So: Week 2 of the Write-a-thon is over. (For me, since I’m doing my writing on a week that runs Monday-Sunday, that is.) Here’s my weekly update! If you don’t know what this Write-a-thon is, and want to know more, see here. (I’m still looking for sponsors, and if you’d like, it’s easy. More info at the link.)
So, I haven’t mentioned this: But I’ll get to that in a moment… I posted awhile back about the then-upcoming elections in Seoul, and how the adult children of two candidates had posted about their fathers–one, to our her (frontrunner) dad as a complete dirtbag and a deadbeat dad, and the other (who was then trailing in the polls) to ask people to consider the issues instead of celebrity (like that enjoyed by his father’s dirtbag competition). It occurs to me that I haven’t posted an update on the situation, so, for those who don’t know: the guy whose daughter …
A former student emailed me, asking–among other things–for advice about things to enjoy during her upcoming visit to Montréal. One of the things I suggested was to visit the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and I couldn’t help but mention my favorite painting there, which, unsurprisingly, is of a teacher. Here it is: I know, hopelessly old-fashioned of me. I like more modern artists too, believe me! Kandinsky! Dali! Escher! Er… look, among my bundle of posters–now in storage in a warehouse someplace in Koream waiting to be shipped to me eventually–are at least a few prints much more avant-garde and …
Well, I’m still at about page fifty of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which is an entertaining book so far, but which is nonetheless a bit slow going: the sentence structures take some getting used to, to say the least. I’ve temporarily abandoned ship to reread Gulliver’s Travels (for the first time since childhood), another popular Georgian novel and one with much less tangled prose. Still, I do intend to continue with Tristram Shandy–and for that matter Moll Flanders–once Gulliver’s finished his travels. I only made an effort to see Michael Winterbottom’s film adaptation of the former, titled A Cock and Bull …
Long story short? Free (as in “free beer”) beer. And food. And a horse-drawn cart. But you want the long version, right? In a very recent post, I speculated on parallels between Georgian England and other societies that are in a comparable stage of internalizing modernity, industrialization, urbanization, and so on. I specifically suggested that what had sounded so odd to me about the handling of the Bin Duong rioters here in Vietnam–trying to appease them, and even give them a refreshing drink–might have a parallel in Georgian England. Well, whaddaya know. While reading a paper on the hop trade …