A thrush in the syringa sings
‘Hunger ruffles my wings, fear,
lust, familiar things.Death thrusts hard. My sons
by hawk’s beak, by stones,
trusting weak wings,
by cat and weasel, die.Thunder smothers the sky.
From a shaken bush I
list familiar things,
fear, hunger, lust.’O gay thrush!
— Basil Bunting, one of Jim’s favorite poems, Yorksire poet
Friends and readers,
As summer’s teaching comes to an end (having gone well), and I’m about to have one of these 6-7 day “time aways” with my daughters in California, I thought it opportune to look where I am. I’ve come close to where I was in January. My house & books are once again in order, retrievable; my soul is strengthened by involvement in yet more new learning (Austen post-texts of all things), & sustaining authors & books (Thackeray and P. D. James), my now fully beloved Ian Pusssycat has taken to sleeping by my side, we consciously understand one another, are perpetual companions over our shared days.
I am facing up to a partially physically disabled life. I’m not going to be able to walk well enough to use public transportation or drive for a very long time, if ever. The coughing will not stop; food and drink are going down my trachea instead of my esophagus. Dr Wiltz said this not uncommon among stroke survivors and before any therapy or anything can be done, I must submit to a barium swallow. This, to take a photo of my sides using contrasting colors. Well, many years ago I was the victim of physical abuse at Kaiser: I showed up for something called a barium swallow and when I saw what it was and attempted to leave, I was grabbed, pushed onto the table, and strapped down. This did happen. Then bullied into swallowing this stuff. They then took photos. I will never put myself into such a situation again. I remember the guy asked me if I worked; he was implyimg if I didn’t this showed I was neurotic. To refuse to submit to this was, you see, not normal, normal people work at daily jobs for money..
I did this week join two stroke survivors support groups on FB, sending a third this photo of me and Ian in order to begin to be friends. It was censored as not acceptable! So I got off. From the other two I learned my situation is common
So having understood what I’m facing, I re-registered for London’s National Theater at Home (online) and last night watched 3/4s of a 1940s domestic drama-comedy, Dear Octopus by Jodie Smith, featuring one of my several favorite actresses, Lindsay Duncan. It gradually revealed its liens in shared common memories.
Lindsay Duncan as Dora, grandmother, matriarch it’s her 50th wedding anniversary
I shall see a play a week.
I registered and paid $175 to attend tthe coming fall JASNA (from Cleveland, Ohio) — all the plenaries, sessions, playlets, singing. That’s what I went for anyway; after first in person one I went to, I found myself not included in any of the evening parties or coterie get-togethers. I would eat out with Izzy or by myself sit by a pool drinking whiskey and ginger ale, feeling left out.
Very favorite OLLI at Mason session is reading poetry together. All of us have our cameras on. As I told Linda, the liaison, of the classes at OLLI a Mason
I am sad I don’t get to see and really talk to the friends & acquaintances I’ve made at the 2 OLLIs and Poetry and Prose. I regret not teaching in person but think I’m pretty effective, I do just what I would do were I in a class, except I can’t show video clips. I don’t get myself in trouble as I used to do in person as a student in the class. Still I mind not being in person more at OLLI at Mason than the other two. I don’t teach at P&P but P&P & OLLi at AU and OLLI at York (made up of Brits, Germans and French people) the default is cameras on. On the York OLLI everything done virtually; I’m the only US person I’ve seen and I am now having trouble paying for it; they want an electronic check or I should use paypal. I may have to ask Andrea to do it for me but how shall I reimburse her? [This was resolved.] the norm in all 3 is camera on. If someone keeps the camera off at P&P & OLLI at York, the person will explain &/or apologize. It’s not gone that far at OLLI at AU but I’d say 80% are visible. So I know how the classes are going, who’s there, participating &c. I’ve long ago become inured to people at OLLI at Mason simply ignoring my pleas to be visible. I find it a form of hard indifference, but also surmise the population just refuse to see they have an obligation to me. They should turn the moral of An Inspector Calls on themselves. I know there are people in my classes who keep their cameras off because so many do but they are a tiny minority.
All I can think is most OLLI at Mason people don’t regard classrooms a social experience at all. Or their idea of socializing is for the most part performative. Is this the cool caution of the US upper middle class (who predominate in parts of Fairfax that attend there)?
I’m never eager to leave home to go stay/live elsewhere. I did learn to enjoy it in the later years with Jim — I enjoyed staying at the Landmark trust places and what we did once there. I am uncomfortable in these glamorous hotels; I’ll see more of California & the vacationer’s culture and world. — I probably agreed because it was a long way off in time. I’m not so afraid to be alone now; instead the trip worries me. I fell hard last week. If Laura were not going and coming on the trip itself with me, I’d back out. The hell with the money.
I shall need this computer (or another) to work, to maintain stable connectivity
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I’m all set for fall at both OLLIs:
Mr Harding (Donald Pleasance) and Elinor (Janet Maw)
Making Barsetshire
This will be a course on the origination & development of Anthony Trollope’s first cycle of novels, published between 1855 & 1866 (6 in all); Barsetshire was not a planned series, but evolved over time to become one. We’ll read the first three, The Warden, Barchester Towers, and Dr Thorne, by which time (1857)Trollope came to see were one imaginary-realistic county with its own peculiar mix of themes, places, and recurring characters. I’ll ask the class to see outside class two marvelous film adaptations, Barchester Chronicles (1982, BBC) and Dr Thorne (2015, ITV). We’ll explore how all these relate to mid-century Victorian England, and modern TV serials, our own era today, and Trollope himself.
