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his word if by doing so he puts himself at risk, and if the reasons that made him give his word in the first place are no longer valid.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!

Busy Thursday

"He did not know himself what was the matter.  He was naturally so young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted to crush her on to his breast to ease the ache there.  He was afraid of her.  The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed into a shame.  When she shrank in her convulsed, coiled torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to the depths of his soul"--Sons and Lovers

"I'm sorry, I forgot that you were sick the day they taught law at law school!"--A Few Good Men

I had a busy Thursday.  First I met with Midwife and we discussed the articles I've been writing for her.  We had lunch at the 12 Hours restaurant where I had the beef noodle soup.  Later she took some pictures of me in front of wall paintings!

Early in the evening I went on Betty Anne's art walk.  This time we were on Dundas West, between Ossington and Dufferin. Later I went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Midtown Cafe north of St. Clair station.  I sometimes have to leave after just one song, but this time I managed to stay for two.

This afternoon I saw Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men with Dawna, for the first time.  The military code of silence is an important issue-- witness the Chelsea Manning controversy-- but I found the movie pretty conventional.  You could see people "acting":  Jack Nicholson was clearly a bad guy from the first moment you saw him!

We've started watching the third season of Bloodline.  It's the best TV show I've seen since Breaking Bad!

DUNKIRK

Looking for work: "Then he looked wistfully out of the window.  Already he was a prisoner of industrialism.  Large sunflowers stared over the old red wall of the garden opposite, looking in their jolly way down on the women who were hurrying with something for dinner.  The valley was full of corn, brightening in the sun.  Two colliers, among the fields, waved their small white plumes of steam.  Far off on the hills were the woods of Annesley, dark and fascinating. Already his heart went down.  He was being taken into bondage.  His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now"--Sons and Lovers

"He's dead, mate." "Then be bloody careful with him!"--Dunkirk

This afternoon I went to the first Cross-Culture Meetup.  It's for people who've spent over a year of their life outside of Canada, and I've spent about three years in Great Britain.  We met in Dufferin Grove park, and may do a karaoke sometime.

Tonight I saw Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk at the Varsity as a History Meetup event.  I thought a war movie like that would attract an all-male group, but I was the only boy there!  The movie was exciting and realistic, without the cheap tricks Nolan sometimes employs. (Remember in The Dark Knight when Commissioner Gordon got killed, but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family?)

I remember seeing a bit of an earlier movie about Dunkirk at my aunt Alma's house, but finding out that she couldn't bear war movies.  Too grim for her!

UNFORGIVEN

"We've all got it coming, kid!"--Unforgiven

Yesterday afternoon I saw Unforgiven with Dawna. That's the fourth in the series of "avenging angel" westerns starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, along with High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider.  It's even better the second time. 

It's an old man's western, like Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch.  Gene Hackman's especially good as the ex-gunfighter sheriff nemesis. There are some funny touches, like Hackman's jerry-built house and Eastwood's persistent trouble getting his horse to stand still so he can mount it.  But there's also a scene with two guys on a train shooting birds out of the sky in a marksmanship contest, encapsulating the waste culture of the frontier.

Today I was going to see a documentary at the Bloor, but misplaced my glasses just before I was going to leave.  After a few hours Father found them at the bottom of the stairs. (They must have fallen out of their case when I picked it up.) But in the meantime I was in a foul mood.

I've started reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Portuguese.  Of the ebooks I started looking at, I've ended up spending the most time on the book about the California gold rush.

Ebooks

I've started reading some of my virtual library.  Through Bookbub I've been getting a lot of history ebooks for just a dollar or two, but they aren't worth much until I read them...

Two of them are American Heritage magazine publications about the Great Frontier and the USA's "confident years" between the Civil War and World War I respectively.  The latter begins with a chapter about how Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment came about.

Some years back I enjoyed Only Yesterday, Frederick Allen's "informal" history of the United States in the 1920s.  Now I've started Since Yesterday, Allen's sequel dealing with the '30s.  It starts with a long description of September 3, 1929, the day the New York Stock Exchange reached its pre-crash peak. (It was also exactly ten years before Britain and France declared war on Germany and World War II started!) Just to confuse you, the 1929 stock market crash actually happened on two days:  the first part was on Black Thursday, the second five days later on Black Tuesday.

