First Impressions (books)

I'm sure that I have written more than once that I need to trust my instincts and just give up on books a lot more quickly than I did in the past.  Of course in the distant, distant past (my late teens through mid-20s) I was so determined to finish every book I started, but with time I realized this was just foolish.  In terms of books that simply didn't get any better but I did finish (though I should abandoned at the 50 page mark or before) I can put Faulker's A Fable (though I suppose in this sense I am a completist and will eventually want to read all of his novels) and Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival firmly in this category.  Brigid Brophy's In Transit wore out its welcome long before it ended.  And if I am being brutally honest I have kind of regretted reading all the Kundera books I have read to date.  In the case of Mann's The Magic Mountain and Musil's A Man Without Qualities and even von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, I knew going in these would all be grinds, but there were at least some interesting bits along the way (though not that many in My Brother Abel) and there was no serious thought on my part that I would abandon them.

So consequently I have started dropping books sooner, particularly if I didn't have a truly compelling reason to read this book in the first place.  (I generally do a quick scan of Goodreads, discounting all the sycophantic 5 star reviews, to see if there are readers who found the book improved but more often than not, I find myself in agreement with the 2 and 3 star reviews.  And frankly, I don't think I have enough time left to me to read that many 2 or 3 star books...)

I'm actually starting to try to get a sense within the first 5 pages (rather than 50) to decide if I will continue a book.  I stumbled across a positive review for Jane Igharo's Ties that Tether, so I gave it a shot.  But I realized that it was only a step or two above a romance novel, though one with an inter-racial and inter-cultural twist.  

Most of the reviewers agreed that Igharo leans pretty heavily on romance tropes (whether this is a good thing or bad thing depended on their taste), but it definitely turned me off.  I then read some SPOILERS that said there was a surprise pregnancy (which naturally should have come with a trigger warning...) that came up quite early in the book, so this already had me thinking this was a rip-off of a plot device used in The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (not that Igharo has probably ever even heard of that TV show, as it never came out on DVD).  But I read a couple more pages until there was a ridiculous plot twist (with the narrator finding out that her one-night stand was now working at her company) that came straight out of a romance novel, and I said to myself, I simply cannot read any further.

On the other hand, I read just a few pages of Jean-Christophe Rehel's Tatouine (also recommended by Star book reviewer I believe), and I said this sounds like quite a unique narrative voice.  Not a person I would want to spend any time with in real life, but still worth following through the book.

The narrator is living with cystic fibrosis in a basement apartment in the suburbs of Montreal.  He has a somewhat vivid imaginary life (shades of Walter Mitty) but his thoughts are largely colonized by LucasWorld, and he wishes he could live on the desert planet Tatouine, primarily so he can be left alone.  While I am not sure it is a conscious riffing off of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (with its anti-social anti-hero), I wouldn't be surprised if Rehel was making a link between the two.  At any rate, this is a book that sold me (on continuing) within a few pages.

I spent a bit of time looking at the other offerings from QC Fiction, which is an imprint that translates books by Francophone authors from Quebec.  Almost all of them grabbed me just through the book blurbs, though I haven't had a chance to get that many out of the library.  They have some decent sales (3 books for $45 plus shipping) but you can't mix and match.  I wish they would do something like Brick Books where you could order a lot of the e-books and drop the price down to $10 or so.

Fortunately, the library has a copy of virtually the entire run.  I'm actually quite interested in Listening for Jupiter, Prague, The Unknown Huntsman, The Electric Baths and Songs for the Cold of Heart (which has won a number of awards).  The next one I am likely to read is In Every Wave, as it is the shortest!

Because Eric Dupont's Songs for the Cold of Heart is quite long (just breaking the 600 page mark), I think this is one I would prefer to own rather than attempt to read from the library.  I actually biked past BMV on the way home on Monday and hit the jackpot.  They had a nice used copy for $10, whereas I had been thisclose to paying $13 (plus shipping) from Amazon.  I would probably have picked up The Electric Baths as well, but that wasn't in stock at BMV.*  Hopefully, my Spidey sense isn't malfunctioning, and I will more or less enjoy Tatouine and Songs for the Cold of Heart all the way through. 

* Another great pick-up was Richard Ford's Canada for $5.  I had just seen Richard Ford talking a bit about his newest story collection, Sorry for Your Trouble, at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Multi-Tasking

I've mentioned a few times that I mostly still go to the office, though last week I did work from home on Wed., as it was supposed to rain most of the day.  In the end, the rain cleared up after a few hours, and I could really have made it in.  I didn't make that mistake on Thursday or Friday.

