I'm Still Here

It's been a very busy time for me here at the Homestead.  The main reason is that I have been out with the telescope for the last four nights out of six.  Those in-between nights were also clear, but I needed to rest my eyes and body a bit.  All in all I had the best month of observing so far in 2026 and tried to make the best of it. 

 

There has also been Iaido training, a piano group get-together and a visit from Amanda.  With clouds settling in for the long term, astronomy is likely over until November.  Being our Thanksgiving weekend there is no Iaido training.  It appears I may be able to catch up with myself and my blogging at last.

 

In astronomy news I am tracking down galaxies right now in two constellations, Pisces and Cetus.  Neither constellation is very impressive to the human eye, but add a decent sized telescope and suddenly there are hundreds of objects to look for.  I've added over 12 pages of notes to my observing log this past week.  My drive to dark skies is 50 minutes each way, so I've also been driving for 400 minutes (at night).  Harvest season is just beginning, but I managed to dodge the worst of the tractors so far.  They now use headlights so bright that even if they are two miles away I can see my shadow.

 

In piano news Jim P. and Rob B. came by last week.  We haven't been together for ages.  It's always great for me to sit back and hear my instrument played so well.  Jim played a long piece by Bach, followed by an etude by Philip Glass.  Rob played the Chopin Barcarolle, a piece that he has had for a long time, but is always appreciated when he does perform.  I played three short pieces, one each by Haydn, Beethoven and MacDowell.  We will try one more meeting before Christmas.

 

Amanda came by last weekend for a five hour catch up.  Since we last saw her in early Spring she has been to Scotland and London and we have been to London twice.  She has also moved into her own apartment in Toronto, finally escaping a house-sharing situation with others over many years.  Her place looks and sounds really great!  She also brought us some sacred coffee beans and pencils for my collection from Loch Lomond and the Tate.

 

Amherstburg has a fairly new conservation area open to the public and we paid our first visit earlier in the week.  It's adjacent to River Canard, which we drive over each time we go to Windsor.  For 35 years we have driven past this vast marsh, once in private hands but now open to the public.  The trail is just over 2 km long and it was a surreal experience to see the highway bridge from this perspective.  The marsh and small lake are filled with water birds and turtles.  We will be back, especially when the water lilies bloom in the Spring.   Here are a few snaps of our first walk here.  It is a very short drive from our house to this location.

 

This is a new and classy area to hang out in Amherstburg. 

 

The CR 20 highway bridge over the Canard River. 

 

Salt brine was once extracted from this area.  River Canard on left and the wetlands are on the right.

The trail circles the area,which is quite large.

 

There were swans, herons and other water birds. 

 

7 turtles in the sun.  Snappers and softshells share the area. 

 

There are leftover structures from mining days. 

 

Turning now to films, there are three to report.  Most recently we watched Close To Vermeer, a documentary from 2023 detailing the preparation for the world's largest gathering of paintings by the master.  Only 34 or so are known to be by his hand, and the Rijskmuseum managed to snag 27 of them for the exhibit.  This is an excellent film, on par with the one we saw recently about the Bosch exhibit.  While the paintings speak for themselves, the dialogue is informative and often entertaining.  This was showing on the Kino streaming channel.

 

Now streaming on Kino. 

 

From Criterion we watched Aventurera, a Mexican film directed by Alberto Gout.  It is from 1950 and stars the queen of Mexican cabaret Ninon Sevilla.  Here is the blurb from Criterion:

"A darkly glittering feminist revenge tale played at fever-pitch delirium, this oft-cited pinnacle of the popular Mexican cine de rumberas genre—dizzyingly plotted “fallen women” melodramas studded with showstopping musical numbers—stars Ninón Sevilla in one of her defining roles: as Elena, a young woman whose happy life shatters abruptly when her mother walks out for another man and her father commits suicide. Reduced to poverty and taken merciless advantage of by a villainous nightclub owner (Andrea Palma), Elena reinvents herself as a cabaret star. But she never forgets the people who wronged her, and when a chance to exact vengeance presents itself, Elena seizes the opportunity."

 

The plot is a bit dizzying, and while Sevilla can sing and dance, she does both with a sort of almost clumsy ungainliness that brings back memories of Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street.  Filmed in b & w.  While usually at the heart of every wronged girl's problems there is a cad of a man, this girl was mostly wronged by her mother and her eventual mother-in-law.  A weird but likable movie, like the starlet herself.  Poor Rengo, who saves the girl but loses her to her true love.

 

Streaming on Criterion. 

