Colette's Birthday - January 28, 1873

Back when I was working as a page in the library my father used to run, I noticed while reshelving, that the works of two authors never seemed to be borrowed. Cloete and Colette. Nearly side by side, the old rebound editions sat untouched. I figured they were fusty and twee and I never cracked them open.

Years later I dragged my sorry single self to a branch of the library in Toronto’s North Beaches. On the “New and Interesting” shelf was an annotated biography of Colette. I was curious enough to pick it up. Along with that I also picked up some of Colette’s Claudine novels. I remember that they were small and a brilliant blue, but like the books that were never borrowed in the Parry Sound library, virtually untouched.

These old novels had me hooked. It was an epiphany for me. I read everything by and about Colette I could lay my hands on.

Her descriptions of her life and surroundings were astonishing without being cloying. She was sort of the anti-Hemingway. She was a true romantic, but not in the way of today’s contemporary writers. She could wax poetic about a fiddlehead emerging from the earth, or the scent of pine, or the languidness of her cat or her love for her mother.

In “Duo” here is the description made by a cuckolded husband of his wife’s housedress. “This tall blue woman, her blue so soft and washed out, as blue as the moist patch of sky between two clouds, where the first star rises after a shower.” I’ve worn a blue kimono ever since.

Colette made me realize that in the Victorian and Edwardian age (if one can apply those terms to the French…) sex was available and enjoyed by the married and non-married alike. She made me realize that there were strong, independent women. Smart, witty women; vagabonds living at the same time as my Great Grandmother who never let her husband see her naked.

All of Colette’s characters had an insouciance, a nonchalance. A wordliness that I’ve never been able to achieve.While Gigi and Chérie were interesting, I never really loved them. Their demi-mondaine subjects threw me. But they did come in handy while reading Sarah Bernhardt’s biographies – her mother was a courtesan.

Some of my favourite Colettes are the Claudines, Retreat from Love, La Vagabonde and her other book Musical Hall Side-Lights, detailing the time she ran away from home and joined the theatre. Her memoirs are immensely enjoyable. Duo and Le Toutounier I loved – can you imagine a couch so big that you and your 2 sisters can sleep on it? I began reading her Ripening Seed the day after G and I moved in together. I remember sitting on the pebbly cement balustrade of our new rental reading it while waiting for him to come home.

So happy Birthday Colette. You made my world a nicer place.

The Red-Headed League - My Version

Do you remember the Sherlock Holmes story The Red-Headed League? Pawn-broker Jabez Wilson was the ginger-haired rube. His assistant Vincent Spaulding, needed him out of the way (to dig a tunnel into the bank next door) and came up with the most amazing scheme.

Spaulding had shown his carrot-topped boss a want-ad in the newspaper offering work and the staggering sum of four pounds a week to red-headed men only and urged him to apply. Curiosity piqued, Wilson had waited in a long line of fellow red-heads He was the only applicant hired because none of the other applicants had hair to match Wilson's fiery red locks. For several lonely weeks all Wilson did was transcribe the Encyclopedia Britannica.

He had acquired knowledge about Abbots and Archery and Armour and Architecture and had hoped to move on to the Bs when he encountered a sign: "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED."

I have my own story to tell. In 2002 my son was 8 and I need to find work. I’d hemmed and hawed. Not trained in any specific field, I’d created lists upon lists of what I’d like to do with my life.

I typed in two words to an employment search engine: Travel. Writing. And found a hit right away. An online travel encyclopedia was training and hiring writers for their website. I spoke to a fellow on the phone, whom I thought was some young dotcom kind of firebrand, and he wanted to interview me at his home office. After much deliberation with my husband, we figured I was safe enough to go for the interview.

So I headed up into north Toronto, where seriously there was more snow. I rang the bell of a tasteful house on a quiet street and was greeted by a man about 60 who seriously resembled Groucho Marx.

He ushered me into his basement where the long thin room was lined with books and 5 computer stations. I also noted a fake nose and glasses among his mementos – I wasn’t the only one who had noticed the resemblance.

“Jim” asked me some questions about travel; where had I been and what style of travel did I prefer. Then he asked me to complete a test that he himself had created on the computer. There were questions like “name 3 European Museums other than the Louvre”, “name 3 world-famous waterfalls other than Niagara” “what are three sites worth visiting in London." He had me rephrase two travel articles and reduce them into one. The test was over an hour long. Apparently, I did very well and he hired me on the spot. Training was to start the following week.

