Luana Patten

            On Tuesday morning during yoga the heat from the radiator raised pools of sweat that the breeze from the window chilled.

            There’s a guy in an electric wheelchair that comes to the Coffeetime every morning but sits outside smoking and sending fumes up into my apartment. He also shouts and swears at people a lot. There’s another guy he talks to and this morning he said that he only had one beer in the fridge. The guy in the wheelchair said that’s good because he always saves a beer for when he gets up.

I memorized the first verse of “Vu de l’extérieur” (From the Outside) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments in my translations and my rhymes as I learned how it is sung.

            I typed more of my lecture notes.

            I took a siesta from 9:30 to 10:40 so I’d be fresh for work.

            It had been raining all morning and still was when I left for OCADU but though the downpour was steady it wasn’t heavy and so I was only a bit damp when I got there. The instructor took me by surprise because she just looked like another student and gave off the same amount of confidence. Lima Lenaghan is very slim and shy and she’s the first teacher I’ve seen who lectured with hand written notes. I assume she’s very new to this but will rise to the job.

            I started with two minute and five minute poses and then just did twenties for the rest of the class. During breaks I worked on my journal with my laptop.

            As I was leaving I looked over to the sign-in desk in case Brian Haddon was there on his way in. He was, so I went over to say “Hi”. His van dyke beard has gotten very white. I told him he looked distinguished but he said he looked scruffy. I walked him across the street and we chatted briefly. We arranged to meet for a beer in December.

            On my way home I stopped at Loblaws because I knew Freshco has only green grapes right now. I bought two bags of red and one of black, plus a strawberry rhubarb pie. My cashier picked a hair off the box and explained he’d been worried that it had been inside on the pie. I thanked him for looking out for me.

            I had potato chips and salsa with a bit of yogourt for lunch.

            I took another siesta.

            I worked on my journal.

            My upstairs neighbour David knocked on my door as I was cooking dinner. He wanted to give me two slices of pizza. I tried to turn him down but he insisted and so I took them. He also wanted to give me an electronic device that he’s been hyping to me for the last few weeks. I went upstairs with him and he gave it to me. It’s a Bluetooth Portable PA system and voice amplifier. It also apparently records onto USB and comes with a headset. Off hand I can’t think of what I’d use it for since I can record at home with my computer or camera and I don’t need to amplify my voice at home. We’ll see.

            I grilled a pack of frozen drumsticks that I spiced with cayenne. I had two with a potato and gravy while watching wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Josh comes to the town of Varga in response to a letter sent him by Gabe Henshaw. We never see Josh with a home base and so I wonder where a letter would be mailed. Henshaw wants Josh to find his son’s dead body because he knows he’s been murdered. When Josh asks around he hears everyone say that Wilt Henshaw is still alive and that Gabe is a delusional drunkard. Josh learns that Wilt had been in love with Abbie Fenton and Gabe says they were going to be married. Everyone else says that Abbie was out of Wilt’s league. Josh is almost convinced that the town is right about Gabe but on his way out of town he is accosted by Abbie who tells him to meet her behind the school that night. But when Josh goes there three men beat him up. When he confronts Abbie about it the next day she tells him that she didn’t set him up. She says she was in love with Wilt and that he was murdered by Jed Miller because Jed wants to marry her. Josh tries to raise a posse against Jed Miller but he finds that no one would do anything against Miller because he single-handedly saved Vargas from dying when he opened up his sawmill. Josh confronts Jeb alone and when he’s ambushed he kills him.

            Abbie was played by Luana Patten, who was a child star in Disney films like Song of the South. She stopped acting for eight years and then returned in her late teens to be the leading lady in “Rock Pretty Baby” starring Sal Mineo.

Marxist Lennonist

            On Monday morning I started song practice singing my translation of “Le poinconneur des Lilas”. By the time I finished I noticed I was singing in French but didn’t remember where I’d switched languages. Maybe I’m becoming subconsciously bilingual.

I got more than half of  “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian memorized.

            I finished posting my translation of “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” by Serge Gainsbourg and started memorizing his “Vu de l’extérieur” (External view). He's telling someone they are beautiful on the outside but ugly inside so they should stay away.

            I spent 45 minutes reading the chapter on Winkelman from Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance. I’d never heard of Winkelman but apparently he was a German scholar of Greek literature who hated Germany and German literature and was a big influence on Goethe. He worked out of Rome and became quite well known for his books on Greek lit and art. When he finally returned to visit Germany he received a hero’s welcome but shortly after that he was murdered by one of his many young lovers.

            Reading made me sleepy so I took a siesta from 9:30 to 11:00.

            I planned on voting on my way home from class and so I gathered up my voting card and put my non-wallet-sized birth certificate between the pages of a book in case they would ask for it. It went online to see who was running in Parkdale. Besides the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats (The party is 57 years old. How long can they call themselves “new”?), the Greens, the Purple’s Peepee of Canada, The Communists and the Radical Marijuana Party there were no other choices. Why is there never a Rhino or Pirate candidate in Parkdale? Also isn’t the Marijuana Party more than a little redundant now that pot is legal?

            When I got to school there was another class in our room and so I sat in the hall and read more about Winkelman.

            Professor White was a bit late. We began by talking for quite a while about our Finding Place essay and everybody seemed quite confused about the format. My impression is that it’s extremely wide open as long as we talk about the places we selected.

            The professor talked about the torture tree in Cuylerville, New York. In 1779 George Washington sent troops to destroy Native villages on the Genesee River. One troop ran into a group of Seneca and most of the soldiers were killed. The ones that weren’t were supposedly tortured. Washington had the nearby villages obliterated.

