Post-Easter chocolate

Just read Adam Hochschild's American Midnight. (Moira got it from the library, but let me read it first!) It's about the USA during and just after World War I, a time of xenophobia, proto-fascist mobs and a huge assault on civil liberties.

Now I'm reading Ada Ferrer's Cuba:  An American History for my History Meetup.  Very entertaining!

Last week I bought some post-Easter chocolate, but this year I only spent 15 or 20 dollars. (My favourite is white chocolate and chocolate with rice crisps.) Half of it was gourmet jelly beans in about 30 flavours.

We just watched the Danish TV show White Sands, about two cops going undercover in a surfing resort, posing as a couple to solve a murder. (Of course, there are romantic sparks...)

Last Friday my watch party showed Michael Cimino's ill-fated western Heaven's Gate.  It's the fourth time I've seen it:  a shameless mess yet a glorious folly!

Thursday I had lunch with Debbie at the Old Spaghetti Factory. (It turned out dinner was spaghetti too...)

The warm weather arrived, so the other day I started preparing the garden for planting.

Today I made fettucine alfredo, but it was made from raw linguini instead of pre-cooked fettucine, and instead of the usual grated parmesan Moira bought a block of parmesan and grated it herself.

FINNEGANS WAKE

 "The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy"--Finnegans Wake

I've joined a new Meetup group that's reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake a couple of pages at a time.  The language is really complicated! (Notice that the title has no apostrophe...) Fortunately I've found the webpage finwake.com with an annotated text.  We meet online on Sunday nights.

I've also taken over an online Meetup group for reading short stories. (I enjoyed Farshad's similar Meetup, but he returned to Iran and that group disappeared.) Yesterday I had an event where we discussed Alice Munro's "Day of the Butterfly" and "Bardon Bus" and next month we'll do Stephen Leacock's hilarious parody collection Nonsense Novels.

I've caught up with the manga version of One Piece, having seen episode 1079! (They're now on a scientific research island called Egghead.)

On my Friday night watch party I've been showing some movies that even I haven't seen!  In recent weeks there's been the Japanese samurai-era movie Gate of Hell and Barry Levinson's Baltimore-set Liberty Heights, and last week it was the newsboy musical Newsies. (This week I'm showing The Thin Red Line, which I did see 25 years ago...)

The Labour Party's National Executive Committee finally went and deselected ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn!  Very tacky, and I've been vocal about it on Twitter.  It's time for the British left to form a new party. (I think of the Reservoir Dogs line "Are you gonna bark all day, Little Doggie, or are you gonna bite?" It's time for the left to bite.)

Caught up with ONE PIECE

Last week, after four or five years, I finally got caught up with the long-running anime One Piece, seeing the last of its 1053 existing episodes! (Now I'll have to watch just one a week, like others who are up to date, instead of two a day.) Now I'm reading the manga version of the story online, which is about 50 episodes ahead of the anime.  I've almost reached the end of the Wano story, the longest and most colourful of its mega-arcs.  It involves a country that's avoided foreign contact for centuries, and it takes its look from Japan's similar Edo Era.

Speaking of which, I'm now reading Mark Ravina's To Stand With the Nations of the World:  Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History for my History Meetup.  I moved the location back to the Tim Horton Doughnuts near Bay station because the Imperial Pub was too crowded for people to find me.  But now I think I'll move it to the doughnut place on St. Clair West because parking will be easier there.

I like this weather when there's still snow on the ground but it's melting!

On Thursday Moira and I had lunch at Puitak's apartment and we skimmed through the Oscars show.  We walked down to her place, because the weather was warm, and I felt pretty bushed afterward.

On Friday night my watch party showed Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish Troubles.  I'd seen it before over 15 years ago, but I'd forgotten how good it was! (The next day I watched it again with the DVD commentary, by Loach and an Irish historian.) It's a real disgrace that he was expelled from the Labour Party for promoting Labour Against the Witch Hunt...

Today I had a big headache and skipped dinner.

