Laziness

For some reason September has made me lazy.  I haven't been going to Noah Richler's campaign office for volunteering, I've stopped baking bread and I can't think of things to write here.

Friday night I went to a fundraising event for Noah Richler at Dave's, just a few blocks from here.  I only went to make a token appearance, and left when the music started.  The next day I actually went into the office!

I finally finished A Short History of Progress.  And now I've started reading Edgar Allen Poe for the Classic Book Club.

Monday at choir practice Paolo asked me to yell like I wanted someone to come to me, so I said, "Come here, you sonuvabitch!" (That brought the house down.) And that's a word I've never used before!  All of a sudden, I'd been possessed by what Poe called "the imp of the perverse." At least I didn't say, "Get your stupid ass in here, you goddamm sonuvabitch!"

Opera rehearsal started Tuesday night.  We did the opening chorus of The Elixir of Love, which I'm pretty familiar with. (We're also doing Die Fledermaus.) Starting this year we're going to do eight performances instead of twelve, which means an extra week to rehearse.

Today I finally started moving those heavy patio stones to expand the garden. (Too lazy to get far, of course.) There's a whole layer of weeds that's spread over them.  I should dig up the potatoes sometime soon.

There's a girl in Waterloo called Nikki who asked me to order a plush Super Mario Brothers toy for her on Amazon. (She can't do it herself because she doesn't have a credit card.) But I couldn't open my Amazon account, having forgotten the password.

Last Night at the Proms

Saturday I went to the Last Night at the Proms telecast at the Yonge & Eglinton.  Once again, I just stayed for the first half. (The second half's kinda predictable anyhow.) I really went there to meet Mary and John D. from the Music Meetup, whom I haven't seen lately.  I'm impressed that pianists like Benjamin Grosvenor manage to memorize whole concerti!

You know you're getting old when you go to the cinema and see posters for sequels to movies you've already forgotten!

Sunday was the latest ROLT, and the topic was banned and challenged books, since September is Banned Books Month. (The event's title was "Think of the Children!") There were eleven people, about our best turnout ever!  I read the passage from Of Mice and Men where Lennie ends up killing the skanky woman, and the opening pages of W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind?  (One guy said it read the Steinbeck passage "beautifully"!) I would have read the opening pages of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich--it's not only been banned by the Soviets, but challenged in Canadian schools because of words like "shit-barrel"--but there were enough other people reading for a full event.

On Monday Paolo had the choir trying parts of "Joy to the World" and "Angels We Have Heard on High." He's moved us into the Villa Colombo hall where they have banquets, and introduced some new voice exercises like "tritrutritrutri," where you make an expression like the Phantom of the Opera when his mask's just been pulled off.

I thought tonight was going to be the first night of opera rehearsal, but when I went down there the place was empty!  First night is next week, of course.

New choir director

The Columbus Centre Community Choir has a new director, Paolo Busata.  We met him last Tuesday at a meet & greet, and had a full rehearsal last night.  We learned the first parts of "O Canada" and "Time to Say Goodbye." He's introduced some new voice exercises.

The Saturday before last I went to John Snow's book club.  The place at the Lillian Smith library somehow got double-booked, so they went to some coffee shop.  Unfortunately, I was late getting there and didn't know where they'd gone!  But I met up with Gabriella, who was also late, and we went to a Second Cup and had our own mini-meeting.  I wouldn't have been worth much at the main meeting anyhow since I hadn't read any of Stendhal's RED AND BLACK.

Sunday night I went to the Politics Meetup for the first time, at Scallywag's.  They had a political trivia quiz and I finished second. (We needed a tie-breaking bonus round.)

Last week I went to the Electric Caterpillar bookstore and bought a book of Italian folktales.  I'm now translating the Turinese story "The Canary Prince," about a princess locked up in a tower who sees a prince on the ground, but they're too far apart for talking and can only gaze at each other and wave their hankies. (Oh well, I like to think she had a voice like Fran Drescher while he had a voice like Robin Leach!) Then a fairy gives her a book where she can turn the pages one way to turn him into a bird who can fly up to her windowsill, then turn them the other way to change him back.  But her evil stepmother puts some pins in the cushion he lands on...

I also got a book about a hundred famous Italians.  But that book's language is less simple, better suited for Moira. (She's been reading a novel in Italian!)

