Mary Murphy

            On Friday morning I looked for a new picture of Boris Vian to post on my Facebook fan page. I found one of him holding an armful of incongruous items and making a goofy face.

            I’ve memorized two-thirds of “Banana Boat” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done on Saturday morning and then I’ll look for the chords.

            I washed another eight boards of the living room floor behind my couch. This was a fairly clean section already and there were no remnants of my late cat Jonquil stuck to the wood. There will be some in the next section however and further on in the spot where she actually died.

            I had a chicken wing for lunch and some yogourt.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and then took a bike ride to Bloor and Spadina, south to Queen and west again. On Queen there was a loud guy, wearing loud clothing and with loud hip hop music coming out of his backpack. He was riding with a young woman who looked very normal compared to him. After he passed me he tried to pop a wheelie and fell flat on his ass when his bike flipped back too far.

            After coming home I got caught up on my journal. 

            I worked a bit on my review of David Jure's "The Patient English".

            I finished a draft of “My Blood in a Bug”.

            I had three small potatoes, a chicken breast and some gravy while watching an episode of Wagon Train.

            This story starts with a poker game between Luke O'Malley and Dan Romero but the game is interrupted when the sheriff arrives to arrest the bandit Romero. Romero believes that O’Malley told the sheriff that he was there and swears he will kill him. On the day of Romero’s hanging O’Malley is the only one in town that does not attend. But before the execution can take place Romero’s men come riding and shooting into town. Seeing that Romero is escaping and remembering his promise to kill him, O’Malley goes to his sister's place, takes a parson’s suit and hat that she is holding for a real minister, takes his daughter Kate and his son John and rides out of town. He changes his name and approaches the wagon train, asking to ride along with it. A young woman named Martha Murphy, travelling with her father takes a liking to Kate and John and begins acting maternally towards them. O’Malley confesses to her that Kate and John are not his natural children but are the kids of a man that he’d seen gunned down in a saloon. He's been taking care of them ever since and loves them like they were his own. Kate displays a little too much knowledge about poker to the Major than a preacher's daughter should. Flint tells the Major that the parson reminds him of a card shark name O’Malley that he met who is a friend of Dan Romero. The Major has O'Malley detained because he thinks he's in league with Romero, who has been spotted in the area. Knowing that Romero will probably raid the train, O'Malley escapes and goes to try to stop him. He is captured, tied up and forced to come along while Romero heads out to raid the wagon train. But O'Malley's children have snuck away from the train and bring with them the $20,000 that O’Malley won from Romero. Kate begs Romero to let her father go so they can go to California on the wagon train. Romero softens and says he will miss Romero and lets him go. At the end O’Malley appears to be hooked up with Martha.

            Martha was played by Mary Murphy, who played the good girl that tamed Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

Dead Things Behind the Couch

            On Thursday morning I finally finished posting “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog.

            I finished translating “Banana Boat" by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse.

            I pulled my couch out from the wall and washed another eight boards of the living room floor behind it. Part of it was an area that still had traces of fur caked in with body fluids left over from when my last cat Jonquil died back there. I had wiped back there after she was gone with a damp cloth and some detergent but obviously not very thoroughly.

            I had a chicken wing for lunch and some yogourt. Instead of four heaping teaspoons of yogourt, starting from this day I decided to cut it down to three.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and then took a bike ride to Bloor and Spadina. Riding the mountain bike in easy gears it seemed to take forever. I rode down Spadina to Queen and headed west.

I stopped at Freshco on the way home. The black grapes were on sale and so I took four bags. I got a field tomato and a real basket of Niagara peaches as opposed to the plastic baskets they’ve been selling. They had watermelons for $3 and so I tried the watermelon test I’d learned online. I looked for the yellow spot, picked up the watermelon and tapped the spot while listening. The first one had a drum-like sound while the second and third sounded dull, so I went with the first one. The one I’d bought two weeks before without testing it was overripe in places, so I was interested to find out if I'd joined the elite that know how to pick a good melon to eat. It turned out that the melon I’d picked was under-ripe. One-year-old cheddar cheese was on sale for $6 and so I took two. There were frozen back ribs on sale and a late middle-aged couple were looking at them. The man had a rack of ribs in his hand but the woman pointed out to him that they were back ribs. He tossed the rack back down contemptuously. I guess he prefers spare ribs but I couldn't find any meat experts online that have a negative review of back ribs. Most people prefer them to spare ribs.

The cashier said, “So you raided the grape section!” I always get comments from cashiers about how many grapes I buy. Are four bags of grapes a lot?

When I got home I worked on my journal.

I had three little potatoes, a chicken breast and some gravy while watching Wagon Train.

In this story, an old friend of Flint’s arrives at the wagon train. Cliff is an adventurer, a teller of tales and a prospector. While telling stories of his wild life to the other members of the train he announces that he’s finally become a millionaire and that he wants to travel with the wagon train to stake his claim. Cliff goes out with the other men to hunt buffalo but the rookie he’s with causes a stampede and Cliff is severely trampled. It is certain that he will die in a matter of hours. They are in dangerous Sioux territory and the Major says that for safety sake they have to move on and leave Cliff behind. Flint insists on staying behind with him till the end and so a tent is set up with a cot for Cliff to lie in and they have a barrel of water and some food. A man named Manson tells Flint that he’s grown fond of Cliff and he would like to stay with him as well. But Manson has an ulterior motive as he is hoping that before he dies Cliff will tell him where his gold mine is. Flint comes back from collecting firewood and finds Manson shaking Cliff to get the information. Flint takes Manson’s gun away from him. A couple of days pass but Cliff still hasn’t died. He becomes conscious and asks for water. After a couple more days, when Cliff starts asking for food Flint knows that he’s not going to die after all. One night Manson clubs Flint over the head, kicks over the water barrel and makes off with the horses and guns. When Flint tells Cliff all this and that they’ve been spotted by the Sioux, Cliff says, “Let’s get movin” and gets out of bed. It would be a four-day walk to the nearest fort or half that if they cut through the mountains but Cliff is weak and keeps collapsing. Flint coaxes him by calling him a coward and he gets some energy back but they have no water until a rainstorm comes. Flint is attacked by a bear but Cliff tackles it with a knife. For some odd reason they don’t eat the bear even though they have no food. Finally they both collapse and can go no further but Flint hears horses and thy get up in hope of help but it is a band of Sioux. Next we see Flint and Cliff as healthy as can be in a saloon, drinking whisky and talking about what a good thing it was that those missionary Sioux came along. They discover that Manson’s dead body is in the back room with a Sioux arrow in it. Flint gets his gun and horse back. As he is about to leave Cliff confesses that his “gold mine” was a metaphor for a wealthy woman that he’d found that wants to marry him.

