2025 Readings 113

 If I blew through Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower in two days, my 113th book dragged itself across the finish line in dribs and drabs after months on my nightstand. This is not a condemnation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote, but rather the recognition that it was not a book designed for a passionate reading marathon. The title of the book describes itself: it is the actual lecture notes that Nabokov prepared for a class he taught on Cervantes's classic. However, Nabokov clearly didn't consider Don Quixote to be a classic, and was dragooned into teaching it. He considered it to be a cruel book, and I think that's an interesting (and in many ways correct) interpretation. Nabokov proposed that Cervantes's talent as a writer and the beauty of Don Quixote as a character made up for a poorly structured novel that mainly seemed designed to cruelly misuse the poor knight errant. I only read Don Quixote in its entirety a couple years ago and really liked it, flying into a minor rage when some wanker on a podcast that Janet likes was telling his listeners that they didn't need to bother reading the novel. I'm not going to agree with the wanker in question or Nabokov, because I definitely think you should read Don Quixote. Still, it was interesting to get Nabokov's very different interpretation, and it inspired me to give Cervantes another read sooner than later. 

Christmas 2025 - the Prequel

 OK, so Christmas is clearly not here yet, and I don't know exactly what form it will take (we might be down visiting Janet's mom or we might be spending it with Gary and Ali and some combination of her family or we might be spending it blissfully alone). So, I thought I would go ahead and post the beginnings of the celebration.

I think we went a little crazy on the Christmas tree this year. At Morse Farm, our traditional location to buy our tree, we had a sense that it was a tall tree, but we didn't seem to understand how fat it was as well. Thank God we live in a cabin, or that guy would have been hunched over by the roof.

I was out running errands when Janet began to decorate the tree, and when she realized that we don't really have enough lights or ornaments (but considering this is our last Christmas here for, at the very least, years, we couldn't justify purchasing more stuff for decorating).

Being a problem solver (and also, obviously, usually a problem creator), I jumped in to help fill out the tree decorations. Thank you Mothman! That said, I'm disturbed that the Banff Trading Post didn't selling Merman stuffies.

Merry Cryptidmas!! What problems doesn't Mothman solve?

It's strange to think that next year we'll be celebrating the Christmas season in Sicily. I started doing some research on Christmas traditions in Sicily and I think it's going to be pretty amazing.

2025 Readings 112

 Here's another book that's very indicative of this Year of Reading (or, as I sometimes refer to it as: The Years of Reading Stuff I Never Read): Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. This was one of the selections from our Unofficial Book Club, which has, from the beginning, taken a science fiction slant (which is fine, because I never read science fiction). I had never read any of Butler's works, so this was a new experience. The fact that I read the entire novel in about two days let's you know that I definitely liked it, and strongly recommend it. The work has a very dystopian feel to it, but it's more about a very easy to perceive natural end of the world. The novel was published in 1993, which means it was written during the Bush 1 presidency and clearly in the shadow of the Reagan years. As horrible as things are at this moment during the Trump nightmare, we should never forget that the foundations of this horrific right wing wet dream were set years ago when the Evangelicals made it clear that theirs was the only path to God and the wealthy and corporate America made it clear that we're all on our own. One member of the UBC said that she found it very difficult to read because of the violence and the unrelenting grimness, but I suggested that it was hard to read because we were living it right now. My copy of the Parable of the Sower came with her Parable of the Talents (which is the second book of what she planned to be a five book series, but, sadly, she died before completing any more - so I guess we'll never know her long-term goal for the series). I'll definitely be tearing into Parable of the Talents early next year, although it will be after the Year of Reading comes to an end, which is why I'm recording my plans now. 

Sizzlebrain

 During my long life I've usually been the one who established and popularized nicknames, both for my family members and also friends. With that in mind, I suppose it's not surprising that I ended up playing a similar role here in the cabin with the cats. Cici, the little of the two sisters, is not often referred to The Vertical Cat or Nut Job or Two Pounds of Terror (all, clearly, originating with me). Her sister Mollie (or Miss Mollie, as Janet insists on calling her) is alternately referred to as The Horizonal Cat or the Lap Whore or Anvil Head or Sizzlebrain (which is based on her propensity to curl up next to the stove or the chimney, even leaning in with her brain pushed up against a pretty hot surface). Here she is upstairs happily napping against the chimney.

There comes a point when I should just go ahead and create a Label for Cats (we just received five calendars that I had manufactured mainly from pictures of Mollie and Cici.

