Walter Pidgeon

            On Wednesday after midnight I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few of bedbugs from the curtains. I reset the thermostat from 21.5 to 22.5 so the heat would kick on. I went to bed at 1:50, slept until 3:15 when I got up to pee, then slept right through to the 5:00 alarm. 

            I use two yoga mats and the bottom one has fallen apart but for years I’ve had another on the shelf waiting to take its place. It’s a woven vinyl mat that I found years ago and it turns out to be thicker and more comfortable than the old one. 

            After yoga there were a few bedbugs on the walls and on the baseboards around my bed. 

            I revised my translation of the first two verses and the chorus of “C’est ici (This is the Place) by Boris Vian. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune more than half the time. 

            I got an email from the landlady telling me that pest control will be coming on Friday. It’s been 2 and a half years since the last time. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos at 18:25, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since July 11.

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:30. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of my daughter Astrid when she was pre-verbal and a rehearsal with Yehudah Culman and his cello of my song “Seven Shades of Blues”. I had to use the Noise reduction effect in Audacity several times to get rid of humming. 

            I made pizza on multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching episode 12 of Daniel Boone. 

            A British unit led by Major Halpen on horseback marches into Boonesborough. A declaration is read that the territory of Kentuck now belongs to the colony of Virginia and therefore the king. The residents have 30 days to move out. Yad points a rifle at Halpen and gets shot in the shoulder. 

           Mingo goes to Daniel to inform him. When Boone reads the declaration it says the governor of Virginia is Lord Dunsmore. Mingo seems to recognize the name. Boone says he’s going to meet with Dunsmore and Mingo says he wants to come along to meet him as well. They force their way into Dunsmore’s office and Dunsmore welcomes them. He seems to recognize Mingo. Dunsmore explains that a treaty with the Tuscarora is what gave them Kentucky. 

           Boone and Yad go into Tuscarora territory to get Chief Tamend to come with them and to point out this was a mistake. Boone first captures him and then convinces him to freely come with them. 

           We find Mingo standing before a structure and singing something he says is the “Cherokee Death Song”. It seems to be just made up for this show. He also sings it in English and it addresses his mother. As he starts to walk away he sees Lord Dunsmore has been listening. He says he’d forgotten how sad that melody is. He says Mingo’s mother’s name meant “Singing Wind”. We now know that Mingo is Lord Dunsmore’s son. When his mother died he took him back to England. He tells Mingo the title of Lord Dunsmore is still his to claim. 

            Boone, Tad, and Tamend are captured by Halpen. They are to be held until Dunsmore’s orders are carried out. But Mingo comes and frees them and says he’s found another William Penn treaty, this one giving Virginia to the Cherokee. But then Halpen recaptures them. However Boone challenges Halpen to a fencing duel. He loses his sword but knocks him out with a punch. They disarm Halpen’s men and escape. 

            Next we see Boone and the Kentucky settlers storming Dunsmore’s mansion. They begin carrying the furniture out of his office, saying he’s been evicted because Boone bought the deed to Virginia from the Cherokee (of course this is not historically true). Cincinnatus is there planning on turning the office into a bar like at Boonesborough. Dunsmore smiles and admits defeat. He says they can keep Kentucky. He tears up the titles and they all have a drink. 

            Dunsmore was played by Canadian actor Walter Pidgeon, who was born in St. John, New Brunswick. He tried to join the Canadian Army at 16 but was discovered and sent home. He studied Law and Drama at the University of New Brunswick. During WWI he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Artillery but was crushed between two gun carriages during training and spent 17 months in a Toronto hospital, missing out on the rest of the futile war. He tried to join the RCMP but was rejected because of his army injuries. He studied voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He studied acting at E.E. Clive’s Copley Playhouse where he made his stage debut. He performed in stage musicals before moving to Hollywood. He made his Broadway debut in Puzzles of 1925. He made his film debut in the silent picture Mannequin. He co-starred in the silent films The Outsider, Old Loves and New, Miss Nobody, Marriage License?, The Heart of Salome, The Girl From Rio, The Thirteenth Juror, The Gorilla, The Gateway of the Moon, Woman Wise, Turn Back the Hours, and Clothes Make the Woman, He co-starred in Her Private Life, A Most Immoral Lady, Bride of the Regiment, Sweet Kitty Belairs, The Gorilla, Viennese Nights, Kiss Me Again, The Hot Heiress, Big Brown Eyes, She’s Dangerous, Girl Overboard, As Good As Married, Saratoga, My Dear Miss Aldrich, A Girl With Ideas, Man Proof, The Girl of the Golden West, The Shopworn Angel, Too Hot to Handle, Listen Darling, Stronger than Desire, The House Across the Bay, It’s a Date, Dark Command, Flight Command, Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver (for which he was Oscar nominated), White Cargo, Dream Wife, Madame Curie (for which he was Oscar nominated), Mrs. Parkington, Julia Misbehaves, Command Decision, The Miniver Story, Scandal at Scourie, That Forsyte Woman, Weekend at the Waldorf, The Secret Heart, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Executive Suite, Men of the Fighting Lady, These Wilder Years, The Rack, Advise and Consent, The Two Colonels, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Warning Shot, Funny Girl, Harry in Your Pocket, The Neptune Factor, Live Again Die Again, and Sextette (Mae West’s last film). He starred in Melody of Love, Fatal Lady, Society Lawyer, 6000 Enemies, Nick Carter Master Detective, Sky Murder, Phantom Raiders, Man Hunt, How Green Was My Valley, Holiday in Mexico, If Winter Comes, The Red Danube, Calling Bulldog Drummond, The Unknown Man, The Sellout, Forbidden Planet, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Big Red, The Vatican Affair, and The Mask of Sheba. He had a poor memory for names and often just called people “Joe”. He had an encyclopaedic memory for risque limericks and used to sing them to his co-stars. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1952 to 1957 and in that capacity he tried to stop the production of the film Salt of the Earth because blacklisted people were in the cast. He donated his body to the UCLA Medical School.