LA-Ont painter

A few posts back, I mentioned briefly Ivano Stucco, a painter who splits his time between LA and southern Ontario.  There was something about his work that caught my attention, most likely the fact that there was clear craft involved, but that in most of his pieces there was something that made the work stand apart from a purely figurative painting.  In By Sweetness Alone it was the outrageously oversized hummingbirds, but also some of the crazy highway angles in the background.

Ivano Stucco, By Sweetness Alone, 2018

As I looked through his work on-line, I realized that there were quite a few highway paintings, though not all of them were quite so plunging.

Ivano Stucco, Lo-Gas Eat, 2018

The highway in this is one is much flatter, but the sign has been transformed, somewhat akin to something James Rosenquist might have done in one of his simpler prints.

Here the highways criss-cross and the traffic seems endless.

Ivano Stucco, Highway to Heaven, 2018

The overall effect is fairly claustrophobic.  You can just barely make out the sky, which is sort of a steely blue-grey.  If you look closely, it is possible to see some places towards the top of the painting where the painting surface has been roughed up and there is a honeycomb effect.  There are some other areas where there are flashes of colour that aren't strictly speaking naturalistic.  As I said, there is a bit more going on in this painting that just a straight-forward painting of the highway.

This older work combines a few of Stucco's preoccupations: an unusual perspective, a car, a pedestrian (he has a whole series of people walking), a storefront, graffiti and stylized elements (the pedestrian's jacket and the store windows).

Ivano Stucco, Upswing, 2012-3

Of course, what kind of LA artist would ignore the city's noir side?  (Though LA noir always involves more driving than NY-based noir...)

Ivano Stucco, Nightlife, 2014

This could also be a scene from a noir film:

Ivano Stucco, Crackpots Jackpots and Flower Pots, 2018

While most of Stucco's work is based on LA's highways and neighbourhoods, he does travel and is inspired by other cities.  Together (No. 17) was inspired by the train station in Florence (which I certainly hope to see one of these days).

Ivano Stucco, Together (No. 17), 2018

Here is the obligatory New York City shot.

Ivano Stucco, On the Bowery, 2017

Most recently, Stucco was in Chicago, taking in the urban landscape, and he came up with this image of the downtown, under the L tracks.

Ivano Stucco, Chicago 'L', 2018

The L basically does look like this, a huge overhanging valley of steel, and I worked right around the corner from Washington and Wells for years.  (I never saw anyone with a tiger head, however.)  This painting is still available incidentally.  I considered purchasing it, but eventually decided it was just a bit too large for the house, given the limited wall space that is left.

Art Destruction

I meant to get around to this post several months ago, but work has been fairly crazy.  Anyhow, last summer I went to the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and got into a discussion with the artist Bonnie Miller.  She had been talking up her project, called the Impermanence Project, where she would essentially loan a piece of art to a collector for 9 months (symbolic, no?) and then take it back and transform the work into something new, presumably 3 or 4 smaller pieces built from the materials of the original work.

While quite a number of artists have recycled canvas, and some even cut paintings down into new paintings,* it is somewhat less typical to cut up the canvas and layer it on top of other canvas, but that is part of Miller's aesthetic.  It does result in uneven surface that calls attention to itself in a way that "flat" paintings do not.  It is exceedingly rare for an artist to take an artwork back to keep working on it or, indeed, to "destroy" it.  I suppose at least Miller is upfront about it, unlike the Banksy stunt from a few months back.

The bigger question that Miller is probing is how people feel about the idea that a piece of art they brought into their home is only temporary, but beyond the idea of having a piece of art on loan (itself not that radical an idea), no one else will have that art in the future, as it will be transformed into something new.  I suppose this gets at the relationship people have with their possessions, with most people preferring to hang onto them and not think of them as temporary.  But it also makes explicit this idea that an artist should have some measure of control over their work even after selling it.  (I tend to react badly to this notion, but that's part of my broader disdain for the way copyright has been evolving over the years.)

The actual terms of the agreement make it possible for the buyer to have "keeper's remorse" and hang onto the work and not surrender it at the end of 9 months, but then they will have to pay a penalty of sorts.  So it is a bit of a gamble on Miller's part to see whether people will grow so fond of the work that they can't imagine giving it up.

I was fairly sure in my case that I could honor the original terms of the deal.  In part, I have a lot of art and it is often a struggle to integrate new work into my living space (and I have no idea what I'll do in 15 years or so if we decide to downsize!).  Also, while I thought the piece in question was interesting, I wasn't so in love with it that I would be broken up if it was broken up (literally).

Anyway, here is the piece in the studio:

Here it is after delivery:

  
And here it is, hanging over the fireplace:

I'm not sure it was intentional, but in the lower left corner there is something that could be a pink conch shell.

But it also looks just a bit like a reclining monk.

In the other corner, there is a object that vaguely reminds me of Marcel DuChamp's experiments in form (and of course DuChamp was well-known for recycling work, both figuratively and literally).

Marcel DuChamp, Chocolate Grinder No. 1, 1913

It appears there are a few more months to go on the contract, but at this point, I am planning on hanging it back over.  I'm actually fairly curious to see the smaller works that are refashioned from the larger one.  Certain parts of the work appeal to me more than others, so I'm hoping that at least one of the resulting pieces uses them in an interesting way.  But I won't know for some time.


* Here is one of the more interesting examples from Picasso's work where he cut the father figure out of the main painting and then painted out the fish that the father was dangling over the child.

I've seen the final painting at the Art Institute of Chicago many, many times.  I've also seen the fragment, but it isn't displayed nearly as often naturally.

Crazy computer problems

I'm suffering from some very annoying computer problems.  I suppose this is what happens when you hang onto computers past their normal lifespan -- 3 or so years now!  Actually, I still have an ancient computer (2006 or so!), which I only haul out every once in a while.  It is set up for only two things -- to read Region 2 DVDs (at one point I had amassed quite a few of these from Amazon.co.uk) and to record music from a turn table.  I must admit that I haven't used it in a long time, and I do have three LPs to convert, so I probably should dust it off, set it up and cross my fingers!

But my main computer is from 2013-4.  It got so annoying with the automatic updates messing around with my remaining hard drive space (which I do keep far too low) that I set it up so I am notified but have to accept the updates.  I then realized that Defender updates its anti-virus definitions basically every 30 hours, so it is continually updating.  I'll probably give up and switch back to automatic updates for Defender at least.  The world has definitely changed from when anti-virus updates were more or less a weekly thing.

