Gladys Hurlbut

            On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords to “Apocalypstick” by Serge Gainsbourg and uploaded it to Christian's Translations. It was all ready to publish but the YouTube search engine that goes with my blogger couldn’t find the YouTube recording that Google finds. I’ll have to paste in the URL tomorrow to finish the post. 

            My B string is getting more and more out of tune like it did before the machine was changed. I’d planned on taking the guitar to Remenyi yesterday to have them ship it back to Washburn, but no one answered the phone. I’m too busy with school now to pack it up and take it downtown so I’ll have to wait until my time is freed up. Maybe during reading week in February.

            I spent more than an hour in the late morning re-reading Oroonoko by Aphra Behn. It becomes even more clear the second time around that this “hero” is an asshole. Here is a man who captured hundreds of slaves and sold them to European slave traders and so for him to be captured and enslaved is really poetic justice, although the novel doesn’t paint it that way. Aphra Behn seems to be saying that slavery is hunky dory but it would be an injustice to enslave someone of nobility like Oroonoko. From an objective standpoint however putting him out of commission as a slave trader by enslaving him was a service to humanity. This guy gave the woman he loves two hundred slaves as a courting present and the author treats it as a romantic gesture. Even after experiencing how slaves are treated in the West Indies he offers to provide one hundred more African slaves in exchange for his freedom. Only after that does he instigate a slave rebellion and although he brings the other slaves to his cause by arguing against their treatment, his previous offer puts his sincerity into question. 

            The book is also pretty racist in how Behn presents Oroonoko’s beauty and his intelligence. Both of them are considered exceptional because they are more like that of a European. She shows this especially in her description of his appearance. His nose and his lips are said to be beautiful because they are less typically African and more like that of a beautiful European. 

            I had a slice of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread with peanut butter for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I went for a bike ride to St George and Bloor, south to Queen and then home. It was a dingy overcast day and so it was only really pleasant for the exercise rather than the looking around. 

            I finished reading Oroonoko. It’s a pretty horrible ending. He murders his pregnant teenage wife with her consent and then consents to being tortured to death rather than to live as a slave. But his life as a slave was one that most slaves would have killed for, since he didn’t have to work and he had the respect of many white people. He was only a slave in name and in that he could not leave Surinam. The kind of slavery that was painful to him was simply that he could not live as a prince so it was more of this snooty British “nobility is better” bullshit. 

            I read the poems "The Harp of India", "My country! in thy days of glory past" and "To the Pupils of the Hindu College" by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. Then I re-read "When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be", "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats. Keats is so much better. The imagery is stronger and his use of assonance in "When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be" is magical.

            I started re-reading “Beachy Head” by Charlotte Smith.

            I made a slice of bread pizza with tomato sauce, a bit of Chinese chilli sauce, french fries and cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            The fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina is in an unnamed county that turns out to be dry, meaning alcohol sales are against the law. Andy and Barney receive tips from the respectable elderly Morrison sisters, Jennifer and Clarabelle about two stills in operation in the Mayberry area. They arrest Ben Sewell and Rube Sloane and Barney smashes their stills. What they don’t know is that the Morrison sisters, in the back of their flower business, have a still of their own. They make sure that their customers are only buying their alcohol for special occasions and so Otis says he’s celebration the anniversary of the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia and another says he’s a Muslim celebrating Mohammed’s birthday. Opie comes around asking for some flowers to give to his teacher to get out of trouble and the ladies say he can take what he wants and leave. Opie goes in the back and picks some flowers and also takes a jar that’s there to put them in. he brings it to his father and asks for a better vase and so Andy says there’s one in the back. He leaves the jar on the desk and Andy and Barney can smell the alcohol. Opie tells them that the Morrison sisters have a flower making machine with a copper tube that goes round and round. Andy has Barney destroy the Morrison still. Later the ladies say they’ve gone into a new business making preserves. They say they’ve already given a jar to Barney. Andy walks in and finds Barney drunk and saying, “These are just about the best preserves I ever ate!”

            Clarabelle was played by Gladys Hurlbut, who played supporting roles in “Higher and Higher”, “The Mating Season” and “The Long, Long Trailer.”

            Jennifer was played by Charity Grace, who retired from school teaching at the age of sixty to become a stage and television actor. 

            I finished re-reading “Beachy Head” but the endless description and lists of flowers and birds made me sleepy. I’ll read it again out loud on Thursday when I’m fresher.