19

 And we've passed onto the teens, which means that by the end of the week I'll only have eighteen active teaching days left. Thanks to Bo Levi Mitchell for his help in commemorating another passage.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Bo Levi Mitchell play in person a couple times, and will again one more time this year. He grew up in Katy, Texas and played at SMU and Eastern Washington. He's an all-time great in the CFL (and doubtless a future Hall of Famer). He played most of his career with the Calgary Stampeders, winning two Grey Cups along the way and winning two Most Outstanding Player awards. He owns some pretty amazing individual passing records, including some more team-based records such as most consecutive wins by a starting QB (14), fastest QB to 60 wins (72 starts) and 100 wins (144 starts). He's played the last couple years with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and the hope was that he'd help them break their Grey Cup jinx (they have the longest current drought in the CFL), but they lost in heart-breaking fashion in the Eastern Finals to the Alouettes last year. I think he's now top ten in most passing categories. 

What It Means

 This morning I got up early (which isn't particularly surprising) so that I could head down the hill to the Calais Town Hall by 6:45 to volunteer for the special election on the future of the Calais Elementary School. I've volunteered at several elections over the years, and it's something that I like to do - and to give back to this amazing community. It really hit home with me this morning, however, for a couple reasons. First off, obviously, is that the clock is ticking on our time here, and it's already filling me with these bittersweet emotions. Secondly, I didn't get home last until 8:30 because I was up late teaching my Monday Images of Fascism class. That's a jarring clash of ideologies and emotions. It also struck me that things like this are the present administration's nightmare, not because I'm important (because it would be difficult to imagine someone less important than me), but because that combination - people learning about Fascism and also actively supporting democratic institutions (and community) - is not what the authoritarians want. They would prefer an ignorant and disengaged citizenship, not folks who are paying attention and fighting back, even in quietly by getting up early to spread the de-icer and check people into the system.

Obviously, there's no vetting process here.

This is also the building where we hold the Calais Historic Preservation Society meetings, so it just screams community to me.

Movies in 2026 52

 

Shoah, (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

I can remember the first time I saw Claude Lanzmann's brilliant documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah, back in the 1980s. The entire nine and a half hours had played over four nights on Cincinnati public television. Shortly thereafter I was sitting in the history graduate school TA room and trying to express how profound an experience it was to watch it, and one of the other graduate students said that I guess the watching it over four nights was OK, but that it couldn't compare to sitting in a movie theater watching all nine and a half hours straight through. I remember thinking that this is exactly why so many people hate academics. It's odd, and sad, that that memory always pops up, as compared to simply jumping right into what makes this such an extraordinary and essential film. If you've never seen Shoah, it's not like Alain Resnais's 1956 documentary Night and Fog; that is, there are no scenes of  Jewish bodies being bulldozed into mass graves (a necessary, although painful, vision that, unfortunately, keeps too many people from watching it - and we desperately need to be watching it at this moment in American history). Instead, Lanzmann's film focuses on interviews filmed in the 1980s, which are often played over scenes of Auschwitz or Treblinka in fog or snow, which makes it all more ghostly and somehow eternal. One of the things that makes it work is that he interviews folks who remember the Jews being taken away with almost casual indifference or even humor, which helps to express the fact that anti-Semitism was/is not a simple unfortunate moment in time. Some of the most powerful moments center around secret recordings of a former prison camp guard as he discusses life in the camp, including his boisterous singing of the death camp song that they made the Jews sing. I'm showing part of it this week in my Images of Fascism class, which required me finding a way to reduce nine and a half hours down to no more than an hour and forty minutes to show in class. It's powerful and sobering and hopefully illuminating material. I invested in buying a beautiful Criterion Collection six-DVD edition a couple years ago, and this is the first (and, well, the last) time I'll ever get to show it in class. Highly recommended. 

Ramadan 2026

Every year I try to post the Ramadan schedule, although when it's sent around as a pdf as compared to a .doc file it's a little more challenging. If nothing else, I'll try and the parameters and some initial thoughts. Ramadan begins the evening of Tuesday, 17 February (the month of fasting begins nine days earlier every year) and ends of evening of Thursday, 19 March. As compared to Ramadan falling in the middle of summer, the fasting is much more manageable (especially for old men of declining health). The first official day of fasting is Wednesday, 18 February, with the fast running (here in central Vermont) from 5:28 a.m. to 5:26 p.m. By the end of the month, and after the time change, the fasting will run from 5:37 a.m. to 7:04 p.m. That is, as the days get longer the fasting will get longer as well. Still, as compared to a Ramadan that falls in the middle of the summer, fasting during this period of the year can feel more like skipping lunch. However, as I am wont to opine, the fasting pales in significance to the importance of the Quranic reading and study (as always, mine is the minority opinion on that front). Obviously, I'll have much more to say during this sacred month.

