To thine own self be true

Emblematic of the toxic culture Trump has spawned is his spiritual adviser wishing for all “satanic pregnancies” to miscarry. We’re talking sick, demonic superstition firmly taking hold in the presidency.

Greatly reduces no. of bus routes.
Builds a massive LRT which no one will ride because there is no free parking near terminals, because connecting routes have been cancelled, and because people can’t get to terminals or main routes, and because of dumb fare increases for regular rides and passes. The system has done everything possible to negate ridership.
As well, all the closed bus shelters and signage will have to come down significantly increasing transit debt more than new incoming fares under revised system.
What insight and foresight went into the latest changes to Edmonton Transit?

My Dad took me to a lot of good theatre movies in my formative years. I particularly remember going with him in my elementary years to a Robert Youngson Laurel and Hardy compilation featuring all the old silent comedians. And there were a couple of good UK films we saw together at the old Odeon Theatre off Portage Avenue (now the Burton Cummings Theatre). One was The Bridal Path (1959) which was a romantic comedy about a young Scot (played by Bill Travers) who travels Scotland in search of love.

The other was The Naked Edge which was rated in Europe for 15 and up. I saw it when I was 12 or 13 and it was an adult film in a number of ways: for seedy references, some intense scenes, and more graphic than the usual 1961 violence.

Gary Cooper starred in this, his last film; after shooting wound up, he was given a terminal cancer notice and he would be dead within months, ironically. He plays a businessman who becomes very and somewhat mysteriously wealthy after a robbery-murder at his former place of employment. His wife (played perfectly nervously by Deborah Kerr) comes to suspect that he killed his coworker, incriminated another, and became rich off the stolen money which was never recovered. Yet she continues to love him and, because of her need, she is even prepared to forgive him.

Well, appearances can be deceptive as the wife tries to obtain confirming evidence from others in involved in the case as her husband continues to act ambiguously and cannot conclusively convince her that he is innocent. A great conflict-plot which keeps the viewer. likewise, guessing up to the last 10 minutes and a powerful Hitchcockian ending screenplayed by Joseph Stephano who wrote Pyscho. (There are echoes of Hitchcock’s Suspicion throughout BTW)

Both Cooper and Kerr are well-cast and keep the main conflict and suspense going right up to the shock ending. Also in the mix is Eric Portman as the crooked sleazy book collector, Peter Cushing as the trial prosecutor, Diane Cilento as the wronged man’s cynical wife, Hermione Gingold as the chatterbox-friend who misbelieves the husband has been unfaithful to his wife, and Michael Wilding as the sleazy business partner putting moves on the wife when her husabnd is absent. All characters/actors are interesting and well-cast adding to the edge of this film.

The edgy black-and-white cinematography by Erwin Hillier majorly underscores the suspense and surprises of many scenes. In places, the cinematography reminds one of the cliff road scenes in Suspicion, the nightmare staircases of Piranesi, the mirrors of Psycho and even Citizen Kane with its continuous play of shadows and light. William Alwyn’s music is often too melodramatic, but does effectively add to the terror of some scenes anyway.

This thriller remains director Michael Anderson’s best film and is highly recommended. The video classification remains 15 because of the subject matter.

Beautiful day for a walk at the U of A.
Woodpeckers out working on the thawing trees.
A good time to knock off the snow dump weighing down your bushes, allowing them to straighten out again.

(cover of the rare 1997 UK songbook not available in Canada)

“Everybody knows the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast”
–as predicted by Leonard Cohen, 1988, “Everybody Knows”

Henry VIII, uh, Donald Trump’s “head on a pike” threat to GOP senators thinking of voting for witnesses and documents. Again, the threat of a monarch-dictator-mobster and supreme examples of witness intimidation, bullying, and continuing non-stop obstruction.

–spoken by the gangsta-mobster-thug in the White House today.

are a good excuse to defer brekkie until after labwork, especially. Denny’s is a good go-to place for breakfast. For me, it’s an especially treat since I normally do not drink whole milk or more than 1 cup of coffee to start the day, and do not eat (buttered) toast with jam, scrambled eggs, strip bacon, and hash browns either. A truly super road breakfast like those on trips when the eating rules relax briefly. A little decadence and indulgence to balance whatever normal basics and inconveniences of medical intrusions.

“For though we say that we know nothing about Shakespeare’s state of mind, even as we say that, we are saying something about Shakespeare’s state of mind. The reason perhaps we why we know so little of Shakespeare– compared with Donne or Ben Johnson or Milton–is that his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not held up by some ‘revelation’ which reminds us of the writer. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.”

(large bust of Shakespeare on an EngLit shelf in my bedroom)

Virginia Woolf writing about the greatest writers and greatest minds like Shakespeare–

“If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman must also have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.”

Interestingly, Orson Welles concluded much the same sort of thing many years later–

“Othello is destroyed easily because he has never understood women–like Lear. Shakespeare was tremendously feminine. Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can’t admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.”