Isle of the Tortoise

            On Sunday morning I continued memorizing “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian.

            I finished working out the chords for “La noyée” by Serge Gainsbourg but I still have to place them properly with the written lyrics.

            I washed the book and record shelf at the southwest corner of my kitchen. I had originally kept my records on the bottom shelf but then the cats had scratched the shit out of them and so I moved them to the top. Since the cats are gone now I put the encyclopaedias back on the top shelf and will eventually return the records to the bottom. But first I need to clean the first floorboard in front of the shelf because the records overlap a bit and they would be in the way.

            I had the rest of my crackers with cheese for lunch.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Andy and Kingfish take a break from doing nothing in the office and spend the day at the movies. One of the films is Double Indemnity, which makes Kingfish think that it could give a man’s wife ideas about bumping off her husband for the insurance. When he goes home he finds that Sapphire has taken out an insurance policy on his life and he also finds two train tickets to Georgia. When he learns that she has also recently seen Double Indemnity he is convinced that Sapphire wants to murder him. He stays away from the window in case she might push him out and he refuses to eat her cooking but just wants unopened bread with unopened ketchup. Finally he learns that she has gotten $500 from an insurance policy and she has bought tickets to take them both on a trip.

            I didn’t take a bike ride in the afternoon because I had reading to catch up on for Indigenous Studies. I finished chapters two and three of Ways of Knowing. Chapter two was about how different Canadian environments shape how politics and economics are done in various Indigenous cultures. Chapter three talked about Indigenous art in the same way but also listed a lot of Indigenous Canadian artists of modern times and their accomplishments.

            That caught me up with last week’s readings and for this week there was a PDF posted online of two creation stories and a Thanksgiving address. I read the creation stories twice. A woman was falling but there was no Earth to land on and so the animals below tried to find the right animal to hold the Earth up. After several auditions the turtle won. They needed mud from the bottom of the ocean to put on top of the turtle and so several animals dived but died. One that died had a little mud in its paw when it floated up and that became the basis of the Earth.

            I hated the rest of the pasta and sauce I’d made on Saturday and had it with a beer while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In the first story a banker named Walker hires Josh to track down George Whiteside, the man that robbed his bank. The money was recovered but he is still wanted for the crime. Walker’s real motivation is because Whiteside killed his son. Josh learns from Mrs Walker that her son forced Whiteside to kill him in self-defence. She also informs him that her husband is not well. Josh and Walker travel together until Walker has a heart attack and has to recover in a farmhouse. Josh goes ahead to find Whiteside with only one-way of identifying him: after drawing his gun he holds his right wrist with his left hand.  No one in Banner, Texas has heard of Whiteside. But Josh runs into an outlaw named Phil who wants revenge for Josh putting him in prison. As Phil and his men are about to kill Josh the sheriff draws his gun and saves Josh’s life. It’s clear from the way he shoots his gun that the sheriff is Whiteside. Josh goes back and tells Walker he couldn’t find Whiteside.

            In the second story a murderer named Kidder has been captured but his gang have kidnapped a novice nun named Sister Grace and say they will kill her if Kidder is not released. The mother superior of the convent directly appeals to Josh and he turns her down but immediately goes about helping her. He asks the sheriff to deputize him so he can escort Kidder to Tucson. Josh then takes Kidder to his gang’s hideout and exchanges him for Sister Grace. After they are on their way he tells Grace to go back to the convent on her own while he goes back to recapture Kidder. But Grace insists on following him everywhere he goes because he saved her life and she doesn’t want him harmed. Kidder and the gang have left the hideout but Grace heard them say in Spanish they were going to Mission Junction. Josh goes there and she follows him. He sees Kidder’s gang are about to rob a bank. He ties Grace up in the church and goes after them. Though bound Grace manages to ring the mission bell. Josh turns to the sound just as one of Kidder’s men is about to shoot him from behind. Kidder and his gang are killed in the subsequent gunfight.

            The 17-year-old Sister Grace was played by the 22 year old Claire Griswold, who worked mostly in television. She was considered for the title role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie but lost out to her friend Tippi Hedren. She married director Sydney Pollack and retired in 1963 to raise their children.

Hattie McDaniel

            On Saturday morning I continued memorizing “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian.

            I worked out the chords for the first verse and half of the second verse of “La noyée” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I removed all of the records and books from the shelf at the southwest corner of my kitchen and pulled it away from the wall. I vacuumed behind and then washed the six-board wide section of the floor the shelf covers. There was a lot of greenish beige dried glue to scrape off. It seemed like a lot of work to clean an area that’s going to be covered up again and so no one will see it. I left all the stuff off the shelf so I could wash it in the next session.

