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.

2025 Readings 91

 I just read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Graphic Edition). This book has been all the rage for a few months now, although this was the new graphic edition. My friend Sandy had received a copy on his birthday, so I decided to pick up the graphic edition for myself. I'm looking for books for my new Images of Fascism film class, and I'm going to pair Snyder's book with Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (which I discussed earlier in this series of posts on 2025 readings). I liked Snyder's book very much, although it's difficult to read it at this moment in time (although, of course, it's the perfect moment in time to read it). I'm amazed when I hear people, many of them in the main stream media, who make tentative statements about how we seem to be on the road to authoritarianism, when it's absolutely clear that we're already there. So many of Snyder's lessons are absolutely chilling. 

For instance: Lesson 1 Do Not Obey in Advance

"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."

This may be a fairly obvious bit of advice, although so few people seem to understand it, but it's so damningly true. US corporations and most of the media and seemingly all of Congress have raced against each other to give away freedom with both hands. 

Or: Lesson 2 Defend Institutions

"It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about - a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union - and take its side."

I gave a talk last spring on American Exceptionalism and how dangerous the concept is (beyond the fact that it's just a big lie). The collapse of our institutions is partially a result of our belief that they simply couldn't fail - we're Americans, right?

I'm not going to discuss all of them, partially because you should go buy this book, actually, buy several copies and give them as gifts. However, let me just mention one more, mainly because it really hit me: Lesson 9 Be Kind to Our Language

"Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books."

I think this one jumped out at me so dramatically because I see how my students are so completely unprepared to follow this particular directive.

Anyway, Snyder's book is heartily recommended. The illustrations from Nora Krug are also alternately delightful and heartbreaking.

Crossword

 The other day I received my first Debs Foundation Newsletter, which all the cool kids who support the Eugene V. Debs Foundation get. I don't support a lot of philanthropic organizations - at least as many as I would like - but I'm happy to support the Debs Foundation and the Scudder hospital in India. I've usually just volunteered my time, but as my body has broken down that's more of a challenge. I need to be more creative in finding ways to support projects that I think are important.

Seriously, I was tempted to make a mad dash back to Indiana to attend this event. In my rich imagination, I figured that Bernie and I would just carpool there and back.

I didn't expect to find a crossword puzzle, which I need to tackle soon. I should just turn Janet loose on it - she has mad crossword skills. Hmmm, what's a seven letter word for Indiana's second most famous socialist?

2025 Readings 90

 I promised myself that I was going to read Augustine's City of God this summer, and, although I read a chunk of it, I didn't finish it, so that goes down as a failure. However, I did read Augustine's Confessions, which I been meaning to tackle for years. Part of it relates to the epics project, because Augustine did reference Virgil's Aeneid quite a bit, and I'm using that as a hook in one of my chapters. However, more importantly, while I may be a remarkably flawed person of faith, I'm still a person of faith, and the Confessions is simply one of the great works on faith and coming to terms with one's faith that has ever been produced. 

I'll just include one brief section on the challenges of trying to force faith, when you believe that it's time for you to have faith:

We sat down as far as we could from the buildings. I was deeply disturbed in spirit, angry with indignation and distress that I was not entering into my pact and covenant with you, my God, when all my bones were crying out that I should enter into it and were exalting it to heaven with praises. But to reach that destination one does not use ships or chariots or feet. It was not even necessary to go the distance I had come from the house to where we were sitting. The one necessary condition, which meant not only going but at once arriving there, was to have the will to go - provided only that the will was strong and unqualified, but the timing and twisting first this way, then that, of a will half-wounded, struggling with one part rising up and the other part falling down.

This reminds me of a famous scene when the Chinese monk Xuanzang (the inspiration for Journey to the West) had his own battle with forcing faith in a cave in Afghanistan, where he hoped to see the shadow of the Buddha. So, yes, this will also doubtless find its way into the epics book.