Nonetheless, it is extremely annoying to watch as the 1-2 GB of hard drive space I painstakingly freed up gets eaten up by some unknown process, and I have to restart the machine.  This is basically a daily process* in and of itself.  It takes almost as much time to deal with this as if I actually had a computer virus, aside from the fact that the computer is just very slow and can't really handle multiple processes.

A slightly less serious problem from a security perspective, but still unbelievably annoying, is that the various updates to Firefox or Chrome throw other applications out of whack.  For some reason, Hoopla will not play at all any more.  I suspect this means I have to completely update Firefox and cross my fingers.  However, I had intentionally frozen Firefox to an old version, since it was the last version that would support this cool ePub reader I used.  I suppose I have to lose this feature and upgrade Firefox (and then move to a stand-alone non-browser based reader), but I am still so annoyed that Firefox doesn't support the classic ePub reader any longer (the new version is quite terrible in fact).   It's these annoying incompatibilities that make people wonder why upgrades almost always seem to be a step backwards in terms of just using the programs that you already know and are used to.  Certainly there are very few upgrades that I can recall actually making my computing experience better.  I realize these are all first world problems, but, given the amount of time I spend on computers, it does impact my life on a daily basis.  Sigh...


* And don't get me started on how often Java and Adobe Flash want to be updated!  Fortunately more and more players have moved away from Flash, but there are still some streaming sites that require it.

Classics on the Subway

While I have found the TTC to be extremely trying this past week or two (and I certainly hope I can start biking again in earnest this spring), it does give me more time to read (at least if I am not squished up against several people).  It does take extra concentration if you are reading something "serious," such as Homer, but I can usually make it through without too many distractions.

Anyway, I was settling into Lattimore's take on the Iliad when I saw the woman seated across from me had a Penguin classics with a very odd cover.  I finally was able to see that it was Dante's Inferno! 

It actually looked like part of a totem pole, though when I looked it up later, I could see it was one of the damned souls.

Hardly light subway reading (though to be fair, often the commute does feel like a kind of purgatory).  This is actually a reprint of Mark Musa's translation from the early 90s.*  I've always been the most partial to John Ciardi's translation, as it is the one that is the closest experience to reading Dante's terza rima scheme in English.  However, there are times that this requires stretching the meaning of the poem.  I took a quick look through the first few pages of Musa's translation, and it is pretty solid (it also is well footnoted).  

While I am not expecting to reread Dante in the immediate future, I might pick up a copy of Musa's translation and then when the time comes, I can alternate Ciardi and Musa.  I think I'd actually get Musa's The Portable Dante, which has the entire Divine Comedy, as well as Dante's Vita Nuova.  Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit more to get it up here,** so I think I'll hold off until I'm making a pass through the States, and I'll get it at that time.  As I said, I'm not in any particular hurry.

* Actually his Dante translations came out in the 1970s and 80s!  But then got picked up by Penguin in the 90s.

** Apparently, the Kindle version is all jacked-up, so I'd only get an actual print edition.

Ch-ch-changes

Thought I would try something a bit different and do slightly shorter takes on a few things that have been on my mind lately.

First, while he is still threatening to shut down the government in 3 weeks, it was very satisfying seeing Trump's bluff collapse like a house of cards and he finally reopened the government, getting absolutely nothing in return.  (What a completely unexpected about-face.)  I think the bottom line was watching that the Dems held their position (for once) and the Republicans in the Senate started to cave.  I truly don't think he can come up with a face-saving fudge in three weeks, but I hope they can think up something, if only for the impacted federal workers.  I don't give a rat's ass about Trump and the corner into which he painted himself.  Anyway, I think he will find it a lot less fun being in DC now that the Democrats can actually hold him accountable and there is clear evidence of his abhorrent scuminess and sheer venality (not that there wasn't before -- I mean come on America!).

I'm glad to see that the Greek assembly passed (just barely) the deal with North Macedonia, but it is clear that this issue is far from settled and that it will very likely bring down the government in the next election.  Stupid nationalists.

In other Greek news, I am about 3/4 of the way through the Iliad (both translations) and should be able to push through to the end this weekend.  I have to say that I am struggling quite a bit.  I find the worldview abhorrent, and there is far too much detail (focusing on Achilles' absurdly decorated shield for instance or the family tree details given for most of the combatants), to say nothing of the fact that how much "honor" can there be in warcraft, when the gods intervene all the time!  I'm not in the market for the Marie Kondo "does it give you joy" mantra, but at the same time I am actively disliking this book quite a bit.  There's really no reason for me to hang onto Lattimore's translation, even if it is the "better" one for me.  I expect I'd hang onto Lattimore's Odyssey, however, as it is a much more fun read and arguably more influential, at least for the fiction I read (given that I hate war novels).

It's bitterly cold again this weekend, though for the most part the sidewalks are clear, with a few really annoying exceptions.  I do need to go out once for a play (Ruhl's The Next Room), but I just haven't decided about Top Girls on Sunday.  I guess all things considered, I'm leaning against, since I still have some real work to do, and I'm also working on writing an academic paper (and my researching muscles are a bit rusty).

Despite my very bad experience on the way to Roma back in December, I decided to go after all.  I saw one of the special 70 mm screenings at TIFF.  I think there is definitely something to be said for seeing a film like this in the theatre.  In particular, the sound was surround sound, and you heard all kinds of things just off-screen some of which never turned up on screen (glass breaking, for instance).  While there are some parallels to Fellini, particularly Amarcord, I thought there were also a few nods to Jacques Tati as well.  First the enveloping sound world reminded me of Playtime.  There were also some repeated motifs, like an airplane reflected in a wet floor and then airplanes in the sky over the rooftops where the maids did laundry.  Another Tati-like moment is when Cleo and her employer are outside a restaurant for some reason (maybe travelling back from the coast, I can't recall) and a wedding photographer is taking photos of a couple slightly "downstage."  While Cleo probably doesn't actually photobomb the couple, it is a reminder that the protagonist of one story is barely in the background for another.  Then the plaza is filled with dancing couples, which reminded me of the nightclub scene in Playtime.

Very minor SPOILERS follow

I will say that I had glanced at a woke review talking about the massive violence towards women in Roma, which got me very tense, wondering at any moment when Cleo was going to be raped.  That did put a bit of a damper on the whole experience, and it is only in retrospect that I can appreciate the film for what it was (and thankfully there were no rapes -- obviously the writer was talking about economic violence towards women, which is serious, but in a whole different category...)  I still think it is probably a bit too slow-paced to win Best Picture at the Oscars, but it is a film that will grow on me with time.  I haven't decided if I will see it a second time, but if so, I will just go the Netflix route.

