Mary Shelley

            On Sunday There was hardly any white left in the snow banks along Queen Street and they were looking pretty flat, almost like old dirty knife blades lying on their sides without handles.

            My afternoon siesta lasted an extra hour.

             I weighed 92.4 kilos when I got up.

            I re-read several more pages of Frankenstein and made notes along the way. I also read several more pages of Gretchen Henderson’s “Ugliness: a Cultural History”. I’ve got four pages of notes so far. Here’s some interesting stuff:

Victor Frankenstein’s remarkably secluded and domestic upbringing had given him an invincible repugnance to new countenances. Victor rejected Monsieur Krempe and his scientific doctrine based on his repulsive countenance and the gruff sound of his voice. Monsieur Waldman was attractive to Victor and had the sweetest voice ever heard and so his ideas were accepted. Of the death of Victor’s little brother William, the declaration that “Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child” ignores the thousands of atrocities that had been committed by humans throughout history. “The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact” is something a scientist would not say. “I considered him in the light of my own vampire. My own spirit let loose from the grave.” This suggests that he thought of the possibility of the monster being his own dark aspect or doppelganger. The first physical description of Victor’s mother is presented in a painting that his father had commissioned which depicted her kneeling in agony at her father’s coffin. Why would someone want to remember one’s wife in this manner? Was she most beautiful to Victor’s father when she was in grief? Justine while on death row was rendered by the solemnity of her feelings exquisitely beautiful to the eyes of Victor. If beauty arises as a result of dark circumstances then what does that say about ugliness? Justine’s beauty was obliterated in the minds of her accusers. Victor imagined himself suffering more than someone about to be executed for a crime she did not commit. Elizabeth says “Misery has come home” and “Men appear to me as monsters”. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature solemnized Victor’s mind. The presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene. The monster and Victor have the mountains in common. They meet on common ground. Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to the brute? The monster’s second sentence is, “All men hate the wretched”. Misery made me a fiend. If my creator abhors me what hope can I gain from his fellow creatures that owe me nothing? Mary Godwin considered her stepmother to be disgusting and Mary’s father could not reconcile the monstrous parent-child dynamics that emerged between his daughter and his wife and so he sent Mary away. As Shelley’s mother wrote, “A great proportion of the misery that wanders in hideous forms around the world is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents.”

            There was a skinny, slight young blonde woman in a hoody outside that looked like she might have been a crack addict shouting for my upstairs neighbour David. She was standing just off the edge of the sidewalk in the street in front of the doorway of my building and continuously calling “David!” Finally I opened my window and pointed out to her that David’s window is above the doorway of the donut shop. She said, “Yeah but I’m tryin to stay off the street!” I said, “Okay, but he could hear you better if you stand over there.” She moved over and renewed her serenade. I didn’t get the logic of her needing to stand in the street to be heard. Her voice would have carried just as well from directly under David’s window. I don’t know if he was even home.

            I had a burger on a bagel for dinner and a bran muffin with yogourt for dessert. The muffin was a little too filling.

            I watched an episode of Rawhide. In this story Gil Favor begins to question his judgement in both his decision to take the herd across a dry plain late in the season and in the men he’s hired to help do it. A new drover named Talby is convinced that another named Johnny is really a wanted outlaw named Billy Carter. He says Billy killed his daughter but later we learn that she was killed by someone else that was gunning for Billy, but he blames him anyway. Things keep getting stolen from the other men’s things and Talbot keeps saying it’s Billy that is the thief. As the plain is being crossed and they keep finding dried up holes where water is supposed to be, everyone starts to get on each other’s throats. Friends get into fistfights. Wishbone quits. Another waterhole turns out to be poisoned. Pete, Joe Scarlet and some other men quit. Wishbone stays on. Talbot confronts Johnny and he finally admits that he’s Billy Carter. Billy is ready to have a shootout but Gil steps in. He outdraws Billy and shoots him in the shoulder. It’s discovered though that Billy’s gun is not even loaded and he wanted to die. He shows Talbot the marriage licence from when he ‘d made Talbot’s daughter his wife. From that day she made him empty his gun and he’s kept it empty ever since. She died when someone came gunning for him and she jumped in the way. Suddenly Talbot starts treating Billy like a son and they stay on together with the herd. Gil has given up hope now. They are almost out of water and the herd will soon drop. He admits he was wrong and tells them to leave, but they refuse to go. The other men that left also return, lying that they’d gotten lost. They’ve come from the direction that the herd has to go and they say there’s water over the hill.

            

No Sex For You!

            I dreamed that a man and woman were in my apartment uninvited and I was telling them to leave. My apartment was larger and tidier than the place I’ve lived for the last 22 years, with glass doors separating the rooms. The man and woman were in their thirties and standing in light winter coats as I was chastising them for imposing themselves into another person's space as they were doing. I seemed to know them and they had been guests in my place on a previous occasion. She had shortish dark hair and his was frizzy and brown and balding in the usual places. She left and yet the guy lingered just inside my door. I asked, “Why are you still here?” and he responded, “I was thinking we could have sex.” I said, “Sorry but I’m not gonna have sex with you!” as I escorted him down the hall and made sure he got into the art deco elevator and that the door closed after him.

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing Serge Gainsbourg’s “Cargo Culte”. It’s the last song on his 1971 concept album, “The Ballad of Melody Nelson”. The first song on the album tells of how the speaker meets Melody when his Rolls Royce hits her bicycle. The next few songs deal with the love affair that ensues. Just before “Cargo Culte” is a short song explaining that Melody took a plane that went down in the ocean. “Cargo Culte” talks about the New Guinean shamen of the cargo cult that try to use tribal magic to bring down airplanes so they can pillage their freight.

            At around 9:30 I started feeling sleepy so I decided to wake myself up by heading a couple of hours earlier to the supermarket than usual. It was fairly warm for the season but there were still snow banks and so I wore my Kodiaks. I bought seven bags of black sable grapes, a brick of extra old cheddar, two cheddar smoky sausages, a can of dark roast coffee, some mouthwash and a jug of vinegar.

            After paying for my items I was putting them in my backpack while the customer behind me, a distinguished looking white-haired man with a British accent asked for four bags. He commented to the cashier, “I am a great lover of your bags! They are superior plastic bags!”

