A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is about an aristocrat, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropol after the communist revolution. Instead of being confined to his luxury suite, Rostov is moved to a tiny ten by ten foot room in the attic of the hotel, where he is destined to live from his early twenties to his mid-sixties.
Normally, I think of novels about Russia as grim reading, either set before or after the revolution. A Gentleman in Moscow is enchanting. Both Rostov manner and Towles’ prose is charming and captivating. The novel does touch on the harshness of communistic Russia, but the story carefully isolates the reader from that darkness. In a way, it’s a kind of fairytale for grownups, like the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca.
While A Gentleman in Moscow constantly alludes to Russian literary works, which it admires, its story is light and airy. A Gentleman in Moscow is a love story on many levels without ever being a romance. Rostov does find a woman to love, but it’s about his love for his adopted daughter, family, friends, food, drink, memories, place, and traditions.
I have met many people who raved about this book and pushed me to read it. I have not met anyone who disliked it. Only a misanthrope would hate this story. The novel was made into an eight-part limited series that’s currently running on Paramount+ which follows the original novel very well. I’m sorry I didn’t get to this novel sooner.
A Gentleman in Moscow came in #3 on The Reader Top 100 poll of the best books of the 21st century so far.
For several years now, YouTube has been my favorite TV diversion. I could always find something to watch quickly, and the videos were usually short, so YouTube didn’t demand much. I was first hooked by channels about 8-bit computers, but quickly subscribed to channels about all my favorite subjects. If I showed interest in any topic, YouTube would offer me lots more along the same vein.
Recently I started reading The Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon, Volume 11 by Will and Ariel Durant and became fascinated by the French Revolution. I got on YouTube, searched on that topic, and found tons of videos to watch. There were short videos by amateur historians and professional documentaries like this old one from The History Channel.
However, it was of exceptionally low video quality, 240p, which is unpleasant to watch. But there were other videos, by what I assume are individual YouTubers, in higher resolution, and with particularly good production values, such as this one by Asha Logos.
Or here’s another one from History Weekly. I don’t know if this is a professional outfit, or another lone YouTuber, but it’s also of high quality.
These videos supplement my reading with added information and lots of visuals. However, I wonder about the validity of the information. Should I trust an amateur historian, or even history on The History Channel. The History Channel produces a lot of shows on flaky history, or even crap history.
I decided to subscribe to The Great Courses Plus and watch Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon which is taught by an actual history professor, Dr. Suzanne M. Desan from the University of Wisconsin who specializes in 18th century France. Dr. Desan covers the topic in forty-eight thirty-minute lectures. She has few visuals, so I’m mostly watching her lecture. It’s like a college course.
The Great Courses Plus is $20 a month ($15 if you pay quarterly, or $12.50 if you pay yearly). However, I decided to get it through Amazon Prime for $7.99 a month. Amazon Prime gets a smaller subset of all the courses at The Great Courses Plus, but it did have this one. I’ve found plenty of courses on Amazon Prime version, but I think I’ll eventually join the full version, since it has a lecture series on Voltaire, I want to see that’s not in the Amazon Prime collection.
Another way to get Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon is through Audible.com. It’s an audio only version of the lectures (24 hours and 47 minutes), but it does come with a .pdf textbook for the course. I don’t get the textbook through my Prime subscription, but I would if I subscribed directly to The Great Course Plus. The textbooks for The Great Courses tend to be concise summaries of the lecture that are easy to read and reference. They’re a wonderful way to look back on the details that I quickly forget.
I now find myself watching the Great Courses lectures rather than turning on YouTube. I tend to watch YouTube in idle moments, a kind of random grazing of odd information. Often I end up watching fun but useless stuff.
So, I’ve started switching to the lectures on the French Revolution. This is more satisfying. I don’t even have to watch a whole lecture, so it’s like YouTube, it can be very casual. However, it makes me feel more focused than when I’m watching YouTube. I’m not saying watching YouTube is bad, or that I’m going to give it up. But the Great Courses lectures offer a nice alternative. It feels like I’m getting back to my book. That I’m progressing towards something which is satisfying.
I also like switching between my book and lectures. The two histories reinforce each other, but they also focus on different details. I’m already anxious to read even more about the French Revolution, and The Enlightenment. And I want to read about Voltaire and Rousseau. I’ve already started with YouTube videos, but I crave lecture series and books to get more details.
I knew next to nothing about the French Revolution or Napoleon. And what I did know came from fiction by Dickens and Tolstoy, or from movies. Just knowing about The Terror gives a false sense of what happened.
I now see a synergy between history books, lectures, and YouTube videos.
