Dreams

The other night I had that dream again where I'm visiting Russia, which is odd because when I'm awake I don't have any conscious desire to do that. (Moira asked how I knew it was Russia, but in dreams you just know things!) I'll have to tell my shrink Dr. Hassan about it.

Just last night I dreamed of seeing director Stephen Frears and actor Daniel Day-Lewis being interviewed early in the morning.  Where that comes from was some twenty years ago Moira told me about seeing a TV interview with Frears, and said, "He's so cool he looks like he just got out of bed!" I also had another repeating dream where I'm trying to pack clothes and stuff but making a hash of it.  I suppose that's a common one.

On Sunday I finished raking the leaves on the lawn and putting them in big collection bags, which Father had started. (We got an extra-wide rake!) That evening I went to see a master class the opera group put on for soloists, which was at a church just a few blocks east of here.  I wasn't feeling well and left early, but did hear Renato's big aria from Verdi's A Masked Ball and one from Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd.

Next Sunday is Reading Out Loud Meetup.  Through ABE Books I've ordered Kaleidoscope, a collection of Canadian short stories I was lucky enough to read in high school.  A lot of good stuff there worth reading aloud, by writers like Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro and Hugh Garner and Hugh MacLennan.  I asked for Priority Post, so it should be here by Friday.

The other day I upgraded my computer's operating system from Sierra to High Sierra.  There must be some Bogart fans in Silicon Valley.

I misplaced my watch for a week or two, but just found it again in my room!

The late, great SPY magazine

"Why can't you people leave me alone?"--Gran Torino

This afternoon I saw Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino with Dawna and Debi.  It was quite good, with Eastwood at his funniest as an aging curmudgeon who gets involved with Hmong neighbours.  The ultimate message was pretty hopeful. (That movie was the source of the line "Get off my lawn!" which Bernie Sanders' detractors witlessly linked to him.)

You can read archived copies of Spy magazine online!  It's been looking prophetic lately:  long before director James Toback became part of Hollywood's sexual harassment scandal, Spy had done a feature about him picking up women by saying  things like "Hey baby, I'm a famous director!" 

I've been reading the first issue, from October, 1986--with comedian Chris Elliott on the cover--which featured the ten most embarrassing New Yorkers.  Along with people like "Queen of Mean" Leona Helmsley and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, they cited Donald Trump, and quoted him on his desire to negotiate nuclear arms reduction: "It would take half an hour to learn everything there is to learn about missiles....  I think I know most of it anyway." (Shudder!  Spy famously described Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian.")

I'm not yet quite over my cold. Still eating those pomelo grapefruits!

Almost over it

George C. Scott (lighting a cigar): "My doctor allows me one of these a day.  This is my third!"--Taps

I'm almost over my cold.  Right now I have the song "Shaking the Blues Away" going through my head. (One of the That's Entertainment movies had a clip of Ann Miller singing it in Easter Parade.) Another earworm is "I Only Have Eyes for You" from Dames.

Yesterday our internet and cable TV connection went off for a whole day because of this storm that happened to the east over the weekend. (That's why it's been five days since my last entry here!) 

We finished the third season of Damages and will be seeing the fourth soon.  Last night we watched a DVD documentary about the magazine The Nation. (I read it faithfully in the '90s, back when they had Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn, but lately they've been playing it safe too often.) Tonight we saw part of a series about the history of documentary filmmaking.

Saturday I saw Taps with Dawna, the one where they're going to close down this military school but cadets led by Timothy Hutton grab the drill weapons and end up in a siege.  Well, I saw the first half anyhow.  It's the sort of movie where you know Tom Cruise is a psycho because of his extreme haircut and beret, and the plot requires general George C. Scott to forget that his sidearm still has a live round. (My cold didn't help either.)

My father told me the other week that his mother's father kept a book of Burns poems, the Bible and a bottle of whisky at his bedside.  But I was confused and thought he was referring to my mother's father!

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

I'm still not over my cold.  Last night I went to opera rehearsal, but ended up leaving early. (My voice was so weak that I may as well not have been there!) I did make it to the memoir group.

Moira got all four That's Entertainment movies from the library, with clips from MGM musicals. (She especially liked Eleanor Powell's tap-dancing.) The first one is the best: the second has too much narration.

I've managed to get up to speed with my Facebook notifications, but my email backlog is bigger than ever!

VICTORIA AND ABDUL

Doctor: "I didn't spend six years at Edinburgh University to look at Indian dicks!"--Victoria and Abdul

Thursday night I saw Stephen Frears' Victoria and Abdul with someone from the History Meetup at the Yonge & Eglinton. It was cute if predictable. These British movies often have great supporting casts, and I spotted Julian Wadham as a Royal butler!

I'm now reading Michael Wood's India for the History Meetup. The first chapter is already interesting, though I'm still getting over my cold and not reading much.

These days I'm not doing much but going online and following Twitter.  The Bernie Sanders haters are really rabid!  I'm also watching Damages in the evening--Wallace Shawn turned up in one episode!--but even watching a TV show is a bit of a chore.

I was going to attend a Poetry Meetup tonight but saw fit to cancel.  Dawna and I were going to see the movie Taps, but that was easy to postpone a week. Next week there'll be a lot of stuff that's hard to avoid, and I hope I'll be in better shape.

Still under the weather

This is a persistent cold!  I had to miss the memoir group yesterday, and tonight I'll have to miss opera rehearsal.  At times like this I feel like I could stay in bed for the rest of my life!  Last night it took forever to get to sleep.  I just hope I'm over it by Thursday night to see Victoria and Abdul with the History Meetup.

Saturday I saw George Miller's second Mad Max movie The Road Warrior (for the second time) with Dawna.  It rocks! Bruce Spence's jokey helicopter pilot makes a good sidekick for Mel Gibson's stolid hero.

Sunday I discussed Jack Kerouac's On the Road with the Classic Book Club.  I was late finishing it:  the day before on the way home I went into No Frills to get some more pomelos and left the book in there!  But I finished it in the Robarts Library just before we went into the food court for the discussion.  