I've also been reading Struwwelpeter, Heinrich Hoffmann's 19th-century German collection of gleefully cruel children's stories! (Stuff like the kid who wouldn't stop sucking his thumb, so a man came along with a huge pair of scissors and cut his thumbs off...) Seems he wrote it because he wanted to buy his child a book, but all the children's books he could find were bland.  Lucky for me, the German is simple enough that I can figure it out with help from Google Translate.

HIGH SIERRA

"Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over"--Sons and Lovers

I recently found my credit card blocked.  It turned out that my paying off the whole bill in two big instalments had made them suspicious!  I got it straightened out Sunday.

Last night was John Snow's 60th birthday, and I joined him and two other people at the Hot House. (I had salmon.) It's hard to make conversation with John, of course, because he's the most faithful reader of this blog and it's hard to think of stuff I haven't already written about here!

I finished The China Mirage yesterday and started D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers for the Classic Book Club.  I've already read almost forty pages!  It didn't surprise me to learn that the parents in the novel are based on Lawrence's actual parents--I got the feeling that he knew these two people very well!

Had lunch with Pam at the Grenadier Restaurant and walked through High Park a bit.

In the evening I saw Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (for the third time) with the Classic Movie Meetup at Eton House. Humphrey Bogart has a star-making triumph as a Dillinger-like bank robber, though the subplot with Anne Sheridan's clubfoot is pretty shameless!

Within you and without you

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Classic TV Meetup and we watched DVDs of some TV shows from the 1960s.  The first was The Man From Uncle, in which a Japanese woman accidentally switched her film with the bad guys' film showing their control of volcanoes!  The second was Mission:  Impossible, in which they thwarted an international heroin dealer.  

The third was the first episode of The Time Tunnel, in which our heroes found themselves on the Titanic! (Dawna pointed out that they never seemed to end up in safe places.) Masterpiece Theatre legend Susan Hampshire was a guest star, and I was hoping they'd end up taking her back to the '60s!

Last night I finally got to the Bay at Yorkdale Mall and bought another pair of pajamas. (The pair I got last fall is already "condemned"!)

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The event had religion as its topic, and I titled it "Within You and Without You." I read the Robert Burns poem "Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous," the Tolstoy story "The Three Hermits," some Spoon River Anthology poems and the part of Angela's Ashes where Frank McCourt talks about his first communion.

We've been meeting in a lounge in the Robarts Library.  I was just starting the Burns poem when someone complained, so we moved out to the benches near the sidewalk. (Nobody's complained before--it isn't like we were in the reading room!) This worked out pretty well, despite a little sprinkle.  The only thing that bothered me is that two people in our group lost interest then.  I'll see if the Whole Foods common area would work better.

Dry spell

It's another of those summer periods when I can't think of much to write about.

Last night I dreamed about being on a ship again, returning from London to Halifax. (The ship had trees on board!) The odd thing is that when I woke up and remembered having visited London the month before last, it already seemed like something that had happened long ago.

Today I went on another of Betty-Anne's Queen Street West art walks.  Among other places, we visited Dufflet's pastry shop, where they had free samples!  

I didn't have time for dinner before leaving for the walk, so I was one of the group who stayed on for dinner after the walk, at the Rickshaw Thai restaurant. (I ate coconut chicken.) The place was very noisy, so I wasn't the best of conversationalists.  One of the people at the dinner was a Cambodian-Canadian!

Salsa weekend

On hard cash: "One dollar of this is worth ten dollars of talk!"--The Maltese Falcon

Last weekend was the Salsa on St. Clair festival near our house. (It was pretty noisy.)

Saturday night I went to the Poetry Meetup in Budapest Park. (It was a bit noisy:  maybe High Park would have worked better.) I read stanzas 19 to 41 of the first canto of my translation of Camoes' As Lusiadas. (Before I can read much more, I'll have to do some more translating!) I also read that translation of Pessoa's first Alberto Caeiro poem, and "Th' Brae," my Scots version of "The Hill," the first poem in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Sunday afternoon was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier.

