Peter Haskell

            On Tuesday morning I wasn’t quite able to memorize all of “L'amour en soi” (Love in Essence) by Serge Gainsbourg but I should have the whole song nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and as I will for two more weeks. It took several takes to get through “Vomit of the Star Eater” and “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” but I think I got good versions of each. The take of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” may be the best so far, the gain on the guitar was a bit high on the audio interface compared with the vocal. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the most I’ve weighed in the morning since September 23. 

            Since my free student version of Microsoft Office is expiring on October 3 I decided to buy it today. The main thing I needed was Word but Microsoft offers the whole package in two main options. I could buy it once a year for $100 or buy a one time package for $160. Since I used Word 2000 for twenty years I don’t see the need of annually renewing the app so the latter option seemed much better to me. After tax it was about $190 and it downloaded while I was having lunch. 

            I weighed 87.75 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I took some money from the bank machine and used the washroom. I checked out their grapes but they were too soft and so I walked over to Metro where they were a little firmer and a little cheaper. I got five bags of red grapes and a pack of two artisan naan. 

            I weighed 87.75 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I added all my clips of Buster Keaton falling to fill up the time of the third chorus. Then I cut out several seconds of the old concert footage to synchronize the video when I sing “Some have stayed a night or two / Some even stayed the whole month through / It seems they’d either gotten lost / or fallen in that well”. I shout that last line and extend the final word but I do it slightly longer in the concert video, thus putting the end of the line out of synch with the audio. Next time I’ll cut a little bit of that extension out of the video. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice videos and reviewed another five minutes of the one from September 12. 

            I grilled a small pork tenderloin and had a quarter of it with a potato and gravy while watching episode 23 of The Big Valley. 

            Heath’s childhood friend Ward Witcombe has been borrowing money from him ever since they renewed their acquaintance after Heath came into wealth as a member of the Barkley family. So far he has leant him $300, which in modern money would be over $9000. It’s starting to annoy him and when Ward comes to him while he’s breaking horses he tells him that if he busts a bronco he’ll give him $100. But Ward has no experience and is thrown into a fence, resulting in his legs being paralyzed perhaps temporarily but maybe permanently. Heath feels guilty and begins to help out Ward and his wife Nora around the house, doing all the work Ward never got around to doing. An old boyfriend of Nora’s named Ben Keel from when she worked in a saloon comes to visit after finding out Ward is incapacitated. He tries to rape her but Heath arrives and beats him up. Later Keel and two friends are in the local saloon when Heath’s brother Nick comes in for a beer. They have been spreading a rumour that Heath has been acting as a husband for Nora in every way since Ward has been laid up. Nick fights and beats all three of them. Heath escorts Nora to church but then Deacon Pursey comes to tell Heath’s mother Victoria that the congregation thinks it’s inappropriate considering the relationship they are rumoured to have. Victoria threatens to tell the church minister about this and sends him packing. Heath continues to do renovations to Ward’s house and meanwhile we see that Ward is secretly able to walk. Ward is concealing his recovery to give himself an edge in order to prod Heath’s conscience to get a large sum of money from him towards a timber investment in Montana. He says he needs $5,000, which would be $154,000 in modern money. Heath gets his family to agree to give him the money to help Ward. When Heath is on the way with the money Nora discovers that Ward can walk. She says she’s going to tell Heath and he begins to strangle her. She grabs a gun and they struggle, resulting in Nora being shot and killed. Ward puts her on a couch out of sight and returns to his wheelchair. Heath arrives with the money and then for some dumb reason Ward pulls a gun on him and stands up. He tells him Nora is dead and he’s going to have to kill him too. Heath looks at Nora and sees she’s still alive. That surprises Ward enough for Heath to disarm and overwhelm him. Ward goes to Denver and Nora moves away somewhere with a new outlook on life and a feeling of freedom. 

            Ward was played by Peter Haskell, who earned a BA in English from Harvard. He was planning on studying law when he was cast in the off Broadway play The Love Nest. His TV debut was in Death Valley Days. He was a regular on Search for Tomorrow and Ryan’s Hope. He co-starred in the TV series Bracken’s World. He played Sullivan in two films of the Childsplay horror series. He starred in The Legend of Earl Durand.