Major Pettigrew, unlikely romantic hero

     Helen Simonson. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (2010) A romance. Major Pettigrew, widower, with an obnoxious social-climbing son, notices Mrs Ali, widow, shopkeeper in Edge-combe St Mary’s. They marry, of course, after overcoming their hesitancy and social and family objections. Like any good romance, a social comedy, well-observed, with nice riffs on the usual stereotypes, but with attractive leads. Mrs Jasmin Ali has more practical common-sense, the Major must overcome his small vanities to prove worthy of her, both are reticent , unwilling to give offence or cause embarassment. They both have to accept family responsibilities. A feel-good story with Important Themes, tailor-made for the reading clubs that will study the helpful questions included at the back of the book.
     The book is above average for the genre. Unusually, it tells the story from the male lead’s point of view, which adds to its charm. As one of Jasmina’s young relatives says, “You’re a good man, for an old git.” Precisely, and the touch of fantasy is what makes romances fun reads. I liked this one. ***

APOSTROPHE RULES

The following is a summary of the apostrophe rules I taught. They are really quite simple.

The apostrophe is a spelling mark, not a punctuation mark. As such, it distinguishes between words that might be confused. (Aside: it’s not really needed, since we never confuse these words when speaking.) In spelling, the confusions arise because the apostrophe is used for two purposes, as set out below.

A) The apostrophe of possession:

1) Singular nouns and proper names: add ’s at the end.  Dog – Dog’s. Jim – Jim’s
    Problem: Words/names ending in -s. Usage for these cases varies. See section C below.

2) Plural nouns and names: Add the apostrophe after the plural. If the plural has no -s, add s’.No exceptions. Parents – Parents’. Children – Childrens’

3) Never make a plural by adding ’s to a word.
    Problem: Some newpaper style books specify an apostrophe to make plural out of a number used as a name: the 1970's, not the 1970s. I think this is wrong.

4) Possessive pronouns ending in -s contain no apostrophe. No exceptions. Your - yours. Her- hers. He - his. It – its. Our – ours. Their - theirs.

B) The apostrophe of omission:

5) An apostrophe is used to indicate a syllable lost or compressed through elision (combining two words that otherwise would be pronounced separately). No exceptions. He had – He’d. It is – It’s. They would – They’d. The garden is lovely  – The garden’s lovely.

C) Nouns/names ending in -s:

1) Preferred usage is to add ’s: “James’s book.” This rule expresses preferred pronunciation.

2) However, usage omitting the possessive -s in both sound and spelling is acceptable: “James’ book.”

Rule: When different usages are acceptable, choose one and stick to it.

Jane Austen: Notes on the Love Romance

 OK, I've put up the best-known portrait of Austen. I like it too.

Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the template for love romance novels. The setting doesn't matter. It's the social difference between her and him that's at the core of love romance: She's much too good for him even though He's (usually) a higher class (eg, the CEO/Owner of the company, and she's just a file clerk). He has to prove that he's worthy of Her. Austen's book is better than most romances because She has to prove she's worthy of Him, too. Not that there’s much doubt about that. Lizzie is intelligent, strong-willed, and unwilling to settle for second best. And she has a fine pair of eyes.

Of course Lizzie is worthy of Darcy, who in the end shows that he is an honourable man. It was that over-nice sense of honour that prevented him from supporting Bingley’s courtship of Jane, and worse, rendered him unwilling to reveal the true nature of Wickham. Darcy makes amends for the damage he has caused: he intervenes in the Wickham-Lydia affair. Lizzie is certain that her sister’s missteps have made herself unmarriageable, but Darcy does the honourable thing. He follows his heart and his mind, both of which assure him that Lizzie is a fit mate for him, and the censure of society is at most an inconvenience. He saves the Bennett family from social ruin at the risk of losing some of his acquaintanceship. Dorothy Sayers gives us another couple in which the man saves the woman. It takes three novels for Harriet Vane to overcome her fear that her attraction to Lord Peter Wimsey is contaminated by gratitude. Austen gets around that problem by having Darcy offer his assistance as an expiation for his sins against good sense and love.

