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Image via WikipediaDate: Sunday, January 30th, 2011
Word of the Day: cacoethes(kak\oh\EE\theez); an irresistible urge; mania
Weight: two hundred and six (206) pounds
Goal: seventy-four (74)
Waist Size: forty-one (41) inches
Days until Royal Wedding: eighty-nine (89)
Rowing Duration: hopefully soon
Good day, I hope you are all well on this beautiful Sunday day. I'm not bad, and considering how I have been recently, this is indeed good news.
It seems the effects of the steroids that I took while I was in Gainesville, Florida are beginning to wear off, my feet, legs and body have gone done considerably, it is only the feet and legs that are still swollen, and they're not too swollen, I can now put on a pair of shoes.
I'm not completely out of the woods regarding my health, I still have the kidney stones that are sooner or later going to wreck some havoc, and pain, on me, but for now, I'm doing okay, I really don't like to tempt the fates!!!
I will be going this afternoon to pay my respects to my neighbour whose son, David, passed away on Friday, it will be a sad day, but I put my faith in God, and trust that he has a very good reason for calling David home.
Last night after dinner, I was feeling pretty good so I suggested to Zac that we go out to a movie, and to my surprise, Zac wanted to go, so Zac, Judy and I went off to see the movie "The Green Hornet" in 3D, starring Seth Rogen, who is a very, funny man. The movie also starred Cameron Diaz who is a knockout!, but I felt Christoph Waltz, who is also in the movie, you may remember he was so excellent in the film "Inglorious Bastards" and won a Best Supporting Academy Award for that film, I felt Mr. Waltz was not used to his potential in this movie and was kind of wasted, oh well, I guess you can't always bat a thousand!, especially if you're not me!!!!
Naturally, on a Saturday night the movie house was packed, I believe it was sold out, but we still managed to get good seats. The movie was quite funny and I enjoyed it alot, as did Zac and Judy. Our neighbour, April, babysat Winter, just in case you were wondering about her.
I expect to resume my rowing tomorrow, I have not rowed since we left Gainesville, Florida, and am feeling quite out of shape, (that could be because Efrem you are out of shape!,) anyway, this past week I have been building up my strength by going up and down the stairs, not all of them, say seventy (70) percent of them, so I think I will be ready by tomorrow, at least I hope I'll be able to do it, I've missed Cruella.
As you know, I do think of myself as a writer, it's true I'm not a published writer, unless you count this blog, but I am a writer regardless, and a writer that I really admire is Anton Chekhov whose birthday it would have been today, so I would like to salute him and tell you a little bit about him.
First off, I want to publicly state that I know alot of you are cognizant that Chekhov is famous for his plays, and they are excellent, I mean, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard and Three sisters border on genius, they're brilliant, I have even acted in a couple of these plays, but I think Chekhov's short stories, especially "The Lady with the Dog," prove that story writing is where Chekhov's real talent and strength lay, "The Lady with the Dog" is probably the best story I have ever read, and if you haven't read it, you should, twice!
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов (Russian) (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature. Chekhov's career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." I bet there are alot of you out there learning this for the first time, that I what I'm here for, to provide you with interests and to give you information that you may not have known before!
Dr. Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text."
Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. Chekhov made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Anton Chekhov once remarked "Our talents we got from our father," "but our soul from our mother."
Chekhov attended a school for Greek boys, followed by the Taganrog gymnasium, now renamed the Chekhov Gymnasium, where he was kept down for a year at fifteen for failing a Greek exam. Chekhov sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled:
When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts."
In 1882, Chekhov assumed responsibility for the whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man without a Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). Chekhov's prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leikin, one of the leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.
In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor for free. In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened; but he would not admit tuberculosis to his family and friends, confessing to Leikin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." Chekhov continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodation. Early in 1886 Chekhov was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg, Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin, who paid per line a rate double Leikin's and allowed him three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest.
The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story, finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life which he realizes has been without purpose. This story influences me tremendously because I so much want to leave my mark on this world, and I want my life to have purpose, and not just in my eyes!
By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis. Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it." On 3 June Chekhov set off with his wife Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in the Black Forest, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha describing the food and surroundings and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way the German women dressed, I love that fact, can you imagine?
Chekhov’s death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history", retold, embroidered, and fictionalised many times since, notably in the short story Errand by Raymond Carver. In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband’s last moments:
Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ("I'm dying"). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: "It's a long time since I drank champagne." Chekhov drained it, lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child.
Chekhov’s body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway car for fresh oysters, a detail which offended Gorky. Some of the thousands of mourners followed the funeral procession of a General Keller by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band. Chekhov was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
There is the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic, lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed, as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony, or in other words, CHEKHOV!!, a hero of literature of mine.
I realize that some things I write about do not interest everyone, that is because we are all different people, thank goodness, but I do try to pick topics that are varied, even if I do write about a plethora of things that interest me personally.
Yesterday, I included bits of an article that discussed what men find attractive in women. I selected this article because I know that my audience is comprised of mostly women and I thought you would find this interesting. However, I did not receive any comments on this topics and I was a little disappointed.
Now, it could be that you are all busy, it is the weekend, or perhaps you were disgusted with the bit, regardless, I am trying to reach you and I enjoy getting feedback on my posts, so please remember that when you read my blog. Do take a minute, now and then, (you don't have to provide feedback on every post,) to let me know what you think of my post and of my blog, I really appreciate it.
I hope you all have a great Sunday and take care.