At any rate, I did have an unbelievable number of MS Teams and Zoom meetings, pretty much from 9:30 to 6 pm.  However, in most of them, I was just listening in, so I did my absolute best to multi-task while muted (and with the camera off obviously).

I had promised that I would cook dinner but fell asleep the night before, so the first thing I did was finish putting this casserole together and threw it in the oven.  I then did most of the resulting dishes.

On the other computer, I began a fairly lengthy digitization process, starting with some random News from Lake Wobegon.*  I have an entire box of cassette tapes if you can believe it.  A large number of them are just random hits off of the radio, and most of those I don't need (having either upgraded to CDs or decided I didn't like the songs all that much after all).  However, I did come across some cassette promos, including this one I got not long after washing up in Toronto (the first time) for grad school.

 

I'd say about 1/3 of the remaining tapes are still random stuff off of the radio, 1/3 are interviews I did (either with urban planning students for a project that never materialized or visitors to hostels and hostel workers (ditto)) and the last are me dictating** my memories of my undergraduate career and working in an inner-city high school and then a whole string of tapes I recorded on my way to and back from my mother's funeral.  It's a little ironic that the most important tapes were those where I had recorded transportation professionals and environmentalists as background for my dissertation.  It looks like I tossed these after I had the interviews transcribed (by my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, who was paid for her labour).  Inspired by this, I spent an hour poking around and did find the word documents of the various interviews, so at least that wasn't lost, though there were some hiccups along the way in converting from Mac documents over to PC land.  (I could spend several paragraphs talking about how much I probably lost along the way as floppy disks(!) got corrupted or hard drives damaged, but probably all the things I really care about, my poetry, my dissertation and my various creative writing projects, have been saved in a couple of places.  I also could talk about how these various drives down memory lane are moving me in the direction of actually wrapping up some ancient projects, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.)  This time around, I am just digitizing them and may or may not transcribe them, but I don't really have an urgent need to have them transcribed (so I probably won't get around to it).

On top of these other tasks, I was able to do a load of laundry, and later on helped my daughter a bit with her math homework.  I wish she had been more productive over the weekend (and asked for my help when I was available), but that's another story.  Because the rain had stopped, and the last session ended at 6 (when I had thought it would end at 7!), I ran out and did a mini-grocery store run.  So it did feel like quite a productive day.  It was almost relaxing the next day back in the office when I had far fewer distractions!

* While I do think Garrison Keillor has shown himself to be a very weak liberal ally (and a bit of a creep), his tales are still pretty entertaining.  I had several commercially produced cassettes (Local Man Moves to the City and Stories), which I digitized ages ago, though not entirely sure where the files (or the original tapes) went to!  But now I am working through bits taped directly from the radio, almost entirely from the mid 1990s.

** It's weird enough listening to your own voice on tape, but then to listen to it taped at various years and at quite different tape speeds is particularly disorienting!

Still Not Getting It

It's so frustrating seeing a small (but still too sizable) minority of Canadians are arguing over mask rules.  The new argument seems to be that if X person (usually a bus driver or policeman) doesn't wear a mask, then I don't need to.  Really childish.  And there is almost no point in arguing with such people, but simply avoid them (and if you are an anti-masker, I am not going to publish your comments here).

Friday I decided that since it was probably one of the last nice days before the weather got much colder, I would walk over to Simcoe Place.  (While I probably will gradually wind down my trips to work as it gets colder and I also am generally not eating a full lunch as I am watching my weight, I do eat lunch occasionally.  At any rate, I can visit the Union Station food court and the one over at RBC Plaza without heading outdoors.)  Anyway, I was going to go to a Thai place at Simcoe Place that I like and hope to help keep in business.  The lady at the counter wasn't there, so the cook was serving a customer.  And he had no mask on!  Really?!  Now I am wondering whether he doesn't wear his mask while cooking.  The whole situation completely turned me off, and I am simply not going to go back until the pandemic is past.  That probably means I won't be going back to Simcoe Place until next summer or even later (unfortunately).  While Freshii's is fine (and that is what I had instead), I don't care enough about it to go out of my way.

It's a little different when I read about industries (like gyms and tourism/hospitality) complaining that they are being punished (by the various restrictions) and the evidence is still on the thin side.  It is a tough balancing act between trying to keep the economy limping along and reining in the cases, but the cases are really staying stubbornly high in the GTHA even after 2-3 weeks of these restrictions, and the hospitals are starting to get overwhelmed, which is really what is driving most of the decisions to shut down.  What is so frustrating is that the only thing that really will help us is a much expanded testing and then contact tracing operation.  The Provinces should have thrown everything into this and they simply didn't over the summer.  So it is little wonder that average people are fed up with a situation that doesn't look like it will ever get any better until a vaccine is ready (and even that will likely prove to be disappointing).  But that is still no excuse not to wear a mask anytime you are around others in a public setting!