Anne Jeffreys

            On Wednesday morning on my Christian’s Translations blog I adjusted the chords for all but the final verse of “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian.

            I translated all but the last verse of “Banana Boat” by Serge Gainsbourg. I had to cut the translation work short because at 8:00 I had to shave and shower to get ready for my annual physical. I figure if you have a date with someone who’s going to stick their fingers up your butt, you might as well clean yourself up first.

            I rode to Bloor and Bathurst in easy gears without hurrying and it still only took me twenty minutes. The receptionist recognized me and told me I was already signed in. I sat down in the waiting area and did a French grammar exercise. I was about to read a little more of “Death of Judas” by Paul Claudel but the nurse called my name. That was quick! I usually have to wait longer but the appointment was pretty much on time.

            The first thing the nurse always does when I come for a physical is to check my weight. I was interested to compare my digital scale to theirs and so before I left my place I’d weighed myself in just my underwear. I was 89.2 kilos. In my jeans, undershirt and socks at the doctor’s office I was 90.5 kilos. Later I weighed my jeans, my undershirt and my socks and they surprisingly add 00.9 kilos, so if their scale is accurate then mine might only be off by 00.4 kilos. But I would have to have the two scales side by side to be sure because I find my weight can mysteriously change by a kilo within hours. Last year I was 95.3 kilos, so it looks like I’ve done something right. But if I’m 90 kilos on average right now, even though it’s just inside of the top of my body mass index I still think I could stand to lose a bit more because I feel a little flabby.

            She took my blood pressure and I was 108 over 76, which is healthy.  It was 120 over 70 last year, which was still okay.

            Dr. Shechtman did the usual checks of looking into my ears, listening to my chest and feeling my prostate. All of that was fine. I told him that my hip was still bothering me, so he gave me a form to take to the x-ray place along with the form for my blood and urine work. We discussed me getting a colonoscopy, since it’s been ten years since my last one. He offered me a new alternative test that he said is less invasive than a colonoscopy but not quite as accurate. I’m assuming he was talking about the cologuard test, which is a stool DNA test. I asked him what he would do and he says he would take the home test because he doesn’t like having colonoscopies. He said there is a small degree of risk of rupturing with colonoscopies and of course one has to be doped up to do it. I agreed to try the stool test and so he ordered for one to be sent to me.

            I went down the street to get my x-ray and blood work done. I didn’t have long to wait for the x-ray. My technician was Holly and she gave me a paper gown to put on. I said I’d thought x-rays could see though clothing but she said they couldn’t see through metal buckles, snaps and zippers. After the hip x-rays I went down the hall to the place that takes the blood and urine. The wait was longer there.

            There was a talkative woman from the West Indies. She was just finishing a conversation when she sat down and said, “I never committed a crime in my life!” I said, “It’s about time to start.” She said, “It’s too late!” She told me she was 72 and I commented that she didn’t look it. The receptionist said she’ll be retiring next year and she’ll spend part of every year after that back in the Philippines. She said she’s hoping that her son will give her a grandchild for a retirement present, but at least she has a grand-dog. An elderly man sat down and took off his straw panama hat. The woman told him he looked like a cowboy. He told us that she and I don’t have to worry but when one is bald like him the worst place to get sunburn is on top of the head.

            The technician took two vials of blood and I gave them a generous portion of pee before leaving.

            I rode to Spadina, went south to Queen and then home.

            I’d been fasting since the night before because it was required prior to the blood work and so I had a late breakfast when I got home. I had a slice of toasted raisin-cranberry bread and a bowl of spoon size shredded wheat.

            For lunch I had corn crackers with cheese whiz.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and worked on my journal.

            I had a fried egg and a toasted cheese bagel for dinner with a beer while watching Wagon Train.

            In this story an attractive and strong willed young woman named Julie is travelling on the wagon train with her father to join her two brothers in California when her father dies of “the fever”. The Major tells her she’s going to need a driver for her wagon now but she argues that she’s been driving teams of horses since she was a small child. The Major counters that a driver also needs to know how to do all of the wagon repairs and so she gives in. The Major has another motive in finding Julie a driver, as he’s trying to play Cupid. The first man to try taking the reins of Julie’s team is Jess, but when he gets fresh with her she knocks him off the wagon and takes a bullwhip to him. The next man is Buck, who is the opposite of Jess. Buck is so flustered and shy around Julie that he forgets to do the wagon maintenance she’s asked for and so she fires him. Then the Major gets the reluctant Tobe Cannon to take the job. The first thing Julie does is throw a bucket of water on him. Tobe takes her firmly but gently in hand and she begins to cry in his arms over her father. Over the next few days Julie nags and bosses Tobe like crazy but he takes it in stride and it looks like she’s warming up to him when suddenly he catches the fever. With no one else besides her and the Major willing to look after Tobe the women of the train think it improper that Julie is spending nights alone with Tobe and nursing him. Tobe is not conscious and so to appease the women and to keep her brothers from killing Tobe once they get to California Julie asks the Major to “half-marry” she and Tobe. Apparently a wagon master had the same powers as the captain of a ship and could legally perform marriages. Half marriage means that Julie is promised to Tobe but not vice versa. When Tobe recovers he’s uncomfortable with this half marriage thing but after Julie almost gets killed in an avalanche he realizes he wants to fully marry hr and they do.

            The Major has been in crutches for this episode because the actor Ward Bond had been in a recent car accident.

            Julie was played by Anne Jeffreys, who started voice training and modelling at an early age. She played Tess Trueheart in the Dick Tracy series while at the same time performing as an opera singer. She was married to Robert Sterling, who played Tobe in this Wagon Train story. In addition to acting together they had a successful club act and a sitcom called “Topper” in which they both played ghosts. Thy were married for 55 years. She was David Hasselhoff’s mother on Baywatch and was also a regular on Falcon Crest. She was the last person to dance with Fred Astaire on screen.