On Sunday evening I saw John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (for the umpteenth time) at an outdoor showing in Christie Pits with Miriam and Anne of the Vintage Clothes Meetup.  It has great dialogue, including a lot of suggestive lines. ("How did you and the widow make out?") Sam Spade actually refers to a cop's partner as his "boyfriend"!

It rained a bit during the screening.  Afterward we had hot soup at a late-night Korean diner. (Very spicy!) Then we walked all the way to the Spadina subway station.  I was rather late getting home, like back when I went a long distance to karaoke.

Today I had a pretty big headache.  I had to skip the Toronto Film Society's film noir double bill at the Carleton. (One of them was Robert Mitchum in Where Danger Lives!)

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

"She likes you.  I can see it." "I'd like to know the name of your oculist"--On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Last night was the History Meetup.  We talked about Canadian History and the dummies book, but there were just four people. (A fifth was in the Robarts Library but couldn't find us.) That wouldn't have been so bad, except that two of them got into a spat, and they both left! I wish one of them had stayed, at least.  But Ann did stay and we had a pretty good conversation. (She wrongly blamed herself for the spat.)

Today I went to Dawna's Regent Park screening and saw the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service for the first time. That's the one with George Lazenby as Bond, getting into a serious relationship with Diana Rigg, leading to a tragic wedding day. (Spoiler, like it wasn't predictable...) I ate potato chips for the first time in donkey's years!

It was one of the series' less popular entries, though Peter Hunt staged some good action scenes in the second half, including two ski chases.  When I was little, I looked at the poster and thought that Diana Rigg was "her Majesty"!

The China Mirage says a lot about China-born Henry Luce of Time magazine (the son of a missionary) and his favouritism toward Chiang Kai-shek.  I've always resented that magazine's tendentiousness and shameless promotion of favorites such as Nixon and Reagan.  One especially funny Time cover came after Nixon's resignation when they showed his successor Gerald Ford with the headline "The healing begins." (A note of wishful thinking there...)

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY

Theatre investor: "I've been in show business for twenty years, and I've never said I was wrong! [pointing to his partner] That's his department"--Yankee Doodle Dandy

"You're a piece of shit, Raeburn!" "It isn't my fault that your mother likes me better than you"--Bloodline

Yesterday I finished The Road to Wigan Pier and borrowed The China Mirage from the Deer Park library.  It's a fascinating book about the USA's naive China policy which led to "Who lost China" disillusionment after 1949.  I didn't know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wealth came from his maternal grandfather (a Delano), who reaped a fortune from the China trade--mostly in opium.

Last night I saw Michael Curtiz' Yankee Doodle Dandy for about the fourth time, at Eton House with the Movie Meetup group. That's the one with James Cagney as Broadway performer-composer George M. Cohan. (I've liked the title song since we had it on a 45 RPM record in my childhood.) Only the spanking scene still makes me uncomfortable.

Today I met Midwife and she gave me several ideas for new articles. (The night before I'd written an article about my parents when they lived in England in the mid-'50s while Father was earning his doctorate.)

We had lunch at the Light Cafe, where I had lobster rolls.  She wants me to raise my output to two articles a week, but I now have half a dozen ideas to develop!

THE CRUCIBLE

"In all novels about the East, the scenery is the real subject-matter"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Friday the bank gave me a number to phone, and I straightened things out so my ATM access card will work now.

Yesterday afternoon was Canada Day, and I went out to an open house at an Islamic centre near Yonge & Wellesley, where I forgot to take off my shoes at the entrance. (D'oh!) Someone gave me a long sales pitch.

This evening I went to the cinemacast at the Yonge & Dundas of a 2013 Old Vic production of Arthur Miller's Salem witch trials play The Crucible, whose movie I screened for the history group just a few months ago.  

Starring Richard Armitage, it was three and a half hours of existential dynamite!  Superbly directed, it brought back the dread I felt seeing the first act for the first time over thirty years ago. They'll be screening Angels in America on the 20th and 27th, and repeating Verdi's Nabucco in August.

