The week ended with 5" of rain having fallen onto our yard. 3.5" fell overnight Thursday thru overnight Friday, with much of it falling during the day Friday. Please, no more rain for a long time. Our little creek was full to the brim. A few days ago I could have walked across it in my rubber boots. Now it's a fast flowing, neck-high dangerous torrent. Many people in Detroit had just recovered from three weeks ago, when 5"-7" fell over there. Many had just purchased new appliances and had their basement and homes disinfected. And guess what? They got flooded again.
Deb met with her allergy doctor on Thursday. My piano teacher, Philip A., lives nearby. So I was able to arrange an in person piano lesson, finally getting to play some of my pieces for criticism. I will return for more punishment next Thursday morning. It's great having things to really work on again, mostly ornaments and phrasing. Luckily the rain did not begin until late Thursday night. We woke Friday morning to 0.5" in the rain gauge. Not bad. We can handle that. Then came several torrential, tropical downpours, which added another 1.3" of rain. It rained all day, and by twilight there was another 1.2" in there. Finally we awoke Saturday morning to a final 0.5". Add the 1.5" from earlier in the week, and we now have a record number of mosquitoes in our yard. What a day! We had windows open most of Friday, and the pounding rain was almost terrifying at times. Nothing like Germany and Belgium, but if it had carried on, who can tell? Sunshine is predicted at least until Tuesday.
Meanwhile, our friend Jennifer is in B.C., in the ski town where she used to run a motel. She still has some property there, and a sister, so she is visiting for the summer. The B.C. wildfires are back as bad as ever. Their temps are in the 90s every day, with sunshine. Things are very, very dry. Smoke is in the air day and night from nearby fires. Already a disaster for many, it is likely to get much worse. Her town, Rossland, is mostly forest. So far.
The cat actually left the new couch long enough to grab a quick photo yesterday. Here it is, with our wall of Native art, including the pot, the corn maiden, the main painting (Sacred Place by Jerry Thomas), our framed pipe (beyond the 4-sided CD rack), and kachinas (not seen, below pipe). Anyway, I've already napped on the couch (with a cat lying on top of me), so it has been fully tested and approved.
My two film picks were the week were Fox and His Friends, the next film by Fassbinder in the Criterion Collection, and Murder At The Vanities, a somewhat bizarre and ditzy second rate early musical from Hollywood. Fox (played amazingly well by Fassbinder himself) is a gay carnival worker, who appears there as an advice-giving talking head, amidst dancing girls. When he wins 500,000 marks in a lottery, his life changes. At least temporarily. It's an age-old tale but with a daring twist by the director, as Fox (real name Franz Biberkopf!) burns through money and friends at a fairly rapid rate. Some very funny scenes and lines, as we explore the upper crust of gay life in Munich at the time (1975). Poor Biberkopf.
Murder At The Vanities is from 1934, about a series of murders that are committed and eventually solved during the opening night of a big musical show. The most bizarre number is not the song about marijuana (that one is pretty tame), but the three part number that uses Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2. The first section is called the Rhapsody, and has a pianist and orchestra doing a supposed classical version of the piece. The next section is called The Rape of the Rhapsody, featuring Duke Ellington and his orchestra jazzing up the music, and a large number of black female dancers dressed as maids! Yikes. Next comes The Revenge, where the original orchestra leader (Charles Middleton, no less) takes a machine gun and guns down everyone on stage. It's quite a number, folks. Victor McLaglen plays the woman-crazy bumbling detective.
Mapman Mike
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