            Late that night there was a commotion outside. A woman was screaming angrily and others were shouting. I looked out my window and saw that the screaming woman was one that I’ve often seen hanging out drinking and shouting around the donut shop. My neighbour Benji has said that she’s known to be a thief. She was being dragged to the corner under my window by a man in white sock feet and a taller woman. There was talk of her having stolen things from the man, including his computer. At the corner she collapses on the sidewalk and began crawling out into the middle of the street, stopping traffic. They were trying to tell her to stop blocking traffic while at the same time shouting for anyone with a phone to call the cops. I assume she crawled into the street because she was afraid of being beaten up and if she stopped traffic she would have witnesses. The man shouted that she was going to be spending the night in jail and that he was going to charge her for years of assault, so maybe he was her boyfriend. Frankly I’d always taken her for a lesbian. The man only kicked her once with his sock foot while she was lying there refusing to move. Finally an ambulance stopped and the paramedic coaxed her to sit up and go back to the sidewalk while at the same time radioing for the cops. I finished what I was doing on the computer and got ready for bed. I don’t know if the woman was arrested or not.

Nina Foch

            On Tuesday morning on my Christian’s Translations blog I adjusted the placement of the chords for one and a half verses of "J'suis snob" by Boris Vian.

            After typing out from a YouTube video the first two lines of  “Banana Boat" by Serge Gainsbourg I was able to use those lines in a search and find all the lyrics instead of the Jamaican folk song, which is what always turns up when only searching the title.

            I began translating the song. It’s from the point of view of someone that wants to hitch a ride on a merchant marine ship and have her way with all the sailors.

            I called the Bank of Montreal to notify them that I’ve lost my bankcard. The guy I spoke with told me he would send me a new card with my name on it but that meanwhile I could go to a branch and get a temporary card.

            I lifted my backup bike off its hook for the first time in more than two years. I was somewhat doubtful that the tires would inflate after all that time. They made a crackling noise as they expanded, perhaps because the rubber was dry, but they held. It was weird not riding the bike I’d built in the spring of 2017, but the backup bike, although not the right size has the seat adjusted for my height and I was able to ride to Bloor and Lansdowne fairly comfortably.

            At the bank I explained to the attractive and pleasant desk teller my situation and showed her some mail addressed to me, since that was all I had for identification. The teller asked me a few questions that only I could know the answer to but didn’t seem to have any doubt that I was who I said I was. She told me that the card that had been mailed to me by the guy that I’d spoken to earlier would be void when she issued me a temporary card. She explained that the issuer of the temporary card has to be the one that sends the official card. I wondered why the customer service guy hadn’t known that but she said she didn't know. I got my card, took $200 from my account and went home.

            Since I had an appointment for my annual check-up the next day with my doctor I called the Bloor Medical Clinic to let them know that I’d lost my health card. The receptionist said it was no problem for them because I’d already given them my new card number. She asked me however not to report to OHIP that I’d lost my card until a week after my physical because the provincial government would void the card and they wouldn't get paid.

            I looked into getting another birth certificate from New Brunswick and it looks like I’ll have to pay $75. I could order it online but I'd have to pay by debit and since I didn’t have that much money in my account I’d have to wait until the end of the month.

            I found out that I couldn’t renew my Social Insurance card online but would have to go to their office with a birth certificate. That meant there would be no renewing any identification until I could get another birth certificate.

            I had a chicken drumstick for lunch and some yogourt.

            In the afternoon did some exercises and then went over to Bike Pirates to pay them for the new bottom bracket and to inquire if they knew of anyone that can weld a bike frame. I found out that Tom could weld, although he isn’t a professional. I talked with Tom and he said he could do it for maybe $20 but he couldn't guarantee the job. I said that it's a shame to trash a perfectly good antique steel Raleigh Grand Prix bike frame just because of a cracked dropout. Tom was too busy to make arrangements at that time but told me to come back in an hour. When I returned he gave me his number and said to call him on Sunday morning and we would work out a time for me to bring the bike to his place so he could weld it. 

            I cut up a small chicken and roasted it in the oven. I had one of the legs with three little potatoes and some gravy while watching Wagon Train.

            The story begins with a cavalry unit riding to a fort. A band of indigenous warriors approaches them on horseback. They are carrying rifles but not aggressively. The captain orders his men to fire. The warriors ride away but one of them is killed. Meanwhile the wagon train is about to enter Indian Territory. The Major sends Flint ahead with gifts sugar, saltlick and tobacco for Chief Thundercloud. On the way there he finds the dead warrior but Thundercloud and his braves find him. He gives the gifts to the chief and that appeases him somewhat but he insists that Flint go to the fort and give the message for the soldier that killed his brave to be brought to him. Meanwhile at the fort the captain arrives and presents himself to the commanding officer, Colonel Charles Beauchamp and tells him about the incident with the Natives on the way there. The colonel chastises the captain for creating hostility with the tribe when he’s trying to keep the peace.

            The colonel’s wife Clara is a southern belle who is bored with her life in the fort and disappointed with her husband's lack of ambition. She believes the people that award promotions will never notice him if all he ever tries to do is keep the peace. She has taken to drinking and her behaviour has become problematic.

            Flint arrives at the fort with his message from Thundercloud. Obviously the colonel is not going to hand over his men, but he comes up with a creative solution. He tells Flint to go back and invite Thundercloud and his men to a feast in their honour at the fort. Flint has to do some major diplomacy to convince the chief to come but he succeeds.

            Meanwhile Clara is dead set against the chief and his warriors coming there. She thinks that Charles should fight and defeat the “savages", thereby earning a promotion.

            The feast goes very well. The chief and his warriors are well fed and entertained and they appear to be getting along with the soldiers. Suddenly Clara shows up drunk. She offers Thundercloud some coffee. It’s a drink he’s never tasted and its bitterness causes him to spit it out. Some of it touches Clara's dress and she slaps Thundercloud in anger. The chief and his braves leave and go on the warpath. They plan to attack the wagon train as it is now in their territory. The colonel has no choice but to take his men into battle and he blames Clara. He tells her they are through. Clara feels guilty and is determined to fix the mess that she’s made. She rides to Thundercloud but when a warrior sees a rider approaching from a distance he shoots her. Flint finds Clara dying and takes her to Thundercloud. She apologizes with her dying breath and war is abated. The colonel is offered a top job in Washington but turns it down to stay at the fort.