I just read a Huffington Post article about measuring emotional intelligence, and I doubt that I'd score well on it.  I can't emotionally distance myself from past mistakes, and I do bear grudges from long ago.  In the comments section someone wrote, "Stein supporters and Trump supporters are cut from the same emotional cloth," and I questioned the emotional intelligence of that poster. (This whole "If you aren't with us, you're against us" attitude, which the court in The Crucible exhibited...) Can the people who still speak of "Bernie Bros" be considered emotionally intelligent themselves?

POINT OF NO RETURN

"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt"--The Road to Wigan Pier

This afternoon I finally made it to Dawna's Classic TV Meetup in Regent's Park, on a screen that's about five feet by three feet. (On the way over I was reading in The Road to Wigan Pier about working-class housing estates that make Regent Park look like paradise!)

The DVD was Point of No Return, John Badham's 1994 Hollywood remake of Luc Besson's French spy romp La Femme Nikita.  The original had quite a few cliches--like when X pulls a gun on Y to make him do something Y was about to do anyway--but it also had Jean Reno, one of the world's coolest actors, in the surprisingly cool role of the spy boss.  

The American version predictably had even more cliches, but only had Gabriel Byrne as the boss.  Byrne has talent, but he isn't Reno.(Someone said that whatever role Byrne is in, he doesn't seem quite right for it!) The movie also had Bridget Fonda as the spy--she was very pretty, and maybe she still is!--and Dermot Mulroney as her clueless lover. (Moira fondly refers to Mulroney as "that goof"!) Harvey Keitel also played much the same "cleaner" role that he had in Pulp Fiction the same year.

How cheesy was this version? We learn early on that Bridget's a Nina Simone fan, as she specifically asks for her records, then plays them all the time. Later on Byrne reveals that he's given her the code name Nina, and she says, "For Nina Simone?" (Just in case you forget the connection...) Typical line: "Everything you touch turns to shit!"

On the way home, I met Genevier on the subway, whom I know from my time of dance lessons at the Arthur Murray studio.  I used to sing karaoke with her husband Jim, and we may get together again to do that!

On Netflix, we've started watching Bloodline again, from the first episode, before we get to the third season.  I've also started watching the last episodes of Hell on Wheels, the western with the pretty actresses.

THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

"Watching coal miners at work, you realise momentarily what different universes different people inhabit"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Finished The Winds of War yesterday.  It was pretty conventional and predictable:  as with North and South, I kept guessing what was about to happen.  Like in this one scene where Robert Mitchum is playing chess with a German general and I'm thinking, "The German will put Mitchum in check but Mitchum will end up pulling a checkmate!" I wasn't mistaken.

Should I see the sequel War and Remembrance?  It's twelve hours long, and Youtube doesn't have all of it.  I think it can wait...

I finally got us subscribed to Netflix.  (I figured out that I had to go to the system preferences' network section and remove our old Unotelly proxy.)

This morning I finally finished Canadian History for Dummies, which had me looking at Canadian history in a new way! Now I'm focusing on The Road to Wigan Pier, and just read the chapter describing the extreme working conditions in a coal mine. (During WWII Ernest Bevin, the British minister in charge of wartime production, had some conscripts consigned to coal mining, and many of the "Bevin boys" begged to be transferred back to the army!)

Finished my Sackville article for Midwife and wrote another about living in Brighton, England, when I was four.

Cookie exchange

"The newspaper-canvassers were a type I had never met before.  Their job seemed to me so hopeless, so appalling that I wondered how anyone could put up with such a thing when prison was a possible alternative"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Seeing the result of a Warsaw air raid: "Those German bastards--my God, Byron, look!"--The Winds of War (Whose side are you on?)

Saturday night I baked another batch of gingerbread and raised the temperature another 25 degrees, but there was still a soft part in the middle.  Between the two batches, however, there was enough to bring to the cookie exchange. (And Moira likes the soft gingerbread anyway!)

The cookie exchange was a Baking Meetup event at High Park.  There was a big variety of cakes and cookies.  The people included a couple of Japanese girls, one of whom had fancy striped shoes she got in Japan. Assantewa showed up after I'd mentioned it to her mother. (She didn't have time to bake anything, but she's really into cookies!)

