My almanac project is on a brief hiatus while I explore more immediately profitable work than a book, but please enjoy these reminiscences of July 13ths past.
July 13, 1890: Ambrose Bierce’s best-known short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” is published.
July 13, 1999, South Bend: This morning when I read the newspaper I said, “I want to see Shakespeare in Love.”
Kevin responded, “You want him to be in love?”
I said, “Yes, and I know just the English girl to set him up with.”
So he said, “Okay, Emma.” [Jane Austen reference.]
Later that day I went to the bargain movie theater at Scotsdale Mall, the theater that only costs $1 during the day, and saw Shakespeare in Love. It had Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judy Densch (as Queen Elizabeth), Geoffrey Rush, and Ben Affleck. Rupert Everett appears briefly as Christopher Marlowe; he suggests the plot of Romeo and Juliet (which Shakespeare wanted to call Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter), then gets killed offscreen.
Gwyneth Paltrow was very good at Viola, a lady who loves poetry and the theater. She disguises herself as a man to be an actor and gets the part of Romeo, while at the same time inspiring the role of Juliet. Sadly, their love does not go smoothly, for she has to get married to a local nobleman who wants to make her move to Virginia. (The American colonies were brand spanking new in Shakespeare’s time.)
It’s really a great story. I didn’t know exactly what to expect but was pleased with how the movie unfolded. It’s funny, too.
When I got home I went straight to my bookshelf, pulled down Brush Up Your Poetry (my best source of Brit Lit info), and see what Christopher Marlowe was famous for (other than dying in a bar fight). It seems to be mainly the plays Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta. He coined the phrase “love at first sight:”
“Where both deliberate, the love is slight;
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?”
July 13, 2002, Mishawaka: Tit and I got married at the band shell at Battell Park. After a Polish-style dinner at the reception and hours of dancing and socializing, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott for the night.
I can describe this event in minute detail, but I’m afraid those details won’t be interesting or meaningful to anyone except Tit Elingtin and me.
July 13, 2003: First wedding anniversary! We drove to Navy Pier and went on a cruise on Lake Michigan. Our cruise on the Odyssey II was nothing at all like The Odyssey of Homer. (No, not that minivan that Homer Simpson rented.) We experienced no storms, no shipwrecks.
We had a warm, slightly breezy day. The worst part of it was when we sat on the metal chairs on the observation deck, I got all hot and sweaty and my armpits started to stink. There were no sea monsters. One lady wore a necklace made out of multicolored plastic beads like rosary beads. Not all of the colors were pretty, and they seemed to have been strung in a random order. The resulting mix of colors reminded me of an afghan made with every yarn in the knitting basket. No sea monsters; that necklace was the only aesthetically non-pleasing thing I saw.
No Circe hung around to turn the men into pigs. We all turned ourselves into pigs when presented with the brunch buffet. And then we had a dessert buffet at the end of the cruise. I ate a coconut brownie, a cream-filled pastry, and a slice of raspberry cheese cake. Tit ate all three kinds of cheesecake. He had 2 plates of desserts, actually, washed down with a big glass of chocolate milk. (Mmm, I wish I had one of those chocolate brownies right now.)
One guy sounded a little bit like a pig when his little son showed up with a balloon animal that the ship's magician gave him. “Look daddy, I have a bunny!” he said of a balloon creature with two loops sticking out of the side. “Or a sword!” said the dad. Do you really want to encourage that little boy to prefer weapons to cute, cuddly little creatures, dad? The boy insisted, though, that it was a bunny, not a sword. (I'm not saying I'm against playing games that involve violence or weapons. What I am against is stereotyping children into strict gender roles. More on that follows.) Another boy had a palm tree made out of balloons, and he was pretending it was a gun that shot coconuts.
We encountered no sirens. Thank gods (as Ulysses would say), because I didn't particularly feel like stuffing beeswax in my ears or being tied to the mast. The only music came from the jazz trio. There were some young women in very short skirts whose butts attracted Tit's attention. (I don't mind. He can't help looking, and it's nothing to feel insecure about.) To me, the most tempting (to look at) creature on the ship was a tall, bleached blonde guy in a beige ribbed t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants, and leather loafers with no socks. He was very stylish, and furthermore he spoke with an English accent. He spent the whole time with a shorter, slightly less well-dressed dark-haired man in a light blue polo shirt. They drank coffee out on the hot observation deck and didn't show any signs of sweating. The bleached blonde wasn't exactly a siren, but I could imagine him singing, “You and me and the devil makes three, don't need no other lovin' baby,” like the sirens in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
We met no Cyclops on this Odyssey. Not even a one-eyed Bible salesman. If we wanted adventure, the most we could have hoped for was a balloon-sword fight. It wasn't the boys this time. It was two girls dressed up in platform shoes and–well, dresses. Both of them had hats made out of twisted-up balloons. It reminded me of the creative headdresses worn by the girls (and later, the women) in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The girl in the bright pink dress had her pink hat pulled down over her face, rather like she was in a fencing match. So maybe it wasn't even a “fight.” It might have been more of a good-natured sport.
