Stella Richman

            On Tuesday morning I worked out most of the chords for the instrumental intro to “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I almost finished posting “Rock n Rose” by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations. 

            My guitar continues to give me tuning problems but ten minutes less of them than the day before.

            At around 11:00 I logged on for my Introduction to Canadian Literature lecture. 

            For the first time my mic didn’t work at all and I was forced to text all my comments. When I checked with my voice recorder later the mic worked but not at first because the jack wasn’t pushed in far enough. I’m pretty sure I made sure it was in during the lecture. 

            She said that she had read all of our essay outlines even though she didn’t comment on all of them. 

            She warned us that our final assessment won’t be marked until after the holidays. 

            The lecture was on The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. 

            The novel is set in the context of Truth and Reconciliation. Trauma is passed down through generations. Not everyone agrees on what reconciliation is. People think differently within each community. Dreaming is a link with ancestors. 

            I said that every First Nations community has different issues and so reconciliation would be hard to pin down. One can only find common denominators. She only agreed with the part about different issues. 

            Land acknowledgments do not change anything. 

            After the 80s and 90s Indigenous artists started getting Canada Counsel Grants. 

            Lee Maracle says, “Unless I was sleeping, there is no postcolonialism.” 

            On Story. One has to be ready and receptive for the meaning of story. It is called “Story” and not "the" story. 

            I said “Story” becomes like a personal name. She misunderstood. 

            Story does not begin or end and includes the ceremony of telling. Coming to story contributes to story. One’s own story is part of story. One becomes the subject when one tells one's own story. It becomes part of the cultural memory. It can be medicine. Story is an event and arguing with story becomes part of story. 

            I said stories need conflict to invite resolution. 

            The relationship of trauma to story. Wab was raped and that is hard to speak of.

            I said that oral stories are free to be written while they are spoken because story can change in a moment.

            Orality creates an interactive environment with the audience. It is a dynamic process and there is no story without an audience. It is a living archive that embodies history. One has to know what to do with story. 

            On cultural appropriation Lee Maracle says, “Move over." Let us tell our own stories. There are borders around stories. 

            She referenced Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice. 

            Stories can be medicine but stories about the deficiencies of Indigenous people are poison. Story helps interdependence and sharing detoxifies. Stories affirm survival and help acquire shared knowledge and fight cultural amnesia. 

            Palimpsistic: story in a story in a story. 

            Frenchie’s intimacy with Rose was like a vortex that pulled the rest of the community in. She finally agreed with me. 

            Frenchy has his first hard on with Rose. The professor said “hard on” and it's not in the book. 

            I asked why everyone in the story is referred to as Nish when some of the characters are Cree and would not consider themselves Anishnaabe? She said it was a good question but she didn’t know the answer. Maybe in the context of the novel it has become a collective name. 

            On Minerva’s miracle why is she compliant? She has her own plan. 

            I said Minerva turns out to be an X-Man but the professor didn’t respond to that. 

            The whole novel reaches a crescendo in this scene as all the stories come together. 

            White society is divorced from its own spiritual traditions and so I has lost the ability to dream. Ceremony connects with dreams and creates community. 

            I say family comes from shared experience but I didn't put it in the chat because we moved on.

            Young adults require a happy ending? 

            I ask, if Isaac is the key doesn’t everybody have to learn Cree from this point on? She recounted how after years in Canada she dreamed in English for the first time and it was a big moment. 

            Next week we will have a formal lecture on CanLit. 

            For lunch I had potato chips with salsa and yogourt. 

            The TA for Canadian Literature finally posted the tutorial discussion topic that she was supposed to post on Friday.

            I typed my Canadian Literature lecture notes. 

            I worked on my British Literature essay, just reading through my typed notes out loud and organizing the first few paragraphs towards an argument about predestiny. 

            I cut up a whole chicken, rubbed it with salt and curry and roasted it. I made a new batch of gravy. 

            I had one of the chicken legs for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching the second episode of The Quatermass Experiment. There were six episodes but it turns out that the last four are lost and so the four files I have left each only provide a short synopsis of the plots along with salvaged images. The BBC in those days and through the 60s was infamous for trashing recordings to save money. They didn’t stop to think that these shows would be classics for future generations. I started downloading the sequel, "Quatermass II" and hopefully there are no lost episodes for that. 

            So the second episode begins where the first left off. Victor Carroon emerges from the spaceship and collapses. In the hospital he mostly only repeats the questions that are asked of him. The nurse is shocked when she takes his temperature because he is too cold for a human. The police fingerprint Carroon and Quatermass gives them the files of Carroon and the other two missing astronauts. They find that the fingerprints don’t match exactly but that Carroon’s fingerprints have some patterns belonging to those of the other crewmembers. Mrs Green, the wife of one of the other astronauts comes to ask Victor what happened to her husband. Victor calls her Lou, which is a nickname that only her husband used. They find film footage of the astronauts just before the launch and they have Victor watch it to see if it jogs his memory. Before boarding Victor says he’ll try to bring something back for his wife. When the film is over Victor repeats, “Bring something back.” Victor repeats something in German that was said by the German astronaut, even though he can't speak German. When asked in German his name he says, “Ludwig”. One of Quatermass's scientists discovers an organic gelatinous substance in corners of the ship. The police examine one of the space suits belonging to one of the missing men. Inside the suit is all the nylon underwear that the astronaut would have worn over his body. He could not have removed it while still wearing the space suit. 

            Mrs Greene was played by Enid Lindsey, who played Sherlock Holmes’s landlady Mrs Hudson in the 1960s TV series. 

            The nurse was played by Stella Richman, who started out briefly as an actor on shows like this but moved on to being a script editor and from there a successful television producer. She commissioned Upstairs Downstairs.