HELL ON WHEELS

Have you ever watched a show that stretched credibility on occasion but you largely believed it anyway?  Then one episode there was a plot turn that just had zero credibility, and suddenly every plot turn seemed unbelievable? (Call it jumping the shark.) Something like that happens in the fourth season of Hell on Wheels.

The show is now set in the town of Cheyenne and a new territorial governor has arrived.  He's a carpetbagger out to take control of the rackets, but he also believes in law and order and is out to end the chaos in the streets. (He hangs a man for shooting a cheating gambler.) Then this gunfighter comes to town, along with his deadly enemy.  The result is a gunfight in which the first gunfighter shoots his enemy, and accidentally shoots a kid, then he shoots an innocent resident in cold blood to remove a witness.  He's about to kill a lady before he gets caught.

In the following episode the governor decides to make this gunfighter his marshal!  I could believe it if he'd just killed the other gunfighter, or even if he'd killed the kid too.  But the third killing puts him beyond the pale, and appointing him lawman is a slap in the face to the whole community.  Even a carpetbagging governor should have better sense than that!

This is the first in a long line of developments that aren't credible, but are required for the plot to reach a climactic event near the end of the season.  I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it, but I will say that attention-grabbing clearly trumped credibility.

In addition, the lesbian newspaper lady goes over to the other side and starts a sexual relationship with the governor, for reasons that weren't clear to me.  I think it's so they can go from lovers to enemies at the end of the season.

Campaign office

Last Sunday the Classic Book Club met, and we talked about Thackeray's Vanity Fair.  We got seven or eight people, and some of them had suggestions about books to do.  Looks like we're becoming successful!

I've started doing volunteer work at the Noah Richler campaign for the NDP in St. Paul's. (I haven't seen Richler there yet.) There's quite a variety of chores On Wednesday I wrote poll numbers on folders with a marker all the way up to Poll 129.  Friday I taped leaflets onto the back of the clipboards the canvassers will be using. (We used the transparent tape to cover the whole leaflet to make it waterproof.) Saturday I wrote poll numbers again, but this time I also put maps of poll districts into the folders! (There were some Timbits.) They have a new system for data entry, and I hope I can learn it quickly.

I've almost finished the fourth season of Hell on Wheels.  The show's been getting even more unpleasant, and I respect that!  Too bad the latest episode had that tired "What becomes of men like us?" discussion.

One of my Facebook groups is about the Roman Empire.  I've started posting my amateur translation of Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars, one mini-chapter at a time.  I'm just getting up to the Battle of the Saone River.

I found another good quote in The War That Ended the Peace!  At the start of World War I a German general wrote, "If we will all perish, it's been nice."

New connection

Sunday was ROLT, the event title was "Love Is All Around," and the subject was romantic writing.  I wanted to read the ending of Nineteen Eighty-Four ("He loved Big Brother") but couldn't find the book.  All I could think of was a couple of fairy tales:  the Grimms' "Spindle, Shuttle and Needle" and a Hans Christian story about a snowman who loves a stove he sees inside a window, and after he melts it turned out that they used a dustpan from the stove to make his spine!  There were several new people there, and I hope they'll come again.

Monday night I went to a Toronto Film Society double bill with the Movie Meetup group.  The first was Charlie Chan on Broadway from a mystery series that's a guilty pleasure for me. (It's the third time I've seen that one.  Charlie Chan at the Opera and Charlie Chan's Secret are also pretty good.) Then we saw Elia Kazan's debut A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I'd seen once before on the small screen.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is about a girl who aspires to be a writer. I once saw a movie where a mother takes her daughter's writing to an established writer who asks, "Is she one of those people who talk about writing, or one of those people who write?" I thought that scene was in this movie, but it wasn't.  Then I realized it was probably in I Remember Mama!

I recently finished the third season of Hell on Wheels on Netflix.  That was a jaw-dropping season finale, with Cullen stuck in a shotgun marriage in a Mormon compound presided over by a bishop who's actually the Norse psychopath! (He murdered the real bishop and took his place.) I'm already watching the fourth season.

Yesterday we updated our computer connection, so now we have cable TV again.  If we pay fifteen dollars more a month we can get some extra channels like BBC World and Turner Classic Movies, but we'll have to think about it. (I really don't watch TV much.)