            When I was putting my groceries away I looked out the window and saw a young blonde woman walking an Irish setter but as soon as she turned off Queen and wanted to head north on O’Hara the dog stopped and would not budge. It seemed that it was either enjoying the walk on Queen Street and didn’t want it to end or else it knew the destination on O’Hara (perhaps the West Lodge apartment complex) and did not want to go there. The woman tried gentle persuasion with talking and coaxing but it didn’t help. She tried in vain to drag it by the leash a couple of times. Then she crossed the street and the dog came happily along as it pulled towards Queen but as her caregiver or walker turned up O’Hara again the dog once again sat down and refused to move. Finally she said something in its ear and it followed her north with no more resistance.

            In the late afternoon the old lady who begs around the corner of Dunn and Queen was as usual calling out for “Paul”. I actually haven’t seen Paul nor his yellow scooter for a few months. She was saying, “C’mon Paul! Open the door!” Then she crossed Queen and walked east. I’ve never seen her with a phone but maybe she has one and she and Paul aren’t homeless after all, since there’s no door near where she was standing that could have been opened for her.

            I grilled two burgers and had one on a bagel with ketchup, mustard and pickles for dinner while watching Rawhide.

            This story begins with Gil and Rowdy tracking five stray steers. While following their trail they discover evidence that they were driven off by poachers. The clues lead them to a ghost town but no cows. Convinced there is no one there, they are about to leave when they hear a dog barking. They let the dog out of a storm cellar and see that it’s well fed. They then find a man named Matt sitting by himself on the deserted sidewalk. He claims that he’s the caretaker of the silver mine and that he stayed on when it went dry, but he’s the only one in town. As Gil and Rowdy are leaving they hear organ music. Following the music they enter the church where Ed the caretaker is with two women, a Mrs. Miller and her daughter Angie. The mother tells Gil and Rowdy that two days before Matt and his son Waldo captured the stagecoach they’d been on and are holding she and her daughter for ransom from the stage company. Angie insists that she is not a captive because Waldo is going to show her a new life. She wants to get away from her mother because all she’s done since they ran away from her father is to try to teach her to hate men. Gil and Rowdy agree to help the women escape. The advantage goes back and forth. Matt and Waldo hunt Gil and Rowdy through the town until Matt is captured and put in the jail. But then Waldo threatens to kill Angie if Gil and Rowdy don’t give up their guns. Escaping again, Gil and Rowdy find the place where their horses and the missing steers are hidden. Gil tells Rowdy to ride for help but Waldo shoots him off his horse. After Angie runs to help the fallen Rowdy, Waldo beats her up. Gil finds Mrs. Miller’s hidden gun and is pinned down in a hotel room by gunfire from Matt and Waldo. Rowdy recovers and rides the other horse out to distract Waldo long enough for Gil to shoot and kill him. Then Matt is wounded and it’s all over.

            Mrs. Miller was played by Mercedes McCambridge, who won the best supporting actress Oscar for All the King’s Men, was nominated for the same award for “Giant” and was the demon voice in the Exorcist. Orson Welles called her the world’s greatest radio actress.

            Angie was played by Whitney Blake, who later co-created the hit sitcom “One Day at a Time”. 

Ears Plugged

            When I got up on Friday my left ear was plugged, even though I’d flushed it out the day before. So after yoga I boiled my rubber ear syringe and before song practice I gave my ears a few squirts. After that my left ear felt a manageably clearer but suddenly my right ear was so plugged that my ability to hear myself sing and play was severely impaired. My guitar strings might as well have been a barbed wire fence for all the tone I could discern and my voice sounded like it was filtering through a wall. After the second song I went back to the sink and flushed out my ears again. This time some crumbs of wax came out of my right ear and I was able to hear myself.

            My weight that afternoon was at 92.6 kilos, which is slightly overweight but not too bad for winter weight. Four hours later, feeling hungry and just before preparing dinner, I was 91.9 kilos.

            I’ve re-read almost half of Frankenstein and spent quite a bit of time researching my essay to find any writing on how each new age challenges the perception of ugliness of the previous age. Specifically I’m interested in how Romanticism changed the perception of beauty from that of the age of Enlightenment.

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner and watched rawhide.

            In this story the trail drive has to cross a treacherously windy and dusty mountain plateau that ends in a narrow pass. Gil hires extra men in the town before the climb. Some of the men are of questionable character. One very educated man who knows nothing about cattle asks to be hired on just on the merits of the fact that he has a wagon. Gil needs extra wagons and so Tom gets the job, but he secretly brings along Sally. Shortly after this a powerful rancher named Devereaux comes looking for his wife and wants to search the camp. Gil doesn’t know Sally is there but says Devereaux can’t poke around his camp. The next day when Rowdy sees Tom he attacks him. After a second attack Rowdy finally explains that he and Tom her both in the same prisoner of war camp, but Tom had cooperated with the Union and received better treatment. Gil discovers that Sally is hiding in Tom's wagon and intends to turn her over to Devereaux but she explains that they had just been married the day before against her will because it was a family arranged marriage. She had been engaged to Tom for years before that. One of the new Drovers is a Mexican named Arkansas who tries to steal the money Gil carries at the point of a shotgun. From behind Arkansas comes Rowdy and there is a standoff as Arkansas says he’ll shoot Gil even while Rowdy’s bullet is killing him. Gil calmly tells Rowdy to shoot Arkansas and that if he dies he has to take over the herd. Arkansas is so impressed he gives up and asks to stay on with the drive. Gil believes that he can trust Arkansas now and from then on Arkansas is always there to fight Devereaux and his men. Devereaux doesn’t care that Sally doesn’t want to be with him. Tom turns himself in to Devereaux and he is about to be hanged. Gil convinces Devereaux that if Sally goes with him just to save Tom he’ll never be able to live down the fact that he stole another man’s woman. Devereaux gives up.

            Sally was played by Canadian actor Olive Sturgess.

Locoweed

            On Thursday I did a little more research for my essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I read some more of Gretchen Henderson’s Ugliness: a Cultural History. She’s a very good writer and I like how her epigraph is a quote from Frank Zappa’s “What Is the Ugliest Part of Your Body?”

            I re-read another chapter of Frankenstein. I’ve noted that Victor believes that how people appear on the surface reflects how they are inside.

            I started working on a new poem based on an online argument I had over a year ago with a Nazi who’d been at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. I spent two hours on it but it’ll take another two or more to start pulling it together into a poem.

            At 20:00 I put a potato on the stove to boil and then I headed down to Freshco to buy yogourt and grapes.

            On my way out of the supermarket a cyclist was standing there with his bike and blasting electronic dance music.

            When I got home I had just enough time to heat a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner.

            I watched an episode of Rawhide. The concept of adventures occurring on a trail drive is a lot less formulaic that town based western stories involving lawmen.