I'm, unofficially and fairly casually, working on my list of books to bring to Sicily. Augustine's Confessions is definitely in that list.

The Drive to Work

 There are many things that I will not miss about Vermont (although I will miss many more things about Vermont than I will about America) when we move overseas, but I will definitely (at least not during Mud Season and the depths of Winter - which is, well, most of the time) miss many aspects of the drive to work.

Looking out over Bliss Pond. I sometimes dump off on this route to go home as compared to the more direct drive to the cabin (if there is such a thing as a direct drive to the cabin).

2025 Readings 89

 Yes, I've definitely been on a Julian Barnes reread tear lately, all of which I enjoyed as much or more than the first time I tackled them. Yesterday I finished his A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. Beyond the second chapter, which hinges on some Arabic terrorists kidnapping folks (which seems, in retrospect, to be sort of lazy from a writer of such energy, precision and humanity - but my different response represents changing worlds, both larger ones and my own), I loved it again. Plus, I picked up some lovely passages from the third chapter which will be folded into the epics book. Obviously, highly recommended. 

Breakfast Topic #1

 As I've mentioned, one of the great joys of my life is the Breakfast of Excellence, scheduled for every Friday morning at the TASTee Grill. Usually, one of us, OK, usually Sandy or me, proposes a topic of essential conversation by right-thinking individuals. This week I proposed we discuss the world-altering event of 23 September; no, not the aborted Rapture, but the sad passing of the truly excellent Claudia Cardinale. I don't know exactly when Sandy and I became so fixated on her, although I suspect it was after a group viewing of Sergio Leone's brilliant 1968 film Once Up a Time in the West. Since then her name has been uttered in hushed and reverent tones. 

In preparation for this essential conversation I whipped up this meme, which may have to turned into a handout for the notoriously technophobic Sandy. Erik and I are already discussing the necessity of a Claudia Cardinale memorial film mini-marathon on campus (which would mean he and I sitting alone in the Alumni Auditorium lamenting that no students showed up, and celebrating that no students showed up. At the very least, we'd have to have a tripleheader of Sergio Leone's Once Up a Time in the West, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, and Damiano Damiani's The Day of the Owl.

2025 Readings 88

 A couple weeks ago, during the weekly Breakfast of Excellence at the TASTee Grill, Sandy told me that he had just finished Yevgeny Zamaytin's novel We. Once again, I was reminded of my gaping chasm of knowledge, created by my shamefully adequate Hoosier upbringing. We is a dystopian novel, written in the early days of the 1920s in the Soviet Union. Truthfully, it's rather amazing that it was published, and that Zamaytin survived; apparently, he later directly appealed to Joseph Stalin, and was inexplicably allowed to leave the country (sometimes real life is much stranger than fiction). The hero of the story, D-503, lives, like everyone else, in a glass apartment (a lovely metaphor for life in a totalitarian regime), so rebels, unsuccessfully, against the state. I was thinking that it might be a good choice as a side reading for my film class on Fascism for the spring, but I don't think my students would be able to make much of it (or, I'd have to devote more time to helping them get something out of it than I have to spare). That said, I'm glad I read it, and am looking forward to read it again down the road. I don't think I liked it as much as I thought I would have, but, then, it's hard to get much joy out of reading about an authoritarian regime when you're living in a proto-authoritarian state.

The Excellent Heidi

 Here's another picture that popped up out of the blue. Andy and I were kvetching about the Vikings this morning, which is just a day of the week when a fan of that cursed team, which led to us swapping pictures back and forth. This is one of the ones he sent me, featuring Heidi and I sporting our Alouettes gear at a Montreal game that I think I dragged seven other people to years ago. Bob and Craig look much less happy (and excellent).

Bob and Craig would be happier if they had some Alouettes gear, but I think that's true of most folks.

Apropos of almost nothing, I tried to buy a Nathan Rourke BC Lions jersey last night, but the website failed me. This is one of the challenges of being a CFL fan: the technological base is always a bit shaky. Still, it just makes me love the CFL more.