Afterward I went out to Margo's place north of Bathurst & Steeles for a fall party.  But I got lost and by the time I got there I was pretty worn out.  Lucky there was someone to give me a lift to the subway afterward!

We've started watching the DVD of the third season of Damages. Martin Short has a straight role as a lawyer!

Relocating

"Laredo was a sinister town that morning. All kinds of cab-drivers and border rats wandered around, looking for opportunities. There weren't many; it was too late.  It was the bottom and dregs of America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed. Contraband brooded in the heavy syrup air... Just beyond you could feel the enormous presence of whole great Mexico and almost smell the billion tortillas frying and smoking in the night...  Just across the street Mexico began.  We looked with wonder.  To our amazement, it looked exactly like Mexico"--On the Road

Joan Blondell (seeing Claire Dodd's backside): "There's a familiar sight!"--Footlight Parade

I've changed the location for my Meetups.  Some people complained that the Robarts Library was too confusing for them to find me. (I put directions up the steps to the second floor on the webpage, but a lot of people evidently ignored them.) So now we'll meet at Scallywag's Restaurant, which has a huge space on the top floor.

Today I saw Lloyd Bacon's Warner Brothers Footlight Parade again at the Robarts Library theatre with the Movie Meetup group. (I was about ten minutes late, because I'd convinced myself it was at the Reference Library!) It's nice to see James Cagney in a role using his hoofer talents, and Joan Blondell's one of my favorite '30s leading ladies.  Lots of great pre-Production Code dialogue.

The library book with the poem "Tam O'Shanter" has a whole glossary of Scots words in Robert Burns' poems.  I'm going to write them all down for translating poems into Scots. (Father told me the other day that Mother's father kept a book of Burns poems at his bedside, along with the Bible and a bottle of whiskey.  I'd never heard that before!)

Hope I get over this cold soon!

Backlog

"We were telling these things and both sweating.  We had completely forgotten the people up front who had begun to wonder what was going on in the back seat.  At one point the driver said, 'For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there.' Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the it of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank traced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives"--On the Road

Just recently I accumulated a huge backlog of unread emails. About a third of them are Meetup and Twitter notifications.  A lot are from activist groups--NDP, environmentalists, animal welfare--with links to online petitions for me to sign. (They also ask for money, but rarely get it.) 

I need to get a new computer mouse one of these days:  too often when I click on a link, it'll do two clicks!  That's a disadvantage with my email, because sometimes I'll trash two when I only wanted to trash one. So I go to the trash and look for the one I trashed without reading. That isn't so hard if it's the same day, but emails from earlier days are harder to find.

Monday night we finished the second season of Damages. (I'm still figuring out the whole plot!) Timothy Olyphant also had a good role.

Last night the opera started The Magic Flute.  But they're using a different translation from what's printed in the scores and we had to write it in, and I didn't have a pen!  Lucky for me I have such a great memory...

Next Sunday is my book club, and I still haven't finished On the Road.  Tonight just when I was going to start reading it again, I couldn't find it!  But it turned up at last under a shirt.

I hope I'm not getting a cold. Today I bought some pomelo grapefruit.  

Don't open that door!

Hitchhiking on a truck: "And what a driver-- a great big tough truckdriver [sic] with popping eyes and a hoarse raspy voice who just slammed and kicked at everything and got his rig under way and paid hardly any attention to me.  So I could rest my tired soul a little, for one of the biggest troubles hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable people, make them feel that they didn't make a mistake picking you up, even entertain them almost, all of which is a great strain when you're going all the way and don't plan to sleep in hotels"--On the Road

On a potential US Secretary of Energy: "Trust me, his only loyalty is to the Capitalist Party!"--Damages

Saturday afternoon with Dawna I saw two episodes of The Monkees and two of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Monkees were the first ersatz pop group-- my mother hated them!-- in a mildly goofy show. (There was a funny bit during a hotel caper when one of them entered a linen closet and ran off with a towel, and they showed the caption "Everyone does it"!) The Dick Van Dyke Show is still fairly funny today, and Mary Tyler Moore as his wife does a lot for it.

Yesterday afternoon was the Reading Out Loud Meetup with scary writing the topic:  I titled the event "Don't Open That Door!" Eleven people came!  One of them was an American opera singer now performing in the COC's Arabella, who read a pretty good scary poem he'd written some years back.  

I read "Tam O'Shanter"; a story within a story in Richard Adams' rabbit adventure Watership Down, in which the rabbit hero Elalairah goes to the Black Rabbit in charge of death and tries to sacrifice his life to save his starving people; and the last chapter of Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, set in a charnel house for the executed. There was a Lovecraft story, a science fiction story someone had written, and a poem by James Agee! (I also got one girl to read Poe's "The Raven.")

We met in the Robarts Library food court, where there was a Chinese woman called Wendy drawing sketches of everyone in the place!  That's mine at the top.

No Twitter for me today

"That [injured] thumb became symbol of Dean's final development.  He no longer cared about anything (as before) but now he also cared about everything in principle; that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it"--On the Road

Patty (to her teenage son's cougar girlfriend): "You'll hurt him, and I'll come to you and rip your face off!"--Damages

German strategy: "We'll pretend to retreat on all fronts..."--Europa Europa

Some feminists had a boycott of Twitter today in response to Rose McGowan being suspended for accusing Ben Affleck of lying about Harvey Weinstein.  So I stayed off Twitter today in support of them. (Or maybe it was to show I could go without Twitter for a day.)

Wednesday afternoon I went to the Lillian Smith library to borrow a book of Robert Burns' poetry because I want to read "Tam O'Shanter" at Sunday's Reading Out Loud Meetup.  I borrowed the book, turned to the pages with the poem on the way home, and someone had torn them out! (Selfish...) Today I got another Burns book at the Maria Shchuka library.

Wednesday Moira was using the Metropass, so I used TTC tokens. But the Spadina streetcar's token-accepting machine wasn't working, and at the Spadina station that day the fare inspectors were active! Fortunately, they accepted my excuse.