            A new and young drover named Roy discovers a dead man hanging by his feet and branded with an “S”. A new and more experienced recruit named Rivera, who is familiar with this particular territory, says that the “S” is the mark of a powerful bandit named Sanchez. The men begin to notice riders all around them. Roy sees Rivera gathering a certain weed near the grave they dug for the hanged man. He takes some himself and asks Rowdy about it. Rowdy says it’s coyote weed and that he shouldn’t be carrying it around because it’s deadly to cows and humans. Roy passes on that warning to Rivera, who explains that he has a wound and he uses a Mexican recipe for a poultice that calls for coyote weed. Rivera secretly ties a bandana to a tree that can be seen from the hills. A little later Roy falls from his horse and twists his ankle. Gil yells at him for not checking his equipment because it was clear that his saddle was not fully secured. It isn’t mentioned but it seems obvious that Rivera sabotaged Roy's saddle. That night lightning is spooking the cattle and so the men have to go out on their horses and calm the herd. Roy is supposed to stay off his feet and just help Wishbone for a couple of days but he disobeys orders and mounts up to go and help calm the cattle. He gets cornered by a panicking section of cows and calls out for help but Gil needs to save the herd. Roy falls from his horse and is trampled to death. For most of the rest of the story Rowdy is pissed off at Gil for caring more about cattle than people. That night after eating Wishbone’s stew, most of the men get seriously sick. Gil recognizes the symptoms as those from coyote weed poisoning. He says everyone has to be searched and then suddenly Rivera says he’s going for water. Gil tells Rowdy to gather everyone’s saddlebags but on a hunch Rowdy follows Rivera ad finds him trying to get away. They have a long fight until Gil arrives. Rivera is tied to a wagon wheel. Sanchez and his men are waiting in the hills for the drovers to drop from the poison so they can sweep in and steal the herd. Wishbone sends Mushy out for the herbs he needs to concoct an antidote. He asks for white horse nettle, silver leaf, nightshade and black henbane. I think most of those are all forms of deadly nightshade.

            All the men are forced to drink the antidote, except that one keeps spitting it out and dies. While the men are recovering Gil insists that the men pretend not to be sick in order to fool Sanchez. Then he tells them all to go and pretend to collapse by the watering hole and to wait until Sanchez and his men are three meters away before they fire. Meanwhile Rivera gets away and Gil goes after him. Sanchez is coming and the men want to help Gil but Rowdy orders them to stay put. They do so and when the shooting begins they have the advantage. When it’s all over they think Gil has died and blame Rowdy for sacrificing him but Gil emerges alive. I guess it's some sort of lesson but I don’t buy that it ties in with the incident of Roy’s death. Rowdy wasn’t just saving the herd but all the men that would have been cut down if they’d gone to save Gil.

I can’t find any reference to coyote weed but it’s probably what is commonly called locoweed, which is also poisonous. There is no antidote for locoweed so it seems that Wishbone’s recipe was fictional. 

New Art Must Contain Elements of Ugliness

            On Wednesday morning I spent a couple of hours researching my essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I finished skimming through Violence and Crime in 19^th Century England but there’s not much there to support my argument. I re-read the opening letters in Frankenstein that introduce Victor in the arctic just before he begins to tell his story. 

            I ran out of milk and fruit and so at midday I rode down to No Frills where I bought the five bags of black sable grapes they had and three bags of milk.

            I finished listening to Kate Bush’s home demos from when she was a teenager and before anyone had heard of her. Most of the songs are just her accompanying herself on the piano and most of them are better than her later work. She sang like a bird in those days.

            I skimmed the book The Ugly Laws and found it was another dead end as far as research for my essay is concerned. The laws against ugliness the book talks about were implemented in the United States so I can’t apply them to the era of Frankenstein.

            I had one piece of toast with old cheddar and a handful of potato chips for dinner while watching Rawhide.

            In this story the trail drive comes across a preacher named Brother Bent sitting by himself and reading the Bible in the middle of nowhere during a drought. He tells them he was driven from town for preaching against greed. It turns out that Brother Bent is an expert drover and so Gil hired him on. Brother Bent carries in his pocket a chunk of gold larger than any the men have ever seen but he refuses to say the name of the town from where it came. Some of the men get Bent drunk and he reveals the name. Meanwhile a group of cowboys without a herd are following Gil’s drive. When he confronts them their leader says they lost their herd to Texas fever and he admits that their intention had been to steal some cows from Gil. Gil takes away their ammunition and lets them go. Most of Gil’s men, after they find out the name of the town where gold is supposed to be, quit the herd. Gil finds the outlaw drovers in the nearest town and offers them jobs but their leader says he wants to buy Gil’s herd but at a price by which his backers will be at a loss. Gil has no choice but to take the deal. That night though as he and the handful of men he has left are sleeping. The money is stolen. Rowdy suggests they go to the town that Brother Bent had named. It turns out to be a ghost town. There he finds the men that had deserted him asking to be taken back. They tell him that Wishbone’s helper Mushy has gone missing from their group. The men go after the outlaw drovers and his lost herd. There they find mushy being forced to work as their cook. Mushy tells Gil that they stole the money and so Gil declares the deal off and reclaims his herd. Their leader though, who used to work for Gil aims to shoot him. Brother Bent, who was part of the scam all along steps between the gunman and Gil. He throws his lump of gold at him and that gives Gil enough time to shoot the outlaw. It seems all of Brother Bent’s fake preaching have turned him into a real man of “god” and so that’s what he goes off to be.

            Before bed I started reading some of Gretchen Henderson’s Ugliness: a Cultural History, and I think there’s stuff in there that I can use for my essay. It may be that for new art to come into being it must contain elements of ugliness to challenge and redefine our understanding of beauty.

Laws Against Ugliness

            Every morning, about halfway through my song practice, a westbound streetcar stops in front of my building and the driver goes inside the donut shop to get a coffee. Recently he’s started to look up at my window while I’m playing and on Tuesday, on his way back into his vehicle he turned, looked up, called to me with a smile and gave me the shaka “hang loose” hand gesture with thumb and little finger stretched out and the three middle fingers folded in. That made me feel good.

            I worked on doing research for my essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I wanted to try to find a link between child neglect and violent crime but the statistics that I’ve found to back that up are modern. One thing interesting that I came across is that it was actually a crime in the 19^th Century to be ugly in public. People with grotesque features or unsightly physical deformities were not allowed to hang around on the street. As recently as 2004 a beggar with a large and ugly growth on his neck was kicked out of a small English town. And so if the monster had not been superior to other human’s in every way but in his aesthetic appearance and thereby able to avoid detection or capture, he probably would have ended up in prison, a workhouse or a freak show.