Our internet connection was off for several hours while they worked on updating it.  Oh well, that meant more time for reading The War That Ended the Peace.  It quotes French intellectual Remy de Gourmont on the loss of Alsace and Lorraine: "Personally, I would not give the little finger of my right hand for these forgotten lands.  I need it to shake the ash off my cigarette."

Break's over

I got pretty lazy the last couple of weeks.  Not only did I stop posting on this blog, I stopped baking bread because we ran out of whole-wheat flour and I wasn't motivated enough to buy some more. (I was buying some fresh peaches and stuff today, but I forgot to get the flour!)

Last Wednesday I went to the St. Paul's nomination meeting where we nominated Noah Richler, literary critic and son of novelist Mordecai Richler.  Someone made popsicles with an orange-vanilla flavour, and I ate mine so fast that I got brain freeze!  Stephen Lewis gave a speech.  Dave Koppes, whom I know from my Aspie Meetup, was doing volunteer work there.

It was the same night that Bernie Sanders gave a podcast that 100,000 people gathered to watch.  Funny how I'm excited about Sanders' campaign but I'm afraid to get excited about the NDP prospects in the upcoming federal election.  No doubt I'll be volunteering for that campaign. (I didn't get involved with last year's provincial campaign because I couldn't find the local office, and it turns out they didn't have an office in this riding!)

Last night I saw Best of Enemies, about the Gore Vidal-William F Buckley feud, at the Lightbox.  It was pretty enjoyable.  People of the Buckley school have a lot to answer for regarding the state of the US today!

Today I completed both the Spring issue of Lapham's Quarterly and Thackeray's Vanity Fair.  It's an amazing novel!  Now I'll be turning to the summer issue (about philanthropy) and Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended the Peace, about the world in 1914.

THE WOLF WHO WANTED A SWEETHEART

Last week was pretty busy.  On Tuesday I joined a Movie Meetup and saw the James Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun (for the second time, but first time on the big screen). The last one directed by Guy Hamilton, it's one of the series' less successful entries, though it does have Christopher Lee as the villain.  My favourite part was the two Thai schoolgirls taking on a whole karate school (and wiping the floor with them, of course).

On Wednesday I went to Eton House near Pape station and saw Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (for the second time) on a big video screen with the Life Begins at 40 Meetup.  It started the whole trend of '50s scoff movies, but as the title suggests it's a bit preachy and self-important in a way characteristic of the time. (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit had the ad line "A movie that may very well be the very greatest!" You wish...) The Sam Jaffe character is clearly based on Albert Einstein.

On Thursday I went to another of Betty Anne's art walks.  I met a senior woman with wide round glasses like Iris Apfel, and Betty Anne said she's the Iris Apfel of Toronto!

I just finished translating the Portuguese children's book whose title translates as The Wolf Who Wanted a Sweetheart. (The author and illustrator are French, so I assume that was the original language.) It's about a wolf who's looking for love and learns to dress fancy and carry flowers and memorize love poems.  After getting nowhere, he sits down in the road to take off his painful cowboy boots, and a she-wolf runs into him and he finds love after all.  The lesson for boys:  Sit down on the sidewalk and hope a girl runs into you!

I'm almost up to the Battle of Waterloo in Vanity Fair. (I've started reading Lapham's Quarterly at lunchtime.)

ROLT

Moira went to Kingston (She's going to spend a week in Cape Cod again this year.)

Saturday I went to John Snow's new book club, where we discussed Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I had to admit I couldn't get far into the book:  sensitive young characters like Werther make me impatient, partly because they remind me of when I was young and sensitive. (Another example:  Winona Ryder in the Generation X movie Reality Bites.) I want to say to them, "Welcome to the world!")

Anyway, we had a full turnout of half a dozen people.  We met in the basement of the Lillian Smith library, in the same place where we do the memoir slam.  Next month we're discussing Maurice Stendhal's The Red and the Black.  I don't have time to read it, but I'll come anyhow.

Sunday was the latest ROLT, and the topic was humour, with the title "The titter, the howl, the belly laugh and the boffo."  I read the Stephen Leacock story "Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen" as well as "The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhower's" and Robert Benchley's versions of opera synopses.  I would have read the first chapter of Vanity Fair and Robert Frost's poem "The Code," but I wasn't up to it. 

