Miyoshi Umeki

            On Friday morning I felt like I might be coming down with a cold but I’ve felt that way from time to time over the last few months and it’s gone away. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Dispatch box” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the whole song nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            A little after 12:15 I headed for class. I was the first one there as usual. 

            Professor Balot says a lot of writers of academic essays go off the deep end. If you don't understand an essay it's not written well. They try to position themselves in the larger academic conversation with references to Hegel. The field of lit crit is murky. 

            I say that Pagans may be less conducive to forgetting than Christian’s in The Buried Giant. Nina pointed out that Wistan is really the only Pagan in the story who is resistant to memory loss. 

            William the Conqueror mapped out the whole of England for conquest. He separated the women and killed the men. The stories of King Arthur serve to legitimize the Normans. The Normans were the greatest colonists of their day. They first conquered Sicily by driving the Byzantines out. Then they drove the Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula, conquered parts of North Africa, and then England. The Normans who invaded Ireland became more Irish than the Irish. Then they colonized Scotland and led Scottish rebellions against Norman ruled England. They also conquered Cyprus and the Canary Islands. They were religious nuts. 

            I said the boatman in The Buried Giant is lying. The professor said he’s absolutely lying. 

            It was also pointed out that the boatman is the narrator, which I didn’t pick up on at all. Apparently it’s revealed in the final chapter. 

            The widows in “The Knights Tale” of The Canterbury Tales are similar to those that harass Gawain. The Furies were about vengeance. 

            Alyssa did her presentation. 

            The original lost object is the mother. Freud says our subjectivity is constructed by mourning.

            Epigenetics is the study of heritable traits, or a stable change of cell function, that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 15:49, which as usual on a Friday is the lightest I’ve been at that time in a week. 

            I took a late siesta and got at 18:00. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 20:30. 

            I cut up a whole chicken into legs, breasts, wings and spine and roasted it in the oven. I had a leg with a potato and the last of my gravy while watching season 1, episode 25 of Burke’s Law. 

            It begins with a New Years celebration in Chinatown. A tourist is taking pictures when a car comes speeding to a stop in front of her and the trunk flies open. The female driver and a little girl get out and run into the Paper Dragon club. In the trunk of the car is a dead body. When Burke arrives the tourist points out that the woman who ran is on the picture advertizing the featured dancer of the club, who is named Lotus Bud. Tim says the dead man is Eric Hansen, professor of Oriental Philosophy. His wife’s name is Sylvia and he has the address. Burke finds one high heeled shoe outside and goes inside looking for the match. In a back room there is a dancer but it’s not Lotus Bud. A man named Ying approaches him and tells him in very formal language that it’s a private party. Burke responds in formal language and then Ying starts talking like a hipster. He tries to sell him various items but it’s only after he offers him hashish that Burke reveals he’s a cop. Ying says he doesn’t know where Lotus Bud is. Burke talks with the owner Hop Sing Kelly who is played by Dan Duryea made up to look Chinese. His character is half Irish and spouts Chinese proverbs in an Irish accent. He shows Burke to Lotus Bud’s dressing room. She says she doesn’t know anything about the murder and wasn’t driving a car. Lotus Bud lives in the same building and on the same floor as the deceased. Burk and Les go to Lotus Bud’s apartment where they find the little girl hiding. She doesn’t speak or seem to understand English. Burke charms her enough to get her to go with Les while he goes to the widow of the deceased. Sylvia is played by Barbara Eden who is wearing a very similar outfit to the one she would wear a year and a half later on I Dream of Jeannie, except in this case we get to see her belly button. She’s meditating while drinking gin and following the Eight Fold Path. She’s not broken up about her husband’s death at all and is looking forward to the insurance payment of $50,000, which would be the equivalent of about half a million now. She says Lotus Bud killed her husband and her real name is Mary Ling. She was Eric’s teaching assistant at the university. She says she doesn’t know about any little girl. She says she was in the apartment with three monks when the killing happened. Tim was watching Lotus Bud but she gave him the slip. Burke takes the little girl to his place. In a bar a drunk puppeteer named Charlie January is entertaining patrons for drinks when Lotus Bud comes to him. She reminds him that he saved the life of the little girl Fragrant Lotus in Hong Kong and she needs his help now to find a place to hide. She’s afraid the police will send the girl back to China. She offers him money and so he agrees to come. Burke and Fragrant Lotus are in his car and he offers to buy her dinner. She says she wants coq au vin and suddenly begins talking in jive talk with a perfect US accent. She says he can call her Oscar. Les is staking out Lotus Bud’s building when she and Charlie arrive. Suddenly there is a shot and it looks like Lotus Bud is hit. They grab Charlie because they think he’s the shooter. Lotus Bud gets away. Burke finds out that Fragrant Lotus arrived from Hong Kong last night. The tourist Miss Potter has already sold her photo of Lotus Bud to the press and she has been very outspoken. Burke wants the world to think that the shot that was fired killed Lotus Bud and so he tells Miss Potter that she’s dead so she’ll spread the news. Burke goes back to Sylvia and finds Ying is with her. Burke takes Charlie to Oscar at Lotus Bud’s apartment and the next thing we see is her playing ragtime very proficiently on the piano. Fragrant Lotus explains her grandmother was a vaudeville star in the US and she lived with her in Hong Kong until Lotus Bud could bring her to the US. After she arrived she was in her mother’s dressing room when two men were arguing about money and one of them was stabbed. Fragrant Lotus goes to sleep and then Lotus Bud arrives. She says she asked for Hansen’s help to bring her daughter there but he said it would cost $5000. She paid him but last night he demanded another $3000. She doesn’t know who killed him. Burke takes her to the Paper Dragon and arranges for her to dance in costume for three suspects so he can observe their reactions on seeing her alive. Hop Sing is overjoyed to see her alive. Sylvia is indifferent but Ying is shocked and tries to get away. He’s arrested for murder and attempted murder. Now Lotus Bud tells Burke he saved her life and can marry her if he wants. Fragrant Lotus says, “You can be my pop!” Burke runs away. 

            Lotus Bud was played by Miyoshi Umeki, who was born in Otaru, Japan in 1929. She showed an early musical talent and liked singing popular songs from the US. After the war she toured with a jazz band made up of US soldiers. She was the first to record US songs for RCA Victor Japan and became very popular on the radio. That led to her moving to the States in 1955. She became one of the regular performers on the TV variety show Arthur Godfrey and His Friends, which led to her recording two albums. In 1957 she was cast to co-star in Sayonara for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She was the first East Asian woman to win an Academy Award. The next year she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance on Broadway in The Flower Drum Song. She reprised her role in the film version. She only made five US films but she had several guest appearances on television and co-starred in the TV series The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.