Downtown Flint at 7 AM these days

A trot round the lake(s) at Holly Rec

More sun and lethal snow-covered ice paths

For the second day in a row Frederick and I ended up flat on our backs on our walk (at Seven Lakes).

After the rain washed the old snow away, we got some nice new snow

The only problem was that the snow was on top of snow that had been packed down to diamond-hardness, slightly melted and then re-frozen to ice-rink smoothness. So you take a step into what looks like safe, soft snow, and you (i.e., first me and then Frederick) fall flat on your arse.

Chimney-cleaning time!

Long story short: I have delayed this visit at least twice, because I tried to schedule it back in the beginning of the cold season, after the previous guy had failed to clean off the cap. But then I decided to do it myself, and it seemed to work, but as it took so long to get an appointment I didn't want to cancel, in case the chimney got blocked during the winter. So anyway, they came, and he did a great job (and apparently our chimney was about to be seriously blocked, so...)

Rain on snow makes mist

Still sunny

Frederick had a glucose-detecting-implant-thingy put in his arm today, but was remarkably sanguine about the whole thing. Here he is, demonstrating same. [Update: the implant thingy lasted until sometime between bedtime and last-check-before-parents'-bedtime.  Can't say I blame him.]

Film review: The Mirror (1975)

We've seen three Andrei Tarkovsky films before - his first film, Ivan's Childhood, which is certainly beautiful and bleak, and which I think he later regarded as too flashy/too accessible, and his two science fiction epics, Solaris and STALKER.  This one comes right between those two, and certainly doesn't suffer from being too accessible.  You see vignettes in the life of, well, I'm honestly not sure.  The main character is a woman (played by Margarita Terekhova), who alternates between looking strikingly beautiful

and haggard, depending on how she's shot, and who both plays the wife of (possibly) the main character, whom we never see (or at least, I don't think we do), although we do see through his eyes and hear his voice when he's arguing with her, and also the same person's mother, earlier in time (the 1930's).  Here she is noticing the resemblance:

Things happen, small vignettes - the mother runs to her job at a printing press, convinced that an obscene (I think) word has somehow got into a print run (it hasn't).  

A barn burns down next to their house in the country when (I think) our hero is a child.  A person who calls himself a doctor turns up at (the same?) house in the country (the scene in the poster is the mother/wife watching him from a distance) and sits on the fence with her, and breaks it, and then walks off.  

The mother shows up at another woman's house in the country having walked ten miles with her older son (our hero, Ignat, aged about 12) and asks for help with feminine problems.  While she and the other woman go into the back room, Ignat sits and watches a light go out.  That sort of thing.  Normally I would hate this sort of thing.  I can't sit still for Koyaanisqatsi.  Jami got seriously antsy.  But it held my interest by sheer force of being hypnotically beautiful.  Like STALKER it mixes black and white and color film, but not for any clear reason I could see.  There was also old Soviet news footage (or a very good facsimile) mixed in.  I will have to read up on the film to see if I can understand the underlying events (I think our main character ends up dying of some disease?) but it is possible just to enjoy it as art for art's sake.  And some images, like the barn burning down in the rain, are indelible.

More amazing scenes in gif form here.

Enjoying the sun

Out on the mountain bike trails (when it's too cold and snowy for bikes)

Crisp and cold

The calm before...

My class was canceled because Flint Schools shut down because of the impending winter storm, but it took a while coming, so Frederick and I were able to squeeze in a walk.

The walk was less pleasant than it could have been because it had rained and then frozen, and the narrow path was solid lumpy ice, so we either had to risk falling and cracking a knee (something Frederick managed to avoid, at least) or scramble through brambles by the side of the path. We did a bit of both.

Finally, it's 6 PM and the "wintry mix" has arrived...

Weirdly Warm Wednesdays

For some reason, for the past three weeks or so, it's been super-warm on Wednesday but not on any other day. So, today, it was up above 50°F again, after being in the teens earlier in the week. But there's already a winter storm warning for tomorrow. Anyway, we're in Indian Springs Metropark on our walk here.

My beautiful breakfast

As I have to teach at 7:40 in the morning (and have to drive there first), I make my breakfast the day before. Layers of cashew yogurt, walnuts, blueberries, banana slices... yum.