DON GIOVANNI

On his role in the Barcelona standoff between anarchists and the Republican government: "If this was history it did not feel like it. It was more like a bad period at the front, when men were short and we had to do abnormal hours of guard-duty; instead of being heroic one just had to stay at one’s post, bored, dropping with sleep and completely uninterested as to what it was all about"--Homage to Catalonia

We put on Don Giovanni the weekend before last at the Miles Nadal theatre near Spadina station. It was pretty fun.  I missed the Saturday afternoon performance because I thought it was in the evening! (I told people afterward that I hadn't been feeling well.)

I finished reading that book about the Spanish Civil War and also read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.  Now I'm reading Periodic Tales:  The Curious Lives of the Elements, a book by Hugh Aldersey-Williams about the history of man's relationship with various chemical elements.  I got it in London over ten years ago and only got around to reading it now.

Last Tuesday John P. and I saw Neil Jordan's Marlowe with Liam Neeson as Raymond Chandler's detective.  That was pretty fun too.

Saturday I saw the Chinese movie Hidden Blade just because I needed to get out of the house!  It's a pretty confusing story about Chinese spies working for the Japanese occupiers during World War II and turning double agent--the sort of thing where two of the earliest scenes turn out to be flash-forwards to scenes at the end.

I ran out of Cipralex and only got replenished today, so I had some more vivid dreams.  In one I was a graduate student in London (like I really was in the mid-'90s), but then the story changed and I became like Peter Sellers in Being There, becoming a "star" for no good reason.  In another I was visiting a theme park near Niagara Falls with a World War II theme with an actor performing a Joseph Goebbels speech! (I was reading about Goebbels on Wikipedia...)

61

Last Sunday was my 61st birthday.  My birthday party wore me out, and I had to go to bed early. (We ate Indian food for the first time in a while.) I think the lemon-flavoured birthday cake disagreed with me too.

I finished the book about Ashoka. (I wanted to renew it but someone had put a hold on it, so I was several days overdue returning it.) Now I'm reading Julian Casanova's A Short History of the Spanish Civil War for next month's History Meetup. (Yes, reading For Whom the Bell Tolls got me interested in the subject.) Spain's Catholic Church establishment doesn't come out looking good...

Today I was actually early for my Sunday afternoon singing group! (I'm usually several minutes late.)

We're now doing the stage blocking for Don Giovanni.  I'm going to be one of the people who carries out the Commander's body in the first scene.  (I just learned that this opera's based on a 17th-century play by Tirso de Molina, a Spanish monk!)

At the Toronto Reference Library last week, I found some back issues of Life magazine back in 1972 just before it ceased weekly publication.  My family subscribed to it, and I remember reading some of it at the time!

BABYLON

"Walking carefully, downhill, Anselmo in the lead, Agustin next, Robert Jordan placing his feet carefully so that he would not slip, feeling the dead pine needles under his rope-soled shoes, bumping a tree root with one foot and putting a hand forward and feeling the cold metal jut of the automatic rifle barrel and the shoes sliding and grooving the forest floor, putting his left hand out again and touching the rough bark of a tree trunk, then as he braced himself his hand feeling a smooth place, the bases of the palm of his hand coming away sticky from the resinous sap where a blaze had been cut, they dropped down the steep wooded hillside to the point above the bridge where Robert Jordan and Anselmo had watched the first day"--For Whom the Bell Tolls

Last Tuesday I saw Babylon with John P.  It's like being on a runaway train:  unsettling in places, but you may as well enjoy it.  Brad Pitt has a subtle way of winking at the audience.

Finished For Whom the Bell Tolls yesterday.  It's a masterpiece of grim realism, though not so romantic.  I was thinking of doing Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped and David Balfour for my now-defunct book club, and maybe I'll reread them anyway. (I'm interested in Scottish history these days.)

My History Meetup's next subject will be India's ancient Maurya Dynasty, so I'm now going to read Charles Allen's Ashoka:  The Search for India's Lost Emperor. (Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin biography was excellent!) I may do the Spanish Civil War in April since Hemingway got me interested in that.