I've started reading George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, so on my way to the cookie exchange I read about a shop selling unappetizing tripe!

In The Winds of War there's a scene where Robert Mitchum comes back from being an observer on a bombing raid, and the young Englishwoman who adores him says, "It must have been hard!" and he replies, "It was long." That's the kind of line only Mitchum could deliver!

THE WINDS OF WAR

"I'm going to Warsaw!"--The Winds of War

Wednesday afternoon I met Midwife and talked about things like David Sedaris.  I've written her a short article about seeing Carousel at the English National Opera, and now I'm writing one about my hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick.

This afternoon I baked some gingerbread for the cookie exchange Sunday afternoon.  But it was a disaster (too little shortening?), and I may try baking it again tomorrow.

Tonight I saw the first episode of The Winds of War on Youtube. That's the 1983 miniseries about Americans at the start of World War II, up to Pearl Harbor. (It should have been titled "Welcome to the World, Uncle Sam!") It was a ratings hit at the time, though someone called it "the campiest show since Batman"!

It stars Robert Mitchum, who was one of the coolest actors ever, but he's a bit too old here. Ali McGraw was never much of an actress, but similarly she's way too old! (At least Jan Michael-Vincent has some life.) The female characters are rather brainless.  The bit where the woman gets killed by Nazi strafing and her infant child keeps saying "Mama!  Mama!" is especially shameless.  It's the sort of show that basically tells Americans what they want to hear about themselves.

Learning Korean

My Korean lessons continue apace. (The Teach Yourself language books are brilliant, for those who'd rather learn through books.)  The first lesson was about polite language and nationality, the second family relations, the third time and weather, the fourth shopping for food, the fifth ordering food in a restaurant. (The sixth will be about locations.)

I just learned that the Korean word for "rice with mixed vegetables" is "bibimbap" (비빔밥), which I find a nifty word!  I also learned about "Please be seated" and "This pork belly is too salty" and "Shall we cook it again?"

Sunday afternoon was the Reading Out Loud Meetup.  I read my translation of stanzas 19 to 41 of the first canto of The Lusiades, along with my translation of Pessoa's Alberto Caeiro poem, the part of Candide about the Lisbon earthquake and Pangloss going to the auto-da-fe, and the first pages of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (I'd been meaning to read that here for a while, and finally got around to it.) Suzanne was really impressed by my Lusiades translation.

I just learned in Canadian History for Dummies that Amherst, Nova Scotia, near my hometown of Sackville, had a general strike a few months before the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919!

John and his family came over for lunch today, and I ate a vegetarian hamburger for the first time. (How good was it?  A burger is a burger...)

I'm still translating The Wizard of Oz into Portuguese.  I just got to the chapter where they find out the truth about the Wizard.

MONTEREY POP

This afternoon I tried to find a Classic TV Meetup in the Regent Park area, but I went to the wrong building entrance.  Too bad, Dawna the organizer was posting about the '50s TV series The Adventures of Superman and I printed out the photo above.  It's of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, but don't they look like Clark and Lois on that show?  I also wanted to mention the bit in This Boy's Life where Leo di Caprio was watching the show with his teenage friends, and someone made a dirty suggestion that made them all laugh. Narrator Leo: "That broke the tension, and we settled back to watch dorky adventures..." Sure hope I can find them next time!

Yesterday I went to Sobey's to get their Friday afternoon fish & chips special, but they're no longer selling it there! Fortunately, Loblaw's now has a similar special.

This evening I went to see Monterey Pop yet again, in a 50th anniversary release, at the Bloor. Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, it's one of my favorite rock concert movies!  I like the moment during Janis Joplin's show-stopping "Ball and Chain" when we see Cass Elliott in the audience, clearly impressed! (Several performers would die much too young.) My favorite part of all is Ravi Shankar's long sitar number at the end.