            Clara was played by Nina Foch (pronounced 'Fosh'), who was born in the Netherlands to the US singer Consuelo Flowerton and the Dutch conductor Dirk Fock. She often played sophisticated women in B movies. She was nominated for a best supporting actress Academy award for “Executive Suite". Her greatest success was as an acting teacher. Her motto “Happiness is for cows. You’re supposed to feel like you’ve achieved something" came from Einstein, who said, "ethics built on happiness would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle”. She said that B movies came to be called “noir” because they made them so quickly there was no time to light them properly.

           

Broken Bike, Lost Identity

            On Monday morning on my Christian’s Translations blog I fine-tuned the placement of the chords of the second verse of “J'suis snob" by Boris Vian.

            I posted the lyrics to my translation of “Oh mon amour baiser” on Facebook.

            I started looking for the lyrics to “Banana Boat” by Serge Gainsbourg but every site that claimed to have them had instead the words to the traditional Jamaican “Banana Boat Song" made famous by Harry Bellefonte. At the end of the hour that I allot myself for these Gainsbourg translations I finally found the correct lyrics in a YouTube video.

            I pulled my couch out to the middle of the living room and washed a section of the floor, eight boards by about one metre. 

I threw out my old Lexmark printer-scanner and moved my Martian Bouquet sculpture into its place.

            I had chickpeas with flaxseed oil and garlic for lunch.

            At 16:30 I went out to stand in front of Bike Pirates to make sure I would be one of the first people in line. There was one guy ahead of me whom I’d seen there on several occasions.

            When they opened up, the volunteer in charge was a woman I hadn’t seen before. She was very authoritative almost to the point of being militaristic but very knowledgeable. She had one policy that I especially liked. She insisted that none of the other volunteers help the people that she had already begun to help because it just causes confusion. A lot of volunteers tend to get caught up in helping one person but she seemed to be quite conscientious about dividing her time equally. She would usually give me enough to do that by the time I’d finished she was already coming back around to help me.

            She had me remove my crank arms but the drive side one was very tight. She brought out a tool that made it easy but once it was removed I couldn’t get the crank arm off the tool. She took it to the vice and struggled with it but when a big guy swept in and tried to add more torque to her tool she firmly explained to him that on of her rules is, “Don’t help me unless I ask for help." She got it off.

            She was also able to remove the cup on one side that had refused to come off before. I had always had to put the ball bearings in from the other side of the shell. She used a tool I hadn’t seen before and had no problem.

            She told me that everything between my crank arms was too worn out to put back in. She was about to look for a used bottom bracket when I asked if I could buy a new one. She said that would make things a lot easier and she got me a cheap cartridge style bottom bracket with the ball bearings already installed for $15.

            I had been at Bike Pirates for three hours by the time I was done. I said I was going to take a test drive to the bank machine to get some money for them. I rode to Freshco but noticed on the way that my bike was shifting at the back and feeling like the wheel was going to come off just like it had been before I’d changed the bottom bracket. There was someone breast feeding a baby on the bench beside the ATM. The baby began to cry as I went into my backpack to get my wallet. It wasn’t in the front pocket where it usually is. I looked through the whole pack but my wallet wasn’t there. I figured it must be at home but I went back to Bike Pirates first. When I told my volunteer that the same problem was persisting she assured me defensively that I had definitely needed a new bottom bracket. I had no argument with that but the fact remained that my problem was still there. She looked and saw immediately what the problem was. "You're frame is broken!" She showed me where it had cracked at the dropout. She said I could either find someone to weld it for $100 or $200 or find another frame amongst theirs and transfer my parts. There was no time to deal with that then because they would be closing soon. I left the bike there and went home to get my wallet but it was nowhere to be found. I remembered that my upstairs neighbour had recently had a break-in and thought that maybe someone had stolen my wallet, which contained every piece of identification I had. I went back to Bike Pirates and explained my situation. I said I would try to get a new bankcard the next day and pay them then. My volunteer was sympathetic about my loss. She offered that they could remove the bottom bracket and give me my money back. I took my bike home and ransacked my place but my wallet did not turn up.

            All I could do was make dinner and try to relax. I would deal with what I was going to do about my bike and my identification the next day.

            I had three little potatoes, two chicken drumsticks and some gravy for dinner and watched an episode of Wagon Train.

            The story begins with a smooth talking conman named Riley Gratton in jail and looking out through the window, as the angry townspeople are enthusiastically preparing a tarring and feathering for him. Riley had sold worthless land to them. The young man with the keys to the jail had been Riley’s friend up until his arrest. He gives into Riley’s charm and opens the cell door, saying he had already gotten his horse ready for him an hour before. Later we see Riley ride up to the wagon train. It turns out that Riley served in the Civil War with the Major. The Major is glad to meet an old fellow soldier and invites Riley to stay the night. Riley meets a beautiful young woman named Sarah who is travelling out west in the wagon train with her two brothers. She finds him very charming and he seems to like her as well but not enough to not con her brothers and some other train members into buying the same worthless piece of land he’d sold before. The wagon train is camped out as the men build a bridge to cross a fast river. A few members of the train give Riley a total of $850, which is like $17000 today. Riley hightails it for the nearest town where he loses it all on a crooked roulette wheel. The Major goes after him and gives him a bit of a beating but mostly insists that Riley get the money back from the owner of the saloon. Since the roulette game had been fixed he is not stealing when he goes into Joe McSorley’s office, pulls a gun and takes the $850 back. He gives the money to the Major but gets shot in the shoulder, as he’s getting riding away. Riley heads back to the wagon to tell Sarah he's gone straight. As the Major and Charlie are riding back to the train they are met by McSorley and his men. The Major sends Charlie to the train. McSorley takes the money back from the Major and they get ready to hang him. When Charlie comes back to the train alone Riley knows the Major is in trouble. Riley and Sarah's brothers rescue the Major just in time. Everyone gets their money back and Riley and Sarah get each other. Riley stays with the train and Sarah. The Major tells Sarah's brothers that if they keep Riley with them chances are they’ll end up owning half of California.

            Sarah was played by Karen Steele, who started out as a model. She was in the film “Marty" and played Eve in the Star Trek episode, “Mudd’s Women". She later did TV commercials. She did charity work and married a psychiatrist. 

Bitten by a Bookshelf

            On Sunday morning on my Christian’s Translations blog I got the chords positioned properly for the first verse of “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian. After that I finished posting there “Oh mon amour baiser” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I took everything off the white bookshelf at the southwest corner of my living room and then I lifted it to the middle of the room and washed it. In the process I scraped my pinkie with a rusty nail. I put some hydrogen peroxide on it and kept working. I must have been penetrated by a hundred rusty nails in my life and never got tetanus. Now that I’m older I’m a little more worried about it but not enough to get a shot yet. Now that the bookshelf is white again the area of the floor in front of it that I’d washed two days before didn’t look as bright against it.

