday I got my eyes tested.  I had to register my prescription so ODSP will pay for it, but I'll come to choose the frames next week.

There was a blackout this morning, so I couldn't use this computer.  An event like that reminds me how much I've come to depend on the Internet, especially with the social isolation just now.

I finished the Skypiea story that makes up the fourth year of One Piece.  I've returned to the fourth year of Dragon Ball Z, which is getting weird.  Bulma and the sociopathic Saiyan Vegeta had a baby called Trunks, but now the grown-up Trunks has arrived from the future to help them fight these androids, and a future monster called Cell has also arrived....  I prefer the first Dragon Ball series overall, which was somewhat less focused on the fighting.

I finished my ebook of The Inconvenient Indian.  Now it's time to read Little Women.

THE INCONVENIENT INDIAN

"Feeling less hot, Dixon heard the band break into a tune he knew and liked; he had the notion that the tune was going to help out this scene and fix it permanently in his memory; he felt romantically excited.  But he'd got no business to feel that, had he?  What was he doing here, after all?  Where was it all going to lead?  Whatever it was leading towards, it was certainly leading away from the course his life had been pursuing for the last eight months, and this thought justified his excitement and filled him with reassurance and hope.  All positive change was good; standing still, growing to the spot, was always bad.  He remembered somebody once showing him a poem which ended something like 'Accepting dearth, the shadow of death.' That was right; not 'experiencing dearth,' which happened to everybody.  The one indispensable answer to an environment bristling with people and things one thought were bad was to go on finding out new ways in which one could think they were bad.  The reason why Prometheus couldn't get away from his vulture that he was keen on it, and not the other way round"--Lucky Jim

"A Blackfoot friend once told me that 'enfranchised' was French for 'screwed.' It's only funny if you're Indian.  Even then, it's not that funny"--The Inconvenient Indian

I finished Lucky Jim a few days ago and started reading Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian for next month's History Meetup.  It's pretty perceptive.

On Youtube I found a season of the BBC Great Railway Journeys devoted to Canada.  The first episodes went between Halifax and Quebec City and there were some places I knew from my youth in the Maritimes.

For a change, my online music theory group met today, on Tuesday afternoon instead of Friday.  And my online karaoke group met on Sunday afternoon!

Quiet Passion

"Dixon was alive again.  Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection.  He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning.  The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.  A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse.  His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.  During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police.  He felt bad"--Lucky Jim

"The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, 'so much as looking' at the child; the father's plea was that the mother's lightest touch was 'simply contamination.' These were the opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated—she was to fit them together as she might. Nothing could have been more touching at first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to think what those in charge of it would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive in advance that they would be able to make nothing ill"--What Maisie Knew

On Monday (I think) we had to carry out dozens of buckets of water that had accumulated in our new cellar so John could work on the plumbing for our new shower there.

I finished the book about Afghanistan history so now I can focus on finishing Lucky Jim.

Thursday my History Meetup discussed Afghanistan.  The following night the watch party showed John Huston's movie of Rudyard Kipling's Afghanistan-related story The Man Who Would Be King (which I'd read earlier in the week).  I'd seen the movie before but forgotten how good it was!  Sean Connery and Michael Caine have perfect chemistry.

Tonight I attended the Quiet Passion Literature Meetup through zoom.com . We read out loud the first pages of Henry James' What Maisie Knew.  It was fun. (We may do D.H. Lawrence or Edith Wharton next week.)

Headache!

Last Wednesday and Thursday nights I found two interesting Zoom Meetups discussing art and cinema.

Friday night I saw Anthony Mann's 1964 epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (for the second time) with my watch party. It's intelligent but often awkward. Unfortunately, the streamed version was letterboxed and at least half an hour shorter than the one I'd seen on DVD.  I couldn't help comparing it to today's America:  Livius (Stephen Boyd) was like Bernie Sanders--a bit too principled and not self-serving enough--and Emperor Commodus (Christopher Plummer) resembled Donald Trump. Nice elegiac music by Dmitri Tiomkin.

John's so clever!  He arranged a system with a plank and a lifting blanket that's made it a lot easier to move Father from his bed to his chair.  Now we've ordered a swivel he can stand on so he won't have to turn by himself.