            In the middle of the day the heat came on for the first time since the spring even though it didn’t feel that cold outside.

            I had crackers and cheese for lunch.

            I read about half of chapter two of Ways of Knowing. It describes the various political, economic and social systems of Indigenous people in different environments of Canada, such as the Arctic, the Sub Arctic, the Northeast, the Plains and the west coast.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish and Andy hear about a baby photo contest with a prize of $500. The most beautiful baby picture they know of is on the wall of Shorty’s Barber Shop and so they distract Shorty and steal it. They win the contest but learn that to collect the prize the mother and father have to both present themselves. Since Andy owes his landlady, Hattie McDaniel rent willingly poses as Mrs Brown. But then they find out that the baby also has to be presented. They ask Shorty where they can find he baby and he tells them it was him 40 years ago.

            Hattie McDaniel was played by the actor of the same name. For her role in Gone With the Wind she was the first African American to win an Oscar. The Academy Awards that year were held in a hotel with a strict “no blacks" policy but she and her escort were allowed in as an exception. However they still had to sit at a segregated table. She was also the first black person to sing on the radio. She appeared in over 300 films but only received credit for 83. She was the youngest of 13 children of parents that were former slaves.

            I took a bike ride to the Humber River and rode up the trail to look at the plaque commemorating the village of Teiaiagon. The plaque doesn’t seem to be on the actual site of the village. I don’t know if there is public access to the archaeological site and so I’ll have to look into that.

            It’s about the same distance from my place to Bloor and the Humber as it is to Bloor and University but then going up the trail took more time. Some people that looked like they might have been Native were making dinner on an open fire in the park.

            On my way home I stopped at No Frills at Lansdowne and Dundas where I bought Canadian grapes, imported grapes, strawberries, a ham, some Greek yogourt, cranberries and mouthwash. I’ve never seen so many male cashiers in one supermarket. Mine was asking everybody if they were having a good night so far. I answered that it hadn’t even been night yet when I’d walked in there.

            It was dark when I left the No Frills.

            I sautéed some onions, added powdered garlic, a can of tomato sauce, paprika and cayenne. I boiled some spiral pasta and had some with sauce and a beer while watching two episodes of Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In the first story Josh gets hired by Noonan, a ranch manager to bring back alive Juan Portilla, one of the ranch’s line riders whom he says stole $10,000 from the ranch. Juan’s father Luis tries to stop him but Josh makes him come along. They follow Juan’s trail to a cabin in the mountains where they find him dead. It turns out to have all been a trap by Noonan, who was the real thief. Josh shoots Noonan in the leg and cripples him.

            In the second story Josh is approached by a man named Poe who offers to lead him to a wanted man named Shawnee Bill for half the $2000 reward up front. Josh agrees but the next day Poe puts the money in an envelope and has it sent to Butterfield on the next stage. Then Poe tells Josh that he’s just been tricked, since he’s Shawnee Bill. Josh takes Poe into custody to deliver him to Colorado. They are being trailed by a relentless bounty hunter named Galt who shoots Poe from a distance. Galt does not realize that he has killed Poe and so Josh ties Poe to a horse and sends it galloping in Galt’s direction. While Galt prepares to shoot Poe, Josh sneaks up behind and kills him. When Josh arrives in Butterfield, Colorado with Poe’s body he learns that Poe is a well liked family man there and that he’d just sent $1000 to pay for his wife’s medical bills. Unfortunately the wife died leaving their five-year-old daughter in the care of her grandmother. Josh tears up the reward poster and moves on. 

           

Finding Home

            On Friday morning I continued memorizing “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian.

            I found four versions of the chords for “La noyée” by Serge Gainsbourg and settled on the ones in the key of D but I’m hearing a lot of the chords differently and changing them.  The people that post these chords are probably better musicians than me and may have a better ear but I’ve got to go with the way I hear it.

            I had to do my laundry since I was down to one pair of underwear with a big hole that would not keep my fellas snug.

            I stopped off at the drug store to ask them to call my doctor and renew a skin cream prescription.

            I had a bowl of lentil soup with chips for lunch.