            I skimmed through a few chapters of Violence and Crime in 19^th Century England and I re-read the introduction to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

I jotted down some more ideas for my essay, though it’s all still a bit of a mish mash.

I had six chicken legs in the fridge but only had room to roast five of them so I put the other one in the freezer. I had one leg for dinner with a potato and some gravy and watched an episode of Rawhide.

In this story Rowdy gets sick around the same time as two of the cows and so they think it might be anthrax. They need to drive the cows through a town but the town authorities forbid it because of the anthrax. Rowdy gets worse and so Gil goes to the town looking for a doctor. It turns out there is only an apothecary but the druggist is away. His daughter Betsy though is a nurse and she insists on going to treat Rowdy. As the fever doesn’t change after the next day they hear thunder. Betsy says the worst thing that could happen is for Rowdy to get wet, so Gil and Betsy take Rowdy through the blockade to take Rowdy to the only dry option, the apothecary. The townsmen don’t shoot because they don’t want to hit Betsy but they surround the drug store and promise to shoot anyone that leaves. Betsy and her father Amos treat Rowdy as best they can. When morning comes Rowdy has broken out in a rash and so they know that he has cowpox and not anthrax. Cowpox is not infectious and so the town lets the men drive the herd through.

Betsy was played by former child star Margaret O’Brien. She won an Academy Award as a child actor for her role in “Meet Me In St Louis”. Unlike many child stars, when she became an adult she still got lots of work in film.

Martha Hyer

            I’ve noticed lately that squirrels, which seem to have been hibernating for most of the winter have been coming out at dawn and crossing the power lines back and forth over Queen Street. On Monday morning one of them crossed a snowy cable, knocking powder from side to side as it made its way along.

I spent about three hours looking for research sources for my essay on Frankenstein, but I couldn’t find any more scholarly articles or books that fit the topic than those I’d already found the day before. There are some samples of the writing of Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft that I might be able to use. I think I’ll have to re-read Frankenstein and write as I go. Shelley's own letters might help as well.

            Yesterday I completed a poem that is partly based on the moment six years ago when my daughter came out to me. I sent it to her to see how she felt about it and today she said it was cute.

            The only coffee I have right now is in beans that I got from the food bank so I had to use my blender to grind them. I don’t think I’ve used my Osterizer for over a year and so it was pretty dirty. In trying to clean it before using it I discovered that the bottom screw cap wouldn’t unscrew from the jar. Maybe when the apartment cools down in the spring it’ll come off. The fresh ground coffee was good though.

            I took a siesta in the early afternoon but got up about a half an hour early and so I went back to bed for another thirty minutes.

I’m re-reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to get a better handle on what I want to say in my essay.

I had my last piece of pork tenderloin with a potato and gravy for dinner and watched an episode of Rawhide.

In this story Gil and Rowdy find a camp of four attractive women with a broken wagon wheel. They are a traveling show of trick shooting, knife throwing and trick roping women called the Haley Sisters. Gil offers to fix their wagon and the leader, Hannah asks if they can ride along with the rail drive till the next town, which is a long distance. Gil reluctantly agrees, but after setting some ground rules with his men the women settle in fine. Hannah takes a liking to Gil and he to her but he has to follow his own rules. There is a river up ahead and when Gil, Rowdy and Pete scout for a shallow crossing they see a group of men on the other side. They cross to talk with them and find out that they are managing a train of freight wagons that also needs to cross. Gil offers to flip for who gets to cross first but Blaney the train boss insists that he’s got the right. Since Blaney won’t play it fair then Gil won’t back down. They each camp on their respective sides for the night but that night two of Blaney’s men get drunk and cross over. They try to drag Hannah’s sister Emily away but Hannah shoots one of them in the back. Gil has the dead man taken back to the other side. Blaney gives his man Troxel permission to go after whoever shot their man. He tries to shoot Gil from a hill but Hannah sees him and jumps in front of the bullet. A few hours later Hannah dies. Gil crosses the river with his men but the conflict is settled with a showdown between Gil and Troxel. After Gil wins he still offers Blaney a coin toss, which Blaney loses. Blaney gives in.

Hannah was played by Martha Hyer, who was nominated for an Academy award for her role in Some Came Running.

Ruth, one of the other Haley Sisters was played by Abby Dalton, who started out acting in several of Roger Corman’s cheap teensploitation films, often playing a juvenile delinquent. When she moved to television she played Joey Bishop's wife for the four seasons of the Joey Bishop Show. After that she became a mainstay for five years on Hollywood Squares. In the 80s she was a regular cast member of Falcon Crest. 

What if Men Were Just Seen as Bodies?

            On Sunday I spent a couple of hours finishing a new poem, the meter of which is based on a melody that I’ve had in my head for years and finally found a home for. It’s called “Dancing Signature”. It mentions my daughter though and so I had to run it by her to see if she’s okay with it.

I made the first notes for my research essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein:

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents a dilemma of failed parenting in the early 19^th Century. It depicts the challenge of the father in the traditional maternal role. Shelley’s father could not handle the role of parenting alone and so he sent her away. It is about parental responsibility. Frankenstein had the opportunity to nurture the child that he had brought into the world, but in rejecting that responsibility he inflicted danger and violence on the society in which he lived. He rejected his own work of art as an aesthetic failure but did not take into account the achievement in itself. The monster (his child) was a genius but he only saw its ugliness. He left his own child to fend for itself and blamed it when it reacted violently to society’s rejection of it. This was the most intelligent creature to ever walk the Earth and its father could have taught it how to behave but he did not want to bear the brunt of its challenge to the conventions of society. Frankenstein wanted to blend into and sleep in the familiar. He betrayed the call of both the artist and the parent, which is to find a place in the world for those that we bring into it. Frankenstein failed as both a father and a mother.

This is a research essay and so far I’ve found two books that I might be able to use: Parenting in England, 1760-1830: Emotion, Identity and Generation by Joanne Bailey and The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In her letters she wrote that she was disgusted by her stepmother, which is a similar reaction to Frankenstein’s response to his own creation. Her father rejected Mary’s marriage to Percy Shelley and so in a sense their marriage can be seen as a type of Frankenstein’s monster. One could also see Shelley herself as the monster in the sense that as a woman people may only see her as a body. In that sense there is no difference between ugliness and beauty.

I had extra old cheddar on a piece of toast for dinner but it didn’t feel like enough and so I had the last bag of Kuna Pops that I’d gotten from the food bank. They were stale.

