✨GANDALF the Great Blue Heron!✨

I was mesmerized by this guy! This was a senior Great Blue Heron, with a shaggy beard and wings which he preened while I filmed. There is something mystical about this bird, which is why I called him Gandalf. 

ASMR: Cat Crunchies (late at night!)

I spend some quality time with Bentley, late at night. This is an unvarying ritual in which he paws at me, yawns, paws at me some more, then finally gets his treats. I love the crunchy sounds in this video - very soothing!

💥HIP HOP SPECTACULAR: Lauren Owns the Stage!💥

More incredible dancing from Lauren and crew!

The Hampter Tango (a mystery solved!)

OKAAAAAY, you may ask, and rightly so, what am I doing posting all these YouTube videos today? What I'm doing is finally connecting the dots on something that has been driving me crazy.

For some inane reason, very late at night, maybe just to ease the wear and the tear on my mind, I began to watch hamster videos - no, HAMPTER videos, which are a completely separate genre and generally last no more than a few seconds. Hampters falling down, hampters spinning in wheels, hampters stuffing their cheeks. I was confused at first, but soon saw the light. Either the creators can't spell worth a damn, or - more likely - this is the new, cool, internet/social media way to spell "hamster".

But the hampter I'm talking about - it wasn't even the hampter itself, but the music that came with it. It was just a few bars of a very familiar melody, but played on what sounded like mariachi trumpets, with a loud sort of synthesized percussion and somebody yelling hip-hop-ish things in the background.

BUT THE SONG! What was the name of that song?

I became transfixed by the melody, mainly because it was both so familiar and so impossible to pin down. Surely it was one of the most familiar tangos of all? For it HAD to be a tango, in spite of the mariachi-style inflections added by whatever group was playing it.

So what did I have to go on? I HAD to find out what this was called so I could track down a decent version of it. But did you think I could? 

So I listened to the goddamned "angry hampter" one over and over again, while I scrolled and played and searched, and kept finding those other two classics, La Cumparsita and Jalousy (which is the only tango I ever attempted to play on the violin). But nothing would match up. It was so frustrating I finally had to just give up.

But just now, in the last half-hour or so, I decided to give it another shot. 

AND THEN.

To my astonishment, BINGO, here it was, sounding nearly identical to my beloved Hampter Tango. Not only that, I easily found three different versions of it by three brass ensembles, but thought this had that extra little sassy edge. It sounded more Mexican, though the original piece is Argentinian.

But the weird thing is, now I realize I DID listen to the HampterTango (El Choclo, which makes me wonder if it means "chocolate tango") and just could not make the match. Tangos have an irritating habit of long, ornate introductions, I suppose to get the dancers out on the dance floor. Maybe I never got past that?

But, oh, then! THEN I had the actual title of the piece and could go wild. There were hundreds, if not thousands of arrangements for this piece, but when I hit on this one I went into raptures. I'm not a big accordion fan - I always thought of them as cooling devices - but in this case, as a purveyor of tango passion, it sounded just right. So I was about to hang it up, satisfied I'd made my match with the hampter video. 

But of course, there was more. 

This string ensemble version is simply exquisite, and the music video that goes along with it is charming - though are those women really that gorgeous, that sexy? How many serious musicians actually look like that? Never mind. The three versions - brass, accordion and strings - rounded out the tastiness of the piece very nicely.

But then this one came to mind. . . one of the very first YouTube videos EVER, and one that I listened to endlessly when the grandkids came over in about 2008. 

This is the root, the original, the ur-video, the Hamster Dance (sorry, "Hampter") which took YouTube by storm in the early '00s and never quite left. Who knows, it may even have inspired the Angry Hampter video that started this whole mad chase. 

THE KICKER! I simply had to look up El Choclo, to see what it actually meant - just assuming it had something to do with chocolate - rich, dark, flowing chocolate with a bittersweet edge, sensuous, luscious, just like the tango itself! 

Here's what it means.

"El Choclo" (Spanish: meaning "The Corn Cob") is a popular song written by Ángel Villoldo, an Argentine musician. Allegedly written in honour of and taking its title from the nickname of the proprietor of a nightclub, who was known as "El Choclo". It is one of the most popular tangos in Argentina.

(I'm going to bed now.)

