. . . . Continuing to read with increasing pleasure Sybille Bedford's A Visit to Don Antonio: A Mexican Journey, which she and her girlfriend? lover? companion? all of the above, made from NYC, where they'd been living, initially to Mexico City, from where they began moving outwards, in 1953.
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| Leon Trotsky's house in Coyocán, where he was assassinated in 1940. With his gravestone, the house is now a museum, though it wasn't yet when Sybille Bedford visited. Another Coyocán resident, Frida Kahlo, was still living, barely. She died in 1954 |
I'm rather baffled how to delineate why this book is something I'm liking so much. Partly because the events happened so far in the past now as to be an historical resource, partly because I've been to some -- not all -- of the places she and E go to (E. is what Bedford discreetly names her in the narrative). I've also taken buses across Mexico, on the very route between Vera Cruz and Mexico City, though my first class, complete with wifi, a selection of television programs, films and music -- and air conditioning -- was surely much more luxurious than theirs. Bedford love-hate for air conditioning is an ongoing motif, which I enjoy. That's only of of the concerns her list-of-every-detail-compulsion which runs through the narrative. Her compression of the history of Maximillian in Mexico to a single paragraph sparked in me no end of admiration, done almost entirely as a list.
As if I didn't have already and amply supply of books to read right now, today picked up from the library the latest Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti mystery, Transient Desires (2021). This is the perfect reading for tomorrow at the hair salon. Getting cut and style, plus full highlighting. I'd gotten the hair cut and styled back in the fall of 2020. And that's been it, since February, 2020.
Next up, the dentist and opthomologist, though that is going to take a while: appointments available are rather far into the late spring - early summer.
So many -- I dunno, what do we call all these little jobs put off for over a year, that normally we do regularly, like taking our shoes in to get heel and toe protectors, buying new underwear, etc? I used to call them errands, because one would just d them in the course of the day of getting groceries etc. But after over a year of not doing them at all, they seem more like jobs than errands.
We did some of those along with the library errand, as well as getting groceries at Morton Williams. Came home, had lunch. The predicted rain is expected any moment. So, just a day. An average, normal day. Not since 2016 has there been one of those.
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. . . . Tomorrow night Postmambo initiates its monthly Movie Night!
As a prelude to NOLA Reconnect, we eased into it with something we call Movie Night. A low-key cyber-cinematheque, watching a relevant non-fiction movie on Vimeo together with conversation afterwards on Zoom. Movie Night turned out great. So, I'm pleased to announce, we're going to have Postmambo Movie Night on the third Thursday of every month for the rest of 2021. Which means that --
===>>> this Thursday night, April 15, at 7 p.m. Central Daylight Time (8 pm Eastern), we're going to watch
This is a documentary, shot over a period of twenty years, about the charanga Las Maravillas de Mali, formed by a group of Malian music students in mid-60s Havana, whose best-known member, Boncana Maiga, subsequently directed the famous Africando recordings in the '90s, including the global dance hit "Yay Boy." Much of the film takes place in Bamako.
Conversing with us after the screening will be special guest Banning Eyre -- my longtime colleague at Afropop Worldwide, author of In Griot Time and general go-to Mali expert -- conversing with us after the screening. I also will share a little footage from Las Maravillas de Mali's reunion in Havana during Jazz Plaza Festival in 2019.
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