I'm debating whether to post some pictures of a Borat pro-mask poster in my neighbourhood that has been defaced by ani-mask fools, but that may just be too meta.  I'm actually pretty turned off by the Borat approach, though some people really liked the first movie, though the sequel has been getting consistently poor reviews...

I'll post it after all, mostly because of the "The Mask is a Muzzle" graffiti...

I'm sorry I have to share a planet, let alone my city, with these dolts

Making Progress?

While Toronto's new case counts have come down ever so slightly, that cannot be said of Ontario as a whole.  Peel and now York remain major problems, particularly on a per capita basis.  The most scary thing recently is that 61 cases in Hamilton have been linked to a spin class where they followed all the rules, but the rules do allow masks to be removed during exercise.  And the patient zero was completely asymptomatic, which is increasingly the case, and will make tracking down those who have the virus simply impossible without truly widespread testing, which just won't happen.  So we're basically screwed.

What most likely will happen is they will close gyms through the entire GTHA or they will say no more exceptions - exercise in a mask or not at all (and won't that be fun to enforce?) - or both.  I'm not quite backing off my previous criticism because Toronto hadn't shown the evidence before making the call to close gyms down, but now we have the evidence and the gyms will close along with restaurants. 

I'm actually talking more personally.  While it has only been a bit over a week since I've cut out large lunches and tried to improve my snackage, I do think a couple of shirts are fitting a bit better.  Naturally, I am quite cranky when I am dieting.  That's nothing new.  It takes several weeks before this becomes the "new normal" and my body just accepts it won't get as many calories in the middle of the day.  Waking up hungry in the middle of the night remains my single biggest problem, however.  I'll just keep trying to make some slight progress in the next few months before winter hits (and I lose all will to do much of anything aside from hibernate).

Play Cycles

This is way, way out of order, but I'll see if I can just get my scattered thoughts down (and close a bunch of open browser tabs).

I'd say that there are basically three sorts of play cycles (here I am considering anything with three or more plays in it, so Angels in America won't make the cut).  First, there are strict trilogies (or tetralogies and beyond) with quite a few shared characters.  Sometimes there is a significant passage of time, and sometimes the action is compressed into a day or a week, with quite a few variations as the number of works increases (i.e. some compressed works intermingled with ones with longer timespans).  Actually, in rare cases the passage of time is the main feature in a linked series of plays, and the cycle may span a century or more, with naturally only a few characters in common, though a family history may be covered by the plays.  Second, there are groups of works with strong thematic overlaps but no shared characters.  Third, there are plays that are set in one city or region but with generally little else in common.

I generally find the last category fairly boring, unless the same events are approached from different angles.  Annie Baker's The Vermont Plays (The Aliens, Circle Mirror Transformation, Body Awareness, and Nocturama) certainly doesn't succeed for me as any kind of meaningful cycle, even though I liked The Aliens a great deal when I finally saw Coal Mine's Toronto production.

It looks like I managed to miss the various Chicago premieres of Craig Wright's Pine City, MN plays -- Molly's Delicious, Orange Flower Water, The Pavilion and Melissa Arctic -- but they also do not appear to really have any unifying theme or shared characters.

A third loose quartet is the Quannapowitt Quartet, four one-act plays by Israel Horovitz set near Wakefield, MA.  Interestingly, they are designed to be paired with the Alfred Trilogy, which is a much tighter set of plays with a core character, Alfred Webber, also set in Wakefield, MA.  Now I've certainly never heard of any performances of these plays, and they seem to have essentially completely dropped out of the repertoire.  

In general, it is hard enough seeing specific plays that one is hoping to see that seeing a play cycle (and in the proper order!) is essentially impossible.  When I get around to discussing August Wilson, I have some specific comments about this.  I have to wonder if it is just an act of enormous hubris (and perhaps even a bit of contempt for any potential audience) to write a play cycle that simply will never be performed in its entirety.

I'll move next to the more thematically linked cycles.

