Various Veins
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Busy weekend around my neighbourhood. Our clan restarted the holding of a reunion this year. I'm filled with wonder at the range of interests and occupations that the families of me and my late brother, James hold. The love and respect they show for this old man is heart warming.
Connor, grandson from Corbeil, asked me for some guidance to tackle an English assignment. I had to use a dictionary to shed light on the meanings of several terms. Close reading I get, but what is hypertext?
Connor let me read the assignment on his laptop. When his teacher commented on the tendency of some readers to resist looking for evidence of the art of the author, they feel it is disrespectful to tear the work to pieces, I said, "I get it!"
Connor's grandmother and his father both vigorously refused to look for patterns and subtexts in a work. They said it ruined their enjoyment of reading. "No, no," I would say. "It gives you more and deeper enjoyment."
They never saw the reasonableness of my logic.
Have you seen paintings that have for example a modern sailing vessel in vivid hues and in the background a ghostly older style ship and sometimes even a second one even more ancient? That's what you may find in literary works if you let your mind play with the words.
And so, hypertext I take to be a word of the computer age that means what my teachers were expecting when they directed me to read and discuss.
Somewhere in my house is a small text that names and defines about a hundred figures of speech. I scanned the shelves for it to let Connor get some help in identifying passages to describe in hypertext. Haven't located it yet.
Connor is striving to become an architect. We drove by some homes for him to see how additions and alterations have added or detracted from some venerable buildings.
With the summer sun glaring down on my van without the canopy in place, I could use it for a sauna and maybe to steam vegetables. This is devilishly destructive to the upholstery and moldings. I put the windows down during the heat of the day and sometimes forget to close them when the sun sets. Once last week I was out with a flashlight at 4 a.m. hoping no neighbours happened to be awake. I'd be getting a visit from the OPP.
David got a tarp for me and he and Mark lashed it onto the frame of the shelter Sunday morning. The winds get wild on Second Street, blowing stinging drifts of sand and flapping the tarp like a spinnaker. I may get some of that new gorilla tape to stabilize things. The flapping rips grommets out of the tarp.
Deborah was with David on this mission. She heard something chewing over the ceiling in the entry way. I suggested it was me chewing the morning complement of All Bran but it wasn't. Connor heard it after I'd emptied the bowl. It's probably the black ants I've been murdering with Raid ant bait. I've asked Doug to open the suspended ceiling in the garage and have a look. Dusty and hot up there. He'll need a mask.
I'll test Bill Geysens' Borax and sugar ant trap if it is ants. Could be mice but they usually pause in chiggling when one raps the ceiling.
Update: I looked through the window of the new medical quarters in the Sandy Town Mall on Friday. Saw a sign announcing the East Elgin Medical Group leaning against a wall.