New day, new week. Let’s see if this one can be fruitful. It’s a transition week for us, so there will be some busy-ness.
Writing: In Living Faith today. Go here for that.
Several half-written blog posts around here.
Once the Transition is done, perhaps I can focus more.
Schooling: New category!
Remember – our Kid #5, was, up until a few weeks ago a high school junior. He’s a senior now! Because, why not?
His formal classes don’t start until early September, but this week, in honor of about half his friends being in actual school now (the last chunk to start next week – they all go to different schools, obviously) – we’ll start English Literature. We are using, as a core, this book, with a couple of much shorter introductions as well, plus the usual videos. We’ll start with a general introduction to the development of the English language and the Anglo-Saxon Period today and tomorrow.
You can look forward to a year of posts with me sharing links on that score.
Also starting this week with his tutor: AP Statistics.
Ongoing: piano, first big recital on September 19. To be played: Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, op. 14.
Ongoing: employment as church organist on weekends and for occasional funerals.
Ongoing: Boxing bootcamp and now weights at the Y.
Watching:
As anticipated, we watched Hearts of Darkness , Eleanor Coppola’s documentary about Apocalypse Now.
Really good and illuminating – of course you need to have seen Apocalypse Now first.
And just one more piece of evidence for the argument that You can’t plan creative success. Not that “success” is the correct word here, but I’m in a hurry.
Hard to imagine, for example, Harvey Keitel as Willard, the Martin Sheen part. But yes, he was originally cast in the role. (And Coppola had originally wanted Steve McQueen….)
The whole thing is wild – the original film, the experience of filming it, even its impact all these years later. And with all of our modern performative taboo-breaking and iconoclasm, where is anything out there that is actually trying to confront something deep and true rather than just present, perform and control?
Anyway. Others watched Suicide Squad last night, but I demurred and sat outside and read…..
Reading:
That was fairly ridiculous and I’ll do a blog post later with my conclusions, but yes, over the weekend, I read even more James M. Cain. So now, I’ve read all four of what’s considered his major and more successful works – The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, and this past weekend Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. The last being, like Postman, more of a novella, and easily read in an hour or two.
I was startled how different the ending of Double Indemnity was from the film. I think – no, I know – I prefer the film’s ending. I think Wilder and Chandler took very good source material and made something even sharper out of it. Cain always seems, as he resolves his plots, to go outlandish and a little bonkers.
This would fall into watching, but after I read Mildred Pierce, I revisited the 2011 HBO miniseries version, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet. I had watched it when it aired, and remembered being put off by what struck me as gratuitous and almost laughably obvious nudity (when I say “obvious” I mean – “an obvious pandering to perceived modern tastes), but in my quick run through (I skimmed it, and probably watched about half of it, all told), I was struck by how slavishly faithful it is to the novel (far more so than the Joan Crawford film, which includes a murder that isn’t in the novel, and which, reading the novel, I kept expecting). It’s interesting, although not successful, I think, and I need some time to consider why. Casting has something to do with it – Winslet is great, but Rachel Evan Wood is terrible and miscast as adult Veda and Guy Pearce is almost a parody as Monty.
(Also, having read the novel, I’d say the nudity, while still too much, isn’t completely out of place – there’s a lot of wanton sex in the novel and the crucial scene of Mildred’s daughter Veda parading around in front of her mother nude, is absolutely in the novel, written as a powerful taunt, the cruel culmination at a devastating, cruel moment of a lifetime of Veda’s taunting of Mildred.)
Okay, now let’s read something serious. Well, considering I’m teaching English Literature now, I guess that won’t be too hard.
Listening:
The same – The Piano Guy’s repertoire, jazz piano trios, Poulenc, Satie, Bartok – my go-tos
Cooking.
Not much last week – but with College Guy returning from the beach and departing in a couple of days, I got busy. Made bread, pizza dough and a cake.
Cake – Wacky Cake, developed during the Depression/WWII when eggs and fats were in short supply. It’s very good, and even better when you make it with Dutch Cocoa (which has a higher fat content than the dusty brown Hershey’s Cocoa, and produces much richer baked goods. #influencer)
Travel:
We might do a couple of days next week somewhere, but then the week after, we’ll be traveling just a bit north and doing some hiking and history-contemplating for a week (excluding Sundays of course – Someone’s got to work!)
Note:
This coming Wednesday is the 100th anniversary of the killing of Father James Coyle, rector of the Birmingham cathedral, who was shot while sitting on his front porch by the Protestant-minister-KKK-member-father of a young woman Father Coyle had, earlier that day, married to a Catholic Puerto Rican man. I’ve written more about it here.
The Mass will be livestreamed. You can see more here and here’s the YouTube page where you can watch the livestream. Wednesday at 12:10 Central time.
Charlotte was Both 