Harry and Meghan: "Florid, banal psycho-babble reeking of opportunism"

 

Florid, banal psycho-babble reeking of opportunism - Harry and Meghan are riding other people's grief like trams

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail

Published: 21:24 EST, 1 February 2024 | Updated: 04:09 EST, 2 February 2024

Veteran Sussex watchers were ­yesterday in their power-showers, trying to scrub clean after the latest hosing of treacle from Meghan and Harry.

The couple had issued another of their press statements, this time about child safety on the internet.

Such announcements have become a regular part of the Sussexes’ modus operandi, linking them to a topical issue on which they can parade their empathy.

Their statement, not for the first time, was peppered with American emotionalism, tear-stained platitude mixed with a certain self-serving preachiness. Florid, banal, breathy, reeking of opportunism, it is an art form the exiled royals are fast making their own.

Commenting on a US Senate hearing into dreadful instances of internet child abuse, the duo applauded the ‘bravery and determination’ (one noun alone will never do) of parents whose children had suffered.

As they clawed their way into the circle of virtue – outta the way, people, this is about us –the Sussexes boasted that ‘over the past few years we have spent time with many of these families, listening to their heartache and their hopes for the urgent change that is needed’.

This was ‘an issue that transcends division and party lines’. They also disclosed that one father had told them ‘if love could have saved them, all of our children would still be here’.

Journalistic scepticism may seem harsh given the sensitivity of the issue at hand; yet when an issue is this delicate, would it not be seemly for minor royals to keep their self-promotional psycho-babble to themselves?

This is not the first time that Prince Harry and his actress wife have contributed their unremarkable thoughts on a raw area of public debate.

If they did so spontaneously after, for example, having a microphone thrust into their faces at some public event, it might feel all right.

But the Sussexes come out with sentimental saws on the level of low-grade greetings cards, and they do so by placing them under the ‘news’ section of their personal website. Sorry, but this is pure PR puffery. ‘Turn pain into purpose,’ said Harry at a World Mental Health Day event in New York in October. As it happens, he was talking about how those who suffer misfortune can sometimes become stronger as a result.

‘Days are long but years are short,’ added his consort at the same event.

Eh? It’s the sort of inscrutable gibberish guru Master Po used to say to Grasshopper in the 1970s TV show Kung Fu.

Or take this corker. ‘I’m confident,’ said Meghan, again on mental health, ‘that with more ears and awareness and visibility of what is really happening, we can make some significant change together.’ More ears? Are two not enough for anyone?

As part of her payback to Netflix, from which she and her husband received millions of dollars, the Duchess disclosed that in her wedding speech she spoke of ‘the everlasting knowing that, above all, love wins’.

If you said that at most English county weddings there would be a ripple of mirth and a teasing forest of fingers down throats. Heaven knows what Harry’s old muckers made of his bride’s claim.

Guy Pelly must have almost done the nose trick.

But Meghan appears impervious to British taste. She is immune to the most diabetic-high levels of rhetorical saccharine.

Along with the unfortunate, droopy-tailed Harry, the duchess is a devotee of California psycho-babble and of anxieties being worn as social and political badges.

Look at me, these say, I’m sensitive, I’m not a viciously ambitious, multi-millionaire, West Coast actress cynically adopting positions for career purposes. I’m a genuinely humble, vulnerable, touchy-feely soul. And if you suggest otherwise my attorneys will bust your ass.

If British politicians issued the sort of emetic press releases that Harry and Meghan do, they would be swiftly denounced for gross misjudgement and for trying to surf on other people’s misery. Again, you may think this a harsh comment.

You may say ‘but Harry and Meghan are not politicians’.

I am afraid I would disagree with you. They are behaving in an intensely political manner, beating their breasts for public consumption. Note, too, the repeated calls for ‘change’. These smack of political campaigning.

The Sussexes may think that their press releases are powerful and poetic. To British tastes they will, possibly, more likely look manipulative and opportunistic.

Merely as literary ventures, they are cloyingly mawkish, viscous in their sentimentality.

Whoever writes them has the prose style of a schoolgirl diarist. It is sad that the prince has lost sight of the British virtue of understatement. When it comes to expressions of sympathy, less is always more.

Instead, we are subjected to this mush and gush. On Planet Sussex, ‘light’ is always being ‘shined’, be it on empowerment or inequality. Trite stylistic doubles are deployed.

