Lurene Tuttle

            On Thursday morning I memorized the third and fourth verses of “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            My third song practice since getting my guitar “fixed” at Remenyi on Monday proved that their tightening of the B string machine had no effect on my tuning problem. On Tuesday it was only slightly better and then from Wednesday on it just went back to how it was before. That means I have to ride downtown twice again when I should be studying for my exam. If they can’t replace the machine I guess I’ll be only riding downtown once because they’ll have to send it back to Washburn but then I’ll be out of a guitar probably until January. 

            In the late morning I took my guitar there but Harold told me they don’t have a replacement machine and so the guitar would have to be shipped to Washburn. He warned me that if they send it before the holidays it might take an extra week before I get it back so I opted to keep it and have it sent after Christmas. So I only had to go downtown once after all and I might have taken a bike ride past there later anyway. 

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home where I bought the only bag of red grapes that were firm and two bags of those elongated black grapes. I got a half pint of raspberries, a tub of cream cheese, three containers of Greek yogourt, two cans of peaches, a jug of orange juice and a box of spoon size shredded wheat. 

            I started getting the sniffles under my mask at the supermarket and they continued into the evening. I had jalapeno kettle chips and sour cream for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I did my hip exercises while listening to the earliest surviving episode of The Goon Show, which from the beginning of season two. The sound quality was low so a lot of it was hard to follow. 

            It begins with a police investigation and they interview a man who speaks in a nonsensical but Asian-mocking language. One man says that he’s Chinese. The other asks how he knows. He answers, “You can tell by his eyes.” “His eyes?” “Yes, the way he pronounces them.” The man activates a bomb that will go off in sixty seconds and so there is time for a song. He sings, “Longing for You.” Then a group called “The Stargazers” sings “I Never Was Loved By Anyone Else Until I was Loved by You.” Then the man who built the Suez Canal tells the story of his achievement. He also invented the bald toupee and the stringless violin. He says it took him a long time because he needed permission from Cleopatra. “But she’s been dead for thousands of years!” “I told you it took me a long time!” He tells how Britain used to have to sail around Africa to get to India. “But couldn’t you travel over land?” We tried that but it ruined the bottoms of the ships!” Once while dragging a ship across the Sahara it got wrecked but we managed to escape in life boats. “Life boats?” “I mean we couldn’t swim!” “But you were in the Sahara!” “I know! Who ever heard of anyone trying to swim in the Sahara?” When he first suggested to Parliament that they could cut through the narrow strip of land between Africa and Asia the prime minister asked, “If you do that won’t Africa float away?” The prime minister’s voice is similar to the voices of the “My brain hurts” guys on Monty Python. The canal engineer was very upset after all of his digging when he found out they wanted to fill his canal with water. The final story starred Peter Seller’s character Major Bloodnok in “The Quest for the Abominable Snowman.” The major comes home and tells his butler to take his boots off. He struggles with one and then the other and then the major tells his butler not to wear them again. They capture the abominable snowman and ship him back to England but when they open the crate they find he’s melted. 

            I was sneezing like crazy in the evening. 

            I got an email from the registrar’s office at my college telling me that they can’t change the duration of my exam but if the mark I receive for it falls below the other grades that I’ve gotten for this course I can contact them about it. I guess that’s something but the idea that exams are designed to the advantage of younger students who can type quickly is one of the incidents of ageism I’ve started to notice occurring at U of T. 

            I researched some more of the key terms for my Canadian Literature exam.

            Double consciousness as written about by William Du Bois is an experience of former African slaves maintaining their sense of community with others like them but at the same time trying to be integrated in the collective consciousness of the white dominated world of mainstream North America. Du Bois said the black man is forever forced to look at himself through the eyes of others. It holds him back from a true understanding of himself and stifles self confidence. To see one’s problems while at the same time being seen as a problem. This could only end if racism could end. For the black man it could be seen as a triple consciousness in that to integrate with white society in North America a black man must take on the double consciousness the white North American feels with Europe. 

            I had a potato, a pork chop and gravy while watching the Andy Griffith Show. 

            In this story Annabelle Selby comes to Andy to discuss the charity drive she has organized. She mentions that Opie has only contributed three cents. They also talk about the fine funeral she’d organized two years before in honour of her late husband Tom, who’d gotten killed by a taxi in Charlottesville. But later a man comes up to say hello to Andy and it’s Tom Selby. He explains that Annabelle’s nagging had gotten too much for him and so he went away. He is surprised to learn that Annabelle told everyone he was dead. Andy takes him to visit his own grave and convinces him to go back to Annabelle. He eventually says that he really is buried in that plot because it’s his old self who used to drink. Meanwhile Andy takes Opie to task for being so stingy and only giving three cents to charity while he has $2.50 in his piggy bank. Opie says he’s saving the money for a present for his girlfriend Charlotte. Andy thinks that is very selfish until he learns that the present is a winter coat because Charlotte’s mother can’t afford to buy her one. 

            Annabelle was played by Lurene Tuttle, who started out as a member of Murphy’s Comedians in Vaudeville. She later became known as the first lady of radio, working on Sam Spade, The Red Skelton Show and several other programs. In film and television she tended to play strong supporting roles but when she starred in “Ma Barker’s Killer Brood” she chewed up the screen. She became a radio acting coach for some already famous people like Orson Welles and Jayne Meadows. She was the mother in law of Star Wars composer John Williams.