Ending May

The grand finale to any month's end around here is a three-film festival, courtesy of Criterion.  It's Deb's turn this month, and she has chosen 3 by Powell and Pressburger.  I will report on those after we have seen them.

Last week my choice of movie was Pasolini's Canterbury Tales.  It's basically a farcical comedy, and while some jokes are quite scatalogical (lots of fart jokes coming up in movies lately), others are actually pretty funny.  The Charlie Chaplin tribute is very well done.  While I like the movie overall, the editing seems to be a disaster, despite the director re-editing it himself twice.  Still, it's fun to watch.  And it's your chance to see Tom Baker naked.  As Deb said afterwards, some things you just can't unsee.  The finale, filmed on Mt. Etna, must be seen to be believed.  Of course there were many extras to watch, too.

Just ending its run on Criterion. 

Deb's film choice was a French swashbuckler from 1952 called Fanfan Le Tulip, a take off on Douglas Fairbanks movies.  It stars Gerard Philipe, who makes a very good impression as such a hero.  Sadly, he died at the age of 36!  Co-starring is Gina Lollobrigida, who, besides showing off her charms throughout, also gets to put in a decent acting appearance.

Now showing on the Criterion Channel.

In even more exciting news, I ordered 6 new telescope eyepieces yesterday, a matched set.  Instead of having to refocus each time I pop in a different eyepiece, the focus should be basically the same for all of them.  It can take a long time to refocus each time.  Plus, these are the highest quality eyepieces that I can afford.  I mostly use basic ones now, so the images should be twice as stunning.  No word on when they might arrive.

Deb is hard at work an the new Yorick mini series.  3 episodes  are done so far, and they are destined to become classic ones.  I was hard at work today wacking weeds with the aptly named weed wacker, and mowing the lawn with the aptly named lawn mower.  Our yard goes from being bare to impenetrable jungle in about 6 days, if left unattended.

For today's exploration of the five sense, an on-going feature here at the Homestead blog, I will reveal five of my favourite smells.

Smell  

1)  Bakery (bread, cake, cookies)

2)  Ponderosa pine (in NM, on a warm and sunny day, the tree bark smells like fresh baked vanilla cookies) 

3) Coffee, freshly brewed or recently roasted.  Even the green beans, unroasted, smell wonderful.

4)  Wood smoke, especially pinon pine.

5)  Laphroig single malt whiskey.  

Next time I will detail my readings for May.  It is also the end of Year 4 for my vast and unfinished Avon/Equinox reading project, so I will have something to say about that, too.  Come back soon.

Mapman Mike

More Sense

Last time I talked about some of my favourite things to look at.  I managed to find a few photos to share of some of those things.

Knight Peak, sunset.  Our adopted mountain in NM.

 Deb's school portrait, age 14.  We met when she was 15.

 Lake Penage, where I spent my summers from age 10-30.  Taken from Hill #3.  I can't find my images from Hill #5.

 Our local mountain range, known as Detroit.  The best views are from Windsor. 

Stayed tuned for more fun with senses, after a word from these films we recently watched.

My choice last week was Le Amiche, by Antonioni.  From 1955, it can be considered a women's picture, though not the way American films would be.  The lead is an independent woman who is opening a branch of a fashionable clothing store in Turin.  Shot on location, it also follows the lives of four other women, including one who is suicidal.  Based on a novella written in 1950, it was updated significantly for the film.  An early masterpiece by one of my favourite directors, this film is worth more than a single viewing.  Luckily there were lots of Criterion extras to watch, which often almost gets viewers through the film again.  One of the extras dealt mostly with the fashions, and how the director uses clothes in his films, even shoes.  Quite remarkable, and opens the eyes to so many possibilites and interpretations.  And just seeing so much of Turin 10 years after the war is also quite remarkable.  Much more Antonioni coming soon.

 Showing on Criterion.

Deb's movie choice was called The Juniper Tree, an Icelandic film based on a story by the brothers Grimm.  Filmed in b & w, this stark, medieval tale of visions and magic is a mesmerizing account of a young girl's (Bjork, who is perfect in the role) search for some closure with her dead mother.  Iceland has never looked so hostile and forboding, so cold, dreary, and archaic.  Though the film was made in 1990, it did not gain wide release until restoration of the print in 2015.  This is a stand out film, so unique that it cannot be compared to any other film.  Weird as it is, Deb says that the original story is even weirder.  A must film to see.