            The professor had a problem with Thomas King’s “dead Indians” reference in The Inconvenient Indian when he said that North Americans love dead Indians while live Indians are invisible.

            We talked about leadership and governance.

            Indigenous people don’t just choose leaders. It’s tied into cultural identifiers, place and community. The plains Indians have a different chief selecting criteria than the Haudenosaunee. Leaders are selected based on service and respect.

            Today was Election Day in Canada and in our system the majority wins. Someone said there could be a coalition.  He said that could never happen in the United States.

            He told us that in the US citizens can’t talk to their representatives unless thy go to $500 fundraisers.

            Chiefs are sometimes appointed for life in a hereditary position but not always guaranteed for life. Plains Indians traditionally choose their chiefs for their bravery in acts like snatching someone’s weapon in battle or counting coup, which involves touching the enemy rather than killing them. Unlike in a European monarchy the wealth of chiefs is sometimes determined by how much they can give away.

            With the Haudenosaunee it’s the clan mothers that select the chiefs. The clan mother is equally a leader but male leader plays a different role. I was confused by the difference between the two roles. Haudenosaunee chiefdom is not hereditary. The clan mothers bestow the title or take it away.

            Someone said that it was 100 years ago today that women won the right to vote in Canada. I think it was January 1, 2019 but we didn’t have a federal lection for women to vote in until three years later.

            Consensus is arriving where everybody’s voice feels valued.

            We probably all can agree that everyone should stop their cars at stop signs but not everyone does it.

            Who has the authority in this class? Can we have the professor removed? Yes. 

            If anyone has power long enough it will corrupt them.

            It is a myth that all indigenous people were hunter-gatherers. Three-quarters of today’s diet came from contact with western hemisphere. The tomato, corn, beans and potatoes are not indigenous to Europe.  I see that the tomato is native to western South America. Corn came from Mexico. Beans came from all over the world but I think the vine type came from the Americas and they were planted so they would climb on corn stalks. I knew potatoes came from South America.

            Having a relationship with plants is important. Existing as hunter-gatherers alone would have required several acres per person.

            There were trade networks. Rivers were highways and combined with portage crossings one could traverse the continent. Pipestone is found all over North America but it is only indigenous to Minnesota. The Haudenosaunee borrowed the alligator dance from the Seminoles but the Seminole later lost some of the words and borrowed them back. Obsidian knives can be sharper than a razor. Stone knives break but they can be replaced more quickly than steel.

            Animals don’t fight at the waterhole.

            Most of the people under Greek democracy were not free. Indigenous democracy had individual freedom.

            Freedom is tempered by responsibility. What if we had to be responsible for every word we say? Professor White declared, “I own what I say.”

            What is a sovereign? Kings in the old days and nation states now. Indigenous nations are also sovereign.

            Canada is still making treaties.

            Changing the name in the United States from American Indian to Native American often muddies the legal waters.

            The Gutenberg press created literacy of the masses. Before that stories were told through stained glass. I would argue that songs were more important for spreading stories since not everybody went to church.

            Professor White thinks that Indigenous culture influenced the United States constitution.

            From Canada to South America only one country only one country recognizes that the Earth has rights. He said it was Ecuador and implied that it has something to do with it having an indigenous president. Someone corrected him that it’s Bolivia.

            The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth is a Bolivian law passed in 2010. Evo Morales is the Indigenous president of Bolivia. Ecuador had a less defined law two years earlier recognizing the rights of a natural entity.

            The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted in 2007. It began in 1923 and 1925 with the works of two Haudenosaunee chiefs.

            They objected to the word “population” and so they used “peoples”.

            If you tell Indian people they can’t be Indians for 500 years nobody says anything. If you tell white people they can’t be Indians on Halloween they blow up.

            Clan mothers wouldn’t give power to someone that wants power.

            He takes a moment to praise Obama and to complain about Trump’s lack of empathy.

            In North America we have rights but what are our responsibilities. What if university was free after four years service in either the military or the Peace Corps?

            Someone said that the Peace Corps is colonialist.

            Professor White talked a bit about his experience in the Korean War.

            College culture robbed the United States of its trade's people.

            Each Indigenous nation had ways of engaging with the world.

            They did have land ownership but not on an individual basis. Women owned the clearings and men owned the forests.

            There were forums for airing grievances. Public debates occurred but without shouting and name-calling. The understood the importance of diplomacy and it wasn’t about quid pro quo.

            The professor said students teach him. Back when the Haudenosaunee was just starting the first casino in New York State it had a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding. A student told him that if it does succeed then New York would legalize gambling and she was right.

            He showed us a slide of wampum belts. Creation is how humans and the spiritual world function. He asked us what stands out about some of the wampum belts. I said that one of them has people on it. There are thirteen people for each of the thirteen colonies.

            Another belt represents the dish with one spoon.

            The Hiawatha belt has a tree in the middle. Some say that belt inspired the US Constitution.

            Most wampum belts are not horizontal. They are mnemonic devices that hold history. They mark the beginning of an agreement.

            At tutorial only four students showed up. Concerning my Finding Place assignment I asked Safia if she could pick the two villages on each side of the Humber River for me to write on because they are easier for me to get to. She said I don’t actually have to go to the places, and besides, if I’ve posted my choices she’s already made her selections. Safia says that she knows our Finding Place assignment is confusing. She told me that I was probably right after all that the professor would not be able to get caught up with the syllabus in his lectures. He’s fallen two lectures behind schedule. I said that I don’t mind that rambling kind of lecture style as long as it doesn’t affect my mark. I added that I sort of like it and told her about taking Canadian Poetry with George Eliot Clark, who is a master of the rambling lecture. She said, “He’s a black guy who’s always smiling and he’s an activist? I've worked with him!"