I'm not entirely sure whether Seán O'Casey viewed his Dublin Trilogy as a true trilogy, or if they are grouped together simply because these tragicomedies set in Dublin or because they are the only O'Casey plays in print in North America (a slight exaggeration).  At any rate, the plays are The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). When I skimmed Juno and the Paycock, I found myself loathing the character of Captain Jack so much that it is hard to image I will actually watch it.  I somehow missed Toronto Irish Players doing The Shadow of a Gunman, but I did manage to catch The Abbey Players on tour with a very interesting (and postmodern) production of The Plough and the Stars, which for my money is the best of the three plays.

Sam Shepard's Family Trilogy ranks fairly high up there, at least according to critics (personally I've never been much of a fan of Shepard's work). The trilogy includes Curse of the Starving Class (1976), Buried Child (1979), and True West (1980), although at least some critics contend that it is actually a quintet of plays, adding in Fool for Love (1983) and A Lie of the Mind (1985).  I do think most and perhaps all of these plays take place in Texas or certainly the American West writ large.

Perhaps inspired by Shepard, I'd say that Martin McDonagh's "Galway Trilogy" -- The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West -- focuses on characters deeply at odds with one another, and where familial bonds are too constricting, leading to conflict.  I'm pretty sure I had a chance to catch The Beauty Queen of Leenane, most likely in Chicago, but I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.  Of the three plays, the only one I think I would actually enjoy is A Skull in Connemara, so I'll keep an eye out for that one.

I'm not familiar with the Quiara Alegría Hudes's Elliot Trilogy, a triptych about war and addiction.  It is comprised of Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue, Water by the Spoonful and The Happiest Song Plays Last.  I suspect that these are actually linked through this Elliott character, but clearly I need to investigate more before passing any judgement.

Now I've reached the interlinked plays, which are for me the most interesting type of play cycle.

Arguably, the original Mystery Plays, such as those in the Wakefield or York Cycles, covering all the greatest hits from the Old Testament and then many, many episodes from the New Testament, have only a few characters carried over across the whole cycle (essentially God and Lucifer) but there is considerable thematic unity.

In the course of writing his history plays, Shakespeare actually produced a double tetralogy.  First, Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V.  Then Henry VI, Parts 1-3 and Richard III.  Interestingly, Richard II is not seen nearly as often as Henry IV (Pts 1 and 2) and Henry V.  And Henry VI is almost never staged, but Richard III is very often performed.  I have not actually seen Richard II, but have seen all the others, though it was a truncated version of Henry VI that was squeezed into a single evening!

In terms of practicality, almost all productions of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (which is actually a trilogy - Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted) are compressed into a single long play.  This is how I saw it staged in Chicago.

While I believe it is somewhat shorter, it appears that Stefano Massini's The Lehman Trilogy is generally intended to be performed in one evening.  This covers a huge swath of history, beginning with an immigrant family coming to America in the 1840s and leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  I'm not even sure this has made it to New York yet, but it's something that would likely interest me.

Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays is three plays usually broken into two evenings, though it could be done in a single day.  The plays are The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, and Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet. I was able to see this done at Steppenwolf.  Last year, Soulpepper brought The Brothers Size to Toronto, though as far as I know, they didn't do the other two in the cycle. In general, I thought this was a powerful, provocative set of plays, but I strongly disliked the convention of having the characters read off most of their stage directions. I found it deeply alienating and quite frankly would probably be even more alienating to the audience that McCraney is presumably trying to reach than to a middle-class white audience used to such postmodern tics.

In terms of all day extravaganzas, I've made it through two. In Chicago, Beau O'Reilly put on all three parts of The Madelyn Trilogy over most of a day at the Atheneum Theatre in 2007.  The Coast of Utopia was the other.

Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia Trilogy (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage) tells the story of Russian intellectuals who paved the way for the Bolshevik revolution, focused most strongly on Alexander Herzen.  I knew as soon as I heard about it making waves in London and then New York, I would want to see it.  As far as I know, it has never played in Chicago.  I learned that Berkeley's Shotgun Players were starting to put on the plays one each year, and I wrote them and found out that the plan in two years' time was indeed to put on the entire trilogy, with a couple of days where they would do the entire thing in a marathon (just as was done in New York).  I marked my calendar and waited.  And then when the time came, I flew down from Vancouver, though I wasn't in fact the audience member that travelled the furthest to catch the shows!  It was a pretty amazing day of theatre and did live up to my expectations.  If I recall correctly, at least a few of the scenes from Shipwreck are told from a completely different perspective, filling in the action from Voyage.  But that is something you would probably only pick up on if watching or reading them in a very short amount of time.  Those of us who made it through the marathon got a button.  I actually located mine just a few weeks ago.  It is misplaced again, but when it turns up, I'll scan and add to the post. 

