Lillian Culver

            On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords for “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian and for the second verse of "Lucette et Lucie" by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            Song practice was only half the disaster that it had been the day before. I managed to get in tune sometimes long enough to play ten songs of my twenty minute set in an hour and fifty minutes. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my last Canadian Literature tutorial. 

            Kelly is so patronizing. 

            There’s a three hour time limit once we start the exam. This is a surprise to me. I’d thought the 48 hour window meant we would have that much time. 

            How to access exam: Quercus to course home page to new “quizzes” tab on left to “Final assessment”. The questions are below the instructions. We have to compose our answers on our desktops. We have to save the document with our last name, course code and “Final Assessment” and then upload it. 

            Kelly teaches at York. I think they let anyone teach there. Yesterday there was a cyber attack.

            There were twelve students and so we were divided into groups of three to discuss how to approach one of the essay topics. My group chose to text because one person preferred it and the other couldn’t get her mic working. We talked about dystopia. It wasn’t a bad discussion. Someone said that Indigenous people are currently in a real dystopia. Eleanor typed up what we’d discussed and included some things I’d said. I usually feel pretty left out in these tutorials even though I speak more than everyone else. Kelly never mentions anything that I add to the discussions, so it was nice and appropriate for Eleanor to include me. 

            Two other groups discussed Bildungsroman. They said it’s different if one is white. Coming of age while managing grief. Reunited with the place one never left. 

            I protested the three hour time limit on our online essay because I can’t type very quickly. Kelly said it’s already set and argued that people can type faster than they hand write. Spoken like someone who was raised with a keyboard in front of them. 

            I sent an email to Professor Kamboureli protesting the time limit. I told her that last spring our Indigenous Studies online test was six hours to make allowances for difficulties. I told her it takes me several hours to type handwritten lecture notes. In fact I had brought this up two months ago and she told me that we would probably be given extra time. I guess she forgot. My daughter can type like lightning because she grew up chatting while gaming. That’s probably true of everyone besides me in this course. 

            For lunch I had chips with salsa and yogourt. 

            In the afternoon I went to Freshco where I bought three bags of black grapes, two half pints of raspberries, a pack of chicken drumsticks, three bags of milk, two cans of peaches, Folgers coffee on sale $3 cheaper, and petroleum jelly. 

            I stopped at the bank machine on my way out. On the bench was a little frying pan. Maybe there is also a frying pandemic and they are popping up like mushrooms. 

            I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my phone service. There’s a sign on the door asking people to remove their masks to show their faces before they are allowed in. The guy came to the door and said for me to come back in five minutes because they were on lunch break. I said I’d be quick and so he let me in. I had the exact change. 

           On my way home I ran into my hallway neighbour Benji. He informed me that our former superintendent Sundar had died. It had been rumoured that he died last year and then we found out he hadn’t but it looks like this time it’s true. He was pretty sick because of his kidneys, cancer and addictions. Benji said he’s in a funeral home in the east end and so it’s too far away to visit. 

            I feel like I’m coming down with something. I assume and hope it’s only a cold. Considering that I haven’t gone anywhere but the supermarket, practiced social distancing and wore a mask, it’s weird that I could catch anything. 

            I spent a couple of hours working on my essay, which is due on Friday at midnight. I had a potato, a piece of chicken and gravy while watching the Andy Griffith Show. 

            I remember this story from when I was a kid. A dangerous criminal has escaped from prison and is in the area of Mayberry and so the state police take over Andy’s sheriff’s office. They set up road blocks on all the main roads but when Andy advises them that the criminal might take the side roads, some of which aren’t on the map, they ignore him. Feeling left out, Andy takes Barney to one of the side roads and leaves him there to check traffic. Barney stops and frisks everybody in case they are the convict in disguise, even though he knows everybody. He even frisks his mother. But suddenly when Barney is alone, out of the woods comes Derekson, the escaped convict. By the time Barney recognizes him and struggles to draw his revolver, Derekson is on him and takes his gun. Andy finds Barney tied to a tree but he still has an idea of how to catch Derekson. Since the crook would be heading past Emma Brand’s house and this is her pie baking day, Andy figures Derekson wouldn’t be able to resist the aroma. They head over there and Emma opens the door but behaves strangely. Andy figures Derekson is inside but to keep him from doing anything rash he doesn’t let on. He just tells Emma that if she sees the criminal to not tell him that his rowboat is down by the lake, because he might use it to escape. Andy then calmly radios Captain Barker of the state police and tells him to bring his men down to the lake. They find Andy patiently watching Derekson get in his boat and start rowing across the lake toward freedom. Barker tells Andy he’ll have him stripped of his position for this. But then they see the boat is sinking and Andy tells them to go to the shore where Derekson will swim right to them, which he does. 

            Derekson was played by Frank Gerstle, who in the movie D.O.A. said one of the most famous lines in film noir, “You’ve been murdered.” 

            This was the only appearance of Barney’s mother in the show. She was played by Lillian Culver, whose ancestors include Anne Robertson, heroine of the Revolutionary war and James Robertson, the father of Tennessee. Lillian was acting in silent films when she met Harry Culver and gave up acting when she married him. He then founded the town of Culver City, California, which he established as a model “whites only” town. Now it’s one of the most diverse communities in California. When Harry died in 1946 she started doing a bit of acting again. She was also a third cousin twice removed of Brad Pitt.