            Safia has gotten a lot of emails from students who are confused about the assignment and she finds it confusing as well. She and the other TA sat down with the professor to talk with him about it. She said she doesn't want to say anything against Professor White but she obviously is frustrated with him. She taught this course last year and it's clear that she would rather be teaching it this year as well.

            She warned us that the majority of our assignments are happening next term. That works out better for me since this will be my only course next term.

            We talked about our textbook and how not all Indigenous Canadians agree with it.

            I had thought that Yale Belanger is Indigenous but she said he's a white guy.

            We talked about treaties and I mentioned that Nunavut seemed to have been a pretty good deal. She seemed to suggest that not all Inuit are happy with it. Nunavut is almost the size of Mexico.

            She mentioned the Indian Act, Terra Nullias and doctrines of discovery.

            She said Africa has reserves too and that there are Somalians on reserves in Kenya.

            She said that in western Canada there had been a law for sixty years whereby Natives on reserves needed a pass in order to be allowed to leave. I told her I'd never heard of that. She said she didn't want to debate it with me. I wasn't debating the facts but rather trying to understand them. I asked when this had taken place and she said from 1855 to 1915. That made more sense, as it's certainly not anything I'd heard of in my lifetime.

            I looked it up later and it was implemented in 1885 in Saskatchewan after the Northwest Rebellion. It was meant to be a temporary emergency measure but it hung on for sixty years. In 1893 the Northwest Mounted Police protested the pass system because it wasn’t even technically legal and wanted it ended but one Indian Affairs commissioner overruled the police. Another Indian Affairs Commissioner said it was illegal. The problem was that Indian agents had a lot of power in the communities because they served as judges and supervised commerce.

            Clint Eastwood did a film about residential schools. I see that Eastwood executive produced the Canadian movie Indian Horse. He was very surprised that this happened in Canada.

            She asked us to think about how we are all treaty people and to find out what treaty people are. I looked this up and it means that every use of land that we have in Canada exists because of a treaty. Buying and selling property can happen here because of a treaty. Benefiting from resources here happens because of treaties.

            Despite the complaints about Professor White's rambling lectures, our tutorial was a bit disorganized as well.

            I told Safia that she could be the sister of my upstairs neighbour David as they have the same features, even though he's Ethiopian and she's Somali. I said he's a Falasha, but she first heard, “He's a philosopher.”

            Before going home I went north of my place to Parkdale Public School to vote. I noticed that among the names of candidates with their parties on the end was one name with ML after it. I asked the person that had checked my identification what ML stood for. He didn't know and so he asked someone else. She didn’t know but then they both called to another guy who explained that ML stands for Marxist Leninist. The Communist party was already separately on the ballot. I exclaimed, “Marxist Leninist AND Communist!” One of the workers affirmed, “We run the gamut in Parkdale!” The guy that answered my question said, “I can’t tell you the difference between the two. I just know what they are called.” I was surprised that all through that day no one else had asked my question. Was it because everybody knew what it meant or because everybody just knew whom they were going to vote for and didn’t care? I’m guessing it was the latter.

            I went home and had a lat lunch of my last pork chop with cranberry sauce and some yogourt with honey.

            I worked on typing out my lecture notes.

            For dinner I had my last chicken leg with a potato and gravy while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Josh arrives in Benson, Arizona and the sheriff is relived he’s not there for bounty hunting but to take a little break. Two bounty hunters named Jarrett and Meadows show up with a dead bounty that turns out to have been the town’s mayor. A few years before he had been an outlaw under a different name and the bounty hunters had found out about it. They have a whole book full of unclaimed bounties and they invite Josh in on their business. Josh wants nothing to do with them and so they conclude that Josh must be in town waiting for something big if he’d turn down their lucrative offer. They begin to follow him around town to find out what he’s up to, but what he is up to is a vacation. He tries to make time with the beautiful saloon owner Helen Martin and she is interested until she finds out that Josh is also a bounty hunter. She explains that it might be all right for them to be seen together if Jarrett and Meadows weren’t following him around all the time. Josh comes up with a plan to get rid of them making use of Helen’s artistic talent. He has her make up two fake wanted posters, one each for Jarrett and Meadows. Josh goes to each man separately and shows him the other’s poster. He tells each man that he’s got something big going worth $5000 but he can’t work with a wanted man. This sets Jarrett and Meadows against each other. When they get into a gunfight the sheriff arrests them for disturbing the peace but while they are in jail he will find something else they are wanted for and have them charged.

Splinters in My Dreams

            On Sunday morning I finished working out the chords to “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (I just came by to tell you I’m gonna leave) and started posting it on my Christian’s Translations blog.

            I washed a six board wide section of my bedroom floor. This area is directly in front of the entrance where I can see that I’ve accomplished something. Counting the part that I already washed I’m already half a metre into the room.  The problem with that section however is that it’s along the route my daughter’s computer chair rolled back and forth for years as she played games. Because of that, just as has happened a little bit under my chair, the wood has gotten splintered and so my washcloth kept getting snagged and threads were tearing off that I had to use the brush to free.

            I read chapters four and five of Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance.

            Chapter three was about Luca della Robbia and said that his sculptures were halfway between Greek sculptures and those of Michelangelo.

            Chapter four was about the poetry of Michelangelo but also about his sculptures, saying that he added the equivalent to colour to his sculptures by leaving them slightly incomplete. Pater talks about Michelangelo’s relationships but he avoids mentioning he was homosexual, even though he knew that to be the case.