The next Monday found me sitting in Jim’s basement on a plastic patio chair along with 2 other trainees. One looked normal, but he was a real “the dog ate my homework” kind of guy, and the other, - pale, bearded with the shoulder of his sweater held together with a diaper pin. Despite being in his 30s he started every conversation “When I was in hospital as a kid…”

Apart from familiarizing ourselves his database, training consisted of Jim sitting with a collection of picture books on his lap, showing us useful things. “This is Gothic architecture. It’s known for its pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses.” “This is a Mayan pyramid, this is an Egyptian pyramid.” And so on.

After writing another test about useful things and database code, we could carry on at home independently. For $8.00 an hour (it eventually went up to 10) and the comfort (?) of never having to leave my own home, I described, with the help of maps and national tourism websites, every city, town, village, neighbourhood, point of interest and tourist attraction in:

Bermuda
Jamaica
Anguilla
The Dominican Republic
Dominica
Buenos Aires
French Guiana
Guatemala
Honduras
Iceland
Singapore
St Bart’s
Switzerland
South Africa
and
the Turks and Caicos

Again we were called in for training with the whole crew. There were IT people. Graphics people who dealt with maps and the 60,000 travel slides Jim had. And 3 other “writers”. Another test. I aced it. Top of the class.

Then crisis. To make ends meet the company had to take on a different kind of job. A Japanese manufacturer of in-car GPS wanted the latitude and longitude and a description of every point of interest in the US.

I found and plotted every roadside attraction in the small towns and big cities of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, DC, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, both Virginias, and Utah.

Over the course of 11 months I learned about the sulfurous gas lakes of Dominica, the European charm of Buenos Aires, the serene monastery hotels in Antigua, Guatemala. I learned about the banana industry in Honduras, the three distinct ethnic groups in Singapore and how to find my way around Kitty Hawk, N.C. and Devil's Island. Then there was the penis museum in Húsavík, Iceland, the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Sundance Festival in in Utah.

Heck, I even played the soundtrack to the Civil War as I plotted my way around Harper’s Ferry and Sharpsburg.

I had saved enough money for a trip. After 3 weeks away, I came back and waited for my next assignment. Tick, tick, tick.

Then came the call. They had to make cuts. People didn’t want to subscribe to the site’s wealth of encyclopedic travel knowledge any more. They didn’t take ads in those days and due to the management at the time, going into debt was a no-no. I was the last in and the first out.

Despite the paltry wage it was the perfect job for me. I remember it fondly.

The website still exists although it has changed drastically and is far less user friendly. New management. My work is still there if you can find it. www.planetware.com

Salzburg April (Yes, April) 2003

I meant to post these with my article on Salzburg that I originally posted on December 14. I became a master of layering and had on all the clothes that I packed. It was 80 Fahrenheit when we got to Paris.

Festung Hohensalzburg

St. Peter's Cemetery

The Junior Pup at Leopold Mozart's grave, St. Sebastian's Cemetery

St. Sebastian's

Seismic Monitor

Since the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, I've been checking the Iris Seismic Monitor almost daily to see what on Earth's going on with the tectonic plates. The Pacific Rim is always busy with seismic activity but it seems a little more busy lately, including volcanoes in Ecuador, Costa Rica and the recently-active Mount Redoubt in Alaska. I also had a dream that Greece would be the site of the next big earthquake but since I'm not known as a clairvoyant I wouldn't hold much faith in my early-morning dreams.

Recently I donated to Médecins Sans Frontières Canada (Doctors Without Borders) but was dismayed to learn that their 5 plane-loads of medical supplies sent to Haiti had been diverted to the Dominican Republic and the earliest slot that the Port-au-Prince airport can accommodate them is January 26. I hope for the best.

Theme Thursday - "Surfacing"

"I can't believe I'm on this road again." My sentiments exactly. Lately, when I’m heading up to my folks place on the four-lane black-top, sometimes clear, sometimes centre-bare, depending on the weather I can’t believe it either. Wasn’t I just here?

For the unnamed narrator in Margaret Atwood’s 1972 novel Surfacing, it’s a different matter – she didn’t expect to be returning ever again.

Surfacing is written from the point of view of a young woman who travels with her boyfriend and another young couple to a remote island on a lake in Northern Quebec. She spent much of her childhood there and now she’s there ostensibly looking for her missing father.

