On Tuesday morning I translated the first verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian.
I memorized the fourth verse of "Lavabo" (Washbasin) by Serge Gainsbourg, and almost nailed down the last verse. I'll know the whole song tomorrow.
I weighed 84.7 kilos before breakfast. That's the lightest I've been in the morning in eighteen days.
In the late morning, I started doing my laundry and it was done half an hour before lunch.
When I went into the bedroom to get my bedding I saw a bedbug on the wall just outside the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed, high up at the upper right corner. It fell when I poked it and I found it on the floor at the head of my bed. It was black and greasy and unhealthy looking inside when I crushed it. It looks like the pest control treatment from a month ago is still driving them high up to escape the powder or the fungus.
I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I went up to the Dufferin Mall and to Walmart to buy underwear and sleeveless undershirts. I got the underwear but all of the sleeveless undershirts were white. I went to Mark's and it was the same thing so I didn't get any.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:00.
All day long I kept looking for some kind of message from Professor Audrey Walton giving us a link to our online class. But the class start time passed and yet I still saw nothing. I sent her an email and as soon as I sent it, at about 18:15, I got a Zoom link for the meeting.
The class was underway when I logged in.
She was going over the syllabus.
The response paper is a close reading essay.
The presentation is informal.
She added her own work on plagiarism, stewardship, and research ethics.
Mabinogi is a Welch legend and the beginnings of Arthur, but less glamourous and with more magic.
1066 was the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror remade England and replaced people in power and culture with his own Norman nobles. Literature in English vanished. Tradition became outside the mainstream. The English language was changed.
Geoffrey of Monmouth was like a TV historian of the day.
The first medieval French literature was written in England. The French had only used Latin in their literature up to that time. Marie de France.
There will be queer readings from that era.
There were big cities and populations. It was a different world.
Three women authors: Ancrene Wisse, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe reference each other.
Corpus Christi plays and the Noah's flood comedy.
Pearl Poet or Gawain Poet wrote the refined poem known as "Pearl", with each stanza carrying one line forward and going in a circle. He also wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Professor Walton says "kick" a lot, as in "good time."
We have to do a poster?
We took a break.
We broke off into groups for a few minutes to think of myths about the Middle Ages. I talked about the myth that women were powerless and that people slept more. I also wondered if it was really the "Middle Ages" for Britain since it seemed to be the beginning of English Literature.
My video image was titled "User" and it seemed that was because I hadn't used Zoom since before I bought the new computer and needed to download the software again. When I introduced myself I said my pronoun is "It".
Bede the venerable is the only person in history nicknamed "the venerable". he is the earliest major literary figure in English.
A myth about the Middle Ages is that people didn't live very long, but he made it to his 70s.
Bede had an amazing library built by the equivalent of a millionaire monk named Benedict Biscop who went back and forth seven times to Rome to buy books. It was a dangerous journey. He accumulated 150 volumes. One book traded for 100 acres. Sheepskins were used for paper. When Bede was 15 the plague hit all the monks except himself and his mentor. They rebuilt the monastery from scratch. He was alone with no English speakers other than his teacher. Maybe there were Welch speakers who were not monks that he learned from.
The professor shows a slide of the original text. Punctuation comes from music. The original manuscript has lots of white space and two columns.
History is driven by ideology and narrative technique.
I say Coif argues for Christian conversion with the question, "What has Paganism done for me?"
It's a critique of the king driven by secular concern. Edwin is related to one of Bede's patrons.
The sparrow allegory.
I say winter represents a space beyond comprehension.
Juxtapose this with Dante.
The text is anti-Constantinian. The future Roman Emperor Constantine was born in England. He wanted to convert everyone in the empire by force. Bede is different and the conversions he represents are not forced.
Bede is an outsider.
The most famous passage is by Caedmon. He is the Cowherd who can't sing. He has feelings of inadequacy. He has a Welch name and because his role was humble in the monastery he was probably Welch. Maybe material from Wales inspired the story.
His song/poem is alliterative.
Three sentences begin with names for god. Old English poetry uses a lot of synonyms. For example, maybe four descriptions of a piece of stone. It creates texture and layers.
In the old manuscript of Bede's history, below the Latin is Caedmon's poem. Insider outsider reading.
I say the poem is presented as being less important than its history.
It is an outsider poem. Old English is less valuable.
There are 26 copies.
Bede is called a monster scholar.
After class, I downloaded Zoom again and renewed my password.
Earlier, in anticipation of there possibly being a class, at 17:30 I sliced a potato and put it in a pot of water, I put the gravy on the stove and put a slice of pork in the oven. I turned the elements and the oven on low halfway through class and rushed out to increase the temperature a bit a few times during pauses. Class ended half an hour early and dinner was pretty much ready by then. I had it with a beer while watching episode 20 of Ben Casey.
In this story, an Austrian surgeon named Alfred Littauer with thirty years of experience has just come to the United States and has to serve as an intern for a year as if he had just gotten out of medical school before being allowed to fully practice medicine. He resents this circumstance and in trying to continue with his old-school European ways he clashes with Casey. He prescribes sedatives for patients with head injuries but Casey tells him that sedatives mask the symptoms so they can't tell what exactly is wrong. Littauer also clashes with Nick the orderly when a patient drops a ball and Nick picks it up to hand it to him. Littauer tells him that is outside of his job description. He then tells the nurse to wash the ball and give it back to the patient.
Casey takes Littauer to a barred and guarded section of the hospital and the Austrian doctor is immediately triggered. They visit the room of a prisoner named Lisa Delman who is there because she complains of headaches. Because all of her tests have come back negative and also because she plays head games with the doctors, Casey thinks she is faking just to stay out of her prison cell. She is in prison for two years for extortion and prostitution.
Casey makes Littauer Lisa's physician and Lisa recognizes in the way that he stands in front of the door when leaving that he has himself been in prison. After that, she opens up to him and they become friends. She is honest about her symptoms. Littauer tells Casey that he thinks Lisa has a lesion somewhere and recommends an angiogram. Casey thinks it's futile but agrees to it. The resulting photo shows that Lisa has a brain aneurysm and so surgery is necessary as soon as possible.
Littauer offers to assist Casey but Casey turns him down. Then Littauer removes his gloves and Casey sees a distinctive numbered tattoo on his arm. Littauer spent seven years in a Nazi concentration camp and five years in a displaced person's camp. He ran a hospital in the concentration camp treating thousands of starving patients. He operated under kerosene lamps with guards nearby ready to kill him if he made a mistake.
Casey agrees to allow Littauer to assist. Lisa has to be made unconscious and refrigerated before surgery. Littauer proves himself to be a fine surgeon and Casey is impressed enough to let him close. Lisa recovers.
Littauer was played by Frantisek Lederer, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1899. He became an actor at an early age and toured theatres in Central Europe with Peter Lorre. This eventually led to a starring role in the legendary 1929 German silent film, "Pandora's Box". He became a movie star in Germany and then moved to Hollywood where he was also successful. With the money he earned, he made wise investments in property in the Canoga Park area of California and made a fortune. He was the honorary mayor of Canoga Park for 25 years. He founded the National Academy of Performing Arts and became a teacher there up until a week before he died at the age of 100.
I searched for bedbugs twelve hours after finding one at noon and didn't find any.
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