Thursday night I watched Agnieszka Holland's Europa Europa for the third time, screening the DVD at Debi's place. (Poor Debi has bronchitis!) That's the one about a teenage Jewish boy whose family flees Germany for Poland, then the Nazis invade Poland and he flees east to Soviet territory and a communist orphanage, then the Nazis invade Russia and he gets adopted by an unsuspecting German regiment and sent to a Nazi military school...  Great story, wonderful movie.

The one thing I don't like about Damages is VLA's theme song "When I am Through With You." (The same producers' Bloodline did better with Book of Fear's "The Water Lets You In.")

DAMAGES

"Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came.  This is the result of years looking at sexy pictures behind bars; looking at the legs and breasts of women in popular magazines; evaluating the hardness of the steel halls and the softness of the woman who is not there"--On the Road

We're now watching the second season of Damages.  It's an unpredictable show that keeps you guessing.  In the first season class-action lawyer Patty (a well-cast Glenn Close) took tycoon Ted Danson to the cleaners; in the second, she's after a polluting West Virginia CEO and gets shareholder Danson to sue him! William Hurt has a good role as a researcher playing both ends against the middle.

The central character is Ellen (Rose Byrne), a beginning lawyer working for Patty.  In the first season she was engaged to a doctor who got murdered, a crime for which she almost got framed.  In the second season she's out to nail the real killers, and they're after her too.  Also, she's working for the feds to help nail Patty, because Patty tried to have her killed in the first season for reasons I still haven't figured out. (Maybe it's all clear when you see it a second time!)

John and Kathrine came over for Thanksgiving and we feasted on vegan chili.

The number of my Twitter followers is steadily approaching 2000.

Refining Twitter

"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof?  Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life"--On the Road

"You know, we should be thankful that we live in the United States." "That's what people in Poland say!"--Laugh-In

Thursday night was the History Meetup, where we discussed World War II.  One of the people there was a German woman whose father had been drafted at fourteen or so, and whose grandfather spent years as a Soviet POW.  Another was a Chinese guy whose father rose from a peasant to a colonel in China's Red Army.  Two or three people got into long exchanges.

This afternoon I saw a couple more episodes of Laugh-In with Dawna.  Mother hated the show, and I guess she had good taste.  It was full of lines like "That's as funny as a bumblebee in a nudist camp!"

I've been refining my list of Tweeters I'm following. (Opening the page with the whole list takes quite a while, so I got a system of putting my glasses case on the command key and my wallet on the down-arrow key so it'll download without me pushing the keys again and again.) I've been removing Tweeters who use a foreign language, those whose profiles say "We don't own any of the content posted," and those with Trump in their name or profile picture.

Last night I was reckless enough to do a "neverbernie" search of tweets and reply to some of them. (Clintonites on Twitter are insane--a couple even called Sanders a "grifter"!) A few Tweeters have blocked me, and I'll just have to assume that they have no answer for my brilliant comments.

SHANGHAI EXPRESS

"I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief.  I was getting the bug myself.  I even began to try to see if doors were locked"--On the Road

"Why are you going to Shanghai?" "To buy a new hat"--Shanghai Express

"The government would have had my head long ago if it weren't such a good head"--ibid.

Monday night I saw Josef Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express with Marlene Dietrich (for the second time). It's pretty stylish.  I didn't finish my popcorn.  Lillian and Anne and me had a nice chat afterward.

We have a new conductor at the opera.  Last night she said we're already sounding professional!

Today I finally started harvesting the garden.  I got in the carrots and started with the potatoes.

We finished the first season of Damages and will be starting the second one soon. (The rather annoying theme music has been going through my head.) What a double-crosser Patty is!

Simplify, simplify!

"Although Gene was white there was something of the wise and tired old Negro in him, and something very much like Elmer Hassel, the New York dope addict, in him, but a railroad Hassel, a traveling epic Hassel, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer, and only because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars, generally the Western stars"--On the Road

Hayley Mills (smoking on a train): "I'm not a child, lady, I'm a midget with a bad habit"--The Trouble With Angels.

These days I'm trying to have a shakeout of things like Meetups I never go to and activists who send me emails but I can't sign their petitions because I don't have a U.S. zipcode.  And I've stopped playing the online game Island Experiment.  And just the other day I reached the maximum number of Tweeters you can follow (5000), so now I'm going through the list and removing the ones I know I'm not interested in.

Yesterday afternoon I saw Ida Lupino's The Trouble With Angels (for the third time, but the first time since I was a kid), with Dawna and Debi.  That's the one with Hayley Mills as a mischievous girl in a Catholic school run by nuns. (She reminded me of Claire in Six Feet Under.) Of course, it gets soft in the last half hour and she ends up entering the order. For me it's something of a guilty pleasure. 

On the Road is a pretty fun read, if not so profound as yet.

The cool autumn weather has arrived.  It's time to dig up the potatoes.

Dental appointment

On Hindu-Moslem violence among the Viceroy's servants: "Like Glasgow on a Saturday night!"--Viceroy's House

"Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write!  How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears..."--On the Road

Yesterday I had a dental appointment to replace a filling that got dislodged.  It turned out that to get O.D.S.P. to pay for my checkup two weeks before, I'd brought them the receipt from the wrong month--June instead of September.

Back when O.D.S.P. said I'd be getting a dental card, I thought that meant something you put in your wallet, but it's actually in the monthly receipt they send you.  I must have thrown away September because to me it just seemed one more receipt to clutter up my room.  But I brought them the receipts for July and October, and I hope that's good enough. (Do they think there'd be a two-month gap in my coverage?)

Last night I saw Viceroy's House, about the partition of India and Pakistan, at Canada Square as a History Meetup event. (I'd meant for us to see Victoria and Abdul, but its release got delayed a week.) 