            I didn’t do any exercises or take a bike ride in the afternoon because I had to meet a deadline for a proposal of the “Home” part of my “Finding Places” assignment. I was locating four First nations sites near where I was raised in New Brunswick. Of the four my TA will pick two for me to write about. My preference is the first two. Here are my proposals:

Proposal number one:
            The home where I was raised in the province of New Brunswick is 20 kilometres from the former village of Bristol, which is now called Florenceville-Bristol. The original Wolastoqey word for this location is Shiktehawk and it was important because it was the beginning of the Big Shiktehawk stream, which led from the St John River to a 23.5 km portage to the Miramichi River, which flows to the Atlantic Ocean. Shiktehawk was also the site of a legendary battle and a subsequent peace between the Wolastoqey people and another band that some say were the Mi’kmaq and others say the Mohawk.
            I propose to research and present about the significance of this location as a route and as the site of a peace treaty.

Proposal number two:

            My grandfather had a sawmill near the St John River not far from Edmundston, New Brunswick. Our family history often retells some stories of my grandfather’s violent encounters with one particular “French Indian” who was also working as a logger in that area. The nearest First Nation to that location is the St Basile First Nations 43 km east of my grandfather’s home. This Wolastoqey reserve is mostly French speaking and some of its members are still loggers.

            I propose to research and present about the involvement of the people of the St Basile First nations in the lumber industry in Madawaska County, New Brunswick and hope also to find the source of conflict that existed between settlers like my grandfather and members of the reserve.

Proposal number three:

            Maliseet Woodstock First Nation, 32 km south of the house where I was raised is the second site for this band of Wolastoqey at the meeting of the Meduxnekeag and St John Rivers. The first site was downriver near Meductic. The Meductic Wolastoqey Village was a Maliseet settlement near the Eel River and the St John River 6.5 kilometres up river along the St John from what is now Meductic, New Brunswick. Until the mid 18th Century it was the main Maliseet settlement. The Maliseet built a fort there to defend against Mohawk attacks. It was the first fort in Acadia.

            I propose to research and present about why the Meductic Wolastoqey Village had to move to Woodstock.

Proposal number four:

            Tobique First Nations is the largest of the Wolastoqiyik reserves in New Brunswick with a population of 2,500. The Tobique River is named after the Wolastoqey Chief Noel Tobec (1706 to 1767). It is 25.5 kilometres south of my father's home community of New Denmark.

            I propose to research and present about the history of the Tobique First nations.

            I posted my proposals online just before dinner.

            I had a potato, two drumsticks and gravy while watching the third and fourth episodes of Mr Lucky.

            The third episode was really impossible to follow because it was only a 14% download.

            The second was 89% and it involved a math professor who was trying to work out a system to beat Lucky's roulette wheel. A beautiful rich woman named Prudence always hangs around while the professor plays because she’s interested in whether he’ll ever work it out. Her purpose in the plot seems to be just to serve as eye candy and to be Lucky's romantic involvement in the middle of the intrigue. The police inspector tells Lucky that there’s a counterfeit ring working in fake $50 bills and asks him to be on the lookout. A scuba diver has been putting packages in a net below a porthole and someone inside the ship has been pulling them up. Lucky hears a portal slam and a boat motor. He goes below, sees one of his crewmembers carrying a book up to the deck. He investigates the cabin where he heard the portal slam and finds the wet wrapping of a package the size of a book. The crewmember passes the book to the professor who gets on the boat. Lucky jumps the professor and Andamo takes out the crewmember. The professor isn't really a professor but rather one of the counterfeiters.
            There isn’t much to this show besides visual style.

            Prudence was played by the beautiful Barbara Bain.

           

Tuning the Dark

            On Thursday morning I continued memorizing “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian.

            I finished memorizing “La noyée” by Serge Gainsbourg and started looking for the chords. I’ve found two versions of them so far.

            I washed a six-board wide and 125 cm long section of my bedroom floor just inside the entrance. There was more to clean there than on the floor where my bed sits because there’s foot traffic.

            I emptied into a roasting pan the contents of the big bag of frozen lentil soup that I’d gotten a couple of months ago at the food bank and heated it in the oven. I had a bowl for lunch with potato chips.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story during an argument Sapphire says if she’d known how it was going to turn out she might not have married Kingfish. He decides to call hr bluff and makes a fake document showing that they were never legally married twenty years before. The prank backfires on Kingfish when she kicks him out of the house since she’s not going to share the same roof with a man she’s not married to. Kingfish has to romance Sapphire all over again to win her back.