One thing that is a little disconcerting is that I started filling up the calendar,* and then realized about half the shows are actually in March, not Feb.!  Maybe that is just as well, given how brutally cold it will be in the middle of the week.  I am bummed that I can't find an interesting play or concert for Feb. 3, since I want to avoid the Super Bowl as much as possible, but I suppose I can go to the office and work on this paper.  Anyway, I do need to go make the changes to the calendar and get that all straightened out.  Ciao.

* Also, the Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale is completely sold out.  Drat.  I suppose there is a chance it is the hit of the Progress Festival and gets an extended run, but I doubt it.

It's Not Always About You

This lesson is a hard one to really sink in, perhaps because the "ego" tends to only value things that involve oneself.  And indeed, some (many?) people are so bored when things don't directly involve them that they stir up trouble, just to make sure that they are back in the centre of attention.  Hmm, does that sound like anyone you know in your life (or who is in the news a lot)?

At any rate, I was walking to the store when I stumbled across a sign in my neighbour's front yard.

I thought about it for a bit, and then wondered if it could possibly be a reference to the Little Free Library I finally finished, which is of course unstaffed.

Very few people have a beef with them, though there are actually a couple of "radical librarians" in Toronto who do argue that the LFL system supports a neoliberal agenda.  However, it is only a very small minority who actually think that these book exchanges actually could or should replace libraries.  Certainly no one in Riverdale would think such a thing.

But more to the point, I was getting myself worked up that the Toronto librarian union would actually set up a campaign to encourage people to plant these signs whenever a Little Free Library popped up.  That seemed to be taking it pretty far, but I certainly hadn't seen these signs anywhere else and it seemed like quite a coincidence that it went up roughly a week after my Little Free Library was open.

Fortunately, I took a step back from getting into a beef with my neighbour.  I did some internet research, and in fact it was a complete coincidence and the sign has nothing to do with me at all.

Starting in 2017, Toronto was considering a pilot to extend the hours at two underserved libraries by making them staffless.  Essentially, the premises would be electronically monitored (by librarians elsewhere, who presumably still had other work to do) and the public would have to sign a waiver in case anything happened to them.  This sounds like an absolutely terrible idea for all kinds of reasons beyond the impact on staff.  As it turns out, the city has gone ahead with this pilot at Todmorden Room and Swansea Branches, and they will evaluate it for a year (or more likely until someone is hurt or causes major damage to the untended books).  Not surprisingly, the union is aghast and is just ramping up a campaign against staffless libraries, so I should expect to see more of these signs on more streets (and not merely ones with Little Free Libraries) in the near future.

I'm not pleased to learn about this initiative, but I am relieved to know that (this time) it wasn't personal...

Super Cold Super Moon

It was so unbelievably cold this weekend, and I ended up going out several times.  First, I had to pick my daughter up from her first-ever sleep over.  We scheduled the pick-up early on Sat. before the snow was supposed to start.  It was still cold though!

In the end, it never did snow all that much, maybe 3-4 inches.  Chicago was hit much worse, and a plane even slid off the runway at O'Hare, though I don't believe anyone was seriously hurt.  Before the weather got a lot worse, I turned right around and went to the gym and picked up some groceries on the way back.  I may have mentioned before that I am very glad the gym is right at the mall, since I can usually force myself to go, even when it is nasty out, just so long as I can get two or more things done in one trip.  I probably won't be able to lose significant weight until I get back into the biking full time, but I have probably stabilized for now.

I had been feeling proud of my productivity in such lousy weather, and actually finally set up the sewing machine again, but I also took a relatively long nap in the afternoon...

On Sunday morning, I had been kind of kicking myself for missing the lunar eclipse, though I was pretty sure it had been overcast.  Then I was reading more about the super moon and realized that it was Sunday night into Monday morning, and I hadn't missed it after all.

Sunday afternoon, I left around 1 pm for a 2 pm matinee.  The first couple of legs went reasonably well on transit, but the third leg was agonizingly slow.  I ended up turning up with just 10 minutes to spare.  Now this is a trip that only takes 20 minutes by bike!  Of course, I certainly was not going to be on my bike in these conditions, but there really was no excuse for a streetcar to be going that slow.

I was at Canadian Stage to see 1979, which is Michael Healey's version of a history play, focusing on Joe Clark's decision to hold a vote on the budget, which ultimately led to his minority government falling and Pierre Trudeau coming back into power.  After the first scene, Healey himself came out and said there was a problem with the lights and they were going to start the play all over again!  Hard to imagine, but the actors were troupers and the play didn't suffer from the reset.  While I do prefer Video Cabaret's much punchier and even more sarcastic take on Canadian politics, this was quite good, particularly the portrayal of Trudeau.  The one false note is a really extended (and completely made up) discussion between a young Steven Harper (who didn't even come to Ottawa until 1985) and Joe Clark.  I see where Healey was going with this, but it was too long and too unbelievable and frankly too didactic.  If that had been cut back or simply cut out, I think the play would have been better.

I went straight back to the gym for a half workout and digging a bit deeper into the Iliad.  At this point, I am halfway through both the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations.  While there are still a few places where I like Fitzgerald's poetry better, I'm still sticking with my preference for Lattimore.  In terms of the work as a whole, I don't actually like it that much.  There is far too much line for line repetition, as when Zeus tells his messenger to give a message and then it is repeated verbatim.  But mostly it lionizes stupid pride and cements the idea that women are chattel to be won in war games.  I have to say, not much has changed (on either front really), and 70% of Greeks are against regularizing their relationship with North Macedonia out of stupid nationalism (feeling that the Slavs are somehow going to steal their rights to Alexander the Great).  It just reminds me again of how much I hate stupid people, or indeed most people frankly.

I really was not sure I wanted to go back out into the cold one more time, as I had a ticket for a concert at 8 pm.  I finally forced myself, but it was touch and go.  It was far too cold to just wait for the bus, so I walked to the subway station.  I made it the entire way before I finally saw a bus, which is frankly pathetic (and certainly does not live up to the TTC's 10 minute service on this route).  The concert was ok with the best piece being Claude Vivier's Orion, though all things considered I am not sure it justified being out in such miserable weather.  I did run into a friend there, which was nice, so we chatted during intermission.  Fortunately, transit back was much smoother.

To return to the lunar eclipse, I made it back home just after 10, about when it was starting.  I took a look through the back door screen and saw that it was actually a fairly clear night (often rare in Toronto).  You could just see a little bit of the bottom edge of the moon fuzzing out a bit (though it was hard to see much, given how bright it was).  I called my son down to take a look, and it was a bit more impressive at that point, with maybe 10-15% covered.  I did try to take a photo, but I do not have the right equipment at all.  (The eclipse was much more impressive by this point.)