BLACK ROBE

"Our soldiers defended themselves like soldiers of the pope:  they all knelt, threw down their arms and asked the pirates for absolution in articulo mortis"--Candide

Tuesday night I went to the first meeting of John Snow's book club in its new format, focusing on translated French novels. There were just four people there, but that's twice the number that were at my book club's first meeting!  We discussed Candide, and John was impressed by my calling it a "burlesque" in an earlier post.  Afterward the weather was nice so Brenda, Neeta and I walked from Sherbourne to the Yonge subway.

Tuesday I misplaced Canadian History for Dummies, but it turned up today. (It was in a window sconce.) I'd just got my hair cut that afternoon, so I thought I'd left it in the barber shop.

Yesterday afternoon at Jimmy's I met Anne and her Aspie daughter Assantewa and we discussed her new literary project.

This evening I saw the DVD of Bruce Beresford's movie of the Brian Moore novel Black Robe (for the second time) with the History Meetup.  It's a gripping, beautiful drama about a Jesuit in New France going west to be a missionary among the Huron nation.  Funny that it took an Australian director to make the great Canadian epic!

This afternoon I went to Tap Phong in Kensington Market and bought an ice-shaving machine.

Just now I've been reading The Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots.

CANADIAN HISTORY FOR DUMMIES

"'Oh, here's a Cicero!' said Candide. 'Surely you never tire of reading that great man!'

"'I never read him,' replied the Venetian. 'What does it matter to me that he pleaded for Rabirius and Cluentius?  I have enough cases of my own to judge.  His philosophical works would have suited me better, but when I saw that he doubted everything, I concluded that I knew as much as he did, and that I didn't need anyone's help to be ignorant.'"

Saturday I finished Candide and started reading Canadian History for Dummies, which I found at the Oakwood Village library. (I keep forgetting that it's south of Rogers Road rather than north!)

Written by Will Ferguson, Canadian History for Dummies is a good read with lots of humor.  I especially like that he doesn't neglect my home region of Acadia!  I'm now getting close to the fall of Quebec in 1759.

Saturday I planted the peas and beans and carrots and parsnips. There's still space for the head crops, which I'll transplant once I get a bit less lazy.  I hope we can fit the onions into the space where Moira had an herb garden last year.  Father found the hose in the basement and now I can water it.

The fourth chapter of Teach Yourself Korean is about shopping for groceries, and I've learned "sagwa joosu" and "chohkoh ooyoo," which mean apple juice and chocolate milk. I've had some trouble writing out "won," their currency unit--like Chinese "yuan" and Japanese "yen"--which is written like this (원), because I thought it was written like this (온ㅓ). I've been noticing a lot of grammatical features that have parallels in the Japanese language.

CANDIDE

"'Is it true that people in Paris are always laughing?' asked Candide.

"'Yes,' said the abbe, 'but they're burning with rage at the same time.  They complain about everything with gales of laughter, and they even laugh while they commit the most abominable crimes.'"

I'm in a good mood because Jeremy Corbyn defied expectations and took away Teresa May's majority in the British election.  Corbyn's the kind of politician we need these days!

I've started reading Candide for the second time. (The first time was back when I lived in London in 1995, and I read it during the long commute to the Public Record Office in Kew.) It's something of a burlesque.

Wednesday night I saw Francois Ozon's Frantz with Miriam at the Mt. Pleasant. (Hadn't been there for a while.) It's a pretty downbeat movie about a German woman whose fiance was killed in the Great War and meets a French veteran who knows something of the dead man.

Last night I went to another ESL Meetup.  I met a Korean girl and managed to say to her, "Je sang'il-un Iwol o'il ieyo," which means "My birthday is February 5th." (Which it is.) I told her that I liked the Korean movie Taegukgi:  The Brotherhood of War, and she said it's famous in Korea.

Today I had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzel Hub again. (He generously gave me copies of a couple of French books his book club will be doing soon.) I seemed to leave a bit abruptly and he later wondered if I was mad at him, but I explained that us Aspies are often giving the wrong impression!

After a fortnight, I've finally got rid of my email backlog.  It took a while because I was also dealing with the new emails that arrive every day.

It's supposed to be a hot weekend, and I bought some ice for our freezer.  Now I'd like to find an ice-crushing appliance...