2025 Readings 87

Lately I've been in the midst of two parallel reading tracks, Albert Camus and Julian Barnes (I'm sure there's something that connects them, but it's not jumping out at me right now). Yesterday I finished Barnes's The Noise of Time, which is a fictionalized retelling of the life of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. In that way, it's sort of like his Flaubert's Parrot and The Man in the Red Coat, both of which I love. It deals with the uneasy relationship between the life of the artist and life in an authoritarian regime, among other themes. It definitely made me want to revisit Shostakovich. Highly recommended.

Chinkara

 I don't know why I don't have a Label for Beasties or Random Nature Shit or something like that. It's not like I have taken some nice pictures - or are a part of - some nice pictures of various and sundry animals. Anyway, I never have, and it's too late to start now (he said, getting ready to create a new Label for Films in preparation for next year's project of recording every movie I watch). My excellent friend Ines sent me this picture out of the blue from the time when we went to India on a student trip (she also went on one of the Jordan trips). My response, "I remember him. He was very cute, but a mean little fucker with very sharp antlers." I also had to admit, that I knew he was in India but I didn't know where in India, which is definitely a comment on the inexplicably weird life I've led. In the end I sorted it out, with the help of my friend Kelly (not MK but KT), who was the other faculty member on the trip. It was the far north of India, and it was when we were running around either heading to or coming back from the tiger preserve. It's a chinkara, which is a little Indian gazelle.

And I found out it was a chinkara by typing "little Indian gazelle" into Google. They run amuck - and mess with old dudes - in India, Pakistan, and Iran.

Pellets Conundrum Solved

 As it turns out, stacking the forty-pound bags of pellets in my basement is easier than I thought: I just need to call my son. Being a good soul, he's worried about me carrying the heavy bags in by myself and always offers to help, although I've tended to put aside his offers through a serious of lame excuses, at least until I've (over a period of about two months) carried them in on my own. I suppose it's vanity on my part, but also a sincere desire to not be a burden on others (yes, my father left me quite insane on that front). However, in the end, his desire to help out won out. One day he and his friend Seth showed up and in no time at all managed to carry in 1.8 tons. A couple days later he showed up again, although he did allow me to help (and that's about all I can say about my effort, my weakening legs making any sort of equal partnership impossible). We loaded a ton in about an hour, which, left to my own devices, would have taken me at least a week and a half. 

I suppose there was a time when I could casually carry eighty pounds on my shoulder like that, although it's not within distant memory (if ever). I would carry one forty-pound bag, in the time that he lapped me, carrying two forty-pound bags, Using my limited Hoosier math skills, that means that I was contributing about twenty-percent to the project (which is pretty good for me).

Because there were two of us, we took the approach of carrying them up near the driveway and he handed them down to me in the basement to stack. He did compliment me on my stacking skills. When it's just me, I have to carry them bag by bag to the other side of the cabin and through the backdoor, which is definitely a slower process.

This is my usual helper/supervisor, Miss Mollie. She is definitely unimpressed by my efforts.

2025 Readings 86

 How I went down this rabbit hole is a bit of a mystery, but this morning I finished reading John Treherne's The Galapagos Affair. It's an account of the murders, still an unsolved mystery, that occurred on the Galapagos island of Floreana in 1934. I think Ron Howard made it into a movie, although I haven't seen it, but maybe it operated on some subconscious level to track down info on the case. Anyway, I ended up ordering Treherns's book - and also a separate memoir from from of the participants - and plowed through the former pretty quickly. It would definitely fall into the category of guilty pleasure, but I still enjoyed it. Now, I just need to figure out who I'm going to pass it to. Hmmmm.