I watched an episode of Rawhide. This story begins with a new trail hand named Lance who always wears a bandana over the lower part of his face that makes him look like he’s about to rob a train. This, plus his bad attitude makes the other men uneasy. Then a man named Brazo deliberately sets his horse free and walks into the camp, asking for a job. Gil hires him but it seems obvious right away that he’s there because he’s interested in Lance. Gil figures out that Brazo is a gunfighter named Brazen. At first it is thought that he’s after Lance but it turns out that Lance is his little brother. Lance reveals that he wears the mask because he has a burn scar on his face, though he makes it out to be worse than it is. Lance leaves to become a hired gun for a crooked rancher named Slate. Slate shoots Lance in the back because his first job was to kill his brother but he refused. Brazo goes after Slate and Gil and Rowdy follow. In the town Brazo talks with the restaurant owner, Rainy. She asks him to wait one day before going after Slate and she’ll talk the town into backing him up, but he can’t wait. Rainy says, “God go with you Brazo” and he responds, “Well, that might be a little awkward for both of us.” With the help of Gil and Rowdy he takes out Slate’s men and finally Slate. Brazo rides off but Rainy is sure he’ll be back.

Rainy was played by June Lockhart who later starred as Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space.

Slate was played by Deforest Kelly, who later starred as Dr. McCoy on Star Trek

Two future science fiction stars in one western! Both played doctors too except that she’s not the medical kind.

Dansk

            On Saturday in the late afternoon I went out to go to No Frills. Before going south on Jameson I rode past it to the mailbox to drop in my income report for Ontario Works. After crossing Queen I took another detour and walked over to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to look for a plate to replace the one I’d broken. I do have other plates but I wanted another one that I like so I can use two nice plates throughout the day, one for meals and one for fruit, without having to wash one for the other. They had a pack of six hand-painted Dansk plates that had a circle of earthy green in the middle, rimmed first with purple and again with earthy yellow, then surrounded by a wider ring of blue with a final rim of purple again. They were more colourful than I’m used to but I liked them and the pack of six was $10.00. The lady behind the counter put it in a cloth bag for me. Dansk is a US company that started in the 70s mass-producing the designs of a Danish cutlery craftsman. It’s now a subsidiary of Lenox. My plates are called Coba Inca Blue.

            At the supermarket I got a pint of blueberries and two half-pints of blackberries, five small bags of black sable grapes, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, six chicken legs, some mouthwash and a pack of paper towels.

            The cashier was a woman in her early middle age that I’ve seen there for the last couple of years. She stands out because she has a nose and a mouth piercing which one doesn’t normally see on a white woman her age. She also has an accent that pops up and disappears. I’m guessing that she might be Brazilian but not be of Portuguese descent. She’s always very pleasant.

            I didn’t have to go to the liquor store this time because I’d bought a case on Wednesday.

            I had a can of rigatoni with meatballs for lunch with a slice of bread.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I’ve been listening to Kate Bush’s recent live album, “Before the Dawn”. It seems that when she ran out of creative ideas she fell back on amateurish prog-rock.

            I read Margaryta’s three poems for the Poetry Master Class and critiqued them. She’s a very good writer but poems are very complicated and she sometimes loses control of where they are going. One poem seemed like it should have been two.

            I had both living room windows open and was distracted by a tough, loud woman who hangs out in front of the donut shop. She was mad at the drunk Ethiopian guy because he wasn’t minding his business and she was doing everything short of striking him as she swung her arms in what looked like a crack induced lack of body control. A bike cop arrived and diffused the situation without arresting her.

            I shined up a couple of poems to get ready for when the creative writing class restarts on February 28 and worked a bit more on a new poem with a melody that I’ve had in my head for years.

            I had a slice of toast with extra old cheddar and sliced tomato for dinner with a beer. I'd knocked the beer can over on the counter before opening it and some of it foamed out once I'd flipped the tab so I was disappointed over the loss. They say don’t cry over spilled milk but they obviously weren’t talking about beer.

            I watched an episode of Rawhide. This story begins with Gil and Rowdy going to ask Jed Reston, the owner of a large ranch for permission to let the herd graze on his land. When they arrive at Reston’s home they find his son Matt reluctantly whipping a Cherokee named Chisera as punishment for theft. They are told that they only had three milk cows on the property and that Chisera stole one. They are invited to dine there but on the way to eat thy see three milk cows and realize that Chisera had been whipped for nothing. They lose their appetite and leave.

            The next day in town Gil sees Chisera with his wife and son in the general store being turned down for supplies. Gil buys the boy some candy. Later Jed and his men ride out to the trail drive and tell Gil to get his cattle off his property. This is all over him having been friendly to the Cherokee. Gil is told that he has two days to leave before the cattle start being shot but Jed’s property stretches 200 km to the north and it would be impossible to get them off in that amount of time. The only solution is to cross south into Cherokee territory and ask permission there. Gil and Rowdy are captured and tied up but Chisera says they are friends and they are released. They get permission to graze their cattle and they give the tribe a gift of six cows. They go to visit Chisera and his family. He is trying to become a farmer and has ordered and paid for a plough but the store refuses to give it to him because the town is dependent on Reston. Gil and Rowdy go and pick up the plough. The sheriff and some townspeople try to stop them but Gil shames them into letting them go. Jed’s son Matt goes missing and Jed thinks the Cherokee kidnapped him. What happened was Matt was thrown from the mustang he'd been trying to break and the Chrokee nursed him back to health. Jed captures Chisera and says that he will hang him if his son is not returned by noon. Matt rides in two hours before that but Jed wants to hang Chisera anyway. The thing is that Jed wants the Cherokee land for his ranch and he figures an Indian War will help him get that accomplished. He’d been actually hoping his son would actually be killed. Gil and Rowdy try to stop the hanging but actually it’s Matt that stops it. Chisera gets his plough.

            Chisera’s wife Waneea was played by Carol Thurston who was of Irish descent but had a look that got her typecast as mostly Native women.

Lon Chaney Jr.

            I spent a lot of Friday getting caught up on my journal.

            I filled out my income report for Ontario Works but didn’t feel like mailing it. I decided it wouldn’t be too late if I drop it into the mailbox on Saturday on my way to No Frills.

            I made some slight changes to the responses by the second voice in my poem “Wave in the Air”.

