Values. Family. Jobs. Growth. Carbs. Choice. Ownership.
I went to hear a lecture this evening by U-M history professor Victor Lieberman on "Southeast Asian History in a Eurasian Context." Dr. Lieberman's specialization is in Burmese history and I'm pretty sure I used one of his articles in my thesis. Unfortunately, I was there for maybe a minute when I realized that it would almost certainly be a digression on the lecture notes I put together for the class on Southeast Asian history I taught at Akron a few years ago (trade routes, Mongol invasions, Srivijaya, etc.). Outside lay one of the first nice evenings of the year and I was inside in a stuffy lecture room. Off I went, I'm afraid. It was a curious thrill to confront my "past life" for a brief instant, but perhaps there'll be better opportunities down the road.

I'm maybe a third of the way through Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, which is much like pulling teeth. Check this out:

"At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it seemed, without being observed by him."

Most of the book is like that and I'm getting so close to tossing it out the window. On the other hand, I bet if I finish it that I'll be that much readier for Finnegan's Wake.

I finally saw Point Blank (1967) and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Point Blank was all deadly Lee Marvin cool, racing across semi-psychedelic L.A. trying to get his money back from his double-crossing ex-partner (John Vernon, in a terrific screen debut; he was great in The Outlaw Josey Wales as well). McCabe and Mrs. Miller might have been one of my favorite movies had it not been about a half an hour too long. I've always thought Robert Altman was hugely overrated (especially in M*A*S*H), but this was actually pretty good. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are well-matched as a gambler and a hooker who try to spruce up a grim Washington State mining town, and Michael Murphy characteristically livens things up as a clean-cut weasel. I love Michael Murphy. He makes every movie he's in sleazier.

The "greenway" resolution went down before the City Council last night; apparently its supporters behaved like absolute ninnies at the meeting--now I rather wish I'd been there.