Season's Greetings

"The town decided something had to be done; Mr. Conner [the lawman] said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he was bound and determined they wouldn't get away with it, so the boys came before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the presence and hearing of a female.  The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge; Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard them"--To Kill a Mockingbird

I finally got booked for my Covid booster shot.  I'll be going to a Shoppers Drug Mart in the East End on Christmas Day tomorrow to get it!  I've been staying in just now because of the omicron scare, but Moira can go out because she's over 60 and got her booster shot weeks ago.

I've lapsed in reading Lapham's Quarterly in recent years, but we're still subscribed to it and I'm finally resuming it. (I'm still on the "Fear" issue from the summer of 2017.) No doubt I'll be reading it on the way to the shot place.

I've finished that enjoyable book about the California Gold Rush, and now I've started rereading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for my book club.  It's full of funny details about small town life in the South, but a great novel?  I have a feeling it's just a near-great one that came along at the right time.

The first chapter mentions that a polite way of saying that someone doesn't work is to say "He buys cotton." If anyone asks what I do, I buy cotton!

Last Friday my historical movie watch party showed Sharpe's Rifles, with Sean Bean as the antihero British soldier fighting Napoleon.  I shared it from britbox.com and I was afraid something might go wrong, but it went smoothly.  This week it's Lawrence of Arabia!

Just found an online piece suggesting that what makes Shakespeare's Macbeth so creepy is its liberal use of the article "the"! Like in the lines "It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night." Or the lines "Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it."

Can't wait to get out and see the Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story...

THE AGE OF GOLD

The boy (seeing his pursuer Robert Mitchum on the horizon): "Don't he never sleep?"--The Night of the Hunter

Next month my History Meetup is discussing the California gold rush of 1849, so I'm now reading HW Brands' The Age of Gold:  The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream.  It's a hugely entertaining book.  The first chapter talks about California's state at this time (Mexico had just ceded it to the USA), then it's about the different ways people got to California--Panama, Cape Horn, overland--then how gold got mined, and the next section is about how the state of California got formed...

I've returned to the Bloor HotDocs for the first time since the pandemic started!  I saw documentaries about Kurt Vonnegut and The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson respectively. (Wilson was a musical genius, writing songs that look simple at first glance, but are more complex when you think about them.)

I also went to the Paradise for the first time since the Festival Cinemas age over 15 years ago, and saw Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter yet again.  It works on more than one level, both a film noir and a fairy tale. (Someone in The New York Review of Books suggested a subtext of sexual hysteria.) It occurred to me that the early shot of Robert Mitchum's first victim, showing her feet alone, is a (conscious?) reference to the witch under Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz! Great cinematography by Stanley Cortez.

We've been watching Stephen Frears' A Very English Scandal.  Hugh Grant is a very creepy Jeremy Thorpe, especially his smile! (I recall the real Thorpe as a dour, unsmiling sort.)

Yesterday was mild and I went for a walk through the Distillery district with Camille, whom I met on ourtime.com . (I got her OK to mention her here.) I saw some statues and a fancy pond I don't think I'd seen before, and I got hot chocolate with whipped cream. Camille, I had a good time!