The End of Summer

I’ve just gotten around to making the rounds to change my wall calendars—I’ve got seven of them. It’s not so much that I’m obsessed with what day it is—after 34 years the mail does that for me—but their decorative value.

Today is Labour Day, the day that typically marks the end of the summer season and the beginning of the school year. In Toronto Unionists will be marching in the Labour Day Parade along with the Veterans in a procession that ends in the CNE—it’s one way to get in free. Expect to hear about how severely the weather impacted that venerable institution’s bottom line. The cold weather, several inches of rain from Ernesto, and the foggy glowering skies will have kept people away in droves just as the low ceiling will have kept most of the high performance jets out of the skies. The only people relieved by that happenstance will be the air-traffic controllers at Malton who have to sort out all that extra traffic. In past Air Shows they’ve had to contend with the Anglo-French Concorde, the “so-called” flying cloud from Colorado –that flew in direct, did a fly past, and returned—harrier jets, and some infamous crashes.

The news tomorrow will be filled with the number of people killed in the carnage on our highways—traffic jams are no longer news; who drowned or injured themselves in and on the water; along with statistics about dare-devils injured sky-diving, rock climbing, off-roading, or being just-plain stupid. Me? The closest I expect to come to adventure today is a trip to the garbage chute. If I don’t take it out soon my next adventure will be the battle of the fruit flies.

So how did you spend your weekend? I tinkered with a few photographs, did some browsing on the web, caught up with my E-mail, did some reading, listened to music and podcasts, plus caught up on some computer maintenance. Tomorrow I have to set to work at housekeeping in earnest.

I’ve also watched the movie Troy to check out, now that I’ve read most of it, how it compares with the epic upon which it is based—The Iliad. Given that there’s no historical record that the Trojan Wars ever took place Hollywood can hardly be accused of playing fast and loose with the facts. Allowing for some minor tinkering with events for dramatic effect the movie is reasonably true to the spirit of the piece. Whereas Homer’s audience obviously gloried in the minutia of battle the cinematographers spared us the gory details of disembowelments, immolations, and beheadings; choosing instead to concentrate on the spectacle of wide-angle shots of massive troop engagements. Who, for example could resist portraying the panorama of a thousand ships as launched by that famous face. As with so many charismatic movie stars—seeing her on film on a small screen obviously doesn’t do her justice. The vista of those ships along with the equally famous Trojan Horse, the death of Achilles, the heel, and the sack of Troy are all derived from traditional sources and have no counterpart in the actual poem.

Seems it’s time for my yearly bath so I guess I’d better go attend to that and find something else to write of later.