trennels | Member Posts

I wanted fresh air again today! This time I planned my route: up to the blvd., over, down, cross the avenue, past JCs and the library, around the corner thirty feet or so, backtrack to the intersection, south up the hill, right to the RC Church, backtrack to the intersection and up the (other) hill to my apartment building. Twenty minutes. :-)

Well, that makes sense to me. :-)

Last week on FaceTime I was trying to explain how I used to do mathematical manuscript typing in the Econ department. This was long before PCs, of course, and we didn't even have Selectrics, where you could exchange one 'ball' for another. After some googling I found a description of what I used, though I hadn't remembered the name. They looked like plastic forks with the tines cut off, and a symbol attached. I could find no close-up photo, alas.

"Typits" (1960s-1970s): A common, intermediate tool for typing complex math. It involved small, detachable symbols (Typit sticks) that were placed onto a special prong on the typewriter, allowing the typist to insert symbols one by one."

I went to Lunds today for milk and yogurt. The cashier was charmed by my reusable bag, white with design of many yellow wellies. I explained that it honored the RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.. I bought it in Hastings (Sussex).

Interesting point: Hastings, Minnesota is not named after the town in Sussex, but after the middle name of the first territorial governor of Minnesota, Henry Hastings Sibley. Apparently the name was one of a number of suggestions, and was chosen by being drawn out of a hat!

ETA: didn't

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chazzbanner

I expected a tea delivery today, and a tea delivery I got. UPS tracking didn't work for some reason, but when I went up front to check my mail, there was the brown truck in front of my building. Lucky!

In the afternoon I went for a walk - or tried to. OK, I did go on a walk, but it was not at all normal. There is still too much random ice on the sidewalks. In fact I was asked twice if I needed a hand, as I stood and pondered how to get around an icy patch. The second time I said, no, I'm just going 'there and back again!' (i.e. backtracking to my apartment). There was no way I'd try to do a circuit through the neighborhood.

j-wat is on the way to Palm Springs (for a visit) and to Sacrament (to give a lecture). I got a text from him as his plane flew over SW Minnesota. He sent a photo with annotations, interested in having seen a certain lake once famous for duck-hunting. And, I said in response, my home town!

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chazzbanner

I've stalled a bit listening to new-to-me music ('73-'77), but this is from an album I discovered, Le Chat Bleu, by Mink DeVille.

Watch on YouTube

rattfan

I've been around to take some more pictures of Lake Claremont/The Swamp, so people can see what I'm on about. Well, that's one of the things I carry on about.

I went to the volunteers' seedling watering session on Sunday morning. They're going to think I don't talk much, because that's 7.30 am and the brain is not out of bed yet, but they'll learn. Somebody told me why we're doing it in that area, which was good to know. There used to be five Moreton Bay Fig trees there, but they fell victim to the polyphagous shothole borer, which is a tiny beetle that can kill really big trees. It's not from around here, but decided to move in.

photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNJMTB35YXYd0cKRpLOD0OtPN6WUzEd8Ov0uu1UkDIiZ0y1-L2kv8ciEMTNH4wNxg

Anyway, in no particular order, the photos depict: The shed where volunteers' equipment is kept, two of. The path to where the seedlings are. I didn't have my camera on the day and I can't go in there unless on official business. There's a distant photo of some of the seedlings taken from the public path. All this is a wetland in the centre of Perth, by the way. Claremont is an inner suburb, about six kilometres from the CBD if you take the bike path. [Inner-ish].

There's also one of the surviving Moreton Bay fig trees, which has some 'crime scene' tape up because a branch, the size of any other normal tree, fell off a while back. Then there's the lakeside with some of the residents. I'm told this is a lot of water for the lake to have in late summer, but there's quite a few weeks of hot weather yet to come. Then a surprise, somebody's nest built almost in arm's reach of a public viewing area. Then a distance view of the whole lake.

Then we have some holes. They're as close as I've been able to get a camera to the elusive southwestern brown bandicoot, also called the quenda. I *think* these are quenda holes. I asked at the volunteers thing if there were rabbits here and someone said "rarely," though as we know, two rabbits are all you need. But I've seen and nearly broken my legs around rabbit holes and these don't look like those. Rob, Leece, what do you think? In the link is a quenda someone prepared earlier.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenda

There are definitely foxes, for whom live-capture traps have been set. Somebody had found fox scat right outside the shed. There was a moment of respectful silence for the knowledge of one who knew fox poo when he saw it.

chazzbanner

I've mentioned before how I started collecting significant dates for my 'historical dates game' -- because I gave always been amused by grocery bills of $10.66 or $14.92 and the like.

My other 'collections' of this kind aren't meant to be games, though I find them amusing.