 Showing until May 31 on Criterion.  

I had a wonderfully clear and warm night last Sunday, enjoying spring skies one last time before they change into summer ones.  At sunset a finger nail moon sat above tiny Mercury, and they both sat above a bright crescent Venus, now nearly lost as it passes in front of the sun.  After it was dark I resumed work on hunting down galaxies.  My kind of hunting.

The listening program continues unabated, except when I leave for a night of astronomy.  Then it is abated, temporarily.  We have one more Haydn symphony left before switching to his string quartets, and one more round of Britten.  With Britten we are hearing scattered versions of the many British folk songs he arranged, for both piano and orchestra.  We will soon need to find a replacement for Britten.  There is still a lot of Brahms left to go.

And speaking of listening, it's time for today's five senses revelation.  Today it is hearing, something I do with only one functioning ear these days.   Here (no pun intended) are my five favourite things to hear:

Hearing

1) Music (there's a surprise!) Bach, Mozart, Mahler et al, along with ambient music, a favourite piece of which is called "The Lost Day," by Brian Eno, from his album On Land.

2) Matsu Kaze.  This is the name of a kata in Iaido, and it means "wind in the pines."  The sound of wind in the pines, as heard in the mountains, is like no other sound.  It can be as soft as a sigh, or as loud as an express train.  We first truly heard it on our canoe trip into Ontario's La Cloche Mountains, and then again in NM.   We slept once at 11,600' in NM, on a very cold and very wet night.  The wind howled in the pines all night, and you could trace the wind gust path coming from higher altitudes, passing by our forest, and continuing on down the mountain.  Memorable, to say the least.

3) Lapping water.  Not the ocean kind, but the kind where a small lake washes against rocks on the shoreline.  Again, my youth at Lake Penage leaves me craving this sound.

4) A purring cat.

5) Silence.  No, this is not cheating, as there is really no such thing as true silence.  But I appreciate a quiet environment.  Perhaps my years as an elementary music teacher have something to do with this.

Mapman Mike

Airs De Cour

A recent CD purchase was made, based on hearing some tracks on Sirius radio late one night.  Our car has satellite radio, and when travelling back and forth on astronomy nights, it is my best friend.  The classical station has a program called Millennium of Music, which often features music of the Renaissance.  The CD has to be ordered from France, and it took a while to arrive.  What we received was a two-disc set, wrapped inside a 5 x 8 hardcover book.  The notes are a virtual mini-course on music in France between 1560-1650, mostly songs of love, or rather love lost.  The music is a wonderful addition to our large collection of Renaissance music, from a time and place I knew nothing about.  I can highly recommend purchasing it.

Speaking of astronomy nights, I managed one on Wednesday.  It was a beautiful night, and mixed in with my usual amount of fairly small and faint objects were two giants of the heavens.  NGC eg 4565 is a galaxy seen edge on, and is a spectacular sight in a small telescope.  It's always a thrill to see something like this when one has been viewing much smaller and fainter objects.

With its bright centre, vast size, and prominent dark lane, eg 4565 is a marvel to view.  The line of five stars to the right is very obvious, too.

A second major object viewed was Messier 5, a distant star cluster, called a globular cluster because of its shape.  These clusters orbit our galaxy outside the plane, and often reveal hundreds of stars, especially to 12" scope like mine.  

 Messier 5, a globular cluster seen last Wednesday night.  

I am about to make a major investment in a set of 6 new eyepieces.  Right now I use a reliable but motley crew of eyepieces.  With no travel plans for 2020, it seems the right time to invest in new eyepieces.  Of course I must then scrub my mirror, too.  It's been nearly 2 years since I did that.

Moving on to yet another topic (the final one for today), my Tarot card for this period (April 30th-June 21st) gave me an inspiring idea to try.  Here is the card....

My guiding card for this semester. 

The card shows the Grail Queen (a high enough card, but not a major arcana) standing within a seaside cave (my house for now), and spilling wine from the Grail.  The wine flows into five different cracks in the floor pavement.  According to Celtic tradition, these five paths represent the five senses as a path to the Grail.  I like this path.  Rather than starve myself, or walk to a cathedral on my knees, or flog myself occasionally, I am invited to use my five senses to walk the path towards Truth.  I can do this!