The week before last my historical movie watch party showed David Mamet's superb adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy.  I didn't return it right away because Moira wanted to see it too, and then I forgot about it and only returned it a day late.  But they didn't charge a late fee!

Moira's gone to Kingston for a while so I'm living on my own.  I went to the supermarket and bought nine frozen dinners! (I can cook, but it seems pointless to go to the trouble of cooking no more than one person will eat...)

It's pomelo season again!

Season's greetings

"From it, from the palm of her hand against the palm of his, from their fingers locked together, and from her wrist across his wrist something came from her hand, her fingers and her wrist to his that was as fresh as the first light air that moving toward you over the sea barely wrinkles the glassy surface of a calm, as light as a feather moved across one's lip, or a leaf falling when there is no breeze; so light that it could be felt with the touch of their fingers alone, but that was so strengthened, so intensified, and made so urgent, so aching and so strong by the hard pressure of their fingers and the close pressed palm and wrist, that it was as though a current moved up his arm and filled his whole body with an aching hollowness of wanting"--For Whom the Bell Tolls

The other week my opera group performed Tosca in two concerts.  One was out in Markham so I had to join a carpool to get there.  Before performing we had a potluck dinner and I brought profiteroles.

Debbie and I had lunch at the new Indian restaurant Raahi Kitchen.  The food was pretty good!

I finally had to quit my book club because nobody was coming.  I was about to do Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, and now I'm reading it anyway. (I'm also reading Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin biography for my History Meetup.)

We just watched the last season of Ozark on Netflix.  Now we're starting the new Borgen series about Danish politics.

Yesterday Moira and I had lunch with Puitak and Gordon at the Dragon Pearl Chinese buffet in North York.  The range of food isn't as wide as at Mandarin, but that made it easier to avoid overeating.

It lives!

I've had a bit of writer's block lately.

Last weekend I caught a cold and got hardly any sleep that night so I had to miss the singing group on Sunday.

There's something wrong with the handle on the front door so you can't open it even when it's unlocked! (I've been leaving it ajar when I go out.) We're getting a new handle next week.

I'm now reading Singapore:  A Biography for next month's History Meetup. (Is that place the future?) I've just got to the part about the Japanese conquest in World War II...

I've finished my Chinese dictionary summary.  Now I've started translating a 1950s anti-communist Chinese novel titled Wandering Youth. (I translated the first section some years ago.)

I've had some vivid dreams lately.  The other night I dreamed about The Golden Treasury of Knowledge, a children's encyclopedia set we had when I was young, and finding some of its volumes mixed with volumes of a new edition with different covers.  I also dreamed about having a house with a lawn growing on the roof, including a gravestone(!). Last night I dreamed of being in a studio audience watching the taping of an episode of the British soap opera Coronation Street.

Music

Last week I returned to the Toronto City Opera for the first time since before the pandemic.  We're rehearsing on Thursdays now, so I've moved my History Meetup and book club to Tuesday.

We're now rehearsing Puccini's Tosca for a concert performance in December.  The chorus part isn't very big, so it shouldn't be difficult for us.  I got there late last week so they were all out of scores, and I rely on fellow tenors sharing their score with me.

Carolyn's restarted our singing group.  But now we're meeting in person again, at the stadium complex just south of Coxwell station.  Our first session was last Sunday, but I was a bit late because I thought the place was farther south.

Monday was Toronto's mayoral election.  I voted for the Colombian candidate whose name I can't remember, but John Tory still got re-elected. (My candidate did finish second, so maybe he'll have a leg up next time...)

Sicilian history

Right now I'm reading John Julius Norwich's Sicily:  An Island at the Crossroads of History for next month's History Meetup.  I'm still in the ancient period, but it's pretty fascinating. (I'm also rereading The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz for my book club.)

Saturday John P. and I finally saw The Woman King at the Yonge & Dundas.  It was long but intelligent.