Last weekend I had a big headache!  It must have been from the changing weather.

Anime

I recently completed the third year of One Piece.  After the Alabasta arc ended, the last dozen episodes were filler between the manga stories.  The first ones were pretty good, but the last ones were an odd story about entering a time warp and finding children who'd entered fifty years ago.

I've almost finished the third of seven years of Dragon Ball Z.  I'd have to say I prefer the first Dragon Ball overall.  The second show is focused mostly on the fighting and the story's less fast-moving.  At the climax of the Frieza arc, the planet Namek was going to blow up in five minutes but so help me, it takes over half a dozen episodes to get to the complete explosion!  I've been watching the Garlic Jr. filler arc, and that's pretty weak (besides being a sequel to a DBZ movie I haven't seen). The bad guys take over Lord Kami's sky realm and release a chemical that turns most of the world into evil brainwashed zombies...

Now I've started the last season of Sailor Moon.  This one introduces the Sailor Stars, three fetish-costumed girls with a remarkable resemblance to three guys in a boy band who go to the same high school(?) as Serena and friends. Serena's now transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon, who has white boots and a pair of wings!  Fortunately, Sailors Uranus and Neptune are back.

Last Friday I showed the Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures for the Friday night History Meetup watch party.  It improves with repeat viewings. (It opened in 1976, and it's like Sondheim's contribution to the Bicentennial: America as other people see it.)

We just saw Fear City on Netflix, a documentary about the New York Mafia in the 1970s and '80s and the efforts to destroy it through the RICO act. (They interviewed Rudolph Giuliani, whom I call Adolf Bullyani!)

Earache

"After no more than a minor swerve the misfiring vehicle of his conversation had been hauled back on to its usual course.  Dixon gave up, stiffening his legs as they reached, at last, the steps of the main building.  He pretended to himself that he'd pick up his professor round the waist, squeeze the furry grey-blue waistcoat against him to expel the breath, run heavily with him up the steps, along the corridor to the Staff Cloakroom, and plunge the too-small feet in their capless shoes into a lavatory basin, pulling the plug once, twice, and again, stuffing the mouth with toilet-paper"--Lucky Jim

This past week I've had a bit of an earache.  I still have some trouble hearing.

Tuesday we got a new bin for removing our back yard dirt and managed to fill it in a single day!

Thursday I finally got my hair cut, for the first time since the lockdown started four months ago.  My head feels lighter!

I've been following a page on Facebook that's posting episodes of Alfred Andriola's comic strip Kerry Drake from 1973. (I remember reading the Sunday episodes back then.) It's an underrated police procedural about a plainclothesman with a wife and four kids--quadruplets in the form of two pairs of identical twins, something extremely rare in real life--that's more realistic than Dick Tracy.  

This strip had some clever stories, like one about a guy whose wife miscarried in a home invasion by his co-worker, so he decides to take the law into his own hands!  And one involving Kerry's private eye brother Lefty, about a rich builder's son who falls in love with an untalented singer who in turn attracts the interest of an agent who eventually pressures her into helping him acquire evidence of the father's building substandard housing and bribing government inspectors so he can blackmail the guy...

I've finished the Arabasta story arc in the third year of One Piece.  It's so complex that I'll definitely have to see it again! (Moira and I are watching earlier episodes on Netflix, where we're at the start of the second year.) I'm also watching Dragon Ball Z, and just got to the point where Son Goku turns into a Super Saiyan!

Dog days

It finally rained yesterday.  The air felt fresher afterward.  The only problem was that today the dirt in the basement was a lot wetter and heavier--so was the the sand for the concrete.  I moved a lot of dirt in the morning, but when we mixed concrete in the afternoon I got worn out and had to quit with one more batch to gather. (I was starting to think less clearly and was afraid of getting into an accident!) Fortunately, Moira managed to take up the slack for that last batch.

Nobody showed up for my book club discussing Sister Carrie on Thursday. But a few people came to see the movie version the following day.

Last Monday, to be different, I bought some frozen juice at the supermarket.

Tonight I got about nine people (including me) for the History Meetup discussion of the Dutch Empire.

