Call Me By Your Name

I saw the movie Call Me By Your Name, and was left with haunting what-if’s. I can see that the opportunity for a sequel is wide open, but I suspect that the artists behind the movie fully intended that the conclusion drawn by each audience member would serve as that viewer’s sequel.

Tim Chalamet is a very skilled actor. It was his performance in The King that prompted me towards Call Me By Your Name. I like how the subtleties of his facial expressions reveal so much. I have seen him in interviews, and he is the same there also. A smart boy too. A precocious personality. A going concern. I am eager to see his craft 20 or 30 years from now.

I didn’t like the character of Oliver, portrayed by Armie Hammer. Too American for me? Naw, I don’t think that’s it. Maybe too macho?  I don’t think so. Too selfish? Yeah, that may approximate the answer. Or maybe too independent. Too self-sufficient. Whatever he had, the character of Elio thought he was a hero. I expect that is believable in a boy with an ambivalent self-image.

I enjoyed the portrayal of mutual support within Elio’s family. A healthy, well-functioning family based on acceptance rather than rejection. A good place for Elio.

Pierre Trudeau's Memoirs

I have piles of books that I have set apart for reading as I have the time. Maybe that’s normal behavior for a lifelong bibliophile. I only proceed slowly because (1) I am a slow reader (or maybe a lazy reader), (2) I often get sleepy reading, and so don’t read far in one sitting (or reposing), and (3) I am really busy with other things. Nonetheless, I occasionally get a book read, unlike Theodore Roosevelt who is said to have read three books a day for much of his adult life.

This week I finished reading Memoirs by Pierre Trudeau. The book added depth and breadth to my perspective of the man who gave the rose a bad name. A powerful intellect was he.

He seems to have cared a lot about how his readership would judge him. He emphasizes in the early going his typical Canadian background: he grew up in modest circumstances. For crying out loud, the family summer home didn’t even have adequate plumbing.

Another notable aspect of the book is the coverage of his early adulthood. The man had courage and a well-developed sense of adventure, traipsing across Asia, including China during its civil war. I can see that he brought an unusual background to the Prime Minister’s office.

His sense of Canada --- the notion that the nation is a federation of sovereign people rather than an agreement between provinces and territories --- informed his approach to governance. He seems to have been a liberal at heart, although his legislation was often Liberal rather than liberal, it seems to me.

I recommend the book, or at least parts of it: many interesting photos of one of the most photographed people in history, and interesting anecdotes and explanations…… and excuses.

Water

I have long enjoyed watching water flow, and even more, I enjoy the sound of it doing so --- the breaking of waves on the ocean shore, a waterfall. Ancients, typified by Thales of Miletus, suggested that there must be some unifying force in nature. Nature wasn’t this random collision of various forces --- the chaotic interaction of the gods. It seemed natural that the force would be water. Water seemed to be pervasive: it was a liquid, a gas, and a solid. It moved under its own power; and what a power that sometimes was. So Thales saw water as the arche of which all consisted. 

Water is essential to human life. I have been involved for awhile in a project to resolve the problem indigenous Canadians have with accessing clean water. Typically, municipal water in Canada is clean. Water is tested several times a day. Better to drink tap water than water from a plastic bottle. Well, probably in most cases. But not so with much of the water available to First Nations people. Their water is often toxic with chemicals, and sometimes bacteria. The federal government has earmarked a couple billion dollars to resolution of the problem, but these funds have largely been manifested through central purification systems that do not make sense by reason of cost versus benefits and also because of their propensity to malfunction when there is no skilled help to fix them quickly. Our group has an innovative solution that I won’t detail here just yet. It is much more cost effective than anything I’ve seen suggested as a solution, and substantially more reliable so far as I can so far tell. Hopefully, we will be instrumental in enabling the lifting of many “boil water” advisories.