 

We also saw another film staring Joanne Woodward, starring alongside Tony Randall, Jeffrey Hunter (Captain Pike!) and Cameron Mitchell in No Down Payment.  From 1957 this b & w CinemaScope film was directed by Martin Ritt.  It's a suburban soap opera, as several post war couples share alcohol and BBQ in their newly acquired homes and adjoining back yards in a subdivision in LA.  The writer, Ben Maddow, was blacklisted in Hollywood back in the good old days, and another writer fronted for him here.  The story is rich in happenings as we get into the lives and marriages of four main couples.  Woodward plays an emotionally wounded woman who had to give her baby up for adoption.  She is married to brutish Mitchell, who actually rapes Hunter's wife when he is away.  There are some hard hitting moments, but alcohol and cigarettes get top billing here.  Randall is suitably pathetic as a used car salesman.  A peek into late 1940s lower middle class LA, if anyone is interested.

 

The film has now left Criterion. 

 

That's all for now.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Except for the remnants of Hurricane Isaias, Sunday should be a fun day.  Lots of cooking and baking going on here tomorrow.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Birthday/Equinox Celebration and a Full Moon

I guess the big news for the week is that I am back practicing Iaido once more.  I attend class on Sunday evenings, and I was suffering from it all day Monday and Tuesday.  Hopefully things will improve over time, but my upper front thighs took quite a punishment.  Kneeling is too difficult as I am still having a problem with my big toe, the one I injured in June of 2025.  So all my katas are standing ones for now.  By Winter Solstice I hope to have at least returned to black belt level (Shodan).  After that we will have to see.

 

Another birthday and Equinox has rolled around.  Frodo, Bilbo and I are getting on in years and the big adventures are fewer and further between.  I continue to write up my notes (blog) on the most recent London journey.  I now have six of them published with perhaps three more to follow soon.  I am glad that we returned strongly to cultural doings this time.  I am really missing cultural events in Detroit these days, so London helped fill in that hunger quite a bit.

 

Last night was a bright and large full moon, our second party in five days.  We even had our first fire of the season last night.  We had a game of Akrotiri.  It is a two person game where players must excavate Minoan temples on various Greek islands.  Boats are involved and resources must be gathered, then sold for funds to excavate.  We were amidst the game last night when a tsunami struck, wiping out most of our islands and temples (a glass of ale went whooshing over the game board).  Alas for the lost temples and lost ale.

 

In film news there are three to report, one from Criterion and two from Kino.  First the Criterion  film, which is leaving Sept 30th.  Shanghai Blues is a Chinese tribute to Hollywood's 1930s screwball comedies.  From 1984 it was directed by Tsui Hark, familiar to us through several Criterion films.  It begins on the eve of the Japanese invasion of China and then jumps to 10 years later.  While much of the film is just too silly, a few gags work well.  It is a colourful film with lavish costumes and innovative lighting.  There are many scenes filled with active characters that must have required much planning and discipline from the cast and crew.  While not a film I am likely to rewatch, it was worth a sit through.

 

Leaving Criterion Sept 30th. 

 

The two Kino films were a documentary and an early version of "slow cinema."  Hieronymus Bosch: Touched By The Devil chronicles the job of Bosch scholars in the early stages of mounting a major exhibition of the artist's work in his hometown of Den Bosch.  We travel to Spain, Venice and the US as the group redefines which works were painted by the master and which by the workshop.  This is a really deep dive into some of the artist's major works and is a highly recommended film for art lovers and students.  From 2017 it was directed by Pieter Van Huystee. 

 

A Kino Lorber film, showing on their streaming channel. 

 

Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a Taiwanese film directed by Tsai Ming-liang.  Here is the blurb from the film website:  In Tsai Ming-liang’s minimalist film, the Fu-Ho Grand, a movie palace in Taipei, is closing its doors. Its valedictory screening, King Hu’s 1967 wuxia epic “Dragon Inn”, plays to a motley smattering of spectators, including two stars of Hu’s original opus, Miao Tien and Shih Chun, who watch their younger selves with tears in their eyes. 

This is a wonderfully strange oddball of a film.  Part comedy and part tragedy, we watch the final showing of a film before the theatre closes permanently.  About half a dozen people are at the screening on a rainy tropical night in Taipei.  Only two employees remain, a partially handicapped young woman who sells tickets, cleans bathrooms, washes floors and then cleans the actual theatre seating area after the show.  There is also the projectionist.  We have seen and enjoyed the film that shows in the background throughout (Dragon Inn), and two of its aged stars are in the audience, along with the adorable grandson of one of them.  In the audience is a gay tourist from Japan, a few other gay men, and a woman who cracks and eats nuts while watching and also doubles as the in-house ghost.

