Madge Blake

            On Thursday morning the strength was returning to my sprained shoulder and during yoga I could put my weight on my right arm and right foot while raising my left arm and leg in the air. It still hurts most of the time though and I still can't go down fully into a push up. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro, the chorus and part of the first verse of "On n'est pas des grenouilles" (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At about 9:10 I left for my tutorial and didn't get lost looking for the room this time. I didn't even go through the wrong door when I left the washroom. I was the first one there for several minutes.

            Daniel, the TA for this week and next, arrived at 10:12. He said he made the mistake of taking the stairs at Robarts this morning. 

            The attendance question was if we've ever played a musical instrument. I said I've been playing guitar for an hour a day for thirty years. Everybody in our that was there class has played an instrument.

            He asked for our reactions to The Scarlet Letter. 

           There is a momentum to the novel although it is very interior. 

           What did Dinsdale do wrong? What is his sin? The narrator says wearing two faces becomes a disease. 

            Hawthorne is interested in this era and how it applies to his own 19th Century society. 

            I said Pearl is a manifestation of Emerson's idea of how a child is uncorrupted. But I added that it's hard not to see Pearl as demon. Is she being seen through Puritan eyes? 

            In some ways a child is the construction of the adult looking back. 

            Emerson and Thoreau never talked much about women. 

            I said we make art out of what society imposes on us and Hester did the same thing with the letter. She made the ugly beautiful. I compared it to how colonists turned the song Yankee Doodle, which was meant to mock them, into their theme song. 

            The United States as a child and the right of every child to be free. 

            I said the A appearing in the sky is a message from above that it does not stand for adultery. It may stand for Above. 

            In Chapter 12 near the end Dinsdale sees the letter in the sky. Extended egotism over nature. A Freudian idea of the unconscious. I said we learned in Psyche 101 that Reality is a story the brain tells itself. It's interesting that the letter in the sky was a "dull" red light. Does it stand for Angels? 

           Was Hawthorne a Transcendentalist? Maybe it stands for AUM. 

            After tutorial I rode to Yonge and Bloor. On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of black grapes and a half pint of raspberries. 

            In the fruit section Dan Goorevitch said hello. He asked if I was writing. I said I was trying to find a publisher for a book of poems. He nodded knowingly and said that's always the problem. I said Albert Moritz the poet laureate of Toronto was helping me. Dan said, "Did you just say he was the foremost poet in Toronto?" I repeated "poet laureate" and Dan hadn't known that. He said Albert Moritz writes about things he would write about if he was a good writer. I said he has a book of haiku out now. He walked away saying he wasn't going to argue with me because we always seem to argue and added that he guessed it was a personality clash. Then he turned and asked how my son is. I said I have a daughter. He said I thought you had a boy. I said I have a daughter. He asked how old she is. I said thirty and that she's in Montreal. He asked if she was happy. I said I think so. When I saw him later in the personal items section he ignored me because I guess we'd done all the mutual acknowledgement that was required. 

            I looked at the turkeys but wasn't interested in going to all that trouble cooking something that's so big that I'll have to throw some of it out because it'll go bad before I can eat it all unless I freeze it. Instead I bought a little cornish hen not much bigger than my fist. I also got a bag of cranberries, a pack of five year old cheddar, two cans of peaches, skyr, two bags of kettle chips and three packs of two bars each of Irish Spring. 

            When I got home I took my broken mailbox key to Home Hardware but Henry, the guy who could copy it was on lunch. I left the key with them. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before lunch. I had a chicken spine and the few cold french fries that were left over from the take-out that my neighbour David gave me last week. I added salsa and yogourt and bit my tongue while eating it. 

            Before taking a siesta a tried to call the Parkdale Community Health Clinic to confirm my dental appointment tomorrow but got an overly urgent voice recording from Freedom Mobile saying, "Your account has been suspended!" I realized I'd forgotten to pay for my October phone plan so I went out and paid it. Then since I was still dressed and out I thought I might as well go back to Home Hardware. But while waiting in line I realized I'd only brought exact change to Freedom Mobile and now had nothing and so I went home to get my money. While there I called the clinic and confirmed my appointment. They had told me it was for 10:00 but now it was written as 10:20. They told me to come at around 10:00 anyway to fill out forms. 

            On my way out I ran into my neighbour David. He said his mailbox key cost him $35 but the landlord drilled an entirely different lock for his box. At the hardware store Henry hadn't done the key yet. It took him about ten minutes and it cost me $3.46. On my way in I tried it and it worked fine. 

            I took my siesta thirty five minutes later than usual.

            I finished my blogs and tutorial notes just before 19:00. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 19:00. 

            I read chapter seven of The Scarlet Letter. Hester goes to see the governor to appeal against Pearl being taken away from her. 

            I read half of 1.4 of Henry IV part 1. It's the scene in the tavern after Hal robbed Falstaff in disguise. Falstaff calls Hal a coward for not being there to help him fight all the men that attacked him and the number of men increases by two with every line of his description. Finally Hal reveals it was him that robbed him and Falstaff quickly recovers to say he knew that and only pretended so as not to harm the future king. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken wings while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story the colonel selects Gomer to drive to LA and pick up an important general from his hotel. Carter wants anyone but Gomer to go but the colonel says Gomer has the best driving record and the highest mechanical aptitude scores. Carter makes Gomer leave seven hours before he has to be there so he won't be late. On the way Gomer stops to help an elderly woman whose car has broken down. He pushes her home but is now in Van Nuys and has lost his bearings. He calls Carter for directions. Gomer keeps getting sidetracked. He stops to help a man who is carrying groceries and drives him home. The man insists on Gomer meeting his wife who says nobody does anything nice anymore and so he wants to prove she's wrong. Gomer ends up staying for three helpings of an Italian meal and then they have him look at their family photos. Now he has to call Carter to find out how to get there from Pasadena. Gomer next comes across a woman who is taking a cub scout troop downtown but they've missed their bus. Gomer gives them a ride and then goes to get directions for Wilsher Blvd. After that he turns a corner and finds the cub scout troop again having missed their bus and so he drives them to Disneyland. He gets directions from Carter again and calls Carter to let him know he's there and sees the general. But just as he's about to pick him up a desperate person approaches him. Next we see Gomer quickly drive right past the general, almost knocking him over. The general angrily calls the base and so the colonel and Carter head for LA. They find the general and Gomer having their pictures taken on the steps of the hospital. The general is no longer mad because when Gomer passed him he was driving a pregnant woman who was in labour. The colonel and Carter offer to drive the general back to the base but he wants to ride with Gomer. 

            The first person that Gomer helped was played by Madge Blake who helped to build the detonator for the first atomic bomb and also tested other equipment for the Manhattan Project. She was most famous for her role as Aunt Harriet on the Batman TV show. There was an Aunt Harriet who briefly appeared beforehand in the comic books but the producers mainly didn't want Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson to be living alone together and inviting speculation about homosexuality. She played Larry Mondello's mother on "Leave It To Beaver" and Dora Bailey in "Singin in the Rain", after which Gene Kelly had her appear in all of his movies. She played Flora MacMichael on The Real McCoys. She played the president of the Jack Benny Fan Club on The Jack Benny Show. She played Joey's mother on the Joey Bishop Show.