At the memoir group today we did something different:  we all chose a photo of ourselves and discussed it!  Everyone emailed me a scan of their photo and I combined them in a single document and shared it with the others. (I talked about the photo of me in the Cavalleria Rusticana chorus.)

Not much to talk about these days...

Under the weather

I've had a cold the last few days.  (Maybe it's from reducing my caffeine intake.) I've been napping even more than usual.  I was going to see The Woman King on Thursday, but had to cancel.

Yesterday I went to the dentist for my second root canal, but the dentist decided it wasn't needed after all!  That sort of good news leaves me with a suspicious feeling...

Last week we watched the German series Dark Woods on topic.com .  It's based on the true story of the disappearance of a high police official's sister, connected to a serial killer, that became a cold case for decades.  Very believable.

Now our new topic.com series is Ordinary Woman, a Russian black comedy about a surgeon's wife whose flower shop is a cover for her prostitution ring.  It's perversely funny! (Moira says, "The Russians need a reboot.")

REDS (spoilers, including THE DEFIANT ONES)

Friday night my historical movie watch party showed Warren Beatty's Reds. (I was seeing it for the first time since its original release forty years ago.) That's the one with him and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant, American leftists who witness the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.  It's certainly well-made, and more intelligent than the usual 1981 Hollywood fare, let alone the "fast food" output of today's studios. But it was ultimately a Hollywood movie with those familiar romantic tropes.  

In The Player shrewd studio executive Tim Robbins says, "I have no problem with political movies, so long as they aren't political political!" Reds isn't exactly political political; it's about romance as much as politics. (Jack Nicholson has most of the best lines as Louise's other boyfriend, the playwright Eugene O'Neill.) As with Doctor Zhivago, it feels like a story of lovebirds dealing with something far bigger than them.  I thought of that famous line from Casablanca:  

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

I would have liked more about the period after Reed and Bryant returned to the USA and had to deal with wartime and postwar government repression and the US Socialist Party's playing dirty pool to keep out communists like Reed.  The scene where they try to infiltrate the Socialist convention from which they'd been banned (then retreat to the basement) feels hauntingly familiar.  It reminded me both of the Democratic Party cheating Bernie Sanders and of Keir Starmer's Labour Party barring elected delegates from their conference and mounting anti-heckler security!  This part could have been a whole movie in itself...

Later on Reed is back in Russia and hoping Louise will rejoin him.  Emma Goldman (one of my heroes, nicely played by Maureen Stapleton) says to him:

If Louise were to come here, she'd have to leave the United States illegally, then live in exile with you, and never go home again. All for the sake of a revolution she was never any part of. Why should she?

Because the audience wants her to, of course! So she returns (the real Louise didn't) and gets reunited with Reed in time for his deathbed scene... 

This ending reminded me of the ending in The Defiant Ones, where Sidney Poitier makes it onto the train that'll carry him to freedom, but Tony Curtis doesn't, so Poitier gets off and sits with Curtis and sings until the cops arrive to take them back to the chain gang. James Baldwin pointed out that this ending's purpose was to reassure the white audience that their friendship was stronger than Poitier's desire for freedom.  But suppose it had been the other way around?  If Curtis had got off the train rather than abandon Poitier, would the audience have believed it? They'd only believe the black man sacrificing himself for the white man, not vice versa. (Baldwin heard black men in the audience saying "Get back on that train, fool!")

Speaking of radical heroes of mine, on Sunday I saw the documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie:  Carry It On at the Bloor Hot Docs.  I remember when I was young hearing her song "Look at the Facts." There was something angry about it that I really respected! (I also admired the anger in punk rock...)

HANSAN: RISING DRAGON

Today John P. and I saw Hansan:  Rising Dragon, at the Empress Walk.  It's a Korean movie about a battle where naval hero Yi Sun-sin defeated the Japanese (whom they called Wae) over 400 years ago.  It was pretty well-made and exciting.  Now I'll have to see the movie it's a prequel to, The Admiral:  Roaring Currents, about the final naval battle where Yi defeated the Japanese once and for all at the cost of his own life. (That one was a huge hit in Korea!) Korean cinema has some considerable talent... 

