Tango

            On Tuesday morning my hip was bothering me a lot. It was also raining, which makes me wonder if the problem is arthritis.

            I worked out a couple more chords for the chorus of “J'suis snob" by Boris Vian.

            I finished figuring out the chords for “Puisque je te le dis” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it once in French.

            I began playing my download of “Yessongs", the first live album by Yes. I took everything off the tall set of shelves at the northeast corner of my living room and started cleaning the shelves. I took the top two off and washed them in the kitchen. I was about to take the stereo off the middle shelf and clean there when I noticed that the music wasn't coming through the right speaker. I reconnected the speaker wires at the back of the amp and on the speaker, but still nothing came out. I switched to the radio and had stereo again and so since I was playing the music through my computer I thought the problem would be from there. I looked at the audio levels and they were fine. I checked to see if it was just a problem with VLC Media Player but it also happened on YouTube. Finally I followed the cable to the back of the amp. Both the yellow and the red were plugged in but I pulled them out and re-plugged them and then everything worked. There was no time left to do any more washing.

            I had chickpeas with flax seed oil and garlic for lunch. Sure enough, the next day my sweat smelled like fish because of the flax seed oil.

            I did some exercises then took a bike ride to College and Ossington, went south to Queen and then home.

            I had three little potatoes, a yellow squash, two small pieces of chicken and gravy for dinner while watching parts ten and eleven of Victory at Sea.

            Part ten was about WWII in the Caribbean and South America. In 1942 alone more than 100 American merchant ships were sunk in the Caribbean. Some German u-boats would spend all their time between South America and Africa preying on Allied supply ships. The submarines would have their supplies brought by “milk cow”, which was the nickname for supply submarines. Japanese submarines would join them in patrolling the waters. At the beginning of the war Germany didn't have a lot of surface warships. But the pocket battleship Graf Spee was sent to the south Atlantic to sink merchant ships. In the early days of the war German battleships would give neutral ships a chance to abandon ship and come aboard before they sank them. The British Royal Navy attacks and damages the Graf Spee. It takes refuge in neutral Uruguay but the international neutrality rules only allow them to stay for 72 hours even though they require two weeks to make repairs. As the British are waiting for the Graf Spee off shore its commander decides to scuttle the boat to avoid giving British intelligence access to it. A few days later the commander shoots himself in full dress uniform and the crew spends the rest of the war in Argentina.

            Argentina was neutral for most of the war but there were more than three million German immigrants already there when the war broke out. There was strong support for Hitler within that population. Argentina’s relationship with Britain has been periodically tense through its history.

            On the island of Martinique the US had to make sure that the ships of the French navy remained neutral and would not act in loyalty with the Vichy government.

            There was a German raider called The Atlantis that disguised itself as a merchant ship. Its crew only raised the Nazi flag just before it was about to attack. It sank twenty ships. It was essentially a pirate ship and would force a ships crew to theirs, loot the ship and then sink it. The British cruiser Devonshire encounters the Atlantis and when it does not identify itself properly the British attack and sink it. The Devonshire doesn’t rescue the survivors but a nearby German u-boat picks them up.

            Halfway between South America and Africa is Ascension Island where the Allies set up a base.

            Brazil joined the Allies in August of 1942 and provided vital rubber for the war effort.

            Richard Rodgers wrote the music for this documentary series and in part ten presented a tango that later became the song “No Other Love” with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

            Part eleven was about the war in the Arctic. The easiest way for the Allies to get supplies to struggling Russia was from the north. But it was a rough journey because of resistance from Germany, Japan and extreme weather and there were a lot of casualties. The trip past Norway saw strong German resistance and the Japanese were trying to control the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. British commandoes fought the Germans in Norway. They attacked factories and fish oil tanks crucial to Germany’s war efforts. The creed of the commandoes was, “Plan thoroughly, strike boldly, retire swiftly”. The Germans relentlessly bombed and attacked supply convoys headed for Russia. The documentary only mentions once that Canada was involved in delivering supplies as well.

            Japan had occupied Attu Island off the coast of Alaska and the United States sent desert-trained troops there with air support from Canada. The Japanese were dug deep and resisted hard. The end of the two-week battle ended in hand-to-hand combat. In the end 1200 Japanese died and 600 from the US.