            I changed the last verse of “Princesses Hear a Pea” to “Don’t clear-cut the culture of these confines / though you’re very welcome to add to the mound / You can lay your flavour on top of mine / build a mountain of music in my part of town”

            I made some changes to “Tailor-Made Chain Haibun”:

Those stinking Rothmans sticks you smoke that smell like tobacco blended with sugar and sewage turn my stomach and so does their memory, do you start smoking with dad or do you start with the other girls in boarding school, you smoke everywhere, you smoke with everyone and have lots of friends but it must be tough for you when dad kicks the habit, smoking in the smoky teachers lounge with your colleagues, you smoke with my brother, with your next oldest brothers, your cousins and my father’s sisters, and nobody complains but my dad, my sister and me, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, the fowl smell of cigarette corpses in the house and car ashtrays, and after dinner plates full of butts, you smoke even after your mastectomy until you die of breast cancer when I am seventeen

sighing under a beehive

she crushes the lipstick filter

into unfinished eggs

            I changed my poem “Raja” to present tense and ditched the unnecessary punctuation, plus I made the stanza switch that Albert suggested.

            I boiled a potato heated a piece of pork tenderloin and made some chicken gravy.

            I watched an interesting episode of Rawhide. The trail drive is waiting for the Devil River to shallow so they can get the herd across and so the men are getting bored. There is a town nearby but Gil the trail boss is reluctant to let the drovers go in. That night a small wagon arrives at the trail drive campfire driven by a man in a Confederate officer’s uniform and an attractive well-dressed woman named Narcissa. She hands out pamphlets and the colonel gives a speech in a British accent about a new Confederacy being built in Panama. He refers to himself as the Emperor of Panama. Gil recognizes him as Colonel Millet from the war just as Millet refers to Gil as Lieutenant Favor. Gil tells the colonel to leave and after he leaves he tells his men that he will fight any man that falls for the colonel’s con game and starts preaching it to the other men. Jessie, a sentimental but illiterate ox of a man has been swayed by Narcissa’s flirtations and becomes the colonel’s first recruit. He returns to the camp drunk the next morning and declares that he is now in the Panamanian Confederate army. As Gil promised they have to fight but Jessie is bigger and stronger than Gil and he wins. Jessie leaves the drive. Gil decides that though the river is still deep and fast he can’t afford to lose any more men and so he attempts a crossing. One of his men, a northerner known as Boston drowns and they can’t ford the river. Several men are upset at Gil about his mistake and they decide to join the colonel. The colonel makes Jessie a captain. The colonel keeps thinking he can convince Gil to join him. He lives in a replica of a Virginia plantation where when Gil arrives he is greeted by the first Black man to appear on Rawhide. He is a butler and he is singing the traditional song, “There’s a Man Going Round taking Names”: “He’s taken my father’s name and left my heart in pain …” When the butler leads Gil inside Narcissa asks him to finish the song for Gil and he sings, “And Death is the man taking names …” She tells Gil that Millette is all washed up and that she needs Gil to fulfill her dream of rebuilding the Confederacy in Panama. She kisses him and he does not resist but it does not sway him. Millette arrives and it’s clear that he’s insane. He says he’s broke and so he’s going to lead his new recruits on a raid on the treasury of a certain fort while the cavalry is occupied with an Indian battle. That they they will gain the money to travel to Panama. The next night in town the men are drinking and preparing for their first mission. One of them says that he’s heard there’ll be banana plantations in Panama instead of cotton and he wonders, “What’s a banana?” The colonel arrives to fire the men up for tomorrow’s mission though he doesn’t tell them exactly what it is. Meanwhile Jessie has become so obsessed with Narcissa that he believes her flirtations are an indication that she wants to marry him. He goes to her room and asks her when they’ll be wed but she tells him he disgusts her and of course this upsets him. After the colonel finishes his speech he goes upstairs to find Narcissa frightened and distraught. He begins comforting her and Jessie becomes jealous. When Gil, Rowdy and some of the other drovers arrive at the saloon to try to convince the men not to follow the colonel, Jessie emerges from the second floor hotel room with a struggling Narcissa in his grip. He is wearing the colonel’s coat and announces that Millette is dead and he is their new leader. No one wants to follow Jessie. He pulls a gun and descends the stairs with Narcissa as a shield. But he gets shot twice anyway. He drags Narcissa to the livery stable where he dies.

            I wonder if we were expected to ignore the fact that Colonel Millette had a British accent. I found out though that there was at least one British officer that fought for the Confederacy, a few sergeants and many more British and foreign soldiers. Brits that were involved in the cotton or fabric industry felt motivated to support the south and some other Brits just liked the snooty fake aristocracy that the Confederacy tried to maintain.

            I also wondered if there had really been a plan to rebuild the Confederacy in Panama. The Confederacy had plans even before the Civil War to take over parts of Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil. One southerner, William Walker actually formed a private army and conquered Nicaragua for a year, becoming its president. He was defeated by a coalition of Central American countries and when he tried to return and take over again he was captured and executed by Honduras. After the war 20,000 rebels fled to Brazil where they formed two colonies, one of which is Americana. They still meet once a year to celebrate their heritage.

            Jessie was played by legendary character actor Lon Chaney Jr., most famous for The Wolf Man.

            Narcissa was played by film noire star, Marie Windsor. She was so notorious as a “bad woman” in her film roles that people used to mail her Bibles to help save her soul. She was known as Queen of the Bs because of all the B movies she starred in.

Wave in the Air

            On Thursday I typed my lecture notes and got caught up with my journal. By the time I’d done that though I didn’t have time to finish the new poem I was working on and so I grabbed an old one from the book that I want to publish. The two poems from Paranoiac Utopia that I printed are “Petal and Thorn Collage On Skin” and “Sugar”. My third poem is more recent and just called “Parkdale”.

            I turned my flashers on before I started riding because last time it got dark halfway to Victoria College but I barely needed them at all this time. After Reading Week when we come back on February 28 I won’t have to use them for the ride in.

            I noticed as I passed the Royal Cinema on College that “In the Realm of the Senses” is playing. I saw that first in Montreal back in the mid-seventies when it was banned in Ontario. What a great film!

            There were more bunny tracks by the bike post ring but there were also bunny-hunting kitty cat tracks.

            I was the first one there and about five minutes later Margaryta arrived. She told me that Vivian had a hand injury and wouldn’t be coming. She added what I already knew from the same email she’d received, that Blythe wouldn’t be coming either and so it would be just she and I in one group.

            Albert began the class with a pile of chapbooks in front of him that some former students of our course and one current student have gotten published. One of them was published by Grey Borders Books in Buffalo. Another was published by a Toronto publisher named Jim Johnstone who features younger poets. Another publisher named Biblioasis has an international reach.

            Albert handed us a sheet calling for submissions for a book by Grey Borders called “Daddy: A Cultural Anthology”. They are asking for poetry, fiction, essays and artwork on whatever the word "Daddy" means to people.