I used to write my memoir pieces on looseleaf in the same binder as my choir music.  But starting at today's slam, I've turned to writing in a Pierre Belvedere notebook of the same sort I used to write my diary in before going online with it.

I'm finally getting serious about my schedule for finishing Vanity Fair within six weeks (which allows for one library renewal). The other day I read over thirty pages!

Salsa on St. Clair

Sunday was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed The Yearling.  There were five of us, including someone who came because she thought it was the Poetry Meetup!

On Tuesday I saw the documentary THE GREAT MUSEUM at the Bloor.  It's about the Kunsthistoriche Museum in Vienna.  Another museum for my bucket list!  Their new chandelier-like electric lights have a very clever modern design.

On Thursday I borrowed Vanity Fair from the library.  I'd been hoping to finish the fraud issue of Lapham's Quarterly before starting it, but it's 800 pages long and I want to make sure to finish it before the next book club meeting.  Judging by the first chapters, it's pretty fun.

Thursday night I went to see the French-Czech animated science fiction feature Fantastic Planet at the Revue (for the second time, but the first time in a cinema). The place was packed and I was lucky to get in!  It's original but the animation is rather basic. (They also showed an odd French animated short titled Les Escargots.)

This weekend is the Salsa on St. Clair street festival.  I went to Hillcrest Park to read Vanity Fair and escape the noise. (I've developed a fantasy of meeting a girl who's reading a book of her own there...) On the way there, I saw another house that put out its excess books for whoever wants them, and I got a copy of Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth! (That's a book I mean to read one of these years.  I think Dr. Hassan liked it.)

Someone online accused Bernie Sanders of trying to "hijack" the Democratic Party.  If this be hijacking, make the most of it!

New books!

Monday night I saw The King and I with the Movie Meetup group at the Event Screen (for the second time, but the first time in a cinema). I think this is what Edward Said meant by "orientalism." It's best for the Thai ballet of Uncle Tom's Cabin.  The real King Mongkut was far more enlightened than the semi-civilized clown the western world imagines.

Thursday I went on an art walk along Dundas Street.  We stopped at a Portuguese-themed boutique and I bought the children's book Coracao de Mae (mother's heart). Then we went to the Monkey's Paw bookstore.  I'd hoped to try their vending machine that sells you a random book for two dollars, but it needed restocking.  I did buy The Book of Flags, The Odd Book of Facts, Great Cities of the World and Women in the Comics.  But when I was through buying them, I couldn't find the rest of the group and missed the rest of the walk!

Later that evening I went to the revue and saw Robert Wise's boxing classic The Set-Up.  They also had a boxing-themed Three Stooges short and the Warner Brothers cartoon To Duck or Not to Duck. ("You know, there's something awfully screwy about this fight, or my name isn't Larrimore--and it isn't.")

Wednesday I went to Shopper's Drug Mart to replenish my cipralex prescription.  It turned out that it wouldn't be ready until the next day, possibly the late afternoon, so I didn't have time to pick it up then what with the art walk.  I would have got it yesterday but I was under the weather.  I finally got it today.

I've been watching Royal Heritage on Youtube.  That's a 1977 BBC documentary series in connection with the Silver Jubilee, depicting the British monarchy's history and collections. (Several of the Royals make appearances.) I remember seeing some of it back at the time, especially the part where Prince Charles goofs around with an old microscope the future George III used.

An unusual dream

Sunday was the latest ROLT.  The subject was Commonwealth literature, with the title "Common Wealth" (geddit?). Over 20 people said they were coming, and five showed up, which I'm getting used to.  I read the chapter from Jalna about Piers and Pheasant eloping, and a few selections from the foreigners issue of Lapham's Quarterly:  a Kenyan describing his schooling in the '50s and using Shakespeare sonnets to appeal to girls, a bit from an Indian novel about an "untouchable" accidentally running into a Brahmin.  Jane read the first scene from the script of Goin' Down the Road.

Tuesday I finally went to an Ontario Services place near College & Euclid and got my health card renewed. (It expired four months ago, but I hadn't got around to renewing it before.) That evening Bereaved Families of Ontario was having an open house, so I visited their new offices on Merton Street.