I found a Youtube channel with clips of the music on the anime One Piece.  It has some really brilliant background music by Kohei Tanaka and Shirou Hamaguchi!

Can't think of much to write about--this hot weather is getting to me!

A concrete plan

"What the so-called judges of the truth or morality are really inveighing against most of the time is not the discussion of mere sexual lewdness, for no work with that as a basis could possibly succeed, but the disturbing and destroying of their own little theories concerning life, which in some cases may be nothing more than a quiet acceptance of things as they are without any regard to the well-being of the future. Life for them is made up of a variety of interesting but immutable forms and any attempt either to picture any of the wretched results of modern social conditions or to assail the critical defenders of the same is naturally looked upon with contempt or aversion"--Theodore Dreiser

We got the last dirt out of the cellar on Thursday, filled the bin on Friday and got it towed away Monday.  Yesterday we got loads of sand and gravel, so today we started mixing concrete for the cellar!  We're using a small mixer that's very noisy.

Mixing concrete is three-person work.  I had the simple muscle job, producing buckets of sand and gravel from the piles.  Moira had the precision job, measuring out cement and water in the right proportion. (Each batch needs four buckets of gravel, two buckets of sand and one bucket of the cement-water mix--I think.) John did the mixing and pouring, the noisiest job.  When he was finished for the day, we had a surplus of one bucket of sand and two buckets of gravel, giving us a head start tomorrow.

Friday my watch party showed the Titanic movie A Night to Remember, which is way better than the shameless 1997 blockbuster. (I've always found David McCallum pretty cool!)

Finished Sister Carrie on Saturday.  It's honest in a bleak, impressive way.  My next novel will be Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.

Dirt and more dirt

"Whatever a man like Hurstwood could be in Chicago, it is very evident that he would be but an inconspicuous drop in an ocean like New York.  In Chicago, whose population still ranged about 500,000, millionaires were not numerous.  The rich had not become so conspicuously rich as to drown all moderate incomes in obscurity.  The attention of the inhabitants was not so distracted by local celebrities in the dramatic, artistic, social, and religious fields as to shut the well-positioned man from view.  In Chicago the two roads to distinction were politics and trade.  In New York the roads were any one of a half-hundred, and each had been diligently pursued by hundreds, so that celebrities were numerous.  The sea was already full of whales.  A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view--remain unseen.  In other words, Hurstwood was nothing"--Sister Carrie

Last week we got the movable bin to remove the dirt from our cellar. (It's the same size as the one we used in the winter.) We've been filling it directly from the cellar--the pile in our back yard will come later.

The earlier dirt I'd been carrying directly from the back room to the back yard. But now we have a new system where it goes out through the basement, up the steps to the yard and then to the bin. (With the last part you have to carry it through the hot sun.) John digs up the dirt, Moira carries it up to the yard--along with Kathrine on the weekend--and I take it the rest of the way.  At our best, we've been moving it pretty quick:  it helps that I can often carry two buckets at once.

We've been doing this work in the morning hours, to avoid the hottest time of day.  So I've been waking up earlier than usual--I hope I can make a habit of it!  And I haven't had time for Sailor Moon or One Piece, but I'm still watching Dragon Ball Z. (In the story I'm now watching, Bulma, Kuririn and Gohan have taken a spaceship to the Dragon Ball planet!)

Today we finally moved the first load away, and got a new bin for a second one. We started loading this one too, but the weather was drizzly and we ended up stopping lest we get into an accident. (It made me appreciate the sunny weather earlier on.)

I've finished the book about Amsterdam, so now I can concentrate on finishing Sister Carrie.

AMSTERDAM: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST LIBERAL CITY

"The misfortune of the Hurstwood household was due to the fact that jealousy, having been born of love, did not perish with it.  Mrs. Hurstwood retained this in such form that subsequent influences could transform it into hate.  Hurstwood was still worthy, in a physical sense, of the affection his wife had once bestowed upon him, but in a social sense he fell short.  With his regard died his power to be attentive to her, and this, to a woman, is much greater than outright crime toward another.  Our self-love dictates our appreciation of the good or evil in another.  In Mrs. Hurstwood it discoloured the very hue of her husband's indifferent nature.  She saw design in deeds and phrases which sprung only from a faded appreciation of her presence"--Sister Carrie

I'm now reading Russell Shorto's Amsterdam:  A History of the World's Most Liberal City for my History Meetup.  It's an entertaining, well-written book! (Now I want to read Shorto's other books...) It's all about how 17th-century Amsterdam was the birthplace of modern liberal society, including the multinational corporation in the form of the Dutch East India Company.  Characters like Willem the Silent and Rembrandt are fascinating!

