2025 Readings 110

                             He was sad at heart, 

unsettled yet ready, sensing his death.

His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain; 

it would soon claim his coffered soul, 

part life from limb. Before long 

the prince's spirit would spin free from his body.

You know, I suppose I shouldn't actually include works that I read specifically for my Epics book, but I'll make an exception here. I had not read Beowulf in an age, but picked it up again because I was searching for a half-remembered passage that I wanted to include in a chapter. However, after sitting down, I ended up reading the entire epic again. In this case it was Seamus Heaney's verse translation, which wasn't obviously wasn't even in existence when I read Beowulf in college. As to be expected, the things that resonated with me now almost assuredly didn't interest me all those decades ago, and vice-versa. I'm sure the passage above speaks to the end of the year, the end of another semester, the upcoming end of my career, and my rapidly approaching sixty-sixth birthday. 

2025 Readings 109

 A couple nights ago I finished Edith Wharton's Ghosts, a collection, not surprisingly, of her ghost stories. I've always loved her novels, but had never really delved into her short fiction, and didn't, to my shame, even know that she was known for her ghost stories. They tended to fall into a very familiar pattern: outside is drawn into a very larger country house which has a spectral past, although I suspect that's more a limitation on the genre than it is Wharton as a writer. I didn't love the collection, but I would still recommend it.

The Human Condition

 Last week's Thanksgiving break was dominated by Janet unfortunately coming down with COVID. Happi8ly, it was a mild case, and our trip to Massachusetts to see her mom turned into takeout grilled chicken from Market 32. After laying up for a few days she's now right as rain, although still tires pretty easily (classic COVID). Now I'm the one who feels dreadful, although I've tested negative twice. While Janet slept long hours recovering I launched into the requisite movie marathon, re-watching the entire nine and a half hours of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition trilogy: No Greater Love (1959), Road to Eternity (1959), and A Soldier's Prayer (1961). It's such a pity that the original set of novels of Junpei Gomikawa have never been translated into English. The right wing in Japan hated the novels and the films, and maybe that helps explain why it is under-watched (and obviously under-read) even today.

The greatest film trilogy in history is The Human Condition, and, no pun intended, I will die on that hill. I'm going to show part of it next semester in my Images of Fascism class, although, sadly, not the entire trilogy (which would make the foundation for a great class).

2025 Readings 108

 I've been watching a lot of Japanese cinema lately, and not simply all the films in my Japanese film noir class. Anyway, I was thinking of watching my favorite Akira Kurosawa film, Ikiru, again. It's a film that I always want to show in class, but, being a Kurosawa film, it's much too long. It's influenced by Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which made me realize that I hadn't reread that classic in way too long a time. If you haven't read it (and shame on you if you haven't), it's essentially a novella (especially by Tolstoy standards), and on Audible it was only two and a half hours. It's message, that of a dying man, if only for about fifteen minutes about two hours before he dies, realizing how foolish his life decisions had been. completely still resonates today: "Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." Highly recommended.

2025 Readings 107

 I've finished three different books in the last couple days, which is more impressive than it sounds. As we've discussed, I, like most readers, have several books going at the same time, and this time three just happened to finish up at the same time. I finished the second book in the Dune series, Dune Messiah. The ending redeemed the book a bit, although I don't know if it would inspire me to read any more in the series. I was telling my son that I thought Dune Messiah had too little of what made the first book, Dune, so good: extensive and fascinating world building - and too much of what often dragged down the first book: pretty clumsy dialogue, full of endless self-reflection and doubt. Obviously, it's not as if I'm opposed to the self-reflection, it's just that it was either clumsily delivered or painfully obvious, and tended to drag on. I'll do some research on the next installment and decide if I want to go on or not.

33

 We're down to 33, counting this upcoming Finals Week. Actually, as I've pointed out, I'm not certain exactly how many days, mainly because my spring semester is still a little unclear. The number will not jump to lower single digits, however, because the college, after giving it some thought, decided to not buy me out of my last semester.  Or maybe they didn't decide not to do so because that would have implied that they actually thought about it. Either way, it looks like my spring schedule is coming closer to coming into focus. The countdown next semester will be more exactly.

Here's Andrew Harris during his early days with the BC Lions. He later played for his hometown Winnipeg Blue Bombers before finishing his career with the Toronto Argonaut. Currently he's the running back coach for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Obviously, he's CFL through and through. During his career he rushed for over 10,000 yards. He has won five Grey Cups (four as a player, and one this year as a coach).

2025 Readings 106

 I've talked about the wealth of books that I culled from the Northshire Bookstore's New York Review of Books (NYRB) corner. Last night I finished another of them: Sigizmund Krzhizhanosvky's Autobiography of a Corpse, a collection of short stories. Like the vast majority of the NYRB books that I purchased, I really liked, bordered on loved, Autobiography of a Corpse. True to the mission of the NYRB collection, Krzhizhanosvky is an author I'd never heard of (another gaping hole in my witless Hoosier education). All the stories are clever, although not so clever that you find yourself thinking, "OK, now you're just trying to be clever." The stories are clever, but there's also an edge, and I would argue an odd humanity to them. Take for example this little portion from the short story "Seams":

Indeed, the only way I can write is bit by bit, in a break - along a seam. My thinking, too, feels short of breath: inhale - exhale, exhale - inhale. It's hard to finish a thought. Take today. I sat down on my usual bench on my usual boulevard and looked about. People were walking by - mincingly and swaggeringly, from right to left, from left to right, in ones and two, and in groups. First I thought: Who are they to me and who am I to them? Then I just stared. One they went, mincingly and swaggeringly, from left to right, from right to left. Again I thought: Man is to man a wolf. No, that's not true, that's sentimental, lighthearted. No, man is to man a ghost. Only. That's more exact. To sink one's teeth into another man's throat is at least to believe - and that's what counts - in another man's blood. But there's the rub: Man cased to believe in man long ago, even before he began doubting God. We fear another man's existence the way we fear apparitions, and only very rarely, when people glimpse each other in the gloaming, do we say of them: They're in love. No wonder lovers seek out a nighttime hour, the better to envision each other, an hour when ghosts are abroad.