The film increased my sympathy for Lord Mountbatten, who hadn't been told that Churchill and Jinnah had already cut a deal to partition India--he was the fall guy somewhat.  If Congress had let Pakistan take all of Punjab and Bengal, instead of dividing the two states, partition would have been simpler; would it have meant less violence? (Much of the panic and violence resulted from people being uncertain which nation they'd end up in.) At any rate, Pakistan/ Bangladesh would have enjoyed greater diversity, and India still would have been huge.  Nice to see Michael Gambon and Simon Callow in the supporting cast.

Today I picked up Jack Kerouac's On the Road at Oakwood library. I've also been reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes.

THE ATTRACTIONS OF MAY

"I liked making love with the lights on.  He liked making love with someone else"--The Attractions of May

Tuesday night I finally made it to opera rehearsal.  We've been learning "Oh, Welche Lust!" the number where the prisoners are let out into the sunshine. (Raquel Welch played Lillian Lust in Bedazzled--see how easy to remember German words are?)

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Play Read-Through Meetup, which started at Yorkville Library but ended in the Reference Library.  We read Norm Foster's The Attractions of May, and I played Hank.  It's really funny!

Finished Manon Lescaut.  I was reading that Abbe Prevost had a lot of real-life experiences like Des Grieux, including an extravagant, enigmatic lover much like Manon!

Last night I was going to go to the Introvert Meetup at the Snakes and Lattes board game hangout, but once again I completely forgot it! (Don't like being one of those Meetup no-shows...)

Hot weekend

"Since, after all, there was nothing in my conduct, taken as a whole, that could totally dishonour me, at least when compared with that prevailing in certain circles of young men, and since a mistress is on considered shameful in the century in which we live, any more than using a little art in persuading fortune to favour one at cards, I described to my father the life I had been leading frankly and in detail"--Manon Lescaut

This weekend was a scorcher. You wouldn't know that it's autumn already!

Saturday I went to a potluck lunch with the Aspergers Meetup group.  I brought fruit salad; someone brought cookies made from corn flakes!  Evie hosted it, and had some discussion questions like "If you were on a desert island with just enough for survival, how would you make your life meaningful?" I'd watch the night skies and get to know the stars.

Afterward I went on Betty Anne's art walk.  We started in Trinity-Bellwoods Park, where they were having an arts festival. (The music was a bit too distracting for me, unfortunately.) Betty-Anne pointed out a Filipino ice cream shop where they have charcoal-black waffle cones and very exotic flavors.

On Twitter people are talking about the controversy over the football players kneeling for the national anthem.  Why shouldn't you kneel?  To me it seems every bit as "respectful" as standing!

As a Canadian, I'm ashamed that our government won't let Chelsea Manning into the country.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

"'It is impossible,' he said, 'that the wealth that maintains you in your dissolute way of life should have come to you lawfully.  You have acquired it dishonestly; it will be taken from you in the same way.  The most terrible punishment that God could inflict on you would be to leave you to enjoy it in peace.'... I listened amicably to his advice; and although I was not in the least disposed to follow it, was grateful for his zeal, for I knew the source from which it sprang"--Manon Lescaut

"The things I do for England!"--James Bond

This afternoon I saw Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice with Dawna.  It's one of the more offbeat James Bond movies. (When Sean Connery was in Japanese disguise, he reminded me of Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon!) Major plot hole:  at the end they escaped through the tunnel where they couldn't enter earlier because it contained poison gas.

I'm enjoying my reading these days.  Manon Lescaut must have been ahead of its time:  there's something really modern about the contradictions in Des Grieux' character. (Remember when I said that the book and opera Carmen was the first film noir?  Now I think this was it!)

I'm also enjoying J.L. Granatstein's coffee-table book about Canada in World War II, especially the chapter about the home front.  In the broad terms of Canadian history, the wartime period seems like something of an aberration...

Lawyer Glenn Close on Damages is pretty scary, like Tina Brown on speed!  Talk about a poker face...

D'OH!

Des Grieux on Manon being sent to the Hopital jailhouse: "It was not that she was treated barbarously; but she was kept in close confinement, alone, and condemned to complete each day a particular task, the necessary condition for her securing a portion of disgusting food"--Manon Lescaut (Forced to work for a living--poor baby!)

Last night was the first rehearsal for the new Toronto City Opera season.  We'll be doing Beethoven's Fidelio and Mozart's The Magic Flute. (We were going to do the Canadian opera Transit of Venus instead of The Magic Flute, but plans got changed.) This year the chorus will be unusually big.  We'll be doing Fidelio in its original German, a language I don't recall we've ever done before:  pray for us.

I wasn't there, however. (I know of the chorus size because it was mentioned on a TOR-related webpage.) So why did I miss it? Because I completely forgot about it!  I guess John Snow's right -- I do have too many activities.

We've started watching the legal drama Damages on DVD from the library. (We're interested in it because it's created by the same people as Bloodline.)

Saw Blurred Lines at the Bloor. It's a documentary about the modern art scene and how it's been distorted by millionaires paying huge sums at the big auctions. (As far as I'm concerned, you can have Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.)

*GASP!*

"Everything they say at Saint-Sulpice about free will is an idle fancy.  I already see that I will lose my fortune and my reputation for your sake.  I can read my destiny in your lovely eyes"--Manon Lescaut

Friday morning I had a dental checkup. (In the reception area I met Kathy from my opera group!) I still haven't got my dental card from ODSP so I'll have to deal with that soon. Because I had a headache Thursday and had to get up early Friday, I got behind in my emails. (I need to unsubscribe from more of those lists!)

Yesterday afternoon was the Reading Out Loud Meetup. September is Banned Books Month, so as usual our topic was banned and challenged books. (The event's title was *GASP!*) I read a chapter from Frank McCourt's memoir 'Tis, in which he tried to teach J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye to his high school class but the principal came in and confiscated all the books!  We also read the chapter from Catcher where Holden meets Luce the college boy.  

