Maple leaf

In the autumn, the first tree to shed its leaves is the maple,  I think. (The oak is the last.) When we were living in Sackville we planted a couple of maple trees on our lawn that had been growing on a roof on the local university campus. (Some tall maple had been shedding leaves on the roof for years and produced not just seelings but the ground for them to grow in.)

March is maple syrup season.  I read that what draws out the sap is thawing and refreezing, which causes it to expand and contract in turns.  With fruit trees, it's better to plant them where they won't keep re-thawing, since that can cause uprooting, so they sometimes get planted on the north side of a hill. (Robert Frost wrote a poem about that.) But sugar maples are better for the south side!

The maple leaf is a symbol of Canada.  We have quite a few brand names like Maple Leaf meat and Maple Leaf Mills flour.  And a maple leaf is in the middle of our fine national flag. (The shape looks easy to trace, but it isn't.) Does it remind anyone of a marijuana leaf?

Youngest in the family

I was the youngest of five kids.  I suppose I'm spoiled in some way. (I still don't have a paying job.) But it wasn't all comfort:  older siblings have a tendency to decide what's best for you and ignore your own opinion on the matter.  And they sometimes have subtle ways--or not so subtle--of pulling rank.

I remember the time my brother flashed his fist an inch from my face and said, "You flinched!  That means I get to hit you!" (Odd how it seems funny in hindsight...)

I also wore some hand-me-downs.  Seems to me that should be nothing to be ashamed of!  If a piece of clothing hasn't been worn to rags, someone should wear it.

Back in the early '70s I watched some of The Brady Bunch.  At the time, I had no idea what a camp classic it would become! My favourite character was Bobby the youngest son, because he was one of the youngest, and a boy like me. (Cindy was equally young, but she was a girl.) I remember one episode where Bobby was worshipping Jesse James, until he had this nightmare where the whole family were pioneers travelling on a train in the Wild West, and then Jesse James came on board and shot them all in the back. (He pointed a toy gun at them and kept repeating, "Bang!") For a kid like me, that was a bit disturbing.

Book smells

In my house we collect a lot of old books. (We sell them online.) I'm familiar with their musty smell.  Magazine also have their own smells. Remember when they stuck tiny perfume samples into glossy magazines?  I never cared for that smell.  New books in bookstores also have a certain smell.

I lived in Britain when I was four, and visiting again years later I recognized the old smells of coal smoke, greengrocer shops and butcher shops.  When I was little I got turned on by the smell of acetone for removing nail polish. (Lucky I didn't get addicted!) We played recorders but they got stored on a shelf next to a can of dog repellent and ended up smelling the same!

Couldn't think of anything else to write...

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe's last movie was The Misfits, written by Arthur Miller (as his marriage to her was collapsing), and directed by John Huston.  It's a flawed, uneven movie, but it has some great moments.

It's about how Marilyn Monroe goes to Reno for a divorce, then shacks up with aging cowboy Clark Gable. (This was his last movie too.) They couldn't be explicit back in 1961, but it's pretty clear that they've shacked up!

There's a terrific climax when Gable and the other cowboys round up some wild mustangs to sell to the dog food factory, and Marilyn freaks out.  I like the way the camera shows here from a hundred feet away as she screams.  Poor Marilyn! (This scene has greater meaning for people seeing it today than it must have had for contemporary moviegoers seeing it before her death.)

Montgomery Clift had a good role as another cowboy. (In a town full of sad stories, his is one of the saddest.) He has a great scene talking to his unheard mother on the phone. They say he nailed it in one take!  Miller ended the movie with Marilyn and Gable staying together--he later admitted this reflected wishful thinking about saving his real marriage--but Clift wanted him to end it with Marilyn getting together with him.  That would have made more sense.

It was a very troubled production, with serious delays and budget overruns.  Gable insisted on doing his own stunts, which may have contributed to his death. Marilyn was widely blamed for the delays, but it wasn't all her fault:  Huston gambled away the cash that had been set aside for daily expenses!  Yet she and Clift got along famously. (She said he was "the only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am.") It's a shame that this is the only film they made together.

Five black dots

"Five black dots" makes me think of dice.  Did you know that a pair of dice have a total of 42 dots between them? That's why Douglas Adams said in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books that the key to the whole universe is the number 42!

Speaking of dice, when I was young we had a lot of Parker Brothers board games.  I don't know how anyone can play Clue!  But Risk was a pretty challenging game, in which the different players set out to conquer the world.  My brother John put all the troops he could spare on Iceland, the gateway between Europe and North America. (He called it "the Homeland"!) I preferred to monopolize Australia, though you could only advance one way from there.

I went through another board game phase in recent years.  I've been learning games like Settlers of Catan and Small World and Ticket to Ride. (Ticket to Ride involves laying railway links across a continent.  I like the version set in Europe the best.) For a while I went to Meetup groups to play these games with other people--some of them are really smart!  But then I lost interest.  Who knows when I'll take them up again?

Time wasters

My biggest time waster right now is computer games.  Right now I spend a lot of time on Facebook playing Candy Crush Saga.  I got up to Level 1437, but I've been stuck there for a couple of weeks! (It's a tough level.) I used to play Zynga games like Farmville and Frontierville quite a bit.  Maybe I'll take up Sim City someday. (I got the Minecraft software but can't figure out how to use it.)

I also waste time on puzzles, like the New York Times crossword that I do online on Thursday night and Friday night. (That's the only part of the Times worth subscribing to!) There's also a website at brilliant.com that has challenging puzzles involving math, geometry and logic.

Speaking of time wasters, I recently got started on Twitter, where my handle is Captain Snark. (That handle includes a Canadian flag, and a rose to show I'm a socialist leftie.) I've got into a lot of quarrels about Bernie Sanders.  The Bernie-haters keep pointing out that I'm Canadian, as if that disqualified my opinions about American politics, and I have to keep reminding myself, that most Americans are more open-minded than that.  One of the Tweeters I follow is the actor James Woods, who's pretty right-wing.

When all else fails, I can waste time by napping.