Very Vermonty

 

Yes, because, well, #YankeeHellhole (it's 63 and sunny in Catania right now). I think I'm posting this for two reasons, both related to the fact that our Unofficial Book Club is meeting this morning at the Maple Corners Community Center. First off, it's telling that no one in the group sent around an email proposing that we postpone the meeting because of the dangerous cold (it's Vermont, after all, and Vermonters are a generally rugged crew). Secondly, we always meet at 10:30 on Sunday morning, and at no point has anyone suggested that we not meet on Sunday mornings (Vermont is, statistically, the last religious state in the union - by a fair margin - so this is completely understandable). 

Movies in 2026 51

 

Three on a Match, (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

 
I continue to work my way through the Pre-Code Mervyn LeRoy collection on the Criterion Channel. Sometimes, when I'm tired, their shortness and oversized theatrics is a welcome. That doesn't mean that they are just flighty entertainment, and it would be grossly unfair to consider them as such. The very fact that so many of them caused "outrage" among the religious leaders of the time, and eventually led to the Code, speaks to the fact that they were talking about things that "polite" society didn't approve of and didn't think should be part of the national cultural dialogue. Rather, there are nights when you just find yourself saying, I don't think I'm up for Kieslowski or Bergman or Trier tonight, but an hour and five minutes of pre-Code bad behavior is a fitting nightcap. Last night I finished LeRoy's 1932 film Three on a Match. It was kind of a mess, mainly because I think they were trying to tell about three hours of story in an hour and five minutes. If nothing else, it's notable for the appearances of a very young Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Davis is one of the three main stars, although with the smallest and least-demanding role, and Bogart doesn't pop up until around forty-five minutes into the movie (as always, as soon as Humphrey Bogart strides onto the screen everybody else disappears into the background, such is that strange cinematic magnetism that he always possessed). It tells the story of Mary (Joan Blondell), Vivian (Ann Dvorak), and Ruth (Davis), who grow up together, but then go their separate ways, before reuniting with unforeseen (some good, some terrible) consequences. I'm sure several things grabbed the attention of the more puritanical viewers, mainly Vivian cuckolding her attorney husband Robert (played by Warren William, in a classic Warren William role) with Michael (Lyle Talbot, in a typically slimy Lyle Talbot role) - and, by the end, Vivian clearly being a coke addict (emphasized by the fact that Bogart, smiling to the other members of the gang, brushes his fingers under his nose). Like I said, it's kind of a mess, especially with a kidnapping thrown in with exactly ten minutes left in the movie - and it's frustrating for a film buff to see Davis and Bogart given so little to do (but, again, they were just getting started - and in that sense it's kind of cool to see them) - but, all things considered, I'd recommend it. If for no other reason it does give you a sense of what eventually led to the disastrous Code a few years later.

Ketchup or Catsup?

 I'm chronicling a very odd moment from yesterday's Breakfast of Excellence, my routinely scheduled Friday morning breakfast with my friends at the TASTee Grill. At a certain point, after we'd finished our traditional meals (we actually never order, we just sit down at the waitress brings the same four selections) when Erik pulled out a penny and asked me to pass the ketchup. He wanted to determine the date, which I initially thought related to a discussion of the value of that particular vintage of currency, but I think he was then going to ask us what we thought the most important thing that had happened in that year. So, why the ketchup? Apparently, ketchup, because of its acidity, was/is good for cleaning coins (or at least pennies), and Erik assured us that he used this method all the time when he was growing up in Burlington. Kevin then assured that this was well known, and I had to admit that once again the Indiana education system had failed me. I decided to capture this moment in time because I thought it said something about lovely, odd, organic nature of long-term friendships. None of us thought that it was odd at that moment that Erik decided to clean an old penny with ketchup, and it immediately launched us into this meandering discussion of somewhat related subjects, including Sandy relating his father, a very successful attorney, and his decades-long quest for found coins and elaborate theories on the best places to find them (he didn't collect coins, rather, he just saved them in a special pile and used them to occasionally take his wife out to dinner; he took her out to eat at many times, but the coin-generated meals was an acknowledged special treat). I cannot do justice to how much I will miss these guys next year.

I didn't get to ask whether or not the cleaning required ketchup or catsup because, in the end, the penny was so damaged that the date could not be recovered. It was so light that it almost had the weight of a similar circle of cardboard, weird.