            I had cheese and crackers for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish tries to sell Andy his old car but Andy isn’t buying. Kingfish has to take Sapphire to a dance later but decides to take a nap and so he goes to sleep at the lodge. He wakes up the next morning and realizes he’s stood his wife up. He rushes to his car and it’s gone but he finds it a block away. Later he hears that an automobile meeting his car’s description was used the night before in a jewellery store robbery. He’s desperate to get rid of the car and so he gives it to Andy. When Andy finds out why he gave it to him Kingfish helps him paint it and then trade plates with another lodge member. With the heat off Kingfish claims it’s still his car. Andy leaves it to him but while Kingfish is driving away the cops stop him because his plates were used in a robbery on New Years Eve.

            I read Pater’s chapter of Leonardo da Vinci. Frankly I don't understand what this has to do with our course. I guess Pater’s own writing, as a critic is part of the aesthetic movement and it has very little to do with his subject matter. I was so exhausted from all this reading I’ve been doing since Friday so I took a break and did the dishes.

            The chapter on Joachim du Bellay was more interesting because I learned that he was part of a 16^th Century group of poets that called themselves Les Pleiades and it included Pierre de Ronsard. Serge Gainsbourg has a song called “Ronsard 58” which I’ve translated and which is based on a poem by Ronsard called “Quand vous serez bien vielle” (When you are very old). Here is the first verse of Ronsard’s poem:

Some night when you are old, spinning yarn out of wool

Sitting in candlelight and warming by your hearth

You’ll marvel to yourself while reciting my verse

Ronsard celebrated that I was beautiful

            Here is my translation of the song by Gainsbourg:

As long as you’ve got all of your well shapely favours
You'll have your lovers and you'll have your success
You will vacation on exclusive shores
wearing bikinis that’ll crack all their necks
You’ll have the glamour and you'll have the fast cars
Fashionable men will bow to kiss your hand
You’ll smile serenely while you play your part
But in the end you’re just another little tramp.

Whore on the sidewalk or in a palace
Any way you roll it it's the same old smoke
They make the money and you get the business
You learn to make love without making episodes
And then one fine day my sweet little dove

A younger face will just displace you from your high horse
And then between your sobbing you’ll admit that my love
wasn’t all that awful when I put it in verse.

And all you’ll have left of me will be my trashed lines
My literature that you once condemned
That’s all that you’ll have to remember the guys
All of your old men who will stop turning their heads
It’s the only mirror that you’re face will not break
and it’s guaranteed for eternity
Old father Ronsard wasn't out of his head
When he said the same thing to his own little minx

            For dinner I melted some cheddar cheese on top of some tortilla chips and had them with salsa and a beer while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            The story begins with four convicts named Ash, Turner, Burns and Cutler escaping from prison in barrels. They are bent on taking revenge on Aben Starr, the man that ratted on them when they made their previous escape attempt. When they were captured before they were severely abused as punishment. They split up and arrange to meet at the way station where Starr is now working. Josh Randall arrives at the way station first because he’s looking to collect the reward on the convicts. Shortly after that Turner and Ash get there and take both Josh and Starr captive. Their plan is to wait for Burns and Cutler before killing Starr. Meanwhile the stagecoach pulls in with two passengers. Ash kills the driver and takes the man and woman prisoner. The passengers are Quaker siblings on their way to start a school for deaf and dumb children. He and his sister Jane, who is also a deaf mute, will be teachers there. The brother tries to escape to get help but is killed. Ash has his eye on Jane and so Josh plays the two men against each other in regard to developing a rivalry for possession of Jane. He uses eye signals to get Jane to help him along and she obliges. This distracts the two men long enough for Josh to get the upper hand and kill them. When Burns and Cutler arrive Josh and Starr have the advantage and after a gunfight they prevail. Josh gives half his reward to Jane towards the school for the deaf.

            Jane was played by Judith Braun, who was married to screen writer Walter Bernstein. He was one of the victims of the Hollywood blacklist. 

Aucassin and Nicolette

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse and chorus of “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (I just came by to tell you I'm gonna leave) by Serge Gainsbourg. The rest of the song has the same chords and so it will be just a matter of inserting them in the right place now.

            I washed another six-board wide section of my bedroom floor in the area where the foot of my bed sits.

            I went down to Freshco at King and Jameson where I bought grapes, raspberries, mouthwash, yogourt, hair conditioner and coffee. Chicken drumsticks were on sale and I got two packs for $5.20. At the checkout I bought a large reusable shopping bag.

            I had a small can of beans with toast for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire is upset that Kingfish doesn’t give her money to buy new things and she threatens to do something desperate. She meant she would get a job. Later Kingfish hears that a woman stole $300 from a store and then when he comes home he finds $300 hidden in the closet, thinking that Sapphire is the thief. He takes the money and tries to turn himself in to keep his wife from going to jail but finds the real thief has been caught. Kingfish finds out that Sapphire is the treasurer for her women’s group and she was holding onto the $300 they made at the charity bazaar until she could put it in the bank. The police arrest Kingfish for stealing his wife’s $300.

            There was a joke about US President Truman’s speech the night before in which he’d lifted controls on meat. Andy said he’d made a lot of horses very happy.

            I read the first two chapters of Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance. I guess the reason we are reading this is because it shows the influence that the Renaissance had on the aesthetic and decadent movements.

            The first chapter is about the medieval love story of Auccasin and Nicolette. It is a chantefable or sung story about the love between a Christian knight and a Saracen slave maiden. I downloaded the original text.

            Pater also mentions Abelard and Heloise, the true story of the Christian philosopher who fell in love with his student and got her pregnant. Her uncle castrated him and he became a monk while she became a nun and their relationship continued in the form of correspondence.