Sister Carrie is engrossing.  There's something that seems very modern about it--I can imagine the story happening in real life. (Someone said that Theodore Dreiser was a master of inarticulate characters!)

I'm now watching three anime shows concurrently!  One is Dragon Ball's sequel Dragon Ball Z.  It's started well with Son Goku dead and doing martial-arts training in the afterlife. (They're going to use the Dragon Ball wish to resurrect him when it's time for earthlings to fight the invaders from the Saiyan planet.) He has a young son Gohan whose fighting potential is so immense that former villain Piccolo (now a reluctant ally) has subjected him to boot camp in a land with dinosaurs rather than people.  Akira Toriyama has an incredible imagination!

I've also been watching the third year of One Piece set in the desert land of Arabasta. (Was Eiichiro Oda influenced by Frank Herbert's Dune?) And I've also been rewatching the first season with Moira, for the third time--it's that good!  I recently finished rewatching the third season of Sailor Moon. (Mimete was a villainess I actually felt sorry for--she had a life beyond villainy, for all the good it did her.) Now I'm watching the fourth season, but it isn't as good as the first three.  Aside from Rini's cute relationship with a winged unicorn, it's getting rather familiar. (I hear that the fifth season got really crazy!)

I've almost finished the Level 3 book of musical theory.

THE BLUE COLLAR TRAP

"A lovely home atmosphere is one of the flowers of the world, than which there is nothing more tender, nothing more delicate, nothing more calculated to make strong and just the natures cradled and nourished within it.  Those who have never experienced such a beneficent influence will not understand wherefore the tear springs glistening to the eyelids at some strange breath in lovely music.  The mystic chords which bind and thrill the heart of the nation, they will never know"--Sister Carrie

Today at archive.org I rewatched the 1972 NBC News White Paper documentary "The Blue Collar Trap." Back when I was ten, we saw it on American TV when we were visiting the USA.  Our visit came in the wake of Hurricane Agnes, at the time of the Watergate break-in. (When Mother heard about in in the news, she predicted it would prove important!) We were also in the Washington DC underground parking lot where Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would soon meet Deep Throat...

Anyway, this documentary focused on four young men working at a Ford Pinto factory in California.  A couple of them had fought in Vietnam, one was a "hippie," and one went to this ecstatic church where people were dancing in the aisles. (I'd always imagined church services as quiet, restrained affairs...) They seldom voted on union matters, let alone in public elections.  One of them mentioned that when he was starting out the foreman advised him that instead of staying there he should go back to school and get a better job.  

Watching it today, I couldn't help considering that this was near the end of the "golden age" for the American working class; things have since got harder for them. Of course, this was a decade before Van Gordon Sauter dumbed down CBS News (giving anchorman Dan Rather a jersey to wear on air, etc.) and NBC and ABC followed suit, leaving them unlikely to produce reports this thoughtful again.

But what do I know about physical work?  Well, the last few days I've moved a huge amount of dirt to the back yard from our cellar, and I actually got a bit of a sunburn on my scalp!  I've been wearing gloves, but my hands are still getting sore in places. (A couple of times I've forgotten that I have to tie my shoes before putting my gloves on.) We have ten buckets, and my favourite four are relatively small, with handles.  Two others are small but don't have handles; three have handles but are larger; and my least favourite is large without a handle!  John's also using a jackhammer to break up these cement steps that used to be part of a cellar door, but led to nowhere after the room was built over them.

I've now started watching the anime sequel Dragon Ball Z.  It looks pretty good so far, with Goku dead and seeking martial-arts training in the after-world. (The others plan to use the seven dragon balls to bring him back.) His little son Gohan is undergoing a sort of manhood training alone in the wilderness to develop his immense fighting potential. All this is in preparation for fighting two Saiyan aliens who will arrive on Earth within a year in the hope of destroying it...  What an imagination Akira Toriyama has!

