Eating Horses: some history (link)

     Scientific American of  September 1886 ran an article about eating horses. Here's the link: SciAm 1886 Eating Horses
     Comments: The religious prohibition is very odd, considering that St Peter had a dream about "unclean" animals, which is usually interpreted as an attack on the the notion of "unclean" food.
     Real salami (not the imitation sold as such in our supermarkets) is made from donkey meat. The best french fries are said to be those fried in horse fat.
      During WW2, horse meat was offered in many parts of Europe when other meats became scarce. The objections to eating horses are clearly cultural and psychological: we just don't like eating friends. We think of horses, like dogs and cats, as friends. Family, even.

Moonstruck (1987)

   

    Moonstruck (1987) [D: Norman Jewison. Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis] 39-year-old widow Loretta Castorini (Cher) agrees to marry Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) even though she doesn’t love him. At his request, she finds his estranged brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) to invite him to the wedding. They fall in love, and the rest of the movie unravels the complications caused by this accident of fate. Loretta’s father Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) is having an affair. Her mother Rose (Dukakis) has a brief conversational encounter with Perry, a philandering professor. Johnny’s mother recovers from her deathbed, which will delay the wedding. All in all, a lovely mess, which Jewison directs with flair. The actors are convincing, the editing supports their exquisite timing, the narrative pace is always just fast enough that we ignore improbabilities, and slow enough that we savour the Great Moments.
     Almost exactly in the middle we attend a performance of La Bohème (Ronny loves opera), which reminds us that this movie is itself an opera: larger than life, moving the story forward through emotion not reason, and ultimately satisfying because it feels right. Logic has nothing to do with it. Logically, we should all give up and die, since that’s what will happen to us all anyhow. This movie says, No, we should live, and risk heartbreak. As someone else said somewhere: Pain is good, it reminds us we are alive. So is joy, and for the same reason. ****

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

      In the Heat of the Night (1967) [D: Norman Jewison. Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger] Watching this movie, I realised that I hadn’t seen it since its release 46 years ago. I did see many of the TV series episodes, and my vague memories of both made for a melange of misleading impressions. I’m glad we decided to watch it on TVO’s Saturday Night at the Movies. The story is simple: Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), waiting for a train in Sparta, Mississippi, is arrested as a suspect in the murder of Colbert. a Northerner planning to build a factory in Sparta. When Chief Gillespie (Steiger) learns that Tibbs is Philadelphia’s number one homicide expert, he wants Tibbs to help him. Tibbs and Gillespie solve the crime, but not before personal weaknesses, and social and racial tensions create events that intersect with and delay the solution of the puzzle.
     The movie is tough, considering its time it’s very tough. It’s difficult to recall the state of race relations in the 1960s. The civil rights movement was top of news and mind. We all knew that people had been murdered in the South. We knew that a mild mistake or social solecism could still be lethal for blacks in Mississippi and Alabama. In Canada the racism wasn’t as overt, but it was real enough. We were at the beginning of decades of self-congratulation for “achievements” that should have been unremarkable: black MPs, black Lt Governors, black writers, and so on. This movie arrived on our screens carrying a heavy load of baggage.
     Still, the movie works simply as a movie. It’s quite likely that under-30s won’t get the full import of some of its plot points, for example, a Philadelphia police chief telling his black subordinate to help out the cops in a Mississippi town, or Endicott and Tibbs conversation about orchids in Endicott’s green house, or the fact that a Northerner was planning to build a factory in the town.
     Chief Gillespie’s slow, grudging acceptance of  Virgil Tibbs as a colleague is nicely done. Gillespie first fingers Tibbs as the perpetrator, then a poor white boy, then one of his own officers. The unquestioned assumptions of the old Southern social order prevent clear thinking. Tibbs also suffers from prejudices: he wants to bring down Endicott, a man who tries to maintain the ante-bellum social order, and, absent slavery, succeeds. Endicott is not the murderer, or even behind the murder, but the values he represents mess up the investigation. The turning point comes when Tibbs admits his hatred of Endicott. Gillespie says, “You’re like the rest of us.” This is a turning point for Gillespie, too. Both men are now able to see each other's strengths and weaknesses as men as well as cops, and the case unravels pretty quickly from that point on.
     The movie works on many levels. The acting is very, very good. It’s difficult to portray a change in character; both Poitier and Steiger succeed. The secondary characters are given enough of a backstory that we understand why they act as they do. Their racism may be a reflex, but it’s a reflex they can on occasion transcend. The pacing of the movie is just right. It starts slowly, and most of the time we see the action contrasted with the slow rural ambience of the town, so that even a drive across town is imbued with menace. The overall feel is of reactions barely suppressed, of rage and fear seething below the Southern politeness, a politeness that cracks from time to time.
      Daylight, nighttime, interior and exterior shots are so subtly alternated that we don’t realise how seamlessly they tell the story until we reflect on that story. The story itself is entirely plausible, both the crime, and the personal and social conflicts that intersect with it. Tibbs occasionally seems a little to good to be true, but in the next shot he’s vain enough of his superior policing skills that this impression dissipates. Unlike the stereotypical detective, he has to be rescued from physical danger. The ending, when Gillespie takes leave of Tibbs with the affectionate “You take care, y’hear?”, is perhaps too Hollywood feel-good, but that’s a very minor cavil. ****