I also enjoyed the story "In the Pupil," where a group of souls who had looked into the same woman's eye and said the same thing to her while she said the same things to you (that is, the usual lies that you tell each other), are trapped in a room that is clearly her eye with the pupil as a ceiling, condemned to hear her hear and say that same things to later men - and "Yellow Coal," based on a scientist inventing a new way to harvest an abundant energy source, human spite.

Highly recommended.

And So It Begins

 Here's yet another picture of Bliss Pond, which has been featured in too many posts lately. It's one my latest longcut to the cabin. In this case, sadly, it's representative of the arrival of winter. UTKR

I think it's the beached canoe, sitting lonely and neglected, that makes the picture. I will not miss the winter when we're in Sicily.

2025 Readings 105

    I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I write. I'm not sure of the nature of my existence, and wonder to find myself writing. I speak Latin, of course, but did I ever learn to write it? That seems unlikely. No doubt someone with my name, Lavinia, did exist, but she may have been so different from my own idea of myself, or my poet's idea of me, that it only confuses me to think about her. As far as I know, it was my poet who gave me any reality at all. Before he wrote, I was the mistiest of figures, scarcely more than a name in a genealogy. It was he who brought me to life, to myself, and so made me able to remember my life and myself, which I do, vividly, with all kinds of emotions, emotions I feel strongly as I write, perhaps because the events I remember only come to exist as I write them, or as he wrote them.

    But he did not write them. He slighted my life, in his poem. He scanted me, because he only came to know who I was when he was dying. He's not to blame. It was too late for him to make amends, rethink, complete the half lines, perfect the poem he thought imperfect. He grieved for that, I  know; he grieved for me. Perhaps where he is now, down there across the dark rivers, somebody will tell him that Lavinia grieves for him.

Ursula Le Guin, Lavinia

This morning I finished Ursula Le Guin's novel Lavinia. Oddly, that's the third Le Guin novel I've read this year, odd because I had never read any of her work before. The first two were products of the demands of the Unofficial Book Club that continues to trundle on against all logic. Lavinia, however, was a byproduct of the Epics book. The character Lavinia plays an important, although limited and silent role in Virgil's Aeneid. She is destined to be Aeneas's second (or third, depending how you count Dido - I would be gracious and recognize Dido's belief that they were actually married) wife, and the mother of the Roman people. In the Aeneid she doesn't say a word, and she is most known for her hair catching on fire during a ceremony (which has tremendous prophetic implications) and her famous blush. I used her blush as a focal point in a chapter to talk about the fact we always want the female characters in the epics to say more, and that many modern readers have chosen these female characters and gave them that voice. It made me wonder if anyone had actually done that with Lavinia, and was surprised that Le Guin (I guess that's more pleasantly surprised that shocked). I don't know if I loved the book, but I liked it quite a bit, and it made me want to finish my own book even more. I always warn my students that when they choose a topic that they really love for a paper (for instance, instead of writing their paper on a section of Crime and Punishment for my Nature of Evil class they instead pick a video game or anime or film) one of the dangers is that they love it so much that they end up retelling way too much of the story. How could they not? If you asked me a question about Bleak House or The Chess Garden or The Book of Disquiet or Remembrance of Things Past I would waste way too much time gushing about the story. I would argue that Le Guin falls into that trip in Lavinia. She is trying to give Lavinia a voice, but too much of that voice was consumed with retelling the story of the Aeneid through Lavinia's eyes. Eventually, after the events of the Aeneid play themselves out, Le Guin can begin to tell the story of Aeneas's last three years, and Lavinia's sorrow know that he only has that short amount of time left, and the time after his death. The best part is that three year stretch of time before Aeneas's passing. It's clear that Le Guin loves the Aeneid, and that's one of the things that inspired her to take on the challenge of giving Lavinia her voice. And, if anyone know the temptation to convince folks to revisit these classic works it's me.

Spying

 This cabin really is one extended cat playground, and on one level it pains me to think of taking Mollie and Cici away from it. However, in the end, they'll be happy wherever we are - or at least wherever our laps are (and we'd be miserable without them). I'm always amazed when someone asks, "When you move overseas are you taking the cats?" It would be better to ask if they're taking us.

Here's a picture of Master Spy Mollie, keeping me company in my loft office while keeping an eye on Janet at the same time.

2025 Readings 104

 Last night I finished reading James Cain's Mildred Pierce, which I picked up at the Montpelier Library for $3 as I was returning books one day. For such a big film noir fan, I haven't read as much roman noir as you might imagine. Overall I liked the story quite a bit, although I struggled at the beginning because I think I was trapped inside the narrative confines of the 1945 Joan Crawford original. The actual novel contains the same characters but a very different central narrative plot point. Essentially, I kept waiting for the murder and the backstory, which never happened. I believe the Kate Winslet remake is much closer to the novel. Once I freed myself from that expected story arc I enjoyed it quite a bit, and the ending is definitely better than the movie. Recommended.

CFL Playoff Excellence

 Somehow, in the couple dozen CFL games I've dragged people to, I'd never actually attended a playoff game. It's not as if I hadn't suggested it, but the timing was never right - and with my impending and fast-approaching deadline of leaving the country the emotional weight that I could bring to bear was too much for my friends to ignore. With that in mind, Cyndi, Kevin, Craig and I attended the East Division Semi-Finals, which was a Crossover game (another reason why the CFL is better than the NFL) with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers heading east for the game. It played out like it always does: I rashly buy tickets, and then begin the process of leaning on my friends.