            The second chapter is about Pico della Mirandola, who wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is considered to be the manifesto of the Renaissance because of its attempt to connect all the world’s philosophies and religions into agreement.

            The third chapter was about Sandro Botticelli who through his painting interpreted the work of Dante.

            I had a piece of toast with cheese and a beer for dinner while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            Have you ever noticed that every western town on television is perfectly flat?

            This story begins with a man wearing fancy and very jangly spurs knocking another man unconscious in an alley in one such flat western town named Lordsville. A woman named Lucy enters the alley calling for Vick, who is the assailant. She asks who the unconscious man is and he tells her he’s just a drifter. Vick leaves and she pulls out a derringer, killing the drifter, then rips her own clothes and calls for help. The next day Josh arrives in town on the trail of Vick Warsaw and the sheriff informs him he’s dead and shows Josh Vick’s personal effects. On learning that there was a $2500 reward for Vick Warsaw the sheriff leaves town to fetch the US marshal so that Lucy can receive the reward

            I’ve always been confused about the difference between a sheriff and a marshal, so I looked it up. Sheriffs are elected by towns to keep the peace while marshals are federally appointed law officers.

            Josh looks again at Vick’s personal effects and then smiles, realizing that Vick is still alive and someone else was buried. He goes to visit Lucy and tells her of his conclusion. Later Josh receives a note from Lucy asking him to meet her. Near her seamstress’s shop Vick tries to gun him down but has to escape when he is not hurt. Later he hears Lucy calling for Vick as to her surprise Josh walks up. She confesses and says she’ll lead him to Vick. Vick tries to shoot him gain and Josh kills him. Lucy is arrested.

            Lucy was played by Betsy Drake who was born in France. She is best known for her first film “Every Girl Should be Married" in which she starred with Cary Grant. She married Grant shortly afterwards with the best man being Howard Hughes and they were married but not together for thirteen years. During her marriage to Grant they underwent LSD therapy together and took it over 100 times. She was in Spain in 1957 while Grant was filming The Pride and the Passion with Sophia Loren. She left on the Andrea Doria when she found out he was in love with Sophia. She was rescued when the liner sank and she lost $200,000 worth of jewellery and a book manuscript she'd been working on. She wrote the script for Houseboat and thought she would co-star in it with Grant but he wanted Loren so the script was rewritten and she received no credit. Their divorce settlement won her a million in cash and a percentage of the thirteen films he mad while they were married. She gave up acting wrote books and attended Harvard, earning a Master of Education degree.

Kitchen Light

            On Friday morning I found four sets of chords for “Je suis venu te dire je m’en vais” (I just came by to tell you I'm gonna leave" by Serge Gainsbourg. I picked the set that might be the official ones in an actual chord but I still didn't agree with all of them. Maybe it's different for guitar rather than piano but he just doesn't sound to me like he's singing a G#minor at the beginning of the second line. I went with a C7.

            Now that I’ve finished with school deadlines for a few weeks I felt I had the time to go back to my floor cleaning project. I washed and brushed a six floorboard wide section of my kitchen floor in front of the bookcase at the southwest corner of the room. Since the last section I cleaned is covered up by the bookcase, this is the first visible bit of progress I’ve made with the kitchen floor.

           It didn’t take me long and so I had time to ride down to Freshco before lunch. They didn’t have much in the way of grapes and so I just bought three bags of green ones. I got two half pints of raspberries, a jar of hot salsa and Balderson extra old cheese was on sale for $5, so I got a hunk.

            I had a cold pork chop for lunch and some yogourt with honey.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises for the first time in a few days while listening to Amos and Andy. This is the first show after the summer break of 1946. Andy has been working at a summer resort in the country where he's met a rich woman whom he's asked to marry him. She says she’ll marry him as long as they can live in the mountains that she loves. Andy buys a lot on the side of a mountain that's ridiculously steep. Kingfish has a job with a real estate company and he shows him the property. When they get there Andy says the lot is too big. Suddenly there is the rumbling of an avalanche and after it dies down Kingfish asks, “It ain't too big now is it?” There is a lot of humour around the post war shortages of building materials and housewares. There is mention of a law at that time against building but I can’t find any evidence of that. In the end Andy finds that Louise has left Andy without any word. He says he’ll get back at her by holding onto the property that he bought so she can’t get it. Kingfish looks at her picture and tells Andy that she’s the one that owns the whole mountain.

            I read chapters 3 and 4 of The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King.

            Chapter 3 was about how much North America loves and profits from dead Indians. Live Indians are invisible except when they dress up as dead Indians and North Americans find legal Indians just plain annoying.

            Chapter 4 was about all of the many forced relocations of Indians that have taken place in the history of the United States and Canada. It was also about how treaties mean diddlysquat.

            I read about half of chapter four of Ways of Knowing by Yale Belanger. It covers what chapter 4 of King’s book does but King does it with humour while still giving the relevant information.

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy for dinner while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen. In this story Josh is escorting a prisoner to the town of Bannach because in three days Josh’s friend is going to hang for that prisoner's murder, which obviously didn't happen. Perry, the leader of a freight coach carrying a load of dynamite reluctantly agrees to let Josh and his prisoner ride with them. At first he and Josh are enemies and agree that when they get to Bannach they will fight it out. Along the way a bridge is out and Josh shows ingenuity in using some of the dynamite to blast a passage across. This causes Perry to gain respect for Josh. At one point Josh’s prisoner gets hold of dynamite and says he’s going to kill everybody if he can’t be free. He lights a match but the coach boss knocks it out of his hand with a whip. When they get to Bannach past the deadline it turns out that his friend’s trial has been delayed because everyone has left town because of a gold strike. Josh and Perry go for a drink and forget about their animosity.

