Female Zorro

            On Thursday morning I memorized the chorus and the second verse of

“L'amour prison" (Jailed in Love) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it all in my head

on Friday.       

            I worked on my journal.

            The morning got away from me when someone accused me on Facebook

Messenger that the 1990s journal that I’ve been posting shows that I acquired sex through

coercion.  I took issue with that since coercion is getting something through threat or

force, which is essentially like accusing me of rape. There is nothing in the history of the

long seduction I’m recounting that shows me using threat or force.

            Despite the morning having slipped away in argument so I didn't have a chance to wash my kitchen hall shelf, I wanted to feel some sense of accomplishment. I got rid of some books that had been piled up on the shelf for a while. On my way out to the supermarket I put them on top of the Now Magazine box in front of my building. Later I noticed that everything but the big sociology textbook had been taken.

            At Freshco I bought three bags of cherries and two bags of grapes. I also got cinnamon raisin bread, a can of dark roast coffee, some Greek yogourt, a strawberry rhubarb pie, two cartons of spoon size shredded wheat and a pack of paper towels.

            On the way back from the supermarket I stopped at the hardware store to buy four brackets for my shelves in the bedroom. I found out later however that I bought the wrong size but hopefully since I haven't used them I can exchange them on Friday.

            I added chicken broth to the ground chicken, bacon and tomato sauce that I’d made the day before and had a chunky soup for lunch with potato chips.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish hears that Andy has inherited $2000 from his aunt and he hopes to somehow cheat him out of it. He learns that the condition in the will is that Andy must use the money for college tuition and so he pretends that he’s started a college. He gets an attractive showgirl to pretend to enrol in the college while Andy is there and suddenly he wants to enrol too. But his aunt's lawyer says it’s not an accredited college and so he can’t get the money. Kingfish tries to forge a later will by his aunt but the lawyer threatens him with legal action. Finally Andy gets the money after enrolling in barber college.

            I wrote some rough notes toward my Indigenous Studies research essay:

            I would like to research Indigenous day schools in Canada that were active during the time that residential schools were in operation and look at why there were no residential schools in New Brunswick. If the government believed that residential schools were the best choice, then why were they not made mandatory in the Indian Act? Was there something unique about New Brunswick or its Indigenous residents that kept residential schools from being built there? I would also like to look into the lives of the five Micmac sisters who taught while speaking Micmac at day schools in New Brunswick and how they got away with it. What were day schools like and could they have been remotely as bad as residential schools? I think that they must have been better since they were on the reserves and so every student was able to come home to their own culture after school. I would like to read some accounts of day schools from Natives that attended them.

            I had a potato and the last three pieces of the chicken I’d roasted with some gravy while watching Zorro.

            In this story Ricardo convinces the governor to grant amnesty to Zorro. The governor agrees to do so if Zorro will come at a certain hour on a certain day and unmask. Ricardo’s motivation is that he believes Zorro will not come because of his sense of duty. He reasons that if Anna Maria sees that Zorro will not give up his identity for her then she will give up on Zorro and marry him. Anna Maria is certain that Zorro will reveal himself to her. She seems so happy about the idea of marrying Zorro that Diego decides that he will come after all. But when he goes to his hideout to change he finds Bernardo is tied up and a man dressed something like Zorro puts a sword to Diego’s throat. Diego’s hands are tied behind him while the masked man silently guards him. Suddenly Diego begins to fight with his feet and frees his hands in time to overpower his captor. When he unmasks him we find it is Alejandro, Diego’s father. He says that he has known for a long time that Diego was Zorro and he could not allow him to give up that identity because all of California depends upon him. The time for amnesty that the governor offered Zorro comes and goes and so the governor withdraws the offer. Suddenly Zorro charges in riding Phantom and sweeps Anna Maria off her feet. He takes her out of town where they dismount and he explains to her why he could not reveal himself. Anna Maria doesn’t quite understand but she is willing to try.

            Don Alejandro is played by George J Lewis, who was the only actual Mexican on a show that is supposed to feature all Mexicans. He played the leading male role in Zorro’s Black Whip of 1944, which was the first movie to feature a female Zorro. 

He was also the leading man in the Vera Vague comedy shorts of the 1940s.