I continue to fight off
boredom with weird 19th century literature. I've never
really been into the whole "hook and bullet" genre - men
blowing away wild animals for sport - but even the
hunting parts of the Charles St. John were wonderfully
written and I started to enjoy the structure of slogging
through water, mud, or underbrush noticing every plant
and animal around while in pursuit of the "muckle hart".
Ned brought me Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways
by John G. Millais, which is a classic in hunting
literature and a classic of Canadiana (although I don't
think Newfoundland was part of Canada yet at the time it
was written). It's not in the same class as the St. John,
but it has its charms. Millais (who is the son of the
pre-Raphaelite painter Millais) was quite taken with the
"quaint and colorful" locals so the book is full of
transcriptions of their stories in Newfie dialect. The
major attraction is how unintentionally funny it is.
Millais was obsessed with horns. It's almost as if the
caribou themselves were simply bearers of the horns. The
more he mentions horns the more I laugh. As I read aloud
to Nancy, I started adding "with horns" to every animal
or object he mentioned. After all, the entire book is
about horns.
An aside: The spellchecker is
clearly non-Canadian. It suggested "Newbie" for
"Newfie".
Nancy did the multiple bus
connection thing on Thursday and stayed until Sunday, so
at least I had company in my boredom. Ned drove us over
to the local Blockbuster on Saturday so I could rent a
DVD now that the new DVD/VCR combo is hooked up thanks to
the Beach Boys. I've never been in Blockbuster before and
found it overwhelming. I also had trouble with the fact
that they still had the empty cases on the shelf when all
the copies were already rented out. I guess I came across
like a naive alien from a far more primitive planet where
you bring the empty case up to the cash register and they
hand you the movie and put the empty case behind the
counter so 300 people don't try to rent 3 copies of
Spirited Away. So despite the shelf full of
Spirited Away cases there was not a single copy of
it available. Princess Mononoke was nowhere to be
found - not even Ned's daughter's copy at their house. We
ended up with a Jackie Chan flick: Drunken Master.
Appropriately, we ordered Chinese food from the only
place in this g*dforsaken suburb that delivers so had a
Chinese evening.
On Sunday, La Madre couldn't find
my house to pick me up. I am getting a complex about
this. A complex about my condo complex. A Jackie Chan
movie practically broke out during the Easter egg hunt
when both nieces spotted a chocolate egg at the same time
and knocked over one of La Madre's plants while fighting
over it. Witty banter never really broke out during
dinner. Andrea had been reading Tom Sawyer but
lost her four novels of Mark Twain collection. She was
desperate for reading matter as it is April school
vacation week. I promised books from my shelves in
exchange for a ride home in the 7-passenger 8-cupholder
van. Not that I have any Mark Twain hanging around but
there's plenty of literature suitable for school
vacation. Meanwhile, Lizzy was talking about reading
Oedipus Rex in school and how gross it is when he
gouges out his eyes. Nancy sympathizes, saying she read
it at age 11 and was traumatized by the illustration of
the gouged eyes. I was closer to Lizzy's age when I read
it and I know it wasn't an illustrated edition. Also,
Lizzy's class is doing a unit on banned books. This came
up when Nancy asked if they read Huckleberry Finn
in school, continuing with the Mark Twain discussion.
Apparently they do, and they discuss the issues raised
and why some schools have banned it. The kids are
evidently getting a good education and learning to think.
They're surprisingly mature when not fighting over
chocolate Easter eggs.
I gave Andrea Island of the
Aunts, as many of the Jane Langton books as I could
find, Daughter of Tibet, Escape from
Katmandu, and Edwin Way Teale's Wandering Through
Winter. I told her Ned is "deaccessioning" his
library and some of the books are migrating from his
basement to my house. Therefore, some of mine have to
migrate to Groton. Sure enough, one of the books Ned
brought over today was Wandering Through Winter
along with Circle of the Seasons and whatever the
summer one is called. I am well supplied with Teale.
Meanwhile, I ordered Andrea a new four novels of Mark
Twain book from amazon.com and requested overnight
delivery.
I continue to fight off boredom ...
with horns.