The Coast of Utopia would have been right up the old Soulpepper's alley, and I kept hoping it would make it to Toronto.  Now it won't fit at all with the new mandate at Soulpepper, and I find myself increasingly at odds with the company and will almost certainly never subscribe again.  I missed Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests Trilogy (1973) by a single season, and they have essentially dropped Ayckbourn from their repertoire entirely, so the only way I'll likely ever see this is on video unfortunately.  The plays cover one weekend, each set in a different part of Norman's sister-in-law Annie's house: the dining room (Table Manners), the living room (Living Together) and of course the garden (Round and Round the Garden).

I have no idea if Lanford Wilson's The Talley Trilogy (Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly and Talley and Sons) could be done in a single day or would benefit from such treatment.  

Apparently, the 9 one-acts in Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle were indeed intended to be seen as a 6 hour extravaganza (or perhaps in two 3-hour blocks): Masters of the Trade,Courtship of Morning Star, The Homecoming, Ties That Bind, God's Great Supper, Tall Tales, Fire in the Hole, Which Side Are You On? and The War On Poverty make up the cycle.  Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize, this lasted less than a month on Broadway and was essentially consigned to the shadows of history by Angels in America.  Looking over the reviews, this looks like a series that I might read some day but probably would not seek out to actually watch in performance.

George F. Walker has quite a few linked plays.  His “film noir” Power Plays -- Gossip, Filthy Rich, and The Art of War -- all feature the anti-heroic detective Tyrone Power.  Then there is a trilogy about a family living in the East End -- Criminals in Love (1984), Better Living (1987) and Escape from Happiness (1991).  I saw Escape from Happiness at Alumnae Theatre and liked it quite a bit, and I keep hoping that the other two will pop up, or better still a company will try to program all of them in sequence.  Some critics include Better Living and Beautiful City thematically in this East End cycle, but they are definitely much more loosely linked.

Then there is the Bobby and Tina trilogy - Tough!, Moss Park and then a much later sequel The Damage Done.  I actually did see The Damage Done but was extremely frustrated that very poor publicity meant that I missed out on a chance to see a double bill of Tough! and Moss Park.  Much more recently, he has a new trilogy linked by location (a housing project, most likely on the East Side of Toronto): The Chance, Kill the Poor and Her Inside Life.  This is one that I have managed to see all the plays.

Finally, Walker has written Suburban Motel which is actually six one-act plays with a handful of linked characters.  While I have not had much luck catching this (with Ryerson screwing up my tickets), I believe I have seen 3 of the 6.  I figure once Canadian theatres start reopening, there is a moderate chance I'll be able to catch the Bobby and Tina trilogy (as it is often programmed as theatre aimed at teens) and perhaps gradually pick up the rest of Suburban Motel.  Here's hoping anyway.  

At this point, I am shifting to play cycles that most likely could not be seen even in a single marathon event.

First, there is Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle (Roots in a Parched Ground, Convicts, Lily Dale, The Widow Claire, Courtship, Valentine's Day, 1918, Cousins, and The Death of Papa).  This cycle is quite autobiographical and has many shared characters across the plays.  I recall several years back this was supposed to be reprinted in one or perhaps two volumes, but nothing ever came of it.

Second, there are a series of Canadian history plays called The History of the Village of the Small Huts by Michael Hollingsworth. Depending on how it is broken up and reconfigured there are up to 21 plays in the cycle: New France (Parts I-IV), The British (Parts I-IV), The Mackenzie Papineau Rebellion, Confederation, The Red River Rebellion, Canadian Pacific Scandal, The Saskatchewan Rebellion, Laurier, The Great War, The Life and Times of Mackenzie King, WWII, The Cold War, Trudeau & the FLQ, Trudeau & the PQ and The Life & Times Of Brian Mulroney.  These are put on exclusively by Toronto's Video Cabaret, as far as I know.  I've seen The Great War, the two Trudeau plays (so excellent) and a mashup of Confederation through The Saskatchewan Rebellion over two evenings.  They were supposed to do The Cold War last year, and assuming they survive the pandemic, I expect that's what they will pick up with.  Assuming I stay in Toronto and they stay in business, I likely will eventually catch all the plays in the cycle.  I did recommend to them that they try to do archival recordings of these shows, but that was a bit beyond their capabilities at the time.