            Looking it up later I see that Grey Borders Books is not actually in Buffalo but rather in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

            Albert brought up the words “Dude” and “Bro” and said he was surprised that people actually use them. I said that another one is “Boss" and mentioned that guys call me “boss” every now and then. One somebody almost doored me and said, “Sorry boss!”

            For our group and another we just worked at opposite ends of the long table. A third group went into Albert's office.

            Margaryta and I began with my poem, “Wave in the Air”, which is for two voices and so I asked her to read the non-italicized first voice, since the italicized second voice has more to do because it has to respond to the first voice but when in brackets it has to be simultaneous with the first:

From way down deep from way down deep

inside your heart inside your heart

I can

feel something tremble (feel something tremble)

and I satellite dish it I dish it up

into my chest down in my chest

just like a

radio signal (radio signal)

It’s like sweet oh so sweet

rarely heard music sweet sweet music

that comes from

so far away (so far away)

that it only only only

breaks the static cuts through the static

on those

clearest of days (clearest of days)

until one day until one day

Is it by chance by happenstance?

my needle

catches it bang on (catches it bang on)

so that it blows oh yes it blows

right through my chest hard through my chest

like a

wind rushing through a canyon (wind rushing through a canyon)

and then every night (night)

I find myself tied to the touch (tied to the touch)

of your wave in the air of your wave in the air

because I love those songs so much

and I’m so afraid (afraid)

to touch that delicate dial

and risk losing that wave that wave that wave

without a safecracker’s style.

And so I grit and so I grit

my winter teeth those cold cold teeth

and bear the

bad news of the war (bad news of the war)

and the tedious words those boring words

of your sponsor your corporate sponsor

and your

ballgame’s boring score (ballgame’s boring score)

until your tide until your tide

comes rolling back come back come back

to wash away my bitter skin (away my bitter skin)

and roll right through roll right on through

my arching bones that arch of bones

that frame the

temple deep within (temple deep within)

so that every night (night)

I can find myself tied to the touch (tied to the touch)

of your wave in the air of your wave in the air

of your wave in the air (of your wave in the air)

            She said it was easier to understand after reading it with me. She thought my instructions had not made it clear that the italics were meant to indicate a second voice.

            It turned out that a lot of what she didn’t understand was generational. Modern radios tend to automatically hone in on a station and so she didn’t get the concept of losing a station and having to delicately turn the dial like a safecracker in order to find it again. She also didn’t get my references to sponsors, ballgames and the war. She wondered “What war?” My point is that almost anytime one tunes into the news there is news and sports and if one is not paying for satellite or cable radio or listening to the CBC one is getting commercials as well. I had to explain to her that this is a metaphor for a relationship. Even when if one finds someone whose presence is like sweet music to your being you still might have to deal with things they like that you might not like, such as sports, business and politics.

            Albert’s written comments for this poem were very complimentary: "Beautiful poem. Highly creative, striking idea for its form; very well crafted …”

            He also got the safecracker’s reference and said it’s an “excellent image!”

            At the end of the class he mentioned the poem again and suggested that we have a reading of it in the class with two voices.

            Of my poem “One-Handed Rolly Haibun":

You roll a perfect cigarette with one hand while steering the tractor with the other from harrow to harvest always Vogue papers and Macdonald’s Export tobacco with the Highland Lassie on the package who I think looks like my mother, I have to admit that the rollies you make from that pouch are less unpleasant than the stinking Rothmans tailor-mades that Mom smokes, leaning your bad back forward tired and thoughtful in the chair at your end of the kitchen table in the corner by the toaster beneath the old brown radio news with your elbows on your knees and your suspenders relaxing by your hips you take slow, contemplative drags from your after dinner cigarette, always holding it between the tips of index and thumb, but never between fingers like a lady, my sister and I don’t want you and Mom to smoke, you take our complaints with grumpy calm until one day you stop, and we don’t dare to say anything out of fear that we are yelled at or that speaking puts a jinx on our good fortune, weeks later you climb on Mom’s back to stop her from puffing and you stay there until she dies.

you roll a smoke with one hand

wind blows into my face

cool mist of DDT

            I was surprised when she said that “leaning your bad back forward tired and thoughtful in the chair at your end of the kitchen table in the corner by the toaster beneath the old brown radio news with your elbows on your knees and your suspenders relaxing by your hips” was the weakest part of the poem. I always thought that it was one of the strongest and my friend Dutch had mentioned liking that part as well.

            She also didn’t understand that a haibun is supposed to have a haiku at the end and said I should put it inside the poem.

            Of the accompanying “Tailor-Made Chain Haibun”:

Those stinking Rothmans sticks you smoke that smell like tobacco blended with sugar and sewage turn my stomach and so does their memory long after you die of breast cancer when I’m a teenager, you smoke even after your mastectomy, you smoke everywhere with everyone and have lots of friends but it must be tough for you when dad kicks the habit, smoking in the smoky teachers lounge with your colleagues, you smoke with my brother, with your next oldest brothers, your cousins and my father’s youngest sisters, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, the fowl smell of cigarette corpses in the house and car ashtrays, and after dinner plates full of butts, do you start smoking with dad or do you start with the other girls in boarding school, nobody complains but my dad, my sister and me.

sighing neath her beehive

she crushes the lipstick filter

into unfinished eggs

She thought that there were way too many repetitions of the word “smoke”. I would agree, as when I read it out loud I only used about eight and so eleven could be chopped off.

She didn’t think that I should put the two poems on the same page. I explained that I put them together because they are portraits of my parents. She said in that case I should give them one overall title to indicate that.

Albert wrote that “nobody complains but my dad, my sister and me” is a good ending in some respects but it also feels somewhat anti-climactic. He also thought I should have avoided the archaism of “neath” in the haiku.

Of my poem “Raja”:

My landlord’s name means, “lord” in his language

so it’s like calling him “Lord the landlord”

or “My landlord Lord”.

Lord!

My landlord calls and asks how I am

He has never asked me such a question

I say “fine” and ask the same of him

I’ve never given him such a greeting

With both of us shovelling so much charm

something not nice must be going to happen

My landlord suggested that I forgot

when I paid the rent by email transfer

that he’d given notice the rent would go up

effective the first day of the new year

I told my landlord I did not receive

a proper notice of rental increase

He then demanded to know what I meant.

I told him to re-read the document

or that he could have his wife or lawyer

read and help him decipher the paper

He said “I gave you sixty days notice!”

I said, “You have to give ninety days notice.”

As I expected he started to yell

and let me know I’m a “fucking asshole”

I said “Relax and just follow the rules”

But saying, “relax” never does seem to help

"You wanna follow the rules?