Writing in Elle magazine, Meghan said that women should ‘focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings’. And then there was ‘a ripple of hope can turn into a wave of change’ – a phrase the couple pinched off the late Robert Kennedy and used at some humanitarian awards in 2022.

There is much ‘focusing on wellbeing’ and ‘relating to shared experiences and challenges’ and ‘discovering of opportunities for growth’.

‘Mentoring’ is a must-have, both for mentors and, dreadful word, ‘mentees’. And ‘hearts’ are invariably ‘heavy’.

Other people’s disaster and grief are ridden like trams.

💥COCKATOO JUMP SCARE! The Best Moment in CITIZEN KANE💥

The famous cockatoo jump scare from Citizen Kane. I watched this movie again recently, and it slapped me in the face just like before, but in all different places. It is truly astonishing and can't really be analyzed. But it's a cautionary tale. To peak at age 26 is a sad thing, particularly in light of Welles' later performances in commercials:  frozen peas, fish sticks, beef burgers, California plonk, board games, cameras, photocopiers, Japanese whisky. . . and the list goes on and on. Most memorable were the Paul Masson drunken outtakes. I would feel sorry for Welles, except that  I don't, because everything I have ever heard about him would indicate he was a big overgrown baby (later, a bearded baby) who treated everyone around him like shit. And never let anyone forget that he was a genius. Well, Citizen Kane WAS genius, but I am not so sure about Welles.

💗Erica Dances her Heart Out!💗

                                               The amazing Erica Gunning.

🔥💗My Heart's on Fire! An Incredible Dance Performance💗🔥

I have no words! The amazing Lauren Gunning, who has trained as a dancer and choreographer from the age of three - an incredible thirteen years. I can't even cry when I watch this, I am too busy gasping. 

Dance, dance, dance the night away!

 

💗BACKSTAGE at the DANCE RECITAL!

I hope to post some actual dance footage, if I can get around the copyright restrictions on the music. A fun time was had by all!

FUDGE WARS! Follow Mr. Swanley's no-fail recipe for perfectly made fudge (or else)!

 

I was YouTubing around (late at night, like always) and began to look at fudge recipes, as my last two batches hadn't turned out very well. I found the following jaw-dropping exchange between what could only be called a fudge scientist, and a few other people who were obviously having him on: but what made it even more delicious (pardon the pun) is that he had NO IDEA they were having him on. 

He took them entirely seriously in their earnest questions about the specific gravity of the fudge he was making - even asking him for a copy of his spreadsheet! - and just continued to pontificate, a self-involved, know-it-all, university-certified crashing bore, the type you never want to get caught with at a party. He ripped into the one person who had something intelligent (not to mention relevant) to say about the whole thing, accusing her of finding spiritual fulfillment in failure. Ain't YouTube grand?