FORBIDDEN PLANET

On landing on a foreign planet: "Nothing to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and you have to bring the cans!"--Forbidden Planet

I was just reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Canadians, part of a funny series of books they sell at Foyle's in London.  It's already finished, so now I can start on Candide for John Snow's book club.  I thought we had a copy, but I couldn't find it and had to get one at the Lillian Smith library.

Last night I went to a Movie Meetup screening of Forbidden Planet (for the third time).  It's handsome-looking but a bit awkward.  Anne Francis was a babe!  I brought a British book of the world's worst movie posters, and showed the others the lurid-looking Forbidden Planet poster.

Yesterday I finished preparing the garden, and this morning Moira and I went to Fiesta Farms and bought seeds and stuff. (They didn't seem to have broccoli or brussels sprouts.)

SCORE

Saturday I joined Miriam at the Karelia Kitchen for a Vintage Clothing Meetup. (I had a cheesecake with pistachio crust.) We visited some boutiques, and ended up at the Dundas West street festival.  I'd just finished Cold Comfort Farm, and lent her my copy.

Yesterday Moira joined me at the ESL Meetup at the Midtown Hub, and quite enjoyed it.  We were helping immigrants with English idioms, and some of them were pretty tough. (With "Add insult to injury," I ended up saying, "That one isn't important, you don't have to know it"!) Some of the immigrants were Korean, and were impressed that I could say "Annyong haseyo" (hello). We walked there and back along St. Clair Avenue.

Last night I saw Score at the Bloor HotDocs. (I renewed my silver membership.) It's a documentary about movie composers, something like Visions of Light did with cinematographers back in the '90s.  I wish they'd spent a bit more time on classic composers like Maurice Jarre and Miklos Rosza--I'm never satisfied, am I?

With Cold Comfort Farm finished, I started reading the short book Xenophobe's Guide to the Canadians, one of the books I bought in London.

I've been trying to subscribe to Netflix, but they won't accept my credit card and when I try to pay through Paypal I get a message that the payment system is down. "Please try again later."

Dufferin Mall

"It was one of his disagreeable duties as a State psycho-analyst to remove the affections of his patients from the embarrassing objects upon which they were concentrated; and focus them, instead, upon himself"--Cold Comfort Farm

Today I finished forking the garden and started deepening the surrounding ditch.  When I'm finished with that and level it out with a hoe, it'll finally be ready for planting!

I was going to meet John Snow for lunch, but there was a misunderstanding about the day. Oh well, we'll meet next Friday.

In the evening I went out to Dufferin Mall.  At the Bell store I got a USB cable so I can connect the Iphone to my desktop and post the photos I took in London. Then I went to Walmart and bought new socks and undies, along with several towels for the bathroom.

I read over thirty pages of Cold Comfort Farm and should finish it on the weekend.  I'm also close to finishing going through the email backlog.

I just bought another cheap Ebook, about New York City in the 1960s.  I don't know when I'll get around to reading any of them--I still haven't finished the Tom Swift book--but they do sound fascinating!

I had a very strange dream last night about being among a group of people who hung onto ropes under an airplane and went all around the world without touching the ground.

Bits and pieces

"Flora was desperately sleepy; she felt as though she were at one of Eugene O'Neill's plays; the kind that goes on for hours and hours and hours, until the R.S.P.C. Audiences batters the doors of the theatre in and insists on a tea interval"--Cold Comfort Farm

My Korean is slowly progressing. I've been learning to write their syllables, and the only part that still resists my facility is these vowel formations like "wa" and "wo." I've been writing out the conversations and such in my Teach Yourself book, and also making a glossary.  It helps to know some Japanese, whose syntax is similar in some ways.

I got a new ATM access card, but the first time I used it the machine rejected it, so I had to go to the tellers to get it straightened out.

Finally started forking the garden to prepare it for planting.  And just as I was getting underway, it started raining!  Ain't it the way?

Tonight I went on Betty Anne's art walk in the area near Dundas & Dufferin.  One of the places we went to was a lingerie boutique!

Last night I dreamed of being near the front line of the American offensive against Japan in the Pacific war, running away and passing the Marx Brothers on tour.

I have about 300 emails left to open...