While revisiting her childhood house she comes face to face with her past. Recalling past events and emotions while trying to piece together her father’s disappearance, she finds herself sinking into a "Lost Weekend". Her history overtakes her, driving her mad and forcing her to go walkabout. She becomes “undone.”

Flooded with her memories and grief for an unborn child, the “surfacer" realizes that going home means entering another time, and she needs to come up for air. Funny, it’s never been that bad for me.

I read Surfacing years ago and I have to say it didn’t resonate with me like The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 80 years before Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing. But that will have to wait for another time.

For other Theme Thursday contributors please clink here. http://themethursday.blogspot.com/2010/01/thursday-january-14-2010-surface.html

Film 101 - part 2 --- Georges Méliès

Most of us have seen a clip of the ancient film where the poor Man in the Moon gets smacked in the face by a rocket. Georges Méliès, born in Paris in 1861 is responsible for that early film and as a film maker Méliès was the first to utilize cinema's potential to tell magical stories.


Méliès was an illusionist by trade. Before making films he was a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin (how wonderful).

In 1895, after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' camera, he became interested in film. Two years later he established his own studio.

From his rooftop property in Montreuil, Méliès directed 531 films ranging from 1 minute in length to 40 minutes. These early films are similar to the magic tricks that Méliès had been performing on stage featuring disappearing objects or people. Despite this, Georges Méliès revolutionized early cinema. Although many of Méliès’s early films were devoid of plot, his special effects and storyboards became fundamental aspects of filmmaking. His films were even pirated!

He wrote, directed and acted in nearly all of his films. His most widely-known film is 1902’s A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la Lune) includes the celebrated scene mentioned above in which the rocket-ship hits the Man in the Moon.

However, Méliès, the poor guy, could not compete with the larger studios like Pathé (who eventually bought him out) and he spent his last years selling toys in a boutique in Paris’s Montparnasse train station.

Méliès did not grasp the value of his films, and he allowed most of his film stock to be melted down into boot heels during World War I. Many of his films were recycled into new film and as a result much of his legacy does not exist today. Luckily, a copy of Méliès's 1899 short film Cleopatra, believed to be lost, was discovered in Paris in 2005.

The importance of his work was recognized in the years prior to his death. In 1932 the Cinema Society gave Méliès a home in Château d'Orly where he died in 1938.
Please enjoy these Méliès videos found on Youtube.

(vozdh)

(thedisko)

(early cinema)

What "Type" are You - A Quizz

I'm definitely a little heavy on the video side of things this month but here is another brought to my attention yesterday by Jessica Jones of How about Orange, a blog brimming with inspiration and DIY tutoirals.

The graphic design firm Pentagram has hired a Freud-like psychiatrist to determine what typeface most suits your personality. He'll ask you some questions, jot down some notes and after revealing your "type" will give a brief history on the font you are diagnosed with. I was surprised to find that I'm apparently lettre ornée, as illustrated above.

Have a go right here. As Woody Allen would say, "It's the most fun you can have without laughing" Do I have that wrong? The password is "character".

Film 101 Part 1- the Lumières

The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, whose name aptly means "light" in English, ran a sucessful photography business before perfecting the moving image by tinkering with Edison's Kinetograph. Their invention, the Cinematographe, was an all-purpose camera that filmed, developed and projected moving pictures all from the same box.

Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory was the first commercial movie. Created by the Lumière brothers in 1895, it was screened as the first in a series of 10 short films at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, and marked the first time admission was charged for a movie screening.


Obtained from http://www.institut-lumiere.org/francais/films/1seance/accueil.html

Here's A Trick on the Gardener
(iconaus)

The Lumière's 1895 The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat had the power to astonish. People completely unused to the moving image were quite dismayed and legend goes that the audience hid behind their seats and ran to the back of the theatre. What I like about this and other 19th and early 20th century films is the slice of life offered.These folks aren't in costume - that's how they dressed!

(early cinema)

And one more from (SeppukuEntertainment)
The Baby's Breakfast

January, month of empty pockets!

"The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February,
at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before
we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day,
until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour."

- Vita Sackville-West

The above is Painting #2 for 2010. It's a complete rip-off of Canadian artist William Goodridge Roberts (more about him later). I needed some practice.

Does anyone know who I'm quoting in my title (without Googling)? She's one of my favourite writers and I was recently disappointed by a movie adaptation of one of her classic stories.

