Monday

All right. On this feast of St. Lawrence. Are things slowly, slowly creeping back to normal?

Are you all, like me, holding your breath?

We’ll see.

Less than a week until we get College Guy back up there. All of his Alabama/Auburn friends are moving in this week. Most of the Auburn classes are remote at this point, so I’m just glad that I’m not looking at rental bills for apartment living so my kid can be on a computer all day 90 minutes from home. At this point, my kid’s schedule is all face-to-face except for one class which, he says, will probably be big (he took part 1 in the spring and there were 70 students), so there just isn’t a classroom space where that can happen with distancing requirements.

(I know, I know. 70 students is not “big” for college. I was in survey courses with hundreds in an auditorium. I get it. But for this school…yes. Big.)

Planning is starting to happen for high school. I’ll have a bigger post on what we’re doing for the sophomore year later this week. Just ordered the chemistry text (he’s doing that via a co-op, taught by a Ph.D. from a local university, so I think we’ll be fine there, thanks.) and he’s been doing math (Algebra 2) and Latin 2 sporadically this summer.

But at this moment, he’s out mountain biking with a friend. Yup, got up at 7, and they went to a local park (other kid drives) – to get it in before the 90+ degree heat hits with full force.

So, let’s digest.

Writing: Still working on The Thing. It’s coming along.

Reading: Yay! Books! Libraries open!

I can’t tell you how much this has changed my life of late. It makes no sense, really. I have a lot of books in my house. Bookstores have been open. Every book ever published in the history of the world can be found online, in some form or other.

But you know what?

I’ve read almost all the fiction I have in this house – I don’t horde books – in fact, it’s the opposite – after dealing with three estate-cleanings (mom,dad, husband) and moving a bunch of times…yeah..books are not something I want to cart around and move yet one more time. I have a lot, but they are mostly books that I think will be useful to me in research or have sentimental value.

And as far as reading online – sick. of. it. 

I am firmly on Team Print. I really do think that, at least for me, I retain information far better when I’ve absorbed all those symbols we use for that thing called language on a physical page in a physical book that I’m holding in my physical hands in a specific place and time than I do with the same read on a screen.

So, there you go. Here’s my review of Nothing to See Here – which I liked a lot. For once, I can join accolades. Currently reading Followers which is not high literature, and not even at the level of Nothing to See Here, but is an interesting and generally well-written take on social media. More when I finish.

Also read: chunks of Rough Ideas  by pianist Stephen Hough. I’ve been interested in him for a while – coming to hear of him through Damian Thompson, I believe – and these are just short pieces about various aspects of music, including performance and practice – which are being passed on to Pianist Son, and he’s super excited about that, I’m sure you know.

I think I’m going to spend some time with this: The Soul of the Apostolate –  what I read about it indicates that it might help me frame some of my thoughts about ministry and its impact on the one “doing” the ministry, and all the risks involved.

Cooking:

Actually counting down the days until I don’t have to think about it for a while. But also committed to building immunity and providing good food before college dining services take over. So…sucking it up and trying here.

It’s nothing like what my friend has had to be doing since March. She has nine kids, the youngest being 10, so that means most of them are teens and young adults, and all were home for much of the past few months. Plus three other young adults, siblings whose homebase is in Europe stuck in the US because of travel restriction,  with them for a while. So…that house provided food for fourteen people every single day…..yes, they were able to do some fending for themselves, and those who were able were out and about with jobs, but still. She was running a restaurant, really!

Last night: This flank steak, which will do double duty, leftovers serving as another meal of sandwiches. Made these muffins over the weekend, as well as pizza dough. 

(Note – in my experience, the sweet spot for pizza dough use is 3/4 days after making it. It’s got the most flavor then and still has good rise.)

Listening:

Piano teacher will be staying around. His graduate school is mostly operating remotely, so why move back when you’ve got your house in the country and your chickens. So that will impact the shape of the piano studies this year, in a positive way, after two years of mostly remote lessons on our part. So: Gershwin preludes, Debussy’s First Arabesque and Moonlight Sonata (3rd movement) are the focus for the moment.

Also Billy Joel’s Vienna , which is pleasant to listen to.

Also, he bought an electric guitar, so there’s that. No amp yet, so it’s a muted, yet steady soundtrack to the day.

Watching: 

Since we last spoke? Let me see:

12 Monkeys, Blade Runner (original – “Final Cut” version), and Tunes of Glory. 

You’re familiar with two out of the three, I’m assuming, so let’s focus in on the last.

