Category: All Posts
Locking In Rates
I paid off the mortgage on my house twelve years ago. Now I’m aging in place and depriving some young, deserving family of a home.
I’ve said it before. We’re living with the consequences of interest rates being kept too low for too long.
The Three Wise Men
Tomorrow morning I will be meeting with the surgeon, the chemotherapy oncologist and the radiation oncologist, for my first post-treatment consultation. I’m feeling nervous with a dash of hopefulness.
Update: I have been told that I am now free of cancer!
Howard’s End
On the Roku Channel I’ve been watching Leslie Howard’s son Ronald as Sherlock Holmes, in the 1950’s TV series. The shows are good fun, and being in the public domain they’re widely available.
The old Alfred Hitchcock Presents series is also on the Roku Channel. Ronald Howard appears in an adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s 1890 short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.
Howard as a Southern plantation owner was a clever bit of casting, considering that his father was Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. I can’t embed the Hitchcock episode, but this link will take you there.
https://therokuchannel.roku.com/watch/b19e33491d2656a3a444fce5d0281a12
A Fanclub of One
Of interest to a very few other than myself, today on TCM I caught Bomba on Panther Island. It’s the second movie in the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series and it features my very first childhood crush, Allene Roberts.
Allene’s dress that’s seen early in the movie seemed familiar.
Yep, just as I thought. It’s the same dress that Allene wore later in “The Haunted Lighthouse”, the first of her three appearances in The Adventures of Superman.
They weren’t kidding about “Poverty Row,” the term that was coined in the movie business for the ultra-low budget studios! Maybe it was one of the dresses Allene’s seamstress mother made for her.
Allene goes swimming with Johnny Sheffield, who before playing Bomba the Jungle Boy was simply “Boy” in the Weissmuller Tarzan series. Allene bears something of a resemblance here to Maureen O’Sullivan, who was Sheffield’s mother Jane in the Tarzan movies.
Speaking of Allene, eBay currently has a couple of unique items. I had a tough time deciding which one to bid on.
Norman Rockwell’s Vision of My Future
In 1965/66, Norman Rockwell envisioned the girlfriend I would have ten years later, right down to the drawing pad and jeans with boots. Except for her height. Marion was almost 5’10” tall. Few girls could pull off this classic “college art student” look so beautifully.
As with other Rockwell paintings, Picasso vs. Sargent has a humorous idea behind it, like a single-panel gag cartoon. Here is a critique by someone who has put a lot more thought into the painting’s gag than I have.
https://massmedievalist.substack.com/p/the-massachusetts-medievalist-on-23d