Kathleen Freeman

            On Thursday after midnight I did my usual search for bedbugs and found none. That makes a week without a sighting and so I'm not going to bother looking tonight. Pest control is coming tomorrow. 

            I worked out the chords to most of “Le vieux rocker” (The Old Rocker) by Serge Gainsbourg. I just have the instrumental part to do and that's half done as well. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. I had time to eat an apple and take a few sips of coffee before leaving for tutorial. 

            One student was already in the room when I arrived. It was the first time I hadn't been the first one. I got him to help me move the tables a little further down so people could get by behind me.

            The average mark for our first assignment was 76.5% but the average mark Sarah gave was 75%. I got 78%. Sarah said we shouldn't stress over that mark since it's worth about 1% of our final mark. I said it's not so much about the overall value of the assessment but what it communicates in the moment. Even if someone were to stop me randomly on the street while I'm riding my bike and assess the the quality of my riding I would still be affected by it. Sarah asked, “What if the person doing the assessment was an expert cyclist?” I said that would depend on the criteria by which they'd been determined to be an expert. A self-taught musician could possibly know more about music than a Conservatory graduate. 

            Seven students were here at the start but two or three more came later. 

            Since we would be talking about Henry James's Daisy Miller, Sarah came dressed as Daisy Miller with a very feminine whitish dress and a pink bow in her hair. 

            Our attendance question was “What is your favourite thing to cook?” I said I only eat bread on weekends and Wednesdays and I often make pizza on naan, adding sauce, extra old cheddar and any meat that I have left over. 

            We had a review of the lecture that covered gender, race, and the late 19th Century figure of woman. 

            In the novella Winterbourn does interpretive reading of Daisy's body, behaviour, clothes and words. In Kate Chopin's Desrée's Baby, the baby is read by all. 

            Of the signifier, the signified equals half the sign. One side of the sign is the signifier and the other side is the signified. We as readers are in the role of Winterbourn and Armand and Deserée's mom.

            Henry James wrote peak realism in US fiction and was also considered to be a British writer, with his subject being often US citizens living outside the US. He was also proto-modernist. He started out with realism but also the interiority and consciousness of Modernism later. Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness To The Lighthouse, and TS Eliot's The Wasteland are other Modernist examples. 

            Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening about a white woman who leaves her marriage. For Deserée's baby, the white parent makes the meaning. Armand has the final say of who the baby is. 

            I talked about how Daisy Miller reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir's essay “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome”. She said that Bardot was the most perfect example of the ambiguous nymph that is the “child-woman.” Sarah thought that was interesting and someone else agreed that there is something of the child-woman or Lolita in Daisy Miller. 

            Winterbourn's leveling or intentioned assessment of Daisy Miller, that she is a coquette: a young, vain, manipulative woman who does not care about others' emotions. What is his relation to Daisy? Her real name is Ann. I had missed where it said that. Sarah said in Nabakov's Lolita, it was Humbert who named her Lolita. Maybe Daisy named herself. 

            What does it mean for US citizens to live in Europe in the story or in reality? 

            I said there is no culture in the United States, especially in the early 19th Century. These people are cultured and educated. They feel culturally starved in the US. There is also a sense perhaps of seeking out their European roots. 

            There is a distinction between the siblings Randolph and Daisy. They represent two types of US citizens. 

            I pointed out that all the judges of Daisy and how one should behave in Europe are from the US. The one character who accepted her is a European, Mr Giovanelli. There is a class difference between the Millers and the other US people in Europe. Old money versus new money. 

            The US people are moving around and flirting with Europe. 

            The Millers do not know how to not show they have money. I said they don't know how to not be read. 

            I pointed out that Morley Callaghan was like a Canadian Henry James in that he never wrote about Canada. 

            The US citizens in Europe are hammering home the success of nation-building. They are obsessed with saying they are from the US, but the cultural and social capital is not in the US but in Europe. At the end of Daisy Miller she dies. She was the most innocent and so her death was sad. Is Deserée innocent? If one is hammering a point one must have anxiety over it. The people that suffer are the women Daisy and Deserée. The innocent suffer. 

            There are no lectures and no tutorial next week because of reading week. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor and on the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought two bags of green grapes, three bags of black grapes, two half-pints of raspberries, a half-pint of blueberries, a bag of kettle chips, a small whole chicken, two containers of Greek yogourt, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a bag of naan, extra old cheddar, cream cheese, a can of peaches, and a jar of Sorrentese Alfredo sauce.

            I weighed 86.9 before lunch. That didn't seem possible but I weighed myself twice and it came out the same. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos at 18:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal and editing my tutorial notes at 19:30. 

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

            In this story, Carter has given Gomer a ride into town and as he is parallel parking he scratches the car in front. There is a small scratch that Gomer assesses to be $10 worth of damage. Gomer urges Carter to leave a note and finally he gives in, saying in it that he'll pay for the damage. It turns out that the car belongs to a Mr. Whipple, who calls Carter and tells him that the damage is $250. Carter refuses but then Whipple comes to the base and shows Carter that where there had once been a scratch at the back left side of the car there is now a substantial and ugly dent. This eventually goes before Colonel Grey, but even with Gomer's testimony, the colonel is convinced it was Carter's fault and orders him to pay. Gomer goes to the Whipple house to try to talk with him but only Mrs. Whipple is at home. She is very nervous and tells Gomer to go away. As Gomer is walking down the street he sees Mrs. Whipple get into the car and while trying to back it out of the driveway hits a tree in the same spot where the dent is. She is sitting in the car looking very upset when Gomer approaches and asks if she always drives that way. He says you did it, didn't you and she confesses. She says she can't tell her husband because she just started driving and he will yell about how he told her so when he said she shouldn't get a license. But he convinces her that confessing is the best thing for her to do and offers to stay with her for moral support. When Mr. Whipple comes home, after giving her husband a big martini Mrs. Whipple confesses. At first, Whipple begins to yell but this time Mrs. Whipple breaks her habit of yelling back and just responds gently. Whipple calms down and says everyone is entitled to one mistake and they embrace.

            Alice Whipple was played by Kathleen Freeman, whose parents were vaudeville performers and she first appeared on stage with them at the age of two. She made her first film appearance in “Wild Harvest” at the age of 28 in 1947. She played Gertrude Linkmayer on “Hogan's Heroes.” She co-starred in the short-lived series “Lotsa Luck.” She appeared in eleven Jerry Lewis films and played Sister Mary Stigmata in “The Blues Brothers.” She was the voice of Peg's always unseen mother on “Married With Children.” 

            Harry Whipple was played by Al Lewis, who early on was a circus clown but finished his education and earned a Ph.D. in Child Psychology. He taught school and wrote two children's books before turning to acting. He started acting in burlesque and on vaudeville before he made it to Broadway. He appeared on most of the television shows that were made in New York in the 1950s and then in the 60s played Leo Schnauser on “Car 54 Where Are You?” His most famous role was as Grandpa on “The Munsters.” His character was incorrectly called “Grandpa Munster” by the media when his real name was Sam Dracula. “Munster” was his son-in-law Herman's last name. In the late 60s, he opened a restaurant called “Grampaw's” in Greenwich Village. In 1998 he ran as a Green Party candidate for Governor of New York. I notice that I've used almost 5% of the 20 gigs of data that I bought from Freedom Mobile. That's not too bad. I use the dlink network whenever possible. Some days it's stronger than others, but today I was able to play a video of “Le vieux rocker” several times on YouTube without using my data.