English PhD students file a reading list in their general dissertation area, usually divided into three parts: written texts, theory, secondary materials (articles).

This gave me an idea: I'd do this, only with books I'd already read. :-)

One obvious topic was Golden Age Hollywood.

Heading: “Golden Age” is defined as the 1910s through the 1940s, but I continue with a few people from the 1950s, during the decline of the studio system. I’ve included some who were British but worked in Hollywood for much of their careers.

Section One: Histories: These are books on Hollywood and Los Angeles history, American movies, the movie studios, and books about specific Hollywood movies or events.

Section Two: Group Biographies and Oral Histories

Section Three: Biographies: "Biographies of actors, directors, producers, writers, and others in the movie business"

Sections: Biographies and Memoirs (and Letters)

Yes, I still read books on Golden Age Hollywood, and add them to the list.

I showed an earlier version of the list to j-wat and he approved of its comprehensiveness. All I needed to do was add a list of Films.

Lol! It wasn't as if I would actually write a dissertation--! :-). It got me to thinking about how I'd divide up the films. Silents, pre-Code (but some are silent?), screwball comedy, film noir, western, musicals. Or have sections on certain directors.. Griffith, Lubitsch, Wilder, Ford, Sturges, Capra, Stevens, Wyler, Hitchcock -- where would it end?

Nope, I won't add films - I'll just watch them!

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cahn

This week: All right! As a preface to Josephus Book Club, I am just reading the preface this week and we will do a bigger chunk starting this next week (see below). The preface is just a few pages long (I'm reading up until what in Oxford is paragraph 30, "All of these contents are set forth in seven books... I shall now begin my narrative as indicated at the start of my summary.")

I'm sure you all will have deeper things to say than I do about this, but wow I am just amused by how Josephus just starts out pulling no punches about how annoying and inferior he thinks the other historians are. (The footnote to The historians of this war fall into two categories... hearsay... or distort the facts namechecks Justus, who featured prominently as a frenemy in Feuchtwanger's Josephus trilogy.) I do like his logic in saying, hey, if you want to make the Romans look good, why make the Jewish side look feeble? Also his logic in saying, hey, actually, it makes more sense to be writing contemporary accounts for which one has eyewitnesses, as opposed to writing about ancient history "as if the ancient historians had failed to give their own accounts sufficient finesse," lol. (Although I guess that is what academic historians do!)

Titus Caesar is also namechecked, lookin' good.

The footnotes also say that historiographical writers generally claimed impartiality, so Josephus talking about his personal feelings of sorrow here is atypical, which I thought was interesting.

In fact, looking over the whole sweep of history, I would say that the sufferings of the Jews have been greater than those of any other nation -- and no foreign power is to blame. Oooooof. I guess that's a good tagline to pique interest in the book, though...

(I'm really glad I read Feuchtwanger's Josephus books first to orient myself, though!)

Next week: We'll start Book 1!

selenak advised that we read up to Herod the Great's killing his favorite wife. My Oxford edition has "verse"/paragraph numbers but not chapter numbers as selenak's has, but I think (selenak, please let me know if this is incorrect) in my edition the idea is to read up to paragraph 443/444: Maddened by unbridled jealousy, Herod ordered the immediate execution of them both. Remorse quickly followed rage: his anger subsided, and his love was rekindled. The heat of his desire for her was so intense that he could not believe she was dead...

WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. I can see we have lots of sensationalistic gossip ahead of us!

cahn

thistleingrey mentioned that it was a solid depiction of academia and characters in academia, which immediately piqued my interest. I have read Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis and enjoyed it, and I know Hazelwood is in academia, but I sometimes thought... well, let's just say that it's a romance between a grad student and the young hotshot professor in her department, and... okay... that part... is totally realistic actually... but I feel like I kind of got stuck a lot in all my feelings about the potential deep pitfalls. Hypothesis was also, I think, much more concerned with primarily being a romance novel and secondarily a novel about academia.

Anyway, this is unabashedly a romance novel, complete with marriage-of-convenience and sometimes even the one-bed trope, but without any particular kinks like professor/student :P But the thing that makes it interesting (to me) is that it's at least as interested in both the experiences of the precariat (*) and also familial relationships as it is in the romance itself. In fact, it does not have a conventional romantic Act 3; here the Act 3, as well as the understandable but frustrating misunderstandings that prolong it, is passed squarely on to the familial relationships rather than the romantic ones. Which I personally really like!

The two main characters, Jonah and Sadie, are adorably academics. (**) I laughed out loud when Jonah said, "I'm all for radically revised gender roles in the heteronormative institution of marriage, but I should still pay for my wife's engagement ring," if only because I've never heard anyone else talk that way in a romance novel -- though if you have, please rec it to me. (Their engagement is the aforementioned engagement-of-convenience and the ring is $27.99, I hasten to append, and she pays for his ring.) (lol, I think I actually paid for my engagement ring, because it was an important transaction involving me and an important piece of jewelry -- what?)