Other readings were the first chapter of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (from the second edition--I suppose John Snow knows the differences between the editions!); the part from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita where Humbert Humbert recalls all the places they visited driving around the U.S.; and Tomi Ungerer's children's book No Kiss for Mother (which a librarian panel denounced, leading to all his books being removed from some school libraries!) I would have read a bit from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but we ran out of time.

Through sheer persistence, I've come to follow over 2500 people on Twitter. (Some of them are nice enough to tweet their thanks!) I skip the singers and the business firms and those using foreign languages, but there are still a lot of others.  And mostly as a result of that, I already have close to a thousand followers.

Manon Lescaut is a cracking good read!  I'm still not sure what to think of Manon:  is she a "bad girl" or just making the best of her limited options?

Nightmare!

"That human resolutions should be subject to change is not something that has ever surprised me:  being born of a particular passion, they may be destroyed by another; but when I think of the sanctity of the resolutions that had brought me to Saint-Sulpice, and of the inner joy Heaven granted me so long as I continued to carry them out, I tremble at the ease with which I was able to break them"--Manon Lescaut (Something Catholic about that!)

Flip Wilson as Adam: "It wasn't the apple in the tree, it was the tomato on the ground!"--Laugh-In

Last night I had a nightmare. That doesn't happen often, but I was tardy refilling my Cipralex prescription and that tends to cause vivid dreams. (The night before I had a dream involving Liv Tyler and Colin Firth in a movie about invaders destroying London landmarks, with me an actor playing Firth[?] and improvising lines about how depressed I was being in such a stupid movie.) 

In my nightmare I was in the movie I Want to Live! the one where Susan Hayward ends up in the gas chamber, which I actually haven't seen. (A glamorous-looking death row prisoner, isn't she?  If you ask me, a movie with an exclamation mark in the title is trying too hard.) In the dream I wasn't a character in the movie, but an audience-like observer who knew what was going to happen and wanted to get out before seeing it.  Sort of like when Wile E. Coyote went off a cliff and got them to end the cartoon before he reached the ground.

This afternoon I saw a couple of episodes of Laugh-In with Dawna.  Yes, it is pretty dated. (The funniest bit was Tommy Smothers introducing Rowan and Martin and struggling to pronounce their names!)

I've started reading Abbe Prevost's Manon Lescaut for John Snow's book club and J.L. Granatstein's The Last Good War, about Canada in World War II, for the History Meetup.

Last time I forgot to mention that at this week's memoir group, there was a rare subject that I couldn't think of anything to write about:  sports cars.

LEAVING HOME

"As for Pierre Gringoire, he not only managed to save the goat, but he became somewhat a success as a dramatist.  It appears that, after delving into astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics, and having tasted every variety of silly pursuit, he returned to tragedy, which is the silliest of all.  It was what he called coming to a tragic end....  Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a tragic end--he married"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Sunday night I saw a documentary at the Bloor about A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the East Indian who brought the Hare Krishna movement to '60s America, then the world. (I couldn't remember his name and had to look it up on Wikipedia.) 

Then Monday night I saw the documentary Hitler: A Career on Netflix.  (They were rather opposite personalities, of course.) It mentions that part of the reason the Nazis caught on in early '30s Germany was because their activities were more fun than the other parties!

Yesterday I ran through David French's Leaving Home with the Play Reading Meetup at Yorkville Library. (We had to move out to a park in the middle because a book club had the room.) It's a 1972 play about a Newfoundland family in Toronto, and I was Ben, the son about to leave home.  I saw the play on the CBC back in the '70s, or maybe it was the sequel Of the Fields Lately.  At any rate I remember the grace: "Bless this food that now we take and feed our souls for Jesus' sake!"

I've finished Hunchback. Its style is rather theatrical, almost operatic! (I wasn't surprised to learn that Victor Hugo wrote a libretto for an opera version.)

I now have over 500 Twitter followers!  I guess I reached a critical mass after following a thousand Tweeters...

Organizers Meetup

"I wonder if anything gives a mother more delight than the contemplation of her infant's shoe, especially if it be a holiday, a Sunday, or a baptismal shoe, a shoe embroidered to its very sole--a shoe worn before the child has taken its first step.  That shoe so cute and tiny covered a foot to young to walk; it is the shoe that recalls her baby so poignantly that it seems as if the child were present"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"What place are you bound for?" "Same place as you, Jeremiah--hell, in the end"--Jeremiah Johnson

Wednesday night I went to an Organizers Meetup at Spring Rolls near Yonge & Bloor.  I met quite a few people I knew, including the Russian Margo (not the Polish Margo).  Some people speaking for Meetup were talking about the site's new look and looking for feedback from us. But I really can't judge such changes until I've actually been working with them.

Thursday night was the History Meetup.  The subject was the Renaissance and we discussed Machiavelli's The Prince.

Yesterday I saw the 1972 Sydney Pollack-Robert Redford western Jeremiah Johson with Dawna. Anne came too, but she left early because she couldn't face its turning violent.  It's one of the cooler westerns, though the last half hour is weak.

Today I went to Dutch Dreams for ice cream with a Meetup group.  The weather's been changing, and I've had a severe headache.  This evening we watched an architectural show on Netflix about ten outstanding bridge designs. (The series also does museums and city squares and such.)

MILDRED PIERCE

"He did not know, he whose heart was as light as air, he who observed no law in the world but the ordinary laws of nature, he who allowed his passions to follow what course they wanted, so that the spring of his emotions was always dry because he opened daily so many fresh channels--he had no idea with what fury that flood of human passions swells and surges when it is refused outlet, how it gathers strength, and overflows, how it wears away the heart, how it has broken away its dikes and burst from its bed"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"A ruler who just plays the lion and forgets the fox doesn't know what he's doing.  Hence a sensible leader cannot and must not keep his word if by doing so he puts himself at risk, and if the reasons that made him give his word in the first place are no longer valid.  If all men were good, this would be bad advice, but since they are a sad lot and won't be keeping their promises to you, you hardly need to keep yours to them.  Anyway, a ruler will never be short of good reasons to explain away a broken promise"--The Prince

"One of these days you may have a weak moment." "When I do I'll send you a telegram--collect!"--Mildred Pierce

Sunday we finished the Netflix series Ozark.  As much as I like shows with smart characters, so many characters being this smart is rather hard to swallow.