MrSwanley2 years ago (edited)
I have tried making fudge many times, and found it near impossible to get consistent results using this technique. Then, being an engineer, I realised that both temperature and soft ball tests are (unreliable) ways to estimate water content. If you knew the target water content you could just measure it directly by weighing the pot and contents, before and after - there is no need to estimate it. I now believe that perfect fudge has a water content of around 10.5%. Hence with this recipe your starting weight is 1094g (+pot) and I predict that if you cook it until you reduce to 931g (+pot), leave to cool for 8 mins, beat for 5 minutes and pour... you should end up with perfect fudge every time. I made myself a little spreadsheet to calculate moisture content of common ingredients, and so far I've hit the nail every time I've followed it. In fact this method is precise enough to go for a particular type of fudge, e.g. moist or slightly dry.
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AnyaLake1 year ago
+MrSwanley well good for you, you just took the joy out of it!
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake The joy comes from eating and gifting perfectly made fudge, in fact I'm not aware of what other joy there is to be had. However, if you get some kind of spiritual fulfillment from failure then you can just keep on doing what you're doing. Nobody is forcing you.
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Joseph Mory1 year ago
+MrSwanley from one engineer to another, would you care sharing that spreadsheet?
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MrSwanley1 year ago
+Joseph Mory I'm willing, but I don't know how to get a file to you. I don't use any file sharing sites and I believe YT would block the URL anyway. I don't see a personal message system either. Besides which, the spreadsheet is nothing special. It's just a list of ingredients by weight (g), for each ingredient I input an estimated water % and use that to calculate the water grams. I sum the columns to calculate total weight and total water %, and a final section allows me to enter a target water% and predict what the total weight should be when that amount of water is removed. Basic assumption that all mass lost is water vapour. My water% estimates for important ingredients are milk(87%), sweetened condensed milk(33%), butter(15%). That's in the UK: different parts of the world have different standards for solids content of dairy products, so I would double check those.
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Joseph Mory1 year ago
I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out, thanks for the input!
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AnyaLake1 year ago
a spiritually fulfilled person would have sent a PM, exchanged emails or even posted onto google docs given that everyone posting here by definition has a google account. Right back to failing in life I go ...
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake I am here trying to share ideas with other people who are interested in making fudge. You seem to be intent on nothing except picking a fight - for no good reason that I can see. Thanks for reminding me about Google: I just used it to mute any further posts from you.
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Fyfy zyzy1 year ago
+MrSwanley I was wondering your calculations include the pot, how much does your pot weigh? Just so I could calculate and get exact results every time but with using my pot weight. Thank you for sharing what you have discovered.
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+Fyfy zyzy The weights I gave don't include the pot, that's why I say (+pot) beside them. They are just the sum of the weights of the recipe ingredients, before and after removing water. Add the weight of your own pot to both.
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Sam LSD1 year ago
thanks for that scientific calculation about moisture content.
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Zilliz 0002 months ago
MrSwanley or....you could just use a candy thermometer! !
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ferociousgumby20 hours ago
Woah!
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FUDGE WARS, ROUND 2!: I just perused a few more fudge recipes on YouTube, and you wouldn't believe who popped up in the comments, giving everyone even more grief about the sacred science of fudge-making. Some poor lady, obviously just trying to be helpful, posted a conversion from British weight measurement to the standard North American dry measure system (cups instead of ounces/mls). And once again, the Fudge Grinch popped up.

Abigail Skelton2 years ago
FOR EVERYONE IN AMERICA, HERE ARE THE INGREDIENTS: 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter 2 cups brown sugar 1/2 cup milk about 1 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk what recipe should I convert next?
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Abigail Skelton2 years ago
+thecraftyzebra Your welcome! Any suggestions for another recipe to convert?
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MrSwanley2 years ago
+the wild one I hate it when people use liquid volumetric measures for solids such as butter, and things with variable density, such as sugar. Even in America I'd have thought people would want to use sensible, repeatable measures. So, no more conversions please.
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Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+the wild one Thank you for converting this for us in the US! Love these recipes! Please do caramel tarts!

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Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+MrSwanley Speak for yourself only. I appreciate the conversions!
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Tabitha Crouse1 year ago
Thank you so much! That is extremely helpful!
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E Winter1 year ago
I know right. mrswanley has a lot of nerve speaking for everyone. Needs to mind his business if the conversations aren't useful for him.
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Melatina771 year ago (edited)
Great tasting fudge and easy to make!
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MrSwanley1 year ago
+E Winter It would help if you learned to speak and interpret English before making a fool of yourself. I clearly said "_I_ hate it", not "_we_ hate it", i.e. at no time did I claim to speak for anyone except myself. And I stand by what I said, which most people with a brain will recognize as common sense.
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Woahhh!!

🌺The Troll Doll Channel: Venus in the Garden🌺

Some of my loveliest trolls, with my favorite YouTube music by Sir Cubworth. Just wish the light was brighter, but my office is very dark. 

These cannot be trolls. . .

6 Vintage Mini Baby Dolls Troll Creepy Spooky Miniatures Halloween Props 1.25"

Condition:

Used

“Miniature dolls are in vintage condition. Please see photos.”

Price:

US $9.99

ApproximatelyC $13.45

Shipping:

US $15.53 (approx C $20.91) eBay International Shipping

Located in: Farmington, Minnesota, United States

Authorities may apply duties, fees, and taxes upon delivery

Delivery:

Estimated between Mon, Feb 5 and Mon, Feb 12 to V3B 5V3

Seller ships within 2 days 

30 days return. Buyer pays for return shipping. 