Anyway, I rarely like romance novels, but I liked this one!

(*) I did not know the term precariat: the precarious proletariat, that insecure class of unstable work and low wages -- but I was familiar at least by reputation with the academic pre-tenure-track life that the term describes, in the sense that it is one of the many reasons why I did not pursue academia

(**) Jonah likes using footnotes; I guess your mileage may vary but I found it adorable, perhaps inevitably

chazzbanner

As a child I would confuse these tv actor names:

James Franciscus
Anthony (Tony) Franciosa
James Farentino

They did not look like, but they were all Italian-American.

Then there are the Glovers: John Glover, Julian Glover, Crispin Glover. They can all be rather creepy looking IMO. And none of these are John Wood.

And these:

Margaret Tyzack
Geraldine McEwan
Eileen Atkins
Anna Massey

Anna Massey: Laura Kennedy in The Pallisers
Margaret Tyzack: Claudius' mother Antonia in I, Claudius
Eileen Atkins: (much later) the cook in Gosford Park
Geraldine McEwan: the other

Slim Pickens and -- the other one. Darn it, I figured that out a year or two ago, but I forgot his name again! Will report back. :-)

Oh - that didn't take long! Pat Buttram.

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chazzbanner

I was very happy to learn this morning that I have no calcium build-up in my heart. At the very least, this means that for the time being I don't have to go on a statin. :-)

This is the result of the CT Calcium Scan I had on 1/31.

***

This entry is brought to you by the letter L and the number 5.

(Two books I finished today: The Lives of Lee Miller, and Five Windows.)

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chazzbanner

I found something that can soothe me and help me concentrate: not just asmr, but making queue of some of Latte's 'members only' videos. These have no ads, so when the queue moves from one video to another there is no annoying interruption.

Here's something I came across the other day, an amusing clip from What's My Line, with Bennett Cerf. I had a crush on him when I was a kid - yeah - and always noticed Random House books. :-)

witty ways

ah yes, he wasn't a looker (or young) but he was intelligent and witty. What else could you ask for? :-)

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cahn

okay, I was not expecting to have quite SO MANY feelings about Operation Mincemeat, the musical, but indeed I do. (I have listened to the cast recording about seventy times and have not been able to see it live, though I, uh. Have now seen it, see end of post.) I don't think I have had so many strong feelings about a musical since Hamilton, only in many ways they are wildly different feelings?? Hamilton is a fancy big-chorus-dancing musical that is concerned predominantly with valorizing a particular hero (Alexander Hamilton) in a eh-mostly-historical way while offering up somewhat revisionist-considerations of some of the other US's famous Founding Fathers, with a major thematic concern of race, but which adheres to pretty standard gender considerations. OM is a budget-vibe musical starring five people who are both the big parts and the chorus, that is concerned predominantly with both rather revisionist-considerations, in a mostly-historical-fiction way, of a particular type of hero (a heavily fictionalized Ewen Montagu) who is known for his part in the WWII shenanigans of Operation Mincemeat, while at the same time offering up larger parts to people who were not at all famous, with a major thematic concern of gender.

( Starting with: There are FIVE people in the cast! )

chazzbanner

I forgot the Radisson!

Radisson Hotels are now a world-wide chain, but they started here in Minneapolis. In fact, I didn't know just how long ago the original Radisson Hotel was built: 1909.

I found a web page about the original Radisson. It was built by a woman who had recently inherited* a fortune and was encouraged to invest in downtown Minneapolis.

Radisson – The Original

*from an uncle or a cousin? the article says both.

The article tells a fascinating story, including the tale of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, the French explorer whose name was given to the hotel.

I remember the Radisson from when I was perhaps 13, though I don't think I ever stayed there. My parents (aka 'the folks') did stay there on occasion.

Once I was in their room (probably reading or watching television) while they were at a dinner in the Flame Room. Whoever hosted the dinner told my folks that I'd be welcome to join them at the table. I don’t think I had an entrée, but I had shrimp cocktail, which I found fascinating!

In the early 60s the hotel was bought by local businessman Curt Carlson, who developed the Radisson chain. I saw him on campus, once: oh, hey, there's Curt Carlson. :-).

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nineveh_uk

Such as when it is February and seems to have been raining forever.

Watch on YouTube

chazzbanner

I had to move my car today because the lot was plowed again (why?). I parked on the boulevard above my street about 9:30, and moved it back about 3 o'clock when the plowing was finished. (It was scheduled 12-3... they were on the late side.)

In the meantime I did who-knows-what. Seriously. Watched a movie, read, and the usual.