So I took a notepad, and after some thought I jotted down my five favourite things for each sense.  What emerged was a fairly good portrait of who and what I am.  There were no surprises, but it would be a fun way to get to know someone you didn't know. Rather than give the whole show away, I thought I would present my findings one sense at a time.  In this way you can do your own chart before seeing all of my answers.  Today I will divulge what I chose for sight.  These are things I could look at indefinitely, and have done so.

Sight:

1) Landscape/Cityscapes (favourites are Knight Peak, NM; Lake Penage from Hill #5; Detroit from Windsor.

2) Paintings (Bruegel).

3) People (Deb; family)

4) Telescope Views of the night sky.

5) Film (movies)

There you have the favourite things I love to look at.  Next time join me for Hearing!

Mapman Mike

Daisies

No, the flowers of that name are not yet blooming, but soon.  An agreement between our next door neighbour and us leaves a strip of grass between our houses uncut until the daisies bloom.  They get about 18" high and make a beautiful little forest of flowers.  Once they go to seed the grass gets cut and that part of the yard goes back to being normal grass.  And as I discovered while reading a recent novel by John Christopher, where the phrase "fresh as a daisy" came up, that the original name for the flower was Days Eye.  They bloomed at sunup and slept the night, therefore giving meaning and origin to the popular phrase.  Just one of the many things one learns by reading science fiction.

Yesterday was a holiday Monday in Canada, as we joyously celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria.  No, I didn't make that up.  Since long weekends don't matter much to retirees, especially ones under stay at home orders, we usually don't pay much attention.  But this year we took a day off, listening to music, gaming, and even baking cookies.  Really really good cookies.  Too good, I'm afraid.  This almond cookie recipe is now attached via magnet to our fridge for easy reference.

Tonight at 5 pm I am looking forward to a Facebook chat with Amanda.  I've heard nothing from her since we saw her at Christmas, other than the notice she posted of her father's death last month.  We'll soon know how her funky end of Toronto has been doing during this mess.

In movie news, my choice for last week was Variety, a 1925 film starring Emil Jannings, literally bug-eyed with jealousy.  Now, if you were a handsome male trapeze artist working with a husband and wife team, and you depended on the husband to catch you many times during every show, would you seduce his wife in secret and hope the husband never found out?  NO, I wouldn't mess around with her, either.  But one man does.  A very suspenseful film, filled with unique camera work and some crazy trapeze acts.  Criterion is showing a recently restored, flawless print.

 The restored version is showing on Criterion. 

Deb's choice was called Good Morning, a colour feature from 1959 directed by Yasujiro Ozu.  It's a light comedy about two young brothers who stop talking, to protest adults who talk for nothing, and to try and gain a TV for the household.  There are also endless fart jokes.  Aside from that aspect, this is a very fun and watchable movie, especially if Japanese home life seems like watching science fiction to you.  Small, impeccable sets, wonderful linear camera work, and many sly pokes at Japanese domestic life and getting on with very nearby neighbours makes this one a keeper.  The youngest boy really makes the picture special, however, with his cherubic chubbiness and emerging sunny personality.

 Good Morning, showing on Criterion in a beautiful print.

 Masahiko Shimazu adds much to the film's comedy.  Here he asks permission from his teacher to talk, using a sign language only he and his older brother know. 

It was supposed to rain all day Sunday, but we only had a brief shower.  It was supposed to rain all day Monday, but we only had a brief shower.  But it came down late Monday night, and we had 1.1" of rain in the gauge this morning.  There are some impressive amounts of water in our creek, and many areas of our county are either flooded today or under a watch.  Things are looking rather green out there, and soggy.

We continue to be baffled and greatly amused by the latest PC game we are playing together, called Kentucky Route 0.  We are currently in Part 3 of 5,and are sitting in a small theatre watching two plays performed simultaneously.  Weirdly beautiful, after our trip through the forest to find a doctor.  We flew on Julian, a giant eagle.   There are few real puzzles, as the game is based around exploring and conversations.

 2 screenshots from the magical PC game called Kentucky Route 0. 

Turning to the world of art, we will now examine a landscape painting that uses no lines, only dots.  Seurat used the science of how our eyes see colour to create his static view of life and nature.  In his Detroit canvas, he even includes the frame as part of his experiment.  This painting travels often, and seems to garner rave reviews wherever it goes.  It leaves me a bit cold, but it is true to itself and what it is trying to achieve.  I used to be fascinated as a child looking at comic books with a magnifying glass, and realizing that the entire comic art was made up on nothing but tiny dots, of very strange colours.  With Seurat we do not need the magnifying glass, but rather just to step back from it a bit.