Afterward we saw a crowd of expatriate Persians at Mel Lastman Square demonstrating against Iran's Islamic government.  I noticed they were waving the pre-revolutionary flag with a lion and sun in the place where they now have the "eternal flame"--a bit like the South Vietnamese flag I saw on a Toronto storefront once.

On Saturday we were celebrating my niece's return from Denmark and made a cake, but things were so chaotic that it wasn't till mid-afternoon that they got to offer me a piece, and it spoiled my dinner a bit. (I just had a bowl of Tim Horton Doughnuts chili, normally a lunch-sized meal.)

Moira went to Kingston for a few weeks, so I'm alone here, which is something different for a change. (Before she left, she took me by surprise by cooking and freezing several portions of beefaroni and chili for me!)

Last week the book club discussed Hans Christian Andersen's stories.  Next time it'll be Mordechai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.  

Yesterday the memoir group met again.  The others just want do one piece a week, but maybe they'll let me recite a second one anyway. (I'm already thinking of a piece about "manners.")

Is this really September?  Even the nights are still warm enough for me to sleep with the windows open!

In recognition of Her Majesty's funeral--why do I always think of these things a day late?--here's the Alfred de Musset poem "A Soldier's Funeral" set to music by the stunning Lilli Boulanger on the eve of the Great War!

At the dentist

Last week I went to my new dentist and got a couple of fillings. (My last dentist was Czech, but this one's a Korean from Indonesia!) A couple of my teeth need root canals.  I have the alternative of just pulling them out, and it's tempting:  they're inconspicuous molars, and I'm not a Julia Roberts with a perfect smile to protect.  But I decided on the root canals instead for a simple reason--I want to keep the symmetry in my mouth when I'm flossing!

My memoir group is moving from writing one piece at each online session to writing two, like when we met in person BC (Before Covid).  All of a sudden I've been thinking of all these subjects I can write about!  For today's meeting I'd written about joy, and I've already written about regret, next week's subject along with circuses. (Then I'll write about religious beliefs...) I thought about what I'd write while the dentist was working on my mouth.

On Thursday the History Meetup met at the Tim Horton Doughnuts near Bay & Bloor. (The previous place was too noisy:  there was a band performing on the street outside!) Howard suggested the Imperial Pub so we'll go there next.  I'm returning to the Toronto City Opera next month, which rehearses on Thursdays, so I'll be moving my Meetups to Tuesdays.

Preparing for the upcoming book club event, I read the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Angel." It was so beautiful that my jaw could have dropped!

I have a huge Chinese dictionary, and recently I've been going through it and writing each character down, including its pronunciation (both Chinese and in Japanese when it's used in Kanji), and a one-line meaning. (My computer can write Chinese and Japanese characters!)  

I'll forget most of it, of course, but it's like this story from India I read online:  a guru's student said "I've read tons of books, but forgotten most of them.  What good has it done me?" So the guru gave him a dirty old sieve and sent him on a quest to bring him water from the river.  But the water kept running out, of course, and the student had to return and say "I've failed." "No, you haven't," said the guru. "Look how clean and shiny you got the sieve!  The books you read and forget clean your mind just like the water cleaned the sieve it was running through."

Lately I've been listening to symphonies and concerti as I write down those Chinese words. Grieg's A Minor piano concerto reaches out and grabs you!  And Beethoven's third piano concerto in C Minor is one of my favourites too.

I just heard about how a Scottish lad called Rory verbally accosted pedophile Prince Andrew in the Queen's funeral cortege and got wrestled down by police while the crowd aggressively ignored him, singing "God Save the King." Now I know what happened after the kid said "The Emperor's naked!" Rory's my new hero.  As for the crowd, the word "useful idiots" comes to mind.  If you think Rory's impolite, consider that the funeral cortege for Belgium King's Leopold II, directly responsible for the Congo holocaust, got booed by working-class people in the Brussels streets. (I might have done it too, not just because he was evil but because he got away with it!)

