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.