And here I am this morning at Carman Ainsworth, in front of an...interesting mural.

The days are getting longer rapidly - it's already light by 7:30 AM these days.

Hogbacks, and back to bloody cold

How many times do I have to stack these f@*#ing logs?

The worst part is, this proves Jami right. She SAID they were going to fall down and I pooh poohed her. Fortunately this time no cars were harmed.

McGnnis Lake: where the hand of man has never set foot

I'm always a bit anxious walking out on ice that has no footprints OR pawprints on it. What do they know that I don't? It didn't help that about a week ago I put my foot through the ice and had to do the rest of the walk with a boot whose fancy wooly lining had absorbed about a pint of icy water. But we made it across unscathed.

Spoke too soon

When faced with the prospect of Frederick and I hanging round the house all afternoon, stopping her doing things she likes to do alone (practice the bass, do her Occulus Quest Virtual Reality workout, etc.), Jami decided/"remembered" that Frederick could handle walks that weren't too stressful. So we're back to having walks after just one day off.

Film review: An Inspector Calls (2015)

 Apparently, the original J.B. Priestley play is something of a classic.  The first English production had Ralph Richardson as the titular inspector (and featured a young Alec Guinness).  The 50's film version had Alistair Sim (I will definitely have to seek that one out).  And Tom Baker played him on stage, something I would dearly love to have seen.  But David Thewliss is pretty wonderful in this version, too.  The rest of the cast (including Miranda Richardson) is just fine, too.  My ignorance of mid century British theater served me well, because I had no idea what to expect going in.  (Well, what I was expecting was proto-Agatha Christie stuff.)  Turns out this is something of a parable/a ghost story/a morality play rather than a detective yarn.  Very briefly, it is 1910, and a rich family (father, mother, young adult daughter and son) is celebrating their daughter's engagement with the scion of a the head of a rival firm and have just reached the post-prandial cigar stage, when an inspector calls.  And he is not just chilly and brusque, he is common (broad Northern accent) and singularly unimpressed with the airs and graces of the family.  (When informed by the father that he plays golf with the inspector's superior, the inspector just remarks that he doesn't play golf.)  Very quickly they discover that the inspector's reason for coming is that a young woman has just died in hospital of a suicide, and that the father had something to do with it.  Specifically, he fired her for persuading her fellow workers in his garment factory to strike for a living wage.  But wait, there's more.  The daughter got the same woman fired from her next job in a fit of pique.  And the fiance had an affair with her, but abandoned her when it became inconvenient.  Then the son got her pregnant!  Then she went to a charity to get money to pay for lodging, and the mother, who was on the board, turned her away!  Now at this point, this sounds like a rather ridiculous series of coincidences.  And besides, none of them strictly speaking did anything illegal (except the son, and that was stealing from his own father's firm to give her money, which she accepted until she found out it was stolen).  And indeed, the inspector (whose name, he revealed, was "Goole") leaves without taking official statements or anything (but not before delivering a fiery speech about how we must care for each other, and if we don't, we'll come to a hot end).  After he's gone, the family feel awful, but pretty quickly the father and the fiance start having doubts.  The fiance points out that he never showed more than one of them at a time a picture of the girl, so for all they know it could have been  a different girl each time.  And they only had his word for it that she was dead.  They call around, and it turns out not just that no girl has died by suicide that night, but there is no Inspector Goole in the local constabulary.  This makes the parents and fiance positively giddy with relief, but the children are sickened by them, because they know that whatever happens, they have treated the vulnerable with arrogance and contempt.  But then the phone rings.  The father answers it and his face drains of blood.  It's the police.  A girl has just died by her own hand and an inspector will be coming to pay them a visit...

Is it heavy-handed?  No doubt.  Is it quasi-religious?  Possibly.  Is it a timely call for a more extensive social safety-net, and union protections?  Undoubtedly.  A gripping little number.  I'll definitely seek out the Sim version - after playing Scrooge, I'm sure he got a kick out of playing a spectral presence himself.

The New Science Building on campus is pretty fancy

Shiawassee - still flat

Turns out this will be our last walk for a while - Frederick is confined to strict rest while he's on a course of medication (which, his new doctor assures us, will result him feeling better than he ever has!).

Highland Rec - sunny and pushing 50°F