View of Le Crotoy from Upstream, 1889.  George Seurat, 1859-1891.  Oil on canvas, 39" x 49" framed.  Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.

 Unframed view.

 Detail of the village.

 Detail of the church. 

It's my choice for a film tonight, and I have yet to choose.  Check back later for the exciting details.

Mapman Mike

Onward and Onward

Entering our third month of staying home now, except for rare outings for groceries, and even rarer clear nights for astronomy.  We actually had two good nights, Monday and Tuesday.  I was out Monday night, but was kept home Tuesday by my 2nd Meniere's attack in 3 days.  This season always seems to bring about the worst of it for me, due to allergies.  And I had really pulled back on my meds.  But I have resumed.  My right ear remains about 95% plugged, making practicing piano more challenging.  Thunderstorm season has now arrived, and some warm Gulf air is entering our neighbourhood, after a very chilly April and May.

In movie news, we finished Around the World In 80 Days, as well as The Ghost Goes West, both showing on Criterion in very fine prints.  80 Days features some wonderful colour photography of once exotic parts of the world, before hordes of people in tee shirts and shorts descended upon them.  I have never read the story by Jules Verne, but that will be remedied.  Ghost was also an entertaining diversion, as a Scottish castle is moved to Florida, stone by stone.  The castle ghost accompanies the move.  The ghost effects are quite good.

Both films now showing on Criterion Channel. 

In art news, there is still no sign of when the DIA might reopen to the public.  Our border with the US will be closed to casual traffic at least until June 28th anyway.  So I continue to sift through the on-line offerings.  Here is today's selection.

Clearing in the Woods by Renoir (the museum has a very strong Renoir collection) is a painting that expands our appreciation for the artist, as it shows a subject inspired by Barbizon artists.  These artists were painting landscapes near Paris in the mid 1800s, and several of them rank among my favourite painters.  Rousseau, Bonheur, Daubigny, Courbet, Millet, Diaz, and many others were outside painting long before it caught on with the Impressionists.  Inspiration for the Barbizon school of painting came directly from nature, and Dutch 17thC landscape paintings.

Clearing In The Woods, Renoir, 1865.  Oil on canvas, 22.5" x 32.5".  

Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.  

Painted when the artist was 24, it is one of the rare Renoir pictures with no human figures in it.  It also shows the move away from more realistic depictions, such as those by Rousseau, to a more abstract version of nature, softer and warmer in many ways than the Barbizon school.  We get the feeling of a hot day, where sunlight is shimmering across the land.

Detail of left foreground.  The image is not out of focus.  Renoir was intending to show landscape through summer heat and humidity.

 Detail of right side, showing some of the humid sky. 

In gaming news, I finished playing Four Last Words, a very fun and very funny game based on early paintings and music.  The object of the game is to commit all 7 Deadly Sins.  It is very challenging, and I needed a walkthrough for Gluttony and Lust.  Highly recommended, with laugh out loud moments nearly everywhere throughout, including the excellent end game sequence.  I will definitely play this one again soon.  It was created by a single person, and is relatively unknown.

Deb and I recently started playing a game called Kentucky Route 0, one of the strangest little creations I have ever encountered.  It is played in 2D, with surreal and very beautiful and imaginative graphics.  The game was released in 5 parts, but we downloaded the entire package.  We are still playing Part 1, which has been a pretty amazing game so far.  You play as a man with a truck attempting to deliver some antiques to various rural addresses.

Image from part 1, near the beginning.

 Image from part 1. 

Our listening program is moving along.  We recently heard Symphony #102 by Haydn.  Only two more left!  And we recently acquired a lot of CDs by Brian Eno.  Lots left to do around here, at least for another month or so.  Until next time, happy stay at home time!

Mapman Mike

The Future

It's beginning to sink in that we may never travel by air again.  Possibly by train, in our own sleeper compartment.  But it's hard to imagine wanting to be squeezed into economy on a plane.  If there ever is such a thing again.  The big news this week is that Warren Buffet is fleeing airlines stocks, saying that the industry will never recover.  The days of jumbo jets seem numbered, and if only smaller jets prove profitable, it will be only the rich who fly (like it was in the beginning).  Our Prime Minister says that it will likely be December before casual international airline travel can resume into and out of Canada.  And how many airlines are going to last that long?  Detroit air traffic is down 3/4 from the same period last year, and it continues to shrink.  And the domestic planes that are flying have from 1 to 10 people on board.  The major airlines are asking to drop many smaller airports from their schedules, and this will likely be a permanent drop.  So what that mean?  Even more vehicle traffic between Detroit and Chicago, for one thing.  The only way to travel for us this year, once restrictions are lifted, will be by car.  And the only safe way to sleep will be in our tent at a campground.  Once the roads clog up, that will be it for our excursions.