            I read the rest of chapter four of Ways of Knowing. It does seem that progress has been made in the treaty process, especially with the creation of Nunavut.

            

Teiaiagon

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Je suis venu te dire que m’en vais” (I Just Came By to Tell You I’m Gonna Leave) by Serge Gainsbourg, and I started tracking down the chords. This was a bit of a hit and so I knew the chords would be posted. I found a couple of versions but I always look for four and then settle between them.

            I spent a lot of the day getting caught up on my journal.

            I had a cold pork chop with some cranberry sauce for lunch.

            I didn’t do my exercises in the afternoon because I had a deadline to meet for uploading four proposals of Indigenous places in Toronto to visit for my Indigenous Studies course. I’d previously bookmarked a map of indigenous archaeological sites in Toronto and spent several hours researching them. I wanted to find the closest ones possible. Two of them are across the Humber River from one another at Jane and Annette. Another is at Keele and Finch while another is at L’Amorough Park in Scarborough. There’s one way up in the northeast corner of Scarborough, but that’s too far for me. I ate a potato and a chicken leg with some gravy while I was working. It was after 22:00 by the time I uploaded my proposals, and the deadline was midnight. Here’s what I came up with:

Proposal number one:

Near the mouth of what the Anishinaabe called Cobechenonk for “leave the canoes and go back” and what is now called The Humber River was a trading post called Teiaiagon. Teiaiagon was a Seneca village from 1670 to 1690 on the east bank of the river. It is near the current intersection of Jane and Annette in the community of Baby Point. It was surrounded by corn, bean and squash fields and fortified by the banks of the valley. It was on the Toronto Carrying Place Trail or the Humber Portage which ran up the Humber from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe.

I propose visit the area and to research and present about the significance of this location as a Seneca trade route and agricultural site.

Proposal number two:

In 1690, the Anishnaabe ancestors of the Mississauga and New Credit First Nation, members of the Ojibway nation, were driven south by settlers from the north shore of Lake Huron to the mouths of rivers like the Humber. They drove out the Seneca and established a village on the opposite shore of Cobechenonk where they traded with the British and the French. 

            I propose to visit, research and present about the site of the Mississauga village at the Baby Point location. I am particularly interested in the idea that such villages were only settled for twenty-year periods for reasons of agricultural saturation.

Proposal number three:

            The Alexandra village site was on a small ridge overlooking what is now Highland Creek in L’Amorough Park on the north side of McNicholl Avenue between Birchmount and Kennedy. It was an active community in 1350 and had a population of 800 to 1000 of ancestors of the Huron-Wendat people. Seashell beads found indicated that they had trade with the east coast 100 years before European contact. They had fields of corn, bean, squash, sunflower and tobacco. The remains of sixteen longhouses, some sweat lodges and garbage pits have been uncovered. The artefacts have been removed and the area is a residential subdivision but there is a plaque commemorating the site of the village.

            I propose to visit the plaque, research and present about the Huron-Wendat people. I’m especially interested in the trade that they would have had with the indigenous people of the east coast.

Proposal number four:

            The Parsons site (AkGv-8) at Finch and Keele overlooking Black Creek was an Iroquoian amalgamation of smaller communities joined together for protection. It was twelve hectares, which is twice as long as other sites. It was active in the mid to late 15^th Century. There were ten longhouses, sweat lodges, four refuse areas and a defensive palisade. There was evidence of trade throughout southern Ontario.

            I propose to visit, research and present about the history of the Iroquois in this area.

            My preference would be if my TA were to pick the two sites on the Humber, since they only take half an hour for me to get to on my bike.

            I was relieved to be done with deadlines for a few weeks.

            I had yogourt with honey and strawberries with coffee for dessert and watched an episode of Wanted Dead Or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Josh is escorting a man named Logan he’s captured for the bounty when he is confronted by a lynch mob that wants to take the prisoner away from him. Josh is ready for a fight but gets distracted when Logan tries to run and then Josh is hit from behind and knocked out. When Josh gets to town he finds that the sheriff is the one that led the lynch mob. Logan is wanted for murdering his own stepdaughter, who was the girlfriend of the sheriff’s son, Damon. Logan signed a confession while in a state of fear of the lynch mob, but the fact is that he does not remember having committed the murder. He had found that his stepdaughter Marnie inexplicably had $100, which he'd took from her after an argument and proceeded to get drunk. Josh goes to the local judge and tells him about the money, which was not mentioned in the trial. When Josh tells the judge that Damon is leading a lynch mob that plans to hang Logan that night he says he’ll stop it. Josh goes to Logan’s farm and finds from Logan’s wife that Damon had given her the money. When Josh returns to town he sees Logan hanging and finds the judge tied up. The judge says the sheriff jumped him. Josh has figured out that Damon must have murdered Marnie but as he takes him to the sheriff’s office he hears a gunshot from inside. The sheriff has committed suicide because he was the one that killed Marnie, as he loved her too.

Baudelaire: Bard of the Brain's Badlands

            On Wednesday morning I skipped rehearsal except for part of one song. After that I got into the final stretch of writing my essay. It was basically done but there were a few little tweaks that came up each time I read it through. Almost every time I made a change it was either a little bit over or under the maximum word count and so I would take out superfluous words or add something. At 9:00 I went back to bed for a little over half an hour. When I got up I numbered the lines on my translation so I could more easily cite them. The MLA guide wasn’t exactly clear on how I should cite numbered lines and so I just tried to make it as easy for Professor Li to understand as possible and hoped it was going to be all right. I spent an hour memorizing my translation and made some small adjustments as I went along.