            It rained most of the day and so I didn’t take a bike ride downtown but I needed meat and fruit and so I rode down to Freshco at around 17:00. I bought four bags of grapes, some old cheddar, some Black Diamond old cheddar on sale, a loaf of sliced light Bavarian rye bread, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a tub of margarine and a carton of spoon size shredded wheat.

            I roasted the drumsticks and made gravy. I had two drumsticks and a potato with gravy while watching one episode of Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Randall learns that a less ethical bounty hunter named Daimler is after the bounty for an old man named Juan Hernandez who may really be Don Diego Vasquez, who has been wanted for murder for fifteen years. Hernandez lives outside of Miles City, Montana with his half Sioux daughter Juanita and several Sioux that protect them, including a warrior named Charlie Two Hawks. Randall tags along with Daimler because he knows his reputation for preferring dead bounties to live ones. But Daimler doesn’t want company and knocks Randall out before going after Hernandez. Juanita meets Daimler on horseback to tell him that her father is willingly surrendering. Hernandez receives Daimler graciously and admits that he is Vasquez and that he did indeed murder a man but it was the murderer of Juanita’s mother. Vasquez begins to leave with Daimler willingly but when Daimler pushes the old man roughly and knocks him down Juanita attacks Daimler. Daimler hits Juanita and Vasquez raises his cane to strike but is fatally shot. As Vasquez is dying he tells Daimler that he has also posted a bounty. Randall arrives too late and asks Daimler to leave the body with Juanita but he needs it for the bounty. He ties the body to Vasquez’s horse and leaves. Charlie Two Hawks follows and Randall wants to stop him so he won’t also be hunted for murder but Juanita promises Randall that Daimler will not be killed. As we see Daimler riding along, first his horse is shot and the horse carrying the body runs away. Daimler tries to drink from his canteen and that is shot as well. Daimler is taunted by an unseen enemy making animal noises as he tries to make his way to safety. When Daimler finally collapses from madness and thirst, Charlie Two Hawks comes forward with a knife. When Randall catches up with Charlie Two Hawks he is riding with Daimler alive but in shock beside him. Charlie Two Hawks leaves Daimler to his care and when Randall asks what the bounty had been Charlie Two Hawks replies that he took Daimler’s right thumb so he could no longer be effective as a quick shooting bounty hunter.

            

Steve McQueen

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the first verse of “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian and all but the last verse of  "La noyée" by Serge Gainsbourg.

            In the late morning I took a siesta so I’d be fresh for Aesthetic and Decadent Movements class that afternoon. I only slept for about half an hour and so I had time for lunch before leaving.

            There was no other class ahead of ours so I was able to open the little basement windows and air out the stuffy room.

            I worked on my journal with my laptop until class started.

            Professor Li gave us a review to bring us up to date.

            Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnets tangle love with death. It’s better to compare his work with that of other poets in order to understand it.

            Christina Rossetti’s poems have intricate form and feelings, artfulness of emotions and complex aestheticism.

            We looked at George Meredith’s long poem about a love rectangle, "Modern Love".

            I pointed out that his use of sonnets stretched to sixteen lines reflects an abnormal situation. Sonnets usually contain a resolution either in the sestet or in a couplet at the end but these don’t. I suggested that this might be deliberate in order to convey the idea that these entanglements have no resolutions.

            Someone suggested that there is a sense of surplus in the relationships because of the stretch to sixteen lines.

            The husband refers to himself in both the first and third person. I said that the observing “I” may be referring to the involved self as “he” because he is both a participant and an observer.

            The poem sometimes reads like a novel.

            One aspect of modernity may be that the wife is the first one to take a lover.

            The word “modern” may be there for irony.

            “Low sobs” are not loud and yet they “shook our common bed”. This is symbolic of repression. 

            “Little” is smaller than “small”.

            Her sobs “strangled mute” are tied with the “muffled pulses” of the darkness.

            The “heavy measure” of sleep relates to musical measure.

            In sonnet XLVIII the husband speaks in the first person displaying his psychology as he complains about women in general. He uses “sense” and reason and “senses” to refer to physical perception.

            “In most hearts”: For a Victorian male, opening the heart and being humorous and ironic were very manly things to do and to be honest was to be “earnest”. But the speaker here talks of feeling the truth.

            We took a five-minute break.

            Before looking at William Morris’s “Defence of Guenevere” she showed us his painting of the same name. But I found that although the painting is by Morris it was a portrait of his wife Jane Burden depicted to represent Iseult mourning Tristram’s exile from the court of King Mark.