Tonight I saw Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce for the third time. It's a hard-boiled Joan Crawford melodrama and corny fun, with some great dialogue. (The Kate Winslet version wasn't as good, despite having a handsome look.) Jack Carson and Eve Arden have good supporting roles.

I'm now following over 500 tweeters, and have over 30 followers of my own. (The big topics on Twitter just now are Trump announcing he'll abandon the Dream Act, and Hillary Clinton's weaselly-sounding campaign memoir.)

What weather!  Harvey hit Texas last week, Irma is about to hit Florida, and Jose is already forming.

DIRTY HARRY

"Women understand and respond to one another more quickly than do men....  To tinge a whole company of pretty women with a certain amount of ill-humor, it is enough for just one prettier woman to arrive on the scene--especially when there is but one man present"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Dirty Harry (to his new partner): "I hope your college degree doesn't get you killed, because I might get killed with you."

Thursday night I tried to screen Zhang Yimou's To Live at Debi's place for the History Meetup. But the subtitles wouldn't play, and about a third of the way through it got completely unplayable! Pity, it's a wonderful movie...

Yesterday afternoon I saw with Dawna Don Siegel's Nixonite vigilante classic Dirty Harry, which made Clint Eastwood a star in America. (He was already the top star overseas!) To call it a caricature is putting it mildly: in the last third it becomes a full-fledged cartoon!  The villain, out to extort money from the city government,  assassinates random people, then says he has a girl buried alive, then gets released on a technicality, then pays someone to beat him up so he can say Eastwood did it and stop the latter's surveillance, then takes a school bus hostage.  It's the sort of movie where Eastwood's watching for the villain through binoculars and ends up seeing naked women who haven't closed their curtains. (I'd thought that Animal House invented that cliche!) Never a dull moment, I'll admit.

What's depressing about movies like this isn't just that they're transparently manipulative. (Dedicating the movie to San Francisco policemen killed in action was especially shameless!) It's that people are so easy to manipulate, at least in America. Just like those Jell-o Pudding Pops commercials where Bill Cosby says in a smarmy voice, "Mom won't give you the Evil Eye because it's made of real pudding!" Then they show a pair of motherly hands mixing the pudding and adding milk from a pitcher.  We all know it's made in some factory and filled with sugar and fat and exotic chemicals, but American moms have a vague image of pudding as "wholesome."

Twitter is a first-class time-waster!  I've been following every tweeter they suggest just in case any of them comes up with something interesting...

Twitter

Now that I'm on Twitter, Moira gave me a big list of prominent Tweeters to follow--people like Bradley Whitford and Gary Shteyngart. I'm also following people like Stephen Fry, who said the solar eclipse looked like the Apple computers logo, and Michiko Kakutani.  

I've also added quite a few newspapers and magazines, because they often post interesting articles and reports. Moira enjoys the threads of comments that can accumulate on some entries.

Today I had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzel Hub.  I said goodbye to the waitress but almost forgot to say goodbye to John!

Tonight I saw the documentary Dawson City:  Frozen Time at the Bloor.  It's about a cache of over 500 reels of silent film they found in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, almost forty years ago.  

What a story!  Dawson City was the "end of the line" for many movies, appearing there years after their first release, so distributors often wouldn't pay to have them returned.  The local Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce man, in charge of such dealings, thus ended up with a basement full of boxes containing such films and was eventually told to get rid of them. Many such films had been burned or thrown in the river, but the local recreation centre was filling in its former swimming pool so the rink that covered the area would have a more even surface.  

The guy let the boxes of films be used as landfill there, and one day, long after the recreation centre had been torn down, someone was digging there and turned up some films. They contain varying degrees of water damage, but many of them would otherwise be completely lost! (The documentary also tells a lot about the Klondike gold rush and Dawson City's later history.)

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME

"Listen then to this ensemble of the steeples; diffuse over it the murmur of half a million people, the everlasting plaint of the river, the boundless breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills in the distance like so many vast organs, immersing in them, as in a demitint, all in the central concert that would otherwise be too raucous or too sharp, and then say whether you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling than this tumult of bells and chimes, this furnace of music, these ten thousand voices of brass, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high--than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra--than this symphony as loud as a tempest"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"How do I get in?" "That's easy.  Pick a fight"--Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Friday I saw George Miller's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Dawna (for the second time).  It's all over the place, but cumulatively pretty fun.  It owes a lot to movies like Lawrence of Arabia, and the musical score, also by Maurice Jarre often sounds similar.  I ought to see the Charlize Theron version someday!

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Globetrotters Meetup at the Fox and Firkin near Wellesley Station.  The organizer is an Indian from Delhi, and there were also a Ukranian and a Romanian.  I've done enough travelling for a bit, but I do like talking about foreign countries!

This afternoon was the Classic Book Club Meetup, where we discussed Sons and Lovers. There were six people there, including one who thought she was going to the Reading Out Loud Meetup! But I persuaded her to join us anyway, and she made a good contribution.

I've been looking at some of the women on the Zoosk dating site, but so far there aren't many whose interests overlap with mine:  most of them list few interests, and some show none at all!

I've joined up on Twitter at my sister's urging. (I chose the site name Kermit Higby, after a rival detective who appeared on an episode of The Rockford Files!) My first message was a link to a National Film Board cartoon of the song "Log Driver's Waltz."

https://twitter.com/KermitHigby

Photographer's assistant

"If Gringoire had lived in our day, how justly he would have kept to the middle, between the classic and the romantic!...  But he was not primitive enough to live three hundred years, and that's a pity.  His absence leaves a void which, today, is sorely recognized"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

On the "Let them eat cake" quote: "That's ridiculous!  I would never say that!"--Marie Antoinette

Wednesday I was a photographer's assistant! Midwife was taking photos of Miriam in 1940s clothes and I helped out. (What's the story, Morning Glory?) This was near Midwife's apartment in the downtown YWCA building, and we did it on a rooftop there. I held the reflector to focus light on Miriam's face when the sun was behind the clouds, and moved her hair back with the pointed end of a comb when it got in her face.  It was pretty fun.