I was doing some other work and checked in after 40 or so minutes and it was half covered, which was cool.  At some point I looked again, and instead of being completely gone, it was sort of a dusky colour.  Here's a bit of a primer on what was actually going on.  I suspect there are sites that actually have better photos and videos of the eclipse, but I had my fill.

Toronto downtown art show

While I think I only make it every other year, I do like going to the big outdoor art show in Nathan Phillip Square.  It is usually in July, right around the time of the Toronto Fringe.  This year it will be July 12-14.

Here are a handful of artists that caught my attention from the last two times I visited:

Lori Mirabelli, Fading Out

Lori Mirabelli


.

Diana Rosa, Dream Vacation

Diana Rosa


.

James Paterson, It Talks And It Talks And It Talks And All I Have To Do Is Listen

James Paterson

Elizabeth Elkin, Times Square

 Elizabeth Elkin

While Elkin had some interesting abstracts, I did prefer her cityscapes.

Ivano Stocco, By Sweetness Alone

Ivano Stocco

Stocco splits his time between Guelph and LA!  Several of his pieces, including the one above, reminded me of the city paintings of Wayne Thiebaud.  Some, though not all, are very large paintings, and you don't often see such large canvases at an outdoor art show, not least because it is such a hassle transporting them.  While I really don't have any extra wall space in my house, I must say that several of Stocco's paintings tempted me.

Bonnie Miller, Dante's Lighthouse

Bonnie Miller

I liked the color palate that this artist used, reminding me a fair bit of Kandinsky. I ended up getting into a fairly long conversation with Bonnie Miller over her Impermanence Project.  Somewhat to my surprise, I ended up participating, but that will have to be discussed separately.

Winter theatre is here

It's so cold outside, but a number of smaller theatres have upped their game to offer interesting offerings to tempt me outside.

I'll start with productions I knew about (and may have already discussed here), then I'll mention some productions that are completely brand new to me.

Shakespeare BASH'd is doing Othello at the Monarch Tavern from Feb 5-Feb 10 (including a couple of matinees).  Othello is far from my favorite tragedy, since I think far too many coincidences break Iago's way (and his wife doesn't intervene when she had a clear opportunity to do so), but it's still a play to be reckoned with.  I took my son to see Driftwood do it, but we had terrible seats, so I'd like to take him to a performance* where we can actually see what's going on.  Shakespeare Bash'd does a good job with Shakespeare, though I do have a certain fondness for their 90 minute adaptations during TO Fringe, whereas now they are doing the full-length plays.

Opening this weekend and running through Feb. 2 is Caryl Churchill's Top Girls at Alumnae.  I have somewhat mixed feelings about this play, and I definitely wish they were doing Cloud Nine instead.  I really haven't decided if I will go (having seen two previous productions), but if I do make it, it will be at one of the PWYC matinees.  So a lot depends on the weather and what else I am doing...

As it happens, I do have a small gap in my calendar.  I decided I just couldn't justify going out to Rochester to see Yankee Tavern.  Maybe if I had started sooner and had gotten the bus fare down around $50...  But it is about $100 now, and worst of all the outbound trip takes 6 hours (with a couple ridiculous layovers in upstate New York).  While the inbound trip is just over 4 hours, I would have to catch the Greyhound at 1 am, and I honestly don't want to be at the Rochester Greyhound station at 1 AM or in Buffalo at 4 AM.  Of course, if I was convinced this would be a spectacular production, I might still do it, but I have a sinking feeling that this would be kind of amateurish, and I just can't see investing this much time and money in a play that I may not even like.  So I'll see if it comes around any closer next year.  I'm still leaning towards making the trip to Chicago in the late spring to see Dietz's Bloomsday.

Probably the single biggest surprise of this half season is that there is a guest presentation at Tarragon where they are doing Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room from Jan 16-27.  I missed an opportunity to see this in Chicago, and have been somewhat regretting that decision ever since.  Anyway, I'll be going next weekend to catch it.  I can't really discuss it much here, as the whole play is very NSFW...

Another somewhat surprising pop-up is 1979, which is a comedy about Joe Clark and his very short reign of terror (just joking...).  I remember that this was presented at Shaw a season or two ago, and then travelled to Ottawa, and now it is here, as a guest production at Canadian Stage.  It has also already opened and runs through Jan 27.  I'll be checking it out on Sunday.  Ticket availability is pretty good so far.

I decided to pass on Next Stage, as the only production that sounded at all interesting turned out to be a fairly lame illusionist act (at least according to one reviewer).  But I am leaning towards The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, which is part of Theatre Centre's Progress Festival.

I don't have all the details yet, but fairly soon there will be a production of Dorfman's Death and the Maiden at Red Sandcastle.  I'm going to pass, as I just think it is inverted revenge porn, but I know a few people might be interested.

In terms of theatre involving Latin American justice (or lack thereof), I'm much more interested in Kiss of the Spider Woman, which runs March 6-10 in the Don Jail!  Tickets for art workers are already sold out!  There are still general admission tickets, but I had better decide what performance works for me and order quickly.

Interestingly, there is a super short run (March 8-10) of Pinter's Betrayal at Red Sandcastle.  I'll want to catch that as well.  This one wasn't on my radar at all, so I'm glad I stumbled across it.

Then Bigre at Canadian Stage brings me to mid to late April.  I'm assuming by then it will finally feel at least a bit like spring, and I'll have another post dealing with spring through summer theatre down the road.

For the summer, I really haven't looked much at Stratford or Shaw, though I am pondering the full-length version of Man and Superman with Don Juan in Hell.  This seems just a bit excessive at 4.5 hours (and a lunch break)!  On the other hand, this isn't going to be performed again at Shaw, probably not in my lifetime.  So if I want to see it, I have to go this summer.  I have to admit Stratford looks pretty disappointing as well.  There's a moderate chance** I'd go see Wajdi Mouawad's Birds of a Kind and a small chance I'd go for Henry VIII. But I don't think I'll be travelling quite as much as I sometimes do for the summer festivals. Perhaps I am thinking so far ahead, since I don't really want to deal with the actual weather outside...

* I am sorry that I picked a date that conflicts with Amici performing Mozart's Gran Partita, as I would have enjoyed that, but you can't do everything obviously.  For a second, I started panicking that I was nearly triple-booked, but in fact the Shostakovich 5th Symphony is March 10, not Feb. 10.