Banff Merman

 It's amazing that here we are, halfway through September, and I still have material from my June trips that I haven't posted. I'll give myself credit for devoting so much time to writing; it may be an excuse, but I'll take what I can get. We watched the Calgary Stampeders game on Saturday (I need to post on that as well, and how we barely, and heroically, survived), but because of a scheduling glitch we had all day Sunday to kill before heading back to Edmonton that night. Kevin suggested that we head up into the Canada Rockies to Banff, which led me to reply: You mean to see the Merman, right? Kevin, inexplicably, knew nothing about the Banff Merman. We tracked him down in the Banff Trading Post, and he was worth the trip. And, oh, the Merman swag that I brought home . . .

OK, so he's clearly a paper mache head glued on to a preserved fish, but he's still in the Cryptozoology Hall of Fame.

His origins, at least in this world, are murky, and he made the rounds of countless county fairs over the years, until the owner of the Banff Trading Post purchased him and gave him a good home.

2025 Readings 85

 The other day I was chatting with my excellent friend Sanford Zale, and asked him if I my belief that Albert Camus's The Fall is a better novel than The Stranger was a mark of my lack of cultish sophistication. Happily, he validated my theory. It's not that I didn't like The Stranger, because I did, but I do think The Fall is better. I'm in the middle of a bit of Camus run lately, having read The Plague during this year of reading all sorts of stuff. I finally got around to reading The Fall after my latest listen to Charles Mathewes's Why Evil Exist Great Course. Professor Mathewes goes into a fascinating deep dive in regards to what The Plague and The Fall tell us about Camus's concept of evil, and I'm glad that he convinced me to follow through on reading a book that I've been putting off for way too long. Highly recommended.

Office MIschief

 Yesterday I walked into the office to find this epic Alouettes pennant hanging on our office door. I suspected that Erik had spirited away from treasure from the Alouettes game, not only because he had mysteriously disappeared during the game, but also because it's a classically Erik thing to do. He's definitely one of the people who I will miss the most next year when we're overseas.

It makes me happy that this will continue to grace the Wick hallway even when I'm overseas.

2025 Readings 84

 I'm finishing up a reread of Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, a novel that I truly love. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Braithwaite, a professor searching for the actual stuffed parrot that sat on Flaubert's desk, but the book is really a love letter to Flaubert. Barnes is such a brilliant writer. Last year I reread his nonfiction work The Man in the Red Coat and reread The Sense of an Ending, and was blown away once again. This makes me want to go through a massive Barnes reading - and also reread (for who knows how many times) Flaubert's Sentimental Education (ne of my all-time favorite novels). 

A Truly Wretched Game - and a Wonderful Day

 A couple posts ago I shared the surprising math wherein I had, over the years, brought 19 different people to CFL games. The "research" was inspired by taking my friend Erik, a first-time CFL game participant, along with Cyndi and Kevin (veterans) to an Alouettes game on Saturday. The game was pretty dreadful. It was played in a steady cold rain, and the Alouettes were, due to injury, down to their backup backup backup quarterback, but the day itself was an amazing day spent with great friends.

I've attended some ugly CFL games, but this may have been the ugliest. Kevin and I freezing to death in Calgary this summer was unpleasant, but the bizarre weather conditions made it beautiful in its own way. I remember watching Johnny Manziel "play" a game for the Alouettes once, and that was train wreck, can't look away bad.

Having said all that, before the game we stopped by the Kouign Amann bakery before hand, for delicious and dangerous pastry. Then we drove on the Schwartz's Deli for smoked meat, and you can't ever complain about that.

The crew at Schwartz's, getting ready to tuck in. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, "Can't talk, eating."

Erik and Kevin enjoying the grandeur that is Schwartz's. After our mad dash to Kouign Amann we arrived at Schwartz's at 10:20 (they open at 10:00). Apparently you don't want to get there any later - within ten minutes the place was packed.

Cyndi, strangely, eating her smoked meat sandwich with a knife and fork, clumsily displaying her patrician roots.

Cyndi, rocking one of my Alouettes shirts and her Ali McGuirk hat.