Wednesday night I went with Miriam's group and saw Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (for the second time) at a Ladies of Burlesque show at the Royal. Marie Antoinette is one of history's big scapegoats!

Yesterday I went with Midwife to a costume warehouse in New Toronto to return those '40s clothes.  She'd ask if I could come in case her daughter couldn't make it and she needed my help.  Her daughter did make it, but I went anyway for the excursion. (We rented a van.)

Solar eclipse

"I tell you, sir, it's the end of the world. Never has there been loose such an unruly mob of students!  It's the accursed inventions of the age that are ruining everything--the artillery, the muskets, the cannons, and above all the printing press, that scourge brought from Germany"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Monday afternoon during the solar eclipse I was inside the Lillian Smith library with the memoir group. (Father made a clever gizmo out of a computer crate for seeing the crescent sunbeam.) Oh well, maybe the Imp of the Perverse would have made me look directly into it...

Now that I've finished Sons and Lovers, I got some new books there.  Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame I'm reading for John Snow's book club.  Machiavelli's The Prince I'm reading for the History Meetup.  And I also got an annotated edition of the manuscript Pioneer Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder's first attempt at telling her story.

On the first page of Hunchback, Hugo indirectly reveals that he's started writing the novel at the time of the July Revolution.  No doubt he did so to remind his readers that the age of Paris mobs was far from over!

Hunchback and Prince are rather appropriate books to be reading at the same time, since they're both about the difficulties of the Renaissance.

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER

"It hurt him so, that things had lost their reality.  The first snowdrops came.  He saw the tiny drop-pearls among the grey.  They would have given him the liveliest emotion at one time.  Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean anything.  In a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and just the space would be, where they had been.  Tall, brilliant tram-cars ran along the street at night.  It seemed almost a wonder they should trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. 'Why trouble to go tilting down to Trent Bridges?' he asked of the big trams.  It seemed they just as well might not be as be"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday afternoon I saw High Plains Drifter with Dawna (for the second time, except that the first time was on a black & white TV decades ago so I couldn't appreciate the scene where the whole town was painted red!). It's the first of the "avenging angel" westerns directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.  We also saw an episode of his TV western Rawhide--Dawna recognizes every actor who appeared on the first Star Trek series!

High Plains Drifter is the one where stranger Eastwood comes to a town whose marshal was whipped to death by three outlaws who are now getting out of jail, and the town's afraid they'll return for vengeance so they hire him to defend the town and give him a blank cheque, but at the last minute he leaves them to face the outlaws alone, then returns that night and kills them after all, and he's the ghost of the marshal who got whipped to death!

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup, with the topic of humorous writing. (I titled the event "Jocularity.") I read the part of Huckleberry Finn where the King works a camp meeting; the part of Frank McCourt's Teacher Man describing his first two days teaching school; and James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  This time we read in Robarts Library's food court.

I just finished Sons and Lovers with a week to spare.  The sensitive hero's relationship with his protective mother reminded me a bit of my relationship with my mother.

NABUCCO

"And after such an evening they both were very still, having known the immensity of passion.  They felt small, half afraid, childish, and wondering, like Adam and Eve when they lost their innocence and realized the magnificence of the power which drove them out of Paradise and across the great night and the great day of humanity.  It was for each of them an initiation and a satisfaction.  To know their own nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which carried them always, gave them rest within themselves.  If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass-blade its little height, and every tree, and living thing, then why fret about themselves? They could let themselves be carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the other. There was a verification which they had had together.  Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away; it was almost their belief in life"--Sons and Lovers

This afternoon I saw the Met production of Verdi's Nabucco at the Yonge & Eglinton, with the great Placido Domingo in the title role.  That's the one where Nabucco captures Jerusalem but his daughter falls in love with a Judean and converts, but his other daughter schemes to take over when he goes out of his head... The Slaves' Chorus was so well-received that they did it a second time! (I saw that happen with "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" at the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls in London twenty years ago.)

I've just been rereading The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder's unfinished addition to her Little House series, describing her newlywed life.  It's only half as long as the other books:  I have a feeling that she gave up on it because it brought back too many painful memories. Three of their first four crops were lost--including a $3000 bumper crop wrecked in a hailstorm--her husband suffered paralysis from a combination of diphtheria and overwork, she lost their second child shortly after his birth, and their house burnt down.  The good old days...

The Crown keeps getting even better! (They've now got to the part in the mid-1950s when my parents were in England.) As the Queen, Claire Foy's polite poker face reminds me of a geisha.

THE CROWN

At the theatre: "The drama continued.  He saw it all in the distance, going on somewhere; he did not know where, but it seemed far away inside him.  He was Clara's white heavy arms, her throat, her moving bosom.  That seemed to be himself.  Then away somewhere the play went on, and he was identified with that also.  There was no himself.  The grey and black eyes of Clara, her bosom coming down on him, her arm that he held gripped between his hands, were all that existed.  Then he felt himself small and helpless, her towering in her force above him"--Sons and Lovers

We've started watching the royal drama The Crown on Netflix.  It's a handsome production and pretty believable. (The Duke of Windsor privately referred to Elizabeth II as "Shirley Temple"!)

Saturday afternoon I saw some more spy shows with Dawna: The Man From UNCLE, Mission: Impossible and Get Smart. (The last was one of my favorite shows when I was young, though I have to admit such '60s comedies were rather sexist.)

I was going to watch the meteor shower in Christie Pits with Miriam's group Saturday night, but the webpage said we'd meet at the Black Rock Cafe at 997 Bloor St. West and when I got there it turned out the address was wrong!  I went home and it turned out that the address was 977 Bloor St. West.  So I went there but couldn't find the rest of the group.