            William Morris was a socialist who was dissatisfied with the grotesqueness of the industrial world. He believed that it enslaved thinking and caused alienation. To counter this he set up workshops for the design and hand crafting of wallpaper and fabric. The most prominent store that Morris worked with was the Liberty department on Regent Street. She passed a around a piece of fabric called “Strawberry Thief” designed by Morris that she’d bought at Liberty in London. She said it costs $92 per metre.

            Our first seminar starter this week was by Ling Sun, who says Guenevere is comparing her tears to the blood of Christ in the wine of the Eucharist.

            I pointed out that the idea of what is divine has been switched in the poem, as the colour blue is presented as that of hell while red becomes divine.

            The second seminar starter was by Robin, who connects Keats’s phrase, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” to the Defence of Guenevere. Guenevere claims to be innocent because she is beautiful.

            I told the professor that I plan on making my own translation of “Au lecteur” by Baudelaire and asked if I should upload it with my paragraph when I do my presentation in two weeks. She said that I should attach it.

            She commented that a lot of seminars she’s taught have had students not being engaged with the material but our class is outstanding.

            She wanted to know if hr teaching style was too aggressive. I told her that I like it because I’m an argumentative type of person.

            After class I rode to the U of T Bookstore to see if our Indigenous Studies textbook, Ways of Knowing by Yale Belanger was in yet and I was glad to see that it was. I was not glad to see the price of $112 on the shelf though. I took it to the counter and the clerk asked if I wanted to pay for something. I said I didn’t want to pay for anything because it was going to hurt. He said it always does. He was interested to know what course it was for. I was pleasantly surprised to see the price was lower than that listed on the shelf, although it was still pretty expensive at $97.60 after tax. The clerk asked if I wanted a bag and I said I think I’ve paid for it, although the bags are free anyway.

            I rode west on College to Brock and then went up to the back of the Dufferin Mall because my second Waterpik had died. In Walmart they only had two kinds of Waterpiks. One was another wireless one like I’d just had and the other was a plug-in kind about a size down from the one that my daughter bought me a few years ago. I got the plug-in model and it was $112.97 after tax. This was an expensive day!

            When I got home I went out to the liquor store and bought a six-pack of Creemore. When I walked up to the cashier she was telling someone, “He wants to put in a moat with snakes and alligators in front of his wall!” I asked, “Trump?” She pointed at me and said to the other person, “See? He didn’t even have to hear the name to know whom I was talking about! You’d have to be dead to not see how crazy that is!”

            I did some exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish wants Andy to buy a car with him with Andy making the first down payment. They buy a 1926 Overland Roadster but six blocks from the dealer the tire blows out. They open the rumble seat to get the tools and find a woman’s body. They are frightened and think the police will think they killed her. They park the car and hide in their office while worrying about the electric chair. Andy goes out to move the car and while he is gone a man arrives who used to be the owner of the car. He tells Kingfish that he left his mannequin in the rumble seat and wants it back. Kingfish tells him he can take it. When Andy returns he offers to pay Andy for his half of the car and Andy takes the money. Kingfish tells Andy he’s just been scammed because the body was a mannequin. Andy tells him he found that out a few minutes ago after Kingfish’s car got hit by a truck.

            I cut a rectangular focaccia bun in half and made two small pizzas with the rest of my sex trade worker sauce and my old cheddar cheese. They turned out well and I had them with a beer while watching the first two episodes of Wanted Dead or Alive, starring Steve McQueen. 

            I hadn’t even known that McQueen had been on a TV series. He plays a bounty hunter with a heart of gold named Josh Randall whose weapon is a sawed off rifle that he carries in a holster like a six-gun.

            In the first story, Randall arrives in La Tunas in pursuit of Carl Martin but walks in on Carl being busted out of jail by his brother Andy. The sheriff is killed and Randall is slugged over the head but manages to severely wound the escaping Car just before losing consciousness. When he comes to he is accused of killing the sheriff and busting Carl out of jail so he can track him down and get the reward. Randall escapes and goes after the brothers. He finds them at their ranch with their sister Louise, who hadn’t known her brothers had killed someone. Carl tries to shoot Randall but Louise stops him. He’s too weak to fight but Andy isn’t and ends up killed. Randall gets the reward and gives large amount of it to the sheriff’s widow. Someone says that if people knew he did things like that they’d be friendlier towards him but he says he doesn’t want the kind of friends that would need to know.

            Louise was played by Jennifer Lea, who was chosen to play Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show but was ultimately replaced by Mary Tyler Moore.

