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Aesthfluenza Jukebox

Four songs with "don't" in them:

1. ___________

2. ___________

3. ___________

4. ___________

Cry For Me Argentina

Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia (1977) is a book I read once a year, usually in the spring or fall. Like another favourite, Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator (1978/1997), the book is comprised of short prose pieces -- 97 in Chatwin's book, 103 in Bernhard's. For me, nothing (else) in Chatwin's oeuvre comes close, not even his best known book, Songlines (1987).

Here is a line from In Patagonia:

I pictured a low timber house with a shingle roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with all the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.

Let the Sun Go Down On Me

I first saw Daphne Odjig's The Lady Teacher (1970) in Herbert T. Schwarz's Tales from the Smokehouse (1974), a curious book that features a number of Woodland creatures, like Earth Mother. Not sure if The Lady Teacher was part of Odjig's 2009 National Gallery of Canada exhibition (if it was, it would have appeared behind the exhibition's privacy wall). Checked the NGC's online collection and saw that it was purchased that same year, though its image is still listed as "not available."

I Want to Live Like a Refugee

The CBC tells a story of woman who is adapting Bratz dolls for Syrian refugee children.

Years ago a friend returned to Vancouver from rural Peru with a woman he was hoping to marry. When their wedding day came, his friends showered them with gifts, a few of which were handmade ceramic bowls made by local potters. The woman was thankful, of course, because she saw in these gifts not the object itself but the thought behind them. However, of all the gifts they opened, the one that brought her to tears was a six-speed mixmaster -- "con la función de pulse!"

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The Spirit of Christmas Past (Mid-Century Film Version)

Dickens's "Spirit of Christmas Past" is a thoroughly Victorian figure whose representations are wide and varied.

It was a strange figure -- like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.