Stage 3 Arrives

 We are the last county in Ontario to be allowed to move to Stage 3 (Stage 1 being the most severe).  It makes little difference to us, since one of us has an auto-immune disease.  And though I am really starting to miss my visits to Detroit, and it seems highly doubtful that I will get to New Mexico this autumn, I am still fine staying home.  Reading and practicing are all going well, and the movies from Criterion just keep on coming.  Deb is deep into her latest Shakespeare film, and my 2nd Valeria novel is nearly done its rewrite.  So it will be status quo around the Homestead.  Maybe a day trip or two once the kiddies are back in school, and if we can get Deb's cough fixed.

I got a phone call from my M.D. this morning, informing me that my latest blood work results were nothing less than perfect.  I am happy to hear it, and have just started Week 10 of the indoor fitness program.  I am anxious for a long walk outdoors, but it's still too warm and humid anyway.

On Sunday afternoon Randy G. stopped by for a visit.  It was scorching hot, but we sat underneath the trees on our front lawn, with a lovely breeze off the river, and sat around and talked for nearly two hours.  Randy is a fellow astronomer I have known since about 1978, and a music lover and loyal attendee at my concerts.  I showed him the new eyepiece set, which has really taken my observing to a new dimension.  These eyepieces give the impression of actually being in space, rather than just looking at it from afar.

As I write, some fierce storms are about 3 ours west, and heading our way.  Chicago just got socked, and looks as if Detroit is next . We are currently playing Middle Earth The Lidless Eye card game, a second try at learning the new game.  We will continue later; now it's time for some dinner.

In movie news, we watched Museum Hours, the 2nd time we have seen this wonderful little film.  It's more an ode to Vienna than a real film, with an extremely thin story backed by plenty of images of the city, and especially of the Kunsthistoriches Museum, and especially the Bruegel paintings.  The city images are not glamourized at all, and Vienna doesn't even seem all that attractive.  It's just a city with working people, and it's December, an off season for tourists.  More than anything else, this film was responsible (after our first viewing several years ago) for finally getting me to book flights to Vienna, and see the city and the Bruegel paintings.  We have now visited twice, with at least one more visit planned, and have now seen almost all the extant paintings by the master.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

I reconnected with Taeko S. on Facebook, after thinking about her on Hiroshima day.  Of course we have a standing invitation to stay with her in suburban Sydney.  They are currently doing huge renovations on their house.  Her husband is Australian, whom we met in Windsor at a dinner party, but I would love to meet her daughter, who is a music major!  Who knows, it might happen.  I would give a lot to have a dark sky view of the southern constellations.

 

Mapman Mike

Valeria 2

The first draft of my 2nd Valeria novel is nearly complete.  The final chapter is in progress, to be followed by the first rewrite.  Certain aspects of the story need to pared down, and other ones brought to the forefront.  There is always a plan when a story begins, but as most writers know, novels and their characters have a way of steering things in directions even the best planners can fail to predict.  Valeria herself, the child of very ancient vampire parents, is 13 and has been raised as a vegetarian.  While her character develops more than the others in the story, including her friends, everyone is growing up and changing on the go.  Anyway, Val helps keep me young, and likely her parents, too.

As righteous anger continues to boil over in the world, staying home is a good way to avoid confusion.  Deb and I have both adjusted very well to staying home during the last 5 months, and will likely continue to do so for some time.  Our days are filled, and some days there is even time to get everything done that we wanted.  That's not to say we don't share the outrage over social injustices that have been going on for centuries, and not surprisingly, continue to go on to this day.  While it's good to see so many people demanding change and justice, during a pandemic it can really confuse people, who seem to bounce from one crisis to another like a pinball machine.  Essentially, if we don't get a grip on climate change really really soon, all of the other issues won't matter much at all.  Mr. Trump, if doing nothing else, is helping prepare the world for the chaos to come.

In gaming news, we received our new cards and play decks from The Netherlands.  The Lidless Eye is a full set expansion of Middle Earth: The Wizards, which we have been playing since about 1995.  Instead of playing with a company of heroes, one now manages a deck of evil rogues.  The games can be combined, playing an original hero deck against a minions one.  First we must learn to play the basic game, though.

One of the cards from The Lidless Eye, a new game for us. 

We also bought our newest board game, based on the famous and very popular Bob Ross PBS TV art show, where you paint along with Bob as he creates one of his "masterpieces" in about 30 minutes.  Called Art of the Chill, we played our first game yesterday.  It's for 2-4 players, and takes less than an hour to play.  It is easy to learn, and quite fun.

Art of chill, our newest board game. 

In astronomy news, I have managed one mosquito-infested outing so far this month, with another planned for Friday evening.  The sun has really began moving southerly once again, though July nights are still bright ones.  I can begin observing deep sky objects around 10:30 pm.  I am currently working mostly in the constellation Draco, a haven for galaxy lovers.

In movie news, we watched Atom Egoyan's acclaimed film The Sweet Hereafter, which I detested.  Though winning high praise from critics and several big film awards, it never caught on with the public.  Could it be that the film is actually really empty, and has covered the images and dialogue with so much pretension and garbled story telling that it literally makes little sense to viewers?  There is zero entertainment value in watching the afterlife of a small town that lost many children to a school bus accident.  The lawsuit is sabotaged by a young teen girl getting revenge on her father who raped her (I am not making this up).  The lawyer has a daughter who is a drug addict.  Not sure how that fits into this movie, but we see a lot of it.  There is good acting, great photography, and the accident scene is realistic in a dream-like and surreal way.  I would much rather have seen a first class documentary about this event (based on an actual bus crash) then this confusing mess of a feature film.

From 1997, now showing on Criterion. 

My choice this week is an early work by Wim Wenders, as I continue to seek out all available films by him and Fassbinder.  The American Friend is Wenders' take on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game, a favourite novel of mine from many years earlier.  Dennis Hopper plays Ripley, who comes to the rescue of a Hamburg art framer, who has been taken advantage of by a mobster.  Shot in Hamburg and Paris, the movie is slow to build, but once it gets going it has some terrific moments.  The entire train sequence is very tense, as the two killers have to improvise under very strained conditions.  Parts of the movie are quite silly, including the first murder on a subway station escalator (why follow him all around?), and the way the framer is so easy and obviously manipulated over his medical condition.  But of course he knows this, right?  And parts of the movie are fun, especially once the murders begin, and never seem to stop, as one bad thing leads to other bad things.  Not a great movie by any means, but it has its moments.  Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and several other directors have small roles.  We now have a small host of extras to watch now about this movie.

Now showing on Criterion, from 1977. 

I'll be back soon with some landscape art from the DIA.

Mapman Mike