1001

Saturday, October 1, 2022

 In bed at 9, up at 4:30, 4 or 5 pss, no vino.  43, high mid 60s & sunny.

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I've been reading and rereading The Waste Land, along with some online notes making it less opaque.  Reading it perhaps because my mood is so low with the consciousness of decreasing 'eptitude', increasing decrepitude, depression over the state of the world: believable threats of nuclear warfare from Putin, the reality of evolving lethal viruses incubating in bats and rats, melting polar caps, fascism.  Godard and Eliot so similar, just with different art forms and separated by a couple of generations.  Thinking of pedophilic but prescient Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, great reads.

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Travel story in this morning's WaPo about Dundee, Scotland, which was a very major manufacturing city during and after the Industrial Revolution, famous for its jute factories, jute used to make burlap and other stuff.  How did the British (English/Scottish) swells treat their workers?  " . . . when Britain finally required public education, Dundee mill owners successfully petitioned to be an exception. They got permission to employ “half-timers” — children who’d work 30 hours a week in the mill for minuscule pay and go to school for half days only. They were so good at crawling under machinery and pulling out dust and fibers!  In fact, 70 percent of mill workers in Dundee were women and children, who were paid less than men. The city was known as “She Town” and was the first place in Scotland where jailed “suffragettes” went on hunger strikes. It was also full of men raising children and drinking too much.  In part as a consequence of these conditions, 63 percent of Dundee’s eligible men fought in World War I, where they were slaughtered in droves. A battalion known as “Dundee’s Own” sent 423 men and 20 officers into battle at Loos, France, in September 1915. All but one of the officers were killed, as were 230 enlisted men."  The good old days. . . 

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The trees are starting to turn color, especially some maples.

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I swallowed hard and decided to try to salvage the cabbage borscht.  Keeping my fingers crossed hoping it will be worth eating but not very hopeful.  The key to soup is the broth and I'm still stunned that I poured down the drain about 9 cups of the 12 cups of broth I simmered for 4 hours 2 nights ago.  

Looks OK, smells OK, taste test tomorrow.  We went to MacDonald's for dinner tonight.  Geri worked all afternoon at her vegetable garden.  Then re-watched The Starling with Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd.  Watching the lengthy credits at the end of the movie reminded me of (1) the address in Our Town end with North America, planet Earth, and the mind of God (or something like that); Elizabeth Warren reminded the world that "I built that" is only partly true, all kinds of people and public expenditures make any enterprise possible; and (3) all the people like ripples in a stream, butterfly wings flapping in South America who have some role in making any movie, or other enterprise, possible.  Also watched Last Laugh with Chevy Chase, Richard Dreyfuss, and Andie Macdowell.

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