Stores that are reopening and are limiting the number of customers who can enter at any one time are finding that it is not profitable to even bother opening at all.  Despite the bright and cheerful weather, there are some grim times ahead.  And while things may eventually recover in a number of years, for us older folk who still hoped to get some travelling done before it became too exhausting, our days are limited indeed.

Good thing there is still a lot of music to listen to, and movies to watch, and books to read.  These pastimes have saved our souls since March, and will have to continue doing the job for the foreseeable future.  Speaking of movies, Deb's choice this week was an early Jackie Chan flic called Half a Loaf of Kung Fu.  From 1978, it starts out as one of the silliest movies I have ever watched, with humour at a kindergarten level (those kids would die laughing, for sure).  It was so juvenile that Deb gave up and walked out on it halfway through.  I suffered on, but it got better and better.  The humour found the right level, and the acrobatics, once the star learned his kung fu (from a book of images!), became unbelievably good.  In the funniest scene, Jackie is fighting the big bad guy at the very end.  He has dropped his instruction sheets during the fight, and as he fights he crawls around on his hands and knees studying the images.  This is actually side-splitting; first because he learned from pictures in the first place, and second because he has to keep referring to them scattered in the dirt in the middle of his biggest fight of all.  When he finally gets to the final sheet, it shows a man with about ten pair of legs moving in a blur.  "I can't do that!" exclaims Jackie.  But he can.

 Now showing on Criterion. 

My film choice for the week is Around the World In 80 Days.  We are currently watching a doc about Brian Eno's early years first.

Today's art work is a good one for the season, as everything begins to bud and flower around here.  This is the only Monet painting in the DIA.  They used to have a large Waterlilies, but they sold it many years ago.  Can you imagine?  I have a b & w photo of it from a very old guidebook, and it looks as if it would be a showpiece of the museum today.  Monet is one of my least favourite famous painters, but I do love this garden scene.

 Rounded Flower Bed, ca 1876.  Claude Monet.  Oil on canvas, 22" x 32.5".  Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.  

Mapman Mike

April Books Read

I managed to read and review 12 books last month, including another epic by Spinrad.  10 books were related to my Avon/Equinox project.  I am down to 14 authors left to read in my Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery Series, as they drop out one by one as I finish reading all of their accessible oevre.  In between each book read I now read 30 minutes from Burton's Tales of the Arabian Nights--I am now beginning the 20th night of stories.  Already a remarkable number of them were ones chosen by Pasolini for his filmed version.  After a complete cycle through the remaining authors, I read a book unrelated to the series.  Currently that is the very long 3-part story by Jules Verne called Mysterious Island.  I will soon be reading part 2 of that novel, as I continue my way through the PC adventure game called Return to Mysterious Island.

I began the month by finishing the epic Mexica by Norman Spinrad.  This is a detailed and very riveting account of Cortez and his Mexican conquests, one of the best historical fictions I have ever come across.  Having visited the Aztec capital, or what remains of it, three times now certainly helped.  Everyone knows that Cortez, with much smaller forces, was able to capture a and conquer a vast city and civilization.  But how?  Answers come, and they are complex.  Highly recommended, and one of his best books.

Next came the 4th entry in Piers Anthony's fascinating Cluster series, which also ties in to his Tarot Trilogy.  Called Thousand-Star, it can be read without prior knowledge of the series, but of course it's better if you know.  It's not as tight or well constructed as many of his novels, as we follow two characters (inside one body), one alien and one human, on an adventurous competition on a strange planet.  Throughout the series we have learned very little of the Ancient Ones, those who came before everything else and left strange machinery and archaeology behind.  This contest is geared towards attaining an ancient site and learning more about the previous masters of the galaxy.  Certainly a good read.  It could be made into a fun adventure game, too.