You wanna follow the rules?”

He said, “You fucking asshole!”

and ended the call

The rent increase was thirteen dollars

and so my millionaire landlord would be

poorer by about fifty dollars

three months from the start of February

I would lose the same every three months

till next year he raises the rent again

but really the biggest difference

is that I don’t start screaming and calling him names

Two years ago his stomach exploded

because he was full of anxiety

I could offer to teach him yoga

but doubt he would take instruction from me.

The next day my landlord came around

to hand me a brand new notice of increase

He warned me, “This time don’t fuck around!”

and suggested or else I might end up deceased

            She thought that the line “something not nice must be going to happen” was unclear.

            Albert said I should put the whole poem in the present tense. He also thought I should move the first three of the last four stanzas ahead of the stanza before them like this:

As I expected he started to yell

and let me know I’m a “fucking asshole”

I said “Relax and just follow the rules”

But saying, “relax” never does seem to help

The rent increase was thirteen dollars

and so my millionaire landlord would be

poorer by about fifty dollars

three months from the start of February

I would lose the same every three months

till next year he raises the rent again

but really the biggest difference

is that I don’t start screaming and calling him names

Two years ago his stomach exploded

because he was full of anxiety

I could offer to teach him yoga

but doubt he would take instruction from me.

"You wanna follow the rules?

You wanna follow the rules?”

He said, “You fucking asshole!”

and ended the call

The next day my landlord came around

to hand me a brand new notice of increase

He warned me, “This time don’t fuck around!”

and suggested or else I might end up deceased

            One of Margaryta’s poems was one she didn’t even remember writing and couldn’t really answer any questions about it.

Since it was just Margaryta and I we finished hearing and critiquing each other’s poems early and we chatted for the last half an hour.

I asked her if she’d understood the monetary slang of “fin” that I used in my poem “Maroon River” two weeks ago for a double meaning with fins for swimming. As I suspected, she hadn’t. When I wrote “testosterone’s tapping the pussies like trees / two fins for a swim in the estrogen sea” she’d thought that I’d been talking about a threesome. She suggested that it might be a generational thing since she’d never heard of a fin as a five. She added though that as a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada there are some phrases that she gets wrong or misses all together.  I just asked my daughter about it and she had no idea what a fin was either.

Margaryta came from the Ukraine when she was four and she said her first language is Russian while Ukrainian is only the second. She said there is a divide between the Ukrainians from the west and the east. She told me that her parents get mad when people ask them why they didn’t choose to live in Bloor West Village. They answer, “If we wanted o live with Ukrainians we would have stayed in the Ukraine!”

Albert gave me back copies of my poems from the previous week with comments. He’d already commented in person on “Makeup Mirror” but of “The Long Warm Thread Between Us” he said it was a good ghazal. He suggested one stanza might be superfluous and another weak, but I’ve made changes to both of those since then.

Of “Princesses Hear a Pea”:

A young couple gave me a funny look

while I unlocked my Parkdale home

They were turning their tumblers two numbers up

beside the Izakaya Sho

They stared and then whispered to each other

I was pretty sure I wasn’t naked

through all of my layers of winter armour

so why were the gentry agitated?

Next morning I was singing and playing

when a guy about my daughter’s age

came underneath my window and waved for me

to lean out on my window ledge

When he said that he’s my next-door neighbour

I recognized him as the salty slice

from the night before when I opened my door

of the snooty couple with the evil eyes

He complained my voice is too thunderous

at 6:00 and that it shakes them awake

I’d been worried I wasn't loud enough

and glad to hear that I penetrate

My morning practice is nearing twenty

and he’s the first one to grumble

No one in my building can even hear me

while he’s past two walls and a stairwell

They leave the nest in a middle class burb

move to an urban neighbourhood

and they take a place on an ambulance route

on a street where poor people shout

in joy and in agony all night long

and then they try to stop their neighbour’s song

Whenever I move to a neighbourhood

I don't try to gentrify my neighbours’ behaviour

The yearspan of my morning serenades

Have made them a part of the community culture

Don’t clear-cut the culture of these confines

though you’re very welcome to add to the mound

You can lay your culture on top of mine

build a mountain of culture in this part of town

            He thought the end of the second stanza “when I opened my door

of the snooty couple with the evil eyes” was unnecessary.

            His final comment was “Bravo! Fine poem. In the line of Acorn and Purdy.”

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home. Their black grapes were not as firm as I would have liked but I found two bags that weren’t too bad. They had navel oranges and blood oranges so I got seven of the former and three of the latter. I also got a half-pint of raspberries and some Greek yogourt.

            Earlier I had roasted a pork tenderloin and boiled a potato and so it didn’t take long to make dinner when I got home. While eating I watched an episode of “Rawhide”.

            In this story Gil gives his men some time to go into a nearby town and have a good time. He warns them that the roulette table in that town is crooked. Rowdy asks Gil to hold on to most of his pay. The men ride into town hooting and shooting. Despite the warning they get mad when they lose at roulette and so there is a fight. A local gets killed and so does one of Gil’s men. Meanwhile Rowdy meets a woman named Clovis. She had picked his pocket but on seeing it was empty gave it back to him, saying she’d found it. She tells him she needs money to get out of town but she doesn’t tell him she is the wife of a very jealous older man that happens also to be the sheriff. The sheriff had previously arrested another man that had shown interest in Clovis and shot him in the back after letting him escape. Rowdy asks Gil for his pay so he can give Clovis $50 to leave town but Gil refuses, thinking that Clovis is not trustworthy. Rowdy quits the trail drive and loses a fistfight with Gil, but Gil gives him his pay. Rowdy goes into town to find Clovis and Gil goes in to settle up the damages that his men caused. Not understanding that the sheriff is unstable, Gil decides to teach Rowdy a lesson and asks the sheriff to arrest Rowdy for horse theft. The sheriff knows that Rowdy has been talking with Clovis and so after arresting him, when Rowdy says he can prove he’s not a horse thief if the sheriff would come out to the drive with him. The sheriff agrees but his intention is to kill Rowdy along the way. Clovis warns Gil that her husband plans to kill Rowdy and so they go after them. They stop him just before he is about to shoot Rowdy. Clovis refuses to take money from either Rowdy or Gil, I guess because with her husband dead there is no more need to escape.

            Clovis was played by Sally Forrest who started out as a dancer in movies but got critical praise in the lead role of Not Wanted. Ironically, after marrying her agent Milo O Frank Jr. she didn’t work that much in films. They were married for 53 years until he died.