2025 Readings 111

 "Under every dictatorship," he said, "one man, one perfectly ordinary little man who goes on thinking with his own brain is a threat to public order. Tons of printed paper spread the slogans of the regime; thousands of loudspeakers, hundreds of thousands of posters and freely distributed leaflets, whole armies of speakers in all the squares and at all the crossroads, thousands of priests in the pulpit repeat these slogans ad nauseam, to the point of collective stupefaction. But it's sufficient for one little man, just one ordinary, little man to say no, and the whole of that formidable granite order is imperiled."

Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine

Memory is a strange thing. I have this clear memory of my friend Bill and I sit in the Brannigan Room at our fraternity at Franklin College. We were both reading the same book, Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine. It my memory I was about a half-hour ahead of Bill, as we pushed to finish the novel. It must have been a requirement in some interdisciplinary class, maybe the only one we ever took together. A side note: it's funny how Champlain always sold our interdisciplinary core as a revolutionary creation when I was taking classes in an interdisciplinary core in the late 1970s (although that's a question for another day). In my memory I finished the book, was disgusted by the ending, and threw the book across the room. A half-hour later, again, in my memory, Bill reached the same conclusion and fired the book across the room as well. Recently, I mentioned this to him during a Zoom chat, and he had absolutely no memory of it at all. So, he could have just forgot it - or it could have been another friend - or, more likely, it never happened. I mean, this is the same time and place that gave rise to my famous/infamous Halloween Killer dream, which has haunted/amused generations of students, but which I always have to admit to them might never have happened either. The last paragraph recounts the almost certain demise of Cristina, the lover, at least potentially, of Pietro Spina/Paolo Spada, climbs up into the mountains to find Pietro/Paolo, who is fleeing the Fascists. Here is the last paragraph: 

Eventually a voice in the distance answered her, but it was not a human voice. It was like the howling of a dog, but it was sharper and more prolonged. Cristina probably recognized it. It was the howl of a wolf. The howl of prey. The summons to other wolves scattered about the mountain. The invitation to the feast. Through the driving snow and the darkness of approaching night Cristina saw a wild beast coming towards her, quickly appearing and disappearing in the dips and rises in the snow. She saw others appear in the distance. She knelt, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the cross.

Obviously, this is extraordinary, a fitting ending and a brilliant metaphor for the anti-Fascist core of the book - and, even more obviously, I was a moron as a freshman in college. Of course, I was already a passionate reader, and very well-read, as the first year moron, and yet I clearly missed the point pretty dramatically. In that sense, I guess it's not particularly surprising that my generally illiterate (not simply culturally, but actually in regards to reading as a basic skill) don't pick up the symbolism in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Of course, none of this may have ever happened.

What matters is that it's a great novel, and I highly recommend it. Interestingly, I'm planning on using parts of it in my Images of Fascism class this spring. I've just ordered Silone's Fontamara, the first novel of the Abruzzo Trilogy, of which Bread and Wine is the second work. 

27

 And that the semester is over - and my spring schedule is finalized (inshallah) - I went ahead and posted my number of official days on campus left until retirement. I didn't include any calculations for Finals Week in the spring, mainly because I don't know how my rearranged schedule will translate into finals. Besides, all I do during Finals Week is show a film, give an in-class group analysis of said film, and kibitz with the students. I'm sure there are all sorts of days where I will be required to come up, but good luck on that happening during my last semester. With that in mind, factoring in 14 regular semester weeks in the spring, times two class days a week (even after the change in my schedule, I'm still stacked on Mondays and Thursdays), subtracting a day off for MLK day, I'm down to 27 days left. I've already run off pictures of players with the numbers 26, 25, and 24, because I'm nothing if not prepared.

Mike Pringle played for the Montreal Alouettes (most notably), Edmonton Eskimos - and during that shameful time when the CFL had franchises in the US - the Sacramento Gold Miners (Surge) and Baltimore Stallions. He's a three time Grey Cup Champion, a two time Most Outstanding Player, rushing for over 16,000 yard in his CFL career, and had his number 27 retired by the Alouettes. While I have my unique souvenir Alouettes jersey (which always gets praise by fans at the games), I don't have an actual player jersey: Pringle's 27 would be a great choice.

Out and About

 Last Sunday was the last F1 race of the season, and super fan Janet was appropriately saddened. So, I managed to talk her into heading down to the Langdon Street Pub to watch the Vikings game, and partake of many appetizers. While I seriously lament the passing of Smitty's, the bar in Burlington who used to text me on late Sunday mornings to encourage me to come in, letting me know that my seat was waiting for me and that the Vikings were already on that TV (I would waltz in and a switchback and 13 hot wings would magically appear before I had my coat off), Langdon is a pretty fair replacement. An excellent time was had.

And, inexplicably, the Vikings played great, probably because I've sworn them off (as shown by my amazing Hamilton Tiger-Cats sweatshirt).