It may look like the cover of a Beatles album, but it's the crew scurrying back from the Kouign Amann Bakery with treats.

Stopping at the Fromagerie Fritz Kaiser (the cheeseshop hidden in a cornfield right across the border), while providing us with some wonderful cheese, also made us arrive a little later at Schwartz's Deli. The wait was worth it.

Noted CFL and smoked meat fans, Cyndi and Kevin.

I always somehow forget that Schwartz's is located in the Little Portugal neighborhood in Montreal.

So what you want about attending an Alouettes game (they have the worst food in the CFL and pretty lame corporate tailgating) the place is always packed and it was rocking for the playoff game.

Despite Kevin's feigned grumpiness, an excellent time was had by all.

Craig had not attended a CFL game with me for over a decade, so he definitely enjoyed the day (and proved himself heroic by topping off the air in the tires of our car).

The halftime highlight was the local band, whose name I sadly did not catch, featured a pink haired leader singer belting out some AC/DC songs. There seems to be more classic rock played at CFL games than NFL games, but that's another dissertation topic.

A big win for the Alouettes, in a game that wasn't really this close. The Blue Bombers string of appearing in five straight Grey Cups was snapped (too bad, because the game was in Winnipeg this year).

And, of course, the trip ended with a stop at Tim Hortons on the way home.

The only two failures were 1) somehow not taking pictures of our stop at the Fromagerie Fitz Kaiser (the first stop of the day, where we picked up some amazing cheese), and 2) being unable to convince the crew to head to Hamilton the following weekend for the East Division Finals, where the favored Tiger-Cats lost a heartbreaking game to the Alouettes (although we did gather at Kevin's to watch the game).

2025 Readings 103

 I talked recently about pre-purchasing a Craig Johnson Longmire novel, First Frost, and then forgetting about it so long that not only was it published, but another one came out as well. Return to Sender. Last night I finished the latter. I liked it, although it seems that he's lost touch with his main characters a bit. When discussing First Frost, I suggested that when he sets the story someplace other than Wyoming the beautiful balance and authenticity of the stories seems to fall apart. On the one hand Return to Sender is closer to home, but it still felt like he was struggling to bring everything together. I'm happy I read it, and I'll purchase and read whatever he puts out, but he seems to be struggling to both find new things to say while still remaining true to his characters. Return to Sender starts out pretty true to his earlier stories, but then jumps the shark pretty dramatically, and the last third felt like he was padding out to reach an acceptable page limit. Beloved characters such as Vic or Henry disappeared altogether in this one. Maybe next year I'll cycle back and reread them from the beginning. If you are a Longmire fan, obviously, you need to read Return to Sender, if you're new to the series definitely don't start here, because you probably won't read another one (which would be a pity).

34

 And here's number 34, although, as I've stated recently, this number is getting ready to either jump up by about fifty percent or maybe drop down rather dramatically. 

Here's a great picture of George Reed and his family. Reed played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders for all thirteen years of his career, and is on the short list for greatest CFL running back of all-time. He finished with over 16,000 yard, averaging 5.0 yards a carry. Even in his last year he rushed for over 1400 yards, so he had an almost unmatched (if not actually unmatched) career. While born in Mississippi, he died a few years ago in Regina, so he clearly made Canada his home.

2025 Readings 102

 In this year of reading I've mentioned those books which somehow existed parallel to me, sometimes for decades, that I somehow never got around to reading. That is, there are those books that you seem to have always known about, and sometimes even considered reading, but somehow never got around to it for any number of reasons. Yesterday I finished one of those books: Frank Herbert's Dune.  Why had I never read Dune?  I'm not actually a big science fiction reader, so it's not that strange all things considered. However, I know that at various times over the last four decades I've owned at least one copy of Dune, which stared at me forlornly from a bookcase while I ignored it, before it somehow disappeared, shrapnel from some relationship breakup.  Recently my son encouraged me to give it a look, although in this case a listen, as he sung the praises of an audiobook version he had just finished. We were having lunch at the Langdon Street Pub, and I think I looked it up on the spot and purchased it. I liked it a lot, both the recording and the story itself. The Islamic/Arabic subtext, both its role in the novels and its disappearance in the films, was something I had heard about, but I was still surprised by the number of instances that these concepts shaped the text. These ranged from borrowing a book title from Ibn Khaldun to concepts such as jihad. I was somewhat disappointed in his portrayal of jihad, because he definitely falls back upon the idea of the "lesser jihad" while mainly ignoring the more idea of the "greater jihad." That is, he made greater use of the concept of jihad as conquest while ignoring the much more essential aspect of the internal personal struggle to do the right thing. Still, it made for a very interesting reading, and made me more than a bit appalled that the film versions always duck it altogether and rely upon stereotypical portrayals of Arabs. The religion he creates is a combination of Islam and Buddhism, which, as I've discussed in other places on this blog, I don't actually find that strange of a concept. Anyway, I enjoyed Dune, and have already uploaded Dune Messiah, the second volume. I can't imagine that I'll make my way through all six of the Dune novels that Herbert himself wrote, let alone the mountain of related books that his son produced, but I'm looking forward to at least one more.

35

 I don't know why I'm continuing in this countdown since my spring schedule has been destroyed, and thus I'll have to start over again, but, as I've pointed out earlier, if nothing else we can always learn more about the CFL Anyway, if my schedule had not been destroyed I'd have 35 total days that I have to be on campus at Champlain until my retirement.

And number 35 is a very worthy selection: Tyrone Jones of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He won two Grey Cups with the Bombers, and is still the franchise's all-time sacks leader.

