Walt Whitman

            On Thanksgiving after midnight I did a search for bedbugs before going to sleep and found none. I'd hoped these searches had ceased to be necessary but finding one on Sunday morning after a month made me feel I have to be on the lookout. If I go a few days without seeing another I'll relax again. 

            I worked on editing "On n'est pas des grenouilles" (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations in preparation for publication on the blog. It should be finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading Henry IV part 1 just before lunch. 

            I started making cranberry sauce and after the berries had boiled down halfway I added honey. 

            I weighed 90 kilos before lunch. While eating I continued to read The Scarlet Letter. Hester reveals to Dimmesdale that Chillingworth, the man who's been slowly killing him under the pretense of being his physician is her ex-husband. Hester and Dimmesdale decide while meeting in the forest to run away together. He will give up being a minister and they will go back to Europe. She throws away her scarlet letter but when her daughter returns to her from playing in the woods she refuses to aspproach her because she's not wearing the letter. Hester puts it back on. I had about twenty pages left when I took a siesta.

            I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. The corner of Yonge and Dundas was crowded with people and traffic. The preachers were out in force. Yonge Dundas Square was strangely almost empty. When I got home my neighbour Benji asked if I had any speaker wire because his stereo stopped making noise. I opened my big drawer of wires and cables and found some right away. 

            The cranberry sauce turned out pretty good. 

            I finished reading The Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale delivers the sermon of his life and afterwards while walking through the adoring crowd he comes to Hester Prynne and Pearl. He calls them to join him on the scaffold where he confesses his sin to the crowd and then dies. Chillingworth is foiled by this action and grows old almost immediately. He turns out to be very rich and leaves everything to Pearl including great property in England and North America. Pearl settles in England with her mother but eventually her mother returns to Boston and her little hut. She again dons the scarlet letter but now as a badge of honour. She becomes somewhat of a guru, especially for women. 

            I sent my poetry manuscript to Exile Editions. 

            I started reading Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. It seems to be more a song of the United States about to be shattered by Civil War and which he unites in the diverse poems united in the poem. 

            I coated the little Cornish hen with olive oil, salt and chili powder. I had half of it with a potato, gravy, cranberry sauce and a beer while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story two teenage females are having sodas in the Bluebird Cafe. Jill is confident and popular with boys while Molly is somewhat of a wall flower. A boy comes in that Molly likes and he asks Jill on a study date. They leave Molly alone, forgetting that Jill was supposed to pay for Molly's soda. Molly tells the waiter she has no money but Gomer happens to be there and comes to the rescue, paying for Molly's soda. The next day Molly meets Gomer at the gate of Camp Henderson and offers to repay the soda. Gomer is on his way to meet Lou Ann but he's early and so he accepts Molly's offer. When Lou Ann arrives at the Blue Bird they invite Molly to come to the movies with them. But after that Molly attaches herself to Gomer on every date and she tells her friends that Gomer is her boyfriend. After Molly sends Gomer a love letter that he considers to be a bread and butter letter Lou Ann educates him that Molly has a crush. She urges him to let Molly down without breaking her heart because she went through the same thing at fifteen. Lou Ann goes home and Gomer meets Molly. When Gomer learns that Molly had been invited to a party at Jills place that night he asks her to take him there. Gomer is a big hit dancing to rock and roll with Molly but it also attracts the attention to Molly of boys her own age. That is what Gomer hoped would happen and now that her confidence has been built up she begins dating other teenagers, forgetting about Gomer. 

            Molly was played by Joy Ellison, who appeared several times from the age of five on The Andy Griffith Show as a schoolmate and love interest of Opie. 

            Jill was played by Mary Anne Durkin, who had guest appearances on several TV series.