Thursday was the latest History Discussion Group, with Canadian history the subject.  But only Jane showed up at my house.  Yet Moira came to talk with us (Jane likes her) and things went pretty well.  I think I'll go back to the original plan of making a history book the topic of discussion.

I've finally caught up with all my Facebook groups!  I'd dropped quite a few, though I did pick up some recently.  The group on Britain in the middle ages is particularly active.

Moira's been watching Bernie Sanders on YouTube and in podcasts.  I pointed out to her a clip of him confronting Alan Greenspan which they say is going viral.

Last night I had an unusual dream.  I was living in a building a distance west of my true home, where each household had a cubicle in a rectangular grid.  Time passed ten or twenty years into the future, and I found out that THE NATION had published a review of the writing of Jorge Luis Borges written by me. (I've hardly read any of Borges!)

Spice cake

Monday night was the choir's year-end concert.  We bought Beatrice and Adolfo a Yorkdale gift certificate.  Moira didn't hate "Can You Can-Can" as much as I feared, though she thought Beatrice's rendition of "Summertime" should have been slower.  I got Giovanni to give us a lift to St. Clair Avenue afterward, but Ora also brought a guy so there were four people in the back seat and Moira had to sit on my lap!

I was tired of Moira always buying Duncan Hines chocolate cake mixes, so I suggested we try spice cake instead.  So she found me a spice cake recipe online and I ended up baking that tonight.  Unfortunately, the brown sugar had some hard lumps that couldn't be broken down.  Sometime I'm going to make goulash!

The other day I went to Rainbow Caterpillar, a children's bookstore near Corso Italia that specializes in foreign languages.  I bought a Portuguese book whose title translates "The Wolf who Wanted a Sweetheart." (I think the original was French.) They also had an Italian book of fairy tales that I may get later.

I went to see Dr. Hassan yesterday.  I was reading The Yearling on the way there and back, and managed to read over 40 pages that day.

I'm concerned about some of Hillary Clinton's supporters.  Debating with them on Facebook, I got the impression that they're seeing what they want to see in her and ignoring that a lot of people see her in less admiring terms, while dismissing Bernie Sanders as a "risk." Just like John Kerry's supporters, indeed.  And they're making an issue of Sanders' supporters being uncivil and divisive.  Yet it's not in the Democratic Party's interest for the leading candidate's shortcomings to be ignored in the name of niceness.

Facebook group shakeout

It's nice to know that John Snow reads this blog.  In fact, he reminded me that it's been a while since my last post! (Oh well, I guess I need people to spur me on...)

I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook groups.  Too much time, in fact.  So I've been leaving a lot in the last day or two.  At my peak I was in dozens!  Stuff like movie groups focusing on actors like Buster Keaton or Joan Blondell, directors like Billy Wilder or William Wilder, genres like westerns or musicals, periods like the silent era, studios like MGM and RKO...  I was also in groups focusing on America in the '20s, '30s, '40s etc.  These groups are interesting enough, but I've just been spending too much time on them.  For now, I'm keeping a few with subjects like ocean liners and Weimar Germany.  And I'm hesitant about leaving the groups with political subjects, where I sometimes get into interesting discussions.

Last weekend I saw the first part of the New York movie A History of Violence, but I just couldn't get into it.  It's one of those plots were things get worse and worse...

Sunday night I went to Lisa's Storytellers Meetup.  There was a big group of people there talking about ayahuasca-related revelations, which was all Greek to me.

The night before I made gingerbread, and I brought some to that event, as well as the next day's memoir slam and the evening dress rehearsal for next week's choir concert.  It's pretty popular everywhere. (At the memoir slam, one of the subjects was "Better beware," and I uncharacteristically drew a blank and couldn't write anything about it.)

Since finishing the translation of the Portuguese booklet about the life of St. Pedro Claver, I've started translating one more of the Spanish Mortadelo & Filemon comics.  This one's subject is rehabilitation, and looks like more tasteless fun.

THE YEARLING

I've started reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling for my Classic Book Club.  What a challenge getting it from the library!  I'd misplaced my library card, so I went to the Wychwood library to get a new one.  It turned out that I'd left it at the Bloor-Gladstone library a couple of months ago, so I went there to get it back.  Then I returned to Wychwood and was going to take out a copy of The Yearling, but it turned out that my library card needed renewal, so I had to go home to get a "proof of residence" document. (There ought to be an easier way of proving where you live!) So I got the card renewed, but the book still hadn't been reshelved.  I ended up borrowing it from the Oakwood branch.