I've already finished Level 1 in the Royal Conservatory's Celebrate Theory series, and the other day Carolyn brought me 2 and 3. (At that Friday Zoom.com session, she and someone else are at level 4, and I should be caught up with them before long.)

The Cold War

"Naturally timid in all things that related to her own advancement, and especially so when without power or resource, her craving for pleasure was so strong that it was the one stay of her nature.  She would speak for that when silent on all else"--Sister Carrie

John's been renovating the sun room. (When he's finished, Father will have a downstairs shower!) Just now he's digging in the foundation to make it less mouse-friendly, with Moira and I toting the dirt and rocks to the back yard. There's now the sort of big, low space there where people would hide from the Nazis in a war movie.

I was thinking about the Cold War. Remember the ending of The Maltese Falcon?  Sam Spade hands Brigid over to the cops and they take her down the elevator (whose cage closes on her like prison bars), while Sam takes the stairs down.  Someone said the subtext is that they both go to hell, but Brigid goes there directly while Sam takes the longer route.

Anyway, I was thinking that applies to the post-1980s situation.  Russia went straight to hell in the early '90s with an economic downturn as severe as the Great Depression, while the US has finally reached hell this year.  The Cold War's real "winners," it's now clear, were the Chinese.  They not only reinvented communism, they've reinvented capitalism!

And Reagan didn't even end the Cold War, let alone winning it.  On the contrary, he turned it into something permanent that only needed a new enemy in the form of the Moslems.  His foreign policy decision with the greatest long-term importance was arguably reflagging the Kuwaiti oil tankers just to get in Iran's face and show that Washington was still regionally powerful in the wake of Iran-Contra. This was the first step on a road that led to the 1991 war with Iraq (which I for one consider to have been a contemptible exercise in "power without responsibility"), 9/11, and the ill-starred occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.  But I think I said that before...

Finally got my Cipralex and Robutrin prescriptions refilled.  I had to message my shrink and it was a bit complicated, so I went without for several days and my dreams got vivid again.

I just bought the Ebook of the first reprint of the manga version of Dragon Ball. (Just finished watching the first anime series--am I ready to take on Dragon Ball Z?)

Watch party

Booker T. Washington: "You will receive a speedy trial and a swift execution."... "Mr. Washington, you speak like an angel.  It's too bad we're down here on earth"--Ragtime

Yesterday I did my first watch party with the History Meetup group, screening Milos Forman's movie of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (which I was seeing for the second time). The group wasn't all in the Toronto vicinity; there was one from Brooklyn and another from Austin, Texas.

The movie's a handsome production but it doesn't really work. It removed a lot of the sprawling book, including Sigmund Freud and Emma Goldman and the Peary expedition and the Zapatistas and the Lusitania, but what's left seems less streamlined than spotty.  What seemed "kaleidoscopic" on paper comes across as hit & miss on the screen. (Maybe it could work better as a miniseries.  I have heard good things about the Broadway musical version.) Among other things, the story's central bourgeois family manufactures fireworks, yet we never see any pyrotechnic displays!  Randy Newman's central theme is graceful, but it's a waltz rather than ragtime.

As lady of scandal Evelyn Nesbit, Elizabeth McGovern seemed to me more teenager than sex goddess.  I noticed a lot of future big names in small roles, including Dominic Chianese (Junior Soprano), whom I recognized from his voice!  The best performance is Howard Rollins as Coalhouse Walker, though his storyline struck me as the novel's most dubious. (An African-American heads down the road to radical terrorism because bigoted firemen vandalized his car??  I guess that's supposed to be the sort of black militancy middle-class white readers can identify with.) Doctorow got away with stuff like this in the book because there was so much else going on, but that sort of thing is harder to pull off in a movie.  Earlier on they'd considered hiring Robert Altman to direct it, and his style might have worked better.

I've started learning music theory on Friday afternoons on Zoom with some people from my singing group.  Level 1 was no challenge for me:  so far it's all stuff I remember from my piano-playing days.