** I just read the summary of Birds of a Kind and am pretty turned off.  I would go see it at Hart House or a black box theatre, but I'm not going at Stratford prices.  On top of everything else, this sounds like a bit of a repeat of Jason Grote's 1001.  So I guess it is Henry VIII or bust...

Speaking of Hart House, I have kind of tuned them out this season after a quick look at the line-up.  They are currently doing the musical Hair, and in early March a Kat Sandler comedy, Retreat.  I think it might be hard to fit in, given everything else going on at that time and it's a short run, but I'll consider squeezing it in.  I'm intrigued that they have this moderately high-profile drag queen in the cast, so I don't know how that could possibly hang together (whether she is going to be campy or not).

Edit (1/22) In addition to forgetting about Hart House, I totally blanked on Oslo presented by Mirvish, but I doubt I will go to this unless I get a discount coupon in my email.  I will definitely be going to the evening of Pinter shorts at Soulpepper, though I will be going the rush ticket route, so will probably see it midweek, to whet my appetite for Betrayal at Red Sandcastle.

Reflections on Rabbit (Part 2)

As with my previous post on Updike's Rabbit novels, there will be SPOILERS ahead.

If you don't like SPOILERS, you better run...

I fully note the problem of applying today's mores to the past, but Harry Angstrom seems a deeply selfish cad in Rabbit, Run, even for his own time.  I came very close to bailing on the series in the first book when Harry is living with another woman, Ruth, and he objects her using a diaphragm because the very idea basically icks him out, though of course he doesn't like using condoms and virtually never does throughout the course of the novels.  How grotesquely selfish can you be?  I briefly thought he was acting out of religious faith, but the novels make it quite clear he isn't a Catholic (so isn't placed in the bind of David Lodge's narrator in The British Museum is Falling Down).  Well, not surprisingly, Ruth gets pregnant, but Harry abandons her in the end to return to his wife, Janice.

In the second novel, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit has followed his father into a blue-collar profession, setting linotype for a newspaper.  The first part of the novel does feel just a bit like slumming, though perhaps Updike's roots were a bit more working class than one would expect from someone who went to Harvard in the 1950s, though arguably it was a bit more of a meritocracy back then when a truly bright boy* could be plucked from the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.  Nonetheless, Updike's reportage on the working class rings a bit false (to say nothing of the unlikely events** where Harry takes in a hippie chick and a Black nationalist while his wife has run off!).  It isn't until Rabbit is Rich where I find the preoccupations of Harry's country club partners to be a bit more grounded and realistic.  It is essentially as though once Updike encroaches upon John O'Hara's turf (and Updike was an admirer of O'Hara) that he blossoms, at least for me.  I definitely prefer these later novels, and Rabbit is Rich is my favorite.  (Rabbit at Rest contains a very unfortunate portrayal of a Japanese businessman (who cannot pronounce the letter 'r'), which is a bit grating, but mostly I find Updike drags things out here, taking far too long to confirm that Harry's son, Nelson, is a heavy cocaine user and has been embezzling from the car lot.  I also was not thrilled about how much Janice (and Janice's mother) enable Nelson's bad behavior, though, to be fair, this began in Rabbit is Rich.  But perhaps the most challenging scene of the novel is where Harry sleeps with his daughter-in-law in a set piece that would take too long to explain.)

I have to admit it is hard to decide just exactly how Updike wants the reader to view Rabbit.  Is Rabbit an indictment of American society and particularly the hero worship that so many have towards sports figures?  Many times Updike makes it clear that Rabbit peaked too soon and has never lived up to his high school "glory days."  He lucked into a comfortable lifestyle through his wife's family connections, though he was then basically pushed aside at the car lot by Janice and her mother (into very early semi-retirement) in order to make room for Nelson, far before Nelson was mature enough for the responsibility.  Harry does live in the past a fair bit, though he is also a fairly optimistic (and patriotic) fellow.  What undermines any general critique that Updike is making is that, time and again, women throw themselves at Harry, including his daughter-in-law, who at one point admits that she wishes Nelson were more like his father!

Nelson is a spectacularly unpleasant character in Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.  While most of Updike's characters make significant mistakes, Nelson is the most self-pitying and the one who blames everything on his lousy upbringing, whereas Harry pretty much doted on his mother.  It is truly sad to see how Nelson plays on his mother's guilt (for abandoning him for a few months while she had an affair) to get away with bloody murder, including smashing up two cars at the lot!  I will say I was a bit surprised that the rehabilitation clinic he is forced into towards the end of Rabbit at Rest produces lasting results, and he is in much better shape in Rabbit Remembered, even making connections with his half-sister after she comes into their lives.  (Harry's illegitimate daughter was only told the truth about her parentage on Ruth's deathbed.  Ruth had actually lied to Harry on the few occasions he tried to track her down and offer child support.)  I suppose here Updike is advancing the idea that people can change for the better, though others certainly seem stuck in a rut.

I mentioned briefly the way that these books function a bit like a series of time capsules, with headlines a decade apart.  There is also a bit of a motif where Harry looks at the movie marquees and sees a jumble of half spelled out titles, such as "2001 SPACE OD'SEY" or "BUTCH CSSDY & KID."  In Rabbit is Rich, there is a different (newer?) movie theatre that advertises 4 movies at a time. 

It is certainly possible that I warmed up to Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest because I remember the current events and saw many of the movies that Updike name-checks (and during their initial runs long before Netflix or even HBO!).  While this isn't quite as sustained as in Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale, where the changes to the town square are catalogued in great detail, Harry and then later Janice do spend a fair bit of time thinking about how Brewer has changed, with gentrification occurring in one neighborhood they used to live in and various businesses failing and city planners putting in a pedestrianized mall. 

As before, this post is running fairly long.  I think I'll just touch on a few other aspects of the novels that caught my attention (as I am quite unlikely to read them a second time).  Harry starts out fairly religious, and while he does think about God and goes to church less and less in the later books, he never completely loses faith.  His wife's family persuades their priest, Reverend Eccles, to spend time with Harry and to bring him back into the family, though not necessarily the fold (Harry's upbringing is Lutheran not Episcopalian).  Eccles finds a new job for Harry, but mostly takes him golfing in an attempt to build rapport and trust and ultimately convince Harry to return to his wife.  In the end, Harry does return, though he is still unstable (a weak reed).  Eccles's wife says that the baby probably would still be alive if Eccles hadn't intervened, and he doesn't really have an answer for this.  Harry himself wonders several times, particularly in Rabbit Redux, why God didn't cause the bath stopper to come loose and save the life of his child.  His faith in a personal God has certainly shrunk a bit by Rabbit is Rich.  Still, there is an interesting passage in Rabbit is Rich, where Harry and Janice are flying down to the Caribbean and this excites Harry, who basically only travels for business (this is before they buy a condo in Florida prior to Rabbit at Rest): "Joy makes his heart pound.  God, having shrunk in Harry's middle years to the size of a raisin lost under the car seat, is suddenly great again, everywhere like a radiant wind.  Free: the dead and the living alike have been left five miles below in the haze that has annulled the earth like breath on a mirror."