I showed The Great Courses Plus to my friend Annie yesterday, and now she wants to watch a lecture series together. We watched movies and television shows together, but it’s gotten hard to find things to watch, at least things we both want to see. The lectures open a new avenue of something to do together.
My next goal is to learn to take notes. I feel like I’m learning something valuable, but I’m not sure how much I’ll remember. With the book, lectures, and videos I’ve been trying to remember certain details. I want this TV watching to be more than just idle time killing. My brain is getting flabby as I age, so I’m trying to exercise it.
I can’t find a sample video of Dr. Desan’s lecture, but here is a sample video with three other lecturers at The Great Courses Plus (previously named Wondrium).
I’m finding studying history to be a great escape from worrying about the real world. We’re living through some exciting history, but it’s also unnerving, and stressful. I find lots of comparisons with today’s politics in the French Revolution. That’s consoling in a way. However, things Trump is saying makes me worry about another version of The Terror.
I had a very weird day yesterday. It made me feel weird. Nothing truly bad happened to me, but it felt like I was coming down with something. It’s hard to describe. A touch of anxiety, a tiny bit of dread, and a pinch of paranoia. Today that feeling is gone. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I’m more susceptible to disease and unwanted emotions. I worry that they will get more intense as I get older.
It started when I drove to the library and discovered it was closed. The hand lettered signs on the doors said the library would be closed until next Monday. This was Wednesday, so that was odd. When I got home and told Susan she said she knew why. She had read that someone committed suicide inside the library on Monday. That generated a feeling I can’t describe.
Later, I drove off to meet a friend for lunch, and got pulled over by a policeman. It sent a rush of adrenalin through me. I was in the middle lane, and he pulled up behind me at a traffic light. I had seen him a few blocks earlier sitting on a side street, and I didn’t see him come up behind me until he blared his siren and flashed his blue lights. I thought maybe he had seen me while I was trying to swat a mosquito and I looked suspicious.
I maneuvered across the right lane and into a drop-off zone for a school. The officer was genuinely nice. He gave a rather long prologue apologizing for pulling me over, but said they were out in force looking for cars with defects. My right taillight was out. Our city stopped doing car inspections years ago to save money, so those kinds of violations are a problem. I was glad to learn about my problem and thanked him. He thanked me for being nice about it. Made me wonder how many people got angry with him.
However, the incident left me feeling hyper. Even though I got to lunch on time, I couldn’t relax. And my food tasted odd. I’m a vegetarian and I worried my cheese enchilada might have meat in it. I couldn’t see any, but it just added to the weirdness.
After lunch, while still in the parking lot, I got out my toolbox. I had a spare lightbulb, but I couldn’t undo the bolt holding in the light fixture with the plyers I had. That produced a bit annoyance.
I drove home worried I’d be pulled over again, but I got back without incidence. I quickly replaced the light bulb and thought things would be okay. I went in to pay my ticket online, but the online form wouldn’t work. Another bit of frustration.
Then I heard a big noise that I knew was a tree limb crashing down. That happens a lot around here because of all the trees. I went outside and a limb had fallen across the back end of my truck, along the ridge of the tailgate, where I had been working on the light. If I had been out there then, it would have conked me on the head. Now I was starting to feel paranoid.
Some days things just go wrong. When I was younger, I could work eight hours dealing with problem after problem and constant frustration, and it wouldn’t bother me. Why, now that I’m living the life of Riley in retirement, do tiny little disruptions in my routine gnaw at me? Is it aging?
I’ve noticed that some older people get agitated and flustered when trivial things go wrong. Is that my future? What will I be like at eighty? And ninety must be surreal.
I’ve always been laid back. And on most days, I still feel laid back. But some days, I’m a few percent off being at ease. I wonder if that’s going to get worse. Is it age, or is being retired, while developing an almost rigid routine of doing exactly what I wanted, ruined me for interruptions? It’s gotten so any day that I must do something out of the ordinary annoys me. That’s a wimpy way to be, and I don’t like it.
I’m reminded of a story a standup comic told decades ago. I forgot who it was, maybe George Carlin or Woody Allen. It was about a New Yorker who was terrified of getting mugged. The advice he got was to get up every morning and pistol whip himself. I thought it absurdly funny back then, but there might be a bit of valid advice in it today.
After a good night’s sleep, I feel normal again today. I was able to pay my ticket online, and I’ve been able to follow my rut routinely. However, I’m not ready to leave the house looking for trouble. I guess I’m chicken.
