Blossom Rock (Marie Blake)

       On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing “Mangos” by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords and was surprised that at least one set had been posted. I started transcribing them to my text. Even if there are other sets I'll probably finish doing copying them tomorrow and then start hearing how they fit. I weighed 88.1 kilos before breakfast. I had time to eat three oranges and drink a whole mug of coffee before leaving for the US Lit lecture. There was frost on the roof so I definitely wore my winter gloves. Someone drew a cartoon on the board showing a frog sneaking up with a knife behind someone holding a smartphone and wearing earplugs. The caption was the frog is your English 250 essay and the one with the headphones is you. She said she can't give an extra two days of grace for submitting our essays but there are two days of grace.

I'm not editing my essay notes until after I've handed in my essay. 

        The lecture was mostly about Carson McCullers's “The Ballad of the Sad Café” with the last half hour looking at “The Blues I'm Playing” by Langston Hughes. 

I offered an interpretation of “The Ballad of the Sad Café” as a birth of Cousin Lymon. He comes down the birth canal of the road. At first they think he's a calf and then a child and then he arrives discoloured the way babies do. He begins to cry and Amelia gives him a bottle. When she touches him she touches where he is most afflicted which is on his hump. He becomes both child and patient. He never behaves as an adult until he rejects her care in defence of Marvin Macy. That is his coming of age and abandonment of the mother. 

I asked the professor after lecture if the 1991 movie was any good. She said she'd seen it years ago but has forgotten it. She likes the casting of Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine though. 

She asked me about my university career. I told her I switched to English Specialist last year and that I;m in fourth year. She said she doesn't understand why the university changes the requirements of students like me and makes us take a lot of second year courses. I told her that I could get higher marks in fourth year than second year for the same level of essay. She said she'd heard that professors tend to mark higher than teaching assistants and I confirmed that was true. Professor Naomi Morgenstern seems pretty nice. 

I rode to Yonge and Bloor and then home via King. It was still cold out and I was glad to be wearing winter gloves. 

I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. 

I got an email from Michael Callaghan of Exile Editions responding to my manuscript submission. He said he has sent my book for editorial review and that he hopes they can find a place for my book in 2022 or 2023. I don't know yet if that is a confirmation that it will be published or not. 

I didn't get caught up on my journal until after 19:30. 

I researched the Aleut peoples in order to try to understand why the narrator of Sherman Alexie's “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” calls them cousins. He's Interior Salish and therefore identifies as an “Indian” while the Aleuts are more closely related to the Inuit although not that close. He calls the Indians at the bar “pretend cousins” and he also says that most of the homeless Indians in Seattle are from Alaska. I guess there are “Indians” in Alaska as well. 

I weighed 87 kilos before dinner. I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching the fourth episode of The Addams Family. 

In this story an election is approaching and grandmama says she first voted in 1906 even though women couldn't vote then, but she didn't let that stop her. Gomez is getting into the spirit by putting up the posters of all of the presidential candidates that the Addams family has supported throughout history. Every one of them lost and they seem quite proud of that. Gomez is planning to support Quimby but then learns that Hilliard from the school board is running that he plans on brightening the streets and draining the swamps. Since politicians never keep their promises Gomez concludes that Hilliard is the best bet for keeping the streets gloomy and the swamps swampy. They are offering to give him $20,000 but he tries to discourage them from helping. Fester writes a campaign song: “Don't be a hog help clean up the bog vote for Sam L Hilliard, He'll stick to the issues he might even kiss you so vote for Sam L Hilliard.” Hilliard loses by a landslide and so Gomer proudly puts his poster with the others. 

Grandmama was played by Marie Blake, who was born Edith MacDonald and was the sister of Jeanette MacDonald. Although Jeannette became a big movie star she always considered her sister Edith to be more talented. Because of that she never missed an episode of The Addams Family. When they were children they acted together in Vaudeville. She changed her name to Blossom MacDonald and performed with her future husband Clarence Rock as “Rock and Blossom.” When she started in movies in 1937 she used the name Marie Blake.  She became well known as Sally the switchboard operator in the Dr Kildare film series from 1938 to 1942.