Bob Atkinson. North Bay in Postcards and Sudbury in Postcards. (1981 and 1982)

     Bob Atkinson. North Bay in Postcards and Sudbury in Postcards. (1981 and 1982) Collections of old postcards open a window on the past. These pictures were published both to show off the places they depicted, and to provide people with the kind of images they thought were important. Public buildings of various kinds, whether built with public money (such as libraries or schools) or private money (such as railway stations and bank buildings) figure prominently. So do street scenes, primarily of business sections. This may reflect Atkinson’s taste, but my own casual examination of old postcards (almost always overpriced) in antique stores persuades me that these books reflect the range of available images. Postcards show us what our ancestors thought worth photographing, and that was mostly works for the public good and evidence of their prosperity and enterprise. There has been a subtle shift: modern postcards lean more heavily towards scenery, and “tourist attractions.” ***

Poul Anderson. Space Folk (1989)

     Poul Anderson. Space Folk (1989) The title describes the common thread of this collection. Generally upbeat in the 50s-60s “hard science” mode, and often funny. One story deliberately takes the gloomy view, arguing that if we don’t go into space, we will perish as a civilisation. This story hardly works; thesis-ridden stories rarely do, unless they’re cast as fables or parables, and this one is in the naturalistic mode.
     Anderson has a talent for creating characters that seem to be more than contrivances to make a plot work, but he also has the failing of writing to a thesis more often than not. The stories all have a point, and it sometimes gets in the way. Anderson is careful to be ethnically inclusive, his space-craft crews have diverse names, but their ethnic backgrounds tend to be stereotyped. In fact, there is more than a whiff of racist over-compensation.
     There is a similar effort to give women equal status. Here too he tends to be limited by stereotypes; he likes Nordic amazons, and oddly enough his most believable women are these almost-caricatures. The most successful effort in this book is a farce set on a cloud-covered planet dominated by head-hunting, caste-ridden warrior lizards navigating by wind and weather. Ulrica is the woman warrior, and Didymus is the teacher-wimp, but his science enables him first to assist her in defeating a nasty aristocrat, and secondly to navigate the ship to the Earth base. A Foucault pendulum figures in both events. Ulrica falls in love-lust with her little rescuer, a fate he is not sure he desires. The touches of space-opera parody provide the element of fantasy that allows one to suspend disbelief and enjoy the silliness.
     The stories range from OK to very good. I omitted reading two in which Anderson writes using another writer’s universe. These just didn’t have the immediacy of setting and character at which Anderson excels, and which make his most pedestrian plots believable. ** to *** (2002)

Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes (1982ff)

     Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes (1982ff)
     Calvin and Hobbes (1987); Something under the Bed is Drooling (1988); Yukon Ho! (1989); The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book (TLSB) (1989) Revenge of the Baby-sat (RBS) (1991); Scientific Progress Goes Boink! (SPGB) (1991); Attack of the Deranged Mutant Snow Goons (1992); The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes (TIC&H) (1992; compilation of RBS and SPGB).
     There will be no more Calvin and Hobbes; Watterson stopped writing the strip in shortly after 1992. Like Berke Breathead, he had mined his vein; and there was no more ore. He knew that repetitions would not do; variations on his themes had already begun to appear, as is clear when one reads all of these books at once, and Calvin could not stay six years old forever. But while it lasted, C&H was one of the best available.
     Some people thought of Calvin as merely an updated Dennis the Menace (whom Dairy Queen has quietly removed from its graphics). Calvin was more than that. He was both as silly and naive as any six-year-old can be, and wise as only children can be. Watterson did sometimes yield to the temptation of putting his own views into Calvin or Hobbes’s mouths, and occasionally the strip descended into sentimentality, but overall it was bizarre, surreal, clear-eyed, satirical, truthful, and accurate. It was never cynical, though it came close. It worked not just because of the graphics (Watterson is especially good at facial expressions and fuzzy tigers), but also because of the language. Watterson was a writer as well as an graphic artist. The full page renderings of Spaceman Spiff in TLSB show that he could be a great comic book or illustrated novel writer. The verses in TIC&H show his talent for wordplay, a talent that also shows up in his brilliant parodies of PI stories (written to show Calvin’s struggles with math tests.), and in Hobbes’ epigrams. And Spaceman Spiff is a loving rendition of the SF fantasies of the 1950s and 60s. Worth rereading more than once. **** (2002)