Of course, in reality marriage back then wasn't about love but about property. Darcy’s attractiveness increases enormously when Lizzie visits his estate and realises what she’s missed. That’s why class difference mattered, and why the love romance is still as much about overcoming social as character differences.

The ideal of marriage as a union of compatible people suited for each other by both social status and property, slowly changed since Austen wrote her novels. Love became the criterion for choosing the lucky swain from amongst the competitors. Since approximately the 1950s, that’s shifted even further. Now people think that love is the only justification for marriage. That's why divorce when the love is gone is not only OK, it's mandatory.

Art rules life. If you want to know where society is heading read its popular literature. Or watch TV and movies. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", said Shelley. He’s right.

2011-2018

Murder in Penzance: Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death

      W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death (1990) Someone kills Matthew Glynn, owner of the family business, a bookstore, and eldest brother in a dysfunctional family in Penzance. Wycliffe and his plodders uncover the family skeletons one by one, but by the time Wycliffe reconstructs the ancient crime that triggered the murder, the killer is dead. The inquest into the death of the first victim may or may not name names. Wycliffe is left with a feeling of failure, but the reader is satisfied that the puzzle has been solved.
     Burley was a school teacher before retiring to write murder stories full time. He knows when a digressive tidbit will entertain or inform the reader. He’s good at sketching ambience. He clearly loves Cornwall and its people. He’s a skilful writer, telling us as much as we need to follow the story and round out the characters enough that we care. His books are well-done entertainments, with a thematic core, in this case the perils of family secrets. The TV series based on his books is worth watching. **½

The Loch (TV series)

     The Loch (2017, 6 episodes) [D: Brian Kelly & Cilla Ware.  Laura Fraser, Siobhan Finneran, Jack Bannon] Shown on CBC TV. A serial killer rampages through a Scottish town ostensibly on the shores of Loch Ness. It’s Annie Redford’s first murder case. DCI Quigley leads the investigation, but Annie’s special, local knowledge is of course key, as is the expertise of profiler Albrighton, who has a history with Quigley. These and other complications spin out the story over six episodes.
     Worth watching for the well done shifts in relationships within the team, the families, and between neighbours and friends. The puzzle is overly complex, but a large part of that is the irrelevance of most of the information gathered by the team. Several of the plot lines are left incomplete, but I suspect that’s largely the effect of cutting up to 5 minutes out of each episode to make room for those damn commercials. Generally well acted, competent photography and music. **½

Katherine Westphal, textile artist

I like textile art. Katherine Westphal is another textile artist I didn't know about.Sample of her work:

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

Why all the fuss about Facebook data being mined by a third party for political purposes? Facebook has been selling personal data to advertisers (and I think to anyone else that paid the price) from the very beginning. Its business is collecting and selling data about you. That’s the service for which they get paid. You don’t pay them to provide the means of keeping in touch with your friends.

So why the shock when it’s revealed that some people want to sell you political beliefs instead of shoes? When it comes to “free” media like TV and Facebook, you are the product.

I think the only surprise is that someone had a pang of conscience and revealed Cambridge Analytica’s shenanigans. You can be quite sure that Facebook data is being mined by anyone that wants to do so. Heck, you can do it yourself on your own machine. Just snip and save whatever you want, and look it over at your leisure. I’m pretty sure there are programs out there that will do this for you automatically. Look for “archiving software”.

Facebook was designed to be easy and convenient to use, and that is what makes it open to anyone who wants to mine data. It links files together so that many people can, if they wish, read the same file: A note about your meal, a picture, a link to a website, a video, whatever. And each of these items is labelled with your name. It has to be. Else it couldn’t be seen by you on your Facebook page.

But that means that Facebook has that labelled stuff on its servers. If there’s enough labelled stuff about you, it’s easy to figure out what kind of person you are. That’s what makes that data valuable for advertisers. It’s how Facebook figures out what ads to show you. It’s how Amazon decides to show you what “People who bought this also bought...” Etc. IOW, Facebook etc merely do what we all do: A “person we know" is really the collection of everything we know about them, plus what we think it all means.

What isn’t clear is how Cambridge Analytica got hold of all that data. There’s a good deal of fudging around this question. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said almost nothing. It seems CA hacked into Facebook’s servers to get the data,. That’s bad. But if Facebook sold them the data, I think that’s worse.