Ethiopian New Year

            On Thursday morning I translated a couple more lines of "Complaint due progress" by Boris Vain.

            I almost finished memorizing “La cible qui bouge” by Serge Gainsbourg. It has kind of a country sound to it but really country might have gotten it from Acadia anyway.

            I washed another eight boards of my living room floor, or more like seven and a half. The seventh board took me up against the dresser in the corner but the eighth board extends out from the side of the dresser along the front of the radiator. Now the whole living room floor is clean except for the area where the dresser sits in the southwest corner.

            For lunch I had the rest of the macula ratio with potato chips.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish has gotten $400 as an insurance payment for an electrical fire in his home that destroyed some of his furniture. Sapphire insists that he put the money in the bank but first he cashes it in $1 bills so he can lie down and cover himself with money. His lawyer Gabby convinces him that he can double the $400 overnight by investing it and so he calls an investor who assures him that he can double it overnight by investing in Brazilian brass mines. He says he has seen the mines personally and that there are mountains of brass along the Amazon stretching as far as the eye can see. Of course the next day the money is not doubled since there is no such thing as a brass nine. Kingfish comes for his $800 and finds Frank Morgan packing to leave town. Fortunately Amos has senses that Morgan is crooked and calls the police. Morgan gives Kingfish back his $400 plus another $100. Later Sapphire tells Kingfish that she has ordered her new furniture from a company called Frank Morgan’s Brazilian furniture and it will arrive in two weeks.

I took a bike ride. I stopped at BMV to see if they had Patter’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance, but they didn’t. I rode to Bloor and University, south to Queen and then west. I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought a basket of peaches, a basket of nectarines, a field tomato, some two-year-old cheddar, two outside round steaks, a container of Greek yogourt, a can of coffee, some baking soda toothpaste and a pack of paper towels.

            When I got home I worked on my journal.

            There was a knock on my open door and it was my upstairs neighbour David. He wanted to buy me something to eat but I told him I already had a steak to grill. He seemed to have his heart set on getting me something anyway and told me that it was Ethiopian New Year. I asked him what they eat for New Years and he said usually lamb. I let him get me something and he brought back a cardboard container with a meal of spicy lamb, salad, rice and yogourt that he bought from Ali Baba. I read that some Ethiopians associate their New Year or Enkutatash with the return of the Queen of Sheba from visiting Solomon. Some scholars say that the Queen of Sheba never existed and others argue that Solomon didn’t either, since references to either of these figures can only be found in the Hebrew Bible.

            For dinner I had one of the steaks, four little potatoes and some gravy while watching Wagon Train.

            This story presented an interesting moral dilemma for the Major as leader of a wagon train. A bee stings one of the horses pulling the Barrister wagon and they go out of control, causing Jenny Barrister to be thrown from the wagon and hard against a rock. Her husband Daniel belongs to a Christian sect that is against medical intervention. The Major tries to respect the beliefs of his passengers but Jenny is crying out in pain every night and the other members of the train protest. We hear that a few months before that Daniel’s daughter died of a fever because Daniel refused to let a doctor treat her. The Major goes to ask Jenny what she wants and although she is of the same faith as Daniel, she begs for a doctor. Daniel says he will kill anyone that intervenes. The Major sends Flint to the nearest settlement but it turns out that the town is under quarantine because of a smallpox epidemic. Flint charges past the guards and barges into the doctor’s office where he finds a young man sleeping. The young man is Dr. Culver, fairly fresh from medical school. The doctor agrees to go and examine Jenny but tells Flint he will have to stay for fear that he will carry the smallpox. He inoculates Flint and heads out. As he approaches the wagon train the Major comes out to meet him but the doctor tells the Major to stay back. He says he will need a tub of hot water, some lye soap and a clean set of clothes. The Major lends him his own oversize clothing. The doctor tells the Major to continue the wagon train on its way but to leave the Barrister wagon behind. Daniel stands ready with a shotgun as the young doctor approaches but the doctor is the son of a minister and they wind up in a scripture battle until Dr Culver out-quotes him, convincing him that Biblical law demands that he save his wife’s life. Daniel lowers his gun and the doctor operates to repair a fractured rib that is puncturing Jenny’s lung.

            I looked for Christian sects that refuse medical help and found The Followers of Christ, which have child mortality rate ten times the average. The Followers of Christ sprang from the Pentecostal Church in the 19^th Century and are a likely model for Barrister’s faith.

            Jenny was played by Peg Hillias, who played Stella’s neighbour Eunice in “A Streetcar Named Desire”.