I heard about an interview where the new King had said that NHS hospital staff should take a more "caring" approach. (So who's been working long, stressful hours, at the risk of their own health, to prevent Covid from killing even more people?  Not him.) Really, sometimes Charles is inept to the point of being pitiful!  And I say this as someone who admires the high ideals he sometimes expresses, and wants to give him a break.

Should the Dominion of Canada keep its "hand-me-down" monarchy?  I've never supported it and I'm not going to start now.  As far as I'm concerned, Canadian monarchists are the most fatuous people in the world!

Did you know that Charles III is the same title Bonnie Prince Charlie would have got if the 1745 rebellion had succeeded? (Oh, you did.)

The consequences of insomnia

Last night I had a bout of insomnia.  It started when I dreamed of something I've probably mentioned here before:  One morning when I was 15 I had to bicycle to high school in the pouring rain, and when I came to a stop sign I pressed the brakes to stop like usual, but the road was so wet that I skidded into the intersection.  And a policeman stopped me and chewed me out, and I cried!  This wouldn't bother me if he'd just been more sympathetic, but he didn't give a shit.  He called me "my man," and I've hated that expression ever since.  I failed to cope with the world, and I can't redo it.  My parents clearly felt I was too sensitive, but there it is. (The asshole got fired a week or two later--I just wish I'd been there to kick him while he was down!)

Anyway I woke up from this dream and couldn't get back to sleep because I still feel so angry about it.  Not just mad at the cop, but at everyone who's told me I'm too sensitive! (They effectively said, "We can't expect anything else to be different, but we can expect you to force yourself to be less sensitive about it.") And mad at myself, too, for being unable to cope. Eventually I did get back to sleep, but didn't wake up till noon.

My memoir group has taken to choosing our topic the week before instead of waiting for the revelation an hour or two before meeting. (Please bear with me, this really isn't a digression!) And I like doing it that way because I have time to think and write longer pieces.  But Selia prefers to still hear the topic on the same day, so I promised to email it to her then.  But this week, waking up so late, I forgot to do so and she found out too late to participate this week!  As it was, I lost track of the time and barely managed to get dressed before the meeting was due to start. (Sylvie, blessings on her, says she'll email Selia future topics.)

What else has been happening in my life?  Last week I got my hair cut and noticed I look a bit like Lennart Brix, Detective Lund's icy boss on that Danish show The Killing, which we've almost finished. (As the British would say, it's pure dead brill!)

On Thursday I had lunch with Debbie.  We were going to eat Vietnamese at Dzo, but it turned out the place wasn't open for the lunch trade, so we ate Chinese hot pot at Mix2 Grill instead.  I told her, "It's all part of the adventure!"

For my next History Meetup topic, I've chosen Qin Shihuang's unification of China in 221 BC.  So I'll be reading Jonathan Clements' The First Emperor of China.  But I can't go borrow the book till tomorrow because it's Labour Day.

Last week I read that the families of the Munich Massacre's nine Israeli victims 50 years ago have come to an agreement with the German government for compensation. Meanwhile, it turns out that Israel's Operation Breaking Dawn the other month killed 46 Palestinians, including 17 children. (When will their  families get compensation?)

Fifteen years ago my four-month break from diary writing ended, so I've resumed posting my diary at https://thistime15yearsago.blogspot.com/ 

THE KILLING

For the last few weeks Moira and I have been watching the fascinating Danish TV series The Killing.  It's about two mismatched detectives investigating a teenage girl's murder and one of them suspects a serial killer... It's also about the girl's family and a politician who gets entangled in the case.  Of course it's grim, but it has a lot of funny touches too. (There was an American version, but Moira says it isn't as good.) We're watching it through topic.com , a streaming channel with a lot of European stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Francis Coppola's The Godfather yet again, at the Carleton.  The scene where Al Pacino talks to his father Marlon Brando in the hospital reminded me of talking to my own father in his last days two years ago. (I'm now wearing his old jacket, I guess to be closer to him.) Then I went and ate the same Chinese food from the same place where I got it after seeing The Godfather Part II three years ago!

