Hazel Shermet

            On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords for “Mangos” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French. I still need to go through singi ng my translation and make some small adjustments. I'll have that done tomorrow and upload it to Christian's Translations. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before breakfast. I drank a glass of orange juice and some of my coffee before leaving for my last tutorial.

            As I was locking my bike in front of University College a very friendly and well fed squirrel came near me and started begging on its hind legs. It moved slightly away and then came back to do the same. When I said “I don't have any food for you but it was nice of you to ask” it took that as encouragement and climbed the iron fence to get closer to my level. It kind of made my morning. 

            In tutorial we talked about how hard it is to have to read a whole novel at the end of term. I mentioned Alice Munro saying that all novels would be better as short stories. Sarah wondered why short stories don;t grab people as much as novels. I suggested it's because people like to have a big plate of something in front of them rather than a little gourmet dinner. A novel is like a holiday and short stories are too short for a holiday even though they make better literature. Sarah asked if anyone besides me could name a literary journal. 

            The attendance question was “Do you have a pet?” I said I had cats for twenty years. Three generations and I named them after the daffodil family: Asphodel, Narcissa, Daffodil, Amorillo, and Jonquil. Sarah said she'd recently had to put down her cat because it had FIV or cat's AIDS. 

            The nature versus culture opposition dichotomy structures our thinking differently than in Enlightenment times when man was figured above animals. Salvage The Bones is in the present tense while most novels are in the past tense. Destructive female characters. 

            Sarah's dissertation is in environmental human Eco-criticism. Is all the destructiveness of Katrina natural or cultural? I said it's obviously cultural because the poor and mostly black people had to live in less flood protected parts of New Orleans. Poor people would have also had a more difficult time evacuating even if buses were provided. I said in the novel the pit is also cultural because it was created from the family's father letting businesses excavate the area for clay and the pit allowed the house to be flooded. 

            We are animals. What is natural? A hurricane is a mix of nature and culture. The age we live in is the Anthropocene. We live in deep time ages mapped out over millions of years indicating the prehistoric geological character of the planet. There have been 10,000 plus years of humanity. We came in the Holocene defined by stability and predictable conditions of achievement made possible by conditions on earth. Because of human action we are now the number one force for climate change. We are out control. We left the Holocene. We don't know how long it will last. If Katrina is natural or cultural can't be answered in the Anthropocene. 

            I said metaphorically nature and humans are brought together in the novel. 

            New Orleans was entirely created by humanity and built below the waterline. Some say the Anthropocene began in 1492. 

            Naming hurricanes. I said hurricane Hazel changed the shape of some Toronto neighbourhoods.

            Uncanny means familiar but off. Robots made to look like humans. Uncanny valley describes the relation between human like robots and the emotional response they evoke. Environmental uncanny is related to the sublime. Uncanny valley. Fake spectators at sport events. When authors include a storm the literature is relegated to sci fi. Storms are too convenient. But it's weird to not have storms. Salvage the Bones is based on a real hurricane. Bosch mansion of literature and the doghouse of sci fi.

            I mentioned the parallel between Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones and Zadie Smith's “On Beauty.” In both cases a black female author fom our era draws from the work of white male Modernist writers from a hundred years ago. I wondered if it's a pattern or coincidence. Sarah thinks they are salvaging the authors William Faulkner and E.M. Forster. 

            I probably won't go to the optional tutorial on December 9. I would be better off working from home to prepare for my exams. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor, south to College, west to Dovercourt, south to Queen and west to Gladstone to stop at Freshco. I got five bags of grapes, a half pint of raspberries, five year old cheddar, a can of peaches, skyr, hot salsa, three bags of milk, kettle chips and Earl Grey tea. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos at 17:45. I got caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I read Act 2 Scene 1 of Othello. While they are waiting for Othello to arrive in Cyprus Iago banters with Desdemona, making risqué jokes about women. Othello arrives and there's sweet talk with Desdemona before they leave together. Then Iago plots with Rodorigo against Cassio and Othello. Then when Iago is alone he tells the audience that he thinks Othello has been fucking his wife and he wants to fuck his. 

            I read chapter five of Salvage the Bones. Esch is feeling more pregnant but only looks like she's gaining weight, Skeet gives the dewormer to China. Skeet's father tries to get rough with Skeet and Skeet has to stop China from attacking him. The father says he wishes she had because then he would have had her shot. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching an episode of The Addams Family. 

            In this story Cousin Melancholia comes to visit Morticia because her fiance Fred took his ring back and went to join the Foreign Legion. Gomez tries to find a husband for Melancholia from among his many companies but with no luck. Lurch and Thing aren't interested in marriage either. Meanwhile the company Ferguson, Riche and Fisher wants to send their lawyer Harvey to get Gomez to sign away the oil rights to some land in Kenya. Harvey has dealt with the Addamses before and doesn't want to go. But when he lets it slip on the phone that he's a bachelor Gomez invites him over. Morticia gives Melancholia a makeover to dress her up in one of her own gowns with the trail that looks like a splatter of black on the floor. Grandmama keeps throwing her love dust on both of them. Harvey keeps trying to get away but Melancholia grabs him and starts kissing him. Just then her boyfriend Fred comes in. He explains he took her ring back because it was turning her finger green and now gives her one of brass. He didn't join the foreign legion but rather the American Legion. Fred then punches and knocks Harvey out and he has won Melancholia back. 

            Melancholia was played by Hazel Shermet, who was both an actor and singer who performed in theatre, on radio, in films and on TV for several decades. She provided the voice of Henrietta Hippo on The New Zoo Review and of Mrs baily on Jem. She appeared in over a hundred TV commercials. She was the last actor to play Miss Duffy on “Duffy's Tavern.” This was where she met her future husband Larry Rhine who was the head writer. She was a regular on the radio show “Jack and Cliff.” She was the star of two musical shows on local television in New York on which she would sing audience requests.