Last night Miriam and I were going to see West Side Story at Christie Pits' outdoor screening and then go out for Korean soup again.  But she wasn't really up to the movie, so we went straight to the soup.

Zoosk

"She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him.  She loved him dearly.  He, as he lay with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet.  He did not mind if the raindrops came on him:  he would have lain and got wet through:  he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable.  This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday Betty-Anne's art walk returned to Queen Street West. One place we went to was a shop for cocktail paraphernalia!

That night at a midnight showing (well, 23:00 anyway) the Carleton had a special screening of the Godzilla classic Destroy All Monsters in honor of the guy inside the monster suit who just died.  I was thinking of seeing it, but my headache came back and it looked too noisy for me.

On a whim, I joined the dating website Zoosk. (Hope over experience?) For my profile I wrote:

I'm a late bloomer. I love classic books, music, movies and TV. My favourite journey is to London, England.
I like reading, especially history. (Fairy tales and comic books appeal to me, even at my age!) And walking is one of my favourite activities.
I'm politically conscious. There are a lot of things in the world that make me angry. (With Donald Trump, however, I've gone beyond anger...) I believe in justice, though in practice I'm skeptical about realizing it.

For my perfect match I wrote:

I like someone who's a good listener, has a sense of humor, and cares about important things as passionately as I do.

For my perfect date I wrote:

A good first date would be just going out for ice cream or doughnuts. Later, karaoke would be fun! Or a movie: my idea of a good romantic movie is Disney's LADY & THE TRAMP, the John Wayne-Claire Trevor western STAGECOACH or even John LeCarre's THE CONSTANT GARDENER. After that, who knows? =)

The good thing about this site is that you get to choose from a wide range of available interests to add to your profile:  people, books, movies, TV shows, sports and such.  And also observe other people's profiles:  I don't think I can date a woman whose interests include the stupid, shameless movie Life Is Beautiful...

Headache!

"Mrs. Morel felt as if her heart would break for him.  At this rate she knew he would not live.  He had that poignant carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life, which is a form of slow suicide.  It almost broke her heart.  With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam for having in this subtle way undermined his joy.  It did not matter to her that Miriam could not help it.  Miriam did it, and she hated her"--Sons and Lovers

These are a couple of those pictures Midwife took of me last week.  She wants to do some more once she knows my clothes size!

The other night I got a big headache that's only now gone away.  I usually read while on the TTC but I couldn't do it so much yesterday.

Monday night we saw the last episode of Bloodline.  The last three episodes, after the trial, weren't as good. (Too much confusing surrealism...)

Yesterday I met Midwife and Miriam.  Miriam's been reading my articles too, and likes them. My next one will be about how I was born on the day of a big Aquarian stellium! (I'm too rationalistic for astrology, really, but it is kinda fun.)

Last night I went to the Cross-Cultural Meetup at Page One near the Ryerson campus.  I had to leave a bit early because of my headache.

I've made Dawna's Classic TV a joint event with my Reading Out Loud Meetup.  Since my group has over 4000 members, that's bound to increase interest in hers!

THE WILD, WILD WEST

"He looked at his mother.  Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral quietly.  She seemed again to be beyond him.  Something in the eternal repose of the uplifted [Lincoln] cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality.  What was, was.  With all his young will he could not alter it.  He saw her face, the skin still fresh and pink and downy, but crow's-feet near her eyes, her eyelids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He beat against it with all the strength of his soul"--Sons and Lovers

"I love being a grandmother.  It's like eating all the ice cream you want and never getting fat!"--Bloodline

Thursday night was the History Meetup, where the subject was modern China.  Just three people came, but one of them talked a lot and that was worth quite a bit.

This afternoon I saw three episodes of The Wild, Wild West with Dawna.  That show was The Man From UNCLE on the frontier, as crazy as it sounds. In one episode they took on a megalomaniac who wanted to create an independent state between the U.S. and Mexico and had stolen the first copy of the United States constitution; in another someone tried to shoot the Mexican president and they had to figure out who was really behind it; in the other one the dwarfish villain Dr. Loveless faked his death and pretended to be his own neurosurgeon uncle.

By today's standards it was a cheesy show, especially the de rigeur fight scenes.  Watching several episodes, you'll notice that the sets got recycled. (Big Brad's Bar seemed to be a chain with franchises all over the west!) One detail that bugs me is their getting orders from Washington by pigeon post: how can a carrier pigeon track down a moving railroad car?

Enough on my plate?

"Spring was the worst time.  He was changeable, intense and cruel.  So he decided to stay away from her.  Then came the hours when he knew Miriam was expecting him. His mother watched him growing restless. He could not go on with his work.  He could do nothing.  It was as if something were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on his hat and went, saying nothing.  And his mother knew he was gone. And as soon as he was on the way he sighed with relief.  And when he was with her he was cruel again"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday, through some bureaucratic SNAFU, the room at Lillian Smith library where the memoir group usually meets was taken for some conference.  They did let us meet in the reading area, but we only did one topic since we couldn't talk too loud. Since next week is a holiday, I brought home the can of subject cards to remove superfluous items and maybe add some more of my own.

After two weeks, I'm halfway through Sons and Lovers.  When I'm finished that, I'll have to read The Prince for my History Meetup and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for John's book club. I'm way behind in Lapham's Quarterly.

And there are all those Ebooks that I've started reading.  I just finished a history of the California gold rush the other day.  But I've also started a biography of Walt Disney, a history of the Versailles palace, a history of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and The Boo, Pat Conroy's biography of the fatherly assistant commander at the Citadel military school. (I liked My Losing Season, his memoir of playing basketball at the Citadel.)

In addition to all that, today I went to the Gladstone library and borrowed Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie. (Just because I felt like reading it again!)

Someone said I don't like people, which may be true to some extent. (Linus Van Pelt: "I love mankind--it's people I can't stand!") He mentioned that I rarely talk about people in this blog, but part of the reason is that I worry about what people may think if they read about themselves here.  Which is why he shall go nameless!