truepenny: artist's rendering of Sidneyia inexpectans (Default)
[personal profile] truepenny
1. Happy Fourth of July! Also, belatedly, happy Canada Day!

2. I was very sad to discover that Edward Hardwicke died this May. He was my favorite Dr. Watson, and he was astonishingly excellent in Sir Ian McKellen's Richard III. It's obvious from reading what he says about Jeremy Brett, just on the IMDb page, and then reading what Brett had to say about him (and I am still sad, sixteen years on, that the world now lacks Jeremy Brett), that he was a lovely human being and that the friendship he and Brett show between Holmes and Watson was also part of their real-life relationship.

Rest in peace, Mr. Hardwicke. And thank you.

3. And a quote from Jeremy Brett on playing Sherlock Holmes: "I'm so miscast; I'm a romantic-heroic actor. So I was terribly aware that I had to hide an awful lot of me, and in so doing I think I look quite often brusque, or maybe sometimes even slightly rude. In fact Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Doyle's daughter, who's a great personal friend of mine, did once say to me, 'I don't think my father meant You-Know-Who to be quite so rude', and I said, 'I'm terribly sorry, Dame Jean, I'm just trying to hide me'."

4. So, after fifteen years of living in this piece of the Upper Midwest, [livejournal.com profile] mirrorthaw and I have finally started exploring its natural wonders, starting with the state parks. The bit of it I want to blog about is, in one of the state parks, there's a pine plantation--i.e., planted by someone who intended to harvest the trees for lumber. (The park information is very carefully passive voice, so it's hard to tell quite how we ended up with a pine plantation in a state park.) Walking from the mostly oak forest into the pine plantation was one of the more eerie experiences I've had recently. Because, you see, the thing about pine plantations is that they kill all the other vegetation. No smaller trees, no bushes. No Virginia creeper, no grape vines, no mayflowers or ferns. No animals. No birds. Just these tall, straight trees, and a carpet of dead pine needles. And the mosquitoes who followed us in.

It'll probably get into a story eventually, but in the meantime, it's this odd lump of experience like an inclusion in quartz.

5. There's nothing like disgusting humid sweltering heat to make Catzilla feel snuggly.

Date: 2011-07-04 08:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] coffeeem.livejournal.com
Fer instance, here are the very first lines of the novel, The Valley of Fear:
__________________

"I am inclined to think—" said I.

"I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I'll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. "Really, Holmes," said I severely, "you are a little trying at times."

He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate answer to my remonstrance.
_________________

Oh, Watson, poor dear. It's a dysfunctional relationship. I could give you a prosthetic spine, but I think you're too far gone for that.

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truepenny: artist's rendering of Sidneyia inexpectans (Default)
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