    

Every once in a while, when I'm trolling for trolls, I come across an eBay listing that makes my hair stand on end. Why anyone would want these six grubby little things, looking worse than the average Haitian juju doll, is beyond me. They're only about an inch high, and I can't even tell you what they remind me of, except to say it's something that didn't go to full term.

The fact that they are described as "used" makes me wonder - used for WHAT? Surely to place some sort of exotic curse on someone you REEEEALLLY don't like. I don't see how you'd use them as a spooky Halloween prop, except maybe slipping one into someone's drink or placing them inside a pumpkin spice doughnut or something equally nasty. Or sneaking them into a bag of innocent-looking gummie bears? 

Doorbell cam captures emotional moment

This made me cry!

The Glass Palace Revisited: did this book change, or did I?

THE GLASS PALACE by Amitav Ghosh      Random House      470 pages   ISBN:  0-375-50148-7

The Globe and Mail books section    January 16, 2001

Review by Margaret Gunning

      THE GLASS PALACE is a vibrant blockbuster of a novel, described by a London critic as “a Doctor Zhivago for the Far East”.  It’s historical drama on a grand scale, swift-moving yet packed with detail, as naturally cinematic (and romantic) as GONE WITH THE WIND.  But beneath this colorful exterior run deep currents of conscience, lending the novel extra dimensions.  Two lovers are the glue binding together a massive century-long sweep of story, from the British invasion of Burma (now Myanmar) in the late 1800s through the chaos of two World Wars to the age of e-mail and the Internet.

     The novel opens in 1885 with an ominous rumbling sound, “unfamiliar and unsettling, a distant booming followed by low, stuttering growls.”  Only one person in the marketplace of Mandalay knows what the sound is – an eleven-year-old Indian-born orphan boy named Rajkumar:  “ ‘English cannon,’ he said in his fluent but heavily accented Burmese.  ‘They’re shooting somewhere up the river.  Heading in this direction.’”

     As usual, the canny young survivor’s instincts are correct.  British soldiers have invaded the royal city of Mandalay, and are about to send the King and Queen into bitter exile.  Burma is rich in teak forests, and though the people are incredulous (“A war over wood?  Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”), they soon must join neighboring India in submitting to British rule.

     As King Thebaw and the haughty Queen Supayalat are forced to leave the glittering Glass Palace, looters quickly move in to scavenge what they can find.  Young Rajkumar watches in shock as the unguarded palace is stripped of its treasures:  “Armed with a rock, a girl was knocking the ornamental frets out of a crocodile-shaped zither; a man was using a meat cleaver to scrape the gilt from the neck of a saung-gak harp; and a woman was chiseling furiously at the ruby eyes of a bronze chinthe lion.”

     The irony here is that the King and Queen are respected and even beloved figures in Burma.  But Ghosh is adept at stripping the veils off human nature, to reveal the crude drive for survival that lives even in seemingly innocent hearts.

     Before the royal couple are sent away to India, Rajkumar has an extraordinary encounter with a young girl, one of Queen Supayalat’s attendants:  “She was slender and long-limbed, of a complexion that was exactly the tint of the fine thanaka powder she was wearing on her face.  She had huge dark eyes and her face was long and perfect in its symmetry.  She was by far the most beautiful creature he had ever beheld, of a loveliness beyond imagining.”  The young girl shyly tells Rajkumar her name:  “Dolly.”  It is as if the name is branded into his heart, for even after years of separation he continues to believe that this still, mysterious creature is his destiny.

     Rajkumar seems to represent the human will to survive – and even thrive – even under the most adverse conditions.  Destined for success, he goes to work for his friend and mentor Saya John in the teak industry, eventually creating a kind of empire of his own.

     Meanwhile, in Ratnagiri, India, Dolly continues to care for the daughters of the exiled royal family.  District Collector Dey , a sort of combination jailer and protector-figure, keeps close watch over the family; like so many of the oppressors in the British regime, he is Indian.  His wife Uma, restless and intelligent, strikes up a close, unlikely friendship with Dolly which neither of them realizes will last a lifetime.

     Ghosh deeply explores the complex nature of oppression as his huge story unfolds.  Of the British, one of his characters comments, “They don’t wish to be cruel; they don’t want any martyrs; all they want is that the King should be lost to memory – like an old umbrella in a dusty cupboard.”  The Collector cynically observes about Rajkumar, now a well-known figure, “Do you think this man Raha would have been able to get rich if Thebaw were still ruling?  Why, if it were not for the British, the Burmese would probably have risen up against these Indian businessmen and driven them out like sheep.”