This means I didn't take time to work up what I had intended to post. (postponed)

Instead, here are links to two sites in my part of Minnesota (the southwest):

Jeffers Petroglyphs
7,000 year old sacred rock carvings

Pipestone National Monument

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thekumquat

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

cahn

Our beloved problematic author, Flavius Josephus, with the wild plot twist in the middle! Is anyone still interested in doing this thing?

I have the Oxford World Classics edition; I looked around and I liked this translation, and it's got copious footnotes. Each "book" is a little less than 100 pages on my kindle, and I think I can probably read about 50 pages every week (we can see how it goes and whether I can go faster or must go slower), so I propose dividing the first "book" into two, and reading half one week and half the next. (I did read the intro this past week, but I'm not sure how much I got out of it.)

selenak, would you be able to find a good dividing point of that first book? My goal would be to post every weekend (probably on Sunday, but depending on time) on the reading thereof.

I also feel I should open up this post for general classics discussion if anyone wants it. Depending on how my reading goes I also reserve the right in this post to review whatever other random classics-related or modern-historical-novels-set-in-the-time-of-the-classics reading I do.

thekumquat

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Location: London

chazzbanner

Watch on YouTube

cahn

okay I had SO many feelings about this 2024 Vienna Don Carlo. Watching another whole Don Carlo in early 2026 was not actually in my plans (having watched lots of bits and pieces in late 2025), but uh I may have written a fic involving a fictional staging of this opera that doubled the role of Posa, and then

Ladybug_21 mentioned that they'd heard of a production with doubles of all the historical characters -- meaning not Posa but the other main characters -- and of course I had to go find it. I am here to report that it is this absolutely wild regie modern AU that I adored and found completely riveting. Those of you who dislike regie would greatly dislike it (although the singing is great, consider listening to the audio) and those of you who like regie would quite enjoy it, I think. The director is Kirill Serebrennikov, and now I want to see any opera he ever does. I found the staging (with a couple of exceptions) a rather coherent and fascinating concept.

(So as to put this outside of the cut: this is the 4-act version. Joshua Guerrero is Carlo, Étienne Dupuis is Rodrigo, Roberto Tagliavini is Filippo, Asmik Grigorian is Elisabetta, and Eve-Maud Hubeaux is Eboli. I had not heard or watched any of them except Dupuis, but I thought all of them were great, the singing was just gorgeous and their acting is wonderful too. I am really loving the modern trend of opera singers being great actors.)

( I went in unspoiled except for the above and LOVED being unspoiled, so I'm putting all of this under cut, just in case -- spoilers for the entire production. )But tl;dr: I did feel like the updating of the setting did drive home what an opera of big themes and big emotions Don Carlo is, and how the relationships (except for Filippo-Rodrigo, in this production) drive the big emotions that drive the opera. (Interestingly, the singers don't touch very much; Rodrigo and Carlo do a little, and Elisabetta and Carlo touch hands very briefly in their last duet, and then of course embrace right before Filippo walks in -- but as opposed to that heartbreaking Bastille Don Carlos I saw, it still all works without the touching, and just highlights how our society is much less touchy-feely than it could be.

I really liked it, and I was both thinking about it days later and humming little bits of the score.

rattfan

We're back. Sometime in the early morning, according to my landlord, who had to take exercise down all eight flights of steps. So sometime later than the predicted 2 am. Around 2 am I put the rats' cage back in usual spot and closed up, basically assuming they had gone to bed by then [they had]. The full moon was right in the centre of the view, Rob and Leece, so it wasn't very dark at all. In fact the light was quite amazing. Couldn't sleep, so sat there and watched a bright light move, wondering whether it was a satellite. Not an aircraft, so for me at least a genuine UFO.

Got to sleep some time after that. It's quite some years since I had to get through a night like that without aircon. First World problems, I know. Many years ago I was in another apartment during a run of 40^C days and only a fan. It being the January holidays, my rat Ari and myself spent the time collapsed on the floor. He got daily cold baths to help, I took cold showers. Ari slept on the bathroom tiles. The temp got down to around 21^C last night. Eventually. I'm just flaked out from the insomnia.

As we say hereabouts, well, at least it's not as hot as yesterday!

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Antonia Forest fans

Member Posts

this and that

well I got fresh air at least

this album

Fox Poo and other items of interest

ongoing (reading)

The Jewish War: Preface

An Academic Affair (McAlister)

just one of those things

good news

quiet / Mr. C

Operation Mincemeat (mostly the musical)

once more

Sometimes art speaks for us

SW MN

Theatre & Culture 2025 (part 2)

The Jewish War read-along (or: Classics Post #2)

Theatre and culture 2025 (part 1)

lovable fellow

Don Carlo (Vienna 2024)

Saw 2 am

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October 2021

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