            For several years I’ve organized my books according to the Library of Congress system that most university libraries use. But the bookshelf has three shelves for books that are 20 cm, 22cm and 27 cm high; it has forced me to put some books forward on their sides. I decided when I put the books back on the shelf to still follow the system but to zigzag them according to size so they all fit upright. It looks a lot neater that way.

            I had crackers and cheese for lunch.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and then took a bike ride. My intention had been to ride to Bloor and Spadina but after Ossington my bike started feeling like the back wheel was going to fall off. When I looked down I could see it flopping from side to side as I pedaled. When I stopped to look at it the wheel itself was solid but there was some give in and out with the cranks. I only went as far as Bathurst, rode very slowly down to Queen and headed west, all the time worried that the back was going to break off before I got home. Monday was definitely going to have to be an afternoon at Bike Pirates to fix whatever was wrong.

            I had an egg with toast and a beer for dinner while watching an episode of Wagon Train.

            This story begins with Flint the scout leading the train to a spring, only to find that since he was there the year before a town has suddenly built up around it. Tucker the town mayor is a thief and the male population consists mostly of his enforcers as he charges a lot of money for water that used to be free. He asks for a dollar a wagon and twenty-five cents for each head of cattle he gives access to the water. That would be about $20 a wagon now. The Major heads for a nearby town to find a sheriff and see if the mayor has a right to charge for water. Zeke, one of the members of the train is there with Flint. A saloon girl named Violet approaches Zeke and they turn out to be married, even though Zeke is travelling with his young wife Maggie on the wagon train. Violet married Zeke when he was a barge captain on the Mississippi but she ran off. He looked for her for years but concluded she had died and moved on. When mayor Tucker finds out that his girl Violet and Zeke are married he tries to blackmail him for $200. Zeke gives Tucker half a $200 bill and tells him he’ll get the other half when the divorce between him and Violet is finalized. But Violet decides that she doesn’t want to divorce Zeke. She goes to Maggie and tells her that her marriage is void because she’s still married to him. Maggie is understandably upset but especially so because she’s just learned she’s pregnant. She’s about to lave Zeke. Zeke decides the only thing he can do is kill Violet. He goes into town to shoot her at the same time that the wagon train members decide to invade the town and fight Tucker’s men for the water. Violet runs from Zeke and he goes after her and is about to murder her when Flint shoots the gun out of his hand. As Zeke and Flint are standing off Violet runs to Zeke and says he can have Maggie but she doesn’t want him to die. Just then Tucker shoots and kills her. The wagon train people win the war and get their water. Everything is suddenly hunky dory between Zeke and Maggie at the end as if he hadn’t been willing to kill someone. Even though he didn’t murder Violet his efforts to do so created the circumstances in which she died. It’s somewhat disturbing that this was presented as a happy ending.

            Violet was played by K.T. Stevens, who was the daughter of director Sam Wood and who appeared in his second silent film, “Peck’s Bad Boy” when she was two years old. In adulthood she was more successful on stage and in radio than in films but she is remembered for her television role in The Young and the Restless.

            Maggie was played by Janice Rule, who started off as a ballet dancer, then a chorus line dancer in her teens. She became a versatile actor who worked in a wide range of films and TV shows, including the first season of The Twilight Zone in “Nightmare as a Child”. It was said she was best at playing embittered, neurotic socialites. She co-starred in On The Waterfront with Marlon Brando. She married Ben Gazzara. She earned a doctorate in psychology and became a successful psychotherapist in Manhattan after she gave up acting.

           

Swinging Toaster

            Early Saturday morning was the first in a long time when it was so chilly that I had to close my windows. It warmed up later.

            I continued to edit “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog.

            I worked on translating the extra lyrics that I found for “Oh mon amour baiser” by Serge Gainsbourg. Since “baiser" can mean both “kiss” and "fuck" it wasn't really possible to find one word that plays with the double meaning in English and so I just went with "kiss". The song is basically a list of places and ways to kiss and I needed rhyming English versions of the final list:

Baiser sein (kiss breast)

Baiser ventre (kiss stomach)

Baiser rein (kiss kidney - but kidney is also a sexual reference, as in "reach my kidneys")

Baiser hanche (kiss haunch)

Baiser cuisse (kiss thigh)

Baiser tout (kiss all)

            I went with:

Kiss my breast

Kiss my paunch

Kiss my sex

Kiss my haunch

Kiss my thigh

Kiss the rest

            It was still a bit chilly when I was getting ready to leave for the food bank. I considered wearing jeans but it looked like it would warm up while I was in the line-up and so I wore shorts and sandals. I putt a long sleeved shirt in my backpack just in case. The food bank line up was much longer than the week before but then it was abnormally short because of the rain. This would probably be the last long line-up of August.

            When I was locking my bike in front of 1499 Queen West, Bart was there for the first time in a long time, blurting out things due to his condition. He said, “He can’t afford schoolbooks! That’s why he’s fucking stupid!”

            Veronica was already there and I took my place four places after her and behind a blue cart. I walked back up to chat with her. She told me she’d started reading my Food Bank Adventures at newz4u.ca. At first she began reading the most recent but then decided that it would b better to start from the beginning. She said that she took issue with my portrayal of a Christian woman’s happiness as mental illness. I remembered the person she was talking about and I’ve seen the woman a few times since I wrote that. She was referring to “Hypermanic Joy”, my September 11, 2017 post. The woman in question had been extremely exuberant during the waiting period and had told several strangers that they were “good”, “beautiful” and “pretty”. I explained her elation as probably being a hypomanic episode and Veronica was offended that I was denying that she could have been happy simply because she was a Christian. If just being a Christian gave people that level of elation we would be surrounded by ecstatic people all over North America. I told Veronica that I’ve met lots of bipolar people that on the upper end of their mood swings could almost convince someone that they were a divine being, but it had nothing to do with their religious beliefs.

            Veronica told me she was enjoying my posts because there are a lot of characters and they seem like players in a soap opera. I’d never thought of them as soap operatic but I think a TV show about a fictional weekly food bank would be unique and interesting. It could be like one of those edgy sitcoms that often deals with very serious issues while at the same time being funny.

