Sunday 30 July 2023

Sylvia Field


            On Saturday morning it was the beginning of the eleventh year of this journal. 
            I blog published "Be Sweet With Me", which is my translation of "Plus doux avec moi" by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song "Pour ce que tu n’étais pas" (For Someone You Were Not). 
            I played the Kramer electric guitar during song practice. On Sunday I'll begin two days of playing my Martin acoustic. 
            I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in ten days.
            The waiting period cleared on Friday for me to try to enroll in the two Creative Writing courses I'm interested in. They gave priority to students with a Creative Writing minor until July 28, so now I'm on waiting lists for both of them and if ten students drop out of Poetry I'll be in. I'm number 22 on the Short Fiction waiting list. But these are only classes of twenty and so for ten people to drop out it might not be very likely. Maybe the course that starts in January is a bigger possibility. 
            In the late morning I walked over to the hardware store to buy rechargeable AAA batteries. The display on the thermostat in the hallway went dead yesterday but when I put the new batteries in it came back on. Not that we need it for the furnace right now but I find it convenient that it displays the temperature. The landlord owes me $17. 
            I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my August plan and it was the first time in a long time that there was no one ahead of me. Whoever is ahead usually is either buying a phone or has some other time consuming issue. 
            I went to No Frills where the Canadian peaches are finally in and so I bought a basket. I also got five bags of cherries, two packs of blueberries, a bag of naan, dental floss, salsa, and three small containers of President's Choice skyr. They never seem to have the large containers on Saturdays. The stocker told me he put a bunch of them in the fridge a day or so ago and so I guess they are popular. I find the PC skyr to be less sour than the Siggis skyr. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade.
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00. 
            I spent half an hour on the deck chiseling fossils from slate. I knocked out a couple of small pieces of green root. I'll probably be done with these rocks in a couple of weeks. 
            I was caught up in my journal at 18:23. 
            I compared the video of my June 25 acoustic performance of "Megaphor" with the one on July 5. Although one doesn't distinctly sound superior to the other, July 5 looks a lot better because of how the light is coming in and so July 5 wins. I compared July 5 to July 8 and July 5 not only looks better but I'm firmer with the chords and there is less traffic noise, so July 5 is still ahead. I compared July 5 to July 9 and it was hard to make a decision but I think July 5 looks a little better and has a little more power. So July 5 is still ahead. I compared July 5 to July 10 and I think July 5 sounds and looks better. I compared July 5 with July 14 and though July 14 looks pretty good it's got some flaws in the sound, and so July 5 will be the acoustic version of "Megaphor" that I'll upload to YouTube. Now I have thirteen electric guitar versions of the song to re-review and decide which one of those will go online. 
            In Audacity I synchronized the master vocal track with the one on the drum track for my song Sleep in the Snow at the point where the vocals begin after the instrumental. It was just a matter of deleting some of the calm space where the drums pause at the end. The drum track is far from perfect because I'm not a drummer but it's the only one I have. When I make the video I'm thinking that I'll make one with the drums in the soundtrack and one without. The drums don't sound as good during the instrumental and I considered isolating them from where the instrumental begins at 3:01.590 and lowering the volume or just removing them and replacing them with the snare track but I decided that might sound dumb. I think I'll go with what I have such as it is and start thinking about the video. 
            I scanned what is probably the last strip of negatives from the shots I took of my ex-girlfriend Whitefeather and her son Thomas when we went to visit him at St. John's Training School in Uxbridge in the early 1980s. I started scanning a set of colour negatives from the end of the summer of 1991 when we took my baby daughter to the Canadian National Exhibition for the first time. 
            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, honey-garlic sausages and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the season 3 finale and the season 4 premier of Petticoat Junction. 
            In the first story Betty Joe wants to buy Willie's motorbike, which is one of those old style motorized bicycles that has pedals and a chain so it can go without the motor. But Betty doesn't have the $24 that Willie is asking. There is a funny haggling process as Betty, Kate, and Willie discuss the price. Betty says he's asking $23. Willie says $24. Betty says, "But you'd take $23". Willie says $23.50. Betty says, "Mom, where could you find a motorbike like this for $22?" Willie says $23. Willie says it only goes ten kilometers an hour. Betty says she'll give him $19. Willie says $22.50. Betty tells her mother $20 for a motorbike is a real bargain. Willie says $21. Kate asks where she would get the $17 for the bike. Willie says $19. Kate says her Christmas budget is $15. Willie says $16. Then he says $15 without the headlights. Betty tries to get work babysitting for fifty cents an hour but the mother will only agree if Kate supervises and so the baby is brought to the Shady Rest. The baby always cries in Betty's arms and so Kate does all the work. More work is offered until there are eight babies under Kate's care. The dog keeps calling to be fed but it is told that babies come first. Finally all of the babies' bottles disappear and the empties are found with the dog. Betty makes $11. The dog is still being ignored and leaves. Late that night the dog comes back with Willie and the motorcycle. Willie says the dog came and coaxed him there. Willie is willing to trade his motorcycle for the dog but Betty says no.
            The second story introduces the third and final Billie Joe Bradley, although she doesn't play a prominent role in this episode. As usual, Joe has pushed forward a money making scheme for the hotel without consulting Kate. He has advertized the Shady Rest as a wedding and honeymoon haven with a free wedding and honeymoon to the couple that writes the best letter. Hundreds of letters arrive but one stands out. A couple says their families won't let them get married and so they have to elope and this contest is their only chance. It's a Romeo and Juliet type romance and so Tony and Laura are the winners. But when they arrive on the train it turns out that they are an elderly couple and that the families that won't let them marry are their adult children. The wedding is held but when the priest asks for just cause of them not getting married Tony's son Herbert and Laura's daughter Violet walk in the door to stop the wedding. They say their parents are behaving like adolescents so Kate tries to use a strategy to get Violet and Herbert to leave them alone. She tells them to treat them like adolescents and use reverse psychology, telling them they can do what they want but thinking they will do the opposite. But after Violet and Herbert leave, Tony and Laura have an argument about each other's children and now don't want to get married. Joe tries to make Tony jealous by taking Laura on a romantic canoe ride. Tony is jealous but pretends not to be. Joe and Laura return soaking wet because the canoe tipped over. Then Violet and Herbert return with the judge and say they were wrong. It becomes a double wedding as Violet and Herbert get married too. 
            Laura was played by Sylvia Field, who made her Broadway debut at the age of 17 in The Betrothal. Her first movie was the 1928 silent film The Home Girl. She married actor Ernest Truex in 1941 and in 1949 co-starred in "The Truex Family", one of the earliest TV sitcoms. She played Mrs. Remington for three years on the sitcom "Mr. Peepers". She played Aunt Lila on the Disney sitcom "Annette". She played Martha Wilson in ninety episodes of "Dennis the Menace".






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