            At 13:10 I headed for class. There were a few students already in the room when I arrived. I sat writing about the previous day while waiting for the professor to get there.

            We started by finishing our discussion of  “Les petites vielles” by Charles Baudelaire.

            She said of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Evil Flowers) that the poems are stark and dynamic. Beauty is no longer about what is pleasing to the eye. It has to do with art and sensory impact. Beauty becomes identified with evil. This approach forces us to see sin, artificiality and morbidity as beautiful but it’s not what would charm the middle class. Baudelaire is taking on and trying to shock complacency and the sense of progress held by the bourgeoisie. Baudelaire sees sin, desolation and morbidity as artistically valuable.

            Baudelaire connects seeing and feeling. Tactile presence is yoked with active viewing. One must feel part of viewing acuteness in order to see through feeling. To feel is to see and to fuse perspective with bodily response.

            For Baudelaire the sense of virtue is no longer a quality. It’s important to respond to what can move you and to have the capacity for feelings.

            The old women in “Les petites vielles” are virtuous. “Come love them! As they are still souls although broken”.

            This is more than social criticism. It is about viewing.

            At this point Professor Li asked me to do my presentation. I asked if I should read my translation. She hesitated, commenting that it’s a bit long but then said okay.

Dear Reader

Stupidity, folly, mean stinginess and sin,

Weigh upon our bodies and occupy our brains,

We use them to feed our accommodating shame,

the way beggars nourish their own little vermin.                         

                       

Our sins are pig headed, our repentance has no spine;                

When we confess we charge ourselves a handsome tax,

And then we step gaily back on our muddy path,

Believing vulgar tears will wash away the grime.                        

There on evil’s pillow is Satan Trismegistus

Who lulls our dull minds with enchantment every hour,           

And the rich metal ore that is our willpower

Is transformed to vapour by this wise alchemist.                        

The Devil’s the one pulling on the strings that jerk us!

To repulsive objects we think to be sweet charms;

Each day we step closer down to infernal harm,                        

Sans horror we traverse the foul stinking darkness.                    

Like a poor debaucher kissing and then gorging

On the martyred breast of an antiquated whore,

We steal a quick handful of underground pleasure

As we squeeze flesh tough as an old dried up orange.                

Tightly pullulating like a million helminths,

Inside our brains a horde of demons has its fun,

And on each breath that comes, Death slithers in our lungs

And with our lame complaints, down the phantom rill sails in.  

If the will to poison, burn buildings, stab and rape,                     

Has yet to become stitched with the embroidery

On the banal canvas of our pitied destinies,

It’s because our souls, alas, are just a tad afraid.

But here with the jackals, the panthers, the bitches,

The monkeys, the serpents, the scorpions, the vultures,             

All the yelping, howling, growling, creeping monsters,

In the menagerie of our cold debauches,

There is one more ugly, more wicked, more of dirt!

Though he’s not the loudest nor grand in expression,

He’d give in to break down the land to devastation                    

And with one little yawn would swallow up the Earth;

It’s Ennui! With eyes charged by unconscious weeping,

He dreams of scaffolds while smoking his hookah.

You know him dear reader, that delicate monster,

Hypocrite reader – my fellow man – my sibling!                    

            Then I read my seminar starter:

 The Reason in Rhyme

In “Au Lecteur” Charles Baudelaire uses rhyme to perform several important functions that a free verse translation of the poem could not accomplish. The enclosed rhyming couplet in the middle of each quatrain symbolizes our dual nature of penitent and libertine. The couplet is confined by rhymes above and below, representing our morally polluted environment. The iambic hexameter Alexandrine lines put more distance between the top and bottom rhymes of each stanza than iambic pentameter. This extension takes reading each line almost beyond breathing comfort; places the rhymes further from memory, momentarily disorienting us, and making our journey through this underworld of the self more difficult. As the poem progresses we are presented with problems generated by the Petrarchan style quatrains, with no sestet for resolution. The rhymes lighten the gravity of this situation but the only answer lies at the end when the author rhymes himself with the reader.

I had two questions for the group. The first was, “Why is god not mentioned in the poem?”

Professor Li thought it was a very good question. It stimulated some discussion. I thought it was interesting that Satan is in the poem with no counterpoint. I have read that Baudelaire believed that humanity had sunk so far from god that it’s no longer a consideration anymore.

My second question was, “In the first stanza, is Baudelaire saying that remorse is more contemptible than sin?” I said that he compares remorse to vermin that are being fed by our sin and comparing anything to vermin is pretty contemptuous. There is a sense that all we have to do when we have done something wrong is to feel badly about it, which is a bit cheap of us.

I think the professor liked my poem and my presentation.

We looked at the poem “Baudelaire” by Eugene Lee Hamilton. It’s descriptive but distant and it has a lack of energy like an after dinner poem. He simply names colours rather than describing the colour and its effect. The poem doesn’t make us uncomfortable enough to be a proper tribute to Baudelaire. I hadn’t noticed that it’s a sonnet, probably because the sestet is on the next page in our course pack.

We looked at “Ave atque Vale: In Memory of Charles Baudelaire” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Professor Li said it’s a pastoral elegy that Swinburne wrote for Baudelaire after being falsely informed that Baudelaire had died. But apparently Baudelaire actually did die before Swinburne published it.

In a traditional pastoral elegy the poet poses as a shepherd addressing the deceased as having been also a shepherd. There is a verse in which the poet asks the guardians of the dead why they hadn’t been there to prevent the death. There is a procession. There is a flower passage. There is a reflection on divine justice. The ending is a renewal of hope and joy. Writing a pastoral elegy is a way to attempt to escape death.