Another dry spell

It's been a week and a half since my last post here!  There just hasn't been much going on in my life.

Every day or two I check the latest Covid-19 statistics.  First I check the Canadian figures to see if we're getting closer to ending isolation. (Even though I know a watched pot never boils...)

https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html#a2

Then I see the international figures here. (But bear in mind, random testing and death rate statistics suggest that in the USA the true figure is two or three times as big!)

https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en

This page shows new cases.  It looks like Iran's already in a second wave.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It's Victoria Day, and the warm weather has arrived.  We're now opening the living room windows, and today I mowed the lawn for the first time this year.  I also brought out my summer hat.  John finished relaying the floor of the big second-storey room that used to be mine, and it was fun helping him align the individual boards so the whole thing would be flush!

Thursday night the book club met and discussed Leaves of Grass.  Only a few people came, but the book was a real revelation for me!  Walt Whitman was a rare original.

I now have over 5000 followers on Twitter, a number that exceeds people I follow.  That means I can be more lenient in following more Tweeters, since my maximum is now something like 5500!

I finished rewatching the third season of Sailor Moon, and now I'm on the last arc of Dragon Ball, with Son Goku doing nth-degree training up above the clouds with Mr. Popo.  Some people think Popo is racist, but I find him pretty cool.

Peaky Blinders is getting to be a little much.  It's the kind of show where we see Churchill painting with a nude model. (I could hear them thinking, "What can we throw in that's attention-grabbing?") One Youtube comment said, "I got lung cancer just from watching the show." Not only do the characters smoke a lot, there's generally a smoggy industrial atmosphere!

Online Meetups

Whereto answering, the sea,

Delaying not, hurrying not,

Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,

Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death,

Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart,

But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and leaving me softly all over,

Death, death, death, death, death.

--a rather Povian verse from Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

Today I hosted the first online event for my Meetup groups.  My History Meetup discussed the world in 1900, and it felt pretty timely.  I actually came on an hour early, but Subha from Korea made the same goof and we had a good talk waiting for the others to arrive.  In the weeks to be come I'll be hosting the book club online and even have a watch party for a historical movie.

I've really been getting into Walt Whitman's poetry! (I was worried about finishing it in time for next week's Meetup, but I'm well on schedule.) His sea poems are vivid, and he wrote some of the finest poems about old age.

Just finished rewatching the King Piccolo arc of Dragon Ball. (Now it's time to return to Sailor Moon.) That arc is the series' best of all!  It involves the evil alien King Piccolo out to reconquer and destroy the world, who's killed three of Goku's friends so they want to find the dragon balls to bring them back to life and Goku wants to destroy Piccolo, but Piccolo got the dragon balls and rejuvenated his superpowers and then killed the dragon...   Tribesman Yajirobe is a funny sidekick for Goku.  The part where they go through an icy underground maze with a spirit who plays mind games, to get a drink of ultradivine water, is especially imaginative.  And the subplot about Tenshinhan's need to take on Piccolo in order to atone for his past misbehaviour is dramatically strong.

We've started watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix.  It stars Cillian Murphy as a numbers racketeer in Birmingham, England a century ago dealing with communists and the IRA as well as the police.  The music's oddly anachronistic, like in Boardwalk Empire.

Bits and pieces

I'm ashamed of myself, taking so long between posts on this blog!  Why don't I feel motivated?

I've found some more virtual Meetup events.  On Saturday nights I do a virtual karaoke.  I don't have a handheld mike and the audio has trouble, but I sing five songs at each event.  And on Sunday mornings there's an event where we talk military history.

I've returned to watching Dragon Ball, now the third season with the second worldwide martial-arts competition. And I bought and read an Ebook of the first chapters of the manga version of One Piece.

It's less than two weeks to the virtual Book Club, so I'll have to get Leaves of Grass read. (I had to google the word "eidolon"--it's a sort of spirit-image.)

John finished remodelling the kitchen, so now he's renovating the big second-floor room that he'd previously been keeping all his tools in.  He pulled up all the floorboards, and I helped him drive out all the nails, which means hammering them on the sharp side to push them up enough for a hammer claw to do the rest.  When that's finished, we can make it into a guest room and move in the excess furniture now in my and Moira's rooms.