            Someone called out my name and it was Moses, one of my former yoga students from when I volunteered as a teacher at PARC. He was wearing a t-shirt with the message, “Don’t Drink and Derive”. He asked how my French studies were doing. I told him that I’d completed second year FSL at U of T but that it had been very difficult and so I’d decided a few years ago to leave the FSL minor for the last and to work on improving my French on my own. Recently however, upon entering fourth year I’d realized that my minors of FSL and Philosophy were just dragging my GPA down and so I requested to change from an English Major to an English Specialist. That way I could drop FSL and Philosophy, and keep studying French on my own without suffering academically for it. I won’t find out if they’ll allow it until September.

            He asked if I have any postgraduate plans and I told him that I’m hoping to go for the Masters Degree in Creative Writing, but they only accept seven students a year for that program. I said I'd taken a Creative Writing course last winter with Albert Moritz, the new poet laureate of Toronto, and that he’s been helping me edit my book towards publication.

            Moses told me that he’d be auditing a couple of Yiddish courses at U of T this fall. I said that could be fun, since there’s so much humour in Yiddish. He informed me that Yiddish was his first language and he is fluent and so I assume it’s not a Yiddish language course he’ll be auditing but maybe a Yiddish culture course.

            We talked about language as technology and how it transforms over time. He said he’d recently read a book about the history of the semicolon, from the time it first appeared, two years after Columbus set sail and found the new world. I mentioned how aspects of our language have changed drastically even over two hundred years. For example, it wasn’t that long ago when the word “girl” referred to both a male and female child. Very recently we have the expanded definition of the word “genocide” that has gotten some people worked up in protest.

            Moses told me that he’d recently had a tumour removed and since it had been on his heart he wrote the tumour a love poem.

I recounted how just a day before that I’d had a dream in which I learned that songs are the flowers of truth.

We said goodbye and Moses continued west.

I was surprised to see that Graham was back in the food bank line-up, even though he must have gotten paid the day before. I asked, “What are you doing here?” and he answered, “I’m hedging my bets.” He explained that he’d reported his income to Ontario Works and wanted to see how much they deduct from his next cheque before he spends what might have to be rent money on groceries. It turns out that even though we are both on Ontario Works, his situation is different and social services actually sends money directly to his landlord. I hadn’t known that was something that happens but he explained that it’s a deal that Ontario Works makes with landlords to keep tenants from being evicted if they fall two months behind on the rent. This is called “pay direct” and they will also pay for utilities like electricity and heating in the same way.

I talked a little more with Veronica and she wanted to argue towards the existence of god, asking, “How did the universe get here if there is no god?” I countered, “How did god get here?” If god could just be without a creator then so could the universe.

She declared that there is no proof of creation but there is also no proof of evolution. I laughed and said, “Of course there’s proof of evolution! There are fossils!” There are also artefacts. Now there is also genetic proof. She challenged, "Then how did life start?" That's actually a very good question. Graham mentioned panspermia, the idea that life on Earth was seeded from elsewhere in the universe. Most scientists think that life just came about on Earth as a result of the right conditions, the right amount of certain chemicals combining, the right amount of heat, the right amount of electricity and the right amount of water. The conditions for new life forming from scratch no longer exist on our planet and it was probably a one in a zillion chance that it would have happened in the first place.

Graham was talking about the mostly useless items that are offered on the first set of shelves in the food bank. I mentioned the taco kits and he added that there’s never anything offered to put I them unless you want a taco shell with tomato sauce or flavoured mustard. Of the canned goods he said he gets tired of the chickpeas, since there's nothing much that one can do with them but put them in a blender and make hummus. I told him that I put oil and garlic on them and it’s pretty good. His final complaint was about the bread and the fact that it's not sliced. He said it's good bread but he can't fit it in the toaster. I told him that for me a toaster would just be another thing to clean and something that takes up counter space. Ever since I left home as a teenager, if I’ve had access to a kitchen I've just used the oven to make toast. I related how when I was a kid we had an art deco toaster with doors the swung up and down. One would put the bread on the door while it was lying down and swing it up close it. One turned it on by plugging it in. Of course it didn’t toast both sides and so the bread had to be flipped.

While we were talking about bread, Mo was walking by and stopped to say hello to me. I held out my hand to shake his and he instead grabbed my forearm and so I clasped his as well. He asked us what the difference is between "beauty" and "beautiful". I said "beauty" is a noun and Graham said, "beautiful” is an adjective. Mo was not satisfied with our answer and went on to declare that the sun is beautiful and what we see is beauty. Mo was slurring his words and appeared drunk. Graham tried to shake his hand but Mo said he doesn’t shake hands but only does the arm clasp. I've heard him say that before but I've also had him shake my hand. He continued east.

Graham said that where he lives near King and Dufferin is packed and chaotic now that the Canadian National Exhibition is on. I added, "And then there's the air show" expecting to find an ally in hating it, but it turns out that the air show is the only thing Graham likes about the Ex. He shared that "Top Gun" is one of his favourite movies. I told him about a movie from 1994 called “Sleep With Me". It stars Meg Tilly in her last Hollywood film before moving back to Canada to raise her children. There’s nothing outstanding about the film as a whole except for a scene during a party in which Quentin Tarantino explains to some other guests the homoerotic subtext of the movie “Top Gun". 

Marlina didn’t seem to be there this week and there were no numbers given out. Valdene the manager barked that if we weren’t in line we couldn’t go downstairs. Given that everyone she was yelling at was in line it seemed like she just wanted to hear her own voice being authoritative.

It took a long time for them to open and it was after 11:00 by the time the line got moving.

From the shelves I got a box of oven baked corn crackers, a 60-gram pack of pecan pinwheels and a can of chickpeas.

Considering how Graham and I had been talking about how they were always there, ironically there were no taco kits this time. There were boxes of Cheerios and granola bars among other things that I didn’t take.

I reached for some of the “Organic Slammers" pureed fruit snacks but Larissa told me they are baby food. “They're not baby food!" I argued. They're marketed for kids, as there's a drawing of a boy on a skateboard on each container, but they aren’t baby food. She insisted that she'd seen the box they came in and they are baby food. I looked at the Slammer Snacks website and the splash image is a photo of a ten year old kid kicking a soccer ball. Maybe on the box that Larissa saw was the name Baby Gourmet, which is the parent company of Slammer Snacks.

