A COUPLE THINGS

CULTURE PILL:

When I lived in Barrow, Alaska, the local college would offer free course.  I took on about literature.  The instructure lived in my building, I gave a small old book written by Daniel Defoe titled, "Travels with a Donkey".  I am certain he invented an early version of the sleeping bag.  

When I lived in Barrow AK, the local college offered free classes.  The instructor lived in my building.  I gave him a little old book by Daniel Defoe titled Travel with a Donkey.  I am pretty sure he invented an early version of a sleeping bag.

At any rate, the class was local and very interesting.  We first watched he original Frankenstein.  We also watched a later edition starring Robert DeNiro as the monster. At the end of the class we were challenged to write any we liked about Frankenstein. I wrote a sequel titled "Big Man.  The book ended in the Arctic, seen as an exotic local circa 1812.  The ship burned however Frankenstein escaped to an ice floe.  He used the salt water to heal his burns and ate what he could catch from the sea.  A party of Eskimo hunters found him and decided to take him home with them.  He recovered and soon learned Inupiaq and shared meat.  He once drove off a polar bear with his roar.  Eventually they returned to Utkiagvik (Barrow).   No one minded his scars, many hunters were worse off.  The children loved him for he was very tall.  He married and named the first five children after his victims back home.  After that his wife named the rest of the children.  His leather notebook labeled Victor Frankenstein still exists where it can be found in the local library. 

Then we were introduced to Latin American authors.  We read "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  It has six chapters and is about a courtship between two young people.  As I read it in the fifth chapter one of the paragraph sounded very familiar.  I started looking backwards.  I finally found a duplicate paragraph in the second chapter.  The paragraph was identical.  They were on a steamer along the river, it described the surroundings perfectly, the sounds, the smells.  I was puzzled.  The teacher suggested I write a letter to Marquez,  I did so,English and Spanish.  I never heard from him.  I have often wondered if he wrote other Easter Eggs in other books but I have never read them.  Has anyone else read them and if so did you find any Easter Eggs ?  

Then we read a short story titled "The Third Bank".  It was about a grieving woman asking the local Priest to find her husband.  He was astounded.  She reported that he left in a single person boat.  She begged the priest to bring home.  The priest told her that it was impossible.  We were supposed to figure out what really happened.  Someone suggest that the man's one person boat was actually a coffin and he was dead and could not return.  

My friend, Patrick Pendleton participated in a murder solving thing, He had a lot of fun.