 

There are many long static shots, with a pair of them lasting two minutes each.  Each composition is carefully chosen, but it is the actual movie palace itself that becomes the main attraction here.  We see into its closets, hallways, foyer, main auditorium, bathrooms, projection room, stairways and even the outdoor entrance.  This is one of the better "slow cinema" films I have seen.  Recommended.

 

Now showing on the Kino channel. 

 

In gaming news we are making progress in Syberia, the original version of the first game (there is a remake).  We have advanced to Barrockstadt, the first stop along the way.  The game suffers from too many silly diversions in its attempt to create length.  Players always want to get back on the train and move along, but it takes several hours of doing tasks before that can happen.  Still, it's a fun game and Kate Walker makes a good heroine. The game runs perfectly on Steam.

 

On our way at last! 

 

University entrance at Barrockstadt. 

 

I continue to be impressed by Train Sim World 7.  I've added a new English route which I will play soon.  Today I'm in Dresden, running a high speed train towards Leipzig.  After Equinox the landscape on all routes changed to Autumn.  Pretty neat.  A new feature is live weather, where I get the actual weather where I am driving.  Here are a few recent photos of some of my journeys.

 

A rainy day, leaving from Dresden. 

 

Trans Pennine route towards Manchester.

 

A sunny day on the Great Western Railway. 

 

I won't post here any more until I complete the London blog entries.  But I will be back with more fascinating coverage of life at Lone Mtn. Homestead soon.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doings and Happenings

It's been mostly a bust for astronomy, despite several clear nights.  Wildfire smoke continues to turn our skies milky in the daytime, and less than black at night.  I have managed two outings, both hampered by the amount of particulates in the air.  That's two months running now for smoke in our skies.  After talking with my parents recently, it's worse in Sudbury.

I took a week off from strenuous piano practice, following my program on the 10th.  I also took a week off from blogging.  But this week it's back to a full time work schedule, with a few new pieces added to the heap.  For now I will try for 2 1/2 hours per day, with a day off in there somewhere each week.  The Beethoven Sonata (Op. 10 #3) takes up the bulk of my time, but the Bach Prelude and Fugue (Book 2, Eb+) and Chopin Nocturne take up an hour.  I am also working with Paula on an (easy) piano duet for our next group gathering.  As for the Beethoven, I am now attempting to memorize the first movement.

Sunday we resumed work on the yard, mostly strenuous clearing out of weeds, and overgrowth from ivy and shrubs.  Only three large bags went out to the curb this time, but it's a start.  There has been some rain, but not very much.  We are not (yet) in another drought situation, but it won't take long.  The smoky skies have been keeping down the temperatures to the low 80s so far.  I guess one good thing came out of the smoke filled skies.  Plus some very red sunsets.

And last night I returned to Iaido training!  I thought today I would be in much worse shape, but aside from some stiffness in the hips, I don't feel too bad.  Relearning the basic katas will take a few weeks.  I hope to continue training over the summer, counting it as my cross training fitness day.  Being fit for three years now is paying off in having more energy overall, and recovering more quickly from strenuous activity.  Iaido also helps me with concentration, something I badly need to play piano successfully.  I have not trained in at least five years.  But last night felt good.  It was time to return, at least for the summer.  I was only able to dress in the hakama with help from Deb and the internet.

In movies news, there is only one film to report that I mostly enjoyed.   The Misfits is from 1961, directed by John Huston, screenplay by Arthur Miller, and starring everyone.  The film appears to be about Marilyn Monroe herself, who soars to new heights in this movie.  She plays a woman who has just divorced, and who teams up with three very different men (played by Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift).  Highly watchable, though the wild mustang scenes might be too much for some people.  But therein lies the catch:  while Marilyn cannot stand to think of the wild horses being captured (they are to be sold for dog food), she is more than willing to take the wildness from Gable's lifestyle (it was time, anyway) and tame him.  The movie does feature several scenes, some of them eye popping, demonstrating Marilyn's sexual attraction to men (the famous bar scene where she bats a ball on a small paddle board over and over, to name one).  But her acting easily transcends those moments.  At times in control, at times totally vulnerable, at times womanly, and at times like a young girl, she attains depths in this film that must have made other actresses add another reason to hate her.  A very unusual Hollywood film, and not to be missed.

Now showing on Criterion. 

Mapman Mike