Next came the prequel to John Christopher's Tripods series, written last.  Called When The Tripods Came, it is easily the best of the series, and explains how the alien takeover of Earth was achieved.  Good stuff.  I only have one final book by the author left to read.  Next came Harry Harrison's 2nd and final Tony Hawkins spy novel, another very funny entry called Queen Victoria's Revenge.  Mostly set in England and Scotland, Tony is assigned to deliver a payout to a hijacking gang, but is kidnapped and thrown into the middle of a very messy adventure.  A nice change from serious SF.

Next came Kenneth Bulmer's The Ships of Durostorum, the 5th novel in his Keys series.  We get a different perspective with this novel.  Instead of having the hero battling the evil Countess and her clan, we have the hero land in her midst, hired by her to oversee updating of her mines, and believing that she is the best thing since sliced bread.  He doesn't find out the truth about her until the end, and we finally get to see the Countess in action for a longer period of time.  She is one very bad lady!  On the flip side of the Ace Double novel was a story called Alton's Unguessable, by Jeff Sutton, a new author name for me.  This is one of two books I read in April by authors other than you know who, and it really is a first rate SF novel.  It concerns the usual scouting expedition looking around for a habitable planet to colonize, but nothing else is similar to anything I have ever come across before.  It's like a very good Star Trek episode, only even Kirk could not talk his way of the mess this ship and its hapless crew get into.  Very memorable!

E. C. Tubb continues to surprise me with high quality stand-a-lone novels (he wrote nearly endless series which I have not yet explored).  This latest one is called Dead Weight, and takes us to a future where old people can be rejuvenated and live far beyond any normal lifespan.  This creates some serious social problems, which are dealt with well in this short novel.  The book would make a good companion read to Harrison's "No Room No Room."  It plays out like a good "noir" story, too.  Well done!

Next came another double novel, this one published in modern day by Armchair Fiction.  The one I was concerned with was called Planet For Plunder, by Hal Clement.  Aliens arrive on Earth.  First come mining pirates, to loot the mineral wealth.  They set in motion events that will ultimately destroy life on the planet.  Then along comes a responsible conservation officer to try and makes things right.  Clement's aliens are always very, very aliens, and getting to know and understand them is a big part of reading one of his novels.  This began as a novelette, but was expanded into a longer version by Sam Merwin, Jr.  I have read and enjoyed both versions.  On the flip side was Men of the Morning Star, by Edmond Hamilton, about a colony on Venus exploiting not just the wealth of the planet's oceans, but the inhabitants as well.  Very short but not really that bad.

Michael Moorcock's The Sword of the Dawn is the 3rd entry in his Hawkmoon/Runestaff series.  It's a bit of a pot boiler, though a few new aspects of the story get introduced.  The main problem is Hawkmoon; he is a very dull hero, thinking with his sword, so to speak.  I'll be glad when this series is over.  If you are new to reading sword and sorcery, then this seem like the cat's meow.  However, it is very derivative of other, much better told tales.

Lastly comes J. G. Ballard's novella Running Wild, about a mass murder in a gated community just outside Reading (I failed to mention a rather dismal book by Jack Williamson and Frederick Pohl, part 2 of a juvenile undersea adventure trilogy).  Ballard's book is written in the form of a murder mystery, and it is essential reading.  Best of the best, and very disturbing, too.  I also just finished a book by Malzberg, which I'll save for talking about next month.  Now it's on to James Blish once again!

In other news, we watched Zatoichi #9 this week, The Adventures of Zatoichi.  It's Deb's choice for the weekend.  And we just listened to Haydn Symphony #101--only three more to go in the marathon!!

Thursday we celebrated Beltane in a big way.  Usually it's a quiet evening, the final wood fire of the season.  We then celebrate May 1st with a woodland walk to see trilliums, wild ginger, and other spring wild flowers.  With all the local parks closed for quarantine, there was no woodland walk.  We did manage a walk around the local pond, seeing many trees and shrubs in full blossom, and acres of dandelions, keeping the tortoise happy.  But Beltane Eve we turned into a major listening party.  I received 8 of 9 CDs by Brian Eno I had ordered, and we played 4 of them.  The cats love his music as much as Haydn's.  The fire was slow to start, but once it got going it was a good one.  Vegan pizza for supper.  Deb also baked cinnamon muffins, which lasted into today.  They go remarkably well with coffee.  And with Deb's version of chocolatl, made with baking chocolate and almond milk.  The best.  We also roasted two batches of coffee beans, our Beltane roast, as it is called.  So Happy Beltane, and I hope you enjoy May as much as we will.

Mapman Mike