2025 Readings 101

 This morning I finished the latest book in our Unofficial Book Club, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. For some reason we started off with science fiction novels (I'm not certain exactly why) and we could never seem to quite get away from them. The Ministry for the Future is described as a "science fiction nonfiction novel." Truthfully, while it had some nice moments, mainly related to cool science things I didn't no anything about, I didn't like this book at all. It was as if Robinson wanted to tell, briefly, about a number of tangible science things that we could actually do to save the planet, he decided to do it through a poorly laid out story - which mean, at least in my opinion, that neither the story or the science really worked. Essentially, neither path was ever able to gather any momentum before you popped back to the other lane again. The question I kept coming back to was one of will: why don't we have the will to make these changes? In the book so much of the change was brought about by sheer desperation, either because of profound ecological degradation or a global depression or ecological terrorism, all of which raised interesting points but which Robinson never followed through with in any meaningful fashion. It received some great reviews, but then I think there are books that are sort of negative review proof (as in, the topic is simply not something that a reviewer feels he/she should attack), and ecological degradation is definitely one of them. I'm going to pass the book on to some of my science geek friends, who may enjoy it a lot more than I did.

36

Now, following out the system I laid out the other day, I'll go ahead and post a CFL player who wore number 36, signifying the number of days that I should have left at Champlain before my retirement. Sadly, the key word in that sentence is, as I feared, is should. Because of comically (although there's nothing funny about it) my carefully sculpted spring schedule has been destroyed and is in the process of being put back together again. The result would be that my last semester would be marked by a terrible schedule and tiny classes. The key word in that sentence is would, because I told my coordinator to reach out to the provost in regards to buying me out of the end of my contract. This is only partially because a change in my schedule would require me to start looking up CFL players with numbers in the 50s and maybe even 60s. Mainly, paying me a healthy salary (even if I could use it) to teach a minimal amount of students while taking money away from adjuncts just seems like a foolish use of resources.

Despite the dour note above, we should celebrate the great Dave Ridgway (known as the "Robokicker"), a Hall of Fame Kicker for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He holds the CFL records for most field goals in a regular season (59) and consecutive field goals (28) in a regular season.

Not Getting It Right

 I was talking to my friend Chuck the other day in between classes and I shared one of those strange realizations that I've had recently as I countdown my final year. When you're a teacher (or, more broadly anyone, I guess) and you're facing down retirement, you have these moments when you walk out of class and realize that you'll never teach that subject or film or chapter from Crime and Punishment again - and that you still didn't get it right. If you're a sincere and dedicated teacher - or you have more than your fair share of pride or ego - you always think that with a few tweaks you'll hit the bullseye next time. Like most teachers I write up notes to myself, not at the end of every entire class, but after each individual class period, with things that went right and wrong, and proposed changes for next year, hoping that next year everything will come together brilliantly at long last. Because of the nature of Champlain I suppose the chances of us ever getting it right are fairly inconsequential, mainly because our curriculum in the Core is interdisciplinary and seems to be torn apart and rebuilt every five years or so. Essentially, I don't have thirty-five straight opportunities to get that lecture on the Persians right (although it was already really good when I stopped teaching world civilization). Still, you would think that five times through would be enough for you to get it all sorted out. Of course, that's not the way it works, because teaching is not a one way street. Every course, and every class period for that matter, is organic: who are the students who signed up for that sections, and which ones showed up that day (did one of the two bright kids take the day off? did three of the ten who shouldn't actually be in college take the day off? how does that impact the chemistry?). For some time now I've believed that if you have four classes in a semester you normally have one you really like, two you can abide, and one that is borderline painful to meet. You never want your bad class to be the last one you meet with that week, because then you go into the weekend believing that you're actually a lousy teacher. Following that logic, I hope my last class in the spring is a great one, so that I don't go into retirement convinced that I had spent four decades as a lousy teacher. Maybe on that last day I'll do the roll, take a quick read of that day's chemical makeup of the room, and just send them home if I think they'll ruin my retirement.

37

 As I approach retirement I guess it's not particularly surprising how many of my posts reflect that coming event. The other day I calculated how many days I'm required to be on campus before I retire. This is not the number of days that I'll actually be on campus, simply the minimum number of days that I'm required to be on campus. It's actually pretty easy to calculate because I stack all my classes on Monday and Thursday, which also inevitably leads to two days during Finals Week. Now, with the math sorted out, that works out to 37 more days before I shut it down in May. It doesn't seem like many days, and it certainly doesn't reflect the amount of time and days that I devote to teaching, which is essentially every day, but it's an interesting way to think about it. To celebrate this countdown, and remind my colleagues that their time suffering under the Scudderite junta are coming to an end, I'm posting a picture of a CFL player with the corresponding number of my door before I head out to my 4:00 film class (knowing that I won't be coming back to my office after class). So, yesterday at 3:45 I took off to prepare to show Pale Flower in my Japanese Film Noir class, and taped this picture to my door. On Thursday I'll go ahead and taped up a picture of number 36, and on and on. Now, what might mess up this brilliant scheme is that my spring numbers are so unbelievably bad, as Champlain clumsily tries to not go out of business, there's talk that my beautifully constructed schedule might be torn apart and put back together again, and then I'll suddenly have to recalculate and start looking for numbers in the 60s. Or maybe Champlain will just throw their hands up and buyout my last semester, in which case I'll have to start looking for players wearing the number 7.

I should probably give credit to the player as well, not simply to celebrate the moment but also because I'll doubtless want to know the name in the years to come (and, well, we can always be a better CFL fan). This is Wesley Sutton from our hometown Montreal Alouettes.

2025 Readings 100

 Just as I went through a Julian Barnes phase in this year of reading (both revisiting books I had loved before and exploring new ones), I suspect I'm going to finish out the year in a Martin Amis phase. A couple weeks ago I finished a reread of London Fields, and a couple days ago I read, for the first time, Night Train. Amis was such an interesting and brilliant and complicated writer. London Field was, among many other things, almost a parody of a roman noir. Night Train was, for all intents and purposes, a roman noir, and if Amis wanted to he could have easily taken that approach in his career. It read like a deeper James Ellroy, literally that level of dark and fucked up. Highly recommended. 