A brief moment when it was raining on us. During the game I was pitching a Hamilton game to Cyndi and an Ottawa game to Kevin. They both, wisely, ignored me.

This was, inexplicably, again, Erik's first CFL game. Here he is trying to grasp the different dimensions of the field and the complexities of the rouge. Oh, and we didn't see a rouge, adding to our misery. On the hill, in the distance, is a building we discussed during the game.

Every time I go to an Alouettes game I look at that building and pick out my imagined new office, only partially because I could go into my office during games to "research and write" while watching the Alouettes play. Since Erik was at the game we discussed that this was also his decision since we always share an office. We settled on the office right below the clock. Now, of course, I don't even know if this is a faculty office building, but we've chosen our spot nonetheless.

After leaving Schwartz's Erik and Cyndi stumbled into Cafe Le Nigiriz in pursuit of a cup of coffee. We ended up watching an extraordinary science experiment. Erik joked that it was a pity that we ended up missing the game because of the elaborate preparation time, but that it was the greatest cup of coffee of all time. It was a cool place, and I suspect it will be added to our Alouette game routine.

And, of course, the day ended at a Tim Hortons in pursuit of TimBits. All was right with the world.

2025 Readings 83

 Last year I bought all three of my friend and office-mate Erik Esckilsen's novels. A couple nights ago I finished his first novel, The Last Mall Rat, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Technically, I guess it falls in the young adult fiction category, except that's awfully reductionist for a thoughtful and knowing novel. I asked Erik if he was actually Mitch, the main protagonist, who set up a sort of protection racket at a mall to mildly terrorize horrible customers; he said only mildly and indirectly, which I took to be yes. On a deeper level I think the novel is also about the tension between a small town and corporate America - and between a younger and older generation. As I said, I liked it a lot, and it's definitely recommended. I think me reading his novel made Erik slightly uneasy - and Janet was when I read her - and which I will doubtless be if my book is ever published (happily, that will never happen, so I'll avoid that uncomfortable moment). I'm looking forward to reading Erik's other two novels, which are on my nightstand.

The Canadian Economy

 Yesterday I calculated that over the years I've taken 19 different people to CFL games, some multiple times, across six different cities. I'm afraid that when we move to Europe the Canadian economy may collapse. 

Living on the Edge

 Here's a simple picture that I snapped in my office the other day, which reflects the hectic, exotic life that I lead as a professor: the Ramayana, a scribbled edit, coffee, and Digestives.

It is funny/amazing how happy writing is making me. It makes me realize that retirement is going to be a good thing.

2025 Readings 82

 Yesterday I finished Albert Camus's The Stranger, which is another book that definitely calls for a reread before too much time has passed. I didn't like it as much as The Plague, which I loved a few months ago when I reread it for the first time in decades. Somehow, and I blame growing up in the intellectual wasteland that is Indiana, I had never read The Stranger. I'm also looking forward to reading Camus's The Fall and The Myth of Sisyphus, which have found their way into my queue. 

And Yet Another Canal Picture

 Granted, we'll be moving to Sicily and not Venice, but Italy is a simmering conversation in the cabin. As such, it's not surprising that my mind has been coming back time and again to last year's trip to Venice. Truthfully, I didn't like Venice as much as I thought I would, but that may be more a statement of how it is suffering under the weight of over-tourism (even in November) and the often debilitating pain I'm in (which makes even the shortest walk a challenge that takes away from its joy).

I snapped many pictures of the canals, day and night, but this is one of my favorites. It hints at the mysterious nature of the ancient city, and I could also imagine myself living in one of these apartments.