Ever since I learned about Super Audio CDs decades ago, I’ve been on a quest to hear high resolution music. I bought a Pioneer SACD player to go with a 5.1 AV receiver, but I wasn’t satisfied with what I heard. If I listened intently, I thought I heard more details, but only if I really concentrated. Later, when they started selling hi resolution music files, I spent $25 on a 24bit Van Morrison album. It sounded good, but not dramatically better. I also tried Tidal, Amazon Music HD, and Apple Music hoping to hear more. Even after getting MQA set up, it just didn’t wow me. I was never sure if my equipment was completely compatible.
I then bought a Fiio K5 Pro ESS headphone amplifier and Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro 250-ohm, open back, headphones and resubscribed to Tidal Music. This finally impressed me. I was easily hearing far more detail in the music, and it was very enjoyable. I’ve never really liked listening to music on headphones or IEMs, but this sound was different.
However, reviews of the DT 990 Pro were not completely positive, and I was impressed by several reviews of the Sennheiser 560S, which claimed these headphones were great for hearing hi-resolution clarity.
Not every song was a night and day difference, but some songs were. I thought “Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers was a different recording. Ditto for “I Feel Free” by Cream. And my favorite new group that I’ve been playing for months, Prefab Sprout, also sounded far more detailed and much more appealing. When listening to oldies from the 1960s I felt like I was hearing them better than anytime in my life.
I think these songs were dramatically different because I heard a lot of separation between the instruments. It felt like I could hear each individual instrument clearly, and I heard instruments I hadn’t noticed before. Plus, vocals seemed different too, more textured.
I don’t necessarily recommend chasing after hi-resolution audio unless you’re already anxious to hear more from your favorite music. And I can’t guarantee that any equipment will get you there. Or if you can hear a night and day difference. I’ve been long frustrated in trying to find a system to play hi-resolution audio.
Now that streaming services like Tidal, Apple, and Amazon HD are offering files in hi-res formats for the same price as a normal subscription, it’s kind of obvious to want to hear that hi-res sound. But a lot of equipment can’t play hi-res files, or if they do, they down sample the music. Even Apple which makes a big deal out of offering hi-res music, doesn’t play it on all its devices. You even need to go into the settings on your iPhone to turn on hi-res music. And then it’s Bluetooth headphones and Air Pods won’t play it.
Wired headphones can produce a wider range of music resolution, even more than speakers, even speakers with subwoofers. And if your ears are old like mine, you’ll have hearing loss in some sonic ranges.
I’m happy with the Fiio K5 Pro ESS and Sennheiser 560s. I hear a lot more, and it’s very enjoyable. And my setup is very modest, only about $375, not counting the Tidal subscription. I have no idea how much of its potential range of sound I’m hearing, but it’s more than I was hearing before. Even with CD quality or Spotify compressed music, the combination of the Fiio and Sennheiser made the music sound better. But I now hear a difference with Tidal, and I’m going to switch to it since Spotify is dragging its feet with offering hi-res music.
Eventually, I’ll crave better headphones (Focal Clear?) and a better headphone amp (WA7 Fireflies?). I’m already looking forward to the Fiio K11 R2R because I’ve always wanted to hear a R2R DAC. However, I’m happy enough for now, and maybe for years. I love playing whole albums and listening intently. I’ve done that with my floor standing speakers, but I feel like I’m getting a new experience with the headphones.
I don’t know why hearing more details is so enjoyable to me. I especially like the separation of instruments because I can concentrate on individual performances. It’s like hearing music new again.
If you only listen to music casually or play music in the background while you do other things, hi-res audio isn’t important. You must focus on music like being at the theater watching a movie for hi-res to matter.
Susan and I are watching the entire run of Leave It to Beaver. We’re currently in the sixth and final season, about to finish all 234 episodes. We watch two episodes a night, so that means we’ll complete six years of the original broadcast in 117 days. Back then they had thirty-nine episodes per season.
We’ve watched Jerry Mathers (Beaver) and Tony Dow (Wally) grow up. When the series begun in 1957, Beaver was seven and in second grade. Wally was thirteen in the eighth grade. Six years apart, but six years later, Beaver was in the eighth, but Wally was in the twelfth, four years apart. Evidently, the producers didn’t want Wally going off to college. Mathers and Dow were only three years apart in age in real life. Dow was born in 1945, and Mathers in 1948.
Leave It to Beaver premiered on October 4, 1957, the same day that Sputnik I went into orbit. I had just entered first grade and was five. I don’t remember seeing Leave It to Beaver as a kid in the 1950s. It wasn’t until sometime in the 1960s that I saw an episode, and I didn’t see it often. Susan didn’t watch it as a kid either.