2025 Readings 99

 I don't really think of myself as someone who routinely reads detective novels, but there are some exceptions. I'm sure over the years I've read all the Sherlock Holmes short stores and novel several times, although I suppose that's true of most folks. I may also be a James Ellroy completest, including multiple readings of the L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz), American Tabloid, and My Dark Places. Oddly, I'd also have to add to that Craig Johnson's Longmire series, which I suspect, like many people, I first encountered on Netflix. The novels are very different than the series, and, as might be imagined, better (although the casting of the Australian actor Robert Taylor was a great choice). Yesterday I finished First Frost, which I believe is the 20th in the series. If you're familiar with the Longmire series, you know he's a sheriff in a small town in Wyoming, supported by a cast of characters who run throughout the entire series (again, the TV series had different supporting characters, and some of the casting of the characters from the novels was a bit iffy - although Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear turned out to be an inspired choice). I remember travelling on a bus through the scrubby desert of Jordan while reading one of the earlier Longmire novels, and as I passed in and out of consciousness I started to believe that I was in Wyoming. The series is not great, but it's definitely entertaining and I'm always happy when I return to it. The one thing I would add is that it works when they're actually set in Wyoming. There's one where Walt goes down to Mexico and another when he's in Philadelphia and this last one which is a flashback a period before he and Henry go to Vietnam (don't try and sort out the timeline, especially on the TV series), and they never quite work out as cleanly as the ones where the action occurs in Wyoming. There's sort of an internal logic, a mood, in the Wyoming stories that are never captured in the stories outside of  Absaroka County. It's not that the non-Absaroka County stories are bad (and I completely understand why Johnson occasionally tries to mix things up), rather, they just feel a little unnatural and forced. Having said all that, I'm looking forward to reading the next one, and carrying out a massive reread once retirement hits.

2025 Readings 98

 Most of the 98 books I've read so far this year I've liked quiet a bit, and, of course, there are others that I was less impressed by. In the latter category would fall Baek Sehee's I Want to Die but I want to Eat Tteobokki. Last week I read a couple stories in the BBC about Baek Sehee's death, almost certainly a suicide. I had not read her book so I tracked it down. She certainly cut a sympathetic character in the book, which took the form of a series of conversations between her and her therapist. To me, the problem was one of the challenge of translating literary works across different cultures. My understanding is that in South Korea has still been frowned upon to discuss mental health issues, and, in this way, I believe her book is very important. However, since these topics have been a part of the Western literary and cinematic tradition for so long it's simply impossible for it to have the same impact. I'll doubtless revisit it down the road sometime.

Fame

 I guess I can go ahead and retire, as my fame will never reach a greater extent than this moment: one of my pictures was celebrated on the Adamant Co-op weekly email.

It was a nice career.

Calgary Stampeders Game

 And now the second half of the June CFL Trip of Excellence to Alberta. In an earlier posting I mentioned that Kevin and I were somewhat worried about the Thursday night, 19 June, game in Edmonton (as Edmonton is the most northern major city in the America, as they are proud of reminding everyone), but in the end the weather for that game was glorious. It didn't occur to us that the Saturday afternoon, 21 June, game in Calgary, three hours farther south, would be an issue. As it turns out, the game was played in the midst of something like a mini-hurricane, featuring temperatures in the low-40s, wind gusts over 40 miles an hour, and a consistent cold rain. Seriously, it was the coldest that I've ever been at a game, which is partially explainable by the fact that a game in Cincinnati in December insured that you were prepared for that much cold. I didn't take more pictures, or for that matter clap more, because it would have required digging my hands out of the layers of clothes I was buried under.

When we walked out of the car we were almost blown over, and after taking refuge in a Dairy Queen for an hour, we headed to the stadium. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that we were almost blown off the bridge.

The Stampeders rain slickers were a life saver.

The picture can't do justice to how miserable it was.

This would probably give you a better idea. The official photographer grabbed a picture of us at the same spot, which was later shown during halftime on the jumbotron. Sadly, my hands were too cold, and buried, for me to get my phone out in time to snap a picture of it.

Still, you have to hand it to the few devoted Calgary fans who showed up.

In between this game and Edmonton, you would have thought that not only did no one in Canada like the CFL, they also apparently didn't know that it existed. At least there was a legitimate excuse in this instance as the weather made staying home and watching the game on the couch to be a much better option.

The Stampeders lost to the woeful REDBLACKS, mainly because they clearly didn't want to be there, and the Ottawa squad was much more desperate for a win. Doing my CFL playoff calculations, I think this abysmal non-effort cost them a home playoff game.

Still, a good time was had by the Vermont contingent. That's now six of the nine stadiums visited, although following up with the Blue Bombers, Roughriders, and BC Lions is going to be a challenge from a home base in Sicily. Maybe I can knock off one or two next June before we move.

The Champ After All

 The other day, with one week left in the CFL fantasy season, I snapped a picture of my dear friend Cyndi standing next to the penultimate standings of our league. Some utter bastard (could be anyone) had run off a copy of the standings and taped it to the door, mainly because, after leading the lead for weeks and weeks on end, my friend Jack had caught her with one week to go. Heroically, Cyndi rallied and slipped back into first place at the end. Someone (could be anyone), then, being a gentleman/gentlewoman/gentlebeing (because it could be anyone), did make up for the original sign by running off a new copy of the now final standings and taking a picture of the champ.