Tunes of Glory is a very good – not great, but good – film released in 1960, but set a bit earlier, in the years following World War II. Set in Scotland, it stars Alec Guinness and John Mills as two almost-competing military unit commanders, one retiring, one coming in. It’s about different leadership styles, and it’s about the impact of war.

Guinness was already one of my very favorites (this viewing season we had already watched The Man in the White Suit and Our Man in Havana) and he’s fantastic in this – I could watch him play this character all day.

From an article on the film:

In the acting department he fared extremely well, landing Alec Guinness and John Mills to play Sinclair and Barrow, respectively. This casting was less intuitively obvious than it may seem, as Neame observes in a couple of interviews on the Criterion disc. Guinness and Mills had worked together once before—in David Lean’s 1946 Great Expectations, which Neame had produced—and the director’s first instinct for Tunes of Glory was to have Guinness as “the educated one” and Mills as “the red-headed boozer.” This comported with the private personalities of the actors: Guinness tended to be inward and reclusive, Mills to be outgoing and gregarious. It also suited Mills’s knack for “lower-deck” characters and his flair for military roles, ten of which he’d played in prior films.

On the other hand, Guinness was fresh from Neame’s excellent 1958 comedy The Horse’s Mouth, reconfirming his own expertise with the lower deck, and his great enthusiasm for playing Sinclair evidently decided the issue. While this was certainly a good outcome, I suspect that Guinness would have given more vivid inner life to stuffy, uptight Barrow than Mills manages to bring, twitching eyelid and unstiff upper lip notwithstanding. Then again, Mills won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival, so all worked out for the best—although as documentary filmmaker Nigel Algar notes in a Criterion extra, the ideal solution was proposed by a New Yorker reviewer who imagined a stage production with Guinness and Mills alternating the lead roles nightly.

And I agree with this author’s take on the last moments of the film. It’s what prevents it, really, from moving from “good” to near-great:

To avoid spoilers, I’ll be a bit cagey about the conclusion of the story, but I think my point will come across. As the conflict between Sinclair and Barrow escalates, Kennaway’s novel keeps them at an unbridgeable emotional distance. The movie version allows them a temporary but illusory compromise that Murphy approves of in his essay, arguing that it shifts the emphasis from Barrow’s individual resentment and maladjustment to the double-sided tragedy of two men undone by inflexible pride and poorly managed ambition. But for me, the conclusion doesn’t quite work on either page or screen. Both iterations end with Sinclair planning a grotesquely elaborate ceremony that he crazily hopes will exorcise the crushing remorse his actions have brought upon him. In the book, his scheme seems thinly motivated and arbitrary, and the movie makes matters worse with a clichéd flourish, having Sinclair’s demoralized colleagues shuffle haplessly away while he drones on about his overblown idea. In a film that usually strikes a good balance between behavioral overtones and psychological undertones, this culminating scene tilts disappointingly toward staginess.

That said, it’s a very good movie, interesting, revealing and with a great turn by the always wonderful Alec Guinness.

Added: I forgot!

The Apostle. 

Hadn’t seen it years – I saw it in the theater when it was released, with a largely African-American church-going audience, which added great value to the already excellent experience.

Marvelous film, as I’ve always said – one of the most truthful explorations of faith ever put to film. It’s a powerful answer to the question: How can you say you believe when you’re also such a sinner? 

It doesn’t answer the question with syllogisms or proof, just an honest depiction of the mystery.

 

Give me a sign or somethin’. Blow this pain out of me. Give it to me tonight, Lord God Jehovah. If you won’t give me back my wife, give me peace. Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. Give me peace. Give me peace.

I don’t know who’s been foolin’ with me—you or the Devil. I don’t know. And I won’t even bring the human into this—he’s just a mutt—so I’m not even gonna bring him into it. But I’m confused. I’m mad. I love you, Lord, I love you, but I’m mad at you. I am mad at you!

So deliver me tonight, Lord. What should I do? Now tell me. Should I lay hands on myself? What should I do? I know I’m a sinner and once in a while a womanizer, but I’m your servant! Ever since I was a little boy and you brought me back from the dead, I’m your servant! What should I do? Tell me. I’ve always called you Jesus; you’ve always called me Sonny. What should I do, Jesus? This is Sonny talkin’ now.