     When Rajkumar meets Dolly again in Ratnagiri years later, she is little changed, “a prisoner who knew the exact dimensions of her cage and could look for contentment within those confines.”  This odd stillness gives her a rare sort of power, as for the rest of the story she will become the eye of a hurricane of world events.  When Rajkumar and Dolly finally marry, there is a satisfying sense of resolution.  But where a lesser novel might have ended, this one is just getting started.

     There are several strands of story that radiate outwards from the golden couple.  When Uma’s husband the Collector dies, she reinvents herself dramatically as a world traveler and, later, a political radical for the cause of Indian self-rule.  Her nephew Arjun, first an eager young recruit in the British Indian army, undergoes a huge upheaval in conscience when he realizes that serving the oppressor (and thereby gaining some personal status) is morally indefensible.

     The bond between Uma and Dolly is further cemented when Uma’s niece Manju marries Neel, one of Dolly’s sons.  The other son, Dinu, falls in love with Alison, the granddaughter of Rajkumar’s old mentor Saya John.  (At the end, Ghosh takes us nicely up to the present day when Dolly’s granddaughter Jaya embarks on an internet search to find her uncle Dinu, now a very old man.)  Though all these interconnections are complex, the skeins of story never become tangled due to Ghosh’s awesome gift for storytelling, which includes an ability to cover tremendous ground without shirking on intimate details.

     This is a novel brimming over with ideas, exploring the ways we cooperate with our own oppression, the nature of exploitation, the dehumanizing effects of racism and dispossession, and the miraculous way in which a change of consciousness (as with Uma and Arjun) can eventually alter the course of history.

     Ghosh is so adept at entertaining us with his big, rip-roaring story that we barely realize we are being enlightened.  Through his characters he delivers some powerful punches, as in this exchange between Arjun and his friend during World War II: 

     “ ‘As colonial masters go the British aren’t that bad – better than most.  Certainly a lot better than the Japanese would be.’

     ‘In a way the better the master is, the worse the condition of the slave, because it makes him forget what he is.’ “

     The way Ghosh drops in jarring little references to British culture is masterful.  At one social event on a rubber plantation in Malaya, peanut crumpets are served.  Manju goes to fetch “the Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit tin in which she kept Arjun’s letters”.  And Arjun remarks to his friend (whose name has been Anglicized from Hardip), “Just look at us, Hardy – just look at us.  What are we?  We’ve learned to dance the tango and we know how to eat roast beef with a knife and fork.  The truth is that except for the color of our skin, most people in India wouldn’t even recognize us as Indians.”

     The highest calling of a writer is to serve as the conscience of humanity.  Ghosh’s writing is so saturated with conscience that it transcends all but the best historical works.  (The author lives up to his convictions.  He recently turned down a shot at the prestigious Commonwealth Literary Prize on the grounds that the very existence of a “Commonwealth” smacks of the old imperialism.)  In THE GLASS PALACE Ghosh has created a work of literature that deserves to become as permanent as all the maddening, beautiful paradoxes of human nature.

BLOGGER'S UPDATE. So did this book change, or did I? Re-reading it in 2024, it hardly seems like the same scintillating epic I rhapsodized about in this review. I wrote it for the Globe and Mail in 2001, and naturally, the passage of more than 20 years has changed my perspective on practically everything. Though I was kind of pleasantly surprised at the review itself and thought it was well-written, not to mention a fair summation of this ponderous doorstop of a book, it nevertheless just lands completely differently with me now.

I’m making my way through it as my bedtime reading,  which is in part designed to bring on a peaceful slumber. Thick books are appreciated, mostly novels and biographies. My husband jokes that I buy my books by the pound. But these days, finding anything truly well-written sends me back to the stacks and things I've read before, at least once.  The Glass Palace isn’t exactly making me sleepy, but I’m finding it much harder to get through. In fact, it's a bit of a trudge. 