2025 Readings 81

 I've tried to be completely honest in regards to chronicling my readings this year (after all, I did discuss my cryptid picture book), so I'll go ahead and talk about my reread of Marvel Masterworks collection of Avengers comic books. The key above is the word "reread." What led to me delving into the early Avengers comic books is that I am using it in a chapter in the Epics books. In the seventh chapter, which deals with women and gender, I have a section about gender roles and expectations and norms in the Iliad, etc. In the last paragraph I provide a little late context for the discussion by focusing on this frame - and also some egregiously misogynistic passages - to show that if this was so routine in the early 1960s in the US we shouldn't be too hard on a series of epics that were written hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The point is not to give them a pass, but rather to problematize the issue. The funny thing about all this is that I was looking for this frame, but also one in when I remember Ant Man telling the Wasp why she, as a woman, much like the Hulk and Captain America's teenage friend Rick Jones, couldn't be a full-time, official member of the Avengers. However, apparently that was just a fever dream of mine because I can't find it. This may also be moved up a little further into the chapter to a section on the nature of the patriarchy - or maybe both. Anyway, getting back to the "reread" part of this: I already have the first six collections of the Avengers Masterworks on my Kindle, so I can't simply rack this up as the demands of the epics book. They were on sale a few years ago so I grabbed several of them. What amazed me was how bad they were. Granted, they were created in the early 1960s and I read them not much later, but still, they're pretty bad, and not simply the inherent misogyny of their universe, but also the language and the plots. Still, I had fun rereading them, even if they were far clunkier than I remembered. That said, I also plan to reference that utterly cringeworthy five minute section in the last Avengers movie when the female heroes get to run around with the Infinity Gauntlet for a highly compartmentalized scene, before the dudes step back to the forefront to save the day (some things never change).

"SPOKEN WITH HONOR, AND WITH DIGNITY, LIKE A MAN!" Many people have commented on Trump's odd insistence on typing in all caps, but I wonder if anyone has researched whether this is because all he's ever read are comic books? Lord knows he's apparently never read a novel.

Vermont as Parody of Itself

 I snapped this picture at our final Adamant Coop Cookout of the season last week. We are a wonderfully wacky mixture of hard scrabble folks and pseudo-Europeans.

Yes, Vermont sometimes just can't help itself.

2025 Readings 80

 A couple days ago I finished Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, which I had somehow never read. I was inspired to tackle it after my recent reread of Heart of Darkness. The Secret Agent was quite good - in fact, I think that I liked it better than Heart of Darkness - and I'm disappointed that I had not read it previously. I make up for it because I can already sense a pretty quick reread. I don't think it's necessarily a fair criticism to state that the ending went a little off the rails, but it is suddenly and unexpectedly dominated by a couple characters who had played minor roles up until that moment. It's not that it doesn't work, because I think it does, but it spins off in a way that I don't think I've processed yet. Maybe I'll add to this post after my reread. Anyway, The Secret Agent is definitely recommended.

Why God Invented Metaphor

 And so it has begun, the end of my last year teaching at Champlain, or, well, probably anywhere (at least full-time). It has left some many things with a bittersweet feel. On Thursday I walked out the end of the hallway in Wick and saw this little message from God.

I may have come up with the term "The Corphanage," but I have a suspicion that the sign was created by either Pepin or Esckilsen.

2025 Readings 79

 Last night I finished George B. Kirsch's Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War, which is part of my recent run of baseball books. As I was telling my cousin Nick this morning, by the end of the CFL season I will have gone to at least three games - which is three more MLB or NFL games than I've gone to in the last twenty years. However, I've also gone to a boatload of minor league and college summer league games during the same period, which shows that I still love baseball in its purest form. I'm also fascinating by the early history of baseball, which led to me thinking about baseball during the Civil War (the Reds are baseball's first professional team, starting in 1869, so it was a short skip to the war). Here's one of my favorite passages:

In America's National Game Spalding recounted a rumor "that in Virginia, in the long campaign before Richmond, at periods when active hostilities were in abeyance, a series of games was played between picked nine from Federal and Confederate forces." Although Spalding reported no direct evidence of those contests, he did cite "cases where good-natured badinage was been exchanged between Union and Confederate soldiers on the outposts of opposing armies in the field." John G. B. Adams of the Nineteenth Massachusetts recalled that early in 1863 several men of the Union army encamped at Falmouth played baseball and also watched Confederates play games across a river. He wrote: "We would sit on the bank and watch their games, and the distance was so short we could understand every movement and would applaud good plays." (p. 40)

I immediately swiped this section and used it in my Epics books, in a chapter that discusses violence and warfare. It reminded me of that famous story of English and German troops exchanging presents during the first Christmas of the war, getting at the sense of war as sport before the overall horror destroyed that notion.