Today there were some snow flurries! (The big temperature drop gave me another headache.) I remember when I was growing up in New Brunswick, there'd be snow in May once every several years.

I'm now in the Orcs and Goblins chapter of the online Elvenar game.

I now have over 4800 followers on Twitter.  Which means my ceiling of Tweeters I can follow has finally been raised a bit above 5000!

Zoom!

Sailor Venus on Esmerald: "Not only does her attitude bite, but so does her voice!" Sailor Jupiter: "Well, she has the loudest voice in the universe, so I guess we'll know when she's here!"--Sailor Moon

I've downloaded the zoom.com arc and entered the world of online conferencing. (In the '70s wasn't there a PBS children's show titled Zoom!?) I was at an online Meetup event Sunday, and Monday I participated again in my now-online memoir group:  I read them that piece I'd written several weeks ago.  I've also moved the Meetup groups I organize to the online format.

Just finished rewatching the "Dark  Moon" arc of Sailor Moon, which comprises the last two-thirds of the second season.  The story gets pretty convoluted:  a rather bratty younger girl called Rini literally falls out of the sky, who eventually turns out to be the daughter of Serena and Darien's future selves in 3000 A.D. when they're ruling Crystal Tokyo! (She returns to our time in the later seasons and becomes a Sailor Scout herself...) Darien, who's finally become Serena's boyfriend, gets these visions that Serena will be in mortal danger if he marries her, so he dumps her.  Later it turns out that the future Darien was messing with his mind to make sure that their relationship was strong enough for the battle ahead... (Destroy their relationship in order to save it, huh?)

This arc has a hit & miss array of ten villains, including Rini who briefly turns into Wicked Lady because the Wise Man villain has been messing with her mind! Counter-intuitively, over half of them get "redeemed" in the end.  I liked it when Neflyte got redeemed in the first season, and Alan and Ann in the previous Doom Tree arc, but this yields diminishing returns.  I do like the sheer shamelessness of the villainess Esmerald! (The first season villains took their names from varieties of jade, and several of these villains are named for precious jewels.) 

Like the Malachite arc at the end of the first season, this arc is uneven but has some great episodes--particularly after the Sailor Scouts enter the Time-Space corridor to fight the villains, who want to conquer the future earth.  I especially like the moment when Serena's heading off for the final battle and meets her civilian friend Molly, who hints that she knows Serena's true identity and ends up praying for her. (It works better in the original Japanese version--the DiC dub softens the religious aspect.)

Finally did my taxes!

Youtube musicals

My new time-killing interest is watching stage musicals on Youtube.  You can find whole shows of a high quality there!  I'm interested in stuff like Oliver! and Pacific Overtures and Guys and Dolls.  Yesterday I watched a video of the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel (actually a preview of the show). 

And today I saw Sam Mendes' famous 1993 Cabaret production with Alan Cumming as the MC.  Powerful ending!  That show seems particularly timely in 2020, with so many people sleepwalking into disaster...

I finally finished The Vertigo Years, which my mind keeps mistitling The Vortex Years!  I've now started reading Walt Whitman's poetry opus Leaves of Grass--I just read a few poems at the start so I could write here that I've started it.

I finished rewatching the second year of Dragon Ball and started the second season of Sailor Moon.  The first third is the Doom Tree arc, with two aliens pretending to be schoolkids Alan and Ann. (They're my favourite second-season villains.) That arc has my personal favourite episode, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," where they're putting on a play of Snow White and have to deal with a clown monster!

I've started reading manga online.  Right now I'm reading Candy Candy, a romantic girl's comic from the late '70s about an orphan called Candy White who's hired by a rich family to serve as companion for this nasty sister and brother pair but gets treated as a servant and has to live in the stables, but this boy on a neighbouring estate falls in love with her... It has a certain Cinderella sensibility, and that's just the start of a soap opera spanning decades of her life.  I just found out that forty years ago they made an anime of Anne of Green Gables!

We've finished putting everything in the kitchen, so our dining room is in pre-clutter mode again.

Last weekend was warm, so I walked out to Hillcrest Park. (There were few people there, so I had an easy time keeping social distance.)