I should mention that Harry is a bit obsessed with death from the second novel on.  He often thinks about all the dead people he knows, starting with his daughter and his coach, then his parents, then Janice's father and finally some people his own age start passing away, and imagines them practically following him around (though still under the ground).  I wouldn't say it comes across as particularly morbid, but it kind of goes along with Harry being more backward-looking than future-oriented.  After he has his first heart attack, Harry acts like his life is over, and he's more or less waiting for death.†  It's often hard to remember that he is only in his mid 50s by this point!  (No question that being pushed aside at the car lot was a huge blow to his psyche, and he probably wouldn't have been so beaten down by his health scare.)  He finally does start getting a bit of exercise (not counting golf), walking around unfamiliar streets in Florida, though then he stumbles across a basketball court and overdoes it in a pickup game, leading to his second heart attack.

While Rabbit definitely is a bit too prone to sleep around (and a fairly incredible number of women throw themselves at him), there is an amusing set piece early on in Rabbit is Rich where Janice is feeling a bit frisky, but Harry just wants to finish reading his Consumer Reports article.  He has certainly adapted well to his move up the class ladder and become a dedicated consumer (and thus is doing his duty as an American).

I certainly didn't like Harry Angstrom much in the first and even the second novels, but he grew a bit more on me after that, which may just be par for the course, once I decided to invest the time in reading the novels all in one go.  If you didn't have the time or interest in that, you could just jump to Rabbit is Rich, which I do think is the best of the bunch.


* Women were still largely confined to Radcliffe until the 1970s.

** This section of Rabbit Redux is almost like that bizarre movie with Mick Jagger (Performance) where the barriers between Harry and Skeeter (the Black nationalist) come down in unpredictable (and unbelievable) ways.  But what truly feels unbelievable is that Skeeter knows there is an arrest warrant out for him, but he crashes with Harry for weeks and even starts hanging out in the front yard!  It's like no one in this novel has functioning self-preservation instincts.

† There's no question this novel hit a bit too close to home, where I was just waiting to see how quickly Updike would kill off Rabbit with his oversized (and very overweight) body and over-worked heart.  That's pretty much what caused my father's death, though he made it into his 70s.  During his 50s, he was a much healthier specimen than Harry, who seems incredibly frail by his mid 50s.  Still, I had a lot of trouble reading the hospital scenes and found it a relief that Updike doesn't really drag it out, relative to all the other aspects of the novel. 

Library Open for Business!

It was a very cold weekend, but I managed to install the Little Free Library in the front yard!  Check it out:

If you look really closely, you can see a few of the books I crossed off my main reading list (Ship of Fools, Hard Times, The Fisher King and Within Normal Limits).

I haven't taken the time to register this with the official LFL group, but I will probably do that over the next few days.  Now I want to make sure that I don't actually have to list and track all the books (that sounds too much like actual work), but I'm fine with registering so people know it's there.

It's just as well that the table turned up, since the ground is frozen pretty solid, and I don't think I could have actually dug a hole deep enough.  Instead, I screwed the stand into the table and the library into the stand.  I can always rethink the pole option down the road, but it seems sufficiently stable for now.

It actually was a fairly busy and productive weekend (I also got the Christmas lights out of the tree), but I'm pretty tired now.  I should head out and get some rest before tomorrow, since it looks like another full day ahead.

A Month of Classics

I am starting a bit late, and may run into Feb. a bit, but now that I have finished the Rabbit cycle (even Rabbit Remembered), I am going on a classics spree.  I've been very slowly making my way through this list, but I am going back to the beginning, more or less, with Homer.

I'm almost certain that I read the Fagles' translation of The Iliad not all that long after it came out.  (I was in a book club that read The Iliad but I'm not 100% which translation it was.)  However, I've always wanted to get around to reading the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations, since those were the main choices when I was in undergrad, and, thus, they've always been the only ones that "counted" for me.  But how to choose?

I don't do it that often, but when I have to choose between two translations, I sometimes read both books, alternating chapters.  I did this for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (ultimately siding with Pevear and Volokhonsky).  So I started in on the first two books of the Iliad, letting Fitzgerald go first.  I have to say, I've already made up my mind and prefer Lattimore.  First, his introduction is quite useful (my edition of the Fitzgerald Iliad doesn't have any notes at all) and he seems a bit more high-minded (if not a little stuffy) with longer line breaks.  Indeed, Fitzgerald seems just a bit too casual, particularly when Achilles (or Akhilleus as Fitzgerald has it!) berates Agamemnon.  But really the deal-breaker for me is the completely idiosyncratic spelling of names that Fitzgerald adheres to.  I've decided to go ahead and read both, but I will only keep Lattimore, and I'll put the Fitzgerald in my Little Free Library.  I took a quick look at the Fagles to refresh my memory, and it is a solid translation, but Lattimore really seems to be what I am looking for.

I'll do the same double duty for The Odyssey, but again am almost certain that I'll prefer Lattimore.  Then it will be Virgil's Aeneid.  I think it is a little less clear in this case.  As far as I can tell, Lattimore never tackled Virgil.  Fitzgerald was the dominant choice of my young adulthood, though Fagles is probably a solid choice as well.  Interestingly, several reviewers praise Rolfe Humphries (whom I only know through his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses).  If I can track down Humphries in a local library, then I'll see how it stacks up, and I may browse Fagles as well.

After that, I plan on rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses.  I would like to take a look at some of Horace's Odes and Juvenal's Satires.  Depending on how much time is left in the month (likely not much!), I might read On the Nature of Things by Lucretius.  I suspect that will be it for the hard-core classics for a while, though either late this year or early next year I expect to do a plunge into Greek drama.

Anyway, it should be a pretty significant shift from the fiction I've been reading lately.  That's not to say that I will enjoy The Iliad any more than the other things I've been reading.  It's mostly about the petulance of these warriors on a marginally justifiable raid to reclaim Helen, when by many accounts she was perfectly content with Paris (or at least as content as one can be when compelled to act by the gods).  In some ways, it is more surprising that there weren't more rebellions, saying essentially that a 10-year siege just to save the "honor" of Menelaus was pointless -- and that if that's what these alliances between kingdoms/tribes entailed, then they would be well out of them.  I'm well aware you can't read ancient texts using today's moral standards, but I've really never thought anything in The Iliad was particularly noble or even that enjoyable, though I have much better feelings towards The Odyssey.  I guess that really does beg the question of why bother returning to it, and that only answer is that because it is there (at the centre of Western literature) and I feel a strange compulsion.