Finally, finally, we come to August Wilson's The Pittsburgh Cycle where he managed to write 10 plays, one for each decade, representing the Black experience in the Twentieth Century.  I will list the plays by the decade that each represents:

• Gem of the Ocean (1900s) 
• Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1910s) 
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1920s)
• The Piano Lesson (1930s) 
• Seven Guitars (1940s) 
• Fences (1950s) 
• Two Trains Running (1960s) 
• Jitney (1970s)
• King Hedley II (1980s ) 
• Radio Golf (1990s)

Clearly, this is a massive, massive achievement, but even for a company that wanted to devote an entire season to August Wilson, they most likely could only get halfway through the cycle.  I'm pretty sure I had the opportunity to see Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, but I thought that because there are at least some connections between the plays, I would be better off trying to see them in sequence.  Looking back, that was somewhat foolish, and I definitely should have tried to catch Gem of the Ocean at least.  August Wilson productions definitely crop up quite frequently in Chicago, and I did see a staged reading of The Piano Lesson.  And I saw Soulpepper put on Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, though I have to admit I didn't really like the plot that much.*  This is a case where the most feasible way of experiencing the plays would be to just put on a series of staged readings (perhaps while waiting for quarantine to end...), but I know so very few Black actors in Toronto that it seems like a pipe dream.  In the meantime, I will try to sit down and read the plays in order (though it is surprisingly hard to put my hands on a copy of Radio Golf, at least until Robarts reopens to the general public).

Stepping back, I've had some success seeing all the plays in a cycle (most notably Stoppard and McCraney) but far more often I've only caught one or two plays out of a cycle.  For someone who goes to the theatre as much as I do, to have so little success in filling in these gaps (and then the frustration that ensues) really speaks to the questionable logic behind writing linked plays in the first place.

* While I didn't like this play much (mostly because I thought Ma Rainey treated her band quite shabbily), I see that Chadwick Boseman's last movie is going to be a Netflix production of Ma Rainey, and I'll probably eventually watch it out of respect for him.  On a slightly more disappointing note, I see that I could have caught the revamped production of Jitney at the Goodman Theatre in 1999, not long before we moved to Brooklyn.  I don't really have a good explanation for skipping over the various Goodman productions of Wilson's plays, other than wanting to see them in the "right order."  It may well be one of the biggest lost opportunities of my theatre-going career.

Two Busy Weekends

I am really torn between recreating a series of blog posts I had planned to write over the past week (only in my head unfortunately) or jumping ahead to my most recent thoughts on Toronto life, now that we are being rolled back to Stage 2 lite (no indoor dining, no indoor bars and no gym!).  Maybe I'll see if I can pull off a bit of a hybrid.

Floating over all of the events of the past couple of weeks was the suspicion that, due to the sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in the GTA, we were going to see restrictions come in.  I was (and continue to be) somewhat peeved that the Toronto medical officer wouldn't impose restrictions on her own (with Tory's backing) and kept trying to make the Province wear the coat.  I mean if she really means what she says and that everything but essential travel should be ruled out, then she really should use all the tools at her disposal.  The Premiere said that she (or rather Toronto acting on her advice) could close down restaurants and so forth.  And definitely Toronto can roll back the library openings or even close down the swimming pools.  But they haven't, which makes it hard to take her seriously.  And probably more damning is that there is still too much secrecy over where infections are being spread.  It seems 44% are in restaurant and bar settings, so it seems you can make a strong case that these have to be shut down - and unfortunately probably not reopened until a vaccine arrives. But have there really been many cases caught in gyms or indoor health classes?  I don't know, but I don't think so, so it really does seem like overkill, or operating on some weird precautionary principle (I think these places are more dangerous because of all the extra huffing and puffing of the gym rats, but I can't actually prove it).  Frankly, I feel that Ontario and Toronto politicians and officials have let us down by not being more prepared for the second wave (and not building up the necessary testing and tracing ability), as well as not being nearly as convincing this time around, which will make it that much harder to get public buy-in, when #1) people are thoroughly sick of the restrictions in their lives and #2) there is real economic hardship any time the restrictions are increased.  I could go on for pages about COVID, so let me switch back to what I have actually been up to over the past two weekends.

Two Saturdays ago, I managed to get myself up and get to the gym around 7 am.  (The day before I had gone to the mall to pick up some things from Home Depot including a new fire extinguisher for the kitchen, as I found out while taking it down to paint around it it had expired long ago!  There was a short line to get into the gym, so I just bailed.)  I'm trying to turn over a new leaf and get back into shape, though I don't think it is so much about the exercise as just eating better (less snacking and much smaller lunches -- in this I am not at all helped by the fact that Tim Hortons and McCafe have discontinued their yogurt parfaits, which was my go to lunch most days when dieting more strictly).  Then I came home and did the big weekend grocery shopping.  Then around 12:30, I was able to join my son at the mall (and even managed to get my daughter to come along), so that we could run over to Staples and get photos taken for the immigration process.  Even though I'm fairly sure that Biden will win and things will sort of return to normal in the States (aside from the Supreme Court being yanked to the right to the degree it will be impossible to overcome without packing the Court), I am so thoroughly disenchanted with the hard core 40% of Americans who still support Trump (frankly scumbags to the core) that I have no interest in being part of their society any longer (or even visiting that often).  The photo session wrapped up around 1:30 or so, and having gotten so much done in the morning, the fact I had any time left over was just gravy (in the words of Raymond Carver).

