Quiet Beautiful Day In North Texas, Nothing About The Bakken --- March 19, 2022

Beautiful, beautiful day in north Texas. 

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The Book Page

Wow, talk about serendipity. It's a long story, I won't bore you with the details but I finally got a hardback copy of The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, c. 1995. 

The author is German, had taught at the University at East Anglia (UK) when this book was published, He was made Professor of German, there in 1986, and was the first director of the British Centre for Translation. One wonders if he was a fan of JRR Tolkien.

The Rings of Saturn was written in German; mine, of course, is a translated version. 

Genre: they call is a "novel." 

It's not. It's "pure literature" at its best but it's not a novel.

It's a memoir written by an older gentleman who reflects on life as he walks along the southeast coast of Britain. If one likes streams of consciousness from a man who reflects on literature, with really, really good writing, it's highly recommended. 

It is amazing all the new words and new idioms I have found in just the first few pages;

• "turned the collars himself"
• quincunx
• amphisbaena
• Baldanders
• hydriotaphia
• pismires
• exequies

That was the first chapter, all I've read so far, and now I'm re-reading the first chapter before moving on. In that first chapter the author spends quite a bit of time on Gustave Flaubert, which led me down a rabbit hole. Here's a small sampling:

• Gustave Flaubert's scrupulous devotion to style and esthetics;
• Vertigo: "Flaubert's grain of sand."
• Mythology of Blue: Flaubert and his scruples.
• Tumblr: Mythology of Blue

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The Movie Page

Rotten Tomatoes:

• 200 best romantic comedies of all time;
• #1: "The Philadelphia Story" with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, director, George Cukor, 1940 
• #9, "It Happened One Night" with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, director, Frank Capra, 1934
• #13, "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray -- I never considered this a romantic comedy; it's a Bill Murray classic.
  
• 100 best romance movies of all time;
• #1, "It Happened One Night" with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, director, Frank Capra, 1934
• #2, "Casablanca," 1942. 
  
• 100 sexiest movies of all time.
• "Basic Instinct": #79
•  "Troy" with Brad Pitt, #76
• "Mr and Mrs Smith" with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, #73
• "Dirty Dancing" with Patrick Swayze, #59
• "Eyes Wide Shut" with Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, #51
• "Swimming Pool" with an older Charlotte Rampling, #37 -- fascinating
• "Mulholland Drive" with so many; a David Lynch classic, #36
• "Body Heat' with William Hurt, blew me away when I saw it the first time, #4
  
• None of the rest interested me; except for #4 I have not seen any of the other top 35.
  

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Family Affairs

My wife and I are celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary today.

• Sapphire, coincidentally, happens to be my wife's second favorite gemstone.
• Her favorite gemstone is opal, the gemstone associated with the 34th anniversary. 
• I don't know if May has any sapphires, but she certainly has several nice opals. 
  

Our daughter and granddaughter Olivia are in Phoenix where Olivia's FC Dallas soccer team is playing in a tournament.

Sophia, our youngest granddaughter, stayed home with her dad. Yesterday, Sophia spent the day on the beach in nearby Grapevine Lake, TX. It's even a better today for the lake.

The oldest granddaughter, of course, is in Nashville, TN -- Vanderbilt University.

Up in Portland, OR, our younger daughter is home with husband and two-year-old twins; the twins celebrated that birthday about two weeks ago.