For one thing, every page seems to have at least three unidentified words in foreign languages – with very little context to give the reader any idea what these words mean. This violates one of the cardinal rules of good writing: Never talk down to your readers – or right past them, for that matter! Keeping us in the dark as to what you actually mean is - what? Irresponsible? But it has the effect of watching two people talk to each other in a private code while you struggle to understand what they are saying. It's insular. And it's exclusive. It pushes us away from this richly exotic culture rather than welcoming us in. This means Ghosh just lost a major point with me. Had I compiled a glossary when I started re-reading it, the list would likely be in the hundreds by now (and I’m not even finished reading yet!).

This means that my poor cat Bentley has to listen to me fist-pound and curse and yell, "NOT ANOTHER ONE!" every couple of pages. What does the man mean, and why won't he tell us? The only reason I don't throw the book across the room is that it's just too heavy to lift.

The multitude of characters are on the whole well-drawn, but it’s hard to keep track of the players, as the book covers something like a hundred years and three generations. But the younger generation in this book just don’t come across as young. They seem like throwbacks to the 1920s or 30s in their idiom and attitudes. Are they stereotypes? Not quite, but I’m struggling to get a picture of some of them, of how they come up against each other, how they succeed and fail and grapple with each other in their march through history. (And that's another issue: every single thing these people do seems to be drenched in historical significance, which I can't get into here or I'd have to write another 1200 words.)

 I’ve noticed this “damn, the book changed” phenomenon, of course. We all do. I’ve watched movies from the 1990s that I absolutely loved, and have been borderline-appalled at the poor quality of them. My Best Friend’s Wedding fell apart completely, with its sophomoric and even puerile sexual crudeness and its utter lack of chemistry between Hugh Grant and Andie McDowall. Only the poem recited over the gay partner’s grave is any good, and it’s by W. H. Auden.

So is The Glass Palace a period piece, and if so, from what period? Hard to say. Sweeping sagas are harder to sell nowadays. All I know is that I'm glad I don’t have to go through the laborious process of reading and then reviewing it again. I only had two weeks, no matter how long the book, one week to read and one week to write, making copious notes all the while. Then I had to get it in on the dot, then wait three or four weeks for it to actually run so I’d be paid my $250.00. (Not to mention the $50.00 "kill fee", which was all I'd get if they decided not to publish it.)

 And yes, folks, as amazing and astounding as this is to most people, I DID get paid. It was, and is, work. Writers have needs, breathe, need to eat and take shelter. People were always astonished that  I would actually be PAID to trudge through a thousand-page book and earn the incredible sum of $250.00. Most of the many newspapers and magazines  I worked for all across Canada paid considerably less. But the fact this had anything at all to do with money (shouldn't I just be starving in a garret somewhere?) astounded most people.

"Do they PAY you for that?" would be the incredulous query. When I said yes, then I'd get, "How much?" If I made the mistake of telling them, there were two possible responses:

"THAT much?" (with a doubtful expression), or 

"Oh. (Long pause) Is that all?" 

The whole idea of making money for something as rarefied and esoteric as WRITING is still pretty foreign to most people. I feel liberated now in that I do not need to answer to ANYONE, I can just launch it out there whenever I feel like it, and though I’m not exactly paid for the work I do on my blog, it’s still pleasant and gratifying for me to keep working on it. In fact, if it isn't pleasant and gratifying, I won't do it. Every week, I get several comments from readers all over the world (I got one from New Zealand before breakfast!) on blog posts I wrote in 2012 or even earlier, which makes me realize my stuff is “out there” – very much out there, if I google my name and location or one of my book titles.

Well, this thing is getting almost as long as my Globe review, but at least I don’t have to go back and fine-tooth-comb it for errors and length. Nobody has to approve it. I think the upshot of it all is, I’m a lot less inclined to want to plough through a book that is basically pretty heavy going, with characters that don’t exactly jump off the page, a dated viewpoint, and dozens and dozens of unfamiliar words that are never defined.

Hell, I ain’t got time any more! I’m almost seventy, and back when I was in my youthful forties I felt I had all the time in the world. I didn’t, of course, but making my way through this museum-case of a novel is bringing it home to me that I have absolutely NO time to waste. On anything. Not even on a book as large and impressive as this one. Dr. Zhivago for the Far East it might be, but that's without Julie Christie and Omar Sharif and that magnificent musical score.

And I'm not going to be reading Zhivago any time soon. I've heard it's an awful bore.