Robert Katz. The Cassandra Crossing (1977)

     Robert Katz. The Cassandra Crossing (1977) Novelisation of a film script. These rarely work, and this is worse than most. It’s in sections like a film script, perhaps to give it more of the feel of a movie. Maltin gives the movie three stars, but I give this book none. I couldn’t finish it, stopped after about 10 pages, read a few pages later in the book. Egregious errors abound, e.g. the train supposedly weighs 22,900 tons. Gagging noise! (2002)

Dozois and Schmidt, eds. Roads Not Taken (1998)

     Gardner Dozois and Stanley Schmidt, eds. Roads Not Taken (1998) Tales of Alternate History, ranging from the mildly humorous to the ploddingly serious to the politically despairing. I omitted reading “The Forest of Time” (Flynn), a tale based on the many worlds interpretation of QT. The best stories use what’s known of the past, put a little twist on it, and extrapolate in terms of what we know or guess about social developments, such as “Outpost of Empire” by Silverberg (the Romans control Europe in the 1500-1600s); “We Could do Worse”by Benford (Joe McCarthy becomes president); “Aristotle and the Gun” by Sprague de Camp (in which a disgruntled scientist tries to nudge Aristotle into a more scientific direction, but fails; Aristotle decides to devote himself to ethics, political theory, and aesthetics instead.)
     The means of the twist range from sheer chance to time-travel. Chance is the most satisfying; we all know how much of our lives results from unforeseen and unforeseeable events. A taste for this kind of fiction is in itself specialised, and within it, there are subgenres of differing appeal. Inventing an alternate history in detail is a pleasant occupation, much like inventing a game universe, but one must have the same interests as the author to enjoy the result. Like a game universe, the setting has a feeling of arbitrariness about it. After all, change a few contingencies, and still another scenario is just as plausible. The characters who inhabit such alternative worlds differ from us only in accidentals, such as language, knowledge of the world, costume, political assumptions, and so on. But it’s these accidental details one must focus on, in order to give the alternate history a feel of plausibility, and in doing so, one tends to lose the essence of character. The writer of alternate history must find the right balance between accident and essence, and few succeed. Benford’s “We could do Worse” comes closest, perhaps because it’s the least different from our own world. * to **** (2002)

Charles Dennis. The Next to Last Train Ride (1977)

Charles Dennis. The Next to Last Train Ride (1977) I bought this book to add to my collection of railroad-related fiction, but that’s all there is to recommend it, and it’s not enough. A mixed-up plot involving a coffin that supposedly contains the body of a Vietnam casualty, a woman with three breasts, a transfer of money between west and east coast crooks (in the aforesaid coffin), and of course a train, plus an assortment of other characters, all somehow related to the hapless hero, a failed and failing confidence trickster. All this might make for a saleable scenario or treatment suitable for the imagination of a movie studio executive, but it doesn’t translate into a readable book. Not unless the writer has the style and the timing to carry it off, and though Dennis tries hard, it doesn’t work. The strings on the characters are too visible, there’s a lot of the nudge-nudge wink-wink type of humour, check the cover art. Too many plot points are telegraphed, often two scenes ahead. To compensate for this, I guess, other events are complete surprises, contradicting expectations set up earlier.

One wonders what will happen next on this silly odyssey, and if that was Dennis’s intention, he succeeds. But not enough to keep me slogging on to the end. If Dennis had focused on writing a novel instead of a movie-treatment, the book could have been very good. There’s more than a touch of the surreal, but one gets the feeling that Dennis is thinking more in terms of how the book will read to a director looking for movie material than in terms of how the story will unfold. * (2002)

Update 2026-04-14: There is in fact a movie based on this book: Finders Keepers (1984). IMDB rating is 5.3. Available on YouTube.

Hurwitz and Fidell. Silly Signs (1974)

     A. B. Hurwitz and J. A. Fidell. Silly Signs (1974) A Scholastic book bought by Cassandra many years ago. Consists of what the title says: and some of the signs are pretty silly, too. Not known which are real and which are made up. I mean, some signs are purposely silly, others are silly by accident. I’d like to know which are which. Most are the result of the writers’ not thinking about how the sign will look to the intended audience.
     Samples: Belt Your Family and Save Their Lives. Come In and Borrow Enough to Get out of Debt. Wanted - Man to Take Care of Horses Who can Speak German.
     Amusing. Middle school pupils like this kind of thing in part because it confirms their growing sense of mastery of the language. One has to understand the language pretty well to catch the absurdities in these signs. ** (2002)