justing.net
Week Notes No. 32
It’s Thanksgiving week!
I'm a sucker for a good cloudy sky.
Almanac
Some rain, lots of clouds. Holiday activities. I have the whole week off.
NOV25MON
I already had W-F off, so I opted to take M and T as well. I’m looking forward to a whole week off!
NOV26TUE
Visited 3 parks. Quicksilver, Calero, Santa Teresa. At Quicksilver I walked through some California Laurel, or maybe it was an appetizer course of herbed olives. It had recently rained, so all the plants were quite aromatic, if that is any excuse.
NOV27WED
Nothing to report.
NOV28THU - Thanksgiving Day
After messing around on Bsky for a bit, and keep in mind that I basically have no community there,1 micro blog posts are too short to say much of anything with a natural level of complexity and/or nuance. Pithy one off remarks are the commonest things I see; soundbite rhetoric. Does a soundbite have even two dimensions? Or maybe the most frequent is the hustle. So much hustle. Either way it’s pretty exhausting. I do appreciate the generally cheery attitude amongst the improbably large pool of people I ended up following. And the art. There is lots of cool art.
NOV29FRI
Chill day.
NOV30SAT
Have you seen the Tragedy of the Nutcracker? I saw a junior performance, and before you get out the pitchforks and torches, please allow me to explain. It was an adorable performance.
There were three acts (not really, it was 5 scenes and no intermission: junior performance, remember?). First, a bit of gold tape affixed itself center stage left and a little drama unfolded while the male lead attempted to innocently sweep his dancing foot and remove it. No luck. Some minutes later, an opportunity presented itself for a bit of stooping and the tension was resolved.
In the next scene, a shocking twist: two of the senior dancers’ costumes became entwined; they were hooked! One of them realized the predicament, but the other was still unaware. Now that’s exciting! Luckily the attachment only lasted a moment and they were free and escaped stage right.
For the final dramatic moment, one of the most junior dancers in the troupe lost control of their hat. Stunned, she looked to the male lead for help or guidance or maybe just support. Confidently, non-chalantly, he gestured to her to simply re-place it upon her head, no big deal. The young dancer was surprised at the simplicity of the solution, and the calmness of the proposer. So she did put it back with a bit of a struggle, the pesky elastic band was not cooperating. In the end it rested upon her tiny head, maybe a bit backwards, but there nonetheless.
The rest of the regular programming was quite enjoyable even with the novel plot elements that I had not seen or heard of before. It has all the usual pieces too: children, mice, princes, and the morning. There was one bit that I didn’t remember from before: the humans (well, Nutcracker prince) shot first!
In truth, these little unplanned dramas made the clockwork of ballet theater more human, more relatable. The errors, sure they distracted a bit, but the show was not so complicated or unfamiliar that it was a problem. The errors showed that these dancers are accessible, and that they all, even the prima donnas, start as junior dancers who may make mistakes.
Recommended.
DEC01SUN
Where is everyone? Costco is practically deserted. TJs too. I can only assume that the people are not returned from their travels. I won’t question it, I’ll just get my shopping done and get going.
Media
Movies
Suzume, very good!
Television
Slow Horses S4. Ended kind of abruptly. I suspect that the budget constraints of 3 major stars (Oldman, Pryce, Weaving) put limits on the amount of screen time that Oldman got this season.2 It has been renewed for series 5 and 6.
Girls5Eva S1. Unexpectedly wackily hilarious.
YouTube
Usual Martijn and maigomika and Any Austin.
Reading
Regular steady progress in both The Odyssey and When Things Fall Apart.
It’s funny, The Odyssey is very readable, and the reaching back in time aspect is gripping. The story is, the story is both simple and interesting. Is it just alien? Stripped of the ten dollars words used in other translations, the plot movement is often naively direct. Literally of the form “I’m going to tell you X, now X happens” kind of segues. But there are good phrases and words and so on.
Things Fall Apart has many good insights, there is a lot of human psychology in there. It reminds me of the Stoics a bit. My first Bhuddist reading. Very educational.
Words
Charon, the ferryman, is pronounced like Karen. Well, so my dictionary says. I still see it said both ways, but the hard K seems more likely consistent with other uses. There seems to not be a lot of other details about this figure. I consulted the Oxford Classical Dictionary too, not just Wikipedia. Was he a man and emplaced in this role? Was he a god? A blank slate then.
Email me your favorite Thanksgiving treats.
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Tags that connect: [[running]] Week Notes No. 30 and 31, Week Notes No. 29, Week Notes No. 28, Week Notes No. 27, Week Notes No. 26, Week Notes No. 25, What I'm up to this week, Week Notes No. 24, Week Notes No. 23, Week Notes 22, Week Notes 21, Week Notes No. 20.