Resting from Reading Rabbit

It has certainly taken me a while, but I've reached the end of the Rabbit novels proper.  (Each one is longer than the last, so it was like the finish line kept moving further and further away.)  There is still a novella called Rabbit Remembered, which I'll probably start in on by Monday, but I wanted a short pause to reflect on the novels as a whole.  While there actually isn't all that much plot per se in these novels (they are much more consumed by Rabbit Angstrom's thoughts on all kinds of current events in addition to his family dealings), there are certain life events that could be considered SPOILERS, and I'll have to mention a few of them to do any justice to the novels, so you have been warned.

Again some SPOILERS embedded below.

One of the worst kept secrets in literature is that Updike killed off Harry Angstrom in Rabbit at Rest (there was only a relatively short period where this wasn't discussed openly), although now that I have gotten to the end of the book, I see that he left Harry at death's door (from a second heart attack) and it isn't until Rabbit Remembered that Updike is completely clear that Harry doesn't make it out of the hospital, i.e. if you wore rose-colored glasses you could imagine him pulling through, though with a much reduced quality of life.

What I personally found a bit too cute is that the last section of the book is titled "MI" and of course this would seem to be Michigan, since the other sections are titled FL and PA, corresponding to where Rabbit was living at the time.  When Rabbit makes yet another run for it, avoiding facing the music for yet more bad personal decisions, I kept expecting him to turn north and drive up to Michigan (though Ohio would have been a slightly more logical choice), but in fact he returns to Florida.  Thus, MI stands for myocardial infarction (or heart attack).  There really isn't any logic to this, just a desire on Updike's part to mislead the reader.  (It should either be FL or FL/MI, but the first chapter would then also be FL/MI, since Harry had his first heart attack in Florida as well.)

It's difficult to really assess the novels as a whole.  It seems to me the first one was a bit of a one-off about an American male who really had trouble facing up to his responsibilities and his family life and basically wouldn't grow up.  There were a few interesting asides about Harry's thoughts on current events, but this wasn't really the focus.  At some point, Updike decided to return to the Rabbit character and age him about a decade and have this youngish man largely forged in the 1950s (but with some memories of WWII) deal with the upheaval of the 1960s.  Then the success of Rabbit Redux convinced Updike to periodically return to the scene, very much like the 7Up series where we (the readers) could see how people changed with the times (and adapted or failed to adapt).  It's a really interesting concept, and I'm struggling to think of another case where it has been applied in such a rigorous way in literature.  Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time definitely has the main characters moving in time from the 1920s to the late 1960s (or even 1971, according to Hilary Spurling), but the gaps aren't quite so regular.  Quite a few of those novels are closely spaced, so there isn't the same jump cut to the next decade, which Updike maintained.  Dos Passos's USA Trilogy is a bit more compressed in time, though it ranges a bit further afield in geography (we virtually never see Rabbit outside of Pennsylvania or Florida or driving between the two states, with one notable vacation to the Caribbean in Rabbit is Rich).

No question the most interesting or successful aspects of the Rabbit novels are when Harry reflects on the big events of the day -- the moon landing, the oil crisis which marked Carter's presidency, the Iran hostage situation (which was fairly central to Adam Langer's Crossing California), Ollie North and the Iran-contra affair, Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye & Jessica Hahn, and even Sally Ride and the Challenger explosion.  (Not that his thoughts are particularly profound...)  While Rabbit does occasionally ruminate on Nixon and Watergate, the main events happen off-screen as it were, between Rabbit Redux and Rabbit is Rich.  Harry also thinks quite a bit about sports, naturally enough, as he was a high school basketball star, which in many ways marked his entire life, but the nature of sports is to be completely transitory and frankly meaningless in the larger scheme of things.  While I suspect Updike did the research and put in the actual scores of the various Phillys and Eagles games mentioned throughout these novels, the only sports story that really had much cultural resonance was Pete Rose being banned from baseball -- and Giamatti's death by heart attack almost immediately afterwards!

One of the downsides of all the attention that the novels got is that Updike is occasionally writing with "his legacy" in mind, self-consciously making links between the novels.  Harry's son, Nelson, does a runner when his daughter is about to be born (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...), spoiling that fancy Caribbean vacation.  However, in this case, Nelson actually is out of the state when the girl is born, unlike Harry, who does leave Ruth (a woman he's shacked up with) to rejoin his wife Janice in time for the birth of their daughter, Rebecca.  History doesn't precisely repeat itself.  In the first novel, Harry only makes it as far as West Virginia before turning back around and returning to Brewer, PA.  In Rabbit at Rest, Harry does make the entire drive from Pennsylvania to Florida over a couple of days, though perhaps the highways had improved by that point...  Probably the most pointed linkage is through Harry's playground misadventures.  Rabbit, Run begins with a young Harry wanting to play pick-up basketball with some kids in the neighborhood, clearly not ready to grow up and forgo the adulation he got as a basketball star.  In Rabbit at Rest, he is an over-the-hill, shambling wreck (at least this is how he sees himself) who, nonetheless, plays a bit of HORSE with some Black kids in Florida, and then a few days later, plays a too vigorous game of one-on-one, which leads to the second, fatal heart attack.

While he never gets quite so "literary" again, Updike borrows very heavily from Joyce's Ulysses in Rabbit, Run, though you could say there are some ironic inversions.  Ulysses is almost entirely about Leopold Bloom's travels around Dublin (largely though not always inside his head) and then Joyce ends the book with Molly's inner monologue.  Similarly, Rabbit, Run is pretty much all wrapped up with Rabbit and his unwillingness to stick with his conventional marriage, leading to his aborted flight to West Virginia, though most of the novel takes place in the small towns surrounding Brewer (apparently a composite of Reading, PA and a few other places).  The one time you get into Janice's head in Rabbit, Run is an inner monologue where she gets drunk, upset at Rabbit heading out and abandoning her for yet another long night, and accidentally drowns the infant Rebecca.  Aside from the fact, I wasn't thrilled at how much conscious or unconscious woman-shaming or blaming goes on in the novels, it was a bit of a shock that Updike would actually go there in the first place.  However, Rabbit, Run doesn't end with the death of the baby, but rather Rebecca's funeral, where Harry, overwhelmed by life (and death), runs off yet again.

