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).