At that point, I cycled over to the Ryerson Image Centre and then down to work for a while.  I believe I made it home in time to replace one more board in the deck, but I am not entirely certain of the timing of that.  I do know that I probably should have gotten at least some of the taping done in the kitchen, but I was (understandably) kind of wiped out by this point.

So it fell to Sunday to do all the really hard work.  I think it probably took 2-3 hours to get all the taping done and then somewhat longer to prime the kitchen walls.  It essentially did take up all of Sunday, though I did run back to the mall to get a small paint sampler and my daughter needed something, but I can't recall what that was.  I wanted to paint a couple of small patches to make sure that people were ok with the new colour before I thoroughly committed.  (I don't love the new colour, but I hated the old colour and this is much better.)

This meant I had to go back to Home Depot on Monday evening to get the rest of the paint and put up the first coat. 

I did get lucky that the paint was mixed with some primer and coated pretty evenly, so I only had to paint it once (plus the primer on Sunday).  I was pretty sure it was going to take two coats, but it actually looks pretty good with just the one.  It took about 4 hours, and I was pretty weary at work on Tuesday...

I didn't have that much to do in the middle of the week, but I did notice that the local raccoon had torn up yet one more board while searching for insects.  I was thoroughly P.O.'ed.  After work on Friday, I managed to go off and get the groceries for the week (assuming that the stores would be pretty backed up on the weekend).  I was in a pretty bad mood as the restrictions had come down finally, and all the gyms in Toronto were closing at midnight.  I debated going in for one last workout at 9:30 or 10 pm, but decided that, with everyone else having the same idea, it was likely going to be more crowded than was really comfortable.

So it will just be the biking as my main exercise from now on.  Sat. I biked in to work and managed to make some headway on the immigration application and wrapped up final edits on a slightly overdue book review.  I also managed to get home in time to replace that one board, having one remaining spare board from when we brought all the lumber over the bridge.  I also painted the whole upper, upper deck with stain to make this less appealing to raccoons looking for snacks.  I'm sure I'll need to replace a few more boards next year, and probably have to sand and restain the upper and middle deck, but this should at least get me through the winter.

I took a close look at the restrictions, and they are pretty broad -- all performing arts venues are closed down (so those folks that had won the "lottery" to see Angela Hewitt are out of luck after all and Mirvish's new experiment to do a sound installation of Saramago's Blindness is also going to put out of commission).  However, it says that museums with interactive components will be shut down (so the Ontario Science Centre and large parts of the ROM).  It was silent on other museums, and most of the them planned on being open (until explicitly forced to shut down), so I decided to follow the letter (if not the spirit) of the shutdown.  I figured that there won't be many more days before they were told to shut down as well, at least if the cases keep increasing, and the weather was going to turn fairly soon as well.  So my son and I biked off to the AGO Sunday morning and saw the Diane Arbus exhibit* and also the new contemporary exhibit showcasing Haegue Yang's work.  Perhaps ironically, my favourite image from the Arbus exhibit was one devoid of people.

Diane Arbus, Empty Snack Bar N.Y.C., 1957

We grabbed a slice of pizza, eating it in the park as the in-store dining was out obviously.  Then we biked back home.  I had just enough time to take my daughter to the mall to do some clothes shopping, and I tried to decompress the rest of the evening.

I haven't done all that much today, but there are some small chores, like trying to fix up the bedframe, that I am taking on.  Mostly, I'd like to try to finally wrap up this report for work and get back into the immigration system, so I can get this citizenship application mailed off next week.  It appears that the deadline for SFYS has been moved back another week, and I didn't miss it after all, so I'll definitely try to do some creative writing after being sidelined for a while.

As I indicated, I've been pretty busy, but at least I don't have these major chores hanging over my head any longer.  And with that I think I'll close this post.