He's definitely an irresponsible jerk in the first novel, and it's a bit of a surprise that Updike managed to build such a literary legacy on the back of Harry Angstrom.  To get there, Updike starts off with Janice taking Harry back, despite everything, apparently relatively soon after the funeral, though we don't find this out until Rabbit Redux.  Then Rabbit Redux is more or less an inversion of Rabbit, Run, where Janice is ground down by everyday life and runs out on the marriage and into a fairly long affair with a co-worker at Springer Motors, the car lot owned by her father.  Harry has to be the responsible one for once, taking care of their son, Nelson.  For a while, he seems to be doing reasonably well, but then some crazy 60s stuff happens, some of which is more than a little implausible, though I'll return to that shortly.

This is turning out to be an extremely long post, and I'm probably not even halfway through, so I will cut this short and start a second post to conclude my impressions of the books.  My last word on the "literary" aspect of these novels is that all of them end with one word sentences.

Rabbit, Run: "... his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs.  Ah: runs.  Runs."

Rabbit Redux: "... comes upon the familiar dip of her waist, ribs to hip bone, where no bones are, soft as flight, fat's inward curve, slack, his babies from her belly.  He finds this inward curve and slips along it, sleeps.  He.  She.  Sleeps.  O.K.?"

Rabbit is Rich: "Through all this she has pushed to be here, in his lap, his hands, a real presence hardly weighing anything but alive.  Fortune's hostage, heart's desire, a granddaughter.  His.  Another nail in the coffin.  His."

Rabbit at Rest: "'Well, Nelson,' he says, 'all I can tell you is, it isn't so bad.'  Rabbit thinks he should maybe say more, the kid looks wildly expectant, but enough.  Maybe.  Enough."

Time travel question

One of the pieces I was writing for Sing-for-You-Supper is actually a comedy that has time travel as an integral part of the plot.  I'm honestly not 100% sure it works (as a comedy), and I didn't attempt to plug all the logical holes that arise when you try to use time travel in a "realistic" way.  I was writing part of this right before a TorQ concert but still have lots of handwritten notes to type up and the ending wasn't finished.  In the end, ironically, I ran out of time (or rather the energy needed to stay up all night after finishing my first piece (The Visitation)), but it's not such a bad thing to have a solid start on a piece for February.

Interestingly (perhaps only to me) is that a more serious play I was working on at one point had one person trying to play a joke on another by pretending to be a time travelling version of his older self.  I think I've sort of come around to this idea that this is a pretty lame practical joke, though the bigger question is whether the play as a whole (with or without this joke) has enough dramatic interest for me to continue writing it.  At the moment, I would say not, but never say never.

At any rate, I have thinking a lot lately about how incredible it would be to go back in time and spend more of it with loved ones, who had passed on.  (And what a business opportunity if time travel was scientifically to say nothing of commercially possible!)  Of course, it might just be too tempting for people to go back and tell their loved ones to go see the doctor more and go for that check-up/X-ray what have you, and thus threaten their own timeline.

Would I have rerun this past summer a bit differently, making sure to go visit my father?  Probably, though given what I know now, I might have preferred to go two summers back (when I actually did go) but spend a longer time then.  And to bring a video camera, since my phone completely let me down (spoiling the video I tried to take).  Fortunately, it's not all bad news, since I did a video interview with him, probably in 2015.

But maybe I would be more tempted to go much further back to when my mother was alive and go visit her.  Of course, she would not even recognize me 20 years on, which might not be such a bad thing (in terms of not disrupting the current timeline).  Or I could visit my earlier self and say that I really needed to get on the train to Detroit a couple more times to visit my mom, even if I couldn't say why...

I wonder if people would mostly want to visit their family or key (positive) events in the own lives, or if they would be more interested in time travel tourism (checking out the 1960s or Paris in the 1920s or, for the hardcore, North America prior to Columbus).

I suppose it is a fairly interesting (if completely academic) question: if time travel existed, how far back would you go and what/who would you attempt to see/contact?  Feel free to add something in the comments.

Bonus points for not saying you'd go back and try to kill Hitler (or Stalin).


Edit (1/5) Speaking of time travel, I was amused by this comic - The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee - along the same general lines as my recent work. 

What makes it even more amusing is that Canada runs its Sunday comics on Saturday (a hangover from the way the UK does things), so I'm seeing the cartoon a day before it will show up in the States.

While you will most likely have to wait until February to see (or read) my piece on time travel, I just heard that my other, non-time-travel, playlet The Visitation, will be playing at Sing-for-Your-Supper this upcoming Monday.  Should be fun!

First Day, Fast Start

I think this must be a record, even for us, but my wife wanted the Christmas tree down (apparently to try to conjure spring), and it is already down.  Normally we wait until the first weekend of the new year.  Nonetheless, we do have a small living room, and it definitely feels more spacious without the tree and all the ornaments.

I also managed to get the door attached to the Little Free Library.  Basically, aside from figuring out the roofing shingles, staining it, and putting in a post and bracing system, it's done.  Famous last words, but I do think the worst is over.  I certainly have plenty of books to go inside, so that is a motivating factor.

My main remaining task for the day is to write up my playlets for Sing-for-Your-Supper (I have two pretty good ideas), so I will head over and do that for a while.

Resolutions? for 2019

I don't typically made full-blown resolutions for New Year's, as they aren't sustainable and you just feel worse when you can't live up to your "better self."  I've actually been doing quite well going to the gym, though it does get harder once it is cold and there is snow on the ground and I have to drag myself across the bridge.  I would like to keep up with the exercise and perhaps make it over to the Regent Park Aquatic Centre from time to time.  I haven't decided if I am going to buy better shoes and start jogging, but it isn't a bad idea.

Last year I followed through on a long-held pledge to produce my own play (Final Exam at Toronto Fringe).  I don't feel as obligated to do this again, though I will keep my eyes open for opportunities at theatre festivals and small companies looking for submissions, but I probably won't self-produce again.  I will keep writing the short playlets when I am inspired, and indeed I have a couple that I have to type up for today and send off to Sing-for-Your-Supper.

One thing that I will set aside time for this year is to polish my poetry of transportation anthology and shop that around to at least a couple publishing houses.  And I really should get the sewing machine set back up again, so I can finish the second quilt I started.

It looks like I will finish this academic article with my co-author, and we'll send that off to a high-quality academic journal.  This might end up consuming a fair bit of time.  Depending on how it goes, there are two (or even three) other articles in gestation that I might try to get out there.

Beyond this, I probably should brush up my French.  But that's the closest I'm going to get to a traditional New Year's resolution.