Comic Relief (featuring Daniel Craig, shhh)

Some girls have all the breaks! Here's something funny from the Beeb.


Thanks BBC

Poor Old CN Tower

photo George Fischer


AP Photo

Toronto's CN Tower lost its "tallest free-standing structure in the world" status to Dubai's new 206-storey Burj Khalifa. But according to Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, the 553-metre structure will now be known as the world's tallest tower (for now).

Would you like to live on floor 108? I believe that's as high as the residences go.

Meeting at Night

Here are two more of the BBC Essential Poems (to Fall in Love With). Unfortunately I can't obtain this DVD as it's only available in Europe, so thanks (FilmographySam).

Meeting at Night by Robert Browning and Proposal by Tom Vaughan are read by Samuel West, known in our household as the unfortunate Leonard Bast.

Meeting at Night by Robert Browning

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.


Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

The Proposal by Tom Vaughan

Let's fall in love-
In our mid-thirties
It's not only
Where the hurt is.

I won't get smashed up
Should you go
Away for weekends-
We both know

No two people
Can be completely
All-sufficient.
But twice weekly

We'll dine together
Split the bill,
Admire each other's
Wit. We will

Be splendid lovers,
Slow, well-trained,
Tactful, gracefully
Unrestrained.

You'll keep your flat
And I'll keep mine-
Our bank accounts
Shall not entwine.

We'll make the whole thing
Hard and bright.
We'll call it love-
We may be right.

The Fruits of My Labours - The First Painting of 2010

I think I will rename this one Still Life with Chinese Lanterns and Light-Sucking Black Avocado. Further down is the photo I took it from taken on my window sill in the summer.

Vignettes de la Maison du Chiot Intelligent

Here are some of the more interesting corners of my 1892 shabby-chic house.

Sonnet 29

BBC2 ran a series called Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With).Thanks to(frklinee)on Youtube for sharing this clip of Matthew Macfadyen reading Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
–William Shakespeare

Two Christmas Blondes

I was outnumbered by men in my household this past week. Here is a photo of me plus the other female in the house. It really doesn't help having Jersey on my side because she's a sucker for males and a real flirt. I think those teenage-boy toes are about to get a licking.

The book I'm holding is The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence by Martin Gayford, (with whom I have corresponded!!!)Maybe I'll gain some insight.

Let Me Give You a Present You Can't Refuse

It was a very Godfather Christmas at our house. J-Pup received the Godfather trilogy and two annotated books about the making of the films. Not very Christmassy I know, but my husband and I try so hard to keep Junior away from gaming that we thought we’d try to turn him on to some other quality films.

The Godfather came out when I was 10 and when I first saw it a few years later, I thought it was dark, boring, unfathomable and gross. Fast-forward 37 years and I can see it for the great art it is. We watched The Godfather, part II and followed it up with Jeff Bridge’s Starman. While I loved Starman when it first came out, it’s not even on the same page as The Godfather films.

The first two Godfathers really stand the test of time. What’s great about well-made period-pieces is that you can’t tell if they were made in 1972 or 2002. I can’t see how Coppola could improve on them.

It’s still confusing; although not as much so. It’s still gross, but over the last 3 decades, I’ve become more or less inured to movie violence. The films are gorgeous to watch. Michael Corleone is so handsome. And chilling. Mario Puzo’s novel describes Michael Corleone as possessing “a cold chilling anger that was not externalized in any gesture or change in voice. It was a coldness that came off him like death.” Well done, Al. For that, I forgive you your current bad toupee.

Did you know The Godfather was Al Pacino’s second movie and the first Pacino movie ever released? Amazing. Much to my chagrin I learned that Brando was my age when he made the first film and therefore three years younger than my husband. I was happy to learn there was substantial make-up involved. And Fredo – the perennial milquetoast – he’s so good that I forget he’s acting. During his unfortunately short six-year film career John Cazale appeared in five movies, each of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation and The Deer Hunter. Try to add up the six-degrees of separation there!

Last night we watched The Godfather, part III for the first time. It was so bad. Michael Corleone was actually quite affable and I enjoyed every moment he was on the screen. I can even forgive Sophia Coppola’s and Diane Keaton’s bad delivery for the gorgeous scenes of Sicily. Andy Garcia’s Vincent was an inspired piece of casting even though he did look more like a hybrid of Michael and Kay than Sonny’s kid.

Anyway. Annie Hall and Hannah and her Sisters are in the wings for this weekend. Happy New Year!