Last week my book club discussed Breakfast of Champions.  I was ready to quit if nobody showed up, but there were a few people after all.  For our next book, I thought of doing Les Miserables, long enough for two sessions, then I came to my senses and chose Hans Christian Andersen's stories instead.

This week my History Meetup is discussing the Moghuls, so I've been reading Diana and Michael Preston's Taj Mahal.  For next month, I think we'll discuss the Age of "Discovery."

I've been talking to women over 50 on the dating site ourtime.com .  I've been getting better about starting conversations, but I'm still a bit shy about asking them out.  The other week there was some computer glitch and my subscription got terminated, and I couldn't restore it.  I've been thinking of trying Elite Singles next...

Salsa on St. Clair

"I was on a par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge.  I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter.  I had it explode.  I had it disperse itself again....  Ask me a question, any question.  How old is the Universe?  It is one half-second old, but that half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far.  Who created it?  Nobody created it.  It has always been here"--Breakfast of Champions

The weekend before last they had the Salsa on St. Clair Festival around the corner from my house, for the first time in three years. (The last couple of years they had a "virtual" version...) Once again, it was pretty noisy.

I dealt with the noise by going out to see Baz Luhrmann's movie Elvis at the Varsity.  It was pretty good, but a bit too long.

Yesterday Moira and I had lunch with Puitak and Gordon at the Mandarin Chinese buffet restaurant near Eglinton station.  I couldn't resist eating a full dinner, and I spent the rest of the day resting and digesting.  My fortune cookie told me to keep my eye open for unexpected opportunities.

My intermittent cold came back today, and I've been sneezing a lot.

Lately Democrats on Twitter have been repeating the line that voting isn't a valentine to your favourite candidate but a chess move to realize the world you want.  Very well, back in the 2016 primary the smart chess move would have been to vote for the candidate with the best chance of beating Donald Trump, and that was clearly Bernie Sanders. (It isn't just hindsight.) But too many Democrats made their primary vote a valentine to Hillary Clinton!  Practice what you preach, "pragmatists"...

The memoir group

"The sun--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city [London] in clear and radiant glory.  Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.  It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay.  It did.  He tried to shut it out, but it would stream in.  If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!

--Oliver Twist

Thursday of the week before last the Classic Book Club met at Noonan's (formerly Dora Keogh) to discuss Oliver Twist.  Or we would have, except that I was the only one who showed up!  Howard also came, but he thought it was the History Meetup...  I'll give the group one more try with Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, but it looks like it's dying.

Last Monday my memoir group met in person for the first time since before the pandemic struck.  We gathered at Sylvie's house on pretty Alcina Avenue and wrote about cartoons and speculation.  We're going to meet online through Zoom, starting tomorrow.

I can now show DVDs in my Friday watch party! (It took Donald to figure it out, of course.) The last two weeks I've rented and shown David Lean's Oliver Twist and Danny Kaye's Hans Christian Andersen. (This week it's The Wild Bunch, but I can stream that one through Google Play.)

I was going to attend a Karaoke Meetup yesterday, but I couldn't find the place! (Google Maps turned out to be unreliable.) Oh well, at least I got out of the house...

The Ontario election

Nancy: "When such [women] as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us?  Pity us, lady--pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgement, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering"--Oliver Twist

Last week was Ontario's provincial election, and this was the seat result, under the "first past the post" system:

Progressive Conservative:  83

NDP:  31

Liberal:  8

Green: 1

Once again, I've imagined how it would have turned out under the mixed proportional representation system I favour.  That's the one where A seats (about 70%) would be directly elected in the same way as before; B seats (about 25%) would be allotted to parties so that the total of A and B seats would be as close to the popular vote as possible; and C seats (about 5%) would be given to the top party in popular vote, to improve the chances of a stable majority.  But if one party got a landslide, so that its A seats alone were greater than its proportional number of A and B seats, the C seats would go to the other parties to bring them closer to their vote proportion.  Which happens to be the case here.

