tonight’s Alberta electricity emergency telling people to disconnect their EVs to protect the grid.

There simply is not enough electricity in Canadian winters to keep EVs  up and running. EVs can’t be guaranteed to work in Canada. And as Canada gets colder from climate change and cheapo governments like the UCP don’t have adequate grid power to keep citizens plugged in generally, who wants to waste big bucks buying an EV?

Jazz piano at Bill Evans’ peak. All the music from the Village Vanguard after-hours sessions. (Within 2 weeks of this session, bassist Scott LaFaro would be dead from a tragic car accident. Evans would be unable to perform for months afterward.)

I recall letting the dog out in this sort of weather. She usually moved about normally before getting around to doing her business. There were time I remember going out to collect her after she froze in a snow drift. Certainly we never walked her below -5 C thereabouts, and even then we put on her booties.

Remembered all this as I went outside to do the afternoon feeding of sunflower seeds and broken peanuts for the squirrel and birds. The sparrows arrive pretty fast–immediate seating! I could see their little breaths rising from the suspended tray on the backyard tree. No, it’s not easy being a bird or squirrel out there in this kind of polar vortex weather. You’ve got to feel for human beings like kids and the homeless, naturally, but birds and animals have it pretty rough, too. And some won’t make it through without human help.

Headline, again, today:

“I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

Medhi had his last show on MSNBC last evening; it had been cancelled back in November. He had been offered a lesser position with the corp, but decided to leave the network entirely. On his own terms.

I can identify with his decision. Back in 1983,-4, I was declared surplus at McNally High; all the other dept. members had seniority. That’s just the way it was going to be for the next school year.

So early in the spring, Percy Page High was recruiting and interviewing, and I applied and got an interview. They were so impressed by my experience and credentials, the woman housemaster chased after me into the hallway afterward to tell me I was hired right then as nominal subject-area head (with instant seniority).

Meanwhile back at McNally as actual enrollment figures came in higher, some fudging had gone on and the principal asked my dept. head (not me) if Richard would still be available/reconsider staying for the following year, and she politely told him No, he had another job already.

My kind of story, much like Mehdi. If ‘they’ don’t want you or would potentially again down the road get rid of you, it’s time to completely cut ties with the organization and move on, making your own fate/choosing your next situation. Don’t look back.

As it was, things turned out well and luckily. I had my pick of rooms, books, and staff, and had a 5 min. walk home at lunch and after work (saving an hr. travel time in rush-hour traffic). My aging car was given a break from the previous driving and the shops teacher at the new school took it off my hands, taking it apart with his classes, giving me an easy way to offload it.

Out in the cold

Homeless face deep freeze after camp cleanout

Direct cremation $1375 plus GST

Lovingly rendered by two Harvard profs for Oxford University Press.  281 p.p. with over 130 color illustrations (and many other black and whites) by artists of scenes described in the famous poem.

(Zoom in) The authors have laid out the text of the poem in larger, clear Bell type. They have used short, unintrusive glosses in the margins with vocab notes at the bottom of pages. Scenes Wordsworth was describing are illustrated by relevant color paintings on facing pages.

Also worth checking out, his sister Dorothy’s journals:

Of God, Incest, Belief, and Madness: quietly Wow-full to say the least!

Bergman shot the first of his three Trilogy films on the island of Faro, where he later retired to. His go-to cinematographer Sven Nykvist renders this bleak somewhat stage-ish drama in beautiful black and white. Background Bach chamber music underscores the overall gloomy, existentialist desolation.

This is the story of Karin (Harriet Andersson) who moves convincingly into schizophrenia, as witnessed by her writer-father David (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who uses her illness in her writing (!), her loyal doctor-husband Martin (Max von Sydow) who cannot physically love her, and her brother Minus (Lars Passgard) who is coming of age while flirting with her. No large cast is needed; this is very much a claustrophobic closet drama with myriad brilliant insights into the powerful, deep subjects mentioned above.

There are, incidentally, elements of Gilman’s early feminist short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the madness scenes. The sets and the locales are well-chosen and morph into another seamlessly and suspense-fully. The acting is extremely realistic and poignant; three of these actors were Bergman movie and theatre vets.

Things start innocently enough before becoming dark and menacing. Details are unfolded memorably along the way as the story and the viewer’s understanding are both filled in. The ambiguous ending between father and son deals with God, belief, and love and is well-worth a rewind/second look; the ‘right’ things get said, but the resolutions remain deliberately ambiguous in essential Bergman style. The viewer may have much of the available information about these characters, but is also left with much uncertainty as to ‘answers’.

Highly recommended for sensitive and thoughtful viewers with an interest in these deep topics as well as devoted fans of Bergman’s o’er brimming film catalogue/career.