Angie had 2% and 3% milk but that’s too much fat for me so I took a 900 ml bottle of Happy Planet mango and passionfruit smoothie. Angie said I could take two. I didn't want yogourt, eggs or frozen hot dogs, but Angie said for me to wait. She spent about a minute digging to the bottom of the generic frozen meat bin. She pulled out a 450-gram pack of frozen extra lean minced turkey. I took it and appreciated her getting it for me. As I was stepping away she asked if I wanted a big bag of lentil soup. I said, “OK” and she reached into the freezer behind her to grab a 3.68-kilo bag of frozen yellow lentil soup. I exclaimed, “That really is big bag of lentil soup!” She confirmed, “It sure is! Keep it frozen!” I could have used the bag of frozen soup as a weapon.

From the bread section I took a stone-baked rectangular medium pizza-sized flatbread and three cheese bagels.

Sylvia gave me a 680-gram back of little potatoes, two oranges, a couple of mandarins and a pair of apples. From the “Take what you want” section I grabbed the firmest five from a box of overripe plums.

The giant bag of soup and the meat were a good score but it sure was a long wait in line to get them.

I went home to put my food away. Before I headed back out to the supermarket my next-door neighbour Benji told me that our upstairs neighbour had his place broken into the night before while he was in bed sleeping. He woke up and found his door broken. We speculated that it must have been someone David knew because it wouldn’t have been likely that they’d get into the building without a key unless someone let them in. He has lost his building key on more than one occasion. I locked my door when I left.

From No Frills I got a plastic basket of Ontario grapes, two bags of black sable grapes, two bags of cherries, a half pint of raspberries, a basket of peaches, three containers of Greek yogourt, some mouthwash and some shampoo. When I left the supermarket I only had change in my pocket.

I had a beef patty and a big pretzel for lunch.

I did some exercises in the afternoon and then took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst, south to Queen and then home.

I worked on my journal.

For dinner I heated the frozen chicken nuggets that I got from the food bank a few weeks before and watched an episode of Wagon Train.

This story begins with a young man named Tom unknowingly comes too close to a campsite of outlaws. Their leader, the Laramie Kid thinks Tom is there to get the reward for his head but Tom doesn’t know what he's talking about. In Tom's pocket the Kid finds a land patent that Tom’s father earned for fighting in the Civil War and which he’d passed down to him. When the Kid cruelly rips it up Tom grabs a gun from one of the outlaws and fatally shoots the Kid. One of them shoots and wounds Tom and then they take him to a tree to hang. Just then they hear a posse coming and they leave Tom for dead. On the wagon train a wealthy woman named Mary Halstead is travelling out west in hope of tracking down the son she’d abandoned when he was a baby. She has only a few months to live and so she wants to find her boy before he dies. When the wagon train finds Tom still alive Mary is hopeful that it's her son Earl but his scar is on the wrong hand. Nonetheless she feels maternal towards Tom and nurses him back to health. Meanwhile the Laramie gang are out for revenge on the man that killed their leader. Not realizing that Tom is on the wagon train they try to lure it into an ambush to rob it but Tom recognizes and shoots one of them. As the man is dying he says, “First you got Earl and now me!” Tom suddenly realizes that the Laramie Kid was Mary's son. He tries to keep the fact that he killed her son a secret from her but a lawyer that she had hired to track Earl down tells her that her son was the Kid. Mary is upset and sends Tom away. He is captured by the Laramie gang while confronting the lawyer on the trail. They take Tom to hang him again. When Mary learns from the lawyer that Tom is about to be killed, she goes to him even though she is now so weak she can barely walk. She finds the gang about hang Tom and proves to them she is the Kid’s mother. She pleads with them not to kill Tom and argues that Earl would have listened to her. The new leader decides that she may be right but he has to kill one of the men who is not convinced. As the gang rides away, Mary dies in Tom’s arms.

Mary was played by the great Agnes Moorhead, who started out as a child singing in church and later became a dancer and singer in the St Louis Opera. She earned a Doctorate in Literature. In the late 1920s she became involved radio acting and was the voice of many famous characters. When she signed a contract with MGM pictures she insisted that she still be allowed to work in radio. She was so versatile that she was impossible to typecast. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Magnificent Ambersons and then three more times after that. She was the first woman to host the Oscars. One of her most acclaimed television roles was in The Twilight Zone episode, "The Invaders" in which she plays a mute woman alone in a remote prairie farmhouse being confronted by tiny aliens from outer space. Her most famous part on television was that of Endora the witch on Bewitched.

Songs Are the Flowers of Truth

            On Friday morning I dreamed about a family consisting of a daughter with close-cropped hair and her parents. I may have been the daughter, the observer or both. The family has no hope but in terrorism until someone gives them two pieces of luggage. One piece is an old style large suitcase and the other is a cylindrical canister with a shoulder strap that the daughter uses. Inside of these containers are a large variety of beautiful flowers, which they make into bouquets. The giver says, “I will return to see how you have used these flowers of truth."

            I woke up and got up to pee. When I got back to bed I had a related dream in which I learned that the flowers of truth are songs.

            The dreams put me in a good mood and on top of that the humidity was much lower than usual and so my guitar didn’t go out of tune as much during song practice.

            I continued to edit “J’suis snob" by Boris Vian on my Christian's Translations blog. Maybe it would have been quicker to just fiddle with the html when I first tried to post it.

            I worked out the chords to “Oh mon amour baiser” by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French with my guitar but when I started doing it in English I realized that I hadn't translated the extra lyrics that I'd found.

            I slid my couch out to the middle of the room and pulled the white bookshelf away from the wall so I could wash the northwest corner of my living room floor. I cleaned an area twelve boards wide and a little over a metre long. But now that it’s bright there the bookshelf looks soiled and crappy, so next I'll have to take everything off the bookshelf and wash that. I think it’ll take two more weeks to finish the living room.

            I had a chicken drumstick for lunch and some yogourt.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises and then took a very slow bike ride in easy gears so as not to strain my knee. It’s not as much fun to ride slow, but maybe I'll get to a point where I'll consider it a race and I'll strive to be the slowest person on the road, getting pissed off if someone allows me to pass them.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I received five offers for work in October and November at OCADU but could only take two of them because of my course schedule.

            I did a little more work on my review of David Jure's "The Patient English".

            I weighed 90.3 kilos in the evening, so my weight hasn’t really changed from three months ago despite the fact that I haven't taken any long bike rides this summer.

I had three little potatoes, two drumsticks and gravy for dinner while watching Wagon Train.