 

* I'm glad I actually read most of the text from the Harper's article The Full Circle.  I was going to say that Seth cribbed directly from the William Mack piece where he was quoted: “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken but you are bound to weaken one day.”  But then it turns out Mack himself was apparently riffing off of a Gene Byrnes's cartoon called It's a Great Life If You Don't Weaken, which was popular among American soldiers during the first World War.

Here We Go Again

For the moment, cases in Ontario seem to have levelled off very slightly, but they are still on the rise in Toronto.  This is incredibly depressing and stressful.  Nonetheless, the incidence of new cases is still very uneven throughout the city, and new cases in Riverdale/Leslieville are still quite rare fortunately.  Though I did see there was one case in Leslieville Jr Public School, which will have to be monitored.

There has been a bit of a run on paper towels again, though for the moment toilet paper supplies are holding up.  I'm really hoping not to return to the days when the lines to get into the grocery store stretched out across the entire parking lot.

The biggest question of course is how many schools are going to be shut down, and if this experiment is given up.  It looks like my daughter finally has a permanent French teacher and is doing those lessons.  However, it turns out that my son's accounting teacher is not going to be the "permanent" teacher and may not be able to provide any marks.  What a mess!  I realize it is even worse for children in French immersion, many of whom were kicked out of their programs with no recourse.  I guess the question is how they account for this at the end of the year.  Given that learning in this environment is going to be impaired, how will they give out marks (and will colleges and universities even trust them)?  Again, this speaks to the need to probably repeat this year after a vaccine is available, and just treat this as an experiment in maintaining children's mental health.

I'm assuming there will be more restrictions coming, particularly in Toronto.*  I wouldn't be at all surprised if gyms and movie theatres and concert halls have to cut back even further to 25 people.  This will probably force RCM to scrap their Angela Hewitt concert, but I'll call tomorrow and see what the story is (and whether my tickets will be honoured or not).  I suspect that people are expecting the gyms to scale back as well.  I finally made it over to the mall on Wed. to take care of a few other things and go to the gym (I didn't feel I really had to go on the days I was pounding out the boards in the deck), and there was a line-up.  This is the first I've seen in a while, and while I probably would have been able to get in within 30 minutes, I just was so discouraged and generally fed up, I just went home.  I was making slow progress on losing the extra weight I've picked up during the crisis, but at this point my low-level depression is getting a bit deeper, and I just can't face up to this, on top of everything else (the dark evenings and the possibility that this virus will never end).  I am still biking to work about 4 days a week, and I'll try to do that as long as I can, though the dark evenings are starting to spook me a bit (last night it was sprinkling a bit, which I was not expecting and did not appreciate).

I've already mentioned how I am pretty sick of on-line music and decided not to sign up for Tafelmusik's opening on-line concert.  I'm just slightly more open to on-line theatre (though I have completely stopped following The Show Must Go On-Line and the Plays in the House guys).  It looks like next Tuesday there is a potentially interesting play on Zoom, and then probably the second Monday of Oct. will be another SFYS.  I have a couple of ideas I really need to get down on paper (one about a budding romance in a deserted food court and then one about speed-dating that is not COVID-related), so this is a good reminder.  Maybe I can carve out some time over the weekend.

And in a very strange way of history repeating itself, Trump has caught the coronavirus, just like Boris Johnson (his acolyte).  I am a terrible person, as I hope he suffers very badly and frankly I do hope he doesn't pull through.  I don't think he will emerge from this as a chastened or wiser person (certainly within a couple of weeks Boris was back to his old ways), learning anything from this experience (he is simply incapable of positive personal growth), so the best outcome would be a lengthy hospitalization that would force the debates to be cancelled (I'm sure Pence would relish this way out from debating Kamala Harris).  In a sense, it would be a way for him to step away (and have Pence pardon him for "everything" that could land in a federal court) and save face (and he's all about the saving face).  So we'll see how this plays out, but all I can say is finally!  I only wish it had happened last week, causing so much turmoil that he wasn't able to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  But who knows, maybe a couple of Republican Senators will also have the virus** and they have to shut down the hearings.  Here's hoping.

* There is only a small notice on the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' website that they are effectively closed down by the province from Oct 1-28, and apparently they are still booking tickets through Nov. for their post-Impressionism exhibit.  Wishful thinking at this point.  I guess if I had know exactly how this all was going to play out, I would have just rented a car in July and gone out there, but hindsight...

** There are reports that Trump met (maskless naturally) quite recently with Pence and McConnell and Barrett herself, so it will be a very interesting time, especially if Trump really does end up in the hospital and perhaps Pence himself is out of commission for a few days.  Then Pelosi steps in.  Poetic justice for sure.