Party    A seats/    B/     C/    Total

PC       83                                83

NDP    31              13      2      46

Lib        8               17      2      27

Green    1                1       2       4

Under this system, the Progressive Conservatives would still have a narrow majority.  Under the present system they won 2/3 of the seats with just 2/5 of the vote.  Under my system, the opposition parties would each receive half a dozen fewer seats than if the vote were purely proportional, though the C seats would provide a slight compensation.  The Liberals were only slightly below the NDP in popular vote, but the PC advantage in seats particularly works against them.

Who's the cult?

"That when the Dodger, and his accomplished friend Master Bates, joined in the hue-and-cry which was raised at Oliver's heels, in consequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow's personal property, as has already been described, they were actuated by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves; and forasmuch as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual are among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman, so, I need hardly beg the reader to observe, that this action should tend to exalt them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in almost as great a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their own preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little code of laws which certain profound and sound-judging philosophers have laid down as the mainsprings of all Nature's deeds and actions:  the said philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady's proceedings to matters of maxim and theory:  and, by a very neat and pretty compliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely out of sight any considerations of heart, or generous impulse and feeling.  For, these are matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by universal admission to be far above the numerous little foibles and weaknesses of her sex"--Oliver Twist

I've started reading Oliver Twist for my book club.  I'm also going to read The Silk Road:  A Very Short Introduction for the History Meetup.

The other week they leaked a ruling suggesting that the United States Supreme Court is about to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, as a result of Donald Trump appointing three right-wing justices.  Then there came a flurry of social media posts blaming the state of things on Bernie Sanders for getting in the way of Hillary Clinton defeating Trump!

Firstly, this is blatantly unfair.  Sanders could have double-crossed the Democratic Party and defected to the Green ticket, and he might then have won the three-way race! (At the very least, he likely would have reduced Clinton to the dreaded "spoiler" role.) But he played it safe, campaigned for Clinton and delivered 80% of his supporters on Election Day.  For crying out loud, he even warned Hillary that she needed to pay more attention to states like Wisconsin....

If you consider normal figures for supporters of an unsuccessful primary candidate not voting for the eventual nominee, in Sanders' case it's actually a lower number than usual. (Expecting such supporters to vote for the nominee unanimously is like herding cats!) And it's worth emphasizing that Sanders supporters actually voted for Clinton somewhat more solidly than Clinton supporters had voted for Obama in 2008.

Secondly, two can play the blame game.  During the primary, polls already showed Clinton leading Trump by a couple of points, the same dicey margin she'd have in November.  But these polls also showed Sanders leading Trump by close to ten points.  Was the Supreme Court's future less important then?  Should it have been of greater concern to Democrats who voted to nominate Clinton because Sanders was a white male? (Clintonites today are still using that "Bernie Bros" cliche, a soundbite worthy of Hillary's role model Richard Nixon.) To those who chose Hillary because "Bernie's not a Democrat"? When the Senate voted to invade Iraq, of course, Bernie was a truer Democrat than Hillary or Clueless Joe--but the Iraq disaster's only relevant when demanding that everyone vote Democrat in November...

Not to mention the black voters on Super Tuesday who overwhelmingly voted for Hillary out of personal loyalty to the Clintons, giving her a crucial edge. (Some of them didn't even know who was running against her!) Should they have cared more about the Supreme Court then?  But if you question the black community's wisdom you'll be accused of racism--and yet, stupid is as stupid does.

Clintonites fault Sanders for staying in the race all the way to the convention, though their heroine had done the same thing in 2008.  What it comes down to is that they blame Bernie for undermining Hillary's support by running against her at all! "Everyone would have been happy with Hillary if only Bernie hadn't said all those Mean Things!" If she couldn't afford the challenge of having Bernie running against her, it follows that she was a poor choice for the nomination.  Some Democrats at the time actually warned against nominating Hillary, only to be accused of sexism!  And even today her admirers are turning a blind eye to all the weaknesses that the general election made clear...