In other words, we’re not watching Leave It to Beaver for nostalgic reasons. I’m not sure why we got hooked on it. We were just looking around for something to watch, and I suggested the show as something pleasant we both might like. Susan doesn’t like shows with violence (although I’ve got her to watch the Fargo series recently). I think I picked Beaver because Susan loved watching Andy Griffith so much.
I do have nostalgic memories of family shows like Make Room for Daddy, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and My Three Sons from the late 1950s and early 1960s, so it’s odd we picked Leave It to Beaver. We even signed up for Peacock with no ads so we could watch it without ads.
I can’t promise that Leave It to Beaver is one of the greatest TV shows ever. It’s pleasant. We like the actors and characters. The stories are quite simple, very pro-family, very didactic. The stories are also repetitive. For example, there are several episodes about Beaver getting a pet he can’t keep, including an alligator, rat, donkey, and a very ugly monkey. There were many shows where Beaver friends convince him they should all go to school wearing something weird, like a sweatshirt with a horrible monster on it, or show up for a special event not wearing a coat and tie, and Beaver shows up as the gang planned but the others don’t, making him look stupid. Another common plot was for Beaver’s friends to talk him into doing something he shouldn’t.
Most of the episodes had a message. Often it was: When your parents tell you something it is for your own good. But fairly frequently, there were shows about how parents should listen to their kids sometimes, because sometimes their kids knew better.
I remember Leave It to Beaver being about only the kids, sort of like Peanuts. But half the show is about Ward and June. I guess as a kid I just didn’t pay attention to adults, either in real life or on TV.
One of my favorite episodes has Beaver getting in an argument with a bigger kid and uses a cuss word. Of course, the school bell rings when Beaver says the word, but his teacher, Miss Landers, heard what he said. Miss Landers is shocked and sternly informs Beaver he’s in big trouble. Miss Landers tells Beaver to bring a guardian to school to meet with her. Ward is off on a business trip, and Beaver can’t bring himself to tell June what he said, so he convinces Wally to come to school as his guardian. Miss Landers accepts Wally because she doesn’t want Beaver to tell June what he said either.
Even though we time travel back to the 1950s and early 1960s when we watch Leave It to Beaver, it doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels more archeological. The show just reminds me of how things were so different back then.
I thought I’d find episodes I would remember but I haven’t. The closest any episode felt like I had seen it before was the one when Beaver and Wally play the stock market. I do remember as a kid watching a TV show where the kids learn about the stock market, but I can’t swear it was on Leave It to Beaver. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.
Quite often while watching other old TV shows I’ll tell Susan, “Oh, I’ve seen this one.” But that’s never happened with Beaver. But the intros and closing credit scenes to all six seasons seem burned into my memory, but not the stories themselves. I guess I remember the visuals and not the plots.
It’s weird to watch a show from the first to the last episode. I’ve done that several times now. It’s also kind of painful. Older TV shows depended on every episode being entirely self-contained. This approach leant itself to formulaic scripts, which was true with Leave It to Beaver. I’ve read that Beaver was the first show to have a finale, which was a unique episode. But for the most part, there was a commonality to every other episode.
As far as I can remember every episode featured the staircase. Most featured front or back door meetings, breakfast table meetings, dinner table meetings, doing the dishes together, sitting around the bedroom, living room, or den. For most seasons we saw Ward and June kiss in each episode. That seemed to fall off in the last couple of seasons. All four of the main actors had standard facial expressions and used specific body language in every show.
One thing I remembered wrong was the Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond) character. I remember him as a juvenile delinquent, the bad boy. But the show portrays him as a sympathetic loser, on the pathetic side, one who tries too hard, has too much ego, and probably has bad parents.
Beaver had very few guest stars, which was what I enjoyed when watching the entire nine years of Perry Mason. However, a few of the actors, like Miss Landers (Sue Randall) I’ve seen on other shows. I saw her on Perry Mason. Of course, Fred Rutherford (Richard Deacon) went on to be Mel on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Watching old TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s reveals an alternate reality that we all observed back then. The Beaver often mentioned the TV shows that were on when Leave It to Beaver was on the air, even making inside jokes about the competition. And to a degree it makes fun of other pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. But it was very gentle. I even saw a science fiction magazine a couple of times. I’ve often wondered when science fiction was first mentioned in pop culture.
The show covered the phases of childhood and adolescence that kids were going through back in the 1950s and early 1960s. Leave It to Beaver went off the air in 1963, before the famous Sixties began. This photo meme on Facebook conveys that stark change perfectly.
Watching Leave It to Beaver explores the times before that cultural shift.
Auxiliary Memory 