I had my fun watching my undoing on the TV

[sovay]

I had a pleasant dream last night. It was half mixed up with the book or the film of itself, but I always like when even fictional people turn out to be more interesting than their first appearances, so I enjoyed hearing a stiff shy teacherly type enthuse about ballooning with an animation he had not formerly been able to carry into his classes. Everything got vaguely action-packed after that. The previous dream I had which was not a nightmare dated from the night before the beginning of the move; it was the direct consequence of watching a movie which I would still like to write about and featured Peter Ustinov.

There must still be a global shortage of vanilla, because when I unpacked the bottles of vanilla extract I had carefully saved from the wreck of our pantry, my mother looked at me as though I had produced oranges in wartime. On the other hand, she has reserves of marzipan.

On second or third read, I still find Wildfire at Midnight (1956) the most frustrating of Mary Stewart's novels of romantic suspense. It was her second novel; it looks now like the outlier in her catalogue with its police inspector and country house cast of suspects for whom the heroine out of her element is more the reader's lens on the action than its catalyst; its plot is essentially folk horror, which feels intriguing and unusual for the time, but its romance suffers more from its era than any other novel of Stewart's I can bring to mind and so does its psychology. It does contain one of my favorites of her supporting characters, right up there with the incomparable Tony Gamble. I just really wish the central couple would stay divorced.

As 1776 season is upon us, please enjoy this rendition of "He Plays the Violin."

Comments

[asakiyume]

I have become quite a canny prospector when it comes to global shortages. I got some vanilla laid by too ;-)

Your dream is wonderful. I enjoyed hearing a stiff shy teacherly type enthuse about ballooning with an animation he had not formerly been able to carry into his classes. --I love this. It reminds me in a tangential way of Meg in A Wind in the Door being able to care about Mr. Jenkins when she remembers the lengths he went to to provide Calvin with shoes in a non-humiliating way. I mean it's different too: your dream is about someone being able to share their enthusiasms, which is not the same as showing their moral fiber, but the result is the same: a person snaps into focus as the special being that they are.

[a_reasonable_man]

Last week, Lily and I saw the new, post-Hamilton production of 1776 at the ART. All the cast was female/trans and mostly of color. Black actors played John Adams, Abigail Adams (in a colorful headwrap), Ben Franklin, and John Hancock. White actors played John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, and Martha Jefferson (the actor who played Martha also played Dr. Lyman Hall). An actor of Asian descent played Edward Rutledge.

It was an excellent show. It was funny; it was emotional; every soloist took down the house. There was a great moment at the beginning when the cast got into character, changing from contemporary clothes into longcoats and buckled shoes; when, in unison, they rolled their socks over their shins to create white leggings, it seemed almost a magic trick. The production adds Abigail's now famous call, in a letter to John, but not in the original show, to "remember the ladies." Now, too, when Jefferson is drafting and reciting the Declaration, she is shown being dressed by an enslaved person; when Jefferson recites "all men are created equal," the enslaved person suddenly stops what they were doing, and stands, facing the audience. The production also pointedly makes the ending less uplifting than in the original production, because the slavery issue is made to hang over it. During "Molasses, to Rum, to Slaves," the back of the set had opened to reveal rum barrels stacked to the rafters. At the July 4th close, the barrels reappear.

Accompanying the show at the A.R.T. was an exhibit of a big, colorful mural of the date "1776," created by a large group of young artists, mostly of color, many queer and trans, and many first or second generation immigrants. It was accompanied by film of them making the painting while each explained what the American revolution meant to them, or did not mean, and how they could claim it for themselves.

[sporky_rat]

I think I missed what happened to your apartment. I am glad y'all got out safely.