Stuff and Moonshine

Andrew watched the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special on the weekend, which led off with this bound-to-become-a-Christmas-classic by The Old 97s, who have big Arrogant Worms energy.

Yesterday was my (Great-)Aunt Janette’s funeral*, though the actual burial will be on Tuesday in Brampton. Much reminiscing— the best story I heard involved one of my mother’s cousins, playing keyboards in a salsa club on Spadina in the early ‘eighties, looking up to see that his mother, grandmother, and Aunt J had come to hear him. His mother was loudly trying to order a G&T, his grandmother was, I think, trying to pretend she wasn’t there, and Aunt Janette, who was fluent in five or more languages and politely unflappable and friendly in all of them, was explaining in Spanish to the waiter just what it was that her in-law was trying to ask for.

Aunt J had worked as a translator during and just after WWII; a lot of us at various times wondered, only half-jokingly, whether she’d been a spy; she always refused to confirm or deny these speculations. She was definitely a librarian, and later a professor of Library Science. Everyone in the family had lived with her at one time or another (for me, it was a couple of summers in the late ‘nineties). She had a record collection that included a lot of classical stuff, the album of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Rastaman Vibrations, and the original cast recording of Johnny Johnson.

Andrew noticed an interesting oil painting, of a Toronto back yard, at the funeral home. It looked almost like an early Lawren Harris, but turned out, along with a painting of the harbour, to be by one Albert Franck.

We had planned to go to the ROM today, but Andrew was too tired.
Happy Hanukkah— I like this card from the NYC Transit Museum. (Also if anybody reading this is in New York, apparently the Museum is hosting a swing dance Dec 15)

ETA — I seem to recall that a few months ago, googling “Babylon Berlin” turned up lots of photos of Charlotte Ritter in her beautiful green hat, and now I can barely find any, and when I can the hat doesn’t look like the one I remember (there’s a shot of her and Gereon Rath passing each other in paternoster elevators, but the hat she’s holding seems... less textured than the one I recall). Am I just delusional?
Also — sovay and I were talking a while back about the time the New York Department of Health had to vaccinate the *entire city* against smallpox, and did so, within about a month; good to see, on this World AIDS Day, that they still have highly competent people.

* Condolences unnecessary, I think — she was ninety-seven, had led an exemplary life, and she hadn’t been all that well for the past year or two. “You all think I’m unsinkable,” one of her nieces recalled her saying, “but I’m not.” That was about as close to negativity as she ever got.

Just realized that once again, Hina Matsuri has whizzed by without my noticing. Mind you, I guess that's understandable given that I'm not Japanese and don't have daughters.

Here's to the miraculous conservation of lighting power!


ETA - and on that note - LED menorah!

Finally learned to play dominoes today.

Now I'm watching fireworks from my window. Not a professional display - I'd have to be on the other side of the building to see that - but a lot of people setting off their own in the Lakeshore park (plus a few that seem to be coming from the terraces and balconies of high-rises). mostly just roman candles, with the occasional starburst shell, but someone at the end of the spit has a few of those white ones that travel in corkscrew trajectories.

The bats must be nonplussed.