This story begins with a small group of soldiers and one Native woman being attacked by what appears to be a Cherokee raiding party but they are Lupon in disguise. This might be a made up tribe because I can’t a tribe with a name that even resembles that. The wagon train men hear the gunfire and so Flint and two other men ride to investigate. They help to fight off the raiders. The commanding officer and two other soldiers are killed, leaving Lieutenant Avery and two of his men. They are on their way to deliver a treaty to Chief Dark Cloud of the Lupon and they are escorting his daughter Mokai from Washington. The Major tells Flint to travel with the soldiers and make sure the treaty gets to Dark Cloud. Avery is now in command but he does not treat Mokai very well. One of the soldiers, Private Sumter keeps looking for opportunities to sexually assault Mokai until Flint intervenes. They fight and when Sumter pulls a gun, Avery shoots him. We learn that Lupon brave Running Horse is leading the raids with the intention of preventing the treaty from reaching Dark Cloud because he wants to become chief and he wants war. Mokai confronts Avery about his unfriendliness. She says that if she and he cannot be friends how can their two peoples? Avery gradually softens towards her but he has a secret agenda regarding her father. Fifteen years before Dark Cloud slaughtered Avery’s family and so he is contemplating revenge. Flint senses this and warns him that preventing future deaths is more important than his revenge. There are several raids and Avery is the only soldier left by the time they reach the Lupon village. Avery does not kill Dark Cloud and he and Mokai exchange gifts.

It was kind of a lame story with some very fake looking and talking Natives.

Mokai was played by Susan Kohner, who is the daughter of Lupita Tovar. Susan was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role in “Imitation of Life”. She gave up acting to raise a family in the early 60s.

            

Margo

            On Thursday morning I continued editing “J’suis snob” on my Christian’s Translations.

            I tried to figure out the chords for “Oh mon amour baiser” by Serge Gainsbourg but about halfway through I started hearing them differently and so I wasn’t sure if I had them right. I’ll probably nail them with a fresh rain on Friday.

            I removed the drawers from my desk and washed the insides and the front. Then I cleaned all of the drawers inside and out. I’d thought it was only going to take a few minutes but I laboured for an hour. I’ve officially cleaned the front part of my living room. 

            Most of the rest of the project will involve pulling my couch out to wash the floor behind.

            I made a salad of white radish, cucumber and grape tomatoes with flaxseed oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic. I had that and the last of my sausages for lunch.

            I did some exercises and then took a very slow bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. I took it easy because I want my knee to get better but I still want to be able to ride. I think I only passed one person the whole ride. I stopped at Freshco on the way home. I was approaching the watermelons when a middle-aged woman with an eastern European accent asked me if I knew how to tell which is a good watermelon. I told her that I’ve never learned how to test them and so I just take one. She said the Chinese seem to be very good at picking them.

            Here’s what they say online. A watermelon should feel heavy for its size. If it has a small creamy yellow area on its underside it’s ripe. Tape the underbelly and listen for a deep, hollow sound. That will be a good one. I’ll try it next time.

            The grapes were all too soft and so were the cherries but I got one bag of cherries anyway. I bought three bags of milk, a can of coffee, a box of early Grey tea and a carton of spoon size shredded wheat.

            I got caught up on my journal, but while I was at the computer I was smelling rotting dead things and I was wondering if it was me. I realized that it was garbage night and the Coffeetime had put out their bins for pickup.

            I weighed myself for the first time in several weeks and I’m at 91.4 kilos. Exactly three months ago I was 91 kilos.

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had two for dinner with three little potatoes and some gravy while watching Wagon Train. This story was quite predictable. It begins with a man on the wagon train entertaining the other members at night with “The Ballad of Yellow John Thurmand”, a story about a man that gave in to fear and did not fight when a wagon train was massacred. Also listening is the Darro family, Aline, John and Tommy. Tommy tells his parents that the song makes him hate John Thurmand. It’s easy to guess from their reactions that John Darro is really John Thurmand, having changed his name and trying to forget the past, while keeping it a secret from his son and everyone else. Along the way the wagon train picks up an old drunk named Briscoe who is a survivor of the massacre. When Briscoe recognizes John as Thurmand he blackmails him for whisky but one night while too drunk he reveals to the whole train that John Darro is really John Thurmand. Tommy says he hates his father. Most of the travellers want to kick Darro and his family off the train but the Major says that would be like murdering them. There is a hostile tribe out there that could attack at any minute. Briscoe gets drunk and wanders off. The Major, figuring Briscoe has been captured by tribesmen head north to try to retrieve him. But after they leave John finds a trail of Briscoe leading south and rides out alone to find him. He tracks Briscoe to a wooded area where he has twisted his ankle. Not wanting help from Darro and not believing h came looking for him alone, Briscoe calls out for the Major and attracts a Native raiding party. They are captured. The Major and the men learn what’s happened and go after Darro and Briscoe. We find the two captives tied up with Darro being calm and Briscoe panicking. The Major cuts through the tent and cuts them free but they are jumped as they try to. John saves them by killing the warrior guard. Now he’s a hero and the lyrics to the song are changed.

            Briscoe was played by Edgar Buchanon, who played Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction.

            Darro was played by Eddie Albert, who was the star of the Petticoat Junction spin-off, “Green Acres”.

            Aline Darro was played by Eddie Albert’s real life wife, whose full name was Maria Margarita Guadalupe Teresa Estella Castilla Bolado y O’Donnell, but her professional name was simply Margo. She was born in Mexico City, the daughter of a Spanish surgeon. She was the niece of bandleader Xavier Cugat and performed as a dancer in his orchestra from the age of nine. She lived with her aunt in New York City and was cast at the age of fifteen as the lead in the film, "Crime Without Passion". She worked throughout the 1950s in television and film until her career was sidelined by the blacklist. Although she was not a communist, she was known for her progressive views and she was labelled a communist because of her support of The Hollywood Ten, her pacifism and her support for refugees. After appearing at an anti-Franco rally she needed a bodyguard because people were spitting at her in the streets. Her husband Eddie Albert was also blacklisted but because he served in WWII and was somewhat of a hero he was removed from the blacklist after the war. In 1970 she co-founded Plaza de la Raza (Place of the People), a cultural centre for arts and education, which is still in operation today. She became the Commissioner of Social Services for the city of Los Angeles. She was married to Eddie Albert for 39 years, until she died in 1985.