New Computer!

On a doctor: "In constant touch with all phases of ignorance and dereliction as well as sobriety, energy, conservatism, success and the like, he was more inclined, where fact appeared to nullify his early conclusion in regard to many things, to suspend judgment between the alleged claims of heaven and hell and leave it there suspended and undisturbed"--An American Tragedy

My generous brother Donald bought me a new computer and set it up on Sunday! (He did the same for Moira.) My old computer, which I'd had for seven years, was a Catalina 10.15.7, while the new one is Ventura 13.5.1.

I needed a new computer because my keyboard connection was acting up.  The shift and return keys weren't working. I could still use the caps lock for the upper case, but not stuff like ! and $, and my brackets had to be square.  And to make a line break I had to press the tab key repeatedly.  Several times it had gone like this for a couple of days then gone back, but eventually it stayed that way.  That's why I haven't been writing on this blog for the last month...

Last month I saw Oppenheimer at the Varsity with John P.  Pretty good but too long and loud, and the music was intrusive.  The other week I saw a documentary about the making of Elvis Presley's terrific 1968 TV special at the Yonge & Dundas.  Thursday I had lunch with Debi at the Mandarin buffet restaurant, and of course I ate a whole dinner's worth.

I finished translating the Korean book about Lincoln and started on the one about Gauguin's art. I went to the place where I bought them and got some Korean translations of Japanese manga:  the first two volumes of the teenage romance Honey and a volume of Dragon Ball (with the end of the Cell saga).  I've also started translating them, though their language is slangier and more difficult.

Speaking of Korea, Moira and I just saw the terrific first season of Pachinko, based on Min Jin Lee's novel about a Korean family living in Japan.  Now I'll definitely have to read the book:  I can't wait for the next season!  But I checked on the Toronto library website and they have about 60 copies and 200 holds. (Book clubs must be reading it.) Some great storytelling...

I read a short Thomas Keneally biography of Lincoln, the subject of next month's History Meetup. (For good measure, I read Michael Korda's short biography of Ulysses Grant.) I'm also reading Theodore Dreiser's mega-novel An American Tragedy, which sort of took that Horatio Alger trope--a young man in the city shows his virtue and ends up in a position of upward mobility--and turned it inside out!  If I didn't already know how the story would go, I probably couldn't bear to finish it, sort of like when my mother was reading Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and couldn't get past the part where she was writing the letter to her fiance revealing that she wasn't a virgin...

The novel's chapters have numbers instead of their own titles, but I've started making a list of the chapters and giving them titles myself, a bit like the DVD feature that allows you to start a movie at an individual five-minute section and gives each one a heading.