Topics coming soon:
Art
Politics
Cartoons
Word of the Day: cacoethes(kak\oh\EE\theez); an irresistible urge; mania
Weight: two hundred and six (206) pounds
Goal: seventy-four (74)
Waist Size: forty-one (41) inches
Days until Royal Wedding: eighty-nine (89)
Rowing Duration: hopefully soon
Good day, I hope you are all well on this beautiful Sunday day. I'm not bad, and considering how I have been recently, this is indeed good news.
It seems the effects of the steroids that I took while I was in Gainesville, Florida are beginning to wear off, my feet, legs and body have gone done considerably, it is only the feet and legs that are still swollen, and they're not too swollen, I can now put on a pair of shoes.
I'm not completely out of the woods regarding my health, I still have the kidney stones that are sooner or later going to wreck some havoc, and pain, on me, but for now, I'm doing okay, I really don't like to tempt the fates!!!
I will be going this afternoon to pay my respects to my neighbour whose son, David, passed away on Friday, it will be a sad day, but I put my faith in God, and trust that he has a very good reason for calling David home.
Last night after dinner, I was feeling pretty good so I suggested to Zac that we go out to a movie, and to my surprise, Zac wanted to go, so Zac, Judy and I went off to see the movie "The Green Hornet" in 3D, starring Seth Rogen, who is a very, funny man. The movie also starred Cameron Diaz who is a knockout!, but I felt Christoph Waltz, who is also in the movie, you may remember he was so excellent in the film "Inglorious Bastards" and won a Best Supporting Academy Award for that film, I felt Mr. Waltz was not used to his potential in this movie and was kind of wasted, oh well, I guess you can't always bat a thousand!, especially if you're not me!!!!
Naturally, on a Saturday night the movie house was packed, I believe it was sold out, but we still managed to get good seats. The movie was quite funny and I enjoyed it alot, as did Zac and Judy. Our neighbour, April, babysat Winter, just in case you were wondering about her.
I expect to resume my rowing tomorrow, I have not rowed since we left Gainesville, Florida, and am feeling quite out of shape, (that could be because Efrem you are out of shape!,) anyway, this past week I have been building up my strength by going up and down the stairs, not all of them, say seventy (70) percent of them, so I think I will be ready by tomorrow, at least I hope I'll be able to do it, I've missed Cruella.
As you know, I do think of myself as a writer, it's true I'm not a published writer, unless you count this blog, but I am a writer regardless, and a writer that I really admire is Anton Chekhov whose birthday it would have been today, so I would like to salute him and tell you a little bit about him.
First off, I want to publicly state that I know alot of you are cognizant that Chekhov is famous for his plays, and they are excellent, I mean, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard and Three sisters border on genius, they're brilliant, I have even acted in a couple of these plays, but I think Chekhov's short stories, especially "The Lady with the Dog," prove that story writing is where Chekhov's real talent and strength lay, "The Lady with the Dog" is probably the best story I have ever read, and if you haven't read it, you should, twice!
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов (Russian) (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature. Chekhov's career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." I bet there are alot of you out there learning this for the first time, that I what I'm here for, to provide you with interests and to give you information that you may not have known before!
Dr. Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text."
Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. Chekhov made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Anton Chekhov once remarked "Our talents we got from our father," "but our soul from our mother."
Chekhov attended a school for Greek boys, followed by the Taganrog gymnasium, now renamed the Chekhov Gymnasium, where he was kept down for a year at fifteen for failing a Greek exam. Chekhov sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled:
When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts."
In 1882, Chekhov assumed responsibility for the whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man without a Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). Chekhov's prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leikin, one of the leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.
In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor for free. In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened; but he would not admit tuberculosis to his family and friends, confessing to Leikin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." Chekhov continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodation. Early in 1886 Chekhov was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg, Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin, who paid per line a rate double Leikin's and allowed him three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest.
The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story, finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life which he realizes has been without purpose. This story influences me tremendously because I so much want to leave my mark on this world, and I want my life to have purpose, and not just in my eyes!
By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis. Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it." On 3 June Chekhov set off with his wife Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in the Black Forest, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha describing the food and surroundings and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way the German women dressed, I love that fact, can you imagine?
Chekhov’s death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history", retold, embroidered, and fictionalised many times since, notably in the short story Errand by Raymond Carver. In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband’s last moments:
Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ("I'm dying"). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: "It's a long time since I drank champagne." Chekhov drained it, lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child.
Chekhov’s body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway car for fresh oysters, a detail which offended Gorky. Some of the thousands of mourners followed the funeral procession of a General Keller by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band. Chekhov was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
There is the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic, lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed, as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony, or in other words, CHEKHOV!!, a hero of literature of mine.
I realize that some things I write about do not interest everyone, that is because we are all different people, thank goodness, but I do try to pick topics that are varied, even if I do write about a plethora of things that interest me personally.
Yesterday, I included bits of an article that discussed what men find attractive in women. I selected this article because I know that my audience is comprised of mostly women and I thought you would find this interesting. However, I did not receive any comments on this topics and I was a little disappointed.
Now, it could be that you are all busy, it is the weekend, or perhaps you were disgusted with the bit, regardless, I am trying to reach you and I enjoy getting feedback on my posts, so please remember that when you read my blog. Do take a minute, now and then, (you don't have to provide feedback on every post,) to let me know what you think of my post and of my blog, I really appreciate it.
I hope you all have a great Sunday and take care.
Topics coming soon:
Art
Politics
Cartoons
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