Sadly, the picture doesn't extend far enough down to include Mike Kelly's team, which finished dead last. Now, the challenge begins, finding the appropriate trophies. I think I know what Cyndi's championship trophy will be, but I'm still working on the last place trophy, which will obviously be called The Mikey (it's harder to find a stuffy version of the Merman than you would think).

2025 Readings 97

 Yesterday I finished a long-delayed rereading of Martin Amis's London Fields, which I read way back shortly after its publication in 1989. It's definitely a novel that you either love or hate. My memory, which may be apocryphal, is that after its publication it was up for a major literary prize and one half of the committee threatened to quit if it didn't win and the other half threatened to quit if it did win. Again, that may be a false memory, but I could also clearly see it to be true. Truthfully, I think I had both hate and love responses during my reread, but in the end I came down on the side of liking the novel quite a bit. It's inspired me to dig into a few other Amis novel that I haven't read it a long time or simply haven't gotten around to tackling yet. Although it was published ten years before the Millennium, I will always associate it with that general millennial madness of the age. 

Edmonton Elks Game

 Yesterday I bought four tickets for next Saturday's CFL Crossover game, where the Montreal Alouettes will host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. It made me think of several things: 1) G3, Ali, and I saw the same two teams play last year when the game was decided by the inexplicable hurricane wind that blew in from Winnipeg to knock down an Alouettes punt and hand the game to the Blue Bombers; weird to think that I'll be watching the two teams play once again in almost exactly the same time of years; 2) this will be my fourth CFL game of the season, and first ever playoff game, so the enormity of this summer's move to Sicily must be really hitting me - both because I'm maxing out my CFL time, but also creating even more opportunities to spend time with my friends (who I will miss terribly); and 3) that I still have things to post about my June trip to Alberta with Kevin. On Thursday, 19 June we saw an Edmonton Elks home game, when they hosted, of all teams, the Montreal Alouettes. We thought the weather might be sketchy, but it was wonderful (unlike the freezer bowl in Calgary two days later, but more on that later). Our Airbnb was pretty craptacular, but it was also within easy walking distance of the stadium. As soon as we walked out the door we could hear the pre-game music blasting.

The Elks have been pretty dreadful the last few years, but it wasn't that long ago that they were still winning Grey Cups.

The stadium featured pretty good food, unlike the nightmare that is an Alouettes home game.

It's a really nice stadium, although it was all but empty, which was a discouraging thing to witness on the opening night of the season. Again, they've been terrible lately, and the general mood in Edmonton was pretty down (it probably didn't help that the Oilers have played for two straight NHL championships (although, sadly, having lost both).

The stadium holds something like 60,000, but the announced attendance was only around 14,000 (although Kevin and I both agree that it felt closer to something like 8000). To have the Elks run out onto the field to an empty stadium was sad. We sat next to a really nice couple from Montreal, who now live in Edmonton, who were there to root on the Alouettes. He said they used to have Elks season tickets, but they've been so terrible lately that they gave them up. The guy told me that they really needed a smaller stadium, which is an interesting approach to take.

Still, an excellent time was had by the Vermont contingent, and a guy stopped me on the way out to tell me how much he liked my Warren Moon jersey (granted, I had it custom made, because he played for the Eskimos and not the re-named Elks, but it was a popular choice nonetheless.

The game was not as close as the 38-28 score indicates, as the Elks scored a goodly amount of points in garbage time. Actually, they got a lot better as the season progressed, mainly because they made a change at quarterback, and they almost snuck into the playoffs. My son says I can no longer root for four CFL teams and that I have to make a decision, and since Edmonton was my original favorite team (although under misguided circumstances), I really should just settled on them.

2025 Readings 96

 Recently I've decided to add a third book to my Images of Fascism class for the spring, Anne Applebaum's Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. I had ordered it a couple months back, and finally knocked it off in a couple days this week. She certainly makes many of the same points that Sarah Kendzior makes in her books, and I consider them both to be impeccable sources. To me, it's almost impossible to read books like this, written by serious scholars, (and not the hacks who produce Russian-friendly propaganda on the right), and not understand the the horrible situation that we are in. I'm amazed when talking heads wring their hands and talk about the very real possibility that we will slide into autocracy, when we have already slipped into autocracy. There were so many passages in Applebaum's book that spoke to me, so it's hard to pick one, but here's one that's spot-on. 

But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don't offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don't inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, cause there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.

Applebaum is talking about Russia and China and Iran, etc., but she's also clearly talking about the US under Trump as well. I just kept thinking about the forty percent who don't vote, for many of the reasons they have been programmed to believe that she references above. Sometimes at the Food Shelf we would run drives to help our visitors sign up to vote. Many of them would say, in various ways, that there's no point because both options are bad. You would try to avoid thinking, "yes, and this is another in a series of bad decisions which left you queued up at the Food Shelf this morning," because, truthfully, many of them were simply victims of a cruelly unfair system that crushed far too large a percentage of the population into poverty. However, that answer, that both options are bad, is exactly the answer that those in power want people to give. I'm hardly happy with the modern Democratic party, but, especially if you are poor, there are profound differences between the two parties, and the one party is only offering you surface-level patriotism and freedom, and there is a true difference. If you can convince forty percent of the population not to vote, then you can rely upon a fanatical thirty percent who will always vote (and vote how they are told), and you simply need to grab a couple swing states (no doubt, sometimes by cheating) and you will be in power forever.

Obviously, Applebaum's book is not only highly recommended, it is essential.

The Chicken Bowl Payoff

 Sadly, the Springfield Buffalo are not fated to win a fifth title in the illustrious Twin Peaks Football League (such are the cruel vagaries of fantasy football), but at least I'm doing OK in my rivalry games. After dispatching Andy in the Cryptid Bowl (and collecting that sweet Bobblehead Bigfoot) I defeated Cyndi in the Fried Chicken Bowl. Being a good soul, she followed up and took me out for a chicken dinner (technically, the loser is supposed to cook a friend dinner for the winner, but we've always been flexible on that front). Next up, the Key Lime Pie Bowl with Katheryn.