            In the second story Josh gets a telegram from an old friend named Sykes, who is a retired Confederate colonel. He finds him injured at Fort Considine and being cared for by his daughter Jody. He learns that it was Jody that sent the telegram. Sykes has been wounded by bounty hunters because a fake wanted for murder poster for Sykes with a reward for $1000 has been posted all over the territory. Josh has to do detective work to discover who printed the poster. It turns out that it was Clara Hood, the wife of a deserter named Ben Hood that Sykes had put in prison for twenty years. Hood had died in prison and so Clara wants revenge on Sykes. Josh stops her and her brother and the fake wanted posters are collected for a bounty of $1 each.

            Carla was played by Joan Banks who was a radio star of the show Gangbusters among others in the 1930s. She didn't start having success in films and television until the 1950s. 

Ziva Rodann

            On Tuesday morning when I got up it felt like I had a cold. I figured I’d caught it from the tech guy at the Help Desk at U of T who kept coughing on his hand before touching my keyboard.

            I continued working on memorizing the first verse of “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian and memorized the first four verses of  "La noyée" by Serge Gainsbourg.

            At 9:30 I took a siesta because I had to work that afternoon and didn't want to nod off while posing. I got up at 11:00 and felt a lot better.

            I ate a cold steak for lunch.

            I worked at OCADU for the first time since March 29. The instructor was a TA named Shevon and new to me. The job was pretty average, starting with short poses and increasing to fifteen at the end. During breaks I used my laptop to work on my journal.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco to buy two $2 watermelons.

            For the second day in a row I skipped my afternoon exercises because it was so late when I got home.

            I had my last steak with a potato and the last of my gravy while watching the first two episodes of “Mr. Lucky”. This was a show that I’d started downloading a year ago but only 56.5% made it into the folder. I tend to give a show a year because sometimes they take a few months. Watching it was pretty choppy and with a lot of gaps but I caught most of what was going on.

            In the first story Mr Lucky is running a casino in an unspecified Latin American country with a sketchy political climate. Lucky’s friend and right hand man Andamo is a native of this country and has been secretly helping the revolutionaries to overthrow the president. The president encounters a beautiful woman named Elena at the casino and arranges to have dinner with her. But it turns out she is one of the rebels and while necking with him she pulls a small knife from her hair and kills him. The shit hits the fan and so Lucky and Andamo buy a rowboat for $5000 and hightail it out of there.

            Elena was played by Israeli actor and mime Ziva Rodann. She was the first Israeli actress to sign with a major studio in Hollywood.

            Somehow between the first and second episode Lucky and Andamo become crewmen on a freighter. They arrive in the States and run into someone they know who is on his way to a costume party on a boat. The boat turns out to belong to a notorious conman named Julius Rutherford Shank. Lucky recognizes Julius and saves one of his victims from falling for a mica mine scam but it puts Julius, his wife and their daughter Maggie into a precarious position because Julius owes money to the mob. Lucky goes to the mob boss and says he wants to open a casino there. The mobster says it’s out of the question because the syndicate wants to keep a monopoly. Lucky borrows money from the mobster and then uses it to win a lot more at his casino. He buys Julius's boat from him and opens a floating casino called the Fortune 2. These first two episodes were basically an origin story. The boat is the centre of Mr. Lucky’s operations from this time on with help from Andamo, Maggie and Julius.

            This show was a Blake Edwards creation like Peter Gunn, also with music by Henry Mancini.

            Maggie was played by Pippa Scott, whose father wrote all of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. She co-founded Lorimar, one of Hollywood’s most successful production companies. In the 80s she founded IMI, an organization that tracks down evidence of war crimes.

            Andamo is played by Ross Martin who would become famous in the 60s for playing Artemis Gordon, another sidekick, in Wild Wild West.

One-Piece Suits Are Closer to Naked than Bikinis

            I worked on memorizing the first verse of “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian and memorized the first three verses of  "La noyée" by Serge Gainsbourg.

            Microsoft Word crashed on me again while I was continuing to transcribe the poem "Au lecteur" by Charles Baudelaire. I installed Apache Open Office and "Au lecteur" was my first document in that program. I put it on a flash drive to take to school with me.

            At the Ramsay Wright building a guy asked if I had the key to a lab. I told him that they don’t give the keys to labs to English students because we might create Frankenstein's monster.