2025 Readings 78

 Recently I listened to the Why Evil Exist Great Course, for, seriously, probably the fourth time. And even when I'm no longer teaching my Nature of Evil class I suspect I'll continue to come back to this Great Course for a long time. Professor Mathewes clearly has a serious academic man crush on Joseph Conrad,  which inspired me to go back and reread Heart of Darkness. Unbelievably, I don't think I've read Heart of Darkness since before the first time I saw Apocalypse Now, which means it's going on something like fifty years (which is, obviously, another shameful admission on my part in a lifetime of shameful admissions). It really is a great now - and I may have to go back and listen to Professor Mathewes's talk on Conrad and Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent (which I'm listening to right now, and, even more shamefully, it's the first time that I've tackle The Secret Agent (more on that shortly). Here's an all-time "duh" statement, but Heart of Darkness if wonderful. It's powerful but also more than a bit maddingly oblique, and purposely so. So, after re-listening to the lecture on Conrad I suspect I'll dive back into Heart of Darkness again (but don't worry, I won't count it). Truthfully, it's better than I remember it being, although I'm sure I was in no emotional shape to make sense of it as a teenager. "The horror, the horror."

The Pellets

 When Janet and I first got together and I moved into the cabin her in Calais we heated with a massive wood stove (there are several pictures of my constant morning battles with the stove here on the blog). Eventually, I convinced her to buy a pellet stove (I lost out on my goal of moving her all the way to acquiring an actual furnace) as part of my long-term plan to get a new dishwasher and microwave and now refrigerator. This just shows that she's a lot tougher than me, which is not saying much, obviously. On a day to day basis, heating with the pellets is simply a lot easier, or, to think of it another way, less wear and tear on my rapidly degenerating body. The one great exception to this rule is late summer when the mass of 40 pound bags of wood pellets arrive; then, as the excellent Mike Kelly would opine, shit gets real. I think the first year we bought five tons, and then had to buy more on a bag by bag option at the end of the season - and the second season we bought six tons, and still ended up buying more individual bags late in the season - and so this year we just went ahead and bought seven tons. Each pallet is a ton, comprised of fifty 40 pound bags. The first year I carried in most of them, with some much-appreciated help from Janet, Gary and Ali. The second year I vowed that I would get over my own idiotic self and make a more deliberate effort to get more help carrying them in; there was even talk of a group carry in the pellets chili party. However, it came to nothing, mainly because of my own obstinacy, which is a legitimate desire not to bother other people and my own rage against the dying of the light vanity. And so I carried in all six tons, little by little, with my main goal being to average five bags a day. At that pace I can get them into the basement of the cabin in a little over two months. Now, with my legs this is a real challenge, but I did definitely notice that I was getting stronger (although in no less pain) by the end, with the last few days featuring a half-pallet carried in. It's actually OK that it takes so long to get them in, not simply to prolong my fragile life, but also because we don't actually have enough room in the basement to hold all of them. We end up continuing to carry them on after we've started burning them, thus creating and filling space at the same time. As long as they're in by the time the snow starts I'm happy. Anyway, this year I've decided to get serious about bringing in more folks to help, even if it's just to hire young bucks to carry them for me. Of course, I said that last year . . .

Janet is clearly much more excited about the arrival of the wood pellets than I am.

OK, five down, only 345 to go.

They haunt me constantly, staring in mournfully from the back yard, reminding me of my many failures.

Oh, it's always the wood pellets . . .