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Earlier I thought I saw the same girls walking poodles made of balloons. Then I heard a pop. It may have been different little girls. My memory was slightly hazed by the combination of Dramamine and Champagne. I was a little sleepy for most of the cruise. I had about four cups of coffee (some of the best coffee I've ever tasted, by the way) and a Vanilla Coke in Chicago, but it didn't help me stay awake.
Other than the balloon poodles, the strangest creature on the ship was a black butterfly. It passed in front of me, then fluttered toward the shore.
I'll have to thank my parents for the cruise. The weather was pleasant, the view was nice, and the food was awesome. The jazz trio wasn't bad, either. I liked their take on the Marvin Gaye song “What's Going On.”
After the cruise (and despite drowsiness), we walked around downtown (we paid $18 to park in that Navy Pier garage, and we wanted our money's worth) and found the free newspaper New City. I love the clip art in this paper, and I sometimes enjoy reading the descriptions of out-of-the-way theater productions, independent films and art exhibits. Not much good in the July 10 issue, though. I think I should read The Effects of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits, reviewed in the newspaper. [But I never did.]
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Okay, now a word on the Ya-Yas. The movie stars Sandra Bullock as a NY-based writer with a very dysfunctional relationship with her Louisiana mother. The mother has three best friends, and the four of them make up the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. They have their own rituals, including drinking “blood” made of chocolate syrup, as well as a fierce loyalty to each other from childhood. They know all of each other's secrets, like the tragic death of Teensy's brother in the war. They know why the mother, Vivian, disappeared when her children were small, only to reappear months later with no explanation. It seems she had a terrible problem with alcoholism, which her doctors mistakenly thought they could cure with pills.
I wish I could have seen the whole thing and paid it more attention, but I had to go take a shower and get ready for a family wedding.
July 13, 2005: Third wedding anniversary! We took the South Shore to Chicago and visited Shedd Aquarium. We saw a giant Amazonian python, a tank with various species of shark, bioluminescent jellyfish, enormous crabs, white belugas, swimming penguins, and dolphins who understood sign language. Animals! Who understood a human language! That’s astounding!
Later we walked through the art gallery district, where we visited:
• Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery
• Atria Kitchen Design
• Douglas Rosin Decorative Arts and Antiques
• Josephine
• Galeria Gala
From there we hopped on the El, got off at the Berwyn stop, and went to Early to Bed, a sex-positive shop on N. Clark St. I’d seen advertised in Venus magazine. [Wikipedia: “Venus Zine was a quarterly internationally circulated magazine covering women in music, film, art, entertainment, literature, fashion, indie culture, and DIY culture. It was published from 1995 through 2010.”]
In the evening, we took a bicycle taxi to the Hancock Building, where there was no wait to ride the elevator to the 96th floor, the observation deck. We looked to the southwest and saw fireworks being launched from a boat off Navy Pier. Chicago has a large enough contingent of French citizens that it has a Bastille Day celebration, and Bastille Day is July 14th.
July 13, 2010, Mishawaka: For our 8th anniversary, Tit and I ate breakfast at Carol’s, had lunch at Granite City, shopped at the mall, visited my parents, then had dinner at Bonefish Grill.
July 13, 2014, South Bend: For our 12th anniversary, Tit and I went rafting on the East Race. We took two trips down the whitewater race in a rubber raft. I fell in once. Later we went for a tandem bike ride and stopped at Smith’s for a beer.
Monday, July 13, 2020, Indianapolis: We didn’t go anywhere for our anniversary due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, but we did order Chinese food for delivery. The masked delivery driver left the bag of food on our front steps and insisted on getting back in his car before we opened our storm door to get the food. These are the kinds of precautions we have to take when a highly contagious, potentially deadly virus is going around.
Tuesday, July 13, 2021, Indianapolis: On a recommendation from our friend Hadya, Tit and I went to Union 50 on Mass Ave. for our anniversary dinner. It’s literally an old union hall converted into a fancy restaurant. We sat outside on the patio and ordered such things as a meat and cheese board with pimiento cheese, beet salad, and a braised lamb shank. We got carrot cake to go.
Thursday, July 13, 2023: This is what we're doing today:
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