            There was no class ahead of us in the lecture hall. I plugged in my laptop and tried to transcribe a little more of “Au lecteur". Some students behind me were saying that our textbook finally arrived on Thursday. It made me wonder why Professor White hadn’t emailed us about it so I could have swung over there to buy it during my bike ride on Friday. As it was I didn't get the required reading done and neither did most of the other students.

            I tried to go online with my laptop but I couldn’t connect, despite the fact that my laptop had been set up two years before to access the U of T network.

            The professor gave us our “Finding Place assignment". It had been due on October 21 but he’s extended it to November 18. The assignment has two parts. We have to find four Indigenous places at or near our original homes and another four in the Toronto area. Of those four our TA will pick two for us to visit and write about. Some suggestions were actual Native run places like the Pow Wow Café. I asked about places that have no supervisors or plaques, like the indigenous village that used to be at the mouth of the Humber River. Someone asked if they could interview people but he said there are ethical issues about human subject studies. We have to submit our proposals this Friday.

            The final assignment should be three to seven pages long and it’s worth 20% of our mark.

            The professor mentioned that our textbook was in but when a student announced that it had sold out he exclaimed, "They're killing me!"

            In the lecture he talked about finding the middle ground between the indigenous viewpoint and that of settlers.

            History was a collection of oral traditions. Is a standard version necessary? In the west we need a standard narrative.

            He drew the diagram of an intersection with two cars that have just had an accident in the middle and a closed circuit camera on the corner. How many points of view do we need to know what happened?

            Another example he used was 9-11. What happened?

            We take into account in a cyclic sense how things have changed.

            We have the point of view of someone from outside the natural world versus that of someone from within. Context means everything and both sides of Custer’s last stand are important.

            Stories are understood on an individual basis.

            He asked students to Google something related to Indigenous people and to report the number of results and how long it takes. A Native woman in the back Googles Orange Shirt Day and gets 429 million results in 4.5 seconds. September 30 is Orange Shirt Day to honour indigenous children that were taken away from their parents and placed in residential schools. The day after I tried and got almost 2 billion results in 0.45 seconds.

            He asked us how many pages deep we go when we search for something online. Most people raised their hands to “one". I tend to go three pages deep and the professor said he usually goes five.

            He says in the United States there were boarding schools for indigenous children too.

            Do songs make you think of points in your life? Do you still sing the ABC song to yourself?

            Some claimed that Christian hymnals helped Native people remember their stories.

            Which presidents were good speakers? Obama was good but Bush wasn’t. Trump is in a class by himself called "liar liar pants on fire".

            He mentioned a book called A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. He said that it’s told not through the eyes of the dominant culture.

            Where did Columbus land? He said on the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic but it was on Guanahani, which became San Salvador in the Bahamas. I found out that the Santa Maria was owned and captained by a Basque named Juan de la Cosa and several members of his crew were also Basque and so there was already an indigenous connection. Some speculate that Columbus was actually also Basque.

            Columbus's men almost mutinied. It was actually the Basques that almost mutinied.

            The professor didn't know that his Columbus Day is the same day as our Thanksgiving.

            What is widowed land?

            Some claim that the Indigenous population in North America at the point of contact was less than the current 2.7 million population of Toronto. The widely accepted estimate is that there were 15 to 19 million but by the year 1900 there were 250 to 350 thousand. That is a 95% loss.

            What caused this loss? The plague and what used to be called “The American Holocaust” before the term got pushed back because that would mean someone would have to take the blame.

            Lord Geoffrey Amherst took blankets from a smallpox ward and distributed them to Indigenous people.

            The decline in the indigenous population caused the buffalo population to rise to 60 million up until the 1850s.

            He said there's an overpopulation of deer right now in the United States. He's hunted five years but only gotten two deer.

            The Indigenous population of Hispaniola almost became extinct from 1492 to 1535.

            He said Mexico had 25 million Aztec in 1519 but my research says the Aztec empire had 5 million people. 

            The Spaniards came for glory, god and gold but not in that order.

            Assimilation and acculturation are not interchangeable.          

            Assimilation is a coercive technique. Some of the greatest stories have been written about resistance to assimilation. Star Treks Borg: “You will be assimilated”.

            Those fighting assimilation have been known by various names such as the resistance, insurgents and terrorists.

            Acculturation is a blending of the best of both societies into melting pots, mosaics and stews. The professor said he was getting hungry.

            The idea of freedom during the French Enlightenment was based on the Indigenous American concept of freedom.

            In a consensus all don't have to agree but they agree that they can agree.

            US politics is about one number: 51 because there are 100 senators.