I've only read a couple of chapters of the book so far, but it's vivid!

Wednesday night I saw the documentary Iris at the Bloor, about Iris Apfel, a 90-year-old designer with an enduring sense of style.  What a lot of objets d'art she's collected over her life!  They should build a museum just to fill it with the best of her stuff.

Thursday night the Classic Movie Meetup and I saw King Vidor's early talkie Street Scenes at the Revue.  It seemed pretty close to the stage version, which isn't such a bad thing.  I got more and more into it as it went along, and now I want to see it again!  They also showed a newsreel about 1936 aviation, a Betty Boop cartoon based on Snow White--with Koko the Clown (Cab Calloway's voice) singing "The St. James Infirmary Blues"--and a short made from the football scenes in the Marx Brothers vehicle Horse Feathers.

We had a long spell of dry weather for the last week, but it finally rained today, and the garden soil is a nice deep brown.

History discussion group

Wednesday night I saw Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd remake at the Yonge & Dundas, with Kenneth from the History Discussion Group and his blind friend John. The place was almost empty, so there was nobody sitting near us and we could whisper to John what was happening. (As I watched it, I kept wondering which parts you couldn't follow without seeing.) It was pretty good.

Thursday night the History Discussion Group Meetup met at my house. (I don't usually have Meetups there, and I'll find another place when the group's big enough.) We talked about the world in 1914:  I titled the event "The age of men." Two people came:  Leon, a Russian from Moldova, and Millicent, a Masai from the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.

Thursday I walked to Fiesta Gardens and bought seed potatoes and carrot seed.  Friday I planted the spuds in our back yard garden.  Then I gave them a watering, but the hose was full of leaks.  We'll clearly have to get a new one.

This afternoon I saw Marion Davies' silent comedy Patsy at the Revue.  She missed her calling in the sound era:  she should have been making screwball comedies!

I'm ready to start reading The Yearling for the Classic Book Club.  But I lost my library card and I'll have to bring a proof-of-residence paper and get a new one.

I'm also rereading Ken McGoogan's How the Scots Invented Canada in preparation for next month's history discussion group, which will be about Canadian history.

I've been watching the last season of Boardwalk Empire on DVD.  Patricia Arquette is great in it, but she's met the violent fate of Steve Buscemi's other witnesses.

Gardening time

The hot weather arrived last weekend.  I've been working a lot in the garden, extending it to where we used to have the planter. (There's good potting soil there.) I moved two rose bushes from there to the planter next to the front porch, and a couple of other flowers to the terraced area next to the sidewalk.

I just finished digging a trench around the whole area, and as soon as I level it out it'll be ready for planting.  There were a couple of stumps so deeply rooted that I had to saw them out, and there are also quite a few roots from our late cherry and plum trees.

This garden work is part of the reason it's been so long since my last post here.  Another part is my involvement with those Facebook groups.  Up to last week I followed up all my Facebook notifications, but that was taking up so much time that I stopped.  Now I'm trying to be selective.

Wednesday I saw Fred Zinnemann's movie of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! for the second time, but the first time in a cinema, at the Event Screen.  It's a bit square, best for the surreal ballet sequence.  I have to admit I felt sorry for Judd Fry. (Despite being the villain, there was something sympathetic in the way Rod Steiger played him.)

Thursday I went on Betty-Anne's art walk, in the Junction area for the first time.  I noticed a used-book store and visited it and another one on Saturday afternoon.  But I wasn't interested enough to buy anything.

I finished reading Our Mutual Friend on Saturday night, just before the Classic Book Club met on Sunday afternoon. (Why not cut it close?) There were seven people there, exactly the number in my reservation.  Now I've started reading the spring issue of Lapham's Quarterly, whose subject is con games.

The weather got cooler today, but that can't last forever.

Iambs and dactyls

Thursday was going to be the History Discussion Group Meetup.  I hoped to have it at the Victory Cafe but they couldn't fit in my reservation.  So I moved it to the Ryerson Hub cafeteria area, where we used to have Games Meetups.  But the place turned out to be undergoing renovation!  Leon was the only other person I could find.  So I rescheduled the event for two weeks later, and chose our home because I couldn't think of any other place!