This is the course I’ve invented for the coming winter (4 week session) for OLLI at Mason (online)
It reads like a novel
In this course, participants will read an example of new historicism: narrative non-fiction where the study of a wide swath of contemporary cultural documents enables the historian to create narratives that read like novels. Students will discuss John Wood Sweet’s, The Sewing Girl’s Tale, a story of abduction and rape, gender, and class in late 18th century New York City. The genre enabled the historian to deconstruct what was claimed to have happened to what really did. The class will also discuss two other cases of abduction and rape in the 18th century where all can choose to read one of four books: a 20th or 21st century novel (Tey’s The Franchise Affair, a detective mystery or Donoghue’s Slammerkin, an historical novel), an 18th century pamphlet (by Henry Fielding), or a straight old-fashioned history. We’ll compare what we think we know about these cases (Elizabeth Canning and Mary Saunders) and their outcomes with what is found in Sweet’s book (Lanah Sawyer).
in the spring I’ll do 3 novels by Forster (Howards End, Maurice, A Passage to India) and his anti-fascist journalism (including “What I Believe”) — it was cancelled at the start of the pandemic. I’ve struck off a small wedge from my originally over-swollen Everybody’s Protest Novel too: Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Ann Petry’s The Street, Joan Didion Salavdor w/James Baldwin prose non-fiction. A six-weeke or soring course. So all the preparation not wasted. The “Sayers Quartet” of Wimsey-Harriet Vane will have to wait.
Tomorrow for my time at Coronado Island (near San Diego, wherever that is), with my daughters and son-in-law, I have the important task of which books to take to absorb myself across time poolside or a beach, in a plane (if possible), one Barsetshire, James’s Devices & Desires (which I’m in the middle of), Sayers’ Busman’s Holiday. I’ve now paid for, an online OLLI ourse from York, England, with that inspiring teacher that this spring into summer’s Cornwall delights came from — Winifred Holtby, books, her friend-author, Vera Brittain, and books (including the study of Virginia Woolf), so shall I take South Riding?
But first I’ll read a Kate Flint essay on Woolf’s The Waves, read 2 essays on Austen and one on Outlander I must review for Scriblerian, more on Thackeray’s life by Catherine Petersand Mora Nair’s India (coming out of reading Vanity Fair). rying for Susan Hill on Jacob’s Room is filled with books, but I fall alseep.
After lunch, pay Washington Gas, Laura comes over. Must plan trip. Oh dear.
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What other important things do I have to communicate? I bought myself two more seersucker cotton outfits to wear, a dress with pink-and-white stripes; a flared A-line skirt to the knees, with blue-and-white ones. It’s what I can stand in this heat. I stepped out of my house this Wednesday, onto the stoop — the air was like a furnace, I’ve never before experienced such heat: go inside and weather channel tells me it’s 103F, heat index 113F, air quality orangey-red. Not good. And GOP party vows “to drill, baby, drill” (Trump quote).
Practicalities: I’ve gone through some $1800 because last week the a/c was not cooling the house. An honest and hard-working electrician, Ricardo Diaz, has now been here 3X. And the reason the house is now cool, is he took the time to think about what are its problems. Built in 1947, with no expectation it would have a/c it originally had 4 doors, each outer wall (but the bathrooms) has a large window, so I have potentially cross ventilation, and when I first saw it in the attic was a huge fan, sat on the floor in a wooden frame. But the next time I saw the house, the fan was gone. A tenant who had behaved badly: propensity to sell cars he did not own, did not pay the rent, had lived here. New locks on all doors when I moved in.
Ricardo found and bought, installed a large fan, not as big but he put it high; he has vacuumed all the grates, and now nothing is in the way of the air circulating; he closed off gaps which allowed the air from the attic to get down here. He did a lot of work in the form of replacing parts on the machine, but it’s these other things that permit the a/c to do the job that making it cool. I had bought since Jim’s death good fans I have working in all rooms. The thermostat is unluckly in a wall on the other side of the kitchen stove. It would take a lot of money to rearrange the electricity so we leave it for now. This morning I shall post $819 to him. As my mother used to say, “it costs to breathe.”
The roof Ricardo found had leaks and some rotting area, so today a roofer is at work on that. Jovaney Cardenas. Another $1400. In the fall maybe I’ll put in new roof, but that is way expensive. The one up there now done in 2004 for $5000.
It really is cooler in the down living part of the house now, very generous of Ricardo to do such work. Many people would not do this even if I pay them. There had been rats, maybe raccoons trying to get in. Jovaney worked in high heat too. GOP characterizes such people as frightening crooks — the frightening crooks were those addressing the RNC. A pair of parents bought for their 20-year old boy an AR-15 as a present. It’s a killing machine What did they imagine he’d do with it? Of course he’s dead. The boy hesitated is what happened to him. The two young men who put in that ladder were hard-working illegal Irish immigrants. Good handymen. “Top of the morning to you, Mrs Moody,” they’d say to me as they came up the path. Jim steered clear of such people. He’d never have agreed with Mr Christbel, the legal German immigrant who turned the filthy useless screened porch into a comfortable affordable room of one’s own — no permit, no license, tweaked extortionate standards
And Sheila, my hairdresser was here on Tuesday. $120 all to herself. My hair once again this believble soft brownish blonde. So if I go nowhere and see people only via zoom, I still look right. What I’ll do when she retires I know not.
Ripeness is all (Shakespeare reflectively). I begin to understand what this means: readiness (Hakespeare uses this word too in the same kind of context) to make what I can of what I hope to hold onto, “steady on,” as Dan Rather says in his valuable newsletters.
Have I said enough to situate you in my life? My old motto from Anne Finch: I on Myselfe Can Live” modified.
Ellen