            We gravitate towards like-minded people.

            How long has the general population been literate? It exploded about 500 years ago.

            Stained glass windows were telling stories since long before literacy.

            Who can tell Indigenous stories?

            A myth was perpetuated that Indigenous people did not own land. Haudenosaunee women owned the clearings and the forests belonged to the men. There were always territorial boundaries.

            The rules of the dish with one spoon:

Take what you need and use it all.

Leave some for future generations.

Leave the dish clean.

            Agriculture was practiced by most tribes.

            Indigenous people were explorers. How else would the Haudenosaunee have an alligator dance?

            The professor asked where up here outside of a zoo have you seen an alligator. I said, “In a restaurant.” He asked if it had been alive or dead. I told him it had been on a plate. He declared that alligator actually tastes pretty good.

            In tutorial we talked about the colonial idea that North American land had been empty when Europeans arrived.

            Pre-contact was oral while post contact was written.

            Safia asked what was taken away. Someone said that boys were made to cut their hair in residential schools. The language, sundance and the potlatch among many other traditions were also suppressed.

            Language carries history.

            In the Caribbean the Terinas and the Arowak were eliminated. I asked what about the Carib Indians but she said that was the Arowak. But I don’t know what she means because Caribs are still on the islands and the mainland. The Terena are the indigenous people of Brazil. The Arawak came to the islands before the Carib. The Carib/Taino people are an Arawak subgroup.

            Indigenous suicides in the Attawapiskat First Nation James Bay happen in a diamond rich area where the Native people are extremely poor.

            We separated into two groups and our group discussed the question, “What does the cover image of Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian say about the marketing of the dead Indian in the era of the 1950s when it was painted?”

            Most of the discussion was between a very intelligent Indigenous woman and myself.

            The painting depicts one big ship and one Indian with churning waters in between. The ship is bright in the light while he is in the shadows and foliage but his back is lit by a red light, perhaps from a fire. The man is wearing a feathered headdress indicating that he is a leader and his spear is pointed away while he is raising his hand in what looks like a gesture of greeting. It’s not a very realistic image because of how close the waves are with no beach in between.

This was an advertisement for a shipping company and the marketing seems to be to tell customers that they have access to remote, exotic places where the resources are still pristine and where will be no problem from the natives.

Safia asked if we could think of any modern marketing campaigns that use Indigenous people. I said “Lakota" and the Native woman next to me smiled and said, “So exotic!"

I asked Safia about the Finding Places assignment because I wanted to do some research into a story that is well known in my family about two violent encounters he had with a “French Indian”. I would like to find out where home would have been for this “French Indian”. She said I should go for it.

Safia and I walked out together as I told her that my mother seemed to be terrified of Indians. I recounted how an Indian had emerged from our cedar forest at the east end of our farm and walked across the field to our house. She let him come in for a drink of water when he asked but she was clearly frightened. I assume he was headed west to cross the border.

I went straight to the help desk at Robarts to deal with the issue of not being able to connect to the U of T wifi with my laptop. The

            Gordon tried several certificates as well.
            Gordon comes from the Pacific Mall area of Markham. I told him my daughter was born not far from there.

            We'd checked my password and it worked to log onto Quercus but after I'd been there for almost two hours I wondered if the password was actually the problem. I'd been told when I set up my tablet there for wifi two weeks before that my password might be a future problem because there are new security criteria. Finally we changed my password to eleven figures from eight, I added a capital letter and three more letters and it still didn't work but after about fifteen minutes it kicked in.

            I checked to see if our Indigenous Studies textbook was there in the library but it was out and I think it might be the wrong edition anyway.

            I stopped at the U of T Bookstore to double check and I was told that the textbook has been ordered from Nelson and it might be in later this week.

            By the time I got home it was too late to take a siesta or even to do my afternoon exercises. It was almost time to start dinner.

            I emailed my cousin Glen

            I grilled the three steaks I'd bought on Saturday and had one with a potato and some gravy while watching the rest of the Annette Funicello documentary. When she signed up to do the Beach Party movies with Frankie Avalon, Walt Disney reminded her that she had an image to uphold and asked her never to wear less than a one-piece bathing suit. Maybe that was for the first movie, since there are lots of photos of her in a bikini for those films. I’ve always thought one-piece swimsuits are sexier than bikinis. But then no piece bathing suits are sexier than one-piece bathing suits. The one piece is closer to nakedness in that it’s form fitting whereas the bikini seems like a lot of clothing.