The first stanza sets the tone. The poem searches for death and wants to keep it around.

In my opinion the poem is full of too much alliteration with the “F” sound. I told the professor that in places it sounds like Dr. Seuss. She thought that was cute.

Marco observed that this poem could easily have just been about Baudelaire’s art and Swinburne’s inability to reach it.

I handed in my essay:

We got no class and we got no principals and we got no innocence

We can’t even think of a word that rhymes – Alice Cooper

The Reason in the Rhyme of “Au Lecteur” by Charles Baudelaire

In “Au Lecteur” Charles Baudelaire uses rhyme to perform several important functions that a free verse translation of the poem could not accomplish (Baudelaire 2-3). The rhyming of the couplet in each quatrain symbolizes the connection between the halves of our dual nature of penitent and libertine in the circumstance of repeated indulgence in vices that serve as food for the parasite of remorse (Christian 3-4). The rhymes above and below the couplets in the ABBA scheme represent the morally polluted environment that surrounds and corrupts us. The Alexandrine metrical structure in iambic hexameter puts more distance between the top and bottom rhymes of each stanza than there would be in a more songlike iambic pentameter poem (Hamilton 20). This separation makes their connection easier to forget, thereby creating the effect of momentary disorientation in our journey though this quotidian underworld. The voyage is made more difficult by the extra iambic foot in each line that takes reading them beyond relaxed breathing comfort. As we are adjusting to a more epic pattern of respiration we are also faced with the problems the extended lines present to us in combination as Petrarchan style quatrains. Unlike a sonnet there are no overt resolutions to the troubles that these quatrains generate, such as the manifestations of Satan with no mention of god to serve as their counterpoint and rhyme (Christian 9, 13, 23). To lighten the gravity of this circumstance the rhythmic harmonization of word sounds serves as elevator music for the reader’s descent to the darkness of his nature. Rhymes resist the gravity of the situation by providing the reader with a set of cadent flapping wings to slow his descent to the morass of the human condition. Rhymes offer the only hint of resolution in this poem with the final rhyme being that of the author with the reader (Christian 40).

After class Professor Li asked me how long it took me to write my translation. I told her a couple of days. I mentioned that I translate a lot of French songs and she asked if that’s what I do for a living.

When I got home and was just inside my building door there was a knock and I saw it was Peter Janes. I opened the door and we chatted for a few minutes. He wanted to know how my photos of him taking apart the skeleton of the burnt garbage bin turned out. I told him I’d friend him on Facebook and tag him with the photos. He said he’s a camera technician on film sets. He was going to perform at Fat Albert’s later that night. I told him to say “Hi” to Glen Garry.

I had a hard time finding Peter’s Facebook page because I’d always thought his name was Peter James. It was only after scrolling through the postings on the Fat Albert’s Facebook page that I saw the real spelling of his name.

I had a late lunch of pretzels.

That night for dinner I had the rest of my ham with some cheese in a sandwich and watched two episodes of Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

The first story was a Christmas episode, which is rare for western shows. A boy named Laddie approaches Josh on Christmas Eve just as he’s about to head for Christmas dinner with an attractive woman in Butte, Montana. Laddie knows that Josh is a bounty hunter who finds people for a living and he offers him eight cents to find Santa Clause for him. He says he’s sent several letters but Santa has never brought him what he’s asked for. Laddie won’t tell Josh what he wants. Josh doesn’t say he will help him but the other men at the bar think it’s funny to assure Laddie that Josh indeed will find Santa for him. Before Josh can tell him otherwise Laddie thinks that he’s agreed to help him, thanks him enthusiastically and leaves. Josh doesn’t have the heart to tell him and so he tries to find someone to pose as Santa that he can bring to the boy’s house. Ben, the local drunk volunteers and promises to stay sober. Josh goes to the house with Ben and keeps him in the barn to wait for a signal. Josh has dinner with the family. He learns that the boy’s father used to be a prosperous sheep farmer but wolves have taken half his stock. Josh signals for Ben in the window but he doesn’t come. He finds him in the barn drunk on horse liniment. Meanwhile a drifter shows up at the door asking for shelter from the snowstorm and so they take him in. On Christmas morning the drifter is gone and has left a Winchester rifle behind. This is apparently what Laddie has been asking Santa to bring to his father every year so he can fight off the wolves. The thing is that the doors were double bolted from the inside and the drifter couldn’t have left without leaving the door unlocked. In the fireplace they find sleighbells.
            Laddie was played by Jay North, who was Dennis the Menace on TV in the 1950s. 

The second story is about a couple of prospectors named Frank and Dixon that have become mail thieves. They’ve shot and killed one mailman on the trail already. What they are looking for is a $20,000 diamond that they know is going to be delivered to Tucson. Josh is hired to protect Jarvis, the latest carrier but the thieves shoot and wound Jarvis in the mountains. Jarvis manages to wound Dixon and then takes shelter in the desert mountains but with no water. Frank goes into town to get water. Meanwhile Josh is approached by the leader of a religious settlement who asks him to recover a bottle of holy water from the River Jordan that is also in the mail. The owner of the diamond hires Frank to help Josh find the missing mailman. When they arrive in the mountains Dixon fires at them. Frank sneaks up and kills him and then goes with Josh to find Jarvis. Jarvis is dead but his bag with the diamond is there. Frank clubs Josh and knocks him unconscious. Frank tries to get away but he’s out of water. Josh recovers and survives by drinking some of the holy water. By the time he finds Frank he is so thirsty he trades the diamond for a drink. There are only a few drops left when the pastor gets the bottle but he’s grateful that it saved Josh’s life.