WE had never eaten at the Onion City Chicken & Oyster restaurant in Winooski, but I would happily go back (how to pull this off in Sicily will be more of a challenge).

It was a delicious sandwich that failed as a sandwich, but would have succeeded magnificently as a final senior project in pursuit of a graduate degree in engineering.

Crypto Corner

 In the far corner of my office in the cabin I'm developing a definitive Crypto Corner. After winning the 2025 Cryptozoology Bowl (an official Event of Excellence in the TPFL calendar) I received an amazing bobblehead Bigfoot in the mail (Andy, being a Gentleman of Excellence, quickly sent along the required cryptozoology swag - I have several years of swag to send to him in the future to pay off inevitable losses to the powerhouse Shackleton Shockers). Now, where to put him? Naturally, he'd be happiest living next to my bobblehead Santa Champ. Somehow, Bigfoot looks best with the log cabin background.

What is scarier: Champ or Bigfoot or a dozen or so Proust-related books?

A Note of Excellence from Andy.

The Last Last

 For sometime now I've been joking about "the last car" or "the last class", etc., that is, the last car I would ever own or the last class I would ever teach or, well, fill in the blank. However, I guess I'm not really joking about that any more. The other day when I sent an email to several  administrators informing then that this school year would be my last, it clearly meant several things (beyond merely the obvious: good luck seeing me at any meetings for the rest of the year). It essentially kicked the "last" series of events into high gear. My goal for this summer is to sell my Outback, with the hope that it will truly be "the last car" I ever own. It's not out of the question that, depending upon where we settle in Italy/Portugal that we might end up buying a Yaris of some little Euro-friendly car, but we'll include that on Janet's ledger. The last class will be here before you know it, especially since this fall semester is suddenly half over already. Of course, the other side of that is the beginning of a series of "firsts": favorite café in Catania, etc.

Janet snapped this picture the other day, in my "last office."

2025 Readings 95

 As we passed through the Fort Lauderdale Airport on the way back from visiting Jack and Julie we had time to spend in the bookstore in Terminal 2, which would probably constitute the second best bookstore in Vermont (seriously, it was a nice little bookstore). While there I picked up a copy of Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy, which I owned at one time in the antediluvian past in a complete hardbound set of the works of Dickens (one of the many great gifts that my ex-wife Brenda bought me over the years). Sadly, all those books went the way of all flesh, and I don't really have that many actual, physical copies of Dickens left - and considering our upcoming plans I'm not going to be adding more on this side of the Atlantic. Still, I was happy to stumble across this book so I went ahead and picked it up.  It's essentially a travelogue that Dickens wrote on a vacation in Italy. I don't think it's great (and this is coming from a complete Dickens nut), but it's still interesting. When I think of what made Dickens a great writer I believe it was the slow evolution of his characters, and less his physical descriptions or quick snapshots, wo, with that in mind, I would argue that a travelogue didn't really play to his strength. Still, I liked it, and borrowed some of it for the epics books to serve as an introduction to a section. If you like Dickens or Italy, you should still give it a look.

Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany with a bright remembrance of it, for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The summertime being come - and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us, and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village near the awful rocks and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts of the Great St Gothard, hearing the Italian tongue for the last time on this journey - let us part from Italy with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people naturally well disposed and patient and sweet tempered. Years of neglect, oppression and misrule have been at work to change their nature and reduce their spirit: miserable jealousies fomented by petty princes to whom union was destruction and division strength have been a canker at the root of their nationality, and have barbarized their language, but the good that was in them ever is in them yet, and a noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that hope!

And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully because, in every fragment of her fallen temples and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end - and that the world is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing and more hopeful as it rolls!

Mapping CFL Excellence

 After our tortuous return trip on Wednesday morning (yes, it was supposed to be Tuesday - thanks Delta), Janet and I popped by campus on an errand and I found the following map hanging outside my office. This was some excellent mischief, engineered by Erik, Cyndi, and Mike.

Obviously, in pin placement, I was careful to chose green pins for Edmonton and red pins for Calgary, etc., to line up with the team colors - as one would.

There are times when I think these guys may actually miss me when I'm gone.

Fifty Years Is Not Enough

 Here's a great picture of my friend Jack, my best friend for now over fifty years. We're sitting at some divey bar along the beach in Fort Lauderdale, enjoying adult scholarly beverages, watching the ocean, and constructing film noir scripts from the cast of characters that populated the strip. It was such a great trip, and I'll share a few more posts about it. What a tremendous blessing these fifty+ years of friendship have been. Julie and Janet are amused by the fact that in fifty years Jack and I have had exactly one argument, which to us is more than we could ever imagine having.

Truthfully, there was also a bit of a bittersweet feel to it all, and I'm not simply being too Scudderian in my response to things. There were a couple times when I had this feeling that this might be the last time we saw each other.  We're men of a certain vintage, with our own sketchy medical history, and Janet and I are leaving the country next July. It's easy to construct a world where Jack and Julie will never actually fly over to see us in Sicily, and on the few times that I'll come back I won't build in a separate trip down to Florida (or Colorado, which is where I suspect they'll end up). A lot of Zoom chats will go a long way to making me happy and the move easier. 

2025 Readings 94

 On our recent trip down to Florida to see our dear friends Jack and Julie I blew through Olga Ravn's The Wax Child. I've been raving to anyone who would listen about Ravn's novel The Employees, which is just extraordinary. I don't know if I liked The Wax Child as much, although that would hardly be a condemnation, considering how much I liked her earlier work. The Wax Child is a literary retelling of actual witch trials, told from the perspective of a wax figure created for casting spells. At times it almost felt too much as the recounting of a series of fascinating/troubling witchcraft beliefs from the medieval world, as compared to a story that held together more cleanly. Still, it may just mean that I need to give it another read, which I was hoping to do anyway. 