The Bloor is having a retrospect of documentaries by the Maysles Brothers.  Friday night I saw Gimme Shelter (about the disastrous Rolling Stones concert at Altamonte in 1969) for the third time, but the first time on the big screen.  Saturday I saw the deeply strange Grey Gardens for the second time.  They're showing Salesman on Thursday, but that's at the same time as Betty-Anne's latest art walk!

This afternoon was the latest ROLT Meetup.  This month the topic was poetry again, and I titled the event "Iambs and Dactyls." I read Rupert Brooke's sonnet "The Soldier," John Greenleaf Whittier's "Barbara Freitchie" (since it's the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War), Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells," Walt Whitman's "Miracles" and Robert Frost's "The Code." Henry read a passage by Charles Bukowski about style, and I had to point out that Poe was someone with style!

In one of my Facebook groups I started a thread with "You know you're getting old when..." And I offered this post: "...when your dreams are in reruns." I'm in a group devoted to ocean liners and posted about travelling on the Arkadia on its last voyage in 1966.  If I can find the menu the parents saved from the Empress of Britain in 1957, I'll have to scan it and post it in the group!

Twenty years ago

Last night I dreamed about Goodenough College.  Twenty years ago last weekend I flew to England to spend eight months at Goodenough College in London while researching my Ph.D. thesis.  It was the best eight months of my life!  It still feels recent to me.  I've never done anything else quite that exciting.

But one thing that has me excited now is Bernie Sanders' candidacy for the American presidency.  For a couple of months I've kept writing comments at The Huffington Post and Facebook saying "Run, Bernie, run!" and "You can do it, Bernie!" (After he announced, I wrote a post saying "I knew he could do it!") Don't be too sure he can't win the Democratic nomination and even the presidency.  People who dismiss his chances aren't just underestimating him, they're underestimating the American voters.

Sunday I went to a brunch with Paula's Fun Loving Friends Meetup.  We went to the Universal Grill at the corner of Shaw and Dupont, which is within walking distance of my house!  Afterward I went to see Giuseppe, but he didn't seem to be in.  At one of the houses along Shaw Street they were giving away their excess books, and I found an interesting book about someone biking through rural France and learning about French history.

Our choir is doing "Mambo Italiano" and a new arrangement of "Santa Lucia." And we're also doing that Russian song "Kalinka" again, which is one of my favourites!

I've been spending too much time on Facebook groups lately. (I've stopped posting Captain Snark pieces.) It looks like I'll have to quit at least some of them.  But they've been having some interesting discussions on subjects like Robert Mitchum.

I've finished rereading Our Marvellous Native Tongue, and now I'm rereading How the Scots Invented Canada.

Maytime

The warm spring weather has arrived, and I've started wearing my summer jacket.  I'll have to start preparing the garden pretty soon.  I think I'd like to plant a birch tree in the back yard since we've cut down the cherry and plum.

The Classic Book Club is meeting again in a couple of weeks, so I'll have to focus to finish Our Mutual Friend in time.  But two chapters a day will be enough, and I hope I can read faster.  I couldn't get the Victory Cafe for the History Discussion Group, so I'll use the Ryerson Student Hub instead. (I've gone there for Board Games Meetups.)

The other day one of the federal NDP candidates uploaded a poster promoting Israel with the line "67 years young." I posted "67 years of ethnic cleansing" and he accused me of "hate" and "trolling." He challenged me to provide links showing Israel's guilt on this charge and I provided three, but he ultimately deleted two. (He kept the one from Haaretz because it showed what a great democracy Israel is.) He ultimately closed the thread and said he'd delete any more of my comments, and I wrote a last post saying "Delete away, you Stalinist!"

Father found the misplaced Metropass at the post office with just a couple of days left in the month.  But it's just as well, since we'd run out of tokens.

Thursday night, on a whim, I went to the Nonfiction Book Club Meetup.  The book was Abundance, about anti-Malthusian theories of the future.  I hadn't read it and I don't think it would have convinced me.

At the memoir slam Monday, the Burkes from Newfoundland gave me a copy of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology! (I'd mentioned the previous week that I wanted to find a copy.) I've encouraged them to think of a book they'd like, since we have such a big collection.