The Drive to Work - Yet Again

 OK, this is the last morning picture of Bliss Pond that I'm going to post, at least until the next one.

I mean, come on, that's beautiful. 

2025 Reading 93

 For a really lone time I've had a historical/political man-crush on Eugene V. Debs, and I've often portrayed myself as "that other Hoosier socialist." To this day, I think that arguing for anyone other than Debs for greatest Hoosier or all-time is just a stupid argument. Anyway, I finally got around to reading Nick Salvatore's Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, the award-winning (and justifiably so) biography of the Indiana socialist. It's strange to think of a time when Indiana was not a radical right wing hellscape (not that it was a bastion of liberal thought at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but at least it could produce someone like Debs) and when America still believed that it could be a better place and actually thought about the plight of the working class. There were many fascinating and moving moments in the book (and not simply that his long-time mistress was Mabel Curry from Franklin), but one of the most emotionally uplifting/draining was the description of the day Debs was released from prison after serving three years for speaking out against America's entry into World War I:

     On Christmas afternoon Theodore and a group of Socialist comrades met Debs at the gates of Atlanta Penitentiary. As they joyfully and tearfully embraced and fervently kissed one another, a low rumbling in the background intensified. Warden Fred Zerbst, in violation of every prison regulation, had opened each cell block to allow the more than 2,300 inmates to throng to the front of the main jail building to bid a final goodbye to their friend. Turning away from the prison, Gene started down the long walkway to the parked car. As he did, a roar of pain and love welled up from the prison behind him. With tears streaming down his face, he turned and, hat in hand, stretched out his arms. Twice more, as he walked to the car, the prisoners demanded his attention. Twice more he reached to embrace them. At the car, a terribly thin and drained Debs offered one final good-bye and quickly entered.

     Union men might have smoothed his journey to jail, but Debs remained the only American who could evoke such love and admiration from this primarily working-class prison population. One of his first actions upon release again suggested why Debs was so loved. On the way to the train that would take him to Washington and an interview with the president, Debs removed from his wallet the five dollar bill prison regulations provided each released prisoner. With a short note, he sent it to the committee working for the release of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, two working-class Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murder by a Massachusetts court. There would not be another American radical like him for some time.

It's hard to imagine that there ever way another American radical like him, ever, before or after. One of my few regrets, probably the only one, from my trip west with my great friend Sanford was our failure to make the Eugene V. Debs Museum in Terre Haute in time (we arrived too late in the afternoon) for a visit. I could imagine a world wherein the only time I make it back to Indiana would be to visit the museum.

The Drive to Work - Again

 OK, so I know I just posted a picture of Bliss Pond that I snapped on my drive to work the other day, but here's another one. Lately I've been been taking the shortcut (although I suspect it's a couple minutes longer) and bailing off and on to County Road from Bliss Pond Road. This is especially a nice treat in the morning (it's dark by the time I get home on Mondays - and will soon be in the mornings as well, sadly) and it inspires me to drive on to Burlington to grind out my last year.

My friend Jack thinks that may be Champ in the middle, although maybe we need a new name: Blissy?

2025 Readings 92

 Here's another book that I had never read, but, in this case, I had never heard of until recently. I suppose that's not too surprising since, by definition, there are millions of books I've never heard of. This is strange because it's related to Indiana, and you would have thought I would have heard about it - seen it featured in some discussion of books with a Hoosier connection or even it front and center in a bookstore in Indiana (I suppose such things exist, although I can't remember one off hand). However, maybe it's not that strange. Anyway, a couple days ago I finished Budi Darma's People From Bloomington. Darma, originally from Indonesia (and already a successful writer there), earned his Ph.D. in literature at IU in the 1970s (writing his dissertation on Jane Austin, of all people). People From Bloomington is a collection of short stories, which, much like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, comes together to form a novel. I always scold my students for not reading the introduction to the books I assign them, and this was another great example of why it's beneficial to do so. It's pointed out that one of the things that makes the collection so interesting is that instead of the myriad examples of western writers writing on the exotic other in places like India or Africa or the Middle East, here's an Indonesian writer reflecting upon the exotic other in the west. What comes across is a not particularly flattering portrayal of Hoosiers, which, truthfully, I think it pretty spot-on. In Indiana we pride ourselves on being friendly souls - or at least that's part of our mythology - but there's also a definite closed-minded cruelty to Hoosiers. Every four years the first states that are called are Vermont (unfailingly) for the Democratic candidate and Indiana (unfailingly for the Republican candidate). In the old days I suppose that would have been fine, although my old home state has gone passionately MAGA, and I would argue that it's a reflection of the callousness that Darma captured in People From Bloomington. Anyway, I'd definitely recommend the book. It was uneven, but some of the short stories were staggeringly good. 

The Gloaming

 Here's a picture I snapped the other night as Janet and I were heading home. It seems to fit my mood. Yesterday I emailed the administrators at Champlain to let them officially know that I'm retiring after the spring semester. Yes, I've officially entered The Gloaming. This morning my dear friend Cyndi told me that the place wouldn't be the same without me, and I replied that that's the great mythology. Instead, by next fall I'll be a vague memory. However, that's OK, and foolish and counterproductive to think otherwise. As Marcus Aurelius reminded us, "Soon you will have forgotten the world, and the world will have forgotten you."

Here's a shot of Sodom Pond (which is right across the street from the Adamant Coop) in the gloaming. There's a little break in the trees as you wind around Sodom Pond road, and I'd hate to think how many times I've stopped in the middle of the road (one of the advantages is driving around on Vermont's dirt roads) to take a picture, although I don't know if I like any of them as much as I like this one.